The VSVR 1875-1880 (Part 1)
Quickly after settling into his new office Lenin pushed through the social reforms he had promised in order to bolster his popularity and satisfy his supporters. The maximum working day was decreased by two hours from 14 hours to 12 hours a day. This, admittedly, was still a rather high number of hours and it was not entirely common for this to be worked in the first place. However it did make a noticeable impact on the Republic as approximately 15% of people now had a shorter working day. The unemployment subsidy was increased – this news was greeted by jubilation from Bohemians and Silesians as despite several months passing since their annexation there remained thousands of unemployed workers (a problem that would largely cease to be an issue by the Summer of 1875). Therefore this move cemented a strong base of support for the Marxist-Leninists in these regions. Finally more stringent safety regulations were introduced for the Republic’s factories, again output was sacrificed for the well being of the workers and again the Marxist-Leninists saw their popularity spike upwards.
Lenin also granted the officer class the vote, it was decided that all members of the military would hence forth be classes as soldiers – this ended the division between the officers (disenfranchised) and the common soldiers (enfranchised). This was obviously a compromise with the Marxist’s Militarist allies but Lenin managed to convince Schlieffen to back down on his calls for votes for the petite bourgeoisie (very easily) and more importantly on the calls for the vote for farmers (a more difficult task).
The first major incident of Lenin’s term as Chairman occurred on March 3rd across the border in the Netherlands. The country was still licking its wounds from the mauling it had received in the Bohemian War which had ended barely one year previously and the state was highly unstable. The Monarchy had failed to re-establish a significant military presence in Europe (aside from the still impressive Dutch Fleet), had been ineffective in rebuilding the country’s economy, had lost much of its respect and was becoming increasingly reliant on exploiting the East Indies for all they were worth. In short the Kingdom was the worse for wear. On top of this there was a rebounding Communist party known as the League of Dutch Labour (ideologically the League supported an intriguing mixture of Anarchist and Marxist beliefs but was a chief proponent of the Vanguard Party championed by Lenin).
On March 3rd League Paramilitaries (armed with guns produced in the VSVR) launched a coup in Amsterdam. The King fled the city by ship along with much of the city’s ruling classes, effectively abandoning the capital to the Communists. With a virtually non-existent standing army the King’s forces were expected to simply give way to the inevitable. However Willem III refused to give in and landed in Gelre, with around 12,000 sailors he marched in land to this most anti-Communist province and started to raise troops to launch an attack on the West coast of the country which was heavily Communist. The resulting Civil War would last until November.
The colonies, quite shockingly, were not unanimous in their support for the Monarchists as the Caribbean colonies (perhaps influenced by the large Comintern presence in the region) declared for the Republicans whilst the East Indies were much more divided than one would assume. Obviously the Imperial Dutch forces in the region declared for the King but the Communist Republicans (assisted by Comintern bases in the Philippines) had managed to raise much of the local population into rebellion with promises of autonomy, equality and an end to exploitation. With the vast majority of his fleet focussed on Europe Willem could do nothing to cement himself overseas. In the Netherlands themselves he was initially very successful. He smashed a Republican Army near Utrecht in early June and subsequently recaptured Utrecht and Rotterdam, effectively forcing the Communists into Holland. However after 3 failed attempts to invade this most valuable of provinces things started to fall apart for Willem as his army suffered from desertion, rebellions occurred within the territory he held and the Communists better organised themselves. With arms, volunteers and military experts streaming in from the VSVR (their ships being protected by VSVR flags) the Communists quickly grew stronger and in September launched a massive counterattack.
On November 17th a massively outnumbered Monarchist Army surrendered at Groningen. Bucking a regicidal trend the Dutch did not take their opportunity to behead their Monarch but instead cut a deal. In return for the right to flee to London Willem agreed to surrender all claim to the Netherlands and to call upon the Monarchist troops in the East Indies to lay down their arms. With the Dutch Civil War at an end the Republic of the Netherlands and the East Indies was proclaimed. The Republic would consist of 3 main bodies – from Jakarta an East Indian Politburo ran internal affairs for the former colony, in Amsterdam a Dutch Politburo ran internal affairs for the European Netherlands whilst a second Republican Politburo acted as the unifying government for the entire Republic whilst also running internal affairs in the small Dutch territory in Africa and their lands in the Caribbean. Lenin was sceptical about the Dutch system of government and urged the Republic to simply divide its Empire in the same way that Spain did – however Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, the Chairman of the Republic, ensured Lenin that the Republic would be stronger united.
One of Lenin’s great personal desires was to embark on a series of almighty projects that would show the world the wonders of socialism, the might of the VSVR and make them tremble. Everything the Republic had would have to be the biggest in the world, the most powerful in Europe and the most technologically advanced. This craze would later become known as Gigantomania.
One of the most important facets of Gigantomania was the massive expansion of the Red Army under Alfred Schlieffen. In barely two years between 1875 and March 1877 (when the Republic would enter its next war) the standing army swelled by an additional 50%. In 1875 it was 320,000 men strong, by March 1877 there were 480,000 men under arms. On top of this during the same period an additional 400,000 people were made ready for conscription. The Army was not just expanding rapidly, it was modernising too. In March 1875 the Politburo agreed to make the Red Army the first on earth to be outfitted with the recently invented Maxim Gun (first built in France just 6 months before). The Red Army was fast becoming the most formidable land army on the planet, now only France could match it and even that was arguable.
In Cologne the Statue of the Revolution was created. The colossal twin figures of a male worker and a female peasant joining together stood at an awesome 114 metres tall, making it the largest stature of earth. Just larger than the statue of Liberty which was unveiled in New York around the same time.
In Beyreuth the largest Opera House in the world was opened to the music of the Republic’s greatest composer – Richard Wagner. It was said that the Italian ambassador who attended the opening night of the People’s Opera House cried, believing that Italy’s time as the home of opera was now over.
In the North a huge Canal was carved out of the ground to connect the Baltic and North Seas. However its tactical use would be greatly limited by the time it finally opened in 1878 as by then the Republic would be at war and its fleet would be sunk.
Other, more practically useful, constructions included the Cologne Metro (the first underground railway on earth) and the Elbe Dam which provided power for the surrounding area. Gigantomania provided the Republic with some of its greatest achievements, but they were not nearly as popular within the Republic as one might expect. They were regarded as costly wastes of resources which could be better spent on the workers by some Marxists and as the ultimate symbols of Lenin’s arrogance and Monarchical desires by many Anarchists.
In 1876 the first members of a new Socialist project arrived in West Africa. Ignoring pre-existing French and British influences they set up several towns along the coastline from where they spread the gospel of the Republic to the people of Africa for the first time. This move would finally turn the British, whose relations with the Republic had blown hot and cold for years, firmly against the Republic.
By 1877 the Republic had already undergone several serious and damaging convulsions. Amongst the agreements made in the Marxist-Militarist coalition was the secret promise Lenin made to his allies to reign in the Anarchist press.
Following the publishing of several inflammatory pieces in the Anarchist Zeal (including caricatures of Lenin as a Pharaoh overseeing the construction of his works with Schlieffen whipping the proletarians at work and articles delving into Schlieffen’s Prussian past) Lenin proposed a motion to the Politburo which would establish a level of press censorship – preventing ‘’counter-revolutionary materials from publication’’. With only 4 alliance members on the Politburo (including the pro-liberty Necazian) Lenin was defeated. However this minor crisis of his authority gave him an opportunity to greatly change the way politics in the Republic worked as he went to the Constituent Assembly. Prior to this, struggling to find a true purpose, the Assembly had acted primarily as an advisory body (similar in that respect to the Senate of the ancient Roman Republic) with little actual power. Lenin put his law before the Assembly and won the vote (with just 51 members voting for). The Assembly was widely respected due to its direct election by the people and Lenin declared his act to be law, circumventing the Politburo. Lenin then returned to the Politburo to tokenly offer them a second opportunity to vote in favour, which they did, but in reality the shift of power from the Politburo to the Constituent Assembly, and thus into the hands of whichever faction led the Assembly, was clear.
But this action provoked outrage from the Anarchists, the Moderates and the Independents who made up around ½ of the Constituent Assembly and around the same portion of the Republic’s people.
In protest the Zeal published an entire paper which savagely attacked the alliance – it called Lenin a tyrant, a would be King and a traitor to everything Marx stood for. It included an interview from the much respected Engels in which the previous Chairman lambasted the law. Finally it called for a second revolution to topple the Marxist-Militarist coalition before it was too late. The paper was designed to contradict the new law and to challenge Lenin.
Lenin responded to this by having Schlieffen send Red Guards, popular figures amongst the people, to close down the Anarchist Zeal. The paper’s head offices were occupied, most of the printing equipment destroyed and two editors arrested whilst the Zeal was banned. Once again the original underground newspaper returned to its roots as a radical Anarchist news outlet calling for action against the state.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. With everything he had once fought to achieve falling apart the once violently militant Party Secretary for the Ruhr, Kadon, stood up in front of around 40,000 workers of all political alignments in an address to the workers of the Ruhr and denounced the Chairman, calling for radical action against the government unless freedom of the press was restored. Protected by his position within the Politburo Lenin could not touch him as Kadon went about reforming the Young Anarchist movement as a powerful force amongst the Anarchists.
Just as the cissies of the late 1860s had been ignited by the clash of violent Anarchist street mobs with officials of the state in early 1877 the Republic seemed to be heading towards civil war once more after an Anarchist mob clashed with police in Berlin resulting in the deaths of some 12 police officers and 51 Young Anarchists.
Lenin turned to Schlieffen to save the situation. Schlieffen responded in typically forward style ‘’give me a war’’.
On March 24th 1877 the United Socialist People’s Republic declared war upon the one Imperialist power that had retained good relations with the Republic up to that point – the industrially rich Russian Empire. Lenin’s casus belli was his demands for Russia to retract its influence form Sweden and therefore allow the Swedish Monarchy to finally collapse (by this stage it only retained power thanks to Russian aid), and usher in another Communist Republic. By mid Summer the Republic was also at war with the British Empire as the British attempted to force the VSVR off of the African Continent. Although the wars were officially separate (there was no alliance between Russia and Britain) they are often combined together in the Republic as the Eastern War...
