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The Empire of the Red Star

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europa.eu.int
I have just bought Victoria, and I have just envisioned an alternative history of the 19th century Europe. What if the laborers of Austria did topple the double monarchy and establish a communist state in Central Europe?

Of course, it does sounds mad, but not as mad as the bolsheviks comming into power in Petrograd? The communist Austria would be the foundation of the Empire of the Red Star, which would retake all the lost and scattered possesions of the earlier Habsburg Empire, and by 1920 eitherly unified Europe underneath the sword of the working class, or taken the continent into the fires of the abyss...
 
Wouldnt it just break apart ?
 
Originally posted by Patric123
isnt this OT for the aar forum?
Click to expand...

He's maybe posting an idea for an AAR? It definately sounds interesting :)
 
Early years: 1836-1856

Industrialization and Conquest

It was a sunny new years day, and the streets of Linz was only thinly crowded with people. The christmas tree had not yet been taken down in the square, and the headache of Frederich Faggart had all but dissapeared in the thin air of the alpine town in this far-off region of the Empire.
Faggart would stay here in Linz for the next few days, and then travel back to the imperial capital, where he earned his upbringing from tuturing the eight year old Franz Joséf, the heir to the throne of Habsburg.
He was a tall, beardy man, who never would have gained his position if thé authorities had known his real political attachment, with the middle class of Bohemia.
He had spent his time in Linz with his good friend Otto Karpschyk. This Karpschyk was an intellectual and a reporter with ties to some liberal movement.
Faggart looked out of the window of the smoky inn where he sat, and then he looked back on his friend Otto. "Are you sure it would function as meaned?"
"The Walloons are sure, even if they do not know how much it will change the face of our wourld. With the rail, the borders could be overcome, and it would be more movement, people will travel across Europe, freely, for not to mention all the goods that will be fracted. The future will show that rail will be the single most important economic catalysator of Europe..."

*********************************

Habsburg - year 1836

The habsburg empire was fully united in the sense that the imperial army would not have to beg for approval to get to distant parts of the empire, as in the earlier centuries, when Habsburg had been scattered in pieces around Europe. The Empire was in no way weak, but it was weakened, both by the collapse of the HRE thirty years earlier, and by the nationalist and proletarian secessionism that was flourishing in Italy, Poland, Hungary and Bohemia. The imperial army, consisting of 50.000 - 60.000 men, would not keep control of the empire during a possible industrialization process.
The budget of the 2th of january 1836 saw the introduction of high tariffs, which would protect the farmers of the empire - yes - especially the poor poles, slovakians and romanians, from foreign competition.
 
If it's break-down

I will try to move the Empire in a direction were a proletarian dictatorship, either peacefully or through revolution, gains control of the imperial heart and center of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. The rest of the empire is possible to - for the time being - sacrifice. That would also give the Empire of the Red Star a legal and justifiable casus belli against a lot of European Minors.
 
The Socialist Commonwealth of Central Europe? Sounds interesting! :)

I have that picture in my mind - a red revolutionary with a Russian felt hat, and with impeccable Austrian old-world manners. ROFL
 
Early Years 1836 - 1856

The cabinet of the emperor was assembled in the beginning of january 1836 to negotiate in the matters of the budget. Despite protests from the Hungarian and Galizian nobles, a staged tax higher for the rich was enabled.
The crime budget was lowered, and the machine began to roll. Several new divisions was assigned to the imperial army, which grew in size.
Despite these reforms, nothing important happened during this year, and the dissatisfaction grew deep within the populace. In Prague, the third city of the Empire and the heart of Europe, unemployed poor people marched towards the city council and occupied it, thus threatening to take control of the city. The Imperial government sent 20.000 men underneath a general Adler, a blond-haired, young officer who's father was into politics.
Even though the rioters had taken control of mainly the whole of Prague, the forces of Adler was deployed south of the city, and then moved inwards, calling for negotiation, or sooner to say, total surrender of the rebellion.

3.139 people were killed. It was the 18th of june 1836, and it was perhaps a rainy day.

****

"Herr deputy ambassador", smiled the secret police chief, nodding at his superior in the Karlsbad castle a month later. "We have reason", he said, and lended above the map of the table, "to believe that acts of revolution are coordinated from the J-town."
The deputy ambassador lended his head to his hand. His name was not important, in a year or two he would be forgotten and replaced by another bureaucrate as anonymous, but for now, he held the absolute executive power in the Habsburg empire, and the thrust of the emperor himself. His name was Theodórz Putnik, not a German but a Croat, and a very patriotic one.
"The J-town?" he asked in a rhetorical question. "The jews town? You must mean Kraków".
The secret police chief smiled with his grim mouth, it was not so usual that the imperial executive knew so much about the lingua of the secret police, and it was very not usual that the deputy ambassador of the cabinet knew anything about the world.
Putnik smeared his dry lips with the thin, white-gloved girl-like hands, as he seemed to be in very deep thoughts. "Kraków... the last remnants of Poland, the symbol of the triumph of our diplomacy, indeed Walter."
The Deputy ambassador raised and walked across the stony room in this medieval palace, as he watched out of the window and saw the star-clear sky.
"You know Walter, my brute friend, that we could await this... the second mistake of great late Metternich, we have to hope that more unpleasant surprises does not occur, or else my master will be dis-pleaced."
The police chief moved beside his superior, watching his long, aristocratic face. "What would yopu do with J-town... eh boss..."
"I will wait, wait for the orders from my master... It is an intolerable situation in the long view, three conservative states unified in a alliance... no a war against revolution, and by pure weakness, we ought to accept a semi-independent freeport for anarchists, secessionists, liberals, outlaws and other terrorists."
But on the other hand, if we strike now, we will have to explain it for the other three... sorry... two members of the alliance."
"Peter and Roger?", the police chief said.
"You can be safe my friend, I know that they will hear this anyway, so why not let them do that. It would be inpolite... I do not want to risk the crumbling of the Holy Alliance and the security of Europe by invading a tiny enclave, a stitch, which only by a slight coincidence happens to lie in the meeting point of the borders of the greatest empires of the world..."
"Would they go into break because of J-town, I mean, nothing important exists there, but radical clubs, drugs, bombs, poets and artists... and Jews of course." Walter made a grim look when he mentioned that word.
"What could we possibly do?", the Deputy ambassador grumbled. "If we would allow Russian intervention in the Caucasus and Balkan, to a slight degree, Pr... I mean 'Peter', could not hesitate to support this war."
"How sounds your CB, my lord?"
"What do you like 'War against Drugs'?", the deputy ambassador smiled. "We could shrink this war down to a question about opium by saying that this is a part of our anti-drug policy, like the proposal to ban tobacco in the empire. If we would ban tobacco, why would we not go to war with such people that lives by inhalating and smuggling cocaine?"
"Brilliant... pure genious. But has not Peter always wanted to control J-town?"
"Peter wants to control everything... we'll give them our support in the next session in the parliament of Frankfurt... they need us to get a proper CB against Denmark."
"Is that not to bring upheaval to Europe in a bigger scale? And what would Frenchy and Benny do?"
"Frenchy and Benny would not do anything for the first. Frenchy does not dare to move against the combined strength of our forces and the forces of Roger and Peter. Benny have their little trouble with a revolution in Canada. We would of course have helped them, because or policies are purely based on ethics, but we have no fleet and we will not try to mob up America against us. They are or friends you know."
"America... I thought they were 'amoral revolucionaries and terrorists'?"
"Many things has changed.", Putnik sighed. "Nowadays, we have accepted the status quo in leaving America to strife against anarchy in it's most unpleasant democratic form. They will have their world, if they leave ours in peace. Europe will forever be in our hands."

***
Three weeks later, the envoys of his Imperial majesty declared, from Switzerland to Moldavia, from Poland to Serbia, and in the embassies of several European powers, that the free city of Kraków posed a threat against the authority of Imperial Europe, and thus had to be utterly destroyed.
 
Then it all fell apart...

General Adler ordered his servant to go after another punsch in the mid february of 1837, when herr deputy ambassador Putnik suddenly appeared in the entrance of the conquered city council of Kraków. Putnik's tall, eagle-like appearance was dressed in a black coat and a black hat of the same form that was used by those new capitalist adventurers. His face displayed a strange combination between triumph, eagerness, tiredness and bitterness. He embraced the victorious old general, and congratulated him to the victory. Then they both sat down in this great hall, formerly the audience chamber of Polish and lithuanian kings, to discuss the peace terms.
Even though Prussia and Russia had - after two formal weeks of hesitation, given their initial support to the war, France and Piedmont had rejected the idea and officially declared that they did not accept a possible Austrian annexation of Krakow. Putnik had called to a conference in Vienna, to restore the order of Europe, backed by Russia, the strongest mainland power and the policeman of Europe.
But only Russia, Prussia, Austria and representatives of the burning city of Kraków had attended the conference, which thus saw the end of the old order, even if Putnik had'nt noticed that. Russia had been given green light for expansion in Moldavia towards Constantinople. Putnik had cast the bite and hoped that Russia would accept the possible crush of tiny Congress Poland. At least that would be a sufficient option. Putnik knew that it was to create some problems in the future, but in his mind, Kraków posed a greater threat to the very existence of the Habsburg Empire. And now he was disappointed, because of the minimal losses in this war. The Austrian troops had lost only 9 men - 9 men! Perhaps the smallest loss in entire history, due to total ruthlessness in bombing the city into submission with two newly formed artillery divisions. Thousands of citizens in Kraków had fallen before the Austrian bayonettes, more than 22.000 men in the surrounding countryside had been taken to prison camps in the Carpatian mountains.
And the war created a great upheaval within the Empire. Anti-war demonstrations, student riots, ethnic conflicts and vandalism flourished during the first few months of 1837. And the war, as unimportant as it did seem, sent shivers through the body of Europe - in London more than 170.000 people gathered in a protest against the Holy Alliance, the struggle between Goliath of Austria and the little tiny David of Congress Poland.
More than 12.000 people were killed in the conquest of Kraków, and most of them was civilians. But the war transferred into something different - into the ethnic wars of 1837 - 1848, or as popularly called, the "Little Dirty War". In the summer of 1837, several cities in Galizien was raising the fist of rebellion, and the Italian and Czech cities soon followed, declaring autonomy from the emperor.
Deputy ambassador Putnik was, for his service, given the title as count of Kraków, a city which he chose to rule from Vienna, and general Adler, the hero of the war, was killed the 29th of august 1838 in a sudden ambush by Slovakian patriots, in the pacifization of Brno.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Collapse of the Old Order 1840
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1839, Austria gave their support to Prussia in the since long anticipated war against Denmark, which was quickly conquered and humiliated by the Prussian forces. Then, the Lutheran Sparta was satisfied for the time being, though the Orthodox Behemoth in the east now started to slowly roll south.
In the spring of 1840, the same time that Austria saw it's first railroad, between Linz and Vienna, more than 200.000 Russian soldiers moved into Turkish Moldavia, squashing the defenders into oblivion and heading for Constantinople.
In the same time, Egyptian forces moved north in a daring manuevre, and the kingdom of Greece declared war against the sultan. Because of a tiny and silly and unessecary war in southern Poland, the whole Orient was now in flames, and with the conquest of Kirkuk, the Russian empire had reached it's zenith. Soon, the soldiers of the tsar would wash their feeth in the Persian gulf, thus reaching an ice-free port.
It was then Britain declared war upon Russia...
 
Cool idea, I especially can't wait to see what the Socialist Austrian flag is. :D

Good luck. :)
 
I'm desperate

Whatever I do, it seems like the imperial government would gold out forever. I have only made Austria stronger, even though two of the other European great powers had faded into the void.

Beside that, I think that all socialist flags look pretty same. I have experienced Lucca go into the mires. Hów could i do to create an all-out rebellion?
 
Well story wise I could offer ton of help, but gaming wise...

Try the GD perhaps? :)

Things you might try:

Raise taxes and tarrifs
Lower all spending on education and crime
Make no social reforms
Make sure you do exactly the opposite of the majority most wanted causes :)

V
 
Re: Well

Originally posted by The Crocodile
I have tried everything, even losing a mayor war, and nothing have happened
Click to expand...

It takes a few years, first the people must all become socialist then when they are so pissed off and are dieing in too many numbers they will become communists, then let them take your capital!
 
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