Capital: Krakow
Population: 137 M. core (33 M. non-core)
Government: Constitutional Monarchy (Social Democratic)
Official Language: Polish (with enshrined rights for minority languages)
Official Religion: Slavic paganism (with enshrined rights for minority religions)
Faction: Commonwealth
This whole section is more than long enough even without recapping all of Poland’s 1053-year-long history, discussed at length in other places. So let us focus on the recent history and present.
Poland’s political left has a messy history of violent resistance, starting with its very birth in the Hungry 1840s and culminating in the civil war of 1900-03. While much of that baggage still remains – especially in the minds of the conservative right – the left has had great success in rebranding itself as a legitimate player over the last 30 years or so, and can take credit for almost all the greatest and most popular reforms of this era. If the PUP was more or less personified in the controversial Mikolaj Rusin, its usurper the SDP is similarly centered on Bartlomiej “Bart” Stawicki, the most popular politician of modern Poland, who is currently serving his fourth term as Premier. Yet the SDP’s hold on power is not uncontested, and Stawicki was only able to gain his current position by forming the historic Red-White Coalition with his conservative opponent, Leszek Mazowiecki. This is a necessary deal with the devil that aims to ensure stability and government function, at the cost of greatly compromising either party’s ability to push their own agenda.
In addition to Premier Stawicki, Minister of Finance Mazowiecki, and their respective parties, the third great man of Polish politics is of course High King Lechoslaw IV, scion of the unbroken (if winding) Lechowicz dynasty. Despite being reduced to the role of a constitutional monarch since 1920 – Stawicki’s most iconic achievement so far – the High King still has a great deal of prestige, visibility, soft power, and influence in the margins, should he decide to wield it. Despite adjusting well to his role and not overstepping his bounds, he is also a very active philanthropist, speaker and commentator. His unofficial role is often to reconcile party differences, pressure them to agree, or in fact give them a public
excuse to compromise without angering their respective voters. These three leaders each have a hand on the rudder of the ship of state, trying – sometimes competing – to steer it through the stormy waters of their age.
Poland’s internal troubles don’t end there, though then again, it seems like few nations in the world are entirely alright at the moment. The overhanging threat of another destructive war, which even bordered on mass hysteria a couple years back when tensions with Russia reached their peak, is a dark cloud over the people’s minds. The free media and popular sentiment are strongly anti-war, at almost any cost. What’s more, in regular years the Crown Army could rely on a ready supply of millions willing to seek a job in the military as a source of pay and housing with no expectation of an actual fight. The acute threat of war has not only reduced this flow of voluntary enlisters – the brave individuals that this crisis has
encouraged to serve their nation can’t nearly make up the deficit – people have even started to dodge their obligatory registration for the draft, either not showing up at all or making up excuses in order to get sorted as unfit to serve. Whether these problems can somehow be solved at the source, or simply through stricter enforcement, is a matter of great debate in the administration.
Whether or not the economic downturn of the past few years was actually caused by the Liberal government, or just that same threat of war, it has also done its part in slowing down Poland’s rearmament: while the military can still keep its existent men in arms, any great
expansion has been hampered by the lack of heavy industry to dedicate to it. At least the crisis is nowhere near as deep as the previous Great Depression, just a normal fluctuation, and seems to be on its way out.
After initial attempts to revamp the civil war era Dwójka into something less “rabidly anti-communist secret police” and more “intelligence service”, it was eventually decided that it had too much baggage – especially in terms of reputation – and was better off replaced altogether. The new Security Service, also known as the SB or Slube (
Służba Bezpieczeństwa), is
meant to focus specifically on foreign threats and not on paranoid surveillance of Polish citizens, but there’s inevitably plenty of overlap, as this includes keeping an eye out for spies and leaks. Much of the former Dwójka’s bureaucracy and members also simply moved to the SB, but at least there were major changes in organization and doctrine, and the career officer Iwo Kraszewski – a long-time critic of the previous leadership – was appointed as its new Director. The SB is a supposedly “apolitical” government bureau overseen by the Ministry of Defense, placing it under joint Sejm–Crown control while still maintaining some of its legacy as a weird offshoot of the army.
(Note: Intelligence Agency not actually prebuilt at game start)
Poland’s many colonies will be discussed below, but the homeland itself has two main hotspots in terms of naval strategic importance: Denmark and Calais. The Danish Belts (the narrow straits between the Danish islands) are treaty-bound to remain open to all shipping, while the Kiel Canal crossing the peninsula admits most civilian vessels, but in wartime, Poland can close them both to completely control the entrance to the Baltic Sea (the Belts are lined with heavy artillery, while the Canal includes several locks operated from land). Calais, on the other hand, gives Poland a toehold on the narrowest part of the English Channel, next to Frisia and Lotharingia, and a mere 100 miles from Paris. Its land connection to Krakow has suffered a fair bit as all the countries in between fell out of the Polish sphere, but its strategic purpose remains the same.
Capital: Kaposvar
Population: 19 million
Government: Constitutional Monarchy (Social Democratic)
Official Language: Pannonian, Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian and Bosnian
Official Religion: None (Catholic, Lollard and Cathar)
Faction: Commonwealth
Even after 248 years, “Stanislaw’s folly” takes up space on the map, only held together by Polish support and military intervention. Officially the Principality is independent, but in practice, entirely subject to Poland’s whims. Yet due to many citizens’ resistance to its very existence, the central government can’t really be either too democratic or too autocratic, so mostly it’s just weak. With Polish consent, the Yugoslavian Sejm has been delegating more and more rights to the different regions, as well as recognizing more and more
of those regions. Poland doesn’t really care too much, since although Yugoslavia is at this point seen as an integral part of the Polish sphere and as a “fellow Slavic nation”, Poland’s main geopolitical interest is to keep it in one piece and not falling under Latin influence. The Latin Federation sponsoring freedom fighters in Bosnia was even one of the flashpoints of the Great War, and they would definitely do something similar again.
The central government itself is torn between “vassal” attitudes, those more focused on Yugoslavia as its own nation, some specifically Pannonian nationalists who would like the dominant ethnic group to take more control, and others. It seems impossible for a true pan-Yugoslav identity to develop at least as long as the country is seen as a Polish puppet, yet it couldn’t stand very long
without being a Polish puppet, seeming to leave nothing but bad options and the status quo. The silver lining is that at least the country’s divisions are “only” political, ethnic and linguistic: religiously it is a major melting pot of different Christian sects, living in relative harmony (or at least peace) with no clear geographic boundaries. So that’s one less division to worry about.
Yugoslavia itself has a decent enough army, and has made great contributions to Polish wars in the past. However, especially after the Great War, the army has been strictly voluntary, and with a supposedly tight vetting process at that, to avoid either agitating the populace or training future rebels. The Yugoslavian navy and air force are less impressive, but still there.
Capital: Jakarta
Population: 64 million
Government: Dictatorship (Colonial Government)
Official Language: Polish (majority speak various native languages)
Official Religion: None (pagan, Hindu and Sunni)
Faction: Commonwealth
The East Indies have a population comparable to some great powers, over two thirds of which is concentrated on the southern island of Java. Though the northern parts remain staunchly Muslim – and their rights as oddani are at least legally guaranteed – the majority, including Java, is either Hindu or some other flavor of pagan. And even though the bold pan-pagan idea of Slavo-Hinduist syncretism has been more or less ignored everywhere outside of Poland, in the East Indies it has been “enforced” and gotten a decent enough foothold. More conservative Hindus understandably resent these Polish attempts to hijack and misrepresent their faith.
After its humble beginnings in the early 1600s, the patchwork territory of the Polish East Indies – now basically synonymous with the region as a whole – was for a long time administered by the East India Company, a crown-chartered traders’ union that became like a great feudal empire unto itself. With a ragtag system consisting of outposts built on “empty” spots, land seized from the local kingdoms, princedoms left as vassals, some that officially remained independent even after their de facto conquest, and more, Krakow was happy with the situation as long as the Company did its job and delivered its dues. Due to the distances involved, the Crown couldn’t really have micromanaged the region if it wanted to.
This didn’t change until 1862 when the not-yet-disgraced High Queen Wieslawa, prompted by growing awareness of the Company’s brutal rule and mismanagement, nationalized all of its overseas possessions and made the East Indies into a proper Crown colony. At the time, there was some vague hinting that its status would be reviewed in the near future, which many of the colonials also took to heart and remember to this day – but this never truly happened, other than the Crown actually ending most of the special arrangements made with the locals to fully annex them instead.
In 1923, the SDP-led Sejm together with Lechoslaw IV passed a bill finally turning the East Indies from a Crown colony (personal property of the High King) into a “special protectorate” of Poland, a step above the likes of Senegambia or Kongo but below fully autonomous Nowa Straya. While both shipping and communications have massively improved, it is still incredibly far-flung from Krakow, and as long as the region remains stable, doesn't get much attention on a daily basis. It is mostly important for its location and massive natural resources. Over time, the focus of the economy has moved from cash crops and gold to things like oil, rubber and tin – all massively important for modern industry.
Life in the colony has certainly improved since 1923, but even though nearly everyone is now technically a Polish citizen, there’s still a clear class divide between the locals and the roughly 300,000 Europeans who have migrated to the region since its conquest. Despite some experiments in democracy on a more local level, the East Indies as a whole are still administered by a Crown-appointed Protector-General. The most important naval base Singapura remains under direct military administration, while the official capital of the region is the largest city, Jakarta.
There are a few other European outposts on the outlying islands, namely British, Nordic and Asturian. Due to their tiny size and distance from Europe, they’re so dependent on the Polish East Indies that they might as well be part of them.
Capital: Manila
Population: 13 million
Government: Dictatorship (Colonial Government)
Official Language: Polish (majority speak various native languages)
Official Religion: None (pagan, Catholic and Sunni)
Faction: Commonwealth
The Maniolas are usually treated as an extension of the East Indies, and are in a similar situation administratively as well. In fact, the separation of the two was only formalized with the aforementioned 1923 bill. However, even more than the huge and diverse East Indies, the Maniolas’ fraught relationship with Poland – and burgeoning national consciousness – has been defined by the failed Maniolan Revolution of 1893. Out of all the socialist, republican and nationalist uprisings all over the Polish sphere at the time, the Maniolas’ was the largest, and also the most brutally put down with history’s first large-scale use of chemical weapons. While the situation was successfully “pacified” in the aftermath, it instilled in the Maniolans a deep grudge and burning will for independence.
Capital: Eoragród
(Sydney)
Population: 6.5 million
Government: Constitutional Monarchy (Social Democratic)
Official Language: Polish
Official Religion: Slavic and native paganism
Faction: Commonwealth
Ah, Nowa Straya. The sleepy backwater of the Polish empire, and mostly happy to stay that way. While the loss of the more populous, accessible, and frankly valuable Buyania, Lukomoria and Jeziora was a certain boost in status for Nowa Straya, there’s only so much it could be exploited. While it has been an
useful outlet for emigration and source of mineral riches, it’s hardly
vital in any sense, and much like with the East Indies, the sheer distances involved have resulted in a lack of attention from the homeland. This has been mostly “benign neglect”, though, bringing Eoragród a high degree of autonomy, to the point that Krakow doesn’t wield most of the powers it actually has. Unlike any of Poland’s other colonies, Nowa Straya is a fully-fledged democracy with its own elections, Sejm and Premier (the High King is still the ceremonial head of state).
When Nowa Straya was first explored by westerners, it was thought to be a small island, then part of a greater Terra Australis, but finally turned out to be its own continent more or less the size of Europe (not including Russia). It’s very sparsely populated for its size, with most settlements being clustered on the verdant coastlines, but had – and still has – a diverse native population distributed along its entire length. Much like in Amatica, some of these groups were integrated (or rather annexed) into the colonial population, while others were driven into “the Outback”, but unlike in Amatica’s federal structure, even the ones given citizenship have had no real political recognition
as groups. Furthermore, the country has an unusually high proportion of East Slavic heritage, such as Ukrainian and Belarusian, and others like Lithuanians. Most of the population at this point is mixed-race Slavic and Aboriginal, adding to the strength of a distinct “Strayan” identity literally across the world from Poland.
Capital: Nakhon Si Thammarat
Population: 8 million
Government: Republic (Social Democratic)
Official Language: Malay
Official Religion: Sunni Islam
Faction: Commonwealth
The Sultanate of Ligor used to be one of the main kingdoms of the East Indies, with scattered holdings all across the archipelago as well as Indochina. Today, it is the last one to survive in any real form. Made into a Polish vassal in 1863, at the same time that High Queen Wieslawa was nationalizing the East India Company, it was already rather “modernized” at the time and thus allowed to remain autonomous for mutual convenience. Its absolute monarchy, too, veered steadily towards parliamentarism, especially as the Sultan was seen as Krakow’s main lackey and democracy seemed like a logical path towards local decision-making. When the last Sultan, Nazrin IV, died without a clear heir in 1924, the parliament decided to finally make it official and turn Ligor from a constitutional monarchy into a full republic. Without that much thought, Poland gave its blessing, as the move away from dynastic vassalage was more or less in line with the reforms it was pursuing in the East Indies anyway.
In the years since then, though, the Ligor Republic has become increasingly restless. Zhaoism, surely seeping in from Cambodia next door, has gained a strong foothold – which is an understated way of saying that the parliament is utterly dominated by communists and other socialists, all of whom have independence at the top of their agenda. And possibly not just for Ligor, but even the entire region suffering under imperialist oppression.
The formerly Latin colonies attached to Ligor at the end of the Great War brought up the population numbers quite a bit, but now the majority are Thais and Cambodians who might feel like they’re simply being tossed from one colonial overlord to another. Thanks to Polish patronage, the autonomous Ligori army is relatively modern, even including a small air force and an armored division.
Capital: Bielgorod
Population: 52 M. core (28 M. non-core)
Government: Constitutional Monarchy (Social Democratic)
Official Language: Moldavian (basically Polish)
Official Religion: Slavic paganism
Faction: Commonwealth
The Kingdom of Moldavia is a peculiar nation. Originating as a single chiefdom within Poland, it has gone through multiple steps of growth (under Polish protection), collapse (when Poland got tired of it) and then growth again (when the weakness of the Francian Empire created a power vacuum in the region). Some would say its existence is still dependent on Polish patronage, but what’s certain is that there is no other country more tied to Poland, save perhaps Yugoslavia. It’s also one of the founding members of the Commonwealth of Sovereign States… dragged in by Poland, of course.
Unlike in Poland, where Slavs were always a clear if internally diverse majority, the Moldavians have basically never been a majority in their own country since they first started expanding. Whether or not Poland’s style of multiculturality would’ve even been possible under these conditions, Moldavia didn’t choose this option, but rather one of aggressive conversion and slavicization. This had mixed success at best, and the Moldavian identity was mostly (grudgingly) adopted in the northern parts like Hungary, Wallachia and Bulgaria that also had closer contact with the rest of Slavdom. Thus the population of Moldavia can be divided into three major identity groups: Moldavians, Greeks and Arabs.
Such is Moldavia’s economic and military reliance on Poland that even its internal politics generally mirrored Krakow’s: openly admitted or not, whatever winds are currently blowing in Krakow tend to reach the Moldavian Sejm as well. It’s partly due to this influence, partly due to harsh reality, that Moldavia has also been moving towards a more culturally and religiously tolerant, democratic form of government. However, actual democracy seems like an impossibility for a divided state like Moldavia’s, and thus the right to vote has still been strictly regulated along
geographic lines. This basically amounts to ethnic discrimination anyway, especially as Europeans who settle in otherwise excluded regions still get to have their rights “grandfathered in”. Everything south of Adana, i.e. the Arab half of the country, is treated more or less like an overseas colony with no political rights.
Lechogród – still called Constantinople by some – remains one of the greatest cities in Europe and Slavdom, and also a symbol of shared Polish-Moldavian heritage, given its name and all. Though much time has passed since its Slavic conquest and renaming in 1597, it is still defined by its succession of Greek, Roman and Francian history; and though the Muslims just barely failed to conquer it, it still shows the Rûman influence that shaped most of Anatolia, not to mention being a melting pot of the entire Moldavian empire. Its size, economy and location make it in many ways the second Moldavian capital, arguably more important than Bielgorod. Strategically, too, simple geography makes it both a critical link between Europe and Asia – the first actual bridge across the Bosphorus Strait, dreamed of since ancient times, was recently completed with Polish aid – and the only waterway in or out of the Black Sea. As the Bosphorus is less than half a mile wide at its narrowest point and passes literally
through Lechogród, it’s understandable that Moldavia has chosen to regulate it rather strictly, permitting all civilian shipping in peacetime but reserving the right to decide which military ships are allowed to enter. In effect, this means only Moldavia’s closest allies, while Russia for instance can enjoy having its fleet locked in the Black Sea. This alone makes Moldavian friendship absolutely vital for Poland.
Lechogród isn’t the only chokepoint held by Moldavia, either: Europe has grown increasingly reliant on easy shipping through the Suez Canal, which makes the journey to Asia more than 5,500 miles shorter (and much calmer weather-wise) than going around Africa. It is especially vital for Moldavia itself, seeing as its main colonies are in India and Madagascar, but also Poland with the East Indies and Nowa Straya. Due to its importance to all of Europe and the global trade, the treaties surrounding the Suez are somewhat more permissive than the Bosphorus, allowing also military shipping; but Moldavia still maintains the right and ability to close it off in wartime.
Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs
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