Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-02-21, 08:21 AM (ISO 8601)

Chapter #73: Constitution Score (1918-1922)

Spoiler: Chapter

Show

5th of October, 1918

The Social Democratic Party has been left with, or rather, taken upon itself the unenviable task of dealing with what will come to be known as the Great Depression. Its leader Premier Bart Stawicki seems to have managed to strike an alliance with High King Lechoslaw IV, who hasn’t really made a strong impression on his subjects yet. Now Lechoslaw is clearly starting to make a conscious effort to appear in public, perform every ceremony he can, and make inoffensive but broadly leader-like statements. Rather than openly favor any one party, though, his frequent speeches to the Sejm are focused on individual issues, such as traditional values, aid for the poor and austerity in matters that don’t directly help the people. He commends the Sejm for its action in some fields and lightly nudges it forward in others. He doesn’t personally write for the papers like Wieslawa did, but they write plenty about him. If people want him to be a “cultural” leader and symbol of the nation, he seems interested in doing that job as well as he can. It might also be that he just doesn’t want to let the hugely popular Stawicki steal all his thunder.

In the past ten years, communism and primacism alike have mostly been successful in full republics as opposed to constitutional monarchies. The most striking example is Russia, which collapsed into total anarchy within mere months of the United Kingdom being abolished and thus let the primacists take over. Whether this correlation actually hides a causation or not, monarchists sure like to think so. An independent monarch, even if mostly sidelined in regular times, is a unifying figurehead, reminder of long-standing tradition, and last bastion against radicalism. In comparison, the legitimacy of any elected politician is temporary at best and can basically be retracted at will, especially as long as these institutions themselves are still young. Thus, even if “democracy” is increasingly accepted as a good thing, it needs to be tempered by the presence of a “permanent” ruler who can step in if necessary. And again, it’s not unusual to think that a competent (?) dictator in countries like Russia or the Federation might actually be preferable to an incompetent republic, or that their popularity (?) is actually a sign of people’s natural desire for a strong leader.

As has been discussed, however, the Kingdom of Poland is unusual among the so-called constitutional monarchies, being only “semi-parliamentarian” and having neither a formal constitution nor any legal checks on Crown power. Even though High Queen Wieslawa somewhat stained the Crown’s image during her own reign, opinions are split on whether or how this should be changed. And even though the new ruling party is in favor of constitutional reform, it obviously can’t do anything about it without Crown consent: that would basically be a heavy-handed ultimatum and dismissal of the Crown’s legal authority, a very high threshold (and literal treason) that no one is interested in crossing as long as the issue remains non-urgent.

It’s common knowledge, or at least strongly assumed, that Premier Stawicki is bringing up the question in his meetings with the High King, but there has been no visible movement so far. He probably doesn’t want to rock the boat by pressing the issue too much, either.

Though most people are probably far too traumatized from the Civil War and too content with the present state of things to do anything radical, both the Depression and to a lesser extent the constitutional question have indeed raised tensions in Polish society. In a haunting echo of two decades ago, liberals and communists alike are trying to build support for more radical movements that could well turn violent in one way or another. On paper, though, the current government should prove a lot easier to work with than the one that was in power “back then”. The Slavic Sanacja also seems to be organizing, partly in response to these left-wing movements, but it’s small enough that any attempted action on its part would probably be suicide for the whole party, and the threat isn’t really taken seriously.

Demand for reform is definitely mounting among the populace as a whole. The Premier should have some pretty good ammunition to convince the High King with, should he decide to use it.

(Non-Secret Ballots here is a stand-in for overall stronger democratic control, and adopting it turns you into a Constitutional Monarchy.)

As this left-wing fervor goes to show, though, the matter isn’t as “bureaucratic” or “a meaningless formality” as many conservatives like to put it. Whatever its actual content, the mere existence of a constitution is still immensely meaningful from an ideological point of view, for all sides. While there definitely are a lot of centrists or moderates who really don’t have strong feelings on the matter, it can hardly be settled before the people who do have strong feelings can reach a compromise.

Further complicating the matter is the fact that the ones most energized by this debate – the hardcore communists – are the same people who think that even a constitution would just be slapping a bandage on a gangrenous limb that needs to be amputated altogether. As the months roll by, it increasingly seems that this threat on the very extreme left will be the thing that forces the SDP and the Crown to do something before it can recruit too many people into its ranks.

By the spring of 1919, as the Depression approaches the first anniversary of the London stock market crash, its effects on daily life – unemployment, evictions, crime, largely improvised breadlines, suicides – have long since become a dreadful part of daily life… and now, as the snows melt and people are more willing to take to the streets, so do the riots. The liberal and right-wing rebel movements have remained rather marginal, but support for the communists – who have rebranded themselves as the “United Workers of the World” and started bringing entire labor unions into the fold – is growing faster than ever. This is manifesting as all sorts of direct action: large strikes, sabotage, blocked roads and railroads. The ostensible goal is to force those companies to bend to their demands, but the notoriously anti-communist secret police Dwójka, greatly curtailed since the peak of its power during the White Terror, seems certain that the UWW’s actual aim is to sow chaos across Polish society as a whole. All this occurs despite open support for “communism” as a political stance actually being historically low, but that just goes to show how wily the Reds really are. And due to the legacy of the Civil War, the Crown Army and the Gendarmerie are also quite toothless in putting down these so-called rebels, beyond making sure that no public buildings or officials are targeted.

By July, the UWW (on paper a totally legal union) has several million registered members, and the official estimate is that a few hundred thousand of them could be not only willing but prepared to join more direct revolutionary action, should the leadership call for it. The SDP does in fact try to appease them by passing new regulations, which fits the party’s own agenda just fine, but the deeper issues remain unsolved. Constitutional reform arguably has little to do with any of this in practice, yet it has somehow become the proxy battleground for tensions enflamed by the Depression. Whether or not this is on purpose, the SDP isn’t helping things with its occasional insinuations that the Crown is somehow constraining its more important reforms.

Poland has its hands full trying to keep stable, especially important as other countries have seen a variety of revolutions recently. In August 1919, though, the most notorious of said revolutions faces a humiliating setback: almost three years after Yegor Zavoyko’s Russia started its much-vaunted rematch against little Bolgharia, the war has in fact become an indecisive slog. The Bolghars, who had prepared for the Russians to counterattack like this eventually, have turned to mobile guerrilla warfare in the northern woods and southern steppes alike, and despite ostensibly occupying most of the country, Russia has proven unable to beat the nomads into submission or reintegrate the contested territories, where the local population is clearly siding with Bolgharia. Russia’s own army is pathetic for a country its size, and even fewer of its units are actually in fighting condition or competently led. The Depression has only made an already bad situation worse, as Zavoyko’s economic recovery was always built on loans, hopes and empty promises that became completely unsustainable as the global stock market crashed. Now Zavoyko – and yes, he really does make these decisions pretty much alone – is finally forced to accept his failure and retreat from Bolgharia altogether.

No actual peace treaty is signed, though, only a shaky armistice, and occasional clashes and tense standoffs continue near the border. In this situation, the staunch nationalist Zavoyko does the unthinkable: he turns to the international community. As ironic as the whole thing is given Russia’s own history, it is true that Bolgharia is the one that invaded Russia in 1909 and annexed a region almost the same size as Bolgharia itself at the time, referred to here as the Samara Territory. Besides, Zavoyko says, any past aggressions or so-called crimes were committed by the United Kingdom, not his “reborn” Russia – thus this matter should be considered on its own merits, where it’s quite clear-cut that Bolgharia has the responsibility to return the land it took. Actually, if you really think about it, what right does Bolgharia even have to exist? It was arbitrarily carved out of Uralia by the German Bundesrepublik in the name of self-determination. That’s around where Zavoyko realizes he’s pushing it, though, and scales back to focus on the real issue.

In reality, of course, it’s more nuanced than that: the 1909 invasion occurred in the aftermath of region-wide uprisings of people wanting to join Bolgharia, the population is almost entirely Bolghar, and Zavoyko’s government was actively persecuting them at the time – still is, actually. Some outside observers propose a referendum to let the Samarans themselves decide which country they want to join, but all sides already know that the outcome would be hugely in favor of Bolgharia. Thus the Russians refuse to even consider the idea.

Ideology, personal opinion and realpolitik all make the question of whom to support hugely complicated. Poland, for instance, doesn’t want to lean too hard into the whole idea of referendums and self-determination – which could have a less than desirable effect on its own territories – but also can’t bring itself to support Russia in this debate, despite the fact that a growing contingency of people actually have sympathy for Russia’s plight and especially its treatment in the Treaty of Ryszarda. Thus the Polish position is to just skip the referendum, force the two to sign a proper peace treaty and let Bolgharia keep Samara.

Over the course of a couple months, the matter somehow threatens to balloon into another major incident as different nations step forward in support of either side. Felice Fanti’s Latin Empire shows no interest in the whole thing, apparently not too eager to legitimize the concept of territorial disputes being settled by outside intervention, but Germany (always the odd one out) and, more shockingly, Frisia, still thought to be in the Polish sphere, actually support Russia.

However, once it becomes clear that this isn’t going to be settled at the negotiating table, no one has any interest in escalating the matter further – not even Russia, which, it bears emphasizing, just lost against Bolgharia (twice). International interest vanishes as quickly as it came, and the border is left right where it is. Zavoyko still refuses to sign an official peace, though, and all this farce really achieved was to humiliate himself and Russia in the eyes of the world. And if he himself was starting to show some interest in rapprochement with the west, those hopes might well have been dashed.

Britannia doesn’t even participate in the whole debacle, being too busy with internal problems: the Irish have been unhappy with the concessions they were given at the formation of the Triple Monarchy, where they were saddled with another Scottish king instead of their own proper republic, and autonomy instead of independence. The citizens have been up in arms for a few years now, and the situation has only gotten worse as the Great Depression – which originated in and hit Britannia harder than anywhere else in the world – led to the loss of financial support from the capital, the Monarchy’s one saving grace in the eyes of many. As demands for reform grow louder and louder and London doesn’t have another penny to spare, a new marginally better compromise is finally reached in November 1919: while the King of Ireland will officially keep his position, the Irish regional parliament (which actively detests him) will be given ever greater autonomy to basically run Ireland as an independent republic with ever more tenuous ties to the rest of Britannia. It is a bizarre system, but hardly more bizarre than the Triple Monarchy itself. As part of this compromise, though, the Irish are forced to swallow a bitter pill of their own: for Irish autonomy to be possible, the rights of the Scottish and Yorkish settlers in Northern Ireland must be ensured, and thus Britannia must maintain more direct control of that part of the island. There’s no hiding the fact this also gives the Monarchy a base to “maintain order” in Ireland, should it try to rebel or otherwise slip out of British control.

On most maps, there is no official change in borders, but on the ground, Ireland is basically a state within the state. And as usual, neither side really sees this as a permanent solution.

While of great interest to the political leadership, these international crises do little to distract the regular citizens from their everyday concerns. Even as the SDP does its best to reform the economy (despite being bogged down by budget issues) and allay any fears of an actual uprising, others say it’s simply distracting from the real, more important long-term problem.

January 1920. Both Premier Stawicki and High King Lechoslaw IV have been making fewer public appearances for a while. Some have taken this as a sign of weakness, fear, complacency, government paralysis or whatnot. Thus it comes as a great surprise when, in the first Sejm session of the new year, Stawicki suddenly comes out with a constitution that his and the Crown’s inner circles have been drafting in uttermost secrecy almost since the start of his term. Now all that remains is for the Sejm to accept it.

Due to the sensitivity of the issue and uncertainty of whether it’d actually go through – Stawicki feared that saying too much too early would be a great humiliation if it didn’t work out, whereas the Crown feared that it would bring even greater public pressure – even most of the SDP is taken by surprise, albeit a positive kind. With their control of 86% of the Sejm, they could just pass the law right then and there, but they do still want to go through it properly. The National Coalition and Popular Party who make up the remaining 14% are more torn, but mostly convinced after the High King personally gives the piece of paper his support and also sends people to speak with them in private.

The Constitution is long and rambling, and obviously covers a lot of basic rights and liberties that have already been taken for granted or made into law ages ago, while also entrenching things like “Polish culture and identity, religious freedom, and equality regardless of sex, race or creed” as the defining values of the nation. Some of the biggest new things are:

The Constitution overrides any laws that might be in conflict with it, such laws cannot be enacted, and it can only be changed or amended by a large enough majority in the Sejm and the consent of the Crown.
The High King and the Crown Government’s public position and unassailable dignity are entrenched, more or less enshrined. However, on the legal side, their ability to pass laws without the Sejm’s approval is greatly limited, and while they retain their right to veto the Sejm’s actions, the Sejm can now override that veto with a large enough majority. This is the part that was the most controversial during the negotiations.
The High King still appoints the Premier, but “as nominated by the Sejm”. Only a formality in most cases, but it means that he can’t skip over the largest party without giving it a chance (like in 1891) or arbitrarily replace the Premier with his own (like in 1896). The various ministers who are then nominated by the Premier are given more responsibility and no longer require specific Crown approval. The High King can still call a new election, but is only expected to do so if the Sejm fails to form a functioning government.
In a similar vein, instead of being chosen by the Crown directly, the various members of the judiciary branch will be appointed as nominated by the relevant councils, themselves consisting of professional judges. The goal is to finally have an independent judiciary and Supreme Court that can buck both the Sejm and the Crown if necessary, but mostly make sure that the laws the other two pass are enforced by the letter and only rewritten through the proper channels instead of bending along the way. It’s also the judiciary’s task to monitor that the constitution is obeyed. Of course, there’s no way to fully block out political pressure, backroom dealing among the judges themselves, or their personal views affecting their judgment, but it’s better than nothing.
Elections will be held every four years instead of five.
Starting with the 1922 election, the number of seats in the Sejm will be increased from 300 to 450 and the number of voting districts adjusted accordingly. This number hasn’t changed in all this time even as voting rights were massively expanded, meaning that there were as many as fifty times more voters for the Sejm to represent (before even considering population growth). The districts themselves are also overdue for a revamp, their borders having remained rather constant regardless of changes in population. There are some now half-dead hamlets that have their own seat in the Sejm just because some noble used to own a manor there. The goal is to have roughly equal, or at least closer to equal, populations for each district. The exact arrangements aren’t part of the constitution, though, and will be decided separately.

The proceedings take a few weeks, and many word choices and other little details still receive tweaks, but finally the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland passes with 98% of the votes. It having become clear that this was a foregone conclusion, only six deputies vote against: four on procedural grounds, two Coalition members out of actual ideological protest.

This marks the first recognition of true parliamentarism in Polish history: the Sejm is the highest authority with the power to overturn the others. To many it might seem like an outright capitulation to the demands of the Sejm, the SDP and/or the masses, depending on how one chooses to put it. It’s not entirely one-sided, of course, as the Crown also gets many things it wanted and even the more dramatic parts are mostly just acknowledging the reality that already exists. A few radicals on both sides might feel that if it really comes down to it, this constitution is still just a piece of paper that can be rewritten or overridden when the time comes; but to most, it symbolizes both a hope and a real promise of a stable, prosperous Poland. After some 80 years, has the Long Revolution finally reached its goal?

Halfway across the world, yet another country comes within a inch of falling under the thrall of primacism: after losing another war against Manchurian communists and losing control of its most valuable and populous territories, including the capital Beijing, the Chinese Empire is extremely weak and anti-communism is at an all-time high. A primacist faction known as the Blue Shirts Society leads part of the army in a coup against the imperial government, and shockingly, actually succeeds in assassinating the Emperor with a car bomb while he is still being moved to his residence in the temporary capital Taiyuan. However, this ultimately serves to turn both the populace and the rest of the army against the Blue Shirts and allow the elected government to restore order. Faced with the option of bringing in one of the young emperor’s indirect relatives as his heir, the government decides – with a heavy heart, if you want to believe it – to “delay the coronation of the next Emperor until it can be performed in the true capital.” In the months to come, this decision will be cemented and taken a step further, officially turning China from a constitutional monarchy into a full-on republic.

Unlike the interregnum, though, this period of peace was always going to be brief: aided by the Uyghurs, the Mongol Khanate seems intent on making use of this weakness to annex Inner Mongolia, a large albeit sparsely populated Mongol-majority region that has long languished under Chinese rule.

That proves to be a severe miscalculation, as the Republic still has a population several times as large as the two Khanates combined, and is quickly able to throw together a conscript army large enough to push across the steppe all the way to the Mongolian capital.

As for Poland itself, though… through a combination of the SDP’s diligent work, the Coalition’s already cautious enough policies in its own term, and Poland’s overall economic strength, it’s one of the faster countries to start recovering from the Great Depression (which is to say, it “only” takes around three years from the start of the crisis). It’s not all the way back up yet, especially as long as its trading partners are still in shambles, but this is still something for all involved to be proud of. It also means Poland is well placed to capitalize on those other countries’ weakness; economically, of course.

It comes as little surprise that with this, the Constitution, and Stawicki’s unfailing PR skills, the SDP expects to win handily in 1922. The shocking thing is the sheer scale of that victory. The SDP wins a nigh-unprecedented actual majority of the votes, not merely a plurality as is usually the case. This support is once again quite even across the country, with the single-digit number of districts that the SDP doesn’t win being clustered around Torun, Latvia and Mogilev, where the Coalition squeaks out a narrow victory. The SDP has proven ideologically moderate enough that a lot of voters who don't otherwise identify as socialists have crossed party lines to vote for them, as have basically all the so-called social liberals, who are seen more as "liberal socials" at this point. Thanks to the wonders of the Polish voting system, and some alleged (alleged) tampering with the district borders, this 50.7% of the votes brings a grand 98.1% of the seats.

In the past, when a majority was a majority and its size didn’t really matter as much, this might’ve meant little more than bragging rights. However, with the introduction of the Constitution, the power to overrule the Crown, and the idea that some decision requiring a supermajority is supposed to make a difference, the fact that the system makes it disproportionately easy for a single party to win almost the entire Sejm is increasingly seen as a fatal flaw. Whether or not the SDP is going to abuse this power right now, either it or some other party might try to do so in the future. And so, though that is clearly loser talk and the SDP itself is quite happy with the current state of things, it can’t convincingly deny this problem either. Further reforms to the voting system might well be on the way.

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

Show

Newspaper Gallery

In May 1920, Fanti’s Latin Empire tried to turn its long-running cold war with Santa Croce – consisting mostly of naval skirmishes and diplomatic spats – into a hot one with a surprise naval landing. However, much like Zavoyko’s invasion of Bolgharia, it was a huge failure that led to the death or capture of the entire invading force. A white peace was finally signed soon after, grudgingly recognizing Santa Croce’s independence in exchange for the return of those POWs.

In addition to whatever’s going on in China at any given time, communism seems to be making headway in the rest of Asia as well: in Cambodia, the rather long-standing republic ended up being its own undoing, as the local communists were actually elected in an entirely fair election only to then maneuver their competitors out of power and, with only a few assassinations’ worth of blood, turn the country into a one-party dictatorship. A good reminder of the importance of checks on parliamentary power, though Cambodia is small enough that it goes unnoticed by anyone in Poland.

Meanwhile, the much larger Karnata seems to have followed a worryingly common pattern by blaming the King for the losses against the Maratha, abolishing the monarchy, and declaring itself the Karnata Republic. Thing is, in the latest election, this republic too ended up electing the communists, and the jury is still out on whether this is the start of another internal takeover similar to Cambodia, or more like the PUP in Poland. It would seem like the communists here aren’t similarly placed to exploit the system and undermine the republic, but who can tell. It’s a strange trend going around nonetheless.

Spoiler: Comments

Show

I had to set aside two weeks where I wouldn’t allow myself to work on this before I had taken care of other things I needed to do. And it worked! Somehow! So back in we go.

Mechanically, pretty much the only difference between a Semi-Parliamentarian and Constitutional Monarchy is the inability to appoint a ruling party, which I haven’t done very much anyway. The full impact this might have on the narrative side remains to be seen. It felt important to me to go through some of the things a proper constitution actually contains rather than simply say it’s there, though.

On a side note: Obviously the use of supermajorities as a check on government power isn’t inherently incompatible with first-past-the-post systems IRL (only partly so), but it kinda might be in this world where regional differences in voting behavior aren’t really a thing and the same party has had a huge supermajority for two terms in a row now.

**InvisibleBison** · 2021-02-21, 09:05 AM (ISO 8601)

Does the constitution say anything about the command of the army? You mentioned in Chapter 68 that the Sejm had no authority over the Crown Army, and I would have expected that to be one of the things addressed by a constitution.

I do think it would be a good idea to adopt a more representative method of elections. Though if I'm reading the charts correctly, that would probably mean a few primacists would get elected, which while not meaningful in and of itself would still be a worrying precedent.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-02-21, 10:33 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by InvisibleBison

Does the constitution say anything about the command of the army? You mentioned in Chapter 68 that the Sejm had no authority over the Crown Army, and I would have expected that to be one of the things addressed by a constitution.

That's a great question, which I was actually planning to address but apparently either forgot or left for later. Everything Army-related has kinda been on the back burner, in-universe as well. I'll discuss that in the next chapter, when we also deal with the other bug fixes being made to the Sejmic system.

Originally Posted by InvisibleBison

I do think it would be a good idea to adopt a more representative method of elections. Though if I'm reading the charts correctly, that would probably mean a few primacists would get elected, which while not meaningful in and of itself would still be a worrying precedent.

It will make the Sejm a pretty noisy place, yeah. Literally too: a single-digit number of opposition members can't really have a physical presence in the room if they wanted to, but a larger number of smaller parties can maintain a lot more debate, even if the ruling party were to still hold a majority.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-01, 10:46 AM (ISO 8601)

Chapter #74: Changes in Order (1922-1927)

Spoiler: Chapter

Show

12th of October, 1922

As the SDP has taken credit for drafting Poland’s first true constitution – which was also accompanied by changes to the voting districts – only to then take 98% of the Sejm in the next election, the half of the nation that didn’t vote for them isn't unjustified in feeling like the system could be a bit busted. The largest supermajority demanded by the constitution – in order to both declare a bill urgent and override a possible Crown veto – is 5/6 of the Sejm (83%), which means that any party that manages to reach that on its own can legally do anything short of rewrite the constitution itself (where Crown consent is strictly required). It’s widely assumed that the Crown wouldn’t just sit by if that power were abused, but it’s also obvious that a constitution whose balance can only be maintained by extra-constitutional action isn’t exactly well-designed.

To be fair, the problem isn’t actually the constitution itself, but the way that it happens to interact with Poland’s archaic voting system. While the SDP is extremely well-liked, at 50.7% of the vote as compared to the Popular Party in distant second place at 15.7%, it can hardly be considered fair that such a hair-thin majority should give a single party absolute power in all of Poland. Speaking of the Populists, it’s also worth bringing up that thanks to the way the districts are laid out, the Coalition at least got 9 seats in the Sejm despite actually having fewer votes than them. If the system were directly proportional, the Sejm would currently have 71 Populists and 66 Coalition members. While the old system was considered perfectly adequate until just recently, that situation has suddenly turned on its head.

Indeed, the district-based system is a remnant from the days when the Sejm was intended to represent a.) only 2% of the population and b.) different localities first and foremost, not so much parties or ideologies. Whether one considers this change a good thing or not, that’s definitely the reality of the times, and there’s no point in trying to ignore it. It puts into perspective how much things really have changed over the past 100 years or so, with the same words meaning completely different things, but the SDP for one is obviously happy with the continuing triumph of democracy.

That democratic ideology is another reason, though, that despite holding the dominant position (for now), the SDP can only agree that the current system is unsustainable. Far be it from them to undermine their grandest achievement and probably destroy their own respectability in the long run. If they create a blatantly unfair system and expect it to hold up by the power of legal text alone, someone will simply ignore that text and drag them out by force. Thus a special committee with representatives of the SDP, the Populists, the Coalition and the Crown is put together to draft some major changes to the voting system in time for the next election.

Another awkward thing about the constitution involves the status of the Crown Army (which in these contexts also includes the Marynarka). The High King remains the commander-in-chief, all levels of the military are closely intertwined with Crown institutions, and all soldiers swear loyalty to the High King personally – an ancient ritual that dates back to the honor guard of Lechoslaw the Great himself. The Crown is literally in the name and forms the whole military’s spiritual backbone, which has more than just symbolical importance. On all this, the Crown more or less refuses to budge. It is quite strange indeed for the military of a constitutional monarchy to be under the monarch’s direct command, but that’s one of the compromises you’re forced to make in order to get said monarch to sign said constitution. And, after all, if the Sejm were to try something blatantly unacceptable with its veto-overriding powers, who could stop it if not the eternally loyal Crown Army?

That being said, even if the Crown Army’s ultimate loyalty is to their sovereign, sharing that power is a necessary exercise in trust. In practice, though the Crown has some income of its own, the theoretical independence of the military is always subject to the Sejm’s power over the state budget, not to mention the stream of other decisions that involve or affect it somehow. The Sejm has a Ministry of Defense whose main purpose is to act as a liaison between the two and coordinate things for mutual benefit, but it has no actual power to command the military should it come down to it. In a similar vein, foreign policy and matters of war and peace still belong to the Crown, but the Sejm tries to work with it as closely as possible, and as long as the High King remains cooperative, can expect to be included in the decision-making.

Finally, the gendarmerie and the Dwójka (full name “Second Department of Crown Army General Staff”) remain part of the Crown Army, while the regular, mostly unarmed police force is under the Sejm’s Ministry of the Interior. How one feels about this depends largely on how avowed of a republican one is, and whether one trusts the Sejm or the Crown more. Who knows, maybe it’s good that the Dwójka – which the Crown is doing its best to reform into a proper intelligence service as opposed to an ineffectual and reviled secret police – answers to the High King rather than the whims of a ruling party that might change every four years. Regardless, the split into Sejmic and Crown police does plant the seed for a possibly dysfunctional interservice rivalry.

All in all, it is fair to say that even with the new constitution, Poland is still on the more monarchist end of the spectrum, at least in terms of the powers that the High King theoretically has.

After successful field tests in the central Polish plains, and with more vehicles being churned out by high-security factories, Poland has managed to scrounge together the world’s first "armored" unit: the Crown Tank Regiment. Actually consisting of only a few dozen tanks and their support crews, the regiment is intended to act as a model and testing ground for more to come, but funding and especially military funding are hard to come by in the current economy. Besides, Poland is rather confident in its ability to avoid any European wars in the near future anyway, so tanks aren’t really at the top of the shopping list.

Tests show that the so-called Škoda KH-50 (Kolohousenka, "Wheeled Caterpillar") is more or less bulletproof, and basically a mobile bunker. With its tractor-inspired tracks, it can cross difficult terrain – even trenches and barbed wire – and then switch to its wheels for road speeds as high as 22 mph. However, its worst enemies are enemy artillery, which can still give it a good rattling… and its own engineering. Tank design is still an experimental field, and the KH-50 has the tendency to break on its own a little too often for comfort.

Tank doctrine is even more of a mystery, and highly dependent on both their number and steadily improving technical capabilities. Hell, the Crown Tank Regiment has been placed under the cavalry corps for the time being (the artillery was also considered), and many seem to think that it really is going to act like some modern equivalent of the winged hussars of old, riding into battle alongside the other more lightly armored horsemen. No one besides a few revolutionary thinkers can even imagine that in a decade or two, that whole ancient service branch might be more or less ceremonial, replaced in the field by motorized and armored troops.

The greater purpose of the tank is to make the next conflict less bloody than the last one (hopefully for both sides, but primarily for the Poles). The most ambitious theorists claim that in the future, entire wars will be decided by tanks. But of course, the best-case scenario would be not needing to go to war at all.

The Crown Air Force (the Poles are pretty consistent in their naming; even Marynarka Korony is just Polish for Crown Navy) is also founded in 1923. While civil aviation has been advancing in leaps and bounds – it should soon be possible to take a series of flights from Stockholm to Esperanza – military usage has lagged behind for, well, largely the same reasons as tanks. And much like tanks, the actual use of planes in warfare is still something of a question mark, as even the top theorists of the field are just that: theorists. The roles planned for aircraft can largely be divided into scouting, bombing, and stopping enemy planes from doing the same. While the decision to implement the Air Force as its separate organization on the same level as the Navy was the result of a long debate – it simply doesn’t sit comfortably under any existing branch – it will still be de facto at the bottom of the pecking order, especially as long as it doesn’t get any chance to prove itself.

While the Latins can be proud of their history as pioneers of lighter-than-air travel and aviation in general – the hot-air balloon was first invented and mastered in France – the gas-filled airships developed by Italian inventor Zeppeli and named after him have been largely dismissed as having any military use, despite some initial hopes that they could be used for bombing. The Fanti regime has taken a great liking to them as something of a vanity project, though, often flying them over political rallies and other public events or even sending them on visits to other countries. Zeppelis are also capable of taking a few dozen passengers on longer, even transatlantic flights, something which planes have yet to achieve.

Latin Zeppeli on tour over Tokyo, Japan.

Back to world events: Despite managing to march all the way to Ulan Bator, the Chinese conscript army has proven unable to resist the Khanates’ highly mobile professional soldiers after all. In January 1923, the young republic is forced to admit its defeat and give up more than half of its remaining territory (albeit less than 7% of its population, and mostly discontent Mongols at that). The so-called legitimate Chinese government is looking weaker by the day, but of course, that’s just normal for China at this point. On that note: Poland has made some half-hearted compromises of recognizing the imperial-slash-republican government as the legitimate one over the communists without actually supporting its claim to the Japanese and British parts of China, nor making any commitment to protect it.

On 21 July 1924, Felice Fanti is found dead at his mountain villa, where he often used to retreat in the hottest weeks of summer. Though it’s been 13 years since he installed himself as Dux, he was still only in his late 30s, and people – adorers and enemies alike – were expecting their youthful, charismatic leader to remain in charge for decades to come. Accordingly, the whole hierarchy and government of the Factio Fascistica have been more or less built around him and a cult of personality bordering on messianic. Then again, dying is what messiahs do best. Though it is in fact apparent that he died of "poisoning", said poison turns out to be alcohol and drugs. The regime does its best to silence all witnesses and pass it off as a tragic heart attack.

The logical next step in the Caesar metaphor would be for Fanti’s heir apparent to take his place and really cement the status of the new Empire, but due to his young age and not having expected to die any time soon, he doesn’t really have one – nor even a clear favorite among his followers. As the nation mourns, the top levels of the regime itself immediately erupt into a crazed mess of intrigue and scheming to see which of his cronies and generals gets to inherit him. However, this clash mostly happens in the shadows and smoke-filled backrooms of the Empire, with the public only ever seeing a highly censored glimpse of the action.

The fascists enjoy real, but far from overwhelming, popularity within the country.

When the second Dux finally emerges, it is no less than one of the party’s foremost ideologues and architects of Fanti’s popularity, the aptly titled Minister of Propaganda, Lucius Santori. Many would say that despite his proven proficiency at helming the Empire’s media machinery, Santori is not quite as charming or charismatic in person, but he certainly was in a good position to maneuver his way into power. Whatever his weaknesses, he knows how to cover for them, and covering things has in fact been most of his job description up to this point. Due to holding his cards so close to his chest, though, it’s quite hard to say what he’ll actually look like as the leader of a nation. One thing he will be is a pioneer of the radio as state propaganda, eventually making it official policy that every home should have a receiver. The one to design all the programming, of course, will be himself.

In July 1925, Sweden sees countrywide communist unrest in the wake of a harsh crackdown on an ironworkers’ strike. While unusually large, this uprising is actually only the latest of many: the country’s parliamentarian but still staunchly conservative government seems to have taken a basically zero-tolerance attitude towards socialist action in recent years, which has in fact caused some awkwardness in their dealings with Poland’s SDP. While the Crown does offer its help should the Swedes need it, it is refused, as they (perhaps wisely) calculate that calling in a foreign military would only make things worse in the long run. Militarily speaking, Sweden should be able to handle itself, even if it takes a while due to the country’s sheer size. Although widespread, these self-proclaimed Red Guards are still scattered and small in size.

What’s more, just as Britannia’s economy is finally starting to recover from the Great Depression that started in London, it sees another massive stock market crash that takes it two steps backwards. Even with the Irish question “solved” (more like punted forward), the country seems to be stuck in a real quagmire that might well result in more unrest sooner or later.

At the initiative of Lechoslaw IV, in late 1925 the Sejm approves a large recovery program aimed at Poland’s allies rather than Poland itself; a rather radical concept based on a modern understanding of supply and demand. With a mixture of directed investment, extremely cheap loans and actual “free money” (no such thing exists, of course), Poland can accomplish the dual goals of supporting its own largest trading partners and tying them ever more closely into its own sphere of influence. While the monarchs and governments in charge of these countries surely realize this aspect of the deal, most of them decide to make use of it. Such is their desperation, and perhaps their actual desire to tie Poland to their interests. Separate but parallel to this financial support, Poland also pursues closer military and political cooperation between its former Coalition friends.

Arguably a rather bold move to make just as Poland heads into an election year, but Premier Bart Stawicki and the SDP believe the optics to be in their favor, especially as they manage to include some minor "workers’ rights" conditions in the program. The Electoral Act of 1925 is also finally rolled out. While it obviously falls to the SDP to pass it through the Sejm, it has been shaped by broad consensus between the three largest parties in order to give it legitimacy. Through this, the SDP more or less concedes its dominant position, but hopes that this display of sticking to its principles might help maintain its lead.

Most notably, instead of 450 equal-population districts that each have one deputy, the country will be divided into larger, geographically defined districts with a different number of deputies based on their population. The seats in each district can then be divided proportionately to each party’s share of the vote, or at least closer to it, which should add up to a similarly fair distribution on a country-wide scale. The exact math that goes into it can be a bit complicated, involving party lists and whatnot, but the end result should be that no longer will parties with 15% of the vote get 0% of the seats. Of course, with only so many seats to hand out in each district, there will still be a certain “rounding error” threshold to cross before a party can win one of them. This isn’t entirely unintended, as it might help keep the worst rabble out of the Sejm.

On a secondary note – less significant to the end result if not the individual voter – the Electoral Act also cements certain voters’ rights, mostly the right to conduct the voting itself in secret, not be questioned on one’s vote, and not face discrimination based on political stance (however impossible that is to enforce). In the last couple elections, individual votes have no longer been publicly announced as they used to be, believe it or not, but the voting still happened in plain view with everyone else standing in line behind you.

Mere days before the results come in, the government has to deal with an unusually direct provocation from the Latins: on a visit to Lotharingia, which is drawing closer and closer to Rome, a Latin Zeppeli not only passes over Calais but also drops pro-Latin propaganda flyers all over the city while it’s there. While the flyers themselves are rather benign – pretty much just advertisements for the fascists’ new holiday resorts – the way in which they’re distributed obviously isn’t. One would expect a bit more subtlety from Dux Santori. Whatever the case, one of the last things the government does in its current term is send an official protest to the Latins for violating Polish airspace and distributing foreign propaganda. For the fascists’ first concrete offense towards Poland, perhaps this isn’t the worst it could’ve been?

And with that distraction still fresh on everyone’s minds, the most diverse Sejm in recent history is sworn into office. The new system works more or less as intended, at least in the sense that every party that makes it in has a seat share within a couple percentage points of its vote share. At 0.5% of the votes, the Royalists continue to be so unpopular that they’re literally a joke, but that brings up the main problem that many see with the situation: most of the former Royalists have moved over to the much more radical Slavic Sanacja. While the Sanacja doesn’t openly flaunt its worst tendencies or ties to foreign primacists, it doesn’t take a bloodhound to smell something fishy about them, and especially the ruling left-wingers sure don’t like them. To others, though, the Sanacja’s presence is just another reminder that the right really needs to pull itself together if it’s ever going to pose a real challenge to the left. That might mean more strongly denouncing the Sanacja… or who knows, actually working with it. At least the party itself remains marginal for now, even if symptomatic of something greater.

As for those left-wingers, the SDP ends up losing its narrow majority of the vote. However, it is still able to form a coalition government with the hopefully rather subservient PUP. The great thinker Mikolaj Rusin has retired after some forty years in politics and the precipitous collapse of his party, and the new generation hasn’t yet built a clear profile for itself, but whether the communists particularly enjoy working with their more moderate comrades or not, the other option would be to let some other party like the Coalition take their place and probably lead to a much less productive term.

With the Sejm finally the highest authority in the realm and representative of the general population, hopefully political decision-making will also become more responsive to the public from here.

In much the same way that Lotharingia has been slipping under Latin influence – Frisia’s growing independence making it increasingly difficult for Poland to exert pressure in the region – the Republic of Bavaria finally makes official its departure from the Polish sphere, where it’s been stuck since the start of its existence. Treated as a protectorate, a vassal or an afterthought at best, it’s not entirely unfair to say that Bavaria has never been truly “independent” at all, and if its existence is basically a choice between sucking up to either Germany or Poland, it’s increasingly willing to go with its cultural brethren. The original reasons Bavaria broke free in 1840 included religious differences and the chaos of the German Civil War, but Poland is obviously no better in the former department while the latter has long since been settled. Rather than join Krakow’s economic program, the München government is in talks with Frankfurt to seek deeper integration on mutually beneficial terms – certainly better than relying on Poland’s protection and fighting wars on its behalf.

There are actually several other countries begging for closer relations with Poland, yet being consistently denied: Bolgharia, Siberia, Mongolia and Uyghuristan are all asking not just for Polish money, but more importantly, a full military alliance, which both the Crown and the Sejm are unwilling to give. The goal is to guarantee them against (mainly Russian) aggression, not risk getting drawn into some distant disputes or especially offensive wars deep in Eurasia. The Altay Pact is entirely adequate as it stands.

The governments in Tomsk, Ulan Bator and Urumqi increasingly disagree. Zavoyko’s Russia has so far proven less threatening than expected, while they’re under growing pressure from the east instead – and indeed, anyone who can look at a map will realize that Poland is no real help in that regard, especially as the Republic of China can no longer act as a corridor to the sea. In addition, even though the Pact has kept outright aggression at bay, communist influence through politics, economy and culture has been unavoidable. Seeing Poland as an unreliable crutch, the Siberian Republic has elected a rather radical socialist party and formed a military alliance with Manchuria, even participating in attacks against China. The two Khanates have shown more restraint so far, but Zhaoism – the more rural-focused communism characteristic of China – has a growing foothold among their people as well, and both of them regularly have to deal with guerrillas in their vast countryside. The local socialist party has also found success in the Mongol elections.

Bavaria might find, though, that its decision to draw closer to Germany has come at a very bad time. Despite a certain standoffishness, the foreign policy of the late Felice Fanti could actually have been characterized as rather reconciliatory, whether due to the material realities of the time or just lack of enthusiasm on his part – he was, in retrospect, rather driven by his personal whims. Especially in contrast to Russia, the Latin Empire (still officially called Federation, mind you) has managed to appeal to many of its neighbors with its displays of wealth, stability and conservative values, and even reclaimed its status as the second-largest economic power of the world.

Alas, Lucius Santori is proving somewhat different. The almost comical Zeppeli incident in Calais has been far from the only border incident that the Latins started since he took charge. Since the Latin nation has recovered quite well – and Germany so thoroughly alienated itself from the Coalition – he’s been building up for an effort to right the wrongs of the Treaty of Grazyna. Tyrol is but a footnote in the Latins’ grievances, but the loss of Franche-Comté has been a constant source of resentment and reminder of their weakness. Home to a couple million Frenchmen and little to no Germans, it being handed to Germany based on some already illegitimate Bundesrepublik-era claims goes against everything the staunchly Pan-Latin government stands for.

In October 1927, after already hammering on the issue and riling up his people for several months, Santori finally sends Germany an ultimatum for the return of Franche-Comté. He fully expects the ultimatum to be rejected, and indeed, mere days later the Legions start marching for the border. 19 years after the end of the Great War, the Latin Empire and the Republic of Germany are about to clash once more.

Poland and friends loudly protest this violent revision of Grazyna, but just as Santori had calculated, they’re all unwilling to actually throw their weight behind Germany – not to mention that the Latins actually have better PR and even some sympathy on their side, as the general perception is that Franche-Comté was only grudgingly given to the Germans because they had already occupied it. As the great powers try to avoid a new war over a Latin-German dispute they don’t actually care that much about, only the direct allies of the two seem ready to get involved, and even then, Asturias actually breaks off its fledgling alliance with Germany rather than get dragged into this. This war puts both Lotharingia and potentially Bavaria in the line of fire. Should’ve just stuck with Poland…

Even one-on-one, though, this war won’t be an easy one for the Latins. They should once again get a head start thanks to the Germans stationing much of their army on the Polish border, but before accounting for wartime mobilization, their armies are actually more or less the same size (310 vs. 316 brigades), and neither side’s weak allies should be expected to tip that balance too much. Depending on how the fighting goes, it could really swing either way. The rest of Europe waits with bated breath, but mostly hopes that this will be a brief showdown between “only” two great powers. There is a certain confusion in the air, though: this whole war is eerily reminiscent of past Latin-German wars – over the same region, even – that turned into terrible meat grinders and achieved nothing. The main difference is that this time, they didn't even blunder into it by trying to be too smart for their own good, so much as just walked into it willingly.

With more and more conflicts starting to pop up in different corners of the world, though, there’s definitely a tangible sense that what little “post-war order” there was is starting to fall apart.

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

Show

No newspapers, somehow.

Even Amatica, remarkably peaceful ever since the Anti-Asturian War ended in 1872, hasn’t been entirely spared from conflict, albeit brief: Hibernia finally secured the support of the Free Nations to attack the United Lordships (always the odd one out) and take back the disputed province of Charlotte, as well as South Fiorita while they were at it. The war was extremely one-sided and over in a couple months.

Certainly helped along by its constant wars against its much larger neighbor, the Republic of Benin – actually one of the oldest democracies in the world, though often forgotten – has finally succumbed to internal pressure and broken apart into Dahomey and Benin. Alas, neither republic survived this transition, but were quickly taken over by military juntas. Benin is still fighting an extended civil war against various other nationalists, as well as rebels trying to restore the republic. The Sultanate of Kanem-Bornu also had a huge outbreak of separatist unrest a while ago, but somehow managed to contain it.

Kanem-Bornu has its own share of problems, though. After its unfortunate involvement in the Great War greatly weakened the Sultanate and made it cut its ties with Poland, it was left wide open for the UAS to start pushing into Morocco. Both the Arabs and frankly many of the Moroccans consider North Africa to be rightful Arab land, or rather, membership in the federation to be preferable over the Sultanate. The UAS has already secured much of Morocco and cut off the Saharan Railway, the Sultanate’s vital lifeline to the north, and is currently in the process of invading the rest.

Much like in the Altay Pact, communism is seeping into South Asia as well: with international pressure, the Maratha Confederacy was forced to release the Republic of Gondwana (a region which had been tossed back and forth between the other Indian powers), which was immediately taken over by a military junta, which was then overrun by a communist coup that established a full-blown proletarian state right in the middle of India. Indo-Zhaoism, communism adjusted for the local audience, seems to be proving rather popular. For that matter, the UAS and even the Polish vassal of Ligor have fallen for the possible trap of electing outspoken revolutionary communists into their government. Other countries that haven’t gone that far have also seen a sharp uptick in socialism.

The Chinese wars rage on: the Manchus (and now Siberia) continue to gnaw at the Republic, which is still putting up a fierce but hopeless defense.

Spoiler: Comments

Show

1927 is right on the border of when I’ll actually “let” this war go through rather than step in to delay it until HoI4. It shouldn’t become a Great War, either, as neither side has any great power allies. We’ll see what happens if it somehow stretches into 1936; probably a temporary truce of some sort, since HoI4 kinda requires the initial buildup phase.

The timeline of tanks and airplanes has been somewhat jumbled by the fact that they were too late to be used in the Great War, but since we did just get our tank and airplane units, I figured it was high time I gave them at least some token notice. The Kolohousenka was a real, funny-looking Czech design from 1923 that was quickly scrapped. Somewhat more conventional tanks are about to get their first real use in the Latin-German war.

Poland doesn't have a proper Upper House, but only a single-chamber Sejm that the Crown can veto if necessary but generally doesn't have a direct say in. Hence the Upper House's shift to "Based on Population".

And yeah, I’ve shamelessly turned off fog of war entirely to better keep track of what’s happening around the world. I’ll turn it on when/if we get into a war ourselves, of course.

**InvisibleBison** · 2021-03-01, 12:10 PM (ISO 8601)

A resurgent Latin Empire won't be good for anyone. Hopefully the Germans can beat them hard enough that the regime will collapse, or at least be too busy dealing with internal problems to bother anyone.

Also, who are the Latins allied with?

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-01, 01:36 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by InvisibleBison

Also, who are the Latins allied with?

Lotharingia plus their usual cadre of goons, i.e. Malta, Navarra and Sardinia. Germany is allied with Bavaria and Juliana (the former Asturian colony in Alcadra). Lotharingia and Bavaria are the only ones with any significant military.

**InvisibleBison** · 2021-03-01, 04:14 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by SilverLeaf167

Lotharingia plus their usual cadre of goons, i.e. Malta, Navarra and Sardinia. Germany is allied with Bavaria and Juliana (the former Asturian colony in Alcadra). Lotharingia and Bavaria are the only ones with any significant military.

Ok, so that numeric disparity that the war summary shows can be brought to bear. That's not going to be good for Germany.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-01, 05:52 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by InvisibleBison

Ok, so that numeric disparity that the war summary shows can be brought to bear. That's not going to be good for Germany.

Not necessarily. The military score on the Latin side is hugely inflated by some weird hidden math, plus their navies, which should be all but irrelevant (since neither side has colonies and Juliana's not gonna do much anyway). Their actual relevant numbers are:

Latin Empire: 310 brigades, 24.07 mil. pops
Lotharingia: 46 brigades, 2.14 mil.
Malta: 1 brigade, 44.27 k.
Navarra: 8 brigades, 337.22 k.
Sardinia: 16 brigades, 870.41 k.
Total: 381 brigades, 27.37 mil.

Germany: 316 brigades, 15.15 mil. pops
Bavaria: 33 brigades, 1.60 mil.
Juliana: 9 brigades, 408.60 k.
Total: 358 brigades, 17.15 mil.

So basically, the initial army numbers are more or less even, though the Latins do indeed have the advantage in population and economy, which translates directly into more conscripts in the long run. But it's nowhere near the 3-to-1 odds given by the war overview. Normally I'd say the Germans have the advantage in terms of geography, too, but I already know the AI's not gonna make any use of that...

**InvisibleBison** · 2021-03-01, 08:32 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by SilverLeaf167

Not necessarily. The military score on the Latin side is hugely inflated by some weird hidden math, plus their navies, which should be all but irrelevant (since neither side has colonies and Juliana's not gonna do much anyway).

Yeah, I was misremembering how the game works. I thought those numbers were the straight number of soldiers each side had.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-10, 05:24 PM (ISO 8601)

Chapter #75: Commies, Colonies & Civilization (1927-1933)

Spoiler: Chapter

Show

12th of October, 1927

The Latin Empire under its new Dux, Lucius Santori, has declared war on Germany to reclaim the territories (and prestige) it lost in the Treaty of Grazyna. Those are indeed important, but on paper, this war still seems like it should be rather hard-fought – certainly not an opportunistic attack on a vulnerable enemy the Latins could expect to just roll over. It all makes much more sense in terms of primacist ideology, though: having all of their national brethren under the same flag means even more to them than to the average country, and the same goes for military glory, the true lifeblood of a nation. As a new and perhaps still vulnerable Dux, it is doubly important for Santori to cement his position and remind the people of why they tolerate the regime to begin with. And last but not least, primacism itself might have had a role in convincing its own advocates that their enemies are inherently inferior and one Latin soldier is actually worth ten “Teutons”.

The Latins do have population and economy on their side in the long run, though, and even the belief in their military superiority might not be completely baseless: while both sides are more or less equal in terms of the military technology accessible to them, the more warlike Latins have been more active in actually implementing it, perhaps in preparation for a chance like this when the first adopter might still have an advantage. Both sides have small amounts of tanks and airplanes, but the Germans have been slow to organize them into an actual fighting force, and while the Latin tanks also only number a mighty two regiments, their air force is about ten times as large as the Germans’. That’s still rather tiny in comparison to the total militaries on both sides, though, which raises the question: can such a small number of advanced weapons really affect a war? That’s what everyone else (including the Crown Air Force) is waiting to find out. Europe will be their gruesome firing range.

As the Latin vanguard crosses the border into Franche-Comté, the Germans also become the first people to find out what it’s like to be on the receiving end of aerial attack (their own planes, besides being badly outnumbered, are not even close to the front yet). In practical terms, the damage done by strafing runs and sporadic, inaccurate bombings is much less than that of an artillery salvo, but the novelty of the situation makes it all the more disorienting and terrifying for the soldiers on the ground. Of course, the Latin air force also becomes the first air force to take any casualties, as any plane flying low enough to hit anything is also vulnerable to machine gun fire. But then again, once the Germans finally manage to send in some disorganized planes of their own, they become the first ones to take any aerial casualties in plane-to-plane combat.

Latin fighters flying in formation, photographed for the press.

While the Poles would like nothing more than to send in frontline observers – out of both political and military interest – neither the Germans nor the Latins are willing to receive them. The Poles are more or less forced to rely on espionage, third countries, and the German media, which is rather informative and freely accessible in Poland (even though Frankfurt quickly implements some wartime censorship). Despite wanting to stay out of this war, the Polish government and populace alike are following it as closely as possible every step of the way.

Geographically speaking, the main lines of the war can be expected to be rather similar to the Great War: grueling combat in the Alps, faster thrusts and entangled frontlines in France. A few weeks in it seems like the Germans might even have the better position, using Franche-Comté as a base to enter Latin territory just as much as the Latins enter theirs, but it’s far too early to say. Lotharingia is right in the German line of fire, whereas Bavaria at least has the luxury of being nestled “behind” Germany, where only a few scattered bombing runs can reach for now.

Poland offers Germany its moral support in this conflict – regardless of all else, the Latins are the aggressors and Poland still clings to the Treaty of Grazyna – and also doesn’t do anything to stop it from using Polish ports and other infrastructure to obtain supplies. It does, however, fall short of directly intervening, as not only have the Germans loudly denounced Poland so often in these interwar years, the Polish people themselves are strongly opposed to any military action. Not a single party has chosen a pro-intervention line, not even the otherwise jingoistic Sanacja, most likely because the enemy would be their fellow primacists. As such, Poland can only hope that this is just a short conflict before another period of peace, but prepare for the possibility that it isn’t.

With Lotharingia, a former Polish “ally” or buffer state, caught in the war as well – and on the wrong side at that – staying out of it truly isn’t a matter of waving “good luck” and sitting back. Lotharingians buzzing around Frisia and Calais, not to mention all the other disruptions to everyday life in the region, force both local officials and Poland itself to make an executive decision on whether to try and salvage Lotharingia from the Latin sphere by offering it more aid, or even a way out of the war. In light of Poland’s commitment to peace (for itself), the answer seems to be “no”.

The forms of rearmament easiest to “sell” to the public are the ones that involve boosting Polish industry – be it in quality or quantity – rather than increasing conscription and military spending for instance. Of course, technological progress is achieved more and more by private actors that the Crown then contracts to either produce those inventions or license them to the state, but through its subsidies and network of “trusted partners” the state is still closely involved with most developments in the field. At the moment, with the military going through a possibly somewhat belated modernization boom, it really is a seller’s market: tanks, planes, warships, artillery, and naturally the equipment of the regular soldier are all receiving great attention from the Crown if not the public.

Doctrine and organizational reforms are some other things conveniently “free” to implement (if you gloss over the administrative costs, as many people happily do). As the cooperation between the Sejm’s Ministry of Defense and the Crown’s various military organs has become more official, constant and organized, both sides have agreed, though probably with different ideas of what it actually means, to the forming of a War Council – a traditional institution that has already existed in many forms in the past. There the Minister will meet directly with the three coequal leaders of the Crown military’s different branches, in hopes of fostering more efficient cooperation and planning. Fast coordination and concentration of forces are indeed becoming a more central part of military doctrine, as better communications (such as radios) and the desire to avoid extended wars make it possible and necessary, respectively.

October 1928. A year into the war, any hope of a fast German turnaround has pretty much vanished. While the Latins’ success has been far from overwhelming, German operations in Latin territory are small and scattered while most of the fighting takes place deep in Germany, even just a few miles away from Frankfurt.

After sweeping through the Wieden corridor, some Latins have actually reached as far as Austria, Bavaria and the Polish border, but these troops are in fact badly overextended and unable to hold their gains for long before getting encircled.

At least to the south, one war that has received much less attention finally ends: the United Arab States keep strengthening their grip of Morocco, though still failing to take full control. A mountainous region with such tenuous supply lines to their actual mainland seems to be rather difficult to fight in after all.

And in the far east, another chapter of the Chinese Chaos comes to an end: after the last communist incursion cost the Republic of China a few major cities, dismantled the parts of the military that weren’t already dead or destroyed, and basically brought on a permanent Manchu presence within the rump state, it fell into one last bout of stateless anarchy before finally collapsing for good. Primacists and communists had long since entered the fight for control alongside the republicans and imperials, but this final battle was basically between the extreme right and left. Although, all sides were so spent that even the fighting was a little anemic at this point. In the end, the ones who emerged victorious in the capital Taiyuan – i.e. basically saved the Manchus the trouble of invading one more time – were the communists, who had been in league with Manchuria and the People’s Republic of China from the start.

With that, the Republic is truly gone and what remains of China reunited. The Manchu government is able to fully formalize the status of the People’s Republic as an “independent” but very much subservient state, even graciously ceding some regions that had been administered from the north until now due to the Republic being in the way. The Chinese capital returns to a rather ruined Beijing, and in one fell swoop, China is once again the single most populous non-colonial country in the world. Doing something about those colonizers is definitely going to be on the agenda, though…

There is also trouble closer to home: obviously inspired by the Latins next door and eager to either join forces with their former countrymen, or even literally join the country, a primacist uprising in Brittany attempts to overthrow the government. If not for the Polish army stationed there, the ruling Breton SDP would definitely be done for. Notably, most of these right-wing revolutionaries belong to the French minority, which was never quite as enthusiastic about an independent Brittany to begin with: it turned the Bretons from a minority in a Latin country into a majority in their own country, with vast implications for the Latins who still lived there. The aftermath of this uprising raises those ethnic tensions higher than they’ve ever been; but it is also a symptom, not just a cause.

In January 1930, the first great primacist leader – Yegor Zavoyko – dies of natural causes, i.e. likely a medical condition his government doesn’t feel like elaborating upon. He was getting up there in years, of course: even before becoming the Russian dictator for 21 years, he was already an accomplished general. It comes as little surprise that his successor as Vozhd is also an old military colleague of his: Timur Morozov, Admiral of the Fleet (which has mostly fallen into obscurity, making his title more political than anything). The unverifiable story goes that he was a lowly officer in the last days of the Great War who took it upon himself to bravely elude Coalition fleets and smuggle in supplies for Zavoyko’s forces, rising through the ranks rather quickly after Zavoyko took power.

And in April, only a few months later, Lucius Santori’s crusade comes to an ignoble end: after a lot of hemming back and forth, the frontline has ultimately gotten bogged down in Elsass-Lothringen and clearly isn’t moving from there. Due to the way the front is shaped, the further in they push, the shorter the front gets and the more forces the Germans can concentrate in any one place. Any further commitment would only risk turning discontent at home into open revolt, and so he is forced to swallow the bitter pill of white peace, or in fact defeat, as the one thing the treaty does include is Lotharingian disarmament.

Typical Latin-German war. Some blame Santori’s own obsession with glorious charges, good-looking PR and inherent supremacy that all led to needless waste of men and material. Most of Europe, of course, is in fact glad that there were no further border changes, and hopes that the Latins might even have been humbled a bit. The primacist leaders’ track record so far makes it look like they really might not be such a problem. But if there’s one thing that just makes primacists even worse, it’s being humbled; and the treaty here is in fact only an armistice, not a true peace. Literally, this time: that's what they wrote down. Neither side is actually planning to let the other get off so easy.

Speaking of powder kegs, one that has taken miraculously long to explode finally does so in the spring of 1929: New Svea, originally formed out of a grab-bag of Asturian provinces, has really been the most “traditional” colony left in the western hemisphere, in that it still has a roughly 3% European minority ruling over a quite sizeable native population. While the colonial government has been forced to make more and more concessions to reality, the basic setup hasn’t changed, and has also made it stick closer to Stockholm even as the rest of the Nordic Union veered farther away. Still, the close economic and military cooperation of the Union managed to keep it rather stable as just one more agrarian, resource-producing hinterland.

A long streak of events such as the Mikmaq revolution, the primacist movements in Solmark and Paraland, attempted communist uprisings in Vanaland, the establishment of communist Honduras right in the neighborhood, Sweden’s loss of authority, and perhaps the overall decline of “colonial” systems in the region have all contributed to mounting support for leftist politics and native independence movements in New Svea. The real deciding factor, though, probably was the dwindling material support from the Union. Now the country is finally aflame with the flames of rebellion, a massive uprising led primarily by the Nahua, the largest ethnic grouping that forms 56% of the population. The colonialist army is utterly outnumbered and outmatched, and can only mount a desperate defense of the capital Sayula.

The first wave of break-offs occurs in early 1930, when the native republics of Chichimeca and Anahuac declare independence from the Swedish yoke. Anahuac quickly establishes its government at Tenochtitlan, still one of the bigger cities on the continent, albeit only a shadow of its former beauty, as the Lake Texcoco it used to “float” in has been almost entirely drained to make way for more construction. In this unstable situation, though, the socialist rebels in charge of each country end up seizing dictatorial power for themselves, and “republic” remains just a nice word for the moment. Time will tell if this actually changes.

At the same time, communists – mostly natives, albeit with a couple Europeans mixed in – overthrow what’s left of the New Svean government itself and try to rework it into a socialist federation run on their own terms. Peaceful relations are sought with Chichimeca and Anahuac, as well as Honduras despite its colonial nature. However, that’s easier said than done, and a mere month later, the so-called United Socialist Communes of Amatica has already collapsed into a number of states, all various flavors of communist: Tarasco, Oaxaca, Yucatan and Guatemala. What relatively few Europeans there were have either fled or mostly concentrated in Tarasco, the former capital region.

What a strange turn for an already strange region. Of course, as anyone could’ve guessed, it’s not exactly going to become a peaceful utopia from here: within a couple weeks, the first war between two of these socialist states has already begun.

Poland is once again more preoccupied with its own elections. In the last four years, both Europe and the world have gone through a lot of turmoil, but within Poland, not much has fundamentally changed – which is probably a net positive, as it’s now in a rather tolerable state, but that doesn’t make for very inspiring politics. The SDP has continued its social reforms, especially as the economy has recovered to fund them, but though the international program has been a relative success, the coalition partner PUP has – intentionally or not, who knows – ended up sabotaging a lot of legislation and causing electoral gridlock by denying the SDP its votes at the worst moment. In addition, as the economy has recovered but the SDP’s economic controls only tightened, their negative effects have also become more prominent.

In the September 1930 election, the SDP is still the largest party, but far too small to form a majority government even with PUP support. Whether this is in fact a reaction to their politics, anti-ruling party bias, or just a return to normal after an abnormal red shift, is an eternal and rather fruitless debate. What matters is that the Populists, the second-largest party (unthinkable only a few years ago), see their chance and take it: by teaming up with the Coalition, they can scrounge together 53% of the Sejm. By the rules that all the parties accepted, this allows the Populists to be sworn in as the premier party. Though this is obviously frustrating, the SDP doesn’t protest, but only bites its tongue and claps politely.

(Remember that the Devolutionists don’t legally exist and are a faction of the Popular Party.)
(I used modding to switch the ruling party to the Populists after this.)

The Populists and the Coalition are actually pretty close to each other on economic policy these days, and while they still have their differences in other areas – like conservative values and such – the economy just so happens to be where their main focus lies now that democracy et al. aren't such defining issues anymore. After the SDP was given more or less free rein to rebuild the economy for the last 12 years, the new government’s hope is to keep the finished building but take down the scaffolding, so to speak.

Fittingly, while Bart Stawicki retreats to lead the SDP as the main party of the opposition, the new Premier is as “arch-Populist” as they get: Aurelia Lechowicz, an old money capitalist whose grandparents managed to corner a good chunk of the burgeoning fuel refinery industry back when it was still getting off the ground. Their company – from which she divests herself as she becomes Premier, of course – treats much of the raw oil pumped in the Carpathians, and more notably the East Indies. A self-proclaimed capitalist, industrialist and seventh-cousin-twice-removed of the High King or something, she seems like a figure who can get the government parties to work together on their common ground.

7th of February, 1931, is a day that might in retrospect live in infamy. Until now, despite their many parallels and shared history of the Great War, the primacist governments in Rome and Moscow haven’t actually had much diplomatic contact. Not only were they both too focused on their own internal matters, the Great War was actually a divider between them, as both countries felt like the other was to blame for the humiliating failure of the Treaty Powers. That’s what makes the Moscow Summit, should it last, so impactful: it promises a renewal of the alliance between the two great powers, in pursuit of their shared ideological interests and, quite openly, vengeance for the Great War. The treaty is publicly, even loudly announced, clearly intended as intimidation for the countries in between them – messing with either one risks plunging Poland into another dreaded two-front war. They'll surely try and use this deterrent to throw around their weight a little bit.

On one hand, they did lose the Great War quite badly, and have been stumbling through a series of military failures since then. Indeed, this search for allies was no doubt brought on by Santori’s failed invasion of Germany. Many people’s reaction is to scoff and roll their eyes at this empty talk. However, the Great War was also quite hopeless for the Treaty Powers, but that didn’t stop them from starting it, and then causing massive death and destruction before they were forced to accept that. Their new leaders have, if anything, proven themselves very liable to do the same. Quite tellingly, the Poles’ attitude – though increasingly nervous – is in fact rather complacent and self-assured in a way. “They’re not going to beat us this time either, but we’re worried they might try.”

Probably hoping that this would've made the Poles more receptive, the Radziwill government continues its overtures across the Atlantic, but while their envoys are received politely and the talks themselves proceed in good spirit, they still go home empty-handed time after time. It might be that geopolitically, the western hemisphere really is seen as something of a backwater, simply too far from all the actual threats to be very relevant. The Free Nations grows increasingly frustrated at being turned down.

The Lechowicz government isn’t too concerned with foreign policy – that's the Crown's job. The Populists get right to work undoing not just many of the SDP’s industrial and social programs, but even legislation, such as cutting in half the “criminally high” minimum wages set by the previous government. All minimum wages do, they say, is disrupt the free market and stop companies from taking on as many workers as they’d like; and it’s not like a drop in minimum wage actually leads to a similar drop in actual wage. It's called "minimum" for a reason.

Surprising precisely no-one – it’s a tried-and-true pattern, and basically part of the party program at this point – on the industrial side, the Populists cutting government contracts, price controls and overall subsidies means that unprofitable businesses (which really shouldn’t be called “businesses” at all) struggle, while lowered taxes and tariffs mean that the already profitable ones do even better. For some lower-class workers who had grown complacent with the SDP, this might well seem like a rough wake-up call to the ideological and class differences that despite best efforts still divide Poland – and most any other country.

And it certainly doesn’t go as planned for the Populists themselves. Whether or not their policies were correct, they at least seem to have applied them far too quickly, as the sheer U-turn in direction leaves a lot of companies big and small in freefall, and in addition to the people who do have a job but with worse pay, unemployment actually reaches levels it hasn’t seen since the first months of the Great Depression. Premier Lechowicz will need to slow down a bit.

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

Show

No newspapers.

After stabilizing for a couple years, Native Amatica hasn’t fallen into constant infighting or anything, but that might be because most of the border disputes between them are against Anahuac, which is as large and powerful as all the others combined. The leader of Anahuac, your classic supposedly-socialist strongman, seems more or less content for now with his annexation of Chichimeca.

The more generic military dictatorship in Benin has been replaced with a markedly primacist one, which has immediately gotten to work reconquering the various states to its west that broke off in the chaos.

Indo-Zhaoism claims another victory in Rajasthan, where a popular uprising – similar to Gondwana – has toppled the unwaveringly conservative even if democratic government to found the so-called Ganges Commune. The Maratha Confederacy is also strongly social-democratic, but at least the Karnata Republic has stepped back from the brink and away from hardcore communism.

China’s reunification hasn’t gone quite as painlessly as hoped or perhaps expected: though there’s little doubt that it can eventually put it down, the Beijing government faces quite considerable separatist unrest in its western provinces.

Spoiler: Comments

Show

A bit like Tayshas, I had prewritten events for New Svea to either break apart or "nativize" should it ever become independent, but then I realized those didn't really account for the possibility of independence through breaking apart - nor the communist involvement - so like a lot of stuff in this AAR, I ended up having to juryrig a lot of that as it went down.

I’m very much in Conversion Fever mode, but that’s how it goes. That means somewhat switching into “observer mode” on my part, but it also makes me giddy at anything and everything that happens around the world. It just makes me look at everything in a "now, how will this work in HoI4" mindset.

We’ll probably have one more Vic 2 chapter, and then a Vic 2 wrap-up of some sort.

**InvisibleBison** · 2021-03-10, 10:42 PM (ISO 8601)

Things continue to go not that great for Poland - its enemies are getting stronger while its leadership manages to bork up the economy in an attempt to fix what wasn't really broken. It's been a while since Poland's actually had any notably talented leaders, hasn't it?

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-11, 06:29 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by InvisibleBison

It's been a while since Poland's actually had any notably talented leaders, hasn't it?

Well... Premier Stawicki seemed pretty competent in his own field, but beyond that, it's true that you kinda need to go back to the generals of the Civil War, and even they're either marred in politics or personally bloodied their hands. Marshal of the Indies Jan Chodkiewicz ruined his own legacy in the Maniolas, even in the eyes of most Poles, but Marshal of the Realm Zofia Grzymala, savior of Krakow and the High Queen, probably would've been the greatest hero of White Poland (and not responsible for any atrocities) if not for that random sniper. Of course, YMMV on how the highest military commander of the country putting themselves in sniper range reflects on their talented-ness.

The Great War probably had a lot of military talent, not just disasters and "sheep leading lions" as the saying goes, but it's pretty hard to zoom in on considering that there were like several dozen generals running around. Vic 2 is definitely the single most "impersonal" of the Paradox games – most characters are completely made up by me – which lets my institutionalist instincts take over and kinda gloss over the Great Men much of the time. HoI4 should be a swing in the other direction, due to taking place over a shorter time period and having portraits and all.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-13, 01:13 PM (ISO 8601)

Chapter #76: The Common Good (1933-1935)

Spoiler: Chapter

Show

26th of June, 1933

With Poland’s archenemies making alliances and its own economy ailing again, the optimistic mood that had already been shaken by the Latin-German war turns increasingly dour. The economic downturn and Populist resistance to government spending have put a damper on military investment, yet the looming threat of war also raises concerns within the military itself. With the exception of some parts that are fully professional either due to the technical training required or just their “elite” image, the Crown Army and Marynarka consist of a core of professional soldiers, conscripts going through their mandatory year-long service, and former conscripts who can be called to arms in the case of war. While the former also don’t want war – long gone are the times when a soldier might be eager to win gold or glory on the battlefield – their professional pride (and fear of punishment) stop them from voicing any protests they might have.

The regular people, however, have a similarly personal stake but no pride in the game. While there’s no doubt that they’ll defend Poland should it come down to it, “the masses” and all kinds of citizens’ groups, including newspapers, make it perfectly clear that they expect the government to avoid war at almost any cost.

The calculation made by the Crown, the War Council and most of the Sejm is that deterrent must be answered with deterrent. Building on the foundation laid by the so-called Stawicki Aid program, the founding charter of the Commonwealth of Sovereign States is signed in June 1933. On Poland’s part, the signing is done by Lechoslaw IV and the Foreign Minister and then ratified by the Sejm. Built on voluntary association and equal rights for all members – de jure, anyway – the Commonwealth promises common forums, open borders, a lot of boring but impactful economic coordination, and the main point: a binding military alliance, with actual sanctions to enforce it. The Commonwealth is headquartered in Bratislava: the capital of Poland’s Slovakian region, a central location, the fourth-largest city in European Poland (after Krakow, Prague and Berlin), and at least slightly more “neutral” than Krakow itself would be.

(Commonwealth of Sovereign States – Wspólnota Suwerennych Państw)

As emphasized by the name, the Commonwealth’s stated mission is to work for the common good of all its members while they still retain full sovereignty. It is neither a federation nor a mere alliance, but something in between, an international organization of width and depth never seen before and hard to get a read on. For now, the contents of the Charter are rather pragmatic in nature, but many of the ideologues behind it see a bold future of human rights and democracy. However, grand international treaties such as Charleroi and Grazyna have developed a pretty bad reputation by now, and all those different elements being combined into one big package deal is quite intimidating as well. Many rich countries like Britannia, Frisia and the Free Nations would like the military alliance but not the economic integration, whereas weaker countries could appreciate the economic benefits but would rather stay out of any wars. In the end, many nations on friendly or cordial terms with Poland sign up as “associates”, but the only ones to become full members are Yugoslavia and Moldavia; i.e. a Polish puppet and Poland’s little sibling. With their various colonies added to the mix, that is quite a respectable zone of control already, but not much different from the alliance they already had.

At least at first, the Commonwealth is at risk of falling short of its goals. It’s up to the people involved to prove that it’s anything more than just a Polish power project, or an empty bluff.

Some good news do start trickling in. This becomes the channel for Lotharingia to officially sever its Latin alliance by seeking Commonwealth association status instead. Returning to the Polish “sphere” obviously isn’t their intention either, but the war against Germany showed extremely well the risks of getting too cozy with Rome. There have been fears – both in Poland and in Lotharingia’s own government – that this apparent acceptance of fascism was also encouraging the country’s own primacists.

Meanwhile, clearly in need of allies but still spiteful of Poland, Germany starts trying to warm up bilateral relations with Britannia instead. While Britannia clearly tries to keep a foot in both camps, maintaining alliances with both Poland and Germany, it seems like the world is shaping up into another great mess of treaties just when it should be uniting against a common threat. Then again, maybe the Poles are in no position to be lecturing the Germans on this, after Germany was left to face the Latins alone.

Poland also tries to approach the United Arab States, given their highly strategic location relative to Russia, but unsurprisingly they and the Moldavians can hardly stand in the same room. Asturias also refuses, not liking Poland very much nor wanting to fight the Latins for no reason. Even Sweden isn't interested, as its rollercoaster relationship with Poland seems to have taken a dip again. Unable to grow any further, the Commonwealth is left to consolidate its gains.

Back in Krakow, Premier Aurelia Lechoslaw is forced to rein in her own government. Even if it means angering the Popular Party’s most extreme wing, the Coalition is content, and even the opposition willing to help should the government fall short of a majority. The Populist economic programme, even if she still stands behind it, might've been enacted just a little too quickly, while some bigger problems were ignored.

For one thing, wage slavery is an endemic problem in Poland, like in most other countries. Figuratively it means any situation where workers make so little that they’re living paycheck to paycheck and subject to their employers’ every whim – obviously made worse by the Populists cutting the minimum wage in half – but there are even some companies that operate by getting their employees so deeply in debt to the company that they’re never able to pay it off. Much of the work done by the SDP to legislate against these systems has been interrupted or undone, but now the opposition is able to force the government to reverse course and also raise the minimum wage… by half of how much it was cut. Baby steps, but a positive trend.

The “other” opposition is also looking out for the common people, in its own way and with its own motives: the Slavic Sanacja, Poland’s own primacist party, is stepping on the toes of both the conservatives and the socialists by investing heavily into community work and charity. A surprising arena for this competition is Denmark, which has long become profiled as having some of the most active labor movements, worst strikes, most protests, and a general undercurrent of unrest. For the Sanacja, it provides a good opportunity for some photoshoots to garner goodwill with the rest of the population, whatever their actual view of the Danes themselves (it seems they’re among the “less despised” minorities on the Sanacja’s list). Of course, it deserves to be noted that after some 700 years as an integral part of Poland, as much as half of Denmark’s population is either thoroughly slavicized or composed of Slavic migrants. It also turns out that the Sanacja discriminates against the region’s sizable Christian minority – northern Jylland is one of Poland’s main oddani districts – but there’s little room for fact-checking in the fight for publicity.

The Sanacja has already performed better and better with every successive election for a while, and is clearly hoping for its biggest whopper yet in the 1934 election. In the current atmosphere, it seems to be going for a rather daring “if you don’t want to fight them, join them” stance towards the Latins and Russia – of course, in reality the aims of each country’s primacists are in direct conflict with each other, but the Sanacja doesn’t need to say that. Realistically speaking, it’s only hoping to grow some more and maybe form a coalition with the Coalition, not actually win the premiership or be expected to keep its word any time soon.

War and foreign policy are clearly at the top of the agenda for all the parties this season, especially relative to the fact that neither of them is technically the Sejm’s business. However, all sides seem to have learned some degree of realism towards the fact that no matter what Poland does, other countries could take the initiative, and Poland would have no choice but to react. The debate is more about whether the focus should be on “avoiding” or “forestalling” that, how Poland should act in that situation, how to prepare for it, and so on.

It is hard to say whether Russia's new Vozhd Timur Morozov is merely finishing what Zavoyko started, or actually chose this timing on purpose, but he makes his first move in July 1934, just as the Polish election is picking up speed: primacist Russia goes to war with Bolgharia for the third time, with full intention of making it the last. Citing Bolgharia’s previous aggression and mistreatment of Russians in its territory as his rather throwaway casus belli, he places no upper limit for Russia’s war goals and seemingly plans on ending the country altogether. In this, Bolgharia is bravely supported by the Republic of Siberia; but the Latin Empire makes it clear that in accordance with their treaty, it will join the war against any other power that should try to intervene.

Morozov is leaning on the assumption that Poland will not start a new great war “over Bolgharia of all places”. He is correct. It could have been different only a few years ago, but the Latins’ involvement changes the math completely. The Poles can only take this as a reminder of what they’re up against, and really start preparing in earnest for the time that they’re no longer able – or allowed to – sit back and watch.

However far the different branches of Judaism have diverged by now, Poland’s own Jews (and even some other oddani) pray especially hard for a miracle to save Bolgharia, the only independent Jewish nation in the world. And indeed, whatever the end result of the war, the very first battle will go down in history as proof that the Bolghars can and will fight back against Russia’s rebuilt, reorganized, and rearmed military. After almost two months of failed attempts to take Syzran, the Russians are finally forced to retreat with far disproportionate losses, having gone in with superior numbers and come back with barely a few stragglers.

Alas, while Fortress Syzran will go down in history – and is also seized on by the Polish press – it is but a rock in a river, and the water is more Russians. Around them, the rest of the country is rapidly getting overrun.

The Siberians are capable of little more than raids on their own front, unable to help Bolgharia in any way and forced to withdraw as soon as Russian troops start arriving in earnest.

Whatever success the Sanacja might have had with its campaigning is quickly undone by this show of primacist aggression, and the results of the 1934 election are, if anything, rather similar to the last. The Sanacja loses some seats, the SDP and Populists both gain a few, the Royalists make a tiny comeback – highlighting just how desperate some people are getting – but the order doesn’t actually change. The SDP is still the largest, but still doesn’t have enough to form a government with the PUP. That’s where the important change comes in, though: the Coalition has, and not for the first time, suffered dearly for teaming up with the Populists. Even though their economic policies are quite similar on paper, it seems that in practice, the Coalition is still seen as a center party and its voters expect it to act like one, not to mention protecting small-town values and compassion. Rather than form another hair-thin majority with the Populists, the Coalition makes a whole other deal with the devil and takes the SDP up on its offer: the Red-White government is born.

Though red and white obviously aren’t taboo or anything, being the colors of Poland and all, in a political context the Red-White juxtaposition always dredges up some painful associations. However, this time the message is one of national unity: that whatever their political differences or old grudges, they are all Poles – Poles who cannot sit around snapping at each other while enemies whose ideology and political programme literally includes the destruction of Poland are building up their forces.

For a long time, the primacist powers were seen as clearly autocratic but not all that exceptional or concerning. However, more information about their tyrannical ideology has been circulating lately – especially Russia’s. Morozov seems to have both amped up Zavoyko’s policies to hasten their “completion”, and also become louder and more brazen in discussing his plans for Poland. It should be said that Poland, like any other imperialist country, is far from perfect, and in terms of political repression its own track record is even rather poor until recently. Meanwhile, its dedication to cultural and religious diversity has been applied with heavy double standards, and hasn’t stopped it from running a vast colonial empire or stomping down independence movements. But that diversity has been an integral part of the national spirit since at least the 1400s, and people of myriad tongues and faiths really have come to be seen – and see themselves – as Poles. Even in the aforementioned colonies, Polish policies have been vastly different from any other power’s, low as that bar might be.

Even more so than this or that piece of land being conquered by an enemy power, the Zavoykist idea of a Slavdom violently purged of impure influence is frightening, even outright disgusting, to the vast majority of Poland. The image of Russian commissars pouring into town and taking their fellow Poles away into the night is seen as an existential threat, a sin against humanity and all the gods, and that’s before getting into the details of whether they themselves might be deemed impure as well – unlike in the east, where Russians and others have remained relatively segregated, there’s no such thing as a pure Slav or non-Slav in Poland. It’s hard to get reliable information out of Russia, but the reports say that entire villages worth of Khazars, or Jews, or Muslims, or whoever is the enemy of the state on this occasion, have been getting “relocated” to nonexistent destinations or labor camps in the middle of the wilderness, only to be replaced in their very own homes by Slavic settlers the next day. Exaggerated or not, the idea of waking up one day to find one’s neighbor replaced with a Russian is planted firmly into people’s heads.

(“To arms! Save the Fatherland! Remember well our future fate.”)

The atmosphere of late 1934 and 1935, defined by mounting fear and outrage that all the institutions of state try to shape into determination, is not at all comparable to that of just 30 years ago, when Poland was on the brink of the Great War and even somewhat eager to get it started. The past is a different country indeed, and not only are the stakes of this looming conflict far more severe – the Great War was fought over Mogilev, Calais and Bosnia, for gods’ sake – it was that war which taught everyone on both sides how horrible total war can be. Humanist, democratic ideas and a great wealth of post-war literature have brought to light, or at least greater attention, a whole new side of war: that the human birthright is to live one’s life to the fullest, not throw it away or kill someone else for whatever ideology. That war is an aberration, not the natural or desirable state of humanity. That the gods of war, including Perun himself, are worshipped not to glorify war, but so that they might bring swift deliverance from evil.

Well, platitudes aside, the nationwide propaganda campaign (if that’s how one wants to see it) is certainly a success. It even needs to be cooled down a bit when the mood starts getting too apocalyptic, and indeed, it mostly seems to stabilize into a grim resolve to keep calm, carry on, but stay prepared for the worst. More attention is directed towards the fact that the Crown Army will in fact protect Poland, and is more than capable of doing so – as long as all Poles do their part. After all, the Poles are the Crown Army.

Rather than stoke up fears of an immediate war, right here and tomorrow, the Red-White government – led by a returning Premier Stawicki – needs to create a state of readiness that Poland can maintain for a long time, even indefinitely (as mad as that sounds), without undue stress on either the people or the economy. Perhaps a little darkly, besides military funding and all those sorts of projects, this also means preemptive investment into things like public healthcare, disability benefits, widows’ pensions, and other such things that are already important in peacetime but infinitely more so during war. Those are things the SDP and Coalition can more or less reach a compromise on. Alas, there is still a reason they’re not used to working together, and disagreements tend to arise whenever the Sejm needs a majority vote on things like labor unions or business regulations.

Bolgharia’s independence comes to an end in January 1935, when it is annexed wholesale and immediately divided into several arbitrary districts, leaving no trace of the nation on the map. A surely brutal occupation awaits the Jewish Khazars who dared humiliate Russia on several occasions, even worse than the treatment of their brethren over in Russian lands. Bolgharia has actually never been part of Chernigov, Novgorod or Russia before, but used to belong to Vladimir. Its conquest makes Uralia’s position increasingly perilous, too.

It should go without saying that in the world of today, the intense discourse over in Poland doesn’t go unnoticed in Russia either. Poland hasn’t had an embassy in Moscow or really maintained full diplomatic relations ever since Zavoyko first took over – the embassy fled the chaos just in case – but only a consulate in Chernigov, through which most of their limited communications have been conducted. The consulate tries to keep a low profile, but as Polish rhetoric towards Russia grows increasingly harsh, Morozov decides to take it out on the consulate, be it as a punishment, a provocation, or both. As several employees are arrested on charges of espionage, the rest sent back to Poland and the entire building confiscated, Russia is clearly looking for a reaction. Poland responds with the good old heavily worded protest and similar measures against Russian agents in Poland. There also starts to be more yelling between the two sides, whereas so far both have mostly talked about each other in the third person. Stawicki and Lechoslaw IV himself make bold, even if pointless, demands for Russia to amend its cruel policies. They are, unsurprisingly, met with even angrier resistance. It’s still just verbal sparring and saber-rattling, though: neither side is actually going to war right here and now.

And right in the final days of November 1935, just to ramp up tensions even further, Dux Lucius Santori is assassinated. A bomb explodes in a meeting room, killing him and several other high-ranking officials. It’ll take a bit to determine who all were actually involved with this – security is supposed to be top-notch, hinting at an inside job – but the finger is immediately pointed at the Germans. Especially since the peace between their two nations is only an “armistice”, the only thing stopping it from being broken here and now is that neither side feels ready for it yet. In Polish eyes, the Latins seem more and more like a German concern, while they must focus on Russia.

In any case, Santori is hastily replaced by Agrippa Gallo, his former chancellor and right-hand man. Santori was already starting to be seen as something of a failure, both by his fellow fascists and perhaps even the people, but his sudden demise is still a blow to the regime – not least for the reason that Gallo is already its third leader in some twenty years. The more successions they go through, especially without accomplishing any major successes, the less the Dux will look like a God-given leader and more like any other military strongman. The unsustainable nature of the fascists’ own militarism is likely to lead them to ever bolder displays of self-destructive brinkmanship.

The world enters 1936 in a perilous state. There are no open wars currently ongoing, but all the more internal and international tensions ready to erupt wherever you look. The only one who doesn’t see an enemy ready to pounce is one who isn’t watching. The war panic may have subsided, but it has only given way to war anxiety. But, some say that anxiety is a tool of survival.

Modern times have made it exceedingly clear that no man’s body is more than flesh; yet war cannot be allowed to become a matter of who is ready to throw away the most of his countrymen. If the civilized nations of the world are going to emerge victorious in this fight for their souls, what they need is obviously lots of guns, but also minds of steel, wills of thunder…

Continued in Hearts of Iron.

Spoiler: Some Statistics

Show

I generally haven't been making colonies into full states, but Taiwan became one automatically as it had already been done by the Latins.

Numbers in the second image are highly skewed as usual, though we are #1.

Spoiler: Comments

Show

Kind of like what happened with the Great War, I had to spend some time figuring out how heavily to lean on the real-life narrative of complacency and appeasement that defines the build-up to WW2. In the end, I decided that narrative made little sense for us, as the primacist powers have already existed for 25 years, started several wars of their own, share a long border with us, and have made it clear that they're coming for us specifically. Don't think I can write an “I’m sure it’s just talk” attitude here. Also saves me the trouble of trying to maintain that pretense at the start of HoI4… I assure you, I’m already bad enough at that game without gimping myself on purpose.

Some kind of summary chapter is coming as promised, but after that, the conversion process will take a bit.

**InvisibleBison** · 2021-03-13, 07:01 PM (ISO 8601)

The Commonwealth seems likely to prove a failure, given how only nations that are already aligned with Poland are joining. Perhaps it will be replaced with a true international organization in the coming war, as happened with the League of Nations.

Also, that military score is insane! Do you have a hundred dreadnoughts or something?

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-13, 10:02 PM (ISO 8601)

Yes, actually.

Spoiler

Show

Needless to say, navies are getting even less of a 1-to-1 conversion than everything else.

The military score is like extremely bugged, by the way. See how I'm getting 8360 for Soldiers & Army? Other countries, including those with armies similar to or larger than mine, all have single digits, which is definitely an actual glitch. The industry score also has little correlation with number of factories, which can be either a glitch or just weird math.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-20, 03:41 PM (ISO 8601)

Interlude #5: Reflection (1936)

CK2 Summary • EU4 Summary • Vic 2 Introduction • Vic 2 Halfway Point

Spoiler: Overview

Show

In many ways, the century or so leading up to the Constitution of 1920 – or 1037 in the Slavic calendar – was one of the most trying in the Kingdom of Poland’s history, though the same was also true for most of the world. Building on the intellectual groundwork laid by the Enlightenment and the social uprooting caused by industrialization, the capital-letter ideas of Revolution, Democracy, Nationalism, Socialism and more made their mark on every nation in one way or another. Poland’s century of troubles was, if anything, the fruit of its stubborn attempts to swim against the flow of time.

Convention dictates that Polish history be viewed through the lens of which monarch was reigning at the time. Reductive or not, it is a decent way to split up an otherwise somewhat chaotic period.

High King Nadbor III (r. 1805–1861) set out to be a very conventional Polish king, following the established ways of working with the nobility – and only the nobility – in the Sejm while still holding absolute power himself. The first half of his reign was defined by the military and ideological threat of the Bundesrepublik, but after that outside enemy showed its weakness and collapsed under its own weight, he and the rest of the upper classes proved completely unable to handle with grace the liberal movement within Poland’s own borders. As he became increasingly distant and complacent at the same time that political strife started to become a defining feature of Polish public life, the main disagreement today is over whether he failed to stop it, allowed it to happen, or in fact caused it through his own actions. Whatever side of the argument one is on, the Nadborian era is often cited as the last of the “Old Poland” and the first of the Long Revolution – the country’s grinding, hesitant transition into a new era.

High Queen Wieslawa I (r. 1861–1916) set out to be a great reformer in her own way, bucking both the new trends and the legacy of her predecessor. While allowing and even encouraging the Sejm to modernize itself, she seemed to think she could work around this by simply using her own power more – and to a point, that seemed to be going quite well, except for the fact that once-progressive Poland started to fall behind the rest of the civilized world. It wasn’t until the more extreme socialists threatened to take over (i.e. be elected to) the Sejm that this arrangement broke down, as she simply could not tolerate actual anti-monarchists in her government. The Wieslawan Restoration, her perhaps overblown response, began the White Terror and then the two-phase Civil War against first the People’s Front and then the Reds. Immediately on the heels of indecisive White victory, Poland was plunged into the Great War to avenge the way its enemies had taken advantage of the chaos. As Poland marched from trauma to trauma, Wieslawa had no choice but to isolate herself from politics, lest her presence taint all attempts at reconciliation. As it is still a tender scar upon the Polish spirit, the Wieslawan era is remembered primarily for the conflicts of its second half, not the power and prosperity of the first – especially as they too have become controversial by their association with absolutism and imperialism.

High King Lechoslaw IV (r. 1916–present) set out to be the ruler that the people needed him to be. He grew up in an era when the democratization of the Sejm was already a fact of life, but which was also marked by the Civil and Great Wars (not very civil nor great) where he himself served in the Marynarka. Even in his position of privilege, that era affected him deeply. Though he had already been selected as a teenager, or in fact groomed for the role since he was a child, it wasn’t until 1910 that he was officially cloaked, and in 1916 the throne was his to deal with. He had no qualms about bowing to the will of the people, verifying the Constitution of 1920 – though it still left him with considerable power – and spending most of the years since then supporting the Sejm to his best ability while also trying to maintain his personal image.

As much as some like to mythologize it, “the national spirit” is a manmade thing, but that simply means it can be whatever people want it to be. The one constant in Polish history seems to be the monarchy, and people are surrounded by reminders of it – the White Eagle Banner, the Slavic calendar, the Crown this-and-that – but it too has changed over time. So has the meaning of being a Slav.

Just like personal identity, national identity is often defined by reflection upon the other. In many cases, that other can be an enemy. Sometimes identity is about what one strives to be. And whether or not this has always been the case, the New Poland has chosen to self-identify as a land of freedom, equality and an inclusive vision of slavicness. The fact that this vision was shaped by the pragmatic need to rule a diverse empire matters little, as does the fact that it only became a popular talking point after an enemy started saying the opposite. Slavdom is under threat not by an external power or subversive minority, but by another set of Slavs whose interpretation of the word is the polar opposite of Poland’s. The murderers who have seized power in Russia would show the world that the Slavs are exactly what Christians in the dark middle ages thought them to be.

The new capital-letter idea is Solidarity.

Spoiler: Timeline of Vic 2

Show

1836: As Germany and Poland get involved, an English invasion of Scotland quickly spirals into the Third Revolutionary War. However, after the northern front is quickly decided in Poland and Scotland’s favor and a separate peace is signed, the Italian Empire and the Bundesrepublik are left stuck in a war that neither can win, but also refuse to surrender.

1837: Threatened with invasion by Moldavia, the already fraying Pratihara Empire is forced to grant independence to the Uyghur Khanate. While not that important in itself, after other countries of the Empire also start breaking off, this arguably marks the beginning of the Chinese Chaos that will last for over another hundred years and claim tens of millions of lives. This raises the question of whether Moldavia is to blame for the whole thing, but realistically speaking, it was only a matter of time.

1840: The Mad Year sees revolutions in both Italy and Germany. Many parts of Italy break off, while Germany loses all its colonies and subject states from France to Siberia. A total of ten nations gain independence, though many of them are short-lived. The new Latin Federation stabilizes relatively quickly and starts reannexing its lost provinces. Germany, however, enters a decades-long cycle of coups and uprisings known as the German Civil War, and will never recover the vast majority of its breakaway regions.

1841: The Brest-Litovsk Bloodbath, a small street brawl involving Byelorussian liberals violently yet ineffectually suppressed by the state, acts as the spark for revolutionary movements to really start taking root in Poland. This is often set as the earliest starting point of Poland’s so-called Long Revolution. After a mob tries to storm the New Sejmic Palace, the half-fictional Red Eagle Army is scapegoated as the mastermind.

1844: The so-called Railway Rebellion, encapsulating a wider range of problems related to Poland’s industrialization, erupts at Krakow Central Station. The fury caused by the harsh crackdown grows into armed uprisings all over Poland. While far from successful, this marks the first such “revolutionary” fighting in the country.

1847: Coming right on the heels of another, much larger uprising, Poland faces the Second Amatican Revolution. As all three of its Amatican voivodeships (Buyania, Lukomoria and Jeziora) declare independence and join together to form the Free Nations of Amatica, Poland simply doesn’t have the stomach to start a whole transatlantic war over it in the current situation, and is more or less forced to let them go without a fight. 71 years after the original Amatican Revolution in 1776, which was violently put down, the first New World colonies have gained independence, and they will not be the last.

1847-1849: The Mad Years of the Hungry ‘40s reach their apex, with the Crown in a state of open war against the various revolutionary groups within Poland. The movement arguably isn’t so much put down as simply runs out of fuel, with some of the symbolical leaders – such as Lech Lisowski, accidental founder of the Red Eagle and inventor of the world-iconic red flag – turning themselves in just to make the fighting stop. In the next few years, the shaky peace is accompanied by some tentative attempts at reform, such as free press, right to assemble, and abolition of slavery, but none of the main things the revolution was really asking for.

1850-1856: For a few chaotic years, almost all of Europe is fighting one war or another, with the so-called Western (Poland and Scotland vs. the Latin Federation), Central (Germany vs. Switzerland and Lotharingia) and Eastern Wars (Chernigov, Sweden and Arabia vs. Novgorod and Moldavia) starting at almost the same time for entirely unrelated reasons. Poland’s own involvement in the war is rather brief, though.

1856: A liberal government is elected for the first time in Poland, leading to a solid 15 years of leadership by the Popular Party and Premier Agata Krysiak, the most significant and longest-serving premier of the 19th century but also highly debated due to her laissez-faire policy. The Commissions Act also extends pseudo-voting rights to the middle classes, the first major step towards turning the Sejm into a true popular parliament.

1861: After High King Nadbor III’s death by aneurysm, High Queen Wieslawa I takes the throne. Her more assertive and monarchist tendencies often put her at odds with Premier Krysiak. The official residence of the Polish monarch is finally moved out of Wawel Castle to the more recently built and extravagant Grazyna Palace outside the city. Having first sent the Crown Army to occupy and vassalize the Sultanate of Ligor, Wieslawa continues to strengthen Poland’s grip on the East Indies by declaring the full nationalization of the East India Company. And finally, she also asserts her authority in Europe, as Poland defeats both England and the Latins in two separate wars in short order.

1863: The Geneva Convention and its successors go down in history as some of the only treaties that the great powers actually manage to follow pretty faithfully to this day.

1864: As a rather shocking and sudden solution to their fruitless disputes, the monarchs of Chernigov and Novgorod marry and unify their countries into the United Kingdom of Russia. This union is rather dominated by Chernigov, and Novgorod basically accepts it as the more pleasant alternative to more violent conquest, especially as it has recently gone bankrupt and Chernigov is offering to bail it out. The Russians do have a shared national identity and this deal is also mutually beneficial, transforming the United Kingdom into a great power almost overnight. As the country pivots to a more distinctly ”Russian” identity, though, its various minorities will find themselves more and more marginalized as time goes on.

1865: The world’s first major socialist party is founded in Moldavia, based on the ideological framework of the Bohemian Jewish economist Reuben Stern. While far from the first socialist writer, having actually based his works on his interactions with other socialists, Stern will be recognized as the main pioneer of political socialism and especially “communism” as it comes to be known.

1871-1872: The so-called Anti-Asturian War erupts as England, Japan, the Latins, the Arabs and more simultaneously attack the ailing empire in its moment of weakness. Poland also joins alongside the Free Nations, helping it liberate most of the Amatican colonies from Asturian rule. While Asturias still keeps much of its empire, diplomatically it’ll never regain its status as a great power, or even make a real attempt.

1875: The Congress of Charleroi is convened by Poland to deal with some of the many disputes that have fueled constant wars in Western Europe for the past forty years now. The English and Latin border claims are seemingly settled, at the cost of Poland relinquishing some of its influence in the region. While the actual treaty arguably doesn’t hold for very long, it does achieve its main goal of cutting back on that fighting… for a few decades.

1880: The communists smash their way into the Sejm for the first time, with a whole 21% of the seats, but are left in the opposition for a long time. The right wing and the Crown start becoming more vehemently anti-socialist to keep them in check.

1881: The Krakow Conference formally delineates some claims and future procedures for great power conquests in Africa. Though the practical meaning of the conference itself is limited, it marks the first of many similar negotiations and the start of the Scramble for Africa, with the great powers racing to conquer the entire continent in less than a decade. Halfway across the world, the Pacific islands are also quickly gobbled up.

1891: The communist-dominated SDP wins 49% of the Sejm, but having fallen just barely short of a majority, is denied the premiership and in fact any real role in the government. Desperate to hold onto that last 1%, the conservative government and the Crown begin a period of steadily escalating political repression. This manifests in widespread communist and colonial uprisings, including a very big one in the Maniolas, building up to a much larger revolution to come. As the years go by, the mood on both sides grows increasingly apocalyptic.

1894: Even more shockingly than Chernigov and Novgorod, England and Scotland manage to put their differences aside to form the pseudo-federal state of Britannia. Much like with Russia, this is a result of growing English domination and a lapse in Polish protection, but also a mutual need to suppress the Welsh and Irish respectively. Arguably, the thaw in English-Scottish relations is the greatest success of the Congress of Charleroi. But regardless, while Britannia emerges as a great power, the various Scottish colonies take this opportunity to declare independence in a peaceful manner.

1896: Despite attempts of fraud by the ruling conservatives, the SDP wins the majority in the Sejm. In response, the Wieslawan Restoration arrests much of the SDP, replaces the Premier with a royal puppet, rolls back voting rights and civic freedoms, centralizes power under the Crown, calls a new heavily manipulated election and begins the real White Terror, where basically no left-wing activity or political opposition is allowed. The Terror is also punctuated by large uprisings in Yugoslavia and the Bremen Voivodeship.

1900-1903: After years of occasional skirmishes, the Polish Civil War finally begins on Kupala Night 1900. It comes in two major waves, first the republican People’s Front and then the communist Red Guards, the latter being much, much larger, more persistent and infamous. Millions are involved and hundreds of thousands die in the fighting, and the White victory at the end is a Pyrrhic compromise that gives the Reds much of what they wanted, including a place in the government for the pseudo-communist Polish Unity Party. Extremists on both ends want to continue the fight, but most people would rather just let it end, no matter how spiteful. During the war, the Latins, Russians and Germans all take the opportunity to try and grab territory for themselves, though the Poles manage to stop the last one.

1903-1905: In the brief years of peace splitting up what will be known as the Two Wars Period, universal suffrage is finally introduced in Poland, alongside many other social and liberal reforms along leftist lines. Mikolaj Rusin, the leader of the PUP, makes his mark as the other great Premier of the modern age.

1905-1908: Old tensions over Yugoslavia and the overall great power pecking order mix with the new issue of the provinces seized during the Civil War, finally leading to the Great War, the largest and most destructive war in European history up to this point. Blame for starting the war is officially placed upon the Latins, especially after they lose, but in the long term, it’s tempting to say that the war was inevitable one way or another. The Treaties of Grazyna and Ryszarda are forced upon the Latins and Russians respectively, leading to moderate territorial losses but all the more humiliation and rage. Primacist dictatorships seize power in both countries within a few years after the war.

1916: High Queen Wieslawa I dies in her sleep, making way for the current High King Lechoslaw IV.

1918: The burst of the post-war “colony bubble” in Britannia sends much of the financial world into freefall, beginning the Great Depression. Poland survives relatively well, but the crisis still paves the way for the reformed SDP – purged of its more extreme components – and Premier Bart Stawicki to be elected. They’ll be voted out for a term in 1930, but make a return in 1934, letting the social democrat Stawicki cement his place as the third great Premier of the era.

1920: Working in concert with all the major parties, Stawicki and the High King manage to work out Poland’s first real constitution. 80 years since the start of the Long Revolution and 17 years after the civil war, Poland has more or less caught up with the rest of the west in modernizing its political system – on paper – but still needs to actually live up to those promises.

1927-1930: The primacist Latin Empire finally breaks the “peace” in Western Europe, invading the German Republic. After two and a half bloody years, the war "ends" in an unsatisfying armistice and great humiliation for the Latin regime.

1931: Russia and the Latin Empire make a new alliance, leaving Poland with hostile forces on two fronts once more. As Russia’s new leader Timur Morozov gets bolder and bolder with his rhetoric towards Poland, not to mention treatment of his own citizens and annexation of Bolgharia, it increasingly starts to seem like a second great war might be inevitable.

1933: Poland founds the Commonwealth of Sovereign States, an economic and military alliance intended to contain the primacists and other destructive forces. Results are middling at best.

1934: As the Popular Party under Aurelia Lechowicz has seemingly plunged Poland into another recession at the worst possible time, the so-called Red-White Coalition government is formed to unify the nation against a common enemy, led by Bart Stawicki once more.

Spoiler: Poland Today

Show

Much has been made of Poland’s military and diplomatic crises recently, and much more is to come. However, before getting too immersed in that, it’s worth taking a look at some aspects of everyday Polish society, after what might’ve been the most revolutionary century in its history.

Economy & Welfare

While some ups and downs are inevitable, the popular perception – especially with the Red-White Coalition now in power – is that the conservatives built a buffer against the Great Depression with their careful policy, the social democrats helped both the economy and the regular person recover from the crisis, and then the liberals ruined everything and caused a new recession. While this one was much smaller, its effects are still being felt, and it has also sorely slowed down Poland’s rearmament. At least unemployment has been kept under control, only really becoming a problem around Prussia and parts of Pomerania.

Poland is still the #1 industrial powerhouse of the world, though Japan and the Latins are not far behind. In the financial sector it is even more dominant, with the vast majority of the world’s stock trades passing through Krakow. Competing stock markets still have their place in other ideological and geographical niches such as Rome (primacist), Frankfurt (neutral), Tokyo (Asian) and Ledenesz (Amatican), but in sheer volume, Krakow’s financial sector is larger than all of theirs combined. Of course, being based mostly on speculation and “animal spirits”, the financial sector is especially sensitive to the smallest changes in policy and very loud in its demands for deregulation. As something of a strange tradition or high-effort inside joke, some brokers at the stock market actually gather to pray to literal animal spirits at the pagan temple across the street.

The general wisdom (currently) accepted by socialists and conservatives alike, though, is that both the social safety net and the way businesses treat their employees require heavy state regulation, or otherwise the businesses can and will reduce those to the bare minimum (and below). It’s a little ironic, then, that the area where Poland is most lacking is state-funded unemployment subsidies. Then again, though some business representatives like to point this out, they’re usually quickly shut down by the reminder that any increase there would have to be funded by increased taxes on businesses anyway.

The working population in the European parts is employed about equally in agriculture, raw resource production, and other industries. While Poland isn't urbanized quite to the point of Lotharingia or Germany, and the population also gets sparser the farther into the east or north you go, it does have the biggest cities anywhere west of India. The only metropolitan areas that can even remotely compete with Krakow in terms of sheer size are Moscow, Ledenesz (Quebec City) and Nueva Lisboa (New Orleans).

Language and Schooling

The only official language on the national level is Polish, and its use is mandated for things like the government bureaucracy and Krakowian politics. However, the different regions have clung tightly to their right to their own language. This means that most regions outside of Poland Proper are at least bilingual or more, which is also seen in things like street signs that show the same name written in both Polish and the local language. This effect is less pronounced in West Slavic areas that have been part of Poland for almost a millennium and whose languages are officially classified as dialects of Polish, including Pomeranian, Sorbian, Czech and Slovak, but more distinct with East Slavic, and most of all non-Slavic languages (Khazar, Prussian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Danish, Hungarian and German). All of these except Danish (Runic) and German (Latin) have been standardized to use the Cyrillic alphabet, which Poland originally adopted and spread in the 10th century because it had been designed by a Slav, for Slavs, even if this St. Cyril himself was a Christian. By Poland's grace, the alphabet has also been spread to many other peoples across the world who used to lack a written language altogether. Unfortunately, the mostly region-based system still lets smaller and more diaspora-based languages such as Romani and Yiddish fall through the cracks, and also herds minorities to try and stick to "their" parts of the country. It's hard to immediately suggest a better solution, though, assuming the universities can't start pumping out hordes of omniglot officials anytime soon.

The Polish-Russian border is a classic example of how arbitrary some classifications can be: on the Polish side, Ukrainian (also known as Ruthenian) and more recently Belarusian (formerly Byelorussian) have been registered as their own languages, whereas just across the river, those same people would be classified as speaking an inferior dialect of Russian that needs to be standardized out of existence. That’s not to say that Poland doesn’t have political reasons to be separating these languages from Russian, too.

Polish cannot be avoided anywhere in the country and everyone also studies it in school, but regions have been granted the right to teach their own language, though not a specific way to do so. Sometimes the local language is taught as a separate subject, sometimes used in all teaching while Polish is the separate one. The most common foreign languages taught in higher grades are Pannonian, German and Latin (surprisingly enough, but considered necessary to the educated citizen). Due to the motley nature of Poland’s linguistic and religious landscape, the school system is similarly diverse (or messy, depending on how you look at it), being mandatory up to the age of 12 but provided by all sorts of religious, public and private groups with a wide range of standards and curricula. In the most cosmopolitan areas like Krakow, Berlin, Prague, Kiev and Bratislava, almost every major faith and language can be found in close proximity. Secondary education is hard to come by in the countryside, and tertiary is still too expensive for most, but universal literacy – at least on a decent level – has been more or less achieved.

The main language of the Slavic Church and its sacred texts is Polish, but translation and the use of local languages is highly encouraged, and other congregations (namely Catholic, Jewish, Hindu and Muslim) obviously have their own preferences.

Religion

Since the 15th century, the protected status of the oddani – “the devoted”, i.e. non-pagan monotheists – has been entrenched in Polish law and society. Though it has since faded in importance with the overall shake-up that traditional social structures received in the 19th century, as well as the arrival of Hindu and other immigrants who didn’t fit so readily into these established communities, both the term and its deep cultural importance still remain. While it came with a certain degree of segregation, oddani being encouraged to move into specific areas and neighborhoods, it was still far preferable to their treatment in most of Europe, and led to phenomena such as most of Europe’s Jewish diaspora migrating to Poland over time (well, the ones who didn’t go the New World instead). Generally located close to the border, the oddani enclaves also became natural safe havens for other persecuted minorities like the Christian heretics, even if in their case the threshold to move from a Christian country into a pagan one was much higher. Thus the oddani formed cross-cultural communities defined by religion first and foremost, not to mention international connections, while entire regions such as Crimea, Bohemia, Slovakia and Jutland were greatly influenced by their large amounts of oddani.

The Constitution of 1920 cemented this long-established religious freedom as a basic right, but no longer made any mention of the oddani as a social class, choosing not to renew this official segregation. Meanwhile, though, the Slavic Church was still kept as the official religion of the state, even if the actual meaning of this was hazily defined. The Archpriests and Archpriestesses of Perun have always been highly influential spiritual leaders, but considered merely learned individuals and not in any way infallible (in contrast to the Catholic Pope for instance), and have mostly chosen to stay out of secular politics regardless. And though the supreme cleric at Bialaskala is a step above all others, they don’t hold any official power over the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of other countries, and the worldly wealth of the Slavic Church is also quite limited in the present day.

But even as the country becomes increasingly secular in its politics, the Slavic Church – founded by King Lechoslaw the Great, natch – is still important as ever to Polish identity, including traditional institutions like the Crown, state ceremonies, the official calendar speckled with Blessed Ancestors, and all sorts of public imagery. None of the political parties right of center hesitate to tap into religious sentiment, either. After all, the very original raison d’etre of Poland is to be the “Savior of the Slavs”, the one to save them from religious, cultural and military conquest by the worshippers of the Crucified God. Though it’s been a very long time since any of that was a legitimate threat, and the Church's own rhetoric has also become much less hostile, what matters is that practicing Slavic pagans still form the officially-endorsed majority in Poland.

Status of the Colonies

Imperialism and colonialism are still mainstream, and Poland hardly stands out in a negative light compared to the other great powers. However, the colonies do form a painful double standard regarding Poland’s declarations of “equality” and “solidarity”. They’ve been controversial with the liberal and especially the socialist block for a long time now, facing criticism from both practical and ethical perspectives, but more recently the feeling has been that it’s best not to rock the boat just when the global situation seems unsteady as it is. Besides weakening Poland, there are fears that greater autonomy – or especially independence – would leave these regions open to corrupting ideologies, or even the other great powers. Decolonization is increasingly being discussed as a long-term goal, but has been put on the back burner for now.

The individual colonies will be discussed in greater detail later on. But all in all, not counting the more or less fully autonomous parts (Nowa Straya and Ligor), the legal status of non-European Poland is filled with – depending on how you look at it – awkward, half-hearted, or hackneyed compromises that seem to promote one ideology without really putting it into action. Most people either have or can easily acquire Polish citizenship, but can’t actually practice most of their rights without physically traveling to Europe, as remote voting arrangements are only made for government and military employees. Religious and cultural rights are on paper similar to Europe, but applied a lot more sloppily and ignored at will. While more rural regions enjoy a certain level of “benign neglect”, it is clear that the colonies as a whole are entirely tied to serving European interests. And while the use of machine guns and chemical weapons against colonial rebels was vindicated in the worst of ways when the Crown showed that it would also use them at home (equality!), it still didn’t exactly endear the colonizers to their subjects.

Though a certain degree of racism, xenophobia and slavocentrism is of course evident both in the colonies and at home, pan-paganism has for all its other flaws done a great deal to counteract the worst of these impulses. Even if patronizing, it does help to have all the highest authorities in peoples’ lives preaching kinship and integration rather than superiority and conversion. But whereas Poles settling in the colonies can basically expect to find their place in the middle class, if not the elite, the smaller counterstream of colonial citizens migrating to Europe – making use of those liberal citizenship laws in search of a better life – have not only found themselves in a difficult position but also put those tolerant ideals to the test. While still rather marginal in number, the arrival of Africans and Southeast Asians with strange languages, beliefs and skin colors has been a lot for some to take in. The Muslims arguably have it toughest, though, as they have neither paganism nor any large oddani communities to lean on: the Muslim community in Poland is more or less all immigrants, or refugees from Russia's Caucasus region.

More Statistics

[Half of the most populous provinces in Europe are in Poland. Note: In-game provinces, not actual city limits or metropolitan areas. There are roughly 15 million people living within 50 miles of the Krakow city center, many times more than in real life, a density comparable to New York Metro around this period.]

[Military, archaic and a few other goods omitted. As you can see, we're very strong in strategic resources like oil and rubber, but our enemies aren't far behind. Fun fact: Despite being the world leader in lumber, paper and furniture, Poland actually imports almost all its raw timber – mostly from Russia, which is the clear world leader there. The next biggest are the Free Nations and Uralia, and timber is very cost-inefficient to transport for long distances. That industry is probably having a bad time with the political situation.]

Spoiler: Comments

Show

To make up (?) for the lack of hard stats or whatnot, have a bit on Polish civil society at this time. As much as we’ve been focusing on politics, I feel like we’ve been kinda neglecting some of this stuff, as Vic 2 AARs maybe have a natural tendency to do, and HoI4 sure isn’t gonna be better in that regard. I don’t feel like dwelling too much on things like national score comparisons, as they’re both glitched out and going to be heavily reworked anyway. As for maps and such, I’m going to be posting a criminally long world atlas once we enter HoI4, so don’t you worry.

HoI4 will be the last official part of this AAR. I’d like to actually finish a megacampaign for once, plus I have a long list of reasons I personally think that Stellaris doesn’t actually make for a good capstone. However, I’m still thinking of doing something with it. I have some assorted ideas I want to try out if we ever get there and I’m not thoroughly tired of this yet, but I’ll think of it as a non-canon spinoff of sorts, and probably write it in a rather different style and structure more focused on small snippets of worldbuilding and prose. The main issues I have with Stellaris, AAR-wise, can be split into “reasons why it doesn’t work for a megacampaign” and “reasons it doesn’t work for my usual style”, so it might be fun if I can get past both of those.

As for the conversion, I’ve been doing it by hand, and it’s definitely going to be most involved one so far. I'm hoping to get it into a state where it can run without needing constant juryrigging like Vic 2 did. I think I already talked about how the Paradox game line gets more “scripted” the further you go, and in HoI4’s case, even if the wars themselves can obviously go a lot of ways , basically no wars can start or other changes happen without being scripted ahead of time, and the branching paths merely add more alternative scripts. Left to its own devices, the world will just idle for 15 years. This, and the focus on a single big war that needs to be kept interesting somehow, mean that I need to more or less write the main “plot”, think about balance, and probably even playtest it in observer mode to see that it works.

If anyone’s curious about the work process (all the steps overlap and are at various levels of completion):

Convert the map itself, editing and creating new states as necessary to make sure the borders match. DONE. HoI4’s inbuilt map editing tool is great, by the way.
Go through each country individually to match relatively simple things like flags, country names and ruling parties. Make up names for leaders and generals, but not individual advisors (in other countries) since those are all but invisible to not just the reader but even me, the player. Repurpose character portraits already in the game, but don’t always just go for the defaults.
Adjust mechanically important things like population, industry, technology and military size to some compromise between accurate, balanced and “interesting”.
Figure out what each country could or should try to do in the game, tweaking the above as necessary.
Write all the events, national focus trees etc. to make that happen. Only a few countries will have unique focuses, because sheesh, that’s a lot of work to make a country do one thing three years in that could’ve just been achieved by event. Most focus trees in the unmodded game are pretty irrelevant anyway, if you're not the one playing them.
A lot of definitely unnecessary tweaks, because it makes me happy.

Addendum: The Nobility
Addendum: Political Parties
Addendum: The Christians

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-20, 03:42 PM (ISO 8601)

If there's any other trivia or world-building stuff that you're curious about, do ask! It'll help fill the gap while I work on the conversion, anyway.

**InvisibleBison** · 2021-03-20, 04:55 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by SilverLeaf167

If there's any other trivia or world-building stuff that you're curious about, do ask! It'll help fill the gap while I work on the conversion, anyway.

What's happened to the nobility? I imagine they've lost all their governing powers as Poland democratizes, but do they still have wealth or special privileges? And more specifically, is the House of Elders still around? It became a purely ceremonial institution in the 15th century, but I don't recall it ever being mentioned after that.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-20, 06:33 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by InvisibleBison

What's happened to the nobility? I imagine they've lost all their governing powers as Poland democratizes, but do they still have wealth or special privileges? And more specifically, is the House of Elders still around? It became a purely ceremonial institution in the 15th century, but I don't recall it ever being mentioned after that.

...Excellent questions, especially the latter. Some of this stuff I've probably never addressed.

Spoiler: Addendum: The Nobility

Show

The Polish szlachta class has always been rather broad, encompassing everyone from basically viceroyal magnates to lower gentry who didn't necessarily even own any land. The prerequisite to serve or vote in the original Sejm was, indeed, to be a szlachta who did own land, and the people who actually got elected were generally from the middle-to-upper end of the scale. In practice, "the nobles" usually refers to the ones who are actually recognizable as such, and the lowest of the szlachta also lack most of the actual privileges associated with the term.

Today that nobility can be roughly divided into three categories: new, traditional, and modern. The "new" nobility is something of a technicality, consisting of rich landowners who purchased honorary titles during one of the periods that the Crown was selling them to make a quick buck, either to gain access to the Sejm or for the other privileges. This only happened sporadically and became far less relevant by 1856 at the latest, when participation in the Sejm started being expanded anyway. Besides a fancy title, most of them never really identified and weren't identified with the traditional nobles, and there's not much to set them apart from anyone else. Even the ones who have fallen upon hard times actually can't re-sell their titles, so they're just stuck with them even as they run a grocery store in Vilnius or something - as has always been the case for the lower end of the szlachta. Some, on the other hand, are still just as rich as they were when they bought their titles. The title basically bears no relevance in this.

The traditional nobles are, broadly speaking, those landowning families who were granted their noble titles somewhere several centuries ago and have tried their best to cling to their old lifestyles. Typically this means idle manorial lords who made their living by taxing or, after taxation was made the sole privilege of the state, collecting rent from the peasants who lived on their land. Since Poland never adopted serfdom to begin with and the peasants were always "free", on paper this business model actually hasn't changed much, except for the fact that this sort of small-scale agriculture has become a lot less competitive, many of those peasants moved elsewhere, and the nobles fallen upon hard times as a result. Generally only the upper end with especially large estates, government positions, or other outside income have been able to maintain their wealth this way. Often but not always the traditionalists are also the most serious about sticking to their old titles, rituals, clothing, and other trappings of nobility.

And finally, the modern nobles are the ones who leveraged their wealth and connections to become capitalists, civil servants, military families or more, giving up the old manorial lifestyle when it became inconvenient (if they ever lived that way to begin with) and just transitioning from the old upper class into the new upper class. Even though their new job titles aren't hereditary, they're well placed to put their heirs through university and pull the right strings to land them a nice job somewhere. The Crown administration is especially receptive to nobles, being mostly independent of the Sejm and able to pick its own employees. Whether or not they still hold onto the old trappings of nobility, they're enjoying life as part of the privileged 1% that Poland still very much has, and while some of that 1% has risen from outside the nobility, needless to say, the nobles are over-represented within it. Hell, one could probably write a scathing exposé of how much of the country's wealth is owned by people named Lechowicz alone. Former Premier Aurelia Lechowicz is one example.

The nobles' legal privileges had been on the decline for a long time, and were basically dealt the very last blow over the course of the 1920s. The Constitution didn't overwrite the nobles' old rights, but also didn't include any of them, and now the Crown Council also lost the ability to interfere if it wanted to. Even though the nobles are still over-represented among politicians, being too blatant about it in an era of universal suffrage would be electoral suicide, so almost everyone just took it quietly. They still hold onto a number of more "ritual" privileges, including the right to be addressed by their title in formal contexts and get the best seats in certain, well, rituals, but in legal terms they're more or less indistinguishable from anyone else of their wealth class. Money is the new nobility.

One of those ritual privileges is that only nobles can be appointed to the House of Elders, which still has the great honor of confirming the nomination of the High King. This role, however, is purely ceremonial, and if the House actually tried to pull something, it'd be a scandal for sure, but couldn't actually derail anything unless the succession was already very contested somehow. Furthermore, the size of the House of Elders is unregulated, and has grown to the point that Elder is basically a title handed by the High King to any sufficiently old and moderately respected noble (there are a few hundred at the moment). Besides being a nice little prize to throw around, this has the side benefit of making it even harder to manipulate enough of the House to cause any such scandal, especially as it only actually convenes when the High King dies, which for most Elders means "never". After all, they're by definition already old when they get the title.

Still, even if ceremonial, Elder remains one of the more respected noble titles from both a secular and a religious standpoint. To the people who care about the nobility, anyway. The left wing (of academics and laymen alike) is increasingly apathetic, disdainful or even actively hostile towards the nobility, but for the most part, people still feel a certain ingrained respect or at least natural curiosity towards them.

**IthilanorStPete** · 2021-03-21, 07:21 AM (ISO 8601)

Finally caught up, after reading through the entire Vic2 section of the AAR. Notes written as I read through it:

The Polish Civil War was something else...it felt like the other shoe finally dropping after decades of tension. And an utterly brutal chapter to read, as it should be.
Of course it’s the frickin’ Balkans.

Took the words right out of my mouth.
Chapter #69: Not Nice

Heh, indeed. More seriously, Japan entering the war was a major twist, though it certainly makes sense.
I almost wish the Great War had been less one-sided, even if the Latins put up a surprisingly good fight. On the other hand, Poland went through enough trauma in the Civil War.
~~Fascism~~ Primacism's rise in Poland was pretty well foreshadowed, it certainly made sense in the narrative.
Interesting that Frisia became a GP. Not the first time I've seen that sort of thing happen; this Bavaria AAR saw the same scenario happen with Hungary.
Hooray for the Constitution! Certainly took Poland long enough.

All in all, this is truly tremendous work. Looking forward to Hearts of Iron!

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-21, 10:52 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by IthilanorStPete

~~Fascism~~ Primacism's rise in Poland was pretty well foreshadowed, it certainly made sense in the narrative.

This is especially nice to hear. Long-term narrative is perhaps the thing I worry about the most, since unlike some AARs I just write as I play along, so sometimes I end up either foreshadowing things that don't end up happening, or conversely just drop things in pretty unannounced. Or, you know, simply forget about a worldbuilding element or "plot" thread forever.

Originally Posted by IthilanorStPete

Interesting that Frisia became a GP. Not the first time I've seen that sort of thing happen; this Bavaria AAR saw the same scenario happen with Hungary.

Yeah, though it didn't last long in the end as Russia recovered. Only long enough to break their already shaky vassalage, which I'll have to address in slightly more detail in the HoI4 atlas.

Vassals are another thing I pretty much tend to forget in Vic 2, since there's pretty much zero gameplay interaction with them.

Originally Posted by IthilanorStPete

All in all, this is truly tremendous work. Looking forward to Hearts of Iron!

That makes me very happy to hear! I do this (and the conversion stuff) more or less for the joy of it, but as I've probably said before, I'd be lying to say I could have the commitment for it if it didn't receive some attention/praise.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-22, 09:25 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Addendum: Political Parties

Show

The Sejm of 1934, led by the Red-White Coalition between the SDP and the National Coalition, has the highest number of parties ever represented in Poland, a total of six. This isn't necessarily a sign of deep division so much as the new proportional system, where even the smaller parties are likely to get someone elected after their votes are pooled.

In comparison to some other countries whose politics are solidly divided along geographic, religious, class or other lines and parties can only compete over a small number of swing voters, Poland's voting population has proven remarkably mobile, and the three largest parties can look forward to sizable swings in every social class. The socialists, liberals and conservatives all have different arguments that can appeal to the same people, "the average Pole" being more or less any sort of working class, Polish-speaking pagan. Arguably the Polish voter also seems to have a rather short memory, but that might be justifiable by the fact that politicians also have a surprisingly rapid turnover rate, most of them only being elected for a term or two before graciously (or in fact disgraciously) bowing out to pursue other interests. The class of actual career politicians has been growing steadily for a century now, but there's still a decent number of newcomer and dilettante candidates in any given election. Especially the new party-list system actually encourages parties to get as many candidates as possible, since 10 candidates with 1,000 votes each are just as good as 1 with 10,000 votes.

The Polish Unity Party has a very fraught history. Building on the legacy of the then-banned SDP, it was born as a government-mandated "official opposition" during the White Terror, had an influx of actual Reds, won the first election after the Civil War, enacted universal suffrage, steered Poland through the Great War, but finally fell out of favor in the 1910s. Without any real power or hope of gaining it, for a while the PUP became a slightly more hardline government partner to the moderate SDP, until this latest Red-White Coalition left it to seek its identity in the divided opposition once more.

The Social Democratic Party, currently in charge, has its origins as the undeniably communist-dominated "Old SDP" of the pre-White Terror era. After the party was banned from the Sejm and split between revolutionaries and reformists, the latter formed the basis for the increasingly moderate "New SDP". It made a big comeback in 1913 and won the premiership in 1918. Today it is a rather conventional center-left party, defined by its focus on workers' rights and secular values, the latter of which especially appeal to a lot of non-pagan voters: even if said voters are religious themselves, secularism in a pagan state basically means more freedom of religion for them. The greatest controversy surrounding the party would be whether, in its efforts to make itself presentable to the public and other parties, it has given up too much of its revolutionary spirit, gotten domesticated, and started making horse-trades over trivial changes rather than pursue true socialism. The SDP appeals to the average voter by promising better pay, better treatment and welfare payments, which the other parties would say is just transparent populism.

The Popular Party fits quite uncomfortably into the two-dimensional Left-Right spectrum of today, where the two extremes are communism and primacism. It is liberal in more or less every way, combining the social liberalism of the left and economic liberalism of the center-right. The one topic where it's extremely anti-liberal is when it comes to labor's freedom to organize. Alas, with the growth of democracy and civil rights, the grand liberal talking points of the past century are more or less moot, while with its economic policy it has a tendency to go overboard whenever it does get in power. Still, its allegedly disastrous 1930-34 term didn't actually cause a drop in support; what changed was that the conservatives decided not to work with it anymore. Liberalism is also the only real option for many who don't identify with the conservatives' Slavic identity, yet don't want to consider themselves socialist. By the way, the original ban on the Devolutionists was actually lifted after the Civil War at the same time as the SDP, but aside from some local grassroots movements, they've simply decided that they have more influence as the extreme wing of the Populists than they would as their own party. The Popular Party appeals to the average voter by promising lower taxes, lower prices and less state controls in general, which the other parties would say is just transparent populism.

The National Coalition still identifies and tries to sell itself as the definitive Center party, which it arguably is: where the Populists draw from both extremes, the Coalition is close to the center on most issues. However, "moderatism" and "conservatism" are still inherently ideological concepts defined by what one sees as moderate and worth conserving. In concrete terms, the party supports social welfare in the name of compassion, low taxes in the name of welfare, a strong state in the name of security, and traditional moral values in the name of "that's just how it ought to be". Poland's inherent diversity has forced the Coalition to try and find what sorts of values could be shared by as many voters as possible, but it also doesn't shy away from prudent references to Slavic culture and religion, and that is still the group where it enjoys its strongest support. The National Coalition appeals to the average voter by promising stability, familiarity and more attention to rural areas, which the other parties would say is just transparent populism.

The Royalist Party has made a small comeback in the latest election. It has never been the Premier party, only a tiny coalition partner, and was even out of the Sejm entirely for 78 years in 1856-1934, yet still maintained a stubborn, hopeless presence at the polls just to get some publicity. For a time the whole party just became a country club for nobles who didn't even expect to do any politics, but the tense situation has finally brought them back as a serious (if still insignificant) player. Bound by tradition as they are (and clinging to what brand awareness they have), they've kept their Royalist name, but their commitment to royal power is more abstract at this point, mostly a symbol for traditional values and state power in general. Although, they are the only party that is actually pushing to return more power to the Crown. They don't especially like what any of the other parties have become, and would rather have a weaker Sejm altogether.

Finally, the Slavic Sanacja. The newest and most controversial. While primacism remains an unstandardized and often informal ideology, and the Sanacja doesn't openly label itself as such, the rest of the public has made the connection, and the party has been half-hearted and unsuccessful in denying these accusations. The Sanacja's core ideology isn't far off from the Russian Vozrozhdeniye regime, besides replacing Russian with Polish and still having to function in a democratic environment for now. Politically the state should be strengthened, socialists and liberals weeded out, and the economy run through private companies but with strong state oversight. Unusually, though, "state" here refers to neither the Crown nor the Sejm, but the Sanacja itself. And more vitally, it wants a monolithic Slavic Poland where all minority privileges are dismantled, those who cannot assimilate are enslaved or slowly allowed to die out, and a great program of Polish settlement is begun in the colonies and the underdeveloped Dnieper region alike. Most of these ambitions they hide, some they dress up in euphemistic terms, and whether their roughly 7% support is reassuringly low or far too high is a matter of perspective. But if the late 1800s were an era of open anti-communism, in the Poland of today, all other parties are united against the Sanacja.

There are also smaller parties floating around, built on individual issues, identities or just charismatic leaders, but they've been kept out of the Sejm by the vote threshold inherent in the system, lack of publicity, and probably just the voters' awareness that they couldn't achieve anything anyway. More successful have been those that formed a bloc inside one of the main parties instead. While it can fairly be said that most people just vote based on habit, mental images, or whom they've heard the most about, the Polish public is also growing in political activeness, awareness and interest in what's going on, and this has a great effect on their voting behavior.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-25, 07:15 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Addendum: The Christians

Show

From the Polish perspective, Christianity has always been a distinctly foreign and outside religion, the political and cultural threat that originally motivated the founding of the Slavic Church or even Poland itself. For a long time, Poland’s main enemies were Christian, and thus the religion itself obviously became associated with… well, the enemy. Arguably this only started changing after Poland became more preoccupied with other Slavs, or when religion itself was further separated from realpolitik. Yet at the same time, Poland’s own oddani have led a relatively peaceful existence inside this seemingly anti-Christian country.

The average Pole is familiar with Christianity’s basic beliefs, tenets and aesthetics, as churches big and small are a common sight sprinkled throughout the country – further east, these are often repurposed guild halls or other private buildings – but can’t or doesn’t care to make the distinction between different types of Christianity. However, both Christianity and its internal divisions have played a critical role in European and by extension Polish history, and have also started to gain new relevance with the rise of totalitarianism as a political force. Pagan-centric as the Polish worldview might be, it’s worth taking a look at the Church of the Crucified God's present state and history.

(Click for full size)

Catholicism and the Heresies

The Catholic Church can rightly be considered the “main” branch of Christianity. Even the name actually means “universal”, though that's going a bit far. Whereas all the Abrahamic faiths worship the singular god Jehowa, the Christians are distinguished by their belief in Jesus Christ the Crucified God, a mortal manifestation of Jehowa who was born into our world 1936 years ago and then, well, crucified. The Catholic Church supposedly traces its line of succession back to the first Pope, Simon Peter, a personal friend and student of the Crucified God, which pagans also consider impressive if indeed true. The Papacy remains the defining feature of Catholicism to this day, and the main source of schism between Christianity’s various sects, as the Pope has wielded varying degrees of divine and secular power over the ages.

Christianity was initially adopted by and spread all across the Roman Empire, and for a long time there were no major schisms other than the Coptic Orthodox Church (see the next section). Christendom's high point was arguably in the early 600s, when it stretched uninterrupted and mostly united from Ireland to Iraq. However, after the founding of Charlemagne’s great Francian Empire in 800, combined with Islam taking over formerly Christian areas in the south and pagan Nords invading Britannia, it came to be that more or less all the Christian lands left were inside one of two empires: Francian or Byzantine, also known as West and East Rome. As these empires became bitter rivals and started warring against each other, the differences that had begun to emerge between Latin and Greek Rite Christians were increasingly tied up with their respective imperial politics and grew ever deeper and more hostile. This all culminated in the 1146 Crusade for Constantinople, the death blow to the Byzantine Empire, and the systematic dismantling of the rival church. Though in practice they still maintained much of their old ways, the Christians of the east were forcefully integrated into the Catholic faith and the Pope declared the only legitimate Patriarch. This arguably laid the groundwork for their eventual turn to heresy. Although, some of those old Eastern Orthodox heretics also remain to this day, refusing to accept the Pope and waiting for the return of the rightful Patriarch of Constantinople (opinions are divided on who this would be). They’re mostly present in Southern Italy, rural parts of Santa Croce, and funnily enough some isolated communities in the Eurasian wilderness.

With the fall of the Byzantines, there was only one major Christian power. However, even before this the Francian Emperor and the Pope had been in constant conflict, competing for control of the flock. The Pope is supposed to be Jehowa's closest representative on earth, nothing like the Archpriest of Perun for instance, and in the crusader era some of them actually lent great legitimacy to these holy wars by leading from the front, personally facing High Kings in open battle. Countless Emperors were “excommunicated” by the Pope, which in Catholicism is the ultimate penalty for going against the will of Jehowa, and is supposed to mean total exclusion from Christian society until the person repents. However, seeing as this was done to the Emperor, and so many times too, it quickly lost all meaning and only served to make people ignore the Pope in other things as well. The Emperors stopped short of denying the Pope’s divine authority, but were perfectly happy to reduce his secular power, eventually even shutting him out of Rome itself. It seemed at the time like Christendom was a self-contained whole that didn’t necessarily need a Pope to gather around, especially with the Emperor – who, don't forget, ruled over the vast majority of the world's Christians – to serve as a symbol. This both angered the people who still cared about the Papacy and vastly undermined the meaning of the Catholic Church as an institution. Already in the 900s there were countless heresies popping up, raising their own rivals to the Papacy or just abandoning it altogether, often presenting some very interesting theological viewpoints in the process. Despite facing heavy and violent persecution from the Empire, some of these proved very persistent. By military force, they were contained, but never wiped out.

External threats were growing ever stronger: the last major crusade in 1347-54 (for Frisia) was decisively crushed by the warrior queen Grzymislawa, with the Pope himself captured on the battlefield and forced to kneel, and even Germany fell into pagan hands for good. Meanwhile, as the Emperor–Pope schism became entrenched, powers that should’ve belonged to the Pope were increasingly wielded by local bishops and even secular nobility, even more so after 1444 as the Empire was forced to adopt a more decentralized structure. This not only gave heresies room to reemerge, but even gave vassal lords a practical reason to embrace them as a way to grab influence for themselves. Though of course none of the heresies were completely identical to those from 500 years ago, the events that began in 1514 are generally referred to as the Heretic Rekindling.

First of the new wave was the monk Wolf Raleigh of Lancaster, who gathered a fervent cult of followers and began the new rise of Waldensianism, which quickly spread from that far end of the Empire to dominate Britannia, Lotharingia and parts of France. Even Poles can see the difference between it and Catholicism, given its visible focus on ~~apostolic poverty~~ slightly less ostentatious churches and lack of saint worship, but its heretical views on things like Purgatory, the sacraments, and the Pope being the Antichrist were far more relevant (and intolerable) to the Church. Alas, seeing the threat and opportunity in this uprising, Duke Algernon Grey of Lancashire decided to join them, and many others followed. Lancaster remains a pilgrimage site for Waldensians to this day (non-literal, as they also abolished pilgrimage). With its adoption in Britannia, Waldensianism has spread far and wide to all the English and Scottish colonies, and is the second-largest branch of Christianity.

The next “major” heresy to be rekindled was Catharism in Smyrna, Anatolia. The Cathars differ wildly from almost all other Christians in their belief that the Jehowas of the Old and New Testament (Christianity's main holy books) are actually two separate deities, evil and good respectively; that humans are the spirits of angels trapped in bodies of flesh; and given the above, sex is an artificial constraint imposed upon humanity, and men and women are equal. Most of this seems workable to a pagan audience, but to other Christians it is so anathema that to this day, even other heretics tend to find the Cathars distasteful. And yet, they have replaced the Catholic Church as the main form of Christianity in most of Moldavia and parts of Yugoslavia. Pagan indifference has left them much more freedom than in actual Christian countries, where they were harshly persecuted to the point of willingly moving into those pagan countries, even though most of them still see the Poles and Moldavians as conquerors (as they should).

Finally, Lollardism emerged in the now mostly forgotten Kingdom of Carinthia. Pagans frankly have trouble separating Lollards from Waldensians, even if they themselves feel the difference keenly. While only some Lollard sects are overly fundamentalist in the sense of obeying the Bible to the letter in all things, they all agree that church doctrine should be drawn solely from the Bible and not any later additions or interpretations. Many share the Waldensians’ passion for destruction of icons and separation of church and state, as well as their disinterest in some of the sacraments, Purgatory, saints and other things not clearly defined in the Bible. Most of the differences between the two heresies appear to be products of time and distance rather than doctrine per se. From its birthplace in the Alps, Lollardism has become the main heresy in Yugoslavia, Southern Germany, Bavaria, and Slovakia – Bratislava, one of the bigger cities in Poland, actually has a Lollard majority, as do nearby Austria and Polish Hungary.

As these movements started to divide into countless sub-sects, some of them took the name “heretic” as a matter of pride, others consider it offensive to this day, and others started using it to describe each other. Whatever their differences, one thing all these rapidly spreading heresies had in common was their denial of the Papacy and the declaration of “everyone their own Pope” with no need for higher authorities to act as a medium between them and Jehowa. This was an existential threat to the divine power of the Pope or the Emperor. The Empire was internally divided, the Catholic and Heretic Leagues formed, and a continent-spanning Heretics’ War fought in 1566-74, but even though the Emperor and the Catholics “won” in the end, it was probably worse than if they’d done nothing at all. The absolute ban on heresy was clearly unenforceable, yet only pushed the imperial princes further away from their liege, the British Isles even deciding to leave the whole Empire. Though it was far from the only internal problem facing Francia, it was arguably this very “victory” that led to its ultimate collapse and the rise of the much smaller Italian Empire from its ruins. Then again, if Catholicism had somehow sustained its own weight and kept its status as a dominant political force, a lot of the intellectual and political history of Europe would have looked very different to the point of being unrecognizable today.

Today in 1936, Catholicism is the majority religion of Yugoslavia, the various Mediterranean states, the Latin Empire, Asturias, and their various colonies around the world. Due to its focus on Papal authority, Catholicism isn’t really capable of developing “sub-sects” – any such movement is considered a heresy instead, unless you count monastic orders – but even within these territories, the heresies have come to stay and the ban on them has been quietly abandoned as doing more harm than good. However, the Latin Federation took the large step of welcoming the Pope back to Rome from his exile, and the primacist Latin Empire has only gone further in tying the Church to its ideology, public image and national identity. If the primacists can’t replace the Pope, then they’d rather use him for their own goals. The Empire's heretics – relatively few despite being spread over a large area – aren’t facing a new era of persecution per se, but there’s a clear trend of official rhetoric and even laws getting less… accommodating towards them.

Other Forms of Christianity

The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria split off from Rome over doctrinal differences already in 451, long before any of this Byzantine or Heretic Rekindling nonsense became a thing. Their main disagreement was whether the Crucified God was one man with a human nature and a divine nature, or human and divine in one nature, whatever that means. Today, much like Waldensians and Lollards, it’s more a matter of traditions diverging over time. For a while, it was the main church of Egypt, the Middle East, Armenia, Abyssinia and even small communities as far as India, but the rise of Islam in the 7th century led to its separation from the rest of Christendom and the conversion of most of these regions. While it has faced persecution at times and tolerance at others, it has never disappeared, though the Moldavian conquest forced the Patriarch of Alexandria to move further south (he kept his title). The main concentration of Coptic Christians is in Ethiopia, but back when slavery was still legal and common in Arabia, a disproportionate number of these slaves were Christians, leaving them spread out across the country even after slavery was abolished.

Mormonism is a highly localized heresy born in the Union of South America only a century ago. It can arguably be compared to Catharism in its distance from mainline Catholicism, which is exactly why its original members embarked on a famous trek to the easternmost end of the country, where they settled their own territory and founded the town of Sion del Oeste – Zion of the East – at the edge of a great salt water lake. Though the Union promises religious freedom and the Mormons even openly engage in missionary work, something most heretics wouldn’t dare do in a Catholic country, they’re still mostly concentrated and isolated in their own community.

And finally, though not yet widely recognized, one quickly growing branch of Waldensianism has recently emerged in British-colonized China. Though British missionaries were the ones to introduce this faith to the region, their own efforts in spreading it have been rather fruitless; instead, this new movement that has spread like wildfire and supposedly converted some 20 million people was started by a local librarian, Luo Shuren, who heavily reinterpreted their words into something more appealing to the local audience. It seems that the various minorities that have always been afforded a second-class role in Chinese society are proving especially open to these ideas. As another product of the Chinese Chaos – hopefully just a footnote and not a whole new chapter – this so-called Heavenly Kingdom movement (usually called Shurenism) claims that the true “divine mandate” was held by Jesus all this time, and if enough of the Chinese people convert and devote themselves to Him, He will judge them worthy and finally descend to rule as their Emperor (“Son of Heaven” in Chinese) for a thousand years of paradise on earth. The basic tenets other than that are reasonably close to Waldensianism, but the movement obviously has a strong anti-British side, seeing the expulsion of the European colonizers as part of this paradise. Then again, as the Brits have obviously noticed this movement and aren’t really huge fans of it, expelling them might also become a necessary step to achieve that salvation.

Judaism

As a honorary mention here, Judaism obviously isn’t a Christian sect, but worth bringing up for completion’s sake. The way the pagans understand it, Judaism is the original Abrahamic faith, but more or less Christianity if the Crucified God were merely a prophet and not a true manifestation of their god. Then again, the pagan perspective of Judaism also differs from the Christians' in that a.) the pagans couldn’t care less who crucified the Crucified God, unless he does commissions, and b.) the Khazar Jews actually posed a military threat to Poland during its early history and even ruled over most of modern-day Russia. After the Khazar steppe was conquered by the Slavs, the difference became more distinct: the Israeli Jews are a global diaspora banished from current-day Palestine shortly after the death of Jesus (though for unrelated reasons), whereas the Khazar Jews are a large confederation of Turkic steppe nomads who converted to Judaism in the 700s. Numerically this ends up meaning that Khazars form the majority of the world’s Jewish population, though also more concentrated in Eastern Europe and not as well-known internationally. In Polish use, Khazar mostly refers to either the Khazar Jews as a whole or the ones living in the Dniepr-Don region, whereas the ones living in the Upper and Lower Volga regions are called Bolghars and Cumans respectively. None of them have had a very good time in primacist Russia, and now independent Bolgharia has been annexed as well, an ill omen for the only Jewish country in the world.

Whereas Khazars in Poland have mostly been focused in the Black Sea region, the Israeli Jews are diffused throughout the country (and the world) without a real homeland to call their own. Much like the various Christian heretics, they’ve often found it easier to stay in the pagan countries that are merely indifferent towards them or, in Poland’s case, even had special protections for oddani. Judaism too has several different denominations, but it’s as much a social class as it is a religion and culture, and they are too small a minority in most regions for others to really see the difference, except maybe between the ones who dress and do their hair in a strictly ordained manner and the ones who don’t. In addition to the differences between sects, there is a larger split between Israeli and Khazar Jews as a whole, produced by their vastly different cultural backgrounds and historical context. As a haven of the Israelis and conqueror of the Khazars, Poland is the main place where these two traditions meet and interact: some Israelis are overjoyed that more have been brought into the fold, whereas others are bothered by being outnumbered in their “own” religion. Regardless, most of their meetings are happy and peaceful, and in places with only one synagogue, they’re perfectly capable of worshipping together.

The question of the Jewish homeland has occasionally been raised with Moldavia, which has control of Palestine. The Polish suggestion has been that it could be made into a designated region for Jewish migration in much the same way as was done with Crimea. However, not only does Moldavia lack a similar system or any interest in one – designated regions for minorities don’t fit its own approach to building a pagan state – this would surely cause a great deal of unrest with the Arab population in not just Palestine but perhaps all of Moldavia. As this isn’t really that important for Poland, it hasn’t pressed the issue.

Polish View of Christianity

Though it's obviously been refined along the way, and not all pagan countries are as tolerant either, the Slavic Church of Poland's official stance remains the same: Jehowa is one god among many, and they wouldn't necessarily even mind including him (non-capital h) in pagan services if his worshippers themselves weren't so opposed to the idea. The story of him as the "traitor god" is still going around, but was abandoned as official doctrine before it really got rooted to begin with. The official stance on Jesus' divine status is ambivalent, to avoid needlessly antagonizing other Abrahamics. This syncretism is inherently one-way only, as a polytheist Christian would almost by definition be considered pagan instead, but Christians – especially when a minority in a pagan country, but also in more religiously liberal societies where pagans are found mingling with Christians – have been accommodating in other ways, and religious hatred or intolerance has by no means been the assumption for a long time. In fact, even the aforementioned mixing of services often happens in more casual settings where neither side takes the matter too seriously, the Christians waiting patiently when others worship gods they personally don't believe in.

Out of the main three forms of Abrahamic belief – it really is weird that worship of this one god blew up so badly to begin with – Christianity is larger than Judaism but smaller than Islam, which dominates Northern Africa and most importantly China. Even when not taking their own pan-pagan doctrine too literally, Poles have often been happy to rub this sense of proportion in the Christians' faces, such as by devoting more room at international events to Muslim and Hindu displays than specifically Christian ones. Of course, this could just be them being fair and proportional, but no, they definitely do it at least half on purpose. Due to their common history, Christianity definitely has a special position in the Poles' eyes as well.

As for the forms of Christianity itself, Catholicism remains the largest in Poland, as it does globally. However, whenever this distinction has been made, the heretics have often been seen as the more "trustworthy" ones. Catholicism is the faith associated with the Pope, the Emperor, the crusades, and many countries that Poland has less than stellar relations with, such as the Latins and Asturias. The heretics, on the other hand, are associated with Britannia, Lotharingia, Yugoslavia, Moldavia, and victims of Catholic persecution, not to mention that they swear no fealty to Rome like the Catholics do. To some extent, these stereotypes still linger to this day, usually pushed aside but easily resurfacing in times of tension.

(Hindu, Animist, Sunni and Fetishist are found mainly in the colonies. Waldensianism is present but too small to show up in the pie chart.)

Especially that last part has actually become a talking point in Poland recently, given the primacist threat and the Latins’ conscious efforts to use the Pope as a propaganda tool. The people loudest about this are from the non-primacist right wing, as the left generally tries not to talk about religion while primacists don’t like badmouthing, well, primacism. But the official Polish position, as it has been with the oddani for many centuries, is that the principles of Solidarity extend to all Poles regardless of language or faith, and that protecting Poland is precisely the reason they must stand against such toxic talk of division.

Christian View of Paganism

The distinction between regular syncretists and full pan-paganists is that while both are willing to try and incorporate different religions into one big community (or even semi-coherent doctrine), the latter go even further to claim that all the religions of the world are derived from a single ur-belief, whether that existed in the Slavic region or somewhere else. Not just plenty of pagans, but basically all non-pagans dismiss the pan-paganist claims out of hand: even the academics who have come to the conclusion that the Abrahamic faiths are an offshoot of Canaanite polytheism, which is frankly all but stated in the Bible itself, find no evidence for any connection between this and Slavic paganism for instance. Those Abrahamics who do believe in pan-paganism on some level (or are just casually clumping other religions together) typically consider their own faith the exception, the chosen people in a sea of infidels.

However, given the prevalence of non-Abrahamic faiths in the world and their hegemony in the political, economic and cultural spheres, Christians can't help but realize that they really are in the minority. Out of the top 8 great powers, five are Slavic and one is Shinto-Buddhist. Obviously this is nothing new to them, but the interconnectedness of modern times has made it more concrete, and how they feel about it may vary. Most people of any given religion, obviously, don't really think too much about it outside of how it affects their daily lives. Some simply believe that Jesus' command to spread the gospel to all the nations of the world is still a work in progress, and will hopefully be achieved one day, be it centuries or millennia from now. Some, especially primacists, still see paganism as an active threat that must be dealt with, whether that means isolating themselves from it, containing it, or wiping it out (easier said than done). Some see paganism as simply unrelated to their own religion, while a few might consider it the work of the Devil or whatnot. All believe that the gods other than Jehowa are "false", but differ on whether they might be non-god spirits, misinterpretations of Jehowa, or just completely made up. But many, as mentioned above, have simply accepted the relativity of the whole thing: that the rest of the world is polytheist, they are monotheist, and that's really all there is to it.

It's hard to get a clear image due to there being relatively few Christian countries to compare, but often one gets the feeling that different types of Abrahamics get along better with the pagans than they do with each other. This of course is a social phenomenon observable in any kind of community: a heretic in your midst is a much greater ideological threat, their crimes much more personal, than a clear outsider who is neither interested in nor capable of getting involved in your debates. The thinner the line, the easier it is to imagine being pulled over it, and to a Christian, even a Jew or a Muslim is still a much closer relative than a pagan. Too bad this hasn't really manifested as pan-Abrahamic solidarity, outside small fringe movements anyway; the sides would be a lot more balanced then.

Spoiler: Comments

Show

The logical other side of a pagan AAR is a vastly smaller, weaker, and different Christendom, which we haven’t really talked about in a while, so here’s a retrospective on some history. For the record, the Schism was never “mended”, mechanically speaking, but Orthodoxy was almost completely wiped off the map to the point that it really can be treated as one of the lesser heresies. On another world-changing note, there was never a Westphalia-style "religious peace" made between the Pope and the heretics like there was in our timeline, but rather an empty victory, leaving both sides in a very different position.

Shurenism was born out of me seeing that Waldensianism had been really successful in one specific part of China and nowhere else for some reason, not counting Hong Kong. The Catholics in Taiwan, Indochina and the Maniolas I’m willing to treat as just plain old conversion work, but that Chinese blue blob really stood out.

It really is funny that the Khazar Jews end up being such a major presence in my AARs, when historically they’re more of a footnote if they actually existed at all. They also put me in the somewhat sensitive position of how to handle, you know, extremely literal Jewish hordes as a major antagonist in the CK2 section… Don’t know if it felt that way to anyone else, but the Hellenic AAR many years back actually left a somewhat bad taste in my mouth in that regard.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-03-28, 07:30 AM (ISO 8601)

I made the logical addition of a "Christian View of Paganism" to the end of the last, uh, addendum. Obviously just a very small glimpse of what must be a cultural, intellectual and ideological sphere massively different from our own, where roughly 30% of the world population is Christian. I don't have an exact number for what that ratio might be in the Slav-verse, but just a brief comparison of the two world maps (AAR, real world) really speaks volumes.

The obvious elephant in the room (?) is what exactly Slavic paganism looks like these days, but that might be the hardest to write because it's gonna be pretty much completely fiction (and I'm forced to admit I'm not actually that well-educated on the subject). The last in-depth look at Slavic Church beliefs was back in 1041, and there's definitely been huge changes since then. But I do feel obligated to get back to that eventually, after HoI4 at the latest.

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-05-31, 06:55 PM (ISO 8601)

Health check: The conversion has been in a pretty good state for a while, but finishing up some of the most tedious yet also complex and vital parts (like focus trees for major countries) has taken a backseat to other priorities. Definitely wanna carry this to the finish now that we're so close to it, and likely will find the time and energy somewhere during the summer.

**InvisibleBison** · 2021-06-01, 09:03 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by SilverLeaf167

Health check: The conversion has been in a pretty good state for a while, but finishing up some of the most tedious yet also complex and vital parts (like focus trees for major countries) has taken a backseat to other priorities. Definitely wanna carry this to the finish now that we're so close to it, and likely will find the time and energy somewhere during the summer.

Exciting news! I'm looking forward to the conclusion of the saga.

**IthilanorStPete** · 2021-06-01, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by SilverLeaf167

Health check: The conversion has been in a pretty good state for a while, but finishing up some of the most tedious yet also complex and vital parts (like focus trees for major countries) has taken a backseat to other priorities. Definitely wanna carry this to the finish now that we're so close to it, and likely will find the time and energy somewhere during the summer.

Great to hear! I was just thinking about this the other day, as I was reading stuff on r/HoI4; filling out the major focus trees for the main countries does sound like quite the task. Looking forward to the finished result!

**SilverLeaf167** · 2021-08-25, 04:41 PM (ISO 8601)

Just for a little update's sake: Didn't get much modding done for the majority of summer due to the mental hurdle of actually jumping back into it, but have been hard at work for the last couple weeks now. Spent a lot less time working on the focus trees than all the other details that keep popping up as the mod nears completion. I hope to have something to show within the next couple weeks (though we're starting with very text-heavy world overviews), and am announcing that just to put some pressure on myself.

**IthilanorStPete** · 2021-08-25, 04:46 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by SilverLeaf167

Just for a little update's sake: Didn't get much modding done for the majority of summer due to the mental hurdle of actually jumping back into it, but have been hard at work for the last couple weeks now. Spent a lot less time working on the focus trees than all the other details that keep popping up as the mod nears completion. I hope to have something to show within the next couple weeks (though we're starting with very text-heavy world overviews), and am announcing that just to put some pressure on myself.

Glad to hear it, looking forward to the result of all your work!

**InvisibleBison** · 2021-08-26, 07:34 AM (ISO 8601)

I'm delighted to see this excellent AAR is going to continue!

Thread: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Re: Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

Posting Permissions