NationStates Jolt Archive

This thread serves as factbook to the Igovian Soviet Commonwealth of Beth Gellert in the mainstream of Nationstates. There also exists another manifestation of the ISCBG, resident in the AMW (A Modern World) community, but that isn't here addressed.

The Commonwealth with which we are concerned is also split into two distinct parts, the conception of each to be described in following posts in this thread.

First is a territory that fits with real-world geography, being centred in Finland including the Karelian and other lands in reality lost to Russia, and also incorporating the Estonian islands of Hiiumaa and Saaremaa, and the Murmansk Oblast. Its history differs from the real one starting around 1921 after the Bolshevik destruction of the Russian Revolution and gradually shares less commonality as time moves on. It was only in 1941 that a distinct nation was founded here, and from then on it went by the name Igovian Soviet Commonwealth.

Second is a much larger fictional land of some millions of square kilometres. It is a land in which Celtic society resisted the ingress of Latin and Anglo-Saxon civilisation until modern times. It joined the industrial revolution and the world market only in the C20th, when its many tribes and communities were united in a parliamentary democracy under the constitutional monarchy of a high-king called Adiatorix. It is only now, at the time of typing, that the masses of the so-called Kingdom of the Geletians [the Geletian Celts] are actively working to restore traditions of communal ownership and to politicise such traditions by active association with the Igovian Soviet Commonwealth.

The near future shall bring the formation of the Igovian Soviet Commonwealth of Beth Gellert, and cement Igovian thought as the premier opponent to the bourgeois and the ailing forces of state-capitalism and pre-market forms.

The Igovian Soviet Commonwealth and How It Came To Be

At the very beginning of the C20th, sailors at the Russian naval base of Kronstadt had been a source of radicalism, and their mutinies had a part to play in the Tsar's issuing of the October Manifesto. But the Duma's consultative powers and the meagre rights afforded to the people did not satisfy Kronstadt nor many other Russians -revolutionaries from the truly communist to the power-hungry Bolshevik- and, as we all know, revolution found Russia anyway. In the February Revolution sailors from Kronstadt took part in the over-throw of the Tsar, and in the October Revolution famously crewed the Aurora and shelled the Winter Palace, helping in bringing-down the apologist nationalist Provisional Government.

It was not long before the sailors and soldiers of the Kronstadt Soviets had begun to lose faith with the Bolsheviks and the lack of democracy in Lenin's Russia, and the crew of the battleship Petropavlosk, amongst others, had passed a resolution on the matter. What followed in 1921 was a Bolshevik atrocity as Lenin and Trotsky lead the way in denouncing the people of Kronstadt for daring to practice for what most Russian communists and other revolutionaries had originally fought, and directed the Red Army to assault the base.
A valiant defence came to defeat and bloody slaughter as the sailors tried to resist soldiers attacking on foot against positions designed to defend against attack from the sea, the heroes of Kronstadt holding out for days in the freezing cold as they waited for relief from those they were fighting to support. The first soldiers sent against Kronstadt were easily convinced to desert and join the true Sovietists, sending their officers back empty handed. But the Bolsheviks had taken a strangle-hold on power and their Cheka stiffled dissent outside Kronstadt: help would not come.

Finland: Thy Gleam, Thy Glow, Thy Joy Hope

Perhaps so many as eight thousand sailors and civilians escaped to Finland, where they re-established Soviets*, and Commonwealth -though as yet totally unimagined- loomed silently just beyond the horizon.

In 1906, Finnish women had become the first in Europe to gain the parliamentary vote, something that began to set the land in good stead for further progressive change as would eventually be brought by the survivors of Kronstadt. When the Russian revolutionaries arrived, Finland had been independent for just a few years, but had already seen civil war as left-wing parties tried to take power from the hands of the reactionaries. The struggle ended in rightist victory and the creation of a Republic hardly two years before the arrival of the Kronstadt revolutionaries.

In the mid 1920s, Finnish leftist parties struggled for recognition, and achieved some governmental acknowledgement, but in 1929 the Lapua Movement arose and demanded a ban on communist activity, and this was carried-through by 1930, well displaying the true bias of a government that lacked the metal of the heroes of Kronstadt who stood alone in worse conditions. During these years, the newly arrived Russians helped to establish a number of Soviets in spite of restrictions, causing much friction.

In 1932, the Lapau Movement -born of Italian Fascism- attempted an armed coup against the government that proved itself too weak by bowing to their earlier anti-communist demands, and -perhaps by the very strength of the new Soviets and the misunderstanding with which they were regarded by people full-up on Republican and even Bolshevik propaganda- achieved some initial success as people reacted to growing Russian influence (even if the Soviets were anything but Russian nationalists or even remotely pro-Moscow). This Fascist success prompted the Republican government to outsource a good measure of security obligation to the Finnish Soviets in the few areas that still overwhelmingly supported them.

Here after -with the Lapua Movement's militant rising defeated, in no small measure thanks to Sovietist help- the communists in Finland again gained widespread respect and their movement's ideas began to spread, but the Krondstadt revolutionaries' bitter experience at the hands of the Bolsheviks meant that it lacked the usual pro-Moscow bent, and never suffered any significant Leninist influence.

A Revolutionary's Role in a Reactionary's war

During the Second World War years the Finnish Soviets wasted no time in spreading propaganda that would turn out to be quite accurate, speculating over Russo-German intentions for the region. Fascists and Bolsheviks were established as principle enemies of all surviving forces of Finnish politics, and, in late November of '39, the true Soviets met the Red Army's treacherous offensive with the same tactics that had years previously saved Petrograd and almost Kronstadt.
They came out as Soviet comrades and rebutted the advance of the Russian soldiers with words, invoking the spirit of revolutions so recently passed to inspire widespread disobedience in the Red Army vanguard. Much as in the Great War and in 1921 mutiny began to set-in, and, as in the early days of Russia's revolutions, the soldiers simply refused to fight for political masters who would divorce them from their own powers as free men. Where the advance did not halt it was at least seriously hampered by delays elsewhere and its tactics were shattered, individual units becoming more than easy pickings for Republican ski troops. But it was not the Republican government that was awarded primary credit for the miracle victory unfolding, rather it was the Soviets who had refused to engage in patriotic warfare where internationalist wisdom could triumph. They gained yet more support, and the Republic's war-time militarisation actually threw more young men into the arms of the true communists as they joined the army that lead them to association with the military's unofficial Soviets.

Finland's Republican government was doomed even as it rolled-back what few Red Army formations tried seriously to attack its territory. Thousands of Russian soldiers joined the true Soviets they found in Finland and turned their weapons back on what they called, "the New Provisional Government": the Bolsheviks. This in itself briefly threatened to see the USSR commit the same suicide as had the Republic in Finland, but, piling on yet another layer of martial irony, the German assault on Russia galvanised a threatened sense of nationalism as Russians turned their attention away from the rescue of revolution and towards that of country, upsetting many of the new-thinking Finns.

Commonwealth and Survival

Still, the mass mutiny in favour of the True Soviets and the later invasion of Russia by Germany meant that the Finns and their ex-patriot Russian allies were not only able to defend Karelia and Petsamo but also to spread proper revolution throughout the Murmansk region, and that territory soon joined in a Soviet Commonwealth with Finland: Moscow was unable to prevent this for fear of more mutiny draining any forces directed there instead of against the German advance.
Commonwealth was established with enthusiasm in Finland as the Republic collapsed after being unable to justify its opposition to the heroic and successful True Soviets, to which it had already turned for help as if Kerensky looking to the Russian Soviets for the salvation of the Provisional Government. For a moment it seemed as if the revolution was to roll on through Europe as other Baltic peoples -independent only since the October Revolution- turned to the True Soviets when the Red Army attacked, but it was unfortunate that the young Commonwealth was unable to fight an offensive war against the Bolsheviks and had to content itself with the comradeship of the Estonian archipelago as the mainland fell back under Russian domination.

This new commonwealth was structured largely according to the vision of comrades like Orinoco Igo, who spoke often and well on matters revolutionary, making sure that Finns, Russians, and Estonians in the new society understood the gravity of their place in history, a success to honour the dead of past revolutions and to lead the way for all on earth.

During the Second World War, the True Soviets directed some small efforts to helping Allied operations against the Nazis, and to aiding the Nazis against the Bolsheviks, in both cases thanks to fear of Berlin and of Moscow and to the fragility of the infant revolution in Finland, Murmansk, and the Estonian Archipelago. The former sort of aid was probably most important, endearing the True Soviets to Allied powers as they tried to support operations in Norway (with rather limited impact, it must be said) before the foundation of the Igovian Soviet Commonwealth in late 1941 lead to a marked increase in aid to Norwegian resistance movements and to partisans across Eastern Europe. By the time Igovian military enterprises became sufficiently serious to attract Hitler's attention the tables were already being turned against Germany, and the Igovians were safe from the full force of the Wehrmacht, as the Commonwealth was well able to absorb limited operations launched against her. She received a token bleed-off of Allied aid from the convoys to Russia (some of which were allowed to land at Commonwealth ports before moving on to Russia), but this was massively limited not only by reltive insignificance next to the USSR's anti-Nazi muscle of Igovian operations, but also by Stalin's little-disguised hostility to the revolutionary enclave and an Allied desire to keep Uncle Joe onside.

This hostility became an obviously great threat to the Commonwealth as the Red Army reduced German opposition and itself gained confidence, but Stalin delayed in striking: no doubt the military mind of Trotsky (equally disliked in the Commonwealth as in Stalin's government, though arguably better understood) would have made no such error, but the theme of both sides in Europe's revolutionary struggles persistantly shooting their own toes had continued with Trotsky's forced exile.
Stalin didn't strike because, according to now mainstream Beddgelen popular culture and in the tactful words of Igo's son, Graeme, was, "a gigantic pansy who, in Korea, wouldn't even dare openly fight the freaking UN, if you can believe it". It is more seriously held that the USSR's dictator had cause to hesitate in light of earlier mutiny in favour of what was now an even better-established revolutionary society, and, before long, the western allies had realised the value of limiting Moscow's influence in the region and had begun to arm the Igovian Soviet Commonwealth against Russia in something of a propaganda coup for democracy if not quite capitalism. Eastern distraction soon added to Moscow's big list of reasons for not attacking the Commonwealth, and it appeared for a moment that revolution had finally brought a lasting and uncorrupted communism to the world.

Think Globally, Act Like Finland is the Centre of the World

The Igovian Soviet Commonwealth saw massive immigration as light industry flourished, living standards increased, and the society's tollerance became renowned around the world with the story of its birth from a peaceful marriage of Russians and Finns spread in countless languages. The repeated victories of peaceful consultation over hostility and still the plucky struggle of underdogs in armed conflict all combined with the promise of a good, honest life and of sparkling political freedom between rampant anti-communist witch-hunting and Stalinist dictatorship to draw leftists from far and wide.

Foremost amongst immigrants were Welsh socialists, trade unionists, and Owenites seeking to establish palaces of industry in the new utopia. They met with success in an environment that largely was quite well prepared, and perhaps artificially helped by anti-Russian aid that dismissed many fears of under-industrialisation relative to population growth. It was a Welsh movement that dominated the re-structuring and industrialisation of Igovian society in often Owenite fashion, further radicalised by the teachings of the colourful Orinoco Igo.

The Estonian islands of Hiiumaa and Saaremaa (which came to be known as Salvador) and the Aland Islands (later Victoria) were important first as military depots, then listening posts, test sites, and air bases in use at different times by both sides in the Cold War, always stationing so-called defensive rather than strategic or offfensive weapons. They developed to become increasingly important in Baltic trade, and they began in some regards to more closely resemble Singapore or Hong Kong as population density increased.

Old Habits Die Hard

As the Cold War took shape, a somewhat arrogantly imagined Igovian closeness to the 1st world (that is, on the part of the latter) lead to what is retrospectively called, "meddling of the highest order" culminating in the short-lived monarchy of a Geletian Prince named Llewellyn, who over-saw a parliament filled by appointed and elected ministers. These men (and a few women) attempted to exert power that they claimed to have been afforded by a narrow majority of votes, given to them in a ballot participated in by less than half of the Commonwealth's population and boycotted or spoiled by most. Market reforms were tabled and efforts were put under way to their fruition as Llewellyn systematically attacked Beddgelen manufacturing and basic industries, and -as wage caps were lifted- a new class of super-rich began to emerge on the increasingly metropolitan islands of Victoria and Salvador, as the Prince renamed them, while the mainland generally suffered from a concurrent abolition of the minimum wage.

Needless to say, this was all an incredibly stupid idea, and the Igovian Soviets railed against the new government, demanding not only the restoration of minimum and maximum wages and the re-opening of closed factories and mines (in which they received strong solidarity support back in Britain and elsewhere, eventually leading to more immigration), but also the abolition of the central government and its new armed forces. Soviet leaders pointed out that the parliamentarians had just stolen direct political power from the hands of the people, and accused them of a four-year dictatorship that could only be broken by the election of a different four year dictatorship at the end of that term.

Government forces attempted to break strikes and disperse protests, all to little avail.

Eventually, fearing that the situation was spiralling out of control as national output fell across all sectors and investor confidence in the emerging Commonwealth market on the door of the USSR crashed, Llewellyn's government ordered the small Commonwealth Army to disarm the Soviets and violence erupted with many citizens -especially on the mainland- throwing-up barricades and taking to arms, shutting the central government entirely out of the operation of day to day life in most of the Commonwealth. Llewellyn panicked and appealed for international help from the 1st world, and the Iansislian government responded, dispatching the grand fleet from the distant Pacific, presumably intent on breaking dangerous revolutionary ideas while the chance existed and before they swept back east across the USSR.

The long transit of the archaic capitalist fleet left plenty of time for the Igovians to learn of the government's intent to bring in foreign forces, and at this point the Soviets were actually able to receive aid from Moscow: the USSR apparently preferred the Igovians' dangerous ideas to the capitalists' dangerous guns.
The Igovian Soviets went on the offensive with the Iansislian fleet still days from the Baltic, and the government was confined to the islands of Victoria and Salvador and lain under siege. Arranging an amphibious assault took more time, however, and the foreigners' advance fleet arrived in time to join what became the Battle of Salvador, in which newly-acquired Russian anti-ship missiles hammered the unsuspecting Iansislians, who suffered horrific casualties but appeared to have helped in disuading the Igovians from invasion of Victoria and Salvador. Moscow was pleased that its weapons had been seen to win a military victory against the capitalist world.

A Century in the Making

In fact, another power-struggle had been sparked by the Commonwealth's dependence upon Moscow during the conflict. One Sopworth Igo -grandson of Orinoco- a charismatic young firebrand with distinctly Bolshevik aspects to his personally ambitious political outlook, had positioned himself at the head of inter-Soviet co-ordination efforts and as a liason between these and Moscow. For a time he was widely refered to as Premier, and pushed the Soviets to recognise his father, Graeme, as Chairman of the Commonwealth Communist Party. This again seemed to signal an assault on the left as power ran thickest through certain hands, and this time the problem was resolved again through words as Graeme talked his son out of whatever unpublished plans he may have designed. Certainly the Igos were important in enabling the Commonwealth to receive Russian aid, and Sopworth's salvation -he was never put on trial by the Igovian Soviets- was probably in the fact that he could be presented as having double-crossed Moscow: always a good idea for someone seeking popularity in the Igovian Soviet Commonwealth!

Within a few years, as the Commonwealth's stability grew following the collapse of the USSR and a related decline in western pressure and aid, Victoria and Salvador were inclined towards reunification with the mainland, and this came without bloodshed, though members of the former parliamentary regime fled abroad, many to Iansisle.

The Result

Today, the Igovian Soviet Commonwealth strives for utopia, and exists as a leaderless association of communities based in modern palaces of industry: pantisocratic phalansteries as Igovians call them, practicing community of goods and enjoying direct democratic input on every level of Commonwealth administration.
The Army was disbanded after Victoria and Salvador's central government fell, and it has been replaced by a Commonwealth Guard, which -for mutual defence- arms all able comrades across the Commonwealth.
All comrades in the so-called staple formations of the Militia and the Air and Oceanic Guard elements of the Commonwealth Guard are enrolled in military Soviets that directly elect Soviet Consuls to the Soviet Commune, and such consuls are subject to recall at any time by decision of their Soviet. All meetings of the Soviet Commune are recorded in detail and said details are distributed amongst the Soviets at their next gatherings, and as well they are placed in the public realm by free publication. From the time of their earliest days of communal education, comrades are encouraged (if not immediately, then at least when older) to make a habit of reading the minutes of Soviet Commune meetings so as to never be divorced from the political life of their society.

In very similar fashion, other comrades meet at Local Senates -of which there are thousands- to discuss matters of local government but also to elect Popular Consuls to meet in the Regional Senates from where -in the business of running city-wide affairs- these consuls must consult with their Local Senates while remaining always subject to immediate recall by spontaneous popular referenda. There are also popular elections of consuls to State Senates (nine, namely Victoria, Salvador, Southern Finland, Western Finland, Eastern Finland, Oulu, Lapland (including Petsamo), Murmansk, and Karelia), which help to co-ordinate large public works programmes and to make widespread any information on useful or failed initiatives attempted on Local or Regional scale. The Final Senate behaves as a Soviet Commune to the masses, being attended by Popular Consuls and Soviet Consuls as well as members of the Commonwealth Professional Civil Service, which has Unions that elect Union Consuls.

The CPCS is a massive organisation with branches that include professionals in all areas of public life, from elected teachers and judges to professional doctors and elected administrators. All of its constituents are elected save those requiring particularly extensive training -doctors and the like- but none are immune to popular votes stripping them of their powers (as said powers are held in fact to be societal constructs, not individual). Unions serve professions as Soviets serve the military: they elect Union Consuls as equivalents to Soviet Consuls. These consuls deal with those issues that specifically concern or arise from given professions and which may not be so immediatelly obvious to the masses as they attend Local Senates.

Unions and Soviets do not replace for fighters and workers the function of Senates, but serve to oil the machinery of their professions while their members are free also to attend Local Senates to address matters affecting them personally or socially in a wider sense.

All aspects of a Beddgelen's life have become quite radically different from what might have been the case were their revolution another false one, but these shall be discussed later. The military, work, civilian transport, environmentalism, education, religion, sports, and more things now carry distinctly Igovian characteristics that would perhaps make them individually unworkable in foreign societies, but which together in the Commonwealth -apparently- make sense.

Geletia, and how it came to be

Europe

The Geletian Celts originate in Europe more than two thousand years ago. An independent community of a few thousand individuals they controlled little territory and small few fortified villages, but were noted as unusually tall and fierce even amongst their lofty Celtic kin. They were described by classical witnesses as rowdy, drug-addled, fierce, but sharp and creators of an ordered society in which village captains were often elected and always represented their people's interests in commune with the high chief several times yearly.

The Geletians joined the great invasions of the Balkans as hardly a foot-note, their entire community uprooting and moving but still dwarfed in size and significance by the armies of Cerethrius, Brennus and Acichorius, and Blogius as they attacked the Macedonians and others. They were keen volunteers to the cause of Brennus when he moved on Greece itself, and provided several hundred infantry and almost as many in cavalry and grooms.

It is now believed that the Geletian warriors were amongst those Brennus picked as his tallest and his strongest swimmers to cross the Spercheius, and though their contribution here was significant, the later defeats in narrow ground caused the Geletians to loose faith with Brennus. They split from his armies and followed the example of Leonnorius and Lutarius in migrating to Thrace.

Asia

Not much later the Geletians went with the Trocmi, Tolistobogii and Tectosages into Asia Minor. It is true that at this point, and when they settled to the creation of what would become known as Galatia, the Beddgelen ancestors were probably not known as Geletian but by some other name that referenced so few people amongst tens of thousands that it has been long forgotten.

The Geletian name was adopted possibly in the first or second century BCE as this minority broke from Geletia. It is not clear exactly when the split happened, but if not before then it was certainly by the time that Caesar's contemporary Deiotarus was recognised by Rome as King of Galatia in defiance of ancient traditions and structures.

The Geletians moved on, apparently migrating through Armenia around the time that it was suffering conquest by Rome, and reputedly offering mercenary service to both sides at various times, always as it suited their continued progress away from the classical world to which the Geletians have always for whatever reason been violently opposed.

By the time that they reached the Parthian Empire, the Geletians found it too falling into war with Rome, and they were happy to lend their experience against the Romans, essentially trying to impart a better understanding of the combined arms of the day to cavalry-obsessed Parthians. Still, the small tribe did not linger in Parthia, apparently being unable to trust the expansionist empire, and moved with its offences into the Indus and then racing ahead into India by some time perhaps as early as the first century AD, a truly epic rate of migration that had taken the Geletians from the middle of Europe to the edges of modern India in much less than half a millenia.

When they hit India the Geletians were perhaps the most experienced war fighters on earth, having battled half a dozen major enemies along almost every step of the last five thousand kilometres and fifteen generations. Skilled metal workers they had picked up the fashioning of early steel before they were far inside India; had witnessed, carried-out, and resisted countless fortress sieges from northern Macedonia to eastern Parthia; were natural horsemen who adapted new cavalry tactics from Parthia's cataphracts and mounted archers and had become fond of the bow; and of course were physically dominant over all opposition in India.

The Geletians stayed a long time in India, though rarely long in one place. It seems that the Gupta Dynasty and the golden age of Hindu administration over-shadowed the slight numbers of the previously immune Geletians, who moved south and came into conflict with Tamil kingdoms where they had more success and carved-out new influence for themselves.

After several generations, it seems, the Geletians were encouraged to leave, frustrated by the endurance of such independent civilisations as that of the Pallavas. On reaching the southern tip of India the Geletians apparently acquired a fascination with seafaring, possibly sick of journey across the land after a thousand years of fighting or simply believing that either they had gone so far as it was possible to go, or that Sri Lanka offered something especially desirable.

The Indian Ocean

It was here, more than one thousand years ago, at the Geletians finally changed tactics. They took a great interest in ship-building once they'd begun, wanting as intelligent people to take command of a new science once it was introduced to them. They apparently traded with local people and Arab and possibly Chinese sailors (judging by the varied influences evident in wreckage found dating from the time) for help in constructing a seaworthy flotilla.

The Geletians may have split in two at this point, many refusing to take such a radical leap of faith by setting out to sea. These apparently tried to maintain their old position as a significant military power on the sub-continent, but were too few in number and too much isolated, eventually being absorbed over several often violent generations into larger Dravidian and other populations.

Those who sailed were perhaps genius and more likely inexperienced. Having a poor understanding of the sea and of the conventions of travel and trade at sea, not to mention of geography, they ended up heading south. Passing the equator, they sailed on and found the Chagos Archipelago and near by it another that they would call Parmis. Used as a base, the Parmis Archipelago was the stepping stone from which further progress took the Geletians towards the Tropic of Capricorn and to the discovery of a massive new land that they found unpeopled.

Geletia

Eleven million square kilometres of land to the east of Madagascar, it was sub-tropical in some areas and barren in others (both hot and cold), but the largest parts were ideally suited to the Geletians and they seemed almost to have a genetic memory of its cool temperate expanses moderated on the one hand by warm waters and the other a highland configuration. The Celts settled in the valleys, the mountains, and the forests, and expanded rapidly.

They called this new land Geletia, and for hundreds of years since have worked to make it their own. As their numbers grew, which they did rapidly through the fertile valleys, the Geletians began to fragment and soon Geletia looked like a second Europe, dominated by the Celts but not as a united empire. They quite missed the industrial revolution and continued to war with one another. Though the finest riders, archers, wrestlers, and swordsmen imaginable, and farmers able to turn yields equal to early C20th levels in the industrial world, not to mention artists of great merit, the Geletians were ill prepared for a much belated embrace of the free market, which came only in living memory.

A chieftain named Adiatorix changed everything in Geletia by a campaign of conquest that was considered quite un-Geletian. The normal result of war was plunder, in some cases the taking of slaves, a little killing, and sometimes the extraction of tribute. Adiatorix subjugated his defeated opponents after a victory that had been a particularly long time coming, and thereby almost doubled his power, which made his next victory relatively easy. Early confederations arranged against him did not really take his threat or themselves very seriously, and were easily broken-up or convinced to disband. Later ones were simply too late, and Adiatorix began to buy fire-arms from the outside world, making his conquest complete with surprising ease.

Links to the Commonwealth

Llewellyn was a Geletian prince, son of a chieftain who would be felled by Adiatorix. He quit Geletia as Adiatorix began to engage with the outside world, and was able to establish himself -with the help of his father's kingdom- back in faraway Europe by diving into the youthful Commonwealth in and around troubled Finland. The popular leftist movement against Llewellyn's Principality in Europe did not induce the Geletians to send help because, by the 1980s, Adiatorix had defeated his father, and annexed his kingdom. The High King, as Adiatorix was proclaimed, had no interest in such a remote outpost, and certainly felt no loyalty to the son of a defeated rival. It is for this reason that a Geletian Prince looked to Iansisle instead of Geletia when he needed help, and though costly and on the face of it a defeat, the Iansislian intervention did enable Llewellyn to maintain a government for seven years after the start of the revolt against him and long after the fall to Adiatorix of the last independent Geletian tribe.

The Commonwealth Guard (link) (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=438540)

Points of interest related to the above
(And probably to more yet to follow)

-This is a fact book-type thread for a relatively mainstream incarnation of Beth Gellert, as opposed to the version of the ISCBG existing within the more insular AMW RPing group... which I hope to end up appreciating more by this return to the domain of the plebes :)

*This is the point -in 1921, following the move to Finland- at which our history breaks from reality and Beddgelen society begins. Many events -especially during the early years- remain basically the same as in reality, but gradually diverge into greater radicalism than actually prevailed under German and Russian influence. Mainly, the differences in the '20s and '30s are in the measure of influence that Russian immigrants from Kronstadt weilded over developments, but there are surely plenty of people here better versed in Finnish history who could spot all of this more easily than I could write any of it!

-Many people think that history is a dull subject. Dull? Is it, "dull" that Jesse James once got bitten on the forehead by an ant, and at first it didn't seem like anything, but then the bite got worse and worse, so he went to a doctor in town, and the secretary told him to wait, so he sat down and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and then finally he got to see the doctor, and the doctor put some salve on it? You call that dull?

-If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

-Yes, I typed the initial post in one stream of consciousness before realising that it would result in one heck of a text block, and later forced-in hurridly imagined chapter titles wherever they would fit, incase you were wondering.

tag

**I'll be darned if I can remember who came along to aid the Iansislians. I'll kick myself, I'm sure. One of those New Highlands types, no doubt. Oh, I had it, then! Heh. I know this arguably mucks around with Iansislian history again, but the idea of fitting the Battle of Salvador into AMW history never made sense. I think that this only means that the Iansislian fleet's effort was all the more titanic, and its failure only more romantically awful than it already was...maybe...a bit... okay, they'd have to re-coal a lot, but it'd be good practice, for the various survivors, anyway. If it has at any point become really important that the sailors drowned in the sunny Indian Ocean as opposed to the icy Baltic, then we'll just shake the multiverse stick that little bit harder.

It was the Larkinians, if memory serves me more properly than usual. As for the re-write of history, 's fine. I'm happy so long as Salvador remains an officially recognized event, specifics like 'location' be damned. :)

Fantastic. And it was the Larks, not the Celebor..ne... man, I can't remember who was and wasn't what and when. Okay, those guys. :)

Yeah, I'm drunk.

Okay, good, great. So the Ians basically did the reverse of the Russians in the war with Japan. Actually, on this topic, since the Battle of Salvador, I've begun to seriously doubt the legitimacy of Igovian success against your armoured belts. In all honesty, I don't think that our anti-shipping missiles would have been so descructive as was then decided. I remember some discussion over the matter... we asked for advice, but nobody was very clear. I now doubt that our mostly short-range ASMs would have convincingly damaged your heavier ships. I must admit that I can't remember what was in the advance fleet- destroyers, tenders, and troop ships would have been obliterated, yes, but battleships and maybe heavy cruisers... well, I can't help thinking that maybe we were inches away from a capitalist hold-out on the islands.

(A bump for views while I try to convince myself that I don't really want to work out the entire Igovian political and economic theory and RP its birth. Because I don't want to do that. Do I? That'd waste my time. Right? Oh, damn vodka...)

Hmmm...Does this history apply to AMW as well? If so, a few things regarding the USSR are probably different..

OOC: Nah. This is for the wider NS, and largely held in reserve for whenever I may encounter a none AMW thread I wish to join :) Lucky for some, we haven't got what would translate to 120 million national guardsmen and women in AMW!

This BG is much less ancient in RP terms, being a few generations old rather than millenia. As you may have gathered, there's some elements of RP history from way back before AMW -possibly from mid 2003? eesh- that sometimes weigh heavily on the nation's development, and maybe it hasn't felt entirely right to cut them out for AMW, so this lives on to keep these aspects alive.

So it doesn't really matter, but we haven't actually changed much of the USSR's history beyond the post-revolution loss of Murmanskaya. This manifestation just makes it all the easier for numbskulls [Sino?] to appreciate that Igovians are democrats at odds with Bolsheviks.

I may not do much of anything with this BG for a long time if AMW continues to be fun, but it's always here in readiness for chance RPs or interest from other players.

Right, back to bed for a couple of hours, before I really get carried away in this aimless chatter.

Hmm....I wonder what LRR did in World War Two...

I would imagine that LRR would have played a more or less significant role in the pacific war, shooting up Japanese meteorological planes and launching nuisance raids here and there. Perhaps Japan even could have invaded some of the more remote Robotic Isles.

(Mostly a bump to keep this alive, as, owing to the AMW South Pacific war, I haven't had time to develop it like I hoped.

Ah, LRR and BG, always jabbing away at one evil empire or another (the USSR, Japan, uh, Iansisle, erm...France), hopeful that it won't go horribly wrong, heh.)

(Damn it! I still haven't got around to thinking up a good way to get the archetypal towering Geletian maniacs into my mainstream BG without ruining the history I've already written, and this thread is going to fall off the face of the earth if I keep putting it off. This message will self destruct and kill me if I don't address the problem before 2034. There, now it has to get done.

Now who wants to know something else about BG that I can make up on the spot?)

Er...what are your Bananna exports per $GDP?

About ninety-four cents, give or take just less than a dollar.

Now contains an exciting... link to another thread, heh. Oh. Well, as it turns out, describing the Commonwealth's revolutionary communist defence forces takes-up rather more than a single post, so they won't be appearing here. Information on their political life, composition, equipment, and probably soon their experiences shall be contained there.

Unless I decide to put military history here, instead. Oh, life is hard. But I'm happy to find that I've not totally lost interest in my nation, after all. Hurrah.

(And who says that communism on this scale is hopelessly bureaucratic? You got your reply inside the proper six to eight weeks! Just.)

OOC: Geletian history added, in terms of how they got to where they are.

Noteworthy is the fact that I've decided to settle Geletia back into the Indian Ocean and go with that version of history rather than looking for a better one. A recent attempt to join a fictional continent with other players came to nothing when nobody could be arsed, so I'm back to the place in which we were bombed by a rogue aircraft from... Crimmond? No? Someone I can't remember, anyway; attacked by terrorists for being too communist; attacked by terrorists for not being sufficiently communist; where we launched an intervention in defence of the Malagasy Republic and established bases jointly with Western Asia; and where some other stuff probably happened, too. Hurrah.