Icarus: 2000
- Thread starter AnywhereButOTL
- Start date
Orville_third
Banned
Perhaps the ROK is the closest thing to a fascist state left. Does it have religious elements in power?
As for Japan, I'm glad someone like Shoko Asahara isn't running things...
As for Japan, I'm glad someone like Shoko Asahara isn't running things...
I want to know what it's like in the south. The feeling I got was that the RoK might actually be a democratic state in the south, but that's its brutally occupying the north and treats them as a second class. Kind of like what some of the more extreme northerners seemed to want to do to the south after the American Civil War.
Yup. Things got pretty ugly under Brooke, which I'll be detailing as time goes on.
Pretty spot on. Let's just say that the city of Inchon might have a different name ITTL.
Not so much saving money as scaring people. You'll notice that the jihadists in Pakistan almost got used to the orbital bombardment platforms being used on them after a while. They became expected, so Brooke decided to mix up the bag a little bit. It didn't really work.
Things are pretty miserable in northern Korea, but at least there's no concentration camps. Or are there?
When our brave protagonist reaches southern Korea then he'll hear all about that.
The UN doesn't exist anymore (it completely collapsed after the Chinese revolution and the clusterfuck that occurred when nobody could get together to confirm the New Chinese Republic as a UN member). I'm not really sure who the protagonist is to be honest. He's either a really powerful private citizen who's decided to write a book, or from a really important newspaper (how else would he get anywhere near some of these people?).
Plot twist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky is the protagonist.
The ROK is uncomfortably theocratic on some things (the religious revival hit them hard, and it hit them...weird too) but they're still more or less secular. I'll get into it more when the protagonist reaches Seoul.
I will admit, I was tempted to make Japan a Shinto dictatorship, but then decided that I wasn't willing to deal with the butterflies that that would cause, so instead they get to live. They're plenty Shinto, but they're doing alright.
Those are both good comparisons. The whole thing might have gone alright (even with the nukes being swapped) except for Park Chung-hee flipping out and deciding that anyone who had anything to do with the old communist government had to die. This led to the north being all sorts of nasty for a few years, and even after things calmed down there's still a lot of resentment on both sides over what happened.
Indeed. They're a flawed democracy at best right now. Lots of censorship and lots of very cheerfully authoritarian government officials who wouldn't be out of place in a Dostoyevsky story.
[George W. Bush]Mission accomplished.[/George W. Bush]
Tashkent, Capitol of the Central Asian Compact
Similarly to Vladivostok and New Pyongyang, Tashkent has been reclaimed from what was once the ashes of an atomic bombardment. The bomb that destroyed Tashkent was fired in the dying days of the Soviet Civil War, alongside eleven others that laid waste to nearly the entirety of Central Asia. The next several years were filled with atrocities and widespread violence of every kind. To this day the exact number of people who were lost in those dark times remains unknown, but it is agreed that of the thirty two million people who lived in the region when the bombs hit, more than eighty percent of them were dead or displaced by the time the fighting came to a close.
In the twenty five years of the Compact’s existence, the population of the nation has recovered, but is still well below the pre war figure. Ibrahim Azder, the curator of the National History Museum, is one of the Compact’s foremost experts when it comes to the troubled times that preceded the founding of his nation.
“Times were very tough back then.” He says as we walk around the museum grounds. The museum is on a hill and we overlook the rest of Tashkent. Most of the buildings in the city center are built in the Brutalist fashion, and stocky Soviet style apartment complexes make up a considerable portion of Tashkent’s residential areas. This is a legacy of the city’s early days, when workers and refugees alike needed to be housed quickly and effectively. Many of the engineers had worked on Soviet projects and simply did what they knew best. After more diverse architectural skill was found, different styles popped up, resulting in the city center looking much like it had before the bombs had fallen and the edges of the city, near the slums, depending on traditional Islamic architecture with arches and mosaics being prominent.
Azder was out of town celebrating his fortieth birthday when Tashkent was destroyed, and at seventy is one of the oldest people that I have seen in the city so far. Much like the New Republic of China, the Compact’s population is overwhelmingly made up of young people, both a hopeful and incredibly sobering sign.
“The reason why we have so few people...even after former Uyghurstan petitioned to join us, is mostly because of famine. A lot of people might have kept on living after those dark times, but their bodies never recovered. Many women could not have children after nearly starving to death...so our population remains low.” Azder says, after we pass a government poster showing a large family. Women are given cash prizes for having large numbers of children and the current President claims that the Compact will have crossed the thirty two million threshold by 2020.
“But you recovered from your ordeal.” Azder nods, smiling. He leans heavily on a cane and has a severe limp from when he was shot in the leg with a Kalashnikov in 1973.
“More or less. I lost teeth to malnutrition...my leg never healed properly from the gunshot wound. I am very fortunate to be alive today.” He chuckles and we round a corner. The museum is funded by the state and is chock full of artifacts from the fighting, old vehicles, rifles, pictures and educational films describing atrocities committed during the fighting. The involvement of the Soviet Union in the nation’s formation is never mentioned in the Compact’s state approved history books, American special forces only grudgingly so.
The Compact refuses to allow entry to Soviet citizens and maintains a strict trade embargo as well. I was only allowed in after promising to stay for only three days and not to ask any questions that were not state approved. I do not intend to keep that last part of the bargain.
“There’s a banner in the front room of the museum,” I say as we approach the front doors of the building, a blue banner with a few bold words written on it, “what does it say?” Azder, who knows every last inch of the museum that he has lovingly curated for the past fifteen years, doesn’t even look at the banner.
“The Youth Are The Future, And The Future Must Never Forget.” He says, clearly relishing the phrase.
“In my travels I have interviewed many different people from many different nations, and one of the things that they have in common with one another is a desire to never forget the troubles of the past.” Azder’s face lights up when he hears this.
“That’s wonderful to hear. I know that the Chinese espouse that, but too many others would simply let their history drain away from them if it meant that they got more comforts and luxuries...” Azder mentions the Chinese somewhat cautiously, the Compact and the New Chinese Republic have been at odds ever since much of the land formerly known as Uyghurstan voted to join the Compact in 1976. The official position of the state on the New Chinese Republic is that they are not to be praised or trusted in any way. Azder is likely granted more leeway because he is a state employee, and a valuable one at that, but at the same time saying anything contrary to what the state wishes you to say can often lead to trouble.
“Do you believe that this history will be remembered in the same way when the last people who remember the chaotic times are dead?” Azder nods.
“Yes. We suffered more greatly than any other nation on earth in those dark days...and even when I and everyone else who was there for it are dead, the scars from that time will not fade. The education that we give our youth is very heavily focused on remembering what happened back then, so at very least the next generation will continue to pay tribute to the horrors that we suffered.” We pass through the front doors of the museum and into the front lobby. Standing beneath the blue banner, Azder gestures at the first few display cases, which contain samples of ash and melted sand from each of the twelves sites where the Soviet bombs landed during the civil war.
There are posters above each case displaying quotes from survivors of the bombings, along with photographs and other evidence from the atomized cities, towns and industrial sites.
“What the Soviets did to us back then was not warfare...it wasn’t even murder...it was atomic genocide. Brezhnev fully intended to wipe us out, and it was only due to the grace of Allah that he didn’t succeed.” I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the last portion of Azder’s statement but the first part is right on. Brezhnev died before he could be tried for his sickeningly long list of crimes against humanity, but had he survived then there would doubtlessly be charges of nuclear genocide against the people of Central Asia amongst his charges.
“You lived in Tashkent before it was bombed,” I say, “did anybody else you knew make it out of the city?” Azder is silent for a long moment.
“Not many,” he says finally, “not many at all. That sample over there,” he points to a glass tube of dark grey ash underneath a label announcing that it was from Tashkent’s ground zero, “I collected that. According to what few witnesses we had at the end of the war, the bomb exploded directly over Pakhtakor Stadium, which was filled with refugees fleeing the fighting in the north. That vial is filled with the ashes of women and children, some of whom I probably knew. When the city was being rebuilt, all of the neighborhoods were filled with new faces...all I had were my friends who I had made during the war...nobody from the old days.” Azder suddenly looks very old and tired, he leans on his cane and smiles bitterly at the cases that surround him.
“I’m sorry if I upset you.” Azder shakes his head.
“No...it’s just hard to be an old man from a dead city.” We move on to the next set of displays, which show artifacts from the initial fighting. Rifles, a Soviet mobile artillery piece, empty mustard and sarin gas shells, a dozen bricks from different places, old strands of barbed wire...evidence and memorabilia from a distant and horrible place.
“That,” Azder says, pointing to a dark grey blob hanging suspended in a cube of glass, “is the bullet that they dug out of my leg in 1973. It hit me in the back of the thigh and came out of my shin...how it did that I do not know.” Azder chuckles and I look at the bullet, it’s been beaten out of shape and I can see the little marks where the doctor’s forceps cut into it during the operation.
The next room of the museum has a screen set up against one wall. Azder has timed our arrival so that the movie that loops on the screen starts as I walk into the room. Taking a seat I listen to the national anthem of the Compact before the film begins. The film itself is in Uzbek, but there are English subtitles, presumably for my benefit.
“In the spring of 1971, towards the end of the Soviet Civil War, the Socialist Soviet Republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan broke free from the corrupt and totalitarian rule of Leonid Brezhnev, expelling his armies from their lands. In retaliation to this, the insane dictator fired a dozen atomic warheads into the peaceful cities of Central Asia, obliterating centuries of art, culture...and ending millions of lives.” Footage of nuclear blasts throw chaotic streamers of light across the room, and I recognize that one of the explosions is in fact the destruction of Perm, filmed from the plane that bombed it. No known footage exists of the Central Asian blasts, though there are many photos of the mushroom clouds rising over the devastated cities afterwards. The state seems to have mostly made use of old American footage of nuclear tests from the 1950s and 60s.
“This terrible blow was to start four long years of bloodshed and horror. Of the thirty two million brave patriots who expelled the Soviet menace in 1971,” an animation shows a medley of thirty two typical Central Asian citizens, some of them farmers, a few tradesmen, a half dozen soldiers and imams and two or three professional workers in suits, “only six million would remain when our nation was founded in 1975.” Twenty six of the figures on screen fade away, looks of horror coming onto their faces as they do so. The animation is slick and I remember reading that the state typically outsources their propaganda work to an animation company in Korea whenever they need something for younger audiences. The film I’m watching clearly isn’t meant only for children though, and even if the facts of the film are deliberately skewed in the state’s favor, their propaganda is rather fun to watch. I cant imagine the effect it must have on someone who doesn’t know about its flaws.
“The war began shortly after. The survivors of the Soviet bombing soon found that resources were scarce and fallout from the blasts made many people sick. When the Soviet Civil War ended, there was hope that the new Soviet leader, Alexei Kosygin, would make up for the sins of the monster he ousted and help fix the devastation in Central Asia,” ominous music, “but he didn’t. Displaying the cruelty and callousness inherent in the communist system, Kosygin turned the immense wealth and resources of the Soviet Union inwards, and ignored the cries of women and children, even as they died by the millions on his southern border.” Images of Soviet troops, their faces in shadow, are shown, standing tall along the southern Kazakh border as part of Kosygin’s war against extremism there. Footage of famine victims, epidemics and the aftermath of ethnic cleansing is shown, all hammering home the point of how awful the fighting was.
“Similarly, the United States did nothing, even as they fought in Pakistan and China. Central Asia became a forgotten place...a dead place, and still we bled.” Footage shows a smiling man with a severed head tucked under his arm. Still smiling, he takes the cigarette that he’s smoking and sticks it between the corpse’s lips. The footage is silent so that the narration can be heard but the image is still chilling, the jihadist laughing uproariously as he points at the head, luxuriating in the grotesque joke that he’s made.
“It was not until the invasion of Uyghurstan in spring of 1973 that the United States moved special forces into Central Asia in order to stabilize the region. The Americans did this not out of any benevolence that they had in their hearts, but rather the cold hard logic that a peaceful Central Asia would be more beneficial to their goals in Uyghurstan. That is all that our nation was to them, just an objective to be met.” The sudden appearance of truth in the film, even if it suits the state’s purposes perfectly, is still surprising. The Compact has no shortage of legitimate grievances against many of their neighbors, they shouldn’t have to lie to their people to whip them up into a nationalistic fervor. Yet they still do.
The rest of the film describes the rise of the secular regime that now rules the Compact. The role of the American special forces seems to be solely to kill jihadists, and the narrator is careful to say that the winning factions would have won anyways, just more people would have died. The film ends with a triumphant panning shot of a rebuilt Tashkent that conveniently doesn’t show so much as a square inch of the slums. As the film ends and the capitol city of the Compact fades away, Azder smiles and nods happily.
“They make a new film every few years, this one is from last year. I’ve been watching movies like that for all of the fifteen years I’ve ran this museum...I never get tired of it.” I get the feeling that he’s saying this more to convince himself than anything, but I just nod.
“It was very well edited. Do you feel that it represented the struggle?” Azder nods without a trace of hesitation and I remember that he’s probably gotten this question a lot.
“Yes. Be aware that I was not present for much of the fighting though...I was in a field hospital on the Iranian border for much of the conflict.” Azder and I move to the next room, which is filled with medals and cases displaying documents. An original copy of the first constitution of the Compact is housed against the back wall, flanked by two flags, modeled to suggest that they’re blowing in the wind. The constitution is eighty pages thick but all that is seen is the top page, which declares that it is indeed the first constitution of the new Central Asian Compact.
The medals and other decorations that fill up the rest of the room were donated by veterans of the Compact’s military. There are old Soviet decorations dating back to the Second World War, and then more recent medals from the Compact’s various conflicts.
Most of the medals seem to come from the low grade border war that the Compact has been fighting with the New Chinese Republic and Tibet ever since Uyghurstan petitioned to join in 1976. This border war would have probably flared into a full blown war long ago if it weren’t for the Compact’s nuclear arsenal, which it first tested in 1982. The Chinese have nuclear weapons as well, but with the region as unstable as it is, another atomic conflict could have devastating effects to the security of the Asian continent.
There are also internal medals, some for arresting saboteurs and foreign spies, others for keeping order in unstable parts of the Compact. At the moment those seem to mostly be in former Uyghurstan, as well as former Kyrgyzstan, where the oppression of the Kyrgyz minority continues to this day.
In a small case at the back of the room Azder shows me his own medals. There are three of them, one for being wounded, the others for faithful service to the state. He smiles broadly as he explains what each one is for.
“For ten years for faithful service. I’ll get a third one in five more years...and when that happens then I will retire.” Azder could retire right now, he has a state provided pension, but he enjoys his work too much, even if the hours are long and the work makes his leg hurt.
“You certainly seem happy here,” I say as we move on, into the records room, “would you say that most people in the Compact are happy?” Azder hesitates before frowning.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been out of Tashkent for a long time...I know that there is war on the border with the Chinese and Tibetans, so people are definitely unhappy there. Aside from that I cannot say.” I want to ask him about the slums but decide not to, Azder lives in one of the apartment complexes in the center of the city, he doesn’t have to so much as look at the slums if he doesn’t want to.
“When you do retire,” I say instead, “would you prefer that another person who went through the bad times take over your position, or is it time for a new generation to be put in charge of this museum?” By the time Azder retires, in 2005, the chaos of the early 1970s will be thirty years in the past, most people in the nation will remember it only hazily, if at all.
“So long as that young person knew what happened and had the proper qualifications, then I would be happy to hand over my museum to them. But I believe that the state will make the correct choice when it comes to my replacement.” Azder seems happy with this answer, though it’s not much more than a basic preference. He doesn’t have any control over who replaces him, but that doesn’t seem to bother him, he has faith in the state.
“What’s in that next room?” I ask, and Azder chuckles.
“It’s an audio room, where you can listen to the various songs that were considered for our national anthem. There’s also speeches, but none in English I’m afraid.” I listen to several of the songs, which all seem to be made up of percussion and trumpets. The music of the regime is heavily triumphant, which makes sense seeing as how it was recorded in the immediate aftermath of a victorious war. Bypassing the speech station I meet up with Azder again and we move into the final room.
The room is empty aside from a mosaic made of empty shell and bullet casings, shrapnel and other detritus from the war. It’s a map of the Compact, and in the center of the mosaic, amidst the instruments of death, flowers are growing, their image made up of semi precious gems and other minerals found within the Compact. It’s an amazing piece and as I look closer I can see that vines from the flowers are beginning to break apart the covering of old metal.
“All of these were found on battlefields throughout the Compact...many of them were probably used to kill people.” The reality of it is sobering and I walk closer, noticing that much of the material making up former Uyghurstan is twisted glass and blackened stones probably taken from the sites of American atomic bombings.
“This is an amazing piece.” I want to say that it reminds me of a sculpture that I saw in Stalingrad several years ago, of a giant Iron Cross made up hundreds of thousands of medals taken from dead Nazi soldiers during the Second World War. I hold my tongue though, comparing the Compact’s work to Soviet artistry would be a faux pas.
“It is. It was made by a team of artists from Uzbekistan...they also made a lot of the posters that you see around the city.” The posters are colorful and hard to miss, espousing the supremacy of the Compact in large, solid looking words and slogans. They remind me of Stalinist era propaganda but I don’t say that either.
“I enjoyed the tour,” I say, which is the truth, the museum is honestly impressive, “thank you very much for guiding me through it.” Azder smiles and extends a hand, which I shake. Despite his age his grip is firm and I can see that the old man has plenty of life left in him, even after the horrors that he had to endure in the past.
“It was an honor,” he says, “stay safe on your travels.” I promise that I will, and as I exit the museum a black van pulls up, perfectly timed. Under any other circumstances this would have been terrifying, but when the men in uniforms hop out, all they do is take my coat and say hello to Azder. Azder in turn asks one of them how his family is doing and then waves goodbye as I get in.
The state will take me to the Iranian border and watch me carefully until I go across. With Iran being one of the last countries in the world that tolerates them, it’s the cheapest way for them to get rid of me. If relations with the Iranians go downhill then they just might have to spring for a plane ticket.
Similarly to Vladivostok and New Pyongyang, Tashkent has been reclaimed from what was once the ashes of an atomic bombardment. The bomb that destroyed Tashkent was fired in the dying days of the Soviet Civil War, alongside eleven others that laid waste to nearly the entirety of Central Asia. The next several years were filled with atrocities and widespread violence of every kind. To this day the exact number of people who were lost in those dark times remains unknown, but it is agreed that of the thirty two million people who lived in the region when the bombs hit, more than eighty percent of them were dead or displaced by the time the fighting came to a close.
In the twenty five years of the Compact’s existence, the population of the nation has recovered, but is still well below the pre war figure. Ibrahim Azder, the curator of the National History Museum, is one of the Compact’s foremost experts when it comes to the troubled times that preceded the founding of his nation.
“Times were very tough back then.” He says as we walk around the museum grounds. The museum is on a hill and we overlook the rest of Tashkent. Most of the buildings in the city center are built in the Brutalist fashion, and stocky Soviet style apartment complexes make up a considerable portion of Tashkent’s residential areas. This is a legacy of the city’s early days, when workers and refugees alike needed to be housed quickly and effectively. Many of the engineers had worked on Soviet projects and simply did what they knew best. After more diverse architectural skill was found, different styles popped up, resulting in the city center looking much like it had before the bombs had fallen and the edges of the city, near the slums, depending on traditional Islamic architecture with arches and mosaics being prominent.
Azder was out of town celebrating his fortieth birthday when Tashkent was destroyed, and at seventy is one of the oldest people that I have seen in the city so far. Much like the New Republic of China, the Compact’s population is overwhelmingly made up of young people, both a hopeful and incredibly sobering sign.
“The reason why we have so few people...even after former Uyghurstan petitioned to join us, is mostly because of famine. A lot of people might have kept on living after those dark times, but their bodies never recovered. Many women could not have children after nearly starving to death...so our population remains low.” Azder says, after we pass a government poster showing a large family. Women are given cash prizes for having large numbers of children and the current President claims that the Compact will have crossed the thirty two million threshold by 2020.
“But you recovered from your ordeal.” Azder nods, smiling. He leans heavily on a cane and has a severe limp from when he was shot in the leg with a Kalashnikov in 1973.
“More or less. I lost teeth to malnutrition...my leg never healed properly from the gunshot wound. I am very fortunate to be alive today.” He chuckles and we round a corner. The museum is funded by the state and is chock full of artifacts from the fighting, old vehicles, rifles, pictures and educational films describing atrocities committed during the fighting. The involvement of the Soviet Union in the nation’s formation is never mentioned in the Compact’s state approved history books, American special forces only grudgingly so.
The Compact refuses to allow entry to Soviet citizens and maintains a strict trade embargo as well. I was only allowed in after promising to stay for only three days and not to ask any questions that were not state approved. I do not intend to keep that last part of the bargain.
“There’s a banner in the front room of the museum,” I say as we approach the front doors of the building, a blue banner with a few bold words written on it, “what does it say?” Azder, who knows every last inch of the museum that he has lovingly curated for the past fifteen years, doesn’t even look at the banner.
“The Youth Are The Future, And The Future Must Never Forget.” He says, clearly relishing the phrase.
“In my travels I have interviewed many different people from many different nations, and one of the things that they have in common with one another is a desire to never forget the troubles of the past.” Azder’s face lights up when he hears this.
“That’s wonderful to hear. I know that the Chinese espouse that, but too many others would simply let their history drain away from them if it meant that they got more comforts and luxuries...” Azder mentions the Chinese somewhat cautiously, the Compact and the New Chinese Republic have been at odds ever since much of the land formerly known as Uyghurstan voted to join the Compact in 1976. The official position of the state on the New Chinese Republic is that they are not to be praised or trusted in any way. Azder is likely granted more leeway because he is a state employee, and a valuable one at that, but at the same time saying anything contrary to what the state wishes you to say can often lead to trouble.
“Do you believe that this history will be remembered in the same way when the last people who remember the chaotic times are dead?” Azder nods.
“Yes. We suffered more greatly than any other nation on earth in those dark days...and even when I and everyone else who was there for it are dead, the scars from that time will not fade. The education that we give our youth is very heavily focused on remembering what happened back then, so at very least the next generation will continue to pay tribute to the horrors that we suffered.” We pass through the front doors of the museum and into the front lobby. Standing beneath the blue banner, Azder gestures at the first few display cases, which contain samples of ash and melted sand from each of the twelves sites where the Soviet bombs landed during the civil war.
There are posters above each case displaying quotes from survivors of the bombings, along with photographs and other evidence from the atomized cities, towns and industrial sites.
“What the Soviets did to us back then was not warfare...it wasn’t even murder...it was atomic genocide. Brezhnev fully intended to wipe us out, and it was only due to the grace of Allah that he didn’t succeed.” I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the last portion of Azder’s statement but the first part is right on. Brezhnev died before he could be tried for his sickeningly long list of crimes against humanity, but had he survived then there would doubtlessly be charges of nuclear genocide against the people of Central Asia amongst his charges.
“You lived in Tashkent before it was bombed,” I say, “did anybody else you knew make it out of the city?” Azder is silent for a long moment.
“Not many,” he says finally, “not many at all. That sample over there,” he points to a glass tube of dark grey ash underneath a label announcing that it was from Tashkent’s ground zero, “I collected that. According to what few witnesses we had at the end of the war, the bomb exploded directly over Pakhtakor Stadium, which was filled with refugees fleeing the fighting in the north. That vial is filled with the ashes of women and children, some of whom I probably knew. When the city was being rebuilt, all of the neighborhoods were filled with new faces...all I had were my friends who I had made during the war...nobody from the old days.” Azder suddenly looks very old and tired, he leans on his cane and smiles bitterly at the cases that surround him.
“I’m sorry if I upset you.” Azder shakes his head.
“No...it’s just hard to be an old man from a dead city.” We move on to the next set of displays, which show artifacts from the initial fighting. Rifles, a Soviet mobile artillery piece, empty mustard and sarin gas shells, a dozen bricks from different places, old strands of barbed wire...evidence and memorabilia from a distant and horrible place.
“That,” Azder says, pointing to a dark grey blob hanging suspended in a cube of glass, “is the bullet that they dug out of my leg in 1973. It hit me in the back of the thigh and came out of my shin...how it did that I do not know.” Azder chuckles and I look at the bullet, it’s been beaten out of shape and I can see the little marks where the doctor’s forceps cut into it during the operation.
The next room of the museum has a screen set up against one wall. Azder has timed our arrival so that the movie that loops on the screen starts as I walk into the room. Taking a seat I listen to the national anthem of the Compact before the film begins. The film itself is in Uzbek, but there are English subtitles, presumably for my benefit.
“In the spring of 1971, towards the end of the Soviet Civil War, the Socialist Soviet Republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan broke free from the corrupt and totalitarian rule of Leonid Brezhnev, expelling his armies from their lands. In retaliation to this, the insane dictator fired a dozen atomic warheads into the peaceful cities of Central Asia, obliterating centuries of art, culture...and ending millions of lives.” Footage of nuclear blasts throw chaotic streamers of light across the room, and I recognize that one of the explosions is in fact the destruction of Perm, filmed from the plane that bombed it. No known footage exists of the Central Asian blasts, though there are many photos of the mushroom clouds rising over the devastated cities afterwards. The state seems to have mostly made use of old American footage of nuclear tests from the 1950s and 60s.
“This terrible blow was to start four long years of bloodshed and horror. Of the thirty two million brave patriots who expelled the Soviet menace in 1971,” an animation shows a medley of thirty two typical Central Asian citizens, some of them farmers, a few tradesmen, a half dozen soldiers and imams and two or three professional workers in suits, “only six million would remain when our nation was founded in 1975.” Twenty six of the figures on screen fade away, looks of horror coming onto their faces as they do so. The animation is slick and I remember reading that the state typically outsources their propaganda work to an animation company in Korea whenever they need something for younger audiences. The film I’m watching clearly isn’t meant only for children though, and even if the facts of the film are deliberately skewed in the state’s favor, their propaganda is rather fun to watch. I cant imagine the effect it must have on someone who doesn’t know about its flaws.
“The war began shortly after. The survivors of the Soviet bombing soon found that resources were scarce and fallout from the blasts made many people sick. When the Soviet Civil War ended, there was hope that the new Soviet leader, Alexei Kosygin, would make up for the sins of the monster he ousted and help fix the devastation in Central Asia,” ominous music, “but he didn’t. Displaying the cruelty and callousness inherent in the communist system, Kosygin turned the immense wealth and resources of the Soviet Union inwards, and ignored the cries of women and children, even as they died by the millions on his southern border.” Images of Soviet troops, their faces in shadow, are shown, standing tall along the southern Kazakh border as part of Kosygin’s war against extremism there. Footage of famine victims, epidemics and the aftermath of ethnic cleansing is shown, all hammering home the point of how awful the fighting was.
“Similarly, the United States did nothing, even as they fought in Pakistan and China. Central Asia became a forgotten place...a dead place, and still we bled.” Footage shows a smiling man with a severed head tucked under his arm. Still smiling, he takes the cigarette that he’s smoking and sticks it between the corpse’s lips. The footage is silent so that the narration can be heard but the image is still chilling, the jihadist laughing uproariously as he points at the head, luxuriating in the grotesque joke that he’s made.
“It was not until the invasion of Uyghurstan in spring of 1973 that the United States moved special forces into Central Asia in order to stabilize the region. The Americans did this not out of any benevolence that they had in their hearts, but rather the cold hard logic that a peaceful Central Asia would be more beneficial to their goals in Uyghurstan. That is all that our nation was to them, just an objective to be met.” The sudden appearance of truth in the film, even if it suits the state’s purposes perfectly, is still surprising. The Compact has no shortage of legitimate grievances against many of their neighbors, they shouldn’t have to lie to their people to whip them up into a nationalistic fervor. Yet they still do.
The rest of the film describes the rise of the secular regime that now rules the Compact. The role of the American special forces seems to be solely to kill jihadists, and the narrator is careful to say that the winning factions would have won anyways, just more people would have died. The film ends with a triumphant panning shot of a rebuilt Tashkent that conveniently doesn’t show so much as a square inch of the slums. As the film ends and the capitol city of the Compact fades away, Azder smiles and nods happily.
“They make a new film every few years, this one is from last year. I’ve been watching movies like that for all of the fifteen years I’ve ran this museum...I never get tired of it.” I get the feeling that he’s saying this more to convince himself than anything, but I just nod.
“It was very well edited. Do you feel that it represented the struggle?” Azder nods without a trace of hesitation and I remember that he’s probably gotten this question a lot.
“Yes. Be aware that I was not present for much of the fighting though...I was in a field hospital on the Iranian border for much of the conflict.” Azder and I move to the next room, which is filled with medals and cases displaying documents. An original copy of the first constitution of the Compact is housed against the back wall, flanked by two flags, modeled to suggest that they’re blowing in the wind. The constitution is eighty pages thick but all that is seen is the top page, which declares that it is indeed the first constitution of the new Central Asian Compact.
The medals and other decorations that fill up the rest of the room were donated by veterans of the Compact’s military. There are old Soviet decorations dating back to the Second World War, and then more recent medals from the Compact’s various conflicts.
Most of the medals seem to come from the low grade border war that the Compact has been fighting with the New Chinese Republic and Tibet ever since Uyghurstan petitioned to join in 1976. This border war would have probably flared into a full blown war long ago if it weren’t for the Compact’s nuclear arsenal, which it first tested in 1982. The Chinese have nuclear weapons as well, but with the region as unstable as it is, another atomic conflict could have devastating effects to the security of the Asian continent.
There are also internal medals, some for arresting saboteurs and foreign spies, others for keeping order in unstable parts of the Compact. At the moment those seem to mostly be in former Uyghurstan, as well as former Kyrgyzstan, where the oppression of the Kyrgyz minority continues to this day.
In a small case at the back of the room Azder shows me his own medals. There are three of them, one for being wounded, the others for faithful service to the state. He smiles broadly as he explains what each one is for.
“For ten years for faithful service. I’ll get a third one in five more years...and when that happens then I will retire.” Azder could retire right now, he has a state provided pension, but he enjoys his work too much, even if the hours are long and the work makes his leg hurt.
“You certainly seem happy here,” I say as we move on, into the records room, “would you say that most people in the Compact are happy?” Azder hesitates before frowning.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been out of Tashkent for a long time...I know that there is war on the border with the Chinese and Tibetans, so people are definitely unhappy there. Aside from that I cannot say.” I want to ask him about the slums but decide not to, Azder lives in one of the apartment complexes in the center of the city, he doesn’t have to so much as look at the slums if he doesn’t want to.
“When you do retire,” I say instead, “would you prefer that another person who went through the bad times take over your position, or is it time for a new generation to be put in charge of this museum?” By the time Azder retires, in 2005, the chaos of the early 1970s will be thirty years in the past, most people in the nation will remember it only hazily, if at all.
“So long as that young person knew what happened and had the proper qualifications, then I would be happy to hand over my museum to them. But I believe that the state will make the correct choice when it comes to my replacement.” Azder seems happy with this answer, though it’s not much more than a basic preference. He doesn’t have any control over who replaces him, but that doesn’t seem to bother him, he has faith in the state.
“What’s in that next room?” I ask, and Azder chuckles.
“It’s an audio room, where you can listen to the various songs that were considered for our national anthem. There’s also speeches, but none in English I’m afraid.” I listen to several of the songs, which all seem to be made up of percussion and trumpets. The music of the regime is heavily triumphant, which makes sense seeing as how it was recorded in the immediate aftermath of a victorious war. Bypassing the speech station I meet up with Azder again and we move into the final room.
The room is empty aside from a mosaic made of empty shell and bullet casings, shrapnel and other detritus from the war. It’s a map of the Compact, and in the center of the mosaic, amidst the instruments of death, flowers are growing, their image made up of semi precious gems and other minerals found within the Compact. It’s an amazing piece and as I look closer I can see that vines from the flowers are beginning to break apart the covering of old metal.
“All of these were found on battlefields throughout the Compact...many of them were probably used to kill people.” The reality of it is sobering and I walk closer, noticing that much of the material making up former Uyghurstan is twisted glass and blackened stones probably taken from the sites of American atomic bombings.
“This is an amazing piece.” I want to say that it reminds me of a sculpture that I saw in Stalingrad several years ago, of a giant Iron Cross made up hundreds of thousands of medals taken from dead Nazi soldiers during the Second World War. I hold my tongue though, comparing the Compact’s work to Soviet artistry would be a faux pas.
“It is. It was made by a team of artists from Uzbekistan...they also made a lot of the posters that you see around the city.” The posters are colorful and hard to miss, espousing the supremacy of the Compact in large, solid looking words and slogans. They remind me of Stalinist era propaganda but I don’t say that either.
“I enjoyed the tour,” I say, which is the truth, the museum is honestly impressive, “thank you very much for guiding me through it.” Azder smiles and extends a hand, which I shake. Despite his age his grip is firm and I can see that the old man has plenty of life left in him, even after the horrors that he had to endure in the past.
“It was an honor,” he says, “stay safe on your travels.” I promise that I will, and as I exit the museum a black van pulls up, perfectly timed. Under any other circumstances this would have been terrifying, but when the men in uniforms hop out, all they do is take my coat and say hello to Azder. Azder in turn asks one of them how his family is doing and then waves goodbye as I get in.
The state will take me to the Iranian border and watch me carefully until I go across. With Iran being one of the last countries in the world that tolerates them, it’s the cheapest way for them to get rid of me. If relations with the Iranians go downhill then they just might have to spring for a plane ticket.
Interesting. So Central Asia is an authoritarian union, but perhaps not as bad as it could be considering the nuclear genocide committed against it. Any chance we could get a map of the world at some point?
You seem to be avoiding the main thrust of the question: a better than tripling of China's population in a bit over a generation after a nuclear war is absurd. That's something like a 4.6% growth per year rate. That would make it the second fastest growth rate in the world OTL, with only Qatar (where thanks to it's small population, immigration probably is a big contribution), and one of only three countries on earth which have an over four percent growth rate. China's growth rate averaged over the last 114 years is less than 1% per year: it's not sub-Saharan Africa.
China's growth rate was around 1%-1.5%, according to the World Bank, from the 70s until the 2000s, at which point it began to dip below 1%. But actually, sub-Saharan Africa (which has growth rates between 4 and 5 percent, just lower than the growth rates of the Gulf states, which hover between 4 and 7) is a great example, if you buy into the argument that a less educated, more impoverished population is likely to have a birth rate (and thus a growth rate) higher than other nations. We're talking about a nation which had its infrastructure annihilated in a brutal nuclear war followed by massive ethnic violence and civil war. The education system would have been totally shot. The plight of rural peasants, dealing with radiation, the blight, and civil war, would arguably have been worse than the plight of sub-Saharan Africans. An entire generation would have been left utterly without a childhood, forced straight into adulthood by the time they could carry a gun. And after that the impoverishment was only perpetuated by authoritarian dictatorships. So yeah, we are kind of talking about a situation that was for some time analogous to and in some points even worse than sub-Saharan Africa.
Donald Reaver
Donor
The sub-saharan countries had large food gifts from the first world which was not dealing with nuclear war and economic chaos. This world has a China that has been nuked, various plagues and a blight that can destroy some of the major crops.
The first world does not have the resources in this world to back up China like they did in Africa in our world. You are talking of a nation that seems to have gone a 170 million to 650 million in 27 years.
Famines happen because you can not ship surplus food from on area to one in need, I do find it hard to believe that can over come that kind of disruption to their systems to get that kind of growth.
The whole world is far closer to the edge, and it sounds like Brooke took it even closer to the edge. Even more nukes falling to the East of China from where Icarus Rising left off.
The first world does not have the resources in this world to back up China like they did in Africa in our world. You are talking of a nation that seems to have gone a 170 million to 650 million in 27 years.
Famines happen because you can not ship surplus food from on area to one in need, I do find it hard to believe that can over come that kind of disruption to their systems to get that kind of growth.
The whole world is far closer to the edge, and it sounds like Brooke took it even closer to the edge. Even more nukes falling to the East of China from where Icarus Rising left off.
Mosh, I'm averaging the actual population growth from 1900 and 2013, not doing a fine-grained analysis. Anyway, assuming some sort of magical sliding scale in which lowering wealth automatically equals rising birth rates is frankly eye-rollingly silly, [1] aside from the fact - which I must repeat - that the growth rates given are extremely high even by Subsahran African rates. Drops in wealth in the west in the 30s or in the Soviet block in the 90s led to declining, not increased birth rates, while being very rich by Arab standards hasn't kept the Saudis from very high growth rates until recently. Cultural factors, expectations, religion, etc. all have a lot to do with how people make their decisions about how many kids they have. And in the devastated wastes of post-nuclear war China, where are they going to feed all of those children? The Chinese, like anyone else, worry about what kind of world their children are going to be born into.
Bruce
PS - I'll also note the Chinese had those 1.5 or 1% growth rates while being extremely poor for most of the period. You can't get much poorer than a 1930s Chinese peasant without just starving to death. And there are no African countries any more with annual growth rates as high as 5%, and only 2-3 with rates over 4%
Edit: [1] OK, that was a little harsh, and I apologize, but I stand by the basic claim. Do we have a demographer in the house?
Bruce
PS - I'll also note the Chinese had those 1.5 or 1% growth rates while being extremely poor for most of the period. You can't get much poorer than a 1930s Chinese peasant without just starving to death. And there are no African countries any more with annual growth rates as high as 5%, and only 2-3 with rates over 4%
Edit: [1] OK, that was a little harsh, and I apologize, but I stand by the basic claim. Do we have a demographer in the house?
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If what ABOTL told me about the situation when I was making the 1973 map is anything to go by, not good
I'm thinking Armenia is akin to Chechnya ITTL, though as Christians they might get marginally more sympathy (plus there's that quarter of Jerusalem).
Woo, after a month of cramming I am now completely caught up on the Icarusverse. It's been an excellent if depressing read. I found myself nearly brought to tears reading about Hunter S Thompson's experiences when uncovering the FBI's skeletons. It may be American selfcenteredness, there are our horrors that were arguably worse, but that string of events was just so....wrong for what the country is supposed to be. Thompson is probably the figure I'm keeping an eye out for the most.