For the first half of the twentieth century, Societism (usually synonymous with the Combine) had gone from strength to strength, advancing repeatedly in three huge waves and never in retreat.
The Pandoric Revolution, the Black Twenties, the Second Black Scare (1940s?)?
Your teachers, on the other hand, may well be of a generation whose formative years were in the 1980s or 1970s. Many of them may not be able to separate the earlier history of the Combine from the ideas that they gained when they were your age. To them, the Combine will always signify a decaying, ineffective entity, unable to come to terms with the fact that it no longer represents the radical cutting edge of ideological boldness. Apparently, superficially, it seemed harmless or even comical. Yet behind the blank face it presented to the world, deep within, suppressed anger was slowly building towards the tragedy of 1990.
More recently, Ertegun (2017) even suggested that these assumptions on the part of the European, Chinese and American Diversitarian theorists of the 1960s and 70s could be recognised in a parallel attitude towards the Soviets themselves. Russia had traced an almost unambiguously ascendant trajectory throughout the same first half of the twentieth century, and indeed before that. It mattered not that the Sunrise War had ended that ascent by breaking the old Russian Empire; Ertegun argues that men like Lebrun and Wenediger were still subconsciously viewing Soviet Russia as a threat to their nations almost as great as that of Societism itself. It is an interesting lens through which to view the struggles between Novgorod’s Empty Throne and the other ASN nations with, but a view many on both sides would reject.
Men and women across the nations held to this attitude as a central pillar of their existence, and found it very hard to adapt to a world in which it might no longer be true. Indeed, it can be argued that when the nations did begin to accept this, in part due to generational change, it mirrored a similar epiphany on the part of the Combine, its rulers suspecting their glory days were over—and so the descent to 1990 began.
The bar-brawl of the late-50s Sunrise War seems to end with Russia badly concussed but the Combine leaking some blood onto the carpet as well; one evidently recovered much faster than the other. It's quite possible this war is seen as a dangerous near-miss (something the Soviets probably encourage to legitimize their authority) until the Combine's 60s-80s weakness becomes more apparent.
Also, "Empty Throne" is a
delicious metonym for a political regime. Please tell me they literally build a giant throne in Novgorod's main square. Although come to think of it Novgorod is an odd location for a replacement capital, if we're going with the theory that Moscow was nuked. Even Kazan is arguably closer to the Russian heartland. Although if the Soviets TTL are drawing from the racialist-leftism that inspired the Meridian Colorados and the French Noirs (fairly likely, given their skepticism of "national friendship") then the Tatar city of Kazan would be vastly inferior to Novgorod, the city of Alexander Nevsky's pride. But I'd like to think we're not reprising Jacobinism again, and going for something fresher.
Ertegun is a very Turkish-sounding name-- does the Eternal State or its successor rejoin the world community faster than the Combine successors?
Caraibas’ ‘revolutionary violence is a form of warfare’ quote was repeatedly reused and expanded by other Societist writers. Later this often took the logical form of ‘X is war, war is wrong, X is wrong’. Of course, in the Combine’s years of decline ‘X’ was often anything that a Zonal Rej had decided was undesirable. This is an example of how people of your teachers’ generation may be unable to take this seriously (or understand how people of the 1890s and 1900s did), because they only know it in this farcical context. Indeed, the phrase was arguably finally buried by Yan Mathews’ cutting remark summarising the Combine’s actions in the crisis of 1990: “Peace is war, war is wrong, peace is wrong.”
A Zonal Rej? Just one is all it takes? Does the Combine's end come about by decentralization, as each Rej becomes an absolutist Rex... but because you need to preserve the illusion of unity the bad decisions of one get blamed on all? Might be possible that this is how the weird events hinted at in Japan come about-- the Combine wins it in the Sunrise War but in the ensuing malaise can barely govern it; the suddenly-very-autonomous Rej pursues some...
strange ideas.
It’s because of how the Combine ended that it may be difficult now to appreciate that Societism was once considered a form of Pacifism; indeed, that that was its defining characteristic. Caraibas might have coined the Doctrine of the Last Throw, but fundamentally before the rise of Alfarus and the Celatores, the dominant manner of Societist thinking was nonetheless that violence was never justified, and that the world could never be united by force. It is this early, naïve, paleo-Societist view that we need to bear in mind when considering how the people of the 1900s viewed Societism as an ideology.
Maybe the Combine ends in a civil war, egged on by the Diversitarians? Did we ever hear of any Diversitarian cities destroyed in the Last War of Supremacy (I believe they were the ones launching the nukes, possibly to seize the chance offered by the internal chaos of the hated enemy)?
But no, if the Combine's ending is considered such a perfect reversal of the Pacifist impulse... maybe it was a pre-emptive strike by August-Coup-style hardliners on the world that rejected them. A repeat of Monterroso's mistake. Those poor bastards.
You have been born into a world without the Combine (at least in a form anyone would recognise)
I guess the question of "how did they build Diversitarian nations out of the Combine?" is answered by... they didn't? I suppose South America can keep its diverse populations as a token of apology for the whole "shattered cities en' wailin' bairns" business. The sense of commonality based on common residence regardless of exact origin will gel into something "national" soon enough, even without active steps taken to resurrect the culture and politics of the UPSA at its prime. After all, the Combine era is now an epoch of Platinea's national experience, and 'tis a great crime to murder a nation :^))))))