Map of the Fortnight 293: On Your Ruins, My Empire

CourageousLife

CourageousLife

On Your Ruins, My Empire

The Challenge
Create a map showing a warlord, explorer, or adventurer founding their own fiefdom on top of a larger state in decline.
Based on the topic suggestion from @Comte de Dordogne

The Restrictions
There are no restrictions on when your PoD or map may be set. Fantasy, sci-fi, and future maps are allowed, but blatantly implausible (ASB) maps are not.

If you're not sure whether your idea meets the criteria of this challenge, please feel free to PM me or comment in the main thread.

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The entry period for this round will end when the voting thread is posted on Monday the 10th of June.

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THIS THREAD IS FOR ENTRIES ONLY.

Any discussion must take place in the main thread. If you post anything other than a map entry (or a description accompanying a map entry) in this thread then you will be asked to delete the post. If you refuse to delete the post, post something that is clearly disruptive or malicious, or post spam then you may be disqualified from entering in this round of MotF and you may be reported to the board's moderators.
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NeonHydroxide

Why are there two countries called 'Ukraine'?

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Like the two Congos and the two Italies, the two 'Ukraines' often confound geography and trivia fans, especially since unlike the other two pairs, these two countries don't even share a border. How did 'Ukraine-Kharkiv' and 'Ukraine-Pavlodar' end up getting so separated?

Well, like the other two pairs, the answer comes down to the brutality of early 20th century politics. After the rapid defeat of the Soviet Union in the German-Soviet War of 1941, Germany annexed the western third of the former Soviet Union - including 'Ukraine-Kharkiv', which was then the ethnic heartland of the Ukrainian people. Beginning in 1943, Germany's Nazi regime began ethnically cleansing this territory of all 'inferior' peoples, including the Ukrainians. Millions were forced to march eastwards to the rump Soviet state, and a large percentage - as many as 40% - died or were murdered before reaching their destination.

The Soviet Union was in deep political turmoil following the overthrow of former dictator Joseph Stalin, widely blamed for the country's defeat due to his pro-German policies in the years leading up to the war. The new government initially attempted to resettle the expulsees in ethnically-defined territories. For the Ukrainians, this was the 'Gray frontier' - a territory then in central Siberia which had been a center of Ukrainan settlement even during the Russian Empire period.

But despite keeping Stalin's proclivity for brutality, the government proved unable to provide for or control the massive influx of people being expelled from the West. As starvation mounted, opposition grew - especially amongst the Ukrainians, who had had active anti-Soviet resistance groups operating even before the war. By the late '40s, central government authority was at its breaking point, and by the early '50s, civil war had broken out between different political factions and a wide range of separatist groups. Of these, the Ukrainians proved some of the most effective, defeating the forces both of the Siberian-based Soviet faction and of the Kazakh National Army and carving out an independent republic - what we know as 'Ukraine-Pavlodar' and the Ukrainians call 'Gray Ukraine.'

Meanwhile, the German attempts at ethnic cleansing had largely been put on hold, as not enough German settlers had settled in the East to maintain food production.By the 1950s, the Nazi 'Commisariat of Ukraine' was still majority Slavic and plurality Ukrainian, though all authority was held by ethnic Germans. As the German bloc began to fray throughout the Cold War, German governments elevated the status of a variety of ethnic groups, including, in 1978, the Ukrainians, which led eventually to the restoration of Ukrainian ethnic rule in the Ukrainian heartlands.This region became officially independent as the Free State of Ukraine in 1993 - what we call 'Ukraine-Kharkiv' and Ukrainians sometimes call 'Black Ukraine'.

Many Ukrainians from 'Ukraine-Pavlodar' have returned to old homes in 'Ukraine-Kharkiv,' and cultural exchange is strong, but political relations between the two brother countries remain cool - where Ukraine-Pavlodar is a generally-democratic, U.S.-aligned republic, Ukraine-Kharkiv is much more repressive and retains strong ties to the German dictatorship.


See also (similar but not fully aligned):
 
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