MotF 259: Return to the Fold

MotF 259: Return to the Fold

The Challenge

Show a situation where a polity has returned to a community it once seceded from.

The Rules
This could be international (e.g. the C.S.A. returning to the U.S.) or internal (e.g. West VA remerging with VA). Feel free to interpret broadly.

If you're not sure whether your idea meets the criteria of this challenge, please comment in the main thread.

Entries will end for this round when the voting thread is posted on Monday, August 1.
Yes, you read that right - four weeks. However, the next challenge will be posted on Monday, July 18, so there will still be a new challenge every fortnight.

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, you will be asked to delete the post and re-annexed by the mother country.

Please continue to submit your suggestions for future contests here, vote on the winners for 257 and 258, and vote for the theme for 260 here.​
 
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What's that? Another worlda? Yep! (at least there was an attempt) I'm also fairly certain you did not say the return to the fold had to be peaceful.
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Sidewise through the timelines we find ourselves in an almost totally alien Kazakhstan. Lush, dense forests turned into miles and miles of dead trees, rivers so polluted that even taking a dip in one is fatal, and dried out desert as far as the eye can see.

It wasn't always this way.

For just five years before, instead of the mad Holy Russian Empire, there was instead the Komi Republic. Nicknamed "Pandora's Box", people of almost any ideology could quickly enter the political scene of the small state located in the northern parts of European Russia (well, the parts of European Russia that weren't German), just below the West Russian Revolutionary Front and its two military districts of Plesetsk and Ukhta.

In late 1962, Pandora's Box was opened. The Passionariyy Organization won that years elections, beating the Democratic Coalition and the Communist Party of Komi. Their candidate, Sergey Vladimirovich Taboritsky, held the belief that Tsarevich Alexei was simply in hiding (he wasn't) and set out to bring him out of hiding at all costs. The newly rechristened Holy Russian Empire quickly began to expand, crushing smaller warlords beneath its boot. The world paid no heed, after all, Taboritsky was bound to overextend himself on some warlord on the Moskowien border, right?

Then Tyumen fell. The first major Russian state the HRE came across, it fought valiantly, but ultimately fruitlessly. The HRE smashed it, as it did all the smaller states in West Russia.

Next to go was the Central Siberian Republic. HRE troops stormed the city of Tomsk and nearly completely obliterated it, using chemical weapons to ensure not a soul made it out alive. Indeed, most didn't. Kemerovo vanished from the map. Then Krasnoyarsk. Then the Black Army, then the Revolutionary Council. The black tide swallowed Siberia whole. The lucky ones were defeated before the Mad Regent arrived. The unlucky ones literally melted in colossal clouds of death.

With Russia secured, the Mad Regent turned south. There, the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and the Polish Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (or Kazakhstan and Nowa Polska) lived in uneasy peace.

Which was not to last. On the 18th of May, 1967, the Regent began his southern conquest. Nowa Polska fell quickly, the last remnants of a Polish state scoured from the map and its inhabitants slaughtered. Kazakhstan held out for longer.

But not forever. On October 21, Kazakhstan surrendered. The Holy Russian Empire had reached its natural borders.

In the following months, an operation was commenced to wipe every last trace of Kazakh culture out, replacing it with superior Russian culture. The Kazakhs simply became one of a long list of minorities exterminated across the vast hellscape that the Empire was turning into. All across Russia, forests vanished, rivers turned black and toxic clouds filled the air. Chemical weapons were used in suppressing just about every single rebellion against Taboritsky's rule. In just half a decade, Russia - and Kazakhstan - had been turned into a nightmarish wasteland that would never fully recover.

---------------

So here's my submission to MotF 259. This can also technically count as my never-to-be submission to MotF 258. I've been wanting to do something with TNO for a while, and this was a good opportunity to finally make my idea.

BTW: Going clockwise from top left, first map is in late May, second is in early August, third is in late September and the fourth is at the end of the invasion with the complete annexation of Kazakhstan.

TL,DR: Tabby's Russia takes over Kazakhstan.
 
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The Soviet Union's Mars colonization project was to be its chance to reestablish itself as a great power after decades of being gradually left behind by the rising strength of the U.S., China, and Europe. For a short period, it worked - the large swath of territory assigned to Moscow by the Nairobi Treaty flourished benefited greatly both from full control over the Argyre basin, which filled with water much faster than the vast northern ocean, and from access to the economic center of the Martian economy through its port cities on the Sea of Capri. For a few, shining generations, the three Martian S.S.R.s (two contiguous, a third on the far eastern side of the planet) kept the Union on its feet, providing concrete profit with its wealthy mines and a sense of purpose for an ideology which was increasingly past its prime on Earth.

When the end finally came on Earth, the Martian territories - isolated as they had been from the machinations of the Politburo - were thrown into political chaos. Argyria, self-sufficient on food and home to a large population of Ukrainian and Central Asian settlers who had moved to Mars to find distance from Moscow, was one of the first republics where nationalists gained power and declared full independence from the Soviet Union, becoming the third independent polity on Mars and the second to adopt a flag using the pan-Martian colors. Meanwhile, neighboring South Margaritifer, grown wealthy as a transit point due to its position on the equator, making it the site of the Soviet Union's main investment into space elevators, was so tied to the Union that it was one of three republics (along with Kazakhstan and East Imbria) which refused to recognize the Kharkiv treaty which officially dissolved the Union.

As the years went on, South Margaritifer was left as the only state retaining the claim to the legacy of the Union, and the second generation of leaders began to look for ways to make good on that ideological legacy, if only to prop up waning domestic support. Their first target was their neighbor to their south, grown rich off an increasingly-successful farming operation but left dependent on South Margaritifer due to underdeveloped infrastructure to other regions. Through an intense campaign of economic pressure, information operations, and covert action, the Argyrian government was brought to the brink of chaos, creating an opening for South Margaritifer's armies to conduct a lightning operation to seize the Argyrian capital of Dalnyy and install a puppet regime which quickly rubber-stamped a treaty of reunion - only the second land conflict to take place on Mars.

The new confederation, propped up by brutal suppression of dissent, survived until the collapse of interplanetary civilization, but dissolved into civil war soon afterwards. Without modern infrastructure, Argyria was left mostly isolated from the northern civilization which flourished on Mars in the centuries following, while South Margaritifer was drawn almost immediately into the great battles for control over the Mariners' Valley which have dominated the history of Western Mars ever since.
 
mJWwyb7.jpg


The Soviet Union's Mars colonization project was to be its chance to reestablish itself as a great power after decades of being gradually left behind by the rising strength of the U.S., China, and Europe. For a short period, it worked - the large swath of territory assigned to Moscow by the Nairobi Treaty flourished benefited greatly both from full control over the Argyre basin, which filled with water much faster than the vast northern ocean, and from access to the economic center of the Martian economy through its port cities on the Sea of Capri. For a few, shining generations, the three Martian S.S.R.s (two contiguous, a third on the far eastern side of the planet) kept the Union on its feet, providing concrete profit with its wealthy mines and a sense of purpose for an ideology which was increasingly past its prime on Earth.

When the end finally came on Earth, the Martian territories - isolated as they had been from the machinations of the Politburo - were thrown into political chaos. Argyria, self-sufficient on food and home to a large population of Ukrainian and Central Asian settlers who had moved to Mars to find distance from Moscow, was one of the first republics where nationalists gained power and declared full independence from the Soviet Union, becoming the third independent polity on Mars and the second to adopt a flag using the pan-Martian colors. Meanwhile, neighboring South Margaritifer, grown wealthy as a transit point due to its position on the equator, making it the site of the Soviet Union's main investment into space elevators, was so tied to the Union that it was one of three republics (along with Kazakhstan and East Imbria) which refused to recognize the Kharkiv treaty which officially dissolved the Union.

As the years went on, South Margaritifer was left as the only state retaining the claim to the legacy of the Union, and the second generation of leaders began to look for ways to make good on that ideological legacy, if only to prop up waning domestic support. Their first target was their neighbor to their south, grown rich off an increasingly-successful farming operation but left dependent on South Margaritifer due to underdeveloped infrastructure to other regions. Through an intense campaign of economic pressure, information operations, and covert action, the Argyrian government was brought to the brink of chaos, creating an opening for South Margaritifer's armies to conduct a lightning operation to seize the Argyrian capital of Dalnyy and install a puppet regime which quickly rubber-stamped a treaty of reunion - only the second land conflict to take place on Mars.

The new confederation, propped up by brutal suppression of dissent, survived until the collapse of interplanetary civilization, but dissolved into civil war soon afterwards. Without modern infrastructure, Argyria was left mostly isolated from the northern civilization which flourished on Mars in the centuries following, while South Margaritifer was drawn almost immediately into the great battles for control over the Mariners' Valley which have dominated the history of Western Mars ever since.
What happened to the Soviet Union in TTL?
 
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The Second American Civil War

Above is a map of various major governments which participated in the Second American Civil War, 1969-1975. Following the SACW, the former states of the US reformed into the Federal States of America, which remains the government of the country today.

Secessionist MovementsCounter-Secessionist Movements
The Secessionist movements in the SACW include the New South, Cascadia, and Northwest Territory. These governments worked with each other during the conflict, as all three had similar goals and ideological cores.

The New South was a spiritual successor to the Confederate States of America. The New South was the most influential of the three, controlling nearly a third of the former US. The government pushed segregationist policies against African-Americans and other racial minorities, and enforced a highly fundamentalist version of Christianity.

Cascadia and the Northwest Territory were linked by white supremacist ideology. Cascadia was more centralized, with a more organized military force. The Northwest Territory, of the other hand, was much less centralized. In many parts of the region, bandit gangs were in de facto control.
Counter-Secessionist movements during the SACW include New Afrika, Sequoyah, Lakota, the Republic of Deseret, and the Yellowstone Republic. These governments varied wildly in their cooperation with the federal government.

Generally, New Afrika, Sequoyah, and Lakota worked less with the government in DC, and more-so looked to work against the New South in the case of New Afrika and Sequoyah, and the Northwest Territory in the case of Lakota. All three were looking for full independence for their territories, but worked with DC when it was convenient.

Deseret and Yellowstone both worked closely with the federal government against Cascadia and the Northwest Territory. Deseret had a stronger homegrown secessionist movement then Yellowstone, leading to some internal unrest within the territory. Yellowstone was formed as a temporary state for the "unified self defense of the residents and nature of the Greater Yellowstone Region."
 
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