The Silver Knight, a Lithuania Timeline
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China's Great Leap Forward
China's Great Leap Forward: Yang Long's first term
Yang Long had been named Chancellor of China by Li Xiu, the Jiaqing Emperor, in order to solve the economic crisis that China had due to the French Flu. Although China had been less affected by the French Flu and the economic crisis which followed than most countries in Europe or the Vespuccias, Shun China was still affected by the economic crisis as extremist movements had arisen in Shun China and the Japanese Revolution had led to fears of extremist movements taking power in China. Yang Long set to work forming a coalition government between the Alliance for Democracy and Progress and the Democratic Union Party immediately after the Jiaqing Emperor named him Chancellor of China. Yang Long's coalition government would consist of 8 ADP members and 12 DUP members named as Grand Secretaries. The new government of Yang Long would have many challenges ahead for them in the years to come but Yang Long's period as Chancellor would help define modern China for decades to come along with Kang Shui, leader of the Democratic Union Party, becoming Grand Secretary of the Revenue.
Kang Shui, head of the Democratic Union Party
Yang Long had been named Chancellor of China by Li Xiu, the Jiaqing Emperor, in order to solve the economic crisis that China had due to the French Flu. Although China had been less affected by the French Flu and the economic crisis which followed than most countries in Europe or the Vespuccias, Shun China was still affected by the economic crisis as extremist movements had arisen in Shun China and the Japanese Revolution had led to fears of extremist movements taking power in China. Yang Long set to work forming a coalition government between the Alliance for Democracy and Progress and the Democratic Union Party immediately after the Jiaqing Emperor named him Chancellor of China. Yang Long's coalition government would consist of 8 ADP members and 12 DUP members named as Grand Secretaries. The new government of Yang Long would have many challenges ahead for them in the years to come but Yang Long's period as Chancellor would help define modern China for decades to come along with Kang Shui, leader of the Democratic Union Party, becoming Grand Secretary of the Revenue.
Kang Shui, head of the Democratic Union Party
Yang Long's first few months as Chancellor of China would be marked by the proclamation of the "Great Leap Forward", a program to help end the economic depression in China, ensure a more progressive government for China, and strengthen China's power overseas. As part of the Great Leap Forward, during Yang Long's first three years in office, the government instituted a series of radical reforms to the Chinese economy including a limited universal healthcare system, a social security system, regulations to prevent monopolies from springing up in businesses, a minimum wage law, and a ban on children under 13 from working and restricting child labor of children under 16. In addition to this, the government instituted a program of public works including a massive program to develop Xiboliyan infrastructure as to make exploitation of Xiboliya's resources faster and more efficient to fuel the industrial machine of Shun China. It was also during this time that Han Chinese began migrating to Xiboliya as the "first wave" of settlers had largely been Sinicized Jurchens. Other highlights of the Great Leap Forward's infrastructure program included the Chinese government deciding to dam the major rivers of China to control flooding of the major rivers as a result of the damage caused by the 1931 Yangtze Flood, which claimed up to 1,000,000 lives and helped cause China's economic crisis along with the French Flu. Party politics in China were also going through a dramatic shift as Yang Long's faction of the Alliance for Democracy and Progress and the moderate faction of the Democratic Union Party found they had many things in common during the coalition government. On September 2, 1934, Yang Long's faction of the ADP and Kang Shui's moderate faction of the Democratic Union Party formally merged into the Progressive Union Party (Mínzhǔ jìnbù liánméng dǎng) with the radical faction of the DUP led by Xiang Guiying forming the Unitarian Party of China and the rump Alliance for Democracy and Progress forming a coalition arrangement with the Constitutional Protection Alliance. The Jiaqing Emperor called for early elections which were held on October 21, 1934. Said elections were a landslide for the Progressive Union Party as it won 402 of the 684 seats in the Chinese legislature while the Unitarian Party of China won 75 seats, the rump Alliance for Democracy and Progress won 58 seats, the Constitutional Protection Alliance won 63 seats, the National Salvation League won 70 seats, and the Jurchen People's Party (Nuzhen Renmin Dang), a regionalist party representing Jurchen interests won 16 seats. The victory of the PUP gave Yang Long a new popular mandate for passing more progressive reforms as well.
While China was reforming itself during this time, it's time to note that it also was active foreign policy-wise as the Shun Chinese had supported a nationalist uprising in the Ryukyu islands during the Japanese Revolution and a referendum was scheduled for 1934 on whether the Ryukyus would join China or remain independent with the referendum voting 55-45 on union with China (albeit with some autonomy over local affairs). As a response to the formation of the Commonwealth in the "Act of Union", Shun China formed the East Asian Security Association (EASA) in the Treaty of Xiamen (February 26, 1936) with Lan Xang, Dai Viet, Korea, Siam, Burma, Assam, and Brunei as founding members of said alliance. Aceh was supposedly meant to be part of the EASA until the Coup of September 2, 1935, in which a Purple Unitarian regime was installed in Aceh with said regime combining Purple Unitarianism with fanatical Islam and was a pariah in the region. In addition, Shun China forged close ties with the government of Visegrad as well during this time as well. Lusang, initially reluctant to join the EASA, joined the EASA in 1937 due to the increasingly radical nature of the Union of Japan with the Shun Chinese roping in the Khanates of Yarkand and Tibet into the alliance at around the same time. Now, the Orient was locked in a "Silent War" between India and China.
Princess Li Wei, heir to the Dragon Throne after the Royal Succession Edict of 1933
Unfortunately, not all was well in Shun China as the Jiaqing Emperor had no sons, only two daughters, Princess Li Wei, who was born in 1913, and Princess Li Ai, who was born in 1919. The Jiaqing Emperor in 1933 enacted an edict changing the royal succession so if the Emperor had no sons, his first-born daughter could become Empress. Under the Royal Succession Edict, Li Wei would become Empress of China, the first since Wu Zeitan, after the death of the Jiaqing Emperor in 1952. Needless to say, traditionalist elements in the Chinese elite were unhappy with this, especially Prince Li Jin, the Jiaqing Emperor's younger brother. Li Jin also had ties to ultra-nationalist/Purple Unitarian groups like the Empire Renewal Movement (Diguo Fuxing Yundong) and was seen as the "black sheep" among the Emperor's younger brothers as Princes Li Yu, Li Su, and Li Shuren were largely supportive of the Jiaqing Emperor's progressive policies. In conjunction with like-minded officers and far-right politicians, Prince Li Jin plotted a coup to "renew" the Shun Empire along Purple Unitarian lines with himself as Emperor. The date of the coup was set for July 7, 1937. On that day, the plotters who had banded together under the banner of the "Empire Renewal Movement" planned to assassinate senior politicians who they viewed as "selling the Empire out" and then seize power. Unfortunately, the Empire Renewal Movement's plot was revealed by the head of the Embroidered Uniform Guard (Jinyiwei), Cai Xuegang, who had been in contact with the plotters through a network of secret agents as the Jinyiwei had been the intelligence network tasked with dealing with "enemies of the state" during both the Ming and the Shun Dynasties
On that day, the Empire Renewal Movement tried to assassinate many senior government officials but most of their assassination attempts were unsuccessful as the senior officials targeted had been warned beforehand and loyalist forces, led by the Jinyiwei, quickly crushed the "Empire Renewal Movement" and arrested their leaders, restoring order in Beijing. In the aftermath of the 7/7 coup attempt, Yang Long, Li Xiu, and Cai Xuegang quickly moved to purge the Shun Empire of the "Empire Renewal Movement" and their sympathizers to prevent anything like this from ever occurring again in the Shun Empire. The trials against the coup plotters were swift but effective as first the junior officers who had carried out the plot and then the senior officers and scholar-officials who had supported and planned the coup went before the special tribunal which had been established for the purpose of trying the coup plotters and was under the jurisdiction of the Jinyiwei. The verdict was the same in almost all cases in that they were found guilty and sentenced to death. Finally, Prince Li Jin, who had been stripped of his rank and titles by the Shun government, appeared before the court on February 1938. He gave a speech in which he defended what he did as he did so "in the name of the Chinese nation and the Great Shun Dynasty" from "degeneracy". His speech before the special court fell on deaf ears and on March 2, 1938, Prince Li Jin was led from his cell in Beijing and beheaded in the prison yard. Aside from newspapers publishing short articles on his execution and some members of the Shun Imperial Court wearing clothes of mourning, that day was a normal day for the people of Shun China. His execution marked the final destruction of the Empire Renewal Movement as many generals, scholar-officials, and officers who had supported it had been executed before him. Another major event in 1938 was that elections were due to be held on September 1. With Yang Long's party being very popular, few expected any surprises with the elections as Yang Long was set to win another term as Chancellor with his PUP winning 389 of the 684 seats up for grabs.
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If you're wondering why there's a "Tibetan Khanate", it's something akin to the Khoshut Khanate, which historically ruled Tibet in the 17th century.
So the Shun China has dodged the bullet? Good, good, I half expected it to go full "rule from below" mode, with the putschists glorified and given ridiculously lenient sentences. But then, what did they expect, with their plans to depose the Emperor rather than turn him into a venerated figurehead?
This, I have to say, is one of the most HOIIV ready TLs I've read. Between offering something truly different, having a relatively even conflict, and having different paths countries can go down, well, if I had any modding ability I'd make a mod for this. Hint hint.
Chapter 83: Potop
Part 83: Potop (1937-1939)
It all started out with the first breakouts of the French Flu epidemic in the spring of 1928, starting out by affecting the densely packed and unsanitary cities in the federal kingdom such as Prague, Pest, Buda and Krakow. The response of the federal government was extremely slow even by the standards of the era - an extraordinary session of the Convention of the Three Nations was only called three weeks after the epidemic had reached the country, only to be dissolved by partisan struggles and an inability to come to compromise. Only in the summer of the same year were the first actions taken to prevent further deterioration of the situation, increasing funding to the healthcare system and cutting off access from other flu-inflicted nations - which, much like everywhere else, caused a major economic recession. However, the recession ended up far worse and elongated in Visegrad compared to it's neighbours - a part of the blame has to be put on the ineffective Republican minority governments in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but a much larger part has to come to just how fragile the economy of Visegrad was at the time. Much of the economic growth of the Era of Good Feelings had been acquired through buying on margin, credit purchasing and stock exchange speculation, all of which increased consumption, but resulted in catastrophic losses once the house of cards came crashing down.
This combination of problems was so vast and felt so unbeatable that the Visegradian population even made up a very accurate name for it - the Deluge. And while a lot of flack needs to be given to the failing democratic governments of Visegrad, who were incapable of even slowing down the fall of the nation, collapsing one after another in what was basically a political death spree, the words of the late Ferenc III Luxemburg ring true in this time: "Even God himself would have trouble restoring our nation's greatness, if he was at it's helm". The government of Jan Žuk of the late 1920s tried fighting the recession by first trying to balance the budget, in order to try to restore the trust of the people into the government and thus encourage investments, but it backfired, as this meant cutting a number of important government programs which disproportionately hurt the poor more than the rich. The Protectionists and their leader Ferenc Skarbek were elected in 1930 as a result of dissatisfaction with the Republicans, but they were unable to propose anything better. The budget was too deep in the hole to allow for, say, introducing public works like the Lithuanians were doing, and any attempts to raise taxes were deemed too unpopular to be worth trying. Once we get to the 1930s, successor governments, whether Protectionist or Republican, could only form minority governments, as much of the Convention, up to 50 percent in some cases, had been overrun by squabbling radical parties who wouldn't even consider a coalition with the "establishment". The massive divisions in the Parliament paralyzed the government and made it unable to take any decisive action against the Deluge.
Picture taken in Prague during the Deluge, April 1935. Filled with desperation and inability to cope, many unemployed workers chose suicide
The Deluge also heightened the hidden ethnic tensions within the multiethnic Kingdom. Many minorities easily noticed that federal aid and support was disproportionately more targeted towards the main nationalities, especially Hungarians and Bohemians, while leaving the peripheries in the dust. Nationalism also added to the rise - the Great European War and the Era of Good Feelings had both strengthened Visegradian unity, but now that both of these events were gone and superseded by something this terrible, all that unity was fading away. The Kingdom of Hungary suffered through a number of riots and clashes in the 1930s, particularly between the military and the militant Romanians, as well as Slovaks, who cried out against constant Hungarian domination in the state and their discrimination in economics, politics and culture. Meanwhile, in cities such as Buda, Debrecen, Cluj, and especially across Transylvania, the bitter, poor and hungry city inhabitants lashed out against the nearest scapegoat - which, almost always, were the Romani minority. Up north, a different process was taking place - the Kingdom of Poland was doing the best out of all four of the kingdoms within Visegrad, mostly thanks to effective local leadership, and they were getting tired of dragging the rest of Visegrad with them and getting held down by all this "dead weight". And we are not even talking about the most recent addition to the Kingdom - Slavonia. Some observers there have described the situation as a war in it's own right - entire villages were arming and clashing with others for the smallest grievances, just to scapegoat someone for all the economic and political deterioration.
All of this chaos, anger, bitterness was fertile ground for the spread of radical ideologies. While some far-red ideologists were drawn by the success of the Revivalist government in Lithuania and sought to replicate it, the real benefactor of the Deluge was the Unitarian movement within Visegrad, united under the Unitarian Congress of Visegrad, an underground organization with close ties to the Commonwealth. Turkey and India, especially Turkey, couldn't possibly say to to destabilizing one of the strongest countries in Europe and laying the patchwork for the "liberation of Europe" from the bourgeoisie and the capitalist pyramid governments. As such, money, funding, weapons and supplies kept flowing to the Unitarian Congress like there was no tomorrow, and the 1930s saw a dramatic jump in the movement's popularity across all strata in the society of Visegrad, to the point where the Congress was able to prop up a number of legal "Democratic" Unitarian parties to try to make a shot for the 1938 elections to the Convention of Three Nations.
This naturally worried the establishment within the United Kingdom, and the reigning Protectionist government, controlled by Sándor Márton, opted for the ultimate measure to prevent a Congress victory in the elections - vote rigging. As such, once the election of 1938 swept away, the loose coalition of Unitarian parties were declared to have only collected about 26 percent of the vote, while the Protectionists reached up to 40 percent, a plurality, and assembled a new minority government, once again with Márton in charge. Naturally, the people did not buy this result. Mere days after the new Convention of Three Nations was assembled, worker unions took to the streets to contest the election results, declaring them rigged. Some of the most energetic protesters even went so far as to march through the countryside and go through each village, collecting information about every person's vote, in what is now known as the Census of the Proletarians - in many cases, the "census" reflected completely opposite results from the official line. Instead of trying to weather the storm or giving in to the protests, the Márton government chose to restore order in the streets with violence, mobilizing the police and some army units to quell the protesters.
This was the end of the line.
To the common man, Sándor Márton was now not just a man who entered the election through a rigged vote, but also a man getting close to a dictator.
With all this in mind, is what followed really all that surprising?..
The Protectionist government limped along for a few more months, constantly facing harsher and harsher opposition in the streets, the cities and the countryside, losing more and more control over the country, until finally mass blue-clad, blue flag waving militias rose up across the nation. This was the beginning of the civil war in Visegrad, and mere days after Unitarian militias took control of much of the Hungarian plain, Transylvania, Silesia and eastern Bohemia, Visegrad's highly industrialized and densely populated regions, a provisional government was formed in Buda, in the halls of the Royal Palace - the royal family and the government fled north, to Poland. The Unitarian government was led by Gregor Samsa, the leader of the Unitarian Congress of Visegrad, who promptly declared the establishment of the Confederation of Unitarian States and it's goal to reunite all of Visegrad under the blue banner.
Gregor Samsa, the leader of the Confederation of Unitarian States
The first vulture to take advantage of the civil war in Visegrad was Turkey, declaring war on the kingdom mere days after the rebellion broke out - as if this was a sort of coordinated affair. The vast and modernized Unitarian military swept into the lightly defended Balkan puppet states, defeating the local Visegradian garrisons and local polices and "national guard" forces within days. The focus of all of Europe, especially Germania and Lithuania, immediately went to the crisis in Visegrad.
The War of the Danube has begun.
Delhi.
For the record, if I seemingly vanish for some time and don't respond to your questions, that means I am working on a new update - because I save my drafts on this site's draft feature.
I wonde how Shun China is reacting to this as Yang Long has just won a second full term in a landslide
Long live the revolution in Visegrad!
And Gregor Samsa? You`ve read your Kafka, haven`t you.
And Gregor Samsa? You`ve read your Kafka, haven`t you.