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--- timelines:fire_eagle_snow_bear_archived_version [2014/01/24 06:10] – Petike
+++ timelines:fire_eagle_snow_bear_archived_version [2019/03/29 15:13] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
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 Most of all, the people needed food. The famine was getting worse, and people were starving. The only thing preventing food riots was the army presence in the streets. The nearest European countries all wanted to extract a criminal price for food. The Czar appealed to the worlds great producing nations for humanitarian aid. The United States and Canada, sympathetic to the struggling giant, supplied massive amounts of food at low prices. Using the army to help distribution, the Czar managed to feed his hungry people.
-**1918**
+====Russia: 1918====
 Finally, Nicholas felt that things were sufficiently stable to hold Russias first free general election.
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 Among the Duma's first actions was to pass an extensive series of political and economic reforms. A document similar to the American Bill of Rights was adopted, and private enterprise was encouraged. The Mensheviks in the Duma were suspicious of this, and managed to push through legislation that created social aid programs. They also legalized unions, and recognized the right of labor to strike.
-**1919**
+====Russia: 1919====
 Education in the Federal Republic of Russia was at an all-time low. Medical care was also non-existent. The Duma recognized this and funded the creation of rural health clinics, as well as provided financial incentives to attract foreign doctors. It also began to debate the creation of a public school system to begin education of the masses.
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 (Message edited by maestro876 on December 16, 2002)
+----
+Posted on Monday, December 16, 2002 - 09:43 pm by [[offtopic:Zach Rosen]]:
+==== The Union of South Africa: 1917 - 1919 ====
+South Africa's Afrikaner population breathed a sigh of relief as their British overlords did not force them into conflict against their friends, the Germans.
+Their relief did not last long. With the war over, and their banks fat with profits, many British gazed longingly at the beautiful beaches and the wide open veld of South Africa. British immigration increased tenfold.
+This was not received well by the Afrikaner population. At this tiem in South Africa, the "racial question" referred not to differences between whites and blacks, but to tensions between English-speaking Whites and Dutch-descended Afrikaners.
+The South African Party of Jan Smuts and Louis Botha lost support in much of the Transvaal and Orange Free State because of their "radically pro-British policies". In Cape Province and Natal, English whites began to slowly close the numerical gap with the Boers.
+The Boers resented this "encroachment of their rights as sovereign people", and instances of racially motivated violence against English whites began to increase. Some English whites in the Transvaal were overtaken by angry mobs who beat and sometimes killed them.
+In 1919, Prime Minister [not sure on the title; someone help me] Louis Botha died. Jan Smuts succeeded him. John Barry Hertzog, leader of the opposing Nationalists, seized the moment to whip Afrikaners into an anti-English frenzy. Major violence broke out in Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Durban. An assassination attempt against Smuts was barely thwarted.
+In May, a Boer commando attacked the British embassy, killing much of the diplomatic staff and wounding the ambassador. He and his family were subsequently taken hostage. The Afrikaner rebels declared they would only release him if the British promised to grant South Africa full independence, remove all British citizens, and force the Smuts government to enact laws harshly segregating the races.
+A government special forces team stormed the rebels' hideout, killing most of them, and rescuing the ambassador.
+Things died down a somewhat in South Africa after that. Smuts gave in to some of the Afrikaner demands concerning segregation, and that helped restore him to many of the Dutch-descended whites. Hertzog and the Nationalists remained active, though Smuts managed to retain a majority in the parliament, for the time being.
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 Posted on Wednesday, December 18, 2002 - 12:31 am by [[offtopic:Macsporan]]:
+==== United Kingdom: 1916 ====
 By the end of 1916 the view from the white cliffs of Dover had never looked so attractive. During the last two years Britain, scrambling to meet the orders placed upon it by the European War, had undergone a second Industrial Revolution.
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 (compiled from posts made by other participants in the making of the timeline)
+----
+Posted on Monday, December 16, 2002 - 03:56 pm by [[offtopic:Macsporan]]:
+Suggestions:
+I think the first year of the Russian Republic is going to be a little more eventful.
+I think extremists of the Right and Left will be busy vying for power, especially if there isn't much food around and too many people with guns.
+The new Czar is going to have to put down some of the more outrageous factions before he can conduct and election in safety, perhaps doing a precarious balancing act like the first year of Wiemar Germany.
+However I think, having a loyal army and functioning government to back him he will weather the storm OK.
+The oil and gold in Siberia is to my mind a little too much of a Deus-Ex-Machina but can almost certainly be brought into play later during the more peaceful economic growth phase.
+Don't worry too much about being dull from time to time.
+Speeding things up too much or having a massacre a minute makes rather poor AH, in my opinion.
+This timeline will not be dull, believe me.
+Some of Russia's biggest problems are illiteracy and high infant mortality.
+The new government is going to have to be big on schools and rural health clinics.
+With a good supply of healthy workers and an education system producing skilled engineers and scientists Russia can industrialise, but not without.
+I think foreign capital is inevitable, at least for a while, but the Russian government is not going to put the place up for sale, or allow control of the country to leave their hands.
+Joint ventures are most likely with the state and native financiers investing heavily in capitalist enterprises in collaboration with foreign banks.
+Hope this is helpful.
+lol :-)
+----
+Posted on Monday, December 16, 2002 - 06:39 pm by [[offtopic:Macsporan]]:
+This is very good.
+I particularly like the evolution of political institutions, based as far as I can tell on the US experience, but exactly what you would expect of a political class initially wary of despotism, but seeing the need, after a bit of experience, for an effective executive.
+I expect the Canary and the Coward would have made their play in the period of initial confusion after the signing of the Armistice. No need to change these delightfully comical events, just make them happen a bit earlier.
+Education is really the key to everything. Without a literate population, with engineers and scientists a their apex, and a lot of skilled tradesmen you really can't do anything.
+The project of training them, along with the rural clinics, is going to be long-term.
+However this Russia is not going to frighten the bourgeois away anywhere near as much as OTL, nor will it have ideological objections to paying people with scarce skills a lot of money, so it will have a greater pool of willing technical expertise to draw on from the word go. Nor will the government be shy in sending them overseas for fear of ideological contamination.
+You can expect the first crop of post-war engineers, some returning from overseas with the latest ideas, others doing very intensive crash-courses at home, to be available some time in 1922-3. That's when the real economic miracle will begin.
+I've decided to lower the butcher's bill for my post-war French political troubles from 10 to 3 thousand. I think I got carried away there.
+Thanks, Zach. I like the way you're doing this, very much.
+We'll wait to see what Bill comes up with with his USA stuff then I guess we'll have to fill in the gaps as best we can with other countries and then move on.
+----
+Posted on Monday, December 16, 2002 - 08:22 pm by [[offtopic:Zach Rosen]]:
+Yes, I was basing this partly on the US's own early experience with democracy, though with the proper Russianisms used. It is interesting to note that the "Coward" as you so aptly put it is quite historical. It turns out that Lenin was really terrified of personal violence. It's just that in OTL, he was never placed in a situation where he personally had to fight for his life.
+You know, I feel kind of bad that we are going through all this trouble to create a democratic and prosperous Russia (something long overdue in real life) only to hand it over to a band of fascist madmen. :-(
+Oh well. 'Tis the curse of history I guess.
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