Communism

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An ideology derived from Socialism, in which all property is to be held collectively, allegedly for the common good.

Goods and resources are meant to be redistributed from each according to their ability to give to each in accordance with their need, via a centralised committee of economic planners. For some reason this invariably ends badly.

Scott Alexander's Lecture #6

(reproduced below)

As presented in Menelmacar in October of 2002 presents an interesting picture. Although long out of date, it has useful information regarding the early days of Micronational Communism.

New Post Lesson 6:

Communists A specter is haunting micronationalist--the specter of communism. All the powers of the world have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Shah and Ras, Elentari and Prime, Treesian nobles and Micromondesian spies. It is high time that I should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the specter of communism with a history of the party itself.

I have titled this class “Communists”, but by that, oddly enough, I don’t just mean anyone with a communist philosophy. There are a lot of communists who will not be covered here, and there are a lot of people who will be covered here who are not communist. What I mean is a distinct sector of micronationalism – similar to the Apollo or Micromonde sectors – whose distinctive characteristic is the tendency of its members to be on the left side of the scale.

Micronational communism really began in early middle 2001. There were certainly communist countries before this, but they tended to be what Kuralyov called “costume communist” – that is, someone who thinks being communist is a cool rebellious thing to do, or maybe enjoys the aura of evilness communism carries with it in the Western world. Not people who are actually acquainted with the works of Marx or dyed-red, card-carrying fellow-travelers of the Communist Party.

But in early 2001, this type did indeed arrive, and they did so with a vigour that made up for their previous absence. The Karl Marx of micronationalism was a man by the (nick)name of Siberian Fox, and, rather than a Manifesto, he taught by living example – the first great Communist micronation, the People’s Republic of the New Soviet Empire. Fox was a genius in web and graphic design. He was the one who made the Kingdom of Babkha logo on the top of their forum, to give you a bit of an idea of his skills. The PRNSE website was a masterpiece, and it soon became one of the most popular Communism related sites on the Internet. It had information on Russian history, the Russian military, Communist philosophy, et cetera. You needed information on anything Red, the PRNSE site was a good place to be.

With the site as a bit of a hook, Fox lured an odd ragtag group of people from all over the world into his new nation. There were a few people who were from his circle of real life friends, or at least elsewhere in his country of England – I believe Europia, scorchedCCCP, A_Monk, and Innumerablecaravan were of this latter group. Then there were two Yankees – Kuralyov and Yuri V. Andropov – and a Californian – General Zhukov. There was even a Chinese guy – Red Liberator. Then there are a few others I don’t know where to put…Sputnik84 and Comrade Rika, for example. This last one I will give especial remark to, both because I talked to her a bit and she was my source of a lot of information, and because a few of my fellow Apolytoners will be interested in a story she once told. She came originally from the communist nation of East Cyberia, one of the many spinoffs of Cyberia after all the civil wars, and that she had worked a lot with Mike Rosario, who, about five years ago, was one of the most, if not the most, important people in micronationalism. Rosario is also the Apolyton poster Red_Trotskyite, for those of you who, like me, had met him but had no idea of the connection. He became extremely scared when he saw an Apolyton Independent Nation, and Rika sent me a few of their transcripts. It was funny. But now I’m really digressing. Anyway, this body of people, plus Fox, formed the core of the PRNSE, but there were many, many, more citizens…I wouldn’t be surprised if there were around a hundred.

In the beginning, the New Soviets were active in the micronational community. President Fox was seen around Treesia, Hyperborea, and Istvanistan (and we have an unconfirmed sighting of him in Istvanistan just last week, actually). They even went so far as to take their first colony, the Socialist Republic of Rulak, led by, you guessed it, Thomas Hubert. Of course, as soon as he joined, Hubert started insulting people, making enemies, and then revolting, so there was their first bad experience with the rest of the world. Luckily, President Fox, bless his heart, was the only person who ever had the presence of mind to deal with Thomas (‘ persona) in an intelligent way. He IP traced him, found his phone number, called his parents, and told them to please reign in their son’s Internet activities. After that, Thomas was not seen again for a long, long time. The New Soviets also joined the League of Micronations. Now, any of you who are intelligent can see where this is leading. The main points of contact with the intermicronational world are Thomas Hubert, the League of Micronations, and (gulp) Istvanistan.

Are any of you surprised to learn that they decided intermicronational relations were a worthless waste of time, micronationalists were all children, and they should go into isolation with a new “Iron Curtain” policy? Neither was I. They maintained only a tenuous contact with their only ally, Babkha, and other than that broke of all relations.

Or so, it seems, they wanted us to believe. The Rasinate of Q’Attera Macusia’a, precursor to Attera, had a secret forum that no one was supposed to be looking at, even though they put it in plain sight and forgot to tell people not to look at it. Anyhow, the KGB, the New Soviet Intelligence Agency, which was run by Yuri with a secret subdivision called the GRU run by Europia, decided to go look at the secret forum, and did so. Ras Diga noticed, and got very upset, in that special way that only Ras Diga can, but there wasn’t much he could do about it because the New Soviets were isolationist. So he denounced them to the League of Micronations, which they weren’t really in, leaving only their allies Babkha to defend them. We all know what this led to between Babkha and the Rasinate, so I won’t go there.

The Rasinate did a bit of an investigation on the KGB/GRU, and discovered that things were even worse than they had thought. Yuri Andropov had joined the Rasinate under a double login, and although he hadn’t gotten any sensitive information, this was still a big security breach. Further, the Rasinate somehow discovered that the PRNSE was working to destabilize a number of other micronations, including Lyrica, possibly for revolution or invasion. The PRNSE denied this and counter-alleged (through their Babkhan allies) that the Rasinate was lying to try to increase its own international prestige and clout.

Okay, cut out of the international crisis for a few minutes. I’ll come back to it. But now we need to go to domestic problems. One of the little incidental things that the New Soviets had was a gaming clan…that is, a New Soviet team on some of the multiplayer games around. Originally, General Zhukov, a New Soviet citizen from California who admittedly wasn’t really Communist but just sort of liked the whole micronation thing, was a high ranking member of this. But scorchedCCCP, the leader of the clan, demoted him, for reasons that were a bit vague. Scorched said it was legitimate because he wasn’t doing his job. Zhukov said it was because of personal issues, and appealed it all the way to Siberian Fox. President Fox stood by scorched, and Zhukov started getting really mad and protesting everywhere he could and saying highly non-complimentary things about the government. Fox told him to stop. He didn’t. Finally, Fox and the rest of the leadership, which at this time was mainly scorched, Yuri, and Europia, kicked him out.

Zhukov’s friends were very angry about this. A few of the more vocal among them – Sputnik84, Red Liberator, and Kuralyov - especially Kuralyov – started protesting. They soon learned that when you’re in a one-party Communist state modeled after the old Soviet Union, protesting doesn’t always have the results you want. So now aside from protesting Zhukov’s removal, they were protesting the fact that apparently the leaders didn’t care about the opinion of the common people. The leaders, in this case, were Fox, Yuri, and Europia, and the group started kind of not really a campaign against them.

Okay. Back to foreign affairs. But not the interesting type. The New Soviets noticed the Rasinate’s AtterComm and were intrigued. Soviets are naturally supposed to have satellite states, and they were supposed to be leading the Revolution in the micronational world, so they ought to go find some communist countries, satellitize them, and lead them. But there weren’t all that many communist countries around. Finally, their searchers reported two – Norad, led by Chris Toke, and the Skerry Isles, led by a certain Dafydd Young. Both of them were extremely new and inexperienced, and welcomed Soviet help. The three drew up the Commonwealth of Communist Communities Pact, or CCCP, in which they would be joined together in mutual friendship as a force for communism in the microworld. This didn’t work out, as will be explained later.

Anyway, Zhukov, after being kicked out, was understandably a bit upset. He asked his friends (Kuralyov et al) to fight for him, and they did, but that wasn’t really enough. Luckily, he had been a relatively high ranking member of the KGB/GRU before his exile, and had access to a number of state secrets. By a bit of a coincidence, he was in contact, at the time, with the editor of a little-known periodical of a tiny backwater corner of the micronational world called the Apollo Fireball. He asked the editor if he would be willing to publish his New Soviet secrets. The editor said sure, why not, and the Fireball printed a special report, which I believe was titled, in true Fireball style, “The Secret Communist Diaries Of Yuri V. Andropov” It consisted of two ICQ logs – Zhukov and Yuri and Zhukov and Europia. The logs proved that the New Soviets had been spying on and infiltrating the Rasinate, that they had been responsible for a “People’s Republic of Interland” farce, that they had plans to spy on a whole list of nations including Rocentia, and Jaris.

There was a lot of other nasty stuff, like that President Fox had personally authorized a number of these missions, and there were some insults against other micronations in there too. The news was a bombshell. One of the effects, of course, was to totally change intermicronational politics. My personal favorite effect was that all of a sudden people from all across the microworld heard of the Apollo Fireball, started subscribing to it, and the paper totally shifted its focus from the Apollo Sector to the world at large. But back to the totally changing intermicronational politics.

Again, the Rasinate, as well as others, were enraged. Diga took action and sent everyone’s favorite psychopathic microwarrior, Ras Markle, to bother the Soviets. Which he did. Exceptionally well. Unfortunately for both sides, at this time a major spam attack occurred on the PRNSE boards. The New Soviets, rather logically, accused Markle and the Rasinate, but it turned out it wasn’t them after all. Suspicion fell on a very weird not-quite-right-in-the-head New Soviet called khenlein. At about this time, he edited all of his posts in the PRNSE forum to say, and I quote, “.”, and then disappeared forever. Since there were hundreds of posts by him, this created…a stir, sort of like what happened when Jason did the same thing in Tymaria, only a bit worse.

But back to domestic politics! Kuralyov and his group of protesters found that marching on the capital had not been very effective, since one, there wasn’t really a capital, and two, they weren’t really marching. So they decided to form a sort of party, and called themselves the Free Citizens. They were for the rights of the average New Soviet, as opposed to Fox, Yuri, and Europia in the “party leadership”. One lesson of history, though, is that you don’t form a new party in a one-party state. They got in big trouble for this and the conflict between them and the “leadership” widened. They started recruiting more people to their cause.

Finally, they decided legal means just weren’t going to cut it. They were going to have to become…a clandestine organization! So they did. But they weren’t very good at it. Luckily for them, an odd character came and made them a forum and taught them a few basic rules of secrecy and clandestineness. He refused to give his real name to them, because he feared his position would be jeopardized if anyone figured out who he was, but he went by the bizarre moniker of “Fido The Talking Dog”. Anyhow, Fido and the Free Citizens started plotting, and mainly developed a really good secrecy policy without doing all that darned much. Their two accomplishments were, first, publishing The Free Citizen, an independent paper to counteract the official propaganda instrument, For The Motherland, and second, and this was a big one, convincing both other CCCP countries to come over to their side. So the Free Citizens were now Dafydd, Chris Toke, Kuralyov, Zhukov, innumerablecaravan, Sputnik84, Red Liberator, and Fido…a very odd group, especially considering what diverse places on the spectrum they ended up later. But for the time, they were united against a common enemy.

Events. Zhukov, being stateless, joined his former espionage target the Rasinate of Qattera Macusia’a, becoming…Ras Zhukov! Bet you didn’t see THAT coming, did you? The People’s Republic of the New Soviet Empire figured out (after only the better part of a year) that an Empire was sorta against communist principles, so they changed their name to the People’s Republic of Kraznograd. Then they realized (commendably quickly) that Kraznograd sounded like some kind of toxic chemical, and they changed it again to the People’s Republic of Bristol. At which point they realized that the 99% of their citizens who weren’t from Bristol might not like this, so they changed it to…The People’s Republic of the New Soviet Empire. So this whole line of thought was a bit pointless. I don’t really know why I mentioned it. The Free Citizens started looking for foreign allies, and got joined by, of all people, ultra-anti-communist Mark Buhr of Lyrica. The Fireball basked in worldwide fame. The Hegemony of Alexandros was formed. The Rasinate created a new AtterComm. Which brings us back to the Free Citizens.

Things looked pretty bad for them. All their protests had gotten them nowhere. Yuri, Europia, and Fox were still there, frustrating them at every turn. There was a brief period of excitement when they got access to the Secret Soviet High Command (password=talkingfisharecool), but irregularities were discovered and they lost it. They regained it a bit later (new password=flyingfisharecooler), but lost it again. Then came the worst part. Some traitor, and I still don’t know who it is, gave Yuri the password, location, and codewords for the Super Secret Free Citizen Hideaway. He came in, saw the operation, and everyone got in trouble. It was at about that point that decided maybe all-out revolt would be a good idea.

The new country they formed was called the Free Republic, and they asked their allies the Skerry Isles and Norad to merge with them, which they did. Thus, this country was big, and important. It was a long long time in the making, and it should have been. There were a lot of problems that needed to be ironed out. (Fido the Talking Dog left at about this point) For example, half the population was Communist and the other half wasn’t. They somehow solved this by pretending to be Romans, something I don’t think anyone wanted. So they formed this big pseudo-Roman republic that would become incredibly important later on.

Back in the PRNSE, Siberian Fox was extremely upset. He had been humiliated by the spying reports, which he continued to deny vehemently, had had a good deal of his citizenry taken away from him, and had seen his leadership of the communist microworld through the CCCP break up. He was disillusioned with everything. I spoke to him a bit during this period, and he gave me the impression of one of those disillusioned geniuses who knows that his work will never be understood during his own lifetime. It was no longer enough for him to be totally isolated from micronations if his PRNSE was a micronation itself. It would have to totally transcend micronationalism. So he declared it a “non-micronational political simulation”, purged all elements even vaguely reminiscent of micronationalism, moved onto an EGroup, told me to stop reporting on it, broke off the remnant of a connection with Babkha, and disappeared into the night.

It’s still around, I think, plotting against the core of the American system of freedom and justice…or something like that. Maybe when you wake up tomorrow, you’ll see Fox’s massive armies marching across the Heartland, finally ready for the strike they’ve been preparing in the shadows all this time. Maybe the workers, under his leadership, will spontaneously rise up and topple the petty bourgeoisie from their places of power when they least expect it. I don’t know. I’m a historian, not a prophet. But whatever the New Soviets are doing now, our interest in them lies, from this point forward, in what they, despite themselves, created – the Free Republic.

The Free Republic was, to paraphrase Archbishop Murphy, a micronation wandering around desperately in search of a purpose. They weren’t really communist…besides, the Soviets were better at that. They weren’t really Roman…besides, the Nova Romans were better at that. They weren’t really much of anything. They solved this in the same way the Americans do – by using the world “freedom” a whole lot. They were also united a bit by a common hatred of the New Soviets…or at least some of them…a few of them stayed in the Soviet Empire themselves. Somehow, though, this sufficed. The Free Republic managed to stay together for three months, and only ended when they voluntarily chose to merge into Tymaria.

The FR people certainly had a quality team. Dafydd from the Skerries was very good at Flash and general computer stuff, so he made them a very nice looking website. Kuralyov, while not really a leader per se, was good at getting people to stick together, and also wrote a very nice paper called The Free Citizen which reported on FR news on a frequent basis. And Ras Zhukov was good at all things military, not to mention he had the Rasinate on his side, which is always a good thing, then as much as now.

The diversity of people in the FR began to really show when they had their election for the top position, Consul. Kuralyov had been Acting Consul for about a month while things got set up, but now it was time to go for the real thing. Poor Kuralyov ran for reelection, but he kind of got swamped beneath all kinds of weird partisan groups and supporters. The spectrum ran from supercommunist like Red Liberator, who was supported by the New Soviets (for all the good that did) to sort of communist, to so not communist that it made Margaret Thatcher look like Vladimir Lenin (Zhukov). One of my favorite micronational stories is the Fireball’s coverage of their campaigns. Just as a little “get to know you” thing, we asked all the candidates their role models. One of them said Jesus, another said Mao. Whatever else you could say about this campaign, it wasn’t the type where you could accuse the candidates of being exactly alike.

After a long, hard fought battle, Ras Zhukov took the position. Surprisingly, there were no revolts or hard feelings or Revolutions For The Glory Of The Motherland or anything. The Communists formed an opposition party and that was that. But if that was a divisive issue, the next one was worse. Ras Zhukov suggested that the Free Republic join the Atteran Commonwealth, which was then, like it is now, a group of nations allied with Attera that recognize the Le’ult as sovereign. The Communists and certain other factions went a bit ballistic. They spun it as pretty much inviting monarchist factions to come in and rule the country imperialistically from abroad.

This was encouraged by the Babkhans, who had gradually trickled into the Free Republic to add (generally unwanted) commentary on a lot of issues. If the Atterans had their crazy Ras Markle to go around and cause trouble, the Babkhans had their crazy Sarhang Ataxerxes, and he backed up the anti-Atteran faction as much as he could. There was a bit of a scuffle, and it looked like the two nations would come to blows, if not outright war. Finally Babak Shah issued an Imperial Farman telling everyone to stay out of the Free Republic. This was intended as a nice gesture, to get them to stop being harassed, but the Free Republicans took it as a sort of blockade or embargo and got really annoyed. Kuralyov went over to Babkha and started generally bothering them as much as he could, for which he was called a Tudeh and laughed out of the country, although recently it seems they’ve made up their old differences and are getting along a lot better.

Anyhow, despite Babkhan and domestic opposition, the vote to join AtterComm passed. I didn’t notice too much of a difference except that I think Zhukov got a promotion out of the deal and this was what kind of drew the Rasinate into Tymaria. The big international crisis in this period was Rulzcentia. Basically, someone called Comrade Redstorm had taken over a dead country called Rulak and was trying to make it into a Marxist paradise. Or something. But he couldn’t get any citizens. Then a certain Comrade Titov came along. Titov had before this only been active in Lyrica and Cyberia, where apparently his whole purpose in life was to annoy Peter Hickey, which, though in itself a worthy goal, he went about in a rather juvenile and irritating way that led people to generally believe he was one of the many many double logins of Emperor Jacobus, the micro-world’s best known anti-Hickeyist (or one of them, at least…there are certainly enough to choose from) and general oddity. When Hickey founded the serious and (for a while) prosperous country of Rocentia, Titov founded Rozcentia, its sort of evil twin, both as a parody of the former and as a way to annoy Hickey and ruin his country’s good name.

So Titov and Redstorm merged their two countries and became the People’s Republic of Rulzcentia, which generally went around annoying absolutely everyone. Because of the tactics (stuff like randomly declaring invasions, then hastily retracting them, or extremely poorly planned spam/smile attacks) some people began to get suspicious, and, sure enough, someone noticed Redstorm’s email address was tom_hubert@yahoo.com. After some more failed attacks and general blunders, whether or not to attack Rulzcentia became a pressing question. Finally, a group of nations including Alexandros, the Free Republic, and some others I can’t remember, calling themselves the Allies, took over Rulzcentia (can’t remember how) and kicked Redstorm and Titov out of micronationalism (for a while, at least). This was probably FR’s biggest foreign policy victory.

Domestically, things were going pretty well too. They set up a University, with courses in Esperanto (Kuralyov: “Esperanto? That’s just another word for Spanish, right?”) in micronational history (an interesting lesson on predictions of the future that had some good points but totally missed Tymaria…not that everyone else didn’t too) and other such things. The Free Republic was divided into provinces. Ras Zhukov started talking with the Apollo people because he heard they had a pretty good map that he could use. When he learned there wasn’t really any space available, he said why not expand it a bit? Scott Siskind and Erik Metzler, the people in charge, said, pretty much, you expand it, and we’ll tack your expansion on. What eventually ended up happening was that all three of them got involved and the map ended up more than doubling in size to become today’s MCS Map. Everything to the east of the Raynor Isles was created by the three of us working together with a view toward Free Republic land. The FR was given a very big chunk of territory on the eastern continent both as a symbol of their large size and of the help they had rendered. Of course, this large chunk of land was pretty valuable, and became very important later (as you may have noticed).

A bit after the consul election, FR started getting friendly with Interland. Interland had been founded as part of the Lyrica/Cyberia Sector of micronationalism by Pete Krembs, an insane frothing libertarian. It was somehow obtained after its death by Julian Starr, although without Pete’s approval, and Starr started working on building it up again. He also got a friend, Sean Walker, to help him and to serve as President. Sean started posting over at the Free Citizen boards, and a lot of people started to take a liking to him. He wasn’t like the other foreign posters, who were either Babkhans trying to convince them to leave Attera before it was too late or New Soviets like Yuri and Europia trying to insult or make fun of them. Sean was helpful, constructive, and became a valued part of the FR community.

Then Sean mentioned he was actually Yuri Andropov in disguise. No one believed him, of course. Yuri was this crazy Communist who had been oppressing them and insulting them, whereas Sean was a generally nice guy and also a hardline Republican. But Sean proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt, including a dramatic demonstration to the Fireball, and eventually he convinced everyone. Thus the Free Republic learned a very important lesson: Yuri is a double-dealing creep. Never trust him. Or at least that’s what I learned. The Free Republic apparently learned nothing, because in a few weeks they were trying to merge with him. The Interland-Free Republic merger was, at least by me, pretty unexpected, because merging (except among some Apollo nations) was a lot less common and accepted then than now. The FR was quite a bit bigger than Interland, but terms were discussed, and the thing generally seemed to be doing well.

Of course, that didn’t work out, because the rest of us had to butt in and ruin it. I thought the merger was a good idea and I reported it to Hegemon Rhode of Alexandros, my boss at the time, along with the suggestion that we join in. Rhode, who, as we all know, was power-crazy, decided that would be a good idea, since probably he could convince all these foreigners to make him supreme leader by his brilliance and general greatness, and then he could rule a really large country. So I said Alexandros had some interest in the whole merger thing, and then suddenly the Rasinate noticed that a member of their Commonwealth was about to merge with several non-members, which would make stuff difficult. For whatever reasons, and to the total shock of absolutely everyone, they decided to merge with it (I wouldn’t be surprised if their reasons were not dissimilar to Jason’s) and, about thirty long-winded pontificating speeches by Jason later, Tymaria was born. And the history of an independent Free Republic was over. The Tymarian Free Republic state will be covered in the Tymaria class.

But the Free Republic didn’t go into that good night without leaving a few successors of its own, so the thread of Communist micronationalism can now be traced a bit forward to the land of Proletaria.

Tymaria was not communist. There was a communist party in it for a while, albeit a very small one, but it wasn’t communist. So, the Free Republic having been amalgamated, there was no real communist micronation and many homeless communist micronationalists. The world has a policy of correcting such things, and two new states, Rasperia, and Proletaria, were born. Proletaria was the brainchild of Ryan Caruso, who somehow went from being a libertarian to being a communist (with some Islam in there somewhere) without anyone noticing. It never really did too well. Rasperia was the fault of Dafydd Young, and also never really did too well. Both of these nations were generally competing with Tymaria, a competition they were doomed to lose. Both failing, they decided to join together into a single new nation – which failed in twice as big a way. This new nation was the Proletarian Democratic Union, and Dafydd was its Chairman.

It was founded in late December/early January 2001/2002, and a few months into its existence Ryan replaced Dafydd as Chairman. Other than that, there was really not much to say about it. There was the Kraznograd incident, in which Babkha claimed a certain part of the dead hulk of the old New Soviet Empire and the PDU told them they couldn’t have it, but they soon reached an amiable resolution. Other than that, really nothing. Hard to believe a country existed for four months doing so little.

The Proletarians and the rest of micronational communism were as unhappy with the failure of the PDU as us historians. But in about April 2002, things started looking up. For one thing, Tymaria was no longer the massive colossus it had once been – it was now possible, at least in theory, to compete with it. For another, a few of the Old Guard had returned. Kuralyov had ended a period of retirement, and Europia, the old New Soviet leader, had reincarnated as “William Howard”. Together, they decided to come up with a bold new plan to reinvigorate communism. They met in a forum called the Internationale (still locked, unfortunately) and discussed their plans.

A few weeks later, there was a bit of a crisis in Cumquat. The outspoken conservative bishop Eric Fenton had given a sermon denouncing Communism, and a few communists (pointed there by myself) had gotten into arguing with him. He happened to do some rather illegal things to bolster his arguments and was kicked out of the country. The place he fled to was totally unknown before that time. It seemed to have just been created a week or two ago. Called the Holy Empire of Minorca, it was ruled by someone calling himself God Emperor Marcus, and by his friend, Count Tuscany. Fenton was immediately given a high position, and immediately followed (or so it seemed) by the communists.

Kuralyov began to set up a communist party calling for the overthrow of the Emperor. The Emperor responded with rather clichéd dictatorness. The communists citizens of the Empire, who now numbered six, set up the Workers’ And Peasants’ Militia to protect themselves. The Emperor ordered the WPM disbanded. The WPM said no. Thus began the Minorcan Revolution. The Workers and Peasants quickly captured and imprisoned God Emperor Marcus, and, although Count Tuscany vowed to continue fighting, he sort of faded away and was not seen from again. The communists declared Minorca theirs and renamed it Baracao in honor of their glorious victory. They also switched EZBoards.

The six revolutionaries of Minorca were declared to be The Six Revolutionaries of Minorca (note capitalization) and became Baracaoan heroes. They were (as far as I can remember) Kuralyov, William Howard, Red Liberator, Dafydd Young, Conrad Cromien, and Uncle Damn. William Howard was elected the first Chairman. A constitution was drawn up in which the Communist Party would have the power, and would decide issues through a People’s Congress and Central Committee.

The Revolution has now become a well-beloved part of Baracaoan history. The new website’s core is Tales of the Revolution, and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Militia has become the core of the Baracaoan army. Oddly enough though, none of this, in a sense, ever happened. The communists had decided that the reason their countries weren’t working was that they hadn’t had a real traditional communist revolution. Revolting against a real country would be too risky and difficult, not to mention not very nice. So they made their own (fake) country and then revolted against it. The part of God Emperor Marcus seems to have been generally played by Red Liberator – who played Count Tuscany is still classified. In any case, they quickly killed off the no-longer-needed characters – Marcus was executed for crimes against the state after a show trial, and Tuscany just disappeared, plotting revenge. So much for the Baracaoan Revolution.

But Baracao was not done with war by a long shot. First there was the matter of the Free Republic. As a Tymarian state, it had miraculously held onto a small kernel of identity and activity, but after most of the communists left to join Baracao, it became inhabited by a totally different group of people – some Micromonders, such as Peter Little and Mattlore Devious, and some others, like Drogean. Peter Little became consul of the state, which was now sort of a governor-type position, upon Dafydd’s resignation, and while the state lacked the vitality it had enjoyed under communist rule, it was by no means dead. There were even a few of the old guard, like Kuralyov, remaining. And this group decided that Baracao, being the good communist nation that it was, would be a more fitting home for the FR than capitalist, already-fragmenting Tymaria. So they held a vote to secede. The communists fudged the vote counting a bit and won.

The Tymarians discovered the irregularities and insisted on a revote. The communists lost. Undeterred, they claimed that the country was theirs by reason of the fact that they had founded it, and they declared it a free and independent state. Tymaria said no way, and a rather pathetic conflict ensued. Kuralyov, who was the Consul of this independent Free Republic, “recwared” all kinds of weapons against the Tymarians, most of which the Geneva Convention would have a lot to say about. After he dropped anthrax on the capital or something, the Tymarians started ignoring him totally, especially since they didn’t want a recwar, they wanted the Free Republic. Kuralyov’s Free Republic, as expected, went and joined Baracao in a few days, leaving two totally separate Free Republics, a state of affairs that would persist for about four months and which some would say persists unto the present day.

Peter Little, Consul of the Tymarian Free Republic, soon became an enemy of Baracao. The Baracaoans generally started taunting him mercilessly based on his bizarre grammar and syntax, but in my opinion kind of crossed the line. Little was the leader of South Mondesia, and decided to infiltrate Baracao. He was, however, caught, and Baracao/South Mondesia tensions increased. At exactly this time, someone with a Baracaoan IP address and Baracaoan weapons and a Baracaoan style started hacking Peter Little. The Baracaoans claimed (rather halfheartedly) that it wasn’t them, but the fact that it was them was pretty obvious. They stole his account numerous times, messed up the South Mondesian board, and generally caused havoc. Eventually the stress became so great that Peter Little left micronationalism. Nice victory for the big Baracaoans…using illegal and unethical methods to harass and break a fourteen year old kid. I’m sure whoever did that got a medal. Yes, you’ll notice I’m a bit displeased about this incident, please ignore me. Anyway, that was the outcome of two of Baracao’s conflicts.

Through the next few months, Baracao was pretty quiet. More than almost any other micronation, the discussion centered on macronational politics – particularly those of Britain, Cuba, and the United States. Not just in Chez Guevera, their “bar/club”, but also in their main forum and across the nation. Although all Baracaoans are at least nominally communist, there are huge differences of opinions between them, and enough foreign capitalists visiting that political debates are not likely to run out any time soon. Among the issues that came up were the Treesians opening a Baracaoan mission and Murphy opening up a Baracaoan diocese, despite some opposition to the “opiate of the masses”. There was also an almost-war with Tymaria over the Free Republic, and another almost-war with the Free Republic after it broke away from Tymaria. Citizens came and went. Uncle Damn defected to Tymaria after a bit of a conflict that the rest of the world is still in the dark about. Some new people, like Calif El Hazzad and Andres Pueblo, joined. The government set up a web store which was full of capitalist irony and which has never really caught on. A website was made, as well as a seal looking suspiciously like that of Cuba. In recent Baracao history, probably the two most important events would be the election of Dafydd as Chairman and the acquisition of Menelmacar. The conflict with Menelmacar might rank up there too, but I think I’ll leave that out of this work. William Howard announced an intention to resign as Chairman on August 25. He wanted to give someone else a chance to fill the top spot and prove that a communist country could be democratic. The two contenders in the election were Dafydd Young and El’Dorni, who was actually Thomas Hubert. Despite an early Hubert lead, Young won and became Baracao’s second leader. Varja was acquired as another result of Hubert’s entrance into micronationalism. It was the country he and some of his role-playing friends created, and lasted until the first election when Hubert, losing, held a socialist revolution and took control. The non-communists fled to Menelmacar, and Varja became rather deserted. Eventually the Varjan communists joined Baracao, and Varja was made into a Baracaoan province.

Thus is Baracao today. A rather active and flourishing communist country under Chairman Dafydd and First Secretary Hubert, with a few strained relations but generally one of the outstanding leaders of the micronational world, and heir to a tradition that stretches back over a year and five countries. Micronational communism isn’t just a few tinpot dictators anymore – it has grown from its humble origins into a well-organized and powerful force to be reckoned with. Workers of the microworld, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!