Valourium

The Proletarian Union of Valourium, commonly called Valourium, or sometimes the Union, is a federative socialist state in Western Amphia. It is bordered to the east by Zusea, to the south by Kyrossia, to the west by Arshavat, and to the north by Serebryansk. It has an estimated population of 68 million. Valourium is highly devolved, containing 5 regions, 23 provinces, and 528 counties, all with some degree of significant political power. The Kabiszja runs through Valourium south to north and has a deep connection to Valourian history, culture, and identity.

Valourium is a very highly developed country with a gross national product of $2.127 trillion. Although Valourium's economy is largely based in the extraction and refinement of resources, it maintains a healthy manufacturing sector specializing in heavy consumer commodities, industrial equipment, and food stuffs as well as an emerging tech sector. Agriculture is especially important in a few regions of the country. Additionally, Valourium's enormous emphasis on education and support for universities has pushed it toward the forefront of sciences, leading to healthy enterprises in foreign advising and consultation. It is a member of the Ordic League and a founding member of CODEX.

Low Middle Ages
Historians in Valourium have used the term "Low Middle Ages" to refer to the medieval period in present day Valourium before the uniting of the Wylno and Prayatask peoples into the United Kingdom of the Valourians. This period in Valourian history is characterized by frequent and bitter combat between the two formerly mentioned peoples before a long era of peace resulted in the marriage of Kashkanova Vadimovna, the daughter of King Sakharov Valerianovich of the Prayatask, and the Wylno Crown Prince Leszko Korinsky. King Sakharov died without a male heir, resulting in a war over his succession. As his son-in-law, Leszko asserted he was the rightful King of the Prayatask. He joined the war leading an army raised by his father and was eventually victorious. Thus began the Leskan Dynasty, the first of many that would rule over all of Valourium.

The Kingdom of Wylnia had formerly existed as a mostly centralized state. However, the confederated tribes of Prayataska people, it is said, united into a kingdom after being led to a glorious victory against Pelkish invaders. The Prayatask aristocracy then took it upon themselves to demonstrate their martial prowess against foreigners themselves, leading to a series of incursions into Wylno territory. Increasingly unable to respond to several independent armies at once, the Wylnian king began granting significant powers to nobility. They were permitted to keep significant portions of the taxes they levied in the name of the king, and to raise armies of their own.

High Middle Ages
After the marriage of Leszko I and Princess Vadimovna created the United Kingdom of the Valourians, Leszko's first move was to secure ties to other kingdoms in order to make its preservation an interest of other royal families. As such, Leszko offered his first daughter, Polina Amester, to the second son of the king of Voyaslavia, revealing that Valourium was opening up to greater interconnection with the Dominate.

State centralization
The Ordic Enlightenment, otherwise known in Valourium as the Ordic Awakening, paved the way for centralization of the United Kingdom into the hands of the monarchy, lessening the power and prestige of the Grand Duchies composing Valourium. Many scholars argued that this contributed to the ambitions of the Grand Dukes who seceded in the National Wars. By establishing the Royal Valourian Trade Co., the royal family managed to establish a decent maritime trade network, although they were unable to create successful colonies. The large sums of money entering the royal family's personal funds and the national treasury enabled expansions and improvements for road and river routes. This allowed Valourian-made goods to efficiently reach port cities on the Southern coast and, as a side effect, troops to move more quickly across the country directly representing the Crown. Thus disputes between nobles endured much pressure to resolve their differences in courts rather than on the battlefield. The heavy Crown influence on these institutions and ability to project force basically ended the last remnants of true feudalism.

In combination with improved waterwheels and farming methods, the improved transportation networks allowed the population to burgeon and expand into new places in towns. This continued the Valourian tradition of trade-based urbanization.

National Wars
The National Wars is unique in Valourian history as its only ever three-way civil war. The war was initiated by the Ameran Grand Duke Kirillovsky Aleksandr Leonidovich, who after several failed attempts by King Romuald Kownacki to establish Valourian colonies overseas declared the Kingdom of Prayataskaya, the homeland of the Valourian Amers, on the 4th of May, 1768. Not only did the Amers in Prayataskaya see the United Kingdom as unfairly skewed to favor the Zwylnians, but Zwylnian kings in recent history had committed some of the most glaring errors in governance both domestically and abroad. This led the Valourian Amers not only to emphasize the differences between their culture and the Zwylnians, but also gave them a scapegoat on which to blame political problems. In turn, the Valourian Zwylnians in the Eastern third of the country, largely isolated by its characteristic hills and forest, began to shun Ameran culture and clamor for the creation of a new independent Zwylnian kingdom. Once the Valourian Amers had declared their own kingdom, these Zwylnians moved quickly to establish their own and on the 23trd of May, 1768, declared independence as the Kingdom of Wydowik under the leadership of Grand Duke Mariusz Bojanowski. King Kownacki, to whom about half of the population was still loyal, refused to recognize either. Thus began the civil war known as the National Wars.

Whereas Prayataskaya began the war moving quickly to establish a firm defense for its territory, Wydowik sought to force Kownacki to recognize the nascent kingdom by sending General Edmund Kubiak with an army to lay siege upon Amestryi. Although this left most of its forces committed, Wydowik had little trouble defending its borders from attempts at invasion from loyalist forces due to the aforementioned hills and forest covering most of its land. Furthermore, few efforts were made by the loyalists to regain Wydowik initially as they accounted for the difficulty of invasion along with the fact that Prayataskaya contained most of Valourium's iron, which was crucial for any sort of war effort. Therefore, Valourium's primary goals at the start of the war was the retaking of Prayataskaya and relieving the siege of the capital. With both the King and the Grand Martial of the Army, Grand Duke Antonov Victorovich, being trapped in Amestryi, the responsibility for these two goals fell on Duke Anatol Krolikowski, who had around 38,000 soldiers, 6 batteries of field cannon, and 2 batteries of siege artillery at his disposal.

The first significant engagements of the war were the Battle of Norogodny and the Amestryi Siege Bypass, both of which were stunning successes for the loyalist forces due in part to the bulk of rebelling forces being unprofessional and mostly untrained and the latter of which successfully rescued Kownacki and Victorovich. This gave many the impression that the rebellion would be over shortly. However, as the armies of Valourium reached more important objectives, they unexpectedly found themselves facing increasingly better equipped and trained troops, resulting in, among other things, the disastrous Battle of Fedosov Ridge, in which Krolikowski's army leading the offensive against Prayataskaya was almost entirely destroyed. Krolikowski barely escaped with his life. This encouraged Prayataskaya to go on the offensive.

Dragging out for many years, Prayataskaya's offensives gained ground against the Valourian loyalists until June of 1773, when rumors of Prayataskayan massacres of predominantly Zwylnian villages pushed the citizens of Wydowik, built largely on ethnic identity, to demand retribution against Prayataskaya. Delaying as long as he could, self-declared King Bojanowski bowed to the people's will and issued an ultimatum for restitution to be paid to the devastated villages. Prayataskaya refused. The rumors were not true. In fact, it was none other than Krolikowski who created the rumor and sent spies to Wydowik to propagate it. As planned, it led to war between the two breakaway kingdoms. Wydowik started its offensive against its new enemy in May of 1774, when the spring rains had mostly stopped in the country's central region. It ended disastrously as Prayataskaya possessed a larger army which Valourian loyalists refused to attack that year. This failure opened Wydowik up to an offensive, however, which Valourium exploited. Attacking in August the same year, Valourian forces quickly advanced through the dispirited breakaway state, using the need to defend Zwylnians from further crimes to raise support for reintegration. It worked. Wydowik rejoined Valourium in June 1775, after a second brief offensive from the loyalists. Prayataskaya attempted to prevent this by opening its own offensive against Valourium, but they made little progress as they stretched their resources thinner and thinner everyday.

Valourium spent the next several months preparing to strike back at Prayataskaya. In June 1776, Valourium attacked Prayataskayan forces from the south and the east, surrounding many of Prayataskaya's armies and forcing them to surrender. Kownacki's government had reclaimed nearly three quarters of all lost territory just that year in an impressive demonstration of power. A second offensive launched in May of 1776, which also made rapid gains for an entire month straight, forced Leonidovich to either surrender or be killed either by his own subjects or by Valourian soldiers reaching the rebel capital. He chose his life, signing the Peace Treaty of Dragovich on July 6, 1777. This peace all but destroyed entirely the individual identities of the Amers and Zwylnians, establishing a timeline for the creation of a new language combining both people's and banning the use of either on their own. In addition, only the most fundamentally important locations throughout Valourium would retain their traditional Ameran and Zwylnian names. After two generations passed, most Valourian urbanites were speaking Zwylno-Ameran, and much of the countryside had adopted it. While legally enforced, the population of Valourium was simply too spread out with too little connective infrastructure to fully apply enforcement throughout the United Kingdom. As a result, there are still small populations throughout Valourium which carry on the use of the languages independently. In 1992, a SPAN resulting from the case of a man arrested in Amestryi for speaking Zwylnian saw the decision made to stop enforcing the ban on personal use of Ameran and Zwylnian, although it still forbade the use of it in regional governmental documents. This is currently challenged by groups such as the Wydowik Voters' Caucus.

Industrialization of Valourium
The Industrial Revolution reached Valourium in no hurry. The first major event influenced by it had no immediate effect on the country's development into an industrial state. The Uprising of the Serfs in 1821 is arguably the result of foreign literature made available through mass publishing industries abroad. While few serfs were literate, those most respected among the many communities of serfs were exposed to new ideas challenging the authority of their lords and praising the value of owning one's property. So although the basic principles of Liberalism became personal values among the Valourian people, they entrenched themselves quickly into a romantic of life, dedicated to managing the family farm or travelling throughout the land as a merchant, meeting new people and enjoying familiar taverns along the way as depicted in the famous poem Siabry na Čužynie. They shunned the frantic, fast-paced living style which came with industrialization. Valourian industry sprang forth from so-called "huĺtajavaliary," an abbreviated phrase meaning "lazy merchants," who started to produce cheap counterfeits of expensive foreign goods which they would previously have to travel hundreds if not thousands of miles for. As such, these huĺtajavaliary set up workshops tucked away in the Wydowik Forest, out of sight of most travelers while accessible enough for small villages to be employed making these goods which they largely did not recognize. A strict division of labor was utilized to quickly manufacture these goods.

In 1861, King Nikolai commissioned an investigation concerning counterfeit products uncovered the hidden production centers of Wydowik Forest, which the government quickly seized and turned into armorers for the army, utilizing the apparent methodology of the huĺtajavaliary. Impressed with the rate at which even these small workshops produced arms using the methods of the huĺtajavaliary, King Nikolai Kalinowski ordered the construction of two factories in Amestryi, one for rifles and one for artillery, which would utilize this system. Seeing how powerful neighboring armies could become with their heavy industries, he feared that Valourium could not protect itself if it refused to catch up. Most of the nation's coal and iron came from the eastern reaches of Valourium, however, so King Nikolai also commissioned the Dragovich-Amestryi Railroad, to cross the entirety of Valourium. It was completed in 1870. The factories were completed in 1875, having been constructed using materials imported by sea until the railroad's completion. After the completion of these factories, the small Wydowik Forest workshops were sold to locals, who started producing farm tools, simple hardware, and housing supplies. Initially sparking stiff resistance from small-scale farmers and craftsmen worried about their livelihoods and traditional ways of life, the government soothed the populace by offering many farmers jobs too valuable in their eyes to pass up on and other farmers subsidies to purchase the land others were leaving. This did not quell all peasants, however, and a national police service was established in 1876 mainly to protect workshops and factories. By 1881, 15% of Valourium's population lived in urban communities supported by industrialization, mostly linked by railroads.

Reign of Svetoslav and the Aroslav Terror
King Kalinowski passed away in old age at the age of 83 in 1881, and King Alexander Svetoslav ascended the throne. Despite the impressive rate at which Valourium had industrialized over the last couple decades, Svetoslav thought that it was too slow and initiated the Valourian Modernization Mandate (VMM), directed by the Bureau of Valourian Industry (BVI), which had the authority to levy taxes within a certain margin and distribute the funds to individuals according to their ability to accelerate the industrialization process. Beginning operations in 1883, the VMM was supposed to be a more efficient way of distributing government subsidies according to how specialists thought they should be spent. However, Svetoslav appointed his brother, Duke Dmitri Aroslav, as the BVI's director, and he was more concerned about the withering strength of the aristocracy than with the improvement of Valourium's industry. Therefore, he laid out a plan whereby nobility throughout Valourium would be given funds and instructions for establishing their own local industry, thereby reinforcing the dependency of peasants and workers on the aristocracy while also empowering Valourium to fight a modern war. In reality, however, Valourium's landed gentry wanted nothing to do with dirty, smelly factories or loud, fuming trains, so they instead spent the money on repairing their estates, expanding their stables, more lavish feasts, and other extravagant indulgences. Subsequently, after reviewing industrial progress after the first year of the VMM, Svetoslav grew furious with Aroslav. Instead of dismissing his own brother from his post, however, he simply demanded significantly better results in the following years. Svetoslav is reported by some to have threatened to brand Aroslav's forehead with a hot iron to mark incompetence, but there is no evidence that this happened.

With Aroslav hard-pressed to expand Valourium's industrial base but still wanting to strengthen the aristocracy, he sought the help of Jan Balakov, Director of the Valourium Royal Investigative Service (VRIS), to enforce industrial-focused spending among those receiving funding under the VMM without shifting focus. The VRIS had no legal right to interfere in the VMM's operations as no laws or regulations required those receiving subsidies to necessarily invest them in industry. It was not considered necessary on account of the nature of the VMM. What the VRIS agents did, receiving generous payments from Aroslav, was gather information about those who squandered their subsidies and fabricated severe criminal charges for them. In total, twenty-eight individuals were tried in courts over their alleged crimes, sixteen were sentenced to prison, and one sentenced to execution by hanging. This sequence of events is colloquially referred to as the Aroslav Terror, lasting from 1884 to 1888. In these four years, Valourium's industrial output rose by approximately 12%, indicating that Aroslav's method worked and explaining why there was not more suspicion surrounding the criminal trials of dozens of aristocrats. Indeed, for a few years, commoners started seeing Aroslav as their champion, stamping out corruption among the landed nobility, making sure "Valourians' money" got invested into "Valourians' future." The execution by hanging of Count Vojciech Domovnik, famous for his original literature, finally aroused suspicion from Svetoslav concerning the nature of Aroslav's running of the VMM and the trials of the nobility.

King Svetoslav personally began to question agents of the VRIS. Promising immunity to those who cooperated with the investigation, they quickly gave up the information that Aroslav fabricated most of the criminal charges against the nobility. Svetoslav ordered the arrest of Aroslav at the beginning of 1889 and put him on trial in the High Court of Amestryi in what would become only the second criminal trial to take place in it. With the image of Aroslav being a champion of the commoners and the fighter of corrupt aristocracy, the public started depicting the trial as a struggle between the government and the people. All of this cultivated in the January Riots of 1890 when the court found Aroslav guilty of several counts of perjury, misuse of government authority, and corruption. For this, he was sentenced to life in prison. When police failed to put down the riots, Svetoslav brought in the army to quell the public. In the end, several blocks of Amestryi were destroyed by fire and 21 people were killed. Among these were 2 soldiers, 4 police officers, and 15 civilians, one which was a child who suffocated in smoke whilst trapped in a burning building. Dozens other were injured. This is widely regarded as the beginning of the rift between the public and the monarchy. As a result of the whole debacle, great pressure from the general public and Valourian aristocracy, Svetoslav made a promise to establish a representative parliament, although he did not attach a planned date to this plan.

Reign of Ekaterina II
In 1892, King Svetoslav passed away after a stroke believed now to be related to a brain aneurysm. Taking his place was Queen Ekaterina II. Her first act was to establish the parliament promised by Svetoslav, making it consist of 360 representative districts. Despite this, the monarchy retained most power to rule by decree, and every act of parliament had to be approved by the monarch. In the end, the parliament acted only as a supplement to the Throne. Nonetheless, the establishment of an elected parliament did much to subdue the population. Seeing her popularity and power as an opportunity to save the reputation of Valourium's system of monarchy, she did not stop at establishing a parliament. Ekaterina II nullified the acquisition of the lands of Aroslav's persecuted nobles by other aristocrats and held a public auction to investors. This allowed the development and flourishing of a few extremely productive, vertically integrated companies in Valourium, assisted by the Royal Bank of Valourium established by the Queen. Also during her reign, Ekaterina II encouraged members of the nascent parliament to enact safety reforms in industry. In 1900, Valourian workers celebrated the passage of the Workplace Safety Act along with a minor unemployment program as a triumph of their parliament and a sign of the Queen's grace. While riding on a wave of popularity in a country building up towards world power status in terms of economic influence, Ekaterina II passed away just ten years into her reign in 1902, succeeded by King Kalinowski II.

Ascension of Nikolai II
Nikolai II, once upon the throne, deemed that Ekaterina II was too focused on social issues and let the military fall into an appalling state of readiness for modern warfare. He immediately called upon a minor yet noticeable increase in income taxes to fund a recruitment drive. Additionally, he started to funnel money from public works projects and social programs to upgrade the army's arsenal. This had two noteworthy effects on the population: the government no longer effectively relieved the urban areas of Valourium who continued to face ballooning costs of living; furthermore, factories continued to receive greater and greater demands from the government as a consumer, resulting in increased neglect of positive workplace conditions as well as increased work hours. Dissatisfaction over this trend stewed up until the fifth of May, 1907, when the workers of the Dragovich Noble Metalworks plant walked out on strike, starting the period in Valourium known as the Proletarian Awakening, which ended with the Proletarian Revolution of Valourium. Local police were dispatched to disband the gathering. The strikers refused, prompting the police to respond with force. However, the workers, more much plentiful than the police, were not only not deterred by this force but responded with their own. Dragovich Noble being the largest supplier of steel in Valourium, Nikolai II dispatched the 3rd Royal Cavalry Regiment to disband the crowd. After the strikers refused to disband when confronted by the cavalry, the soldiers opened fire. All confidence among the workers quickly collapsed, and they started scrambling in a panic. The soldiers kept firing and firing until everyone had completely fled the area around the metalworks. 84 men were killed in the incident, almost all of them workers from the plant. Despite great effort from the state to prevent news of the massacre from spreading, papers started circulating in Amestryi on May 11th, resulting in a massive street demonstration marching toward the summer palace in which it is predicted that around 400,000 citizens took part. As they marched to the palace, the protesters encountered soldiers at Aureli Square, where they were told to disband. Once more refusing, yet another bloody massacre, known simply as the Aureli Square Massacre, took place. This time, 167 people were killed with hundreds more wounded. Fury spurned large swaths of the working class to enter open revolt against the government in the period known as the Great Turbulence. It ended on the 28th of January of 1908 with the end of the Siege of the Lebryck Barricade, where the last of the proletarian rebels surrendered to government forces.

The Proletarian Awakening
Rather than taking the revolt as a sign that he needed to reform the country again, Kalinowski II decided that the most urgent necessity was to reform the army and police to be better at preventing armed insurrections and subduing them once they exist. For this purpose, new draconian laws were enacted. These new laws prohibited more than five non-related persons from gathering outside of work, created a new government censor bureau to review texts submitted to publishers, gave the police new gear and weaponry for the purpose of breaching and clearing buildings, and established a close network of military installations throughout the country to monitor activity not only in the cities and villages but the countryside as well. Additionally, police units were attached to railway stations and ports to ensure customs officers and station workers thoroughly searched for and confiscated Socialist literature. These came to be known as the Retribution Acts by the general populace. Although these did effectively end the publishing of new Valourian labor-oriented literature and bring about the arrest and subsequent execution of most of Valourium's most notable Socialist thinkers, such as Arciom Lysenko and Darya Yakovenko, the Proletarian Awakening continued.

In the countryside, hand-written notes and pamphlets were passed from person to person, with individuals sometimes copying these for greater circulation. Mechanically pressed content rarely escaped the watchful eye of the army and the King's personal investigative service, which acted as a secret police. In addition to reinforcing Socialist ideology by spreading awareness of social and economic conditions in the agrarian country, they kept track of military movements throughout the countryside and established profiles on the identifiable officers. These rural operatives formed the Peasants' Front, a political faction which sought pro-agriculture reforms. They supported centralized government, in order to regulate prices to keep farming profitable, but also economic decentralization, so that they would keep the profits from agricultural activity. While Valourium already had strong central governance and a mostly de-centralized economy, the Peasants' Front believed that the state unfairly supported industry at the expense of the rural country. Bringing goods to market in the cities, whey made contact with urban workers, who by and large organized into two different factions: the Yakovenki and the Lysenkii.

In addition to the passing of small notes and pamphlets, Socialist agitators and Unionists started composing songs with hidden meanings to encourage the spirit of dissent and coordinate ideological/philosophical principles. While most working class individuals may not have understood the intricacies of refined ideology, they could understand the sentiment expressed in simplistic song verses, and they tended to resonate. For example, there is "Heaven's Treasure," which promotes the concept of higher wages, condemning the typical starvation wages of the time, and disguised it as an upbeat song reinforcing faith. There is also "Lucifer the Banished," speaking of the "Wrathful Lord" set out to "harm the righteous children," once again using religious metaphor to express anti-royal/anti-noble sentiment. Stirred by song and empathy, many individuals continued organizing in underground circles despite the draconian laws enacted explicitly to prevent the organization of labor. Some of the actions taken by these individuals included planned tips to the police with some true and some false information in order to throw them off track, paying homeless individuals to march in small protests or harass police, and strategically placed public proclamations of the desires and intentions of labor parties which were actually made up. All of this was done to promote class consciousness, exhaust law enforcement, and inspire more and more people to join the cause.

Agitating activity started to die down in the years leading up to 1916 as wages increased along with decreasing work hours as the military's modernization neared completion, decreasing government demand for weapons among other things. However, wages started decreasing again as the labor force expanded faster than the economy could generate new jobs. Because of this, workers started striking more and more regularly with greater numbers up until 1921, when an enormous nationwide general strike momentarily crippled all commercial activity. The government sat down to negotiate with noteworthy figures from major sectors of the Valourian economy and reached a deal allowing the formation of labor unions in the private sector. Following this, wages once again began to increase, subduing the leftists again until 1927, when a major economic recession took hold in Valourium. With rampant inflation and unemployment, among other things, Valourium's major labor unions covertly planned and executed a general strike.

The Proletarian Revolution
What is now known as the Proletarian Revolution in Valourium started as a general strike in February 1927. While labor unions were legalized after the rebellion of 1907-08, their actions were strictly regulated by law. Strikes were hypothetically allowed, but under such specific circumstances and within such a narrow context that they were effectively useless, especially in times of high unemployment such as 1927, when market failures across Amphia tanked Valourium's economy along with several other States.

Police were quickly dispatched in every city to disband the picket lines, but they were easily overwhelmed by the greater numbers of the strikers in addition to the unemployed masses who joined the lines simply to denounce the government. So, the army was used to put down strikes, although many soldiers were unwilling to fire upon strikers. By this point, most soldiers were drawn from urban populations, and they often had family working in urban industries. As a result, the army split between sympathizers and loyalists. As a further consequence, many cities became safe havens for strikers and their sympathizers, protected by former army soldiers. Strikers eventually organized local governments for their safe havens, comprised mostly of union officials administering the strikes.

With union leadership split up among the several independently operating cities, efforts were made to establish lines of communication. Army deserters formed up into Crimson Brigades, so-called for their crimson armbands identifying their loyalties, went on the offensive. By May of 1927, most cities under striker control were connected. On June 18th, the First Congress of Proletarian Unions was convened, which produced a provisional constitution creating a nominal workers' democracy. In this system, union members elected government representatives, who then elected executives from among themselves. This outraged the Peasants' Front, who by and large formed the backbone of revolutionary intelligence operations and were critical to the success of the Crimson Brigades' offensives in the spring. Since they were not members of any union, they were shut out from elections for this new government.

The new government, simply known as The Proletarian Union, quickly came to be dominated by the leaders of the Steelworkers United and the National Workers' Union as they formed the largest blocs of organized workers. These unions promoted Lysenkist principles of State economic planning, at odds with the decentralizing ideology of the other large organizations, the Federation of Industrial Workers and the Trade Unionist Coalition. Nonetheless, these latter organizations did not possess the constituency necessary to counteract the formers' dominance, and the economic planning appeared to serve the new government well during wartime.

Much of the bloodiest fighting in the early days of the civil war took place around Dragovichka, where most of Valourium's steel and other heavy industrial goods were produced. As well as this, most coal and oil extracted in the country were transported through the city. When the revolutionaries eventually secured Dragovichka and its surroundings for good, industry in loyalist territory was practically crippled. This, along with the overwhelming pro-revolutionary stance of the peasantry, made it impossible for loyalist forces to maintain adequate supply. As such, by the autumn of 1927, revolutionary forces controlled much of the country from the Prayatask mountains to the northern provinces. [Tentative] However, in spring of 1928, the Vordic Empire landed sea troops in the northern provinces to help hold the line against revolutionary forces. Although several offensives were launched by the latter, the well-supplied and professional Zusean troops prevented any breakthrough. Meanwhile, reactionaries in the neighboring regions of Ossintoria and Lakaria, where trouble was also brewing between socialists and royalists, formed into volunteer militias in an attempt to prevent the formation of a large socialist power bordering their homeland. They harassed the southern border of revolutionary-held territory, diverting much needed forces from the northern front.

During the winter of 1928/1929, however, the Vordic Imperium notified Nikolai II that economic and political circumstances made the intervention untenable in the long run. [Tentative] To make things worse, a harsh winter and the revolutionary tendencies of the peasantry resulted in food shortages through all of Valourium but especially in the loyalist-held territory. So, the royal government of Nikolai II was in an extremely precarious situation, while the revolutionary front increasingly saw outright victory as an impossibility. In January 1929, knowing his situation was dire but appearing solid from the outside, Nikolai II sent a letter to the revolutionary forces to initiate negotiations for a peace settlement. The king and his retinue met with Proletarian Union delegates at Wielkispływ, a large city just behind the front on the loyalist side. In mid-February, a deal was reached whereby the king would abdicate and turn over sovereignty to the Proletarian Union in exchange for the safety of his family and retention of the family estate in Wydowik Forest. Shortly after the deal was signed, the Proletarian Union decisively vanquished the royalist militia wreaking havoc in the south.

Today, Artjom Medsyszki, a grandson of Nikolai II, is serving as a member of the Presidium of the Proletarian Union for the district containing Ljutsa, the closest city to the family estate. He is a strong proponent for environmental restoration in national forests and clean industrial technology, making him a popular figure in the region as well as a policy leader in the Presidium.

Consolidation of the Proletarian Union
With the end of the civil war and formalization of Proletarian Union sovereignty, the Second Congress of Proletarian Unions was called to address long-term issues of statehood. Certainly, few if any States would recognize the legitimacy of the Proletarian Union despite the formal abdication of Nikolai II and his agreement to abolish the monarchy entirely. Furthermore, the major actors in the revolution had different preferences for how centralized the political and economic systems would be. The leadership of the National Workers' Union (NWU) and Steelworkers United (SWU) leaned towards Lysenkist doctrines, which favored the centralization of political and economic authority into a State led by a united workers' party. Between the two, however, the Steelworkers United members were generally less dogmatic than the National Workers' Union members and believed that total centralization would be an inefficient disaster for a peacetime economy. Although, they did agree that highly concentrating the means of production would be good to lower production costs and rebuild the armed forces and national infrastructure, both of which would be crucial for protecting the revolutionary State against foes such as its incredibly powerful neighbor, Zusea.

The Federation of Industrial Workers (FIW) adhered to industrial unionism, whereby all workers within a given industry would be represented by one union. Meanwhile, the Trade Unionist Coalition (TUC) advocated strong institutionalization of trade unions, which assembled could make arrangements for harmonious work between different trades and ensure a relatively flat salary curve for all levels of employment within and maybe even between each industry. Both of these organizations, influenced by the theory of Yakovenko, favored a decentralized political structure that would devolve power to the lowest government unit which could address any given political issue, putting them both at odds with the NWU and SWU, who wanted a national organization to set most policy for all levels of government.

In addition to all this, people from all factions were concerned about Valourium's outstanding debt before the revolution. It was almost universally agreed that the new State had no moral responsibility to repay it, but practical concerns abounded. Especially, people worried that the new State would be unable to get any significant international financing if it neglected the old debt, and they also feared that capitalist powers might use arms to force repayment.

Although the Second Congress started roughly, under threat of protests from the peasantry, the NWU and SWU, the two largest delegations at the Congress, pacified them by promising that a legislature would be created in the model of the old National Assembly, which was very popular. The FIW and TUC were opposed to the creation of "statist institutions the likes of which always give preference to one class over others," but the overwhelming support for such an assembly from the peasantry made it political suicide to oppose it. In the end, an industrial syndicate system was enshrined in the constitution as a compromise between the four large factions. It created industrial conglomerates within each established industry, whose executives would be elected by the workers within the industries, much the same as in the provisional constitution, but consolidating the patchwork of different unions into the syndicates as they are known today. These syndicates would coordinate production with each other through the National Industrial Congress, where representatives from executives' offices and delegates elected among floor workers would evaluate production capabilities and challenges along with working conditions and compensation. It also created the National Workers' Congress, which would act as the State's legislature. The Presidium, previously both a legislative and executive body as per the provisional constitution established in the first Congress of Proletarian Unions, would be consigned to executive duties only.

The Second Congress also agreed to assume responsibility for the debts of the previous regime, although the Presidium would quickly send ambassadors out to Valourium's various creditors to negotiate new payment arrangements. These ambassadors were also tasked with legitimizing the new State by emphasizing that the royal family had been spared, and the revolution was popular and represented the interests of Valourium and her people.

To address security and economic concerns, the first duly elected National Industrial Congress resolved to focus on infrastructure and armament for the next five years. Railroads were to be rebuilt and extended, new bridges were to be constructed, roads to be paved, and the army arsenal to be expanded with new weaponry with particular emphasis on modernization. Old rifles would remain in production, but new artillery was to be produced along with aircraft and armor. Although Valourium possessed one of the world's largest air flotillas before the revolution, the aircraft were severely outdated. The tanks operated by the Kingdom were also outdated and not nearly numerous enough in the first place.

Endwar
As the Endwar in Amphia began, the Valourian Armed Forces remained extremely similar to the revolutionary army of Crimson Brigades during the Proletarian Revolution. While the structure had been professionalized, economic woes and civil reconstruction efforts hampered arms manufacturing, leaving the army's vehicles and gear largely outdated. The Army could boast a single modernized armor division, while the rest of its armor, comprised mostly of (FT-7) tanks, was scattered throughout infantry units for fire support. Doctrine was based on positional warfare and heavily dependent on large artillery formations. Some mechanization was introduced to the Army Cavalry, although horse soldiers were still common. The modernized wings of the Air Force were small and spread thin.

Government
Valourium is a democratic socialist federative State. It has a 528-member unicameral legislative body, the National Workers' Congress, and a 150-member Presidium, which acts as the supreme executive institution with the power to veto or approve and implement legislation. Both are elected on a biennial basis. There is also a quasi-legislative assembly, the Syndicate Assembly, which convenes representatives from each of Valourium's Syndicates to discuss business issues including supply, demand expectations, logistics, finance, and infrastructure. It has little official power, although it may pass resolutions which are binding upon Syndicates, Syndicates are able to voluntarily adopt policies in response to assembly reports and resolutions, and the assembly itself may present certain resolutions to the National Workers' Congress as legislative proposals. Additionally, as the Syndicate Assembly represents a majority of the Valourian workforce, including skilled and unskilled labor along with executives, it wields considerable lobbying power with regards to both the National Workers' Congress and the Presidium.

Political Geography
The Proletarian Union of Valourium is

Security Concerns
Since the Endwar, tensions remain high with Zusea, which occupied Valourium for years. Zusea's staunch opposition to Socialism and large military make it Valourium's primary security concern, especially given the grudge Valourians still hold against the imperium.

Armed Forces
Valourium maintains one of the world's ten largest militaries, emphasizing the role of ground and air forces in national defense. Strategic and tactical doctrine focus on rapid mobility in order to scatter and disorganize hostile forces in a defensive conflict, the only realistic scenario acknowledged by Valourian defense institutions. The Valourian Armed Forces are divided into the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. Additionally, each Voivodeship of Valourium maintains Civic Guard units, which are essentially militias of citizens of each respective district. The Civic Guard is used for large-scale emergencies such as natural disasters in peacetime but may be subordinated to Armed Forces Command in times of war, effectively making it a large active reserve. Ordinary Armed Forces Reserves are also ample, albeit with aged weapons and vehicles available to them for the most part.

Armored cavalry units are the preeminent formations of the Valourian ground forces given the expansive flat terrain between the Zwylnian heartland of Valourium and the Imperium of Zusea, Valourium's primary security threat.

Separation of Supply and Demand
One of the greatest points of contention in the early days of the rule of the Proletarian Union was the matter of how goods would be distributed without the Capitalist mode of economics. Many advocated for a complete command economy. Those in favor of the model came to be known as the Totalitaristy, or Totalists. They argued that it was the only way to ensure completely equitable commodity and service distribution. Many others argued that a free market economy should continue to be used, but with the Union having the power to intervene in business activity and present enterprises with mandatory directives. The thinking behind this was that it is impractical to try to manage the household intake of commodities for millions of people from one governing body and that, furthermore, people should be able to choose what they earn through their work. In the fourth session of the Constitutional Assembly of the Proletarian Union, a compromise was reached in which the supply side of the economy would be controlled by the National Workers' Congress, which would have a body added to it to represent the syndicates, the Valourian Syndicates Assembly, which would be responsible for enacting the gathering and usage of resources in production and distribution in order to avoid the placing of impossible demands upon producers and laborers. One of the primary responsibilities of the NWC would be to gather economic data from regions, compiled from county reports which are based on municipal reports. The Syndicates operate as businesses do in free-market economies with the exception that they must present their plans to the VSA. Finally, the VSA would submit all syndicates' plans to the NWC for approval. The purpose of this complex scheme is to allow syndicates to operate efficiently, knowing their own circumstances and possibilities while providing the general populace a way to disallow plans which would be detrimental to their own well-being or that of the economy.

The demand side of the economy, however, was left to the individuals inhabiting the country. The utilitarian nature of the Proletarian Union led to the agreement that the best path to maximum content among the population was to allow individuals to decide upon their own commodities and services.

Syndicate Production Model
The syndicates of Valourium operate with a unique model which provides administrations such as those of private enterprises while also making them responsible to the state and their employees. As such, economic growth is not quite as rapid as truly private enterprise, although it occurs naturally and in response to real economic demands. At the same time, it provides the public with greater protection from recessions as well as more easily executable maneuvers to avoid noteworthy recessions and job loss.

Syndicates are organizations of enterprises which share common/similar functions, needs, and characteristics. For example, the Heavy Metals Syndicate includes operations for making steel from raw iron and carbon materials; producing steel frames, beams, girders, sheets, etc.; and milling steel parts, among other things. The core of each syndicate is its planning and coordination committee. In these committees, persons representing individual enterprises discuss what they need to operate and why then pass resolutions regarding goals, needs, and obstacles. Furthermore, these committees send delegates to the Valourian Syndicates Assembly. The VSA essentially operates in the same fashion, with delegates discussing and passing resolutions in line with their interests. However, in the VSA, the delegates propose economic legislation to the NWCV. Furthermore, each syndicate in the assembly has voting rights in the NWCV.

Factories and other large workplaces, defined by the Proletarian Union as workplaces with over one hundred employees, are run by industrial committees elected by the employees and subject to recall votes. These committees are tasked with running enterprises similarly to executive boards. They create plans for their enterprises and manage their resources and labor. As well as this, they are trusted to place those they perceive as the most diligent, knowledgeable, and/or experienced workers in on-floor management. In order to maintain their positions, worker committee members must place some degree of trust in the workers who elected them and make sure they pay attention to their demands. In return, the workers legitimize the authority of an administrative body to issue reasonable penalties and punishments to genuinely disruptive employees. Additionally, this ensures that leadership positions are generally held by individuals who truly understand their jobs and operations. These committees also vote on the level of compensation for employees at every level of operations. It is generally understood that running large industrial enterprises is a difficult matter often requiring irregular and unscheduled work hours, and as such committee members, effectively comprising higher management, usually has no problem setting their own compensation higher than the on-floor laborers, but the ability for committee members to be removed by vote by such laborers prevents the difference from becoming too extreme.

Employees constituting on-floor labor are allowed to petition for recall referendums for delegates sent to the VSA by syndicate committees. This allows generally competent negotiators who understand production and service operations as well as labor conditions to establish economic interests in national policy, including agenda for trade, taxes, infrastructural development, and regulations. Due to the market style of consumption, basic supply/demand statistics are used to give the government a realistic look at the needs of the nation. In the process, the population, being heavily involved in the production process as voting members of economic society, are made aware of basic and even somewhat sophisticated economic facts while being decently shielded from misinformation. Theoretically, this makes the consensus-building process across Valourium's many different governmental authorities and economic enterprises more civil and productive. This is a virtue enshrined in the Constitution of the Proletarian Union.

The attachment of the VSA to the National Workers' Congress, comprised of county-elected representatives, allows the general population to block the initiation of economic policies which would be potentially harmful to their well being or that of their communities. Furthermore, it allows the public as a whole to imprint upon the key actors driving the economy its long-term vision for the future. This lends itself to preventing long-term stagnation and recession.

Work Culture
Although Valourians work an average of 6 hours per workday, many choose to work 8 hours per workday for most of the year so that they can go most of the winter without working, or working very little. There are many reasons for this choice: it keeps people from having to travel in adverse weather, it allows people to do things which help them overcome seasonal affective disorder, and it allows people to participate in many holiday activities and travel for such.