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by Zitravgrad. . 86 reads.

Kazimir I. Miroslavsky's Autobiography [1st Person | WIP | It Keeps Going]


"Time flies, life dies -- unquestioned.
Hearts broken, dreams shattered -- unobjected.
Eight-hundred-thousand hours -- just enough.
I would rather not live more than that."

"Shards of glass -- our reality.
Pick them up, let them cut you.
Oh -- this endless agony.
It truly is the roots of all evils."

"There is no living in purpose.
There is no salvation in meaning.
See to it that your soul be distorted.
That. Is. My. Order."


And thus begins our journey onto nothing and everything that I have to offer. For a reason I will relay to you here, I decide to introduce myself and my history instead of letting it be written by others, although it is inevitable that someone has written their interpretation of me. Even if you do not trust me or believe a single word for my lips, I implore you understand me. My life has been a quest of power, without rest...

My name is Kazimir Ivanovich Miroslavsky. You may know me as the Premier of Zitravgrad, the revolutionary, the gendarmerie, the naval officer, a loving husband, and a devoted father of four -- but not a lot more. As you may have heard: "Men who create history have no time to write it." Well, about that. I am here, having just enough time to justify myself. And you are here, being the judge of me. Your verdict will become the history of me.


If you do not mind, this is quite the favorite picture of mine.
Sincerely, I promise that other photos will not take as much space.

With blood, toil, and sweat -- the people of Zitravia have fought long and hard for the new future as apparent in the Zitravian Revolution. And I have promised to secure it. But am I a patriot or just an opportunist? Am I the liberator or just another tyrant with different face? Ideas and ideals create ideologies -- but where am I in that regard? Zitravia, Gaia, and you, my reader, I do not implore you to symphatize with me. You, who, have a freedom of opinion, can put my name into the long list of this broken world's tyrants if it pleases you. After all, this piece you are reading is likely going to be ridden with bias, as expected from autobiography. Here's hoping that I do not bore you midway through the journey.





First of all, I have no shame in addressing my family history or our ambitions. No, rather the opposite. Before becoming "the class traitor" as the socialists liked to name us, we Miroslavsky had been a patriarchal military family, with our near-aristocratic tradition and frequent involvements with Zitravian politics and military. Our status as a military family would be far more relevant in the pre-revolutionary eras than now, as this means that we, as a part of the upper half of Kozavian-Zitravian society, were monopolizing means to social influence, wealth, and power through becoming prominent military officers and marrying into the Zitravian high society. People act as though pursuing better and higher places is such an embarrassing thing... and yet they will do so if given the chance. Our first 'official' patriarch was a second-generation noble immigrant from Adychei, Bislan Makhushnov (1762-1825), who fought in the Universalis War (1780-1817). While having married a Kozavian-Zitravian noblewoman in 1792 and earned his rank as a General in 1814 , he was never fully accepted into the Zitravian society until he entered the Orthodox Church (from paganism) and changed his name to Boris (Petrovich) Miroslavsky. Moreover, his Adychian noble rank also was not deemed high enough to apply to Kozavian nobility. There was no real explanation as to how he got 'Miroslavsky' from 'Makhushnov' and arguably the latter sounded better. (Or I might be prejudiced.) Our family has long revered the name of General Makhusnov and we have a painting of him in our main house -- a suburban manor he purchased in 1818. It would be hard to forget where you came from when there is a life-sized painting of a man in uniform in the first room you step in when you enter your house.

Systematically, the family was able to pass their values from one generation to another. However, none of the Miroslavsky patriarch was ennobled despite having several members married into the nobility. This was due to the fact that the family's status relied upon the status of the patriarch and the Imperial Rule was reducing the rate of giving noble titles as reward (the last on being in 1857). After Boris Petrovich, his son Alexei Borisovich (1796-1887) took a more deliberate approach as he arranged seven children into high-profile marriages. If his memoirs were reliable, they looked at him strange when he entered any social gathering. The man himself was involved in the Kasgar War (1851-1855). Meanwhile, his son Razan Alexeyevich (1833-1911) was the first Miroslavsky who saw no actual war in his lifetime (although he did join the military), while his son Yuri Razanovich (1861-1937) fought in the First Global War and took active parts in Kozavian suppression of Zitravian Communists and Providenskan Communes. (Because communists... am I right?) Yuri Razanovich was the first Miroslavsky to truly "clear" the family name of the Adychian origin, proclaiming himself and his descendants as pure Zitravian. Then, Yuri's only son, Pyotr Yurievich (1893-1991) would live long enough to see three global wars and fought in two of them. He also became the Governor-General of Zitravia in 1950s, the first commoner to be put in such position. In this era, our family declared ourselves as loyal to the Kozavian Empire and as protectors of Zitravia... and we all know how that ends.

Disillusioned with war, Vladimir Petrovich Miroslavsky (1920) was and still is the only patriarch in 200 years to choose a profession outside the military. He took up a career in law and became a prominent lawmaker in 1990-2000s Zitravia and married a wealthy Zitravian businesswoman named Aurora Kyschkina, setting the family among the civilian side of Zitravian high society. However, his son Ivan Vladimirovich (1945 - 1994) and grandson Kazimir Ivanovich (1970) (or myself) fought in the Imperialists' War, in which the former was killed in action. During the era of turmoil that followed, there was much clash between my grandfather and myself, with both of us belonging to different eras and mindset. The older man had wished to preserve the status quo, believing that the growing dissidents in the 2000s would "come and go" while I believed it was the end of the Imperial Rule and we had to adapt or die. However, I definitely did more than adapt -- I dare say that I led Zitravia into a new era, although it is still to be decided what kind of era it would be. And from here, our family name was finally preserved in the pages of history after 200 years of forgotten service.


Left to Right: Bislan Makhushnov (1762-1825), Alexei Borisovich (1796-1887), Razan Alexeyevich (1833-1911), Yuri Razanovich (1861-1937)

Left to Right: Pyotr Yurievich (1893-1991), Vladimir Petrovich (1920), Ivan Vladimirovich (1945 - 1994), Kazimir Ivanovich (1970)



I will admit that I have had it easy -- being born in a comfortable family with our privileges secured. This has been what my critics have been using to attack me for years. I could also say that I was born during the peak of our family's prestige and there has been no moment of dire need or lack in my life. Oh, perhaps suffering is also a privilege of its own. Nonetheless, I will also say that my family had in store for me all the great expectations one could put upon a son in a family governed by patriarchy. As soon as I was born, my immediate family consisted of my paternal family, in accordance to Slavic tradition. My great-grandfather, my paternal grandparents, and my parents would devote their attention to me since I could remember. It was a good upbringing in a way, yet it was uncomfortable at the moment. Sometimes, I did wish that I had a sibling to share all this attention.


I only put up this photo
because my mother told
me to do so. I was around
eighteen and only reading
the edgiest of poetry.

My father, Ivan Vladmirovich, was a naval officer. Hence, he would not be home for a long time then come home for quite a stay. Apparently, he was freshly promoted to a commissioned officer before I was born and he had to venture into the quest for ambition not unlike our ancestors before him. Nonetheless, we were close and I have long looked up to him as a role model -- serious, hard-working, and faithful. My mother, Ekaterina Andreievna, came from a similar type of family. They were immigrants from the now-dissolved Kingdom of Polske, in which their family were in the nobility. Nonetheless, the foreign nobility had this problem when they immigrated outside of their country: they might lose their titles if they could not find connection in the Kozavian or Zitravian nobility. That detail was important in a way, since it formed my mother's character. She has long been a dedicated nurse, a loyal wife, a loving mother, and a devout Orthodox, almost an ideal of femininity in our culture. However, she has always appeared to me as oddly submissive and muted.

Meanwhile, my grandparents were there to fill the time that my parents were not present, giving clandestine supports for something that my parents might have warned against and essentially spoiling me as grandparents tend to do. However, I owe much of my current identity to my great-grandfather. As I have mentioned, Pyotr Yurievich had been the Governor-General of Zitravia after the Second Global War. The man himself had fought in two global wars and participated in many conflicts within Zitravia, initiated either by foreign enemies or domestic dissidents. His political career was, however, short-lived, as the nobility did not sit well with his increasingly egalitarian policies. He spent much of his last years writing to justify himself and his actions in both military and political careers. He would explain to me the nature of power in its purity, with and without the politics that followed. That would build me up and open my eyes... but only several years later.

Outside this house, we have what we used to jokingly call "our network". But in reality, they were my cousins -- a few of whom belonged to aristocratic families. I will not mention their names except when needed, as it will appear rather pretentious of me to list out their names. Apart from them, I had the company of my godfather, Dr. Sergey Petrovich Pashkov, a respected pharmacist and lecturer with whom I tended to only meet under the context of church attendance. This means that as we both drifted away from the Orthodox Church, we also drifted away from each other. His relationship with our family has been complicated at best, but this is not worth explaining.

"Military families" in Kozavia and its former dominions are often middle-class to upper-class families who have a long-preserved tradition of sending their sons (or even daughters) to the military. They are not an official thing but certainly has a unique place in the Kozavian and Zitravian cultures. Each family sometimes has its "patriarch" who is in charge of the estate and the wellbeing of his family members. (For some reason, they tended to be more patriarchal than otherwise.) From time to time, such families might arrange marriages between their families and support each other in time of need -- a tradition often taken as nepotism. This tradition seems to decline in the post-independence Zitravgrad, largely because of the conscription already sending everyone to a couple of years of service and also the abolition of the rigid table of ranks and castes in 2008.


Please dearly do
remember that if you
have a teenage son
(or even young adult)
and want to take a
photograph of him,
do not tell him to smile
because he will not.

My early education was not exciting. I attended the local public school in Providenska from Kindergarten to Grade 6. The teachers were probably just writing my report cards positively like they did to any student who was not particularly problematic: "quite cheerful, does his assigned tasks well and promising." My happiest of moments in school was perhaps whenever I saw my father waiting at the gate of the school in full naval uniform, clearly just arriving home. Like any kid, that would somehow fill me with a sense of superiority otherwise known as "cool". Also, the 1970s was arguably the best decade of Gaian history. For once, there was no (official) war and technological advancement had brought us comfortable life and stable economy. To have grown up in it was a fortune, but to live long enough to see it go was a misfortune. So as the dear child of destiny for my family, I attended St. George Naval Academy Preparatory School since I was 13. It might sound early for some, but trust me -- it was considered an appropriate age for our culture, at least in that moment. I do not know about other children, but I was prepared for that.

As you may see, the earlier you enter military school, the more prepared you will be for promotion and position of command. But in pre-revolution Imperial Zitravia or the entirety of the Kozavian Empire in general, it was not that simple. Noblemen tended to come first, whether by the expectation of their own families or by hefty donations they might make. Regardless of reason, commonners like myself had to work harder and some even began to resent the system. But it was not a new feeling. It was a long-lived feeling we had never fixed. Surrendered to our fate and limited birthright, we could only say, "Well, he sure is lucky."

And so I tried to compete. There was no such thing as fraternity among these youg men who were supposed to inspire fraternity in the future. There was no such thing as compromise, cooperation, and compassion among our ranks, yet we were supposed to inspire and utilize such feelings in the near future. They said school was a replication of adult's world, and so it was. Or perhaps our world was even an exaggeration of the real world. There was politics among us since we all were introduced to each other, divided by social class, ethnicities or even regionality. I admit that for a teenager, I was great at pretending to like people I did not like. I had with me the small group of urban commoners, with us all standing back to back against other groups and we didn't even like one another all that much.

Academically, I would be educated for a future on a warship of any sort. The subjects I took were both from regular curriculum for secondary school and military-oriented courses, just so that we had any remaining common sense in our heads and developed actual interests further away from caliber of our guns. I myself had taken a fair interest in mathematics and history, while maintaining a reading list suited for overly dramatic young man -- classic literature, history fictions, whichever appealed most to my hormonal mood swings at the moment. In addition, all of us were required to pick up another language beyond our mother tongue. During that time, the most popular languages were definitely French and German, while English was mandatory as second language. But I did not know what attracted me to try grasping the strange languages spoken in the Kaskhacia, like Circassian, Georgian, and Armenian. Perhaps I remembered the Circassian blood in me, which should have been bred out seven generations ago since Bislan Makhushnov married a fair Zitravian wife. Perhaps I wanted to be different. Likely both.

Inevitably, I had to carry my report cards home, even in sailor's uniform. It usually read like: "highly intelligent, sociable yet selective with his company". Sometimes, it got more intense, sounding like: "we are concerned that he does not make friends with his classmates." My family was concerned, but not for the reason I expected. I apparently had overlooked the fact that network was built since in school, and to reject it would be a mistake. Well, what did they expect? I was a teenager and thought myself a lone wolf. But there we went, on with our lives, because once 1980s ended nothing would be the same. But at that time, we did not know. Even the best of us could not have known. During this time, I also found myself getting together with a childhood sweetheart, whose name I will not mention, as with my other former relationships -- in regards of my wife and the people themselves. She was a neighbor of mine and we had planned too far for a pair of teenagers, speaking playfully of marriage and such.



Once I graduated from the secondary school curriculum in 1988, I continued my higher education at the same academy, aiming for a Bachelor's degree which is a minimum requirement for a commissioned officer. At the very end of 1980s, there was a sense of anxiety at the end of our throats. The Imperialists' War had begun in 1985. However, it began as a series of conflicts nowhere near our lands at the beginning. Overseas territories, colonies, and whatnot. It was only in 1989-1990 that the Auestriker Empire and the Kozavian Empire had their battles in Eastern Auropia. It was hard to pinpoint that who began first, but eventually the Auestriker Empire proved to have the upper hand.

With the Auestriker troops quite literally knocking our doors in Providenska in the end of 1990, all military schools and academies shut down and sent all its students into their respective forces. At the young age of 20, I was sent to the Baldreatic Sea 3rd Submarine Fleet. Submarine Pankrova is probably one of the best submarines we have. And by "best", I mean "only a decade behind Auestriker submarines". Like a gruesome reminder of the Second Global War, we found ourselves fighting with futuristic U-boats.


This is the old newspaper I picked up
when I visited a restaurant in Grosingen
in June 1992.

Instead of being referred to simply as the Third Global War, the Imperialists' War (1985 - 1995) has been granted a fancy name that reflected its imperialist nature -- it was a war that stemmed from colonial conflicts which soon escalated into a field of opportunities for colonial powers to settle conflicts, whether old or new. Although starting as a series of unrelated conflicts, the factions soon became clear in the late 1980s – with the Kozavian Empire, the Papal States and Fracialian Empire on one side and the Anglicaen Empire, the Austriker Empire and the United Commonwealth of Eastern Atlanzian States on the other. The Kozavian Empire and its dominions only joined the war in its latter half, but its initiation of nuclear exchanges escalated the conflicts. As a result, the Empire was hit by 16 nuclear strikes, 3 of them were in Zitravia and 2 more were in Kozavia itself. The end of this war reshaped the global order and shifted the balance of power away from colonial powers to regional powers.

The map of Baldreatic Sea was becoming 'black' (the color used to paint Auestriker territories). Soon enough, the shores of Polizhen and Zitravia were painted black. It took two years for the Auestriker Navy to land in Zitravia in 1992, and established their own naval base in 1993. My entire naval career was defined by the actions from 1990 to 1995, and the rest barely mattered. From the right start, I was still a non-commissioned officer and my works abroad the submarine were intercepting electronic communications, and gathering information. Computer-related tasks, if anything, since Gaia as a whole had pushed itself onto the age of automation. In the submarine, there was little personal space and privacy, and I eventually had to get used to going days and nights without sleeping. Now stuffed together leagues under the sea, we the rowdy, bickering boys from the Academy had to get along. We did not use the sun to tell time. Instead, we used a clock that chanted old, repetitive propaganda, as acquiring new ones might result in us being detected by the enemy. Silence was appreciated, as loud alarms meant we were in range of the enemy and in position for battles. Communication with other ships on the fleet was limited to only dire necessities.

Our fleet was engaged in several battles and night battles, often relying on going around undetected to assist the main ships for most of 1991 and first half of 1992. However, we were separated from other fleets as the Auestriker fleets kept spreading thin and luring us away from the Zitravian shores. Once our shores were taken over early in 1992, the remnants of our fleet would join the Hsilgne Navy and start using Port Grosingen as our base of operation until the end of the war. I must admit that for an outdated naval force, we held out surprisingly well and we were strategically secured. By the very least, we were able to shield the Auestriker fleet from approaching the ports of our Allies, but those ports were not our enemy's priority to begin with.


That was the best smile I
could give for it. Good lord,
my father just died.

My concerns were with my father, who served on Battleship Strayaz, and my family who were in Providenska, which I heard was under siege from 1991 onwards. But that was the point -- the more we were concerned of the world above, the less efficient we were. Or at least our captain thought so. He only allowed vague reports from the above and concealed to us some important news that could be damaging to our morale. Fighting from a submarine was not exactly glamourous like charging on land or in the sky. It was stressful, anxious, and one needed to concentrate on endless mechanism. Our submarine only came ashore thrice in five years from August 1990 to March 1995: September 1991 in Svarevna, June 1992 and October 1994 in Grosingen in the Hsilgne Union. I only opened my eyes to the outside world three times in five years and found out that our captain had lied to us all along. He deliberately omitted the news of my father's death from me.

I did not quite recall what was my initial reaction to seeing it when I was eating dinner with, excuse me, a short-term paramour (an older, married woman at that) I picked up at the port. But later that night, I confronted my captain and found that I was not the only one who did that. There were quite a few of us who were demanding answers. The captain yielded to us but for the rest of the time he was with us, he maintained his reasoning and methods without fail, and perhaps knowing that he was deliberate in his actions calmed us down. God save his soul, as he committed suicide after the war after losing his wife and children in the Nuclear Calamity.

With the death of my father, I was decorated as a commissioned officer and became a junior lieutenant, with the order in effect in late 1992. It was special in a way because I had not finished my bachelor's degree, but it also came with a loss too great for simple ribbons and medals to console. In fact, it was a promotion people knew better than to celebrate. Better than nothing at least. Once we returned into the cold sea, I was moved to the navigation crew and started working under the Chief Navigator who would commend me to the Navy later on.

I was also able to call my family while at the port and learned that my great-grandfather had died of sickness while my family migrated to our summer dacha in Paplonbrianska. As if one loss was not enough... I decided to keep it tight rather than tell anyone. Every man had his own problems at that time, I was certain...




"Funny that we had to have political
scientists say that. It was dead obvious."

From here on, everyone would have no shortage of problem. Mass migration, communication shutdown, civil unrest -- you name it. All these were bound to happen when the world seemingly came to an end. Even drinking water became a luxury in some areas, so I heard. My family also could not return from the North immediately due to the difficulty in travelling around the country. In January 1995, the war was put to an ended just as the Kozavian-Zitravian troops had lifted the Siege of Providenska and pushed the Auestriker out of the Empire and even onto Polskan Republic, but the Auestriker surrendered before their capital would be occupied like in the Second Global War. As news went above our heads faster than ever, trauma arrived like lightning and there was not a single person left among our crew who had a bit of courage to console anyone. We silently acknowledged each other's sorrows and that was the greatest solidarity we had. We returned to the shore just about in time for the mass funeral for the seamen who died during the war. My grandparents and mother arrived from Paplonbrianska the exact day of that ceremony... and we all went to see my father for the last time. They brought his body up when they exhumed some sunken ships. Ironically, it was probably for spare parts, metals, black boxes and captain's logs more than the bodies of the patriots who sacrificed themselves in the war.


My cousin Alexey Svaskov
and I in February 1995.
Good Lord, at least he lived!

"May I join you for a moment? I served on Battleship Strayaz and your father was our captain." - Yermirov to me, paraphased

That was the first time I met Nikolai Yermirov. But at that moment, I did not know who he was and he did not know who I was, apart from being fellow sailors who had fought in the cold Baldreatic Sea. He kept a polite distance from us, seeing that we were coming as a family. Besides him, Yermirov appeared to have a twin brother who was deafblind, but worked in an intellectual position in the Secret Service -- Konstantin Nedelykov. These men would be in my path to destiny later on... but not for good.

They presented to us a body bag, near frozen after hours in the snow. Inside, there was a cold, pale husk of a man in a captain's uniform, almost mummified in thin ice. My grandfather would insist that we would bury him in a church in our neighborhood, despite initial protests. Seeing that more and more people were willing to transport the bodies of their loved ones to their homes, the navy's officials yielded. It was too odd a moment, loading my father's frozen body into the back of the car. I was not talking much on the way back despite my family wanting to know how I had been for the last five years that I did not see them. In the old Zitravian fashion, my grandfather kept repeating: "It will be fine. We will be fine." Zitravian had always been caught between the power struggle of the West and the East (if the world was based in Auropia, that is). We have always been so used to destroying and rebuilding. After every heartbreak, we would be told this. But at that moment, I would not feel fine again.

I came back to our house looking like it might have been used as a hideout. Well, it was. I was informed as such by the authority from the Army, who paid us the cost of repair but not a lot more. We didn't complain. It was needed, wasn't it? My father's body already decayed further from the moment they took him out of water. We decided that the mourning was over and buried him in the graveyard behind our local church, where quite a number of our familiy members had been buried before. I stayed at home for a while, a few months perhaps, doing the same thing my father did, but only spiritually. Walking, eating, breathing and even thinking seemed to be beyond my reach then. My uniform hung in front of my wardrobe like an old painting, a piece of memories I didn't want to touch.

And if any reader still has not forgotten my passing mention of a childhood love -- my past hope and dream whom I betrayed out of loneliness and weak-willedness when I saw another woman at the port of Hsilgne. I came home in hope to find her and renew my chances to be with her. I was of two minds at the moment -- should I merely ask her to forgive me and once more pledge loyalty to her or should I keep silent on something she could not possibly know about? As it turned out, neither option was on the table. She came to me apologizing profusely and caught me off guard with an announcement of her marriage with another man, a soldier who saved her life during the Siege of Providenska. I did not argue; in fact, I wished them well and I believed to heart that she deserved better than me. But that news did not help me to recover from my nightmares.

After quite a break, I got called to station in the Seabase in Nyebessa, a seabase looking west into the Baldreatic Sea itself. My heart died looking at the sea. I was not prepared to brave it again, either on or under its surface. I just knew I couldn't. After years of hardship, back-breaking training and years of stress under the sea, I had never broken, or so I thought, until this moment. I looked at the sea, painted by the sunset, and wept. But alas, it was not clinical depression and I doubted the Admiralty would take "sickness of the spirit" as an actual sickness if I wanted to take a leave and stay on half-pay for half a year or so. My melancholic and idle phase lasted about a month and that made me feel amazingly useless. Never before had I felt like a complete waste. In fact, I felt myself getting weaker physically at the same time my mental health deteriorated.

The Admiralty called. I was given two choices -- continue serving or resign. But despite the wording here, the question was not raised in an aggressive way. The Vice-Admiral responsible for human resources was a kind man who spoke in an understanding tone whether he actually understood us or not. He explained to me that the Navy could not do with sailors resigning en masse after the war and any officer who wanted to stay would be valued, and he was willing to "help" me with my future in the Navy if I was to return to the high seas. I could not look at him in the eyes when he spoke of it, and perhaps he took it as a sign that I was going to jump the sinking ship.

My heart was not in it as much as it used to be. But I did not have a choice myself. I would be frank that, as a twenty-four year-old who became a commissioned officer only due to his father's death, I could not see myself doing much. My university course was on hold since I left for war and I had no degree at the time, even if I was close to graduation. (I would graduate in 1996.) A lifetime of military academy also did not groom me for other careers. Perhaps this was one of the reasons I felt genuinely useless, but also obliged to remain in the Navy. And perhaps this was also why my grandmother had long been against my career choice. I was told I could leave, but the door was shut behind me, locked, literally and figuratively. It took an audacity to open a locked door when neither requested or allowed. But my weakness won halfway. I asked for a comfortable position on land, where I could work in the Navy but not on a ship. The Vice-Admiral was surprised, pleasantly surprised.

He had a position for me, extremely crucial one, according to him. The way he worded it made it sound like it was an indispensable position vital to the Navy's survival. In fact, he was right in a way, but the truth came out to be far less exciting. I was basically offered a position in the clerical staff in the Admiralty. In addition to this new post, I was given one week to readjust myself and pointed towards a few apartment rooms I might be interested in.

In April 1996, I started my first week working at the Admiralty in Yaroslavgorod in Paplonbrianska utterly confused. I had only been there as a visitor and our family's dacha was completely in the countryside of Paplonbrianska. It was an ancient city, nineteenth century incarnate and more efforts were put in the preservation of that aesthetics rather than proper modernization. After the war took away its vibrance and activities, the remaining feelings were coldness and broken pasts. But at least, I was not on a ship. I spent my free time, which was surprisingly abundant, to rediscover who I might be rather than who I should be. It was during this period of life that I became more religious than I used to be. Solemn, poignant aura of the city's cathedrals draw in troubled souls, after all. I prayed daily and nightly and observed fasting rules as closely as a layman could ithout damaging his health. I was not unhappy.

Still, my professional life was "doomed", if one considered paperwork to be a death of an aspiring soldier's spirit. But I soon learned how important bureaucracy was -- grudgingly so. Days and nights spent working on spreadsheets, standing next to a photocopy machine, and writing reports by hand soon taught me all the functions that composed the Navy, or indeed any military organization. True, there were such things as logistics classes in the academy. But as with everything in the world, one only gets better when one does it with one's own hands. Well, yes... even brewing tea for your superiors counted as work -- and that was where I started to learn how to make tea beyond throwing tea bags and hot water into cups. On the other hand, I gained a bit of insight and momentum in my personal life and lived an existence that was more than work and sleep. I worked out, read intensively, explored the old city, saw its museums and monuments -- a record of a state's glory. But there was a reminder which was omnipresent and far from gentle. Zitravian flags flew under Kozavian imperial banners everywhere in the city. I served the Empire, not Zitravia. It was an odd realization. A foreigner of that time might not realize, but Zitravians felt that they had been on their own since the war.

During this time, I also developed a close yet erratic relationship with a colleague of mine -- a dark-haired and light-eyed Kozavian nobleman by the rank of Count, whose name I shall omit for his privacy. We rarely arrived to a common opinion and the relationship could have been more physical than genuine. Nevertheless, I would neither blame him nor take it as my own mistake. I was a man living alone in a city completely new to him, and he lived long in the gilded cage that was aristocratic tradition. We enjoyed our patchy relationship for nearly two years. But it was the empty years of our lives. We were young men, rebellious in spirit but scared to put it in practice, and we definitely did not love each other enough to fight our families' doubts. In fact, I could not think of lasting a lifetime with him since the moment I saw him. Same-sex marriage had been leg in the Kozavian Empire since around 1970s, but that meant absolutely nothing for the ultraconservative, to which regrettably our families belonged.

His complaint to me was how I could never defend his honor. This stemmed from how we were usually the targets of ridicules among the staffs of the Admiralty. Legalization does not always mean acceptance, and he was more sensitive to me in this regard. While I shrugged away offhanded comments from those around us, he took it seriously. I believe he had enough in one particularly cold day in 1998, when the crew of Battlecruiser Sefirozh came ashore and one officer in particular requested certain paperwork. It was Captain Nikolai Yermirov, whom I had mentioned before. He was polite to me at first, then our conversation drifted to why I was in the clerical instead of the submarine crew. That was when it became rather disrespectful. Hilariously, men at my age only know how to retaliate. That conversation rang in my head for a bit while, even for months after it happened.

In return to his insult towards my professional path, I inquired about why he used a different last name to his "twin" brother. This hit hard, I believe. He was an illegitimate child. People had stopped batting an eye on illegitimate children for a while then, but not in the aristocracy. One should be happy that the aforementioned brother was deafblind, since he was accompanying Yermirov. His Highness, Prince Nedelykov, only tried to hold him down loosely with his feeble hands. I actually did wonder how he seemed to know that an argument was happening in front of him.

To make the matter worse, my former lover showed up for a paper or two. He was already a rival of Yermirov, and both men had blackmailed the life out of each other's scandalous lives. I understood more than others the extent of mutual hatred they shared for each other. But I did not quite know they would literally throw hands and swords in front of the photocopy machine after some verbal provocation, just mere minutes after I left the room for something.

If anything, that was disrespectful to the photocopy machine. It was an actual duel, with real blood being spilled. I was already too late when I tried to stop them, Captain Yermirov only backed down when the sword grazed his eyes, leaving him nearly blind. Meanwhile, the Count had his left hand severed. It was a horrific scene. I called the ambulance and explained to Prince Nedelykov what was happening with much difficulty with his accursed Braille machine. In response to learning that his half-brother just got in a duel and lost his sight right behind him, his Highness only replied: "I saw that coming anyday." But he did not see it happening, did he?

I spent the next few hours trying to explain everything to the Admiralty. Fortunately, the higher-ups brushed off the accusations that I provoked Captain Yermirov first and I was not blamed for this happening. Perhaps they were perfectly aware of the rivalry between him and the Count. Both men were put on inactive officer list for as long as their medical recovery took and later found themselves in Seaport Memel, part of the Auestriker Naukograd, which I will explain later in intensive details. But for now, the Naukograd sounded to me like a cushioned punishment -- they kept their jobs and positions, but were stuck in a seaport once belonged to the Auestriker Navy and still populated by prisoners-of-war. It was a position of no growth and little emotional comfort, especially when I had earned the animosity of both the Captain and the Count. When I visited both men in the hospital out of sheer duty, they already had cybernetic replacement for the parts they lost in the duel. How convenient. I bothered to drag my audience through this seemingly trivial anecdote to reveal my first standoff with my future enemy -- an embarrassing one at that. I did not know what makes it so memorable to me. Perhaps it is its ludicrousness that makes it so unforgettable...

Nonetheless, I thought a lot about how I would never grow up in the Navy thanks to my traumatic experiences. I looked at others who shared my experiences and found that at least half of them were fine and functional. Then why was I in the half that was not fine? Could I do this paper-pushing job forever? The answer for that was no. But the solution would arrive far later. It was coming close to the latter half of 1999. Summer was rarely warm, and I was starting to genuinely surrender to the fate I chose out of cowardice in this cold, living relic of a city. But there was then the bureaucratic downsizing, notorious known as "Y2K" -- its operational code.

We wouldn't know or care which "modern-minded" bureaucrats in Providenska had this bright, burning idea but we immediately agreed that they were possibly not as bright as they believed themselves to be. This was the greatest upheaval I had seen in a while. Junior officers from all forces in the Armed Forces were taken into evaluation for new positions elsewhere -- either civilian or police. They had hoped that it would offer some wartorn souls salvation in other parts of the civil service and safely transfer manpower from military to police without a hitch. Well, the hitch happened.

Perhaps tired of me, the new Vice-Admiral who worked in the Admiralty would strongly suggest I moved to one of these places. He said there was no glory for me in the Navy anymore. "Why stay?" That was his exact words. "If you so like the struggle for success, leave. You are young and a military university graduate." I had always been anxious to leave, I just had to be careful what I asked for. And so, I looked up those possible future careers and found myself most interested in the Kremlin Gendarmerie -- an elite paramilitary law enforcement organization. I had known it before, it was an organization sent to keep major cities in order and was frankly more like a tool of internal control than genuine protectors of law. But there was a sense of honor in it -- great one. I applied for it and prayed that I would be chosen.

To cut it short, I was eligible to serve in the Gendarmerie and the initiation training would start in June, whether by luck or qualifications. I made this decision completely independently from my family's "advice", although I would be placed in Providenska by another stroke of luck and simply because it was my home city, which would allow me to rejoin my family in our estate. The hitch I mentioned manifested itself during the so-called initiation period, in which young military officers who were groomed for military throughout their lives must make an attempt to comprehend how civilian and police affairs worked. People so often pair the military and the law enforcement together as men of similar feathers, but they will never be beings of the same species.


This one was from my initiation
training to join the Gendarme.
To be perfectly honest, I was
just posing, not really shooting.

I had to make the cut, or they might send me back to paper-pushing in the Admiralty or, worse, find me a job of such description in the Gendarmerie. Before the training, I was informed that I would be transferred to the Gendarmerie with the rank of Captain, effectively the same rank I maintained in the Navy at the time. However, my future promotion was an entirely different question. However, our six-month training was more theoretical than pracitical or physical. While physical training existed, the theories of becoming a policeman seemed far more grueling to me. That was perhaps both a dead end and a revelation to me -- a piece of a puzzle to how a state was governed. The state revolved around more than the military...

That said, I must be reminded again and again as to why I was reading traffic laws and learning how to wave in the middle of an intersection, or why I should recall how to handle a suspect without knocking them out or touching them the wrong ways. Civil rights would be an amazing concept to think about if you came from a place that taught you to just eliminate the enemies by whatever means. I would learn an entirely new definition of protecting the people.

But before one would indulge in dreaming of being a romantic hero and a protector of freedom, rights and public order, one would also have to consider that law enforcement protects the state as well. Sometimes, it would be nearly impossible to balance between protecting the state and the people, especially when the two parties were confronting each other. But that would be the problem of tomorrow rather than now. I myself would never find an answer or solution to that problem, even until now.

I showed up in Kolavinsk Gendarmerie Station as the new Captain. Judging from the reaction of my new colleagues, I must have seemed as though I appeared out of nowhere thanks to a ludicrous order drafted by some air-headed bureaucrats in the Kremlin. I mean, yes, that was the situation. I would not spend my time here to relay to my audience the structure of the Gendarmerie, but instead will explain briefly that as a Captain, I answered to the Major of my department, who in turned answered to the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the whole station. On the other hand, I had perhaps twenty-or-so officers beneath me, both commissioned and non-commissioned. First day in, and already in a position of command over two dozens of people who doubted my abilities. No, I, too, doubted my abilities. Do not get me wrong -- I have lifted my miserable head up and set my back stright during the last five years that followed the war. But every man ought to be a little anxious first time, especially when I consider that my previous post was a command over an office with five dispassionate clerks-in-uniform, a fax machine and a photocopy machine.

Although I initially found it incredibly irritating, I later found intrigues useful. It appeared that I replaced a captain who was beloved and only left to be assigned to a higher position elsewhere. I needed to fill her shoes to be able to distinguish myself in anyway. I later knew her name to be Colonel Konstanze Zaneva, whom I would also meet later. After meeting Zaneva, I would learn that imitating another person would only destroy myself. And so, I worked on bonding with my men in my own way, with the "old world charm" my grandfather had thought me. As a result, my subordinates at least felt comfortable enough around me but also gossiped me behind their backs. But it was just a trivial issue.

If anything, I was elated to be in Providenska with my family. But before I realized anything, I was celebrating my thirtieth birthday while still living with my grandparents and mother. Every friend I knew of was getting married and having children. The question now laid upon me: "When are you getting married?"

My time in Yaroslavogorod brought me only one fruitless affair with a man and a couple of numbers of women I never called again. Rarely had I ever felt that I was in the mood for a relationship after my first one ended the way it did. The guilt from that one fling lingered very faintly, but more importantly I simply did not have space and time in my personal life for another person. Seeing how indecisive I was, my grandparents took this matter into their hands. If I could not love, then marry for status and connection -- it was a Zitravian way of life before the Revolution, almost too common.

Two women in particular would come into my life and disappoint me while I would disappoint them in return. As I said, I had no space in my bubble for another person to occupy long-term even though I did still yearn for companionship. I would not mention their names, as usual. One of them was an aristocratic woman of lower ranks, which meant people would bat an eye way less if she were to married a commoner. But even then, she showed a disdain for my lowly rank of Gendermarie Captain and I was soon fed up of her prudish, pretentious demeanor and backed off fast. The second one was a businesswoman I knew through my grandmother's business. We entertained each other for a while, but anything more concrete looked impossible. We ended up as distant friends by the end of it all. My grandparents gave up, I gave up, we did not talk about it again for a great while. I looked back to myself and wondered what I did not have to hold down a relationship, but I was also relieved to remain free to choose my own future partner, if there would be any.

As for my career in the Gendarmerie, I served for the first four years without a primary issue. While the situation had stabilized much from the early days of peace, a low, deep wave of unrest could be felt. Even in the offices of the lawkeepers, complaints were whispered and ill-intended rumors of the ruling class were passed around like some kind of national pastime. I, too, took the liberty to cuss about delayed funding of something and the sluggish process of some other thing. Just to give a bit of perspective, I worked in the administrative department and spent my days patrolling the areas and doing stereotypical police duties. My men and I were not properly supplied and many of us resorted to buying our batons, handcuffs, and ammunitions with our own money.

Sooner or later, I would get myself reacquainted with combat training, to the point that my free time was occupied with such activity. However, you must excuse me for eschewing martial arts -- there is no art in my line of work, only get. From here, I discovered my love for fencing, hand-to-hand fighting and marksmanship. Nonetheless, I was also looking out for higher positions and took upon studying for a Master's Degree in Public Safety, which I obtained in 2002.


As Zitravia became politically unstable, the Kozavian Empire began to rely more upon the ruthless hand of the Gendarmerie to curb down the dissidents. It was an ironic situation -- the people would see every new rule or law as a sign of the government strengthening their oppression and the government would see any small request of liberty as a sign of disobedience. With his grandfather as an advisor to the Governor-General, Miroslavsky was initially stationed in Providenska and ordered to keep an uncomfortably close look of Baron Lavrentiy Kholmatzhonov, current Mayor of Providenska. In December 2003, he was notably present in the theatre when the assassination attempt on the Governor-General happened. And when the accusation randomly fell upon Colonel Oleksander Vitalijnovich Kyrycenko (who is Kazimir’s cousin through a paternal aunt) and the Cossack Guards, the younger Miroslavsky came to the defense of his grandfather and his cousin, the head of the Cossack Guards. Miroslavsky couldn't quite put a finger on what was going on, but was soon aware that not every man in the Kremlin was loyal to the Kozavian Empire. Once the accusation was cleared, Miroslavsky was discreetly promoted to colonel and transferred to a new post to silence him, and it was to a post that no one wanted to go.

"I did not have to look too deeply around me to notice that we were walking on shards of broken glasses. I was a gendarmerie officer, someone in the center of chaos. But I only needed more information to discern its sources and future directions. And it was in this assassination attempt that I found my wit’s end, even if temporarily." - Miroslavsky on the current state of affairs in 2003

The very last Governor-General of Imperial Zitravia before the storming of the Kremlin was Casmar Kirillovich Deryzsky, who was proven unpopular with the common people, but tolerated by the aristocracy whom he tried hard to appease. In December 2003, the Governor-General was shot in the back by an unknown assassin (later revealed to be a hired hitman rather than a politically-driven killer) while in an opera house. Among the suspects were the Cossack Guards, which was, at the time, led by Colonel Oleksander Kyrycenko, who had a tumultuous relationship with the Governor-General. The case was soon revealed to be plotted by the men from the inner circle of the Kremlin in order to cause a stir -- it was not even meant to be successful.

"When I entered that place for the first time, I felt as though I was leaving the borders of Zitravia and somehow crossing into the Auestriker borders. Everything about it gave me the feeling – their obsession with order, cleanliness and hierarchy of command was the main factor. I felt uncomfortable even as a man who had seen a fair share of military and police services, yet also fascinated." - Miroslavsky on the Auestriker Naukograd

He stepped his foot on the soils of Svarevna in February 2004 -- his next post was Auestriker naukograd, an old enemy airbase that was ironically turned into a labour camp for the prisoners of war who once owned it. In the Naukograd of the Auestriker prisoners of war, he felt almost like a prisoner himself, and, even worse, stuck with people who did not speak (or even try to) speak Russian or Ukrainian. Nonetheless, Miroslavsky would tread lightly around the Naukograd residents and managed to gain the trust of their leading figures. During this time, the Auestriker Naukograd sent a handful of their engineers to the Zitravian forces fighting in the rebellious Baldreatic States and Miroslavsky soon found himself in charge of something bigger than a colonel should manage -- an airbase, a seabase, and a military research city with the total population of almost 30,000, as well as the expectations of the Zitravian Armed Forces that he could beat all those into obedience.

The Naukograd was, in his opinion, where ethics were thrown out of the window in the name of "progress". Notably, he oversaw the projects of Colonel Dr. Alexander de Marmesont and Prof. Dr. Konstantin Stepanovich Nedelykov. While Miroslavsky respected both Marmesont and Nedelykov, they were not friendly towards him and vice versa. (Nedelykov is a "twin" brother of Yermirov, after all.) There, he witnessed Nedelykov's works, which set a leap for cyber warfare that was introduced in the 1980s. Then, and especially then, did Kazimir Ivanovich realized that the weapons created here were not only for wars against nations, but also wars against internal conflicts. Moreover, the Naukograd residents also spoke liberally and aggressively of how there would be a ‘revolution’ in Zitravia, something that piqued Miroslavsky’s interest.


That day I learned the hard way
that she can't handle alcohol.
Like at all.

"There was not much joy in my existence, even over a decade after the war. This little Ms. Marmesont was a light to my soul. I felt as if I could not last without her. But certainly, there was a loud objection. I was thirty-four, if I was a woman they would consider me a spinster. My bride-to-be was eighteen, innocent and pure. It took a considerable amount of time and efforts to convince her father than she would be in good hands." - Miroslavsky on the circumstances of his engagement

But in the oddities of the Naukograd, his attention was caught by the young, beautiful daughter of the Marmesont family -- the eighteen year-old Rosaline de Marmesont. Despite being fifteen years apart, he soon pursued her relentlessly and proposed to her. The couple were then engaged in the September of 2004. This became the second event that compromised his career in the Gendarmerie, especially thanks to the status of Auestriker Naukograd as a LinkSharashka where prisoners of war from the Imperialists' War were held. Reasonably, Miroslavsky's decision to marry a daughter of an Auestriker "war criminal" was seen to be in poor fashion, even if the Naukograd now served Imperial Zitravian Armed Forces and no other marriage between Auestriker officers and Kozavian-Zitravian ones faced similar issue. Perhaps it was Miroslávsky's position that ignited the controversy.

Auestriker Empire was an archnemesis of the Kozavian Empire during the Imperialists' War, and its defeat meant that the furious and embittered Kozavian Empire was free to trample over it. In 1995, 1,500 Auestriker prisoners of war were handpicked for their expertise in military-related engineering and extradited to a Naukograd (science city) in Svarevna for the purpose of weapon research. According to their sentences, most members were to be put under labor for at least 20 years. One of the high-ranking members in the Auestriker POWS was Prof. Dr. Alexander Theodore de Marmesont, a 36-year-old aerospace engineer. After gaining permission from the Kozavian authority, his wife and three children joined him in the Naukograd.

The Naukograd was essentially a city, with its own hospital, school, housing, emergency service, and utilities. For most parts, the "prisoners" had to take care of their own living condition, while living and working under the strict eye of Zitravian Gendarmerie. If anything broke, they had to fix it themselves while the Gendarmeire's only job was to watch them work and report on it and to prevent them from stepping out of the city without permission. This, however, also meant that their living standard certainly was above normal prisons and that they retained a sense of community. As a result, most kept their own culture and even refused to speak Russian or Ukrainian to their "jailors" and even demanded respect for their high-ranked officers and scientists.

Nonetheless, everything went through almost peacefully. Miroslavsky was moved out of the Naukograd on the ground that he did not fraternize any further with the Auestriker staffs, while his engagement was respected. He was given a new position in Providenska in November 2004, which was in a large Gendarmerie station called Svinsky Ploshard – a mere fifteen minute walk away from the State University of Providenska, the hotbed of political activities led by academics. He and his fiancée soon cohabited in his grandfather’s estate. Initially, his family did not find his foreign bride-to-be appealing, having preferred one of his former suitresses. Rosaline later received proper identification document which named her ‘Feodora Alexandrova’ -- her first name was derived from her father's middle name Theodore. By then, Miroslavsky was considered one of the local ‘shadow figures’ in Zitravian politics. Despite having no solid or legitimate power, merely being a high-ranking gendarmerie officer enabled him to an extent of the state secrets as well as its surveillance system.


You might wonder
who would take
this photo for us.
Well, long story short.
I had a spy camera.
Original Source Linkhere /
Colorized by https://colourise.sg/

"Some think their ambitions would end when they look behind them and see that they are already leading a decent amount of people. Others think their ambitions would end only when they look back in front and find that no one else is leading them. I was conflicted between these thoughts." - Miroslavsky in 2005

It went almost well until April 2005, when Miroslavsky would meet was his own authority, in the form of Gendarmerie Director Kirill Petrovich Kavaz. Almost immediately, he was accused of collaborating with the Austriker prisoners of war and put under "torture routine" for two weeks (along with a few other notable officers, one of whom died in torture). It was soon revealed to Miroslavsky that Kavaz needed someone to take the blames for his own collaboration with Lavrientiy Kholmatzhonov and it was Kavaz himself that plotted the assassination attempt on the Governor-General's life. Kavaz was duly exposed and tried for his crime by his colleague, the Secret Police Vice-Director Dorofey Alexeyevich Konstantinov with the help of the Ministry of Justice (in which Vladimir Miroslavsky had a hand.)

Kazimir Ivanovich was then released from prison in one piece, but barely alive. This event was some kind of political revelation for him, and he began to notice political factions that grew everywhere in Zitravian society. (In his own word, he mentioned "it took him too long to notice.") Reportedly, he was hung upside-down and flogged until he was unconscious. It was clear that he refused to speak and to admit for the crime he never did. This event set Miroslavsky's political philosophy, in addition to his already cynical nature -- he soon believed that this was in no way wrong and he deserved to be tortured on the ground of failing to avoid his enemy's manoeuvring. In his "might makes right" view, everything was justified in the game, as long as one got away with it.

Kozavian law enforcement has a rule on corporal punishment known as "Interrogation and Torture Routine". Essentially it is a process in which the interrogators must estimate the suspect's capability to withstand torture before applying a physical and psychological force upon him or her as constantly as possible without killing the person by accident. A routine is usually repetitive but specific, dictating what to do and when to do it for optimal result in interrogation. This includes, but is not limited to, long period of sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, food and drink deprivation, and stress positions, or more physical methods such as waterboarding, mock execution, flogging and threat of mutilation. Do consider that Miroslavsky is a physically imposing man and even then they managed to break his will to exist in two weeks and left him blind in one eye.


They took me out of
jail and expected me
to go back to work
a week later.

He also took considerable time to heal from the torture in the summer of 2005 – an event that ironically reconciled his family with his fiancée, as the latter dedicated much of her time to take care of him. This was when he reportedly joined the Workers' Union through an old friend of his -- Vladimir Zaradinsky, a writer and political activist known for staging riots and protests in Providenska. However, the so-called "union" was then still in its infancy and even if the network was wide, it was patchy at best. However, this changed when some army officers were involved -- the ideas shared by the union members soon spread widely, but quietly, to their friends and families, and so on. Ironically, the ideas that actually went out were not close to the idealistic socialistic draft of its proprietor, but rather the ideas of revenge and independence from the Kozavian Empire.

Prof. Dr. Denis Anatoleyevich Mefimsky's opposition towards the Kozavian Rule started from the tamed and reserved environment of the University of Providenska but soon was translated into something people could digest. Essentially socialistic, pro-worker rights and anti-monarchy, the Workers' Union was considered radical and dangerous by the Kozavian authority, almost confused for the Communist. Since their ideology attracted common people, the Workers' Union's strength was in the number of supporters. The Workers' Union later became the Workers' Party under the leadership of Premier Miroslavsky, but it is uncertain if its starting ideology still remains.



"If we shall compare the sorry state of Zitravia as being lost in a tunnel, then the light we are seeing at the end of the tunnel is not hope. It is hatred. But it is so strong, so passionate, so fascinating. That is actually what started our revolution."

Soon enough, he would be an influential member of the Workers' Union although he never fully acknowledged the economic ideology with which this faction came up. It was more about his connections and military and legal expertise that attracted attention from the union's members. In the summer of 2005, he was already planning to marry his fiancée but the turmoil in Zitravia required Miroslavsky to work harder. Coincidentally, Feodora was finishing her doctorate in the University of Svarevna, where technocratic activities were at its peak.

Feodora was also a protégé to none other but Nedelykov himself. Thus, Miroslavsky soon learned through his fiancée that another faction of right-wing technocrats was fixed upon restoring the Yaroslav dynasty. None of those would really matter to him until he learned that Nedelykov, a mathematician and computer scientist, was working on nationwide sabotage which would signal the beginning of the fascist revolution. While questioning the relationship between Feodora Alexandrovna and Konstantine Stepanovich, Miroslavsky still made use of most information about the latter that he heard through his fiancée and others. Moreover, he eventually had access to her works which were majorly related to the Auestriker Naukograd and the Zitravian Army intelligence agency. During this time, Miroslavsky played the role of a loyal gendarmerie officer while covering the activities of his own faction. This included the murders of Minister of Health and a prominent judge in early 2006, the recruitment within the ranks of the law enforcement and other minor distractions from the real issue that there were several political factions waiting to topple the Imperial Rule. The start of 2007 was also marked by an ominous feeling -- he did not just know what was about to happen, he intended to have a hand it it.

"Nedelykov, Yermirov and their followers were surprisingly patient. They could wait for years for their planned revolution… my own comrades were not nearly that patient. However, it was fortunate that we knew what they were thinking, or at least a glimpse of it. We could manipulate their fight to our advantages."

Even the fascists had two sides inside them... Led by Vice Admiral Nikolai Stepanovich Yermirov, the republican fascists were in support of a fascist republic run by a regime of military officers, free from the influence of a monarchy. It had its own struggles before forming into a small, but crucial faction filled with the top brass of the Armed Forces in the early 2000s, with its heart in the Zitravian Navy. Meanwhile, Dr. Konstantin Stepanovich Nedelykov was more of an aristocrat who wished to preserve the shape and form of the Zitravian ruling class -- the old elites. He rooted for the return of the pre-Kozavian monarchy. the Yaroslav dynasty. Although both were covered with the blanket term of "fascism" thanks to their far-right stances, they were drastically different and not even the brotherly bond would hold Nedelykov and Yermirov together to the end.

Thoughts were made in a school of thought -- the Front was united in the office of Asst. Prof. Dr. Adam Yanovich Dresvyanin, but his front was not very wide. Largely kept among themselves, the educated middle-class of eastern oblasts considered themselves above the common people by their education and merits, but below the middle-class in Providenska and Yaroslavogorod and the ever-privileged aristocracy. They were freshly-educated from abroad and brought "new ideas" to home, mostly from western nations. Even in the 21st century, the Kozavian Empire was a stranger to the idea such as "democracy", and they believed themselves to be the pioneers of it. In their mind, the only way that Zitravia could be free was to be independent from the Empire first and foremost. In its infancy, the United Front was considered an ally of the Yaroslavian Fascists until the Provisional Government came into existence.

Before the Kozava dynasty took over Zitravia in the 16th century, the Grand Principality of Zitravia was ruled by the Yaroslav dynasty. Unlike the opulent and grandiose, yet militaristic Kozava, the Yaroslav has always been rather ascetic and peaceful. And this was the reason they were still honored with the title of Grand Prince/Princess and allowed to hold religious ceremonies in the name of Zitravia. But nonetheless, the title was a merely empty word, and there have been a few Grand Princes who had tried to wrestle their dominion back. Grand Prince Viktor has always been a subject of discussion (and much quarrel). When a faction considered itself "Yaroslavian", its allegiance laid with him. Still, Grand Prince Viktor considered their allegiance a manipulation and his position a pawn of power. He was only 19 years old when the Revolution started, and never actually condoned any faction.

In the early morning of 12 August 2007, Miroslavsky took the chances to hijack the sabotage and marched with the Workers' Union to the Providenska Kremlin Walls, just to discover that the fascists would arrive by Light Cruiser Aphylla, under the leadership of Vice-Admiral Yermirov himself. Moreover, the other factions would throw themselves into this opportunity at later dates. Public protests would become more frequent and, worse, the police and the military personnel were found abandoning their posts to join the protesters. Despite the mixed message and visible ideological clash between the left and the right as well as the republican and the Yaroslavian, the Kozavian Empire sensed one crucial issue -- a revolution. The Governor-General would be captured and promtply executed by defenestration, from the window of the Kremlin Palace down to the ground where the barely alive Deryzsky would be burned alive by the angry mob of soldiers waiting below. At that moment, it felt as if the so-called "socialist" and "fascist" factions were joined together as one large movement.

Dr. Nedelykov is a man of complex operations -- even more so than Miroslavsky. In 1996, he started writing a calculator program named Paradox, which soon grew into a more complex software with several extensions (Equinox Paradox for date and time calculator, Avaritia Paradox for accounting, etc., etc.) But its final extension was "Licentia Paradox" which was a brute force hacking program that slowly ate into the Zitravian Regional GovSys (Government's System, that, ironically, was developed by a team led by Nedelykov himself) and into all public systems while erasing its own footprints. If Nedelykov's interrogation is reliable at all, 12 August 2007 was not the day he was ready, but rather a month before. But before then, he left his 64 GB RAM desktop computer running a 5 TB heavy software on the high-speed connection from 2001 to 2007, just to get hijacked on the day of operation.

The sabotage lasted almost 12 days, during which electricity, telephone lines and internet were not working properly (except some places that had their own generators -- a minor detail for Nedelykov anyway.) His targets were the bureaucracy and the law enforcement who, as he wanted, failed flat to preserve order in the capital city and other strategic locations. This also allowed the imports of foreign support since the border control would not be able to detect a majority of mercenaries without sophisticated tools. Any communication between any authorities were made by written messages sent by vehicles. It lasted not long, but long enough for the already prepared revolutionary armies to set itself up.

"The Empire's greatest mistake was not suspecting Baron Kholmatzhonov who was quite literally holding all the strings together under the nose of the Governor-General himself. For almost a decade, the Baron has established himself the best of connections -- he knew every faction regardless of ideology, knew where they formed, knew who they were and knew how to compromise with them... and most importantly owned a media company that published news he wanted Zitravia to see. This man was the Governor of Providenska for five years and swore an oath of fealty to the Kozavian Empire, yet it was him who hired a hitman to shoot the Governor-General in the back. It was him, the culprit that Kavaz looked for three years ago." - Miroslavsky's comment on the Provisional Government

As Zitravia quickly collapsed into an anarchy, the meeting between faction leaders were called in the first week of September 2007, by Baron Kholmatzhonov. Despite his excellent mediator skill, he followed an ideology that was the least popular among the radicals -- a simple constitutional monarchy under Grand Prince Yaroslav, but not without a strong grip from the aristocracy which he himself planned to lead. Nonetheless, he was able to convince all sides to gather the troops in time before the Zitravian War of Independence officially began a week later. Miroslavsky did not stand as the leader of the Workers' Union during the Revolution or the War of Independence, but was heavily involved in military and police affairs and seated as Director of Public Safety in the Provisional Government and a(n armchair) commander for the forces that his faction gathered. The reason behind Miroslavsky's appointment despite the existence of more senior officers was his role in the Workers' Union and his facade of being negotiable and submissive to the Provisional Government, as well as his being able to connect to the Naukograd and to communicate with some foreign mercenaries thanks to his knowledge in their languages. It was more of a situational appointment than anything.

Now face to face with Nedelykov and Yermirov who ardently protested his presence, Miroslavsky sensed future conflicts with them (or rather initiated it out of sheer distrust). He was put in two major roles -- one of a military staff commander and one of a police commander. Much like many "warlords" during the Revolution, Miroslavsky himself did have to deal with insubordination with lashes and bullets. At the time, he was assigned a division of his own in the capital, with a mix of professional soldiers, volunteered partisans and mercenaries -- which he ran with iron discipline. Zitravia itself was a large country, thus the Provisional Government's concerns were in fact the fightings originated from the breakage between those who were still loyal to the Kozavian Empire, while the invading forces from the east would become an issue later on. Some of those loyalists came in from of influential local politicians or even police or military officers. As the political partisan groups spread across the map, each group would try to hold their territories in order regardless of their allegiance to the Provisional Government -- such leaders were referred to as "warlords" even if such system was short-lived.


They told me that I had
fifteen minutes for this.
I only took this long to
mince my words to death.

Miroslavsky's wartime practices were rather controversial. During the War of Independence and the Civil War, Miroslavsky would have the funds of his troops both from domestic and foreign sponsors transferred to an offshore account and converted the funds into a stable currency that was not Kozavian ruble due to the descending value of the currency. His troops were not paid in paper money due to the instability of the situations, but rather in necessities like food, clothes and medicine for the soldiers and their families. Meanwhile, he held the capital still with endless propaganda and curfew and recruited civilians into his numbers. Some of the recruits under Miroslavsky was as young as 14. Much like other warlords during the time, Miroslavsky was holding an army he recruited, consisting of militiamen, professional soldiers and foreign volunteers.

The question of the foreign volunteers and mercenaries was never answered or explained, but most records had implied that they were from nations who were rivals to the Kozavian Empire. It has also been heavily implied that Miroslavsky, who speaks reasonably good Turkish, had a few connections with Saratolian diplomats and hence the Sultan of Saratolik. A couple more dispatches have discovered that Miroslavsky was aware or even supported by nationalist movements in other parts of the Kozavian Empire, namely Dozdchenian, Tbilosian, and Hayarmanian underground movements. His troops traded weapons and mercenaries with other nationalist movements and still supports them until now albeit covertly. He would also take many of these soldiers to his side during the Civil War, although some did go to side with his archnemesis Yermirov.

On 28 October 2008, the Kozavian Empire accepted their "inability to win" against the Zitravian forces and a treaty was signed between the delegates of the Empire and the new fledging nation which had not even decided what it was going to be. Again and again, Kholmatzhonov realized that there was no way it would survive if all factions remained intact, but he was far from being the only man who realized it. Largely by personal prejudice, Kholmatzhonov dismissed the Communist Party out of the picture, a decision that marked him as a rival of other left-wing parties. Meanwhile, the southeastern militia and Cossack troops under the Prince Director Dmitri Yakovich Potyomkin (who was not so coincidentally yet another cousin of Miroslavsky) blended into the Workers' Union and the rift between right-wing factions deepened over the role of Grand Prince Yaroslav. The United Front led by Adam Yanovich Dresvyanin left the scene and went into inactivity (until its comeback in 2010), while other factions struggled to work together anymore. The Internal Ceasefire (28 October 2008 - 16 November 2008) was a very short time in which nothing happened on the outside, but the Provisional Government was internally on the verge of collapse while it was working to preserve itself. The Collaborators' Civil War broke soon after its collapse. Most notably, it was Miroslavsky himself who broke the ceasefire by arranging an attack on the Fascists' submarine Odrashka from the Baldreatic Sea. By that time, Zitravian "warlords" had already banded into major factions occupying from several towns to an entire oblast, with Miroslavsky having more allies than his major rivals -- the northwestern troop of Vice-Admiral Yermirov and the eastern troops of General Leonid Kolkaz.



Just before the ceasefire was broken.
One of the most intense moments
of my life and perhaps my crew's too.
Original Source Linkhere

"The northeast belongs to our allies, far from us but not our enemy; a mild presence of people who might have supported Kozavia are also there, but they are ignorable as our war with Kozavia is over. The southern states are in conflicts, but mostly with themselves. There is my dear Dmitri [Potyomkin] there with his people. They open the way for foreign mercenaries to join us. But Yermirov has his fair share of these men as well -- after all their allegiance is money. The east... oh... the east... Leonid Kolkaz is its current "saviour" with all his rejected talk of communism. He is neither my or Yermirov's ally, but rather enemy of us both. The west, especially the capital, is divided between Yermirov and I, with our sacred borders drawn by the river near the Kremlin itself. But this is where my problem remains. Yermirov stirs the sea with chaos and delightfully sails in it. If I want him gone, I will need a fleet of my own." - Miroslavsky on "warlord era" of Zitravia

His quest to find a fleet strong enough to counter Yermirov was difficult. The Auestriker Naukograd had defected from the fascist, but it only produced highly-specialized weapons, many of which were classified and not many of his soldiers would learn to operate them efficiently in time. Moreover, many were demoralized against the sheer notoriety of Yermirov's name. However. he managed to secure a fleet led by the prototype Battlecruiser Polshaskovich. The said battlecruiser was built with the newest technologies plagiarized from Auestriker Navy, and gave Miroslavsky a fair advantage. In fact, Miroslavsky would be on that ship for the majority of the Civil War, operating from afar as his ship would slowly creep into the capital through the river Znieza.

While rarely actually seen in combat, Miroslavsky was an expert of strategy and logistics. Once the effects of the digital sabotage wore out, he began planning for his allies from the battleship. As the Director of the Public Safety during the Provisional Government, Miroslavsky was the closest to the common people, while Yermirov was the closest to the Zitravian troops as the Commander-in-Chief -- in many people's opinions, both men could have been working together as they did in the war against Kozavia -- Miroslavsky was an iron-handed leader who ran the civilian with draconian rule and Yermirov was a brutal commander who ran the troops with cult-like aura. Their only difference was that Miroslavsky was by the least tolerated by the masses and capable of compromise and sweet talks while men under Yermirov's oppression were actually holding guns. When cultists woke up, they would warn others against it.

The sailors under Vice-Admiral Yermirov were perhaps the least tolerant of Yermirov after their realization that he was not everything he had promised to them. Since February 2009, the fleet under Yermirov was still stationed next the Admiralty Building, a position he wouldn't give up for anything. A few days after entering each other's range of fire, Miroslavsky decided that a showdown in the middle of a river in the metropolis would be a horrid idea, but Yermirov would begin the last battle at their respective positions. As a result, both ships were heavily damaged but Light Cruiser Aphylla was the only one that sank. Yermirov was declared dead after the wreck of the ship was taken out of the water a week later.

"The Eastern oblasts do not want to be their own state. They want to put Kolkaz in Providenska and over a unified Zitravia. The problem is that I am already in Providenska and I, too, want to put myself over a unified Zitravia." - Miroslavsky's remark upon hearing that Kolkaz was still alive, 21 February 2009

Without Yermirov, the fascist soon broke into disarray, having no other leader capable of controlling the military forces as a whole and leaving only a few groups to offer strong resistance. His co-collaborator Nedelykov tried to escape south but was caught and put on a trial. The fascist troops in Providenska and western oblasts either surrendered or were killed while the situations in other regions depended on whichever factions were dominant. Any town or city under the Workers' Union would attack any remaining Kozavian loyalists as well as fascist sympathizers and silence any other opposition, sometimes by force and other times by gathering support of the local population. However, the eastern oblasts strengthened to the point of having a sizeable partisan network armed by weapons captured or salvaged from the previous conflicts.

It was getting more and more apparent that Miroslavsky was not loyal to the founding ideology of his faction. The Workers' Union soon found itself more or less defined by Miroslavsky's own methodology. Nonetheless, he became increasingly popular in his sphere of influence, venerated as a hero of the Zitravian people. Meanwhile, Kolkaz's own ideology was far clearer. If anything, he was a true communist who saw Miroslavsky as just a new face from the Zitravian oppressive ruling class run by aristocracy and bourgeoisie. With both men claiming that they were the true savior of the people, the Civil War would not end until they fought. However, between the western and the eastern oblasts, there was the massive Wasteland itself. Most conflicts during the Revolutionary War had specifically avoided this area thanks to its unspeakable hazards of radiation and mutants.

"The man who conquers the Wasteland shall conquer Zitravia in the process." - Leonid Kolkaz upon the ambiguous stance between the western and the eastern oblasts

As of the spring of 2009, the Wasteland had been virtually untouched beyond certain areas opened for research stations and watchtowers that kept people out and the mutated creatures in. While airborne transportation was possible, neither side had enough transport planes to make a decisive move against the other. Seeing that Miroslavsky was hesitant, Kolkaz decided to transport the troops halfway into the Wasteland and landed in the safe zones behind the western gates of the Wasteland. Only one oversight was made: the eastern army did not expect that the western army had begun an expedition into the Wasteland themselves. Both armies eventually found out that the legends of the Wasteland's terror were true and it reduced their fights into skirmishes rather than outright battles as intended. In protective gears and vehicles, both armies fought in the heart of the wastelands from 17 March to 21 May. On 22 May, Leonid Kolkaz was captured in his camp and promptly executed by gunshot. With much of professional troops wasted in the fight, the eastern army soon surrendered as Miroslavsky crossed the Wasteland into the eastern oblasts. The rest from now was a long path to reestablishing any semblance of order and stability.

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Zitravgrad

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