What, exactly, is peace?
In a narrow sense, peace is merely the absence of war. In a broader sense, it is a state of harmony—a condition where conflict and discord are replaced by mutual understanding and cooperation.
So, if we are to call our current situation a peace negotiation, what flavor of 'peace' are we seeking?
"Recognize our sovereignty over all currently occupied territories, as well as a ten-kilometer buffer zone to the south!"
"Rebellious curs! To dare address the Crown in such a manner... You should be grateful we allow you to stand here at all—"
"Be grateful you haven't been put against a wall and shot yet. You're wasting our time with your aristocratic filth."
Naturally, it was peace in the narrowest possible sense.
I sat at the negotiating table alongside the commissars of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, facing the diplomatic envoys sent by the Victorian Empire.
I am certain the ultraradical factions among us would ask: why?
Why bother with a peace treaty at all?
If reactionaries composed of nobles and royals are destined to collapse under the weight of their own inherent contradictions, then is negotiation not a futile exercise?
Should we not, instead, press the war further to accelerate the revolution?
Strictly by the book of socialist theory, perhaps they are right.
To understand socialism while adhering to reactionary principles is impossible—unless one is a madman following some hybrid 'Third Way,' a naive idealist, a proponent of National Bolshevism, or an early fascist clinging to a potpourri of incoherent ideologies.
Just as the Chicago School in the United States—creators of neoliberalism—denied the Marxist concept of exploitation, the revanchists and reactionaries deny the exploitative nature of class structures and the autonomy of the proletariat as asserted by Marx.
Consequently, they inevitably lag behind the wheel of progress, eventually falling off the tracks of global history.
...At least, that is what the socialist and communist idealists like to preach. In reality, that is a dream with a dangerously thin probability of manifesting on its own.
The peasantry, still shackled by feudal systems and religious conservatism, cannot shed their illusions about the nobility as quickly as the industrial workers. If the revolutionary government fails to implement radical land reform or maintain peasant-friendly pricing, their revolutionary fervor can sour into reactionary hostility in the blink of an eye.
Fed by such peasants and remnants of the old guard, reactionism finds its second wind. Ultimately, this leads to the same oppression seen in the USSR: the suppression of the peasantry under the guise of War Communism, and the mass slaughter of the Kulaks under Stalin's iron fist.
When such things occur under the banner of 'Real Socialism,' the state drifts further away from its ideals. This failure becomes the fuel that eventually drives people to reject the very legitimacy of Soviet thought.
The Soviet Union perished because of these contradictions.
It was destroyed by citizens who no longer believed in the government or the communist ideal.
It was choked to death by the conservative old guard, the KGB, and the military apparatchiks who refused to relinquish their power.
But... we have not walked that path of self-destruction.
We did not drink from the poisoned chalice of War Communism.
Furthermore, by integrating a form of 'State Capitalism'—though since Keynes does not exist here, it is better described as a pragmatic moderate socialism—we have achieved significant success. Capitalists in Terra are currently little more than robber-barons-in-waiting, anyway.
We have seized a victory greater, a freedom wider, and a democracy better than the incomplete successes of the 20th-century Bolsheviks on Earth.
However, the revolution is unfinished, and the war is far from over.
To this day, we have not even glimpsed the Victorian strategic assets—the Steam Knights.
Despite mobilizing every scrap of metal, every rapid-fire cannon, every rifle, and dozens of improvised warships just to defeat a motley coalition of nobles—and even after successfully executing a bypass and encirclement strategy—we sustained heavy losses.
Could we defeat a Steam Knight, a mechanical monstrosity capable of butchering hundreds in a single charge? No.
Our only strategic asset capable of standing against such power is Alexandra.
The only advantage we possess is raw numbers.
But a single strategic weapon cannot hold the line forever.
Like the Chinese Volunteer Army in the early stages of the Korean War, we would eventually be decimated by air superiority and overwhelming artillery. Without proper counters, we would simply be marched into a meat grinder.
That is why... now is the opportunity.
For reasons unknown, they want a peace treaty. We will give it to them.
Following this accord, we will undergo a national transformation.
We will refit this nation into a grand machine designed for the coming revolutionary war that will shake the world. We will gather our own strategic weapons.
We will endure this humiliation to cultivate our strength.
With the hammer of the people and the rising tide of the proletariat, we will shatter their illusory empires and reconstruct them into Soviet states.
In short: this peace is a retreat of fifty paces to ensure a future advance of a hundred.
The imperialists believe we are riddle with contradictions.
The skeptics believe we will eventually devolve into an elite-led autocracy or another empire worse than the monarchy.
They are wrong.
We will overcome every contradiction.
Workers, peasants, and the intelligentsia will unite to establish a true proletarian state.
We will stain the world red.
From Sami to Sargon.
From Bolivar to the Far East!
But first, we continue the deception.
Recently, the People's Tribunal delivered its verdict on the anti-revolutionary and anti-human nobles whose trials had been delayed. They were sent to the execution grounds and dispatched in public view.
It was necessary to manufacture an atmosphere of terror.
"The accused, Archibald Ninimore, is found guilty of thirty-eight counts including anti-revolutionary propaganda, solicitation of murder, espionage, treason, attempted terrorism, serial murder, obstruction of justice, industrial sabotage, and obstruction of union activities. Therefore, this court sentences the citizen Archibald Ninimore to death."
"Th-this is a conspiracy! You lowly peasant scum!!"
"Drag him away!"
The Victorian delegation surely saw us as bloodthirsty radicals after that.
We will use that perception.
There is a strategy derived from the carrot and the stick: 'Good Cop, Bad Cop.'
The middle-tier cadres, party members, and heads of the commissariats act as unhinged radicals. I, and a few others, pose as the voice of moderation.
By doing this, the envoys will naturally gravitate toward us, hoping to empower the 'moderates' by agreeing to more favorable terms to avoid dealing with the 'madmen.'
We even staged the Peasant Soviets to appear destitute.
Since the high and mighty lords know nothing of rural life, we only had to make the peasants look slightly more miserable than those living under normal noble rule.
"How can they live in such pity..."
"Eating only a single loaf of bread a day? This is barbaric!"
Through these tactics, we deluded them into thinking our system was buckling under its own weight.
They see a Republic so radical it must surely collapse. They are indulging in the delusion that they will reclaim these lands soon enough without a fight.
This was the backdrop as the negotiations commenced.
And through the crude listening devices we had hidden, I could hear their whispers.
"...Let's just concede and finish this quickly. The nobles in this region are all dead anyway. If we break off negotiations or try to reclaim too much territory now, the Great Dukes will just swoop in and fatten themselves on the spoils while we take the heat."
"...Are you certain?"
"Yes. These radicals won't last. They'll collapse from an uprising of the very 'virtuous commoners' they claim to serve, and the land will fall back into the Crown's hands soon enough."
Excellent.
They intend to bend.
Our strategy had worked. Now, we just had to play along with their farce.
"Recognize our sovereignty over all currently occupied territories, as well as a fifty-kilometer buffer zone to the south!"
"Rebellious dogs of the Emperor! You dare? You should be grateful we allow you—"
"Grateful? Thank the Motherland we haven't fed you to the vultures. Aristocratic filth!"
This exchange was born from necessity.
...In fact, we were repeating almost the exact same lines again.
We had gone through this several times already.
I suppressed a sigh. I felt like an actor on a theater stage, delivering the same dialogue with the same emotional cues over and over.
But I couldn't let my guard down. Genuine feeling had no place here.
This was a performance—a diplomatic masquerade.
My cadres were playing their parts perfectly, especially Wrangel. He was turning red in the face, shouting at the top of his lungs, ensuring the diplomats grew weary of this 'diplomatic amateur.'
Beyond simple exhaustion, they were being subtly cowed by the perceived threat to their lives.
And now, my turn: the moderate.
"Easy, easy. This is a sacred hall of negotiation. Compose yourself, Comrade Wrangel."
"But these reactionary bastards started—!"
I silently raised a finger to my lips.
Wrangel took a sharp breath, and only then did the fire in his eyes seem to dim. Readjusting his mask, he receded back into his seat.
I gave the imperial delegation a small, subtle wink. They appeared appalled by the display, but that shock was quickly woven into the web of my negotiation strategy.
Now was my time.
"Recognize the sovereignty of our Soviet government over the entire occupied region, plus a ten-kilometer buffer to the south. Surely that is a fair price to pay for your safe return and the prevention of unnecessary friction?"
I spoke with a soft, conciliatory tone, while carefully conveying the underlying message: We have absolutely no intention of ever leaving this land.
If they failed to catch that, they were incompetent as diplomats.
Bluffs and diplomatic euphemisms flew back and forth. They huddled together, whispering. I could practically see the numbers, the gains, the losses, and most importantly, the 'prestige' clicking in their heads like a calculator.
Eventually, they nodded. It was our first victory.
The territorial dispute was settled. Next came the matter of prisoner exchange.
"There are many so-called 'anti-establishment' elements currently in your custody, are there not?"
"There are. Why do you bring them up?"
"Hand them over to us along with the prisoners of war. Their families as well. Wouldn't that allow your country to rid itself of a major source of internal instability?"
They hesitated.
They whispered about whether it was right to hand over their criminals to the very nation that served as the source of their ideological corruption.
The delegation's eyes widened. They were talking about ideological criminals—to hand them over on a family scale? That meant handing over even the descendants of traitors.
The answer, unsurprisingly, was positive.
"Very well. And what of our men in your custody?"
I had a plan for that. We would 'procure' our strategic human resources from the enemy.
"We will ask the prisoners directly. Only those who express a desire to return shall be repatriated. Furthermore, we will allow them to transfer their assets to the side they choose."
"Does that include your own prisoners?"
"It does."
I extended my hand.
That was the killing blow. I gave them the impression that we were trustworthy, while simultaneously positioning myself as a partner in cleaning up the post-war disorder.
"What do you say? A fair arrangement, is it not?"
I could almost hear the abacus clicking in their minds. They were weighing the benefits to their state.
Finally, they made their decision.
"Very well. We accept."
Naturally, this decision was born of arrogance. In their eyes, who would ever want to remain in a 'corrupt and repulsive' system like this Soviet state? They assumed everyone would beg to return to the Empire.
We would use that arrogance to secure a massive advantage.
The final drop of ink met the treaty. The seals of the Kingdom's Plenipotentiary and the Union's People's Commissar were pressed firm.
I looked at the documents, the ink still wet, and thought silently.
'This is not the end of the war.'
This is merely a pause. By the time our preparations are complete, they will regret every single word printed on this parchment.
For now... we play at peace. A peace written in blood. A moment of breath-catching today, for the sake of tomorrow.
And so, the negotiation was concluded.