Hanson's Roughriders
SOC-9
So, I have had a love for Stalinist Russia in a space setting. What issues if any do you see a centralized government such as this?
Communism in space
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[m;]Anybody mentions anything post 1945, and they get an immediate infraction for politics outside the pit.[/m;]
Given that same limitation...
The pre-1945 Stalinist regime was functionally just an autocracy with a single-party bottom-up democracy as a distraction. Each party council (soviet) elects a member to the next higher level... and that one to it's higher level... and so on until the Supreme Soviet. Even under Joseph Stalin, much of the day-to-day was done by the Supreme Soviet and the various District and City Soviets.
As Orr notes, it's hard to have a command economy with lags that long; certain areas of Siberia were out of contact for similar lags due to bad weather and lack of radio.
It means you need Trusted and Trustworthy apporatschiki in the various remote sites, and you need to rotate them. You can either have centrally appointed political officers, or centrally appointed functionaries, or retain central approval and brainwashing for planetary soviets... or make it clear to the planetary soviets that the implementation of directives is left to them, but not the option of whether to do so or not, and the Military will back it up.
To be stable, you almost need psionics...
Given that same limitation...
The pre-1945 Stalinist regime was functionally just an autocracy with a single-party bottom-up democracy as a distraction. Each party council (soviet) elects a member to the next higher level... and that one to it's higher level... and so on until the Supreme Soviet. Even under Joseph Stalin, much of the day-to-day was done by the Supreme Soviet and the various District and City Soviets.
As Orr notes, it's hard to have a command economy with lags that long; certain areas of Siberia were out of contact for similar lags due to bad weather and lack of radio.
It means you need Trusted and Trustworthy apporatschiki in the various remote sites, and you need to rotate them. You can either have centrally appointed political officers, or centrally appointed functionaries, or retain central approval and brainwashing for planetary soviets... or make it clear to the planetary soviets that the implementation of directives is left to them, but not the option of whether to do so or not, and the Military will back it up.
To be stable, you almost need psionics...
Were those often out of contact parts of 1930s Siberia vitally necessary to the state? You need to talk with a steel mill or tractor factory more often than a prison or lumber camp.
An important point, especially when you previously mentioned councils electing one of their members to serve on higher councils!
Were those often out of contact parts of 1930s Siberia vitally necessary to the state? You need to talk with a steel mill or tractor factory more often than a prison or lumber camp.
An important point, especially when you previously mentioned councils electing one of their members to serve on higher councils!
Note that the elected served until they resigned, were arrested, died, or got elected upward... there was no "recall" process. Psionic brainwashing of the planetary soviets would be adequate to ensure their loyalty. But not adequate to ensure their safety and the stability. No, for that, you need Thought Police.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
I would think you could run into it on a planetary / system level more than once in a while. All you need is a dictatorship (charismatic or not) with a law level of A or better I'd think.
Even an impersonal bureaucracy with a high law level would work. That is, "Stalin" (the local equivalent) is as more a figurehead than a reality (something like Big Brother) for the average citizen on a daily basis who has to deal with something like the bureaucracy in the movie Brazil.
Or, you could have the really insidious charismatic dictator with a law level of say E or better who runs what appears to be a utopia right up until you do something to get his attention. Lord Farqquad maybe...?
As for motivation: Psionics / thought police would work but then again fear and uncertainty would too. Bureaucratic inertia on the scale of the Vogons would do as alternative. Imagine a planet of nothing but lawyers...
Even an impersonal bureaucracy with a high law level would work. That is, "Stalin" (the local equivalent) is as more a figurehead than a reality (something like Big Brother) for the average citizen on a daily basis who has to deal with something like the bureaucracy in the movie Brazil.
Or, you could have the really insidious charismatic dictator with a law level of say E or better who runs what appears to be a utopia right up until you do something to get his attention. Lord Farqquad maybe...?
As for motivation: Psionics / thought police would work but then again fear and uncertainty would too. Bureaucratic inertia on the scale of the Vogons would do as alternative. Imagine a planet of nothing but lawyers...
There are a lot of Stalinist looking high pop governments out in Traveller-land. That was one of the more simplistic assumptions of the world generation system. The challenge is how to get one of them to project power to other weaker systems, or how to get several of them to cooperate with each other. On the latter I dare not speak in detail as it involves a potentially proscribed post-1945 analysis - and I don't see you persuading two or more far-future Stalins from different worlds to cooperate with each other anyway. As to the former, power grows out of the ba - ooh, that's 1964; never mind. 
Well, you can look up history as well as the next guy. The broader lessons can be summed up without pointing to specifics: most important, that you can accomplish a lot if you can find people dedicated enough and get arms to them. That's true whether you're tapping into politics, religion, ethnic divisions, almost anything that divides people and makes them passionate. Spreading the thing is just a matter of finding a disaffected class and convincing them your way of doing things offers them a brighter future. After that, it's the problem of maintaining central control, and that's where rigorous indoctrination - and judicious use of high technology - come into play. I invite you to consider what a Stalinist society with access to TL 15 computers and clandestine information gathering technology, not to mention a rigorous cradle-to-grave propaganda and information control network informed by TL15 social sciences, could do to monitor a subordinate world and ensure its continued orthodoxy and reliability.
Well, you can look up history as well as the next guy. The broader lessons can be summed up without pointing to specifics: most important, that you can accomplish a lot if you can find people dedicated enough and get arms to them. That's true whether you're tapping into politics, religion, ethnic divisions, almost anything that divides people and makes them passionate. Spreading the thing is just a matter of finding a disaffected class and convincing them your way of doing things offers them a brighter future. After that, it's the problem of maintaining central control, and that's where rigorous indoctrination - and judicious use of high technology - come into play. I invite you to consider what a Stalinist society with access to TL 15 computers and clandestine information gathering technology, not to mention a rigorous cradle-to-grave propaganda and information control network informed by TL15 social sciences, could do to monitor a subordinate world and ensure its continued orthodoxy and reliability.
See that both Solomani Party and the Zhodani councils work in a similar way, in both cases the members of lower councils electing one representative to the higher council up to the supreme one...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The Imperium works the same way - except in reverse.
The guy at the top (Emperor/Archduke) appoints the guys underneath him (sub sector dukes) who then control the masses who don't get a say.
Oh, wait, I'm forgetting that there is absolutely no election other than sub sector dukes "elect" "appoint" "manoeuvre themselves" to the position of sector duke.
My version of a Stalinist system in space would be:
every citizen on every planet elects one or more representative based on world population and economic output to a sub sector soviet.
Each sub-sector soviet elects a number of representatives to the sector soviet, again based on sub-sector population and economic output.
Each sector soviet elects two members for the union of soviets politburo, who then elect a president.
The guy at the top (Emperor/Archduke) appoints the guys underneath him (sub sector dukes) who then control the masses who don't get a say.
Oh, wait, I'm forgetting that there is absolutely no election other than sub sector dukes "elect" "appoint" "manoeuvre themselves" to the position of sector duke.
My version of a Stalinist system in space would be:
every citizen on every planet elects one or more representative based on world population and economic output to a sub sector soviet.
Each sub-sector soviet elects a number of representatives to the sector soviet, again based on sub-sector population and economic output.
Each sector soviet elects two members for the union of soviets politburo, who then elect a president.
Not really. People forget the Imperium is a collection of governments, not citizens. The expanding Imperium made it's membership sales pitch to the governments of worlds and pocket empires, not to the masses. (Unless the government in question was a democracy or republic of some sort and even then the masses may not have been represented in the government. Suffrage can be limited in all sorts of ways.)
One of the ways Dulinor upset the status quo was his penchant for bypassing planetary governments to "assist" the masses directly. That overturned centuries of Imperial policy; i.e. we don't interfere in planetary affairs as long you pay your taxes.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Imperial government begins at the sub-sector level...
individual world governments have no say at all about who their sub-sector duke is. Top down appointment rather than bottom up election, and hereditary to boot rather than serving a term in office.
individual world governments have no say at all about who their sub-sector duke is. Top down appointment rather than bottom up election, and hereditary to boot rather than serving a term in office.
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It sure does. And that subsector was created when enough of the governments in a certain region signed up.
Perhaps. They had a big voice when the subsector was created and they may still have a big voice depending on what's happened in the centuries since the Imperium's arrival.
We tend to forget that most of the initial imperial titles within a given subsector were created as bribes to get planetary governments and pocket empires to join. It's the whole idea behind T4's Pocket Empires, remember?
There is filthy rich extended family fleeing far enough out into space hoping they can use that time it will take the expanding border to reach them to carve out a polity the Imperium will choose to negotiate with. There's also that moribund pocket empire hoping to reinvigorate itself enough in time for the Imperium's arrival that negotiations are preferable?
When the subsector is first set up and all the titles ranging from duke to marquis to baron are passed out, the previous movers and shakers of the previously independent worlds become the imperial movers and shakers of the new imperial subsector.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Over time lines go extinct and priorities change. The hereditary president of Chumbawumba was made the first Marquis of Chumbawumba centuries ago. He might have taken care to maintain his power base on that world, but whether his great-to-the-nth descendents are smart enough to take their purely Chumbawumban duties seriously or whether the first marquis' line still exists is debatable.
The fact is, however, that a powerful local was granted originally the title because of the political weight they carried in the region and that intelligent descendents of that newly minted noble will remember that their family only holds that title because of their position in local politics.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Looks like I didn't delete my post in time to avoid this sidetrack 
Appointing a local from one world to be subsector duke looks like a great way to get the rest of the worlds in the sub sector up in arms against them, and there is very scant evidence that this is how sub sector dukes were appointed.
Appointing a local from one world to be subsector duke looks like a great way to get the rest of the worlds in the sub sector up in arms against them, and there is very scant evidence that this is how sub sector dukes were appointed.
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Enoki
SOC-14 1K
You could even find a group of systems close together with one being the home to a viscount or count that is a "Stalin." The other nearby systems each have a ruling baron who is answerable to the count. The barons are all cronies of the count involved and they rule with like mind.
That in a sense would duplicate the Stalinist system. Having one system that is amber or red in the group could be the "gulag" system.
That in a sense would duplicate the Stalinist system. Having one system that is amber or red in the group could be the "gulag" system.
Unless a big chunk of the new Imperial subsector was a pre-existing pocket empire the Imperium just absorbed for the price of a few titles.
True, but T4 and M:0 and Pocket Empires are replete with talk about how early Imperium has expanded more by negotiation and less by force thanks to the practice of bribing local movers & shakers with, among other things, Imperial titles. Remember, the Pacification Campaigns came several decades after the Imperium's founding and even then diplomatic/economic pressure was emphasized over military conquest.
A new subsector's duke would most likely be someone from the Imperium rather than a local, but most of the counts, viscounts, marquis, and barons in that new subsector would most likely be locals. All politics is local, so those new Imperial nobles are going to keep a close eye on the needs of the pre-existing power structures whose control made them Imperial nobles in the first place. And, if he's worthy of his title, the new duke is going to keep a close eye on the needs of the new nobles in his subsector.
A thousand years later things will have changed, but for the first few generations the various Marquises of Mudball are going watch out for Mudball's interests because they're also the Planetary Kings of Mudball and being the planetary king is what made them an imperial marquis in the first place.
I think the answer, or an answer, can be found in GT's Interstellar Wars. The Ziru Sirka uses a planned economy of sorts as a way of maintaining political control. Worlds are prevented from being completely self-sufficient with regards to the empire's overall tech level. Any given world only produces a few pieces of the overall tech level puzzle and must rely on trade to receive the rest. Population levels are kept in check for the same reason.
The Vilani realized that no system of controlled supply and demand can be perfect, so they allowed a certain amount of speculative trading in order to smooth out any rough spots. Such trading allowed unforeseen surpluses on one world to make up for unplanned shortages on another. Such trading will not replace the planned movement of goods by the bureaus, it will just hopefully fill in any cracks.
A smart command economy may have similar mechanisms.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
There was a thriving black economy in the pre-war Stalanist Soviet Union.
Ethically challenged merchants will still have a role to play in Stalinism in Space
Sure, but as you say it was black market. And in the restored Ziru Sirka (MT, Rebellion times) the free trade was also limited, nearly prosecuted.
Most traveller merchant campaigns are based on free trade. I'm afraid this kind of setting will severely limit it, as probably most ships would be governement owned and free trade (at least) thighly controled, so this kind of campaigns will always border illegal trade (from either side of the line).
Most traveller merchant campaigns are based on free trade. I'm afraid this kind of setting will severely limit it, as probably most ships would be governement owned and free trade (at least) thighly controled, so this kind of campaigns will always border illegal trade (from either side of the line).
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
You missed a step -
Every citizen on every planet elects one or more representatives based on regional population and economic output to a world soviet.
Each world soviet elects one or more representatives based on world population and economic output to a sub sector soviet.
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