Bergonian History
1930-1934-- The Revolution

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This is the tumultuous, bloody upheaval that transformed the country into an uncompromisingly socialist commonwealth.  The big corporations were wiped out.

On this page: 

The Players   Chronology  

The detailed History:

1890-1930 -- Growth of the Left.

1920-1930 -- The Time of Shifting Shadows

1930 -- Leftist victory at the polls.

1931-- Revolutionary Upheaval.

October 1932-April 1934 -- The Radical Regime.

May-July 1934 -- General Acuila's Coup; formation of a Grand Left Coalition.  

Summary: It began when the broad-based leftist Democratic Front won the national elections in late 1930.  Fighting ignited when a right-wing coup toppled the government.  The left wing, including the DF, reacted in April 1931 with a "great uprising" that provoked fighting everywhere.  On May Day workers all over the country engaged in a General Strike that resulted in mass worker takeovers of their places of employment.

The Military split and warred upon itself.  During spring and summer of 1931 fighting between the Left and the Right resulted in a partitioning of the country, with the Right controlling the western third.  This turned into war.

The Left split in April 1932, and the communists and revolutionary socialists took over the government in October.  In September 1933 the left militarily wiped out the last right-wing armed opposition, but not before 600,000 died in the fighting. 

Bergonia drifted toward Communist dominance, but by May 1934 all non-Communist leftist factions combined with the army to throw the Communists out of power.  Just two months later all the leftist groups agreed upon a plan to phase in a constitutional government. 

The Players:

The Left (good guys):

The Democratic Front a coalition of non-Marxist/neo-Marxist socialists, syndicalists (related to the IWW in the U.S.), and radical trade-unionists. It split into two factions,

the socialist "Rosist" faction, and the syndicalist "Mistral" faction.

The Communists: the Marxist party, allied with the Soviet Union until the exile of Trotsky.

The  Anarchists organized into local clubs.  Strong links to the anarcho-syndicalist unions.  Often allied to the Democratic Front or to the Mistral faction.

The Right (bad guys):

The Conservative Party & the Liberal Party:  the two main parties of the bourgeoisie, both committed to defending capitalism.  The Conservative was the dominant party of the capitalist moguls, while the Liberal Party was more prevalent among petit bourgeoisie and advanced a reformist capitalist agenda.  They formed the National Salvation Alliance.

The Kilitan: a tightly organized group of atrei who opposed promoted pre-columbian native culture and opposed the seemingly dominant European culture, as well as Christian influences.  Militant and militarized, idealized the ancient warrior, often labeled fascist. 

Chronology

1920-29:

"The Time of Shifting Shadows"-- Strikes, demonstrations, growth of Democratic Front, Communists & Kilitan.  The tremendous class and cultural divisions worsened during the 1920s, even though Berg shared in the world-wide prosperity.  Labor unions battled police and armed strike-breakers

1926:

Democratic Front wins 31% of seats in Congressional elections.   Conservative Eduoard Pierisin elected president with a Conervative-Liberal majority in Congress.

1928:

Strategic alliance between Anarchists & Democratic Front.

October 1929-1930:

The international stock market crash ushers in the Depression.  Markets abroad for Berg goods collapsed-- millions of new unemployed within a year.

September 1930:

Democratic Front wins congressional elections, while incumbent Conservative President Pierisin wins reelection by a hair.  The socialist-syndicalist Democratic Front won a majority in Congress in 1930, prompting the bourgeoisie into an alliance with the nativist Kilitan movement.  

March 1931:

The Kilitan, the Conservatives and their friends in the Army attempted a coup d'etat, and succeeded in taking Ceiolai and disbanding Congress. 

28 March 1931:

"The Grand Uprising" by the united Left, a vast nationwide counterattack against the KIlitan-Conservative-Military coup.
April 1931: "The Month of Blood"-- fighting erupted everywhere between the Left & the Right.  Leftist and Kilitan militias went after each other in the streets.  All civil authority broke down.  Each side had allies in the Army & Navy, and so the armed forces split in two.  This was the beginning of civil war.
 Spring-Summer 1931: In most places the workers took over their factories and shops, fulfilling the syndicalist idea of the General Strike.  The capitalists and their managers fled, abandoning their properties for good.  Workers seized the factories with banners waving, realizing that nothing would get produced unless they did. Out of the chaos of civil war, a new economy suddenly emerged from the ground up.  The "improvised revolution." 
Spring-Summer 1931: The Kilitan-Conservative-Army alliance consolidated control over the western third of Bergonia, with the Democrats controlling the rest.  The country is divided along an armed front.
1932: Civil war ravaged central Bergonia. Towns & villages burned, soldiers dug trenches, commandos committed atrocities, and refugees fled across the land.  
 Spring 1932: As they fought the Kilitan, the DF socialists cleaved into two opposing factions.  The more radical socialists, called Rosists, allied with the Communists.  The other faction, consisting of the syndicalist tendency, was called the Mistrala.
October 1932: Together the Rosists and the Communists took over the government and established what's been called the "Radical Regime." 
Winter 1933: General Permado Acuila rallied the Left and launches a huge strategic offensive, forcing the Kilitan to fall back to positions in the states of Cuecha, Sefaieri and Coninipati.  
Summer-Fall 1933: A real revolutionary terror ensued. The Communists oppressed religious institutions, which prompted a popular backlash that inured to the benefit of the moderate socialists.   
September 1933: Kilitan collapsed-- the Left took over all Bergonia.
Feb 1934: The Mistrala faction joined with anarchists and religious people in opposing the Radical Regime.  They openly revolted in many cities in April. 
May 1934: The Rosists deserted the communists to negotiate with the Mistrala to produce a new government. Acuila initiated a coup and kicked the Communists out of power.  
July 1934: Acuila and the Rosists orchestrated a "Grand Left Coalition" (everyone on the left sans communists).  They decreed elections for a constituent assembly on 1 Oct.  Acuila became the interim President.  All violence ended.
28 Nov 1934: The Constituent Assembly convened.  Afterwards, the socialists and the anarcho-sydicalists sat down at the table, made compromises, and created a constitutional regime. 
   

The Detailed History of the Revolution:

1890 to 1920:
Radical movements rise up to oppose the conservative capitalist state:

Socialists, Communists and Anarcho-Syndicalists:

In the 1890's various revolutionary movements sprouted up Each one had its own theorists, organizers, political party front, and newspapers, and each one had an arm of allied labor and fraternal organizations.  On the Left emerged three separate tendencies, (a) the Marxist socialists who became organized in a Communist party, (b) the non-Marxist socialists and radicals, collectively called the Democrats, allied with a broad front of socialist labor unions, and (c) the Anarchist League and the anarcho-syndicalist labor movement.  On the right there arose the semi-fascist Kilitan, a militant movement of Miradi natives in opposition to everything European. 

The Democrat Front ran candidates in elections as the way to get control of the state apparatus.  Their allies the anarchists sought to organize the workers and bring about an economic revolution.  The syndicals followed the idea that a general strike would bring down capitalism.  Many syndicalist union members voted for Democratic candidates since the anarchists refused to 

The DF's arch-enemies, the communists, followed the Marxian prescription of organizing to overthrow the state in a violent revolution.  

The Kilitan also believed in taking power in a violent overthrow.  They harkened to the ancient Bergonian pattern of coup d'etats by righteous heroes against an oppressive state.  A council of five masked "warriors" ran the Kilitan.  They prepared for coordinated street action, and often seized local government buildings to protest real and imagined desecrations of old sites.  

Conservatives & Liberals-- the bourgeoisie politicians: 

Warding off these three groups was the government, dominated by the Conservative Party, which had virtually absorbed the Liberal Party.  Their patrons, the industrialist moguls and the bankers, adamantly refused to recognize labor unions.  Doing the bidding of their masters, the Conservatives used the police, the courts and the army to suppress strikes.  The conservatives included what remained of the Iregemi class.  The Catholic Church was frightened of the Communists and the Kilitan both, and naturally sided with the Conservatives.  

The Conservatives of the 1920s were different from the Conservatives of a hundred years earlier.  Then it was Iregemi in the interior and mercantilist traders in the seaports.  Then it was exclusively Christian and mostly white.  Now it was purely bourgeoisie, racially, linguistically and religiously mixed, but united in the commitment to or dependency upon industrial capitalism.

1920 to 1930: the "Time of Shifting Shadows"

By 1920 each of these movements had begun to snowball.  Each one printed its own newspapers, recruited members and held rallies and parades.  The Communists and the Democrats engineered strikes.  These three movements together threatened the stability of the capitalist republic.  

In the election of 1926 the Democratic Movement won a spectacular 31% of the seats.  The Conservatives and Liberals held a solid majority of 57%, with peasant and nativist parties affiliated with the Kilitan holding the remaining 12%. The Conservative, Eduoard Peirisin, won the presidency.

The DF delegates immediately challenged the conservative-liberal majority by introducing bills to establish the eight-hour workday, a minimum wage and the right to strike, and distribute iregemi landholdings to the peasants.  The conservatives and liberals did give on one point-- they outlawed child labor.  

Edouard Peirisin, a Catholic (like so many Presidents before him) was a strong leader for the Conservative Party.  He was born of a sherei father and an atrei mother in Comleta, a great bastion of Bergonian Catholicism.  He graduated from the prestigious University of Ceiolai with advanced degrees in law and economics.  He worked a while for Credit Varsca, one of the biggest banks in Bergonia, and then went wholesale into conservative politics.  With six feet five inches of stature, cool good looks, a fine shaggy head of hair, and a commanding wit and self- assurance he became an instant success.  He campaigned quite well in French as well as his native Minidun.  The Conservative Party elite in Comleta-state (now Bun-Vosuget) patronized him and groomed him, and in 1910 he won election to state governor.  In 1914 he went to Congress as a Conservative Party delegate and in no time ascended into the national leadership.  He was golden. Crowds loved him.  The newspapers (controlled by conservative editors and conservative owners) lionized him.  He was elected president in the election of 1924, and again in 1927.

The 1920s was a times of violent strikes, marches and brutal police repression.  It was a time of assassinations, crime and conspiracies.  But in the cities it was also a time of avant guard culture.  German Expressionism made a big impression.  So did American jazz and blues.  This decade saw the beginning of mass culture-- radio, movie theaters, mass circulation newspapers-- as well as the beginning of air travel and automobiles.  Electrification was complete in the cities and commencing throughout the countryside.  It was a tense, exhilarating time.  Many current Berg novels and movies tend to romanticize this time.

In 1928 the Democratic Front received a tremendous boost when the Communist Party and its labor allies agreed to work with the Democratic Front.  In the run-up to the 1930 election Pierisin's Conservative Party mimicked the leftist's grand coalition by forming one of its own, the National Salvation Alliance.  The Liberal Party immediately joined, as did a number of minor parties, Catholic action groups, the national chamber of commerce, and many professional associations.

Top of the Page

1930: The Democratic Front Ascends

The International Stock Market Crash:  For over fifty years exports to Europe constituted an important driving part of the economy.  The market in Europe for cotton, fruit, teas and herbs and specialized foodstuffs all simulated Bergonia's agricultural sector.  The European demand for copper kept miners in the pits.  The demand for Bergonia's excellent woods kept lumberjacks in the mountains.  And the continent's demand for Bergonian textiles, steel, ceramics, paper, and glassware all kept men in the plants.  But the sudden crash immediately devastated the foreign markets for all these exports.  Thousands of men lost work.

The 1930 election-- the Democratic Front victorious:   In the election of 1930, held in September, the Democratic Front won a huge majority of seats in Congress.  This occurred in part because Pujorimec, the communist leader, instructed his followers to go to the polls and vote for DF candidates.  Most anarchists, in a radical change, also resolved to vote as well.  This was, of course, tactical and cynical behavior.  Pujorimec believed this was just a step to bring on the first stage of revolution.  He had studied the Russian Revolution and understood that communist revolution occurred in sequential stages-- he hoped now to bring on the Kerensky stage.

The election was a mess.  Conservatives, anticipating their crushing defeat, decided at the last minute to disrupt the vote.  They mangled the vote counting at thousands of voting stations.  Likewise, in several constituencies the DF supporters overran vote counting centers to stop the Conservatives and proclaimed their candidate victorious.  Nevertheless the final results, certified two months late, showed the DF winning with 57% of the delegates.  The conservative-liberal coalition, now campaigning under the National Salvation alliance, had shrunk to 31%, with the nativist/Miradi parties and peasant parties getting 11%. 

This result gauged the radicalization of the middle, which has been described by computer modelers, and which is fundamentally necessary to revolution.  Indeed the collapse of the moderate center and its subsequent radicalization is the revolution.  The computer modeling suggests the keys include a highly-confident radical sector and the collapse of the majority's confidence in the center. 

However Pierisin, the President, was reelected by a hair.  This anomalous result is in part explained by the fact that Pierisin was personally very popular with the military, and many soldiers split their votes between him and DF candidates for congress. 

Now Bergonia now had a congress dominated by radical socialists and a conservative president.  Bergonia also had millions of families severely affected by the global economic downturn. 

The DF elected one of their leaders, Catlere Amar, to the post of speaker, the second most powerful position in the government.  Amar made speeches promising a total social revolution. 

But the Kilitan movement was swiftly growing as a counter-weight to the advance of the united Left.  The capitalist class, desperate to retain its power, forged an alliance of convenience with the Kilitan—much the same way the German capitalists supported Hitler. (When the chips come down, true capitalists will unhesitatingly chuck democracy into the fire.)  The Kilitan by 1930 had over 200,000 young men enrolled in their "clubs."

The prospect of a DF victory during the 1930 campaign prompted many capitalists to move their remaining assets and cash overseas.  The country suffered from a great flight of capital, forcing runs on banks all over Bergonia.

Spring 1931:
Fighting erupts between the Left and the Kilitan-Conservative Alliance;
Capitalism begins collapsing with worker takeovers.

The end of President Pierisin:   Just after the election, in November 1930, Pierisin declared a state of emergency.  But the new Congress made it clear that it would not tolerate any usurpation of constitutional authority, and there was open wrangling.

Pierisin's friends among the capitalist class urged him to declare a dictatorship and save the commonwealth from the radicals.  They cited the example of John Rarsa's dictatorship. So on 3 January 1931 Pierisin initiated a coup d'etat, but he did so in haste, without firmly lining up all potential allies. A number of army units rose up, but apparently many commanders who had promised support for the coup turned chicken at the last minute, and two of them at the last minute betrayed Pierisin altogether.

The coup failed.  Pierisin and the coup participants were arrested. The DF Congress immediately removed Pierisin from office in lightening time, along with his vice-president, and elected their leader Amar to fill his spot.  Pierisin's gamble failed miserably, and had the result of handing the entire apparatus of the state over to the Left.  The DF now made ready to legislate a socialist revolution.

The Kilitan-National Alliance:  The capitalists, now desperate, met behind closed doors with the Kilitan leadership.  Despite all the radical doctrine, the Kilitan proved very flexible in making alliances with men of white blood, so long as they had money.  If the conservatives promised to back Kilitan dictatorship, the Kilitan would rid the nation of socialism.  The Kilitan suddenly awash in cash, now suddenly softened its line against European influences.  This was a very bizarre alliance, one based on the old maxim about how "the enemy of my enemy becomes my friend."  Here was the party of money based on Western capitalism teaming up with the party of rigid romanticism based on anti-Western sentiment.

It was the worst sort of alliance.  But it reflected the opinions of many military officers, the big majority of whom were atrei.  Although many of the officers, and most soldiers, originated among the peasantry, the army itself was a Western institution eager to acquire and master Western technology.  People often hold to heart two logically incompatible beliefs, and so it was not surprising that these men could negotiate trade deals with Englishmen during the day and in the evening study the ancient Book of Anger and wear funny old replica clothing of ancient warriors.  The same phenomena has occurred in many other nations and peoples when confronted with European culture and immigration.

Thus it was that on 15 February 1931 the Kilitan Council of Five appeared at a public rally.  In front of thousands of assembled followers and on national radio they announced their intentions of affiliating with the National Salvation Alliance.  Afterwards people came to call this expanded alliance the "K-N," the latter standing for "National."

The Kilitan-National Coup:   The military wanted to try Pierisin's co-conspirators in a military court, but the DF majority in Congress passed legislation requiring a trial before a special tribunal.  This became a point of pride and resentment among many officers.  The trial was set to begin on 20 March 1931.  The head of the Navy, Admiral Zaran, demanded it be cancelled, but Amar refused.  

On 17 March 1931 the Kilitan-National coalition attempted their coup d'etat.  Sympathetic army officers and Kilitan militias, with overt Conservative support, revolted in coordinated fashion.  They managed to seize Ceiolai and many other cities.  Pierisin and the supporters of his coup were freed from prison.  But other army officers held their units for the constitutional government, and in many notable incidents subordinate officers refused to follow orders to join in the coup.  In four notable incidents, troops mutinied against their officers.  

The Kilitan and their National Salvation Alliance cohorts proclaimed a ruling Junta of Seven.  In a blow to Pierisin supporters they made Admiral Zaran the President, and they traveled to Ceiolai to assume power there.  When they arrived they ordered the dissolution of Congress.  Their supporters had already also jailed Amar and as many members of his new government as they could find.  

After the initial burst of fighting, it appeared that the coup had managed to take over three-fourths of the country.  But they were spread thin, and could do well in most places if they could occupy the government buildings, patrol the main streets and thwart demonstrations.  They did aggressively go after the DF leaders.  Some they murdered.  Some they arrested.  But most local leaders got away.  In many cities and towns the leftists successfully mobilized militias to resist the troops, but in many others the leftist militias went into the countryside.  

28 March 1931--the "Great Uprising."  The DF was still quite strong, only taken by surprise, and still in control of many cities.  It immediately counterpunched.  The Junta's forces did not hold the large port city of Glen, and the DF ruling council met there and declared a general strike for 28 March.  The DF brought all its resources to bear for this one move.  They would arm all their men. They would march to confront the forces of the Junta and the Kilitan in every city and town.  They would freeze the infant dictatorship in its tracks and take back the country.  And the workers would take over.  In order to exert the maximum amount of pressure, the anarcho-syndicalists could have their general strike.

28 March became known as the Great Uprising.  Everywhere workers went on strike.  In many cities and towns the DF partisans stormed the government buildings and the radio stations.  The uprising's greatest successes occurred in Ceiolai and Lefitoni.  In Ceiolai a bitter street battle around the National Radio Service building left over 2,600 dead.  The DF forces prevailed and from there went on to storm the Congress Building and retake the city.  President Amer was liberated, and the Junta was forced to evacuate.  This is now the most romanticized moment in the revolutionary lore.

April 1931-- the Great Uprising commences the "Month of Blood."  There was not a city in the nation that did not see violent clashes between DF supporters-- socialists, syndicalists, communists and anarchists united-- against the Kilitan militias, with army units joining in.  Rapidly all DF supporters united to form units of "Volunteers to Bergonia" to fight alongside the loyalist army units.  The railroad workers refused to cooperate with the rebelling army commanders, so they could not move their men around the country.  The combatants fought in the streets, in buildings, in parks, in the countryside. 

Congress reconvened in Ceiolai on 20 May 1931 and attempted to organize a revolutionary government.  

Late Spring-Summer  1931--the workers seize the plants

The most significant development of this period was that in most places the workers took over their factories and shops.  The capitalists and their managers fled.  In some factories & plants the workers forced the owners out, while panicked owners and managers deserted others, leaving the workers in charge.  The capitalists could not appeal to their allies for immediate protection, since their allies were fighting desperately to maintain control.  They had to abandon their properties now for good, and a great many of them attempted to flee the country.  Those who had earlier moved their money out of the country could enjoy comfortable exile in Europe or New York.  Others went to South America, hoping to find new opportunity there.  In some cases the owners and managers voluntarily relinquished all right, yet remained to help the new owners.

Realizing that nothing would get produced unless they took charge, they did so.  While soldiers and Volunteers fought and died, and while party leaders issued brave proclamations, the workers met in assemblies, organized committees and reopened their plants.  Their syndicates created local & regional Workers Exchange Committees to arrange barter and credit arrangements with each other.  The water plant workers got water running again, and the electrical workers got the power back on.  Out of the chaos of civil war, a new economy emerged from the ground up. 

The same thing has almost happened in the real world, specifically in Italy in 1920, and later in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.  In both cases workers rose up, took over their industries and collectively managed them until political forces interfered.

Summer 1931--partitioning the nation

After May 1931 the two sides fought to a rough stalemate. The Kilitan dominated the states of Coninipati, Sefaieri, Cuecha, Omaika and Paietri-- fully one third of Bergonia.  A relatively stable front line between the two sides stretched across the land.  Cities had burned in the Spring, but now soldiers dug trenches, commandos committed atrocities, and refugees went this way and that.  The Democratic forces were a hodge-podge of regular army units, armed Volunteers and armed party militias.  However taken together they had three times as many more men under arms than the well disciplined Kilitan-Nationalist opposition.  In the "Democratic Zone" the DF government was piecemeal and confused, which afflicted the military command structure.  So while the Democratic forces had more men and greater resources, the Kilitan's had far better command.

Throughout the remainder of the year, and on into the next, the situation was miserably stable, with a military stalemate.  The K-N occupied one third of the country.

Spring 1932-- Rupture of the Democratic Forces

In March 1932, as the war raged, the DF split into two factions.  One faction was called the Rosists, after the red rose habitually worn by one of their leaders, Jacques Brissot.  It was the more radical faction, wanting a quick transition to socialism, with instant action against the 30% or so of the economy still being operated by capitalists.  This group included the local clubs descended from the Gatlarin (Commonwealth) Party and the Social Revolutionary Party.

The other faction was called the Mistrala, named after Hamon Mistral, the fiery young leader who most eloquently argued for caution in implementing change, for a broad front of all anti-Kilitan forces, and for religious tolerance.  The clubs joining this faction evolved from the Social Equity Party (i.e. the descendants of the Feral Cats) and the pro-syndicalist Democratic Workers Party.

In the summer of 1932 Brissot and Nset Delamon, another Rosist leader, met with Pujorimec, and they negotiated an alliance between the Rosists and the Communists. 

 

October 1932:  The Radical Regime

During the Summer of 1932 the Kilitan forces gained the upper hand.  With boats they transported an army and made an amphibious landing on the norhern coast of Pasiana.  They invaded and conquered almost all of central Bergonia, threatening to take Ceiolai, but Rosist militias heroically defended against professional army units with artillery and tanks.

In September 1932 the Congress took a vote to appoint an Executive Committee to run the country.  It was dominated by Rosists and Communists.  Once installed they initiated a coup on 20 October 1932.  In June the Rosists expelled most Mistralas from Congress and then reorganized the Congress into an unelected Revolutionary Assembly.  For the first time Communists sat in Congress.  At the same time the radicals created a Co-Presidency, with Rosist leader Nset Delamon elected to one position by the Revolutionary Assembly and Communist leader Pujorimec elected to the other.  Trotsky traveled from Mexico to Bergonia, and Pujorimec greeted him with open arms.

The newly organized Intelligence and Investigations Committee was dominated by the Co-Presidency.  The IIC became a new secret police.  With this new power the Co-Presidents inaugurated a phase known to historians as the Radical Regime.  They went after all other factions, closed their publications and put their leaders under arrest.  The syndicalists and the anarchists went underground.  The communists gained control over the new police force and oppressed religious activists, closing down monasteries and seizing church property.  They oppressed Christians and Miradi with equal intolerance.

The new Executive Committee appointed General Permado Acuila to organize and oversee all the disparate Leftist fighting forces.  Acuila was a Mistrala, but his competence was beyond all doubt, and the Executive Committee appointed him out of desperation.  He initiated a "National Recovery Order" (NRO) whereby all military commands, including the Volunteers and all the party militias, were integrated into a single army.  He created a strategic command council, consisting only of officers with proven talent, to run the NRO.  The NRO organized improved logistics, virtually taking over the railroads, many hospitals, warehouses and the public works.  The NRO ended up strengthening the new coop movement with procurement orders and contracts with the syndicals.

In February 1933 Acuila put his NRO troops to the test and initiated a powerful counterattack against expanding Kilitan armies.  He initiated two thrusts.  The first was a massive infantry attack on Letlari that was instantly successful.  In no time the NRO infantry was ascending to the Ifuno Plateau and the state of Sefaieri.  Second was a dramatically concentrated punch westward out of Zeinran into Sefaieri toward the city of Cristoni.  Here Acuila relied upon tanks to lead his infantry.  He also used aircraft for scouting and bombing enemy positions.  Fighting was fierce, and in March 1933 70,000 retreating Kilitan troops dug in on top of Nanetlamo Mountain, near the city of Crisitoni in the state of Sefaieri, building fortifications around a 45 mile perimeter.  Acuila resolved to break this resistance and besieged Nanetlamo, but he allowed the bulk of his troops to continue the westward advance.  However the Kilitan resorted to trench warfare and stopped the DF advance.  In Pasiana the Democratic forces enjoyed initial success, but the Kilitan tactically withdrew and took up new positions in central Pasiana.  By the beginning of May 1933 neither side was able to advance any further on the other.  The siege of Nanetlamo continued, and the resolve of the defenders gave heart to Kalitan supporters everywhere.

On 2 August 1933 a squadron of ten commandos attacked the Presidential Palace in the middle of the day.  They gained entry through a window and assassinated Pujorimec in his office.  Their identity was never firmly established, and remains one of the greatest mysteries of modern Bergonian history.  Fairly good evidence suggests they were Mistrala, but other evidence points to other communists, perhaps Stalinist agents alarmed at Pujorimec's coziness with Trotsky.  Indeed Trevor Locksley, who succeeded Pujorimec as Communist Party chairman and then as Co-President, had a much better opinion of Stalin than he did of Trotsky.  

On 14 August 1933 Acuila's forces dramatically breached the perimeter at Nanetlamo.  The survivors sued for peace.  In September regular armored army units loyal to the revolution punched through the Kilitan line in eastern Cuecha and decisively crushed the Kilitan army.  Tanks appeared in the hills to the south of the big cities of Cuecha, while workers in the Kilitan-controlled cities of Paiatri rose up in armed revolt.  The Kilitan regime collapsed.  

With Pujorimec's assassination as a pretext, Locksley prompted a wave of police terror.  

The moderate Mistralas however retained a lot of local power, if for no other reason because of their numbers, as did the anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists.  Militias remaining loyal to the moderates and the anarchists still had their weapons.  Many offices and soldiers in the field wiping up the last Kilitan resistance had no love for the communists.  

The decisive turn came in February 1934 when the anarchists finally closed ranks with the Mistralas and the religionists.  On 21 February 1934 a great many Mistrala and anarcho-syndicalists assembled on the Shiero Plaza in Lefitoni (since renamed the Plazhttp://a of Stout Hearts).  Volunteers loyal to the radical regime arrived and shot into the crowd.  Although moderate propagandists later claimed that 2,000 were martyred that day, the likely figure is 300.  

But the massacre offended public opinion and motivated the moderates all over the country.  A new rebellion began.  The local workers committees sided with the moderates, and the moderates began operating out in the open, even reopening offices and starting publications again.  

Many within the Rosists were appalled with how things had gone.  The Communists' oppressive behavior and the wave of resistance prompted a debate.  Delamon had crafted the Rosist alliance with the Communists and so now fell out of favor.  The Rosists wanted to broaden the regime's appeal and increase the counterweight to Lockley and the Communists.  The perfect man for this was Genral Acuila, a hero to many.  During a raucous convention of Rosist representatives in March 1934, Delamon was pressured into resigning from the Co-Presidency, and Acuila was acclaimed Co-President  by the Executive Committee.  The Communists acquiesced to his ascension, and probably thought they could manipulate him. 

May-July 1934:
Acuila's coup and the establishment of a Grand Left Coalition

In April 1934 a Mistrala militia took over the city of Varsca, previously held by Rosists & Communists.  The Mistrala this time enjoyed the open support of Catholic and Miradi activists.  The new city council declared itself in opposition to the radical government in Ceoilai.  The Rosists in Ceiolai read the writing on the wall and decided that they had to reach a compromise with these men who had previously been their comrades.  But Locksley and the Communists opposed any compromise.  Nevertheless on 7 May 1934 the Rosists openly entered into negotiations with the Mistrala, their former DF comrades.  Tension rose excruciatingly, and there was incessant speculation that the Communists would do something calamitous.  There was even talk about partitioning the country, since the parties had their relative regional strengths.  The Communists used the stall to step up secret police activities and make selective arrests.

Acuila did not want to wait for the negotiations to conclude.  On 31 May 1934 a virtual coup d'etat occurred when President Acuila dramatically arrested his co-president, Locksley, and the communist chief of security.  He kicked the Communists out of the government by dismissing all their ministers. It turned out that the Communists had grossly underestimated him.  

Acuila invited the moderate Mistralas to join the Rosists on a new Executive Committee.  Everyone agreed that Acuila would remain the sole President.  In no time at all the Rosists and Mistralas had formed an expanded Executive Committee of 30 members to include representatives of the anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists.  A grand governing coalition of virtually the entire left had been achieved.  

With this extraordinary balance of plural groups accomplished, the entire left resolved to cooperate and compromise to build a pluralist socialist-syndicalist society.  

In 1950 John Nash, the mathematician who advanced game theory, imagined that a competitive game could reach a point of equilibrium where each player has given his best response to the strategic circumstances, given the strategies of all the other players.  Each player reaches a point when he decides that he has achieved as much in the game as he can.  This is known to us as the Nash Equilibrium, the antithesis of the zero-sum game.  In the 1960s a Bergonian historian applied Nash's game theory concepts to historical analysis, and concluded that the best opportunity for such equilibriums come when, in a multi-player game, all players unite to vanquish one player and join in the spoils.  Such a time came in the history of the Revolution when the various parties and factions united to vanquish the Communists, and achieve peace among each other as a result.  This has been very unofficially called the "Peace of the Funeral Banquet."  It was the feast of the conspirators to celebrate the murder, derived from the great literary classic from Tanic times, The Virtue of Timeliness, a novel that was rendered into an opera, about a banda warrior lodge where one of the senior banda caused horrible dissension that only his murder could quell.  Acuila always admitted that The Virtue of Timeliness was a great favorite of his, while its seeming endorsement of mafia-like betrayal has perplexed many in the West.

There was a flash of violence in early June as the communist militias gave resistance.  But before the end of the month, under Acuila's decisive leadership, NRO Army units and various Mistrala and Rosist militias acted to detain the entire Communist leadership and disarm or wipe out the communist militias.  

On 16 July 1934 Acuila and the Executive Committee laid out a plan for creation of a libertarian socialist regime.  Their decree guaranteed free speech and freedom to organize for all Left groups except that the Communists were to be restrained.  It guaranteed freedom of religion.  It also scheduled the election of a Constituent Assembly to serve as an interim Congress and to draft a socialist constitution.  

The Constituent Assembly was elected on 1 October 1934.  Its first session on 28 October 1934 was broadcast to the nation on radio. Following a script endorsed by all, the Assembly members took their seats and elected General Acuila interim President by acclamation.  Then Acuila took his oath and gave a speech to the Assembly in which he proposed a provisional bill of rights and a general amnesty for all rank-and-file Kilitanists and Communists who did not participate in atrocities.  The new assembly overwhelmingly approved, in a sign of official reconciliation.  In this manner the revolutionary state was formalized.

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