Evgenia Exteberria, First Tribune of the Grand Secretariat of the Byzantine Commune
Inaugurated October 28th, 1884

The Athens Commune

: Comrades! Once again, I am so proud of what we’ve accomplished here together! In just five days, we’ve… I… hm.

Comrade Exteberria crumples up her prepared remarks and tosses them into a bin.

: Can we speak frankly for a bit?

: We’ve all been having those weird dreams, right?

: I’m not just going crazy, am I?

: Septimus Severus sacking old Byzantion? The Great Fire? The Fall of the Senate? And then… whatever it was that happened last night.

: So, like, before we just get out of here, get on our trains to the four corners of the Commune, the boats to our home nations, or even just the streetcars to the other side of town to our new offices…

: What happend? What was that?

: What did it mean?

It’s a reminder that there’s nothing for us in the past but war, death, and woe, Evgenia, love. We’ve been a nation obsessed with our past from the very start. Even when Rome barely existed, we were devising legendary pasts for ourselves— the voyages of Aeneas, Romulus and Remus, seven kings with improbably long reigns. What we saw was just the slightest fraction of our past, just a handful of the massacres, conquests, and horrors that haunt our long centuries. So there’s no sense obsessing over it, chasing bygone glories. To the future, to the stars– ad astra.
##Support Evgenia Exteberria’s Girlfriend, Definitely

Sic itur ad astra. “Thus you shall go to the stars.” Virgil, Aeneid book IX. I do not deny that the past is full of horrors— but that is precisely why we must keep it close to our hearts. If we forget Septimus Severus, we become Septiumus Severus. In many ways, we are building something never seen before in the world— but people are people, Byzantines are Byzantines. There is an unparalleled wealth of knowledge and experience to guide us.
##Support the Florentine Classicist

It… the dreams were a warning. We are headed for some disaster, something inconceivably horrific just over the horizon. A modern horror, making the Victorian Wars or the campaigns of Chang Yuchun look like local brushfires. My people have learned perhaps more than any other in the world that all nations now exist in a single community, and a half-hearted vote by bored parliamentarians can unleash hell on earth on the other side of the world. Eventually, the system will seize up and destroy itself in a great global conflagration. There is nothing we can do to avoid this fate— we are headed towards it like a locomotive on a track. But, perhaps, if we prepare for it, we can survive, and build a new world in the ruins of the old.
##Support the Union Planner

It means there’s like an infinite number of ways we could have fucked everything up and blown up the world, and the fact that we’re still alive today is a goddamned miracle. We’re threading a delicate needle here, so above all we need to be realistic. Our fancy ideas won’t do us any good if we don’t have enough realpolitik to make it into the 20th century. Staying allied with Great Britain is a good example. We’ve done them a favor by not pressing the issue of the Pope, and they’ll do us a favor by passing legislation that helps improve the situation of the British worker. The potential of the Commune means nothing if it’s strangled in the cradle. Pragmatism above all else, lest we wind up like all those other Constantinoples.
##Support the Pragmatic Diplomat

##Support Evgenia Exteberria’s Girlfriend, Definitely: “Our past is no oracle.”
Adept Nightingale
Ghetto Prince
Juvenalian.Satyr
Retroflex Ejective
Reveilled
ThatBasqueGuy
Hephasto
Hiveminded
WilliamAnderson
9

##Support the Florentine Classicist: “Byzantion falls no more.”
GSD
Hitlers Gay Secret
JT Jag
Arbite
AJ_Impy
Frontspac
RZApublican
Kellanved
Rumda
Luhood
Another Otter
PoorWeather
Lynneth
Clayren
Lord Cyrahzax
Caustic Soda
Skyfinder
mcclay
StrifeHira
Unwise_Cashew
Akratic Method
paragon1
Erwin the German
Sindai
RagnarokZ
Zeronos
NGDBSS
27

##Support the Union Planner: “no amount of ‘home runs’ can save us”
nothing to seehere
Not So Fast
Meinberg
Freudian
LordGugs
Semquais
TheMcD
Ghostwoods
Lustful Man Hugs
Aeromancia
BwenGun
Zikan
Ogianres
Soup du Jour
Chwoka
Rodyle
Glenn Zimmerman
Balk
RabidWeasel
WeaponGradeSadness
Small Frozen Thing
Thordain
22

##Support the Pragmatic Diplomat
cokerpilot
sheep-dodger
Rejected Fate
GunnerJ
loquacius
Flesnolk
D3m3
7

##Abstain/Other
NewMars
tabris
ThaumPenguin
3

Vote closed! Florentine Classicist is the primary winner, Union Planner is the secondary winner, so both will influence our policies*. Corinthian columns in every Great War trench! Well, maybe not.

*and the other various undisclosed results of this vote

In addition to the various other effects these votes will have and how, the Athens Commune, current ruling party of the communal republic of Byzantium, has adopted the following policies:

Trade Policy: Protectionism. We didn’t directly vote on any economic issues, so let’s just leave this where we had it. The strong support for the Union Planner indicates a defensive mindset, anyway. Build trenchworks around our domestic industries, that’ll teach ’em.
Economic Policy: Planned Economy
Religious Policy: Secularized. While obviously not hostile to religion, in the style of the state atheism of the German pangalists or even some of the communist movements attending the International, the decision to scrub Constantine’s name from the capital city and to let the Pope stay under Victoria III von Habsburg’s thumb in exchange for pro-labor legislation in Great Britain indicated that the irenicist wing of the Commune was outmaneuvered.
Citizenship Policy: Full citizenship. This was pretty much a gimme, but if we’d elected to maintain our African colonies instead of opting for either of the two self-rule plans, it would have set a dangerous precedent re: who does and does not count as a citizen, and we might have been stuck with limited citizenship instead.
War Policy: Anti-military. I kind of wish there were something in between pro- and anti- military, but since there’s not, I feel that the decisions taken at the International (to decline the Red Guard’s recommendation to move the capital to Athens, dismiss Sypromilios, opt for the Union Man’s decolonization plan instead of the Legionnaires and withdraw our forces from Africa) indicated a slightly anti-military position. At the same time, there was enough support for the military (not having Spyromilios executed, prioritizing our strategic military alliance with Great Britain, and the strong support for planning for war and disaster in the future) to block us from out-and-out pacifism. Jingoism never really had a chance, although maybe I would have given us that if we’d kept our colonies and been consistently pro-military in other votes.

Keep in mind that all of this is just for our current party, though– in our govtype, multiple socialist and communist parties are allowed, so the old Labour and Irenicist parties are still around, and depending on how the narrative unfolds we might get another communist party to compete with Athens in the coming decades. No matter which party is elected, though, the votes here will still serve as guiding principles about what the Byzantine Commune is all about.

Our capital city will be named named Byzantion, in recognition of its great antiquity and long history of being one of most important strategic points in the ancient world since long before there even was a Roman Empire, much less any need for a New Rome. Also, because that was already the name of the polis containing Constantinople, so we can really save on new stationery that way.