Democratic People's Republic of Menghe: Difference between revisions
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Democratic People's Republic of Menghe 대멩인민민주주의공화국 Dae Meng Inmin Minjujuŭi Gonghwaguk | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1964–1987 | |||||||||
 Flag | |||||||||
| Motto: 만국의 노동자여, 단결하라! Workers of the world, unite! | |||||||||
| Anthem: Aegukka | |||||||||
| Location of the DPRM in Septentrion Location of the DPRM in Septentrion | |||||||||
| Capital | Donggyŏng | ||||||||
| Common languages |
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| Demonym(s) | Menghean | ||||||||
| Government | Socialist Republic | ||||||||
| General-Secretary | |||||||||
• 1964-1969 | Sun Tae-jun | ||||||||
• 1971-1980 | Sim Jin-hwan | ||||||||
• 1980-1987 | Ryŏ Ho-jun | ||||||||
| Legislature | House of the People's Representatives | ||||||||
| Historical era | Cold War | ||||||||
• Established | 4 April 1964 | ||||||||
| 21 December 1987 | |||||||||
• Socialist Repblic of Menghe established | 25 March 1988 | ||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
| 1987 | 3,032,657 km2 (1,170,915 sq mi) | ||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• 1987 | 363,000,000 | ||||||||
| Currency | Inminpye | ||||||||
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The Democratic People's Republic of Menghe (Menghean Sinmun: 대멩인민민주주의공화국, Menghean Gomun: 大孟民主主義人民共和國, pr. Dae Meng Inmin Minjujuŭi Gonghwaguk), commonly abbreviated DPRM, was a government that ruled Menghe between 1964 and 1987. It was established at the end of the Menghean War of Liberation, when communist guerillas and revolutionaries overthrew the Tyrannian-backed Republic of Menghe government, which had been put in place after the Pan-Septentrion War. The new government inherited the same borders established by the Federal Republic of Menghe in 1900, though it maintained active territorial disputes with Dayashina and the peninsular enclave of Altagracia.
Throughout its existence, the DPRM was a one-party state under the Menghe People's Communist Party, which had organized revolutionary activity during the War of Liberation. The MPCP was rife with internal divisions, however, and a rivalry soon emerged between the followers of Sim Jin-hwan and Ryŏ Ho-jun, with the military occupying the sidelines as a third faction. This political infighting hindered the country's economic growth, and was driven primarily by deep disagreements over how a socialist economy ought to be structured.
As the largest Communist power in the Eastern Hemisphere, the DPRM was a major player in Septentrion's Cold War. In order to protect against foreign threats, the country pursued a "military-first" policy, prioritizing the defense sector over civilian industry. The DPRM also aggressively promoted communist movements abroad, funneling arms and advisors to a number of radical groups in the eastern hemisphere. During its later years, it even built up a covert nuclear weapons program, which it revealed to the world in 1984.
Under its third major leader, Ryŏ Ho-jun, the DPRM slid into a period of political turmoil and economic stagnation. A "perpetual revolution" organized against supporters of Sim Jin-hwan escalated into rampant violence, decimating the ranks of government agencies. Institutional collapse combined with disastrous agricultural policy to produce a severe famine which killed upwards of 10 million people. These problems led a faction of nationalist military officers led by Choe Sŭng-min to organize a military coup in late 1987. After overthrowing the Communist Party leadership, the coup ringleaders formed the Interim Council for National Restoration, which transitioned to today's Socialist Republic of Menghe in 1988.
Background
Occupation and oversight
At the end of the Pan-Septentrion War, the defeated Greater Menghean Empire and its former ally Dayashina were placed under a military occupation government headed by the Allied powers which had been active in the Eastern theatre. New Tyran took primary responsibility for Menghe. As part of the "de-nationalization" campaign, major landowners and enterprises which had supported the Imperial regime were stripped of their property, which was taken over by a combination of foreign enterprises and local collaborators.
In 1951, power was formally handed over to an independent government, the Republic of Menghe. While the new government was nominally autonomous and democratic, the Menghean population overwhelmingly viewed it as a puppet state backed up by Tyrannian and Columbian commercial and military interests. The RoM's economic policies favored foreign companies and products over domestic ones, and further enhanced the power of large landowners, intensifying rural resentment and lending support to a communist-aligned independence movement.
Menghean War of Liberation
At the outset of the occupation period, the communist movement was relatively weak; while the leaders of the Greater Menghean Empire, most notably Kim Myŏng-hwan, had shown surprising leniency toward communist thought, Marxism was mainly limited to small reading circles among officers and workers, and had very little resonance in the countryside. Until the late 1950s, the bulk of the resistance was motivated by conventional nationalism, with veterans of the Pan-Septentrion War and youths brought up in the Menghean Empire's propaganda fighting to resist foreign invaders.
As time passed, however, nationalist units like the Suguk Resistance Army began to erode, and communist movements gained ground. Rhetoric denouncing feudal exploitation gained immediate support among tenant farmers, and by the mid-1950s the reformed Menghean People's Communist Party enjoyed strong rural support. Initially, the communist and nationalist factions viewed each other as rivals and enemies, skirmishing even as hostile forces bore down on their positions, but in 1958 Sun Tae-jun was able to negotiate a pact in which the two sides would unite around the common goal of an independent Menghe. The resulting Sangwŏn Agreement proved decisive in strengthening the resistance front, though it also preserved the Menghean People's Army as a sphere of nationalist ideology under the future regime.
Strengthened by their newfound unity - and by a rising stream of arms flowing across the Polvokian and Maverican borders - the united Menghean Liberation Front gained rapid ground in the late 1950s and early 1960s, forming conventional forces armed with tanks and aircraft to supplement its guerilla campaign. By 1964 they had seized the capital at Sunju, forcing the Republic of Menghe government to flee to Altagracia as the Menghean Government in Exile.
Government and Politics
Ruling party
The Democratic People's Republic of Menghe was ruled by the Menghean People's Communist Party (대멩인민공산주의당, Dae Meng Inmin Gongsanjuŭi Dang), sometimes abbreviated as Communist Party or MPCP. Founded in 1948 with the merger of the Menghean Workers' Party and the Menghean Peasants' Resistance Front, it reflected a combination of interests an d ideologies, which would haunt it to its grave.
As in most one-party states, the Party leadership by default exercised enormous control over the country's politics. All three of the DPRM's major leaders ruled through the post of General-Secretary of the Party, and the highest ruling body was the Politburo Standing Committee.
Factional conflict
By the time of Sun Tae-jun's death, there were two main factions among the Party membership, based primarily on their different visions of a socialist economy and also on their competing patronage networks.
The first of these was the Progress Faction, or Jinjŏnpa (진전파 / 進展派). Led by Sim Jin-hwan, they believed that Menghe's economic backwardness threatened its military security and everyday prosperity, and believed that the first priority of a socialist state should be to dramatically expand the country's productive capacity. To do this, they favored large, modern, organized factory complexes, which would be centrally managed by the national government. They also subordinated worker independence to the goal of reconstruction, demanding longer hours and fewer holidays in order to surpass plan targets. More broadly, the Jinjŏnpa membership bought into a high modernist vision of society, favoring rigid organization and state control on all levels. With respect to old traditions, they retained a somewhat neutral view: as long as traditional thought contributed to social order, it could be left alone, as it would fade away once new sources of order were established.
The opposing group was known as the Populist Faction or Popular Faction (민중파 / 民衆派, Minjungpa), though contrary to its name it was not a genuine grassroots movement. Rather, it was composed of hardline Communists, most notably Ryŏ Ho-jun, who believed that Socialism should place power in the hands of the working classes at the ground level. This meant transitioning to village-level enterprises which were run by a Party member with collective decision-making spread out among the workforce. Ryŏ and his followers derided Jinjŏnpa economic thought as revisionist and productionist: because it only valued the quantity of economic output, it tolerated daily labor conditions which were not substantially different from those under capitalism. As part of this rapid transition to a communist society, the Minjungpa also advocated for an immediate eradication of all old traditions, which distracted the people away from their true class consciousness.
Conflicts between the two factions had the highest stakes on the Communist Party's Central Committee, the roughly 500-member body which elects the Politburo and its Standing Committee (and by extension the Party leadership). Through careful vote-buying, Sim was able to secure a majority on this body in 1970; after he lost that majority in 1979, Ryŏ Ho-jun was able to depose him. Other lines of battle were drawn between individual government agencies. Most of the ministries and bureaus related to economic planning were dominated by Jinjŏnpa supporters, especially the Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises and the Ministry of Railways. The Minjungpa, by contrast, had a larger base in bodies that drew a larger share of Communist hardliners, such as the Red Pioneers of the Revolution (precursor to today's Youth Vanguard) and the Ministry of State Security (precursor to the Ministry of Internal Security).
Timeline of leadership
The MPCP's first General-Secretary was Sun Tae-jun. Beginning his career as a prominent reformist under the Greater Menghean Empire, he rose through the ranks of the Menghean Workers' Party during the early War of Liberation years, and by 1958 had emerged as the party's head. Generally, his views were moderate, and he favored compromise over confrontation. This had its drawbacks too; during his time in office, he failed to resolve growing disagreements among his subordinates, or even designate a clear successor. He died in a plane crash on April 28th, 1969, after a suspicious mid-flight explosion that some have linked to Tyrannian intelligence services.
For a brief period after Sun Tae-jun's death, there was no clear leader in power. Jang Sŭng-wŏn and Ji Nam-sŏn both held the post of General-Secretary, for 1969-1970 and 1970-1971 respectively, but neither could consolidate power and both were voted out by the Central Committee.
In January 1971, Sim Jin-hwan won the Central Committee election and managed to hold on to his post. His nine-year term in office was the longest of any of the DPRM's General-Secretaries. The leader of the Jinjŏnpa, he used his power to unleash a renewed campaign of planned economic development. He also formally declared Menghe's military-first policy, though in practice planning had prioritized the armed forces from the War of Liberation onward. While pragmatic in some respects, he remained committed to state ownership of industrial production, and ordered the beginning of Menghe's nuclear weapons program.
Sim's industrialization effort only deepened factional tensions, and in 1980 Ryŏ Ho-jun accused Sim of plotting a self-coup to consolidate his power, forcing the latter out of office and taking his place. Ryŏ then pushed through many of the policies the Minjungpa had favored, including agricultural collectivization and industrial decentralization. He also began a bottom-up purge against surviving members of the Jinjŏnpa. Always known for his aggressive temperament, Ryŏ became increasingly unstable as the years wore on, descending into bouts of extreme paranoia and relying more and more on his Premier, Gang Byŏng-chŏl. Both were ousted in Choe Sŭng-min's Decembrist coup.
Perpetual revolution
The "perpetual revolution" (영구 혁명 / 永久革命, Yŏnggu hyŏgmyŏng), also translated as "permanent revolution," was a political campaign that Ryŏ Ho-jun launched in 1982 in order to remove Junjŏngpa politicians from the upper ranks of the party. Irritated that his rivals were obstructing his policy efforts, and fearful that he could be deposed if industrial production continued to fall, Ryŏ gathered members of the Red Pioneers in People's Square in April 1982, to celebrate the 18th anniversary of the DPRM's establishment. There, he called on them to "denounce the revisionists, liquidate the traditionalists" (sujŏngjuŭi-ŭl gongbaghae, jŏntongjuŭi-ŭl malsalhae), signaling a two-pronged attack on the Jinjŏngpa and on traditional culture.
For the next four years, the country was gripped by political upheaval. At "mass action sessions", they seized, humiliated, and brutally beat officials who were suspected of following the Jinjŏngpa, including Sim Jin-hwan himself. The State Security Forces joined in, detaining suspected traitors within the Party. Both groups' purges descended into witch-hunts driven by mass hysteria, with individuals arrested for crimes as modest as owning a foreign radio or befriending a relative of Sim's many decades ago.
The political upheaval of the period severely destabilized government institutions and citizens' everyday lives; for much of 1986, trains stopped running altogether because the Ministry of Railways had lost a majority of its administrative staff. In 1984 the state closed all schools and universities so that students could serve in Red Guard units full-time, and in some areas closed factories so that workers could "join the revolution." Only in late 1986 would Ryŏ demobilize the Red Pioneers, partly out of a concern that those who had witnessed famine deaths in rural areas would grow resentful against his leadership. The State Security Forces continued their purges throughout that year.
Economy
Under the leadership of the MPCP, Menghe was a socialist economy, with the state not only planning but also actively engaging in economic activity. In addition to the broader inefficiencies associated with a control economy, this meant that Menghean policymaking in the DPRM era was closely tied to whichever faction dominated the Party leadership.
History
Reconstruction
When the Menghe People's Communist Party came to power in 1964, they inherited a severely crippled economy. Prior to the Pan-Septentrion War, Menghe was already under-industrialized compared to the other major powers, and the combined effects of total mobilization and Allied bombing had weakened even that early industrial capacity. Both the occupation authorities and the Republic of Menghe had allowed the country's remaining heavy industry to deteriorate, instead favoring plantation agriculture and handicraft production - which, they believed, were better suited to Menghe's comparative advantage of a large, poor population. The War of Liberation had brought further devastation to the country's rural infrastructure, and what little foreign capital had settled there in the 1950s soon moved back overseas.
Sun Tae-jun's response was a policy of reconstruction, organized through traditional village communities. Over the course of the War of Liberation, the advancing Menghean Liberation Front had carried out land reform, a process which they completed in the 1960s. Freed from the yoke of domestic and foreign landlords, as well as the turmoil of civil war, peasants began to generate higher agricultural yields, and there was a widespread perception that the standard of living had started to improve.
The early DPRM also received ample quantities of economic aid from the FSR and Polvokia, including teams of engineers and entire factories broken up for on-site assembly. Economic planners used this increased industrial output to invest in further development, repairing the country's railroads and setting up new factories. Much of this early growth was locally directed, more out of necessity than ideology.
Industrialization
After Sim Jin-hwan came to power, he ordered an acceleration of this developmental campaign, turning rapid industrialization into his main priority in office. Under his rule, new development prioritized larger factories and regional specialization, out of a belief that economies of scale would improve productivity. He also shifted his attention from the countryside to the cities, and increased the required grain quota from farms in order to feed more industrial workers.
Collectivization
Upon removing Sim from office, Ryŏ Ho-jun and his "populist faction" immediately reversed course on economic policy, denouncing centralized industrial plants as "state capitalism" because workers were forced to labor long hour with no control over their conditions. His proposed solution was to decentralize economic production, in some cases literally breaking up factories into smaller units which could be shipped into the countryside, and place the individual enterprises under the control of town and village Party leaders.
Whatever its intentions, this policy severely curtailed economic output. Backyard furnaces produced low-quality steel which was often unusable, town and village leaders siphoned off funds from their local enterprises, and collective management by unskilled workers led to major problems with planning and coordination. The simultaneous political upheaval added to these problems, as Red Pioneer units seized control of factories and purges in the Ministry of Railways brought shipping to a halt.
Ryŏ also ordered a transition to collective farming, which was carried out between 1983 and 1985 - overlapping with the peak of the perpetual revolution period. Inefficiencies in planning, disorganized transportation, and coercive enforcement of collective policy intensified the effect of a sustained drought, leading to the Menghean famine of 1985-87. Over 10 million people died in the course of three years, most of them in the rural areas of the south, southwest, and center region.
Work-unit socialism
Throughout all three periods, the day-to-day economic structure of workers' lives was surprisingly constant. Compared with other state-run economies, Menghe developed a particularly distinct form known as work-unit socialism (단위 사회주의 / 單位社會主義, danwi sahoejuŭi). This derived its name from the "work units" (danwi) which all workers were registered into, regardless of their workplace. Originally, these were set up simply to oversee labor, as part of a structure that at various times included "squads," "work teams," and "brigades."
In addition to overseeing labor, the work unit also controlled workers' access to many key goods which were not distributed through the free market. Ration cards, for example, were issued as part of workers' pay, and could be exchanged for staple meals at both independent shops and cafeterias operated by the workplace itself. On-site housing was also workplace-owned in most cases, and some of the larger factory compounds built in the 1970s included their own schools and hospitals for workers. Even in smaller state-owned work units, the unit leader would have authority over employees' travel and their approval for subsidized medical service.
Under the table, work units also became important sites for lower-level patronage. Workers who forged close connections with the work team head could gain privileged access to rare items like bicycles, watches, and whatever consumer goods happened to be in shortage at the time, while workers who gained a reputation for slacking off (or, later, for ideological disloyalty) were punished with restricted access to even public services. This system was important in holding the broader system together, and its disintegration during the mid-1980s may have contributed to the MPCP's loss of public support in the cities.
International trade
Another constant through three factional leaderships was the structure of international trade. Only specific types of state-owned enterprise, known as "import-export companies," could trade with foreign enterprises and governments or deal in foreign currency. Thus, state-owned enterprises seeking to import foreign supplies would have to buy them directly from an import-export company, and vice versa when seeking to sell domestic goods abroad. By manipulating prices at both ends, import-export companies became a major source of both internal revenue and hard currency for the regime.
Foreign relations
From the outset, the DPRM was thrust onto the front lines of Septentrion's Cold War. The regime maintained a tense relationship with members of the Grand Alliance, who had supported the Republic of Menghe during the War of Liberation. It was particularly hostile towards New Tyran and the Organized States of Columbia, which had backed the RoM government; Sylva, which still held the peninsular enclave of Altagracia; and Dayashina, which had become a strategic ally for the GA in containing Menghe. Conversely, the DPRM initially enjoyed good relations with Maverica, Polvokia, and Innominada, as well as the Federation of Socialist Republics.
Sun Tae-jun, its first ruling General-Secretary, was an outspoken advocate for international communism, and he set the tone for subsequent administrations. Under his doctrine, all countries must first develop their own communist movements, tailored to their countries' conditions; only after all countries have done so can they work together to overcome their differences and unify into a worldwide Soviet. In pursuit of this policy, Sun and both his major successors funneled arms to communist and anti-colonial revolutionaries across the Eastern Hemisphere, including guerillas in Dzhungestan and anti-colonial revolutionaries in Sundan.
Many foreign countries, especially those in the Grand Alliance, regarded the DPRM as a rogue state, citing its aggressive foreign policy and willingness to supply arms to violent or radical movements. Even Polvokia and the FSR regarded the DPRM as a volatile and unreliable ally, and began distancing themselves from its government in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The DPRM's diplomatic isolation intensified in 1984, after the country conducted its first nuclear weapons test. Under the terms of the STAPNA agreement, all other countries in Septentrion imposed a trade embargo on Menghe until it agreed to give up its nuclear weapons, a requirement which Ryŏ Ho-jun rejected. This period saw especially tense relations between Menghe and Dayashina, which would have been a likely target in any Menghean nuclear strike.