Polvokian Civil War
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The Polvokian Civil War was an armed conflict that took place in Polvokia from 1996 to 1999. It arose out of long-standing tensions between the Tukchin ethnic majority and the large Meng minority. The critical spark came on March 26th, 1996, when Tsangmargi Argun was expelled from the Communist Party Politburo over his radical anti-Meng views.
Background
Ethnic makeup of Polvokia
For most of history, the area that is today Polvokia was inhabited by a variety of nomadic tribes, who herded horses and reindeer around the region's icy taiga forests. Prior to the 15th century, these groups lacked any written language, and most surviving records of their existence come from Menghean historians, who in the 11th century bestowed the name Jukjun (竹珍 / 죽진) on what was then the largest confederation of tribes. The locals later adapted the name as Tukchin, a catch-all term for the peoples living south of the Buksan Mountains but north of the White River.
At the end of the 13th century, the Tukchin Khaganate was annexed by the Menghean Yi dynasty, which administered the area as the provinces of Pobuk and Hanhae. During the period of Yi rule, a large number of ethnic Meng came to reside in the Yi-controlled territories. Many of them were soldiers, administrators, traders, and other migrants from Menghe proper, as Yi policies promoted settlement on the frontiers, though recent historical and genetic work suggests that most Meng today residing in Polvokia were locally native people who assimilated to the Meng cultural identity.
In addition to Meng and Tukchins, who collectively make up 77% of Polvokia's population today, there are a number of smaller ethnic groups. Dzhung make up a majority in the western corner of the country, and non-Tukchin herding tribes are scattered across the far north, separated from the Tukchins by the Buksan highlands. At times, the other northern tribes aligned themselves with Tukchins in political conflict, but the sparse northern tundra has generally given them a high degree of de facto autonomy.
Tensions over Meng hierarchy
Ever since the Yi invasion, the Meng enjoyed a privileged position in Polvokian society, despite being a foreign minority. The Kingdom of Polvokia broke away from Yi Menghe in 1514 and remained independent for three centuries to come, but ethnic Meng still dominated the country's government. The royal family line was descended from the last Yi governor, they hired all their administrators from the literate Meng scholar class, and they conducted all government affairs in the Menghean language.
The Meng also enjoyed disproportionate economic status. Many Meng were merchants or artisans who came to Polvokia to trade in furs and minerals, and they ran a thriving cross-border trade with relatives in Menghe proper. Meng landlords also owned much of the farmland in the arable south of the country, and as the 19th century progressed, the large landlords began extending their holdings progressively further onto what was once grazing land. Increasing openness to trade in the late 19th century enriched the old merchant class, even as increasingly large numbers of Tukchins found themselves working in mines or on farms run by Meng elites.
Anger over labor exploitation boiled over into the Polvokian Revolution of 1905, which mainly pitted Tukchin miners and tenant farmers against the Meng merchant and landowner class. Under the leadership of Ulhanga Ayan, a Letnian-educated intellectual, the Polvokian People's Republic imposed a Communist system, confiscating large enterprises for state ownership and distributing farmland to tenant workers. Despite calls for Tukchin dominance, Ayan stopped short of more drastic measures against the Meng, and after 1915 he allowed them to resume artisanal work and local trading in order to stabilize the rural economy.
Tensions remained latent throughout the 20th century, as the Meng steadily deepened their role in Party organs and economic planning institutions. General-Secretary Barda Ulušun purged officials close to Menghe in 1945, but later resumed support for Menghean communist guerillas, and his successors sought to strengthen ties with the Democratic People's Republic of Menghe by welcoming more ethnic Meng into the Party's upper ranks.
Following Menghe's economic reforms in the early 1990s, Menghean industrial growth rapidly accelerated, feeding a demand for raw materials in Polvokia. State-owned mines and oil wells run by Meng managers began turning large profits. Hard-pressed for foreign currency, the Polvokian government passed a controversial law in 1994 which would allow Menghean state-owned enterprises to purchase large tracts of land for mining and forestry. All of these trends spurred fears among radical Tukchins that the Meng merchant class was regaining political and economic influence at their expense.
Expulsion of Tsangmargi Argun
On March 23rd, 1996, General-Secretary Ikderi Bauchi convened a special four-day plenary session of the Politburo to announce his planned retirement, citing old age and poor health. In a departure from previous General-Secretaries, he delegated the task of choosing a successor to the Politburo, and stated that he would return on the 26th to give his approval.
After three days of debate, the Politburo held a vote to nominate Im Sŭng-gi, the Party Secretary of the Grand Assembly and an experienced economic technocrat. This marked the first time in the PPR's 91-year history that an ethnic Meng had been seriously considered for the post of General-Secretary. Im's nomination was approved by a narrow margin, with 12 voting in favor, 7 against, and 4 abstaining, on a body that generally makes decisions by consensus. Im himself did not vote. Tsanmargi Argun, a leading cadre from Usur Golo, demanded that Bauchi be brought back to weigh in on the outcome; but against expectations, he gave his approval, stating that Im had served the Party well and was qualified for the position.
At this point, according to witnesses at the meeting, Tsangmargi Argun "exploded," cursing at the General-Secretary and demanding that the post be given to a Tukchin. Kim Jin-ho, another member, retorted that the Party constitution did not bar Meng from holding the office, to which Argun accused him of conspiring to support the restoration of Meng supremacy. As the argument escalated, the Deputy Secretary called for a motion to suspend Argun's Politburo position and subject his Party membership to review, on grounds of threatening violence against the General-Secretary and other Party members. Bauchi supported the motion, which passed 14 to 10 (Bauchi and Im cast votes, while Argun did not).
Following his expulsion from the Politburo, Tsangmargi Argun fled with two other members to Magedar, his power base in Usur Golo. There, he proclaimed that he had been forced out for exposing a Meng conspiracy to take over the Polvokian government and restore Meng supremacy. His claims were initially met with some skepticism, as the Politburo met behind closed doors and its special session had been called in secret; but when Kim Jin-ho appeared on national television on April 2nd to declare that Im Sŭng-gi had been "unanimously elected" to replace Ikderi Bauchi, who would be stepping down, many took this as vindication of Argun's account.
Course of the war
Outbreak
The next morning, crowds of Tukchin rioters stormed government buildings throughout Magedar, killing Meng officials and alleged Tukchin sympathizers. Tsangmargi Argun positioned himself at the head of the movement, declaring that a Meng takeover of the state was underway and a "Second Revolution" was needed to uproot the conspiracy and definitively expel the Meng from the country. When news of the attacks reached Ryŏngdo, Bauchi reportedly suffered a stroke; after Im Sŭng-gi declared that the General-Secretary was incapacitated and he was stepping in as leader himself, this further fueled Tukchin accusations of an illicit takeover.
The Tukchin-majority police and intelligence forces in Magedar declared their allegiance with Argun's rebellion, as did a number of military units based near the city. Meng soldiers and officers were either expelled from their units or detained, joining thousands of others in makeshift prisons throughout the city. Mass defections were less common further south, where the Meng constituted a local majority; the Navy, for instance, was predominantly staffed by Meng personnel from coastal areas, and uniformly declared its loyalty to the Im Sŭng-gi government in Ryŏngdo, though a few ships were rocked by violent mutinies from Tukchin crew members.
The Polvokian People's Army attempted to march on Magedar, but its mobilization set off copycat uprisings across the central-northern region as Tukchins rallied against the approaching troops. As the rebel-controlled area spread, morale in the government's forces began to break down, with rising tensions between Meng and Tukchin soldiers and officers. By mid-June, three more divisions had declared their allegiance to the rebels, and the government forces which remained were plagued by desertion and mistrust. With the government offensive stalled, Argun's forces were able to extend their control over the central region of the country, declaring the formation of a Tukchin People's Republic (TPR).
Even as the front lines stalled, Im Sŭng-gi and his peers refused to call for foreign assistance, apparently out of a concern that inviting Menghean ground troops into the country would only fan the flames of ethnic unrest. Some sources indicate that two Menghean diplomats traveled to Ryŏngdo as early as August 1996 to inquire about military aid, but their offers were discreetly turned down.
Southward offensive
The long sub-arctic winter stalled fighting on both sides, but it was not an equal ceasefire. TPR forces used the delay to expand their control through the sparsely populated north, linking up isolated pockets of rebel activity. Argun also began integrating his growing contingent of militia and irregular units into the defecting divisions, organizing a mixed but heavily armed conventional force. Meanwhile, the Im Sŭng-gi government continued to struggle with internal fractures, including car-bomb attacks on Party buildings.
Once spring arrived, TPR troops began an aggressive offensive onto the South Polvokian Plain, with the ultimate aim of taking Ryŏngdo and establishing control over the whole country. Front-line government forces crumbled with alarming speed, and in May the rebels laid siege to the city of Hongdan, where the 4th Motorized Division was based. Chalainur fell in August, and on the opposite end of the front, rebels occupied the highlands overlooking Wŏnsŏng. By the time winter set in again, rebel units had come within 50 kilometers of the Menghean border, and a vast swath of the country was under TPR control.
The fall of 1997 witnessed the darkest hours of the conflict. In the last months of their southward push, Tsangmargi Argun's forces had captured large swaths of territory in which the Meng constituted a majority. As the winter months set in, a stream of refugees began flowing across the border to Menghe, where they described a ruthless campaign of war crimes and ethnic cleansing at the hands of the TPR.
The government faction, for its part, was in poor shape; the rebels were less than 200 kilometers from Ryŏngdo, and had begun launching indiscriminate bombing attacks against the city from captured airfields further north. Yujin, the second-largest city and home to a large Meng population, was also in danger of falling, and both Wŏnsŏng and Hongdan were under siege. Adding to the strain, TPR forces near Hongdan had captured and broken open the country's main oil and gas pipelines, leading to heating and power shortages in the southern cities. This also set off one of the region's worst ecological disasters: an estimated 300,000 cubic meters of oil from the burst Wŏnsŏng pipeline flowed freely into the Helian Ocean before a pumping station further north was shut down.
International response
As news of atrocities against the Meng heightened, the Menghean government reversed course on its no-first-strike policy, making preparations for a military intervention into Polvokia. The Disciplined Society Campaign was on its ascent, as was Choe Sŭng-min's cult of personality, and there were growing calls within the party to "act in the spirit of justice" and demonstrate the military's power. With the 10th anniversary of the Decembrist Revolution fast approaching, central leaders also didn't want the celebration to be overshadowed by inaction toward a genocide against the Meng.
Over the course of the preceding year, most high-readiness troops in the Menghean Army had already been moved to the northern border, out of a fear that the conflict could spill over into attacks on Menghe itself. In late November, these forces were mobilized and brought up to full strength. Before beginning the operation, Menghean diplomats made a flurry of contacts with Dayashina, Dzhungestan, Themiclesia, and Nukkumaa, seeking to clarify their intentions and avoid accusations of aggression.