6-6 Crisis
The 6-6 Crisis, also known as the Great Purge (though this can also refer to a specific part of the crisis), was a
An estimated 1,500,000 Songhua were killed during the 217-day period from June 5th, 1984 to February 1st, 1985, with nearly twice as many being internally displaced and around 500,000 believed to have fled the country into neighboring Nam. The widespread slaughter of civilians ended when the Interim State Council (controlled by the Xikou Clique political faction) ordered the Imperial Armed Forces to begin disarming the volunteer units of the Red Bird Guard militia.
The killings were part of a massive political purge in response to a foiled coup attempt in June by the Empress Dowager Zian and a coterie of allies, and were spearheaded by the Empress Dowager Zili as Chairwoman of the Interim State Council.
The crisis took place in the context of the disordered political scene in Songguo in 1984, with the government of First Minister Qin Min'er facing a range of crises and scandals that had left the legislature and major political parties paralyzed and dysfunctional. The country was still recovering from a costly victory in the 3rd Songhua-Nematsujin War and had also struggled to combat rebellions in its close ally Namkwon, and a drought had seriously impacted much of the countryside, which still housed a majority of the population. These factors had all led to an economic downturn that had seriously impacted urban centers as well. As a result, protests and unrest had shaken the country through much of the winter and into the spring. Simmering vendettas over the recent ascension to the throne of the Shunzhen Emperor in 1980 were also still active behind the scenes in the imperial court.
Late on June 5th and into the early hours of June 6th, the Empress Dowager Zian, along with the First Minister, and Justice Minister Prince Qi began a military coup attempt that was violently foiled over the next five days by the Xikou Clique (whose principal conspirators included a host of high-ranking government and military leaders allied with the Empress Dowager Zili). The Xikou Clique suspended the country's democratic government and empowered the reorganized State Council as the new supreme executive body. With the suicide of Zian and the capture of her co-conspirators on June 10th, and unrest having spread across the country during that time, the mass purges began.
Soldiers, police, and security forces quickly detained key military and political leaders associated with Zian, and the Interim State Council quickly formed the Red Bird Guard militia organization for youth to join, blasting propaganda against the "gang of usurpers" and connecting them to foreign agents to play on xenophobic sentiments across the country. Hundreds of thousands of military officers and civil servants cast under suspicion were also arrested and swiftly began to be executed by the Internal Security Service. The Red Bird Guard militias swiftly grew in power as the country descended into chaos, with Red Bird units in villages across the country denouncing hundreds of thousands as foreign agents or threats to the dynasty. The Red Birds in particular also persuaded and pressured civilians to join in the killings, growing more and more extreme and splintering into factions that fought against one another. On January 9th, when a Red Bird faction in Dongjing went as far as to threaten the Interim State Council, the military was sent to disarm the militia and the mass killings of suspected enemies of the state came to a halt.
During these events and in the aftermath, the Community of Nations (CN) and Songguo's allies (Cheonhae, Namkwon, and Meidao) and its other neighbors (including Negara and Nematsu) were criticized for not doing more to intervene and stop the killings, and Namkwon in particular was criticized for repatriating Songhua refugees attempting to flee to the Internal Security Service, which frequently executed or detained them.
The crisis is rarely discussed in Songguo today, with mentions of it being heavily censored across the media by the government. The government has made no effort to set up any investigations or tribunals, and many dissidents who have called for details about the crisis, especially the mass killings, have been "vaporized" by Songhua secret police. Despite the attempts to ignore it, however, the crisis has had a lasting impact on Songguo. Reforms implemented during and after it seriously weakened the democratic element of its government, and have led to further political turmoil into the 21st century as different political factions originating in this tumultuous continue to struggle against one another. The flight of nearly half a million Songhua citizens has also added a new generation to the significant Songhua diaspora, and one far less inclined than previous waves of emigrants to view the motherland and its government in a positive light.
Background
Succession Disputes
The Chenghua Emperor had died in 1980, succeeded by his eldest son with the Empress Dowager Zili, who had been controversially appointed Heir Designate in 1978 over the objections of then-Empress Zian, whose son the Prince Chu was passed over. Prince Chu was elevated to Prince Yan after the coronation of the Shunzhen Emperor, but was not officially made Heir Designate, meaning that as soon as the Emperor had a son he would likely be passed over. However, the Shunzhen Emperor's codification of emerging Euclean norms in the court (namely, dismissing the imperial harem) meant that the existence of heirs beyond his brother was dependent on his wife, the Jiashun Empress, who he married in 1981 against the wishes of much of the imperial court, as she was a commoner with no significant family wealth or pedigree. By 1984, their conspicuous lack of children and rumors from the imperial court suggested their marriage was not going well, but the Emperor still did not appoint his half-brother Heir Designate.
The Empress Dowager Zian, the mother of Prince Yan (formerly Chu), and Prince Qi, the younger brother of the Chenghua Emperor, had both been opposed to the Shunzhen Emperor's designation as heir, though for different reasons (Prince Qi had also hoped to inherit his brother's throne). However, Prince Qi, recognizing the Phoenix Throne had passed to the next generation, threw his lot in with the Empress Dowager Zian in pushing for Prince Yan to be made Heir Designate. The Princes Ji and Li (the younger brother and younger half-brother by a third, deceased wife of the Chenghua Emperor, respectively), however, did not push their own candidacies (Prince Ji was in fact vocal in his support for the Shunzhen Emperor's decision or lack thereof).
Government in crisis
The government of First Minister Qin Min'er had been struggling in the wake of the Blue Banner Rebellion in Namkwon and various internal issues (including several corruption scandals and a botched response to major floods in the eastern areas of the country following a typhoon). The First Minister had lost control of the United Front's Central Disciplinary Commission, the apparatus responsible for keeping all political parties in line with one another, to rivals from the minority, but the body was paralyzed by internal battles between supporters of the First Minister and the opposition and thus unable to monitor and tamp down their disputes. This led to a particularly vicious election cycle, culminating in January 1984 when the First Minister's majority was shaved to a razor-thin margin in the Grand Assembly and he only narrowly survived a vote of no confidence from his own Revolutionary Party. The opposition Workers' Front was able to gain several cabinet posts and paralyze the cabinet, which at the time was more important than the State Council. Due to deadlock between the parties, no Interior Security Minister was appointed, and the position fell to Lu Bingwen, the highest-ranking civil servant within the Ministry and a former diplomat and courtier. Meanwhile, the apolitical position of MSJ director fell to Lao Chonglin, an MSJ officer and the husband of Grand Secretary Liu Lianhua.
In February, newspapers broke two stories that left the Qin government essentially dead in the water. The first personally impacted the First Minister, revealing not only that he and his wife had been living apart for some time, but that she was apparently living with a female lover. Their only daughter soon attempted suicide thanks to the constant press coverage, though she survived and was placed in a mental institution (further damaging the First Minister's image). The second bombshell revealed major graft by a number of aides and even several cabinet ministers, as well as top figures in all three major parties (particularly the ruling Revolutionary Party). The First Minister was not firmly connected to any of the dirty dealings, but seemed seriously implicated. However, Prince Qi, the Justice Minister (also implicated in the corruption) quashed efforts to investigate further, and riots and protests erupted in a number of cities as various parties protested the leadership and one another. Efforts by senior civil servants and bureaucrats to tamp down the infighting was ineffective, with political appointees firing dozens of senior bureaucrats who attempted to advise against continued political warfare or to try and counter the toxic climate.
The government was also faced with the need to make significant budget cuts heading into 1984, as they had continued and expanded the costly Kaizhou Reconstruction Plan that previous governments had embarked on following the Third Song-Nematsujin War, while also trying to replace destroyed military equipment and expand nearly all other government services. Serious budget shortfalls left Songguo on the brink of fiscal crisis.
Pre-coup machinations
In March an ongoing scandal regarding the Qin cabinet covering up kickbacks involved in the construction of the Lanpu Dam and dubiously legal forced relocations of villagers led many of the remaining untainted senior officials in the Public Works Ministry to resign in protest. In response, a number of Revolutionary Party deputies, including Shen Tai and Hao Jinkai, introduced a no-confidence measure to try and force the First Minister aside. Viewing then-Deputy Hao's involvement as proof of the Empress Dowager Zili colluding against him (as he had employed Hao in his office initially at her behest), he moved behind closed doors to add to the pressure on the Emperor to appoint the Prince Yan as Heir Designate, particularly working with the Prince Qi, who he was already close with and who was serving at the time as Justice Minister.
This, in turn, provoked the Empress Dowager Zili, who became worried that the First Minister might support an attempt by Empress Dowager Zian or Prince Qi to remove her son from the throne. Having built strong relationships with the chiefs of the main security agencies and senior military officials (collectively known as the Xikou Clique), she began plotting to wipe out the various alternate branches of the dynasty and remove the First Minister from office. Under the constitution, the Emperor could not actually dismiss the First Minister, though he did publicly call for Qin to step down for the good of the country (further provoking the First Minister).
In May, Prince Qi uncovered evidence of Civil Guard mobilization orders issued confidentially and without approval from the First Minister by Defense Minister Shen Tai (one of the Empress Dowager Zili's allies). Alarmed, he informed the Empress Dowager Zian, who immediately smelled a plot (having already been suspicious of what seemed like an attempt to push out the First Minister) and began preparations to preempt whatever Empress Dowager Zili was planning. Zian quickly made contact with a number of generals loyal to her, and already had control of the Imperial Guard. She also is believed to have coordinated with the Empress to ensure the loyalties of palace staff and Capital Region Metropolitan Police (Police Commissioner Li Fang was a longtime friend and possible lover of the Jiashun Empress's). However, Defense Minister Shen had actually notified the First Minister of the mobilizations before Prince Qi heard about them, claiming the mobilizations were a contingency due to unrest around the country.
Coup and counter-coup
June 5th
Late on June 5th, Empress Dowager Zili had the Emperor spirited in secret out of the Capital Region to Zuo'anbao, putting a body double in his place. She herself went to Tianjing, visiting the residences of a number of her allies in quick succession and quickly moving them to the State Security Directorate building, protected by Internal Security Service (ISS) troops under the command of Interior Security Minister Lu Bingwen. It is believed she was tipped off to Empress Dowager Zian's impending coup by Grand Secretary Liu Lianhua, who herself also fled to Tianjing.
The First Minister, meanwhile, who had not known that Zian was actually plotting a coup, evacuated to Changzhou, where he had a close relationship with the commander of the 6th Group Army. He ordered the 6th Group Army to mobilize and set up roadblocks and fortifications along routes to the capital, and used the Revolutionary Party's Changzhou machine to mobilize a number of paramilitaries as well. Empress Dowager Zian called him to inform him of the plan, which he agreed to, and he prepared to address the nation to justify the coup, which was anticipated to proceed smoothly. However, despite the First Minister's control of the city, MSJ saboteurs sent by Director Lao blew up the city's main state broadcasting center as the First Minister was about to deliver his speech, wounding him.
When the Emperor was not found to be in the palace, his body double and a number of palace staff were summarily executed, but a number of Imperial Guards who objected to their organization's strike against their rightful monarch and commander began a counterattack. They occupied the Northern Apartments and pushed out Zian's forces. She, in turn, sent word to her loyalists in the military that the Emperor had fled, and quickly crushed the rebellious Guards and established total control over Dongjing. Prince Qi had been responsible for coordinating the effort to capture the Grand Empress Dowager, and had discovered her flight to Tianjing but was unable to alert the Empress Dowager in time for her to figure out that the Emperor had probably also vanished. Capital Region Police and the 2nd Group Army, commanded by Prince Qi's son the Duke of Shi, converged on Tianjing to capture Zili and her allies. However, they faced unexpected resistance from ISS security forces and paused outside the city to prepare for an assault. They were unable to shut down power or communications, allowing Zili to continue communicating with her clique of generals and officials around the country.
June 6th ("6-6")
Commanders loyal to Zili were soon in control of most of the country's largest cities, including Haixingwai, Qingzhou, Pingzhou, Lancheng, Linzhen, Hanjin, and Xikou, and the Interior Security Ministry began mass arrests of those suspected of sympathizing with Zian and Qi. The deputies of the Grand Assembly were also woken in the night and convened in the wee hours of the morning, being compelled to vote at bayonetpoint for a measure introduced by Defense Minister Shen to strip the First Minister and the cabinet of their powers and vest "supreme executive authority" with the State Council. The State Council had previously been viewed simply as a larger version of the cabinet, an advisory board of senior officials for the government, but now its ranks were pared down to only include members of the Empress Dowager Zili's clique.
Zian and Prince Qi, however, soon mobilized their forces around the country more fully, fomenting riots in Haixingwai and Pingzhou, sending the 5th Group Army (commanded by Zian's nephew) marching on Lancheng, and seizing control of the strategic cities of Yenling, Nanjing, and Zhulin around the Capital Region. They faced another serious setback, however, when the 1st Air Division in the Capital Region moved to reinforce the defenses of Tianjing. Zian and Qi had little influence in the Air Force, and air strikes left what was supposed to be a quick attack by the 2nd Group Army against lightly armed ISS troops in shambles. The 14th Group Army, which had been moving into the outskirts of Lancheng assuming it would only face light resistance from naval infantry, was also heavily bombed on June 7th by the 1st Air Division and the 2nd Air Division based near Zuo'anbao.
Most crucially, the Emperor made a speech to the nation denouncing Prince Qi, Empress Dowager Zian, Prince Yan, and the First Minister, marking the moment when the crisis became a public affair.
Counter-coup gains momentum
On June 9th, with unrest and confusion now spreading across the country, the Xikou Clique evacuated Tianjing by air, removing to the more secure Xikou (which became the origin of their name). The Emperor's location was finally discovered by Prince Qi, but the 5th and 2nd Group Armies were unable to mount effective attacks, and the city was also reinforced by the 4th Division of the 3rd Group Army, under the commander of the Emperor's younger half-brother Prince Li, and by the 9th Group Army (commanded by a former lover of Zili's), which had sped north from Nanchuan by train.
By June 10th, two full days before it is believed Zili had planned to initiate her own coup, Defense Minister Shen had mobilized nearly a million Civil Guard reservists and concentrated around half of that force outside Longshan. The following day, they began a disorganized but enormous attack on the Capital Region, overwhelming Zhulin and surging to the outskirts of Dongjing. The 2nd Group Army essentially disbanded as an effective fighting force throughout the evening under the weight of numbers of the Civil Guard, though it inflicted heavy casualties on the poorly-trained, poorly-equipped reservists. The following day, the Civil Guard stormed Dongjing and captured Prince Yan, Prince Qi, and Empress Jiashun, while Empress Dowager Zian elected to commit suicide by slashing her wrists rather than face capture. Prince Qi sent word to the 6-6 Faction's supporters around the country to lay down their weapons, and all three were placed under house arrest as the Xikou Clique and the Emperor returned to the Capital Region.
Meanwhile, in Changzhou, the soldiers of the 6th Group Army saw the writing on the wall and began to surrender. Unwilling to face probable execution or life in prison, the First Minister slipped out of the city and spent the next week journeying across the country and into Namkwon while the ISS searched for him. He then crossed the Namkwonese border with Negara and defected, causing outrage across Songguo.
The Great Purge
With power firmly in the hands of Empress Dowager Zili and her clique of supporters, she embarked on a massive and brutal purge of the civil service, imperial family, and military, using the Interior Security Ministry and the State Council Research Office to root out and destroy anyone suspected of harboring sympathies for the 6-6 Faction or the Qin government. Elections were indefinitely suspended and millions of people fell under suspicion, with hundreds of thousands being imprisoned, sent to labor camps, or executed. The country was also rattled by the rise of the Red Bird Guards, with millions of youth joining Guards units and zealously dispensing extrajudicial punishments to those suspected of supporting the "Five Evils"- the usurpers, Nematsujin dogs, the Negaran savages, the Euclean barbarians, and their Songhua cronies (identified as the supporters of Empress Dowager Zian, Prince Qi, and the Qin government).
So many people were executed in Lantai Prison that the Dongjing municipal government filed complaints with the Interior Security Ministry because the blood running from the prison's pipes was polluting the Lai River, and reportedly the bodies had to be buried in mass graves with bulldozers. Mass killings occurred around the country, usually at the hands of Red Birds, Civil Guard, ISS, or regular military forces, but spontaneous outbreaks of violence and unrest spread through many villages, with citizens seemingly randomly turning on neighbors suspected of disloyalty and murdering them. Between mass killings and the latter type of murder, the death toll of the purge is estimated to be upwards of one and a half million people, with hundreds of thousands more tortured, displaced, or raped. Over the span of six months, this makes the 6-6 Crisis one of the largest, most efficient democides in history.
Prince Qi and his family, along with Prince Chu (demoted from Prince Yan) and his family, and a number of other blood and marriage relatives of the imperial family, were executed about a month after the coup, on July 16th, in what is now known as the Imperial Pogrom (a rather dark Songhua joke about this incident refers to it as "trimming the imperial family tree"). Almost all branches of the dynasty save for Empress Dowager Zili and the Shunzhen Emperor's were destroyed. None of those executed were interred in the imperial family tombs (it is believed they probably joined thousands of other purge victims in mass graves outside Dongjing).
As the Red Birds continued to grow in power, the purges grew to increasingly surreal proportions, with Red Birds even making "citizen's arrests" against "suspected traitors" from the Interior Security Ministry and the Xikou Clique's supporters.
January 9th Incident and the End of the Crisis
The January 9th Incident, in 1985, was an incident when a mob of Red Bird Guards from the 116 Faction, having defeated a number of their enemies in the opposing 128 Faction, entered the city of Dongjing and rioted, threatening the storm the Daming Palace and the Northern Apartments and seize the Interim State Council (essentially comprised of the Xikou Clique and no one else). The State Council realized that the Red Birds had gotten out of hand, and throughout the rest of January the armed forces were employed to forcibly disarm any Red Bird units that did not voluntarily surrender whatever weapons they had and submit themselves to the new Social Bureau of the Public Works Ministry for reassignment.
Aftermath
The Red Birds remained a new force in politics and a powerful volunteer youth service with both community service and paramilitary aspects, and under the post-crisis reforms, the paramilitary wings of various political parties were consolidated under the Red Birds. These reforms strengthened the United Front's disciplinary apparatus, and gave the imperial court and civil service significantly more power on the State Council (which itself suddenly became the main executive body), while reducing the power of the Grand Assembly. Imperial succession law was also reformed to allow women to inherit and to formally prohibit the monarch from taking multiple spouses at once. The government also moved to rein in the fiscal situation and reform Songguo's struggling economy, opening it more to the outside world.
Less than a year after his defection, in March 1985, Qin Min'er was assassinated by an MSJ sniper in Kota Merdeka. His defection and assassination, as well as the Negaran government being appalled by the bloody purge and mass killings, seriously deteriorated already-poor relations with Negara (which considered intervening during the crisis, and only elected not to due to Songguo's large nuclear arsenal).
1985 and 1986 saw bumper harvests, and with the chaotic assaults of the Red Birds and the completion of the Great Purges, stability began to return to Songguo. The new government began planning for the 1989 Tianjing International Exhibition, but would not allow fresh elections until 1990. In 1990, Empress Dowager Zili stepped down as Interim Chairwoman of the State Council, and Shen Tai, who had served as Defense Minister in the Qin government and during the 1984-1990 period, took power as the elected First Minister and Chairman of the State Council. His tenure, however, would be brief, as the 6-6 Crisis has set the stage for the next chapter in Songhua politics: the rise of Zhao Bolin.