1. [b][u]Nation Name:[/u][/b] Union of Socialist Voskiya 2. [b][u]Head of State:[/u][/b] Chairman Dominik Luczynski, 44 3. [b][u]Political Alignment during the Most Atrocious War:[/u][/b] Entered the War a [color=lightblue]Pact Nation[/color]. Ended the War a [color=gray]Neutral Nation[/color] following the Winter Revolution of 1915. 4. [b][u]Culture:[/u][/b] The great experiment, a nation of socialist principle and theory forged within the harsh anvil of war and winter. The butcher's bill of the Most Atrocious War stands tall, amidst the millions of lives claimed by the 6-year war can states and nations be counted, the Voskiyan Commonwealth was one such casualty. Faced with a buckling front and internal unrest, the blizzards of the 1915 winter oversaw more then just to near collapse of the Commonwealth's allies in the Pact of Unity but the utter collapse of the Voskiyan Commonwealth to discontent rebels and parties of the radical left during the Winter Revolution of 1915, and the subsequent formation of the Union of Voskiya from the ashes. Following it's ascension, the new worker's state was quick to end it's involvement in the Atrocious War and instead sought to centralize it's rule while the world continued to turn upon it's axis and tear itself to pieces for a further four years. The Voskiyan Union has existed for a mere 4 years though in that time the Trade Union Congress has been swift with the implementation of Syndicalist and Socialist theory. The Union of Voskiya is a decentralized state ruled by directly elected regional councils under the jurisdiction of the national Trade Union Congress. Currently the economic ethos of the government is not one of an entirely state directed economy, but instead allows for some economic freedom at the local level backed up by strong workers' rights, welfare support and a democratization of the workplace in the form of co-operatives while the 'commanding heights' of the economy such as the coal industry are nationalized and run by their respective Trade Unions with supervision from the Congress. In 1916 it was also established that Voskiya was to be a secular state, with religion being incompatible with the spirit of scientific materialism following a decree that forbade the public teaching of religion though accepted that citizens may teach and may be taught religion privately. Culturally the Socialist Union is distinct. A state of socialism and secularism in an age of monarchs and capitalists. The worker's state enjoys an age of relative freedom and experimentation as the new Union seeks to discover it's own unique culture and society. As encouraged by the central government, a variety of trends, be it in art or literature, in numerous schools, some traditional and others radically experimental have proliferated under the new government, with an extensive interest by the state in the burgeoning film industry as a means to communicate with the masses. Such is life in the young Union of Voskiya as it seeks to forge it's own identity and power in the post-war world.