soviet union civics

[Hammurbabble]

Remember that we aren't given any of the theological teachings and values for any of the Civ4 religions and they make no difference in-game. All that matters is that they are a belief system and value system that unite the people around a central authority, keep them content and supporting the system, and allow the various religious civics to operate. Stalin's cult of personality could do all those things, even if strictly speaking it wasn't what a religious person would call a "religion," and so could Hitler's romanticized German nationalism.

Interesting stuff about the Nazis' environmentalism. Except that Hitler was a vegetarian, I didn't know any of that. I still think Mercantilism fits their historical reality better than Environmentalism, though, in terms of the in-game mechanics.

Why slavery for the Nazis? Because a lot of their production, especially war production, employed slave labor from concentration camps and POWs. That's why not all the Jews shipped to Auschwitz were immediately put to death, those that could work they put to work instead.

What changes took place in the Soviet Union after the war, and especially after Stalin died, that's a good question. I would disagree that their real government type was ever Representation. It's true that the Supreme Soviet was a representative body, but the voting was rigged to keep it locked down by the Communist Party, and anyway the real authority lay with the Politburo. Of the government civics in game, I think Police State still fits it best. It wasn't nearly as harsh and brutal after Stalin died and it ceased to be a dictatorship in favor of an oligarchy, but it was still a government that ruled with secret police and denial of basic political rights. Unfortunately, the changes that took place, while substantial, don't fit anything in Civ4.

Perhaps one could argue that the Soviet Union was moving towards Representation under Gorbachev, but since the Soviet Union fell then, we'll never know.

Stalin may have been anti-nationalist in theory, but during World War II that went out the window.

After he died, though, I think we could argue that the Soviet Union dropped Nationhood and adopted Bureaucracy instead. Also, they switched out of Slavery, but to what? Considering the hereditary privilege of Communist Party membership, I would say Caste System. (Remember, the Caste System proper has only existed in India, and so what's called that in game is a looser term.)

So here's what I'm going to suggest:

Soviet Union from Stalin's death until Gorbachev's reforms:

Police State
Bureaucracy
Caste System
State Property
Organized Religion

And under Gorbachev, it became (or was becoming):

Representation
Bureaucracy
Caste System
State Property
Free Religion

 

[Endure]

While that was a well written post Hammurbabble and I'm inclined to agree with most of it, you kinda skipped the part where the original question posed was during WW2.

 

[Hammurbabble]

While that was a well written post Hammurbabble and I'm inclined to agree with most of it, you kinda skipped the part where the original question posed was during WW2.

Scroll up, dude. I dealt with that in an earlier post, basically taking the same positions you did.

 

[Jazzmail]

I'm going with emancipation for the soviet union. Socialism. Class conflict and all that.
Caste system would be the opposite civic: families dedicated to making either warriors or priests or workers.
Slavery could be a cynical alternative, considering how little freedom, but only if you forget slavery means treating a specific group of people as less than human. When you oppress just about everyone (police state) and then everyone is sort of equal again.

USSR: police state, bureaucracy, emancipation, state property, theocracy.

Theocracy is a bit problematic, but communists were dogmatic and believed in marx' prophecy of a far future communist utopia. Religion was also suppressed.


The USSR combination kind of sucks. Now let's try the US for laughs: HR, FS, EM, FM, OR.

 

[Crowqueen]

I would vote Mercantilism for the Nazis. Environmentalism is a product of the post-industrial age and the activism it engenders is a product of non-state groups rather than official ideology; I dare say it doesn't even exist as yet in the real world though only time will tell whether governments are prepared to sacrifice development on the altar of health. One thing it may represent is post-industrialism (after all, it allows corporations) but I don't think that the Nazis can really be called a post-industrialist society as they were pretty committed to German industries and wanted to impose that might on the world. Until after the war people didn't really concern themselves with improving the standard of living dramatically and it isn't really until the 1970s that we let go of industrial society and embraced new methods of improving technology to ensure cleaner supplies of energy and production rather than abandoning development as an all-consuming priority. The USSR and Nazi Germany were products of the high industrial age and would not have coped with modern information systems which allow access to facts and figures necessary to push governments for change. And even modern democracies have bureaucracies which conduct detailed scientific research into the effects of climate change etc. rather than letting themselves be swayed by fashionable concerns (my going-on-40 boyfriend remembers when everyone was afraid of nuclear winter rather than climate change). I know people who have argued at length on forums after having done studies into drugs that make cannabis look like the single biggest danger to the health of mankind, yet governments are being persuaded into decriminalisation or legalisation. That to me is the biggest single drawback to basing things on the whims of pressure groups rather than arbitrating on behalf of society as a whole. Ergo, Environmentalism is a complete-non-starter because no government would do more than increase taxes on polluters and gas-guzzler cars because environmental opinions change so much that it is impossible to please everybody all of the time, particularly if you are trying to run a military-industrial complex as were the Nazis. Most of their support anyway came from the working class so to destroy industry in pursuit of a bucolic romanticism was not going to be the Nazis' way of operating. Most government support comes from the "lowest common denominator" and so if environmental policies get too far, jobs begin to be lost, tax revenue goes down and we can't afford the luxury of environmentalism. Thus governments don't make environmental promises that are effective on a wide-scale however much hot air they spout about trying to do so.

Personally I think therefore Environmentalism should be renamed Post-Industrialism. That way it would still give the health benefits but be more explainable in terms of reality. Governments may assume they give priority to climate change, but in reality, rightly or wrongly, the people I know who work with the British Government actually say that it is mostly natural fluctuations and although we need alarming propaganda to change our ways, we are actually looking at normal cyclical change (2,000 years ago there was thriving viticulture in the South of England, such as you only see now in the South of France, and 1,000 years ago or thereabouts people were abandoning Greenland as the current Arctic climate set in - and it is still not fit for the kind of agriculture the Vikings managed to establish there). If this is the case no modern government would be tempted to sacrifice long-term development - even if it is towards light industry and the commercial sector rather than heavy industry - so Environmentalism does not on the whole fit the Nazis at all.

To sum up for the Nazis:

Police State
Nationhood
Caste System (I still say the Master Race theory fits more but perhaps we could again have two systems operating in tandem)
Mercantilism
Free Religion (they were going to destroy the Church after the war but as long as the churches toed the party line they were spared; in fact it was probably more liberal than the USSR was either at the time or after the war)

 

[Hammurbabble]

I dare say it [environmentalism] doesn't even exist as yet in the real world though only time will tell whether governments are prepared to sacrifice development on the altar of health

You are right that it doesn't exist yet in the real world, although it soon will because it must; you are wrong that adopting it has anything to do with sacrificing development for health. Rather, it amounts to adopting the only viable path to further development once it reaches a certain state.

In-game, once cities reach a certain size Environmentalism outdoes Free Market in commerce; in the real world, something comparable happens and we're just about there.

One thing it may represent is post-industrialism

The only way we will achieve a "post-industrial" economy in the sense you mean is if we fail to make the environmentalist transition and devolve to a pre-industrial one. Either that or via nuclear war. The term "post-industrial" is a piece of self-serving nonsense that tries to justify or excuse moving the industrial capacity from advanced economies to exploitable primitive ones so as to take advantage of oppressed, low-wage labor, and pretend this is some kind of natural development or even something to be desired. Absent the unconscionable politics and diplomacy that allow this sort of thing, the industries of the U.S. and Europe would still be going strong, and would continue to do so under an environmentalist economy. Calling a society "post-industrial" makes no more sense than calling it "post-agricultural." Perhaps we will reach a point in which the majority of the wealth produced in our society (even restored to healthy economic functioning) doesn't come from manufacturing, but in such an economy our manufacturing sector will remain as healthy as ever, just as our agriculture does today, it will only be overshadowed by (perhaps) an information sector that is even stronger than it is.

Governments may assume they give priority to climate change, but in reality, rightly or wrongly, the people I know who work with the British Government actually say that it is mostly natural fluctuations

Well, that just proves the people you know in the government aren't climate scientists and don't know squat about it. Which is OK, I hadn't heard that being a climate scientist was a requirement for government work.

Getting back to in-game stuff and abandoning dubious modern politics, I don't agree that the Nazis practiced the Free Religion civic. In fact, considering the way they treated one religion in particular, that strikes me as complete nonsense.

 

[Crowqueen]

You are right that it doesn't exist yet in the real world, although it soon will because it must; you are wrong that adopting it has anything to do with sacrificing development for health. Rather, it amounts to adopting the only viable path to further development once it reaches a certain state.

There's no must about it. Governments, as I say below, have to look at the long-term probabilities rather than taking anything anyone says as gospel. I know climate scientists (or geographers - my mother and sister are both) and neither of them are as alarmist about it as political propagandists who thrive on the way they have injected concern about the climate into every area of life including spirituality (you are now sinning if you use too much carbon...which is ridiculous for a Christian like me to really explain why the Church has jumped on the bandwagon too). We are in danger of falling prey to someone who says, "oh! look! the Jews are causing climate change! let's kill them!" Would you be the first to say yes?

In-game, once cities reach a certain size Environmentalism outdoes Free Market in commerce; in the real world, something comparable happens and we're just about there.

True but you could compare anything with the game and get a strange result. I played Jewish Japanese in my last game but that doesn't mean any time soon IRL you are going to get Israelis planning to move to Tokyo as their holy city. I know what you mean, I just don't agree that in the long term climate change is going to turn out to be a disaster. Like in 2000 with the Millennium Bug when we were all going to die because of faulty computer programming, for the last ten or twenty years since the break-up of the USSR (and the last serious chance of nuclear winter causing the destruction climate change is going to cause supposedly in the vague near future) we have been actively looking for the End of the World. In reality, any end is going to come if governments loose their heads over this, that and the other that are supposedly deadly within a few years and neglect the real business of governing their citizens in an adequate and responsible way. You could also say we are going to die from Terrorism and we must have a War on Terror and citizens' rights should be curtailed to prevent Terror. Replace "Terror" with "Environment" and it still doesn't make it right.

The only way we will achieve a "post-industrial" economy in the sense you mean is if we fail to make the environmentalist transition and devolve to a pre-industrial one. Either that or via nuclear war. The term "post-industrial" is a piece of self-serving nonsense that tries to justify or excuse moving the industrial capacity from advanced economies to exploitable primitive ones so as to take advantage of oppressed, low-wage labor, and pretend this is some kind of natural development or even something to be desired.

Nonsense. Ask any economist or political or social scientist (I have a BSc in social science from the LSE btw with specialisms in democracy/democratisation and the IR of the Nazi-Soviet period) and they will tell you a post-industrial society is one where people have enough leisure time to play Civ and sit around worrying about "goods" like climate change. What it means is that we have evolved technologically to the point where most Western countries have the capacity to downsize their manufacturing industries and move on to a service or commercial economy based on information technology rather than steel, coal and oil. The Soviets and Nazis were industrialists; the modern economy is information-based. That's what I mean by post-industrialism.

Absent the unconscionable politics and diplomacy that allow this sort of thing, the industries of the U.S. and Europe would still be going strong, and would continue to do so under an environmentalist economy. Calling a society "post-industrial" makes no more sense than calling it "post-agricultural." Perhaps we will reach a point in which the majority of the wealth produced in our society (even restored to healthy economic functioning) doesn't come from manufacturing,

Already have done. We outsource most manufacturing now to China or India or the Far East and those countries are now what we call industrialised. Britain's manufacturing sector plummetted in value during the period of Thatcherism in Britain (called Reaganomics in the US) and although I'm not sure it was particularly healthy for Britain overall we now have an economy largely post-industrial in the ways I described above because of economic reforms. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had an economy primarily based on manufacturing and heavy industry, so they cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called Environmentalist. That's what I was getting at in my original post.

but in such an economy our manufacturing sector will remain as healthy as ever, just as our agriculture does today, it will only be overshadowed by (perhaps) an information sector that is even stronger than it is.

i.e. POST-INDUSTRIALISM.

Well, that just proves the people you know in the government aren't climate scientists and don't know squat about it. Which is OK, I hadn't heard that being a climate scientist was a requirement for government work.

Governments have to make decisions in the long-term as much as the short term. Given fluctuations in climate that I mentioned, I don't think it is as bad as all that and neither do the people I know higher up who actually have to act on the basis of conflicting viewpoints.

I didn't say I knew climate scientists, I said I knew the people who have to make the decisions based on realistic forecasts and separate myth from reality so that the people they govern don't suffer by the imposition of an arbitrary ideology. Your post makes sense and there is little that I disagree about but you come across just like a Soviet scientist trying to promote atheism.

Whether or not you agree politically, I am saying that environmentalism is a kind of post-industrialism, in that people have actually begun to move beyond heavy industry into a commercial and technological age which, I agree, improves commerce in the game - as in Environmentalism - and in real life has moved many countries from heavy industries and extraction-based economies into service and tertiary economies. Regardless of whether you believe it's a good thing, it happens that manufacturing jobs have shifted from the developed West to the developing world. That's a fact which the Nazis wouldn't have known about. To say it is "dubious" belies a whole field in which governments now have to cater to growing commercial sectors and diminishing manufacturing bases. As someone who wants to go into politics, I make it my business to try and separate myth from reality so the decisions I make in power are clear, transparent and don't play too heavily to a short-term issue. The cleanest and most efficient source of energy in Britain is nuclear fuels. It's incredibly climate change friendly - the UK needs too much energy at current output to be solely dependent on wind power which is erratic to say the least (and are you going to be the one to give up your computer to save energy? thought not).

Then we have the whole issue of whether climate change is real or to what extent it actually exists as an unusual phenomenon rather than as part of a natural cycle which lasts several thousand years. Looking at the way costume, for example, fluctuates in design between looser, cooler clothing and well-padded "armour", you can see climate fluctuates between historical periods and we are in a warm spell at the moment (though here in Britain the temperature is well below average for this time of year). If we are changing from year to year the trend seems either to be too close to call or downwards.

Getting back to in-game stuff and abandoning dubious modern politics, I don't agree that the Nazis practiced the Free Religion civic. In fact, considering the way they treated one religion in particular, that strikes me as complete nonsense.

Yes, but steering clear of the Holocaust, they didn't touch the other churches. They were going to, but they needed both Lutherans and Catholics onside to make sure the religious differences that had split Germany in the past didn't do for Hitler as well. Hence Free Religion where neither was favoured and both Catholic Bavaria and Lutheran Prussia were happy with what the Nazis provided enough to subsume their differences into a free-religious state. Yes, Hitler killed Jews, but he also killed Polish Catholics, Russian Orthodox, protestants probably all over the place and so on. In Germany he pursued a policy of free religion, or of free denomination in any case. In racial policy he murdered millions, but he also murdered secular Jews as well as practising, as well as "conversos". He treated Judaism not as a religion but as an ethnicity.

 

[Jerrymander]

The USSR combination kind of sucks. Now let's try the US for laughs: HR, FS, EM, FM, OR.

The US has no organized religion.

 

[Jazzmail]

The US has no organized religion.

But the US do have hereditary rule?! LOL.

It wasn't meant as a serious suggestion. Now god bless america.

 

[brianshapiro]

Are you sure Nationhood is a better choice than Bureaucracy?

Communism as a movement was actually against nationalism, proponents saw it as an international workers movement, many seeking to put an end to the nation state. They didn't really stand behind their historic nation, whether it be Russia or Ukraine or Belarus, but the Communist Party, and the political organization of the communist party which made up the Soviet Union.

Nationalism in a historical context doesn't mean what people think it does, it means the JS Mills concept of self-determination and sovereignty, which is why nationalism was intimately connected with democratic movements in the 19th century.

There were aspects of the Soviet Union which we associate with ultranationalist movements including the head of the politburo as a cult leader, and had in theory the same view of average people as responsible for the politics of the state (although in reality it was ruled by an elite class), where the point of Nationhood as a civic is just that, you can draft more people for the military because people are ready to defend their nation.

But on the other hand, the Soviet Union was a completely managed state, which would account for the upkeep cost of Bureaucracy. The higher production in the capital would also account for the ability of the state to marshall its income for state projects rather than it actually being efficiently distributed throughout the country.

 

[brianshapiro]

Yes, but steering clear of the Holocaust, they didn't touch the other churches. They were going to, but they needed both Lutherans and Catholics onside to make sure the religious differences that had split Germany in the past didn't do for Hitler as well. Hence Free Religion where neither was favoured and both Catholic Bavaria and Lutheran Prussia were happy with what the Nazis provided enough to subsume their differences into a free-religious state. Yes, Hitler killed Jews, but he also killed Polish Catholics, Russian Orthodox, protestants probably all over the place and so on. In Germany he pursued a policy of free religion, or of free denomination in any case. In racial policy he murdered millions, but he also murdered secular Jews as well as practising, as well as "conversos". He treated Judaism not as a religion but as an ethnicity.

The Nazis promised the Church a lot of things which they didn't hold to, they believed the Church had to be subservient to the Nazi state. The Nazi vision of Christianity was a 'positive christianity' where the aryan aspects of Christ were emphasized, and Christ was put into the mould of a folk leader. Priests that didn't fall in line with this view were attacked by the Nazi party. In essence, the Nazis wanted to create a new religion that centered around the state.

The whole existence of things like the Hilter Youth and worshipping the fatherland can be as an organized pseudo-religion.

Also even though it might be the best option, Mercantilism is a bit iffy i think. It would make more sense if State property in the game were replaced by Syndicalism

 

[brianshapiro]

I never heard that they were vegetarians before, if thats right the Nazis once again amazes me of tha duality of their view of the world.
Anyway, isn´t those nature reserves a part of the romantic use of nazi propaganda. In my mind they are. The amount of effort that the nazis used to get the word out to the german people during the 30: s and during the war was emense and all matter of methods was used. Movies and radio was just one thing, there were new buildings, theatre, music and so on. Not to mention the 1936 Olympics.

Ah well I don´t argue with you that they were envirmontalists (spelling???) they probably were, but why did they do it?

Part of the propaganda of Nazis was aimed at how Jews killed animals under kosher law. They tried to portray Jewish people as inhuman based on their treatment of animals.

The environmentalism of the Nazis was based on all sorts of mystic beliefs about the connection of the race to the soil.

 

[Leodavinci]

As a person born in USSR I would go for:
Police State (you may argue later, but was 100% true at a time of WW II)
Nationhood (especially when you have drafting and espionage bonuses in count)
Slavery (you may argue later, but was 100% at WW II, whipping population to do stuff)
State Property
Theocracy (with religion communism and its great prophets Lenin, Stalin, Marx and Engels ))

edit: and the same for Germans, except Theocracy, they had a lot of brainwashing but they allowed Christianity besides their own Nazi religion

 

[Solid]

Part of the propaganda of Nazis was aimed at how Jews killed animals under kosher law. They tried to portray Jewish people as inhuman based on their treatment of animals.
.

Yes I know, that is one of the contradictions of the nazis world views. They picture the jews like inhuman cause they used barbaric methods of slaughter and then they just killed as many of the paople as they could. In all sorts of inhuman ways I might ad.

I am for some reason always stunned and in some senses amazed by these kinds of thoughts: I can´t for some reason not get into my head how that thought works for any human at all.
It must be something like this.
"I hate those people because they do many bad things, like they are barbaric against animals when they slaughter them. Therfore I will kill them to show..."

What??? I don´t get it at all. And I read so much about this, (not everything of course, there is plenty I don´t know) I talked to so many people about this. (Not everyoone of course, as I said ther is many things I do not know, like the vegetarian thing) I never can get it into my head how that mind works. Every new thing I learn gets me more and more confused.

And I might ad that I know that the things that are so clearly the right thing to do for us now as individuals, might not be the right thing to do if we end up in a group of people with different ideás. The power of the group process are scary. The mob can do plenty of things that NO member of the mob could do in any other given situation. I think I find my answer to my rambling there, but I still can´t get my head around this dilemma.

This kind of things has happend many times in history and are probably happening right now. We still do not learn from history.


-----------------------------------

And there you got it some more incoherent rambling

 

[Napalm102]

USSR and Nationhood don't fit. USSR was not a single entity, it was made up of 15 different states of differnt races, granted Russians were a majority. Unfortunatelly there no choice that fits effect wise to what was happening to USSR during WW2, so lets stick with Nationhood.

Intead of slavery I would pick emancipation, which fits better. Forced labor can be attributed to the massive war-time mobilization and the need both to draft and to support the drafted troops equipment wise. Besides IMHO slavery is more of a mentality where one group of people feels superior about other group of people to the point that the later looses all human rights.

 

[red_elk]

Police state. At war time - undoubtedly.
Bureaucracy. Nationhood would be suicidal in multinational country.
Emancipation.
State property.
Organized religion, orthodox christianity. Switched temporarily from... atheism (may be paganism? Don't know) for war time.

 

[Leodavinci]

USSR was kind of multinational, but Russians were the most multinational of them all
So if you speak Russian you are multinational, if you dont, you are nationalistic enemy of the state.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well

WWII USSR

Police State definitely
Bureaucracy/Nationalism (Nationalism fits the Drafting more)
Slavery [possibly Emancipation, but Whipping population to Industrialize]
State Property (obviously)
Either Free Religion or Theocracy (communism state religion)

Nazis
Police State definitely
Nationalism (obviously)
Emancipation (their only real population division was people not to kill eventually and those to kill eventually)
either Mercantilism or Environmentalism (from the regulated economy, and the lack of foreign trade/health goods)
either Free Religion or Theocracy (Naziism state religion)

 

[brianb1974]

WW2 USSR
Police State
Bureaucracy (Historically accurate, although you could argue for Nationhood in gameplay terms)
Slavery (whipping pop for development)
State Property
Theocracy w/ NSR (enforced atheism)

Nazi Germany
Police State
Nationhood
Emancipation (none of the others really fit)
Mercantilism
Organized Religion (Christianity) probably best depicts what was going on between church and state.

And the Adolf Hitler leader should be charismatic aggressive, which accounts also for the high quality of the German military. His favorite civic is nationhood.

 

[ICNP]

Bear in mind the question was "during WWII." Under Stalin, and in wartime. Endure has it, in my opinion.

Police state? Stalin epitomized that.
Nationhood? Yes, up to and including a mass draft.
Slavery? Yes: because forced labor, even working to death, was key to military production, especially when they were able to use German POWs
State Property should be obvious
Theocracy is the only odd one, but considering the cult-like propaganda machine of the Stalinist state, and also Theocracy's military benefit in-game, this is the closest of the religious civics to what Stalin had during WWII

So They basically were the ultimate war machine? Heck they have like no WW and can produce more units than you can count in a turn.

Religion is so obscure in this period although a no religion theocracy (more like a state theocracy) sounds fine.