1925

Only in the name of the general rights of society can a particular class lay claim to general domination.

-Karl Marx

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

-Thomas Mann
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** Some Key Events, 1925**

January 5th: The British minister for Colonial Affairs Lord Edwin Montagu forms a commission to begin planning a sweeping re-organization and “rationalization” of colonial rule.

January 8th: Thomas Mann, a prominent German exile in Chicago, publishes Der Zauberberg , or the Magic Mountain. It is widely understood to be a searing indictment of pre-war European bourgeoisie society, and is the subject of controversy in several German-language emigre newspapers. Its final character is the Dutch pepper merchant turned communist Pieter Pepperkorn, a larger than life figure whose bodily vigor and inexhaustible sense of life overshadows the cold intellectualism of both the reactionary Jesuit Naphtha and the liberal Herr Settembrini.

January 11th: The Executive Committee of the All-German Congress of Soviets narrowly votes to legalize homosexual relationships. Sodomy and other “homosexual acts” were decriminalized the previous year.

January 13th: The NBII issues a classified report on the causes of William Jennings’ Bryan’s death. It is shared with President Elihu Root and a few of his advisors.

January 16th: Diplomats from the Dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are invited to London to participate in the colonial commission. The Liberal government, hoping to reduce Britain’s colonial burden, aims to secure the Dominions’ agreement to administer a number of outlying territories.

January 18th: Hjalmar Branting, the Social-Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden, dies in office. He will be succeeded by Ivar Vennerstrom, a parliamentarian from the left-wing of the party.

January 21st: Two days after Vennerstrom’s accession to the party leadership, national documents inconspicuously begin replacing “The Kingdom of Sweden” with “Sweden”. Several right-wing papers that denounce the change are stormed by paramilitaries associated with Swedish unions.

January 23rd: General del Castelnau, the de facto leader of the Republic of France, announces that the national capital will remain in Toulouse for the time being. Paris and much of the Loire Valley are still under military administration.

January 26th: Albert Einstein leaves Switzerland and takes up a post at the new Institute for Pure Science at the University of Berlin.

January 28th: Eduard Bernstein wins a leadership election to the right-wing “Free Socialist People’s Party”. With most of the union-aligned Social Democrats now solidly in the camp of the Revolutionary Social-Democrats, the party, which has around 100 People’s Assembly Deputies but almost no representation in the worker’s councils, is undergoing a crisis of faith. In a break from some of his past writings, Bernstein will soon denounce the “statist” socialism of Luxembourg, contrasting it unfavorably to the “Italian Experiment” in “Free Socialism”. He is, however, silent about the government’s ongoing repression of the organizational apparatus of the national-social association, something which the Free Socialists will ultimately benefit from.

January 30th: The People’s Assembly and Revolutionary Social Democrats on the Executive Committee shoot down a RAF-sponsored measure to begin an ambitious program of naval expansion.

February 2nd: The British colonial commission agrees to merge the administrations of Palestine and Lebanon. Scattered protests emerge among the Lebanese Maronite-Christian and Palestinian Zionist-Jewish communities, but the Arab majority of the territories are pleased with the decision. The territory will be known as the “Levantine Protectorate”.

February 4th: The New York Stock Exchange makes its biggest day of gains in the past decade as rumours circulate that Hoover intends to reform antitrust law in an effort to ensure the international competitiveness of American goods.

February 5th: The young scholar Max Horkheimer is offered a position at the University of Leipzig’s new Institute of Scientific Sociology. The chair of the institute is Karl Mannheim, a Hungarian-German Sociologist and Marxist convert.

February 7th: Sun Yat-sen announces the creation of a “special economic zone” in the Yangtze River Delta to promote foreign investment. In reality, privileges will be granted almost solely to American investors.

February 8th: American troops in Khuzestan, initially there to defend British interests in the area, are used to place pressure on the Persian government to permit a favorable American investment treaty. The American encroachment in Persia, a traditional zone of British influence, causes tensions between the allies.

February 10th: In a gesture of bipartisan magnanimity, the Liberals appoint the Tory William Ormsby-Gore as Viceroy of India. Ormsby-Gore is hardly a doctrinaire conservative, and is known for holding more progressive views on colonial matters.

February 11th: Marcus Garvey returns to the United States after a long sojourn in Ethiopia. He has been assured by several supporters that the government no longer has any intention of arresting him.

February 14th: Benito Mussolini, Georges Valois, Pierre Taittinger and Francois de La Rocque publish a small booklet titled: “Fascism: The Politics of the 20th Century”. Though ostensibly coauthored, it is largely written by the Italian exile and then translated into French by Valois. This will be the classical statement of “Fascism”. Mussolini argues that the past decade has demonstrated that the new, universal class of history is neither the merchant nor the worker, but the soldier. Only a “combatant’s state” led by hardened veterans can surmount class conflict and impose order on a disintegrating society.

February 16th: The Swiss Government agrees to repatriate Erich Ludendorff to Germany. He will face trial in Berlin for “Crimes against the German and European peoples.” Similar trials will also be held for the Polish ringleaders of the Jewish ethnocide.

February 18th: William Ormsby-Gore arrives in Bombay, the provisional capital of the British Raj. He soon learns that a vicious insurgency continues to grip Bombay, Bihar, Bengal, and the Andhra Delta area.

February 19th: Amid continuing unrest in the north, General del Castelnau announces a period of “indefinite extraconstitutional emergency rule” until civil order is restored.

February 21st: The independent-minded governor of Indochina refuses to recognize the authority of the French government until elections are held. This is criticized by the governor of colonial madagascar, who warns of a “British quest for influence” in the colonies. Despite a rote denunciation, Castelnau refuses to take formal action against the wayward colonial governor. Coffers will continue to flow from Indochina into the French treasury despite the conflict.

February 22nd: Fearing for his own safety, George Clemenceau quietly goes into exile in England.

February 24th: From his mansion in Toulouse, General del Castelnau announces the unilateral repeal of the 1905 law separating church and state.

February 27th: The German Government, previously focused on the creation of a system of economic planning, begins restructuring the famously hierarchical German education system. The first institutions to come under assault are the upper-class gymnasiums.

February 28th: The People’s Front Against Imperialism is formally founded and headquartered in Amsterdam. It is to serve as a front organization for IntRevMar’s Anti-Colonial Committee; over the year it establishes branches in Batavia, Yogyakarta, Hanoi, Saigon, and Algiers.

February 30th: Prominent Catholic Cardinals in America criticize Pope Gregory after he rejects several proposed cardinals for a new Archdiocese in the south. Church observers fear a second schism.

March 2nd: Bernstein files an application for the Free Socialist Party to join the International Union of Revolutionary Marxists. As an avowedly revisionist party, it is unclear that they have the support required to join the body. The membership committee decides to postpone a decision until the 2nd Congress of the International Union of Revolutionary Marxists, to be held in July.

March 4th: Herbert Hoover is sworn in as the 30th President of the United States. In his inaugural address, Hoover promises to return America to its former place as a “shining beacon and example” to the rest of the world. On his first day, he commutes several of the harsher prison sentences meted out during the red panic, drawing muted criticism from the party’s hard-right.

March 7th: The potential rift in the church is averted when Gregory backs down, allowing a more centrist cardinal to be appointed in the new Archdiocese.

March 8th: On International Women’s day, tens of thousands of working-class women in London, Manchester, and Birmingham take to the streets and demand an extension of the suffrage.

Marth 10th: The American Congress begins drafting a new tariff act. The bill is widely understood to be a reaction to the increasing penetration of cheap British manufactured goods into the American market.

March 12th: In the interest of organization, the colonial commission agrees to separate internal matters of British colonial administration with possible cessions of territories to the dominions.

March 15th: The German Soviet Executive Committee forms a subcommittee to investigate the effect of the militia reforms of 1922-1923 on the army’s performance. A growing number of right-wing RAF and RSD delegates advocate a return to a professional army.

March 19th: The Swedish Parliament passes the controversial “Corporate Reform Act”. All corporations employing over 100 people will now have to submit major financial and business decisions to independent review boards run by a mixture of non-partisan experts, labour union bureaucrats, and government administrators. The bill is part of a broader effort to immunize the Swedish state and Swedish national security from the decisions of private capitalists, many of whom are unhappy with the nation’s IntRevMar alignment.

March 22nd: As part of his “two-way diplomacy”, Yukio Ozaki shepherds a bill through the Japanese diet rescinding bans on most major socialist organizations.

March 23rd: The American Congress amends the new tariff bill to create carve-outs for Japanese companies.

March 25th: The American Secretary of State reaches a deal with Castelnau allowing America to permanently station 30,000 troops on the French mainland. Though this is ostensibly to repel a German assault, many wonder if it is really intended to ensure that France repays its massive war debts to America and Britain.

March 27th: Anticipating a potential loss in next year’s elections to the People’s Assembly, some voices in the Luxemburgist RAF urge “constitutional reform” to ensure the continued supremacy of the Soviets over parliament.

March 29th: Large-scale resettlement of Jewish refugees into Galicia begins. The area is still plagued by ethnic violence between Jews and Poles, and the fragile state is propped up by German military and industrial assistance.

March 30th: Britain and the colonies finally agree upon a plan of cessions. Australia will administer the formerly German South Seas territories. German Southwest Africa and all British territories south of the Zambezi River, including Bechuanaland, will be ceded to South Africa to run as independent territories. The liberal government hopes that the generous concessions to South Africa will placate its restive boer population. After some pressure and prodding, Canada also agrees to a plan to help co-administer the states of the Caribbean, with an eye to eventual federalization.

Frederick Lugard, a supporter of “indirect rule” through “traditional native elites” and an influential voice on the colonial commission, has only reluctantly agreed to the South African annexations. In exchange for his support, he and his liberal supporters have been promised extensive latitude in determining the governance of the rest of Africa. The separation of internal matters of colonial governance from the question of dominion cessions turned out to be only nominal.

April 2nd: The Lodge-Fordney Tariff act passes the Senate and is signed into law. Though the tariffs in the bill are not aimed specifically at Britain, they tend to target goods which are imported from it. Notably, most of America’s trade with the dominions, such as Canada and Australia, is unimpacted. Specific carve-outs are made for South American nations, though most imports from these countries are not targeted by the bill, as they are not produced domestically. More notable is the explicit exemption given to Japan; Tariff rates are to be set on a bilateral basis here, in a future trade treaty. Chinese industrial and consumer goods produced by American-owned companies are also eligible for targeted exemptions, though they will have to make applications to the federal trade commission.

April 5th: Commissar of Justice Clara Zetkin, in concert with the leading members of the subcommittee on Juridical Affairs, announces the end of the “extraordinary law of proletarian revolution” introduced in 1921, which has permitted potential counterrevolutionaries to be tried in special tribunals without full due process. These extralegal tribunals were subject to a great deal of criticism from members of Bernstein’s Free Socialist Party, and they contributed to the flight of over 800,000 white emigres over the early 1920s. Zetkin’s declaration is a sign that the new socialist government in Germany feels secure, but it also comes as Ludendorff’s trial is being prepared. This confirms that Ludendorff will be tried in a normal, German court, under customary law. The trial is set to begin on the 24th.

April 7th: Numerous British politicians privately toast the upcoming trial of Ludendorff. A minor controversy is caused when The Nation reports that Prime Minister Richard Haldane quipped that he would “prefer to have seen Ludendorff tried in Britain, but is certain that the reds will give him his due.” The British elites widely blame Ludenforff and “Prussian obstinacy” for the state of affairs in Europe; history may have turned out quite differently had he been willing to accept one of the Entente’s generous peace proposals.

April 10th: After years of power-sharing arrangements, the Dutch SDAP and SDP merge together, constituting themselves as internal factions of a single party. The Dutch Council-Republic is now a one-party state.

April 12th: Vorwarts, the main newspaper of the Revolutionary Social Democrats, runs a story detailing the “fatigue” of workers with the tasks of political and social revolution. Over the past two years, the Luxemburg ministry has passed ambitious reforms to devolve power to the individual worker-councils, but this has placed ever-expanding demands on the workers’ time, energy, and brainpower. A quote from one worker summarizes the sentiment in certain workplaces, particularly outside councilist strongholds such as Saxony and Berlin: “What’s the point in electing these blokes if they’re going to hand all the work back to the worker?”

April 14th: Terrorists associated with the Bengali-Indian Liberation Front carry out bombings in Calcutta which kill four British officials and twelve civilians.

April 17th: Vorwarts receives hundreds of letters from irate workers denouncing the “scab mentality” of the individuals discussed in the April 12th article. For their part, several prominent politicians of the Revolutionary Social-Democrats, without directly referencing the article, make statements in defense of the councils and their role in the revolution, as well as the recent reforms. Having recently made gains in the council elections, the RSD leadership is fearful that speaking against the councils would alienate both the younger activists within the party and ensure permanent RAF hegemony within the councils themselves.

April 21st: An armed Turkish convoy south of Damascus is ambushed by a mixture of Druze and Arab guerilla fighters; fifteen Turkish soldiers are killed, and another ten captured by the “Syrian Revolutionary Front”. Britain accuses the Soviet Union of funding the group; shortly thereafter, Sverdlov accuses the British of the same. In reality, both states have their hands in the pot.

April 23rd: With the assistance of American loans, the government of Persia begins buying out British oil concessions in Khuzestan. Desperate for an infusion of hard American currency, the British are forced to agree to the deal. This marks the end of the informal British imperial presence in Persia, and the beginning of a competition between the Soviets and Americans for influence in the region.

April 24th: The Trial of Erich Ludendorff begins in Berlin. Ludendorff’s lawyers will argue that, as most of his counterrevolutionary actions were committed well before the emergence of the German Socialist Republic, the law cannot apply to him. Similar jurisdictional arguments will be made at several concurrent trials of Polish government leaders accused of aiding and abetting the Jewish ethnocide.

April 27th: Forty-two men die in three-way paramilitary clashes in Paris between Maurras’ pro-government Action Francois, Valois and De La Rocque’s Fascist Leagues , and left-wing insurgents. With many demobilized veterans of the French Army having joined the former two organizations, it turns out to be exceedingly difficult for the military administration to impose order.

May 1st: The first International Worker’s May Day Celebration is hosted by Leningrad, in recognition of its leading role in the European revolutions. In attendance are rising stars of several prominent socialist parties, including Nikolai Bukharin, Ernst Thalmann, and Palmiro Togliatti.

May 3rd: A Turkish “Revenge Expedition” sent into Druze-majority areas in Southern Syria meets disaster at the Battle of Nawa. Over 1,500 Turkish soldiers, around half of the total, are killed or severely wounded in the battle, and the rest are forced to retreat back to Damascus.

May 5th: In a major coup for Castelnau, the liberal-radical governor of the burgeoning colony of French Algeria swears loyalty to the new government. Later reports will reveal that substantial American pressure was brought to bear on the equivocating governor.

May 6th: Major protests break out in Oran and Algiers among French colonists and Russian white emigres, who worry that the Government in Toulouse intends to repay American debts through taxation of the colonies.

May 9th: The British intelligence services leak information which indicates Soviet funding of the Druze militias in Southern Turkish Syria. Though Sverdlov denies the claims, he faces criticism from his IntRevMar allies for the move, which many equate to the failed “Indian Experiment”. Gramsci is the lone Western socialist leader who refuses to sign on to a letter written denouncing Sverdlov’s “opportunism”.

May 11th: To the horror of Germany’s three main political parties and hundreds of thousands of worker-activists , the judge in Ludendorff’s trial indicates that he is sympathetic to the argument of the defense. This comes on the heels of similar judgements concerning Polish war criminals; judges, even ones who are committed socialists, deny that the government has authority to prosecute individuals who were never under its legitimate jurisdiction. The Executive Committee and People’s Assembly both immediately begin drafting legislation to explicitly clarify the extent of the government’s powers and offer additional grounds for a prosecution.

May 12th: Ormsby-Gore, the Viceroy of India, meets with a number of prominent Indian Muslim leaders, including some who signalled reluctant support for the INC revolt. He later announces a blanket pardon of mid-level officials of the Muslim League who are willing to “swear fealty to the crown and loyally serve the British Raj.”

May 14th: The historic Syrian City of Damascus falls to advancing Druze rebels. Around five thousand Turkish soldiers are captured by the rag-tag militants under the command of the charismatic Druze Leader Sultan Al-Atrash. This marks the official beginning of the “Syrian Crisis”.

May 16th: The Turkish government accuses both Britain and the Soviet Union of interfering in the territorial integrity of Turkey and thereby violating the 1924 agreements which brought an end to the Greco-Turkish and Armenian/Kurdish conflicts. The Turkish Army is mobilized to enter the Aleppo District in Northern Syria en route to retaking Damascus.

May 17th: The American Ambassador to the United Kingdom expresses his consternation with the “Syrian Situation”, and argues that the UK ought to have consulted the Council of State of the newly-formed Atlantic Union before providing assistance to the Druze and Arab rebels.

May 23rd: The Turkish advance into Northern Syria is thrown into chaos as the largely ethnic Arab garrison of Aleppo declares their loyalty to the new state emerging in the south. Years of secularizing and centralizing reform from Ankara have persuaded both the Islamic establishment and the Al-A’yan merchant and landowning class that they would be better off under an independent Syrian state.

May 25th: The IntRevMar Council of Revolutionary States begins a formal inquiry into the Soviet Union’s funding of Arab Rebels.

May 28th: After several weeks of debate and amendment, the German People’s Assembly and Executive Committee hold a joint session to pass the “Law of Proletarian Supercession”.

Two interlinked grounds are offered for the new jurisdiction that the German Socialist Republic claims over both the Polish war criminals and Ludendorff. Firstly, as the representatives of the revolutionary proletariat, the new state has the right to carry through the “necessary means” of securing the revolution. This includes not simply the elimination of counterrevolutionary elements which were dealt with in the extraordinary trials, but also the annihilation of the symbolic figureheads of the old regime. This right is grounded in the proletariat as a universal class of history; just as the bourgeoisie in their own time of ascendancy had the right to revolt against the feudal-absolutist monarchy of Louis XVI and then impose the new laws of republican market society post facto upon the detained monarch, so too is it within the rights of the universal proletariat, which has now “Superseded” the bourgeoisie, to impose a new, socialist justice upon the petty tyrants of yesteryear.

Secondly, the bourgeoisie has formally lost its “substantial title to rule” by virtue of its manifold atrocities during the Great War and the following revolutionary era. As a consequence, bourgeois “legality” has lost whatever claim it may have had to legitimacy. Yet the “natural order of justice” demands that, so far as possible, there be some degree of “legal order” imposed upon the “anarchic and lawless charade” of past bourgeoisie rule. In the case of “especially heinous crimes against global society”, the failure of bourgeoisie states to secure a “true order of legal justice” must not be grounds for future states to grant implicit license to this lawlessness. Pending the creation of a “truly global proletarian society”, the German socialist republic therefore assumes the “solemn responsibility” of achieving some measure of “proletarian justice” through acting as a temporary and provisional representative of the interests of “global humanity”. The law defines both ethnocide and imperialist war as “Crimes against Human Society” which may be prosecuted by any “proletarian state which has detained the perpetrators of these offenses.”

It is later pointed out that these clauses may very well require the German Socialist Republic to detain and prosecute British and French leaders during the Great War if they were ever to set foot upon German soil.

June 5th: The Ludendorff and Polish war criminal trials begin anew, with their prosecutions now being held under the “Law of Proletarian Supercession”.

June 8th: Leipzig’s Institute of Scientific Sociology announces that it will publish the collected works of Marx in a new volume.

June 11th: Work begins in the American House of Representatives on a bill to overhaul existing antitrust law.

June 13th: Major protests break out in Ankara, Konya, and Adana against Turkish Remobilization.

June 15th: The Colonial Commission deadlocks over the organization and governance of British colonies in East Africa. The most radical elements of the liberal government hope to create a new, independent body entrusted with overseeing and supervising British colonial administration, with some even suggesting that members of all “Responsible nations” be allowed to sit upon it. Both pragmatic centrists and settler interests oppose this proposal, but they can agree on little with one another. The centrists, represented by long-standing figures of the colonial affairs bureaucracy such as Frederick Lugard, hope to universalize the system of “indirect rule” first pioneered in Nigeria, while white settlers in Kenya and Tanzania fear that empowering local chieftans and tribal heads will lead to their inevitable dispossession.

June 19th: Ataturk’s government begins a wide-ranging crackdown on opposition figures amidst the Syrian crisis. His government has faced sustained criticism from localists, islamists, and progressives over the debacle in Syria.

June 24th: Us Few , a futuristic film set in an era after “Communism” has been achieved, debuts in German theatres. It is quickly banned in most of the Atlantic Union states, though it draws criticism in Germany and the Soviet Union for its seemingly mixed appraisal of the communist future. The director, Fritz Lang, makes only cryptic comments about the overall “political” content of the film.

July 28th: Outraged by the continuing intransigence of the white settlers, Richard Haldane instructs the colonial minister Edwin Montagu to push several proposed reforms through the colonial ministry over their objections. A week later, Montagu issues a circular instructing the governors of Britain’s East African colonies to move forward with the policy of “indirect rule”, and to begin integrating the administrations of British East Africa, British Somaliland, Tanganyika, Nyasaland, and Northern Rhodesia into a single “British East African” polity, with its capital in the town of Nairobi. When the inevitable settler protests begin, Haldane pointedly suggests that they move south, to the newly enlarged Union of South Africa.

July 2nd: The Turkish Army begins besieging Aleppo.

July 3rd: Erich Ludendorff is found guilty for the newly-created “Crimes Against Human Society” of “Imperialist War”, “Suppression of Proletarian Freedoms”, and “Incitement to Ethnic Hatred”. He will be sentenced to death the next day.

July 5th: Erich Ludendorff is executed in Berlin. The same day, Roman Dmowski’s trial concludes; the one-time Polish leader is convicted of perpetrating ethnocides against the Ruthenian and Jewish Peoples. In a highly symbolic move, he is to be executed in Krakow, the capital of the fledgling Galician Socialist Republic.

July 6th: The 2nd Congress of the International Union of Revolutionary Marxists commences in the German capital of Berlin.

July 7th: A procedural vote to open up the floor to a sweeping reconsideration of IntRevMar inaugural platform on colonialism is narrowly defeated by a coalition of Leninists, right-luxemburgists, and Gramscians. The vote is widely seen as a victory for those who prioritize continued aid to anti-colonial national liberation movements above providing assistance to small and embattled revolutionary movements in England and America.

July 8th: A special commission formed to investigate the failure of the Indian Revolution delivers a scathing report critical of the Bourgeois Indian government. Amadeo Bordiga, the Italian left-communist, harshly criticizes Sverdlov for the “opportunistic gambit” of delaying the report on India until the vote on anti-colonial policy was finished. By a wider margin than expected, IntRevMar decides to create a standing committee to review the details of anticolonial policy.

July 10th: To the alarm of American diplomats, German, Italian, and Dutch trade representatives secure a deal granting the central european socialist states preferential access to Chile’s immense copper reserves. The booming copper mines of the American southwest has pushed down the price of the key resource in America, making it easier for the socialists to entice the Chileans.

July 11th: The IntRevMar Standing Committee recommends the creation of a permanent commission to “oversee” the activities of the anticolonial committee and various IntRevMar front organizations. Later that day, a vote narrowly passes the main body of IntRevMar endorsing the creation of the commission, which will be staffed primarily by Central European delegates. However, IntRevMar appears deadlocked on broader and more theoretical questions for the time being. None attempt to make revisions to the initial platform.

July 13th: The Turkish government, fearing a continuation of internal instability, agrees to negotiate with the Druze and Arab rebels. The Soviet Union and Britain will both act as mediators. Both powers receive notes of diplomatic protest from their respective bloc partners, Germany and America, who worry about being iced out of negotiations. Hoover speaks later that day of the need for a “Strong and Stable Turkey.”

July 14th: News from Turkey reaches the main body of IntRevMar. A Leninist programme to focus the resources of IntRevMar primarily on the colonial south is defeated, and an alternative one pledging support to working people in both the “imperial core and colonial hinterland” is adopted. However, in a coup for Sverdlov, the German Revolutionary Social-Democrats continue to support the Leninist line, though for pragmatic rather than ideological reasons. By focusing IntRevMar’s resources on the colonies, they hope to avert the breakout of renewed conflict.

July 15th: IntRevMar votes to reject the bid of Bernstein’s “Free Socialists” to join the body, arguing that their revisionism constitutes a refusal to adhere to the first and seventh conditions of entry.

July 16th: The de facto leader of the Syrian rebellion, Al-Atrash, meets in rebel-controlled Damascus with Turkish diplomats; although the intention of Turkey is to concede autonomy to the Syrians, it quickly becomes clear that both British and Soviet diplomats intend to create an independent Syria to serve as an additional buffer state. There is significant support within Syria for the Hashemite King of Iraq, Faisal, to be crowned in Syria; although this also has its advocates in the British foreign ministry, the Soviets oppose the extension of British influence in the Levant, and the liberal government of Haldane has no desire for a second great war to break out over a middle eastern conflict.

July 18th: IntRevMar, technically intended to conclude today, extends the duration of the 2nd Congress for an entire week. Key matters have still not been discussed, and there is a growing movement to empower the Council of State. Attendees from the center of the Bolshevik Party denounce this as an attempt to impose Central-European control over Soviet foreign policy and support for revolution in the colonized south and east.

July 19th: In a public speech, President Herbert Hoover warns against the further parcelling up of the “proud Turkish nation”.

July 20th: White settlers converge on the town of Nairobi, the capital of the new British East African Colony. After several pitched battles in the city’s streets, the British garrison surrenders to the settler militias. Britain has a new colonial crisis on its plate, weakening its hand in the Turkish negotiations.

July 22th: The Haldane Ministry comes in for sustained criticism from Tory MP’s for its “anti-white” colonial reforms, which they allege has contributed to the unrest in Kenya and Northern Rhodesia. The next day, Haldane accuses the conservatives of advocating for colonial policies which would “incite the natives to insurrection and turn our vast empire into a breeding ground for red subversives”.

July 25th: Continued doubt about the soundness of British finance and the drying up of American loans prompts the Bank of England to raise its interest rates considerably in the hope of attracting foreign investment. British exports, after having briefly achieved a position of unrivalled global supremacy, are now beginning to face a serious challenge from American and Japanese competitors. Of particular concern is the dumping of Japanese textiles inside India, which has led Lancashire interests to call for a tariff on Japanese produce. Thus far, this has been resisted by Ormsby-Gore, who fears that a further hike in the prices of consumer goods would make the pacification of India more difficult.

July 26th: IntRevMar finally concludes after no small degree of acrimony and infighting. The “2nd Congress Policy” urges a strategic retrenchment until the next “crisis of capitalism”. IntRevMar affiliated parties are to remain on the sidelines; while they may participate in electoral politics, they are not to participate in government until they secure an absolute majority and can commence a “ruptural break”. Several smaller, more moderate social-democratic parties that joined IntRevMar during the heyday of global revolutionary fervor object to this policy, and over the next few months, some of them will voluntarily drop their IntRevMar membership. Notably, despite some disagreements with IntRevMar, the Swedish, Danish, and Swiss Social-Democratic Parties will not go down this route.

July 28th: A Palestinian-Lebanese delegation of Arab Notables arrives to petition the British Colonial Commission for a “Pan-Arab Union” with Syria as well as an eventual pathway to dominion status. This plan also receives support from the Hashemite government of Iraq, particularly its nationalist education minister Al-Husri. Upon being notified of the Palestinian-Lebanese requests, Egyptian politicians express discontent with the prospect of any sort of broader Levantine union that might challenge Egypt’s ascendancy as the de facto leader of the Arab world. After some debate, the Liberals assure the delegates that, though union with Syria is presently impossible, they are open to discussing dominionization in the future.

August 2nd: British expeditionary forces crush the settler revolt in Nairobi. Over 3,000 settlers are arrested over the following weeks; most will be deported to South Africa, though the ringleaders will be executed for treason.

August 4th: Under heavy Soviet-British pressure, Turkey recognizes an independent Syria. The boundaries of the new state will not fully satisfy the Syrian nationalist movement; the “Alawite coast”, Alexandretta, and the northern third of the Aleppo district (though not the city proper) will remain a part of Turkey, largely because of American pressure.

August 8th: At the request of British diplomats, the Iraqi King Faisal quietly removes Sati al-Husri from his position of education minister in Iraq. Al-Husri has long been a leading voice of Arab nationalism; initially tolerated by the British, he has lately alienated them by directing harsh criticism at the Syrian peace and British-Egyptian efforts to prevent a Pan-Arab union. Al-Husri will soon arrive in the Soviet Union.

August 11th: A small publishing house in Berlin agrees to print Julius Martov’s highly incendiary “Memoirs of the Revolution in Russia”, thereby sparking the “Martov Affair”. Martov, currently in exile in Germany, accuses the Bolshevik Party of suppressing a loyal worker’s opposition and crushing the organs of proletarian democracy.

August 16th: Asked by a reporter to clarify her position on Martov’s new book, Luxembourg explains that she has not yet read it nor has any plans to, and reiterates that whatever the differences between the “German” and the “Soviet” system, there is little reason to foment “needless acrimony”. Members of both the left and right of the revolutionary worker’s front begin to voice dissent, either straightforwardly endorsing the text or at least publicly defending its publication.

August 18th: A terrorist attack on a British consulate in Nairobi kills 4 junior officials of the colonial bureaucracy. The British Tories are placed on the backfoot after accusations proliferate that they are sympathetic to settler terrorism.

August 19th: The German press publishes leaked reports indicating that Sverdlov requested Martov’s text to be censored and for Martov himself to be repatriated to Russia to face trial for treason. In Vorwarts, the main publication of the Revolutionary Social-Democrats, a withering attack is launched on the “degenerate partyism” of the Soviet Union. Several prominent newspapers of the RAF-centre in turn accuse the Revolutionary Social-Democrats of seeking to defame the “birthplace of the revolution”.

August 21st: At a private executive committee meeting, Luxemburg advocates to cease the printing of Martov’s text in the interest of comity with the Soviet Union. She is outvoted by a coalition of left-wing RAF council-communists, revolutionary social-democrats, and around half of the more right-wing, pragmatist faction of the RAF, which has split on the issue.

August 23rd: Germany is forced to send an additional 4,500 troops into Galicia to quell an ongoing insurgency of Polish nationalists. Germany has already dedicated an inordinate amount of resources to training the fledgling national army, composed mostly of ethnic Jews and Ruthenes.

August 26th: The Antitrust Reform Act of 1925 passes the United States Congress. The most sweeping restructuring of antitrust law since the early 1890s, the act effectively reverts the progressive reforms passed under Theodore Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan, paving the way for the reconsolidation of American industry.

August 28th: Herbert Hoover, General del Castelnau, and Richard Haldane meet in the town of Portsmouth to discuss the ongoing issue of French war loans. While the Americans show a willingness to forgive much of the loans in return for preferential market access, the British, who are on edge about further depreciation of the pound due to its declining position in export markets, instead hope to recoup much of the loans. It quickly becomes clear that any arrangement to reduce French war debt will have to be financed and paid for by American largesse.

August 29th: In a sign of deteriorating German-Soviet relations, Sverdlov publicly denounces the German refusal to repatriate “known enemies of the Soviet worker’s state”. Several outlets sympathetic to Bolshevism in the west, particularly in the Netherlands and Eastern Germany, allege that the real issue is Central European reticence to stand alongside the Bolsheviks in the pursuit of “global revolution”.

September 3rd: A preliminary agreement reached at the Portsmouth Conference comes in for criticism from Republicans in the House of Representatives, who accuse Hoover of subsidizing Britain’s “unfair trade practices”. It quickly becomes clear that the treaty, which will see America provide generous loans to France, will be dead on arrival in Congress. Hoover decides to extend his stay in London in an attempt to negotiate trade concessions. Britain has recently been the subject of criticism in American newspapers for exploiting its de facto monopoly on rubber and control over the markets of South and Southeast Asia to erect barriers to American industries.

September 4th: The number of guest workers in Germany exceeds one million for the first time. Economists associated with the Supreme Planning Board of the Socialist Economy claim that net “social wealth” is now at least ten percent higher than it was before the war, though in reality, the heavy-industrial pattern of development undertaken by the Luxembourg administration has only unevenly begun to effect standards of life; more impactful has been the more even dispersal of income and the tentative creation of several universalist welfare programs. The glut of guest workers, while accelerating economic growth of Germany, has also made many of the new socialist states in Eastern Europe wary of potential German economic domination, prompting them to grow closer to the Soviet Union.

September 6th: Hoover leaves London without having achieved significant concessions. The Hoover administration contemplates issuing a blanket pardon of French debt to force Britain’s hand, but balks at the domestic political consequences as well as the potential economic effects this might have on Britain.

September 8th: Ormsby-Gore, in an effort to recreate a class of native collaborators, rescinds the ban on the Muslim League as a seditious organization.

September 9th: After months of political maneuvering, the RAF successfully passes several measures amending the German constitution and weakening the power of the People’s Assembly. Despite howls of protest from both the remnants of the National-Social Association and the Free Socialist Party, the policy is broadly supported by both the RAF and RSD, the two dominant parties in the Executive Committee.

September 11th: Months-long talks to arrive at a detente between the Soviet Union and the Republic of China fail. Sverdlov has insisted that the tiny Chinese Communist Party be included in a “broad front” government, and has also refused to return border territories seized by the Soviet Union during the second Sino-Japanese war.

September 13th: Republicans in Congress form a body to investigate unfair foreign trade practices, the so-called “Lodge Committee”. In reality, the body will focus almost solely on Britain.

September 15th: American diplomats reach a deal with Persia to open several military bases on the southern coast of the nation, ringing the Persian gulf.

September 17th: Protests erupt in Paris, Toulouse, and Orleans over “British Debt Slavery”. The French Union of Fascists makes the somewhat bizarre argument that by attacking French naval assets at the beginning of the First Revolutionary Era, Britain had declared an act of war and thereby nullified any French debts. Fascist propagandists denounce Castelnau as a “pawn of a Judaic-American-British-Communist conspiracy to enslave the French people in perpetual debt peonage and steal her rightful empire”.

September 20th: General del Castelnau refuses to issue a cancellation of debt without the explicit go-ahead of the Americans. Demonstrations grow more violent and widespread, particularly in Algeria, where the local police lose control of the city of Oran after being instructed to stand down by its mayor, Jules Molle.

September 25th: Three-way clashes break out in Oran and Algiers between pro-government “Action Francaise” paramilitaries, fascists, and pro-independence militants associated with the “Algerian Social Union Party” of Jules Molle. By the end of the week, the “Algerian League’s”’ militias will control both Oran and Algiers. The social base for the far-right movement is a mixture of white emigres from Russia and Germany, anticlerical French Algerians, and anti-semites.

September 27th: Remaining units of the French Army in Algeria depose their generals and declare loyalty to the French Union of Fascists. After almost bloodlessly taking control of the Paris Military Occupation, Valois and Taittinger’s League of Fascists begin the “March on Toulouse to Redeem France”.

September 29th: Under American pressure to abdicate and avoid a civil war that would present the socialists with a golden opportunity to gain control over the entirety of France, Castelnau flees the country. The fascists will seize control of the capital the following day, and most army units in France will swear loyalty to the new “French Salvation Government” shortly afterwards.

September 30th: Valois is made the new “First General” of France. Mussolini, Taittinger, and de la rocque are all given prominent positions in the new administration.

October 1st: Valois declares the unilateral cancellation of all French foreign debt. The pound’s value starts to plummet.

October 3rd: The army of the French Worker and Soldier’s Republic begins to mobilize in response to the “reactionary unrest”. Valois quietly accepts an American offer to station three divisions near the border.

October 5th: In response to French actions, the British government instructs several colonies, most notably the Anglo-Dutch East Indies, to institute import controls. Journalists in the socialist world predict the beginning of another “inter-imperialist war”.

October 7th: Most of the governors of French colonies in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean declare their loyalty to the deposed Castelnau government. Given the lack of continuing resistance to Valois’ coup in the metropole, this constitutes a de facto declaration of allegiance to the British Empire, which has already made substantial efforts to integrate wavering French colonies as quasi-protectorates.

October 8th: An attempt by remnant units of the French Army to retake the city of Algiers ends in disaster as they are massacred by pro-independence militia units. America dispatches several diplomats to France in an effort to mediate the Algerian crisis.

October 10th: With the signing of the Vienna Concordant, the Netherlands, Czechia, and Galicia all cease to be Associated Socialist Republics of Germany, instead becoming joint members of the “European Socialist Community”, along with Italy. In reality, this change is mostly semantic, serving to formalize the joint military and economic cooperation between the five states. The Italian Army, however, still stands outside the military command structure of the emerging alliance.

October 11th: Jules Molle arrives in the city of Algiers to raucous crowds of supporters. He declares the independence of Algeria as a safe haven for “All European Christrians fleeing from the horrors of socialism and the thuggery of the so-called Fascists.”

October 13th: A joint Anglo-American naval force stationed in Sardinia and Malta halt several French troop transports from reaching Algeria. They hope to force the French Fascist government to come to the table and reach a settlement with the Algerians. In the United States, several influential white emigres have spoken out in support of Molle and against the “Barbaric” soldier’s government in France, which is likened to “White Bolshevism”.

October 14th: Valois relents when it becomes clear that without continued American support, his government would be unable to resist an invasion from the socialist bloc. America has also been a key source of investment and development aid. Domestically, the Anglo-American intervention has bolstered his position, confirming fascist propaganda about an English “conspiracy” to steal France’s empire.

October 17th: Valois, Molle, and representatives of the major powers of the Atlantic Union meet in Oslo to determine the fate of French Algeria.

October 18th: Valois demands that any concessions in Algeria be met with a promise from Britain not to interfere in French efforts to “reimpose order” on other secessionist colonies. In light of Britain’s recent protectionist measures, the Americans support the demand, pointing out that, while the likes of Indochina and French Central Africa may have needed British protection in the chaos of the First Revolutionary Era, they are the rightful territory of the French state. British diplomats insist that they will only agree to such territorial cessions if France agrees to fully repay its war debts.

October 20th: An assassination attempt on the left-wing Prime Minister of Japan, Yukio Ozaki, spectacularly fails. It will soon emerge that the assassin was once a senior officer of the Japanese Imperial Army. Ozaki will use the leverage gained from the attack to launch a wide-ranging assault on the “unconstitutional powers” accumulated by the military bureaucracy.

October 21st: Catholic newspapers in the United States begin attacking Valois as an “anticlerical extremist”. Valois has attracted ire for the often religiously-inflected character of his opposition to the Castelnau government, which he has accused of being more loyal to the “deposed Pope in Portugal” than the “eternal spirit of France.” Several sensationalistic accounts of churches burned down by “white bolsheviks” will later be debunked.

October 23rd: After the Oslo Conference shows signs of deadlocking, American diplomats privately suggest to their British counterparts that they quit the conference. This would permit them to avoid having to negotiate with Valois over the position of the wayward French colonies, and would make it easier for the Americans to impose a unilateral settlement on the intransigent dictator.

October 25th: The Lodge Committee publishes a report concluding that Britain has reneged on the terms of its agreement to keep the East Indies open for trade with America, and recommends retaliatory tariffs.

October 26th: British diplomats leave the Oslo Conference, citing “irreconcilable differences” between them and Valois. The French government will be cajoled into accepting an Algeria that is nominally French but de facto independent.

October 29th: Herbert Hoover vetoes a bill imposing harsh retaliatory tariffs on most British goods.

November 1st: An attempt to override Hoover’s veto in the Senate fails by three votes after passing the house with a comfortable margin. A coalition of Democrats and Internationalist Republicans voice concerns about its potential effect on relations with Britain.The stock market rises more than four percent after it receives news that the tariffs will not go into effect.

November 3rd: Henk Snevleet, the mixed-race Indonesian-Dutch founder of the Indonesian Social-Democratic Association, makes landfall in the city of Semarang under a false alias. He will be in charge of building several IntRevMar front organizations.

November 6th: In several Italian recall elections, the Gramscian centre of the Italian Union of Revolutionary Marxists loses ground to an emboldened Bordigist left, reflecting dissatisfaction amongst Italian workers at the perceived inertia of the socialist-catholic coalition government.

November 8th: French Indochina and Madagascar formally suspend their ties to the French metropole. The new class of colonial administrators will increasingly be of a pan-european cast, including Belgian, Dutch, and Italian white emigres.

November 12th: Efforts to issue a blanket ban on the Federation of Chinese Anarchists come up against resistance from the left wing of Yat-sen’s own party, represented by Wang Jingwei, Chiang Kai-shek, and Chen Jiongming. Jingwei will publish an article accusing elements of the government of “capitulating” to American imperialism and “trading the Japanese master for the American one”.

November 15th: Amidst rising tensions with Britain, The Breeding Ground of Bolshevism is published in Life magazine. The article, written by Charles Evans Hughes, a long-time doyen of the American foreign policy establishment and one-time associate of Elihu Root, compares Britain with Austria-Hungary, invoking the metaphor of a “prison-house of nations”. Without “thorough imperial reform”, Hughes warns, the peoples of the empire will inevitably turn to the “poisonous creed of Bolshevism”.

November 17th: Italian unemployment numbers hit 10% despite its booming export sector, further straining the nation’s meagre national social welfare system. The socialization of industries has led to a sharp uptick in worker productivity, but also created systematic incentives against the expansion of most small to mid-sized industries. An increasing trickle of Italians have crossed north, into Germany, while other, more skilled workers have left for the Soviet Union.

November 20th: Petrograd is formally renamed to Leningrad.

November 23rd: The Republic of Syria formally adopts its first constitution, declaring itself to be a federal, democratic presidential republic. Scattered protests occur in Hama, Homs, Damascus, and Aleppo, largely by those who oppose its secular character. Included in the constitution are several controversial provisions allowing for the future incorporation of other “lands historically recognized to be a part of Syria”, including Palestine and Lebanon. While most Palestinian and Lebanese notables welcome Pan-Syrianism, others denounce the clauses as presumptuous and condescending.

November 26th: Viceroy of India Ormsby-Gore refuses a request from the British cabinet to impose import duties upon Japanese textiles which are currently flooding India. After a heated cabinet meeting, Haldane will withdraw the request the next day.

November 29th: Valois quietly confirms with the American diplomatic staff that he will continue the military and economic cooperation begun by Castelnau, despite his harsh denunciation of “foreign imperialists”.

December 2nd: Sweden formally seeks accession into the European Socialist Community. Elements of the German, Dutch, and Italian governments view the bid with suspicion due to the ideological reformism of Sweden’s Social-democrats.

December 5th: The German Subcommittee of Military Affairs finally publishes its report on the militia. Although mostly negative, it does applaud the militia as an important tool of “socialist education”.

December 8th, 1925: Herbert Hoover makes his state of the union address to the United States Congress. In contrast to his earlier plea for a “return to normalcy”, Hoover now makes the case for America to play an “expansive, global role in the promotion of Democracy, International Peace, and Free Commerce”. As part of this effort, a bill is soon introduced to Congress permanently expanding the American armed army and providing for the selective conscription of men aged 18-28.

December 12th: A People’s Assembly proposal to entirely abolish the militia-system runs into the opposition of nearly the entirety of the RAF. A compromise settlement will eventually emerge in which the militia is preserved but a core of quasi-professional “Special Volunteers” will be forms, whose roles are not dissimilar from that of a traditional, permanent officer class.

December 15th: Ludwig Wittgenstein successfully defends a thesis at the University of Vienna, with Bertrand Russell sitting as a reader on the dissertation committee. Wittgenstein was only recently permitted back into Germany after his wealthy family fled Austria during the first days of the revolution.

December 19th: Sweden’s bid to join the European Socialist Community is rejected, but a summit will be held to investigate it becoming an “ancillary member”, which would include admission to the common market and passport-free zone.

December 23rd: The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of the Early Marx are published by the University of Leipzig. Historians will mark this as the beginning of both the “Marx Dispute” and the “Second Philosophical Revolution”.