Dobromir Sillis
Dobromir Sillis Stanislavovich Vladibor (Lutoborian: Dobrymyr Žiltyi Stanislavevyč Volodyborivskyj; 1 Conservene 1899 – 12 Conservene 1988), simply known as Dobromir Sillis, was regent (pravitel) of the Lutoborsk from the 1967 Lutoborian Putsch through to his removal in the 'Confected Coup' of 1988. His twenty-one years in power are associated with rapid centralisation and modernisation under an imperialist dictatorship, a model which experienced initial economic prosperity but also ultimately collapsed, a failure which brought about his fall.
| Dobromir Sillis | |
|---|---|
| |
| Regent of the Lutoborsk | |
| In office 17 Estion 1967 – 13 Sation 1988 | |
| Monarch | Chotimir (1967–1978) Vladibor XI (1978–1988) |
| Preceded by | Svorad of Nemasy |
| Succeeded by | office abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1 Conservene 1899 |
| Died | 12 Conservene 1988 |
| Religion | Vaestism |
Early life and career
Dobromir was born into a cadet Vladiborovid family among the Lutoborian nobility, which was too distant and unimportant — amidst the general devaluation of aristocratic status caused by prolific intermarriage and granting of honours in the late 19th century — to be considered for royal succession or even any central office, but still of considerable means, owning extensive holdings in the north of the country, mainly around Shuhzheh.
Dobromir was groomed for aristocratic life from a young age, and entered the Northern Legion as an officer at the age of 23. During the Lutoborian Civil War he rose rapidly through the ranks of the military under Negomir, thanks in large part to his personal connections to prominent northern aristocrats. Although he saw very little actual action during the second part of the war, spending the majority of his time as a military envoy or go-between in Zemay and Kiy, by the time of the Blue River Punctation in 1943 he was a junior general, a rank he continued to occupy through to the 1947–49 Doyotian War. He played a crucial part in Voivode and regent Svorad of Nemasy (coincidentally another cadet Vladiborovid)'s purge of the upper ranks of the military in the aftermath of the Doyotian disaster, and by 1960 he was the second-most senior officer in the army after Yaromir Yonayov.
An adept politician, Dobromir helped to consolidate the army as a separate power within the regime that Svorad had set up, following the establishment of independent military interests along the lines of the Zemayan Vytautian system. Although he and the army had played a key role in protecting Svorad's rule and carrying out many of his widely resented plans, he showed an increasingly public hostility to the Voivode's policy as the latter's popularity fell during the Years Without Summers, and in 1967 he took the opportunity presented by Svorad's brief hospitalisation to seize power as regent himself, ruling in the name of Chotimir, who remained under house arrest.
Regency
Initial policies
With the country in an economically precarious state, the many Externalists Svorad had promoted to high positions now demanded an even more heavy-handed restoration of order. Seeking their support, Dobromir decided to tie to his name the Hammer of Knowledge Programme, a comprehensive blueprint for top-down economic reform and industrialisation authored by the experts of the State Apparatus Multidisciplinary Board. The guiding principle of the Programme was the creation of vertically integrated oligopolies protected by high tariffs externally, but free to undercut their more traditional competition domestically. The idea here was that Lutoborsk's many regions would complement one another naturally, instead of continuing the still-extant policy of internal protection for northern and central industries that would otherwise be outperformed by Estates elsewhere. From such economic integration and division of labour, the unity of a modern Lutoborian empire would find a solid material basis.
In practice, these reforms favoured southern industrialists, who for political reasons often sought to maintain their unproductive enterprises with state subsidies. These Machine Lords also sought to dismantle Kainish-sponsored northern industry as a dangerously efficient competitor. This lobbying dovetailed with Dobromir's concern about Kainish influence over the northern concessions under the Blue River system creating a dangerous drive for secession, which the Lutoborsk had already suffered with the Greater Doyotian marshalates. The northern 'Khuikhs' had already become a hotbed of dissent due to grain expropriations under Svorad to manage the climactic crisis. Dobromir reasoned that if regional economic competition was inevitable, a resurgent yet resentful Khuikhland would pursue regionalism if not secession, while the demonstrably loyal and supportive southern interests, however cynical they may be, were at least known and dependable quantities. Thus, despite his background in the north, this calculation meant he would decide on a policy that amounted to thoroughly 'breaking' the power and will of an independent Khuikhland.
Northerners were first subject to disproportionately unfavourable restructurings, in the name of 'levelling the playing field'. The government demediatised the estates of local nobles beginning in 1968 and placed them under centralised control. When the Kainish began protesting these acts, Dobromir apparently decided that Kiy had thus revealed itself as the great enemy of an imperialist Lutoborsk, and all means were to be employed to make it submit to the interests of a Lutoborian ascendancy. In 1969 he thus decreed the expropriation of Kainish estates in Kadalkhia and the Homul Peninsula. This act soon caused the suspension of Kaino-Lutoborian relations, and a confrontation known as the Holay War. A grand confrontation against Kiy and its supposed Khuikh catspaws in the name of Lutoborian unity, fought with all the means that could be mobilised per the theories of Zemayan socialism, would thus set the mood for the entirety of Dobromir's regency.
Another important reform that Dobromir enacted was to impose hierarchies of schools as provinces and the sole administrative divisions of the Banner-State, totally replacing the confused and overlapping jurisdictions of noble lands, estates, and schools with a clear centralised chain of command, dictated by High Offices acting in his name. This was already standard practice in the rest of Vaestdom, absent previously in the Lutoborsk due to the confusion caused by the Flank State. The changes were probably not as significant as the continuities: the new system of provinces really just formalised the Combinations of schools and estates, somewhat akin to astals, that the Svorad regency created as an ad-hoc solution to regularising administration. For the time being it allowed effective dialogue between government and local forces, but it also provided a platform for the major interests outside of the imperialist clique of the army and the Apparatus Board to congregate as a political opposition.
Height of power
Dobromir's first decade in power was characterised by rapid economic growth. But the extent to which the almost immediate increases in output were a product of Dobromir's policy – as opposed to Svorad's work in the previous decade finally bearing fruit – remains debatable. Many of the technological improvements also came from plundering northern industry: Kainish technology was shipped southwards for reverse-engineering, or otherwise rewarded to southern-based state cronies. Khuikhland's own economy was gutted, whether directly by the expropriations or indirectly by the 'levelling' internal trade policies that left it prey for southern dumping and acquisition; it was left with only sensitive, strategic, or extractive facilities under the ownership of southerners or the state.
What is certain is that powered by Azophine and Kainish machine parts, and funded by easy credit from the Consortium of Measures, output skyrocketed and living standards improved dramatically. Initially there were challenges when Terophan imposed diplomatic and then economic pressure through the 1969 Lutoborian sanctions, to make the Lutoborsk compensate Kiy for expropriations, but more importantly to punish it for trading with Rejectionist Azophin and supporting its Head of the Snake Policy. But the rest of Joriscia practically ignored this vain display of the Terophatic Ascendancy, and after Terophatic policy towards Azophin relaxed in 1972, there were no more fetters on a Lutoborian economic take-off.
The other half of the regent's ascendancy was the escalation of the Holay War into what was practically a low-intensity war. With Terophatic support proving reluctant and ineffective, in 1971 the Kainish tried to harass Lutoborian shipping, in order to enforce their demands for compensation and re-entry. But for Dobromir his objectives had long been the subjugation of Kiy itself, and astutely playing on the controversy surrounding the rehabilitation of Kainish Strong Externalism, he announced the Lutoborsk would enforce its own blockade to punish heresy. Clashes such as the Daskhye Operations occurred around the Esperasian Ocean, but in 1972 the Kainish exploited a civil insurrection in northern Lutoborsk, the Long Day Uprising, and almost invaded over the Tchokbyl Sea. Dobromir ordered that the Inquisitional Marshalcy be established to fortify the north and place it under a military dictatorship, while in other parts of the country he built up the power of secret police, primarily through the Office of the Majordomo and the Office of Knowledgeable Affairs, to curb dissent among civil interests, and interfere in provincial politics. Interventive central economic initiatives were used to support military buildup, as part of an arms race with Kiy. The 'silent war' against Kiy was thus being escalated on both foreign and domestic fronts.
The country under Dobromir also acquired considerable prestige on the world stage. During its standoff with the 1969 sanctions Lutoborsk became a heroic symbol of resistance to Terophatic hegemony among other disgruntled Joriscian states, and by the time the new Terophatic court under Spytihnev VII moved towards sharing power among the Panarchate, the empire and its regent were now favourably positioned towards all the powers of Vaestdom besides Kiy. The Kainish were condemned in the Holay War as aggressors, and there was widespread sympathy for Dobromir as a vanguard in the fight against heresy. In 1977 the Lutoborsk also tested its first nuclear weapon as part of the Earth of Ghost-Glass Programme, balancing Kiy which had just acquired it in 1976. The ensuing multilateral, mediated negotiations that tried to prevent nuclear war again tilted the Holay War's balance in the Lutoborsk's favour. After a century of diplomatic passivity, the Lutoborsk had finally become worthy of the title of Great Power, it seemed.
Challenges
Dobromir's attempt at establishing authoritarian rule was met with protest from the beginning, and the Machine Lords soon turned from allies to adversaries, alongside diverse sections of the nobility and the scholarchate. The military, the secret police, and the Apparatus Board's high-handed interventions were all widely criticised, and they especially conveyed the impression Dobromir could not legitimately rule by the regular instruments of Vaestopolitics. In any case, as the economy improved, those interests also grew bolder in demanding voice and initiative, and were less content with collaborating with dictatorship out of necessity. A standoff occurred in 1978 when Chotimir died in suspicious circumstances, the details of which remain unclear, but it resulted in a compromise where Dobromir and the imperialists would share power with the aristocrats, and the new vozhd Vladibor XI, while remaining powerless, could appear more frequently in public via solemn apportation and morally pressure the administration if needed. Even the Inquisitional Marshalcy conceded influence to provincial government while the north would be permitted to redevelop to truly stabilise local society, which had scarcely lost its will for resistance under repression.
On the economic front, from 1979 the shortcomings of the Lutoborian model began to become evident. Growth had already begun to slow over the previous two years as the economy teetered on the brink of overproduction for a saturated domestic market, but fairly strong exports of intermediate inputs and cheap electronics kept the country afloat. However, as the limited Joriscian integration made possible by the Terophatic Ascendancy unravelled, and tariffs were repeatedly raised in the run-up to the Terophatic Implosion, Lutoborian exports abruptly became uncompetitive, despite a detente with Kiy and the restoration of cross-Tchokbyl trade from 1981. Although crisis was just about averted for the time being, the country turned to borrowing and printing money to fill the gap in the current account, resulting in rapid inflation during the 1980s. The only real relief was the rise of the Street Acolytes among the hlavy and the urban middle class, who ideologically supported imperialism because of having benefited from the 1970s, and for the time being exerted sufficient pressure on both dissatisfied elites and popular complaints.
Once again the northern lands proved to be a thorn in Dobromir's side. In Kadalkhia, without a Street Acolyte constituency, inventive action by the provincial government led by Latseen Tikhady was needed to quell dissent, but Dobromir interpreted him as a challenger to the imperialist chain of command, and in 1983 tried to use Zakon Kolodynsk's Inquisitional Marshalcy to subvert Tikhady. This operation was botched and led to a popular uprising among the locals who were previously armed to defend against Kiy; when in 1984 Dobromir tried to use the army to suppress the revolt and in the meantime purge Tikhady, the provincial government seceded and the conscripts deployed mutinied. The 'Dengish Banner' was not suppressed until 1985 when Kolodynsk's hated authority was re-imposed over the region after heavy fighting.
Crackdown
The secession crisis confirmed Dobromir's worst fears that his compromises had led to dreaded factionalism that threatened to undo imperialist ambitions and his own authority, and he took a hardline response. The imperialists cracked down on local initiative, arrested numerous opponents and dissidents, while reasserting central authority; bloodily crushed the strikes of 1985 which protested sustained inflation due to the war in Kadalkhia — but also alienated the empire's south from the regime; and deliberately over-allocated resources into bloating the military and security apparatus to drum up war hysteria against Kiy, with which relations were once again severed over the Dengish crisis, while aiming to crush the economic basis for independent civilian interests.
As even the army's ranks now whispered with opposition to his policies, Dobromir promoted the Apparatus Board and its foremost politician To Ezhynanyolsk to an important place in maintaining this system, while trying to ensure that there was dependable institutional support for his policies. In the few years it had to demonstrate its worth the Apparatus Board did prove effective as a new power base and decision-maker. But its representatives were overwhelmingly (reformed) Strong Externalist technocrats, who spoke detachedly of transforming the empire into a 'perpetual war machine' to justify civil repression and military spending, which further angered conservatives and led to a resurgence of neo-dubitants.
During this period, the now elderly Dobromir appeared ever more infrequently in public, and he became hated by much of the population. He was seen by many as weaponising economic ruin and making the entire country suffer to stay in office. Paranoia and senility made his own decisions increasingly questionable, he became obsessed with war with Kiy, and it fell to Ezhynanyolsk and others to ensure that the system did not fall apart or commit effective suicide. But his power was not seriously challenged after the 1985 strikes, and he maintained a fearsome reputation. Soldiers and officers voiced disagreement but discipline was largely maintained, important generals remained imperialist albeit also ageing, and the mutiny in Kadalkhia proved to be unique. The secret police forces kept provincial governments and the army itself in check. The Street Acolytes were being effectively used to ensure the obedience of low-level government, and provided the bare minimum of public support for the otherwise unbearable situation.
Downfall and death
Despite the obvious unpopularity of the regime, there was no move to remove Dobromir until 1988, when the looming threat of default and creditor action by the other Joriscian powers, a rising tide of labour militancy, and rumours of the Voivode's growing senility combined to force the elite's hand. Even then it was only the opportunity presented by the death of Vladibor XI, and fears that the Apparatus Board and the Street Acolytes could carry on his ruinous policies even if he retired or died, that finally led to his deposition under the cover of Vladibor XII's coronation. The actual events of the Confection of 1988 seemed to have only marginally involved Dobromir, with Kolodynsk and Apparatus Board hardliner Ahtrey Sluvyuk being the main conspirators trying to clamp down on the opposition.
Although initially Dobromir was said to have stepped down voluntarily due to his age (by Vaestic reckoning he was 91), three months later he was charged by a character tribunal with 'usurping power' from the rightful Vozhds Chotimir and Vladibor XI, and sentenced to death. The trials were the most publicised of those involving imperialist figures arrested after the Confection, and proved cathartic for public anger. The former regent himself appeared confused at the proceedings and barely spoke coherently. He was executed by firing squad, and buried, after a funeral attended only by close relations, on his family estate.
Legacy
Dobromir has generally been characterised as a tyrant and usurper since the Confection, and scapegoated (though justifiably so) for the many problems that beset the country prior to Vladibor XII's federalising reforms. Even among imperialist circles in the Lutoborsk today, he is heavily criticised. Central intervention and authoritarian repression under the regency, even under the Inquisitional Marshalcy, was not particularly harsh or overreaching (albeit often unjust, brutal, and underhanded) for a Joriscian country in the post-Long War era, or even in comparison to Messenian states; but for almost all of society the stakes demonstrated and the problems that emerged under it have been sufficient to ensure constant wariness of central power and imperialism, backed up by the country's already large size and culture of freedom. In Kadalkhia and the other northern regions, Dobromir is especially bitterly remembered as a murderer and oppressor alongside his predecessor Svorad of Nemasy; effigies of the regent are still burnt on days remembering the Dengish uprising and in protests against the government.
To the rest of Vaestdom, Dobromir's treatment within the Lutoborsk is often considered another part of that country's propensity for disorder, especially since the imperialist project and many of his policies in principle seemed to be common wisdom about establishing Authority of Knowledge in such a perceivedly backward country. 'Revisionist' evaluations of Dobromir as a meaningful moderniser to be looked at with greater nuance thus primarily come from Peninsular scholarship. Though it is hard to ignore his abuse of illegitimate authority and the immensely destructive cynical policies at the end of his rule, it has been argued that modern Lutoborsk's claim to power owes greatly to the Svorad and Dobromir administrations, which created a truly united political entity from what was merely a multilateral relations system between independent noble-led dominions. The 'positive' coercion and incentivisation of Lutoborian elites into partaking in an imperialist state functioned alongside the 'negative' persuasion, by the period's hardships, that they needed to work together to prevent abuses of power, and this is seen by bitter socialists as the explanation for the Confectionary order's vitality despite its promotion of factionalism. Even the alienation of much of the empire from imperialist institutions and policies in the last days of the regency may well have served a united effort behind overthrowing them, and securing consensus on the long-term dismantling of these instruments.
More general Vaestic critiques of Dobromir concern his close association with Strong Externalists, and the adoption of externalist or Post-Radiant ideas himself. Serious evaluations, even in the Lutoborian scholarchate, acknowledge that Dobromir was not particularly malicious against any section of Lutoborian society, and his harsh stances came from mostly rational calculations about what needed to be done about the empire for the sake of imperialist objectives. That it resulted in his later infamous policies invites philosophical questioning of the underlying modes of thinking and of technocratic approaches to governance, especially for the internalist Sage Precepts but also by sceptics among the Post-Radiance.