Totalitarian country - Eroberia

Eroberia: Citadel Beneath the Rusty Sky ‎Official name: The Commonwealth of Erberia

Capital: Verthion (Moscow) – a fortress city built on a rocky plateau in the center of the country. It is a complex of government citadels of black glass and concrete, connected by enclosed walkways, and stands in stark contrast to the squalid outlying service quarters.

Head of State:

Official title: The Supreme Arbiter of the Commonwealth.

Name: Karsten Wolfram.

Image: A 68-year-old man with the impeccable posture of a former officer, a cold gaze, and a perpetually impassive face. Appears in public exclusively in a formal, unadorned dark gray uniform. His rare speeches are monotonous, measured, and devoid of emotion, like reading from a technical manual. This creates the image not of a charismatic leader, but of an impersonal, inexorable force of law and order.

Governing structure:

· Highest authority: The Council of State Expediency (CSE) – an unconstitutional governing body, its full composition never publicly recorded. All key decisions emanate from it. · Legislative veneer: The Assembly of the People's Will (ANW) – a unicameral parliament, whose members are appointed from above or "elected" without alternatives. Its sole function is to unanimously approve decrees prepared by the CSE. · Key ministries (the de facto pillars of power):

1. The Ministry of Internal Security and Unity (MVSE) – a security and repressive apparatus. A veritable "thought police."
2. Ministry of Truth and Public Enlightenment (MVE) – ideological control over the media, education, culture, and history.
3. Ministry of National Revival and Demography (MNR) – control over the family, birthrate, gender policy, and the healthcare system.
4. Ministry of Defense Economy (MOW) – management of the planned, militarized economy, distribution of scarce resources.

Official ideology: The Doctrine of the Eternal Front and Organic Unity.

Promulgates the idea that Erberia is a besieged fortress whose survival depends on total unity, sacrifice, and adherence to the "natural order" (traditional family, hierarchy, duty to the state). Progress and personal happiness are declared secondary to the strength and security of the nation.

Administrative division:

The country is divided into 10 Military-Economic Districts (MEDs), each headed by a Governor-Commandant, appointed directly by the SGC and wielding virtually unlimited power within their territory to ensure "target indicators" for conscription, production, and birth rates.

State symbols:

Flag: Dark green cloth (symbol of fortitude and the earth) with a vertical black stripe at the flagpole (symbol of steadfastness and mourning for the fallen) and a stylized silver symbol in the center—a shield intertwined with an ear of wheat and a gear. Coat of arms: A shield with the same symbol, supported by two stylized stone griffins. Latin motto: "Per Unitatem, Securitas" ("Through unity, security"). · Anthem: "Anthem of the Unbreakable Rock" is a slow, heavy marching tune with lyrics about duty, blood spilled for the land of one's ancestors, and eternal vigil at the borders.

This formal device serves only as a rigid framework concealing the true, shadowy, and ruthless mechanics of power described earlier. All the titles are intended to sound neutral and technocratic on the international stage, but domestically they convey a clear, unquestionable message of strength, control, and submission. ‎After the great turbulence of the mid-2020s, when the chains of globalization snapped under the weight of crises, Eroberia rose from the ruins of a once-powerful state. This wasn't a revolution in the conventional sense. It was a slow, systemic upheaval, where fears of chaos and nostalgia for the supposed power of the past were skillfully molded into a new, ironclad reality. The country, locked in on itself, declared the outside world the embodiment of decadence and aggression, and under this banner, it built a society of total debt and sacrifice. In a world where fragile global stability collapsed in the mid-2020s under the weight of a series of economic collapses, pandemics, and resource wars, a new entity emerged from the ruins of one of the major European powers: Eroberia. Emerging from chaos as a "project for order," it quickly degenerated into a complete totalitarian organism, perpetuating itself in a state of permanent mobilization.

The ideology of Eroberia, known as the "Doctrine of the Iron Family and the Eternal Front," not only dominated the public sphere—it became the only acceptable reality. The state, having elevated traditional values ​​to absolutes and distorted them beyond recognition, transformed them into the repressive framework of society as a whole. The family ceased to be a private matter, becoming the primary productive and ideological unit. The "Demographic Debt Law" required every woman to have her first child before age 25, and to have at least three children by age 30. Failure to comply was punishable by a progressive tax, turning a childless woman into a financial pariah and subsequently, into a suspect of "anti-state deviation." Patriarchy was institutionalized: men were declared soldiers, breadwinners, and clan leaders, while women were declared mothers, homemakers, and living symbols of the nation. Higher education for women, while not formally prohibited, was mired in quotas, recommendations, and "career guidance" so rigorously that it became the preserve of only a select few, whose talents could serve the regime in narrow, technical fields devoid of managerial relevance.

Officially, Eroberia is a fortress besieged by a hostile world. Its unified and all-pervasive media landscape day after day paints the image of a warrior nation, a family-nation, which, only by clenching its steely will, can resist the treachery of external enemies and the corrupting influence of alien values. Television screens and newspaper columns are filled with reports of new victories on peripheral fronts, where the valiant Eroberi army is repelling nameless aggressors. Statistical summaries, read by announcers with unwavering confidence, report record construction rates, GDP growth, and rising prosperity for citizens. Every newscast features the opening of a new factory or kindergarten, the presentation of state awards to mothers of many children and soldiers who distinguished themselves in military exercises. ‎ ‎The foundation of Eroberi ideology is the doctrine of the "Eternal Front." The state exists in a state of constant, sometimes ebbing, sometimes flaring up war on its borders. The enemy is never definitively identified; its face changes in propaganda reports, but its presence is constant. This eternal confrontation has become the justification for all internal practices. Every citizen is a soldier from birth, at their post. Boys are prepared for this role physically and mentally from their earliest years. Games, fairy tales, the school curriculum—everything is imbued with the cult of strength, discipline, and a willingness to die for the Motherland. A young man who reaches adulthood does not choose his path—for a decade, he becomes a cog in the military machine, his sexual energy, his melancholy, his youth channeled into a fierce hatred for an invisible enemy and blind devotion to the Leader. ‎ ‎Women's fate in Eroberia is carved in stone by demographic laws. Woman is the "sacred vessel of the nation," her primary and indisputable function is the reproduction of soldiers and the mothers of new soldiers. Patriarchy is elevated to the rank of heavenly law.Higher education for women, although not formally prohibited, is surrounded by such a barrage of restrictions and stigmas that it is accessible only to a select few among the elite, and even then only in "appropriate" fields. The "childlessness by prime" tax—by age 25—is not only an economic lash but also a mark of social shame. A family with fewer than three children by age 30 is considered incomplete, selfish, and undermining the country's defense. ‎ ‎Propaganda in Eroberia isn't just advertising for the regime. It's the air they breathe. It's everywhere: in the national anthem played before every movie, in posters featuring stern-faced soldiers and rosy-cheeked mothers, in school textbooks rewritten to make all history lead to the current triumph. News of victories at the front, record harvests, and the launch of new factories flows ceaselessly. The announcer's voice, cheerful and unwaveringly confident, speaks of rising prosperity, of a bright future that's just around the corner, if only we can be patient. ‎ ‎ ‎Reality, however, breathes through the cracks of this glossy façade like cold, gray concrete. Rising prosperity remains a figure in reports. The majority of the population lives in faceless panel neighborhoods, hastily erected and deteriorating with each passing year. Schools and kindergartens, overcrowded as a result of demographic policy, operate in three shifts, and teachers, stunned by ideological pressures, barely have time to teach basic literacy and numeracy. Salaries, even in heavy manufacturing or law enforcement, go toward meager rations and basic necessities, which are increasingly disappearing from store shelves, becoming scarce. Factories, the pride of propaganda, primarily serve the defense industry, while the civilian sectors of the economy are in a state of chronic decline. Eroberia's cities are gray anthills of standard, quickly built, rapidly deteriorating buildings. Schools and kindergartens are overcrowded, teachers are exhausted, and children are often hungry. The salaries proudly mentioned on television are in fact eaten up by a system of mandatory "voluntary" contributions to the defense fund and perpetual shortages. Store shelves are empty, and when something does appear, kilometer-long queues form. The factories whose smokestacks are displayed on posters often produce obsolete equipment or are completely idle due to sanctions and inefficiency. ‎ ‎But the heart of the Eroberia state was war. Not a specific campaign, but a state of continuous, smoldering conflict on the perimeters of its borders and in the information space. Enemies changed—sometimes neighboring "sub-states," sometimes "transnational liberal cartels," sometimes "internal degenerates"—but their image was always essential for the system's survival. Every boy from infancy was raised as a future defender. Kindergartens resembled barracks, and schools focused on basic military training, the history of victories, and "ideological hygiene." The sexual energy of young people, especially male ones, was methodically sublimated by militaristic propaganda. The romance of heroism, the cult of strength, rituals of male fraternal bonding, grueling training—all this channeled natural impulses into service to the state, replacing personal bonds with collective ecstasy under the banner. Women were relegated to the role of reward, a pure ideal to be defended, and a mother who would produce new soldiers. ‎Sex in such a system becomes not a personal experience, but an instrument of control and sublimation. Young men, isolated in barracks and deprived of normal social interaction, channel their repressed libidinal energy into aggression on the training grounds and a mystical adoration of the Leader, whose image is imbued with the traits of an unwavering father. Marriages are often encouraged or even arranged by command to "boost morale" and, of course, to fulfill the child quota. Personal life has disappeared, dissolved into duty to the state.The core of Eruberian ideology was the Traditional Way of Life, elevated to the rank of state religion. The family is a unit obligated to serve the state with its children. The "civil inferiority tax" for women who haven't given birth by age 25 is not just a fine, but a stigma of uselessness. Starting a family with three or more children by age 30 is a duty, not a choice. Patriarchy is not hidden here, but cultivated as the natural and only true order. Male upbringing is the warrior's path from kindergarten. Toys, books, the school curriculum—everything is aimed at shaping a soldier, a protector, a cog in the military machine. Mandatory military service after school is only the beginning. Afterward, a man is not demobilized, but transferred to the "active reserve," which in practice means endless training, exercises, and regular rotations to unnamed "conflict zones," from which many never return. Women's fates are prescribed with the same ruthless clarity. Their world must revolve around the home, the nursery, and subordination to their husband-breadwinner. Higher education for girls is fraught with such bureaucratic and ideological obstacles that it becomes the preserve of a select few, most often from families of the ruling nomenklatura. Marriages at eighteen, often to men significantly older, are encouraged by society and tax breaks. pregnancies have become commonplace, and motherhood the only approved career. The state skillfully manipulates basic instincts, isolating young men in a barracks environment where their natural impulses are sublimated into blind rage against the "enemy" and loyalty to the regime, while girls are instilled from a young age that their greatest value lies in fertility and fidelity.

Outwardly, Eroberia appeared to be a fortress-state, confidently moving forward. The media, merged into the single mouthpiece of the Patriotic Broadcasting Agency, trumpeted daily the construction of new residential neighborhoods, modern schools, and high-tech manufacturing plants. Charts of rising prosperity, indicators of industrial growth, and demographic triumphs were constantly on the screens. The reality, however, was the reverse side of this gloss. Buildings constructed at a rapid pace quickly deteriorated, materials were stolen, and apartments in them were mostly occupied by loyal security officials and bureaucrats. Schools and kindergartens, overcrowded due to demographic pressure, operated in three shifts in old buildings that hadn't been renovated in decades. Salaries, especially at state-owned enterprises, barely covered the cost of meager rations. Shortages were the norm: people lined up for hours to obtain clothing, quality food, and household appliances, or even required special coupons distributed at work for "labor merit." ‎ ‎The underbelly of "eternal prosperity" was a general poverty of spirit and existence, masked by rituals of ostentatious loyalty. Fear became the primary social glue. Fear for children who might not be accepted into school due to their parents' "unreliability." Fear of neighbors who might report you for "decadent talk." Fear of the "Council of Moral and Demographic Health," whose commissions could barge into any family for an inspection. And above all this—the gigantic, intangible, and omnipresent image of the Fatherland-Besieged-Fortress, which demands everything and forgives only loyalty. Eroberia didn't live. It mobilized, multiplied, and fought, plunging into an endless spiral of self-isolation and aggression, where each successive generation was born with the gag of propaganda in its mouth and the specter of the enemy at its back. ‎ ‎Higher education in Eroberia had become a phantom mirage, an unattainable status symbol that the state carefully devalued in the eyes of its citizens. The dream of a university, of science, of free intellectual inquiry was not just lofty—it was suspect. The propaganda machine methodically worked to eradicate the very desire to learn more.Why do you need philosophy when you have a charter? Why physics when you have a rifle blueprint? Why history when you have an established patriotic epic about the heroism of the Eröberian spirit? It was vital for the authorities that people remain within the framework of simple, clear, repeatable formulas, unburdened by critical thinking. ‎ ‎The overwhelming majority of young people, especially men, were sent straight from school to vocational schools at factories or military training centers. There, they mastered a narrow set of practical skills, sufficient for operating machine tools, repairing equipment, or shooting. Girls, if their families couldn't or didn't want to pay for even technical school, often remained with a modest high school diploma, which opened the door only to low-paying positions as saleswomen, cleaners, or, at best, junior nurses—until their duty to the state called them to childbearing. Those who dared to dream of attending university faced an impassable barrier. Tuition fees were astronomical, designed not for real incomes, but for the merest stratum of party nomenklatura and loyal oligarchs. For a family even considered "average" by Eruberian standards—meaning, able to afford the occasional meat purchase and free of utility debt—a year of a child's education at the institute would have meant financial disaster. Scholarships were mockingly small, and the "state contract" system, followed by mandatory ten-year work in a designated backwater, only confirmed that higher education was not a privilege, but another form of lifelong servitude.

But even those few who broke through these barriers discovered they had entered not a temple of science, but a caricature of it. University programs were ideologically driven to the extreme. Lectures on social sciences turned into hour-long panegyrics to statecraft. In technical departments, half the time was devoted to "patriotic education" and military training. Books in libraries were subject to strict censorship, and access to global scientific databases was completely blocked "for security reasons." Professors who retained any remaining conscience were forced to read between the lines and whisper seditious materialism in their kitchens, risking everything. ‎ ‎The irony and greatest tragedy of the system was that a higher education diploma meant almost nothing in material terms. An engineer developing obsolete components for the defense industry, or an agronomist implementing pseudoscientific methods in collective farm fields, lived in the same squalid dormitories, stood in the same lines for scarce items, and received a salary only slightly higher than that of a skilled worker at the same factory. The only difference was the form of exploitation: the worker surrendered his hands to the state, while the engineer surrendered the remnants of his intellect, forced to serve an insane system. This knowledge, this smoldering spark of reason in the realm of obscurantism, made their lives not better, but only more bitter. They saw the absurdity more clearly than others, but were powerless to change it, locked in a cage of fear, duty, and eternal, all-consuming lies. Education capable of engendering critical thought is the systemic enemy of Eroberia. Higher education has become an elitist, expensive, and strictly ideologically controlled institution. For the majority, crushed by poverty and propaganda, university is not a dream but an abstraction, devoid of meaning in a world where only strength and discipline are valued. The country needs not philosophers or engineer-thinkers, but soldiers, workers, and mothers. Even the few who make it into universities are immersed in an atmosphere of total indoctrination, and their degrees often offer no real advantage in life, other than a slightly more substantial ration and the illusion of status. ‎ ‎Thus, Eroberia exists in a permanent state of mobilizational trance. Its strength lies in its ability to transform human lives, emotions, and the most intimate spheres into a resource for maintaining power. It is a fortress state that fears not so much an external enemy as the silence within its walls—a silence in which unacceptable questions can arise.And so war, real or mythical, is a necessary condition of its existence, a perpetual motion machine consuming generation after generation.

A certain degree of misogyny and misogyny was also widespread. This phenomenon arose spontaneously, like a fungus on the rotting wood of state ideology, and the Eroberia authorities, after brief hesitation, chose not to eradicate it, but to observe. Official doctrine glorified woman as Mother and Guardian of the Hearth, a sacred symbol. But in the nooks and crannies of barracks, in the stuffy dormitories of technical schools, in the anonymous segments of the local network "EroNet," a unique, ugly and vicious folklore was formed.

Young people, raised in an atmosphere of constant violence, deprived of normal communication, haunted by fear and dissatisfaction, sought a simple explanation for their pain. The state was too abstract and menacing to hate. The enemy at the border was too distant. But women—they were close by. They were that very "weak link" that, according to propaganda, always threatened the stability of the front. The idea that women were not sacred but a burden, a traitor by nature, a predator draining men of their strength, began to resonate in tormented souls. ‎ ‎This wasn't an organized movement. Rather, it was a collection of toxic attitudes, whispered in smoking rooms, crude jokes in the ranks, and poisonous memes on closed forums. "They give birth to soldiers so they can die, while they themselves live at our expense," "They just want to marry a rich man, but they don't give a damn about a real warrior, a simple guy," "All their tears are lies and manipulation." State patriarchy, which elevated women to a pedestal of duty, unknowingly gave birth to its own dark shadow—a mundane, embittered misogyny that reduced them to the level of a thing, a problem, or an enemy.

The authorities turned a blind eye to this. This was advantageous. Firstly, such spontaneous hatred served as an additional social boost for the most aggressive and conformist young men, giving them a sense of illusory superiority. Secondly, it divided society, hindering the potential rapprochement between men and women based on shared dissatisfaction with the regime. A woman who fears not only the state but also her male neighbor is doubly helpless. A man who sees a woman as the source of his troubles, rather than a comrade, is doubly lonely and easily manipulated.

Thus, this underlying misogynistic current became a kind of safety valve for the system. He diverted the steam of youthful rage and frustration into a channel safe for the regime—gender strife. The state neither legislated to support it nor punished its everyday manifestations. Silent connivance spoke louder than any decree. In this quiet, dirty war between the sexes, encouraged from above, Eroberia found yet another tool for fragmenting human connections, leaving its citizens lonely, embittered, and utterly submissive to the only force they believed could bring order to this chaos—the iron hand of the state. ‎ ‎In Eroberia, the telephone had long ceased to be a personal device. It was an agent, a spy, and a preacher in one pocket. All new smartphones, the so-called "Erophones," rolled off the assembly line with a "loyalty system" already embedded in the hardware. It tracked not only calls and locations, but also analyzed typing patterns, activity time, and even tone of voice in approved messaging apps. Propaganda apps couldn't be deleted. They sent hourly reports from the front, portraits of heroes, and reminders about taxes and debt. Patriotic slideshows blocked the screen. The world outside the country was accessible only through state-run "portals of truth," where any foreign news was laced with toxic ideological commentary. ‎ ‎But even in this total digital prison, there were cracks. In basements, abandoned warehouses, and among workers at giant factories, old-fashioned devices were quietly passed from hand to hand—battered "bricks" and decade-old smartphones, untouched by malware.They couldn't access the official Eronet, but using makeshift antennas and microchips stolen from satellite towers, they picked up weak, distorted signals from outside or connected to encrypted mesh networks that entangled working-class neighborhoods like a spider's web. There was no complete anonymity—there was always the risk of being tracked or denounced—but here, in the silence, one could read unedited text, see a photograph from another world, or simply write a message that wouldn't be analyzed by the algorithm for "disloyalty." These devices were more than just technology. They were relics of freedom, black mirrors reflecting a distorted, but true, face. ‎ ‎Culture under Pressure: From Thoughts to Reflexes ‎ ‎Books not approved by the Ministry of Truth and Education slowly disappeared from public life. The authorities didn't need citizens capable of sustained, deep, critical thinking. They needed reflexes: rage at the sight of an enemy, tenderness at the sight of a mother with many children, submissiveness at the sight of superiors. Literature that provoked doubt, empathy with the abstract, and reflection on the complexity of the world was dangerous. It was supplanted by flat, primitive formats: television sketches built on the humiliation of the "weak" and the glorification of the "strong," jokes about greedy mothers-in-law and stupid neighbors, endless series about valiant counterintelligence agents. Thinking had to be simplified, narrowed to the mundane and ideological. ‎ ‎If a book did make it to the shelves of an official bookstore, it was a dismal spectacle. Political manifestos of the Leader and his cronies, published in tens of millions of copies. Magazines with glossy photographs of factory floors and smiling collective farm women. Or censored fiction: historical novels in which all the Eruberian ancestors were heroes, love stories inevitably ending in marriage and the promise of three children, technical fantasies about the conquest of space under the wise leadership of the Party. The words here were dead, devoid of subtext and soul. They didn't reveal the world, but rather walled it off with another brick. ‎ ‎Underground of Ink and Whispers ‎ ‎But the thirst for something different, the need for real words, which even the most sophisticated propaganda couldn't kill, found an outlet in the shadows. There were underground markets, living by their own rules. It was an ecosystem fueled by desperation and curiosity. Here, in the pitch darkness of abandoned metro stations or under the guise of trading old spare parts at outlying flea markets, exchange took place. They traded poems by banned poets printed on thin tissue paper, philosophical treatises, photocopies of old, pre-revolutionary history and sociology textbooks, and translated articles from foreign academic journals. Sometimes they even traded old, tattered, heartbreaking novels about love and freedom. ‎ ‎The morality and information security police fought this fiercely, with raids and harsh prison sentences. But eradicating it completely was impossible. In the lower classes, among workers, impoverished engineers, and desperate teachers, the mutual responsibility of silent resistance was stronger than fear. Here, the state was mistrusted; the price of its lies was known. The black market in ideas was not a business, but an act of collective spiritual survival. They risked everything, but they passed on the notebook of poems like a baton. In these handwritten texts, read to tatters, lived the memory of another humanity—complex, suffering, thinking, and free. It was a quiet, stubborn war of page against screen, meaning against slogan, human whisper against the roar of loudspeakers. And in this war, despite everything, hope smoldered, like a tiny but unquenchable letter on dirty, palm-warmed paper. The authorities took a more radical approach to book culture. Why risk leaving people the tools for independent thought? Libraries were methodically "cleansed," turning into repositories of ideological garbage. Bookstores groaned with multi-volume works of the Leader, dry technical manuals, collections of approved war memoirs, and pulp novels where heroic steelworkers fought treacherous spies and heroine tractor drivers dreamed of a fifth child.Fiction capable of evoking complex emotions or critical thought was either confiscated or published in censored versions, with entire plot lines and characters excised.

The authorities encouraged a different, simpler form of consumption: endless television sitcoms with crude humor, entertainment shows where the main prize was a scarce food supply, and war dramas that fed the mill of militaristic hysteria. The goal was clear: to overload citizens' consciousness with flat content that required no thought. Tired of the hardships of everyday life and the hopelessness of life, people were expected to come home to switch off, not to think. Intellect became not just unnecessary—it was dangerous.

But where there is demand, a black market is born. Underground book exchanges and digital "libraries" on hidden flash drives became the circulatory system of a different, parallel knowledge. Smugglers risked their lives to smuggle surviving paper volumes of philosophy, classical literature, and contemporary foreign prose across borders. Lone techies assembled primitive e-readers from old parts that left no digital trace. They paid for this not with money—it was almost meaningless—but with services, rations, and silence. ‎ ‎The police and state security committees declared war on these shadows. Raids on apartment "libraries" and searches with the confiscation of "illegal storage media" were commonplace. But eradicating them completely was impossible. The need for living words, for a different thought, for beauty not sanctioned from above, proved stronger than fear. The black market in ideas was a symptom of the system's deep malaise—its total insincerity. He argued that even in the most compressed, lie-soaked clay of the human spirit, seeds remain that, against all odds, reach for the light, even if that light is destined to burn underground, in eternal fear of being crushed under a guard's heel.

Relationships and Sex: The Mechanics of Duty and the Shadows of Intimacy

In Eroberia, the concept of relationships was systematically removed from the personal sphere and relegated to the realm of state. Feelings, attraction, love—all were viewed through the prism of utilitarian utility and ideological conformity. Sex ceased to be a secret, an intimate language of two; it became accountability to the system, an act of civic duty, a mechanism for the reproduction of "human material."

Relationships as contracts. Marriage was encouraged, and often arranged, through departmental or union dating services. The criteria were simple: ideological reliability, health (confirmed by humiliating medical examinations), and a willingness to fulfill the child's quota. Romantic courtship, if it existed at all, resembled a ritual with a predetermined outcome. Trust was rare and fragile—in a world where informing was encouraged and phones were tapped, any frank word could be evidence of "disloyalty." People bonded not through sincerity, but in defiance of universal fear, finding in each other a safe haven of silent understanding that didn't require dangerous words. ‎ ‎Sex as sublimation and control. For young men serving decades of military service in harsh, ascetic conditions, sexual energy represented a powerful, unstable force. The state skillfully redirected it. Suppressed libido was sublimated into fierce aggression during training exercises, fanatical devotion to the Leader (often with erotic overtones), and contempt for the "weakness" embodied by women. Intimacy, when it finally became possible, was often rough, devoid of tenderness, steeped in years of frustration and an internalized model of dominance. It was not a dialogue, but an act of asserting power, transferred from the barracks to the bedroom. ‎ ‎Sex as a duty. For married couples, intimate life was under invisible but tangible pressure. Having children was not a right, but a duty. Taxes, public censure, social security checks—all this transformed the marital bed into a factory floor. Pleasure, experimentation, and variety were considered bourgeois excesses, distracting from the main goal.Sex became a joyless routine, another item on the list of duties to the Motherland. A woman unable to conceive wasn't just unhappy—she was guilty, a flawed unit in the system. ‎ ‎Underground of emotions. However, even in this emasculated reality, human nature peeked through the cracks. Secret, dangerous connections arose—fleeting romances on factory shifts, where a glance meant more than words; desperate attempts to find warmth in the embrace of equally tormented loneliness. There was a black market not only in books but also in forbidden sensations: contraband foreign perfumes, music, old love films—anything that could momentarily create the illusion of another world, where two people belonged only to each other. But even here, trust was worth its weight in gold. The fear of being betrayed, overheard, caught hung in the air, poisoning every moment of intimacy. ‎ ‎Thus, in Eroberia, relationships and sex became a battlefield between the state machine, striving to regulate and subjugate everything, and the deep, ineradicable human thirst for true intimacy, for mystery, for love as an act of freedom, not duty. The intimate sphere, transformed into an instrument of propaganda and control, became one of the most tragic and devastated landscapes of this country, where even in each other's arms, people often remained in a terrible, insurmountable loneliness. ‎Marriages of Convenience: The Demographic Conveyor ‎ ‎In Eroberia, the institution of marriage was completely reborn, becoming not a union of hearts, but a form of social engineering and compensation, dictated by the harsh arithmetic of the state machine. The practice of marriages with a large age gap was not an aberration, but a systemic norm, a direct consequence of years of military service. ‎ ‎A young man, conscripted at eighteen, returned to civilian life well into his thirties, or even forties. His youth, energy, and most emotionally formative years were spent in training, trenches, and barracks discipline. Upon returning to civilian life, he found a desert. Women his age, those few who had not been married before, were already married long ago, often to older men, or were burdened with children and poverty. Young women aged 18 to 22 were considered the most valuable "demographic asset" by society and their families, under pressure from taxes and propaganda. Marrying a daughter to an adult man who had already served in the army and had at least some stability (an apartment in a Khrushchev-era building, a job as a mechanic or security guard) was considered fortunate. It was a marriage of convenience, based not on love but on survival. The man received a young wife capable of quickly fulfilling the childbearing quota and living up to the image of a "flourishing Eruberian family." The woman and her family received relative financial security and relief from the shameful childlessness tax. ‎ ‎Those "lucky" enough to marry while still in service (sometimes permitted for exceptional achievements or at the special request of a commander) lived in a state of permanent separation. His wife existed as an appendage to his soldier's book, raising the children alone in his absence, and the rare leave turned not into dates but into intense attempts to conceive another child and resolve accumulated domestic problems. In such circumstances, intimacy was reduced to the mechanical act of procreation, devoid of time for tenderness or getting to know each other. ‎ ‎A Man Who Served: The Right to a Reward. A man who had given his best years to the state—from 18 to 30, or even longer—returned to "civilian life" with tangible social benefits, but with a devastated soul. He had a relatively stable position (if he served in the security forces or at a loyal enterprise), a tiny but private living space in a "veterans' home," and, most importantly, a keen, almost instinctive desire to compensate for his stolen youth. The state, with its cult of power and hierarchy, convinced him he had earned his due. And part of this "reward" was a young, unspoiled wife. A girl of 18 to 22 years old was considered ideal: fertile, pliable, not yet infected with doubts, she could be molded to suit his own lifestyle, already fully formed by the system. For him, this was an act of possession, a return to control over his own destiny, a symbol of a mature man who had endured the crucible and won the prize. ‎ ‎A teenage woman: a forced settlement. For a young girl in Eroberia, such a marriage was often the only strategic chance to avoid a worse fate. Marrying a retired officer or a low-ranking official was a social lift, a way to escape a poverty-stricken, large family, and gain relative protection and shelter. She bought herself a reprieve from the childlessness tax and public disdain, sacrificing her youth and freedom. There was almost never any love involved—it was a sober, desperate calculation dictated by survival. She was taught that it was her duty to tie her life to a defender of the Fatherland, and the age difference only emphasized his wisdom and merits.

Returning to civilian life did not mean peace for a man who had served in the army. The state, having granted him formal freedom, burdened him with a new yoke—an economic one. These men, schooled in absolute subordination, took on the most difficult, low-paid, and often dangerous jobs: as miners, construction workers in harsh regions, machine operators in continuous production.

Dogmas of Hatred: Pseudoscience as a Weapon of Control

In addition to the official, state-sponsored misogyny that elevated women to the dusty pedestal of the Mother, a malignant, everyday shadow of the same had also taken root in Eruberian society. It drew its strength not from decrees, but from the dark depths of collective frustration and deliberately cultivated ignorance. These views, though not directly enshrined in law, were encouraged and legitimized through propaganda and tacit approval from above.

The cult of "primordial purity." For many men whose youth was spent in the ascetic, female-free hell of the barracks, the virginity of their brides became an obsession, a fetish. This was not simply a relic of patriarchal morality—it was a painful compensation. A woman untouched by another man was perceived as the last territory that could be completely controlled, an "unspoiled" commodity in a world where they themselves had nothing left. Marrying a virgin offered the illusion of victory, of possessing something whole in their own fractured lives. Weddings sometimes even included the humiliating ritual of revealing the bedsheet—not so much a family tradition as a public act of male celebration and confirmation of the bride's "quality." For a woman, this created monstrous pressure: losing her virginity before marriage could lead to shame, forced marriage, or even revenge from a rejected suitor.

The myth of telegony as a social sentence. The pseudoscientific theory of telegony—the belief that a woman's first man or all previous partners are "imprinted" on her genetic makeup and influence her future children—experienced a renaissance in Eroberia. It was actively promoted in controlled patriotic communities, in lectures "on family purity" for young people, and echoed in crude soldier jokes. It was a brilliant tool for the system. It transformed any woman who had had a premarital relationship into a "tainted vessel," a threat to the "purity of the nation." This hit divorced women especially hard. They were viewed with double contempt: as "spent material" who had failed to preserve the family (the fundamental unit of the state), and as genetic "poisoners." It was virtually impossible for them to remarry a "decent man." They became outcasts, condemned to hard, low-paying work and a life of perpetual guilt. This myth scientifically justified (in the eyes of the average person) the social isolation of the undesirable, absolving men and the state of any responsibility.

Disgust as an ideological discipline. The treatment of divorcees, widows (whose husbands didn't die at the front, but, for example, died of illness), and simply "overstayed" women created an invisible but strong social hierarchy. A woman who didn't fit the narrow confines of the prescribed path (virgin → bride → mother of many children) was automatically considered defective. She was denied respect, a career, and even basic human consideration. This disdain served as a powerful means of intra-group control among women, forcing them to compete for the status of "correct" and inform on each other to avoid ending up at the bottom of this hierarchy themselves.

Thus, these radically sexist attitudes served the system as a biological and social weapon with a dual effect. First, they tightened control over women's bodies and destinies, raising state demographic policy to the level of domestic terror. Secondly, they provided embittered, disenfranchised men with the illusion of power and "scientific" superiority, diverting their anger from the true culprits of their woes—the ruling elite—to a more accessible and vulnerable target. As a result, society found itself shackled not only by external laws but also by internal, voluntarily accepted chains of the darkest and most pseudoscientific prejudices, which the system skillfully elevated to the rank of sacred and immutable truths.Sex as an Ideology: Myths and Bonds of an Embittered Consciousness

In the pathological cauldron of Eruberian society, where state patriarchy merged with everyday bitterness, a set of radical, quasi-religious sexist beliefs took shape. They weren't codified in official codes, but had the force of an unspoken law, shared by most men and imposed on women through social pressure. It was a crude, mythological superstructure over an already monstrous reality.

The cult of virginity as a fetish of failed power. For many men whose youth was taken by the state and whose masculinity was humiliated for years by military hazing and senseless drills, the bride's virginity became an obsession, the last illusion of control. In a world where they had no control over their fate, their bodies (which belonged to the army), or their minds (which belonged to propaganda), a woman's "purity" became a perverse symbol of territory to be conquered and possessed. It was an act of appropriation, designed to compensate for years of humiliating subordination. A woman with no "past" could, they believed, be imprinted only with their will and their order. This conviction was carefully fueled by propaganda, portraying "purity" as the highest feminine virtue, directly linked to loyalty to the state. Medical examinations before marriage, although not universally legalized, were often practiced at the request of the groom or his family, becoming a humiliating ritual.

The myth of telegony as a pseudoscientific weapon. In a context where genuine scientific knowledge was suppressed and education was reduced to a minimum, obscurantist superstitions flourished, disguised as "folk wisdom" or "secret knowledge." Belief in telegony—the pseudoscientific concept that a woman's first sexual partner "imprints" the genes of all her future children—became particularly popular. For Eruberian men, this was the "perfect" explanation for their pathological jealousy and desire for total control. It justified the demand for virginity not only morally but also biologically: he had to be the first, otherwise his children would carry the "spirit" of another. This myth served as a powerful tool for the further enslavement of women: even past violence or consensual intercourse made her, in the eyes of society, forever "tainted," a genetically inferior mother for future soldiers of the Fatherland. Any woman with a "tarnished" reputation became an outcast.

The stigma of divorce was a lifelong mark. If a woman dared to divorce (an incredibly difficult and socially condemned process), she incurred not just condemnation but total ostracism. In the eyes of society, and especially its male counterparts, a divorced woman was doubly outcast. First, as a "refuser" of her sacred duty to uphold her family at any cost. Second, and most importantly, as "used" and "damaged" material. She was treated with even greater contempt than a single woman. It was believed that she had already proven her "failure" as a wife, and her affair with another man (even her ex-husband) forever deprived her of the chance to be "pure" for someone new. She became a warning example for other women, living proof that the only path for a woman is to endure without complaint, no matter what happens.

These three beliefs—the cult of virginity, the belief in telegony, and the stigma of divorce—were intertwined into a single, suffocating tangle. They served as the final, domestic frontier of total control, transferring the frustration and rage generated by the state into the realm of personal relationships. They made every man, even the most humiliated by the system, a slave driver over "his" woman, and every woman an eternal hostage not only to the law but also to the primitive, cruel superstitions shared by society. This was the final act of dehumanization: love and trust were replaced by myths of purity and impurity, and the human body became a playground for biological fantasies justifying tyranny on the most microscopic, domestic scale.

Traitors: Keepers of the Smell of Paper and the Taste of Freedom

Their official nickname was "zhloby" or "shadows"—an ugly, abrupt word that, in propaganda, coexisted with images of drug dealers, spies, and sadists. They were described as creatures with oily eyes, the affected speech of traitors, and the cruelty of degenerates, ready to sell their hometown for a pack of foreign cigarettes. But in reality, in the dank basements and cluttered backyards of the factory districts, they were quite different.

They were not aggressive. Their main weapon was silence. They moved without unnecessary sounds, spoke in hushed tones, and their eyes, on the contrary, were lively and attentive—they knew how to see, unlike the glassy gazes of most. These were people who retained some kind of inner poise: an engineer whose blueprints had long since been burned; a librarian from a demolished library; A literature teacher, kicked out for reading the "wrong" poetry.

Their clubs, or rather, their meeting places, weren't places for ideological debate. They were warehouses for the survival of the soul. At first, people came to them not for truth, but for scarce goods. For a pack of decent shoelaces that wouldn't break after a week. For high-quality electrical tape to fix a leaky pipe. For a hairbrush that wouldn't rip out strands. For a pack of sanitary pads—a luxury item in a world of perpetual shortages. "Shadow" would take orders without further ado, nod, and within a few days, the desired item would appear as if out of thin air. They paid with whatever they could: their meager groceries, old clothes, and, more often, with silent trust.

It was here, among these mundane trifles, that the first step toward dissent lay. Because in a country where everything was flimsy, smelly, and unreliable, the very quality of a simple Western comb or the strength of a thread became sedition. It was irrefutable, tactile proof: another world exists. And it makes things not for show, but for people.

Only after many such transactions, after establishing silent contact, could a cautious question follow, more like a password: "And... about reading?" Then, looking around, the "shadow" could extract from its hiding place not a commodity, but a treasure.

Books. They smelled different. Not of the musty printer's ink from propaganda brochures, but of dust, time, glue, and hope. Here were pre-war publications—tattered volumes with gilded spines, telling of distant lands, of complex human emotions, of science without ideological blinkers. And samizdat—stacks of typewritten pages, with a broken "r" or carefully copied by hand. Poems that weren't published. Philosophical essays. Translated articles. Memories.

They read secretly, behind closed shutters, by the light of a dim bulb or candle. They read and wept, because the words revived feelings they considered atrophied. There were no direct calls to rebellion here. There was something more dangerous: a reminder. A reminder that people can be complex, that the world is multicolored, that love can be tragic, and thought can be independent. They didn't "recruit." They returned to people their own human heritage, stolen by the state.

Their strength lay not in organization, but in this quiet, chain reaction of insight. A neighbor who received medicine from them for his sick mother began to hear falsehoods in the television news reports. A woman who bought thread to sew her daughter a dress suddenly realized the humiliating role she had been forced into. They weren't the motherland's salesmen, but its last apothecaries, curing the people of amnesia and spiritual scurvy. They knew the taste of real coffee—bitter, rich, invigorating. They knew the feel of thick, rustling paper on which to write the truth.

Their end, if they were caught, was terrifying. But the network of such "points" was a living organism: if one cell disappeared, another would eventually emerge in a new location, with a new password. They were traitors only to the regime. For those who wished to remain human, they were quiet, risky guardians of the light, selling not drugs, but an antidote. And therein lay their greatest sedition.Traitors: Shadows Preserving the Light

They were invisible. This was their first and most important victory over the system. Propaganda painted garish images: decadents dressed in foreign rags, cigarettes in holders; cruel hucksters scurrying through back alleys with packets of white poison; cynical intellectuals scribbling denunciations to the enemy for a pittance. But the real "traitors" were indistinguishable from the gray mass. They looked the right way—weary, poor, submissive.

He was an engineer in the same faded jacket, smelling of machine oil and melancholy. A nurse with hands chapped from disinfection, holding in the pocket of her old gown not a propaganda-scarred brochure, but a stack of typewritten sheets of devastatingly beautiful, throat-stopping poetry. A factory worker whose powerful, scarred hands didn't reach for vodka after their shift, but carefully, almost reverently, assembled a primitive receiver from old radio parts capable of picking up "the voice from outside." A literature teacher, officially teaching approved odes to the Motherland, but in rare, terrifying, confidential lessons, whispering quotes from banned authors whose words about freedom and dignity sounded like an incantation from another world.

Their "affection" was in fact a quiet nervous exhaustion from a perpetual double life. Their "aggression" was merely the caution of a cornered animal, a momentary freeze and wary gaze at an unexpected knock. They weren't selling out their homeland. They were trying to save its soul, plucking from the rubble of official culture, bit by bit, what made a person human: the ability to sense complexity, to yearn for beauty, to doubt.

Their gatherings weren't satanic orgies, but secret evenings of salvation. In an apartment where the only luxury was books hidden behind plywood in an alcove, or in a dacha six hundred square meters square, smelling not of barbecue but of damp earth and freedom. Here, they didn't plot overthrow. Here, they listened. To an old, scratched vinyl record with music that wasn't broadcast. Here, they read. Out loud, quietly, passing around the only copy of a novel, bought for half their salary on the black market. Here, they talked. Not about politics—that was mortally dangerous—but about feelings, about meaning, about what it means to be honest with oneself in a world of universal lies. It was group therapy for souls poisoned by propaganda.

Their "cruelty" was merely the strict discipline of conspiracy. They knew that one mistake, one unnecessary word, one weakness could destroy not only them, but everyone who came to these meetings. Trust here was more valuable than life itself. They were bound not by ideology, but by the mutual compassion of those who understood, the brotherhood of those who had not broken.

The system knew about them. The "top brass" understood perfectly well that it was impossible to eradicate them completely. But they pretended to fight caricatures of "drug dealers and spies," periodically staging show trials of random people, planting evidence on them. This maintained the necessary image of the enemy among the people. The true "traitors"—the quiet guardians of alternative memories and a different consciousness—were identified selectively, methodically, when they let their guard down or became too visible. They weren't executed with pomp. They were quietly ground into the camp dust. They disappeared, and others took their place. Because the need for truth, for beauty, for genuine human expression was stronger than fear.

They weren't a stain on Eroberia's body. They were its last conscience, its quiet, unquenchable sorrow for itself, for the country it could have been, but never became. And this was their greatest "betrayal"—they refused to forget that man is born for more than to be a cog in the machine of eternal war and obedience.