There aren't Raven forums yet, so: "Soviet Empire" led by Katherine the Great makes no sense

[iamryankelly]

A mystical Russian Empire led by Katherine the Great? Sure. "Soviet Empire?" Makes no sense.

But "Soviet" refers to the councils that were the hallmark of early Russian socialism directly after the revolution. So what happened, Lenin showed up and did some revolution, but then handed the reigns over to Katherine, who did some counter-revolution, re-serfed the peasants, re-instated the empire, but kept the workers' councils?

Personally? I would much prefer a mystical Soviet Union led by Lenin, who instead of dying and leaving Stalin to seize power, instead uses magic whatnot to live and lead the people's republic down a different path.

 

[Wallace Walrus]

I will say that while on its face it makes little sense for Catherine, a committed monarchist, to lead a "Soviet Empire" (we won't even talk about the ridiculousness of having a worker lead empire) it is not without precedent for evil, power hungry autocrats to subsume themselves into the rhetoric of populist movements for the purposes of gaining political capital. China, for instance, after the cultural revolution is pretty distinctly not Marxist-Leninist-Maoist any longer; Yet they still praise Mao as the original party head, and the political party he started ostensibly clings to his ideology through rhetoric (though not through policy). A similar situation could be imagined as the inspiration here. Catherine is of course not pro-worker or pro-democracy, but pretending to be was the best way for her to gain power to again become a human.