Patriotic War

The Patriotic War (15 Sept. 1987 – 2 Oct. 1989) was a conflict fought between the Pacifican Army of the Pacific and the Pan-Pacifican Revolutionary Movement supported by the communist Common Workers’ Party and the Soviet Union. Beginning on 15 September 1987 at the Vladivostok Massacre the conflict continued for over two years, fought bitterly by both sides of the war. It concluded on 2 October 1989 with the official banning of the Progressive Party of the Pacific and the Pacifican Government Organization, as reformed by President Oleg Betin. This date is also officially referred to as the beginning of the Progressive Resistance that lasted until 1993.
The Patriotic War is the first and only major conflict the Pacifican Republic ever had to fight. Spurred by political disagreements and tensions within the collapsing Soviet Union, the war tested the will of Pacifican democracy. Over fifty thousand people died on both sides; over thirty-thousand casualties, both military and civilian, were suffered by the Pacificans. Today the war serves as a solemn moment in the Pacific’s history, and a testament to all those who would “give their lives in the name of liberty, freedom, and democracy in a land that would not permit it,” said Marshal Igor Zakhaev in 1992.
Today, the Patriotic Memorial of the Pacific stands as the national memorial to all those that served and that died in the conflict on the Pacifican side. A smaller, privately funded memorial is dedicated to those who fought on the communist side of the war.
==Pre-War Tensions==
===Election of 1985===
President Oleg Betin was elected on 15 September 1981 and pledged to build the Pacifican Republic as the end of the Brezhnev era drew near. When Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev did die in 1982, Betin said that the spread of Pacifican democracy was inevitable and “had a clear path”. In the 1985 election, Betin and Chairman Gregory Rapota both pledged the easing of market restrictions in the area as the ideas of the free markets of Western Europe and the United States began to enter the Pacifican Republic as Soviet censors began to ease on foreign media.
Within the Progressive Party of the Pacific, the newly formed Civil Libertarian Caucus quickly took power in the mid-1980s. Advocated to more social liberal reforms and freer markets, Oleg Betin used the Caucus’s platform as the platform for his campaign in 1985. The group’s ideals spurred off of popularity generated by former Leftist Chairman Nikolay Vinnichenko‘s initial proposals of economic reform in 1981. Winning over the Pacifican people in his promises of a more capitalistic economic approach, he, and the Civil Libertarians, were elected into office that year.
In the VII National Assembly, elected in 1985, many Leftists were content with Progressive reform on the economy. The conservative members of the United Pacifican Left disagreed with the liberal Leftists-in-Assembly. Throughout 1985 and 1986, a power struggle erupted within the party between those in favor of a socialistic centralized economy and those in favor or a more capitalistic decentralized economy. 
===Leftist Split, 1986===
On 1 May, 1986, members of the conservative factions of the United Pacifican Left issued their manifesto and formed the ‘’Congress of the Revolutionary Movement in the Pacific’’ within the party. Members of this faction in the Party began to claim that they were the legitimate leaders of the Left, attempting to compete with the existing liberal-leaning elements of the party.
Not shortly thereafter their establishment, members of the Congress were expelled from the United Pacifican Left all throughout August 1986. Unlike the Progressives, the Leftists did not allow inner-party factionalism, an attempt to prevent splits within the party. This backfired though, and bitter Congress members formed the Common Workers’ Party on 7 November 1986. This new party pledged allegiance to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and promised for policies that would return the nation to a more centralized economy, promising that such power over the nation’s wealth would be returned to the people through the Marxist principle of “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
Because of their new party affiliation, former Leftists-in-Assembly were now members of the Common Workers’ Party. As such, the Common Workers picked up seven delegates in the VIIth National Assembly.
===Formation of the Pan-Pacifican Revolutionary Movement===
With the Assembly election of 1987 coming up, many elements within the Common Workers’ Party figured that because of their shunning by the Leftists-in-Assembly and the Progressive government, that they would not be elected into office. In favor of a Leninist method to get into power, the party formed the Pan-Pacifican Revolutionary Movement in June 1987 as the paramilitary wing to the organization. Delegates in the National Assembly quickly banned the paramilitary organization, calling it a “threat to liberty and Pacifican democracy”.
Category:Democratic Republic of the Pacific
Category:Wars