Ooc: Parbhani rightly pointed out that I mistakenly called his representative President instead of Envoy or something similar. We agreed that in the post above President is to be read as Envoy.
The audience in the state Duma chamber appreciated envoy’s Artem speech. After he finished, all guests, Yeva and all but five members of the Duma stood up and gave a round of applause. Both parties, Legion and Republican, heavily favored good relations with Zaporozh so it was of no surprised that they received the speech favorably.
The five members of the Duma, three from the Legion and two Republicans chose not to stand or applaud because they objected to the Inner Karifan reference and the anti Rodinian rhetoric. While their views were in the minority they nevertheless represented a point of view, although marginal, that existed in Samantran society that Rodina could be a friend of Samantra because of cultural ties and that renaming the Rodinian Sea was a slap in the face to the people of Rodinia not just the Rodinian government.
“It is a wonderful gift and I thank you in the name of the Samantran people for it. We gladly accept.” replied Yeva.
“I apologize that I didn’t have a chance to properly reply during our tour but I remember your comment about the size of our churches and cathedrals. There is downside to it or better said it is a consequence of our recent history. The Sacred War, which we call the whole period on conflict starting with 1914 and the whole Great War Era and going all the way to 1954 with the end of the civil war in Samantra, devastated not just the country but also religious life. Whole communities fled from one side of the country to another. Some fled aboard only to return after decades. All that chaos uprooted many communities and destroyed in many cases irreversible the communal life that used to exist in the rural and small towns of Samantra. All of a sudden in the mid 1950 we were a poor, devastated country with few places to worship and a population that while strongly believed in the Lord knew very little of what Christianity teaches. More than half a century later, we are slowly seeing the kind of community created along small parish churches built or better said rebuilt in neighborhoods. That is why images shown in the “
Family First interview" had such a profound impact on us Samantrans. Villages like the one featured…” she paused because much to her shame she had forgotten the name but quickly one of her assistants next to her whispered so she resumed “Krasnoe. Yes, Krasnoe. They remind us of the stories our grandfathers used to tell us about how life was in Samantra before the devastation. “
Realizing that she should get back to the agenda she resumed:
“So all I can say is that we envy your small churches and the communities you have around them.”
“Now, with your permission I would like to approach the first topic on our agenda and that is security. I will leave Mr. Gedeon Egorov who is my security adviser to explain a bit about our plans.”
Gedeon Egorov, security adviser to the President of the Duma
“Thank you Ms. President.”
“Your excellency” Gedeon says turning his sight to Envoy Lebedev “you have already anticipated perfectly our views on the matter in your speech before the Duma. The Samantran government sees Soviet Rodina as holding back progress and humanity in our region and as a security threat to Samantra, a security threat that we seek to contain and eventually neutralize.
Our first plan of action is to deny access to military ships that do not belong to nations of the Rodinian Sea. That would stop Rodina from receiving military aid by sea from Kaitaine and apply pressure on their government.
The second plan of action is to found an institute for the desovietization of the Rodinian Sea countries by which we will seek to encourage anti soviet activity in Rodina as well as promote anti Soviet opinion in the Rodianian sea states and beyond.
Thank you.”
Yeva frowned at Gedeon’s lack of tact and immediately went on damage control in order to assure the guest that Samantra was not about to start a war.
“I allow me to better… phrase our position. Our proposal is to keep the Rodinian sea exclusively for navies belong to the countries that have access to the Rodinian sea. We are talking here of course only about warships and not civilian ships and we are consulting our friends to see what you think of the proposal. We have not yet discussed this with other governments but we intend to bring this up with NiS in my coming visit there, as they would be affected, with Halych, though with the civil war raging there (ooc: assuming it will not be retconned) we do not know if we will be able to do that. Chistopol will also be consulted of course. We expect the highest opposition to be encountered there since they are members of SUN and that will affect their allies. Allies with whom Samantra doesn’t always get along” she said referring to Drenovia.
“But allow me to underline that under no circumstances are we making a claim to own the Rodinian Sea and if this proposal of ours is poorly received we will not go forward with it. We are not… “
“Rokkenjima” said one of the members of the Samantran team igniting laughter on the Samantran side with only Yeva suppressing her laughter to only a chuckle as to maintain the appearance of neutrality on the matter but clearly agreeing to the statement.
“As for the institute, it will be an umbrella organization with at least part of the funding from the Samantran government which will seek to maintain in the public attention the horror and abuses taking place in Soviet Rodina. It will seek to make use of already existing initiatives or beging new ones. We have yet to make a definitive list but among the proposals would be to finance and promote books detailing the abuses in Rodina as experienced by Rodinains who have fled the country, expositions in schools in Samantra and other countries about life in Rodina, financing and contributing whatever possible to broadcast from Zaporozh, assuming your government would allow this of course, the Divine Liturgy across the border in Rodina. We have reports that there are thousands if not a lot more Orthodox Christians in hiding in Rodina. We believe them hearing the Divine Liturgy over radio with a sermon mentioning them would give them immense comfort. As I said, the institute will not be founded from the premise that nothing has been done until now in that regard and will seek to fund already existing projects where they exist or to honor those that already have dedicated their lives to fighting in whatever shape or form they could the soviet government of Rodina. And should your government or any NGO from Zaporozh wish to be a cofounder it will of course be of great help and greatly appreciated.”
Yeva realized that the Samantran side had already monopolized the talks but she wanted to address one more issue:
“I may have been perhaps rude in not addressing this sooner. I have noticed your government’s initiative to not recognize the name of the Rodinian Sea because of obvious and understandable reasons. In fact I believe Chistopol has expressed a similar view recently. Despite us noticing it, we have not expressed any public position on the matter so let me explain our reservations. We are hesitant to support a change in the name of the Rodinian sea for fear that it may be interpreted as a way to erase the history of the Rodinian people. The soviet government of Rodina is one thing, the people are another and such a change could be turned against us by their propaganda machine. The second issue we have is that so far we have not heard or been able to come up with a name can convey at least a similar cultural connection. Rodina means after all “motherland” (ooc: at least that is my understanding it means in Russian) in the language we all share whether we are Samantrans, Zaporozhians, Chistopolians or Halychians. I would argue even the people of NiS understand the same thing. Calling it East Aranye Sea or even Inner Karifan seems to erase the cultural connection we have with it. But as I said, we are open to the idea; we just don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”