Found at FreeOpenSourceInfo.org shortly after the Peace Treaty with Victoria was signed:
The Arctic Environmentalist Republic At A Glance:
Name: Arctic Conservationate
Government Type: Liberal Parliamentary Social Democracy
Territorial Extent: Roughly all of the former Dominion of Canada from the 60th parallel north, including the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and part of the Nord-du-Quebec region of former Quebec
Capital: Whitehorse
Official Currency: Dollar (Arctic)
Population: 3,380,000 (Including guest workers and Russian military personnel.)
History: The Arctic Republic begins where the Dominion of Canada ends during the 2030s. With Atlantic Canada under the Victorian thumb, Pacific Canada forming the short lived Cascadian Republic, and central and western Canada collapsing under the tide of American refugees, the remnants of the Canadian government evacuate north to attempt to re-establish Peace, Order, and Good Government north of the 60th parallel.
The government of the day hoped to use the Northwest Passage to keep themselves afloat as they reorganized themselves, and refused Russian claims that the passage was international waters
History, and Tsar Alexander IV had different ideas. The Canadian refusal to waive sovereignty of the waters of the Northwest Passage, the Arctic's resources riches, and the proximity of a potential foe to Russia led Alexander to coldly calculate that Canada would be better off joining her American sister on the asheap of history.
In 2038, with Alaska reentering the Russian Imperial Family once again, the vastly reduced Canadian state now found herself between the Rock of Victoria and the Hard Place of Russia. Both Victoria and Russia would combine their efforts to destroy the last Canadian embers.
While both Russia and Victoria would embark on campaigns of violent military sabotage against deniable Canadian targets, their most potent weapon was simply flooding the area north of the 60th parallel with refugee Canadian citizens "repatriated" from areas of Russian and Victorian control.
The first destabilizing wave of refugees were Quebecoise fleeing the Victorian ethnic cleansing of Quebec in the late 30s, followed by another wave of refugees fleeing Cascadia after its conquest by Japan in 2042. Many of those fleeing Cascadia were driven out at the behest of Alexander with an eye to putting the finishing touch on the dying Canadian state.
Alexander's plan worked, and by 2044 Canada was effectively dead as a coherent entity, the last zone of Canadian control reduced to 500,000 desperate people clinging to life in a space that had previously supported only a fifth of that number.
Into this void stepped Alexander's Russia. Russian expeditions set out to seize control of the Northwest passage, and to exploit the region's resource wealth. They were met with a determined guerilla campaign from the still active Canadian Arctic Rangers who had outlived their government. The attacks vastly increased the risk of using the passage and made attempts to conduct resource exploitation infeasible.
With Russia stretched thin establishing her empire, Alexander turned to Victoria to pacify the region. Victoria, fresh off the destruction of the "New South" and the Cascadian Republic, began enthusiastically. However the Victorians merely ended up chasing guerillas across the snowy wastes for weeks at a time, losing many frozen blimploads of Victorian troops to the adverse climate and clever Arctic Rangers. It was eventually decided that those troops could be more profitably used in collapsing the various successor states in America proper, especially the strengthening Pacific Republic.
Instead, Alexander switched tack and extended the carrot to the Canadian remnants. Contacting the remains of the Canadian state across the Arctic, Alexander's Russia provided food support in exchange for military basing rights, an end to Ranger attacks on shipping, and assistance with resource extraction.
This new direction worked well enough to quell the resistance as Alexander's attention shifted to his efforts to destroy the Pacific Republic in 2047. The improvement wasn't total as small scale attacks and acts of resistance continued throughout the rest of the decade as the loosely knit peoples of the old Canadian North knit themselves together into the "Arctic Community".
In 2051, Alexander dispatched his 16 year old daughter, the Grand Duchess Catherine, as "Ambassador" to the Arctic Community in what was intended to be her first experience in leadership and foriegn diplomacy.
It was Catherine, at her father's behest, who helped transform the Arctic Communities into the Arctic Conservationate. The newly forming government was intimately involved in Alexander, and Catherine's, environmental planning.
The North American Arctic was deemed the perfect place to test out and implement many of Alexander's most ambitious geo-engineer projects -long before such risk measures would be deployed on Russain soil. The ambitious projects saw the tapping of the previously unused pool of (surviving) well-educated Canadian refugee labour, as well as the immigration of Russian and other world scientists to the Conservationate to conduct their experiments.
These experts also began testing and implementing many "green" resource extraction technologies to exploit the untapped resources of the north freed up by climate change and technological advancement.
During the early 2050s the Conservationate was also tied tightly into the Russian economic sphere. While the Conservationate brought in money from a variety of sources: Tolls charged to non-Russian ships, the various advantages brought by being a shipping hub, money from Arctic based Russian Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen, the export and implementation of green geoengineering projects. The Arctic economy was also boosted by the transit of cheap Victorian raw materials and inexpensive Californian manufactured goods, and the agricultural products of both.
The economic boom begun in the 50s still hasn't ended in the Arctic, and the wealth flowing in has led to the development of a vibrant progressive liberal social democracy as strong as any that existed before the Collapse.
In fact, in many ways, most ways, the Collapse can be said to have been good for the former Canadian Arctic. The region went from being an impoverished backwater neglected by a distant federal government to a prosperous and fully modern state as Alexander's most favoured vassal.
Domestic Politics: In addition to the common dual axes of, social liberalism and conservatism, and economic leftism verses market economics, the Arctic political sphere is defined by pro- and anti- Russianism (Which masquerades as Pro- and Anti- Victorianism.)
Though it may come as a shock to many, Alexander's Russia is liked, or at least seen as a generally benign force in the Arctic, as the country's current prosperity is owed in large part to her place in the Russian economic sphere, Alexander's environmentalist policies, and Russian military protection.
The current Arctic Parliament contains nearly a dozen small parties jockeying for power, but five stand out enough to be worth reckoning with:
-The Arctic Liberal Party: The current ruling party of the Conservationate takes its lineage directly from the Liberal Party of old Canada, right down to having a Trudeau on cabinet. The Liberals are known for their dedication to social liberalism, social democratic economic policies, and firmly pro-Russian stance. The current Liberal government is intent on expanding Arctic market influence across the globe, extremely eager to have Arctic Corporations enter markets worldwide. The recent opening of the great lakes region to sea traffic has the government very interested. At the moment the current the Liberal Government is in no danger of falling or losing the next election scheduled for 2080. (Provided the economy remains strong. Thank god California, at least, is stable and exporting)
-The Collective Democracy Party: The current loyal opposition is a socially progressive, economically far left party who are, at worst, agnostic towards Russia. At this point in time they are focusing on calls to enter government in order to implement experimental decentralized democratic economic planning systems. They mostly cheer on the Commonwealth's rise from a social standpoint and ignore the fact that a good part of the Arctic's current prosperity, and their own future plans relies on cheap Victorian imports.
-The Qorsk Party: The "Qorsk" (from Inuktitut for "Green") Party are a party riven by two very contradictory thoughts: Alexander's environmentalist drives are important to the survival of Humanity, and FUCK Victoria (And Russia's Imperialism). The very leftwing socially and economically Qorsk Party often finds itself in a de facto alliance with the Progressive Conservative Reform Alliance and revivalist Bloc in opposition to Victoria's place in their economy.
-The Progressive Conservative Reform Alliance: Recently formed from a group of center and center-right opposition parties, the New Tories should be considered very pro-capital, and while they are somewhat socially centrist, they are mainly distinguished via their desire to cut ties with the vile Northern Confederacy. They often find themselves aligned with the leftist Qorsk and Bloc in opposition to the main parties on foriegn policy.
-The Bloc: Formed originally from ethnically Quebecois refugees, the socially and economically left wing Bloc are well known for their seething hatred of Victorian Anglos and revivalist desire to reclaim everything lost during the Collapse. They are openly gleeful at the Commonwealth's rise.
Rumours that the Liberals and Collective Democracy receive favourable media coverage thanks to Russian funding are entirely baseless. The Conservationate is a fully free democracy which just happens to fall into a Russian media sphere with its own perspectives on what counts as legitimate political opinion. A perspective that knows that the Qorsk and Tory joint foriegn policy stance is clearly extremist. (And thank god that the fringe lunatics in the Bloc are nowhere near power!)
Economy: The rapid growth of the Conservationate since 2050 has seen it called "snowy Dubai" by some (If "sandy Duba"i wasn't a duneswept ruin in the middle-east).
The Arctic's key geographic location in the Imperial economic sphere combined with the Arctic's pool of highly skilled labour and Russian backing has led to continual growth. (The fact that the territory of the Conservationate is rich with newly available resources doesn't hurt in any way.)
A respectable percentage of the Conservationate's growth can be chalked up for being a middleman between nations who find it political suicide to deal with Russia directly, and Russia itself. In the 2060s the Liberal government, partnered with the Grand Duchess Catherine, took advantage of this reluctance by launching a campaign selling green technologies and geoengineering services under the branding of smiling indiginous faces for those countries who did not feel comfortable accepting Alexander's Russian environmental advisors directly.
More recently the Liberal government has sought Russian backing to displace New York as the main financial center of the Americas, touting the Arctic's stability and distance from conflict as an advantage over the Victoria adjacent Free City. The government also plans to sell the Arctic on its central location on fiber-optic cables that run from London to Tokyo and Los Angeles to Whitehorse to Moscow as part of its efforts to poach tech firms from California.
Commonwealth Opinion: While most Arctic citizens greet the rise of the commonwealth as good news, Conservationate businesspeople and economic planners have more mixed feelings on Chicago's rise.
On the one hand the access to new markets that will need their services is welcome, on the other the ongoing destruction of the Victorian Civil War has been extremely negative for the Arctic economy. The exploitation of Victorian labour to procure cheap raw materials has been part of the Arctic economy from day one and the halt to exports has caused real worries that the end of Victorian agricultural products could lead to a rise in food prices in a country that relies on imports to feed itself.
On the other hand, the opening of the North American interior has Arctic companies salivating over potential opportunities for investment as the Conservationate's proximity and control of nearby trade routes has corporations and economic planners alike interested in the Commonwealth as a trade partner.
Military: Well, the Conservationate has the five thousand man Arctic Rangers, and the nuclear powered icebreakers of the Coast Guard. Is that what is meant by military?
Thanks to the kindness of Tsar Alexander IV, the Conservationate needs no military to protect itself, and in fact the presence of Imperial Sailors, Airmen, and Soldiers on Conservationate soil are a net economic boon!
The Arctic is a long way removed from the chaos which still engulfs the continent. Only the fringe Revivalist lunatics in the Bloc would even dream of building up a military force!
Culture: Thanks to the devastating effects of the Collapse, the Arctic Conservationate of the 50s was not dominated by any single ethnicity, instead it had large populations of various ethnicities, and though it was dominated by people of Indiginous, Anglo, and Quebecoise decent, large portions of the population were also of southeast asian and east asian descent due to the Japanese conquest of Cascadia.
In the current era, the Arctic population's explosive growth comes in large part from returnees from the American and Canadian diaspora, and immigration from other parts of Russia's informal empire moving to perhaps the most openly free section of said informal empire.
While Arctic citizens are ambivalent towards Alexander IV himself, they are much more favourably disposed to his heir apparent Catherine, and eagerly await the day she takes up the old man's mantle as ruler of the Russian empire.
Otherwise Arctic citizens don't usually stop to consider how their prosperity is linked to the Russian empire, much less pause to contemplate the human rights violations in the Victorian state that provides their raw materials. Much as how Canadian citizens of the pre-Collapse never stopped to think about how much of their prosperity came from developing nations overseas with poor rights records. Those that do stop to consider either vote Qorsk, PCAA, and Bloc, or consider that someone has to do business with Victoria and it might as well be them rather than a more unscrupulous country.
Inhabitants of the Conservationate are self-consciously environmentalist, and take great pains to ensure that all of the Arctic's economic activity is as green as possible, and thanks to Russia's backing are often at the forefront of deployment for new environmental technologies. They also take future planning very seriously, mapping out infrastructural development and urban expansion decades in advance.
As part of the Arctic's dedication to pluralism and multiculturalism they have planned cities, especially port cities, to allow for multiple overlapping cultural enclaves for the Arctic's wealth of cultures both native and immigrant.
Arctic ports are also known for their "Vicsburgs": small insular communities formed to service retroculture Victorian sailors who routinely travel between the eastern seaboard and the far north as part of the internal trade of the extended Russian Imperial family. While the Victorian CMC is wary of these small communities due to their contamination by liberal culture, they are unable to act on Arctic soil due to Russian pressure. It is rumoured that what external intelligence service that Victoria is able to run, and a surprisingly large percentage of the Victorian diplomatic corps, are recruited from these comparatively cosmopolitan Victorian communities. Though this is often strenuously denied.
As far as media output goes, the well educated Arctic still lags behind many other countries and imports much of their media from Russia, California, Japan, and the EU. Though as part of the Liberal government's many plans the Liberals want to encourage the formation of new domestic media companies via a scheme to poach Californian creators.
In Popular Culture: The Arctic Conservationate occupies a warm place in the Russian psyche, especially next to Russia's other, far more restive, North American children in the Russian Imperial Family. While Californians are seen as restive and stubborn, and Victorians as wild-eyed fanatics, Arctic citizens are seen as friendly, hard-working, and peaceful.
The Conservationate has become a popular location for Russian military shooters, technothrillers, and explosion filled blockbusters, as the country is seen by many as Russia's strategic "backdoor".
For example: the ongoing, highly popular, video game series "Manifest Destiny",
(which depicts a military conflict fought between Russia and a revanchist United States under the control of the totalitarian "Manifest Destiny Party",) has an entire game (Manifest Destiny III: Arctic Oil) dedicated to brave Russian soldiers fighting to protect the Arctic Conservationate from American subjugation alongside brave Arctic Rangers.
Globally the Arctic is seen in a number of different lights, from being Canada's successor, to Russia's puppet, but generally the country itself is seen as at least benign, though well thought of due to their environmental work.
(Pre-cleared with Poptart)
en.wikipedia.org
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
