The Kerensky Miracle (part three)
A continuing investigation into the history of BattleTech / MechWarrior's Clans
Last week we continued our deep dive into the history of the Clans of BattleTech and MechWarrior and uncovered signs that people from the fallen Rim Worlds Republic were a significant part of the population that settled on the Pentagon worlds and became the Clans.
A Convenient War
Our sources generally agree that Aleksandr Kerensky’s people styled themselves as a Star League in Exile and began to overcome the difficulties of settling the Pentagon worlds. While Kerensky remained in place as the head of a military government, this did not prevent a certain degree of prosperity emerging in the 2790s. In particular, the settlements on the Pentagon worlds were stable enough to support further colonisation into the nearby Kerensky Cluster, with the poetically-named Strana Mechty (Land of Dreams) a particularly popular destination.
The sources also agree that civil unrest became an increasing problem at the same time. The reasons given for unrest vary somewhat. All three emphasize Inner Sphere nationalism and tension between people from the six major states of the defunct Star League. To this, Focht adds friction from the demoblisation and unhappiness about the loss of old luxuries, Kell basically chalks the problems up to human nature (a standard excuse when someone doesn’t know the reason for an event), while Paliwoda contradicts Focht on the matter of luxuries but shares his view that demobilisation was still an issue over ten years after the fact. All three agree that unrest became rebellion on the world of Eden, starting with riots in late 2800 and a declaration of independence from Capellans (people tracing their descent to the Capellan Confederation of the old Star League) in May 2801. Kerensky is said to have responded with military force, a solution that spiraled into a massacre that destroyed whole settlements. Kell and Paliwoda supply the figure of almost twenty thousand deaths. This atrocity sparked further uprisings which Kerensky answered with more force – our sources leave the blood toll to the imagination. Only the old General’s death on the 11th of June put a halt to the army’s campaign against its own people. A faction of the armed forces rallied around Aleksandr Kerensky’s son, Nicholas, and went into a second exile on Strana Mechty. There, they demobilised more troops and transformed into a new society known as the Clans. Meanwhile, the remaining people of the Exodus ruined one another with destructive wars and fell back into barbarism, before the return of Nicholas Kerensky at the head of the Clans ended their squabbles and established a new order.
What are we to make of this story?
Right at the top, the narrative is extremely convenient. It’s an almost perfect founding myth for the Clans, who believe that they went into exile because of the fratricidal barbarism of the Inner Sphere and will return one day to end the Sphere’s wars. Sometimes history does provide people with precedents for an asserted “national destiny”, but this is an exceptional fit. That should arouse significant suspicion that the facts have been “improved upon”.
Indeed, our prior investigation suggests a significant omission. In part 2 of this series, we found evidence consistent with large numbers of people from the Rim Worlds Republic going into Exodus with Kerensky. These people seem to vanish for the story of revolt and civil war in the Pentagon worlds. What happened to them? Perhaps they were over-represented among those who struck out for the Kerensky Cluster? This does seem plausible for people who once lived on the edge of the Inner Sphere and may well have faced discrimination on the Pentagon worlds – but if that is what happened, it’s hard to understand why our sources have nothing to say about it.
Furthermore, the suggestion that demobilization was still causing friction over a decade after the fact isn’t credible on the surface. Perhaps some former soldiers would raise a glass and drink to the good old days, or grouse about how they could have stayed in the army if it hadn’t been for a bit of bad luck, but to think that it was still a major issue takes a great deal of faith. This view most likely survives among the Warrior Caste of the Clans because of their sense of social superiority – to these people, being demobilized would indeed seem like a horrible fate that would haunt a person for the rest of their days. However, it need not be a complete fiction. The claim could be a distorted memory of a much more likely cause of unrest. Kell and Paliwoda told us that half a million of the six million people in the Exodus stayed in uniform. One person in twelve wearing uniform would be a staggering size for a peacetime army. (For comparison, on the eve of the First World War, France was considered heavily armed but had less than one person in thirty serving in her armed forces – the Star League in Exile comes close to France’s one in ten in uniform after mobilization.) Population growth and wastage of military manpower might have eased the situation somewhat, but as the years went by and no force from the Inner Sphere arrived to threaten the Exodus Kerensky’s people must have wondered why so many of their people remained in the armed forces. It wouldn’t be surprising for discontent over this to fall out of the historical memory of the Clan Warrior Caste – after all, the Warriors would hardly enjoy passing on a story of how civilians resented large numbers of soldiers – and be gradually replaced by the more “natural” story of former soldiers embittered years after their demobilisation.
But there’s an even bigger problem.
The Purpose of Clans and Castes
Our sources do not explain the reason for the basic divisions of Clan society – Clan and Caste. There are vague suggestions that the Clans were meant to replace the old divisions of the Inner Sphere that had led to conflict, but this is obviously absurd. If the intention was to do away with conflict by getting rid of old divisions, why create new ones? The division into Castes is even more obscure. Paliwoda has a quote attributed to Nicholas Kerensky that links the number of Clans to the number of settled worlds in the Kerensky Cluster, so perhaps the Castes are meant to equal the five Pentagon worlds. However, this doesn’t explain why any divisions exist in the first place. We are essentially told that this social structure was adopted because it was what Nicholas Kerensky wanted. Neither Kell (claiming to be telling us the story in Nicholas Kerensky’s private journal) nor Paliwoda (claiming to have a whole range of private journals from founding figures of the Clans) can offer anything more substantial.
As such, we must look for other evidence. Helpfully, Kell also has a report on the state of Clan society in 3062. Clearly this would have significant differences from what was going on at the time of Nicholas Kerensky, and we should be hesitant about assuming a straight line of development. In addition, many are rightly concerned about Kell’s biases. It’s important to start from the most reliable parts of his report.
In this case, Kell’s estimates of the relative size of the Caste populations are the most promising. He had a motive to tell the truth as he saw it, as the numbers might someday be verified and in any case his once-more allies would be using his figures on Clan manpower to inform their military planning. But while we have good reason to believe his claims, they are startling. Kell estimates that in 3062, the total Clan population was roughly 1.15 billion (not including former subjects of other polities conquered since the Clan invasion began in 3050). Of these, he claimed that only one in ten thousand, or a total just over 110,500, were members of the Warrior Caste in any capacity. Kell adds that the Warrior Caste not only served on the front lines and in military garrisons, but also as armed police. It is possible, even likely, that Kell had no figures for artificially-gestated children in the sibko systems, a small fraction of whom might be expected to graduate as Warriors some day, so we can treat his numbers for the Warrior Caste as a total of adults only. Furthermore, the armed forces of the Clans count significant numbers of other Castes (especially the Technician Caste) in their ranks, so we could perhaps multiply this count by ten. One in a thousand is still vanishingly low compared to the weight of the army during General Aleksandr Kerensky’s military dictatorship, and even looks light compared to countries in the real world. (A relatively peaceful 21st century nation-state like New Zealand has about one in four hundred of its populace employed by the police and a similar number in the armed forces.)
It’s hard to see how such a small group could dominate their society, especially given their further division into (at first) twenty Clans. While the Warriors have a monopoly on lethal force, their limited manpower makes intermediate steps of coercion practically impossible. Faced with a problem like industrial action, the Warrior Caste might try saving face by barking at the leadership of the Labourer Caste that they have brought shame upon the Clan and ordering “whatever it takes” to resolve the issue – but all civilians would understand this as backing down. Failing that, use of force would have to involve heavy equipment due to limited manpower, which could snowball into further opposition from the civilian castes. Indeed, there might even be opposition within the Warrior Caste because of concerns about collateral damage creating an opportunity for rival Clans.
Kell also makes some claims about the character of civilian government in the Clans. Here we are on less certain ground as he may well be viewing events through the bias of the Warrior Caste, omitting details, misinformed, or outright lying. However, the picture he paints is broadly consistent with the tiny social weight of the Warriors. According to Kell, most of the day-to-day government of the Clans is in the hands of the civilian castes, managed by regional, planetary, and Clan-wide caste and inter-caste councils. He also notes that even when it comes to top-level decisions, the supposedly all-powerful Warrior Caste is “often prompted by the civilian castes” to take action. Kell equivocates on the power of civilian leaders, claiming that they are “potentially” able to rival the Khans that lead the Warrior Castes while insisting that this doesn’t happen in practice. He goes on to say that the Warriors are forced to tread carefully due to the threat of popular revolt, while the threat of lethal violence from the warrior caste “keeps [civilian leaders] in line” and is the reason why – with the possible exception of the Diamond Shark Merchant Caste, he knows of no cases of “systemic abuse” by civilian leaders. Most intriguingly, Kell claims that Clan civilian government is rarely disrupted by the results of Warrior trials, even if the flag over a city changes. This either means that the Warrior Castes of different Clans have largely uniform policies towards their civilians (which we are told is not the case) or that their policies have little impact.
Those who want to see Clan society as thoroughly dominated by the Warrior Caste often point to Kell’s description of Clan justice, pointing out that Warriors preside over all cases. Frankly, Kell must be wrong about this one, because there are not enough Warriors to handle that job. (Each Clan has tens of millions of civilians, which would at least mean hundreds of justices. Finding those among a Warrior caste numbering in the thousands is implausible.) It’s likely that Kell only refers to judicial proceedings within the Clan military – i.e. courts-martial – and it is unsurprising that members of the military were presiding. What happens in a purely civilian court is unclear. Kell tells us that an inquisitorial system is used in Clan courts-martial, so perhaps the same holds. Those taking Kell’s account of Clan justice seriously should also note what he says about the Prinz Eugen. According to Kell, as of 3062 the old warship is employed as a maximum security prison, holding mostly, “members of the civilian castes too influential to execute or exile”. How could there be any such people if the Warriors controlled everything?
The Clans: Civilians of Kerensky?
The conventional picture of the Clans is that they are an extremely militarized society dominated by the Warrior Caste. Kell’s evidence – even the largely unquestionable demographic estimates – doesn’t fit with this. At the time of his report, the Clan military had a tiny footprint and minimal impact on civilian lives. Unlike in the states of the Inner Sphere, there were no secret police, and uniformed police were fairly rare. Rather than a militarized society ruled by force, the genuine article seems to have been a remarkably demilitarized society – and one that must have been governed by consent.
This admittedly revisionist position on the later state of Clan society offers a powerful explanation for the Clan and Caste reforms attributed to Nicholas Kerensky. (Attributed, as a range of possibilities exist, up to and including scenarios in which the younger Kerensky attempted a Warrior dominion only for that power to be eroded or overthrown later.) The Warriors were divided into Clans and set to feud among themselves to reduce their political power relative to civilians. The Caste system, while often denounced as a means of oppression, gave the Labourers a permanent political organization for representing their interests and ensured that the leadership of that organization would be drawn from the ranks. (In both respects, differing very sharply from the position of blue collar workers in the Inner Sphere.) While we do not know when this type of social organisation emerged, they are coherent as a post-“Pentagon Civil War” if the conflict was a revolt against Aleksandr Kerensky’s bloated military dictatorship.
So much for social development. Next week, we’ll go digging in the dirt.