And they said, "Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
And the Lord said, "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
— Genesis 11:4-9
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"Booo! Reactionaries, get out of the Soviet! Do you wish for the blood of our Kazdelian comrades to merely soak the furrows of their fields?"
"It is you Adventurists who should leave! Why should we concern ourselves with those Kazdelian parasites?"
It was an ordinary day.
Today's session of the assembly was hurtling toward catastrophe.
The Centralists fought among themselves, the Communists clashed with their own kind, and the parties engaged in a bitter war of attrition.
Just as a Communist cannot comprehend an Absolutist, and a Liberal cannot understand a Totalitarian, the Sorbonne Clique (SP) could not fathom the National Liberation Alliance (NLA), and the NLA, in turn, held the Sorbonne Clique in utter contempt.
However, one question must be asked.
The Sorbonne Clique—who were they?
"...Those miserable status-quo-ists."
Benjamin Roosevelt, the representative of the Liberty League—Internationalist Youth Front, quietly ground his teeth as he stared at the benches of the Centralist deputies.
When did it begin? Perhaps twenty years ago?
Within the nomadic city of the Gallic Soviet, at the prestigious Sorbonne University, a specific power base had been forged.
The organization, named the Sorbonne Young Liberators' Union, appeared wholesome at first glance.
It felt like an alumni association established by Sorbonne graduates. Since other large organizations like the Birmingham Student Council and the Philadelphia Student Association existed, it didn't seem problematic at the time.
The issue lay in the political views of those who emerged from that university.
"What I am saying is, why must we spill our blood for the sake of Kazdel!"
Yes.
That man currently at the podium, delivering his speech, was the problem.
Edward Lewis.
The current representative of the Centralists and the head of the Sorbonne Clique.
It hadn't been that long since the Sorbonne Clique seized control of the Centralist faction.
Perhaps ten years?
The Centralists had focused their efforts on the Gallic Soviet elections to secure victory in the General Election.
And naturally, the vast majority of those elected were from the Sorbonne Clique.
'Citizens! We shall scrap these reckless adventurist policies, optimize revolutionary subsidies, and use that wealth to achieve economic development!'
Unlike the Republic of Victoria, which began by hanging the northern nobility immediately after the revolution, or Columbia, where nobles either didn't exist or were torn apart as imperial collaborators, Gaul did not punish its nobility with such severity.
This was partly because some nobles had enthusiastically joined the revolution, and partly because the Gallic nobility, long suppressed by the Emperor and the central government, were quick to submit to the Revolutionary Government.
However, this ultimately birthed a so-called 'reactionary' electoral culture within Gaul.
The people voted for the intelligentsia simply because they were the intelligentsia.
The candidates of the Social Revolutionary Workers' League were overwhelmingly from worker or peasant backgrounds, and those of the Liberty League were (though he loathed to admit it) idealists and eccentrics.
Thus, those who would have been pelted with eggs in Victoria—or perhaps met with a revolutionary 12mm round in Ursus—successfully won their seats in droves.
When the Hoover Cabinet of the Liberty League disintegrated following their de facto defeat in the Ursus Civil War and the subsequent totalitarian shift of the Republic of Ursus government, the Sorbonne Clique became the masterstroke that allowed the Centralists to reclaim power.
And within the Centralist faction, they became sacrosanct.
'Um... Comrade Sorbonne... isn't abandoning internationalism a bit much? We are, after all, Centralists who follow the path of Comrade Vladimir...'
'Blast it all! Are you suggesting we forfeit the Gallic seats? We simply need to pull the wool over their eyes for now! Know your place and act accordingly.'
After this process was repeated numerous times, and as the old guard—those who debuted in the 30s through the 50s, the golden age of the Centralists—became ineligible for reelection due to age limits in the electoral laws, the Sorbonne Clique finally succeeded. They seized over 30% of the Communist Party's total seats, effectively conquering the Centralist faction from within.
This was the result.
"Foreign blood must stop at foreign borders. We mourn the tragedy of Kazdel, yes. But mourning is not a line item in our budget!"
Lewis continued, slamming his palm against the podium repeatedly to silence the uproar from the floor.
"I will move to cut the special budget. I will restrict the authority to deploy International Brigades. And with that money—"
He did not stop.
He purposefully lingered on the words 'with that money.'
"We will stabilize the situation in Ursus. We will build housing. We will lay down power lines. We will lower the price of food even further!"
It was predictable.
He was using flowery language to silence the Liberty League by bringing up their failures in Ursus.
He was attempting to appease the Social Revolutionary Workers' League, whose base was the common folk, by mentioning housing, electricity, and food.
And naturally, the result was...
"We shall proceed to the vote!"
Among the 4,000 People's Deputies: 1,201 against, 1,702 in favor, with the remainder being abstentions or invalid votes.
The motion for intervention in the Kazdel Civil War failed to meet the required two-thirds majority of the total assembly.
In other words: Intervention by the Union in the Kazdel Civil War was rejected.
"Good gods...."
Roosevelt clutched his forehead.
Shouts and chaotic cries erupted from the floor.
On that day, for the first time since its founding, the Union failed to initiate a foreign intervention.
The tower built with such painstaking effort was crumbling.
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