Today we explore the example of Novaya Zemlya.
Novaya Zemlya saw it's birth as a Socialist Republic of the USSR Micronation. Shortly after Zemlya gained SSR status, the USSR would dissolve due to overwhelming internal strife, leaving Zemlya out on it's own. The 4 men who began the nation would not allow their dream to die, and re-structured the SSR into it's own independent nation. Then began a flurry of activity as they created laws, instituted Foreign Policy, created a vodka distillery and economic foundation, and began a Football League - all in a matter of 8 weeks' time.
At it's peak, Zemlya saw quite a bit of activity. Posting levels hovered around 35+ per day (not bad for a nation with only 6 registered citizens), and their artistic contributions were unrivaled at the time. Nearly every Zemlyan citizen was a registered artist - putting forth original paintings, drawings, computer art, poetry, song lyrics, short stories - almost anything you can imagine. They even published two books: titled "Nuked" and "Balloons".
In addition to posting activity and art, Zemlyans were respected throughout the Sector - by monarchist and socialist alike. Instead of taking the hardline Trotsky-like communist stance against anything non-socialist, Zemlya were passive and neutral, not even raising up armed forces - just keeping a small police force to use in urban areas for civil order. There wasn't a respectable Micronation in the Sector who wasn't dealing with Zemlya, hoping to get their hands (and livers) on the renouned Zemlyan Vodka.
Speaking of the vodka, Zemlya will live on in history as the first Micronation to have a functioning economy based on bottles of vodka (no seriously). Citizens were paid with the stuff, they traded with it, and each one basically consumed it on a scale that would have killed several hundred asian elephants. Please see the image below of a banknote for 20 Bottles of Vodka (created for use outside of Zemlya).
The nation even had it's own set of vodka bottle emoticons - one for each of the 12 Zemlyan Vodkas produced. From that idea, several other nations (most notably Gotzborg) would create their own set of alcohol-inspired emoticons for use on their own fora. Here is an image of the emoticons once used in Zemlya:
Novaya Zemlya would also become a popular proponent of Micronational Radio, and "Radio Free Zemlya" went on-air in March of 2005. The station would bring regular news and updates to the Zemlyan people, as well as anyone else who wished to listen in - and kept a blog containing transcripts for those with really slow net access. Zemlya would win a FNORD in 2006 for Excellence in the Field of Journalism - much of the credit for this going to the popularity of RFZ as well as the various state-run entities.
Eventually, Zemlya was doing so well that someone came up with the clever idea of screwing it all up. So the nation made a move toward pure communism - a move that effectively killed the nation off for nearly half a year. This was helped along by the loss of 3/4ths of the founders just a few short weeks following the attempt at communism. So it came to pass that Novaya Zemlya, once the preeminent Socialist Micronation in our Sector, fell into severe inactivity. After existing for over a year, and thriving to the point where it was the most respected Socialist Micronation on the Micras map, the nation was handed over to the GC as a Proctectorate until such time as the Zemlyans decided they wanted it back.
Skip ahead those six months later. With the return of 2 founders, Zemlya saw a brief re-birth. The boards were revived, and activity began to pick back up as all 4 founders eventually came back and pitched in. There was a reversion back to the original socialist system, with only the enterprises being cooperatively owned. They re-claimed their independence from the GC, and were given back their land. Things were looking up - until one of the founders became seriously ill and passed away, causing the others to experience a period of mourning that would result in the complete death of the nation. Only one remained, the original founder himself - who tried to save Zemlya on his own. All was in vain, and the board suffered some sort of deletion no more than 10 days ago. Novaya Zemlya is truly gone - all that remains are our memories, some images, and a few publications.
