There are very few people in history whose greatest impact on history was their death, among them Romulus Augustulus, Louis XVI., James Garfield, Franz Ferdinand, and Richard Cameron. The subject of this week's (reposted) article has the dubious honor of joining this elusive club.
Who: Oleg Tikonov
What: Premier of the USSR
When: unknown - 14th January 2011
By the time of Battletech, Tikonov has been dead for over a millenium. During more than 25 year of art and fiction and countless sourcebooks, no more than a few dozen lines have been written about him. By all means, he should be an uninteresting bystander.
What makes him noteworthy? In a very real sense, Oleg Tikonov was the last gasp of the 1980s' status quo. His death is the Battletech writers saying "this is where our history ends and Battletech begins". For a long time, he was the first named fictional character in BT history, not counting casual throwaway names of House Lord ancestors.
So, who was Oleg Tikonov, the fictional last Premier of the Soviet Union? Thanks to the fall of the Soviet Union, that's a question with three answers, although we will condense it in two.
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Writing the future timeline of Battletech in 1987/1988, Oleg Tikonov was conceived as a rather straightforward character: a wink-and-nudge expy of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, whose programs of "Glasnost" and "Perestroika" had not yet fully kicked off (it is unclear to me if the name is a deliberate reference to Nikolai Tikhonov, who was Premier between 1980 and 1985). The USSR was slowly withdrawing from their long war against the US-supplied Mujahideen of Afghanistan, and Czernobyl was still fresh in the memories of everyone.
It's likely that this incarnation of Tikonov rose to power around 2005 after a long career as apparatchik, tried to further reform the Soviet Union, and failed miserably. He was promptly killed after signing the Tikonov Accords (basically trading free elections for monetary support) by Mustafa Khemer Rhasori, a radical Moslem [sic] on the 14th January or somewhen in November 2011 (
House Liao and
The Periphery disagree with
Dropships and Jumpships), starting a row between followers of his politics and his internal opponents which over time escalated into civil war.
Why exactly he killed the Premier is never made clear, but it may be assumed that the occupation of Afghanistan continued in some fashion. It's pretty clear, however, that Tikonov's liberal policies made him many enemies. It's likely that somebody in his retinue looked the other way when the assassination happened. And after he was dead, made their move to regain control - cue the Second Soviet Civil War.
Centuries after his death, some poor, deluded fools named a planet after him, which grew to moderate importance in spheric events.
In
Dropships and Jumpships, we learn more of the far future of the 1990s up to the 2010s. Already in the 1990s (after treaties allowing limited armament in space), concrete plans were made and construction began on the SDI/WODeN, the Western Orbital Defense Network. At the heart of the network was Crippen Station, which was completed in 2005 and played a pivotal role during the violent collapse of the USSR.
It may leave younger people scratching their head, but in the 1980s, a second space race and armament was not unfeasable. The USSR in western understanding was still a strong nation which needed to be contained. Taking the Cold War into space seemed logical at the time, even though ultimately unfeasible in real life.
Still, it was good enough for fiction and the Battletech future was among the more logical and well thought out, considering contemporaries like Red Dawn.
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After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the Battletech developers began dancing the dance of one thousand and eight historical retcons. Imagine somebody in a room full of coal trying to dance a kasatchok while juggling burning torches. Sooner or later, one of the torches will fall, igniting some coals, which will make the dance all the more hectic and painful, until finally someone calls the fire fighters.
Thankfully, Battletech only danced it twice. Other games still haven't stopped.
The big retcon was released via
Battlespace in 1993. This is the version which remains canon to this day, and is supported by publications as recent as
Jihad Hot Spots: Terra, which greatly fleshed out the actual events and historical setting.
The "modern" version of the Battletech timeline fully realizes it is alternate history. In BT history as written, the Cold War never slowed down until the end, with space armament the latest and most expensive front during the 1980s. Finally, the Soviet Union collapsed from exhaustion in 1988. Perhaps the strain of keeping up with American anti-missile satellites broke its neck, keeping the Afghan SSR pacified couldn't have helped either.
Nonetheless, the Russian Federation under Gorbachev tried to pick up the pieces, enacted capitalistic reforms and removed its military from the Warsaw Pact countries. The fact that during the 1990s Russians had a shorter life span than 3050s Clan civilian caste, shall stand as pars pro toto.
Thanks to a convenient global recession and several coup attempts by communist hardliners, the Russian Federation collapsed in 1997 and was replaced by a reborn USSR (aka "Russian Republic"). The Warsaw Pact countries were reoccupied while a weakened and smaller NATO looked on, and a second Cold War began where the first left off. Rearmament was universal - WODeN and Crippen Station being the most notable NATO space offspring during this period.
Just when World War III was becoming a real possibility, Oleg Tikonov - apparently a compromise candidate - ascended to the post of Premier in 2004, after even the most hardline communists conceded that the USSR needed serious change.
Lauded as a mediator and peace keeper, Tikonov defused the tensions with the West and began salvaging whatever he could.
His reforms proved successful, and in January 2011 he signed the Tikonov Accords with the USA, opening up the USSR to financial help in return for free elections within the next 5 years. Four hours later, he and his family were killed when Muslim extremist Mustafa Khemer Rhasori blew up their limousine - cue the Second Soviet Civil War.
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What remains? The earlier version of Oleg Tikonov was a staple of Cold War fiction - the Russian reformer, possibly somewhat bumbling, ultimately unsuccessful thanks to the evil hardliners. The newer version is a more interesting figure by reason of retcon - surviving both the collapse of the first USSR, the rise and fall of the Russian Federation, and the rise of a hardline second USSR, he clawed his way to power, in service of his country.
But ultimately he didn't matter. Oleg Tikonov died on the altar of narrative causality, and the present and politics of the 1980s died with him. From here on, it's about the big stompy robots.
