17) Svoboda. The world of Svoboda had a long and bloody history.
The ultra-nationalist Russian government of the early 2090's had many enemies, and even more numerous elements it wished to get rid of - anarchists, liberals, Trotskyists, free-thinking intellectuals, communists, pacifists, libertarians, religious leaders and the national leaders of minorities, and many others. While many of these dissidents and rebels could be disposed in the traditional ways - either execution or an exile to a Siberian prison-camp - some of their leaders were less easy to deal with, politically speaking. These rebel leaders were both too politically sensitive to kill outright and too dangerous to keep in the (relatively) nearby Siberia. So the Russian government decided to adapt the eons-old tradition of political exile to the Interstellar Age, loaded these important dissidents on the colony ship Alexander III and sent them on a one-way journey to far stars.
Months later, strained by many weeks of successive jumps through empty space, the Alexander III's jump-drive failed while approaching a habitable world far, far from Earth. The damaged ship managed to crash-land, but in the ensuing chaos, the prisoners rebelled. After a brutal struggle, they managed to kill some of the guards and convince the rest to join them; Russia was, after all, parsecs on parsecs away, and the need for survival outweighed the orders of the far-way government.
So the rebels named their world Svoboda ("Freedom") and tried to organize their own government. They failed. Miserably. Many of the groups were simply unable to tolerate the other factions, both ideologically and personally, and arguments turned into open warfare within mere months. Most of the intellectuals and pacifists, tired of the factional strife, took the Alexander III's single jump-capable lifeboat and travelled to even further stars, eventually establishing the peaceful colony of Nadezhda ("Hope"). But the rest of the factions used the fact that they had a whole empty world to settle, and each moved to establish its own colony in a different region.
In the centuries that followed, each faction's colony grew on its own, fighting the other groups on a semi-constant basis. Most of them managed to maintain an industrial tech-level (Traveller TL7), mostly focused on basic survival gear and on military equipment. Svoboda remained a balkanized world, torn by frequent warfare, a battlefield among the stars. For more than 450 years, however, it remained alone. And then the Federation came.
The first Federation scouts reached Svoboda in 2553; they barely managed to escape from the locals, who, in most cases, were willing to kill for a working starship. The Federation battle-fleets arrived in 2561 and interdicted the world, marking it as a "Red Zone" - a hazard for travellers. And then the Spaceborne Forces were sent in to force peace on the long-embattled factions.
Initially they were successful; after all, the locals primitive equipment and small factional armies were no match for their high-tech (Traveller TL11) equipment, backed by the distant industrial might of the Federation. In 2575, Svoboda was formally annexed to the Federation, establishing a planetary capital at Crashdown City (originally Trotskygrad). But the locals, used for their freedom for centuries and long hateful for any centralized government, did not approved of this enforced peace.
In 2582 they rebelled. Multiple guerrilla groups, armed with (relatively) primitive weapons but determined to harass the invading Federation until it will leave their world alone, began attacking the Federal troops. The Federation responded with the Svoboda Police Action, a military campaign aimed at crushing the rebels. Not only did this intervention fail, but, together with the Cera Tellan Police Action, it grew into the multi-world Trailing Pacification Campaign as many other Federal colonies used the opportunity to rebel and try to win independence.
More than two decades of constant war in the trailing part of the Federation finally convinced Prime Minister Feinstein to grant independence to various rebellious worlds on the Frontier, including Svoboda and Cera Tellan, in 2604. But the political and economical interests heavily invested in these worlds could not agree to that; so, in 2605, they staged a coup and installed Star Marshal Durnhal instead. Thus the Hegemony was born.
Ever since 2605, the Hegemony had tried to re-assert its control over Svoboda numerous times. But faced with a hostile population, not to mention engaged in a fully-blown interstellar revolution around Cera Tellan, it was unable to fully control Svoboda. In 2631, when the cease-fire agreements were signed between the various factions of the Civil War, Svoboda was among the worlds receiving independence.
Today Svoboda is the capitol of the Independent Worlds. While still balkanized, its various factions agree to keep warfare between them at a relatively limited level in order to prepare for a possible future attack by the Hegemony. Thus the Svoboda Council was born, an inter-faction mediating body mostly concerned with diplomatic relations with other worlds, as well as with preparing the planetary defenses. Laws are lax on Svoboda, with the most (relatively) peaceful area, Trotskygrad (where the largest starport is located), having a Law level of 2, and the rest of the world having a Law level of 1 or 0. Svoboda, with all its small and anarchic nations, also serves as a good flag-of-convenience for Independent Worlds free traders looking to avoid regulations or taxes.
