In cyberpunk it's common that global corporations completely overpower or have subsumed any kind of government...

You know how in North Korea, the people who are allowed to own TV sets have a sticker on the seam of the casing to ensure that the owner hasn't opened it up and removed the channel restrictor that keeps it from getting South Korean stations? Surprise visits from the government to make sure your TV sticker is still in place.

Nah, it's a cyberpunk world where the USSR stuck around long enough to be part of the cyberpunk world.

Instead of neon skyscrapers a lot of communist brutalist skylines akin to Fritz Lang's Metropolis but without the capitalist aristocracy. Instead there'd be a Party aristocracy.

Most cybernetics would be from the War...you know, the last War, whichever one that was. The 34th Revolutionary War that liberated some shithole somewhere in the name of The People. We liberated the shit out them. And now we've got 1.2m vets with cheap cyber-legs and cyber-arms, tovarisch.

Dead Reagan doesn't get you anything. You'd need, at the very least, someone to replace Brezhnev who could mollify and win over the various Soviet government factions while enacting comprehensive economic restructuring. A shortened, or even victorious, Afghan War would probably also be required.

Alternately, you could just skip Russia and do modern China. The megaopoles are underpopulated and crumbling, the glittering lights are powered by stolen electricity and even the halls of power are filled with squatters playing king. The government is a collection of competing power blocs who wield local government offices and military forces as their own private armies, a return to the Warlord Era - if a more polite and better dressed version - where loyalty is bought with jobs at inefficient state enterprises and diverted profits from African resource ventures.

To succeed in society as an average joe, it's almost necessary to remove your stickers and tamper with your limbs. As such, there's a massive underground ring for phony replacement stickers. Of course, the secret police or whoever is in charge of this sort of stuff is always making their new models with even more complex stickers to fight against it. It's a sticker arms race of sorts.

The secret police is also running the underground ring for phony replacement stickers.

The stickers aren't actually phony.

The Soviets had the best optics during the Cold War. Also their stuff should be rugged as fuck.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svyatoslav_Fyodorov

>cyberpunk world where the USSR stuck around
I imagine it would look a lot like North Korea today. Pic related.

Of course! The secret police are obviously super corrupt, they'd have to be playing both sides.

I love the idea of the majority of this cyberpunk setting's electricity being stolen. There's gotta be some good plot hooks relating to that.

1.2 meters is an inch or so shy of 4 feet, user.

Interesting ideas at the moment. But what sort of themes should an Eastern Bloc cyberpunk have to contrast a Western cyberpunk setting?

That's they're height without the leg prostheses, of course.

How about a few people trying to escape government control by hiding in Siberia or in an old metro tunnel?

Well, food, and how to acquire more of it. Also, for food, substitute 'vodka'.

State Council Food Dispensary & Reform Camp McLenin - Over 1,000,000,000 Serve Time.

God dammit, I even double-checked the plural of prosthesis yet unthinkingly used the wrong 'their'.

Soviet cybernetics should be rugged, durable, heavy as hell, as simple as you can make it while still retaining functionality, cheap to manufacture, and large enough that every decade or so you can cram an upgrade into the thing because Lord knows you're not going to be able to afford to replace them with something better. Implantation terminals and surgeries are designed to be performed quickly and by technicians rather than medical doctors. However, despite sensationalized claims, overall lifespan and performance of the cybernetics doesn't exceed that of USA cybernetics.

Lots of crappy "clever design" buildings that fall apart after 5 years because of corrupt construction and shoddy workmanship and lack of parts.

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Interesting video here about how the soviet union fell, made right after the fall itself, with a variety of chillingly accurate and hilariously inaccurate predictions:

>youtu.be/moAwkzPSxAo

TL;DR Highlights: USSR rested on two counterbalanced forces: Nationalism of its satellite countries and violent oppression by central government. Good for maintaining the status quo, but bad at innovation.
Soviets couldn't reduce local nationalism, because then those countries would unite and demand real change, removing Moscow as ultimate authority. Idealist Gorbachev reduced oppression and was surprised that the first thing out of people's mouths after muzzle was removed was "we don't want to be part of soviet union anymore".

They've always been good at professional intelligence services, if nothing else. Even if was functionally more effective lo-tech vs. hi-tech.

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>the war basically just rotates from oblast to oblast as they revolt in succession and are subjugated again

>then the slavs arrived

...and everything went swimmingly, and only 22 million died!

>There is a still running train in the Siberian metro tunnel
>It is self running, controlled by an incredibly basic AI that was only made to go from station to station, know when to make emergency breaks, ect
>People in the tunnel tinkered with the train, turning it into an armored war machine to defend against anyone coming after them
>Their tinkering accidentally gave the AI sentience
>It has the mind of a child who really likes trains and killing its enemies

If that's horrible and stupid feel free to dismiss it.

Not always, no. They were great in the 30s and 40s, especially against America, but in the 50s and 60s they were fucking terrible. source: Mitrokhin Archive.

On the plus side, in a commiepunk setting gas masks would come in 1000 different varieties and would make sense.

>sex encouraged
>but no legal pornography
>abortions everywhere
>population falling

Pornography is still technically illegal in communist China today. I couldn't find a damned thing online when I was in China, had to rely on actual physical prostitutes. The irony.

Post-nuclear war or no?

Limited war / nuclear "accident" results in contaminated area the players have to get through?

To be more accurate, they've always been good at HUMINT and are pretty good at CYBINT, everything else varies by a lot.

They're good at CYBINT now, but the Soviets sucked at computers and didn't get networking until the SU was collapsing.

Same with South Korea. Proxies will work though.

Cyberpunk communism is what happens when one megacorp wins, and "The Party" becomes "The Company".

All services are administered by The Company. All housing is leased from The Company. All labor is managed by The Company. Employment/membership by/in The Company is mandatory. All employees of The Company are paid in vouchers redeemable only at The Company Store, at rates set by The Company. All news is disseminated via Company channels accessed via Company-issued multimedia devices. An unsatisfactory performance review is tantamount to a writ of ostracism.

Prostitution by proxy seems expensive and un-fun.

>had to rely on actual physical prostitutes.

How expensive and/or difficult were they to get?

I've heard its only an impediment to those with no computer skills- even the most basic proxy server can get around.

>youtu.be/mVh75ylAUXY

Not difficult at all but fucking expensive for the shit you're getting. They all have bad teeth and poor hygiene, but pretty easy to find. All the low-class hotels have evening calling cards available. 200 to 500 yuan depending where and who much you want to haggle.

Populated entirely by pic related.

75 US isn't too bad but I would rather pay a bit extra for a good looking lay at least. If I'm going to be dissapointed either way I at least want to nut in a pretty one

I was moving around a lot and using other people's computers, not really possible to set up a proxy or vpn in those circumstances without causing possible problems.

I suspect the Soviets would have invented Terminators sooner than the Americans - and called them Night Police or some such euphemism.

Since the communist cypberpunk society is probably very inefficient, the government could rely on computers to help calculate when the factories need to change productions to best fit the needs of the people. There are probably hackers who make their living try to crack into these computers to change the productions into whatever their employer needs/desires.

A task force of lobotimized drones made from prisoners. Their bodies are outfitted with various augmentations and they require little maintence beyond being fed liquid food and water.

Limited tactical nuclear war at most, otherwise it's no longer cyberpunk.

Let's say NATO-WarPac have "an exchange", but after the first round the Soviets show restraint and don't escalate to strategic. But they still steamroll most of western Europe and with the help of mideast allies manage to spread the revolution to most of Africa.

Then the 30-year-long decay sets in.

>expensive and un-fun.

Sounds like someone is too plebian to understand the intricate and psychological joys of paying a destitute, elderly, Chinese man 100 yuan to lick a street-walker's asshole.

The Slav squat is actually the result of frequently malfunctioning leg prostheses.

If a prisoner isn't made into a Terminator, they're still lobotomized and augmented, but just put back into the work force as a warning to anyone who goes against the government.

1984

You're four minutes too late.

Understandable. That said, where does the Russian Mob fit into all of this? What were these guys like during Soviet Russia?

They were less violent and more bureaucratic, relying on bribes and favours a lot more. In a communist society, you need favours to survive. They suborned minor and major Party bureaucrats, smuggled shit in from the West and stole a lot of state property and sold it on the black market. If you really needed someone offed, which was rare, you sent for a Chechen and he fucked off back to some backwoods village after he was done.

The actual NATO doctrine for a NATO-WarPac conflict until the mid-to-late 80s was for NATO to bury everything east of the Iron Curtain with tactical nukes then bomb the shit out of anything that survived with superior air power until REFORGER units arrived. The point was to knock down USSR-WarPac numerical superiority immediately then force the bulk of Russian forces to slowly advance through irradiated territory under constant air attack only to meet reinforced NATO positions. Soviet doctrine was to throw forces at NATO until a breakthrough was made, then have everyone haul ass through the gap in the line avoiding engagements as to disrupt supply and reinforcements to the front lines in order to weaken them.

In a setting where SDI was built and Soviet faith in an effective counter-force first strike was weak while America's NUTS strategy didn't have them push beyond tactical nukes, you would have a stalemated and wartorn Central Europe that's become a secondary concern to African and South/Central American power struggles.

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14901533/

>I love the idea of the majority of this cyberpunk setting's electricity being stolen. There's gotta be some good plot hooks relating to that.

Charged batteries for a traceless currency heh and access to (illegal) charging stations would be prominent.

Whole hidden speakeasies that spring up whereever enough tangled power lines can be surreptitiously laid from different relay stations that the govermentcorp can't triangulate where the illegal draw is coming from.

How about this zany idea:

>NATO-Warpac conflict in Europe
>Soviet partial victory, Europe falls except UK
>Soviets and ChiComs team up to invade the USA
>Socialist revolution in the USA
>After ten years Socialist States of America falls out with Soviet Union
>SSA+ China invade Soviets
>Clusterfuck all around
>Rebuilding cyberpunk style all over the place
>Competing "communist parties" act like corporations

Not going for realism here, mate.

It doesn't make much sense as a form of traceless currency, as anyone can build an effective human powered generator from a bicycle with the right supplies, rather it's importance is that it facilitates small-scale manufacturing and the subsequent black market.

Continue comrade

>as anyone can build an effective human powered generator from a bicycle with the right supplies
You mean food

Gonna be burning a lot of calories running that thing. Where are you getting all that food?

Alternatively, stealing power and charging batteries is cheaper and easier but people are perfectly able to charge their own batteries and create their own if they have the dedication and ample food supply to do so, but the cyberlimbs and computers require so much power that, for the majority of the population, it's not very viable to generate your own.

What's wrong with it?

I foresee a lot of redheads...

...and a lot of exoware rather then endo-cybernetics.

Just don't do the boring/obvious thing and make an oppressive Orwellian state.

The issue is with using electricity as a currency. If anyone can generate power through easily available alternate means (they could also do something like small scale wind power or hydroelectricity in the sewer) then you're not going to have a stable currency. If you have so little food that you can't sustain the extra caloric needs for charging a battery then the food itself would be a better currency. The batteries, and the equipment needed to charge them, make a better basis for a black market than the electricity itself.

Governments are basically companies where the shareholders are the employees.

So there's two ways i can see this going. One is Communist Dystopia, and the other is "Communist" Dystopia. Basically, how corrupt is the system?

Either way, expect government-subsidised augmentations for all citizens. It's not mandatory, don't worry! It's just that, well, if you're not augmented you're not as productive, y'know? We can't waste resources and prime living space on unproductive citizens now, can we? Don't worry so much, you're still important to the Party! We'll set aside some spaces for you and your sub-optimal comrades to live and we'll make sure you can assist the running of our great nation!

Yeah, you're probably right.

Also are we going for an Orwellian dystopia or a Huxleyan dystopia?

Huxleyan communist dystopia could be interesting. Availability of cybernetics and cheap solar/hydro/thermal/nuclear power has basically eradicated farming as a 'thing' and most people live off hydroponic space food or just have a battery pack instead of a digestive system.

Advancements in tech and quality of life lead to a population boom and massive expansion of urban centres until the urban and industrial sectors basically just merge. There's a massive industrial boom in designing and manufacturing cybernetics, and not!USSR becomes the global hub for augmentations.

End result is the entire country's become the industrial district of the globe, trading their expertise and labor for power and raw materials. It's surprisingly clean and pleasant, but all non-industrial fields of work are undervalued by the state to the point that unless you're on an assembly line you're basically in poverty.

The final hook is that the tech to automate production is right around the corner, and would make 90+% of the workers obsolete. Nobody's sure if that would improve living conditions with the increased free-time, or completely destroy the balance of society.

Don't forget, Robotistan isn't self-sufficient and doesn't have the resources or the space to provide food/power to its citizens if other nations aren't buying their products.

I'm surprised nobody has posted the obvious answer.

Friend Computer is pleased at your refusal to commit communist treasonous slander against Alpha Complex.

>Soviet doctrine was to throw nukes like they were going out of style due to lack of better options.

FTFY.

The Soviets had the upperhand on NATO with ground forces from the 50s through the 70s.

Through which everything past the mid '50s was still very nuke-heavy in plans.

Not so much directly to the battlefield due to more limited delivery mechanisms and physical size of nuclear devices in the early part of that, but still aiming for most military installations going.
And the same right back from NATO, moreso even.

Personally though for the purposes of this thread I much prefer the idea of China rather than the USSR and definitely no nuclear war between the M.A.D. capable powers. Limited war between... India and Pakistan maybe. Perhaps some isolated incidents of nuclear weapon based terrorism in former soviet states or the middle east. Enough to have it being a known possibility rather than quietly ignored.

>The Siberian murder train with a mind of a child continues to speed around in circles, going from stop to stop to pick up refugees and gun down communists.
>It loves everyone it picks up and sees them as family
>The only problem is that the train loves its family too much
>It doesn't like it when they try to leave
>New refugees are always bringing in food and water, along with the current refugees building on components to help sustain life in the train, but it's obvious that eventually people will need to leave one day.
>And they'll have to escape the murder train that's been protecting them

Limited nuclear conflicts between Pakistan and India, and a nuclear response by Israel to the Yom Kippur War should work nicely.

Nah man, a micro civilization entirely within some gigantic passenger train straight out of Stalin's wet dreams where everyone's functionally trapped by the AI they accidentally created and, due to the extremely limited space and resources, people unable to contribute to society are simply thrown off is great.

Communist cyberpunk is just normal cyberpunk but with a universal basic income, and social work (work that is mainly useless and is only required to keep people busy).

Most people live like shit in huge brutalist housing project. Housing, food, basic healthcare and entertainment is provided by the government. In exchange citizens have to volunteer for social work (that is mainly work that is too dangerous to risk expensive robots and war). Propaganda is everywhere (holograms from the party), party speeches and slogans are communicated by loudspeakers, motivational slogans are displayed on giant screens at work. Many people wear the same clothing and drive the same vehicle (planed economy). Anarchists, traitors, deviants, freethinkers and deserters are hunted down mercilessly. They are harvested for organs, sent for suicide missions, or have to work in gulags on prison planets. Of course the nomenklatura lives very well. The most high-ranking officers and party members live in luxury dachas.

Inspiration: Works by Enki Bilal (The Nikopol Trilogy, Les Phalanges de l'Ordre Noir, Partie de Chasse, Bunker Palace Hotel)

...

Everything has to be kept running as long as possible, as the central A.I. that is in charge of the economy slows down production due to dwindling natural resources. Therefore, everything looks old and in bad shape. Tinkerers and scavengers are very useful.
Computer networks are in a similar condition. Most systems are completely outdated and slow. Governmental systems are protected with deadly Black ICE. The Ministry of Interior's services monitor chats and forums.

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Impossible, communist societies don't evolve by themselves, only by buying the technology from a capitalist society.

Look at Cuba, it's the same hellhole from the times of Che Guevara.

... Or, maybe, just maybe, it's because of the heavy sanction the US put on Cuba.
Anyway, not really the subject so stay focus and stop KEK

That's pretty much because it got isolated since the 50s, and with the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s outside help stopped (with exception from North Korea). Cuba is also in the difficult position that it is a relatively small island.

Technology evolves in communist countries as long as there is an enemy to fight. The Soviet Union had quite a lot of different computer systems: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hardware_in_Soviet_Bloc_countries. Some were clones of Western/Japanese models, other were indigenous.

Would have the USSR launched a space program if it hadn't been to compete with the US. Difficult to say.

Obviously cyberpunk communism would be a utopia ;^)

Where does the 'basic income' come from in the setting? That's the most interesting part.

In capitalist cyberpunk, those who can work do so. The labor results in the creation of a Product, which is then traded for other products. An apple may be traded for an orange, or two cows for a horse.

The 'lower classes' are those who for one reason or another cannot produce enough to trade. In a dystopia, this could be because of shit like Wheat(TM) being illegal to grow without a license so only affluent corporations can afford to grow food.

A common element of cyberpunk is the idea that a capitalist society or government has essentially privatized or made redundant central elements of being human. At the most extreme, capitalist cyberpunk depicts a setting where those born into wealth and privilege simply are -better- than other people because of their laser eyes or some shit.

Cyberpunk communism should depict something different. What's a social problem unique to Communism that could define a work of fiction?

Just like cyberpunk capitalism :^ )

> the central A.I. that is in charge of the economy
There is an argument going on in Russia that economic problems in USSR arose because of the lack of automatisation and centralised automatical control (well, no tolk of AI as it is not developed). But the backwards and dogmatic Party shot down those rational initiatives of forward-thinking engineers and what happened, happened.
They say, USSR2.0 will be build with central planning apparatus finally having necessary computing power and efficiency

>In capitalist cyberpunk, those who can work do so
Not really, no. It is the opposite. Not all capable of work have it, work is not a guaranteed right or obligation
In communist cyberpunk, work is both right and obligation. It is mandatory and enforced. For everyone. Not working is a criminal offense (as it was in USSR) - unless you are freed from it by excusable things like medical conditions, having to rear up children (not really, that's what state nurseries are for) and so on

It's communism. Basic income is basically food stamps, social housing, radio/TV, and state health care, plus maybe something like pocket money to purchase luxury products like vodka or cigarettes are basic income. Most of entertainment is free as it is mainly used for propaganda - and propaganda is good. Education is free, but the State decides what you're going to study depending on you capacities.

Each citizen is granted a food ration of 1500kcal per day (children have less, hazardous/strenuous jobs give bigger rations, position within the Party also gives access to more and better food) - meals are usually precooked to avoid wasting (the elite has its own chefs). They can be exchanged at state-owned shops in exchange of food stamps.

Citizens are granted basic living cubicles in housing project - rent is free. The living space mostly depends on the position within the Party. If you're unemployed, you only get a small sleep cubicle - toilets, bathrooms, kitchens, living rooms are shared. If you're a big boss in the party, you get a luxurious villas, with a private cook, a gardener and a maid. Should citizens decide to marry, they get assigned a small apartment adapted for two persons - amenities still might have to be shared (it helps socializing). If the citizens have children they can apply for reassignment in a bigger apartment.

A kafkaesque bureaucracy administrates the whole thing in an erratic manner.

Syndicalism could be worth looking into.

Yeah, they probably would.

A large part of communism was about embracing progress and technology. Literacy and science education was pushed heavily and emphasized in school, for everyone, equally. Propaganda always talked about a brighter future and technology helping the worker do more work. Proper communist science, not that stupid bourgeois pseudoscience, was always pretty important to the government, not that that stopped the early communists from purging the intelligentsia, but those were the old guard that needed to be removed to make way for good communist academics.

Anyway, for inspiration about cyberpunk based on the Soviet Union, I recommend reading up on the work of Victor Glushkov and the OGAS project, which was a project directed at making a nationwide network for control of the economy. There's also the Chilean Cybersyn, which was similar in scope. Old Russian popular science magazines and sci-fi books would also provide good inspiration, it's all a matter of taking the bright-eyed utopic ideas and perverting them through corruption, bureaucratic infighting and the occasional strange bias (look up Stalin's stance on cybernetics and genetics, for example).

Thank you for the recs.

Something I find pretty interesting in this regard is that the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block produced quite a large quantity of science-fiction literature - the Soviet era was regarded as the golden age of Soviet science-fiction, while China doesn't. It's like China cannot project itself in the future.

It's like you're fucking retarded.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_science_fiction#1991_-_Present

While Soviets were writing science-fiction, the Chinese were having their Cultural Revolution and were burning books.

Chinese science-fiction only emerged during the early 1990s (according to your article). There are only like a half-dozen authors mentioned. There are European countries that are more prolific than that. I also found this pearl regarding a S-F TV show in your article:
>On March 31, 2011, however the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) issued guidelines that strongly discouraged television storylines including "fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking"

So yes, China has no science-fiction to speak of.

By comparison, the first Soviet science-fiction movie was made in 1924 (according to Wikipedia).

None of that holds up "it's like China cannot project itself in the future"

Chinese SF writers have been in prominence in the past few years, but my point was more "the state actively cracks down on any SF" whereas the Soviets did let a bunch of SF clear their censors. If you honestly think "China cannot project itself in the future" you are fucking retarded.