Location: USSR

Overview • People • Government • Economy • Trend • Analysis

The United Slavic Sphere of URBOV is a colossal, environmentally stunning nation, ruled by President Dmitri Siloviki with an iron fist, and renowned for its hatred of cheese. Its compassionate, cynical population of 5.629 billion are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich. In their personal lives, however, citizens are relatively unoppressed; it remains to be seen whether this is because the government genuinely cares about its people, or if it hasn't gotten around to stamping out civil rights yet.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of Education, Defence, and Healthcare. It meets every day to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Kiev. The average income tax rate is 93%, and even higher for the wealthy. The private sector is almost wholly made up of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, although the government is looking at stamping this out.

Political activists are routinely executed, pristine wilderness has been trashed in the quest for cheaper oil, people choose marriage partners by buying a lottery ticket, and the new hit series "URBOV's Got Trauma" has corporate executives fleeing the country. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. URBOV's national animal is the Commissar, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the Ruble.

URBOV is ranked 58th in USSR and 18,163rd in the world for Most Compassionate Citizens, scoring 4 on the Kitten Softness Rating.

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NationStates by Max Barry, author of and