Arduous March

The Arduous March was a historical era and corresponding sociopolitical movement in the United Republics. In the aftermath of World Revolutionary War, the global reach of the communist movement had greatly expanded, but into countries that were devastated by the war as well as economically underdeveloped. The term was first coined by Premier John Reed in his V-J Day public address, where he spoke of "an arduous march ahead" for the American proletariat to assist their comrades.

The period was marked by rationing, labor mobilization, and an austere civilian economy in the United Republics. Millions of military conscripts would serve abroad to both garrison JDPON authorities and to do civil engineering labor. Intellectuals and skilled-laborers were drafted to work abroad in this project, establishing schools, modern industrial systems, and new civil services, an immense knowledge transfer from the developed core to the periphery.

As a development project, in scale and scope it was unprecedented in human history, and the immense political/economic cost born by the UASR resulted in intense domestic malaise, fractured the Workers' Party, and put the country behind the Franco-British Union in many living standard metrics until it was wound down in 1960. The era overlapped with the Cold Peace and the War for the Horn of Africa, the conventional start of the Cold War.