Mikhail Oktan (born around 1910) is a high-ranking officer of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, who is notorious for his extreme greed.
Biography[]
Early-life[]
Mikhail Oktan was born somewhere around 1910, as there are no substantial certificate documents regarding his exact place of birth, date of birth and what exactly did he do in his youth. So up to the period of World War II, there can only be a wide scale speculation. Most likely of them being that he at one point joined the Red Army during the 1930s after he finished his studies. His true nature would appear when the Great Patriotic War would break out with Germany and the Soviet Union.
World War II and desertion[]
In the early days of World War II, Oktan was fighting against the Germans efficiently up until at one point, he saw how the USSR started to rapidly lose against the advancing forces of the Third Reich. It is at that point that he voluntarily deserted from a Red Army and joined Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia. Following the USSR's subsequent collapse, Oktan would find himself in the newly formed Reichskommissariat Moskowien and from that point, he would not be seen again in wider scale until the West Russian War.
West Russian War[]
When the West Russian War had started, Oktan already had met with Andrey Vlasov, who became partners despite their differences in a cause against communism and to liberate Russia from it. It was during this time that they met up with a former Red Army general Sergei Bunyachenko, whose wish is to destroy the Front and was blamed for all of their failures in the war. While the West Russian Revolutionary Front managed to break through the A-A line and greatly weaken their stronghold on Russia, the Front would collapse and have many of its holdings lost, with only the cold and barren north alongside with territories of Plesetsk and Ukhta remaining in their possession. Unfortunately for all of KONR, this war was the time when they would accidentally find themselves stranded away from the borders of Moskowien, and as a result, would suffer from the constant Luftwaffe bombardments.
Present day[]
In 1962, the situation for KONR may yet to provide a strong candidate that can lead Russia to its glorious future. However, as all the three candidates realize, most people dislike KONR for being collaborators with the German Reich, and Oktan himself is the manifestation of all those traits that supposedly every member has. Yet one does not need to get rid of them in order to impose your own will and dominance over glorious Russia, as Oktan shall prove himself, no matter the cost or money.
In-game[]
Oktan can either be chosen as Vlasov's successor as leader of the KONR or come to power through a coup, if the player does not secure his influence. Since reunification is done by Vlasov, Oktan's adventure starts at the regional stage.
At that stage, Oktan implements a kleptocratic military junta, as evident by both his political and economic focuses. His focus tree regarding economics largely remains the same for the rest of the two candidates, with the exception that he won't form unions by any means, and how he will also suffer some penalty of gaining a higher poverty level. His diplomatic focuses reveal that he will eventually, while co-operating with Germany, cut all ties with them once they become financially unsubstantial and not useful to him.
At the super-regional stage, the true nature of his economic system begins to unfold as through his focuses is revealed that his "web" is a covert term for a neo-feudalist control over Russian society, assigning his general secretaries and civilian ministers to take control of certain provinces to accumulate the profit and expand their influence for Oktan. This makes the middle class impossible to exist, as all the fruits of labor are accumulated by Oktan's most loyal men.
Unlike Bunyachenko or Zykov, Oktan is not capable of peacefully unifying with any warlord at either the regional or super-regional stages, likely due to his desire for Russia (to eventually sell the country to the highest bidder) being so incompatible with the goals of any other warlord. Even Pavel Batov, who will meet with Bunyachenko to discuss peaceful unification despite both having fought on opposite sides of the West Russian War, will not have the option to peacefully unify with Oktan.
Quote upon unification[]
"Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find nothing."
—Aesop
Trivia[]
- Oktan, as he is in this world, is one of the most mysterious historical figures, as there is almost no information about him in English. His real name was possibly Mikhail Iliynich or Natko, which explains his weird pseudonym. At various points, he claimed Serbian and Croatian ancestry, pretending to be a Balkan baron who had residences in Paris. Possibly, he was a chemical engineer before the war. He allegedly served in the Red Army for a short time before he voluntarily joined the Germans. He set up a journal in occupied Oryol, which was an anti-Semitic publication under the German occupation. He organized children settlements where he sent 7-14 years old kids nominally to raise them in a Nazi spirit, but they really acted as forced blood donors for the Wehrmacht. How he died remains a mystery to this day, with reports of him either fleeing from the battlefield and moving somewhere else, to getting killed by the Red Army.
- Just like Dmitry Yazov, Oktan's post unification portrait has a 5% chance of appearing with sunglasses.
- In the mod's files, there exists an unused portrait of Oktan wearing a German field marshal's uniform, and was likely the oldest variation of Oktan's portrait (hence the "old" in the filename).