Serbovia
Establishing Nation
PROLOGUE
One of the things that Zeljko Vukanovic remembered of his father before the latter had passed away due to a cancer of the liver - an unfortunately major cause of death among male Serboves - was how he had used to say that as a young man he had had no goals, and that he had found his goals only at a later date in life. Zeljko's father had probably meant that as an advice against the stupidity of youth, but Zeljko had always seen its meaning in the fact that when his father had reached that later date in life, he had chosen to concentrate on his work rather than his wife and Zeljko and his siblings.
For him, everything had gone the other way round. When Zeljko had entered the Petrograd University of Finance and Administration, it had been 1988, two years after the Royals had been driven into exile. The speed at which the Social-Nationalists had seemingly resolved Serbovia's political turmoil and instability had impressed him, and like many of his age he had been full of enthusiasm towards the Social-Nationalist People's Party, becoming a full member of the party in the April of 1989 - two months before the government had instituted compulsory party membership for university students.
During his later years, the ideological zeal that had led him to become an active member of the University's section of Social-Nationalist Youth and Students had faded, being replaced by quiet confidence in how the system worked and by unwillingness to question the workings of the said system. As a young man, he'd studied for the sole purpose of obtaining a position in the party hierarchy and eventually entering politics, but that ideological zeal had faded by the time of his graduation. Instead, he had chosen a bureucratic position in the Ministry of State Finances despite knowing even then that few members of the party's inner circle came from civil Ministries. The inner circle always consisted of either established party officials or those who came from the "key" ministries - External Affairs, State Security and Defense.
Zeljko himself believed that after he had reached his desired management position within the Ministry and established a family with Anastasia Vukanovic, a woman he had met while at the University together, he had no goals left to fulfill. In many ways, he was right. He had a stable, respected occupation, a family, an owned apartment in a upper middle-class section of Petrograd and a car - Sokol Jarac 1000. All that a man like him could aspire to have, with the possible exception of the full retirement seventeen years away.
OOC:Short stories...GO! Writing this felt kinda forced, so pardon any wooden writing in this thread. Writing about relatively average people's lives isn't exactly the cup of tea of a Tom Clancy wannabe like me.