Pavel Batov
Pavel Batov (born 1st June 1897) is the second-in-command of Konstantin Rokossovsky, commander of the Ural Military District.
Involvement
At game start, Batov is a general and the head of government under Konstantin Rokossovsky. What happens to him afterwards will depend on if Sverdlovsk manages to unify West Siberia:
- Should Sverdlovsk unify West Siberia, Rokossovsky will die of natural causes and Batov will become the leader of Sverdlovsk. During the regional stage, he will hold democratic elections, running against Boris Yeltsin. Should he win the election, he will continue to rule, but make it clear that he plans to step down eventually. If he loses, he steps down and becomes Yeltsin's security minister.
- If Omsk ends up being the state that unifies West Siberia, he will form an underground resistance consisting of former Black League officers who believe Dmitry Yazov has betrayed Dmitry Karbyshev's beliefs. If Batov is not dealt with, Yazov will be killed, and the Siberian Black league will collapse, with Batov leading the new Russian National Reconstruction Committee (something that is likely to happen if the League is controlled by the AI). If the Black League successfully deals with the insurgency, Batov will be executed and the League will remove as much of his presence from history as possible.
At regional, he is able to peacefully unify with Samara (provided it is not ruled by Mikhail Oktan), a socialist or centrist Komi, Vyatka and the West Russian Revolutionary Front. At the super-regional stage, he can unify peacefully unify with Novosibirsk, Tomsk, the People's Revolutionary Council, Ivan Stepanov's Siberian Black Army, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Buryatia and Magadan (provided that Magadan is not under the control of Mikhail Matkovsky).
Trivia
- According to a former developer, Batov was originally going to be the Mad Regent instead of Sergey Taboritsky. Unlike Taboritsky, however, he would not have been able to adopt the Burgundian System, and would have remained under Despotism. The idea was scrapped because it made no sense, and according to the developer, was only put there to appease head developer Pink Panzer (who wanted every region in West Siberia to have multiple paths - the exception being Omsk, which Panzer was convinced to keep to a single path of ultranationalism). This may have been the reason he wound up in Sverdlovsk, as in real life, Sverdlovsk was the city that the Romanovs were executed in.
- Back when there was a planned canon for the 1972 start date, Batov would have been the one to unify West Siberia before being annexed by the West Russian Revolutionary Front, led by Georgy Zhukov.
- Batov's Omsk collapse portrait is named Portrait_Sverdlovsk_Punished_Pavel_Batov, a reference to the Metal Gear Solid character "Punished" Venom Snake.
Quote upon unification
"One minute can decide the outcome of the battle, one hour - the outcome of the campaign, and one day - the fate of the country."
—Alexander Suvorov