Plamen Iliev

The Right Honorable
Plamen G. Iliev II Пламен Г. Илиев II
Representation of Plam, 2024
President of Plamia Incumbent
Assumed office 1st of November, 2015
Co-Emperors	Himself and Emil I (11th - 14th of June, 2019)
Prime Minister	Nikolay Mitankin Position Abolished Himself Mihael Mishev
Speaker of Parliament	Antoanela Ch. Position Abolished Yasen Durvarov
Predecessor	Office established
2019 General Election	38 votes (86,4%)
Foreign Minister and Regent of the Durvarian Commonwealth Incumbent The Duchy of Cynia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Emalor: 2022 – present The Duchy of Isiara: 2022 – present The Duchy of West Punia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Yustan: 2022 – present The Duchy of Pofasmagoria: 2022 – present The Duchy of Reduta and Center: 2022 – present The Duchy of Elnor: 2022 – present The Duchy of Naslands: 2022 – present The Duchy of East Aradonia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Dormateya: 2022 – present The Duchy of Kanea: 2022 – present The Duchy of Bankiya: 2022 – present The Duchy of Astral-Leon: 2022 – present The Duchy of Verdeal: 2022 – present The Duchy of Pancharevo: 2022 – present The Duchy of Lyulin: 2022 – present The Duchy of Kremikov: 2022 – present The Duchy of Sto-i-deveto: 2022 – present The Duchy of Tergia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Exus: 2022 – present The Duchy of Slatina: 2022 – present The Duchy of Mishev Krai: 2022 – present The Duchy of Izrev: 2022 – present The Duchy of Lovech: 2022 – present The Duchy of Maderia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Doctor's Garden: 2022 – present The Duchy of Frendlandia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Sava'a: 2022 – present The Duchy of Asparuhovo: 2022 – present The Duchy of Tsvetenor: 2022 – present The Duchy of Quensia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Abvgdeya: 2022 – present The Duchy of Kamakia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Mladost: 2022 – present The Duchy of Ganevo: 2022 – present The Duchy of Jarmia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Slivosmet: 2022 – present The Duchy of Bosperis: 2022 – present The Duchy of North Punia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Kimonovo: 2022 – present The Duchy of Serdika: 2022 – present The Duchy of Galabovo: 2022 – present The Duchy of Lozenech: 2022 – present The Duchy of Saxonia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Barodenia: 2022 – present The Duchy of 'Kristiania: 2022 – present The Duchy of Kushtastan: 2022 – present The Duchy of Gosholand: 2022 – present The Duchy of Octavia: 2022 – present The Duchy of West Parkland: 2022 – present The Duchy of Bodegratia: 2022 – present Duchy of The South Park: 2022 – present The Duchy of Honberg: 2022 – present The Duchy of Sorland: 2022 – present The Duchy of Vitosha: 2022 – present The Duchy of Matematia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Oborishte: 2022 – present The Duchy of Lexia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Moraldia: 2022 – present The Duchy of South Punia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Theland: 2022 – present The Duchy of Orphia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Neo-Iskar: 2022 – present The Duchy of Fozoria: 2022 – present The Duchy of Geomilev: 2022 – present The Duchy of D'vor: 2022 – present The Duchy of Saidoria: 2022 – present The Duchy of Outer Sofia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Yoania: 2022 – present The Duchy of Gabrielia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Rumenvile: 2022 – present The Duchy of Nadezhda: 2022 – present The Duchy of Borisova Gradina: 2022 – present The Duchy of Zarea: 2022 – present The Duchy of East Aradonia: 2022 – present The Duchy of Waltergrad: 2022 – present
Appointed to office 1st of November, 2022
Tsar	Yasen I
Co-Regents	Chief Marshal Mihael Mishev Chief Justice Georgei Lovejoy
Predecessor	Office established
2nd Chancellor of the Wynnish Realm
Assumed office 20th of March, 2022 - 12th of June, 2022
King of Wynnland	Maximilian I
Cabinet of Ministers	Christina Nowell RichRacc Luke of Wellmoore
Statsgad	Milaw Oakforrest Aidan Fritz William Cooper
Predecessor	Milaw Oakforrest
Successor	Milaw Oakforrest Himself (as Lord President)
Personal information
Born	13 January Sofia, Bulgaria
Citizenship	See list Plamia Durvarian Commonwealth Grand Republic of Cycoldia Monmark
Nationality	Bulgarian
Ethnicity	Bulgarian, Greek
Political party	Plamist International Party
Religion	Agnostic
Military service
Allegiance	Plamia Wynnland Durvarian Commonwealth
Service/branch	Cyber Forces General Staff Armed & Naval Forces
In service	2015 - present 2022 - 2022 2022 - present
Rank	President Chief of Armed Forces ranks: 2x Field Marshal 7x Lieutenant General 5x Major General 4x Colonel 11x Major 3x Lieutenant 2x Admiral
Unit	The Iliev Battalion
Battles/wars	Anti-Tizian War Lexian Civil War Anti-Perfectionist Conflict The Durvarian Wars

Plam (Plamen G. Iliev II, born 13th of January, 200X) is the current President of Plamia, Foreign Minister and Regent of the Durvarian Commonwealth, amateur writer, digital and canvas artist, award winning sportsman in fencing, football and chess, et cetera. He founded Plamia (then named the Nicko-Plamian Republic) with his childhood best friend Nikolay Mitankin on the 1st of November, 2015, having remained its president since, with brief tenures as Emperor, Prime Minister and Chief Justice during times of re-organization. Iliev is the chairman of the Golyam Yus Foundation (Фондация Гѫлям Юс), an organization formed with the sole goal and purpose of removing the soft sign (ь) from the Bulgarian alphabet and instead bringing back the pre-Soviet language reform letter big yus (Ѫ ѫ), which would take on the sound of the English "J".

Personal life

Plam was born on the 13th of January 200X in Bulgaria's capital city of Sofia into an upper middle class family. His father was, at the time, the owner of an alcohol and soft drinks importer firm, a concert organizer for rock groups who toured in Bulgaria and co-founder of a marketing agency, which Plamen's mother managed for the most part. He and his twin brother were the first of his father's four children, with his step-brother and step-sister being born a few years later. His parents divorced around late 2013, yet remained on good terms and continued being business partners. His father's opposition to the appointment of Delyan Peevski as Chief of State Agency for National Security (DANS) led to him taking part in organizing the 2013–2014 Bulgarian protests against the Oresharski cabinet through the "ДАНСwithme" initiative, which led his participation in the early 2017 founding of the political party Yes, Bulgaria! with four other figures from the protest movement. This led to Iliev taking part in a number of antigovernmental demonstrations and got him interested in politics from an early age, eventually leading to his interest in micronationalism as a means of political expression. Iliev is openly bisexual and identifies as religiously agnostic. In mid June of 2023, his family rescued a month old street cat, named Rusty for its orangish fur.

Plam's cat Rusty after waking him up at 4:26 in the morning

Political Beliefs

Plam has stayed largely consistent on his political beliefs for the last around 8 years, generally being progressive and economically left-leaning. His ideology can best be summed up as pragmatic leftism, for he recognizes that his true political goals as a libertarian socialist are currently unattainable. For that reason, he has argued against many of his fellow leftists' political strategies, especially those espousing anti-electoralism. He has openly expressed his overwhelming hatred of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which he claims was not socialist in any meaningful way. He has, in particular, been vocal about his dislike of the Stalin Administration, which he sees as the force that brought the Soviet Union beyond the point of no return and into totalitarian dictatorship painted red. To justify that view, he cites the ethnic minorities the Soviet state slaughtered or forcibly relocated, the political opponents (including Plamen G. Iliev I, his paternal grandfather) who were routinely assassinated and the 3 years of pillaging and brutal occupation of Bulgaria by the USSR after World War 2.

As an extension of this position, Plam has opposed the Bulgarian Socialist Party's party establishment due to it currently being led by an open Todor Zhivkov apologist, and has supported Democratic Bulgaria, a coalition in which Yes, Bulgaria! is the leading member, as in his eyes they've done more for the progressive and leftist causes than BSP could in the 30 years since the fall of the People's Republic, citing the most recent campaign promise by party chairman Korneliya Ninova to "protect schools from gender ideology". His position on the People's Republic of China is similarly critical, as in his view they too fell into oligarchic dictatorship shortly after winning their civil war.

Plam has argued in favor of progressive taxation on the wealthy, decreasing the military's budget and launching many investigations into the Bulgarian political class' corruption, raising enough money to build better public infrastructure and free public transport, guarantee tuition-free education, ensure no person, citizen or not, is left without proper medical care and build low-income housing that the state rents out for at most half of minimum monthly wage. His stated solution to traffic in cities is to, in the long term, ban most cars in the city and replace them with public transport. He believes in open borders and that ethnicity itself is immaterial to a person's character, advocating for the European Union's unification into a single federation.

Despite originally supporting Bernard Sanders during the 2020 primaries, Iliev has endorsed Joe Biden for a second term as President of the United States the day he was sworn in, citing the Democrats' mild progressivism and the clear hostility towards civil rights and the concept of democracy by the Republicans. He felt optimistic about the Biden Administration up until October of 2023, when the state of Israel began its military operation in the Gaza Strip with the President's full support.

Micronational History

Nicko-Plamian Republic, 2015-2017

Plam has been involved in plenty of micronations' politics, starting with his very own on the 1st of November, 2015. During the first few months of the Nicko-Plamian Republic, he and his friend Nikolay Mitankin served as the sole two members of government, finally deciding to hold elections in late December. Three positions were open, President, PM and Speaker of Parliament, which position at the time acted as a one man parliament. He and Nikolay kept their offices as President and Prime Minister, while a friend of theirs named Antoanela Ch. became Speaker of Parliament. This status quo maintained itself until mid 2017, when most parties involved were losing interest and so decided to make a bet. While what the bet entailed is lost to time, the trio wrote and signed a contract that whoever wins gets supreme authority and thus can do whatever they want with the micronation. Antoanela came out on top in the end, resulting in her becoming Empress for life, after which the micronation was split in two on the 24th of May, 2017, one part becoming Antaland, Ch.'s project, while Iliev remained President of the other fraction.

Koprivshtica, 2017-2019

After a brief period of re-organization, on the 1st of July, 2017, Plamia became known as "the Woodland Civilization" as its land claims shifted to encompass a part of a former logging cite in Koprivshtica, a small town where Plam spends a few weeks every year for family reasons. The system of governance transitioned into something similar to direct democracy, although the position "President of Plamia" was retained. For the most part, four citizens made up its population, cleaning the logging cite up collectively and trying to spent the night camping there. Only a few weeks later, when Iliev had to return to Sofia, the nation went back to its usual Presidential Republic status. Nothing of note happened during the quiet years between the summers of 2017 and 2019, but when the four original citizens happened to all be in Koprivshtica at the same time, they once again claimed the the logging cite, only it was split between 4 small states and a common area. Plamia, the second largest of the four, became a kingdom in name yet remained de-facto a presidential republic, the positions of Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament having been abolished some time during the quiet years. As the day went on, the Kingdom of Emildor, led another citizen by the name of Emil, signed a treaty of unification under a dual monarchy, taking inspiration from Austria-Hungary yet having both monarchs be equally powerful. The Emilo-Plamian Empire lasted for almost 70 hours, during which it accomplished few of its goals, with an attempt to do a military invasion of the common area quickly abandoned as all sides realized how pointless it was. During the evening of the 14th of June, 2019, Plam would travel back home, this new experience inspiring him to at least look into micronationalism.

Re-organization, 2019

For the few months of summer vacation, Iliev watched and read almost every piece of micronational media he could find on YouTube, eventually leading him to the r/micronations subreddit. From the 23rd of July until the end of the year, Plam served as Prime Minister, reorganizing the nation to properly function and declaring it a People's Republic, a name he would later come to regret due to its connections to red fascism. After said re-organization the population went into a steady growth of roughly 2 new registered citizens, most of them knowing the King-President in real life, eventually reaching 53 by the time of the 2019 Plamian General Election, which was held on the 1st of November, exactly four years after the founding of the original micronation. The voter turnout was 83%, with only 9 citizens not casting a ballot. Iliev received 38 votes out of 44, winning a second term as president, while the parliament elections with 10 seats opened resulted in a landslide victory for the Plamist International Party, which won 8 seats and 33 votes, followed by the independent candidate for Parliament Yasen Durvarov, who earned 7 votes, and the Marxist-Leninist Alliance, which received 4 votes and thus the remaining seat. Durvarov was appointed by the Plamist majority as the Speaker of Parliament and took office on the 1st January, 2020, while the post of Prime Minister was highly contested among the Plamist faction, eventually leading to the three official candidates running for party leader. The 2019 Plamist Leadership Election was announced to be held on the 8th of November, the tensions rising as all three candidates seemed to be fit for the role. Finally, on the day of the election, the two main candidates, Mihael Mishev and Alexey Petrinin, representing the center and right wing of the party respectively, received 11 votes each, 40.7%, left wing Georgei Lovejoy got 4 or 14.8% and Plam himself abstained, being the only one out of the 27 members to not vote for any of the three. In a tie breaker, Lovejoy endorsed the democratic socialist over the centrist, resulting in Mishev's victory with 55.6% of the second round votes. Prime Minister Mishev was sworn in alongside the Speaker of Parliament on the 1st of January, 2020.

Inter-micronational Relations, 2020-2021

In early 2020, Plam was one of the founding members and later leader of the United Micro Nations, an alliance of generally leftist members of r/micronations, dissolving it in early 2021 for ideological reasons. Plamia's Autonomous Region of Pravets was founded on the 8th of June, 2020, with Iliev claiming a rural house in the mountains next to the small town by the same name and picking the many wild strawberries growing across its lawn. In late 2020, Plam was a leading member of the Maple Community's Grand Siida, meeting and befriending Sylvie Vaux for the last 9 months before her disappearance from micronationalism. On the 19th of January, 2021, he was officially made Duke of Flamia by the Monmarkian King Alexander I Constantine. 8 days later, on the 27th of January, 2021, The Maple Community, The Monmarkian Commonwealth and The People's Republic of Plamia signed and released a joint set of conditions that would grant them autonomy should they join the League of Independent Nations, something that only Monmark would go forwards with in the following months. During 2020 and 2021, Iliev frequently participated in the Reddit micronations community, doing things like drawing countryballs, running surveys about people's political compass leanings, posting pie charts of the relative size of other micronational communities, at one point even taking control of 7 out of the 9 micronation themed subreddits with more than 10 members and making them all private to unify the community onto r/micronations and r/micronation. He played a big part in the leaking of private Lexian chat logs that revealed, among other things, bomb plots again Nexan citizens, a doxing server, Tizian Azura's partnership with a terrorist organization, the extent to which the Perfection Group's eugenicist policies had developed, et cetera.

Wynnland, 2022

On the 19th of January, 2022, Plam was contacted by RichRacc, a friend of his, with the intention of starting a political party in Wynnland together. Iliev agreed, joining the nation's discord server and applying for citizenship, which was granted a few hours later. As the new constitution had just been ratified, elections were scheduled to be held at some point in February, however they were eventually moved to mid March. During this period of roughly two months, Iliev founded a big tent centrist party with three other political figures (RichRacc, Christina Nowell and Luke of Wellmoore), was chosen as party leader without being a candidate for it, was given the rank of Chief of Armed Forces to reform the military and got a position as de-facto deputy Minister of Culture. In the March 2023 Wynnish Parliamentary Election, Plam's party Das Zentrum achieved 3 of 9 seats in Parliament, doing especially well in the province of Dixieboro, where they won both of the 2 seats by a large margin. As they had received the most votes, the first mandate to form a government was given to Zentrum, who entered talks with all three other parties. After a day or so of discussion, the party of Milaw Oakforrest, at the time appointed interim Chancellor, and the Social Labour Party both agreed to form a coalition, resulting in the first elected Chancellor government of Wynnland, the Iliev Administration, having a 8 to 1 majority in the Wynntag. He was sworn in as Chancellor on the 20th of March, appointed Christina Nowell and RichRacc as Ministers of Justice and Foreign Relations respectively, while keeping Luke of Wellmoore as Minister of Culture. He used the so called Statsgad system to appoint political advisors, largely filling it with members of Milaw Oakforrest's Constitutionalist Party, and the Parliament granted the leader of the Social Labour Party, William Cooper, the role of Speaker.

Under the Iliev Administration, Wynnland joined a defensive military alliance, established plenty of foreign relations, liberalized significantly and appointed two new Supreme Court Justices - Yasen Durvarov and Georgei Lovejoy. It all, however, came crashing down as former Wynnish political figure and, as a member of the Social Labour Party put it, scoundrel by the name of Bryce Smith was welcomed back into the reformed nation. Unaware of his shady past, Das Zentrum supported his run for Dixieboro governor, which he narrowly won even despite DZ's popularity. He quickly established a system of extreme autonomy from the federal government, creating many committees, senates and councils which he was the sole member of under the pretext that there were no other candidates, and granting them supreme authority, unmatched by even the Chancellor in certain areas. When Smith tried to reform the legal system of Dixieboro to grant himself the power to overturn federal legal decisions, however, Minister of Justice Christina Nowell saw it as an attack on her department's authority, filing a lawsuit against him. The governor panicked, officially announcing that he is stripping many leading Das Zentrum figures including Plam of their citizenship, something he had no authority to do. In a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court, Bryce was stripped of his positions, his citizenship was revoked and all of his acts as governor were annulled.

After the three months term of Parliament ended and the new elections were scheduled, Oakforrest and Iliev came to an agreement that, after the election concluded, Plam would allow Milaw to become Chancellor once again, and that instead, a position called Lord President was to be created specifically and solely for him to occupy. The Lord President held some institutional power, but its real importance was being the face of the government, appealing to citizens. The coalition successfully won another term and continued their governance, however the new administration faced Conservative accusations of political repression after a member of the Conservative Party was sued by the Justice department for financial fraud. This escalated to the point that Christina Nowell resigned and left Wynnish politics. The crisis culminated when, on the 16th of September, 2022, Milaw Oakforrest resigned as Chancellor, later being appointed Chief Justice. As the Wynntag was dissolved and new elections were called, the Wynnish King Maximilian I appointed Bryce Smith as interim Chancellor, completely expunging his record. This came as a shock to the former government which had been the target of his repression, causing a month long attempt to dissuade him before leading to a wave of resignations and renunciations of citizenship by most members of Das Zentrum on the 23rd of October.

The Durvarian Commonwealth, 2022 - present

On the 1st of November, 2022, Yasen Durvarov united all 77 micronations he had taken through coup, election or appointment over the years into a single entity, known as the Durvarian Commonwealth. After proclaiming himself as Tsar Yasen I and renaming all 77 new territories under his rule, Durvarov created three administrative bodies for them. The first and most important one, the Regency, are the de-facto cabinet and deputies to the Tsar, made up of a Foreign Minister, Chief Marshal and Chief Justice. Iliev was granted the title Foreign Minister and Regent, meaning that in the event that the Tsar is absent, he would be responsible for a third of his duties on top of the ones already part of the Ministry. The second body would be the House of Dukes, where a single representative of each Duchy functions as a Member of Parliament would, only the position of Prime Minister is merged into the Tsar. They could be either elected or appointed, depending on what the form of government before the Commonwealth was like. Plam is currently the Duke of the Duchy of Reduta and Center, appointed by the Tsar unilaterally. The third body, the so called First Court of the Commonwealth, is filled with judges, as many as the Tsar decides, who are approved by at least 50 of the Dukes. Plam has been offered a spot on the Court, but refused alongside Georgei Lovejoy, as they expressed support for the separation of power between branches of government. His involvement in the ongoing Durvarian Wars is typically very minor, as disputes between Duchies and other micronations are usually handled by the Chief Marshal.