In the 1860s, serfdom was abolished by the Tsar of Scythia. The workers aboard their landships were, at least on paper, free men. However, due to there being no system to give them any social mobility, this changed very little. The farmers, industrial workers and soldiers were still bound to their positions, enslaved by debt to the state and to landowners.

Grigory Zinoviev, the charismatic young man who was responsible for spreading his Communist cell's pamphlets around his home landship, ended up sparking the first battles of the Revolution when he broke out of the brig in 1897. Others recognised him and joined his cause, and eventually, multiple landships were entirely Bolshevik.

Other splinter factions took advantage of the chaos to form their own small polities, from the Ice-Sailors of Kronstadt, to Nestor Makhno's Black Army. Zinoviev, and his supporters, ended up being the ones to take the Mothership Tsarstyo, however, renaming it the Molot Zheleza in 1900.