The Anomaly Research Zone of Progressa Island is a mammoth, cultured nation, ruled by Trofim Lysenko with an iron fist, and notable for its smutty television, vat-grown people, and restrictive gun laws. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 9.462 billion inhabitants of the Island of Progress are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as "my little playthings."

The large, corrupt, moralistic, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Education. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Magnitoshakhtinsk. The average income tax rate is 95.0%.

The frighteningly efficient Progressa Islandian economy, worth a remarkable 2,118 trillion Shastis a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. However, for those in the know, there is an enormous, deeply entrenched black market in Arms Manufacturing, Uranium Mining, Information Technology, and Door-to-door Insurance Sales. The private sector mostly consists of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, but the government is looking at stamping this out. Average income is an amazing 223,846 Shastis, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Budding hospital branches are leaving arborists stumped, children are strong-armed by police into eating their greens, shoppers carry protractors to verify their produce, and it isn't 'real music' without several cannons. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Progressa Island's national animal is the Owl, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to toxic air pollution, and its national religion is The Cult of Personality of Lysenko.

Progressa Island is ranked 35,874^th in the world and 993^rd in The North Pacific for Most Cultured, scoring 76 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.