Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

Before the delegation departed, a group of Chinese economic experts sat together to carefully study the newly appointed Soviet General Secretary, Velikoslav Ivanovich Ivanov, who was also known for his pragmatism and reform.

Sino-Soviet relations are thawing. Where exactly will Ivanov lead the Soviet Union? Is his informatization and OGAS projects on the same or different paths from China's current trial-and-error approach?

These issues are of paramount importance to China, which is currently advancing reform and opening up and urgently needs to understand the direction of its massive northern neighbor.

A speech

PS: This is a free chapter.

I wrote a lot of things last night while writing the new chapter. It was probably because I was looking for something in Lenin's Selected Works and my emotions were a bit turbulent. So I tried to write a speech from the perspective of the protagonist in my book, based on a scenario.

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On Soviet Democracy in a New Historical Stage

— Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution

The great October Socialist Revolution has traversed a glorious seventy-year journey. At this historically significant moment, our Party, our country, and the entire international communist movement face a fundamental question—where does the future of Soviet power lie?

This is a critical issue. Comrades have already seen that the people's dissatisfaction with bureaucracy is deepening; waste, passive resistance, and formalism in production have damaged the reputation of socialism; and the emergence of special strata within the cadre ranks is corroding the Party's body. These problems are not inherent flaws in socialism itself, but rather a result of our deviation from the socialist path.

To answer today's question, we must go back to the basics, back to Comrade Lenin, back to 1917.

Comrade Lenin clearly stated in "State and Revolution" that the form of state under the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a parliament, but a Soviet. The Soviet is neither a legislative body in the bourgeois sense, nor simply a consultative council, but a form of government in which the people directly exercise power, combining legislative, executive, and supervisory functions!

In summarizing the experience of the Paris Commune, Comrade Lenin repeatedly emphasized four principles: First, all public officials should be elected and can be removed at any time; second, the wages of public officials should not be higher than those of skilled workers; third, the standing army should be abolished and replaced by an armed people; and fourth, legislative and executive powers should be combined.

This is the true face of Soviet democracy, and this is the original intention of the October Revolution!

Let us examine our own situation today and ask ourselves these questions: Are our factory directors elected by the workers? Can our ministers be replaced at any time by worker representatives? Do our senior managers and ordinary workers receive the same wages?

Comrades, we must realistically admit that we have deviated from Lenin to a great extent.

But how did our deviation occur?

Comrade Lenin himself did advocate for a single-management system, expert-led factory management, and strict labor discipline between 1918 and 1921. This is a historical fact that cannot be ignored.

However, this was a temporary retreat that the revolution had to take under specific historical conditions. What was the situation Russia faced at that time? Armed intervention by fourteen countries, a White Army civil war, industrial collapse, a food crisis, a sharp decline in the working class, and extremely low levels of education. Under such conditions, it was unrealistic to immediately realize the Soviet democracy outlined in the 1917 program!

Comrade Lenin himself repeatedly pointed out that the one-man leadership system was "temporary" and "for the purpose of getting through the difficulties." His praise of Saturday voluntary labor in "The Great Initiative" stemmed from his unwavering commitment to the ideal of the working masses becoming the true masters of production. In the final stages of his life, in articles such as "How We Reorganize the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection" and "On Cooperatives," he expressed deep concern about bureaucratization—a concern born from his observation that the initial aspirations of 1917 were being eroded.

Comrade Stalin made indelible contributions to leading socialist construction, the Great Patriotic War, and the restoration of the national economy. However, it must be pointed out realistically that he formalized the temporary measures that Comrade Lenin had to take during the Civil War into a regular system for the entire stage of socialist construction. The one-management system went from temporary to permanent, expert management of factories went from expediency to convention, and the special treatment of party and government cadres went from special circumstances to a system.

The bureaucratic problem we face today must be solved; we must return to Comrade Lenin's original vision.

Then people may ask: Why, after the war ended, after the national economy recovered, and after the working class grew stronger, did we still not return to the 1917 program?

The reason our party leaders are loyal to Lenin—or at least the vast majority of them are loyal to the communist faith—is that the material and technological conditions are not yet mature.

Let us revisit one of Lenin's famous quotes: In 1917, Lenin said that the administration of the state could be so simple that any literate worker could master it. At the time, this statement was considered utopian by many, including some revolutionary comrades.

Why? Because the complexity of modern large-scale industry and the interconnectedness of the entire national economy truly exceeded the cognitive capacity of an ordinary worker at the time. Managing a large factory with tens of thousands of employees, coordinating the flow of materials among hundreds of supply units, and maintaining the production balance of thousands of enterprises nationwide—without computers or information networks, such management could only rely on a few specially trained individuals and a hierarchical bureaucracy.

But today, the situation has fundamentally changed.

my country's working class has grown from several million in 1917 to tens of millions today. The average education level of Chinese workers is approaching that of a fully-fledged secondary school education. my country has already achieved world-class levels in computer technology, automation control, and information transmission. In our factories, workers can already access real-time production data, inventory data, and the operational status of other units through terminals. The nationwide unified information system we are building will, for the first time, make the operation of the entire national economy transparent, visible, and subject to public oversight!

What does this mean? It means that Soviet democracy, which Comrade Lenin described in 1917 as a distant prospect at the time, has for the first time become a material and technological reality.

Comrade Lenin once proposed a great formula:

Soviet regime + nationwide electrification = Communism

Today, we must develop this formula into:

Soviet regime + nationwide electrification + nationwide informatization = Communism

Today, the Alliance is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century. Entering a new era, the Alliance faces new enemies, new challenges, and a new revolution. We must bring the invincible Marxism-Leninism into a new historical stage.

Therefore, the Party Central Committee believes that now is a historic opportunity to restore and develop Soviet democracy, and the Party's basic direction in the reform of industrial enterprises is:

First, rebuild substantive workers' soviets. Every state-owned enterprise should establish a workers' soviet elected by all employees, with regular re-elections, and workers should have the right to dismiss their representatives at any time.

Secondly, the core function of the workers' Soviet is supervision, especially data-driven supervision. Supported by a unified national information system, the workers' Soviet has the right and the ability to supervise the execution of its production plans, the use of materials, the distribution of products, and labor remuneration. Any falsification will be immediately exposed to the masses. This is realizing Lenin's envisioned principle of worker supervision using modern technological means.

Third, workers' Soviets participated in decision-making regarding technological improvements, safe production, and welfare distribution within their enterprises. This institutionalized the long-standing tradition of "rationalization proposals" in the Soviet workers' movement, allowing the wisdom of the masses to rise to collective decision-making through organized means.

Fourth, systemic matters such as production tasks, prices, and investments of enterprises are still coordinated and arranged by the state planning authorities with the assistance of the national information system. It is crucial to distinguish between two levels here: the workers' Soviet manages the internal affairs of its own enterprise, not the macroeconomic balance of the national economy. The latter falls under the unified management of the Party and the state through scientific planning.

Fifth, the Party's leadership role in enterprises must be strengthened, not weakened. The Party does not directly interfere in the specific production management of enterprises, nor does it interfere in the scientific calculation of the national economy, but the Party must ensure that the entire cause advances along the socialist path, must educate and guide the masses, and must ensure that the workers' Soviets are not captured by the interests of any small group, local interests, or departmental interests.

This places higher demands on the Party's leadership.

At the same time, the Party Central Committee believes that it is necessary to address several potential concerns directly.

One criticism regarding the Yugoslav path. Some comrades worry that the reforms of the workers' Soviets will lead us to Yugoslav-style workers' self-government. This concern is well-intentioned, but it must be clearly stated that:

Yugoslavia’s fundamental mistake was abandoning a unified planned economy, abandoning the leadership of the Party, and turning enterprises into competing market entities, which resulted in blind competition among enterprises, short-sighted consumption by workers, and widening regional wealth disparity!

Our reforms are fundamentally different—we adhere to a planned economy and will use nationwide informatization to bring it to a scientific level that the Yugoslavs could never achieve; we uphold the unified leadership of the Party; and our workers' Soviets, while managing their own enterprise affairs, do not detach themselves from the unified socialist economic whole.

Regarding the historical issue of the "syndicalist bias" in 1921, some comrades may recall the historical lesson of Lenin's criticism of the workers' opposition. We must grasp the essence of Lenin's criticism: what Lenin opposed was handing over the management of the entire national economy to scattered, independent trade union organizations under conditions of extreme economic hardship immediately following the end of the civil war.

What Lenin opposed was not workers' democracy itself, but decentralism!

With today's mature material and technological conditions, it is entirely possible to allow workers to fully exercise their democratic rights within their own enterprises while simultaneously maintaining unified economic planning through a national information system.

This is the dialectic of history moving forward, not simply going back to 1921!

Regarding democratic centralism: Some comrades worry that expanding workers' democracy will weaken democratic centralism, but this understanding is incomplete. Democratic centralism itself requires equal emphasis on both democracy and centralism. In the past few decades, we have emphasized centralism a lot, but not enough on democracy.

The purpose of making up for the lack of democracy now is precisely to make democratic centralism a truly vibrant system.

Centralization without democracy is bureaucracy, and democracy without centralization is anarchy; neither is the democratic centralism envisioned by Lenin.

Comrades, seventy years ago, the great October Revolution proclaimed the beginning of a new era to the world in the form of the Soviet.

Over the past seventy years, the great Soviet people have achieved remarkable accomplishments under this banner. We established the world's first socialist state, defeated the evil fascism, created a powerful industrial system, and sent mankind into space.

However, comrades must see clearly: the old management system can no longer be maintained today. If we continue down the old path, socialism will gradually lose its vitality in the new wave of technological revolution.

The historical mission of our generation of communists is to turn Comrade Lenin's original aspirations into reality under new material and technological conditions. This is the self-improvement of socialism, the return of socialism to its original form, and the unfolding of socialism at a higher stage.

For the first time, a real workers' Soviet appeared in our factory.

Let our national information network become the eyes and nerves of hundreds of millions of workers to monitor the economy and participate in management.

The problem of bureaucracy that the Party has long failed to solve will be answered in our generation.

Long live the Soviet regime!

Long live the national electrification and informatization!

Long live the invincible Marxism-Leninism!

Long live the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!

Chapter 73: We need to rely on Comrade Great Glory to come up with some new ideas.

Beijing, June 24

Some time has passed since the new General Secretary of the Soviet Union put forward the General Line and launched enterprise reforms. Many socialist countries and political parties around the world are paying attention to what new things this former big brother is going to do.

Soon, the commentator's article published by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in "The Communist" along with a large number of editorials on the governing philosophy of the new General Secretary were collected and sent to Zhongnanhai.

There is considerable debate among Chinese scholars about this reform path. Coincidentally, the 13th National People's Congress is scheduled to convene in October, and some officials submitted a report to Premier Zhao Ziyang, suggesting that China could learn from the experiences and lessons of its elder brother to improve the proposals for the 13th National Congress.

Zhao Ziyang, who had just succeeded Hu Yaobang at the beginning of the year as acting General Secretary and still held the position of Premier of the State Council, spent half a day reading through Ivanov's work from beginning to end. After reading it, he made his own judgment.

In Zhao Ziyang's view, the Soviet Union's reforms were ultimately just a stopgap measure.

Whether it's the National Automated Management System, the Computerized Planned Economy, the Workers' Soviet, or the Shadow Price System, they all sound impressive, but they didn't actually touch the burning pot. They just gave the decades-old planned economy a nice-looking new bottle labeled "informatization."

It's just old wine in a new bottle.

Several years ago, Zhao Ziyang systematically studied market mechanisms. The system of decentralization and profit sharing that he implemented when he was in charge of Sichuan was one of the earliest prototypes of Zhong's reforms.

He understood one thing earlier and more thoroughly than many others in the party: for the economy to be vibrant, the market must guide businesses!

Let prices fluctuate according to supply and demand, and then the central government can make precise adjustments.

No matter how shrewdly Ivanov calculated, he couldn't fathom the true supply and demand hidden within the countless transactions. Big Brother's attempt to replace the market with a smarter computer was, in Zhao Ziyang's eyes, a misguided approach from the very beginning.

The root of the problem is not that the plan was not accurate enough, but that the plan itself.

The only way out for reform is through marketization!

Moreover, the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is about to be held in October, and the political report for this congress was mainly drafted under the leadership of Bao Tong, the political secretary of Zhao Ziyang. In this report, the concepts of "the primary stage of socialism," "one central task and two basic points," and "the state regulates the market, and the market guides enterprises" have already pushed China quite far into the framework of a market economy.

PS: At this time in 1987, the capitalists had not yet completely sided with the West, and at least maintained a consensus with Deng Xixian on the leadership of the Party. However, his secretary, Bao Tong, had already stopped pretending and was clearly heading towards liberalism. In the end, Bao Tong was ousted at the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1992, when the elder statesman began to implement his grand plans. He was expelled from the Party and sent to prison.

Zhao Ziyang called Bao Tong over and pushed the stack of Soviet materials in front of him.

"You've seen what's going on in the Soviet Union," Zhao Ziyang said, pointing to a stack of photocopied documents on the table.

"I think Ivanov is not a simple man. He came to power through a coup and established his political line in just two months."

But his approach is the opposite of ours—he's leaning towards planning, while we're moving towards the market. I'm wondering if we should take this opportunity to review the political report of the 13th Party Congress again?

After all, we're all feeling our way across the river, and we can certainly learn something from the decades of experience and lessons of the Soviet Union, our older brother.

Bao Tong picked up the photocopy, flipped through it again, and shook his head.

“Premier, in my opinion, this report doesn’t need to be changed.” Bao Tong’s tone was very confident.

"On the contrary, the Soviet system has proven that our path is correct!"

Ivanov wanted to revive the planned economy using information technology—but that was impossible; he couldn't do it.

From Stalin onwards, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev all tried to implement a planned economy for so long without achieving anything significant. Just when Gorbachev finally started to open up market-oriented reforms, Ivanov pushed it back down!

I believe the Soviet Union's political instability will continue until the day it collapses.

The problem with planning is never that it's not fast enough or that the data is incomplete; it's that it stifles people's enthusiasm for production and blocks the most sensitive signal—price.

He connected all the data from across the country to one machine, making it seem transparent. But as long as the central government is still making the decisions about what to produce and what to allocate, ministries will still falsify data, factories will still slack off, and people at the bottom will still slack off.

His OGAS will eventually turn from a decision-making system into a decorative system hanging on the wall.

He paused, then uttered a statement that few in the party dared to say publicly at that moment:

"The Soviet Union's reforms were doomed to fail!"

It is unwilling to relinquish economic control to the market, and unwilling to truly loosen its grip on politics—it wants to hold onto both ends, but in the end, it can't hold onto either end.

Director Deng is right; he never goes back on his word, and we must never follow in his footsteps and go back on our path.

Zhao Ziyang didn't respond immediately. He could hear the increasingly undisguised obsession with the word "let go" in Bao Tong's words.

He didn't point it out.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The person who truly took this dramatic change in the Soviet Union seriously was another person—Deng Xixian.

This chief architect of reform and opening up knew better than anyone how deep and dangerous the river beneath his feet was.

China in 1987 was far from peaceful. At the beginning of the year, Hu Yaobang had been forced to resign as General Secretary for "ineffective opposition to bourgeois liberalization," and large-scale student movements had erupted in Shanghai and other places at the end of the previous year. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the anti-reform forces within the Party launched another "anti-bourgeois liberalization" movement.

This set of ideas started with the "Cleansing Up Spiritual Pollution" campaign in 1980 and was brought up almost every year, with Deng Xixian himself supporting it each time.

At the same time, prices were soaring, and signs of inflation were beginning to make people panic, with prices changing daily in the market.

It's practically a carbon copy of Britain when Thatcher implemented neoliberal reforms in 1981, when inflation in Britain soared to over 20 percent, and now domestic inflation is about to break the 20 percent mark as well.

British reforms faltered halfway through; Ivanov's involvement in the Falklands War led to a popular uprising, resulting in Thatcher's ouster and the rise of the more moderate Labour Party.

This is the growing pain of development, a necessary sacrifice. Afterwards, state-owned enterprises will need to be reformed, and the wave of layoffs at that time will be the real challenge.

Throughout the 80s, Lao Zhong was feeling his way across the river. Some said he had to feel his way across the river by feeling his way across the eagle's leg, while others said he had to feel his way across the bear's leg. But how many hidden reefs were lurking beneath the surface? No one dared to say they had figured it out completely.

Precisely because of this precarious situation, Deng Xixian observed his northern elder brother's every move with exceptional care. Both being major socialist countries undergoing reform, the trials and tribulations Ivanov had encountered might offer valuable lessons for China.

Deng Xixian's evaluation of Ivanov was two-sided.

Politically, he thought the short man was doing a good job. Ivanov, the party leader, didn't loosen his grip at all—he didn't let openness become an out-of-control flood like Gorbachev did, he didn't touch the multi-party system, and he didn't even show any intention of bowing to the Western parliamentary system and separation of powers.

This was exactly what Deng Xixian was thinking. Deng Xixian has spoken about political system reform no fewer than twenty times over the years, but a closer look at what he said reveals…

Separating the party from the government, decentralizing power, streamlining institutions, and improving efficiency... at its core, it is actually an administrative system reform, and he never took it in the direction of "developing Western-style democracy".

His bottom line is firmly set: political system reform is for improving efficiency and enhancing the Party's leadership, not for copying the Western model!

He has said more than once: "The political system reform we are talking about is not the separation of powers and checks and balances in the Western sense!"

On this point, he felt that Ivanov was a sensible man who knew what could be moved and what should not be touched.

However, in terms of economics, Deng Xixian felt that this older brother was somewhat conservative.