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

"He's stuck in the old planned economy mentality."

Deng Xixian put down the document and spoke to Zhao Ziyang, who was sitting opposite him. In his view, Ivanov's attempt to repair the planned economy with a computer and an OGAS system was ultimately just getting stuck in the old framework, unable to break free.

Ivanov was unwilling to use the power of the market, or rather, he dared not use it.

But Deng Xixian didn't rule out any possibility. To be honest, Ivanov's approach did indeed produce tangible results—products became more abundant, productivity increased, and people started to smile.

The achievements are there and cannot be dismissed.

“However,” Deng Xixian changed the subject, “we could learn from the Soviet Union’s corporate management techniques.”

His OGAS (Office Automation System) is useful for national administration and managing important departments; I think it's a good approach to improving efficiency through information technology in office work.

He thought for a moment and said, "Could we add something like 'improving management level' to the report of the 13th National Congress? Management is also a form of productivity!"

Technology is technology, and methodology is methodology; these two should be considered separately. We won't learn Ivanov's methodology, but we can use his methods for improving management; I think there's nothing wrong with that.

As for the issue of the political line that Zhao Ziyang kept dwelling on, Deng Xixian's attitude had always been clear. He picked up his teacup, took a sip, and repeated what he had said over and over again.

"Our fundamental political line is to make the effort to develop social productive forces the overriding central task." He held up one finger, then raised a second one.

"To modernize China and make it prosperous, first, we must implement the policy of reform and opening up; second, we must adhere to the Four Cardinal Principles. Neither of these two can be neglected."

This is Deng Xixian's principle of "both hands must be strong".

For him, reform and opening up and the Four Cardinal Principles were never two opposing forces, but rather two hands working towards the same goal—

The core of the Four Cardinal Principles is the leadership of the Party. We must never let the CPC regime be ruined in his hands, and we must never let the Chairman's legacy be squandered in our hands!

Reform and opening up was the banner he used to save the Party and the country. Whenever he felt that reform and opening up threatened the Party's leadership, he would stand up and speak out against bourgeois liberalization.

Whenever he felt that reforms were encountering obstacles, he would stand up and loudly proclaim that not reforming would lead to certain death.

He himself said that the Four Cardinal Principles were Chairman Mao's old ideas, not his new ones. He raised this old banner again in order to connect with the Mao Zedong era and give the Communist Party's rule a legitimate foundation.

But reform and opening up is his own banner, his new thing.

Zhao Ziyang did not argue further. He and Deng Xixian actually disagreed on economic matters, especially on whether or not to fully embrace the market.

He went further and more systematically than Deng. But at this point, these differences hadn't reached the point where they needed to be laid bare. He packed up his materials, got up, and took his leave.

After Zhao Ziyang left, the room became quiet.

Deng Xixian did not get up immediately.

He sat there, his gaze falling on the portrait of Chairman Mao on the wall.

The person in the portrait gazes at the room, at the distance, just as the Lenin statue hangs on the wall of the neighbor to the north, staring at the future that has been briefly reached.

He actually had a complicated and somewhat inexplicable feeling towards the newly established Soviet Union, his big brother.

Decades ago, China followed the Soviet Union closely—learning its planned economy, its industrialization, and its first Five-Year Plan.

Later, the two sides fell out and argued repeatedly. Chairman Mao led the Party in criticizing the Soviet Union as revisionist, saying it had changed its nature and betrayed Lenin. Later still, China rolled up its sleeves and embarked on reform and opening up, moving towards a market economy and leaving its old brother, the Soviet Union, far behind.

But now it seems the tide has turned again. The Soviet Union produced Ivanov, who, in turn, raised Lenin's banner high—establishing workers' Soviets, opposing bureaucracy, and implementing his information-based planned economy, seemingly positioning himself as the orthodox Marxist-Leninist.

The further he ventured into the market, the heavier the unease became among the older generation of Party members, such as Chen Yun.

Their most powerful statement was: "Look, even the Soviet Union, our big brother, doesn't have a market, so why should we follow the capitalist path?" If Ivanov's path actually succeeds, it will be like handing these people a ready-made knife.

Deng Xixian gazed at the portrait of Chairman Mao on the wall, but he knew better than anyone else—

You still have to walk your own path.

He agreed with the Soviet system in terms of upholding the Party's leadership politically, but he felt that following Ivanov and reverting to the old framework of a planned economy was a dead end. He understood this point even better than Ivanov.

What he wanted was to genuinely increase productivity so that ordinary people could have meat in their pots and money in their hands. He didn't care much about whether it was called socialism or communism or whatever the name was. He believed that as long as a cat caught mice, it was a good cat, regardless of whether it was black or white.

Looking at the portrait of his teacher, who had once denounced the Soviet Union as revisionism, a ripple still stirred within him. The side condemned as revisionist back then had now transformed into the orthodox one, holding high the banner of Lenin, while he, upholding the four cardinal principles left by his teacher, was leading the country step by step in the direction his teacher had most warned against.

Both he and Ivanov were walking a tightrope.

Sometimes, history is more shrewd than anyone else's calculations.

Chapter 74: The worker only needs to tighten the screws; knowledge points...

A massive informatization construction project has begun.

Information and computing centers started in major cities like Moscow and Leningrad, spreading along railway lines from city to city to the republics and then to the state level. The manufacturing budget for the computer and electronics industry was constantly being increased, and the Soviet-owned semiconductor base in Zelenograd was still expanding outwards.

In order to produce enough terminals more quickly, the Soviet Union and China cooperated to grant production licenses for some computer models. The two sides shared the technology, and the Chinese side manufactured the circuit boards and delivered them to the Soviet Union.

As for money? There were no rubles. Anyway, everyone in the Politburo knew that the Soviet Union was going to pull off a big heist in October, and they were just waiting to receive billions of dollars in subsidies from the United States. So they simply gave Lao Zhong an IOU, to be repaid a year later, in US dollars.

On June 25, the Soviet State Bank issued a batch of forward letters of credit to China, with a term of one year and a value of US$1 billion, to be paid in US dollars upon maturity.

However, China was very cautious and demanded that settlements be made in both gold and US dollars, to which Slava readily agreed.

At that time, Lao Zhong's foreign exchange reserves were only US$150 billion, which was a very small amount, and all foreign exchange income had to be settled and centrally managed by the central bank.

As for holding US Treasury bonds? Lao Zhong's large-scale purchase of US Treasury bonds began after China's accession to the WTO in 2001. In the late 80s, the mainstream settlement methods were mainly letters of credit, collection, and barter.

Slava glanced at the national reserves—the Soviet Union was the world's second-largest gold producer, with 2800 tons of gold reserves in 1987. What else was there to say? It was only 10 billion, might as well!

This sudden move immediately alarmed the West. NATO, which had been badly burned by the Soviet Union during the previous oil crisis, thought the Soviet Union was going to repeat the same trick. But upon closer inspection, they realized it was only 10 billion? And it would be repaid in a year?

That's fine then. Let the bear and the rabbit play. It's probably just a symbolic commercial treaty between the two countries to promote friendship.

But a new problem arose. The machines were successfully transported—boxes of brand-new terminals and computers were shipped to information centers across the country—but when they arrived, the officials were dumbfounded.

Nobody knows how to use it!

In such a large country, there are very few people who truly understand computers, information engineering, operations research, and cybernetics.

The few graduates from top universities like Moscow State University and Novosibirsk State University who specialize in their fields each year are barely noticeable when spread across the vast network that is being built throughout the entire alliance. In information centers across the country, brand-new machines stand there covered with dust cloths, while next to them stand groups of cadres who have to learn on the spot where even the power switches are located.

Even more critically, the Soviet Union's chronic labor shortage had plagued the state apparatus for decades. The birth rate in the Soviet Union was declining year by year, and the growth of the working-age population had long since slowed down. State-owned enterprises employed a 10-20 percent surplus of staff who were physically present but not actually doing any work.

Moreover, most of the Soviet Union's labor force was concentrated in Europe, while resources and construction sites were in Siberia and the Far East. Slava's implementation of informatization and automation suddenly created an enormous demand for skilled workers and engineers, but there simply weren't enough people to fill that gap!

The technology has improved, and the machines are more advanced, but without someone to operate them, even the most advanced machines are just a pile of scrap metal covered with cloth.

The immediate, miraculous effects promised by Rislava in the short term have yet to materialize. There is a severe shortage of highly skilled workers, while low-skilled manual laborers are superfluous in the face of automation; this imbalance has bogged down his reforms.

At this critical juncture, he did something else that some intellectuals considered to be adding fuel to the fire—tightening the power of the workers' Soviet.

This immediately ignited a large number of intellectuals in the country who had been fed by Gorbachev's public pronouncements for over a year, and their dissatisfaction with Slava began to rise.

In their view, the new General Secretary has put the brakes on reform while simultaneously stripping the workers' Soviets of their "democratic" rights. The combination of these two actions is highly inappropriate.

This is retracing Stalin's path!

This statement began to circulate semi-openly within small circles of intellectuals in Moscow and Leningrad. At that time, Stalin's name was still overshadowed by Khrushchev's secret report and had not been rehabilitated. Among the liberal intellectuals of the time, equating someone with Stalin was a very heavy accusation.

PS: Still a secret report, still a victim of public opinion, the protagonist's discussion of Stalin's image will have to wait until after Mu Tian is thoroughly investigated.

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.

On July 9th, this pent-up discontent, which had been brewing beneath the surface, surfaced for the first time.

Back then, Gorbachev publicly released a large number of political prisoners, rehabilitated a large number of liberal intellectuals who had been sidelined, and invited them back to their positions in newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and other propaganda media.

These people have taken up their pens and microphones again, and they have been the most active and vocal figures in public discourse in recent years.

On this day, an article was published in a highly influential magazine in intellectual circles. The article did not mention Slava by name, but talked about "historical lessons" throughout, about how workers' democracy in the 1930s was swallowed up step by step in the name of "centralization", and about what kind of abyss a country will slide into once it silences the masses and blinds them.

Anyone with eyes can see that this is aimed at Slava's tightening of control over the workers' soviets!

At almost the same time, a highly respected veteran writer, at a public gathering of literary and artistic figures, bluntly asked in front of everyone:

"Is the open democracy that we have fought so hard for over the years going to be taken back by others in the name of science and stability?"

These words quickly spread throughout intellectual circles.

What concerned Slava the most was Academician Sakharov, who had recently been rehabilitated by Gorbachev and had a huge international influence. Sakharov wrote him a long letter saying that he understood the General Secretary's good intentions for stability and development, but he earnestly asked the General Secretary to think about it: if a country's intellectuals begin to fall silent, then the country's mind will rust.

Slava knew all too well the power of intellectuals. On another timeline, it was precisely this group wielding pens and microphones who had gradually hollowed out the empire's ideological legitimacy. What would happen if these same people started inciting the people to take to the streets in protest?

He didn't want to bleed.

Bloodshed is the last resort, and also the worst, for defending power. He had witnessed firsthand what repression looked like in the cold nights of Almaty; once the guns were fired and the blood was shed, some things could never be recovered.

He wouldn't want to touch that knife for even a day if he could avoid doing so.

But how can we dissipate this gathering force without bleeding?

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.

Director Nian quickly provided him with a solution.

After hearing Slava mention it, she squinted her eyes and thought for a short while before giving an idea.

“You’re putting your effort in the wrong place.” She put her feet off the chair and leaned forward. “Intellectuals are like that; the more you try to suppress them, the more motivated they become—what they have in abundance is their pride in ‘I am persecuted for the truth.’”

If you actually send troops to arrest people and shut down publications, that's exactly what they want. Tomorrow, all the Western newspapers will be writing monuments to them, and they'll truly be martyrs.

"Then what do you suggest we do?"

"Inviting them to meals, beheading them, accepting them as dogs—intellectuals are by no means a monolithic group."

She paused for a moment, then continued, "Besides, bro, think about the OGAS you're trying to create. Once this huge network is set up, who will be responsible for getting it running?"

It relies on a large group of people who understand algorithms, data, and machines. Where did these people come from? They emerged from the intellectual class.

She stared at Slava.

"Therefore, you need to tie their interests to your reforms. Make them feel that following your path of informatization is promising, gives them status, and provides them with a bright future."

One intellectual who bets everything on you is far more useful than a hundred who have been arrested by you.

"That's true. What our alliance lacks most are unofficial 'meat megaphones,' and we need '50-cent party members.' Let's do it this way."

On July 12, the KGB report was delivered to Slava's desk.

The report divided Soviet intellectuals into four groups.

The first group consists of technical intellectuals—engineers, researchers, computer experts, economists, and those engaged in natural sciences.

These people should have been the General Secretary's natural allies. OGAS needs them, and information technology development needs them. Slava's recent high-profile promotion of Kantorovich and Grushkov, elevating the status of those involved in mathematical economics and cybernetics, has hit them where it hurts.

The report also pointed out a problem—these people were very conflicted about his tightening of control over the workers' soviets. Some, especially those involved in planning mathematics and cybernetics, secretly applauded, believing that there was a contradiction between the workers' democratic system and scientific decision-making; how could workers' votes be as reliable as algorithms!

The workers only need to operate the machines on the production line, while the experts have to consider many other things.

However, another group of people, especially market-oriented economists, are very wary of this, because Slava's tightening of the planned economy is tantamount to kicking their market-oriented approach aside.

The second group consists of liberal humanistic intellectuals—writers, journalists, historians, and philosophers.

This group has the most acute dissatisfaction with the General Secretary.

The most active group in the publicizing of the Gobi Map in recent years has been this group of people, such as the editors of magazines like "New World" and "Spark," as well as Korotich and his group.

What they really cared about was not the size of the power of the workers' Soviet—the workers in the factory didn't care about democracy at all, since it wasn't them who were going to work on the assembly line!

What they care about is freedom of speech, freedom of publication, and whether the truth of history can continue to be uncovered.

These bastards are just using this as an excuse to oppose Slava!

Slava's tightening of the workers' Soviet was a signal to them—they feared that this "tightening" would spread to their territory, and that the crack in the door of openness they had painstakingly pried open would be closed again.

In this group's mindset, any "tightening" will be automatically translated as "neo-Stalinism," which is the standard reaction of intellectuals in the era of openness!

The third group consists of local intellectuals from the various constituent republics—the Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Central Asian countries...

These past few years have coincided with a wave of awakening national consciousness, and thanks to Gorbachev, people in these constituent republics are now organizing various "people's fronts."

The attitude of this group towards the General Secretary depends entirely on one thing—whether his information-based centralized system is good or bad for them.

However, OGAS uploads all data to the central system of the entire alliance and makes decisions based on the central algorithm. In the eyes of these local intellectuals, this is nothing short of a technologically upgraded version of Great Russian chauvinism.

No matter how pure Slava's original intentions may be, in their eyes, this system is aimed at depriving ethnic groups of their autonomy!

The fourth group consists of young intellectuals and university students. The report states that this group has become politically active in recent years, has the least patience for the system, is most sensitive to information from the West, and is most impatient with the official rhetoric of that ideology.

What they want is very practical – for their lives to visibly improve. Stop lecturing them with grand principles and let them see a promising future.

Director Nian was right. This isn't just one intellectual adversary; it's four groups with different thoughts, demands, and vulnerabilities.

Technologists can be won over, liberals are the most difficult to deal with but care the most about that little bit of freedom, nationalists are a powder keg on another level, and young people want practical benefits and a future.

This small group makes it easy for tanks to run them over, doesn't it?

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.

On July 15, a plan drafted by Slava himself and approved by the Politburo was finalized.

Starting this year, Soviet higher education will expand enrollment. There will be a significant increase in enrollment in STEM fields, especially in computer science, information engineering, operations research, automation, and electrical engineering—key OGAS (Occupational, Global, and Industrial) specialties.