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

Defense Minister Sokolov's open-top car slowly drove along Red Square, past one contingent after another. At each stop, he greeted the troops loudly.

"Hello, comrades!"

The soldiers, heads held high, responded in unison, their shouts nearly lifting the Moscow sky.

"Wishing you good health, Comrade Soviet Minister of Defense!"

"Congratulations on the 70th anniversary of our great October Socialist Revolution!"

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!"

Those three drawn-out "Hurrah!" sounds were the most iconic sound at Soviet military parades, one after another, rolling from one end of Red Square to the other.

After the review, Sokolov stood before the microphone and gave a brief speech. He reviewed the significance of the day, the achievements of the Soviet Army over the years, and the Party's consistent peace policy and leadership. He concluded with a series of progressively stronger slogans; with each slogan, the entire audience and the reviewed troops responded with a resounding "Hurrah!"

Glory to the great October!

"Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!"

"Glory to the Soviet people—the people of creators, the people of victors!"

"Glory to the Soviet Armed Forces!"

"Hurrah—!"

The sound waves rose higher and higher, making people's eardrums vibrate.

The parade had ended, but the crowd on the reviewing stand was still immersed in the lingering echoes of steel and shouts, unable to come back to their senses for a long time.

Slava turned around and slowly spoke to the delegations from all over the world behind him.

“Comrades, please remember,” he said.

"What the United States has never feared is Soviet nuclear weapons, nor Soviet tanks or nuclear submarines."

The Soviet Union's ground forces could only threaten Europe, while the United States' nuclear forces were no weaker than the Soviet Union's. The fundamental reason Americans feared the Soviet Union was because it possessed an ideology capable of completely destroying the Western capitalist world—

The core competitiveness of the Soviet Union lay in its communist ideology.

"This competitiveness is unprecedented. Many foreign comrades consider the Soviet Union to be a larger version of Russia, and Americans sometimes directly refer to us as Russia instead of the Soviet Union, which is wrong."

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a national union without geographical or ethnic characteristics, which is extremely rare in human history.

It is not Russia, nor any so-called nation-state; it is a unique alliance in human history with a social system for its citizens, and communist ideology is the foundation of our nation.

He scanned the various expressions on the faces below the stage, and his voice deepened.

"The current international communist movement is no longer in the same form as it was in the 1960s and 1970s."

The weakness of the bourgeoisie has never been manifested in the suppression of communists. The capitalist counterattack has plunged the international communist movement into a slump, and the West's constant demonizing propaganda has led many people to misunderstand us.

But one fact everyone should acknowledge is that a social system or an ideology, without considerable appeal, is insufficient to motivate tens of millions to willingly sacrifice their lives for it!

"On the snowy plains of Northeast China, in the cities of Western Europe, in the rainforests of Latin America, and on the plateaus of Africa, comrades from different countries, different ethnic groups, and speaking different languages ​​shake hands with each other because they share the same worldview and are willing to fight for the same goal!"

The bourgeoisie will never understand why a country thousands of miles away could organize and support the rule of another country without any self-interest; such a thing has never happened before in history.

"Bethune, Camus, Orwell, Hemingway, Tito, Neruda, Sartre... Most of these people may never have had any dealings with Spain in their lives, yet they were willing to join the International Brigades in Spain and at the call of the Comintern to come to Madrid and fight the fascists with bayonets."

This spirit is incomprehensible to many. They fear the appeal of communism, preferring to believe we've used brainwashing and biotechnology for control rather than acknowledge that an ideology can transcend national borders, ethnicities, languages, and cultures, inspiring a stranger to be willing to give their life for another.

He paused for a moment, his gaze slowly sweeping across the faces of each delegation member.

"I want to tell you comrades that we must never abandon communist ideology. This is our most precious thing, and I hope that none of us will betray our fundamental principles."

A long silence fell over the audience.

A moment later, applause erupted like a tidal wave.

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 military parade was followed by a mass parade.

This was the segment with the most slogans. The announcer on Red Square read out the slogans one by one through a loudspeaker, and each time a slogan was read out, the crowd responded with a thunderous shout of "Hurrah!"

Every year at this time, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would issue a special set of slogans commemorating the anniversary of the October Revolution, published in Pravda. There were usually dozens to hundreds of slogans, ranging from paying tribute to the Party, the people, and the armed forces to paying tribute to the working class, collective farm peasants, and intellectuals of the constituent republics, and then to paying tribute to the people of the fraternal socialist countries.

There was one change in this year's slogan that was immediately noticed by sharp-eyed observers—

Among the long list of brotherly countries named in tribute, in addition to Eastern European countries, Vietnam, Cuba, Mongolia, and Laos, North Korea was listed separately as usual, but this time, for the first time, China was added to the list.

These two words are the most resounding footnote to the leaders who had just shaken hands at the airport.

The announcer's voice echoed across Red Square, building the grand ceremony step by step towards its final climax. At the very end, those three unchanging lines resonated:

"Under the banner of Lenin, under the leadership of the Communist Party, forward! Towards the victory of Communism!"

Long live the great October!

"Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!"

The shouts of "Hurrah!" from hundreds of thousands of people on Red Square merged into a wave of sound that soared into the sky.

On the reviewing stand, Slava stood beside Deng Xixian, gazing at the sea of ​​red flags below and at the faces behind him, from all corners of the world, all looking up in the same direction.

On the 70th anniversary of the October Revolution, exactly one month after Black Monday, left-wing forces from all over the world gathered in Moscow, and Sino-Soviet relations reached a new height not seen in twenty years—a glorious moment that any Soviet leader could only dream of.

But Koslava remained on edge.

These delegations will all be attending tomorrow's Party Congress as observers. This meeting will decide the future of the world communist movement, the new relations between the Soviet Union and other countries, and most importantly—

To correct the general direction of the various subordinates in the Warsaw Pact Group who have different reform directions and ulterior motives.

Soviet military aid and economic subsidies were not a bottomless pit, nor were they the basis for these people to lie low and do nothing! As Soviet reforms deepened, the resistance from domestic bureaucrats would rise sharply. If these opposition groups joined forces with the conservatives of the Warsaw Pact to oppose him, it would not be a good thing.

We must clear away the obstacles on our path of reform in advance.

He had already prepared his trump card, offering different prices to each of his underlings.

Chapter 80: The Brezhnev Doctrine is Great!

On November 8, 1987, the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union officially opened in the Great Hall of the Kremlin.

Red flags fluttered in the auditorium, where thousands of delegates gathered, and a huge portrait of Lenin overlooked this sea of ​​red above the rostrum.

One after another, delegations from fraternal parties from various countries took to the podium to deliver their speeches—from Western Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America… The underlying theme of each speech was the same: victory!

The ongoing Great Depression across the ocean gave everyone present a long-lost sense of pride and triumph. For the first time in seventy years, the banner of socialism was raised high in such an atmosphere of victory!

Koslava's mind was not on the enthusiastic speeches on stage.

In the next few days, he will take advantage of the window of opportunity before the situation gets to its worst and while the United States is preoccupied with its own problems, to give his Warsaw Pact allies a good talking-to.

Fortunately, Gorbachev didn't implement the new thinking diplomacy, otherwise Slava would have had a better chance of utilizing Brezhnev's legacy.

Slava commented:

"The Brezhnev Doctrine has a myriad of principles, but in essence, it boils down to one sentence: 'Intervention is justified!'"

For centuries, since the Treaty of Westphalia, the prevailing view has been that sovereignty is paramount, self-determination of borders is justified, and interference is unjustified. The Brezhnev Doctrine overturned this old argument, a significant achievement.

This principle was derived by the socialist camp from its struggles, and Brezhnev drew the conclusion. Based on this principle, they intervened, sent troops, and brought fraternal countries back to the right track.

PS: The Treaty of Westphalia was a treaty signed in 17th-century Europe after the Thirty Years' War, marking the birth of modern sovereign states.

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 first day's agenda concluded, and it was already dark. Slava had the North Korean delegation invited to a quiet meeting room in the Kremlin.

Before the North Koreans arrived, Director Nian went into the house first. She plopped down on the sofa, took out a chocolate as usual, and glanced at Slava's unusually tense face.

"What, you're getting nervous about meeting that old fox Kim Il-sung?"

Slava shook his head: "North Korea is a tough nut to crack."

He paced slowly around the room, his brow furrowed.

"In the past year or so, we've subdued countless disobedient regimes. But North Korea is different from Hungary and Bulgaria. Those Eastern European Warsaw Pact countries were, in essence, regimes grafted onto the regimes by the Red Army after their invasion; their party legitimacy was granted by Moscow—"

So whenever we change course, their party can always find a corresponding reformist to take over. Kádár worked on the new economic mechanism in Hungary for twenty years, and people like Mladenov have always been in the Bulgarian party.

"By adjusting these countries, we are adjusting a system that originally shared the same origins as ourselves."

“But North Korea is different. Like Lao Zhong, they fought their way to victory.” Director Nian stopped eating sunflower seeds.

"Yes, Kim Il-sung's regime was built through the self-reliance of the Paektu Mountains and the anti-Japanese guerrillas, not by us. This narrative was frozen after the August Factional Incident in 1956—that year, the pro-China Yan'an faction and the pro-Soviet Soviet faction within the Party joined forces to try to get rid of him, but he ended up wiping them all out, erasing them and their achievements from the Party's history."

Since then, the Workers' Party of Korea has made a major ideological break with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party.

"Main ideology?"

"It is the product of this separation." Slava nodded. "On the surface, it talks about autonomy, self-reliance, and self-defense, but at its core, it boils down to one sentence—North Korea's affairs are decided by the Workers' Party of Korea itself, and foreign parties have no right to interfere!"

This means we can't even find a foothold in any faction within the Korean Workers' Party. The pro-Soviet faction? They were all physically eliminated in 1958; what's left are all people personally selected by Kim Il-sung who are utterly devoted to the Paektu bloodline.

He continued:

"And there's something even more troublesome. In 1980, at the Sixth Congress, Kim Jong-il officially designated his successor—damn it, this is the only hereditary succession in the entire socialist camp!"

Even Brezhnev disapproved of this back then, privately criticizing them for being feudal. But with the succession plan locked in, any slight adjustment to the line of succession directly undermines the legitimacy of Kim Jong-il's rule.

Kadar's reforms allowed him to redefine his own position within the reform process. Kim Jong-il, on the other hand, lacked this advantage. His entire political capital rested on the claim of being the "purest successor to the Great Leader's line." With the line shifted, half of his twenty years of succession planning was rendered useless.

So this kid is definitely the most staunch opponent of reform, and ironically, he now controls both party affairs and propaganda.

Director Nian squinted: "Even if you manage to persuade the older generation, the lower-level implementers can also handle it, which is a bit difficult—China and North Korea have a military treaty."

The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between China and North Korea was signed in 1961 by Premier Zhou Enlai and Kim Il-sung in Beijing. The treaty stipulates that if one contracting party is at war due to aggression from another country, the other contracting party shall immediately provide military and all other forms of assistance.

We cannot use force against North Korea; we cannot afford the cost of relations with China plummeting to a freezing point again.

PS: This is the only military alliance treaty with mutual defense nature that China has signed with a foreign country to date. The treaty was renewed three times in 1981, 2001 and 2021, which is enough to show the importance that Lao Zhong attaches to North Korea.

“That’s not all. We can’t cultivate loyalists like we do with the constituent republics.” Slava sighed. “North Korea implemented the ‘Ten Principles of a Unique Ideological System’ in the 1970s, changing the entire cadre system from being responsible to the party to being responsible to the leader personally.”

The promotion, personal wealth, and even the treatment of their families of officials are all tied to the leader, not to any position within the system. This system is virtually immune to external influences.

A Hungarian bureau chief could carry out Kádár's instructions while secretly studying Western economics at home; if a North Korean official of the same rank were discovered studying foreign materials, they'd probably have to launch a three-pronged attack on Seoul.

"Could we try to exert economic pressure?"

“They are independent and autonomous, and their relationship with Lao Zhong is also quite ambiguous.” Slava shrugged.

"Hungary and Bulgaria were able to make changes because their economies already had room for flexibility—Hungary had the lowest level of agricultural collectivization, and Bulgaria had a lot of light industry that could be exported."

What about North Korea? It has an extremely militarized and distorted heavy industrial structure, with military spending accounting for 25% of its national economy, far exceeding our 14%. Their entire industrial system is designed for wartime mobilization, while the civilian sector has shrunk drastically.

This structure cannot be reformed gradually because there are simply no peripheral departments to change—any change would touch the core of the military industry.

He then said, "What's really disgusting is that North Korea can turn around and control us. It's standing right there on the 38th parallel, which is an asset in our Far East strategy. We can't really turn against it, otherwise, who will it side with if it falls?"

Even if China and the Soviet Union reconciled now, Pyongyang could still find a way to exploit the gap between them. It could still create trouble for us, provoke South Korea, withdraw from nuclear negotiations, and engage in terrorist activities...

Every time, those of us behind the scenes are forced to endorse it or put out its fires.

Director Nian's eyes turned cold: "I know that. At the end of this month, they're going to cause us a huge mess. In order to sabotage next year's Seoul Olympics, their agents will plant a bomb on a plane, causing the plane to crash and killing more than a hundred people. Once this happens, the whole world will be watching Pyongyang, and we, as the ones behind it, will be dragged down with them."

The room fell silent for a moment.

"So tonight I saw that they couldn't reason with Kim Il-sung to get him to give up Juche ideology—it was like talking to a brick wall. For the past thirty years, he's been receiving aid while simultaneously preaching Juche ideology."

Slava made a decision: "We want to turn North Korea into a limited sovereign energy and military vassal in the Far East system. I don't want to turn it into Hungary; I don't have the ability, nor do I need to. I just want it to be obedient and not cause me trouble."

How do I make it obey?

“Use what they want most to bind them. Hasn’t North Korea always wanted to build nuclear weapons?” Slava said.

“We gave them nuclear power plants. In late 1985, Gorbachev signed an agreement with North Korea, promising to help them build four VVER pressurized water reactors in exchange for them joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—which they did that year.”

But this project hasn't seen a single shovel of earth moved since it was signed. On one hand, our own economy is tight; on the other hand, I previously ordered the nuclear power plant to undergo overhauls, requiring reassessment of all types of turbines. As for North Korea, they've been dragging their feet on signing the IAEA safeguards agreement, which should have been signed within eighteen months according to the treaty.

Slava's proposal is to reactivate an old, stalled contract. The political cost of restarting it is low, and North Korea cannot directly refuse it.

“North Korea is severely lacking in electricity. Factories have switched from three shifts to two shifts. Their energy structure is coal plus hydroelectricity, and they rely entirely on us for oil,” Slava said. “Nuclear power is too tempting for them. North Korea also produces its own nuclear materials, but they lack the technology and equipment.”

If we don't give it to Lao Zhong, he'll give it to us anyway. He found Chinese ballistic missile blueprints in the Baekdu Mountains and he's going to make trouble for us.

But a nuclear power plant certainly won't bring about political reconciliation—dependence doesn't equal obedience; historically, it has always accepted foreign aid but has never compromised its principles for it. Besides, nuclear power plants take seven to ten years from groundbreaking to grid connection; by the time they're finished, it'll be too late.

"So tie it up first."

“You really understand me!” Slava’s speech quickened. “The nuclear power plant restart, the continued preferential oil prices, plus the MiG-29s—hasn’t North Korea always wanted us but never given them to us?”

I think we could add regional development of the Tumen River basin in exchange for signing a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, for renouncing international terrorism, for accepting our economic advisors to Pyongyang, and for incorporating a small element of a computer plan into the third seven-year plan.

Start with seemingly insignificant areas like foreign trade settlement and energy dispatch.

“None of these requirements demand that Kim Il-sung abandon Juche ideology. I’ve given him plenty of face, so he’ll definitely be able to explain it to his cadres. I think the essence of the reform can be subtly incorporated into the guise of technological cooperation, which is much more effective than forcing him to change his course directly.”