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

Slava knew better than anyone how the Polish party ended up on another timeline—the 1989 "Round Table Conference," where the party sat down with Solidarity to negotiate a semi-free election, which resulted in a landslide victory for Solidarity, the collapse of the party, and Jaruzelski's resignation.

He absolutely could not allow this outcome to repeat itself. If the Polish party collapsed like this, it would be tantamount to declaring the entire Warsaw Pact reform a failure from the very first step!

So an order was issued from Moscow.

He must dismantle Solidarity.

While Solidarity appeared to be an impenetrable union in 1987, it was actually riddled with cracks.

The Wałęsa faction was based on workers, had strong nationalist tendencies, relied heavily on the church, and genuinely disliked the Soviet Union. However, he was only suited to causing trouble, not to be a leader.

In December 1990, Lech Wałęsa defeated his opponent in the first direct national election and was elected president for a five-year term. However, he didn't even serve a second term before losing to former communist Kvašenevsky.

An anti-communist hero lost to the successor of the Communist Party, which they had just overthrown!

PS: Sometimes I don't quite understand those people on Zhihu who praise Wałęsa. In the 1995 election, Wałęsa's approval rating was among the lowest of all candidates. He had enough prestige as a standard-bearer of anti-communism, but he was terrible as a ruler.

After becoming president, Wałęsa exhibited strong authoritarian tendencies and a personalized style. He proposed "rule by axe" (rzady siekiera), frequently clashed with parliament, the prime minister, and the cabinet, attempted to expand presidential power to interfere in the formation of the government, and even turned against the prime minister from his own camp. The Solidarity movement quickly fell apart because of him.

After becoming president, his lapses in conduct at diplomatic events, his vulgar language, and his contempt for intellectual advisors gradually alienated Poland's intellectual class and urban middle class. Many Solidarity intellectuals who had initially supported him eventually broke with him.

During his first term, Poland experienced massive unemployment, the collapse of state-owned enterprises, and inflationary shocks, which remained unresolved. His original working-class base began to oppose him. Ironically, it was the Gdansk shipyard workers who had made him a detective who voted against him.

Therefore, his best place is actually to become a spiritual leader, a national mascot, so that he won't get hit by a boomerang.

Other factions within Solidarity, such as the Kulona faction, consisted of left-wing intellectuals who believed in social democracy; the Michnik faction consisted of pro-Western liberal intellectuals who were in line with the student movement of 1968; there was also the church faction, which was conservative and nationalist and dominated the countryside; and at the very edge was the radical "Fighting Solidarity" that advocated the violent overthrow of the Communist Party.

Slava's decision was to absorb the Kulon faction, divide the Wałęsa faction, isolate the Michnik faction, and monitor the Fighting Unity faction.

Kulon was a man worth courting. The improving Soviet economy, abundant consumer goods, and the real-time feedback mechanism of the computer program—if packaged as a new form of "democratic participation"—were genuinely attractive to someone like Kulon.

Slava's order was to push the Jaruzelsky government to invite people like Kulon to join an institution such as an "economic reform advisory group" early the following year.

On the surface, it was about incorporating the opinions of the opposition, but in reality, it was about gradually pulling Kullon out of the political core of Solidarity.

Kullon may not accept the invitation, but once it is made public, the cracks within Solidarity will be widened even further.

Lech Wałęsa is even more difficult to deal with. He is an international moral authority and a symbol of the working class; he cannot be confronted directly, but he can be sidelined.

In fact, by 1987, Wałęsa was already facing criticism from the younger generation of workers within Solidarity, who felt he was too pragmatic and too willing to compromise. Slava's solution was to push Jaruzelski to give Solidarity limited recognition—restoring its legal status but barring it from participating in elections.

This move both gave Wałęsa the status of a leader of the opposition within the system and stripped him of the special aura of being the only opposition figure.

As for Michnik and his group of militant solidarity fighters, just keep an eye on them—suppressing them would make them martyrs, attracting even more discontent and raising their political value to the point where they could be canonized.

As for the economic issues, the Soviet Union simply could not afford to take on that $390 billion debt.

Slava decided to speak with the Western creditors on behalf of the Soviet Union as Poland's debt repayment coordinator. The Soviet Union expressed its willingness to guarantee a portion of Poland's foreign debt, provided that the West agreed to significant extensions and discounts.

This statement itself was the Soviet Union's way of appeasing the West, while also providing a way out for Western banks that had long wanted to cut their losses but lacked a political face-saving option.

After all, banks need to make money and eat. They were anxious because they couldn't get back the large sum of money they had lent to Poland. Now that the Soviet Union had promised to help repay the money, these Western creditors who had lent to Poland would immediately become pro-Soviet.

With the Soviet Union thriving and the Warsaw Pact unlikely to disintegrate anytime soon, if Poland were to collapse due to its debt crisis, the Soviet Union would simply resolve the issue by force, leaving no opportunity for international capital to carve up Poland's state-owned assets.

This debt must not be allowed to become a bad debt; we must follow in the footsteps of the Soviet Union! As for confronting the Soviet Union—to hell with it! I need to eat; are you, America, going to pay me back the $390 billion I owe?

That's how capitalists are; as long as there's enough profit, they'll even sell the rope to hang themselves, even if it means defying national policies.

At that time, the world was in the midst of an economic crisis, and banks were struggling to stay afloat. The Soviet Union's timely guarantee allowed these capitalists to stay a little longer at the card table. Some of these capitalists were almost ready to put up a memorial tablet for Tsar Ivanov I in their homes!

But why did these banks end up needing Soviet assistance?

In short, the deepening political divisions in Western Europe gave the Soviet Union more opportunities to pull them away from American control and onto its side.

After promising to guarantee Poland's debts, Slava planned to use barter within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) to replace part of the hard currency repayments—the Soviet Union would buy more ships and meat from Poland (Poland was the only country in the entire Warsaw Pact where collectivization had largely failed and a large number of private small farmers remained), settle the accounts in rubles, and then let Poland use these rubles to buy consumer goods in the Soviet market.

Then there's the shipbuilding industry in Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity. Slava's order was to help Poland secure shipbuilding orders from the Warsaw Pact and the Third World (Cuba, Vietnam, Algeria, Libya, India), to get the shipyards in Gdansk back to work, and to give that place that had bred the opposition back to work, higher wages, and a future—this was called cutting off the fuel supply.

As for the 75% of Polish farmland still held by private small farmers, Slava did not force the Polish party to continue to promote collectivization. One must eat one bite at a time and walk one step at a time. You can't do ten years' worth of work in one year. So the Soviet Union generously and officially recognized Poland's "mixed ownership" model of agriculture, packaging it as diversity within the socialist camp.

Finally, a set of rhetoric was tailored specifically for the Polish party – “The Polish-style Socialist Path.”

Slava instructed the propaganda department to consider redefining Poland's three inescapable realities—agriculture dominated by private ownership and small-scale farming, the social authority of the Catholic Church, and Solidarity—as characteristics of Polish socialism.

This is not called deviating from socialism; it is called "the form of realization of socialism under specific conditions in Poland."

This rhetoric gave Jaruzelski a way out internally, allowing him to tell party members: "We are following a Polish path, not a copy of the Soviet model."

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.

After dealing with the Polish issue, the last country was Czechoslovakia.

General Secretary Husak was 74 years old. After Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 1969, he replaced Dubček and presided over the "normalization" project—wiping out all the reform achievements of the Prague Spring of 1968. During his 18 years in power, his governing philosophy can be summarized in one sentence: "Don't touch anything."

Everyone who supported the reforms in 1968 was expelled from the Party, removed from public office, expelled from universities, and expelled from the cultural sector.

In a country of fifteen million people, among those expelled were Czechoslovakia's top scientists, engineers, economists, and cultural figures. They sank to the bottom and became the core of underground culture—underground publishing, underground universities, and underground philosophical discussions.

Czechoslovakia's economy is not in crisis—low foreign debt, stable living standards, and no inflation. Yet, it also lacks any vitality. It's a state of slow death: everything seems fine on the surface, but innovation has stagnated, technology has fallen behind, and young people see no hope for development. This industrial powerhouse, which was already one of Europe's most developed countries before being taken over by the Soviet Union in 1948, has gradually weakened over the past forty years.

Slava's opinion was that if people didn't change their thinking, they should be replaced.

Just a month after this meeting, Husak will resign as General Secretary, and Yakesh will succeed him as originally planned—a mediocre conservative who has neither the courage to suppress nor the direction to reform, and will only watch helplessly as the situation slowly deteriorates.

Slava absolutely cannot allow Yakesh to succeed him. He wants to put forward Prime Minister Straugal, a moderate reformer within the party and with good relations with Moscow.

On the evening of November 11, Slava invited Husak and Straugal to dinner alone, but left out Yakesh, who was supposed to succeed him.

The very act of hosting this meal was a political signal. During the meal, Slava's words were cryptic yet perfectly watertight, but the meaning was clear:

The Soviet Union preferred Straugar.

Husak understood immediately—wasn't he himself put on the throne by being specifically named by the Soviet Union? He knew exactly how to interpret such words.

The final arrangement was that Husak would retain the national presidency (a position not held by the party) and retire gracefully, while Straugal would take over the real power of General Secretary.

Then came the sensitive issue of freezing the 1968 Prague Spring.

In Hungary, he had to actively address 1956 because it was the only way for the Hungarian Party to extricate itself from its predicament; in Czechoslovakia, he didn't even touch 1968.

Every country has its own unique circumstances. Hungary's Nagy has been dead for thirty years, and dealing with him is purely a historical issue. But in 1968, Czechoslovakia's Dubček was still alive—he is now living a semi-house arrest retirement in Slovakia.

Overturning the verdict of 1968 would mean the return of a living person to politics, which would immediately cause an earthquake in the power structure.

Therefore, Slava set a tone of selective silence for the Czechoslovakian Party—neither affirming the "counter-revolutionary" label, because that would make him appear as rigid as Brezhnev, nor publicly re-evaluating it, because that would cause the Czechoslovakian Party to collapse in legitimacy on the spot.

In private, he only gave Straugar the advice:

"Some chapters in history, I think, require time and distance to see clearly; right now, the Party's task is to focus on economic development, as for political reversals, merits and demerits, etc., let future generations judge them."

Economic reform requires the implementation of computerized planning. In Czechoslovakia, the focus is not on abandoning marketization—because it hadn't really implemented it much in the first place—but on using computer technology to revitalize that stagnant planning machine.

Then came the issue of the more than 500,000 people exiled after the Prague Spring. Slava pushed for a limited rehabilitation, exonerating ordinary, apolitical people who were implicated after the Prague Spring.

Those ordinary scholars who had merely signed their names and written a few articles in support of reform were restored to their right to work and publish, while Havel, the core members of Charter 77, and those with strong political opposition were not included.

Czechoslovakia was terrified of being crushed by Soviet tanks, so Husak simply expelled most of those who had even remotely touched on reform from the party. Slava believed that the vast majority of those 500,000 people were ordinary people who wanted to return to normal life, with only a small group being political activists.

Give the former a way out, and isolate the latter.

Finally, there's the matter of dealing with Slovakia.

Czechoslovakia was a federation of Czechoslovak and Slovakian parts, and Husak himself was Slovak. The "humanitarian socialism" movement of that time was primarily a movement of Czech intellectuals; the Slovaks wanted more of a national federation.

Slava's order was to grant Slovakia more autonomy within the framework of the computer plan, allowing Bratislava's economic planning to be coordinated directly with Moscow, without having to go through Prague every time.

At the same time, Slovakian cadres were promoted, and Slovakian language and culture were supported. In this way, Slovakia became a stable anchor within the federation—Czech intellectuals were stirring up their opposition, while Slovakian workers and peasants felt the current system was beneficial to them. This made it difficult for a nationwide opposition movement to unite.

Even in the worst-case scenario, we can simply split up, letting the Czech Republic in the west get out while Slovakia stays at home.

PS: There is this option in the game; when Czechoslovakia's liberalization gets out of control, you can choose to split it in two.

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.

Having finished dealing with the last two countries, Poland and Czechoslovakia, Slava stood by the window and let out a long sigh of relief.

These past few days he's gone through all the patients in the Warsaw Pact camp, one by one. Looking back, this wasn't a reform of the COMECON members at all; it was clearly six or seven completely different major projects. Each country had a different political structure, economic situation, ideological burden, and form of social opposition, and each had to be analyzed using entirely different logics.

East Germany traded economic aid for political adjustments; Hungary traded a direction for the transfer of sovereignty; North Korea gradually locked down regional integration; Romania awaited a coup within its party; Bulgaria was a free model; Czechoslovakia was a delicate operation; and Poland, on the other hand, offered a crutch to a party prepared to die, allowing it to live with dignity.

On the last day of the conference, the leader said to Slava, "Your approach is exactly the opposite of Gorbachev's."

Slava understood what the leader meant. On another timeline, Gorbachev's attitude towards these brotherly countries ultimately boiled down to "Your own affairs, you decide for yourselves."

This sounds like an open-minded approach and a delegation of power, but in reality, it's tantamount to handing over leadership.

Once a core member relinquishes control, the entire camp scatters into fragments under the centrifugal forces of its members!

The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) needed a new form of leadership, one that relied not on tanks or orders, but on tailoring a development path for each country that was both feasible for itself and could be integrated with the Soviet Union.

Based on this, Slava firmly believed that the Soviet Union could become the true and dynamic leadership core of the Warsaw Pact.

Outside the window, the November night in Moscow was as deep as ever. Koslava knew that on his last day, he would face China.

Since the Sino-Soviet split, it's time to have a frank and open conversation with China.

I need to take a day off to go to the hospital.

As the title says, something urgent has happened; I need to go to the hospital with my mom for a CT scan. I'll update tomorrow.

Chapter 84 Sino-Soviet Friendship Restored

After dealing with the various dissenting opinions among the Warsaw Pact allies, Slava saved the most important meeting of the conference for last.

China.

These days, I've been diagnosing and prescribing treatments for each of the entire camps: East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia... Each one is a body with varying degrees of illness, and each one needs to be analyzed using different logic.

But no matter how different those countries are from one another, in Slava's eyes they are all the same kind of thing—patients, pieces he can play.

But China is different. It is another great power that can rival the Soviet Union. It is another player in the game, not a vassal of the Soviet Union.

This country built its empire inch by inch on its own; its legitimacy doesn't depend on Moscow's approval, and it stands tall and proud. At this table, Slava can only talk.

At noon on November 12, in a solemnly furnished reception room in the Kremlin, the delegations from both countries sat facing each other across a long table.

On the Soviet side were Slava, Nyanko-Doubi, and Premier Ryzhrykov; on the Chinese side was Deng Xixian, who, though no longer on the front lines, was clearly the one making the decisions.

The atmosphere at the start of the talks was so tense it felt like war was about to break out, a far cry from the friendly atmosphere that had prevailed when the Chinese delegation visited the Soviet Union. Friendship was meant to demonstrate the unity of the socialist camp to the outside world, but now that the door was closed, everyone was going to speak frankly and openly.

From ideological debates to tense standoffs on the border, from the gunfire at Zhenbao Island to dozens of divisions facing off day and night along the thousands of kilometers of border—the two largest socialist countries have treated each other as their most dangerous enemies for a full twenty years.

For twenty years, the two countries vilified each other as traitors in the newspapers. The Soviet Union amassed a million troops in the Far East, while China dug air-raid shelters underground.

Now, the leaders of these two countries are sitting at the same table again.

The small talk was warm, the tea was lukewarm, but Krishna knew in his heart that none of the people sitting across from him were there to reminisce.

The people at this table are making decisions about the lives and fortunes of over a billion people; each of them represents a vast nation that needs to be accountable.

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.

No one expected that Deng Xixian would be the first to speak.

The old man put down his teacup and, in his slow but clear voice with a heavy Sichuan accent, placed the question that had stood between the two parties for twenty years on the table.

"Comrade Ivanov, those past disputes between our two families," Deng Xixian waved his hand, "who is a Marxist-Leninist and who is a revisionist, we argued for years and fought a lot of battles."

I think we should just let those things go.

He paused for a moment: "We end the past and create the future; we let go of the past and look forward."

There was a moment of silence in the reception room.

Slava knew that this was the famous quote from Gorbachev's visit to China, which led to the establishment of Sino-Soviet friendship.

Twenty years ago, China was the first to stand up and point its finger at the Soviet Communist Party, accusing it of degeneration, betraying Lenin, and becoming a revisionist—a label the Soviet Union wore for twenty years. Logically, today, if the two sides are seeking reconciliation, China should demand an explanation, at least for the Soviet Union to acknowledge this old grievance.

But Deng Xixian didn't. He immediately wiped the question of "who is right and who is wrong" off the table, a question that everyone thought would lead to a stalemate for a long time.

He doesn't like to go back to the past.

Slava understood immediately how to respond. He didn't try to take advantage of the situation—that would be petty and would disrespect Deng Xixian's magnanimity. He also spread his hands, his tone frank:

"Director Deng is right! We could go through the old accounts one by one, and we still wouldn't be able to finish. Even if we did, the two families would still be the same, and no one would gain any extra flesh!"

The same applies to the Soviet Communist Party—let's put aside the accusations we've made against each other over the years and look forward.

He paused for a moment, then said half-jokingly:

"Besides, this label has been worn by people over the years, and I think it's a bit ridiculous to put it on anyone's head. What was the situation back then, and what has it become now? If we really want to discuss this, it would probably take three days and three nights to figure out who should correct whom."

This was half a joke, but the absurdity of history hidden beneath the surface was something everyone at the table could discern. The roles of offense and defense reversed, and right and wrong became a complete mess.

A hint of a smile flickered in Deng Xixian's cloudy eyes.

Relations between the two parties were formally restored in this back-and-forth exchange. As for Zhenbao Island, and the bloodshed on the border over the years, there was an unspoken understanding between the two sides—