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

A few weeks later, a Soviet delegation flew to France.

This time, they were going to Burgundy in eastern France.

When outsiders think of Burgundy, they mostly think of wine—it produces some of the world's finest wines. But this time, the Soviets weren't there to visit the wineries.

They went to see the chickens.

Chapter 96 The Ecological Crisis of the Aral Sea

The chicken farm is very large, supplying nearly 70% of the chicken meat for northeastern France. The delegation could only tour the various factories by electric vehicle.

The French factory manager who received the Soviet delegation was unremarkable in appearance. He was rather thin, like a frail scholar, wore small round glasses, had deep-set eyes, and sported a beard like Charlie Chaplin's. He had a kind face.

Let's call him the chicken farmer for now.

The chicken farmer led the Soviet delegation into the walkway outside the chicken farm, and after everyone put on protective suits, they went into the shower room.

The shower room was rather cramped, and the overhead showerhead was leaking. There was also an observation window on the iron door. This almost gave Old Deng, a member of the delegation, PTSD. Forty years ago, when he was a guerrilla fighter, he had also been in a similar shower room, except that the showerhead sprayed toxic gas instead of disinfectant.

"Look, you can look anywhere. There's nothing here that you can't see."

The chicken farmer, with his hands behind his back, smiled at everyone.

It was quieter here than the Soviets had imagined. The delegation had expected tens of thousands of chickens crammed together to be unbearably noisy. But the French had properly controlled the temperature, ventilation, and lighting in the chicken coop, and the chickens pecked at the food on either side of the automatic feeding line, occasionally clucking a few times.

The shed was clean and almost odorless. The automatic feeding, watering, cleaning, and manure disposal systems ran smoothly. There weren't many people; most of the work was done by machines.

"How did your chicken end up dead on the ground? Could there be a problem with the breed? We're not buying ordinary white-feathered chickens that are only 40 days old. We need quality chickens. This chicken... could it have a disease?" Suddenly, a Russian in the delegation pointed to a dead chicken on the shelf that had been pecked out of its feathers and said to the chicken farmer.

The chicken farmer's eyes widened: "Look at this, where is there any chicken plague now? This is all industrialized farming. This factory alone has more than 3 chickens. Isn't it normal for a few to die every day? You're afraid of the plague, but I'm more afraid than you are!"

The Russian nodded, seemingly understanding but not quite.

"Okay, then pick out a chicken for me, let me see how good it looks."

The chicken farmer sighed, opened a shelf, scanned the chickens, gently patted them to calm them down, and then grabbed one and handed it to the Russian.

How about this one?

One member of the delegation asked, "We intend to buy these chickens to use as breeding stock. Can we guarantee their health?"

The chicken farmer shook his head speechlessly: "I raise chickens, would I sell you diseased chickens?"

"Are you sure this chicken is healthy?"

The chicken farmer fell silent, glaring at the troublemaking Russian in the delegation. If this had happened at a street stall, it might have escalated into a fight, but this was a national delegation, so the others stepped in to smooth things over.

"Hey, Rostislav, we should trust the French taste—" "But this guy looks German to me—" "Shut up!"

The Russian who had just been causing trouble was immediately covered up and dragged away. The Soviets came here mainly to learn the technology. They imported those fast-growing broiler chickens from China, and coming to see the high-quality chickens from France was just a side project.

Breeding, feeding management, slaughtering and processing, cold chain—the French had expertise in this entire upstream industrial chain that the Soviet Union lacked. After the troublemakers were pulled away, the chicken farmers quickly regained their smiles.

After the meeting, the decision to import this French industrialized chicken farming technology was basically finalized. However, after the technical discussions, the Russian who had been causing trouble started sharing his thoughts with the rest of the delegation.

His name was Rostislav Ordovsky Blanko, and he was a representative of the catering industry in the Soviet Union.

His father was a Belarusian who fled Russia after the February Revolution, his mother was Spanish, and he grew up in Caracas, Venezuela.

He came to Moscow to start a restaurant business after the Soviet Union's Individual Business Law in 1986 legalized a large number of income types. A descendant of exiles, he traveled halfway around the world to return to his grandparents' homeland to do business—initially, his restaurant catered to Western businessmen, accepting US dollars and paying in rubles.

During his trip with the delegation to see chickens, he sensed another opportunity.

"It's not enough to just raise chickens and put them on the shelves. What did economist Keynes say? To create demand, we must first make people love eating chicken, and make eating chicken convenient, cheap, and readily available. Only then can we make chicken a part of people's meat consumption."

Once people get used to eating chicken, our production pressure on beef and pork will decrease, and we should develop and promote more chicken products. Didn't Comrade Khrushchev say he wanted to prepare a good dish of beef stew with potatoes? We can't make beef stew right now, but I think we can make chicken stew with potatoes!

The minister in charge of chicken production in the delegation didn't know much about this. As a bureaucrat, his job was to ensure that production targets were met, not to develop any chicken products.

That's a consumer-side issue; it has absolutely nothing to do with the supply side.

But after Rostislav said that, he became somewhat tempted—if the Soviet Union's demand for chicken increased, then his department's power would increase, and he could take a gamble!

"So, Comrade Rostislav, could we also make American fried chicken? I went to America in '76, and their fried chicken was delicious."

The minister's idea was to develop American-style fast food and fried chicken, but both consumer representatives and administrative officials rejected the proposal. First, they argued that they couldn't simply copy the American model, and second, Soviets generally didn't eat chicken that way.

So Rostislav talked to the Frenchman. The Frenchman was polite on the surface, but deep down he was a bit resistant to fried chicken fast food.

The French tradition of raising chickens is to roast chicken, stew chicken in red wine, and to follow the "slow, flavorful, and high-quality" approach of label chickens—which is different from fast food.

Asking the French to teach the Soviet Union how to make fried chicken is like asking an Italian to teach you how to make frozen pizza or asking a Chinese chef to teach you how to make General Tso's Chicken—it's a case of culture shock.

What France could provide to the Soviet Union was breeding, raising, slaughtering, and cold chain logistics. As for how to consume it at the end, that was something the Soviets had to figure out themselves.

The minister was at a loss. He didn't have the authority to make a snap decision to ramp up fried chicken production. He was just a bureaucrat responsible for ensuring chicken production targets, and bureaucratic inertia led him to immediately abandon the project.

Rostislav understood that he had to forge this path himself. He then discussed the matter with other relevant administrative officials in the delegation, and after the discussion, he made up his mind—he wanted to create a Soviet-made fast-food brand!

Instead of simply copying the American fried chicken, the Soviet Union had its own version. He set his sights on Kiev fried chicken cutlet—a dish originally found only in high-end restaurants, one of the prides of Soviet cuisine.

He wants to use an industrialized supply chain to turn this dish, which used to be reserved for respectable occasions, into a standardized, inexpensive fast food that can be bought anywhere on the street.

To bring food that was once only available in high-end restaurants into every household.

Rostislav grew increasingly excited about the idea. Little did he know that the fast-food brand he had founded would grow into a behemoth in the years to come.

But that's another story.

P.S.: Rostislav is the founder of a Russian fried chicken brand established after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The brand was previously acquired by KFC, but it was revived after KFC withdrew from Russia due to the Russo-Ukrainian War.

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While the delegation was looking at chickens in Burgundy, trouble broke out in Central Asia, thousands of kilometers away.

A white sandstorm swept across Uzbekistan.

The storm whipped up a white dust, like salt scattered on the ground, which sent chills down my spine. When the wind picked up, the sky was first yellow, then gray, and finally a dirty white.

White salt and alkali rained down relentlessly, covering the cotton fields, the alfalfa fields that should have grown into fodder, the rooftops, windowsills, wellheads, and the children's hair.

Wherever it lands, it leaves a layer of salt and alkali, but where does this salt come from? From the Aral Sea.

The IT equipment deployed in Uzbekistan suffered greatly. Dust got into the terminals, screens went black one after another, power poles were knocked down, and a large number of computing nodes lost connection. Moscow even thought there was a major power outage in Uzbekistan.

Some local officials began to panic because the targets might not be met!

This year's cotton and alfalfa quotas are ruined! This white storm has destroyed everything in the fields, so a poor harvest is inevitable.

In the past, when faced with such a situation, the first reaction of lower-level officials would be to try to cover it up, conceal it, and falsify figures to deceive Moscow.

But this time they couldn't hide it, because Moscow already knew.

Moscow immediately dispatched a special investigation team. Before the lower-level officials could even figure out how to suppress the matter, the investigation team was already on its way.

Information technology has largely blocked the old practice of "reporting only good news and concealing bad news, and using false data to deceive superiors," which had persisted for decades. Moscow can now obtain real-time information about local disasters.

The investigation team knew that if this white storm was not resolved, the Soviet livestock industry—those chickens, cattle, and pigs that relied on Central Asian alfalfa as feed—would all suffer; the Soviet cotton industry would also be hit.

When Slava received the damage report from the investigation team, he knew he had to address the ecological issues.

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.

This story begins with the Aral Sea.

The Aral Sea was once a vast inland lake in Central Asia, but it began to experience problems in the 1950s.

The cause was cotton.

The Soviet Union wanted to develop agriculture, especially cotton cultivation. Central Asia was designated as the region for cotton cultivation. To achieve this, the Soviet Union constructed large-scale canals in the Aral Sea basin, diverting water from the two major rivers that flow into the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, to irrigate the cotton fields.

From 1960 to 1988, cotton cultivation in Central Asia expanded from 1.9 million hectares to 3.1 million hectares. During the same period, the Soviet Union's raw cotton production doubled.

What about the Aral Sea?

The water from those two major rivers was almost entirely diverted to irrigate cotton fields. By the 1980s, regardless of whether it was a normal year or a drought year, no river water could flow into the Aral Sea.

The Aral Sea, deprived of its water supply, shrank dramatically, losing more than 80% of its water source. The lake's surface receded year by year, and its shoreline receded further and further away.

The receding lake waters revealed large expanses of the dried-up lakebed. Layers of salt and alkali had been deposited on the lakebed, and with the receding waters, these deposits were all exposed to the air. The wind would then carry the salt and alkali away.

This is the White Storm.

High-salinity, toxic white dust storms are more destructive than sand. They are very damaging to the surrounding vegetation, directly altering soil conditions and causing soil erosion. Once the vegetation dies, the land becomes even more desertified, the climate becomes more severe, the Aral Sea shrinks more, more salt flats are exposed, and the storms become more intense!

This is the man-made ecological disaster that exacerbates the deterioration.

Even far from the Aral Sea, Central Asia faces the reality of land degradation. Most of the irrigation canals in that system are not lined, allowing river water to seep into the ground, raising the water table and exacerbating soil salinization.

In addition, with decades of planting only cotton without crop rotation, the planting area of ​​alfalfa has shrunk again and again, and cotton has become the only crop, resulting in the soil fertility deteriorating year by year.

The use of pesticides has reached alarming levels—tens of kilograms of pesticides are applied per hectare to cotton fields in Uzbekistan, mainly toxic substances such as DDT and lindane, with some areas using more than 70 kilograms per hectare.

In the end, all these things fall on people.

In 1987, 80% of all children who died from intestinal infections in the Soviet Union were from Central Asia. The rate of infant deaths from digestive and respiratory diseases in Uzbekistan was twice the Soviet average.

Slava remained silent for a long time as he looked at the report sent by the investigation team.

Humans have transformed nature but failed to respect its laws, and this is the bitter fruit they have sown themselves.

Those who made the decisions to build large canals and plant cotton on a massive scale in the Aral Sea basin back then were not unaware of the consequences. They knew that if all the water in the river was drained, the Aral Sea would disappear; they knew that, yet they still did it anyway.

Because cotton can generate export revenue, because Moscow needs cotton, and because they need to meet their targets!

Central Asia bore the ecological cost, while Moscow reaped the benefits of cotton production. This is the increasingly loud accusation from those former republics—ecological colonialism.

“Brezhnev…you really know how to leave me a bomb.” Slava sighed.

The bombs left behind by his predecessors were passed around to him in a game of musical chairs. Brezhnev dusted himself off and went to see his mentor to end it all, completely trusting the wisdom of this descendant!

Well, I still have to pay off my supervisor's credit card.

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 May 9, Slava summoned representatives from the Central Asian republics to Moscow.

He wants to find a way out of the Aral Sea issue.

“The Academy of Sciences gave me a plan. The most direct way to save the Aral Sea is to return the water that should be flowing into the Aral Sea to it,” Slava said bluntly.

The moment those words were spoken, the meeting room erupted in chaos.

“Comrade General Secretary,” a representative from Central Asia immediately spoke up, “if the water is returned to the Aral Sea, what about the cotton?”

That's the problem.

Central Asia's economy is built on cotton. Cotton quotas are both a shackle imposed on Central Asia by Moscow and a vital source of income for the local elites. To return the water used for cotton irrigation to the Aral Sea is tantamount to cutting down Central Asia's cotton production, and thus tantamount to threatening these people's livelihoods and power!

Looking at those faces, Slava understood what they were protecting.

Over the decades, the cotton issue has become inextricably linked to political power, ethnic relations, and the power struggle between the central and local governments! How many people embezzled funds from cotton irrigation projects in the cotton case he handled? Now that he wants to cut down cotton, he is touching an entire intricate web of vested interests.

But he had to do it, because such a distorted economy could not be sustained in the long run.

Slava said, "I know that Central Asia cannot do without cotton. If it is cut off all at once, your economy will definitely collapse. We can gradually carry out economic transformation."

First, develop water-saving irrigation technologies. Currently, those unlined irrigation canals leak everywhere, wasting a huge amount of water. If we could improve the irrigation technology, we could save a significant amount of water used for cotton cultivation—and some of that saved water could be returned to the Aral Sea. This is a way to save water without affecting cotton production.

Second, reduce dependence on cotton and find alternatives. Central Asia cannot rely solely on cotton forever; it needs to gradually introduce other crops and industries so that its economy is no longer solely reliant on cotton.

Third, gradually reduce the production targets for cotton. Reduce them a little each year, giving Central Asia's cotton-dependent economy time to gradually adjust.

These three steps cannot be rushed—rushing them will cause major chaos in Central Asia's economy and national sentiment!

Even if all of this is done, how long will it take?

"Comrades, the Aral Sea's illness cannot be cured quickly. Even if we return every last drop of water to the Aral Sea starting today, it will still take more than ten years to recover."

The meeting room fell silent.

"This is not our fault; it is all debt accumulated little by little by our predecessors over decades. The more carefree they were when they were planting cotton, the harder it is for us to pay off this debt today. This debt has landed on our hands, and we can only pay it off little by little. We can no longer leave the problem to future generations and trust their wisdom."

He looked around at the faces of those from Central Asia.

“I know some of you are reluctant to give up the cotton. But go back and look at your hometowns, those places where white storms are raging, look at those children who are dying one by one from drinking poisoned water—those are your people too! Who is the money from the cotton going to? It can't be earned by trading human lives, can it?”

No one spoke anymore.

A month later, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union convened its June 1988 plenary session, and the issues of economic transformation and ecological protection in Central Asia were formally brought into the central discussion.

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The Aral Sea will take more than a decade to recover, but the white storms in Central Asia are already raging. Slava needs to find a way to protect farmland and crops that can be effective within a few years.

Returning farmland to forest.

Remove some land that is no longer suitable for farming and has become saline-alkali, and plant trees and grass. Strengthen ecological protection and establish multiple protective forests.