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

Slava's plan to build a space agency is to break down this black box.

Civilian aerospace was separated from the military system to form an independent agency with budget auditing. Those who profited from coordination lost their jobs, and a portion of the military's budget from aerospace projects was cut off—once it was cut off, it was gone forever.

But Slava has the support of the military establishment and a majority of the Central Committee.

Defense Minister Sokolov and Chief of the General Staff Ogarkov both supported the reforms. The majority of the several hundred members of the Central Committee supported the Politburo's departmental reforms.

In recent years, Slava has been reorganizing one ministry after another—the nine ministries of the military industry, three education departments, the National Education Committee... Most people in the Central Committee have become accustomed to this pace of "Slava moving one department at a time".

Each time the sky didn't collapse after the operation, the effects were always visible, and thankfully, no major problems arose. Therefore, the resistance was much less this time compared to the first time.

Soon, at the March plenary session, the proposal to establish the space agency was passed by an overwhelming majority. Yashin's opposition was drowned out by a minority vote. The moment the proposal passed, Yashin's face was grim—he knew that the Central Committee's decision was an order, and he could only stand up to show his obedience.

Slava knew that Yashin only obeyed his words, and that the anger he was holding in would eventually find a way to be released.

What else is there to say? Send him away!

The day after the bill to establish the Soviet State Space Agency was passed, Slava launched a KGB investigation into the top brass of the Strategic Rocket Forces.

That's the speed we need! So fast that the other side doesn't even have time to coordinate and destroy evidence, or to hide the contents of the shady accounts!

The KGB had far more information than Ashin had imagined. For decades, the KGB had kept track of countless transactions that took place within the black box of that informal power structure. Now, Slava demanded it be brought out, and the KGB arrived.

In the following month, nearly a third of the senior officers of the Strategic Rocket Force were purged.

Political censorship, isolation, and expulsion from the party—those committee members involved in informal power operations over the decades were summoned one by one for questioning and investigation.

On March 25, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued a statement:

"Comrade Yuri Pavlovich Yashin, Commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, requested retirement from the Central Committee due to health reasons. The Central Committee of the CPSU approved Comrade Yashin's request and thanked him for his many years of contributions to the country."

Comrade Alexander Alexandrovich Volkov will assume the post of Commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces.

Meanwhile, a large number of cadres from the Strategic Rocket Force and related ministries were expelled from the Party and imprisoned for reasons such as "corruption, bribery, and loss of ideals and beliefs."

The announcement didn't cause any stir in Poland on the day it was issued; the news was published in the official newspaper, but most readers just flipped past it.

It's just another old comrade retiring "due to health reasons," and another batch of corrupt officials being dismissed. This kind of thing has happened more than once in Slava's reforms over the past few years; we'll get used to it.

No one spoke out for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in the streets. Although the details of the old scandals that were unearthed were not reported in the newspapers, the words "corruption and bribery" were enough to convince most people.

Ah, yet another one.

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 March 17, the Soviet State Space Agency was officially established.

It was based on the Energy Research and Production Association (yes, that's what the Soviet department responsible for manned spaceflight was called), and incorporated all the civilian space functions that were previously scattered across the Ministry of General Machine Building, the Committee on Defense Industry, and other ministries. The space agency reported directly to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, no longer going through the military.

The military retained its authority in the military aerospace field: reconnaissance satellites, ballistic missile early warning systems, military communications satellites...

However, civilian space activities such as space stations, commercial launches, deep space exploration, and international cooperation have all been assigned to the National Space Administration.

On the very day the space agency was established, it extended invitations to the Warsaw Pact countries, hoping that the Soviet Union's allies would join the Soviet-led space cooperation system. The Warsaw Pact countries eagerly participated, none wanting to be left out.

East Germany possessed aerospace technology; its optics and precision instruments could be directly used on the space station. East Germany sent a delegation composed of experts in optics and aerospace electronics to Moscow to discuss specific cooperation modules.

Czechoslovakia has a manufacturing base, and its aerospace parts and precision machining can be used to participate in the production of space station components.

Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria... their space technology level is not as high as East Germany and Czechoslovakia, but they can contribute other things. Some can participate in the production of ground equipment, some can provide sites for tracking and control stations, and those that really can't contribute any technology can contribute money—divided according to national strength, so joining this system at least occupies a position.

In international politics, securing a place is sometimes more important than technical contribution. If you have a chair at this table, you'll get a slice of the pie when it's time to divide it; if you're not there, you get nothing.

The Warsaw Pact countries all understood this very clearly.

By the end of March, all the major Warsaw Pact member states had joined the cooperation framework led by the Soviet Space Agency. Those with technology contributed technology, those with manufacturing capabilities participated in manufacturing, and those with nothing contributed money—as for Romania, which was excluded, the KGB had already organized a coup alliance, just waiting for Secretary Cikuosecu and his wife to go on vacation in two weeks.

And so a space alliance of the socialist camp was formed.

Old Zhong's situation was a bit different. China didn't have a space agency. In 1988, China's space affairs were scattered among the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense and the Ministry of Aerospace Industry, somewhat similar to the situation in the Soviet Union where these affairs were spread across several ministries. China has always insisted on independence and self-reliance, and it was impossible for China to join the Soviet space agency and become part of that system.

Finally, China first sent a representative to join the Soviet Space Agency, representing China's interests in the soon-to-be-built International Space Station. The representative said that China wanted to understand the rules and participate in discussions first, and that once China established its own space agency, the Chinese space agency would become a strategic partner of the Soviet Space Agency.

Now, all that's missing is Europe.

On March 29, news officially came from France that the French government had agreed to begin negotiations with the Soviet Union in Paris on space cooperation.

The first step has been taken in what is the largest space cooperation project in human history, led by Moscow and spanning two major camps, from the Warsaw Pact to China to Western Europe.

Chapter 108 Soviet Space Diplomacy

May 1, 1989, International Labor Day.

Red flags fluttered in the streets of Moscow. Processions of workers marched through Red Square, floats laden with banners blared, and marches blared from loudspeakers—this was one of the most important holidays in the Soviet Union each year—a holiday for the world's proletariat!

On that very day, the French presidential plane and a group of representatives from space agencies of Western European countries landed in Moscow.

French President François Mitterrand announced that he would pay a state visit to the Soviet Union on International Workers' Day.

A large part of the reason was to make Americans jealous, because President Gephard, a hardline economic leader, had finally gotten the country mostly under control.

Since Black Monday in November 1987, which plunged the United States into the Great Depression, the whole world has been thrown into chaos by the United States!

When Reagan was in power, he would still consider the unity of the free world, urging capitalists around the world to unite against communist terrorists and maintain a semblance of peace.

Veteran politicians from the Cold War era are no pushovers. Having endured decades of confrontation with the Iron Curtain and fought against the superpower on the other side for so long, they all know the order in which to resolve conflicts.

But these young hardliners who came to power because of the Great Depression didn't think that way. Dick Gephart was too young. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1941, served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, and did not enter politics until 1976 when he became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1989, he was only 48 years old. He grew up during the most glorious and powerful era of postwar America. For him, class struggle and anti-fascism were unimportant, because those were matters for his parents' generation. The American Dream—working to support a family and buying a house and a car—was simply a matter of course for him!

Until the day my dream shatters.

Those veteran politicians, who grew up during the Great Depression in the United States after World War I and experienced the confrontation of World War II and the Iron Curtain of the Cold War, know all too well the power of communism—how did the American Dream, labor unions, and the idea of ​​one person supporting the whole family come about?

If it weren't for the class struggle that swept the globe in the early 20th century that frightened capitalists, and if it weren't for a superpower with communist ideology watching from the sidelines, how could the vast majority of Americans have lived such a good life?

However, the economic crisis of 87 greatly shook the strength of the American establishment. A large number of emerging young people wanted to make America great again. The General Secretary of the Soviet Union next door was only in his forties, and the Soviet Union regained its former deterrent power in just a few years under his leadership. Why couldn't they do the same?

Thus, with his promises, Gephardt defeated Reagan, the scapegoat for the Great Depression, in the 1988 election and became the young new president of the United States. In addition to cutting the budget and taking over Reagan's plan to take over Japan from the Soviet Union, he also began to ask other NATO members for money.

Besides demanding that NATO member states shoulder a higher proportion of military spending and purchase American equipment, the United States also focused on its operations in the Middle East. After shifting its focus from South Africa to the Middle East, the US did indeed strengthen the link between the dollar and oil by controlling oil-producing countries, which temporarily raised oil prices, and the US economy began to show signs of recovery in early 89.

Seeing that the new president was doing a decent job, major capital groups that had suffered losses during the Great Depression intensified their lobbying efforts in Congress, hoping to plunder foreign assets to continue their recovery.

Japan? Japan is already doing it, so we don't need to worry about that.

Africa? While Africa's raw materials are certainly valuable, they are not a high priority for the United States.

Then the only option is to annex Western Europe. For some time now, the US has been trying to deal with France, this troublesome country, making diplomatic threats but not daring to impose economic sanctions—the US economy was finally showing signs of recovery, and another wave of NATO infighting would cause it to decline. Therefore, the US can only try to seize assets from its allies.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Justice officially put pressure on the French company Alstom.

Alstom is a leading global supplier of power and rail transportation equipment, with world-class technology in hydropower, nuclear power equipment, and environmental control systems, holding approximately one-sixth of the global power market share. It is responsible for the manufacture, maintenance, and upgrading of all steam turbine generators for dozens of nuclear reactors in France, and also provides propulsion turbines for the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier—arguably a core strategic asset of France!

Due to the Great Depression in the United States in previous years, Alstom of France began to expand its territory in the US market. With its technological and financial advantages, it won many power infrastructure construction contracts in the United States and overseas, and had an overwhelming advantage in the competition with General Electric of the United States.

Therefore, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into Alstom's "foreign corruption" two weeks ago. The legal basis for this investigation is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which stipulates that the U.S. has jurisdiction over any company that uses U.S. dollars to sign contracts or send and receive emails through a U.S.-based entity—this is known as long-arm jurisdiction.

On April 14, Alstom's Vice President of International Sales was arrested by the FBI at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on charges of bribery to secure engineering contracts in the United States. The vice president was told he could face up to 125 years in prison in the US. A week later, several other Alstom executives were arrested in other locations in the United States.

General Electric (GE) has close ties with the U.S. Department of Justice's anti-corruption division. By 1989, seven Supreme Court prosecutors had entered GE's compliance management positions through the "revolving door." Now, with congressional support, GE directly targets foreign companies implicated in corruption cases as ideal acquisition targets.

France did not remain passive. The French Minister of Economy initially suggested finding West Germany's Siemens as an alternative buyer and even urgently passed legislation requiring government approval for foreign acquisitions of key French companies.

Then General Electric threatened that if Siemens dared to form a joint venture with Alstom, the joint venture would face a $15 billion fine. How could the most Atlanticist West Germany dare to defy the Americans? Siemens immediately withdrew.

If you're ruthless, don't blame me for being unjust. Since you're behaving so disgracefully, don't blame France for going to the Soviet Union!

Seeing France take the lead in confronting the Taliban, other Western European countries decided to follow suit. France is one of the few NATO countries that dares to confront American hegemony. If France doesn't stand up for itself this time, it will be a good start for the United States, and then Italy, West Germany, Britain, and Sweden will all suffer.

So Mitterrand brought more than just symbolic meaning with him on this trip.

Several planes following the French president's plane carried an entire business delegation from Western Europe—executives from French pharmaceutical giants, large agricultural companies, the president of Alstom, representatives from the German and Italian space agencies, and other member states of the European Space Agency who also hitched a ride with Mitterrand.

Everyone came to Moscow on May Day under the guise of space cooperation.

Slava, who had just returned from China, warmly greeted the group at the airport upon seeing them arrive to deliver money to the Soviet Union. The two shook hands in front of the reporters' cameras. Mitterrand looked better than when they met in Paris last year—after his re-election as president, the awkwardness of co-governance had ended, and he no longer had to fight for territory with the right-wing prime minister, making him much more relaxed.

Mitterrand also brought along Jean-Pierre de Georges, the president of Alstom, who said that Alstom was very interested in cooperating with the Soviet Union and hoped to undertake projects such as the renovation of electrical infrastructure in the Soviet Union and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. He talked a lot of nonsense, which made Slava very happy. So Mitterrand, Jean-Pierre de Georges and Slava took another picture.

After taking the photo, Slava realized what it was for—to pose for the Americans.

Alstom had a large amount of assets in the United States. If Alstom really sided with the Soviet Union, the United States would have every reason to acquire Alstom's assets within the scope of US intervention at a low price. Mitterrand's move was a warning to the Americans that France still wanted to maintain its independence and autonomy, and that cooperation with the Soviet Union would probably only be symbolic.

Sure enough, Alstom remained largely detached from the negotiations, and within two weeks of the negotiations ending, the French executives detained in the United States were released without charge.

A month later, Alstom CEO Jean-Pierre de Georges merged Alstom with GE's power division in the UK, forming a 50/50 joint venture.

France ultimately sought to maintain its independent status between the United States and the Soviet Union.

"Mr. General Secretary," Mitterrand said with a smile, "Happy Labor Day to all the people of the Soviet Union!"

Slava smiled and said, "Mr. President, welcome to Moscow! This is a holiday for working people all over the world, and we're celebrating it for you too!"

The pharmaceutical and agricultural companies that Mitterrand brought with him have already prepared contracts.

France's pharmaceutical industry was the best in Europe. Companies like Sanofi and Rhône-Poulenc held drug patents, manufacturing processes, and quality control systems that the Soviet pharmaceutical industry could only dream of.

Many of the medicines that ordinary people in the Soviet Union took were based on formulas from decades ago, with outdated production processes and inconsistent quality.

French pharmaceutical giants weren't just coming to Moscow to develop space-based drugs. The Soviet Union was a market of 3 million people, a market that Western European pharmaceutical companies couldn't enter due to Cold War barriers. Now, those barriers were loosening—Sino-Soviet relations were improving, Franco-Soviet cooperation was deepening, and the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) was quietly loosening, and French pharmaceutical companies sensed an opportunity.

However, those were secondary objectives. The most important thing was to acquire experimental sites on the Soviet Union's future space station!

The Soviet Union had published its pricing standards for microgravity protein crystallization services on the space station. The Soviet Union sold on-orbit experimental time to Western European pharmaceutical companies, charging by the hour.

The pharmaceutical company provided protein samples and experimental protocols. Soviet cosmonauts or future European cosmonauts stationed on the space station operated the crystallization equipment in the medical module. After crystallization, the samples were returned to Earth via Soyuz or Progress spacecraft and handed over to the pharmaceutical company for analysis.

At this time, Hirschst and Ronna Planck were racing to develop recombinant protein drugs. Insulin, interferon, and erythropoietin were at the forefront of these giants' research. The microgravity crystallization service provided by the Soviet Union could provide higher quality three-dimensional protein structure data than on Earth, directly accelerating drug design!

As for the commercial revenue from the subsequent pharmaceutical experiments? The current contract intends to distribute it according to a "platform fee + service fee" model. The Soviet Union will collect a platform usage fee, accounting for approximately 40% of the total experimental revenue. If the specific experimental operations are performed by European astronauts, the operational service fee will go to the European Space Agency. Experimental data and intellectual property rights will belong entirely to the investing companies—this is a key condition for attracting companies to participate; companies will not accept the Soviet Union having the right to view their experimental data.

Germany and Sweden, on the other hand, are interested in new materials processing experiments for the space station. Special alloys, high-purity semiconductor crystals, and optical glass produced under microgravity are all cutting-edge research projects. Germany has a long tradition in materials science, and its clients include the chemical divisions of Hirschsler and Bayer, as well as the optical division of Zeiss.

After seeing that China had already invested in the agricultural module of the space station and secured a fixed workstation, agricultural companies also plan to participate in the joint space breeding project.

French company Limagrain and the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences jointly designed a breeding experiment program—which crop varieties' seeds were sent to the space station to be exposed to cosmic rays, for how long, and where they would be planted and screened after returning to Earth.

France provided high-quality parent seeds and modern breeding and screening technologies, while the Soviet Union provided the space station experimental platform and agricultural module. The intellectual property rights of the parent varieties before the seeds were sent into space belonged to the original providers, while the intellectual property rights of variants acquired in the space environment were jointly owned by both parties.

However, commercialization rights are divided geographically: sales rights in the Soviet/COMECON market belong to the Soviet Union, sales rights in Western European markets belong to France, sales rights in the Chinese market belong to China, and so on. Rights in other global markets are negotiated and allocated or shared proportionally.

The Soviet Union also publicly announced its research on closed ecosystems. It stated that it would test a completely closed plant-microbe-water cycle system in the agricultural module to accumulate data for life support in a future lunar base.

The Soviet State Space Agency proclaimed, "This will be a crucial step for mankind toward the stars."

Even after venturing into space, humanity will still need to research deep-space agriculture, just as their ancestors did tens of thousands of years ago:

Pulling the harrow and guiding the plow, just like the first dawn of civilization.

These business representatives spent three days in Moscow, meeting with their Soviet counterparts one by one. The director was in charge of overseeing these business negotiations.

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 struggles at the aerospace table were the most intense.

The French National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) brought a technical team. The German Space Agency (DSE) sent representatives, and the Italian Space Agency (ISA) also sent personnel; these three entities together constitute the three core funding countries of the European Space Agency.

What everyone wants to discuss is how to distribute the profits afterward.

Who pays how much, who builds which module, whose astronauts go first and how long they stay, whose experimental equipment is placed where on the space station, how are the revenues from commercial launches divided, how are the intellectual property rights of the special materials produced by the vacuum manufacturing module calculated, whose module connects to the international cooperation interface of the space station first, and who has the management rights after connection...?

Each of these issues will be debated for a long time.

Semenov, representing the Soviet Space Agency, sat at the negotiating table. He first showed the Europeans his ambitious new space station plan:

A spine-like truss structure, a massive core module weighing over 90 tons, numerous standardized interfaces, and an estimated weight exceeding 300 tons upon completion...

The European engineers were ecstatic when they saw the plan; its scale and ambition far surpassed that of the American Freedom program, which was still in the early stages of development! But as their eyes lit up, the distribution of money and power became a point of contention among the parties.

The French felt that they were the first Western European country to negotiate space exploration with the Soviet Union, and that France had contributed significantly to the Columbus project, so France should receive the lion's share of the profits.

The Germans disagreed, arguing that their aerospace industry was no less capable than France's—the German Space Agency had a strong foundation in satellite technology and space experimental equipment, not to mention optical systems. Germany felt the awards should be based on technological contributions, and that it shouldn't be ranked lower than France.

The Italians feel squeezed from both sides. Italy's aerospace industry is smaller than France's and Germany's, but it can manufacture the best pressurized hulls for habitation modules in Europe. It wants to hold onto this unique technology and secure an irreplaceable position in the profits.

Semyonov's position on the Soviet side was clear: the core module and main structure were all built in the Soviet Union, and management control must remain with the Soviet Union. The European modules could be connected to international cooperation interfaces, and the operation of those modules had to comply with the safety regulations and coordination procedures set by the Soviet Space Agency.

The Soviet space agency was the "property manager" and the largest landowner of this space station.

Europeans were somewhat unhappy about this, feeling that it meant the Soviet Union had the final say on their section, and that if any disagreements arose in the future, the Soviet Union would definitely have the final say.

Slava did not compromise on this point.

"This is the space station we built! We built the core, we used our rockets for launch, and we used our fuel for orbital maintenance. Europe is certainly a guest; guests can bring their own furniture to stay, but the house is ours, and this bottom line must never be blurred!"

Semyonov held firm to this point at the negotiating table. The Europeans ultimately chose to compromise—because they had no other choice; if you didn't accept the Soviet rules, you had nowhere to go.