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

Before Slava could answer, Director Nian stretched, turned on the overhead light, and put his sunglasses back on: "Alright, time to get to work, my great and glorious comrade. The Soviet people still need you; you can't rest yet!"

“It seems we’re not destined for a life of luxury, my beloved Comrade Hope.” Slava kissed her ear.

"I am very honored to walk with you toward our final destination."

The mentor on the wall gazed at all of this.

...

By May 1990, the "vegetable basket project" initiated by the leader had been fully implemented. Starting with the pilot project in Kyiv in 1988, direct vegetable sales points expanded to 147 large and medium-sized cities throughout the Soviet Union within two years. Fast-growing vegetables—such as bok choy, cucumbers, eggplants, and tomatoes—grown by cooperatives around cities could be supplied directly to the city's vegetable markets within a single day.

The current supply is still insufficient and far from achieving the goal of "allowing all urban residents to buy fresh vegetables at any time," but everyone has high hopes for the future.

报告里的数字显示，到1990年4月，全苏147个试点城市居民平均每星期的蔬菜摄入量比1986年增长了近125%。

In terms of meat, beef and pork production saw some increases, while chicken production grew the fastest. Industrialized chicken farming began in 1988 with the introduction of French technology, and within two years, the Soviet Union had established several large-scale chicken farms—mainly in Ukraine and southern Russia, near corn and soybean producing areas.

The number of broiler chickens slaughtered had already begun to increase in 1990. Chicken was going from being a rare commodity to becoming commonplace on the Soviet people's tables. Large quantities of cheap chicken and corn sausages could be found in state-run stores as a meat substitute for the vast majority of Soviet people.

Slava failed to achieve Khrushchev's version of socialism with potatoes and beef stew, but at this rate, the Soviet Union will likely achieve socialism with potatoes and chicken stew first.

As for the chef Rostislav, who went to France, his fast food chain "Kiev Chicken Cutlet" has already opened 5 stores in Moscow and is doing very well.

In terms of animal feed, corn cultivation has expanded in Ukraine and the North Caucasus, while soybeans are being promoted in the Far East and southern Russia. In the Far East, a cooperative breeding project with China has produced the first varieties of soybeans suitable for the Soviet climate. This sector is still in its early stages, and the feed shortage remains significant.

The cold chain in agriculture is the weakest link. Even in 1990, the Soviet Union's refrigerated transport capacity remained severely inadequate—the spoilage rate of vegetables transported from suburban cooperatives to urban markets was still too high. Insufficient refrigerated trucks, inadequate cold storage facilities, and poor infrastructure resulted in a discontinuous supply chain. This explains why, even after nearly three years of implementing the "vegetable basket" program, only a little over a hundred supply points had been established in large and medium-sized cities.

Infrastructure construction and renovation will be included in the report in the upcoming 13th Five-Year Plan.

In the upcoming 13th Five-Year Plan period, Slava set preliminary agricultural targets based on the report's indicators: the total output of staple grains in the Soviet Union should be stabilized at around 220 million tons, and the grain self-sufficiency rate should exceed 90%;

The "vegetable basket" project aims to gradually cover all cities in the Soviet Union with a population of over 500,000 over the next five years. Agricultural production and research consortia will be further promoted and applied, with the goal of incorporating 50% of eligible collective farms across the Soviet Union into such consortia by 1995.

Chicken production doubled, and beef and pork production increased by 10%, with the goal of eliminating the need for a "Fish-Eating Day" within the alliance before the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan.

The cold chain coverage rate should be increased from almost none to 15%, and the planting and development of dual-purpose crops such as corn and soybeans should be further expanded.

...

In terms of industrial and military reforms, the alliance has finally begun to recover from the growing pains of reform, albeit with some stumbles.

The reform of military enterprises, which began at the end of 1987, involved the reorganization of nine military ministries based on their technological attributes and the separation of civilian production capacity from the military system. This reform was basically completed by 1990.

In the first half of 1988, the supply of consumer goods declined due to the impact of reforms, resulting in longer waiting times and raising concerns among intellectuals. The situation only began to recover in the second half of 1988 and stabilized in 1989.

By 1990, the supply of consumer goods in the Soviet Union was much better than it had been in 1986.

The painful period was over, and the Soviet Union finally emerged from the storm and headed towards the light.

The military industry reform has brought about even more changes, with the accounting systems for civilian and military use now separated! Previously, the accounts of military ministries were a mess—military money and civilian money were mixed together, and no one could figure out exactly how much was spent or where it went.

Now they're separated; military use is for military purposes, civilian use is for civilian purposes, each has its own budget, and each is subject to its own audit.

The industrial goals for the 13th Five-Year Plan are to achieve an annual growth rate of 4% in the output value of civilian industries, continue to promote the development of civilian consumer goods industries, and achieve substantial improvements in the variety and quality of consumer goods.

Slava added a note next to the draft: "It is unrealistic to directly consult consumers about improvements to consumer products before information technology is available, but we must at least ensure the quality of our products."

Therefore, he specifically lowered the labor productivity target for the next five-year plan. The goal of the 12th Five-Year Plan was to achieve a cumulative growth rate of 20% in labor productivity over five years, while the 13th Five-Year Plan lowered this target somewhat.

Labor productivity is the most core economic indicator in the planning system. Simply put, it is "how much product is produced per unit of labor input", usually measured by per capita output or output created per working hour.

The GDP measurement commonly used in other countries was not very useful in the Soviet Union because the Soviet Union had a planned economy system in which almost all prices were set by the state. The GDP measurement system, which is suitable for a market economy system, was not well adapted to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's indicators included national income, gross industrial output, gross agricultural output, labor productivity, and real per capita income.

The logic of a planned economy differs from that of a market economy. The market relies on price signals to automatically regulate resources, while planning relies on the State Planning Commission to issue targets from top to bottom. The labor productivity growth rate is one of the core figures that is invariably included in every Five-Year Plan document.

In theory, if labor productivity increases, it means that output targets can be achieved without increasing labor and resource inputs—this is one of the pieces of evidence for the "superiority of socialism" in the official narrative since the Stalin era.

The Soviet Union did not rely on exploitative extended working hours, but rather on "advanced technology + advanced organization + enthusiasm for work" to improve efficiency!

However, in practice, this has become a major area for statistical fraud. Because labor productivity is a soft indicator, it is more difficult to verify than total output value, and it is a major area for bureaucrats at all levels to inflate figures. Factory directors often falsify reports to meet targets, or "manufacture" superficial efficiency improvements by reducing product quality and simplifying processes.

Labor productivity = output value / labor input. The per capita output value method is total output value ÷ average number of employees, and the hourly output value method is total output value ÷ total actual working hours.

So how is "output value" defined? This is where the most shady dealings occur. The Soviet Union used the so-called "gross output value method" instead of the value added method commonly used in market economies. The gross output value method includes the value of intermediate inputs but does not deduct the consumption of raw materials and semi-finished products!

This leads to an absurd result: factories can produce higher output value by using more processes and consuming more raw materials—even if the actual use value of the final product is not improved at all.

This problem had actually been criticized within the Soviet economics community long ago. There was a specific term for it called the gross output problem, which means that factories deliberately complicate simple production processes in order to meet output targets. For example, they would break down parts that could be made in one step into several processes and calculate them separately, thus creating more output value out of thin air.

The denominator of labor productivity can also be manipulated. The statistical scope of the number of employees can be adjusted (for example, excluding certain auxiliary jobs from production workers to reduce the denominator). Overtime is often not included in working hours statistics but output is included in output value. Moreover, the pricing of output value is entirely determined by the National Price Commission.

In the Soviet Union, all product prices were set administratively by the State Price Committee. In order to compare the growth rates of output figures from different years, the statistical department would use a fixed "base year" price system to calculate the output value of each year—such as the constant prices of 1926/27, the constant prices of 1955, and the constant prices of 1965. The base year was changed several times in Soviet history.

This gives the factory enough room to manipulate product pricing. Every time a factory launches a "new product" (even if it's just a different model and repackaged version of an old product), the price committee needs to set a new "fixed price" for it. This pricing process itself is manipulable; the factory manager has an incentive to set the official price of the new product too high, so that even if the actual output doesn't change, the book value can still legally increase.

This phenomenon is specifically described in Soviet economic literature as the "miracle of output value of new products".

Each time the benchmark price system was changed, the output figures for various sectors in the Soviet Union would fluctuate dramatically. This fluctuation contained both real relative price changes and a significant amount of room for administrative manipulation. When historians and economists work backward to deduce the real economic growth rate of the Soviet Union, a large part of their work involves finding ways to peel away this layer of price distortion to restore the true output.

In the end, after much deliberation, the conclusion was still: why not look at indicators like steel production, since that's easier to calculate?

Therefore, in the 13th Five-Year Plan, Slava will have to find a way to reform the planning statistics, which will definitely cause chaos again.

Slava still has a lot to learn about statistics.

...

Information technology development has been included in the 13th Five-Year Plan.

Over the past five years, the deployment of information systems has gradually expanded from pilot projects to nationwide implementation. Information technology is not OGAS (Office Automation System); information systems cannot yet automate economic management. Their primary purpose is currently to improve management efficiency, reduce corruption, and increase productivity.

The informatization construction is almost entirely centered around agricultural production and research consortia. It has not yet affected the bureaucrats of the entire country. However, in the not-too-distant future, these bureaucrats who rely on the black box of power to suck the blood and sweat of the people will also be crushed by Slava.

By 1990, over 70 percent of the major industrial enterprises, agricultural complexes, transportation hubs, and large warehousing centers in the Soviet Union had been connected to information networks. Every day, production, inventory, and logistics data from all over the country were collected in the computing center and then reported to higher authorities.

This system greatly improved the efficiency of Soviet material dispatching, transforming railway dispatching from manual and telephone-based methods to computer-optimized systems.

At the same time, the loss rate in warehousing is also decreasing. Now every batch of materials entering and leaving the warehouse is recorded in the system, showing where everything is, when it should be sent out, and when it needs to be replenished—computers are much more reliable than human brains.

The problem is that in recent years, due to the opaque nature of statistics, many warehouse supplies have been resold, which has put the bureaucrats responsible for data entry in a difficult position. They either have to lie through their teeth or obediently accept disciplinary review.

As information technology spreads further across the country, this phenomenon of reselling goods will decrease, and the transparency of the exercise of power will continue to improve.

Information technology has exposed many problems in recent years.

The Soviet Union's own computers were underpowered, with slow terminals, frequent crashes, and difficult maintenance. Some remote consortia received a terminal that would break down every few days, and each repair took a month—waiting for parts to be shipped from Moscow.

There aren't enough people who know how to use this system. Many grassroots cadres and workers still have the old habit of writing reports by hand; if you give them a terminal, they won't know how to use it or won't want to. Strengthening cadre training has also been included in the 13th Five-Year Plan.

Ultimately, the informatization goals of the 13th Five-Year Plan were changed to increase the informatization network coverage of the industrial sector to over 90%, upgrade the backbone network's communication capabilities with equipment and advanced communication technologies obtained from foreign capital (referring to Japan, which was to be ceded later); increase the localization of terminal equipment production; and carry out large-scale computer operation training nationwide.

Slava spent the most time on this section, writing numerous annotations in the margins of the report.

Next is energy.

The Soviet Union was an energy superpower, with oil and natural gas being its largest sources of foreign exchange earnings. During the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period, the global energy market experienced dramatic fluctuations. Black Monday in 1987 triggered the Great Depression in the United States, and international oil prices initially plummeted before rebounding due to the situation in the Middle East and US-Soviet production controls. Through precise control of its oil exports, the Soviet Union maintained a reasonably respectable level of foreign exchange earnings from oil during these years.

Koslava has always been anxious about making a living by selling oil.

Oil prices were beyond the Soviet Union's control—they depended on the international market, on OPEC, and on the whims of the Americans. For a country to have nearly a third of its fiscal revenue reliant on something whose price it couldn't control, it was walking a tightrope!

The energy targets for the 13th Five-Year Plan are as follows: maintain stable oil and natural gas production without blindly expanding production; intensify the promotion of Sakhalin energy cooperation projects, using Japanese technology and capital to exploit Soviet oil and gas reserves; promote nuclear power construction, with five new nuclear power plants to be built during the 13th Five-Year Plan period; and begin to study diversified routes for natural gas exports, further opening up export pipelines to Europe and China.

Slava wrote next to the energy section: "Reducing dependence on oil export revenue was a long-term task for the Soviet Union, even if it took until 2010, to ensure that the Soviet economy was no longer subject to the control of other countries."

In education, educational reforms were launched in 1988. The three departments were merged into the Ministry of National Education of the USSR, and a system of joint examinations by subject category was implemented, with constituent republics organizing local joint examinations in their mother tongues.

By 1990, the first batch of students who took the joint entrance examination under the new system had entered university.

The initial results are visible. University enrollment rates in remote areas, especially in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, have increased significantly. A number of students who were previously excluded due to insufficient Russian language skills or the high cost of traveling to big cities for exams have now achieved high scores in the joint entrance exams for their native language and entered top universities in their respective republics or even the entire Soviet Union.

The system of targeted contract students is also in operation. Due to a severe shortage of talent, many agricultural production and research consortia have chosen to sign targeted contracts with major universities to train the people needed by the local consortia—computer technicians, agricultural engineers, transportation managers, etc. These targeted students are required to return to work in the consortia for three to five years after graduation.

Although the first batch of students enrolled under the targeted enrollment program are still studying and will not graduate until around 1992, the recruitment channels have already been established.

Slava firmly believes that as agricultural production and research consortia continue to expand and as the scientific elements in agricultural labor production factors continue to improve, the traditional "farmer" will disappear into the long river of history, and be replaced by agricultural technicians and engineers.

The educational goal of the 13th Five-Year Plan is to fully promote the joint examination system and eliminate the remaining practice of schools setting their own exam questions.

Increase enrollment quotas for colleges and universities in computer and information technology, and promote vocational and technical education to train intermediate technicians in Central Asia and the South Caucasus;

We collaborate with Europe and China on student exchange programs.

In the field of space, the Buran spacecraft successfully completed its maiden flight during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the Soviet State Space Agency was established, Warsaw Pact countries joined the space cooperation system, China, France, Germany, Italy and other countries signed space cooperation memorandums with the Soviet Union, the upgrade and transformation of the GLONASS navigation system was launched, and the Eurasia Navigation Service Company was registered in Switzerland.

The design for the new International Space Station has passed all reviews and has entered the detailed design and component manufacturing phase.

十三五的航天目标是在1991年底至1992年初发射新空间站的核心桁架，1992-1993年发射居住舱和第一批实验舱，到1993年底第一阶段基本建成。

The GLONASS satellite constellation has been completed with 24 satellites, achieving global coverage, and commercial launch services have generated a stable revenue stream.

As for defense and security, this section of the report is the most brief – because specific figures and details cannot be disclosed to the public, and even in versions circulated within the Politburo, many figures are presented as code names.

The defense direction for the 13th Five-Year Plan is: to continue to advance the informatization reform of the military; to steadily advance the modernization of the navy and develop the next generation of nuclear-powered steam catapult aircraft carriers; and to maintain the reliability of strategic nuclear forces.

The 13th Five-Year Plan also included content on ecology and environmental protection, especially the Aral Sea.

Since the White Storm of 1988, the Soviet Union has done a lot on the Aral Sea issue—pilot projects for water-saving irrigation were launched in Uzbekistan, cotton production targets were gradually lowered, and the planting of protective forests was initiated in several key dust storm areas in Central Asia.

After its establishment in January 1988, the State Committee for Nature Conservation began a systematic inventory and restoration of protected areas and forests throughout the Soviet Union.

It was projected that by 1995, the Soviet Union would have restored the area of ​​afforestation and protected areas established during the Stalin era. Regarding the restoration of the Aral Sea itself, the report from the Academy of Sciences mentioned:

"The restoration of the Aral Sea is a project that will take decades, even generations. What we can do now is slow down its shrinkage. It is expected that the Aral Sea will stop shrinking in 1998 and will take at least 20 years to restore its former size and surrounding ecology."

The ecological goals for the 13th Five-Year Plan are: to continue reducing the quota for Central Asian cotton, by another 10% within five years, reducing the demand target from 4.3 million tons to 3.9 million tons;

Promote drip irrigation and water-saving irrigation comprehensively;

The area of ​​protected forests was restored to the level of the Stalin era, and a water quality monitoring network was established in the major river basins throughout the Soviet Union; the publicity of World Eco Day and tree planting activities were institutionalized, and the feasibility of inter-basin water transfer schemes began to be studied.

However, water diversion is a double-edged sword. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union proposed a plan to divert water from the north to the south—to bring water from the Siberian rivers to Central Asia. At that time, it was shelved due to environmental and technical disputes.

It's okay to bring it up again for further discussion, but we can't start construction rashly.

In terms of foreign trade and international economic cooperation, the goals of the 13th Five-Year Plan were to continue to deepen all-round cooperation with European countries, absorb industrial assets acquired from foreign countries, expand trade with China, open up deeper trade channels with Southeast Asia, and promote the entry of Soviet products into the European market.

In terms of social security, this was the area where ordinary Soviet citizens felt the impact most directly.

Housing construction during the 12th Five-Year Plan period was faster than in previous five-year plans—mainly because military-industrial reforms released a batch of construction capacity that had previously been locked within the military-industrial system. However, the overall housing shortage remained enormous, with millions of families across the Soviet Union waiting in line for housing, some for as long as ten years.

The 13th Five-Year Plan will not change the free housing system; the state will continue to provide free housing to families. This is one of the biggest obsessions since Slava's arrival.

Next, we need to prepare for the 28th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Chapter 111 The 28th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was convened.

July 12, 1990, Grand Hall of the Moscow Kremlin.

The six thousand seats were already full. Party delegates from all over the Soviet Union, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, from Murmansk to Dushanbe, were sitting in this hall of supreme power, waiting for the supreme leader standing on the podium to speak.

Slava walked onto the stage and placed his hands on the edge of the podium.

"Hoo..." He took a soft breath, stroking the smooth wooden surface.

In the center of the wall behind the rostrum is a bust of Lenin, five or six times larger than life-size.

Lights shone down from both sides and above, creating sharp lines of light and shadow on the statue's brow ridges and cheekbones.

Lenin's gaze passed over the heads of everyone in the Presidium, over the gray or completely white heads of the generals and ministers in the front row of the main hall, over the heads of the secretaries of the constituent republics and the first secretaries of the regional committees in the middle section, and landed on a certain position in the last row of the upper stands at the far end of the hall—or even further, beyond the wall, on a place that Lenin himself might or might not see.

Two huge red flags hung down from either side of the statue. The golden hammer and sickle had faded with time. The flags remained motionless in the airflow from the air conditioning vents in the hall, with only the bottom corner occasionally flipping.

The red of those flags was somewhat uneven; the red was deeper in the folds, while the raised areas along the folds illuminated by the light were somewhat whitish.

They've been hanging here since the Stalin era, from the 22nd Congress, the 23rd Congress, the 24th Congress... and they're still hanging here today.

Slava suddenly sensed something and turned slightly to look behind him.

A line of golden letters is inlaid on the lintel above the huge portrait of Lenin: XXVIII СЪЕЗД КПСС

—The 28th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Above it, higher still, a line of Russian text runs across the entire wall: Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!

Workers of the world, unite!

No one spoke; the hall was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

The delegates below the stage watched the General Secretary quietly as he turned to the statue on the wall, gazing silently at the creator of this great alliance.

Seventy-three years ago, the Aurora's cannon shot brought Soviet power to the Russian land, and Lenin led the Bolsheviks to establish the world's first socialist state. In 1922, Soviet Russia, along with several other Soviet republics including Ukraine and Belarus, united to form the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," and thus the story of the Union officially began.

Time flies. It's like the blink of an eye. One moment the League was born, and the next it's already in the last decade of this century.

The alliance has been reborn under his leadership, and he will continue to carry on his mentor's unfinished work!

He slowly raised his hand and saluted his mentor, who was gazing into the distance.