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

A chain reaction has begun.

Some factories had to abandon their original plans to produce boots → those planned products were delayed → consumers of those products saw "estimated delivery time postponed" on the reservation system → some people canceled their reservations → cancellations led OGAS to believe that demand for those products had decreased → OGAS reduced production orders for those products → a few days later, new consumers made reservations → OGAS had to increase production orders again → factories had to revise their plans again...

In addition, the constant booking and cancellations by foreign agents ultimately led to system instability.

The entire Soviet consumer goods production system was like a car swerving on a highway. The original cybernetics algorithms were simply no match for this pressure. The result of using the old algorithms was that every system correction created new deviations, and every deviation led to new overcorrections!

On September 25, 1994, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had to make a decision: to urgently shut down the national consumer reservation system.

The system was shut down less than three weeks after its launch across the Soviet Union. The official statement from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union said: "The system is undergoing technical upgrades and optimizations, and services are temporarily suspended. The resumption time will be announced separately, and unfinished orders will be refunded at full price."

This caused an uproar on domestic forums. Some people were cursing: "That's how Soviet technology is; it crashed after only a month!"

Someone said, "My ordered boots haven't arrived yet! And why didn't I get my refund? Where did my money go?!"

Some people say, "A planned economy simply can't work with e-commerce; the old ways are still the best."

Someone tagged Xiong Ge: "Isn't Xiong Ge supposed to have a powerful background? Does anyone know Xiong Ge? Can we ask him what to do?"

"AAA Arrest Warrant Wholesaler Bear" did not speak on the forum because the overwhelmed Slava was in a meeting at the Kremlin.

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.

A special meeting was being held inside the Kremlin at that moment.

Those present included Slava and Malinovsky, the Director of the State Planning Commission, several mathematicians and cybernetics experts from the Academy of Sciences, and Prime Minister Ryzhkov.

The atmosphere was very bad.

Malinowski was pale. He knew that the responsibility for this matter lay primarily with him—he had proposed the plan and assured that it was technically feasible, but he had not fully foreseen that the volatility of demand would have such a huge impact on the system, not to mention that they had not obtained the real demand!

Slava did not scold him.

"Now that things have come to this, I, as the leader who made the decision to implement this policy, must bear the main responsibility. It was my oversight that I failed to consider so many potential risks, and it was my attempt to implement the policy before the risks materialized. I will make a self-criticism in the Politburo later."

Our top priority now is to find a solution.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences had already discussed and finalized the plan before the meeting:

The first step is to add a buffer window to the demand data. Instead of transmitting every instantaneous demand directly to the production end, we need to average it over a time window, filter out short-term fluctuations, and only transmit the medium- to long-term trends to the factory.

In layman's terms, it means accumulating demand orders and leaving them idle for a week before finally placing the orders with the factory.

Secondly, it's important to establish buffer inventory. Not everything should be produced "to order." For goods with volatile demand, a certain amount of safety stock should be maintained. With inventory in place, short-term demand can be absorbed from the existing stock, avoiding the need for emergency adjustments to production plans each time.

The third step is to establish a tiered response system. Commodities are divided into two categories: those with "stable demand" and those with "fluctuating demand." Commodities with stable demand follow the traditional planned production route, requiring no scheduling system to determine daily flour production quantities; historical data is sufficient.

For goods with stable demand, the traditional e-commerce model is adopted, where citizens can purchase directly online, and then the local material allocation system will transport the goods to citizens from local warehouses (or state-run stores).

Goods with fluctuating demand, such as fashion apparel, electronics, and seasonal items, are sold through a pre-order system.

"We need to acknowledge one thing—not all consumer demand is suitable for being driven by real-time. Some demands are stable and predictable, where planning is better than real-time. Some demands are volatile and unpredictable, where real-time is better than planning. A one-size-fits-all approach of either fully planned or fully real-time is not suitable!"

Slava listened to the whole thing.

Later, when discussing the behavior of those stupid foreign speculators and domestic resellers testing the system with orders, they decided to add restrictions to the system—purchases must be made using real-name accounts. In order to further prevent the emergence of a few resellers who engage in speculation and reselling, the Soviet Union decided to make collective purchases by community. Residents of each community would place orders at their community office, and then the community would report the demand. Once the goods were delivered to the community, someone would bring the delivery slip.

毕竟苏联600万个人网民在一个3亿多人口的国家里只占2%。如果电商依赖个人终端，98%的苏联公民将被排除在外，这也是系统刚刚开放时需求数据被如此剧烈冲击的原因之一——98%的需求被委托给这2%的人了，能不出问题吗？能没有倒狗吗？

But the Soviet Union had one thing that Western countries did not: an extremely dense network of grassroots community organizations.

Soviet urban housing was organized into large residential communities, primarily consisting of Khrushchev and Brezhnev buildings. Each community had a residents' committee, a grassroots trade union organization, and supporting shops, post offices, and clinics. Since almost all factories had deployed terminals, each community service center, factory-affiliated consumer cooperatives, and even post offices could become access points for the consumer reservation system.

Now, the issue concerning over 6 million netizens has become the issue concerning over 900,000 community nodes across the country.

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 the meeting, Slava sat alone in his office.

On the table lay the report on the national consumer reservation system, which had been abruptly halted. In the margin of the report, he wrote:

"This will not be the first setback in my information system reform. We cannot give up because of the first fall. We must overcome the difficulties and move forward."

He put down his pen.

Outside the window, autumn in Moscow is spreading its leaves one by one. Golden birch leaves drift in the wind and fall at the foot of the Kremlin's red walls.

Thousands of kilometers away in the United States, a company called Amazon has just launched its own shopping website, almost completely copying the interface of the Soviet Union's appointment system.

The Americans got their revenge on the international stage, fiercely mocking and attacking the Soviet system and proclaiming the superiority of the capitalist market economy.

Amazon doesn't need OGAS; it doesn't need a central computing center to schedule production. It sells whatever it has in its warehouses, producing first and then selling, raising prices and making a fortune when sales volume is too high.

This logic does not require complex cybernetics algorithms, real-time scheduling of production plans, or finding an equilibrium point; the market's influence has already been achieved invisibly.

The market automatically matches supply and demand. When there is an excess of goods, prices fall; when there is a shortage, prices rise. When prices rise, producers produce more; when prices fall, producers produce less. Countless decentralized decision-makers coordinate spontaneously through price signals, without the need for any central authority.

What the Soviet Union tried to achieve for decades, using the world's smartest mathematicians and most advanced computers—perfectly matching supply and demand—seemed to be accomplished by the market through a simple price mechanism.

At least on the surface, that's how it seems.

Koslava knew that the market price mechanism also had its costs. The way prices matched supply and demand was too cruel; those who couldn't afford it were excluded. In the Soviet Union, everyone could afford bread as long as prices didn't rise. In the United States, bread prices were determined by the market, and during the Great Depression, some people couldn't afford milk, while factories were dumping milk into rivers.

One system is inaccurate, and the other is unfair.

Which is better?

The future will provide the answer.

Chapter 135 Welcome to the Age of Computerized Planning, Comrade

In October 1994, the National Consumer Reservation System finally reappeared in various communities in a brand new form after being taken offline for a month.

Experts from the Soviet Academy of Sciences spent a month designing a new machine that would not be available on the internet for some time; residents would have to make an appointment at a computer room set up by the community committee.

The community committee was a grassroots organization in the Soviet Union, responsible for public affairs in a residential area, ranging from major issues like heating repairs to minor matters like neighborhood disputes. Almost every residential area in a Soviet city had a community committee office—usually a small room on the ground floor, where one or two staff members sat.

Some communities have a computer room where operators sit and wait for residents to make appointments. Since most residents have never seen this device before, the operators have to stand next to the machine the whole time to guide residents in selecting products on the computer.

Once residents are familiar with using the machine, the operator's job will be much easier. Considering that some residents want to keep their privacy, the community also provides paper appointment forms. Residents can go to the machine to temporarily get an appointment code and then fill it out on the form at home. After filling it out, they can copy the appointment code and put it in the community's box. After get off work every day, the operator will take out the form and manually enter the data.

Having learned from past experiences, community registration requests are no longer transmitted to the central system in real time—the data is first aggregated at the community level. Each community compiles a list of appointment requests received that day and uploads it to the local information center that evening. Ultimately, the central system receives aggregated, batch-processed request data by day.

Meanwhile, the system also establishes buffer inventory for popular products. Common products maintain a certain safety stock, and short-term demand fluctuations are absorbed by the inventory. Only when the inventory exceeds the limit will additional production orders be triggered.

The tiered response system has been implemented in the new system. Daily necessities such as flour, milk, salt, and cooking oil will not be subject to the reservation system. Instead, they will be supplied through the traditional planned supply channels. If an order is placed on the same day, the community will pick it up from the state-owned store or the city's inventory on the same day. Generally, the goods will arrive the next day. If the order is placed early, the goods will arrive at the community in the afternoon.

This relatively quick process has significantly shortened the lines for shopping at state-run stores.

For non-essential consumer goods—clothing, home appliances, daily necessities, and furniture—these are the main businesses of the reservation system.

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 plan has been finalized, but as we all know, the biggest problem in the policy process, from its release to its implementation, is often not technology but people.

With 900,000 communities, each community needs at least 2-3 operators who can use appointment terminals, help residents register, handle simple technical problems, and work in shifts.

The question is, where did the Soviet Union come from to generate nearly three million computer-savvy technicians among its people?

If this were the case in the future, the old clock could have met this demand in two years at most, but what about the Soviet Union?

At that time, the Soviet Union was facing a severe shortage of computer professionals. In recent years, the nationwide construction of OGAS, the popularization of the World Wide Web, the upgrading of agricultural, industrial, and research consortia, and the informatization transformation of government, private, and military enterprises... all led to a fierce competition for talent.

Computer science students at universities and colleges were snapped up by major corporations and production units as soon as they enrolled, because the Soviet education system reforms produced students with sufficiently high academic levels.

Unlike Lao Zhong's poor vocational training, the Soviet Union's comprehensive vocational education system produced students with various operational certificates. These students, unlike their university peers, only acquired skills related to their majors. To meet the urgent needs of production units for talent, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union organized special meetings every few years with representatives from various industries to discuss which skills vocational schools should teach and what certifications graduates should receive.

As for those students who fail the skills assessment? They will either repeat a year or drop out.

It was this system, which brought vocational education and production units in close alignment, that made graduates of Soviet colleges highly sought after by companies. The Ministry of Education did its best to ensure that vocational school teaching did not deviate from the national development strategy, while production units delivered continuously improved front-line production experience and scientific research results to schools, enabling students to match their skills with their future jobs.

This socially responsible education system naturally comes at a cost—it cannot provide a large workforce to society in the short term.

Either focus on quantity at the expense of quality, which might yield good results in the short term but will inevitably erode employers' trust in the education system in the long run. Then, the days of guaranteed job placement upon graduation and employment contracts upon enrollment will be over. The consequence of businesses distrusting vocational education is that everyone rushes to the university track to compete for degrees. To alleviate employment pressure, universities will be forced to expand enrollment, leading to a dilution of academic qualifications, forcing future generations to compete for even higher degrees...

Slava was unwilling to undertake such short-sighted reforms and instead relied on the wisdom of future generations. Soviet specialized education must never prioritize quantity over quality!

What about bringing in external labor?

The Soviet Union changed its immigration policy in 1991, from welcoming foreign experts to naturalization to allowing residents of COMECON countries to immigrate to the Soviet Union. But this was far from enough. The Soviet Union's Eastern European allies were also carrying out information technology reforms under the Soviet Union's guidance. Everyone was short of talent and could not exploit each other.

Importing large numbers of workers from capitalist countries like Western Europe? No, we're still in the Cold War; the risks are too great.

Should we bring in laid-off workers from the Soviet Union? Although the Soviet Union was neither a member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) nor a member of the Warsaw Pact, China and the Soviet Union had already established friendly relations. A few years ago, Slava and Deng Xixian signed a labor dispatch contract for the construction of the Far East, which had a good effect. Now we can expand on this.

So Director Nian visited China again, and General Secretary Jiang Huaimin gave him a grand reception. Slava had called the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in advance, saying that Director Nian could fully represent his will, and soon the two sides began to discuss the issue of the number of dispatched workers.

At that time, China was undergoing state-owned enterprise reform. Official estimates in 1994 showed that there were more than 20 million redundant employees in China's state-owned enterprises, accounting for more than a quarter of the total workforce.

With the start of enterprise reforms, the annual number of laid-off workers increased year by year from 300 million in 1993 to nearly 2150 million in 1999.

The real large-scale layoffs occurred after the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1997. By the end of 1994, the situation was still in its early preparatory stage—redundancy was already severe, but formal large-scale layoffs had not yet been fully implemented. In 1994, Premier Li Peng ordered the Ministry of Labor to launch re-employment pilot projects in more than 30 cities, which in itself indicated that the problem had become so serious that central government intervention was necessary.

The olive branch extended by the Soviet Union just happened to solve Lao Zhong's urgent problem. In 1994, China had not yet reached the point of large-scale unemployment and layoffs. At present, there is still large-scale hidden unemployment - tens of millions of state-owned enterprise workers are nominally still on the job and have not lost their jobs, but in reality they have nothing to do and are sitting in the factory waiting to die with basic wages or half wages.

At the time, there was a rather cruel term to refer to these people: "surplus workers".

Jiang Huaimin was facing enormous pressure to reform state-owned enterprises, with tens of millions of surplus workers needing a way out. At this time, Zhu Rongji, who was serving as Vice Premier of the State Council and concurrently Governor of the People's Bank of China, offered an idea: first, develop township and village enterprises, improve social security and re-employment training, keep the high-quality labor force in hand, and give those workers who were over forty or fifty years old to the Soviet Union, and then they could earn a large amount of foreign exchange from the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union was naturally unhappy! The purpose of bringing in labor was to enable people to create value, not to bring in a bunch of middle-aged and elderly people to support and then have the Soviet Union pay their pensions—and the pensions wouldn't even reach the workers; they would be transferred to the Soviet Union in rubles, and then the Soviet Union would pay the workers in RMB.

So the two sides argued about this issue for several days, and finally each side compromised:

The Soviet Union could establish a labor dispatch company in Laozhong, recruiting 60% of the personnel from the "surplus workers" of Laozhong's state-owned enterprises and 40% from the local community. All recruited personnel's salaries would be paid by the Chinese side, with Soviet rubles used directly as foreign exchange. The Chinese side originally intended to provide room and board and send its own personnel to manage the workers, but the Soviet side believed that proletarian workers in the Soviet Union should live according to the provisions of Soviet labor law, that the proletariat should unite, and that free immigration should be permitted.

Therefore, the labor dispatch contract signed between Slava and Deng Xixian a few years ago was modified. The Chinese side no longer established a dedicated management team for the industrial park; instead, the Soviet side took over management. The original 15 dispatched workers were increased to 55, and then rapidly increased to 105 million a few months later.

Following the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1997, China signed labor dispatch contracts with other COMECON countries, causing the number of Chinese laborers exported that year to surge to 4 million. Large numbers of Chinese laborers went to COMECON countries, just as their ancestors had done over a century earlier. Only after 1999 did this number gradually begin to decline to below 1 million.

In November 1994, the "Sino-Soviet Labor Cooperation Agreement" was signed in Beijing and Moscow respectively.

The Soviet Union prioritized recruiting surplus workers from state-owned enterprises in the three northeastern provinces of China. This was because the northeast was adjacent to the Soviet Far East, had the most adaptable climate, and its old industrial areas had a highly skilled population and the most severe problem of surplus state-owned enterprises. The Soviet Union had a special committee and relevant factories submit their labor needs. Workers came to the Soviet Union on contract, typically for one to three years, renewable upon expiration. For outstanding workers, the Soviets allowed them to bring their families free of charge, and also thoughtfully provided supporting facilities such as schools and hospitals.

All of this was done in order to retain the population, ideally so that the Chinese laborers could settle in the Far East with their families after their contracts expired.

Since the Soviet Union's initial intention in recruiting people was to cultivate computer talent, the people sent by Lao Zhong's side had both a much weaker learning ability than before and a serious language barrier. Therefore, the Soviet Union had Chinese workers replace the Soviet workers in their positions and provide free retraining to the Soviet workers. They did not expect the Soviet workers to learn how to code or write programs; they only needed them to know how to operate computers.

"Ultimately, we will all return to school..."

—An anonymous Soviet agricultural worker, May 1, 1995

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 training classes were held in cultural centers or workers' clubs in various districts.

A typical training session has twenty to thirty trainees, one trainer—usually a young teaching assistant borrowed from a university computer science department, and one appointment terminal—exactly the same model that will be deployed in the community.

The trainer was a 23-year-old, dressed in the classic programmer style, wearing a plaid shirt and glasses. The trainees sitting in front of him were around 48 years old on average, and they kept looking at him with an expression that said, "What the hell are you talking about?"

“Comrades,” the trainer said, trying to sound confident, as he patted the terminal’s display.

"This machine is the tool you will be using next; its function is very simple—"

"Wait a minute!" A saleswoman from a state-owned store raised her hand. "Is this thing plugged in?"

"...Plug it in."

Where to insert it?

"...the wall socket." This young man probably had never been to the grassroots level and didn't know how much patience one's people had to endure dealing with trivial matters every day. In any case, he was almost red-hot.

“Our store’s sockets only have two holes, but this plug has three holes.”

The trainer paused for a moment, then said, "Uh—you can use an adapter."

"What is an adapter? Who provides the adapter? What happens if it breaks? Do I have to pay for it?"

"...It should be provided by the community. You should ask the community management committee for details."

“But the community just said they don’t handle this, and that it’s your responsibility,” an old man in the crowd said, raising his hand.

"..." The trainer took a deep breath and looked at the community worker next to him, who shrugged:

"Should I call the state-run store?"

A few minutes later.

"Hey, comrade, the good news is that the state-run store has power strips, the bad news is that they say if we use the community budget to buy them, they'll have to submit a report. This is a state-owned asset of the '705u.com-Reading Club First Release,' so we'll probably have to wait two or three days."

"...I'll pay for the power strip." "Then you'll have to register it." "..."

In the end, it took 20 minutes to solve just the socket problem. Someone borrowed a multi-functional power strip from the workers' club next door, and then the trainer started teaching how to turn it on.

“Come on, watch me demonstrate—press this button, press it once and it will pop up, don’t hold it down.” He pointed to the terminal’s switch.

More than twenty people stared at that button as if it were a landmine. An old man who used to manage the instruments in the factory reached out and pressed it, and the screen lit up.

"Oh!!!" A series of sounds, somewhere between surprise and relief, came from the classroom.