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

Below the portrait was a line of text, written once in Russian and once in Chinese:

"Long live the invincible Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought!"

Cao Dewang always felt that the two portraits were looking at him.

"Hey, is it possible to reconcile?"

Cao Dewang tentatively asked in a low voice.

"At this moment? You must be joking!" the Chinese worker Xiao Chen in front of him mocked.

The arbitration representative from the management committee stood aside, glancing towards the door, clearly not intending to face the thousands of angry workers. The Soviet chairman stepped forward and spat in Cao Dewang's face.

"Hang this capitalist who destroys labor assets on a street lamp!"

The workers swarmed forward. Someone grabbed Cao Dewang by the collar of his suit, tearing the collar of the Italian-made suit worth thousands of dollars. Cao Dewang was pulled up from the ground. His feet left the ground, and his body was lifted, pushed, and dragged by several hands out of the control room and across the open space of the factory.

Someone noticed what was hanging around his neck—a jade pendant, said to be worth hundreds of thousands of yuan.

"Ha, our family's total assets don't even amount to 10,000 yuan."

The jade fell onto the cement floor, and no one picked it up in the darkness.

At the factory gate stood a lamppost, about four meters high, topped with an orange sodium lamp. Someone had brought a steel cable from the workshop; originally intended for a crane, it was now looped around Cao Dewang's neck. The other end was thrown over the horizontal bar at the top of the lamppost and pulled taut.

Someone brought over a wooden stool for Cao Dewang to stand on.

Cao Dewang stood on a wooden stool. A steel cable was around his neck, and the stool beneath his feet was something that could be kicked away...

"I...I was wrong...Dad—no, my esteemed grandfathers, please forgive me!"

The orange light from the streetlamp shone on his face, which was covered in sweat, and his lips were trembling.

Soviet workers formed a circle, and Chinese workers formed a circle as well. Some were shouting slogans, some were laughing, and a Soviet worker stepped forward—his feet were already resting on the leg of the stool.

"and many more."

The arbitration representative from the management committee, who had been watching from the sidelines the whole time, finally stepped forward.

"Wait!" His voice was three times louder than usual. "Comrades! Comrades! Stop!"

He squeezed in front of the lamppost, blocking the worker who was about to kick the stool from Cao Dewang.

"The Soviet government can agree to your demands! All of them! Transparency! Working hours! The treatment and residence permits for Chinese workers—all of them! On the condition that no one dies!"

He looked at the Soviet chairman.

"Brother, I'm begging you." His voice suddenly lowered, "Don't resort to vigilante justice. This will escalate into an international incident, affecting Sino-Soviet relations—"

The Soviet chairman looked at him, then glanced at Cao Dewang on the street lamp.

Cao Dewang's legs were trembling like a leaf, and his trousers were soaked with sweat. His mouth was moving, but no sound came out.

The chairman looked at him and then he waved.

"Take it off."

The steel cable was removed from Cao Dewang's neck. His body slid off the stool, landing first on his knees and then collapsing to the ground.

Cao Dewang knelt on the cement floor, and his son Cao Hui was also pushed to kneel next to him. Several members of the Chinese management team were also pushed over to kneel.

"Good men, spare me! I have money, lots of money! I can give it all to you, please spare my dog's life!"

Cao Dewang's voice was hoarse and distorted, completely unlike the tough tone he had displayed a few hours earlier on the radio when he said he would smash all the machines.

"Spare me, I'll agree to anything. I'll give you whatever you want, please spare my life!"

The workers stood around watching Cao Dewang kneeling on the ground.

Soon, someone went to Cao Dewang's office. The office door lock had previously been jammed with glass, and this time they smashed the entire door open with a hammer. Inside the office was a safe with a combination lock.

A Soviet worker opened the safe with a screwdriver and a cutting machine brought from the workshop.

Inside the cabinet were stacks of cash, an account book, several contracts, Cao Dewang's passport, and gold bars.

The cash and ledgers were taken out and placed on the table in the control room.

Under the streetlights, in front of all the workers, while Cao Dewang was still kneeling on the ground, stacks of money were laid out on the table, and a worker began to flip through the ledger and read it aloud to everyone.

"Look carefully, comrades!" The Soviet Chairman stood by the table and had more than a thousand people from the factory take turns coming over to visit.

"This is the money he earned. Look how much it is from your labor—from your ten, twelve, sixteen hours of work!"

The Chinese workers looked at the money on the table.

“He called you lowly bastards, ungrateful serfs! You earned this money for him, and this is how he sees you!”

Under the orange glow of the streetlights, an expression that was hard to tell whether it was anger or sorrow appeared on the workers' faces.

Many people started to cry.

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 camera set up outside the factory wall by Far Eastern Television captured part of this scene:

Under the streetlights, a Chinese man in a suit was hanging from a lamppost with a steel cable around his neck. At his feet was a stool, and around him were thousands of workers.

The image isn't very clear, after all, it was taken at night through a wall using a telephoto lens. But it's clear enough—clear enough to see the fear in the person hanging there, the anger of the surrounding workers, and the shadows cast on everyone's faces by the orange light of the streetlights.

The photograph made the front page of several newspapers in the Far East the following morning, and then spread throughout the Soviet Union and the world via the Internet.

Within hours, the matter escalated from a labor dispute at a factory into a diplomatic incident between the two countries, with telephone lines buzzing on the satellite link between Moscow and Beijing.

Both foreign ministries had to work overtime because of this.

At the glass factory in Nakhodka, Cao Dewang was taken away by the management committee, and the workers didn't know where he went.

The bewildered Chinese workers were then led by a newly elected Soviet management team to continue production activities.

By this time, the photograph, which had spread internationally, had already stirred up a huge wave in the Western world, and Western politicians were once again experiencing the oppressive feeling that communism had brought them half a century earlier.

Many populist politicians have finally understood why those Cold War old-timers were so terrified of communism.

Chapter 138 The more the enemy opposes me, the more it proves I'm right.

April 28, 1995

The photo of Cao Dewang hanging from a streetlamp spread around the world in less than 48 hours. The photo first appeared in the Vladivostok Morning News, a local newspaper in the Far East, which even featured it on its front page with the headline:

Nakhodka: The united working people have once again repelled the infiltration of capitalism!

The Western reaction was one of shock and confusion in the first few hours.

The London Daily Telegraph's headline read: "Soviet workers hang Chinese merchant from lamppost: October Revolution in the Far East Special Zone"

The accompanying photo reads: "This shocking photograph reveals a horrific scene unfolding in the Soviet Far East Special Zone—a Chinese investor is violently attacked by Soviet workers and nearly lynched. The photo exposes the true face beneath the surface of Soviet reforms: a country where the rule of law has vanished, and a mob incited by ideology!"

France, as the most pro-Soviet major power in the NATO camp, has a relatively moderate attitude on this matter, with even the right-wing newspaper Le Figaro leaning towards neutrality.

The Nakhodka Affair: When Marxism in the New Era Meets Capital

"This photograph will be recorded in the visual history of the Cold War. It shows the clash of two civilizations: one that believed in the sanctity of property, and the other that believed in the supremacy of labor. The man under the streetlight represents the former, and the workers around him represent the latter. The question is—who was right?"

The New York Times, on the other hand, took a provocative and inflammatory tone.

Violence by Soviet workers shakes Sino-Soviet relations

"...The Nakhodka incident will have a profound impact on the already complex Sino-Soviet relations. The security of Chinese companies' investments in the Soviet Union was questioned. Analysts pointed out that this incident exposed deep-seated contradictions beneath the surface of Sino-Soviet cooperation:"

The emerging social strata in China's market economy reforms will inevitably clash with the deeply ingrained communist ideology of the Soviet Union.

The Washington Post editorial went even further, extending the discussion to Sino-Soviet friendship: "The 'honeymoon period' in Sino-Soviet relations may never have truly existed. China was a country embracing a market economy, while the Soviet Union remained a country clinging to a planned economy."

In his 1859 preface to *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*, Karl Marx stated:

'...The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, that is, the real basis upon which a legal and political superstructure stands and to which a certain form of social consciousness corresponds. With changes in the economic base, the entire vast superstructure also changes, more or less quickly.'

We can't help but ask: Can these two great powers, China and the Soviet Union, really come together?

Western official media naturally wouldn't miss this opportunity to sow discord within the socialist camp. Whether it was the United States, Britain, Japan, or Canada, they all began to elaborate on the fundamental systemic differences between China and the Soviet Union.

However, they are still using old ways of thinking to deal with the Soviet Union, interpreting it through the old Cold War framework, and believing that the Soviet Union is heading towards confrontation again. The Wall Street Journal did a special analysis on this, inviting a group of former diplomats and Soviet experts to discuss "whether Ivanov is losing control of the reformists".

The reason for this misjudgment is that the West is used to interpreting any hardline stance of the Soviet Union as a "return to Stalinism." They fail to understand that Slava was actually doing something much more subtle—opening up a route for ideological offensive.

The West knows that both Slava and Gorbachev were reformists, the difference being that Gorbachev's reforms were radical and Slava's were moderate. Neither of these reformers had any interest in returning to the Stalin era.

After all, in the 80s, the Soviet Union did indeed adopt a posture of peaceful coexistence and joint arms reduction, seeking mutual reductions in various military negotiations such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, willing to do larger-scale business with Western Europe, and proactively initiating the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Vietnam, as well as Sino-Soviet friendship...

General Secretary Ivanov's "consistency between words and deeds" has led many Western experts on Soviet affairs to believe that he is a pacifist. They argue that Ivanov's coup attempt against Gorbachev was simply because Gorbachev went a little too far and Ivanov himself had a strong desire for power.

They thought that the moderate reformists in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union joined forces with the radical reformists to stage a coup because of a simple power struggle. Little did they know that the serious internal differences and contradictions within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had reached an irreconcilable point. At that time, the moderate reformists were really prepared to fight another civil war!

It's just that things went so smoothly that we didn't have to use that method.

Now that Slava has finally torn off his mask and begun to reveal his true purpose, how can this not cause panic in the West?

On the eve of Labor Day, a column in The Wall Street Journal stated:

The Nakhodka incident may have been a "Kristallnacht" for Sino-Soviet relations—it revealed a fact that had been obscured by diplomatic rhetoric: the Soviet Union was not a capital-friendly place. Any foreign entrepreneur trying to do business in the Soviet Union should take a close look at Cao Dewang's photo and ask themselves this question:

Are you prepared to be lynched by the rogue proletarian mob instigated by the Soviet Communist Party?

The next target of attack was Slava, and Western media quickly shifted their focus from the Nakhodka factory to the Kremlin.

Western media viewed the Nakhodka affair as a microcosm of the Soviet Union under Ivanov. This young man, a former KGB officer, used an iron fist to control the army, intelligence agencies, media, party and government organs, and the minds of the people!

The Washington Post used a jarring headline in its report the day before Labor Day:

Ivanov: Stalin of the 21st Century?

The report listed a series of "charges"—

Bloody suppression of domestic dissidents: Many political prisoners were imprisoned in Soviet "psychiatric sanatoriums," and the whereabouts of Gorbachev and other radical reformers remain unknown.

Suppression of ethnic minorities' freedom: The independence movements in the Baltic states were suppressed, and traditional culture and religious beliefs in Central Asia were systematically suppressed.

Ecological damage: Massive afforestation campaigns are destroying the original desert and Gobi ecosystems of Central Asia and Siberia. This statement seems absurd, but The Washington Post did find several experts from Western environmental organizations to endorse it, saying that "deserts and Gobi are unique ecosystems, and large-scale changes in their vegetation cover could cause irreversible damage to native species."

Wasteful military expansion: building aircraft carriers, constructing space stations, forming a Mediterranean fleet... These projects consumed enormous amounts of national resources when the average income of Soviet citizens was still far lower than that of the West.

Interference in Eastern European Democracy: The regime changes in Eastern European countries were in fact orchestrated by Moscow, and the newly appointed leaders were all "puppet masters of Moscow."

The forced implementation of informatization: The forced deployment of the OGAS system "is destroying the traditional way of life in the Soviet countryside," and the promotion of new collective farms "has caused farmers to lose their generations-old farming methods and land memories, and even the glorious profession of farmer will be ruthlessly destroyed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the history of Russia."

...

Slava never expected the photo to have such a powerful impact. He seriously underestimated the fear that Western capitalists and conglomerates had of such events. He thought the West might just say a few words and move on. But the news was like a firecracker thrown into a pack of dogs, and the whole dog farm started barking all over the place.

On May 1, 1995, Time magazine's cover featured a color photograph of Slava.

This photo has clearly been manipulated; the contrast is maximized—his face emerges against a dark background, his eyes staring directly at the camera, his expression cold and aloof. The top left corner displays the red TIME logo, and below it, a line of white text reads:

THE MAN WHO REWIRED AN EMPIRE

The Empire's Reconnector

Subtitle: The Imperial Machine of Velikoslav Ivanovich Ivanov

The article writes:

"In a small town in the Soviet Far East, a Chinese businessman was nearly hanged from a street lamp."

This is the Soviet Union in 1995, not Petrograd in 1917, not Paris in 1793, but 1995—the year the World Wide Web was invented four years earlier, the Cold War had entered its fifth decade, and humanity had already launched a space station into orbit.

But the scene under the streetlights looked no different in essence from any revolutionary violence in any century. Technology may advance, but humanity will not.

To understand what happened under that streetlamp, you must understand the Stalinist standing in the Moscow Kremlin—Velikoslav Ivanovich Ivanov. This General Secretary of the Soviet Union, the supreme ruler of the largest country on the planet, a man in his forties who left everyone who tried to understand him utterly bewildered.

The article then devotes considerable space to describing Ivanov's governing style:

"...Gorbachev wanted the Soviet Union to become more like the West—more democratic, more open, and more free. Ivanov had no interest in this; he wanted the Soviet Union to become more like a machine."

That computer information network covering the entire Soviet Union was the nervous system of his machine. He used it to manage the economy, monitor production, allocate resources, and he even tried to use it to do what the Soviet planned economy had dreamed of for decades but had never achieved: to make central planning respond to consumer demand as sensitively as the market.

He failed—at least temporarily. His national consumer reservation system was forced to shut down due to systemic chaos less than a month after its launch.

But he doesn't give up, he never gives up—that's his most dangerous trait!

The article then turned to Ivanov's list of crimes:

"...Under Ivanov, the Soviet Union looked very good. The economy was growing, the supply of consumer goods was improving, the space program was progressing, the military was being modernized, new aircraft carriers were being launched, and new space stations were being assembled in orbit."

So, what is the cost?

Beneath these gleaming numbers and images lies a darker story. Where is Ivanov's former General Secretary, Gorbachev? Nobody knows. The official explanation is that he retired 'due to health reasons.' But multiple sources confirm that Gorbachev and several other high-ranking former Soviet officials are being held in 'special medical facilities'—a euphemism for political concentration camps in the Soviet Union.

The reforms in Eastern European countries appeared to be democratization, but in reality, they were regime change orchestrated by Moscow. Old leaders were replaced, and new leaders were all from a cadre of officials cultivated by Moscow. East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary... every new government implemented economic restructuring under Moscow's guidance, and the core of this restructuring was access to the OGAS system...