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

The total short-term cost is about 100 billion rubles. If the Brezhnev Building were to be replaced and all urban residents in the Soviet Union were to live in the Ivanov Building, it would cost several hundred billion rubles!

This is not money that can be spent in one or two years. In 1992, the Soviet Union's total annual revenue was only 7200 billion rubles!

At present, the Soviet Union's capital construction investment accounts for 7.1% of the total investment in all sectors of the national economy. It seems that it can raise 500 billion. However, the Soviet Union's capital construction investment is a broader concept. It includes not only construction projects such as housing and factories, but also equipment purchase and installation projects.

7.1% is not a small percentage. At that time, China's related investment ratio was 4.5%, the United States' was 5.8%, and the Soviet Union's investment ratio in fixed assets related to people's livelihood had been increasing over the years.

After several weeks of estimation, the State Planning Committee believed that if the budget ratio of the 13th Five-Year Plan remained unchanged, and the investment in basic construction was increased from 7.1% to 8% in the subsequent 14th Five-Year Plan, then the Soviet Union would have a good chance of completing this ambitious plan before the end of the 16th Five-Year Plan, that is, before 2010.

Everyone believed that the ambition of this plan was comparable to that of Comrade Khrushchev, who aimed to achieve communism within 30 years. Many people thought it was a vanity project, while others thought that such a large investment would allow them to make a lot of money.

Undoubtedly, once it is successfully realized and modern socialism is successfully brought to the Soviet Union, then General Secretary Velikoslav Ivanovich Ivanov will become the sixth greatest figure in the history of socialism, alongside Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.

“Then let’s proceed step by step,” Slava wrote on the cover of the plan. “First, select a few pilot projects to create models so that people can see what the new communities are like. Once they see them, they will have expectations, and with expectations, they will be willing to wait. In the meantime, those Khrushchev buildings will be reinforced, with priority given to building them in earthquake-prone areas and other disaster-prone regions.”

It is not scarcity that is a concern, but inequality. Slava knew that the privileges of cadres inherited from the Seventh Congress of the CPSU since Khrushchev had not disappeared, and the parasites deeply embedded in the body of the state had not been eradicated. If the people knew that it was the officials in big cities who had moved into these houses first, then his reforms would encounter the greatest obstacle.

Moreover, Soviet officials probably wouldn't even look at this house; most high-ranking officials already owned luxury apartments or detached villas.

Perhaps it is time to begin cleaning up the party's system; the 14th Five-Year Plan and the upcoming 29th Congress of the CPSU will be the next steps in his grand blueprint.

The Soviet Union was his greatest work.

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.

Lyublino neighborhood, southeastern Petrovsk district, April 1993.

Lyublino is one of the city's most typical Khrushchev-style housing complexes—built in 1962, it consists of twenty-odd five-story gray buildings lined up in neat rows, like a company of soldiers standing in formation on a parade ground. Between the buildings are narrow asphalt roads, a few half-dead birch trees, and a patch of grass that has been kicked bare by children.

Lyublino was selected as the city's first pilot community for the "Ivanov House" project.

When the news reached the residents, they reacted with all sorts of problems that gave the community officials so much headaches that they considered resigning.

The community worker's name is Natasha. She is thirty-five years old. She has worked for the Lyublino community committee for six years. Her daily work used to involve handling neighborhood disputes, registering households, and organizing holiday activities. Now, her job has become something she has never done before:

They persuaded 1,200 residents to move out of their homes where they had lived for 30 years.

“Comrades,” she said to more than thirty resident representatives as she stood in the community activity room.

"The Union has decided to completely rebuild the Lyublino micro-district. The existing Khrushchev-style buildings will be demolished, and a new residential community will be built on the site. The new buildings will be twelve-story frame structures with sufficient earthquake resistance, and each unit will be fifty to one hundred percent larger than the current ones—"

“Wait!” A woman in her fifties raised her hand. Her name was Vasilyevna, and she had lived in Lyublino for twenty-eight years.

"You said you'd tear it down and rebuild, but where will we live when it's demolished?"

"The government will build temporary housing areas on nearby vacant land—"

"Temporary housing area?" the woman's voice shrieked. "What do you mean? We're living in makeshift shacks?"

"It's not a workers' shed, it's a simple dwelling—with walls, a roof, and heating—"

"Oh right, simple housing. Don't think I don't know that you cadres love to play word games."

The woman repeated the word, her tone carrying a sense of distrust, as if to say, "I knew this would happen."

"Tell me, how long?"

Natasha swallowed hard.

"About ten to thirteen months."

The activity room erupted in chaos.

"Thirteen months! You made me live in the workers' shed for thirteen months!"

"It's not a workers' shed—it's temporary housing—"

"What it's called doesn't matter! What matters is winter! It gets to minus twenty degrees Celsius here in winter! You want me to spend the winter in temporary housing?"

"The alliance will provide heating equipment—"

"What kind of heating equipment? Electric heaters? How big of a room can one electric heater warm? I have an elderly person in my family! An eighty-year-old! She's been freezing in that 'temporary housing' all winter—"

"The alliance will guarantee—"

"Alliance guarantee! Alliance guarantee!" the old woman's voice grew louder and louder. "Khrushchev guaranteed us this five-layered box thirty years ago! And now he's offering another guarantee! I don't trust your guarantees!"

Natasha took a deep breath.

She understood Vasilyevna's anger; she truly understood. A person who had lived in Khrushchev's building for twenty-eight years... well, even though that apartment of just over thirty square meters was small and old, and even though you could hear a sneeze from next door, it was her home.

Telling her now, "Move out and live in a makeshift house, and wait a year for a better new house," might not be very convincing.

But Natasha had nothing else to give her—except a promise.

She tried to steer the conversation back on track: "The new houses will be much larger. A three-bedroom house will be at least 80 to 90 square meters. There will be a separate kitchen and bathroom, a balcony, and an elevator, so you won't have to climb five flights of stairs anymore. The ceiling height will be 2.8 meters, 30 centimeters higher than now—"

“What’s the use of thirty centimeters?” another resident interjected. “I’m living perfectly well now. I fixed the leak myself, replaced the windows myself, and had the heating pipes installed. And now you’re telling me to tear it down and rebuild? I spent ten years making this dilapidated house habitable—and you’re just going to tear it down with a single sentence?”

This is another kind of resistance—those who painstakingly renovated their old houses. Within the framework of the Khrushchev Building, they used their own hands and savings to transform it into the way they liked. New wallpaper, new floors, partition walls they built themselves, showers they installed themselves... these things weren't worth much money, but each one embodied their labor and emotions.

Because housing was always free, as natural as breathing air and drinking water, the most attractive factor for most old Zhong people was not something the vast majority of Soviet people had to consider.

It's only natural for the Soviet Union to provide free housing to its residents; this is the superiority of socialism! This tradition started in the Stalin era. Does it mean that only Ivanov wants special treatment and forcing people to pay for housing? Is Ivanov leading the Soviet Union down the capitalist road?! Is the CPSU still the vanguard of the people?

Clearly, emotional value and other factors are more important to people.

...

There is another group whose grievances are more specific—those residents living in the Brezhnev building.

The Brezhnev Buildings were built in the 1970s and 1980s. They are generally nine-story buildings, slightly better than the Khrushchev Buildings but not by much. They have elevators (although they often break down), the apartments are a bit larger (40 to 60 square meters), and the earthquake resistance is slightly better (but still doesn't meet the standards).

Several Brezhnev-era buildings in the Lyublino neighborhood were not included in this batch of demolition and reconstruction. The design institute assessed that the Brezhnev-era buildings were in better condition than the Khrushchev-era buildings and could be reused through renovation and reinforcement.

Prioritize handling the Khrushchev building.

Achieving fairness and equality is a very difficult thing.

The residents of the Brezhnev building watched as the Khrushchev building next door was demolished and a new twelve-story building rose up, with each unit ranging from eighty to one hundred and twenty square meters—while they were still living in the Brezhnev building, which had a floor area of ​​only forty square meters!

"Why? Didn't the alliance say that everyone should be equal? ​​How come they are more equal than us?"

"Why is it that those living in the Khrushchev building get new apartments, while we living in the Brezhnev building only get renovations? Our building is old too! The elevator has been broken for a long time and no one has fixed it! The heating pipes are leaking! Why are they the only ones getting new apartments?"

"Because of the earthquake resistance of the Khrushchev Building—" one official explained.

"I don't care about earthquake resistance! I've lived for over thirty years and never seen an earthquake here! I want a new house, if they have one, I want one too! Is the Communist Party still the vanguard of the people? Have I been expelled from the people's ranks? If I get frostbite at home, will the community provide medicine? Because the temporary housing has poor insulation, who will pay for the extra gas bill I have to pay in winter?"...

The problem is not scarcity, but inequality.

As long as policies are implemented at the grassroots level, the discontent of troublemakers and socialist infants will follow. Slava has long been cursed as a dog in the hearts of the vast majority of grassroots cadres. If hell really exists, the crimes Slava was tried for should be enough to make him serve his sentence for the distant fortieth millennium.

Natasha deals with these kinds of stupid things every day. From morning till night, she takes calls, receives complaints, and gets yelled at. She gets yelled at by older women, older men, young people, and residents of the Brezhnev building.

Amidst mixed reactions of praise and criticism from residents, construction began.

In May 1993, a temporary housing area was completed on an open space on the east side of the Lyublino micro-district. Rows of simple, factory-prefabricated modular houses were assembled, each about twenty square meters—smaller than the rooms in Khrushchev's building, but it was truly temporary!

Heating equipment has been installed, including electric heaters and small gas heaters. There are also public kitchens, public restrooms, and temporary shops.

The residents began to move. The family moved out of the small apartment, carrying all the things they had saved up over thirty years: furniture, clothes, pots and pans, framed photos, children's toys, and the elderly's medicine. These things were loaded onto a truck and transported to a temporary housing area a few hundred meters away.

The demolition of Khrushchev's building was indeed swift; dismantling the prefabricated houses was like the reverse process of assembling building blocks. Cranes lifted the prefabricated panels one by one from the frame, and within a few days, a five-story building was reduced to rubble.

Concrete fragments were removed, steel bars were recycled, the site was leveled, and the pile driver arrived.

Construction has begun on the foundation of the new Ivanov building.

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.

Slava's desk was piled high with problem reports. The problems in the Lyublino neighborhood were not isolated cases; pilot communities throughout the Soviet Union were encountering similar difficulties.

It was March 1993. Residents were complaining a great deal about heating in their temporary housing, as Russian winters were notoriously cold. Residents of the Brezhnev House were petitioning, demanding equal treatment with those of the Khrushchev House residents. Construction noise and dust in the city were sparking protests from surrounding residents. Construction projects in different parts of the Soviet Union also presented various problems, requiring adjustments to the design institute's plans…

Every problem requires time, effort, coordination, and most importantly—money.

The question of "fast, efficient, and economical" is not a multiple-choice question; it's a single-choice question.

He chose to make a promise to the people, and the people repaid him with trust and support. He personally promised the people that he would realize socialist modernization and enable them to live a good life. He had to keep his promise.

Let them scold me if they want.

After all, the people's yearning for a better life is the Party's goal and the cause to which it has dedicated itself.

Chapter 143 The Fifth Major Case in the Soviet Union—The Civil Engineering Case

There were four major corruption cases in Soviet history.

The first case—the diamond case. Solved in 1979, it revealed that high-ranking officials of the Soviet jewelry and diamond company "Crystal" colluded with overseas buyers to smuggle Soviet-made diamonds to the West at prices far below market value through diplomatic couriers, pocketing the difference. The case involved millions of rubles and implicated numerous officials from the Ministry of Foreign Trade, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the KGB.

The second case—the fur case. In the early 1980s, managers of several state-owned fur shops in Moscow colluded with manufacturers and warehouse managers to purchase the best furs (mink coats, fox fur hats) at low prices under the guise of "inferior goods," and then resell them at market prices to black market dealers or directly to wealthy customers, pocketing the profits. The case implicated a deputy secretary of the Moscow City Committee.

The third case—the fisheries case. The Far East fisheries system systematically falsified catch figures—one hundred tons of fish were actually caught, but the reports showed eighty tons; the difference of twenty tons was secretly sold to Japan and South Korea, with the foreign exchange going into the Swiss bank accounts of a group of fisheries officials. The case implicated a deputy minister of the Ministry of Fisheries.

The fourth case—the cotton case. It occurred in Uzbekistan. Slava and Nyan handled this case. The cotton production of the entire republic was systematically overstated for decades. The core reason was that Brezhnev set arbitrary targets, and the production reported by local authorities was much higher than the actual production. The state purchase funds corresponding to the overstated part were intercepted at each level.

The case implicated Rashidov, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, and several high-ranking officials in Moscow. Later, after Slava came to power, the central government gradually reduced the phenomenon of setting targets arbitrarily without regard to science through information technology reforms.

Each of these four major cases grew slowly within the Soviet system and was eventually uncovered by a chance clue, implicating a large number of officials in systemic corruption.

In the latter half of 1993, the fifth case arrived.

Later, people called it the "Earth and Wood Case".

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 story begins with a whistleblower letter.

On May 2, 1993, a border city about 5 kilometers south of Baku in the Soviet Union of Azerbaijan.

On this day, the "Citizen Whistleblowing" portal on the Soviet government website received a short letter written in Azerbaijani, which was automatically translated into Russian by the system:

"...The Khrushchev-era building in our neighborhood was demolished, and they said they'd build a new one. But the allocation list for the new building came out—and none of the families who had been waiting for eight years were on it! On the list were the in-laws of the community Soviet chairman, the daughter-in-law of a construction committee cadre, and the sister-in-law of the street office director. When we asked why, they said, 'Your qualifications don't meet the requirements!'"

Why doesn't it comply? Isn't it said that information-based government reforms will expose corruption? Why are these people who clearly don't need housing coming to take our houses?

On the same day, similar posts appeared on the Vichet forum's "Azerbaijan Housing Forum" and "Housing Allocation Queue Forum." There were multiple posts; within a few days, the number of related posts exceeded three digits, all saying the same thing: there was a problem with the allocation list for the newly built Ivanov housing complex—those who should have received housing hadn't, while those who shouldn't have received it had!

Parts of Azerbaijan are located in earthquake zones, and according to the description in the whistleblower post, the city where they are located should theoretically not be on the first list of projects to be built!

In fact, such whistleblowing was not new in the Soviet Union. Corruption in housing allocation had existed throughout Soviet history. It was an open secret that those with connections received housing first, while those without connections continued to wait.

After all, the power of approval is in the hands of officials, and who gets it first and who gets it later depends on their relationship with the officials, which is how rent-seeking comes about.

According to the reforms promoted by Slava, the allocation of housing in Ivanov should have been based on eligibility verification through data from the OGAS system: resident's family size, current housing area, waiting time, and whether the property is located in an earthquake zone... This data is all available in the OGAS system, which automatically sorts residents, leaving little room for human intervention. Furthermore, residents can check their ranking and who received housing in each batch at any time through their community...

In theory, that should be the case. Information systems are designed to promote people's democracy, make information more transparent, and make it easier for people to supervise the government!

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.

According to normal procedures, this letter of complaint should have been distributed by the central petition system to the local petition department in Azerbaijan for processing.

Because the Soviet Union received thousands of online complaint letters every day, ranging from complaints about noisy neighbors to accusations of official corruption, the central government couldn't handle every single one personally. The established procedure was that the first complaint would be handed over to the local authorities, and only if the complainant was dissatisfied with the local handling and filed a second complaint would the central government take notice.

This process usually works. Most first-time complaints are resolved locally—either the problem is actually solved, or the complainant is "dealt with," meaning the matter is at least half resolved and doesn't escalate.

But this time it's different.

Several weeks later, before the local petitioning authorities in Azerbaijan had even issued a response, residents in Armenia began to file complaints.

Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan have always been strained, with deep-seated grievances between the two republics stemming from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Even after Moscow intervened several years ago and took direct control of the disputed region from the central government, relations between the two republics remain poor.

Normally, the two sides dislike each other both online and offline, but on this matter, they are surprisingly in agreement: they are talking about the same thing—corruption in the allocation of the new buildings!

What's even more interesting is that the local Soviets on both sides of the Armenian and Azerbaijani borders are still blaming each other. The Azerbaijani Soviet says that Armenia is in a bad situation because Armenia stole the budget and built the buildings first; the Armenian Soviet says that Azerbaijan is the root of the problem because it built more Ivanov buildings even though only a portion of the area is on the earthquake zone.

If only one side is reporting, it might be a dispute over interests or an isolated case. But if both sides are reporting and the content of the reports is highly similar, it indicates that the problem is structural and is likely not the personal behavior of a single official.

The Soviet Prosecutor's Office decided to send someone to investigate.

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.

Legendary investigator Jeliman Khorenovich Gedrian thus arrived in Azerbaijan.

He was Armenian, which was a sensitive issue. Many officials in the prosecutor's office worried that he would vent his resentment towards the enemy country, but the prosecutor's office sent Gerdrian because they trusted his abilities.

Gerdrian was a high-ranking official in the Soviet Prosecutor's Office specializing in high-level anti-corruption cases. He had participated in the follow-up investigations of the cotton scandal and knew how corruption operated within the Soviet bureaucracy—every link in the chain profited, and every participant protected others, because if one person fell, everyone else would fall too!

He had a premonition that he was going to pull off a big job this time.

On May 20, Gerdrian flew from Moscow to Baku with two assistants.

Upon arrival, he didn't go to the local government, as that would alert them. The first thing he did was go online.

He wanted to see the posts on the Vicher Forum about corruption in the allocation of new buildings in Azerbaijan, to understand what people were saying, how many people were reporting it, and what the specific accusations were.

He opened his browser, logged into the Vicher Forum, and searched for "Azerbaijan" plus "Ivanov" plus "allocation".