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

But Slava still wanted to see what limits he could reach.

While his troops were fighting and maneuvering, they were also constantly capturing equipment to prolong their lives and waiting for an opportunity to counterattack. Through continuous reconnaissance and harassment, they forced a regiment to advance on the southern flank more than a day slower than planned, and also wiped out more than four times the total value of the Red Army's entire battalion and company, including their equipment.

His victory surprised the entire command. Many generals privately asked who had led the troops. Defense Minister Ustinov's expression was not very good, while Ogarkov's smile was even more difficult to suppress than an AK.

Ultimately, Slava couldn't escape the Red Army's purge. Armed and reconnaissance helicopters successfully caught up with the Blue Army, whose drones had been completely wiped out. In any case, Slava offered absolutely no gameplay experience.

In the midst of the fog of war, while others are sitting in their vehicles, they are inexplicably announced by the command headquarters that they have been discovered by attack helicopters and then completely wiped out, after which they can return to the command headquarters to settle the victory.

Regardless of the infighting among the higher-ups, the soldiers and officers below all admired this Blue Army battalion with its legendary battle record. A Red Army colonel wrote in his post-battle report:

"The Blue Force's 117th Battalion demonstrated an unconventional combat model. Its dispersed deployment, information coordination, and flexible maneuverability caused unexpected trouble for our southern flank advance group. The actual combat effectiveness of this battalion far exceeded the theoretical value corresponding to its organized force, which is worthy of in-depth study."

The commander of the Blue Team, a lieutenant general who had always held reservations about this "KGB experiment," spoke a fair word at the debriefing meeting:

"The 7th Battalion is one of the few battalion-level units in the entire Blue Army that forced the Red Army to dedicate special forces to deal with it. If we had ten such battalions, the Red Army's timeline would be delayed by at least three to five days!"

...

After the exercise, Ogarkov met with Slava and Sokolov at the Leningrad Military District headquarters.

There were only the three of them in the meeting room. Ogarkov was dressed in civilian clothes, and on the table was a complete combat log of the Blue Army's 117th Battalion and a copy of the director's internal debriefing report.

"How did your data terminal perform in actual combat?" He didn't ask about the exercise results.

“When the five cameras were deployed to the battlefield, they operated stably for about 70 to 75 percent of the time. The rest of the time they malfunctioned or were obstructed by the terrain,” Slava said, not intending to embellish anything in front of the marshal. He pushed the equipment operation logs he had recorded during the exercise onto the table. “The reliability of the equipment itself needs to be improved, and the data capacity is too small. It can only transmit text and coordinates, not images. The image quality of the Tu-143’s television camera was very poor. The last one became unusable after D4, and the remaining days relied entirely on human reconnaissance and the directing staff’s special assistance.”

“That means your information system was out of commission for nearly a quarter of the time, and you even lost your drones in the last two days—but even so, your battlefield situational awareness was still far superior to that of the Red Army on the other side,” Ogarkov said, leaning back in his chair with his fingers interlaced on his stomach.

"What if the reliability of the equipment could be improved to over 95%? What if the drone's image quality allowed you to distinguish the type of tank? What if every division had a battalion like this?"

These questions don't need answers, because the answers are in the questions themselves.

Ogarkov stood up and walked to the window.

"The official conclusion of this exercise will be that the Red Army won a great victory—this is necessary; there is no other political option."

But I will write something else in my internal report. I will write that this exercise exposed the widening gap between us and the West in command and communications, battlefield situational awareness, and precision strikes, and that traditional heavy-duty tactics will encounter unexpected resistance when facing an informationized adversary.

He turned to look at Slava and Sokolov.

"And your battalion will be written in the appendix of the report as a case study—a case study demonstrating the future form of warfare. This case study will not change any decisions made today, but it will certainly have an effect in the future."

He walked to the door, opened it, and prepared to leave, but paused on the threshold and turned back.

"Comrade Velikoslav Ivanovich, go back to Moscow. Andropov is waiting for you. Moscow needs you more than Belarus in the coming days."

The door closed. Sokolov and Slava sat in the conference room for a while longer, neither of them speaking.

The September sky over Leningrad outside the window is high and blue. Autumn has arrived, and the birch leaves are starting to turn yellow. A few have already been blown by the wind onto the windowsill.

As they were about to part, neither of them knew what to say.

Sokolov finally spoke: "What will happen to this battalion?"

“I don’t know,” Slava shrugged. “Maybe it will be disbanded and reorganized into the original sequence, or maybe it will be kept and experimented with again—it depends on what the higher-ups decide, but it should probably go back to the old ways.”

“If I can keep it,” Sokolov said, looking out the window, “I would like to continue taking it.”

"Hmph." Slava chuckled.

He still remembers the look on Sokolov's face six weeks ago, the one that said, "Who do you think you are, coming here to teach us how to fight?"

"You were a great battalion commander. I may never serve in the army again; the battlefield really isn't for me. But—I'll remember this experience for the rest of my life. I hope we can meet again..."

He thought about it and realized that farewells between men didn't need much sentimentality.

"May there be no more wars after this."

"May there be no more wars after this." Sokolov stood up and shook hands with Slava. Then he picked up his military cap from the table, put it on, saluted Slava, and left.

Slava rested for a while in the empty conference room, then packed up the documents on the table, put them in his briefcase, turned off the lights, and left.

At the end of the corridor is a window through which you can see the Neva River in the distance and a barge passing by on it. The barge is piled with timber, has a deep draft, and moves slowly, leaving a long trail of ripples in the afternoon sun.

The Western 81 exercise has ended.

In the propaganda film, the Red Army achieved a glorious victory, with its iron torrent crushing all resistance, and the socialist armed forces once again proving their invincibility.

So what about this unbreakable alliance?

Chapter 17 I haven't read many books, but I know the importance of being realistic.

It was around mid-September when the aftermath of the exercise was finished. The air in Moscow already carried the scent of autumn—the birch leaves were beginning to turn yellow, and the state-run newsstands along the streets had stocked a new issue of *Spark* magazine. The cover featured a photograph of the exercise: dozens of T-72 tanks rolled across the field in a wedge formation, with the headline printed in bold red:

"The Invincible Soviet Armed Forces"

Director Nian picked him up at the train station, carrying a plastic bag containing two still-warm meat pies and a bottle of kvass. She glanced at his face, asked nothing, shoved the plastic bag into his arms, and pulled him toward the subway station.

"Eat something first, we'll talk about it when we get back."

I was eating a meat pie against the wall of the Rislava metro car. The pie was a bit hard, but the filling was alright, the standard taste of a state-run canteen—a bit too onion-flavored, but at least it was real meat. There weren't many people in the car. Opposite me sat an old lady wearing a woolen hat, dozing off, and next to her was a middle school student in a school uniform looking at a physics textbook with an atomic model on the cover.

Slava leaned over for a peek, and wow, there was calculus too! He couldn't understand it anyway—but with his level of knowledge, he could probably compete for the math championship at a vocational high school.

"The Soviet Union had some expertise in science and engineering," Director Nian commented.

"really."

After returning to his apartment, Slava spread the stack of documents from his briefcase on the table, then lay down on the sofa with his eyes closed for about ten minutes, while Director Nian flipped through his documents without disturbing him.

"The report is well-written and quite in line with the central ideas of Marxism-Leninism." Director Nian turned to the last page and looked at the conclusion. "But there's one paragraph you might need to change—'The directing department has double standards in judging the attack from the command post.' How old are you, still throwing a tantrum?"

The Western 81 exercises are essentially a political drama, what are you making a fuss about? Besides venting some minor emotions, what good does writing this do? It easily gives others ammunition to criticize you, and you'll feel good if they label you.

“This isn’t something I planned to publish. What’s wrong with me writing it for myself? Besides, it’s a double standard to begin with!” Slava said with her eyes closed.

"Who knows what you're planning to do if I don't tell you? You'd better be more careful." Director Nian tapped Slava on the head.

...

Andropov met them ten days after the exercise ended.

The location was still Andropov's apartment. On the coffee table sat a pot of Georgian black tea and several oranges. Andropov looked even thinner than the last time they met, his cheekbones more prominent, but his eyes were still bright, the sharpness honed over fifteen years in the intelligence system undiminished by his physical decline.

He listened to Slava's report for about forty minutes, with almost no interruptions, only occasionally asking one or two detailed questions—he basically didn't ask professional scientific questions, but rather the officers and generals that Slava had contacted.

"What did Ogarkov say?" he asked finally.

"He said he would include the Blue Army's 117th Battalion in the appendix of the internal report as a case study of information warfare."

“Appendix,” Andropov chewed on the word, “do you know what that means?”

"Putting it in the appendix instead of the main text means that he approves of this direction, but does not yet have enough political capital to bring it to the forefront."

“Yes, Ogarkov is a smart man. He knows when to go in and when to wait.” Andropov picked up his teacup, took a sip, put the cup down, and remained silent for a while, his gaze falling on the folds of the curtains, as if he were thinking about something far away.

“You’ve done very well,” he finally said, his tone flat but Slava could sense the weight of those words—Andropov wasn’t one to give easy praise. “You’ve come a long way in the past year.”

"The next thing will be more difficult. I need you to stay in Moscow, not as staff officers or secretaries—I have people who specialize in those things."

Having sat in this position for fifteen years, fewer and fewer people are willing to tell me the truth. Perhaps it's time for you to learn something else.

Since then, Slava and Niandao's life trajectories have changed.

They began appearing around Andropov at an irregular but increasingly frequent pace. There were no appointment documents, no offices, and they didn't appear on any organizational charts, but the sharp-eyed people in the KGB system had already noticed: Velikoslav and his silver-haired female assistant were coming and going more and more often in the meeting room on the fifth floor of the headquarters building.

Andropov liked to call them over for talks around eight or nine o'clock in the evening. Usually, after finishing his official duties for the day, he would brew a pot of tea and sit in that simply decorated reception room. The topics of conversation ranged from the international situation to economic reforms to the lessons of Soviet history.

Sometimes Andropov talks while Slava and Director Nian listen; sometimes Slava offers an idea, and Andropov refutes or adds to it; occasionally, Director Nian will chime in with a blunt comment that leaves both of them speechless—Andropov has an unusually high tolerance for Director Nian's style, and Slava even thinks he might enjoy being rebuffed by someone who doesn't follow bureaucratic rules, because such an experience is so rare in his daily work.

Slava and Andropov can reach a consensus on some points, but Slava is not optimistic about many of Andropov's policies—after all, Andropov is still the kind of person who would blame a ship sinking on a deck that wasn't cleaned properly.

This meant that Slava had to be careful not to step on Andropov's landmines when dealing with him, and also had to demonstrate his own value to Andropov.

Slava could sense that Andropov was doing two things through these seemingly casual conversations: first, testing his judgment and knowledge to see if he was worth continuing to invest in; second, gradually unfolding his diagnosis and vision of the country in front of him, like polishing a mirror—he needed someone who could reflect his thoughts back, even if what was reflected was not entirely what he wanted to see.

It's clear to everyone that this short man is moving into the inner circle of the KGB chairman. As for what that means—that depends on how things change in Moscow over the next few months.

...

Soon the situation changed.

On October 29, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held a crucial meeting on the Polish question. In the preceding month, Soviet pressure on Poland had reached a point of near-breakdown—on September 10, the Soviet government notified Warsaw that it would cut oil supplies to Poland by 64 percent and natural gas supplies by 47 percent, and immediately cease diesel imports;

In June, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union sent a stern warning to the Polish United Workers' Party; in July, Foreign Minister Gromyko personally went to Warsaw to exert pressure; in August, Brezhnev summoned Polish First Secretary Kania and Polish Prime Minister Jaruzelski to his Crimean resort for a personal reprimand. On October 18, the Kremlin, having reached its limit of tolerance for Poland's slow and weak response to the Solidarity movement, directly pressured the Polish United Workers' Party to replace First Secretary Kania, with Jaruzelski concurrently serving as Prime Minister and First Secretary.

Even with all this, the situation in Poland continued to deteriorate, and Solidarity's influence only increased. While Jaruzelski stated his intention to restore order, he also repeatedly implied that he couldn't handle the situation without Soviet military intervention. He tied the crackdown to the promise of Soviet military intervention—"I won't act unless you send troops."

This sparked outrage within the Politburo. At the meeting on October 29, Andropov confirmed a consensus that everyone had sensed but no one had publicly stated: the Soviet Union would not send troops to Poland.

Slava learned of this from Andropov's conversation that evening.

"In 1956 in Budapest, we solved the problem with tanks, and it took ten years to heal that wound! In 1968 in Prague, we solved the problem with tanks again, and to this day the Czechs still hate us."

Poland is neither Hungary nor Czechoslovakia—with its 36 million people, its own army, and its intricate ties with the West, the cost of military intervention is beyond our means.

"But what if Solidarity really seizes power? What if Poland sides with NATO? What will happen to East Germany?" Director Nian asked.

Andropov looked at her: "Poland can be independent but it must never side with NATO—losing control of Poland is a smaller price to pay than being dragged into the abyss by Western political and economic sanctions, and I think that's acceptable."

Slava listened from the side, but what he was thinking about was something else entirely—an empire choosing to retreat on its periphery is never an isolated event in history, but rather the beginning of a chain.

Today it's Poland, tomorrow it could be Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or East Germany.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 did not happen suddenly. The first brick had already been loosened in the Gdansk shipyard in 1980, and when Moscow decided not to send troops in October 1981, it had already tacitly accepted that the wall would fall sooner or later.

The Brezhnev Doctrine—the Soviet Union’s right to military intervention in any socialist country that “deviates” from its principles—had effectively ended on this day, though there were no documents, no statements, and even those present may not have realized it themselves.

The building is already collapsing.

...

Meanwhile, another clue is also tugging at Moscow's nerves.

On September 23, while the smoke from the Western 81 exercises had not yet cleared, the United States and the Soviet Union reached an agreement in Geneva to formally begin negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear forces.

The negotiations took place against the backdrop of an increasingly tense nuclear standoff in Europe since the late 1970s—the Soviet Union had begun a large-scale deployment of SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missiles along its western border starting in 1977, each carrying three independently targetable nuclear warheads and with a range covering the entirety of Western Europe. NATO was forced to adopt the "two-track decision" at the Brussels conference in December 1979—if negotiations failed, the US would begin deploying Pershing II ballistic missiles and land-based cruise missiles in Western Europe starting in late 1983.

Slava and Nian had discussed this on the train from Moscow to Uzbekistan; back then it was just a news item in the newspaper, but now it has become one of the most prominent headlines in the intelligence briefings that appear on Andropov's desk every day.

On November 18, U.S. President Reagan delivered a speech at the National Press Club that caused an uproar in Moscow. He proposed the so-called "zero option"—that if the Soviet Union dismantled all SS-20, SS-4, and SS-5 missiles, the United States would cancel its plans to deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe.

The proposal seems very fair on paper—neither side will deploy troops back to the starting point—but Moscow clearly doesn't think so.

Andropov explained the reason to Slava in a rare, sharp tone during the conversation:

"Reagan demanded that we dismantle the hundreds of missiles that had already been deployed in exchange for him canceling a deployment plan that had not yet begun—essentially asking us to hand over our weapons first, and then promising not to buy any more guns in the future."

And he deliberately omitted the nuclear forces of Britain and France from his calculations. Britain and France combined have hundreds of nuclear warheads pointed at us—they don't count? What do you mean by "zero option"? This is blackmail! Fuck you Americans!

What can Slava say? That the SS-20 shouldn't have been deployed in 1977? The reasons for the Soviet Union's missile deployment in 1977 can be traced back even further; how can that mess be settled? It's impossible to settle!

In late November, Brezhnev, despite his poor health, visited West Germany and presented the Soviet proposal in Bonn.

The Soviet Union was willing to make partial reductions but insisted on including British and French nuclear forces in the calculations. The United States flatly refused, arguing that Britain and France were sovereign states with the right to decide the size of their nuclear arsenals, and that US-Soviet negotiations could not dictate the actions of third countries. The two sides were locked in a fierce battle for European public opinion—the Soviet Union used the massive anti-nuclear movement in Western Europe to try to sow discord between NATO allies and the United States, while Reagan insisted that the Soviet Union's SS-20 was the root cause of the peace crisis.

Western Europeans were still quite clear-headed; they knew that no matter who won the final victory after the US and the Soviet Union went to war, Europe would be reduced to ruins, and Europe would definitely be the loser.

PS: Obviously, Japan doesn't have this awareness now, thinking it can sit at the table and eat with China and the US.

On November 30, the United States and the Soviet Union formally began negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear forces in Geneva.

As Slava read these intelligence briefings in Andropov's meeting room, he felt a strange sense of disorientation—the director knew that the negotiations would eventually end in 1987 with Reagan and Gorbachev signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Soviet Union would dismantle all SS-20 missiles and the United States would withdraw its Pershing II missiles, but in 1981, no one knew this outcome. Everyone was seriously playing the game, calculating, and anxious, as if this nuclear standoff would continue forever.

"What are you thinking about?" Andropov once noticed that he was lost in thought.

"I'm wondering how this negotiation will end. This stalemate is really difficult to handle, Mr. An." Slava put down the intelligence briefing.

"What do you think?"

"If neither side backs down, the end result will either be a real deployment—and Europe will become a powder keg that could explode at any moment—or one side will blink first."

So who do you think will blink first?

"It depends on whose internal pressure is greater. Reagan faced wavering Western EU allies and the anti-nuclear movement within the US, but his economy was growing and he could sustain it. We face economic stagnation and troubles like Poland, with ongoing bloodshed in Afghanistan, and an arms race with a US whose military spending is doubling... In the long run, we'll be the ones blinking first."

I am neither a hater of the country nor a traitor, and I myself am not very well-educated, but I am very clear about four words: "seek truth from facts."

Andropov stared at him for a long while, the weight of his gaze making Slava almost want to take back what he had just said. But Andropov ultimately just nodded, picked up his teacup, took a sip, and left the topic somewhere on the table.

...

On December 10, the Politburo held another meeting to discuss the Polish issue.

The atmosphere was even more tense this time than on October 29th. Yaruzelsky continued to link the repression with the Soviet promise of military intervention, and the Politburo's patience with this stance had completely worn thin. Andropov made it clear at the meeting that even facing the unpleasant prospect of losing Poland, the Soviet Union would never send troops.

Two days later, late at night—from December 12th to the early morning of the 13th—the Polish State Council approved a nationwide martial law decree in Warsaw.