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

Director Nian ate two sunflower seeds and tilted his head slightly.

"President An threw you into that place—right across from China—and put you in charge of agriculture—do you think that's a coincidence or a backup plan he left behind?"

Slava did not answer the question because he was unsure of the answer.

Perhaps Andropov simply pointed to a Far Eastern region and sent him there, or perhaps old Deng did consider the geographical location of the Amur region and Slava's political ideology when making that decision—after dealing with Andropov for two and a half years, he learned one thing:

Behind every decision this person makes, there may be three to five layers of consideration, and you are never sure which layer you are seeing.

The boarding announcement came on, and a female voice read out the flight number and gate. Slava stood up and picked up her suitcase, while Director Nian stuffed his bag of sunflower seeds into his pocket and stood up as well.

As they walked through the waiting hall toward the boarding gate, they passed a wall displaying a map of Soviet domestic flight routes. Moscow was marked with a red five-pointed star on the map, while Blagoveshchensk, six thousand kilometers away in the Far East, was just a tiny, almost invisible black dot.

How did Stalin endure being exiled to Siberia multiple times during the Tsarist era, a distance of 6,000 kilometers? Was going to Siberia really a vacation and a luxury for the "Iron Father"?

Director Nian walked beside him, her silver hair almost blinding under the fluorescent lights of the waiting hall. She carried her bag and walked without saying a word until she crossed the threshold of the boarding gate, when she turned back for one last look at the gray Moscow skyline behind her.

Outside the window, it was late March in Moscow and the snow was still falling. The snow melted as soon as it hit the tarmac, turning the concrete into a grayish-brown mud.

"This awful weather in Moscow," she muttered as she stepped over the threshold, "I don't want to think about it anymore."

Slava knew she was lying, but he didn't call her out on it.

The plane taxied on the runway for a while before accelerating and taking off, and Moscow rapidly shrank outside the window.

The gray Khrushchev buildings and the birch trees between them became a blurry patch of color, then the whole city shrank into a dark spot on a snow-covered gray-white plane, and finally, even the spot disappeared, leaving only the boundless Russian land slowly receding beneath the wings.

Forests, rivers, and the occasional small town were all covered by the grayish-white remnants of snow at the end of March.

The flight time for 6,000 kilometers is about eight hours, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

Slava leaned against the window seat with his eyes closed. His mind was racing with too many things—Reagan's speech and the Star Wars program, Andropov's increasingly grim face, Gorbachev's rise to power, and what would happen to the military reforms without him, the outstanding marksman 83 a few months later—damn, he had almost forgotten the nuclear war panic that nearly destroyed human civilization.

That moment is still about eight months away.

But during those eight months, he had to learn how to grow soybeans and wheat in a state on the far east frontier, while at the same time figuring out how to continue playing his game on a chessboard 6,000 kilometers away!

He had never hated his past behavior so much at this moment. If only he could have acted better like Ge Tudi, if only he could have gained more of President An's trust!

How wonderful it would be if I had more power!

He suddenly opened his eyes and stared at the airplane window, his breath blowing the silver hair off his cheeks.

Director Nian was already asleep in the seat next to him, her head resting on his shoulder, swaying slightly with the plane's gentle turbulence but never falling off.

Slava reached out and straightened Director Nian's head. Director Nian snorted, turned over, and continued to sleep, his silver-white hair scattered on the dark blue seat back.

The plane flew eastward at an altitude of 30,000 feet.

Beneath their feet lay an empire bent under its own weight, a fortress surrounded by the hostility of two superpowers, a behemoth trembling in the shadow of nuclear warheads, searching for a way out.

And at the easternmost edge of this behemoth, on the banks of the Heilongjiang River, a small city awaits him.

Spring comes later in the Far East than in Moscow; Blagoveshchensk is probably still covered in snow and ice at minus twenty degrees Celsius.

His winter is not over yet.

Interlude: The world is standing on the edge of a precipice

Under Reagan's influence, anti-nuclear sentiment was rising in the United States, and the Soviet Union's previous responses to Reagan's speeches were mostly taken out of context by the media and instilled in Americans as part of ideological propaganda.

So, amidst the overwhelming propaganda, a brave girl decided to ask the emperor of the evil empire on the other side of the earth.

...

Manchester, Maine, USA

Samantha Smith was extremely anxious; every morning when she opened her eyes, her first thought was whether the earth was still alive.

This is not the kind of naive question used in children's literature to amuse adults.

For the past few weeks, American television has been broadcasting daily simulations of nuclear war and footage of mushroom clouds. Newspapers are showing range diagrams of the Soviet SS-20 missile and hypothetical images of Washington, D.C., after being nuked. Radio broadcasts are playing recordings of anti-nuclear protesters chanting "We don't want to die in atomic flames" as they march down Fifth Avenue in New York.

These things, along with cereal commercials, reruns of Sesame Street, and her mother's calls to wake her up for breakfast, constitute the daily routine of a ten-year-old American girl.

Millions of American children suffer from the same fear, but most children simply keep it inside or release it in their nightmares. Samantha did something different—she wrote a letter to the person who created the fear.

The incident began with a November 1982 issue of Time magazine, featuring a cover portrait of an elderly man wearing glasses, with the headline "Feature on the New Soviet Leader." After seeing that face, Samantha asked her mother:

"Everyone is so afraid of him, why doesn't anyone ask him if he actually wants to fight?"

Her mother probably said it casually: "You can write him a letter."

So Samantha actually wrote it.

The letter was so short that any diplomat would have thought it was a joke, but it was precisely this naiveté that gave it a penetrating power that no diplomatic rhetoric could match:

"Dear Mr. Andropov: "

My name is Samantha Smith. I am 10 years old. Congratulations on your election as General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.

I am very worried that Russia and the United States will get into a nuclear war. Do you want to see war or peace? If you don't want to tell me how you would try to avoid war, you don't have to answer this question.

But I'd like to know, why do you want to conquer the world, or at least our country?

God created the world for us, and He wants us to live in peace, not to fight each other.

Sincerely,

Samantha Smith

When the letter was sent, Samantha probably thought it would disappear into pulp like millions of ordinary civilian letters that were thrown into the shredder of the Soviet embassy in the United States.

In fact, under normal circumstances it should have disappeared into the pulp. But in any case, the letter was discovered by TASS—or rather, arranged to be discovered; no one knows exactly who in the chain of transmission made the decision to retrieve it.

In any case, the letter was eventually published in Pravda, with the title "A Letter from an American Girl".

On April 25, Andropov's reply was delivered to Samantha's mailbox.

Slava read the reply in Pravda while in his office at the Blagoveshchensk Regional Committee.

At the time, he had been in office in Amur Oblast for less than a month. His desk was piled high with the previous year’s agricultural production reports and water conservancy project schedules. Each document made him understand more deeply what it meant that “the land where Russian literature of suffering was born must be full of suffering.”

But Andropov's letter made him temporarily forget about soybean yields and spring flood warnings.

“Dear Samantha:

I received your letter. In fact, I've been receiving letters from people all over the world, including in your country, recently.

I believe that your letter shows you are a brave and honest girl, just like Becky and Tom Sawyer's friends in Mark Twain's novels.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is also popular and loved by children in my country.

You wrote to say that you are worried that our two countries will be drawn into a nuclear war, and asked me whether we would take measures to avoid the outbreak of war.

Your question is of utmost concern to any intelligent person, and I will answer it seriously and sincerely.

Yes, Samantha, we, the Soviet Union, are doing our utmost to prevent the world from descending into war. This is the wish of every Soviet citizen, and it is what our great founder, Vladimir Lenin, taught us.

The Soviets knew all too well what a terrible war meant. Forty-two years earlier, Nazi Germany, seeking world domination, had attacked us, burning thousands of towns and villages and massacring millions of Soviet men, women, and children.

In that war that ultimately ended in our victory, the Soviet Union and the United States formed an alliance: we fought side by side to liberate people ravaged by Nazi invaders. I hope you can learn all this from your school classroom.

Today, we yearn even more for peaceful coexistence, and even more for free trade and cooperation with all inhabitants of the earth—near and far—especially with great nations like the United States of America.

Both the United States and our country possess nuclear weapons—a terrifying weapon capable of killing millions of people in an instant. However, we never wish to use them.

This is precisely why the Soviet Union solemnly declared to the world that it would never—never—be the first to use nuclear weapons against any country. We are planning to halt their reproduction and to attempt to destroy all stockpiled nuclear weapons on Earth.

I think this is the most complete answer to your second question: 'Why do you want to conquer the world, or at least our country?'

We never thought of it that way. No one in our country—whether worker, farmer, writer, or doctor, adult or child, or government official—would want to see any war, large or 'small'.

We yearn for peace and a peaceful and prosperous life: to grow wheat, build skyscrapers, invent things, write books, or travel in space.

We hope for peace to come to the Soviet Union, to come to the earth. For our children, and for you, Samantha.

If your parents allow, I would like to invite you to our country, preferably in the summer when it is not too cold. You will learn about our country, meet your peers, and visit the international children's summer camp at sea—'Aljeb'. I hope you will witness firsthand how, in the Soviet Union, everyone longed for peace and friendship.

Thank you for your letter. Wishing you a lifetime of peace and happiness.

Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov

Regardless of whether the girl was being used as a pawn or genuinely wanted to ask a question, President An's reply has indeed brought this matter to the forefront.

Is this reply a public relations performance by a leader, or the KGB officer tormented by the fear of nuclear war speaking his true feelings to a child?

Perhaps it was both. Humans are complex beings. Andropov could sign the escalation order for Operation Ryan and write a reply to a ten-year-old girl on the same afternoon. The former ordered Soviet spies around the world to gather evidence of an impending American nuclear strike, while the latter promised the world that the Soviet Union desired peace and would never be the first to use nuclear weapons. He may have been sincere in both of these actions.

Because fear and the desire for peace are not contradictory; they are often two sides of the same emotion—it is precisely because you are so afraid of war that you crave peace so much, and it is precisely because you crave peace so much that you see the shadow of war in every suspicious sign.

Samantha's letter and Andropov's reply became global news within days, and the freckled ten-year-old girl became America's most famous child overnight.

Top hosts like Ted Copper and Johnny Carson invited her to their shows, and the media labeled her a "little social activist."

Later in July, she accepted Andropov's invitation and flew to Moscow for a two-week visit. She visited the Aljekt summer camp, swam and played games with the Soviet children, and took many photos. The Soviet children in the photos looked no different from the American children; they all had the same smiling faces, the same sunburns, and the same ice cream stains.

These heartwarming scenes offered a glimmer of hope to the nuclear-fear-ridden summer of 1983—as if the two superpowers would stop dropping nuclear bombs on each other if children could sit together and eat ice cream.

She later wrote a book about her trip to the Soviet Union, which had a great impact in the West at the time, and many people began to examine this axis of evil, which only existed in newspapers and speeches, from another perspective.

But their happiness was short-lived. On August 25, 1985, Samantha and her family were on a small plane home when the plane suddenly malfunctioned, and the whole family died in the crash.

Samantha died at the age of 13.

PS: I personally do not believe this is a purely accidental event, but there is no evidence to prove that it was not an accident.

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.

Meanwhile, Reagan did not stop.

The Evil Empire speech and the Star Wars program were just the opening act of his psychological warfare operation—which the Pentagon internally referred to as "psychological warfare against the Soviet leadership."

Even many people in the CIA don't know the specifics; only a very small circle within the White House and the Pentagon has a complete picture.

CIA Director William Casey later revealed some details in his memoirs:

He said Reagan was deliberately portrayed as a "reckless cowboy on the nuclear issue," and that this image was part of the White House's psychological warfare strategy.

If you make the other person feel that you are a madman, someone who doesn't play by the rules, someone who doesn't hesitate like a normal person when it comes to pressing the nuclear button, then the other person will be in a state of high tension at all times.

Sustained tension can lead to misjudgment, misjudgment can lead to concessions, and concessions can ultimately lead to collapse.

Another component of psychological warfare is military provocation.

U.S. Strategic Air Commander Jack Chain commented after the Elite Shooter 83 exercise:

“Sometimes we send bombers over the Arctic, and sometimes we send fighter-bombers close to their border. When they get nervous, we stop and come back a few weeks later.”

Another senior military official put it more bluntly: "The Soviets couldn't figure out our intentions. They would turn on their radars, take off their fighter jets, and watch us intently until the very end," only to find out it was just a probe and breathe a sigh of relief—then they would come back for another one two weeks later.

The most egregious instance was a secret military exercise conducted by the US Navy in the Pacific—carrier-based aircraft from the Pacific Fleet took off from their carriers and flew a simulated attack route against Soviet targets in the Far East, only turning back when they were within the detection range of Soviet shore-based radars, activating the air defense forces of the Soviet Far Eastern Military District as if they were on high alert.

Following that incident, the Soviet Far East air defense forces remained at the highest level of readiness for nearly a week until it was confirmed that the American aircraft had completely withdrawn—but every officer on duty spent that week under the psychological pressure of impending war.

Slava was increasingly able to understand why Andropov was so terrified. If he hadn't come from the future and knew the ending, he would have been terrified too!

The frequent military provocations by the US military, the deployment of nuclear weapons, various covert movements, demonizing propaganda, and the ever-increasing US military spending (which has already doubled)...

This is essentially equivalent to a signal before war.

At this time, Soviet intelligence agencies were collecting evidence around the world that the other side was preparing to launch a nuclear strike. NATO air forces were playing a cat-and-mouse game on the Soviet border. Nuclear submarines from both sides were tracking each other in the deep ocean. Thousands of nuclear warheads were on standby 24 hours a day and could wipe human civilization off the face of the earth in 30 minutes!

The world is standing on the edge of a precipice, with peace and fear coexisting in the hearts of everyone on both sides of the Cold War.

Welcome to 1983.

Chapter 30 Large-scale Industry-Research Consortiums (9K Two-in-One)

It wasn't until he was actually sent to the countryside that Slava realized how big the Soviet Union was.

Of course, he could sit in his office listening to his subordinates report on their work, waiting for instructions from his superiors, and then just get by, just like every day for the past few decades.

But Slava couldn't sit still. Director Nian said that 38 years old is the age to strive, and if he worked hard, he might be able to go further and become the first secretary of the state party committee. So the two of them went to conduct on-site research together.

For the first three days after taking office, Slava spent almost all his time traveling by car—starting from Blagoveshchensk, where the regional party committee is located, heading north along the asphalt road on the banks of the Amur River, passing through the delta where the Zeya River flows into the Amur River, and then turning onto a gravel road to head west into the heart of the Amur Region.

Along the way, there are endless plains, occasional birch forests, and small towns and collective farms that only appear every few dozen kilometers. The houses are all made of wood, and the tin roofs reflect a hazy light under the April sun.

The car was a UAZ-469 provided by the state committee. The Soviet-made jeep's suspension system, which had absolutely no shock absorption, coupled with the terrible road conditions, really gave the two of them a hard time. Fortunately, the fuel and travel expenses could be reimbursed, so the two of them could have a small meal and drinks in the city using public funds.

The two did not ask the state committee for an escort. Wherever they went, they went to the local bus station or market. There were plenty of people traveling between cities and towns, and many wanted to hitch a ride. Wouldn't it be great to take this opportunity to chat with the locals about their lives?

Locals could tell that the two men's car belonged to officials, but because the car was so dilapidated, they assumed it belonged to a low-ranking official, so locals dared to get in the car without permission.

Officials' license plates have specific letter combinations and have enjoyed the privilege of being exempt from routine traffic police checks since the 60s. Slava dislikes bureaucracy, and this license plate can save him a lot of trouble.