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

The more the enemy opposes, the more it proves that Slava is right!

The Minister of Agriculture of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic submitted a letter of opinion to Moscow through official channels, the core of which is:

"Information technology development should be steadily promoted on the premise of fully respecting the management authority of the constituent republics, and it is not advisable for the central government to bypass the republic level and directly deploy data collection systems at the grassroots level."

Kazakhstan's opposition was even more direct; their deputy minister of agriculture said something to Slava's liaison over the phone that later became a joke in Moscow's reformist circles:

"Our comrades in Moscow want to see our data? Sure, we'll send it to you once we've compiled it. Why bother with computers?"

Guess why we need to develop information technology?

Everyone understood the real reason for the opposition.

Information transparency means that local officials have lost the "power to process" data, and that's the root cause!

Under the current system, from farms to districts to states to republics and then to Moscow, each level can "appropriately adjust" the figures during the data reporting process.

When production is low, increasing it slightly makes it seem like the target has been met; when costs are high, decreasing them slightly makes it seem like efficiency is good—this kind of adjustment has been an unspoken rule for decades, supporting the political achievements and career paths of everyone from grassroots cadres to the Party Secretary of the Republic.

Now Slava wants to create a system that allows Moscow to directly access grassroots data? Isn't that digging the grave for the CPSU?

I wonder what the statue of the mentor on the wall would think if he saw this scene.

In short, things escalated. The agricultural departments of Uzbekistan, Georgia, and Belarus also expressed their concerns, and representatives from several republics even went to Chernenko's secretary to complain—although Chernenko himself probably didn't even know the name of the project, his secretary still forwarded the complaint to Romanov's office, who was looking for a scapegoat to use against the reformists.

Finally, Gorbachev had to step in and smooth things over, making a compromise decision at a meeting of the Central Secretariat:

"The direction of information technology development is correct, but the pace of implementation should take into account the capacity of all parties. It is recommended to first conduct pilot projects in 'border areas and key agricultural areas where conditions are ripe' and then gradually promote them after gaining experience."

In layman's terms, it means don't try to expand nationwide; just pick a few places to focus on first.

Slava knew this was the best outcome Gorbachev could achieve. Under the current political landscape, forcibly pushing for nationwide deployment would mean offending the local powers of all the constituent republics, a battle he couldn't win.

The pilot program was eventually narrowed down to a total of 173 agricultural research and development consortia in Uzbekistan and its border regions in Central Asia.

With the scope of this pilot project narrowed, the number of ACY system standards that needed to be coordinated and integrated was also greatly reduced, turning the original nightmare involving more than a dozen different specifications into a controllable task that only required dealing with three or four main models.

The first batch of terminal equipment delivered by the Ministry of Electronics Industry arrived in the pilot area in mid-October. Agricultural colleges and research institutes affiliated with the local consortia provided operators—young teachers and graduate students who had tinkered with computers in the laboratory were temporarily assigned to the agricultural information technology group. Each person received an extra subsidy of 100 rubles per month on the condition that they spend more than four hours a day sitting in front of the terminal and typing in the data from the paper reports sent from various production units one by one.

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 cotton harvesting season in Uzbekistan peaks at the end of September.

Every autumn, the entire Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic enters a state of total mobilization:

Universities suspended classes, middle schools closed for holidays, factories redeployed workers, and government agencies were downsized to just staff on duty. From teenagers to retired teachers in their sixties, everyone who was able was sent to the cotton fields, bending over to pick cotton bolls one by one from the withered bolls and stuff them into cloth bags in the endless white cotton fields.

In 1984, cotton harvesting in the Soviet Union was still mainly done by hand, with a mechanization rate of less than 40 percent. Moreover, the quality of machine-harvested cotton was far inferior to that of hand-harvested cotton. Therefore, every autumn, millions of Uzbeks had to repeat this ancient labor from sunrise to sunset.

In mid-October, Slava personally went to Uzbekistan to oversee the cotton harvest.

Two years ago, he came here with Andropov's orders to investigate the cotton case. At that time, Rashidov was still alive, and the cadres of the entire republic were still operating around that large network woven from false figures.

Now Rashidov has long since gone to see his mentor, his network of connections uprooted and replaced by a new generation of officials, giving Slava the power base in the region.

My family and I can never repay Mr. An's kindness.

Uzbekistan's cotton production target for this year is 4.5 million tons.

It is nearly a third lower than the five or six million tons during the Rashidov era. It is the result of the annual reduction that began during Andropov's tenure. Every year, a reason was found, such as abnormal climate, the impact of water conservancy construction, or production fluctuations during the variety renewal period. In short, the target was reduced a little bit each time, like slowly deflating a balloon that has been blown up for twenty years.

Slava knew that Uzbekistan's actual cotton production was around 3.5 million tons. The target of 4.5 million tons was still higher than the actual capacity, but at least it wasn't as outrageous as before, requiring an exaggeration of many times over to achieve. Now, only a 20% to 30% "embellishment" was needed.

Anyone who has worked in the central government knows that this ratio is considered close to an "honest" level in the planned economy statistics of the alliance.

In October, the cotton fields around Tashkent are bustling with people. Hundreds of men, women and children in work clothes are bending over and moving slowly through the waist-high cotton stalks, dragging behind them white cloth bags stuffed with cotton.

In the distance, several tractors pulling wheelbarrows wait to be loaded onto the dirt roads in the fields.

At the entrance to each plot of land, a simple shed was erected, under which was a large weighing scale. Next to the scale sat an official wearing an armband, with a notebook and a pen in front of him.

The pickers dragged the bags full of cotton to the front of the shed to be weighed. The officials recorded the weight and the pickers' names in a notebook. Then the bags were loaded onto a waiting tractor and transported to a nearby primary processing station.

This registration step is new.

Previously, data on cotton from the field to the primary processing station relied entirely on verbal reports and estimates. Now, every bag of cotton has a birth certificate: who picked it, which field, what time it was weighed, and how much it weighs, all written in black and white in the registration book.

At the end of the day, these registers are collected at the district-level information node, which is located in a computer room in the management center of the industry-research consortium. The young technicians, who receive a monthly subsidy of one hundred rubles, enter the data into the system one by one.

While inspecting the fields, Slava stopped in front of a weighing shed for a while and noticed a detail: when some bags were put onto the scale, some things that were not cotton were sticking out of the bottom—sand, mud, and even withered cotton stalks—and these things were stuffed at the bottom of the bags and covered with cotton, and then weighed along with the cotton.

It feels like I've gone back to three years ago.

The official in charge of weighing the bags visibly tensed up when he saw Slava staring at the clumps of mud leaking from the bottom of the bags, but he said nothing and simply lowered his head to continue writing in the register.

The deputy secretary of the district committee standing next to him was a man in his forties, wearing a faded blue work uniform. His calloused hands and dark skin clearly indicated that he was a model worker.

He walked over and shook hands with Slava.

"Comrade Secretary, this year's targets are much lower than last year's, but we can basically achieve them. Everyone is working very hard!"

Look at the weather. The rainfall has been alright this year, and the cotton is growing well. Our yield per unit area will definitely meet the target. As for those bags—”

His gaze drifted to a row of bulging cotton sacks piled up next to the scale, some of which had dried and turned white from the mud at the bottom.

"Sigh, farmers, they've been doing this for generations, they can't change it overnight."

Slava looked at him for a while, hesitating whether to confront him on the spot and expose the problem of the adulterer.

Given his position as the Secretary of Agriculture of the Central Secretariat and his past record of investigating cotton cases during the Andropov era, this deputy secretary of the district committee and his subordinates responsible for weighing the cotton would be terrified and would weigh all the bags mixed with sand again overnight. As a result, the cotton production figures for this district would go from barely meeting the target to being severely under-produced, and their official hats would have to be used as chamber pots for Slava.

But then what?

His information technology pilot project in Uzbekistan had only been running for less than two weeks! If a major fuss were made over a few bags of sand at this point, grassroots officials throughout Uzbekistan would see information technology as a "tool sent from above to find fault," rather than a means to improve management efficiency!

They will passively resist in a million ways that Slava could never have imagined: not reporting data, reporting false data, accidental damage to terminal equipment, technicians taking sick leave... In that case, this pilot project will really become a pile of scrap metal!

You can't get fat overnight. Change things little by little. Sometimes it's good to be a little oblivious.

Slava turned his gaze away from the mud-stained cotton sacks: "Okay, keep going. Be careful and don't let the students stand in the sun for too long. Those who can't do the work can carry a bucket and make some tea to help the children cool off."

He turned and walked towards the jeep waiting on the edge of the field. Director Nian followed a few steps behind and asked in a low voice, "Aren't you going to take care of the sand?"

"Never mind, let's save face for everyone."

"Why isn't he as indomitable as before? Has our Comrade Velikoslav also been corrupted by the evil mountain of bureaucracy?"

"Stop arguing. We'll talk about the sand issue later—once the information system is running smoothly, enough data has been accumulated, and everyone has gotten used to the process and no longer sees it as a threat, it won't be too late to tighten the standards then."

Director Nian shrugged: "Ignorance is bliss?"

“It’s good to be confused sometimes,” Slava repeated.

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.

By mid-November, when the cotton harvest was basically over, these more than one hundred information nodes had been operating for nearly a month.

After some initial hiccups, the data from Uzbekistan—well, at least Slava believes it was genuinely an accident:

The system crashed twice. A technician misplaced a decimal point, causing the cotton yield for a certain area to be recorded as zero in the database, necessitating a recalculation. For several days, the data was completely cut off because a sandstorm severed the telephone line for that area...

In short, the system has finally begun to reliably send summary data back to Moscow every day.

The first thing Slava does every morning when he gets to the office is to open the summary sheet printed from the information center on his desk.

A densely packed matrix of numbers printed on continuously folded paper using a dot matrix printer is so ugly that any programmer in 2024 would want to beat up the designer!

But for Slava, each of those numbers was worth ten thousand times more than a front-page editorial in Pravda!

According to statistics, the autumn soybean harvest increased by 12 percent compared to last year. As for how much of this increase was due to improved management by the cooperative, how much to favorable weather this year, and how much to new varieties, he was not quite sure yet.

The Voronezh consortium performed even better, with a production increase of nearly 15 percent, which caught Slava's eye—the production differences between different farms within the consortium were narrowing, indicating that the consortium's resource sharing and technology promotion mechanisms were beginning to take effect.

The cotton data from Uzbekistan presented him with some difficulties.

The summary report shows that Uzbekistan's cotton production this year is 4.62 million tons—120,000 tons higher than the target of 4.5 million tons.

Slava believes that the consortium and information technology have indeed brought about some production increases—more timely fertilizer allocation, more reasonable irrigation arrangements, and reduced losses in some intermediate links. However, a few percent marginal improvement cannot push the actual yield from 3.5 million tons to the reported figure of 4.62 million tons in a single harvest season.

The difference of over a million tons couldn't be made up even if Rashidov were summoned from the dead. How much of it was sand? How much was due to the registrar's shaky hand adding extra zeros under the leader's instructions? How much was the result of district leaders hinting to their subordinates to fill in more...?

He can't figure it out, and he doesn't intend to.

Slava sat in his chair thinking for ten minutes. Outside the window, the November sky in Moscow had already darkened, and the streetlights shone with an orange glow in the first snow. In the distance, a tram clanged past, its sound carrying exceptionally clearly in the cold air.

Then he picked up a pen and changed the number on the summary report to 4.47 million tons.

The reduction of 150,000 tons was just right, making the figure appear to be fluctuating slightly around the target rather than significantly exceeding it.

What if Comrade Brezhnev were suddenly released by his mentor and possessed Chernenko, then patted Slava on the shoulder and said, "Comrade Ivanov, I think this year's output can be increased again, what do you think?" Wouldn't that cause an uproar?

Even if Brezhnev couldn't rise from the dead, this figure would still raise suspicions in statistical culture, because there are only two possibilities for a region known for overstating its targets to suddenly exceed them:

Either their reporting techniques are more sophisticated this year, or someone has tampered with the information system.

A slight shortfall is good; it won't make those above think they're fabricating data, nor will it make those below feel that Slava is forcing them to do the impossible.

Director Nian, watching him change the number from behind, joked:

"Ignorance is bliss?"

Slava put down his pen and smiled.

"It's rare to be confused."

Chapter 44 Seizing Power from the Ministry of National Defense

Just as the Union's agriculture was thriving, bad news came from Afghanistan.

At the end of September, the Pandeshir Valley once again became a nightmare for the Soviet army.

This was the seventh large-scale Soviet offensive against this valley since 1980, and the largest solo operation of the entire Soviet-Afghanistan War.

Approximately 15,000 Soviet and Afghan government troops attacked from the north and south. Su-25 attack aircraft and Mi-24 attack helicopters took off from Bagram Air Base and bombed villages in the valley, while ground troops advanced along the valley floor under the cover of tanks and armored vehicles. From a purely tactical point of view, the offensive was successful.

Massoud's partisans were forced to withdraw from their main stronghold in the valley, and the Soviet army established five outposts at the bottom of the valley.

But as autumn and winter approached, Massoud, whom Western journalists called the "Lion of Panjshir," and his several thousand jihadists once again infiltrated back from the surrounding mountains, launching a sustained harassment and siege of the five Soviet outposts.

Three outposts were captured in mid-October, and the remaining two were besieged. With their supply lines cut off, the defenders had to rely on airdrops to survive.

The attack of 15,000 men resulted in five indefensible strongholds and an ever-growing list of casualties—almost a perfect replica of the previous six Pandeshir campaigns, in which the Soviet army was able to capture the valley each time and the partisans were able to make a comeback each time!

This strategic failure intensified the struggle within the military and between conservatives and reformers in the Politburo.

Conservatives believed that the Soviet Union needed to go all out and increase its investment to crush all resistance from the Afghan jihadists in one fell swoop, and they blamed the reformists' terrible military reforms and withdrawal policy for preventing the Soviet army from exerting its full strength!

Reformers, however, see this as an opportunity to cut their losses. As is well known, sunk costs are not involved in the final decision-making process, and the alliance has no need to stay in this quagmire any longer.

"If the Soviet troops had remained, the jihadists supported by various powers would have united to fight the coalition. If the Soviet troops had withdrawn, we would not have to worry about the Americans extending their reach into Afghanistan, because the jihadists would have split up and then fought a civil war."

Perhaps the initial withdrawal set a precedent; once the red line is crossed, it is no longer a red line. The military reformists eventually persuaded the establishment to continue the withdrawal in the Politburo. Ogarkov even likened this desperate offensive by the establishment to "scooping water out of a sink without a drain."

In the mountainous environment of Afghanistan, attempting to eliminate guerrilla forces through large-scale conventional warfare was a militarily impossible task. Continuing to launch the eighth and ninth offensives in Panjshir would not have produced any different results other than depleting the manpower, resources, and morale of the Soviet army.

Since the military's opinion was basically unified, Chernenko followed public opinion and continued the withdrawal of troops. He announced this at a small meeting attended only by his inner circle:

"Consolidate the front line around Kabul and a few major cities, refrain from launching any new large-scale offensive operations, and continue to gradually withdraw troops in accordance with the plan formulated during the Andropov era."

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 plenary session of the Central Committee in late October was not convened by the Second Secretary.

It's nothing short of a miracle that Chernenko actually chaired this plenary session!

Over the past few months, Chernenko's emphysema and cardiopulmonary failure have almost made him disappear from public view, and Western intelligence agencies have been updating their predictions on how long Chernenko can live every few days.

There was also a false report in September, when American media somehow got the news that Chernenko had gone to see his mentor in a perfectly normal manner and issued an obituary in advance to mourn him (pop champagne). As a result, Chernenko had to come out and say that he was not dead.

This clearly demonstrates how little trust the outside world has in Chernenko's health.

After October, Chernenko's staff arranged a series of image-building activities for him: stopping to shake hands and exchange a few words with foreign ambassadors during "chance encounters" in the Kremlin corridors, broadcasting a few seconds of footage of him signing documents on television, and publishing brief news reports in newspapers about him "listening to a work report from a certain comrade"...

In short, we must make the outside world feel that the General Secretary is still in office, in good health, and that he will live a long and healthy life.

By the end of October, Chernenko, having likely recovered enough energy after receiving sufficient oxygen and injections, decided to personally preside over the plenary session and demonstrate to everyone:

"I'm not dead yet, the power is still in my hands, I am the General Secretary! You all better tone down your private collusion regarding the successor!"

Thus, at the plenary session, each member reported in turn on their work achievements in 1984.

In agriculture, grain production in the pilot areas of the consortium has indeed seen considerable growth, and the growth in Sino-Soviet trade is even more remarkable—from 700 million rubles at the beginning of the year to an estimated 1.5 billion rubles by the end of the year. Inexpensive Chinese light industrial products are filling long-standing gaps in the Soviet consumer market at an unstoppable pace.

While the quality of those light industrial products was indeed inferior to that of American and Japanese products, their prices were only a fraction of those of similar Western goods, and they were plentiful. For a country where one had to queue to buy even a decent pair of nylon stockings in a state-run store, this was already a substantial improvement in living standards.

After completing the agricultural report in Slava, there was an unexpected bonus:

Several young cadres from industrial ministries approached him during the tea break to chat about the large-scale application of information technology in industry. They were very interested in the data collection system that Slava had built within the consortium and wanted to know if it could be transplanted into the management of industrial production.