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

Beer should be moderately regulated, but not subject to extreme restrictions.

At the same time, continuing Ligachev's previous decision, more recreational facilities will be built in the next five-year plan, including stadiums, swimming pools, parks, and cinemas, to replace drinking with healthier hobbies.

The alliance will surely defeat alcohol!

Ryzhkov was the first to express his support. This plan preserved the bulk of the government's revenue from alcohol sales while cutting the most problematic category. For him, this was a plan that he could sell within the Politburo.

Ligachev's attitude became even more hesitant. His morality told him that any tolerance of alcohol was a compromise with depravity, but Slava's arguments about the national question did indeed touch a nerve with him as a federationist.

What ultimately convinced him was a report from Ukraine that Slava sent him:

On May 21, local officials in Kharkiv Oblast encountered fierce resistance from farmers while carrying out the demolition of vineyards. On May 22, several incidents occurred in Transcarpathian Oblast where farmers physically blocked bulldozers. It is said that the winemakers at the Massandra winery in Crimea are organizing a protest to preserve the Tsarist-era wines stored in their underground cellars!

This is outrageous! If these events were filmed by Western media and they claimed that "the Soviet Union used bulldozers to crush the cultural heritage of ethnic minorities," the propaganda effect of one such event would be equivalent to ten thousand anti-Soviet propaganda campaigns by Pope John Paul II!

Therefore, after discussing with Solomentsev, Ligachev agreed to propose a revised plan in the Politburo.

On May 25, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued a notice suspending the implementation of the resolution on the anti-alcohol campaign.

The following day, the Supreme Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee convened a supplementary meeting on the implementation details of the anti-alcohol campaign.

On the 28th, the revised plan was adopted, basically accepting the suggestions of Slava and Ryzhkov: strict control of spirits, ban on production in Polmotuha, preservation and encouragement of the development of natural wines, and moderate regulation of beer.

The vineyards that have been eradicated will be considered for replanting depending on the circumstances, but in practice, in response to Moscow's policy of reducing alcohol production, economic compensation and crop replacement are more often used as compensation options.

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 made full use of the credit for this policy adjustment in Ukraine.

Grape growers in the Transcarpathian, Crimean, and Kherson regions soon learned that it was the short Moscow official standing in front of the bulldozer who made a phone call on their behalf and saved their vineyards!

What a wonderful person! It must be that our mentor, watching from heaven, sent our 'great and glorious' comrade to serve the people!

At the grassroots level, these stories of standing up for the people are more effective than any documents or speeches.

It didn't need to be translated into any language to be understood by everyone, from Hungarian grape growers to Ukrainian collective farm workers to Russian factory workers... the story spread far and wide.

While this grassroots influence may not translate into Politburo votes in the short term, its value would far surpass that of the top-down network that Sherbitsky wove over thirteen years should one day be needed to launch a bottom-up reform movement in Ukraine.

When people unite, their power will far exceed everyone's imagination.

After the anti-alcohol movement subsided, Slava devoted all his energy to promoting agricultural informatization in Ukraine.

The national economic informatization project, which Ryzhkov secured at the April plenary session, has been formally incorporated into the framework of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan.

Now, Slava's IT project has transformed from an "agricultural secretary's personal hobby" into a formal program supported by the national budget.

The scope of this project is not limited to agriculture—its goal is to extend the framework of agricultural informatization to the industrial sector, establish unified technical standards and data exchange protocols, and lay the infrastructure foundation for future OGAS.

In Ukraine, Slava selected three regions with suitable conditions as pilot areas for information technology development:

Poltava Oblast, Vinnytsia Oblast, and Kirovoglar Oblast.

These three regions share the following characteristics: first, they are all major grain-producing areas in Ukraine; second, their regional party secretaries are not staunch supporters of Sherbitsky; and third, their existing ACY systems are relatively standardized and easier to integrate.

Ryzhkov provided additional support to Slava from the industrial sector.

Several batches of terminal equipment and communication interfaces, which were prioritized for production by the Ministry of Electronics Industry, were allocated to pilot regions in Ukraine. At the same time, Ryzhkov also sent several technical experts from the Ural Industrial Complex to Ukraine to assist Slava's team in system deployment.

The collaboration between these technical experts and Slava's agricultural information team also produced an unexpected chemical reaction:

People with industrial backgrounds brought data management experience accumulated in factory environments, while those with agricultural backgrounds brought practical methods for solving communication and data collection problems in decentralized rural environments. When the two were combined, the system's stability and coverage efficiency were significantly improved compared to the previous purely agricultural pilot projects!

However, information technology faces much greater political resistance in Ukraine than it does in Amur and Voronezh.

Although Shcherbitsky did not publicly oppose the project, he used his network to create obstacles at every possible stage:

Slow approval processes, delayed resource allocation, and local officials' "distrust and lack of cooperation" with outside technical teams.

What to do? Only kill!

Slava was ruthless. When it was time to be lenient, he didn't mind spending time and effort on appeasement, but when it was time to use drastic measures, he never hesitated to act like Stalin.

Russia can tolerate tyrants, but it cannot tolerate cowards.

Slava replaced a large number of key officials in the pilot state with young, pragmatic people, and each replacement required a confrontation with Sherbitsky.

This is a long war of attrition, where the outcome of each round is so small that outsiders can hardly perceive it, but for those involved, every step is crucial to whether the next step will succeed.

While advancing informatization, the cooperation between Ryzhkov and Slava has opened up a new area—the reform of state-owned industrial enterprises.

The first major headache Ryzhkov faced after becoming prime minister was the efficiency of state-owned enterprises.

Soviet industrial output growth had been declining for the past decade, equipment was aging, the introduction of new technologies was lagging, and product quality was becoming increasingly uncompetitive in the international market.

His instinctive reaction was to start from a management perspective:

"If factory managers are given more autonomy and stronger incentives, production efficiency should be able to improve."

He brought up the idea during a working lunch with Slava—a preliminary proposal for a factory manager responsibility system.

When Slava heard about the factory director responsibility system, the first image that flashed through his mind was Old Zhong.

He witnessed similar models firsthand during his visits to township and village enterprises in Hebei and Shandong:

The factory manager had considerable autonomy in operations; after a portion was handed over to the government, the majority of the profits remained in the factory for expanded production and bonuses. Were those township enterprises truly so dynamic and far more efficient than state-owned factories...?

Don't make the neoliberal leader laugh.

“Nikola Ivanovich, I have considered the factory manager responsibility system, but there are several fatal pitfalls in this system that you must see in advance.”

He spent about twenty minutes listing all the risks he could think of.

"The first pitfall is internal control."

You've given power to the factory manager, but the property rights still belong to all the people, which means there's no real owner watching him.

What would the factory manager do? He'd sell the factory's equipment at a low price to a "collective enterprise run by a relative," and then purchase raw materials from that so-called "collective enterprise" at a higher price, thus circulating the profits outside the factory.

Ryzhkov frowned.

He himself had been the director of the Ural Heavy Machinery Plant, and he knew that this operating method was very feasible.

And there are even more ruthless methods. While in office, the factory director can embezzle and sell off as much of the state-owned assets as possible. Once he has sold off most of them, he can simply walk away, the state-owned enterprise goes bankrupt and is liquidated, and then the factory director can transform into the new leading enterprise in the area.

As for what will happen to the workers? Only God knows.

Historically, a significant portion of state-owned enterprises in China were transferred out in this way from the late 80s to the 90s. The "spontaneous privatization" on the eve of privatization in the Soviet Union in the 90s was even more exaggerated, with factory directors directly transferring the core assets of their enterprises to cooperatives under their control.

If such a system is implemented, OGAS will not be effective in addressing this issue. Theoretically, it can monitor the flow of materials in real time, but only if the reported data is accurate!

But the factory manager is the ultimate person responsible for data reporting. The supervisor and the supervised are the same person. How can this work?

"The second pitfall is short-termism, something Yugoslavia already learned from when it was trying to establish 'workers' autonomy'."

A factory manager's term is three to five years, but the return on industrial investment often takes more than ten years. If you use current profits to evaluate a factory manager, he will reduce R&D, postpone major equipment overhauls, and divert depreciation reserves to bonuses.

The numbers looked impressive during his term, but the actual value of the factory was shrinking.

Our industrial equipment is already severely outdated. If you give the factory manager an incentive to not make long-term investments, the factory will be nothing but an empty shell in a few years.

"The third problem – what about the workers?"

We are a workers' country—well, at least nominally we are.

Once the factory director wielded excessive power, the Party committee, the labor union, and the workers' representative assembly were all marginalized. Then, the director began laying off redundant staff. Did the factory have an unemployment relief system? No. Was there retraining? No. Where did the laid-off workers go? They went to the streets.

What do you do after you go out? Drink vodka—see, this brings us back to the issue of alcoholism.

P.S.: Back then, alcoholism was also a serious problem in Northeast China. If you have elders in your family, you can ask them about it.

Ryzhkov's pencil moved quickly across his notebook. He was a pragmatic man, and for every risk Slava listed, he could find a corresponding case in his own factory management experience.

"The fourth pitfall is soft budget constraints."

Will loss-making companies go bankrupt? If so, then everything is fine, and the market signals become meaningful.

If not, considering employment, politics, and urban stability, the factory director faces an asymmetrical incentive where "winning is mine and losing is the country's."

He will inevitably engage in high-risk expansion, because the state will bail him out if he loses money anyway.

How many single-entity cities, each with its own factory, were there in the Soviet Union? If the factory went bankrupt, the entire city died; politically, it was impossible to let it go bankrupt.

In the Soviet Union, this problem was even more difficult to solve than that of Old Zhong.

In the 80s, the cities where state-owned enterprises were located also had township enterprises, foreign-invested enterprises, and private enterprises that absorbed employment. In the Soviet Union, an industrial city often had only one or two large factories. So now, if you travel to Siberia, Russia, you can often see dead cities. Most of those cities were industrial cities. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of state-owned enterprises, these cities died.

"Then what is your alternative?" Ryzhkov asked bluntly.

Slava said:

"I think collective decision-making combined with diversified supervision is more promising. The factory director has the authority over daily operations—procurement, production scheduling, personnel allocation... but major decisions such as investment, pricing, profit distribution, and disposal of large assets require a Soviet."

This organization should include employee representatives, supervisors appointed by higher authorities, bank representatives, and a chief technical engineer. It shouldn't be one of those rubber-stamp bodies; it should have actual veto power.

Ryzhkov remained silent for a long time.

The word "Soviet" means a representative meeting or committee.

The Soviet was an organizational form created by Lenin during the Russian Revolution to lead the masses in revolutionary struggle. It was a democratic form for workers and peasants, whose representatives could be elected and replaced at any time.

His homeland was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but the Soviets were long dead; what lived now was just a red empire in red.

The ideals of mentors are talked about by everyone in this country every day, but how many people actually do them?

A surge of heat welled up in his chest.

Ryzhkov looked at the statue hanging on the office wall. His mentor's gaze was fixed on the distance, looking towards the future that had been briefly reached.

“Yes, Soviet.” He looked into Lenin’s eyes, the hammer and sickle emblem on his chest burning hot.

“Soviet, we are the Soviet Union.” He repeated the word again.

"Yes, that's the original intention of reviving Soviet democracy—workers participating in management, collective decision-making, and checks and balances. This is what Lenin envisioned in 1917, but it was later changed and never came back."

They briefly traveled to the future.

A determination surged within Ryzhkov:

"Yes, this framework has a much smaller impact on our system than the factory director responsibility system. It retains the form of collective leadership, and the Party organization can continue to participate in enterprise management through employee representatives or supervisors, instead of being sidelined by a factory director with great power."

Slava cautioned, “Furthermore, if all the factory directors of state-owned enterprises in the Soviet Union become like little Hitlers, and they become economically independent, they will have their own political demands—if this group unites, they will form a new interest group, and what will happen to the principle of the Party’s control over cadres?”

This last point silenced Ryzhkov.

He is a person with deep feelings for the Party's organizational principles. Although he is very pragmatic on economic issues, the phrase "the Party manages cadres" carries great weight in his heart.

PS: At that time, corruption within the alliance system was confined to the planned distribution system (obtaining approvals and using connections). Corruption under the factory manager responsibility system would escalate to include, but not limited to, procurement kickbacks, sales kickbacks, bid rigging, related-party transactions, and the transfer of benefits in the disposal of land and factory buildings.

This type of corruption involves far larger sums of money than under the old system and is much harder to detect—because it occurs within the boundaries of legitimate business autonomy. Both Lao Zhong and the management of state-owned enterprises in Russia during the 1990s experienced this wave; in Russia, it resulted in oligarchy, while in China, it was partially suppressed through subsequent anti-corruption efforts and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) system.

“You have a point.” He thought about it carefully, “but how exactly can collective decision-making plus diversified supervision be implemented, how are employee representatives selected, where are the boundaries of the supervisors’ authority, and how is it connected with the existing Party committee and trade union system… If these details are not clarified, it’s just a piece of waste paper.”

"Then let's figure it out. We'll test it in a few pilot companies first, and promote it in parallel with the information technology pilot. We'll use the OGAS data system to support the monitoring function, so that everyone can see the company's real operating data."

Information transparency is a prerequisite for multi-faceted oversight. If members of the Soviet in the factory cannot see the true financial statements, then oversight is meaningless.

Ryzhkov had many ideas popping into his mind, and he couldn't wait to analyze their feasibility with his confidants.

"I'll go back and have the economic department study the feasibility. But Ivanov, these things can't be rushed. When pushing it in the Politburo, we need to be very careful with our wording. Don't use terms like 'Soviet democracy'!"

Gorbachev uses this word; if you use it again, it'll be like you're trying to steal his flag. You need to keep a low profile now; we're all waiting for you to come back.”

No, buddy?

"What word should we use?"

"Take the collective decision-making mechanism for perfecting corporate management, for example, no one can find fault with it."

"No problem."

Slava laughed and hung up Ryzhkov's phone.

Chapter 51: Completing Lenin's Unfinished Work (1 words)

Despite his busy schedule as Prime Minister, Ryzhkov still devoted a great deal of energy to perfecting his state-owned enterprise reform plan.

Three weeks later, the state-owned enterprise reform plan was delivered to Gorbachev's desk.

Pilot Program for Improving the Collective Decision-Making Mechanism for the Management of State-Owned Enterprises

No one could find fault with the wording of the entire plan; the core content remained unchanged—it was the framework that Slava and Ryzhkov had discussed.

The factory manager retains the right to operate the business, but major decisions are made by a deliberative body whose members include employee representatives, supervisors appointed by the higher authorities, and chief engineers. The OGAS information system is used to make financial and operational data transparent.

Gorbachev's reaction after reading the plan was exactly as Slava had predicted; he was just struggling to find a suitable reform plan.

"Excellent! Comrade Ryzhkov's enterprise reform plan is exactly what I wanted. He truly is a good cadre of the Party. I will immediately set up a committee to study it in detail!"