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

In Kyiv, he witnessed the same crackdown, but the anti-non-labor income law had an even worse outcome: selling locally grown grapes was considered a possibility for winemaking and was prohibited, while making locally grown wine was considered illegal production and was confiscated.

The vineyards that Slava saved in Transcarpathia last year are now facing new threats.

In Tbilisi, he heard a new story: an elderly Georgian woman was fined fifty rubles for selling her homemade churchihra (a traditional Georgian sweet made with walnuts and grapes, which is very delicious) downstairs.

Fifty rubles is a quarter of her monthly pension!

But what alarmed Slava the most was the police system. The police had adopted a new way of working when enforcing the law. They would pay attention to the car a person was driving, the clothes they were wearing, and the house they lived in. If these consumption levels seemed excessive, exceeding the normal income level of an ordinary worker or farmer, they would go to the person's home and ask them to explain the source of their income.

This logic of "reverse calculation based on excessive consumption" grants local police considerable discretion.

What constitutes exceeding the limit? Does a color TV count? Does a newly purchased Lada count? Does a leather jacket count?

The standards are determined entirely by law enforcement officers on the spot, with no predictable red lines!

Slava wrote in his report:

"The practical effect of this decree is that it turns every citizen of the Soviet Union into a potential criminal! Under conditions of insufficient state supplies, almost everyone is supplementing their income and consumption through some kind of gray channel, and these channels are now all defined as illegal."

When a law turns every aspect of daily life in society into a crime, it punishes not the crime itself, but life itself.

Such decrees, detached from the masses, should be swept into the dustbin of history along with their leaders!

He knew that such absurd legislation would greatly damage the image of reform.

In the original historical year of 1985, the public genuinely expected reforms from Gorbachev. The anti-alcohol campaign was the first time that reform and harassment were linked in the public consciousness.

This is the second time such a decree has been passed. If the government continues to interfere with people's basic livelihoods in the name of reform, the word "reform" will turn from hope to fear among the people.

A reform that instills fear in the people is doomed to failure.

This is one of the reasons why Gorbachev's economic reforms were unsuccessful and he had to turn to political reforms.

Some leaders make decisions on a whim, make promises they can't keep, and set the tone they can't deliver. When things go wrong, they regret it and eventually walk away!

But what about the people? Only God knows.

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 returned to Moscow on June 13.

He was just about to go see Second Secretary Ligachev when Prime Minister Ryzhkov, who already knew what he was going to do, said to him first:

"The central government has actually realized this problem and is currently discussing the decree to relax the restrictions."

This decree was actually the result of a struggle between Gorbachev and Ligachev.

In his memoirs, Gorbachev exonerated himself on this matter, stating that "the May resolution on strengthening the struggle against non-labor income reflected the position of those in the party and government organs who did not accept the leadership line, and it had to be corrected later."

This is his standard narrative of shifting blame to the Ligachev faction.

But the Politburo's resolution was passed unanimously, including Gorbachev himself, who voted in favor!

During the policy drafting process, Ligachev and Solomyantsev were indeed the main proponents. Their logic was that speculation and the shadow economy should not be allowed to continue to erode socialist morality, and such behavior should be curbed through legal means.

Ryzhkov's attitude was ambiguous. As Chairman of the Council of Ministers, he needed these tools to curb corruption in the management of state-owned enterprises, but he also knew that cracking down too broadly would backfire.

Gorbachev himself adopted a two-step approach: first tightening and then loosening restrictions. He first used criminal law to bring all gray economy activities under the state's purview, and then provided a legalization channel through the Law on Individual Labor Activities.

This logic is theoretically plausible, but it seriously underestimates the fact that grassroots enforcement agencies are far more flexible in responding to tightening orders than in responding to loosening orders.

To put it bluntly—it's easy to get the police to arrest people, but it's very difficult to get them to let go.

Slava could understand Ligachev; the decree attempted to uphold the principle of distribution according to work, but its actual effect was to make citizens no longer believe that the state could distinguish between labor income and non-labor income.

Since the boundaries are determined by the police on the spot, any income is legally insecure.

This legal uncertainty later transformed into a general disregard for all institutional rules during the liberalization wave of 1989–1991.

Slava decided to speak with Ligachev in person and show him how their policies had been distorted in practice.

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 and Ligachev's conversation was scheduled for an afternoon in mid-June. He didn't bring the written report with him; following his supervisor's advice, he left it in his briefcase and walked into Ligachev's door empty-handed.

"Yegor Kuzmich, I just got back from down there, and I'd like to tell you about some things I saw..."

Then he spoke for forty minutes, each story having a name, a location, a specific amount of money, and a date; they were all stories of real people's experiences.

As Ligachev listened, his expression grew increasingly somber, angry, and pained.

He was furious because the grassroots implementers had distorted his policy of “opposing non-labor income” into a persecution of ordinary workers.

His original intention was to crack down on corrupt officials and speculators who use national resources to enrich themselves, not to punish an old flower seller or a young appliance repairman!

He was in pain because he began to realize a fact he didn't want to face—the intention of a policy does not equal its effect.

Every decree written in the Moscow office undergoes an uncontrollable transformation after reaching the grassroots level thousands of kilometers away, and the direction of the transformation is almost always towards becoming stricter, more brutal, and more conducive to expanding the power of law enforcement.

Ligachev knew this was the second time he had regretted something; the first was last year's ban on alcohol, and the second was now.

The two immediately began discussing new laws and planned to send a discussion group to draft a law that would truly legalize individual businesses, protecting the reasonable and permissible aspects of people's daily economic activities within a legal framework.

Things progressed faster than Slava had anticipated in the next two weeks.

Feedback from the grassroots has flooded into Moscow from all directions. Slava is not the only one who has seen the problem; party committees of the constituent republics, petition offices of the provinces, and even internal KGB reports are all reflecting the same situation:

Even before the law officially took effect, it had already sparked widespread panic and discontent at the grassroots level!

In late June, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued a statement: "In view of the deviations and excessive implementation of the law against non-labor income in some regions, the Central Committee has decided to suspend the implementation of the law until the supporting details are improved."

At the same time, a new law entered the fast-track review process—the Law on Individual Labor Activities.

The spirit of this law is almost the complete opposite of the May Decree: it legalizes twenty-nine categories of self-employed businesses, including tailoring, appliance repair, home education, housing rentals, car rentals, catering services, furniture manufacturing, and handicraft processing...

Soviet citizens and their family members were permitted to engage in these activities, provided they registered with the local Soviet and paid a business tax.

This was the first time since the New Economic Policy was terminated in 1929 that the Soviet government systematically provided a legal framework for individual business operations.

The wheat has ripened countless times, but this is the first time in fifty-seven years!

The law is expected to be passed by the Supreme Soviet in August.

Slava thought that was the end of it; a flawed decree had been halted, and a correct law was on its way.

But Yeltsin, that breed of dog, made his move.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, the 55-year-old First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee, accomplished a major feat at the Moscow City Committee plenary session in mid-June:

In public, he specifically criticized the corrupt legacy left by his predecessor Grishin and the privileged distribution mechanism of the business system, and announced a comprehensive purge of the cadre ranks in Moscow, including a large-scale replacement of district party secretaries.

However, in his speech at the plenary session, Yeltsin did not limit the issue of corruption to the Moscow City Committee level; he elevated the topic to the level of the entire Soviet cadre system, and implied:

“These problems are not caused by Grishin alone, but by systemic flaws in the entire cadre management system.”

Everyone could tell who the cadre management system was referring to—Ligachev.

After all, the Second Secretary was in charge of ideology and cadre work, and if there were problems in the cadre system, the root cause would be Ligachev's office.

After the plenary session, Yeltsin began interacting with the media. He didn't read from a prepared statement during interviews, queued for public buses, and checked the stock of goods on store shelves...

Every move he made maximized his image against bureaucratic privilege. Although Soviet newspapers and television were still under official control, they began to frequently report on this unconventional Moscow mayor.

Director Nian scoffed at this:

"What he's doing is putting on a show of anti-corruption."

True anti-corruption efforts involve plugging loopholes in the system; what he did was pose for the camera. But that's not the most dangerous part—the most dangerous part is that he shifted his focus from Grishin to Ligachev.

Within the party, disagreements of this level are traditionally resolved internally; he has now brought it to the public eye. This implies that he is either recklessly ignorant of the rules, or that someone is backing him up to do this.

"Gorbachev?"

"What do you say?"

Yeltsin was promoted to Moscow by Gorbachev, and none of his major actions could have been carried out without the General Secretary's tacit approval!

Gorbachev was using Yeltsin as a weapon to weaken the authority of the Second Secretary.

While Yeltsin was launching a frontal assault on Ligachev, Alexander Yakovlev was taking action.

After being recalled from Canada, Yakovlev worked in the Central Committee's Propaganda Department, controlling the core switches of the Soviet ideological machine.

What ideas can be discussed, what articles can be published, and what voices can appear in newspapers and on television?

Starting in June, Yakovlev's role rose significantly. He began to shift the work of the propaganda department from maintaining ideological discipline to organizing for openness. He relaxed the censorship of sensitive topics, tacitly allowed some liberal intellectuals to publish previously forbidden views in official media, and promoted a group of young people with similar ideas to him among the propaganda cadres.

Something unprecedented began to emerge in the Soviet public sphere: open discussion of intra-party disagreements.

Ligachev's anti-non-labor income decree was implied by Yeltsin in the media as dogmatism detached from the masses. Clearly, Gorbachev wanted to damage Ligachev's public image before making personnel changes at the opportune moment.

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.

End of June.

Gorbachev visited the Volga River basin.

In the original history, this inspection was a key moment—because Gorbachev used a new term for the first time to define the direction of his reforms during a dialogue with worker representatives at the Volga Automobile Plant.

reconstruction.

Acceleration is an economic slogan, while reconstruction is a political slogan.

However, the discussions at the Volga automobile plant did not go smoothly.

The Slava information technology pilot project has been deployed at the Soviet Union’s largest automobile manufacturing plant. In the nationwide deployment plan of two hundred public computing centers, the Volga Automobile Plant is one of the first industrial nodes to go online.

Under Ryzhkov's impetus, a workers' council has been established here, following the model that Slava had tested in Ukraine—financial data on the OGAS terminal is made public to worker representatives, major business decisions require a vote by the Soviet, and the gap between the factory director's bonus and the workers' income has been kept within a reasonable range.

The workers no longer passively listened to the General Secretary's speech and then applauded, but instead actively talked about the changes taking place in their own factories.

This is exactly the "democratization" and "openness" that Gorbachev wanted most, but he is not happy about it.

A veteran mechanic who had worked in the final assembly workshop for fifteen years was the first to speak:

"Comrade General Secretary, our factory's system used to be bad. The factory director made all the decisions, and we workers didn't even know how much money the factory made in a year or where the money went."

The factory manager gets dozens of times more bonuses than us, why? He doesn't even work on the production line!

Things are different now. Ever since Comrade Ivanov from the Information Technology Committee installed that computer in our factory, the worker representatives can see the monthly operating data.

Last month, we voted against an unreasonable equipment purchase at the workers' committee meeting—the factory manager wanted to buy a batch of imported parts that were 40% overpriced. Once the figures were laid out, everyone could see there was something fishy going on!

Another young worker chimed in: "And our income has indeed increased. The workers' committee discussed a new performance-based system with management, and the 'more work, more pay' part has really reached us!"

One female worker added, "Before, whatever the factory manager said was law, and we just focused on working. Now, at least we know how the money is spent and how the work is divided."

Who brought about this change? It was Comrade Ivanov.

We thank the Party's leadership! We thank Comrade Ivanov! We thank the General Secretary for promoting such a good cadre!

Gorbachev sat there and nodded with a forced smile.

Then another worker said:

"The old factory director responsibility system was not implemented well. The factory director had too much power and no one could control him. He could spend money however he wanted, and the workers had no say. It's much better now."

The factory manager responsibility system was one of the enterprise reform directions promoted by Gorbachev in his strategy of accelerating development. Although it was later changed to the "workers' committee + multi-party supervision" model under the influence of Slava and Ryzhkov, the factory manager responsibility system was indeed originally proposed by Gorbachev's camp.

The worker was unaware that the "old system" he was criticizing was actually promoted by the person sitting opposite him.

Gorbachev continued to nod, maintaining his posture of humbly listening to the opinions of the masses.

However, if a sufficiently sensitive instrument were available to measure the tension of his jaw muscles at that moment, the reading would likely be several times higher than the normal value.

At the end of the discussion, Gorbachev stood up, and everyone else stood up and applauded. He took a deep breath, smiled gently, and said:

"I humbly accept the criticisms from my comrades regarding the previous system and some of the Party's previous erroneous resolutions."

"Everyone, please feel free to speak your mind. I'm listening."

The applause grew even louder.

The workers felt that the General Secretary was really listening to them, and how rare it was in the Soviet Union for a leader who could humbly accept criticism!

But Gorbachev's smile vanished the moment he left the workshop and walked toward his car.

He paused before getting on the bus, turned to Yakovlev standing next to him, and said, word by word.

"Everyone spoke very well today."

pause.

"I've written it all down."

Chapter 60 Slava at a Historical Turning Point (9k)

The first thing Gorbachev did upon returning to Moscow was to take out his little black notebook and write down names, with Slava at the top of the list.