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

A problem a technician encounters in Moscow may have already been solved in Minsk. Closing that loophole is equivalent to rendering the entire network's error correction capability halved.

As a result, this "technical exchange" channel was transformed into the first internet forum in Soviet history by the technicians on night duty.

Each round of delay is about thirty seconds, depending on the level of network congestion and the forwarding speed of the state information center, which is incomparable to the later instant messaging.

But in the Soviet Union in 1986, this was an experience so exciting that you didn't want to sleep!

Valery is on the terminal tonight with three other people, one in Leningrad, one in Kiev, and one in Sverdlovsk.

The night shift started with the same old routine: complaints about the heating. Leningrad station said they'd had radiators installed by the end of October, while Minsk was still freezing and waiting for the heating company to take pity on them. Sverdlovsk station, as usual, said sarcastically:

"Your comrades in the European part are so delicate. Here, if we don't turn on the heating in October, people will die. And if they die, we have to dig up the frozen soil and bury them ourselves."

Suddenly, the Budapest website came online: "Actually, if you guys feel cold, you can hide in the computer case vents to warm up."

The Kiev station didn't respond to that, instead asking, "Did you read the article about corporate autonomy on the front page of Pravda today?"

The technician at Leningrad Station who was doing maintenance today had the online name "Neva River," and he immediately perked up:

"Of course I read it! You can tell it's written by Yakovlev the moment you smell it. It's all bullshit, all talk about liberating productive forces and breaking the rigid system. It's all just empty talk."

I'd like to ask the writer of this article, how many days the hell have you actually worked in your life? Do you know how many procedures are involved in getting a CM-4 machine approved after a report is submitted?

Sovereignty, autonomy my ass! Our center has to go to the ministry to replace a 12-ruble cable, and you're talking to me about autonomy?

The account with the codename "Gummy Bear" immediately responded at Vilnius station:

"Neva River, you're talking without understanding the situation. They're talking about the big picture, and you're nitpicking the details. If the overall direction is wrong, replacing ten thousand cables won't help!"

Besides, at least Yakovlev dared to speak the truth. Look at Ligachev and his gang; all they talk about is stability, unity, and forty years of achievements—it's like chanting a mantra, it makes you want to vomit.

Valery's fingers itched when he saw this, so he typed a line on the keyboard:

"Hey, Little Gummy Bear, don't jump to conclusions and label people right away. What do you mean by 'Ligachev's gang'?"

Do you know about Ligachev's resistance to the anti-non-labor income law last year? If that law were to be implemented, the vegetable vendor downstairs from your building would be the first to go in jail, and you'd still be able to eat fresh tomatoes.

"Damn it, you're all talk and no action against conservatives, but if you actually wiped them all out, you wouldn't even be able to buy bread. Do you think goods just grow on shelves?"

After a delay of about forty seconds, the reply from Leningrad Station popped up:

"Valerian, are you out of your mind? The anti-non-labor income law was stopped by Yeltsin and his gang later. What does it have to do with Ligachev!"

Belarusians are so out of touch with reality. They think they know politics just because they read a couple of Minsk Evening News articles? I suggest you stop pretending and go clean your machines instead.

Valery stared at the screen for half a minute. The electric kettle in the server room, used for shifts, had just boiled, making a bubbling sound. He didn't get up to pour the water; he wiped his hands on his trousers and continued his passionate output:

"You just spout nonsense, don't you? No wonder I heard that Leningrad people eat borscht poured on the table. That's how low their understanding is."

The Council of Ministers was responsible for halting the law against non-labor income; it was signed by Ryzhkov. Ligachev was the first to support the suspension at the Politburo meeting—this was reported in the newspaper this April. You don't even read the newspaper and are just making things up on your keyboard.

"And you're saying we're out of touch? Our terminal can access economic data from all 46 cities in the alliance, while your crappy terminal can't even gather data for this one state. Who the hell is out of touch?"

Sverdlovsk Station—codenamed "Vodka Forever"—usually quiet, suddenly chimed in:

"I told you two to stop arguing. What's the point? You've been arguing for ages, and it's all for nothing. If you ask me, Gorbachev and Ivanov are bound to fall out sooner or later."

One's all talk, the other's all action; you'll see.

Leningrad Station immediately retorted:

"Vodka, stop stirring up trouble! What do you mean 'one talks the talk, the other walks the walk'?"

The General Secretary's promotion of openness is the first time in decades that ordinary people can see real things in the newspapers. Is this what you call empty talk?

What kind of workers' council did Ivanov set up? It was just giving workers small favors to shut them up and prevent them from asking big questions.

You've been playing this game for seventy years, it's just the same old thing in a new guise.

Valery was really angry now. He ignored the bubbling of the teapot and typed with so much force that the keyboard seemed to be protesting.

"Neva River, I'll fuck your mother! Small favors? My cousin earned over eighty rubles more last year at the tractor factory thanks to the new performance-based pay system, enough for him to buy his mother medicine for half a year."

Eighty rubles may seem like a small favor to intellectuals in Leningrad, but it's a lifeline for workers!

You bunch of guys drinking special-supply beer and reading Spark magazine are sitting at a coffee table talking about openness, and you're talking about it in such a fucking elegant way!

Do you know how cold it is in the factory in winter? Do you know how exhausted a female worker working three shifts is? You don't know, and you don't want to know.

You just want to see people criticizing Stalin in the newspaper, feel better after reading it, think you've improved, that your IQ has increased, and then go home, close the door, and continue with your mundane life.

This delay was quite long, almost two minutes, and Valery almost thought the other person had disconnected.

Then the reply from Leningrad Station popped up:

"Valery, you are a lackey of the system, a piece of paper that Hitler threw when he was a child, a dutiful son and grandson of a dictator!"

Valery paused for a moment, then typed another section:

"I'm a technician working for the system. If I don't maintain this CM-6, you can't even open the terminal, let alone publish any public opinions on it!"

The biggest problem with you guys is that you think that only criticizing the government counts as thinking, and only negating everything counts as progress! You think you're pursuing freedom, but you're just following the trend.

"You'll only realize when this country falls apart that all those pretty words you spout today won't save your winter heating or your cafeteria lunch."

Leningrad Station responded quickly:

"Falling apart? Why don't you go and shout 'Long live Stalin'? You're the kind of bastard who would line up with the KGB to report your neighbor in the 1930s. I can smell your stench even through the internet."

At this point, Kyiv Station jumped in to smooth things over, but their tone was sarcastic:

"Alright, alright, Valery, don't take it too seriously. Neva is just being sarcastic; he didn't mean it that way. But speaking of which, what you just said was a bit... how should I put it, a bit like an old-fashioned cadre."

You're only twenty-six, bro. Don't act like a fifty-year-old Party Secretary.

Several people fell silent at the same time on their terminals.

Valery's gaze bypassed the screen and swept over the small indicator light on the wall of the server room—it was the status light for the system log recorder; a solid light meant it was working, and an off light meant it was off.

It's always been on; it's been on ever since he discovered the chat feature three months ago.

He never thought about it, because he naturally assumed that the chat logs wouldn't be archived. After all, who would bother archiving the idle chatter between technicians?

But this is a system designed by Slava. No system designed by Slava would allow data to be easily lost.

He stared at the screen, his heart pounding. The humiliation he had just suffered on the Neva River kept replaying in his mind.

Damn it, why should I put up with this humiliation!

Why is it that after working diligently for three months, maintaining this network that keeps the economic data of dozens of cities across the entire alliance running, he gets scolded like this by a guy in Leningrad drinking special-supply beer and reading "Spark"? Is he being called a traitor who would report his neighbor in the 1930s?

Why should he be labeled with so many accusations just because he said that public disclosure can't solve the problems of heating and lunch?

He slowly typed a line on the keyboard, then deleted it word by word.

He typed a new line, this time without deleting: "I'm off work. I have work to do tomorrow."

He exited the chat application.

The only sounds in the server room were the cooling fans and the burnt smell of the electric kettle that had boiled dry. He went over and unplugged the kettle.

He stood at the window of the duty room for a long time. The streets of Minsk were almost deserted late at night in October, except for a night sanitation truck that slowly drove past the intersection in the distance, its headlights casting long shadows of the bare linden trees along the roadside.

A surge of anger rose within him.

He'd seen plenty of night shift technicians hurling insults at each other; every one of them's mother had been cursed at, but a couple of days later they were best buddies again!

What he couldn't get over was the phrase "the henchmen of the system."

Valery's father was a veteran fitter at the Minsk Automobile Plant who participated in the Battle of Moscow in 1941. His father's most frequently uttered saying was, "The country gives you food, so work hard for the country and don't do anything useless."

His father became lame in one leg due to a work injury when he was sixteen, and has walked with a limp ever since. But every year on May 9th, Victory Day, he would still take out his military uniform and stand in the square with his crutches.

Was his father a henchman of the system?

He graduated from university at the age of twenty-six and joined the computing center, earning a monthly salary of 160 rubles. Every night, he would watch over so many machines to prevent them from breaking down, ensuring that a Belarusian tractor factory could send its production data to Moscow on time—was he a "lackey of the system"?

Damn it, why should I?

He pulled a cigarette from his drawer and lit it. Smoking on the night shift could easily trigger a false alarm on the server room alarm, but he didn't care today. He took two puffs, then stubbed it out on the windowsill and turned back to the terminal.

Valery retrieved the entire log from 11 PM until he logged out of the chat, and copied it to a 5.5-inch floppy disk. All of Neva's messages were on it, with timestamps accurate to the second and the sender's terminal ID—

The Leningrad Seventh Public Computing Center, number LEN-007-04, allows you to directly associate the duty technician's code with the individual.

PS: At this time, IP addresses did not exist.

You call me a lackey of the system? Fine, then I'll show you what a real iron fist looks like!

He dialed the duty phone: "Hello? KGB? I want to report...yes...the Leningrad Seventh Public Computing Center..."

He didn't know if the decision he made tonight was the first instance of online whistleblowing in human history.

If so, then starting from this late October night, the Soviet Union in 1986 will have the beginning of its own whole story about the internet and the establishment of the regime.

All of this started because four men on the night shift had a fight on the terminal in the dead of winter night over an editorial in a newspaper.

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.

In August, Slava stood at the window of his Moscow apartment.

Director Nian was watching TV and eating sunflower seeds in the living room when a news report was playing: Gorbachev personally called Andrei Sakharov, a nuclear physicist exiled in Gorky, and invited him to return to Moscow.

Sakharov was the most prominent dissident in the Soviet Union and the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. In 1967, when anti-ballistic missile defense became a major issue in US-Soviet relations, Sakharov wrote a letter to the Soviet leadership stating:

The Soviet Union should accept the United States' suggestion that both sides jointly abandon the development of anti-ballistic missiles; otherwise, an arms race over this new technology would increase the possibility of nuclear war.

He also requested permission from the leadership to publish an article in a Soviet newspaper explaining the dangers of anti-ballistic missiles. The authorities ignored the letter and prohibited him from publishing books in the Soviet Union that would discuss the issue.

In May 1968, Sakharov began issuing frequent statements against weapons and human rights, and was subsequently banned from participating in any military-related research. In 1980, he was arrested for demonstrating against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and was subsequently exiled to Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod.

In the original historical account, Sakharov received the International Humanitarian Award in 1988 and visited the United States. He later assisted in the establishment of some of the earliest independent political organizations in the Soviet Union and became a key figure in the Soviet opposition.

The commentators on television were enthusiastically recounting the historical significance of this decision.

Slava looked out the window at the rain; the Kremlin's red star appeared as several blurry, dark red dots in the rain.

"Director Nian," he said to her without turning his head, "do you think this country will still exist in five years?"

Director Nian was still wrapped in a blanket on the sofa watching TV when he heard this, and said:

"If we do everything right, then maybe..."

"What if we do it wrong?"

"Then it's gone."

The rain continued to fall outside the window. On television, the footage of Sakharov returning to Moscow from Gorky caused a sensation throughout the Soviet intellectual community—a new era was beginning.

"I'm going to the Far East tomorrow; we need to speed up our operations."

Chapter 61 Change People If They Don't Change Their Mindset (1 words)

The next day, news suddenly came from the Politburo that Gorbachev would meet with Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland, in two weeks.

The meeting was referred to in official documents as a working meeting rather than an informal summit, in an effort to lower outside expectations.

After all, even if the negotiations with the Americans break down, it won't be a huge loss of face.

Gorbachev hoped to use this diplomatic summit to curb the arrogance of Slava and Nyando. The achievements of the moderate reformists in diplomacy in the past few years had been too dazzling, and he had to suppress them!

In a handwritten letter he delivered to Reagan through Shevardnadze in early October, he wrote quite frankly:

"We should stop having those ceremonial meetings like those in Geneva and instead hold a meeting between the two formal summits to focus on substantive issues."

Gorbachev wanted to launch a surprise attack, catching Slava off guard with a meeting that was prepared in very short time. With only 9 days to prepare, there was simply no time for the preparatory diplomacy of a regular summit – Gorbachev must have planned this all along!

Gorbachev put his proposal directly to discussion in the Politburo:

First, strategic nuclear weapons were to be halved, with the US and the Soviet Union each reducing their strategic nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles by 50% within 5 years, and then eliminating them all within 10 years. There was also the need for both sides to negotiate and sign a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.

Secondly, the number of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (INF) deployed in Europe has been reduced to zero, while each side retains 100 in Asia. This is not a big deal; the Americans had already conceded at the Geneva Summit, and now the combined number of INFs held by the US and the Soviet Union in Europe is just over three digits.

Last but not least—the US SDI research cannot be actually deployed, but it can be tested; the Americans will never agree to that.

Under the Soviet system, the General Secretary was not the president. As General Secretary, he could push forward the agenda, but he could not make concessions on international occasions that went beyond the consensus of the Politburo.

Therefore, Gorbachev had to first put his proposal to the Politburo for review, and only after the Politburo reached a consensus and drew red lines for negotiations could he take the proposal to Iceland.

If Gorbachev signs the treaty without authorization, Prime Minister Ryzhkov will immediately raise objections at the Council of Ministers, Second Secretary Ligachev will criticize him for unprincipled compromise at the Politburo, the military will immediately demand a reassessment, the KGB will raise questions, and Gromyko, as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, will inevitably join the opposition.

At that point, Gorbachev could sign the papers without permission and return to Moscow from Iceland, then go directly to the Kremlin for a meeting without carrying any weapons.

This was one of the reasons why Gorbachev later wanted to establish a presidential system to seize power. As for how Yeltsin stole the fruits of his labor, that's another story.

Upon learning the news, Slava immediately convened a meeting with Nian Dao, Ligachev, Ryzhkov, and the military representative sent by Ogarkov.

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.