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

Six months ago, after Romanov, who was in charge of the military industry, "retired," Gorbachev handed over the military industry to Zaykov—a person he had just promoted who was more loyal to him.

This means that within the vast military system, two lines of command and technological revolution emerged that did not completely overlap: one was the military command and technological revolution line led by Ogarkov, which leaned towards moderate reformers; the other was the military production and arms procurement line controlled by Zaikov, which leaned towards Gorbachev.

The military is not a monolithic entity.

At the most critical moment, whose orders will the military command system that truly mobilizes troops—the General Staff, the major military districts, and especially the Taman and Kandemi divisions stationed near Moscow—listen to?

He sat down in Ogarkov's office. The Soviet marshal's office was as simple as his military style, with Soviet military maps hanging on the walls and several pamphlets he had written himself about the military technological revolution on the desk.

“Sergei Fedorovich,” Slava said, getting straight to the point. He and Ogarkov were so familiar with each other that no small talk was needed.

"I've come here today to ask you a question that I'm reluctant to ask, but I have to ask."

Ogarkov looked at him; the old marshal, who had served in the Soviet Army his entire life during the Great Patriotic War, seemed to know the purpose of Slava's visit.

"You want to ask which side the army will be on in the worst-case scenario, right?"

Slava hadn't expected Ogarkov to bring up the issue so directly.

"Yes."

Ogarkov took a deep breath, remained silent for a moment, then stood up and walked to the military map on the wall, looking at it with his back to Slava.

“Comrade Ivanov,” he said slowly.

“I’ve spent my whole life in the military. I’ve seen this country at its most powerful, and I’ve also watched it gradually become what it is today.”

Our military equipment is becoming increasingly outdated compared to that of the Americans. We have the best engineers and education system in the world, but our entire industrial system, our economy, and our technological foundation are lagging behind.

Before the Western 81 exercises, I wrote two pamphlets about the military technology revolution and the reconnaissance and strike complex, but do you know what my deepest concern is?

He turned to look at Slava.

"Our country may not even survive until the technological revolution is complete. If this alliance falls apart, even the most advanced military theories will be nothing but empty words."

“So,” Ogarkov’s tone became much more serious, “I support the path that will allow this country to survive and become strong.”

"Over the past year, I've seen you do things that are genuinely improving the country. As for what Gorbachev did, I don't see where it will lead us, except chaos."

He paused.

"If things go to the worst, if someone tries to drag this country into the abyss by violating the Party Constitution and national interests—"

"The Soviet army's responsibility is to defend the country and its people, not to defend any one person sitting in the General Secretary's position, Comrade Ivanov."

But what Ogarkov said next made Slava realize that things were not so simple.

"But I want to remind you of one thing: the military is not mine alone. I can influence the General Staff, many officers who are loyal to the reformists, and most of the military command system."

However, the military has its own rules, and military interference in politics is a major taboo. This is why our generals cannot enter the Politburo. Unless absolutely necessary, and unless there is a reason that is legally sound and justifiable according to the Party Constitution, the military must never voluntarily get involved in the power struggles within the Party. Once the military intervenes in politics, this precedent will have endless consequences.

“I understand,” Slava said. “I also don’t want the military to get involved in politics.”

I hope this matter can be resolved within the framework of the Party Constitution and through the legitimate procedures of the Central Committee plenary session. My purpose in asking you about the military's position today is not to request anything from you—I must ensure that if anyone tries to use illegal means to obstruct a legitimate transfer of power, the military will not become that person's tool.

Ogarkov nodded.

"You can rest assured about that. The military will not become a tool for anyone to undermine the Party Constitution or disrupt national order. If the January Plenum makes a decision according to the procedures stipulated in the Party Constitution—whatever that decision may be—the military will uphold the implementation of that legitimate decision. But if anyone tries to use illegal means to oppose legitimate procedures—"

He didn't finish his sentence, but Slava understood completely.

The military reformists' stance is to uphold party rules and procedures, maintain a legitimate transfer of power, and safeguard national stability. Under this stance, if the January plenary session weakens or replaces Gorbachev through legitimate procedures, the military will not interfere and may even uphold the implementation of this outcome!

But what if Slava loses? What if Slava decides to fight Gotutu to the death? Will the army still stand by his side?

Ogarkov did not give his answer.

But Ogarkov didn't know that Gorbachev would soon force him to join Slava with his army.

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.

It was already evening in Moscow when Slava left the Ministry of Defense.

In December in Moscow, it gets dark as early as four o'clock in the afternoon. The lights of the Kremlin shine in the winter night, and the red star shines with an eternal dark red light against the snow.

He sat in the car, watching the Moscow street scenes flash by outside the window, pondering the situation over the next month or so.

The plenary session in January 1987 will be the moment of decisive battle.

The moderate reformists have nearly gained a majority in the Politburo, while Gorbachev is losing ground domestically. Both sides are working hard for the January plenary session and seeking the support of more members of the Central Committee.

Should we continue down Gorbachev's path of openness, democratization, and Westernization, or should we shift to a path that prioritizes economic reform, gradual improvement, and the preservation of the socialist foundation?

Everyone will provide an answer.

The outcome of this battle will not only affect the political future of a few individuals, but it will also determine whether this country will repeat the ending he witnessed on another timeline—cracking apart in the flood of public release and ultimately collapsing in the winter of 1991.

If the country cannot be turned around at the January plenary session, and if Gorbachev continues down his path, then Almaty will not be the last crack.

The Baltic Sea, the Caucasus, Central Asia... those ethnic conflicts he had witnessed erupting one after another on another timeline would become reality one by one, until the entire alliance fell apart.

He can't let that ending repeat itself!

As the car drove across Red Square, Slava looked out the window at the Kremlin walls and the red flags fluttering in the snow.

He wanted to fight for a different path for this country, a path that would not lead to disintegration or the abyss, a path that would allow this country and its people to survive.

The car drove into the night.

The snow is still falling in Moscow, covering the ancient city and the upcoming meeting that will decide the fate of a superpower.

This short man, who has traveled from forty years in the future and now stands on the edge of the core of this country's power, is ready to gamble with fate at that most crucial historical juncture.

Chapter 64 Summoning Loyal Officers (Part 2)

Gorbachev's counterattack was faster than anyone expected.

Following the emergency meeting of the Politburo in Almaty, he transformed in just a few days from a General Secretary who had been cornered and forced to make repeated concessions back into a shrewd and decisive political hunter.

The first thing he did was postpone the plenary session.

"...Given that the accelerated development strategy and economic reforms have entered a critical stage, the Party needs more thorough and broader democratic discussions to unify thinking. The agenda for the Central Committee plenary session needs further preparation, and the session has been postponed to April."

This action effectively nullified the moderate reformists' plan to launch a surprise leadership change at the January plenary session. The moderate reformists' advantage lay in their Politburo votes, which could only translate into a real threat to the General Secretary at the plenary session. By postponing the plenary session by three months, Gorbachev essentially bought himself three months to retaliate.

More importantly, initiating this motion itself bypassed the collective decision-making process of the Politburo.

Logically, postponing a Central Committee plenary session should be a decision made by the Politburo, but Gorbachev, in his capacity as General Secretary, announced it directly!

This was procedurally flawed, but under the prevailing system at the time, the General Secretary had considerable autonomy over the meeting agenda, making it difficult for moderate reformers to refute it on the spot on the grounds of "procedural irregularities."

Ligachev can't possibly say that the General Secretary has no right to decide when the plenary session will be held, can he?

So Second Secretary Ligachev immediately found Slava: "That old fox—he knows we're going to make a move in January, so he's sabotaging the meeting first!"

"Three months?" Slava pondered. "He's bought himself three months. What will he do with those three months?"

When Slava asked the question, he didn't realize that the first part of the answer would directly target him.

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 second thing Gorbachev did was to resolve the issue of Slava.

Whether it was him, many party cadres, KGB members, or internal police officers, many people harbored an inexplicable suspicion about Slava—

What is the background of this person who suddenly appeared, with a vague resume, yet climbed to the edge of the inner circle of power in just a few years? What were his early experiences like?

Gorbachev decided to investigate.

He couldn't use Chebrikov's KGB; Chebrikov was the core of the moderate reformists, and sending the KGB to investigate Slava would be like alerting him. Besides, even if the KGB did investigate, all they could find was the file Andropov had meticulously prepared for Slava—a flawless identity and resume with no faults.

Andropov, a former KGB officer, provided Slava with absolutely perfect cover.

But Gorbachev had another card to play – the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Interior Minister Vlasov was transferred from the Rostov Regional Committee by Gorbachev and Ligachev in early 1986—a party cadre who did not have his own faction within the Interior Ministry system and was completely dependent on his promoter.

Gorbachev ordered Vlasov's NKVD to check Slava's files. And this investigation uncovered a fatal flaw.

The KGB's archives were meticulously prepared by Andropov himself, and were flawless. However, the Ministry of Internal Affairs' archives system was a separate, independent system—basic files managed by various levels of agencies under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, including household registration, residence records, job transfers, and social relations.

When Andropov forged Slava's identity, he focused on managing the KGB network and high-level political files, but he did not and could not fill in all the household registrations and residence records scattered throughout the country at the grassroots level of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

When the Ministry of the Interior was going through Slava's basic files, they discovered that before 1980, this person had nothing in the Ministry of the Interior's file system.

There are no original birth registration records, no residence registration records for childhood and adolescence, and no trace of any social activities prior to 1980.

It's as if this person appeared out of thin air in the world in 1980.

In the Soviet Union, a country with extremely strict management of citizens' files, the file of an official who had entered the Politburo and was about to become General Secretary was completely blank before 1980!

Is this correct?

When Gorbachev received this discovery, he could hardly believe his luck.

He originally just wanted to find out about Slava's past connections and investigate his dirty laundry to see if he could dig up some juicy dirt. But the Ministry of Internal Affairs has given him a big surprise!

He didn't need to know who Slava really was—he couldn't even imagine that the truth was such an absurd thing as a time traveler—he only needed the fact that the file was false.

In the Soviet political logic, falsifying one's resume was a political death sentence for a high-ranking official.

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 February 1987, Gorbachev made his move.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs decided to suspend Slava from his duties pending investigation, citing "significant doubts in his personnel file that require further investigation."

During the investigation, Slava was suspended from his post as director of the State Economic and Information Commission and was "assigned" to an agricultural region in the Ural Mountains to "guide agricultural development."

In the Soviet bureaucratic system, it made perfect sense for an official whose file was questionable to be temporarily suspended and sent to a lower-level unit for training during the investigation. Even if moderate reformers wanted to oppose it, they couldn't find a strong basis for their opposition.

You can't say that people whose files are questionable shouldn't be checked, can you?

Slava was thus exiled to the Ural Mountains and sent up there.

Nominally, he was sent to guide agricultural development, but in reality, he was assigned to do grassroots work in a factory that produced agricultural machinery.

The local Party committee received instructions from the central government to take an extremely harsh stance against Slava:

This person is an official with questionable status; he must be strictly controlled until the facts are verified!

Worse still, with Gorbachev's side secretly pushing for propaganda, various claims about Slava began to circulate locally—

People in the Party Committee privately said that Slava's identity was questionable, that he was an anti-Party element, an ambitious manipulator, and even that he was a spy planted by the West and a traitor who had infiltrated the Party!

This is the darkest moment since Slava came to this world.

But the people's eyes are discerning.

The Party Committee said that Slava was an anti-Party element, an ambitious man, a Western spy, and a traitor, but the workers in the factory who worked with Slava in the workshop every day did not believe a word of it.

The reason is simple: some of these workers had used Slava's information system, some had heard about what he did in Ukraine and Almaty, and some came from factories and farms where things had really gotten better.

They looked at Slava, the short man who had been exiled and operated the machines and ate in the canteen with them. He never put on airs and didn't seem like the kind of Western spy the Party Committee had described.

If Western spies can pretend to be good cadres for their entire lives, then they won't care whether Slava is actually a spy or not.

The workers, using their simple judgment, came to a conclusion completely opposite to that of the Party Committee: this person was a good person and had been wronged!

The Party Committee deliberately gave Slava the worst treatment, the worst food, the most dilapidated house, and even prevented him from taking a bath.

In the harsh winter of the Ural Mountains, a man who had worked a long day of heavy physical labor in a factory, covered in machine oil and sweat, was deprived of the right to take a shower.

This is an insult to him, an attempt to destroy Slava's dignity.

But the workers secretly helped him; some brought him food, and others gave him blankets. It was through these workers that Nian Dao found a way to contact Slava.

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, in Moscow, Gorbachev was sowing the seeds of his own doom in a game he thought he had the upper hand.

After exiling Slava to the Urals, Gorbachev continued his counterattack, pressuring leaders of the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) member states to publicly support his reform agenda, using economic and military support as leverage to coerce them into taking sides.

This blatant coercion caused widespread discontent and chaos in Eastern Europe.

The leaders of Eastern European countries already harbored resentment towards the Soviet Union's domineering attitude. Gorbachev's pressure tactics, threatening to cut off their energy supplies if they supported him, threw the entire socialist camp into chaos.

Some countries outwardly complied but inwardly resisted, some secretly opposed, and some became alienated from the Soviet Union due to Gorbachev's pressure.

Gorbachev is squandering the influence the Soviet Union had built up over decades in Eastern Europe in order to fight for power at home.

Amidst the chaos in Eastern Europe and the tense power struggle within the Soviet leadership, an unexpected event occurred.

It was a late March afternoon in 1987 when a small, single-engine Cessna 172 civilian aircraft flew into Soviet airspace from the direction of Helsinki, Finland.

The pilot of the plane was a nineteen-year-old West German youth named Matthias Rust.

He was a fervent pacifist who, after the failure of the Reykjavik summit, felt deeply disillusioned with the nuclear standoff between East and West, and conceived a crazy idea: