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

“Of course, there is a risk of being bitten back on this path,” Director Nian added. “If the position is too large, it will appear in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s large trader reporting system, so we have to break up the position a bit through several shell companies. We can start now, or it will be too late to break it up later.”

She paused, then continued, "As for what happens after it's done—with the West collapsing, there will definitely be investigations. I've instructed the General Staff Intelligence Bureau and the KGB to prepare several 'reasonable other suspects' for us between May and September."

Japanese zaibatsu, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, Hong Kong family offices... which one doesn't have more compelling motives than us?

Moreover, I think we can add fuel to the fire for Japan, making the American father even more dissatisfied with his son. We already ignited a wave of firepower against Japan during the oil crisis. If another global crisis hits this time, I estimate that Japan's economic bubble may burst ahead of schedule.

"Perfect timing, with the bursting of the Japanese bubble economy, we can have another feast." She finished speaking and leaned back in her chair.

"Capitalism is great! Who says capitalism is bad? I think it's wonderful!" Slava exclaimed, clapping his hands in praise.

"We should first thank Comrade Marx for opening up new avenues of knowledge. The cyclical economic crises of capitalism are a historical cycle that they can never escape."

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.

This plan was presented exactly as it was presented at the Politburo meeting.

The atmosphere in the meeting room was lukewarm at first, not because these Politburo members looked down on money—no one in a country that had been tormented by the collapse of oil prices and a fiscal deficit for almost two years would turn down foreign exchange.

The problem lies in the word "prediction".

Most of the committee members present had spent most of their lives immersed in a particular understanding: the biggest blind spot in Soviet economic intelligence tradition was precisely macro-finance.

The KGB and the General Staff Intelligence Agency were adept at stealing Western military technology, semiconductor processes, and encryption algorithms, but when it came to analyzing the structural vulnerabilities of financial markets, they were practically clueless.

Ideology bears half the responsibility for this. Soviet political economy firmly believed that capitalist crises were cyclical and inevitable.

However, when it comes to specific details like "which Monday of which October of which year," they lack both the analytical framework and the necessary personnel.

A 1987 report from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences did indeed state in black and white that "the US financial system has structural problems." However, they could produce such a report every year; any undergraduate economics student could easily fabricate one for you!

People cry wolf every year, but no one can say for sure when the wolf will actually come.

Moreover, that mechanism called "portfolio insurance" was so complex that even in 1987, not many people in Western academia truly understood its systemic risks, let alone in the Soviet Union!

It's really asking too much of the older members of the Politburo who are used to official documents and class analysis to believe it.

“Comrade Ivanova,” Ligachev began, his words quite polite.

"Even our country's top economic research institute, which employs hundreds of experts, wouldn't dare to make such a definitive statement as late as October. What makes you so sure that something bad will happen to the Americans this fall? What if this foreign exchange is poured into the market, and that building just happens to stand still this year? Who will be responsible for the alliance's assets then?"

This question revealed the thoughts of more than half of the people present.

The Soviet Union had less than 10 billion in foreign exchange reserves, a large portion of which was converted into Japanese yen and German marks during the previous oil crisis.

Ligachev was good at appointing ideological cadres, but Prime Minister Ryzhkov was the one to manage the economy. Ryzhkov spoke up first on behalf of the leader.

Ryzhkov said, "From the oil price collapse in early 1986 until now, it was the set of foreign financial operations led by Comrade Ivanova that truly saved the Union nearly five billion dollars in revenue and filled most of the huge hole caused by the oil price collapse!"

Someone who has already proven herself with real money, the plan she presents now, no matter how far-fetched it may sound, I think is worth serious consideration by everyone here.”

"Moreover, leverage of ten to twenty times is no small amount of money."

Gromyko also took sides, trusting the young director as well.

The veteran's words instantly changed the previously lukewarm atmosphere. Everyone present silently calculated in their minds—if this plan really succeeds, a few months later, the alliance will be catching handfuls of gold bricks falling from the sky in the most successful casino of Western capitalism, making a fortune counting money until their hands are numb.

Slava said at this moment:

"Comrades, in a few months, in November we will hold the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China."

This congress will be attended by representatives from almost every Marxist political party in the world, and from all socialist countries. Brotherly parties from Eastern Europe, brotherly parties from Asia, and non-ruling communist parties from the West... they will all be sitting in that hall watching us.

“If,” he emphasized the word, “right before the conference, the financial heart of the capitalist world were to experience a global financial collapse—and our Soviet Union would not only be unscathed but would also reap a huge profit from it—comrades, think about what that would mean?”

The meeting room fell silent.

"This means that we have once again demonstrated to the world the cyclical nature of capitalist economic crises through the collapse of capitalism itself," Slava exclaimed.

"This means that Comrade Karl Marx's assertion a hundred years ago—that capitalism cannot escape its periodic crisis of self-destruction—remains an irrefutable truth today in 1987!"

What a powerful boost this was to the comrades from all over the world sitting in that hall! At a time when we had just experienced a change of power, and the entire socialist camp was watching where we were headed, what could better prove the correctness of our path than such a victory?

"Long live the invincible Marxism-Leninism!" Slava led the applause, and the Politburo members followed suit.

They were politicians who, throughout their lives, adhered to the doctrine that capitalism was destined to perish.

If we can witness this theory being proven true across the ocean, and also conveniently add such a contribution to the upcoming grand event, then the risks on the foreign exchange account will seem less daunting.

After careful consideration, the Politburo finally made the decision—to trust Comrade Ivanova.

Until the moment the decision was made, the old guard in the Politburo didn't really understand what portfolio insurance was, and they certainly couldn't figure out the intricacies behind that tenfold leverage.

But everyone wanted to present a grand gift at that highly anticipated meeting in November, a gift that would inspire socialist comrades all over the world!

As the meeting adjourned, Director Nian leisurely retrieved the brown paper document bag from the table and tucked it under her arm. As she passed Slava, she lowered her voice and whispered something only the two of them could hear:

"See, brother? To get a room full of people to believe in something they don't understand at all, it's never about reasoning—it's about letting them taste the sweetness first, and then painting them an even bigger pie."

“You’re a born power animal,” Slava remarked.

“That’s called outsmarting him, baby.” Director Nian’s silver hair quickly disappeared at the conference room door.

Chapter 72 describes the realization of Lenin's ideals, but it doesn't specify which year Lenin...

What is to be done will be done, and what is done will be done again.

Reality proves that human behavior and social events are not entirely determined by individual will, but are influenced by historical laws. Even though Slava is currently in the high position of General Secretary, he cannot escape this historical law.

He sarcastically remarked that Gorbachev had previously sought legitimacy in Lenin's collected works when implementing reforms, but now that it was his turn to reform, he himself had to follow Gorbachev's example.

But it doesn't matter. His pragmatic tendencies mean he doesn't care about this. After all, no amount of slogans can change the fact that a bag of sugar will appear on the shelves of Moscow's state-run stores!

The people don't care whether he cites Stalin or Trotsky; they care whether the sales clerk behind the counter will throw a "sold out" sign in their faces after they've been queuing for two hours. They care about whether they'll have beef stew with potatoes in their pot tonight, and they care about food, clothing, shelter, transportation, birth, aging, illness, and death!

Where should economic reforms go? How to fill the shelves? How to make the more than 300 million ordinary people on this land truly feel that their lives are getting better? These were the first questions that the moderate reformists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had to answer to the entire Union.

He can't avoid it, and he can't afford to delay it.

At this critical juncture, on May 28th, a draft was delivered to his desk—

That was the historically famous "State-Owned Enterprises Law".

Slava spent the entire morning reading it from beginning to end, and the more he read, the more his heart sank. He was all too familiar with the framework of this draft—

Enterprises fully implement economic accounting and self-responsibility for profits and losses. State orders replace planned quotas. After enterprises hand over their profits, the remaining profits can be used for investment, salary payments, and bonuses. Enterprises can sell products exceeding state orders independently in the wholesale market. Factory directors are elected by the labor collective, and enterprises operate and manage autonomously.

This is essentially a market-plus version of his previous economic reforms. Each measure, taken individually, is impressive and aligns with the trend of loosening restrictions on businesses. However, when put together, the entire package points in only one direction—

Market economy.

It gradually disperses information and decentralizes decision-making power to enterprises at each level, turning every factory into a small business owner who lives by watching their own profit statement.

Slava closed the draft and rubbed his forehead.

He knew better than anyone in the Kremlin where this road led. On another timeline, it was precisely this very corporate law, along with the cooperatives, price controls, and independent sales that followed, that pushed the country step by step off the cliff!

Once workers and factory managers have tasted the benefits of "deciding for themselves what to produce, how much to sell, and how to distribute the profits," the resistance to pulling them back into a unified planning system increases exponentially.

Why did Kosygin's reforms in 1965 fail halfway through? He knew perfectly well that the reluctance of ministries to relinquish power was one issue, but once power was delegated to enterprises, the difficulty of taking it back was on a completely different level!

What's worse, this road is the opposite of where he really wants to go.

He wasn't going to the market; he was going to OGAS, to work on automation, to develop advanced computerized planned economy, to use real-time data and algorithms to weave the entire national economy into a self-regulating network—the cybernetics path that Academician Grushkov conceived but was killed by Kosygin and his ilk with their "profit-driven" approach!

Comrade Grushkov passed away in 1982, before he could see his vision realized. Yet, he remembered clearly the core figure Slava, whom he had fought over with Kosygin back then—

Prioritizing profits is a dead end!

The purpose of planning is production, while the purpose of the market is profit. In the end, this will inevitably degenerate into departmental protectionism and layers of inflated, false data.

History has proven Grushkov right.

Slava picked up his pen, wrote a line on the cover of the draft, and sent it back.

The socialist market economy and the computer-based planned economy centered on cybernetics are two mutually exclusive paths, not two pieces of cloth that can be sewn together.

He had no intention of implementing a planned economy characteristic of the Soviet Union. He knew that once the profits were tasted, it was only a matter of time before the planned economy shifted towards the market. Initially, only private enterprises entered the market; later, this expanded to include all sectors except core defense industries; then, state-owned enterprises gradually relinquished core industries closely related to people's livelihoods, such as healthcare and transportation, handing them over to the market; and then...

Further down the line, it can sit at the same table as Keynesian economics.

Since he has chosen to use OGAS to improve the plan and return to Soviet democracy, this draft bill that is rushing towards the market cannot be allowed to move forward for even a day!

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's easy to reject a draft, but difficult to come up with your own version.

That same day, Slava convened his group of economic experts—from the Central Institute of Economic Mathematics to the State Planning Commission, those who truly understood cybernetics—to discuss a corporate reform law that belonged to Slava and could continue the general roadmap of informatization.

He stated directly:

"We will not follow Gorbachev's corporate law. What we want to do is redefine the enterprise from a business unit into a data unit engaged in production activities."

This will be the first major task I undertake after taking office. If I mess it up, all subsequent socialist modernization efforts will be castles in the air!

But Slava didn't immediately have the experts scramble to write the regulations. After more than a year of hard work in Ukraine, the Volga region, and the Far East, his strongest belief was in four words—seeking truth from facts!

The premise of seeking truth from facts is to conduct investigations and research first. Any policy written on paper in Moscow is one thing, but it is quite another when it is implemented in a factory thousands of kilometers away!

He had personally measured this gap by lifting the straw on the feeding trough in Smolensk with a pitchfork.

So Slava decided to figure out one thing first: what fruits did the reforms he had implemented in those pilot factories—worker soviets, OGAS terminals, performance-based incentives—bear after more than half a year, and what problems did they create?

So he divided his forces into two groups. One group was the KGB Economic Directorate in Chebrikov, who were sent to bypass the layers of official reports from the local party committee and go down to the workshops to conduct on-site investigations.

Another approach was to invite worker representatives from the Soviets in the various pilot factories to Moscow for face-to-face talks, allowing these people who stood by the production line every day to pour out their experiences, both good and bad.

When the supplies from the two groups converged, what lay before Slava was a far more complex picture than he had anticipated.

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 news was mixed.

The pilot factory has indeed seen a significant increase in labor productivity over the past six months. The products have become more diverse and abundant, and the workers' incomes have risen. Even the surrounding shops have more items than before, and the people are all smiling.

Judging from these impressive figures alone, Slava's reforms are indeed a panacea with immediate and effective results.

But bad news is lurking in the shadows of these numbers, emerging wave after wave.

The first signs to surface were some scattered incidents.

The first problem is that the quality is quietly declining.

While the quantity has increased, the failure rate, return rate, and product lifespan have shown a slow deterioration.

One bearing factory increased its output by 30%, but after a year of operation, the failure rate of the bearings installed on the machines climbed from 0.3% to 0.8%—this kind of data only becomes apparent when the machines are actually running.

The first to notice are never the impressive production report, but rather the maintenance workers and elderly technicians with wrenches at the user units.

The old problem of "using inferior materials" inherent in Soviet industry resurfaced under the new incentive of bonuses, only to be overshadowed by the dazzling increase in quantity.

Slava stared at the data for a long time—his multi-source verification design could block single-point fraud, and the downstream system would immediately alarm if the accounts did not match. However, it could measure the number of pieces and the weight, but it could not measure whether a single bolt was cut short at the tolerance edge or whether the surface treatment was omitted.

Everything appears normal on paper, but the actual quality of the product is deteriorating inch by inch underneath.

The second point is that the distribution of prize money has begun to polarize.

Over the past six months, the gap in bonuses among different companies has widened significantly. In some factories, workers' monthly bonuses are almost equal to their basic wages, while in others, they receive almost nothing.

However, the root of this gap is not entirely due to whether the workers work hard or not—sometimes it is due to the difference between new and old equipment, sometimes it is due to the stability of raw material supply, and sometimes it is simply due to the difference in logistics conditions in the location.

The problem is not scarcity, but inequality.

Many workers don't feel that distribution is based on labor, but rather on "luck" or "location." When the disparity is small, everyone tolerates it, but once they're in the same city, doing the same job and producing similar goods, why should the factory next door get more than them?

This resentment could no longer be suppressed.

The third issue is the formation of cliques within the workers' Soviets, something Lenin was very wary of in 1921, which has now resurfaced.

More than half a year after the establishment of the Workers' Soviet, the "activists" who spoke the most at meetings, made the most proposals, and interacted most frequently with the factory's management gradually formed a new core.

A tacit understanding gradually developed between this group of people and the factory director. The factory director would not touch the Soviet's nominal authority, and the Soviet would cooperate with the factory director on important matters.

This is exactly the kind of mistake that workers' committees in Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe made!

It was called "the aristocracy of the working class".

Slava originally intended for the workers' Soviet to be the eyes that supervised power, but those eyes themselves grew a pterygium.

The fourth point is the emergence of a new "surprise culture".

The Soviet Union's old problem was that it would rush to do things at the end of the month or quarter. OGAS compressed the statistical cycle to days or even hours, but the bonus assessment cycle did not follow suit—bonuses were still paid quarterly because the central economy had not yet been reformed and the central government could not keep up with the local governments.

Thus, a new cycle emerged: in the last two weeks of each assessment period, the entire factory entered a state of overtime, overload, and disregard for quality and lives; once the assessment period was over, the equipment went into maintenance and the staff went on vacation.

This is just the first wave that has surfaced. Once the KGB and worker representatives uncover the deeper issues, Slava will see not just the problems of individual companies, but structural problems at the systemic level.

The reasons why Grushkov failed to develop OGAS back then are starting to take effect, and the ministerial soft resistance has begun!