Chapter 10, World of Conflict: Red Dawn
September 29, 1945, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Flying over the city of Belgrade from the air, the ancient city along the Danube River exudes the vicissitudes of history. From the Celts to the Romans, to the Slavs, Huns, Goths, Turks and Serbs, this ancient city has had many rulers over the years. The flames of war never really go out. In the past half century, it has become the powder keg of the Balkans - the fuse of the last world war was ignited here. In this world war, this land was also filled with blood.
Fortunately, the recent chaos is finally over: after four years of anti-fascist war and domestic melee among various ethnic groups, the ancient city of Belgrade and Yugoslavia finally welcomed a new owner: the General Secretary of the Yugoslav Communist Party, Croatian Josip Broz Tito.
At this time, Tito, who had just attended the Communist International Summit in Moscow, was walking out of the Capital Airport with a tired look on his face and boarded his special car.
For Tito, the latest Communist International summit that ended yesterday was really not a pleasant experience. The Soviet people's rough and rude style was really a bit uncomfortable. However, there are still hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops stranded on the soil of Yugoslavia, and many things can only be tolerated temporarily... After initially reaching the agreement that "all socialist countries should assist each other in post-war reconstruction, strengthen economic cooperation, and work closely together" , in order to cope with the counterattack of Western capitalist forces" and after obtaining a sum of aid, Tito left his foreign minister to go to Leningrad to attend the subsequent economic and financial cooperation conference of various countries, and hurried back to Belgrade to deal with Yugoslavia There is a mountain of mess in the country.
As a geographical term, the history of "Yugoslavia" is actually very short. It was a country that was forcibly kneaded together after the First World War. It has neither sufficient cultural traditions nor a strong internal identity. It can hardly be said to be a national concept, nor can it be said to be a geographical concept. It does not even have the dynastic tradition of the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Habsburg family. In this forcibly created country, the largest ethnic group, the Serbs, who consider themselves to be the supreme masters, the Croats who were forcibly dragged out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as trophies, as well as the Bosniaks, Macedonians, Slovenes, Albanians all dislike each other. Moreover, almost every ethnic group has its own fascist extremist organization. They started fighting and killing each other before the war. After the German army invaded and the country collapsed, they killed each other with corpses everywhere and rivers of blood.
As a Croat, Tito's status in Yugoslavia was actually very embarrassing. Because the main ethnic group in this country is Serbs, and when Tito was young, Croats were loyal subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and enemies of the Serbs. During the last world war, the Croats fought bloody battles with the Serbs for several years. Now, many Serbian nationalists are deeply dissatisfied with the fact that they have to accept such a "foreigner" riding on their head and allow a Croat to become the supreme ruler of their country.
——How do you say it? It’s probably the same feeling as having a Pole become the General Secretary of the Soviet Union!
Fortunately, the war is now over, people are at peace, and everything is waiting for improvement. Most of the country in Yugoslavia is full of ruins and starving people. The people are tortured to death by the cruel war. They are war-weary to the extreme, even the most radical " The Great Serbs" cannot incite the people to revolt needlessly. In addition, there are still hundreds of thousands of Soviet Red Army troops stationed in Southeast Europe, and there should be no trouble in the short term.
However, the Soviet Red Army brought as much trouble as they brought benefits: the smoke of the fall of Nazi Germany had not yet cleared, and in order to preserve the red regime in France, the Soviet Red Army had already fought with the British. In order to demonstrate the unity of the socialist countries, Yugoslavia had to send an international column to France to participate in the war to help destroy the French White Army... This is still a small matter. The real trouble is that the US and Soviet armies are not far away now. The confrontation in Rome, the British Mediterranean Fleet and the American Atlantic Fleet are already cruising in the Adriatic Sea, and Greece in the south has become another battlefield for the confrontation between the East and West camps within the Allies. Yugoslavia is standing on the edge of this war whirlpool, and it may happen at any time Falling into the flames of war again!
Thinking of this, Tito couldn't help but sigh, took out a few newspapers from his briefcase that he had not had time to read on the plane, and read them carefully.
In the international news section of the newspaper, the headline was the fall of the Port of Bombay, India. The British seemed to be lamenting about this: With the last outlet to the sea blocked by Indian rebels, Governor Wavell, who was trapped in Delhi, was completely isolated and helpless. . The British Royal Navy, which had just suffered two Soviet atomic bombs in the Netherlands, obviously could not have the strength to launch an expedition to the Indian Ocean... The loss of the British Indian colonies seemed to be a foregone conclusion.
However, things in such a remote place meant nothing to the Yugoslavs who had no overseas colonial tradition. Tito took a few glances and passed away.
Then, there is the latest progress of the Soviet Red Army in France: after the liberation of Paris, workers and peasants across France rose up in response to the revolution, and Marshal Pétain's Vichy French regime collapsed. Lyon, Marseille, Toulon and other major southern cities launched uprisings one after another and established a Soviet revolutionary regime. It seemed that the liberation of the country was just around the corner. De Gaulle's Free French movement has also lost its foothold. He himself was forced to live in exile in the UK again. He just delivered a tearful speech in the House of Commons in London, begging for more aid. Unfortunately, there were only a few who responded and there were a lot of boos.
Next came the news from Spain. What surprised Tito was that under strong pressure from the United States and Britain, General Franco actually sent troops to intervene in the French revolution! Fifty thousand Spanish intervention troops and a few thousand Portuguese crossed the Pyrenees the day before yesterday and assisted Marshal Pétain in suppressing the citizen uprising in Toulouse... But considering that the steel torrent of the Soviet Red Army was already close at hand, these Spanish troops His fate is probably very worrying.
In fact, even the remaining senior leaders of Vichy France believed that Toulouse was not safe enough and were already preparing to go to Corsica to establish a government-in-exile.
However, on the other hand, even if Franco stood still, the socialist camp might not be able to spare him after liberating France. Many of the exiled politicians of the Spanish Republic are now active in Paris and Moscow... Tito also met several of them when he was in Moscow.
Everyone knows that Comrade Stalin wants to get a complete red Europe, and the Iberian Peninsula is naturally among his goals.
The news further down is not so wonderful. On the Greek battlefield, the Greek White Army, supported by the British Mediterranean Fleet, successfully attacked Salamis Island and penetrated into the hinterland of Greece. At the same time, a British cruiser formation violently bombarded Athens. Greek soldiers and civilians suffered heavy casualties, and large-scale fleeing was taking place. In terms of military strength, the current Greek White Army is only one-tenth of the Greek Red Army, and it only occupies a few marginal islands, and its population and strength are very weak. Unfortunately, with the support of the British Mediterranean Fleet, it could use the sea route to maneuver freely for raids, but the Soviet fleet was stuck in the Black Sea by Turkey and could not get out. Although the Soviet Union managed to transport a batch of torpedo boats to the Greek Red Army via railway, the effect was better than nothing.
Fortunately, the key to defeating the British lay not in the Mediterranean but in London: the bellicose Prime Minister Churchill was clearly on his last legs. The latest opinion polls show that the British public is deeply dissatisfied with the endless war. Everywhere you can hear someone imitating Churchill's tone and making a sarcastic speech: "In Singapore, we have failed. In the Low Countries, we have failed. . In France we failed again... Even in Australia we did not succeed! And next, India!... I have nothing to offer you but my tears, my toil and my stupidity..."
A few days ago, Prime Minister Churchill received a censure vote in Parliament, and a wave of cabinet reversal was brewing. Generally speaking, this old colonial empire has been like the French Empire at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The war has exhausted its last strength and courage, and it can no longer fight.
By then, the crisis of the Greek red regime will be easily resolved, and the entire Balkan Peninsula will be able to calm down for a while...
Seeing this, Tito rubbed his eyes, raised his head, and through the car window, he scanned the ruins on both sides of the road and the depressed and dilapidated street scene. Recalling the scenery he saw on the streets of Moscow, he couldn't help but shake his head and sigh: Even after suffering Before the war destroyed it, neither Belgrade, the capital of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, nor Vienna, the "City of Music", the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, could compare to the grandeur, splendor and grandeur of Moscow.
But as a prisoner of war on the Eastern Front of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the last war, Tito, who spent some time in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp at that time, knew very well what the Soviet Union looked like in the past. In fact, at the time of Lenin's death, the Soviet Union was in no better shape than Yugoslavia is today.
At that time, the Soviet Union, which had just ended its civil war, inherited almost all the high-quality and bad assets of the Russian Empire: its vast territory, rich natural resources, harsh and freezing environment, messy ethnic relations, and countless addicted people all day long. The lazy man who loves vodka... Although there was the glory of the "European Gendarmerie" in the Tsarist era, it was still essentially a backward country where farmers cultivated the land with wooden plows.
Then, Comrade Stalin, a professional slut from a Georgian seminary, used brutal methods that were far superior to those of previous tsars and comparable to the Khans of Mongolia. He whipped these drunkards who were half-awake and half-dreaming with vodka and dragged them away. On the road of blood and tears of rapid industrialization.
——"If you can't get things done, shoot them and leave it to your own devices!" "Whoever dares to object can be sent to see Comrade Lenin!" "Instead of letting potentially dangerous elements hold back when the war is unfavorable, it is better to do it before the war. Eliminate it from the physical body first"...
When Westerners learned all the shocking news about the great purges of the Soviet Union, a bunch of international commentators still celebrated, thinking that the collapse of the Soviet Union was imminent.
But they don’t know that the Slavs, represented by the Russians, all have extreme M genes hidden in their bodies. It is useless to talk to them nicely. Only the tyrant’s bullets, nooses and Gulag labor camps can transform them from slugs. Into the Tyrannosaurus rex... If you want to control this nation to reach the top, the leader must be cold-blooded and cruel enough, and his will must be as indestructible as a special alloy!
Therefore, under Comrade Steel's spiked whip, the productivity and development speed of the Soviet Union have accelerated by leaps and bounds, and the national cohesion has become unprecedentedly strong. The European and American experts who were waiting to see the joke dropped their glasses and shouted that the Soviet Union was evil. The empire violated the scientific principles of economic development.
In short, in just a dozen years, this comrade, the Iron Man, successfully reversed the extremely bad domestic and international situation in one fell swoop by relying on his own will, prestige and cruelty. , built the world's second strongest military-industrial system on countless corpses, made the once poor and weak Soviet Union grow into a real monster, and then flattened the entire European continent with a rolling torrent of steel!
Thinking about the incredible explosive development speed of the Soviet Red Empire over the years, Tito couldn't help but feel dazed.
Perhaps Yugoslavia should also learn from the advanced experience of the Soviet Union, first send hundreds of thousands or millions of unruly bastards to see God, and then put the remaining people into labor camps and work day and night until they die, at least I worked until I had no time to think wildly, and then all the problems were solved...
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Soviet Union, Leningrad
Although the war on the European continent has not yet been completely extinguished, the old capital of Tsarist Russia, formerly known as St. Petersburg, is already a bustling and prosperous scene.
Unlike the desperate frustration, hunger and deprivation during the last world war, during this world war, except for the worst months of the war, the people living in Leningrad never felt the extreme There is an obvious supply shortage.
On the contrary, as the red iron stream continued to advance on the European continent and good news came frequently, the products on the shelves of Leningrad's state-owned stores became increasingly rich: various oriental teas, colorful silks, cigarettes The ration quantity has been doubled, and sugar has never been sold without a ticket. In addition, there are many tropical specialties that were hard to see before, such as pepper, dried coconut, palm oil, pineapple preserves, coffee beans, canned tropical fish, and many strange spices that cannot be named...especially chocolate, which is the best-selling one. Hot, because of the long-term blockade by the imperialist powers of the world, cocoa powder from tropical areas has always been a rare luxury product in the Soviet Union!
Although no one knows where these good things come from, it does not stop citizens from rushing to buy like crazy while waving rubles. The girls put on the smooth and gorgeous silk skirts with excitement, and the children happily licked the chocolate and tropical fruit preserves.
In addition to the increasingly rich material life, the brilliant victories of the Red Army on the front line were in stark contrast to the bad news during the last world war, making the Soviet people feel great joy in their spiritual life. Some people and shops even hung large maps on the walls, and planted small red flags on newly liberated cities every day, watching as the European continent was gradually submerged by the red tide from east to west.
Today, after the Red Army entered Paris half a month ago, new good news came from the front line: the Red Navy's Arctic Fleet successfully captured the port of Narvik in northern Norway, eliminating the last British invasion force entrenched in Northern Europe. Declare the liberation of all Scandinavia!
To this end, Leningrad announced that all primary and secondary schools in the city would have a half-day holiday, organize celebration parades, and distribute candy.
Suddenly, the streets of Leningrad were crowded with people, laughter and laughter continued, red flags were waved everywhere, and confident songs were flying everywhere.
At the same time, in a lounge on the third floor of the Winter Palace, diplomats from the newly established European socialist countries were looking through the windows at the sea of red flags on the street, as well as the flags being carried out by primary school students. Each model of the Soviet Union’s national emblem has very complicated eyes.
Although they are all from the socialist camp, few Europeans like Russians. There are so many countries in the world, and indeed many of them have become nightmares for their neighbors at some point. But Russia may be the only country in Europe that has been the biggest nightmare for all its neighbors since its founding. In modern Europe, one of the biggest themes in the foreign affairs of various countries is to manage various anti-Russian alliances.
However, although Europeans have always stubbornly looked down on the Russians in modern history, trying to expel them from the category of European civilized people, considering them to be uncivilized barbarians. But in fact, the Russian nation is really an extremely outstanding nation. Although it only has a history of emerging from ignorance in just three to four hundred years, it has produced the world's top geniuses in almost all aspects such as science, technology, humanities, and military.
In the eyes of the vast majority of European intellectuals, the Russian nation is a great nation; Russia is a magnificent land; but Russia is a terrible evil empire, greedy and shameless. Almost all of Europe hates Russia, hates Russia, is afraid of Russia, and even unites to attack Russia... But it is of no use, Russia is invincible. Even if he was defeated occasionally, he would just go through the baptism of fire like a phoenix reborn, and then crawl out from the ashes to stir up trouble, making the whole of Europe tremble, but there was nothing he could do about it.
——In this world, I am afraid that only the Soviets dare to print the entire earth on their national emblem, dare to liberate all mankind as the core purpose of founding the country, and only the Soviets dare to use their own country to make the biggest revolution in human history. A social science experiment...
Now, the Soviets are going to use the entire Europe for social science experiments again! Well, this time it’s financial.
——The theme of this Leningrad Conference is: the issuance of a unified currency for all socialist camp countries across the European continent: the euro!
In response to this, the first reaction of diplomats from various countries was to lie down and then cry: since entering modern times, how can there be a reason for a large number of countries to use the same currency? It is no longer the Renaissance era when all of Europe used Italian ducats and florins!
Judging from the experience during the unification of the German Empire, this is simply a prelude to annexation, okay?
Facing the arrogant Soviets, the small Eastern European countries could not stand up. The German Communist Party and the Italian Communist Party were representatives of the defeated countries, and they were not qualified to speak out against it. Representatives of the French Communist Party, which had not yet unified the country, slapped the table on the spot, saying that they would never give up the historic franc... Seeing that there was a leader, representatives from other countries also rallied around and agreed, but at the same time they couldn't help but feel cramps in their calves. , for fear of offending Mao Zi and causing a fuss that would never end.
However, this time the Soviet representative was rarely easy to talk to. Seeing such strong opposition, he readily took a step back and said that if the situation did not allow it, the launch of a unified socialist national currency could be temporarily shelved... However, as a Substitution and minimum requirements. Although each socialist country can issue its own banknotes, it must use the same unified pattern as the ruble, that is, the cruiser Aurora...
This is another request that makes people want to roll their eyes. Since the first two years of the Soviet-German war, under the sole discretion of Uncle Steel, ruble banknotes of all denominations in the Soviet Union, from large to small, and even kopeck coins All the patterns have been changed to the cruiser Aurora!
As a result, just as Americans call the dollar Franklin, the Russians also bluntly call the ruble Aurora...
Then, the most widely circulated stamp image in the Soviet Union was also the cruiser Aurora, and the most widely issued low-level medal was still the image of the cruiser Aurora... A bronze statue of the cruiser Aurora stood on Red Square in Moscow. , in government buildings in every city in the Soviet Union, Aurora cruiser models of different materials and models have become standard equipment. Looking at Stalin's frantic look, he simply wanted to turn this antique cruiser from the Russo-Japanese War era into a holy relic and artifact of the red camp, similar to the "True Cross" and "Ark of the Covenant" of the Catholic Church... …
Well, although I know that you Russians have a short history and little experience, when your Nordic neighbors have been playing the pirate game vigorously for hundreds of years and finally refused to do it and changed their ways, you Russians have never seen what the sea looks like. Woolen cloth. As a result, when I saw the sea, I became excited like a shot of chicken blood. I must drive a warship to the sea to play. For hundreds of years, I have been thinking about the outlet to the warm ocean... Then, Aurora The cruiser Aurora is indeed an important symbol of the October Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union, as well as the most famous warship in the entire socialist camp: As everyone knows, the cruiser Aurora fired a cannon that night, and the revolutionary sailors rushed into the winter Palace!
But it can’t be promoted like a statue of the Virgin Mary or a cross, right? Is this still a materialist?
Therefore, representatives from various countries were still reluctant to agree to this embarrassing request. But the Soviets were no longer willing to give in... After a fierce argument, representatives from various countries had to accept this tough "minimum requirement" and agreed to turn all their respective currencies into "warship coins" like Maozi. , or "Aurora Coin": In any case, printing an "Aurora Goddess" on banknotes is much easier to accept than printing Stalin's head (Aurora is a transliteration, and the free translation is Aurora Goddess), isn’t it?
Just think of it as a small sacrifice to satisfy the Soviet people's vanity and to thank the Soviet Red Army for liberating all of Europe!
However, none of them knew how significant this seemingly-gone-for-fame thing was to the Soviet Union and the socialist camp...
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Soviet Union, Siberia, Tyumen Oilfield
In the history of another world, this oil field with huge reserves would not be surveyed and discovered until the 1960s. Before that, it was just an inaccessible wasteland. However, in this world, certain things have undergone incredible and wonderful changes...
——In the cold wind coming from the Arctic, a blond girl wearing a military coat and a fur hat stood alone in the wilderness in the wind.
She was silent for a long time, as if she was brewing something.
Then, the girl stretched out a jade hand towards the wilderness... Then it was time to witness the miracle!
Under her will, the desolate land squirmed like plasticine and quickly changed its shape: turf and shrubs were quickly and quietly leveled by an invisible hand, and big trees were cut down silently. Peeling and embalming... The gravel was burned into glass by the high temperature that came from nowhere, the soil was burned into red bricks and ceramic tiles, and thick reinforced concrete walls sprouted from the ground like bamboo shoots and mushrooms. Even various metal components such as copper and iron were separated from the soil by some magical force and flowed on the ground like a river...
Of course, relying solely on the metal components in soil and rocks is far from enough, so the girl ordered people to pile up a large amount of aluminum, copper ingots, iron ingots and rare metals here in advance. Under her power, these metal raw materials melted quickly like candles by the stove, turned into parts of various shapes, and finally assembled into sections of pipelines, machines... and then, a nearby building The exposed rock mountain suddenly cracked, and pieces of solid rock were cut away. Neatly cut stone slabs and stone bricks were separated from the mountain silently, suspended in the air, like well-trained soldiers, forming a neat team and marching towards the deserted construction site, like stacking blocks. Paved into foundations, roads and embankments...
Pumping units, oil pipelines, distillation towers, power plants, reservoirs, oil storage tanks, booster pumping stations, management centers, staff dormitories and canteens...all the construction equipment that make up the oil fields and refineries are all under the will of the girl. , emerging from the soil. The cables and pipes buried underground are also formed directly under the ground. The pipes that lead directly to the oil storage strata do not require a drilling machine at all, they are automatically formed underground...
Then comes the most tedious and fragmented part, which is to produce various process documents, equipment manuals, operating guides, notice boards, factory maps... one by one, and put them in the places where they should be, so that the subsequent receiving personnel will not As for the black eyes.
In this way, a huge oil base was quietly built on the frozen soil of Siberia in a way that was completely inconsistent with science and materialism.
Fortunately, there were no people living in this place. The Red Army had previously blocked hundreds of kilometers of nearby land under the pretext of military exercises. Otherwise, if such a large industrial facility suddenly appeared like this, anyone who saw it would find it strange and think it was a ghost, right?
The huge project that originally required tens of thousands of people to work hard for a year or two was easily completed by the girl in one afternoon.
The same thing, or miracle, has happened more than once in the Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, Australia, and even India in recent years. Let those desolate corners that were originally forgotten by the Western European and American civilized world enjoy the benefits of industrial civilization to varying degrees...
When everything was completed, the blond girl stretched, turned and walked towards an off-road jeep nearby, still mumbling, "...the rate of increase in the power of faith recently...is really impressive. Surprised! It seems that it is getting easier and easier to work. It seems that everyone likes money... Unfortunately, the power of faith that is not gained from the battlefield always feels a bit awkward when used. So refreshing! ”
Having said this, she looked up at the eastern sky, and a bloodthirsty and ferocious smile suddenly appeared at the corner of her mouth: "...Okay! The matter of building socialism should come to an end here. What follows is destruction. Time for capitalism! From now on, I must kill people and fight hard against those Americans who refuse to admit defeat!"