Remove ads

Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Blackstar said:
Despite his qualifications and intelligence, comrade Lobanov utilized his influence to order his pilot to fly through a forming winter storm.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is why I love this quest! It's not just random justifications for dice rolls. There is a slew of background events that makes it really feel like a living world, one that is exciting to be part of.

Blackstar said:
If the Soviet worker has a demand for strange cheeses, wines, and meat products, there is no reason not to provide them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And it can be funny, too!
 
[]Igor Alexandrovich Skachkov
[]Lydia Vasilievna Sokhan
Hurray for boring and reliable!
 
Maybe the ecology pick could look into the catfish nat 1 we got way back? Not sure if were working on the same waterways though. That or maybe give better insight into what trade offs different crops would have beyond being more profitable? Do we have protections against crop pathogens like Panama disease that wiped out the Gros Michel banana? Did the Gros Michel even get wiped out?

This is also good look into what city planning actually looks like to the average visitor to Leningrad. Ive been meaning to ask what all our infra projects and housing corrections would even look like at this point. Its kinda funny how mixed use development is a profitability efficiency despite it just meaning people get to stores easier.

You got to give Voz credit. The guy can wax lyrical about every minutia that makes nylon the supermaterial that will revolutionize the union's textile industry, but ask him what the tv stations are producing and he'll just say the rejects made a documentary or something.

Is it wise to focus on petroeuros to China currently? It could lead to closer economic ties, but I also worry we might end up with a resource curse. This and China could do its own refinery exploitation, cutting us off an income source.

Im a bit strapped for context on the Brazilian third way. Are we doing the same trade we do with the US, or is it different.
 
cooldude888 said:
Im a bit strapped for context on the Brazilian third way. Are we doing the same trade we do with the US, or is it different.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Jânio Quadros had an all over the place foreign policy, was going to invade French Guiana in 1961, had troops ready and all, but resigned before carrying it out. Next turn he should be out, dude is the weirdest and most incompetent person that ever assumed leadership in Brazilian politics, at which point his leftist Vice-President (back then the VPs were elected) might take over if he manages to negotiate with the Right and wrangle the support of the Legalist officers in the Army to fend off any challengers. OTL he had to compromise with a Parliamentary system, stripping a bunch of his powers, to be able to take office, due to the fact he was out of the country on a trip to the PRC to establish closer relations. He met Mao, Kruschev and Gagarin in that trip, interesting bit of history there.
 
Last edited:
I see that the Chinese campaign in Vietnam has ended in a great embarrassment and has handed a great foreign policy victory for President Johnson in the US. The American intervention against the Chinese invasion must have been quite the sight. Oddly, the leaders of both superpowers benefited from this war. General Secretary Kosygin's argument for limited Soviet involvement in the war on the grounds of avoiding an escalation with the Americans and that the Chinese would fail badly regardless of any Soviet aid was regarded as vindicated. President Johnson gets to take home a foreign policy victory in Vietnam that he was denied in OTL. Without the Vietnam disaster, perhaps Johnson can carry out his domestic agenda better. I wonder how the American public views the government directly militarily helping up one group of Communists against another. There are probably a lot of appeals to "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and pointing to Ho Chi Minh's admiration for the United States by the US government to justify the intervention.

Vietnam will be firmly aligned with the Americans now for understandable reasons. Let the Americans have this win. At least, everybody is spared a long grinding war. Hopefully the Chinese government will learn its lessons, reform its military after this debacle, and will not do anything so foolish like this again.
 
Last edited:
Blackstar said:
Aristov has finally become too much of a problem to be tolerated, as he has taken an incompetent swing against the broader MNKh declaring that managerial authority needed to be expanded to optimize growth. In the days following his juvenile attempt at a new line of pandering to managers, loyal technocrats have been ordered to take a radical line, denouncing him as a capitalist and freezing the body in intensive argumentation. Thankfully due to determined efforts by two soon to be promoted regional politicians willing to explain issues to idiots, letters of public support for the new line have been generated. While Aristov has attempted to defend himself to the various other representatives in the Supreme Soviet, instead of taking their time to speak, several key politicians made important readings of the views of the public, going as far as to imply his acts as near sabotage of the construction of Communism. Despite making the correct ideological justifications for his particular line, the tide was sufficiently turned to open him to intense critique from every opportunist element, miring him and leaving his block to be picked at, at least until the imbeciles of the Supreme Soviet find a new distraction.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
that's actually kinda sad.

In the west, you can basically destroy a politician by accusing them of being a communist.

in Russia, you can destroy them by accusing them of being a capitalist.

In both cases, you are explicitly NOT addressing the value of their ideas and opinions. just trying to mark them as "the other/the enemy".

Blackstar said:
Due to the sheer scale of the rural housing modernization program, a number of flights by important personnel have been taken by helicopter. Despite his qualifications and intelligence, comrade Lobanov utilized his influence to order his pilot to fly through a forming winter storm. By the voice recorder onboard, this led to a significant destabilization of the Mi-4 as it was continuously hit by severe turbulence in a dense fog. Pilot altitude estimations were then thrown off, leading to a misinterpretation of altitude in flight followed by a sudden but rapid impact into the ground. As far as could be determined from the crash site, everyone on board perished on impact, leaving Smolin as the acting minister and requiring the selection of a new deputy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
...he deserves a Darwin award.

poor helicopter pilot though. It's not HIS fault the idiot ordered him to fly to their death.

Blackstar said:
[]Igor Alexandrovich Skachkov: An important academic in the fertilizer program that has proven his competencies in various intensification proposals. Conventional and a significant counterbalance to the far softer line of Smolin, he has achieved massive increases in yields and is one of the academics behind the modernization of Soviet agriculture. He is an academic, cut off from any power base, and minimal risk of political maneuvering leaving him as the politically easiest candidate. Simultaneously, he holds broadly correct opinions on the necessity of increasing agricultural production, reducing agricultural employment, and ensuring the lowest possible food price for the Soviet worker.

[]Georgy Nikolaevich Igoshev: Chief agronomist of one of the major enterprises centered around Tula and responsible for considerable gains in yields. Favoring an approach centered around the intensification of land use and with a strange opinion on the necessity of the agricultural export economy. He has taken a decisively odd political line, leaving him to be hard to support and justify, but also leaving him entirely dependent on the ministry. The most effective counterbalance to Smolin as they both agree on almost nothing, ensuring that the ministry can be made to properly follow central direction along with broadening policy choices for the ministry itself.

[]Nina Ivanovna Nikonova: Very young and already with a doctorate in biological sciences, Nikonova has progressed rapidly through the state apparatus, taking on challenging work towards increasing production in the Altai. She has little support outside of any local network and much of the party is still divided on the emotional nature of women for a significant support base to form around her. She has had exemplary performance, enabled a considerable increase in returns, and a demonstrated willingness to go out into the countryside to perform her duty. Harsh in the implementation of programs towards the taming of nature and one of the personnel core to the Virgin Lands campaign's implementation, she is more than capable of adapting to the latest methods for the increase of yields.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They all sound acceptable, so I'm sure I'm missing something :V

Blackstar said:
[]Lydia Vasilievna Sokhan: Despite her degree in philosophy rather than a more applicable field, a decade of experience in the coordination of elements of the polytechnical program across Ukraine has earned her a degree of prominence. Hardworking, capable of adaptation, and outspoken on teaching methodologies to a sufficient extent to limit her political influence. Sokhan is an ideal academic to continue Kalashnikov's work on expanding the social sphere of education and ensuring that the soft sciences gap can be closed and over-taken.

[]Zakhar Ilyich Fainburg: Achieving a doctorate in mathematical economics and with a radical line of the criticality of developing the service economy, he is the most specialized of the candidates under consideration. While it is obvious that the service economy has practically been fed piecemeal to the private sector, so far no one has proposed any form of solution. He has published a number of papers on the necessity of a pivot towards it, taking examples from the Capitalist world. This has earned him almost no support and few cadres, rendering him weak politically and a perfect radical to contrast for a more measured buildup of the service sector.

[]Lev Naumovich Kogan: A sociologist specializing in cultural research and more of an educator than the others, he is conventional and focused more on expanding education rather than fundamentally altering it. A doctor of science and a strong academic candidate from Yekaterinburg, he has little support in conventional party bases leaving him capable of gathering cadres, but with few to his name. Likely the strongest acceptable minister in case of rapid succession and the least disruptive to the operation of education and the service sector.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
while part of me wants to get both women deputies, I actually like the "Service economy man" here the most. He's not wrong in pointing out that's a really important sector to develop, and for all of our relative better position compared to OT Urss, we're still FAR behind the west there. More than in any other sector, really.





and, generally speaking, this turn was actually great for our economy. lots of projects completed, quite a few close to completion...

should we consider rushing electrification of railway a bit, now that the locomotive plant is ready too?
 
I think they call it euro in an unofficial way maybe in the universe it has another name but average people in Europe started calling it euro because it is the currency that everyone uses in the continent.
 
Hianny said:
[]Zakhar Ilyich Fainburg
I want this guy because it is correct we won't need to go hard on the service transition in the 60s but we are not picking the minister we are picking the deputy. This means that the new Minister will likely last at least 5 years but we have also just seen one last 15 which means that if we want a service sector focused minister in the 70s this is the time to pick one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You make a good point here.

Also, if party members are taking advantage of their positions to establish enterprises that benefit them personally but have to be treated by competitors as shadow-state enterprises, going for Fainburg offers some advantage, since most of the private enterprises are in the service sector, and going for the guy who shakes up the service sector could be a way to keep these party bosses honest...

Mr. Sandman said:
Podgorny in the meanwhile, had large gains, and netted 20 members.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Podgorny only gained 10 members, but still, he and Kosygin seem to be doing better than Voz's prejudices would lead us to believe.

Regards,

fasquardon
 
Sounds like It'll be at least a year before Augmented Earthmoving gets clear for general-purpose use. Fair enough. But I've suddenly found myself skeptical of its practicality. Problem is that nuclear explosions make very circular holes in the ground, while canals are very non-circular. If a 100 kiloton blast creates a 400 meter wide crater like the Sedan test (400 m is more than overkill for a canal and will need a lot of earthmoving to bring things to a more reasonable shape), than to make a canal 400 kilometers long you'll need one thousand of those bombs. How much would the unit cost of a low-fallout production run be?

Good thing that MinService retired at the same time as MinAg died, which allows us to promote a woman to deputy without having to pick the one that risks girlboss-ing all over Central Asia's climate. But even then, I'm tempted to vote to promote Nina also due to the symbolism of giving someone so young the job (BTW @Blackstar how old is Lydia Sokhan?) and because of her field experience, with the hope that we can reign in her REALLY GOOD IDEAS by not taking projects that propose wacky ways to bring more land under cultivation or whatever.

EDIT: On second thought, the new minister is an ecologist who wants to expand the national park system. Giving him a first mate that wants to blow up Siberia might cause damaging friction. But on THIRD thought, perhaps having him as her mentor will moderate some of Nina's worse ideas?

Also somehow it took me this long to realize that "Abort Program Enhancement" means enhancement of abort programs, not aborting the enhancement of programs.

And holy shit us getting a unified currency zone going is huge. Maybe in a few more decades we'll be moving towards federalization of the Red EU.
 
Last edited:
"Euro" makes sense for the currency name, yeah India and China are CMEA associates but they're not full members and definitely won't be in the currency union, everybody actually using this new currency is going to be in Europe. And not just some random minor states in Europe, but a solid majority of the continent.
 
With regards to the deputies, if the first opportunity to get a female deputy is liable to cause ecological crises due to mid-century attempts at what could be called terraforming, or means missing out on a service industry focused minister when you'll really need one, maybe you could just wait for the second opportunity rather than rush for the first?
 
On the services deputy, I think soft sciences is way more important than pursuing a 'service sector transition'. It's still the 60s, and our non-government service sector is managing well enough. Also, IRL I think the 'service sector transition' was as much about capitalists looking for excuses to screw over workers as it was about any kind of economic necessity. A lot easier to sell 'We're going to offshore any unionized job that we can get away with' when you can say it's a necessary economic transition rather than just a cash grab on your part.

Soft sciences, on the other hand, is something we *really* need, specially if we want to be able to effectively absorb the rest of Asia into our economic system and reform our society and government for the better.

Edit: That's not to say that we couldn't benefit from building out our service sector some, but I don't think it takes priority over the soft sciences.
 
Well, the latest we get the next opportunity to place a new deputy is something akin to 76. Is that date too late for service economy?
 
A deputy appointed during the 70's won't actually be the department head until somewhere around the 80's and won't really have the clout or experience to go big on their ideas for even longer after that. It's important to remember that we're picking deputies on a decade+ lag time here, not appointing an immediate new head.
 
Crazycryodude said:
A deputy appointed during the 70's won't actually be the department head until somewhere around the 80's and won't really have the clout or experience to go big on their ideas for even longer after that. It's important to remember that we're picking deputies on a decade+ lag time here, not appointing an immediate new head.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That is even assuming that Voz doesn't implode the Ministry upon his departure, and whoever his true sucessor is (not whatever academic he gets as deputy that gets ousted a year in) just decides to get a clean slate of Ministers.
 
Mr. Sandman said:
That is even assuming that Voz doesn't implode the Ministry upon his departure, and whoever his true sucessor is (not whatever academic he gets as deputy that gets ousted a year in) just decides to get a clean slate of Ministers.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Voz hasn't ever had a deputy and I really doubt he'll ever appoint one before eventually departing. That's going to be awkward but IDK, that's what you get when the head is super controlling.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top