Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition

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Yeah, I am not sure... Masherov sounds like someone who could Gorbachev the Soviet Union potentially (once he gets more experience he could be fine). Abramov seems alright. But in general I have liked Kosygin's calls and wouldn't mind if he got another 5 years or so...
Me neither, but it's worth observing that one of his greatest virtues, his ability to make the necessary compromises to put the USSR on a more sustainable trajectory that will hopefully (along with other factors) avoid the 70s-era stagnation that doomed it in our timeline, is one that has a limited shelf-life and does not necessarily make him the best contender to remain in charge indefinitely.

You're not wrong that too much idealism could blow up the Union too soon, though, because the entire institution is, for now, still very firmly founded on a lot of corpses and lies. Improving things rapidly and immediately will tend to delegitimize the entire project, to the point where people start defecting from it if they think they can do better by any means (e.g. nationalism).

No, Voz hasn't brought them into the patronage networks. They're all legitimately dedicated communists out to get rid of corruption. They're young and idealistic.
I mean, I'm sure some of them went up into the patronage networks, because systems like that do continue to recruit people over time anyway.

But yeah, Voz did recruit a lot of young idealists with the general intent of pointing them at his enemies and pulling the trigger.
 
Me neither, but it's worth observing that one of his greatest virtues, his ability to make the necessary compromises to put the USSR on a more sustainable trajectory that will hopefully (along with other factors) avoid the 70s-era stagnation that doomed it in our timeline, is one that has a limited shelf-life and does not necessarily make him the best contender to remain in charge indefinitely.
This 70s era stagnation, what was its nature exactly? Is it something we could mitigate as MNKh head or would political interference prevent it?
 
Kos main problem was an unwillingness to send all the guns to revolutionaries wearing red hats which is a very unpopular position to take so i get where the Voz is a liberal wrecker idea comes from
Basically, There'e been a handful of chances under Kos to get a socialist/communist gov in power if we played hard ball but his reluctance let it fall through.
The problem isn't so much that this option in isolation was illegible, as that the cumulative effective of a dozen-plus turns of all the options being like that left a lot of us with our eyes glazed over. One may speculate that it greatly reduced the number of people who were even mentally able to go "wait, SHIT" and process how bad it could be for Voz to fail to fend off that anti-corruption drive.
I will admit that Kos-speak definitely had me skipping over the options. He has had the least enjoyable "voice" of all the Ministers so far. Outside of a few highlights here and there of Voz being sassy.
We needed the two decades or so since Stalin's death and the rising standards of living we've experienced, just to bring into the forefront a new tranche of Party members who are reasonably enthusiastic about routing out corruption and spreading the influence of the working class over the system. In the immediate aftermath of Stalin, nobody dared to stand up and say they cared about it, and I think Mikoyan and Kosygin deserve a lot of credit for managing to navigate that transition to the point where we've actually got a shot at the third generation of party leadership making things significantly better.
The USSR was (and still is) a abuse victim of a nation, and with Stalin dying early, and Mikoyan and Kosygin keeping the peace and bringing new prosperity (despite the crazy hijinks that is the SupSov and Soviet government) have gone a long way to healing those wounds.
 
The Great Brain shall brain no more. Communism is surely doomed.

Man, I should have kept making those analysis posts of Voz's alternate reality.
 
Did some analysis similar to Vi'Talzin. Not super in depth but might be handy.
Fyodor Anisimovich Surganov - We want to fix agriculture and avoid larger politics like a plague. -10 due to being over promoted means he was promoted outside his skill set. Peter principle in action? Waiting for the political situation to stabilize and presumably cleaning moderate amounts of house as a side-job.

Vladimir Fedorovich Mitskevich - We fucking love politics, Voz gave us too little in fact. Key ally of Masherov, meaning we're tied to his success, but also less tied than Nosilovsky. However dealing with the economy, our job, will be horrible. We're going to miss key problems and opportunities (and any failures are going to be horrific).

Anton Bronislavovich Nosilovsky - We'd be a puppet of Masherov, with very little political control. If we barely want to touch bureaucracy, not bad. While our technical skills are good, I feel like a lack of political experience and management experience means issues dealing with the ministry itself. Our projects will probably go fine, but we're going to have issues maneuvering around the existing patronage networks, even if they're temporarily cowed.

Vasily Ivanovich Drozdenko - We fucking love roads and railroads. Going to be great at clearing through our road debt, and manageable with other projects. He's going to miss some key details with the larger economy, but not the worst. Politically his faction looks to be on the way out, but time will tell how long that will take. Young and energetic bodes well for potential development though.

Ivan Efimovich Klimenko - Hey guys what about the people? Going to be good for developing services (a sector I feel is underdeveloped), and I think Abramov's faction is good. Going to be decent with infrastructure and working through roads, but will have issues managing the ministry. While his political capabilities are currently outsized, I feel like having any will be a boon to dealing with the ministry.
 
Hmmm... Drozdenko looks interesting.

There's a lot of case to be made for social focus, but for his part infrastructure is just... something we always need.

Personality wise, he looks like a Civil Engineer with Opinions. Being a seemingly highly competent Ukrainian native civil engineer with criticisms of the Kiev renovations strikes me as interesting. He looks like also capable of organizing people around him even in smaller factions towards a common end, with enough effectiveness to be something that has to be reckoned with, and the direction he takes that political savvy ("moderate reform") seems promising.

Dice wise, he's a capable manager, which dilutes the dice malus to a -5 outside of bureaucracy.

There's a risk is that -10 and five rolls in the bureau is a lot of chances for something to roll *very* low.


EDIT: Being a Kosyginist when there's a chance Kos's star is falling is a risk, but the man also looks to be experienced uniting a small faction to outsized influence, is part of what I'm saying.
 
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This is a nontrivial part of the reason I don't vote anymore...
I agree with this. I'm also hesitant to say I agree with it, since the fact that the leader has a personality is one of the distinguishing traits of this quest over other planquests, where the leader is just a set of bonuses and nothing else. That's hardly the only reason why this is the first and best of the bunch, but it contributes.

Nonetheless... not only does over-obfuscation cause damage by hiding too much (I didn't even understand Voz was actually corrupt), it also creates a barrier to entry to cast opinions. Through Voz's tenure especially I was always afraid to make my opinions known for fear of being swamped with "but Taka you don't understand what's really happening! You poor fool, you're not even on the Discord!"
 
EDIT: Being a Kosyginist when there's a chance Kos's star is falling is a risk, but the man also looks to be experienced wielding a small faction to outsized influence, is part of what I'm saying.
Just to be clear, Kosygin isn't out yet, Masherov has displaced him as the leading power in the Supreme Soviet, but he still has his position, a resilient base of support and pretty strong control over the Party overall. There is definitely a chance he will be ousted in the following 5YP, but it probably would not happen immediately and Blackstar has said if everything goes well he might even retire in 69 when the elections happen. 4 years is not a terrible timeframe for a man to cultivate his own power base within the ministry and get used to more high powered politics.
(I didn't even understand Voz was actually corrupt
Honestly, as soon as he got in it was clear to me at least he was pretty corrupt. Do remember that when Malenkov went into his anti-corruption crusade, Voz tried to do a backroom deal with him handing a list with people (most likely very conveniently his political rivals) the former could target in the sweep whilst not looking too closely elsewhere. We even had the option to use that whole shady dealing against him to try remove Voz. Its poetic really, Voz got in because he backstabbed Mal since the latter was running a sinking boat over anti-corruption, and he got out because Kosygin left him to dry rather than try to defend Voz's blatantly corrupt attempts to cover up evidence.

EDIT: Quoted below is the interaction I was thinking of:
Anti-Corruption Investigation: Heavy Industry

While the control commission is preparing for an anti-corruption investigation, Vozvensky moves into your office to ensure that he is fully up to date on what is going on and to coordinate an optimal response. Just a few days later before the control commission has even moved he has provided a list of personnel that he strongly recommends being looked at. Such informal dealings are not to be mentioned to anyone as is a common understanding, but this still does present an opportunity. As far as can be determined, the list is mostly more conservative managers along with several of the conventional technocrats that have utilized their connections to an excessive extent. Overall, the list itself is a massive asset and would likely do a decent job of cleaning up the most visible corruption in the Ministry, of course, it would also further strengthen Vozvensky's position.

[]Push for the List: It doesn't hurt to provide a little push to the overall agency to ensure that the right people are looked at. It'll cut down most of the excesses and ensure that most of the worst cases are looked at without harming too many internal allies.

[]Burn the List: A genuine investigation would be a far more neutral option, though that would leave the control commission in charge of making the necessary connections and likely slow down the effort while also greatly disrupting the functioning of the Ministry. Simultaneously, it would also indicate no strong preference for the vice minister, possibly causing some instability.

[]Utilize the List: As much as it would likely hurt in the sector and overall politically, reporting the list up the chain with some additional implications would be cause for a deep investigation into Vozvensky, killing his career as a proverbial nuclear option. This would also ensure that whatever blackmail he has will come to light, but there is almost no better option in terms of getting rid of the man.
We ended up burning his list as to have a more neutral investigation.
 
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To a large part, the over obfuscation is a product of well, Voz, comparative to every other head you have had, most others are not as I have refereed to him as, a strange Stalinist so far up his own ass that he has become the first Stalinist Klein bottle. Literally everyone, including the politician is going to be leagues more conventional in their thoughts/approaches. Either of the engineers are going to be very task and asset focused as a paradigm, social scientist will give you things around social impacts, and the political guy will mostly present things as politics. Their educations and history to a large extent will define how they present things.

All but the first are a product of your "third generation" of party leadership. I.e those that came into the party on the rising wave of Mikoyan era reforms. Their not going to tie themselves into political pretzels trying to justify things internally to themselves and as a presented narrative to the Supreme Soviet. Though to an extent, its a bit my fault for not communicating things cleanly in terms of the degree of double speak, am going to turn that down significantly along with well, having a PC perspective that is orders of magnitude less deluded.
 
We did have that bad roll on justifying the low agricultural profitability. Most likely our inexperienced character is going to have an impossible target thrust on them and they'll become a sacrificial lamb at the end when they fail it.

Actually, after two decades of the MNKh being propelled forwards by chads with massive boni, we'll probably get unrealistic targets in general.
 
I agree with this. I'm also hesitant to say I agree with it, since the fact that the leader has a personality is one of the distinguishing traits of this quest over other planquests, where the leader is just a set of bonuses and nothing else. That's hardly the only reason why this is the first and best of the bunch, but it contributes.

Nonetheless... not only does over-obfuscation cause damage by hiding too much (I didn't even understand Voz was actually corrupt), it also creates a barrier to entry to cast opinions. Through Voz's tenure especially I was always afraid to make my opinions known for fear of being swamped with "but Taka you don't understand what's really happening! You poor fool, you're not even on the Discord!"
I've long been of the opinion that just... correctly deciphering information and figuring out what's true, what's false, (or in the post-Stalin era, what's merely blatantly biased, how, and why) is basically half the quest, yeah.

And in that vein, for what it's worth, independent analysis is always worth something. Not being on the discord may make you "out of the loop," but it also means you don't risk converging on the same answer by making the same assumptions. The self proclaimed "discordburo" may have more information, but all the insular conversation also means it's easier to to transmit a bad assumption while building up the ideas and worldviews that go in to that analysis.

A fresh pair of eyes is actually pretty valuable.
 
A turn or two back we voted to lock in a Services focus in the 8th FYP. If that's not invalidated by this shakeup, we'll have a massive amount of Services dice available: sixteen, minus any autodice we lock in. Something I doubt we'll be repeating much. And our other focus will most likely be Infra (as always...). Klimenko sounds like he'll fit into that specialization very well, might not have the best raw numbers but this sociologist-engineer would know how to ensure a services-focused plan is well prioritized.

EDIT: The Voz allowing to get a boatload of dice from restructuring after hiring the students, after looting the military for another six dice at the start of his plan, is probably his best legacy.
 
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EDIT: The Voz allowing to get a boatload of dice from restructuring after hiring the students, after looting the military for another six dice at the start of his plan, is probably his best legacy.
Translation: his bureaucratic empire-building made the Ministry really big, to the point where even after some of the most blatantly corrupt types are kicked out, it'll still be big and have a lot of raw personnel to throw at its problems... One hopes.

That's what Voz was doing? I thought he was... well, actually, I don't know what I thought he was doing. Getting high in a room full of computers, maybe.
That too.
 
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For a very fast very rationalized priority list by general political skill its approximately Mitskevich>>>Drozdenko>=Klimenko>Surganov>>>>>Nosilovsky.

Mitskevich is basically his own electoral apratus and knows exactly what to do to gather support, his issue is mostly in execution before anything else. Drozdenko has the Kiev and to a lesser extent Ukrainian party organs behind him and he is fairly involved with them, while this makes him more tied down that does have the advantage that he has a massive set of reliable personnel to push up and does have backers. Klimenko was the secretary and practically in charge of the local party, the only issue is said local party is in Smolensk. To an extent this makes him independant in raising fresh cadres from the ministry rather then his background, but as a downside this does mean he sorta like Voz does have to make or secure a source of cadres, in this case probably the university and scientific system, just with a very very different bent then Voz. Surganov does not want to be political and in fact just wants to not deal with it, the issue is the MNKh head is inherently a political position. Nosilovsky knows nothing, has optimistic assumptions, and has little understanding of anything that is happening. He will fairly quickly get better in the sink or swim sense but it will be a massive clusterfuck.

To note for this pick, soft factors are frankly far more important then hard ones. You cannot spend enough to save an idiot without massive delegation, and a lot of things will come down to political ability. The other thing to take into account is party base and the various factional backers, as the ministry is so massive some independant action is practically expected but the Troika that formed is not that stable and will likly attempt to consolidate each other out at some point like litterally every other troika.
 
I'm a Masherov man, seems like the only fella in the race who wants us to stop bending over and taking it from the capitalist swine, so I guess my choice here is Nosilovsky, seems like the most fun of his three affiliated candidates
 
Well, depends on how Blackstar handles sub-zero rolls really. I might be overreacting because of trauma from The Tattered Eagle on SB, where a non-1 low roll than falls negative due to maluses causes even MORE damage than a straight Natural 1 does.
To be fair we have a much different set of material conditions than Tattered Eagle like

1. The main below 0 result I can think of was the Privatized Death Schools in Liberia which was something that was possible to happen considering it involved a place very,very far away from the Ministry.

2.We aren't the disorganized,Capitalist,feudal and corrupt shitheap that is the Austrian Empire in the 19th century.We are the corrupt,market socialist and overcentralized shitheap that is ITTL's USSR.

3.Based off the To The Future quest BlackStar has a negative is just a bad failure rather than nat 1 tiers of penalty.Bad but not a nat 1.

4.One of the <10 rolls we had in Bureaucracy was the language project which while it essentially neutered multilanguage efforts wasn't bad enough to cause the complete destruction of minority languages or the Tattered Eagle secret Magyar assimilation school failure on SB.

5.We have different QM's with different styles of writing and treatment towards the fanbase.
 
During the GPW, one of Hitler's sanity rolls was a negative value. The result of that was ordering a full assault in the middle of the horrible winter and losing like a third of Germany's army.
 
Well that was quick, although in hindsight getting fired after not doing anything about the wave of new student-backed anti-corruption candidates coming for our ass was pretty predictable.

I thought Voz being corrupt as hell was pretty obvious, every single time he said "correct personnel" (like once or twice an update it felt like) that meant cronies. Yeah the jargon could get a little thick sometimes but... "I decided not to read the bureaucracy and politics actions" as an excuse for how folks missed that isn't making a lot of sense to me. If you don't read the quest you're not going to catch things going on... and THE core mechanic that makes me love this quest more than any other on SV is how the bureaucracy and player character influence what information we get.

That, and Blackstar actually having the balls to take it seriously and have corruption/brainworms lead to us actually making bad decisions, instead of most other SV organization-/nation-quests where disembodied spirits of pure reason manage to make perfectly rational and correct decisions that always go well except for an occasional corruption tax on the roll or budget or whatever. The point is not to play optimally and get it right all the time, the point is to demonstrate in a narrative format how bureaucracies are made out of human beings who make human fuckups with serious consequences. The Soviet Union didn't fall apart IRL because they ran their Corruption Meter up to the Collapse Breakpoint of 100 Corruption Points, they fell apart because of humans making bad decisions on bad information.

Ditto on the Moon race being a part of the plan vote, a bunch of technocratic nerds getting obsessive about their cool rockets to the point where it's detrimental to them doing the rest of their jobs is the format working as intended IMO.



With that rant out of the way, I think our best choice for a successor is Klimenko? Tying back in to how this game isn't actually about Numbers Go Up, it's about the human beings (who are frequently obsessed with Numbers Go Up), Klimenko is the closest thing we've got to an expert on how complex societies work. And the USSR is nothing if not a complex society. Getting a non-STEMlord, but still expert scientific, opinion on what we're doing and the impact it has on the actual human beings we rule over is absolutely invaluable. Especially going into the back half of the 20th century, when the USSR historically hit its points of no return on the way to collapse.

The Ministry is overflowing with expert STEMlords in the lower echelons who can handle the nitty gritty details of building trains, our new top level boss needs to be capable of developing a holistic view of what he's actually ordering all his STEMlord underlings to do. I absolutely do not want to put Yet Another Engineer in charge, Voz trying to treat a complex human society like an engineering problem is why we have communist sweatshops and displaced half of Moscow to pave a double-wide boulevard to the front door of his new bureaucracy palace.

Especially since the modifiers on the player character aren't actually the whole story, remember that starting next turn we have a +21 modifier from competent/educated lower level staff in the Ministry. So the worst case is Klimenko having a +11 in his weakest sectors, not an actual negative, and it will scale upwards as he settles in. Mechanically that's totally fine, and the soft/narrative benefits of him being a doctor of sociology will be MORE than worth an extra +5 on some progress rolls, +5 really isn't that make or break especially with the amount of money and dice we have to throw around now that we're an actually developed economy.
 
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With that rant out of the way, I think our best choice for a successor is Klimenko? Tying back in to how this game isn't actually about Numbers Go Up, it's about the human beings (who are frequently obsessed with Numbers Go Up), Klimenko is the closest thing we've got to an expert on how complex societies work. And the USSR is nothing if not a complex society. Getting a non-STEMlord, but still expert scientific, opinion on what we're doing and the impact it has on the actual human beings we rule over is absolutely invaluable. Especially going into the back half of the 20th century, when the USSR historically hit its points of no return on the way to collapse.

Yessssss. Sociologist *and* engineer? Want. Definitely go with Klimenko.
 
Thank Lenin, I thought Voz was going to die in office. It's been too long since our character got fired.

Not surprising that all the replacements are varying shades of garbage though, Voz spent a great deal of time and effort on kneecapping anyone competent enough to be a threat.
 
The point is not to play optimally and get it right all the time, the point is to demonstrate in a narrative format how bureaucracies are made out of human beings who make human fuckups with serious consequences. The Soviet Union didn't fall apart IRL because they ran their Corruption Meter up to the Collapse Breakpoint of 100 Corruption Points, they fell apart because of humans making bad decisions on bad information.
Which is why, despite suffering (a notable amount, in fact) from the over-obfuscation, I hope the quest doesn't veer too hard in the other direction. It is one of several things that really make this quest feel real.
 
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