In Russia, receiving a comment about being "rough" in one's work was not considered a negative critique. Beria knew very well that the high-handed, rough attitude Stalin often displayed was an act; what Stalin truly could not accept were "impure" people.

Ignoring Stalin's displeasure and reprimands, Beria waited for Stalin to finish his scolding before asking, "What is your reasoning?"

Beria replied, "General Secretary, recent KGB intelligence assessments have basically confirmed that, given the current stage of the war, nationalist sentiment in Finland has reached an extremely high level. This sentiment is not directed specifically against the Soviet Union or the Allied Powers, but against any country that attempts to enter Finland. Regardless of which country enters Finland, they will encounter fierce resistance."

Stalin frowned slightly. This situation was no secret; he had received the same information through other intelligence channels. This sentiment of resistance was not unique to Finland; all small nations felt the same. However, Finland was a very small country, with a total population of only 3.7 million—less than the current number of troops in the Red Army.

"Is your reason merely that our army will face fierce resistance during the liberation of Finland?" Stalin asked.

Beria answered, "General Secretary, Finland has already received various security assurances from Germany. It is said that a portion of the Finnish military has received training in Germany, so Finland's resistance may be extremely fierce."

Hearing this, Kirov frowned. Finland's land area was not small, at 338,000 square kilometers, with a coastline of 1,100 kilometers and several good harbors. However, this large area also made Finland's defense very difficult. According to intelligence obtained by the Soviet Union, even if Finland carried out a national mobilization, its military strength would not exceed 150,000 troops. They had very few tanks and other equipment; the Red Army could break through wherever it pleased.

Kirov felt compelled to ask, "Comrade Beria, have you received some specific information?"

Beria replied, "Comrade Kirov, several reports on the Red Army's foreign exchanges indicate that during military exchanges, the Chinese National Defense Force believes Finland could adopt a comprehensive guerrilla warfare model to fight the Soviet Union. As long as Finland can receive aid from the sea, they can keep fighting. The Red Army would then be forced to conduct a pursuit campaign across the entire country, necessitating the construction of a large number of POW camps for Finland's 3.7 million people."

Hearing Beria explain it this way, Kirov finally understood why Beria opposed the plan to liberate Finland. In Beria's judgment, Finland would absolutely not surrender like the three Baltic states, but would fight to the end. In that case, Finland's 338,000 square kilometers of territory would provide ample space for comprehensive guerrilla warfare.

Although Kirov believed the Finns would put up relatively fierce resistance, he did not think Finland could manage a nationwide guerrilla war. Kirov had originally thought Beria was taking a more moderate stance, but now he felt that Beria's suggestion of building POW camps for 3.7 million Finns was an extremely radical view.

Stalin, at this moment, was not thinking of Finland, but of Poland. In 1939, Nazi Germany launched a blitzkrieg against Poland, occupying the western regions. The Soviet Union immediately invaded Poland from the east, occupying all Polish territory east of the Curzon Line and capturing approximately 250,000 Polish military officers and soldiers.

The Soviet Union subsequently detained the Polish officers and soldiers in several newly built POW camps. Soon, the Soviet government came to view the Polish prisoners as a major burden: on one hand, the Soviet Union had to consume precious manpower and resources to feed them during tense war preparations; on the other hand, the Polish prisoners might resist Soviet imprisonment at any time. Consequently, the decision was made to deal with the officers among the Polish prisoners first. With the officers removed, the remaining soldiers would be leaderless.

Initially, "relevant Soviet authorities" believed the best method was physical elimination. On March 5, 1940, Lavrentiy Beria, the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, wrote a report specifically requesting approval from Stalin and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to execute over 20,000 prisoners and convicts, primarily Polish officers. It was immediately approved.

If this had been Beria's sudden, solitary idea, the report would certainly not have been approved immediately. The matter had been tacitly agreed upon by the upper echelons before Beria, as the person in charge, proposed the execution plan.

Now that Beria had raised the issue of POW camps for 3.7 million Finns, based on Stalin's understanding of him, he believed Beria did not want to carry out a large-scale execution of the entire Finnish population. Stalin himself had no intention of massacring the entire citizenry of Finland.

However, if the situation truly turned into what Beria predicted, Stalin would not have many choices. Although it wouldn't go as far as executing all 3.7 million Finns, executing several hundred thousand would be inevitable. And the remaining Finns would have to be sent to Siberia.

Stalin was not above doing such things; after suppressing numerous local rebel forces in the Caucasus region, he had forcibly migrated the remaining local populations to Central Asia or Siberia.

Lighting his pipe, Stalin fell into deep thought. The current world situation was extremely tense. Because of the Soviet Union's cleverly neutral stance, the Euro-American bloc had changed their policy of superficial hostility towards the Soviet Union and begun trying to pull the Soviet Union into the Allied camp. This gave the Soviet Union a transcendent status.

The Allied Powers did not use the traditional method of first giving large benefits; they merely made various all-encompassing promises. But these promises would only be honored *after* the Soviet Union joined the Allies. This made Stalin very dissatisfied with the Allies.

From a certain perspective, this military operation to liberate Finland could serve to test the Allies' attitude towards the Soviet Union. If the Allies ultimately accepted the Soviet Union's liberation of all of Finland and its transformation into a Soviet Socialist Republic, it would prove that the Allies were merely posturing before the Soviet Union and, in fact, dared not do anything to it. The Soviet Union could then consider executing plans to liberate Eastern and even Central Europe... But what if the Allies went to war with the Soviet Union over Finland?

Stalin had originally been displeased with Beria's opposition to liberating Finland, but after strategic consideration, he now felt Beria's view was very prudent. If the Allies were at a disadvantage in their war with China, it would mean the Soviet Union gained freedom of action. At that time, Finland would no longer be important; what was undoubtedly more valuable to the Soviet Union was Eastern and Central Europe. Moreover, once the Allies were defeated, Finland would be destined to return to the Soviet embrace; the current Soviet Union had no need to be so hasty.

Having clarified the strategic order, Stalin finally asked Beria, "What is the current status of the suppression of the left wing in European countries?"

Beria immediately answered this actually very serious question. Among European communist parties, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) had once been the largest. Now, KPD members in Germany basically only existed in prisons and concentration camps. A large number of KPD members had fled to the Soviet Union, some to other parts of Europe, and a small number to China. In the European countries that had become fascist, the communist parties had all suffered brutal crackdowns, and the fate of their members was much the same as that of the KPD.

Because the Asian Alliance had raised the banner of "Overthrowing the Four Big Mountains," although the left wing in Euro-American countries consisted of communists, their attitude towards opposing the Four Big Mountains was relatively close to China's. After the establishment of the Allied coalition against China in Europe, the left wing in various countries suffered comprehensive blows, with large numbers of leftists arrested and imprisoned. The Euro-American public with leftist sympathies was silent as a cicada in winter, daring not express such views anymore.

Listening to Beria's introduction, Comrade Kirov's expression grew grave. When Beria finished speaking, Kirov frowned slightly, pondering something.

"Comrade Kirov, how do you view this matter?" Stalin was somewhat concerned about Kirov's attitude.

Kirov hurriedly replied, "General Secretary, China has already begun establishing the World People's Liberation Army. I am wondering, did He Rui anticipate the reaction of the Euro-American countries?"

Stalin strongly agreed with Kirov's perspective, because he had also noticed this. The reason Europe and America were powerful in the past was that the left wing, advocating for the maintenance of social fairness and justice, had played a significant role. Now, the Euro-American crackdown on the left had created a huge divide within their societies. This was weakening the power of Euro-American nations.

However, Stalin mocked, "The so-called left wing—historically, the speed at which they turn right has always been very fast." This was not Stalin staining anyone's innocence; he was merely stating a fact.

After the failure of the Paris Commune revolution, the Second Industrial Revolution occurred, and the capitalist economy developed rapidly. With the upsurge of the international workers' movement, the widespread dissemination of Marxism, and the establishment of workers' parties in various countries, the desire of the working class worldwide to strengthen international contact and unity became increasingly urgent. Under these circumstances, Marxists convened an International Workers' Congress in Paris on July 14, 1889. They passed the draft "International Labor Legislation" and the resolution on "Celebrating May Day." This meeting is generally recognized as the founding congress of the Second International.

As the international situation became more tense, a world war seemed imminent. In November 1912, the Second International held an extraordinary congress in Basel, Switzerland, specifically to discuss the issue of opposing the threat of war. It unanimously passed a manifesto titled "The International Situation and Unified Action Against War," severely condemning the military expansion and war preparations of imperialist countries like Germany, Britain, France, and Russia, and calling on the people of all countries to use all means to oppose imperialist war.

After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, most Social Democratic parties in the Second International, under the control of rightists and centrists, betrayed the cause of proletarian revolution. They stood on the side of their own bourgeois governments, supporting the imperialist war, causing the Second International to split into social-chauvinist parties slaughtering each other. The Second International had gone bankrupt.

Kirov and Beria both expressed agreement with Stalin's view. Although Beria agreed verbally, inwardly he felt the situation had changed. World War I was a dog-eat-dog war between imperialists; comparing it to China's Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, it was indeed a case of "no righteous wars in the Spring and Autumn."

But the current situation was different. Besides the emergence of the Soviet Union, a powerful communist country, there was now also China, a powerful leftist socialist country. Therefore, a large number of leftists who refused to fight an imperialist war again either fled to the Soviet Union or to China. Or they remained in their own countries, providing intelligence to the Soviet Union, hoping the Soviet Union could end the imperialist war. This gave Soviet intelligence agencies overseas intelligence sources they had never dared to imagine before.

Comparing the huge intelligence gains the Soviet Union had obtained, Beria believed China must have also obtained a great many Euro-American intelligence sources. China could completely use this intelligence to increase its odds of winning the war.

With the conversation reaching this point, Stalin ended the meeting. He had now resolved an inner confusion regarding Soviet strategy; even if he wasn't fully enlightened, at least it was no longer vague. After sending off Kirov and Beria, Stalin once again considered the Soviet Union's world strategy. He discovered that the reason the Soviet world strategy had major problems was very likely that the Soviet Union subconsciously believed Europe was the center of the world. Given the Soviet Union's strength, wanting to liberate the entire European continent and become the dominant power on the continent was not a goal the current Soviet Union could easily determine.

In reality, with the rise of the United States, the Soviet Union had to acknowledge that the trans-Atlantic economic circle was the center of the world. The Soviet Union's strength was fundamentally insufficient to become the leader of the circum-North Atlantic economic circle.

Given these realities, the Soviet Union certainly could not formulate a world order led by the Soviet Union. Yet the Soviet Union was a top-tier Great Power, and it could not admit to being merely a regional power. In many discussions, due to an inability to seek truth from facts, they inevitably fell into the old rut of thinking "dominating Europe means dominating the world." Furthermore, the Soviet Union currently had an unforeseen circumstance: the image bonus of being the beacon of communism.

The people of this world all hoped for liberation and true democracy. No matter how imperialist and colonialist forces struck at left-wing forces, left-wing thought existed in everyone's heart. The Soviet Union became the carrier for these thoughts. Thus, the Soviet Union unexpectedly became the world center on an ideological level. This actually satisfied the Soviet Union's feeling of being the world center, making it feel that to some extent, it *had* become the center of the world.

The United States and China were not European countries to begin with; both countries had broken free from the shackles of regional-centrism from the start. Instead, they could consider things from a global perspective, making it easier to formulate reliable ideas for a world order.

Thinking of this, Stalin's train of thought had no more restrictions. Having recognized this, Stalin felt a bit sour in his heart, because he really wasn't satisfied with the Soviet Union being just a regional power, or ending up with European hegemony. The cold reality made Stalin feel a sense of powerlessness. Stalin hated this feeling of powerlessness!

Looking at the world on the map, which was far vaster than the Soviet Union, Stalin pondered what a Soviet-led world order should actually look like.

***

It was not only the Soviet Union that saw "On the Future of the World"; the leadership of industrial nations worldwide soon saw this article. British Prime Minister Churchill's mood became terrible after reading "On the Future of the World." Churchill's obese body was sunken into his chair, the smell of cigars permeating the Prime Minister's office.

Churchill understood world order, so he knew very well that He Rui's article was not an exaggeration. Although He Rui did not state it explicitly, strategically speaking, China was digging out the foundations of the British Empire. India, with its population of over 400 million, was a huge market for Britain, providing a vast number of jobs and massive tax revenue for the British population of over 40 million. The 400 million people of India were also an inexhaustible source of soldiers for Britain.

When Britain suppressed other colonies, it used Indian troops extensively. Since the combat effectiveness of local colonial rebels was insufficient, Indian troops were enough to deal with them. Therefore, the job of the British Army was to fight battles requiring the highest technical content, crushing organized colonial rebels and winning great victories one after another. Meanwhile, the Indian colonial troops bore the losses of "security operations," which actually incurred high casualties.

Now, China did not seem to be conquering India like a whirlwind, but in the Bengal region, the Sikh regions, the northern Muslim regions, the southern Tamil regions, and the eastern Deccan Plateau region—areas with traditions of historical independent states—a large number of governments declaring independence had appeared one after another.

What alerted Churchill most was the independence of the Deccan Plateau region. This was originally the territory of the Kakatiya Dynasty. The region was populated by descendants of ancient Indians, founded by a group of peasant warriors from the "non-reincarnating" Sudra caste (in the Vedic age, Sudras were the lowest of the four major castes, with no religious privileges and no right to soul reincarnation). Moreover, these people not only proudly "boasted" of their Sudra identity but also strove to build a new type of Indian local kingdom with social mobility and vitality.

In Churchill's view, the independence of the Andhra region on the Indian Deccan Plateau posed the greatest shock to India. Because once the "untouchables" sought independence, for Hinduism, it was a true class struggle. Class struggle would undoubtedly intensify the turmoil within India, leading to the complete fragmentation of the Indian region.

No matter how the British government propagandized that China was establishing a Chinese world colonial system, Churchill was basically certain that China truly did not want to expand its colonies and was dedicated to liberating global colonies. And what Britain needed now was to gather greater strength to maintain its status.

After China fragmented India, even if China left India and let Britain kill its way back in, for Britain to reunify India, it would need to consume enormous resources and endure terrible losses. The British World Empire had already been destroyed in the present.

Thinking of this, Churchill burned with anxiety. Yet there was nothing he could do.