Chapter 353
After getting rid of Academician Ioffe's entanglement, Yuri hurried upstairs and rushed to Comrade Stalin's office. Compared with the time notified before, he was nearly five minutes late.
When Yuri walked into Stalin's office, the spacious room was already shrouded in smoke. Light blue smoke floated above the baseline nearly three meters above the office, but the air was filled with a pungent smell of smoke.
There were quite a lot of people present today. Comrade Stalin was sitting behind his desk, flipping through a document with a black hardcover. Opposite his office, there were about thirty or forty people sitting.
A quick look showed that among those present, in addition to the members of the Presidium of the Central Committee, there were also the top leaders from various departments of the People's Committee. Of course, there were also some people Yuri didn't know at all.
When Yuri walked in, a middle-aged man who looked a little thin was saying something. He was sitting close to the window, almost in the corner of the office. The sound of Yuri pushing the door open obviously affected him. He paused for a moment, and then turned his head to look at the door. When he saw Yuri, he hurriedly turned sideways and nodded from a distance.
The middle-aged man's pause also affected other people in the office. Even Comrade Stalin raised his head and looked towards the door, with obvious dissatisfaction on his face.
Yuri avoided Stalin's gaze by taking off his military cap. He closed the door of his office, turned around, walked to a chair not far from the door and sat down. He did not move to the front row, even though there was a seat specially arranged for him.
Comrade Stalin was a punctual person, and he had the same requirements for others. He hated being late for meetings, but Yuri was not afraid of the leader getting angry today, after all, he had legitimate reasons. One was to inspect the construction site of the Palace of Soviets, and the other was that he was delayed by Academician Ioffe.
However, Comrade Stalin obviously did not intend to reprimand him in public. Seeing Yuri sitting down at the door, he quickly lowered his head to look at the document in his hand, and the middle-aged man near the window began to continue his speech.
Yuri sat in his seat and after listening for a while, he guessed the identity of the middle-aged man.
The issue involved in the middle-aged man's speech was about the frequent crossing of the border between China and the Soviet Union in the Altai Krai by Uyghurs into the Soviet Union. According to the middle-aged man, this situation has been becoming more and more serious in the past few months, from the initial dozens of people per week to the current hundreds or thousands of people per week.
China's civil war has been going on for nearly a year. The Nationalist government, which once seemed to have absolute advantage, is retreating on all fronts. Although they still have an absolute advantage in military strength, anyone with a discerning eye can still see that perhaps the Nationalist government's failure is already doomed.
It was also in this situation that, in order to avoid war, this large-scale smuggling phenomenon appeared not only in Xinjiang, but also on the Mongolian border.
The middle-aged man should be Belyaev, Nikolay Ilyich Belyaev, the first , a cadre with strong working ability but poor physical health.
Yuri didn't pay much attention to the issues that Belyaev talked about. After all, they had nothing to do with him.
In fact, Yuri felt a little curious, because according to the previous notice, today's meeting should be dedicated to discussing nuclear weapons research issues, and the purpose of the meeting should be to form a coordinated cooperation mechanism among various ministries and commissions to promote the progress of nuclear weapons research and development projects. But based on the current situation, the topic of the meeting seems to have gone off track.
Belyaev first raised some issues concerning the border crossing of residents in China's Xinjiang province, and then changed the topic to the issue of posthumous recognition of martyrs in the Great Patriotic War.
With the first anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War, many issues have begun to be brought to the table. Among them, the issue of treatment of soldiers who died from non-war factors has been a hot topic in recent times.
There will definitely be casualties in war, this is inevitable, but there is one very prominent problem, that is, people who die in war do not necessarily die directly on the battlefield. Many people also die outside the battlefield, for example, from illness during the war, from various accidents, and so on.
If a soldier dies on the battlefield, whether from wounds or directly from enemy gunfire, there is no controversy and he will be defined as a martyr. However, some soldiers die of diseases, such as malaria, epidemics, starvation, etc. For example, during the Battle of Leningrad, many soldiers and civilians died of starvation. Should these people be posthumously recognized as martyrs?
In addition, there were people who died in swamps and forests due to troop transfers during the war. Are they considered martyrs?
Another issue is whether the soldiers who died in various accidents, such as soldiers who died while testing new weapons, or pilots who died in plane crashes, should be confirmed as martyrs.
To be honest, Yuri's political sense is not particularly sensitive. To some extent, he is even a little slow to realize it. But even so, when Belyaev's speech was nearing the end, he still noticed something unusual, because in his opinion, the first secretary from the Altai Krai had obviously wasted too much time on the issue of the crashed pilot and had given too many related descriptions.
According to Belyaev, during the entire Great Patriotic War, as many as 471 pilots were killed in the Altai Krai, of which more than 200 pilots died due to aircraft malfunctions. The number of pilots who actually died in the air battles against Germany was less than 170.
During Belyaev's report, Yuri's vigilance gradually increased. This... could be attributed to intuition. He felt that Belyaev's speech had a malicious meaning because the data he provided was too specific and detailed, and was very targeted.
It must be admitted that the Soviet Union did lose a lot of pilots during the Great Patriotic War. In the initial border battles, as a large number of forward airfields were destroyed, not only were there a large number of aircraft lost, but also a large number of pilots. In the subsequent battles, affected by the performance of their own aircraft and combat methods, the loss of pilots was even more astonishing. However, in the past few years, no matter which department, it has never counted the number of pilots lost due to aircraft failures.
Belyaev now mentioned this issue very vaguely, and at the same time provided detailed data. During the entire Great Patriotic War, a total of 144 pilots sent by the Altai Krai Pilot Club died of non-combat factors.
Yuri didn't know where Belyaev got this data from, and he didn't say how to explain the so-called "death from non-combat factors", whether it was death from illness or aircraft failure, because the other party's speech did not further explain in detail. But from what he said, it was obvious that he was consciously guiding everyone in the meeting to think in this direction.
Yuri is no longer a novice in politics, and his way of thinking has changed to some extent. Therefore, he can guess that Belyaev's remarks are targeted.
While lighting a cigarette, Yuri straightened up a little and looked towards the front row. He first glanced at where Comrade Stalin was, but unfortunately, Comrade Stalin, who was sitting behind his desk, still frowned, holding his pipe in his mouth, with a serious expression, but did not make any further comments.
Yuri looked around the front rows, trying to find Comrade Malenkov, but to no avail. Comrade Malenkov was not present at today's meeting.
His eyes swept around the meeting room again, and just when Yuri was thinking about taking a closer look, Comrade Stalin, who was sitting behind the desk, suddenly raised his head, as if he had noticed something, and cast two sharp glances straight towards Yuri's position.
Quickly turning his eyes away to avoid meeting Stalin's gaze, Yuri pretended to be calm as he took a puff of his cigarette. Then he lowered his head and looked at the notebook spread out on his lap.
At this time, Yuri already had a premonition that today's meeting might not be that simple. If nothing unexpected happened, Comrade Malenkov might be in trouble.
Just after Belyaev finished his speech, the office door was gently pushed open, and a burly man in an Internal Affairs Ministry uniform walked in. He had a square face and small eyes, giving people a mean feeling.
Yuri knew this man. He was the captain of Beria's guard. His name seemed to be Sarkisov. He was not sure of his full name, after all, he had never dealt with him.
Sarkisov was holding a thick stack of documents in his hands. He walked through the left side of the meeting room and went straight to the front row. He bent down and whispered a few words to Beria who was sitting there, and then he handed the documents to Comrade Stalin's desk.
Yuri didn't pay attention to what was happening in front of him; he was still thinking about Malenkov.
During the Great Patriotic War, Malenkov was a member of the Defense Committee and was responsible for the production of military supplies, the most important of which was the manufacture of tanks and aircraft. The Ministry of Aviation Industry, which was then under the People's Committee, was under his direct leadership.
If Comrade Stalin wanted to investigate issues such as the plane accident, Malenkov, the direct person in charge, would not be able to escape - Comrade Stalin was very good at using this method: first focus on one aspect of the problem, then discuss and criticize, expand the problem, and finally when the net is closed, no one involved will be able to escape.
