Andrei Gorchenko
From Ipon
The son of a Farmer, Andrei Lanskya Gorchenko was at the time one of Josef Stalin's top advisors. Stalin personally chose him to be a Candidate for the Sakhaliyan Governing seat, if elected he was to turn Sakhaliya into a Soviet style Republic keeping close ties with the USSR. On the announcement of Stalin's death on March 5, 1953 things started to change, but 1960-1970 Gorchenko was struggled to stablize the country, every coming year looked up economically with the production of goods getting stronger, but come the winter the production would drop to depressing levels as snow storms could leave many place in Sakhaliya isolated and entire Industial districts without power. Food was scarce and those who were'nt starving to death were freezing to death. In 1962 Gorchenko managed to appeal to the US for funds to construct new Power stations, they loaned him $400 million but it wasn't near enough to repair the economic damage Khrushchev had caused. Sakhaliya was now in debt to the US and this made Communists all over the world view Khrushchev with a degree of malice, although no-one more than Mao Zedong who vowed to help Sakhaliya by whatever means possible, he told Gorchenko "Socialists are to each other what the heart is to the brain. Without partnership the body [Communism] cannot function."
For the next decade Gorchenko continued to keep ties with China strong, in 1968 Mao personally offered him a holiday home near the City of Dalian for his 20th year as Premier of the Sakhaliyan Peoples. Gorchenko reluctantly declined, however, he asked Mao that he hoped this would not affect their friendship, Mao replied "My friend, the Tiger does not hate his fellow Tiger for refusing offered Meat. He embraces the fact that there is more for himself and it only strengthens the fellowship!". Needless to say, Gorchenko admired Mao's wisdom, he soon became an aficionado of Mao's teachings and writing, he read the 'Little Red Book' as if it were a Bible. Gorchenko found a friendship in Mao that he could have never found in Stalin, but it became more and more apparent that with Mao's deteriorating health and his own age [64] the friendship would not last forever.
