Chayanov in Pyongyang

This is just really interesting. 

historical-nonfiction:

This map is a really a picture in macro-scale of the epic tank battle for the plains of Germany, that entire generations of Western and Soviet officers built careers around planning and preparing for. In the history of human civilization, the Soviet Western TVD invasion was probably the most researched, contemplated, and gamed out battle that was never actually to take place. Fifty years of strategic studies were compiled by both sides on this very subject, probably reaching into encyclopedic scales, as both sides searched for advantages in a truly enormous field chess game.

In 1987 there were 30 forward deployed Soviet divisions in Eastern Europe to spearhead this assault, with a further 94 in Western Russia to rapidly reinforce it. Such was the fear of this imagined future battle that in the West, the mere act of reinforcing the spearhead was considered to be an overt prelude to war. Many unnerving international crises were generated by both illusions and realities of this feared reinforcement.