Less than a week after Liu Shanmin left, he called Li Long.
Since it was an international call, the sound was a little distorted, but Li Long could tell that Liu Shanmin was in a fairly good mood.
So Li Long asked, "Did you sort things out over there?"
"Sorted out, all sorted out. It was very simple," Liu Shanmin said with a laugh. "I brought back all those supplies and a few men, then found the people who were loyal to me. Once word got out, before I even made a move, someone tied up the ones with other ideas and delivered them straight to me."
He made it sound simple, as though the whole thing had gone quite smoothly. But Liu Shanmin went on to explain that he had been able to resolve it so easily for two main reasons.
One was that there really was a group of people in Kazakhstan loyal to Liu Shanmin. Otherwise, if everyone had turned against him, he would have struggled to gain a foothold even after returning.
The other, and the main reason, was that he had brought back a large quantity of supplies.
Kazakhstan was actually in a semi-independent state now. Many other Union Republics had already declared their effective separation from the Soviet Union. The Kazakh Union Republic was the last to declare its departure.
But life in the country was difficult at this point. Within the Soviet system, the Kazakh Union Republic had ranked as the third-largest economy, behind only Russia and Ukraine.
However, its economy was based mainly on industry and mineral resources, with relatively weak light industry. Between 40 and 70 percent of its daily necessities had to be imported.
Those imports had originally come mainly from the other Union Republics, allocated by the Soviet Union