I loved the chapter. I think the quotes are especially perfect of an introduction this time. Hence my comment.
Your practice of quotes inspired me to add something similar in my TL and it's quite good, how you've utilized them to set the tone. So like I usually think something along the line of...
why doesn't communist North China merge into the USSR? Demographically it can't be as unbalanced and at most it should be about 35-40% of the USSR population...