My brothers keeper, an OC/SI as the twin of Stalin

[Alenco98]

November 25, 1907
Tbilisi, Russian Empire

Dawn had barely broken over the rust-colored rooftops of Tbilisi, the early winter sun casting a faint golden sheen over the frosted windows. The city was waking slowly, as if reluctant to face the day. Inside our cramped little flat, the air was heavy with grief—and the smell of Khachapuri that Aleksandra had baked just a few hours before, as if food could somehow plug the gaping hole left behind by death.

I laid out a plate and slid it gently across the table to my brother, whose eyes were locked onto nothing in particular, red-rimmed and sunken like he'd spent the night fighting ghosts. Which, to be fair, he had.

"Joe," I said softly, nudging the plate closer. "Come on, man. You've got to eat. I can't let you grieve yourself to death. You're already halfway there."

He didn't answer. Just blinked slowly, like my voice had to swim through molasses to reach him. His jaw clenched, eyes glistening with that miserable mix of rage and sorrow, and then—nothing. He just kept staring at the floor. Occasionally he'd let out a sharp sob, sudden and violent, like his heart was cracking open in real time.

I didn't blame him. Kato—his wife, his compass—was gone. Just like that. Typhoid, the bastard. Quick, cruel, unceremonious. She'd been the only thing anchoring Joseph to this world. And now she was gone, and I was afraid he might be next.

Allow me to introduce myself, before this gets any more depressing. I'm Mikheil Jughashvili—though you can call me comrade Makarov. Yes, that Makarov. No, not the one with the psychotic monologues and evil plans—though I do appreciate the comparison. I'm Joseph's younger twin, technically by nine minutes, but I like to think those nine minutes were spent soaking up all the charm and good skin. I never caught smallpox, unlike Joe. My face is still intact. He has... character.

We're both part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, although our methods differ. Joseph—he prefers the flashy, revolutionary stuff. Robbing banks in broad daylight, shooting Tsarist cops, threatening aristocrats. He likes to think he's the hero in some Georgian remake of Grand Theft Auto IV. I, on the other hand, prefer staying in the shadows—organizing meetings, handling money, securing supplies, you know, the logistics. The stuff that keeps a revolution running while the heroes pose with their revolvers and give angry speeches in dingy taverns.

Before all this, I lived a boring, beautiful life. Nine to five at an office, a modest house with the extended family, saved enough to fill up my Roth IRA and 401k every year then vacation in Paris and Vienna twice a year. I had dental hygiene, health insurance, disposable income, and the delicious luxury of not being on any watchlists.

Then fate, in all its absurd cruelty, happened. I fell off a roof. No, really. I was helping my stepfather fix a leak, slipped while carrying his damn toolbox, and the next thing I knew I woke up in a tiny Georgian house, screaming like a banshee from the 21st century in the body of a newborn.

Readjusting was… an experience. Language wasn't too hard. I was still me in here, so I picked up Russian and Georgian fast. Claimed I learned English, French, and Spanish in seminary—teachers thought I was a linguistic prodigy, and Joe believed I was touched by God. Or Marx. Hard to say which he thought higher of.

The priesthood wasn't for me though. Not in this world, not with this future. I paid enough attention in history class to know what was coming—the revolution, the gulags, the famine, the purges. Who needs a collar and cassock when you can have a pistol and a party membership card? So I followed my brother into the fire.

And now here we were. The fire had taken from us.

Joseph sat motionless at the table, a wreck of a man in a world that didn't care. I'd taken his revolver last night—he'd barely noticed. The idea of him turning it on himself was more terrifying than anything the Okhrana could throw at us.

"She wouldn't want you to be hungry," I said softly, tearing off a piece of the warm Khachapuri and dipping it in the gooey cheese, handing it to him like you'd feed a sick child. "Come on, Joe."

He finally moved, took the piece, and chewed it slowly, deliberately. He didn't even scowl at the name "Joe," which was usually enough to trigger a ten-minute rant about nicknames. His silence was... worse than anger.

Aleksandra, Kato's sister, moved quietly around the kitchen, preparing more food, avoiding eye contact. She looked so much like Kato it hurt. Same eyes, same cheekbones, same quiet dignity. I'd loved Kato too, I still did. But Joseph met her first, fell for her first, and I stepped aside. That's what brothers do. You don't compete. You carry the weight.

"When does the funeral start?" I asked Aleksandra, my voice lower than usual.

"Soon," she said quietly.

And then—crying. High-pitched, panicked. Yakov.

"I'll get him," I said quickly, already heading toward the room.

I found the boy lying on his tiny mat, wailing. He had her eyes. That warm hazel that always made Joseph soften, even when he was fuming about tsarist oppression. He had Joe's hair though, thick and dark like soot. I scooped him up, holding him close, whispering nonsense. "Hey there, little comrade. Easy now. Let's go see Papa."

When I came back into the kitchen, Joseph was still chewing that same piece of bread like it was his last meal. He looked up—briefly—at Yakov in my arms, then down again.

Aleksandra didn't say a word. She just kept folding napkins with a trembling hand.

"You know," I said, adjusting Yakov on my hip, "he's going to need a home. A real one. Not some back alley safehouse full of bullets and explosives. You can't carry him in your satchel while you're out shooting cops."

Joseph finally looked at me, really looked. I saw the fear in his eyes—the fear of not being enough. Not being strong. Not being her.

"I can do it," I said. "I'll raise him. I'll have to step back from the party, of course, at least for a while. But he needs more than his mother's family. He needs a father figure. A stable one."

"You can't just leave the party," Joseph rasped, voice cracking. "Leave him here. Come with me. He'll be safe."

I shook my head. "I'm not leaving. I'm pausing. Besides, he needs to know his father and uncle didn't abandon him. That he has a home, not just a safehouse. I'll bring him to see Keke every week. I'll teach him to walk, to speak, to read. You—you go change the world. But let me give him a chance to have a normal childhood."

Joseph looked away again, lips trembling, jaw clenched.

"I'll make sure he remembers her," I added gently. "Every single day."

Outside, the funeral bells began to toll, low and solemn.

The revolution could wait a little while. Today, we were just a family—broken, grieving, but still holding on.

November 25, 1907 (Later That Day)
Kukia Cemetery, Tbilisi

The winter wind cut like a blade as we gathered at the cemetery after the funeral. The Georgian hills brooded in the distance, grey and silent, as if mourning her too. The priest murmured his prayers, but the words felt hollow, drifting into the cold air like smoke. Kato's casket—simple, pine, too small for someone who meant so much—rested on the edge of the grave like the last word in a sentence no one wanted to read.

Joseph stood beside me, a statue chiseled from pain and fury. His fists were clenched, his knuckles white. He'd been quiet after the funeral.

The mourners stood in a loose cluster: friends, distant family, comrades. A few men in plain coats hung back, too clean-shaven, too quiet—Okhrana, no doubt. Even grief couldn't loosen the Empire's paranoia.

Then came the burial.

The ropes creaked as the casket was lowered into the earth. The thud of dirt hitting wood echoed like a war drum in my chest.

And then Joseph snapped.

He let out a guttural cry, something between a sob and a roar, and before anyone could stop him, he hurled himself into the grave—into the grave. Dirt flew, mourners gasped, someone screamed. He clung to the coffin like he could dig her back up with his bare hands, like if he just held on hard enough, she wouldn't leave.

"Kato! Kato, don't go—"

I leapt forward and climbed down after him, slipping in the mud. I grabbed him under the arms, tried to pull him back. He fought me. Hard. He was a strong man, fueled by madness and grief, and for a terrifying moment, I thought he'd stay there. Die there.

But I whispered to him. Not commands. Not philosophy. Just his name.

"Joe… Joe… she's gone. She's gone. Come back man."

He collapsed in my arms, shaking, sobbing like the revolution never existed. I hauled him out with the help of two comrades and we fell to our knees in the slush beside the grave.

But the Okhrana weren't grieving.

I saw them shift, whisper. One of them reached into his coat. My blood ran cold.

"You have to go," I whispered to Joseph. "Now. They're here."

His eyes met mine. Still wet, still haunted, but focused now. "You'll take care of him?"

"I swear on her grave."

We stood, muddy and ruined, and hugged like brothers at the end of the world.

"Stay safe," I murmured. "And don't do anything too stupid."

He gave me the faintest smile—the ghost of his old smirk. "No promises."

And just like that, he slipped into the crowd and disappeared. Gone before the final prayers had even finished.

I left minutes later. Not as dramatic, not as poetic. Just a slow backstep, a nod to Aleksandra, and then I was gone too. Just in case. The Okhrana didn't need a second twin in their files.

November 29, 1907
Tbilisi, Russian Empire

The flat was small, drafty, and smelled faintly of vodka and onions. But it was safe.

Aleksandra let me in with a tired nod. She hadn't cried once since the funeral, but her eyes were swollen, and her voice was barely a whisper when she said, "He cried again this morning. Yakov."

I stepped inside, took off my coat, and knelt by the cradle. The boy blinked up at me, wide-eyed, a little confused, a little scared. He reached out, and I took his tiny hand in mine.

"It's just us now, buddy," I said softly. "Your papa's off changing the world. But I'll be here. I'll keep you fed, teach you to walk, teach you to curse in several languages. And maybe someday, I'll tell you how beautiful your mother was. How your father nearly buried himself alive for her. How love, even in a place like this, can still break the hardest hearts."

I looked up at Aleksandra.

"I'm done with party work. For now. I'll stay. For him."

She only nodded. No argument. No platitudes. Just quiet understanding. When I looked at her I saw Kato again. I smiled a little, "I'll fix up a meal, Khachapuri?"

She nodded, smiling a little

March 17, 1917
Petrograd, Russian Empire

The morning light spilled reluctantly through the grimy windows of our modest little apartment. I peeled back the curtain slowly, cautiously—like I expected to see Death himself loitering out on the street corner, waiting for his next appointment. But no, just people. Civilians. Some armed, some staggering home from what was either a riot or an all-night revolutionary bender, it was hard to tell anymore. I squinted. No gunfire. No soldiers. No screaming.

"Well," I muttered, letting the curtain fall back into place, "looks like everything's clear. At least for now."

Behind me, Aleksandra—Sashiko, if you asked anyone who'd known her longer than me—was sitting on the threadbare sofa, nursing our youngest, Besarion. He was barely two months old, a chubby little miracle who had no clue the world was ending outside.

I turned and looked at her. She was tired—no, exhausted. But she still had that calm nobility about her, even with a baby at her breast and a revolution outside the window.

The door creaked open. My mother, Keke, stepped out of the second bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"Is everything alright out there?" she asked, voice hushed like we were in a church or a war zone. Frankly, both felt accurate.

I nodded. "Seems like the fighting's stopped. The streets are quiet. For now." I paused. "How are the kids?"

"Still asleep," she said softly. "Yakov, Kato, Joseph, Alyosha… all out cold."

"Good," I said. "If they wake up, tell them I'll be back soon. I need to go check the situation. And send a letter."

I crossed the living room and shoved one of the ratty little couches aside, revealing the false floorboard beneath. I pried it open, revealing the treasure trove below—boxes of gold coins, contraband ammunition, dried food, and more ammo (you can never have too much ammo, especially when you're an ex-cop in revolutionary Russia).

I pulled out a pistol and a couple of bullets, loaded them with practiced ease, and sealed the floor again, nudging the couch back into place. Aleksandra didn't say anything, but I felt her eyes on me. The same look every time I strapped on a gun—equal parts fear and disappointment, the kind of look that said "I married a lunatic, didn't I?"

Yes. Yes, she did.

In my defense, I used to be a police officer. Emphasis on used to. Once the soldiers started mutinying and the Tsar's grip on the empire began to slip like a drunk man on ice, I figured the badge wouldn't mean much longer. And sure enough, here we were. The revolution had arrived, right on cue.

Maybe I should rewind a bit.

After Joseph—Joe—left us, broken and blazing with grief, I knew I couldn't just stay in Tbilisi forever. I had a family now, yes, but I also had… information. Foreknowledge. A cheat code. I knew the revolution would kick off in 1917, here, in Saint Petersburg—Petrograd now, technically, but let's not pretend the Empire's name changes mattered much to people dodging bullets.

So I reinvented myself. No more Mikheil Jughashvili. Too conspicuous. Too tied to Joe. Instead, I became Mikheil Vissarionovich Zhakhaev. Sounded proper. Authoritative. Slightly Eastern European Bond villain, with a sprinkle of Call of Duty for flavor.

I married Aleksandra, because grief has a way of turning strangers into soulmates. We were two broken people trying to fix each other with love and shared childcare. It worked surprisingly well.

We moved to Petrograd. I became a cop.

On paper, I was immaculate. Never late, always present, never corrupt—officially. Unofficially? I was corrupt as hell. Ran guns, stashed supplies, made quiet deals with smugglers, gave heads-up on raids in exchange for gold and favors. I was building an arsenal under my floorboards and a fortune under my mattress.

The plan was simple: join the Party, rise through the ranks, keep my nose clean publicly, and privately become the black market's silent king. Then, once the purges started under Stalin, I'd take my family and my fortune and disappear somewhere warm—maybe Argentina. You know, the usual post-revolution dream.

But there was a catch.

A big one.

Stalin… was Joe.

That little bastard. My twin brother. I didn't even realize it until a few years ago. I'd always thought "Stalin" was just some Russian asshole that popped out of the party apparatus. I didn't know it was Joe, thank you American schooling for not being in depth about Joe. I'd kept up with the party despite being inactive. I read their underground newspapers. Recognized the cadence in his letters when he replied under the name "Stalin."

Joe. My brother. The one who threw himself into his wife's grave a decade ago. The one I pulled out of the dirt.

And now he was poised to rule Russia with an iron fist.

Which, naturally, completely fucked my plan.

I couldn't just defect. He'd find me and my family. He knew me. I was too recognizable. Too dangerous. Too embarrassing. The twin brother of Stalin, living lavishly abroad while his brother ran Russia with an iron fist? That was execution-worthy in any ideology.

So I improvised.

If I wanted to survive, I had to gather leverage. Emotional blackmail, familial guilt, sentimental ties—whatever I could weaponize. I had to be the one person in the world Joe couldn't bring himself to destroy.

I went to the bedroom, opened the drawer beside the bed, and pulled out a letter I'd written two days ago, as soon as I saw the army turning against the Tsar. The writing was simple, the message clear: "I know who you are. And I'm still your brother."

I folded it carefully, slid it into an envelope, and tucked it into my coat pocket.

Back in the living room, I paused for a moment. Aleksandra looked up at me, Besarion snoozing peacefully in her arms. My mother stood quietly nearby, her face taut with worry.

I kissed Aleksandra gently. Then kissed the baby's forehead. Then hugged my mother.

"I'll be back," I said. "Don't open the door for anyone unless you're absolutely sure it's me. If I don't come back… reach out to Joseph. He'll come eventually."

She nodded, jaw tight. No tears. She was stronger than I ever gave her credit for.

I opened the door. Took one last look at my family. And stepped out into the cold, collapsing empire.

The snow was still falling—lazy, wet flakes drifting down like the sky hadn't yet gotten the memo that it was March and time to stop acting like it was January. I pulled my coat tighter around me, teeth chattering slightly. The Petrograd chill always found its way into your bones, like a petty bureaucrat determined to ruin your day.

I stepped carefully through the narrow alley behind our apartment and began making my way toward the city center. Not the main roads—those were crawling with too many people, too many eyes, and far too many bored soldiers with itchy trigger fingers and no idea who was officially in charge. Some of them were so drunk they'd probably arrest their own boots.

I avoided the Winter Palace entirely. That place had become a hornet's nest of revolutionary chaos and frightened officers clinging to whatever shred of imperial illusion they still had left. The last thing I needed was to be stopped, questioned, and "accidentally" shot for looking suspicious—something my face tended to do on its own even when I was completely innocent, which, to be fair, I rarely was.

Eventually, after winding through side streets and half-frozen canals, I arrived at my destination: the Tauride Palace.

It looked almost surreal now, majestic yet bruised, like a weary aristocrat forced to room with striking dockworkers. A decade ago, it had been a glittering seat of nobility. Now it was the beating heart of revolution—or at least one of them. The Petrograd Soviet had taken up residence here, for now at least. Revolutionary real estate tended to be temporary, like revolutionary leadership.

The irony wasn't lost on me. As a police officer, most of my time had been spent "assisting" the Okhrana in keeping tabs on the very people now running the show inside that building. By "assisting," I mean helping sabotage the investigations just enough to let me run guns and make shady deals in peace. Now, I was the ex-cop—still carrying a gun, still carrying secrets—walking into the headquarters of the Petrograd Soviet like I belonged there.

Stupid? Arguably. Bold? Absolutely. But technically, I was still a party member. Inactive, sure. Slightly criminal, certainly. But I had the paperwork. Somewhere. Maybe.

I approached the front gates, where a small group of armed guards were gathered. They all had that hardened, unshaven, sleep-deprived look of men who'd been up all night keeping an eye on people who were keeping an eye on them.

One of them stepped forward to block me. He looked like someone had genetically spliced Jason Statham and Agent 47 in a vodka-soaked lab. Bald, square-jawed, and built like a bookshelf.

"Name and business," he barked in a clipped accent that said, 'If you waste my time, I will punch you through a wall.'

I stood straight, tried to project confidence. "My name is Mikheil Vissarionovich Jughashvili. I'm here to request a favor."

He blinked. "This is the headquarters of the Provisional Government and the Soviet. Not a soup kitchen."

The other guards laughed. Not the worst joke I'd heard, but still mildly irritating.

I ignored the laughter and spoke calmly. "My brother is a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. If I remember correctly, they were the ones who founded the Soviet? I'm also a member—Comrade Makarov." I pulled the letter from my coat pocket, holding it up. "I came here to have this delivered to him. You know him as… Comrade Stalin."

That name—Stalin—changed everything. Like a magic spell. The sarcasm drained from their faces. Even Agent 47's slightly unshakable aura of smugness flickered.

The bald enforcer stepped forward and carefully took the letter from my hand. He looked me over again, slower this time, not as dismissive.

"You said… Stalin?" he asked. Not mockingly—curiously. Like he was trying to solve a puzzle that had just grown arms and punched him in the face.

"Yes," I said. "He's my brother. I'm trying to find out if he's still alive. And if he is… my home is open to him if he needs a place to stay."

For a moment, he just stared at the envelope. Like it might explode.

Finally, he gave a curt nod. "I'll make sure the letter is delivered."

"Thank you," I said. "I'll see you around."

He didn't reply, just slipped the letter into his coat like it weighed more than a gun.

I turned and walked away. The moment I crossed out of the palace gates, I let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. The streets didn't feel any safer than before, but at least I wasn't in the direct line of any revolutionary firing squads.

Still, I didn't linger. I wasn't comfortable being out in the open for long. Not in this city. Not in this year. Not with my last name.

As I turned back onto the side street, pulling my coat tighter against the biting cold, I thought of Joe—no, Stalin now. I'd handed a letter to a group of armed revolutionaries asking them to pass a message to one of the most dangerous man in the country, who also happened to be my twin brother. Not exactly your average family reunion.

But what else could I do?

He needed to know I was here.

And more importantly—I needed him to remember who we used to be so I wouldn't be on the receiving end of a firing squad when he went all Robespierre.

March 20, 1917
Petrograd, Russian Empire
Evening

There was a knock at the door. Not the anxious, rapid-fire kind that shouted "police raid" or "Okhrana purge"—no, this was slow. Measured. Almost… respectful. Which, frankly, was even more suspicious.

Aleksandra looked up from the stew pot. My mother froze with a half-folded towel in her hands. Yakov, bless his little heart, just kept drawing strange little crayon people on the kitchen wall. I set down my newspaper—Pravda, naturally—and walked to the door.

I didn't open it immediately. Just stood there, my hand hovering over the knob. I could feel it, something familiar on the other side. Like a ghost of childhood pressed up against the wood.

I opened the door.

There he stood.

Joseph.

Stalin.

Ten years older, more worn, more gaunt than I remembered—but the same brooding intensity in those eyes. His mustache was thicker now, better groomed. His coat was long and military, but fraying at the edges. He looked tired. He looked dangerous.

He looked like my brother.

We stared at each other for a heartbeat longer than necessary.

"You look like shit." I said in Georgian.

Then he opened his arms.

I didn't hesitate.

We hugged like brothers do after war and widowhood and revolution—tight, wordless, full of things we couldn't say out loud. His hand slapped my back once, hard, in that awkward masculine way that said "I missed you, you bastard."

Inside, chaos.

Keke let out a sharp gasp and dropped the towel. "Joseph!" she exclaimed, hands flying to her mouth.

Aleksandra didn't say anything at first—just stepped forward and stared at him. Then, slowly, she smiled. Not wide, not forced. Just honest. Like seeing a ghost that turned out to be alive.

Even Yakov stopped drawing on the wall. "Papa?" he asked softly.

Joseph dropped to one knee and opened his arms again. "Yes, my little comrade," he murmured, voice cracking just a little.

Yakov ran into his arms. Aleksandra wiped her eyes discreetly.

And me?

I just stood there, letting it all sink in.

Later That Night
11:43 PM

Dinner had been… surreal.

We'd cooked everything we had worth showing off. Potatoes, stewed cabbage, leftover veal that Aleksandra had been saving for Yakov's name day, a bottle of wine we'd been hoarding since 1915. The table was full, loud, messy—like the old days, before grief hollowed us out and history ran us over like a Tsarist train.

We talked. Laughed. Even Joseph cracked a smile once or twice, especially when Kato—our daughter, not the ghost—told him Yakov had been pretending to lead revolutions with a stick and a tea tin. It was all… human.

But now everyone was asleep. Kids tucked in. Keke passed out in the armchair. Aleksandra upstairs with the baby, snoring softly. The apartment had gone quiet, the warmth of the kitchen fire casting long shadows on the faded wallpaper.

Joseph and I sat across from each other in the small parlor, sipping lukewarm tea like two old men with nowhere to be.

Then I stood.

"Come," I said quietly.

He raised an eyebrow but followed.

I pulled the couch away from it's spot. Lifted the creaky floorboard. Exposed the little armory I'd built under our living room like a paranoid squirrel preparing for revolution.

Joseph peered down at it—rows of pistols wrapped in rags, crates of ammunition, two rifles, a short shotgun, and a box of gold coins tucked beside canned beans and hardtack.

His silence was unnerving.

"Surprise," I said, grinning. "Our version of the family jewels."

Still nothing.

I cleared my throat. "I didn't just write to you for hugs and stew, Joe. I'm still in the Party. Inactive, sure. But I've been preparing."

He looked up at me, slowly.

I pressed on. "Civil war is coming. I can feel it. The Provisional Government won't hold. The Tsar's gone, but power hates a vacuum. You and I both know it's not over—it's barely started."

He still didn't say anything. Just looked back down at the stash.

"I've been laying low. Playing the role. I was a cop here, remember? On paper I was the most punctual, loyal officer in Petrograd. In reality, I was looting supply shipments and warning smugglers of raids. All of this—" I gestured at the hidden arsenal, "—came from that."

Joseph knelt beside the cache and ran a hand over one of the pistols.

"Why show me this?" he asked finally. His voice was calm, but I knew him too well. It was the kind of calm that could shatter into violence.

"Because you're going to need help," I said simply. "Not just ideologues. Not just revolutionaries quoting Marx between gulps of soup. You'll need fighters. Planners. People who know the city—who know how to move, how to smuggle, how to survive."

I crouched beside him. "I know where more of this is. Across the city. Armories, caches." I pulled out a map of the city, with X's dotted all over.

I paused, then looked him in the eyes.

"I want to help. Not for politics. Not for glory. For the family. For the future. For you."

He stared at me.

Seconds passed.

Then: "You always were the smarter twin," he muttered.

I laughed. "Took you long enough to admit it."

He grunted. "Don't get used to it."

We sat there in silence for a moment, the weight of what was coming pressing down on us like the cold outside.

"Does Aleksandra know?" he asked.

"Some of it. Enough to worry. Not enough to stop me."

He nodded.

Finally, he reached down, picked up one of the pistols, and checked the chamber.

Then—he smiled. Just a little. Just enough.

"Well then," he said. "Let's prepare for the end of the world."

 

[Alenco98]

March 21, 1917
Petrograd, Russian Empire
Morning

I found him in the kitchen, sitting in my chair like he'd paid rent and bought the wallpaper. Which, in a way, was fair. He was Stalin now—the Stalin. Boots up on the stool like a smug Cossack, coat draped over one shoulder like a Napoleonic cape, sipping tea and reading Russkoye Slovo as if it wasn't a steaming heap of bourgeois sentimentalism pretending to be journalism. Across from him, Yakov munched on a piece of black bread, legs swinging beneath the table like a particularly solemn metronome.

And just like that, the next phase of my plan was already in motion.

It was a simple plan, really. I couldn't just sit on my ass and be "Stalin's brother." What would that even look like? Me, reclining on some commissar-issued chaise lounge, enjoying tea and Stroganoff while my dear sibling played Robespierre with a mustache—executions, purges, famines, and the cherry on top: World War fucking Two?

No. Fuck that. Someone needed to be the adult in the room. Someone had to lean in and whisper, "Hey Joe… Germany is coming. Maybe you shouldn't kill half the officer corps."

Maybe I wouldn't change the world. Maybe I wouldn't stop the bloodshed. But if I could trim the death toll from ten million to, say, five? That's five million mothers who don't cry themselves to sleep, five million fathers who don't drink themselves to death, and five million kids who don't grow up remembering nothing but boots and snow and silence.

So I moved.

"You're reading the liberal rag now?" I said, eyebrow raised as I poured myself a chipped mug of tea that tasted like betrayal.

Joseph didn't even glance up. "I like to know what the enemy thinks. And the crossword's halfway decent."

I sat down and scraped some dubious cheese onto a crusty corner of bread. "Pravda's is better."

He smirked, folded the paper with all the pomp of a royal decree, and sipped again. "We need to talk," I said.

He sighed theatrically. "That's usually how most terrible ideas begin."

"Glad you're in the mood to be enlightened," I replied.

"The Red Guards are a mess."

He blinked at me slowly, like a snake trying to decide if I was prey or just annoying. "You've been out of the Party for nearly a decade and that's your big observation?"

"No," I said, chewing slowly. "That's just the appetizer. They're a bunch of disorganized amateurs. Half of them don't know which end of a rifle fires bullets, and the other half are either drunk on vodka or high on their own pamphlets. If a civil war breaks out—and it will—they'll be chewed up like stale khachapuri at a Georgian funeral."

He didn't speak. That meant he was listening. Which meant I had a shot.

I leaned in, tapping my finger on the table. "We need a real force. Not a mob of factory workers with pitchforks and poetry. A professional revolutionary corps. Disciplined. Trained. Structured. The kind of men who can hold a line and quote Marx without crying."

He tilted his head, suspicious. "And I suppose you've already come up with a name."

I grinned. "The Revolutionary Guard Corps."

Thank you, late-night 4chan threads about the Middle East. I didn't know much about Russian history back then, but I knew enough about coups, militias, and what happens when you let idealists run the armory. I wasn't an encyclopedia, but I was definitely the kid who read the appendices for fun.

Joseph hummed, deep and low. "Pretentious. But not bad."

I sipped my tea and kept going. "We train them. Organize them into cells. Standardize rifles, formations. Chain of command. Uniform code. And they report directly to us—the Party. No warlords, no freelancers, no anarchists with delusions of grandeur."

He was silent for a long time, thumb tracing the rim of his cup like it held secrets. Then, dry as desert sand, he said, "Sounds dangerously close to Bonapartism."

I shrugged. "Only if someone else does it. If we do it, it's ideological purity with uniforms."

That actually got a chuckle out of him. Just a little one. But it was real.

"I've been reading," I added. "Clausewitz. Sun Tzu. Moltke. Machiavelli."

He leaned back with mock horror. "Dear God. One of us did learn to read after all."

"Laugh all you want. My point stands. Revolutions don't die from bullets. They die from ego, chaos, and bad planning. We need structure. We need teeth."

He tapped the table, slowly. "You sound like Dzerzhinsky."

I frowned. "Who the hell is that?"

He blinked. "You've really been out of the loop."

"Yeah, well, I've been raising your son, genius."

That shut him up. I let the silence linger a little before I dropped the second shoe.

"And while we're on the topic of structure—an intelligence wing. Internal discipline. External sabotage. Counter-propaganda. Surveillance. Loyalty enforcement. Something like the Okhrana, but less tsarist, more... efficient."

Now that got his attention.

He raised an eyebrow. "Suppression?"

I sipped my tea again. "I was going to say 'respectful civic dialogue' but fine—yes, suppression. Cold, calculated, necessary suppression. Do you want to win or do you want a university lecture series from exile?"

He chuckled again—darkly, this time. "And what would you name this little secret empire of yours?"

"I'll come up with something. Something sharp. Something that makes people wake up at 3 a.m. sweating."

He looked away, toward the window, where frost crept like fingers across the glass. "You've changed."

"I've adapted," I said. "You taught me that. Sentimentality is a liability. This world eats soft men."

He sighed, long and low, like he was exhaling a childhood. "I remember when you used to say you wanted to go to America."

"I did," I said. "And now I'm here, pitching you a paramilitary and a surveillance state. Isn't life funny?"

A pause. A longer one.

"You know," he said finally, "you might have made a better revolutionary than me."

I smirked. "Oh, I am. But I'm family-oriented, so I temporarily left to help you out."

We both laughed at that. Quietly. Sadly. Like men who knew too much and loved too little.

Then he looked at me again. And the softness drained from his face like blood from a wound. His eyes were ice now—sharp, calculating, the eyes of a man who'd watched the future and decided to bend it into submission.

"You're right. About all of it. The Red Guards are useless. The liberals are weak. The Provisional Government is a kicked dog with a crown. And when it falls, we'll be there to seize what's left."

He stood up. Crossed the room. Lifted a floorboard. Inside: the stash. Our old friends. Guns, papers, maps, promises.

"You'll start small," he said. "Petrograd first. Small cells. Trusted men only. You oversee logistics. I'll see what I can do with Dzerzhinsky. He's got the dead-eyed zeal we need. As for your Revolutionary Guard—"

He looked back at me, face unreadable.

"Train them well. We'll need hounds when the wolves come. But keep it quiet. Small. Don't draw fire too early."

Then he returned to the table. Clapped a hand on my shoulder. Heavy. Final.

"Welcome back, comrade Makarov."

April 15, 1917
Petrograd, Russia

I leaned back on the battered old couch, glass of Georgian wine in hand—the good stuff, or at least good enough that it didn't taste like fermented shoe leather. One of the smugglers who worked with me had brought it by as a bribe-slash-gift. A token of appreciation, or maybe just a down payment on not getting stabbed in an alley by one of the other criminal outfits prowling the city like rats with better hats.

Of course, the wine wasn't the only thing he gave me. Protection doesn't come cheap, not even in a revolution. But we weren't here to talk about my side hustles.

Joseph Stalin—my older twin, future tyrant, and current soup enthusiast—was sitting across from me, slurping a steaming bowl of borscht our mother had made. He looked oddly serene, like a wolf on vacation. It was the only time he ever looked remotely at peace: when eating. Say what you want about Stalin, but the man respected soup.

He reached into his coat, pulled out a cigarette, and held it between two fingers like a man about to say something smug.

"Not in my house," I said flatly, without looking up.

He groaned. "You're still doing this?"

"Yes. I like the smell of soup and revolution, not stale smoke and black lung."

He muttered something unkind in Georgian but tucked the cigarette back into his coat.

"Fine. Anyway, report," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "What's the status on your little Guard Corps and your new Okhrana?"

I set my glass down with a soft clink. "We've got about two hundred men under arms now. They're former colleagues from my police days. Trained, disciplined, loyal."

Joseph raised an eyebrow. "Colorful."

"Colorful gets the job done. We secured a few weapons from old Imperial stockpiles I had mapped out years ago. Not all of them—some were looted by rival groups, gangs, or God-knows-who—but enough."

He leaned in, curious now. "How much is 'enough'?"

I ticked them off on my fingers. "Four hundred Mosin-Nagant rifles, fifty Nagant M1895 revolvers, two PM M1910 machine guns—one of them even works without kicking like a mule—about a hundred grenades, two armored vans that look like they were held together with hope and rust, and roughly thirty thousand rounds of assorted ammunition."

He paused. "Where the hell are you keeping all of that?"

"We've got a warehouse by the docks," I said casually. "Used to be a place for fish. Now it's for weapons. Same smell. We've got a rotation of guards watching it day and night."

He nodded slowly, then tilted his head. "And your new Okhrana?"

"Twenty agents so far," I said. "Ex-policemen mostly. A few underworld types. And—"

I hesitated for dramatic effect.

"—a couple of former Okhrana."

That made him freeze, spoon halfway to his mouth. His eyes narrowed. "You would work with them?"

"They work for us," I clarified. "Big difference."

He scowled. "Keep them on a short leash."

"They're on a leash so short it's practically a noose," I assured him. "So far, we've got one guy embedded in the Provisional Government. He's posing as a secretary for a mid-level official—nothing flashy. Says the place is a zoo. Infighting everywhere. Half the cabinet wants to keep the war going, the other half wants a truce, no one agrees on food policy, and the Entente is propping them up with loans and prayers."

He grunted. "What else?"

"My agents are embedded in various Red Guard units. The Putilov Factory, the Vyborg District, Obukhov Plant, even a couple of the Bolshevik student detachments. I've got feelers in the Mensheviks, anarchists, syndicalists—basically anyone carrying a pamphlet and a weapon. For now, they're just observing. No action. Just ears open and mouths shut."

He swirled his spoon around his bowl, thinking. "And how exactly are you keeping these people loyal? Especially your Guard Corps. How do you know they won't flip the second someone waves a red flag and promises them bread?"

I grinned. "Because I pay them."

He looked at me like I'd suggested feeding caviar to stray dogs. "Pay them? I saw your stash in the apartment. It's substantial, sure, but not nearly enough to fund an army."

I sipped my wine, letting the suspense simmer a bit before answering.

"I made contacts over the years. Smugglers, brothel madams, counterfeiters, black marketeers. I've been good to the underworld and the underworld's been good to me in return. They're terrified right now—cops are gone, order's a joke, and every other gang wants their cut. We offer protection. Real protection. Not just muscle, but organized, sober, punctual violence. They pay in food, guns, ammo, gold—whatever they've got. And I use that to fund the operation. It's a self-sustaining ecosystem of paranoia."

He stared at me for a moment. I could see the war in his eyes: part of him was impressed, the other part deeply disturbed that his twin brother had turned Petrograd's criminal underbelly into a revolutionary ATM.

But he couldn't argue with the results. The revolution, after all, had to get paid.

He leaned back, exhaled slowly, and looked at me sideways.

"You know," he said, voice dry, "for someone who used to spend his Saturdays reading history and cooking with mom, you've become alarmingly competent at this."

I raised my glass in a mock toast. "Turns out cooking and revolutionaries aren't that different. Get the right tools, improvise when you can, and always, always know what ingredients you'll need."

He chuckled. Just a little.

Then the smile vanished, and he went back to stirring his borscht like it contained the secrets of the universe.

"Good work," he said. "Keep me updated. But tread carefully. The wolves haven't started howling yet, but they will. When they do, I want to be the one holding the leash. And one more thing."

"What is it?"

He leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, voice low and measured.

"Lenin's returning tomorrow."

The words hung in the air like gunpowder smoke.

I blinked. "Tomorrow?"

He nodded. "We just got confirmation. The Germans are sending him in through Finland Station, under heavy cover. We've arranged some Party men to meet him—but I don't trust all of them, and neither should you."

"Fair," I muttered. "That place is going to be a madhouse. Everyone from Mensheviks to babushkas trying to kiss his feet."

"Exactly why I need you," he said, pointing a finger at me. "I want a company of your best men—disciplined, armed, clean uniforms if possible. No drunks. No screaming about dialectics. Just men who know how to walk in a line without shooting themselves in the foot."

I raised an eyebrow. "We escorting him like a czar now?"

"We're protecting him," he corrected sharply. "And yes, we're also putting on a show. Lenin needs to see we've got muscle. Order. Structure. Not just a pack of sweaty poets yelling about worker councils."

I swirled the last sip of wine in my glass. "So, you want him impressed. You're hoping he'll back us."

He didn't deny it.

"I'll arrange it," I said. "50 of our best. Matching boots, pressed coats, no visible stab wounds. Even throw in a bandolier or two for dramatic effect."

He smirked. "Make it 60. After the welcome, I'll try to introduce you to him. One-on-one, maybe two-on-one with me in the room. You can pitch him your vision—the Guard Corps, the intelligence wing, the army. You make a good case, Mikheil. Better than I could, even. You've got that… charm."

"charm," I echoed. "That's what we're calling it now?"

He ignored that too.

"But," he added, voice tightening, "you keep the details to yourself for now. The warehouse, the arsenal, the agents, the funding streams—none of it exists. As far as Lenin is concerned, this is just an idea you've been brewing. A theory. You're an idealist with a plan. Not a man who's already stockpiling grenades in a fish warehouse."

I tapped my fingers on the table. "You don't trust him?"

He shrugged. "I don't trust anyone. Not yet. And Lenin… Lenin is brilliant. Visionary. But he's also cautious about power. About rivals. If he thinks you're too competent, too prepared—he might see you as a threat."

"And if he sees me as useful?"

"Then you're in."

I whistled. "So, impress him. But don't intimidate him. Be smart, but not too smart. Don't mention the warehouse full of weapons I built from scratch using the criminal underworld and my leftover cop buddies. Got it."

Joseph gave me a thin smile. "Exactly. Be the humble architect of the future. The man with a blueprint, not a battalion."

I stared at him, then shook my head with a quiet chuckle. "God, we are such bastards."

He smiled again, broader this time. "Better bastards than fools."

There was a pause. "Damn right." I finished my wine. He finished his borscht. Outside, the city moaned with distant gunshots and shouted slogans. The revolution was waking up again.

"Tomorrow then," I said. "I'll have the boys ready. No shooting, no looting, just smiles, boots, and bayonets."

He nodded, then stood, pulling on his coat.

"And Mikheil?"

"Yeah?"

He glanced back at me, eyes serious. "Don't fuck this up. If Lenin likes you, everything changes. If he doesn't…"

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.

I nodded.

He left.

I sat there a while longer, listening to the city breathe through cracked windows and thin walls, thinking about Lenin, the Guard Corps, the Okhrana, and how I, a 21st-century interloper in a secondhand body, had become Petrograd's most well-dressed warlord.

Then I poured myself another glass of wine.

Tomorrow, I'd meet the man who would shape the revolution.

I just hoped I didn't terrify him too much.

 

[Alenco98]

April 16, 1917
Finland Station, Petrograd
Russia

The crowd at the station was a mess—a revolutionary stew of factory workers, students, sailors, babushkas, bored teenagers with pamphlets, and at least one man selling hot potatoes and muttering about the Mensheviks under his breath. Flags waved, fists raised, and chants echoed across the platform like a drunken hymn. Down with the war! Long live Lenin! Down with the Provisional Government! Long live Lenin! Over and over again, like the city itself had learned to chant.

My men stood apart from it all, 60 of them now—three had hangovers from drinking last night, but unfortunately for them the revolution waits for no one. They stood at attention in clean coats, boots polished, weapons slung in perfect formation. A mix of ex-cops from my precinct and surrounding ones, veterans, and one former circus strongman who refused to speak unless addressed as "Comrade Bear." His real name as I would come to find out later in the year was Fyodor.

I stood in front, coat pressed, gloves immaculate, sabre sheathed more for the look than the use. Optics mattered, Stalin said. Might as well lean into it.

Then the train pulled in, slow and heavy, hissing steam like a dragon clearing its throat.

The crowd roared. Some people cried. Others chanted louder. A few just looked bewildered, clutching newspapers and craning necks for a glimpse of the man who'd supposedly flown in on German wings to save the revolution. The irony was so thick it could be served in a bowl with sour cream.

And then there he was.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. Lenin.

Shorter than expected, balding head shining under the gas lamps, beard trimmed to a sharp point, eyes like drill bits. He looked less like a prophet and more like a mildly annoyed librarian—but the energy that followed him was palpable. Electric. Every movement seemed intentional, every glance calculated.

He stepped down from the train, flanked by a few weary-looking comrades, his expression unreadable.

I stepped forward, snapping a crisp salute.

"Comrade Lenin," I said, "I've been sent by Comrade Stalin to escort you to the Smolny Institute."

He looked me over with a flick of his eyes, brows lifting slightly. "And who might you be?"

I smiled. "Mikheil Dzhugashvili. Stalin's younger twin brother. I'm the better looking one. He hates when I say that."

A twitch tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't know Stalin had a twin. He doesn't talk much about family."

"Probably for the best," I replied. "We're not exactly a textbook family. But I assure you, I'm quite real. My job is to keep you in one piece on your way to the Soviet. It's a madhouse out there."

"I assumed as much," Lenin muttered, adjusting his coat. "Lead the way then, Comrade Better-Looking-One."

We moved through the crowd as my men formed a protective cordon, parting the sea of Petrograd's finest radicals like Moses with machine guns. Some people shouted greetings to Lenin; others just stared in awe. One woman fainted. Lenin looked mildly inconvenienced but nodded politely.

As we walked, he fell into step beside me. "So, Mikheil. Tell me—what is it exactly you do? Aside from providing escort duty for returning revolutionaries."

"I'm sort of a revolutionary nanny," I said, hands clasped behind my back.

Lenin blinked. "A what?"

I grinned. "I was in the Party, like Stalin. Active for years. But after his wife, Kato, died… well, someone had to raise his son Yakov. Joseph threw himself into the cause. I stepped back and raised the boy. Someone had to hold the bottle while he held the bomb."

Lenin gave me a sideways glance. "You left politics to raise a child?"

"Temporarily. The cause didn't vanish—just shifted shape. Yakov was just a baby. Stalin would send money when he could, usually in envelopes that reeked of gunpowder and bad cigars. I worked as a cop here in Petrograd, ran a few investigations, made some enemies. But at night, it was me, my wife, my kids, my mom and Yakov. Bottles. Lullabies. The occasional Marxist bedtime story. From each according to his abilities, and mine happened to include changing diapers."

Lenin actually laughed. A short, dry chuckle, but real.

"Well," he said, "that might be the most proletarian reason I've ever heard to pause a revolution."

"Thank you. I take great pride in my bourgeois resentment and my ability to cook porridge."

He nodded thoughtfully. "And now?"

"Now Yakov's old enough to run circles around us both, and I'm back in the struggle. Petrograd's a powder keg. The Red Guards are disorganized, the underworld is exploding, the Soviets are arguing about dialectics while the Provisional Government bleeds in public. So I've taken it upon myself to help impose some discipline."

Lenin's gaze sharpened. "Discipline?"

I smiled faintly. "A vision. A proposal. But I'll save the pitch for when there's less steam and shouting. I didn't come to shove ideas down your throat, Comrade Lenin. I came to make sure you got to the Smolny in one piece."

"Hmph." He glanced around. "Your men… They look competent. Not the usual red guard I see around here."

"I picked them myself. Former cops like me, veterans. All loyal. All trained by me. We even combed their beards for lice. That's how serious we are."

"I do appreciate lice-free escorts," he said drily. "What's the group called?"

"Officially?" I shrugged. "They don't have a name. Yet. They're just another red guards group. Unofficially, I've been drafting some ideas. Revolutionary Guard Corps has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

Lenin's brow furrowed, but he said nothing. We continued on in silence, his mind clearly chewing on something bigger.

When the towering shadow of the Smolny loomed ahead, lit by gas lamps and flickering torches, he stopped short and turned to me.

"Your brother trusts you?"

I looked him in the eye. "Yes. More than he trusts himself, I think. And I trust him. Even if I don't always agree."

Lenin nodded. "You're a rare breed, Comrade Mikheil. Most men either talk ideology or throw bombs. You seem to do both while feeding children and managing a street militia."

"I'm a man of many talents," I said with a smile.

He gave me one more long, calculating look.

"Come to the Smolny tomorrow morning," he said at last. "We'll talk. Bring your vision. If it's sound, maybe it won't just be your brother listening."

My eyebrow rose. "A private audience with Lenin on day two? You flatter me."

"No," he said simply, "I'm curious. And that's dangerous."

Then he turned and walked into the Smolny, the doors swinging shut behind him.

I stood outside for a moment, hands in my coat pockets, watching the lights flicker in the windows of the revolutionary hive. I could already hear the debates, the shouting, the righteous indignation.

And yet… something was changing. Fast.

I turned to my men. "Back to the warehouse. No drinking, no shooting, and if Comrade Bear starts drinking excessively again, put a stop to it."

They saluted.

As we walked back through the city streets, I allowed myself a small smile.

Lenin was here.

And he was listening.



The air inside Smolny was thick with smoke, tension, and the smell of overworked revolutionaries. Old nuns' dormitories turned committee rooms. Lenin had taken over one of the larger classrooms, its crucifixes long since torn down and replaced with hand-drawn maps of factory districts and food supply routes. Someone had left a half-eaten potato on a desk. It was unclear whether it was a snack or a paperweight.

I entered behind Stalin, flanked by two of my men who looked intimidating enough to make most Mensheviks reconsider their positions on democratic centralism.

Lenin was already there, perched at the head of a battered oak table, poring over a stack of telegrams and half-burned notes. He didn't look up as we walked in.

"Close the door," he said flatly. "And tell whoever's shouting about bread prices in the hall that I'm not the baker's union."

Stalin grunted and obeyed. I stepped forward and stood at attention—partly out of respect, partly out of performance.

"Comrade Lenin," I said. "You asked for my vision. I've come to deliver it."

That got his attention. He glanced up, squinting slightly, gestured to the seat across from him.

"Speak."

Stalin sat in the corner, arms crossed, quietly observing. His face was unreadable—just the faint hint of a smirk, like he was waiting to see if I'd crash and burn or launch something worth remembering.

I sat down, met Lenin's gaze, and laid it out.

"There's going to be a civil war," I began. "That's not a guess. It's a certainty. What you're proposing—land redistribution, the dismantling of the aristocracy, the total abolition of private property and capitalism—you're not just rattling the gates of power. You're taking a battering ram to the foundations of a thousand-year-old order. The nobles, the generals, the factory owners—they're not going to debate us into surrender. They're going to fight. Brutally."

Lenin didn't flinch. He just nodded once, slowly, eyes sharp.

"The Red Guards," I continued, "are enthusiastic, brave, even fanatical. But they're disorganized. They're militias with slogans. If the war starts tomorrow, they'll be cannon fodder. You need to build a real army. Ranks. Logistics. Discipline. Officers who know how to march and men who know how to shoot without hitting their own toes."

"And I suppose," Lenin said, "you've got a plan to prevent that army from marching on us one day?"

"Exactly." I leaned in, lowering my voice. "Bonapartism is inevitable if power is centralized in a single institution. So we build redundancies. My Revolutionary Guard Corps—the men you saw yesterday—is just the start. Ideologically educated, heavily armed, trained not just to fight—but to think. Their purpose will be singular: to protect the revolution from the army if it ever turns."

"And who watches them?" Lenin asked immediately, tone razor-sharp.

"I'm glad you asked," I said, suppressing a grin. "We build a new Okhrana. Not the old one—no monarchist brutes. Ours would be staffed with vetted Party loyalists. Professionals. Their job would be internal intelligence, loyalty enforcement, counter-sabotage, spying abroad, criminal enforcement. And they, too, would have teeth—an armed wing, a National Police Force if you like."

He drummed his fingers on the table.

"Let me clarify the architecture," I said. "A centralized Soviet Army to handle foreign threats. A Revolutionary Guard Corps to keep that army in line. And a new Soviet Okhrana—armed, loyal to the Party—to keep both of them in line."

"Checks and balances through overlapping paranoia," Stalin said from the corner. "Elegant."

"Exactly," I said. "No single general can stage a coup without inviting a bloodbath from the guard corps and Police. Every sword faces a mirror. You want loyalty? Fear and structure get you there faster than abstract slogans."

I let that settle, then added, "And while we're talking power and perception, I want to propose a May Day parade."

That raised Lenin's eyebrow.

"A public show of strength and unity," I said. "Red Guards marching in formation. Flags, uniforms, drums. The people are scared and angry and starving. They need to see order. Strength. And you, Comrade Lenin—rifle in hand, walking at the front. You are the symbol."

He narrowed his eyes. "You want me parading like a tsar?"

"I want you to be the opposite of a tsar," I said firmly. "But a symbol all the same. The average Russian peasant has never read Das Kapital or the communist manifesto. Hell, most of them can't read. But they understand symbols. Uniforms. Banners. Heroes. You march with them, and they'll follow you anywhere."

"And when do we teach them the theory?"

"After we win the war," I said. "Power first, then theory."

There was a silence.

I leaned back, glanced at his cigarette pack. "Also, respectfully, you should consider quitting smoking. And drinking. You're about to be the soul of a revolution. Maybe don't die from lung or liver failure before we get to the end."

Stalin barked a laugh. I glanced at him. "You too brother." He scowled.

Lenin didn't laugh at all, or scowls.

For a long, uncomfortable moment, he just stared at me. Then, slowly, he set the cigarette he'd been rolling down on the table and folded his hands.

"You speak like a man who's lived through this before."

"I just read a lot," I said, smiling faintly. "Sun
Tzu's art of war, Caesar's commentaries on Gaul, Napoleon's biography, Machiavelli's the prince, Moltke, Bismark, Clausewitz. Anything and everything on politics and military tactics I could get my hands on. I stole ideas from all of them, synthesized them into my own."

Lenin exhaled through his nose.

"What do you think?" he asked Stalin, still not looking away from me.

Stalin shrugged. "He's pragmatic. Cynical. Slightly unhinged. I trust him."

"High praise," I said dryly.

Lenin turned his gaze back to me. "Your proposal… it's terrifying. Bureaucratic. Militaristic. Contradictory to many principles of grassroots revolutionary thought."

He paused.

"I like it."

I blinked. "You do?"

"It's realistic. Brutal, but grounded in the facts. You're right—the old order will not go quietly. We cannot meet them with disorder and poetry. We must meet them with steel."

He stood. "You'll draft a formal structure for these corps and committees. Bring it to me by the week's end. I want clear chains of command. Oversight bodies. Vetted officers. And most importantly—loyalty to the Party above all else."

"Understood."

"And the May Day parade?" he said.

I shrugged. "You'll need a rifle."

"I've got one," he said. "But I'll only march if you and Stalin march."

Stalin smirked again. I nodded. "Got it. I'll have my men march with you at the front."

Lenin lit the cigarette he had set down earlier. "And I'll consider cutting back. After we win."

"Fair enough," I said, standing with him.

As I turned to go, Lenin called after me.

"Mikheil."

"Yes?"

"You're not afraid of what you're building?"

I paused. Thought for a moment. Then said, "Only if the wrong men are left to run it."

He didn't answer. Just nodded.

And I left the room, already drafting blueprints in my mind for an army of shadows and an empire of symbols.

The revolution was sharpening its teeth.

 

[Alenco98]

Smolny Institute
April 24, 1917
Morning


The room was quiet save for the rhythmic scratching of Lenin's pen as he underlined a passage for the third time. Stalin sat off to the side, legs crossed, a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray he'd emptied twice already. I stood near the window, arms behind my back, watching them read through the draft I'd handed over ten minutes earlier.


It was long. Dense. The kind of thing you write when you've got too much time and just enough paranoia.


I'd titled it plainly: Organizational Blueprint for Revolutionary Security and Continuity of Power. Subtle enough to pass as bureaucratic, dangerous enough to matter.


Lenin finally leaned back, fingers steepled under his chin, expression hard to read. Not impressed exactly—but focused. Like he was examining a pistol, curious whether it would shoot or blow up in his hand.


Stalin was the first to speak.


"Well," he muttered, tapping ash into the tray, "it reads like something written by a man who's had three near-death experiences and doesn't want a fourth."


I turned. "I'm flattered."


Lenin closed the folder slowly. "This is… ambitious."


"That's a word for it," Stalin added. "Another word might be 'terrifying.'"


I gave a slight shrug. "I read a lot. Bonaparte. Clausewitz. Moltke. San Martín. Sun Tzu. I ripped off a little from everyone—stole some of the best tools in the toolbox and welded them together with paranoia and revolutionary theory."


"You forgot Machiavelli," Lenin said.


"I thought that was implied."


Lenin's eyes twitched, just slightly, with something resembling amusement. "The sheer level of cross-surveillance here is dizzying. It's not so much checks and balances as it is checks and purges."


"Welcome to continuity of power," I said. "You want to remake society? You'll need to survive the first five years. That won't happen if the army crowns itself a Caesar the moment you turn your back. Or if the secret police becomes a state within a state. This is how you stop that."


Lenin tapped the file. "The State Commissariat for Anti-Bonapartist Security… SCABS?"


"I wanted something memorable," I said. "No one forgets a bad rash."


Stalin choked on his tea.


Lenin did not laugh. But he did exhale sharply through his nose, which was the closest thing I'd seen to a chuckle.


"You realize," Lenin said slowly, "this creates a permanent apparatus of mutual suspicion. The army fears the Guard. The Guard fears the KGB. The KGB fears the Party. The Party fears itself."


"That's the point," I said. "You want a revolution that survives? Make betrayal a suicide mission. No one builds a cult of personality when they're under ideological surveillance and counter-Bonapartist monitoring."


"Sounds exhausting," Stalin muttered. "But effective."


Lenin laced his fingers. "The Party remains supreme in this. Every officer, every commander, every guard dog swears loyalty to the Party, not the state, not the people, not the leader. That's good."


"It'll prevent another Napoleon," I said.


"Or another Tsar," Stalin added.


Lenin leaned back, quiet again. For a while, he just stared at the ceiling, mind clearly spinning.


"You understand," he said at last, "what you're building is not just a defense mechanism. It's a permanent state of war. A war against betrayal. Against memory. Against the inevitability of decay. You're building a machine that eats its own shadow."


"Yes," I said.


"And you're fine with that?"


"I'd rather we eat our own shadow," I replied, "than let a general eat the revolution."


That hung in the air for a while.


Then Stalin stood, stretched, and walked over to the samovar.


"Well, he's mad," he muttered. "But he's our kind of mad."


Lenin didn't smile, but his voice was lighter now. "I should hate it. It contradicts half of what I believe about democratic centralism and mass line theory."


"But?"


"But," he said, "I've also read history. And unlike our idealist friends, I remember the part where Robespierre lost his head."


I nodded. "You don't win revolutions with purity. You win them with power—and then decide what kind of purity you can afford."


Lenin picked up the folder again. "Very well. I'll submit this to the Central Committee. Not all of it will pass—not yet—but enough will stick."


"May Day parade still on?" I asked.


He gave me a look. "Only if you promise not to make me wear medals."


"No medals," I said. "But a rifle. Big, flashy. Maybe a red sash if you're feeling theatrical."


"I'm not."


"We'll work on it. You should do a speech near the end. I'll get to typing one up for you."


Lenin flipped to the final page again. "This Decree 1917-A… Emergency powers. It allows the Guard and the KGB to override civil leadership."


"Only in case of coup attempts," I said.


"Coup attempts defined by…?"


"Two people. The KGB Director and the Commander of the Revolutionary Guard. And only with NDC ratification."


"And if you are the Commander of the Guard?" Lenin asked.


"Then I hope someone's watching me just as closely."


He stared at me.


Then he nodded, once.


"Stalin," he said, "I want you overseeing the formation of the NDC. Start assembling candidates for the Joint Chiefs, RGC command, and preliminary KGB directorates."


Stalin gave a short nod. "On it."


I exhaled. Quietly.


"And Mikheil," Lenin said.


I turned.


"SCABS?" he asked again, deadpan.


I shrugged. "You'll remember it, won't you?"


He closed the folder.


"Yes," he said. "Yes, I think I will."


----------


Organizational Blueprint for Revolutionary Security and Continuity of Power.

By Mikheil Jugashvili: April 24, 1917

I. NATIONAL LEADERSHIP


1. Supreme Organ of National Security: The National Defense Council (NDC)


Chairman: Vladimir Lenin (or General Secretary of the Party)


Deputy Chairmen: Head of Joint Chiefs, Commander of Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC), Director of the KGB


Function: Central body overseeing all armed institutions, coordinates war effort, approves military doctrine, appoints top commanders with Politburo ratification.


---


II. SOVIET ARMED FORCES (SAF)


Structure:


Branches: Army, Navy, Air Force


Supreme Military Command: Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)


Chiefs of each branch report to the Chairman of the JCS


Chairman reports directly to the NDC


Political Oversight:


Party Commissars embedded at every battalion and ship level


Commissariat for Political Discipline reports to the Party Central Committee


---


III. REVOLUTIONARY GUARD CORPS (RGC)


Purpose:


Protect the Party, Party leadership, and key infrastructure


Prevent Bonapartism, coup attempts, and high-level internal subversion


Structure:


Branches: Army Guard Division, Air Guard Wing


Supreme Commander of the RGC reports to the NDC


Battalion-Level Loyalty Officers appointed by the Party Central Committee


Training and Equipment:


Smaller but elite, equipped with modern weapons, armored vehicles, air assets


Officers trained in both military doctrine and Marxist-Leninist theory


Oversight:


Office of Political Security (OPS) within the RGC:


Monitors ideological purity


Collaborates with KGB's State Commissariat


RGC promotions require Party Central Committee vetting


---


IV. NATIONAL GUARD (NG)


Purpose:


Internal Security, Protest Control, Counter-Sedition, Urban Policing


Command:


Operates under the Committee for State Security (KGB)


Local units report to Regional Security Councils chaired by Party appointees


National Commander of the National Guard reports to the Director of the KGB


---


V. COMMITTEE FOR STATE SECURITY (KGB)


Structure:


Director of the KGB reports directly to the NDC


Operates with autonomy from military chain of command


Five Primary Directorates:


1. Criminal Control Directorate (CCD)


Investigates high crimes, black markets, organized crime


Works with NG and Revolutionary Tribunals


2. Party Monitoring Directorate (PMD)


Monitors loyalty, discipline, and political activity of all Party members


Authorizes surveillance, internal investigations, and purges


3. Military Intelligence Directorate (MID)


Strategic and battlefield intelligence for wartime


Liaises with SAF and RGC high command


4. External Espionage Directorate (EED)


Overseas operations, agent networks, and foreign subversion


Reports to both the Director and a secret subcommittee of the Politburo


5. State Commissariat for Anti-Bonapartist Security (SCABS)


Dedicated to rooting out military adventurism, disloyalty, and rising charismatic officers


Has internal jurisdiction over both the SAF and RGC


Can arrest, interrogate, and detain military officers upon NDC authorization


---


VI. OVERSIGHT AND INTERNAL CHECKS


1. Party Central Committee (PCC)


Appoints all senior officers in RGC, KGB, and SAF with background vetting


Runs Cadre Evaluation Commission: permanent office that reviews ideological purity, finances, and personal conduct


2. Inspectorate-General of the Revolution


Independent arm of the PCC that audits and investigates all branches


Has arrest powers in collaboration with the KGB


Staffed by trusted revolutionaries and theoretical purists


---


VII. VETTING AND LOYALTY ASSURANCE


1. Loyalty Oaths:


All officers must swear loyalty to the Party—not the state or any individual leader


Oaths renewed annually, with symbolic ceremonies and psychological testing


2. Dual Command System:


Every combat or intelligence unit has:


Commander (Military discipline)


Political Officer (Party loyalty)


No order is valid without approval from both


3. Officer Schools:


Revolutionary Military Academy: For SAF


Red Guard College: For RGC


Lenin Institute of Security and Ideology: For KGB and National Guard


All institutions include Marxist theory, Party history, and Bonapartism awareness training


---


VIII. EMERGENCY POWERS CLAUSE


In the event of a suspected coup or insurrection:


The Director of the KGB and Commander of the RGC may jointly invoke Decree No. 1917-A, which:


Suspends civil command authority


Grants emergency arrest and purge powers


Triggers full activation of RGC and NG under joint control of the NDC

 

[Alenco98]

May 1, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Dawn

Spring had finally arrived in Petrograd, brushing away the last sour chill of winter. A crisp breeze swept through the city's battered streets, carrying with it the smell of fresh bread, coal smoke, and the faintest hint of something revolutionary—or maybe just uncollected garbage. You couldn't always tell the difference in Petrograd.

The sun was just beginning to rise, throwing soft gold against the old façade of Smolny. And behind me, standing in sharp formation, were two hundred of my finest men.

Not all of them, of course. The other five hundred were off doing other—necessary—things. Protecting the city's many unofficial "taxpayers." Brothels, black markets, smuggling dens, gambling parlors—you name it. The underworld didn't fund itself. And Lenin didn't need to know where the rubles, ammo, food and guns were coming from, only that I had expanded my force from the original sixty to a crisp seven hundred in just a few weeks.

And it wasn't even technically a lie. I had expanded. I just... started from three hundred. Call it revolutionary rounding.

Then he appeared. Right on time.

Lenin emerged from Smolny's front doors with the posture of a man who hadn't slept in two days and had personally tried to edit every speech, leaflet, and agitprop poster in Petrograd by hand. His coat hung off his frame like a flag on a dying wind. There were bags under his eyes deeper than the trenches on the Eastern Front.

"Salute!" I shouted, sharp and clear.

As one, my men raised their right arms in a crisp, militaristic gesture. Call it "Roman" if you like—but we all knew what kind of aura farming we were aiming for. Lenin, mid-step, stopped with a visible twitch in his jaw and a brief look that said 'What in the name of Marx is this?' before composing himself.

"…At ease," he muttered with diplomatic restraint. The arms lowered.

He didn't ask questions. Smart man.

These were my best. Hardened veterans, loyal as dogs, mostly former police from my old precinct, and a few newer additions: criminals, gang enforcers, even a couple ex-Okhrana officers I'd worked with. But to Lenin, they were all just ex-cops, thoroughly reformed and ideologically reliable. And very well-dressed.

Black military tunics—clean, tailored, sharp as razors. Red armbands with the revolutionary star stitched in gold thread. Black boots polished to a shine, with crimson stars painted on the toes. Their helmets—painted a striking, aggressive red—bore the totenkopf insignia on the side, just for flair. I liked the symbolism. Skull and star. Death and revolution. And yes, I was aware I had just invented something that looked eerily similar to the future SS. But technically, I'd beaten Hitler to it. Suck it, Adolf.

They looked magnificent. Imposing. Terrifying. The sort of unit that would make both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks nervous—and that was the point. I wasn't here to make friends. I was here to make history.

I stepped forward and took a bolt-action rifle from Comrade Bear, our resident circus-strongman-turned-henchman, who was now moonlighting as quartermaster. I handed the rifle to Lenin.

"You ever shoot one before?"

He blinked at it like I'd just handed him a dead raccoon.

"I have not."

"Perfect," I said cheerfully. "You're a fast learner. I'll show you. During your speech, fire it into the air. It'll be symbolic—powerful. The masses will love it."

He frowned. Deeply.

"I am not a Caesar," he said flatly.

"No one cares," I replied. "Symbols matter. Slogans matter. You can give the best speech in the world, quote Marx and Engels until your throat dries out—but if there's no theatre, no bang, it'll fade. People want drama. They want fire. Shoot once in the air, raise a fist, and they'll follow you to the ends of the Earth."

He looked like he wanted to spit. Instead, he crossed his arms. "I will not turn this into a pantomime."

"I'm asking for one shot. Not a golden chariot and a laurel crown."

Before he could object further, I took the rifle back, chambered a round, aimed up at the sky, and fired. The crack echoed across the square, scattering a few pigeons and earning some awed murmurs from the early crowd gathering down the street. I cycled the bolt, checked the chamber, and handed it back to him.

"Simple," I said. "Even the tsar could manage it, and he couldn't wipe own shit."

He stared at the rifle like it might bite him. Behind me, Comrade Bear brought forth the next item—a large, slightly lumpy, canvas-wrapped object.

"Here," I said, taking it. "Put this on."

"What is it?"

"Bulletproof vest. Improvised, but effective. Layers of steel plate, cotton, and guilt. If things turn ugly, I'd rather not have to mop your brains off the palace steps."

He didn't take it.

"And this," I added, taking a bright red helmet from Bear, "is for your head. I'd prefer to keep that intact too."

"I am not wearing a helmet," he snapped. "I am not a tsar, a general, or a mascot."

"And I am not letting you get shot by some idiot with a grudge and a revolver."

There was a long pause. His jaw clenched. His hand gripped the rifle tightly. He looked, for a moment, like a man regretting every decision that had led to this precise moment in his life.

Then he took the vest.

"Fine. But if I fall off the podium from the weight, I'm blaming you."

"You fall off the podium, I'll have Stalin tell Pravda to write that it was a heroic dive to avoid a sniper."

He sighed—long, low, exhausted. "I miss exile. No parades in exile. Just books and terrible cheese."

"Welcome to power, Comrade."

Behind us, the sun crested fully over the rooftops, casting the whole plaza in gold. My men stood tall. The people were gathering. The flags were being raised. Revolution had a stage now.

And at the center of it stood Lenin.

Bulletproof. Armed. Slightly miserable.

Perfect.

May 1, 1917
Tauride Square, Petrograd
Midday

The plaza was packed.

Workers with soot-streaked faces. Soldiers on leave, some already drunk. Peasants in from the countryside, wide-eyed and underfed. Women holding children. Men holding pamphlets. And, scattered among them, the various self-appointed champions of revolution—Mensheviks with well-worn boots, Social Revolutionaries handing out slogans like candy, anarchists grumbling about hierarchy while forming one in their own corner.

And at the center—looming above it all—stood the temporary podium erected in front of the Tauride Palace, draped in red cloth and festooned with banners bearing hammers, sickles, stars, and slogans so aggressive they practically yelled at you.

I stood off to the side with Comrade Bear and a few of my officers, arms folded, watching the crowd. My men flanked the square, standing like silent statues in their sleek black tunics, red armbands and helmets gleaming in the sun. The totenkopf insignias were drawing whispers already. I could hear them:

"Who are those men?"

"Bolsheviks?"

"No, I heard they're comrade Makarov's. They say he's building his own army."

"A personal guard?"

"Looks like the Okhrana in red."

"Better dressed."

I smirked slightly.

Let them talk.

On the stage, Lenin adjusted the improvised bulletproof vest under his coat for the third time. It didn't fit well—nothing about Lenin said "tactical chic." But he had accepted it, and that meant something. In one hand he held the rifle I'd given him, pointed downward, more prop than weapon. His other hand gripped the edge of the lectern, knuckles white.

Then he stepped forward.

The square fell silent. It was uncanny how quickly the noise died when he spoke.

"Comrades," Lenin began, voice harsh, clipped, worn with exhaustion—but resonant with something deeper: conviction.

"We stand today not as subjects, not as slaves to czars, nor servants to capitalists—but as a people awakening. The February Revolution was the first step. It brought down the autocrat—but it did not feed us. It did not give land to the peasant. It did not end the war."

A murmur of agreement passed through the crowd.

"What does the Provisional Government offer us? Patience. Delays. More death on the front. More promises to landlords. More ration lines. More speeches. More suffering. The same misery, with a new name!"

The people stirred.

"We are not interested in cosmetic change. We do not want a revolution with gloves. We want transformation."

He lifted his head. Eyes scanning the crowd.

"We demand bread—because we are starving."

"Bread!" someone shouted from the crowd.

"We demand peace—because our sons die in a war they did not start and cannot finish."

"Peace!" another voice called, and more joined in.

"And we demand land—because the land belongs to the hands that till it, not the boots that trample it!"

The crowd roared:
"BREAD! PEACE! LAND!"
"BREAD! PEACE! LAND!"

Lenin waited, arms raised, letting the chant echo until it began to fade.

"The Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies are the only legitimate power in Russia. Power must pass from the capitalists to the proletariat. Not tomorrow. Not after a conference. Now."

"All power to the Soviets!" someone yelled. Dozens followed.

"ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS!"

Lenin nodded. Raised the rifle—reluctantly, but deliberately.

He pointed it skyward.

For a moment, he paused, looked down at me where I stood off to the side.

I gave a small nod.

He pulled the trigger.

The shot cracked like thunder.

The square exploded with cheers.

It was absurd, theatrical, even a bit ridiculous—but it worked. The crowd adored it. That one symbolic shot sealed it. It wasn't just the words—it was the image.

Lenin: the theorist, the exile, the Marxist philosopher—had just fired a gun into the sky to herald revolution.

History wouldn't forget it.

And neither would the other factions.

---

Later, inside the Tauride

Lenin was wiping sweat from his brow with a frayed handkerchief. I handed him a glass of water. He downed it like it was vodka.

"That was the most I've ever sweated in my life," he muttered. "I nearly dropped the rifle. And this vest itches."

"It looked glorious," I said.

"I looked like a circus bear dressed by a paranoid tailor."

"Bear says thank you."

He gave me a sidelong glance. "You've done well, Mikheil. Too well."

I raised an eyebrow. "That a compliment or a warning?"

"Both," he said. "Your men… they impressed the crowd. But they also drew attention."

"Good," I replied. "Let them talk. Let the Mensheviks stew."

"I'm not worried about the Mensheviks," he said. "I'm worried about some of our own. There are whispers. That you're building a personal army. That you're... a shadow to the Party."

I didn't flinch. "And what do you think?"

"I think you're an asset," he said, "because you understand what most of these theorists don't: revolutions don't survive on pamphlets and declarations. They survive on power. On structure. On fear. And loyalty."

Then he sighed. "But you also terrify them. And perhaps you should. A revolution without fear is a poem, not a movement."

Stalin, who had been leaning silently against the far wall, finally spoke.

"Mikheil's not a Bonaparte," he said. "If anything, he's our Dzerzhinsky. Just... better dressed and worse behaved."

"High praise," I said. "I'll embroider it on a pillow."

Lenin nodded. "For now, keep the Guard visible. But do nothing flashy for a while. No new uniforms. No new titles. No marches in helmets with skulls."

"Too late on the skulls."

"I mean it. Let the idea of order settle. Don't force it."

"Understood."

He stood, stretched, and winced at the vest. "Next time I give a speech, no guns."

"No promises," I said.

Outside, the chants were still faintly echoing through the streets. Bread. Peace. Land.

But now… they chanted something else too.

"Lenin! Soviet Power!"

I glanced at Stalin. He looked amused, but not surprised.

Lenin rubbed his temples.

"God help me," he muttered. "I think I just became a symbol."

May 1, 1917
Evening
Mikheil's Apartment
Petrograd

The apartment stank of cheap coffee, gun oil, and burnt cabbage. Stalin had kicked off his boots, loosened his collar, and was pouring tea like it was morphine. Outside, Petrograd still buzzed with the electric afterglow of revolution and parade hysteria. The chants had faded, but the tension hadn't.

I was sitting on the arm of the couch, still in uniform, cap tilted back, polishing a revolver with the casual affection of a man cradling a future.

Keke was in the kitchen making dinner with Aleksandra while the kids were playing in the living room. Besarion thank God was asleep.

"That," I said, "was just the beginning."

Stalin grunted. "You're starting to sound like Lenin."

"I'm flattered."

I leaned forward. "I've had reports—spies in the various Red Guard militias. Word is, some of them want in. They saw the parade, the uniforms, the discipline. My boys look like a future. The rest of them? They look like a drunken choir at a rifle range."

Stalin sipped his tea, watching me.

"I'll probably have a few thousand by the end of the month," I said. "Volunteers. Defectors."

There was a beat of silence. Keke was humming a Georgian lullaby as Aleksandra chopped vegetables. The room was warm but coiled like a spring.

"I'm going to start taking over the entire Petrograd underworld," I said casually. "Systematically. One gang at a time. Redirect smuggling routes. Fold the brothels, gambling dens, and forgers into my logistics network. We'll need all the resources we can get to fund this army. I even have plans for a few underground factories to start making guns and ammo."

Stalin inhaled deeply, his expression unreadable. "You're building a state within the state."

"I'm building the spine of a state," I replied. "Lenin can write pamphlets. You can rise through the party. But someone's got to arm and feed the men."

Another pause, Stalin stared at me for a long moment, then stood and walked to the window. He looked out over the flickering city.

"People are going to fear you."

"They already do."

"You could become a threat to Lenin."

"Only if he becomes a threat to us."

He didn't turn around.

Finally, he said, "Just make sure he doesn't become a threat."

I smiled. "As you say."

---

May 2, 1917
Lvov Cabinet Meeting
Mariinsky Palace, Petrograd

Prince Lvov looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. He probably hadn't. The war, the land question, Petrograd's descent into a semi-armed commune—all of it was devouring him slowly.

"Gentlemen," he said, voice hoarse, "yesterday's May Day parade… was a disaster."

The ministers shuffled papers nervously. Minister of War Guchkov, beet-faced with rage, slapped a photo on the table.

"These blackshirts—who are they? Why are they marching? Armed? With helmets? And skulls?"

"I heard they're Bolshevik," said Foreign Minister Milyukov.

Lvov buried his face in his hands. "We're losing control."

"You never had it," Guchkov muttered.

"There were thousands in the crowd!" shouted Justice Minister Pereverzev. "Cheering Lenin like he was a Tsar in red. And what did we do? Sit here and sip tea!"

"The Bolsheviks are building a parallel state!" Guchkov barked. "Lenin is writing manifestos—his underlings arming men! If we don't act now, there won't be a Provisional Government left by the end of the year."

Milyukov looked up slowly. "So what do we do?"

Everyone paused.

No one answered.

---

May 2, 1917
Bolshevik Inner Circle Meeting
Smolny Institute

Lenin sat at the head of the table, still in his dusty coat from the day before, reading Mikheil's most recent logistical report. It read more like a military occupation plan than a political memo. Recruitment numbers, uniform standardization, disciplinary protocol, even plans for underground arms factories.

Zinoviev was the first to speak.

"This is insane. He's setting up a personal army. Did you see those uniforms yesterday? Black, red, and skulls? It looked like the revolution had joined a death cult."

Kamenev grumbled. "He's worse than Dzerzhinsky, and Dzerzhinsky hasn't even arrived yet."

"He's effective," Lenin said quietly.

"Effective?!" Zinoviev exclaimed. "He's got death squads in the planning stages!"

"He also has seven hundred men who answer to the Party," Lenin replied. "Armed. Loyal. And capable of doing what the Red Guards can't."

"But how long until he decides the Party answers to him?"

Lenin looked up slowly. "Then we put a bullet in his head."

The room went silent.

Stalin, sitting in the corner with his usual quiet smirk, finally spoke.

"He's not a Bonaparte," Stalin said. "He's a butcher. But he's our butcher."

"Until he starts writing our names down," Kamenev muttered.

Lenin stood. "We'll let him build—for now. We need order. We need muscle. When Trotsky arrives, we'll reassess. But until then…"

He glanced around the room.

"Let the wolves do our hunting."

 

[Alenco98]

May 18, 1917
Petrograd, Russia

I stood on the edge of the train platform like a man awaiting the next chapter of an already absurd novel. Flanking me were roughly a hundred of my boys—armed, dangerous, and polished like they were about to storm Versailles or audition for a revolutionary fashion show. I was at their head, of course, looking very much like a warlord who'd learned public relations from watching too many mob movies in his previous life.

The rest of my force—about 1400 men, give or take a few new recruits and one or two "sudden resignations"—were elsewhere. Busy. After the May Day parade, recruitment had exploded like dynamite at a police station. Apparently, nothing inspires loyalty like disciplined uniforms, loud slogans, and a maniac with a clipboard and a rifle.

So, I seized the moment.

We expanded. Rapidly.

The underworld of Petrograd—always a writhing mess of pimps, smugglers, opium peddlers, and anarchist cosplayers—began to fall under our rule rather than our protection. I started with the smaller outfits. Gave them the pitch: "You can either answer to me, or to the chaotic soup of Red Guards, drunk militias, and amateur revolutionaries that roam the streets like revolutionary hyenas."

Most chose me. Because I was the devil they knew. And I was the devil with boots, guns, and a ledger.

They kept operational autonomy—for now—but they kicked up a percentage. In return, I kept the chaos at bay and provided the warm comfort of state-backed gangsterism. If recruitment kept up at this rate, I'd control the entire Petrograd underworld by the end of the year.

Maybe sooner.

Of course, we diversified.

We had a small workshop tucked away behind a bakery near Smolny, churning out homemade ammunition with the loving care of revolutionaries and ex-criminals who'd failed as poets. Plans were in motion to expand into rifles, pistols, maybe even improvised armored trucks if we could find enough scrap metal and not kill ourselves welding.

Then there were the soup kitchens.

Yes. Soup kitchens.

We had five of them now. Staffed, patrolled, and managed by my men. Peace. Bread. Land. Painted on every entrance in proud red letters. Nothing won hearts and minds like a hot meal and visible guns. Within our territory—mostly around Smolny—things were orderly. Our rules were simple: no robbing, no raping, no killing. Break the rules, you get hung from a lamppost. Just like that.

I had become something like Lil' Zé from City of God, only with more Marx and less cocaine. God, I missed modern movies.

But today wasn't about brothels or breadlines. Today was about a train.

A crowd had gathered around the station platform. Workers, students, soldiers, political enthusiasts, and those bored enough to follow a new messiah just for the fun of it. I stood at the front, humming Friends Will Be Friends under my breath. Queen always helped me stay grounded. My mom used to blast A Night at the Opera on weekends while cleaning. But me? I preferred their later work—A Kind of Magic, The Works. Friends Will Be Friends was my personal anthem. It reminded me that, even when life felt like a cosmic joke, someone somewhere was still willing to hand you a warm meal or hold your hand while you burned the world down.

Comforting, really. Especially considering I was now the reincarnated twin brother of a man who might just outdo both Robespierre and Hitler if left unchecked. And here I was—his quiet enforcer—building my own little revolutionary fiefdom as Petrograd slid into open madness.

So yeah. Queen helped.

Then I heard it.

The train whistled in the distance. A low mechanical groan echoed as it pulled into the station. The crowd surged, pressing forward with excitement and curiosity, faces flushed with anticipation.

The train hissed to a stop.

And out he stepped.

Leon Trotsky.

Shorter than I expected. Thin. Angular. Messy hair in a halo of defiant disorder. Round-rimmed glasses. He looked like the ghost of a university professor who'd once tried to assassinate a czar and then gotten distracted by theory.

The crowd cheered. He didn't smile—he observed them, coolly, methodically. Even from the platform I could feel it: the confidence, the ego, the unspoken "I've returned, and I'm the smartest man in the room."

I took a breath, then barked, "Salute!"

A hundred rifles snapped to shoulder. My men raised their aem, the "Roman" salute as always. My Soviet SS, god I was proud, maybe I could sue Adolf for plagiarism once he founds the real SS.

Trotsky paused at the bottom of the steps, taking in the sight. His eyes flicked to me.

"Mikheil Dzhugashvili," I said, stepping forward. "Comrade Makarov, Stalin's brother. I'm here to escort you to Smolny. Lenin's expecting you."

He tilted his head. "Stalin's brother?"

"The prettier one," I said, flashing a half-smile. "But you can call me Mikheil."

There was a flicker of something—amusement? Annoyance? Hard to tell with Trotsky.

"I've heard of you," he said, glancing at my men. "You're the one building a private army in the city."

"Among other things."

He gestured toward the street. "Lead the way."

And so I did.

As we walked toward the motorcade—two repurposed bakery delivery trucks and one stolen army car, all armored and painted with Bolshevik slogans—I let my mind wander for a moment. Lenin was probably pacing in his office, sharpening his metaphors and trying to decide whether Trotsky would be an asset or a rival. And I? I was escorting the man who would either become our greatest asset—or end up on my kill list.

The ride through Petrograd was slow and bumpy, our driver apparently selected for his ability to hit every pothole with philosophical intention. The city slid past us in shades of gray—factory smoke, battered buildings, exhausted people. Revolution wasn't glamorous. It was soot, sweat, and a faint smell of cabbage that lingered no matter how fast you drove.

Trotsky sat opposite me in the car, silent for the first few blocks, watching the street through the window like a man calculating the precise velocity required to leap from a moving vehicle.

"You ever been back here since '05?" I asked, trying to break the ice.

"Not since they arrested me," he replied, still watching the window. "I still remember the Tsar's guards dragging me out of the Soviet like I'd insulted their mothers."

I chuckled. "Well, now you're back. And the guards here all work for me so no dragging for you this time."

That got him to turn.

"You're quite proud of your militia."

"Someone has to be," I said with a shrug. "The Red Guards are passionate, but they're also drunk and mostly allergic to the concept of formation. So I filled the gap."

He narrowed his eyes. "And Lenin approves of this?"

"Lenin tolerates results. I provide results. He gives speeches. I make sure no one interrupts them with bullets."

He studied me for a beat. "And who are you again?"

"Mikheil Dzhugashvili," I said. "Stalin's younger twin. The better looking one, though he hates when I say that."

Trotsky blinked. "Stalin has a twin?"

"Surprise."

"Why have I never heard of you?"

"Because I've spent the last ten years not writing essays in exile," I replied with a grin. "When Stalin's wife Kato died back in 07, I stepped back. Raised Stalin's son Yakov while he ran off to organize revolts and get himself arrested and shot at repeatedly."

"And after that?"

"I moved to Petrograd. Figured if revolution ever came again, this is where the curtain would rise. I became a cop—don't judge me yet—and used the badge to gather contacts, stash weapons, build trust. I collected IOUs, favors, maps of the sewer systems, bribed officers, and built myself a very polite little arsenal under everyone's nose."

He blinked again, this time genuinely surprised.

"I wasn't ideological then," I admitted. "I was… preparing. I figured someone had to be the adult in the room when the world caught fire again."

He tilted his head slightly. "So you're not a true believer."

"Oh, I believe," I said. "I believe we're about to rip a thousand years of power out of the hands of the nobility, the clergy, the military, and every self-declared aristocrat who ever stole bread and called it divine right. I just also believe they won't let it go quietly."

"Now that," he said, "we agree on."

I nodded. "Which is why I've built more than just a militia. I'm pitching something bigger—Lenin's seen the outlines."

He raised a skeptical brow.

I leaned forward slightly, lowering my voice.

"I'm proposing a tripartite security architecture. First, a Soviet Armed Forces—a real army, trained, standardized, with political commissars in every battalion to keep it loyal to the Party."

Trotsky didn't react. But he was listening now.

"Second," I continued, "the Revolutionary Guard Corps—my creation. Separate from the army. Smaller, elite, ideologically trained. Their job? Prevent Bonapartism. No general ever gets ideas above his station without my boys knocking."

"And the third?" Trotsky asked flatly.

"A National Guard, run under a new Committee for State Security—our own intelligence service. Internal policing. Surveillance. Counter-sedition. They watch the army and the Guard Corps. The Guard Corps watches them. It's a beautiful system of distrust. A web of paranoia so tight no one can stage a coup without tripping ten alarms and getting shot by at least two branches of the state."

Trotsky's lips twitched. "So… your solution to tyranny is a mutually assured police state?"

"Not tyranny," I said. "Redundancy. And yes, a little healthy fear."

He turned to the window again, voice low. "You know what this sounds like, don't you?"

"Of course. But it works. No single man can seize power if the moment he tries, two other institutions move to crush him. The system polices itself. No Bonaparte marching on the capital someday with a loyal army and a grudge."

Silence fell over the car like a guillotine blade.

We bumped over a loose cobblestone. Trotsky exhaled through his nose.

"You're dangerous."

"Only to dangerous people."

"I'm not sure if you're a genius or just a very charming psychopath."

"Why not both?"

Trotsky snorted despite himself. "I see why Lenin lets you hang around. You're useful. Ruthless. And you talk like a man who's read too much and killed just enough to make it work."

"I try."

The car rumbled to a stop.

Smolny loomed outside, gray and severe as ever.

Trotsky opened the door, then paused.

"You know," he said without turning, "if this revolution survives, it won't be because of your kill lists. It'll be because people still believe something better is possible."

I nodded. "And it's my job to shoot anyone who ruins that possibility."

He stepped out, coat flaring behind him.

I watched him go, whistling quietly—Friends Will Be Friends again, of course.

Disarming? Yes. Dangerous? Also yes.

But he wasn't on the list.

Yet.

May 18, 1917
Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Lenin's Office – Later that day

The three of them sat around a battered oak table that had once been used by tsarist nuns to grade catechism tests. Now it hosted the would-be architects of a new world order.

Lenin sat at the head, ink-stained fingers steepled under his chin, his eyes flicking between his guests like a chess master weighing which piece to sacrifice first.

Trotsky—fresh off the train and still brushing soot off his coat—sat opposite, posture relaxed but coiled with energy. He hadn't removed his glasses, even indoors, as if he expected at any moment to be shown a pamphlet in need of urgent criticism.

Stalin was seated off to the side, silent, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded like a snake waiting for someone to blink.

Mikheil was absent from the room—officially. But the entire building still hummed with his presence. His men were on the stairs, in the halls, even refilling samovars in the breakroom. Everyone knew he was watching. You didn't need to see a panther to know it was in the trees.

Lenin broke the silence.

"You've been briefed on the situation?"

"I've read what I could," Trotsky replied. "The newspapers are full of fantasy. The city is boiling. The Soviets are divided. The Provisional Government is inert. And you, Lenin, seem to have turned some of the working class into your own personal army."

"Not my army," Lenin corrected, "our army. The people's."

Trotsky smiled faintly. "With black uniforms, red helmets and skulls?"

Lenin didn't rise to the bait. "Mikheil's methods are unorthodox, yes. But effective. We are surrounded by wolves. I'm not ashamed of keeping a few guard dogs."

Stalin grunted in what may have been agreement—or gas.

Trotsky looked at both of them carefully. "You know I'm not a Bolshevik."

"Not yet," Stalin murmured.

Trotsky ignored him. "And I'm no Menshevik either. Martov and his faction are still debating whether the proletariat deserves shoes."

"Ah," Lenin said dryly, "the revolutionary centrists—forever waiting for the perfect storm while drowning in the rain."

"I prefer to act when it's strategic," Trotsky countered. "And right now, you are acting with speed I'd call... alarming."

Lenin raised an eyebrow. "You've come back to a revolution in motion. Caution is a luxury I cannot afford."

Trotsky leaned back. "And Mikheil? What is he, exactly? A revolutionary? A general? A warlord?"

Lenin chuckled softly. "A necessary evil."

"His pitch to me," Trotsky continued, "sounded less like socialism and more like a board meeting at a steel trust. Revolutionary Guard Corps. Redundancy layers. Counter-Bonapartist intelligence directorates. He speaks like he's building an empire of preemptive paranoia."

Stalin finally spoke again, low and even. "That's because he is. But it's our empire. A people's empire."

Trotsky looked between them. "And what happens when this system—this beautiful web of distrust—turns inward? What happens when the watchdogs eat the master?"

"That's why we educate them," Lenin replied, voice suddenly sharp. "That's why we lead. We don't trust the revolution. We control it."

Trotsky's eyes narrowed. "That's not Marxism. That's mechanized autocracy."

"And yet you're here," Lenin said. "You got off the train. You came to Smolny. You could have gone to the Mensheviks. Or home."

Trotsky didn't answer.

The silence was loud.

Then Lenin leaned forward, calm and deliberate.

"We need you, Leon. Your mind. Your ability to speak to the masses. To organize. To command. The army is crumbling. The Red Guards are scattered. Mikheil's men can police Petrograd, but we need to build a national force. A true Red Army. And you—"

He let the words hang.

"You're offering me command?"

"I'm offering you responsibility," Lenin said. "You believe in the revolution, even if you doubt our style. Prove your way is better. Help us build the structure. Before the Provisional Government collapses—or worse, clamps down."

Trotsky looked again at Stalin, who gave him nothing but a long, quiet stare.

"I'll think about it," Trotsky said.

"Don't think too long," Lenin replied. "The train to the future is moving. You can either ride it—or be left on the tracks."

Trotsky rose.

He turned at the door. "And Mikheil?"

"He's outside," Stalin said. "Probably chatting with some guardsmen."

"I like him," Trotsky said flatly. "Terrifies me. But I like him."

"That means it's working," Lenin said with a faint smile.

Outside Smolny
Moments Later

I was leaning against a column, humming a Queen tune—Under Pressure this time—when Trotsky stepped out.

"Everything good in there?" I asked, tossing him a cigarette.

Trotsky caught it but didn't light it. "Your brother doesn't talk much."

"Neither do snakes before they strike."

Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "You really are just going to keep building this private empire of yours?"

I grinned. "Not private. Just… selectively socialist."

A beat.

"You're scaring the Mensheviks," Trotsky said.

"I scare everyone," I replied cheerfully. "That's why no one fucks with Lenin."

Trotsky smirked despite himself. "Charming."

"I try."

As Trotsky walked away, I turned to Comrade Bear.

"Put Trotsky on the maybe list," he said.

"Maybe for what?"

"Maybe he'll save us. Maybe he'll try to kill us. Either way… we'll be ready. Have a man on him at all times."

May 18, 1917
Later that Night
Dzhugashvili Apartment, Petrograd

It was after dinner time, and the city had gone quiet—by Petrograd standards, anyway. No gunfire, no screaming. Just the occasional clatter of boots in the alley and the distant hum of revolution humming itself to sleep.

Inside our new, nicer apartment near Smolny, the gas lamps burned low. The wallpaper was peeling, the floor creaked with every step, and the kitchen smelled faintly of tea, gun oil, and cabbage stew that had tried to be heroic but died in the pot.

Mom was in the kitchen fixing us some dinner as me and Stalin had come back late.

I meanwhile sat at the table in my uniform shirt, sleeves rolled up, pouring myself a small glass of Georgian brandy—liberated from a Black Sea trader who'd needed "protection." Stalin sat across from me in a threadbare chair, still half-dressed, a cup filled with brandy dangling from his lips like a punctuation mark that never quite ended the sentence.

We were alone.

Mostly.

"I like him," I said, swirling the glass. "Trotsky. Sharp. Funny, in that dry 'I'm smarter than everyone else in the room and I know it' sort of way. Knows how to hold court. Good posture. Voice carries. The soldiers will eat it up."

Stalin said nothing, just watched the smoke rise.

"But," I continued, "he's also a threat. Ambitious. Charismatic. Dangerous."

A pause.

"Either he'll be my best friend," I said, sipping slowly, "or I'll have to murder him."

From the kitchen came a loud clatter of metal.

I blinked.

Stalin blinked.

We both turned.

Keke—our mother—stood in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing her nightgown and clutching the samovar like it had personally insulted the Virgin Mary.

"You will do what?" she said in a voice that belonged more in a church confessional than a Petrograd apartment at midnight.

"Oh, Mama," I said quickly, setting the glass down. "I was being metaphorical."

"Murder is not metaphor," she snapped, crossing herself with the vigor of a woman who'd seen too many sons get ideas above their morals. "You are not Cain! You are baptized!"

"Yes, yes, we've all been baptized," Stalin muttered, exhaling smoke.

"Do not speak of killing, especially not of other Christians!" she shouted. "You will go to hell!"

"He's not even a Christian," I muttered. "He's a jew." I said in a tone what would make Patrick Bateman say, "cool it with the anti semitic remarks."

That earned me a wooden spoon from the counter, hurled like a divine missile. I ducked.

Then another voice chimed in—gentler, but just as damning.

"Mikheil," said Aleksandra, stepping into view from the bedroom in her house robe. Her hair was braided neatly. She looked tired, disappointed, and terrifying in that soft, domestic way that could kill a man without leaving a bruise.

"You're talking about killing people in front of your mother," she said.

"I wasn't trying to."

"You never try. It just… happens. Like your gun collection in the old apartment?"

I sighed, rubbing my temples. "It was just theoretical. You don't plan a revolution without a few contingencies."

"Contingencies shouldn't include murder," she said sternly. "You have children. What will you tell Iosif? 'Papa builds soup kitchens and occasionally assassinates political rivals'?"

"...Yes, what about it?"

She folded her arms. "This is not normal."

"I'm not normal, Aleksandra. We're not normal. We live in a city where half the people are starving and the other half are armed. I'm basically one of the strongest warlords here. A warlord trying to build order out of a collapsed empire. Sometimes that means being unpleasant."

"Mikheil," Keke interrupted, pointing at me with righteous fury, "if I hear you speak of murder again, I will drag you to church myself and have you confess it to Father Giorgi."

"He's been dead since 1904."

"Then I will dig him up!"

I glanced at Stalin. He was chuckling, the bastard.

"Oh don't look so smug," I said to him. "Last week you said you wanted to strangle Petrov from the Vyborg red guards."

"I said it quietly," he replied. "In confidence. Like a civilized revolutionary."

Aleksandra sighed. Keke muttered prayers under her breath and began pacing.

I stood, stretched, and walked to the cabinet, pulling out another glass. "Alright. Fine. I will not murder Trotsky. Yet. Let's see how he does first."

Keke groaned loudly and stormed back to the kitchen, muttering something in Georgian about her sons being wolves raised in a den of lunatics.

Aleksandra lingered a moment longer, looking at me with that exhausted, patient love only wives and saints are capable of.

"Just come to bed soon," she said softly. "Iosif keeps waking up. He misses you."

My smirk faded. I nodded.

She left.

Stalin leaned back in his chair, blew out a long stream of smoke, and said, "You really do terrify people."

"Only the ones who should be terrified."

"Trotsky?"

I finished my drink. "We'll see. I had bear send a man to keep an eye on him. The bastard won't be able to take a shit without us knowing about it."

May 18, 1917
Dzhugashvili Apartment
Petrograd, Russia
Later in the evening

The tea had long gone cold, the cigarette smoke hung low like a fog of unspoken crimes, and the clock ticked with all the cheer of a funeral procession.

Stalin was still seated across from me, one leg draped over the other, fingers steepled beneath his nose. He hadn't said a word in five minutes—not unusual for him—but I knew the gears were turning. They always were.

I leaned forward and broke the silence.

"We'll need to start working on the Party."

He didn't look up. "We?"

"You," I corrected. "You need to start working on the Party. I'm good at logistics, weapons, supply chains, making people disappear quietly into a canal—but this politicking, the committees, the backroom games, theoretical debates that end in purges? That's more your thing."

Finally, he met my eyes. "And what would I be working toward?"

I shrugged. "Influence. Control. Insurance. In case Trotsky turns out to be more Robespierre than Danton."

"He's already both," Stalin muttered. "He just hasn't picked who to guillotine yet."

"Exactly. So we get ahead of him. We need eyes in every Soviet, hands in every caucus, ears in every corridor. If he tries anything? We already own the vote, the gun, and the man counting the votes."

"And this plan of yours requires what, exactly?"

I smiled. "My entire empire."

That got his attention.

I reached under the table and pulled out a notebook—leather-bound, worn, a bit bloodstained. I slid it to him like it was a holy relic.

Inside were names, routes, stashes, contacts. The underbelly of Petrograd, mapped like a city of sin. Brothels. Gambling dens. Opium houses. Smuggling tunnels. Fenced jewelry. Bribed customs officers. Black market medicine and surplus army boots. And dozens of operators who paid me to keep them safe, silent, and functional.

"You've built a syndicate," Stalin said, flipping through the pages with an eyebrow slowly climbing his forehead.

"A state-sponsored one," I corrected. "And now it's yours to use—if you're willing."

He looked up slowly. "You're giving me this?"

"Use it however you want. Blackmail. Kill. Threaten. Bribe anyone and everyone in the Party and the Soviets to our side. I don't care what you do, just make sure when the dust settles, you're still standing and Trotsky isn't."

Silence. A long one.

Then a very loud gasp from the hallway.

We both turned slowly.

Standing in the shadow of the doorway, lit only by the faint orange glow of the dying lamp, was Keke—clutching a crucifix like she was about to perform an exorcism.

"Mikheil," she whispered. "You're funding Joseph's politics with whore money?!"

"Technically it's diversified," I replied. "There are also opium dens and weapons sales."

She staggered back like I'd slapped her with the cross.

"And you gave your brother a murder budget?!"

"Mama, please," Stalin said, rubbing his temples. "It's not a murder budget. It's a discretionary influence fund."

From the kitchen, Aleksandra appeared, pale as flour. She looked from me to the notebook, then back again.

"Mikheil," she said, voice trembling, "is that why there are diamonds in the sugar tin?"

"Collateral," I said. "From a pawn broker. He was late on payments."

She stared at me.

"You used our pantry as a vault?"

"It's temperature controlled," I said. "Also, no one ever checks the sugar tin."

Stalin cleared his throat. "If I may... the real takeaway here is that my brother is offering me an entire shadow economy with the express goal of stabilizing Bolshevik power."

"You boys need Jesus!" Keke barked.

"I need another cigarette," Stalin muttered.

"Not in my house." I barked. Stalin scowled.

Aleksandra shook her head and went back to bed, muttering something about moving to Georgia and raising sheep. Keke stayed in the doorway, silently praying under her breath, occasionally shooting me the kind of look that would have turned Lot's wife to salt twice over.

I leaned back in my chair, smirking faintly.

"So," I said to Stalin, "what do you say? You take the Party. I'll handle the streets. Between the two of us, we'll squeeze this revolution like a lemon and see who bleeds."

Stalin took another long drag, flipping the notebook closed with a slow, deliberate gesture.

"I say you're completely insane."

"But effective."

He nodded once. "That's the terrifying part."

 

[Alenco98]

July 17, 1917
Smolny Palace
Petrograd, Russia – Evening

We were crammed into one of Smolny's many drafty, echo-prone conference rooms, the kind with cracked molding, half-burned candles, and a crucifix someone had violently removed from the wall, leaving behind an unsettling shadow of Christ's outline and a bloodstain of flaking plaster. A very appropriate setting for the kind of conversation we were having.

At the table sat the main players: Lenin, looking gaunt and twitchy, eyes darting like a man who hadn't slept in three days and might never again. Stalin was across from me, smoking like it was a form of punctuation. Trotsky, technically still a free agent—neither Bolshevik nor Menshevik anymore—had been increasingly orbiting our camp like a highly intellectual asteroid with a great mustache and a dangerous gravitational pull. The rest of the Bolshevik high command filled in the gaps—Zinoviev, Kamenev, assorted theorists, tacticians, and wreckage from earlier debates.

The mood? Tense didn't quite cover it.

Outside, Petrograd was on fire—metaphorically and, in several districts, quite literally. Another massive strike had broken out yesterday. The Provisional Government, ever innovative in its capacity for self-destruction, had responded by rolling out machine guns earlier today. Live ammunition. Corpses in the street. Blood in the gutters. Very effective at crowd control, very bad for optics.

Now half the city was rioting, the other half was hiding in basements, and both halves were asking the same thing: "When are the Bolsheviks going to finish the job?"

And what did Lenin say?

"No."

Firm. Calm. Like he was ordering soup.

"We're not ready," he said.

And he was right.

Much as my inner tyrant wanted to flip the table and declare a glorious coup, I agreed. My Revolutionary Guard Corps had grown to just over 3,000 foot soldiers—not counting spies, runners, factory agitators, saboteurs, quartermasters, or the workshop crews making bullets out of melted candlesticks. We were organized, loyal, fanatical, and heavily armed, but we were still just the second-largest Red Guard force in the city.

Kronstadt still held the crown—both in numbers and in firepower. But the good news? They were warming to us. Fast.

Even better, I had made a personal friend in Fyodor Raskolnikov, one of the leading troublemakers over at Kronstadt. A boisterous, dangerous man with a talent for mutiny and a taste for vodka that could dissolve metal. We got along famously. Stalin had introduced us, and soon enough we ended up playing chess, drinking Georgian wine I bought and exchanging military workshop designs.

Ah, nepotism. Sometimes it really works.

Now, Raskolnikov—bless him—had taken it upon himself to incite a full-blown garrison mutiny. Which was fantastic in the short term, since it redirected government paranoia away from Smolny and toward Kronstadt. But also deeply inconvenient, because now Kerensky and his ilk were convinced we were days away from storming the Winter Palace with pitchforks and whatever the hell passed for a navy in July.

And speaking of government panic—Chernov, one of the Provisional Government's more unfortunate ministers, had been nearly lynched by a mob of angry sailors from Kronstadt just today. Who rescued him?

Trotsky.

Yes, that Trotsky. He threw himself into the crowd like a Marxist Moses and managed to pull Chernov out with nothing more than a torn coat and a lecture on revolutionary ethics.

It was hilarious. And also deeply horrifying.

Because it meant we were officially in the middle of an uncontrollable revolution. One that didn't care whether the Bolsheviks were ready, or whether Lenin's pamphlet schedule said now was the time to seize power. The mob didn't care about theoretical maturity or historical conditions. The mob wanted blood, and they were starting to look at us as the guys holding the knives.

Back in the room, Kamenev was wringing his hands about the need to "appeal to the working class with moral clarity," while Zinoviev muttered something about "tactical patience," and Lenin kept repeating that the time wasn't ripe like a man trying to will a fruit tree into bearing arms.

Trotsky, meanwhile, sat with his arms crossed, silently judging us all like a disappointed history teacher watching his students fail to spell "dictatorship of the proletariat."

I leaned back in my chair and looked around at this circus, this war council, this absurd halfway point between theory and chaos, and thought—

Jesus Christ, this is life now.

The room was still buzzing with low arguments and the smell of sweat, dust, and revolutionary failure. Lenin was pacing now, muttering to himself in staccato bursts of German and Russian. Zinoviev was still advocating for a pamphlet campaign, as if the Provisional Government could be drowned in paper. Kamenev looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin and back into his university library.

I stood.

My chair gave a very satisfying scrape against the floor. It got their attention.

"I think," I began, "we need to do something in between Lenin's refusal and Kamenev's suicide-by-caution."

A few heads turned.

"We don't call for a coup. But we don't condemn the strikes either."

Lenin stopped pacing.

"We say something vague. Something legally useless but emotionally loaded. Like: 'The Bolshevik Party will not be intimidated by counter-revolutionaries. The workers and soldiers will defend the gains of the revolution.'"

Trotsky raised an eyebrow.

"We don't name names. We don't shout 'Down with Kerensky.' But we hint. We remind the people: Peace, Bread, Land. That's it. Those three words are more powerful than any manifesto."

I stepped forward and set my hands on the table.

"Smolny becomes our fortress. Literally. I've got 3,000 men under arms. Heavily armed. Trained. Fanatical. They're already on alert. We lock this place down. We lock down our printing presses. Our workshops. Our warehouses. Our food kitchens. We put sandbags at the doors, machine guns on the roof, patrols on the street."

Kamenev blanched.

I continued. "We rally the other Red Guard detachments. I've got people embedded in all of them. Kronstadt. Vyborg. The students Committes. I can send emissaries to coordinate a 'Unity Rally' outside Smolny. Peaceful. Symbolic. Flags, workers, uniforms. No grenades unless the Provisional Government brings them."

Zinoviev looked queasy. "That sounds like a provocation."

"It's not a provocation unless we call it one. It's a rally in support of the people. We say we want Kerensky to listen—not fall. Yet. But we build pressure. Publicly, we say 'respect the people's will.' Privately, we dare them to shoot first."

Silence.

Then I added, "And while we're at it, we need to start preparing for the long game. A true army. Not just the Guard Corps. A Soviet Army. If civil war breaks out, we'll need more than Red Guards and street militias. We'll need logistics, uniforms, command structure, discipline."

I looked to Lenin.

"You pick the head. You're the one they trust. I'll supply him men, weapons, and security. But we can't wait forever. Either we build it—or someone else does."

Another silence.

Then the reactions came.

Lenin rubbed his forehead, muttering something about historical necessity and premature action. Finally, he said:

"This is… measured. Cautious. But strong. It's not a coup. Not yet. But it applies pressure. Keeps our options open. I agree with the rally—on one condition. No spontaneous arming of civilians. We can't afford a civil war yet."

Stalin just nodded. Slowly. "I like it. Order with flexibility. We let the people feel the power, without taking power. Not yet. And if things turn… we're already in position."

Trotsky leaned back in his chair, stroking his mustache like he was preparing to write a ten-page takedown of the idea.

"This plan reeks of Bonapartism," he said flatly. "Fortresses. Private militias. Secret police. Next you'll be proposing to build a Party navy with cannons shaped like hammers."

I smiled. "Actually—"

"However," Trotsky interrupted, "it's the best option on the table. We can't let the Provisional Government massacre people and then call for unity. We either defend the masses or we admit we're just another faction trying to out-publish the Kadets."

Zinoviev, predictably, looked horrified. "We are walking toward a militarized politics that will devour us all. These plans will lead to dictatorship!"

Kamenev nodded in cautious agreement. "We must proceed with great restraint."

Trotsky turned to them, voice razor-sharp. "You're both living in 1905. This isn't a theoretical seminar. The Provisional Government is shooting civilians in the street. If you're too squeamish to defend yourselves, get out of the way."

Lenin finally raised his hand.

"Enough. We proceed with the Unity Rally. Mikheil, coordinate with the Guard Corps and the other Red Guard factions. Zinoviev—draft a statement. Kamenev, you'll read it to the press. Keep it clean."

He looked around the room.

"We are not launching an insurrection. But we will not be trampled."

Then he turned to me.

"I'll name the head of the Soviet Army tomorrow."

As the meeting ended and the room slowly emptied, Stalin approached me and muttered quietly:

"You're building an army. I'm building the Party. Trotsky wants the revolution."

He lit another cigarette.

"Let's see who gets what first."

July 18, 1917
Smolny Palace – Morning
Petrograd, Russia

I stood just behind the giants of the revolution—Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Stalin, and Zinoviev—like a polite shadow with a violent streak. At my side were six of my boys, sharp-eyed, sharper-jawed, and carrying enough firepower to make a tsar reconsider his entire lifestyle.

Before us, arrayed in the courtyard like a row of toy soldiers if the toys had severe trauma and rifles, stood a full contingent of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Five hundred men. Black uniforms pressed and glinting in the morning light, red helmets with Totenkopf's gleaming like cherries of war. It was theatrical, it was militarized, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Honestly, if this whole communism thing didn't work out, I could pivoted to military fashion design if I'm not shot.

Each guard stood straight as a bayonet, rifles at their shoulders, sidearms holstered, boots polished to mirror shine. A sea of red stars stared back at us. It was a sight that inspired either awe, fear, or rapid bowel evacuation, depending on whether you were a Bolshevik, a Menshevik, or someone still clinging to the Provisional Government.

I stepped forward and stood next to Lenin, who squinted at the display like a man unsure if he was at a rally or a fever dream. Time to get the show started.

"Hail!" I shouted.

Instantly, five hundred arms raised—not clenched in defiance, but stretched forward in that "Roman" salute we all knew would one day become very problematic in Germany. But for now, it was ours. Revolutionary, symbolic, maybe a little fascist-flavored, but nobody could deny it had flair.

"Glory to the Party! Glory to Marx!" the guards barked in perfect unison, the sound bouncing off the palace walls like a war drum.

Then, like a choir of well-armed angels:
"Peace! Bread! Land!"

The crowd, packed in tight outside the gates, erupted into applause and whistles. Some waved red banners, others hoisted children onto their shoulders so they could glimpse the moment history smiled with crooked teeth.

I turned to Lenin, gave him a respectful nod, and grinned.
"Your turn, Comrade."

He looked at me like a man who'd just been handed a live grenade and told it was a microphone.

Lenin cleared his throat, adjusted his collar, and stepped forward with the subtle confidence of someone who was 70% ideology and 30% caffeine. The cheering softened. The crowd leaned in. History held its breath.

Meanwhile, behind me, one of my guards—Comrade Oleg, bless his simple soul—whispered, "Should we fire a volley into the air for drama?"

"No, Oleg," I whispered back. "Let the man talk before you start a civil war."

Lenin raised his hand. The crowd, remarkably, quieted.

"Comrades," Lenin began, his voice hoarse but firm, "we live in a time of great struggle. The streets of Petrograd have run with blood once again. Many ask what our position is, what the Bolshevik Party says of the protests."

He paused. Somewhere in the crowd, a bottle clinked to the ground. Someone coughed.

"To that, I say this: the will of the people is not to be silenced with bullets. But neither shall we allow our party to be dragged into premature confrontation by adventurists or provocateurs—be they in the street, in the army, or wearing a minister's sash."

That earned a few shouts of approval and a hearty, "That's right!" from someone in a dirty naval coat who may or may not have been drunk.

"We shall not let this Party be bullied by the agents of counter-revolution!" Lenin's voice rose now, his hand slicing through the air like it was cutting up bread—or political opposition. "The Soviets must stand united. Workers, peasants, soldiers, sailors—we must be disciplined, comrades. We must be prepared, organized, not reckless."

He gestured toward the red banners, fluttering beside bayonets and helmets.

"We call not for chaos—but for peace. We demand bread for the hungry. And we declare land to those who till it with calloused hands!"

A thunderous cheer erupted.

"Let the Provisional Government listen well," Lenin said coldly, "for we speak with the voice of the people. Let them act according to the will of the masses, or let history sweep them away like autumn leaves beneath a storm."

And with that, he stepped back.

A few scattered calls of "Lenin! Lenin!" broke out, but they quickly faded as another figure stepped forward.

Trotsky.

He had his glasses on, his hair wild as ever, and the look of a man who would argue with a priest at a funeral just for fun.

He adjusted his collar, raised one hand—and let loose like a cannon blast.

"Comrades!" Trotsky shouted. "We are told to be calm while workers are shot in the streets! We are told to be patient while bread lines grow longer, while our comrades rot in trenches for a war we did not ask for!"

Now the crowd was moving with him—cheering, clapping, rifles tapping against boots.

"They say revolution is premature," Trotsky barked, "but I ask you—was hunger premature? Was Tsarism premature? Are the bullets in Nevsky Prospect premature?!"

He was pacing now, gesturing wildly, passion crackling in every line.

"We will not provoke, no," he said with a sly smirk. "But we will not kneel either. The Bolsheviks will not cower before a dying regime whose only talent is butchery and bad policy!"

Rifles shot into the air. A few Kronstadt sailors let out howls like wolves.

"The hour approaches when the people shall act!" Trotsky bellowed. "And when that moment comes—our boots shall be laced, our rifles loaded, and our resolve as cold and sharp as a bayonet in winter!"

Absolute pandemonium. Cheers. Chants. Salutes. A Red Guard fainted from heat or passion—unclear which. Even Lenin looked vaguely impressed, though he gave Trotsky a side-eye like someone who'd just watched their dog learn to talk politics.

I stood there grinning like an idiot. My uniformed boys raised their rifles. The Kronstadt sailors followed. So did the factory guards. A hundred red banners whipped in the breeze like revolutionary streamers at a parade that might end in civil war.

It was perfect.

Controlled chaos. Righteous fury. Revolutionary theater with a machine gun budget.

No calls for a coup. No direct attacks on Kerensky. Just… a very sharp, very loud reminder:

We're here. We're watching. And we're not afraid.

July 18, 1917
A quiet office room near Smolny
Evening

The sun had dipped low, casting a soft amber glow over the Petrograd rooftops as I waited by the window, arms crossed, listening to the muffled sounds of typewriters and boots outside. Fyodor Raskolnikov entered quietly, closing the door behind him with a quick glance down the hallway—as if checking for ghosts or informants. I didn't blame him.

He was still in his naval greatcoat, boots caked with street dust, cap tucked under one arm. The man looked like he hadn't slept since the tsar abdicated—deep-set eyes, sharp cheekbones, and that grim Kronstadt expression of someone who knew how many corpses a revolution might stack.

"Comrade Makarov," he greeted.

"Comrade Raskolnikov," I replied, gesturing to the seat across from me. "Glad you came. You're a hard man to get a hold of. I was about to send a boat."

He sat with a faint, humorless grin. "Well, I haven't had time to schedule many social calls lately."

"Understandable," I said, pouring him a shot of watered-down wine from a dusty bottle I kept in my desk. "You're organizing half the Baltic Fleet and inciting Petrograd's garrison into spontaneous bouts of mutiny. Must be exhausting."

He took the drink, downed it in one motion, then looked me dead in the eyes.

"You wanted to talk?"

I nodded and leaned forward.

"The Provisional Government's not going to let this slide, Fyodor," I said. "Kerensky's already twitching like a man who hears the gallows being built behind him. There'll be a crackdown. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. But it's coming."

"I know," he said, grim.

"And when it does," I continued, "they're not going to start with Lenin or Trotsky. Those two are too public, too careful. They'll start with you. You and the other Kronstadt leaders. You're the perfect target—militant, popular, and naval."

He didn't respond. He didn't need to.

"So," I went on, "here's my offer: I'll shelter you. You and your closest officers. I've got safe houses near Smolny, underground supply routes, men who'll kill or die on my word. You'll disappear from public view, at least long enough for the fire to pass."

He arched an eyebrow. "And in return?"

I gave him a lopsided smile. "Just loyalty. Not blind. Not eternal. Just… remember who backed you when things got dangerous. Remember who kept you breathing. That's all."

He looked away for a moment, staring at a framed map on the wall—old, tsarist, cracked around the edges. The tension sat between us like an uninvited guest.

"I won't abandon Kronstadt," he said finally.

"I'm not asking you to," I said. "I'm offering to preserve your leadership so Kronstadt doesn't burn without a head. You think I want to see sailors gunned down in the streets because their commander was too proud to vanish for a week?"

He snorted. "You talk like a criminal."

"I am a criminal," I said, cheerfully. "But one with a plan."

He studied me—really studied me—for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.

"All right. If it gets worse, I'll send word. But if I go into hiding, I want my men armed, supplied, and ready to strike if needed."

I nodded. "Done. I'll keep channels open to Kronstadt, and if you have to vanish, we'll make it look like you walked into the sea and never came back."

He rose from the chair. "You really think it's going to come to that?"

I stood as well. "It already has. We're just waiting for Kerensky to catch up."

We shook hands—firm, cold, quiet.

"I'll hold you to your word," he said.

"Good," I replied. "Just be alive to do it."

As he left, I glanced out the window again. The streets below looked calm on the surface. But the revolution had teeth now—and they were starting to show.

-----------

July 20, 1917
Petrograd, Russia
Morning – an apartment in the outskirts of Vyborg

The room smelled like gun oil, cheap vodka, and paranoia. A perfect sanctuary, really.

Raskolnikov and three of the other Kronstadt sailor leaders had just arrived under armed escort—hooded for plausible deniability, escorted through back alleys and underground cellar tunnels that my men used for smuggling liquor and rifles. We fed them, gave them new clothes, and told them to shut up and not look out the windows.

It was a good thing they got here too, the Provisional Government had just issued an order for the arrest of Lenin and the leaders in Kronstadt. The government had agreed yesterday night and had planned to give the order out today. Fortunately, with some of my people embedded within the government I got advanced notice and sent people to get Roskolnikov, and now here we were.

"How long do we stay here?" one asked me, his breath still fogging despite the summer heat.

"Until I say so. Or until the government collapses. Whichever comes first," I said, handing him a mug of tea laced with just enough brandy to take the edge off his revolutionary zeal.

We gave them cots. Blankets. Soap. Even cigarettes—not the fancy kind, but it beat gnawing on a rifle stock. Then I left instructions with Comrade Bear to post three guards at every door, rotate shifts every six hours, and shoot anyone who asked too many questions. No one knew they were here, no one except bear and a few cadres within the RCG, they were hidden well, and I intended it to be that way for now. Right now however, I had a meeting to attend. Back to Smolny.

I traveled back to the city the say way I left, hooded for plausible deniability, escorted through back alleys and underground cellar tunnels that my men used for smuggling liquor and rifles. Fashionable, discreet, like I was in an Alex Ryder spy novel. By the time I arrived in Smolny it was mid afternoon.

I walked into the room where the Bolshevik leadership had gathered—Lenin, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, a few others who mattered, and Trotsky, who still technically wasn't one of us but was basically aligned with us.

I didn't waste time with pleasantries.

"Gentlemen," I said, taking my spot near the head of the conference table, "The government is moving. I just got word from my man in the Transport Ministry—they're mobilizing troops, sending them towards the city under the pretext of 'restoring order.' They'll get here tomorrow."

The room didn't go silent—it tensed. You could feel the oxygen trying to make a decision about whether to stick around.

Lenin leaned forward. "How reliable is the source?"

"He's currently sleeping with the secretary of one of Kerensky's deputy ministers. I trust pillow talk more than I trust the newspapers."

Zinoviev muttered, "A military coup…"

Stalin grunted. "Called it."

Kamenev, more cautious as always, asked, "I knew this would happen, we shouldn't have done that damn ra-"

"Quiet," I said. "We still have time. Which is why I've taken the liberty of setting up a response."

Trotsky, arms folded, raised an eyebrow. "Oh? I assume this will be something subtle and nuanced?"

I grinned. "Subtle as a punch to the teeth."

I laid it out fast:

"We use this. We want the people to think an aristocratic counterrevolution is coming—because it is. We flood the streets with posters, handbills, speeches. 'The generals are coming. The landlords are coming. Only the Soviets stand between you and the whip.'" I paused. "Catchy, right?"

Lenin cracked a faint smile. "Keep going."

"I'm sending my men to sow unrest in the army's ranks—especially the infantry and artillery divisions. Lots of peasant boys in those units. I imagine they won't be thrilled to learn they're being used to march on Petrograd and shoot their brothers."

"Agitators?" Stalin asked.

"Agitators. With leaflets, money, and alcohol. One or two guns if negotiations break down."

Kamenev looked skeptical. "You really think you can divide them?"

"I don't need to divide them. I just need to make them hesitate. A hesitating army doesn't march—it festers."

"Anything else?" Lenin asked, already scribbling notes like he was drafting the future.

"Yeah. I've still got men in the Provisional Government. Minor clerks, typists, janitors—no one famous, but they hear things. I'll have them start whispering that the generals are going rogue. Make it look like he's not just targeting us, but Kerensky too."

That got a laugh from Trotsky. "Divide and conquer. You're a natural Machiavellian."

"I prefer the term preventative visionary," I said.

Lenin folded his arms and nodded slowly. "This could work. If we don't overreach."

"We won't," I said. "We won't call for a coup, not yet. Remember? We don't need to. We'll just make it clear that we will not be bullied. The guards will remain in Smolny, our printing presses, warehouses, workshops. Fortify. Post patrols. Distribute food. Give speeches. We won't say 'down with Kerensky'—we'll say 'respect the will of the people.' We'll call for bread. Peace. Land. Like in your speech yesterday."

"And if the army marches anyway?" Kamenev asked.

I shrugged. "Then we shoot them in the face and blame the entire mess on monarchist traitors. Either way, we win. They'll look like the aggressors, we'll look like the victims. The red guards look to us now, Kronstadt is on our side, and we have 3000 heavily armed men. Kerensky knows if he tries anything it'll be civil war. He won't roll the dice."

As we left the room, Lenin clapped me on the shoulder.

"Comrade Mikheil," he said, "your methods are unorthodox."

"Better unorthodox than buried."

Stalin gave me a look. "You've been reading too much Machiavelli again, haven't you?"

"Of course," I said. "And I underlined the violent parts."

 

[Alenco98]

July 21, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Afternoon

We were seated in the grand chamber that, for lack of a better term, had become the provisional war room of the Revolution. The walls still smelled faintly of chalk dust and candle wax from the building's former life as a finishing school for the daughters of the nobility. Now it housed armed men, political fanatics, and a bureaucratic fever dream I'd drafted in a haze of memories from my past life, everything from the Baathists to the Waffen SS to south American millitary juntas, all rolled up and painted with a bright red color and aesthetic. Glorious.

This was the first official meeting of the Revolutionary Defense Council—not yet National, of course, but hey, the branding had to start somewhere. This was my baby. My Frankenstein. My blueprint for a state built on steel, slogans, and layered paranoia. And it was breathing.

At the head of the long table sat Vladimir Ilyich Lenin—half messiah, half migraine. Beside him, on the left, Leon Trotsky in his clean jacket, polished spectacles, and smirk that could slice bread. And me, Mikheil, to Lenin's right—looking like the devil's gym coach in my black Guard Corps uniform, the newly minted Supreme Commissar of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. It sounded impressive, which was the point.

There was an empty chair left for Dzerzhinsky. He was en route from Moscow. Stalin had written him personally, even sent him a copy of my Internal Security memo, which I'll admit was basically a love letter to professional paranoia. From what I'd heard, Dzerzhinsky had a spine made of steel and a stare that made prison wardens flinch. Stalin described him with a kind of reverent dread—said he once chewed out an entire police battalion with a single look. The man had spent more time in solitary than most people spend asleep, and he never cracked. Never begged. Never even got indigestion, apparently.

So of course I wanted him to run the intelligence service. He sounded perfect if Stalin was to be believed.

While the others fiddled with papers, I stood humming quietly to myself—Remember Summer Days by Anri, because dammit, it was July and I was feeling nostalgic for a time that technically hadn't happened yet. City pop from the 1980s? Sue me. It kept me calm, unlike the Russian summer which smelled like sweat, cordite, and old cabbage.

Lenin looked up and deadpanned, "Comrade Mikheil, if you insist on serenading the Revolution, at least be in key."

I stopped humming and raised an eyebrow. "What, you don't like sweet summer songs about heartbreak?"

"I prefer we discuss building the army," he said flatly.

Sigh. "No respect for musical taste." Bastard.

"We need to expand immediately," Lenin continued. "Your Guard Corps, Trotsky's military detachments need to unite the Red Guards under our command. And Dzerzhinsky's national guard once he gets here. Discipline, logistics, hierarchy. I want unity, and I want it now."

Trotsky nodded, adjusting his spectacles. He still hadn't formally joined the Bolsheviks, but at this point, he was more "Bolshevik-adjacent" than most actual members. His Mezhraiontsy faction was preparing to merge with us during the upcoming Party Congress. My own people inside his circles told me he had about 4,000 sympathizers—cadre, factory agitators, some ex-soldiers. Only 500 were armed. The rest had slogans and a dangerous amount of free time.

Charming, yes. Dangerous, also yes. So I'd help—but not with my best toys. I had a rule about arming charismatic men who hadn't yet sworn loyalty. They would get rusty Mosins, hand-me-down pistols, machine guns that wheezed like old men. Just enough to say, "Look, we care," but not enough to let him play Napoleon.

"I'll start reallocating workshop production," I said. "Get them the basics—rifles, ammo, a few belt-fed toys."

I looked Trotsky in the eye and smiled the way a man smiles while counting exits in a room. "You'll need to institute real military discipline. Ranks. Drills. Punishments. The whole menu. If civil war comes—and it will—we'll need a damn army, not a rabble of angry poets with rifles."

Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "Poets with rifles won the Commune."

"And how long did that last?" I replied, sweetly.

Lenin chuckled. Trotsky grimaced, then scribbled something furiously in his notebook—probably a note to later yell at me.

Trotsky eventually nodded. "I'll appoint officers. Begin drills. But I want autonomy in organization."

"Of course, it's your Millitary," I said, smiling with all my teeth. "I'm here to ensure no Bonapartes rise up from within your ranks. And Dzerzhinsky once he's here will be there to keep an eye on me. And we're here to keep an eye on Dzerzhinsky. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be."

Trotsky's expression didn't change, but his eyes told me he was displeased with the arrangement. Bite me.

As Frank Underwood once said in my previous life: Shake a man's hand with one hand, hold a rock in the other. Except this wasn't Gaffney, South Carolina. This was Petrograd in 1917, and the rock wasn't metaphorical—it was three thousand heavily armed men in red helmets. Well, soon to be 4, maybe 5, applications were skyrocketing.

But for now, the meeting went on. And went on it did, for hours in fact. Logistics, funding, discipline, protocol, drilling, lovely, boring shit. But better than giving speeches, I had stage fright. But back to the meeting.

The air in the chamber grew heavier as the meeting went on. The dull orange glow of kerosene lamps flickered against chalkboards now covered in hand-drawn military maps and half-erased propaganda slogans. The Revolutionary Defense Council was still in session—none of us could leave. Outside, the streets of Petrograd were quiet in that way cities are before they erupt.

Lenin leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers steepled beneath his beard. "The army is restless."

He didn't need to say it twice. We all knew. Every report we'd received in the last several hours told the same story: infantry regiments from outside the city were lining the outskirts under military command. Meanwhile, inside Petrograd, Red Guards, sailors, and soldiers loyal to the Soviets had turned their factories, barracks, and soup kitchens into fortified bunkers.

All it would take was a single musket crack—one stupid spark—and we'd be swimming in blood.

Trotsky, arms crossed, spoke first. "The millitary wants provocation. They're banking on us taking the first shot. Then they declare martial law, paint us as terrorists, and slaughter their way to legitimacy."

"Which is why we don't shoot first," I said, sipping tea that tasted faintly of gun oil and mold. "We wait. Fortify. Let them stew. But not a step back either. We don't show weakness."

I pointed at the map where red circles denoted the Revolutionary Guard strongpoints. "Smolny's a fortress. My men are disciplined, armed, and sitting on their hands playing cards and cleaning bayonets. Let them come to us. If they fire first, they lose the narrative."

Lenin cleared his throat. "Narratives are fine, Mikheil, but if they surround us, the city becomes a prison. And we're not the wardens."

"I never said we sit idle," I replied. "We can negotiate. Send someone to speak with Kerensky. Buy time. Let him think we're open to reconciliation, or de-escalation, or whatever buzzword he needs to sleep at night."

Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "You want to lie to the Provisional Government?"

I looked at him like he'd asked if the sky was blue. "Of course I want to lie to them. You think I built a private army by being honest? Kerensky wants to believe we're still playing politics. Let him."

Lenin muttered, "That's a dangerous game."

"Comrade Lenin," I replied, voice dry, "we're Bolsheviks. Our entire existence is a dangerous game."

I leaned back, hands folded. "Besides, while they're busy talking, we begin to consolidate the Red Guards under Trotsky and begin molding them into a true Soviet military. I've already got feelers out with some of the Kronstadt boys. Raskolnikov and a few other leaders are holed up in one of my safe houses. Cozy place. No lice. We need to convince them to consolidate under our command. We wrap them into Trotsky's battalions, formalize it. Discipline them. I say make Roskolnikov head of the navy."

Trotsky gave me a sidelong glance. "You think they'll listen to me?"

"They won't listen to anyone but you," I said. "Roskolnikov is friendly towards me but he think I'm a gangster. They're not wrong. But you're still the man from the 1905 Soviet. You have the mystique. The charisma of the streets."

Trotsky smirked slightly. "So you're proposing I become a symbol."

"No," I said. "I'm proposing you become a leader. The symbol is Lenin. You're the saber."

Lenin looked up at that, finally breaking his silence. "And you, Mikheil? What are you in this equation?"

I smiled. "I'm the one that protects the party from the saber if a Bonaparte takes hold of it."

That got a solemn nod from Lenin.

"We'll need to vet the Kronstadt officers," Lenin added. "Some of them are radicals, anarchists even."

"Let them be radicals," I replied. "As long as they take orders and know where the bullets go, I don't care if they believe in the Tooth Fairy or a flying borscht monster. Once they're under our umbrella, we can trim the fat later."

Trotsky looked uneasy. "You make it sound like we're planning a purge."

"I'm not planning a purge," I said with a grin. "I'm just preparing for one in case the situation demands it. Well, that would be Dzerzhinsky's job, I'd just be there to provide the extra muscle if he asks for it."

Lenin rolled his eyes. "You know you're terrifying, right?"

"Thank you I'm flattered."

Lenin then stood, signaling the meeting was done. "Do it. Contact Kerensky. But no agreements. No promises. Buy us time. Meanwhile, Trotsky, start integrating the Kronstadt detachments and the Mezhraiontsy into a proper military. If we can consolidate the red guards under one chain of command, we'll be more than a movement—we'll be a state in waiting."

We both nodded. "I'll send a few of my men to take Trotsky to Roskolnikov. He's out by Vyborg. But you never heard what I said."

As we filed out, Trotsky grabbed my shoulder and asked me to stay behind for a second. "Mikheil," he said, "you ever consider not smiling when you talk about violence?"

"I am smiling?" I asked.

He didn't laugh.

Smart man.

 

[Alenco98]

July 22, 1917
Grand Hotel d'Europe, Nevsky Prospect
Petrograd, Russia

Luxury has a smell. Velvet chairs that have never felt real poverty. Polish so thick on the floors you can see your sins in the reflection. A room like this one—at the top of the Grand Hotel d'Europe—reeked of old money, even if most of the empire's capital was currently being dragged through the gutters of revolution and possible counter-revolution. I stood there, hands clasped behind my back, staring out over Nevsky Prospect, the grand avenue of Petrograd. Once it was a river of nobility. Now, it was caked in blood and soot.

They still hadn't cleaned up the blood from five days ago. You'd think someone in the provisional government would've brought a mop. But no. The bloodstains were still there. Dried. Maroon. Historical. It added ambiance, I suppose. You don't get that at the Ritz.

Of course, I wasn't here for the view. Or the stench of incompetence. I was here for a meeting. "Negotiation" implies honesty, fairness, maybe even goodwill. I had none of those things in my pocket. I came to lie so well that it would buy us at least seventy-two hours of revolutionary breathing room. Long enough for Trotsky to butter up Raskolnikov in one of my safehouses out in Vyborg—cozy place, low rent, very little police attention, three entrances, and a lovely view of the alley where I had my men dump the bodies.

If Raskolnikov went all in with us, that was it. Game over. His Kronstadt sailors were fanatics with bayonets. Fanatics we liked. And more importantly, they were organized, armed, and willing to shoot people for fun and ideology. With them, we'd become the largest Red Guard faction in Petrograd. Sure, there would still be other groups out there—but they were disorganized anarchists, drunk Mensheviks, socialist vegetarians, and people who thought "direct democracy" was a substitute for logistics. The city would be ours like a bassline belongs to a Toto track.

And who was I here to lie to?

Kerensky. The man, the myth, the mediocre. Prime Minister now, after Lvov finally realized running a revolutionary government was not the same thing as managing a provincial hunting club. Poor guy probably cried into his cravat before resigning. So, Kerensky it was. Lawyer. Orator. Believer in constitutional socialism. Basically, a man who thought he could tame a burning building by giving it voting rights.

Behind me stood my boys. A detachment of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Red armbands, black boots with painted red stars, pressed black uniforms, and their now-signature red helmets adorned with Totenkopfs. Yes, skulls. An aesthetic war crime—a strange fusion of communist color and nazi aesthetic. We looked like we couldn't decide whether we were about to liberate the workers or goose-step over their corpses. And that was exactly the point. Fear is branding.

Was it hypocritical? Of course. But as I often reminded myself in the mirror every morning: I wasn't a communist. I wasn't even a proper revolutionary. I was just a modern man born in the wrong time, trying to turn Petrograd into a profitable dystopia before my twin brother Joe turned it into an actual Robespierrerian theme park with forced dissapearances and labor camps instead of a simple beheading on the menu. If I could trim the body count down from "millions" to "a few hundred thousand," I figured I deserved a Nobel Peace Prize and a Queen vinyl box set.

I leaned against the glass, humming "Turn it into love" by Kylie Minogue. The synths were in my head—soft, nostalgic, painfully out of place in this war-torn capital of imperial decline and rising paranoia. I wished I had a cassette player. Hell, I wished I had a drink. But drinking was for the anxious, and I was calm. At least on the outside.

Soon, Kerensky would walk through those gilded doors. I'd smile. He'd pretend he wasn't terrified of me and my boys. I'd make vague comments about peace and stability. He'd make even vaguer ones about democracy and national unity. And while we danced this diplomatic tango, Trotsky would arm the sailors, I'd consolidate the guard corps, and the empire would continue to hemorrhage into history.

Ah, the sweet scent of revolution. And blood. Always the blood.

Now, where the hell was the room service? I was promised tea.

I liked my betrayals with jasmine.

Fortunately for me my tea came in 5 minutes later, not jasmine sadly, out of stock, Green tea it was, fuck.

As I was sipping on my tea Kerensky entered like a man late to his own execution: upright, composed, sweating through his collar. His hands fluttered near his coat buttons, then away—an unconscious tick. He wasn't afraid of me, of course. No, no. He was afraid of the future. I just happened to be wearing it like a uniform.

"Comrade Makarov," he said stiffly, offering a handshake. "Thank you for coming."

I didn't shake. Instead, I offered a nod, polite but cool. My gloves were still on. "Prime Minister."

He didn't correct me. He sat across from me in one of those gaudy Louis XVI chairs that screamed ancien régime louder than a Romanov with gout. I took the opposite seat, leaned back, and crossed one leg over the other like I was auditioning for a role as 'Sinister Twin Brother #2' in a Tolstoyan noir.

"Let's speak plainly, shall we?" I said, brushing imaginary lint from my black overcoat. The red trim caught the afternoon sunlight like a bloodstain trying to be elegant. "The city's burning. Again."

Kerensky's smile was diplomatic, which is to say nervous. "Yes. A regrettable situation. We are working to restore—"

"—the illusion of control?" I interrupted, smiling thinly. "A noble effort. But no one believes in illusions anymore. We traded those for rifles."

He stiffened but didn't rise to the bait. Smart. Barely.

I gestured out the window toward Nevsky Prospect, where army patrols were now warily skirting the edges of Red Guard barricades like rats around a bear trap. "Let's not pretend. The army's in a standoff with my people. I have over 3,000 men—disciplined, armed, uniformed, and increasingly sober. The Kronstadt boys are very sympathetic to my cause, as are the various red guard factions within the city. I've ordered them to hold every inch of ground they've taken. They will not fire the first shot. But if fired upon..."

I let that sentence hang in the air like a funeral banner. Kerensky's jaw tightened.

"We did not endorse the events of the last few days, Prime Minister," I said with mock sincerity. "We told our people we would defend ourselves from counter-revolutionary aggression. We never once called for your removal. In fact, I personally prevented a dozen would-be martyrs from storming your offices. Peace, bread, land—those are polite requests, not demands. You should be thanking me."

He stared. "You're asking me to forget the last few days ever happened?"

"I'm offering you a return to stability." I smiled. "A return to the status quo ante insurrection. All you have to do is nothing. No raids. No arrests. No premature declarations of martial law. Quietly call off the arrest orders on Lenin, Roskolnikov, Trotsky and all the other Bolsheviks and Kronstadt boys you just imprisoned. You pretend last week was a nasty fever dream, and in return, you get... peace."

"Peace," he repeated, flatly.

"Yes," I continued, "a temporary truce between competing mobs, an unofficial armed zone around Smolny. That's the Petrograd Soviet's version of peace."

Kerensky exhaled slowly. "And if I refuse?"

I shrugged. "Then you can send your men to storm Smolny, we won't fire the first shot but once your men do, you and I both know a civil war will begin right then and there. You'll lose the city. Maybe the country. And Berlin will be very interested to hear that you picked a fight with your own capital while their military is probably preparing for a new offensive after your little failed stunt a few weeks ago. Can you afford that?"

He said nothing. That was the most honest thing he'd done all day.

"Look," I continued, folding my hands, "you know as well as I do this place is one spark away from becoming a bloodbath. I'm just here to keep the fire in the bottle. But if you crack down—if you push—we won't be the ones starting the war, but we sure as hell will be the ones finishing it."

Kerensky looked down at his hands—clean, pale, shaking slightly.

"You're threatening the provisional government," he said quietly.

I laughed, sharp and low. "Oh, Prime Minister. I'm not threatening you. I'm educating you. There's a difference. Threats are loud. Warnings are polite. If I told Comrade bear over here to strangle you if you opened your mouth again, that would be a threat." I glanced at bear. "Don't do it though, it's a example."

He only nodded.

Then I stood. Slowly. The meeting was over.

"You're very good at this, Comrade Makarov," he said grimly.

"I used to be a police officer," I said cheerfully, my men following me as I walked towards the door. "You learn how to negotiate with men."

As I stepped into the hallway, the first bars of an old Laura Branigan song drifted through my head—Gloria', I think. Something smooth. Honey for the soul.

And I smiled. Because I was winning.

July 22, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia — Evening

I arrived at Smolny covered in the usual dust, city smoke, and political residue that clings to you after sharing a room with Alexander Kerensky. The man smelled like sweat, fear, and Eau de Liberal Delusion.

The guards at the entrance saluted in that familiar style—the one that would become deeply unfashionable in Germany after the second world war in my timeline—but for now, it still meant "we are armed and ideologically enthusiastic." I saluted back, passed through the double doors, and climbed the grand staircase two at a time, boots echoing like war drums on marble.

The meeting was already in progress.

Inside the old classroom that had become our nerve center, the familiar rogues' gallery of revolution was gathered: Lenin, perched at the head of the table, chewing the end of a pencil like it owed him money; Kamenev beside him, looking as anxious as a banker in a commune; Stalin in the corner, calm and quiet—deadly quiet—like a bear that had just learned how to use a ledger. And then there was Trotsky, who had only just returned, his coat still dusted with road grime and the scent of grandiosity.

"Ah," Trotsky said the moment I entered, brushing invisible lint from his sleeve, "Comrade Makarov returns from his audience with our beloved Kerensky. Tell me, did he weep, or just piss himself?"

"A bit of both, I think," I said, hanging up my coat and taking my usual seat beside Stalin. "Though I think the piss was metaphorical. The man is trying to play poker with a hand full of pamphlets."

"What did he say?" Lenin asked, voice low, brows furrowed like thunderclouds gathering above a battlefield.

I nodded. "He'll back off. At least for now. I told him we'd pretend the last few days never happened if he doesn't try anything stupid. I reminded him that I've got 3,000 heavily armed men and that I'm not afraid to use words like 'civil war' in casual conversation."

Lenin smiled. It was not the warm smile of a kindly uncle. It was the thin, papery grin of a man mentally writing a manifesto while someone else talks.

Kamenev exhaled slowly. "We're sitting on a volcano."

"We are the volcano," Trotsky muttered. "They're the ones building dachas at the base."

I turned to him. "Speaking of firestorms, any news from our friends in Kronstadt?"

Trotsky's grin returned in full force. "Raskolnikov is in. He agreed to consolidate under our command. Effective immediately, he's the new Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy."

There was a beat of silence, then a collective exhale. Even Lenin leaned back slightly.

"That's no small gain," Stalin said finally, his voice like gravel soaked in vodka.

"He's right," I agreed. "With Kronstadt on our side, we now control the sea—at least the Gulf of Finland. More importantly, we have a large, angry contingent of sailors who love nothing more than shooting officers and yelling slogans. We can work with that. Taking into account my 3000 guards, Trotsky's 500 men, and Kronstadt's approximately 9000 men from both sailors, infantry and dockworkers we have approximately over 12 thousand men under arms. If we arm all of Trotsky's men we'll have over 16 thousand. The remaining red guards are all mensheviks, anarchist, socialists and every else in between. They're approximately 4-5 thousand in total. Once we fully consolidate and integrate them we'll basically control the city."

"I assume they'll need arms," Lenin said.

"They're sailors, they've already got more guns than grammar. But I'll supply extra rifles and ammo. The priority right now is arming Trotsky's Mezhraiontsy faction. They'll be the core of our Soviet army. We'll need to train them, standardize doctrine, impose discipline, hierarchy. Trotsky, you'll handle it right? You'll also need to name a head of the army. And air force once you get started. You're head of the joint chiefs, you coordinate between the army, navy and air force, you can't lead them yourself. Unless Bonapartism is your style."

Trotsky scowled then nodded. "I'll arrange it."

"Good," I nodded. "We're building an army. And a navy. And an air force too once we have the resources. And, if we're being honest, an entire state security apparatus based on layered paranoia and deeply unhealthy levels of mutual surveillance. But hey, at least the trains might run on time."

That got a small chuckle out of Kamenev. Stalin just smiled slightly—he liked it when I joked about paranoia; it saved him the trouble of pretending not to enjoy it.

Lenin stood, the room falling quiet.

"Then it's done. Raskolnikov leads the navy. Trotsky will oversee consolidation of the Red Guards and creation of a centralized military command. We will continue to build, recruit, and wait. Mikheil will continue expanding the Revolutionary guard corps. And once Dzerzhinsky comes he will begin establishing the national guard and our intelligence agency. We will not strike first. But if the moment comes..."

"We murder them," I said in a cheerful tone.

Everyone nodded. That was the mood now—anticipation sharpened to a fine point. The smell of gun oil, ink, and cheap Petrograd coffee hung in the air like prophecy.

The revolution wasn't coming.

It was already here.

July 22, 1917
Mikheil's Apartment, Petrograd
Late Evening

The lamplight was low, casting long, flickering shadows across the cramped apartment. The air was thick with tobacco smoke, bread crumbs, and revolution—our usual bouquet. I sat on the worn armchair across from Stalin, unbuttoning my coat, boots dirty with Petrograd mud and Red Guard blood—not literal blood today, thankfully.

Stalin sat hunched at the kitchen table, sipping tea that was more memory than flavor. His face, as usual, was unreadable. Not blank—just still. Like a cat watching a mousehole, unsure if it wants to eat or toy.

"Listen," I started, "We need someone to officially coordinate logistics and supplies."

He glanced at me sideways. "You've been doing it."

"Exactly. I've been doing it—for everyone. My Revolutionary Guard, Trotsky's army; soon enough I'll be doing it for Kronstadt's sailors, and Dzerzhinsky's, well, our little Bolshevik Okhrana and national guard. I'm building workshops, running safehouses, recruiting and training men, printing leaflets, managing soup kitchens, collecting protection fees from businesses and criminal organizations, not to mention and buying more goddamn boots, bullets, guns and food than a single man can use in a thousand lifetimes. We've got thousands of men to feed and arm, and it's getting out of hand."

Stalin nodded, clearly listening.

"I propose we create a post—Commissar of Strategic Resources," I continued, leaning forward. "Someone to coordinate supplies, production, recruitment, and logistics across the board. And I've got a candidate."

"Who?"

"Our brother-in-law. Alexander Svanidze."

Stalin didn't speak. Just stared for a moment, pipe clenched between his teeth like a vice.

"He's family," I added quickly, "but he doesn't carry the Jugashvili or the Stalin name. That matters. He's low-profile, competent, and already a party man. Quiet, loyal, educated. He did well at Tiflis. He's helped me handle accounting and translation work while you were off shooting cops. He knows numbers, and more importantly, he knows how not to talk too much."

Still nothing. Just the sound of the kettle hissing and the creak of Keke's chair in the corner.

"Whoever controls the purse," I added, voice lowering, "controls the army. You know that. Trotsky can play Napoleon all he wants with his flair and his speeches, but if he can't clothe his men or put bullets in their rifles, he's just an orator with an audience problem."

Now Stalin smirked. Just a twitch, a curl of amusement in one corner of his mustached mouth. "You want me to propose this to Lenin?"

"Exactly. You propose it. Say you've got a few candidates. Leave Svanidze's name until later. It's less suspicious if it comes from you."

He exhaled through his nose, pipe smoke trailing like battlefield fog. "You trust him?"

"More than I trust Trotsky."

From the corner, a soft voice interrupted us. "You boys always talk about trust like it's something you can measure in bullets," Keke said, folding laundry with the grace of a saint and the subtle disdain of a Georgian grandmother who had seen far too much. "And all this talk of control… When does your little revolution start feeding people, hm?"

Stalin turned toward her slowly, affection and deference showing in the small way he adjusted his posture. "Mikheil already is Mama. Haven't you seek the soup kitchens?"

Aleksandra emerged from the tiny kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron. "He's right, though," she said, looking at me. "You're doing too much. You're thinning yourself. You come home and fall asleep at the table. Last week you went 20 hours without eating. That's not revolutionary, that's idiotic."

"Don't worry," I said with a grin. "If I die, my men will carry my corpse on a banner of black and red, with a slogan that says, 'He died for logistics.'"

Stalin rolled his eyes. "You want me to make our brother-in-law the commissar, fine. But if he starts siphoning food to his cousins in Kutaisi, I'll have him shot."

"He won't," I said, waving it off. "And if he does, I'll shoot him myself. We're family, not sentimental."

Keke crossed herself.

Aleksandra looked horrified. "Sometimes I think you two need a priest. Other times I think you need a padded cell."

"I've got red uniforms," I muttered. "Just need the padding my love."

We shared a laugh, bitter and weary, the kind you only hear in basements before coups. Outside, the wind picked up, rustling Petrograd like a whisper of the future.

1. Note for my peeps that aren't experts on the revolution, by this stage in 1917 the Kerensky government cracked down on the Bolsheviks and forced Lenin to flee to Finland and imprisoned Trotsky while forcing the red guards to go underground. So the butterflies are flapping.

 

[Alenco98]

July 27, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia — Evening

I chewed on my thumb, ink-stained and calloused, as I signed off on yet another piece of paperwork—this one a payment summary from one of our more... community-minded brothels down by the docks for this week. 3 crates of Mosin-Nagant bullets, 30 kilos of food, a crate full of surplus rifles, and ten kilos of fuel. Not bad. A patriotic haul, if I do say so myself. I marked it with a dull red wax stamp and tossed it onto the ever-growing "dealt with" pile—an ironic name, since the pile was clearly plotting to kill me in my sleep.

With a sigh I rang the brass bell on my desk—an obnoxious little thing that sounded more bourgeois than revolutionary—and reached for the next report. This one came from Chernenko's boys, a friendly opium den near the Winter Palace. I gave it a cursory glance. Opium dens: the unsung saints of the revolution. A blessing and a curse, really. They always paid in hard currency—dollars, pounds sterling, occasionally French francs or uncut gems like something out of a Dumas novel. That was the blessing. The curse was that I had to immediately barter this wealth away to buy food, fuel, and other basics from shady middlemen who looked like they were just waiting for the czar to come back and kiss them on the mouth.

It didn't help that our ruble was about as stable as a drunk peasant on stilts. Prices for bread, boots, and bullets changed hourly. One moment a bolt of cloth cost a silver ruble, and the next I was being offered it in exchange for "a good joke and a fistful of morphine." Most of my boys weren't exactly literate in economics—half of them still thought supply and demand were Bolshevik slogans—so I had to delegate finances to party clerks. And of course, this being Russia, some of the bastards were skimming off the top like caviar thieves. I told Lenin. He said, "Discipline is the lifeblood of revolution." So I shot four of them in the head this month alone. Hooray, socialism.

The door creaked open behind me. Aleksandra stepped in, my wife, my light, my long-suffering fellow lunatic in this revolutionary circus. Behind her padded in little Iosif—my son, my reminder that I still had skin in this increasingly chaotic game.

"That's the second stack this hour," she said, arms crossed like she was about to take the desk out back and shoot it.

"Tell me about it," I muttered. "The revolution won't feed itself. Or pay itself. Or arm itself. Or wipe its own ass, apparently."

"Yes, yes," she cut in with a smirk. "You're the quartermaster. I know."

She started collecting the stack—lining up the documents so neatly it made my head hurt. Iosif ran up and hugged me, tiny arms wrapped around my leg like a partisan grenade.

"Who's my little revolutionary?" I ruffled his mop of hair and smiled. "You'll be a general someday. If we survive, that is."

"A general?" he said, eyes wide. "Will I have a pistol like you papa?"

"What? Of course! Can't start a dictatorship of the proletariat without a proper pistol. It's in the rules."

"Just as long as he doesn't end up shooting people over missing canned beans," Aleksandra said dryly, not looking up from the paperwork.

"Oh, come on," I groaned. "How was I supposed to know Iosif was watching when I made an example of that clerk?! I can't keep track of everyone."

"I know." She sighed, shaking her head. "I keep finding bullet casings in the flower pots."

"On the bright side," I said, "Keke's making borscht tonight—with khachapuri."

"Where is she?"

"Running the soup kitchen outside Smolny. She said some anarchists tried to cut the bread line earlier and bear almost shot them."

"And the boys?"

"Upstairs. Playing with Yakov and the other little revolutionaries-in-training. I think they were pretending to try and collectivize a bakery."

I stood and gently nudged Iosif toward his mother, then pulled her in for a long hug, burying my face in her shoulder.

"I mean it," I whispered. "You're the reason I haven't lost my mind. With all the shit I'm juggling—militias, spies, supply lines—I couldn't do this without you."

She pulled back just slightly and kissed my cheek. "Just make sure this revolution of yours actually works. I'm tired of living in a school surrounded by armed revolutionaries and machine guns."

"It's for your safety. You know what Bear told me."

"About the army patrols near our apartment and the suspicious men loitering?" She nodded. "Yes, you've told me. Just promise me you won't get yourself killed. I don't want to be a widow. Your brother—he's not exactly the caring uncle type."

"Joe is... complicated. You know how much he loved Kato. I get it. If I lost you, I'd be right there with him. Brooding. Smoking. Probably threatening to purge the baker's union."

"Well, he threatened to shoot my brother a few days ago."

"He probably wouldn't have done it," I said with a shrug. "More likely he'd send him back to Georgia. Or to inventory boots. That's his idea of mercy."

"Either way, just be careful." She looked at the documents in her hand again and sighed. "I'll take these to the records room."

"Got it. Love you."

"Love you too. Try not to declare martial law before dinner."

"Only if I can help it."

She walked out, Iosif trailing behind her like a sleepy duckling. I stood there for a moment, alone again in the paper jungle of revolution.

I looked at the next file. Another opium den. Another ledger. Another goddamn line item for the dream of utopia.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, Stay with me by Miki Matsubara was playing. Because if there was one thing I needed right now was for my sanity to stay with me.

I'd just finished signing off the opium den and beginning to contemplate whether revolutionary paperwork qualified as a war crime when the door creaked open. Again. I didn't even look up.

"If it's another requisition request from the Kronstadt boys, tell them I already gave them three crates of rifles and ammo,'" I muttered.

"It's not the Kronstadt boys," came Stalin's gravelly voice. I looked up. He stood in the doorway, looking half-amused, half-bored. His coat still had flecks of dried snow from somewhere—maybe metaphorical. "Felix's train just arrived a few hours ago. He's here."

I blinked. "Already?"

Stalin stepped aside—and in walked the man himself.

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky.

He didn't walk so much as glide forward like a famine ghost wrapped in Catholic guilt and political rage. Black overcoat. Sunken eyes. Eyebrows that could launch purges on their own. The man looked like someone had taken a Polish monastery, doused it in vodka, and forged it into a human being.

"Comrade Makarov," he said in a low, formal voice, "I read your proposal. The layers of counter-subversion. The mutual surveillance. The internal audit structure. Very... thorough."

"I aim to please," I said, standing to shake his hand. His grip was bone-crushingly firm. Not the enthusiastic type, then.

"Lenin says this structure will serve as the bedrock for revolutionary security."

"That's the plan," I said, picking up a heavy leather-bound book from my desk. "Here. The first 60 pages are strategy. The next 300 are operational reports. It's an index of my existing intelligence network. You'll have two hundred field agents to start—spies, prostitutes, pickpockets, former precinct cops, and yes…" I raised an eyebrow and smiled, "…a few ex-Okhrana."

Dzerzhinsky's face twitched ever so slightly. Disgust or thought? It was hard to tell—his resting expression looked like he was constantly considering mass executions.

"Former Okhrana?" he repeated coldly.

"Working under your orders," I clarified. "Not with you. You'll have full discretion. Hell, once you're done with them, feel free to have them shot if you want. I'd consider it tying up loose ends."

Felix didn't laugh, of course. I wasn't even sure he understood what laughter was. He just nodded once, slowly.

"You've also been authorized by Lenin to begin forming a National Guard," I continued. "Urban security. Internal order. Crime control. Civil discipline. I'll handle the logistics—food, fuel, weapons, salaries. You just tell me what you need and how many bodies to bury."

"I will require a dedicated headquarters," he said.

"Already have a shortlist. I've got a couple of warehouses near the docks with reinforced steel doors and an underground annex south tour name on it. Should be perfect for interrogations or executions or torture. Whatever your style is."

He ignored that.

Stalin, leaning in the corner and puffing a cigarette, finally spoke. "He's efficient, no?"

"He's terrifying," I muttered under my breath.

Felix turned, as if he'd heard me anyway. "Efficiency must terrify."

"Well, you're halfway to sainthood then," I quipped.

"I have no interest in sainthood."

"Not even a martyr complex?"

That got a twitch from his lip. A smile? Or an internal list of who to purge first?

"Look, I know you're busy," I said, softening slightly. "But my mother's making borscht. My wife has khachapuri in the oven. You want to come to dinner? Meet the family? Scare the children?"

He looked at me like I'd offered him a date with a giraffe.

"No. I have work to do. The state does not wait for soup."

And with that, Felix Dzerzhinsky turned and walked out, coat flapping behind him like the wing of a reaper late for his next harvest.

I turned to Stalin.

"He's good."

Stalin exhaled smoke and smiled faintly. "Exactly."

I reached for the next report on the desk—something about one of our brothels stockpiling morphine—and said to myself: "God help whoever crosses Dzerzhinsky."

I wouldn't.

 

[Alenco98]

August 16, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia

I leaned back in my chair, spine cracking like a rifle bolt, and exhaled one long, soul-crushing sigh as I stamped yet another piece of paperwork—this one detailing the weekly tax intake from one of our fine upstanding community establishments: a gambling den nestled in the shadow of the Winter Palace. This particular den was the bastard child of the Petrograd vice industry—ugly, unloved, but still useful. It dealt mostly in French francs. Always the damn francs. The occasional British pound or American dollar would show up like a drunk relative at a wedding, but the francs dominated. No surprise there—they were practically sucking off the French embassy for clientele. Still, I hated francs. The ruble was already circling the drain, but the franc was trying its best to catch up, gasping for breath somewhere between Verdun and Passanchdaele.

Not that I blamed the French. After all, they weren't Russia.

But enough about collapsing currencies—I had real problems. Specifically: work, more work, and an endless mountain of soul-sucking bureaucratic agony.

With our holy trinity of armed wings—my Revolutionary Guard Corps, Dzerzhinsky's National Guard, and Trotsky's Soviet Armed Forces—now operational, my job as the unofficial quartermaster of the impending apocalypse had metastasized into full logistical cancer. It was one thing to arm and feed your own troops; it's another to coordinate food, weapons, clothing, ammunition, and building materials for three rival military-industrial Frankenstein monsters stitched together by ideology, paranoia, the party, Lenin, and shared hatred of tsars.

Worse still, I could no longer strut around in my glorious revolutionary black-and-red drip, complete with matching armband and subtle death imagery. I had to stay behind a desk. Me. Mikheil the Terrible. Reduced to rubber stamps, requisition forms, and the occasional death sentence and execution for embezzling funds and/or supplies.

Truly, I was suffering from success.

Still, I was adapting—like a cockroach with ambition. Stalin had pitched my idea to Lenin: the creation of a Commissariat for Strategic Resources, and to my eternal gratitude (and mild concern), Lenin approved it with frightening speed. I proposed a clean subdivision model—one committee each for money, food, ammunition, clothing, vehicles, building supplies, and what we called "support logistics" (basically everything else, including things we'd forget about until the latrines exploded).

Naturally, Stalin filled the new offices with hand-picked "loyalists" who just happened to be people he'd bribed or blackmailed into place using money from my own black-market empire which I also used to supply/pay the aforementioned trinity of armed wings that now answered to the party/Lenin. Stalin had even secured a position as head of the money committee for Alexander Svanidze, a trusted "old comrade from Georgia"—who was, incidentally, our brother-in-law.

If anyone asked, we'd simply say, Yes, he is. You never asked. We never lied. The best lies are told by simply omitting the truth.

On the ground, things were looking remarkably good—for a city teetering on civil war. Those days in July where we almost had civil war break out had been good for recruitment. Many of the red guard factions began rallying to us once Kerensky backed off.

Trotsky's shiny new Soviet military for example had grown to a solid 7,000 army regulars after I both managed to arm his Mezhraiontsy faction and aided him in co-opting various lesser Bolshevik aligned red guards into his command. The navy had 9,000 sailors and marines from Kronstadt along with several warships. We even had a nascent air wing with 200 men in it. Unfortunately we only had a few aircraft, and they were basically glorified lawnmowers strapped to wings. Fuel and parts were scarce, so we mostly stuck with the occasional hot air balloon—because nothing says air superiority like dangling in the air in a giant floating suicide note.

My own Revolutionary Guard Corps had a recruitment boom as well courtesy of the red guards and a surge in popular support. We now stood at around 5000 men—heavily armed, frighteningly well-trained, and stylish enough to frighten anarchists, Mensheviks, and fashion critics alike. Our uniforms were now iconic: the terror of Petrograd and the envy of every other revolutionary LARPer within 100 miles.

Dzerzhinsky? Oh, Felix had gone feral. Once he realized he had carte blanche to build a security and intelligence service, he became a monk with a gun fetish. He had 350 agents already—spies, informants, torture specialists, and God knows what else—and the National Guard had quickly ballooned to 2000 disciplined fighters, most of whom were probably ex-convicts who could recite Marx while strangling you with piano wire.

All told, we had over 20,000 men under arms in Petrograd alone. And that didn't even count the workers, volunteers, builders, and other non grunts we had that made sure our men could operate and function on a day to day basis.

The old Red Guards—bless their chaotic, disorganized hearts—were now becoming a historical footnote. The ones that hadn't joined our assorted armed wings were a cocktail of Mensheviks, anarchists, and other political leftovers who could see the writing on the wall while the walls themselves were closing in.

My men told me that even now, more factions were coming to us—hat in hand, ready to swear fealty. The revolution wasn't a threat anymore. It was becoming an inevitability.

And on that inevitability? Civil war. Blood. Triumph. And if I were very lucky: a functional logistics department.

Now if only someone could bring me some coca cola and a fucking Burrito. Preferably before France collapses.

But of course, that brief and precious moment of solace had to end—because life, particularly revolutionary life, is allergic to peace. I cracked my knuckles, straightened my spine until it audibly protested, and reached for the next sheet in the never-ending Tower of Bureaucratic Misery™. This one? A logistics report from Kronstadt detailing their weekly ammunition delivery. Wonderful.

It was a lot—not because they were under-supplied, mind you, but because they were under new orders. They were to hoard as much as they could: shells, crates of Mosin-Nagant rounds, black powder, fuel, dried meat, boots, bandages, even salt. They were preparing for the inevitable. Just like we ordered them and every part of our various armed forces to.

Last week, at our not-so-secret war council—the Revolution Defense Council—we'd made the big decision. The Room of Realists, I called it. Trotsky, Lenin, Dzerzhinsky. I pointed out the very obvious elephant in the room: Civil war wasn't a possibility—it was a calendar item. All roads now led to gunfire, famine, political assassinations, and ration coupons.

It wasn't hard to convince them, really. Trotsky practically vibrated with bloodlust at the thought of toppling the Provisional Government with a bayonet charge and a really good slogan. Dzerzhinsky didn't need much nudging either. The man had been through enough Tsarist torture sessions to have permanently replaced his blood with vendettas. And Lenin? Lenin had enough enemies in every direction that at this point, violence was just another form of punctuation.

So the new policy was simple. Elegant, really: stockpile everything. Weapons, men, influence, toilet paper—especially that last one, judging by the current state of Petrograd's lavatories. Begin quietly expanding outside the capital. The Red Guard, the National Guard, the Soviet Army—we would no longer be a city-bound militia. We were becoming a machine.

Dzerzhinsky, ever the terrifying overachiever, had already deployed National Guard detachments to Moscow, Kazan, Voronezh, and Tsaritsyn, with the mission of establishing satellite cells. Not just National Guard units, either—he was laying the groundwork for local Soviet Armed Forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps branches as well. Naturally, Trotsky and I signed off, then immediately dispatched our own agents to the same cities. Half to assist, half to spy, and maybe—just maybe—one or two to sabotage if needed. Ah, interservice rivalry. It was like Christmas, only with more backstabbing and less cake.

The whole operation felt eerily familiar. I'd spent a few years reading up on middle eastern politics in college cause I got a political science minor on top of my econ degree. This was starting to resemble the Baathist model far too well: multiple overlapping armed institutions, each loyal to a different warlord, all reporting to one paranoid leadership council. The only difference was that we had snow and a crippling vodka shortage, and no one had a moustache quite as photogenic as say Saddam's.

As I shuffled another stack of documents, I found myself absentmindedly humming "Oh No, Oh Yes" by Akina Nakamori. It was a strange comfort—sultry and soft, a piece of bittersweet city pop that made me feel like I was living in a doomed romantic anime set in a Tokyo lit by neon and regret. The irony of the lyrics wasn't lost on me either: the push and pull of something inevitable, something you know is going to destroy everything, but you want it anyway. Oh no, oh yes indeed.

I hummed louder as I reached for another file—this one stamped "Dockyard Smuggling Manifest"—and leaned back in my chair, letting the tune swirl in my head like smoke from a burning regime.

Outside, the wind howled down the alleyways of Petrograd like a ghost learning to whistle. Civil war was coming. And we were going to meet it with clipboards, bayonets, and just enough music to keep from going mad.

I was halfway through humming the bridge of "Oh No, Oh Yes"—you know, that part where the sax swirls like you're slow dancing through emotional ruin—when the door slammed open with the subtlety of a mortar shell.

In came Stalin.

He was wearing his coat like it was a funeral shroud and had the kind of expression that said, "Something bad happened," followed by, "And we're going to make it everyone else's problem."

"Mikheil," he grunted.

I paused mid-hum. My pen was still in my hand, hovering over a delivery log from a brothel near Vyborg that paid its taxes in bulk soap, homemade grenades, and a disturbing amount of salted horse meat.

Stalin stepped forward, dusting snow off his sleeves that wasn't there, like a man who wanted to look dramatic. "Lenin's called an emergency meeting. Now. Central Committee and the entire Revolutionary Defense Council."

I gave him a raised eyebrow. "Emergency? Let me guess: someone finally lit Kerensky's mustache on fire? Or did Kamenev lose another debate with a brick wall?"

"No jokes," he said flatly. "It's serious. Couriers came from the front. Something's happening."

I nodded slowly, the chorus of "Oh No, Oh Yes" still playing on loop in my head like a tragic backing track to our creeping descent into civil collapse as I hummed it. My feet tapped along unconsciously. Stalin narrowed his eyes.

"What are you humming?"

"Nothing."

He stared at me like he was calculating whether or not to have me committed. "Sounds... Foreign."

"Does it?"

Pause.

"Definitely foreign."

I shrugged and stood, casually flipping over a supply manifest for Dzerzhinsky's newest "interrogation tools." "Must be the stress. I sometimes hum under duress. It helps me avoid smashing my head through the window. You try managing logistics for over 20 thousand armed men in a city on the brink of civil war while at the same time ensuring the soup kitchens, workshops, and criminal underworld all runs."

He didn't push it. He knew better. I was the only man in Petrograd who could coordinate arms shipments, fuel rations, field latrines, and midnight executions while still finding time to hum obscure 1980s ballads.

We exited my office and headed down the hallway of the Smolny Institute, passing armed guards, typewriter drones, and one guy throwing up into a bin. All very normal.

"Do we know what this is about?" I asked in Georgian.

"No. But Lenin's pacing again."

"Oh, Christ."

"When he paces, it's bad."

"Does he have his head up his ass?"

"Yes."

"Worse than bad. That's full 'What is to be done?' mode."

We turned the corner toward the war room, the one we'd repurposed from a girls' boarding school classroom. The chalkboards still had cursive handwriting exercises beneath the maps of army group movements. A revolutionary aesthetic.

As we approached, I resumed humming quietly.

"Oh no," I whispered.
"Oh yes," I whispered louder.

Stalin shot me a look. I grinned back. He just shook his head.

God help the Russian Empire.

Then we walked in.

The room reeked of sweat, tobacco, kerosene, and existential dread. Everyone who mattered was crammed into the ex-classroom turned nerve center of the revolutionary movement, now dubbed—unironically—"The War Room." A map of Petrograd had been nailed over an old chalkboard still faintly showing a young girl's handwriting: "My name is Natassia and I love spring."

Poor Natassia. Spring was cancelled. I hope she's still alive.

Lenin sat at the head of the table, towel wrapped around his bald head like some prophetic tuberculosis patient. Trotsky paced like a caged ferret. Zinoviev chain-smoked like his lungs were something to be punished. Kamenev looked like he'd already written his own eulogy. Stalin stood silently, arms crossed, leaning against a bookshelf titled Russian Literature for Young Girls, as if he were pondering the murder of a nation and whether it could be done before sunrise.

Then Dzerzhinsky stood.

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky—his face sharp as a sickle, his soul possibly made of ice and old Orthodox guilt—spoke with the grim tone of a man used to sending people into basements from which they never returned.

"Kornilov's forces are moving," he began, voice quiet but direct. "Multiple battalions en route from the front. Armored trains, cavalry, artillery support. Timing suggests initial approval from Kerensky."

The room sucked in breath like a funeral mass.

"But," he added, "now Kerensky seems to be... hesitating. Possibly panicking. Our sources are unclear. It may have been a ploy to check us that is now spiraling out of control."

Murmurs. Paper shuffling. Kamenev muttered something about how the bourgeois always overplay their hand.

I leaned forward, flicking a pencil off the table.

"So let me get this straight," I said. "Kerensky may or may not have ordered Kornilov to move on us. Kornilov may or may not be about to stage a military coup. And we're all just sitting here like it's a bad Dumas novel plot?"

Silence.

I continued, sighing. "Fine. Then we assume the worst. Christ you all need a sense of humor."

I stood up and addressed the room like I was giving a toast at the world's most depressing wedding.

"Here's the plan: we hunker down. Full lockdown. We fortify Smolny, the Tauride, the rail yards, and every goddamn street we can turn into a redoubt. I want sandbags at soup kitchens. Trenches behind newspaper stalls. If it's got bricks, stack 'em. The whole city needs to be a goddamn fortress by the end of the week."

Trotsky stopped pacing. Zinoviev stubbed out his cigarette. Stalin gave me the nod.

I kept going.

"We begin immediate sabotage operations. Felix, have your agents embed themselves along the rail lines. We cut every telegraph, blow every bridge we can. Get messages out to our cells across Russia—Petrograd is under threat. I want unrest within Kornilov's ranks: pamphlets, sedition, strike calls, even a little creative assassination if we can swing it."

"Of officers?" asked Kamenev, his voice unsteady.

"No," I said flatly. "The fucking cooks and latrine cleaners. Of course officers, Kamenev. If you shoot a colonel, a lieutenant might think twice about marching on his fellow citizens."

Kamenev looked queasy. Trotsky, on the other hand, looked like I'd handed him a new favorite trenchcoat.

"Meanwhile," I added, "I want Trotsky to begin arming the unions. I don't care if they're factory workers, bread bakers, or half-blind anarchists with wooden legs. We give them rifles, we teach them how to shoot, and we tell them if Kornilov gets to Petrograd, he'll turn them into roadkill. They'll fight harder than any conscript."

Lenin stirred.

"We are not yet in open war," he said, his tone measured. "We must avoid giving them justification. We speak of peace. Bread. Land. Let them fire the first shot."

"Oh, I'm not suggesting we start it," I said. "I'm suggesting we set up barricades, load the rifles, and politely dare them to start a civil war while the Germans are still marching east."

Zinoviev snorted.

"And if Kerensky tries to play both sides?"

I smiled, dark and dry. "Then we smile back... and wait until he's standing on the wrong side of the river."

The room was quiet again. Even Trotsky had stopped pacing.

Lenin nodded once. "Begin preparation. If it comes to war, the revolution will not be caught sleeping."

"One more thing." I added. "Have a rally Tomorrow. Announce the creation of the Soviet military. Have Trotsky there, as well as the guys he appointed to lead the air force, navy, and army proper. Then announce the creation of the national guard under Dzerzhinsky. And of course since everyone knows about the Revolutionary guard corps I'll be there as well. We'll have a parade after the rally, a show of strength and unity. The military, national guard, and Revolutionary guard corps. All united to protect the revolution."

The whole room looked at me. Lenin only nodded and looked at Trotsky and Dzerzhinsky. "Coordinate this with comrade Makarov. We'll have the rally and parade at mid day tomorrow."

I turned back to my seat, humming "Oh No, Oh Yes" again under my breath.

Stalin whispered: "That damn song again."

I sighed. "Let me cope."

 

[Alenco98]

August 17, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia

It was mid-morning, and the summer sun had just begun to cut through the industrial haze clinging to Petrograd like a damp, anxious shroud. The streets outside the Smolny Institute were packed—not with market-goers or idlers, but with steel-eyed soldiers, grim sailors, and party men clenched tight like a fist. This wasn't a parade. This was the prelude to destiny—or disaster. There was no going back.

This was it. Do or die. Either we claimed total legitimacy—political, military, moral—or we became another forgotten footnote like the 1905 revolution. Crushed, burned, and buried beneath Cossack hooves and liberal hand-wringing.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps—nearly a thousand of my boys—stood in immaculate formation in front of the grand podium, where the entire Bolshevik high command had assembled: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, Kamenev, a few others who'd probably be purged or forgotten in a decade under Joe's orders, and, of course, me. The usual lineup of increasingly sleep-deprived visionaries and mild sociopaths.

Surrounding them were detachments of the nascent Soviet Military and Dzerzhinsky's new National Guard. The air buzzed with cigarette smoke, engine oil, sweat, and revolution.

Naturally, I stepped up first. I was in charge of theatrics, after all.

I stood tall, cracked my neck, and barked into the wind, "HAIL!" as I raised my arm in the now-infamous "funny German salute." Everyone in Europe would eventually associate it with mustaches and meth in a few decades, but for now? Pure revolution.

My men answered without missing a beat. "HAIL MARX! HAIL THE REVOLUTION! GLORY TO THE BOLSHEVIKS! DEATH TO THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION!" All shouted in perfect unison, fists clenched and eyes blazing.

Then, as if possessed by the ghost of choirboys past, I began to sing.

Not city pop this time—no Akina Nakamori, no "Oh No, Oh Yes." This was sacred. This was war. This was The Internationale.

What can I say? I had pipes. I'd been a choir boy back in Georgia, and unlike the rest of these chain-smoking vodka-throated fanatics, I hadn't bathed my lungs in tar. I was no Freddie Mercury, but I could carry a tune without sounding like I was coughing up the czar.

"Arise, ye who are branded by the curse,
All the world's starving and enslaved…"

And then, like a miracle brewed in a samovar of righteous fury, the Revolutionary guard joined in.

"Our outraged minds are boiling,
Ready to lead us into a deadly fight!"

Then came the rest of the square. Then the rest of the Bolshevik leadership. Even Lenin's voice—normally dry and militant—caught the rhythm. Trotsky, ever the actor, belted it like he was commanding a crowd in a thunderstorm. Stalin mumbled through it like a man with ulcers, but his hand was raised. Dzerzhinsky didn't sing, of course. Dzerzhinsky didn't sing. He simply stared into the crowd with a dead man's eyes while mouthing the words like a liturgy before a funeral.

"We will destroy this world of violence
Down to the foundations, and then
We will build our new world—
He who was nothing will become everything!"

The roar that followed nearly cracked the cobblestones. Rifles were raised, flags waved, workers and soldiers howled in euphoric bloodlust. I was no longer in Petrograd. I was in the belly of a beast made of passion and bayonets.

I did the salute again. "Long live the revolution! Death to the counter-revolutionaries! Glory to the Bolsheviks! Glory to the Soviets! Hail Marx!"

The Revolutionary Guard screamed it back with such ferocity that I swear I saw a bird fall out of the sky in shock.

"I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" I bellowed again, cupping my ear with mock surprise.

"LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION! DEATH TO THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES! GLORY TO THE BOLSHEVIKS! GLORY TO THE SOVIETS! HAIL MARX!" The crowd was seismic now—the buildings themselves vibrated with that terrible, beautiful energy.

Then I screamed the final command: "GUN SALUTE!"

Rifles were raised. The air cracked as synchronized shots thundered skyward. Echoes ricocheted across Petrograd. The cheers were deafening. Even the ghosts in the Winter Palace must've heard.

It was the overture to the apocalypse. But damn it, it was glorious.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, Akina Nakamori still hummed.
Oh no. Oh yes.
History was about to happen.

Then Lenin stepped forward.

The crowd quieted—not instantly, of course. Revolutionary mobs don't obey silence like a church choir. But they stilled gradually, like a tide settling after a storm. The cheers tapered, the rifle salutes stopped, and the mass of soldiers, sailors, workers, and partymen focused.

He adjusted his collar, smoothed his beard with a twitch of the fingers, and raised his voice—not loud, but sharp, deliberate, like a bayonet thrust into the gut of the moment.

"Comrades!"

The crowd rippled with tension. Even the wind seemed to pause.

"I come to you not with promises, nor platitudes, but with grim truth. General Kornilov is marching on Petrograd. Whether by the incompetence of the Provisional Government or by treachery, the sword of counter-revolution has been drawn. He comes not to save our nation—but to strangle her."

The crowd muttered. My guards gripped their rifles harder. Somewhere, someone spat in the dirt.

"Let us not pretend otherwise. The General seeks to restore the old order—to crush the Soviets, the workers, the peasants, all of you gathered here! He would roll back our revolution with Cossack hooves and machine guns."

A pause.

"We shall not let him!"

The crowd erupted. Lenin raised a hand and the noise fell, like an orchestra cut short by the conductor's glare.

"We will fight! To the last man if necessary. To the last bullet! And in this defense, we will not be disorganized. This will not be a mob defending a barricade. This will be the first act of a revolution rising to life!"

He stepped aside slightly and gestured with both hands.

"Therefore, effective immediately, we announce the formal creation of the Soviet National Guard, under the direction of Comrade Dzerzhinsky. His task is simple: to root out counter-revolution wherever it festers, from the streets to the shadows."

The crowd went quiet. The name Dzerzhinsky was already feared. And rightly so.

Lenin continued, voice rising.

"We also announce the creation of the Soviet Armed Forces. Not a collection of militias and scattered detachments, but a unified military command. The revolution must be defended by structure as much as spirit!"

He turned to his left.

"Comrade Trotsky will serve as Commander-in-Chief of this new force. His task will be to bring order to the chaos, and fire to the defense of our revolution."

A wave of applause rolled through the crowd like thunder. Trotsky, ever theatrical, gave a modest nod and straightened his glasses, already imagining the war room.

Lenin raised a hand again.

"The Soviet Navy, the pride of Kronstadt and the Baltic, shall be led by Comrade Fyodor Raskolnikov, who stood with us when others hesitated, who raised the red flag on the decks before it flew over the city."

More cheering.

"The Soviet Army, the hammer of the revolution on land, will be commanded by a man whose discipline, clarity, and resolve have never wavered—Comrade Yakov Sverdlov."

There was a slight pause. Some were surprised—but no one doubted Sverdlov's loyalty or work ethic. If anyone could turn a factory of men into a military force, it was Yakov.

"And last, our wings."

Now Lenin smiled, almost ironically.

"Russia has few airplanes, fewer pilots, and even less fuel. But if we are to build the future, then even the sky must be red. The Soviet Air Force shall be entrusted to Comrade Konstantin Akashev."

A ripple of curious applause. Nobody quite knew who he was—but if Lenin said it, it was probably important.

He concluded, voice low and grave.

"This is it, comrades. The old world is dying. The new one claws for breath. We will either crush Kornilov's march or be crushed beneath his boots. But no matter what happens, the revolution will not go quietly. We will meet him—not as dreamers, but as soldiers."

A beat of silence.

"Glory to the Soviets! Death to the counter-revolution! Long live the revolution!"

The crowd exploded. The rifles roared once more.

Once the speech was done and the rifles had been fired. It was time for the parade. The Internationale still echoed faintly in the alleys as we prepared to move, bouncing off tenements like some drunken ghost of revolution past. Now came the fun part.

"Parade time," I muttered under my breath as I straightened my black coat. I had my red armband secured, my revolver polished, and my hair actually combed for once. You had to look good while orchestrating the military reconfiguration of a collapsing empire. Optics mattered.

I gave a hand signal, and the first column of the Revolutionary Guard Corps began to march past the podium.

My boys. My lovely, well-fed, better-armed, beautifully uniformed boys.

Five thousand strong in Petrograd alone now, boots pounding in unison, black uniforms pristine, red helmets glinting in tIhe sun like Satan's bowling balls. They held their rifles just right—barrels angled, stocks aligned, the kind of discipline you got when you took in criminals, former cops, factory boys, and beat it into them with ideology and a pay bonus. I'd trained them to give the Roman salute. We were Bolsheviks with nazi aesthetics before the Nazis were a thing. Cheeky. Intimidating. Ironic. I loved it. We made it theatrical. Hell, we were goose stepping. Hitler was going to rip us off and I was going to give him so much shit once Barbarossa started and he tried to conquer us. Cosmic irony, I loved it.

They passed in perfect formation, one battalion at a time. Each was flanked by banners stitched with "Peace. Bread. Land." and "Glory to the Soviets!" and, in one case, "Steal Rations, Get Executed." (That was a personal touch. I liked to keep the rules of engagement clear.)

Then came Trotsky's Soviet military. Him at the very head. With Sverdlov's army—less polished, more... let's call it "eager." Right behind him. His men were mostly converted Red Guards, recently armed, half in old Tsarist uniforms, half in donated overalls. But they held their rifles upright and their eyes forward, and that was what counted. Trotsky and Sverdlov had whipped them into a fighting force in weeks. God help me, the bastards were competent.

Behind the infantry came the naval contingent. Kronstadt sailors, led by Raskolnikov himself, stormed down the square like they were already marching on Hell. I liked them. Rough, foul-mouthed, smelled like boiled fish and vodka sweat, but loyal. They marched like anarchists at a funeral, but they had guts. And guns.

Then came Dzerzhinsky's National Guard. A new addition, freshly armed, already feared. Fewer in number but tight as a drum. Their uniforms weren't as flashy—gray with red piping—but their presence made people shut up fast. I'd personally funded their recruitment and left Dzerzhinsky to "refine" them, which probably involved something between a loyalty oath and medieval psychological torture. I didn't ask.

I spotted Dzerzhinsky at the far end of the column, stone-faced as always, watching like he was already picking out future traitors from the crowd. I waved. He didn't wave back.

Finally came our "air force."

Yes. Balloons. Two of them. Big red ones. Tethered. One had a stencil of Marx's face on it, the other said, "Land to the Peasants, Death to Tyrants!" in bold paint. They wobbled proudly above the square like a surreal circus act from Hell.

"Not exactly a flyover by Spitfires," I muttered, "but it'll do for now."

The parade lasted a solid hour. Cheers, chants, rifles raised, a few doves released (they immediately got caught in the balloon lines—awkward). The people loved it. Not just the diehards either—the workers, the union boys, even the neighborhood widows with five kids and a bottle of cheap kerosene looked impressed. For once, we looked like a real government. A terrifying, bureaucratic, half-criminal government—but real.

Lenin leaned in to me during a brief lull and muttered, "You've turned Petrograd into an armed camp, Makarov."

I smiled. "Revolutions need bread, weapons, blood, and a lot of pageantry."

Stalin snorted. "Let's hope it's not just the pageantry."

"Relax," I said, watching another column of my guards pass. "We've got the guns, the money, and the lunatics. We'll be fine."

Trotsky finally glanced my way.

"Nice turnout," he said curtly.

"Thanks. You're welcome for the rifles, by the way."

He grunted and looked away.

I leaned back, humming "Oh No, Oh Yes" under my breath again. Still no one had asked what song it was. The glorious ignorance of my Soviet peers regarding Japanese city pop was the one comfort in a world teetering on the edge of civil war.

Tomorrow, the streets might run red. Today, we had uniforms, chants, and red balloons.

Revolutions are strange like that.

Now I had to meet Kerensky with Lenin.

August 17, 1917 – Early Evening
Grand Hotel d'Europe, Nevsky Prospect
Petrograd, Russia

The hotel room reeked of cigarette smoke, stale power, and the cologne of someone trying to convince themselves they still had control over their life. Kerensky on a fancy chair, not quite slouched but not upright either—like a man halfway through realizing the rope's already around his neck.

I walked in behind Lenin, silent, my coat spotless, boots shining, a leather folder tucked under my arm. Inside? Just a blank notepad and a pistol. Props, really. Theater was half the job.

Kerensky didn't rise to greet us. Bad sign.

"Comrades," he said, trying to sound warm but coming off like a man ordering his own execution by politely requesting the firing squad. "I hope you understand the situation is… fluid."

Lenin cocked an eyebrow. "Fluid is one word for it."

I gave him a smile—just enough to show teeth. Not threatening. Just enough to remind him I had 5,000 heavily armed reasons to be in this meeting. All of them currently holding positions around the Smolny Institute, railways, and other vital infrastructure. I took a seat without asking. The luxury of power is in pretending it was always yours.

Lenin didn't bother with pleasantries. "Kerensky, this is not a diplomatic meeting. We're here because Kornilov is mobilizing. Marching on Petrograd. Explain that."

Kerensky sighed like a man asked to explain why the dog he let in is now pissing on his rug.

"I… I authorized troop movements. Yes. To secure order. The city is in chaos."

Lenin's tone turned scalpel-sharp. "Troops moving toward the capital with artillery and no parliamentary oversight is not 'order.' That is a coup in motion."

Kerensky raised his hands defensively. "He misunderstood his orders."

I leaned forward, smiling in that way Stalin calls my 'maniac grin.' "He misunderstood his orders and mobilized an entire army group? And you still haven't stopped him? Come now, Minister you're insulting my intelligence, you're either a conspirator or a coward. Either way, you're out of time."

His face flushed red. "That's not fair—"

"Life isn't fair," I cut in. "Ask the people your boys machine-gunned in July." I tapped the folder like it held their names.

Kerensky stood up. "Are you threatening me?"

"No," I replied, voice smooth as glass. "I'm educating you on what's coming. If Kornilov crosses the threshold of Petrograd, it won't be the Bolsheviks who fire the first shot—but we will finish it. We will kill them all down to the drummer boys if we have to." Yes, yes, I could finally let the edgelord within out. God I loved having power.

Kerensky sat down again. Hard.

Lenin, to his credit, stayed calm. He always played the long game. "What we want is clear. Withdraw Kornilov's forces immediately. Publicly disavow his actions. And allow our men to coordinate defense."

Kerensky looked like a man realizing the only parachute on the plane is in our hands—and we might not throw it.

"I… I can issue a telegram. Begin negotiations."

Lenin nodded. "You do that."

I stood. "And Minister," I added, walking toward the door, "if you don't… well, let's just say I've heard about what Kornilov's men did in Galicia. If Petrograd sees the same? It won't be your government they blame. It'll be your face."

Lenin paused at the door, turned back just long enough to add: "We don't want blood, Kerensky. But we have buckets ready if it comes to that."

And then we left. Quietly. Calmly. Time to get ready for war.

Or not.

August 17, 1917 — Late Evening
Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Dinner with the Stalin Family

The air in the dining room smelled of borscht, burnt kerosene, and history in the making.

We'd cleared out a section of the Smolny for family quarters — modest but warm, though everything creaked like the floorboards were eavesdropping. The table was set with chipped plates, lukewarm stew, a single candle between us, and a samovar that hissed like it had secrets. In attendance: me, Stalin, his son Yakov sulking in a corner with a chunk of bread, Aleksandra (my beloved Sashiko) ladling soup like a saint, and of course our mother, Keke, seated at the head of the table like the Georgian matriarch of some strange revolutionary mafia.

I was in good spirits. Why wouldn't I be? The city was ours in all but name. We had the men, the guns, the streets. Kerensky was cornered, Kornilov was marching into a buzzsaw, and the air stank of destiny.

I clinked my spoon against the side of my bowl like it was a victory bell. "Kerensky's finished," I said, beaming. "The man practically begged us to stop his own general. If Kornilov attacks, we'll gut the bastard. We'll kill his whole army — drummer boys included. Especially the drummer boys."

Stalin raised an eyebrow, chewing slowly, as if judging whether the stew or my sanity was more concerning.

Aleksandra shot me a look over the pot. "Drummer boys?"

"They keep the rhythm, Sashiko. You ever try to fight a war without rhythm? Chaos. Better to put a bullet in Beethoven than let him set the tempo for the counter-revolution."

Stalin let out a low chuckle, dry as dust. "You're in a mood."

"I'm in the mood for winning." I sipped my tea. "The city's ours, brother. The Soviets have the streets, the sailors are loyal, the factories are arming our men, and we've got food lines staffed by propaganda-spewing volunteers. We've got the rats and the beggars. We've even got the damn opera singers. Who does Kerensky have? Maybe a sad violinist in exile somewhere in Paris."

Yakov, curious for once, looked up from his bread. "What's a drummer boy?"

I patted him on the head. "A tiny bourgeois timekeeper for bigger, dumber soldiers. Don't worry — you're not one. You're a future general in the Revolutionary guard corps."

Stalin snorted, then muttered something about "generals before grammar."

Keke crossed herself. "Mikheil, no more jokes about killing children."

I smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, mama. But if they're wearing a uniform and keeping beat for a tsarist general marching on the revolution? They're fair game."

She glared. "God will judge us all, child. Even those who dress their murder in patriotism."

"Of course," I said, bowing slightly. "Which is why I'll be wearing red when He does. It hides the blood better."

Stalin rolled his eyes. "He's been humming foreign songs again."

Aleksandra narrowed her eyes. "You've been humming again?"

I shrugged. "Always. Helps me concentrate."

"I told you, the children think you're possessed when you do that," she muttered, ladling another scoop into Stalin's bowl. "Last time Yakov cried and said you were summoning demons from the samovar."

"He might've been right," I said dramatically. "Revolution is a ritual, after all."

Keke ignored me and spoke to Stalin. "Iosif. I know this will not end peacefully. Just... if something happens to either of you—"

"It won't," Stalin interrupted. "Not yet. The city's with us. If Kornilov makes a move, we'll strangle it in the cradle."

I nodded. "And if God is watching, He'll understand. We don't do this for pleasure. We do this because the old world refuses to die quietly."

Silence settled for a moment as spoons clinked and the candle sputtered in the draft.

Finally, Stalin looked up from his bowl. "You're right about one thing, Mikheil."

"Which one?"

"If we win this... it won't be because we were smarter or more righteous. It'll be because you've turned the underworld into a quartermaster's office and the revolution into a funeral procession for the empire."

I grinned. "I do try."

"You're dangerous," he muttered.

"And you're family," I said, raising my cup. "To blood. And to whatever blood demands."

Keke crossed herself again. Aleksandra just sighed and muttered, "I married a lunatic."

But when I looked around the room, at the candlelight flickering on the faces of my family, I felt it — not peace, never that. But a kind of clarity. We were past the point of no return. And if God didn't like it?

He could take it up with the drummer boys.

 

[Alenco98]

August 20, 1917
Central Committee Meeting – Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Mikheil's POV

It was early, too damn early — the kind of hour that makes revolutionaries look like accountants. The war room stank of sweat, ink, and cold tea, the official perfume of the Soviet. We were all seated around the long wooden table Lenin insisted we use for "optics," though the surface was so scratched and uneven I half-expected a goblin to crawl out of one of the grooves.

I leaned back in my chair, legs crossed, fingers stained with grease from reviewing ammo manifests before this delightful gathering of caffeine-addled Marxists. Trotsky was already arguing with Kamenev about something unimportant — the definition of "Bonapartism" or some such fantasy. Stalin sat beside me, arms folded, face unreadable as usual, though I knew he was quietly enjoying watching me twist the knife.

Because today I was twisting it hard.

"Comrades," I said, clapping my hands together with a grin, "we have Kornilov. The counterrevolution has been neutered, and not a single shot fired. A marvel of revolutionary efficiency. Truly, we've turned the Tsarist warhorse into glue without so much as lifting a bayonet. Dzerzhinsky of course is to thank for this, his agents did a hell of a job, working with the rail unions, infiltrating the army. Let's have a round of applause for the hero of the hour."

Applause broke out in the room. Dzerzhinsky didn't smile, didn't nod, he just sat there. I both respected that and unsettled by it. That man hasn't felt an ounce of emotion since the 19th century.

"anyways." I continued once the applause ran out. "I have a proposal," I continued, standing up now and pacing like a theatre director whose actors were constantly trying to unionize. "A triumph. A Revolutionary Bolshevik Triumph. Picture it: Kornilov and his officers marched in chains down Nevsky Prospect, surrounded by our Revolutionary Guard, the Soviet Army, and the National Guard. Red banners flying, rifles gleaming, the Internationale echoing from every corner of Petrograd. The people cheering, the Mensheviks pissing themselves, and the Provisional Government officially made obsolete."

Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "You want to… parade the general? Like a gladiator defeated in the Colosseum?"

"Exactly," I said, pointing at him like he'd just solved dialectical materialism. "We're not just seizing power, Trotsky — we're writing the myth. If the people see Kornilov broken, marching past the Winter Palace like a war trophy, they'll understand: there's no going back. No more compromise. No more Kerenskys fumbling in the middle. Only forward, comrades — with rifles, boots, and bad intentions."

Kamenev looked deeply uncomfortable, which meant I was on the right track.

"But won't that provoke further violence?" he asked, voice tight.

"We're already living in a story written with blood," I said. "Better we write the next scene ourselves than let some drunken monarchist draw it for us."

Lenin sat quietly for a moment, fingers templed under his chin like some bald Bond villain. Then, with a thin smile, he nodded.

"I approve — with revisions."

I gestured broadly. "Comrade Lenin, it's your parade to perfect."

"You'll plan the march. I'll give the final speech. We will call on every red guard, every worker's militia, every sympathetic peasant and sailor who hasn't joined us yet to unite under one command. No more factions. No more dithering. We shall show them the strength of the Soviets… and the fate of counterrevolution."

Trotsky leaned in, his voice dry. "It's propaganda of the deed. I admit — grotesque, theatrical… but brilliant."

"I am grotesque and theatrical," I said. "You're welcome Bronstein."

Trotsky scowled. He hated when I called him by his real last name. Good. It was for the best if he redirected all his ire at me. Let Joe outmanuever him and purge him from the party while I played lightning rod for every idealist and enemy we made.

Stalin grunted beside me. "Just don't let him plan the route. He'll take us past every brothel and opium den he owns."

"I pay more taxes to the revolution than the entire Duma combined," I shot back. "Every client that visits a whorehouse is a bullet in Trotsky's rifle. You're welcome, again."

Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, his voice a low grind of stone. "I want the names of every officer marching. If any of them had agents in the city, I want them found. Before they walk."

I nodded. "Do what must be done with your spies Felix. You name it. Do not hesitate, show no mercy. They'll sing before they march."

Kamenev grimaced. "This is all... very cynical."

"Oh no, Kamenev," I said with a smile and mocking tone. "It's efficient. The Roman Empire didn't last centuries on idealism. Neither will we. Not without a little drama, a little showmanship, and a whole lot of guns."

Lenin tapped the table. "Then it's settled. The Soviet triumph shall march. And the world will watch."

And if any Mensheviks still didn't get the message?

Well… there's always room at the back of the parade for new prisoners.

But I had more proposals. The day was young.

I sat down, letting the echo of Lenin's speech about unity and power hang in the air a moment longer before slicing through it with a tone of restrained excitement. The good kind. The kind you get when you know a regime's about to fall and you've already picked out the wallpaper for your new office.

"Comrades," I began, "I think we can all agree that seizing power is no longer a matter of if. The when is fast approaching — and I propose that we begin preparing the country for our 'when.'"

I paused, letting them stew in it. Lenin raised an eyebrow. Trotsky leaned forward, intrigued.

"We have the muscle in Petrograd. The Revolutionary Guard, the National Guard, the Soviet military. We've brought the anarchists and the red guards to heel and most now report to the national guard, the Soviet military and my boys in black— the Mensheviks are scattered, the SRs are tired, and Kerensky's government looks like a worn-out actor still trying to play Hamlet in a theater that's already burning."

A few smirks around the table. Dzerzhinsky, as always, looked like he was planning someone's execution in his head. Probably mine, but at least he'd do it efficiently.

"I propose," I continued, "that we deploy detachments from all our forces to every major city in Russia — Moscow, Arkhangelsk, Kiev, Kazan, Tsaritsyn, Yekaterinburg. We send trusted officers, backed by the party, to begin integrating with the local soviets. Not to ask for control — to assume it. Peacefully, if possible. Forcefully, if needed. I can have it done by October 1st. Just give me the green light."

Lenin steepled his fingers. "That's ambitious, Makarov. Logistically…?"

"I have the trains, I have the maps, I have the black-market fuel, and God help me, I have enough horses to open a cavalry museum. We've been preparing for months."

Stalin gave a small, crooked smile. "He's not lying. We've had men stockpiling weapons from Finland to Georgia."

"Good," I nodded. "Then let's do more. I say we also begin courting the remaining Mensheviks and SRs. Not with philosophy or leaflets, but with money, bullets, or secrets. I've got enough of each. And Dzerzhinsky—" I gestured to Iron Felix, "—has enough informants to fill a theater."

Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, his voice dry and ironclad. "I have dossiers on many of them. Affairs, theft, sympathy with the Whites, questionable loans. I can make them bend."

Trotsky chuckled. "Blackmail, bribery, threats. Bolshevik diplomacy at its finest."

"Come now," I smiled darkly, "we're just offering them choices. Join us… or join the past."

Kamenev, ever the soft one, furrowed his brow. "You want to expand our reach and turn our enemies into allies by threatening them? Isn't that… dangerous?"

"Kamenev," I said patiently, "everything we do is dangerous. We're betting our lives on a revolution led by a gaggle of radicals who want to upend centuries of social and economic order which will start a civil war. We're already in the deep end. I'm just trying to make sure we don't drown."

A silence followed. Sverdlov broke it first. "If he can really get us full control of the regional soviets, we'll be unstoppable."

Lenin nodded. "Do it. You have until October. Use your guards, use Dzerzhinsky's agents, use whatever you need. Just make sure they report to us."

"And the Mensheviks?" Dzerzhinsky asked.

"Start quietly," Lenin said. "Promise them protection. Offer them minor roles. If they refuse, well… Felix, I trust you know what to do."

"As you say," He muttered. "They will join us, or die."

As we adjourned, I thought to myself: this was it. We were no longer plotting survival — we were orchestrating victory. The Bolsheviks would rule. Not just Petrograd. Not just the winter. But everything.

And if I had to bribe, threaten, or bury half of Russia to get there?

Then by God, I'd do it with a stamped requisition order and a smug little smile.

Now I had to talk to Vlad and Joe

As we walked over the room went over to Lenin and gave him a subtle nod. Then to Joe.

"Comrades. A word in private?"

Lenin glanced at me, then at Stalin. Stalin, arms crossed, gave a short nod. We walked through the arched corridor of the Smolny Institute, the old girls' school now doubling as the headquarters of revolutionary destiny and logistical despair. We stepped into a side office—formerly a music room for the bourgeois daughters of Petrograd, now home to a table, three chairs, a flickering oil lamp, and a map of Russia half-pinned and half-falling off the wall. Time to use my economics degree from college.

I shut the door.

"Gentlemen," I said, lowering myself into the chair. "We have a revolution. We have Petrograd. We have Kormilov in chains. We even have, God help us, the foundations of a military-industrial complex that's current staffed by drunk dockworkers and former anarchists."

Lenin gave a tight smile. "And?"

"And," I replied. "We need to set up a war economy. I've been running this thing like a mafia state with good intentions. And it's worked, barely. But it won't work once the war starts. We need to formalize it."

"Formalize what?" Lenin said, suspicious.

I leaned forward. "The underworld. The black markets. The brothels, gambling dens, opium holes. The smuggling rings. The food runners. The dock mafias. All of them. They stay—but they become arms of the Revolution. They get permits. They pay taxes. They answer to the commissariat. And if they don't, we execute them, slowly."

Lenin blinked. Stalin raised an eyebrow.

"You want to… legalize crime?" Lenin asked flatly.

"I want to control it," I replied. "Same thing, really. If we stamp it out, it goes underground and multiplies. But if we own it, then we can direct it—toward our war effort. I can feed, clothe, and arm the military, but I need the black markets out in the open and formalized to do it."

Stalin scratched his chin. "The tsar had a secret police. You want to turn Petrograd into an open air brothel."

"Exactly."

Lenin shifted. "And the means of production?"

"Nationalize the factories," I said without missing a beat. "Shift them all to wartime production under the Commissariat of Strategic Resources. We'll need rifles, uniforms, boots, trench shovels, gas masks, and locomotives. But," I raised a finger, "allow some private enterprise. Craftsmen, artisans, small traders. Let them function under licenses. Let them feed the cities and move money. Just make sure we get our cut. And if we don't, bodies, ropes, lampposts."

"You want controlled capitalism," Stalin muttered.

"So what?" I asked, grinning. "And we need the peasants. Land reform."

"Ah," Lenin leaned forward, interested now.

"3 acres and a shovel," I said. "We promise every peasant who joins us land, a shovel, and protection. But only 3. Cap it. No new aristocrats. Anyone—kulaks, old nobles, whatever—who refuses to give up the excess... we offer them a choice. Sign it over, or watch their family get bayoneted to death. Slowly."

Stalin snorted. Lenin winced. "A touch brutal."

"We're not handing out bread at a parish bazaar, Vladimir. We're planning how to win a civil war."

There was a pause. Then I continued.

"We need foreign trade, too. Not for show. We use Petrograd—just Petrograd—as a special economic zone. Limited trade. Foreign banking. We accept gold, silver, currency—whatever they'll give us for grain and raw materials. We'll need a stable ruble or something pegged to foreign coin. I'll take care of the rest."

Lenin nodded slowly. "And who runs all this?"

"I'm overloaded," I said. "I've got the Revolutionary Guard Corps, I'm running the logistics for the Soviet military, the national guard, the whole commissariat for strategic resources—it's too much. Alexander Svanidze has been handling the finance division in the commissariat quietly. Good man. Educated. Loyal. I suggest we promote him to head the Commissariat for Strategic Resources."

Stalin tried his best to act confused and pretend he never heard of him. "...Svanidze?"

I smiled but kept it vague. "A comrade from our days in Georgia. You remember."

Lenin narrowed his eyes. "He's your brother-in-law."

"What about it?" I replied innocently. "You never asked. And he's a party man like me and Joe. He helped me plan logistics back when Joe was robbing banks and shooting cops. This isn't any different. Just scaled."

Stalin of course seemed upset I called him Joe, jaw clenched. But I continued "Let Joe oversee the finance division of the commissariat."

There was silence for a moment.

Then Lenin leaned back and laughed. "God help us. You've built the Revolution with blackmail, brothels, and bookkeeping."

I clapped his shoulder. "And you'll take the credit, comrade."

Stalin didn't laugh. But he didn't argue either.

Good. That meant he understood.

August 20, 1917
Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Private Family Dining Quarters, 9:43 PM

It was late. The kind of late where the only light left in Petrograd came from dying lanterns, cigarette tips, and that weird sickle-shaped moon that seemed to leer at you like a smug noble waiting for a guillotine that would never come. But here, in our little fortified pocket of the revolution—Smolny—we had something close to normalcy. Or the Bolshevik version of it, which meant hot soup, no gunfire outside the windows, and all the children asleep.

We were gathered in our private quarters upstairs: myself, Aleksandra, my beloved rock; Keke, still mothering us all even though one of us ran the Soviet's logistics and the other ran Russia's shadow government; Stalin—Joe—and his ever-silent stormcloud gaze; and Alexander Svanidze, our soft-spoken, glasses-wearing, soon-to-be-cannon-fodder brother-in-law who has only arrived from Georgia a few days ago and had basically been promoted to lead our entire war economy, poor bastard.

Dinner was simple: beet soup, black bread, and salted fish. Peasant fare, but at least it was ours. We didn't have to beg it off some fat noble or scrape it off a trench floor.

I raised my cup of tea—boiled twice, tasted like revolution and floorboards—and turned to Alexander.

"To your promotion, Commissar of Strategic Resources." I gave him a mock funny German salute. "You lucky bastard."

Alexander blinked and gave a small, almost apologetic smile. "It's… a heavy responsibility."

"You're telling me," I laughed, gesturing to the stacks of paperwork still looming in the corner. "Don't worry. I'll help train you for the next few weeks. Show you how to keep the wolves fed without feeding them too much. But after that, you're flying solo. I'll be there as an unofficial advisor if you want, but the drowning will be yours to do."

He nodded. "Thank you, Mikheil. Truly."

Then came the expected complaint, right on cue, delivered with that gravel-thick tone only one man in the world could weaponize into guilt.

"You called me Joe in front of Lenin," Stalin said, not looking up from his fish. "It's unprofessional."

Aleksandra immediately turned her face to hide her laugh. Even Keke raised an eyebrow. I took a sip and grinned.

"Oh come on," I said. "You really think Lenin didn't know your name's Iosif Dzhugashvili? I mean, the man lived in exile just like you did. It's not like I yelled 'Little Joe likes honey cakes and Khachapuri' in front of the Revolutionary Guard."

Stalin gave me a withering stare that could curdle milk. I smiled sweetly in return and tapped his cup with mine. "To professionalism."

Svanidze, poor soul, tried to change the subject. "I'll do my best to keep things running smoothly. I promise."

Stalin finally looked at him. "Don't fuck this up," he said flatly. "If you do, we won't just lose a war. We'll lose the whole country. And I'm not burying another Svanidze."

A chill passed through the room. Even Aleksandra went quiet. Keke simply looked down, murmured a prayer under her breath.

I cleared my throat, trying to lighten things back up.

"Well, I'd say it's only a matter of time now. The moment we seize the winter palace and start taking control of every city we can get our hands on, civil war is on."

"Like the sunrise," Joe muttered.

"And that brings me to a favor," I said, setting down my spoon.

Everyone looked at me.

"I need you, Joe, to start gently floating an idea. Not now, but slowly. Softly. Don't push. Let it spread like mold in a bourgeois wine cellar. It's about the Tsar."

"Go on," Stalin said, suspicious already.

"I want him and his family back in Petrograd. Alive. Intact. Dressed like normal people. Put them in a shitty apartment near the docks. Make the Tsarina sew uniforms for the National Guard. Make the Tsar work in a munitions factory. Get the daughters into nursing. Teach the little boy to distribute pamphlets. We feed them stale bread and glorified water soup. Then we make them read Marx. Every day. Publicly."

Stalin stared at me. "You want to re-educate the Romanovs?"

"I want to humiliate them," I replied. "Killing them? That's too easy. It makes them martyrs. We don't need martyrs. We need symbols. Living, wheezing symbols of the old order rotting under fluorescent lights in a factory breakroom. Turn them into communist poster children. Imagine the headlines: 'Nicholas Romanov Commended for meeting his work quota.'"

Aleksandra giggled. Keke looked scandalized. "They are still human beings, Mikheil."

"Yes, and they'll be treated spared and allows to live in our new order," I said. "A kindness really."

Stalin didn't smile. But he also didn't say no.

"You want me to pitch this to Lenin?"

"He'll never accept it from me," I said, waving a hand. "He'll think it's one of my theatrical antics again. But you—you he trusts. He thinks you're serious. Sober. You have that dead stare that screams 'not here to joke.' You could sell him arsenic as vitamin tonic."

Joe looked away, thinking. Svanidze quietly finished his soup. Keke got up and started clearing plates, muttering about how "God does not smile upon cruelty."

"I'll do it," Stalin finally said.

That, from him, was basically a love letter.

I leaned back in my chair, sipping the last of my tea, and watched the candlelight flicker across the faces of the people I'd dragged into this war. My family. My soldiers. My revolution.

And I couldn't help but think…

Soon, all of Russia would be ours. And the Romanovs would be stuffing sandbags in the rain.

 

[Alenco98]

August 22, 1917
Nevsky Prospect
Petrograd, Russia
Morning

It was a glorious day to humiliate a general and his officers.

The sun hung low over Petrograd like a smug overseer, casting long shadows down Nevsky Prospect as the procession began. We had polished our boots, combed our beards (those of us who had them I didn't), oiled our rifles, and starched our collars—not out of respect for the occasion, but because if you're going to rub a man's face in the dirt, you may as well look sharp while doing it.

Kornilov—Russia's finest tragicomedy in a mustache—was marched at the head of the column like a fallen Caesar with none of the dignity. His hair was disheveled, uniform wrinkled and unbuttoned at the neck, hands tied behind his back, and that little twitch in his left eye gave away the boiling stew of humiliation he was trying (and failing) to suppress. Behind him trudged his loyal officers, stripped of their swords and their pride, some looking stoic, others like they were trying very hard not to soil themselves.

Behind them came us.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps marched first, well, not march more like goose stepped—my men, a thousand strong, 6000 in total after a little emergency recruitment drive on my end these last few days thanks to Kormilov's little failed putsch. All in black uniforms and crimson helmets, rifles slung and recently polished with mechanical elegance. Every boot fell like a metronome, every stare ice-cold. Behind them, the newly-organized Soviet military under Trotsky, still a bit ragged around the edges but drilled well enough to look imposing with the majority wearing a now standard brown uniform. Then came Dzerzhinsky's National Guard, some of them their new no-nonsense blue uniforms which soon would be official, half ex-cons and half radicals with nothing left to lose. They carried themselves like they enjoyed the idea of civil war.

We passed by rows of onlookers: workers, students, soldiers, babushkas, and a suspicious number of stray dogs who somehow always knew when politics were about to get bloody. Some jeered at Kornilov, others laughed outright. One woman threw cabbage. One child shouted, "Is that the man who wanted to be Tsar?" and was promptly lifted onto his father's shoulders like a folk hero.

I walked just behind the first line of my men, head high, hands clasped behind my back, whistling quietly. The international would've been perfect, but the mood struck more of a "Another one bites the dust".

Once we reached the main platform outside Kazan Cathedral, the crowd packed into the plaza. A sea of fists, caps, and waving red flags. And then Lenin, our bald prophet of doom and bread, stepped up to the podium.

He looked glorious, truly. The wind caught his coat just enough to make him look cinematic, if one squinted hard enough. He waited for silence, then raised his hand.

"Comrades!"

The word echoed off the cathedral walls like thunder.

"Today we have seen Thermidor vanquished! General Kornilov and his conspirators sought to march on the people of Petrograd with iron and fire, to place bayonets between us and our revolution."

He gestured to Kornilov, who stared straight ahead like a wax figure filled with regret and constipation.

"But they were defeated—not with bloodshed, but by the will of the people, by the unity of workers, sailors, and soldiers! By the indomitable strength of the Soviet!"

The crowd roared. A few caps were thrown. One man wept, which was impressive given how dehydrated everyone was.

"These men will be held in Soviet custody," Lenin continued, "until a full trial can be prepared. We are not the Tsar's regime—we do not execute without justice. But let this parade be a warning. Let every would-be counter-revolutionary see the fate that awaits those who try to shackle the working class."

Kornilov flinched slightly. Dzerzhinsky smiled for the first time since I met him. Unsettling.

"This revolution shall not be strangled in its cradle!" Lenin cried, voice rising to a pitch that cracked slightly. "It shall be nursed by the people! Armed by the people! Defended by the people! And when the day comes—and it will come—when we seize power in full, let none say they did not see it coming."

I leaned over to Stalin. "Damn good speech."

He shrugged. "Bit theatrical."

"Courtesy of yours truly."

Stalin chuckled at that. Trotsky stood next to Stalin and simply scowled. Bastard. Don't butt into a Convo between brothers.

The speech then ended. The band struck up the Internationale, and the crowd sang like their rent had just been cancelled. Kornilov and his officers were taken away, flanked by Dzerzhinsky's men. Not a stone was thrown, not a shot was fired.

Victory, by humiliation.

And damn, did it feel good. Now I had more meetings later today. Great.

August 22, 1917
Smolny institute
Petrograd, Russia, Late afternoon

I dropped the stack of typewritten papers on the long oak table with the thud of a pistol on a nightstand. The room went still. Lenin rubbed his bald head. Trotsky squinted like I'd just handed him a sack of manure and called it gold. Stalin looked at me with that half-grin he gets when he's trying to decide whether to laugh or have me shot for insolence. It was time to unleash my little program of humiliation, brainwashing and indoctrination. And solidify my reputation as a monster within the party. Great.

"Comrades," I began, theatrically, "I give you Project Red Rebirth. A full-proof system to take these White bastards—Kornilov, his officers, the nobles, hell, even the Romanovs—and turn them into walking propaganda for the revolution. Broken wills in peasant boots, singing hymns to Marx after they've scrubbed the latrines of Petrograd."

I let it sit. Nobody interrupted. I could hear Dzerzhinsky sharpening the blade of his soul somewhere deep in his jacket pocket.

I pressed on, flipping through the pages as if lecturing children:

"Wake them at dawn with screaming guards, beat them for whispering. Essays on Marx in the morning, Machiavelli in the afternoon, mock executions at night. And always, always the family hostages in the background—letters forged, threats implied. The choice becomes: betray your class, or watch your wife and children die in 'protective custody.' Simple, efficient, humane in the revolutionary sense."

Trotsky was the first to scoff, of course. He leaned back, glasses glinting like bayonet steel.

"Humane? You mean medieval. This is not socialism, this is sadism. We don't need a boot camp of torture chambers—we need the masses. Kornilov isn't worth a drop of ink, let alone the ink you wasted typing this farce."

I smirked. "Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Lev Bronstein. The people don't read Marx. Half of them can't even read. They respond to symbols. Remember May Day? Lenin fired a rifle into the air—one shot—and recruitment surged. July? Those little protests? We held rallies, and the boys over at Kronstadt pledged themselves to us while recruitment surged. And just recently, when we paraded through the city when Kornilov tried his little putsch and we blurted out the International, every SR and red guards that was worth their while joined us. Symbols matter. Humiliation matters. People love a show. I say let's give them the best circus in Russia."

Stalin chuckled low, like he always does when he's weighing the pleasure of my cruelty against the annoyance of my mouth. "There's…logic here," he muttered. "Hostages mean loyalty. Break their backs, they become tools." He tapped the packet. "It is…barbaric. But so is counter-revolution."

Trotsky snapped. "And where does it end? Today Kornilov, tomorrow the Mensheviks, next week us if we disagree with you?"

"Are you saying you're a reactionary?" I said sweetly while smiling at him. Stalin almost laughed.

Lenin finally weighed in, stroking his chin as if he were petting some invisible cat. "Comrade Mikheil, you are creative. Always creative. And there is utility in re-educating valuable men, yes. But to systematize it? To make a program of it? Hm." He glanced around the room. "It risks distracting us from seizing power outright. Torture chambers are not factories, nor are they rifles. Still…" He trailed off, eyes narrowing. "Symbols, yes. You are not wrong about symbols."

I leaned forward, smiling. "Then let us compromise. We'll make two tiers of Red Rebirth. Only the choicest cuts of the bourgeois pig. Kornilov himself, the generals, the high nobles, Romanovs and the whole royal family if we catch them will go through the full blown program. Make an example. A living exhibition of revolution. The rest, the officers, the lower nobility, impoverished nobles? A more toned down version. Hold their families hostage, constant readings of marx, no sleep deprivation, no mock executions."

Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, his voice dry as winter frost: "If we do this, I want full oversight of the…conditioning facilities. No anarchic cruelty. Order. Method. Records."

"Done," I said, clapping my hands. "It will be beautiful, Felix. It will be yours. You'll get to sharpen your knives with bureaucracy."

Trotsky muttered something about "Asiatic barbarism" and started scribbling furiously in his notebook. Stalin eyed him like a cat eying a rat.

Lenin sighed, exasperated. "We will discuss this further. But Comrade Mikheil…" He jabbed a finger at me. "Do not mistake theatrics for politics. We cannot blind ourselves from our true goals."

I gave him my broadest grin. "As you wish, by the way comrade Lenin, come to dinner at my quarters. Relax for once in your life. My mother makes khachapuri that will make you weep like a child. Dzerzhinsky, you too—your blood pressure needs cheese. The rest of you are welcome as well. Politics and plotting after dinner."

The room half-laughed, half-groaned. Trotsky muttered something about preferring exile in New York. Stalin pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, "Every day with you is like wrestling a drunk bear."

And me? I just leaned back in my chair, thinking: They'll thank me when Kornilov is teaching Marx to peasants with tears in his eyes.

August 22, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Late evening

To both my surprise and mild horror, every single member of the Central Committee accepted my dinner invitation. Even Trotsky. Especially Trotsky. The man would attend a funeral if there was soup involved. Suddenly, I found myself in the unenviable position of having to feed the leadership of the revolution with nothing but my mother, and my brother Stalin as my sous-chefs.

I scrambled like a man possessed. Extra tables dragged in from the classrooms, mismatched chairs borrowed from the guards, candles stolen from the commissary. Meanwhile, I had to cajole Stalin—already sulking because I'd called him "Joe" in front of Lenin—into peeling potatoes. He protested, muttered about being too busy with "state affairs," but I leaned in and hissed, "If we look like bad hosts, they'll think we're counter-revolutionaries." That did it. Nothing terrifies Stalin more than the suggestion he might look bourgeois.

So there we were: I chopping vegetables like some harried innkeeper, Stalin hacking at the meat and nicking his fingers so often you'd think he was trying to assassinate himself in installments. Each cut, I forced him to wash thoroughly—there's no penicillin in Russia, and I wasn't about to have him die of sepsis while the revolution still needed his paranoia.

By the time the first knock rattled the door, we looked like butchers who'd wrestled a cow to death and lost. My shirt was covered in beet juice, Stalin had blood stains on his sleeves, and my mother scolded us both for looking like dockside criminals. Which, to be fair, wasn't entirely inaccurate.

Still, the food was ready—or what passed for food. A Georgian touch, of course: khachapuri, glorious cheese bread, a gift from God to compensate for the existence of Russians. The rest, predictably Slavic: stroganoff, borscht, and Olivier salad. All washed down with French wine I'd "confiscated" from a brothel owner a month ago who usually paid her protection tax in cash.

The woman had offer me a thirteen-year-old girl as part of the payment. I explained, very politely, that if she pimped out anyone under eighteen again, I'd have her strung from a lamppost and let my men use her as bayonet practice. She didn't believe me. A few days later, one of Dzerzhinsky's men reported she'd simply sold the children off to another brothel. So, true to my word, I had my revolutionary guard drag her into the street and bayoneted until she resembled a political cartoon. Then I tracked down the man who bought the girls and had him strangled, on principle.

The girls themselves? Sent to work in a munitions factory, which was a mercy compared to prostitution—or marriage. As for the now-ownerless brothels, I handed them over to Dzerzhinsky. Efficiency, comrades: state-sanctioned brothels, fully staffed and run by prostitutes who doubled as informants. Lenin preached about nationalizing industry; I merely extended the logic to vice.

So that evening, as the Committee filed in—Lenin in his spotless suit, Trotsky in his eternal sneer, Dzerzhinsky already looking like he was plotting someone's midnight disappearance—they were greeted with steaming khachapuri, borscht, stroganoff, salad, and wine. All of it cooked by two semi-competent revolutionaries, an overworked mother, and a future dictator with blood on his apron.

I saw Lenin glance at Stalin's bandaged fingers and mutter, "So this is what proletarian hands look like." Stalin glared at me across the table, silently promising my eventual execution. Trotsky laughed far too loudly at nothing, probably hoping to disguise the fact he was stuffing his pockets with bread for later. Dzerzhinsky said nothing, ate mechanically, and stared into the middle distance like the soup had personally offended him.

And me? I poured the wine and thought to myself: We may all be dead within the year, but at least we'll die on a full stomach. Dinner was on.

The table groaned beneath the weight of food, though whether from abundance or sheer structural weakness was hard to say. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, my mother, my wife, my brother-in-law, even my eldest son perched on a chair too tall for him—an entire revolution compressed into mismatched dining chairs and candlelight that made us all look like murderers in a painting. Which, in fairness, we were.

I clapped my hands as the first spoons touched the soup.

"No politics," I declared. "Not until the last plate is cleared. Anyone who tries to plot the overthrow of anyone else at this table before dessert will be force-fed until they choke."

Trotsky snorted. "That's absurd."

"Yes," I said, ladling borscht into his bowl. "And so are you. Eat."

Lenin frowned, but said nothing. He looked like a priest forced to endure a wedding feast when he'd rather be leading a funeral. His spoon rose and fell like a metronome.

Conversation began hesitantly, like a man testing thin ice. My mother, bless her, asked Trotsky if he was married.

"Yes," he said.

"Poor woman," she replied flatly, and went back to sipping her soup. Trotsky nearly spat beet juice across the table.

I leaned toward Dzerzhinsky, who was hunched over his bowl as though interrogating it.

"Felix," I said. "You must relax more. You look like you'll work yourself into the grave before you've shot your first aristocrat."

He blinked, the closest he came to laughter. "I cannot relax. There is too much work."

"Yes, but if you die of exhaustion, who will terrify the bourgeoisie with those wonderful cheekbones?" I raised my glass. "To Felix's continued existence! May he one day smile before rigor mortis forces him to."

The table laughed. Except Felix. He just stared at me, spoon mid-air, as though calculating how many men he'd need to dispose of my body discreetly.

Stalin, meanwhile, picked at his stroganoff with the sulkiness of a man convinced his portion was smaller than everyone else's.

"Eat," I told him.

"It's cold."

"It's meat, Joe. Considering the state of Russia, I could serve you a boiled shoe and you'd still lick the plate."

He grunted, then muttered something about "bourgeois nicknames."

My son, emboldened by the laughter, pointed at Lenin. "Why are you bald?"

The room froze. Even the candles seemed to dim. Lenin's eyes narrowed to razor slits.

"I lost my hair in the struggle," he said, voice dripping with martyrdom.

I ruffled the boy's hair. "See, my son? Revolution makes you bald. That's why I sing instead of writing pamphlets."

Trotsky cackled, though it sounded more like a man choking on bread. Lenin's glare shifted to him with the intensity of an artillery barrage.

As wine flowed, conversation loosened. Stories emerged—childhoods, families, memories of tsarist prisons. I told them about my time taking bribes in Petrograd and stashing guns, how a pimp once tried to cheat me with counterfeit rubles. "I broke his hand with a baton. He screamed like a little bitch as I kicked him repeatedly. Then I shot him."

My wife hissed at me to stop. Stalin chuckled into his glass. Trotsky looked scandalized, as though violence outside of theory offended him. Lenin pursed his lips, calculating whether this anecdote could be weaponized at my expense.

At one point I raised my glass again.

"To our enemies," I toasted. "May they live long enough to see us laugh at their funerals."

Everyone drank. Even Felix.

As dessert arrived—bread pudding drowned in vodka, because Russia—the table was warm, even joyful. For one hour, the revolutionaries ceased to be conspirators and executioners. They were just tired men eating in candlelight, pretending at normalcy.

But beneath the laughter, a current of menace lingered. Every joke about baldness, every tease about exhaustion, every toast could just as easily be remembered tomorrow as betrayal. In this room, humor was both shield and dagger.

And so we ate, we laughed, we drank—and silently sharpened our knives beneath the tablecloth.

Eventually though, all good things had to end, plates had been cleared, wine had been drunk, Stalin had complained three separate times that his portion was smaller than Trotsky's, and Trotsky had complained three separate times that my jokes were "unbecoming of a revolutionary." The usual.

I stood, clapped my hands, and declared:
"Now—enough of this Orthodox silence. We've eaten like peasants. Now we dance like Americans."

The room went very still. Dzerzhinsky's fork froze mid-air. Lenin squinted as though I'd just spoken in Sanskrit. Stalin muttered something about "bourgeois corruption." Trotsky nearly spilled his wine in outrage.

I grinned, walked to the gramophone in the corner, and produced my secret weapon: a record, wrapped in rags, smuggled into Petrograd only days ago. I held it up like a priest revealing a relic.

"Gentlemen, comrades, fellow revolutionaries: Livery Stable Blues. Straight from New Orleans. A smuggler's gift to me a week ago for tolerating his activities up to now. After he also paid our cause with 20 crates worth of bullets. Ask my brother in law Alyosha over there, he verified."

He smiled nervously and nodded as I set the record down, cranked the machine, and suddenly the room filled with something utterly alien—trumpets, trombones, clarinets, all sounding like a circus run by drunks. Jazz.

Every face looked horrified. Lenin's especially—he looked as if Karl Marx himself had risen from the grave only to start tap-dancing.

I turned to Aleksandra, my wife, who had spent the evening politely enduring the company of men who debated humanity as though it were a chessboard. I smacked her ass with a sharp crack.

"Dance with me, my love."

She gasped, half scandalized, half amused, and before she could object I spun her into the middle of the room. The jazz howled and I howled with it. We twirled, stumbled, laughed. Her dress flared, her hair whipped against my cheek. Stalin looked like he was being tortured. Trotsky muttered, "Decadent trash." Lenin rubbed his bald head furiously, as though trying to erase the sound.

I dipped her low, nearly dropped her, then yanked her upright with a flourish. The horns blared. She laughed, flushed, alive in a room where joy was usually rationed like bread.

The music built, chaotic, drunken. On the final note, I pulled her close, twirled her one last time, and kissed her hard enough to make the candles flicker.

When I finally pulled away, her eyes sparkled with something rare in Petrograd—happiness. I pressed my forehead against hers and whispered, loud enough for every Bolshevik corpse-in-waiting at the table to hear:

"I love you. Always. Even when we're up to our knees in blood, I'll still love you."

The room was silent. The gramophone hissed, needle scratching at the end of the record.

Trotsky looked scandalized, as if love itself were counter-revolutionary. Lenin coughed awkwardly, muttering something about "bourgeois sentimentality." Stalin swirled his glass and muttered, "Disgusting." Dzerzhinsky just stared, probably imagining how best to arrest jazz for crimes against order.

But Aleksandra smiled, and in that moment—between the smell of cabbage, the sound of jazz, and the eyes of history's greatest executioners watching me make a fool of myself—I didn't care.

Love in Petrograd: now that was the real revolutionary act.

The evening went on, the wine had loosened everyone's tongues, but not their politics. I sat back down at the table, still glowing from dancing with Aleksandra. She fussed over her hair, trying to tame it after my little stunt. Stalin glared at me like I had personally offended Georgian masculinity. Trotsky scribbled furiously in his notebook—"Decadent spectacle, jazz = counter-revolutionary bourgeois degeneration" no doubt.

I clapped my hands. "Iosif! Fetch the map, boy."

My eldest, recently turned eight, scurried off to the adjoining room and returned with the map of Europe I'd pinned and re-pinned so many times it looked like a butcher's apron. He laid it flat across the oak table, weighted at the corners by Lenin's glass, Stalin's fork, Trotsky's ego, and Dzerzhinsky's eternal frown.

The map was a mess of lines and scrawls, red ink for fronts, blue for rivers, little notes in my handwriting like 'Austro-Hungarians = drunk clowns' and 'French morale = corpse in a uniform.'

I tapped Petrograd with my finger.

"Comrades, let's talk reality. When we seize power—and we will—we need peace. Immediately. Not months of negotiations, not a people's committee of endless debates. Immediate. Peace. With Germany."

Trotsky scoffed. Stalin raised an eyebrow. Lenin's lips pursed like he'd bitten into a lemon. Aleksandra gave me the side-eye that meant: don't embarrass me in front of the bald one again.

I pressed on.

"It doesn't matter if we're seen as German puppets. We will be seen as German puppets, no matter what we do. But we'll have a civil war to fight, not a popularity contest. We sign the paper, hand over whatever Germany wants, and they pull their army out of Russia. Simple. Efficient. Humane, in the revolutionary sense."

Iosif giggled at that line. I ruffled his hair.

I pointed at the Western Front. "Now, here's the beauty of it. Germany moves their entire force back west. They start hammering the French, the British, and yes, maybe even march on Paris. If they do, the Entente will be too busy choking on baguettes to send a single rifle or man to Russia and help the reactionaries. We get our breathing space. We crush the counter revolution. We consolidate. By the time the Allies look east again, we'll be untouchable."

Stalin leaned forward, eyes glinting. "You're saying… let Germany bleed the Entente dry, while we take Russia. Then, we pick our borders back up again like nothing happened?"

I spread my arms. "Exactly. Germany is already dying. They've lost too many men. Their economy is a corpse propped up by bayonets. America—untouched, industrialized, hungry—will crush them. Germany cannot win the long game. So let's use the short game. We'll be free of war, armed with victory in civil war, and when Germany collapses, we take back whatever they stole. No one will stop us because we'll be the only ones left standing."

Silence. A long silence. The children watched from the side of the room like wide-eyed owls. Aleksandra refilled her glass, muttering, "My husband, the genius. Or lunatic. Hard to tell."

Lenin finally spoke, his voice low and deliberate. "You propose…surrender before victory. Peace at any price. You would hand over half of Russia."

I grinned. "An exaggeration, more like 10, maybe 20 percent at most. Amputate a hand for the body to survive. Amputate or die, comrade. That's the choice."

Trotsky snapped, slamming his notebook shut. "This is surrender dressed up as strategy! You would make us slaves of Germany. The revolution would be spat on by every worker in Europe!"

Stalin chuckled darkly. "Let the workers spit. They can spit on us from Paris when the Germans march through it."

That got a laugh from me. Trotsky's face turned crimson.

Lenin stroked his chin, eyes darting across the map. "You are both wrong and right. A revolution shackled to Germany is no revolution at all… but neither is a revolution drowned in blood before it has teeth. A tactical retreat. Hm."

Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, voice flat as stone. "Practical. Cruel, but practical. Our enemies are everywhere. We cannot fight a war on many fronts. And peace would free us to focus on… internal matters." He adjusted his cuffs like he was tightening a noose.

My mother—God bless her Orthodox soul—crossed herself and muttered, "You are all devils."

Iosif tugged at my sleeve. "Papa, does this mean we'll win?"

I looked at him, then at the table full of men who'd one day drown the world in terror, and I smiled.

"Yes, my son. We'll win. And one day you'll tell your children how we sold part of Russia to save the rest. And they'll laugh about it over khachapuri."

Stalin smirked. "If there are children left."

Trotsky muttered, "Asiatic barbarism," for the third time that evening.

Lenin sighed, as if Atlas himself had just asked for help carrying the world. "We will discuss this further. But…" He tapped the map. "There is a ruthless logic here. We must survive first. Everything else is secondary."

Aleksandra clinked her glass against mine. "To ruthless logic, then."

The children laughed, not understanding.

And for one brief, wine-soaked moment, the future of Russia—the blood, the betrayals, the gulags, the famine—was decided over jazz, khachapuri, and an eight-year-old holding a map with sticky fingers.

 

[Alenco98]

August 26, 1917
A Church near the Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia

Father Sergey Eldarevich Patruchev stood beneath the stone arch of the church entrance, as he did every Sunday and feast day, his cassock brushing against the steps as he greeted the faithful one by one. Their faces carried the same mixture of weariness and desperate devotion that had become so common in Petrograd ever since the war started. Some crossed themselves hurriedly, others muttered greetings, but all seemed eager to escape the turbulence outside and find a measure of peace within the gilded, candlelit nave.

Then he heard it—the sound that always preceded them. A syncopated rhythm of boots, precise yet almost mocking, like a parody of military discipline. Goose-step. A grim herald of a presence his parishioners had come to recognize too well.

The Revolutionary Guard.

The Bolsheviks' shock troops. Enforcers, black-clad arbiters of order and terror, whose rifles gleamed like icons of a darker faith, who protected and taxed every brothel, opium den, and other criminal activities to arm, fund and supply not only themselves, but the nascent Soviet military and national guard. They filed into the church with unnerving confidence, helmets painted a crude blood-red, adorned with skull and crossbones as though they were not men but heralds of the angel of death itself. At the door they broke their rigid march, relaxing into something looser, as though stepping into the house of God required a casual posture. All while they left their rifles nearly stacked at the door. Outside the church, another battalion, probably 200 or so formed a protective perimeter around the church.

Not only to protect his parishioners of course, but him and his family.

Comrade Makarov. Mikheil Jugashvili. The man whose name whispered through taverns and barracks, half curse, half incantation. He entered not like a warlord but like a genial neighbor arriving at a family gathering. His wife, Aleksandra, on his arm. His children clustered around him: Iosif, eight years old and already sharp-eyed; little Ekaterina, seven years old solemn as a nun; Alyosha, recently turned five who clutched at his father's coat; and the baby—Bessarion—who his friend Anatoly over in the outskirts had baptized earlier this year, despite the irony of christening a child of such a man.

Behind them came Mikheil's mother, old Ekaterina, pious to the bone and stubborn as the stone icons in the church walls. He had come to love her simple devotion, the way her trembling hand clung to the cross at her chest. Then followed his brother-in-law Alexander, stiff and humorless, already scanning the pews for threats. And lastly, the one absent figure loomed like a shadow: Stalin. The twin. The "Man of Steel." The Central Committee member. Sergey had never seen him in person, but he felt his presence whenever Mikheil entered, as though the brothers carried each other's weight like two halves of the same coin.

At least Mikheil believes, Sergey thought, not without bitterness. At least he still bends his knee to God, even if only in appearances.

"Father Patruchev!" Mikheil greeted him warmly, flashing the same disarming grin he used, Sergey suspected, moments before pulling a trigger or extorting a smuggler. That smile—open, easy, almost charming—hid the truth that last week alone he had shot three men dead, broken two jaws in an alley, and shaken down every pimp, gambler, and opium den from the Neva to the Vyborg side. He would no doubt sit across from Sergey in the confessional after Mass and recount whatever atrocities he had done with the breezy tone of a man describing errands.

Mikheil clasped his hand firmly. "Has any of the Revolutionary Guards, the National Guard, or the army been troubling you this week? None of my boys, I hope? Do you need more rations for your soup kitchen?"

The priest forced a nod, half grateful, half afraid. "No, Comrade. Your men have done a… wonderful job keeping the hooligans away from the church. The believers feel safe here. And the soup kitchens—" he swallowed, "—they run well enough, for now."

Mikheil's face lit up. "That's a relief." He patted the priest's shoulder as though reassuring a nervous clerk. "Well then, I'll see you in confession after the service. Don't worry, Father. I'll bring you something good today." He winked, as if sin itself were a gift to be offered.

And just like that, he turned, striding into the nave with his family, settling into the pews as if they had come for a picnic. Aleksandra smoothed her skirt, the children squirmed, and old Ekaterina crossed herself three times as though to cleanse the air around her son.

Father Patruchev exhaled heavily, his hand tightening around the brass cross that hung from his neck. A gangster masquerading as a revolutionary, he thought, and yet a man who kneels at the altar, who prays, who confesses. What kind of faith is this? What kind of world is this, where wolves come dressed not in sheep's clothing, but in skulls and bones, and still kneel beside the lambs?

He sighed, bracing himself for the strange intimacy of the confessional, where Mikheil would unburden himself with a laugh, recounting murders, thefts, and extortions as casually as a farmer speaks of weather.

Patruchev longed, then, for the simple solace of his home that awaited him later today: his wife's stroganoff waiting on the stove, the quiet weight of his newborn son in his arms. Simple joys. A kind of holiness untouched by politics or death. Yet even there, the shadow of men like Mikheil crept in. The soviets practically ran the city ; the provisional government was paralyzed, fighting a losing war on one front while the Bolsheviks built a parallel army in the capital. Something was going to happen. He knew it, his parishioners knew it as well.

As the bells tolled and the choir began their hymn, Father Patruchev closed his eyes and whispered a prayer. Not for his flock—though they needed it. Not even for himself. But for Mikheil. For the smiling devil who walked into his church each week like he owned both heaven and hell.

And in the corner of his mind, he wondered—does he?

------------

The incense still hung in the air when the last hymn faded. Parishioners drifted out with hurried bows and murmured prayers, until only a few stragglers remained kneeling in the pews. Father Patruchev moved toward the confessional, every step heavy, as though he were walking into a tomb. He slid into his place, crossing himself quickly, steeling his mind.

The curtain on the other side rustled, and there it was—the faint scent of wine, leather, and blood.

"Bless me, Father," came the familiar voice, cheerful as a man greeting a friend at a tavern, "for I have sinned."

Patruchev shut his eyes, gripping the edge of the seat. O Lord, grant me patience.

"I'll start with the big one," Mikheil said, lowering his voice to something conspiratorial. "Remember General Kornilov? That proud Cossack rooster who tried to march on us? Well—I organized a little parade for him and his boys. Made them march through the streets, stripped of their dignity, while everyone jeered. Marvelous optics, Father. Very festive. If you'd been there, you'd have sworn it was a carnival. Only with more spit and contempt."

Patruchev's hand twitched toward the cross at his neck. He murmured, "This is a grave humiliation of your fellow man."

"Yes, yes, grave humiliation, sinful pride, what have you. Write it down. Now, the second thing. You'll like this—it's very… theological." Mikheil chuckled. "I've been building a little program for the aristocrats, the nobles, even the royal family if we can nab them. Think of it as… rhetorical exercises! They'll get daily instruction in Marx, Engels, Lenin. If they resist? Well, we still have their families. Insurance, you understand. They'll either come out good little Marxists or… their families and themselves will die. Efficient, eh?"

Father Patruchev's mouth went dry. His mind screamed, This is not catechism, this is coercion, this is torture! But aloud, he whispered only, "The Lord teaches mercy."

"Oh, I give them mercy. Submit or die. That's mercy, isn't it?" Mikheil laughed, and the sound rang hollow in the tiny box.

He leaned closer, lowering his tone. "We're also working on something bigger. Don't spread this one around, Father." A pause, then, in a stage whisper: "We're going to surrender to Germany. Just as soon as we seize power, I already planned a coup a while back. Sign the peace, send the Germans packing back to France. Everyone will scream that we're traitors, puppets, but who cares? We'll win the coming civil war while the Allies and the Kaiser bash each other's skulls in. By the time Germany falls—and they will fall, mark my words—we'll be the only power left standing. Smart, eh? Then we'll go and reconquer whatever those Hun bastards took from us. Call it a, strategic retreat."

Patruchev nearly bit his tongue to stop himself from gasping. Dear God in Heaven. He's boasting of treason as if it were clever bookkeeping.

"And of course," Mikheil went on, breezily, "the usual business. I shot 10 people this week for stealing supplies. Not personal, Father—just policy. If you let one man steal bread, tomorrow ten men steal rifles. And about fifteen others roughed up on my orders for not paying their taxes. Don't worry, nothing too serious. Broken teeth, cracked ribs. All fixable."

The priest's hands trembled in his lap. Each word felt like another stone dropped into his soul. And yet Mikheil spoke with the casual tone of a man listing errands: bread bought, boots polished, executions carried out, atrocities and plots being planned.

Patruchev whispered, voice breaking, "These are not sins you confess lightly, my son. These are the gravest of sins. They are… they are the ruin of souls."

Silence from the other side, then a sigh. For a moment, Father Patruchev thought—hoped—Mikheil had been struck by remorse.

Then Mikheil said warmly, almost tenderly, "I know, Father. That's why I bring them to you. Catharsis. Better in your ears than rattling around in my head and drive me mad, eh? Besides, you're the only man I can tell all this to who won't try to shoot me or praise me afterward."

He laughed again, soft and genial, as though they were discussing fishing or the weather.

Father Patruchev pressed the cross to his lips, whispering a prayer so faint it barely escaped him. For mercy. For strength. For the strength not to scream at this man who brought sin into God's house like contraband smuggled in a coat pocket.

"Anything else?" he asked at last, his voice a thin thread.

Mikheil thought for a moment. "Oh, right—nearly forgot. I may have spanked Aleksandra during a dance the other night. Inappropriate, perhaps? Though she smiled, so maybe not a sin at all." He chuckled. "Still, best to be thorough. I think that's all for this week though. Just remember, if anyone gives you or your people trouble, come to me, I'll have them hung before sundown. Or just a stern talking to and a threat to execute them next time if you don't feel like having blood on your hands. As for your soup kitchens, I'll have my men deliver the usual food rations tomorrow and guard your kitchen. Let me know if you need more men to protect them."

Patruchev closed his eyes. For a wild moment he imagined standing, throwing open the curtain, and striking Mikheil across the face. But instead he murmured the absolution, his words trembling as though spoken by someone else.

When Mikheil left, the priest remained in the box long after, clutching his cross, fighting the nausea that rose in him. He prayed for forgiveness—not for Mikheil, but for himself, for being too weak to cry out.

August 26, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Afternoon

The smoke was thick enough to choke a horse. Everyone had a cigarette, a pipe, or, in Stalin's case, a half-burned cigar that looked like it had been gnawed rather than smoked. Trotsky was pacing, spectacles glinting under the weak lamps. Lenin sat with his head in his hands, listening more than speaking. Dzerzhinsky leaned against the wall like a statue carved out of exhaustion.

And then there was me, Mikheil. Leaning back, legs spread, looking like I owned the place. Which, if you counted who actually held the guns in Petrograd, I more or less did.

"Comrade Makarov," Trotsky began—he always used that damned false name when he wanted to be cold with me—"Attending church again." His lip curled on the word as though it had a smell. "It undermines us. It sends the wrong message. Religion is—"

I cut him off. "Yes, yes, the opium of the people. I can quote Marx better than you, Bronstein." I leaned forward, fixing them all with a grin. "What's the full line, eh? 'Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.'"

I spread my arms. "So what do you want me to do Lev? Shoot the sigh out of them? Ban the soul out of their conditions? Confiscate the only bloody opium keeping them sane until we build the paradise we keep promising?"

Lenin rubbed his temple. Trotsky looked like he'd swallowed a lemon.

"I don't see in the Communist Manifesto where Marx said 'shoot priests.' I've read it cover to cover, more than once. Nor do I recall a footnote that says 'burn down soup kitchens if the clergy run them.' What I do recall," I jabbed a finger at Trotsky, "is that we need the people. And the people like their churches."

Zinoviev shifted nervously. "But it gives an image of superstition. Of backwardness. The revolution must be—"

"Must be alive first, Grigory," I said sharply. "Alive, fed, and not rioting against us because we closed the only place that gave them bread and hope. My men stand guard outside and protect Father Patruchev's church and every fucking church in Petrograd every Sunday. You know what that does? It makes babushkas cry with joy, and makes people think twice before smashing windows. Good optics. Very good optics. Even the priests bless us. Imagine that: the men of God bless the men of Marx."

Kamenev gave a thin smile. "You sound almost proud, Mikheil."

"I am," I shot back. "We run our soup kitchens, the priests run theirs while we protect them. We look like protectors, not looters. Even Christ himself would have liked it." I smirked, couldn't resist it. "After all, who was it that chased the moneylenders from the temple? Who said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven? Sounds like a good Bolshevik to me."

The room went quiet. Lenin pinched his nose, muttering something about blasphemy. Trotsky, meanwhile, was practically shaking.

"So you suggest," Trotsky spat, "that we attend mass? That we, Marxists, sit in pews like good little Christians for the sake of 'optics'?"

"I don't see why not." I said with a shrug. "Stand there, arms crossed, looking solemn while Father Patruchev talks about loving thy neighbor. Then afterward, we go back to planning how to murder and/or reeducate every noble and their families in Russia. Two birds, one stone. They see us in church, they trust us more. They hear us quoting Christ against the rich, they trust us more. And when we finally confiscate the estates, they'll say, 'ah well, Jesus warned the rich, didn't he?'"

That got a few uneasy laughs. Even Dzerzhinsky cracked half a smile before coughing into his sleeve.

Lenin finally looked up, eyes sharp but weary. "You're turning religion into a tool."

"What about it?" I asked. "And tools are useful. Unlike useless debates."

Trotsky slammed his fist on the table. "This is opportunism! It is—"

"It is pragmatism, Lev." I interrupted again, leaning back with my hands behind my head. "And unless you'd like me to pull my men from the churches and let them get smashed to pieces by hooligans, I suggest you shut your mouth, Bronstein. The people love their priests. And for now, the priests love me. That's worth more than your rousing speeches."

The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the scratch of Stalin's cigar. He hadn't said a word the whole time, just sat watching me with those narrow eyes of his, unreadable, like a man studying a horse before deciding whether to shoot it or ride it.

Trotsky looked furious, Zinoviev and Kamenev almost as livid, Lenin conflicted. Dzerzhinsky looked like Dzerzhinsky. And me? I was grinning like a boy at his first communion.

Because I knew I had them. They couldn't touch me. Not with my men holding the guns, and not with the people whispering thanks to me in their churches.

------

Later that night
Smolny Institute
Lenin's office

The committee had dispersed, most muttering about vodka or cursing me under their breath. But not me. Oh no. I got the invitation: a little private talk.

It was just the four of us. Lenin, pale and thin, looking like a corpse who'd sat up for one last argument. Stalin, slouched in the corner, smoking and staring at me like he was trying to decide whether to strangle me or shake my hand. And Dzerzhinsky, leaning against the wall, hands folded like a patient undertaker, which wasn't far from his day job.

And me—Mikheil, a ghost from the future, gangster, revolutionary, amateur stand-up comedian.

Lenin started, voice sharp but tired:
"You create problems, comrade. The Party cannot look like it encourages religion."

I grinned. "Not encourage—control. There's a difference. You shoot them, they become martyrs. You fund them, you own them. That's my point."

Lenin squinted. Stalin blew smoke rings. Dzerzhinsky blinked slowly, like a reptile.

I leaned forward, hands spread like a salesman unveiling a shiny new product:
"We confiscate their wealth, their lands, their valuables. Then we create a commissariat—call it the Commissariat of Religious Affairs. Every church, mosque, synagogue, temple, buddhist monastery—they all have to register. They want to build a soup kitchen? They ask us. They want candles for Christmas? They ask us. They'll be eating from our hands. We'll own them."

Dzerzhinsky raised an eyebrow. "So you propose to subsidize superstition."

"Subsidize? No. We leash it. You can murder men all day, Felix, but an idea is harder to strangle and bullets are expensive. This way we hold the leash. We make religion a pet. Harmless, declawed, fed just enough to survive."

Stalin finally chuckled, low and humorless. "Like a dog on a chain."

"Exactly," I said. "A very holy dog. We let it bark, maybe even wag its tail at us, but it never bites. And if it does? Off with its head. Simple."

Lenin tapped the desk with his fingers, thinking. The man looked half-dead, but his brain still whirred like a machine. "It is… pragmatic. The people will not give up their faith overnight. You suggest to control it."

"Of course," I said. "You use what you have. Jesus condemned the rich. Mohammed preached against usury. Buddha renounced wealth. They're practically writing Party leaflets for us already. Why waste bullets and men putting down rebellion and shooting priests when we can quote scripture?"

Stalin's eyes narrowed. "But you believe it, don't you? You kneel. You cross yourself."

I smirked. "I do." I nodded. "What about it? Optics, remember? And besides—" I couldn't resist, I leaned in conspiratorially, "—between us, I've probably killed more people in the past three months than all three of you combined. God's definitely very pissed at me."

There was a silence. Lenin stared at me like he wasn't sure if I was joking. Dzerzhinsky actually coughed a laugh, the driest sound in history. Stalin muttered something in Georgian that sounded suspiciously like a curse.

Lenin finally nodded, almost grudgingly.
"Very well. We will consider your commissariat. But mind this, Mikheil—if you build yourself a power base in the Church, if you turn priests into your own guard… then you will be the one we must put down."

I grinned, leaning back. "As you wish comrade."

Then I took a long look at them. Sitting there, facing Lenin, Stalin—all these names I'd read in history books—and realizing I was the one lecturing them? That was funny. Too funny. The kind of absurd joke that made me want to laugh out loud in their faces.

And the best part? I probably did have a higher body count already.

History, it turns out, has a dark sense of humor. And I fit right in.

 

[Alenco98]

September 17, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia

I woke, as I always did, at precisely 5:30 a.m. Not a second later. To sleep longer would be sloth; to wake earlier would be masochism. I am neither a pig nor a monk. I am Mikheil.

I rose, placed a pillow on the floor, and did a headstand against the wall. I counted to one hundred in a whisper, steady and calm, as though communing with some cruel God who cared only for numbers. Then I collapsed, deliberately, onto the wooden floor with a thud loud enough to wake the mice. I don't just do this for "health." Health is an abstraction. I do it so my hair doesn't fall out. All that blood rushing to the scalp—natural medicine. Thick hair is a symbol of power, immortality. Lenin has a bald head. Stalin has a pockmarked face. I, however, will never surrender my hair. I would rather die.

Next came my morning routine. I strapped on a backpack I had stuffed with ten kilos of contraband paperweights, and did thirty push-ups, thirty squats, and fifteen pull-ups on the bar nailed above the door. Every grunt echoed through the hall like a threat. Keke stirred awake from my exertions, glaring at me with the face of a long-suffering saint. Sashiko and Aleksander groaned as well. Joe—my brother, Stalin—slept on, oblivious, dreaming perhaps of pamphlets, bribes, and endless meetings with factory men who smelled like kerosene and lies. He really should regulate his sleep, but explaining the concept of "wellness" to him is like explaining opera to a sack of potatoes.

Afterwards, I went to the communal washroom. The plumbing groaned like an old revolutionary who had been shot but insisted he was still alive. I washed myself thoroughly, first the body, then the hair—always the hair. I massaged it like a prized mink stole. Then I dried off, walking back to my quarters wearing nothing but a towel, carrying my crumpled nightclothes like the relics of a saint.

I changed into my revolutionary guard uniform. Before leaving, I combed my hair with precision, washed my face with lavender-scented soap—handcrafted, naturally, dipped in hot water until it softened into a perfect mixture of purity and decadence. It makes me look young, ethereal even. Stalin and I are both 39. Stalin looks 50. I look 25. Grooming, long hair brushing my collar, and a skincare routine that would shame Parisian courtesans—these are my weapons. Too bad for me I'm still shorter than Joe, he stands at whopping 5'7 while I'm barely 5'4 on a good day, truly there are some things you can't escape even in death, but it is what it is, short king for life.

There is an idea of a Mikheil Jugashvili. Some kind of abstraction. A concept more than a man. You can shake my hand and feel flesh, you can hear my voice, but you cannot touch me. I am not here, not really. I am from the future. A place more advanced, slightly more civilized, slightly less violent. Only slightly. I am above you all.

Except my wife, my mother, and my close family. Even Joe. I have grown… fond of them. Perhaps even love them, though love is such a tedious word, so bourgeois, so sticky. Call it possessiveness, if you prefer. And I would kill every single man, woman, and child in this building without hesitation if it meant keeping them safe and happy. With a smile, no less.

As I stepped back into the hall, Keke muttered about my vanity. I explained, very kindly, that aesthetics are not vanity—they are survival. Lenin has his speeches, Trotsky his pen, Stalin his paranoia. I have my hair and my face along with my men and their menacing drip. In a few years they will all be dead or irrelevant, but people will still remember me as handsome. That is immortality.

I hummed softly as I walked out of the building. Not a Russian tune, not a revolutionary anthem, but something from far ahead: "Puzzle" by Meiko Nakahara. City pop, neon humming through the void, longing pressed into vinyl. A song about yearning for love you cannot reach.

I yearn too. For the future. For the world to catch up with me. Until then, I will stay here, in the Smolny Institute, surrounded by men with bad haircuts and worse ideas.

And I will be beautiful.

But for now—vanity rituals complete, hair gleaming like a bayonet—I had work to do. Revolutionary work. Important work.

Helping Trotsky build his grandiose Soviet military, which he treated like a personal orchestra—he the conductor, the soldiers the instruments, always trying to drown out the tune of reality. Helping Dzerzhinsky hammer together his National Guard, a paranoid man creating an institution for even more paranoid men. And, of course, my own duties: shaping and expanding the Revolutionary Guard; strangling the criminal underworld until it squealed rubles and supplies that would then use to upkeep my guardsmen, the national guard and military; inspecting factories.

Yes. Mondays. Always Mondays. Tax day.

I left the Smolny like a tsar leaving his palace, Revolutionary Guard stationed at the gates. They saluted. I saluted back, gracious as a monarch humoring peasants. All with the funny mustache man salute. One handed me a helmet. I put it on. Another handed me a rifle. I slung it over my shoulder. A third presented a bulletproof vest, which I strapped on ceremoniously, as if being dressed for war—or a particularly aggressive dinner party.

The men hated the vests, hated the discipline, hated the drills, especially under the fading summer heat. But hatred is useful. Hatred is discipline. And a civil war was coming. Better they sweat today than bleed tomorrow.

A battalion of my Guardsmen—about a hundred, give or take—waited in formation. They saluted. I returned the gesture, magnanimous. We marched to the street, where a dozen armored cars waited like steel beasts. I claimed the front seat of one in the middle of the convoy. Half the battalion piled into the cars, the other half mounted horses that arrived a few minutes later, snorting, stamping, shitting. Democracy on four legs.

We had two stops today in between collecting taxes: Obukhov Factory and Petrograd Imperial University. Priorities. Hooray.

Obukhov first. Weapons production is always more important than academics. After all, you can't educate a man who's already been shot in the head.

The ride took half an hour, though Petrograd traffic made it feel like half a century. Still, the crowd parted for us eventually. They always do, when a hundred armed men demand it.

We dismounted at Obukhov. Guards flanked me as I strode inside. Technically, Trotsky had absorbed the Red Guards here into his embryonic "army," but they remembered me. I had organized defenses against Kornilov, defended the party in July, and, most importantly, made sure wages were paid and vodka flowed. Logistics is love. Logistics is respect.

Just as I was about to enter the factory floor, I spotted a commotion: a group of guards barking at a man and woman who looked decidedly foreign. Wrong clothes, wrong posture, wrong everything. Spies? Journalists? Diplomatic lice? I wandered over, curious.

The guards straightened immediately.

"What's the problem?" I asked, voice smooth, like oil ready to ignite.

The ranking guard stepped forward. "These two claim to be journalists. They want to interview the workers. Trotsky ordered us to keep anyone like that out. Could be spies."

The man spoke up, his Russian accented like a drunk trying to play the balalaika. "My name is John Reed. I am a journalist, here to cover events in Russia. I only seek a statement."

"Where are you from?" I asked flatly.

He looked at me and turned pale. Even foreigners knew who we were. Revolutionary Guards were not known for their warmth.

"I'm American," he stammered. "Portland."

"Ahh, Americans!" I replied—in flawless Mid-Atlantic English. The crowd blinked in collective shock. I hadn't spoken English since… well, since before I died. It felt refreshing, like brushing your teeth after biting into someone's jugular.

"Is your wife American too?"

The woman nodded quickly. "Yes. From San Francisco."

"Lovely," I said. "West Coast royalty. My name is Mikheil Jugashvili. Founder and head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. I was here to inspect the factory anyway. Why don't you wait here? We'll do an interview afterwards."

Reed lit up like a child offered candy and opium at once. "Yes! Of course."

"Perfect." I nodded. Switching back to Russian, I ordered my men: "Keep them here. Make sure no one disturbs them. Not even themselves."

The guards chuckled nervously. The Americans didn't understand.

Then I turned to the factory overseers, beckoning them forward with the gesture of a man who owns time itself. "Well then, gentlemen," I said. "Let's inspect production ."

And into the factory I went, humming "Puzzle" again under my breath. Always "Puzzle." Because in this city of corpses, betrayal, and smoke, I longed for a future that did not yet exist.

And until it came, I would build it—with bullets, taxes, and perfect hair.

The overseers shuffled forward as I entered the factory floor, nervous as altar boys caught stealing communion wine. They led me through the factory gates, past a gauntlet of guards and foremen, into the belly of the Obukhov Works.

The air inside was a cocktail of smoke, oil, sweat, and desperation. Sparks leapt from furnaces, machinery roared like starving lions, and men in soot-blackened overalls hammered metal into the shapes of death. Glorious.

"This factory," the senior overseer began, voice trembling with a mix of pride and fear, "was producing munitions for the war effort—rifles, ammunition, shells, artillery—for the Provisional Government. But now, comrade, every shipment, every piece, every bullet is directed to the Bolsheviks."

I smiled thinly. Like a father hearing his son finally admit he wants to become an executioner, not a doctor. I felt bad for Kerensky and his men. Worried? Nah, the Petrograd garrison, while on paper over 60 thousand men strong, was a rabble of sick, demoralized and undisciplined men who were more likely to receive rations that payment this month.

We had Dzerzhinsky's agents embedded within the guard, many of them were defecting to us on a daily basis. Trotsky now had 25 thousand men under arms, Dzerzhinsky 3 thousand, and little old me 7 thousand. All paid, armed, and supplied reliably thanks to the underworld and my now suffering brother in law who so graciously took the weight off my shoulders. Though I admit my men were better armed than Trotsky's and Dzerzhinsky, and Dzerzhinsky's were better armed than Trotsky. But Trotsky's men compared to the Petrograd garrison were far better off.

In short, Petrograd was a rotting house, one kick at the door and they would crumble. Bliss.

"We have diversified," the overseer continued quickly. "Not only rifles now, but bullets, shells, and artillery pieces. By the end of next month we estimate we'll have produced enough to arm another ten thousand men and sustain them for 3 weeks."

Ten thousand men. Fully supplied. Armed by my factories. Ten thousand opportunities to kill ten thousand more of someone else's men.

I paused by a workbench where a half-assembled Machine gun rested. I ran a gloved hand along its cooling jacket, savoring the oily residue left behind. I could almost hear it purr.

"Ten thousand men," I repeated slowly, as though tasting a rare wine. "That is enough to win a small war, gentlemen. But not enough for what we're looking to do."

The overseers laughed nervously, not sure if I was joking. I wasn't. Not entirely.

We walked deeper into the cavernous shop floors, where the din of hammering and grinding was deafening. I noticed a worker welding artillery parts without goggles. His retinas will probably melt in a few weeks. I sighed and glanced at one of the overseers. "Get the damn boy some googles. A blind welder is a useless one." One of the overseers nodded nervously and ran off while I continued.

I inspected crates of newly manufactured rifles stacked neatly against a wall, each stamped with the factory mark and serial numbers. Rows upon rows of them, like coffins waiting for occupants.

"You've done well," I said at last, turning back to the overseers. "I am pleased."

Their faces relaxed in visible relief. Being told "I am pleased" by me was the equivalent of a papal blessing—except the pope can't have you shot if the incense smells wrong.

I clasped my hands behind my back, strolling down the rows of rifles, humming "Puzzle" again, almost under my breath. The machines pounded in time with the beat. Metal, smoke, longing.

"This city bleeds, and you are the veins," I said absently. "Keep the guns flowing. Ten thousand men. By the end of October."

The overseers nodded violently, swearing they would work day and night.

Good.

I don't ask much. Just loyalty, discipline, and the ability to turn Petrograd into an arsenal of nightmares.

And I always, always, ask nicely first.

----------

We left the factory to the thunder of machines still birthing weapons behind us. My men fell into step, boots clattering against the cobblestones, armored cars rumbling like angry beasts chained to the revolution. Reed and his San Franciscan bride hurried alongside, scribbling in their notebooks like diligent undertakers preparing a eulogy for a still-living man.

"Comrade Jugashvili," Reed began carefully, "could I ask you—what exactly is the Revolutionary Guard's role in this… movement?"

Ah, the opening volley. I smiled, a politician's smile sharpened into a razor.

"Our role, John," I said in flawless English, "is simple: defense against Bonapartism and counter revolution. We are not here to plan coups, or seize power for ourselves. No, no. That's it. Think of us as a fire brigade—except instead of water, we use rifles, and instead of fires, we put out reactionaries and anyone within the Soviet Military that styles himself as a wannabe Napoleon."

They laughed nervously. I pressed on, enjoying myself.

"You see, just weeks ago, we defeated General Kornilov's putsch. A Thermidorian attempt if ever there was one. A general marching on Petrograd to restore 'order'—bah. We stopped him. Ordinary men, workers, Revolutionary Guards, the Soviet military, the national guard standing shoulder to shoulder. A victory, yes, but also a warning. The forces of Thermidor are always waiting. Always circling. Always one telegram away from strangling history in its cradle."

Reed scribbled furiously. His wife simply stared at me, eyes wide, like she couldn't decide if she was listening to a statesman or a lunatic who might start foaming at the mouth.

I decided to indulge them with biography. Everyone loves a confession from a dangerous man.

"My name, as I said, is Mikheil Jugashvili. I am the younger twin of Iosif Stalin. He is a member of the central committee. He is the brains, the thinker, the man with the plans. I am…" I spread my arms modestly. "The builder. My brother Stalin sketches and plans the house. I make sure it has walls and a roof. And perhaps a few well-stocked cellars."

Reed chuckled. He wasn't sure if I was joking. He wasn't wrong.

"I stepped back from party activity for some years. After Stalin's wife died, someone had to raise his boy, Yakov. I did. Married my sister in law, had a family of my own. Five children now. I count Yakov as my son. My mother lives with us too. We are very… domestic. Imagine it: me, my wife, the children, Stalin's boy at the table, our mother muttering prayers in the corner, all while I'm hiding rifles beneath the floorboards. A normal Russian family."

They blinked. I grinned.

"I moved here to Petrograd some years ago. Became a policeman, if you can believe it. Yes, Mikheil the Bolshevik, Mikheil the revolutionary, walking a beat, whistling at drunks, handing out fines and taking bribes. But I was clever. I built contacts in the underworld. Smugglers, thieves, black-market men. I kept weapons hidden, organized networks. When the time came, I had the tools. And when I reunited with my brother here—when Stalin came into his own—I began to organize the Guard. Workers, veterans, gangsters. A motley crew, yes, but disciplined. We run factories, we run soup kitchens, we run the city's veins, we protect churches and keep order. And occasionally, we run out of patience."

Reed swallowed hard. His wife scribbled now too, though I wondered if she was writing words or just drawing escape routes.

"You see, John, history requires both dreamers and janitors. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin—they dream, they plan. I sweep the streets, load the rifles, collect the money, break the bones when necessary. Division of labor, efficient."

I adjusted my rifle strap, gestured for them to follow me as I climbed into one of the armored cars.

"Now," I said, clapping Reed on the shoulder in what I imagine felt like a bear trap disguised as affection, "you're welcome to accompany me. It's Monday. Tax day. Today we collect revenue from factories, brothels, and other businesses that owe loyalty to the revolution. A revolutionary state needs funding, after all. And the world will learn soon enough that Petrograd's criminal underworld and honest businessmen now reports to me. In exchange for protection, they pay their share. Just like everyone else."

Reed hesitated, then nodded, smiling thinly, already imagining his Pulitzer—or whatever passed for one in this time.

"Excellent!" I said brightly. "Consider this an exclusive tour of the revolutionary economy. Guns, factories, taxes, prostitutes. It's all very modern. America could learn a thing or two."

I leaned back in the car as the engines roared to life. My men saluted. I returned it casually, like Caesar blessing the Senate before a massacre.

Reed leaned forward with a final question. "And if someone refuses to pay these… taxes?"

I smiled wide, teeth white, eyes empty. "Then, John, we first politely ask they pay us. They must be fed. And if they refuse again—well…" I glanced out the window at the passing city. "We shoot them."

The convoy rolled through Petrograd like a steel centipede, armored cars and horsemen in neat formation. I sat shotgun, Reed and his wife behind me, scribbling furiously. Poor things. They thought they were observers. No, they were participants now—extras in my little morality play about the revolution.

Our first stop was a bakery. The smell of stale rye and desperation clung to the air like mildew. The baker, a fat man with flour-caked fingers, greeted me with a forced smile and a trembling ledger. I smiled back, shook his hand warmly, asked about his wife and children. Then I asked for the money.

He produced it quickly—stacks of bread, yeast, and a few gold coins, tied neatly with string. Polite, efficient. I patted him on the cheek. "Good man. You feed the revolution, we feed you. Remember: Lenin dreams of bread for all, but I am the man who makes sure no one steals the loaves." He laughed nervously. Reed scribbled.

Second stop: a gambling den tucked behind a butcher shop. Cards, dice, vodka. The place smelled of tobacco, fear, and cheap perfume. The owner, a gaunt fellow with the eyes of a starving wolf, tried to hand me half of what was owed. I leaned in close, whispered in perfect English so only Reed and his wife could hear: "Do you know what happens to men who shortchange history? They become history."

Then, louder, in Russian, I snapped my fingers. My men stepped forward. The owner, suddenly realizing his error, produced the full amount. I smiled, took it, kissed him on the forehead like a priest giving a benediction. He nearly wept with relief. Reed's wife looked like she wanted to vomit. Good. She was learning.

Third stop: an opium den. The air thick with smoke, bodies sprawled like corpses in soft piles, eyes glazed over in chemical paradise. The owner, a Chinese man with perfect posture, handed me the tribute without hesitation. "You're efficient," I told him. "Like me. If only more Russians were like you, we'd have built socialism last week."

Next came the brothel. Always my favorite. The madam—a formidable woman in her forties with more rouge than dignity—curtsied as though I were some czarist prince instead of a revolutionary gangster. Her girls peeked from behind velvet curtains, wide-eyed and half-curious. I told her gently, "Your business thrives because the revolution protects it. Imagine if the Whites came back—they'd shut you down, or worse, make you their wives. Think about it." She thought about it. She paid in full.

Halfway through, a thief decided to test his luck. Some half-starved wretch slipped a handful of coins from a gambling den's pile into his ragged coat while my men weren't looking. But my men always look. He didn't make it two steps before they had him pinned against the wall.

I strolled over, Reed in tow. "My friend," I said kindly, "do you know what this money is for? This is for rifles. For bullets. For artillery. For the survival of the revolution itself. When you steal from this pile, you steal from the cause. You might as well be stealing from Lenin's pockets, or from the hands of the workers themselves."

He stammered, cried, begged. I nodded sympathetically, then I shot him after we dragged him outside. A single shot. His body slumped to the cobblestones, coins scattering like bloodstained confetti. Reed froze, his wife's pen clattered to the ground. I looked at them both and smiled.

"Taxes must be collected," I said softly. "Or else what is the point of government?"

We continued on—workshops, banks, smugglers' hideouts, black markets, even a soap maker. Each had their tribute ready, some cheerfully, most fearfully. The system worked because I was polite first, terrifying second. That is the true balance of revolution: a smile, a handshake, and the occasional corpse as punctuation.

By the time the sun dipped low, our wagons bulged with cash and contraband. Reed finally dared to speak again. "This… this is extraordinary. I've never seen—"

"Yes, yes," I cut him off smoothly. "Extraordinary. Historic. Necessary. You will write about this, John. You will tell your countrymen that the Bolsheviks are not anarchists or bandits, but organizers. We impose order. We collect taxes. We build an army. We win."

I leaned back, stretching, then added casually: "When we return to Smolny, I'll see if I can arrange something for you. Perhaps you'll meet the Central Committee. Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky. You can interview them. Imagine the headlines. And if you've no place to stay, you can stay at Smolny. Comfortable beds, revolutionary atmosphere, plenty of rifles to keep you warm."

Reed quickly shook his head. "Thank you, Comrade Jugashvili, but we've already taken rooms at the Angleterre."

"Ahh, the Angleterre," I said with a grin. "Very bourgeois. Very respectable. Yes, yes, stay there, drink their coffee, write your little notes. But while you're here, you'll wait in Smolny until I finish one more stop. One last errand. Then I'll deliver you to Lenin himself like a pair of rare foreign birds. How does that sound? Interviewing our leader."

Reed nodded eagerly. His wife said nothing, eyes fixed on the cobblestones still dark with blood.

"Wonderful," I said brightly. "Now, let us be on our way. History doesn't wait, John. And neither do I."

---

Later that afternoon

The convoy lurched to a halt outside the hulking facade of Petrograd Imperial University. Students in threadbare coats shuffled past in twos and threes, clutching notebooks like talismans. The war had hollowed them out—boys who should have been memorizing Pushkin now memorized ballistic coefficients.

I left Reed and his delicate wife behind at Smolny—better for them not to see this part. Journalists like to believe in noble revolutions, not the mechanics of mass death.

Inside, the chemistry department smelled like vinegar, chlorine, and academic desperation. The laboratory was a forest of glass tubing, bubbling flasks, and chalkboards scrawled with equations no worker would ever understand. Young men in spectacles and white coats stood at attention as if I were a visiting czar. In a way, I was.

"Good afternoon, comrades," I said, switching to Russian, my voice warm, almost paternal. "Tell me—how far along are we with the chlorine?"

A thin professor with nicotine-stained fingers cleared his throat. "Comrade Jugashvili, the production is… progressing. We've achieved stable yields. The gas can be compressed into cylinders, but—well—the issue is the shells. We are working on methods to fill artillery rounds safely without corroding the casings."

I paced slowly between the benches, trailing my fingers across the cold metal of the apparatus, listening to the hiss of the pipes. "And how soon until you can? Weeks? Days? I like punctuality, professor. It reassures me that civilization is not entirely doomed."

The students shifted uneasily. One finally spoke up—brave or stupid, it was often the same thing. "Perhaps by the end of October, Comrade. The design for the shells is almost ready. The problem is sealing them—if they leak, even storage is dangerous."

I stopped and looked at him, smiling faintly. "Dangerous? My boy, everything here is dangerous. Walking outside is dangerous. Speaking the wrong word is dangerous. Do you think the Whites will be merciful if they march into this city? Do you think they'll hand you your diploma and a pat on the head? No. They'll conscript you, starve you, hang you from the nearest lamppost."

Silence. Only the sound of liquid dripping into a beaker.

"Good," I said finally, clapping the nervous student on the shoulder. "So you understand. This is not a game of textbooks and chalk. You are soldiers now, even if your weapon is a pipette instead of a rifle. Produce me shells, gentlemen. Ten, twenty, a hundred. Let the counterrevolution breathe their own death when they charge at us. History will not remember the squeamish chemists—it will remember the survivors."

The professor nodded stiffly. "Yes, Comrade Jugashvili. We'll accelerate the work."

"Excellent." I turned toward the door, adjusting my gloves. "If you succeed, you'll arm the revolution. If you fail…" I gestured vaguely at the beakers, the acrid fumes. "Well. Just try again, I understand chemistry is rather dangerous."

They all nodded in terrified agreement.

I left them with that thought, the scent of chlorine stinging my nose as I stepped back into the crisp evening air. My guards fell into formation, rifles at the ready. The day was nearly done, and so was I.

Another errand completed. Another piece of the machine oiled with fear, discipline, and a promise of progress.

------

Later, 7 PM, the same day

Smolny smelled of ink, wet wool, and cigarette smoke thick enough to be cut with a bayonet. The corridors buzzed with typists hammering communiqués, runners shouting for Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev. History in its larval stage, crawling noisily toward metamorphosis.

I stepped into the meeting chamber where the Central Committee was gathered around a battered table littered with papers, maps, tea glasses, and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. Lenin sat forward, bald head gleaming, scribbling furiously; Trotsky leaned back, pince‑nez glinting, looking smug as a man who believed he had personally invented the revolution; Kamenev puffed his pipe nervously; Zinoviev muttered something about the Germans.

"Comrades," I began, removing my gloves, "I stumbled into a problem today. Or perhaps an opportunity. Two Americans—journalists—at Obukhov. John Reed, and his wife Louise Bryant. They wanted to interview the workers. The factory guards didn't know what to do, so I intervened."

All eyes turned to me. Lenin's pen stopped mid‑scratch.

I continued, matter‑of‑fact. "I spoke to them. In English. Perfect English. Shocked the hell out of them, I think—they probably expected a Bolshevik to grunt like a peasant. I explained we are not coup plotters, but defenders of the revolution against counter‑revolutionaries. Cited the Kornilov affair as a Thermidorian attempt we defeated. Nothing about our planned coup, nothing about treaties with Germany. Just—enough to make us look organized, principled, not deranged."

Trotsky leaned forward, lips twitching in amusement. "You gave them a little morality play, then?"

"Yes Lev. I also gave them a sketch of myself—my role here, my family, Stalin as the brains while I build the muscle. Nothing dangerous, nothing compromising. Just the sort of narrative that looks good in a foreign newspaper."

Lenin tapped the table with his pen, considering. "And you believe they should be allowed to interview us?"

"Yes," I said simply. "Legitimacy, comrade. Abroad, they do not know us, except through the lies of the bourgeois press. Reed and his wife are sympathetic—they worship revolutions the way priests worship relics. If they write favorably, the world will see not criminals, but statesmen."

Kamenev frowned. "And if they publish details we don't want revealed?"

"I gave you all a complete account of what I said, word for word, so you may decide if any of it should be censored. I avoided all talk of October, of the Germans, of power seizures. It was polite conversation about defending the revolution. A bit of family story for color. If you wish, I'll sit in on their interviews. Their Russian is terrible—like cats fighting in a sack. I can translate their questions and our answers into proper English."

Trotsky smirked, exhaling smoke. "A revolutionary, a tax collector, and now an interpreter. Truly, Mikheil, you are the Renaissance man of Bolshevism."

I grinned back. "Better me than some translator from the old ministries who'd sell every word to the Provisional Government for a hot meal. Isn't that right Bronstein?"

Lenin nodded slowly, drumming his fingers. "Very well then. If Reed is truly sympathetic, his pen may be as valuable as a rifle." He scribbled a note and tucked it aside. "Go and get him."

Business resumed—supply shortages, rail strikes, the endless question of bread and power. But the Americans lingered in the air like cigar smoke. They were here, and they would write. And if they wrote well, perhaps the revolution would echo further than Petrograd's frozen streets. Meanwhile, I stood up and went to get the Reeds

---

8 PM

I ushered John Reed and Louise Bryant in, both looking anxious but feverishly alive. Reed's eyes darted about the room like a man stepping into scripture. He wanted to see saints, and here they were: bald, bearded, nicotine‑stained, overworked saints.

I cleared my throat. "Comrades, these are the Americans I mentioned—John Reed, journalist, and his wife, Louise Bryant. They wish to record what is happening here, to explain it abroad. I have spoken with them already. I believe they are sympathetic."

Lenin leaned forward, studying them the way a surgeon studies a patient. "They speak Russian?" he asked in clipped syllables.

I shook my head. "Badly. Like two chickens debating bread crumbs. I'll translate."

Trotsky smirked. "Then let us hope your English is as sharp as your tax collections."

I gestured for Reed to begin. He adjusted his spectacles, voice tremoring with excitement: "What do you see as the ultimate goal of this revolution?"

I translated for Lenin: "He asks where this all leads, what the purpose is."

Lenin's face twitched into that familiar half‑smile that could curdle milk. "Tell him: the transfer of power to the soviets. The destruction of the bourgeois order. Bread, peace, land."

I nodded and relayed smoothly in English: "The goal is simple—power to the workers and peasants, food for the hungry, peace for the weary, and land for those who till it. Everything else is noise."

Reed scribbled as though taking dictation from Christ.

Louise Bryant cut in: "And what of democracy? Elections?"

I translated; the room bristled. Zinoviev muttered something unprintable. Lenin leaned forward, tapping his pencil on the table. "Tell her: bourgeois democracy is a mask for exploitation. Ours is the higher democracy—direct power through soviets."

I gave it to her politely: "The current system is a fraud. What matters is the soviets—councils of workers and soldiers. That is real democracy, unfiltered, uncorrupted."

Bryant frowned, but Reed's eyes lit up. He was falling in love with the revolution, probably already drafting chapters in his head.

Then Reed asked, tentatively: "And if your enemies resist?"

I translated. Trotsky perked up, his moment to thunder. He straightened his jacket and let loose: "If they resist, we will break them. History does not tolerate hesitation. We will answer counter‑revolution with the Red Terror of the people!"

I hesitated—too much honesty, too soon. So I softened it: "If they resist, we will stand firm. History is on our side, and no enemy will prevail against the will of the workers."

Trotsky shot me a look, realizing I'd shaved off the terror. I smiled blandly back. That's what interpreters are for—making monsters sound like statesmen.

Bryant, ever sharper, asked: "And what of women in this revolution? What future for them?"

Lenin paused, then answered quickly, as though this had been rehearsed: "Women are equal in the struggle. They will be equal in the soviets. They will be free."

I translated it faithfully. Even I couldn't improve on that—it was the one thing Lenin meant sincerely. Louise looked impressed, for once not scribbling but thinking.

The interview wound down after an hour. Reed's notebook was fat with prophecy; Louise looked thoughtful, wary but intrigued. Lenin rubbed his temples. Trotsky preened. Zinoviev yawned.

I escorted the Americans out into the hall. Reed turned to me, eyes blazing. "Do you realize you're living through history?"

I smiled politely. "Yes, but unlike you, I'll be the one writing it in blood."

He laughed nervously, thinking it was a joke.

It wasn't.

-------

9:30 PM

The Americans left with their notebooks stuffed like geese before a Christmas feast along with a continent of my guardsmen led by bear. They were smiling as though they had just bought stock in destiny. I watched them walk out the door and thought: there go two people who will probably get us killed with adjectives.

The Central Committee reconvened in one of the smoke‑filled rooms upstairs. The chairs were mismatched, the table was missing a leg and propped up with a pile of old Pravdas. Lenin sat at the head, rubbing his temples as though democracy itself had given him a migraine.

"Well?" he said.

Trotsky leaned forward, his mustache twitching with self‑importance. "They will spread our message abroad. America will know the revolution is here, inevitable, glorious. It was good—very good—that they came."

"Yes," Lenin muttered, "good. Except that you sounded like Robespierre with a hangover."

Trotsky bristled. "I told the truth."

I interrupted before they could start bickering like two opera divas sharing one spotlight. "I softened your truth," I said, lighting a cigarette. "Otherwise, the Americans would have run screaming into the Neva and drowned themselves rather than publish you."

Zinoviev chuckled through a cough. "The interpreter saves the revolution, comrade Mikheil."

"Of course," I said. "My brother Stalin makes the plans. Lenin makes the speeches. Trotsky writes the poetry of blood. And I"—I flicked ash into the corner—"make sure the foreigners don't hear the word 'terror' before we're consolidated."

That earned a few laughs, though Trotsky glared as though I'd compared him to an actor in cheap vaudeville. Which, in fairness, I had.

Lenin tapped the table. "Jokes aside, this is important. We need legitimacy abroad. Not for the bourgeois governments—they will never accept us—but for the workers, the socialists, the ones who still think we are nothing but fanatics."

"And are we not?" Kamenev muttered.

Lenin ignored him. "These Americans will write their little articles. They will tell the workers in New York, Chicago, San Francisco that something new is born here in Petrograd. They will plant seeds. That is what matters."

Trotsky folded his arms. "Yes. Though one wonders how much 'legitimacy' we gain when our interpreter edits my words like a censor."

I leaned back in my chair. "Lev, if I had translated you word for word, we would already be surrounded by French bayonets, American Marines, and a British orchestra playing 'Rule Britannia' while they shelled Smolny. Consider me the birth control on your revolutionary cock: unpleasant, necessary, prevents messy consequences."

Silence. Then Lenin laughed so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. Zinoviev wheezed until he had to spit in a cup. Even Kamenev smiled.

Trotsky did not laugh. He muttered something about "vulgarity" and stared at the wall like a man plotting revenge against wallpaper.

Lenin wiped his eyes and composed himself. "In any case, well done. You handled them. If they ask again for interviews, we will allow it. With you present, comrade Mikheil. Always with you."

"Of course," I said. "I'll make sure they see us as the noble defenders of liberty and not the lunatics sharpening guillotines in the basement."

Trotsky growled. "We don't need guillotines."

"No," I said. "We need bullets. They stack better."

Another round of laughter—nervous, but laughter all the same.

The meeting adjourned. Lenin went off to write, Trotsky to sulk, Zinoviev to cough, Kamenev to wring his hands. I lingered, staring at the empty chairs. It struck me, not for the first time, how fragile this all was—this band of half‑starved intellectuals and conspirators pretending to be a government.

And yet, with a few rifles, a few factories, and a few journalists willing to swallow our lies, we might just pull it off.

History, I reflected, is written not by the victors, but by the fools who believe the victors' press releases.

And tonight, we had just hired our first ghostwriters.

But now I had to get dinner with my family.

---

Late evening

Dinner round two. The family gathered like a small parliament nobody voted for. Keke at the far end of the table, reigning over the soup pot with the authority of a Roman senator. Alexander and Aleksandra had joined us—our brother‑in‑law and my beloved wife, both too polite to admit they regretted saying yes. Stalin, as usual, sat like a lump of granite, eyes darting around the table as if he expected a spy to crawl out of the bread basket.

We had just started on the pickled fish when Stalin broke his silence.

"These Americans," he said slowly, spoon halfway to his mouth. "Reed, and his wife. You trust them?"

The table went still. Keke's spoon clattered against her bowl. Aleksandra blinked like she'd been slapped. Alexander, poor bastard, shifted uncomfortably, clearly wondering if he was allowed to breathe.

I smiled. Always I smiled. "Trust? Joe, I don't even trust my barber. But the Americans? They're useful. Reed is desperate—he thinks we're the new French Revolution. I'll feed him just enough rope to strangle himself."

"You're too casual," Stalin muttered. "Foreign journalists are snakes. They print one wrong word, we have trouble."

"Then," I said, cheerfully cutting into my black bread, "I'll cut out their tongues. Problem solved. No tongue, no bad articles."

The children—mine and Yakov—stared at me wide‑eyed. Aleksandra gasped. Alexander looked like he wanted to vomit into his soup.

"Mikheil!" Keke snapped. "The children!"

I patted my youngest on the head. "Don't worry. Papa's joking. Probably."

Stalin didn't laugh, but he didn't scold me either. He just sipped his vodka, as if weighing whether my joke was actually a proposal.

I leaned back in my chair. "Look, if Reed betrays us, I'll kill him myself. Then I'll make his wife write a glowing obituary about the man's tragic accident while chopping beets. You'd be amazed how many journalists slip on turnips in Russia."

Keke slammed her fist on the table. "You cannot say things like that at dinner!"

Alexander tried to change the subject, god bless him. "So… the factory inspection went well?"

"Marvelously," I said. "Obukhov will have enough rifles and shells to arm ten thousand men by the end of October. Isn't that reassuring?"

Aleksandra looked faint. "Ten… thousand?"

"Yes sweetie," I said brightly. "Ten thousand rifles, ten thousand bayonets, ten thousand ways to make our enemies shit themselves in terror. Honestly, it warms the heart."

The children were now whispering to each other. One asked: Papa, are you going to kill the Americans for real?

"Only if they deserve it," I said, smiling like a kindly priest. "And if I do, I'll comb my hair nicely for the occasion. Presentation matters."

Keke buried her face in her hands and sighed. Stalin chuckled under his breath—the kind of low, dry chuckle that told me he was enjoying this far more than he'd admit.

Finally, Stalin raised his glass. "To the Americans," he said. "May they write what we tell them."

I clinked my glass against his. "And if they don't, may they meet a tragic fall from the Smolny staircase."

Keke hissed. Aleksandra gasped again. Alexander nearly dropped his drink. The children laughed nervously, unsure whether it was a joke.

But Stalin and I—well, we drank.

Because for us, the line between joke and plan has never really existed.

 

[Alenco98]

Mr. Jugashvili is the only sane man in Moscow according to the ambassador. I will pray for the future of the people of Russia the day he dies.

- Excerpt from a US cabinet meeting on April 12, 1935 said by Cordell Hull, Secretary of state.

PROJECT RED REBIRTH
FINAL DRAFT

Manual for Class Redemption and Revolutionary Transformation

By Mikheil Jughazvilli
Date of Writing: September 3, 1917

---

Objective

To utterly dismantle the self-conception of Tsarist officers, aristocrats, and royalty, erasing all vestiges of loyalty to throne, church, or nobility. Survivors will emerge either as broken shells made useful through servitude—or as corpses whose deaths serve as revolutionary warnings.

---

Phase I: Isolation and Fracture

Family Hostage Amplification

Families separated immediately, but not merely "protected":

Spouses are forced to write confessions denouncing the subject.

Children are photographed in peasant clothing, smiling while performing labor.

Once a week, the subject receives a "letter" (fabricated if necessary) where their family blames them for their suffering.

Guards periodically whisper:

"Your wife is sweeping barracks floors for peasants. Your children say they prefer potatoes to your luxuries."

This drives guilt into every thought.

---

Environmental Torture

Cells are stripped of identity: no mirrors, no clocks, no personal possessions.

Lighting alternates between 24 hours of glare and total blackout, never predictable.

White noise, dripping water, and intermittent banging on cell doors destroy all sense of time.

Guards rotate speech patterns—sometimes screaming, sometimes whispering sweetly, sometimes silent for days—ensuring no stability.

---

Phase II: Regiment of the Broken

Wake-Up (05:00)

Instead of merely being shouted at, subjects are dragged from their cots, slapped, doused in freezing water, and forced to crawl to breakfast.

Breakfast of Silence

Gruel deliberately salted or unsalted unpredictably to disrupt body rhythm.

Any movement out of order = food removed and redistributed to others.

Speech Control

Silence enforced except for mandated chants.

Any unapproved words: gagged for 12 hours, or forced to wear a spiked collar preventing comfortable sleep.

---

Phase III: Ideological Bombardment

Lectures (07:00–12:00):

Readings of Marx, Engels, Lenin—broken by interruptions of guards screaming insults.

Subjects must copy entire texts by hand, pages confiscated daily.

Essay Rituals:

Essays are not only critiqued but burned in front of the subject while peers laugh.

Rewrites required until ideological phrasing is flawless.

Shame Amplification:

Nobles must read aloud their own degrading essays in monotone, while others throw scraps of bread at them.

---

Phase IV: The War on the Self

Counter-Ideology Destruction (12:00–16:00)

Instead of merely critiquing Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, subjects must:

Tear pages from old books with their teeth.

Spit on family crests or portraits of monarchs.

Burn symbolic items (epaulettes, jewels, crosses) while shouting:

"The Revolution burns my past, and I am nothing without it!"

Punishment for hesitation: stress positions, forced kneeling on sharp stones, or flogging.

---

Comrade's Court (16:00–19:00)

Struggle sessions elevated:

Subjects forced to slap and spit on one another.

Rewards (extra bread, an hour of sleep) given to the most vicious denunciations.

"Class trials" held where peers must accuse each other of imaginary "counter-revolutionary" thoughts.

Failure to denounce others = labeled "enemy accomplice," punished twice as harshly.

---

Phase V: Ritual Humiliation

Labor of the Ashamed (19:00–22:00)

Subjects ordered to lick floors clean before scrubbing.

Forced to wash peasant underwear and hang it like flags.

Bow before peasants drafted into guard duty.


Every hour, saluting Marx's portrait is not enough—they must kiss the floor in front of it, chanting louder each night.

The Naked Readings

Subjects stripped bare and ordered to read State and Revolution aloud, voices trembling while guards mock their bodies.

---

Phase VI: Night Terror Protocols

Mock Executions (22:00–02:00)

Enhanced cruelty:

Guns discharged near ears to simulate killing.

Graves actually half-dug, then filled back in after subjects collapse.

Occasionally, one prisoner is executed to reinforce credibility. It must be the most defiant and stubborn prisoner.

Witnesses are forced to applaud the "justice" of the execution.

---

Sleep Deprivation (02:00–05:00)

Beds removed, prisoners must stand in freezing corridors, singing revolutionary anthems until collapse.

If one falls asleep: group punished with cold showers and food withdrawal.

---

Phase VII: Rebirth or Disposal

The Redeemed

Surviving nobles are paraded in rags before peasants, confessing their crimes.

Tsarist officers forced to clean latrines in uniform, medals pinned mockingly to their rags.

Converted subjects appear in propaganda photos teaching literacy to peasants, captioned:

"Even parasites can be reborn as men."

The Unredeemable

Broken beyond use: executed quietly.

-----

Special Protocol: Romanov Family

Nicholas II: forced to kneel daily before peasant children while teaching them to read Marx.

Alexandra: ordered to carry buckets of human waste through villages, mocked by peasants.

Daughters: used as models in propaganda posters—scrubbing laundries, sewing uniforms. Publicly photographed with slogans like "The princess scrubs for the people."

Alexei: too frail for heavy labor—appointed as a clerk to Lenin, required to transcribe Marxist texts while being reminded that "the Revolution is stronger than his bloodline."

All images, essays, and humiliations are carefully documented for international distribution as The Redemption of the Parasites campaign.

 

[Alenco98]

September 19, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia

I lounged in the chair like it belonged to me, even though technically it belonged to the state, and the state technically belonged to nobody—or everybody—depending on who was yelling the loudest that day. Trotsky was in the middle of one of his marathon reports/speeches about "training" his new Soviet military. By training he meant: getting a gaggle of half-drunk Red Guards to stop voting on whether or not to obey orders. Charming, really. One of these days they'd refuse to advance because the bread was stale, or because the officer's moustache wasn't proletarian enough. Democracy at its finest. Joy.

The miracle was that they hadn't turned on us outright. Credit where credit's due: Trotsky had charisma. He could convince a half-starved soldier to storm the Winter Palace just by wiggling his eyebrows. I respected that. And besides, the Provisional Government was so universally despised they made us look like benevolent saints. We ran soup kitchens, swept the streets, and ensured the breadlines ran on time. Compared to Kerensky, we were bloody philanthropists.

Of course, it wasn't just goodwill. My "taxation" scheme ensured we had money, guns, and enough food to keep the men loyal. Every business in Petrograd—legal, illegal, or "somewhere in between depending on how drunk the police were that night"—paid into my coffers. Shopkeepers, factory owners, pimps, even the bakers coughed up their share. It was revolutionary redistribution at its finest: steal from everyone, give to ourselves. Compared to the starving idiots in the Provisional Government's barracks, my men looked like kings. Dzerzhinsky's lot weren't much worse off either. Trotsky's weren't half shabby. But there was a pecking order.

But discipline—now that was the problem. Bolshevik agitators in the provisional government's army were whispering in soldiers' ears: "Don't follow orders, comrades. Governments are for suckers. The Bolsheviks are your real friends." Naturally, the soldiers listened and defected. But their lack of disciple transferred over. Which meant Trotsky's shiny "Soviet army" often behaved more like a mob with matching armbands than an actual fighting force.

Luckily, that's where I came in. My Revolutionary Guard Corps—and Dzerzhinsky's so-called National Guard—were proper military outfits. Ranks, discipline, rules, executions. Yes, executions. You refused an order, you got a bullet. Simple, efficient, motivational. And no one could say they weren't warned: from day one, we told recruits, "You'll be fed, you'll be paid, you'll be armed. But you'll also fucking obey or you'll die."

Trotsky, of course, whined about Bonapartism. I reminded him his army was almost 3 times the size of mine and Dzerzhinsky's put together, and that if I got any funny ideas, he and Dzerzhinsky could squash me like a cockroach. He didn't like the reminder, but he shut up. Still, I could tell he was developing a personal grudge. Which, frankly, was hilarious.

Now, today's subject was seizing power. We already agreed we were going to do that, every member of the central committee was all in.

Lenin however wanted it Bolshevik led only, Trotsky wanted to bring in a few allies, and the others—Zinoviev, Kamenev, that usual gang of nervous wrecks—wrung their hands like old aunts at a funeral. The funny part? It didn't matter what they thought. Trotsky and I had the guns, Dzerzhinsky had the prisons and guns, and Lenin was the leader. That was enough. Bonapartism was already here, the others just hadn't noticed.

Trotsky insisted we at least bring in the anarchists, Left SRs, maybe even a few Mensheviks too cowardly to pick a side. Lenin scoffed, naturally. He wanted it pure, a Bolshevik triumph, untainted by compromise. Personally, I didn't care. We had the rifles, we had the men, and if we didn't have the loyalty of the others, well, we knew where their families lived. Cooperation could be… negotiated.

Still, I leaned in. "Comrades," I said, "we can secure support from the Left SRs, the anarchists, and even some wavering Mensheviks. The trick is knowing how to ask."

At that, I gestured to the man who knew the art of persuasion better than anyone. Time to show them all the networking my brother had done thanks to Dzerzhinsky's spies and my money on top of running Pravda. Well, not my money but the revolutions money. Then again who's counting.

Joe stood up slowly, brushing crumbs from his jacket like he'd just stepped out of a bakery rather than a revolution. He looked around the room, face utterly expressionless, then spoke in that gravelly voice of his.

"We can begin… convincing many of them. Bribes. Threats. A little blackmail. The usual. The anarchists scream a lot, but they sign quickly once you show them photographs of their families. The Left SRs fold when you threaten to kill their mistresses. And as for the Mensheviks—well, let's just say their principles cost less than a sack of flour. They won't be a problem."

He sat back down, calm as a priest at confession.

And that was that.

There was silence for a moment after Stalin's little sermon. The kind of silence you only get when a room full of men suddenly realizes they're in bed with the devil—and that the sheets are already on fire.

Kamenev cleared his throat first, fiddling with his spectacles like they might shield him from reality. "Well, ah… Comrade Stalin, I do admire your… thoroughness. But perhaps—just perhaps—relying on… intimidation and, ah, extortion might… complicate things, ideologically speaking?"

He looked around for support, like a drowning man searching for driftwood. None came.

Zinoviev piped up, voice squeaking like a terrified schoolteacher. "Yes, yes, I agree with Kamenev. We are Bolsheviks, not… criminals."

That was when Dzerzhinsky laughed. Actually laughed. It was the kind of laugh you'd expect from a man who hadn't slept in three weeks and was surviving entirely on tea, cigarettes, and the occasional execution. "Comrades, please. We run all the black markets in Petrograd already. If we're not criminals, then what the hell are we? Philanthropists?" He wiped his eyes, still chuckling. "No, no—Stalin's right. Fear and greed. Same currency as ideology, only it spends faster."

Lenin, for his part, didn't flinch. He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled, eyes gleaming like a cat watching mice argue about cheese. "If we can bribe them, we will. If we can blackmail them, we will. If we must kill them, we will. The revolution does not care how it is fed, only that it is fed. History will absolve us."

Trotsky frowned, of course. He always frowned when someone else's methods worked better than his speeches. "Yes, yes, fine, but we must at least appear to have their support. I can rally the Petrograd Soviet only if it looks like the Left SRs and anarchists are on board. They don't have to mean it—they just have to say it while I wave my arms and shout about democracy."

Lenin smirked. "Exactly. They will sign. Stalin will ensure it. Trotsky will make it sound noble. Kamenev and Zinoviev will wring their hands. And I…" He tapped his temple. "…I will write history so none of this looks like the gangster racket it truly is."

The meeting moved on, as if Stalin hadn't just admitted to running the Revolution like a mafia protection racket. But everyone's eyes lingered on him just a little longer than before.

Of course, the meeting was far from finished. Now it was my turn to be reprimanded. Word of my draft—Project Red Rebirth—had spread beyond the Central Committee and into the Petrograd Committee itself. Predictably, the reaction had been outrage.

"Comrade Mikheil," Lenin began, his tone sharp but measured. "We have read and reread your draft carefully these last few weeks. I have also circulated it among comrades here. The verdict is unanimous—it is excessive. Far, far too excessive."

I nodded calmly. That was expected. I had never truly believed they would adopt it in its entirety. The point was to shock, to establish myself as indispensable in matters of organization and discipline, to be feared, and to force them to accept at least part of my proposal. Still, perhaps I had overreached; perhaps they now saw me as nothing more than a savage. Fuck them I had the guns and money.

"I know," I replied evenly. "Technically it is written as a final draft, but I never imagined it was untouchable. Edits are welcome, of course. However, I must insist on one matter: we will need the Tsarist officers. If we are to recruit them, then we will also need leverage. Hostages. Without them, discipline is impossible. Trotsky's new Soviet military, as it stands, is closer to a mob than a fighting force. The Guard Corps and the National Guard are disciplined, yes, but not large enough to win a civil war on their own."

The room shifted uneasily. Trotsky straightened in his chair, his expression a mixture of irritation and reluctant recognition.

"You are not wrong," Trotsky admitted after a pause. "If we attempt to command them without guarantees, they will betray us at the first opportunity. Families—yes, in theory, families could be used to secure loyalty. But what you propose, Mikheil, is systematic. Too systematic. Insane even. A program of terror so codified it reads more like a bureaucratic manual than a military measure."

"Because," I interjected, "without system there is chaos. Better that it is codified, understood, and overseen by the Party than carried out in secret by desperate commanders improvising cruelty on their own terms. At least this way, it is discipline with purpose."

Zinoviev shook his head vigorously. "This is barbarism, pure and simple. To hold wives and children as hostages? To torture men constantly for weeks on end? We will destroy ourselves in the eyes of the proletariat. What kind of revolution begins by replicating the Tsar's worst crimes?"

"You are naïve, Zinoviev," Dzerzhinsky cut in sharply. "Revolutions are not made with white gloves. You call it barbarism, but what do you imagine civil war will look like? If we do not control the officers, the Whites will. And they will not hesitate to kill our families, one by one. Better that we are feared than destroyed."

Kamenev leaned forward, trying to moderate. "Comrades, there must be a middle path. Discipline is indeed necessary. Hostages… perhaps only in extreme cases. But to formalize it as policy? To make it a cornerstone of our strategy? That will alienate not only the soldiers, but also our allies on the Left."

Lenin raised his hand, silencing the debate. His eyes narrowed, fixed on me. "Comrade Mikheil, your logic is not without merit. We must recognize the weakness of our position. The Provisional Government still clings to power, the garrisons are restless, the front collapses by the day. Yes, we need the officers, and yes, we must prevent betrayal. But your draft—this Project Red Rebirth—it risks binding us to a program of cruelty so explicit it may discredit us before we have even seized power."

His tone softened slightly. "However… your central point stands. We cannot rely on enthusiasm and speeches alone. Some form of guarantee must exist. Something that makes defection unthinkable. The question is how far we are prepared to go."

All eyes turned again to Trotsky. He tapped his pen against the table, staring at the notes before him as if they contained an escape. Finally, he exhaled.

"I detest it," Trotsky said bluntly. "I detest every part of it. But… I cannot deny the necessity. In the Civil War that is coming, we will face traitors, saboteurs, and men who smile while stabbing us in the back. Hostages may be the only language they understand. I will not endorse your entire draft, Mikheil, but the principle—" he looked around the room, unwilling, yet resolute—"the principle may be unavoidable. I say we keep the hostages, but only until the war ends. And the torture, the humiliation? No." He shook his head, "too excessive, too systematic. We don't have the time, we will need the officers as soon as possible."

The room was already tense when Trotsky finished speaking, and then the shouting began.

Zinoviev slammed both palms on the table. "This is madness! Absolute madness! We are Bolsheviks, not medieval tyrants. To reduce ourselves to taking families hostage—what will the soldiers think? What will the workers think? We'll discredit ourselves before the revolution even begins!"

Trotsky's voice cut through, sharp but strained. "And what will they think when officers defect, when whole regiments collapse because their commanders betray us? Fine words, Zinoviev, but they will not win battles. Families as hostages—yes, it is distasteful. But war is not about distaste, it is about survival. Discipline is life. Indiscipline is death."

Zinoviev turned to him in disbelief. "So you would shackle wives and children to enforce loyalty?"

Trotsky jabbed a finger across the table. "Better that than to let White generals march into Petrograd while we moralize over principle. You call it barbarism—I call it the difference between victory and annihilation."

Dzerzhinsky broke in, cold and cutting. "Enough. We are not debating abstractions. I have interrogated spies, deserters, and infiltrators. I know what betrayal looks like. It always begins with a weak officer who believes he can slip away unnoticed. If he knows his family is in our custody, under our guard, he will think twice. We will not torture them. We will not starve them. But they will remain with us as guarantees. That is the reality."

Kamenev tried to calm the storm, his voice thin against the clamor. "Comrades, there must be limits! We cannot descend into indiscriminate cruelty. Discipline, yes—but not degradation. If we humiliate officers, if we torture them, we will earn nothing but hatred. And hatred is not loyalty."

I leaned forward. "No one is suggesting indiscriminate cruelty, except for me but I'm open to changing my mind. However, the officers must be made to serve. That requires leverage. Hostages will give us leverage. Beyond that—let them be treated properly. Fed, housed, and, when they obey, respected. But make no mistake: without guarantees, we will lose them. And without them, Trotsky's army is a mob."

Lenin rapped his knuckles on the table for silence. "Enough posturing. We must decide. Do we, or do we not, take the families of Tsarist officers into custody as hostages to ensure loyalty?"

There was a pause. Then Trotsky nodded, almost reluctantly. "Yes. We must. Without them, there is no discipline."

Dzerzhinsky: "Yes. Under strict supervision. They will not be harmed, but they will remain under guard."

Lenin's gaze shifted to Kamenev and Zinoviev. "And you?"

Zinoviev hesitated, his face pale. "I oppose it. It will stain the revolution."

Kamenev sighed heavily, glancing at me, then at Lenin. "I oppose cruelty. But… I cannot deny the logic. Very well. Families may be taken—but they must be treated humanely. No torture. No humiliation."

All eyes turned to Lenin. He spoke slowly, clearly, as if dictating a decree. "So it is agreed. Hostages will be taken from among the families of officers. They will be treated humanely, placed under guard, and released only when their loyalty is proven. As for the aristocracy—the Romanovs included—they will not be subjected to humiliation or torment. They will work in factories, they will sweep floors. They will study Marx and Engels. They will live under strict supervision and ideological re-education, guarded by the organs of state security." He glanced at Dzerzhinsky, who gave a curt nod.

Zinoviev tried one last protest. "Comrades, if we go down this road—"

Lenin cut him off. "If we do not go down this road, there will be no revolution to speak of. History does not forgive hesitation."

The vote was called.

The decision was made. The shouting subsided into a heavy silence. Everyone understood the weight of what had just been sanctioned. Looks like my plan, albeit modified to be less insane and sadistic was going forward.

Lenin closed the matter with finality. "It is settled. We will have discipline. We will have loyalty. And we will have victory. History will remember that we acted with necessity, not cruelty."

Later that night

I sat at the table, hunched over a bowl of borscht Keke had conjured together, humming "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys. A song from a future that might not exist, a band that certainly didn't yet — details are iffy when you've been dead for a while and spat back out into Petrograd like some cosmic joke. But still, better to hum about Aruba, Jamaica, Bermuda, Bahama than think too hard about being stuck here: Russia, 1917, pre-communist hell, and somehow one of the architects of the bloodbath-to-come.

Keke had promised to make khachapuri too, bless her, but of course Yakov — that little parasite — had crept into the pantry and eaten half the cheese like a starving rat. Stalin, predictably, wanted to spank the boy, a true Georgian patriarch's solution: blood, bruises, and a lecture on discipline. I preferred otherwise. A stern talking-to, followed by the corner of shame, and denying him dinner. Stalin glared at me across the table, spoon in hand, muttering that I was soft, spoiling the boy. I reminded him — sweetly — that I was the one raising Yakov, not him. And if he wanted to pick up the slack, he was welcome to try. He grumbled, he bitched, he sulked into his soup. Domestic bliss, Bolshevik style. Poor little Yakov meanwhile was now in his room, sulking and hungry but tomorrow everything would be fine.

As I swallowed down another mouthful of beet-red sludge, it struck me how increasingly easy it had become to get the Central Committee to bend toward my point of view as time went on. The more men, money, and rifles I scraped together, the more convincing I became. Except for Trotsky, of course — but Trotsky was Trotsky, a man who could argue with a wall and still think he won. Kamenev and Zinoviev hated me too, but what of it? They were professional handwringers, useful for comic relief more than anything else.

Lenin was harder. Convincing Lenin was like trying to convince God: exhausting, but possible, provided you had enough wit, a touch of ruthlessness, and a decent punchline. Dzerzhinsky, meanwhile, looked like a corpse that had decided to get up and join politics. Terrifying, yes, but very practical. He fell in line.

And Stalin? Joe was pragmatic too — though his pragmatism was measured in how useful a thing was to his rise. As long as my schemes didn't block his climb, he was content to nod along. A bonus, really, because he was the sort who remembered debts, and I had saved him more times than I cared to count.

The rest of the Central Committee? They didn't matter. They knew who the hell I was: the man who had gone from a disgraced Tsarist police chief to commander of one of the largest armed factions in Petrograd in mere months. The man who had saved their arses during the July Days and Kornilov's putsch. The man who brought them guns, men, food — a proper fucking army. And people tend to listen to the man who feeds them.

Still, I reminded myself not to get carried away. Red Rebirth had been… excessive. Too much of my old life bleeding into this one, too many memories of every fucked-up book, movie, anime mashed together into one manual of horrors. Some of it passed, yes, but too much and they'd all start whispering "psychopath" again. Best to be the useful lunatic, not the liability. Which reminded me I should probably speak to those journalists and censor some of the more extreme things I did with them.

The revolution was close now. Soon we'd march on the Winter Palace, sweep the Provisional Government into the dustbin of history, as Lenin loved to say. And after victory? That's when the real game would begin.

I glanced at Stalin across the table. He was sipping his borscht slowly, eyes hooded, like a wolf deciding whether to eat you now or later. My mind flashed back to high school history books: the purges, the pacts with Hitler, the bungling in World War II. And I could see it even now — that same cold hunger already glinting behind his eyes.

The trick, I knew, was to be indispensable. To make him so emotionally dependent that purging me would be like amputating his own arm. And in some ways, I already was. I had raised his son. I had saved his life as a boy, yanking him out of the path of a carriage. I had patched his wounds after those ridiculous bank robberies and half-baked firefights. Hell, I still called him "Joe," and he didn't bite my head off anymore. That was progress. That was trust.

But trust in this game was a blade with two edges. I knew if he turned on me, it wouldn't just be me. Aleksandra, my children, even Keke — none of them would be safe. Stalin didn't purge individuals; he purged bloodlines.

I lifted my spoon and let the borscht drip back into the bowl. "Survive," I muttered under my breath, "just survive."

The table was quiet for a while as I continued eating, save for the scrape of spoons against bowls. It was quiet, too quiet, so quiet in fact I was bored. I figured time to tease my future dictator/brother and further humanize him as well as myself in his eyes.

"Joe," I said, keeping my voice casual, almost lazy. "You should relax more outside of meetings and party activity. You're at home. This is family. We're not your political enemies. No need to look at people like you're about to shoot them for standing up correctly."

Stalin didn't answer at first. He just kept sipping, mustache bristling in irritation. His mother, Keke, muttered something in Georgian under her breath, probably along the lines of 'Yes, stop being a bloody storm cloud at the dinner table'. Aleksandra shot me a look, the kind only wives can give — equal parts you're right and don't provoke him, idiot. Aleksander, my brother, snorted into his bread, delighted to see Stalin getting poked.

I pressed on. "You know what you are, Joe? You're a tsundere."

The spoon stopped halfway to his lips. His brows furrowed. "A… what?"

I grinned, leaning back, savoring the moment like good vodka. "Tsundere. A word from Japanese books. Means someone who's cold, harsh, and aloof on the outside — terrifying, really — but deep down, they're warm and friendly. Kind, even. You remind me of that. You act like the executioner, but underneath, you're a softie. Especially when Kato was alive."

There it was. The flicker across his face. Memory mixed with pain, with loss. For a moment, the tyrant-in-the-making looked almost human again.

Then he growled. "You read too much foreign bourgeois material." He set the spoon down with a clink, glaring at me like I'd just confessed to owning a library of French romance novels.

I laughed, full-throated, and raised my hands in surrender. "Guilty as charged! You're right. Absolute trash. Corrupting my brain. First it's Japanese words, then it's soft discipline for Yakov, next thing you know I'll be letting him draw instead of cleaning rifles."

Even Keke chuckled at that, shaking her head. Aleksandra smiled faintly, relieved the tension had broken. Stalin, for his part, muttered something about "idiots and their metaphors," and dug back into his borscht with grim determination, as if proving that beet soup was more reliable than people.

But I caught it — the corner of his mouth twitching, just barely, like he was fighting not to laugh.

And I thought to myself: That's how you survive Joseph Stalin. You tease the wolf until he forgets to bite.

 

[Alenco98]

"If you have any last words, now's the time to say them. If not, I'll generously give you a full minute to pray. Not that it'll do you much good. You lot made a sport out of hanging priests from lamp posts, so I doubt you remember how it works. Still, I'm charitable—so I'll give you the minute anyway.

Just in case, though—anyone want a priest for last rites? Anyone? Cigarettes at least?"

– Field Marshal Mikheil Jughashvili, addressing a group of anarchist prisoners in Barcelona moments before their execution by a joint firing squad of the Spanish Communist Party and the Internationalist Soviet Legion, Spanish Civil War, 1937

September 30, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia

11:59 PM

We stood outside Smolny like actors waiting for the curtain to rise, except instead of scripts we had rifles and instead of an audience we had an entire empire balanced on a knife's edge. My Revolutionary Guard was lined up, rifles gleaming in the moonlight, boots clattering on the cobblestones like the world's most terrifying percussion section. Dzerzhinsky's men were nearby as well—tight, disciplined, and looking as if they'd cheerfully shoot their own grandmothers if he gave the order. Trotsky's mob was there too, a bit less uniform, a bit more "peasant militia chic," but still useful in large quantities, like manure.

"Everyone remembers their roles, yes?" Lenin asked in his usual mixture of calm authority and mild constipation.

We all nodded. Of course we remembered; we'd been rehearsing this for days like some demented amateur theatre troupe. Each man knew his part, each unit its cue. The stage was set, the props were loaded, and the orchestra—by which I mean the artillery—was tuned.

The clock began to strike midnight. I yawned, because even revolutions drag on when you've had no sleep, and gave a nod to Bear, my lieutenant, who dutifully handed Lenin a rifle. Lenin looked at it with the satisfaction of a vegetarian suddenly handed a sausage—he liked the symbolism but God help him if he had to actually use it.

"I'll handle clearing the palace out," I said. "Shouldn't be too difficult."

I turned to my men, their bayonets glinting. "Remember, comrades—Kerensky alive. If it looks like he's escaping, put a bullet in him. Preferably somewhere dramatic."

They didn't nod. They saluted. Silent, disciplined, professional. Lovely boys. Trotsky's lot, by contrast, would probably have debated the ethics of it until Kerensky had already caught the next train to Paris.

---

October 1, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia

The bells stopped ringing, and with them ended one Russia and began another.

We moved out in our convoys like clockwork, armored cars growling through the streets. It was history, yes—but also theatre. A grand pageant with rifles as props and the Winter Palace as stage. And the actors? Well, half of them were professional revolutionaries, and the other half were professional lunatics. Either way, curtain up.

As we rolled out, I found myself both awed and oddly serene. I'd read about this moment once in dusty high school history textbooks, never expecting to be one of the key players. And yet here I was, writing the script with my own boots on the cobblestones.

I glanced over and caught sight of Joe—my brother Stalin—chatting with some of the Guards. I waved like a friendly idiot. He, of course, did not wave back. Just a curt nod, as if I'd asked him to pass the salt at dinner. Christ. The man could plot mass purges with gusto but heaven forbid he wave like a normal human being.

He climbed into one armored car, I into mine. Behind us, Dzerzhinsky's men filed out with mechanical precision, Trotsky's half-trained collection of idealists straggling after. I couldn't help but smile.

Trotsky had been livid that he wasn't given the honor of storming the Winter Palace. Oh, the way he sulked. He argued for days about symbolism and historical destiny, pounding the table with all the righteous fury of a preacher who's just realized the choir prefers vodka to hymns.

But I'd killed the idea in council with one very simple observation: his men were a mob. Yes, they adored him, yes, they'd follow him into Hell itself, but discipline? Uniforms? The ability to march in a straight line without breaking into a political argument? Forget it. "They're all rival factions stitched together under Trotsky," I'd told Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, and Trotsky who wasn't pleased during our Revolutionary defense council meeting. "No proper chain of command yet, no discipline, no true officer corps. What we need is a scalpel, not a kitchen knife."

Then I'd gestured to my Revolutionary Guard outside the window, standing in neat rows, uniforms crisp, rifles gleaming, discipline drilled into their skulls with a delightful mixture of vodka and fear. "My men are perfect for the job."

And wouldn't you know it—Dzerzhinsky backed me. A miracle. Then again, weeks of dragging him to awkward family dinners with Stalin and my mother had softened him somewhat. Nothing bonds men quite like being force-fed Georgian food while Stalin scowls at you across the table and my family talk to you. Stalin and Felix actually had a decent working relationship even before Petrograd which helped—equal parts mutual respect and mutual threat—which made it much easier to rope him to my side. It also helped I basically helped him set up his own personal army. Debts paid, debts owed.

Trotsky never stood a chance. Networking beats charisma every time.

We rumbled through the streets of Petrograd in our armored procession, iron beasts grinding over cobblestones slick with autumn drizzle. The city was mostly asleep, though a few stragglers peeked out from windows or alleys, eyes wide, muttering prayers or curses depending on their politics.

Trotsky's rabble had done their job. Say what you like about them being a mob of half-trained ex-Mensheviks and anarchists in mismatched coats, but they'd gotten the garrison to melt away and locked down the streets. Of course, it wasn't only just their efforts—it was Felix Dzerzhinsky's efforts as well. Technically, I'd built that spy web for him first, but Felix had taken it, fed it steroids, and now it sprawled across Petrograd and a good chunk of Russia like a paranoid spider's masterpiece. His men had bribed, cajoled, threatened, or simply persuaded most of the Petrograd garrison—some fifty thousand troops—to look at each other, shrug, and collectively say, "You know what? Fuck this. We're out."

So here we were, standing outside the Winter Palace. My Guard fanned out and surrounded it, rifles ready, bayonets fixed. It looked almost professional, which was both comforting and slightly terrifying.

I stepped out of my armored car, boots hitting the cobblestones with theatrical weight. One of my men handed me a rifle, and I marched straight over to Stalin's car. He was still sitting inside, brooding like a Georgian gargoyle.

"Here," I said, thrusting the rifle into his hands.

He looked at it, then at me, like I had just slapped him with a dead fish.

"What?" I shrugged. "You're coming in with me. Symbolism, Joe. Symbolism. I storm the gates with my men, and you're beside me. It'll look good in the history books. I'll be the better looking one but you'll be the taller muscular one."

For a moment I thought he might actually throw the rifle back at me and strangle me with his mustache. But no—he glanced around, read the room, and then gave me that look. You know the one: the "you fucking bitch, but fine" glare. Then he yanked the rifle out of my hands with all the grace of a spoiled child grabbing a toy.

"I'll lead the first men," I said, "and you'll be right begind me." Joe only nodded and got out of the car.

I turned, raised my rifle above my head, and shouted: "Comrades! History is watching! We have a coup to launch—get ready!"

The men fell into formation with the kind of crispness that made me proud and terrified in equal measure. I adjusted my helmet, tugged at my bulletproof vest, then checked Joe had his own and we began. As we did I thanked God for being a forward-thinking lunatic—and tried not to think about how much my stomach was currently attempting to crawl out through my ass.

Because here's the thing: the garrison was demoralized, yes, but what if they resisted? What if some stubborn bastard suddenly decided to grow a spine? What if they actually fought like soldiers instead of deserters? The thought rattled in my head as we prepared to breach.

So I did what any man in my position would do. I hummed the Jedi Temple March to myself as we advanced. Yes, that one—the ominous theme that played when Anakin Skywalker marched into the Jedi Temple to murder a bunch of younglings. Except, of course, I wasn't here to massacre children. Only soldiers. Well, soldiers and Kerensky, if he tried to pull an Allende.

Helmet on, rifle loaded, heart hammering like a drum solo at a funeral. And so we marched into the palace, actors stepping onto the stage of the world's bloodiest drama.

The gates of the Winter Palace groaned as my Guard shoved them open, hinges squealing like an old drunk being forced out of a tavern. It wasn't really a storming—more of a swagger, a saunter with rifles raised and boots striking the marble like we were about to perform Swan Lake rather than overthrow a government. If history was a stage play, then we were the actors who hadn't rehearsed but still knew every line.

The corridors inside were dim, lit by flickering oil lamps that cast shadows over gilded walls and portraits of Romanovs staring down at us with the kind of aristocratic disdain that said: "Peasants, how dare you track mud on my parquet floors?"

I took point, rifle in hand, Stalin beside me. He carried the one I'd given him like it wasn't a rifle at all but a shovel he fully intended to bury someone with. His eyes slid past the portraits and chandeliers with visible disgust. "Bourgeois decadence," he muttered, "would look better melted into bullets." I nodded in agreement. He wasn't wrong.

I hummed the Jedi Temple March under my breath, letting it echo in the hall. Stalin raised an eyebrow at first but then shrugged. By the second refrain I caught him nodding to the rhythm. Perhaps I'd found our future anthem—imagine the Red Army marching into Berlin to the same tune Anakin Skywalker slaughtered Jedi children to. Hilarious. History rhymes, after all.

The palace guards offered about as much resistance as a wet paper bag. Most had already deserted, been bribed, or simply decided they'd rather not die for a provisional government that couldn't even feed them. The few stubborn souls who did resist were promptly disarmed—or ventilated. Sometimes both in rapid succession.

We moved through the palace like rats in a granary, swarming room to room. My Guard knew the drill: clear every chamber, drag out anyone holding a weapon, secure the staircases. Boots pounded up and down the halls, doors slammed open, men barked orders, rifles cracked. Then came the silences—those heavy, ringing silences that meant someone wasn't ever getting back up again.

And then came the real prize.

Alexander Kerensky—poster boy of the provisional government, savior of the revolution, great defender of democracy—was bolting down the back halls with a clutch of guards. He ran like a rabbit that had just seen the stew pot. His escape plan? A waiting automobile in the courtyard at the end of the hall, guarded by a few loyalists. I swear the man had all the dignity of a wet cat sprinting across a frozen pond.

We spotted him just as he and his entourage broke for the car. My blood ran cold, then hot. This was it. I bellowed:

"ALIVE! TAKE HIM ALIVE, DAMN IT!"

The Revolutionary Guard nodded enthusiastically and immediately opened fire. God bless them—real discipline. Kerensky's guards, to their credit, actually had spines and returned fire. Bullets whizzed down the corridor, a couple of my men crumpled, and I suddenly realized Stalin was aiming and shooting beside me.

That's when the awful thought hit me: am I really about to change history by getting my brother killed in the middle of this farce?

Absolutely not. Fuck that. I lunged at Stalin, tackling him to the ground just as something smacked my back like a baseball bat. The vest absorbed most of it, but it still rang through my ribs like a church bell.

Our numbers easily overwhelmed them. The gunfire sputtered out, the last loyalist fell, and silence crept back in. I staggered to my feet, chest burning, and surveyed the carnage. That's when I noticed two things.

One: all of Kerensky's guards were women. Dead, scattered across the hall. Some of them were genuinely pretty. I sighed, shaking my head. "What a waste," I muttered, stepping over them like discarded mannequins in a shop window.

Two: at the end of the hall, at the edge of the courtyard where the car was, I saw a body right at the edge of the car door. My stomach dropped before I even reached it. Kerensky.

I knelt, rolled him over. He was coughing up blood, hands clawing weakly at the air. A neat row of bullet holes tore through his chest like some drunk had tried to play connect-the-dots with a Mosin-Nagant.

"Get a fucking medic!" I barked, stripping off my jacket and pressing it against his chest. Blood soaked through instantly.

I leaned close. "Hey—stay with me. Do you really want your last words to be cough cough choke gurgle? Think of your legacy, man!"

Kerensky's eyes bulged, his mouth frothed crimson. He tried to speak, managed a wet rasp, then shuddered and collapsed. Nothing. Gone. Just like that.

"Goddamn it!" I shot to my feet and kicked his limp body. The thud echoed across the courtyard. "Why couldn't you just fucking surrender like a civilized man?!"

The silence that followed was thick, broken only by Stalin grumbling as he dusted himself off. And somewhere deep in my skull, the Jedi Temple March started playing again.

I slumped against the car, back still burning from where the bullet had kissed me. My lungs felt like someone had lit a candle inside them. With a grunt I tugged off the vest, the straps sticky with sweat, and held it up for Stalin to see.

There it was—neat and ugly—a bullet lodged dead center, flattened against the steel plate like a bug on a windshield. I laughed, bitter and wheezing, because what else could I do?

"Would you look at that," I said, shoving it toward him. "Guess that makes twice I've saved your life, Joe."

He frowned, confused, maybe even offended. "Twice?"

"Yeah," I smirked, wincing as the movement tugged at my ribs. "Don't tell me you forgot. That cart when we were kids? I shoved you out of the way, remember? You got away clean, I took the bruises. History repeating itself—me getting knocked around so you can keep raging at the world."

Stalin stared at the vest, then at me, his expression unreadable. Finally he gave this little grunt, half irritation, half reluctant acknowledgment. The man didn't do gratitude. He just adjusted his cap and muttered, "Hmph. You're still soft."

"Fucking Tsundere." I chuckled. "Soft? Brother, I just took a bullet meant for you. If that's softness, maybe you should try it sometime. Builds character."

For a second—just a flicker—I thought he might laugh. Instead he gave me that look of his, the one that promised he was already calculating whether welcoming me to the Bolsheviks had been worth the trouble. Then he muttered:

"Next time, wear two vests."

I barked a laugh, clutching my ribs. "Next time, you wear one. I'm not in the habit of making this a trilogy."

I looked over at Kerensky's body, still steaming faintly in the night air, while my vest hung limp in one hand like a butchered breastplate. The man had choked to death on his own blood, and all I could think was how history books had made him seem so much more… important. In reality, he looked like a butcher's accident.

"Pick him up," I ordered flatly. Two Guards moved in, gingerly hoisting Kerensky like he was a broken chair. "Treat him with care, but don't make it look like we're crying about it."

I turned to the women guards, sprawled lifeless across the cobbles in their crisp uniforms. Pretty faces, bloodied but still strangely dignified. They'd fought hard, harder than Kerensky ever had. I raised a hand to stop a Guard from dragging one by the boots.

"No. With dignity. Carry them out properly, two to a stretcher. Don't strip them for trophies. Don't mess with their bodies. They fought like soldiers, not servants. We'll honor that."

Stalin raised an eyebrow at me, but I waved him off. "Don't give me that look. We need martyrs, not looters."

And then, as we were escorting the bodies out of the palace, the heavy doors of the Winter Palace swung open behind us. Out came Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, and the rest of the whole central committee marching in like a funeral procession. They stopped dead when they saw me, vest still dangling in one hand, Kerensky's limp body in the other direction, and a line of dead women soldiers being lifted out like fallen saints.

Perfect timing.

Lenin's eyes widened, then narrowed. "Comrade Mikheil… explain."

I sighed, rubbing my temples. "Kerensky tried to flee. We went after him. His guards resisted, my men returned fire. Kerensky caught a few bullets. I tried to save him, but…" I gestured at the corpse being hauled up the stairs. "Well. The provisional government is now very dead."

Zinoviev looked horrified, Kamenev just looked sick, and Trotsky's face twisted into something between fury and smugness. The rest of course just looked stunned. I could practically hear Trotsky rehearsing the speech he'd give about my incompetence.

So I cut them all off.

"We double down," I snapped. "We take credit. We tell Petrograd, we tell Russia, we tell the world: Kerensky ran like a coward and died like a coward. No heroic stand, no noble sacrifice—just a little man trying to scurry out the back door. His guards fought harder than he did. Women, comrades. They fought more bravely than their own Prime Minister. And we will bury them with military honors to show we reward courage, even from the enemy."

That shut them up for a moment. The idea sank in. Lenin stroked his beard, considering.

I pressed on. "Kerensky, meanwhile, we give him a grave. A public one. Headstone with his name, nothing fancy. His family can find him, mourn him. But no flowers from us, no speeches, no marble. He gets a patch of dirt and that's it. And when people ask why, we say: this is the difference. He had office but no courage. His guards had courage but no cause. We had both."

Trotsky finally exploded. "This is insanity! You want to glorify Kerensky's guards? You want to turn them into martyrs? Into symbols?"

I grinned darkly. "No, Leo. I want to turn them into our martyrs. People will say: even Kerensky's guards respected the Bolsheviks enough to die with dignity. They'll say: look at the women, fighting with more courage than the whole damned provisional government. And when they compare that to Kerensky coughing his lungs out in a gutter—who looks stronger? Who looks legitimate?"

Dzerzhinsky—stone-faced, iron eyes—nodded once. "He's right. Fear comes from cruelty. But legitimacy comes from control. This shows control."

Lenin exhaled slowly. "A dangerous gamble, but… it may serve us. Kerensky alive would have been… useful. But dead, he is only a symbol. And symbols can be recast."

Kamenev muttered something about "desecrating politics with theatrics," and I leaned over him. "Comrade, politics is theatrics. You think the people care who signed what document in some smoky office? No. They'll remember the image: Kerensky scurrying, Kerensky dying, women laid out with honor, and the Bolsheviks striding victorious through the palace."

Silence fell for a moment. Then Stalin snorted, low and derisive. "Hmph. You sound like a street performer."

I flashed him my bloodstained smile. "Street performers keep the crowd happy, brother. And right now, Russia is a very angry crowd."

 

[Alenco98]

October 2, 1917
Winter Palace
Petrograd, Russia
Afternoon

We sat in the throne room of the Winter Palace, though "throne room" now felt like a sick joke. The gold, the chandeliers, the oil portraits of stiff Romanovs—everything smothered under red banners like the palace itself had been taken hostage. The tsarist eagles and saints hadn't been scraped off yet, just covered with cloth, as though we were hiding the body under a rug. The room reeked of history, revolution, and bad tobacco.

In the middle sat a massive table, cluttered with maps, ledgers, and ashtrays filling faster than our grain bins. Around it, the Central Committee hunched with the seriousness of surgeons at an autopsy. And me.

Technically, I wasn't even supposed to be there. I wasn't a Central Committee member, just an "adviser"—which is Bolshevik code for too useful to ignore but too irregular to admit we need him. My late arrival to revolutionary activity after my hiatus from the party should've disqualified me, but after saving their hides in July and again during Kornilov's cosplay of Bonaparte, they finally gave me an official seat once we seized power.

So here I was, wearing the most absurd title in Russia: Commissar for Religious Affairs. Which really meant: keep the priests obedient, seize their wealth/properties, and murder anyone in the clergy who dares talk shit about Lenin or the party. Holy work. On the side, I also happened to be commander‑in‑chief of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and a member of the Revolutionary Defense Council. Put simply: I got to point guns at people and I got control of the churches. If only my teachers at the seminary in Tilfis could see me now, they'd either be proud or horrified, definitely the latter.

Across the table, Dzerzhinsky glared at the papers like they had personally wronged him. He was Commissar for Internal Security now, master of the National Guard and my shiny new intelligence service. I'd suggested a grand name—the KGB, committee of public security in Russian. All because I stole it from the future. Historical plagiarism, I call it. Saves time.

Then there was Trotsky, our freshly minted Commissar for Military Affairs. That meant the air force, navy, and army were his toys to play with. He basked in it with the smug satisfaction of a man who thought his mustache had personally won the July Days. I'll give him this: Trotsky had charisma. He could organize an army, I genuinely respected his abilities in that front. The problem was, he thought idealism could replace realpolitik.

And of course the supporting cast: Zinoviev, Kamenev, Lenin, Stalin. A legendary blunt rotation if ever there was one—though tragically, all we had to smoke was the future of Russia. And once Stalin came into power he'd probably kill them all because I had never heard of any of these people asides from Stalin in school.

Speaking of Stalin—my dear brother—he now carried the heaviest portfolio of all: Commissar of Foreign Affairs. Why him? Because we needed peace. Without peace, we'd be a red stain under a German boot. Lenin fretted about the Allies retaliating, about losing credibility. But over weeks of inviting him to family dinners and lectures over maps—sweetened with my mother's khachapuri—I convinced him otherwise.

My argument was simple: once we pulled out, Germany would hurl everything at the Entente. They'd be too busy drowning in French mud outside Paris while desperately trying to hold Germany back to bother invading us. By the time they thought about intervening, we'd be too entrenched, too armed, too mean to uproot. They'd take one look at us and say, "fuck this, not worth the headache."

Lenin's first choice for the foreing ministry had been Trotsky. Naturally. Trotsky loved the stage, loved to pose as if history itself were watching him and had the charisma and multilingual skills to boot. But Trotsky wanted "neither war nor peace," some cosmic middle ground between surrender and revolution. Which in practice meant: suicide, but with better speeches. Worse, he genuinely believed revolutions would break out across Europe like spring flowers. He was a poet playing general. I told Lenin, bluntly, that what we needed was not poetry but someone who could sit at a negotiating table, grunt "peace," and not blush.

So, a few days before the coup, Lenin finally caved. Over khachapuri and cheap wine, he sighed like a man signing his own death warrant and said, "Fine, we'll sue for peace immediately. Stalin will negotiate for it."

And that was how three Georgians suddenly found themselves at the very heart of power. Alexander Svanidze—my brother‑in‑law and accountant of miracles—was already Commissar of Strategic Resources and his role was merely made official, which meant paying bills, feeding cities, running the war economy and making sure the army didn't run out of bullets. Stalin took foreign affairs, to glower at diplomats until they signed whatever paper he shoved across the table. And me, of course, the shepherd of churches and commander of our own little revolutionary mafia. 3 out of 12 central committee seats. Yay!!!!

The Party whispered about us already: the Georgian troika. They didn't say it kindly. But fuck them—we paid the troops, armed them, clothed them. I personally saved their skins in July, and again during Kornilov's amateur hour. A quick reminder of that usually shut their mouths.

The discussion of course was naturally peace, and Stalin was given the floor to speak. He stood from his seat and began to report on what he was going to do and what he'd done so far. "I've taken some of comrade Makarov's revolutionary guards and arrested everyone at the foreign ministry. We're currently searching for every treaty and agreement, both secret and known. I expect we'll finish with our search within a few days, I've let the ministry know that their cooperation is not optional."

"You haven't shot anyone yet right?" I asked, wanting to be cheeky.

Of course no one chuckled but Stalin gave me that, "I'll shoot you if you act clever again" look so I shut up again. He continued, "I've sent emissaries to the Germans calling for a ceasefire and negotiations. I expect a reply within a few days."

They all talked among themselves, Trotsky Dzerzhinsky surprisingly enough and a few others were against peace, Trotsky the idealist and wanting to spread revolution and all, while Dzerzhinsky basically had a hate boner for Germany and would rather die than have his homeland be under German rule, devil that you know and all.

Lenin let this go on, the central committee going on and on about peace vs surrender with Stalin, me, Kamenev, Lenin and a few others firmly on the peace side with Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky and some others on the fight on side.

Unfortunately for them they were divided, Trotsky was wishy washy, wanting to stall while the others like Dzerzhinsky wanted to fight on. But with all of us on our side united in peace we won out eventually, and Stalin was formally allowed by the central committee to pursue peace negotiations after a vote.

Lenin leaned back after the vote ended in his favor, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. "Very well. We'll send Stalin. He will negotiate with the Germans on our behalf. If he succeeds, peace will follow. If he fails, it was his fault."

Stalin grimly nodded. "I'll take care of it."

And like that, with the debate on peace ended, I decided to lob another grenade into the conversation.

I leaned forward, tapping the table. "Comrades. Now that we've finally decided to pursue peace, I'd like to remind you of a little problem rattling around in the east. The Romanovs."

That froze the room faster than a Siberian wind. Everyone's eyes shifted.

"Now, I know what you're thinking," I went on, grinning. "We've got enough problems without babysitting the old tsar and his brood. But think of the propaganda value if we bring them here—alive, intact, and maybe even useful. Imagine them working on factory floors, quoting Marx like schoolchildren. A tsar on a lathe! An empress at a textile mill! A grand duchess saying all power to the soviets! The royal children handing out pamphlets and praising Marx. Don't tell me that wouldn't make headlines."

Lenin's brow furrowed, clearly running the scenario through his mental printing press. Dzerzhinsky's jaw clenched—he didn't like loose ends. Trotsky scoffed outright.

"Again with your theatricality, you still want to parade them around like circus animals?" Trotsky sneered.

"Better than making martyrs," I shot back. "If we shoot them now, they become saints to the Whites. If we keep them breathing, they're a punchline."

Silence again. I let it hang before continuing. "I'll handle it. I'll go with a detachment of my Revolutionary Guards—no half-trained rabble, proper disciplined men. And before you all get nervous, no, I won't subject them to my little Project Red Rebirth games." I smiled wide. "Even I know the difference between propaganda value and… ah… creative re-education. Maybe a few mock executions to remind them who's in charge and some forced readings of Marx, but not extreme cruelty."

Trotsky muttered something about "extreme for you," but I waved it off and continued.

"I'll drag the Romanovs back here. Safe, secure, visible. No underground dungeons, no accidental bullet 'misfires.' We put them somewhere respectable but controlled. It makes us look strong—magnanimous, even. See how merciful the Bolsheviks are? Even the tsar lives under our rule."

Lenin tapped his pen against the table. He didn't like it, but I could see the gears turning. Propaganda was his favorite narcotic.

Trotsky shook his head. "You're playing with fire, Mikheil. If they escape, if they're rescued—"

"They won't," I interrupted, blunt. "Me and my Guards will see to that. And if by some miracle Nicholas grows wings and flies away, I'll take the blame. Put my head on the chopping block, make me the scapegoat. But if it works, we have a living exhibit of history's failure standing beside our victory."

Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, voice low and iron hard. "And if they inspire counterrevolution?"

"Then I'll shoot them. Quietly. Publicly, we'll say they died of influenza. Or maybe of bourgeois weakness." I shrugged. "Either way, it's our call, not theirs. Until then, they're useful. Better a live Romanov under our boot than a dead one turned into a White banner."

The committee sat in heavy silence. Lenin finally nodded, slow and deliberate. "Very well. We'll try it your way. But understand, Mikheil—if this goes wrong, you'll answer for it."

I gave him my most charming grin. "Comrade, if it goes wrong, I'll sign my own death warrant."

Inside, I was already picturing the scene: Nicholas in overalls, fumbling with a wrench in a factory while a Bolshevik foreman barked orders; Alexandra darning socks in a communal home; the grand duchesses reading out Marxist slogans in halting Russian like schoolchildren. It was perfect. Too perfect, really. Which meant it probably wouldn't happen. But if nothing else, I'd get to watch Bear try to shove an imperial family into armored car. That alone was worth the trouble.

Meanwhile the room had grown heavy again, the kind of silence that feels like everyone is sharpening knives in their heads. Lenin's verdict still lingered: I'd been given my leash, but the noose was attached to it.

"Very well," Lenin said, his eyes drilling into me. "But understand this clearly, Mikheil. If the Romanovs slip through your hands—if anything goes wrong—you will take full responsibility."

Dzerzhinsky nodded sharply. "On your head alone."

Trotsky, smug as ever, leaned back in his chair. "Yes, it will be a fitting end for him if he lets them get away."

I stood, brushing imaginary dust off my jacket. "Oh, I understand perfectly, comrades. If I botch this, I'm the villain of the story. If the Romanovs sprout wings and fly off to Paris, I'll gladly shoulder the blame." I paused, flashing them a grin that probably didn't help.

"And if that happens, I hereby give Stalin permission to execute me himself. In fact, I think he'd enjoy it. Might even crack a smile for once."

Stalin looked up from under his brows and muttered, "Don't tempt me."

The committee chuckled nervously—except Lenin and Dzerzhinsky, who didn't chuckle at anything unless it involved someone getting shot.

I raised my hands like a showman taking a bow. "So it's settled. I'll go and have my men wrangle the Romanovs, and if it all collapses, I'll even provide the bullets for my own execution. Efficient, yes?"

Lenin scowled but waved me off. "Enough of your theatrics. You have your orders. Now get to work."

Dismissed. Like a student after detention.

As I left the throne room, I caught Stalin's eye. He didn't say a word, just gave me that look again—the same one from when we were boys and I pushed him out of the way of that runaway cart. Equal parts annoyance and reluctant gratitude. More brotherly teasing I guess.

I winked at him. "Yesterday I saved your life, Koba. One day you'll thank me. Or shoot me. Maybe both."

He just sighed and shook his head.

October 2, 1917
Winter Palace
Petrograd, Russia
Afternoon

A few minutes later, I found Comrade Bear waiting in the corridor. He stood like a brick wall in uniform, broad-shouldered, stoic, and with the kind of expression that suggested he'd just as soon eat a horse raw as follow orders. Good man. Loyal. Terrifying. The sort of fellow you want on your side when the firing starts and the vodka runs out.

"Bear," I said, motioning him into the room. "I have a little errand for you."

His eyebrows twitched. For a man of his bulk, that was practically a soliloquy.

"You're going to prepare five hundred men—my men, Revolutionary Guards, the best of them—and you're going to help me secure the Tsar and his charming little family. That means Nicholas, Alexandra, all the Romanov children, the little sick one too. And listen closely: you will help me ensure they are not harmed. Not a scratch. Not a bruise. If one of them stubs their toe, it will be my head on a platter. And if it's my head on a platter, I'll make sure yours is the side dish."

He gave a curt nod, no trace of humor. Everyone else seemed to take me seriously when I joked about executions; only Bear looked like he was actually planning the logistics of it.

I leaned in, lowering my voice. "Your job isn't to guard prisoners. Your job is to guard propaganda. Think of the poster value! Imagine the Tsar on a factory floor in Petrograd, handing out bolts, quoting Marx badly. Oh, the workers would eat it up. They'd line up for bread just to laugh at him."

Bear didn't so much as blink.

That's when it hit me: I had no idea what his actual name was. I'd been calling him Bear for months, because, well, he looked like one. But perhaps, before entrusting him with Russia's royal brood, I should finally correct that.

"What's your name, by the way? Your real name. I've been shouting 'Bear!' at you like you're a circus act."

For the first time since I'd met him, he smiled—or something close to it, a faint crack in the granite. "Fyodor," he rumbled. "But I prefer Bear."

"Fyodor the Bear," I mused, clapping him on the shoulder. "Good. Then Bear it shall be. History will thank me for keeping things simple."

I straightened up, all official-like. "If you succeed, there'll be a promotion waiting. I'll make you the first of my generals. And I'll give you a little red star to pin on your chest. If you fail…" I shrugged. "Well, let's not discuss executions just yet."

Bear nodded once more, as solemn as a priest at a funeral.

"Pick the men carefully," I added, wagging a finger. "No drunks, no looters, no romantics who think princesses are worth rescuing. I want men who will guard the Romanovs like they're guarding Lenin's mustache—ferociously and without a hint of humor. Preferably with families, more collateral if you get my drift. Understood?"

"Yes, Comrade," Bear said, voice low and firm.

I grinned, leaning back in my chair. "Excellent. Off you go, then. Go fetch the men. Get supplies prepared, armored vehicles too, I want to be ready to move within two weeks."

Bear saluted, turned on his heel, and stomped out.

I watched him go, thinking: if anyone can help me drag a royal family across Russia without losing half of them to frostbite or bayonets, it's a man named Bear. And if not… well, Lenin told me I'd take responsibility. But I had a feeling Bear would shoulder most of it first.

October 2, 1917
Smolny, Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Dinnertime

Dinner was a miracle in itself. Somehow Aleksandra had wrangled a roast chicken, bread that wasn't completely stone, and even some wine. The table creaked under the weight of actual food, something I hadn't seen in weeks outside of confiscations. My Guard could raid bakeries and warehouses all day, but Aleksandra? She could conjure a meal out of a famine. Proof she was the more dangerous half of this marriage.

We gathered around: Stalin, looking like he'd rather be chewing nails than sitting at a table; my wife Aleksandra, regal in her practicality; my mother Keke, who could curdle milk with a look; Aleksander (my brother-in-law), grinning too much for a man in a collapsing empire; the children—Kato, Aleksander, and little Iosif—squirming like they'd been force-marched here. Even Yakov, Stalin's boy, sat stiff and polite at the far end, eyes flicking at my kids like a stray dog sniffing for pack. Baby Besarion meanwhile was asleep in the other room.

I raised a glass. "To peace, before we all die of indigestion."

Aleksandra gave me that look. The one that meant: don't joke in front of the children. Stalin just muttered something about bourgeois rituals, then drank anyway.

Keke cut straight to business. "So. Iosif will go to the front?"

"Unless Lenin says otherwise," I said. "Yes. He will negotiate a peace treaty. Smile, shake hands, sign away part of Russia. Then he'll come home and say he secured peace. I meanwhile, will go east and drag the Tsar and his family here. I'll be a delivery boy."

Stalin scowled. "If you fail—"

"Yes, yes, I know. You'll execute me. I suggested it myself, remember?" I said, stabbing a potato. "At least keep it quick. I'd hate to die slower than a soldier in the western front ."

Aleksandra sighed, rubbing her temples. "The Tsar. You've actually agreed to bring them here? To Petrograd?"

"Not just me, I'm bringing Bear and 500 men," I corrected. "Big man, the best of the best. Perfect for carrying Romanovs. Five hundred Guards under my command, strict orders: don't so much as sneeze on the royals. They're worth more to us alive than dead. Imagine them working factory shifts, quoting Marx with terrible accents—better propaganda than ten rousing Lenin speeches."

Aleksander the brother-in-law chuckled nervously. "You make it sound like a circus."

"It is a circus," I said. "We're just arguing over who gets to play ringmaster."

The kids cut in before politics drowned the room. Kato, perched at the edge of her chair, had a notebook open. She bit her thumb furiously like she always did, then pushed it across the table to me. A drawing: a lopsided airplane, wings too long, nose too blunt. Underneath, in shaky handwriting: I want to be a pilot.

She didn't speak, not much. But when she did, about planes, her words locked into place like cogs in a machine. She stuttered, yes, but her eyes lit up like she was already flying above us. "If you're… still alive," she mumbled, not looking up, "and… a-and I do well in school, y-you'll send me. Flight… school."

My throat caught. "Yes. If the schools ever open again, and if I'm not shot for treason by my brother here—" Stalin grunted "—I'll fast-track you myself. You'll terrify the world, Kato. A pilot with my sense of humor? The Germans won't stand a chance."

She smiled faintly, thumb between her teeth again, then muttered, "If the plane crashes… at least I'll save the family money on a coffin." My Aleksandra winced, keke gasped and Stalin chuckled, but I couldn't help but outright laugh. Looks like she got my fucked up sense of humor.

Meanwhile, little Iosif was banging his spoon like a saber. "Papa, I want to go with uncle Joe to the front!" he shouted. "I'll fight the Germans if they try to hurt him. Yakov will come too, won't you, Yakov?"

Yakov glanced up, hesitant, then nodded. "Yes," he said softly, almost apologetic.

I laughed. "Two boys against the Kaiser's army. Excellent plan. But no—you're staying here. If the Germans kill Joe, someone has to take care of keke." Aleksandra kicked me under the table and keke and Joe glared at me then at his namesake.

Aleksander cleared his throat, very proper for a boy of his age. "I finished a book today. On Russian history."

"Ah, history," I said. "A list of people who made the wrong choice too late."

"No, Papa," he said, indignant. "It was about Napoleon's invasion and how it was defeated."

"Napoleon, yes. Walked into Russia, then general winter destroyed him. Very smart of him. Word of advice, never invade Russia without proper supply lines for winter."

The table settled after that into the clatter of cutlery and murmured talk. Stalin ate like a man swallowing enemies whole, silent and brooding and twitching slightly every time someone called him Joe, it was the kids now, as well as Keke, Aleksandra and even our brother in law. My wife and mother whispered to each other, probably about how I was going to get myself killed by the counter-revolutionaries as soon as word got around that I had the Tsar. The children bickered, chattered, and occasionally stabbed potatoes with more violence than necessary.

And me? I sat there in the middle of it, sipping wine, thinking: This was nice, I loved these idiots. Even Stalin in a twisted fucked up way, they were family after all. Not my old family, but I'd grown fond of them, no, loved them. Not as substitutes but for themselves.

Dinner wound down, plates scraped clean, the children herded away by Aleksandra with the efficiency of a field marshal herself. Keke stayed at the table to knit, which in her case meant stabbing needles into yarn like she was picturing some poor bastard's face. Stalin lingered too, swirling his glass, watching Kato as she collected her notebook before shuffling off.

He muttered, low but sharp enough to cut the room in half:

"She looks like my Kato."

I blinked. "Of course she looks like Kato, her mom is Kato's sister and she also looks like her."

He shook his head. "Not just that. Her face. Eyes. Her expressions. Like a child version of her. It's…" He trailed off, expression caught somewhere between grief and suspicion, as if the universe had personally insulted him by resurrecting his dead wife in my daughter's skin.

I barked a laugh, too loud. "Then maybe she is Kato, back again to torment you. Reincarnated as my little girl, biting her thumb and drawing airplanes instead of arguing about Marx."

Stalin's gaze snapped to me. He didn't laugh. He never did when the dead were mentioned.

So I pressed harder. "Don't worry, brother, we'll make sure she's looked after. Hell, I'll marry her off to Yakov if you want. She'll need someone to take care of her—she's clever but strange, and he's… well, quiet, dependable. Perfect match. We'll keep it in the family, like good Georgians. Great idea right?"

Stalin's jaw clenched. He didn't answer, just drank.

I grinned, outwardly. Inside, though, the thought coiled like a snake: If I bind my blood to his, if Yakov is tied to my daughter, then maybe—just maybe—when the purges come, he'll hesitate. A daughter-in-law, grandchildren. His own twin brother, now brother in law too. Even Stalin has to blink before shooting family… right? God I hoped I was right.

I wasn't sure. But in this game, you don't play the odds—you play survival. And survival meant laughing at ghosts over dinner, treating Stalin like a human while calculating how to keep my name off the list when my brother finally crowned himself the Red Tsar.

 

[Alenco98]

October 6, 1917
Pulkovo Heights
Petrograd, Russia — Afternoon

I stood at the crest of the hill with about two thousand of my men fanned out behind me, many of them had been with me almost from the beginning, the creme de la creme so to speak. I, on the other hand, just wanted to make sure Krasnov's cavalry provided us with some live-fire practice. Binoculars—looted from a dead Provisional Government officer who had very graciously donated them with his last breath—were pressed to my eyes as I looked south, where the road snaked its way toward the city like a vein begging to be cut.

It hadn't even been a week since we'd "seized" Petrograd, and already the Junkers thought it was a good idea to rise against us. Brave, yes. Intelligent? No. Fortunately for me, Dzerzhinsky was handling that particular crisis. I had even loaned him a thousand of my Revolutionary Guards, because nothing says "loyal comrade" like sending your best men into urban street fighting you don't want to deal with. My real concern was what lay to the south: General Pyotr Krasnov, trying to drag the corpse of the Provisional Government back to life and march it straight into our city. Admirable, in a "charging into a firing squad" kind of way.

Naturally, I volunteered to defend Petrograd. "Defend" is a polite word, though. What I really wanted was for my men to practice turning Cossacks into corpses before I had to go east and drag the Romanovs back for Lenin's (my) theater piece.

And so, poor Krasnov's little army was about to discover that I had troops hidden on both sides of the road and a few borrowed artillery pieces up in hills along with my men pointed at their teeth. It was going to be less a battle and more of a particularly bloody rehearsal.

As I waited, I found myself humming Turn It Into Love by Kylie Minogue. Let's just say revolutionaries don't always march to "The Internationale." Fittingly ironic, too. There was no love involved in what was about to happen. I wasn't turning them into lovers; I was turning them into fertilizer.

A rider approached at a gallop, one of my scouts, caked in mud and exhaustion. He pulled up sharp, dismounted, and saluted.

"General Jugashvili."

I returned the salute with just enough laziness to remind everyone I outranked them. "Report."

"We've spotted the enemy. They're five kilometers out and closing."

"Excellent. You've earned yourself a nap. Don't get killed before you take it." I waved him off, then turned to the others. "Battle positions."

That was all it took. Men scrambled, rifles clicked, and orders echoed down the line. The few drummer boys I had with me began pounding out a ten-second rhythm, a brutal and ugly tune that made my eardrums beg for mercy. Half a moment of deafness later, I heard it—the shrill, synchronized whistle from down the road. The signal from my men hidden along the flanks.

Everything was in place.

"Time for a good old-fashioned massacre," I muttered, mostly to myself, though a few nearby Guards heard me. A few of them chuckled. That was fine. Someone around here had to appreciate the comedy of the situation. Meanwhile I kept humming Turn it into love.

I raised my looted binoculars again, peering into the distance. The enemy was coming into view. Lines of horsemen, banners fluttering, sabers flashing in the autumn light. Brave bastards, I'll give them that. Shame bravery doesn't stop bullets.

Behind me, my men waited tensely, serious and solemn. In their heads, this was the most important day of their lives. In mine, it was just another day in Paradise.

Through the binoculars, Krasnov's cavalry looked almost noble. That was the cruelest part: the sheer aesthetic of it. Horses in neat formation, sabers glinting, banners snapping in the autumn wind. It would have made a fine painting. Unfortunately for Krasnov, my men and I were not an art gallery. We were more of a butcher's shop ready for modern warfare.

The road below was lined with my Guards, dug into ditches and hidden behind little earthworks. On the ridge, our field guns sat ready, crude but serviceable, their crews fussing over them like overfed hens. I lowered the binoculars, flexed my fingers, and exhaled slowly.

"Wait for it," I murmured.

My Guards tensed, rifles trained on the approaching column. They were nervous. Their breaths came in visible puffs in the cold air. Their hands shook on rifle stocks. They thought this was a holy moment, that history itself was watching.

Me? I was thinking about dinner and Aleksandra's sweet ass as I was planning on blowing her back out after this. God even though we were both approaching our 40s she was still beautiful, truly Georgian women were superior, no wonder Joe was sad when Kato died, what zero Georgian pussy does to an mfer. I too would commit mass murder if I didn't have a cutie Georgian waifu.

But enough about my wife, time for murder, the first rank of cavalry came into range. I raised my hand and held it there, savoring the silence. Krasnov's men looked magnificent — for now. Then I dropped my hand.

"Guns!"

The artillery boomed. The ground trembled. A shell screamed into the road and blossomed into a plume of smoke, dirt, and shredded horseflesh. Another shell landed square on a cluster of riders, tossing them into the air like broken dolls.

The effect was immediate. The column faltered, men screaming, horses rearing. And then my Guards opened fire. The crack of rifles rolled across the ridge, a ragged chorus, and the neat order of Krasnov's cavalry dissolved into chaos.

I raised the binoculars again. Through the smoke, I saw a rider catapulted from his saddle, still clutching his saber as though honor could protect him from shrapnel. Another man's horse collapsed mid-gallop, pinning him underneath, thrashing in terror as bullets tore through them both.

"Beautiful," I muttered. "Like ballet. If ballet ended in pools of blood."

One of my Guard's chuckled after missing a shot. I smacked him lightly on the helmet. "None of that. If you can laugh it means you're slacking."

The enemy tried to rally. Brave fools spurred their horses forward, shouting, sabers raised high, charging into the gunfire. From a distance, it looked heroic. Up close, it looked suicidal. My men cut them down in droves. Every ten meters another body slumped forward, clattering out of the saddle, or another horse screamed as it went down in a heap.

I couldn't help chuckling. "Target practice, comrades. This isn't war, this is pest control."

Then, as if to prove me wrong, a cluster of cavalry actually made it within striking distance of the first line of Guards on the side of the road. Sabers flashed, and for a few seconds steel met bayonet. Horses trampled, men shouted, and the smell of blood grew sharp in the air. But numbers were against them. The Guards swarmed them like wolves. Within moments, the last rider was dragged from his horse and bayoneted into silence.

"See?" I said, mostly to myself. "Bravery is a lovely quality. Almost as lovely as dying young."

Another artillery shell landed in the road, right in the middle of what had once been Krasnov's neat column. The explosion scattered horse and rider alike, bodies flung skyward before crashing down in grotesque heaps.

The survivors broke. Panic rippled down the line, and the cavalry wheeled desperately, trying to retreat south. But my men had already fanned out to cut off their retreat. From both sides of the road, rifle fire poured into them, cutting them down as they fled. What had begun as an army now looked like a stampede of terrified animals, desperately clawing their way out of a slaughterhouse.

I lowered the binoculars and turned to one of my lieutenants, who looked pale but exhilarated. "You see, comrade? That's how you make history. With shrapnel, smoke, and a generous helping of horse meat. Write that in your memoirs."

He blinked at me, giving me that, "is this guy real" kind of look. Everyone else was dead serious. Their faces were drawn, tense, as though this massacre were some great sacrament of the revolution.

Me? I was humming Turn It Into Love again under my breath, watching Krasnov's grand little cavalry melt into ruin. The sun was already dipping west, staining the battlefield with red. Red banners, red coats, red blood. A perfect Bolshevik painting, really.

By the time the smoke cleared, the road was littered with broken men and horses. The survivors were fleeing south, abandoning their dead. My Guards emerged from their positions, cheering, rifles in the air.

I raised a hand for silence. "Good work, comrades. Krasnov has learned today's lesson: Petrograd is not for sale. At least, not to cavalrymen with delusions of grandeur."

They laughed nervously, unsure if I was joking. I wasn't. Or maybe I was. Even I wasn't sure anymore.

I turned my gaze south again, binoculars raised, scanning the horizon for any sign of reinforcements. Nothing. Just smoke, blood, and the faint echo of hooves fading away.

"Massacre complete," I muttered. "clean up time."

The battlefield was already a charnel house, but I wasn't done. Artillery and rifle fire could only take you so far. To really drive the point home — to really educate Krasnov's men — you had to look them in the eyes while you killed them.

So I mounted up. My horse, a miserable brown thing I'd stolen from some aristocrats estate a few days back stamped nervously. It probably smelled the blood. Good. Fear builds character, even in animals.

I turned to the Guards clustered around me. Their bayonets gleamed in the dying light. Their faces were pale, tense, and serious — as though they were marching into the Last Judgment instead of a live-action meat grinder.

I grinned. "Comrades, the enemy is broken. They are running, bleeding, shitting themselves in fear. Perfect time for us to show them the true meaning of revolutionary justice."

A ripple of cheers answered me. Not very enthusiastic — more like the nervous laughter of men who had just realized their boss was insane but they had no choice except to follow him into hell.

I drew my saber. I'd taken it off a dead Cossack shortly after the storming of the winter palace. Not polished, not noble — just sharp, practical, and a bit nicked at the edges, like myself. I raised it high.

"Forward! Into history! Or into a shallow grave. Either way, let's ride."

We charged down the slope. The thunder of hooves shook the ground, the Guards shouting their hoarse war cries. My blood sang with the rhythm of it. For once, I almost felt like one of those romantic paintings — gallant officer leading his men into glory. Except instead of glory, we had mud, blood, and horseshit spraying in every direction.

Krasnov's survivors were scattered and panicked, trying desperately to regroup. When they saw us charging, some dropped their weapons and bolted, others froze, and a few — God bless their doomed courage — lowered their lances and tried to meet us head-on.

The clash was brutal. My saber caught a rider across the chest, splitting him open like an overripe melon. His horse screamed and bolted, dragging his corpse half-hanging from the saddle. Another came at me, thrusting with his lance. I leaned low, let it scrape past my shoulder, and slashed his face. He tumbled backward, howling, clutching the ruin where his eye used to be.

One of my Guards rammed his bayonet clean through a Cossack's belly, only to get yanked from his own saddle when the poor bastard clung to the blade out of sheer terror. They both went down in the mud, writhing, until another Guard stabbed down and silenced them.

I laughed — couldn't help it. "Oh, beautiful! Bayonet ballet, comrades! Five stars!"

The Guards didn't laugh. They never did. Too busy surviving.

The rout turned into a massacre. We ran them down, cutting and stabbing as they tried to flee. Horses stumbled over corpses. Men slipped in the mud, only to be trampled or skewered. The screams were constant, high and thin, like some grotesque orchestra tuning up.

Through the chaos I spotted a familiar figure: Pyotr Krasnov himself, trying desperately to rally a knot of cavalry. His uniform was filthy, his horse lathered with sweat, but he still looked every inch the officer — stubborn, proud, stupid.

I pointed my saber. "There! The maestro of this little tragedy!"

A handful of Guards followed me as I spurred my horse toward him. Krasnov swung his saber with surprising skill, cutting one of my men clean out of his saddle. Brave bastard. If this were a duel, maybe he'd even have won. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't a duel. It was a mob.

My horse crashed into his, shoulder to shoulder, and I swung low. My saber tore across his thigh, blood spraying hot across my sleeve. He screamed, tried to cut back, but another Guard slammed his bayonet into Krasnov's shoulder. He dropped his weapon, nearly toppled from the saddle.

"Enough!" I barked, and the Guards pulled him down alive. His face was ashen, his eyes burning with humiliation. I leaned down, meeting his gaze.

"General Krasnov," I said sweetly, almost tenderly, "thank you for the exercise. My men needed it. And I needed the entertainment."

He spat at my boot. Missed. I laughed. "Careful, comrade. You'll need all your fluids for your execution."

The last of his men were dragged down screaming, disarmed, or executed where they lay. The battlefield fell into an eerie quiet. Just the groans of the dying, the sobs of the captured, and the wet sucking sound of the mud under the hooves of exhausted horses.

My Guards began gathering up the prisoners. Dozens of them — ragged, terrified, hands bound behind their backs. They looked at me with hate, with fear, with that special kind of disbelief men get when they realize their courage has been wasted.

I dismounted, wiping my saber clean on a dead man's cloak. I looked around at the carnage — the heaps of horses and men, the smell of powder and shit and blood.

"Comrades," I announced, "victory is ours. Petrograd is safe. The revolution lives another day — thanks to our good friends Krasnov and his merry band of corpses."

A few Guards managed weak chuckles. Most were just staring at the ground. Dead serious. Traumatised.

I sighed. "You people really don't know how to enjoy a massacre."

I glanced at Krasnov, now bound and glaring daggers at me despite his wounds. "Don't worry, General. I'll make it quick. But first I need to deal with your men."

I patted him on the cheek. He flinched.

"Ah," I smiled, "still got some fight in you. Hilarious." Then I looked around.

The battlefield bathed in that warm, golden light that makes everything look almost holy. A painter would've called it beautiful. To me, it looked like the world's largest abattoir — steaming heaps of men and horses, puddles of blood that reflected the sky like a bad watercolor. Romantic, really.

The Guards had rounded up the survivors — a miserable herd of maybe sixty men, bound and kneeling in the mud. Faces grey with shock, eyes darting like trapped animals. They whispered prayers, muttered curses, begged under their breath. Always the same noises. Always the same look — "Why me, why now?"

I sat on a fallen log, brushing dried blood off my saber with the hem of a dead officer's sash. Krasnov knelt apart from the rest, his uniform torn, his leg still bleeding. He held his head high, still playing general even with mud in his hair. Admirable, in a way. But admirability is rarely a survival trait in my world.

I stood, stretched, and looked over the prisoners.

"Comrades," I said, voice carrying over the field, "you fought bravely. Stupidly, but bravely. Now, the revolution is merciful. You may live — if you join us."

A few lifted their heads. Hope flickered. Most stayed silent. They already guessed what was coming.

I smiled, clapping my hands together. "Of course, nothing is free. If you want to be reborn as revolutionaries, you must prove it. Words are cheap. Bullets too. Blood, however… blood is priceless."

I gestured. The Guards began pulling men from the line, shoving them forward in small groups. I let them stand, trembling, staring at their bound comrades.

"Here is your test," I explained cheerfully. "Take these bayonets, these stones, these rifles without cartridges. Kill the ones who refuse to join us. Kill your brothers, your friends, your drinking companions. Kill them, or be killed with them."

The prisoners stared, aghast. One whimpered. Another spat and called me a monster. I laughed. "Monster? Please. At least a monster keeps to children's bedtime stories. I come right to your doorstep."

The first group hesitated. A few reached shakily for the bayonets. The rest froze. That's when the Guards prodded them forward with rifle butts. Then the real show began.

One man smashed his comrade's skull with a rock, sobbing as he did it. Another lunged with the bayonet, stabbing again and again while screaming apologies. Blood sprayed, men gurgled, the air filled with the sounds of betrayal. It was clumsy, hideous, pathetic — and exactly what I wanted.

Because here's the thing: I'd seen this trick before. Not in Russia, but in a grainy documentary I watched back in my past life. Saddam Hussein, first days in power, dragging Ba'athists into a hall and forcing them to kill each other to prove loyalty. Brilliant bit of theatre. You don't just win obedience — you make them complicit. You turn men into their own jailers. After that, they can never go back.

I didn't say a word about it, of course. Try explaining to Lenin or the central committee that you got your methods from a future Arab strongman who hadn't even been born yet. No, better to just smile, whistle, and let the lesson play itself out.

The killing went on in fits and starts. Some men broke instantly, hacking away at their comrades like madmen. Others resisted until the Guards threatened them with their rifles. A few refused outright. Brave, principled, suicidal. They died on the spot, bayoneted by the others while I watched.

When it was over, twenty remained alive, covered in gore, shaking, some sobbing, some wide-eyed like newborn calves. My new recruits. Their hands would never be clean again. Perfect.

I walked among them, clapping one on the shoulder, ruffling another's hair like proud children. "Congratulations, comrades! You are now baptized in blood. The revolution welcomes you. Don't look so grim — you've just earned yourself a new lease on life and a pension!"

No one laughed. Not the prisoners. Not my Guards. But they didn't protest either. They'd seen me do worse. And they respected me for it, in their own grim way. I fought with them, bled with them, joked with them, and most importantly — I paid them. A man who keeps your stomach full can get away with anything, even turning captives into executioners.

Finally, I returned to Krasnov. He was still upright, glaring at me with raw hatred. Brave man. Too brave.

"General," I said softly, "you're a soldier. I'll give you a soldier's death."

He tried to speak, but I drew my pistol and shot him through the head before he could finish the sentence. His body crumpled forward into the mud. Just another corpse in a sea of them.

I holstered the pistol, turned back to the Guards. "All right. That's done. Gather the weapons, strip the corpses, feed the horses. Tonight we drink, eat and fuck to our hearts content. Tomorrow we get back to work. History doesn't wait — and neither do I." I looked around the battlefield one more time. "And bury the bodies, they may be the enemy but they died well and still fought despite the odds despite it all. We may show no mercy to our enemies, but it doesn't mean we should disrespect the dead."

I strolled away from the carnage, humming under my breath. Something upbeat. Espresso, by Sabrina Carpenter, because goddamn I needed an Espresso. And my give a fucks were also on vacation, well, they'd been on vacation for a long time.

October 6, 1917
Winter Palace, Petrograd
Evening

By the time I rode back into Petrograd, the city already smelled of burnt cordite and wet blood — a familiar perfume by now. The Junker cadets had made their last stand in side streets and schoolyards, their shiny boots splattered in the mud like some bad parody of Napoleon's Old Guard. Brave boys, but unfortunately for them, they were playing toy soldiers against men who had long since graduated to butcher's work.

Dzerzhinsky, his men and my boys had handled it. And when I say "handled," I mean "left no one to handle ever again."

The Palace gates creaked open, and I stepped into the throne room — yes, still calling it that, because the irony tickled me. Red banners sagged from the walls, already stained with soot. At the far end stood Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Iron Pole himself, still in his blood‑flecked coat. His eyes were pale glass marbles — cold, steady, the kind of eyes that don't blink even when you're washing entrails off your boots.

Around him, the Committee waited: Lenin, stiff as a professor lecturing in a morgue; Trotsky, looking like someone had told him his reflection was prettier than him; Stalin, arms folded, lips pursed, already radiating the smug aura of a man who thought he'd saved the revolution by rearranging his desk papers.

And me — dirty, tired, smelling like burned horse flesh and victory.

Felix was first to report. His voice was calm, precise, as though he were giving a quarterly account of flour shipments:

"The Junker cadets are suppressed. Survivors shot. Their officers hanged in front of their units. Families of the ringleaders are under guard, pending transport to secure facilities. Confiscated armories catalogued. City pacified."

Simple, efficient. You had to admire Felix — he brought the same tone to describing mass executions as one might bring to listing grocery items.

Lenin nodded gravely, rubbing his temples. "And their morale? The effect on the population?"

Felix blinked once. "Morale is irrelevant. Fear will suffice."

That's Dzerzhinsky for you: why inspire when you can terrify? Why persuade when you can strangle? If he ran a bakery, I'm convinced he'd hand out bread with one hand and point a pistol with the other.

My turn came. I strolled forward, boots squelching faintly, and threw a mud‑spattered map down on the table. "Krasnov's little adventure is finished. His men are corpses on Pulkovo Heights. Survivors were… re‑educated." I paused, just a hint of a grin. "Hands‑on method. Very interactive. Builds character."

No one laughed, of course. They never do.

Stalin raised an eyebrow, suspicious as always. He didn't like not knowing details, especially when those details involved my particular brand of theatre. He muttered, "How many defected?"

"Twenty," I said brightly. "Well, twenty plus however many corpses they carved through to prove themselves. Loyal boys now. Proper revolutionaries. Very motivated."

I could feel Trotsky's disgust radiating like a draft. He opened his mouth — something about barbarism, no doubt — but then closed it again, teeth clicking. Smart. I'd seen that look before: he wanted to lecture, but he also wanted to keep his liver intact.

Lenin steepled his fingers, his voice calm but heavy. "So. Krasnov is dead, the Junkers are eliminated. We have bought ourselves breathing space. But these methods…" He trailed off, eyes flicking between me and Felix like a schoolmaster forced to supervise two delinquent pupils who'd set fire to the library — one with kerosene, the other with dynamite.

I smiled helpfully. "Comrade Lenin, the counter‑revolution is like a garden. You cannot simply prune it. You must root it out, crush the weeds, and sometimes feed the soil with their bones. Dzerzhinsky provides the plow, I provide the fertilizer. Agriculture, really."

Felix gave the barest nod, as if approving the metaphor. Lenin, of course, looked like he was weighing whether to throttle us both or promote us.

Stalin finally broke the silence. "The Germans will hear of this. It strengthens our position. They will see we are in control, not a fragile clique."

"Exactly!" I said, clapping my hands together. "Fear at home, leverage abroad. Everyone wins. Well — not the Junkers, or Krasnov, or the 20 surviving recruits who learned that loyalty sometimes requires bayoneting your former comrades in the throat. But us? We're doing splendidly."

Again, silence.

The Committee stood like statues, all grim, all serious, all pretending not to hear the joke behind my words. But I could see it in the Guards outside the doors — the way they held themselves straighter when I passed, the faint glint in their eyes. They knew. They respected me because I bled with them, drank with them, laughed with them. Felix ruled by fear. I ruled by familiarity and a generous payroll. Different styles, same results.

As the meeting wound down, Lenin concluded, "We have survived today. That is all that matters. Tomorrow we continue."

Felix bowed his head. Trotsky sniffed. Stalin muttered something Georgian under his breath. I just whistled a cheerful tune, Kylie Minogue again, because someone had to lighten the mood.

Outside, Petrograd smoldered under its new masters. Inside, we were already planning the next fire.

 

[Alenco98]

October 8, 1917
Petrograd, Russia
Afternoon

Father Sergey Eldarevich Patruchev swept the stone steps of his church with the slow, practiced rhythm of habit. It was the same work he had done for years: sweeping the entrance, scrubbing soot off the brass railings, patching leaks in the roof when they came, preparing for the next mass. Being a priest was not a job but a life — prayers and liturgies, feast days and burials, sermons and confessions, and, when no one was looking, sweeping dust from the church's cracked old flagstones.

And now, even after revolution had turned the city upside down, the work went on. Masses still needed saying, candles still needed trimming, icons still needed dusting. The prayers remained the same — only the world outside had changed.

But the change stood guard at his very door. Four men in black coats and red armbands loitered there, rifles slung across their shoulders, the new masters of the street. The Revolutionary Guard Corps. They said they were there to "protect" the church, and every other church, mosque, synagogue, and temple in Petrograd. Protect — a strange word, Sergey thought. Soldiers with bayonets rarely came to protect. They came to remind.

He bent to sweep the steps again, the broom whispering against stone, when he heard the sound that made his stomach tighten: the boots. A hundred times he had heard them, heavy and deliberate, the thudding march of men drilled to stomp the earth in unison. The goose-step of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

He froze. He knew who it would be.

It was not Sunday, but a Monday. Still, the man came. The man who had routed and butchered a Cossack host only two days ago. The man who, just yesterday, had sat in the confessional and described — with disarming cheer — how he had forced prisoners to kill their comrades with stones and bayonets if they wished to live. Sergey had thought then, as he thought now: only a monster could imagine such a thing.

And then Mikheil Jugashvili appeared, he looked nothing like a monster. He walked with the confidence of a man who had never doubted his own steps, who smiled as if he were greeting friends on a summer morning, not dragging shadows behind him. He was short, but broad-shouldered, with neatly combed hair, a handsome face free of the pockmarks smallpox had carved into so many others. A man who looked more like a charming actor in a play than a butcher.

"Father Patruchev, hello!" he said brightly, clapping Sergey on the shoulder as though they were old friends meeting at market. Without asking, he plucked the broom from Sergey's hand and passed it to one of his guards. "Sweep for him." The order was casual, like telling a servant to fetch tea. The Guard obeyed instantly, and Sergey could only stare as the man began to sweep, awkward and grim-faced with a rifle still slung over his back.

"Come, Father," Mikheil said, ushering him inside. The doors shut behind them with a hollow echo, shutting out the city and leaving only candlelight.

Sergey's throat was dry. "What… what brings you here, Comrade Jugashvili?"

"I have a favor to ask of you."

Here we go, Sergey thought. His fingers curled around the sleeves of his cassock, gripping tight.

"What sort of favor?" he asked carefully.

Mikheil leaned against a pew, smiling as if they discussed the weather. "Well, you see, I'm no longer just commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. I've been appointed head of the Commissariat of Religious Affairs."

Sergey felt the blood drain from his face. The Commissariat of Religious Affairs. The name itself sounded like a warning.

"Religious affairs?" he repeated, though he dreaded the answer.

"Exactly." Mikheil nodded with mock solemnity, then brightened again. "My new job is very simple: register every church, mosque, temple, synagogue, and shrine in Petrograd. Make sure no one preaches counter-revolution. Just paperwork, really. Forms, signatures, stamps." He grinned. "The Almighty is no longer the only one keeping records."

"I… I see." Sergey swallowed, too afraid to probe further.

But Mikheil was already ahead of him, pacing between the pews like a man inspecting a factory floor. "Father, this is good news. For you, for your priests, for all of your faith. Because I'm not only in the commissariat now — I am a sitting member of the Central Committee. One of the most powerful men in the government. And, more importantly, the only one in there who practices the Orthodox faith."

He turned suddenly, his smile fading to something harder. "Do you know what the others wanted to do with your church? With all the churches? With the mosques, the synagogues, the temples?"

Sergey opened his mouth, but Mikheil cut him off, voice still cheerful but edged with iron.

"They wanted to seize the land, confiscate the wealth, declare state atheism. Some even wanted to ban religion altogether. Imagine that! I told them it would be madness. People love their faith too much. Even with your… issues" — he waved a hand vaguely, as though the sins of the clergy were an untidy room — "you are a net positive for society. You keep the people calm, you bury the dead, you marry the living, you sing the songs that make them believe life isn't just shoveling manure until they die. That's valuable."

He smiled again, bright and easy, as though he had just offered praise.

"So I told them: leave religion alone. Let it exist, as long as it does not cause trouble. Which," he said, stepping closer, "is why I am here. I am here to offer you a job."

Sergey blinked. "A… job?"

"Exactly!" Mikheil's grin widened, his teeth flashing white. "I will be leaving the city on a mission. A secret mission. Very important, very dangerous. But while I'm gone, I need someone to run the Commissariat in my place. Someone who is respected, honest, apolitical. Who better than my priest?"

He clapped Sergey on the back again, as though congratulating him. "You will be Under-Commissar for Religious Affairs. You'll do my job while I'm away."

Sergey's hands tightened on the folds of his cassock. The candles flickered. Outside, the muffled scrape of a broom against stone continued.

A job. He almost laughed at the word.

Father Sergey swallowed. "You… you would make me a commissar?"

"Under‑commissar," Mikheil corrected cheerfully, wagging a finger. "Let's not inflate titles. That's how tsars get made." He leaned back against the altar rail, hands clasped as though in prayer. "But yes. You. Who better? You're literate, sober, respected. The people listen to you when you talk. And unlike half my comrades, you don't smell like you've bathed in vodka and slept in a pigsty. You'd be surprised how rare that is in government."

Sergey tried to answer but the words stuck. He thought of the council in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, of Peter and Paul debating how far one might bend before breaking. Could a priest serve Caesar without betraying Christ? Could he serve Bolsheviks without betraying God?

Mikheil saw his hesitation and raised a hand as though calming a child. "Now, don't make that face. This isn't a bargain with the Devil, Father. I won't ask you to renounce God. No oaths, no spitting on icons, no parades of blasphemy. That was what the others wanted." He grinned. "I told them that was idiotic. Why pick a fight with Heaven when you already have so many on Earth?"

He took a step closer, his boots clicking softly on the stone floor. "The only pledge required is simple: you do not preach counter‑revolution. No sermons about wicked Bolsheviks, no 'anointed tsars,' no muttering about God's vengeance on the proletariat. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, render unto Lenin what is Lenin's." He chuckled. "Same difference."

Sergey stiffened. "And… render unto God?"

"Oh, absolutely," Mikheil said warmly, as if reassuring a nervous guest. "You may render unto God all the incense, prayers, and funeral hymns you want. Keep the peasants pious, give them something to believe in beyond bread rations and cold barracks. That's useful. That's stabilizing. But…" His smile thinned. "If you start talking about a 'Holy War' against us, Father, then I'll have to nail your wife to the church door. And believe me, even Luther never tried that."

Sergey's heart pounded. He wanted to shout that the Church belonged to God alone, that Christ had no equal in Lenin or in Caesar. But he was staring into the eyes of a man who had forced Cossacks to kill their own brothers with their bare hands. A man who smiled as he spoke of it, who smelled faintly of wine and soap but carried death around him like incense.

"And the Party?" Sergey asked carefully.

"Yes," Mikheil said, clapping his hands once. "The Party. You will have to join. But think of it this way: You don't even have to believe. Just sign the book, stand when they say stand, clap when they say clap. We don't need your heart, Father, just your silence."

He leaned forward, his voice dropping lower, almost intimate. "And really, what is one more pledge? You already wear a cassock and call yourself a servant of God. Is it so hard to add another line? 'Servant of God, loyal member of the Party'? Seems manageable."

Sergey's palms were sweating. He wanted to refuse. But behind Mikheil's easy grin he saw the corpses at Pulikovo Heights, the eyes of men forced to kill their own brothers, the news that even the Junkers had been butchered to the last cadet under Dzerzhinsky's hand.

Mikheil spread his arms as though concluding a sermon. "So here's the good news: your church stays open, your flock keeps their sacraments, and your God gets His incense. All you have to do is help out the Party while you're at it." He winked. "Metaphorically."

Sergey thought of the guard outside, awkwardly pushing a broom over stone steps with a rifle at his back. He thought of Christ silent before Pilate.

Father Sergey then swallowed, fingers tight around his wooden cross. He had expected blasphemy, desecration, some grotesque oath to the Devil dressed up in Bolshevik red. Instead, Mikheil spoke with the ease of a man ordering dinner.

"You look tense, Father. Don't." Mikheil smiled, all teeth, his eyes too sharp to be friendly. "Let me reassure you once again, I'm not asking you to spit on God or burn your icons. That's not my game. No midnight orgies with goat‑headed idols, no tearing Bibles into toilet paper. Your job will be boring. Census work." He mimed writing on an invisible ledger. "Every church, every mosque, every synagogue — counted, registered, filed away like good livestock."

Sergey flinched at the word.

"Soft secularism, Father," Mikheil continued, as if he were explaining tax law to a child. "French style. Reasonable. The churches will keep their properties. No bonfires of relics, no nuns thrown into the streets. But…" He raised a finger. "Those properties will be taxed. Their schools, charities, hospitals — still yours, still church‑run. But the Party will have men inside. Not to preach, not to interfere, just to make sure you're healing bodies, not fermenting counter‑revolution in the back pews. Think of it like the jizya under Islam, only gentler. Less whips for believers, more clipboards for administrators."

He leaned closer, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "And the taxes will be reasonable, Father. Not the old tsarist extortions. Just enough to remind you who's boss." He tapped Sergey's chest lightly with a gloved finger. "Spoiler alert: it's us."

Sergey forced himself to speak. "And if… if I refuse?"

Mikheil laughed, a quick bark that echoed against the church walls. "Refuse? Oh, Father, I would be upset. I would have to hand your file to Zinoviev or Kamenev, and they'd get their wish — shutter the churches, confiscate the land, turn your altars into pig troughs. They've been pushing state atheism since day one. They'd burn you all for kindling if I let them. But I argued you were useful. That people love you too much to lose you. And for now, Lenin listens. For now."

Sergey felt his mouth go dry. "So… I am only spared by your favor?"

"Yes!" Mikheil beamed, as though announcing a prize. "Exactly. And you know why? Because you're the only priest I know well enough not to bore me. I'd have picked Father Saba from my hometown back in Georgia — kind man, used to slip me wine from the chalice when I was a boy — but Georgia is too far away and this is urgent." He shrugged. "So here you are. My priest. My under‑commissar."

Sergey lowered his head, staring at the floorboards. He thought of Christ's warning: render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's. Mikheil had twisted that verse until it bent around the Party like iron around a wheel. He had offered survival in exchange for silence, power in exchange for complicity.

Mikheil, seeing his hesitation, patted him on the shoulder. "Father, this is compromise. Compromise keeps people alive. You preach the Gospel, we audit the books. You bury the dead, we collect the taxes. No one has to die. Unless, of course, you choose otherwise."

Sergey raised his eyes and saw the smile — warm, easy, casual — but behind it lay Pulikovo Heights, the corpses, the blood in the mud.

And he understood then, with dreadful clarity, that Mikheil's offer was not mercy. It was a trap disguised as mercy, a noose dressed up as a handshake.

But still, he heard his own voice, hollow and faint, say: "I accept."

Mikheil clapped his hands together, delighted. "Wonderful! God stays God, Lenin stays Lenin, and I get to sleep at night without worrying about your sermons turning my men into holy martyrs. Everybody wins!"

Sergey nodded stiffly, wondering if Heaven would ever forgive him.

Father Sergey braced himself for blasphemy, for the sneer of the atheist who despises all faith. Instead, Mikheil leaned back against the pew, casual as a parishioner waiting for vespers.

"Father, you're thinking too hard. You look like you swallowed a live frog." He chuckled. "Let me put you at ease for the third time now. The churches will be free to do as they please — bells ringing, incense burning, icons kissed, the whole package — so long as they don't preach counter‑revolution. That's the line in the sand. Pray for the poor, feed the hungry, lecture about sin all you like. Just don't sermonize about overthrowing the workers' state, and we'll get along famously."

Sergey blinked, uncertain if it was kindness or bait.

Mikheil's smile widened. "In fact, I've already passed a few decrees as commissar. You'll like this one: attacking or desecrating a place of worship? Punishable by service in a punishment brigade. Digging trenches in the Arctic, sweeping mines in the Baltic. Very educational work. And murdering priests, imams, rabbis, or any other holy men?" He raised a finger like a schoolteacher. "Capital offense. Immediate execution. No appeals. Bullet to the head, straight justice."

Sergey's heart gave a sudden, bewildered lurch. It was protection, yes — protection by threat of iron and gunpowder.

"And here's my favorite," Mikheil said, lowering his voice as though sharing a family secret. "Speaking badly of any religion in public — any religion — is punishable by whipping. Twenty lashes for the first offense, forty for the second, and if they still don't learn their manners, well…" He shrugged. "Whips can be remarkably persuasive. Nothing like a welted back to remind you to keep your clever little mouth shut."

Sergey stared, trying to reconcile the warm, almost jovial tone with the savagery of the laws. Mikheil spoke as if he were describing a new school curriculum, not state violence wrapped in a smile.

The commissar tapped the arm of the pew. "See, Father? I'm your best friend in that Central Committee. Zinoviev wanted to seize your churches and turn them into canteens. Kamenev wanted to burn the relics. Trotsky, well, Trotsky just sneers — I think he finds God unfashionable. But me? I put laws in place. Hard laws. Laws that make harming you a capital offense. Laws that keep the mobs at bay. It's protection money, really. Think of me as your patron saint with a revolver."

Sergey's lips moved before he realized he was speaking. "And what does Heaven make of such protection?"

Mikheil's grin sharpened. "Heaven can lodge a complaint with Lenin, Father. Until then, you've got me."

 

[Alenco98]

The year is 1917, the Tsar has just been overthrown. Outside of the Smolny institute. A man walks up to the guards and requests a letter be delivered, that man was Mikheil Jugashvili. And that letter marked the beggining of his rapid rise through the Bolsheviks.

-Intro from Spartan761-History's YouTube video on the life of Mikheil Jugashvili titled: The Red Richelieu

October 16, 1917
Finland Station
Petrograd, Russia
Morning

I stood on the platform outside the train, watching steam hiss from the great iron beast that would haul me and five hundred weary men eastward to Tobolsk. Our destination: a frozen Siberian backwater where the Romanovs sat waiting in their gilded exile, like a porcelain tea set wrapped in rags.

The journey, on paper, was simple. Ride the Trans-Siberian to Tyumen, then hopefully take a couple of river barges several hundred kilometers north through endless forests and swamps until we reached Tobolsk. That was if the rivers weren't frozen yet which given the state of Russia I wouldn't be surprised if they were and we had to walk so I had bear go heavy on the supplies. Simple, yes—like hammering nails into your own coffin. The only difference was, instead of pine, ours would be snow.

Still, I allowed myself a small consolation: I'd get to ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Tsar built it as a monument to imperial grandeur, and now it was ferrying revolutionaries eastward to retrieve his family. History is never without a sense of humor, but in Russia it's always a little crueler than funny.

Not that I'd spent the last few weeks idling. No, I'd been busy. I had helped Aleksander expand and formalize what we generously called a "war economy" with Lenin's blessing. Someone had to organize the tax collectors, because bullets and bread don't grow on trees, and every revolution eventually needs men with ledgers as much as men with rifles.

Dzerzhinsky's National Guard, technically the new police force, were our collectors. We'd swelled their ranks to nearly ten thousand in Petrograd in just a few weeks. That took work—mainly a recruitment campaign among all the old cops we hadn't shot or who hadn't defected to Trotsky. Nothing motivates loyalty like a choice between a rifle, a paycheck, or a shallow grave.

They now patrolled the streets alongside my own Revolutionary Guard, which had grown to seven thousand. Together, our job was simple: collect taxes, oversee nationalization, and look frightening enough that no one thought to argue about either.

Nationalization, though, was selective. We seized the big enterprises—dockyards, rail hubs, steelworks. The small businesses, we left alone. Shoemakers, fishmongers, the corner print shops—they were hardly worth the paperwork. As for criminal enterprises, well, those were now fully legalized, provided they paid their dues. Brothels, opium dens, gambling parlors, smuggling markets—all out in the open, flying the red flag of fiscal contribution.

The result was a Petrograd unlike anything Europe had ever seen. In the open-air markets you could buy rifles by the crate, opium by the kilo, and rent a woman for the night—all with the convenience of government-issued receipts. "One hour of services rendered, glory to the Revolution." Morality had packed its bags and fled months ago, but the tax man never missed a payment. If that isn't socialism at work, I don't know what is.

Meanwhile, we were delivering on our promises—or at least performing a convincing impression. Bread, peace, land. Land came first. We announced redistribution: no one in Russia could own more than three acres. Anything above that, the state confiscated and handed out to the landless. Three acres and a shovel—that was the new social contract.

Of course, the kulaks and cossacks in Ukraine hated it. The Cossacks in the south of Russia were even less thrilled and the nobility was enraged. They revolted, naturally. But the peasants? They loved it. They embraced it with the fervor of drowning men clutching driftwood. Overnight, we had willing foot soldiers who saw us not as revolutionaries but as the deliverers of their long-awaited inheritance.

The uprisings were inevitable, but they weren't mine to worry about. Those were Trotsky's mess. Let him deal with the Cossacks, Ukrainians, nobles and the stubborn kulaks. I was heading east to play nursemaid to the Romanovs.

As for peace, Joe had been handed that poisoned chalice. Stalin was our negotiator with Germany. He approached it with all the gravity of a priest preparing a funeral sermon. My advice to him was blunt:

"Anything they occupy, let them keep. If they want more, let them have it—but only if they can invade it and hold it. Remind them the Americans are in the war now, and every day they waste bargaining over scraps is another day they lose the chance to knock France out before Yankee boots come stomping across Europe. If vanity and greed blind them, so much the better—we'll be the corpse that drags them down with us. And if they insist on having Ukraine tell them we will burn down every grain field we can find before they get their hands on it and no one would be satisfied. Guarantee them grain though, it's the only reason they even want Ukraine."

Everyone else treated this like destiny, like we were shaping the future of mankind. They whispered and schemed in tones of solemn urgency, as though God himself had drafted our meeting minutes. But I couldn't help myself—I laughed. Outwardly, I kept my face straight; inwardly, I saw it for what it was: the world's bleakest comedy.

Five hundred armed men, bound for Siberia, to guard a royal family that everyone secretly wanted dead but no one wanted to kill. A capital city kept alive by prostitutes, opium, and stolen rifles. A revolution that survived less on ideology and more on taxes from brothels. And everyone around me acted as if this were the will of history, fate made manifest.

Maybe they were right. Maybe this was destiny. But if so, destiny was drunk, blind, and laughing at its own joke.

But enough about revolutions, taxes, and nationalizations. This morning wasn't about politics—it was about family.

First was Mama, Keke. Pious as ever, whispering prayers for me and Joe, as though a thousand Hail Marys could wash away the blood on my hands. These last few months I had racked up a kill count and temperament that would make the Joker himself throw his arms up and mutter, "Alright bro, calm down, you're stealing my act."

She took my face in her hands, drew the sign of the cross over me with trembling fingers, and whispered, "You stay safe out there."

I smiled, because that's what sons do when their mothers beg God to protect mass murderers. "I'll try, Mama." Then I hugged her, inhaling the faint scent of incense she always carried, like the church had branded itself into her skin. Over her shoulder, Joe scowled, as if every act of tenderness was a bourgeois indulgence.

"Remember your confession," she added sternly, "go to church often, and show mercy."

Yes, Mama, I'll make sure to show mercy—right after I'm done hauling a dethroned royal family across Siberia with five hundred armed men.

Next came Aleksandra, leaving baby Besarion with Mama before throwing her arms around me and kissing me so passionately the station guards pretended not to see. She pulled back just enough to whisper, "Try not to get yourself killed, you lunatic."

"No promises," I said with a grin, then gave her backside a firm slap. She laughed, even as Joe glared at me like I had just spit on Marx's grave.

Then it was Aleksander, my brother-in-law—the man who simultaneously ran our war economy/criminal syndicate, proving once and for all that capitalism and communism weren't enemies, just awkward cousins at the same family dinner. He embraced me and muttered, "It'll be less fun without you."

"Joe's got a unique sense of humor," I said with mock solemnity. "You'll be fine." Then I clapped him on the back so hard I nearly knocked the breath out of him.

After that, it was time for the children's parade.

Yakov, eyes wide and expectant, asked, "Will you bring back a present, Uncle Mikheil?"

"If I can steal something shiny from the Romanovs, I'll bring it back," I winked. Who says class warfare can't double as a gift shop?

Next came Iosif, tugging at my coat. "Papa… are you sure I can't go with Uncle Joe?"

Joe once again stiffened at being called uncle Joe. He hated it—made him look soft. Which is exactly why I ignored his glare. "The front's too dangerous," I told the boy. "But when I get back, I'll teach you to shoot a rifle."

His face lit up like Christmas morning. "Really?!"

"Really. You'll be a fine marksman." I ruffled his hair, already imagining the day he'd shoulder a Mosin-Nagant taller than he was.

Then came Kato. She was nervous, biting her thumb, her stutter tripping over her words. Seven years old, and already carrying anxiety like a family heirloom. "P-pa-papa...will you bring b-b-back a m-m-model plane?"

I crouched down and hugged her tightly. "I will. And when I do, you'll be the terror of the skies. Just promise me you'll keep studying, even if the schools are closed. Textbooks are still your weapon."

"I-I'll try, Papa."

"Good girl." I pinched her cheeks gently before sending her off.

Then it was Aleksander, already more bookish than practical. "If there are any rare books out there, could you bring me one? I just finished reading about Napoleon's invasion. Something else like that would be nice."

"Always with the books," I sighed, hugging him tightly. "Fine. If I find one, it's yours. If not, you'll have to settle for an autographed icon of Tsar Nicholas."

Finally, I turned to Joe.

"Make sure they're safe while I'm gone," I said, patting his shoulder. "You're in charge of the Guard here. They're good men, loyal. You're the only one I can trust with this."

He just nodded, stone-faced, as though emotion were a disease he refused to contract.

I leaned closer. "And remember what I told you about the treaty. I believe in you." Then, in a moment that shocked everyone on the platform, I lunged forward and wrapped him in a bear hug.

He stiffened immediately, his face twitching between surprise, annoyance, and something dangerously close to embarrassment. "Stay safe, Joe," I whispered, "I don't want to be forced to save your life a third time."

I pulled back, smirking at his discomfort. "And for God's sake, loosen up when you're with my family. We're not your enemies in the party. I'll see you soon."

The look he gave me could have curdled milk, but I boarded the train before he could lecture me. Sliding into my quarters, I allowed myself one last laugh. Here we were, a family of revolutionaries, criminals, zealots, and misfits—and somehow, I was the one headed to guard the royal family.

October 16–November 20, 1917
On the rails and rivers of Holy Russia

You'd think taking 500 men across Russia would feel like leading an army. It didn't. It felt like babysitting a particularly smelly choir that couldn't keep time, couldn't sing, and occasionally bayoneted the wrong people when drunk. We left Petrograd with banners flying, rifles stacked neatly, boots polished — within two hours half of them were asleep in the hay wagons and the other half were already trying to steal vodka off the commissary car.

The train itself was a miracle of Russian engineering: meaning it shook like a drunken epileptic every ten minutes, the stove smoked us like bacon, and half the wheels sounded like they were planning a suicide pact. I stole my binoculars off a dead Provisional officer, but I swear I should've stolen his cushions too — my ass will never forgive those wooden benches.

I kept morale up by walking through the carriages, cracking jokes and handing out sunflower seeds like I was everyone's favorite uncle — which, I suppose, I am. The men love me, probably because I actually pay them. You'd be amazed what regular wages, hot meals, and the occasional opportunity to loot will do for revolutionary zeal.

We crawled eastward like lice on a peasant's scalp. The timetable said we'd hit Moscow in two days. It took three and a half, because apparently when you're trying to move an armed battalion through a collapsing empire you have to keep stopping for deserters on the tracks, broken rails, and the occasional rumor of anarchists stealing locomotives.

Lenin said to me before we left: "Mikheil, you must reach Tobolsk with haste." And I said: "Of course, Comrade. I'll just flap my arms very hard and fly there instead." He didn't laugh. He never laughs. Miserable man.

By the time we hit Yekaterinburg my men had invented three new card games, two venereal diseases, and at least one folk song about me personally that I'm sure will get me excommunicated if anyone ever writes down the lyrics. Every time we stopped for water or coal, locals came out and stared at us like we were circus animals. Which, to be fair, we were — just a circus with more bayonets and fewer clowns. (Well, fewer clowns if you don't count Trotsky, but I digress.)

Finally, we rolled into Tyumen. Beautiful city, if you like mud, drunkards, and horses that look suicidal. From there came the real fun: no rails to Tobolsk, the river Irtysh was frozen, so we walked.

Do you know how long it takes to have 500 men walk through hundreds of kilometers of muddy roads in the middle of Siberia just as fall is starting to turn into winter, with us having to haul carriages full of supplies and gold for bribing red guards? Too long. The men hated it. Mosquitos, campfires, foraging and hunting for wildlife, the cold, the occasional the bandit getting cocky and trying to fuck with us. I told them not to worry, if they died at least they wouldn't have to listen to me singing anymore. That got a laugh, though I wasn't joking.

At night, we made campfires on the riverbank and gave speeches about duty and glory. Then I challenged them to wrestling matches and let myself lose once in a while so they'd feel proud. Revolutionary Guard morale trick: beat your commander, feel like a hero. (Never mind that I could've broken most of their necks in two seconds.)

We reached the gates of Tobolsk around November 20th, tired, dirty, and smelling like the inside of a drunk priest's cassock. But alive. And ready. I stood outside the city gates and told them all, "Comrades! Here we are. The Romanovs await. If you're lucky, maybe you'll get to meet an emperor. If you're unlucky, you'll die first. But either way, you'll get a story for your grandchildren!"

They cheered. Idiots. Lovely, loyal idiots.

November 20, 1917
Tobolsk, Russia

We made our way into Tobolsk like a touring band nobody asked for but everyone had to host anyway. Down icy streets, past peasants with dead eyes, straight to the governor's mansion — the grand provincial cage where the Romanovs were kept like rare zoo animals.

Step one was the local Red Guard committee. On paper, they answered to Trotsky. In reality, they were a collection of sullen drunks with rifles, suspicious of outsiders and jealously guarding their little Siberian fiefdom. Nominal revolutionaries. Actual extortionists.

Which, naturally, meant bribery.

I opened the chests — neat stacks of gold, vodka by the barrel, salted fish, even some contraband cigarettes. You could practically watch their proletarian rage dissolve into proletarian gratitude in real time. Five minutes earlier, their leader had been frowning at me like I'd pissed in his soup. Ten minutes later, he was practically begging to shine my boots. "Yes, comrade Makarov, sir, the Romanovs are in the mansion. Would you like us to fluff your pillows? Polish your bayonet? Massage your balls?"

Bribery. A tale as old as time. As old as prostitution, as old as monarchy, as old as bad taste. Sometimes I think about it the way I think about music: everyone pretends to have principles, but in the end, everyone just wants the same old chorus. Like Akina Nakamori's song Oh No, Oh Yes. You can pretend you're listening for the artistry, but let's be honest — it's just about mood and seduction. Same with bribery. No one cares about the ideology, just the rhythm of coins dropping in their hand.

Satisfied, we moved on.

The mansion loomed ahead — still impressive, though frost and poverty had made it less a palace and more a mausoleum with delusions of grandeur. I shed my black coat with its red armband, peeled off my bulletproof vest and helmet. Presentation mattered. Walk into a room armored and you look like a soldier. Walk in stripped down, smiling, and you look like a man in control.

I rapped on the heavy oak door. A servant answered — around my wife's age, a little fatter though, but pretty. Pretty in that provincial, doomed way.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Me?" I smiled, polite as a banker foreclosing on a widow. "I'm here to retrieve the Romanovs." My Russian always came out slightly Georgian, a rolling growl that made peasants nervous. "Mikheil Jugashvili. Commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Dispatched with men from the new government to escort the family to Petrograd. Safer there. Within our reach." I tilted my head toward the street, where a dozen heavily armed guards stood in the snow like patient executioners. "I'd suggest you fetch them while I'm still playing nice." I pulled out my revolver and waved it around. That got the message.

Her lips quivered. She nodded, fled.

A few minutes later, I was ushered into the mansion's living room. It smelled of candle wax and faded dignity. And there they were, the living relics of a crumbling dynasty: Nicholas Romanov, looking like a man perpetually caught between constipation and revelation; Alexandra, gaunt but still clinging to her faded German hauteur; five pale, nervous children lined up like broken porcelain dolls; and even a little dog, a spaniel — absurd, ridiculous, and somehow the most regal creature in the room.

"Hello there," I said cheerfully, waving as though we were neighbors at a garden party. My boots squeaked on the parquet. A few of my men followed in, rifles casually slung, eyes scanning every corner.

"My name is Mikheil Jugashvili," I continued, my voice carrying the same false warmth as a host introducing a new track on late‑night radio. "I'm commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. I've been sent to escort you all back to Petrograd. You have 5 minutes to pack whatever you can carry." I clapped my hands. "Get to it."

They stared at me in silence. The tsar blinked, bewildered, like he still hadn't processed that the country no longer belonged to him. Alexandra clutched her rosary tighter. The children looked at me like I was some nightmare creature that had crawled out of the forest.

The dog wagged its tail.

 

[Alenco98]

Embassy of the United States of America
Moscow, U.S.S.R.
April 28, 1934

Excerpt from Confidential Memorandum
William Christian Bullitt, Jr., United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union

"There are but two places in Moscow where the future course of Soviet policy—both foreign and domestic—is truly decided: in the Politburo, and at the dinner table of Mikheil Vissarionovich Jugashvili, Politburo member and brother to Chairman Stalin."

November 20, 1917
Tobolsk, Russia
The Governor's Mansion

Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov, once Tsar of All the Russias, was attempting to enjoy what passed for a pleasant afternoon in exile. He sat in the drawing room with his family, tea laid out, the children whispering among themselves, while the cold Siberian light filtered through the frost-caked windows. Pleasant, of course, was relative. How pleasant could life be after seeing the empire you once ruled torn apart by two revolutions in less than a year?

He had followed events in Petrograd as best he could. Even here, far removed from the maelstrom, news filtered through: strikes, shootings, parades, mutinies. And always, in the center of the stories, the same name whispered with unease: the Revolutionary Guard. Their actions during the July Days, their efficiency against Kornilov's mutiny and recently outside Pukilovo heights—these tales spread through newspapers and rumor alike. They were not soldiers in the traditional sense, but something darker, hungrier.

Now the man himself had arrived.

Mikheil Jugashvili, in his black boots polished to a dull gleam, a revolver at his side, and behind him a detachment of the Guard. Their uniforms were stark and merciless—black tunics with red armbands, steel helms painted red and stenciled with the skull and crossbones. A deliberate choice, Nicholas realized. These men did not wish to inspire loyalty or respect, only fear.

Nicholas and his family stood there. Their imperial bearing had not entirely abandoned them, even if the empire itself had.

"Well?" he asked, struggling to keep his voice steady. "What are you waiting for? I would prefer to be in Petrograd before Christmas."

Mikheil smiled—an expression that was all teeth, boyish on the surface, but with nothing warm behind it. He tilted his head as though considering whether to shoot them or not.

"This is very sudden," Nicholas pressed, mustering the most cordial tone he could manage when speaking to what he considered a bandit in uniform. "We need more ti—"

The sentence was cut short by a deafening crack. Mikheil had drawn his revolver with casual grace and fired a shot into the ceiling. Plaster dust fell like snow.

The room erupted in gasps and yelps. Even the family dog scrambled under a chair, whining. The children clutched at their mother. Nicholas himself flinched despite every instinct to appear unshaken.

And there Mikheil stood, the pistol lazily smoking in his hand, still smiling that smile. It was the sort of smile one might remember for years afterward, surfacing in dreams, in nightmares—mocking, amused, infinitely cruel.

"I'm being very polite right now," Mikheil said in a friendly, conversational tone, as though discussing the weather. "You should be grateful. Next time I'll have my men bayonet your servants and the dog too. And not just in front of you but front of the children. That would certainly get everyone moving, don't you think?"

He chuckled softly, shaking his head, almost as if Nicholas himself had suggested the idea. Then, without warning, his expression hardened, voice dropping into a flat, cold register.

"Now start packing. Whatever you can carry. I am in a generous mood today, so I will allow you ten minutes. Ten minutes, Mr. Romanov. Use them wisely."

The red-helmed guards shifted behind him, boots scraping against the wooden floor, bayonets glinting in the dim light.

Nicholas swallowed. For the first time in his life, he felt the weight of being commanded rather than commanding.

He quickly ushered his family down the corridor, his wife and daughters clutching their shawls, the boy Alexei pale and feverish, whispering weakly as they walked. In their rooms they scrambled to pack, the clumsy desperation of people trying to gather fragments of a vanished life. Clothes were hastily folded into suitcases, icons snatched from walls, a few silver frames and holy images tucked away. The family Bible, its pages worn thin from years of devotion, was pressed tightly into the Empress's arms.

By the time they reached the front doors of the mansion, Mikheil was already there, leaning against the frame with the insolent ease of a man utterly in control. He tapped at the silver watch on his wrist with theatrical precision, his grin spreading as he looked them over.

"Look at that," he drawled. "Nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Impressive, Mr. Romanov. Your family works well under pressure. I might start timing all my prisoners—make it into a sport. Now then—" he clicked the watch shut with a snap, "—follow us. You'll be escorted to Petrograd."

The Guards shifted behind him, rifles at their sides, their skull-emblazoned helmets gleaming dully in the weak light. The Romanovs hesitated for a fraction of a second, as though the act of stepping outside the mansion sealed their fate. And perhaps it did.

But before they could move further, a voice rang out behind them.

"Wait!"

Nicholas turned instinctively, startled. At the far end of the hall stood Eugene Botkin, the loyal court physician, clutching his hat in his hand, his face pale but resolute.

Mikheil pivoted lazily, one eyebrow raised. His expression was somewhere between amusement and irritation, as though he had been interrupted during a game of cards.

"Who's that?" he asked, not to Botkin but to Nicholas, as though the doctor were a piece of furniture.

"That is Dr. Eugene Botkin," Nicholas replied stiffly. "The court physician."

"Ah, a doctor," Mikheil said, drawing the word out. His eyes lit with mischief. "Perfect. Every caravan needs a healer. Saves bullets when the men get sick. Bring him."

One of the Guards immediately strode forward, seizing Botkin by the arm. The doctor resisted briefly, but the soldier yanked him along until he stood face-to-face with Mikheil.

"So, doctor," Mikheil said with mock cheerfulness. "You'll be coming with us after all. Was that what you wanted?"

Botkin shook his head, glancing at the boy who stood pale and trembling beside his mother. His voice cracked slightly.

"No. I am here to plead for the Tsarevich. He is sickly. He will not survive such a journey. Please, I beg you—let him remain until spring."

Mikheil followed the physician's gaze to Alexei, then back to the man. His face betrayed nothing but mild curiosity.

"It's not even winter yet," he said with a shrug. "If the boy is so delicate, we'll bundle him up in blankets, put him in a carriage. He'll be fine. Siberian air is good for the constitution."

Botkin's shoulders sagged with frustration. "No, you don't understand. The boy suffers from hemophilia. He is too fragile to travel by cart or foot. A bump, a bruise—it could kill him. We must wait until spring, when the river unfreezes and transport is safer."

Mikheil's eyes narrowed slightly in thought. "Hemophilia, eh? That's the one where you bleed to death from a pinprick, isn't it?"

"Exactly!" Botkin exclaimed. "That is why I beg you not to risk it. His health cannot endure such a journey."

"No, no, no," Mikheil said, wagging his finger as if scolding a child. "That won't do at all. I promised the Central Committee I'd deliver the whole royal family, not most of it. And I'm certainly not spending the winter in this frozen shithole just to coddle a boy who bruises like a peach."

He began pacing, humming tunelessly under his breath, boots clicking against the wooden floor. His men watched him with the wary familiarity of soldiers used to their commander's moods. For nearly a minute he said nothing, only tapping the revolver against his thigh as though weighing it against some private thought.

Then he stopped abruptly, nodding as though the solution had been obvious all along.

"I've got it. We'll carry him. Stretchers—we've used them for the wounded before. Two strong men will bear the boy on their shoulders the whole way. We'll wrap him up in blankets, so many he'll look like a loaf of bread. Doctor, you can hover over him like a nursemaid and keep him alive. Problem solved."

Botkin looked stricken. "I strongly advise against it. Even then, the danger is—"

Mikheil cut him off with a wave of the hand. "Doctor, you don't understand, I am not staying here. Congratulations—you're now part of the royal procession. Consider it a promotion."

He clapped the physician on the shoulder with mock camaraderie, his smile returning, sharp as a knife.

"Now," he said brightly, "let's get moving. The road is waiting, and I would like to be back in Petrograd before the snow buries us all alive."

November 20 – December 13, 1917
The Road to Tyumen

The march was agony. The column crept forward at a pace so slow it felt like mockery—boots sinking into mud, then scraping against the jagged ice of newly frozen roads. The rains of autumn had only just hardened into winter frost, and the trade felt less like deliverance than exchanging one poison for another. Mud had drowned their wheels; now the cold gnawed at their bones.

Nicholas felt it most through Alexei. Every cough from his son was like a nail hammered into his chest. Every stumble from the stretcher bearers sent a surge of panic through him. The boy's frail body, wrapped in layer upon layer of blankets, seemed so slight it could disappear entirely into the cloth. The man who bore him, a hulking Guard Mikheil mockingly nicknamed Bear, strained beneath both the weight and the responsibility, his breath steaming in the frozen air. Nicholas watched him constantly, half expecting to see Alexei slip away at any moment.

Supplies dwindled rapidly. Bread, flour, salt—gone within days. The Guards began to forage and hunt in the forests: roots, berries, thin deer, even the occasional bear. Fish hauled from icy streams were a rare blessing. To Nicholas's humiliation—and worse, to his wife's horror—the family was ordered to join the labor.

He still remembered the day clearly. A stag had been shot, dragged into camp. His wife had covered her mouth with her sleeve at the stench, recoiling when a Guard handed her a knife.

"I will do it," Nicholas offered, stepping forward, but Mikheil had sneered before he could even finish.

"No, no. Let the bitch learn how the proletariat works."

The Guards roared with laughter, jeering as Alexandra gagged while cutting into the animal, her hands trembling as she pulled steaming entrails from its carcass. Nicholas felt a rage then—cold, suffocating rage—that surprised even him. From that day on, fear had a companion in his heart: hate. Hate for Mikheil Jugashvili and his sneering black-helmeted Guards.

The days stretched into a blur of misery. The cold only deepened. Snow began to fall in thin, needling sheets, stinging their faces, coating their boots in white crust. The first coughs started—light, nervous sounds from men in the column. But even a single cough sent Nicholas into icy terror. Each time, he looked down at Alexei, praying it wasn't his son next.

Mikheil noticed too. He always noticed. He ordered the coughing men shoved to the rear of the column. "If they die, they die at the back," he said simply. But sickness, like snow, spread to all. Soon half the column was coughing, sneezing, burning with fever. Mikheil pressed them forward regardless. If a man collapsed, he was hurled into a carriage like a sack of grain.

And then came the bandits.

Nicholas had known Siberia was dangerous, but he had not expected this. A day without shots fired became a rare blessing. Hungry men, half-wolves themselves, threw themselves at the column with rifles and knives, desperate for the supplies or the carriages. But they had not reckoned with Mikheil Jugashvili.

When the Guards captured them alive, Nicholas almost wished they had not.

Mercy was alien to Mikheil. Those who surrendered quickly discovered that death on the battlefield would have been a gift. He devised punishments that chilled even his own soldiers. Bandits nailed to trees, screaming until their voices broke. Others drowned, forced beneath the icy river until the current claimed them. Some burned alive, their howls echoing through the forest night. Others dangled on their arms while naked for hours in slow hangings while Mikheil's men joked and smoked cigarettes as though attending a play and burning the prisoners bodies with the butts of it.

And always—always—the Romanov family was forced to watch. Nicholas held his daughters close, turned Alexei's face into his shoulder, but still the sights, the sounds, the smells pressed in. There was no hiding from Mikheil's theater of cruelty.

By the time they staggered into Tyumen on December 13, the column had been cut to pieces. Of the original 500 men, little more than 300 survived. The rest lay frozen in the forest, or rotted in shallow graves, or thrown into the river.

Mikheil greeted the station at Tyumen with his usual cheer, as though they had merely finished a hunting trip.

"Well," he said, clapping his gloves together as they prepared to board the Trans-Siberian. "The hard part is over. Let's get you all to Petrograd."

He paused, almost theatrically, before flashing Nicholas that wolfish grin.

"Good news from the front as well. The war ended three days ago. Looks like my brother managed to negotiate a peace with Germany."

Nicholas blinked. "A brother?"

"Oh, that's right," Mikheil said, feigning surprise. He snapped his fingers as if only just remembering. "I never told you. I've got an older twin. Quite the fellow. You'll hear all about him on the way. Now—" he gestured toward the train, "—get on. Petrograd awaits."

 

[Alenco98]

November 26, 1917
Brest Fortress, Brest-Litovsk
German-Occupied Russia

Stalin had arrived 2 weeks ago to oversee the implementation of the armastice, and in that time he has come to despise this place. The fortress stank of damp stone and the stale breath of the defeated. German boots echoed in the corridors, heavy and arrogant, as though to remind him at every turn that he was a guest only by the grace of their bayonets. The air itself seemed foreign—cold, clinical, disciplined in the Prussian manner he instinctively despised.

His staff was a sorry collection. Many were former tsarist officials, men who had learned long ago to bow and scrape, and now shifted their allegiance to the red banner with all the grace of beggars seeking bread. Some were too terrified to meet his eyes, their gaze fixed on the ground as though afraid of provoking him. Others attempted flattery—transparent, pitiful efforts to assure him of their loyalty. Stalin hated them both equally: the cowards who trembled at the sight of him, and the sycophants who thought words could purchase survival.

At least he had the Revolutionary Guard at his side. They were Mikheil's men, handpicked and disciplined in a way that made them stand apart from the ragged ranks of most Bolshevik detachments Trotsky was trying to turn into an army; the exception being Dzerzhinsky's men. Their presence steadied the atmosphere around him. Whatever else could be said about Mikheil—and there was much to say—his men were reliable. Loyal. They obeyed without hesitation. If Stalin gave the order to have a man shot in the corridor, they would do it before the echo faded. That alone gave him a measure of comfort.

And yet it was galling. These were not his men, but Mikheil's. This entire position—Commissar for Foreign Affairs, chief negotiator of the Bolshevik delegation—was not the fruit of his own climb, but the product of Mikheil's insistence towards Lenin. Without him, you would still be writing articles in Pravda, a voice in Stalin's head sneered. He loathed the thought. He owed too much to his brother. Dependence was a chain, and Stalin would never allow himself to be chained. Not forever.

Even the servants were Mikheil's choice. They moved quietly, almost invisibly, attending to his meals, his clothes, his quarters. Stalin suspected them all the same. Poison could be slipped into a bowl of soup as easily as sugar, and a whispered word to the Germans could undo more than an army. Still, they had been vetted, tested. If Mikheil trusted them, they were likely trustworthy. Likely. Stalin reminded himself never to mistake "likely" for "certain." Trust, in politics and in life, was the luxury of fools. And he was no fool.

Mikheil himself was a different matter. Twice in his life, he had saved Stalin from death. First, as boys in Gori, when a horse cart came careening down the street and Mikheil dragged him aside at the last instant. And then during the revolution, when a soldiers rifle cracked down the hall and Mikheil pushed him to the ground before Stalin even realized the danger. He still remembered the smell of the powder, the suddenness of his fall, and Mikheil's half-smile as he got up again.

Stalin despised being in another man's debt. Gratitude was a weight heavier than iron, and it bent a man's spine if he carried it too long. Yet he could not deny it: without Mikheil, he would already be dead. And now, here he was, sitting in the fortress of the enemy, charged with negotiating the peace of the new Soviet state, his life secured and his position elevated because of his brother. The thought curdled in his stomach like spoiled milk.

Still, Stalin knew himself well enough to accept this truth: debts could be repaid. A brother's loyalty today could be transformed into obligation tomorrow. And if Mikheil thought he had bound Stalin to him forever, he would learn—as so many before him had learned—that Stalin's gratitude was never permanent, only provisional.

For now, though, the matter was survival, and survival required peace. The Germans thought themselves masters of this fortress, but Stalin knew better. He had survived seminary priests, gendarmes, exile in Siberia, hunger, betrayal, and bullets. He would survive Brest-Litovsk too. The Germans believed they were negotiating with a beaten people. Soon enough, they would discover that Russia—even in chains—was never so simple to bind.

That evening he found himself seated at a long oak table opposite Prince Leopold of Bavaria, the German commander of the Eastern Front. A banquet was laid out before them, silver cutlery gleaming beneath chandeliers that seemed too ornate for a city that had been reduced to ashes. Stalin looked around the hall and thought it obscene—this ridiculous farce staged in a fortress within a city the Tsarist army itself had burned to the ground during its retreat. Here they sat, carving goose and pouring wine, while outside the walls the peasants still starved in the mud. The aristocracy could always be counted upon to feast on ruins, Stalin thought.

Prince Leopold smiled often, a courteous man, polite in the Bavarian style, but beneath the genial surface Stalin detected the same stench of arrogance that clung to every aristocrat. Their kind wore the same expression whether they were in Tiflis, Vienna, or Munich: the face of a man convinced the world was made to bow before him. The prince's questions, filtered through Stalin's translator, were disarmingly simple—about the revolution, about the Bolsheviks, about Lenin. He seemed genuinely curious, yet it was the curiosity of a master speaking to what he assumed was a peasant servant.

Stalin played the part required of him. He exchanged pleasantries, answered curtly where needed, let the translator soften the edges of his Georgian accent into Russian and then into German. Outwardly, he gave the impression of a man tolerant of the evening's necessity. Inwardly, his thoughts churned.

He thinks this banquet is a stage, that I am an actor in his play, bowing to the old rituals of court and campaign. He thinks this food, this wine, is a kindness. He does not see that all of it is useless. Tomorrow we decide whether his army continues its war in the East or not. Tomorrow he will learn that the peasants and workers of Russia are not so easily moved by goose and ceremony.

The evening blurred for him as it went on. He did not remember much of what was said or how long it lasted. He went through the motions—lifting his glass when the moment demanded it, offering the occasional sharp remark, nodding when addressed. None of it mattered. The real war, the real struggle, would begin in the negotiation chamber tomorrow. Words spoken tonight were smoke. Tomorrow's words would be iron.

Still, he observed. He always observed.

At the far end of the table sat the true players. Richard von Kühlmann, Germany's Foreign Minister, his expression thin and watchful, the calculating mind of a bureaucrat who measured each phrase like coin before spending it. Beside him, Count Ottokar Czernin of Austria-Hungary, a man already fraying at the edges, carrying the weary, desperate air of an empire rotting from within. The Ottomans had sent both their Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha, and Foreign Minister Nassimy Bey. Stalin regarded them coolly: men who thought themselves rulers of Islam but who in truth were German clients wrapped in turbans. The Bulgarians had dispatched Minister of Justice Popoff, later joined by their Prime Minister, Vasil Radoslavov. Both looked as though they were overeating at someone else's table, which in truth they were.

Stalin studied each face, each posture, each careless gesture.

Kühlmann will be the most dangerous. He is a man of detail, a spider counting the threads of his web. Czernin is weaker—Austria is bleeding, hungry for peace. He can be pulled apart with a little pressure. Talaat Pasha is a murderer who believes himself a statesman. Men like him are predictable: appeal to their pride and they will overreach. The Bulgarians? Tools, nothing more. They dance when Berlin plays the music. And Prince Leopold—he smiles, but smiles are only teeth. Let him smile while he can.

The banquet droned on. Toasts were raised, the Germans and their allies congratulating one another on their victories, their conquests, their fine coordination. Stalin lifted his glass when required, though in his heart he despised the ritual. To him it was nothing but aristocratic theater, the clinking of glasses a substitute for real strength. We will see how their confidence endures tomorrow, when I place the grain of Ukraine before them like a pistol on the table.

He sat, silent, his face carefully blank, but inside his mind the voice was relentless. This is all spectacle. Tomorrow is substance. Tomorrow they will expect a supplicant. Tomorrow they will discover a negotiator who speaks for a state that does not beg. And if I must lie, threaten, or stall, I will. I will give them enough to choke on, but never enough to kill the revolution.

He sipped the wine again and placed the glass down carefully. Tomorrow the real battle started. Tonight, he endured.

--------

November 27, 1917
Brest Fortress, Brest-Litovsk
German-Occupied Russia

The morning came gray and cold, the fortress walls sweating with frost. Stalin entered the conference room with his delegation in silence, his boots echoing against the stone. The long table was already crowded: Germans on one side, their allies fanned out beside them, like courtiers arranged around a throne. Stalin noted at once how Kühlmann had positioned himself directly opposite him—a deliberate move, the mark of a man who saw himself as the true master of the proceedings.

They began with the same nonsense as the night before. Kühlmann rose, speaking through his translator, thanking all parties for attending, offering the obligatory remarks about "historic opportunity" and "lasting peace." Another quick toast followed, as if glasses of wine could disguise the reality that this was not a dinner but a dissection table, with Russia splayed across it. Stalin did not smile. He raised his glass, swallowed the wine, and waited.

Then the negotiations began.

Kühlmann, with his lawyer's precision, asked the essential question through the interpreter: What are Russia's conditions for peace?

Stalin leaned forward, his face impassive, his voice low but steady. He spoke Russian, letting the translator carry the weight of his words across the table.

"Russia," he said, "is willing to cede all territories presently occupied by the German and Austrian forces. You have taken them, and you may keep them. We will not contest what is already in your hands. We are willing to return to the previous borders within the Caucasus despite the upper hand we hold in the region. As for reparations—" he paused deliberately, watching Kühlmann's eyes narrow—"we understand both Germany and Austria are facing food shortages. Your people are hungry. Your armies must be fed. We are willing to guarantee grain shipments from Russia and Ukraine in place of reparations."

The words hung in the air, flat, heavy, final. Stalin let them settle like stones dropped into a pond, watching the ripples in the faces across the table.

Inside, his thoughts raced. Give them what they already hold, and nothing more. They expect us to crawl, but I will make them believe this is generosity. Grain instead of gold—better to feed their soldiers than strengthen their bankers. The revolution cannot survive if we bleed it with reparations. Let them choke on bread if they wish, but they will not bleed us dry.

He leaned back slightly, hands folded before him, his expression carved in stone. He had said what he came to say.

Kühlmann whispered something to Czernin. Talaat Pasha exchanged a glance with Nassimy Bey. The Bulgarians looked restless, their hands fidgeting with papers they could not read aloud without Berlin's approval. The Germans were preparing their answer.

Now comes the true test, Stalin thought, eyes narrowing as the translator began to stir again. Let them speak their demands. Let them show their greed. Every empire eventually shows its hunger. And when they do, I will know exactly where to drive the knife.

The Central Powers were about to make their demands.

The silence after his statement stretched thin. Kühlmann whispered again to Czernin, then straightened in his chair. The translator leaned forward, eyes darting nervously as though even he understood the weight of the words he was about to repeat.

"Germany," the translator began carefully, "seeks peace, yes—but a peace that reflects the realities of this war. The territories now occupied by German and Austrian forces—Poland, Lithuania, and Courland—shall no longer be considered part of Russia. They will determine their own futures, free from Petrograd."

Stalin's eyes did not flicker. He listened, his fingers drumming once against the table, then stilling.

The translator continued.

"Further, the territories of Livonia and Estonia will be administered separately until their peoples may establish self-rule. Finland too must be recognized as independent."

Czernin now leaned in, his voice rougher, more tired, but no less determined.

"For Austria-Hungary, the matter of Galicia is not to be disturbed. The question of Ukraine must also be addressed. A delegation of Ukrainians will arrive soon to declare their independence, and their aspirations must be recognized."

Stalin's jaw tensed. Independence. A puppet, nothing more. Bread for the Germans, under a flag of their choosing.

The translator pressed on.

"As for the Ottoman Empire," he said now, turning slightly toward Talaat Pasha, "the lands lost to Russia in the 1878 war shall be confirmed, Kars, Ardahan and Batum."

Talaat inclined his head with a faint smile, as though to say: This is the minimum I expect.

The Bulgarian delegate, Popoff, shuffled his papers before speaking. "And Bulgaria," the translator relayed, "seeks recognition of its territorial gains in Macedonia, and the assurance of economic access through the Black Sea."

The demands fell upon the room like a hammer. Poland, Lithuania, Courland—gone. The Baltics—cut away. Finland—lost. Ukraine—poised for "independence" under German bayonets. The Caucasus abandoned to the Ottomans.

Stalin leaned back, face unreadable. He allowed the silence to return, to stretch, to thicken. He stared at Kühlmann across the table, eyes dark, unblinking.

So this is it. They mean to carve Russia like a carcass on the butcher's table. They speak of "self-determination" but mean occupation. They speak of "independence" but mean German garrisons, Austrian railways, Ottoman slaughter. They want a corpse that does not move, that does not resist. But Russia is not a corpse. Not yet.

He folded his hands, carefully, deliberately.

Stalin leaned forward, his face composed, his voice deliberate, low, but hard enough to strike stone. The translator hesitated, glanced at him once, then began repeating the words in German.

"Poland, Lithuania, and Courland," Stalin said, "are already under your control. You have taken them by force of arms. Russia does not dispute what is already lost. They are yours to do with as you please. Whether they live under your bayonets or under your so-called 'independent governments,' that is your matter, not ours. We recognize their independence if you grant it."

He paused. A faint stir ran down the German side of the table. Then he went on.

"But Ukraine—Ukraine remains under Russian control. And it will remain so. If you desire Ukraine, then you must occupy it yourselves. You will find it a costly prize. And remember this—America is in the war now. Every day you waste chasing Ukrainian fantasies is another day American soldiers and American rifles arrive in France. Every delay makes your western front weaker, not stronger."

The translator's voice quavered as he relayed Stalin's words, but Stalin pressed on, eyes fixed on Kühlmann like a knife point.

"If you attempt to march into Ukraine, you are free to try. But understand: we will burn it behind us. Every field, every barn, every factory—we will leave you nothing but ashes and empty mouths to feed. Our Bolshevik forces are already moving to secure the countryside. These are no idle threats."

He let the words hang in the air a moment, then leaned back slightly, allowing his tone to harden into false magnanimity.

"Still, Russia is not without reason. We understand your need. Grain—we can give you. As much as you require. Let that be the price of peace, not the destruction of Ukraine."

He shifted his gaze now toward Talaat Pasha, his eyes narrowing.

"As for the Ottomans. You will gain nothing. Recall that on your front, the Russians have not been beaten. We have advanced into Anatolia. You are losing. We are prepared to return to the pre-war frontier—nothing more. Take it, or risk losing more when the war resumes."

Talaat's smile froze on his face.

Stalin turned then toward the Bulgarian delegation. His tone changed—calmer, almost generous.

"Bulgaria is free to do as it pleases in the Balkans. Russia will not interfere. Your conquests will be recognized. Your access to the Black Sea is guaranteed."

He returned his gaze to the Germans, his voice iron again.

"As for Estonia, Livonia, and Finland—if you want them, then you must occupy them yourselves. Russia will not recognize their separation otherwise. Until you pay for them in blood, they remain Russian lands."

The words were spoken. The room went still, heavy with the echo of his defiance.

Inside, Stalin's thoughts burned. Let them choke on this. Enough concessions to seem practical, enough fire to make them cautious. They will see I am not a supplicant, not a fool. I have given them Poland and the Baltics they already hold—let them feel victorious in that. But Ukraine? Ukraine is the key. If they overreach, they will bleed themselves white before they taste a single loaf of bread. Let them think on that.

He folded his hands before him, expression unreadable, and waited.

The room erupted, not with shouts but with the subtle chaos of diplomats caught between outrage and calculation.

Kühlmann's jaw tightened, his thin lips pressing into a bloodless line. He did not raise his voice—he was too careful for that—but his fingers drummed once against the table, sharp and deliberate. He spoke in clipped German, the translator nearly stumbling over the pace.

"Germany will not accept threats. Ukraine is no fantasy. It is the breadbasket of Europe. If Russia refuses to recognize its independence, then Russia refuses peace. Our armies have reached Riga, they can reach Kiev as well. Do not mistake our patience for weakness."

Czernin, Austria-Hungary's weary foreign minister, leaned forward now, his eyes sunken but alive with a desperate urgency.

"Do you think you can starve us into submission?" he snapped. "Vienna is hungry, Budapest is hungry. We need Ukraine's grain, not your promises of shipments you cannot even deliver. Your revolution has thrown your country into chaos. You cannot even feed your own capital, Petrograd! And yet you claim you will feed us?" He shook his head, muttering to Kühlmann, but loud enough for the room to catch: "This is madness."

Stalin's face did not move. Good. Let them show their hunger. Hungry men make mistakes.

Talaat Pasha leaned forward, his voice low and oily, a smile stretched taut across his face.

"The Ottoman Empire has no intention of returning to the old frontier. You have advanced into our lands, yes—but the war is over now, and you no longer have the strength to hold them. Armenia, Kars, Erzurum—these will not be restored to you. Do not insult us by pretending otherwise."

Stalin's eyes narrowed, but he did not respond. Murderer. He thinks because he slaughters Armenians he can stare down Russia. He forgets that his empire survives only because Berlin props it up like a rotting doorframe.

The Bulgarians, for their part, exchanged glances. Popoff shifted uncomfortably, then spoke, his voice careful, almost apologetic.

"Bulgaria… is satisfied with recognition of its gains and access to the Black Sea. We seek only peace and stability."

It was a small thing, but Stalin noted it. They want their crumbs, nothing more. They will not fight harder than they must. They are pliable. That is useful.

The Germans pressed hardest. Kühlmann adjusted his spectacles, his voice turning cold, precise, each word like a nail hammered into wood.

"Understand this. The Central Powers will not accept a peace that leaves Ukraine under Bolshevik control. If you will not recognize its independence, then we will deal with the Ukrainians ourselves. And if you make good on your threat to burn their land, then you will answer for it in the next round of war. Do not delude yourself. Your Red Guards are not yet an army. You cannot resist us in the field."

Czernin nodded, adding bitterly, "We need certainty, not revolutionary slogans. Either you recognize Ukraine, or we will recognize it without you."

The room fell silent again, the air sharp with the aftertaste of accusation.

Stalin's hands rested on the table, motionless. His face gave nothing away, but inside his mind the voice seethed.

They are desperate. Austria is starving. Germany is stretched thin. The Ottomans cling to their scraps. They think this show of unity frightens me. They think I will fold. But every empire here is bleeding. Their demands are bold because their time is short. If I can hold them, if I can feed them scraps while denying them the feast, the revolution survives. They believe they are carving Russia apart. They do not see that their own carcass is already rotting.

He leaned back slowly, giving them only the faintest nod, as though acknowledging their words without granting them power.

The negotiations were only in their first hour, and already the knives were out.

Stalin waited until the translators were ready, then spoke slowly, each word meant to cut like steel.

"You misunderstand," he began. "Russia is already offering you what you need most—grain. Free of charge. Not tribute, not reparations—grain, guaranteed. You say Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. But Ukraine is not under German occupation. It remains Russian. Therefore it is not yours to demand."

His eyes shifted back to Kühlmann, pinning him like an insect.

"You may speak of independence, of puppet governments, of lines drawn on maps. But unless your soldiers stand in Kiev, Ukraine is not yours. And if you wish to put them there, you will pay the price in blood. Consider it carefully. America is in this war. Their troops are already landing in France. Each day you waste sending divisions east to chase burned fields is another day American rifles and shells arrive on the Western Front."

The translator's voice shook slightly, but Stalin pressed on, louder now, the edge of anger sharpening his tone.

"Ask yourselves: how many men will it cost you to occupy Ukraine? How many supplies? How much rail transport—already strained to breaking—will you divert from your Western armies to hold a land we are prepared to burn to the ground before you set foot in it? At best, you inherit ashes. At worst, you inherit ashes and more mouths to feed."

He paused, letting the silence weigh on the table, then added with cold finality:

"If Germany wishes, you may send observers, even troops, to guarantee the grain shipments. That can be arranged. But Ukraine remains Russian. This is not negotiable."

He turned now toward the whole table, his voice lower, steadier, but no less firm.

"Do you want to lose this war over imperial arrogance? You are already fighting on too many fronts. Russia is giving you a way out. Take what you already hold. Beyond that—everything else is off the table."

His gaze shifted to Talaat Pasha, narrowing.

"As for the Ottomans—you boast of strength, but in the Caucasus you are losing. Russian troops stand on your soil. Armenia does not kneel to you. A return to the pre-war frontier is more than reasonable. You should thank us for such an offer, not insult us with demands."

Then he looked at the Bulgarians. His tone softened, measured.

"To Bulgaria, however—we thank you for your reason. Your terms are modest, clear, and acceptable. Russia is prepared to recognize your gains and guarantee your access to the Black Sea. If necessary, we will sign a separate treaty with you today."

The Bulgarians shifted in their seats, startled at the unexpected olive branch. Talaat scowled, Czernin muttered darkly to Kühlmann.

Stalin leaned back, folding his hands. His face gave nothing away.

It will be a long negotiation, he thought bitterly. But I will fight for every scrap, every line, every field of grain. Let them dream of carving Russia apart. I will bleed them dry before I let them feed on us.

The room sat heavy, each delegation weighing its next move.

The battle at Brest-Litovsk had only just begun. And he wouldn't just give up parts of Russia away for nothing.

 

[Alenco98]

Excerpt from a May 27, 1987 Interview with Mamoru Oshii, following the release of The Red Spectacles in Japan

Interviewer: The armor and design of the Kerberos in your movie The Red Spectacles is so distinctive—almost militaristic in its imagery. Where did the inspiration come from? Many people are saying it's a copy of the Kremlin Guard Regiment of the Soviet Revolutionary guard corps. Is that true?

Mamoru Oshii: Yes, that's absolutely true. The Kerberos armor is a direct riff on what I saw in the Kremlin Guard Regiment. The idea first came to me after a friend's son returned from a student exchange program in Moscow. He brought back photographs of the Kremlin and of the Guard. What struck me was the Guards themselves—this very deliberate presentation of power.

They wore these heavy composite black armor and broad-shouldered jackets laced with crimson red Soviet emblems that made every man look larger than life, almost more like statues than people. Their helmets were smooth, rounded steel with black visors, and when the visors came down, the eyes glowed red from the type of stained glass they used. It was designed to be both practical and symbolic: protection for the soldier, but terror for anyone who looked into those lenses. They carried Kalashnikovs with grenade launchers, RPK's, RPD's, machine guns, Drugsnovs, drum fed shotguns, and on parade they marched with rocket launchers that looked more like industrial tools than weapons. To see them all moving in lockstep was like watching a living machine.

I tried to imagine what it must feel like to face off against them. The idea that these men, faceless behind armor, would be the ones sent after you if you tried to kill the Soviet President—that's where the seed of The Red Spectacles really came from.

After seeing those pictures, I wanted to see it firsthand. So I booked a plane ticket to Moscow. With the help of my guide and translator, I was able to observe the Guards up close.

What struck me most was the paradox: the image they projected versus who they were in person. From a distance they seemed almost inhuman, this armored wall of order and menace. But when I actually spoke to them—thanks to my translator—I found most were surprisingly approachable, even warm in their own way, though always professional and direct. I even spoke with one of their captains briefly. He was polite, intelligent, and generous with his time—but I left with the sense that you would never want to be on the receiving end of his RPD.

That tension—between humanity and menace—is what I tried to capture in the movie. It wasn't about making them villains, but about showing how institutions can turn ordinary men into something larger, something both awe-inspiring and frightening. And with the Revolutionary Treaty Organization (RTO) still a looming presence from Manchuria all the way to Europe, that imagery hasn't lost its resonance.

December 10, 1917
Brest Fortress, Brest-Litovsk
German-Occupied Russia

Stalin did not flinch. His expression was granite, his jaw set like a stone wall, as he scrawled his signature across the final treaty parchment—ratifying peace between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers.

Outwardly, he was calm, mechanical even. But inside, a furnace of rage smoldered beneath the surface. His hand may have moved with steadiness, but it took every ounce of discipline not to snap the pen in two. To have to give them—those imperial vultures in brass buttons—so much. It was obscene.

Still, he had salvaged what he could. That was the task. Not to posture like Trotsky had proposed after the revolution. No, Stalin dealt in realities. And the reality was simple: their military strength was embryonic, barely coherent; the state was a cracked shell; the civil war was only just beggining. The Germans had the guns, the railroads, the advantage. He had leverage—but not enough.

And yet, he'd made them bleed for every clause. They had demanded Finland. He said no—if they wanted it, they'd have to take it. They pushed for the Caucasus. He reminded them they were losing ground there, not gaining it. Estonia, Livonia? Not occupied. Not negotiable. "This is a surrender, not a buffet," he had told them coldly on the third day.

But Ukraine—that was the bone in the throat.

The Germans needed it. Not for territory, not out of ideology, but for food. Grain. Without it, their armies would starve, their workers would riot, and their empire would crack. Stalin knew it, and so did they.

It was a brutal arithmetic. While negotiations sputtered on in their smoke-filled room, the Bolsheviks advanced. Kharkov had fallen just a week after the talks began. Poltava followed in the weeks after. Trotsky's nascent Soviet army, partisans—all moving westward, torch in one hand, rifle in the other. It was not a clean war. It was not meant to be.

Then the Rada delegation arrived—dandies in national dress and lace-cuffed dreams. They had the gall to present themselves as equals, as sovereigns. Stalin had merely stared at them as if they were beetles under glass.

"You are losing your country, have you not heard who occupies Kharkov?" he had told them bluntly when they first came. "You think you can secure a nation with pretty words and not guns? Don't make me laugh."

They had stormed out, furious, humiliated. But the Germans listened. They still considered propping up the Rada as a puppet regime. Stalin saw through that, of course. "If you do," he had said with a faint smile, "we'll burn every bushel of grain from Odessa to Kiev. And then we'll see how long your war with the entente lasts."

That had sobered them.

In the end, he made them blink.

Ukraine would go to the Germans, yes—but only the western half, up to the Dnieper. Beyond that, the Bolsheviks would retain the east through force of arms. The Rada would not be recognized, not by the Bolsheviks, neither would Poland, Lithuania and Courland. Germany and Austria were free to do whatever they pleased with them, even give them independence if they wanted. But in the eyes of the Bolsheviks they would be nothing but German occupied territory with autonomy.

He allowed himself a rare, quiet smile as he remembered the look on the German officer's face when he agreed to that. Victory, even in defeat.

And now the ink was dry.

With that final stroke, he had officially surrendered every inch the Germans had occupied. Poland, Courland, Lithuania—gone, for now. Ukraine west of the Dnieper—ceded. It was a bitter pill. But poison, taken carefully, can sometimes kill one's enemies too.

He rose from the table, nodding curtly to the other Bolshevik officials. They understood what this was: not an end, but a delay. A breathing space. Stalin had no illusions about peace. Peace was a tool. Like a knife. You use it, until you find a sharper one.

------

December 11, 1917
Brest Fortress, Brest-Litovsk
German-Occupied Russia

He left Brest at dawn. The snow had not yet begun to fall, but the air held the weight of it—cold, sharp, final. His Revolutionary Guard detachment moved with quiet discipline, their black coats buttoned high, rifles slung like shadows across their backs. The train groaned to life beneath them, iron grinding on frost-covered track.

He sat alone in a private compartment, curtains drawn, the samovar hissing softly in the corner. His coat hung beside him like a shed skin. His anger had cooled, but not disappeared. It sat deeper now, lower in the chest—calcified rather than burning. Less a fire, more a stone.

The trip to Petrograd would take four days—longer than usual. The rail network was shattered: strikes, theft, sabotage. The Ministry of Rail Transport was a fiction, its orders ignored or intercepted by commissars who answered only to themselves. The war had broken the arteries of Russia. The revolution had hacked at the nerves.

He had time to think. And he did. For hours, in silence, arms crossed over his chest like a corpse in a coffin, eyes staring past the frost-bitten window.

Mikheil. Always Mikheil.

"Germany will collapse anyway," Mikheil had said just days before he left to fetch the Romanovs, in that same casual tone of his over dinner. "Let them have their grain and their land. They'll choke on both. Austria's already rotting from the inside. America will land millions of troops in Europe and overwhelm them. Once Germany loses the war we'll march back in and take what we lost."

He had nodded then. Agreed, even. It was true, of course—strategically sound. But it wasn't the logic that unsettled him. It was who had said it. Mikheil. The brother who laughed through gunfire, who joked while laying out battle plans, who seemed to bounce from victory to victory on sheer audacity.

The same man who had saved his life—not once, but twice.

And not just his life. The cause.

Kornilov's putsch? Supressed with the help of Mikheil's guard corps. The July Days and Kerensky's compromise, Mikheil's work. The Revolutionary Guard? Mikheil's. The National Guard? Formed under his supervision along with the so-called KGB—his brainchild.

Even Trotsky's army and their success in Ukraine—that too rested on the foundation Mikheil had poured in, the factories, the black markets, the taxes, all while the rest of the Party argued over semantics and slogans.

Stalin exhaled slowly. He hated how much of their power rested on his brother's shoulders.

Mikheil hadn't even asked for recognition. He didn't need to. He operated like a crime boss, not a commissar—power was not a position, it was leverage. He had it all: arms, men, information, money. Their brother-in-law Aleksander, now Commissar for Strategic Resources, ensured the trains ran, the troops were fed, the oil moved.

And now—now Mikheil would return from the east with the Romanovs in chains, paraded like circus animals, the final symbols of a dying order humiliated for the world to see.

The prestige it would bring.

Too much. Too fast.

It was obvious. He was positioning himself. Not openly, never openly. That wasn't Mikheil's way. He wore his intentions like a second coat—casual, layered, always plausible.

A second Bonaparte in the making. And here he was, Joseph Stalin, signing away half of Russia at a table full of Germans, looking like a loser in the newspapers.

He would have to kill him. Eventually.

He thought it plainly. Not in anger, not even with malice. Just necessity. Like war. Like famine. A brother, yes. But a threat too. That was the nature of revolution—it devoured everything, even blood.

But then… the shame.

It crept up slowly, like the cold seeping into the train car. He stared out at the frozen steppe, endless and white, the trees blackened with frost. His breath fogged the glass. It was so easy to think of murder.

And yet—

"You look like shit."

The memory arrived unbidden. The first words Mikheil had said when they reunited after the first revolution in February, right there in front of his apartment.

Then the hug. Tight. Fierce. Like they were boys again.

He remembered seeing Yakov again that night—Kato's son, no, not only Kato but his as well. With her eyes. Her hair. And Mikheil had raised him, just like he promised in those painful days after her death, while he ran off into the revolutionary underground then exile. Their mother, too. Mikheil had brought her back into his life. Quietly. Carefully. Like patching a cracked vase.

And then another memory. Childhood. The smell of blood and vodka. Their father's belt. Mikheil's voice, whispering as he dabbed his wounds, "Don't worry, Joe. Once we're big enough, we'll beat the shit out of Dad. I'll let you have the first hit."

He'd meant it.

And again—Winter Palace. The sound of gunfire, the chaos of revolution. Mikheil tackling him to the ground as bullets cracked overhead. Then that voice, cocky as ever:

"Would you look at that," he said, pulling open his jacket to reveal the bulletproof vest. "Guess that makes twice I've saved your life, Joe."

The smirk. That infuriating, lopsided smirk.

But it was true.

Mikheil had given him everything. The guard. The network. The legitimacy. The political backing. Even the position at Brest. Stalin knew damn well he hadn't been the natural choice. It had been Mikheil's recommendation to Lenin that placed him there. And in his mind, it all spiraled to one bitter, unavoidable truth:

His rise was not his own.

It was Mikheil's.

And that tore at him. Pride—the one thing he still held sacred.

He clenched his jaw. Looked back out at the fields. Snow now. Endless snow.

"Mikheil," he muttered to the window, to the frost, to the silence. "What the hell am I supposed to do with you? Or without you?"

The train rolled on through the white. And Stalin sat there, very still, torn between love and calculation. Between a brother's debt—and that sinking feeling that maybe his brother was plotting against him.

December 12, 1917
En Route to Petrograd
Somewhere near Mogilev

The train continued it's journey as he reflected on his life. It whistled long and low as it pulled through the countryside, vast and empty beneath the blanket of snow. A blizzard had begun during the night—gentle at first, but now growing thick, fat flakes drifting past the window like ash. The countryside was a blur of gray and white, but his thoughts remained sharp, precise, coiled like wire.

He'd barely slept. He didn't like to sleep. Sleep bought dreams, dreams of Kato, of their brief time together, of baby Yakov. Dreams tore at the ice that had formed over his heart and threatened to melt it. He sat wrapped in his coat, half-reclined, boots still on. His tea had gone cold as had the breakfast that had been recently served for him. His eyes were red-rimmed and dry. And his thoughts kept taking him back to the same place, again and again, to Mikheil's quarters in Smolny. To his mother keke, to his brother in law Aleksander, to Mikheil, to his nephews, to his son's, to Aleksandra.

To Aleksandra.

Kato's sister.

The first time he saw her after reuniting with his brother—he felt his stomach twist. Not in lust, not even in mourning. Just confusion. Recognition. She had Kato's cheekbones. Her quiet mouth. The same dark, serious eyes that flicked to him with wary understanding.

It was obscene. A trick of biology. A godless taunt.

She had never spoken much to him, even though he'd practically lived with Mikheil ever since they reunited. She kept the house clean, cooked quietly, supervised the children with a soft authority. He respected her for that. She was not loud, not weak, not empty. She was like Kato—but not. A shadow, a fragment, a living memory that wouldn't rot.

It made him uncomfortable. He never stayed long in the same room with her. He never tried to speak to her except for the bare minimum of what was socially acceptable, courtesies, comments, and messages Mikheil passed to her while he was busy working.

And then there was Kato, the child, his niece.

His niece by blood, but it was more than that. Every time she ran through the hallway, laughing, clinging to Yakov's coat, he saw her. His Kato. Reborn, somehow, but younger, brighter. Innocent.

It was unbearable.

She had that same habit—curling her hair behind her ear with two fingers, blinking too much when excited. He had once caught her humming a Georgian lullaby, one his Kato used to sing when Yakov was sick or while she cooked for him and Yakov. Aleksandra must have taught her. Or maybe Mikheil remembered it.

He thought of asking. He never did. He couldn't bear it.

Aleksander and Iosif, the sons. His nephews.

The younger one—Aleksander—was quiet, methodical, too serious for his age. Mikheil said he would join the Revolutionary guard and be a general when he was old enough. Stalin believed it. The boy had the same stare as his—stern, distant, assessing. But it was the older one—Iosif—that left a mark.

Named after him. His name.

Because you're my brother, Mikheil said. But the boy was different from him; cheerful, clever, prone to mischief, and with that same easygoing attitude and charm Mikheil seemed to have. When Stalin had scolded him for pranking a Smolny guard during a storm, the boy simply crossed his arms and muttered, "How could I have known he was drunk uncle Joe?" Mikheil laughed for ten minutes. Stalin hadn't.

And Yakov—his son—how they treated him.

Not as a cousin. Not as a guest. As a brother.

They shared food. Fought over books. Played tricks on the guards. Yakov followed Iosif like a shadow, when frightened—after a nightmare, a thunderclap, a fever—it was always Iosif who kept him company. Stalin had seen it once, through the door, and had backed away silently.

No orders were needed. No lectures about loyalty. The boys simply were a unit. A family.

A whole one.

He watched it all from the sidelines. Their dinners. Their jokes. The whispered stories after curfew. The effortless belonging. He was always treated as Mikheil's son.

It had been made clear to him shortly after he reunited with Mikheil. When Yakov called his brother papa during dinner. Then froze. Looked at him, wide-eyed.

He had said nothing. Just nodded, slowly.

He didn't blame the boy. He would have done the same too

Stalin rubbed his temples. The train shook slightly, wheels scraping over the worn track. Somewhere in the distance, dogs barked, distant and mournful.

He thought of Mikheil, sitting at the table, listening to Aleksandra hum while she cooked, the children shouting over a chess games. Thought of the man who had saved his life, then gone home to that warmth like it was nothing and he following after him.

His tea was still cold. As was his breakfast. He didn't care.

He looked out at the snow again, face pale and still.

There was no envy in him. No jealousy. No longing.

His pride refused to consider it.

Note: For anyone that's curious, look up Kerberos Panzer Cops and the movie Jin-Roh

Now imagine those guys being responsible for security at the Kremlin.

 

[Alenco98]

Excerpt from a memo from the Soviet consulate in Jackson Mississippi to African American citizens who have accepted relocation to the USSR under Project Deliverance:

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs
Soviet Consulate, Jackson, Mississippi
Memo No. 17/ПД
Date: January 21, 1930

To: All African-American Citizens Accepted into Resettlement under Project Deliverance
From: The Soviet Consulate in Jackson, Mississippi
Subject: Initial Orientation and Conditions of Resettlement in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Comrade,

We extend our warmest greetings and revolutionary solidarity to you and your family as you prepare to embark upon a historic journey toward justice, dignity, and full participation in the building of the international socialist order. This memorandum is intended to serve as your official guide to the basic conditions you may expect upon your arrival in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, pursuant to your acceptance into Project Deliverance.

I. Climatic Conditions and Preliminary Advice

It is of utmost importance to understand that the climate of the USSR, particularly in the regions assigned for settlement, differs significantly from that of the American Deep South. The general climate is akin to that of the New England region of the United States, characterized by long, cold winters with snowfall and short, temperate summers.

You are strongly advised to bring as many articles of winter clothing as possible, including but not limited to: insulated coats, gloves, scarves, thermal undergarments, boots, and hats. In the event that you are unable to secure sufficient winter apparel prior to departure, you must report immediately upon arrival to the Commissariat Officer at the Processing and Orientation Center in Leningrad (Petrograd). There, suitable clothing will be issued to you free of charge as part of your integration support package.

II. Living Conditions and Employment

Under the current Hundred-Year Development Plan, also known internally as Plan Ural, you and your family—if they accompany you—will be settled in newly established industrial and civic zones located beyond the Ural Mountains. These zones represent the vanguard of Soviet progress and are instrumental in the construction of a truly classless, egalitarian society.

Each family will be provided with a state-owned apartment, complete with access to indoor plumbing, electricity, and basic furnishings. Apartments are assigned based on family size and are free of rent, though all residents are expected to maintain cleanliness and report any damage or issues to the local Housing Maintenance Committee. Handymen and repair equipment will be made available upon request.

Furthermore, every adult settler will be guaranteed employment in one of the regional People's Factories (народный завод), with assignments based on skill, background, and national labor needs. Children will be enrolled in Soviet schools to ensure full ideological and academic formation.

You may travel freely throughout the Soviet Union during officially designated vacation periods. However, as stipulated under the binding agreement of Project Deliverance, you and your family are required to maintain legal residence in your assigned city or oblast for a minimum of twenty (20) years. Voluntary relocation, refusal to work, or attempts to circumvent this requirement will result in the revocation of Soviet citizenship for you and all dependents. You will be repatriated to the United States at your own expense and may be barred from future reentry into the USSR.

III. Orientation and Integration Program

Upon arrival in the USSR, you and your family will remain for fifteen (15) weeks in the city of Leningrad, during which time you will undergo comprehensive orientation. This includes:

Formal Russian Language Instruction

Political Education and Cultural Integration Seminars

Basic Soviet Civil Code and Workplace Conduct Training

During this period, all adult settlers must achieve, at a minimum, intermediate proficiency in the Russian language—defined as the ability to hold daily conversations, comprehend written texts, and understand workplace directives. All children are expected to reach functional literacy in Russian by the end of the orientation period.

Failure to meet these basic linguistic and cultural integration standards will result in disqualification from the program. In such cases, citizenship will be revoked and the entire family unit will be returned to the United States. Travel expenses in such instances will be borne by the State.

-------

October 6, 1917
Petrograd, Russia

Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky stood at the edge of Nevsky Prospect, arms crossed over what used to be officer's coat, his chin tilted just slightly upward, as if daring history to unfold properly in front of him.

Before him, the Revolutionary Guard marched down the avenue in crisp formation—long black coats cinched tight at the waist, red armbands stark against the grey mist of Petrograd's autumn. Their boots struck the cobblestones in perfect cadence, not like peasants stumbling in formation, but like soldiers. Real soldiers. Behind them rolled horse-drawn carts and commandeered automobiles piled high with captured weapons—shiny machine guns, crates of rifles, sabers, even a brass Cossack bugle bouncing with every jolt of the wheels. Spoils of war from the fools who'd tried to retake the city earlier today.

Cossacks. Routed at Pulkovo Heights. He'd heard the rumors swirling even before the smoke had cleared. They'd marched on Petrograd thinking it was still the Russia of yesterday—weak, divided, frightened. They met something new instead. A steel spine under the revolution's red cloak.

Tukhachevsky gave a thin, satisfied smile.

It had only been weeks since he escaped Ingolstadt, slipping through the Swiss border like a phantom and smuggling himself back into a country he hadn't seen in years. He'd been a prisoner longer than a soldier, a ghost behind bars while the old Russia devoured itself.

He had half-thought to return to the front. To rejoin what remained of the Imperial Army and resume the fight against the Germans. The noble war. But what he found upon returning made that idea laughable. The army had collapsed—disbanded, demoralized, decomposing. Its officers disgraced, its men turned to bandits or beggars. Discipline was a memory. Honor, a relic.

No, there was no war left. Only this.

For the last few weeks, he had been lingering in Petrograd like a specter with no name. He stayed in the flat of an old acquaintance of his father—an aging academic who brewed bitter tea and cursed every government in equal measure. Tukhachevsky passed his days doing odd jobs and listening, watching, waiting. Always calculating. Where would power settle? Where would ambition be welcomed?

Then came the night of the Revolution.

He had fallen asleep in a country paralyzed by fear and indecision, one that couldn't even police its capital. By morning, it belonged to the Bolsheviks.

Not that much had changed—not visibly. The stores remained open, the soup kitchens fed the poor. Even the brothels, gambling dens, and opium joints hummed along like nothing had happened. Only now, they had red-paper licenses and Bolshevik agents watching quietly from the corners.

Revolutionary oversight, they called it.

But beneath the surface, something had shifted. He could feel it in the way the people spoke, hushed but electric. Tales of victory at Pulkovo, of discipline, of purpose. Of the Revolutionary Guard, defending the city, defending the revolution.

He had been raised a soldier. It was etched into his bones. Even in the gilded halls of his family estate, he had dreamed not of court balls but of maps and uniforms, of war and greatness. And now he watched these Guardsmen with a tactical eye—their organization, their equipment, their confidence. They were not the rabble-turned-army he'd expected. No, they looked like the future.

As the last of the parade passed—the final carriage rattling along with captured sabers clinking together like wind chimes—Tukhachevsky made up his mind.

He would join them.

He left Nevsky Prospect and turned down one of the narrower side avenues, boots splashing in the slush, mind already calculating the angles. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for: a church, guarded by two men in the black coats of the revolution guard, each with rifles slung across their backs and steel in their eyes.

He approached.

"Are you here to pray," one of them asked, eyeing him without interest, "or to cause trouble?"

"Neither," Tukhachevsky replied, voice smooth as polished wood. "I'm here to join the Revolutionary Guard Corps."

The guard didn't blink. Didn't care.

"Go to Smolny," the man muttered, shifting the cigarette in his mouth. "They'll process you there."

It wasn't the answer he wanted, but it was the one he needed.

Tukhachevsky gave a curt nod, turned on his heel, and made for Smolny.

At the gates of the former girls' school—now the nerve center of Bolshevik power—he was met by another cluster of Guardsmen. These ones wore the same clean uniforms, good rifles, the same arrogance in the way they held themselves.

The captain stepped forward.

"Name and intention?"

He straightened his posture. Let them see him.

"Mikhail Tukhachevsky," he said. "Former Second Lieutenant, Russian Imperial Army. I seek to enlist in the Revolutionary Guard."

The captain narrowed his eyes, gave him a once-over, then glanced at one of the younger guards.

"Petrov. Take him to the recruitment office."

No questions about loyalty. No demands for credentials. No snide remarks about noble birth. Just movement. Process.

Tukhachevsky smiled inwardly.

He followed Petrov through the echoing halls of Smolny, past peeling portraits of saints and red banners hanging where crucifixes once were. This place had once taught noble girls to be docile. Now it trained men to make history.

He stepped into the office, boots echoing on the worn floorboards. The room was cramped and cold, its window cracked open despite the autumn chill. Dust clung to the edges of the desk, but the man behind it was sharp and alert. Late fifties, maybe early sixties. Gray hair trimmed close. Civilian coat over a faded Red Army tunic. He wasn't writing when they entered—he was waiting.

Petrov stepped forward. "Sir, this man claims to have been an officer in the former tsarist army. He wishes to join the Guard."

The older man looked up, dark eyes landing on Tukhachevsky with a flicker of disinterest—and calculation. His gaze moved from boots to shoulders to face. A practiced glance. Not respectful. Not impressed. Just measuring.

"Return to your station, Petrov," he said without looking away. "I'll handle him."

Petrov gave a quick nod and stepped out, the door shutting with a dull thud.

Tukhachevsky stood still, waiting. The man didn't offer a name, only gestured to the chair across from him.

"Sit."

He did. Spine straight, legs apart, posture crisp without being stiff. The man's eyes flicked to a worn notepad.

"Name. Rank. Record."

Tukhachevsky didn't hesitate.

"My name is Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky. Former Second Lieutenant of the Imperial Army, Semyonovsky Guard Regiment." He let that settle a moment before continuing. "Captured near Przasnysz in February 1915. Taken prisoner by the Germans. Moved through several POW camps. Escaped four times. Declared a persistent flight risk, eventually sent to Ingolstadt fortress in Bavaria. Escaped five weeks ago. Crossed into Switzerland. Reentered Russia shortly before the revolution."

The man raised his eyebrows slightly at Semyonovsky. He leaned back in his chair, fingers laced across his chest. "The Imperial Guard," he said. Not a question. "And now you wish to join ours."

Tukhachevsky nodded. He knew how this sounded. How it looked.

"Why?" the man asked. "Why would a man who once stood beside the Tsar now offer himself to us? Why shouldn't I assume you're some plant from the Whites, here to sniff around before you cut a few throats?"

Tukhachevsky's tone remained calm, clipped, firm. "You're welcome to verify my story. My name, my regiment, my capture. There are German records, Swiss records. I stayed with Professor Malinovsky on Gorokhovaya Street. You can ask the National Guard to watch me if you like. I haven't exactly been hiding."

"Mm," the man muttered, noncommittal. "I asked why. Not how I might confirm your story."

Tukhachevsky didn't blink.

"Because I've seen the future."

The recruiter narrowed his eyes.

"This morning. Nevsky Prospect. I saw the Revolutionary Guard march past with discipline, unity, purpose. They looked like an army. Not a mob. Not a militia. An army. The first I've seen in months. I realized in that moment—this isn't a rebellion anymore. It's a state. A force. And I want to be part of that. Not hiding in some apartment. Not watching from the sidelines. In uniform. Marching forward."

The recruiter leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. His voice was low now.

"That's very pretty, Lieutenant. Very polished."

"I'm a soldier," Tukhachevsky replied, "not a politician. I don't need to be pretty. I need to be useful."

They held the silence between them for a beat. Then the man reached into a drawer, withdrew a pencil, and scribbled something on a slip of paper.

"Report back to this office tomorrow at 0800 hours. Bring whatever belongings you have. You'll be assigned to barracks and quartered with a new intake unit."

He looked up again, the corner of his mouth twitching as if amused.

"My name is Captain Alekseivich. If you're lying, you'll be gone in a week. If you're not—maybe you'll live long enough to matter."

Tukhachevsky stood, snapped a salute, and pivoted smartly on his heel.

"Sir."

As he stepped back into the hall, the cold hit him like a tide—but he barely felt it. He didn't know whether it was pride or adrenaline humming in his chest, but he felt taller, heavier, realer.

This was the beginning. And he knew it.

He walked out of Smolny like a man about to conquer the world.

-------

December 25, 1917
Finland Station
Petrograd, Russia

Captain Mikheil Tukhachevsky stood tall at the head of his company—one hundred men, handpicked and polished like a saber's edge. Snow collected in the creases of his greatcoat and melted down his collar, but he barely noticed. The wind off the Gulf of Finland bit deep, but he didn't shiver.

He was too busy calculating.

A little over two months. That's all it had taken. Two months of fighting, hustling, bleeding, and drinking himself hoarse at commissar banquets to claw his way from nothing to this moment. His rise had been neither quiet nor clean.

He remembered the start—a handful of men, new recruits like him, barely trained, pulling night duty with the National Guard in the slums and alleys of Petrograd. Putting down what remained of the Provisional Government's backers, cracking Menshevik skulls, dragging anarchists from cellars. Street by street. Bullet by bullet.

They threw rocks at him. Then grenades. Once, he took a knife in the thigh from a teenager pretending to be a courier. He returned the favor with a pistol round to the stomach and didn't blink. He didn't have time to blink.

"Either a general by thirty," he whispered to himself, "or a corpse."

He meant it.

He could fight, yes—but so could every man in the city with a rifle and a grievance. The edge came from everything else.

He had learned to flatter. To charm. To smooth the egos of tired officers and hungover commissars. He brought vodka when others brought excuses. He remembered names. He lied when it was useful and told the truth when it was devastating. He made himself useful to everyone. Officers began saying: "Tukhachevsky—reliable. Get him to do it."

So they did.

Now he was no longer a nameless lieutenant begging for a rifle. He wore a captain's bars stitched in red thread. His company was well-fed, well-armed, better trained than Trotsky's nascent army . And today, they stood on ceremonial duty—not to guard a warehouse or protect a soup line, but to receive Mikheil Jugashvili himself.

Comrade Makarov.

The head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The architect of the military, national guard and revolutionary guard. Everyone knew the name. Everyone had a story. Some said he laughed while giving execution orders. Some said he wept when he saw orphaned children. Some said he danced to American music with his wife at a dinner party with the central committee and slept with a pistol under his pillow.

All agreed on one thing: you didn't fuck with Mikheil.

Tukhachevsky licked his lips and adjusted his gloves. There was something else—the Romanovs were with him. The former imperial family, returned under heavy guard from wherever they'd been buried during the storm of revolution. No one knew exactly what Mikheil planned for them. A show trial? Exile? Propaganda theater? Or something darker?

And then there was Stalin. The older twin.

He stood among the receiving party, silent as a winter grave. Not a word since they'd met, save for a few clipped orders and one look—the kind of look that made you check for knives. That man didn't smile. He didn't blink much either. Just watched. Always watched.

Tukhachevsky didn't like being watched.

The man's silence unnerved him far more than shouting ever could. It was like standing near a pit and wondering how deep it went. He was Commissar for Foreign Affairs, but in practice he was something else—Mikheil's master, darker than the man himself.

And if Stalin viewed him as a threat? Tukhachevsky had no doubt: he'd already be dead.

Still, he clung to what he'd heard—Mikheil was different. Jovial, they said. Talked like a street thug, drank like a sailor, loved his family. But he'd also ordered the surviving enemy to execute their former comrades after Pulkovo Heights if they wanted to live and join him. Tukhachevsky had spoken to one of the prisoners who made it back, he was now a guardsman too.

"He smiled while we killed each other," the man said. "Laughed while some of us begged."

More human than Stalin. But maybe worse for it.

The cold deepened, and the light dimmed behind the smoke-grey clouds. Across the platform, bundled figures shifted in the snow—his company, standing proud in black coats, red armbands bright like fresh blood. Their boots were shined. Their rifles gleamed. He had drilled them mercilessly all week for this moment.

This was the show.

And it wasn't just his men waiting.

There was also the Jugashvili family.

He saw the wife, wrapped in furs, talking softly with the children. Three of them—two boys and a girl, all with pale faces and heavy coats. A nephew, slightly taller and awkward. An elderly mother, bundled like a babushka from a fable. Stalin—and his and Mikheil's brother-in-law, the commissar of strategic resources, arms crossed, cigarette in hand. They looked like a family torn out of a Tolstoy novel and flung headfirst into the 20th century.

He was afraid of Stalin. But the rest? They looked…ordinary.

He reached into his coat pocket and rubbed his small wooden Perun figurine, smooth from years of handling. A bit of old faith, smuggled into a new world. For luck. For strength. For war.

Then the whistle came. The train.

A howl of steel and steam.

He stepped forward, boots crunching in the snow. His men straightened behind him like chess pieces aligned on a battlefield. He gave them a sharp nod, breath clouding in front of him.

Showtime.

 

[Alenco98]

ПРАВДА – Official Notice of Public Closure and Event Protocol
Issued by the Moscow Committee for Cultural Affairs in Cooperation with the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs
Date: May 30, 1932

COMRADES, ATTENTION:

The People's Committee for Cultural Affairs of the Moscow Soviet, in cooperation with the Ministry of Transportation and the Municipal Directorate of Parks and Public Spaces, hereby announces the temporary closure of Izmaylovsky Park for the purposes of logistical preparation and security arrangements related to the upcoming Moscow concert of internationally renowned vocalist and tenor from our cousin revolutionary republic of Mexico, Juan Arvizu.

As part of the ongoing First Five-Year Plan for Cultural Exchange and Socialist Upliftment, the performance of Comrade Arvizu is regarded as a significant milestone in the promotion of international proletarian solidarity through music and artistic appreciation.

Closure Schedule:

Izmaylovsky Park will be officially closed to the general public beginning at dusk on June 9, 1932, and will remain closed until dawn on June 12, 1932.

During this period, access to the park and its surrounding premises will be restricted to authorized personnel, stage crews, national guard, and technical staff responsible for sound, lighting, and maintenance operations.

All unauthorized persons found within the restricted perimeter will be subject to removal and possible administrative penalty in accordance with Article 127 of the Public Assembly and Safety Act (1930 revision).

Ticket Sales and Distribution:

Concert tickets for Juan Arvizu's performance at Izmaylovsky Park will be made available for public purchase at designated kiosks beginning the morning of Friday, June 10, and continuing through the end of Saturday, June 11, or until the allocation of tickets has been fully exhausted.

Tickets will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis, with priority access reserved for the elderly, the disabled, and veterans of the war of national liberation.

Notice on Speculation and Resale:

In accordance with directives from the People's Commissariat for Economic Planning and Supervision, the resale or private exchange of concert tickets for personal profit is strictly prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to:

The resale of tickets at inflated prices;

The hoarding or stockpiling of tickets for speculative purposes;

The use of proxies or third parties to circumvent rationing or distribution guidelines.

Any individual found engaging in speculative activity or violating this ordinance will be subject to criminal prosecution under the Anti-Speculation Act of 1926, with penalties including up to one year of corrective labor in the Siberian districts, loss of party membership, and permanent disqualification from future positions in the party apparatus.

Let this serve as a reminder that the fruits of culture belong not to the profiteer, but to the collective laboring masses of the Soviet people.

By order of the Moscow Cultural Committee
Approved by the Secretariat of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Glory to the Soviet Union – Glory to the Workers of the World!

---

December 25, 1917
Finland Station
Petrograd, Russia

Almost two weeks on the rails, and now the grey skeleton of Petrograd finally rose out of the snow like a tired old ghost trying to remember its name. Finland Station—I recognized it by it's surroundings, the crooked skyline, the half-collapsed chimneys, the church spires leaning like drunkards. The signs hung motionless in the frost, frozen in mid-sentence, while the smoke curled upward instead of sideways like it was offering a prayer. That's how you knew you were back in Petrograd: even the smoke had given up.

It should've taken four days from Tyumen. Five, maybe six, if your conductor was a coward or you packed a samovar and a priest. But this was post-revolutionary Russia, and the trains didn't so much move as lurch. They creaked. They stopped. They groaned like they were reconsidering every life choice. Time no longer moved forward. It staggered like a dying horse—loud, slow, and liable to drop dead in a ditch without warning.

But hey—we weren't attacked. That's something.

Turns out, when your private train car holds over 300 Revolutionary Guards, a tsar and his family, and several locked crates containing confiscated Fabergé eggs, even the boldest Siberian bandits suddenly remember their grandmothers and choose to stay home. Even the wolves gave us space. Good animals, wolves. Smart. Better instincts than half the officers I used to serve with back in my old police days.

I spent most of the journey drifting between reports, inspections, and harmless psychological warfare. Read Marx to the children. Sang folk songs. Performed card tricks. Conducted a mock trial where Nicholas II was found guilty of being himself and sentenced to mop the floor. Made Alexei act as court stenographer with shaking hands. They thought it was theater. It was. But they didn't get the joke.

I don't believe in cruelty without rhythm.

And now, as the frozen silhouette of Finland Station crept closer through the icy mist, I felt a touch of—what was it? Melancholy? Sentiment? Maybe indigestion. Either way, I did what any self-respecting revolutionary warlord would do in my position.

I started to sing.

A soft, warm melody to cut through the frost. My voice at first low, barely above a whisper—just loud enough for the imperial family to wonder whether I was joking.

I wasn't.

"Ohhh baby, you're my baby… so happy Christmas tonight…"

Yes. That song. Singing in the Snow, by Mikiko Noda, a charming little city pop tune from 80s Japan I found on YouTube. Most of it was in Japanese, which the Romanovs of course did not speak. Not that they needed to understand the words. The melody was cheerful, the tone romantic, the context entirely unhinged. That was the point. That and I was so happy to see my wife.

I didn't care that it was Christmas. I didn't care that I was carting the last Tsar of Russia like a sack of potatoes into the capital he used to rule.

"Shining down free in your eyes… hold me tightly in your free arms…"

I tapped the rhythm on the window glass, boot bouncing gently on the floorboards. The train swayed with me, like we were dancing. I imagined myself a lounge singer on the Titanic, if the Titanic had been hijacked by a communist militia and the first-class passengers were shackled to their seats, stewing in the faint aroma of powdered soap and disillusionment.

To their credit, they didn't scream.

They just stared. A gallery of pale wax faces. Olga and Tatiana rigid, lips tight. Maria blinking too often. Anastasia glaring with that teenage fury that made her briefly likable. Alexei coughing quietly into a handkerchief embroidered with a crest that no longer mattered.

And Nicholas…

He looked at me like I was a dream he couldn't quite wake from. Like he kept expecting me to disappear.

I paused between verses, turning my head just enough to meet his eyes.

"What?" I asked in English, tone light and airy. "You didn't know I spoke English? Or that I could sing?"

Nicholas blinked. "You never told us."

I smiled, thin as a knife. "You never asked."

Silence followed. A long, cold silence, broken only by the soft mechanical wheeze of the train and the faint clatter of distant pistons. Then—clang—the bell echoed down the corridor.

Arrival.

Minutes now.

I stood slowly, adjusting the collar of my greatcoat, brushing imaginary lint from my lapel like a man preparing for a recital. I cleared my throat theatrically, stepped toward the aisle, and let my gaze sweep the length of the car.

"Well then," I said, raising my voice. "Get your coats on."

The guards stiffened. The Romanovs didn't move.

My smile dropped, clean and sharp.

"Welcome home," I said in Russian now. "Now get your shit and get off the train."

I gestured toward the doorway with a casual flick of the wrist.

Then I turned to Alexei, the boy shaking in the corner like porcelain on the verge of cracking.

"Except you. My men will get your things. Can't have you dying on me yet. Once you're in the Winter Palace, you're no longer my problem."

He stared up at me, eyes wide and wet as his family began packing. I almost felt bad for a moment. He looked a lot like my little brother back in my old life before I died. I remembered them again, and I just sighed and shook my head.

I'd accepted long ago this was life, but the memories occasionally hit me and it just got me. I guess this is probably why people don't normally remember their old lives when they reincarnate. It's like going in and out of depression at random times. But I had a job to do, and I supervised the Romanovs as they packed their shit.

It only took them two minutes—just two minutes—for the Romanovs to bundle themselves in their coats, gather their imperial rags, and shuffle off the train like miserable ghosts in a snowfall.

We disembarked into a world of crisp uniforms, frostbitten tension, and the gray breath of revolution curling in the air.

"Salute!" a young voice barked. I looked up—and there they were. One hundred guards lined up like chess pieces, steam rising from their nostrils. The lad in front gave a perfect revolutionary salute. His posture was sharp enough to cut steel.

I returned the gesture.

"At ease."

Hands dropped. Boots shifted. Eyes forward.

And then the Romanovs emerged, one by one, draped in fox furs and failure. They looked smaller outside the train. Like they'd shrunk in the cold. It was hard to believe these were once the ornaments of an empire. Now they were just excess luggage in a changing season.

I pointed at the young man who'd called the salute. "You. You're in charge, I assume?"

He stiffened. "Yes, Comrade."

"Good. Get the Romanovs and their belongings into one of the armored cars. Do not help any of them carry their own suitcases. Not one. Except the boy—he's got hemophilia and if he dies before Lenin sees him, I'll be explaining that to the Party with my head in a box. Once they're loaded, take them straight to the Winter Palace. And reserve a second car for me. Lenin's probably already pacing barefoot in a conference room and muttering in German about me."

"Understood." He snapped another salute.

I squinted at him. "What's your name, by the way? You look like you were just weaned off your mother's tit."

"Tukhachevsky. Captain Mikhail Tukhachevsky."

I grinned wide. "Well, fuck me bloody."

He blinked.

"My name's Mikheil. Seems we've got a thing going. Mikhail times 2. Tell you what—I'll hitch a ride in your car. I like hearing new voices before they disappoint me."

I left him standing there, gears turning behind his eyes, and turned toward the reason I still believed in something better than execution squads and ideological purity.

"Aleksandra!"

I practically shouted her name and ran into her arms like I hadn't just spent two weeks terrifying a former monarch and reciting Das Kapital at gunpoint. Her warmth hit me like a Georgian summer. I buried my face in her neck. God, I missed her. The way she smelled—like vanilla, ink, and something else I could never name. I missed her laughter, her scolding, her hands, her hips, everything. I missed waking up next to her and not next to a bolt-action rifle and a stack of communiqués. I missed making love without worrying about when the next telegram would arrive.

She kissed me. Then kissed me again.

"You miss me?" I murmured into her hair.

"Shut up." She laughed, then pulled me into another kiss that should've been illegal under martial law.

The family came next. Keke, crossing herself three times and hugging me like I was still a child. Aleksander, my brother-in-law, who always looked like he was trying not to roll his eyes. The kids—Kato, Iosif, and Aleksander—all wide-eyed and bouncing. Besarion stayed behind at Smolny. The cold was too much, and this wasn't 2025—here, the flu could still kill a baby faster than a bayonet. I wanted more kids, not potential dead baby jokes.

And then, of course, there was Joe.

Stalin.

My brother.

We hugged. Brief but tight. His arms were hard. His coat stiff. His eyes were heavier than I remembered.

"You look like shit," I said in Georgian, smiling like I wasn't half-worried he'd stab me for hugging him too hard.

"Negotiations went as well as they could," he replied curtly.

"Germany will lose," I said. "I promise. By this time next year, they'll be chewing boot leather in Berlin."

"If they don't," he said, "Trotsky will be the least of my problems."

We both knew what that meant.

The moment passed. I turned to my family and told them to return to Smolny. Joe, Aleksander, and I moved toward the car where young Tukhachevsky waited, straight-backed and eyes alert.

He opened the door for us like a good soldier, letting us in one by one, then entering last and shutting it behind him.

I slid in second to last. Wanted the window seat. Also wanted to talk to the kid. See what kind of steel he was made of.

As the car began to rumble through the icy streets of Petrograd—quiet now, watchful—I turned to him.

"So, Captain Tukhachevsky?" I said, stretching out my legs, cracking my knuckles, and giving the boy my most dangerous grin. "You look awfully young to be a captain. You'd better impress me. I've killed men for less than a boring answer."

I leaned forward slightly.

"Let's start simple, shall we? What kind of woman is your type?"

There was a moment of silence so thick you could've buttered bread with it.

I glanced at Joe, his eyes narrowed like he'd just bitten into a lemon. Aleksander turned his head and stared out the window, suddenly deeply invested in the snow-covered buildings of Petrograd. I could feel them both radiating the same thought:

What the actual fuck are you even doing?

Idiots. Cultural illiterates. They'd never had the joy of watching Jujutsu Kaisen. They didn't know the name Aoi Todo, the philosopher-king of friendship and fists. But I did.

And today—I was Todo.

"And before you answer," I added, wagging a gloved finger, "don't give me some boring, generic shit like 'someone nice' or 'someone who's kind and loyal.' That's drivel. That's something you say to a priest before he sends you to war. No. I want something real. Specific. From the heart. A man's type reflects everything about him."

I thumped my chest.

"My type, for example? A proper Georgian woman. Classy. Keeps herself looking good. Keeps the kids in line. Knows how to party when it's time to party, and when we're in public? Always takes my side. Always. But behind closed doors? She'll beat my ego into submission with a wooden spoon and call it foreplay."

I looked over at the young captain.

"Now, your turn. Impress me."

Tukhachevsky didn't blink.

Didn't even hesitate.

He crossed one leg over the other, smoothed a wrinkle from his coat like he was sitting in a café on the Nevsky with a glass of wine instead of sharing an armored car with three men, two of whom. had personally shot people.

And then he said:

"My type?" His voice was cool, confident, and laced with that hint of challenge only young men with dangerous ideas carry.

"A woman who can shoot straighter than me, walk faster than me in boots, and knows how to fake requisition forms by the time I've finished breakfast. Someone who doesn't flinch or cry when I say we might not come back alive. Who irons her own uniform, not mine, because she has her own medals to polish."

I grinned.

He kept going.

"She's ambitious, but not loud about it. Doesn't smile unless it's real. Carries a revolver in her purse and a copy of Tolstoy in her coat. A woman who only calls me 'Misha' when I've done something truly unforgivable. Someone who would smuggle me out of Moscow one day and hand me over to the National Guard the next—if she thought I'd become a threat to the revolution."

A pause.

Then, he added, almost as an afterthought:
"And if she can fence? I'll propose on the spot."

I couldn't help myself.

I let out a loud, delighted cackle that echoed off the car walls.

Joe rolled his eyes and muttered something in Georgian that was probably a prayer or a curse. Aleksander looked like he was considering opening the door and throwing himself into traffic.

I clapped my hands once, sharply.

"Now that's an answer. Goddamn! You've got taste, kid. I like you."

Tukhachevsky smirked, but just a little. Just enough to show me he knew exactly what he was doing.

That was the moment I decided I liked him. Not trust—never trust—but like. A rare thing.

"You pass," I said, leaning back. "For now."

He gave a small nod. "I intend to keep passing, sir."

"Don't call me sir," I grunted. "It makes me feel like a Tsar."

"Then what should I call you?"

"Comrade, obviously." I grinned again. "Or Mikheil. Just not boss—I already have enough men trying to polish my boots with their tongues."

Outside, the streets of Petrograd passed by in quiet reverence. The Winter Palace loomed ahead—dark, vast, and filled with questions.

Inside the car, I rubbed my hands together and chuckled again.

"Now," I said, "next question: if you had to execute a traitor in front of their mother, would you do it before or after dinner?"

Aleksander audibly groaned.

And Joe just sighed.

Tukhachevsky didn't even flinch.

He leaned forward just slightly, resting his elbows on his knees like a man preparing to recite poetry or describe an artillery drill.

"Before dinner."

"Why?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

He didn't hesitate. "Because if I do it after dinner, I'll be distracted. Too much blood, stomach's full, might get sleepy. But before? That's clean. Efficient. Besides—" and here he tilted his head slightly, "—the mother will cry harder on an empty stomach. Easier to read her sincerity."

I burst out laughing.

Joe muttered something about "burguois humor" under his breath.

"Goddamn." I said. "You really are a monster."

Tukhachevsky gave a polite shrug. "Only on the clock, Comrade."

I pointed at him like I'd just found a new pet snake that could juggle.

"All right, next one. Imagine you're betrayed. Stabbed in the back by a man you trusted. You've captured him. He's bound. Helpless. Do you kill him with your own hands? Or do you hand him to the Party for a show trial?"

He took a breath.

"Depends," he said. "If it's personal? I kill him myself."

"And if it's political?"

"Show trial," he said. "Make it public. Make it poetic. Let the people see that even betrayal has structure."

"Smart boy," I muttered, narrowing my eyes.

"But," he added, "I'll make sure he knows that I chose the poet who writes his sentencing statement."

That made me grin like a wolf.

"You know, most men sweat when I do this."

"I'm not most men," he said.

I exhaled, slowly. "That's what they all say."

Another bump in the road. Aleksander grunted as the car jolted.

I leaned forward again.

"Fine. Let's go deeper. If your best friend—your comrade, your brother in arms—starts slipping. He's getting lazy. Soft. Dangerous to the movement. What do you do?"

This time, there was a pause.

A long one.

Good.

He looked at me dead in the eye.

"I talk to him first. Once."

"And if that doesn't work?"

"Then I shoot him." His voice was flat now. "Quickly. Publicly, if I must. Privately, if I can. But I do it myself."

"You wouldn't warn him twice?"

"No," he said. "Because if he's really my friend, my comrade, he'd only need once."

We stared at each other for a moment—two men separated by age, rank, and a half dozen war crimes. And yet…

I saw something in him. Arrogance, yes. But beneath that—a coldness that hadn't calcified into cruelty yet. Still flexible. Still growing.

Good.

I leaned back again, smiling.

"All right, another question," I said. "This one's important."

He nodded.

I gave him a moment.

Then said, in the most serious voice I could muster:

"If you could only bring one condiment to the front—one, and only one—which would it be?"

Aleksander nearly choked.

Joe actually turned and looked at me like he wanted to throttle me.

Tukhachevsky didn't blink.

"Mustard."

"Mustard?" I asked. "Explain yourself, Captain."

"Versatile," he said. "Hides the taste of canned meat. Keeps the sinuses clear. Symbol of strength. Napoleon's favorite, too."

"Didn't Napoleon die in exile?"

"Yes," he said. "But with dignity."

I howled. Full belly laugh this time.

"Holy shit. You might make general before you hit puberty."

He smiled, just a little. "That's the plan, Comrade."

The car turned a corner.

The Winter Palace came into view—gray, looming, half-lit by dying sun and revolution.

But I was still thinking.

Captain Tukhachevsky. Bright, dangerous, confident. Good taste in hypothetical executions and mustard. A little too good. A little too poised. Something about him scratched at my brain like a fingernail on glass.

I studied him again. Young. Calculating. Ruthless. Ambitious. Clever in that performative, low-key way. The kind of clever that made you forget how clever he really was. I'd seen it before.

In the mirror.

So I decided to test the most insane theory I had.

A long shot. The kind of idea that only creeps in when you've been an outsider looking into this world for decades.

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, voice low.

"Hey, Tukhachevsky," I said. "Can I ask you a few weird questions?"

He straightened slightly, not alarmed—curious. "Go ahead, Comrade."

I gave him the grin I reserved for people I liked enough to eventually destroy.

"You ever heard of this one novel… Fullmetal Alchemist? What about code Geass?"

He blinked. "Is that… German?"

"Nope. Japanese."

Pause. "No, never heard of it."

"Huh," I nodded. "Okay. What about The Outsiders? It's American. Young adult fiction."

He frowned, puzzled. "We're… talking about American youth literature now?"

"Sure. Humor me."

"No. Not familiar with it either."

"American Idol?"

"Is that… a religion?"

I barked out a short, sharp laugh. Stalin stared at me like I'd grown a second head. Aleksander groaned quietly into his gloves.

I leaned back against the seat, exhaled.

"I'm fucking with you."

Tukhachevsky gave a polite chuckle, but I could tell he was off-balance now. Good. I like to keep people off-balance. Makes them easier to throw.

But inside?

Inside I was disappointed.

Not much. Just a flicker.

For a moment I really thought—maybe. Maybe he was like me. Another ghost from the future stuffed into a character from history and trying to survive. Another lunatic with Google, YouTube and too much anime in his bloodstream.

But no.

He was just smart.

That made him dangerous.

Smart men don't sleep well in revolutions. They either die early or live long enough to become problems. Tukhachevsky might be a general someday. Or a martyr. Or a traitor.

I'd keep him close. Keep him useful. But I'd never forget he existed.

And if I ever had to?

I'd kill him.

The thought made me laugh inside.

God, I sound like Stalin.

I glanced at my brother, sitting in the corner like a human glacier wrapped in wool and suspicion. Always watching. Always calculating. I used to think he was paranoid. But now?

Now I understood.

Power isn't a throne. It's a balance beam above a pit filled with people you used to love.

You survive by assuming everyone will push you. Because eventually, they might.

The car rolled to a stop. The brakes hissed. The door clanked.

We had arrived.

Tukachevsky reached for the handle and opened the door. He held it open for us.

"Let's go see the boss," I said as I walked out. "Maybe he'll give us medals. Or a lecture. Or just a list of people to shoot. And Tukachevsky, you'll be my adjutant from now on. Get ready, I'll be working you to the bone. You might regret sucking up to me."

He gave me a cocky smile. "I'll manage."

Manage to get himself killed if he pisses off Joe. I thought to myself.

 

[Alenco98]

December 25, 1917
Winter Palace
Petrograd, Russia

We entered the Winter Palace at dusk, stepping over the palace grounds like intruders in a cathedral desecrated by its own parishioners. Stalin walked first, as always—prim, stiff, pretending not to enjoy the sound of his boots on imperial marble. I followed behind, half a step off, as protocol—and fraternal politeness—demanded. Then came my newly minted adjutant, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who towered over me at 6'1 like some Aryan opera villain, all cheekbones and ambition. His face looked like it had been carved with a bayonet and powdered with arrogance. He made me look like his half-Georgian, bastard little brother who had gotten into daddy's vodka stash. Charming.

Trailing in the rear like a forgotten ghost was Aleksander Svanidze—our brother-in-law, our Georgian ballast, part of the old Troika: Stalin, Svanidze, and me. The band was back together. How festive. Like a Christmas special, if Christmas had been co-written by Nietzsche and a pack of jackals.

The throne room was colder than a nun's corpse and dimly lit, with the chandeliers swaying slightly from the draft. The once-lavish imperial hall had been stripped down to its bones—porcelain vases gone, velvet banners burned, and the Romanov throne itself removed. A tragedy, really. I had plans for that chair. Something theatrical. A pig, perhaps, or a performing circus bear trained to relieve itself ceremoniously while the former Tsar was made to watch, nose to filth. But no, the stage had already been cleared for "dignity" and "professionalism." Dull, practical men ruin everything.

The long conference table had been dragged to the center of the room. Around it sat the new lords of Russia, the revolutionary equivalent of the Legion of Doom, if they swapped capes for peacoats and ideals for paranoia. The Bolshevik Central Committee: some of the most dangerous men in the world... and also Joffe.

Attendance was taken. Fifteen voting members, counting myself, Joe, and Svanidze. Non-voters—Teodorovich, Kalinin, Milyutin, and Krestinsky—sat in silence, decorative and inert, like potted plants in a boardroom. They would speak only if spoken to, and even then, preferably not.

I scanned the faces of my comrades. Only a few mattered: Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Sverdlov, Bukharin, Dzerzhinsky, Stalin, myself, and Aleksander. The rest were static. Especially Joffe. God, Joffe. The man was a parasite with a pocket watch, Trotsky's pet parrot who squawked whatever line the messiah of Mezhraiontsy fed him. I would've respected him more if he had a spine, or even just a unique opinion. But no—always nodding, always defending, always fucking Joffe.

Still, my loathing could wait. Tonight's entertainment was the fate of the Romanovs.

Lenin cleared his throat and leaned forward, fingers templed in that signature pose of his—half messiah, half mortician. "Comrade Makarov," he said, his voice calm but sharp, "I would like to formally commend you on the secure and efficient retrieval of the royal family."

I nodded modestly, suppressing the grin clawing its way up my face. "Thank you comrade. How soon can we put them to work in the factories and hospitals? The sooner they're seen sweating in linen smocks, the more valuable they become as living propaganda."

He nodded, approving. "Dzerzhinsky, Svanidze, Bukharin—you'll handle the logistics. Bukharin, have Pravda prepare a series on the Romanovs' arrival and 'transition to proletarian life.' Paint them as penitent, humbled. Icons of the new order. Svanidze, coordinate with local soviets—assign the family to visible and useful positions. Hospitals, textile plants. No desk jobs. Dzerzhinsky, ensure full security. If there's even a breath of defiance, remove the problem... discreetly."

The room murmured assent. Heads nodded. Pens scratched. Revolution by paperwork. I waited a beat, then raised my hand.

Lenin's eyes flicked toward me. "Yes, Comrade Makarov?"

I leaned back in my chair, fingers drumming idly, a picture of casual sadism wrapped in civility. "Just one minor item. The boy, Alexei. He's frail. Hemophiliac. If we put him to physical labor, he'll die. Publicly. And a dead tsarevich is worth less than a humbled, obedient one."

Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "You want us to pamper the princeling?"

"Hardly," I said, smiling thinly. "Make him Lenin's personal secretary. Keep him close. Let the people see the former heir to the empire sharpening pencils and blotting ink for the man who shattered his dynasty. It's powerful optics. It humanizes us. Plus, he's pathetic. The boy's practically translucent. He reminds me of a sad puppy."

No one laughed. I wasn't joking.

Lenin stared at me for a moment—judging whether this was sentiment or strategy. I gave him nothing. Just the smile. That waxy, cold smile that doesn't reach the eyes.

"Approved," he finally said. "Svanidze, reassign one of your clerks to train him."

"Of course," Svanizde said, voice crisp as a saber. He looked at me curiously, as if trying to determine whether I was kind or cruel. As if the difference mattered.

The meeting resumed. Rail schedules. Grain quotas. Murders to be done in the dark and called justice in the morning. But there was another elephant in the room—this one armed, stranded, and bored.

The Czechoslovaks.

Tens of thousands of them, scattered mostly through Ukraine, still clutching the rifles we'd so generously handed out when the Tsar's regime and then Kerensky's provisional circus had promised them independence. They'd been told they were heroes. Now they were unemployed heroes, which is the most dangerous kind. With the war over for us, they no longer had an enemy to kill—except, perhaps, us.

"I'll take care of it," I said as soon as their name crossed Lenin's lips. Quick. Firm. Like a surgeon claiming a tumor for himself. If I pulled it off, I'd win prestige for myself and Joe. If I failed… well, I didn't plan to fail. I don't plan for things that won't happen.

Naturally, Trotsky leaned forward with that predatory smile of his, the one that says I'm about to correct you with historical inevitability.

"And what exactly would your plan be, Comrade Makarov?" he asked, in that grating, smug lecturer's tone. I swear, if Trotsky hadn't been born in Russia, he'd have been one of those Paris professors who never pay their tab and seduce their students.

I smiled back at him like I was selling him a house with a body in the basement.
"Simple," I said. Glancing at Tukachevsky and pointing to the nearby map on the nearby wall. "Bring it here."

Tukachevsky complied like a good dog and handed me the map. Which I then put on the table and pointed north.

"We march them north to Murmansk. The British North Russia Squadron is sitting there right now. They're bored, cold, and waiting for a reason to sail somewhere warmer. Let them ferry the Czechoslovaks out. The Entente will need every rifle and body they can find once Germany throws everything west for one last hurrah before the Americans arrive in force. We get the Czechs out, we get the British fleet out, and in the process we secure Murmansk and the entire northern coast against British landings."

Trotsky leaned back in his chair, smirking like a man watching a dog try to play chess. "You trust the British to just leave?"

"No," I said, "I trust them to go where the war's hotter. And they will, because they're rational when it comes to blood and profit."

I could feel the room shift slightly—half listening, half calculating the angles. I pressed on.

"And once Murmansk is ours, we can move on Finland."

That got their attention. Even Trotsky stopped preening for a moment.

"Yes, Finland," I said, as if I were explaining basic arithmetic to children. "They just declared independence last week remember? Brand new state. Barely any army worth the name and a decent Bolshevik presence. If we leave them alone, the Entente will stroll in and turn Helsinki into a launchpad for the counter-revolutionaries. If we take it now, we secure the north and deny the Entente another foothold. Plus, we get a lovely frozen buffer between us and any entente meddling. Think of it as… early spring cleaning."

Lenin was silent, fingers tapping lightly on the table. Dzerzhinsky's eyes flickered with interest; Sverdlov was scribbling notes like an obedient clerk at a hanging.

Trotsky, of course, had to get the last word in. "Your plan assumes the Czechoslovaks will happily march to the Arctic without complaint. It assumes the British won't decide to stay. It assumes—"

"It assumes," I interrupted, "that I can make them march and that I can make the British leave. Which is why you should leave it to me. You have the military to finish organizing then march, the south is on fire with all the lovely cossacks kulaks, mensheviks and everything else in the middle rising up. You may not like me, but we need each other. You clean the south, I'll take the north then help you out down south."

The tension between us was as familiar as an old wound. Trotsky and I had been circling each other since the revolution began. He saw me as a thug with too much rope; I saw him as a narcissist who mistook his own speeches for divine revelation. We were both right.

Lenin finally spoke, his voice flat. "If you can do it, Comrade Makarov, then do it. The Czechoslovaks are a problem. The British are a potential problem. Finland is a future problem. Remove them all."

Trotsky's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. I leaned back, savoring the small victory. Three birds, one stone. And if the stone was me, well, I always enjoyed the sound of skulls cracking.

Outside, the snow was coming down harder. I imagined the Czechoslovaks trudging through it, rifles slung, boots crunching, their breath freezing in the air while I walked among them like a priest leading his flock to salvation—or exile. The British ships would wait, the Finns would shiver, and somewhere in all that frozen geography, I'd carve a little more space for myself in the map of the new Russia.

The meeting ended not with thunderous applause, but with the quiet shuffle of papers, muttered plans, and the scent of cold tobacco. I lingered behind, chatting with Stalin and Svanidze.

Mostly to remind them that Aleksandra was probably making dinner to celebrate my glorious return from imperial babysitting duty—and that if they didn't show, I'd drag them there by their ears. Aleksander, ever the civilized one, agreed at once. Stalin only grunted—his way of saying "yes" without wasting syllables. They'd probably stay here for hours, hunched over maps, grinding their teeth over imagined conspiracies, before showing up late and pretending they were doing me a favor.

I had other business.

"Tuka," I said, turning to my new adjutant. "With me. Time you met the rest of the family. Well, your new coworkers."

He followed me out of Smolny, through the chill, to the armored car convoy idling outside. The vehicles squatted like iron beetles in the snow, engines purring low and dangerous. We climbed into the lead car, and with a lurch we were off—Petrograd's streets flashing by in a blur of grey stone and half-starved pedestrians who paused to watch us pass, like they were waiting for the Revolution to spit out their name next.

The silence lasted about ten seconds.

"So," I said, leaning back against the cold leather seat, "what's your story, Tuka?"

He glanced at me, wary. "My story?"

"Yes. Your… narrative arc. Your sweeping epic. The tragic opera of Mikhail Tukhachevsky. I like to know the people who might end up taking a bullet for me. Or from me."

He hesitated, then began, his voice clipped, professional. "I was in the Imperial Army. Served on the western front against the Germans. Captured early in 1915."

I made a sympathetic noise. "Ah, the joys of being an honored guest of the Kaiser."

He ignored me. "I tried to escape. Four times."

"Four? That's… enthusiastic."

"Failed each time. Recaptured, punished, watched more closely." His jaw tightened. "On my fifth attempt, I succeeded."

I grinned. "So you're the kind of man who learns from his mistakes."

"Yes. Eventually."

I nodded, approving. "That's good. I like persistence in my adjutants. Means if I send you to steal something and you get caught, you won't just give up and write me an apology letter. You'll try again. And again. Until they either shoot you or you succeed. I can work with that."

He gave the faintest smile. "I imagine you can."

I studied him for a moment. "Do you speak anything besides Russian?"

"French," he said simply.

My smile widened. "Magnifique. Then we can talk without the riffraff eavesdropping. Comment vous êtes-vous échappé mon ami?" (How did you escape my friend?)

He told me in French, his accent crisp—about the forged papers, the night march, the border crossing. I threw in the occasional theatrical gasp, just to annoy him.

When he finished, I leaned back, satisfied. "You'll do fine, Tuka. You have the right combination of determination and poor impulse control. Just try not to get killed before dessert."

He shook his head, amused despite himself. "You're insane."

I patted his shoulder. "Yes, but I'm your type of insane."

The cars rolled through Petrograd's icy streets, past shuttered shops and idle factories, until the looming bulk of Smolny reappeared in the distance, lit from within like a lighthouse in a sea of snow.

As we pulled up, I glanced at Tukhachevsky and smiled. "Welcome to the family business, Tuka. Just remember—ours is the kind of family where you're more likely to inherit a firing squad than a fortune."

We then got out of the car and entered Smolny, making for the wing that served as the Guard Corps' nerve center—a cramped but heavily fortified warren of offices, maps, and men who could kill you with either a rifle or an unconvincing accident. The place smelled of damp wool, cheap tobacco, and the faint metallic tang of too much gun oil.

I made a mental note to ask Lenin for our own building once the war ended and Moscow became the capital. Something grand. Something intimidating. The Kremlin itself, perhaps. Let the peasants whisper that the Georgians had moved in like a conquering clan and nailed the doors shut behind them.

I stepped into my office with Tukhachevsky in tow, gestured for him to sit, and rang the little brass bell on my desk. A few minutes later, a young soldier appeared, back straight, eyes sharp.

"Sir?" he said, saluting.

"Get me my command staff. All of them."

"Yes, sir." He saluted again and disappeared.

Fifteen minutes later, they filed in—my lieutenants, my weapons, my insurance policy against boredom.

Yagoda first: head of security, counterintelligence, and the man responsible for keeping me alive… or at least ensuring I didn't die without paperwork. Lenin had recommended him, which meant he was almost certainly a plant. Related to Sverdlov, too. Definitely there to keep an eye on me. Not that it mattered—I wasn't plotting anything.

"Genrikh Yagoda," I said, gesturing. "Mikhail Tukhachevsky—my new adjutant. Mikhail, this is the man who makes sure nobody poisons my tea or puts a bullet in my spine without an appointment."

"A pleasure," Yagoda said, offering his hand. Tukhachevsky shook it.

Next came Voroshilov, Ter-Petrosian, and Budyonny. Voroshilov and Ter-Petrosian each commanded half of the infantry; Budyonny commanded our cavalry with the enthusiasm of a man who believed horses could win the next century. Stalin had sent me these men—loyalists, friends, drinking companions of his youth. They watched me as much as they served me, which was fine. Everyone watches everyone here. It's how we sleep at night.

"A pleasure," they each said in turn as Tukhachevsky shook their hands.

Finally, Sergo Ordzhonikidze—logistics and supplies. Another Stalin man. Smiled like a genial uncle, but if I asked for six hundred rifles and three boxcars of flour, they'd appear before breakfast.

"Nice to meet you," Sergo said, shaking hands with Tukhachevsky.

Once the pleasantries were over, I stood behind my desk and looked them over. "Gentlemen, we have a new assignment."

I let that hang in the air a moment, watching for the flicker of curiosity—or dread.

"I'll be taking some of the Guard Corps," I continued, "Voroshilov's men primarily, to Ukraine. Our friends, the Czechoslovaks, have been loitering there like an unwanted dinner guest. We're going to retrieve them and escort them north to Murmansk. There, the British North Russia Squadron will take them off our hands and sail them far away, where they can annoy someone else."

A couple of nods. Yagoda's pen was already scratching in his notebook.

"While I'm away," I said, "Budyonny will be in charge of day-to-day operations here. As usual, you'll report directly to Stalin. I expect the cavalry to keep the city looking disciplined.."

They all nodded of course, they may be plants but they knew the job description.

"This is a clean job," I went on. "Two birds with one stone—we remove an idle, armed foreign legion from our backyard, and we give the British a reason to move their fleet out of our waters. Once Murmansk is secured, we can look at Finland. They've just declared independence, and I'm not in the mood to let the British buy themselves a Scandinavian summer home."

They were listening now, really listening, which was the best kind of silence in a room full of killers.

"Questions?" I asked.

No one spoke. Perfect.

I smiled thinly. "Good. Pack for cold weather. And remember—this isn't just an escort. It's a statement. We're not here to ask people to leave Russia. We're here to make sure they never come back."

The meeting adjourned soon after. I told Tukhachevsky he'd be coming with me on this little southern holiday, which seemed to make him absurdly happy—as if I'd invited him to a seaside retreat instead of a march through frostbite and potential mutiny. I dismissed him with a wave, telling him we'd leave a little after New Year's. Coordinating logistics takes time, and besides, I wanted the Czechoslovaks good and restless before I arrived. Restless men make rash decisions, and rash decisions make good examples.

I made my way back to my quarters. Dinner was waiting, the table set like some bourgeois painting we'd all pretend wasn't decadent. It was the usual sentimental affair, and yes, I'd missed them—every voice, every face, every scrap of normalcy that kept me from thinking too much about what I'd done that day.

Keke did her prayer. I joined her, as did the kids and Aleksandra. Ironic, given my growing résumé as a war criminal, but God and I have an understanding—He doesn't judge me for the things I do, and I don't ask Him for help getting away with them.

We ate. Stalin and Aleksander arrived late, which earned them a proper tongue-lashing from Keke. She scolded them the same way she'd scold a child who'd forgotten to wash their hands. Stalin, conqueror of factions, scourge of dissenters, nodded solemnly through it like a schoolboy caught cheating. It wasn't often they were late, but when they were, she made sure they remembered it.

I didn't care much about the food or the conversation. My attention was elsewhere. I was watching my wife the way a hawk watches the only warm thing in a frozen field. Like Quagmire eyeing his next target, if Quagmire had the sense to know when he'd already found the best.

Dinner wrapped up. Normally, I'd linger, maybe smoke with Stalin, maybe tease the children until they rolled their eyes. But duty called—different kind of duty.

Soon enough, I was in my room with her.

We made love like we were making up for lost time. I'd missed her—her scent, her hair, her laugh, her moan, her voice. Everything. Being away from her sharpened the hunger in a way that nothing else could. There's no propaganda photo that can capture that kind of truth.

Afterward, I lay there, her body curled against mine. Even after four children and nearing forty, she was still as beautiful as the day we married. More, maybe, because now she carried the weight of our years together, and wore it like a crown.

I loved her. Which, for me, is more dangerous than hating someone.

The snow was falling outside, muting the city into a soft white silence. I found myself softly singing that song—that city pop Christmas tune by Mikiko Noda from my last life, singing in the snow. The notes felt warm in my chest, absurd and out of place in this century, which only made it sweeter.

"Ohh baby you're my baby… so happy Christmas tonight… shining down free in your eyes… hold me tightly in your sweet arms."

If I had died right then—her arms around me, the snow falling outside, the faint warmth of the meal still in my stomach—it would've been a good death.

---------

Excerpt from The Crisis, February, 1931 Issue— W. E. B. Du Bois

It is a curious and bitter thing that I, a Negro born beneath the shadow of the Stars and Stripes, may tread the boulevards of Moscow without once hearing the diminutive "boy" spat at my back; without being told, in some shop or café, that they "do not serve my kind." Here, in this land so long caricatured by our American press, I may enter where I will, sit where I please, and walk the streets without the furtive terror that my glance, should it fall too long upon a white face, might earn me a rope and a tree.

This is not to paint Russia as a paradise, nor to forget that she, too, struggles with her own sins. But it is to indict, with all the weight of my pen, a Republic that dares call itself the land of liberty while, in its own cities and countryside, the Black man lives as a stranger—suspect in his own home, despised in his own land.

If such courtesy, such human recognition, can be extended to me here, under the red flag and far from the soil of my birth, why is it denied in Georgia or Mississippi? Why in the very streets of New York or Chicago? The shame does not belong to Moscow, nor to me; it rests squarely upon America's conscience. And it is upon that conscience that I now knock, and knock loudly.

For until the Black man may walk unmolested through the streets of his own country—until he may eat at any table, drink from any cup, and meet the gaze of any man without fear—then the words "freedom" and "democracy" are but a hollow echo, mocking the land that utters them.

-------

Note: Imagine Mikheil humming and singing this while executing/torturing prisoners or just commiting war crimes in general:

 

[Alenco98]

December 30, 1917
Petrograd, Russia

The morning frost clung to the church steps like stubborn parishioners refusing to leave after Mass. Father Sergey Eldarevich Patruchev swept at it with slow, deliberate strokes, his broom squeaking against the stone. In one hand, the broom; in the other, the duty of smiling politely to each congregant shuffling inside.

It had been a little over two months since Mikheil Jugashvili had appointed him Deputy for Religious Affairs. A strange appointment, considering that the Bolsheviks and the clergy were usually about as friendly as cats and buckets of water. Yet, much to Patruchev's quiet relief, Mikheil had kept his word: no burned churches, no priests strung up in town squares, no mobs smashing icons. The job was mostly paperwork—registering parishes, cataloging property, ensuring sermons didn't get too political. Compared to what he'd feared, it was… almost merciful.

But mercy from men like Mikheil was like spring in Russia: it came late, stayed briefly, and could vanish overnight.

Today felt different.

As he stood there, broom in hand, a cold ripple passed through his stomach—a priest's intuition, the same instinct that told him when a funeral was coming before the telegram arrived. He looked about. Nothing amiss: same dull-eyed workers filing past to get their seats before mass started, same faint smell of coal smoke from the factory chimneys, same Revolutionary Guards posted by the door like gargoyles with rifles.

Then he heard it.

That sound.

The rhythmic stamp of boots—not the aimless tramp of Red Guards on patrol, but the deliberate, percussive goose-step of them.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps.

They came into view moments later, black uniforms and red armbands cutting through the winter air like a blade through bread. At their head was Mikheil himself, his wife, his children, his elderly mother, and his brother-in-law. Stalin—Mikheil's twin—was conspicuously absent, as always.

"Hi, Father Patruchev!" Mikheil's voice was warm, almost boyish, as he strode forward and embraced him with the easy familiarity of an old friend. The hug was firm, not crushing—Mikheil didn't need to squeeze you to remind you he could kill you. "Sorry I couldn't see you when I arrived. I'm planning another expedition soon, so time's tight. Once again, my deepest thanks for your assistance."

"Of course, Mikheil," Patruchev replied, keeping his voice smooth, almost courtly. Yesterday's Pravda was still fresh in his mind—Mikheil had brought the Romanovs back from whatever hole they'd been hiding in. No firing squads for them, no Parisian-style guillotines. Instead, they'd been assigned to factory shifts—public humiliation in place of execution. In some ways, it was a mercy. In others, perhaps worse.

"You need anything by any chance?" Mikheil asked, casual as a shopkeeper. "Funds? Assistants to help you run the church? Security?"

"No, thank you. Your men have done a wonderful job."

"Perfect," Mikheil said, satisfied. "I'll see you at confession, then. I've got some stuff for you."

A chill went through Patruchev's bones. Stuff. The word hung in the air like incense in a sealed chapel. In Mikheil's mouth, it meant atrocities—sins he would recount with the same tone other men used for hunting stories. And yet, despite himself, Patruchev felt that gnawing, shameful curiosity. He was a priest, sworn to hear and absolve. But with Mikheil, absolution was a strange and slippery thing.

And as he watched the Revolutionary Guard march inside with Mikheil and his family, their rifles stacked in front of the church doors, the frost seemed to settle deeper into the stones beneath his feet. Something was coming. He could feel it. And in this city, under these men, that was never good news.

Mass passed without incident. Candles flickered, choirs sang the familiar hymns, and the faithful made their signs of the cross as though the world outside were not slipping further into madness with each passing week. Patruchev delivered his homily with the steady voice of habit, yet his mind wandered to the Revolutionary Guard standing at the back—silent, statuesque, and entirely out of place among the icons and incense.

When the service ended, he retreated to the confessional booth. His hands folded on his lap, he waited. The air inside was still, save for the faint scent of wax and cedar. He heard the familiar tread of boots outside before the door creaked open and Mikheil Jugashvili stepped in, settling himself like a man claiming a comfortable armchair.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he began, almost cheerfully. "It's been, what… three weeks since my last confession?"

Patruchev murmured the expected words, though his voice caught slightly.

Mikheil wasted no time. "So, the expedition went well. The Romanovs are settling into factory life. I've given them work that's… how shall I say… character-building. I visit from time to time. I don't hurt them—physically, at least. I talk. I remind them of what they used to have, and then I tell them what they have now. You'd be surprised how fast a man's eyes dull when you ask if the Tsar ever pictured himself packing rivets."

He chuckled, low and warm, as if sharing a fond anecdote. Patruchev said nothing.

"Of course, there were bandits along the way," Mikheil continued. "Filth, really. Some got the tree treatment—nailed them right up, arms out, like unwilling saints. You can tell when the voice goes, it's not from pain anymore, it's from the throat just… giving up. Others, I sent swimming. Icy river. Held them under until the current carried them off. The smart ones fought—those I respected. The stupid ones went still right away, and that's just disappointing."

Patruchev's stomach knotted. His hands tightened in his lap, but he kept his tone even. "And the rest?"

"Oh, those," Mikheil said, as if recalling a minor chore. "Some we burned. Small fires, so it lasted. The forest smelled like roasted pork for hours. Others we strung up naked by the arms for slow hangings—let them dance on their toes until their legs quit. My men smoked and joked the whole time, like it was an opera. Sometimes they burned the prisoners with the cigarette ends. I didn't stop them. You have to let soldiers have their amusements."

The booth felt smaller now, the air heavier.

"As for the Romanovs' guards," Mikheil went on, "I paid them off. Not much—vodka, some rubles, promises of things they'll never collect. Makes life easier. And when the guards wouldn't play along… well, they did eventually."

He laughed again, but there was no mirth in it. "And a few executions, of course. Quiet ones. Sometimes you have to prune the tree to keep it healthy."

Patruchev closed his eyes. He had heard every sin a man could confess—infidelity, theft, drunkenness, even murder—but never spoken with such casual warmth, as though Mikheil were describing a fishing trip. The priest gave the penance because it was his duty, murmured the absolution because it was his role. Yet inside, he wondered what forgiveness meant when the penitent left the booth fully intending to do it all again.

When Mikheil rose, he placed a hand on Patruchev's shoulder—light, almost brotherly. "Thank you, Father. You keep the church standing. I keep the wolves away. Between us, we'll get through this."

Patruchev forced a smile. He did not tell him that sometimes, it was hard to tell whether the wolves were outside the door—or sitting in the booth.

---

December 30, 1917
Petrograd, Russia

I stepped out of the confession booth like a man stepping out of a steam bath—refreshed, loose-limbed, almost glowing. I wasn't exactly a good Orthodox Christian. Scratch that—if you lined up the worst Orthodox Christians in the Russian Empire, I'd still be the one they'd keep in the back room so as not to scare the others. But confession had its uses.

For most people, it's about cleansing the soul. For me, it was… free therapy. Except instead of working through childhood trauma, I got to unload the latest catalogue of crimes, atrocities, and morally dubious "expeditions" I'd been on. And Father Patruchev—God bless his trembling hands—always sat there in stunned silence, blinking like a man who'd just been told his house was on fire. That, I admit, I found hysterical.

But enough of that. I had better things ahead—dinner, family time, maybe a roll in the sheets with my wife. Next week, another expedition. This one would be different; I'd take Aleksandra with me. We'd gallivant across Russia together, ending the war one bullet at a time. A husband-and-wife tour of carnage. Bliss.

She was still sitting in one of the pews with the children, speaking quietly to Keke. I walked up.

"You need confession next?" I asked.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I went yesterday. Besides…" her eyes glinted, "it's not like I have a laundry list of sins like you."

"Fair enough," I said with a shrug. "Let's go home, then."

The family stood, gathering coats and scarves. Around us, the congregation was thinning—some filing out into the cold, others lining up for Patruchev's confessional. The guards shifted in their posts by the doors, stamping their feet to keep warm.

We made our way to the exit. I walked with my arm wrapped around her waist, feeling the warmth of her body through the layers. I looked at her face—still beautiful, even after all this madness. Being reunited with her after everything felt like those first months after Kato died. That same strange mixture of grief and new closeness, forged in the fire of shared loss.

We stepped out into the icy air. I pulled her in front of me and kissed her. And then—

—fireworks. That's what it sounded like at first. A rapid, staccato crack. My brain almost wanted to believe it was a celebration.

Aleksandra jerked against me.

"What—?" she gasped, and then slumped in my arms.

The guards moved instantly, scattering, shouting. Somewhere to my left, I saw them tackle a young man to the ground. But my eyes went to her back. Three neat holes. Blood blooming through her coat.

"No. No fucking way." I eased her down to the ground, cradling her head. Her face was pale, eyes wide, the fear in them as raw as I'd ever seen. "Medic! Now!" I roared.

Keke, the children, Aleksander—they rushed over. My hands were moving before my mind caught up, stripping off my coat, pressing it against the wounds.

"Come on, Sashiko." The name slipped out before I even thought. I never called her that. Why now? "Sweetie, don't. Not like this. Stay with me. Hey—stay with me!"

"Mikheil…" her voice was small, fragile. "I'm cold."

"Hang on," I whispered, though my voice broke. "Just hang on. Please."

But then… nothing. Her chest stilled. Her eyes—still open—lost that light.

"Sashiko?" My voice was too quiet. "Aleksandra?"

No answer. No warmth.

I looked back at the family. Their faces were carved in shock—Keke's mouth trembling, the children frozen like statues. Even Aleksander, usually a rock, looked hollow.

I pressed my lips together, forced my face into something neutral, and handed her body to Aleksander. My legs carried me toward the knot of guards restraining the shooter before my brain told them to.

The man was young, no older than twenty. There was hate in his eyes—pure, uncut.

"Couldn't you have waited a few seconds before trying to kill me?" I asked him evenly.

He spat at me. One of the soldiers cocked his fist, but I raised my hand.

"Take him to Smolny," I said, my voice flat. "Get me Yagoda. And Dzerzhinsky."

I looked at the man for a long moment. He'd taken her from me. At that moment, I felt like a piece of me died. I remembered Joe at the funeral, crying, the grief swallowing him. Wanting to jump into the grave. I didn't fully understand why he did it, it was sad yes, losing someone you love is sad. But feeling it now, and the fact that it wasn't sickness but an assassin's bullet.

"I'm going to kill you slowly." I said. "But first I'll kill every one of your friends and family that I can get my hands on if you have any. Wife, kids, mom, dad, friends, your fucking dog. I'll kill them all in front of you, I'll make you watch as I torture them. Then I'll work on you."

The guards looked at me, the assasin looked at me. It was the same look the Romanovs gave me when I fired that shot in Tobolsk. That I was being serious.

-------

Excerpt from Spartan761-History's YouTube video on the life of Mikheil Jugashvili titled - The Red Richelieu

The Red Terror didn't come out of nowhere. Its roots were planted the moment the Bolsheviks decided that democracy was a quaint, bourgeois hobby and dissolved the Constituent Assembly. They didn't just burn the bridge to parliamentary politics; they salted the ashes, then posted armed guards to make sure no one rebuilt it.

But while the machinery of repression was being prepared in the background, it took a personal tragedy to let the beast out. That tragedy arrived on December 30th, in the form of a botched assassination attempt that didn't kill its intended target, but instead took the life of Aleksandra Jugashvili—wife of Mikheil Jugashvili.

To say Mikheil took it personally would be like saying the Black Death was a minor inconvenience. Aleksandra's death didn't just wound him—it gave him the perfect pretext to do what he and Dzerzhinsky had been itching to do since the Revolution: purge the living hell out of everyone who so much as breathed in a way they found suspicious.

And so, the first shots of the Red Terror were not fired by some anonymous KGB agent in a basement. No, they were fired by the left SRs. What followed became known as Bloody January, a grim week long overture during the first week of the new year. It was a warning to Russia: the gloves were off, the knives were out, and the new regime had no intention of letting go of its enemies—at least, not until those enemies stopped moving.