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

[Alenco98]

December 30, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia

Night had fallen in the city, and in my heart, but that didn't matter. The room I was in smelled faintly of dust and old paper—a bureaucrat's tomb. A single bare bulb swung overhead, its light cutting sharp angles across the walls.

The boy—Pavel Andreyvich Solkovsky—sat tied to the chair, rope biting into his wrists, a gag in his mouth. I had promised I wouldn't touch him. Yet. Promises are important to keep—until they aren't. The only thing between us was a table. And there was an empty chair next to the one I sat in.

I wasn't sad. I wasn't mourning. What I felt was pure, undiluted rage, coiled tight in my chest like a steel spring. I could shoot him now, end it quickly—but that would be like throwing away a fine wine without savoring it. No, this had to be slow. He had to taste his death.

A knock at the door.

"Enter." My voice was flat, controlled. A pane of glass over a volcano.

Dzerzhinsky came in first—expression carved from stone—followed by Yagoda, whose eyes flicked briefly to the bound boy, then away. Stalin trailed them, leaning against the doorway with his hands in his pockets, watching as if this was just another meeting about grain quotas.

"Dzerzhinsky," I said without looking at the boy, "did you get what I asked for?"

"I did." Felix approached the table, set down a brown envelope. His fingers lingered a second too long on the paper before letting go, as though to remind me this wasn't his style.

I opened it, scanned the contents. Pavel Andreyvich Solkovsky. Nineteen. Parents: Natassia and Andrey. Sister: Irina. Brother: Alexei. Friends. A lover. A whole life, neatly typed and now mine to dismantle.

I handed the envelope to Yagoda. "Did you gather them?"

"They're outside," he said, his voice neutral, but his gaze darted to Stalin for a fraction of a second—looking for some kind of approval or permission. Stalin gave none.

"Bring his lover in first."

I finally looked at the boy. His eyes had gone wide, pupils like pinpricks. His chest rose and fell faster now. Good. Fear was seasoning—it made the meat tender.

The door opened again. A woman stepped in—young, pretty, the kind of pretty that doesn't last long in this city. Probably Joe's age when Kato died. Maybe younger.

Without a word, I drew my pistol and shot her in the head.

The crack snapped through the air. She folded to the floor like a ragdoll, her blood creeping toward the leg of the table.

Yagoda flinched—just a twitch—but quickly smoothed his face. Stalin didn't move, didn't blink; his gaze stayed fixed on me, as if measuring the efficiency of what he'd just seen. Dzerzhinsky's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, his eyes flicking to the body, then back to me—judging, not shocked.

"Ungag him," I said.

Yagoda stepped forward and yanked the cloth from the boy's mouth.

"You—" Pavel's voice cracked. "You bastard!!!"

"Careful," I said softly. "You're on thin ice already, and I've got your whole family to work with."

He spat on the floor. "You think this will make a difference?"

I smiled, thin and sharp. "No, Pavel. This is just me venting my anger. Look at your lover, you killed her the second you pulled the trigger and my wife died." I leaned forward, resting my hands on the table. "And vengeance… is best enjoyed slowly."

I turned to Yagoda. "Bring in his mother."

The boy thrashed in his chair, shouting curses. Stalin's lip twitched—the faintest suggestion of approval. Dzerzhinsky's eyes narrowed, arms crossed, already weighing how much of this was revenge and how much could be justified as state security. Yagoda simply nodded and stepped out, but I saw the stiffness in his shoulders; he wanted this over quickly.

Then I started with a song, Singing in the snow because my wife liked it when I sang the English part at the beginning. "Ohh baby you're my baby, so happy Christmas tonight."

Unfortunately this was interrupted when Natassia Solkovskaya entered, flanked by two guards. She was mid-forties, still holding herself with the composure of a woman who believed manners could protect her from reality. Her eyes darted from me to her son, then to the body on the floor.

"Sit her down next to me," I said.

No ropes—yet. I wanted her to have the illusion of safety for just a moment.

I leaned forward again, fixing Pavel with my gaze. "There are two ways this ends for you, boy. And for the rest of your charming little family. Option one—you tell me everything. Who your associates are. What group you work with. Where they live. You talk, and I give you all a gift: a quick death. One bullet. You, your mother, your father, your siblings—fast. Clean. You'll all look like you fell asleep."

Natassia's lips trembled. She said nothing.

"Option two…" I let the silence stretch. "You don't talk. And then, Pavel, we do it my way. I will have them all tortured. One by one. Right here. While you watch. I will make you watch until you're crying blood. And then—when they are nothing but screams and broken bones—I will burn them alive in front of you. One by one. All of them. And when the last one is ash… then your torture starts."

The boy's breathing quickened. His mother turned to him, voice breaking: "Tell him."

"Mama—"

"Tell him for god's sake!"

"Oh, don't bring the lord into this," I said lightly, almost amused. "He left the room when your son decided to murder my wife."

Stalin's eyes stayed on me, cool and appraising, like a man watching an experiment he expected to work. Yagoda avoided looking at the boy, staring instead at a crack in the plaster. Dzerzhinsky's mouth was a hard line; I could feel him filing this away for a later conversation about discipline and the Revolution.

I steepled my fingers. "So, Pavel… which ending do you want? Quick and easy or slow and painful. And please, please choose the slow option. I want to see you suffer like I am right now."

Pavel's chest heaved, the ropes creaking with every strained breath. His mother's hand was trembling on the table. The silence stretched until it was nearly unbearable.

Finally, his voice cracked. "It was the Left SRs."

I cocked my head. "The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries?"

"Yes," he spat. "You're a tyrant. All of you. You and your brother and every damn Bolshevik. We knew this was coming. You were just the first. There are others. Lists. Names. You're all—"

I raised my hand slightly, and he went quiet—not because he wanted to, but because he saw the smile spreading across my face.

"Oh, Pavel," I said, almost tender. "Spare me with the whole, you're all so and so bit, it's boring."

Stalin shifted slightly in the doorway, his expression unreadable, but I could see the gears turning—Left SRs, organized assassination plots, lists. He wasn't thinking about the morality; he was calculating the counterstroke.

Dzerzhinsky's gaze snapped to Pavel, the first flicker of genuine interest I'd seen in his eyes all night. "Names," he said flatly. "Now."

Pavel laughed—a raw, ugly sound. "I don't know them all. But I know enough. And when they come for you, no one will stop them. Not even you," he added, looking straight at me.

I leaned in until our noses were almost touching. "Pavel… I'm not going to stop them. I'm going to find them. I'm going to bring them here. And then—" I gestured lazily toward the cooling corpse of his lover, "—I'm going to do this, and worse, until they wish they'd died before they were born."

Yagoda finally spoke, voice low. "If he's telling the truth, this is more than a personal matter."

I chuckled. "Oh, it's still personal, Genrikh. It just has the bonus of being professionally useful."

Pavel tried to meet my eyes without flinching. He almost made it. "You can't kill an idea," he said.

I patted his cheek. "No. But I can kill everyone who has it and their families, down to the fucking babies. Now, names, locations. Or I'll stab one of your mother's eyes out. You have 30 seconds, one."

Pavel's jaw worked like he was chewing glass. His eyes flicked to his mother, then back to me. The defiance started to crumble—rage giving way to something else.

"They're here," he muttered.

I leaned back, folding my arms. "Names, Pavel."

He hesitated, and then it poured out in a rush. "Grigori Stepanovich Shilov. Ivan Dorofeyevich Markov. Yevgeniya Pleshko. All in Petrograd. Safehouses on Bolshaya Morskaya Street, one near the Haymarket. They got their orders from Moscow—from Yakov Blumkin's people. He's running it with Spiridonova's blessing."

Dzerzhinsky's head tilted almost imperceptibly at the mention of Blumkin. Yagoda's eyes narrowed, his mind already mapping the raids. Stalin, still leaning in the doorway, let out a quiet hum. "And Moscow?" he said slowly.

Pavel nodded. "You're all targets. Petrograd first, then Moscow. You were the first."

I let the words hang there. My pulse didn't quicken—if anything, I felt calmer now. The outlines of my evening's work were sharpening into something much bigger, something with more legs.

"Felix," I said without looking at him, "I guess you know what needs to be done?"

Dzerzhinsky stepped forward, his voice clipped. "They'll be taken alive. Interrogated properly."

"Of course," I said, smiling faintly. "Alive. At first."

Yagoda spoke up, almost cautiously. "And in Moscow?"

Stalin finally moved from the doorway, stepping closer. His voice was quiet but carried weight. "In Moscow, we send a message. This ends before it starts."

I turned back to Pavel, resting my hands on the table. "Thank you, Pavel. You've just upgraded yourself from 'slow and brutal death' to 'quick and painless.' That's progress. Not much, but progress."

He glared at me, but I could see the fear now—thin cracks running through the defiance. "Bring the rest of the family in."

The door opened again, and the rest of the Solkovsky family was marched in under guard. Father, sister, brother. All pale, silent, eyes darting to the body on the floor, then to Pavel, then to me.

"Line them up," I said.

The guards arranged them against the far wall. Natassia's eyes were glassy but fixed on her son. The father stood stiffly, as if refusing to give me the satisfaction of seeing him shake. The sister was trembling so hard she could barely stand, and the brother kept trying to catch glimpses of the gagged Pavel.

I walked slowly down the line, hands behind my back, boots clicking on the floor. "You're all going to die," I said plainly, as if I were informing them of a change in train schedules. "The only question is whether you do it with a priest or with cigarettes."

They stared at me in stunned silence.

I turned to Pavel. "And you, boy? Priest or cigarettes? It's a courtesy you never spared my wife when you shot her in the back."

He swallowed hard, eyes wet. "Priest," he muttered.

I looked back at the rest of them. "Well? Speak up."

"Priest," Natassia said quickly, voice breaking. The others nodded.

"Very pious family," I said with a mock warmth, clapping my hands together softly. "Felix, make the arrangements."

Dzerzhinsky's face was unreadable, but I caught the faintest tightening of his jaw as he turned to one of his men and murmured an order. Stalin watched from the side, expression impassive—this wasn't about mercy to him, only procedure. Yagoda didn't meet anyone's eyes; he seemed intent on the far wall.

I strolled back to the table, leaning on it casually. "You'll all have your prayers. And then, once your souls are tidied up… well, we'll move on to the part Pavel's earned all for himself."

Pavel tried to hold my gaze but couldn't. The moment his eyes dropped, I smiled.

"Good. Then it's settled."

Stalin, Dzerzhinsky and Yagoda left the room. It was only me and the guards along with the family I was going to murder. I didn't speak to them, no need to speak to corpses. But I sang, over and over again. "Ohh baby you're my baby, so happy Christmas tonight, shining down free in your eyes hold me tightly in your sweet arms."

Over and over again, Mikiko Noda'a singing in the snow. Only now I didn't have my wife with me. Only this anger, only this emptiness in my soul. So what if I killed them, it wouldn't bring her back. Hell, Aleksandra was a gentle woman, she probably wouldn't have minded letting them go if she survived.

But she didn't, and I was angry.

So I kept singing. "Ohh baby you're my baby, so happy Christmas tonight, shining down free in your eyes, hold me tightly in your sweet arms." Over and over, that same intro. All while remembering my wife's face when I sang it. A few tears streaming. The guards looked unsettled, the family even more so. I just wanted to hold Aleksandra, tell her how much I loved her and make love until the sun came up.

Around 15 minutes later, the door opened again and in shuffled Father Sergey Eldarevich Patruchev, still in his cassock, snow clinging to the hem. His eyes darted from the family lined up against the wall to me, and I could see it—the flicker of recognition, followed by disapproval so strong it almost radiated heat.

I composed myself and I grinned. "Father Sergey, thank you for coming on short notice. You've got some last rites to handle."

His lips tightened. "You know I don't approve of this, Mikheil."

"Of course you don't," I said lightly. "But you'll do it anyway, because if you don't, I'll find someone less squeamish and they'll botch it. Besides…" I gave him a mock-confiding smile, "I'll just confess next week anyway. You know how this works."

He closed his eyes briefly, then stepped forward, murmuring the prayers. I stood beside him the whole time, arms folded, watching each family member bow their head in turn. Pavel kept his gaze fixed on the floor, jaw clenched.

When Sergey was done, I patted him on the shoulder. "Excellent work, Father. Truly dignified."

Then I began.

One shot. The father dropped like a sack of flour.

Another shot. The sister crumpled to her knees before falling forward.

A third shot. The brother's head snapped back, and he slid down the wall.

Natassia was last before Pavel. She didn't plead, didn't scream. Just crossed herself and waited. The shot was clean.

Now it was just Pavel.

I walked over slowly, savoring the sound of my boots on the wooden floor. "Your turn. What was it again? Priest or cigarettes?"

His voice was hoarse. "Priest."

I gestured toward Sergey. "Go on, Father. One more soul for the road."

Sergey hesitated, then stepped forward, speaking the words with the same gravity as before. I watched Pavel's lips move faintly along with him—whether in prayer or just trembling, I couldn't tell.

When it was over, I looked at Sergey. "Thank you, Father. That will be all. You can go."

He lingered for a moment, meeting my eyes. There was no fear there—just the heavy weight of judgment. I smiled at him.

Then I raised the pistol and put a single round through Pavel's gut. His body jerked, then he screamed.

"You should be grateful, better to bleed out on the floor than being burnt alive after a torture session. Think about what you've done as you bleed out. Guards. Make him look at his family's corpses as he bleeds. Once he's dead, bayonet him to make sure he's dead then burn his and the families bodies. Throw them in the Neva."

The guards only nodded as I walked out.

The rage was there, it was only blunted. But it wouldn't go away.

December 30, 1917
Winter Palace – Throne Room
Petrograd, Russia

I walked in and could almost hear my boots echo on the polished floor, though the Committee was already seated around a long, scarred table hauled in for the meeting. I didn't slow my stride. I didn't smile. I probably still smelled of gunpowder and charred meat. Good. Let them smell it. Let them remember what I'd done an hour ago.

I didn't say a word at first. I slid into my chair — directly across from Lenin, just off-center from the massive throne itself — and let the discussion wash over me: food shipments from the Volga, shortages of coal, worker morale in the Vyborg district. The usual revolutionary small talk.

That pressure in my chest was still there. Sashiko. Aleksandra. My wife. My anchor. The warmth in my life. Lying on the cold stone of a church floor with blood blooming through her coat. A part of me was already dead, and the part still alive was sharpening its bayonets.

Then I noticed them watching me — half the table had gone quiet, eyes flicking in my direction.

"Do I have so—" I stopped, sniffed once, and wiped at the corner of my eye. My fingers came away damp. "Sorry about that." My voice caught briefly. I took a slow, deep breath, made a show of steadying my hands, then wiped the tears again. "Carry on. Don't worry about me." My voice was as flat and monotone as I could manage.

No one looked reassured.

Stalin was seated further down, one arm resting lazily on the table, his eyes on me for just a beat too long. It wasn't pity — it was calculation. Is he in control enough to be useful? Or is he about to take the whole building down with him?

Dzerzhinsky sat ramrod straight, pen scratching against a pad, not looking up. But his shoulders were tenser than usual. I knew exactly what was behind that blank face — disapproval. Not of the killing. Never the killing. But the fact I'd done it hot, not cold. Felix preferred his terror like a surgeon preferred his scalpel — clean, exact, impersonal. Mine was a butcher's cleaver.

I let the silence stretch, then said, "The Left SRs need to be crushed. Completely. Pavel Solkovsky gave us names, addresses. Petrograd first — I'll work with Dzerzhinsky to clean it up, hard and fast. No speeches. No warnings. Then I take five thousand of my Guard Corps to Moscow. We hit their leadership before they have a chance to scatter. After that, Ukraine — I start escorting the Czechoslovaks to Murmansk."

Kamenev shifted uncomfortably. "Five thousand? That's a large deployment—"

"Better large than dead," I cut in.

I leaned forward, eyes sweeping the table. "And for that escort, I want Lenin's full authorization — in writing — to do whatever is necessary. If Red Guards or Soviets interfere, we put them in the ground. The Czechoslovaks are disciplined, armed, and dangerous. Piss them off, and they'll start killing our men in retaliation. We treat them carefully, or we don't bother."

A few murmurs passed around the table.

"And since we're talking about security for the revolution," I went on, "The Revolutionary Guard Corps is a guard corps. An attack on me is an attack on all of you. From now on, every member of this Committee and their families are to be guarded at all times — minimum of five guards. Not the factory type. Mine. And you all wear what my men wear: helmets and bulletproof armor. You might think it's excessive — until you hear the fireworks outside your church."

The silence that followed was thick.

Lenin finally spoke, leaning forward, fingers steepled. "You've acted decisively today, Mikheil. The Left SRs must be repressed, yes. Moscow especially. But personal grief is not the same as Party necessity. We must ensure your… methods… serve the Revolution, not private vengeance."

I smiled faintly. "Comrade, my private vengeance and the Revolution's needs just happen to be holding hands and skipping in the same direction right now. You can call it whatever you like."

Trotsky's eyes narrowed. "We can't have Petrograd turned into a theatre for your vendettas. Yes, crush the Left SRs — but under the Party's authority, not as some Georgian morality play where you're both judge and executioner."

I met his gaze and held it until he looked away. "Don't worry, Trotsky," I said softly. "I'll make sure the curtain call says approved by the Central Committee."

Bukharin, ever the optimist, tried a different tack. "We have to be careful not to alienate the workers with… heavy-handed repression. We can't afford to look like the Okhrana."

I leaned back, smirking. "Nikolai, if the workers see us wearing helmets, maybe they'll think we plan to stick around long enough to help them. Or at least to make sure the Left SRs don't get to them first."

Sverdlov tapped his pen. "The Petrograd purge should proceed immediately. The Moscow operation… we should authorize troop movements but finalize plans after Petrograd is secure."

Lenin nodded. "Agreed. Petrograd purge — approved. Mikheil and Dzerzhinsky will coordinate. Moscow — preliminary approval. Czechoslovak escort with full discretion — approved. Committee security: minimum three guards, five for those under direct threat, armor optional."

"Optional armor is still armor for the smart ones," I said.

The vote went quickly:

Petrograd purge: unanimous.

Moscow strike after Petrograd: approved, Stalin and Sverdlov to monitor.

Czechoslovak escort with full discretion: passed, Trotsky abstaining.

Committee security: passed, Kamenev muttering about "militarizing the leadership."

I sat back, folded my arms, and let my eyes wander around the throne room The Tsar had sat here once, surrounded by courtiers and gold. Now it sat empty, dusty, and irrelevant. Like my heart.

---------

December 30, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia

The meeting was over, but it didn't feel like a victory. No one walked out talking strategy or boasting about decisions. It was just footsteps echoing down the marble halls, each man wrapped in his own thoughts.

Dinner was a quiet affair. The long table in Smolny's dining room felt more like a funeral reception than a meal. Stalin sat at my right, silent, his eyes occasionally flicking toward me but never lingering. Across from him, my younger brother Aleksander methodically cut his food into tiny pieces he didn't eat. My mother, Keke, cradled baby Besarion in her arms, rocking him gently. Iosif and Kato sat stiffly beside each other, their eyes fixed on their plates, chewing without appetite.

I didn't speak. None of us did. The clink of cutlery was the only sound until Keke softly hummed a lullaby to calm the baby.

When the plates were cleared, I stood without a word and made my way down the dim hallway to my quarters — the same ones I had shared with Aleksandra.

The air in the room was colder than I expected. I closed the door, and the latch seemed louder than it should've been. The bed was still made the way she liked it, the blanket folded back with that little crease at the corner. Her hairbrush sat on the vanity, a few strands of her dark hair still tangled in the bristles.

On the desk was our wedding photograph — the one with the two of us standing stiffly, unsmiling in that formal Georgian way, but with our hands clasped tight. I picked it up, my thumb tracing the outline of her face.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it for a long time before I realized I was humming. No — singing. Mikiko Noda once again, singing in the snow.

"Oh baby you're my baby, so happy Christmas tonight, shining down free in your eyes, hold me tightly in your sweet arms."

The words came slow, unsteady. My voice cracked halfway through the verse, and I kept going anyway. By the time I reached the Japanese part of the song my throat had tightened, and the picture frame was wet in my hands.

It was ridiculous, really — a song about snow, here in Petrograd, where it never stopped falling.

My vision blurred. I pressed the picture to my chest, bent forward, and the sound came out of me — low, raw, almost a growl at first, then breaking into something closer to a sob.

I stayed there for what felt like hours, singing in fragments, stopping when my voice gave out, starting again until the words dissolved into silence.

When I finally set the picture back on the desk, my hands were shaking.

I wasn't done with the Left SRs. Not by a long shot.

But for the first time all day, I felt the weight of what they'd actually taken from me.

 

[Alenco98]

Excerpt from Memorandum – American Embassy, Moscow
Date: September 7, 1988
Subject: Observations on Non-American Cultural Influence and State Media Policy in the USSR

Since the Start of Stalin's rule, the Soviet Union has allowed and encouraged the circulation of foreign cultural products, primarily from Europe, Japan, and Latin America. This trend continues in the present decade and, in some respects, has accelerated significantly. While American cultural imports are not formally banned, their circulation remains subject to significant restrictions. U.S. books, films, and music may be possessed only for private use, and all such materials must be registered with the Committee for State Security (KGB). This requirement—effectively a form of surveillance over cultural consumption—applies exclusively to American content; media originating from other nations is exempt from this process, with the exception of politically charged media that is perceived to a challenge to Soviet ideology, which is subject to the same registration requirements.

In recent years, the global popularity of Japanese and European animation, comics, and music, as well as Latin American television dramas and pop culture, has created a strategic opportunity for Soviet authorities to increasingly marginalize American cultural influence without resorting to overt repression. Rather than relying solely on confiscations, prosecutions, or police raids—methods typical of other authoritarian regimes—the Soviet government appears to be employing a deliberate policy of cultural saturation. By flooding the domestic market with non-American foreign entertainment, officials can effectively dilute demand for American media, pushing it to the fringes of the black and grey markets.

Japanese and Latin American exports have proven especially popular among Soviet citizens. Brazilian and Mexican telenovelas, Spanish-language pop singers, and various television serials from across the Southern Hemisphere are broadcast regularly on state television and have even toured the country. In many cases, the original language audio is preserved, ostensibly as a nod to authenticity and cultural exchange. However, by retaining the original soundtrack, Soviet censors are able to control public interpretation via subtitled translations that omit, soften, or entirely reframe politically sensitive dialogue. In practice, this allows the regime to claim openness while still exerting tight editorial control.

A recent and illustrative example is the nationwide theatrical release of the Japanese animated film Akira. The film was screened widely across Soviet cities earlier this summer. As with other imported works, the authorities permitted the original Japanese audio but carefully edited the Russian subtitles to remove or neutralize politically charged content—particularly dialogue that might be construed as commentary on state power, social unrest, or generational disillusionment. The result is a version of the film that retains its visual and technical appeal while muting any elements that could provoke political reflection.

By embracing non American foreign imports, the regime can present an image of cultural openness to its citizens and the international community while safeguarding ideological boundaries. The broader effect is a gradual erosion of underground demand for American cultural products, not through fear of punishment, but through the calculated offering of sanctioned, state-filtered alternatives.

---

December 31, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia

I woke to the pale light of winter crawling across the ceiling, the kind of light that made the air feel colder just by existing. This room — a former classroom with peeling chalkboards and cracked plaster — had been our home inside these walls. Mine and Aleksandra's.

I sat up slowly, my eyes drawn, as they had been every morning, to the side of the bed where she used to sleep.

No more Aleksandra. No more leaning over to kiss her awake. No more burying my face against her shoulder after a long day. No more of her laugh cutting through the gloom. No more of her scent.

I leaned over to her pillow and pressed my face into it, inhaling. The faint trace of her scent and perfume was still there — floral, warm, unmistakable. And then it hit me again, like a bayonet sliding between the ribs. My throat tightened, my eyes burned.

"Sashiko…" The word came out as a whimper, a plea. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

The smell wouldn't last. I knew that. Scents are treacherous — they fade, like morning dew burning off in the sun. In a few weeks it would be gone entirely, and all I'd have left would be her memory. And memories were crueler than death because they stayed long enough to mock you.

I stood and crossed to her drawer, pulling it open. Everything was still there, untouched since the night before. Her clothes were folded in the same meticulous way she always insisted on, like even fabric deserved dignity. I let my fingers rest on each piece.

The beautiful red dress she wore when we stayed in, the one that seemed to glow under candlelight. The polka-dotted dress I gave her for her thirty-fifth birthday — she had laughed at it at first, then wore it until the seams threatened to give. And tucked neatly in a box at the corner, the jewelry I'd bought her with the money I skimmed during my time as a cop. Stolen rubles turned into silver and gemstones — a fitting transformation, I'd thought at the time.

I lifted the box, ran my thumb over the clasp, and opened it. The pieces caught the morning light, throwing little shards of red and gold across the wall. They looked just the same as the day I gave them to her. The only difference was that she'd never wear them again.

The grief was a physical weight pressing down on my chest. For a moment I wanted to smash the box against the wall, scatter the jewelry across the floor like shrapnel. But I didn't. I closed it gently, set it back in place. It was going to be a long day, I went and got changed then went to get breakfast, I couldn't murder on an empty stomach.

The walk from my quarters to the dining room felt longer than it ever had, every step echoing in the stone hallways. I passed guards in black helmets who snapped to attention when I walked by. And saluted. I didn't return the gesture. I didn't even look at them. I just kept moving until I pushed open the heavy double doors and the smell of porridge and black bread drifted out.

They were all there already. Aleksander — my brother-in-law — sitting stiffly with his hands folded on the table. Keke, my mother, rocking Besarion in her arms with a slow rhythm, her eyes downcast. Stalin was seated off to one side, a cigarette between his fingers, smoke curling up toward the chandelier, I didn't bother to stop him like I always did, what was the point? Yakov — the nephew I'd raised like my own — stared down at his bowl, not touching the spoon. Across from him were my children: Aleksander, Kato, and Iosif, all quiet, all staring at their plates like they were afraid to make eye contact with me.

The room was silent except for the scrape of a spoon against a bowl.

I took my seat at the head of the table. My voice came out low, even. "I'm sorry."

Every head turned, except for Stalin, who just kept smoking and watching me through the haze.

"My carelessness got Aleksandra killed." The words tasted like metal in my mouth. "I let her be exposed, and I let someone close enough to do it. That won't happen again. To any of you."

I set my elbows on the table, leaning forward, eyes moving from face to face. "From now on, all of you have guards. All the time. Five minimum. Helmets. Bulletproof vests. No exceptions. If you don't like it, too bad. This isn't a debate."

Keke's eyes lifted, just for a moment. "Mikheil—"

I cut her off with a glance. "No exceptions, Mother."

She closed her mouth and looked back down at the baby in her arms, stroking his hair.

I went on. "I'll have my men teach the kids how to shoot. How to defend themselves. If someone comes for you, you put them down and you don't ask questions. The only way I'm burying any of you is if you die in bed, of old age, surrounded by family or illness. Anything else, and I'll make the man who caused it wish he'd never been born and kill his whole family."

The silence was heavier now.

Aleksander (my brother in law) gave a slow nod, though his eyes were shadowed. Yakov looked uneasy, like he wanted to say something but didn't dare. Kato's hands clenched in her lap, a mix of fear and excitement flickering across her face — she liked the idea of learning to shoot, but not why she'd have to. Iosif just nodded, sniffing a little.

Besarion gurgled softly in Keke's arms, the only sound in the room that wasn't soaked in tension.

I leaned back, exhaling slowly, my hands curling into fists in my lap. "I feel like someone tore my heart out," I said, my voice low, "and I refuse to feel that again. For anyone. You hear me? Anyone touches you, I will kill them and everything and everyone they ever loved. There will only be corpses to bury."

Nobody answered. They didn't have to.

We began to eat.

The silence that followed my words was almost physical — a thick, pressing thing that settled over the table.

They didn't argue. They didn't even nod. They just… kept eating. Spoons scraping bowls, teeth tearing at black bread. Even the sound of Stalin's cigarette tapping against the ashtray seemed loud in the room.

Aleksander (my brother-in-law) focused on his food like it was the most important job in the world. Keke fed Besarion with her free hand, never looking up. Yakov's jaw worked steadily as he chewed, but I could see him glance at the children every so often, worry etched in the corners of his eyes.

Kato ate slowly, mechanically, like a soldier on rations. Iosif picked at his bread more than he ate it. The younger Aleksander — my brother in law's namesake — finished quickly but stayed seated, staring at his empty bowl and sobbing a little. Besarion babbled softly in Keke's arms, blissfully unaware of the lead weight in the air.

Nobody said a word. Breakfast had become an exercise in pretending the man at the head of the table hadn't just laid down rules with the finality of a firing squad.

When the plates were empty, chairs scraped back one by one. I stood, pushing mine in slowly. Stalin rose too, smoothing his coat, and Aleksander followed, buttoning his jacket.

Before leaving, I stepped around the table. First to Keke — I bent down, kissed her forehead. She smelled of bread and soap. "I love you so much mom," I told her quietly. Her hand squeezed my arm, but she didn't speak.

I moved to my children. I kissed the top of Iosif's head, gripped Kato's shoulder until she looked up at me, hugged Aleksander hard enough that he squeaked. "I love you so much," I said to each of them. Not goodbye. Just the truth, as raw as I could make it.

Besarion was still in Keke's arms. I kissed him gently, feeling his tiny fingers curl around mine. "Especially you, little one," I whispered.

Then I straightened, nodded to Stalin and Aleksander, and the three of us walked out together. The doors shut behind us, leaving the smell of bread and tobacco behind.

The cold hit me the second we stepped outside of Smolny— that sharp, dry winter air that felt like it could slice your lungs if you breathed too deeply. Stalin walked at my right, silent and watchful as ever, a faint plume of smoke trailing from the cigarette clenched between his fingers. Aleksander was on my left, his collar turned up against the wind, his face tight and pale.

We crossed the courtyard toward the main gates, the frost crunching under our boots. Beyond the iron bars, a convoy waited — black-lacquered trucks idling, their exhaust curling into the air like lazy ghosts.

Yagoda stood at the head of it, wrapped in his heavy overcoat, his hat pulled low. Tukhachevsky was beside him, looking as immaculate as always, his gloves spotless, his posture the sort of thing that made parade-ground instructors weep with joy. Behind them, men stood in formation, rifles slung, black helmets catching the pale sunlight.

I walked straight up to Yagoda. "Genrikh," I said flatly, "you're expanding the guard."

He gave a small nod. "How far?"

"Five guards minimum for every Central Committee member and their families, down to the fucking babies. Mandatory bulletproof vests and helmets. No exceptions."

I jabbed a finger at his chest. "Pick the best of the best. Separate them from the Revolutionary Guard Corps entirely. They'll be their own unit — the Guard Regiment. Elite. Unbreakable. You organize it however you want, but if you fail me…" I let the pause hang until his eyes met mine, "…it'll be your head on a platter."

Yagoda's lips pressed into a thin line. "Understood."

I stepped past him to Tukhachevsky. "Mikhail, are the men ready?"

He gave a sharp nod. "They're equipped and standing by."

"Good," I said, my voice dropping into something darker, almost casual. "We have SRs to massacre."

Tukhachevsky didn't flinch — if anything, I caught the faintest flicker of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

Behind me, Stalin exhaled smoke through his nose, the faintest trace of amusement in his eyes. Aleksander glanced between us, his jaw tight, but said nothing.

"Let's get moving," I said, stepping toward the lead truck.

---

December 31, 1917
Winter Palace – throne Room
Petrograd, Russia

The Winter Palace throne room was colder than Smolny, and it wasn't just the draft. The high ceilings and marble floors seemed to suck the heat out of the air. Dzerzhinsky was waiting when we arrived, flanked by his National guardsmen — hard-eyed, in long coats that hid their weapons but not their intent. A table had been cleared, maps of Petrograd pinned down by pistols and paperweights.

He didn't waste time with pleasantries. "Per Lenin's orders," he said, his voice flat and clipped, "they are to be taken alive unless they resist."

From inside his coat, he produced a folded sheet of paper and handed it to me. I unfolded it slowly. The names glared up at me in neat handwriting — each one a Left SR leader, each one walking around this city right now, breathing air Aleksandra would never breathe again.

I read the list once, committing each name to memory. My eyes didn't leave the page, but my mind was already walking into their apartments, already hearing the screams, already deciding which ones would 'resist.'

I looked up at Felix. He was watching me with that granite face of his, trying to read whether I was going to follow Lenin's orders or my own.

I didn't say a word. I just nodded once.

Dzerzhinsky gave a short nod in return and stepped back, signaling his men to start preparing. The room moved into motion — boots on marble, the click of rifle bolts, the scrape of chairs as maps were pulled closer.

Stalin, standing off to the side, watched me over the rim of his cigarette. Aleksander was by the door, leaning against the wall, silent but alert. Tukachevsky had taken up a position by the maps, already tracing routes with his finger, his mind turning over logistics.

I slipped the list into my coat pocket, close to my chest. I could feel it there like a second heartbeat.

Alive unless they resist.

By the time the trucks rolled out, the city was still half-asleep under a sheet of frost. The streets were quiet except for the growl of engines and the crunch of tires on snow. The Guard Regiment rode in the lead trucks — red helmets, black coats, rifles resting between their knees. Behind them came Dzerzhinsky's National guard detachments, their long overcoats hiding the steel underneath.

The list in my pocket was warm from my body heat, every name etched in my mind.

We hit the first address just as the sun was turning the snow on the rooftops to gold. The guards went in hard — no knocks, no warnings. Doors splintered, boots slammed against the floorboards, shouts in Russian and Georgian filling the air. Most of them froze when they saw the rifles. A few ran. One pulled a pistol and got a bullet through the arm for his trouble.

The orders were to take them alive unless they resisted. My men knew how to make "resisting" a very broad category, but we stuck to Lenin's line for now.

The trucks filled quickly. The arrested were shoved inside, wrists tied, heads down. Some tried to shout slogans — "Long live the Socialist Revolutionaries!" — but it always trailed off when a rifle butt nudged their ribs.

By midday, the convoy was a chain of trucks snaking back to the Winter Palace. The gates opened for us, and the guards waved us through. The snow in the courtyard was already churned into dirty slush by boot heels and tire treads.

Inside the throne room, the arrests were funneled into lines. The imperial grandeur made it all the more obscene — the Left SRs standing where the Tsar once greeted ambassadors, now with their hats in their hands and the cold still clinging to their coats.

They were herded into groups under the chandeliers. Dzerzhinsky stood off to one side, clipboard in hand, calling out names and checking them off. I walked the lines slowly, hands behind my back, letting my eyes sweep over each face. Some glared at me. Some wouldn't meet my gaze at all.

One of them — an older man with a thin, ragged beard — muttered, "This isn't justice."

I stopped in front of him. "No," I said evenly. "It's not. It's vengeance."

I moved on.

By nightfall, the throne room looked less like a seat of empire and more like a holding pen. The air was thick with sweat, tobacco, and fear. The list in my pocket was almost completely ticked off — a few names still at large, but they wouldn't get far. Not in this weather. Not in this city.

The throne room was different in the dark. The chandeliers still glowed overhead, but the light felt harsher, throwing the shadows longer. The gilded walls and painted ceilings looked less like symbols of imperial grandeur and more like a stage set — and tonight, Dzerzhinsky was directing the play.

The men from the KGB had set up tables at one end of the room, papers neatly stacked, chairs pulled up for the prisoners. One by one, they were led from the lines, sat down under the watchful eyes of guards, and questioned in that clipped, mechanical style Felix preferred. Meanwhile the national guardsmen surrounded the room, guns ready. And the same questions were asked.

Name. Affiliation. Associates. Safehouses. Weapons.

The questions never changed, only the answers — and often not even that. Some lied, some stonewalled, some tried to bargain. Every time, Dzerzhinsky noted something on the sheet, passed it down the table, and gestured for the next one.

I stood off to the side, hands in my pockets, watching. The air in here was thick with the scent of unwashed bodies, tobacco smoke, and fear.

Felix worked like a clock — steady, methodical, no wasted motion. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. His men knew when to step in. A tap on the shoulder meant a guard would lean in close and whisper something in a prisoner's ear that made their face go pale. Probably a threat against their families, looks like Felix picked up a few things from me. But aside from that, a simple nod could send a man to a side room from which no one returned that night.

I found myself studying the faces. The ones that sweated. The ones that trembled. The ones that still tried to glare like they thought it meant something. I wasn't looking for guilt — that was certain. I just wanted to savor it, anything to forget the pain.

A young woman — one of the names from my list — sat down in front of Dzerzhinsky. She gave her name without being asked, and then launched into a tirade about "true socialism" and "betrayal of the revolution." Felix let her talk. Didn't interrupt. Just wrote something down and passed the paper to a guard. She was pulled from the chair and led out. Her voice echoed off the marble for a moment before the heavy doors shut.

When there was a lull between interrogations, I crossed the room to where Felix was making notes on one of the case sheets. "I don't care how you get the information," I said quietly, "but I want control over the executions."

He didn't even look up from the paper. "That's not standard procedure."

"Neither is shooting my wife in a church," I said. "And yet, here we are."

Felix's pen hovered for a moment, then scratched across the paper again. "Fine. But it will be done cleanly."

"Clean enough," I said. "We'll start at midnight."

That got his eyes up. "Why midnight?"

I smiled without humor. "It's symbolic. New Year, new slate. The first sunrise of 1918 will shine on a Petrograd with fewer enemies in it. Consider it… a gift to the revolution."

Across the room, a guard slammed a prisoner's head down onto the table to stop him from spitting at the interviewer. The man groaned, blood dripping onto the polished wood. I almost laughed.

I glanced at the tall clock in the corner. The hands crept toward eleven. The air in the throne room was thick with tension and the faint smell of powder from the rifles stacked near the wall. The prisoners in the lines had gone quieter as the night wore on. They knew something was coming.

I turned back to Felix. "When the clock strikes twelve, I want them lined up in the courtyard. No speeches. No ceremony. Just the sound of rifles. We'll start the year as we mean to go on."

Felix gave a curt nod and turned back to his work. I walked away, hands in my pockets, whistling something tuneless.

It was almost time to celebrate.

---

January 1, 1918 – Midnight
Winter Palace Courtyard
Petrograd, Russia

Snow fell in lazy spirals, settling over the cobblestones and the boots of the guard detail. The prisoners were lined up in two neat rows, their breath fogging in the frozen air. Guards stood behind them, rifles slung, bayonets glinting in the light of the courtyard torches.

I stepped forward, revolver in hand. No speeches. No last-minute appeals to the Revolution. That wasn't why we were here.

One by one, I stopped in front of them. The routine never changed.

"Priest or cigarettes?" I asked the first man. His face was pale, eyes darting to the line of guards.

"Priest," he whispered.

I gestured, and Father Sergey stepped forward from the shadows. The priest's murmured prayers mixed with the faint jingle of the clock tower gearing up for midnight. When Sergey stepped back, I raised the revolver and put a single round through the man's forehead. He collapsed into the snow without a sound.

Next.

"Priest or cigarettes?"

"Cigarettes." His hands shook as a guard lit one for him. He took two deep drags before I shot him in the chest.

Third. "Priest or cigarettes?"

No answer, just a defiant stare. I shot him without comment.

It went on like that, the same rhythm — question, choice, bullet. Father Sergey moved like a shadow at my side, giving last rites to some, looking away for others. His eyes were hollow, but he kept doing the work.

By the time we reached the last few, the snow around us was no longer white. The smell of blood and burnt powder clung to the air. My hands didn't ache, my arms didn't tremble.

By the end of the first batch, I felt nothing. No satisfaction. No release. Just empty.

The last one fell into the snow as the great bells of Petrograd began to toll midnight, marking the start of the new year. The sound rolled through the frozen air, echoing off the palace walls.

I holstered the revolver, tilted my head back, and began to sing.

Slowly, quietly at first —
"Ohh baby you're my baby… so happy Christmas ton-"

I stopped, rhe words hung in the cold, my breath turning them to fog. I kept going, my voice flat, almost monotone, as the bells kept ringing. Not even Mikiko Noda's songs could cure how empty I felt right now.

The guards shifted uncomfortably. Father Sergey crossed himself.

I didn't bother finishing the verse as the last bell faded, the final body cooling at my feet.

A new year had begun. And there was still so many more to shoot.

The courtyard became a machine that night, reload, line up, question, shoot, repeat. The only sound was the crunch of boots in the snow, the click of the revolver's cylinder, the occasional snap of a guard lighting a cigarette for a condemned man.

"Priest or cigarettes?"
"Priest."
Bang.

"Priest or cigarettes?"
"Cigarettes."
Bang.

Over and over, my voice never changing, my aim never wavering.

At first, I thought I'd start feeling it after the first dozen, or maybe the first fifty. But the feeling never came. Instead, my mind drifted — not away from the courtyard, but somewhere deeper inside it. I thought about Aleksandra. The way her hair would fall forward when she bent to read. The way her eyes crinkled when she smirked at one of my worse jokes. The way her breath felt on my shoulder in the middle of the night.

And then the sound of the revolver brought me back. Always the same sharp crack, the same faint jerk in my arm, the same collapse of a body into the snow.

By the middle of the night, the snow wasn't white anymore. The red spread in uneven blotches, soaking into boots, freezing in thin crusts along the cobblestones. The bodies were dragged aside in piles by the gate — quiet, methodical work from the guards, like men hauling sacks of grain.

I didn't keep count. I didn't want to.

Sometime past dawn, when the sky had just started to pale, I lowered the revolver and looked at the courtyard — at the heaps of bodies, the trampled snow, the steam rising from the blood-warmed ground.

I turned to one of the guards, a young one whose eyes darted anywhere but at mine. "How many tonight?"

He hesitated. "Comrade, I… I lost count after a hundred."

I stared at him for a long moment. Then I laughed.

It wasn't loud. It wasn't joyful. Just a dry, ugly sound that came from somewhere too deep to be healthy.

And then, before I knew it, I was crying. Still laughing, but crying — tears freezing on my cheeks as I stood there with the revolver in my hand, bodies at my feet, and Aleksandra's face in my head.

The guard stepped back, like he wasn't sure if I was about to hug him or shoot him.

I holstered the revolver, wiped my face, and kept laughing until the tears were gone.

There were still names left on the list. But I was tired, I needed breakfast. And maybe some sleep.

I walked over, revolver still in hand, Felix stood in the entrance to the courtyard, watching me in silent judgement. "Felix," I said, "spread the word about what I did. Every detail. Let it go through the whole city. No. All of Russia. Continue with the executions, I'm going to take a small break and come back later."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Why?"

"Because it'll concentrate all the fear and hatred on me," I said simply. "And the more it's on me, the less it's on the rest of the Central Committee. Let me be the monster they see in the dark. Makes your job easier. Makes them and you safer."

Felix studied me for a moment, then gave a short nod. "Fear is a useful weapon, if you can carry it without it destroying you."

I gave him a crooked grin. "Hopefully an assassin's bullet does the job before that happens. Then I can see my wife again. It's only been a day, Felix, but…" My voice dipped just slightly, "…I miss her."

He didn't reply right away. He just looked at me with that stone-faced expression of his, the one that didn't give away whether he was agreeing, judging, or just filing the moment away for later. Finally, he said, "At the rate you'll going you'll probably end up seeing her soon."

I laughed — short, sharp, and humorless. "Don't threaten me with a good time."

Felix didn't smile. He rarely did. But he nodded again, and that was as close to approval as I'd ever get from him. Then I walked back into the palace, breakfast, sleep, then back to killing.

 

[Alenco98]

"Any of you have any last words? No? Come now, don't be shy—this is the part where you beg for God's mercy or mine, though I'll admit I've had none for a long time. Would you like a cigarette before you meet your virgins in paradise? I hear Afghan tobacco is quite good for calming the nerves before I turn your skull into a Picasso painting. No takers? What about an imam to bless you? I can fetch one if you insist. I've got one on retainer these days—very cost-effective, really. I pay him by the corpse. Anyone? Anyone at all?"

— General Mikheil Jugashvili addressing a group of bound Saqqawist rebels in Charikar, Afghanistan, moments before personally executing them, January 16, 1929.

-----

January 7, 1918
Finland Station
Petrograd, Russia

The train gave that low metallic groan, the kind it makes before it decides to haul several dozen tons of steel and men across a frozen country. Outside, steam hissed in lazy bursts from the engine, wrapping itself around the platform like cigarette smoke from a giant's mouth.

I lit another cigarette. Aleksandra would have hated it — she used to wave her hands in front of her face and mutter about how the smell clung to people that smoked it. Funny thing is, I hated it too. Always did. My last life taught me what smoking does to your lungs, and it's not exactly a secret in this one either. That's why I tried to stop Joe from lighting up in my apartment back then. That's why I never touched them.

But now? What's the point?
The one person I'd kept myself clean for was in the ground, in a box, surrounded by frozen dirt.

Keke was still alive. Joe was still alive. The kids were still alive. But without Aleksandra, it was like someone had taken the part of me that cared and tossed it off a cliff. Everything since her death felt like an echo.

In front of me, the train loomed — the one that would carry me to Moscow. More raids. More purges. More… fun, if you could call it that.

The last six days had been mechanical. Wake up. Eat something tasteless. Round up the condemned. Shoot them. Spend the evening with the family — enough to keep them from thinking I'd gone completely mad with grief which I clearly was — then back to work. No breaks. No soft edges. Just rinse, repeat.

Yesterday had been more of the same. Church in the morning, executions in the afternoon, dinner in the evening. The Lord's work and my work — neatly compartmentalized.

Today was different. Today was her funeral. Father Patruchev led it, his voice even but his eyes looking anywhere but at me. The rest of my family stood together, bundled against the cold, while the wind blew snow over her grave as if the world was in a hurry to forget her.

I didn't cry — not like Joe had for Kato years ago, when the man jumped into her grave like he was trying to sink into the earth and die with her. My grief had already been burned into something else. Something harder.

Now, it was time to leave. I'd hugged the kids at Smolny. Kissed Keke on the cheek. Told them all I loved them in that voice that pretends it's steady. Then I left.

Only Joe and Aleksander came to see me off. I hugged them both — hard enough that they'd remember it. "Don't get yourselves killed while I'm gone," I told them. "Bulletproof vests and helmets. Guards at all times. And make sure Keke and the kids wear theirs too. I don't care if they complain — they comply. Make sure Yagoda keeps them safe, or I'll hang him with his entrails."

Joe just nodded, grim and silent. Aleksander gave me his usual verbal assurance: "I'll make sure they're always protected."

I turned toward Tukachevsky, who was already by the carriage steps, his posture screaming discipline. I climbed aboard and headed straight to my quarters. I'd be sharing the space with him and the rest of my staff — not that it mattered.

I sat on the cot, reached into my coat, and pulled out the wedding photo. The two of us smiling, hands clasped, the world still open in front of us. A few tears threatened, but I swallowed them back.

Couldn't look weak. Not here. Not now. I had thousands to kill. I couldn't afford it.

---

January 16, 1918
Moscow Nikolayevsky Railway Station
Moscow, Russia

I was the last one to step off the train, partly for dramatic effect, partly because I didn't trust the station crowd not to be full of knife-wielding SR lunatics, and partly because I'd been making sure my bulletproof vest was sitting comfortably under my coat. My wife's photograph rested against my ribs in the inner pocket—a reminder of her, it was all I had left. Everyone else but my family was nothing but numbers to me now.

The platform stank of wet wool, coal smoke, and the faint moral decay that comes from centuries of autocracy followed by three years of war. I scanned the crowd and found Tukachevsky, talking to some thin, fox-eyed fellow in a cap that looked like it had seen too many meetings and not enough laundry.

"Tukachevsky," I called, stepping over a puddle of melted snow that looked suspiciously red in the morning light. "Who's this?"

The stranger straightened. "Grigory Aleksandrovich Usievich. I take it you're Commander Jugashvili?"

"I am," I replied. He nodded, taking in my appearance the way one might size up a suspicious meat pie.

"You're shorter than I expected."

"Doesn't prevent me from murdering my enemies," I said, shrugging. My tone was casual; theirs wasn't. I gestured, and one of my men—bless him—tossed me a rifle. I caught it without looking, because what's the point of building a reputation if you can't punctuate it with theatrical nonsense? "Did Dzerzhinsky's men deliver the lists to you? Are the local Red Guards ready?"

"They are," Usievich said slowly, like each word had to be weighed for its possible role in a future tribunal. "I admit, though, comrade… it seems rather excessive, don't you think?"

"Excessive?" I repeated, widening my eyes as if he'd just told me water was wet. "Comrade, I am a member of the Central Committee—same as Lenin, same as Trotsky, same as my brother Stalin. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. The SRs have made it perfectly clear they'll keep trying. Either we kill them all, or they'll overthrow us and hand us gift-wrapped to the reactionaries. Your hesitation is touching, but frankly, the graveyard is full of men who respected proportionality."

He shifted uncomfortably. "I still think it's a bad idea."

"And I respect your opinion," I said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Unfortunately, respecting it is all I'll be doing with it. Now—status of the Left SRs?"

Usievich's expression was the same one you'd see on a man about to hand over bad news to someone with a reputation for shooting messengers.

"They know you're here," he said flatly. "Your little Petrograd purge… word spread before you even got halfway. Most of their leadership in Moscow's already gone underground. We've identified about a dozen safe houses—some confirmed, some just suspected—but they're moving between them constantly. They've stopped holding meetings, no more public agitation, no speeches, no leaflets. When they move, they move in twos and threes, and they're armed. If you want to find them now, it's house-to-house work."

I tilted my head, I was almost amused. "Any arrests so far?"

"A few," Usievich admitted. "A dozen local organizers, both grabbed on the street. We've got them in holding. The rest? We've been sweeping apartments and warehouses since yesterday, but they're spooked. Even their rank-and-file are ditching papers and weapons. They know the second we catch them with something, they're done for."

I couldn't help but grin. Finally, a challenge. Something to point the gun at besides my own mouth when I felt particularly sjitty.

"They're running? Good," I said, flicking ash onto the slush. "Makes the hunt more interesting. I didn't come all the way from Petrograd for a polite conversation."

I patted the stock of my rifle like a loyal dog. "I've got five thousand Revolutionary Guards with me — and not the parade-ground kind. These are the ones who smile while they're bayoneting someone. We'll dig in here, recruit more men, help your men spread our net across the whole city."

I stepped closer to Usievich, lowering my voice like I was about to share a dinner recipe. "Immediate curfew. Anyone caught outside after dusk officially is to be seized, but in reality, I want your men to tail them. Let's see who they meet, where they sleep, what they hide. Safehouses first, arrests second. We're not just plucking weeds here, we're burning the field."

I could see he didn't like where this was going, which only made me smile wider. "The ones we've already got in holding? We start with them. Today. I want to begin with a bang. Something Moscow will tell their grandchildren about, if they live long enough to have grandchildren. I'll personally put them down — clean, deliberate, in full view. Makes the rest of the Bolsheviks safer, too. If they want revenge, they'll come for me instead of everyone else. I'm generous like that."

I looked past him, toward the skyline, the red walls of the Kremlin glaring through the winter haze. "Clear out the space outside the Kremlin. I want them kneeling there before sunset. Get me a priest — last rites for the condemned, or a cigarette if they want, a courtesy they denied my wife."

I turned away, lighting another cigarette, already picturing the smoke curling through the frigid air as the shots echoed off the Kremlin's stones. Aleksandra would have hated the smell. I'd make sure the priests stood close enough to taste it.

January 16, 1918
Right outside the Kremlin
Moscow, Russia

The sun was bleeding into the horizon, casting long red shadows over the cobblestones. Appropriate, I thought — Moscow's sky was doing half my propaganda work for me.

A dozen of them stood in a neat line, hands bound, faces somewhere between pale terror and defiant stupidity. Left SRs, Moscow's finest pests. The crowd had been herded into place, shoulder to shoulder, craning for a view like this was the Tsar's coronation.

I stepped forward, my boots crunching on the frost, and held my hands behind my back like a man greeting guests at a formal dinner.

"Comrades," I said, my voice carrying over the cold air, "you've all been given the same choice. A priest, or a cigarette. I recommend both if you're superstitious — spiritual insurance and something to take the edge off."

One or two muttered cigarettes. Most asked for the priest. Not Father Sergey this time, he was back in Petrograd, someone needed to run religious affairs after all— today I had a local one, older, with a face that said he'd been watching men walk to their deaths since before I was born. He went down the line, muttering prayers and making the sign of the cross.

I waited until he stepped back, then drew my pistol. No speeches now. One step forward, one shot each. The sound cracked against the Kremlin walls like a drumbeat, the bodies dropping in neat succession. I took my time, no rush — they'd waited their whole lives for this moment, whether they knew it or not.

By the last shot, the square was so quiet you could hear the brass casing roll on the stone.

I turned to the crowd, my breath visible in the fading light. "As of this moment," I said evenly, "membership in the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party is a capital offense. You have one day — twenty-four hours — to come forward, renounce your allegiance, and confess your associates. After that, you will be hunted down and executed without exception."

I let the silence hang before continuing. "A curfew is now in effect. After dark, no one leaves their home without a permit. If you're caught without one, you will be detained and questioned. Resist, or act suspiciously, and you'll meet the same fate you've just witnessed. And I'll personally shoot you."

The priest crossed himself again. The crowd didn't move. Good — fear freezes people in place.

I holstered my pistol and stepped over a corpse on my way back toward the Kremlin gates, the last light of day dying behind me.

January 16, 1918
Kremlin
Moscow, Russia
Night time

The Kremlin was quiet in that way only a fortress can be — thick walls keeping the cold out but letting the silence in. My quarters were barely warm, the kind of room where a man could hear his own thoughts whether he wanted to or not.

I sat on the edge of the bed, pulling the photograph from my coat pocket. Aleksandra on our wedding day — smiling like she had no idea she'd eventually marry a man who'd become the executioner of Moscow. I kissed the photo, slowly, like it might kiss back if I did it just right.

"Evening, Sashiko," I murmured, pretending the still air between us was her voice answering back. "How was your day? Mine? Oh, you know… a bit of light killing, some administrative work, a priest… the usual."

I laughed at my own joke, the kind of laugh that dies halfway out of your mouth and leaves a bad taste. "You would've told me to stop smoking. And I would've done it if you hadn't died."

I leaned the photo against my pillow and lay down beside it, like we were back in our old room in Smolny. "They all think I'm doing this for the Revolution," I whispered. "But it's really for you. Every bullet is a love letter written in gunpowder. And the best part? It scares the hell out of them. Keeps the rest alive. Keeps Joe alive. Keeps the kids alive. Keeps Keke alive." I swallowed. "But it doesn't keep you alive, does it?"

For a moment, I imagined she was there — warm beside me, her hair brushing my cheek. But I knew better. The bed was cold. The photo didn't move.

"You know, Sashiko… sometimes I hope an assassin gets me quick. Just one clean shot, and I'll be back with you. I'll stop smoking—we can make love everyday. I'll sing you those stupid songs you love, massage your back, hold you tightly in my arms and never let you go again. But not yet. There's still work. Still lists to check. There's still thousands that need to die. Maybe if there is a heaven and hell, you're probably in heaven. And lets be honest, given my track record, I doubt I'd ever join you, even if I took last rites. So maybe that day was the last time we saw each other." I sighed then looked up at the ceiling.

I stayed like that until the silence pressed so hard against me it cracked something inside. Then it came — not the clean sob of a grieving widower, but the uneven, ugly crying of a man who's been killing too much and sleeping too little. The kind you try to smother into the pillow so the guards outside don't hear.

Eventually, the tears stopped. I fell asleep with the photograph still in my hand, my face turned toward her, half-expecting her to still be there when I woke up.

But she wouldn't be.

Ever again.

 

[Alenco98]

Excerpt from a 1965 foreign Cadre Training Course Manual from the USSR:

Comrades,

We must once again emphasize, with utmost seriousness, that all self identified communists who attend these trainings and reside outside currently designated Frontline States in Asia, Latin America and Africa are strictly prohibited from initiating or participating in armed struggle within the territory of their current country of residence. The reckless use of arms outside approved theaters of operation serves only to slow down the march towards world communism, invite repression, and undermine the carefully cultivated work of the international proletarian cause.

If you reside in a nation where the Communist Party is legal, your path is clear:

Join your local Party immediately.

Work to strengthen it from within: raise funds for its activities, recruit new members, and establish membership in factories, universities, and communities.

Enter trade unions—these are fertile grounds for recruitment and agitation. Build influence among the workers and ensure the union's struggle aligns with Marxist-Leninist principles.

Engage in lawful activism: organize meetings, publish legal literature, participate in elections, and monitor parliamentary activity. In such states, your vote is more powerful than your rifle—use it to advance the revolutionary agenda.

If no Communist Party exists and it is not outlawed in your nation, you are to:

Register a Communist Party without delay.

Establish the party's foundational structure: a central committee, regional branches, and a clear program rooted in Marxism-Leninism.

Seek legal recognition where possible, and pursue political legitimacy through disciplined organizing.

If the Communist Party is outlawed in your country:

Maintain extreme caution. Operate only with individuals you have absolute trust in.

Form small, discreet study groups, introducing theory gradually.

Avoid public displays of ideology; patience is essential. The underground struggle requires years, even decades, to bear fruit.

For those unable to suppress the desire for armed struggle—and only those ready to accept full responsibility for their actions:

Report to the nearest Soviet diplomatic mission or accredited fraternal embassy and declare your intent to volunteer for the Internationalist Soviet Legion.

Understand that upon enlistment you will be subject to the full authority of military law and discipline.

You will be trained and deployed where the Party deems necessary—not where you wish to go.

Acts of cowardice, desertion, or insubordination will be treated as serious offenses punishable by death.

Comrades, the revolution advances not only through the barrel of a gun, but also through the discipline of the mind, the endurance of the body, and the loyalty of the heart. Know your role. Fulfill it with honor.

---

January 17, 1918
Moscow, Russia
The House of Anarchy

The convoy rolled to a stop outside what used to be a merchant's house, now proudly defaced into the "House of Anarchy" by the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups. Charming name. Really subtle. The place looked like someone had taken the dignity of the building out back and beaten it to death with black paint and slogans about "freedom."

I stepped out first, flanked by my guards—towering men in helmets and bulletproof vests who made the anarchists posted at the door look like they were about to piss themselves. I raised a hand to them, not the kind you wave with but the kind that says "I could have you gutted before breakfast, but I won't… for now."

"At ease," I said. "I'm only here to talk to your leader. I trust my envoy explained the terms?"

They nodded stiffly. One of them spoke up. "You must come in without your guards."

"Fine by me," I said. Behind me, my men looked at me like I'd just announced I was going to swim across the Neva in January.

I turned to them and grinned. "If I'm not out in an hour, call the men and tell them to burn this place to the ground. Kill everyone inside. Not just the men—women, children, the cat, the wallpaper, all of it. If they take me hostage, ignore it. Storm it anyway. If I'm dead, Voroshilov takes over. Doesn't really matter now, does it?"

The anarchist guards froze. Their expressions went from nervous to "this motherfucker is crazy" in about two seconds. To drive the point home, I unslung my rifle and tossed it to one of them.

"Go inside and tell your friends exactly what I just said," I told him. "Let them know I don't mind dying, but I do like being theatrical about it. Adds flavor."

I pulled a cigarette from my coat, lit it, and leaned casually against the wall beside the door. Smoke curled up into the Moscow cold. The other guard stayed outside with me, eyes darting between me and my men. Poor bastard looked like he'd forgotten how to breathe.

"Cigarette?" I asked, offering the pack.

"No thanks, I don't smoke," he muttered.

"Good man," I said, nodding. "This stuff will kill you. My wife hated it—why she al—" I stopped. My throat caught. The memories punched their way in again. My eyes stung. I turned away, blinking fast, but a few tears slid out anyway.

"Sorry," I muttered, wiping them away with the back of my glove. "SRs tried to kill me, hit her instead. Now it's my life's mission to kill as many of them as possible. Funny how that works out. Tell me, boy—are you married? Got a lover?"

"A lover," he said cautiously. "Just started seeing her."

I smirked without humor. "Love her. Hold her tight. Never let her go. You never know when she might die. Or you. Hell, maybe both. Depends on how today goes, really." I studied him. "What's your name?"

"Ivan. Ivan Kazachenko."

"Ohh, Ivan. Good name. You from Moscow?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "From Samara. My family moved here when I was a boy."

"I see."

We kept talking—small talk, of all things. A 19-year-old anarchist chatting with a man who might personally murder him and everyone he knows within the next two hours. Surreal, but then again, my whole life had become surreal. Isekai'd as Stalin's twin brother, married, widowed, and now casually walking into an anarchist stronghold without a weapon. Yay, I guess.

Eventually, the first guard came back out. "He's ready to see you."

"Perfect," I said, smiling like this was a tea party instead of a potential bloodbath. "Lead the way."

And I followed him in—no gun, no armor beyond the vest under my coat as well as my helmet and no fear worth mentioning. If they killed me, fine. If not, well… that would be the smartest choice they made today.

They led me through several narrow, creaking hallways reeking of damp wood, cheap tobacco, and that peculiar musk of unwashed coats in the Russian winter. Posters of Bakunin and Kropotkin stared down at me like disappointed relatives, and I stared right back.

The door opened into a modest room with a big desk shoved against the far wall. Behind it sat Lev Chernyi, the secretary of the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups. Tall, wiry, glasses slipping down his nose, and a beard that looked like it had been shaped with a bayonet. His eyes measured me the way a doctor might measure a tumor.

"Commander Jugashvili," he said, gesturing to the chair across from him.

I didn't sit immediately. I took a slow drag from my cigarette, flicked the ash onto the floor—deliberately—and then sat down.

"Lev," I began. "Let's make this quick. I have nothing against the anarchists. In fact, I respect you. Not just as fighters, but as thinkers. You've got fire, and the Bolsheviks need fire. But let me be clear—every last SR in Moscow is going to die by my hand. If they're breathing now, they won't be by the end of the month."

His eyes narrowed. He didn't interrupt.

"As long as you don't shoot at Bolsheviks and you stay peaceful, you can carry on doing your thing. Hand out pamphlets, organize your little workers' circles, drink tea and argue about philosophy—I don't care. We'll even look the other way when you break minor laws, so long as it's not our people bleeding."

I leaned in. "Lenin's edicts have been clear. Land reform and redistribution—three acres and a shovel for every man who works it. Nationalization of the big industries and factories. Eight-hour workdays. Safety regulations. Paid time off. Minimum wage. You know what that means, Lev? It means the workers are getting what they wanted without having to set the city on fire every two weeks. You've got a freer hand than you've ever had."

Chernyi's voice was calm but firm. "We've noticed. But your methods, Mikheil… they alarm my people. Mass executions in the street don't exactly build solidarity."

I chuckled, though it came out more like a cough from somewhere deep in my chest. "Lev, let me reiterate if we catch any of your people helping the SRs, we'll hunt you down like we're hunting them now. I don't want to do that. I genuinely like you folks. Hell, if you've got grudges against the SRs, join us. I'll even let you pick which ones to shoot."

I leaned back in my chair, casual, but my voice sharpened. "Before I came in here, I told my men: if I'm not out within an hour, burn this place down and kill everyone inside. Men, women, children—doesn't matter. If you take me hostage, they storm the building anyway. Ever since my wife died, Lev… I don't care if I live or die. So I dare you—try something."

The room went still.

After a beat, Chernyi folded his hands. "We're not aligned with the SRs. Their path is not ours. But I can't promise my people won't… react if they see you executing men in Red Square again."

"You don't have to promise perfection," I said, my voice low. "Just keep a leash on them. I've got enough pull in the Central Committee to draw the heat off you. But the moment one of your men steps out of line? It's over. No speeches, no trials, no appeals."

He studied me for a long moment, the kind of look that measures how close a man is to snapping. Then he gave a slow nod. "Understood. We'll stay out of your way. But don't expect us to clap for the hangman."

I smiled thinly. "I never ask for applause. Just silence."

We shook hands. His was dry and tense, mine steady. I got up, stubbed my cigarette out right there on his desk, and walked out without waiting to be shown the door.

The air outside was sharper than when I'd walked in, the kind of cold that stings your ears and makes the city feel hollow. My boots hit the wooden steps hard enough to echo, and I could feel every set of eyes in the building boring into my back through the windows. No shouting, no last-minute theatrics—just the dead, uncomfortable silence you get when people can't decide whether to shoot you or pray for you.

My guards straightened as soon as I appeared, relief flickering across their faces. One of them, a younger lad who'd probably been rehearsing his obituary, muttered, "We were about 15 minutes from storming the place, comrade."

"Shame," I said, fishing out another cigarette. "Would've been a hell of a massacre."

Behind me, I could see silhouettes pressed against the upstairs glass—anarchists watching me walk away like they were studying some strange animal that had wandered into their kitchen. I gave them a little wave just to make them more nervous.

Tukachevsky was leaning against the convoy's lead car, arms crossed, reading my expression. "How'd it go?"

"They'll behave. Or they'll die. Either way, it doesn't matter." I climbed into the car, settling in with the wedding photo in my coat pocket pressing against my ribs like a reminder that none of this really mattered.

As the engines started and the convoy rolled away, I glanced back at the House of Anarchy disappearing into the frost. Inside, Chernyi was probably explaining to his people that I wasn't bluffing about the children. And all around me, my men were probably wondering how much longer before I picked a fight big enough to end me.

Truth was, I was wondering the same thing and hoping it was soon.

-----

February 14, 1918
Moscow, Russia
Outside the Kremlin

I stood in front of a little over 2000 left SRs, on Valentine's day of all. Well, technically it was February 1, but we had a new calendar. Just like the western calendar. But it didn't matter now.

We'd picked the unfortunate bastards standing in front of me yesterday. Our little "curfew" having worked wonders. My men shadowed SR couriers, not arresting them right away—just following, waiting, watching them scuttle to their nests. We'd mapped the whole network: safehouses, meeting spots, arms caches, the names of their mistresses, and the taverns where they liked to drink too much and talk too loud.

By the end of two weeks, the tail-and-track method had worked like a dream. And then, like pulling a trigger, it all happened at once.

At dawn, Moscow woke to the sound of boots and truck engines. Thousands of my revolutionary guards fanned out through the city. Red armbands flashing, rifles at the ready. The targets didn't even have a chance to scatter.

By mid-morning, Red Square was packed wall-to-wall with captured SRs. I'd ordered them brought in by the hundreds, each batch flanked by guards. Some were still in their nightshirts, shivering under the winter sky; others tried to look defiant, spitting and shouting slogans that didn't matter anymore.

I stepped out of the Kremlin flanked by my personal guard regiment, the bells of the Kremlin towers echoing above us. I lit a cigarette as I walked toward the makeshift holding pens we'd built along the edge of the square. "Well," I said loud enough for the nearest batch to hear, "I suppose this is what efficiency looks like."

One of my adjutants jogged up beside me. "We've got over 2000 confirmed SRs here, comrade. A few hundred suspected sympathizers too. Still bringing in more from the outer districts."

"Good," I said, blowing smoke into the frozen air. "We'll start sorting them. Today they'll learn how generous I can be."

I could feel eyes on me from every direction—my men, the SR prisoners, random Muscovites who had dared to peek from alleys. And I made sure to project it all: the man who was both in total control and completely willing to die. And the man who killed hundreds of these cretins back in Petrograd. But I was on a schedule, I had Czechoslovaks to escort, this was a side quest.

"Clear the square," I told my guards. "We're going to need space for the executions. I want the Kremlin in the background. Make sure the photographers get a good angle—it's not just about killing them, it's about making it a memory. Let the counter-revolutionaries shit their pants at the name Mikheil Jugashvili."

They nodded and moved off, already barking orders.

I took one last drag of my cigarette, flicked it into the snow, and thought of Aleksandra. If she were alive, she'd probably slap me for all this. But she wasn't, and that made everything so very simple.

A little later, the SRs stood in long, uneven rows, their breath steaming in the frozen air, their faces caught between rage and fear. I stepped forward, coat collar up, cigarette in one hand, pistol in the other, and projected my voice so even the ones in the back could hear.

"I'm feeling charitable today," I began, smiling like a priest about to hand out candy to children. "You're all here because you've committed crimes—treason, conspiracy, terrorism. But…" I dragged the word out and let the silence build, "…I am offering you a chance. A clean slate. A new life."

Murmurs ran through the crowd. Some of them tried to stand taller; others wouldn't meet my eyes.

"If you renounce your membership in the Socialist Revolutionary Party," I said, "you will walk to the right. Do so, and you will prove your loyalty by killing the ones who refuse." I paused, savoring the shift in their expressions. "Yes, that's right—your friends, your comrades, your lovers. Show me you're willing to spill their blood instead of mine."

A ripple of shock went through them.

I gestured, and a crate was brought forward. My men tipped it, and stones tumbled out into the snow. "No guns, no knives. Stones. You'll bash their skulls in with your own hands. Up close. Personal. It will tell me everything I need to know about your commitment to this new… arrangement."

Silence. Even the city seemed to hold its breath.

Finally, I tilted my head and chuckled. "You think I'm joking? Gentlemen—when my wife was shot, I learned something important: sentiment is a luxury for people who get to die in bed. So make your choice now. Right for life, left for death."

One or two began to move. Then more. About a third crossed to the right, eyes darting toward the rest.

I stepped back, letting my guards hand out the stones. The first blow would be the hardest; after that, I knew from experience, momentum took care of the rest.

The snow crunched under my boots as I stepped forward again, the divide now clear—those who had chosen survival stood to my right, clutching their stones; the condemned stood to my left, silent and pale.

"Before we begin," I said, voice carrying across the frozen expanse, "I'm going to offer you one last courtesy. Cigarettes… last rites… or both?"

I gestured to my men, who stepped forward with cartons and dozens of priests in tow. The condemned looked between them and me, as if weighing whether dignity mattered at this point. Some stepped forward to take a cigarette, some crossed themselves as the priest muttered Russian in the icy air, some did both.

I gave them another moment, then called out: "This is your final chance. If you want to save your skin, step right—kill your friends, prove your loyalty. If you hesitate…" I patted my pistol. "…I will put a bullet through your head myself. And believe me, I've got enough ammunition to make sure no one gets a pass."

A few more crossed over, faces twisted in shame.

I smiled thinly. "Good. Now—let's get this over with. The ones on the right—start."

The first swing was always the hardest. A few faltered, looking away, their stones trembling in their hands. I raised my pistol and, without hesitation, shot the first man who hesitated through the forehead. His blood steamed against the snow.

"That," I said, holstering my pistol, "is what hesitation gets you. Keep going."

The air filled with the sickening crunch of stone against bone, mingled with shouts, sobbing, and the occasional gunshot when someone froze up. My guards didn't wait for orders; they knew the drill by now.

I lit another cigarette, the smoke mixing with the fog of my breath, and thought briefly of Aleksandra. You'd hate this, my love. Then I exhaled and watched the slaughter really begin.

The killing went on in waves—stones rising, bones breaking, snow turning into a brown-pink slush beneath boots. I just stood there, cigarette dangling from my lips, watching as they did my work for me.

For a moment, I stopped seeing them. I saw her. Aleksandra in that blue dress she wore the summer before the revolution, laughing at some stupid joke I'd made. The way she'd swat my arm and roll her eyes when I teased her. Her hair in the lamplight. Her scent.

It hit like a rifle butt to the gut. My chest tightened. My throat burned. I sniffed hard and turned away for a moment, wiping my face with my glove. A few tears escaped anyway.

Then I straightened up, lit another cigarette, and forced a smile.

Without thinking, I began to hum—then sing—the Russian lyrics to Fly Me to the Moon, the Evangelion version I remembered from a life that no one else here would ever know existed. My guards stared at me, caught between awe and confusion, while a prisoner mid-swing froze just long enough for a blow to catch him in the side of the head.

I didn't care. I sang louder, the melody drifting through the square like some deranged requiem.

When I finished, I gave a mock little bow toward the piles of bodies.

"That," I said, gesturing grandly, "was for my wife. A proper send-off, don't you think?"

Silence. No one dared answer.

I pointed to the survivors—the ones still breathing, spattered in gore. "Burn them," I ordered flatly. "Every last one. You touch nothing else until this is ash."

They obeyed without hesitation.

By the time the flames were licking at the heaps, I had already turned on my heel and headed for the Kremlin. Tukachevsky was in the corridor outside my office when I got back.

"Make arrangements," I told him, brushing past. "Tell Usievich to handle the remaining SRs they capture the way we just did. In the meantime, we leave for Ukraine in 2 days. We're picking up the Czechoslovaks… and then we drag them to Murmansk. And if they complain about the cold, they can die for all I care."

 

[Alenco98]

"The Japanese are so full of shit it's almost artistic. They spend weeks indulging in an Olympic-level orgy of rape, murder, and arson in Nanking and the world barely shrugs. But the moment I introduce them to the finer points of nerve gas and demonstrate the benefits of superior Soviet firepower, suddenly the UK and US start clutching their pearls and condemning me? Give me a fucking break.

If Tokyo doesn't stop their bullshit along the Far Eastern frontier, I'll make it simple: next time I'll march right into Manchuria and then Korea and I'll order my men to personally acquaint every Japanese man, woman, child and baby to the business end of a bayonet. Consider our last battle a crash course in humility."

— Field Marshal Mikheil Jugashvili, interview with The New York Times, October 7, 1939, Vladivostok.
(Shortly after his decisive victory against the Japanese at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol.)

-----

March 10, 1918
Outskirts of Kiev
Republic of Ukraine (German client state)

We arrived at some ungodly hour when the frost still bit at your nose and the fog made everything look like it was stolen from a depressing oil painting. It was awkward from the start—after all, we'd just strolled straight into German-influenced territory via train. Technically, they could've had us shot, interned, or sent back to Petrograd with a politely worded note telling Lenin to "control his lunatic Georgian ape." But politics makes for strange bedfellows, and in this case, our shared dislike of the Czechoslovak Legion meant we were tolerated.

The Ukrainians and their German overseers weren't exactly warm hosts, but they understood the arrangement. I wanted the Czechoslovaks gone—preferably back in their little corner of Europe or six feet under—and they wanted them gone for their own reasons. That's the beauty of war: you don't need friendship when mutual irritation will do.

It also helped that I had come bearing gifts. Not the diplomatic kind, like meaningless promises or signed treaties—real gifts. Chests of gold coins, bricks of opium, crates of fine liquor, the sort of things that make garrison life a little less suicidal. You'd be amazed how quickly ideological purity dissolves when there's brandy in one hand and morphine in the other. The Germans called it "black market corruption." I called it "accelerated diplomacy."

Now came the main event—my meeting with the head of the Czechoslovak Legion himself, Stanislav Čeček. The man was a soldier, a nationalist, and apparently, a humorless bastard.

His tent was the sort of grim, orderly affair that screamed "I have no hobbies except hating Austria-Hungary." My guards escorted me in, rifles slung, eyes scanning the perimeter like we were about to be ambushed by an army of very angry violinists.

I didn't wait for pleasantries. I marched in, pulled out a chair, and sat down like I was at my grandmother's kitchen table. I reached into my coat and pulled out my cigarettes—good ones, not the sawdust-filled rubbish they hand out to conscripts.

"Cigarette?" I asked, holding the pack out toward him. My tone was friendly enough, but there was just the faintest suggestion that refusing me might result in his entire unit mysteriously losing their supply lines.

He didn't answer. Didn't even blink. Just sat there, staring at me like I was the world's ugliest painting that someone had just hung over his bed.

I took a slow drag from my own cigarette, exhaling deliberately into his personal space. "No? That's fine," I said, smiling in the way people smile right before they stab you. "I'm sure lung cancer is the least of your worries."

Behind me, my guards stood like statues. Behind him, his aides looked like they'd swallowed nails. Everyone in the room was tense, serious, bracing for… something. A threat? A bribe? An act of lunacy?

And me? I was just enjoying the smell of expensive tobacco and the delicious knowledge that everyone here wanted to kill each other but had to pretend otherwise for just a little while longer.

"Let's get to the point," I said, leaning forward, elbows on my knees. "You and your boys are going to Murmansk. Nice place this time of year. Cold, wet, but full of ships that will take you far away from here. You'll be allowed to keep your weapons—every rifle, every machine gun, every piece of artillery you've lugged halfway across Russia.

"And if any Red Guards get in your way?" I gave him my best, slow, measured smile—the kind that unsettles grown men. "I'll personally liquidate them. Every last one. I'll put their heads on pikes and line them along the road so your men can count them as they march. A little morale boost."

He stared at me like he couldn't decide if I was insane or just the most dangerously honest man he'd ever met. "And why," he finally said, "would we go to Murmansk?"

"Because, my dear Colonel," I said, gesturing lazily with my cigarette, "you should think of this as a… generous leave from your current campaign before the Entente sends you to the Western Front to fight the Germans. You'll get to see France. Wine, women, music—well, not the kind of women I'm about to show you, but good enough for you sentimental types."

He narrowed his eyes. "And if we refuse?"

I grinned, then snapped my fingers.

The tent flap swung open, and in came four of my guards, each carrying something different: one with a chest of gold coins, one with crates of liquor, one with a burlap sack that clinked suspiciously (opium, obviously), and one—well—escorting three very uncomfortable-looking women who clearly didn't know how they'd ended up here but had been promised absurd amounts of money to pretend they didn't mind. Thank you Aleksander, God I loved my commissariat of strategic resources, genius idea.

"This," I said, spreading my arms, "is my goodwill package. Booze, gold, opium, and the finest women Moscow had to offer. And believe me, Colonel, I drained every brothel in the city for you and your officers. You are now the single greatest recipient of Russian hospitality since Catherine the Great took in that lover of hers."

The aides behind him looked like they wanted to crawl under the floorboards. Čeček just stared at the pile of vice in front of him.

"There's more where that came from," I added. "Murmansk isn't far. Play along, and I'll keep you swimming in booze, opium and women until you're too exhausted to load your rifles."

He exhaled through his nose like he was considering whether to have me shot on the spot or just accept the inevitable. "We came here to fight," he said. "Not to be bribed into leaving."

"Oh, don't think of it as a bribe," I replied, sitting back. "Think of it as… hazard pay. You've been running up and down Russia for months now, killing Germans and scaring the peasants. Time for a little vacation before someone sends you into the German meat grinder. What's the harm in that?"

We went back and forth for the better part of half an hour—him insisting his men had honor and duty, me reminding him that honor doesn't keep you warm at night or stop a German shell from vaporizing your skull.

Finally, he sighed. "Murmansk," he said, like the word itself was poison.

"Murmansk," I confirmed, smiling. "You'll be there within a month. Weapons in hand, pockets full of gold, and more liquor than your men can drink without dying of liver failure."

He looked at me hard. "If you're lying—"

I held up a hand. "If I'm lying, Colonel, you'll know it. Because I'll be the last thing you see before the bayonet goes in."

We shook hands. His was cold and stiff. Mine was warm and… well… probably still smelled faintly of gunpowder and expensive tobacco.

The deal was done.

I stepped out of Čeček's tent like a victorious general who had just negotiated peace, except instead of treaties and borders, my spoils were measured in crates of alcohol and the collective relief of not having to shoot several hundred Czechoslovaks in a diplomatic incident.

The Legion was gathered in a loose formation outside—dozens of them, in varying states of fatigue, suspicion, and sheer boredom. I waved over my translator, a nervous Ukrainian lad who looked like he'd rather be anywhere else.

"Alright," I said, lighting another cigarette and letting the smoke curl theatrically from my mouth. "Tell them."

The translator hesitated, so I began pacing, gesturing broadly like a man unveiling the solution to all their problems.

"Gentlemen," I began, voice carrying across the camp, "you're going to Murmansk. From there, you will be shipped back to France. France! Wine, food, women who bathe at least once a week—paradise compared to the swamp of misery you've been slogging through here."

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. The translator scrambled to keep up.

"But before you go," I continued, "I have prepared… a parting gift. No, more than a gift—a tribute. A reward for your gallantry in war. You have bled, marched, and fought your way across this frozen hellhole, and for that, you deserve more than empty speeches and stale bread."

I snapped my fingers again. Like clockwork, my men came forward: crates of liquor, sacks of gold, boxes of opium, and—most importantly—several women who looked like they were already regretting their career choices.

"I have," I declared with mock solemnity, "drained every brothel, every bar, and every opium den in Moscow for you. Do you know how exhausting that was? I made my men personally inspect some of the merchandise for quality control. The sacrifices we make for you people."

That got a few laughs—uneasy ones, but laughs nonetheless. Čeček was standing off to the side, arms crossed, watching like a man who'd just realized his army was about to turn into a mobile carnival.

"Think of your trip to Murmansk as a vacation," I went on. "You'll keep your weapons. Every rifle, every bayonet, every machine gun. And if any Red Guards dare to stop you—" I paused, tapping the ash off my cigarette. "—you may kill them all. In fact, I encourage it. Consider it recreational shooting. And should any of those bastards manage to survive long enough to be a nuisance, I will personally put a bullet in their skull myself."

The translator hesitated at that last bit, then repeated it verbatim. The crowd's mood shifted from wary to… amused? Encouraged? It's hard to tell with men who've been living in mud and blood for months, but I saw the beginnings of grins.

"Drink. Smoke. Fuck," I said, spreading my arms. "You've earned it. And remember—Murmansk is just the beginning. After that, it's home. Or at least somewhere that doesn't smell like horse shit and revolution."

The cheer that went up wasn't exactly thunderous, but it was real. Which, considering the circumstances, was good enough for me.

 

[Alenco98]

March 12, 1918
Kiev
Republic of Ukraine (German client state)

The platform stank of wet coal, piss, and people pretending they weren't about to die in a country they couldn't find on a map last year. I stood there in my coat, watching the Czechoslovaks board the miserable parade of trains I'd "acquired" — which is a polite way of saying I bribed, lied, robbed, and blackmailed every rail official in Kiev. Opium, vodka, surplus rifles, women — I dealt in every vice except mercy. The Germans and Ukrainians complained, of course. They always complained. I stopped listening to complaints after the second one; now they just sound like geese honking in the fog.

We were headed north to Murmansk to drop these bastards off. Once that was done I had a new target, Finland. Civil war had recently broken out there now. Another blood-soaked chessboard for me to make moves on until everyone's too dead to play. That's what I told myself, anyway. The truth was simpler: I wanted the noise, the chaos, the distraction. Because quiet nights were when I remembered Aleksandra's beautiful face. And I couldn't afford that.

I lit a cigarette from the pack one of the local prostitutes had given me. Pretty enough, I suppose. She'd offered herself for free — the benefits of being a revolutionary commander with an unpredictable temper. I said no. Not because I'm moral, but because there's only one woman I want right now, and she's buried under enough earth that even if I dug her up, the conversation wouldn't be the same.

So I smoked. And I hummed a song that didn't exist yet — Stay By Me by Anri. If anyone asked, I'd say it was an old Georgian folk tune. But the truth was, it was just the sound of my head trying to keep itself from collapsing inward.

My Revolutionary Guard Corps stood nearby, looking like wolves in human coats. Their job was to make sure my precious ten thousand Czechs didn't shoot anyone important before we reached the front. So far, the Czechs had been too drunk and drugged to kill much of anything — too busy turning the railway station into an open air opium den-cum-brothel. Which suited me fine. Dead Czechs don't ride trains well.

I was halfway through my cigarette when the screaming started. Shouting, boots scraping, something breaking. My song cut off mid-verse. I closed my eyes and muttered, "For fuck's sake," as if saying it would make the noise stop. It didn't.

When I got there, I found two Czechs — swaying, red-eyed, armed — surrounded by my guardsmen, whose fingers were already itching on the triggers. Between them, a railway clerk, barely old enough to shave, clutching his stomach where a bayonet had turned him into a leaking wineskin.

"Get the boy a doctor," I said, voice flat. Then I turned to the Czechs. "You two. Explain."

The bigger one started talking in Czech — a language that sounds like someone gargling glass while arguing with a dog. I waved for a translator before I put a bullet through the air out of boredom.

A Ukrainian stepped forward. "He says… the boy looked at him funny. Like a German."

I just stared at them for a long moment, and for a second I thought about my wife again — about how she'd laugh at the absurdity, how she'd say something clever, something that would make this whole ugly scene feel like a tavern joke instead of another reason to drink myself into the ground.

Instead, I laughed alone. "Tell him that if he stabs anyone else for looking German, when not a single bullet is being fired at us, I will personally strangle him with his own entrails."

The translator hesitated. I told him to say it. He did. The Czechs blanched.

"There's more opium in the train," I added. "Take it. Sleep. Stay out of my sight."

They nodded and staggered away. I lit another cigarette before the first had finished burning.

It would be a long trip. And I knew that no matter how far the rails took me, there wasn't a front, a victory, or a massacre in the world that would bring her back.

---

March 12–17
The Rolling brothel
The journey between Kiev and Tver

The train had stopped being a train somewhere after Poltava. Now it was a mobile brothel-opium den with occasional bursts of machine gun fire, usually from my own Revolutionary Guards when they got bored of watching the Czechs try to outdrink God. The air inside the carriages was a permanent haze of tobacco, cheap vodka fumes, sweat, and the acrid tang of black powder from someone "accidentally" discharging a rifle indoors.

Every so often we'd pull into some backwater station and be greeted by the local Red Guards — young men with eyes like starving dogs and rifles that were older than they were. They'd shout, wave their weapons around, and demand to know why a traveling circus of armed foreigners was tearing through their jurisdiction. That's when I'd step down from my carriage, hand them the sealed orders, and wait.

Most read them in silence, nodded, and stood aside. Some got clever, thought the papers were forgeries, and tried to block us. I'd warn them once. If they fired, even once, I'd have them tied to the nearest telegraph pole, open them up like a fish, and hang their entrails over their heads as a visual aid for the next village's garrison. After the second incident, word traveled faster than the train.

The Czechs, meanwhile, were drinking through their liquor reserves like they were racing the apocalypse. By the time we left Ukraine, half of it was gone — the other half was hidden in personal flasks, the location of which they guarded more fiercely than their rifles.

I started drinking too, at first. Why not? The train was already a rolling orgy of vice, and there's only so much opium smoke you can inhale before you want to blot the world out entirely. But Tukachevsky — damn him — sat down across from me one evening, clean uniform, sober as a nun, and said, "Mikheil, you should stop. We need you sharp."

I stared at him for a long moment, wondering if I could get away with throwing him out the window. Then I sighed, pushed the glass away, and lit a cigarette instead.

From then on, I spent most of my time on the rear platform, smoking and staring into the endless blur of snow and dead trees. I'd stand there for hours, the wind clawing at my coat, imagining that maybe if I stared long enough, the horizon would shift, and she'd be there — standing by the tracks, smiling, waiting for me.

She never was.

And so I kept smoking. The cigarettes burned down to the filter faster than I could flick the ash away. I could still hear the chaos inside the train — the laughter, the shouting, the moans, the clinking of bottles — but out there on the platform, with only the cold and the wind, I could almost pretend it was just me and the winter.

Almost.

March 18–19
Tver
Russia

By the time we reached the frozen approach to Tver, the countryside had stopped pretending it wasn't starving. Villages looked like they'd been robbed by the wind, the houses leaning under the weight of snow, the windows dark. People stared at the train as we passed — not in awe, but with the dull, slow hatred of those who know they'll never see the inside of one.

The first real obstacle came from a Red Guard garrison stationed in some miserable siding just before the city proper. The commander waddled up to me, all fur hat and false confidence, and announced that we would not be passing unless my "initial fee" — yes, he used the word — was doubled.

I smiled at him. I even clapped him on the shoulder. Then I had two of my men hold him down while another doused him in lamp oil. He screamed the way all men scream when they realize they've made a career-ending mistake. I struck a match, dropped it, and stepped back as the fire took him. The smell was instant — burning hair, boiling fat. The garrison just stood there, frozen.

"Now that the negotiation's over," I said, "we'll be on our way."

We rolled into Tver itself later that afternoon. The station there was manned by another Red Guard unit, more disciplined, better armed, and apparently under the impression that they had the authority to halt us for inspection. I invited their officers aboard the lead carriage, smiling like a host at a dinner party. I poured them tea, offered cigarettes, and handed over the sealed orders authorizing our passage.

"This should settle it," I said.

They read the orders. Looked at each other. Then shook their heads.

"No," the lead officer said flatly. "The train stays here."

I sighed. It was the kind of sigh my wife used to mock me for — the one that meant I'd already decided someone was going to die. I leaned back in my seat, tapped ash into a cup, and said, "Gentlemen, this is your only warning."

They ignored it.

I gave a nod. My Revolutionary Guards drew their revolvers and put all three officers down in front of their own men. The carriage erupted as did the train station. Bullets snapped past my ears, shattering windows and ricocheting off steel. My Guards returned fire, and the Czechoslovaks, half-drunk and delighted for the excuse, joined in. Within minutes, the Tver station was ours.

I gathered the surviving Red Guards in the yard — maybe 100 of them, disarmed and shaking. I told them they would decide who lived. Ten men would die. They would vote.

The voting was fast, brutal. No speeches, no appeals. When the count was done, the condemned were lined up. There were no guns for this part. They stoned them — the whole garrison, their own comrades, hands red and trembling by the end of it. Some cried. Some didn't.

By the time the last man stopped moving, the snow was dirty with blood and pulverized bone.

We left Tver a little behind schedule. Not much. Just enough for me to light another cigarette and watch the station disappear behind us, another ugly little memory to file away with all the rest.

-------

March 19–21
Final Push to Petrograd

After Tver, the countryside got quieter. Not peaceful — just quieter, the way a corpse is quieter than the man it used to be. Every village we passed stared at the train like it was some kind of metal leviathan carrying the plague. Which, to be fair, wasn't far from the truth.

The tracks were half-frozen, the stations half-abandoned, and the air so cold it could split wood. Inside, the Czechoslovaks kept drinking, though now they rationed it with grim ceremony, as if they were preparing for siege. My Revolutionary Guard Corps stayed alert, rifles across their knees, watching for the next garrison with more enthusiasm than I had for life.

We still had a few "incidents."

On the 20th, a small Red Guard detachment tried to flag us down at a rural siding. I had the train slow just enough for them to climb aboard, then met them on the platform. They didn't have sealed orders. They didn't have much of anything, except the belief that if they got lucky, they could rob a warlord in transit. I told them to climb back down and go home. They didn't. So we tossed them off while the train was still moving. Some landed in the snow. Some didn't.

That night, as the lamps flickered in the carriages, I stood outside on the rear platform again. The smoke from my cigarette whipped away into the dark, and the wind made my eyes water. I told myself it was the cold, but I knew better. I could feel her absence like a missing limb, an ache that no drink, no killing, no victory could numb.

On the 21st, the sprawl of Petrograd appeared out of the grey like some tired, frostbitten beast. The air was heavier here — smoke, coal, human breath all mixing into something that felt almost solid. As we rolled through the outskirts, the factories loomed like black fortresses, their chimneys vomiting clouds into the sky.

At the final checkpoint before the city, a Red Guard unit waved us down. Their commander approached, saw the orders, and didn't argue. He just looked at me — really looked — like he knew exactly what kind of man was stepping into Petrograd today.

We pulled into the station just after noon. The brakes screamed, the wheels ground against steel, and the whole damn train shuddered like it was relieved to stop.

The Czechs poured out first, loud, drunk, and reeking of everything they'd consumed in the last week. My Guards followed, disciplined, eyes scanning the crowd for threats. I stepped down last, boots hitting the platform with a dull thud.

The city was waiting — tense, brittle, a spark away from burning. I could feel it in my teeth. And for the first time since we left Kiev, I felt… awake.

It wouldn't last.

I stepped out of the train, the Finland Station was colder than the rest of Petrograd, and that was saying something. The wind came off the Neva like it wanted to peel the skin from your face. The platform was lined with a Soviet Army detachment — not the usual mix of half-starved conscripts and barefoot factory workers that Trotsky got together, these guys seemed different. Tall, silent, armed and uniformed, with faces like carved granite and eyes that had seen more executions than weddings. Looks like Trotsky was starting to whip his army into shape, good for him.

Their commander stepped forward, saluted, and said in clipped Russian, "Comrade Jugashvili, the Central Committee requests your presence immediately."

Not invites. Not asks. Requests. Which in Bolshevik-speak meant, "We've decided your schedule for you, and we'd like you to pretend you have a choice."

I took a long drag on my cigarette, exhaled, and nodded. "Fine. Lead the way."

Before following them, I turned to Tukachevsky, who was standing on the platform with that military stiffness of his, looking at my Czechs and Guards like he was already counting corpses in his head.

"Make sure they don't kill each other while I'm gone," I told him.

He opened his mouth to say something about discipline, about control, about how the Revolutionary Guard Corps and ten thousand drunk Czechoslovaks were a powder keg in the middle of Russia's most unstable city. Well, not anymore after I slaughtered the SRs

I cut him off with a raised hand. "No speeches. Just make sure that when I come back, I don't find a pile of bodies taller than the locomotive."

The soldiers didn't smile. I don't think they even blinked. They just turned and began walking toward the waiting convoy. I flicked the cigarette away, stepped into the cold, and followed.

Petrograd's streets swallowed us up — grey buildings, grey sky, grey faces watching from windows. Somewhere in this frozen maze, the Central Committee was waiting to decide whether I was their loyal comrade or their next example.

I lit another cigarette. It was going to be a long day.

 

[Alenco98]

An excerpt from Leon Trotsky's 1936 book, the revolution betrayed

The Revolutionary Guard Corps cloaks itself in the rhetoric of vigilance, proclaiming its sacred mission to be the defense of the party from Bonapartism. But history has a taste for irony, and in this case, irony has sharpened itself into mockery: the Guard has itself become Bonapartist—not by the lightning seizure of state power, as Bonaparte did, but by the slower and more insidious process of degeneration. It has congealed into a monstrosity at once ancient and modern: a Revolutionary Praetorian Guard grafted onto the corpse of the Janissaries.

This transformation was not accidental. By monopolizing the protection of the Communist Party in its entirety, and by ensuring that its command rests in the hands of Stalin's own brother, the Guard has been converted into a private weapon. It serves as both the invisible threat and the visible bludgeon of the General Secretary, a dagger that gleams just enough for all to see, yet strikes only when its master wills it. In this arrangement lies the essence of personal rule under the mask of collective leadership: an armed phalanx whose loyalty is pledged not to the Revolution, not to the working class, but to the person of Stalin himself.

The final, unmistakable stamp of degeneration is found in the Corps' composition. Today, two-thirds of its rank and file hail from the Caucasus—Georgians, Armenians, Azeris—while half its officers are Georgians alone. And who does not know that the Georgian mountains cradled both Stalin and Jugashvili? From this soil has emerged a new martial caste, a neo-Cossack nobility, bound not by class solidarity but by blood, dialect, and the unspoken laws of tribal loyalty. Here, within the very heart of the so-called workers' state, the Revolution has permitted the rebirth of an armed aristocracy—its banners dyed not red with the lifeblood of October, but with the private colors of a family dynasty.

------

March 21, 1918
Winter Palace
Petrograd, Russia

I walked back into the Winter Palace with Trotsky's men at my flanks, the rhythmic clack of their boots on marble echoing like the world's most humorless metronome. The palace smelled faintly of dust, candle wax, and the kind of stale perfume that lingers long after the nobility has either fled or been introduced to the finer points of proletarian justice.

They led me into what was now called the Central Committee Room — though, in reality, it was still the old throne room.

Everyone was there — except Trotsky, of course. He was probably off somewhere, whipping the army into shape. But Lenin was present, perched forward like a vulture over some unseen carcass. Kamenev had that look of permanent constipation he always wore in meetings. Svanidze sat stiffly, pretending to take notes. Stalin was there too, impassive as a marble statue — though one carved by an amateur mason with blunt tools.

I felt all their eyes turn toward me as I entered, that unblinking stare you get when you walk into a room where people have already decided you're either a savior or a bastard, but haven't yet agreed on which.

"Comrades," I said, sliding into a chair with the gracelessness of a man who had been marching for days. "I'm guessing you want a status report on the Czechoslovaks?"

The room was silent, expectant. Lenin nodded for me to continue, but my mind drifted for a moment, as it so often did lately. I thought of Aleksandra. Every time I walked into these rooms, filled with men who spoke in slogans and plotted in whispers, I half-expected to see her there instead — maybe with tea, maybe with that look of amused disapproval she wore whenever I came home with another half-mad story.

But she wasn't here. She would never be here again.

It's funny — you can lead men into battle, watch them die in agony, burn enemies alive, and feel nothing more than a grim satisfaction. But the absence of one woman can hollow you out so completely that even the sound of your own voice feels like it belongs to someone else.

I blinked, forcing myself back to the present. The Czechoslovaks. Yes. That was what they wanted. A tidy little report about a mercenary legion in a nation whose civil war had just begun. Not grief. Not longing. Just numbers and outcomes.

So I gave it to them.

"They're intact," I began, "more or less. No riots, no desertions — a miracle, given their temperament. I've kept them busy, kept them fed, and most importantly, kept them pointed in the right direction. Which is more than I can say for half our forces."

Kamenev scribbled something. Stalin's eyes narrowed slightly, perhaps in amusement, perhaps in suspicion — with him, it was always both.

"And your… methods?" Lenin asked, his voice neutral, though I saw the flicker of curiosity behind it.

"My methods," I said, leaning back, "are effective. Whether or not they're palatable is a matter of taste. And comrades, I've never been one for delicate cuisine."

The room gave a faint, humorless ripple of acknowledgment. They were all deadly serious. I, meanwhile, was trying not to think about how Aleksandra used to tease me for speaking like this, for turning every answer into a performance. She'd have told me to cut the theatrics and tell them the truth plainly.

But she wasn't here.

Lenin leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers, and gave me that look — the one he reserves for comrades who've just admitted to doing something appalling but effective.

Kamenev cleared his throat, his pen tapping nervously against his notebook.
"There are… concerns," he began, the bureaucrat's way of saying we're all horrified but no one wants to take responsibility.

"Concerns," I repeated, rolling the word around my mouth like a sip of bitter coffee.

Sverdlov shifted in his seat, visibly uncomfortable. "The opium, the alcohol, the… ah… prostitutes you've made available to the Czechoslovaks," he said, each word like it had to be dragged out with pliers. "And now they are here, heavily armed… in Petrograd."

There it was. The moral outrage, wrapped neatly in the packaging of political caution.

I sighed. "Comrades, it's either that or they mutiny."

A ripple went through the room — not quite outrage, more like the low thrum of a building's foundation when a train passes nearby. Stalin's lips twitched in what might have been a suppressed smile. Lenin, though, said nothing, which meant he was thinking about it.

"You think the only options are vice or rebellion?" Kamenev asked, his voice rising slightly, betraying that he'd never spent more than ten minutes with soldiers outside of a parade ground.

"Kamenev," I said, leaning forward, "these are men who have been killing for years — not in the abstract, not in the way you all kill with orders and signatures, but with their hands, their rifles, their bayonets. They have marched through mud and blood from one end of Russia to the other. They've buried friends in shallow graves and looted their enemies before the corpses were cold. Now they're stuck in this shit stain of a city, surrounded by more politics than they can drink away, and you expect them to spend their evenings playing chess and discussing the finer points of Marxist theory?"

Lenin's mouth twitched, but he still didn't speak.

I sat back. "They're mercenaries, not monks. And if giving them something to smoke, drink, and fuck keeps them from turning their rifles on you, then yes, comrades — I'll keep doing it. In fact, I'll buy out every opium den and brothel tonight."

The silence after that was the heavy kind — the kind where everyone is trying to decide if you're dangerous, indispensable, or both.

I glanced down at the table, letting my eyes unfocus. For half a second, I imagined Aleksandra sitting beside me, hand on my arm, whispering you could try a gentler answer, you know. I almost smiled. Almost.

Lenin finally broke the silence, his voice measured.

"There's also the matter," he said slowly, "of your… dealings with our own Red Guards."

Kamenev jumped in like an overeager prosecutor. "The executions, the firefights through the countryside— the executions in Tver— and the fact that you seem to conduct these actions with… a certain enthusiasm."

Sverdlov added, almost whispering, "Some of those men had families, comrade."

I leaned back, stretching my legs out under the table like I owned the place. "Yes, and I showed them the paperwork first. I warned them. I told them exactly what the consequences would be if they disobeyed orders. And yet, they still decided to test me."

Kamenev frowned. "So you simply—"

"Murdered them," I cut in. "When a man's stupidity is so profound that he steps willingly in front of a moving train, you don't blame the train. You blame the man."

Lenin raised an eyebrow. "A train?"

"Yes," I said, gesturing vaguely toward the window. "I'm the train in this metaphor, if that wasn't clear. I gave them the choice — step aside or be crushed. They chose the latter. I didn't do it out of bloodlust; I did it because when one Red Guard garrison sees another ignore my orders and live, they start to think they can do the same. And then the whole damned railway is blocked."

Sverdlov looked at me like I'd just confessed to eating children. Stalin, meanwhile, sat stone-faced, though I caught the faintest flicker of approval in his eyes.

"I make examples," I continued. "Not because I enjoy it — though I won't deny there's a certain… satisfaction in watching discipline return to the ranks — but because if I don't, chaos spreads. It's not my fault they're stubborn and stupid. My fault would be letting that stupidity go unpunished."

The room went quiet again, thick with that mix of revulsion and reluctant understanding.

I glanced at the grand, peeling walls of the old throne room. Once, this was where emperors commanded armies with a wave of their hands. Now it was a place where half-starved revolutionaries debated whether I was a necessary evil or just an evil that happened to be useful.

In the back of my mind, I could hear Keke's voice: You keep talking like that, and one day you'll be the example.

Lenin tapped his fingers against the tabletop, studying me like a chess player deciding whether sacrificing the rook was worth the trouble. Finally, he spoke.

"Keep it to a minimum for now," he said. "We don't need Petrograd turning into a circus just because the Czechoslovaks can't function without… certain amenities. How long will you be in the city?"

"Three days," I said without hesitation. "Enough time to get supplies — mostly food. But also booze, opium, and prostitutes. The holy trinity of keeping mercenaries from bayoneting the locals."

Kamenev's pen froze in mid-scribble. Svanidze stared like I'd just admitted to personally assassinating Christ. Stalin didn't blink.

Lenin just nodded slightly, the corners of his mouth twitching. He didn't like it, but he understood.

"Once I've finished escorting the Czechoslovaks to Murmansk," I continued, "I'm still planning to secure Finland. That hasn't changed. But there's something else — more Czechoslovaks are scattered through Russia. I'll probably head east once I'm done with Finland, all the way to Siberia, and take the remaining ones to Vladivostok."

Lenin's eyes narrowed, trying to see the catch.

"It'll be a good opportunity to secure the east as well," I said. "Right now it's a collection of poorly disciplined garrisons, reactionaries, bandits, and people who think 'revolution' means they can loot without consequences. My presence will… clarify matters."

"Meaning you'll shoot people until order returns," Kamenev muttered.

"Exactly," I said cheerfully.

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table. "And for that, I'll need permission to recruit more men. I want to expand the Guard Corps — enough to keep discipline without stretching our lines too thin. We'll have the numbers to protect our supply lines, enforce our authority, and make sure the Czechoslovaks don't decide they're better off running the show themselves."

Lenin looked at me for a long moment. "You're asking for a lot of autonomy."

I shrugged. "Autonomy is just efficiency without the paperwork. Besides, the alternative is chaos — and chaos costs more lives than I do."

For a moment, nobody spoke. You could almost hear the sound of the chandeliers creaking above us. In my head, I imagined Keke watching this exchange from the corner of the room, her arms folded, her expression saying you've just told them exactly how dangerous you are… again.

But she wasn't here, and I was still alive, so I just smiled faintly and waited for Lenin's answer.

Lenin's gaze flicked briefly to Stalin, as if weighing his unspoken opinion. He just stared straight at Lenin, impassive as stone, and gave the slightest nod. A tiny gesture, but enough to say yes, he's dangerous, but he's ours.

Svanidze, sat with his usual bureaucratic stiffness, but I caught the quick dart of his eyes toward me, the faintest tilt of his head. In this room, that was the equivalent of standing on the table and shouting, give him what he wants.

Kamenev was clearly against it, as was Sverdlov. Kamenev's pen started scratching again like he was already drafting my obituary. "Lenin, if we give him more men, more autonomy, we are effectively creating a second army loyal only to—"

"—the Party," Stalin interrupted, his voice low but carrying across the table. "My brother is loyal to the Party." He said it with that same blank tone he always used when daring someone to contradict him.

"Your brother is loyal to you," Kamenev shot back.

Stalin didn't blink. "And who was it that personally stormed the winter palace again?

Svanidze coughed into his fist, the polite way of stopping himself from laughing in the middle of a political knife fight.

Lenin leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Comrade Mikheil, you understand that what you're asking is not without risk. Armed men loyal to one commander — even you — can be a problem if…" He let the sentence trail off, waiting to see if I'd fill in the blank.

"If I decide to become a problem," I said, smiling faintly. "But the truth is, I'm too busy trying to not go insane from grief at the moment."

The room was quiet again, except for the distant drip of water somewhere deep in the old palace.

Finally, Lenin sat back. "Very well. You may recruit. But I expect results. No theatrics, no excesses, and no… unnecessary headlines."

I nodded. "I'll do my best. But with me, 'minimum excess' is still quite a lot."

That drew the faintest flicker of amusement from Stalin. Svanidze kept his face neutral, though I could tell he was relieved. Kamenev scribbled something furiously, probably a note about how this decision would haunt us all.

Inside, I felt the old, familiar hollowness rise again — the thought that none of this mattered without Aleksandra. She would've been proud, maybe, or maybe she would've rolled her eyes and told me I was building myself into a future cautionary tale. Either way, she would've been here to say it.

But she wasn't. So I smiled, accepted the victory, and already started thinking about how much booze, opium and cigarettes I could buy before my three days in Petrograd were up.

The meeting broke up with the usual scraping of chairs and low murmurs of men who didn't want to be overheard. Lenin disappeared first, trailed by Kamenev, who was still muttering to himself. Stalin lingered just long enough to make it clear he was waiting for me. Svanidze fell in beside him, the three of us walking out into the dim, echoing corridors of the Winter Palace.

Once we were far enough from the others, I asked the only question that mattered.
"How are my kids? Kato, Iosif, Aleksander, Besarion — how are they doing?"

Svanidze's face softened, just a fraction. "They've been… quiet," he said. "Depressed since Aleksandra died. The house feels different now. Keke does her best, but…" He trailed off and glanced at me. "You should see them."

I stopped walking for a moment, staring down the long stretch of marble floor ahead of us. The air smelled faintly of dust and oil lamps, and I could almost hear Aleksandra's laugh in the distance — the way she used to kiss me every time I came home.

"I want to," I said finally, my voice was low, I started to sob. "God knows I want to. But if I see them now… I might not want to leave again."

Stalin glanced at me but said nothing. He understood.

"Tell them I love them," I said to Svanidze. "All of them. Tell them I'm busy, but I'll come back. Once Finland is done, I'll come home for a bit before going east."

Svanidze nodded. "They'll want to hear it from you, not me."

"Then tell them anyway," I said, forcing a small, humorless smile. "They can be disappointed in person later."

We walked on in silence after that. The high ceilings of the palace loomed above us like the inside of a cathedral, and every step felt heavier than the last. The war, the politics, the corps — all of it felt like a game I knew I couldn't stop playing, even when I wanted to.

But for the first time in months, I caught myself imagining the quiet of home. Kato reading by the fire. Iosif pretending not to be interested in my stories. Aleksander trying to act older than he was. Besarion — still a baby, I pitied him the most, he would never truly know his mother, not even from the memories. I sobbed again at that thought.

But I couldn't see them, if I let myself walk into that house, I might never walk out again.

So I kept moving. I had work to do.

The rest of the day was a blur of transactions and quiet threats. I spent the hours moving between warehouses, back rooms, and dingy storefronts, collecting the usual mix of supplies the Czechoslovaks considered essential to human survival: sacks of flour, crates of canned meat, barrels of dried fish — and, of course, the more specialized goods. Booze from a sympathetic Kronstadt sailor who'd "accidentally" offloaded more than the manifest listed. A crate of opium wrapped in burlap and marked as "machinery parts."

By the time I made it back to the train station, dusk had fallen, and the place looked less like a transit hub and more like a fortress that had grown out of the rails. Sandbags were stacked in haphazard barricades, machine gun nests were tucked between the freight cars, and a tangle of barbed wire ran along the outer perimeter. The Czechoslovaks had turned it into an armed camp — their camp.

From the rail yards came the unmistakable din of a party. Shouting, laughter, the rhythmic clatter of boots on metal, a fiddle playing something that sounded suspiciously like a marching song until it broke into a drunken waltz.

Tukhachevsky appeared at my side, looking as if someone had just asked him to explain Marxism to a brick wall. "They were getting restless," he said bluntly. "I had to dole out the last of the opium and booze or there would have been a riot."

I looked at him for a long moment. "So what you're telling me is that I left you in charge for one day, and now we're dry."

He shrugged. "Better dry than dead."

Fair point.

I sighed, laughed and headed off toward the seedier edge of the rail yards, where commerce of another kind was thriving. The local prostitutes had clearly seen the opportunity in a station full of foreign soldiers flush with stolen roubles and gold. Rates had tripled since I was last in Petrograd. Some of the more enterprising ones had even set up shop in empty rail cars — curtains strung across the doorways, candles flickering inside, the faint perfume and laughter spilling out into the cold night air.

One woman, leaning against the doorway of a converted sleeping car, grinned at me. "Special price for you, commander," she said, naming a figure that would have bought me a crate of rifles last month.

I shook my head. "At that rate, I could just marry you and save on the hourly fee."

She laughed, but didn't budge on the price.

By the time I was done negotiating, I'd secured a few willing participants for the Czechoslovaks' ongoing morale program, though at a cost that would have made a Tsar blush. Still, better an expensive garrison than a mutinous one.

As I walked back toward the carriage I used as my quarters, the cold night air bit at my face, and I caught myself wondering what Aleksandra would have said if she'd seen me bargaining with prostitutes like I was buying artillery shells. Probably something along the lines of you've built an empire of sin and you're proud of it.

And maybe she'd have been right.

March 22, 1918
Petrograd Rail Yards
Petrograd, Russia

Morning began with the kind of crisp winter air that makes you think, maybe today will be quiet. It's a lie the weather tells you so you'll let your guard down.

By midmorning, a pack of drunken Czechoslovaks — still reeling from last night's opium-and-booze blowout — decided the city needed "improvement." Specifically, they took issue with an old SR propaganda office across from the station. The posters inside had faded into yellow ghosts of their former revolutionary zeal, and apparently, that was an insult to their sense of aesthetic.

So they "redecorated" it.

I stood on the station platform, smoking, as I watched them haul cart after cart of manure — actual horse manure from the stables — into the building. They packed the place to the rafters with the stuff, cheering like they were laying bricks for a cathedral. Then someone tossed in a lit rag, and the whole thing went up in a choking, sulfurous blaze.

The stench rolled across the street like divine punishment, sending the last few SR diehards gagging into the gutter. The Czechoslovaks sang a marching song as the roof collapsed. One of them even saluted me as if I'd personally commissioned the project.

It was the most civic-minded thing they'd done all week.

Later that day, business came knocking in the form of the National Guard, who dragged three suspected SRs into the stationmaster's office. Their uniforms were neat, but their faces carried that half-smirk people get when they think they're too clever to be caught.

I was halfway through a glass of vodka when they shoved the first one in front of me. The man opened his mouth, probably to launch into some tedious speech about loyalty to the revolution, but I wasn't in the mood.

I drew my revolver and shot him in the chest. He went down without ceremony. The second started praying — I put one through his head before he finished the first line. The third just stared at me, breathing hard. I let him see the muzzle before I pulled the trigger.

Three shots. Three bodies. No last rites, I wasn't feeling it today.

I didn't spill a drop of vodka.

For a moment, I just stood there, glass in one hand, revolver in the other, the faint smell of cordite mixing with the ever-present scent of coal smoke and human sweat. The National Guardsmen shifted uneasily, waiting for me to say something that would make the scene less obscene.

"Clear them out," I said finally, setting the glass down. "And next time, bring me proof before you bring me suspects. Saves me the trouble of guessing."

They nodded and dragged the corpses away, boots scraping across the floor.

I picked up the glass again and took a long drink. The burn was welcome — sharp, clean, uncomplicated. Nothing like this city.

Somewhere deep in the station, I could hear the Czechoslovaks still singing, their voices echoing down the steel corridors. For a moment, I let myself imagine Aleksandra walking through the door, wrinkling her nose at the smell, shaking her head at the mess I'd made of my life. She'd tell me this wasn't living — it was just a long, noisy way of dying.

She'd be right.

But the trains still had to move.

So I finished the vodka, reloaded my revolver, and got back to work.

March 23, 1918
Petrograd Rail Yards
Petrograd, Russia

If hell had an administrative wing, it would look like the Petrograd rail yards on the morning of our departure. I spent the entire day wading through a swamp of requisition forms, station masters with sudden memory loss about which trains were "available," and Czechoslovaks who seemed to believe "boarding" meant wandering off to buy bread and getting into fistfights with strangers.

By noon, I'd finally secured enough rolling stock to move the entire contingent. The trick, as always, was to act like the trains were already mine and to threaten anyone who said otherwise. It worked on most people. On the rest, it worked better.

Then came the real crisis.

Tukhachevsky, looking like he'd just been told his mother had joined the Whites, informed me the city had officially run out of opium. The last few grams had vanished overnight into the bloodstream of men who now looked dangerously close to rediscovering their taste for mutiny.

I felt my stomach drop — not out of sympathy, but out of sheer logistical horror. If I put 10 thousand armed, hungover mercenaries on a train with nothing to sedate them, we'd be peeling corpses out of the baggage cars by the second day.

So I did the only thing I could: I bought out every single bottle of vodka and every cigarette pack I could get my hands on. By the end of the afternoon, the train smelled like a distillery married to a tobacco factory. It wasn't opium, but it would keep them calm — or at least too drunk to stage a counter revolution before Murmansk.

By nightfall, I had everyone loaded. The station looked like the aftermath of a small war: crates stacked haphazardly, soldiers slumped in corners with bottles dangling from their fingers, prostitutes counting roubles like victorious warlords.

We had only been in transit for barely half an hour when another Red Guard patrol, out in the outskirts, decided to make a name for themselves by blocking our way. The commander — barely old enough to shave — started shouting about unauthorized movements and "counter-revolutionary elements."

I shot him before he could finish the sentence. My men shot the rest.

The gunfire echoed off the warehouses and then faded into silence. A few of the Czechoslovaks started singing again, as if the whole thing had been scheduled entertainment.

I stood on the platform for a moment, watching the smoke curl into the night sky. Somewhere in that black emptiness, I imagined her voice again — not scolding, just tired. She'd tell me I'd turned travel into a blood sport.

She wouldn't be wrong.

But the whistle blew, the wheels began to turn, and the train carried us away from Petrograd, leaving behind the stink of manure, gunpowder, and the kind of memories that only rot when you try to bury them.

Murmansk, then Finland was ahead. And after that, maybe — maybe — home.

If I didn't die first.

 

[Alenco98]

Field Marshall Mikheil Jugashvili and his Soviet Guards have been both our salvation and our undoing. Their men, tanks and aircraft carve through the fascists with frightening ease, yet their presence weighs on us like a second occupation.

Since the anarchist revolt in Barcelona back in January this year, their cruelty has been unrelenting. I have seen boys as young as fifteen hanged from lampposts, bayoneted as Jugashvili looked on, cigarette in hand, offering them the option of a last smoke or last rites before killing them with the calmness of a man settling accounts. It is not the chaos of war but something colder—violence administered like policy.

The anarchists are unruly, exasperating even, yet they are Spaniards fighting in their own land. To watch them crushed by an ally is a bitter spectacle. One cannot help but fear that even if Franco is defeated, Spain will simply exchange his tyranny for another—this one draped in the red flag of Moscow.

If Jugashvili is the future, then victory may taste no sweeter than defeat.

Excerpt from George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia

------

March 22 – April 1, 1918
Into the North of Russia

The journey toward Murmansk was less a train ride and more a prolonged hostage situation against the elements. The tracks were in a state that could only be described as "posthumous" — warped, frost-heaved, and cut in places by sabotage. We'd grind to a halt every few hours to dig the rails out of snowdrifts or replace sleepers that had rotted into mulch.

The spring thaw was coming in fits and starts, which meant we were trading ice for mud. Not better — just a different color of hell. Wheels spun in the sludge, men slipped under the weight of crates, and every stop was a chance for some local partisan to take a potshot from the treeline.

I kept it together, because someone had to. I chain-smoked like a man on a dare, two packs a day at least. The smoke wasn't for the nerves — it was for the silence, for keeping my hands busy so they wouldn't start shaking. Depression sat in me like a stone. I rationed the alcohol, rationed the cigarettes. If I'd let the Czechs and my Guards have their way, we'd have drunk the last of the vodka by the time we reached Karelia and been reduced to boiling rifle stocks for soup.

Prostitutes — of which the train had acquired more than I could count without using a ledger — were paid in cigarettes, food, and vodka. A grim barter economy that kept morale up and discipline down. You could measure the state of the men by how quickly a carton of cigarettes changed hands.

I slept little. Spent my nights staring at maps under the dim light of an oil lamp, listening to the wind batter the carriage. Every time the train jolted over a repaired section of track, I wondered if it was the rails giving out or if some bastard had planted another charge.

When we were finally about to cross into Karelia, the snow was back with a vengeance — blinding white under a sky the color of lead. Murmansk was still ahead, but I knew already: by the time we arrived, every man on this train would be either twice as hard or half as human.

-------------

April 2, 1918

We were maybe an hour into Karelia when another halt was called. Something about snow-packed rails and a section ahead needing to be cleared. Normally, this would mean men with shovels, cold fingers, and a lot of swearing. But the Czechoslovaks had been itching for entertainment, and boredom is more dangerous than hunger.

It started with one shot — a sharp crack from the far end of the train. Then another. By the time I stepped off my carriage, half a dozen of them were leaning out from the embankment, rifles up, grinning like boys at a county fair. They were shooting at distant Red Guard positions — maybe 600 meters away — just for sport. No orders, no provocation, just… target practice.

I followed the line of their barrels and saw the Reds scrambling in the snow like ants under a magnifying glass. Some were trying to get to cover, others just stood there in disbelief, as if they couldn't quite process that they were being picked off during what was supposed to be a routine standoff of mutual apathy.

"Wonderful," I muttered, lighting a cigarette. "Nothing says discipline like slaughtering your own allies before breakfast."

Tukachevsky appeared beside me, jaw tight. "Do you want me to stop them?" he asked, like it was a serious question.

"No," I said. "Let them have their fun, it'll keep them out of trouble. Maybe the Reds will learn to keep their heads down." I took a drag, exhaled. "Besides, morale's important."

A Czech with a beard like a winter bear popped his head up from behind a crate, shouting something in his ugly, consonant-choked language that I assumed was along the lines of Got one! The others laughed. Another volley went out. One of the Reds fell, the rest finally melting into the treeline.

After a while, the ammunition ran low, the snow-clearing was done, and the Czechs reluctantly shouldered their rifles and trudged back aboard. The train lurched forward again, and the bodies in the distance got smaller until they vanished.

I stayed out on the platform, the cigarette burning down between my fingers, wondering how many more days of this I had in me before I either drank myself blind or started shooting for sport too.

--------------

April 3–6, 1918 — Karelia's Spine

By the time we were deep into Karelia, the monotony had turned heavy, like wet wool draped over the whole train. The snow still clung to the pines, the sky hung low and grey, and the cold had a way of settling into your bones no matter how close you sat to the stove.

I'd stopped talking much. Most days, I sat by the carriage window with a cigarette burning down to my fingers, staring at the blur of forest and frozen swamps, my mind somewhere else — somewhere warmer, somewhere that didn't smell like boiled meat and wet uniforms.

The men started to notice. Especially Tukachevsky. They'd all glance at me when they thought I wasn't looking, unsure if the silence meant I was plotting something or if I'd simply gone hollow. Truth was, I wasn't sure either.

And then the firefights would come. A Red Guard patrol taking shots from the treeline. A partisan sniper thinking he was clever. The moment bullets started flying, something in me would snap back into place — not joy, not rage, relief.

One afternoon, after a sharp crack from ahead sent some of the more drunken Czechoslovaks scrambling, I stepped off the carriage with my guardsmen, drew my revolver, and put a single round through the face of the nearest Red Guard I found before anyone else could react. The man dropped like a sack of grain, his rifle clattering into the snow. I wiped the blood spatter off my coat sleeve with slow, methodical care, holstered the weapon, and went back inside.

I spent the rest of that skirmish reading a tattered copy of War and Peace I'd found abandoned in the station at Tver. I'm not sure if anyone noticed I'd stopped turning the pages halfway through — it didn't matter.

Inside the train, discipline wasn't faring much better. On April 5, three accidental discharges went off in the dining car in the space of twenty minutes. One tore through a cupboard, one shaved a man's ear, and the last one — the real tragedy — blew a hole clean through our samovar. Tea poured out onto the floor in a steaming puddle while everyone just stood there, staring like they'd witnessed a priest get shot during mass.

I said nothing. Just lit another cigarette, took a long drag, and kept reading. God I missed Aleksandra.

April 7–19, 1918— The Hunt

By now, the locals had given up trying to make sense of us. Word had spread across the villages: a train full of screaming, drunk foreigners kept rolling through, stopping at random to "hunt counter-revolutionaries." Nobody seemed clear on what qualified as a counter-revolutionary — it could be an armed Red patrol, a shopkeeper who didn't wave fast enough, or an old woman selling bread at the wrong time of day.

We were averaging two firefights a day. Sometimes the ambushes were real — Red detachments waiting in the treeline, rifles already shouldered. Other times, it was just my Czechs or Guards deciding a group of "suspicious" villagers would make for good target practice. To their credit, they were never bored for long.

I'd stopped caring about politics in these encounters. If someone interfered with track repairs, I didn't bother asking which banner they fought under. Reds, Whites, locals with no affiliation — if they delayed the work, I had them lined up against the nearest fence or telegraph pole and shot. No speeches, no trials. My Guards started taking souvenirs from the bodies — belts, knives, watches. I said nothing, partly because I didn't care, partly because the trophies kept them from asking for more pay.

Somewhere in a half-burned village, the Legion acquired a bear cub. No one could explain where it came from, only that a group of soldiers marched back from the woods carrying it like a prize roast. It was small, still clumsy, and promptly named "Lenin." Everyone thought it was hilarious.

By day three, Lenin had bitten a soldier's ear clean off during feeding. There was some debate about whether to shoot it or keep it. I told them to keep it and threatened to hang them if they killed it. If it was already drawing blood, it fit right in.

Between the gunfire, the drunken singing, and the occasional bear-related screaming, the journey to Murmansk had settled into its own warped rhythm. I kept smoking — a cigarette always burning between my fingers — and wondered vaguely if I was holding this train together, or if I was just the only one sober enough to notice it was falling apart.

--------

April 20–22, 1918 — The Bottom of the Barrel

By the 20th, the cigarette supply was circling the drain. We'd been rationing for days, but now the tins were nearly empty, and tempers were running high. My own patience was hanging by a thread — I was down to my last pack, and even the idea of handing one away made my skin itch.

The Czechs and Slovaks had found their own pressure point: the last few kegs of brandy. By the afternoon, the first fistfight broke out in the dining car. By nightfall, it had escalated into full-blown company-on-company brawls — boots, fists, rifle butts. One unlucky bastard went out the window at low speed and landed in a snowbank. He crawled back aboard at the next stop, covered in frost and still swearing.

The shortage wasn't just alcohol. It was the fact opium was gone — burned all the way back in Petrograd. Without it, the train's general noise shifted from drunken singing to shouting matches in three languages. Even the bear, Lenin, seemed more irritable, pacing the baggage car and snapping at anyone who got too close.

I tried to keep order, but the truth was, I was just as on edge as they were. Every time someone lit a cigarette in my presence, my eyes followed the smoke like a starving man watching bread bake. I caught myself calculating how many I could steal before anyone noticed. Would I have to shoot him for it?

By the 22nd, we were one bad day away from the whole expedition turning into a rolling mutiny. And I knew, when that day came, I'd have to make an example so brutal it would scare everyone back into line — or burn this train to the rails trying.

-------

April 23–25, 1918 — Breaking Point

By the 23rd, the shortages had crossed from "inconvenient" into "existential crisis." The cigarettes were gone. The last bottle of brandy had been drained by a group of Slovaks in the early hours, and the Czechs responded by sabotaging their rations with a handful of salt. Fistfights were now a daily event, sometimes breaking out in two carriages at once.

I'd seen enough. That night, I called the officers both the czech and Slovak sides into the freight car, locked the doors, and told them we weren't leaving until someone took responsibility. They denied everything, naturally. So I changed the game. I told them they would choose one man from each company to die — failure to agree would mean ten from each. I reminded them most of their men were half intoxicated and my men weren't and we could massacre them all right now if we wanted to. I was about to do it honestly.

Once they realized the writing on the wall however they voted. vote was tense, angry, but it got results. The chosen men were executed right there in front of the rest, their bodies shoved out into the snow. The room went dead quiet after that. Not peace — but fear. And fear would carry us the rest of the way.

By the 25th, discipline had returned in a brittle, brittle way. Men saluted faster. The arguments were quieter. Even the bear seemed calmer.

---

April 26, 1918 — The Bridge

It was almost evening when we hit the sabotage. A small bridge, barely big enough for a single carriage at a time, had been blown apart ahead of us. The wreckage was still smoking. My scouts reported movement in the treeline — a Socialist Revolutionary Guard unit, maybe a dozen men, covering the approach.

I didn't delegate. I got some of the boys, then I holstered my pistol, took a rifle for backup, and led the counterattack myself. The snow crunched underfoot, the air sharp in my lungs. The first SR I saw was leaning over the wreckage, reloading. I put a round through his chest before he even looked up. The second caught it in the throat. The third tried to run; I shot him in the back.

One of them rushed me at close range — I dropped the revolver, swung the rifle up, and drove the butt into his jaw hard enough to hear it break. He went down like a sack of potatoes, blood blooming in the snow.

All while bullets flew around me and I shot and stabbed for the next several hours. All while humming signing in the snow cause I needed some absurdity while killing and cause I missed Aleksandra.

When it was over, I was standing there breathing hard, the cold air turning my breath into fog. I looked at the bodies, then at my men, and said — flat, almost bored — "I think I enjoyed that more than sex lately."

Nobody laughed. They just went to work clearing the wreckage. The bridge would be repaired by morning.

I lit another cigarette and watched the treeline, half-hoping for another ambush.

---

Night of April 26–27, 1918 — The Camp by the Bridge

We couldn't move until morning. The engineers needed hours to rebuild the bridge, and that meant the entire convoy camped along the frozen riverbank. Fires went up fast — fueled by chopped wood, broken crates, and the odd splintered wagon board.

The Czechs and Guards raided the nearest villages for supplies to supplement our rations, By nightfall, we had two pigs, three goats, and a suspiciously well-fed cow roasting on makeshift spits. Someone found a 100 barrels of something that smelled halfway between beer and cleaning solvent, and suddenly the air was thick with singing — mostly obscene songs about Trotsky's mother, Trotsky's beard, Trotsky's wife; all courtesy of me and my twisted mind. A chorus of around 15 thousand drunken voices roaring insults into the Arctic night, their breath steaming like the smoke from the fires.

I sat a little apart, cigarette in hand, watching the flames throw shadows across faces already lined from the cold. My men were happy in that ugly, temporary way soldiers get when they've convinced themselves tomorrow might never come.

---

April 27–30, 1918 — The Last Stretch

With the bridge repaired, we rolled forward again into the endless grey-white expanse toward Murmansk. The mood shifted — not exactly calmer, just… more deliberate. Fights broke out less often, replaced by a kind of mutual understanding: the journey was almost over, and nobody wanted to die in sight of the finish line.

Not that the road was quiet. We still had the occasional potshot from the treeline, or a mine buried shallow in the snow. On the 28th, a shell from some ancient mountain gun landed thirty meters short of the tracks, spraying snow over the lead engine and making the bear, Lenin, scream loud enough to startle half the convoy.

The shortages were still biting. Without opium, tempers smouldered just below the surface. I rationed whatever vodka and cigarettes we scrounged up from the nearby villages as tightly as ammunition, handing it out only after firefights. It kept the men obedient, if sullen.

By the 30th, we were deep in the northern wilderness. The forests thinned into windswept tundra, the air sharp enough to make your teeth ache. Murmansk was close — you could feel it in the way the men glanced forward more often, counting the miles in their heads.

I kept smoking. My last carton was nearly gone. Every drag felt like spending gold. And I knew that when we reached the port, there'd be no quiet welcome — just another set of orders, maybe another fight, another list of names to be crossed off.

But at least we'd be done with the rails for now.

---

May 1, 1918 — Murmansk, Arrival

The trains limped into Murmansk like a wounded animal — filthy, bullet-pocked, and wearing the journey like a scar. Soot streaked the carriages, bullet holes stitched along the siding, and the whole thing stank of cordite, alcohol, wet wool, and unwashed men.

The Czechoslovaks staggered off first. Some carried looted Russian flags like hunting trophies; others hauled unconscious prostitutes over their shoulders with the casualness of men moving sacks of grain. A few still had dried blood on their coats — not all of it their own.

I followed them down the platform at an unhurried pace, a cigarette between my lips, coat still bearing the dried, flaking stains from April's bridge fight. I didn't walk like a conquering hero or a defeated man — just someone who had closed a deal, ugly but profitable, and was already thinking about the next one.

Locals watched from the edge of the platform with that mix of curiosity and fear usually reserved for wild animals that haven't decided whether to attack. The British liaison officers, however, just looked horrified — staring past me at the chaos spilling out of the train like they'd been handed a diplomatic incident with teeth.

I stopped in front of them, exhaled smoke, and in clean, deliberate English said,
"Gentlemen — your Czechoslovaks. I'd like to speak to your leader."

They blinked — the surprise on their faces was almost funny. They hadn't expected the bloodstained Georgian warlord to speak their language, let alone like a man asking for a business appointment.

Then I turned back to the Legion, voice carrying over the platform noise.

"The bear stays with me," I said in Russian. "Non-negotiable."

Lenin, the bear cub, was gnawing on the corner of a crate. No one argued.

 

[Alenco98]

Excerpt from George Orwell's 1945 novel, Animal Farm:

Napoleon and Bonaparte were two large Berkshire boars, littermates from the same sow, but so different in manner that many animals wondered how they had come from the same mother.

Napoleon was a pig of quiet disposition, rarely seen in argument, but with a heavy presence that made others uneasy. He had a way of watching, waiting, and saying little, as though every word were a weapon to be saved. He spoke seldom, but when he did, it was always with an air of finality, as though the matter had been decided long before.

Bonaparte, by contrast, was a creature of fire and fury. The animals admired him, for he lived among them, worked beside them, and boasted that his own sons would labour as hard as any beast. Yet there was a hardness in his eye that frightened even his admirers. To friends he was loyal and generous, but to enemies he was merciless, as though cruelty were a form of justice.

Beside them was Snowball, a lively boar with quicker speech and more inventive ideas than either of the brothers. He was less imposing, but far more articulate, and seemed to carry the future in his words. Where Napoleon's silence was oppressive and Bonaparte's zeal was terrifying, Snowball's enthusiasm was infectious.

It was plain to all, even in those early days, that the destiny of the farm would be decided between these three.

--------

May 1, 1918
HMS Glory
Off the coast of Murmansk

The cabin reeked faintly of coal smoke and polished brass. I sat opposite Admiral Thomas Webster Kemp, commander of the North Russia Squadron, who regarded me the way one might study an exotic disease under a microscope — fascinated, but not entirely convinced it wasn't contagious.

I couldn't blame him. I was, after all, a half-mad Georgian warlord who had just hauled ten thousand Czechoslovaks across Russia on a caravan fueled almost entirely by women, alcohol, cigarettes, and opium. If I'd been in his shoes, I'd have been perplexed too. Possibly even alarmed.

But as Meiko Nakahara once said in one of her songs — jinsei wa like a joke. Life is like a joke. And after the year I'd had, I was inclined to agree.

I leaned forward, cigarette smoldering between my fingers, and spoke plainly.
"I'll cut to the chase, Admiral. We've both heard the news from out west. The Germans have taken Amiens. They're currently fighting at Chantilly. Paris is well within artillery range and if Chantilly falls the way to Paris is open. The French are screaming, the British are bleeding, and the Americans are still learning which side of a rifle to hold."

Kemp's face twitched, but he said nothing.

"I have bought you ten thousand Czechoslovaks," I continued, "battle-hardened men who fought for the Tsar, who've survived revolution, betrayal, and a railway trip with me in command — which is frankly the greater miracle. Russia may be technically out of the war, but the Czechoslovaks aren't. They're armed, they're angry, and most importantly, they hate the Germans."

I stubbed the cigarette out on the edge of his polished desk, just to watch his jaw tighten.
"So here's my proposal: you take them. Put them on your transports. Empty your warehouses here and in Archangel, give them rifles, shells, boots — and sail them to France. God knows you'll need them, unless you'd prefer to let the Germans parade down the Champs-Élysées."

I sat back, letting the words hang in the smoke-thick air.

Kemp stared at me for a long time, his expression torn between incredulity and calculation. I knew what he was thinking: Who the hell is this man, and why does he sound like he's negotiating a trade deal instead of dropping ten thousand mercenaries in my lap?

Admiral Kemp sat very still as I finished my proposal. His staff officers — pale, stiff men with neatly trimmed mustaches — exchanged glances that hovered somewhere between disbelief and alarm.

Finally, Kemp spoke.

"Your English… it's very good. Unexpected."

I smirked, flicking ash into a polished brass tray.

"Seminary, Admiral. Before I was a warlord, I was training to be a priest. Turns out God didn't need me, but the revolution did."

The room went quiet at that, the only sound the creak of the ship's timbers and the distant clang of hammers on deck. The British weren't sure whether to laugh or cross themselves.

Kemp leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled.

"Let me be frank, Comrade Jugashvili. What you've accomplished is… extraordinary. To bring ten thousand armed men across that distance, in the middle of civil war, on a railway held together with spit and sabotage — it defies reason. But your proposal…" He shook his head slightly. "It's not that simple."

One of his staff officers cleared his throat.
"London's policy is… unsettled. We do not know yet whether we shall commit significant forces here, in North Russia, or whether these—" he hesitated, eyeing my Czechs through the porthole window "—forces are to be shipped to France, or held in reserve."

Kemp nodded.

"Your men are valuable, there's no denying it. But the Foreign Office is cautious. They see Bolshevism as the greater danger in Russia now. Ten thousand battle-hardened Czechs could make a difference here — holding Murmansk, Archangel, keeping these ports open."

I lit another cigarette, exhaling smoke across his desk.

"So your plan is to keep them here, wasting away guarding warehouses, while the Germans stroll into Paris? Brilliant. Truly, British genius at work."

Kemp's eyes narrowed, but he didn't rise to the bait. He was a professional. "Be careful, Comrade. This isn't London, but my orders still bind me. I cannot promise France. Not yet. What I can promise is supplies, rest, and order for your Legion. After what I've seen today on that platform, they'll need all three."

I leaned forward, voice low.

"Admiral, you're playing for time. I understand. But time is exactly what the French don't have. And when Paris falls, don't say the mad Georgian didn't warn you."

For a moment, no one spoke. The cigarette smoke curled between us like a third participant in the conversation.

Kemp finally broke the silence.

"You will have your supplies. And a message will be sent to London immediately. Until then, I suggest you keep your men under control."

I smiled thinly, stood, and straightened my bloodstained coat.

"Admiral, I don't give a shit about London. I have a civil war to fight. Counter-revolutionaries to kill. If you think I'm going to sit here while you write polite letters back and forth with London, you're out of your mind. Put me on the line with London. Now."

The temperature in the room dropped. His staff stiffened, some glancing at the revolver holstered at my hip.

Kemp frowned. "Comrade Jugashvili, that is not how—"

I cut him off with a laugh. "Spare me the procedure. You're in Russia, Admiral. Bolshevik Russia. Your government has no business here now that we're out of the war. Unless, of course, you'd like to declare war on Russia. That'd be something. I've never killed British before. Could be an educational experience."

That got them. One officer actually half-rose from his chair, knuckles white on the edge of the table. Kemp raised a hand and barked, "Sit down!" Then he turned back to me, eyes flashing.

"Comrade, you are addressing the Royal Navy, not a cabal of drunken mercenaries. Watch your tongue."

I leaned back, spread my arms, grinning through the smoke.

"You've seen my train, Admiral. You think you're negotiating with a delegation, but you're really negotiating with ten thousand drunk mercenaries, 5000 battle hardened men and one half-mad Georgian who brought them here alive. If you want order in Murmansk, you talk to me. If you want chaos, by all means — wait for London."

The room boiled with restrained outrage. Kemp's voice rose, clipped and sharp.
"You presume too much. Britain's role here is not subject to your approval. You are a guest — nothing more."

"And you," I snapped, slamming my hand on the table hard enough to rattle the inkpot, "are a bureaucrat in a uniform, hiding behind telegrams while Europe burns. France is choking, Germany is winning, and you sit here quoting the Foreign Office like a schoolboy reciting his catechism."

Kemp surged halfway out of his chair before catching himself. For a moment, it looked like the meeting might collapse into outright shouting. His face was red, his staff looked horrified, and I just smiled, lit another cigarette, and blew the smoke directly toward him.

"Admiral," I said softly, "get me London. I want to speak to your manager."

The silence after my "manager" remark stretched. Kemp's knuckles were white on the table, his staff stiff with indignation. For a moment I thought he might throw me overboard himself.

Then he breathed in, slowly, and unclenched his fists. His voice, when it came, was clipped and deliberate — the sound of a man forcing himself down from a ledge.

"Comrade Jugashvili… I understand your urgency. Truly. But this is a delicate matter. I will send cables to London tonight. In the meantime, your men will be provisioned — food, boots, ammunition, medical supplies. We can stabilize your Legion here, rest them, ensure discipline is restored. And we will see, in due course, what deployment is appropriate."

His officers nodded, glad their commander was at least pretending this was under control.

I nodded along too, cigarette bobbing between my lips. Outwardly, calm, agreeable. Inside, though? I knew exactly what this was: stalling. The British didn't care about Amiens or France — not really. They wanted an excuse to stay here. To carve out a foothold in the north, to meddle, maybe even to overthrow the Bolsheviks.

And if that was the case… well, I'd have to pull a gamer moment and take Murmansk by force. Expel them. Show them Russia wasn't theirs to treat like a colony.

But none of that touched my face. Instead, I leaned back, smiled thinly, and said,
"Admiral, of course. I appreciate your… consideration. My men will be grateful for the supplies. Food, cigarettes if you have them, and perhaps some whiskey — it's been a long journey. We'll await London's reply."

I extended my hand across the table, all courtesy and warmth. Kemp hesitated, then shook it.

Inside, I was already planning where to place my Guards if it came to a fight.

I left the Glory with a smile plastered on my face, all handshakes and pleasantries, as though Admiral Kemp and I had agreed on the price of a horse. By the time I was back among my men, the mask had slipped. The smoke of the British fleet still hung in the bay, and the thought of their polished arrogance gnawed at me like a rotten tooth.

I called Tukachevsky and the Revolutionary Guard officers into a commandeered warehouse by the station. Just them — no Czechs, no hangers-on, no one who might have second thoughts. The door slammed shut, and the noise of the drunken Legion outside became a dull backdrop.

I lit another cigarette, paced once, then turned on them.

"The British are stalling. You saw their faces. They don't care about France. They don't care about Germany. They want to stay here — to use the Czechoslovaks as their cudgel, to overthrow the Bolsheviks, to make Russia their colony. They'll bleed us dry guarding warehouses until they find an excuse to run the government themselves."

The Guards shifted uneasily. Tukachevsky's jaw tightened, but he didn't interrupt. He knew where I was going.

"So we're going to beat them to it," I went on. "We'll take the British by surprise, overwhelm their detachments in the city. Their liaison officers and sailors will be taken alive. Hostages. Then we scuttle their fleet in Murmansk harbor — sink their transports, cripple their warships if we can. That way, they'll have no landing point, no supply line, no foothold in Russia."

I exhaled smoke and jabbed the cigarette in the air like a pointer.

"Once that's done, we fortify Murmansk. Then Archangel. Barricades, trenches, machine guns on the ridgelines. Let London howl from across the sea. Without ships, they'll be powerless. And the Bolsheviks? They'll thank us for defending the north from imperialists."

The room was silent except for the hiss of the oil lamp.

"Get me translators," I said finally. "All of them. Tonight, I'm going to rile up the Czechoslovaks. Tell them the British plan to abandon them here in the snow, to starve and rot while France falls. Tell them we've been betrayed — and that the only answer is to take Murmansk for ourselves."

I ground the cigarette out on the warehouse floor.

"Gentlemen, we're about to add the British Empire to the list of people who regret meeting me."

---

May 1, 1918
Murmansk
Russia

The night air was sharp enough to cut through coats. The Czechoslovaks were gathered in the square, stamping their boots against the frost, clutching the rations the British had just handed out. Biscuits, tins of meat, a few crates of hard tack — enough to keep them alive, but not enough to buy their loyalty.

I climbed up onto a wagon, lit by torchlight and the glow of barrel-fires, and looked down at ten thousand tired, hungry, angry men. Translators stood ready on either side, waiting to turn my Georgian-Russian bark into Czech and Slovak growls.

I raised my arms. The noise died down.

"I have spoken to the British," I began, my voice carrying across the square. "And I will be blunt — they told you all to go fuck yourselves!"

A ripple of laughter, boos, curses. The translators spat the words with venom.

"They give cheap excuses! They say Bolshevism is a threat to Russia — while the Germans march toward Paris even now! They want to keep you here, cold and miserable, while they dine on caviar in their ships and piss on your sacrifices!"

Shouts of anger broke out in the crowd. Someone hurled their ration tin into the snow.

"I say no! I have given you women! Loot! And I will get you home, one way or another! Not as beggars in some frozen port, but as men — as soldiers, as Czechoslovaks!"

The translators bellowed it, and the square shook with roaring voices in reply.

I stepped forward, stabbing the air with my cigarette. "I say we teach the British a lesson! We seize their ships! We take their guns! We strip everything they have stashed here in Murmansk! And then we make our way home on our own terms. We will show the British you are not their slaves! You are Czechoslovaks! You are a proud people — not British puppets!"

The roar that followed was deafening — fists in the air, rifles raised, the bear cub Lenin howling with the men as if it understood.

I grinned, lifted my arm high, and gave them the chant:
"Glory! Women! Loot! Follow me, and you will have them!"

They answered in thunder, and at that moment Murmansk itself seemed to tremble.

The speech had barely died down before I gave the order. No time to let the anger cool, no time for second thoughts. Rage is like vodka — best drunk quickly before it loses its burn.

I pointed toward the harbor lights where the silhouettes of British warships loomed in the bay.

"To the docks! Catch them with their pants down!"

The roar that followed was feral. The Czechoslovaks surged forward, rifles and bayonets in the air, boots pounding the frozen earth. I didn't stay behind to "coordinate" or "observe." No — I went with them, cigarette clenched between my teeth, revolver in hand. If I was going to turn Murmansk upside down, I'd do it from the front.

The march became a charge, drunken voices twisting into war cries in Czech, Slovak, Russian. They poured into the dockyards like a tide, scattering the few guards and laborers unlucky enough to be standing watch. The British liaison officers, still lingering near the warehouses, barely had time to shout before they were shoved to the ground and trussed up.

Gunfire cracked as a few Marines tried to hold their ground by the piers. I saw one in his blue greatcoat raise his rifle — I put a Nagant round straight through his chest without breaking stride. Another swung a bayonet at close range, and I smashed him in the face with the butt, teeth scattering across the planks.

Behind me, the Czechoslovaks howled like wolves, storming through the dockside, seizing cranes, smashing open warehouses, and dragging crates of rifles and whiskey into the open. The Revolutionary Guards moved with precision, cutting off escape routes and herding the British sailors at gunpoint.

The harbor echoed with chaos — shouts in half a dozen languages, gunfire, the crash of crates hitting the water. In the distance, a klaxon began to wail from one of the British ships, a hollow, panicked cry that carried over the black water.

I spat my cigarette into the snow and drew another from my pocket with blood still on my sleeve.

The klaxons from the anchored ships were screaming now, echoing across the bay like the howls of a cornered beast. Lanterns and searchlights swung from masts, slicing through the Arctic dark, catching flashes of armed Czechoslovaks swarming the piers.

The Royal Navy, caught in its nightshirt, scrambled to respond. Officers barked orders from the decks of HMS Glory and her escorts, Marines lining the rails with rifles. But it was too late for clean discipline.

Dozens of my men had already seized rowboats. They shoved them into the black water, overloaded with armed Czechs and Guards, who paddled furiously toward the ships while shouting curses in a medley of languages. Some carried rifles slung across their backs, others carried grenades like apples in their belts.

"Take the ships! Take the guns! Take the officers alive!" I roared from the dock, revolver raised. The men howled in reply.

On the water, the first rowboats smashed against the hulls of the British ships. Grappling hooks went up, and drunken Legionnaires clawed their way aboard, firing pistols into the air and screaming like demons. The British Marines fired down, muzzle flashes stabbing the night, but the sheer chaos of it worked in our favor. Shots went wild, rowboats pressed in from every angle, and before long the first Czech flags were waving defiantly from a captured deck gun.

I saw one of my Guards leap from a rope ladder straight onto the quarterdeck of a destroyer, tackle an officer, and put a revolver to his temple. A cheer went up from the rowboats below. Hostages. Exactly what we needed.

The harbor had become a battlefield of shouts and gunfire, the water dotted with the black shapes of boats swarming like ants on a carcass. The Royal Navy still had discipline, still had steel, but they hadn't expected to be ambushed in their own anchorage by a mob of feral mercenaries led by a bloodstained Georgian.

I lit another cigarette, watching the flashes of light on the water.

"Gentlemen," I muttered to myself, "the scuttling comes next."

May 2, 1918
Murmansk Harbor
Russia

By midnight, the first decks had fallen. The rowboats kept coming, wave after wave of Legionnaires clambering up rope ladders, bayonets flashing in the searchlights. The British Marines fought hard — stiff, disciplined, barking orders through the chaos — but they were drowning in sheer numbers. Ten thousand half-drunk Czechs, whipped into frenzy, were not an enemy the Admiralty had trained them for.

I boarded HMS Glory myself, revolver in hand, coat whipping in the Arctic wind. A knot of Czechoslovaks cleared the way, their boots splashing through blood and seawater on the deck. A British lieutenant tried to draw his sword; I shot him in the head, watched him crumple, and kicked the blade away.

"Captain on deck!" one of my Guards shouted mockingly, dragging the Glory's real captain forward. A proud man — square jaw, greatcoat still neat even in the chaos. I shoved my revolver under his chin.

"Order your men below decks. Now. Or I paint the deck with your brains."

He hesitated, jaw working. Then the reality set in — Marines already disarmed, sailors herded at bayonet point, Czech flags already fluttering from the rigging of the destroyer beside us. He barked the order. Reluctant, but clear. The crew obeyed. Down into the guts of the ship they went, stripped of rifles, stripped of dignity.

It went the same on the other vessels. Captains forced at gunpoint to surrender their men, stokers driven into the holds, machine-gun nests turned outward to cover the docks instead of the bay. The Guards were efficient, if brutal: once a ship was secured, they lined the crew against the bulkheads, locked hatches, and posted men at every ladder. Hostages, every last one of them.

From the dock, the view was surreal. British warships — proud silhouettes of the Royal Navy — now bristling with Czech sentries at the rails, drunken Legionnaires firing pistols into the air, waving captured rifles and shouting in triumph.

I lit another cigarette and let the smoke curl in the frigid wind.

"Scuttle teams next," I muttered. "If London wants their ships back, they'll have to drag them from the bottom of the bay."

Lenin the bear cub waddled along the dock behind me, chewing on a torn bit of Marine epaulet. The men cheered as I raised my arm toward the harbor. Murmansk was ours.

At least, for tonight.

I gave the order to evacuate the British sailors and officers once everything calmed down. No massacres — not yet. Dead men rot, but live men panic. Panic spreads faster. My Guards herded the crews ashore at bayonet point, rifles pressed into backs, revolvers against skulls. The British lined up on the frozen docks, shivering in their thin uniforms, officers trying to keep their men straight while drunken Czechs jeered.

I let my guardsmen and the Czechoslovaks strip the prisoners of belts, watches, anything of value. I did promise loot after all.

Meanwhile, demolition teams went below decks. Not engineers, not specialists — just Guards with crates of dynamite and a vague understanding that "engine room plus explosives equals sinking ship." They smashed open hatches, dragged charges into boiler rooms, coal bunkers, and magazines. The work was loud, frantic, clumsy — crates slamming onto steel, fuses unspooled across decks slick with seawater.

I paced the quay, cigarette in hand, watching the black silhouettes of the Royal Navy against the stars. Beautiful ships, even now. Steel built for empire. Soon to be twisted wreckage on the seabed.

"Sir," one of the Guards reported, "charges set on the Glory and two destroyers. Another hour for the rest."

"Light them when ready," I said. "Then off the ships. All of you."

At 0200 the first charges blew. A deep, guttural thump rolled across the harbor as Glory's engine room tore itself open, water rushing in with a roar. The old battleship listed sharply to starboard, smoke curling from her funnels, then settled with a groan as the sea claimed her.

One by one the destroyers followed, keels cracking, decks splitting under the weight of inrushing water. Some capsized, masts vanishing beneath the black waves; others sank slowly, stubbornly, until only their funnels jutted above the surface like gravestones.

The British prisoners on shore stood in rigid silence, watching their squadron die in the harbor they had come to command. I caught the captain of the Glory staring at me, his face pale but steady. I raised my cigarette to him in a mock toast.

By dawn, Murmansk harbor was a graveyard. The Royal Navy's North Russia Squadron lay half-submerged in the bay, smoke and oil slicking the water.

I turned to my officers, voice hoarse from smoke and cold.

"Fortify the city. Machine guns on the ridges. Trenches along the approaches. Burn every ship that isn't used for fishing to ensure landing is impossible. From this day forward, Murmansk will remain ours."

May 2, 1918
Daytime
Murmansk

Admiral Kemp sat on a wooden chair in what had once been a fish storehouse, now emptied of crates and filled with British officers under guard. The smell of salt, smoke, and oil from the harbor clung to the air. Outside, the muffled roar of Legionnaires celebrating drifted in — laughter, boots stamping, the occasional gunshot fired into the sky.

I stepped in, coat still streaked with grime, revolver on my belt. Kemp looked up at me with a face carved from stone. He had the look of a man who knew he'd just watched his entire squadron drown and was still trying to make sense of it.

I took out my cigarette case, tapped one free, and lit it. The flame caught the edge of my face in the dim light. Then I leaned against the table opposite him and exhaled smoke.

"Should have put me on the line to London, asshole," I said in fluent English, voice almost casual. "Might've saved your fleet."

Kemp's jaw flexed, but he said nothing. He was too disciplined for that.

I held out the pack, offering him a cigarette. "Go on. Last one's free. After all, I'm a generous host."

He hesitated, then took it. I lit it for him, watched the smoke rise between us.

"You and your men," I said, tone soft but cutting, "will be treated with dignity. No parading in the streets, no executions, no insults. You'll be hostages, Admiral. Nothing more, nothing less. Alive, useful, respected… as long as you don't make me regret it. We'll arrange for you all to be sent to Moscow."

Kemp exhaled through his nose, the cigarette trembling just slightly between his fingers. He met my eyes finally.
"You'll regret this, Jugashvili. London will not forget Murmansk."

I smiled thinly, blew smoke into the dim air, and leaned closer.

"London can't even hold Amiens, Admiral. Let them remember Murmansk. Maybe it'll remind them they don't run the world."

I straightened, flicked the ash from my cigarette, and turned to leave. Behind me, the British officers sat in silence, their uniforms rumpled, their pride drowned with their ships.

May 2, 1918
Night
Murmansk

We gathered in what passed for my headquarters — a commandeered customs office overlooking the recently burnt harbor. The windows were cracked, the floorboards stained with salt and coal dust, but the view was good. You could see the half-submerged hulks of the British squadron bobbing like corpses.

Tukachevsky stood at attention, flanked by the senior officers of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. They were still flushed from victory, but I saw the hunger in their eyes. Victory was an appetizer. They wanted the main course.

I leaned over the map spread across the table, cigarette clamped in my teeth, finger tracing the line of the railway down to Archangel.

"Tukhachevsky," I said, my voice flat. "Take a thousand men. Guards only. Leave the Czechs here — they're drunk, unruly, and too busy looting Murmansk to be of use. You'll march on Archangel. If the British are there, you expel them. If they resist, you take hostages like we did here. If you can't, you burn the harbor and every ship that floats — make it impossible for them to land again."

The Guards exchanged glances, but none spoke.

"On the way," I went on, "kill every SR, every monarchist, every provisional government rat you find. No exceptions. They are to fear our march like a plague of fire." I jabbed my finger against Archangel on the map. "Fortify it when you're done. Trenches, barricades, machine guns on the approaches, burn the fucking port. If the British want a foothold in the north, they'll have to claw it back over corpses."

I straightened, exhaling smoke.
"In the meantime, I'll turn Murmansk into a fortress. The coast will be mined. Every pier burned, every slipway made useless. If they try to land here again, they'll find nothing but wreckage and gunfire."

Tukachevsky nodded sharply. "I'll take care of it."

I smiled thinly, tapping ash onto the map.
"Good. Then let the world know — the north belongs to us. Not London. Not Paris. Us."

The room was silent except for the hiss of the oil lamp. Outside, the drunken singing of Czechoslovaks drifted through the night air, punctuated by the low growl of the bear cub Lenin rooting through a crate.

 

[Alenco98]

May 7, 1918
Winter Palace
Petrograd, Russia

Stalin sat in the Central Committee chamber of the former Winter Palace, his brother-in-law Aleksandr Svanidze beside him, quietly shuffling papers. Outwardly, Stalin presented his usual mask — calm, unreadable, lips set in a faint frown. Inside, however, his thoughts were in disarray, pulled in every direction by the latest dispatch from Murmansk.

The Committee was in uproar. All because of his brother. Mikheil.

The report had arrived only days earlier, written in his brother's bold, clipped writing. At first glance, it had read like another field commander's situation update. On closer inspection, it was closer to a declaration of war.

Mikheil had delivered exactly as promised. The ragged Czechoslovak Legion he'd gathered in Kiev was now in Murmansk, intact, armed, and encamped under his Revolutionary Guard Corps. But what followed in the report had chilled even Lenin to silence.

According to Mikheil, the British had refused to evacuate the Legion. They had refused, too, to leave Russia. So Mikheil had taken matters into his own hands. Murmansk, he wrote, was now "secured" — which in practice meant the docks were in Bolshevik hands, the British liaison officers were hostages, their warships scuttled, and the harbor itself burnt and fortified against any further landings.

Stalin's stomach tightened as he reread the lines. It was not simply that Mikheil had taken such drastic steps. It was that he had made them public. The letter wasn't a private briefing. He had ordered the news to spread across the northern front, justifying his actions in language as inflammatory as the act itself.

"The British admiral himself admitted London considers Bolshevism in Russia a threat," Mikheil had written. "They mean to fight us, like the forces of counter-revolution against France. I have merely made the conditions favorable to our cause. They are off balance. They will act emotionally. They will launch a half-hearted intervention that we can repel with ease."

And now, as if that weren't enough, Mikheil had sent a lieutenant north — a former aristocrat named Tukhachevsky — with orders to secure Archangel, expel any Allied presence there, execute Socialist Revolutionaries, monarchists, and former Provisional Government loyalists, and burn the harbor behind him. On paper, it was logical. Brutal, yes, but strategically sound.

Not to the Committee. To them, it looked reckless, unilateral, dangerous. Even Trotsky, if he wasn't down in the Volga fighting the counter-revolutionaries , would have sat back in his chair and muttered about "adventurism" and "Bonapartism." Lenin drummed his fingers on the table, eyes narrowed, silently weighing the costs. Sverdlov whispered furiously with Dzerzhinsky about whether Murmansk was now a liability.

Stalin said nothing. Outwardly, he remained the picture of composure. But inside, he didn't know whether to feel pride, dread, or resentment. His brother had, in a single stroke, given Russia control of the Arctic coast — and invited the wrath of the world's strongest navy.

Was it brilliance? Or madness? Stalin could not decide.

"Unilateral!" Kamenev barked, interrupting his thoughts while stabbing his finger at the paper he held. "He acted without authorization, without consultation! Scuttling ships, taking hostages, spreading his proclamations as if he were the Party itself!"

Lenin's voice was quieter, but heavier. "He has created a war with Britain without the Party's sanction. That cannot be tolerated. Discipline is everything. The revolution is not won by lone warlords carving fiefdoms."

From the far side, Adolf Joffe, Trotsky's creature leaned forward, spectacles glinting. "Trotsky warned us," he said sharply. "He warned us that this Guard Corps was dangerous — a Praetorian bodyguard in everything but name. And now we see it. Ten thousand Czechoslovaks and 5000 guardsmen at his command, ships sunk, the Entente humiliated. Comrades, his Guard Corps cannot be allowed to operate independently. Not after this."

Murmurs of agreement circled the table.

Stalin sat very still, but his voice cut through the din when he finally spoke.
"Strategically, what he did was sound."

The room snapped to look at him. Stalin let the silence hang, then repeated it slowly.
"The British were going to intervene. They made it clear to him — and they have made it clear to us. Whether now or later, there would be a landing in the north. Mikheil merely ensured that if they come, they come on our terms. With their fleet crippled, with Murmansk and Archangel fortified, not at their leisure. His judgment was correct."

The Committee shifted uneasily. Even Lenin frowned, not at the logic, but at the defense itself.

Joffe raised a hand. "Yes. Strategically, I will not dispute it. What he achieved is useful. But comrades — useful does not mean safe. He acted outside orders. He announced it as policy without authorization. If every commander did this, we would have chaos, not revolution."

Kamenev seized the thread eagerly. "Exactly! Discipline is indivisible. No one is above the Party. Not Mikheil, not anyone."

A chorus of assent followed. Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky, even Kalinin nodding grimly.

Stalin glanced at Aleksandr beside him. His brother-in-law said nothing, but his eyes spoke the same fear Stalin felt: Mikheil had not merely made himself useful — he had made himself dangerous.

The consensus settled. Lenin leaned forward, voice deliberate. "Then it is agreed. His actions were militarily effective, yes. But the precedent cannot stand. The Revolutionary Guard Corps must not be permitted to act as an independent army. Mikheil Jugashvili, comrade Makarov must be reined in."

Stalin lowered his gaze to the table, hiding the storm in his eyes. He had defended his brother's brilliance — but even he could not deny what they all now understood.

Mikheil had gone too far.

The decision came quickly once the shouting gave way to order. Lenin called for discipline, Kamenev demanded precedent, and Joffe pressed the danger of precedent. In the end, there was no dissent.

A formal reprimand. That much was agreed upon first. Mikheil's name would be written into the record of the Central Committee, his actions noted as reckless and unauthorized.

Then came the real blow.

Trotsky, absent in the Volga but present in every word Joffe repeated, would assume authority over the Revolutionary Guard Corps. They would be merged into the Soviet military, their independence dissolved. Mikheil would no longer be a warlord with 15 thousand men at his back, but a commander under Trotsky's hierarchy. But worst of all, Mikheil would be stripped of his seat in the central committee, the commissariat of religious affairs would now go to Joffe.

Lenin leaned forward, his eyes cold. "And commissars. They will go with him. To ensure discipline."

All eyes turned to Dzerzhinsky. He didn't hesitate. "Vsevolod Balitsky," he said, flatly. "One of my most reliable men. He will head the commissars we will send to Mikheil. He will ensure Comrade Mikheil understands what it means to follow Party orders. And the consequences if he acts out."

And then, as if it were a mere administrative detail, Dzerzhinsky added: "Additionally, for his family's protection, Cheka men will be dispatched to his household. His Guards will be relieved of that duty immediately."

The words hung in the air. Stalin heard them for what they were: not protection. Hostages. Insurance. Their mother keke, his niece, his nephews. He wanted to strangle Dzerzhinsky for daring to suggest that. And Mikheil for putting her in danger.

He glanced at Aleksandr beside him, but his brother-in-law gave nothing away. Stalin's own face remained impassive too. But inside, a rage settled in his chest. They had cut Mikheil down without killing him. A reprimand for the papers, commissars for his Guards, stripped of his committee seat, and a noose around his family's neck.

The vote was taken. Unanimous. Stalin raised his hand with the rest. To oppose it would have been political suicide. Aleksander did too.

When it was done, Lenin turned to other matters. But Stalin spoke again, his voice low and deliberate. "Comrades. However we reprimand Mikheil, remember this: he is correct about one thing. The north is not safe. Britain will try again, and not only in Murmansk or Archangel. Finland and Estonia are close to Petrograd — a landing there would threaten the Revolution itself. If we secure those coasts, Petrograd will be safe. If we do not, we risk losing everything."

The Committee fell silent at that. Some frowned, some nodded. Lenin said nothing, but Stalin could see the thought turning in his eyes.

Inside, Stalin sat heavy with the knowledge that his brother had won and lost in the same stroke. Brilliant, reckless, dangerous — and now watched from every angle. He glanced at Joffe, his face gleaming with triumph as he was now a voting member of the central committee. He would remember his name, his time would come.

The decision crystallized slowly. Lenin leaned forward, fingers steepled, and spoke for all:

"Mikheil Jugashvili will be ordered to secure Finland. But not yet. Not until the commissars arrive in Murmansk. Until then, he remains under watch. If he moves without authorization, he will be stripped of command and Party membership immediately. I want the KGB to go to Smolny and dismiss his guards immediately. We must secure his family first before sending out the commissars and recalling him. Dzerzhinsky and the national guard will take over security matters for the central committee members from Mikheils men. They're to be dismissed and sent to barracks with the rest of the guard corps in the city."

Kamenev nodded, scribbling notes for the record. "And this Tukhachevsky in Archangel — commissars will be sent there as well. We cannot allow another commander to imitate his master's behavior."

Dzerzhinsky's face was stone. "Yes. Commissars and reinforcements. National Guard detachments and Red Army regulars will be dispatched to both Murmansk and Archangel. Murmansk is not to be left in the hands of Czechoslovaks and adventurers. Archangel must not fall into chaos."

He turned to the Committee with his usual finality. "When my commissars arrive, Mikheil is to return here. Petrograd will give him formal orders — in writing — to secure Finland. And more commissars will embed into his ranks before he moves. For every ten men he commands, one will be mine."

The room shifted. Even Lenin blinked at the ratio. One commissar for ten men — it was not oversight, it was colonization.

Stalin sat rigid, outwardly impassive, but inside he understood the trap. They would give his brother Finland, yes — but they would choke him with commissars, bind his army with political chains, and cut the throat of the independence he had carved.

He knew also what Dzerzhinsky had not said aloud: with KGB men around Mikheil's family, any defiance would carry a cost too high to bear.

The vote was called again. Unanimous.

Stalin and Aleksander raised their hands with the rest. He had no choice. To resist would have been to admit loyalty not to the Party, but to blood — and that would have been the end of him.

 

[Alenco98]

Daily Mail
May 10, 1918

BOLSHEVIK GEORGIAN WARLORD STORMS MURMANSK!!

BRITISH FLEET SCUTTLED — OFFICERS HELD HOSTAGE

A most vile and perfidious outrage has been inflicted upon His Majesty's Royal Navy. On the first of May, in the northern port of Murmansk, a Bolshevik rabble styling itself the Revolutionary Guard Corps — led by a Georgian brigand by the name of Mikheil Jugashvili — descended upon our fleet and delivered a treacherous blow against the British Empire.

Admiral Kemp and his officers, holding their posts in that distant, icy anchorage, found themselves overwhelmed not by a professional army, but by an undisciplined horde of Reds — armed with rifles, grenades, and a fanatical devotion to Lenin's so-called "world revolution." These men stormed the quayside, overran the naval detachment, and seized both sailors and officers as hostages. Our men now languish under Bolshevik guard, their fate unknown.

Worse still, the fleet itself has been laid to ruin. At Jugashvili's orders, the proud vessels of His Majesty's Navy — symbols of Britain's maritime supremacy — were scuttled in the harbour. Fires were set throughout Murmansk. The docks, warehouses, and fuel depots were put to the torch. What was once a northern bulwark against German encroachment has been reduced to cinders and wreckage, all in the service of a revolutionary tyranny that despises order, tradition, and civilisation itself.

It must be understood who stands behind this crime. Jugashvili is no Russian patriot but a Caucasian adventurer, a Georgian of ruthless ambition who has gathered around himself a private army of cut-throats and desperadoes. His name is scarcely known in the salons of Europe, yet in the chaos of Russia he has clawed his way into power, styling himself a guardian of the Bolshevik cause. He is not a soldier in the true sense, but a warlord — a gangster elevated by the anarchy of revolution.

The implications of this outrage are grave. The Bolsheviks have shown they will not hesitate to strike at Britain, even in the farthest reaches of the North. They have shown that treaties, understandings, and civilised conduct mean nothing to them. They will burn and plunder, scuttle and kill, so long as it serves their dream of a Bolshevised world.

We must not allow this insult to pass unanswered. Murmansk must be avenged. The British officers and men held hostage must be freed. And Jugashvili himself must be made to understand that to raise a hand against the Union Jack is to invite the full, crushing weight of the British Empire.

This is no time for half-measures. Intervention in Russia is no longer a matter of debate, but of necessity. The Reds have struck first. We must strike back harder.

Let there be no mistake: Britain will not allow a gang of Bolshevik savages, led by an obscure Georgian, to dictate terms upon the seas. Our Navy may have been scuttled at Murmansk — but the might of the Empire remains. Jugashvili and his rabble have lit a fire. We shall answer with steel.

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War Cabinet Meeting — 11 May 1918
Prime Minister's Office, London
Classified — Cabinet Transcript

Present:
Prime Minister David Lloyd George,
Lord Milner (Secretary of State for War),
Winston Churchill (Minister of Munitions),
Lord Curzon (Lord President of the Council),
Andrew Bonar Law (Chancellor of the Exchequer),
Arthur Balfour (Foreign Secretary),
Jan Smuts (Imperial War Cabinet).

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Lloyd George (PM): Gentlemen, you will all have read the reports from Murmansk. Admiral Kemp's fleet has been scuttled, the port burned, and our men taken hostage. The act is nothing short of piracy.

Churchill: Piracy? It is worse than piracy. It is an act of war! This Georgian brigand — Jugashvili, they call him — dares to seize His Majesty's ships, burn His Majesty's harbourage, and hold His Majesty's officers captive. It is war, gentlemen, war against civilisation.

Curzon: We cannot let this stand. But with Amiens fallen, Chantilly under fire, and Paris in peril, our hands are tied. France cries out for divisions, not diversions.

Churchill (heated): And yet if we allow this Bolshevik cancer to grow, soon it will stretch from Murmansk to Constantinople! Do you not see? Germany will dine upon Russia, and the Reds will feast on the carcass. We shall face a monster with two heads — the Prussian and the Bolshevik — if we do not act.

Balfour: I must remind the Cabinet that our commitments in France are paramount. The German Offensive is not yet spent. Every man we divert east is a man taken from the trenches in France.

Bonar Law: And every pound diverted east is a pound not spent upon the defence of France. The Exchequer is strained to the bone.

Churchill (slamming the table): Then let us spend the pounds, and the men too, if need be! The empire's honor and credibility is at stake! We must plant the British flag in Archangel, in Murmansk, in the Caucasus if need be — and crush this Bolshevism before it spreads!

Smuts (calmly): Mr. Churchill is not wrong. Bolshevism is a fever, and fevers do not respect borders. But France may collapse within the month. We must balance outrage with reality.

Lloyd George: Precisely. We cannot mount a grand expedition now. But we can prepare. We can lay the foundations. Lord Milner —

Milner (leaning forward): Yes, Prime Minister.

Lloyd George: You are to draft a plan for intervention in Russia. Nothing fanciful — practical measures. Identify where we can land, whom we may arm, what resources are required. And above all, make contact with any anti-Bolshevik factions willing to fight on our side.

Milner: I'll get to it.

Churchill (with satisfaction): Splendid! We shall yet have our crusade against these Red bandits.

Lloyd George (firmly): Not yet, Winston. For now we shall fight with money, not battalions. The Bolsheviks will be weakened from within — with our gold filling the coffers of their enemies. The intervention will come, but not until Paris is safe.

Curzon: Then it is agreed. We bleed the Bolsheviks by proxy today, and prepare for tomorrow.

Lloyd George: Very well. Let the minutes show: funding increased to anti-Bolshevik elements; plans for intervention to be drafted; contact with opposition in Russia to be initiated forthwith. Gentlemen, the meeting is adjourned.

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War Cabinet – North Russia Intervention Outline
Prepared by: Lord Milner
Date: 12 May 1918

1. Objective
To re-establish a secure Allied foothold in Northern Russia in order to:

Counter Bolshevik expansion threatening British interests.

Support anti-Bolshevik and pro-Allied factions (White Russians, Finnish Whites).

Rescue British personnel captured by the Bolsheviks.

2. Assessment of Theatres

Murmansk: Currently untenable. Harbour destroyed, fleet scuttled, town largely razed. Re-establishment would require substantial engineering resources. Risk of Bolshevik fortifications and high casualties during landing high.

Archangel: Feasible for a limited summer operation. Iced over nearly half the year, reducing operational window. Can serve as staging for minor expeditions and liaison with local anti-Bolshevik forces.

Finland: Offers strategic proximity to Petrograd, but currently unstable due to ongoing civil war. British forces would require coordination with the nascent Finnish Government.

Baltic Provinces (Estonia, Latvia): Most favourable theatre. Ports in Estonia (Reval) and Latvia (Riga) offer immediate access to Baltic Sea and interior. Local administrations more stable; opportunity to support anti-Bolshevik forces while avoiding heavy winter obstacles and casualties on landing.

3. Proposed Action

Immediate: Dispatch envoys to Finland and Estonia to secure landing rights and coordinate with anti-Bolshevik factions. Establish intelligence network and liaison offices.

Support Measures: Allocate funding, equipment, and supplies to anti Bolshevik forces in both Russia and Finland. Establish covert lines of communication and limited arms shipments.

Troop Deployment:

Initial reconnaissance and security force: ~1,500–2,000 troops, to land at Estonia or Finland.

Naval escort: light cruisers and destroyers to ensure safe passage and establish control over key ports.

Subsequent reinforcement contingent: up to 5,000 troops if operational intelligence confirms feasibility and local cooperation.

Coordination: Maintain liaison with French and American missions to synchronize anti-Bolshevik assistance while avoiding overextension.

4. Contingencies

Bolshevik Counterattack: Prepare for rapid withdrawal to Baltic Sea if initial foothold proves untenable.

Local Resistance: Anticipate both armed and passive resistance from local populations; utilize intelligence to minimize civilian casualties and maintain order.

5. Timeline

Phase 1: Envoy dispatch and intelligence gathering – within 2 weeks.

Phase 2: Initial troop landing and establishment of forward base – summer months (June–July 1918).

Phase 3: Consolidation and expansion contingent on local cooperation and Bolshevik response.

6. Summary Recommendation

Avoid Murmansk for initial landing.

Prioritize Baltic provinces and Finland as potential theatres.

Provide immediate material support to anti-Bolshevik factions.

Prepare for both defensive and offensive contingencies while maintaining rapid naval mobility.

Prepared for War Cabinet approval and circulation among Allied diplomatic channels.

Note: two more interludes, the state of the western front (going over the changes). And the Czechoslovaks in Siberia.

They'll be summaries and POV's

 

[Alenco98]

An excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the Czechoslovak revolt in Siberia:

By early 1918, the Czechoslovak Legion — once a coherent, if weary, fighting force — had become scattered across the immensity of Russia. Roughly 40,000 men remained under arms, but divided into four major concentrations:

10,000 within Ukraine around Kiev.

15,000 along the Penza–kazan-Samara region

10,000 in the Novosibirsk region, and

5,000 stationed near Vladivostok.

The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, and the subsequent signing of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in December 1917 left the Legion in limbo. Their original mission — to fight Germany and Austria-Hungary for Allied recognition of Czechoslovakia — was now impossible without transit out of Russia.

It was into this void that Mikheil Jugashvili, the Georgian warlord and commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps came into play. Having marched into Ukraine with 5000 of his men. He offered to lead the Ukrainian contingent to Murmansk, all while sending messengers east promising the other Czechoslovaks to stand by as he would get them home as well. His infamous Caravan of Vice — a rolling mixture of alcohol, prostitutes, opium, brutality, and hard marching — deposited some ten thousand Legionnaires and 5 thousand revolutionary guardsmen in Murmansk on may 1st.

Initially Mikheil attempted to negotiate with the British, requesting they begin immediate evacuation of the legion. However, admiral Kemp, not having enough ships and having no authorization from London denied his request, informing Jugashvili that he would have to wait for a reply from London.

Not being one to be denied and with his patience running short, Jugashvili rallied the Revolutionary guardsmen and the Czechoslovaks. They subsequently seized the British fleet, scuttled its ships, and fortified the port that same night.

Jugashvili's mixture of ruthless charisma and opportunism attracted many Legionnaires. He promised them not only survival but wealth, glory, and women — and unlike Allied promises of distant evacuation, his words were backed by immediate plunder and authority.

By mid-May 1918, news of the "Murmansk Incident" had rippled across Russia like shockwaves through shattered glass. To Bolshevik sympathizers, Jugashvili's audacious seizure of the northern port was proof that revolutionary willpower could overcome the hesitancy of Allied imperialists. To the Allies themselves, it was nothing short of mutiny, an act of piracy dressed in the trappings of revolution. For the Czechoslovak Legion, the incident was the breaking point.

From that moment on, the once-unified Legion fractured into two bitterly opposed camps.

The Pro-Mikheil Faction. Bound together by Jugashvili's charisma, were drawn in equal measure by his promise of loot, survival, and revolutionary glory. Unlike the cautious Allied officers, Mikheil spoke in certainties: food today, women tomorrow, and plunder the day after. His words resonated with many Legionnaires of working-class origin and with younger junior officers who had grown tired of vague promises of evacuation to France. Among this camp, genuine communist sympathizers rose quickly in influence, reshaping Jugashvili's cult of personality into a revolutionary crusade. By late May, Mikheil's adherents were openly coordinating with Bolshevik forces under Trotsky in the Volga basin, particularly around the Samara–Kazan axis.

The pro allied pole meanwhile rallied around the idea of legitimacy. For these men — often senior officers, professionals, and those more tightly bound to Masaryk's vision of a Czechoslovak state — survival meant Allied recognition, not revolution. They sought nothing more than to escape Russia, regroup in France, and continue the fight against the Central Powers. In exchange for loyalty, they received supplies, ammunition, and arms from British, French, and Japanese missions in Siberia, with American matériel soon to follow. They aligned themselves closely with White forces, tying their fate to the anti-Bolshevik struggle.

The fragile balance between these camps collapsed on 27 May 1918 in Samara, when Jugashvili's adherents attempted to seize food and ammunition depots guarded by Pro-Allied Czechoslovaks. The clash was short but bloody: rifles cracked through the streets, bayonets were fixed, and in less than an hour fifty-seven men lay dead — the first Czechs to fall not against Germans or Austrians, but against their own countrymen.

The "Samara Bloodletting," as it was later called, set the precedent. From that day forward, every rumor, every whispered order, carried the risk of escalation into fratricide.

The Trans-Siberian Railway became the fault line of the Legion's internal conflict. Word of the Samara clashes spread faster than couriers could ride, magnified by rumor and distortion. In Penza, Legion detachments split over whether Mikheil was a savior or a bandit. In Novosibirsk, commanders argued openly in railway stations, pistols drawn, before men deserted to whichever side promised food and pay.

Entire units began switching allegiance at the drop of a rumor. A commander who one week swore loyalty to the Allies might, after hearing tales of Mikheil's victories in the north, defect the next. Others, more cynical, sold themselves to the highest bidder, looting towns and trading spoils with Bolsheviks or Whites as convenience dictated.

In some cities, the Czechs became petty warlords of railway yards, arsenals, or city blocks — men who had once envisioned themselves as liberators of Prague now ruled over stretches of Siberian mud and timber, their banners no longer a symbol of unity but of faction.

For the Bolsheviks, the split was an unexpected boon. Trotsky, wary yet pragmatic, saw the Czechoslovaks as dangerous but useful allies. With tens of thousands of disaffected Legionnaires adding steel to the Red effort on the Volga front.

For the Allies, the mutiny was a disaster. Instead of a disciplined, unified expeditionary asset, they now faced a divided Legion — one half cooperating with Whites, the other half fortifying Bolshevik strongholds. Japanese officers in Vladivostok fumed that their carefully laid plans to secure Siberia were being upended by "that Georgian bandit," while French officers in Irkutsk despaired that Czechs were killing Czechs before they had even set foot back in Europe.

By June 1918, the Legion's fate was sealed. The question was no longer whether they would fight for Czechoslovakia, but which Czechoslovakia they would fight for; one forged in the crucible of Allied legitimacy and Western recognition, or one born in fire and vice, under the banner of Jugashvili and the Bolshevik revolution.

The next battles — at Kazan, Ufa, and along the frozen stretches of the Siberian railway — would determine not only the survival of the Legion, but whether their homeland would be represented abroad as democratic allies of France and Britain, or as revolutionary comrades of Lenin and Jugashvili.

In Samara, Jugashvili's adherents formally threw in their lot with the Bolsheviks. Bolshevik detachments reinforced them, and together they began a series of lightning raids against White and pro-Allied Czechoslovak positions. Supply depots, rail stations, and even hospitals became targets.

The Whites and their Czechoslovak allies retaliated with their own brand of brutality, executing any Legionnaires suspected of being "red sympathizers." Executions were carried out in public squares to terrify the wavering. But rather than intimidating Mikheil's faction, the bloodletting only radicalized them.

The city became a deadly pendulum of control — swinging one day to the Whites, the next to the Reds. Civilians cowered in cellars, the streets stank of unburied corpses, and the Trans-Siberian line through Samara slowed to a crawl under the weight of barricades and patrols.

By 3 July, the Bolsheviks, supported heavily by Jugashvili aligned Czechoslovaks, seized the upper hand. The last pro-Allied Czech garrisons in the city were surrounded. Jugashvili's men offered them a choice: pledge allegiance or die.

In a grotesque echo of Jugashvili's earlier brutality in Moscow and on the Pukilovo Heights, those who defected were forced to execute their comrades who refused. Entire units dissolved in a haze of tears, drunkenness, and blood. The symbolism was deliberate — Jugashvili's new order demanded not just obedience, but complicity.

Flushed with their victory, the Czechoslovaks advanced south and seized Kazan on July 29th. There, in the chaos of conquest, they captured the Russian gold reserves — the single most valuable prize in Russia. The windfall provoked a bitter quarrel between the Czechoslovaks and Trotsky, who argued the gold belonged solely to the Soviet state.

After tense negotiations, a compromise was struck on August 15. The Czechoslovaks, backed by the sheer fact of physical possession, as well as by the political backing of Joseph Stalin, forced the Bolsheviks to concede. The gold was divided: one-third for the Bolshevik aligned Czechoslovaks in Samara and Jugashvili's northern contingent that was fighting in Finland, and two-thirds for the Bolshevik government. The split was grudging, but decisive. The Bolsheviks gained a financial lifeline that would sustain their revolution, while Czechoslovaks secured the loot that Jugashvili promised them.

Far to the east, in Novosibirsk, the schism played out differently. There, rival Czechoslovak commanders each declared themselves the rightful representatives of the national cause, forming dueling "committees."

Skirmishes on the outskirts escalated into pitched battles. By June, the fighting had drawn in Russian civilians and partisans, swelling into a localized civil war. Artillery duels turned entire neighborhoods into smoldering ruins. Railway cars filled with the dead were sent eastward, silent testimony to the ferocity of the fighting.

In the end, the Whites proved stronger. With substantial Allied support and better supply lines, they gradually ground down the Mikheil-aligned Czechoslovaks. By July's end, the Red-sympathizing Czechs had been surrounded, captured, and executed en masse. Their corpses were displayed publicly, a warning against Bolshevik agitation in Siberia. The pro-Allied faction declared Novosibirsk the "legitimate heart" of the Czechoslovak struggle — though the ruins around them spoke more of fratricide than liberation.

In Vladivostok, the balance was never in question. The Allied faction remained intact and unchallenged. Reinforced by Japanese divisions and with Allied warships in the harbor, Vladivostok became a fortress of pro-Allied order.

Pro-Mikheil agitators, sent eastward to stir dissent, were quickly uncovered and crushed. Those who attempted to rally troops were executed or shipped back west in chains. A rare moment of unity occurred when Japanese and Czechoslovak forces jointly suppressed Mikheil's supporters with ruthless efficiency. Vladivostok thus remained a bastion of Allied legitimacy, a gateway through which supplies, weapons, and political recognition flowed.

By the beginning of September, the map of the Czechoslovak Legion reflected its fracture. Samara–Kazan laid firmly in Jugashvili's hands, aligned with Bolsheviks and enriched by the gold reserves.

Novosibirsk and Vladivostok were purged of Mikheil's adherents, under White and Allied control. With Vladivostok in particular having become a stronghold of the Allied faction, which was heavily bolstered by Japanese power.

The Legion, once imagined as a unified army of national liberation, was now irreparably divided. Two banners flew under the same name: one red, revolutionary, and drenched in vice; the other white, legitimist, and chained to Allied interests.

And in between lay thousands of miles of railway, towns, and villages — the battleground of a civil war within a civil war.

The Legion Civil War remains a footnote in the broader Russian Civil War, yet it had lasting consequences. For the Allies, it shattered faith in the reliability of émigré forces. For the Bolsheviks, it proved both a boon — weakening White control, the securing of the Russian gold reserves — and a danger, as the Czechs were only loyal to loot, not to ideology.

Most poignantly, for the Czechoslovaks themselves, it was a tragedy. Men who had left their homes to fight for independence found themselves killing their own countrymen on distant Russian soil, their sacrifice entangled in the ambitions of foreign empires and the madness of revolutionary war.