My brothers Keeper, an SI as the twin brother of Stalin (Reworked)

[Siryapsalot]

With the framework on religions set up, the MC is trying to leverage it into political power. I'm also guessing the casual antisemitism is just to play on the average Russian's prejudices, even if the hatred for Trotsky is very real.

Click to shrink...

Yep the moment I read that line it was basically hook. line, and sinker it doesn't matter if they aren't totally convinced sweet talk them then throw in xyz Jewish person/people for a 20th cenutry Russian as far as I know with the Pogroms if anyone wants to correct any blindspots I appreciate it in advance.

 

[ReluctantCrusader]

Yep the moment I read that line it was basically hook. line, and sinker it doesn't matter if they aren't totally convinced sweet talk them then throw in xyz Jewish person/people for a 20th cenutyr Russian as far as I know with the Pogroms if anyone wants to correct any blindspots I appreciate it in advance.

Click to shrink...

You're correct, especially about the pogroms part. OTL, I think the closest pogrom committed to the current year of the story are the ones committed by Kolchak

 

[Alenco98]

I paused, and made myself say what came next, because politics and survival came before morals. "And then there's Trotsky. Lev Davidovich Bronstein. A Jew. An avowed atheist. Ask yourself honestly, do you believe that blood sucking jew will ever offer you terms as favorable as these? Do you genuinely want that man running Russia when Lenin is gone?"

Click to shrink...

I should probably emphasize and state that I don't endorse anti semitism and if you unironically agree with this to please unfollow this story. Given the state of things these days I should have probably wrote a disclaimer at the start of the chapter.

And yes, he's not anti semitic, he's just pandering to the crowd he's speaking to.

 

[Alenco98]

Wikipedia page on Operation Storm 333

Operation Storm-333

Operation Storm-333 (Russian: Шторм-333, Shtorm-333) was a Soviet military operation executed in Equatorial Guinea on May 1, 1975. Drawing on special forces and airborne troops, Soviet units stormed the heavily fortified presidential villa of Francisco Macías Nguema in his home village of Mongomo, subsequently killing Nguema, his family, and the members of his cabinet. The operation marked the beginning of a broader Soviet intervention that would fundamentally reshape the political character of Equatorial Guinea within weeks.

Background

The Republic of Equatorial Guinea had, since independence, been governed by Francisco Macías Nguema, a leader who, after breaking with his Spanish patrons, had oriented the country toward the Communist Bloc and cultivated alliances with the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and Korea. In practical terms, Equatorial Guinea served as a transit point through which the Soviet Union channeled weapons and internationalist volunteers to the MPLA in Angola. Nguema exploited this arrangement systematically, repeatedly threatening to terminate the alliance as a means of extracting additional financial support from his Eastern Bloc partners.

Over time, Nguema's governance deteriorated into what Soviet observers would come to characterize as anarcho-tyranny. Declassified reports from Soviet psychologists sent to evaluate him indicated a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and his behavior in office reflected it, mass executions of government ministers, members of the National Assembly, senior officials, and members of his own family became routine features of his administration. Each successive purge further hollowed out the state apparatus, and by the early 1970s the country's governmental infrastructure had entered a condition of accelerating collapse.

The immediate catalyst for Soviet intervention was the Carnation Revolution of 1974 and the subsequent fall of Portugal's Estado Novo regime, which opened the prospect of civil war in Angola and made a stable, reliable logistics base in the region an urgent strategic priority. With Nguema's erratic behavior rendering Equatorial Guinea increasingly dysfunctional, and increasingly embarrassing to its Soviet patrons, Moscow concluded that the costs of maintaining the relationship had come to outweigh its benefits. The decision to remove Nguema was made at the highest levels of Soviet leadership.

The Operation

Storm-333 was the centerpiece of a larger coordinated effort designated Operation Baikal-79, which targeted approximately twenty key installations across Equatorial Guinea, including military headquarters, communications infrastructure, prison facilities, and port installations.

In the days preceding the operation, roughly one thousand Spetsnaz troops, traveling under cover as internationalist volunteers bound for Angola, were flown into the country and dispersed to positions near their designated objectives. The concealment was effective; Guinean security forces reported no unusual activity in the period immediately before the assault.

At midnight on May 1st, the operation commenced simultaneously across multiple sites. Soviet Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunships struck the presidential compound at Mongomo as well as military and naval installations throughout the country. Spetsnaz troops then descended into the compound, overwhelming Nguema's presidential guard, itself modeled on the Soviet Kremlin Guard Regiment, after a brief but intense engagement. The majority of Nguema's guards either surrendered or fled once the identity of their attackers became apparent. Nguema, his family, and the assembled cabinet were located within the villa and shot.

Concurrently, Soviet units seized the national radio and television stations, the international airport, all major ports, and the Black Beach Prison, releasing its population of political prisoners in the process.

Aftermath

In the hours following the assault, the bodies of Nguema and his inner circle were paraded through the capital. Radio broadcasts announced the fall of the regime and the establishment of a provisional Soviet administration. Evidence of the systematic atrocities committed under Nguema's rule, mass graves, prison records, survivor testimony, was compiled and released to the international media in the weeks that followed, providing the public justification for the intervention that Soviet planners had anticipated would be necessary.

Within weeks of the operation, a Communist Party of Equatorial Guinea was formally constituted, drawing its initial membership primarily from political prisoners freed from Black Beach Prison. Elections for a new president and parliament were called the following month. The trials of surviving members of the Nguema government were conducted under a military tribunal framework, with the death penalty applied uniformly to those found guilty of crimes against the population.

Equatorial Guinea subsequently acceded to the Collective Security Treaty Organization and joined Comecoorg, formally integrating itself into the Soviet-aligned international order. The country would go on to serve as one of the primary logistics hubs for Soviet and allied operations across sub-Saharan Africa throughout the late 1970s and into the following decade.

 

[Chaoswind]

I should probably emphasize and state that I don't endorse anti semitism and if you unironically agree with this to please unfollow this story. Given the state of things these days I should have probably wrote a disclaimer at the start of the chapter.

And yes, he's not anti semitic, he's just pandering to the crowd he's speaking to.

Click to shrink...

The shadow of the ADL covers all, even original alt history fiction that uses historical events and situations at their base.

I see no problem with what you wrote and unless you have plans to go out of your way to write in a way that glorifies pre WWII antisemitism then I don't see the point of even addressing it. Commentary on current politics is absolutely banned by default in this site so there is no need to make allusions to it.

 

[Alenco98]

The Soviet team is a machine, there's no doubt about that. All of their players on average have higher physical fitness, ball coordination and cohesion, I do not take that from them and genuinely admire them. But what they make up for in athleticism and coordination they cannot make up in pure talent. Has there ever been a Soviet Pele? Ronaldinho? Maradona? Zidane? Kempes? Messi? Cruyff?

Talent like that cannot be made in the Soviet system, that sort of talent is snuffed out and replaced with the standard Soviet playbook. That talent is taken by the Soviets and you're told to fit into the mold, to become a part of the machine, your body is pushed and turned into a cog.

It's why they haven't won a world cup since 1962, it's why they can consistently enter the semi-finals and sometimes even the final but why they stop there. And it's why we beat them this time and why we will win the next world cup too.

Excerpt from an interview with Kylian Mbappe after France's victory against the Soviet union in the 2018 world cup final in the USSR


March 25, 1923
The Kremlin
Moscow, USSR

It was late — somewhere around eleven or midnight. Ordinarily I'd have gone straight home after the meeting at the monastery. But given the Patriarch's request, I'd swung by Lubyanka first to do some digging.

I'd pulled the file on the man Tikhon wanted saved and taken it straight to Dzershinsky.

House arrest. Not a pardon, not amnesty — just house arrest, and even that had taken some doing. Dzershinsky wasn't budging. "He is a counterrevolutionary element," he kept repeating, as though the phrase itself constituted an argument. "We must make an example."

"We haven't even passed sentence yet," I'd countered. "Surely there's room for an exception." He wasn't having it. I'd read the trial transcripts myself — the prosecution had gone after the priest with real venom, and it was clear the outcome had been decided well before the verdict.

So I played my last card. Which was why I was now sitting across from Stalin at nearly midnight.

He was working through the file I'd handed him. We'd started with drinks and a light meal — I don't usually eat past eight, intermittent fasting and all that, but this was an occasion that warranted an exception. Once we'd finished, I passed the file across and laid out the situation.

"He wants you to save him?" Stalin asked, not looking up.

"Spare him," I corrected. "He wants proof I'm not full of shit. The priest's life is the price of that proof."

"And Dzershinsky is opposed."

"Completely. Which is why I need you to lean on him. He knows exactly why he's getting his Politburo seat at the next Congress — it isn't a mystery to him. A small favor like this shouldn't be a heavy lift in comparison." I shrugged. "What's one life, honestly? The man's signed off on thousands already. Hell, I've shot people for considerably less than what this priest is accused of."

"You have shot people for less," he said. It wasn't a disagreement. "And now you want this one spared."

"I'll take responsibility, same as always." I leaned back and yawned. "I swear to God, it's like pulling teeth with the lot of you. I hand you a working strategy, I test it myself, I show you it produces results — and I still get 'I don't know, Mika, sounds a little bourgeois-adjacent.' It's a miracle we won the Civil War at all, honestly."

Stalin frowned, his default setting when I said things like that. "This sort of talk from you is dangerous."

"Which is precisely why I only say it to you." I waved a hand. "Anyway, can you talk to Dzershinsky or not? What do you need from me in exchange? Anyone you want dead? Zinoviev, maybe?" I smiled.

"No." He shook his head, the particular weary shake he reserved for me alone, the one that meant *what am I going to do with you.* "No killing anyone. Just keep the negotiations with the Patriarch moving forward. And don't embarrass me."

"So that's a yes?" I stood up.

"Keep the negotiations going," he repeated, and looked at me, that flat, unreadable look he used instead of actually agreeing to anything out loud. He'd been doing that since we were kids. Half the time it took me years to realize he'd already said yes.

"Whatever you say, Joe." I headed for the door. "Just get me that amnesty."

I exited the room and subsequently made my way back to my room, easing the door open quietly. Elsa was already asleep in her bed. I glanced at my own, empty, untouched, then back at hers. I sat with the thought for a moment. Part of me wanted to just cross the room and lie down beside her, sleep in the same bed, stop pretending there was a meaningful difference between two beds pushed a few feet apart. But no. It wasn't right. Not yet.

Even thinking about it dredged something up, unbidden. You just had to walk out that day, didn't you, Maria. The old argument from that day surfaced, the one that had, in its own roundabout way, ended with her dead. I waited for the familiar wave of guilt to hit. It didn't come, not really. Just a kind of flatness where the guilt used to live. I wasn't sure if that was progress or something worse.

I went to the desk instead. Opened the top drawer, took out a pen, then opened the drawer beneath it and pushed the pen upward against the underside of the one above, the old trick, the false bottom springing loose exactly the way it was supposed to. I lifted it out and there it was. The book.

Not quite a diary. More of a survival manual, if I was being honest with myself. I'd started it a little over ten years ago, the moment I realized who Joe actually was, Stalin, I'd spent that first frantic week writing down everything I could remember about him. Habits, preferences, favorite foods, anything that might keep me alive long enough to matter.

And then, of course, everything after. The broad strokes of what was coming, the Depression, the exact dates the market would crash, the day the war started, the German offensives, the fall of France. A handful of companies worth buying once the stock market existed in a form I recognized. I flipped to page eight and checked the corner. Still folded exactly as I'd left it. Nobody had touched it.

That wasn't all of it either. The Cold War in outline. Gorbachev. The fall of the USSR, perestroika, glasnost. Mao. Korea. Vietnam. And mixed in with all of it, the parts that weren't strategy at all, my own personal inventory. Favorite vacation spots from my old life. Favorite foods. Fond, useless memories of a family that didn't exist anymore in any sense that mattered. Small things that reminded me I used to be a person and not just an anomaly quietly rewriting the twentieth century from the inside. And of course useful things I was thinking of getting off the ground once the war was over, like the Internet, and video games, god, imagine, even a basic pac-man in the 50s, the sky was the limit.

I added today's entry. "Met the Patriarch. He seemed receptive. Wants me to save a priest as proof of good faith. Spoke to Stalin, looks like he'll arrange it." I set the pen down and looked at the page, then back through everything else. All of it in English. Insurance, of a sort, even if someone got their hands on it, I'd have a head start before anyone worked out what they were actually holding.

I looked at the fireplace for a while. Then back at the notebook.

I should burn it. I thought that every single time. I really should. But I was getting older, and I couldn't just carry the entire twentieth century around in my head indefinitely without something slipping. It had to be written down somewhere. That was the whole justification, and it was a good one right up until the moment it wasn't.

I looked at the false bottom and almost laughed. Same trick Light Yagami used, minus the part where the notebook spontaneously combusted if anyone but me touched it. I didn't have the engineering know-how to rig that, and knowing Joe, if he ever found out I'd built a self-immolating diary, the resulting paranoia would probably kill both of us faster than the information itself.

I slid the book back into the false bottom and closed the drawer. Closed my eyes. Ran through the same scenario I always ran through at this hour, the one that never really went away, Stalin finding the notebook. One of his agents finding it first and handing it to him. Joe, I'm actually from the future. I sat with that sentence for a second, then shook my head and let out a short laugh. No version of that conversation ended well. There was no phrasing that made it land as anything other than insane.

I looked at the fire again, then at the closed drawer. Maybe I should burn it.

But I couldn't. Not with what was riding on it. I just couldn't.

I looked back at the room, my bed, empty. Elsa's, not empty. The drawer, closed and ordinary-looking again. Should I tell her? I dismissed the thought almost as fast as it arrived. If Stalin wouldn't believe it, Elsa would just be frightened by it, and frightening her was the last thing I wanted tonight, or any night.

I yawned, properly yawned, the kind that comes from a day that had contained a monastery, a Patriarch, Dzershinsky, and Stalin, in roughly that order of exhausting. I went to the closet, changed into something to sleep in, and came back out. Looked at my bed. Looked at hers.

I didn't decide so much as stop deciding. My legs just took me there. I crossed the room, lay down beside her, closed my eyes, and let my breathing slow.

A moment later I felt her shift beside me. I opened my eyes and found her stirring, blinking herself awake. "Mika?"

"It's me." My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. "I don't want to sleep alone tonight. I've had more than enough bullshit for one day." I put an arm around her, then immediately second-guessed it. "If you'd rather I didn't, it's fine, I can go back to my own bed." I started to pull away.

"It's all right." Her voice was soft, but certain. "I don't want to sleep alone either. Not tonight."

I stopped moving and settled back down, arm returning to where it had been. "I just want to sleep," I said. "Nothing more than that."

"So do I," she said.

"I..." I stopped, started again. "I love you."

"I know." She reached up and rested her hand against my face, and neither of us said anything else after that.

March 26, 1923
Lubyanka
Moscow, USSR

I sat across from Dzershinsky's desk again, late afternoon, and I'd spent the day the way I always did lately: signing death warrants, arrest orders, operational approvals. The usual grind. Except five minutes ago I'd been summoned to his office, and I already knew exactly what it was about.

"I'm guessing Comrade Stalin spoke to you," I said.

"He did." Flat. Dispassionate. His default register these days, well, technically all the time. But I wasn't really keeping track.

"And he explained what I've been trying to arrange with the Patriarch?"

"He explained enough."

"So the death sentence gets revoked?" I leaned forward. "Not just his, Cieplak's as well. As I understand it, Chicherin over in Foreign Affairs is currently negotiating with the Vatican, and I explicitly told this office before I left for Central Asia that we needed to ease up on religious persecution. Nobody listened, and we very nearly torched a diplomatic opening because of it."

"I should remind you," Dzershinsky said, "that you are only the Deputy Director of the GPU."

"I'm aware." I sat back slightly. "I'd simply assumed that after producing real, measurable results with the Central Asia model, I might have earned a bit more say in how policy actually gets shaped. Especially considering I helped you build an enforcement apparatus that would make Robespierre blush with pride. And considering the amount of blood I've personally put into this revolution, not signed off on from behind a desk, personally, " I tapped the trigger finger of my remaining hand against the table, once, deliberately. "Honestly, I stopped keeping an exact count somewhere past a thousand. Give or take a few hundred." I leaned forward again. "But we're not even talking about that ledger right now. We're talking about something that actually benefits the Soviet Union going forward — diplomatic goodwill, foreign recognition, the world looking at us and seeing something other than a firing squad with a flag."

"You will take personal responsibility for both of them," Dzershinsky said, cutting through it before I could keep going. "House arrest. Seclusion. And if anything goes wrong with either man, it lands on you and nowhere else." His irritation was showing now, thin but unmistakable, the particular tightness of a man being maneuvered and fully aware of it.

"Understood." I stood and gave him a proper salute. "Will that be all, Comrade Dzershinsky?"

"It will be, Butyrskaya prison, that's where they're being held. Go get them yourself, I'll have no part in this."

I nodded, and then, the gears began turning in my head. "Comrade Dzershinsky." I continued. "If I'm taking responsibility for this, and getting them myself, shouldn't it be announced?"

He blinked for a moment. "What do you mean exactly."

"What I just said," I smiled, Dzershinsky immediately looked wary. I never understood really, Russian culture just hated it when people smiled for no reason, more reason to hate living in this hellhole. Now he knew I was up to something. I might as well roll with it. "You said I should take responsibility, so, if say, pravda released an article saying I called for their release, and secured it. Surely it would mean I followed your orders and took maximum responsibility, wouldn't you say?"

"So long as it doesn't embarrass the GPU, and it falls on you." He was scowling now, he knew I was up to something, but unfortunately for him he couldn't tell what.

"I see," my smile widened. "Thank you comrade Dzershinsky, I'll take responsibility." I saluted and left the room. I pictured it, in the monastery, me handing Tikhon a copy of pravda, with the frontpage, Jugashvili securing the release of priests. Then he'd begin taking me seriously.

March 26, 1923
Butyrskaya prison
Moscow, USSR

Konstanty Budkiewicz had made his peace with his fate long ago, back when the killings and the persecutions first began. When his sentence was read to him yesterday, that peace had simply deepened, settled into something closer to certainty. Had not Christ died for the sins of all men? What, then, was so terrible about dying as a martyr in His name?

He lay on his cot, staring up at the harsh gray ceiling of his cell. He had already prayed as much as there was to pray,.for the forgiveness of the men who had sentenced him, for the forgiveness of whoever would ultimately pull the trigger, and above all for the lives of Cieplak and the others condemned alongside him. If his own death purchased their survival, he found he could accept it without complaint.

He clasped his hands once more and murmured a Hail Mary, then asked the Lord to spare the others and grant them long lives, and once more asked forgiveness on behalf of those who would kill him. It was, by now, a familiar rhythm.

Then came footsteps. Several sets, moving with the particular cadence of men who did not need to hurry because no one was going to stop them. He sighed quietly. Has my hour come, then. He wondered as he sat up on the cot and watched the door swing open. Several armed men entered, and at the center of them, a short figure he recognized immediately.

"Jugashvili," he said. There was no fear in his voice, only a kind of tired recognition. "Have they sent you to shoot me yourself?"

He remembered meeting him once before, years ago, in Petrograd during the war. Jugashvili had gathered the clergy together and told them, plainly, without theatrics: "You don't need to declare loyalty to us. Just don't cause trouble, and I won't shoot you. I'm a reasonable man, on my word as a former seminarian." And to Budkiewicz's mild surprise at the time, he had kept that word, at least in Petrograd. But things had changed since Jugashvili left for Moscow. Was he still a reasonable man? Budkiewicz found himself wondering as Jugashvili settled onto the edge of his cot, uninvited, and reached into his coat.

He braced himself. A pistol, surely. He felt a tinge of anxiety and he began to silently pray, the Act of Contrition, then stopped halfway through when what emerged from the coat was, unmistakably, a bottle.

"Soda?" Jugashvili asked, holding it up.

He glanced toward one of the guards. "Open it."

The guard obeyed. Another produced a cup, and the bottle was poured, and the cup was handed first to Jugashvili, who drank from it, swallowed, and then offered what remained to Budkiewicz.

"Coca-Cola. American. Drink, it isn't poisoned, as you've just watched me demonstrate. Besides, I prefer a bullet to poison as a rule, and I'm not crazy enough to poison myself. Yet." He laughed, and Budkiewicz found himself, against his better judgment, laughing a little, then taking the cup and drinking. The taste was strange, something almost nutlike beneath the sugar, sharp and fizzing against the back of his throat in a way that made him blink.

"Are you here to kill me?" he asked. "Is this meant to be some manner of last drink?"

"Far from it." Jugashvili shrugged. "Call it a courtesy call. An acknowledgment." He drew a folded paper from his coat and read from it aloud, formally, the way one reads an official decree. "Per the recommendation of the Deputy Director of the GPU, Mikheil Vissarionovich Jugashvili, and with the approval of GPU Director Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the death sentence of Vicar General Konstanty Budkiewicz, and of his associate, Bishop Jan Cieplak, is hereby suspended and commuted to house arrest."

He folded the paper away and looked up. "Come with me. We'll have you settled at a dacha outside the city, under armed guard, but comfortable enough." He stood. "You can thank Patriarch Tikhon for this. He brought your situation to my attention. I raised it with the General Secretary and with Dzerzhinsky personally, and your sentence was commuted as a result." His tone sharpened slightly. "I'd recommend behaving yourself while you're out there. I took no small risk arranging this, and I have no intention of letting my negotiations with the Patriarch collapse because you decided to be difficult."

Budkiewicz didn't know what to say. He wasn't certain whether what he felt was relief, or something closer to disorientation, or simply the strange flatness of a man who had already made his peace with death and now had to unmake it. He had prepared himself for martyrdom. Welcomed it, even, in the quiet way a man welcomes an ending he has already accepted. And now, house arrest. It felt almost absurdly small by comparison. Anticlimactic, in a way he was faintly ashamed to notice.

"Negotiations?" he finally managed. It was the only part of any of it he could think to ask about.

"State secret," Jugashvili said simply, already turning toward the door. "Come along now, Father. The dacha's waiting."

Note: Fucking Argentina man, it's not coming home , fuck it, at least France got fucked by Spain, it's over for England-cels

 

[You can get stronger]

Thanks for the chapter!

 

[Alenco98]

September 18, 1978
Moscow, USSR

Tatiana Smirnovna Pugacheva lifted the lid from the pot and breathed in. The borscht was almost ready, she could tell by the way the smell had deepened, the beets and beef melting into something rich and dark. Her son had asked for it specifically, and since his birthday was Thursday, she saw no reason to refuse him.

She lowered the flame and stepped back. Five minutes, maybe ten. She opened the drawer for a bowl and spoon, and that was when the knock came.

Irina from next door had mentioned wanting to borrow the vacuum cleaner, though she'd said afternoon and it was only just past one. Tatiana glanced at the clock, 1:23, and decided it was close enough. She retrieved the vacuum from its corner of the living room and opened the door.

It was not Irina.

Two people stood in the hallway. A man and a woman, both in dark suits, both wearing sunglasses despite the dim light of the corridor. Their sidearms were holstered but visible, the leather worn smooth from use. The woman produced a badge and held it open just long enough.

KGB.

"Comrade Tatiana Smirnovna Pugacheva." The woman's voice was pleasant, almost conversational. "We apologize for the interruption, but we need to speak with you privately." Beside her, the man rested his hand on the grip of his holstered pistol without drawing it. "You're welcome to speak with us here, of course. Or we can continue this at the district branch, whichever you prefer."

"Here," Tatiana said. "Please. Come in."

She stepped aside and let them through, pulling the door shut behind them. From the kitchen, the radio was still playing, Radio Free Europe, as it always did at this hour, something American and rhythmic drifting through the flat. Not illegal, she reminded herself. Not illegal. And yet her feet moved toward it before she could stop herself, hand already reaching.

The man's hand came down lightly on her shoulder.

She stopped.

"Please, Comrade Pugacheva." The woman's tone hadn't changed. "There's no need. I'm quite fond of Radio Free Europe myself." She tilted her head slightly, listening. "Marvin Gaye, if I'm not mistaken. A cousin of mine saw him perform last year, she was visiting relatives in New York." She smiled. "A remarkable voice."

Tatiana lowered her hand and led them into the kitchen. She moved to the stove and switched off the flame, acutely aware of how small the room suddenly felt with three people in it.

"I apologize for the smell," she said, because she had to say something.

"Don't be." The woman pulled out a chair and sat without being invited, as though the flat were an office she used often. "You typically cook between half eleven and half two. You bought beets, shredded cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions, and beef bones three days ago. Borscht, yes?"

Tatiana said nothing.

The woman reached into her jacket and set a pack of cigarettes on the table, Stalin brand, the good ones, alongside a lighter and a tin of instant coffee. She slid them toward Tatiana with the unhurried generosity of someone who had done this many times before.

"Please. Sergei makes excellent coffee. The best in Moscow, I've always thought." She glanced at her colleague. "He'd be happy to brew some."

"I'm fine, thank you," Tatiana said, and sat down.

The woman nodded to Sergei. He opened his jacket, withdrew a manila folder, and began laying photographs across the kitchen table one by one, with the quiet efficiency of a man dealing cards.

Tatiana. Her husband. Her sons. Her friends. Her friends' families. Photographs taken through windows, across streets, from angles she couldn't account for.

"Your book club," the woman said. "You've been meeting every second Thursday for the past fourteen months. A study circle, you call it among yourselves." She set down another photograph, a copy of a book cover, the Cyrillic edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four. "Some of your reading choices have drawn attention. Not that reading is a crime, of course. The state guarantees freedom of thought."

She folded her hands.

"What concerns us," she continued, "is something rather more specific. You've been in correspondence with a reading circle in Petrograd. A friend of yours, Pyotr, he organizes their meetings." A photograph of Tatiana speaking with him outside a metro station, clearly taken without either of them noticing. "Together, you were planning to compile a recommended reading list and distribute it to students at Moscow State University."

More photographs. Students Tatiana had spoken with in passing, conversations she had barely registered at the time.

"Comrade Pugacheva." The woman's voice remained gentle. "Your mother is currently receiving treatment for renal cancer at the Botkin Hospital. She is on the waiting list for surgery." A pause. "Your husband Igor is in line for a promotion to shift foreman at the factory. Your son Alyosha, who turns seventeen this Thursday, as you know, has been recommended for a scholarship in mechanical engineering at Moscow State, pending the completion of his military service." She mentioned two or three of Tatiana's friends next, their situations, details Tatiana had not known herself. "These are good things. Things worth protecting."

Tatiana heard what was not being said.

"It would be a shame," the woman continued, just as pleasantly, "if your mother's surgical review were to be delayed. If your husband's promotion were reconsidered. If Alyosha's scholarship recommendation were withdrawn."

The kitchen was very quiet. Outside, Marvin Gaye was still playing.

"What do you need from me?" Tatiana asked.

"Very little." The woman reached into her jacket pocket and placed a small card on the table, sliding it across with one finger. "Keep your book club. Read whatever you like among yourselves, we have no interest in that. But the correspondence with Petrograd, the reading lists, any activities beyond your own four walls, those will stop. Before you do anything of that nature, you speak with your local Party secretary first, and if he says no, you thank him and go home." She let the silence sit for a moment. "And if any of your fellow members begin moving in the same direction, if they start making plans, making connections, you call the number on that card and you tell me."

Tatiana picked up the card. Zoya Felixova Kazachenskaya. A Moscow number.

"I understand this was unexpected," Zoya said, standing. Her partner was already moving toward the door. "I understand it may have felt uncomfortable. But we have a job to do, and you have a life worth keeping intact." Her voice dropped slightly, not unkindly. "You have three thousand five hundred and seventy-six rubles in your savings account. Enough, if it ever came to it, for you and your husband to purchase flights to America. Though I imagine your mother's treatment would become somewhat more complicated from that distance." She picked up her gloves from the table. "Think of it this way, so long as you're sensible, none of this needs to happen. We never need to speak again."

She paused at the kitchen doorway and glanced back.

"Keep the coffee and the cigarettes. The coffee especially, it comes from our comrades over in South Yemen, it tastes amazing." She smiled. "Happy birthday to your son."

The front door opened and closed.

Tatiana sat alone at her kitchen table, the card between her fingers, while Marvin Gaye played softly from the other room.

She did not move for a long time.

 

[iceknight90]

Ah a display of the chillingly personal, and yet seemingly gentle threats mentioned in that previous chapter about homosexuality in the USSR.


"Why hello there friend, please accept our gifts of cigarettes and coffee. Such a nice, peaceful, and prosperous life you've built. Boy it sure would be a shame if something bad happened right? Anywaaaaay... You should probably be a bit more careful about who you're talking to. Bye!"

 

[ReluctantCrusader]

So the Society Intelligence is much more subtle this TL. It isn't as America's whole COINTEL regime but subtle enough. They understand that they don't need to crush every instance of dissent as allowing some amount can be a sort of release valve. What they need to do is to just present it from becoming popular, an activity that many did but no one was ever sure if it ever was widespread