War is inevitable in the struggle for world revolution, we must constantly ready ourselves and be vigilant at all times.
Excerpt from: Quotations from Chairman Stalin, published in 1930 by comrade Mikheil Jugashvilli
October 17, 1919
Smolny institute
Petrograd, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
We stood around a long table in Zinoviev's office: Stalin, Zinoviev himself, Trotsky—who had arrived earlier that day with all the theatrical exhaustion of a man who wanted everyone to know he was indispensable—Dmitry Nadyózhny of the Seventh Army, Dmitry Ayrov, commander of the regional defenses, and Stepan Petrichenko, sent as a representative of the Kronstadt sailors. And then there was me.
On the table lay a map of Petrograd and the surrounding region. Scattered across it were small wooden rectangles—some painted red, some white. There were more red than white, technically, but quantity didn't mean quality. The Whites had planes, tanks, pristine rifles, endless ammunition. Our forces had been conducting a fighting retreat since September 28, when Yudenich's army crossed back into Russia, steadily pushing closer to the city.
Unfortunately for Yudenich, Joe and I had turned Petrograd into a death trap.
I hadn't forgotten the German scare the year before. That attempt had rewired something in my brain permanently. Ever since, I'd been building defenses like a medieval city planner with access to industrial explosives. Sandbags reinforcing checkpoints. Trenches carved through parks and boulevards. Machine-gun nests positioned at intersections. Carefully planned kill zones. I even requisitioned medieval cannons and bombards from every museum in the city and mounted several on the roof of Smolny itself. Zinoviev had screamed at me for hours about "symbolism" and "public perception." I ignored him and added more ammunition.
Now here we were, planning the desperate defense of the city. Well, more like arguing. I'd pitched Stalin's plan for the defense a few hours ago, technically it was my plan, but, I had to credit Stalin, I didn't want to die once he went all dictator. And I figured, what better way to survive than to give your brother credit for all your good ideas so you seemed too brilliant to kill yet useful enough due to knowing your place on the revolutionary totem pole. Politics baby.
We'd been arguing for hours, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Ayrov wanted to launch an immediate offensive to drive their forces back. While me, Stalin, Nadyózhny, and Petrichenko argued for well, our plan. Fortunately, we had a majority at the conference table, and it seemed Trotsky was finally coming around to our side.
"This is madness," Zinoviev said, stabbing a finger at the map. "We cannot just let them march into the city."
"We've been over this for hours ever since I bought up my brother's plan. What part of 'fighting retreat' don't you understand, or should I repeat the plan again?" I said pleasantly. "We're not letting anyone march in. We're making them bleed for every meter."
Trotsky leaned in, adjusting his glasses. "The plan has merit. Drawing them into the city could pin them down effectively. And if we wipe them out wholesale it would deliver a blow to the reactionaries. But allowing a Cheka commander to lead the flanking assault—" He glanced at me, then away. "I cannot have Red Army authority undermined on the battlefield. Most importantly, its dangerous, what if the flanking maneuver fails?"
"Then why don't you lead it, Comrade Trotsky?" Stalin said calmly. "The plan has merit as you just said. If our cavalry outflanks Yudenich's forces, we encircle them. We destroy them. The war ends faster."
Nadyózhny nodded slowly. "It could work," he said. "But only once."
Petrichenko followed with a sharp nod. "Kronstadt is ready. Give the orders and we'll man every checkpoint you've established."
Ayrov cleared his throat. "The plan is mostly sound," he said carefully. "But arming the masses indiscriminately—children included—that will create chaos. Discipline will collapse."
"We already arm children in the countryside," Stalin replied without emotion. "Desperate times require desperate measures."
Trotsky exhaled, fingers steepled. "Stalin has a point. But Ayrov is right about discipline. We should not commit the masses immediately. Keep them in reserve. Assign support roles. If the situation becomes truly desperate…" He paused. "Then we prepare to throw them in."
Everyone nodded gravely.
"So," I said, "You're in then Comrade Trotsky?"
"Reluctantly," He continued, "But the more I recall the defenses you've set up, and the state of the war. Its a gamble, but I think its one we can successfully carry out."
The room went silent, I nodded. "So then." I broke the silence again, because I have a talent for doing that at the worst possible moments. "Who's leading the assault? I'm still available. I can handle myself in a fight. Or at least I like to think I can."
Trotsky looked at me for a long moment. He was assessing, weighing, calculating. The man practically towered over me — five-ten, maybe a bit more — while I stood there at five-three, looking less like a commander and more like someone who should be asking for permission to leave the room. He scanned the others around the table, then returned his gaze to me.
"And who performs your duties while you're gone?" he asked. "You remain the Cheka chief of Petrograd."
"Uritsky," I said with a shrug. "He's been an excellent deputy." I paused, then added casually, "If I die, so be it. I imagine I'll be reunited with my wife."
I turned my head slightly toward Joe. "You remember the promise, brother. If I die, you take care of my children."
The room went quiet.
I could feel it — that sharp, uncomfortable stillness when everyone realizes they are standing next to someone who does not value his own life anymore. I figured I might as well lean into it. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it, the first I'd smoked since before Maria died.
It tasted incredible.
I didn't inhale — never do, terrible for the lungs — but the flavor lingered anyway. Still, all I could think about was Maria. Part of me was ready. Truly ready. Life after her death felt like someone had scooped my heart out with a spoon and forgotten to put anything back. I was a ghost wandering through meetings, executions, and maps, looking for a woman who wasn't there.
"So?" I said, exhaling the smoke. "Anyone else volunteering to throw themselves into the fire?"
Trotsky cleared his throat.
"Your… enthusiasm," he said carefully, "has been noted." He nodded once. "You may lead the assault. However, Red Army officers will coordinate your forces. You will follow army orders without deviation. While your plan has merit, I will modify it as necessary. And I see plenty of ways to adjust it."
"I will do as you say," I replied, smiling — the polite, reassuring smile of a man who had already accepted death.
Then I glanced back at Joe. "So, comrade, should we start measuring me for a coffin?"
Stalin didn't answer.
His eyes narrowed instead, just slightly — the kind of narrowing that meant he was thinking very hard about whether this was bravery, madness, or something far more dangerous.
October 28, 1919
Pulkovo heights
Petrograd, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
I sat on my horse, my ass aching from having ridden almost continuously for the last 24-36 hours, I stopped counting honestly. We'd taken the heights less than an hour earlier. Around me lay bodies — some Tsarists, some ours. It was hard to tell who had died for the revolution and who had simply died near it.
A handful of prisoners had surrendered. I'd offered them a choice: murder their officers and live, or die with them. They chose quickly. Once it was done, I armed the survivors with bayonets and pistols and placed them at the front, right beside me. I like to keep people motivated.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, staring at the sky. I took a long breath and thought of Maria. For a moment, I was back in the apartment — Maria, the children, Keke — Caruso playing softly in the background. Normal things. Civilian things.
"I'll be home soon," I whispered in Georgian.
Then I turned my horse to face the men.
"Comrades!" I shouted. "Today the revolution hangs in the balance. Either we rout the reactionary pigs and crush them between the city and our forces, or the revolution dies here. There is no tomorrow to regroup. Either we win today, or everything ends."
I drew my pistol.
"But I have full faith in our victory! Trotsky fights with us. Trotsky takes bullets with us! And behind him stands the might of the workers!" I raised the pistol. "So I say — glory to the first man who dies!"
I fired into the air.
Then I turned my horse toward the city. "Charge!"
The men screamed and surged forward. I kicked my horse into a full gallop. Red cavalry thundered beside me, infantry pouring down the hill behind us. Below, I could hear the sound of fighting echoing through the streets.
I spotted makeshift buildings — camps, supply depots Yudenich's men had thrown together. Unfortunately for them, they were suffering from an advanced case of being trapped in a hostile city. We rode straight through the defenders. I shot a few men, then rode over the rest.
Five minutes later we slammed into their reserves, and everything disintegrated.
I burned through my ammunition quickly. After that, I drew my saber and started cutting at anything that moved while keeping my horse in motion. There was something deeply ironic about it — me, some random bastard from 2025, reincarnated into the dying Russian Empire, fighting on horseback with a sword like an extra in a medieval pageant.
Irony is a cruel woman.
At some point — I don't remember how — I was knocked from my horse. I hit the ground hard and found myself pinned beneath him. I wriggled, cursed, tried to free myself, then panicked and stabbed at the horse until it stopped thrashing.
I looked left.
A soldier stood over me, raising his bayonet.
He stabbed.
I barely parried it. A heartbeat later, a bayonet burst through his chest. A Red Army soldier dragged him off me and helped me to my feet. My leg screamed in protest, but it wasn't broken. I raised my saber.
"Forward!" I screamed. "Kill them all!"
I charged again — on foot this time — limping, throwing myself back into the chaos. Gunfire cracked around us. Machine guns rattled. Artillery thundered. I ignored it all and just kept moving forward, stabbing and slashing at whoever was in front of me.
After my tenth kill — approximately — I noticed a rifle on the ground. I dropped the saber and picked it up. It was loaded. Thank God for small mercies. I fired, stabbed, shot, killed my way forward.
My body began to feel heavy. Emotionally, I felt nothing. No fear. No thrill. Just a vast, empty indifference pushing me onward.
Something flickered in the corner of my eye. I turned just as a soldier swung his rifle at my head like a club. I barely dodged and lunged to stab him. He dodged too and punched me square in the face, knocking me flat.
It devolved into a wrestling match. The revolution vanished. The war vanished. It was just the two of us.
He got on top of me. He had a knife.
He pressed it down toward my face. I grabbed the blade with my left hand, screaming as I tried to push it back. I punched his forearm with my right — solid as stone. I clawed at his face, uselessly.
The knife kept descending.
Then it touched my eye.
The world went red and black. Pain exploded everywhere. Apathy shattered into pure, animal desperation.
My right hand scraped the ground and found a stone. I slammed it into his face with everything I had. It worked. He reeled back. The knife fell free.
I pulled it from what was left of my left eye and charged him, screaming.
"Die! Die! Die! Die! Die!"
I stabbed until my arms burned.
A hand grabbed my shoulder. I spun, ready to kill again — and froze.
A Red Army soldier stared at me, horrified.
"Comrade Jugashvili," he said.
I gasped and looked around. My men were advancing slowly now. Victory was settling in.
Only then did I realize the world had changed. My right eye saw clearly. My left saw nothing but red and black. No depth. No detail.
Just absence.
"You have a pistol?" I asked.
"Yes, comrade."
"May I have it? I seem to have lost mine."
He handed it over.
I looked at the men ahead of me. "Let's move forward."
Excerpt from Stephen Kotkin's 2014 book: Mikheil Jugashvili, The Red Rockefeller and His Rivers of Blood
By October 1919, the Russian Civil War stood at a critical juncture. In the south, General Anton Denikin's forces continued their slow advance toward Moscow, while in the west General Nikolai Yudenich's army pressed toward Petrograd. The loss of the former imperial capital would have been both a strategic and symbolic catastrophe for the Bolshevik regime. Leon Trotsky, who had consistently argued that Petrograd must be defended at all costs, was therefore dispatched by Lenin to take direct responsibility for the city's defense. He arrived in Petrograd on October 17, 1919.
What Trotsky encountered was not a city resigned to defeat. Under the combined authority of Stalin and Mikheil Jugashvili, Petrograd had been transformed into a fortified urban stronghold. Sandbagged checkpoints dotted nearly every block. Trenches cut through parks, boulevards, and open squares. Machine-gun nests dominated major intersections, arranged to create overlapping fields of fire and carefully calibrated kill zones. In a gesture that combined desperation with theatrical symbolism, Jugashvili ordered medieval cannons and bombards removed from museums and installed at strategic points, including several on the roof of the Smolny Institute itself. Zinoviev protested at length, but to no effect.
Planning for the city's defense had been underway for months. Stalin had overseen the organizational framework, while Jugashvili refined the operational details. When Trotsky convened discussions upon his arrival, it was Jugashvili who presented the decisive plan.
The concept was stark in its simplicity. Trotsky's reinforcements would conduct a controlled fighting retreat into Petrograd, drawing Yudenich's forces deeper into the city while steadily eroding their strength. Once the Whites were sufficiently exhausted, Bolshevik units would engage them at close quarters—"hugging the enemy," as Jugashvili described it—thereby neutralizing the Whites' advantages in artillery, armor, naval support, and British-supplied air power. Simultaneously, Jugashvili would lead a flanking force from the south, sweeping northward behind Yudenich's army and sealing off all avenues of retreat.
This maneuver, named Operation Maria in honor of Jugashvili's assassinated wife, began on the night of October 27–28, the very day Yudenich's forces entered Petrograd. Departing from the rail junction at Tosno, Jugashvili's column surged westward, capturing Gatchina before pivoting north. After a grinding engagement, they retook the strategically vital Pulkovo Heights, a position that had changed hands repeatedly during the campaign.
Following the battle, Jugashvili took more than a thousand prisoners. It was here that he introduced what he chillingly termed the "Baptism of Betrayal." Officers were separated from enlisted men and presented with an ultimatum: the soldiers were ordered to kill their officers with their bare hands or die alongside them. Of the prisoners, seventy-eight were officers, and 123 enlisted men chose death rather than compliance. Only two—Lieutenant Yegor Litvinov and a soldier named Ivan Pavlov—were deliberately spared. Jugashvili intended them to bear witness and to carry a message to the White movement about the consequences of resistance. Those who agreed to participate were immediately armed and placed at the very front of the advancing columns, their loyalty tested in combat.
It was during the final advance toward Petrograd that Jugashvili sustained the first of his disfiguring injuries. Engaging Yudenich's reserve forces in close combat, he lost his left eye in a melee with a White soldier. Despite the wound, he continued to lead his men forward, pressing deeper into the collapsing enemy formations.
Inside the city, news of Jugashvili's maneuver spread rapidly. As the realization set in that retreat was impossible, many White soldiers laid down their arms. Others—Yudenich among them—attempted a breakout, only to encounter Jugashvili's forces holding firm from the rear while Stalin launched a counteroffensive from within Petrograd. Trapped between converging Bolshevik formations, Yudenich's army disintegrated. Yudenich himself and many of his senior officers were killed in the fighting. With his death confirmed, the remaining White forces surrendered.
The aftermath followed a grimly familiar pattern. British and Estonian prisoners were separated and interned—476 Estonians and 123 British soldiers in total. The White officers, 785 in number, were condemned to execution, alongside 456 enlisted men who refused to betray them. The remaining rank-and-file soldiers were ordered to carry out the killings themselves. In front of the Winter Palace, under guard, former comrades murdered their officers with hands and stones, while the foreign prisoners were forced to observe.
Neither Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, nor the other leaders of Petrograd's defense intervened. They stood by as blood once again pooled in the square before the Winter Palace.
In Moscow, the victory was greeted with jubilation. Lenin decreed that Stalin, Jugashvili, and Trotsky be awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Summoned to the capital, each was personally decorated by Lenin. Jugashvili spoke first, praising the courage and sacrifice of the soldiers and workers and concluding with a public tribute to his brother, declaring that without Stalin's planning, Petrograd would have fallen. Trotsky followed, commending the defenders and offering a characteristically strained acknowledgment of Stalin's "effective organization of the city's defenses." Stalin didn't say much, briefly thanking the workers, Trotsky and Mikheil for their efforts and sacrifices.
In Petrograd meanwhile, the consequences were immediate and decisive. Whatever authority Zinoviev retained evaporated. Jugashvili—once the Revolution's enforcer, the "Red Robespierre"—was now hailed as the city's savior. The Petrograd Soviet, one of the last institutions still nominally aligned with Zinoviev, shifted its loyalty entirely to Stalin and Jugashvili. Zinoviev remained a figurehead without power, while Petrograd became Stalin's principal base of operations—a foundation for his eventual ascent as Vozhd, constructed upon the violence, and sacrifices of Mikheil Jugashvili.
Note/Edit: Writing this chapter I thought about it, and I really wanna get to after the civil war and get to WW2, so I'm gonna rush the civil war basically as Petrograd aside from being under a reign of terror didn't suffer much action aside from Yudenichs offensive and the Kronstadt rebellion. I'll get a new chapter out tomorrow. It'll probably slow down once the civil war happens and NEP begins as Mika is gonna do some shit with bootlegging and other shenanigans.
