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

[Alenco98]

December 8, 1907 (old style)
Tbilisi, Georgia

I woke up on the living room couch, stiff as hell, the kind of pain you only get from furniture designed by a sadist who hated vertebrae. Dawn was leaking through the window, painting the city in that scarlet glow that screams "romance" in Paris but just means "cholera" in Tbilisi.

I sat up, yawned, noticed the couch was empty. No surprise. Nobody sane would still be lying on this damned thing. Then I heard it: muffled sobbing from the kitchen. Along with the unmistakable smell of reheated khachapuri. Cold, reheated cheese bread: the true breakfast of the grieving proletariat.

I shuffled in and found my sister in law Aleksandra, sleeves rolled up, banging around the oven like it had personally insulted her. Meanwhile at the table sat my brother, Iosif, or Joe as I liked to call him. Red eyes. Sunken sockets. Expression of a man who had stared too long into the abyss and found the abyss had terrible customer service. In front of him: one lonely khachapuri, like an emotional support carb.

"Joe," I said, nudging the plate closer, "eat before you cry yourself into a puddle. Nobody wants to mop up grief and snot before breakfast."

He blinked at me. Rage, sorrow, indigestion—it was all in there. Then back to the floor he went, like the linoleum had all the answers.

And yeah, the guy had earned his misery. His wife, Ekaterina, Kato, had just died of typhoid. Quick, cruel, efficient—like German engineering but with more diarrhea. She was the one bright thing in Joe's life, which tells you everything about Joe's life.

By the way—hello. My name is Mikheil Jughashvili. Call me Mika. I'm Joe's younger twin by nine minutes, but I stole all the good genes in the womb. Immune system? Check. Face unscarred by smallpox? Check. Sense of humor? Oh, triple check. Joe, on the other hand, looks like a clay bust someone left in the rain.

We're both "party men," technically. Joe runs with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, the Bolshevik faction—don't worry, you're not supposed to understand what that means. I'm technically in it too, but my day job is being a cop. Yes, that means I occasionally arrest my coworkers. Yes, that means I also warn Joe before I do it whenever I can. Yes, that means I'm corrupt as hell. That's called work-life balance.

Now, before you start thinking I'm some loyal revolutionary, let me confess: I don't actually care about any of this shit. Why? Because I'm from the future. Yeah. Reincarnated. Born in the late 20th century, died tragically in 2025, woke up screaming in a Georgian cradle. Long story short: I fell off a roof trying to fix a leak with my stepdad. Toolbox, gravity, splat. OSHA would've had a field day.

Back then, life was great: Roth IRA maxed every year, 401k humming, two vacations to Europe annually, dental hygiene like you wouldn't believe. Now? I'm battling lice, scrubbing with cold water, and watching my twin spiral into depression over his dead wife. Ten out of ten, do not recommend.

But hey, I've got a plan. Make money, get out. America's the goal. I'll drag Mom, my wife Maria, a couple in-laws, and maybe Joe if he ever stops crying. Set up a proto-McDonald's, invest early, short the market before the 1929 crash, retire rich. The American Dream, but with more bribery and typhus along the way.

Speaking of dreams, Joe clearly wasn't having any. He looked like he'd swallowed a fistful of sorrow pills. So I'd already confiscated his revolver and ammo—last thing we needed was him doing a Russian Hamlet routine and leaving Yakov an orphan. Kid doesn't need the Bruce Wayne treatment.

"She wouldn't want you to starve," I said, breaking off a gooey piece of khachapuri and feeding it to him like he was a grumpy toddler. He actually ate it. Progress.

Aleksandra kept bustling around. Cute, honestly. Great ass. Too bad she was married. Luckily, I married her sister Maria, who had the same genetic blessings and fewer legal entanglements. Balance, again.

Then Yakov started crying from the other room. Perfect timing, like a Greek chorus with diaper rash. I went in, scooped him up. Poor kid had Kato's eyes—warm, soft hazel—and Joe's hair, thick and sooty. I whispered, "Easy, little comrade. The world's already shit, no need to scream so loud." Maria stirred in bed, looking way too much like her dead sister for anyone's comfort. Awkward.

Back in the kitchen, Joe was still chewing the same piece of bread like it was the last edible thing on Earth. He looked up at Yakov in my arms, then back down. Stoicism, weaponized.

"You know," I told him, "this kid needs a real home. Not some safehouse full of dynamite. You can't just stuff him in a satchel and carry him into your little revolutionary shoot-outs."

Joe finally met my eyes. Fear, anger, grief. The whole tragic buffet.

"I'll raise him," I said. "Me and Maria. Normal family. Stable life. No bombs under the crib. That's what Kato would've wanted."

"You're going to play house now on top of playing cop?" Joe croaked. His voice cracked like a bad record. "Leave him here. Stop working for those Tsarist pigs and fully commit to the cause. He'll be safe."

I shook my head. "Joe, you know my dream is America, not the party. I only joined your little club to keep you alive. But the kid needs more than a terrorist for a father. He needs a father who's alive."

Joe's lips trembled. He looked away. For the first time, I saw him doubt himself.

"I'll make sure he knows about her," I added softly. "And you. I'll tell him his parents loved him. That you loved him."

Outside, the funeral bells started tolling. Deep, heavy, final. Like God was slamming the world's worst alarm clock.

And all I could think was: I need to figure out whether American banks will even let me open a savings account if my name is Jughashvili.

December 8, 1907 (old style) Later that day
Tbilisi, Georgia

Joseph stood beside me, looking less like a man and more like a granite statue someone had left out in the rain. His fists were so tight I thought he might strangle oxygen itself. He hadn't said a word since the funeral service, which was impressive because normally Joe could brood in three languages at once.

The mourners gathered in their usual Tbilisi cluster formation: crying relatives, exhausted comrades, the guy who always shows up to funerals for the free food. And then, hanging in the back, a few men in suspiciously clean coats with suspiciously even haircuts. The Okhrana. The Tsar's very own secret police. Because nothing says "respect the dead" like a few narcs hiding behind a tree, scribbling in notebooks about the emotional stability of the Jughashvili family.

Then came the burial.

The ropes creaked as the coffin went down, and I swear it sounded like God himself sighing, "Yep, that's one less taxpayer." The first shovelfuls of dirt landed with hollow thuds—like someone was drumming on my ribcage from the inside. It was melodramatic as hell. And then Joe snapped.

He let out a sound somewhere between a sob, a roar, and a cow being strangled. Before anyone could react, he threw himself into the grave. Into. The. Grave. Like he was auditioning for the part of "Hamlet: Underground Edition." Dirt flew everywhere, mourners gasped, one babushka fainted. Joe clung to the coffin as if he could wrestle Kato back into existence with sheer Georgian stubbornness.

"Kato! Kato, don't go—"

I cursed, kicked off my shoes, and slid in after him like this was the world's worst amusement park ride. Mud up to my knees, my coat ruined, my dignity circling the drain. I grabbed him under the arms and tried to haul him out, but grief turns men into oxen. He fought me like a man possessed, and for one horrible second I thought he'd stay down there and make the coffin a double feature.

So I did the only thing I could. I whispered his name.

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

He froze, then collapsed into me, shaking, sobbing, leaking grief all over my shirt. With the help of two comrades who clearly regretted their life choices, we dragged him out and flopped into the slush beside the grave like freshly landed fish.

Meanwhile, the Okhrana were having the time of their lives. No tears from them, just subtle whispers and meaningful glances. One of them reached into his coat, and I thought, Great. Joe throws himself into a grave and I get to join him.

"You have to go," I hissed at him. "Now. They're here."

His eyes locked on mine. Haunted, wet, but clear now. "You'll take care of him?"

"I swear on my life."

We stood, covered in mud, looking like deranged grave-robbers. He hugged me tight, like we were the last two men left on Earth.

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

He gave me half a smirk, which on his face looked more like a stroke. "No promises."

And just like that, he disappeared into the crowd, vanishing before the final prayers were done. Classic Joe—always leaving before the bill arrives.

I stayed, of course. Why shouldn't I? On paper, I was a model cop: punctual, reliable, corrupt in all the right ways. Leaving would've looked suspicious. So I stood there, ankle-deep in mud, mourning alongside Maria and Aleksandra, while the Okhrana made notes like they were shopping for revolutionaries at a farmer's market.

March 4, 1917 (Old Style)
Petrograd, Russian Empire

I peeled the curtain back an inch with the precision of a man about to peek at his neighbor's Wi-Fi password. Pistol in hand, cocked and ready. What did I see? People. Just people. Civilians wandering around like they'd all taken part in a fire sale on history itself. Some were armed, because apparently the only thing scarier than bread lines is unarmed bread lines.

"About fucking time," I muttered, letting the curtain slap shut. "Looks like things are calm."

Behind me, Maria—Mariko, as everyone else insisted on calling her, because apparently pet names are in vouge—sat on the sofa, nursing our one-year-old, Besarion. Baby fat rolls, oblivious grin, not a clue that the outside world was currently eating itself alive. Lucky bastard.

Then the door creaked open. Out came my mother, Keke, yawning like the fall of the Romanovs was just a minor inconvenience between naps.

"Is everything alright out there?" she asked, like she was in a cathedral. Or a morgue. Both equally plausible.

I nodded. "Quiet. For now. How are the kids?"

"Still asleep. Yakov, Kato, Joseph, Alyosha… all dreaming peacefully, unlike the Tsar."

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

I shoved the ratty couch aside, pried open the floorboard, and revealed my life savings. Not rubles. Not bonds. No. Boxes of gold coins, dried food, contraband ammo, and more ammo. Honestly, it looked less like a family man's emergency fund and more like the starter kit for a failed coup.

I took some ammo for my pistol and put it in my pocket. Maria gave me the look. You know the one: Why did I marry this lunatic? She'd given it to me so often I could see it with my eyes closed. Fair. She had a point.

In my defense, I used to be a cop. Key words: "used to." Once soldiers started mutinying and the Tsar's authority slipped like a drunk on black ice, the badge lost its resale value. So I planned to begin my career pivot—from "law enforcement" to "radical revolutionary." Lateral move.

But let me rewind a bit.

When Joe disappeared years ago, I focused on family life. Raised Yakov, filled the house with more children—Iosif, Kato, Aleksander, Besarion—because apparently contraception wasn't invented yet. On the books, I was a model cop. Never late, always professional. Off the books? I was so corrupt I made the Roman Senate look like Quakers. Guns, bribes, smuggling, hush money—I had more side hustles than a modern crypto bro.

And it was working. I had almost saved enough for the dream: America. McDonald's before McDonald's, investments before the crash, real toilets. But then came the catch.

Joe.

Turns out Joe wasn't just my grieving twin who once tried to bury himself alive. Joe was Stalin. Yeah. That Stalin. Thanks, American public schools, for skipping over the fun fact that Joseph Stalin's birth name wasn't actually "Joseph Stalin." I thought it was just some scary Russian brand name. Like Ikea but with gulags.

When Joe wrote me about his new pseudonym in Pravda, my stomach dropped. My twin brother, the grave-diver, was about to become the Iron Fist of Russia. Which meant my American dream was officially fucked. You can't exactly move to Chicago with your wife and kids when your twin brother is committing mass murder under a catchy stage name. People, and by people I mean resentful Russian exiles would put two and two together: "Hey, aren't you Stalin's twin? You look like him, except less pockmarked and slightly less terrifying." Boom. Dead.

So I made a new plan: leverage. Emotional blackmail. Family ties. If the world was going to be stuck with Stalin, I had to be the one man alive he wouldn't dare kill. I needed to make myself indispensable—brother, protector, maybe even his guilty conscience.

Which is why I bribed half the police force and got myself transferred to Petrograd. All that gold I'd saved for America? Gone in a haze of bribes, vodka, and forged paperwork. Did I feel bad? Yes. But Petrograd's corruption was so spectacularly rich that within a year I'd made it back. This city was basically a vending machine for bribes.

I went to the bedroom, pulled open the drawer, and took out the letter I'd written two days earlier, the second I saw the army turn on the Tsar. Simple message: "There's a place for you here. You're welcome anytime."

I folded it, slid it into my coat pocket.

Back in the living room, I paused. Maria glanced up at me, Besarion snoring against her chest. Keke stood beside her, face like granite, worry lines etched deep.

I kissed Maria. Kissed the baby's head. Hugged my mother. Tried not to look like a man walking into history with a gun in his coat and delusions in his head.

"I'll be back," I said. "Don't open the door unless you're absolutely sure it's me. And if I don't come back… find Joe. He'll come for you."

She nodded. No tears, no collapse, just iron resolve. Stronger than I'd ever given her credit for.

I opened the door, took one last look at them. My family. My reason for putting up with this empire-wide mental breakdown.

And stepped out into the cold, collapsing empire—armed, ambitious, and catastrophically unprepared.

The snow hadn't gotten the memo that it was mid-March; it fell like lazy, wet apologies from the sky, each flake dragging a little more damp into the world. I cinched my collar up like I was trying to hide from the Petrograd chill, which has the persistence of a petty bureaucrat with a vendetta: it gets into your bones and stays to file paperwork.

I picked my way down the narrow alley behind our building—no main boulevards for me. Too many faces, too many bored soldiers with trigger fingers that needed employment and no clue who was in charge. Half of them looked like they'd have soldier-arrested their own boots for suspicious loafing. I kept to the side streets and the half-frozen canals, the city's back alleys where history comes to have a smoke and forget its lines.

I gave the Winter Palace a wide berth. That place was a hornet's nest of theatrical panic and buttoned-up officers clinging to the idea of empire like a man clinging to a barstool: embarrassing, delusional, and almost certainly sticky. The last thing I needed was to be stopped, searched, and "accidentally" removed from the gene pool for looking vaguely interesting. My face has always done wonders for me; I didn't need help.

My destination was the Tauride Palace—majestic, bruised, and smelling faintly of damp wallpaper and resolved ideology. Once a glittering aristocrat, now playing host to a motley of revolutionaries who changed real estate like they changed their slogans. The Petrograd Soviet lived here for now; revolutionary tenure is by definition temporary, like bad roommates or bad governments.

The irony landed like a lead boot. I'd spent years "assisting" the Okhrana—by which I mean I helped sabotage certain investigations so I could run guns and make a tidy margin on smuggling. Now I walked into the place where those same troublemakers were running the show. Ex-cop, current gun-toter, tentative revolutionary socialite. Bold? Yes. Stupid? Also yes. But technically I had party papers somewhere in a drawer. Probably under a receipt and three unpaid fines.

A knot of guards clustered at the gate: unshaven, wide-eyed, the exhausted look of men who'd spent their shifts policing paranoia. One of them stepped forward like a man built from raw suspicion—bald, square-jawed, and assembled in a vodka-soaked factory that combined Jason Statham and an angry chair.

"Name and business," he barked in a tone that implied he'd punch you through a wall and then work the paperwork later.

I straightened, tried to look like someone who belonged inside the building and not deep in the "suspicious loiterer" column. "Mikheil Vissarionovich Jughashvili. I'm here to deliver a letter."

He blinked once, like he was calibrating whether I was a person or a paperweight. "This is the headquarters of the Provisional Government and the Soviet. Not the post office."

The other guards snorted. Fine. Laugh it up. They clearly hadn't read my LinkedIn.

I kept my voice flat. "My brother is a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party—the Bolsheviks, if they'll let you call them that without starting a fight. They have offices in here, I believe. I am also a member. Inactive, sure—bureaucratically dormant, but useful." I held up the envelope like a peace offering or a small, formal bomb. "This is for him."

The envelope sat in their eyes for a long beat, regarded like a suspicious artifact—maybe it was a trap, maybe it was an IOU, maybe it was lunchtime.

Finally, the bald man gave a curt nod. "All right. Come on in. We're not the Bolsheviks, but their offices are in this palace. Cause trouble and there will be consequences."

"Thank you," I said, tucking the letter back into my coat like contraband and stepping through gates that felt both gilded and oddly optimistic.

I walked into the Tauride like a man who'd accidentally wandered into a philosophy lecture and decided to stay for the snacks. The place was a hive: guards, clerks, soldiers with faces that had given up on sleep, and civilians who looked like they hadn't had a proper meal since the nineteenth century. I asked around for the Bolshevik offices and collected a few hostile glares—the kind that say, we'll watch you until you confess to a crime you didn't commit. Then I said the magic line: "I'm a Bolshevik… and Stalin's brother."

The hostility didn't evaporate so much as recalibrate to a peculiar Russian setting: I still think you're the problem, but maybe you're our problem. Which is not a compliment, but it's a hiring decision. Somebody pointed me toward a cramped office where, apparently, the revolution did most of its paperwork.

Inside sat a man with round spectacles and a stubby mustache, like a human interruption. He peered at me. "Who are you?"

"Mikheil Jughashvili," I said, trying to sound modest and not like a man holding an envelope full of sins. "I've a letter for my brother—Joseph Stalin."

The name landed like a coin on a tin roof. His face shifted from politely annoyed to suspiciously curious. "Stalin?" He tapped his jaw. "He mentioned a twin once. You do resemble him."

"I'm the better-looking one," I said, half-smile engaged. "Makes the resemblance less uncanny and more tasteful."

The man snorted—thankfully, someone here hadn't lost their sense of humor. He offered a hand.

"Vyacheslav Molotov," he said.

Molotov. I filed the mental image under "things that sound like they were invented for conflict." A nice, volatile name. I handed him the letter. He turned it over like it might detonate or ask for a bribe.

"You say you're a Bolshevik? Never heard of you," he muttered.

"Not exactly front-line material," I admitted. "Mostly helped Joe when he needed it—safe houses, donations when he was exiled down in Siberia. My day job was police work, and smuggling on the side."

That killed whatever thaw we'd been engineering. Temperature dropped. Someone should have offered tea.

"A cop?" he said, eyebrows doing the little arithmetic of trust.

"Yeah." Shrug. "Not great I know. But I have kids to feed. And I'm raising Joe's kid. Try keeping a cranky toddler on revolutionary slogans and stale rye."

"Joe?" Molotov raised an eyebrow.

"Childhood nickname," I said quickly. "Don't use it. He hates it. He tolerates it only from me."

Molotov chewed on that—eyes scanning me like I was a map missing a few landmarks. "I'll read it before I hand it over. Your background doesn't inspire confidence."

"Fair," I said. "It's a note saying he's welcome at my place. If you've got work—supply runs, parcel deliveries—I'll do them. Revolution's here; might as well earn my keep."

"Earn your keep, huh?" Molotov reclined slightly, measuring me like a butcher testing meat. "We're re-establishing Pravda. We need supplies moved to the office. Can you do that without phoning the Okhrana that nobody cares about anymore?"

"Supplies?" I smirked. "Love a delivery. Beats starving. Point me to the guy who needs me."

"Petrenko, down the hall," Molotov said.

And just like that, I'd graduated from "untrustworthy ex-cop" to "revolutionary errand service." History's grand drama, and there I was—about to lug boxes like a very reluctant porter. Perfect.

Patch notes: Reworked the dates to fit the old style of Russian dates before the revolution, also, after some research I found that Mikheils wife in the old story was married by the time of Kato's death so he will be married to another one of her sisters. Also cut down chapter size.

 

[ReluctantCrusader]

It's good that this is being rewritten. There were alot of Bolshevik figures hat were left out in the original and I see that is being corrected here.

 

[Scarletine Witch]

Pretty noice.
I read your Taking a Duce and the old version of this so I hope you aren't too burned out by starting over.

 

[OverseerEX]

Aleksandra kept bustling around. Cute, honestly. Great ass. Too bad she was married. Luckily, I married her sister Maria, who had the same genetic blessings and fewer legal entanglements. Balance, again.

Click to shrink...

Comrade, let's make deal. New wife, new storyline regarding wife. It can't be that whoever he marries dies regardless, right? Right?

Give the man a happy ending.

 

[RadFoxUK]

Huh, neat, only thing I'd say is that linoleum was actually kinda rare, early 1900s, like a lot of the Titanic high class areas had linoleum floors, not marble like in the movies.

It's just weird to find linoleum that early in a feudal shithole, how you gonna shit in an outhouse but have linoleum floors.

Yes its weird that THAT'S what broke my suspension of disbelief.

 

[Alenco98]

March 12, 1917 (Old Style)
Petrograd, Russia

Evening in Petrograd can be stunning—if you ignore the armed men, food shortages, and occasional random gunshots. The twilight sky went crimson, bleeding across the clouds like a watercolor by someone who'd just been fired. Nice to look at. Irrelevant to staying alive as I wasn't here to be an art critic. I was busy working.

Specifically, I was head of my building Soviet. Yes, head. Which sounds grand until you realize my empire consisted of one ghetto ass apartment block, a few of my ex-cops buddies, and some of my very nervous neighbor. A cheap community theater version of the French Revolution.

As soon as I returned from the Tauride I'd grabbed a few fellow precinct buddies who happened to live in the building and said, "Gentlemen, we need to get to work, we're making a Soviet." They weren't thrilled when I announced I was a Bolshevik, but I smoothed things over with myfamily perks: "Don't worry—my brother's a higher up in the party." That, and the fact I was also a cop, didn't get me shot on the spot. Progress.

We then gathered the tenants, declared ourselves a Soviet and I immediately started handing out guns. Claimed I'd "found" them, which is technically true if you don't ask where. Spoiler: My stash. A suprise mouseketool for later.

Now I commanded thirty-seven men. A third, around 12 were cops, the rest civilians who'd gone from "building tenants" to "armed militia" in record time. I drilled them on aiming, conserving ammo, and not shooting themselves in the foot. We had a few rifles and pistols for the ex-cops. The civilians made do with whatever pistols I could sneak out of my collection until better toys turned up.

So here we were: one humble apartment block, smack on the corner between Sredneokhtinskiy Prospect and Aleksandra Ulyanova Street, Okhtinsky district—just across the Neva from the Tauride. Prime revolutionary real estate.

And in the short week after our establishming, we'd already "tried" ten criminals and decorated lampposts with their corpses after yours truly shot them in the head while making everyone in the building and the surrounding streets watch. Public art, really. Effective too—crime rates plummeted once the message got across. Don't fuck with us.

Now I stood on the corner with a cigarette and a few jittery ex-Tsarist cops, trying to look authoritative while chain-smoking some Dukat cigarettes I'd scavenged from the corpse of the latest person we'd executed today, some kid no older than 16. A good find really, none of that Belomor trash—I had standards. And Dukat cigarettes were the shit.

As I finished smoking my cig I spotted something. A figure cutting through the crowd on Sredneokhtinskiy, making straight for us. Others were moving too, but this one… this one was deliberate. Ahh shit here we go again.

I smiled as hand drifted to my holster. Quick-draw practice paid off. I wasn't a cowboy, but I could fake it. Then he stepped off the curb, coat brushing his knees, and I froze.

Joe.

Joseph.

Stalin.

Older, gaunter, eyes sharper than broken glass. The mustache was thicker now, properly groomed. His long coat had that "military chic meets moth infestation" look. He was tired. He was dangerous. He was my brother.

I glanced at my men and subtly signaled them to stand down. Then joe walked up to me and stood in front of me. We stared just long enough to make everyone uncomfortable.

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

Then I opened my arms and he moved in.

We collided like brothers who'd been separated by war, grief, and ideology. His hand slapped my back in that uniquely masculine way that translates as: I missed you, but I'll deny it in court.

I turned to my men. "Comrades. This is my brother, Iosif."

I pulled out my pistol and handed it over like a housewarming gift. "Welcome back, brother."

He gave me that wolfish half-smile. "It seems you've been busy."

"We'll talk over dinner," I said.

Because nothing says family reunion like passing a loaded gun across the street corner while corpses swing from lampposts.

Later that night

Dinner had been… surreal.

We'd cooked everything we had worth showing off. Potatoes, stewed cabbage, leftover veal that Maria had been saving for Yakov's birthday, a bottle of wine we'd been hoarding since 1915. The table was full, loud, messy—like I was back in my old life, like before Joe lost Kato.

We talked. Laughed. Even Joe cracked a smile once or twice, especially when Kato—our daughter, not the ghost—told him Yakov had once run into a wall when chasing Iosif during a game of tag. It was all… human. Stunning when you consider Joe would end up responsible for the deaths of millions.

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

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

Then I stood.

"Come," I said quietly.

He raised an eyebrow but followed.

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

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

His silence was unnerving.

"Surprise," I said, grinning. "Think of it as a late birthday present."

Still nothing. Annoying.

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

He looked up at me, slowly.

I pressed on. "Civil war is coming. I know it. I see the writing on the wall. The Provisional Government is weak, and I've kept up with the party paper enough to know this little revolution is a prelude to the big one. You and I both know it's not over—it's just begun."

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

"I've been preparing. Playing the role. I was a cop sure, a tool of the reactionaries. On paper I was the most punctual, loyal officer in Petrograd. In reality, I was looting supply shipments and warning criminals of raids after taking their bribes. All of this—" I gestured at the hidden arsenal, "—came from that."

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

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

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

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

I paused, then looked him in the eyes.

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

He stared at me.

Seconds passed.

Then: "You always were the clever one," he muttered.

I laughed. "About fucking time. Now you just need to admit I'm the handsome one."

He grunted. "Maybe."

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

"Does Maria know?" he asked.

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

He nodded.

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

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

"Well then," he said. "tell me more."

"Glad you're in the mood to be enlightened," I said. "I'll be blunt: the Red Guards are a mess."

He blinked slow, like a snake debating whether I was prey or a particularly annoying shoe. "You've been gathering weapons and supplies for more than a decade and that's your big observation?"

"No," I said, chewing the words like a man with something to prove. "That's just the appetizer. They're a bunch of fucking amateurs. Half of them don't know which end of a rifle spits bullets, the other half are either drunk, high on their own manifestos, or both. If a civil war comes—and it will—they'll be chewed up like stale khachapuri at a sad Georgian funeral."

Silence. He was listening. Good. That meant I hadn't already dug my own grave with my mouth.

I leaned forward, tapped the table. "We need a real army. Not poetry brandished like a pike. A professional revolutionary army. Disciplined. Trained. Structured. Men who can hold a line and quote Marx without crying on the second verse."

He cocked his head like a man wondering if I was pitching a business plan or a bad play.

"And I suppose you've invented a name?" he asked, suspicion folded into boredom.

"The Soviet Army," I said, grinning like a man who'd passed high school history and felt unstoppable.

He hummed—low and approving. "Pretentious. But effective."

I kept going. "We train them. Cells. Begin to standardize weapons, formations, officers, a chain of command. A uniform code. They answer to the Party—no freelance warlords, no anarchist symptomband. Discipline first; ideology comfortable second."

He thumbed the rim of his cup slowly, like someone tuning a blade. "Sounds dangerously close to Bonapartism."

I shrugged. "Only if someone else does it. If we do it, it's revolutionary and tasteful. With formal ranks."

A short, shocked chuckle escaped him. Small victory.

"I've been reading," I added, recklessly earnest. "Clausewitz. Sun Tzu. Moltke. Machiavelli. Light bedtime reading."

He leaned back like I'd announced I'd taken up knitting. "Dear God. You learned to read."

"Oh, shut the fuck up, Joe." I jabbed. "My point stands. We need a fucking army or we will be crushed."

He tapped the table, slow and methodical. "You sound like Dzerzhinsky."

I squinted. "Who the fuck is that?"

He blinked as if beholding a man who'd missed the memo. "This is what happens when you don't commit to the cause."

"Oh cry me a fucking river, I've been busy raising your son Joe." That landed. Silence folded in, useful as concrete.

I let it sit, then dropped the second shoe. "I can't be the one to propose this. The party probably thinks I'm just some uppity ex-cop who clings to you family perks. They will never trust me with this. So I'm offering it to you."

He fixed me with that look—part curiosity, part suspicion. "Offer what, exactly?"

"All of it." I stood and spread my arms as if unveiling a museum exhibit. "My men, my gun stash, my contacts, my supplies, my rubles, all of it. I know a lot of former cops, gangsters, soldiers—people who can actually shoot. You can lead it. Name it. You give the orders; I do the grunt work—recruitment, supplies, logistics, territory. You'll look like the Party man taking initiative. I handle the messy bits. You propose this to the party and they'll reward you for doing this and you'll benefit."

He said nothing. He stared in that way he had after his first arrests, and even more so after exile—like someone cataloging reasons and saving them for later.

"Why?" he asked at last.

"Why what?"

"This." He glanced at my stash "You were never serious about the cause from the moment you and I joined the part. Now suddenly you gift me this."

Paranoia. Classic. Infuriating. Expected.

"Simple," I said. "I want to be on the winning side. I read Pravda, I watch the streets. SRs, Kadets, Mensheviks—their hour is ugly and short. You and the Bolsheviks look like winners. No, you will be winners. I don't care about Marxist purity, about Marx, Lenin or any of that bullshit. I care about survival. Family first—Mom, Yakov, Maria, you. I only joined the party alongside you to stop you from getting yourself killed. Now that the stakes are higher I need to go all in."

He looked at me, expression a cocktail of contempt, amusement, and that dull, clinical disgust of a man whose appetite is for power, not sentiment.

"You've always been like this," he sneered. "Fine. Tell me numbers: network depth, men, weapons, money, safehouses."

I laid it out like an inventory list because of course I had to, this was Stalin I and he was my brother. "Thirty-seven men. 12 are ex-cops. Twenty rifles—I gave 12 to my cops, the rest are here. The civilians have handguns. Rough training. About ten thousand rubles in gold stashed. Around 2-3 thousand rounds for rifles and pistols combined. No other safehouses. Not yet."

"Who else knows?" he asked. "Can these men fight?"

"Only Keke and Maria know the general scale. The cops have killed before—reliable. The rest are still being trained. They'll hold a wall and maybe a grudgingly patriotic pose."

He studied the guns, the coins, the map of the city I'd produced earlier with Xs like a man marking future appointments. "I have comrades inside the Party. I'll place overseers within your militia. Begin cataloging everything. Disperse your stores; a single cache is an invitation. And no talk of civil war with anyone else except for me. Right now we're in no position to do anything. Keep your mouth shut, report to no one but me unless you have to."

I exhaled. "Whatever you say Joe."

"We better get started," he said.

 

[Alenco98]

April 5, 1917 (Old Style)
Petrograd, Russia

Joe hunched over the table, scribbling like a man trying to outrun a deadline written by history. His face was a weird collage—shock, fear, the kind of giddy horror you get when someone tells you your favorite band is about to headline Armageddon. All he'd said between pen strokes was, "Lenin arrived two days ago." Big news. Useful for posters, speeches, and future biographies. Me? I was too small a cog in the Party's machine to think I'd redirect the course of history yet. I figured I'd try to meet Lenin on the eve of the big show to ask nicely if I could be the first person to storm the Winter Palace, I did want to be in the history books in the future. For now however, I was busy running my little fiefdom in Petrograd.

And busy I'd been. A few of the caches I'd marked on my treasure map had borne fruit. We'd snagged weapons, and with them we'd grown—slowly, satisfyingly, like moss taking over a statue. One hundred and three men answered when I called. We weren't just the rowdy lot in front of my block anymore; we held a three-block radius. Checkpoints, marmalade-stiff guards, a flag—technically the Soviet flag, red and theatrical with a hammer and sickle—hung where a laundry line used to be. Not official yet, mind you. Thank you AP world history.

And so, I had gone on the war path and expanded. Order was our new branding campaign. Theft, rape, murder—those were now career-ending moves in my little jurisdiction. When the neighborhood misbehaved, we conducted quick trials: fast, efficient, theatrical. Sentence, execution, and then the cherry on top—public display on the lampposts. A grisly civic sculpture trail that discouraged repeat business. Practical and cost-effective. Also practical: target practice. Bullets are expensive; bodies, sadly, are free and useful for marksmanship. Cold? Yes. Effective? Also yes.

To keep pretensions of propriety, the Bolsheviks sent commissars to "educate" the populace—ideological outreach, basically. I told them fine, come lecture about dialectical materialism if you want, but if the streets erupt you'll pick up a rifle and stop reading pamphlets. They obliged. Nothing says credibility like a party intellectual with a bayonet.

So I had become, in local parlance, a warlord. One of many. We enforced ranks—minor nobility of the block—salutes, and a uniform code consisting of red helmets and an armband that said, subtly: we are organized and slightly terrifying. The helmets looked like something dragged from a costume shop, but they worked. Discipline beat chaos, every time.

Meanwhile Joe scribbled on, plotting something big, and Lenin—somewhere in the city—was assembling the revolution's opening act. I poured another cup of tea, glanced at the map, and felt the particular satisfaction of someone whose empire consisted of three blocks and very clear rules.

"Jesus, Joe — what the fuck are you writing? You look like you just walked in on the Tsar fucking the Tsarina."

He glanced up, half-annoyed, then snatched a crust of bread Maria had left on the table and chewed like a man trying to concentrate through a migraine. Boring.

So I did what I always do when the vibe needs breaking: hummed. Specifically, the glorious, soothing, culturally appropriate strains of "Brother Louie" by Modern Talking. I tapped the table to the rhythm like some anachronistic metronome from Hell. For reasons unknown to future historians, this made him furious. Lenin hadn't even arrived two days and already my repertoire was destabilizing party discipline.

Ten seconds in his annoyance curdled to real anger. He sighed hard and slammed his pen down. "Will you stop humming that fucking song?"

"Will you tell me what the fuck you're writing?" I shot back.

"Fine." He scoffed, indignant. "I'm editing Pravda with Kamenev. The April 7th issue."

"Wow, good for you Joe," I said. "But what are you writing? You look like a man who's just been offered a terrible promotion—either that or a plan to dismantle Europe."

He rolled his eyes like I'd suggested both. "Lenin wants to blow everything up. He's calling to overthrow the government."

Maria, putting more bread on the table, paused. Even she looked a shade paler — which in her case meant worried instead of silently furious. Me? Inside I was an immovable shrug. If Lenin was calling for revolution, well, that tracks. He'd been ranting like a man with pamphlets and a destiny.

"We might as well back him," I said, the kind of pragmatism that comes from owning very little and wanting to keep it.

Stalin stared at me as if I'd suggested we organize a choir. "What the hell do you even know?"

"I can see the future," I said casually, which is the kind of sentence that should really come with a medical warning. "The government falls. Lenin probably wins. Mind if I see it?"

He slid the papers across. I skimmed, pretending not to enjoy the feeling of reading destiny in cramped Cyrillic. Lenin's recipes for upheaval were bracing: end the war, land to the peasants, power to the soviets — all of it packaged in that blunt, irresistible way Lenin had of ordering history like a takeout menu. I almost applauded. If that's the dish he was serving, no wonder people were lining up.

"So he's calling for peace, land, and soviet power," I said aloud. "Yeah. He's not wrong. Joe, you should back it wholeheartedly."

His face did that thing where it cataloged my opinions and assigned them a crime rating. Part of me wanted to blurt, Hey, dumb-ass, I'm from the future — Lenin wins, you end up running things, and also please stop doing anything that will later terrify historians. But I am not subtle and I am not allowed to rewrite the timeline with smug spoilers, so instead I adopted the persona of Communist Ben Shapiro: rapid facts, relentless logic, ruthless thrift-store charisma.

I laid it out: the war is a meat-grinder, the government is a comically incompetent circus, people are sick of hunger and the draft, the soviets have popularity among the people unlike the government. Facts. Patterns. The obviousness of it made the logic feel less like persuasion and more like pointing at smoke and saying "fire."

Stalin waved a hand like a man who'd heard worse and survived exile. "Just focus on your guards. I'll handle Lenin. Hopefully I can talk him out of total lunacy."

"I say let the man do his thing," I shrugged. "But that responsibility's on you."

He snatched the papers back like they were a hot stove and went straight back to composing manifestos, his pen scratching like a man scratching a dare.

I hummed for another beat anyway, another bites the dust of course because Freddie Mercury needs some love. That and old habits die hard, and if nothing else, 80s music is a potent form of historical sabotage.

He kept scribbling while I chewed the crust Maria had set aside like it was the last loaf on Earth. Another long day lay ahead: patrols, checkpoints, petty tyrant duties—collect taxes, teach thieves the cost of ambition with a bullet, rotate guard duty, etcetera, etcetera. It was neat really, the glamorous life of a local warlord. I fantasized, as one does between mouthfuls, about parading in a general's frock coat or occupying a seat on the Politburo that came with a decent chair and better tea. Maybe I'd lean over to Joe one day and say, "Hey, maybe don't torch every officer in sight—spread the terror out a little. It's more efficient."

He paused, re-read, folded the pages like a man folding up a plan for future chaos, and slid them into his coat. He stood up. "Going somewhere, Joe?" I asked, because apparently I am a master of rhetorical questions.

"To the mansion. I must submit this to Kamenev. Pravda goes out tomorrow." He clipped the words like a man checking an agenda. Practical, inevitable.

"Need an escort?" I offered. Always performative chivalry when you can—keeps the men loyal and the narrative plausible.

"I'll be fine." He sounded like a man who'd survived exile and a lifetime of petty betrayals; fine was his default weather report.

"Still backing Lenin?" I pushed, because one must verify allegiances when they come with potential for promotion.

He looked at me—flat, precise, the kind of look that files you away under useful or expendable. "Stay in your lane, brother."

"Brother," he used that word only when annoyed or when he wanted me to remember family obligations. Noted. I shrugged the way you shrug when someone loans you a paradox.

"Whatever you say, Joe," I said, smiling like a man who'd just signed up for both a revolution and a small mercantile empire. Then I watched him go—coat tails and all—out into the city where pamphlets and gunfire were having a rather ugly courtship.

I sipped my tea, chewed the last of the bread, and made a mental list: patrol routes, which checkpoints needed more men, how to move a cache without looking like I was moving a cache. The revolution could be theatrical and ideological and full of slogans; my job was logistics, to keep the family fed and the men paid and the neighborhood from becoming an unsupervised social experiment.

Maria slid into Stalin's chair with a conspiratorial little exhale, eyes bright with equal parts dread and bargain-hunting optimism. "Do you really think Lenin will overthrow the government?" she asked, fingers picking at the bread crumbs like they were tiny fates to be examined.

"Baby," I said around the last crust, chewing deliberately. "He won't overthrow the government. He's going to destroy everything." I shrugged and grinned because optimism is a contract clause I refuse to break. Her face folded into that half-terrified, half-why-are-you-smiling-at-a-furnace look I'd come to know well. "Mark my words: in ten years this country will be unrecognizable."

I swallowed, kissed her, and lowered my voice to the sort of whisper that announces conspiracy and bad long-term planning. "And the best part? We're close to the center. If we play it right, we won't just survive the carnage — we'll sit pretty after the mess. Us, the kids, the in-laws. A new kind of tsardom. Better tea. Fewer assassinations at weddings."

"That's if you survive," she said, because she's always been somewhat of a debbie downer.

"Please," I scoffed, rolling my eyes like a man who'd already survived a half-dozen near-misses and a questionable moral compass. "I survived as a cop. This will be a walk in the park with bullets." I kissed her again, softer this time, then rose. "Time to get to work."

I snagged my rifle off the couch, the familiar weight a comfort. Outside the apartment door the city hummed—soldiers switching sides like men at a wardrobe sale, printing presses coughing out manifestos, and somewhere distant someone had a brass band of broken ideology practicing without an audience. Another day, another bullet; another day, another ledger entry in the book of survival.

Note: I've been reading an autobiography of stalin, and I didn't know he was againts overthrowing the government when Lenin first came, guess you learn new shit everday. Anyways new chapter in a few days, gonna read more of that book. The title is Stalin: Paradoxes of power, its like 1k pages. As you can see, Mikheil wont be a major player in the party for a while. Which is good because I can get to the civil war quicker. I've also been reading the marxists.org archives on both Lenin's and the bolshevik party congresses so check them out if you're interested. And note, I'm not really a communist, I just found this time period interesting.

 

[ReluctantCrusader]

Note: I've been reading an autobiography of stalin, and I didn't know he was againts overthrowing the government when Lenin first came, guess you learn new shit everday.

Click to shrink...

Tbf, the Bolsheviks early on was split on almost every issue regarding the revolution without even the framework of Marxism-Leninism to guide them and classical Marxism wasn't cut out for the task because Marx wrote jack shit about actually carrying out the revolution. Add the fact that the dominant strain of socialist thought at the time is the 2nd Internationale Kautskyism which thought that Socialist Revolution was impossible in Russia and you get a Bolshevik faction that doesn't what to do. Also why Lenin adopted Democratic Centralism in an attempt to put an end to this madness.

 

[Alenco98]

June 18, 1917 (Old Style)
Nevsky Prospect
Petrograd, Russia

I offered a Bolshevik commissar the cigarette I'd been smoking and watched him take it like a small treat. He lit it without ceremony; the match hissed, the smoke folded into the June air, and for a moment Nevsky looked almost civilized — tram bells, the clack of boots, a shopkeeper swearing at a boy who'd stepped into his doorway. It was the fifteenth day of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Officially the city was holding high debates and lofty resolutions; unofficially it smelled of damp wool, boiled cabbage, and the faint, ever-present tang of war.

Politics, I'd learned, could be explained simply: an endless game of who could shout the loudest and keep the guns. I wasn't a scholar — I'd never had the patience for pamphlets and footnotes — but I was good at other things. Numbers, for instance. Today I could claim three hundred and two men under my command. Thirty-odd of them were commissars and agitators the party had sent to keep ideology from running out of steam. The rest were my boys: clerks who knew how to fold a bayonet into a pocket, black-market carpenters who could make a crate disappear, former cop buddies of mine, and the sort of lads who thought a checkpoint was an excellent place to discuss literature as long as you left your hands where they could be seen. We held seven city blocks around my apartment. Sandbags, a few captured machine guns, and—when the city stores cooperated or the commissars smiled a proper smile—helmets scavenged from military depots. We collected taxes, yes. Call it a protection fee; call it a municipal improvement program. Either way, people kept their doors unlocked and their support high as long as we kept order and shot and hung every thief that thought it was good idea to rob in my territory.

The Bolsheviks' agitators did the rest: bundles of Pravda, posters pasted crooked on lampposts, soup kitchens that smelled faintly of salvation and overcooked barley. Good slogans, good bread, and a man who could promise things in a loud voice will always gather a crowd. I had even given a few speeches on the streets myself — brief, venomous things where I called the SRs and Mensheviks sellouts and suggested, with theatrical contempt, that they were being paid in boys and lies. The crowd laughed; the crowd always prefers the man who swears at his rivals rather than explains them.

Today's assignment from Joe was simple: be visible. Show that the Bolsheviks were not mere resolutions on paper but a presence in the street. There was a rally — a row over a dacha the anarchists had occupied and some workers on strike in solidarity. Red Guard detachments came in clumps, sailors from Kronstadt with salt at the edges of their voices, and the Petrograd Soviet's Executive Committee led the formal part of the procession with all the pomp of a funeral and none of the candor. But when I looked, Bolshevik banners outnumbered the others by a long measure. It was almost comical, the way the old men of the SRs shuffled and tried to speak to a crowd that already had its ears full of Bolshevik slogans. They looked, in their frock coats and righteous fatigue, like men trying to sell umbrellas at a flood.

Stalin had told me that at the Congress the SRs and Mensheviks had the positions and the pedigrees; they had chairs and the luxury of verbosity. Good for them. They tasted like aristocrats: confident, self-assured, and unaccustomed to being interrupted. They called us German agents with the casualness of someone reciting a weather report. Sometimes they were right — most politics is foreign money, rumor, and an unfortunate willingness to be wrong in public. Still, when the orders came down, I suspected I would not feel much. I had executed criminals for less — thieves who thought a man's pocketbook would pay for their children's shoes — and each time it had the same small, efficient quality as boiling water. Murder in our line was no romance; it was the end of a sentence and the start of another.

So I walked Nevsky and watched the city move: a seam of humanity stitched together by hunger and argument while picturing which one of the SR's or Mensheviks I'd be ordered to murder once we took power. I liked to think of myself a realist with a fondness for theatrics — a municipal director of practical inconveniences. People cheered as we passed; some sobbed; one woman spat at an SR who tried to hand her a leaflet. I thought of Joe, of the letter I'd given Molotov, of the absurdity of it all: people arguing over who would get which ministry after we took over the government while I stashed rifles and recruited more men for the real work. I folded those thoughts into the smooth of another cigarette I pulled out and kept my face steady.

Then it began. At first a murmur, then a tidal wave, as though the whole crowd had collectively sighed, "fuck it, one struggle." And of all things, it was the Marseillaise being sung. The hymn of guillotines and barricades, transplanted onto the wet cobblestones of Nevsky Prospect. My French, embarrassingly fluent thanks to years I had once thought wasted in school and college in my past life, slipped into the melody. Each syllable came sharp and perfect, and heads turned toward me. A few wide eyes, a few nods of approval — I had become, for a brief and nauseating moment, a patriot of France in Petrograd.

The church bells chimed overhead, irregular and clanging, as though they too had been conscripted into revolutionary duty. The sound merged with the singing, and for one dangerous instant I felt something like awe. My eyes watered — involuntarily, of course. Humanity, in its endless stupidity, had managed to look noble for once. A mass of starving, angry, lice-ridden people shouting in key. Beautiful. For a fleeting moment, I even felt tenderness toward the Mensheviks and SRs. Imagine that — a moment when I could look at those sanctimonious frauds and not fantasize about a firing squad.

But the mood shifted as it always does. More people joined. More banners, more voices. The slogans erupted like artillery fire: "Down with the ten capitalist ministers!" roared the crowd, and I roared too, savoring the absurd theater of it. Soon after came the other refrains — our tried-and-true bangers: "End the war!" "Bread, peace, and land!" "All power to the Soviets!"

By noon we were no longer a crowd. We were a flood, a wall of sound battering against the city itself. Marching songs, slogans, and the rhythmic tramp of boots consumed the avenue. The banners swayed like blades, and the air was thick with sweat, ink, and conviction.

I laughed quietly to myself. If I had been Kerensky, or one of those self-satisfied SR windbags, I would already be on my knees — shitting, crying, bargaining. But I was not Kerensky. I was Mikheil Jugashvili, and I had a front row seat to history, glorious.

And then of course, more shenanigans ensued as the day went on. Word ran through the crowd like a fever: some anarchists had stormed Kresty Prison, cut the locks, and walked men out into the rain — one of them even happened to be one of ours. Neat, I thought, which is to say it mattered exactly as much as a neat thing in a riot ever can: dramatically useful, logistically messy.

Around me a few SRs and Mensheviks looked hollowly nervous, the way men do when their sermon meets a fist. Poor bastards. The rest of us kept moving. We passed the Winter Palace and the Tauride; banners slapped at the air like angry flags, and our chants stitched a seam down the avenue. From a balcony I could just make out faces — ministers, perhaps, peering down as if into a play where none of the actors had read the script. Someone near me yelled, "Down with Milyukov's heirs!" which is both inventive and terminally contemporary. I would not have wanted the job of whoever came after Milyukov that day. Though to be fair, with my future knowledge, I wouldn't want anyone's job in the provisional government right now.

As evening crept in, the crowd thinned. Sun set like a curtain and the city smelled of coal and boiled cabbage; time to make one more stop before bed: the mansion.

I split from the parade with my men and walked to the Kschessinska mansion — Bolshevik headquarters by appropriation and, frankly, poor taste on the part of whatever noble saw fit to leave without securing his keys. The story ran that the place had once played host to the Tsar's mistress. I suppose revolution enjoys irony as much as revenge; both are good copy and cheap thrills.

My detachment moved like a small, well-oiled nuisance: helmets, armbands, rifles that glinted in the last light. People, naturally, made way. Might makes a pragmatic sort of law out here — polite, predictable. At the mansion entrance we were stopped by a red guard detachment; the man in charge stepped forward and demanded names and intentions with the officiousness of a man who had once learned his authority from a ledger.

"Comrade Jughashvili. Commander of the Okhta Red Guards. I am here to see Iosif Stalin. He told me to come after the rally." I said it flat; the name was the coin that bought us through.

The guard's suspicion softened at that. One of them went inside to fetch Joe while the rest of us exchanged cigarettes and small talk in the rain-bright dusk. My men joked about curricula vitae and looted helmets; the lads always enjoyed the theatrics of revolution as much as the spoils. It is amazing what a roll of tobacco will do for morale.

The guard returned with Joe. I folded into him like a practiced habit; he returned the motion with the same economy he applied to everything: private warmth, public austerity. He didn't smile—few people did these days—so we wore solemnity like winter coats: convenient, anonymous, and oddly flattering.

"I heard the rally went well," he said in that flat, ledger-like tone. "The Provisional Government has lost the streets as of today."

"Damn right." I nodded. "You should have seen it—our banners and chants outnumbered the SRs and Mensheviks by at least ten to one."

"That's only the beginning," he said. "Come. There will be a meeting to run over today's events. You'll provide a rundown. Lenin and the committee will be there."

We moved through the mansion—a succession of low-lit rooms whose wallpaper still pretended to believe in propriety—and I followed him like a guilty conscience. "Will I be able to speak to them one on one?" I asked, because hope is a small, embarrassing muscle I still exercise.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Not yet."

"And the things I've been telling you—have you put in a good word for me?"

"I have," he said in Georgian, opening a heavy door that smelled faintly of boiled tea and old tobacco. "To Lenin, as you repeatedly pestered me to."

"What did you tell him? What did you tell the others?"

"That I have a reliable brother commanding a disciplined Red Guard in Okhta—one we can call on in emergencies." He said as he smoothly switched back to Russian.

Fair enough. I inclined my head. It was an honest enough description: competent, useful, and mildly alarming in the way a well-kept knife is alarming.

"And—" Stalin continued, closing the door behind us so that the room's muffled murmurs felt a world away, "I hope you haven't been speaking about what's coming with anyone else."

"Only Maria," I said. It was the truth in its most limited form.

He frowned. It was a small thing; the only part of his face that moved when the ledger of his patience balanced the wrong way. "You shouldn't be so trusting," he said.

"Come on, Joe." I tried for lightness, because lightness is what I need if I don't want him to purge me in the future, also because I enjoy irritating him in private. "She's my wife. She's family. She's trustworthy."

He made a sound that was neither a laugh nor a scold—more like coal settling in a stove. "Try going through what I've gone through," he said. Then, blunt as a report, "Keep quiet until it's your turn to speak. And don't call me 'Joe' here."

"Whatever you say, brother," I replied as we stopped in front of another door.

He opened the door and we stepped into a room that still remembered ballroom chandeliers and respectable banquets; now it smelled of boiled tea, tobacco, and the faint, stubborn dignity of carpet. Dozens of chairs were arranged in rows like an assembly of expectant corpses. Faces I recognized peered back at me: Molotov — the lean man I'd met the first day, who smelled of coal and certainty — and Lev Kamenev, who'd been introduced to me as one of Joe's colleagues and a man who ran Pravda alongside Joe with a practiced frown. The rest were less familiar, the kinds of faces that would become familiar in due course: weathered, serious, and used to reciting conspiracies as if reading from a hymn.

Stalin pointed to a chair and I took it. As I settled, more men slipped into the room — some I had seen in the rally but had not realized were comrades. By the time the room filled, the hush had the weight of a held breath. The meeting began properly: Lenin stood, spoke in his peculiar, urgent cadence, thanked everyone for turning up, and then, with the economy of a man who needed few adjectives, told the government exactly where to go.

After Lenin, one by one, men rose and gave their reports. Red Guard commanders spoke with the bluntness of tradesmen — how many men they commanded, where they deployed them, what ammunition they had managed to requisition or filch. It was practical talk; it smelled of leather, ration cards, and the sort of arithmetic that decides who eats tomorrow.

Then my turn came.

"Comrades," I said, because one must begin with the right tone even if one plans to be blunt. "The situation, as the previous speakers have made clear, looks good. Today we held the streets while the Provisional Government stumbled. What we need now is to convert that street credibility into real military power. I command a Red Guard detachment in Okhta — a little over three hundred men — and we control roughly seven city blocks around my apartment. I ask the party for more men to engage in agitation, to enforce ideological discipline, to spread the word of the party, and, when necessary, men who will pick up a rifle and throw themselves into danger for the cause. The revolution will not be won with speeches alone; we require men and weapons. And, of course, if any of you find yourselves in Okhta and need shelter, my flat is at the corner of Sredneokhtinsky Prospekt and Aleksandra Ulyanova Street. My wife makes a decent stew and we keep spare beds."

A smattering of applause, some approving nods, a chuckle that sounded suspiciously like relief. Stalin nodded too, and clicked the ember on his cigarette as if that small spark could warm the entire room. I returned to my seat with the easy satisfaction of a man who has just announced sensible facts and a practical hospitality line.

The meeting resumed its steady, somnolent march. One man rose, then another; reports like dominoes: measured, competent, and mildly soporific. If boredom were a weapon, I would have been disarmed. I studied the wallpaper, the small clever pattern that tried to look like roses and instead resembled logistical diagrams. My mind amused itself with petty observations: the way men folded their hands, the little rituals of seriousness that pass for virtue.

When it ended we drifted out into the corridor like a flock of pens returned to their pockets. Before I left, I caught Stalin's eye; he nodded once more — a curt, efficient nod I had learned to read as approval — and kept smoking. I stepped up beside him.

"Are you going back home tonight?" I asked.

"No." He shook his head and switched to Georgian, the language he kept for the small, human truths. "I will help edit Pravda tonight. I will put in a line or two about the Guards from Okhta and how they keep discipline."

I let the compliment land and then he made the obvious, stupid request. "Tell Ma to make stew for tomorrow. I'll try and be there."

"You got it," I said, and for a fraction of a second the hard line at the corner of his mouth softened so that it resembled a smile. "I'll see you tomorrow." I said as I moved to hug him — brief, affectionate, and a little theatrical — patted his back like one might pat a reliable blade. As I stepped away I felt the slow, delicious click of something settling into place. They all knew now: I was Stalin's brother. That knowledge would be a small, useful plot armor. When Stalin became the soviet Kim Jong Un and the nation truly belonged to him, the prospect of being untouchable sounded so awesome.

Note: Sorry for the delays, reading various Stalin and Lenin biographies and wikipedia takes time, also I just boight HOI4 and I have been Gorging myself on it. I tried playing TNO but found it wayyyyy too hard to manage (and my computer is a toaster), so I switched to Thousand Week Reich. Just need to figure out how to unify Russia as Zhukov. In the meantime, another chapter next week ish, I am currently working on applying for jobs and this (and binging HOI4 on the side, ETA next week). Next chapter will be a July days chapter, I'm basically Rushing towards the civil war. And it helps that I reduced his role in the pre revolution era. He'll still become a marshall of the Soviet Union don't worry.

 

[Alenco98]

July 3, 1917 (Old Style)
Okhta District
Petrograd, Russia

I leaned out of the apartment window, cigarette between my fingers, and watched the street move like a slow, obedient animal. I'd declared today my day off — technically — which is the luxury of being in charge: you may set your own hours so long as everyone else keeps working. In practice, being effectively a local don means you're on call twenty-four/seven. Ah, the burdens of leadership.

So far the streets were quiet: carts, trudging faces, my red guards on duty today patrolling the streets. The Provisional Government meanwhile remained a spectacle of mismanagement; according to Joe's morning briefing their latest offensive against the Germans had gone about as well as a man trying to walk barefoot through broken glass. I was almost impressed they had lasted this long with all the bullshit circling them.

I drew the smoke in, watched it pool and unravel, and looked down at my people. My guards — my little constellation of underlings. I was technically second-in-command of roughly three hundred and sixty-four men, with nine city blocks folded under Stalin's authority. A small warlord at thirty-eight. If Ma from my previous life could see me now, she might faint from pride or outrage. Either would be entertaining.

Funny, how the past loosens its hold. At first, when you wake up in another time, you clutch at memories like flotation devices: family, friends, the ridiculous conveniences of modern life. Later, decades in, they shrink and become curiosities — postcards from a life that once mattered. I still felt a tug now and then — a distant ache for a brother's laugh, a nice walk through DC during a date — but the raw, stabbing grief had softened into a familiar bruise. Time, and trench work, do that to a man.

Inside the apartment the children screamed with the precise, licentious energy only small people possess. Maria stirred a pot of stew that smelled like salvation and onions. Keke — my mother in this life — fussed over little Besarion as if he were a delicate instrument. And at the kitchen table, Joe — the man who would become Stalin — sat with Lev Kamenev, who'd crashed on our couch the previous night and refused to make himself scarce. They drank coffee and smoked in the way of men who use cigarettes as punctuation.

Curiosity nudged me; I pulled up a chair and made my entrance as if I'd been invited. "What are you ladies talking about today?" I asked, because a bit of light hearted humor makes politics and the impending civil war I would fight in more palatable.

They both glared like two men who'd rehearsed expressions of displeasure for years. I shrugged and drew another drag. "Something happened I'm guessing. How bad is it?"

"A courier arrived early this morning," Joe said without theatrics. He favored facts like an accountant favors ledgers. "A regiment plans to stage a demonstration later today."

"I see." I nodded. "You want a show of solidarity — me and a handful of the boys?" Initiative — my little hobby — drew the expected snort from Stalin and a chuckle from Kamenev.

"Take a few men," Kamenev said, folding a few leaflets across his knee and pushing them my way. "Nothing flamboyant. Keep an eye on things. If shooting starts, withdraw."

"You should present it as maintaining order," he added. "A show of party solidarity. Hand out leaflets to soldiers and civilians. I can marshal some men from Pravda to amplify it."

"Sounds like a plan." I inhaled, the cigarette burning down to ash between my fingers. "But first — breakfast." Maria appeared as if conjured, bearing a plate of coarse bread. Bread alone, but bread is a miracle in these times. I accepted it with the private gratitude of a man who runs a paramilitary outfit and still enjoys being fed by his wife. God bless being a warlord; the stew line is good for recruitment and morale."

--

Later that day, in the evening

Me and the fifteen men I'd scraped together were a pinprick in a sea of sailors and soldiers marching right outside the Tauride, all heavily armed and gloriously disorganized. We carried one of the Party's banners—our usual bangers: "All Power to the Soviets!" and "Peace, Bread, and Land!" The soldiers had their own banners too, many of them shouting the same slogans, though their enthusiasm was considerably louder and less disciplined. They fired rifles into the air like it was a wedding, wasting ammunition in a display of revolutionary spirit and ballistic stupidity.

I leaned toward one of them and said, in the tone of a man explaining arithmetic to a dog, "Comrade, don't you think firing at clouds is a bit inefficient? We might need those bullets later—bourgeois pigs tend to shoot back."

He laughed, nodded, and whispered it to the others. Slowly, miraculously, the gunfire died down around us. Not completely, of course—this was Russia, not heaven—but in our corner of the parade the noise softened to chants and shouting instead of random gunfire. A small victory for logic. I even spotted one of the Party scribes scribbling something in his notebook while watching us. Maybe it was a good report, maybe he was documenting my eventual purge. Either way, flattering attention.

Soon we reached Kshesinskaya Mansion—the old ballerina's palace now turned Bolshevik headquarters. We stood outside shouting slogans at the façade while Lenin and the rest hid inside, no doubt deciding whether to seize history or just talk about it. The soldiers around us were restless, their anger like a hot fog. They wanted action. They wanted the Bolsheviks to take power, and for a moment I could see it—the banners surging toward the Winter Palace, rifles raised, a revolution unrolled like a carpet of gunfire and glory. If I were Lenin, I thought, I'd have marched then and there. But I wasn't Lenin. I wasn't even a soldier. I was a glorified thug with an administrative streak.

Then, inevitably, things went wrong. News rippled through the crowd: at Gostiny Dvor, someone had thrown a grenade. A firefight followed. No one knew how many were dead. The air turned electric—anger, fear, hysteria, all trying to outshout each other. Somewhere behind me, a voice screamed: "Take power, you sons of bitches!" and the crowd echoed it like a curse.

I lit a cigarette, watching the smoke curl up toward the sullen sky, and glanced at the mansion. The mob roared, demanding revolution. I thought back to my old life—AP World History, of all things. They called it the October Revolution, didn't they? So this wasn't the moment yet. I exhaled, amused by the thought. "Well," I muttered to myself, "someone forgot to check the calendar."

I made a mental note to ask Joe later why they hadn't seized power today. I suspected the answer would be as boring as it was sensible. In the meantime I glanced at one of my men. "Go back to Okhta." I said after inhaling and blowing out more smoke. "Tell my wife and family that I won't be coming back tonight."

"Yes sir." My minion replied and he scurried away from our group and into the crowd.

July 4, 1917 (Old Style)
Outside the Tauride
Petrograd, Russia

I stood beside a battered truck at the foot of the Tauride Palace, cigarette in hand, watching the sort of scene that only revolutions or bad theatre can produce. Viktor Chernov — Minister of Agriculture, leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries, and professional sellout — had just been dragged from the palace by an enthusiastic mob of sailors from Kronstadt. His fine suit was in ribbons, his face a patchwork of panic and bruises, and he was babbling something about his land program as if it could stop a bullet.

Next to him stood Trotsky — the man I'd heard about from Joe, the fiery orator, the intellectual thunderstorm, the so-called voice of the revolution. Up close, he looked more like a man perpetually late to his own performance: hair disheveled, eyes cold, manner precise to the point of irritation. He was trying, with visible restraint, to stop the crowd from murdering Chernov.

One sailor — face red, veins bulging — lunged forward and screamed directly into Chernov's face:
"Take power, you son of a bitch, when it's handed to you!"

The crowd roared its agreement. I could almost taste the rage in the air — that heavy, metallic scent of collective righteousness. And truth be told, I sympathized. But there's no reason to waste a perfectly good hostage, so I reached out and put a hand on the sailor's shoulder.

"How about we don't kill him?!" I shouted, pitching my voice over the chaos. "He could be useful — hostages usually are!"

That earned me a glare, but the man hesitated. Trotsky, mid-sentence, caught my eye. His expression hovered between confusion and contempt, like I'd interrupted a lecture with a bad joke. I winked at him and mouthed, "Calm them down before they rip us to shreds."

For a moment, he just looked at me — that piercing, analytical stare of his, as if dissecting whether I was an idiot or merely inconvenient. Then, with visible reluctance, he turned back to the mob and launched into one of his famous tirades.

"Do you hear, Chernov?!" he cried, his voice cutting through the chaos like a whip. "The people are offering you power — take it, if you can! But if you will not, then do not hinder those who can! Look at what your hesitation has bought you!"

He pivoted sharply, addressing the crowd now. "Comrades — soldiers, workers, sailors of Kronstadt! You rushed here at the first word that the revolution was in danger. Once again, Red Kronstadt proves itself the pride and glory of the revolution! Long live Red Kronstadt!"

The sailors howled their approval. I even joined in, clapping and shouting because, well, the man did have presence. Then, before anyone could lose interest, he kept going — his words smooth, disciplined, theatrical.

"You came to declare your will: that the bourgeoisie must not rule any longer, that the Soviets must take power. That will is just. But will you strengthen the revolution by striking down your own delegate? Viktor Chernov is a representative of the Soviet. Will you disgrace the revolution before all Russia by murdering your own deputy?"

A murmur rippled through the crowd. I threw in my part:
"We will not!" I shouted, loud enough to feed the moment. Others joined in, emboldened by noise.

Trotsky didn't miss a beat. "Do not waste your strength on individuals. Our struggle is against the system that starves and shoots us, against the ministers who promise bread and give only speeches. We will win, comrades, through the organized will of the Soviets — not through chaos!"

The crowd cheered again — a thunder of boots, fists, and wild relief. Trotsky raised his hand for silence. His eyes swept over them, sharp, clinical.

"Comrades, I propose the minister be released at once. Those in favor of violence — raise your hands!"

For a second, the entire world seemed to freeze. He'd challenged them openly — daring them to prove themselves murderers. That took guts or arrogance. Possibly both. No one moved. Not a single hand went up.

Trotsky's voice came again, quieter but no less commanding. "No one? Then it's decided. Citizen Chernov, you are free. No one will hinder you."

He grabbed Chernov by the sleeve and practically dragged him back toward the palace, the gesture half escort, half punishment. I gestured for my men to follow, making sure no one in the crowd decided to change their mind. Once inside, Chernov muttered his thanks and vanished into the building, still shaking like a man who'd narrowly escaped execution — which, technically, he had.

Trotsky stayed behind for a moment, gathering himself. His aloofness was almost a defense mechanism; he stood like a man too clever to enjoy company. I decided to introduce myself anyway — networking is an art, even among egomaniacs.

"My brother Stalin said you were a brilliant orator," I told him as I approached. "But that was something else entirely."

He blinked, looked at me like I was a sudden gust of wind. "Stalin?" he repeated, wary. "The man from Pravda?"

"That's the one," I nodded, extending my hand. "Mikheil Jugashvili. His younger twin — the better-looking one. I run the Okhta Red Guard. If you ever need men for security, you know where to find me."

Trotsky took my hand as if it were a bureaucratic obligation, not a greeting. "I see," he said flatly. "I'll keep it in mind." Then, without another word or even a nod, he turned and walked past me, coat brushing against mine like punctuation.

I stood there for a moment, watching him go. What a charming conversationalist, I thought. Man saves a minister, ignores his own hype man, and leaves without a word. Dick.

Still, credit where it's due — he'd faced down a mob and survived. I figured I could forgive his lack of manners. "Let's head back to Okhta," I told my men, lighting a fresh cigarette. "We need to talk to Joe."

--

Later in the day
Okhta district, Mikheil's apartment

I stood on the roof with Joe, both of us leaning against the railing, smoke curling into the violet dusk. From up here, Petrograd looked like a half-drowned beast — the river glimmering weakly, chimneys exhaling, the city trying to pretend it wasn't collapsing. The air was thick with smoke, sweat, and the faint metallic taste of unrest.

"I want to know," I said, exhaling a slow stream of smoke. "Why didn't we take power today? We had the streets, the soldiers, even Chernov. He was right there — practically gift-wrapped. Now the government's going to crack down. I've already told my men to start hiding rifles, leaflets, anything that screams Bolshevik."

Joe took his time lighting his own cigarette, cupping the match against the wind. The flame flickered across his face — sharp, thoughtful, a bit too calm for a man standing on the edge of history. "Smart call," he said finally. "Straight from Lenin: we're not ready. And I agree."

I looked at him sideways. "Do you now? Tell me why? I want to hear the logic straight from the horse's mouth."

He took a drag before answering. "Even if we seized power now, we'd lose it just as fast. Our presence outside Petrograd is weak, and the Soviets are still controlled by the Mensheviks and SRs. We'd have no legitimacy — no foundation to stand on."

I nodded, a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. "Fair enough. So what's the next step? Should I start getting the higher-ups out of the city? Maybe stash them in Okhta for a while? You know I can arrange that."

"It would be prudent if you started making arrangements," he said. His voice softened slightly, which for Joe was practically a confession of affection.

I chuckled and flicked my cigarette off the roof, watching the ember vanish into the street below. "Looks like I'm in for a long night."

He turned to look at me — that steady, unreadable stare that always made people nervous but never worked on me. "Mikha," he said quietly, "I know you haven't failed me since the day you joined the Party. But the next few days are going to be serious. I want you focused. Completely."

I grinned, half amused, half touched. "That serious, huh?" I placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it. "Don't worry about it, Joe. When have I ever let you down? Remember that time with the carriage, when we were kids? You were almost ran over and I dragged you out of the way at the last moment before the damn thing rolled over you. You can count on me don't worry."

That earned me the rarest of things — a genuine smile. Not his usual guarded smirk, but something faintly human, almost warm. For a few seconds, it was just the two of us again — brothers on a rooftop, smoke and memory between us, the city below holding its breath.

"I'm glad," he said quietly, looking back toward the horizon. His tone softened, almost gentle.

I smiled too, hiding the calculation behind it. Every smile I earned from Joe was another small investment in survival. Stalin might go full psycho and purge the party eventually, but if I kept this up I would be safe.

July 5, 1917 (Old Style)
Kshesinskaya Mansion
Petrograd, Russia

The Central Committee room looked like someone had upended a tea trolley full of anxiety — papers strewn, men pacing, voices ricocheting off gilt plaster. Stalin had dragged me here partly because I nagged him until he gave in and partly because I wanted to see the theater of decision-making up close. Lenin and Trotsky were in the middle of a grim duet; Lenin's face had creased as if the day had stolen ten years in one breath.

"Now they're going to shoot us," Lenin muttered, the kind of fatalism that tastes like stale bread. "Now is the best time for them."

Grim. Defeatist. I wondered, not for the first time, how these people ever managed to seize anything if this was how brave and competent they were. I shrugged; some mysteries are best left to historians and those who enjoy dramatics. And I figured I would find out in October.

Stalin was nearby, low-voiced with Kamenev, and glanced over at me with that half-smile that meant, do something useful, brother. I went to him.

"Comrade," I said, putting on my mildly official tone. He met my eyes. "Tell them about the arrangements you made in Okhta. They'll be on the move any minute."

He nodded, then glanced back at Kamenev. "Tell Lenin to get the room in order. The arrangements my brother made are ready."

Kamenev hustled off like a man delivering a verdict. I could see the room pivot; eyes found us as if we'd become an exhibit. Stalin gave me the nod — the signal to speak.

"Comrades," I began, because there are rituals even in panic. "Yes, the situation is grim. No, we won't pretend otherwise. But panicking and running about like headless chickens—well, that helps exactly no one. I've set up safe houses across Okhta. Routes, stockpiles, places to lie low. You can leave the city in an orderly fashion, or stay and face whatever comes. If you choose to flee, go. If you choose to remain, make sure you are not a liability. As for me — I will not leave until every last one of you who wants to get out has safely gone."

For a beat the room exploded into argument: some wanted to go to preserve their necks and reputations, others insisted on staying so they wouldn't look like cowards in history books. Lenin — practical in his own dour way — chose to leave. Stalin, predictably, said he would remain but slip underground. Sverdlov agreed to stay as well. I exhaled a long, careful breath and realized the next few days would be very long indeed.

As the chatter swelled and plans began to tumble into place, I ran my hand along the back of a chair and thought, who would go, who would stay, how I would arrange their evacuation, what to do about my family. God, Stalin better make me a fucking field Marshall for all the shit I'm doing for him, I thought to myself. Then I lit a cigarette, tucked the plan into my head like a loaded postcard, and prepared for the work of keeping people out of jail.

July 6, 1917 (Old style)
Okhta district, right outside Mikheil's apartment
Petrograd, Russia

I lingered on a street corner with a cigarette, leaning against the same lamppost that had watched me grow from petty thief to municipal inconvenience. The sun had the insolence to be warm. Technically martial law had been declared, so I wasn't supposed to be out here, but rule-following has always been a group activity I politely declined. Yesterday and last night had been a blur of evacuations and safe-house preparations — I'd been moving people like pieces on a chessboard, except the board was on fire and the pieces kept swearing.

News travelled the usual way: ragged couriers and the constant hum of rumor. The counter-espionage bureau had busted into Pravda's offices, smashed presses and desks; I'd managed to spirit away a few plates and a typewriter before the boys finished redecorating with sledgehammers. They'd also overrun Kshesinskaya Mansion; the roughly four hundred men posted there surrendered without imagination. Cowards, I thought. Or simply men who preferred a cellar to a bullet.

I'd told my men to cache their weapons and blend into the city like bad wallpaper. My family had been moved to another flat in my territory with Joe — safer underground than a name on a list. Lenin had dropped by this morning, taken a cup of my mother's stew, had the decency to be lectured for disrespecting her saucepan, and then left for evacuation like a man checking out of a hotel with luggage and a manifesto.

I drew another drag and let myself indulge in a ridiculous fantasy: Field Marshal Jugashvilli. The Red Rommel — what a business card that would be. The image made me grin until it dissolved into smoke.

Footsteps tracked up the street like a promise. I watched my guards with a casual interest. "Looks like they're here for me," I said. "You lot can go home — unless you fancy getting arrested by those charming gentlemen." They exchanged glances, made the sort of decision that involves survival, and melted away.

The column arrived at my block: soldiers, boots polished poorly and faces polished with suspicion. I dropped my rifle practically as a courtesy and raised my hands—behind my head, down on my knees; theatre, if nothing else, should be earnest. "There's a pistol in my right pocket," I volunteered, because manners die hard. The nearest man took this as an invitation to demonstrate his authority and kicked me in the gut. I coughed and tasted iron.

"Dick move," I muttered as they hauled me up and dragged me toward an officious man who fancied himself a commanding presence.

"So you're the Okhta commander," the officer sneered, all small mirrors and swagger. "Consider yourself fortunate we aren't shooting you outright."

Lucky we aren't shooting you — the sort of consolation you give to someone who's just announced they enjoy being waterboarded. If I were Kerensky, I thought, I'd have had us all buried and filed under 'regrettable excesses of civil order.' Still, fate hadn't yet seen fit to rearrange my corpse, so I kept my tone thinly cordial.

"Mind if I get a few w—" I began. He slapped me for the unfinished question. Charming fellow.

If theater doesn't work, improv does. I took a long breath and made my voice big and absurd. "Long live the Bolsheviks!" I shouted, loud enough to turn heads two streets over. "Hail Marx! Hail Lenin! Death to the reactionaries!"

I briefly broke one of my arms free and did what in my timeline would be considered a Nazi salute. Before the guards grabbed me again and they began punching me. I figured I might as well appropriate it, imagine the irony, communists doing a Nazi salute because of me during the coming world war. Hilarious.

This chapter was a doozy to write, I swear, the dual power period was fucking wild.

 

[You can get stronger]

I'm glad you kept the Nazi salute has to be one of the funniest jokes in this fic.

 

[Alenco98]

He was always there, whispering in Stalin's ear, sitting in at meetings. Every policy change, every execution, every purge, every military campaign, the war effort. Everything Stalin and the Politburo agreed on always had Mikheil's influence on it.

Excerpt from: Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics

August 21, 1917 (Old Style)
Kresty Prison
Petrograd, Russia

The guards woke me at precisely five in the morning, banging on the iron door as though they were paid by the dent. My eyes opened to the same cracked ceiling I'd been staring at for the past month and a half — my loyal companion in monotony. I rolled my head toward the wall beside the cot, then crouched in the corner where I kept my treasure: a small, rusted nail. I plucked it from its hiding spot and, with the care of a jeweler, scratched a new mark into the wall. Day forty-six. Lovely.

I replaced the nail, retrieved my pillow, and set it on the floor. Then I lowered myself into a headstand — my improvised morning ritual — and began counting silently. One… two… three… until one hundred. Blood rushed to my skull; I could feel my pulse drumming in my temples. Satisfied, I returned to normal posture, stretched my neck, and set the pillow back on the cot.

Warm-up came next: fifty jumping jacks in the stifling air, the cell echoing with my own ragged breathing. Then push-ups — a hundred, divided neatly into sets of ten, thirty seconds' rest between each. Squats followed, then sit-ups. My personal rebellion against decay. The only regret was the lack of yard time; without running, my dream of becoming the Soviet One Punch Man was tragically deferred.

By my best guess, it was six o'clock when I finished. I tucked the nail back into its crevice just in time for the inspection. The guards entered like clockwork — humorless men who looked allergic to sunlight. They emptied the waste bucket, patted down the cot, glanced at me with suspicion, then shuffled out. Breakfast followed: tea that tasted faintly of metal, a lump of rye bread, and porridge scooped from a dented tin bucket. I ate quickly; chewing only prolonged the suffering.

Then came "quiet hour." No talking, no movement, no noise. The bureaucrats called it time for reflection. I called it a performance of boredom. I dug through the mattress and found my hidden cigarettes and lighter. The cigarette was intact; the lighter, as always, was temperamental. I flicked it once, twice—nothing. "Damn it," I muttered under my breath, tucking it away again.

With nothing else to do, I lay back on the cot. My thoughts drifted like smoke. I don't dream often, but when I do, they're a rerun of past lives: flashes of the world before — faces, cities, the hum of a time long gone. Sometimes it's the ladder, the fall, the weightlessness just before the pain. Other nights, it would be my family vacations to France in my old life. And on rare occasions, this life intrudes — Petrograd, Maria, Joe.

It never lasts. The rattle of keys and the bark of a guard always come, abrupt and graceless. "Time for the yard," they shout. And so the ritual resets — another day survived, another line etched into the wall, another cigarette I won't get to light.

The first breath outside always hits differently. The air isn't clean — it smells faintly of rust, sweat, and distant chimneys — but compared to the cell, it's divine. Warm air, bright light, space enough to stretch your back. I savor it like a man who's learned to appreciate misery in increments.

Around the yard, clusters of prisoners loitered — mostly politicals like me, each pretending to be deep in thought when really they were just sunbathing under the pretense of revolution. In the corner, I spotted Trotsky and Kamenev talking with a few others. Naturally, I wandered over.

"Morning, ladies," I said, fishing a cigarette from my pack. "Any news from the civilized world? Also, anyone got a lighter? First one to save my lungs gets first smoke."

Kamenev, God bless the bureaucratic soul, handed one over. I rewarded him with a cigarette before lighting my own. I turned to offer one to Trotsky, but he cut me off mid-gesture. His voice was as clipped and chilly as ever.

"We've got news you'll want to hear."

I raised an eyebrow. "Do tell."

"We might be getting released," Kamenev said.

That word — released — hit like a gunshot. "Released?" I repeated. "What, did Lenin come back and overthrow Kerensky already?"

You could have heard a leaf fall. Every Bolshevik in a ten-foot radius turned to look at me as if I'd just insulted their mothers, Marx, and the Revolution in one sentence.

"Watch your tongue, comrade," Kamenev said stiffly.

I smiled, hands raised in mock surrender. "Alright, alright. So what's the real story?"

"There's talk of a coup," Trotsky said, his tone level but his eyes sharp. "Kerensky's in a panic. One of the generals is marching on the city — the government's collapsing in real time."

"And what does that have to do with us?"

"Word is," Kamenev said, "Kerensky might release us to help put the uprising down."

I blinked. "You're serious?"

They nodded. The gears in my head began to turn. So that was it. The great historical mystery laid bare: how the Bolsheviks went from hunted fugitives to masters of Russia in half a year. This — this was the hinge. Kerensky, the desperate fool, letting the devil out of the bottle and hoping it would fight his other demons for him.

I couldn't help it — I started laughing. Quiet at first, then louder, until the laughter took on a kind of manic rhythm. The others stared. The look said, Why is this man losing his mind before breakfast?

"Sorry," I said, catching my breath. "It's just… hilarious."

"Hilarious?" Kamenev frowned.

"Damn right," I said with a smirk. "Kerensky's about to hand us the keys to the country. That idiot just did the political equivalent of opening the second Seal."

"For God's sake, comrade," Kamenev hissed. "Keep your voice down — you'll have them thinking we've all gone mad."

"God?" I turned to him, feigning shock. "God?! I thought we were atheists, comrade! Then again," I added with a grin, "I still call myself a Christian — makes weddings and funerals less awkward."

Even Trotsky cracked a laugh, brief and reluctant, like it had escaped him by accident. He shook his head and said, "You're wasted in Okhta, comrade. You should be writing satire for Pravda. It'd be more entertaining than anything Kamenev or Stalin churns out."

That earned more laughter — even from a few guards hovering nearby. Kamenev flushed the color of bad beet soup. "Oh, shut the fuck up," I said in mock offense. "You just don't understand Georgian humor. It's more refined than your Petersburg stuff."

"Is that so?" Raskolnikov said, taking the cigarette I handed him. I lit it for him.

"Indeed," I said with mock dignity. "Haven't I already charmed all of you?"

"Whatever you say, comrade," Kamenev muttered, rolling his eyes.

Trotsky smiled faintly, but didn't reply — too self-contained, too careful. The kind of man who laughs only when he decides it's politically safe to do so. I took another drag and watched the sunlight spill over the yard's brick walls. It was a good day to be alive — for now.

August 22, 1917 (Old Style)
Kresty Prison
Petrograd, Russia

The day began, as it always did, with violence. The guards banged on the iron door like they were trying to wake the dead — a fitting metaphor, really. I opened my eyes to the same cracked ceiling I'd studied for the last month and a half. I yawned, the sound dry and human, and reached for the nail I used to mark my days. Before I could, the door creaked open — unexpected. They usually only opened it when they wanted to ask questions or extract teeth.

"Mikheil Jugashvili," one of them barked.

"That's me," I said, voice groggy, pretending mild confusion.

"Congratulations," the guard said with all the warmth of a corpse. "You've been released by decree of Prime Minister Kerensky. You and all other Bolshevik Party members are to assist in the defense of Petrograd."

I blinked once. Then again. It was almost comical — salvation by bureaucratic panic. I let the information settle, stretched lazily, and exhaled. "That soon, huh?" I said. "So what happens now?"

"You'll be processed. Then you're free to go."

"Perfect." I stood and reached into my mattress, retrieving my cigarettes. I held one up. "Got a light? I'll trade you one."

He hesitated, then reached into his pocket and handed over a lighter. I lit his cigarette first — small courtesies smooth the world — then my own. "Cheers," I said, taking a drag. "What's your name?"

"Pavel. Pavel Chernenko."

"Chernenko." I nodded, filing it away. Names are currency. "I'll remember you. Consider yourself owed." I patted his shoulder — light, friendly, the kind of gesture that could later mean gratitude or threat, depending on how things turned out.

I stepped out of the cell and joined the line of newly resurrected Bolsheviks. The air in the hallway smelled of sweat and disinfectant — the perfume of bureaucracy. Ahead, I spotted Trotsky, Kamenev, and Raskolnikov clustered near the front like intellectual pigeons.

"Morning, ladies," I said, clapping Trotsky and Raskolnikov on their shoulders. "Looks like our early release came through. Guess we're indispensable after all."

Kamenev's mouth tightened into a smile that wasn't one. "So it seems," he said.

"This calls for a celebration," I continued, smoke curling from my mouth like punctuation. "Dinner at my place tonight — Trotsky, Kamenev, Raskolnikov. Corner of Sredneokhtinsky Prospekt and Aleksandra Ulyanova Street, Okhta district. My wife makes a mean stew, and my brother Joe's been keeping the place in order. He's reliable that way."

Raskolnikov grinned. "Why the hell not — once we've dealt with the reactionaries."

Kamenev shook his head. "I'll have to pass, comrade." Always the cautious one.

Trotsky declined as well, voice clipped as usual. "Perhaps when things have calmed down — after we've taken power."

I shrugged with mock regret. "Suit yourselves. More stew for us, eh, Raskolnikov? You ever tried khachapuri?"

"Never have," he said.

I smiled. "Then get ready to fall in love with Georgian cuisine." I patted his back — friendly, firm, just short of domineering.

Minutes later, the guards herded us into the processing office. We gave our names, affiliations, addresses — the ritual of being humanized again. Then, with bureaucratic efficiency, the doors opened. Just like that, we were free.

I stepped out and looked back at Kresty. The sunlight hit its red brick walls like mockery. I raised my middle finger at it — a simple gesture, deeply satisfying. I'd rather die than spend another day in that cage.

Walking toward the city, I smiled to myself. Prison hadn't been a waste — it was networking in its rawest form. I'd smuggled food, cigarettes, even liquor to the others. Played the part of the loyal comrade, the sympathetic ear. I'd listened to their monologues, flattered their intellect, stoked their egos, and always, always mentioned Joe — my brother, the reliable one, the quiet organizer.

Now they trusted me. They liked me. They'd remember my name.

I lit another cigarette, inhaling the taste of cheap tobacco and self-satisfaction. Joe, I thought, when you're sitting in that Kremlin office of yours, you better make me your goddamn field marshall. I've earned it.

I smiled again — outwardly calm, inwardly calculating. Time to murder some reactionaries I guess.

August 22, 1917 (Old Style)
Mikheil's apartment
Okhta District
Petrograd, Russia
In the evening

Joseph Stalin climbed the worn stairs of the apartment building at the corner of Sredneokhtinsky Prospekt and Aleksandra Ulyanova Street. His steps were deliberate, his expression unreadable, the mask of composure he had long since perfected. At the door, he paused, knocked twice, and waited.

A shuffle of feet came from within. The lock clicked, and his mother appeared—older, smaller than he remembered. "Soso!" she exclaimed, pulling him into her arms. He allowed the embrace, stiff at first, then briefly softening before stepping back.

"Thank you, Mama," he answered in Georgian, his tone gentle but restrained.

From down the hall came the faint sound of opera—Caruso, of course. Mikheil's taste had not changed. His mother followed his gaze. "He's with Maria," she said. "He came back only a few hours ago. They haven't left the room since."

Stalin heard the creak of bedsprings beneath the music. He exhaled quietly through his nose. Always the same Mika, he thought.

Children's laughter broke his reverie. They poured from the side room—Iosif, Kato, Aleksander—and finally little Yakov, clutching Besarion's hand. "Uncle Joe!" Iosif shouted, running forward to embrace him. The boy's face was almost his own reflected back at him.

"I'm fine, little comrade," Stalin said, brushing the boy's hair aside with an oddly tender precision.

The others crowded in, peppering him with questions—where had he been, what was he doing? He gave short, neutral answers. Children talk. Even innocent tongues can ruin men. Yakov lingered awkwardly at the edge, as he always did. His own son, yet a stranger—Mikheil had raised him. Kato, though, was another matter. Her resemblance to his dead wife was almost cruel; Maria herself was a living echo of the same lost face.

His eyes moved around the apartment—family portraits, Orthodox icons, the smell of cooking and warm dust. Home, he thought. But not mine. He had trained himself to live without belonging.

He remembered something Mikheil had said in March, when they'd seen each other for the first time in years: "This is your home too. You and Yakov—you're family, brother."

Stalin looked at Yakov again, brushed his hair once more, and turned to his mother. "Do you need help with dinner?"

She waved him off. "I'll manage. Just watch the children."

He nodded, moved to the worn couch, and sat. For a moment, the weight of the room pressed in around him—the laughter, the music, the scent of bread. It was all too close. Too fragile. He folded his hands and stared at the floor, reminding himself that comfort was dangerous.

Mikheil emerged from the bedroom an hour later, half-dressed, his shirt unbuttoned, Maria close behind him. "Joe!" he called out with a grin, his voice carrying the same careless warmth it always had. "How the hell have you been? Got a light?"

Stalin nodded, wordless, pulling out his lighter. Mika produced a crumpled pack of Dukat cigarettes—his favorite, always—and handed one over. Stalin lit it, inhaled deeply, then passed the lighter back.

"A token of appreciation," Mikheil said, lighting his own. Maria took one too, her laugh soft and content.

They sat together as the children played in the corner. For a time, it almost felt normal.

"No party talk here," Stalin said quietly, glancing toward the door. "Too many ears."

Mika scoffed. "Oh, come on, Joe. They're family. What harm could it do?"

So naïve, he thought. That kind of trust had gotten better men killed. Yet when he looked at them—their mother, the children, Maria—he felt something almost dangerous: warmth. He crushed it as quickly as it surfaced. "Later," he said firmly.

Mika shrugged. "Whatever you say, brother."

They moved on to lighter talk—prison, the people Stalin had met there. Kamenev, Trotsky, Raskolnikov, Antonov-Ovseenko. "Raskolnikov's coming tonight," Mikheil added, casual as ever. "Thought it'd be good to have him meet the family."

Stalin's eyes lingered on his brother. He's always been good with people, he thought. Useful. Loyal. But careless.

"So," Stalin said, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. "You talked about me?"

"Of course," Mika replied with a grin. "Told them you're reliable. Shared a few stories from Gori—the two of us against the world. Helps build our image."

Stalin's jaw tensed. He hated being discussed, even fondly. Childhood memories were liabilities, and sentiment was a weakness. Still, nothing in Mika's words sounded dangerous. He could allow it—for now.

"Mika," he said evenly, cutting him off. "From now on, no more talk about our lives before this. Not without clearing it with me first."

Mika laughed softly. "Whatever you say, Joe."

Joe. The childish nickname made his stomach turn. Yet beneath the irritation, he felt something darker: affection mixed with suspicion. He's loyal, Stalin reminded himself. But loyalty changes.

"Boys!" their mother's voice called from the kitchen in Georgian. "Dinner's ready!"

"Coming, Ma!" Mika shouted back, already on his feet. Stalin followed at a slower pace. He watched his brother rush about, setting plates, laughing with the children, helping their mother. Always the golden child.

He remembered her words years ago, after he'd left the seminary: 'Why can't you be more like Mika? Mika prays, Mika studies.' The memory stung like old frostbite.

He sat at the table, eyes flicking to Mika, then to their mother's proud smile. Another memory surfaced—her pleading tone: 'Mika's a policeman now, Soso. Leave politics before you ruin him.'

He had ignored her then, and he ignored the echo now.

A knock broke the silence. Mika went to open the door. Raskolnikov stepped inside—broad-shouldered, worn from prison life. The two men greeted each other like old friends, cigarettes already in hand.

Mika introduced everyone: Maria, the children, their mother. Stalin rose, shook Raskolnikov's hand. The man's palm was rough, honest. A worker's hand. Good material, Stalin noted. The kind who obeys if led right.

Their mother, Keke, placed the final dishes on the table and made the sign of the cross. Stalin bowed his head out of habit, not belief. He did not pray—he calculated, even here. Raskolnikov fumbled through the gesture beside him, embarrassed.

The smell of bread and tobacco filled the small apartment. For a moment, surrounded by warmth and chatter, Stalin felt something he almost couldn't name. Then he crushed it, the way he always did. Love was a weakness. Trust, a liability. And even in this room—his family, his mirror, his twin—he felt eyes on him.

Dinner felt unnervingly ordinary—domestic in a way that made him uneasy. The only absence at the table was the first Kato; in her place sat a child named for her, Mikheil's daughter, a small, uncanny echo. Maria's likeness to Kato tightened something in him. Why did he have to marry Kato's sister? he thought, sour and private.

Mikheil and Raskolnikov took the room in long, loud sweeps—trading prison grievances like badges: the food, the guards they despised, the few they tolerated. Policeman stories followed—bribes taken, men shot, fights scraped away by luck. Raskolnikov spun sea tales; they drank, laughed, and smoked while their mother crossed herself between bites, an old ritual threaded through their coarse talk.

He lost track of time until Raskolnikov left and the children were being put to bed. Yakov tucked Besarion away and, catching his eye, Mika mouthed, Rooftop.

"We'll be back in a minute, Ma," Stalin said in Georgian, then rose and followed.

The stairwell smelled of plaster and wet wood. On the roof the moon cut a pale path over Petrograd's chimneys. Mika leaned on the iron rail, fished out another pack of Dukat, and offered one. Stalin took it, struck a match, inhaled; the smoke steadied him like a small, controlled ritual.

"Explain yourself," he asked him, the question soft but sharpened at the edges.

"Explain what?" Mika asked, amusement flickering. When they were alone, Mika's voice went adolescent—impish, irritating, and oddly disarming. Stalin hated it, and yet a private tenderness lurked beneath the irritation.

"Why did you let them catch you? You could have run."

Mika grinned. "Aww—so you do care."

"Shut the fuck up and answer."

"Fine Joe." He shrugged and grew theatrical. "Politics."

"Politics?"

"Yes politics—trust, goodwill, influence." Mika met his gaze with a candor that was almost childlike. "Remember who I was locked up with? Kamenev, Trotsky, Raskolnikov, Antonov-Ovseenko. These aren't any men. Trotsky alone is worth more than a 100 men. Raskolnikov's tight with the Kronstadt boys. Do you know what that buys us now that I'm close to them?"

Stalin drew smoke and let the ember glow. Useful, he thought. Mika's capture was not folly but a calculated investment. Very useful—if he could keep it under control. He thought of Yakov's awkward face, of Kato's small mirror; the family that tugged at a softness he could not afford. If Mika remained useful, he would bind him—through favors, obligations, reputation, marriage perhaps. Loyalty bought that way was safer than the dangerous loyalty of feeling.

"In that case, Joe," Mika said after a pause—using the childish nickname with a mocking flourish—"now that I've paid my political debt, how's the militia? How many did you lose while I was locked up? How many do you have now?"

"Not too many," Stalin replied, measured. "About two hundred and fifty-four men under arms. We lost some ground and weapons. We currently hold roughly five city blocks."

Mika whistled softly. "Is that right?" He shrugged, already pretending the numbers were trifling. "Well, shouldn't be hard." He took the lighter Stalin offered back, lit his cigarette with a flourish, then inhaled. "You probably heard—Kerensky's handing out weapons like candy." He snorted, a dark little laugh. "That idiot just signed his own warrant. If I were him, Joe, I'd have taken every Bolshevik I could find to Kresty, shot them in their cells, and dumped the bodies in the Neva. The second seal's opened—the red horse rides."

"Second seal?" Stalin asked, tone flat.

"This is why you should've finished seminary, Soso," Mika said, mock-lecturing. He rolled his eyes. Then, more quietly: "I'll start tomorrow, Joe. Leave it to me."

Stalin watched him—the childish swagger, the flippant cruelty in his jokes, the loyalty masked as irreverence. It irritated him; it softened him. He measured the ease with which Mika turned violence into banter and saw how dangerous that ease could be if unguided. He pictured the ledger of favors, the web of obligations, and the small, necessary calculations that turned affection into control.

"Very well," he said at last, clipped and cold. "But remember—usefulness without direction is a liability."

Mika laughed, an unbothered, foolish sound. "Don't worry, Joe. I've never let you down."

Stalin let Mika's laugh hang in the cold air for a moment, then watched the moon drag a pale line across the city. Beneath the irritation, something in him softened — a small, private concession he could almost call confession. He looked at his brother and admitted, without fully meaning to, that he could never quite figure him out. How did Mika speak of shooting men and taking bribes with the same bright grin he reserved for a child's prank? How could cruelty and nonsense live in the same face?

Why did he always behave like a boy? Is he child or man, saint or sinner? Does he perform this breezy innocence to cope with what he's done, or is it the angle — the deliberate mask of the opportunist? When Mika said he only wanted to be on the winning side, did he mean it, or was that another piece of theater? And beneath all of it: did Mika truly mean family, or was family merely another ledger entry to be cashed when it suited him?

A colder question slid into Stalin's mind like an unwanted shadow: should he be removed one day? The thought was clinical, not savage — a possibility assessed as one would appraise risk. He quelled it at once. What would Keke think? he imagined, and the old woman's face folded the decision inward. What would Kato — the ghost that haunted him, the old love whose absence shaped him — think of such a thing? No. He would not let his hand fall that easily.

He would keep Mika close, like a useful instrument in a locked drawer. Close enough to bind with favors, obligations, temperament; distant enough that sentiment could never purchase his obedience. He would not depend on him. Never.

 

[Alenco98]

It all felt like a dream that would never end. Even now, I still find myself dreaming of those weekends at the estate on Zubalovo. I can still taste Uncle Mika's steaks, hear Papa's chess pieces clicking against the board as he played with my love Besarion, feel the cold water in the pool as I swam with cousin Kato, fawn over Aleksander's beautiful ballads while he played the Balalaika, chasing Vasily around the garden, Mama's bedtime stories, and listening to Yakov and Iosif laughing and drinking late into the night.

All that remains now are my memories—my memories and the fading photographs of those painfully beautiful days.

Excerpt from Svetlana Stalina's interview with the BBC in 1997, at her Dacha in Gori, Georgian SSR.

September 1, 1917 (Old style)
Mikheil's apartment
Petrograd, Saint Petersburg

"Well, that was fucking anticlimactic." I drew on the cigarette and watched the smoke curl like a small, defeated flag. Joe took it from me with the solemnity of a man accepting a state secret and smoked as if inhaling could somehow make the world behave itself. The last few days had been a flurry of organized panic: distributing rifles Comrade Kerensky had so generously provided to our men, building barricades, reclaiming bits of the city the way a dog reclaims its favorite stump. I'd dug up old contacts, reassembled my numbers, and then some—four hundred and seven men with guns, a ten–block radius under our thumb. In Okhta we were one of the largest Red Guard factions. We had rifles, pistols, machine-gun nests on key streets; even polite negotiations with Sverdlov about field pieces. Our promotion to general, by all appearances, was only a bureaucratic signature away.

Stalin stared into his cigarette and, as always, made strategy sound like weather. "It is good that events occurred this way," he said, smoke punctuating every clause. "Like you said—Kerensky signed his own death warrant. The Party is back. We are well stocked and armed."

"Damn right." I took the cigarette back. "Now all that's left is the finishing blow."

"And civil war."

I chuckled at that. "Glad you're finally seeing my point of view." I offered him the butt like a peace treaty. "Finish the rest of it."

He accepted it with a small, private smile and muttered thanks in Georgian before going back to his methodical, fatalist puffing.

"So…what's the plan now? Are we going to overthrow Kerensky tonight, march on Nevsky, slap a new face on the government?" I asked, because someone had to ask the obvious stupid question.

"Not yet." He didn't look up. "We cannot overthrow the government alone. We need the Soviet."

Politics was always a spectator sport for me—I'd slept through AP History in my other life and apparently picked up only the highlights: coups, bangs, and unhelpful dates. "Trotsky and Lenin are handling the Soviet stuff, then?"

"They are."

"And our role?"

"Build. Recruit more men. Expand our territory. This isn't Vyborg; there are no huge factories to seize. We must become the largest Red Guard detachment in Okhta. Dzerzhinsky in the Military Revolutionary Committee reports just over a thousand men in Okhta as of these last days. I want the other detachments to look to us."

I whistled, the noise half admiration, half the sound you make when you realize you've been handed a shovel and told to dig a canal. "Ambitious." I laid a hand on his shoulder—small, almost affectionate—a ridiculous domestic gesture given the freight of what we were discussing. "Don't worry. I'll do what I can."

"No, Mika." He finally looked me in the eye, calm as a man reciting a grocery list. "I need you to take over."

You could have slid a bayonet between the words and it would have been cleaner. I kept my smile—habits are stubborn—and felt, not for the first time, like a man who'd been promoted from neighborhood watch captain to provisional dictator by committee vote. It suited me. It terrified me. Mostly it was useful: being terrified makes you better at delegating murder and logistics in the same breath.

I leaned against the railing, watching the city like a man staring at a slow-motion car crash he helped organize. The air smelled of soot, damp brick, and whatever moral decay passes for romance in revolutionary Petrograd. Behind me, Stalin smoked in silence—probably drafting the next purge in his head or calculating how many people he could execute before breakfast.

Then came the creak of the rooftop door. Patruchev, one of my old buddies from the police force, stepped out—still looking like a man whose default setting was "guilty of something."
"Commander Stalin," he said stiffly. "The Alliluyev family is here."

Joe exhaled a cloud of smoke that could've been a weather front, his expression softening just a fraction. He stubbed out the cigarette on the railing and glanced at me.
"Come," he said. "I should introduce you to an old friend."
Then, to Patruchev: "Let them in."

We went downstairs. Joe had mentioned the Alliluyevs in passing before, but this was my first time meeting them in the flesh. Inside my apartment stood a middle-aged couple and four teenagers, all polite smiles and well-combed hair—the kind of people who still believed dinner parties could fix Russia.

"Ah, so this is the brother you mentioned, Koba," the man said as he came forward, shaking my hand. "Sergey Yakovlevich Alliluyev."

"A pleasure, sir." I smiled with all the warmth of a functioning human. "Let me introduce the family. My kids—Iosif, Aleksander, Ekaterina, and Besarion. And that over there is my nephew, Yakov."

"Nephew?" one of the Alliluyev girls asked innocently. "I didn't know you had a son."

Joe froze like a man caught holding evidence. I put a hand on his shoulder.

"His mother passed ten years ago," I explained smoothly. "Joe was dedicated to the cause, so he left Yakov in my care. I raised him—fine boy, practically an older brother to my Iosif. You two rascals, come here!"

The boys ran over, clutching toy soldiers, and I scooped them up like the world's most suspiciously cheerful revolutionary, spinning them around before setting them down and ruffling their hair.

"Well, make yourselves at home," I said, gesturing toward the couches. "My wife Maria and my mother are finishing dinner in the kitchen. I'll fetch some wine—1915 vintage, courtesy of an opium smuggler who had impeccable taste."

The Alliluyevs sat down, politely pretending this was normal conversation. I went to grab my phonograph from the bedroom, because no evening of class warfare is complete without mood music. Setting it up on the little table, I grinned.

"Hope you like opera," I said. "Caruso—imported straight from Italy by a brothel owner who used to bribe me when I was a cop. Una furtiva lagrima." Personally, I'd prefer some city pop—Miki Matsubara, maybe Tatsuro Yamashita—but we make do with what we have when Spotify is gone, and Caruso was good I admitted.

The record spun, the tenor's voice filling the apartment with tragic longing. I sat beside Joe, who looked about as relaxed as a man on a firing squad's short list.

"Oh, Shit!" I suddenly blurted, startling everyone. "Forgot the wine."

I speed-walked to the kitchen, kissed Maria on the cheek as she stirred the stew, hugged Mama as she diced vegetables, and retrieved the contraband bottle from the pantry. Back in the living room, I poured four cups—for myself, Joe, Sergey, and his wife.

"Apologies for the delay," I said. "Cheers!"

We clinked glasses. Conversation flowed: stories from Gori, the seminary, childhood fights and idiotic escapades. Stalin loosened up eventually, the way a rusted door finally does after enough kicks. He didn't talk about his past often, and from the way he fidgeted, I could tell he was halfway between nostalgia and self-loathing.

But then I noticed something else—Joe's eyes kept drifting toward Sergey's daughter, Nadezhda. And hers kept drifting right back.

I blinked. She's fifteen. Fifteen.

I sipped my wine and gave Joe a side-eye sharp enough to shave him.

I'd have to have a word with the man later. Preferably before he made "Comrade Epstein" part of the revolutionary canon.

Around 30 minutes later Mama and Maria told us dinner was ready, I helped to set up the table, bringing over the plates and pots over along with the utensils. The menu wasn't Michelin worthy, but given the state of the city it was a luxury; we had a stew of meat that I said was beef but was in fact horse; Black bread so hard you could use it as a club; Pickled vegetables; and most important of all, a precious tin of sardines that I opened ceremonially as if it were caviar.

Once the table was set up Mama insisted on praying. We all humored her. Stalin performed a convincing pantomime of piety — a man pretending to talk to a God he'd already had executed in theory. Maria and the kids joined in; the Alliluyevs just stared like we'd begun worshipping a samovar. They probably thought we were backwoods Georgians who only supported Stalin because of family ties. Which, to be fair, was 60% accurate.

Then, blessedly, we ate.

Nadezhda — fifteen, loud, and already one foot into the revolution — decided dinner was the time to quote Marx. Something about religion being the opium of the masses and why we still bothered praying. Her parents nodded along nervously, like people agreeing with an armed mugger.

"Opium relieves pain," I said, ladling out stew. "And right now, half the city's starving so give them a break."

She started to argue, but I raised a hand. "If you want to debate dialectics, wait until after dinner."

Stalin shot me a look — somewhere between admiration and homicide. I ignored it. Someone had to keep the dinner from turning into a symposium.

Once the ideological fireworks fizzled out, the evening settled into a rhythm almost resembling normal family life. Conversation drifted: how everyone was doing, how Stalin had met the Alliluyevs, small talk sandwiched between political tension and starvation. And, of course, the glances.

Christ, the glances.

Every few minutes, Stalin's eyes wandered to Nadezhda, and hers right back. I sipped my wine like it could drown the discomfort. He was 38, widowed, tired — but apparently not that tired. She was 15, idealistic, and very much not old enough to understand what she was inviting. I kept quiet, because saying anything would make it real.

I waited for a natural segue and finally asked, casually, "Your children seem quite fond of my brother."

Nadezhda perked up. "Well, he did save my life."

"What?" I said, choking slightly on horse meat. Stalin tensed — the kind of stillness that usually precedes mass arrests.

"It was years ago, in Baku," she said brightly. "I was swimming in the Caspian and started drowning."

"You weren't drowning," her mother, Olga, interjected. "You were playing. He just waded in, picked you up, and brought you back."

"I was choking on water," Nadezhda insisted. "He came and saved me."

"You were three."

"I remember vividly," she said, stabbing a chunk of bread into her stew like she was re-enacting it.

I smiled mechanically, but inside I was screaming. Of course he saved her life. Of course she's infatuated. Fantastic. My brother the revolutionary hero — and possibly the protagonist of a Dostoevsky moral scandal.

He was 38. She was almost 16. Technically, Technically. But technically was doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

I took a long sip of wine and kept my mouth shut, because what was I supposed to say? "Comrade Epstein, pass the bread"?

Better to let the opera play, keep the wine flowing, and pretend I hadn't just watched history's weirdest love story start in my dining room.

After dinner came the politics — the inevitable dessert course of any Bolshevik gathering. Stalin had told me beforehand: "No talk of civil war." So I kept my mouth shut and let him do what he did best — talk like a man who'd already written the next chapter of history in his head.

He told the Alliluyevs about everything we'd done here in Okhta — how he had organized the Red Guards, he had rebuilt them after the July fiasco, he had rearmed and expanded once Kerensky stupidly released the Bolsheviks from prison. Apparently, I was "indispensable" to him — a loyal comrade, a reliable planner, a good fighter. It was a touching eulogy, really, considering I was still alive and sitting next to him.

I nodded along like a good little soldier. There was no upside in contradicting the Great Man in front of witnesses. My job was simple: survive, help, and maybe, just maybe, keep the worst of his impulses from turning into state policy later. That meant smiling, clapping, and pretending I hadn't been the one lugging rifles through the streets while he wrote the minutes.

Once we were alone, or on the roof, then I could be myself — the one person alive who could tell Joseph Stalin to shut the hell up and live.

Nadezhda, meanwhile, hung on his every word, staring at him like a teenage girl at a tragic revolutionary pop star. He didn't seem to mind. In fact, he seemed to encourage it — leaning slightly toward her, letting that quiet charm of his work like slow poison. I wanted to scream, "Joe, she's a minor, for God's sake!" But that wasn't an option. Not in front of her parents. Not in front of Lenin's fan club.

The Alliluyevs themselves were good people — hardworking, kind, naive in that uniquely revolutionary way. I liked them. All of them. Except every time I looked at Nadezhda, I felt nothing but pity. She was bright, idealistic, full of compassion and faith in the movement. She actually believed the Bolsheviks would make life better for the people. Poor girl. I carried the curse of foreknowledge — I knew what was coming. The purges. The paranoia. The oceans of blood. The mountains of bodies. The atrocities I would have to commit in his name and which I was doing already thanks to my particularly brutal brand of justice which involved street lamps, ropes, pistols and bayonets.

And if she ever married Joe — if she ever saw the man he'd become, that I was becoming alongside him — it would shatter her completely.

I glanced at him, still talking, still charming, still rewriting the recent past in his own voice. I leaned in, breaking his rhythm for a second, and whispered in Georgian, low enough for only him to hear:

"We should talk on the roof after they leave."

He gave a small nod and went right back to his story, voice smooth, eyes cold.

So I sat back, lit another cigarette, and waited — the obedient brother, the designated handler, the only man in the room who knew just how far this would all go.

It was past sunset when the Alliluyevs finally left. I sent a dozen of my boys to escort them home — not out of courtesy, but because "hospitality" in Petrograd meant armed protection from counterrevolutionaries and drunks. Once the footsteps faded, Joe and I found ourselves back on the rooftop, the eternal confession booth of the revolution.

We smoked in silence, the city sprawling below us like a half-dead animal. Somewhere down there, he'd rule it all one day. For now, we were just two tired men pretending the wind didn't smell like gun oil and horse piss.

"You wanted to talk," he said.

"I did." I handed him a Dukat and a lighter. He lit up, inhaling like a man refueling. "Nadezhda."

He gave me a side glance — the kind that said tread carefully or you'll be found in a canal. "What about her?"

"You're in love with her," I said flatly. "Or at least interested."

He said nothing. Just stared at me like I'd committed treason by noticing.

"I saw how you looked at her. And how she looked at you. It's Kato all over again."

That name — his dead wife — landed like a grenade. His expression hardened instantly.

"She's a child, Joe. Really?"

"You make a lot of assumptions."

"And they're always right." I shrugged. "Remember 1905? I told you it'd fail. 1914? I said a world war was coming. I read rooms, not tea leaves. And I'm reading that you want her."

He said nothing, just smoked — angrier now, the ember glowing like a warning light.

"I'll say it again," I muttered. "She's a child."

"She's a child," he echoed, nodding once. "Her birthday is soon. She's turning 16."

I closed my eyes. "Joe, for fuck's sake. She's a good girl," I continued. "Her parents are good people. Look at us — we're killers, Joe. Hardened men. If she ever got close to our world, it'd break her. It'd break them."

He turned to me, eyes sharp, voice colder than the night air. "What about Maria? Mother? Your children? Are they not good people too? Look at the streets below. I rule them. You enforce my rule. You've shot men. Hung them from lampposts. Bayoneted them. Don't act holy now — they know who you are. Who I am."

I opened my mouth to reply — but he'd already taken the words. He was right. I had shot, hanged, and stabbed men. And this was only the warm-up act. I had at least a few million bodies left to catch the way things were going.

"We shouldn't drag anyone else into this, Joe," I said quietly.

"You're too soft, Mika. You underestimate people."

"And you're too cruel with people."

He shrugged. "Harshness is the difference between life and death in this line of work."

"Joe, you can't do this."

"Do what exactly?" He smirked. "Sergey's daughter? She means nothing. A child with a schoolgirl crush — what of it?"

"Don't act like you're not the one staring back," I said.

He turned, the smirk gone. "Stay in your lane, Mika. We have work to do."

He flicked the cigarette off the roof and walked downstairs, boots thudding like punctuation marks.

I stood there alone, staring toward the street where the Alliluyevs had disappeared. Smoke curled from my cigarette, drifting out into the twilight.

"Goddamn it, Joe," I muttered to the empty city. "Why do you have to be like this?"

Note: I read a lot about Stalins wife as he met her for the second time in her life around this time period and man I felt so bad for her. Stalin was a dick even to his family.