Joseph Stalin, one of the 20th century's most feared men. Fortunately for this timeline, he has a younger twin with a 21st century mind. Will the twin be able to curtail his brothers worst excesses? Or will he be caught up in the Robespierrian terror Stalin unleashed?
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My brothers keeper, an OC/SI as the twin of Stalin
- Thread starter Alenco98
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My brothers keeper, an SI as the twin brother of Stalin
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Me and Joe
Alenco98
Not too sore, are you?
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November 25, 1907
Tbilisi, Russian Empire
Dawn had barely broken over the rust-colored rooftops of Tbilisi, the early winter sun casting a faint golden sheen over the frosted windows. The city was waking slowly, as if reluctant to face the day. Inside our cramped little flat, the air was heavy with grief—and the smell of Khachapuri that Aleksandra had baked just a few hours before, as if food could somehow plug the gaping hole left behind by death.
I laid out a plate and slid it gently across the table to my brother, whose eyes were locked onto nothing in particular, red-rimmed and sunken like he'd spent the night fighting ghosts. Which, to be fair, he had.
"Joe," I said softly, nudging the plate closer. "Come on, man. You've got to eat. I can't let you grieve yourself to death. You're already halfway there."
He didn't answer. Just blinked slowly, like my voice had to swim through molasses to reach him. His jaw clenched, eyes glistening with that miserable mix of rage and sorrow, and then—nothing. He just kept staring at the floor. Occasionally he'd let out a sharp sob, sudden and violent, like his heart was cracking open in real time.
I didn't blame him. Kato—his wife, his compass—was gone. Just like that. Typhoid, the bastard. Quick, cruel, unceremonious. She'd been the only thing anchoring Joseph to this world. And now she was gone, and I was afraid he might be next.
Allow me to introduce myself, before this gets any more depressing. I'm Mikheil Jughashvili—though you can call me comrade Makarov. Yes, that Makarov. No, not the one with the psychotic monologues and evil plans—though I do appreciate the comparison. I'm Joseph's younger twin, technically by nine minutes, but I like to think those nine minutes were spent soaking up all the charm and good skin. I never caught smallpox, unlike Joe. My face is still intact. He has... character.
We're both part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, although our methods differ. Joseph—he prefers the flashy, revolutionary stuff. Robbing banks in broad daylight, shooting Tsarist cops, threatening aristocrats. He likes to think he's the hero in some Georgian remake of Grand Theft Auto IV. I, on the other hand, prefer staying in the shadows—organizing meetings, handling money, securing supplies, you know, the logistics. The stuff that keeps a revolution running while the heroes pose with their revolvers and give angry speeches in dingy taverns.
Before all this, I lived a boring, beautiful life. Nine to five at an office, a modest house with the extended family, saved enough to fill up my Roth IRA and 401k every year then vacation in Paris and Vienna twice a year. I had dental hygiene, health insurance, disposable income, and the delicious luxury of not being on any watchlists.
Then fate, in all its absurd cruelty, happened. I fell off a roof. No, really. I was helping my stepfather fix a leak, slipped while carrying his damn toolbox, and the next thing I knew I woke up in a tiny Georgian house, screaming like a banshee from the 21st century in the body of a newborn.
Readjusting was… an experience. Language wasn't too hard. I was still me in here, so I picked up Russian and Georgian fast. Claimed I learned English, French, and Spanish in seminary—teachers thought I was a linguistic prodigy, and Joe believed I was touched by God. Or Marx. Hard to say which he thought higher of.
The priesthood wasn't for me though. Not in this world, not with this future. I paid enough attention in history class to know what was coming—the revolution, the gulags, the famine, the purges. Who needs a collar and cassock when you can have a pistol and a party membership card? So I followed my brother into the fire.
And now here we were. The fire had taken from us.
Joseph sat motionless at the table, a wreck of a man in a world that didn't care. I'd taken his revolver last night—he'd barely noticed. The idea of him turning it on himself was more terrifying than anything the Okhrana could throw at us.
"She wouldn't want you to be hungry," I said softly, tearing off a piece of the warm Khachapuri and dipping it in the gooey cheese, handing it to him like you'd feed a sick child. "Come on, Joe."
He finally moved, took the piece, and chewed it slowly, deliberately. He didn't even scowl at the name "Joe," which was usually enough to trigger a ten-minute rant about nicknames. His silence was... worse than anger.
Aleksandra, Kato's sister, moved quietly around the kitchen, preparing more food, avoiding eye contact. She looked so much like Kato it hurt. Same eyes, same cheekbones, same quiet dignity. I'd loved Kato too, I still did. But Joseph met her first, fell for her first, and I stepped aside. That's what brothers do. You don't compete. You carry the weight.
"When does the funeral start?" I asked Aleksandra, my voice lower than usual.
"Soon," she said quietly.
And then—crying. High-pitched, panicked. Yakov.
"I'll get him," I said quickly, already heading toward the room.
I found the boy lying on his tiny mat, wailing. He had her eyes. That warm hazel that always made Joseph soften, even when he was fuming about tsarist oppression. He had Joe's hair though, thick and dark like soot. I scooped him up, holding him close, whispering nonsense. "Hey there, little comrade. Easy now. Let's go see Papa."
When I came back into the kitchen, Joseph was still chewing that same piece of bread like it was his last meal. He looked up—briefly—at Yakov in my arms, then down again.
Aleksandra didn't say a word. She just kept folding napkins with a trembling hand.
"You know," I said, adjusting Yakov on my hip, "he's going to need a home. A real one. Not some back alley safehouse full of bullets and explosives. You can't carry him in your satchel while you're out shooting cops."
Joseph finally looked at me, really looked. I saw the fear in his eyes—the fear of not being enough. Not being strong. Not being her.
"I can do it," I said. "I'll raise him. I'll have to step back from the party, of course, at least for a while. But he needs more than his mother's family. He needs a father figure. A stable one."
"You can't just leave the party," Joseph rasped, voice cracking. "Leave him here. Come with me. He'll be safe."
I shook my head. "I'm not leaving. I'm pausing. Besides, he needs to know his father and uncle didn't abandon him. That he has a home, not just a safehouse. I'll bring him to see Keke every week. I'll teach him to walk, to speak, to read. You—you go change the world. But let me give him a chance to have a normal childhood."
Joseph looked away again, lips trembling, jaw clenched.
"I'll make sure he remembers her," I added gently. "Every single day."
Outside, the funeral bells began to toll, low and solemn.
The revolution could wait a little while. Today, we were just a family—broken, grieving, but still holding on.
November 25, 1907 (Later That Day)
Kukia Cemetery, Tbilisi
The winter wind cut like a blade as we gathered at the cemetery after the funeral. The Georgian hills brooded in the distance, grey and silent, as if mourning her too. The priest murmured his prayers, but the words felt hollow, drifting into the cold air like smoke. Kato's casket—simple, pine, too small for someone who meant so much—rested on the edge of the grave like the last word in a sentence no one wanted to read.
Joseph stood beside me, a statue chiseled from pain and fury. His fists were clenched, his knuckles white. He'd been quiet after the funeral.
The mourners stood in a loose cluster: friends, distant family, comrades. A few men in plain coats hung back, too clean-shaven, too quiet—Okhrana, no doubt. Even grief couldn't loosen the Empire's paranoia.
Then came the burial.
The ropes creaked as the casket was lowered into the earth. The thud of dirt hitting wood echoed like a war drum in my chest.
And then Joseph snapped.
He let out a guttural cry, something between a sob and a roar, and before anyone could stop him, he hurled himself into the grave—into the grave. Dirt flew, mourners gasped, someone screamed. He clung to the coffin like he could dig her back up with his bare hands, like if he just held on hard enough, she wouldn't leave.
"Kato! Kato, don't go—"
I leapt forward and climbed down after him, slipping in the mud. I grabbed him under the arms, tried to pull him back. He fought me. Hard. He was a strong man, fueled by madness and grief, and for a terrifying moment, I thought he'd stay there. Die there.
But I whispered to him. Not commands. Not philosophy. Just his name.
"Joe… Joe… she's gone. She's gone. Come back man."
He collapsed in my arms, shaking, sobbing like the revolution never existed. I hauled him out with the help of two comrades and we fell to our knees in the slush beside the grave.
But the Okhrana weren't grieving.
I saw them shift, whisper. One of them reached into his coat. My blood ran cold.
"You have to go," I whispered to Joseph. "Now. They're here."
His eyes met mine. Still wet, still haunted, but focused now. "You'll take care of him?"
"I swear on her grave."
We stood, muddy and ruined, and hugged like brothers at the end of the world.
"Stay safe," I murmured. "And don't do anything too stupid."
He gave me the faintest smile—the ghost of his old smirk. "No promises."
And just like that, he slipped into the crowd and disappeared. Gone before the final prayers had even finished.
I left minutes later. Not as dramatic, not as poetic. Just a slow backstep, a nod to Aleksandra, and then I was gone too. Just in case. The Okhrana didn't need a second twin in their files.
November 29, 1907
Tbilisi, Russian Empire
The flat was small, drafty, and smelled faintly of vodka and onions. But it was safe.
Aleksandra let me in with a tired nod. She hadn't cried once since the funeral, but her eyes were swollen, and her voice was barely a whisper when she said, "He cried again this morning. Yakov."
I stepped inside, took off my coat, and knelt by the cradle. The boy blinked up at me, wide-eyed, a little confused, a little scared. He reached out, and I took his tiny hand in mine.
"It's just us now, buddy," I said softly. "Your papa's off changing the world. But I'll be here. I'll keep you fed, teach you to walk, teach you to curse in several languages. And maybe someday, I'll tell you how beautiful your mother was. How your father nearly buried himself alive for her. How love, even in a place like this, can still break the hardest hearts."
I looked up at Aleksandra.
"I'm done with party work. For now. I'll stay. For him."
She only nodded. No argument. No platitudes. Just quiet understanding. When I looked at her I saw Kato again. I smiled a little, "I'll fix up a meal, Khachapuri?"
She nodded, smiling a little
March 17, 1917
Petrograd, Russian Empire
The morning light spilled reluctantly through the grimy windows of our modest little apartment. I peeled back the curtain slowly, cautiously—like I expected to see Death himself loitering out on the street corner, waiting for his next appointment. But no, just people. Civilians. Some armed, some staggering home from what was either a riot or an all-night revolutionary bender, it was hard to tell anymore. I squinted. No gunfire. No soldiers. No screaming.
"Well," I muttered, letting the curtain fall back into place, "looks like everything's clear. At least for now."
Behind me, Aleksandra—Sashiko, if you asked anyone who'd known her longer than me—was sitting on the threadbare sofa, nursing our youngest, Besarion. He was barely two months old, a chubby little miracle who had no clue the world was ending outside.
I turned and looked at her. She was tired—no, exhausted. But she still had that calm nobility about her, even with a baby at her breast and a revolution outside the window.
The door creaked open. My mother, Keke, stepped out of the second bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
"Is everything alright out there?" she asked, voice hushed like we were in a church or a war zone. Frankly, both felt accurate.
I nodded. "Seems like the fighting's stopped. The streets are quiet. For now." I paused. "How are the kids?"
"Still asleep," she said softly. "Yakov, Kato, Joseph, Alyosha… all out cold."
"Good," I said. "If they wake up, tell them I'll be back soon. I need to go check the situation. And send a letter."
I crossed the living room and shoved one of the ratty little couches aside, revealing the false floorboard beneath. I pried it open, revealing the treasure trove below—boxes of gold coins, contraband ammunition, dried food, and more ammo (you can never have too much ammo, especially when you're an ex-cop in revolutionary Russia).
I pulled out a pistol and a couple of bullets, loaded them with practiced ease, and sealed the floor again, nudging the couch back into place. Aleksandra didn't say anything, but I felt her eyes on me. The same look every time I strapped on a gun—equal parts fear and disappointment, the kind of look that said "I married a lunatic, didn't I?"
Yes. Yes, she did.
In my defense, I used to be a police officer. Emphasis on used to. Once the soldiers started mutinying and the Tsar's grip on the empire began to slip like a drunk man on ice, I figured the badge wouldn't mean much longer. And sure enough, here we were. The revolution had arrived, right on cue.
Maybe I should rewind a bit.
After Joseph—Joe—left us, broken and blazing with grief, I knew I couldn't just stay in Tbilisi forever. I had a family now, yes, but I also had… information. Foreknowledge. A cheat code. I knew the revolution would kick off in 1917, here, in Saint Petersburg—Petrograd now, technically, but let's not pretend the Empire's name changes mattered much to people dodging bullets.
So I reinvented myself. No more Mikheil Jughashvili. Too conspicuous. Too tied to Joe. Instead, I became Mikheil Vissarionovich Zhakhaev. Sounded proper. Authoritative. Slightly Eastern European Bond villain, with a sprinkle of Call of Duty for flavor.
I married Aleksandra, because grief has a way of turning strangers into soulmates. We were two broken people trying to fix each other with love and shared childcare. It worked surprisingly well.
We moved to Petrograd. I became a cop.
On paper, I was immaculate. Never late, always present, never corrupt—officially. Unofficially? I was corrupt as hell. Ran guns, stashed supplies, made quiet deals with smugglers, gave heads-up on raids in exchange for gold and favors. I was building an arsenal under my floorboards and a fortune under my mattress.
The plan was simple: join the Party, rise through the ranks, keep my nose clean publicly, and privately become the black market's silent king. Then, once the purges started under Stalin, I'd take my family and my fortune and disappear somewhere warm—maybe Argentina. You know, the usual post-revolution dream.
But there was a catch.
A big one.
Stalin… was Joe.
That little bastard. My twin brother. I didn't even realize it until a few years ago. I'd always thought "Stalin" was just some Russian asshole that popped out of the party apparatus. I didn't know it was Joe, thank you American schooling for not being in depth about Joe. I'd kept up with the party despite being inactive. I read their underground newspapers. Recognized the cadence in his letters when he replied under the name "Stalin."
Joe. My brother. The one who threw himself into his wife's grave a decade ago. The one I pulled out of the dirt.
And now he was poised to rule Russia with an iron fist.
Which, naturally, completely fucked my plan.
I couldn't just defect. He'd find me and my family. He knew me. I was too recognizable. Too dangerous. Too embarrassing. The twin brother of Stalin, living lavishly abroad while his brother ran Russia with an iron fist? That was execution-worthy in any ideology.
So I improvised.
If I wanted to survive, I had to gather leverage. Emotional blackmail, familial guilt, sentimental ties—whatever I could weaponize. I had to be the one person in the world Joe couldn't bring himself to destroy.
I went to the bedroom, opened the drawer beside the bed, and pulled out a letter I'd written two days ago, as soon as I saw the army turning against the Tsar. The writing was simple, the message clear: "I know who you are. And I'm still your brother."
I folded it carefully, slid it into an envelope, and tucked it into my coat pocket.
Back in the living room, I paused for a moment. Aleksandra looked up at me, Besarion snoozing peacefully in her arms. My mother stood quietly nearby, her face taut with worry.
I kissed Aleksandra gently. Then kissed the baby's forehead. Then hugged my mother.
"I'll be back," I said. "Don't open the door for anyone unless you're absolutely sure it's me. If I don't come back… reach out to Joseph. He'll come eventually."
She nodded, jaw tight. No tears. She was stronger than I ever gave her credit for.
I opened the door. Took one last look at my family. And stepped out into the cold, collapsing empire.
The snow was still falling—lazy, wet flakes drifting down like the sky hadn't yet gotten the memo that it was March and time to stop acting like it was January. I pulled my coat tighter around me, teeth chattering slightly. The Petrograd chill always found its way into your bones, like a petty bureaucrat determined to ruin your day.
I stepped carefully through the narrow alley behind our apartment and began making my way toward the city center. Not the main roads—those were crawling with too many people, too many eyes, and far too many bored soldiers with itchy trigger fingers and no idea who was officially in charge. Some of them were so drunk they'd probably arrest their own boots.
I avoided the Winter Palace entirely. That place had become a hornet's nest of revolutionary chaos and frightened officers clinging to whatever shred of imperial illusion they still had left. The last thing I needed was to be stopped, questioned, and "accidentally" shot for looking suspicious—something my face tended to do on its own even when I was completely innocent, which, to be fair, I rarely was.
Eventually, after winding through side streets and half-frozen canals, I arrived at my destination: the Tauride Palace.
It looked almost surreal now, majestic yet bruised, like a weary aristocrat forced to room with striking dockworkers. A decade ago, it had been a glittering seat of nobility. Now it was the beating heart of revolution—or at least one of them. The Petrograd Soviet had taken up residence here, for now at least. Revolutionary real estate tended to be temporary, like revolutionary leadership.
The irony wasn't lost on me. As a police officer, most of my time had been spent "assisting" the Okhrana in keeping tabs on the very people now running the show inside that building. By "assisting," I mean helping sabotage the investigations just enough to let me run guns and make shady deals in peace. Now, I was the ex-cop—still carrying a gun, still carrying secrets—walking into the headquarters of the Petrograd Soviet like I belonged there.
Stupid? Arguably. Bold? Absolutely. But technically, I was still a party member. Inactive, sure. Slightly criminal, certainly. But I had the paperwork. Somewhere. Maybe.
I approached the front gates, where a small group of armed guards were gathered. They all had that hardened, unshaven, sleep-deprived look of men who'd been up all night keeping an eye on people who were keeping an eye on them.
One of them stepped forward to block me. He looked like someone had genetically spliced Jason Statham and Agent 47 in a vodka-soaked lab. Bald, square-jawed, and built like a bookshelf.
"Name and business," he barked in a clipped accent that said, 'If you waste my time, I will punch you through a wall.'
I stood straight, tried to project confidence. "My name is Mikheil Vissarionovich Jughashvili. I'm here to request a favor."
He blinked. "This is the headquarters of the Provisional Government and the Soviet. Not a soup kitchen."
The other guards laughed. Not the worst joke I'd heard, but still mildly irritating.
I ignored the laughter and spoke calmly. "My brother is a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. If I remember correctly, they were the ones who founded the Soviet? I'm also a member—Comrade Makarov." I pulled the letter from my coat pocket, holding it up. "I came here to have this delivered to him. You know him as… Comrade Stalin."
That name—Stalin—changed everything. Like a magic spell. The sarcasm drained from their faces. Even Agent 47's slightly unshakable aura of smugness flickered.
The bald enforcer stepped forward and carefully took the letter from my hand. He looked me over again, slower this time, not as dismissive.
"You said… Stalin?" he asked. Not mockingly—curiously. Like he was trying to solve a puzzle that had just grown arms and punched him in the face.
"Yes," I said. "He's my brother. I'm trying to find out if he's still alive. And if he is… my home is open to him if he needs a place to stay."
For a moment, he just stared at the envelope. Like it might explode.
Finally, he gave a curt nod. "I'll make sure the letter is delivered."
"Thank you," I said. "I'll see you around."
He didn't reply, just slipped the letter into his coat like it weighed more than a gun.
I turned and walked away. The moment I crossed out of the palace gates, I let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. The streets didn't feel any safer than before, but at least I wasn't in the direct line of any revolutionary firing squads.
Still, I didn't linger. I wasn't comfortable being out in the open for long. Not in this city. Not in this year. Not with my last name.
As I turned back onto the side street, pulling my coat tighter against the biting cold, I thought of Joe—no, Stalin now. I'd handed a letter to a group of armed revolutionaries asking them to pass a message to one of the most dangerous man in the country, who also happened to be my twin brother. Not exactly your average family reunion.
But what else could I do?
He needed to know I was here.
And more importantly—I needed him to remember who we used to be so I wouldn't be on the receiving end of a firing squad when he went all Robespierre.
March 20, 1917
Petrograd, Russian Empire
Evening
There was a knock at the door. Not the anxious, rapid-fire kind that shouted "police raid" or "Okhrana purge"—no, this was slow. Measured. Almost… respectful. Which, frankly, was even more suspicious.
Aleksandra looked up from the stew pot. My mother froze with a half-folded towel in her hands. Yakov, bless his little heart, just kept drawing strange little crayon people on the kitchen wall. I set down my newspaper—Pravda, naturally—and walked to the door.
I didn't open it immediately. Just stood there, my hand hovering over the knob. I could feel it, something familiar on the other side. Like a ghost of childhood pressed up against the wood.
I opened the door.
There he stood.
Joseph.
Stalin.
Ten years older, more worn, more gaunt than I remembered—but the same brooding intensity in those eyes. His mustache was thicker now, better groomed. His coat was long and military, but fraying at the edges. He looked tired. He looked dangerous.
He looked like my brother.
We stared at each other for a heartbeat longer than necessary.
"You look like shit." I said in Georgian.
Then he opened his arms.
I didn't hesitate.
We hugged like brothers do after war and widowhood and revolution—tight, wordless, full of things we couldn't say out loud. His hand slapped my back once, hard, in that awkward masculine way that said "I missed you, you bastard."
Inside, chaos.
Keke let out a sharp gasp and dropped the towel. "Joseph!" she exclaimed, hands flying to her mouth.
Aleksandra didn't say anything at first—just stepped forward and stared at him. Then, slowly, she smiled. Not wide, not forced. Just honest. Like seeing a ghost that turned out to be alive.
Even Yakov stopped drawing on the wall. "Papa?" he asked softly.
Joseph dropped to one knee and opened his arms again. "Yes, my little comrade," he murmured, voice cracking just a little.
Yakov ran into his arms. Aleksandra wiped her eyes discreetly.
And me?
I just stood there, letting it all sink in.
Later That Night
11:43 PM
Dinner had been… surreal.
We'd cooked everything we had worth showing off. Potatoes, stewed cabbage, leftover veal that Aleksandra had been saving for Yakov's name day, a bottle of wine we'd been hoarding since 1915. The table was full, loud, messy—like the old days, before grief hollowed us out and history ran us over like a Tsarist train.
We talked. Laughed. Even Joseph cracked a smile once or twice, especially when Kato—our daughter, not the ghost—told him Yakov had been pretending to lead revolutions with a stick and a tea tin. It was all… human.
But now everyone was asleep. Kids tucked in. Keke passed out in the armchair. Aleksandra upstairs with the baby, snoring softly. The apartment had gone quiet, the warmth of the kitchen fire casting long shadows on the faded wallpaper.
Joseph and I sat across from each other in the small parlor, sipping lukewarm tea like two old men with nowhere to be.
Then I stood.
"Come," I said quietly.
He raised an eyebrow but followed.
I pulled the couch away from it's spot. Lifted the creaky floorboard. Exposed the little armory I'd built under our living room like a paranoid squirrel preparing for revolution.
Joseph peered down at it—rows of pistols wrapped in rags, crates of ammunition, two rifles, a short shotgun, and a box of gold coins tucked beside canned beans and hardtack.
His silence was unnerving.
"Surprise," I said, grinning. "Our version of the family jewels."
Still nothing.
I cleared my throat. "I didn't just write to you for hugs and stew, Joe. I'm still in the Party. Inactive, sure. But I've been preparing."
He looked up at me, slowly.
I pressed on. "Civil war is coming. I can feel it. The Provisional Government won't hold. The Tsar's gone, but power hates a vacuum. You and I both know it's not over—it's barely started."
He still didn't say anything. Just looked back down at the stash.
"I've been laying low. Playing the role. I was a cop here, remember? On paper I was the most punctual, loyal officer in Petrograd. In reality, I was looting supply shipments and warning smugglers of raids. All of this—" I gestured at the hidden arsenal, "—came from that."
Joseph knelt beside the cache and ran a hand over one of the pistols.
"Why show me this?" he asked finally. His voice was calm, but I knew him too well. It was the kind of calm that could shatter into violence.
"Because you're going to need help," I said simply. "Not just ideologues. Not just revolutionaries quoting Marx between gulps of soup. You'll need fighters. Planners. People who know the city—who know how to move, how to smuggle, how to survive."
I crouched beside him. "I know where more of this is. Across the city. Armories, caches." I pulled out a map of the city, with X's dotted all over.
I paused, then looked him in the eyes.
"I want to help. Not for politics. Not for glory. For the family. For the future. For you."
He stared at me.
Seconds passed.
Then: "You always were the smarter twin," he muttered.
I laughed. "Took you long enough to admit it."
He grunted. "Don't get used to it."
We sat there in silence for a moment, the weight of what was coming pressing down on us like the cold outside.
"Does Aleksandra know?" he asked.
"Some of it. Enough to worry. Not enough to stop me."
He nodded.
Finally, he reached down, picked up one of the pistols, and checked the chamber.
Then—he smiled. Just a little. Just enough.
"Well then," he said. "Let's prepare for the end of the world."
Tbilisi, Russian Empire
Dawn had barely broken over the rust-colored rooftops of Tbilisi, the early winter sun casting a faint golden sheen over the frosted windows. The city was waking slowly, as if reluctant to face the day. Inside our cramped little flat, the air was heavy with grief—and the smell of Khachapuri that Aleksandra had baked just a few hours before, as if food could somehow plug the gaping hole left behind by death.
I laid out a plate and slid it gently across the table to my brother, whose eyes were locked onto nothing in particular, red-rimmed and sunken like he'd spent the night fighting ghosts. Which, to be fair, he had.
"Joe," I said softly, nudging the plate closer. "Come on, man. You've got to eat. I can't let you grieve yourself to death. You're already halfway there."
He didn't answer. Just blinked slowly, like my voice had to swim through molasses to reach him. His jaw clenched, eyes glistening with that miserable mix of rage and sorrow, and then—nothing. He just kept staring at the floor. Occasionally he'd let out a sharp sob, sudden and violent, like his heart was cracking open in real time.
I didn't blame him. Kato—his wife, his compass—was gone. Just like that. Typhoid, the bastard. Quick, cruel, unceremonious. She'd been the only thing anchoring Joseph to this world. And now she was gone, and I was afraid he might be next.
Allow me to introduce myself, before this gets any more depressing. I'm Mikheil Jughashvili—though you can call me comrade Makarov. Yes, that Makarov. No, not the one with the psychotic monologues and evil plans—though I do appreciate the comparison. I'm Joseph's younger twin, technically by nine minutes, but I like to think those nine minutes were spent soaking up all the charm and good skin. I never caught smallpox, unlike Joe. My face is still intact. He has... character.
We're both part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, although our methods differ. Joseph—he prefers the flashy, revolutionary stuff. Robbing banks in broad daylight, shooting Tsarist cops, threatening aristocrats. He likes to think he's the hero in some Georgian remake of Grand Theft Auto IV. I, on the other hand, prefer staying in the shadows—organizing meetings, handling money, securing supplies, you know, the logistics. The stuff that keeps a revolution running while the heroes pose with their revolvers and give angry speeches in dingy taverns.
Before all this, I lived a boring, beautiful life. Nine to five at an office, a modest house with the extended family, saved enough to fill up my Roth IRA and 401k every year then vacation in Paris and Vienna twice a year. I had dental hygiene, health insurance, disposable income, and the delicious luxury of not being on any watchlists.
Then fate, in all its absurd cruelty, happened. I fell off a roof. No, really. I was helping my stepfather fix a leak, slipped while carrying his damn toolbox, and the next thing I knew I woke up in a tiny Georgian house, screaming like a banshee from the 21st century in the body of a newborn.
Readjusting was… an experience. Language wasn't too hard. I was still me in here, so I picked up Russian and Georgian fast. Claimed I learned English, French, and Spanish in seminary—teachers thought I was a linguistic prodigy, and Joe believed I was touched by God. Or Marx. Hard to say which he thought higher of.
The priesthood wasn't for me though. Not in this world, not with this future. I paid enough attention in history class to know what was coming—the revolution, the gulags, the famine, the purges. Who needs a collar and cassock when you can have a pistol and a party membership card? So I followed my brother into the fire.
And now here we were. The fire had taken from us.
Joseph sat motionless at the table, a wreck of a man in a world that didn't care. I'd taken his revolver last night—he'd barely noticed. The idea of him turning it on himself was more terrifying than anything the Okhrana could throw at us.
"She wouldn't want you to be hungry," I said softly, tearing off a piece of the warm Khachapuri and dipping it in the gooey cheese, handing it to him like you'd feed a sick child. "Come on, Joe."
He finally moved, took the piece, and chewed it slowly, deliberately. He didn't even scowl at the name "Joe," which was usually enough to trigger a ten-minute rant about nicknames. His silence was... worse than anger.
Aleksandra, Kato's sister, moved quietly around the kitchen, preparing more food, avoiding eye contact. She looked so much like Kato it hurt. Same eyes, same cheekbones, same quiet dignity. I'd loved Kato too, I still did. But Joseph met her first, fell for her first, and I stepped aside. That's what brothers do. You don't compete. You carry the weight.
"When does the funeral start?" I asked Aleksandra, my voice lower than usual.
"Soon," she said quietly.
And then—crying. High-pitched, panicked. Yakov.
"I'll get him," I said quickly, already heading toward the room.
I found the boy lying on his tiny mat, wailing. He had her eyes. That warm hazel that always made Joseph soften, even when he was fuming about tsarist oppression. He had Joe's hair though, thick and dark like soot. I scooped him up, holding him close, whispering nonsense. "Hey there, little comrade. Easy now. Let's go see Papa."
When I came back into the kitchen, Joseph was still chewing that same piece of bread like it was his last meal. He looked up—briefly—at Yakov in my arms, then down again.
Aleksandra didn't say a word. She just kept folding napkins with a trembling hand.
"You know," I said, adjusting Yakov on my hip, "he's going to need a home. A real one. Not some back alley safehouse full of bullets and explosives. You can't carry him in your satchel while you're out shooting cops."
Joseph finally looked at me, really looked. I saw the fear in his eyes—the fear of not being enough. Not being strong. Not being her.
"I can do it," I said. "I'll raise him. I'll have to step back from the party, of course, at least for a while. But he needs more than his mother's family. He needs a father figure. A stable one."
"You can't just leave the party," Joseph rasped, voice cracking. "Leave him here. Come with me. He'll be safe."
I shook my head. "I'm not leaving. I'm pausing. Besides, he needs to know his father and uncle didn't abandon him. That he has a home, not just a safehouse. I'll bring him to see Keke every week. I'll teach him to walk, to speak, to read. You—you go change the world. But let me give him a chance to have a normal childhood."
Joseph looked away again, lips trembling, jaw clenched.
"I'll make sure he remembers her," I added gently. "Every single day."
Outside, the funeral bells began to toll, low and solemn.
The revolution could wait a little while. Today, we were just a family—broken, grieving, but still holding on.
November 25, 1907 (Later That Day)
Kukia Cemetery, Tbilisi
The winter wind cut like a blade as we gathered at the cemetery after the funeral. The Georgian hills brooded in the distance, grey and silent, as if mourning her too. The priest murmured his prayers, but the words felt hollow, drifting into the cold air like smoke. Kato's casket—simple, pine, too small for someone who meant so much—rested on the edge of the grave like the last word in a sentence no one wanted to read.
Joseph stood beside me, a statue chiseled from pain and fury. His fists were clenched, his knuckles white. He'd been quiet after the funeral.
The mourners stood in a loose cluster: friends, distant family, comrades. A few men in plain coats hung back, too clean-shaven, too quiet—Okhrana, no doubt. Even grief couldn't loosen the Empire's paranoia.
Then came the burial.
The ropes creaked as the casket was lowered into the earth. The thud of dirt hitting wood echoed like a war drum in my chest.
And then Joseph snapped.
He let out a guttural cry, something between a sob and a roar, and before anyone could stop him, he hurled himself into the grave—into the grave. Dirt flew, mourners gasped, someone screamed. He clung to the coffin like he could dig her back up with his bare hands, like if he just held on hard enough, she wouldn't leave.
"Kato! Kato, don't go—"
I leapt forward and climbed down after him, slipping in the mud. I grabbed him under the arms, tried to pull him back. He fought me. Hard. He was a strong man, fueled by madness and grief, and for a terrifying moment, I thought he'd stay there. Die there.
But I whispered to him. Not commands. Not philosophy. Just his name.
"Joe… Joe… she's gone. She's gone. Come back man."
He collapsed in my arms, shaking, sobbing like the revolution never existed. I hauled him out with the help of two comrades and we fell to our knees in the slush beside the grave.
But the Okhrana weren't grieving.
I saw them shift, whisper. One of them reached into his coat. My blood ran cold.
"You have to go," I whispered to Joseph. "Now. They're here."
His eyes met mine. Still wet, still haunted, but focused now. "You'll take care of him?"
"I swear on her grave."
We stood, muddy and ruined, and hugged like brothers at the end of the world.
"Stay safe," I murmured. "And don't do anything too stupid."
He gave me the faintest smile—the ghost of his old smirk. "No promises."
And just like that, he slipped into the crowd and disappeared. Gone before the final prayers had even finished.
I left minutes later. Not as dramatic, not as poetic. Just a slow backstep, a nod to Aleksandra, and then I was gone too. Just in case. The Okhrana didn't need a second twin in their files.
November 29, 1907
Tbilisi, Russian Empire
The flat was small, drafty, and smelled faintly of vodka and onions. But it was safe.
Aleksandra let me in with a tired nod. She hadn't cried once since the funeral, but her eyes were swollen, and her voice was barely a whisper when she said, "He cried again this morning. Yakov."
I stepped inside, took off my coat, and knelt by the cradle. The boy blinked up at me, wide-eyed, a little confused, a little scared. He reached out, and I took his tiny hand in mine.
"It's just us now, buddy," I said softly. "Your papa's off changing the world. But I'll be here. I'll keep you fed, teach you to walk, teach you to curse in several languages. And maybe someday, I'll tell you how beautiful your mother was. How your father nearly buried himself alive for her. How love, even in a place like this, can still break the hardest hearts."
I looked up at Aleksandra.
"I'm done with party work. For now. I'll stay. For him."
She only nodded. No argument. No platitudes. Just quiet understanding. When I looked at her I saw Kato again. I smiled a little, "I'll fix up a meal, Khachapuri?"
She nodded, smiling a little
March 17, 1917
Petrograd, Russian Empire
The morning light spilled reluctantly through the grimy windows of our modest little apartment. I peeled back the curtain slowly, cautiously—like I expected to see Death himself loitering out on the street corner, waiting for his next appointment. But no, just people. Civilians. Some armed, some staggering home from what was either a riot or an all-night revolutionary bender, it was hard to tell anymore. I squinted. No gunfire. No soldiers. No screaming.
"Well," I muttered, letting the curtain fall back into place, "looks like everything's clear. At least for now."
Behind me, Aleksandra—Sashiko, if you asked anyone who'd known her longer than me—was sitting on the threadbare sofa, nursing our youngest, Besarion. He was barely two months old, a chubby little miracle who had no clue the world was ending outside.
I turned and looked at her. She was tired—no, exhausted. But she still had that calm nobility about her, even with a baby at her breast and a revolution outside the window.
The door creaked open. My mother, Keke, stepped out of the second bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
"Is everything alright out there?" she asked, voice hushed like we were in a church or a war zone. Frankly, both felt accurate.
I nodded. "Seems like the fighting's stopped. The streets are quiet. For now." I paused. "How are the kids?"
"Still asleep," she said softly. "Yakov, Kato, Joseph, Alyosha… all out cold."
"Good," I said. "If they wake up, tell them I'll be back soon. I need to go check the situation. And send a letter."
I crossed the living room and shoved one of the ratty little couches aside, revealing the false floorboard beneath. I pried it open, revealing the treasure trove below—boxes of gold coins, contraband ammunition, dried food, and more ammo (you can never have too much ammo, especially when you're an ex-cop in revolutionary Russia).
I pulled out a pistol and a couple of bullets, loaded them with practiced ease, and sealed the floor again, nudging the couch back into place. Aleksandra didn't say anything, but I felt her eyes on me. The same look every time I strapped on a gun—equal parts fear and disappointment, the kind of look that said "I married a lunatic, didn't I?"
Yes. Yes, she did.
In my defense, I used to be a police officer. Emphasis on used to. Once the soldiers started mutinying and the Tsar's grip on the empire began to slip like a drunk man on ice, I figured the badge wouldn't mean much longer. And sure enough, here we were. The revolution had arrived, right on cue.
Maybe I should rewind a bit.
After Joseph—Joe—left us, broken and blazing with grief, I knew I couldn't just stay in Tbilisi forever. I had a family now, yes, but I also had… information. Foreknowledge. A cheat code. I knew the revolution would kick off in 1917, here, in Saint Petersburg—Petrograd now, technically, but let's not pretend the Empire's name changes mattered much to people dodging bullets.
So I reinvented myself. No more Mikheil Jughashvili. Too conspicuous. Too tied to Joe. Instead, I became Mikheil Vissarionovich Zhakhaev. Sounded proper. Authoritative. Slightly Eastern European Bond villain, with a sprinkle of Call of Duty for flavor.
I married Aleksandra, because grief has a way of turning strangers into soulmates. We were two broken people trying to fix each other with love and shared childcare. It worked surprisingly well.
We moved to Petrograd. I became a cop.
On paper, I was immaculate. Never late, always present, never corrupt—officially. Unofficially? I was corrupt as hell. Ran guns, stashed supplies, made quiet deals with smugglers, gave heads-up on raids in exchange for gold and favors. I was building an arsenal under my floorboards and a fortune under my mattress.
The plan was simple: join the Party, rise through the ranks, keep my nose clean publicly, and privately become the black market's silent king. Then, once the purges started under Stalin, I'd take my family and my fortune and disappear somewhere warm—maybe Argentina. You know, the usual post-revolution dream.
But there was a catch.
A big one.
Stalin… was Joe.
That little bastard. My twin brother. I didn't even realize it until a few years ago. I'd always thought "Stalin" was just some Russian asshole that popped out of the party apparatus. I didn't know it was Joe, thank you American schooling for not being in depth about Joe. I'd kept up with the party despite being inactive. I read their underground newspapers. Recognized the cadence in his letters when he replied under the name "Stalin."
Joe. My brother. The one who threw himself into his wife's grave a decade ago. The one I pulled out of the dirt.
And now he was poised to rule Russia with an iron fist.
Which, naturally, completely fucked my plan.
I couldn't just defect. He'd find me and my family. He knew me. I was too recognizable. Too dangerous. Too embarrassing. The twin brother of Stalin, living lavishly abroad while his brother ran Russia with an iron fist? That was execution-worthy in any ideology.
So I improvised.
If I wanted to survive, I had to gather leverage. Emotional blackmail, familial guilt, sentimental ties—whatever I could weaponize. I had to be the one person in the world Joe couldn't bring himself to destroy.
I went to the bedroom, opened the drawer beside the bed, and pulled out a letter I'd written two days ago, as soon as I saw the army turning against the Tsar. The writing was simple, the message clear: "I know who you are. And I'm still your brother."
I folded it carefully, slid it into an envelope, and tucked it into my coat pocket.
Back in the living room, I paused for a moment. Aleksandra looked up at me, Besarion snoozing peacefully in her arms. My mother stood quietly nearby, her face taut with worry.
I kissed Aleksandra gently. Then kissed the baby's forehead. Then hugged my mother.
"I'll be back," I said. "Don't open the door for anyone unless you're absolutely sure it's me. If I don't come back… reach out to Joseph. He'll come eventually."
She nodded, jaw tight. No tears. She was stronger than I ever gave her credit for.
I opened the door. Took one last look at my family. And stepped out into the cold, collapsing empire.
The snow was still falling—lazy, wet flakes drifting down like the sky hadn't yet gotten the memo that it was March and time to stop acting like it was January. I pulled my coat tighter around me, teeth chattering slightly. The Petrograd chill always found its way into your bones, like a petty bureaucrat determined to ruin your day.
I stepped carefully through the narrow alley behind our apartment and began making my way toward the city center. Not the main roads—those were crawling with too many people, too many eyes, and far too many bored soldiers with itchy trigger fingers and no idea who was officially in charge. Some of them were so drunk they'd probably arrest their own boots.
I avoided the Winter Palace entirely. That place had become a hornet's nest of revolutionary chaos and frightened officers clinging to whatever shred of imperial illusion they still had left. The last thing I needed was to be stopped, questioned, and "accidentally" shot for looking suspicious—something my face tended to do on its own even when I was completely innocent, which, to be fair, I rarely was.
Eventually, after winding through side streets and half-frozen canals, I arrived at my destination: the Tauride Palace.
It looked almost surreal now, majestic yet bruised, like a weary aristocrat forced to room with striking dockworkers. A decade ago, it had been a glittering seat of nobility. Now it was the beating heart of revolution—or at least one of them. The Petrograd Soviet had taken up residence here, for now at least. Revolutionary real estate tended to be temporary, like revolutionary leadership.
The irony wasn't lost on me. As a police officer, most of my time had been spent "assisting" the Okhrana in keeping tabs on the very people now running the show inside that building. By "assisting," I mean helping sabotage the investigations just enough to let me run guns and make shady deals in peace. Now, I was the ex-cop—still carrying a gun, still carrying secrets—walking into the headquarters of the Petrograd Soviet like I belonged there.
Stupid? Arguably. Bold? Absolutely. But technically, I was still a party member. Inactive, sure. Slightly criminal, certainly. But I had the paperwork. Somewhere. Maybe.
I approached the front gates, where a small group of armed guards were gathered. They all had that hardened, unshaven, sleep-deprived look of men who'd been up all night keeping an eye on people who were keeping an eye on them.
One of them stepped forward to block me. He looked like someone had genetically spliced Jason Statham and Agent 47 in a vodka-soaked lab. Bald, square-jawed, and built like a bookshelf.
"Name and business," he barked in a clipped accent that said, 'If you waste my time, I will punch you through a wall.'
I stood straight, tried to project confidence. "My name is Mikheil Vissarionovich Jughashvili. I'm here to request a favor."
He blinked. "This is the headquarters of the Provisional Government and the Soviet. Not a soup kitchen."
The other guards laughed. Not the worst joke I'd heard, but still mildly irritating.
I ignored the laughter and spoke calmly. "My brother is a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. If I remember correctly, they were the ones who founded the Soviet? I'm also a member—Comrade Makarov." I pulled the letter from my coat pocket, holding it up. "I came here to have this delivered to him. You know him as… Comrade Stalin."
That name—Stalin—changed everything. Like a magic spell. The sarcasm drained from their faces. Even Agent 47's slightly unshakable aura of smugness flickered.
The bald enforcer stepped forward and carefully took the letter from my hand. He looked me over again, slower this time, not as dismissive.
"You said… Stalin?" he asked. Not mockingly—curiously. Like he was trying to solve a puzzle that had just grown arms and punched him in the face.
"Yes," I said. "He's my brother. I'm trying to find out if he's still alive. And if he is… my home is open to him if he needs a place to stay."
For a moment, he just stared at the envelope. Like it might explode.
Finally, he gave a curt nod. "I'll make sure the letter is delivered."
"Thank you," I said. "I'll see you around."
He didn't reply, just slipped the letter into his coat like it weighed more than a gun.
I turned and walked away. The moment I crossed out of the palace gates, I let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. The streets didn't feel any safer than before, but at least I wasn't in the direct line of any revolutionary firing squads.
Still, I didn't linger. I wasn't comfortable being out in the open for long. Not in this city. Not in this year. Not with my last name.
As I turned back onto the side street, pulling my coat tighter against the biting cold, I thought of Joe—no, Stalin now. I'd handed a letter to a group of armed revolutionaries asking them to pass a message to one of the most dangerous man in the country, who also happened to be my twin brother. Not exactly your average family reunion.
But what else could I do?
He needed to know I was here.
And more importantly—I needed him to remember who we used to be so I wouldn't be on the receiving end of a firing squad when he went all Robespierre.
March 20, 1917
Petrograd, Russian Empire
Evening
There was a knock at the door. Not the anxious, rapid-fire kind that shouted "police raid" or "Okhrana purge"—no, this was slow. Measured. Almost… respectful. Which, frankly, was even more suspicious.
Aleksandra looked up from the stew pot. My mother froze with a half-folded towel in her hands. Yakov, bless his little heart, just kept drawing strange little crayon people on the kitchen wall. I set down my newspaper—Pravda, naturally—and walked to the door.
I didn't open it immediately. Just stood there, my hand hovering over the knob. I could feel it, something familiar on the other side. Like a ghost of childhood pressed up against the wood.
I opened the door.
There he stood.
Joseph.
Stalin.
Ten years older, more worn, more gaunt than I remembered—but the same brooding intensity in those eyes. His mustache was thicker now, better groomed. His coat was long and military, but fraying at the edges. He looked tired. He looked dangerous.
He looked like my brother.
We stared at each other for a heartbeat longer than necessary.
"You look like shit." I said in Georgian.
Then he opened his arms.
I didn't hesitate.
We hugged like brothers do after war and widowhood and revolution—tight, wordless, full of things we couldn't say out loud. His hand slapped my back once, hard, in that awkward masculine way that said "I missed you, you bastard."
Inside, chaos.
Keke let out a sharp gasp and dropped the towel. "Joseph!" she exclaimed, hands flying to her mouth.
Aleksandra didn't say anything at first—just stepped forward and stared at him. Then, slowly, she smiled. Not wide, not forced. Just honest. Like seeing a ghost that turned out to be alive.
Even Yakov stopped drawing on the wall. "Papa?" he asked softly.
Joseph dropped to one knee and opened his arms again. "Yes, my little comrade," he murmured, voice cracking just a little.
Yakov ran into his arms. Aleksandra wiped her eyes discreetly.
And me?
I just stood there, letting it all sink in.
Later That Night
11:43 PM
Dinner had been… surreal.
We'd cooked everything we had worth showing off. Potatoes, stewed cabbage, leftover veal that Aleksandra had been saving for Yakov's name day, a bottle of wine we'd been hoarding since 1915. The table was full, loud, messy—like the old days, before grief hollowed us out and history ran us over like a Tsarist train.
We talked. Laughed. Even Joseph cracked a smile once or twice, especially when Kato—our daughter, not the ghost—told him Yakov had been pretending to lead revolutions with a stick and a tea tin. It was all… human.
But now everyone was asleep. Kids tucked in. Keke passed out in the armchair. Aleksandra upstairs with the baby, snoring softly. The apartment had gone quiet, the warmth of the kitchen fire casting long shadows on the faded wallpaper.
Joseph and I sat across from each other in the small parlor, sipping lukewarm tea like two old men with nowhere to be.
Then I stood.
"Come," I said quietly.
He raised an eyebrow but followed.
I pulled the couch away from it's spot. Lifted the creaky floorboard. Exposed the little armory I'd built under our living room like a paranoid squirrel preparing for revolution.
Joseph peered down at it—rows of pistols wrapped in rags, crates of ammunition, two rifles, a short shotgun, and a box of gold coins tucked beside canned beans and hardtack.
His silence was unnerving.
"Surprise," I said, grinning. "Our version of the family jewels."
Still nothing.
I cleared my throat. "I didn't just write to you for hugs and stew, Joe. I'm still in the Party. Inactive, sure. But I've been preparing."
He looked up at me, slowly.
I pressed on. "Civil war is coming. I can feel it. The Provisional Government won't hold. The Tsar's gone, but power hates a vacuum. You and I both know it's not over—it's barely started."
He still didn't say anything. Just looked back down at the stash.
"I've been laying low. Playing the role. I was a cop here, remember? On paper I was the most punctual, loyal officer in Petrograd. In reality, I was looting supply shipments and warning smugglers of raids. All of this—" I gestured at the hidden arsenal, "—came from that."
Joseph knelt beside the cache and ran a hand over one of the pistols.
"Why show me this?" he asked finally. His voice was calm, but I knew him too well. It was the kind of calm that could shatter into violence.
"Because you're going to need help," I said simply. "Not just ideologues. Not just revolutionaries quoting Marx between gulps of soup. You'll need fighters. Planners. People who know the city—who know how to move, how to smuggle, how to survive."
I crouched beside him. "I know where more of this is. Across the city. Armories, caches." I pulled out a map of the city, with X's dotted all over.
I paused, then looked him in the eyes.
"I want to help. Not for politics. Not for glory. For the family. For the future. For you."
He stared at me.
Seconds passed.
Then: "You always were the smarter twin," he muttered.
I laughed. "Took you long enough to admit it."
He grunted. "Don't get used to it."
We sat there in silence for a moment, the weight of what was coming pressing down on us like the cold outside.
"Does Aleksandra know?" he asked.
"Some of it. Enough to worry. Not enough to stop me."
He nodded.
Finally, he reached down, picked up one of the pistols, and checked the chamber.
Then—he smiled. Just a little. Just enough.
"Well then," he said. "Let's prepare for the end of the world."
Brother could I have some military authority?
Alenco98
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March 21, 1917
Petrograd, Russian Empire
Morning
I found him in the kitchen, sitting in my chair like he'd paid rent and bought the wallpaper. Which, in a way, was fair. He was Stalin now—the Stalin. Boots up on the stool like a smug Cossack, coat draped over one shoulder like a Napoleonic cape, sipping tea and reading Russkoye Slovo as if it wasn't a steaming heap of bourgeois sentimentalism pretending to be journalism. Across from him, Yakov munched on a piece of black bread, legs swinging beneath the table like a particularly solemn metronome.
And just like that, the next phase of my plan was already in motion.
It was a simple plan, really. I couldn't just sit on my ass and be "Stalin's brother." What would that even look like? Me, reclining on some commissar-issued chaise lounge, enjoying tea and Stroganoff while my dear sibling played Robespierre with a mustache—executions, purges, famines, and the cherry on top: World War fucking Two?
No. Fuck that. Someone needed to be the adult in the room. Someone had to lean in and whisper, "Hey Joe… Germany is coming. Maybe you shouldn't kill half the officer corps."
Maybe I wouldn't change the world. Maybe I wouldn't stop the bloodshed. But if I could trim the death toll from ten million to, say, five? That's five million mothers who don't cry themselves to sleep, five million fathers who don't drink themselves to death, and five million kids who don't grow up remembering nothing but boots and snow and silence.
So I moved.
"You're reading the liberal rag now?" I said, eyebrow raised as I poured myself a chipped mug of tea that tasted like betrayal.
Joseph didn't even glance up. "I like to know what the enemy thinks. And the crossword's halfway decent."
I sat down and scraped some dubious cheese onto a crusty corner of bread. "Pravda's is better."
He smirked, folded the paper with all the pomp of a royal decree, and sipped again. "We need to talk," I said.
He sighed theatrically. "That's usually how most terrible ideas begin."
"Glad you're in the mood to be enlightened," I replied.
"The Red Guards are a mess."
He blinked at me slowly, like a snake trying to decide if I was prey or just annoying. "You've been out of the Party for nearly a decade and that's your big observation?"
"No," I said, chewing slowly. "That's just the appetizer. They're a bunch of disorganized amateurs. Half of them don't know which end of a rifle fires bullets, and the other half are either drunk on vodka or high on their own pamphlets. If a civil war breaks out—and it will—they'll be chewed up like stale khachapuri at a Georgian funeral."
He didn't speak. That meant he was listening. Which meant I had a shot.
I leaned in, tapping my finger on the table. "We need a real force. Not a mob of factory workers with pitchforks and poetry. A professional revolutionary corps. Disciplined. Trained. Structured. The kind of men who can hold a line and quote Marx without crying."
He tilted his head, suspicious. "And I suppose you've already come up with a name."
I grinned. "The Revolutionary Guard Corps."
Thank you, late-night 4chan threads about the Middle East. I didn't know much about Russian history back then, but I knew enough about coups, militias, and what happens when you let idealists run the armory. I wasn't an encyclopedia, but I was definitely the kid who read the appendices for fun.
Joseph hummed, deep and low. "Pretentious. But not bad."
I sipped my tea and kept going. "We train them. Organize them into cells. Standardize rifles, formations. Chain of command. Uniform code. And they report directly to us—the Party. No warlords, no freelancers, no anarchists with delusions of grandeur."
He was silent for a long time, thumb tracing the rim of his cup like it held secrets. Then, dry as desert sand, he said, "Sounds dangerously close to Bonapartism."
I shrugged. "Only if someone else does it. If we do it, it's ideological purity with uniforms."
That actually got a chuckle out of him. Just a little one. But it was real.
"I've been reading," I added. "Clausewitz. Sun Tzu. Moltke. Machiavelli."
He leaned back with mock horror. "Dear God. One of us did learn to read after all."
"Laugh all you want. My point stands. Revolutions don't die from bullets. They die from ego, chaos, and bad planning. We need structure. We need teeth."
He tapped the table, slowly. "You sound like Dzerzhinsky."
I frowned. "Who the hell is that?"
He blinked. "You've really been out of the loop."
"Yeah, well, I've been raising your son, genius."
That shut him up. I let the silence linger a little before I dropped the second shoe.
"And while we're on the topic of structure—an intelligence wing. Internal discipline. External sabotage. Counter-propaganda. Surveillance. Loyalty enforcement. Something like the Okhrana, but less tsarist, more... efficient."
Now that got his attention.
He raised an eyebrow. "Suppression?"
I sipped my tea again. "I was going to say 'respectful civic dialogue' but fine—yes, suppression. Cold, calculated, necessary suppression. Do you want to win or do you want a university lecture series from exile?"
He chuckled again—darkly, this time. "And what would you name this little secret empire of yours?"
"I'll come up with something. Something sharp. Something that makes people wake up at 3 a.m. sweating."
He looked away, toward the window, where frost crept like fingers across the glass. "You've changed."
"I've adapted," I said. "You taught me that. Sentimentality is a liability. This world eats soft men."
He sighed, long and low, like he was exhaling a childhood. "I remember when you used to say you wanted to go to America."
"I did," I said. "And now I'm here, pitching you a paramilitary and a surveillance state. Isn't life funny?"
A pause. A longer one.
"You know," he said finally, "you might have made a better revolutionary than me."
I smirked. "Oh, I am. But I'm family-oriented, so I temporarily left to help you out."
We both laughed at that. Quietly. Sadly. Like men who knew too much and loved too little.
Then he looked at me again. And the softness drained from his face like blood from a wound. His eyes were ice now—sharp, calculating, the eyes of a man who'd watched the future and decided to bend it into submission.
"You're right. About all of it. The Red Guards are useless. The liberals are weak. The Provisional Government is a kicked dog with a crown. And when it falls, we'll be there to seize what's left."
He stood up. Crossed the room. Lifted a floorboard. Inside: the stash. Our old friends. Guns, papers, maps, promises.
"You'll start small," he said. "Petrograd first. Small cells. Trusted men only. You oversee logistics. I'll see what I can do with Dzerzhinsky. He's got the dead-eyed zeal we need. As for your Revolutionary Guard—"
He looked back at me, face unreadable.
"Train them well. We'll need hounds when the wolves come. But keep it quiet. Small. Don't draw fire too early."
Then he returned to the table. Clapped a hand on my shoulder. Heavy. Final.
"Welcome back, comrade Makarov."
April 15, 1917
Petrograd, Russia
I leaned back on the battered old couch, glass of Georgian wine in hand—the good stuff, or at least good enough that it didn't taste like fermented shoe leather. One of the smugglers who worked with me had brought it by as a bribe-slash-gift. A token of appreciation, or maybe just a down payment on not getting stabbed in an alley by one of the other criminal outfits prowling the city like rats with better hats.
Of course, the wine wasn't the only thing he gave me. Protection doesn't come cheap, not even in a revolution. But we weren't here to talk about my side hustles.
Joseph Stalin—my older twin, future tyrant, and current soup enthusiast—was sitting across from me, slurping a steaming bowl of borscht our mother had made. He looked oddly serene, like a wolf on vacation. It was the only time he ever looked remotely at peace: when eating. Say what you want about Stalin, but the man respected soup.
He reached into his coat, pulled out a cigarette, and held it between two fingers like a man about to say something smug.
"Not in my house," I said flatly, without looking up.
He groaned. "You're still doing this?"
"Yes. I like the smell of soup and revolution, not stale smoke and black lung."
He muttered something unkind in Georgian but tucked the cigarette back into his coat.
"Fine. Anyway, report," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "What's the status on your little Guard Corps and your new Okhrana?"
I set my glass down with a soft clink. "We've got about two hundred men under arms now. They're former colleagues from my police days. Trained, disciplined, loyal."
Joseph raised an eyebrow. "Colorful."
"Colorful gets the job done. We secured a few weapons from old Imperial stockpiles I had mapped out years ago. Not all of them—some were looted by rival groups, gangs, or God-knows-who—but enough."
He leaned in, curious now. "How much is 'enough'?"
I ticked them off on my fingers. "Four hundred Mosin-Nagant rifles, fifty Nagant M1895 revolvers, two PM M1910 machine guns—one of them even works without kicking like a mule—about a hundred grenades, two armored vans that look like they were held together with hope and rust, and roughly thirty thousand rounds of assorted ammunition."
He paused. "Where the hell are you keeping all of that?"
"We've got a warehouse by the docks," I said casually. "Used to be a place for fish. Now it's for weapons. Same smell. We've got a rotation of guards watching it day and night."
He nodded slowly, then tilted his head. "And your new Okhrana?"
"Twenty agents so far," I said. "Ex-policemen mostly. A few underworld types. And—"
I hesitated for dramatic effect.
"—a couple of former Okhrana."
That made him freeze, spoon halfway to his mouth. His eyes narrowed. "You would work with them?"
"They work for us," I clarified. "Big difference."
He scowled. "Keep them on a short leash."
"They're on a leash so short it's practically a noose," I assured him. "So far, we've got one guy embedded in the Provisional Government. He's posing as a secretary for a mid-level official—nothing flashy. Says the place is a zoo. Infighting everywhere. Half the cabinet wants to keep the war going, the other half wants a truce, no one agrees on food policy, and the Entente is propping them up with loans and prayers."
He grunted. "What else?"
"My agents are embedded in various Red Guard units. The Putilov Factory, the Vyborg District, Obukhov Plant, even a couple of the Bolshevik student detachments. I've got feelers in the Mensheviks, anarchists, syndicalists—basically anyone carrying a pamphlet and a weapon. For now, they're just observing. No action. Just ears open and mouths shut."
He swirled his spoon around his bowl, thinking. "And how exactly are you keeping these people loyal? Especially your Guard Corps. How do you know they won't flip the second someone waves a red flag and promises them bread?"
I grinned. "Because I pay them."
He looked at me like I'd suggested feeding caviar to stray dogs. "Pay them? I saw your stash in the apartment. It's substantial, sure, but not nearly enough to fund an army."
I sipped my wine, letting the suspense simmer a bit before answering.
"I made contacts over the years. Smugglers, brothel madams, counterfeiters, black marketeers. I've been good to the underworld and the underworld's been good to me in return. They're terrified right now—cops are gone, order's a joke, and every other gang wants their cut. We offer protection. Real protection. Not just muscle, but organized, sober, punctual violence. They pay in food, guns, ammo, gold—whatever they've got. And I use that to fund the operation. It's a self-sustaining ecosystem of paranoia."
He stared at me for a moment. I could see the war in his eyes: part of him was impressed, the other part deeply disturbed that his twin brother had turned Petrograd's criminal underbelly into a revolutionary ATM.
But he couldn't argue with the results. The revolution, after all, had to get paid.
He leaned back, exhaled slowly, and looked at me sideways.
"You know," he said, voice dry, "for someone who used to spend his Saturdays reading history and cooking with mom, you've become alarmingly competent at this."
I raised my glass in a mock toast. "Turns out cooking and revolutionaries aren't that different. Get the right tools, improvise when you can, and always, always know what ingredients you'll need."
He chuckled. Just a little.
Then the smile vanished, and he went back to stirring his borscht like it contained the secrets of the universe.
"Good work," he said. "Keep me updated. But tread carefully. The wolves haven't started howling yet, but they will. When they do, I want to be the one holding the leash. And one more thing."
"What is it?"
He leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, voice low and measured.
"Lenin's returning tomorrow."
The words hung in the air like gunpowder smoke.
I blinked. "Tomorrow?"
He nodded. "We just got confirmation. The Germans are sending him in through Finland Station, under heavy cover. We've arranged some Party men to meet him—but I don't trust all of them, and neither should you."
"Fair," I muttered. "That place is going to be a madhouse. Everyone from Mensheviks to babushkas trying to kiss his feet."
"Exactly why I need you," he said, pointing a finger at me. "I want a company of your best men—disciplined, armed, clean uniforms if possible. No drunks. No screaming about dialectics. Just men who know how to walk in a line without shooting themselves in the foot."
I raised an eyebrow. "We escorting him like a czar now?"
"We're protecting him," he corrected sharply. "And yes, we're also putting on a show. Lenin needs to see we've got muscle. Order. Structure. Not just a pack of sweaty poets yelling about worker councils."
I swirled the last sip of wine in my glass. "So, you want him impressed. You're hoping he'll back us."
He didn't deny it.
"I'll arrange it," I said. "50 of our best. Matching boots, pressed coats, no visible stab wounds. Even throw in a bandolier or two for dramatic effect."
He smirked. "Make it 60. After the welcome, I'll try to introduce you to him. One-on-one, maybe two-on-one with me in the room. You can pitch him your vision—the Guard Corps, the intelligence wing, the army. You make a good case, Mikheil. Better than I could, even. You've got that… charm."
"charm," I echoed. "That's what we're calling it now?"
He ignored that too.
"But," he added, voice tightening, "you keep the details to yourself for now. The warehouse, the arsenal, the agents, the funding streams—none of it exists. As far as Lenin is concerned, this is just an idea you've been brewing. A theory. You're an idealist with a plan. Not a man who's already stockpiling grenades in a fish warehouse."
I tapped my fingers on the table. "You don't trust him?"
He shrugged. "I don't trust anyone. Not yet. And Lenin… Lenin is brilliant. Visionary. But he's also cautious about power. About rivals. If he thinks you're too competent, too prepared—he might see you as a threat."
"And if he sees me as useful?"
"Then you're in."
I whistled. "So, impress him. But don't intimidate him. Be smart, but not too smart. Don't mention the warehouse full of weapons I built from scratch using the criminal underworld and my leftover cop buddies. Got it."
Joseph gave me a thin smile. "Exactly. Be the humble architect of the future. The man with a blueprint, not a battalion."
I stared at him, then shook my head with a quiet chuckle. "God, we are such bastards."
He smiled again, broader this time. "Better bastards than fools."
There was a pause. "Damn right." I finished my wine. He finished his borscht. Outside, the city moaned with distant gunshots and shouted slogans. The revolution was waking up again.
"Tomorrow then," I said. "I'll have the boys ready. No shooting, no looting, just smiles, boots, and bayonets."
He nodded, then stood, pulling on his coat.
"And Mikheil?"
"Yeah?"
He glanced back at me, eyes serious. "Don't fuck this up. If Lenin likes you, everything changes. If he doesn't…"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
I nodded.
He left.
I sat there a while longer, listening to the city breathe through cracked windows and thin walls, thinking about Lenin, the Guard Corps, the Okhrana, and how I, a 21st-century interloper in a secondhand body, had become Petrograd's most well-dressed warlord.
Then I poured myself another glass of wine.
Tomorrow, I'd meet the man who would shape the revolution.
I just hoped I didn't terrify him too much.
Petrograd, Russian Empire
Morning
I found him in the kitchen, sitting in my chair like he'd paid rent and bought the wallpaper. Which, in a way, was fair. He was Stalin now—the Stalin. Boots up on the stool like a smug Cossack, coat draped over one shoulder like a Napoleonic cape, sipping tea and reading Russkoye Slovo as if it wasn't a steaming heap of bourgeois sentimentalism pretending to be journalism. Across from him, Yakov munched on a piece of black bread, legs swinging beneath the table like a particularly solemn metronome.
And just like that, the next phase of my plan was already in motion.
It was a simple plan, really. I couldn't just sit on my ass and be "Stalin's brother." What would that even look like? Me, reclining on some commissar-issued chaise lounge, enjoying tea and Stroganoff while my dear sibling played Robespierre with a mustache—executions, purges, famines, and the cherry on top: World War fucking Two?
No. Fuck that. Someone needed to be the adult in the room. Someone had to lean in and whisper, "Hey Joe… Germany is coming. Maybe you shouldn't kill half the officer corps."
Maybe I wouldn't change the world. Maybe I wouldn't stop the bloodshed. But if I could trim the death toll from ten million to, say, five? That's five million mothers who don't cry themselves to sleep, five million fathers who don't drink themselves to death, and five million kids who don't grow up remembering nothing but boots and snow and silence.
So I moved.
"You're reading the liberal rag now?" I said, eyebrow raised as I poured myself a chipped mug of tea that tasted like betrayal.
Joseph didn't even glance up. "I like to know what the enemy thinks. And the crossword's halfway decent."
I sat down and scraped some dubious cheese onto a crusty corner of bread. "Pravda's is better."
He smirked, folded the paper with all the pomp of a royal decree, and sipped again. "We need to talk," I said.
He sighed theatrically. "That's usually how most terrible ideas begin."
"Glad you're in the mood to be enlightened," I replied.
"The Red Guards are a mess."
He blinked at me slowly, like a snake trying to decide if I was prey or just annoying. "You've been out of the Party for nearly a decade and that's your big observation?"
"No," I said, chewing slowly. "That's just the appetizer. They're a bunch of disorganized amateurs. Half of them don't know which end of a rifle fires bullets, and the other half are either drunk on vodka or high on their own pamphlets. If a civil war breaks out—and it will—they'll be chewed up like stale khachapuri at a Georgian funeral."
He didn't speak. That meant he was listening. Which meant I had a shot.
I leaned in, tapping my finger on the table. "We need a real force. Not a mob of factory workers with pitchforks and poetry. A professional revolutionary corps. Disciplined. Trained. Structured. The kind of men who can hold a line and quote Marx without crying."
He tilted his head, suspicious. "And I suppose you've already come up with a name."
I grinned. "The Revolutionary Guard Corps."
Thank you, late-night 4chan threads about the Middle East. I didn't know much about Russian history back then, but I knew enough about coups, militias, and what happens when you let idealists run the armory. I wasn't an encyclopedia, but I was definitely the kid who read the appendices for fun.
Joseph hummed, deep and low. "Pretentious. But not bad."
I sipped my tea and kept going. "We train them. Organize them into cells. Standardize rifles, formations. Chain of command. Uniform code. And they report directly to us—the Party. No warlords, no freelancers, no anarchists with delusions of grandeur."
He was silent for a long time, thumb tracing the rim of his cup like it held secrets. Then, dry as desert sand, he said, "Sounds dangerously close to Bonapartism."
I shrugged. "Only if someone else does it. If we do it, it's ideological purity with uniforms."
That actually got a chuckle out of him. Just a little one. But it was real.
"I've been reading," I added. "Clausewitz. Sun Tzu. Moltke. Machiavelli."
He leaned back with mock horror. "Dear God. One of us did learn to read after all."
"Laugh all you want. My point stands. Revolutions don't die from bullets. They die from ego, chaos, and bad planning. We need structure. We need teeth."
He tapped the table, slowly. "You sound like Dzerzhinsky."
I frowned. "Who the hell is that?"
He blinked. "You've really been out of the loop."
"Yeah, well, I've been raising your son, genius."
That shut him up. I let the silence linger a little before I dropped the second shoe.
"And while we're on the topic of structure—an intelligence wing. Internal discipline. External sabotage. Counter-propaganda. Surveillance. Loyalty enforcement. Something like the Okhrana, but less tsarist, more... efficient."
Now that got his attention.
He raised an eyebrow. "Suppression?"
I sipped my tea again. "I was going to say 'respectful civic dialogue' but fine—yes, suppression. Cold, calculated, necessary suppression. Do you want to win or do you want a university lecture series from exile?"
He chuckled again—darkly, this time. "And what would you name this little secret empire of yours?"
"I'll come up with something. Something sharp. Something that makes people wake up at 3 a.m. sweating."
He looked away, toward the window, where frost crept like fingers across the glass. "You've changed."
"I've adapted," I said. "You taught me that. Sentimentality is a liability. This world eats soft men."
He sighed, long and low, like he was exhaling a childhood. "I remember when you used to say you wanted to go to America."
"I did," I said. "And now I'm here, pitching you a paramilitary and a surveillance state. Isn't life funny?"
A pause. A longer one.
"You know," he said finally, "you might have made a better revolutionary than me."
I smirked. "Oh, I am. But I'm family-oriented, so I temporarily left to help you out."
We both laughed at that. Quietly. Sadly. Like men who knew too much and loved too little.
Then he looked at me again. And the softness drained from his face like blood from a wound. His eyes were ice now—sharp, calculating, the eyes of a man who'd watched the future and decided to bend it into submission.
"You're right. About all of it. The Red Guards are useless. The liberals are weak. The Provisional Government is a kicked dog with a crown. And when it falls, we'll be there to seize what's left."
He stood up. Crossed the room. Lifted a floorboard. Inside: the stash. Our old friends. Guns, papers, maps, promises.
"You'll start small," he said. "Petrograd first. Small cells. Trusted men only. You oversee logistics. I'll see what I can do with Dzerzhinsky. He's got the dead-eyed zeal we need. As for your Revolutionary Guard—"
He looked back at me, face unreadable.
"Train them well. We'll need hounds when the wolves come. But keep it quiet. Small. Don't draw fire too early."
Then he returned to the table. Clapped a hand on my shoulder. Heavy. Final.
"Welcome back, comrade Makarov."
April 15, 1917
Petrograd, Russia
I leaned back on the battered old couch, glass of Georgian wine in hand—the good stuff, or at least good enough that it didn't taste like fermented shoe leather. One of the smugglers who worked with me had brought it by as a bribe-slash-gift. A token of appreciation, or maybe just a down payment on not getting stabbed in an alley by one of the other criminal outfits prowling the city like rats with better hats.
Of course, the wine wasn't the only thing he gave me. Protection doesn't come cheap, not even in a revolution. But we weren't here to talk about my side hustles.
Joseph Stalin—my older twin, future tyrant, and current soup enthusiast—was sitting across from me, slurping a steaming bowl of borscht our mother had made. He looked oddly serene, like a wolf on vacation. It was the only time he ever looked remotely at peace: when eating. Say what you want about Stalin, but the man respected soup.
He reached into his coat, pulled out a cigarette, and held it between two fingers like a man about to say something smug.
"Not in my house," I said flatly, without looking up.
He groaned. "You're still doing this?"
"Yes. I like the smell of soup and revolution, not stale smoke and black lung."
He muttered something unkind in Georgian but tucked the cigarette back into his coat.
"Fine. Anyway, report," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "What's the status on your little Guard Corps and your new Okhrana?"
I set my glass down with a soft clink. "We've got about two hundred men under arms now. They're former colleagues from my police days. Trained, disciplined, loyal."
Joseph raised an eyebrow. "Colorful."
"Colorful gets the job done. We secured a few weapons from old Imperial stockpiles I had mapped out years ago. Not all of them—some were looted by rival groups, gangs, or God-knows-who—but enough."
He leaned in, curious now. "How much is 'enough'?"
I ticked them off on my fingers. "Four hundred Mosin-Nagant rifles, fifty Nagant M1895 revolvers, two PM M1910 machine guns—one of them even works without kicking like a mule—about a hundred grenades, two armored vans that look like they were held together with hope and rust, and roughly thirty thousand rounds of assorted ammunition."
He paused. "Where the hell are you keeping all of that?"
"We've got a warehouse by the docks," I said casually. "Used to be a place for fish. Now it's for weapons. Same smell. We've got a rotation of guards watching it day and night."
He nodded slowly, then tilted his head. "And your new Okhrana?"
"Twenty agents so far," I said. "Ex-policemen mostly. A few underworld types. And—"
I hesitated for dramatic effect.
"—a couple of former Okhrana."
That made him freeze, spoon halfway to his mouth. His eyes narrowed. "You would work with them?"
"They work for us," I clarified. "Big difference."
He scowled. "Keep them on a short leash."
"They're on a leash so short it's practically a noose," I assured him. "So far, we've got one guy embedded in the Provisional Government. He's posing as a secretary for a mid-level official—nothing flashy. Says the place is a zoo. Infighting everywhere. Half the cabinet wants to keep the war going, the other half wants a truce, no one agrees on food policy, and the Entente is propping them up with loans and prayers."
He grunted. "What else?"
"My agents are embedded in various Red Guard units. The Putilov Factory, the Vyborg District, Obukhov Plant, even a couple of the Bolshevik student detachments. I've got feelers in the Mensheviks, anarchists, syndicalists—basically anyone carrying a pamphlet and a weapon. For now, they're just observing. No action. Just ears open and mouths shut."
He swirled his spoon around his bowl, thinking. "And how exactly are you keeping these people loyal? Especially your Guard Corps. How do you know they won't flip the second someone waves a red flag and promises them bread?"
I grinned. "Because I pay them."
He looked at me like I'd suggested feeding caviar to stray dogs. "Pay them? I saw your stash in the apartment. It's substantial, sure, but not nearly enough to fund an army."
I sipped my wine, letting the suspense simmer a bit before answering.
"I made contacts over the years. Smugglers, brothel madams, counterfeiters, black marketeers. I've been good to the underworld and the underworld's been good to me in return. They're terrified right now—cops are gone, order's a joke, and every other gang wants their cut. We offer protection. Real protection. Not just muscle, but organized, sober, punctual violence. They pay in food, guns, ammo, gold—whatever they've got. And I use that to fund the operation. It's a self-sustaining ecosystem of paranoia."
He stared at me for a moment. I could see the war in his eyes: part of him was impressed, the other part deeply disturbed that his twin brother had turned Petrograd's criminal underbelly into a revolutionary ATM.
But he couldn't argue with the results. The revolution, after all, had to get paid.
He leaned back, exhaled slowly, and looked at me sideways.
"You know," he said, voice dry, "for someone who used to spend his Saturdays reading history and cooking with mom, you've become alarmingly competent at this."
I raised my glass in a mock toast. "Turns out cooking and revolutionaries aren't that different. Get the right tools, improvise when you can, and always, always know what ingredients you'll need."
He chuckled. Just a little.
Then the smile vanished, and he went back to stirring his borscht like it contained the secrets of the universe.
"Good work," he said. "Keep me updated. But tread carefully. The wolves haven't started howling yet, but they will. When they do, I want to be the one holding the leash. And one more thing."
"What is it?"
He leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, voice low and measured.
"Lenin's returning tomorrow."
The words hung in the air like gunpowder smoke.
I blinked. "Tomorrow?"
He nodded. "We just got confirmation. The Germans are sending him in through Finland Station, under heavy cover. We've arranged some Party men to meet him—but I don't trust all of them, and neither should you."
"Fair," I muttered. "That place is going to be a madhouse. Everyone from Mensheviks to babushkas trying to kiss his feet."
"Exactly why I need you," he said, pointing a finger at me. "I want a company of your best men—disciplined, armed, clean uniforms if possible. No drunks. No screaming about dialectics. Just men who know how to walk in a line without shooting themselves in the foot."
I raised an eyebrow. "We escorting him like a czar now?"
"We're protecting him," he corrected sharply. "And yes, we're also putting on a show. Lenin needs to see we've got muscle. Order. Structure. Not just a pack of sweaty poets yelling about worker councils."
I swirled the last sip of wine in my glass. "So, you want him impressed. You're hoping he'll back us."
He didn't deny it.
"I'll arrange it," I said. "50 of our best. Matching boots, pressed coats, no visible stab wounds. Even throw in a bandolier or two for dramatic effect."
He smirked. "Make it 60. After the welcome, I'll try to introduce you to him. One-on-one, maybe two-on-one with me in the room. You can pitch him your vision—the Guard Corps, the intelligence wing, the army. You make a good case, Mikheil. Better than I could, even. You've got that… charm."
"charm," I echoed. "That's what we're calling it now?"
He ignored that too.
"But," he added, voice tightening, "you keep the details to yourself for now. The warehouse, the arsenal, the agents, the funding streams—none of it exists. As far as Lenin is concerned, this is just an idea you've been brewing. A theory. You're an idealist with a plan. Not a man who's already stockpiling grenades in a fish warehouse."
I tapped my fingers on the table. "You don't trust him?"
He shrugged. "I don't trust anyone. Not yet. And Lenin… Lenin is brilliant. Visionary. But he's also cautious about power. About rivals. If he thinks you're too competent, too prepared—he might see you as a threat."
"And if he sees me as useful?"
"Then you're in."
I whistled. "So, impress him. But don't intimidate him. Be smart, but not too smart. Don't mention the warehouse full of weapons I built from scratch using the criminal underworld and my leftover cop buddies. Got it."
Joseph gave me a thin smile. "Exactly. Be the humble architect of the future. The man with a blueprint, not a battalion."
I stared at him, then shook my head with a quiet chuckle. "God, we are such bastards."
He smiled again, broader this time. "Better bastards than fools."
There was a pause. "Damn right." I finished my wine. He finished his borscht. Outside, the city moaned with distant gunshots and shouted slogans. The revolution was waking up again.
"Tomorrow then," I said. "I'll have the boys ready. No shooting, no looting, just smiles, boots, and bayonets."
He nodded, then stood, pulling on his coat.
"And Mikheil?"
"Yeah?"
He glanced back at me, eyes serious. "Don't fuck this up. If Lenin likes you, everything changes. If he doesn't…"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
I nodded.
He left.
I sat there a while longer, listening to the city breathe through cracked windows and thin walls, thinking about Lenin, the Guard Corps, the Okhrana, and how I, a 21st-century interloper in a secondhand body, had become Petrograd's most well-dressed warlord.
Then I poured myself another glass of wine.
Tomorrow, I'd meet the man who would shape the revolution.
I just hoped I didn't terrify him too much.
Let me sell you this revolution
Alenco98
Not too sore, are you?
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April 16, 1917
Finland Station, Petrograd
Russia
The crowd at the station was a mess—a revolutionary stew of factory workers, students, sailors, babushkas, bored teenagers with pamphlets, and at least one man selling hot potatoes and muttering about the Mensheviks under his breath. Flags waved, fists raised, and chants echoed across the platform like a drunken hymn. Down with the war! Long live Lenin! Down with the Provisional Government! Long live Lenin! Over and over again, like the city itself had learned to chant.
My men stood apart from it all, 60 of them now—three had hangovers from drinking last night, but unfortunately for them the revolution waits for no one. They stood at attention in clean coats, boots polished, weapons slung in perfect formation. A mix of ex-cops from my precinct and surrounding ones, veterans, and one former circus strongman who refused to speak unless addressed as "Comrade Bear." His real name as I would come to find out later in the year was Fyodor.
I stood in front, coat pressed, gloves immaculate, sabre sheathed more for the look than the use. Optics mattered, Stalin said. Might as well lean into it.
Then the train pulled in, slow and heavy, hissing steam like a dragon clearing its throat.
The crowd roared. Some people cried. Others chanted louder. A few just looked bewildered, clutching newspapers and craning necks for a glimpse of the man who'd supposedly flown in on German wings to save the revolution. The irony was so thick it could be served in a bowl with sour cream.
And then there he was.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. Lenin.
Shorter than expected, balding head shining under the gas lamps, beard trimmed to a sharp point, eyes like drill bits. He looked less like a prophet and more like a mildly annoyed librarian—but the energy that followed him was palpable. Electric. Every movement seemed intentional, every glance calculated.
He stepped down from the train, flanked by a few weary-looking comrades, his expression unreadable.
I stepped forward, snapping a crisp salute.
"Comrade Lenin," I said, "I've been sent by Comrade Stalin to escort you to the Smolny Institute."
He looked me over with a flick of his eyes, brows lifting slightly. "And who might you be?"
I smiled. "Mikheil Dzhugashvili. Stalin's younger twin brother. I'm the better looking one. He hates when I say that."
A twitch tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't know Stalin had a twin. He doesn't talk much about family."
"Probably for the best," I replied. "We're not exactly a textbook family. But I assure you, I'm quite real. My job is to keep you in one piece on your way to the Soviet. It's a madhouse out there."
"I assumed as much," Lenin muttered, adjusting his coat. "Lead the way then, Comrade Better-Looking-One."
We moved through the crowd as my men formed a protective cordon, parting the sea of Petrograd's finest radicals like Moses with machine guns. Some people shouted greetings to Lenin; others just stared in awe. One woman fainted. Lenin looked mildly inconvenienced but nodded politely.
As we walked, he fell into step beside me. "So, Mikheil. Tell me—what is it exactly you do? Aside from providing escort duty for returning revolutionaries."
"I'm sort of a revolutionary nanny," I said, hands clasped behind my back.
Lenin blinked. "A what?"
I grinned. "I was in the Party, like Stalin. Active for years. But after his wife, Kato, died… well, someone had to raise his son Yakov. Joseph threw himself into the cause. I stepped back and raised the boy. Someone had to hold the bottle while he held the bomb."
Lenin gave me a sideways glance. "You left politics to raise a child?"
"Temporarily. The cause didn't vanish—just shifted shape. Yakov was just a baby. Stalin would send money when he could, usually in envelopes that reeked of gunpowder and bad cigars. I worked as a cop here in Petrograd, ran a few investigations, made some enemies. But at night, it was me, my wife, my kids, my mom and Yakov. Bottles. Lullabies. The occasional Marxist bedtime story. From each according to his abilities, and mine happened to include changing diapers."
Lenin actually laughed. A short, dry chuckle, but real.
"Well," he said, "that might be the most proletarian reason I've ever heard to pause a revolution."
"Thank you. I take great pride in my bourgeois resentment and my ability to cook porridge."
He nodded thoughtfully. "And now?"
"Now Yakov's old enough to run circles around us both, and I'm back in the struggle. Petrograd's a powder keg. The Red Guards are disorganized, the underworld is exploding, the Soviets are arguing about dialectics while the Provisional Government bleeds in public. So I've taken it upon myself to help impose some discipline."
Lenin's gaze sharpened. "Discipline?"
I smiled faintly. "A vision. A proposal. But I'll save the pitch for when there's less steam and shouting. I didn't come to shove ideas down your throat, Comrade Lenin. I came to make sure you got to the Smolny in one piece."
"Hmph." He glanced around. "Your men… They look competent. Not the usual red guard I see around here."
"I picked them myself. Former cops like me, veterans. All loyal. All trained by me. We even combed their beards for lice. That's how serious we are."
"I do appreciate lice-free escorts," he said drily. "What's the group called?"
"Officially?" I shrugged. "They don't have a name. Yet. They're just another red guards group. Unofficially, I've been drafting some ideas. Revolutionary Guard Corps has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
Lenin's brow furrowed, but he said nothing. We continued on in silence, his mind clearly chewing on something bigger.
When the towering shadow of the Smolny loomed ahead, lit by gas lamps and flickering torches, he stopped short and turned to me.
"Your brother trusts you?"
I looked him in the eye. "Yes. More than he trusts himself, I think. And I trust him. Even if I don't always agree."
Lenin nodded. "You're a rare breed, Comrade Mikheil. Most men either talk ideology or throw bombs. You seem to do both while feeding children and managing a street militia."
"I'm a man of many talents," I said with a smile.
He gave me one more long, calculating look.
"Come to the Smolny tomorrow morning," he said at last. "We'll talk. Bring your vision. If it's sound, maybe it won't just be your brother listening."
My eyebrow rose. "A private audience with Lenin on day two? You flatter me."
"No," he said simply, "I'm curious. And that's dangerous."
Then he turned and walked into the Smolny, the doors swinging shut behind him.
I stood outside for a moment, hands in my coat pockets, watching the lights flicker in the windows of the revolutionary hive. I could already hear the debates, the shouting, the righteous indignation.
And yet… something was changing. Fast.
I turned to my men. "Back to the warehouse. No drinking, no shooting, and if Comrade Bear starts drinking excessively again, put a stop to it."
They saluted.
As we walked back through the city streets, I allowed myself a small smile.
Lenin was here.
And he was listening.
The air inside Smolny was thick with smoke, tension, and the smell of overworked revolutionaries. Old nuns' dormitories turned committee rooms. Lenin had taken over one of the larger classrooms, its crucifixes long since torn down and replaced with hand-drawn maps of factory districts and food supply routes. Someone had left a half-eaten potato on a desk. It was unclear whether it was a snack or a paperweight.
I entered behind Stalin, flanked by two of my men who looked intimidating enough to make most Mensheviks reconsider their positions on democratic centralism.
Lenin was already there, perched at the head of a battered oak table, poring over a stack of telegrams and half-burned notes. He didn't look up as we walked in.
"Close the door," he said flatly. "And tell whoever's shouting about bread prices in the hall that I'm not the baker's union."
Stalin grunted and obeyed. I stepped forward and stood at attention—partly out of respect, partly out of performance.
"Comrade Lenin," I said. "You asked for my vision. I've come to deliver it."
That got his attention. He glanced up, squinting slightly, gestured to the seat across from him.
"Speak."
Stalin sat in the corner, arms crossed, quietly observing. His face was unreadable—just the faint hint of a smirk, like he was waiting to see if I'd crash and burn or launch something worth remembering.
I sat down, met Lenin's gaze, and laid it out.
"There's going to be a civil war," I began. "That's not a guess. It's a certainty. What you're proposing—land redistribution, the dismantling of the aristocracy, the total abolition of private property and capitalism—you're not just rattling the gates of power. You're taking a battering ram to the foundations of a thousand-year-old order. The nobles, the generals, the factory owners—they're not going to debate us into surrender. They're going to fight. Brutally."
Lenin didn't flinch. He just nodded once, slowly, eyes sharp.
"The Red Guards," I continued, "are enthusiastic, brave, even fanatical. But they're disorganized. They're militias with slogans. If the war starts tomorrow, they'll be cannon fodder. You need to build a real army. Ranks. Logistics. Discipline. Officers who know how to march and men who know how to shoot without hitting their own toes."
"And I suppose," Lenin said, "you've got a plan to prevent that army from marching on us one day?"
"Exactly." I leaned in, lowering my voice. "Bonapartism is inevitable if power is centralized in a single institution. So we build redundancies. My Revolutionary Guard Corps—the men you saw yesterday—is just the start. Ideologically educated, heavily armed, trained not just to fight—but to think. Their purpose will be singular: to protect the revolution from the army if it ever turns."
"And who watches them?" Lenin asked immediately, tone razor-sharp.
"I'm glad you asked," I said, suppressing a grin. "We build a new Okhrana. Not the old one—no monarchist brutes. Ours would be staffed with vetted Party loyalists. Professionals. Their job would be internal intelligence, loyalty enforcement, counter-sabotage, spying abroad, criminal enforcement. And they, too, would have teeth—an armed wing, a National Police Force if you like."
He drummed his fingers on the table.
"Let me clarify the architecture," I said. "A centralized Soviet Army to handle foreign threats. A Revolutionary Guard Corps to keep that army in line. And a new Soviet Okhrana—armed, loyal to the Party—to keep both of them in line."
"Checks and balances through overlapping paranoia," Stalin said from the corner. "Elegant."
"Exactly," I said. "No single general can stage a coup without inviting a bloodbath from the guard corps and Police. Every sword faces a mirror. You want loyalty? Fear and structure get you there faster than abstract slogans."
I let that settle, then added, "And while we're talking power and perception, I want to propose a May Day parade."
That raised Lenin's eyebrow.
"A public show of strength and unity," I said. "Red Guards marching in formation. Flags, uniforms, drums. The people are scared and angry and starving. They need to see order. Strength. And you, Comrade Lenin—rifle in hand, walking at the front. You are the symbol."
He narrowed his eyes. "You want me parading like a tsar?"
"I want you to be the opposite of a tsar," I said firmly. "But a symbol all the same. The average Russian peasant has never read Das Kapital or the communist manifesto. Hell, most of them can't read. But they understand symbols. Uniforms. Banners. Heroes. You march with them, and they'll follow you anywhere."
"And when do we teach them the theory?"
"After we win the war," I said. "Power first, then theory."
There was a silence.
I leaned back, glanced at his cigarette pack. "Also, respectfully, you should consider quitting smoking. And drinking. You're about to be the soul of a revolution. Maybe don't die from lung or liver failure before we get to the end."
Stalin barked a laugh. I glanced at him. "You too brother." He scowled.
Lenin didn't laugh at all, or scowls.
For a long, uncomfortable moment, he just stared at me. Then, slowly, he set the cigarette he'd been rolling down on the table and folded his hands.
"You speak like a man who's lived through this before."
"I just read a lot," I said, smiling faintly. "Sun
Tzu's art of war, Caesar's commentaries on Gaul, Napoleon's biography, Machiavelli's the prince, Moltke, Bismark, Clausewitz. Anything and everything on politics and military tactics I could get my hands on. I stole ideas from all of them, synthesized them into my own."
Lenin exhaled through his nose.
"What do you think?" he asked Stalin, still not looking away from me.
Stalin shrugged. "He's pragmatic. Cynical. Slightly unhinged. I trust him."
"High praise," I said dryly.
Lenin turned his gaze back to me. "Your proposal… it's terrifying. Bureaucratic. Militaristic. Contradictory to many principles of grassroots revolutionary thought."
He paused.
"I like it."
I blinked. "You do?"
"It's realistic. Brutal, but grounded in the facts. You're right—the old order will not go quietly. We cannot meet them with disorder and poetry. We must meet them with steel."
He stood. "You'll draft a formal structure for these corps and committees. Bring it to me by the week's end. I want clear chains of command. Oversight bodies. Vetted officers. And most importantly—loyalty to the Party above all else."
"Understood."
"And the May Day parade?" he said.
I shrugged. "You'll need a rifle."
"I've got one," he said. "But I'll only march if you and Stalin march."
Stalin smirked again. I nodded. "Got it. I'll have my men march with you at the front."
Lenin lit the cigarette he had set down earlier. "And I'll consider cutting back. After we win."
"Fair enough," I said, standing with him.
As I turned to go, Lenin called after me.
"Mikheil."
"Yes?"
"You're not afraid of what you're building?"
I paused. Thought for a moment. Then said, "Only if the wrong men are left to run it."
He didn't answer. Just nodded.
And I left the room, already drafting blueprints in my mind for an army of shadows and an empire of symbols.
The revolution was sharpening its teeth.
Finland Station, Petrograd
Russia
The crowd at the station was a mess—a revolutionary stew of factory workers, students, sailors, babushkas, bored teenagers with pamphlets, and at least one man selling hot potatoes and muttering about the Mensheviks under his breath. Flags waved, fists raised, and chants echoed across the platform like a drunken hymn. Down with the war! Long live Lenin! Down with the Provisional Government! Long live Lenin! Over and over again, like the city itself had learned to chant.
My men stood apart from it all, 60 of them now—three had hangovers from drinking last night, but unfortunately for them the revolution waits for no one. They stood at attention in clean coats, boots polished, weapons slung in perfect formation. A mix of ex-cops from my precinct and surrounding ones, veterans, and one former circus strongman who refused to speak unless addressed as "Comrade Bear." His real name as I would come to find out later in the year was Fyodor.
I stood in front, coat pressed, gloves immaculate, sabre sheathed more for the look than the use. Optics mattered, Stalin said. Might as well lean into it.
Then the train pulled in, slow and heavy, hissing steam like a dragon clearing its throat.
The crowd roared. Some people cried. Others chanted louder. A few just looked bewildered, clutching newspapers and craning necks for a glimpse of the man who'd supposedly flown in on German wings to save the revolution. The irony was so thick it could be served in a bowl with sour cream.
And then there he was.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. Lenin.
Shorter than expected, balding head shining under the gas lamps, beard trimmed to a sharp point, eyes like drill bits. He looked less like a prophet and more like a mildly annoyed librarian—but the energy that followed him was palpable. Electric. Every movement seemed intentional, every glance calculated.
He stepped down from the train, flanked by a few weary-looking comrades, his expression unreadable.
I stepped forward, snapping a crisp salute.
"Comrade Lenin," I said, "I've been sent by Comrade Stalin to escort you to the Smolny Institute."
He looked me over with a flick of his eyes, brows lifting slightly. "And who might you be?"
I smiled. "Mikheil Dzhugashvili. Stalin's younger twin brother. I'm the better looking one. He hates when I say that."
A twitch tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't know Stalin had a twin. He doesn't talk much about family."
"Probably for the best," I replied. "We're not exactly a textbook family. But I assure you, I'm quite real. My job is to keep you in one piece on your way to the Soviet. It's a madhouse out there."
"I assumed as much," Lenin muttered, adjusting his coat. "Lead the way then, Comrade Better-Looking-One."
We moved through the crowd as my men formed a protective cordon, parting the sea of Petrograd's finest radicals like Moses with machine guns. Some people shouted greetings to Lenin; others just stared in awe. One woman fainted. Lenin looked mildly inconvenienced but nodded politely.
As we walked, he fell into step beside me. "So, Mikheil. Tell me—what is it exactly you do? Aside from providing escort duty for returning revolutionaries."
"I'm sort of a revolutionary nanny," I said, hands clasped behind my back.
Lenin blinked. "A what?"
I grinned. "I was in the Party, like Stalin. Active for years. But after his wife, Kato, died… well, someone had to raise his son Yakov. Joseph threw himself into the cause. I stepped back and raised the boy. Someone had to hold the bottle while he held the bomb."
Lenin gave me a sideways glance. "You left politics to raise a child?"
"Temporarily. The cause didn't vanish—just shifted shape. Yakov was just a baby. Stalin would send money when he could, usually in envelopes that reeked of gunpowder and bad cigars. I worked as a cop here in Petrograd, ran a few investigations, made some enemies. But at night, it was me, my wife, my kids, my mom and Yakov. Bottles. Lullabies. The occasional Marxist bedtime story. From each according to his abilities, and mine happened to include changing diapers."
Lenin actually laughed. A short, dry chuckle, but real.
"Well," he said, "that might be the most proletarian reason I've ever heard to pause a revolution."
"Thank you. I take great pride in my bourgeois resentment and my ability to cook porridge."
He nodded thoughtfully. "And now?"
"Now Yakov's old enough to run circles around us both, and I'm back in the struggle. Petrograd's a powder keg. The Red Guards are disorganized, the underworld is exploding, the Soviets are arguing about dialectics while the Provisional Government bleeds in public. So I've taken it upon myself to help impose some discipline."
Lenin's gaze sharpened. "Discipline?"
I smiled faintly. "A vision. A proposal. But I'll save the pitch for when there's less steam and shouting. I didn't come to shove ideas down your throat, Comrade Lenin. I came to make sure you got to the Smolny in one piece."
"Hmph." He glanced around. "Your men… They look competent. Not the usual red guard I see around here."
"I picked them myself. Former cops like me, veterans. All loyal. All trained by me. We even combed their beards for lice. That's how serious we are."
"I do appreciate lice-free escorts," he said drily. "What's the group called?"
"Officially?" I shrugged. "They don't have a name. Yet. They're just another red guards group. Unofficially, I've been drafting some ideas. Revolutionary Guard Corps has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
Lenin's brow furrowed, but he said nothing. We continued on in silence, his mind clearly chewing on something bigger.
When the towering shadow of the Smolny loomed ahead, lit by gas lamps and flickering torches, he stopped short and turned to me.
"Your brother trusts you?"
I looked him in the eye. "Yes. More than he trusts himself, I think. And I trust him. Even if I don't always agree."
Lenin nodded. "You're a rare breed, Comrade Mikheil. Most men either talk ideology or throw bombs. You seem to do both while feeding children and managing a street militia."
"I'm a man of many talents," I said with a smile.
He gave me one more long, calculating look.
"Come to the Smolny tomorrow morning," he said at last. "We'll talk. Bring your vision. If it's sound, maybe it won't just be your brother listening."
My eyebrow rose. "A private audience with Lenin on day two? You flatter me."
"No," he said simply, "I'm curious. And that's dangerous."
Then he turned and walked into the Smolny, the doors swinging shut behind him.
I stood outside for a moment, hands in my coat pockets, watching the lights flicker in the windows of the revolutionary hive. I could already hear the debates, the shouting, the righteous indignation.
And yet… something was changing. Fast.
I turned to my men. "Back to the warehouse. No drinking, no shooting, and if Comrade Bear starts drinking excessively again, put a stop to it."
They saluted.
As we walked back through the city streets, I allowed myself a small smile.
Lenin was here.
And he was listening.
The air inside Smolny was thick with smoke, tension, and the smell of overworked revolutionaries. Old nuns' dormitories turned committee rooms. Lenin had taken over one of the larger classrooms, its crucifixes long since torn down and replaced with hand-drawn maps of factory districts and food supply routes. Someone had left a half-eaten potato on a desk. It was unclear whether it was a snack or a paperweight.
I entered behind Stalin, flanked by two of my men who looked intimidating enough to make most Mensheviks reconsider their positions on democratic centralism.
Lenin was already there, perched at the head of a battered oak table, poring over a stack of telegrams and half-burned notes. He didn't look up as we walked in.
"Close the door," he said flatly. "And tell whoever's shouting about bread prices in the hall that I'm not the baker's union."
Stalin grunted and obeyed. I stepped forward and stood at attention—partly out of respect, partly out of performance.
"Comrade Lenin," I said. "You asked for my vision. I've come to deliver it."
That got his attention. He glanced up, squinting slightly, gestured to the seat across from him.
"Speak."
Stalin sat in the corner, arms crossed, quietly observing. His face was unreadable—just the faint hint of a smirk, like he was waiting to see if I'd crash and burn or launch something worth remembering.
I sat down, met Lenin's gaze, and laid it out.
"There's going to be a civil war," I began. "That's not a guess. It's a certainty. What you're proposing—land redistribution, the dismantling of the aristocracy, the total abolition of private property and capitalism—you're not just rattling the gates of power. You're taking a battering ram to the foundations of a thousand-year-old order. The nobles, the generals, the factory owners—they're not going to debate us into surrender. They're going to fight. Brutally."
Lenin didn't flinch. He just nodded once, slowly, eyes sharp.
"The Red Guards," I continued, "are enthusiastic, brave, even fanatical. But they're disorganized. They're militias with slogans. If the war starts tomorrow, they'll be cannon fodder. You need to build a real army. Ranks. Logistics. Discipline. Officers who know how to march and men who know how to shoot without hitting their own toes."
"And I suppose," Lenin said, "you've got a plan to prevent that army from marching on us one day?"
"Exactly." I leaned in, lowering my voice. "Bonapartism is inevitable if power is centralized in a single institution. So we build redundancies. My Revolutionary Guard Corps—the men you saw yesterday—is just the start. Ideologically educated, heavily armed, trained not just to fight—but to think. Their purpose will be singular: to protect the revolution from the army if it ever turns."
"And who watches them?" Lenin asked immediately, tone razor-sharp.
"I'm glad you asked," I said, suppressing a grin. "We build a new Okhrana. Not the old one—no monarchist brutes. Ours would be staffed with vetted Party loyalists. Professionals. Their job would be internal intelligence, loyalty enforcement, counter-sabotage, spying abroad, criminal enforcement. And they, too, would have teeth—an armed wing, a National Police Force if you like."
He drummed his fingers on the table.
"Let me clarify the architecture," I said. "A centralized Soviet Army to handle foreign threats. A Revolutionary Guard Corps to keep that army in line. And a new Soviet Okhrana—armed, loyal to the Party—to keep both of them in line."
"Checks and balances through overlapping paranoia," Stalin said from the corner. "Elegant."
"Exactly," I said. "No single general can stage a coup without inviting a bloodbath from the guard corps and Police. Every sword faces a mirror. You want loyalty? Fear and structure get you there faster than abstract slogans."
I let that settle, then added, "And while we're talking power and perception, I want to propose a May Day parade."
That raised Lenin's eyebrow.
"A public show of strength and unity," I said. "Red Guards marching in formation. Flags, uniforms, drums. The people are scared and angry and starving. They need to see order. Strength. And you, Comrade Lenin—rifle in hand, walking at the front. You are the symbol."
He narrowed his eyes. "You want me parading like a tsar?"
"I want you to be the opposite of a tsar," I said firmly. "But a symbol all the same. The average Russian peasant has never read Das Kapital or the communist manifesto. Hell, most of them can't read. But they understand symbols. Uniforms. Banners. Heroes. You march with them, and they'll follow you anywhere."
"And when do we teach them the theory?"
"After we win the war," I said. "Power first, then theory."
There was a silence.
I leaned back, glanced at his cigarette pack. "Also, respectfully, you should consider quitting smoking. And drinking. You're about to be the soul of a revolution. Maybe don't die from lung or liver failure before we get to the end."
Stalin barked a laugh. I glanced at him. "You too brother." He scowled.
Lenin didn't laugh at all, or scowls.
For a long, uncomfortable moment, he just stared at me. Then, slowly, he set the cigarette he'd been rolling down on the table and folded his hands.
"You speak like a man who's lived through this before."
"I just read a lot," I said, smiling faintly. "Sun
Tzu's art of war, Caesar's commentaries on Gaul, Napoleon's biography, Machiavelli's the prince, Moltke, Bismark, Clausewitz. Anything and everything on politics and military tactics I could get my hands on. I stole ideas from all of them, synthesized them into my own."
Lenin exhaled through his nose.
"What do you think?" he asked Stalin, still not looking away from me.
Stalin shrugged. "He's pragmatic. Cynical. Slightly unhinged. I trust him."
"High praise," I said dryly.
Lenin turned his gaze back to me. "Your proposal… it's terrifying. Bureaucratic. Militaristic. Contradictory to many principles of grassroots revolutionary thought."
He paused.
"I like it."
I blinked. "You do?"
"It's realistic. Brutal, but grounded in the facts. You're right—the old order will not go quietly. We cannot meet them with disorder and poetry. We must meet them with steel."
He stood. "You'll draft a formal structure for these corps and committees. Bring it to me by the week's end. I want clear chains of command. Oversight bodies. Vetted officers. And most importantly—loyalty to the Party above all else."
"Understood."
"And the May Day parade?" he said.
I shrugged. "You'll need a rifle."
"I've got one," he said. "But I'll only march if you and Stalin march."
Stalin smirked again. I nodded. "Got it. I'll have my men march with you at the front."
Lenin lit the cigarette he had set down earlier. "And I'll consider cutting back. After we win."
"Fair enough," I said, standing with him.
As I turned to go, Lenin called after me.
"Mikheil."
"Yes?"
"You're not afraid of what you're building?"
I paused. Thought for a moment. Then said, "Only if the wrong men are left to run it."
He didn't answer. Just nodded.
And I left the room, already drafting blueprints in my mind for an army of shadows and an empire of symbols.
The revolution was sharpening its teeth.
Zander12700
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A blueprint for a dictatorship
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Smolny Institute
April 24, 1917
Morning
The room was quiet save for the rhythmic scratching of Lenin's pen as he underlined a passage for the third time. Stalin sat off to the side, legs crossed, a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray he'd emptied twice already. I stood near the window, arms behind my back, watching them read through the draft I'd handed over ten minutes earlier.
It was long. Dense. The kind of thing you write when you've got too much time and just enough paranoia.
I'd titled it plainly: Organizational Blueprint for Revolutionary Security and Continuity of Power. Subtle enough to pass as bureaucratic, dangerous enough to matter.
Lenin finally leaned back, fingers steepled under his chin, expression hard to read. Not impressed exactly—but focused. Like he was examining a pistol, curious whether it would shoot or blow up in his hand.
Stalin was the first to speak.
"Well," he muttered, tapping ash into the tray, "it reads like something written by a man who's had three near-death experiences and doesn't want a fourth."
I turned. "I'm flattered."
Lenin closed the folder slowly. "This is… ambitious."
"That's a word for it," Stalin added. "Another word might be 'terrifying.'"
I gave a slight shrug. "I read a lot. Bonaparte. Clausewitz. Moltke. San Martín. Sun Tzu. I ripped off a little from everyone—stole some of the best tools in the toolbox and welded them together with paranoia and revolutionary theory."
"You forgot Machiavelli," Lenin said.
"I thought that was implied."
Lenin's eyes twitched, just slightly, with something resembling amusement. "The sheer level of cross-surveillance here is dizzying. It's not so much checks and balances as it is checks and purges."
"Welcome to continuity of power," I said. "You want to remake society? You'll need to survive the first five years. That won't happen if the army crowns itself a Caesar the moment you turn your back. Or if the secret police becomes a state within a state. This is how you stop that."
Lenin tapped the file. "The State Commissariat for Anti-Bonapartist Security… SCABS?"
"I wanted something memorable," I said. "No one forgets a bad rash."
Stalin choked on his tea.
Lenin did not laugh. But he did exhale sharply through his nose, which was the closest thing I'd seen to a chuckle.
"You realize," Lenin said slowly, "this creates a permanent apparatus of mutual suspicion. The army fears the Guard. The Guard fears the KGB. The KGB fears the Party. The Party fears itself."
"That's the point," I said. "You want a revolution that survives? Make betrayal a suicide mission. No one builds a cult of personality when they're under ideological surveillance and counter-Bonapartist monitoring."
"Sounds exhausting," Stalin muttered. "But effective."
Lenin laced his fingers. "The Party remains supreme in this. Every officer, every commander, every guard dog swears loyalty to the Party, not the state, not the people, not the leader. That's good."
"It'll prevent another Napoleon," I said.
"Or another Tsar," Stalin added.
Lenin leaned back, quiet again. For a while, he just stared at the ceiling, mind clearly spinning.
"You understand," he said at last, "what you're building is not just a defense mechanism. It's a permanent state of war. A war against betrayal. Against memory. Against the inevitability of decay. You're building a machine that eats its own shadow."
"Yes," I said.
"And you're fine with that?"
"I'd rather we eat our own shadow," I replied, "than let a general eat the revolution."
That hung in the air for a while.
Then Stalin stood, stretched, and walked over to the samovar.
"Well, he's mad," he muttered. "But he's our kind of mad."
Lenin didn't smile, but his voice was lighter now. "I should hate it. It contradicts half of what I believe about democratic centralism and mass line theory."
"But?"
"But," he said, "I've also read history. And unlike our idealist friends, I remember the part where Robespierre lost his head."
I nodded. "You don't win revolutions with purity. You win them with power—and then decide what kind of purity you can afford."
Lenin picked up the folder again. "Very well. I'll submit this to the Central Committee. Not all of it will pass—not yet—but enough will stick."
"May Day parade still on?" I asked.
He gave me a look. "Only if you promise not to make me wear medals."
"No medals," I said. "But a rifle. Big, flashy. Maybe a red sash if you're feeling theatrical."
"I'm not."
"We'll work on it. You should do a speech near the end. I'll get to typing one up for you."
Lenin flipped to the final page again. "This Decree 1917-A… Emergency powers. It allows the Guard and the KGB to override civil leadership."
"Only in case of coup attempts," I said.
"Coup attempts defined by…?"
"Two people. The KGB Director and the Commander of the Revolutionary Guard. And only with NDC ratification."
"And if you are the Commander of the Guard?" Lenin asked.
"Then I hope someone's watching me just as closely."
He stared at me.
Then he nodded, once.
"Stalin," he said, "I want you overseeing the formation of the NDC. Start assembling candidates for the Joint Chiefs, RGC command, and preliminary KGB directorates."
Stalin gave a short nod. "On it."
I exhaled. Quietly.
"And Mikheil," Lenin said.
I turned.
"SCABS?" he asked again, deadpan.
I shrugged. "You'll remember it, won't you?"
He closed the folder.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I think I will."
----------
Organizational Blueprint for Revolutionary Security and Continuity of Power.
By Mikheil Jugashvili: April 24, 1917
I. NATIONAL LEADERSHIP
1. Supreme Organ of National Security: The National Defense Council (NDC)
Chairman: Vladimir Lenin (or General Secretary of the Party)
Deputy Chairmen: Head of Joint Chiefs, Commander of Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC), Director of the KGB
Function: Central body overseeing all armed institutions, coordinates war effort, approves military doctrine, appoints top commanders with Politburo ratification.
---
II. SOVIET ARMED FORCES (SAF)
Structure:
Branches: Army, Navy, Air Force
Supreme Military Command: Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)
Chiefs of each branch report to the Chairman of the JCS
Chairman reports directly to the NDC
Political Oversight:
Party Commissars embedded at every battalion and ship level
Commissariat for Political Discipline reports to the Party Central Committee
---
III. REVOLUTIONARY GUARD CORPS (RGC)
Purpose:
Protect the Party, Party leadership, and key infrastructure
Prevent Bonapartism, coup attempts, and high-level internal subversion
Structure:
Branches: Army Guard Division, Air Guard Wing
Supreme Commander of the RGC reports to the NDC
Battalion-Level Loyalty Officers appointed by the Party Central Committee
Training and Equipment:
Smaller but elite, equipped with modern weapons, armored vehicles, air assets
Officers trained in both military doctrine and Marxist-Leninist theory
Oversight:
Office of Political Security (OPS) within the RGC:
Monitors ideological purity
Collaborates with KGB's State Commissariat
RGC promotions require Party Central Committee vetting
---
IV. NATIONAL GUARD (NG)
Purpose:
Internal Security, Protest Control, Counter-Sedition, Urban Policing
Command:
Operates under the Committee for State Security (KGB)
Local units report to Regional Security Councils chaired by Party appointees
National Commander of the National Guard reports to the Director of the KGB
---
V. COMMITTEE FOR STATE SECURITY (KGB)
Structure:
Director of the KGB reports directly to the NDC
Operates with autonomy from military chain of command
Five Primary Directorates:
1. Criminal Control Directorate (CCD)
Investigates high crimes, black markets, organized crime
Works with NG and Revolutionary Tribunals
2. Party Monitoring Directorate (PMD)
Monitors loyalty, discipline, and political activity of all Party members
Authorizes surveillance, internal investigations, and purges
3. Military Intelligence Directorate (MID)
Strategic and battlefield intelligence for wartime
Liaises with SAF and RGC high command
4. External Espionage Directorate (EED)
Overseas operations, agent networks, and foreign subversion
Reports to both the Director and a secret subcommittee of the Politburo
5. State Commissariat for Anti-Bonapartist Security (SCABS)
Dedicated to rooting out military adventurism, disloyalty, and rising charismatic officers
Has internal jurisdiction over both the SAF and RGC
Can arrest, interrogate, and detain military officers upon NDC authorization
---
VI. OVERSIGHT AND INTERNAL CHECKS
1. Party Central Committee (PCC)
Appoints all senior officers in RGC, KGB, and SAF with background vetting
Runs Cadre Evaluation Commission: permanent office that reviews ideological purity, finances, and personal conduct
2. Inspectorate-General of the Revolution
Independent arm of the PCC that audits and investigates all branches
Has arrest powers in collaboration with the KGB
Staffed by trusted revolutionaries and theoretical purists
---
VII. VETTING AND LOYALTY ASSURANCE
1. Loyalty Oaths:
All officers must swear loyalty to the Party—not the state or any individual leader
Oaths renewed annually, with symbolic ceremonies and psychological testing
2. Dual Command System:
Every combat or intelligence unit has:
Commander (Military discipline)
Political Officer (Party loyalty)
No order is valid without approval from both
3. Officer Schools:
Revolutionary Military Academy: For SAF
Red Guard College: For RGC
Lenin Institute of Security and Ideology: For KGB and National Guard
All institutions include Marxist theory, Party history, and Bonapartism awareness training
---
VIII. EMERGENCY POWERS CLAUSE
In the event of a suspected coup or insurrection:
The Director of the KGB and Commander of the RGC may jointly invoke Decree No. 1917-A, which:
Suspends civil command authority
Grants emergency arrest and purge powers
Triggers full activation of RGC and NG under joint control of the NDC
April 24, 1917
Morning
The room was quiet save for the rhythmic scratching of Lenin's pen as he underlined a passage for the third time. Stalin sat off to the side, legs crossed, a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray he'd emptied twice already. I stood near the window, arms behind my back, watching them read through the draft I'd handed over ten minutes earlier.
It was long. Dense. The kind of thing you write when you've got too much time and just enough paranoia.
I'd titled it plainly: Organizational Blueprint for Revolutionary Security and Continuity of Power. Subtle enough to pass as bureaucratic, dangerous enough to matter.
Lenin finally leaned back, fingers steepled under his chin, expression hard to read. Not impressed exactly—but focused. Like he was examining a pistol, curious whether it would shoot or blow up in his hand.
Stalin was the first to speak.
"Well," he muttered, tapping ash into the tray, "it reads like something written by a man who's had three near-death experiences and doesn't want a fourth."
I turned. "I'm flattered."
Lenin closed the folder slowly. "This is… ambitious."
"That's a word for it," Stalin added. "Another word might be 'terrifying.'"
I gave a slight shrug. "I read a lot. Bonaparte. Clausewitz. Moltke. San Martín. Sun Tzu. I ripped off a little from everyone—stole some of the best tools in the toolbox and welded them together with paranoia and revolutionary theory."
"You forgot Machiavelli," Lenin said.
"I thought that was implied."
Lenin's eyes twitched, just slightly, with something resembling amusement. "The sheer level of cross-surveillance here is dizzying. It's not so much checks and balances as it is checks and purges."
"Welcome to continuity of power," I said. "You want to remake society? You'll need to survive the first five years. That won't happen if the army crowns itself a Caesar the moment you turn your back. Or if the secret police becomes a state within a state. This is how you stop that."
Lenin tapped the file. "The State Commissariat for Anti-Bonapartist Security… SCABS?"
"I wanted something memorable," I said. "No one forgets a bad rash."
Stalin choked on his tea.
Lenin did not laugh. But he did exhale sharply through his nose, which was the closest thing I'd seen to a chuckle.
"You realize," Lenin said slowly, "this creates a permanent apparatus of mutual suspicion. The army fears the Guard. The Guard fears the KGB. The KGB fears the Party. The Party fears itself."
"That's the point," I said. "You want a revolution that survives? Make betrayal a suicide mission. No one builds a cult of personality when they're under ideological surveillance and counter-Bonapartist monitoring."
"Sounds exhausting," Stalin muttered. "But effective."
Lenin laced his fingers. "The Party remains supreme in this. Every officer, every commander, every guard dog swears loyalty to the Party, not the state, not the people, not the leader. That's good."
"It'll prevent another Napoleon," I said.
"Or another Tsar," Stalin added.
Lenin leaned back, quiet again. For a while, he just stared at the ceiling, mind clearly spinning.
"You understand," he said at last, "what you're building is not just a defense mechanism. It's a permanent state of war. A war against betrayal. Against memory. Against the inevitability of decay. You're building a machine that eats its own shadow."
"Yes," I said.
"And you're fine with that?"
"I'd rather we eat our own shadow," I replied, "than let a general eat the revolution."
That hung in the air for a while.
Then Stalin stood, stretched, and walked over to the samovar.
"Well, he's mad," he muttered. "But he's our kind of mad."
Lenin didn't smile, but his voice was lighter now. "I should hate it. It contradicts half of what I believe about democratic centralism and mass line theory."
"But?"
"But," he said, "I've also read history. And unlike our idealist friends, I remember the part where Robespierre lost his head."
I nodded. "You don't win revolutions with purity. You win them with power—and then decide what kind of purity you can afford."
Lenin picked up the folder again. "Very well. I'll submit this to the Central Committee. Not all of it will pass—not yet—but enough will stick."
"May Day parade still on?" I asked.
He gave me a look. "Only if you promise not to make me wear medals."
"No medals," I said. "But a rifle. Big, flashy. Maybe a red sash if you're feeling theatrical."
"I'm not."
"We'll work on it. You should do a speech near the end. I'll get to typing one up for you."
Lenin flipped to the final page again. "This Decree 1917-A… Emergency powers. It allows the Guard and the KGB to override civil leadership."
"Only in case of coup attempts," I said.
"Coup attempts defined by…?"
"Two people. The KGB Director and the Commander of the Revolutionary Guard. And only with NDC ratification."
"And if you are the Commander of the Guard?" Lenin asked.
"Then I hope someone's watching me just as closely."
He stared at me.
Then he nodded, once.
"Stalin," he said, "I want you overseeing the formation of the NDC. Start assembling candidates for the Joint Chiefs, RGC command, and preliminary KGB directorates."
Stalin gave a short nod. "On it."
I exhaled. Quietly.
"And Mikheil," Lenin said.
I turned.
"SCABS?" he asked again, deadpan.
I shrugged. "You'll remember it, won't you?"
He closed the folder.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I think I will."
----------
Organizational Blueprint for Revolutionary Security and Continuity of Power.
By Mikheil Jugashvili: April 24, 1917
I. NATIONAL LEADERSHIP
1. Supreme Organ of National Security: The National Defense Council (NDC)
Chairman: Vladimir Lenin (or General Secretary of the Party)
Deputy Chairmen: Head of Joint Chiefs, Commander of Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC), Director of the KGB
Function: Central body overseeing all armed institutions, coordinates war effort, approves military doctrine, appoints top commanders with Politburo ratification.
---
II. SOVIET ARMED FORCES (SAF)
Structure:
Branches: Army, Navy, Air Force
Supreme Military Command: Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)
Chiefs of each branch report to the Chairman of the JCS
Chairman reports directly to the NDC
Political Oversight:
Party Commissars embedded at every battalion and ship level
Commissariat for Political Discipline reports to the Party Central Committee
---
III. REVOLUTIONARY GUARD CORPS (RGC)
Purpose:
Protect the Party, Party leadership, and key infrastructure
Prevent Bonapartism, coup attempts, and high-level internal subversion
Structure:
Branches: Army Guard Division, Air Guard Wing
Supreme Commander of the RGC reports to the NDC
Battalion-Level Loyalty Officers appointed by the Party Central Committee
Training and Equipment:
Smaller but elite, equipped with modern weapons, armored vehicles, air assets
Officers trained in both military doctrine and Marxist-Leninist theory
Oversight:
Office of Political Security (OPS) within the RGC:
Monitors ideological purity
Collaborates with KGB's State Commissariat
RGC promotions require Party Central Committee vetting
---
IV. NATIONAL GUARD (NG)
Purpose:
Internal Security, Protest Control, Counter-Sedition, Urban Policing
Command:
Operates under the Committee for State Security (KGB)
Local units report to Regional Security Councils chaired by Party appointees
National Commander of the National Guard reports to the Director of the KGB
---
V. COMMITTEE FOR STATE SECURITY (KGB)
Structure:
Director of the KGB reports directly to the NDC
Operates with autonomy from military chain of command
Five Primary Directorates:
1. Criminal Control Directorate (CCD)
Investigates high crimes, black markets, organized crime
Works with NG and Revolutionary Tribunals
2. Party Monitoring Directorate (PMD)
Monitors loyalty, discipline, and political activity of all Party members
Authorizes surveillance, internal investigations, and purges
3. Military Intelligence Directorate (MID)
Strategic and battlefield intelligence for wartime
Liaises with SAF and RGC high command
4. External Espionage Directorate (EED)
Overseas operations, agent networks, and foreign subversion
Reports to both the Director and a secret subcommittee of the Politburo
5. State Commissariat for Anti-Bonapartist Security (SCABS)
Dedicated to rooting out military adventurism, disloyalty, and rising charismatic officers
Has internal jurisdiction over both the SAF and RGC
Can arrest, interrogate, and detain military officers upon NDC authorization
---
VI. OVERSIGHT AND INTERNAL CHECKS
1. Party Central Committee (PCC)
Appoints all senior officers in RGC, KGB, and SAF with background vetting
Runs Cadre Evaluation Commission: permanent office that reviews ideological purity, finances, and personal conduct
2. Inspectorate-General of the Revolution
Independent arm of the PCC that audits and investigates all branches
Has arrest powers in collaboration with the KGB
Staffed by trusted revolutionaries and theoretical purists
---
VII. VETTING AND LOYALTY ASSURANCE
1. Loyalty Oaths:
All officers must swear loyalty to the Party—not the state or any individual leader
Oaths renewed annually, with symbolic ceremonies and psychological testing
2. Dual Command System:
Every combat or intelligence unit has:
Commander (Military discipline)
Political Officer (Party loyalty)
No order is valid without approval from both
3. Officer Schools:
Revolutionary Military Academy: For SAF
Red Guard College: For RGC
Lenin Institute of Security and Ideology: For KGB and National Guard
All institutions include Marxist theory, Party history, and Bonapartism awareness training
---
VIII. EMERGENCY POWERS CLAUSE
In the event of a suspected coup or insurrection:
The Director of the KGB and Commander of the RGC may jointly invoke Decree No. 1917-A, which:
Suspends civil command authority
Grants emergency arrest and purge powers
Triggers full activation of RGC and NG under joint control of the NDC
UndeadLord22
Fan Composer
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I want him to make a joke using this:
Strategic Transfer of Equipment to Alternate Location
STEAL
Strategic Transfer of Equipment to Alternate Location
STEAL
krahe
Versed in the lewd.
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A bit of translated fun with acronyms, if go from SCABS to keep the meaning of funny word play and close to what SCABS mean, it could be translated as КОРА, Комитет Обороны Революционного Авангардизма or Committee for Defense of Revolutionary Vanguardism. Which also a funny nod to KGB, which is Committee for State Security. Speaking of, at the 1917 it wasn't KGB, but VChK, KGB was founded way in the 30s
May day dismay
Alenco98
Not too sore, are you?
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May 1, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Dawn
Spring had finally arrived in Petrograd, brushing away the last sour chill of winter. A crisp breeze swept through the city's battered streets, carrying with it the smell of fresh bread, coal smoke, and the faintest hint of something revolutionary—or maybe just uncollected garbage. You couldn't always tell the difference in Petrograd.
The sun was just beginning to rise, throwing soft gold against the old façade of Smolny. And behind me, standing in sharp formation, were two hundred of my finest men.
Not all of them, of course. The other five hundred were off doing other—necessary—things. Protecting the city's many unofficial "taxpayers." Brothels, black markets, smuggling dens, gambling parlors—you name it. The underworld didn't fund itself. And Lenin didn't need to know where the rubles, ammo, food and guns were coming from, only that I had expanded my force from the original sixty to a crisp seven hundred in just a few weeks.
And it wasn't even technically a lie. I had expanded. I just... started from three hundred. Call it revolutionary rounding.
Then he appeared. Right on time.
Lenin emerged from Smolny's front doors with the posture of a man who hadn't slept in two days and had personally tried to edit every speech, leaflet, and agitprop poster in Petrograd by hand. His coat hung off his frame like a flag on a dying wind. There were bags under his eyes deeper than the trenches on the Eastern Front.
"Salute!" I shouted, sharp and clear.
As one, my men raised their right arms in a crisp, militaristic gesture. Call it "Roman" if you like—but we all knew what kind of aura farming we were aiming for. Lenin, mid-step, stopped with a visible twitch in his jaw and a brief look that said 'What in the name of Marx is this?' before composing himself.
"…At ease," he muttered with diplomatic restraint. The arms lowered.
He didn't ask questions. Smart man.
These were my best. Hardened veterans, loyal as dogs, mostly former police from my old precinct, and a few newer additions: criminals, gang enforcers, even a couple ex-Okhrana officers I'd worked with. But to Lenin, they were all just ex-cops, thoroughly reformed and ideologically reliable. And very well-dressed.
Black military tunics—clean, tailored, sharp as razors. Red armbands with the revolutionary star stitched in gold thread. Black boots polished to a shine, with crimson stars painted on the toes. Their helmets—painted a striking, aggressive red—bore the totenkopf insignia on the side, just for flair. I liked the symbolism. Skull and star. Death and revolution. And yes, I was aware I had just invented something that looked eerily similar to the future SS. But technically, I'd beaten Hitler to it. Suck it, Adolf.
They looked magnificent. Imposing. Terrifying. The sort of unit that would make both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks nervous—and that was the point. I wasn't here to make friends. I was here to make history.
I stepped forward and took a bolt-action rifle from Comrade Bear, our resident circus-strongman-turned-henchman, who was now moonlighting as quartermaster. I handed the rifle to Lenin.
"You ever shoot one before?"
He blinked at it like I'd just handed him a dead raccoon.
"I have not."
"Perfect," I said cheerfully. "You're a fast learner. I'll show you. During your speech, fire it into the air. It'll be symbolic—powerful. The masses will love it."
He frowned. Deeply.
"I am not a Caesar," he said flatly.
"No one cares," I replied. "Symbols matter. Slogans matter. You can give the best speech in the world, quote Marx and Engels until your throat dries out—but if there's no theatre, no bang, it'll fade. People want drama. They want fire. Shoot once in the air, raise a fist, and they'll follow you to the ends of the Earth."
He looked like he wanted to spit. Instead, he crossed his arms. "I will not turn this into a pantomime."
"I'm asking for one shot. Not a golden chariot and a laurel crown."
Before he could object further, I took the rifle back, chambered a round, aimed up at the sky, and fired. The crack echoed across the square, scattering a few pigeons and earning some awed murmurs from the early crowd gathering down the street. I cycled the bolt, checked the chamber, and handed it back to him.
"Simple," I said. "Even the tsar could manage it, and he couldn't wipe own shit."
He stared at the rifle like it might bite him. Behind me, Comrade Bear brought forth the next item—a large, slightly lumpy, canvas-wrapped object.
"Here," I said, taking it. "Put this on."
"What is it?"
"Bulletproof vest. Improvised, but effective. Layers of steel plate, cotton, and guilt. If things turn ugly, I'd rather not have to mop your brains off the palace steps."
He didn't take it.
"And this," I added, taking a bright red helmet from Bear, "is for your head. I'd prefer to keep that intact too."
"I am not wearing a helmet," he snapped. "I am not a tsar, a general, or a mascot."
"And I am not letting you get shot by some idiot with a grudge and a revolver."
There was a long pause. His jaw clenched. His hand gripped the rifle tightly. He looked, for a moment, like a man regretting every decision that had led to this precise moment in his life.
Then he took the vest.
"Fine. But if I fall off the podium from the weight, I'm blaming you."
"You fall off the podium, I'll have Stalin tell Pravda to write that it was a heroic dive to avoid a sniper."
He sighed—long, low, exhausted. "I miss exile. No parades in exile. Just books and terrible cheese."
"Welcome to power, Comrade."
Behind us, the sun crested fully over the rooftops, casting the whole plaza in gold. My men stood tall. The people were gathering. The flags were being raised. Revolution had a stage now.
And at the center of it stood Lenin.
Bulletproof. Armed. Slightly miserable.
Perfect.
May 1, 1917
Tauride Square, Petrograd
Midday
The plaza was packed.
Workers with soot-streaked faces. Soldiers on leave, some already drunk. Peasants in from the countryside, wide-eyed and underfed. Women holding children. Men holding pamphlets. And, scattered among them, the various self-appointed champions of revolution—Mensheviks with well-worn boots, Social Revolutionaries handing out slogans like candy, anarchists grumbling about hierarchy while forming one in their own corner.
And at the center—looming above it all—stood the temporary podium erected in front of the Tauride Palace, draped in red cloth and festooned with banners bearing hammers, sickles, stars, and slogans so aggressive they practically yelled at you.
I stood off to the side with Comrade Bear and a few of my officers, arms folded, watching the crowd. My men flanked the square, standing like silent statues in their sleek black tunics, red armbands and helmets gleaming in the sun. The totenkopf insignias were drawing whispers already. I could hear them:
"Who are those men?"
"Bolsheviks?"
"No, I heard they're comrade Makarov's. They say he's building his own army."
"A personal guard?"
"Looks like the Okhrana in red."
"Better dressed."
I smirked slightly.
Let them talk.
On the stage, Lenin adjusted the improvised bulletproof vest under his coat for the third time. It didn't fit well—nothing about Lenin said "tactical chic." But he had accepted it, and that meant something. In one hand he held the rifle I'd given him, pointed downward, more prop than weapon. His other hand gripped the edge of the lectern, knuckles white.
Then he stepped forward.
The square fell silent. It was uncanny how quickly the noise died when he spoke.
"Comrades," Lenin began, voice harsh, clipped, worn with exhaustion—but resonant with something deeper: conviction.
"We stand today not as subjects, not as slaves to czars, nor servants to capitalists—but as a people awakening. The February Revolution was the first step. It brought down the autocrat—but it did not feed us. It did not give land to the peasant. It did not end the war."
A murmur of agreement passed through the crowd.
"What does the Provisional Government offer us? Patience. Delays. More death on the front. More promises to landlords. More ration lines. More speeches. More suffering. The same misery, with a new name!"
The people stirred.
"We are not interested in cosmetic change. We do not want a revolution with gloves. We want transformation."
He lifted his head. Eyes scanning the crowd.
"We demand bread—because we are starving."
"Bread!" someone shouted from the crowd.
"We demand peace—because our sons die in a war they did not start and cannot finish."
"Peace!" another voice called, and more joined in.
"And we demand land—because the land belongs to the hands that till it, not the boots that trample it!"
The crowd roared:
"BREAD! PEACE! LAND!"
"BREAD! PEACE! LAND!"
Lenin waited, arms raised, letting the chant echo until it began to fade.
"The Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies are the only legitimate power in Russia. Power must pass from the capitalists to the proletariat. Not tomorrow. Not after a conference. Now."
"All power to the Soviets!" someone yelled. Dozens followed.
"ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS!"
Lenin nodded. Raised the rifle—reluctantly, but deliberately.
He pointed it skyward.
For a moment, he paused, looked down at me where I stood off to the side.
I gave a small nod.
He pulled the trigger.
The shot cracked like thunder.
The square exploded with cheers.
It was absurd, theatrical, even a bit ridiculous—but it worked. The crowd adored it. That one symbolic shot sealed it. It wasn't just the words—it was the image.
Lenin: the theorist, the exile, the Marxist philosopher—had just fired a gun into the sky to herald revolution.
History wouldn't forget it.
And neither would the other factions.
---
Later, inside the Tauride
Lenin was wiping sweat from his brow with a frayed handkerchief. I handed him a glass of water. He downed it like it was vodka.
"That was the most I've ever sweated in my life," he muttered. "I nearly dropped the rifle. And this vest itches."
"It looked glorious," I said.
"I looked like a circus bear dressed by a paranoid tailor."
"Bear says thank you."
He gave me a sidelong glance. "You've done well, Mikheil. Too well."
I raised an eyebrow. "That a compliment or a warning?"
"Both," he said. "Your men… they impressed the crowd. But they also drew attention."
"Good," I replied. "Let them talk. Let the Mensheviks stew."
"I'm not worried about the Mensheviks," he said. "I'm worried about some of our own. There are whispers. That you're building a personal army. That you're... a shadow to the Party."
I didn't flinch. "And what do you think?"
"I think you're an asset," he said, "because you understand what most of these theorists don't: revolutions don't survive on pamphlets and declarations. They survive on power. On structure. On fear. And loyalty."
Then he sighed. "But you also terrify them. And perhaps you should. A revolution without fear is a poem, not a movement."
Stalin, who had been leaning silently against the far wall, finally spoke.
"Mikheil's not a Bonaparte," he said. "If anything, he's our Dzerzhinsky. Just... better dressed and worse behaved."
"High praise," I said. "I'll embroider it on a pillow."
Lenin nodded. "For now, keep the Guard visible. But do nothing flashy for a while. No new uniforms. No new titles. No marches in helmets with skulls."
"Too late on the skulls."
"I mean it. Let the idea of order settle. Don't force it."
"Understood."
He stood, stretched, and winced at the vest. "Next time I give a speech, no guns."
"No promises," I said.
Outside, the chants were still faintly echoing through the streets. Bread. Peace. Land.
But now… they chanted something else too.
"Lenin! Soviet Power!"
I glanced at Stalin. He looked amused, but not surprised.
Lenin rubbed his temples.
"God help me," he muttered. "I think I just became a symbol."
May 1, 1917
Evening
Mikheil's Apartment
Petrograd
The apartment stank of cheap coffee, gun oil, and burnt cabbage. Stalin had kicked off his boots, loosened his collar, and was pouring tea like it was morphine. Outside, Petrograd still buzzed with the electric afterglow of revolution and parade hysteria. The chants had faded, but the tension hadn't.
I was sitting on the arm of the couch, still in uniform, cap tilted back, polishing a revolver with the casual affection of a man cradling a future.
Keke was in the kitchen making dinner with Aleksandra while the kids were playing in the living room. Besarion thank God was asleep.
"That," I said, "was just the beginning."
Stalin grunted. "You're starting to sound like Lenin."
"I'm flattered."
I leaned forward. "I've had reports—spies in the various Red Guard militias. Word is, some of them want in. They saw the parade, the uniforms, the discipline. My boys look like a future. The rest of them? They look like a drunken choir at a rifle range."
Stalin sipped his tea, watching me.
"I'll probably have a few thousand by the end of the month," I said. "Volunteers. Defectors."
There was a beat of silence. Keke was humming a Georgian lullaby as Aleksandra chopped vegetables. The room was warm but coiled like a spring.
"I'm going to start taking over the entire Petrograd underworld," I said casually. "Systematically. One gang at a time. Redirect smuggling routes. Fold the brothels, gambling dens, and forgers into my logistics network. We'll need all the resources we can get to fund this army. I even have plans for a few underground factories to start making guns and ammo."
Stalin inhaled deeply, his expression unreadable. "You're building a state within the state."
"I'm building the spine of a state," I replied. "Lenin can write pamphlets. You can rise through the party. But someone's got to arm and feed the men."
Another pause, Stalin stared at me for a long moment, then stood and walked to the window. He looked out over the flickering city.
"People are going to fear you."
"They already do."
"You could become a threat to Lenin."
"Only if he becomes a threat to us."
He didn't turn around.
Finally, he said, "Just make sure he doesn't become a threat."
I smiled. "As you say."
---
May 2, 1917
Lvov Cabinet Meeting
Mariinsky Palace, Petrograd
Prince Lvov looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. He probably hadn't. The war, the land question, Petrograd's descent into a semi-armed commune—all of it was devouring him slowly.
"Gentlemen," he said, voice hoarse, "yesterday's May Day parade… was a disaster."
The ministers shuffled papers nervously. Minister of War Guchkov, beet-faced with rage, slapped a photo on the table.
"These blackshirts—who are they? Why are they marching? Armed? With helmets? And skulls?"
"I heard they're Bolshevik," said Foreign Minister Milyukov.
Lvov buried his face in his hands. "We're losing control."
"You never had it," Guchkov muttered.
"There were thousands in the crowd!" shouted Justice Minister Pereverzev. "Cheering Lenin like he was a Tsar in red. And what did we do? Sit here and sip tea!"
"The Bolsheviks are building a parallel state!" Guchkov barked. "Lenin is writing manifestos—his underlings arming men! If we don't act now, there won't be a Provisional Government left by the end of the year."
Milyukov looked up slowly. "So what do we do?"
Everyone paused.
No one answered.
---
May 2, 1917
Bolshevik Inner Circle Meeting
Smolny Institute
Lenin sat at the head of the table, still in his dusty coat from the day before, reading Mikheil's most recent logistical report. It read more like a military occupation plan than a political memo. Recruitment numbers, uniform standardization, disciplinary protocol, even plans for underground arms factories.
Zinoviev was the first to speak.
"This is insane. He's setting up a personal army. Did you see those uniforms yesterday? Black, red, and skulls? It looked like the revolution had joined a death cult."
Kamenev grumbled. "He's worse than Dzerzhinsky, and Dzerzhinsky hasn't even arrived yet."
"He's effective," Lenin said quietly.
"Effective?!" Zinoviev exclaimed. "He's got death squads in the planning stages!"
"He also has seven hundred men who answer to the Party," Lenin replied. "Armed. Loyal. And capable of doing what the Red Guards can't."
"But how long until he decides the Party answers to him?"
Lenin looked up slowly. "Then we put a bullet in his head."
The room went silent.
Stalin, sitting in the corner with his usual quiet smirk, finally spoke.
"He's not a Bonaparte," Stalin said. "He's a butcher. But he's our butcher."
"Until he starts writing our names down," Kamenev muttered.
Lenin stood. "We'll let him build—for now. We need order. We need muscle. When Trotsky arrives, we'll reassess. But until then…"
He glanced around the room.
"Let the wolves do our hunting."
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Dawn
Spring had finally arrived in Petrograd, brushing away the last sour chill of winter. A crisp breeze swept through the city's battered streets, carrying with it the smell of fresh bread, coal smoke, and the faintest hint of something revolutionary—or maybe just uncollected garbage. You couldn't always tell the difference in Petrograd.
The sun was just beginning to rise, throwing soft gold against the old façade of Smolny. And behind me, standing in sharp formation, were two hundred of my finest men.
Not all of them, of course. The other five hundred were off doing other—necessary—things. Protecting the city's many unofficial "taxpayers." Brothels, black markets, smuggling dens, gambling parlors—you name it. The underworld didn't fund itself. And Lenin didn't need to know where the rubles, ammo, food and guns were coming from, only that I had expanded my force from the original sixty to a crisp seven hundred in just a few weeks.
And it wasn't even technically a lie. I had expanded. I just... started from three hundred. Call it revolutionary rounding.
Then he appeared. Right on time.
Lenin emerged from Smolny's front doors with the posture of a man who hadn't slept in two days and had personally tried to edit every speech, leaflet, and agitprop poster in Petrograd by hand. His coat hung off his frame like a flag on a dying wind. There were bags under his eyes deeper than the trenches on the Eastern Front.
"Salute!" I shouted, sharp and clear.
As one, my men raised their right arms in a crisp, militaristic gesture. Call it "Roman" if you like—but we all knew what kind of aura farming we were aiming for. Lenin, mid-step, stopped with a visible twitch in his jaw and a brief look that said 'What in the name of Marx is this?' before composing himself.
"…At ease," he muttered with diplomatic restraint. The arms lowered.
He didn't ask questions. Smart man.
These were my best. Hardened veterans, loyal as dogs, mostly former police from my old precinct, and a few newer additions: criminals, gang enforcers, even a couple ex-Okhrana officers I'd worked with. But to Lenin, they were all just ex-cops, thoroughly reformed and ideologically reliable. And very well-dressed.
Black military tunics—clean, tailored, sharp as razors. Red armbands with the revolutionary star stitched in gold thread. Black boots polished to a shine, with crimson stars painted on the toes. Their helmets—painted a striking, aggressive red—bore the totenkopf insignia on the side, just for flair. I liked the symbolism. Skull and star. Death and revolution. And yes, I was aware I had just invented something that looked eerily similar to the future SS. But technically, I'd beaten Hitler to it. Suck it, Adolf.
They looked magnificent. Imposing. Terrifying. The sort of unit that would make both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks nervous—and that was the point. I wasn't here to make friends. I was here to make history.
I stepped forward and took a bolt-action rifle from Comrade Bear, our resident circus-strongman-turned-henchman, who was now moonlighting as quartermaster. I handed the rifle to Lenin.
"You ever shoot one before?"
He blinked at it like I'd just handed him a dead raccoon.
"I have not."
"Perfect," I said cheerfully. "You're a fast learner. I'll show you. During your speech, fire it into the air. It'll be symbolic—powerful. The masses will love it."
He frowned. Deeply.
"I am not a Caesar," he said flatly.
"No one cares," I replied. "Symbols matter. Slogans matter. You can give the best speech in the world, quote Marx and Engels until your throat dries out—but if there's no theatre, no bang, it'll fade. People want drama. They want fire. Shoot once in the air, raise a fist, and they'll follow you to the ends of the Earth."
He looked like he wanted to spit. Instead, he crossed his arms. "I will not turn this into a pantomime."
"I'm asking for one shot. Not a golden chariot and a laurel crown."
Before he could object further, I took the rifle back, chambered a round, aimed up at the sky, and fired. The crack echoed across the square, scattering a few pigeons and earning some awed murmurs from the early crowd gathering down the street. I cycled the bolt, checked the chamber, and handed it back to him.
"Simple," I said. "Even the tsar could manage it, and he couldn't wipe own shit."
He stared at the rifle like it might bite him. Behind me, Comrade Bear brought forth the next item—a large, slightly lumpy, canvas-wrapped object.
"Here," I said, taking it. "Put this on."
"What is it?"
"Bulletproof vest. Improvised, but effective. Layers of steel plate, cotton, and guilt. If things turn ugly, I'd rather not have to mop your brains off the palace steps."
He didn't take it.
"And this," I added, taking a bright red helmet from Bear, "is for your head. I'd prefer to keep that intact too."
"I am not wearing a helmet," he snapped. "I am not a tsar, a general, or a mascot."
"And I am not letting you get shot by some idiot with a grudge and a revolver."
There was a long pause. His jaw clenched. His hand gripped the rifle tightly. He looked, for a moment, like a man regretting every decision that had led to this precise moment in his life.
Then he took the vest.
"Fine. But if I fall off the podium from the weight, I'm blaming you."
"You fall off the podium, I'll have Stalin tell Pravda to write that it was a heroic dive to avoid a sniper."
He sighed—long, low, exhausted. "I miss exile. No parades in exile. Just books and terrible cheese."
"Welcome to power, Comrade."
Behind us, the sun crested fully over the rooftops, casting the whole plaza in gold. My men stood tall. The people were gathering. The flags were being raised. Revolution had a stage now.
And at the center of it stood Lenin.
Bulletproof. Armed. Slightly miserable.
Perfect.
May 1, 1917
Tauride Square, Petrograd
Midday
The plaza was packed.
Workers with soot-streaked faces. Soldiers on leave, some already drunk. Peasants in from the countryside, wide-eyed and underfed. Women holding children. Men holding pamphlets. And, scattered among them, the various self-appointed champions of revolution—Mensheviks with well-worn boots, Social Revolutionaries handing out slogans like candy, anarchists grumbling about hierarchy while forming one in their own corner.
And at the center—looming above it all—stood the temporary podium erected in front of the Tauride Palace, draped in red cloth and festooned with banners bearing hammers, sickles, stars, and slogans so aggressive they practically yelled at you.
I stood off to the side with Comrade Bear and a few of my officers, arms folded, watching the crowd. My men flanked the square, standing like silent statues in their sleek black tunics, red armbands and helmets gleaming in the sun. The totenkopf insignias were drawing whispers already. I could hear them:
"Who are those men?"
"Bolsheviks?"
"No, I heard they're comrade Makarov's. They say he's building his own army."
"A personal guard?"
"Looks like the Okhrana in red."
"Better dressed."
I smirked slightly.
Let them talk.
On the stage, Lenin adjusted the improvised bulletproof vest under his coat for the third time. It didn't fit well—nothing about Lenin said "tactical chic." But he had accepted it, and that meant something. In one hand he held the rifle I'd given him, pointed downward, more prop than weapon. His other hand gripped the edge of the lectern, knuckles white.
Then he stepped forward.
The square fell silent. It was uncanny how quickly the noise died when he spoke.
"Comrades," Lenin began, voice harsh, clipped, worn with exhaustion—but resonant with something deeper: conviction.
"We stand today not as subjects, not as slaves to czars, nor servants to capitalists—but as a people awakening. The February Revolution was the first step. It brought down the autocrat—but it did not feed us. It did not give land to the peasant. It did not end the war."
A murmur of agreement passed through the crowd.
"What does the Provisional Government offer us? Patience. Delays. More death on the front. More promises to landlords. More ration lines. More speeches. More suffering. The same misery, with a new name!"
The people stirred.
"We are not interested in cosmetic change. We do not want a revolution with gloves. We want transformation."
He lifted his head. Eyes scanning the crowd.
"We demand bread—because we are starving."
"Bread!" someone shouted from the crowd.
"We demand peace—because our sons die in a war they did not start and cannot finish."
"Peace!" another voice called, and more joined in.
"And we demand land—because the land belongs to the hands that till it, not the boots that trample it!"
The crowd roared:
"BREAD! PEACE! LAND!"
"BREAD! PEACE! LAND!"
Lenin waited, arms raised, letting the chant echo until it began to fade.
"The Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies are the only legitimate power in Russia. Power must pass from the capitalists to the proletariat. Not tomorrow. Not after a conference. Now."
"All power to the Soviets!" someone yelled. Dozens followed.
"ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS!"
Lenin nodded. Raised the rifle—reluctantly, but deliberately.
He pointed it skyward.
For a moment, he paused, looked down at me where I stood off to the side.
I gave a small nod.
He pulled the trigger.
The shot cracked like thunder.
The square exploded with cheers.
It was absurd, theatrical, even a bit ridiculous—but it worked. The crowd adored it. That one symbolic shot sealed it. It wasn't just the words—it was the image.
Lenin: the theorist, the exile, the Marxist philosopher—had just fired a gun into the sky to herald revolution.
History wouldn't forget it.
And neither would the other factions.
---
Later, inside the Tauride
Lenin was wiping sweat from his brow with a frayed handkerchief. I handed him a glass of water. He downed it like it was vodka.
"That was the most I've ever sweated in my life," he muttered. "I nearly dropped the rifle. And this vest itches."
"It looked glorious," I said.
"I looked like a circus bear dressed by a paranoid tailor."
"Bear says thank you."
He gave me a sidelong glance. "You've done well, Mikheil. Too well."
I raised an eyebrow. "That a compliment or a warning?"
"Both," he said. "Your men… they impressed the crowd. But they also drew attention."
"Good," I replied. "Let them talk. Let the Mensheviks stew."
"I'm not worried about the Mensheviks," he said. "I'm worried about some of our own. There are whispers. That you're building a personal army. That you're... a shadow to the Party."
I didn't flinch. "And what do you think?"
"I think you're an asset," he said, "because you understand what most of these theorists don't: revolutions don't survive on pamphlets and declarations. They survive on power. On structure. On fear. And loyalty."
Then he sighed. "But you also terrify them. And perhaps you should. A revolution without fear is a poem, not a movement."
Stalin, who had been leaning silently against the far wall, finally spoke.
"Mikheil's not a Bonaparte," he said. "If anything, he's our Dzerzhinsky. Just... better dressed and worse behaved."
"High praise," I said. "I'll embroider it on a pillow."
Lenin nodded. "For now, keep the Guard visible. But do nothing flashy for a while. No new uniforms. No new titles. No marches in helmets with skulls."
"Too late on the skulls."
"I mean it. Let the idea of order settle. Don't force it."
"Understood."
He stood, stretched, and winced at the vest. "Next time I give a speech, no guns."
"No promises," I said.
Outside, the chants were still faintly echoing through the streets. Bread. Peace. Land.
But now… they chanted something else too.
"Lenin! Soviet Power!"
I glanced at Stalin. He looked amused, but not surprised.
Lenin rubbed his temples.
"God help me," he muttered. "I think I just became a symbol."
May 1, 1917
Evening
Mikheil's Apartment
Petrograd
The apartment stank of cheap coffee, gun oil, and burnt cabbage. Stalin had kicked off his boots, loosened his collar, and was pouring tea like it was morphine. Outside, Petrograd still buzzed with the electric afterglow of revolution and parade hysteria. The chants had faded, but the tension hadn't.
I was sitting on the arm of the couch, still in uniform, cap tilted back, polishing a revolver with the casual affection of a man cradling a future.
Keke was in the kitchen making dinner with Aleksandra while the kids were playing in the living room. Besarion thank God was asleep.
"That," I said, "was just the beginning."
Stalin grunted. "You're starting to sound like Lenin."
"I'm flattered."
I leaned forward. "I've had reports—spies in the various Red Guard militias. Word is, some of them want in. They saw the parade, the uniforms, the discipline. My boys look like a future. The rest of them? They look like a drunken choir at a rifle range."
Stalin sipped his tea, watching me.
"I'll probably have a few thousand by the end of the month," I said. "Volunteers. Defectors."
There was a beat of silence. Keke was humming a Georgian lullaby as Aleksandra chopped vegetables. The room was warm but coiled like a spring.
"I'm going to start taking over the entire Petrograd underworld," I said casually. "Systematically. One gang at a time. Redirect smuggling routes. Fold the brothels, gambling dens, and forgers into my logistics network. We'll need all the resources we can get to fund this army. I even have plans for a few underground factories to start making guns and ammo."
Stalin inhaled deeply, his expression unreadable. "You're building a state within the state."
"I'm building the spine of a state," I replied. "Lenin can write pamphlets. You can rise through the party. But someone's got to arm and feed the men."
Another pause, Stalin stared at me for a long moment, then stood and walked to the window. He looked out over the flickering city.
"People are going to fear you."
"They already do."
"You could become a threat to Lenin."
"Only if he becomes a threat to us."
He didn't turn around.
Finally, he said, "Just make sure he doesn't become a threat."
I smiled. "As you say."
---
May 2, 1917
Lvov Cabinet Meeting
Mariinsky Palace, Petrograd
Prince Lvov looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. He probably hadn't. The war, the land question, Petrograd's descent into a semi-armed commune—all of it was devouring him slowly.
"Gentlemen," he said, voice hoarse, "yesterday's May Day parade… was a disaster."
The ministers shuffled papers nervously. Minister of War Guchkov, beet-faced with rage, slapped a photo on the table.
"These blackshirts—who are they? Why are they marching? Armed? With helmets? And skulls?"
"I heard they're Bolshevik," said Foreign Minister Milyukov.
Lvov buried his face in his hands. "We're losing control."
"You never had it," Guchkov muttered.
"There were thousands in the crowd!" shouted Justice Minister Pereverzev. "Cheering Lenin like he was a Tsar in red. And what did we do? Sit here and sip tea!"
"The Bolsheviks are building a parallel state!" Guchkov barked. "Lenin is writing manifestos—his underlings arming men! If we don't act now, there won't be a Provisional Government left by the end of the year."
Milyukov looked up slowly. "So what do we do?"
Everyone paused.
No one answered.
---
May 2, 1917
Bolshevik Inner Circle Meeting
Smolny Institute
Lenin sat at the head of the table, still in his dusty coat from the day before, reading Mikheil's most recent logistical report. It read more like a military occupation plan than a political memo. Recruitment numbers, uniform standardization, disciplinary protocol, even plans for underground arms factories.
Zinoviev was the first to speak.
"This is insane. He's setting up a personal army. Did you see those uniforms yesterday? Black, red, and skulls? It looked like the revolution had joined a death cult."
Kamenev grumbled. "He's worse than Dzerzhinsky, and Dzerzhinsky hasn't even arrived yet."
"He's effective," Lenin said quietly.
"Effective?!" Zinoviev exclaimed. "He's got death squads in the planning stages!"
"He also has seven hundred men who answer to the Party," Lenin replied. "Armed. Loyal. And capable of doing what the Red Guards can't."
"But how long until he decides the Party answers to him?"
Lenin looked up slowly. "Then we put a bullet in his head."
The room went silent.
Stalin, sitting in the corner with his usual quiet smirk, finally spoke.
"He's not a Bonaparte," Stalin said. "He's a butcher. But he's our butcher."
"Until he starts writing our names down," Kamenev muttered.
Lenin stood. "We'll let him build—for now. We need order. We need muscle. When Trotsky arrives, we'll reassess. But until then…"
He glanced around the room.
"Let the wolves do our hunting."
Last edited:
Memory Dump
Muzak Enthusiast
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Fucking LMAO, the roles have been reversed!
I am now physically dependent on you continuing to write this!
MORE, I NEED MORE!
I am now physically dependent on you continuing to write this!
MORE, I NEED MORE!
Trotsky
Alenco98
Not too sore, are you?
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May 18, 1917
Petrograd, Russia
I stood on the edge of the train platform like a man awaiting the next chapter of an already absurd novel. Flanking me were roughly a hundred of my boys—armed, dangerous, and polished like they were about to storm Versailles or audition for a revolutionary fashion show. I was at their head, of course, looking very much like a warlord who'd learned public relations from watching too many mob movies in his previous life.
The rest of my force—about 1400 men, give or take a few new recruits and one or two "sudden resignations"—were elsewhere. Busy. After the May Day parade, recruitment had exploded like dynamite at a police station. Apparently, nothing inspires loyalty like disciplined uniforms, loud slogans, and a maniac with a clipboard and a rifle.
So, I seized the moment.
We expanded. Rapidly.
The underworld of Petrograd—always a writhing mess of pimps, smugglers, opium peddlers, and anarchist cosplayers—began to fall under our rule rather than our protection. I started with the smaller outfits. Gave them the pitch: "You can either answer to me, or to the chaotic soup of Red Guards, drunk militias, and amateur revolutionaries that roam the streets like revolutionary hyenas."
Most chose me. Because I was the devil they knew. And I was the devil with boots, guns, and a ledger.
They kept operational autonomy—for now—but they kicked up a percentage. In return, I kept the chaos at bay and provided the warm comfort of state-backed gangsterism. If recruitment kept up at this rate, I'd control the entire Petrograd underworld by the end of the year.
Maybe sooner.
Of course, we diversified.
We had a small workshop tucked away behind a bakery near Smolny, churning out homemade ammunition with the loving care of revolutionaries and ex-criminals who'd failed as poets. Plans were in motion to expand into rifles, pistols, maybe even improvised armored trucks if we could find enough scrap metal and not kill ourselves welding.
Then there were the soup kitchens.
Yes. Soup kitchens.
We had five of them now. Staffed, patrolled, and managed by my men. Peace. Bread. Land. Painted on every entrance in proud red letters. Nothing won hearts and minds like a hot meal and visible guns. Within our territory—mostly around Smolny—things were orderly. Our rules were simple: no robbing, no raping, no killing. Break the rules, you get hung from a lamppost. Just like that.
I had become something like Lil' Zé from City of God, only with more Marx and less cocaine. God, I missed modern movies.
But today wasn't about brothels or breadlines. Today was about a train.
A crowd had gathered around the station platform. Workers, students, soldiers, political enthusiasts, and those bored enough to follow a new messiah just for the fun of it. I stood at the front, humming Friends Will Be Friends under my breath. Queen always helped me stay grounded. My mom used to blast A Night at the Opera on weekends while cleaning. But me? I preferred their later work—A Kind of Magic, The Works. Friends Will Be Friends was my personal anthem. It reminded me that, even when life felt like a cosmic joke, someone somewhere was still willing to hand you a warm meal or hold your hand while you burned the world down.
Comforting, really. Especially considering I was now the reincarnated twin brother of a man who might just outdo both Robespierre and Hitler if left unchecked. And here I was—his quiet enforcer—building my own little revolutionary fiefdom as Petrograd slid into open madness.
So yeah. Queen helped.
Then I heard it.
The train whistled in the distance. A low mechanical groan echoed as it pulled into the station. The crowd surged, pressing forward with excitement and curiosity, faces flushed with anticipation.
The train hissed to a stop.
And out he stepped.
Leon Trotsky.
Shorter than I expected. Thin. Angular. Messy hair in a halo of defiant disorder. Round-rimmed glasses. He looked like the ghost of a university professor who'd once tried to assassinate a czar and then gotten distracted by theory.
The crowd cheered. He didn't smile—he observed them, coolly, methodically. Even from the platform I could feel it: the confidence, the ego, the unspoken "I've returned, and I'm the smartest man in the room."
I took a breath, then barked, "Salute!"
A hundred rifles snapped to shoulder. My men raised their aem, the "Roman" salute as always. My Soviet SS, god I was proud, maybe I could sue Adolf for plagiarism once he founds the real SS.
Trotsky paused at the bottom of the steps, taking in the sight. His eyes flicked to me.
"Mikheil Dzhugashvili," I said, stepping forward. "Comrade Makarov, Stalin's brother. I'm here to escort you to Smolny. Lenin's expecting you."
He tilted his head. "Stalin's brother?"
"The prettier one," I said, flashing a half-smile. "But you can call me Mikheil."
There was a flicker of something—amusement? Annoyance? Hard to tell with Trotsky.
"I've heard of you," he said, glancing at my men. "You're the one building a private army in the city."
"Among other things."
He gestured toward the street. "Lead the way."
And so I did.
As we walked toward the motorcade—two repurposed bakery delivery trucks and one stolen army car, all armored and painted with Bolshevik slogans—I let my mind wander for a moment. Lenin was probably pacing in his office, sharpening his metaphors and trying to decide whether Trotsky would be an asset or a rival. And I? I was escorting the man who would either become our greatest asset—or end up on my kill list.
The ride through Petrograd was slow and bumpy, our driver apparently selected for his ability to hit every pothole with philosophical intention. The city slid past us in shades of gray—factory smoke, battered buildings, exhausted people. Revolution wasn't glamorous. It was soot, sweat, and a faint smell of cabbage that lingered no matter how fast you drove.
Trotsky sat opposite me in the car, silent for the first few blocks, watching the street through the window like a man calculating the precise velocity required to leap from a moving vehicle.
"You ever been back here since '05?" I asked, trying to break the ice.
"Not since they arrested me," he replied, still watching the window. "I still remember the Tsar's guards dragging me out of the Soviet like I'd insulted their mothers."
I chuckled. "Well, now you're back. And the guards here all work for me so no dragging for you this time."
That got him to turn.
"You're quite proud of your militia."
"Someone has to be," I said with a shrug. "The Red Guards are passionate, but they're also drunk and mostly allergic to the concept of formation. So I filled the gap."
He narrowed his eyes. "And Lenin approves of this?"
"Lenin tolerates results. I provide results. He gives speeches. I make sure no one interrupts them with bullets."
He studied me for a beat. "And who are you again?"
"Mikheil Dzhugashvili," I said. "Stalin's younger twin. The better looking one, though he hates when I say that."
Trotsky blinked. "Stalin has a twin?"
"Surprise."
"Why have I never heard of you?"
"Because I've spent the last ten years not writing essays in exile," I replied with a grin. "When Stalin's wife Kato died back in 07, I stepped back. Raised Stalin's son Yakov while he ran off to organize revolts and get himself arrested and shot at repeatedly."
"And after that?"
"I moved to Petrograd. Figured if revolution ever came again, this is where the curtain would rise. I became a cop—don't judge me yet—and used the badge to gather contacts, stash weapons, build trust. I collected IOUs, favors, maps of the sewer systems, bribed officers, and built myself a very polite little arsenal under everyone's nose."
He blinked again, this time genuinely surprised.
"I wasn't ideological then," I admitted. "I was… preparing. I figured someone had to be the adult in the room when the world caught fire again."
He tilted his head slightly. "So you're not a true believer."
"Oh, I believe," I said. "I believe we're about to rip a thousand years of power out of the hands of the nobility, the clergy, the military, and every self-declared aristocrat who ever stole bread and called it divine right. I just also believe they won't let it go quietly."
"Now that," he said, "we agree on."
I nodded. "Which is why I've built more than just a militia. I'm pitching something bigger—Lenin's seen the outlines."
He raised a skeptical brow.
I leaned forward slightly, lowering my voice.
"I'm proposing a tripartite security architecture. First, a Soviet Armed Forces—a real army, trained, standardized, with political commissars in every battalion to keep it loyal to the Party."
Trotsky didn't react. But he was listening now.
"Second," I continued, "the Revolutionary Guard Corps—my creation. Separate from the army. Smaller, elite, ideologically trained. Their job? Prevent Bonapartism. No general ever gets ideas above his station without my boys knocking."
"And the third?" Trotsky asked flatly.
"A National Guard, run under a new Committee for State Security—our own intelligence service. Internal policing. Surveillance. Counter-sedition. They watch the army and the Guard Corps. The Guard Corps watches them. It's a beautiful system of distrust. A web of paranoia so tight no one can stage a coup without tripping ten alarms and getting shot by at least two branches of the state."
Trotsky's lips twitched. "So… your solution to tyranny is a mutually assured police state?"
"Not tyranny," I said. "Redundancy. And yes, a little healthy fear."
He turned to the window again, voice low. "You know what this sounds like, don't you?"
"Of course. But it works. No single man can seize power if the moment he tries, two other institutions move to crush him. The system polices itself. No Bonaparte marching on the capital someday with a loyal army and a grudge."
Silence fell over the car like a guillotine blade.
We bumped over a loose cobblestone. Trotsky exhaled through his nose.
"You're dangerous."
"Only to dangerous people."
"I'm not sure if you're a genius or just a very charming psychopath."
"Why not both?"
Trotsky snorted despite himself. "I see why Lenin lets you hang around. You're useful. Ruthless. And you talk like a man who's read too much and killed just enough to make it work."
"I try."
The car rumbled to a stop.
Smolny loomed outside, gray and severe as ever.
Trotsky opened the door, then paused.
"You know," he said without turning, "if this revolution survives, it won't be because of your kill lists. It'll be because people still believe something better is possible."
I nodded. "And it's my job to shoot anyone who ruins that possibility."
He stepped out, coat flaring behind him.
I watched him go, whistling quietly—Friends Will Be Friends again, of course.
Disarming? Yes. Dangerous? Also yes.
But he wasn't on the list.
Yet.
May 18, 1917
Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Lenin's Office – Later that day
The three of them sat around a battered oak table that had once been used by tsarist nuns to grade catechism tests. Now it hosted the would-be architects of a new world order.
Lenin sat at the head, ink-stained fingers steepled under his chin, his eyes flicking between his guests like a chess master weighing which piece to sacrifice first.
Trotsky—fresh off the train and still brushing soot off his coat—sat opposite, posture relaxed but coiled with energy. He hadn't removed his glasses, even indoors, as if he expected at any moment to be shown a pamphlet in need of urgent criticism.
Stalin was seated off to the side, silent, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded like a snake waiting for someone to blink.
Mikheil was absent from the room—officially. But the entire building still hummed with his presence. His men were on the stairs, in the halls, even refilling samovars in the breakroom. Everyone knew he was watching. You didn't need to see a panther to know it was in the trees.
Lenin broke the silence.
"You've been briefed on the situation?"
"I've read what I could," Trotsky replied. "The newspapers are full of fantasy. The city is boiling. The Soviets are divided. The Provisional Government is inert. And you, Lenin, seem to have turned some of the working class into your own personal army."
"Not my army," Lenin corrected, "our army. The people's."
Trotsky smiled faintly. "With black uniforms, red helmets and skulls?"
Lenin didn't rise to the bait. "Mikheil's methods are unorthodox, yes. But effective. We are surrounded by wolves. I'm not ashamed of keeping a few guard dogs."
Stalin grunted in what may have been agreement—or gas.
Trotsky looked at both of them carefully. "You know I'm not a Bolshevik."
"Not yet," Stalin murmured.
Trotsky ignored him. "And I'm no Menshevik either. Martov and his faction are still debating whether the proletariat deserves shoes."
"Ah," Lenin said dryly, "the revolutionary centrists—forever waiting for the perfect storm while drowning in the rain."
"I prefer to act when it's strategic," Trotsky countered. "And right now, you are acting with speed I'd call... alarming."
Lenin raised an eyebrow. "You've come back to a revolution in motion. Caution is a luxury I cannot afford."
Trotsky leaned back. "And Mikheil? What is he, exactly? A revolutionary? A general? A warlord?"
Lenin chuckled softly. "A necessary evil."
"His pitch to me," Trotsky continued, "sounded less like socialism and more like a board meeting at a steel trust. Revolutionary Guard Corps. Redundancy layers. Counter-Bonapartist intelligence directorates. He speaks like he's building an empire of preemptive paranoia."
Stalin finally spoke again, low and even. "That's because he is. But it's our empire. A people's empire."
Trotsky looked between them. "And what happens when this system—this beautiful web of distrust—turns inward? What happens when the watchdogs eat the master?"
"That's why we educate them," Lenin replied, voice suddenly sharp. "That's why we lead. We don't trust the revolution. We control it."
Trotsky's eyes narrowed. "That's not Marxism. That's mechanized autocracy."
"And yet you're here," Lenin said. "You got off the train. You came to Smolny. You could have gone to the Mensheviks. Or home."
Trotsky didn't answer.
The silence was loud.
Then Lenin leaned forward, calm and deliberate.
"We need you, Leon. Your mind. Your ability to speak to the masses. To organize. To command. The army is crumbling. The Red Guards are scattered. Mikheil's men can police Petrograd, but we need to build a national force. A true Red Army. And you—"
He let the words hang.
"You're offering me command?"
"I'm offering you responsibility," Lenin said. "You believe in the revolution, even if you doubt our style. Prove your way is better. Help us build the structure. Before the Provisional Government collapses—or worse, clamps down."
Trotsky looked again at Stalin, who gave him nothing but a long, quiet stare.
"I'll think about it," Trotsky said.
"Don't think too long," Lenin replied. "The train to the future is moving. You can either ride it—or be left on the tracks."
Trotsky rose.
He turned at the door. "And Mikheil?"
"He's outside," Stalin said. "Probably chatting with some guardsmen."
"I like him," Trotsky said flatly. "Terrifies me. But I like him."
"That means it's working," Lenin said with a faint smile.
Outside Smolny
Moments Later
I was leaning against a column, humming a Queen tune—Under Pressure this time—when Trotsky stepped out.
"Everything good in there?" I asked, tossing him a cigarette.
Trotsky caught it but didn't light it. "Your brother doesn't talk much."
"Neither do snakes before they strike."
Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "You really are just going to keep building this private empire of yours?"
I grinned. "Not private. Just… selectively socialist."
A beat.
"You're scaring the Mensheviks," Trotsky said.
"I scare everyone," I replied cheerfully. "That's why no one fucks with Lenin."
Trotsky smirked despite himself. "Charming."
"I try."
As Trotsky walked away, I turned to Comrade Bear.
"Put Trotsky on the maybe list," he said.
"Maybe for what?"
"Maybe he'll save us. Maybe he'll try to kill us. Either way… we'll be ready. Have a man on him at all times."
May 18, 1917
Later that Night
Dzhugashvili Apartment, Petrograd
It was after dinner time, and the city had gone quiet—by Petrograd standards, anyway. No gunfire, no screaming. Just the occasional clatter of boots in the alley and the distant hum of revolution humming itself to sleep.
Inside our new, nicer apartment near Smolny, the gas lamps burned low. The wallpaper was peeling, the floor creaked with every step, and the kitchen smelled faintly of tea, gun oil, and cabbage stew that had tried to be heroic but died in the pot.
Mom was in the kitchen fixing us some dinner as me and Stalin had come back late.
I meanwhile sat at the table in my uniform shirt, sleeves rolled up, pouring myself a small glass of Georgian brandy—liberated from a Black Sea trader who'd needed "protection." Stalin sat across from me in a threadbare chair, still half-dressed, a cup filled with brandy dangling from his lips like a punctuation mark that never quite ended the sentence.
We were alone.
Mostly.
"I like him," I said, swirling the glass. "Trotsky. Sharp. Funny, in that dry 'I'm smarter than everyone else in the room and I know it' sort of way. Knows how to hold court. Good posture. Voice carries. The soldiers will eat it up."
Stalin said nothing, just watched the smoke rise.
"But," I continued, "he's also a threat. Ambitious. Charismatic. Dangerous."
A pause.
"Either he'll be my best friend," I said, sipping slowly, "or I'll have to murder him."
From the kitchen came a loud clatter of metal.
I blinked.
Stalin blinked.
We both turned.
Keke—our mother—stood in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing her nightgown and clutching the samovar like it had personally insulted the Virgin Mary.
"You will do what?" she said in a voice that belonged more in a church confessional than a Petrograd apartment at midnight.
"Oh, Mama," I said quickly, setting the glass down. "I was being metaphorical."
"Murder is not metaphor," she snapped, crossing herself with the vigor of a woman who'd seen too many sons get ideas above their morals. "You are not Cain! You are baptized!"
"Yes, yes, we've all been baptized," Stalin muttered, exhaling smoke.
"Do not speak of killing, especially not of other Christians!" she shouted. "You will go to hell!"
"He's not even a Christian," I muttered. "He's a jew." I said in a tone what would make Patrick Bateman say, "cool it with the anti semitic remarks."
That earned me a wooden spoon from the counter, hurled like a divine missile. I ducked.
Then another voice chimed in—gentler, but just as damning.
"Mikheil," said Aleksandra, stepping into view from the bedroom in her house robe. Her hair was braided neatly. She looked tired, disappointed, and terrifying in that soft, domestic way that could kill a man without leaving a bruise.
"You're talking about killing people in front of your mother," she said.
"I wasn't trying to."
"You never try. It just… happens. Like your gun collection in the old apartment?"
I sighed, rubbing my temples. "It was just theoretical. You don't plan a revolution without a few contingencies."
"Contingencies shouldn't include murder," she said sternly. "You have children. What will you tell Iosif? 'Papa builds soup kitchens and occasionally assassinates political rivals'?"
"...Yes, what about it?"
She folded her arms. "This is not normal."
"I'm not normal, Aleksandra. We're not normal. We live in a city where half the people are starving and the other half are armed. I'm basically one of the strongest warlords here. A warlord trying to build order out of a collapsed empire. Sometimes that means being unpleasant."
"Mikheil," Keke interrupted, pointing at me with righteous fury, "if I hear you speak of murder again, I will drag you to church myself and have you confess it to Father Giorgi."
"He's been dead since 1904."
"Then I will dig him up!"
I glanced at Stalin. He was chuckling, the bastard.
"Oh don't look so smug," I said to him. "Last week you said you wanted to strangle Petrov from the Vyborg red guards."
"I said it quietly," he replied. "In confidence. Like a civilized revolutionary."
Aleksandra sighed. Keke muttered prayers under her breath and began pacing.
I stood, stretched, and walked to the cabinet, pulling out another glass. "Alright. Fine. I will not murder Trotsky. Yet. Let's see how he does first."
Keke groaned loudly and stormed back to the kitchen, muttering something in Georgian about her sons being wolves raised in a den of lunatics.
Aleksandra lingered a moment longer, looking at me with that exhausted, patient love only wives and saints are capable of.
"Just come to bed soon," she said softly. "Iosif keeps waking up. He misses you."
My smirk faded. I nodded.
She left.
Stalin leaned back in his chair, blew out a long stream of smoke, and said, "You really do terrify people."
"Only the ones who should be terrified."
"Trotsky?"
I finished my drink. "We'll see. I had bear send a man to keep an eye on him. The bastard won't be able to take a shit without us knowing about it."
May 18, 1917
Dzhugashvili Apartment
Petrograd, Russia
Later in the evening
The tea had long gone cold, the cigarette smoke hung low like a fog of unspoken crimes, and the clock ticked with all the cheer of a funeral procession.
Stalin was still seated across from me, one leg draped over the other, fingers steepled beneath his nose. He hadn't said a word in five minutes—not unusual for him—but I knew the gears were turning. They always were.
I leaned forward and broke the silence.
"We'll need to start working on the Party."
He didn't look up. "We?"
"You," I corrected. "You need to start working on the Party. I'm good at logistics, weapons, supply chains, making people disappear quietly into a canal—but this politicking, the committees, the backroom games, theoretical debates that end in purges? That's more your thing."
Finally, he met my eyes. "And what would I be working toward?"
I shrugged. "Influence. Control. Insurance. In case Trotsky turns out to be more Robespierre than Danton."
"He's already both," Stalin muttered. "He just hasn't picked who to guillotine yet."
"Exactly. So we get ahead of him. We need eyes in every Soviet, hands in every caucus, ears in every corridor. If he tries anything? We already own the vote, the gun, and the man counting the votes."
"And this plan of yours requires what, exactly?"
I smiled. "My entire empire."
That got his attention.
I reached under the table and pulled out a notebook—leather-bound, worn, a bit bloodstained. I slid it to him like it was a holy relic.
Inside were names, routes, stashes, contacts. The underbelly of Petrograd, mapped like a city of sin. Brothels. Gambling dens. Opium houses. Smuggling tunnels. Fenced jewelry. Bribed customs officers. Black market medicine and surplus army boots. And dozens of operators who paid me to keep them safe, silent, and functional.
"You've built a syndicate," Stalin said, flipping through the pages with an eyebrow slowly climbing his forehead.
"A state-sponsored one," I corrected. "And now it's yours to use—if you're willing."
He looked up slowly. "You're giving me this?"
"Use it however you want. Blackmail. Kill. Threaten. Bribe anyone and everyone in the Party and the Soviets to our side. I don't care what you do, just make sure when the dust settles, you're still standing and Trotsky isn't."
Silence. A long one.
Then a very loud gasp from the hallway.
We both turned slowly.
Standing in the shadow of the doorway, lit only by the faint orange glow of the dying lamp, was Keke—clutching a crucifix like she was about to perform an exorcism.
"Mikheil," she whispered. "You're funding Joseph's politics with whore money?!"
"Technically it's diversified," I replied. "There are also opium dens and weapons sales."
She staggered back like I'd slapped her with the cross.
"And you gave your brother a murder budget?!"
"Mama, please," Stalin said, rubbing his temples. "It's not a murder budget. It's a discretionary influence fund."
From the kitchen, Aleksandra appeared, pale as flour. She looked from me to the notebook, then back again.
"Mikheil," she said, voice trembling, "is that why there are diamonds in the sugar tin?"
"Collateral," I said. "From a pawn broker. He was late on payments."
She stared at me.
"You used our pantry as a vault?"
"It's temperature controlled," I said. "Also, no one ever checks the sugar tin."
Stalin cleared his throat. "If I may... the real takeaway here is that my brother is offering me an entire shadow economy with the express goal of stabilizing Bolshevik power."
"You boys need Jesus!" Keke barked.
"I need another cigarette," Stalin muttered.
"Not in my house." I barked. Stalin scowled.
Aleksandra shook her head and went back to bed, muttering something about moving to Georgia and raising sheep. Keke stayed in the doorway, silently praying under her breath, occasionally shooting me the kind of look that would have turned Lot's wife to salt twice over.
I leaned back in my chair, smirking faintly.
"So," I said to Stalin, "what do you say? You take the Party. I'll handle the streets. Between the two of us, we'll squeeze this revolution like a lemon and see who bleeds."
Stalin took another long drag, flipping the notebook closed with a slow, deliberate gesture.
"I say you're completely insane."
"But effective."
He nodded once. "That's the terrifying part."
Petrograd, Russia
I stood on the edge of the train platform like a man awaiting the next chapter of an already absurd novel. Flanking me were roughly a hundred of my boys—armed, dangerous, and polished like they were about to storm Versailles or audition for a revolutionary fashion show. I was at their head, of course, looking very much like a warlord who'd learned public relations from watching too many mob movies in his previous life.
The rest of my force—about 1400 men, give or take a few new recruits and one or two "sudden resignations"—were elsewhere. Busy. After the May Day parade, recruitment had exploded like dynamite at a police station. Apparently, nothing inspires loyalty like disciplined uniforms, loud slogans, and a maniac with a clipboard and a rifle.
So, I seized the moment.
We expanded. Rapidly.
The underworld of Petrograd—always a writhing mess of pimps, smugglers, opium peddlers, and anarchist cosplayers—began to fall under our rule rather than our protection. I started with the smaller outfits. Gave them the pitch: "You can either answer to me, or to the chaotic soup of Red Guards, drunk militias, and amateur revolutionaries that roam the streets like revolutionary hyenas."
Most chose me. Because I was the devil they knew. And I was the devil with boots, guns, and a ledger.
They kept operational autonomy—for now—but they kicked up a percentage. In return, I kept the chaos at bay and provided the warm comfort of state-backed gangsterism. If recruitment kept up at this rate, I'd control the entire Petrograd underworld by the end of the year.
Maybe sooner.
Of course, we diversified.
We had a small workshop tucked away behind a bakery near Smolny, churning out homemade ammunition with the loving care of revolutionaries and ex-criminals who'd failed as poets. Plans were in motion to expand into rifles, pistols, maybe even improvised armored trucks if we could find enough scrap metal and not kill ourselves welding.
Then there were the soup kitchens.
Yes. Soup kitchens.
We had five of them now. Staffed, patrolled, and managed by my men. Peace. Bread. Land. Painted on every entrance in proud red letters. Nothing won hearts and minds like a hot meal and visible guns. Within our territory—mostly around Smolny—things were orderly. Our rules were simple: no robbing, no raping, no killing. Break the rules, you get hung from a lamppost. Just like that.
I had become something like Lil' Zé from City of God, only with more Marx and less cocaine. God, I missed modern movies.
But today wasn't about brothels or breadlines. Today was about a train.
A crowd had gathered around the station platform. Workers, students, soldiers, political enthusiasts, and those bored enough to follow a new messiah just for the fun of it. I stood at the front, humming Friends Will Be Friends under my breath. Queen always helped me stay grounded. My mom used to blast A Night at the Opera on weekends while cleaning. But me? I preferred their later work—A Kind of Magic, The Works. Friends Will Be Friends was my personal anthem. It reminded me that, even when life felt like a cosmic joke, someone somewhere was still willing to hand you a warm meal or hold your hand while you burned the world down.
Comforting, really. Especially considering I was now the reincarnated twin brother of a man who might just outdo both Robespierre and Hitler if left unchecked. And here I was—his quiet enforcer—building my own little revolutionary fiefdom as Petrograd slid into open madness.
So yeah. Queen helped.
Then I heard it.
The train whistled in the distance. A low mechanical groan echoed as it pulled into the station. The crowd surged, pressing forward with excitement and curiosity, faces flushed with anticipation.
The train hissed to a stop.
And out he stepped.
Leon Trotsky.
Shorter than I expected. Thin. Angular. Messy hair in a halo of defiant disorder. Round-rimmed glasses. He looked like the ghost of a university professor who'd once tried to assassinate a czar and then gotten distracted by theory.
The crowd cheered. He didn't smile—he observed them, coolly, methodically. Even from the platform I could feel it: the confidence, the ego, the unspoken "I've returned, and I'm the smartest man in the room."
I took a breath, then barked, "Salute!"
A hundred rifles snapped to shoulder. My men raised their aem, the "Roman" salute as always. My Soviet SS, god I was proud, maybe I could sue Adolf for plagiarism once he founds the real SS.
Trotsky paused at the bottom of the steps, taking in the sight. His eyes flicked to me.
"Mikheil Dzhugashvili," I said, stepping forward. "Comrade Makarov, Stalin's brother. I'm here to escort you to Smolny. Lenin's expecting you."
He tilted his head. "Stalin's brother?"
"The prettier one," I said, flashing a half-smile. "But you can call me Mikheil."
There was a flicker of something—amusement? Annoyance? Hard to tell with Trotsky.
"I've heard of you," he said, glancing at my men. "You're the one building a private army in the city."
"Among other things."
He gestured toward the street. "Lead the way."
And so I did.
As we walked toward the motorcade—two repurposed bakery delivery trucks and one stolen army car, all armored and painted with Bolshevik slogans—I let my mind wander for a moment. Lenin was probably pacing in his office, sharpening his metaphors and trying to decide whether Trotsky would be an asset or a rival. And I? I was escorting the man who would either become our greatest asset—or end up on my kill list.
The ride through Petrograd was slow and bumpy, our driver apparently selected for his ability to hit every pothole with philosophical intention. The city slid past us in shades of gray—factory smoke, battered buildings, exhausted people. Revolution wasn't glamorous. It was soot, sweat, and a faint smell of cabbage that lingered no matter how fast you drove.
Trotsky sat opposite me in the car, silent for the first few blocks, watching the street through the window like a man calculating the precise velocity required to leap from a moving vehicle.
"You ever been back here since '05?" I asked, trying to break the ice.
"Not since they arrested me," he replied, still watching the window. "I still remember the Tsar's guards dragging me out of the Soviet like I'd insulted their mothers."
I chuckled. "Well, now you're back. And the guards here all work for me so no dragging for you this time."
That got him to turn.
"You're quite proud of your militia."
"Someone has to be," I said with a shrug. "The Red Guards are passionate, but they're also drunk and mostly allergic to the concept of formation. So I filled the gap."
He narrowed his eyes. "And Lenin approves of this?"
"Lenin tolerates results. I provide results. He gives speeches. I make sure no one interrupts them with bullets."
He studied me for a beat. "And who are you again?"
"Mikheil Dzhugashvili," I said. "Stalin's younger twin. The better looking one, though he hates when I say that."
Trotsky blinked. "Stalin has a twin?"
"Surprise."
"Why have I never heard of you?"
"Because I've spent the last ten years not writing essays in exile," I replied with a grin. "When Stalin's wife Kato died back in 07, I stepped back. Raised Stalin's son Yakov while he ran off to organize revolts and get himself arrested and shot at repeatedly."
"And after that?"
"I moved to Petrograd. Figured if revolution ever came again, this is where the curtain would rise. I became a cop—don't judge me yet—and used the badge to gather contacts, stash weapons, build trust. I collected IOUs, favors, maps of the sewer systems, bribed officers, and built myself a very polite little arsenal under everyone's nose."
He blinked again, this time genuinely surprised.
"I wasn't ideological then," I admitted. "I was… preparing. I figured someone had to be the adult in the room when the world caught fire again."
He tilted his head slightly. "So you're not a true believer."
"Oh, I believe," I said. "I believe we're about to rip a thousand years of power out of the hands of the nobility, the clergy, the military, and every self-declared aristocrat who ever stole bread and called it divine right. I just also believe they won't let it go quietly."
"Now that," he said, "we agree on."
I nodded. "Which is why I've built more than just a militia. I'm pitching something bigger—Lenin's seen the outlines."
He raised a skeptical brow.
I leaned forward slightly, lowering my voice.
"I'm proposing a tripartite security architecture. First, a Soviet Armed Forces—a real army, trained, standardized, with political commissars in every battalion to keep it loyal to the Party."
Trotsky didn't react. But he was listening now.
"Second," I continued, "the Revolutionary Guard Corps—my creation. Separate from the army. Smaller, elite, ideologically trained. Their job? Prevent Bonapartism. No general ever gets ideas above his station without my boys knocking."
"And the third?" Trotsky asked flatly.
"A National Guard, run under a new Committee for State Security—our own intelligence service. Internal policing. Surveillance. Counter-sedition. They watch the army and the Guard Corps. The Guard Corps watches them. It's a beautiful system of distrust. A web of paranoia so tight no one can stage a coup without tripping ten alarms and getting shot by at least two branches of the state."
Trotsky's lips twitched. "So… your solution to tyranny is a mutually assured police state?"
"Not tyranny," I said. "Redundancy. And yes, a little healthy fear."
He turned to the window again, voice low. "You know what this sounds like, don't you?"
"Of course. But it works. No single man can seize power if the moment he tries, two other institutions move to crush him. The system polices itself. No Bonaparte marching on the capital someday with a loyal army and a grudge."
Silence fell over the car like a guillotine blade.
We bumped over a loose cobblestone. Trotsky exhaled through his nose.
"You're dangerous."
"Only to dangerous people."
"I'm not sure if you're a genius or just a very charming psychopath."
"Why not both?"
Trotsky snorted despite himself. "I see why Lenin lets you hang around. You're useful. Ruthless. And you talk like a man who's read too much and killed just enough to make it work."
"I try."
The car rumbled to a stop.
Smolny loomed outside, gray and severe as ever.
Trotsky opened the door, then paused.
"You know," he said without turning, "if this revolution survives, it won't be because of your kill lists. It'll be because people still believe something better is possible."
I nodded. "And it's my job to shoot anyone who ruins that possibility."
He stepped out, coat flaring behind him.
I watched him go, whistling quietly—Friends Will Be Friends again, of course.
Disarming? Yes. Dangerous? Also yes.
But he wasn't on the list.
Yet.
May 18, 1917
Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Lenin's Office – Later that day
The three of them sat around a battered oak table that had once been used by tsarist nuns to grade catechism tests. Now it hosted the would-be architects of a new world order.
Lenin sat at the head, ink-stained fingers steepled under his chin, his eyes flicking between his guests like a chess master weighing which piece to sacrifice first.
Trotsky—fresh off the train and still brushing soot off his coat—sat opposite, posture relaxed but coiled with energy. He hadn't removed his glasses, even indoors, as if he expected at any moment to be shown a pamphlet in need of urgent criticism.
Stalin was seated off to the side, silent, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded like a snake waiting for someone to blink.
Mikheil was absent from the room—officially. But the entire building still hummed with his presence. His men were on the stairs, in the halls, even refilling samovars in the breakroom. Everyone knew he was watching. You didn't need to see a panther to know it was in the trees.
Lenin broke the silence.
"You've been briefed on the situation?"
"I've read what I could," Trotsky replied. "The newspapers are full of fantasy. The city is boiling. The Soviets are divided. The Provisional Government is inert. And you, Lenin, seem to have turned some of the working class into your own personal army."
"Not my army," Lenin corrected, "our army. The people's."
Trotsky smiled faintly. "With black uniforms, red helmets and skulls?"
Lenin didn't rise to the bait. "Mikheil's methods are unorthodox, yes. But effective. We are surrounded by wolves. I'm not ashamed of keeping a few guard dogs."
Stalin grunted in what may have been agreement—or gas.
Trotsky looked at both of them carefully. "You know I'm not a Bolshevik."
"Not yet," Stalin murmured.
Trotsky ignored him. "And I'm no Menshevik either. Martov and his faction are still debating whether the proletariat deserves shoes."
"Ah," Lenin said dryly, "the revolutionary centrists—forever waiting for the perfect storm while drowning in the rain."
"I prefer to act when it's strategic," Trotsky countered. "And right now, you are acting with speed I'd call... alarming."
Lenin raised an eyebrow. "You've come back to a revolution in motion. Caution is a luxury I cannot afford."
Trotsky leaned back. "And Mikheil? What is he, exactly? A revolutionary? A general? A warlord?"
Lenin chuckled softly. "A necessary evil."
"His pitch to me," Trotsky continued, "sounded less like socialism and more like a board meeting at a steel trust. Revolutionary Guard Corps. Redundancy layers. Counter-Bonapartist intelligence directorates. He speaks like he's building an empire of preemptive paranoia."
Stalin finally spoke again, low and even. "That's because he is. But it's our empire. A people's empire."
Trotsky looked between them. "And what happens when this system—this beautiful web of distrust—turns inward? What happens when the watchdogs eat the master?"
"That's why we educate them," Lenin replied, voice suddenly sharp. "That's why we lead. We don't trust the revolution. We control it."
Trotsky's eyes narrowed. "That's not Marxism. That's mechanized autocracy."
"And yet you're here," Lenin said. "You got off the train. You came to Smolny. You could have gone to the Mensheviks. Or home."
Trotsky didn't answer.
The silence was loud.
Then Lenin leaned forward, calm and deliberate.
"We need you, Leon. Your mind. Your ability to speak to the masses. To organize. To command. The army is crumbling. The Red Guards are scattered. Mikheil's men can police Petrograd, but we need to build a national force. A true Red Army. And you—"
He let the words hang.
"You're offering me command?"
"I'm offering you responsibility," Lenin said. "You believe in the revolution, even if you doubt our style. Prove your way is better. Help us build the structure. Before the Provisional Government collapses—or worse, clamps down."
Trotsky looked again at Stalin, who gave him nothing but a long, quiet stare.
"I'll think about it," Trotsky said.
"Don't think too long," Lenin replied. "The train to the future is moving. You can either ride it—or be left on the tracks."
Trotsky rose.
He turned at the door. "And Mikheil?"
"He's outside," Stalin said. "Probably chatting with some guardsmen."
"I like him," Trotsky said flatly. "Terrifies me. But I like him."
"That means it's working," Lenin said with a faint smile.
Outside Smolny
Moments Later
I was leaning against a column, humming a Queen tune—Under Pressure this time—when Trotsky stepped out.
"Everything good in there?" I asked, tossing him a cigarette.
Trotsky caught it but didn't light it. "Your brother doesn't talk much."
"Neither do snakes before they strike."
Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "You really are just going to keep building this private empire of yours?"
I grinned. "Not private. Just… selectively socialist."
A beat.
"You're scaring the Mensheviks," Trotsky said.
"I scare everyone," I replied cheerfully. "That's why no one fucks with Lenin."
Trotsky smirked despite himself. "Charming."
"I try."
As Trotsky walked away, I turned to Comrade Bear.
"Put Trotsky on the maybe list," he said.
"Maybe for what?"
"Maybe he'll save us. Maybe he'll try to kill us. Either way… we'll be ready. Have a man on him at all times."
May 18, 1917
Later that Night
Dzhugashvili Apartment, Petrograd
It was after dinner time, and the city had gone quiet—by Petrograd standards, anyway. No gunfire, no screaming. Just the occasional clatter of boots in the alley and the distant hum of revolution humming itself to sleep.
Inside our new, nicer apartment near Smolny, the gas lamps burned low. The wallpaper was peeling, the floor creaked with every step, and the kitchen smelled faintly of tea, gun oil, and cabbage stew that had tried to be heroic but died in the pot.
Mom was in the kitchen fixing us some dinner as me and Stalin had come back late.
I meanwhile sat at the table in my uniform shirt, sleeves rolled up, pouring myself a small glass of Georgian brandy—liberated from a Black Sea trader who'd needed "protection." Stalin sat across from me in a threadbare chair, still half-dressed, a cup filled with brandy dangling from his lips like a punctuation mark that never quite ended the sentence.
We were alone.
Mostly.
"I like him," I said, swirling the glass. "Trotsky. Sharp. Funny, in that dry 'I'm smarter than everyone else in the room and I know it' sort of way. Knows how to hold court. Good posture. Voice carries. The soldiers will eat it up."
Stalin said nothing, just watched the smoke rise.
"But," I continued, "he's also a threat. Ambitious. Charismatic. Dangerous."
A pause.
"Either he'll be my best friend," I said, sipping slowly, "or I'll have to murder him."
From the kitchen came a loud clatter of metal.
I blinked.
Stalin blinked.
We both turned.
Keke—our mother—stood in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing her nightgown and clutching the samovar like it had personally insulted the Virgin Mary.
"You will do what?" she said in a voice that belonged more in a church confessional than a Petrograd apartment at midnight.
"Oh, Mama," I said quickly, setting the glass down. "I was being metaphorical."
"Murder is not metaphor," she snapped, crossing herself with the vigor of a woman who'd seen too many sons get ideas above their morals. "You are not Cain! You are baptized!"
"Yes, yes, we've all been baptized," Stalin muttered, exhaling smoke.
"Do not speak of killing, especially not of other Christians!" she shouted. "You will go to hell!"
"He's not even a Christian," I muttered. "He's a jew." I said in a tone what would make Patrick Bateman say, "cool it with the anti semitic remarks."
That earned me a wooden spoon from the counter, hurled like a divine missile. I ducked.
Then another voice chimed in—gentler, but just as damning.
"Mikheil," said Aleksandra, stepping into view from the bedroom in her house robe. Her hair was braided neatly. She looked tired, disappointed, and terrifying in that soft, domestic way that could kill a man without leaving a bruise.
"You're talking about killing people in front of your mother," she said.
"I wasn't trying to."
"You never try. It just… happens. Like your gun collection in the old apartment?"
I sighed, rubbing my temples. "It was just theoretical. You don't plan a revolution without a few contingencies."
"Contingencies shouldn't include murder," she said sternly. "You have children. What will you tell Iosif? 'Papa builds soup kitchens and occasionally assassinates political rivals'?"
"...Yes, what about it?"
She folded her arms. "This is not normal."
"I'm not normal, Aleksandra. We're not normal. We live in a city where half the people are starving and the other half are armed. I'm basically one of the strongest warlords here. A warlord trying to build order out of a collapsed empire. Sometimes that means being unpleasant."
"Mikheil," Keke interrupted, pointing at me with righteous fury, "if I hear you speak of murder again, I will drag you to church myself and have you confess it to Father Giorgi."
"He's been dead since 1904."
"Then I will dig him up!"
I glanced at Stalin. He was chuckling, the bastard.
"Oh don't look so smug," I said to him. "Last week you said you wanted to strangle Petrov from the Vyborg red guards."
"I said it quietly," he replied. "In confidence. Like a civilized revolutionary."
Aleksandra sighed. Keke muttered prayers under her breath and began pacing.
I stood, stretched, and walked to the cabinet, pulling out another glass. "Alright. Fine. I will not murder Trotsky. Yet. Let's see how he does first."
Keke groaned loudly and stormed back to the kitchen, muttering something in Georgian about her sons being wolves raised in a den of lunatics.
Aleksandra lingered a moment longer, looking at me with that exhausted, patient love only wives and saints are capable of.
"Just come to bed soon," she said softly. "Iosif keeps waking up. He misses you."
My smirk faded. I nodded.
She left.
Stalin leaned back in his chair, blew out a long stream of smoke, and said, "You really do terrify people."
"Only the ones who should be terrified."
"Trotsky?"
I finished my drink. "We'll see. I had bear send a man to keep an eye on him. The bastard won't be able to take a shit without us knowing about it."
May 18, 1917
Dzhugashvili Apartment
Petrograd, Russia
Later in the evening
The tea had long gone cold, the cigarette smoke hung low like a fog of unspoken crimes, and the clock ticked with all the cheer of a funeral procession.
Stalin was still seated across from me, one leg draped over the other, fingers steepled beneath his nose. He hadn't said a word in five minutes—not unusual for him—but I knew the gears were turning. They always were.
I leaned forward and broke the silence.
"We'll need to start working on the Party."
He didn't look up. "We?"
"You," I corrected. "You need to start working on the Party. I'm good at logistics, weapons, supply chains, making people disappear quietly into a canal—but this politicking, the committees, the backroom games, theoretical debates that end in purges? That's more your thing."
Finally, he met my eyes. "And what would I be working toward?"
I shrugged. "Influence. Control. Insurance. In case Trotsky turns out to be more Robespierre than Danton."
"He's already both," Stalin muttered. "He just hasn't picked who to guillotine yet."
"Exactly. So we get ahead of him. We need eyes in every Soviet, hands in every caucus, ears in every corridor. If he tries anything? We already own the vote, the gun, and the man counting the votes."
"And this plan of yours requires what, exactly?"
I smiled. "My entire empire."
That got his attention.
I reached under the table and pulled out a notebook—leather-bound, worn, a bit bloodstained. I slid it to him like it was a holy relic.
Inside were names, routes, stashes, contacts. The underbelly of Petrograd, mapped like a city of sin. Brothels. Gambling dens. Opium houses. Smuggling tunnels. Fenced jewelry. Bribed customs officers. Black market medicine and surplus army boots. And dozens of operators who paid me to keep them safe, silent, and functional.
"You've built a syndicate," Stalin said, flipping through the pages with an eyebrow slowly climbing his forehead.
"A state-sponsored one," I corrected. "And now it's yours to use—if you're willing."
He looked up slowly. "You're giving me this?"
"Use it however you want. Blackmail. Kill. Threaten. Bribe anyone and everyone in the Party and the Soviets to our side. I don't care what you do, just make sure when the dust settles, you're still standing and Trotsky isn't."
Silence. A long one.
Then a very loud gasp from the hallway.
We both turned slowly.
Standing in the shadow of the doorway, lit only by the faint orange glow of the dying lamp, was Keke—clutching a crucifix like she was about to perform an exorcism.
"Mikheil," she whispered. "You're funding Joseph's politics with whore money?!"
"Technically it's diversified," I replied. "There are also opium dens and weapons sales."
She staggered back like I'd slapped her with the cross.
"And you gave your brother a murder budget?!"
"Mama, please," Stalin said, rubbing his temples. "It's not a murder budget. It's a discretionary influence fund."
From the kitchen, Aleksandra appeared, pale as flour. She looked from me to the notebook, then back again.
"Mikheil," she said, voice trembling, "is that why there are diamonds in the sugar tin?"
"Collateral," I said. "From a pawn broker. He was late on payments."
She stared at me.
"You used our pantry as a vault?"
"It's temperature controlled," I said. "Also, no one ever checks the sugar tin."
Stalin cleared his throat. "If I may... the real takeaway here is that my brother is offering me an entire shadow economy with the express goal of stabilizing Bolshevik power."
"You boys need Jesus!" Keke barked.
"I need another cigarette," Stalin muttered.
"Not in my house." I barked. Stalin scowled.
Aleksandra shook her head and went back to bed, muttering something about moving to Georgia and raising sheep. Keke stayed in the doorway, silently praying under her breath, occasionally shooting me the kind of look that would have turned Lot's wife to salt twice over.
I leaned back in my chair, smirking faintly.
"So," I said to Stalin, "what do you say? You take the Party. I'll handle the streets. Between the two of us, we'll squeeze this revolution like a lemon and see who bleeds."
Stalin took another long drag, flipping the notebook closed with a slow, deliberate gesture.
"I say you're completely insane."
"But effective."
He nodded once. "That's the terrifying part."
Last edited:
A play known as the July days
Alenco98
Not too sore, are you?
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July 17, 1917
Smolny Palace
Petrograd, Russia – Evening
We were crammed into one of Smolny's many drafty, echo-prone conference rooms, the kind with cracked molding, half-burned candles, and a crucifix someone had violently removed from the wall, leaving behind an unsettling shadow of Christ's outline and a bloodstain of flaking plaster. A very appropriate setting for the kind of conversation we were having.
At the table sat the main players: Lenin, looking gaunt and twitchy, eyes darting like a man who hadn't slept in three days and might never again. Stalin was across from me, smoking like it was a form of punctuation. Trotsky, technically still a free agent—neither Bolshevik nor Menshevik anymore—had been increasingly orbiting our camp like a highly intellectual asteroid with a great mustache and a dangerous gravitational pull. The rest of the Bolshevik high command filled in the gaps—Zinoviev, Kamenev, assorted theorists, tacticians, and wreckage from earlier debates.
The mood? Tense didn't quite cover it.
Outside, Petrograd was on fire—metaphorically and, in several districts, quite literally. Another massive strike had broken out yesterday. The Provisional Government, ever innovative in its capacity for self-destruction, had responded by rolling out machine guns earlier today. Live ammunition. Corpses in the street. Blood in the gutters. Very effective at crowd control, very bad for optics.
Now half the city was rioting, the other half was hiding in basements, and both halves were asking the same thing: "When are the Bolsheviks going to finish the job?"
And what did Lenin say?
"No."
Firm. Calm. Like he was ordering soup.
"We're not ready," he said.
And he was right.
Much as my inner tyrant wanted to flip the table and declare a glorious coup, I agreed. My Revolutionary Guard Corps had grown to just over 3,000 foot soldiers—not counting spies, runners, factory agitators, saboteurs, quartermasters, or the workshop crews making bullets out of melted candlesticks. We were organized, loyal, fanatical, and heavily armed, but we were still just the second-largest Red Guard force in the city.
Kronstadt still held the crown—both in numbers and in firepower. But the good news? They were warming to us. Fast.
Even better, I had made a personal friend in Fyodor Raskolnikov, one of the leading troublemakers over at Kronstadt. A boisterous, dangerous man with a talent for mutiny and a taste for vodka that could dissolve metal. We got along famously. Stalin had introduced us, and soon enough we ended up playing chess, drinking Georgian wine I bought and exchanging military workshop designs.
Ah, nepotism. Sometimes it really works.
Now, Raskolnikov—bless him—had taken it upon himself to incite a full-blown garrison mutiny. Which was fantastic in the short term, since it redirected government paranoia away from Smolny and toward Kronstadt. But also deeply inconvenient, because now Kerensky and his ilk were convinced we were days away from storming the Winter Palace with pitchforks and whatever the hell passed for a navy in July.
And speaking of government panic—Chernov, one of the Provisional Government's more unfortunate ministers, had been nearly lynched by a mob of angry sailors from Kronstadt just today. Who rescued him?
Trotsky.
Yes, that Trotsky. He threw himself into the crowd like a Marxist Moses and managed to pull Chernov out with nothing more than a torn coat and a lecture on revolutionary ethics.
It was hilarious. And also deeply horrifying.
Because it meant we were officially in the middle of an uncontrollable revolution. One that didn't care whether the Bolsheviks were ready, or whether Lenin's pamphlet schedule said now was the time to seize power. The mob didn't care about theoretical maturity or historical conditions. The mob wanted blood, and they were starting to look at us as the guys holding the knives.
Back in the room, Kamenev was wringing his hands about the need to "appeal to the working class with moral clarity," while Zinoviev muttered something about "tactical patience," and Lenin kept repeating that the time wasn't ripe like a man trying to will a fruit tree into bearing arms.
Trotsky, meanwhile, sat with his arms crossed, silently judging us all like a disappointed history teacher watching his students fail to spell "dictatorship of the proletariat."
I leaned back in my chair and looked around at this circus, this war council, this absurd halfway point between theory and chaos, and thought—
Jesus Christ, this is life now.
The room was still buzzing with low arguments and the smell of sweat, dust, and revolutionary failure. Lenin was pacing now, muttering to himself in staccato bursts of German and Russian. Zinoviev was still advocating for a pamphlet campaign, as if the Provisional Government could be drowned in paper. Kamenev looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin and back into his university library.
I stood.
My chair gave a very satisfying scrape against the floor. It got their attention.
"I think," I began, "we need to do something in between Lenin's refusal and Kamenev's suicide-by-caution."
A few heads turned.
"We don't call for a coup. But we don't condemn the strikes either."
Lenin stopped pacing.
"We say something vague. Something legally useless but emotionally loaded. Like: 'The Bolshevik Party will not be intimidated by counter-revolutionaries. The workers and soldiers will defend the gains of the revolution.'"
Trotsky raised an eyebrow.
"We don't name names. We don't shout 'Down with Kerensky.' But we hint. We remind the people: Peace, Bread, Land. That's it. Those three words are more powerful than any manifesto."
I stepped forward and set my hands on the table.
"Smolny becomes our fortress. Literally. I've got 3,000 men under arms. Heavily armed. Trained. Fanatical. They're already on alert. We lock this place down. We lock down our printing presses. Our workshops. Our warehouses. Our food kitchens. We put sandbags at the doors, machine guns on the roof, patrols on the street."
Kamenev blanched.
I continued. "We rally the other Red Guard detachments. I've got people embedded in all of them. Kronstadt. Vyborg. The students Committes. I can send emissaries to coordinate a 'Unity Rally' outside Smolny. Peaceful. Symbolic. Flags, workers, uniforms. No grenades unless the Provisional Government brings them."
Zinoviev looked queasy. "That sounds like a provocation."
"It's not a provocation unless we call it one. It's a rally in support of the people. We say we want Kerensky to listen—not fall. Yet. But we build pressure. Publicly, we say 'respect the people's will.' Privately, we dare them to shoot first."
Silence.
Then I added, "And while we're at it, we need to start preparing for the long game. A true army. Not just the Guard Corps. A Soviet Army. If civil war breaks out, we'll need more than Red Guards and street militias. We'll need logistics, uniforms, command structure, discipline."
I looked to Lenin.
"You pick the head. You're the one they trust. I'll supply him men, weapons, and security. But we can't wait forever. Either we build it—or someone else does."
Another silence.
Then the reactions came.
Lenin rubbed his forehead, muttering something about historical necessity and premature action. Finally, he said:
"This is… measured. Cautious. But strong. It's not a coup. Not yet. But it applies pressure. Keeps our options open. I agree with the rally—on one condition. No spontaneous arming of civilians. We can't afford a civil war yet."
Stalin just nodded. Slowly. "I like it. Order with flexibility. We let the people feel the power, without taking power. Not yet. And if things turn… we're already in position."
Trotsky leaned back in his chair, stroking his mustache like he was preparing to write a ten-page takedown of the idea.
"This plan reeks of Bonapartism," he said flatly. "Fortresses. Private militias. Secret police. Next you'll be proposing to build a Party navy with cannons shaped like hammers."
I smiled. "Actually—"
"However," Trotsky interrupted, "it's the best option on the table. We can't let the Provisional Government massacre people and then call for unity. We either defend the masses or we admit we're just another faction trying to out-publish the Kadets."
Zinoviev, predictably, looked horrified. "We are walking toward a militarized politics that will devour us all. These plans will lead to dictatorship!"
Kamenev nodded in cautious agreement. "We must proceed with great restraint."
Trotsky turned to them, voice razor-sharp. "You're both living in 1905. This isn't a theoretical seminar. The Provisional Government is shooting civilians in the street. If you're too squeamish to defend yourselves, get out of the way."
Lenin finally raised his hand.
"Enough. We proceed with the Unity Rally. Mikheil, coordinate with the Guard Corps and the other Red Guard factions. Zinoviev—draft a statement. Kamenev, you'll read it to the press. Keep it clean."
He looked around the room.
"We are not launching an insurrection. But we will not be trampled."
Then he turned to me.
"I'll name the head of the Soviet Army tomorrow."
As the meeting ended and the room slowly emptied, Stalin approached me and muttered quietly:
"You're building an army. I'm building the Party. Trotsky wants the revolution."
He lit another cigarette.
"Let's see who gets what first."
July 18, 1917
Smolny Palace – Morning
Petrograd, Russia
I stood just behind the giants of the revolution—Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Stalin, and Zinoviev—like a polite shadow with a violent streak. At my side were six of my boys, sharp-eyed, sharper-jawed, and carrying enough firepower to make a tsar reconsider his entire lifestyle.
Before us, arrayed in the courtyard like a row of toy soldiers if the toys had severe trauma and rifles, stood a full contingent of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Five hundred men. Black uniforms pressed and glinting in the morning light, red helmets with Totenkopf's gleaming like cherries of war. It was theatrical, it was militarized, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Honestly, if this whole communism thing didn't work out, I could pivoted to military fashion design if I'm not shot.
Each guard stood straight as a bayonet, rifles at their shoulders, sidearms holstered, boots polished to mirror shine. A sea of red stars stared back at us. It was a sight that inspired either awe, fear, or rapid bowel evacuation, depending on whether you were a Bolshevik, a Menshevik, or someone still clinging to the Provisional Government.
I stepped forward and stood next to Lenin, who squinted at the display like a man unsure if he was at a rally or a fever dream. Time to get the show started.
"Hail!" I shouted.
Instantly, five hundred arms raised—not clenched in defiance, but stretched forward in that "Roman" salute we all knew would one day become very problematic in Germany. But for now, it was ours. Revolutionary, symbolic, maybe a little fascist-flavored, but nobody could deny it had flair.
"Glory to the Party! Glory to Marx!" the guards barked in perfect unison, the sound bouncing off the palace walls like a war drum.
Then, like a choir of well-armed angels:
"Peace! Bread! Land!"
The crowd, packed in tight outside the gates, erupted into applause and whistles. Some waved red banners, others hoisted children onto their shoulders so they could glimpse the moment history smiled with crooked teeth.
I turned to Lenin, gave him a respectful nod, and grinned.
"Your turn, Comrade."
He looked at me like a man who'd just been handed a live grenade and told it was a microphone.
Lenin cleared his throat, adjusted his collar, and stepped forward with the subtle confidence of someone who was 70% ideology and 30% caffeine. The cheering softened. The crowd leaned in. History held its breath.
Meanwhile, behind me, one of my guards—Comrade Oleg, bless his simple soul—whispered, "Should we fire a volley into the air for drama?"
"No, Oleg," I whispered back. "Let the man talk before you start a civil war."
Lenin raised his hand. The crowd, remarkably, quieted.
"Comrades," Lenin began, his voice hoarse but firm, "we live in a time of great struggle. The streets of Petrograd have run with blood once again. Many ask what our position is, what the Bolshevik Party says of the protests."
He paused. Somewhere in the crowd, a bottle clinked to the ground. Someone coughed.
"To that, I say this: the will of the people is not to be silenced with bullets. But neither shall we allow our party to be dragged into premature confrontation by adventurists or provocateurs—be they in the street, in the army, or wearing a minister's sash."
That earned a few shouts of approval and a hearty, "That's right!" from someone in a dirty naval coat who may or may not have been drunk.
"We shall not let this Party be bullied by the agents of counter-revolution!" Lenin's voice rose now, his hand slicing through the air like it was cutting up bread—or political opposition. "The Soviets must stand united. Workers, peasants, soldiers, sailors—we must be disciplined, comrades. We must be prepared, organized, not reckless."
He gestured toward the red banners, fluttering beside bayonets and helmets.
"We call not for chaos—but for peace. We demand bread for the hungry. And we declare land to those who till it with calloused hands!"
A thunderous cheer erupted.
"Let the Provisional Government listen well," Lenin said coldly, "for we speak with the voice of the people. Let them act according to the will of the masses, or let history sweep them away like autumn leaves beneath a storm."
And with that, he stepped back.
A few scattered calls of "Lenin! Lenin!" broke out, but they quickly faded as another figure stepped forward.
Trotsky.
He had his glasses on, his hair wild as ever, and the look of a man who would argue with a priest at a funeral just for fun.
He adjusted his collar, raised one hand—and let loose like a cannon blast.
"Comrades!" Trotsky shouted. "We are told to be calm while workers are shot in the streets! We are told to be patient while bread lines grow longer, while our comrades rot in trenches for a war we did not ask for!"
Now the crowd was moving with him—cheering, clapping, rifles tapping against boots.
"They say revolution is premature," Trotsky barked, "but I ask you—was hunger premature? Was Tsarism premature? Are the bullets in Nevsky Prospect premature?!"
He was pacing now, gesturing wildly, passion crackling in every line.
"We will not provoke, no," he said with a sly smirk. "But we will not kneel either. The Bolsheviks will not cower before a dying regime whose only talent is butchery and bad policy!"
Rifles shot into the air. A few Kronstadt sailors let out howls like wolves.
"The hour approaches when the people shall act!" Trotsky bellowed. "And when that moment comes—our boots shall be laced, our rifles loaded, and our resolve as cold and sharp as a bayonet in winter!"
Absolute pandemonium. Cheers. Chants. Salutes. A Red Guard fainted from heat or passion—unclear which. Even Lenin looked vaguely impressed, though he gave Trotsky a side-eye like someone who'd just watched their dog learn to talk politics.
I stood there grinning like an idiot. My uniformed boys raised their rifles. The Kronstadt sailors followed. So did the factory guards. A hundred red banners whipped in the breeze like revolutionary streamers at a parade that might end in civil war.
It was perfect.
Controlled chaos. Righteous fury. Revolutionary theater with a machine gun budget.
No calls for a coup. No direct attacks on Kerensky. Just… a very sharp, very loud reminder:
We're here. We're watching. And we're not afraid.
July 18, 1917
A quiet office room near Smolny
Evening
The sun had dipped low, casting a soft amber glow over the Petrograd rooftops as I waited by the window, arms crossed, listening to the muffled sounds of typewriters and boots outside. Fyodor Raskolnikov entered quietly, closing the door behind him with a quick glance down the hallway—as if checking for ghosts or informants. I didn't blame him.
He was still in his naval greatcoat, boots caked with street dust, cap tucked under one arm. The man looked like he hadn't slept since the tsar abdicated—deep-set eyes, sharp cheekbones, and that grim Kronstadt expression of someone who knew how many corpses a revolution might stack.
"Comrade Makarov," he greeted.
"Comrade Raskolnikov," I replied, gesturing to the seat across from me. "Glad you came. You're a hard man to get a hold of. I was about to send a boat."
He sat with a faint, humorless grin. "Well, I haven't had time to schedule many social calls lately."
"Understandable," I said, pouring him a shot of watered-down wine from a dusty bottle I kept in my desk. "You're organizing half the Baltic Fleet and inciting Petrograd's garrison into spontaneous bouts of mutiny. Must be exhausting."
He took the drink, downed it in one motion, then looked me dead in the eyes.
"You wanted to talk?"
I nodded and leaned forward.
"The Provisional Government's not going to let this slide, Fyodor," I said. "Kerensky's already twitching like a man who hears the gallows being built behind him. There'll be a crackdown. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. But it's coming."
"I know," he said, grim.
"And when it does," I continued, "they're not going to start with Lenin or Trotsky. Those two are too public, too careful. They'll start with you. You and the other Kronstadt leaders. You're the perfect target—militant, popular, and naval."
He didn't respond. He didn't need to.
"So," I went on, "here's my offer: I'll shelter you. You and your closest officers. I've got safe houses near Smolny, underground supply routes, men who'll kill or die on my word. You'll disappear from public view, at least long enough for the fire to pass."
He arched an eyebrow. "And in return?"
I gave him a lopsided smile. "Just loyalty. Not blind. Not eternal. Just… remember who backed you when things got dangerous. Remember who kept you breathing. That's all."
He looked away for a moment, staring at a framed map on the wall—old, tsarist, cracked around the edges. The tension sat between us like an uninvited guest.
"I won't abandon Kronstadt," he said finally.
"I'm not asking you to," I said. "I'm offering to preserve your leadership so Kronstadt doesn't burn without a head. You think I want to see sailors gunned down in the streets because their commander was too proud to vanish for a week?"
He snorted. "You talk like a criminal."
"I am a criminal," I said, cheerfully. "But one with a plan."
He studied me—really studied me—for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"All right. If it gets worse, I'll send word. But if I go into hiding, I want my men armed, supplied, and ready to strike if needed."
I nodded. "Done. I'll keep channels open to Kronstadt, and if you have to vanish, we'll make it look like you walked into the sea and never came back."
He rose from the chair. "You really think it's going to come to that?"
I stood as well. "It already has. We're just waiting for Kerensky to catch up."
We shook hands—firm, cold, quiet.
"I'll hold you to your word," he said.
"Good," I replied. "Just be alive to do it."
As he left, I glanced out the window again. The streets below looked calm on the surface. But the revolution had teeth now—and they were starting to show.
-----------
July 20, 1917
Petrograd, Russia
Morning – an apartment in the outskirts of Vyborg
The room smelled like gun oil, cheap vodka, and paranoia. A perfect sanctuary, really.
Raskolnikov and three of the other Kronstadt sailor leaders had just arrived under armed escort—hooded for plausible deniability, escorted through back alleys and underground cellar tunnels that my men used for smuggling liquor and rifles. We fed them, gave them new clothes, and told them to shut up and not look out the windows.
It was a good thing they got here too, the Provisional Government had just issued an order for the arrest of Lenin and the leaders in Kronstadt. The government had agreed yesterday night and had planned to give the order out today. Fortunately, with some of my people embedded within the government I got advanced notice and sent people to get Roskolnikov, and now here we were.
"How long do we stay here?" one asked me, his breath still fogging despite the summer heat.
"Until I say so. Or until the government collapses. Whichever comes first," I said, handing him a mug of tea laced with just enough brandy to take the edge off his revolutionary zeal.
We gave them cots. Blankets. Soap. Even cigarettes—not the fancy kind, but it beat gnawing on a rifle stock. Then I left instructions with Comrade Bear to post three guards at every door, rotate shifts every six hours, and shoot anyone who asked too many questions. No one knew they were here, no one except bear and a few cadres within the RCG, they were hidden well, and I intended it to be that way for now. Right now however, I had a meeting to attend. Back to Smolny.
I traveled back to the city the say way I left, hooded for plausible deniability, escorted through back alleys and underground cellar tunnels that my men used for smuggling liquor and rifles. Fashionable, discreet, like I was in an Alex Ryder spy novel. By the time I arrived in Smolny it was mid afternoon.
I walked into the room where the Bolshevik leadership had gathered—Lenin, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, a few others who mattered, and Trotsky, who still technically wasn't one of us but was basically aligned with us.
I didn't waste time with pleasantries.
"Gentlemen," I said, taking my spot near the head of the conference table, "The government is moving. I just got word from my man in the Transport Ministry—they're mobilizing troops, sending them towards the city under the pretext of 'restoring order.' They'll get here tomorrow."
The room didn't go silent—it tensed. You could feel the oxygen trying to make a decision about whether to stick around.
Lenin leaned forward. "How reliable is the source?"
"He's currently sleeping with the secretary of one of Kerensky's deputy ministers. I trust pillow talk more than I trust the newspapers."
Zinoviev muttered, "A military coup…"
Stalin grunted. "Called it."
Kamenev, more cautious as always, asked, "I knew this would happen, we shouldn't have done that damn ra-"
"Quiet," I said. "We still have time. Which is why I've taken the liberty of setting up a response."
Trotsky, arms folded, raised an eyebrow. "Oh? I assume this will be something subtle and nuanced?"
I grinned. "Subtle as a punch to the teeth."
I laid it out fast:
"We use this. We want the people to think an aristocratic counterrevolution is coming—because it is. We flood the streets with posters, handbills, speeches. 'The generals are coming. The landlords are coming. Only the Soviets stand between you and the whip.'" I paused. "Catchy, right?"
Lenin cracked a faint smile. "Keep going."
"I'm sending my men to sow unrest in the army's ranks—especially the infantry and artillery divisions. Lots of peasant boys in those units. I imagine they won't be thrilled to learn they're being used to march on Petrograd and shoot their brothers."
"Agitators?" Stalin asked.
"Agitators. With leaflets, money, and alcohol. One or two guns if negotiations break down."
Kamenev looked skeptical. "You really think you can divide them?"
"I don't need to divide them. I just need to make them hesitate. A hesitating army doesn't march—it festers."
"Anything else?" Lenin asked, already scribbling notes like he was drafting the future.
"Yeah. I've still got men in the Provisional Government. Minor clerks, typists, janitors—no one famous, but they hear things. I'll have them start whispering that the generals are going rogue. Make it look like he's not just targeting us, but Kerensky too."
That got a laugh from Trotsky. "Divide and conquer. You're a natural Machiavellian."
"I prefer the term preventative visionary," I said.
Lenin folded his arms and nodded slowly. "This could work. If we don't overreach."
"We won't," I said. "We won't call for a coup, not yet. Remember? We don't need to. We'll just make it clear that we will not be bullied. The guards will remain in Smolny, our printing presses, warehouses, workshops. Fortify. Post patrols. Distribute food. Give speeches. We won't say 'down with Kerensky'—we'll say 'respect the will of the people.' We'll call for bread. Peace. Land. Like in your speech yesterday."
"And if the army marches anyway?" Kamenev asked.
I shrugged. "Then we shoot them in the face and blame the entire mess on monarchist traitors. Either way, we win. They'll look like the aggressors, we'll look like the victims. The red guards look to us now, Kronstadt is on our side, and we have 3000 heavily armed men. Kerensky knows if he tries anything it'll be civil war. He won't roll the dice."
As we left the room, Lenin clapped me on the shoulder.
"Comrade Mikheil," he said, "your methods are unorthodox."
"Better unorthodox than buried."
Stalin gave me a look. "You've been reading too much Machiavelli again, haven't you?"
"Of course," I said. "And I underlined the violent parts."
Smolny Palace
Petrograd, Russia – Evening
We were crammed into one of Smolny's many drafty, echo-prone conference rooms, the kind with cracked molding, half-burned candles, and a crucifix someone had violently removed from the wall, leaving behind an unsettling shadow of Christ's outline and a bloodstain of flaking plaster. A very appropriate setting for the kind of conversation we were having.
At the table sat the main players: Lenin, looking gaunt and twitchy, eyes darting like a man who hadn't slept in three days and might never again. Stalin was across from me, smoking like it was a form of punctuation. Trotsky, technically still a free agent—neither Bolshevik nor Menshevik anymore—had been increasingly orbiting our camp like a highly intellectual asteroid with a great mustache and a dangerous gravitational pull. The rest of the Bolshevik high command filled in the gaps—Zinoviev, Kamenev, assorted theorists, tacticians, and wreckage from earlier debates.
The mood? Tense didn't quite cover it.
Outside, Petrograd was on fire—metaphorically and, in several districts, quite literally. Another massive strike had broken out yesterday. The Provisional Government, ever innovative in its capacity for self-destruction, had responded by rolling out machine guns earlier today. Live ammunition. Corpses in the street. Blood in the gutters. Very effective at crowd control, very bad for optics.
Now half the city was rioting, the other half was hiding in basements, and both halves were asking the same thing: "When are the Bolsheviks going to finish the job?"
And what did Lenin say?
"No."
Firm. Calm. Like he was ordering soup.
"We're not ready," he said.
And he was right.
Much as my inner tyrant wanted to flip the table and declare a glorious coup, I agreed. My Revolutionary Guard Corps had grown to just over 3,000 foot soldiers—not counting spies, runners, factory agitators, saboteurs, quartermasters, or the workshop crews making bullets out of melted candlesticks. We were organized, loyal, fanatical, and heavily armed, but we were still just the second-largest Red Guard force in the city.
Kronstadt still held the crown—both in numbers and in firepower. But the good news? They were warming to us. Fast.
Even better, I had made a personal friend in Fyodor Raskolnikov, one of the leading troublemakers over at Kronstadt. A boisterous, dangerous man with a talent for mutiny and a taste for vodka that could dissolve metal. We got along famously. Stalin had introduced us, and soon enough we ended up playing chess, drinking Georgian wine I bought and exchanging military workshop designs.
Ah, nepotism. Sometimes it really works.
Now, Raskolnikov—bless him—had taken it upon himself to incite a full-blown garrison mutiny. Which was fantastic in the short term, since it redirected government paranoia away from Smolny and toward Kronstadt. But also deeply inconvenient, because now Kerensky and his ilk were convinced we were days away from storming the Winter Palace with pitchforks and whatever the hell passed for a navy in July.
And speaking of government panic—Chernov, one of the Provisional Government's more unfortunate ministers, had been nearly lynched by a mob of angry sailors from Kronstadt just today. Who rescued him?
Trotsky.
Yes, that Trotsky. He threw himself into the crowd like a Marxist Moses and managed to pull Chernov out with nothing more than a torn coat and a lecture on revolutionary ethics.
It was hilarious. And also deeply horrifying.
Because it meant we were officially in the middle of an uncontrollable revolution. One that didn't care whether the Bolsheviks were ready, or whether Lenin's pamphlet schedule said now was the time to seize power. The mob didn't care about theoretical maturity or historical conditions. The mob wanted blood, and they were starting to look at us as the guys holding the knives.
Back in the room, Kamenev was wringing his hands about the need to "appeal to the working class with moral clarity," while Zinoviev muttered something about "tactical patience," and Lenin kept repeating that the time wasn't ripe like a man trying to will a fruit tree into bearing arms.
Trotsky, meanwhile, sat with his arms crossed, silently judging us all like a disappointed history teacher watching his students fail to spell "dictatorship of the proletariat."
I leaned back in my chair and looked around at this circus, this war council, this absurd halfway point between theory and chaos, and thought—
Jesus Christ, this is life now.
The room was still buzzing with low arguments and the smell of sweat, dust, and revolutionary failure. Lenin was pacing now, muttering to himself in staccato bursts of German and Russian. Zinoviev was still advocating for a pamphlet campaign, as if the Provisional Government could be drowned in paper. Kamenev looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin and back into his university library.
I stood.
My chair gave a very satisfying scrape against the floor. It got their attention.
"I think," I began, "we need to do something in between Lenin's refusal and Kamenev's suicide-by-caution."
A few heads turned.
"We don't call for a coup. But we don't condemn the strikes either."
Lenin stopped pacing.
"We say something vague. Something legally useless but emotionally loaded. Like: 'The Bolshevik Party will not be intimidated by counter-revolutionaries. The workers and soldiers will defend the gains of the revolution.'"
Trotsky raised an eyebrow.
"We don't name names. We don't shout 'Down with Kerensky.' But we hint. We remind the people: Peace, Bread, Land. That's it. Those three words are more powerful than any manifesto."
I stepped forward and set my hands on the table.
"Smolny becomes our fortress. Literally. I've got 3,000 men under arms. Heavily armed. Trained. Fanatical. They're already on alert. We lock this place down. We lock down our printing presses. Our workshops. Our warehouses. Our food kitchens. We put sandbags at the doors, machine guns on the roof, patrols on the street."
Kamenev blanched.
I continued. "We rally the other Red Guard detachments. I've got people embedded in all of them. Kronstadt. Vyborg. The students Committes. I can send emissaries to coordinate a 'Unity Rally' outside Smolny. Peaceful. Symbolic. Flags, workers, uniforms. No grenades unless the Provisional Government brings them."
Zinoviev looked queasy. "That sounds like a provocation."
"It's not a provocation unless we call it one. It's a rally in support of the people. We say we want Kerensky to listen—not fall. Yet. But we build pressure. Publicly, we say 'respect the people's will.' Privately, we dare them to shoot first."
Silence.
Then I added, "And while we're at it, we need to start preparing for the long game. A true army. Not just the Guard Corps. A Soviet Army. If civil war breaks out, we'll need more than Red Guards and street militias. We'll need logistics, uniforms, command structure, discipline."
I looked to Lenin.
"You pick the head. You're the one they trust. I'll supply him men, weapons, and security. But we can't wait forever. Either we build it—or someone else does."
Another silence.
Then the reactions came.
Lenin rubbed his forehead, muttering something about historical necessity and premature action. Finally, he said:
"This is… measured. Cautious. But strong. It's not a coup. Not yet. But it applies pressure. Keeps our options open. I agree with the rally—on one condition. No spontaneous arming of civilians. We can't afford a civil war yet."
Stalin just nodded. Slowly. "I like it. Order with flexibility. We let the people feel the power, without taking power. Not yet. And if things turn… we're already in position."
Trotsky leaned back in his chair, stroking his mustache like he was preparing to write a ten-page takedown of the idea.
"This plan reeks of Bonapartism," he said flatly. "Fortresses. Private militias. Secret police. Next you'll be proposing to build a Party navy with cannons shaped like hammers."
I smiled. "Actually—"
"However," Trotsky interrupted, "it's the best option on the table. We can't let the Provisional Government massacre people and then call for unity. We either defend the masses or we admit we're just another faction trying to out-publish the Kadets."
Zinoviev, predictably, looked horrified. "We are walking toward a militarized politics that will devour us all. These plans will lead to dictatorship!"
Kamenev nodded in cautious agreement. "We must proceed with great restraint."
Trotsky turned to them, voice razor-sharp. "You're both living in 1905. This isn't a theoretical seminar. The Provisional Government is shooting civilians in the street. If you're too squeamish to defend yourselves, get out of the way."
Lenin finally raised his hand.
"Enough. We proceed with the Unity Rally. Mikheil, coordinate with the Guard Corps and the other Red Guard factions. Zinoviev—draft a statement. Kamenev, you'll read it to the press. Keep it clean."
He looked around the room.
"We are not launching an insurrection. But we will not be trampled."
Then he turned to me.
"I'll name the head of the Soviet Army tomorrow."
As the meeting ended and the room slowly emptied, Stalin approached me and muttered quietly:
"You're building an army. I'm building the Party. Trotsky wants the revolution."
He lit another cigarette.
"Let's see who gets what first."
July 18, 1917
Smolny Palace – Morning
Petrograd, Russia
I stood just behind the giants of the revolution—Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Stalin, and Zinoviev—like a polite shadow with a violent streak. At my side were six of my boys, sharp-eyed, sharper-jawed, and carrying enough firepower to make a tsar reconsider his entire lifestyle.
Before us, arrayed in the courtyard like a row of toy soldiers if the toys had severe trauma and rifles, stood a full contingent of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Five hundred men. Black uniforms pressed and glinting in the morning light, red helmets with Totenkopf's gleaming like cherries of war. It was theatrical, it was militarized, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Honestly, if this whole communism thing didn't work out, I could pivoted to military fashion design if I'm not shot.
Each guard stood straight as a bayonet, rifles at their shoulders, sidearms holstered, boots polished to mirror shine. A sea of red stars stared back at us. It was a sight that inspired either awe, fear, or rapid bowel evacuation, depending on whether you were a Bolshevik, a Menshevik, or someone still clinging to the Provisional Government.
I stepped forward and stood next to Lenin, who squinted at the display like a man unsure if he was at a rally or a fever dream. Time to get the show started.
"Hail!" I shouted.
Instantly, five hundred arms raised—not clenched in defiance, but stretched forward in that "Roman" salute we all knew would one day become very problematic in Germany. But for now, it was ours. Revolutionary, symbolic, maybe a little fascist-flavored, but nobody could deny it had flair.
"Glory to the Party! Glory to Marx!" the guards barked in perfect unison, the sound bouncing off the palace walls like a war drum.
Then, like a choir of well-armed angels:
"Peace! Bread! Land!"
The crowd, packed in tight outside the gates, erupted into applause and whistles. Some waved red banners, others hoisted children onto their shoulders so they could glimpse the moment history smiled with crooked teeth.
I turned to Lenin, gave him a respectful nod, and grinned.
"Your turn, Comrade."
He looked at me like a man who'd just been handed a live grenade and told it was a microphone.
Lenin cleared his throat, adjusted his collar, and stepped forward with the subtle confidence of someone who was 70% ideology and 30% caffeine. The cheering softened. The crowd leaned in. History held its breath.
Meanwhile, behind me, one of my guards—Comrade Oleg, bless his simple soul—whispered, "Should we fire a volley into the air for drama?"
"No, Oleg," I whispered back. "Let the man talk before you start a civil war."
Lenin raised his hand. The crowd, remarkably, quieted.
"Comrades," Lenin began, his voice hoarse but firm, "we live in a time of great struggle. The streets of Petrograd have run with blood once again. Many ask what our position is, what the Bolshevik Party says of the protests."
He paused. Somewhere in the crowd, a bottle clinked to the ground. Someone coughed.
"To that, I say this: the will of the people is not to be silenced with bullets. But neither shall we allow our party to be dragged into premature confrontation by adventurists or provocateurs—be they in the street, in the army, or wearing a minister's sash."
That earned a few shouts of approval and a hearty, "That's right!" from someone in a dirty naval coat who may or may not have been drunk.
"We shall not let this Party be bullied by the agents of counter-revolution!" Lenin's voice rose now, his hand slicing through the air like it was cutting up bread—or political opposition. "The Soviets must stand united. Workers, peasants, soldiers, sailors—we must be disciplined, comrades. We must be prepared, organized, not reckless."
He gestured toward the red banners, fluttering beside bayonets and helmets.
"We call not for chaos—but for peace. We demand bread for the hungry. And we declare land to those who till it with calloused hands!"
A thunderous cheer erupted.
"Let the Provisional Government listen well," Lenin said coldly, "for we speak with the voice of the people. Let them act according to the will of the masses, or let history sweep them away like autumn leaves beneath a storm."
And with that, he stepped back.
A few scattered calls of "Lenin! Lenin!" broke out, but they quickly faded as another figure stepped forward.
Trotsky.
He had his glasses on, his hair wild as ever, and the look of a man who would argue with a priest at a funeral just for fun.
He adjusted his collar, raised one hand—and let loose like a cannon blast.
"Comrades!" Trotsky shouted. "We are told to be calm while workers are shot in the streets! We are told to be patient while bread lines grow longer, while our comrades rot in trenches for a war we did not ask for!"
Now the crowd was moving with him—cheering, clapping, rifles tapping against boots.
"They say revolution is premature," Trotsky barked, "but I ask you—was hunger premature? Was Tsarism premature? Are the bullets in Nevsky Prospect premature?!"
He was pacing now, gesturing wildly, passion crackling in every line.
"We will not provoke, no," he said with a sly smirk. "But we will not kneel either. The Bolsheviks will not cower before a dying regime whose only talent is butchery and bad policy!"
Rifles shot into the air. A few Kronstadt sailors let out howls like wolves.
"The hour approaches when the people shall act!" Trotsky bellowed. "And when that moment comes—our boots shall be laced, our rifles loaded, and our resolve as cold and sharp as a bayonet in winter!"
Absolute pandemonium. Cheers. Chants. Salutes. A Red Guard fainted from heat or passion—unclear which. Even Lenin looked vaguely impressed, though he gave Trotsky a side-eye like someone who'd just watched their dog learn to talk politics.
I stood there grinning like an idiot. My uniformed boys raised their rifles. The Kronstadt sailors followed. So did the factory guards. A hundred red banners whipped in the breeze like revolutionary streamers at a parade that might end in civil war.
It was perfect.
Controlled chaos. Righteous fury. Revolutionary theater with a machine gun budget.
No calls for a coup. No direct attacks on Kerensky. Just… a very sharp, very loud reminder:
We're here. We're watching. And we're not afraid.
July 18, 1917
A quiet office room near Smolny
Evening
The sun had dipped low, casting a soft amber glow over the Petrograd rooftops as I waited by the window, arms crossed, listening to the muffled sounds of typewriters and boots outside. Fyodor Raskolnikov entered quietly, closing the door behind him with a quick glance down the hallway—as if checking for ghosts or informants. I didn't blame him.
He was still in his naval greatcoat, boots caked with street dust, cap tucked under one arm. The man looked like he hadn't slept since the tsar abdicated—deep-set eyes, sharp cheekbones, and that grim Kronstadt expression of someone who knew how many corpses a revolution might stack.
"Comrade Makarov," he greeted.
"Comrade Raskolnikov," I replied, gesturing to the seat across from me. "Glad you came. You're a hard man to get a hold of. I was about to send a boat."
He sat with a faint, humorless grin. "Well, I haven't had time to schedule many social calls lately."
"Understandable," I said, pouring him a shot of watered-down wine from a dusty bottle I kept in my desk. "You're organizing half the Baltic Fleet and inciting Petrograd's garrison into spontaneous bouts of mutiny. Must be exhausting."
He took the drink, downed it in one motion, then looked me dead in the eyes.
"You wanted to talk?"
I nodded and leaned forward.
"The Provisional Government's not going to let this slide, Fyodor," I said. "Kerensky's already twitching like a man who hears the gallows being built behind him. There'll be a crackdown. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. But it's coming."
"I know," he said, grim.
"And when it does," I continued, "they're not going to start with Lenin or Trotsky. Those two are too public, too careful. They'll start with you. You and the other Kronstadt leaders. You're the perfect target—militant, popular, and naval."
He didn't respond. He didn't need to.
"So," I went on, "here's my offer: I'll shelter you. You and your closest officers. I've got safe houses near Smolny, underground supply routes, men who'll kill or die on my word. You'll disappear from public view, at least long enough for the fire to pass."
He arched an eyebrow. "And in return?"
I gave him a lopsided smile. "Just loyalty. Not blind. Not eternal. Just… remember who backed you when things got dangerous. Remember who kept you breathing. That's all."
He looked away for a moment, staring at a framed map on the wall—old, tsarist, cracked around the edges. The tension sat between us like an uninvited guest.
"I won't abandon Kronstadt," he said finally.
"I'm not asking you to," I said. "I'm offering to preserve your leadership so Kronstadt doesn't burn without a head. You think I want to see sailors gunned down in the streets because their commander was too proud to vanish for a week?"
He snorted. "You talk like a criminal."
"I am a criminal," I said, cheerfully. "But one with a plan."
He studied me—really studied me—for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"All right. If it gets worse, I'll send word. But if I go into hiding, I want my men armed, supplied, and ready to strike if needed."
I nodded. "Done. I'll keep channels open to Kronstadt, and if you have to vanish, we'll make it look like you walked into the sea and never came back."
He rose from the chair. "You really think it's going to come to that?"
I stood as well. "It already has. We're just waiting for Kerensky to catch up."
We shook hands—firm, cold, quiet.
"I'll hold you to your word," he said.
"Good," I replied. "Just be alive to do it."
As he left, I glanced out the window again. The streets below looked calm on the surface. But the revolution had teeth now—and they were starting to show.
-----------
July 20, 1917
Petrograd, Russia
Morning – an apartment in the outskirts of Vyborg
The room smelled like gun oil, cheap vodka, and paranoia. A perfect sanctuary, really.
Raskolnikov and three of the other Kronstadt sailor leaders had just arrived under armed escort—hooded for plausible deniability, escorted through back alleys and underground cellar tunnels that my men used for smuggling liquor and rifles. We fed them, gave them new clothes, and told them to shut up and not look out the windows.
It was a good thing they got here too, the Provisional Government had just issued an order for the arrest of Lenin and the leaders in Kronstadt. The government had agreed yesterday night and had planned to give the order out today. Fortunately, with some of my people embedded within the government I got advanced notice and sent people to get Roskolnikov, and now here we were.
"How long do we stay here?" one asked me, his breath still fogging despite the summer heat.
"Until I say so. Or until the government collapses. Whichever comes first," I said, handing him a mug of tea laced with just enough brandy to take the edge off his revolutionary zeal.
We gave them cots. Blankets. Soap. Even cigarettes—not the fancy kind, but it beat gnawing on a rifle stock. Then I left instructions with Comrade Bear to post three guards at every door, rotate shifts every six hours, and shoot anyone who asked too many questions. No one knew they were here, no one except bear and a few cadres within the RCG, they were hidden well, and I intended it to be that way for now. Right now however, I had a meeting to attend. Back to Smolny.
I traveled back to the city the say way I left, hooded for plausible deniability, escorted through back alleys and underground cellar tunnels that my men used for smuggling liquor and rifles. Fashionable, discreet, like I was in an Alex Ryder spy novel. By the time I arrived in Smolny it was mid afternoon.
I walked into the room where the Bolshevik leadership had gathered—Lenin, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, a few others who mattered, and Trotsky, who still technically wasn't one of us but was basically aligned with us.
I didn't waste time with pleasantries.
"Gentlemen," I said, taking my spot near the head of the conference table, "The government is moving. I just got word from my man in the Transport Ministry—they're mobilizing troops, sending them towards the city under the pretext of 'restoring order.' They'll get here tomorrow."
The room didn't go silent—it tensed. You could feel the oxygen trying to make a decision about whether to stick around.
Lenin leaned forward. "How reliable is the source?"
"He's currently sleeping with the secretary of one of Kerensky's deputy ministers. I trust pillow talk more than I trust the newspapers."
Zinoviev muttered, "A military coup…"
Stalin grunted. "Called it."
Kamenev, more cautious as always, asked, "I knew this would happen, we shouldn't have done that damn ra-"
"Quiet," I said. "We still have time. Which is why I've taken the liberty of setting up a response."
Trotsky, arms folded, raised an eyebrow. "Oh? I assume this will be something subtle and nuanced?"
I grinned. "Subtle as a punch to the teeth."
I laid it out fast:
"We use this. We want the people to think an aristocratic counterrevolution is coming—because it is. We flood the streets with posters, handbills, speeches. 'The generals are coming. The landlords are coming. Only the Soviets stand between you and the whip.'" I paused. "Catchy, right?"
Lenin cracked a faint smile. "Keep going."
"I'm sending my men to sow unrest in the army's ranks—especially the infantry and artillery divisions. Lots of peasant boys in those units. I imagine they won't be thrilled to learn they're being used to march on Petrograd and shoot their brothers."
"Agitators?" Stalin asked.
"Agitators. With leaflets, money, and alcohol. One or two guns if negotiations break down."
Kamenev looked skeptical. "You really think you can divide them?"
"I don't need to divide them. I just need to make them hesitate. A hesitating army doesn't march—it festers."
"Anything else?" Lenin asked, already scribbling notes like he was drafting the future.
"Yeah. I've still got men in the Provisional Government. Minor clerks, typists, janitors—no one famous, but they hear things. I'll have them start whispering that the generals are going rogue. Make it look like he's not just targeting us, but Kerensky too."
That got a laugh from Trotsky. "Divide and conquer. You're a natural Machiavellian."
"I prefer the term preventative visionary," I said.
Lenin folded his arms and nodded slowly. "This could work. If we don't overreach."
"We won't," I said. "We won't call for a coup, not yet. Remember? We don't need to. We'll just make it clear that we will not be bullied. The guards will remain in Smolny, our printing presses, warehouses, workshops. Fortify. Post patrols. Distribute food. Give speeches. We won't say 'down with Kerensky'—we'll say 'respect the will of the people.' We'll call for bread. Peace. Land. Like in your speech yesterday."
"And if the army marches anyway?" Kamenev asked.
I shrugged. "Then we shoot them in the face and blame the entire mess on monarchist traitors. Either way, we win. They'll look like the aggressors, we'll look like the victims. The red guards look to us now, Kronstadt is on our side, and we have 3000 heavily armed men. Kerensky knows if he tries anything it'll be civil war. He won't roll the dice."
As we left the room, Lenin clapped me on the shoulder.
"Comrade Mikheil," he said, "your methods are unorthodox."
"Better unorthodox than buried."
Stalin gave me a look. "You've been reading too much Machiavelli again, haven't you?"
"Of course," I said. "And I underlined the violent parts."
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July 21, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Afternoon
We were seated in the grand chamber that, for lack of a better term, had become the provisional war room of the Revolution. The walls still smelled faintly of chalk dust and candle wax from the building's former life as a finishing school for the daughters of the nobility. Now it housed armed men, political fanatics, and a bureaucratic fever dream I'd drafted in a haze of memories from my past life, everything from the Baathists to the Waffen SS to south American millitary juntas, all rolled up and painted with a bright red color and aesthetic. Glorious.
This was the first official meeting of the Revolutionary Defense Council—not yet National, of course, but hey, the branding had to start somewhere. This was my baby. My Frankenstein. My blueprint for a state built on steel, slogans, and layered paranoia. And it was breathing.
At the head of the long table sat Vladimir Ilyich Lenin—half messiah, half migraine. Beside him, on the left, Leon Trotsky in his clean jacket, polished spectacles, and smirk that could slice bread. And me, Mikheil, to Lenin's right—looking like the devil's gym coach in my black Guard Corps uniform, the newly minted Supreme Commissar of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. It sounded impressive, which was the point.
There was an empty chair left for Dzerzhinsky. He was en route from Moscow. Stalin had written him personally, even sent him a copy of my Internal Security memo, which I'll admit was basically a love letter to professional paranoia. From what I'd heard, Dzerzhinsky had a spine made of steel and a stare that made prison wardens flinch. Stalin described him with a kind of reverent dread—said he once chewed out an entire police battalion with a single look. The man had spent more time in solitary than most people spend asleep, and he never cracked. Never begged. Never even got indigestion, apparently.
So of course I wanted him to run the intelligence service. He sounded perfect if Stalin was to be believed.
While the others fiddled with papers, I stood humming quietly to myself—Remember Summer Days by Anri, because dammit, it was July and I was feeling nostalgic for a time that technically hadn't happened yet. City pop from the 1980s? Sue me. It kept me calm, unlike the Russian summer which smelled like sweat, cordite, and old cabbage.
Lenin looked up and deadpanned, "Comrade Mikheil, if you insist on serenading the Revolution, at least be in key."
I stopped humming and raised an eyebrow. "What, you don't like sweet summer songs about heartbreak?"
"I prefer we discuss building the army," he said flatly.
Sigh. "No respect for musical taste." Bastard.
"We need to expand immediately," Lenin continued. "Your Guard Corps, Trotsky's military detachments need to unite the Red Guards under our command. And Dzerzhinsky's national guard once he gets here. Discipline, logistics, hierarchy. I want unity, and I want it now."
Trotsky nodded, adjusting his spectacles. He still hadn't formally joined the Bolsheviks, but at this point, he was more "Bolshevik-adjacent" than most actual members. His Mezhraiontsy faction was preparing to merge with us during the upcoming Party Congress. My own people inside his circles told me he had about 4,000 sympathizers—cadre, factory agitators, some ex-soldiers. Only 500 were armed. The rest had slogans and a dangerous amount of free time.
Charming, yes. Dangerous, also yes. So I'd help—but not with my best toys. I had a rule about arming charismatic men who hadn't yet sworn loyalty. They would get rusty Mosins, hand-me-down pistols, machine guns that wheezed like old men. Just enough to say, "Look, we care," but not enough to let him play Napoleon.
"I'll start reallocating workshop production," I said. "Get them the basics—rifles, ammo, a few belt-fed toys."
I looked Trotsky in the eye and smiled the way a man smiles while counting exits in a room. "You'll need to institute real military discipline. Ranks. Drills. Punishments. The whole menu. If civil war comes—and it will—we'll need a damn army, not a rabble of angry poets with rifles."
Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "Poets with rifles won the Commune."
"And how long did that last?" I replied, sweetly.
Lenin chuckled. Trotsky grimaced, then scribbled something furiously in his notebook—probably a note to later yell at me.
Trotsky eventually nodded. "I'll appoint officers. Begin drills. But I want autonomy in organization."
"Of course, it's your Millitary," I said, smiling with all my teeth. "I'm here to ensure no Bonapartes rise up from within your ranks. And Dzerzhinsky once he's here will be there to keep an eye on me. And we're here to keep an eye on Dzerzhinsky. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be."
Trotsky's expression didn't change, but his eyes told me he was displeased with the arrangement. Bite me.
As Frank Underwood once said in my previous life: Shake a man's hand with one hand, hold a rock in the other. Except this wasn't Gaffney, South Carolina. This was Petrograd in 1917, and the rock wasn't metaphorical—it was three thousand heavily armed men in red helmets. Well, soon to be 4, maybe 5, applications were skyrocketing.
But for now, the meeting went on. And went on it did, for hours in fact. Logistics, funding, discipline, protocol, drilling, lovely, boring shit. But better than giving speeches, I had stage fright. But back to the meeting.
The air in the chamber grew heavier as the meeting went on. The dull orange glow of kerosene lamps flickered against chalkboards now covered in hand-drawn military maps and half-erased propaganda slogans. The Revolutionary Defense Council was still in session—none of us could leave. Outside, the streets of Petrograd were quiet in that way cities are before they erupt.
Lenin leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers steepled beneath his beard. "The army is restless."
He didn't need to say it twice. We all knew. Every report we'd received in the last several hours told the same story: infantry regiments from outside the city were lining the outskirts under military command. Meanwhile, inside Petrograd, Red Guards, sailors, and soldiers loyal to the Soviets had turned their factories, barracks, and soup kitchens into fortified bunkers.
All it would take was a single musket crack—one stupid spark—and we'd be swimming in blood.
Trotsky, arms crossed, spoke first. "The millitary wants provocation. They're banking on us taking the first shot. Then they declare martial law, paint us as terrorists, and slaughter their way to legitimacy."
"Which is why we don't shoot first," I said, sipping tea that tasted faintly of gun oil and mold. "We wait. Fortify. Let them stew. But not a step back either. We don't show weakness."
I pointed at the map where red circles denoted the Revolutionary Guard strongpoints. "Smolny's a fortress. My men are disciplined, armed, and sitting on their hands playing cards and cleaning bayonets. Let them come to us. If they fire first, they lose the narrative."
Lenin cleared his throat. "Narratives are fine, Mikheil, but if they surround us, the city becomes a prison. And we're not the wardens."
"I never said we sit idle," I replied. "We can negotiate. Send someone to speak with Kerensky. Buy time. Let him think we're open to reconciliation, or de-escalation, or whatever buzzword he needs to sleep at night."
Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "You want to lie to the Provisional Government?"
I looked at him like he'd asked if the sky was blue. "Of course I want to lie to them. You think I built a private army by being honest? Kerensky wants to believe we're still playing politics. Let him."
Lenin muttered, "That's a dangerous game."
"Comrade Lenin," I replied, voice dry, "we're Bolsheviks. Our entire existence is a dangerous game."
I leaned back, hands folded. "Besides, while they're busy talking, we begin to consolidate the Red Guards under Trotsky and begin molding them into a true Soviet military. I've already got feelers out with some of the Kronstadt boys. Raskolnikov and a few other leaders are holed up in one of my safe houses. Cozy place. No lice. We need to convince them to consolidate under our command. We wrap them into Trotsky's battalions, formalize it. Discipline them. I say make Roskolnikov head of the navy."
Trotsky gave me a sidelong glance. "You think they'll listen to me?"
"They won't listen to anyone but you," I said. "Roskolnikov is friendly towards me but he think I'm a gangster. They're not wrong. But you're still the man from the 1905 Soviet. You have the mystique. The charisma of the streets."
Trotsky smirked slightly. "So you're proposing I become a symbol."
"No," I said. "I'm proposing you become a leader. The symbol is Lenin. You're the saber."
Lenin looked up at that, finally breaking his silence. "And you, Mikheil? What are you in this equation?"
I smiled. "I'm the one that protects the party from the saber if a Bonaparte takes hold of it."
That got a solemn nod from Lenin.
"We'll need to vet the Kronstadt officers," Lenin added. "Some of them are radicals, anarchists even."
"Let them be radicals," I replied. "As long as they take orders and know where the bullets go, I don't care if they believe in the Tooth Fairy or a flying borscht monster. Once they're under our umbrella, we can trim the fat later."
Trotsky looked uneasy. "You make it sound like we're planning a purge."
"I'm not planning a purge," I said with a grin. "I'm just preparing for one in case the situation demands it. Well, that would be Dzerzhinsky's job, I'd just be there to provide the extra muscle if he asks for it."
Lenin rolled his eyes. "You know you're terrifying, right?"
"Thank you I'm flattered."
Lenin then stood, signaling the meeting was done. "Do it. Contact Kerensky. But no agreements. No promises. Buy us time. Meanwhile, Trotsky, start integrating the Kronstadt detachments and the Mezhraiontsy into a proper military. If we can consolidate the red guards under one chain of command, we'll be more than a movement—we'll be a state in waiting."
We both nodded. "I'll send a few of my men to take Trotsky to Roskolnikov. He's out by Vyborg. But you never heard what I said."
As we filed out, Trotsky grabbed my shoulder and asked me to stay behind for a second. "Mikheil," he said, "you ever consider not smiling when you talk about violence?"
"I am smiling?" I asked.
He didn't laugh.
Smart man.
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Afternoon
We were seated in the grand chamber that, for lack of a better term, had become the provisional war room of the Revolution. The walls still smelled faintly of chalk dust and candle wax from the building's former life as a finishing school for the daughters of the nobility. Now it housed armed men, political fanatics, and a bureaucratic fever dream I'd drafted in a haze of memories from my past life, everything from the Baathists to the Waffen SS to south American millitary juntas, all rolled up and painted with a bright red color and aesthetic. Glorious.
This was the first official meeting of the Revolutionary Defense Council—not yet National, of course, but hey, the branding had to start somewhere. This was my baby. My Frankenstein. My blueprint for a state built on steel, slogans, and layered paranoia. And it was breathing.
At the head of the long table sat Vladimir Ilyich Lenin—half messiah, half migraine. Beside him, on the left, Leon Trotsky in his clean jacket, polished spectacles, and smirk that could slice bread. And me, Mikheil, to Lenin's right—looking like the devil's gym coach in my black Guard Corps uniform, the newly minted Supreme Commissar of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. It sounded impressive, which was the point.
There was an empty chair left for Dzerzhinsky. He was en route from Moscow. Stalin had written him personally, even sent him a copy of my Internal Security memo, which I'll admit was basically a love letter to professional paranoia. From what I'd heard, Dzerzhinsky had a spine made of steel and a stare that made prison wardens flinch. Stalin described him with a kind of reverent dread—said he once chewed out an entire police battalion with a single look. The man had spent more time in solitary than most people spend asleep, and he never cracked. Never begged. Never even got indigestion, apparently.
So of course I wanted him to run the intelligence service. He sounded perfect if Stalin was to be believed.
While the others fiddled with papers, I stood humming quietly to myself—Remember Summer Days by Anri, because dammit, it was July and I was feeling nostalgic for a time that technically hadn't happened yet. City pop from the 1980s? Sue me. It kept me calm, unlike the Russian summer which smelled like sweat, cordite, and old cabbage.
Lenin looked up and deadpanned, "Comrade Mikheil, if you insist on serenading the Revolution, at least be in key."
I stopped humming and raised an eyebrow. "What, you don't like sweet summer songs about heartbreak?"
"I prefer we discuss building the army," he said flatly.
Sigh. "No respect for musical taste." Bastard.
"We need to expand immediately," Lenin continued. "Your Guard Corps, Trotsky's military detachments need to unite the Red Guards under our command. And Dzerzhinsky's national guard once he gets here. Discipline, logistics, hierarchy. I want unity, and I want it now."
Trotsky nodded, adjusting his spectacles. He still hadn't formally joined the Bolsheviks, but at this point, he was more "Bolshevik-adjacent" than most actual members. His Mezhraiontsy faction was preparing to merge with us during the upcoming Party Congress. My own people inside his circles told me he had about 4,000 sympathizers—cadre, factory agitators, some ex-soldiers. Only 500 were armed. The rest had slogans and a dangerous amount of free time.
Charming, yes. Dangerous, also yes. So I'd help—but not with my best toys. I had a rule about arming charismatic men who hadn't yet sworn loyalty. They would get rusty Mosins, hand-me-down pistols, machine guns that wheezed like old men. Just enough to say, "Look, we care," but not enough to let him play Napoleon.
"I'll start reallocating workshop production," I said. "Get them the basics—rifles, ammo, a few belt-fed toys."
I looked Trotsky in the eye and smiled the way a man smiles while counting exits in a room. "You'll need to institute real military discipline. Ranks. Drills. Punishments. The whole menu. If civil war comes—and it will—we'll need a damn army, not a rabble of angry poets with rifles."
Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "Poets with rifles won the Commune."
"And how long did that last?" I replied, sweetly.
Lenin chuckled. Trotsky grimaced, then scribbled something furiously in his notebook—probably a note to later yell at me.
Trotsky eventually nodded. "I'll appoint officers. Begin drills. But I want autonomy in organization."
"Of course, it's your Millitary," I said, smiling with all my teeth. "I'm here to ensure no Bonapartes rise up from within your ranks. And Dzerzhinsky once he's here will be there to keep an eye on me. And we're here to keep an eye on Dzerzhinsky. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be."
Trotsky's expression didn't change, but his eyes told me he was displeased with the arrangement. Bite me.
As Frank Underwood once said in my previous life: Shake a man's hand with one hand, hold a rock in the other. Except this wasn't Gaffney, South Carolina. This was Petrograd in 1917, and the rock wasn't metaphorical—it was three thousand heavily armed men in red helmets. Well, soon to be 4, maybe 5, applications were skyrocketing.
But for now, the meeting went on. And went on it did, for hours in fact. Logistics, funding, discipline, protocol, drilling, lovely, boring shit. But better than giving speeches, I had stage fright. But back to the meeting.
The air in the chamber grew heavier as the meeting went on. The dull orange glow of kerosene lamps flickered against chalkboards now covered in hand-drawn military maps and half-erased propaganda slogans. The Revolutionary Defense Council was still in session—none of us could leave. Outside, the streets of Petrograd were quiet in that way cities are before they erupt.
Lenin leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers steepled beneath his beard. "The army is restless."
He didn't need to say it twice. We all knew. Every report we'd received in the last several hours told the same story: infantry regiments from outside the city were lining the outskirts under military command. Meanwhile, inside Petrograd, Red Guards, sailors, and soldiers loyal to the Soviets had turned their factories, barracks, and soup kitchens into fortified bunkers.
All it would take was a single musket crack—one stupid spark—and we'd be swimming in blood.
Trotsky, arms crossed, spoke first. "The millitary wants provocation. They're banking on us taking the first shot. Then they declare martial law, paint us as terrorists, and slaughter their way to legitimacy."
"Which is why we don't shoot first," I said, sipping tea that tasted faintly of gun oil and mold. "We wait. Fortify. Let them stew. But not a step back either. We don't show weakness."
I pointed at the map where red circles denoted the Revolutionary Guard strongpoints. "Smolny's a fortress. My men are disciplined, armed, and sitting on their hands playing cards and cleaning bayonets. Let them come to us. If they fire first, they lose the narrative."
Lenin cleared his throat. "Narratives are fine, Mikheil, but if they surround us, the city becomes a prison. And we're not the wardens."
"I never said we sit idle," I replied. "We can negotiate. Send someone to speak with Kerensky. Buy time. Let him think we're open to reconciliation, or de-escalation, or whatever buzzword he needs to sleep at night."
Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "You want to lie to the Provisional Government?"
I looked at him like he'd asked if the sky was blue. "Of course I want to lie to them. You think I built a private army by being honest? Kerensky wants to believe we're still playing politics. Let him."
Lenin muttered, "That's a dangerous game."
"Comrade Lenin," I replied, voice dry, "we're Bolsheviks. Our entire existence is a dangerous game."
I leaned back, hands folded. "Besides, while they're busy talking, we begin to consolidate the Red Guards under Trotsky and begin molding them into a true Soviet military. I've already got feelers out with some of the Kronstadt boys. Raskolnikov and a few other leaders are holed up in one of my safe houses. Cozy place. No lice. We need to convince them to consolidate under our command. We wrap them into Trotsky's battalions, formalize it. Discipline them. I say make Roskolnikov head of the navy."
Trotsky gave me a sidelong glance. "You think they'll listen to me?"
"They won't listen to anyone but you," I said. "Roskolnikov is friendly towards me but he think I'm a gangster. They're not wrong. But you're still the man from the 1905 Soviet. You have the mystique. The charisma of the streets."
Trotsky smirked slightly. "So you're proposing I become a symbol."
"No," I said. "I'm proposing you become a leader. The symbol is Lenin. You're the saber."
Lenin looked up at that, finally breaking his silence. "And you, Mikheil? What are you in this equation?"
I smiled. "I'm the one that protects the party from the saber if a Bonaparte takes hold of it."
That got a solemn nod from Lenin.
"We'll need to vet the Kronstadt officers," Lenin added. "Some of them are radicals, anarchists even."
"Let them be radicals," I replied. "As long as they take orders and know where the bullets go, I don't care if they believe in the Tooth Fairy or a flying borscht monster. Once they're under our umbrella, we can trim the fat later."
Trotsky looked uneasy. "You make it sound like we're planning a purge."
"I'm not planning a purge," I said with a grin. "I'm just preparing for one in case the situation demands it. Well, that would be Dzerzhinsky's job, I'd just be there to provide the extra muscle if he asks for it."
Lenin rolled his eyes. "You know you're terrifying, right?"
"Thank you I'm flattered."
Lenin then stood, signaling the meeting was done. "Do it. Contact Kerensky. But no agreements. No promises. Buy us time. Meanwhile, Trotsky, start integrating the Kronstadt detachments and the Mezhraiontsy into a proper military. If we can consolidate the red guards under one chain of command, we'll be more than a movement—we'll be a state in waiting."
We both nodded. "I'll send a few of my men to take Trotsky to Roskolnikov. He's out by Vyborg. But you never heard what I said."
As we filed out, Trotsky grabbed my shoulder and asked me to stay behind for a second. "Mikheil," he said, "you ever consider not smiling when you talk about violence?"
"I am smiling?" I asked.
He didn't laugh.
Smart man.
Xodarap
Versed in the lewd.
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I freaking am hyped about this story
So much history that I've never taken a indepth look at told in a amazing way.
Mc has a lot of the likeable villain character traits offset by the Psychopathy of humming cheerfully catchy songs all while telling everyone to be scared shitless of him.
So much history that I've never taken a indepth look at told in a amazing way.
Mc has a lot of the likeable villain character traits offset by the Psychopathy of humming cheerfully catchy songs all while telling everyone to be scared shitless of him.
Bullshit and logistics
Alenco98
Not too sore, are you?
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July 22, 1917
Grand Hotel d'Europe, Nevsky Prospect
Petrograd, Russia
Luxury has a smell. Velvet chairs that have never felt real poverty. Polish so thick on the floors you can see your sins in the reflection. A room like this one—at the top of the Grand Hotel d'Europe—reeked of old money, even if most of the empire's capital was currently being dragged through the gutters of revolution and possible counter-revolution. I stood there, hands clasped behind my back, staring out over Nevsky Prospect, the grand avenue of Petrograd. Once it was a river of nobility. Now, it was caked in blood and soot.
They still hadn't cleaned up the blood from five days ago. You'd think someone in the provisional government would've brought a mop. But no. The bloodstains were still there. Dried. Maroon. Historical. It added ambiance, I suppose. You don't get that at the Ritz.
Of course, I wasn't here for the view. Or the stench of incompetence. I was here for a meeting. "Negotiation" implies honesty, fairness, maybe even goodwill. I had none of those things in my pocket. I came to lie so well that it would buy us at least seventy-two hours of revolutionary breathing room. Long enough for Trotsky to butter up Raskolnikov in one of my safehouses out in Vyborg—cozy place, low rent, very little police attention, three entrances, and a lovely view of the alley where I had my men dump the bodies.
If Raskolnikov went all in with us, that was it. Game over. His Kronstadt sailors were fanatics with bayonets. Fanatics we liked. And more importantly, they were organized, armed, and willing to shoot people for fun and ideology. With them, we'd become the largest Red Guard faction in Petrograd. Sure, there would still be other groups out there—but they were disorganized anarchists, drunk Mensheviks, socialist vegetarians, and people who thought "direct democracy" was a substitute for logistics. The city would be ours like a bassline belongs to a Toto track.
And who was I here to lie to?
Kerensky. The man, the myth, the mediocre. Prime Minister now, after Lvov finally realized running a revolutionary government was not the same thing as managing a provincial hunting club. Poor guy probably cried into his cravat before resigning. So, Kerensky it was. Lawyer. Orator. Believer in constitutional socialism. Basically, a man who thought he could tame a burning building by giving it voting rights.
Behind me stood my boys. A detachment of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Red armbands, black boots with painted red stars, pressed black uniforms, and their now-signature red helmets adorned with Totenkopfs. Yes, skulls. An aesthetic war crime—a strange fusion of communist color and nazi aesthetic. We looked like we couldn't decide whether we were about to liberate the workers or goose-step over their corpses. And that was exactly the point. Fear is branding.
Was it hypocritical? Of course. But as I often reminded myself in the mirror every morning: I wasn't a communist. I wasn't even a proper revolutionary. I was just a modern man born in the wrong time, trying to turn Petrograd into a profitable dystopia before my twin brother Joe turned it into an actual Robespierrerian theme park with forced dissapearances and labor camps instead of a simple beheading on the menu. If I could trim the body count down from "millions" to "a few hundred thousand," I figured I deserved a Nobel Peace Prize and a Queen vinyl box set.
I leaned against the glass, humming "Turn it into love" by Kylie Minogue. The synths were in my head—soft, nostalgic, painfully out of place in this war-torn capital of imperial decline and rising paranoia. I wished I had a cassette player. Hell, I wished I had a drink. But drinking was for the anxious, and I was calm. At least on the outside.
Soon, Kerensky would walk through those gilded doors. I'd smile. He'd pretend he wasn't terrified of me and my boys. I'd make vague comments about peace and stability. He'd make even vaguer ones about democracy and national unity. And while we danced this diplomatic tango, Trotsky would arm the sailors, I'd consolidate the guard corps, and the empire would continue to hemorrhage into history.
Ah, the sweet scent of revolution. And blood. Always the blood.
Now, where the hell was the room service? I was promised tea.
I liked my betrayals with jasmine.
Fortunately for me my tea came in 5 minutes later, not jasmine sadly, out of stock, Green tea it was, fuck.
As I was sipping on my tea Kerensky entered like a man late to his own execution: upright, composed, sweating through his collar. His hands fluttered near his coat buttons, then away—an unconscious tick. He wasn't afraid of me, of course. No, no. He was afraid of the future. I just happened to be wearing it like a uniform.
"Comrade Makarov," he said stiffly, offering a handshake. "Thank you for coming."
I didn't shake. Instead, I offered a nod, polite but cool. My gloves were still on. "Prime Minister."
He didn't correct me. He sat across from me in one of those gaudy Louis XVI chairs that screamed ancien régime louder than a Romanov with gout. I took the opposite seat, leaned back, and crossed one leg over the other like I was auditioning for a role as 'Sinister Twin Brother #2' in a Tolstoyan noir.
"Let's speak plainly, shall we?" I said, brushing imaginary lint from my black overcoat. The red trim caught the afternoon sunlight like a bloodstain trying to be elegant. "The city's burning. Again."
Kerensky's smile was diplomatic, which is to say nervous. "Yes. A regrettable situation. We are working to restore—"
"—the illusion of control?" I interrupted, smiling thinly. "A noble effort. But no one believes in illusions anymore. We traded those for rifles."
He stiffened but didn't rise to the bait. Smart. Barely.
I gestured out the window toward Nevsky Prospect, where army patrols were now warily skirting the edges of Red Guard barricades like rats around a bear trap. "Let's not pretend. The army's in a standoff with my people. I have over 3,000 men—disciplined, armed, uniformed, and increasingly sober. The Kronstadt boys are very sympathetic to my cause, as are the various red guard factions within the city. I've ordered them to hold every inch of ground they've taken. They will not fire the first shot. But if fired upon..."
I let that sentence hang in the air like a funeral banner. Kerensky's jaw tightened.
"We did not endorse the events of the last few days, Prime Minister," I said with mock sincerity. "We told our people we would defend ourselves from counter-revolutionary aggression. We never once called for your removal. In fact, I personally prevented a dozen would-be martyrs from storming your offices. Peace, bread, land—those are polite requests, not demands. You should be thanking me."
He stared. "You're asking me to forget the last few days ever happened?"
"I'm offering you a return to stability." I smiled. "A return to the status quo ante insurrection. All you have to do is nothing. No raids. No arrests. No premature declarations of martial law. Quietly call off the arrest orders on Lenin, Roskolnikov, Trotsky and all the other Bolsheviks and Kronstadt boys you just imprisoned. You pretend last week was a nasty fever dream, and in return, you get... peace."
"Peace," he repeated, flatly.
"Yes," I continued, "a temporary truce between competing mobs, an unofficial armed zone around Smolny. That's the Petrograd Soviet's version of peace."
Kerensky exhaled slowly. "And if I refuse?"
I shrugged. "Then you can send your men to storm Smolny, we won't fire the first shot but once your men do, you and I both know a civil war will begin right then and there. You'll lose the city. Maybe the country. And Berlin will be very interested to hear that you picked a fight with your own capital while their military is probably preparing for a new offensive after your little failed stunt a few weeks ago. Can you afford that?"
He said nothing. That was the most honest thing he'd done all day.
"Look," I continued, folding my hands, "you know as well as I do this place is one spark away from becoming a bloodbath. I'm just here to keep the fire in the bottle. But if you crack down—if you push—we won't be the ones starting the war, but we sure as hell will be the ones finishing it."
Kerensky looked down at his hands—clean, pale, shaking slightly.
"You're threatening the provisional government," he said quietly.
I laughed, sharp and low. "Oh, Prime Minister. I'm not threatening you. I'm educating you. There's a difference. Threats are loud. Warnings are polite. If I told Comrade bear over here to strangle you if you opened your mouth again, that would be a threat." I glanced at bear. "Don't do it though, it's a example."
He only nodded.
Then I stood. Slowly. The meeting was over.
"You're very good at this, Comrade Makarov," he said grimly.
"I used to be a police officer," I said cheerfully, my men following me as I walked towards the door. "You learn how to negotiate with men."
As I stepped into the hallway, the first bars of an old Laura Branigan song drifted through my head—Gloria', I think. Something smooth. Honey for the soul.
And I smiled. Because I was winning.
July 22, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia — Evening
I arrived at Smolny covered in the usual dust, city smoke, and political residue that clings to you after sharing a room with Alexander Kerensky. The man smelled like sweat, fear, and Eau de Liberal Delusion.
The guards at the entrance saluted in that familiar style—the one that would become deeply unfashionable in Germany after the second world war in my timeline—but for now, it still meant "we are armed and ideologically enthusiastic." I saluted back, passed through the double doors, and climbed the grand staircase two at a time, boots echoing like war drums on marble.
The meeting was already in progress.
Inside the old classroom that had become our nerve center, the familiar rogues' gallery of revolution was gathered: Lenin, perched at the head of the table, chewing the end of a pencil like it owed him money; Kamenev beside him, looking as anxious as a banker in a commune; Stalin in the corner, calm and quiet—deadly quiet—like a bear that had just learned how to use a ledger. And then there was Trotsky, who had only just returned, his coat still dusted with road grime and the scent of grandiosity.
"Ah," Trotsky said the moment I entered, brushing invisible lint from his sleeve, "Comrade Makarov returns from his audience with our beloved Kerensky. Tell me, did he weep, or just piss himself?"
"A bit of both, I think," I said, hanging up my coat and taking my usual seat beside Stalin. "Though I think the piss was metaphorical. The man is trying to play poker with a hand full of pamphlets."
"What did he say?" Lenin asked, voice low, brows furrowed like thunderclouds gathering above a battlefield.
I nodded. "He'll back off. At least for now. I told him we'd pretend the last few days never happened if he doesn't try anything stupid. I reminded him that I've got 3,000 heavily armed men and that I'm not afraid to use words like 'civil war' in casual conversation."
Lenin smiled. It was not the warm smile of a kindly uncle. It was the thin, papery grin of a man mentally writing a manifesto while someone else talks.
Kamenev exhaled slowly. "We're sitting on a volcano."
"We are the volcano," Trotsky muttered. "They're the ones building dachas at the base."
I turned to him. "Speaking of firestorms, any news from our friends in Kronstadt?"
Trotsky's grin returned in full force. "Raskolnikov is in. He agreed to consolidate under our command. Effective immediately, he's the new Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy."
There was a beat of silence, then a collective exhale. Even Lenin leaned back slightly.
"That's no small gain," Stalin said finally, his voice like gravel soaked in vodka.
"He's right," I agreed. "With Kronstadt on our side, we now control the sea—at least the Gulf of Finland. More importantly, we have a large, angry contingent of sailors who love nothing more than shooting officers and yelling slogans. We can work with that. Taking into account my 3000 guards, Trotsky's 500 men, and Kronstadt's approximately 9000 men from both sailors, infantry and dockworkers we have approximately over 12 thousand men under arms. If we arm all of Trotsky's men we'll have over 16 thousand. The remaining red guards are all mensheviks, anarchist, socialists and every else in between. They're approximately 4-5 thousand in total. Once we fully consolidate and integrate them we'll basically control the city."
"I assume they'll need arms," Lenin said.
"They're sailors, they've already got more guns than grammar. But I'll supply extra rifles and ammo. The priority right now is arming Trotsky's Mezhraiontsy faction. They'll be the core of our Soviet army. We'll need to train them, standardize doctrine, impose discipline, hierarchy. Trotsky, you'll handle it right? You'll also need to name a head of the army. And air force once you get started. You're head of the joint chiefs, you coordinate between the army, navy and air force, you can't lead them yourself. Unless Bonapartism is your style."
Trotsky scowled then nodded. "I'll arrange it."
"Good," I nodded. "We're building an army. And a navy. And an air force too once we have the resources. And, if we're being honest, an entire state security apparatus based on layered paranoia and deeply unhealthy levels of mutual surveillance. But hey, at least the trains might run on time."
That got a small chuckle out of Kamenev. Stalin just smiled slightly—he liked it when I joked about paranoia; it saved him the trouble of pretending not to enjoy it.
Lenin stood, the room falling quiet.
"Then it's done. Raskolnikov leads the navy. Trotsky will oversee consolidation of the Red Guards and creation of a centralized military command. We will continue to build, recruit, and wait. Mikheil will continue expanding the Revolutionary guard corps. And once Dzerzhinsky comes he will begin establishing the national guard and our intelligence agency. We will not strike first. But if the moment comes..."
"We murder them," I said in a cheerful tone.
Everyone nodded. That was the mood now—anticipation sharpened to a fine point. The smell of gun oil, ink, and cheap Petrograd coffee hung in the air like prophecy.
The revolution wasn't coming.
It was already here.
July 22, 1917
Mikheil's Apartment, Petrograd
Late Evening
The lamplight was low, casting long, flickering shadows across the cramped apartment. The air was thick with tobacco smoke, bread crumbs, and revolution—our usual bouquet. I sat on the worn armchair across from Stalin, unbuttoning my coat, boots dirty with Petrograd mud and Red Guard blood—not literal blood today, thankfully.
Stalin sat hunched at the kitchen table, sipping tea that was more memory than flavor. His face, as usual, was unreadable. Not blank—just still. Like a cat watching a mousehole, unsure if it wants to eat or toy.
"Listen," I started, "We need someone to officially coordinate logistics and supplies."
He glanced at me sideways. "You've been doing it."
"Exactly. I've been doing it—for everyone. My Revolutionary Guard, Trotsky's army; soon enough I'll be doing it for Kronstadt's sailors, and Dzerzhinsky's, well, our little Bolshevik Okhrana and national guard. I'm building workshops, running safehouses, recruiting and training men, printing leaflets, managing soup kitchens, collecting protection fees from businesses and criminal organizations, not to mention and buying more goddamn boots, bullets, guns and food than a single man can use in a thousand lifetimes. We've got thousands of men to feed and arm, and it's getting out of hand."
Stalin nodded, clearly listening.
"I propose we create a post—Commissar of Strategic Resources," I continued, leaning forward. "Someone to coordinate supplies, production, recruitment, and logistics across the board. And I've got a candidate."
"Who?"
"Our brother-in-law. Alexander Svanidze."
Stalin didn't speak. Just stared for a moment, pipe clenched between his teeth like a vice.
"He's family," I added quickly, "but he doesn't carry the Jugashvili or the Stalin name. That matters. He's low-profile, competent, and already a party man. Quiet, loyal, educated. He did well at Tiflis. He's helped me handle accounting and translation work while you were off shooting cops. He knows numbers, and more importantly, he knows how not to talk too much."
Still nothing. Just the sound of the kettle hissing and the creak of Keke's chair in the corner.
"Whoever controls the purse," I added, voice lowering, "controls the army. You know that. Trotsky can play Napoleon all he wants with his flair and his speeches, but if he can't clothe his men or put bullets in their rifles, he's just an orator with an audience problem."
Now Stalin smirked. Just a twitch, a curl of amusement in one corner of his mustached mouth. "You want me to propose this to Lenin?"
"Exactly. You propose it. Say you've got a few candidates. Leave Svanidze's name until later. It's less suspicious if it comes from you."
He exhaled through his nose, pipe smoke trailing like battlefield fog. "You trust him?"
"More than I trust Trotsky."
From the corner, a soft voice interrupted us. "You boys always talk about trust like it's something you can measure in bullets," Keke said, folding laundry with the grace of a saint and the subtle disdain of a Georgian grandmother who had seen far too much. "And all this talk of control… When does your little revolution start feeding people, hm?"
Stalin turned toward her slowly, affection and deference showing in the small way he adjusted his posture. "Mikheil already is Mama. Haven't you seek the soup kitchens?"
Aleksandra emerged from the tiny kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron. "He's right, though," she said, looking at me. "You're doing too much. You're thinning yourself. You come home and fall asleep at the table. Last week you went 20 hours without eating. That's not revolutionary, that's idiotic."
"Don't worry," I said with a grin. "If I die, my men will carry my corpse on a banner of black and red, with a slogan that says, 'He died for logistics.'"
Stalin rolled his eyes. "You want me to make our brother-in-law the commissar, fine. But if he starts siphoning food to his cousins in Kutaisi, I'll have him shot."
"He won't," I said, waving it off. "And if he does, I'll shoot him myself. We're family, not sentimental."
Keke crossed herself.
Aleksandra looked horrified. "Sometimes I think you two need a priest. Other times I think you need a padded cell."
"I've got red uniforms," I muttered. "Just need the padding my love."
We shared a laugh, bitter and weary, the kind you only hear in basements before coups. Outside, the wind picked up, rustling Petrograd like a whisper of the future.
1. Note for my peeps that aren't experts on the revolution, by this stage in 1917 the Kerensky government cracked down on the Bolsheviks and forced Lenin to flee to Finland and imprisoned Trotsky while forcing the red guards to go underground. So the butterflies are flapping.
Grand Hotel d'Europe, Nevsky Prospect
Petrograd, Russia
Luxury has a smell. Velvet chairs that have never felt real poverty. Polish so thick on the floors you can see your sins in the reflection. A room like this one—at the top of the Grand Hotel d'Europe—reeked of old money, even if most of the empire's capital was currently being dragged through the gutters of revolution and possible counter-revolution. I stood there, hands clasped behind my back, staring out over Nevsky Prospect, the grand avenue of Petrograd. Once it was a river of nobility. Now, it was caked in blood and soot.
They still hadn't cleaned up the blood from five days ago. You'd think someone in the provisional government would've brought a mop. But no. The bloodstains were still there. Dried. Maroon. Historical. It added ambiance, I suppose. You don't get that at the Ritz.
Of course, I wasn't here for the view. Or the stench of incompetence. I was here for a meeting. "Negotiation" implies honesty, fairness, maybe even goodwill. I had none of those things in my pocket. I came to lie so well that it would buy us at least seventy-two hours of revolutionary breathing room. Long enough for Trotsky to butter up Raskolnikov in one of my safehouses out in Vyborg—cozy place, low rent, very little police attention, three entrances, and a lovely view of the alley where I had my men dump the bodies.
If Raskolnikov went all in with us, that was it. Game over. His Kronstadt sailors were fanatics with bayonets. Fanatics we liked. And more importantly, they were organized, armed, and willing to shoot people for fun and ideology. With them, we'd become the largest Red Guard faction in Petrograd. Sure, there would still be other groups out there—but they were disorganized anarchists, drunk Mensheviks, socialist vegetarians, and people who thought "direct democracy" was a substitute for logistics. The city would be ours like a bassline belongs to a Toto track.
And who was I here to lie to?
Kerensky. The man, the myth, the mediocre. Prime Minister now, after Lvov finally realized running a revolutionary government was not the same thing as managing a provincial hunting club. Poor guy probably cried into his cravat before resigning. So, Kerensky it was. Lawyer. Orator. Believer in constitutional socialism. Basically, a man who thought he could tame a burning building by giving it voting rights.
Behind me stood my boys. A detachment of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Red armbands, black boots with painted red stars, pressed black uniforms, and their now-signature red helmets adorned with Totenkopfs. Yes, skulls. An aesthetic war crime—a strange fusion of communist color and nazi aesthetic. We looked like we couldn't decide whether we were about to liberate the workers or goose-step over their corpses. And that was exactly the point. Fear is branding.
Was it hypocritical? Of course. But as I often reminded myself in the mirror every morning: I wasn't a communist. I wasn't even a proper revolutionary. I was just a modern man born in the wrong time, trying to turn Petrograd into a profitable dystopia before my twin brother Joe turned it into an actual Robespierrerian theme park with forced dissapearances and labor camps instead of a simple beheading on the menu. If I could trim the body count down from "millions" to "a few hundred thousand," I figured I deserved a Nobel Peace Prize and a Queen vinyl box set.
I leaned against the glass, humming "Turn it into love" by Kylie Minogue. The synths were in my head—soft, nostalgic, painfully out of place in this war-torn capital of imperial decline and rising paranoia. I wished I had a cassette player. Hell, I wished I had a drink. But drinking was for the anxious, and I was calm. At least on the outside.
Soon, Kerensky would walk through those gilded doors. I'd smile. He'd pretend he wasn't terrified of me and my boys. I'd make vague comments about peace and stability. He'd make even vaguer ones about democracy and national unity. And while we danced this diplomatic tango, Trotsky would arm the sailors, I'd consolidate the guard corps, and the empire would continue to hemorrhage into history.
Ah, the sweet scent of revolution. And blood. Always the blood.
Now, where the hell was the room service? I was promised tea.
I liked my betrayals with jasmine.
Fortunately for me my tea came in 5 minutes later, not jasmine sadly, out of stock, Green tea it was, fuck.
As I was sipping on my tea Kerensky entered like a man late to his own execution: upright, composed, sweating through his collar. His hands fluttered near his coat buttons, then away—an unconscious tick. He wasn't afraid of me, of course. No, no. He was afraid of the future. I just happened to be wearing it like a uniform.
"Comrade Makarov," he said stiffly, offering a handshake. "Thank you for coming."
I didn't shake. Instead, I offered a nod, polite but cool. My gloves were still on. "Prime Minister."
He didn't correct me. He sat across from me in one of those gaudy Louis XVI chairs that screamed ancien régime louder than a Romanov with gout. I took the opposite seat, leaned back, and crossed one leg over the other like I was auditioning for a role as 'Sinister Twin Brother #2' in a Tolstoyan noir.
"Let's speak plainly, shall we?" I said, brushing imaginary lint from my black overcoat. The red trim caught the afternoon sunlight like a bloodstain trying to be elegant. "The city's burning. Again."
Kerensky's smile was diplomatic, which is to say nervous. "Yes. A regrettable situation. We are working to restore—"
"—the illusion of control?" I interrupted, smiling thinly. "A noble effort. But no one believes in illusions anymore. We traded those for rifles."
He stiffened but didn't rise to the bait. Smart. Barely.
I gestured out the window toward Nevsky Prospect, where army patrols were now warily skirting the edges of Red Guard barricades like rats around a bear trap. "Let's not pretend. The army's in a standoff with my people. I have over 3,000 men—disciplined, armed, uniformed, and increasingly sober. The Kronstadt boys are very sympathetic to my cause, as are the various red guard factions within the city. I've ordered them to hold every inch of ground they've taken. They will not fire the first shot. But if fired upon..."
I let that sentence hang in the air like a funeral banner. Kerensky's jaw tightened.
"We did not endorse the events of the last few days, Prime Minister," I said with mock sincerity. "We told our people we would defend ourselves from counter-revolutionary aggression. We never once called for your removal. In fact, I personally prevented a dozen would-be martyrs from storming your offices. Peace, bread, land—those are polite requests, not demands. You should be thanking me."
He stared. "You're asking me to forget the last few days ever happened?"
"I'm offering you a return to stability." I smiled. "A return to the status quo ante insurrection. All you have to do is nothing. No raids. No arrests. No premature declarations of martial law. Quietly call off the arrest orders on Lenin, Roskolnikov, Trotsky and all the other Bolsheviks and Kronstadt boys you just imprisoned. You pretend last week was a nasty fever dream, and in return, you get... peace."
"Peace," he repeated, flatly.
"Yes," I continued, "a temporary truce between competing mobs, an unofficial armed zone around Smolny. That's the Petrograd Soviet's version of peace."
Kerensky exhaled slowly. "And if I refuse?"
I shrugged. "Then you can send your men to storm Smolny, we won't fire the first shot but once your men do, you and I both know a civil war will begin right then and there. You'll lose the city. Maybe the country. And Berlin will be very interested to hear that you picked a fight with your own capital while their military is probably preparing for a new offensive after your little failed stunt a few weeks ago. Can you afford that?"
He said nothing. That was the most honest thing he'd done all day.
"Look," I continued, folding my hands, "you know as well as I do this place is one spark away from becoming a bloodbath. I'm just here to keep the fire in the bottle. But if you crack down—if you push—we won't be the ones starting the war, but we sure as hell will be the ones finishing it."
Kerensky looked down at his hands—clean, pale, shaking slightly.
"You're threatening the provisional government," he said quietly.
I laughed, sharp and low. "Oh, Prime Minister. I'm not threatening you. I'm educating you. There's a difference. Threats are loud. Warnings are polite. If I told Comrade bear over here to strangle you if you opened your mouth again, that would be a threat." I glanced at bear. "Don't do it though, it's a example."
He only nodded.
Then I stood. Slowly. The meeting was over.
"You're very good at this, Comrade Makarov," he said grimly.
"I used to be a police officer," I said cheerfully, my men following me as I walked towards the door. "You learn how to negotiate with men."
As I stepped into the hallway, the first bars of an old Laura Branigan song drifted through my head—Gloria', I think. Something smooth. Honey for the soul.
And I smiled. Because I was winning.
July 22, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia — Evening
I arrived at Smolny covered in the usual dust, city smoke, and political residue that clings to you after sharing a room with Alexander Kerensky. The man smelled like sweat, fear, and Eau de Liberal Delusion.
The guards at the entrance saluted in that familiar style—the one that would become deeply unfashionable in Germany after the second world war in my timeline—but for now, it still meant "we are armed and ideologically enthusiastic." I saluted back, passed through the double doors, and climbed the grand staircase two at a time, boots echoing like war drums on marble.
The meeting was already in progress.
Inside the old classroom that had become our nerve center, the familiar rogues' gallery of revolution was gathered: Lenin, perched at the head of the table, chewing the end of a pencil like it owed him money; Kamenev beside him, looking as anxious as a banker in a commune; Stalin in the corner, calm and quiet—deadly quiet—like a bear that had just learned how to use a ledger. And then there was Trotsky, who had only just returned, his coat still dusted with road grime and the scent of grandiosity.
"Ah," Trotsky said the moment I entered, brushing invisible lint from his sleeve, "Comrade Makarov returns from his audience with our beloved Kerensky. Tell me, did he weep, or just piss himself?"
"A bit of both, I think," I said, hanging up my coat and taking my usual seat beside Stalin. "Though I think the piss was metaphorical. The man is trying to play poker with a hand full of pamphlets."
"What did he say?" Lenin asked, voice low, brows furrowed like thunderclouds gathering above a battlefield.
I nodded. "He'll back off. At least for now. I told him we'd pretend the last few days never happened if he doesn't try anything stupid. I reminded him that I've got 3,000 heavily armed men and that I'm not afraid to use words like 'civil war' in casual conversation."
Lenin smiled. It was not the warm smile of a kindly uncle. It was the thin, papery grin of a man mentally writing a manifesto while someone else talks.
Kamenev exhaled slowly. "We're sitting on a volcano."
"We are the volcano," Trotsky muttered. "They're the ones building dachas at the base."
I turned to him. "Speaking of firestorms, any news from our friends in Kronstadt?"
Trotsky's grin returned in full force. "Raskolnikov is in. He agreed to consolidate under our command. Effective immediately, he's the new Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy."
There was a beat of silence, then a collective exhale. Even Lenin leaned back slightly.
"That's no small gain," Stalin said finally, his voice like gravel soaked in vodka.
"He's right," I agreed. "With Kronstadt on our side, we now control the sea—at least the Gulf of Finland. More importantly, we have a large, angry contingent of sailors who love nothing more than shooting officers and yelling slogans. We can work with that. Taking into account my 3000 guards, Trotsky's 500 men, and Kronstadt's approximately 9000 men from both sailors, infantry and dockworkers we have approximately over 12 thousand men under arms. If we arm all of Trotsky's men we'll have over 16 thousand. The remaining red guards are all mensheviks, anarchist, socialists and every else in between. They're approximately 4-5 thousand in total. Once we fully consolidate and integrate them we'll basically control the city."
"I assume they'll need arms," Lenin said.
"They're sailors, they've already got more guns than grammar. But I'll supply extra rifles and ammo. The priority right now is arming Trotsky's Mezhraiontsy faction. They'll be the core of our Soviet army. We'll need to train them, standardize doctrine, impose discipline, hierarchy. Trotsky, you'll handle it right? You'll also need to name a head of the army. And air force once you get started. You're head of the joint chiefs, you coordinate between the army, navy and air force, you can't lead them yourself. Unless Bonapartism is your style."
Trotsky scowled then nodded. "I'll arrange it."
"Good," I nodded. "We're building an army. And a navy. And an air force too once we have the resources. And, if we're being honest, an entire state security apparatus based on layered paranoia and deeply unhealthy levels of mutual surveillance. But hey, at least the trains might run on time."
That got a small chuckle out of Kamenev. Stalin just smiled slightly—he liked it when I joked about paranoia; it saved him the trouble of pretending not to enjoy it.
Lenin stood, the room falling quiet.
"Then it's done. Raskolnikov leads the navy. Trotsky will oversee consolidation of the Red Guards and creation of a centralized military command. We will continue to build, recruit, and wait. Mikheil will continue expanding the Revolutionary guard corps. And once Dzerzhinsky comes he will begin establishing the national guard and our intelligence agency. We will not strike first. But if the moment comes..."
"We murder them," I said in a cheerful tone.
Everyone nodded. That was the mood now—anticipation sharpened to a fine point. The smell of gun oil, ink, and cheap Petrograd coffee hung in the air like prophecy.
The revolution wasn't coming.
It was already here.
July 22, 1917
Mikheil's Apartment, Petrograd
Late Evening
The lamplight was low, casting long, flickering shadows across the cramped apartment. The air was thick with tobacco smoke, bread crumbs, and revolution—our usual bouquet. I sat on the worn armchair across from Stalin, unbuttoning my coat, boots dirty with Petrograd mud and Red Guard blood—not literal blood today, thankfully.
Stalin sat hunched at the kitchen table, sipping tea that was more memory than flavor. His face, as usual, was unreadable. Not blank—just still. Like a cat watching a mousehole, unsure if it wants to eat or toy.
"Listen," I started, "We need someone to officially coordinate logistics and supplies."
He glanced at me sideways. "You've been doing it."
"Exactly. I've been doing it—for everyone. My Revolutionary Guard, Trotsky's army; soon enough I'll be doing it for Kronstadt's sailors, and Dzerzhinsky's, well, our little Bolshevik Okhrana and national guard. I'm building workshops, running safehouses, recruiting and training men, printing leaflets, managing soup kitchens, collecting protection fees from businesses and criminal organizations, not to mention and buying more goddamn boots, bullets, guns and food than a single man can use in a thousand lifetimes. We've got thousands of men to feed and arm, and it's getting out of hand."
Stalin nodded, clearly listening.
"I propose we create a post—Commissar of Strategic Resources," I continued, leaning forward. "Someone to coordinate supplies, production, recruitment, and logistics across the board. And I've got a candidate."
"Who?"
"Our brother-in-law. Alexander Svanidze."
Stalin didn't speak. Just stared for a moment, pipe clenched between his teeth like a vice.
"He's family," I added quickly, "but he doesn't carry the Jugashvili or the Stalin name. That matters. He's low-profile, competent, and already a party man. Quiet, loyal, educated. He did well at Tiflis. He's helped me handle accounting and translation work while you were off shooting cops. He knows numbers, and more importantly, he knows how not to talk too much."
Still nothing. Just the sound of the kettle hissing and the creak of Keke's chair in the corner.
"Whoever controls the purse," I added, voice lowering, "controls the army. You know that. Trotsky can play Napoleon all he wants with his flair and his speeches, but if he can't clothe his men or put bullets in their rifles, he's just an orator with an audience problem."
Now Stalin smirked. Just a twitch, a curl of amusement in one corner of his mustached mouth. "You want me to propose this to Lenin?"
"Exactly. You propose it. Say you've got a few candidates. Leave Svanidze's name until later. It's less suspicious if it comes from you."
He exhaled through his nose, pipe smoke trailing like battlefield fog. "You trust him?"
"More than I trust Trotsky."
From the corner, a soft voice interrupted us. "You boys always talk about trust like it's something you can measure in bullets," Keke said, folding laundry with the grace of a saint and the subtle disdain of a Georgian grandmother who had seen far too much. "And all this talk of control… When does your little revolution start feeding people, hm?"
Stalin turned toward her slowly, affection and deference showing in the small way he adjusted his posture. "Mikheil already is Mama. Haven't you seek the soup kitchens?"
Aleksandra emerged from the tiny kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron. "He's right, though," she said, looking at me. "You're doing too much. You're thinning yourself. You come home and fall asleep at the table. Last week you went 20 hours without eating. That's not revolutionary, that's idiotic."
"Don't worry," I said with a grin. "If I die, my men will carry my corpse on a banner of black and red, with a slogan that says, 'He died for logistics.'"
Stalin rolled his eyes. "You want me to make our brother-in-law the commissar, fine. But if he starts siphoning food to his cousins in Kutaisi, I'll have him shot."
"He won't," I said, waving it off. "And if he does, I'll shoot him myself. We're family, not sentimental."
Keke crossed herself.
Aleksandra looked horrified. "Sometimes I think you two need a priest. Other times I think you need a padded cell."
"I've got red uniforms," I muttered. "Just need the padding my love."
We shared a laugh, bitter and weary, the kind you only hear in basements before coups. Outside, the wind picked up, rustling Petrograd like a whisper of the future.
1. Note for my peeps that aren't experts on the revolution, by this stage in 1917 the Kerensky government cracked down on the Bolsheviks and forced Lenin to flee to Finland and imprisoned Trotsky while forcing the red guards to go underground. So the butterflies are flapping.
Iron Felix
Alenco98
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July 27, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia — Evening
I chewed on my thumb, ink-stained and calloused, as I signed off on yet another piece of paperwork—this one a payment summary from one of our more... community-minded brothels down by the docks for this week. 3 crates of Mosin-Nagant bullets, 30 kilos of food, a crate full of surplus rifles, and ten kilos of fuel. Not bad. A patriotic haul, if I do say so myself. I marked it with a dull red wax stamp and tossed it onto the ever-growing "dealt with" pile—an ironic name, since the pile was clearly plotting to kill me in my sleep.
With a sigh I rang the brass bell on my desk—an obnoxious little thing that sounded more bourgeois than revolutionary—and reached for the next report. This one came from Chernenko's boys, a friendly opium den near the Winter Palace. I gave it a cursory glance. Opium dens: the unsung saints of the revolution. A blessing and a curse, really. They always paid in hard currency—dollars, pounds sterling, occasionally French francs or uncut gems like something out of a Dumas novel. That was the blessing. The curse was that I had to immediately barter this wealth away to buy food, fuel, and other basics from shady middlemen who looked like they were just waiting for the czar to come back and kiss them on the mouth.
It didn't help that our ruble was about as stable as a drunk peasant on stilts. Prices for bread, boots, and bullets changed hourly. One moment a bolt of cloth cost a silver ruble, and the next I was being offered it in exchange for "a good joke and a fistful of morphine." Most of my boys weren't exactly literate in economics—half of them still thought supply and demand were Bolshevik slogans—so I had to delegate finances to party clerks. And of course, this being Russia, some of the bastards were skimming off the top like caviar thieves. I told Lenin. He said, "Discipline is the lifeblood of revolution." So I shot four of them in the head this month alone. Hooray, socialism.
The door creaked open behind me. Aleksandra stepped in, my wife, my light, my long-suffering fellow lunatic in this revolutionary circus. Behind her padded in little Iosif—my son, my reminder that I still had skin in this increasingly chaotic game.
"That's the second stack this hour," she said, arms crossed like she was about to take the desk out back and shoot it.
"Tell me about it," I muttered. "The revolution won't feed itself. Or pay itself. Or arm itself. Or wipe its own ass, apparently."
"Yes, yes," she cut in with a smirk. "You're the quartermaster. I know."
She started collecting the stack—lining up the documents so neatly it made my head hurt. Iosif ran up and hugged me, tiny arms wrapped around my leg like a partisan grenade.
"Who's my little revolutionary?" I ruffled his mop of hair and smiled. "You'll be a general someday. If we survive, that is."
"A general?" he said, eyes wide. "Will I have a pistol like you papa?"
"What? Of course! Can't start a dictatorship of the proletariat without a proper pistol. It's in the rules."
"Just as long as he doesn't end up shooting people over missing canned beans," Aleksandra said dryly, not looking up from the paperwork.
"Oh, come on," I groaned. "How was I supposed to know Iosif was watching when I made an example of that clerk?! I can't keep track of everyone."
"I know." She sighed, shaking her head. "I keep finding bullet casings in the flower pots."
"On the bright side," I said, "Keke's making borscht tonight—with khachapuri."
"Where is she?"
"Running the soup kitchen outside Smolny. She said some anarchists tried to cut the bread line earlier and bear almost shot them."
"And the boys?"
"Upstairs. Playing with Yakov and the other little revolutionaries-in-training. I think they were pretending to try and collectivize a bakery."
I stood and gently nudged Iosif toward his mother, then pulled her in for a long hug, burying my face in her shoulder.
"I mean it," I whispered. "You're the reason I haven't lost my mind. With all the shit I'm juggling—militias, spies, supply lines—I couldn't do this without you."
She pulled back just slightly and kissed my cheek. "Just make sure this revolution of yours actually works. I'm tired of living in a school surrounded by armed revolutionaries and machine guns."
"It's for your safety. You know what Bear told me."
"About the army patrols near our apartment and the suspicious men loitering?" She nodded. "Yes, you've told me. Just promise me you won't get yourself killed. I don't want to be a widow. Your brother—he's not exactly the caring uncle type."
"Joe is... complicated. You know how much he loved Kato. I get it. If I lost you, I'd be right there with him. Brooding. Smoking. Probably threatening to purge the baker's union."
"Well, he threatened to shoot my brother a few days ago."
"He probably wouldn't have done it," I said with a shrug. "More likely he'd send him back to Georgia. Or to inventory boots. That's his idea of mercy."
"Either way, just be careful." She looked at the documents in her hand again and sighed. "I'll take these to the records room."
"Got it. Love you."
"Love you too. Try not to declare martial law before dinner."
"Only if I can help it."
She walked out, Iosif trailing behind her like a sleepy duckling. I stood there for a moment, alone again in the paper jungle of revolution.
I looked at the next file. Another opium den. Another ledger. Another goddamn line item for the dream of utopia.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, Stay with me by Miki Matsubara was playing. Because if there was one thing I needed right now was for my sanity to stay with me.
I'd just finished signing off the opium den and beginning to contemplate whether revolutionary paperwork qualified as a war crime when the door creaked open. Again. I didn't even look up.
"If it's another requisition request from the Kronstadt boys, tell them I already gave them three crates of rifles and ammo,'" I muttered.
"It's not the Kronstadt boys," came Stalin's gravelly voice. I looked up. He stood in the doorway, looking half-amused, half-bored. His coat still had flecks of dried snow from somewhere—maybe metaphorical. "Felix's train just arrived a few hours ago. He's here."
I blinked. "Already?"
Stalin stepped aside—and in walked the man himself.
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky.
He didn't walk so much as glide forward like a famine ghost wrapped in Catholic guilt and political rage. Black overcoat. Sunken eyes. Eyebrows that could launch purges on their own. The man looked like someone had taken a Polish monastery, doused it in vodka, and forged it into a human being.
"Comrade Makarov," he said in a low, formal voice, "I read your proposal. The layers of counter-subversion. The mutual surveillance. The internal audit structure. Very... thorough."
"I aim to please," I said, standing to shake his hand. His grip was bone-crushingly firm. Not the enthusiastic type, then.
"Lenin says this structure will serve as the bedrock for revolutionary security."
"That's the plan," I said, picking up a heavy leather-bound book from my desk. "Here. The first 60 pages are strategy. The next 300 are operational reports. It's an index of my existing intelligence network. You'll have two hundred field agents to start—spies, prostitutes, pickpockets, former precinct cops, and yes…" I raised an eyebrow and smiled, "…a few ex-Okhrana."
Dzerzhinsky's face twitched ever so slightly. Disgust or thought? It was hard to tell—his resting expression looked like he was constantly considering mass executions.
"Former Okhrana?" he repeated coldly.
"Working under your orders," I clarified. "Not with you. You'll have full discretion. Hell, once you're done with them, feel free to have them shot if you want. I'd consider it tying up loose ends."
Felix didn't laugh, of course. I wasn't even sure he understood what laughter was. He just nodded once, slowly.
"You've also been authorized by Lenin to begin forming a National Guard," I continued. "Urban security. Internal order. Crime control. Civil discipline. I'll handle the logistics—food, fuel, weapons, salaries. You just tell me what you need and how many bodies to bury."
"I will require a dedicated headquarters," he said.
"Already have a shortlist. I've got a couple of warehouses near the docks with reinforced steel doors and an underground annex south tour name on it. Should be perfect for interrogations or executions or torture. Whatever your style is."
He ignored that.
Stalin, leaning in the corner and puffing a cigarette, finally spoke. "He's efficient, no?"
"He's terrifying," I muttered under my breath.
Felix turned, as if he'd heard me anyway. "Efficiency must terrify."
"Well, you're halfway to sainthood then," I quipped.
"I have no interest in sainthood."
"Not even a martyr complex?"
That got a twitch from his lip. A smile? Or an internal list of who to purge first?
"Look, I know you're busy," I said, softening slightly. "But my mother's making borscht. My wife has khachapuri in the oven. You want to come to dinner? Meet the family? Scare the children?"
He looked at me like I'd offered him a date with a giraffe.
"No. I have work to do. The state does not wait for soup."
And with that, Felix Dzerzhinsky turned and walked out, coat flapping behind him like the wing of a reaper late for his next harvest.
I turned to Stalin.
"He's good."
Stalin exhaled smoke and smiled faintly. "Exactly."
I reached for the next report on the desk—something about one of our brothels stockpiling morphine—and said to myself: "God help whoever crosses Dzerzhinsky."
I wouldn't.
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia — Evening
I chewed on my thumb, ink-stained and calloused, as I signed off on yet another piece of paperwork—this one a payment summary from one of our more... community-minded brothels down by the docks for this week. 3 crates of Mosin-Nagant bullets, 30 kilos of food, a crate full of surplus rifles, and ten kilos of fuel. Not bad. A patriotic haul, if I do say so myself. I marked it with a dull red wax stamp and tossed it onto the ever-growing "dealt with" pile—an ironic name, since the pile was clearly plotting to kill me in my sleep.
With a sigh I rang the brass bell on my desk—an obnoxious little thing that sounded more bourgeois than revolutionary—and reached for the next report. This one came from Chernenko's boys, a friendly opium den near the Winter Palace. I gave it a cursory glance. Opium dens: the unsung saints of the revolution. A blessing and a curse, really. They always paid in hard currency—dollars, pounds sterling, occasionally French francs or uncut gems like something out of a Dumas novel. That was the blessing. The curse was that I had to immediately barter this wealth away to buy food, fuel, and other basics from shady middlemen who looked like they were just waiting for the czar to come back and kiss them on the mouth.
It didn't help that our ruble was about as stable as a drunk peasant on stilts. Prices for bread, boots, and bullets changed hourly. One moment a bolt of cloth cost a silver ruble, and the next I was being offered it in exchange for "a good joke and a fistful of morphine." Most of my boys weren't exactly literate in economics—half of them still thought supply and demand were Bolshevik slogans—so I had to delegate finances to party clerks. And of course, this being Russia, some of the bastards were skimming off the top like caviar thieves. I told Lenin. He said, "Discipline is the lifeblood of revolution." So I shot four of them in the head this month alone. Hooray, socialism.
The door creaked open behind me. Aleksandra stepped in, my wife, my light, my long-suffering fellow lunatic in this revolutionary circus. Behind her padded in little Iosif—my son, my reminder that I still had skin in this increasingly chaotic game.
"That's the second stack this hour," she said, arms crossed like she was about to take the desk out back and shoot it.
"Tell me about it," I muttered. "The revolution won't feed itself. Or pay itself. Or arm itself. Or wipe its own ass, apparently."
"Yes, yes," she cut in with a smirk. "You're the quartermaster. I know."
She started collecting the stack—lining up the documents so neatly it made my head hurt. Iosif ran up and hugged me, tiny arms wrapped around my leg like a partisan grenade.
"Who's my little revolutionary?" I ruffled his mop of hair and smiled. "You'll be a general someday. If we survive, that is."
"A general?" he said, eyes wide. "Will I have a pistol like you papa?"
"What? Of course! Can't start a dictatorship of the proletariat without a proper pistol. It's in the rules."
"Just as long as he doesn't end up shooting people over missing canned beans," Aleksandra said dryly, not looking up from the paperwork.
"Oh, come on," I groaned. "How was I supposed to know Iosif was watching when I made an example of that clerk?! I can't keep track of everyone."
"I know." She sighed, shaking her head. "I keep finding bullet casings in the flower pots."
"On the bright side," I said, "Keke's making borscht tonight—with khachapuri."
"Where is she?"
"Running the soup kitchen outside Smolny. She said some anarchists tried to cut the bread line earlier and bear almost shot them."
"And the boys?"
"Upstairs. Playing with Yakov and the other little revolutionaries-in-training. I think they were pretending to try and collectivize a bakery."
I stood and gently nudged Iosif toward his mother, then pulled her in for a long hug, burying my face in her shoulder.
"I mean it," I whispered. "You're the reason I haven't lost my mind. With all the shit I'm juggling—militias, spies, supply lines—I couldn't do this without you."
She pulled back just slightly and kissed my cheek. "Just make sure this revolution of yours actually works. I'm tired of living in a school surrounded by armed revolutionaries and machine guns."
"It's for your safety. You know what Bear told me."
"About the army patrols near our apartment and the suspicious men loitering?" She nodded. "Yes, you've told me. Just promise me you won't get yourself killed. I don't want to be a widow. Your brother—he's not exactly the caring uncle type."
"Joe is... complicated. You know how much he loved Kato. I get it. If I lost you, I'd be right there with him. Brooding. Smoking. Probably threatening to purge the baker's union."
"Well, he threatened to shoot my brother a few days ago."
"He probably wouldn't have done it," I said with a shrug. "More likely he'd send him back to Georgia. Or to inventory boots. That's his idea of mercy."
"Either way, just be careful." She looked at the documents in her hand again and sighed. "I'll take these to the records room."
"Got it. Love you."
"Love you too. Try not to declare martial law before dinner."
"Only if I can help it."
She walked out, Iosif trailing behind her like a sleepy duckling. I stood there for a moment, alone again in the paper jungle of revolution.
I looked at the next file. Another opium den. Another ledger. Another goddamn line item for the dream of utopia.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, Stay with me by Miki Matsubara was playing. Because if there was one thing I needed right now was for my sanity to stay with me.
I'd just finished signing off the opium den and beginning to contemplate whether revolutionary paperwork qualified as a war crime when the door creaked open. Again. I didn't even look up.
"If it's another requisition request from the Kronstadt boys, tell them I already gave them three crates of rifles and ammo,'" I muttered.
"It's not the Kronstadt boys," came Stalin's gravelly voice. I looked up. He stood in the doorway, looking half-amused, half-bored. His coat still had flecks of dried snow from somewhere—maybe metaphorical. "Felix's train just arrived a few hours ago. He's here."
I blinked. "Already?"
Stalin stepped aside—and in walked the man himself.
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky.
He didn't walk so much as glide forward like a famine ghost wrapped in Catholic guilt and political rage. Black overcoat. Sunken eyes. Eyebrows that could launch purges on their own. The man looked like someone had taken a Polish monastery, doused it in vodka, and forged it into a human being.
"Comrade Makarov," he said in a low, formal voice, "I read your proposal. The layers of counter-subversion. The mutual surveillance. The internal audit structure. Very... thorough."
"I aim to please," I said, standing to shake his hand. His grip was bone-crushingly firm. Not the enthusiastic type, then.
"Lenin says this structure will serve as the bedrock for revolutionary security."
"That's the plan," I said, picking up a heavy leather-bound book from my desk. "Here. The first 60 pages are strategy. The next 300 are operational reports. It's an index of my existing intelligence network. You'll have two hundred field agents to start—spies, prostitutes, pickpockets, former precinct cops, and yes…" I raised an eyebrow and smiled, "…a few ex-Okhrana."
Dzerzhinsky's face twitched ever so slightly. Disgust or thought? It was hard to tell—his resting expression looked like he was constantly considering mass executions.
"Former Okhrana?" he repeated coldly.
"Working under your orders," I clarified. "Not with you. You'll have full discretion. Hell, once you're done with them, feel free to have them shot if you want. I'd consider it tying up loose ends."
Felix didn't laugh, of course. I wasn't even sure he understood what laughter was. He just nodded once, slowly.
"You've also been authorized by Lenin to begin forming a National Guard," I continued. "Urban security. Internal order. Crime control. Civil discipline. I'll handle the logistics—food, fuel, weapons, salaries. You just tell me what you need and how many bodies to bury."
"I will require a dedicated headquarters," he said.
"Already have a shortlist. I've got a couple of warehouses near the docks with reinforced steel doors and an underground annex south tour name on it. Should be perfect for interrogations or executions or torture. Whatever your style is."
He ignored that.
Stalin, leaning in the corner and puffing a cigarette, finally spoke. "He's efficient, no?"
"He's terrifying," I muttered under my breath.
Felix turned, as if he'd heard me anyway. "Efficiency must terrify."
"Well, you're halfway to sainthood then," I quipped.
"I have no interest in sainthood."
"Not even a martyr complex?"
That got a twitch from his lip. A smile? Or an internal list of who to purge first?
"Look, I know you're busy," I said, softening slightly. "But my mother's making borscht. My wife has khachapuri in the oven. You want to come to dinner? Meet the family? Scare the children?"
He looked at me like I'd offered him a date with a giraffe.
"No. I have work to do. The state does not wait for soup."
And with that, Felix Dzerzhinsky turned and walked out, coat flapping behind him like the wing of a reaper late for his next harvest.
I turned to Stalin.
"He's good."
Stalin exhaled smoke and smiled faintly. "Exactly."
I reached for the next report on the desk—something about one of our brothels stockpiling morphine—and said to myself: "God help whoever crosses Dzerzhinsky."
I wouldn't.
Last edited:
Panic at the Revolution
Alenco98
Not too sore, are you?
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August 16, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
I leaned back in my chair, spine cracking like a rifle bolt, and exhaled one long, soul-crushing sigh as I stamped yet another piece of paperwork—this one detailing the weekly tax intake from one of our fine upstanding community establishments: a gambling den nestled in the shadow of the Winter Palace. This particular den was the bastard child of the Petrograd vice industry—ugly, unloved, but still useful. It dealt mostly in French francs. Always the damn francs. The occasional British pound or American dollar would show up like a drunk relative at a wedding, but the francs dominated. No surprise there—they were practically sucking off the French embassy for clientele. Still, I hated francs. The ruble was already circling the drain, but the franc was trying its best to catch up, gasping for breath somewhere between Verdun and Passanchdaele.
Not that I blamed the French. After all, they weren't Russia.
But enough about collapsing currencies—I had real problems. Specifically: work, more work, and an endless mountain of soul-sucking bureaucratic agony.
With our holy trinity of armed wings—my Revolutionary Guard Corps, Dzerzhinsky's National Guard, and Trotsky's Soviet Armed Forces—now operational, my job as the unofficial quartermaster of the impending apocalypse had metastasized into full logistical cancer. It was one thing to arm and feed your own troops; it's another to coordinate food, weapons, clothing, ammunition, and building materials for three rival military-industrial Frankenstein monsters stitched together by ideology, paranoia, the party, Lenin, and shared hatred of tsars.
Worse still, I could no longer strut around in my glorious revolutionary black-and-red drip, complete with matching armband and subtle death imagery. I had to stay behind a desk. Me. Mikheil the Terrible. Reduced to rubber stamps, requisition forms, and the occasional death sentence and execution for embezzling funds and/or supplies.
Truly, I was suffering from success.
Still, I was adapting—like a cockroach with ambition. Stalin had pitched my idea to Lenin: the creation of a Commissariat for Strategic Resources, and to my eternal gratitude (and mild concern), Lenin approved it with frightening speed. I proposed a clean subdivision model—one committee each for money, food, ammunition, clothing, vehicles, building supplies, and what we called "support logistics" (basically everything else, including things we'd forget about until the latrines exploded).
Naturally, Stalin filled the new offices with hand-picked "loyalists" who just happened to be people he'd bribed or blackmailed into place using money from my own black-market empire which I also used to supply/pay the aforementioned trinity of armed wings that now answered to the party/Lenin. Stalin had even secured a position as head of the money committee for Alexander Svanidze, a trusted "old comrade from Georgia"—who was, incidentally, our brother-in-law.
If anyone asked, we'd simply say, Yes, he is. You never asked. We never lied. The best lies are told by simply omitting the truth.
On the ground, things were looking remarkably good—for a city teetering on civil war. Those days in July where we almost had civil war break out had been good for recruitment. Many of the red guard factions began rallying to us once Kerensky backed off.
Trotsky's shiny new Soviet military for example had grown to a solid 7,000 army regulars after I both managed to arm his Mezhraiontsy faction and aided him in co-opting various lesser Bolshevik aligned red guards into his command. The navy had 9,000 sailors and marines from Kronstadt along with several warships. We even had a nascent air wing with 200 men in it. Unfortunately we only had a few aircraft, and they were basically glorified lawnmowers strapped to wings. Fuel and parts were scarce, so we mostly stuck with the occasional hot air balloon—because nothing says air superiority like dangling in the air in a giant floating suicide note.
My own Revolutionary Guard Corps had a recruitment boom as well courtesy of the red guards and a surge in popular support. We now stood at around 5000 men—heavily armed, frighteningly well-trained, and stylish enough to frighten anarchists, Mensheviks, and fashion critics alike. Our uniforms were now iconic: the terror of Petrograd and the envy of every other revolutionary LARPer within 100 miles.
Dzerzhinsky? Oh, Felix had gone feral. Once he realized he had carte blanche to build a security and intelligence service, he became a monk with a gun fetish. He had 350 agents already—spies, informants, torture specialists, and God knows what else—and the National Guard had quickly ballooned to 2000 disciplined fighters, most of whom were probably ex-convicts who could recite Marx while strangling you with piano wire.
All told, we had over 20,000 men under arms in Petrograd alone. And that didn't even count the workers, volunteers, builders, and other non grunts we had that made sure our men could operate and function on a day to day basis.
The old Red Guards—bless their chaotic, disorganized hearts—were now becoming a historical footnote. The ones that hadn't joined our assorted armed wings were a cocktail of Mensheviks, anarchists, and other political leftovers who could see the writing on the wall while the walls themselves were closing in.
My men told me that even now, more factions were coming to us—hat in hand, ready to swear fealty. The revolution wasn't a threat anymore. It was becoming an inevitability.
And on that inevitability? Civil war. Blood. Triumph. And if I were very lucky: a functional logistics department.
Now if only someone could bring me some coca cola and a fucking Burrito. Preferably before France collapses.
But of course, that brief and precious moment of solace had to end—because life, particularly revolutionary life, is allergic to peace. I cracked my knuckles, straightened my spine until it audibly protested, and reached for the next sheet in the never-ending Tower of Bureaucratic Misery™. This one? A logistics report from Kronstadt detailing their weekly ammunition delivery. Wonderful.
It was a lot—not because they were under-supplied, mind you, but because they were under new orders. They were to hoard as much as they could: shells, crates of Mosin-Nagant rounds, black powder, fuel, dried meat, boots, bandages, even salt. They were preparing for the inevitable. Just like we ordered them and every part of our various armed forces to.
Last week, at our not-so-secret war council—the Revolution Defense Council—we'd made the big decision. The Room of Realists, I called it. Trotsky, Lenin, Dzerzhinsky. I pointed out the very obvious elephant in the room: Civil war wasn't a possibility—it was a calendar item. All roads now led to gunfire, famine, political assassinations, and ration coupons.
It wasn't hard to convince them, really. Trotsky practically vibrated with bloodlust at the thought of toppling the Provisional Government with a bayonet charge and a really good slogan. Dzerzhinsky didn't need much nudging either. The man had been through enough Tsarist torture sessions to have permanently replaced his blood with vendettas. And Lenin? Lenin had enough enemies in every direction that at this point, violence was just another form of punctuation.
So the new policy was simple. Elegant, really: stockpile everything. Weapons, men, influence, toilet paper—especially that last one, judging by the current state of Petrograd's lavatories. Begin quietly expanding outside the capital. The Red Guard, the National Guard, the Soviet Army—we would no longer be a city-bound militia. We were becoming a machine.
Dzerzhinsky, ever the terrifying overachiever, had already deployed National Guard detachments to Moscow, Kazan, Voronezh, and Tsaritsyn, with the mission of establishing satellite cells. Not just National Guard units, either—he was laying the groundwork for local Soviet Armed Forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps branches as well. Naturally, Trotsky and I signed off, then immediately dispatched our own agents to the same cities. Half to assist, half to spy, and maybe—just maybe—one or two to sabotage if needed. Ah, interservice rivalry. It was like Christmas, only with more backstabbing and less cake.
The whole operation felt eerily familiar. I'd spent a few years reading up on middle eastern politics in college cause I got a political science minor on top of my econ degree. This was starting to resemble the Baathist model far too well: multiple overlapping armed institutions, each loyal to a different warlord, all reporting to one paranoid leadership council. The only difference was that we had snow and a crippling vodka shortage, and no one had a moustache quite as photogenic as say Saddam's.
As I shuffled another stack of documents, I found myself absentmindedly humming "Oh No, Oh Yes" by Akina Nakamori. It was a strange comfort—sultry and soft, a piece of bittersweet city pop that made me feel like I was living in a doomed romantic anime set in a Tokyo lit by neon and regret. The irony of the lyrics wasn't lost on me either: the push and pull of something inevitable, something you know is going to destroy everything, but you want it anyway. Oh no, oh yes indeed.
I hummed louder as I reached for another file—this one stamped "Dockyard Smuggling Manifest"—and leaned back in my chair, letting the tune swirl in my head like smoke from a burning regime.
Outside, the wind howled down the alleyways of Petrograd like a ghost learning to whistle. Civil war was coming. And we were going to meet it with clipboards, bayonets, and just enough music to keep from going mad.
I was halfway through humming the bridge of "Oh No, Oh Yes"—you know, that part where the sax swirls like you're slow dancing through emotional ruin—when the door slammed open with the subtlety of a mortar shell.
In came Stalin.
He was wearing his coat like it was a funeral shroud and had the kind of expression that said, "Something bad happened," followed by, "And we're going to make it everyone else's problem."
"Mikheil," he grunted.
I paused mid-hum. My pen was still in my hand, hovering over a delivery log from a brothel near Vyborg that paid its taxes in bulk soap, homemade grenades, and a disturbing amount of salted horse meat.
Stalin stepped forward, dusting snow off his sleeves that wasn't there, like a man who wanted to look dramatic. "Lenin's called an emergency meeting. Now. Central Committee and the entire Revolutionary Defense Council."
I gave him a raised eyebrow. "Emergency? Let me guess: someone finally lit Kerensky's mustache on fire? Or did Kamenev lose another debate with a brick wall?"
"No jokes," he said flatly. "It's serious. Couriers came from the front. Something's happening."
I nodded slowly, the chorus of "Oh No, Oh Yes" still playing on loop in my head like a tragic backing track to our creeping descent into civil collapse as I hummed it. My feet tapped along unconsciously. Stalin narrowed his eyes.
"What are you humming?"
"Nothing."
He stared at me like he was calculating whether or not to have me committed. "Sounds... Foreign."
"Does it?"
Pause.
"Definitely foreign."
I shrugged and stood, casually flipping over a supply manifest for Dzerzhinsky's newest "interrogation tools." "Must be the stress. I sometimes hum under duress. It helps me avoid smashing my head through the window. You try managing logistics for over 20 thousand armed men in a city on the brink of civil war while at the same time ensuring the soup kitchens, workshops, and criminal underworld all runs."
He didn't push it. He knew better. I was the only man in Petrograd who could coordinate arms shipments, fuel rations, field latrines, and midnight executions while still finding time to hum obscure 1980s ballads.
We exited my office and headed down the hallway of the Smolny Institute, passing armed guards, typewriter drones, and one guy throwing up into a bin. All very normal.
"Do we know what this is about?" I asked in Georgian.
"No. But Lenin's pacing again."
"Oh, Christ."
"When he paces, it's bad."
"Does he have his head up his ass?"
"Yes."
"Worse than bad. That's full 'What is to be done?' mode."
We turned the corner toward the war room, the one we'd repurposed from a girls' boarding school classroom. The chalkboards still had cursive handwriting exercises beneath the maps of army group movements. A revolutionary aesthetic.
As we approached, I resumed humming quietly.
"Oh no," I whispered.
"Oh yes," I whispered louder.
Stalin shot me a look. I grinned back. He just shook his head.
God help the Russian Empire.
Then we walked in.
The room reeked of sweat, tobacco, kerosene, and existential dread. Everyone who mattered was crammed into the ex-classroom turned nerve center of the revolutionary movement, now dubbed—unironically—"The War Room." A map of Petrograd had been nailed over an old chalkboard still faintly showing a young girl's handwriting: "My name is Natassia and I love spring."
Poor Natassia. Spring was cancelled. I hope she's still alive.
Lenin sat at the head of the table, towel wrapped around his bald head like some prophetic tuberculosis patient. Trotsky paced like a caged ferret. Zinoviev chain-smoked like his lungs were something to be punished. Kamenev looked like he'd already written his own eulogy. Stalin stood silently, arms crossed, leaning against a bookshelf titled Russian Literature for Young Girls, as if he were pondering the murder of a nation and whether it could be done before sunrise.
Then Dzerzhinsky stood.
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky—his face sharp as a sickle, his soul possibly made of ice and old Orthodox guilt—spoke with the grim tone of a man used to sending people into basements from which they never returned.
"Kornilov's forces are moving," he began, voice quiet but direct. "Multiple battalions en route from the front. Armored trains, cavalry, artillery support. Timing suggests initial approval from Kerensky."
The room sucked in breath like a funeral mass.
"But," he added, "now Kerensky seems to be... hesitating. Possibly panicking. Our sources are unclear. It may have been a ploy to check us that is now spiraling out of control."
Murmurs. Paper shuffling. Kamenev muttered something about how the bourgeois always overplay their hand.
I leaned forward, flicking a pencil off the table.
"So let me get this straight," I said. "Kerensky may or may not have ordered Kornilov to move on us. Kornilov may or may not be about to stage a military coup. And we're all just sitting here like it's a bad Dumas novel plot?"
Silence.
I continued, sighing. "Fine. Then we assume the worst. Christ you all need a sense of humor."
I stood up and addressed the room like I was giving a toast at the world's most depressing wedding.
"Here's the plan: we hunker down. Full lockdown. We fortify Smolny, the Tauride, the rail yards, and every goddamn street we can turn into a redoubt. I want sandbags at soup kitchens. Trenches behind newspaper stalls. If it's got bricks, stack 'em. The whole city needs to be a goddamn fortress by the end of the week."
Trotsky stopped pacing. Zinoviev stubbed out his cigarette. Stalin gave me the nod.
I kept going.
"We begin immediate sabotage operations. Felix, have your agents embed themselves along the rail lines. We cut every telegraph, blow every bridge we can. Get messages out to our cells across Russia—Petrograd is under threat. I want unrest within Kornilov's ranks: pamphlets, sedition, strike calls, even a little creative assassination if we can swing it."
"Of officers?" asked Kamenev, his voice unsteady.
"No," I said flatly. "The fucking cooks and latrine cleaners. Of course officers, Kamenev. If you shoot a colonel, a lieutenant might think twice about marching on his fellow citizens."
Kamenev looked queasy. Trotsky, on the other hand, looked like I'd handed him a new favorite trenchcoat.
"Meanwhile," I added, "I want Trotsky to begin arming the unions. I don't care if they're factory workers, bread bakers, or half-blind anarchists with wooden legs. We give them rifles, we teach them how to shoot, and we tell them if Kornilov gets to Petrograd, he'll turn them into roadkill. They'll fight harder than any conscript."
Lenin stirred.
"We are not yet in open war," he said, his tone measured. "We must avoid giving them justification. We speak of peace. Bread. Land. Let them fire the first shot."
"Oh, I'm not suggesting we start it," I said. "I'm suggesting we set up barricades, load the rifles, and politely dare them to start a civil war while the Germans are still marching east."
Zinoviev snorted.
"And if Kerensky tries to play both sides?"
I smiled, dark and dry. "Then we smile back... and wait until he's standing on the wrong side of the river."
The room was quiet again. Even Trotsky had stopped pacing.
Lenin nodded once. "Begin preparation. If it comes to war, the revolution will not be caught sleeping."
"One more thing." I added. "Have a rally Tomorrow. Announce the creation of the Soviet military. Have Trotsky there, as well as the guys he appointed to lead the air force, navy, and army proper. Then announce the creation of the national guard under Dzerzhinsky. And of course since everyone knows about the Revolutionary guard corps I'll be there as well. We'll have a parade after the rally, a show of strength and unity. The military, national guard, and Revolutionary guard corps. All united to protect the revolution."
The whole room looked at me. Lenin only nodded and looked at Trotsky and Dzerzhinsky. "Coordinate this with comrade Makarov. We'll have the rally and parade at mid day tomorrow."
I turned back to my seat, humming "Oh No, Oh Yes" again under my breath.
Stalin whispered: "That damn song again."
I sighed. "Let me cope."
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
I leaned back in my chair, spine cracking like a rifle bolt, and exhaled one long, soul-crushing sigh as I stamped yet another piece of paperwork—this one detailing the weekly tax intake from one of our fine upstanding community establishments: a gambling den nestled in the shadow of the Winter Palace. This particular den was the bastard child of the Petrograd vice industry—ugly, unloved, but still useful. It dealt mostly in French francs. Always the damn francs. The occasional British pound or American dollar would show up like a drunk relative at a wedding, but the francs dominated. No surprise there—they were practically sucking off the French embassy for clientele. Still, I hated francs. The ruble was already circling the drain, but the franc was trying its best to catch up, gasping for breath somewhere between Verdun and Passanchdaele.
Not that I blamed the French. After all, they weren't Russia.
But enough about collapsing currencies—I had real problems. Specifically: work, more work, and an endless mountain of soul-sucking bureaucratic agony.
With our holy trinity of armed wings—my Revolutionary Guard Corps, Dzerzhinsky's National Guard, and Trotsky's Soviet Armed Forces—now operational, my job as the unofficial quartermaster of the impending apocalypse had metastasized into full logistical cancer. It was one thing to arm and feed your own troops; it's another to coordinate food, weapons, clothing, ammunition, and building materials for three rival military-industrial Frankenstein monsters stitched together by ideology, paranoia, the party, Lenin, and shared hatred of tsars.
Worse still, I could no longer strut around in my glorious revolutionary black-and-red drip, complete with matching armband and subtle death imagery. I had to stay behind a desk. Me. Mikheil the Terrible. Reduced to rubber stamps, requisition forms, and the occasional death sentence and execution for embezzling funds and/or supplies.
Truly, I was suffering from success.
Still, I was adapting—like a cockroach with ambition. Stalin had pitched my idea to Lenin: the creation of a Commissariat for Strategic Resources, and to my eternal gratitude (and mild concern), Lenin approved it with frightening speed. I proposed a clean subdivision model—one committee each for money, food, ammunition, clothing, vehicles, building supplies, and what we called "support logistics" (basically everything else, including things we'd forget about until the latrines exploded).
Naturally, Stalin filled the new offices with hand-picked "loyalists" who just happened to be people he'd bribed or blackmailed into place using money from my own black-market empire which I also used to supply/pay the aforementioned trinity of armed wings that now answered to the party/Lenin. Stalin had even secured a position as head of the money committee for Alexander Svanidze, a trusted "old comrade from Georgia"—who was, incidentally, our brother-in-law.
If anyone asked, we'd simply say, Yes, he is. You never asked. We never lied. The best lies are told by simply omitting the truth.
On the ground, things were looking remarkably good—for a city teetering on civil war. Those days in July where we almost had civil war break out had been good for recruitment. Many of the red guard factions began rallying to us once Kerensky backed off.
Trotsky's shiny new Soviet military for example had grown to a solid 7,000 army regulars after I both managed to arm his Mezhraiontsy faction and aided him in co-opting various lesser Bolshevik aligned red guards into his command. The navy had 9,000 sailors and marines from Kronstadt along with several warships. We even had a nascent air wing with 200 men in it. Unfortunately we only had a few aircraft, and they were basically glorified lawnmowers strapped to wings. Fuel and parts were scarce, so we mostly stuck with the occasional hot air balloon—because nothing says air superiority like dangling in the air in a giant floating suicide note.
My own Revolutionary Guard Corps had a recruitment boom as well courtesy of the red guards and a surge in popular support. We now stood at around 5000 men—heavily armed, frighteningly well-trained, and stylish enough to frighten anarchists, Mensheviks, and fashion critics alike. Our uniforms were now iconic: the terror of Petrograd and the envy of every other revolutionary LARPer within 100 miles.
Dzerzhinsky? Oh, Felix had gone feral. Once he realized he had carte blanche to build a security and intelligence service, he became a monk with a gun fetish. He had 350 agents already—spies, informants, torture specialists, and God knows what else—and the National Guard had quickly ballooned to 2000 disciplined fighters, most of whom were probably ex-convicts who could recite Marx while strangling you with piano wire.
All told, we had over 20,000 men under arms in Petrograd alone. And that didn't even count the workers, volunteers, builders, and other non grunts we had that made sure our men could operate and function on a day to day basis.
The old Red Guards—bless their chaotic, disorganized hearts—were now becoming a historical footnote. The ones that hadn't joined our assorted armed wings were a cocktail of Mensheviks, anarchists, and other political leftovers who could see the writing on the wall while the walls themselves were closing in.
My men told me that even now, more factions were coming to us—hat in hand, ready to swear fealty. The revolution wasn't a threat anymore. It was becoming an inevitability.
And on that inevitability? Civil war. Blood. Triumph. And if I were very lucky: a functional logistics department.
Now if only someone could bring me some coca cola and a fucking Burrito. Preferably before France collapses.
But of course, that brief and precious moment of solace had to end—because life, particularly revolutionary life, is allergic to peace. I cracked my knuckles, straightened my spine until it audibly protested, and reached for the next sheet in the never-ending Tower of Bureaucratic Misery™. This one? A logistics report from Kronstadt detailing their weekly ammunition delivery. Wonderful.
It was a lot—not because they were under-supplied, mind you, but because they were under new orders. They were to hoard as much as they could: shells, crates of Mosin-Nagant rounds, black powder, fuel, dried meat, boots, bandages, even salt. They were preparing for the inevitable. Just like we ordered them and every part of our various armed forces to.
Last week, at our not-so-secret war council—the Revolution Defense Council—we'd made the big decision. The Room of Realists, I called it. Trotsky, Lenin, Dzerzhinsky. I pointed out the very obvious elephant in the room: Civil war wasn't a possibility—it was a calendar item. All roads now led to gunfire, famine, political assassinations, and ration coupons.
It wasn't hard to convince them, really. Trotsky practically vibrated with bloodlust at the thought of toppling the Provisional Government with a bayonet charge and a really good slogan. Dzerzhinsky didn't need much nudging either. The man had been through enough Tsarist torture sessions to have permanently replaced his blood with vendettas. And Lenin? Lenin had enough enemies in every direction that at this point, violence was just another form of punctuation.
So the new policy was simple. Elegant, really: stockpile everything. Weapons, men, influence, toilet paper—especially that last one, judging by the current state of Petrograd's lavatories. Begin quietly expanding outside the capital. The Red Guard, the National Guard, the Soviet Army—we would no longer be a city-bound militia. We were becoming a machine.
Dzerzhinsky, ever the terrifying overachiever, had already deployed National Guard detachments to Moscow, Kazan, Voronezh, and Tsaritsyn, with the mission of establishing satellite cells. Not just National Guard units, either—he was laying the groundwork for local Soviet Armed Forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps branches as well. Naturally, Trotsky and I signed off, then immediately dispatched our own agents to the same cities. Half to assist, half to spy, and maybe—just maybe—one or two to sabotage if needed. Ah, interservice rivalry. It was like Christmas, only with more backstabbing and less cake.
The whole operation felt eerily familiar. I'd spent a few years reading up on middle eastern politics in college cause I got a political science minor on top of my econ degree. This was starting to resemble the Baathist model far too well: multiple overlapping armed institutions, each loyal to a different warlord, all reporting to one paranoid leadership council. The only difference was that we had snow and a crippling vodka shortage, and no one had a moustache quite as photogenic as say Saddam's.
As I shuffled another stack of documents, I found myself absentmindedly humming "Oh No, Oh Yes" by Akina Nakamori. It was a strange comfort—sultry and soft, a piece of bittersweet city pop that made me feel like I was living in a doomed romantic anime set in a Tokyo lit by neon and regret. The irony of the lyrics wasn't lost on me either: the push and pull of something inevitable, something you know is going to destroy everything, but you want it anyway. Oh no, oh yes indeed.
I hummed louder as I reached for another file—this one stamped "Dockyard Smuggling Manifest"—and leaned back in my chair, letting the tune swirl in my head like smoke from a burning regime.
Outside, the wind howled down the alleyways of Petrograd like a ghost learning to whistle. Civil war was coming. And we were going to meet it with clipboards, bayonets, and just enough music to keep from going mad.
I was halfway through humming the bridge of "Oh No, Oh Yes"—you know, that part where the sax swirls like you're slow dancing through emotional ruin—when the door slammed open with the subtlety of a mortar shell.
In came Stalin.
He was wearing his coat like it was a funeral shroud and had the kind of expression that said, "Something bad happened," followed by, "And we're going to make it everyone else's problem."
"Mikheil," he grunted.
I paused mid-hum. My pen was still in my hand, hovering over a delivery log from a brothel near Vyborg that paid its taxes in bulk soap, homemade grenades, and a disturbing amount of salted horse meat.
Stalin stepped forward, dusting snow off his sleeves that wasn't there, like a man who wanted to look dramatic. "Lenin's called an emergency meeting. Now. Central Committee and the entire Revolutionary Defense Council."
I gave him a raised eyebrow. "Emergency? Let me guess: someone finally lit Kerensky's mustache on fire? Or did Kamenev lose another debate with a brick wall?"
"No jokes," he said flatly. "It's serious. Couriers came from the front. Something's happening."
I nodded slowly, the chorus of "Oh No, Oh Yes" still playing on loop in my head like a tragic backing track to our creeping descent into civil collapse as I hummed it. My feet tapped along unconsciously. Stalin narrowed his eyes.
"What are you humming?"
"Nothing."
He stared at me like he was calculating whether or not to have me committed. "Sounds... Foreign."
"Does it?"
Pause.
"Definitely foreign."
I shrugged and stood, casually flipping over a supply manifest for Dzerzhinsky's newest "interrogation tools." "Must be the stress. I sometimes hum under duress. It helps me avoid smashing my head through the window. You try managing logistics for over 20 thousand armed men in a city on the brink of civil war while at the same time ensuring the soup kitchens, workshops, and criminal underworld all runs."
He didn't push it. He knew better. I was the only man in Petrograd who could coordinate arms shipments, fuel rations, field latrines, and midnight executions while still finding time to hum obscure 1980s ballads.
We exited my office and headed down the hallway of the Smolny Institute, passing armed guards, typewriter drones, and one guy throwing up into a bin. All very normal.
"Do we know what this is about?" I asked in Georgian.
"No. But Lenin's pacing again."
"Oh, Christ."
"When he paces, it's bad."
"Does he have his head up his ass?"
"Yes."
"Worse than bad. That's full 'What is to be done?' mode."
We turned the corner toward the war room, the one we'd repurposed from a girls' boarding school classroom. The chalkboards still had cursive handwriting exercises beneath the maps of army group movements. A revolutionary aesthetic.
As we approached, I resumed humming quietly.
"Oh no," I whispered.
"Oh yes," I whispered louder.
Stalin shot me a look. I grinned back. He just shook his head.
God help the Russian Empire.
Then we walked in.
The room reeked of sweat, tobacco, kerosene, and existential dread. Everyone who mattered was crammed into the ex-classroom turned nerve center of the revolutionary movement, now dubbed—unironically—"The War Room." A map of Petrograd had been nailed over an old chalkboard still faintly showing a young girl's handwriting: "My name is Natassia and I love spring."
Poor Natassia. Spring was cancelled. I hope she's still alive.
Lenin sat at the head of the table, towel wrapped around his bald head like some prophetic tuberculosis patient. Trotsky paced like a caged ferret. Zinoviev chain-smoked like his lungs were something to be punished. Kamenev looked like he'd already written his own eulogy. Stalin stood silently, arms crossed, leaning against a bookshelf titled Russian Literature for Young Girls, as if he were pondering the murder of a nation and whether it could be done before sunrise.
Then Dzerzhinsky stood.
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky—his face sharp as a sickle, his soul possibly made of ice and old Orthodox guilt—spoke with the grim tone of a man used to sending people into basements from which they never returned.
"Kornilov's forces are moving," he began, voice quiet but direct. "Multiple battalions en route from the front. Armored trains, cavalry, artillery support. Timing suggests initial approval from Kerensky."
The room sucked in breath like a funeral mass.
"But," he added, "now Kerensky seems to be... hesitating. Possibly panicking. Our sources are unclear. It may have been a ploy to check us that is now spiraling out of control."
Murmurs. Paper shuffling. Kamenev muttered something about how the bourgeois always overplay their hand.
I leaned forward, flicking a pencil off the table.
"So let me get this straight," I said. "Kerensky may or may not have ordered Kornilov to move on us. Kornilov may or may not be about to stage a military coup. And we're all just sitting here like it's a bad Dumas novel plot?"
Silence.
I continued, sighing. "Fine. Then we assume the worst. Christ you all need a sense of humor."
I stood up and addressed the room like I was giving a toast at the world's most depressing wedding.
"Here's the plan: we hunker down. Full lockdown. We fortify Smolny, the Tauride, the rail yards, and every goddamn street we can turn into a redoubt. I want sandbags at soup kitchens. Trenches behind newspaper stalls. If it's got bricks, stack 'em. The whole city needs to be a goddamn fortress by the end of the week."
Trotsky stopped pacing. Zinoviev stubbed out his cigarette. Stalin gave me the nod.
I kept going.
"We begin immediate sabotage operations. Felix, have your agents embed themselves along the rail lines. We cut every telegraph, blow every bridge we can. Get messages out to our cells across Russia—Petrograd is under threat. I want unrest within Kornilov's ranks: pamphlets, sedition, strike calls, even a little creative assassination if we can swing it."
"Of officers?" asked Kamenev, his voice unsteady.
"No," I said flatly. "The fucking cooks and latrine cleaners. Of course officers, Kamenev. If you shoot a colonel, a lieutenant might think twice about marching on his fellow citizens."
Kamenev looked queasy. Trotsky, on the other hand, looked like I'd handed him a new favorite trenchcoat.
"Meanwhile," I added, "I want Trotsky to begin arming the unions. I don't care if they're factory workers, bread bakers, or half-blind anarchists with wooden legs. We give them rifles, we teach them how to shoot, and we tell them if Kornilov gets to Petrograd, he'll turn them into roadkill. They'll fight harder than any conscript."
Lenin stirred.
"We are not yet in open war," he said, his tone measured. "We must avoid giving them justification. We speak of peace. Bread. Land. Let them fire the first shot."
"Oh, I'm not suggesting we start it," I said. "I'm suggesting we set up barricades, load the rifles, and politely dare them to start a civil war while the Germans are still marching east."
Zinoviev snorted.
"And if Kerensky tries to play both sides?"
I smiled, dark and dry. "Then we smile back... and wait until he's standing on the wrong side of the river."
The room was quiet again. Even Trotsky had stopped pacing.
Lenin nodded once. "Begin preparation. If it comes to war, the revolution will not be caught sleeping."
"One more thing." I added. "Have a rally Tomorrow. Announce the creation of the Soviet military. Have Trotsky there, as well as the guys he appointed to lead the air force, navy, and army proper. Then announce the creation of the national guard under Dzerzhinsky. And of course since everyone knows about the Revolutionary guard corps I'll be there as well. We'll have a parade after the rally, a show of strength and unity. The military, national guard, and Revolutionary guard corps. All united to protect the revolution."
The whole room looked at me. Lenin only nodded and looked at Trotsky and Dzerzhinsky. "Coordinate this with comrade Makarov. We'll have the rally and parade at mid day tomorrow."
I turned back to my seat, humming "Oh No, Oh Yes" again under my breath.
Stalin whispered: "That damn song again."
I sighed. "Let me cope."
Siryapsalot
"Chill I'm not an Unc just turned legal"
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I love everything about this just the summary had me intrigued but especially "Stalin turned toward her slowly, affection and deference showing in the small way he adjusted his posture." the family dynamic and how that has changed Stalin.
Xodarap
Versed in the lewd.
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Where the hell is a brothel finding all the horses needed for shipments in the tons of dried meat and soap?
Did they just grab a smugglers hand to bribe the front line soldiers into raiding battlefields for corpses?
Did they just grab a smugglers hand to bribe the front line soldiers into raiding battlefields for corpses?
And not just the infantry, but the artillery and the drummer boys too
Alenco98
Not too sore, are you?
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August 17, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
It was mid-morning, and the summer sun had just begun to cut through the industrial haze clinging to Petrograd like a damp, anxious shroud. The streets outside the Smolny Institute were packed—not with market-goers or idlers, but with steel-eyed soldiers, grim sailors, and party men clenched tight like a fist. This wasn't a parade. This was the prelude to destiny—or disaster. There was no going back.
This was it. Do or die. Either we claimed total legitimacy—political, military, moral—or we became another forgotten footnote like the 1905 revolution. Crushed, burned, and buried beneath Cossack hooves and liberal hand-wringing.
The Revolutionary Guard Corps—nearly a thousand of my boys—stood in immaculate formation in front of the grand podium, where the entire Bolshevik high command had assembled: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, Kamenev, a few others who'd probably be purged or forgotten in a decade under Joe's orders, and, of course, me. The usual lineup of increasingly sleep-deprived visionaries and mild sociopaths.
Surrounding them were detachments of the nascent Soviet Military and Dzerzhinsky's new National Guard. The air buzzed with cigarette smoke, engine oil, sweat, and revolution.
Naturally, I stepped up first. I was in charge of theatrics, after all.
I stood tall, cracked my neck, and barked into the wind, "HAIL!" as I raised my arm in the now-infamous "funny German salute." Everyone in Europe would eventually associate it with mustaches and meth in a few decades, but for now? Pure revolution.
My men answered without missing a beat. "HAIL MARX! HAIL THE REVOLUTION! GLORY TO THE BOLSHEVIKS! DEATH TO THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION!" All shouted in perfect unison, fists clenched and eyes blazing.
Then, as if possessed by the ghost of choirboys past, I began to sing.
Not city pop this time—no Akina Nakamori, no "Oh No, Oh Yes." This was sacred. This was war. This was The Internationale.
What can I say? I had pipes. I'd been a choir boy back in Georgia, and unlike the rest of these chain-smoking vodka-throated fanatics, I hadn't bathed my lungs in tar. I was no Freddie Mercury, but I could carry a tune without sounding like I was coughing up the czar.
"Arise, ye who are branded by the curse,
All the world's starving and enslaved…"
And then, like a miracle brewed in a samovar of righteous fury, the Revolutionary guard joined in.
"Our outraged minds are boiling,
Ready to lead us into a deadly fight!"
Then came the rest of the square. Then the rest of the Bolshevik leadership. Even Lenin's voice—normally dry and militant—caught the rhythm. Trotsky, ever the actor, belted it like he was commanding a crowd in a thunderstorm. Stalin mumbled through it like a man with ulcers, but his hand was raised. Dzerzhinsky didn't sing, of course. Dzerzhinsky didn't sing. He simply stared into the crowd with a dead man's eyes while mouthing the words like a liturgy before a funeral.
"We will destroy this world of violence
Down to the foundations, and then
We will build our new world—
He who was nothing will become everything!"
The roar that followed nearly cracked the cobblestones. Rifles were raised, flags waved, workers and soldiers howled in euphoric bloodlust. I was no longer in Petrograd. I was in the belly of a beast made of passion and bayonets.
I did the salute again. "Long live the revolution! Death to the counter-revolutionaries! Glory to the Bolsheviks! Glory to the Soviets! Hail Marx!"
The Revolutionary Guard screamed it back with such ferocity that I swear I saw a bird fall out of the sky in shock.
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" I bellowed again, cupping my ear with mock surprise.
"LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION! DEATH TO THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES! GLORY TO THE BOLSHEVIKS! GLORY TO THE SOVIETS! HAIL MARX!" The crowd was seismic now—the buildings themselves vibrated with that terrible, beautiful energy.
Then I screamed the final command: "GUN SALUTE!"
Rifles were raised. The air cracked as synchronized shots thundered skyward. Echoes ricocheted across Petrograd. The cheers were deafening. Even the ghosts in the Winter Palace must've heard.
It was the overture to the apocalypse. But damn it, it was glorious.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, Akina Nakamori still hummed.
Oh no. Oh yes.
History was about to happen.
Then Lenin stepped forward.
The crowd quieted—not instantly, of course. Revolutionary mobs don't obey silence like a church choir. But they stilled gradually, like a tide settling after a storm. The cheers tapered, the rifle salutes stopped, and the mass of soldiers, sailors, workers, and partymen focused.
He adjusted his collar, smoothed his beard with a twitch of the fingers, and raised his voice—not loud, but sharp, deliberate, like a bayonet thrust into the gut of the moment.
"Comrades!"
The crowd rippled with tension. Even the wind seemed to pause.
"I come to you not with promises, nor platitudes, but with grim truth. General Kornilov is marching on Petrograd. Whether by the incompetence of the Provisional Government or by treachery, the sword of counter-revolution has been drawn. He comes not to save our nation—but to strangle her."
The crowd muttered. My guards gripped their rifles harder. Somewhere, someone spat in the dirt.
"Let us not pretend otherwise. The General seeks to restore the old order—to crush the Soviets, the workers, the peasants, all of you gathered here! He would roll back our revolution with Cossack hooves and machine guns."
A pause.
"We shall not let him!"
The crowd erupted. Lenin raised a hand and the noise fell, like an orchestra cut short by the conductor's glare.
"We will fight! To the last man if necessary. To the last bullet! And in this defense, we will not be disorganized. This will not be a mob defending a barricade. This will be the first act of a revolution rising to life!"
He stepped aside slightly and gestured with both hands.
"Therefore, effective immediately, we announce the formal creation of the Soviet National Guard, under the direction of Comrade Dzerzhinsky. His task is simple: to root out counter-revolution wherever it festers, from the streets to the shadows."
The crowd went quiet. The name Dzerzhinsky was already feared. And rightly so.
Lenin continued, voice rising.
"We also announce the creation of the Soviet Armed Forces. Not a collection of militias and scattered detachments, but a unified military command. The revolution must be defended by structure as much as spirit!"
He turned to his left.
"Comrade Trotsky will serve as Commander-in-Chief of this new force. His task will be to bring order to the chaos, and fire to the defense of our revolution."
A wave of applause rolled through the crowd like thunder. Trotsky, ever theatrical, gave a modest nod and straightened his glasses, already imagining the war room.
Lenin raised a hand again.
"The Soviet Navy, the pride of Kronstadt and the Baltic, shall be led by Comrade Fyodor Raskolnikov, who stood with us when others hesitated, who raised the red flag on the decks before it flew over the city."
More cheering.
"The Soviet Army, the hammer of the revolution on land, will be commanded by a man whose discipline, clarity, and resolve have never wavered—Comrade Yakov Sverdlov."
There was a slight pause. Some were surprised—but no one doubted Sverdlov's loyalty or work ethic. If anyone could turn a factory of men into a military force, it was Yakov.
"And last, our wings."
Now Lenin smiled, almost ironically.
"Russia has few airplanes, fewer pilots, and even less fuel. But if we are to build the future, then even the sky must be red. The Soviet Air Force shall be entrusted to Comrade Konstantin Akashev."
A ripple of curious applause. Nobody quite knew who he was—but if Lenin said it, it was probably important.
He concluded, voice low and grave.
"This is it, comrades. The old world is dying. The new one claws for breath. We will either crush Kornilov's march or be crushed beneath his boots. But no matter what happens, the revolution will not go quietly. We will meet him—not as dreamers, but as soldiers."
A beat of silence.
"Glory to the Soviets! Death to the counter-revolution! Long live the revolution!"
The crowd exploded. The rifles roared once more.
Once the speech was done and the rifles had been fired. It was time for the parade. The Internationale still echoed faintly in the alleys as we prepared to move, bouncing off tenements like some drunken ghost of revolution past. Now came the fun part.
"Parade time," I muttered under my breath as I straightened my black coat. I had my red armband secured, my revolver polished, and my hair actually combed for once. You had to look good while orchestrating the military reconfiguration of a collapsing empire. Optics mattered.
I gave a hand signal, and the first column of the Revolutionary Guard Corps began to march past the podium.
My boys. My lovely, well-fed, better-armed, beautifully uniformed boys.
Five thousand strong in Petrograd alone now, boots pounding in unison, black uniforms pristine, red helmets glinting in tIhe sun like Satan's bowling balls. They held their rifles just right—barrels angled, stocks aligned, the kind of discipline you got when you took in criminals, former cops, factory boys, and beat it into them with ideology and a pay bonus. I'd trained them to give the Roman salute. We were Bolsheviks with nazi aesthetics before the Nazis were a thing. Cheeky. Intimidating. Ironic. I loved it. We made it theatrical. Hell, we were goose stepping. Hitler was going to rip us off and I was going to give him so much shit once Barbarossa started and he tried to conquer us. Cosmic irony, I loved it.
They passed in perfect formation, one battalion at a time. Each was flanked by banners stitched with "Peace. Bread. Land." and "Glory to the Soviets!" and, in one case, "Steal Rations, Get Executed." (That was a personal touch. I liked to keep the rules of engagement clear.)
Then came Trotsky's Soviet military. Him at the very head. With Sverdlov's army—less polished, more... let's call it "eager." Right behind him. His men were mostly converted Red Guards, recently armed, half in old Tsarist uniforms, half in donated overalls. But they held their rifles upright and their eyes forward, and that was what counted. Trotsky and Sverdlov had whipped them into a fighting force in weeks. God help me, the bastards were competent.
Behind the infantry came the naval contingent. Kronstadt sailors, led by Raskolnikov himself, stormed down the square like they were already marching on Hell. I liked them. Rough, foul-mouthed, smelled like boiled fish and vodka sweat, but loyal. They marched like anarchists at a funeral, but they had guts. And guns.
Then came Dzerzhinsky's National Guard. A new addition, freshly armed, already feared. Fewer in number but tight as a drum. Their uniforms weren't as flashy—gray with red piping—but their presence made people shut up fast. I'd personally funded their recruitment and left Dzerzhinsky to "refine" them, which probably involved something between a loyalty oath and medieval psychological torture. I didn't ask.
I spotted Dzerzhinsky at the far end of the column, stone-faced as always, watching like he was already picking out future traitors from the crowd. I waved. He didn't wave back.
Finally came our "air force."
Yes. Balloons. Two of them. Big red ones. Tethered. One had a stencil of Marx's face on it, the other said, "Land to the Peasants, Death to Tyrants!" in bold paint. They wobbled proudly above the square like a surreal circus act from Hell.
"Not exactly a flyover by Spitfires," I muttered, "but it'll do for now."
The parade lasted a solid hour. Cheers, chants, rifles raised, a few doves released (they immediately got caught in the balloon lines—awkward). The people loved it. Not just the diehards either—the workers, the union boys, even the neighborhood widows with five kids and a bottle of cheap kerosene looked impressed. For once, we looked like a real government. A terrifying, bureaucratic, half-criminal government—but real.
Lenin leaned in to me during a brief lull and muttered, "You've turned Petrograd into an armed camp, Makarov."
I smiled. "Revolutions need bread, weapons, blood, and a lot of pageantry."
Stalin snorted. "Let's hope it's not just the pageantry."
"Relax," I said, watching another column of my guards pass. "We've got the guns, the money, and the lunatics. We'll be fine."
Trotsky finally glanced my way.
"Nice turnout," he said curtly.
"Thanks. You're welcome for the rifles, by the way."
He grunted and looked away.
I leaned back, humming "Oh No, Oh Yes" under my breath again. Still no one had asked what song it was. The glorious ignorance of my Soviet peers regarding Japanese city pop was the one comfort in a world teetering on the edge of civil war.
Tomorrow, the streets might run red. Today, we had uniforms, chants, and red balloons.
Revolutions are strange like that.
Now I had to meet Kerensky with Lenin.
August 17, 1917 – Early Evening
Grand Hotel d'Europe, Nevsky Prospect
Petrograd, Russia
The hotel room reeked of cigarette smoke, stale power, and the cologne of someone trying to convince themselves they still had control over their life. Kerensky on a fancy chair, not quite slouched but not upright either—like a man halfway through realizing the rope's already around his neck.
I walked in behind Lenin, silent, my coat spotless, boots shining, a leather folder tucked under my arm. Inside? Just a blank notepad and a pistol. Props, really. Theater was half the job.
Kerensky didn't rise to greet us. Bad sign.
"Comrades," he said, trying to sound warm but coming off like a man ordering his own execution by politely requesting the firing squad. "I hope you understand the situation is… fluid."
Lenin cocked an eyebrow. "Fluid is one word for it."
I gave him a smile—just enough to show teeth. Not threatening. Just enough to remind him I had 5,000 heavily armed reasons to be in this meeting. All of them currently holding positions around the Smolny Institute, railways, and other vital infrastructure. I took a seat without asking. The luxury of power is in pretending it was always yours.
Lenin didn't bother with pleasantries. "Kerensky, this is not a diplomatic meeting. We're here because Kornilov is mobilizing. Marching on Petrograd. Explain that."
Kerensky sighed like a man asked to explain why the dog he let in is now pissing on his rug.
"I… I authorized troop movements. Yes. To secure order. The city is in chaos."
Lenin's tone turned scalpel-sharp. "Troops moving toward the capital with artillery and no parliamentary oversight is not 'order.' That is a coup in motion."
Kerensky raised his hands defensively. "He misunderstood his orders."
I leaned forward, smiling in that way Stalin calls my 'maniac grin.' "He misunderstood his orders and mobilized an entire army group? And you still haven't stopped him? Come now, Minister you're insulting my intelligence, you're either a conspirator or a coward. Either way, you're out of time."
His face flushed red. "That's not fair—"
"Life isn't fair," I cut in. "Ask the people your boys machine-gunned in July." I tapped the folder like it held their names.
Kerensky stood up. "Are you threatening me?"
"No," I replied, voice smooth as glass. "I'm educating you on what's coming. If Kornilov crosses the threshold of Petrograd, it won't be the Bolsheviks who fire the first shot—but we will finish it. We will kill them all down to the drummer boys if we have to." Yes, yes, I could finally let the edgelord within out. God I loved having power.
Kerensky sat down again. Hard.
Lenin, to his credit, stayed calm. He always played the long game. "What we want is clear. Withdraw Kornilov's forces immediately. Publicly disavow his actions. And allow our men to coordinate defense."
Kerensky looked like a man realizing the only parachute on the plane is in our hands—and we might not throw it.
"I… I can issue a telegram. Begin negotiations."
Lenin nodded. "You do that."
I stood. "And Minister," I added, walking toward the door, "if you don't… well, let's just say I've heard about what Kornilov's men did in Galicia. If Petrograd sees the same? It won't be your government they blame. It'll be your face."
Lenin paused at the door, turned back just long enough to add: "We don't want blood, Kerensky. But we have buckets ready if it comes to that."
And then we left. Quietly. Calmly. Time to get ready for war.
Or not.
August 17, 1917 — Late Evening
Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Dinner with the Stalin Family
The air in the dining room smelled of borscht, burnt kerosene, and history in the making.
We'd cleared out a section of the Smolny for family quarters — modest but warm, though everything creaked like the floorboards were eavesdropping. The table was set with chipped plates, lukewarm stew, a single candle between us, and a samovar that hissed like it had secrets. In attendance: me, Stalin, his son Yakov sulking in a corner with a chunk of bread, Aleksandra (my beloved Sashiko) ladling soup like a saint, and of course our mother, Keke, seated at the head of the table like the Georgian matriarch of some strange revolutionary mafia.
I was in good spirits. Why wouldn't I be? The city was ours in all but name. We had the men, the guns, the streets. Kerensky was cornered, Kornilov was marching into a buzzsaw, and the air stank of destiny.
I clinked my spoon against the side of my bowl like it was a victory bell. "Kerensky's finished," I said, beaming. "The man practically begged us to stop his own general. If Kornilov attacks, we'll gut the bastard. We'll kill his whole army — drummer boys included. Especially the drummer boys."
Stalin raised an eyebrow, chewing slowly, as if judging whether the stew or my sanity was more concerning.
Aleksandra shot me a look over the pot. "Drummer boys?"
"They keep the rhythm, Sashiko. You ever try to fight a war without rhythm? Chaos. Better to put a bullet in Beethoven than let him set the tempo for the counter-revolution."
Stalin let out a low chuckle, dry as dust. "You're in a mood."
"I'm in the mood for winning." I sipped my tea. "The city's ours, brother. The Soviets have the streets, the sailors are loyal, the factories are arming our men, and we've got food lines staffed by propaganda-spewing volunteers. We've got the rats and the beggars. We've even got the damn opera singers. Who does Kerensky have? Maybe a sad violinist in exile somewhere in Paris."
Yakov, curious for once, looked up from his bread. "What's a drummer boy?"
I patted him on the head. "A tiny bourgeois timekeeper for bigger, dumber soldiers. Don't worry — you're not one. You're a future general in the Revolutionary guard corps."
Stalin snorted, then muttered something about "generals before grammar."
Keke crossed herself. "Mikheil, no more jokes about killing children."
I smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, mama. But if they're wearing a uniform and keeping beat for a tsarist general marching on the revolution? They're fair game."
She glared. "God will judge us all, child. Even those who dress their murder in patriotism."
"Of course," I said, bowing slightly. "Which is why I'll be wearing red when He does. It hides the blood better."
Stalin rolled his eyes. "He's been humming foreign songs again."
Aleksandra narrowed her eyes. "You've been humming again?"
I shrugged. "Always. Helps me concentrate."
"I told you, the children think you're possessed when you do that," she muttered, ladling another scoop into Stalin's bowl. "Last time Yakov cried and said you were summoning demons from the samovar."
"He might've been right," I said dramatically. "Revolution is a ritual, after all."
Keke ignored me and spoke to Stalin. "Iosif. I know this will not end peacefully. Just... if something happens to either of you—"
"It won't," Stalin interrupted. "Not yet. The city's with us. If Kornilov makes a move, we'll strangle it in the cradle."
I nodded. "And if God is watching, He'll understand. We don't do this for pleasure. We do this because the old world refuses to die quietly."
Silence settled for a moment as spoons clinked and the candle sputtered in the draft.
Finally, Stalin looked up from his bowl. "You're right about one thing, Mikheil."
"Which one?"
"If we win this... it won't be because we were smarter or more righteous. It'll be because you've turned the underworld into a quartermaster's office and the revolution into a funeral procession for the empire."
I grinned. "I do try."
"You're dangerous," he muttered.
"And you're family," I said, raising my cup. "To blood. And to whatever blood demands."
Keke crossed herself again. Aleksandra just sighed and muttered, "I married a lunatic."
But when I looked around the room, at the candlelight flickering on the faces of my family, I felt it — not peace, never that. But a kind of clarity. We were past the point of no return. And if God didn't like it?
He could take it up with the drummer boys.
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
It was mid-morning, and the summer sun had just begun to cut through the industrial haze clinging to Petrograd like a damp, anxious shroud. The streets outside the Smolny Institute were packed—not with market-goers or idlers, but with steel-eyed soldiers, grim sailors, and party men clenched tight like a fist. This wasn't a parade. This was the prelude to destiny—or disaster. There was no going back.
This was it. Do or die. Either we claimed total legitimacy—political, military, moral—or we became another forgotten footnote like the 1905 revolution. Crushed, burned, and buried beneath Cossack hooves and liberal hand-wringing.
The Revolutionary Guard Corps—nearly a thousand of my boys—stood in immaculate formation in front of the grand podium, where the entire Bolshevik high command had assembled: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, Kamenev, a few others who'd probably be purged or forgotten in a decade under Joe's orders, and, of course, me. The usual lineup of increasingly sleep-deprived visionaries and mild sociopaths.
Surrounding them were detachments of the nascent Soviet Military and Dzerzhinsky's new National Guard. The air buzzed with cigarette smoke, engine oil, sweat, and revolution.
Naturally, I stepped up first. I was in charge of theatrics, after all.
I stood tall, cracked my neck, and barked into the wind, "HAIL!" as I raised my arm in the now-infamous "funny German salute." Everyone in Europe would eventually associate it with mustaches and meth in a few decades, but for now? Pure revolution.
My men answered without missing a beat. "HAIL MARX! HAIL THE REVOLUTION! GLORY TO THE BOLSHEVIKS! DEATH TO THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION!" All shouted in perfect unison, fists clenched and eyes blazing.
Then, as if possessed by the ghost of choirboys past, I began to sing.
Not city pop this time—no Akina Nakamori, no "Oh No, Oh Yes." This was sacred. This was war. This was The Internationale.
What can I say? I had pipes. I'd been a choir boy back in Georgia, and unlike the rest of these chain-smoking vodka-throated fanatics, I hadn't bathed my lungs in tar. I was no Freddie Mercury, but I could carry a tune without sounding like I was coughing up the czar.
"Arise, ye who are branded by the curse,
All the world's starving and enslaved…"
And then, like a miracle brewed in a samovar of righteous fury, the Revolutionary guard joined in.
"Our outraged minds are boiling,
Ready to lead us into a deadly fight!"
Then came the rest of the square. Then the rest of the Bolshevik leadership. Even Lenin's voice—normally dry and militant—caught the rhythm. Trotsky, ever the actor, belted it like he was commanding a crowd in a thunderstorm. Stalin mumbled through it like a man with ulcers, but his hand was raised. Dzerzhinsky didn't sing, of course. Dzerzhinsky didn't sing. He simply stared into the crowd with a dead man's eyes while mouthing the words like a liturgy before a funeral.
"We will destroy this world of violence
Down to the foundations, and then
We will build our new world—
He who was nothing will become everything!"
The roar that followed nearly cracked the cobblestones. Rifles were raised, flags waved, workers and soldiers howled in euphoric bloodlust. I was no longer in Petrograd. I was in the belly of a beast made of passion and bayonets.
I did the salute again. "Long live the revolution! Death to the counter-revolutionaries! Glory to the Bolsheviks! Glory to the Soviets! Hail Marx!"
The Revolutionary Guard screamed it back with such ferocity that I swear I saw a bird fall out of the sky in shock.
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" I bellowed again, cupping my ear with mock surprise.
"LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION! DEATH TO THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES! GLORY TO THE BOLSHEVIKS! GLORY TO THE SOVIETS! HAIL MARX!" The crowd was seismic now—the buildings themselves vibrated with that terrible, beautiful energy.
Then I screamed the final command: "GUN SALUTE!"
Rifles were raised. The air cracked as synchronized shots thundered skyward. Echoes ricocheted across Petrograd. The cheers were deafening. Even the ghosts in the Winter Palace must've heard.
It was the overture to the apocalypse. But damn it, it was glorious.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, Akina Nakamori still hummed.
Oh no. Oh yes.
History was about to happen.
Then Lenin stepped forward.
The crowd quieted—not instantly, of course. Revolutionary mobs don't obey silence like a church choir. But they stilled gradually, like a tide settling after a storm. The cheers tapered, the rifle salutes stopped, and the mass of soldiers, sailors, workers, and partymen focused.
He adjusted his collar, smoothed his beard with a twitch of the fingers, and raised his voice—not loud, but sharp, deliberate, like a bayonet thrust into the gut of the moment.
"Comrades!"
The crowd rippled with tension. Even the wind seemed to pause.
"I come to you not with promises, nor platitudes, but with grim truth. General Kornilov is marching on Petrograd. Whether by the incompetence of the Provisional Government or by treachery, the sword of counter-revolution has been drawn. He comes not to save our nation—but to strangle her."
The crowd muttered. My guards gripped their rifles harder. Somewhere, someone spat in the dirt.
"Let us not pretend otherwise. The General seeks to restore the old order—to crush the Soviets, the workers, the peasants, all of you gathered here! He would roll back our revolution with Cossack hooves and machine guns."
A pause.
"We shall not let him!"
The crowd erupted. Lenin raised a hand and the noise fell, like an orchestra cut short by the conductor's glare.
"We will fight! To the last man if necessary. To the last bullet! And in this defense, we will not be disorganized. This will not be a mob defending a barricade. This will be the first act of a revolution rising to life!"
He stepped aside slightly and gestured with both hands.
"Therefore, effective immediately, we announce the formal creation of the Soviet National Guard, under the direction of Comrade Dzerzhinsky. His task is simple: to root out counter-revolution wherever it festers, from the streets to the shadows."
The crowd went quiet. The name Dzerzhinsky was already feared. And rightly so.
Lenin continued, voice rising.
"We also announce the creation of the Soviet Armed Forces. Not a collection of militias and scattered detachments, but a unified military command. The revolution must be defended by structure as much as spirit!"
He turned to his left.
"Comrade Trotsky will serve as Commander-in-Chief of this new force. His task will be to bring order to the chaos, and fire to the defense of our revolution."
A wave of applause rolled through the crowd like thunder. Trotsky, ever theatrical, gave a modest nod and straightened his glasses, already imagining the war room.
Lenin raised a hand again.
"The Soviet Navy, the pride of Kronstadt and the Baltic, shall be led by Comrade Fyodor Raskolnikov, who stood with us when others hesitated, who raised the red flag on the decks before it flew over the city."
More cheering.
"The Soviet Army, the hammer of the revolution on land, will be commanded by a man whose discipline, clarity, and resolve have never wavered—Comrade Yakov Sverdlov."
There was a slight pause. Some were surprised—but no one doubted Sverdlov's loyalty or work ethic. If anyone could turn a factory of men into a military force, it was Yakov.
"And last, our wings."
Now Lenin smiled, almost ironically.
"Russia has few airplanes, fewer pilots, and even less fuel. But if we are to build the future, then even the sky must be red. The Soviet Air Force shall be entrusted to Comrade Konstantin Akashev."
A ripple of curious applause. Nobody quite knew who he was—but if Lenin said it, it was probably important.
He concluded, voice low and grave.
"This is it, comrades. The old world is dying. The new one claws for breath. We will either crush Kornilov's march or be crushed beneath his boots. But no matter what happens, the revolution will not go quietly. We will meet him—not as dreamers, but as soldiers."
A beat of silence.
"Glory to the Soviets! Death to the counter-revolution! Long live the revolution!"
The crowd exploded. The rifles roared once more.
Once the speech was done and the rifles had been fired. It was time for the parade. The Internationale still echoed faintly in the alleys as we prepared to move, bouncing off tenements like some drunken ghost of revolution past. Now came the fun part.
"Parade time," I muttered under my breath as I straightened my black coat. I had my red armband secured, my revolver polished, and my hair actually combed for once. You had to look good while orchestrating the military reconfiguration of a collapsing empire. Optics mattered.
I gave a hand signal, and the first column of the Revolutionary Guard Corps began to march past the podium.
My boys. My lovely, well-fed, better-armed, beautifully uniformed boys.
Five thousand strong in Petrograd alone now, boots pounding in unison, black uniforms pristine, red helmets glinting in tIhe sun like Satan's bowling balls. They held their rifles just right—barrels angled, stocks aligned, the kind of discipline you got when you took in criminals, former cops, factory boys, and beat it into them with ideology and a pay bonus. I'd trained them to give the Roman salute. We were Bolsheviks with nazi aesthetics before the Nazis were a thing. Cheeky. Intimidating. Ironic. I loved it. We made it theatrical. Hell, we were goose stepping. Hitler was going to rip us off and I was going to give him so much shit once Barbarossa started and he tried to conquer us. Cosmic irony, I loved it.
They passed in perfect formation, one battalion at a time. Each was flanked by banners stitched with "Peace. Bread. Land." and "Glory to the Soviets!" and, in one case, "Steal Rations, Get Executed." (That was a personal touch. I liked to keep the rules of engagement clear.)
Then came Trotsky's Soviet military. Him at the very head. With Sverdlov's army—less polished, more... let's call it "eager." Right behind him. His men were mostly converted Red Guards, recently armed, half in old Tsarist uniforms, half in donated overalls. But they held their rifles upright and their eyes forward, and that was what counted. Trotsky and Sverdlov had whipped them into a fighting force in weeks. God help me, the bastards were competent.
Behind the infantry came the naval contingent. Kronstadt sailors, led by Raskolnikov himself, stormed down the square like they were already marching on Hell. I liked them. Rough, foul-mouthed, smelled like boiled fish and vodka sweat, but loyal. They marched like anarchists at a funeral, but they had guts. And guns.
Then came Dzerzhinsky's National Guard. A new addition, freshly armed, already feared. Fewer in number but tight as a drum. Their uniforms weren't as flashy—gray with red piping—but their presence made people shut up fast. I'd personally funded their recruitment and left Dzerzhinsky to "refine" them, which probably involved something between a loyalty oath and medieval psychological torture. I didn't ask.
I spotted Dzerzhinsky at the far end of the column, stone-faced as always, watching like he was already picking out future traitors from the crowd. I waved. He didn't wave back.
Finally came our "air force."
Yes. Balloons. Two of them. Big red ones. Tethered. One had a stencil of Marx's face on it, the other said, "Land to the Peasants, Death to Tyrants!" in bold paint. They wobbled proudly above the square like a surreal circus act from Hell.
"Not exactly a flyover by Spitfires," I muttered, "but it'll do for now."
The parade lasted a solid hour. Cheers, chants, rifles raised, a few doves released (they immediately got caught in the balloon lines—awkward). The people loved it. Not just the diehards either—the workers, the union boys, even the neighborhood widows with five kids and a bottle of cheap kerosene looked impressed. For once, we looked like a real government. A terrifying, bureaucratic, half-criminal government—but real.
Lenin leaned in to me during a brief lull and muttered, "You've turned Petrograd into an armed camp, Makarov."
I smiled. "Revolutions need bread, weapons, blood, and a lot of pageantry."
Stalin snorted. "Let's hope it's not just the pageantry."
"Relax," I said, watching another column of my guards pass. "We've got the guns, the money, and the lunatics. We'll be fine."
Trotsky finally glanced my way.
"Nice turnout," he said curtly.
"Thanks. You're welcome for the rifles, by the way."
He grunted and looked away.
I leaned back, humming "Oh No, Oh Yes" under my breath again. Still no one had asked what song it was. The glorious ignorance of my Soviet peers regarding Japanese city pop was the one comfort in a world teetering on the edge of civil war.
Tomorrow, the streets might run red. Today, we had uniforms, chants, and red balloons.
Revolutions are strange like that.
Now I had to meet Kerensky with Lenin.
August 17, 1917 – Early Evening
Grand Hotel d'Europe, Nevsky Prospect
Petrograd, Russia
The hotel room reeked of cigarette smoke, stale power, and the cologne of someone trying to convince themselves they still had control over their life. Kerensky on a fancy chair, not quite slouched but not upright either—like a man halfway through realizing the rope's already around his neck.
I walked in behind Lenin, silent, my coat spotless, boots shining, a leather folder tucked under my arm. Inside? Just a blank notepad and a pistol. Props, really. Theater was half the job.
Kerensky didn't rise to greet us. Bad sign.
"Comrades," he said, trying to sound warm but coming off like a man ordering his own execution by politely requesting the firing squad. "I hope you understand the situation is… fluid."
Lenin cocked an eyebrow. "Fluid is one word for it."
I gave him a smile—just enough to show teeth. Not threatening. Just enough to remind him I had 5,000 heavily armed reasons to be in this meeting. All of them currently holding positions around the Smolny Institute, railways, and other vital infrastructure. I took a seat without asking. The luxury of power is in pretending it was always yours.
Lenin didn't bother with pleasantries. "Kerensky, this is not a diplomatic meeting. We're here because Kornilov is mobilizing. Marching on Petrograd. Explain that."
Kerensky sighed like a man asked to explain why the dog he let in is now pissing on his rug.
"I… I authorized troop movements. Yes. To secure order. The city is in chaos."
Lenin's tone turned scalpel-sharp. "Troops moving toward the capital with artillery and no parliamentary oversight is not 'order.' That is a coup in motion."
Kerensky raised his hands defensively. "He misunderstood his orders."
I leaned forward, smiling in that way Stalin calls my 'maniac grin.' "He misunderstood his orders and mobilized an entire army group? And you still haven't stopped him? Come now, Minister you're insulting my intelligence, you're either a conspirator or a coward. Either way, you're out of time."
His face flushed red. "That's not fair—"
"Life isn't fair," I cut in. "Ask the people your boys machine-gunned in July." I tapped the folder like it held their names.
Kerensky stood up. "Are you threatening me?"
"No," I replied, voice smooth as glass. "I'm educating you on what's coming. If Kornilov crosses the threshold of Petrograd, it won't be the Bolsheviks who fire the first shot—but we will finish it. We will kill them all down to the drummer boys if we have to." Yes, yes, I could finally let the edgelord within out. God I loved having power.
Kerensky sat down again. Hard.
Lenin, to his credit, stayed calm. He always played the long game. "What we want is clear. Withdraw Kornilov's forces immediately. Publicly disavow his actions. And allow our men to coordinate defense."
Kerensky looked like a man realizing the only parachute on the plane is in our hands—and we might not throw it.
"I… I can issue a telegram. Begin negotiations."
Lenin nodded. "You do that."
I stood. "And Minister," I added, walking toward the door, "if you don't… well, let's just say I've heard about what Kornilov's men did in Galicia. If Petrograd sees the same? It won't be your government they blame. It'll be your face."
Lenin paused at the door, turned back just long enough to add: "We don't want blood, Kerensky. But we have buckets ready if it comes to that."
And then we left. Quietly. Calmly. Time to get ready for war.
Or not.
August 17, 1917 — Late Evening
Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Dinner with the Stalin Family
The air in the dining room smelled of borscht, burnt kerosene, and history in the making.
We'd cleared out a section of the Smolny for family quarters — modest but warm, though everything creaked like the floorboards were eavesdropping. The table was set with chipped plates, lukewarm stew, a single candle between us, and a samovar that hissed like it had secrets. In attendance: me, Stalin, his son Yakov sulking in a corner with a chunk of bread, Aleksandra (my beloved Sashiko) ladling soup like a saint, and of course our mother, Keke, seated at the head of the table like the Georgian matriarch of some strange revolutionary mafia.
I was in good spirits. Why wouldn't I be? The city was ours in all but name. We had the men, the guns, the streets. Kerensky was cornered, Kornilov was marching into a buzzsaw, and the air stank of destiny.
I clinked my spoon against the side of my bowl like it was a victory bell. "Kerensky's finished," I said, beaming. "The man practically begged us to stop his own general. If Kornilov attacks, we'll gut the bastard. We'll kill his whole army — drummer boys included. Especially the drummer boys."
Stalin raised an eyebrow, chewing slowly, as if judging whether the stew or my sanity was more concerning.
Aleksandra shot me a look over the pot. "Drummer boys?"
"They keep the rhythm, Sashiko. You ever try to fight a war without rhythm? Chaos. Better to put a bullet in Beethoven than let him set the tempo for the counter-revolution."
Stalin let out a low chuckle, dry as dust. "You're in a mood."
"I'm in the mood for winning." I sipped my tea. "The city's ours, brother. The Soviets have the streets, the sailors are loyal, the factories are arming our men, and we've got food lines staffed by propaganda-spewing volunteers. We've got the rats and the beggars. We've even got the damn opera singers. Who does Kerensky have? Maybe a sad violinist in exile somewhere in Paris."
Yakov, curious for once, looked up from his bread. "What's a drummer boy?"
I patted him on the head. "A tiny bourgeois timekeeper for bigger, dumber soldiers. Don't worry — you're not one. You're a future general in the Revolutionary guard corps."
Stalin snorted, then muttered something about "generals before grammar."
Keke crossed herself. "Mikheil, no more jokes about killing children."
I smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, mama. But if they're wearing a uniform and keeping beat for a tsarist general marching on the revolution? They're fair game."
She glared. "God will judge us all, child. Even those who dress their murder in patriotism."
"Of course," I said, bowing slightly. "Which is why I'll be wearing red when He does. It hides the blood better."
Stalin rolled his eyes. "He's been humming foreign songs again."
Aleksandra narrowed her eyes. "You've been humming again?"
I shrugged. "Always. Helps me concentrate."
"I told you, the children think you're possessed when you do that," she muttered, ladling another scoop into Stalin's bowl. "Last time Yakov cried and said you were summoning demons from the samovar."
"He might've been right," I said dramatically. "Revolution is a ritual, after all."
Keke ignored me and spoke to Stalin. "Iosif. I know this will not end peacefully. Just... if something happens to either of you—"
"It won't," Stalin interrupted. "Not yet. The city's with us. If Kornilov makes a move, we'll strangle it in the cradle."
I nodded. "And if God is watching, He'll understand. We don't do this for pleasure. We do this because the old world refuses to die quietly."
Silence settled for a moment as spoons clinked and the candle sputtered in the draft.
Finally, Stalin looked up from his bowl. "You're right about one thing, Mikheil."
"Which one?"
"If we win this... it won't be because we were smarter or more righteous. It'll be because you've turned the underworld into a quartermaster's office and the revolution into a funeral procession for the empire."
I grinned. "I do try."
"You're dangerous," he muttered.
"And you're family," I said, raising my cup. "To blood. And to whatever blood demands."
Keke crossed herself again. Aleksandra just sighed and muttered, "I married a lunatic."
But when I looked around the room, at the candlelight flickering on the faces of my family, I felt it — not peace, never that. But a kind of clarity. We were past the point of no return. And if God didn't like it?
He could take it up with the drummer boys.
I have a few modest proposals
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August 20, 1917
Central Committee Meeting – Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Mikheil's POV
It was early, too damn early — the kind of hour that makes revolutionaries look like accountants. The war room stank of sweat, ink, and cold tea, the official perfume of the Soviet. We were all seated around the long wooden table Lenin insisted we use for "optics," though the surface was so scratched and uneven I half-expected a goblin to crawl out of one of the grooves.
I leaned back in my chair, legs crossed, fingers stained with grease from reviewing ammo manifests before this delightful gathering of caffeine-addled Marxists. Trotsky was already arguing with Kamenev about something unimportant — the definition of "Bonapartism" or some such fantasy. Stalin sat beside me, arms folded, face unreadable as usual, though I knew he was quietly enjoying watching me twist the knife.
Because today I was twisting it hard.
"Comrades," I said, clapping my hands together with a grin, "we have Kornilov. The counterrevolution has been neutered, and not a single shot fired. A marvel of revolutionary efficiency. Truly, we've turned the Tsarist warhorse into glue without so much as lifting a bayonet. Dzerzhinsky of course is to thank for this, his agents did a hell of a job, working with the rail unions, infiltrating the army. Let's have a round of applause for the hero of the hour."
Applause broke out in the room. Dzerzhinsky didn't smile, didn't nod, he just sat there. I both respected that and unsettled by it. That man hasn't felt an ounce of emotion since the 19th century.
"anyways." I continued once the applause ran out. "I have a proposal," I continued, standing up now and pacing like a theatre director whose actors were constantly trying to unionize. "A triumph. A Revolutionary Bolshevik Triumph. Picture it: Kornilov and his officers marched in chains down Nevsky Prospect, surrounded by our Revolutionary Guard, the Soviet Army, and the National Guard. Red banners flying, rifles gleaming, the Internationale echoing from every corner of Petrograd. The people cheering, the Mensheviks pissing themselves, and the Provisional Government officially made obsolete."
Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "You want to… parade the general? Like a gladiator defeated in the Colosseum?"
"Exactly," I said, pointing at him like he'd just solved dialectical materialism. "We're not just seizing power, Trotsky — we're writing the myth. If the people see Kornilov broken, marching past the Winter Palace like a war trophy, they'll understand: there's no going back. No more compromise. No more Kerenskys fumbling in the middle. Only forward, comrades — with rifles, boots, and bad intentions."
Kamenev looked deeply uncomfortable, which meant I was on the right track.
"But won't that provoke further violence?" he asked, voice tight.
"We're already living in a story written with blood," I said. "Better we write the next scene ourselves than let some drunken monarchist draw it for us."
Lenin sat quietly for a moment, fingers templed under his chin like some bald Bond villain. Then, with a thin smile, he nodded.
"I approve — with revisions."
I gestured broadly. "Comrade Lenin, it's your parade to perfect."
"You'll plan the march. I'll give the final speech. We will call on every red guard, every worker's militia, every sympathetic peasant and sailor who hasn't joined us yet to unite under one command. No more factions. No more dithering. We shall show them the strength of the Soviets… and the fate of counterrevolution."
Trotsky leaned in, his voice dry. "It's propaganda of the deed. I admit — grotesque, theatrical… but brilliant."
"I am grotesque and theatrical," I said. "You're welcome Bronstein."
Trotsky scowled. He hated when I called him by his real last name. Good. It was for the best if he redirected all his ire at me. Let Joe outmanuever him and purge him from the party while I played lightning rod for every idealist and enemy we made.
Stalin grunted beside me. "Just don't let him plan the route. He'll take us past every brothel and opium den he owns."
"I pay more taxes to the revolution than the entire Duma combined," I shot back. "Every client that visits a whorehouse is a bullet in Trotsky's rifle. You're welcome, again."
Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, his voice a low grind of stone. "I want the names of every officer marching. If any of them had agents in the city, I want them found. Before they walk."
I nodded. "Do what must be done with your spies Felix. You name it. Do not hesitate, show no mercy. They'll sing before they march."
Kamenev grimaced. "This is all... very cynical."
"Oh no, Kamenev," I said with a smile and mocking tone. "It's efficient. The Roman Empire didn't last centuries on idealism. Neither will we. Not without a little drama, a little showmanship, and a whole lot of guns."
Lenin tapped the table. "Then it's settled. The Soviet triumph shall march. And the world will watch."
And if any Mensheviks still didn't get the message?
Well… there's always room at the back of the parade for new prisoners.
But I had more proposals. The day was young.
I sat down, letting the echo of Lenin's speech about unity and power hang in the air a moment longer before slicing through it with a tone of restrained excitement. The good kind. The kind you get when you know a regime's about to fall and you've already picked out the wallpaper for your new office.
"Comrades," I began, "I think we can all agree that seizing power is no longer a matter of if. The when is fast approaching — and I propose that we begin preparing the country for our 'when.'"
I paused, letting them stew in it. Lenin raised an eyebrow. Trotsky leaned forward, intrigued.
"We have the muscle in Petrograd. The Revolutionary Guard, the National Guard, the Soviet military. We've brought the anarchists and the red guards to heel and most now report to the national guard, the Soviet military and my boys in black— the Mensheviks are scattered, the SRs are tired, and Kerensky's government looks like a worn-out actor still trying to play Hamlet in a theater that's already burning."
A few smirks around the table. Dzerzhinsky, as always, looked like he was planning someone's execution in his head. Probably mine, but at least he'd do it efficiently.
"I propose," I continued, "that we deploy detachments from all our forces to every major city in Russia — Moscow, Arkhangelsk, Kiev, Kazan, Tsaritsyn, Yekaterinburg. We send trusted officers, backed by the party, to begin integrating with the local soviets. Not to ask for control — to assume it. Peacefully, if possible. Forcefully, if needed. I can have it done by October 1st. Just give me the green light."
Lenin steepled his fingers. "That's ambitious, Makarov. Logistically…?"
"I have the trains, I have the maps, I have the black-market fuel, and God help me, I have enough horses to open a cavalry museum. We've been preparing for months."
Stalin gave a small, crooked smile. "He's not lying. We've had men stockpiling weapons from Finland to Georgia."
"Good," I nodded. "Then let's do more. I say we also begin courting the remaining Mensheviks and SRs. Not with philosophy or leaflets, but with money, bullets, or secrets. I've got enough of each. And Dzerzhinsky—" I gestured to Iron Felix, "—has enough informants to fill a theater."
Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, his voice dry and ironclad. "I have dossiers on many of them. Affairs, theft, sympathy with the Whites, questionable loans. I can make them bend."
Trotsky chuckled. "Blackmail, bribery, threats. Bolshevik diplomacy at its finest."
"Come now," I smiled darkly, "we're just offering them choices. Join us… or join the past."
Kamenev, ever the soft one, furrowed his brow. "You want to expand our reach and turn our enemies into allies by threatening them? Isn't that… dangerous?"
"Kamenev," I said patiently, "everything we do is dangerous. We're betting our lives on a revolution led by a gaggle of radicals who want to upend centuries of social and economic order which will start a civil war. We're already in the deep end. I'm just trying to make sure we don't drown."
A silence followed. Sverdlov broke it first. "If he can really get us full control of the regional soviets, we'll be unstoppable."
Lenin nodded. "Do it. You have until October. Use your guards, use Dzerzhinsky's agents, use whatever you need. Just make sure they report to us."
"And the Mensheviks?" Dzerzhinsky asked.
"Start quietly," Lenin said. "Promise them protection. Offer them minor roles. If they refuse, well… Felix, I trust you know what to do."
"As you say," He muttered. "They will join us, or die."
As we adjourned, I thought to myself: this was it. We were no longer plotting survival — we were orchestrating victory. The Bolsheviks would rule. Not just Petrograd. Not just the winter. But everything.
And if I had to bribe, threaten, or bury half of Russia to get there?
Then by God, I'd do it with a stamped requisition order and a smug little smile.
Now I had to talk to Vlad and Joe
As we walked over the room went over to Lenin and gave him a subtle nod. Then to Joe.
"Comrades. A word in private?"
Lenin glanced at me, then at Stalin. Stalin, arms crossed, gave a short nod. We walked through the arched corridor of the Smolny Institute, the old girls' school now doubling as the headquarters of revolutionary destiny and logistical despair. We stepped into a side office—formerly a music room for the bourgeois daughters of Petrograd, now home to a table, three chairs, a flickering oil lamp, and a map of Russia half-pinned and half-falling off the wall. Time to use my economics degree from college.
I shut the door.
"Gentlemen," I said, lowering myself into the chair. "We have a revolution. We have Petrograd. We have Kormilov in chains. We even have, God help us, the foundations of a military-industrial complex that's current staffed by drunk dockworkers and former anarchists."
Lenin gave a tight smile. "And?"
"And," I replied. "We need to set up a war economy. I've been running this thing like a mafia state with good intentions. And it's worked, barely. But it won't work once the war starts. We need to formalize it."
"Formalize what?" Lenin said, suspicious.
I leaned forward. "The underworld. The black markets. The brothels, gambling dens, opium holes. The smuggling rings. The food runners. The dock mafias. All of them. They stay—but they become arms of the Revolution. They get permits. They pay taxes. They answer to the commissariat. And if they don't, we execute them, slowly."
Lenin blinked. Stalin raised an eyebrow.
"You want to… legalize crime?" Lenin asked flatly.
"I want to control it," I replied. "Same thing, really. If we stamp it out, it goes underground and multiplies. But if we own it, then we can direct it—toward our war effort. I can feed, clothe, and arm the military, but I need the black markets out in the open and formalized to do it."
Stalin scratched his chin. "The tsar had a secret police. You want to turn Petrograd into an open air brothel."
"Exactly."
Lenin shifted. "And the means of production?"
"Nationalize the factories," I said without missing a beat. "Shift them all to wartime production under the Commissariat of Strategic Resources. We'll need rifles, uniforms, boots, trench shovels, gas masks, and locomotives. But," I raised a finger, "allow some private enterprise. Craftsmen, artisans, small traders. Let them function under licenses. Let them feed the cities and move money. Just make sure we get our cut. And if we don't, bodies, ropes, lampposts."
"You want controlled capitalism," Stalin muttered.
"So what?" I asked, grinning. "And we need the peasants. Land reform."
"Ah," Lenin leaned forward, interested now.
"3 acres and a shovel," I said. "We promise every peasant who joins us land, a shovel, and protection. But only 3. Cap it. No new aristocrats. Anyone—kulaks, old nobles, whatever—who refuses to give up the excess... we offer them a choice. Sign it over, or watch their family get bayoneted to death. Slowly."
Stalin snorted. Lenin winced. "A touch brutal."
"We're not handing out bread at a parish bazaar, Vladimir. We're planning how to win a civil war."
There was a pause. Then I continued.
"We need foreign trade, too. Not for show. We use Petrograd—just Petrograd—as a special economic zone. Limited trade. Foreign banking. We accept gold, silver, currency—whatever they'll give us for grain and raw materials. We'll need a stable ruble or something pegged to foreign coin. I'll take care of the rest."
Lenin nodded slowly. "And who runs all this?"
"I'm overloaded," I said. "I've got the Revolutionary Guard Corps, I'm running the logistics for the Soviet military, the national guard, the whole commissariat for strategic resources—it's too much. Alexander Svanidze has been handling the finance division in the commissariat quietly. Good man. Educated. Loyal. I suggest we promote him to head the Commissariat for Strategic Resources."
Stalin tried his best to act confused and pretend he never heard of him. "...Svanidze?"
I smiled but kept it vague. "A comrade from our days in Georgia. You remember."
Lenin narrowed his eyes. "He's your brother-in-law."
"What about it?" I replied innocently. "You never asked. And he's a party man like me and Joe. He helped me plan logistics back when Joe was robbing banks and shooting cops. This isn't any different. Just scaled."
Stalin of course seemed upset I called him Joe, jaw clenched. But I continued "Let Joe oversee the finance division of the commissariat."
There was silence for a moment.
Then Lenin leaned back and laughed. "God help us. You've built the Revolution with blackmail, brothels, and bookkeeping."
I clapped his shoulder. "And you'll take the credit, comrade."
Stalin didn't laugh. But he didn't argue either.
Good. That meant he understood.
August 20, 1917
Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Private Family Dining Quarters, 9:43 PM
It was late. The kind of late where the only light left in Petrograd came from dying lanterns, cigarette tips, and that weird sickle-shaped moon that seemed to leer at you like a smug noble waiting for a guillotine that would never come. But here, in our little fortified pocket of the revolution—Smolny—we had something close to normalcy. Or the Bolshevik version of it, which meant hot soup, no gunfire outside the windows, and all the children asleep.
We were gathered in our private quarters upstairs: myself, Aleksandra, my beloved rock; Keke, still mothering us all even though one of us ran the Soviet's logistics and the other ran Russia's shadow government; Stalin—Joe—and his ever-silent stormcloud gaze; and Alexander Svanidze, our soft-spoken, glasses-wearing, soon-to-be-cannon-fodder brother-in-law who has only arrived from Georgia a few days ago and had basically been promoted to lead our entire war economy, poor bastard.
Dinner was simple: beet soup, black bread, and salted fish. Peasant fare, but at least it was ours. We didn't have to beg it off some fat noble or scrape it off a trench floor.
I raised my cup of tea—boiled twice, tasted like revolution and floorboards—and turned to Alexander.
"To your promotion, Commissar of Strategic Resources." I gave him a mock funny German salute. "You lucky bastard."
Alexander blinked and gave a small, almost apologetic smile. "It's… a heavy responsibility."
"You're telling me," I laughed, gesturing to the stacks of paperwork still looming in the corner. "Don't worry. I'll help train you for the next few weeks. Show you how to keep the wolves fed without feeding them too much. But after that, you're flying solo. I'll be there as an unofficial advisor if you want, but the drowning will be yours to do."
He nodded. "Thank you, Mikheil. Truly."
Then came the expected complaint, right on cue, delivered with that gravel-thick tone only one man in the world could weaponize into guilt.
"You called me Joe in front of Lenin," Stalin said, not looking up from his fish. "It's unprofessional."
Aleksandra immediately turned her face to hide her laugh. Even Keke raised an eyebrow. I took a sip and grinned.
"Oh come on," I said. "You really think Lenin didn't know your name's Iosif Dzhugashvili? I mean, the man lived in exile just like you did. It's not like I yelled 'Little Joe likes honey cakes and Khachapuri' in front of the Revolutionary Guard."
Stalin gave me a withering stare that could curdle milk. I smiled sweetly in return and tapped his cup with mine. "To professionalism."
Svanidze, poor soul, tried to change the subject. "I'll do my best to keep things running smoothly. I promise."
Stalin finally looked at him. "Don't fuck this up," he said flatly. "If you do, we won't just lose a war. We'll lose the whole country. And I'm not burying another Svanidze."
A chill passed through the room. Even Aleksandra went quiet. Keke simply looked down, murmured a prayer under her breath.
I cleared my throat, trying to lighten things back up.
"Well, I'd say it's only a matter of time now. The moment we seize the winter palace and start taking control of every city we can get our hands on, civil war is on."
"Like the sunrise," Joe muttered.
"And that brings me to a favor," I said, setting down my spoon.
Everyone looked at me.
"I need you, Joe, to start gently floating an idea. Not now, but slowly. Softly. Don't push. Let it spread like mold in a bourgeois wine cellar. It's about the Tsar."
"Go on," Stalin said, suspicious already.
"I want him and his family back in Petrograd. Alive. Intact. Dressed like normal people. Put them in a shitty apartment near the docks. Make the Tsarina sew uniforms for the National Guard. Make the Tsar work in a munitions factory. Get the daughters into nursing. Teach the little boy to distribute pamphlets. We feed them stale bread and glorified water soup. Then we make them read Marx. Every day. Publicly."
Stalin stared at me. "You want to re-educate the Romanovs?"
"I want to humiliate them," I replied. "Killing them? That's too easy. It makes them martyrs. We don't need martyrs. We need symbols. Living, wheezing symbols of the old order rotting under fluorescent lights in a factory breakroom. Turn them into communist poster children. Imagine the headlines: 'Nicholas Romanov Commended for meeting his work quota.'"
Aleksandra giggled. Keke looked scandalized. "They are still human beings, Mikheil."
"Yes, and they'll be treated spared and allows to live in our new order," I said. "A kindness really."
Stalin didn't smile. But he also didn't say no.
"You want me to pitch this to Lenin?"
"He'll never accept it from me," I said, waving a hand. "He'll think it's one of my theatrical antics again. But you—you he trusts. He thinks you're serious. Sober. You have that dead stare that screams 'not here to joke.' You could sell him arsenic as vitamin tonic."
Joe looked away, thinking. Svanidze quietly finished his soup. Keke got up and started clearing plates, muttering about how "God does not smile upon cruelty."
"I'll do it," Stalin finally said.
That, from him, was basically a love letter.
I leaned back in my chair, sipping the last of my tea, and watched the candlelight flicker across the faces of the people I'd dragged into this war. My family. My soldiers. My revolution.
And I couldn't help but think…
Soon, all of Russia would be ours. And the Romanovs would be stuffing sandbags in the rain.
Central Committee Meeting – Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Mikheil's POV
It was early, too damn early — the kind of hour that makes revolutionaries look like accountants. The war room stank of sweat, ink, and cold tea, the official perfume of the Soviet. We were all seated around the long wooden table Lenin insisted we use for "optics," though the surface was so scratched and uneven I half-expected a goblin to crawl out of one of the grooves.
I leaned back in my chair, legs crossed, fingers stained with grease from reviewing ammo manifests before this delightful gathering of caffeine-addled Marxists. Trotsky was already arguing with Kamenev about something unimportant — the definition of "Bonapartism" or some such fantasy. Stalin sat beside me, arms folded, face unreadable as usual, though I knew he was quietly enjoying watching me twist the knife.
Because today I was twisting it hard.
"Comrades," I said, clapping my hands together with a grin, "we have Kornilov. The counterrevolution has been neutered, and not a single shot fired. A marvel of revolutionary efficiency. Truly, we've turned the Tsarist warhorse into glue without so much as lifting a bayonet. Dzerzhinsky of course is to thank for this, his agents did a hell of a job, working with the rail unions, infiltrating the army. Let's have a round of applause for the hero of the hour."
Applause broke out in the room. Dzerzhinsky didn't smile, didn't nod, he just sat there. I both respected that and unsettled by it. That man hasn't felt an ounce of emotion since the 19th century.
"anyways." I continued once the applause ran out. "I have a proposal," I continued, standing up now and pacing like a theatre director whose actors were constantly trying to unionize. "A triumph. A Revolutionary Bolshevik Triumph. Picture it: Kornilov and his officers marched in chains down Nevsky Prospect, surrounded by our Revolutionary Guard, the Soviet Army, and the National Guard. Red banners flying, rifles gleaming, the Internationale echoing from every corner of Petrograd. The people cheering, the Mensheviks pissing themselves, and the Provisional Government officially made obsolete."
Trotsky raised an eyebrow. "You want to… parade the general? Like a gladiator defeated in the Colosseum?"
"Exactly," I said, pointing at him like he'd just solved dialectical materialism. "We're not just seizing power, Trotsky — we're writing the myth. If the people see Kornilov broken, marching past the Winter Palace like a war trophy, they'll understand: there's no going back. No more compromise. No more Kerenskys fumbling in the middle. Only forward, comrades — with rifles, boots, and bad intentions."
Kamenev looked deeply uncomfortable, which meant I was on the right track.
"But won't that provoke further violence?" he asked, voice tight.
"We're already living in a story written with blood," I said. "Better we write the next scene ourselves than let some drunken monarchist draw it for us."
Lenin sat quietly for a moment, fingers templed under his chin like some bald Bond villain. Then, with a thin smile, he nodded.
"I approve — with revisions."
I gestured broadly. "Comrade Lenin, it's your parade to perfect."
"You'll plan the march. I'll give the final speech. We will call on every red guard, every worker's militia, every sympathetic peasant and sailor who hasn't joined us yet to unite under one command. No more factions. No more dithering. We shall show them the strength of the Soviets… and the fate of counterrevolution."
Trotsky leaned in, his voice dry. "It's propaganda of the deed. I admit — grotesque, theatrical… but brilliant."
"I am grotesque and theatrical," I said. "You're welcome Bronstein."
Trotsky scowled. He hated when I called him by his real last name. Good. It was for the best if he redirected all his ire at me. Let Joe outmanuever him and purge him from the party while I played lightning rod for every idealist and enemy we made.
Stalin grunted beside me. "Just don't let him plan the route. He'll take us past every brothel and opium den he owns."
"I pay more taxes to the revolution than the entire Duma combined," I shot back. "Every client that visits a whorehouse is a bullet in Trotsky's rifle. You're welcome, again."
Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, his voice a low grind of stone. "I want the names of every officer marching. If any of them had agents in the city, I want them found. Before they walk."
I nodded. "Do what must be done with your spies Felix. You name it. Do not hesitate, show no mercy. They'll sing before they march."
Kamenev grimaced. "This is all... very cynical."
"Oh no, Kamenev," I said with a smile and mocking tone. "It's efficient. The Roman Empire didn't last centuries on idealism. Neither will we. Not without a little drama, a little showmanship, and a whole lot of guns."
Lenin tapped the table. "Then it's settled. The Soviet triumph shall march. And the world will watch."
And if any Mensheviks still didn't get the message?
Well… there's always room at the back of the parade for new prisoners.
But I had more proposals. The day was young.
I sat down, letting the echo of Lenin's speech about unity and power hang in the air a moment longer before slicing through it with a tone of restrained excitement. The good kind. The kind you get when you know a regime's about to fall and you've already picked out the wallpaper for your new office.
"Comrades," I began, "I think we can all agree that seizing power is no longer a matter of if. The when is fast approaching — and I propose that we begin preparing the country for our 'when.'"
I paused, letting them stew in it. Lenin raised an eyebrow. Trotsky leaned forward, intrigued.
"We have the muscle in Petrograd. The Revolutionary Guard, the National Guard, the Soviet military. We've brought the anarchists and the red guards to heel and most now report to the national guard, the Soviet military and my boys in black— the Mensheviks are scattered, the SRs are tired, and Kerensky's government looks like a worn-out actor still trying to play Hamlet in a theater that's already burning."
A few smirks around the table. Dzerzhinsky, as always, looked like he was planning someone's execution in his head. Probably mine, but at least he'd do it efficiently.
"I propose," I continued, "that we deploy detachments from all our forces to every major city in Russia — Moscow, Arkhangelsk, Kiev, Kazan, Tsaritsyn, Yekaterinburg. We send trusted officers, backed by the party, to begin integrating with the local soviets. Not to ask for control — to assume it. Peacefully, if possible. Forcefully, if needed. I can have it done by October 1st. Just give me the green light."
Lenin steepled his fingers. "That's ambitious, Makarov. Logistically…?"
"I have the trains, I have the maps, I have the black-market fuel, and God help me, I have enough horses to open a cavalry museum. We've been preparing for months."
Stalin gave a small, crooked smile. "He's not lying. We've had men stockpiling weapons from Finland to Georgia."
"Good," I nodded. "Then let's do more. I say we also begin courting the remaining Mensheviks and SRs. Not with philosophy or leaflets, but with money, bullets, or secrets. I've got enough of each. And Dzerzhinsky—" I gestured to Iron Felix, "—has enough informants to fill a theater."
Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, his voice dry and ironclad. "I have dossiers on many of them. Affairs, theft, sympathy with the Whites, questionable loans. I can make them bend."
Trotsky chuckled. "Blackmail, bribery, threats. Bolshevik diplomacy at its finest."
"Come now," I smiled darkly, "we're just offering them choices. Join us… or join the past."
Kamenev, ever the soft one, furrowed his brow. "You want to expand our reach and turn our enemies into allies by threatening them? Isn't that… dangerous?"
"Kamenev," I said patiently, "everything we do is dangerous. We're betting our lives on a revolution led by a gaggle of radicals who want to upend centuries of social and economic order which will start a civil war. We're already in the deep end. I'm just trying to make sure we don't drown."
A silence followed. Sverdlov broke it first. "If he can really get us full control of the regional soviets, we'll be unstoppable."
Lenin nodded. "Do it. You have until October. Use your guards, use Dzerzhinsky's agents, use whatever you need. Just make sure they report to us."
"And the Mensheviks?" Dzerzhinsky asked.
"Start quietly," Lenin said. "Promise them protection. Offer them minor roles. If they refuse, well… Felix, I trust you know what to do."
"As you say," He muttered. "They will join us, or die."
As we adjourned, I thought to myself: this was it. We were no longer plotting survival — we were orchestrating victory. The Bolsheviks would rule. Not just Petrograd. Not just the winter. But everything.
And if I had to bribe, threaten, or bury half of Russia to get there?
Then by God, I'd do it with a stamped requisition order and a smug little smile.
Now I had to talk to Vlad and Joe
As we walked over the room went over to Lenin and gave him a subtle nod. Then to Joe.
"Comrades. A word in private?"
Lenin glanced at me, then at Stalin. Stalin, arms crossed, gave a short nod. We walked through the arched corridor of the Smolny Institute, the old girls' school now doubling as the headquarters of revolutionary destiny and logistical despair. We stepped into a side office—formerly a music room for the bourgeois daughters of Petrograd, now home to a table, three chairs, a flickering oil lamp, and a map of Russia half-pinned and half-falling off the wall. Time to use my economics degree from college.
I shut the door.
"Gentlemen," I said, lowering myself into the chair. "We have a revolution. We have Petrograd. We have Kormilov in chains. We even have, God help us, the foundations of a military-industrial complex that's current staffed by drunk dockworkers and former anarchists."
Lenin gave a tight smile. "And?"
"And," I replied. "We need to set up a war economy. I've been running this thing like a mafia state with good intentions. And it's worked, barely. But it won't work once the war starts. We need to formalize it."
"Formalize what?" Lenin said, suspicious.
I leaned forward. "The underworld. The black markets. The brothels, gambling dens, opium holes. The smuggling rings. The food runners. The dock mafias. All of them. They stay—but they become arms of the Revolution. They get permits. They pay taxes. They answer to the commissariat. And if they don't, we execute them, slowly."
Lenin blinked. Stalin raised an eyebrow.
"You want to… legalize crime?" Lenin asked flatly.
"I want to control it," I replied. "Same thing, really. If we stamp it out, it goes underground and multiplies. But if we own it, then we can direct it—toward our war effort. I can feed, clothe, and arm the military, but I need the black markets out in the open and formalized to do it."
Stalin scratched his chin. "The tsar had a secret police. You want to turn Petrograd into an open air brothel."
"Exactly."
Lenin shifted. "And the means of production?"
"Nationalize the factories," I said without missing a beat. "Shift them all to wartime production under the Commissariat of Strategic Resources. We'll need rifles, uniforms, boots, trench shovels, gas masks, and locomotives. But," I raised a finger, "allow some private enterprise. Craftsmen, artisans, small traders. Let them function under licenses. Let them feed the cities and move money. Just make sure we get our cut. And if we don't, bodies, ropes, lampposts."
"You want controlled capitalism," Stalin muttered.
"So what?" I asked, grinning. "And we need the peasants. Land reform."
"Ah," Lenin leaned forward, interested now.
"3 acres and a shovel," I said. "We promise every peasant who joins us land, a shovel, and protection. But only 3. Cap it. No new aristocrats. Anyone—kulaks, old nobles, whatever—who refuses to give up the excess... we offer them a choice. Sign it over, or watch their family get bayoneted to death. Slowly."
Stalin snorted. Lenin winced. "A touch brutal."
"We're not handing out bread at a parish bazaar, Vladimir. We're planning how to win a civil war."
There was a pause. Then I continued.
"We need foreign trade, too. Not for show. We use Petrograd—just Petrograd—as a special economic zone. Limited trade. Foreign banking. We accept gold, silver, currency—whatever they'll give us for grain and raw materials. We'll need a stable ruble or something pegged to foreign coin. I'll take care of the rest."
Lenin nodded slowly. "And who runs all this?"
"I'm overloaded," I said. "I've got the Revolutionary Guard Corps, I'm running the logistics for the Soviet military, the national guard, the whole commissariat for strategic resources—it's too much. Alexander Svanidze has been handling the finance division in the commissariat quietly. Good man. Educated. Loyal. I suggest we promote him to head the Commissariat for Strategic Resources."
Stalin tried his best to act confused and pretend he never heard of him. "...Svanidze?"
I smiled but kept it vague. "A comrade from our days in Georgia. You remember."
Lenin narrowed his eyes. "He's your brother-in-law."
"What about it?" I replied innocently. "You never asked. And he's a party man like me and Joe. He helped me plan logistics back when Joe was robbing banks and shooting cops. This isn't any different. Just scaled."
Stalin of course seemed upset I called him Joe, jaw clenched. But I continued "Let Joe oversee the finance division of the commissariat."
There was silence for a moment.
Then Lenin leaned back and laughed. "God help us. You've built the Revolution with blackmail, brothels, and bookkeeping."
I clapped his shoulder. "And you'll take the credit, comrade."
Stalin didn't laugh. But he didn't argue either.
Good. That meant he understood.
August 20, 1917
Smolny Institute, Petrograd
Private Family Dining Quarters, 9:43 PM
It was late. The kind of late where the only light left in Petrograd came from dying lanterns, cigarette tips, and that weird sickle-shaped moon that seemed to leer at you like a smug noble waiting for a guillotine that would never come. But here, in our little fortified pocket of the revolution—Smolny—we had something close to normalcy. Or the Bolshevik version of it, which meant hot soup, no gunfire outside the windows, and all the children asleep.
We were gathered in our private quarters upstairs: myself, Aleksandra, my beloved rock; Keke, still mothering us all even though one of us ran the Soviet's logistics and the other ran Russia's shadow government; Stalin—Joe—and his ever-silent stormcloud gaze; and Alexander Svanidze, our soft-spoken, glasses-wearing, soon-to-be-cannon-fodder brother-in-law who has only arrived from Georgia a few days ago and had basically been promoted to lead our entire war economy, poor bastard.
Dinner was simple: beet soup, black bread, and salted fish. Peasant fare, but at least it was ours. We didn't have to beg it off some fat noble or scrape it off a trench floor.
I raised my cup of tea—boiled twice, tasted like revolution and floorboards—and turned to Alexander.
"To your promotion, Commissar of Strategic Resources." I gave him a mock funny German salute. "You lucky bastard."
Alexander blinked and gave a small, almost apologetic smile. "It's… a heavy responsibility."
"You're telling me," I laughed, gesturing to the stacks of paperwork still looming in the corner. "Don't worry. I'll help train you for the next few weeks. Show you how to keep the wolves fed without feeding them too much. But after that, you're flying solo. I'll be there as an unofficial advisor if you want, but the drowning will be yours to do."
He nodded. "Thank you, Mikheil. Truly."
Then came the expected complaint, right on cue, delivered with that gravel-thick tone only one man in the world could weaponize into guilt.
"You called me Joe in front of Lenin," Stalin said, not looking up from his fish. "It's unprofessional."
Aleksandra immediately turned her face to hide her laugh. Even Keke raised an eyebrow. I took a sip and grinned.
"Oh come on," I said. "You really think Lenin didn't know your name's Iosif Dzhugashvili? I mean, the man lived in exile just like you did. It's not like I yelled 'Little Joe likes honey cakes and Khachapuri' in front of the Revolutionary Guard."
Stalin gave me a withering stare that could curdle milk. I smiled sweetly in return and tapped his cup with mine. "To professionalism."
Svanidze, poor soul, tried to change the subject. "I'll do my best to keep things running smoothly. I promise."
Stalin finally looked at him. "Don't fuck this up," he said flatly. "If you do, we won't just lose a war. We'll lose the whole country. And I'm not burying another Svanidze."
A chill passed through the room. Even Aleksandra went quiet. Keke simply looked down, murmured a prayer under her breath.
I cleared my throat, trying to lighten things back up.
"Well, I'd say it's only a matter of time now. The moment we seize the winter palace and start taking control of every city we can get our hands on, civil war is on."
"Like the sunrise," Joe muttered.
"And that brings me to a favor," I said, setting down my spoon.
Everyone looked at me.
"I need you, Joe, to start gently floating an idea. Not now, but slowly. Softly. Don't push. Let it spread like mold in a bourgeois wine cellar. It's about the Tsar."
"Go on," Stalin said, suspicious already.
"I want him and his family back in Petrograd. Alive. Intact. Dressed like normal people. Put them in a shitty apartment near the docks. Make the Tsarina sew uniforms for the National Guard. Make the Tsar work in a munitions factory. Get the daughters into nursing. Teach the little boy to distribute pamphlets. We feed them stale bread and glorified water soup. Then we make them read Marx. Every day. Publicly."
Stalin stared at me. "You want to re-educate the Romanovs?"
"I want to humiliate them," I replied. "Killing them? That's too easy. It makes them martyrs. We don't need martyrs. We need symbols. Living, wheezing symbols of the old order rotting under fluorescent lights in a factory breakroom. Turn them into communist poster children. Imagine the headlines: 'Nicholas Romanov Commended for meeting his work quota.'"
Aleksandra giggled. Keke looked scandalized. "They are still human beings, Mikheil."
"Yes, and they'll be treated spared and allows to live in our new order," I said. "A kindness really."
Stalin didn't smile. But he also didn't say no.
"You want me to pitch this to Lenin?"
"He'll never accept it from me," I said, waving a hand. "He'll think it's one of my theatrical antics again. But you—you he trusts. He thinks you're serious. Sober. You have that dead stare that screams 'not here to joke.' You could sell him arsenic as vitamin tonic."
Joe looked away, thinking. Svanidze quietly finished his soup. Keke got up and started clearing plates, muttering about how "God does not smile upon cruelty."
"I'll do it," Stalin finally said.
That, from him, was basically a love letter.
I leaned back in my chair, sipping the last of my tea, and watched the candlelight flicker across the faces of the people I'd dragged into this war. My family. My soldiers. My revolution.
And I couldn't help but think…
Soon, all of Russia would be ours. And the Romanovs would be stuffing sandbags in the rain.
Last edited:
Siryapsalot
"Chill I'm not an Unc just turned legal"
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Ok there goes my question about how he would deal with the Romanovs.
Alenco98
Not too sore, are you?
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It's how it happened historically, though the Bolsheviks didn't have a full blown army behind them. Mikheil basically accelerated the creation of a red army.
Amputation
Alenco98
Not too sore, are you?
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August 22, 1917
Nevsky Prospect
Petrograd, Russia
Morning
It was a glorious day to humiliate a general and his officers.
The sun hung low over Petrograd like a smug overseer, casting long shadows down Nevsky Prospect as the procession began. We had polished our boots, combed our beards (those of us who had them I didn't), oiled our rifles, and starched our collars—not out of respect for the occasion, but because if you're going to rub a man's face in the dirt, you may as well look sharp while doing it.
Kornilov—Russia's finest tragicomedy in a mustache—was marched at the head of the column like a fallen Caesar with none of the dignity. His hair was disheveled, uniform wrinkled and unbuttoned at the neck, hands tied behind his back, and that little twitch in his left eye gave away the boiling stew of humiliation he was trying (and failing) to suppress. Behind him trudged his loyal officers, stripped of their swords and their pride, some looking stoic, others like they were trying very hard not to soil themselves.
Behind them came us.
The Revolutionary Guard Corps marched first, well, not march more like goose stepped—my men, a thousand strong, 6000 in total after a little emergency recruitment drive on my end these last few days thanks to Kormilov's little failed putsch. All in black uniforms and crimson helmets, rifles slung and recently polished with mechanical elegance. Every boot fell like a metronome, every stare ice-cold. Behind them, the newly-organized Soviet military under Trotsky, still a bit ragged around the edges but drilled well enough to look imposing with the majority wearing a now standard brown uniform. Then came Dzerzhinsky's National Guard, some of them their new no-nonsense blue uniforms which soon would be official, half ex-cons and half radicals with nothing left to lose. They carried themselves like they enjoyed the idea of civil war.
We passed by rows of onlookers: workers, students, soldiers, babushkas, and a suspicious number of stray dogs who somehow always knew when politics were about to get bloody. Some jeered at Kornilov, others laughed outright. One woman threw cabbage. One child shouted, "Is that the man who wanted to be Tsar?" and was promptly lifted onto his father's shoulders like a folk hero.
I walked just behind the first line of my men, head high, hands clasped behind my back, whistling quietly. The international would've been perfect, but the mood struck more of a "Another one bites the dust".
Once we reached the main platform outside Kazan Cathedral, the crowd packed into the plaza. A sea of fists, caps, and waving red flags. And then Lenin, our bald prophet of doom and bread, stepped up to the podium.
He looked glorious, truly. The wind caught his coat just enough to make him look cinematic, if one squinted hard enough. He waited for silence, then raised his hand.
"Comrades!"
The word echoed off the cathedral walls like thunder.
"Today we have seen Thermidor vanquished! General Kornilov and his conspirators sought to march on the people of Petrograd with iron and fire, to place bayonets between us and our revolution."
He gestured to Kornilov, who stared straight ahead like a wax figure filled with regret and constipation.
"But they were defeated—not with bloodshed, but by the will of the people, by the unity of workers, sailors, and soldiers! By the indomitable strength of the Soviet!"
The crowd roared. A few caps were thrown. One man wept, which was impressive given how dehydrated everyone was.
"These men will be held in Soviet custody," Lenin continued, "until a full trial can be prepared. We are not the Tsar's regime—we do not execute without justice. But let this parade be a warning. Let every would-be counter-revolutionary see the fate that awaits those who try to shackle the working class."
Kornilov flinched slightly. Dzerzhinsky smiled for the first time since I met him. Unsettling.
"This revolution shall not be strangled in its cradle!" Lenin cried, voice rising to a pitch that cracked slightly. "It shall be nursed by the people! Armed by the people! Defended by the people! And when the day comes—and it will come—when we seize power in full, let none say they did not see it coming."
I leaned over to Stalin. "Damn good speech."
He shrugged. "Bit theatrical."
"Courtesy of yours truly."
Stalin chuckled at that. Trotsky stood next to Stalin and simply scowled. Bastard. Don't butt into a Convo between brothers.
The speech then ended. The band struck up the Internationale, and the crowd sang like their rent had just been cancelled. Kornilov and his officers were taken away, flanked by Dzerzhinsky's men. Not a stone was thrown, not a shot was fired.
Victory, by humiliation.
And damn, did it feel good. Now I had more meetings later today. Great.
August 22, 1917
Smolny institute
Petrograd, Russia, Late afternoon
I dropped the stack of typewritten papers on the long oak table with the thud of a pistol on a nightstand. The room went still. Lenin rubbed his bald head. Trotsky squinted like I'd just handed him a sack of manure and called it gold. Stalin looked at me with that half-grin he gets when he's trying to decide whether to laugh or have me shot for insolence. It was time to unleash my little program of humiliation, brainwashing and indoctrination. And solidify my reputation as a monster within the party. Great.
"Comrades," I began, theatrically, "I give you Project Red Rebirth. A full-proof system to take these White bastards—Kornilov, his officers, the nobles, hell, even the Romanovs—and turn them into walking propaganda for the revolution. Broken wills in peasant boots, singing hymns to Marx after they've scrubbed the latrines of Petrograd."
I let it sit. Nobody interrupted. I could hear Dzerzhinsky sharpening the blade of his soul somewhere deep in his jacket pocket.
I pressed on, flipping through the pages as if lecturing children:
"Wake them at dawn with screaming guards, beat them for whispering. Essays on Marx in the morning, Machiavelli in the afternoon, mock executions at night. And always, always the family hostages in the background—letters forged, threats implied. The choice becomes: betray your class, or watch your wife and children die in 'protective custody.' Simple, efficient, humane in the revolutionary sense."
Trotsky was the first to scoff, of course. He leaned back, glasses glinting like bayonet steel.
"Humane? You mean medieval. This is not socialism, this is sadism. We don't need a boot camp of torture chambers—we need the masses. Kornilov isn't worth a drop of ink, let alone the ink you wasted typing this farce."
I smirked. "Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Lev Bronstein. The people don't read Marx. Half of them can't even read. They respond to symbols. Remember May Day? Lenin fired a rifle into the air—one shot—and recruitment surged. July? Those little protests? We held rallies, and the boys over at Kronstadt pledged themselves to us while recruitment surged. And just recently, when we paraded through the city when Kornilov tried his little putsch and we blurted out the International, every SR and red guards that was worth their while joined us. Symbols matter. Humiliation matters. People love a show. I say let's give them the best circus in Russia."
Stalin chuckled low, like he always does when he's weighing the pleasure of my cruelty against the annoyance of my mouth. "There's…logic here," he muttered. "Hostages mean loyalty. Break their backs, they become tools." He tapped the packet. "It is…barbaric. But so is counter-revolution."
Trotsky snapped. "And where does it end? Today Kornilov, tomorrow the Mensheviks, next week us if we disagree with you?"
"Are you saying you're a reactionary?" I said sweetly while smiling at him. Stalin almost laughed.
Lenin finally weighed in, stroking his chin as if he were petting some invisible cat. "Comrade Mikheil, you are creative. Always creative. And there is utility in re-educating valuable men, yes. But to systematize it? To make a program of it? Hm." He glanced around the room. "It risks distracting us from seizing power outright. Torture chambers are not factories, nor are they rifles. Still…" He trailed off, eyes narrowing. "Symbols, yes. You are not wrong about symbols."
I leaned forward, smiling. "Then let us compromise. We'll make two tiers of Red Rebirth. Only the choicest cuts of the bourgeois pig. Kornilov himself, the generals, the high nobles, Romanovs and the whole royal family if we catch them will go through the full blown program. Make an example. A living exhibition of revolution. The rest, the officers, the lower nobility, impoverished nobles? A more toned down version. Hold their families hostage, constant readings of marx, no sleep deprivation, no mock executions."
Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, his voice dry as winter frost: "If we do this, I want full oversight of the…conditioning facilities. No anarchic cruelty. Order. Method. Records."
"Done," I said, clapping my hands. "It will be beautiful, Felix. It will be yours. You'll get to sharpen your knives with bureaucracy."
Trotsky muttered something about "Asiatic barbarism" and started scribbling furiously in his notebook. Stalin eyed him like a cat eying a rat.
Lenin sighed, exasperated. "We will discuss this further. But Comrade Mikheil…" He jabbed a finger at me. "Do not mistake theatrics for politics. We cannot blind ourselves from our true goals."
I gave him my broadest grin. "As you wish, by the way comrade Lenin, come to dinner at my quarters. Relax for once in your life. My mother makes khachapuri that will make you weep like a child. Dzerzhinsky, you too—your blood pressure needs cheese. The rest of you are welcome as well. Politics and plotting after dinner."
The room half-laughed, half-groaned. Trotsky muttered something about preferring exile in New York. Stalin pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, "Every day with you is like wrestling a drunk bear."
And me? I just leaned back in my chair, thinking: They'll thank me when Kornilov is teaching Marx to peasants with tears in his eyes.
August 22, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Late evening
To both my surprise and mild horror, every single member of the Central Committee accepted my dinner invitation. Even Trotsky. Especially Trotsky. The man would attend a funeral if there was soup involved. Suddenly, I found myself in the unenviable position of having to feed the leadership of the revolution with nothing but my mother, and my brother Stalin as my sous-chefs.
I scrambled like a man possessed. Extra tables dragged in from the classrooms, mismatched chairs borrowed from the guards, candles stolen from the commissary. Meanwhile, I had to cajole Stalin—already sulking because I'd called him "Joe" in front of Lenin—into peeling potatoes. He protested, muttered about being too busy with "state affairs," but I leaned in and hissed, "If we look like bad hosts, they'll think we're counter-revolutionaries." That did it. Nothing terrifies Stalin more than the suggestion he might look bourgeois.
So there we were: I chopping vegetables like some harried innkeeper, Stalin hacking at the meat and nicking his fingers so often you'd think he was trying to assassinate himself in installments. Each cut, I forced him to wash thoroughly—there's no penicillin in Russia, and I wasn't about to have him die of sepsis while the revolution still needed his paranoia.
By the time the first knock rattled the door, we looked like butchers who'd wrestled a cow to death and lost. My shirt was covered in beet juice, Stalin had blood stains on his sleeves, and my mother scolded us both for looking like dockside criminals. Which, to be fair, wasn't entirely inaccurate.
Still, the food was ready—or what passed for food. A Georgian touch, of course: khachapuri, glorious cheese bread, a gift from God to compensate for the existence of Russians. The rest, predictably Slavic: stroganoff, borscht, and Olivier salad. All washed down with French wine I'd "confiscated" from a brothel owner a month ago who usually paid her protection tax in cash.
The woman had offer me a thirteen-year-old girl as part of the payment. I explained, very politely, that if she pimped out anyone under eighteen again, I'd have her strung from a lamppost and let my men use her as bayonet practice. She didn't believe me. A few days later, one of Dzerzhinsky's men reported she'd simply sold the children off to another brothel. So, true to my word, I had my revolutionary guard drag her into the street and bayoneted until she resembled a political cartoon. Then I tracked down the man who bought the girls and had him strangled, on principle.
The girls themselves? Sent to work in a munitions factory, which was a mercy compared to prostitution—or marriage. As for the now-ownerless brothels, I handed them over to Dzerzhinsky. Efficiency, comrades: state-sanctioned brothels, fully staffed and run by prostitutes who doubled as informants. Lenin preached about nationalizing industry; I merely extended the logic to vice.
So that evening, as the Committee filed in—Lenin in his spotless suit, Trotsky in his eternal sneer, Dzerzhinsky already looking like he was plotting someone's midnight disappearance—they were greeted with steaming khachapuri, borscht, stroganoff, salad, and wine. All of it cooked by two semi-competent revolutionaries, an overworked mother, and a future dictator with blood on his apron.
I saw Lenin glance at Stalin's bandaged fingers and mutter, "So this is what proletarian hands look like." Stalin glared at me across the table, silently promising my eventual execution. Trotsky laughed far too loudly at nothing, probably hoping to disguise the fact he was stuffing his pockets with bread for later. Dzerzhinsky said nothing, ate mechanically, and stared into the middle distance like the soup had personally offended him.
And me? I poured the wine and thought to myself: We may all be dead within the year, but at least we'll die on a full stomach. Dinner was on.
The table groaned beneath the weight of food, though whether from abundance or sheer structural weakness was hard to say. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, my mother, my wife, my brother-in-law, even my eldest son perched on a chair too tall for him—an entire revolution compressed into mismatched dining chairs and candlelight that made us all look like murderers in a painting. Which, in fairness, we were.
I clapped my hands as the first spoons touched the soup.
"No politics," I declared. "Not until the last plate is cleared. Anyone who tries to plot the overthrow of anyone else at this table before dessert will be force-fed until they choke."
Trotsky snorted. "That's absurd."
"Yes," I said, ladling borscht into his bowl. "And so are you. Eat."
Lenin frowned, but said nothing. He looked like a priest forced to endure a wedding feast when he'd rather be leading a funeral. His spoon rose and fell like a metronome.
Conversation began hesitantly, like a man testing thin ice. My mother, bless her, asked Trotsky if he was married.
"Yes," he said.
"Poor woman," she replied flatly, and went back to sipping her soup. Trotsky nearly spat beet juice across the table.
I leaned toward Dzerzhinsky, who was hunched over his bowl as though interrogating it.
"Felix," I said. "You must relax more. You look like you'll work yourself into the grave before you've shot your first aristocrat."
He blinked, the closest he came to laughter. "I cannot relax. There is too much work."
"Yes, but if you die of exhaustion, who will terrify the bourgeoisie with those wonderful cheekbones?" I raised my glass. "To Felix's continued existence! May he one day smile before rigor mortis forces him to."
The table laughed. Except Felix. He just stared at me, spoon mid-air, as though calculating how many men he'd need to dispose of my body discreetly.
Stalin, meanwhile, picked at his stroganoff with the sulkiness of a man convinced his portion was smaller than everyone else's.
"Eat," I told him.
"It's cold."
"It's meat, Joe. Considering the state of Russia, I could serve you a boiled shoe and you'd still lick the plate."
He grunted, then muttered something about "bourgeois nicknames."
My son, emboldened by the laughter, pointed at Lenin. "Why are you bald?"
The room froze. Even the candles seemed to dim. Lenin's eyes narrowed to razor slits.
"I lost my hair in the struggle," he said, voice dripping with martyrdom.
I ruffled the boy's hair. "See, my son? Revolution makes you bald. That's why I sing instead of writing pamphlets."
Trotsky cackled, though it sounded more like a man choking on bread. Lenin's glare shifted to him with the intensity of an artillery barrage.
As wine flowed, conversation loosened. Stories emerged—childhoods, families, memories of tsarist prisons. I told them about my time taking bribes in Petrograd and stashing guns, how a pimp once tried to cheat me with counterfeit rubles. "I broke his hand with a baton. He screamed like a little bitch as I kicked him repeatedly. Then I shot him."
My wife hissed at me to stop. Stalin chuckled into his glass. Trotsky looked scandalized, as though violence outside of theory offended him. Lenin pursed his lips, calculating whether this anecdote could be weaponized at my expense.
At one point I raised my glass again.
"To our enemies," I toasted. "May they live long enough to see us laugh at their funerals."
Everyone drank. Even Felix.
As dessert arrived—bread pudding drowned in vodka, because Russia—the table was warm, even joyful. For one hour, the revolutionaries ceased to be conspirators and executioners. They were just tired men eating in candlelight, pretending at normalcy.
But beneath the laughter, a current of menace lingered. Every joke about baldness, every tease about exhaustion, every toast could just as easily be remembered tomorrow as betrayal. In this room, humor was both shield and dagger.
And so we ate, we laughed, we drank—and silently sharpened our knives beneath the tablecloth.
Eventually though, all good things had to end, plates had been cleared, wine had been drunk, Stalin had complained three separate times that his portion was smaller than Trotsky's, and Trotsky had complained three separate times that my jokes were "unbecoming of a revolutionary." The usual.
I stood, clapped my hands, and declared:
"Now—enough of this Orthodox silence. We've eaten like peasants. Now we dance like Americans."
The room went very still. Dzerzhinsky's fork froze mid-air. Lenin squinted as though I'd just spoken in Sanskrit. Stalin muttered something about "bourgeois corruption." Trotsky nearly spilled his wine in outrage.
I grinned, walked to the gramophone in the corner, and produced my secret weapon: a record, wrapped in rags, smuggled into Petrograd only days ago. I held it up like a priest revealing a relic.
"Gentlemen, comrades, fellow revolutionaries: Livery Stable Blues. Straight from New Orleans. A smuggler's gift to me a week ago for tolerating his activities up to now. After he also paid our cause with 20 crates worth of bullets. Ask my brother in law Alyosha over there, he verified."
He smiled nervously and nodded as I set the record down, cranked the machine, and suddenly the room filled with something utterly alien—trumpets, trombones, clarinets, all sounding like a circus run by drunks. Jazz.
Every face looked horrified. Lenin's especially—he looked as if Karl Marx himself had risen from the grave only to start tap-dancing.
I turned to Aleksandra, my wife, who had spent the evening politely enduring the company of men who debated humanity as though it were a chessboard. I smacked her ass with a sharp crack.
"Dance with me, my love."
She gasped, half scandalized, half amused, and before she could object I spun her into the middle of the room. The jazz howled and I howled with it. We twirled, stumbled, laughed. Her dress flared, her hair whipped against my cheek. Stalin looked like he was being tortured. Trotsky muttered, "Decadent trash." Lenin rubbed his bald head furiously, as though trying to erase the sound.
I dipped her low, nearly dropped her, then yanked her upright with a flourish. The horns blared. She laughed, flushed, alive in a room where joy was usually rationed like bread.
The music built, chaotic, drunken. On the final note, I pulled her close, twirled her one last time, and kissed her hard enough to make the candles flicker.
When I finally pulled away, her eyes sparkled with something rare in Petrograd—happiness. I pressed my forehead against hers and whispered, loud enough for every Bolshevik corpse-in-waiting at the table to hear:
"I love you. Always. Even when we're up to our knees in blood, I'll still love you."
The room was silent. The gramophone hissed, needle scratching at the end of the record.
Trotsky looked scandalized, as if love itself were counter-revolutionary. Lenin coughed awkwardly, muttering something about "bourgeois sentimentality." Stalin swirled his glass and muttered, "Disgusting." Dzerzhinsky just stared, probably imagining how best to arrest jazz for crimes against order.
But Aleksandra smiled, and in that moment—between the smell of cabbage, the sound of jazz, and the eyes of history's greatest executioners watching me make a fool of myself—I didn't care.
Love in Petrograd: now that was the real revolutionary act.
The evening went on, the wine had loosened everyone's tongues, but not their politics. I sat back down at the table, still glowing from dancing with Aleksandra. She fussed over her hair, trying to tame it after my little stunt. Stalin glared at me like I had personally offended Georgian masculinity. Trotsky scribbled furiously in his notebook—"Decadent spectacle, jazz = counter-revolutionary bourgeois degeneration" no doubt.
I clapped my hands. "Iosif! Fetch the map, boy."
My eldest, recently turned eight, scurried off to the adjoining room and returned with the map of Europe I'd pinned and re-pinned so many times it looked like a butcher's apron. He laid it flat across the oak table, weighted at the corners by Lenin's glass, Stalin's fork, Trotsky's ego, and Dzerzhinsky's eternal frown.
The map was a mess of lines and scrawls, red ink for fronts, blue for rivers, little notes in my handwriting like 'Austro-Hungarians = drunk clowns' and 'French morale = corpse in a uniform.'
I tapped Petrograd with my finger.
"Comrades, let's talk reality. When we seize power—and we will—we need peace. Immediately. Not months of negotiations, not a people's committee of endless debates. Immediate. Peace. With Germany."
Trotsky scoffed. Stalin raised an eyebrow. Lenin's lips pursed like he'd bitten into a lemon. Aleksandra gave me the side-eye that meant: don't embarrass me in front of the bald one again.
I pressed on.
"It doesn't matter if we're seen as German puppets. We will be seen as German puppets, no matter what we do. But we'll have a civil war to fight, not a popularity contest. We sign the paper, hand over whatever Germany wants, and they pull their army out of Russia. Simple. Efficient. Humane, in the revolutionary sense."
Iosif giggled at that line. I ruffled his hair.
I pointed at the Western Front. "Now, here's the beauty of it. Germany moves their entire force back west. They start hammering the French, the British, and yes, maybe even march on Paris. If they do, the Entente will be too busy choking on baguettes to send a single rifle or man to Russia and help the reactionaries. We get our breathing space. We crush the counter revolution. We consolidate. By the time the Allies look east again, we'll be untouchable."
Stalin leaned forward, eyes glinting. "You're saying… let Germany bleed the Entente dry, while we take Russia. Then, we pick our borders back up again like nothing happened?"
I spread my arms. "Exactly. Germany is already dying. They've lost too many men. Their economy is a corpse propped up by bayonets. America—untouched, industrialized, hungry—will crush them. Germany cannot win the long game. So let's use the short game. We'll be free of war, armed with victory in civil war, and when Germany collapses, we take back whatever they stole. No one will stop us because we'll be the only ones left standing."
Silence. A long silence. The children watched from the side of the room like wide-eyed owls. Aleksandra refilled her glass, muttering, "My husband, the genius. Or lunatic. Hard to tell."
Lenin finally spoke, his voice low and deliberate. "You propose…surrender before victory. Peace at any price. You would hand over half of Russia."
I grinned. "An exaggeration, more like 10, maybe 20 percent at most. Amputate a hand for the body to survive. Amputate or die, comrade. That's the choice."
Trotsky snapped, slamming his notebook shut. "This is surrender dressed up as strategy! You would make us slaves of Germany. The revolution would be spat on by every worker in Europe!"
Stalin chuckled darkly. "Let the workers spit. They can spit on us from Paris when the Germans march through it."
That got a laugh from me. Trotsky's face turned crimson.
Lenin stroked his chin, eyes darting across the map. "You are both wrong and right. A revolution shackled to Germany is no revolution at all… but neither is a revolution drowned in blood before it has teeth. A tactical retreat. Hm."
Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, voice flat as stone. "Practical. Cruel, but practical. Our enemies are everywhere. We cannot fight a war on many fronts. And peace would free us to focus on… internal matters." He adjusted his cuffs like he was tightening a noose.
My mother—God bless her Orthodox soul—crossed herself and muttered, "You are all devils."
Iosif tugged at my sleeve. "Papa, does this mean we'll win?"
I looked at him, then at the table full of men who'd one day drown the world in terror, and I smiled.
"Yes, my son. We'll win. And one day you'll tell your children how we sold part of Russia to save the rest. And they'll laugh about it over khachapuri."
Stalin smirked. "If there are children left."
Trotsky muttered, "Asiatic barbarism," for the third time that evening.
Lenin sighed, as if Atlas himself had just asked for help carrying the world. "We will discuss this further. But…" He tapped the map. "There is a ruthless logic here. We must survive first. Everything else is secondary."
Aleksandra clinked her glass against mine. "To ruthless logic, then."
The children laughed, not understanding.
And for one brief, wine-soaked moment, the future of Russia—the blood, the betrayals, the gulags, the famine—was decided over jazz, khachapuri, and an eight-year-old holding a map with sticky fingers.
Nevsky Prospect
Petrograd, Russia
Morning
It was a glorious day to humiliate a general and his officers.
The sun hung low over Petrograd like a smug overseer, casting long shadows down Nevsky Prospect as the procession began. We had polished our boots, combed our beards (those of us who had them I didn't), oiled our rifles, and starched our collars—not out of respect for the occasion, but because if you're going to rub a man's face in the dirt, you may as well look sharp while doing it.
Kornilov—Russia's finest tragicomedy in a mustache—was marched at the head of the column like a fallen Caesar with none of the dignity. His hair was disheveled, uniform wrinkled and unbuttoned at the neck, hands tied behind his back, and that little twitch in his left eye gave away the boiling stew of humiliation he was trying (and failing) to suppress. Behind him trudged his loyal officers, stripped of their swords and their pride, some looking stoic, others like they were trying very hard not to soil themselves.
Behind them came us.
The Revolutionary Guard Corps marched first, well, not march more like goose stepped—my men, a thousand strong, 6000 in total after a little emergency recruitment drive on my end these last few days thanks to Kormilov's little failed putsch. All in black uniforms and crimson helmets, rifles slung and recently polished with mechanical elegance. Every boot fell like a metronome, every stare ice-cold. Behind them, the newly-organized Soviet military under Trotsky, still a bit ragged around the edges but drilled well enough to look imposing with the majority wearing a now standard brown uniform. Then came Dzerzhinsky's National Guard, some of them their new no-nonsense blue uniforms which soon would be official, half ex-cons and half radicals with nothing left to lose. They carried themselves like they enjoyed the idea of civil war.
We passed by rows of onlookers: workers, students, soldiers, babushkas, and a suspicious number of stray dogs who somehow always knew when politics were about to get bloody. Some jeered at Kornilov, others laughed outright. One woman threw cabbage. One child shouted, "Is that the man who wanted to be Tsar?" and was promptly lifted onto his father's shoulders like a folk hero.
I walked just behind the first line of my men, head high, hands clasped behind my back, whistling quietly. The international would've been perfect, but the mood struck more of a "Another one bites the dust".
Once we reached the main platform outside Kazan Cathedral, the crowd packed into the plaza. A sea of fists, caps, and waving red flags. And then Lenin, our bald prophet of doom and bread, stepped up to the podium.
He looked glorious, truly. The wind caught his coat just enough to make him look cinematic, if one squinted hard enough. He waited for silence, then raised his hand.
"Comrades!"
The word echoed off the cathedral walls like thunder.
"Today we have seen Thermidor vanquished! General Kornilov and his conspirators sought to march on the people of Petrograd with iron and fire, to place bayonets between us and our revolution."
He gestured to Kornilov, who stared straight ahead like a wax figure filled with regret and constipation.
"But they were defeated—not with bloodshed, but by the will of the people, by the unity of workers, sailors, and soldiers! By the indomitable strength of the Soviet!"
The crowd roared. A few caps were thrown. One man wept, which was impressive given how dehydrated everyone was.
"These men will be held in Soviet custody," Lenin continued, "until a full trial can be prepared. We are not the Tsar's regime—we do not execute without justice. But let this parade be a warning. Let every would-be counter-revolutionary see the fate that awaits those who try to shackle the working class."
Kornilov flinched slightly. Dzerzhinsky smiled for the first time since I met him. Unsettling.
"This revolution shall not be strangled in its cradle!" Lenin cried, voice rising to a pitch that cracked slightly. "It shall be nursed by the people! Armed by the people! Defended by the people! And when the day comes—and it will come—when we seize power in full, let none say they did not see it coming."
I leaned over to Stalin. "Damn good speech."
He shrugged. "Bit theatrical."
"Courtesy of yours truly."
Stalin chuckled at that. Trotsky stood next to Stalin and simply scowled. Bastard. Don't butt into a Convo between brothers.
The speech then ended. The band struck up the Internationale, and the crowd sang like their rent had just been cancelled. Kornilov and his officers were taken away, flanked by Dzerzhinsky's men. Not a stone was thrown, not a shot was fired.
Victory, by humiliation.
And damn, did it feel good. Now I had more meetings later today. Great.
August 22, 1917
Smolny institute
Petrograd, Russia, Late afternoon
I dropped the stack of typewritten papers on the long oak table with the thud of a pistol on a nightstand. The room went still. Lenin rubbed his bald head. Trotsky squinted like I'd just handed him a sack of manure and called it gold. Stalin looked at me with that half-grin he gets when he's trying to decide whether to laugh or have me shot for insolence. It was time to unleash my little program of humiliation, brainwashing and indoctrination. And solidify my reputation as a monster within the party. Great.
"Comrades," I began, theatrically, "I give you Project Red Rebirth. A full-proof system to take these White bastards—Kornilov, his officers, the nobles, hell, even the Romanovs—and turn them into walking propaganda for the revolution. Broken wills in peasant boots, singing hymns to Marx after they've scrubbed the latrines of Petrograd."
I let it sit. Nobody interrupted. I could hear Dzerzhinsky sharpening the blade of his soul somewhere deep in his jacket pocket.
I pressed on, flipping through the pages as if lecturing children:
"Wake them at dawn with screaming guards, beat them for whispering. Essays on Marx in the morning, Machiavelli in the afternoon, mock executions at night. And always, always the family hostages in the background—letters forged, threats implied. The choice becomes: betray your class, or watch your wife and children die in 'protective custody.' Simple, efficient, humane in the revolutionary sense."
Trotsky was the first to scoff, of course. He leaned back, glasses glinting like bayonet steel.
"Humane? You mean medieval. This is not socialism, this is sadism. We don't need a boot camp of torture chambers—we need the masses. Kornilov isn't worth a drop of ink, let alone the ink you wasted typing this farce."
I smirked. "Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Lev Bronstein. The people don't read Marx. Half of them can't even read. They respond to symbols. Remember May Day? Lenin fired a rifle into the air—one shot—and recruitment surged. July? Those little protests? We held rallies, and the boys over at Kronstadt pledged themselves to us while recruitment surged. And just recently, when we paraded through the city when Kornilov tried his little putsch and we blurted out the International, every SR and red guards that was worth their while joined us. Symbols matter. Humiliation matters. People love a show. I say let's give them the best circus in Russia."
Stalin chuckled low, like he always does when he's weighing the pleasure of my cruelty against the annoyance of my mouth. "There's…logic here," he muttered. "Hostages mean loyalty. Break their backs, they become tools." He tapped the packet. "It is…barbaric. But so is counter-revolution."
Trotsky snapped. "And where does it end? Today Kornilov, tomorrow the Mensheviks, next week us if we disagree with you?"
"Are you saying you're a reactionary?" I said sweetly while smiling at him. Stalin almost laughed.
Lenin finally weighed in, stroking his chin as if he were petting some invisible cat. "Comrade Mikheil, you are creative. Always creative. And there is utility in re-educating valuable men, yes. But to systematize it? To make a program of it? Hm." He glanced around the room. "It risks distracting us from seizing power outright. Torture chambers are not factories, nor are they rifles. Still…" He trailed off, eyes narrowing. "Symbols, yes. You are not wrong about symbols."
I leaned forward, smiling. "Then let us compromise. We'll make two tiers of Red Rebirth. Only the choicest cuts of the bourgeois pig. Kornilov himself, the generals, the high nobles, Romanovs and the whole royal family if we catch them will go through the full blown program. Make an example. A living exhibition of revolution. The rest, the officers, the lower nobility, impoverished nobles? A more toned down version. Hold their families hostage, constant readings of marx, no sleep deprivation, no mock executions."
Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, his voice dry as winter frost: "If we do this, I want full oversight of the…conditioning facilities. No anarchic cruelty. Order. Method. Records."
"Done," I said, clapping my hands. "It will be beautiful, Felix. It will be yours. You'll get to sharpen your knives with bureaucracy."
Trotsky muttered something about "Asiatic barbarism" and started scribbling furiously in his notebook. Stalin eyed him like a cat eying a rat.
Lenin sighed, exasperated. "We will discuss this further. But Comrade Mikheil…" He jabbed a finger at me. "Do not mistake theatrics for politics. We cannot blind ourselves from our true goals."
I gave him my broadest grin. "As you wish, by the way comrade Lenin, come to dinner at my quarters. Relax for once in your life. My mother makes khachapuri that will make you weep like a child. Dzerzhinsky, you too—your blood pressure needs cheese. The rest of you are welcome as well. Politics and plotting after dinner."
The room half-laughed, half-groaned. Trotsky muttered something about preferring exile in New York. Stalin pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, "Every day with you is like wrestling a drunk bear."
And me? I just leaned back in my chair, thinking: They'll thank me when Kornilov is teaching Marx to peasants with tears in his eyes.
August 22, 1917
Smolny Institute
Petrograd, Russia
Late evening
To both my surprise and mild horror, every single member of the Central Committee accepted my dinner invitation. Even Trotsky. Especially Trotsky. The man would attend a funeral if there was soup involved. Suddenly, I found myself in the unenviable position of having to feed the leadership of the revolution with nothing but my mother, and my brother Stalin as my sous-chefs.
I scrambled like a man possessed. Extra tables dragged in from the classrooms, mismatched chairs borrowed from the guards, candles stolen from the commissary. Meanwhile, I had to cajole Stalin—already sulking because I'd called him "Joe" in front of Lenin—into peeling potatoes. He protested, muttered about being too busy with "state affairs," but I leaned in and hissed, "If we look like bad hosts, they'll think we're counter-revolutionaries." That did it. Nothing terrifies Stalin more than the suggestion he might look bourgeois.
So there we were: I chopping vegetables like some harried innkeeper, Stalin hacking at the meat and nicking his fingers so often you'd think he was trying to assassinate himself in installments. Each cut, I forced him to wash thoroughly—there's no penicillin in Russia, and I wasn't about to have him die of sepsis while the revolution still needed his paranoia.
By the time the first knock rattled the door, we looked like butchers who'd wrestled a cow to death and lost. My shirt was covered in beet juice, Stalin had blood stains on his sleeves, and my mother scolded us both for looking like dockside criminals. Which, to be fair, wasn't entirely inaccurate.
Still, the food was ready—or what passed for food. A Georgian touch, of course: khachapuri, glorious cheese bread, a gift from God to compensate for the existence of Russians. The rest, predictably Slavic: stroganoff, borscht, and Olivier salad. All washed down with French wine I'd "confiscated" from a brothel owner a month ago who usually paid her protection tax in cash.
The woman had offer me a thirteen-year-old girl as part of the payment. I explained, very politely, that if she pimped out anyone under eighteen again, I'd have her strung from a lamppost and let my men use her as bayonet practice. She didn't believe me. A few days later, one of Dzerzhinsky's men reported she'd simply sold the children off to another brothel. So, true to my word, I had my revolutionary guard drag her into the street and bayoneted until she resembled a political cartoon. Then I tracked down the man who bought the girls and had him strangled, on principle.
The girls themselves? Sent to work in a munitions factory, which was a mercy compared to prostitution—or marriage. As for the now-ownerless brothels, I handed them over to Dzerzhinsky. Efficiency, comrades: state-sanctioned brothels, fully staffed and run by prostitutes who doubled as informants. Lenin preached about nationalizing industry; I merely extended the logic to vice.
So that evening, as the Committee filed in—Lenin in his spotless suit, Trotsky in his eternal sneer, Dzerzhinsky already looking like he was plotting someone's midnight disappearance—they were greeted with steaming khachapuri, borscht, stroganoff, salad, and wine. All of it cooked by two semi-competent revolutionaries, an overworked mother, and a future dictator with blood on his apron.
I saw Lenin glance at Stalin's bandaged fingers and mutter, "So this is what proletarian hands look like." Stalin glared at me across the table, silently promising my eventual execution. Trotsky laughed far too loudly at nothing, probably hoping to disguise the fact he was stuffing his pockets with bread for later. Dzerzhinsky said nothing, ate mechanically, and stared into the middle distance like the soup had personally offended him.
And me? I poured the wine and thought to myself: We may all be dead within the year, but at least we'll die on a full stomach. Dinner was on.
The table groaned beneath the weight of food, though whether from abundance or sheer structural weakness was hard to say. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, my mother, my wife, my brother-in-law, even my eldest son perched on a chair too tall for him—an entire revolution compressed into mismatched dining chairs and candlelight that made us all look like murderers in a painting. Which, in fairness, we were.
I clapped my hands as the first spoons touched the soup.
"No politics," I declared. "Not until the last plate is cleared. Anyone who tries to plot the overthrow of anyone else at this table before dessert will be force-fed until they choke."
Trotsky snorted. "That's absurd."
"Yes," I said, ladling borscht into his bowl. "And so are you. Eat."
Lenin frowned, but said nothing. He looked like a priest forced to endure a wedding feast when he'd rather be leading a funeral. His spoon rose and fell like a metronome.
Conversation began hesitantly, like a man testing thin ice. My mother, bless her, asked Trotsky if he was married.
"Yes," he said.
"Poor woman," she replied flatly, and went back to sipping her soup. Trotsky nearly spat beet juice across the table.
I leaned toward Dzerzhinsky, who was hunched over his bowl as though interrogating it.
"Felix," I said. "You must relax more. You look like you'll work yourself into the grave before you've shot your first aristocrat."
He blinked, the closest he came to laughter. "I cannot relax. There is too much work."
"Yes, but if you die of exhaustion, who will terrify the bourgeoisie with those wonderful cheekbones?" I raised my glass. "To Felix's continued existence! May he one day smile before rigor mortis forces him to."
The table laughed. Except Felix. He just stared at me, spoon mid-air, as though calculating how many men he'd need to dispose of my body discreetly.
Stalin, meanwhile, picked at his stroganoff with the sulkiness of a man convinced his portion was smaller than everyone else's.
"Eat," I told him.
"It's cold."
"It's meat, Joe. Considering the state of Russia, I could serve you a boiled shoe and you'd still lick the plate."
He grunted, then muttered something about "bourgeois nicknames."
My son, emboldened by the laughter, pointed at Lenin. "Why are you bald?"
The room froze. Even the candles seemed to dim. Lenin's eyes narrowed to razor slits.
"I lost my hair in the struggle," he said, voice dripping with martyrdom.
I ruffled the boy's hair. "See, my son? Revolution makes you bald. That's why I sing instead of writing pamphlets."
Trotsky cackled, though it sounded more like a man choking on bread. Lenin's glare shifted to him with the intensity of an artillery barrage.
As wine flowed, conversation loosened. Stories emerged—childhoods, families, memories of tsarist prisons. I told them about my time taking bribes in Petrograd and stashing guns, how a pimp once tried to cheat me with counterfeit rubles. "I broke his hand with a baton. He screamed like a little bitch as I kicked him repeatedly. Then I shot him."
My wife hissed at me to stop. Stalin chuckled into his glass. Trotsky looked scandalized, as though violence outside of theory offended him. Lenin pursed his lips, calculating whether this anecdote could be weaponized at my expense.
At one point I raised my glass again.
"To our enemies," I toasted. "May they live long enough to see us laugh at their funerals."
Everyone drank. Even Felix.
As dessert arrived—bread pudding drowned in vodka, because Russia—the table was warm, even joyful. For one hour, the revolutionaries ceased to be conspirators and executioners. They were just tired men eating in candlelight, pretending at normalcy.
But beneath the laughter, a current of menace lingered. Every joke about baldness, every tease about exhaustion, every toast could just as easily be remembered tomorrow as betrayal. In this room, humor was both shield and dagger.
And so we ate, we laughed, we drank—and silently sharpened our knives beneath the tablecloth.
Eventually though, all good things had to end, plates had been cleared, wine had been drunk, Stalin had complained three separate times that his portion was smaller than Trotsky's, and Trotsky had complained three separate times that my jokes were "unbecoming of a revolutionary." The usual.
I stood, clapped my hands, and declared:
"Now—enough of this Orthodox silence. We've eaten like peasants. Now we dance like Americans."
The room went very still. Dzerzhinsky's fork froze mid-air. Lenin squinted as though I'd just spoken in Sanskrit. Stalin muttered something about "bourgeois corruption." Trotsky nearly spilled his wine in outrage.
I grinned, walked to the gramophone in the corner, and produced my secret weapon: a record, wrapped in rags, smuggled into Petrograd only days ago. I held it up like a priest revealing a relic.
"Gentlemen, comrades, fellow revolutionaries: Livery Stable Blues. Straight from New Orleans. A smuggler's gift to me a week ago for tolerating his activities up to now. After he also paid our cause with 20 crates worth of bullets. Ask my brother in law Alyosha over there, he verified."
He smiled nervously and nodded as I set the record down, cranked the machine, and suddenly the room filled with something utterly alien—trumpets, trombones, clarinets, all sounding like a circus run by drunks. Jazz.
Every face looked horrified. Lenin's especially—he looked as if Karl Marx himself had risen from the grave only to start tap-dancing.
I turned to Aleksandra, my wife, who had spent the evening politely enduring the company of men who debated humanity as though it were a chessboard. I smacked her ass with a sharp crack.
"Dance with me, my love."
She gasped, half scandalized, half amused, and before she could object I spun her into the middle of the room. The jazz howled and I howled with it. We twirled, stumbled, laughed. Her dress flared, her hair whipped against my cheek. Stalin looked like he was being tortured. Trotsky muttered, "Decadent trash." Lenin rubbed his bald head furiously, as though trying to erase the sound.
I dipped her low, nearly dropped her, then yanked her upright with a flourish. The horns blared. She laughed, flushed, alive in a room where joy was usually rationed like bread.
The music built, chaotic, drunken. On the final note, I pulled her close, twirled her one last time, and kissed her hard enough to make the candles flicker.
When I finally pulled away, her eyes sparkled with something rare in Petrograd—happiness. I pressed my forehead against hers and whispered, loud enough for every Bolshevik corpse-in-waiting at the table to hear:
"I love you. Always. Even when we're up to our knees in blood, I'll still love you."
The room was silent. The gramophone hissed, needle scratching at the end of the record.
Trotsky looked scandalized, as if love itself were counter-revolutionary. Lenin coughed awkwardly, muttering something about "bourgeois sentimentality." Stalin swirled his glass and muttered, "Disgusting." Dzerzhinsky just stared, probably imagining how best to arrest jazz for crimes against order.
But Aleksandra smiled, and in that moment—between the smell of cabbage, the sound of jazz, and the eyes of history's greatest executioners watching me make a fool of myself—I didn't care.
Love in Petrograd: now that was the real revolutionary act.
The evening went on, the wine had loosened everyone's tongues, but not their politics. I sat back down at the table, still glowing from dancing with Aleksandra. She fussed over her hair, trying to tame it after my little stunt. Stalin glared at me like I had personally offended Georgian masculinity. Trotsky scribbled furiously in his notebook—"Decadent spectacle, jazz = counter-revolutionary bourgeois degeneration" no doubt.
I clapped my hands. "Iosif! Fetch the map, boy."
My eldest, recently turned eight, scurried off to the adjoining room and returned with the map of Europe I'd pinned and re-pinned so many times it looked like a butcher's apron. He laid it flat across the oak table, weighted at the corners by Lenin's glass, Stalin's fork, Trotsky's ego, and Dzerzhinsky's eternal frown.
The map was a mess of lines and scrawls, red ink for fronts, blue for rivers, little notes in my handwriting like 'Austro-Hungarians = drunk clowns' and 'French morale = corpse in a uniform.'
I tapped Petrograd with my finger.
"Comrades, let's talk reality. When we seize power—and we will—we need peace. Immediately. Not months of negotiations, not a people's committee of endless debates. Immediate. Peace. With Germany."
Trotsky scoffed. Stalin raised an eyebrow. Lenin's lips pursed like he'd bitten into a lemon. Aleksandra gave me the side-eye that meant: don't embarrass me in front of the bald one again.
I pressed on.
"It doesn't matter if we're seen as German puppets. We will be seen as German puppets, no matter what we do. But we'll have a civil war to fight, not a popularity contest. We sign the paper, hand over whatever Germany wants, and they pull their army out of Russia. Simple. Efficient. Humane, in the revolutionary sense."
Iosif giggled at that line. I ruffled his hair.
I pointed at the Western Front. "Now, here's the beauty of it. Germany moves their entire force back west. They start hammering the French, the British, and yes, maybe even march on Paris. If they do, the Entente will be too busy choking on baguettes to send a single rifle or man to Russia and help the reactionaries. We get our breathing space. We crush the counter revolution. We consolidate. By the time the Allies look east again, we'll be untouchable."
Stalin leaned forward, eyes glinting. "You're saying… let Germany bleed the Entente dry, while we take Russia. Then, we pick our borders back up again like nothing happened?"
I spread my arms. "Exactly. Germany is already dying. They've lost too many men. Their economy is a corpse propped up by bayonets. America—untouched, industrialized, hungry—will crush them. Germany cannot win the long game. So let's use the short game. We'll be free of war, armed with victory in civil war, and when Germany collapses, we take back whatever they stole. No one will stop us because we'll be the only ones left standing."
Silence. A long silence. The children watched from the side of the room like wide-eyed owls. Aleksandra refilled her glass, muttering, "My husband, the genius. Or lunatic. Hard to tell."
Lenin finally spoke, his voice low and deliberate. "You propose…surrender before victory. Peace at any price. You would hand over half of Russia."
I grinned. "An exaggeration, more like 10, maybe 20 percent at most. Amputate a hand for the body to survive. Amputate or die, comrade. That's the choice."
Trotsky snapped, slamming his notebook shut. "This is surrender dressed up as strategy! You would make us slaves of Germany. The revolution would be spat on by every worker in Europe!"
Stalin chuckled darkly. "Let the workers spit. They can spit on us from Paris when the Germans march through it."
That got a laugh from me. Trotsky's face turned crimson.
Lenin stroked his chin, eyes darting across the map. "You are both wrong and right. A revolution shackled to Germany is no revolution at all… but neither is a revolution drowned in blood before it has teeth. A tactical retreat. Hm."
Dzerzhinsky finally spoke, voice flat as stone. "Practical. Cruel, but practical. Our enemies are everywhere. We cannot fight a war on many fronts. And peace would free us to focus on… internal matters." He adjusted his cuffs like he was tightening a noose.
My mother—God bless her Orthodox soul—crossed herself and muttered, "You are all devils."
Iosif tugged at my sleeve. "Papa, does this mean we'll win?"
I looked at him, then at the table full of men who'd one day drown the world in terror, and I smiled.
"Yes, my son. We'll win. And one day you'll tell your children how we sold part of Russia to save the rest. And they'll laugh about it over khachapuri."
Stalin smirked. "If there are children left."
Trotsky muttered, "Asiatic barbarism," for the third time that evening.
Lenin sighed, as if Atlas himself had just asked for help carrying the world. "We will discuss this further. But…" He tapped the map. "There is a ruthless logic here. We must survive first. Everything else is secondary."
Aleksandra clinked her glass against mine. "To ruthless logic, then."
The children laughed, not understanding.
And for one brief, wine-soaked moment, the future of Russia—the blood, the betrayals, the gulags, the famine—was decided over jazz, khachapuri, and an eight-year-old holding a map with sticky fingers.