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

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Render unto Caesar New
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    • October 8, 1917
    Petrograd, Russia
    Afternoon

    Father Sergey Eldarevich Patruchev swept the stone steps of his church with the slow, practiced rhythm of habit. It was the same work he had done for years: sweeping the entrance, scrubbing soot off the brass railings, patching leaks in the roof when they came, preparing for the next mass. Being a priest was not a job but a life — prayers and liturgies, feast days and burials, sermons and confessions, and, when no one was looking, sweeping dust from the church's cracked old flagstones.

    And now, even after revolution had turned the city upside down, the work went on. Masses still needed saying, candles still needed trimming, icons still needed dusting. The prayers remained the same — only the world outside had changed.

    But the change stood guard at his very door. Four men in black coats and red armbands loitered there, rifles slung across their shoulders, the new masters of the street. The Revolutionary Guard Corps. They said they were there to "protect" the church, and every other church, mosque, synagogue, and temple in Petrograd. Protect — a strange word, Sergey thought. Soldiers with bayonets rarely came to protect. They came to remind.

    He bent to sweep the steps again, the broom whispering against stone, when he heard the sound that made his stomach tighten: the boots. A hundred times he had heard them, heavy and deliberate, the thudding march of men drilled to stomp the earth in unison. The goose-step of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

    He froze. He knew who it would be.

    It was not Sunday, but a Monday. Still, the man came. The man who had routed and butchered a Cossack host only two days ago. The man who, just yesterday, had sat in the confessional and described — with disarming cheer — how he had forced prisoners to kill their comrades with stones and bayonets if they wished to live. Sergey had thought then, as he thought now: only a monster could imagine such a thing.

    And then Mikheil Jugashvili appeared, he looked nothing like a monster. He walked with the confidence of a man who had never doubted his own steps, who smiled as if he were greeting friends on a summer morning, not dragging shadows behind him. He was short, but broad-shouldered, with neatly combed hair, a handsome face free of the pockmarks smallpox had carved into so many others. A man who looked more like a charming actor in a play than a butcher.

    "Father Patruchev, hello!" he said brightly, clapping Sergey on the shoulder as though they were old friends meeting at market. Without asking, he plucked the broom from Sergey's hand and passed it to one of his guards. "Sweep for him." The order was casual, like telling a servant to fetch tea. The Guard obeyed instantly, and Sergey could only stare as the man began to sweep, awkward and grim-faced with a rifle still slung over his back.

    "Come, Father," Mikheil said, ushering him inside. The doors shut behind them with a hollow echo, shutting out the city and leaving only candlelight.

    Sergey's throat was dry. "What… what brings you here, Comrade Jugashvili?"

    "I have a favor to ask of you."

    Here we go, Sergey thought. His fingers curled around the sleeves of his cassock, gripping tight.

    "What sort of favor?" he asked carefully.

    Mikheil leaned against a pew, smiling as if they discussed the weather. "Well, you see, I'm no longer just commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. I've been appointed head of the Commissariat of Religious Affairs."

    Sergey felt the blood drain from his face. The Commissariat of Religious Affairs. The name itself sounded like a warning.

    "Religious affairs?" he repeated, though he dreaded the answer.

    "Exactly." Mikheil nodded with mock solemnity, then brightened again. "My new job is very simple: register every church, mosque, temple, synagogue, and shrine in Petrograd. Make sure no one preaches counter-revolution. Just paperwork, really. Forms, signatures, stamps." He grinned. "The Almighty is no longer the only one keeping records."

    "I… I see." Sergey swallowed, too afraid to probe further.

    But Mikheil was already ahead of him, pacing between the pews like a man inspecting a factory floor. "Father, this is good news. For you, for your priests, for all of your faith. Because I'm not only in the commissariat now — I am a sitting member of the Central Committee. One of the most powerful men in the government. And, more importantly, the only one in there who practices the Orthodox faith."

    He turned suddenly, his smile fading to something harder. "Do you know what the others wanted to do with your church? With all the churches? With the mosques, the synagogues, the temples?"

    Sergey opened his mouth, but Mikheil cut him off, voice still cheerful but edged with iron.

    "They wanted to seize the land, confiscate the wealth, declare state atheism. Some even wanted to ban religion altogether. Imagine that! I told them it would be madness. People love their faith too much. Even with your… issues" — he waved a hand vaguely, as though the sins of the clergy were an untidy room — "you are a net positive for society. You keep the people calm, you bury the dead, you marry the living, you sing the songs that make them believe life isn't just shoveling manure until they die. That's valuable."

    He smiled again, bright and easy, as though he had just offered praise.

    "So I told them: leave religion alone. Let it exist, as long as it does not cause trouble. Which," he said, stepping closer, "is why I am here. I am here to offer you a job."

    Sergey blinked. "A… job?"

    "Exactly!" Mikheil's grin widened, his teeth flashing white. "I will be leaving the city on a mission. A secret mission. Very important, very dangerous. But while I'm gone, I need someone to run the Commissariat in my place. Someone who is respected, honest, apolitical. Who better than my priest?"

    He clapped Sergey on the back again, as though congratulating him. "You will be Under-Commissar for Religious Affairs. You'll do my job while I'm away."

    Sergey's hands tightened on the folds of his cassock. The candles flickered. Outside, the muffled scrape of a broom against stone continued.

    A job. He almost laughed at the word.

    Father Sergey swallowed. "You… you would make me a commissar?"

    "Under‑commissar," Mikheil corrected cheerfully, wagging a finger. "Let's not inflate titles. That's how tsars get made." He leaned back against the altar rail, hands clasped as though in prayer. "But yes. You. Who better? You're literate, sober, respected. The people listen to you when you talk. And unlike half my comrades, you don't smell like you've bathed in vodka and slept in a pigsty. You'd be surprised how rare that is in government."

    Sergey tried to answer but the words stuck. He thought of the council in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, of Peter and Paul debating how far one might bend before breaking. Could a priest serve Caesar without betraying Christ? Could he serve Bolsheviks without betraying God?

    Mikheil saw his hesitation and raised a hand as though calming a child. "Now, don't make that face. This isn't a bargain with the Devil, Father. I won't ask you to renounce God. No oaths, no spitting on icons, no parades of blasphemy. That was what the others wanted." He grinned. "I told them that was idiotic. Why pick a fight with Heaven when you already have so many on Earth?"

    He took a step closer, his boots clicking softly on the stone floor. "The only pledge required is simple: you do not preach counter‑revolution. No sermons about wicked Bolsheviks, no 'anointed tsars,' no muttering about God's vengeance on the proletariat. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, render unto Lenin what is Lenin's." He chuckled. "Same difference."

    Sergey stiffened. "And… render unto God?"

    "Oh, absolutely," Mikheil said warmly, as if reassuring a nervous guest. "You may render unto God all the incense, prayers, and funeral hymns you want. Keep the peasants pious, give them something to believe in beyond bread rations and cold barracks. That's useful. That's stabilizing. But…" His smile thinned. "If you start talking about a 'Holy War' against us, Father, then I'll have to nail your wife to the church door. And believe me, even Luther never tried that."

    Sergey's heart pounded. He wanted to shout that the Church belonged to God alone, that Christ had no equal in Lenin or in Caesar. But he was staring into the eyes of a man who had forced Cossacks to kill their own brothers with their bare hands. A man who smiled as he spoke of it, who smelled faintly of wine and soap but carried death around him like incense.

    "And the Party?" Sergey asked carefully.

    "Yes," Mikheil said, clapping his hands once. "The Party. You will have to join. But think of it this way: You don't even have to believe. Just sign the book, stand when they say stand, clap when they say clap. We don't need your heart, Father, just your silence."

    He leaned forward, his voice dropping lower, almost intimate. "And really, what is one more pledge? You already wear a cassock and call yourself a servant of God. Is it so hard to add another line? 'Servant of God, loyal member of the Party'? Seems manageable."

    Sergey's palms were sweating. He wanted to refuse. But behind Mikheil's easy grin he saw the corpses at Pulikovo Heights, the eyes of men forced to kill their own brothers, the news that even the Junkers had been butchered to the last cadet under Dzerzhinsky's hand.

    Mikheil spread his arms as though concluding a sermon. "So here's the good news: your church stays open, your flock keeps their sacraments, and your God gets His incense. All you have to do is help out the Party while you're at it." He winked. "Metaphorically."

    Sergey thought of the guard outside, awkwardly pushing a broom over stone steps with a rifle at his back. He thought of Christ silent before Pilate.

    Father Sergey then swallowed, fingers tight around his wooden cross. He had expected blasphemy, desecration, some grotesque oath to the Devil dressed up in Bolshevik red. Instead, Mikheil spoke with the ease of a man ordering dinner.

    "You look tense, Father. Don't." Mikheil smiled, all teeth, his eyes too sharp to be friendly. "Let me reassure you once again, I'm not asking you to spit on God or burn your icons. That's not my game. No midnight orgies with goat‑headed idols, no tearing Bibles into toilet paper. Your job will be boring. Census work." He mimed writing on an invisible ledger. "Every church, every mosque, every synagogue — counted, registered, filed away like good livestock."

    Sergey flinched at the word.

    "Soft secularism, Father," Mikheil continued, as if he were explaining tax law to a child. "French style. Reasonable. The churches will keep their properties. No bonfires of relics, no nuns thrown into the streets. But…" He raised a finger. "Those properties will be taxed. Their schools, charities, hospitals — still yours, still church‑run. But the Party will have men inside. Not to preach, not to interfere, just to make sure you're healing bodies, not fermenting counter‑revolution in the back pews. Think of it like the jizya under Islam, only gentler. Less whips for believers, more clipboards for administrators."

    He leaned closer, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "And the taxes will be reasonable, Father. Not the old tsarist extortions. Just enough to remind you who's boss." He tapped Sergey's chest lightly with a gloved finger. "Spoiler alert: it's us."

    Sergey forced himself to speak. "And if… if I refuse?"

    Mikheil laughed, a quick bark that echoed against the church walls. "Refuse? Oh, Father, I would be upset. I would have to hand your file to Zinoviev or Kamenev, and they'd get their wish — shutter the churches, confiscate the land, turn your altars into pig troughs. They've been pushing state atheism since day one. They'd burn you all for kindling if I let them. But I argued you were useful. That people love you too much to lose you. And for now, Lenin listens. For now."

    Sergey felt his mouth go dry. "So… I am only spared by your favor?"

    "Yes!" Mikheil beamed, as though announcing a prize. "Exactly. And you know why? Because you're the only priest I know well enough not to bore me. I'd have picked Father Saba from my hometown back in Georgia — kind man, used to slip me wine from the chalice when I was a boy — but Georgia is too far away and this is urgent." He shrugged. "So here you are. My priest. My under‑commissar."

    Sergey lowered his head, staring at the floorboards. He thought of Christ's warning: render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's. Mikheil had twisted that verse until it bent around the Party like iron around a wheel. He had offered survival in exchange for silence, power in exchange for complicity.

    Mikheil, seeing his hesitation, patted him on the shoulder. "Father, this is compromise. Compromise keeps people alive. You preach the Gospel, we audit the books. You bury the dead, we collect the taxes. No one has to die. Unless, of course, you choose otherwise."

    Sergey raised his eyes and saw the smile — warm, easy, casual — but behind it lay Pulikovo Heights, the corpses, the blood in the mud.

    And he understood then, with dreadful clarity, that Mikheil's offer was not mercy. It was a trap disguised as mercy, a noose dressed up as a handshake.

    But still, he heard his own voice, hollow and faint, say: "I accept."

    Mikheil clapped his hands together, delighted. "Wonderful! God stays God, Lenin stays Lenin, and I get to sleep at night without worrying about your sermons turning my men into holy martyrs. Everybody wins!"

    Sergey nodded stiffly, wondering if Heaven would ever forgive him.

    Father Sergey braced himself for blasphemy, for the sneer of the atheist who despises all faith. Instead, Mikheil leaned back against the pew, casual as a parishioner waiting for vespers.

    "Father, you're thinking too hard. You look like you swallowed a live frog." He chuckled. "Let me put you at ease for the third time now. The churches will be free to do as they please — bells ringing, incense burning, icons kissed, the whole package — so long as they don't preach counter‑revolution. That's the line in the sand. Pray for the poor, feed the hungry, lecture about sin all you like. Just don't sermonize about overthrowing the workers' state, and we'll get along famously."

    Sergey blinked, uncertain if it was kindness or bait.

    Mikheil's smile widened. "In fact, I've already passed a few decrees as commissar. You'll like this one: attacking or desecrating a place of worship? Punishable by service in a punishment brigade. Digging trenches in the Arctic, sweeping mines in the Baltic. Very educational work. And murdering priests, imams, rabbis, or any other holy men?" He raised a finger like a schoolteacher. "Capital offense. Immediate execution. No appeals. Bullet to the head, straight justice."

    Sergey's heart gave a sudden, bewildered lurch. It was protection, yes — protection by threat of iron and gunpowder.

    "And here's my favorite," Mikheil said, lowering his voice as though sharing a family secret. "Speaking badly of any religion in public — any religion — is punishable by whipping. Twenty lashes for the first offense, forty for the second, and if they still don't learn their manners, well…" He shrugged. "Whips can be remarkably persuasive. Nothing like a welted back to remind you to keep your clever little mouth shut."

    Sergey stared, trying to reconcile the warm, almost jovial tone with the savagery of the laws. Mikheil spoke as if he were describing a new school curriculum, not state violence wrapped in a smile.

    The commissar tapped the arm of the pew. "See, Father? I'm your best friend in that Central Committee. Zinoviev wanted to seize your churches and turn them into canteens. Kamenev wanted to burn the relics. Trotsky, well, Trotsky just sneers — I think he finds God unfashionable. But me? I put laws in place. Hard laws. Laws that make harming you a capital offense. Laws that keep the mobs at bay. It's protection money, really. Think of me as your patron saint with a revolver."

    Sergey's lips moved before he realized he was speaking. "And what does Heaven make of such protection?"

    Mikheil's grin sharpened. "Heaven can lodge a complaint with Lenin, Father. Until then, you've got me."
     
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    • Alenco98 said:
    Speaking badly of any religion in public — any religion — is punishable by whipping. Twenty lashes for the first offense, forty for the second, and if they still don't learn their manners, well…" He shrugged. "Whips can be remarkably persuasive. Nothing like a welted back to remind you to keep your clever little mouth shut."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I'm sure the good father noticed the unspoken subtext that this law also affects the church once the first holy man decides to try to convert and denounce other faiths only to watch as the guards in the corners begin to march towards him and the Cloister looks on in fear as he is whipped for all to see
     
    Thanks for the chapter, wordsmith.
     
    Trans Siberian slog New
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    • The year is 1917, the Tsar has just been overthrown. Outside of the Smolny institute. A man walks up to the guards and requests a letter be delivered, that man was Mikheil Jugashvili. And that letter marked the beggining of his rapid rise through the Bolsheviks.

    -Intro from Spartan761-History's YouTube video on the life of Mikheil Jugashvili titled: The Red Richelieu

    October 16, 1917
    Finland Station
    Petrograd, Russia
    Morning

    I stood on the platform outside the train, watching steam hiss from the great iron beast that would haul me and five hundred weary men eastward to Tobolsk. Our destination: a frozen Siberian backwater where the Romanovs sat waiting in their gilded exile, like a porcelain tea set wrapped in rags.

    The journey, on paper, was simple. Ride the Trans-Siberian to Tyumen, then hopefully take a couple of river barges several hundred kilometers north through endless forests and swamps until we reached Tobolsk. That was if the rivers weren't frozen yet which given the state of Russia I wouldn't be surprised if they were and we had to walk so I had bear go heavy on the supplies. Simple, yes—like hammering nails into your own coffin. The only difference was, instead of pine, ours would be snow.

    Still, I allowed myself a small consolation: I'd get to ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Tsar built it as a monument to imperial grandeur, and now it was ferrying revolutionaries eastward to retrieve his family. History is never without a sense of humor, but in Russia it's always a little crueler than funny.

    Not that I'd spent the last few weeks idling. No, I'd been busy. I had helped Aleksander expand and formalize what we generously called a "war economy" with Lenin's blessing. Someone had to organize the tax collectors, because bullets and bread don't grow on trees, and every revolution eventually needs men with ledgers as much as men with rifles.

    Dzerzhinsky's National Guard, technically the new police force, were our collectors. We'd swelled their ranks to nearly ten thousand in Petrograd in just a few weeks. That took work—mainly a recruitment campaign among all the old cops we hadn't shot or who hadn't defected to Trotsky. Nothing motivates loyalty like a choice between a rifle, a paycheck, or a shallow grave.

    They now patrolled the streets alongside my own Revolutionary Guard, which had grown to seven thousand. Together, our job was simple: collect taxes, oversee nationalization, and look frightening enough that no one thought to argue about either.

    Nationalization, though, was selective. We seized the big enterprises—dockyards, rail hubs, steelworks. The small businesses, we left alone. Shoemakers, fishmongers, the corner print shops—they were hardly worth the paperwork. As for criminal enterprises, well, those were now fully legalized, provided they paid their dues. Brothels, opium dens, gambling parlors, smuggling markets—all out in the open, flying the red flag of fiscal contribution.

    The result was a Petrograd unlike anything Europe had ever seen. In the open-air markets you could buy rifles by the crate, opium by the kilo, and rent a woman for the night—all with the convenience of government-issued receipts. "One hour of services rendered, glory to the Revolution." Morality had packed its bags and fled months ago, but the tax man never missed a payment. If that isn't socialism at work, I don't know what is.

    Meanwhile, we were delivering on our promises—or at least performing a convincing impression. Bread, peace, land. Land came first. We announced redistribution: no one in Russia could own more than three acres. Anything above that, the state confiscated and handed out to the landless. Three acres and a shovel—that was the new social contract.

    Of course, the kulaks and cossacks in Ukraine hated it. The Cossacks in the south of Russia were even less thrilled and the nobility was enraged. They revolted, naturally. But the peasants? They loved it. They embraced it with the fervor of drowning men clutching driftwood. Overnight, we had willing foot soldiers who saw us not as revolutionaries but as the deliverers of their long-awaited inheritance.

    The uprisings were inevitable, but they weren't mine to worry about. Those were Trotsky's mess. Let him deal with the Cossacks, Ukrainians, nobles and the stubborn kulaks. I was heading east to play nursemaid to the Romanovs.

    As for peace, Joe had been handed that poisoned chalice. Stalin was our negotiator with Germany. He approached it with all the gravity of a priest preparing a funeral sermon. My advice to him was blunt:

    "Anything they occupy, let them keep. If they want more, let them have it—but only if they can invade it and hold it. Remind them the Americans are in the war now, and every day they waste bargaining over scraps is another day they lose the chance to knock France out before Yankee boots come stomping across Europe. If vanity and greed blind them, so much the better—we'll be the corpse that drags them down with us. And if they insist on having Ukraine tell them we will burn down every grain field we can find before they get their hands on it and no one would be satisfied. Guarantee them grain though, it's the only reason they even want Ukraine."

    Everyone else treated this like destiny, like we were shaping the future of mankind. They whispered and schemed in tones of solemn urgency, as though God himself had drafted our meeting minutes. But I couldn't help myself—I laughed. Outwardly, I kept my face straight; inwardly, I saw it for what it was: the world's bleakest comedy.

    Five hundred armed men, bound for Siberia, to guard a royal family that everyone secretly wanted dead but no one wanted to kill. A capital city kept alive by prostitutes, opium, and stolen rifles. A revolution that survived less on ideology and more on taxes from brothels. And everyone around me acted as if this were the will of history, fate made manifest.

    Maybe they were right. Maybe this was destiny. But if so, destiny was drunk, blind, and laughing at its own joke.

    But enough about revolutions, taxes, and nationalizations. This morning wasn't about politics—it was about family.

    First was Mama, Keke. Pious as ever, whispering prayers for me and Joe, as though a thousand Hail Marys could wash away the blood on my hands. These last few months I had racked up a kill count and temperament that would make the Joker himself throw his arms up and mutter, "Alright bro, calm down, you're stealing my act."

    She took my face in her hands, drew the sign of the cross over me with trembling fingers, and whispered, "You stay safe out there."

    I smiled, because that's what sons do when their mothers beg God to protect mass murderers. "I'll try, Mama." Then I hugged her, inhaling the faint scent of incense she always carried, like the church had branded itself into her skin. Over her shoulder, Joe scowled, as if every act of tenderness was a bourgeois indulgence.

    "Remember your confession," she added sternly, "go to church often, and show mercy."

    Yes, Mama, I'll make sure to show mercy—right after I'm done hauling a dethroned royal family across Siberia with five hundred armed men.

    Next came Aleksandra, leaving baby Besarion with Mama before throwing her arms around me and kissing me so passionately the station guards pretended not to see. She pulled back just enough to whisper, "Try not to get yourself killed, you lunatic."

    "No promises," I said with a grin, then gave her backside a firm slap. She laughed, even as Joe glared at me like I had just spit on Marx's grave.

    Then it was Aleksander, my brother-in-law—the man who simultaneously ran our war economy/criminal syndicate, proving once and for all that capitalism and communism weren't enemies, just awkward cousins at the same family dinner. He embraced me and muttered, "It'll be less fun without you."

    "Joe's got a unique sense of humor," I said with mock solemnity. "You'll be fine." Then I clapped him on the back so hard I nearly knocked the breath out of him.

    After that, it was time for the children's parade.

    Yakov, eyes wide and expectant, asked, "Will you bring back a present, Uncle Mikheil?"

    "If I can steal something shiny from the Romanovs, I'll bring it back," I winked. Who says class warfare can't double as a gift shop?

    Next came Iosif, tugging at my coat. "Papa… are you sure I can't go with Uncle Joe?"

    Joe once again stiffened at being called uncle Joe. He hated it—made him look soft. Which is exactly why I ignored his glare. "The front's too dangerous," I told the boy. "But when I get back, I'll teach you to shoot a rifle."

    His face lit up like Christmas morning. "Really?!"

    "Really. You'll be a fine marksman." I ruffled his hair, already imagining the day he'd shoulder a Mosin-Nagant taller than he was.

    Then came Kato. She was nervous, biting her thumb, her stutter tripping over her words. Seven years old, and already carrying anxiety like a family heirloom. "P-pa-papa...will you bring b-b-back a m-m-model plane?"

    I crouched down and hugged her tightly. "I will. And when I do, you'll be the terror of the skies. Just promise me you'll keep studying, even if the schools are closed. Textbooks are still your weapon."

    "I-I'll try, Papa."

    "Good girl." I pinched her cheeks gently before sending her off.

    Then it was Aleksander, already more bookish than practical. "If there are any rare books out there, could you bring me one? I just finished reading about Napoleon's invasion. Something else like that would be nice."

    "Always with the books," I sighed, hugging him tightly. "Fine. If I find one, it's yours. If not, you'll have to settle for an autographed icon of Tsar Nicholas."

    Finally, I turned to Joe.

    "Make sure they're safe while I'm gone," I said, patting his shoulder. "You're in charge of the Guard here. They're good men, loyal. You're the only one I can trust with this."

    He just nodded, stone-faced, as though emotion were a disease he refused to contract.

    I leaned closer. "And remember what I told you about the treaty. I believe in you." Then, in a moment that shocked everyone on the platform, I lunged forward and wrapped him in a bear hug.

    He stiffened immediately, his face twitching between surprise, annoyance, and something dangerously close to embarrassment. "Stay safe, Joe," I whispered, "I don't want to be forced to save your life a third time."

    I pulled back, smirking at his discomfort. "And for God's sake, loosen up when you're with my family. We're not your enemies in the party. I'll see you soon."

    The look he gave me could have curdled milk, but I boarded the train before he could lecture me. Sliding into my quarters, I allowed myself one last laugh. Here we were, a family of revolutionaries, criminals, zealots, and misfits—and somehow, I was the one headed to guard the royal family.

    October 16–November 20, 1917
    On the rails and rivers of Holy Russia

    You'd think taking 500 men across Russia would feel like leading an army. It didn't. It felt like babysitting a particularly smelly choir that couldn't keep time, couldn't sing, and occasionally bayoneted the wrong people when drunk. We left Petrograd with banners flying, rifles stacked neatly, boots polished — within two hours half of them were asleep in the hay wagons and the other half were already trying to steal vodka off the commissary car.

    The train itself was a miracle of Russian engineering: meaning it shook like a drunken epileptic every ten minutes, the stove smoked us like bacon, and half the wheels sounded like they were planning a suicide pact. I stole my binoculars off a dead Provisional officer, but I swear I should've stolen his cushions too — my ass will never forgive those wooden benches.

    I kept morale up by walking through the carriages, cracking jokes and handing out sunflower seeds like I was everyone's favorite uncle — which, I suppose, I am. The men love me, probably because I actually pay them. You'd be amazed what regular wages, hot meals, and the occasional opportunity to loot will do for revolutionary zeal.

    We crawled eastward like lice on a peasant's scalp. The timetable said we'd hit Moscow in two days. It took three and a half, because apparently when you're trying to move an armed battalion through a collapsing empire you have to keep stopping for deserters on the tracks, broken rails, and the occasional rumor of anarchists stealing locomotives.

    Lenin said to me before we left: "Mikheil, you must reach Tobolsk with haste." And I said: "Of course, Comrade. I'll just flap my arms very hard and fly there instead." He didn't laugh. He never laughs. Miserable man.

    By the time we hit Yekaterinburg my men had invented three new card games, two venereal diseases, and at least one folk song about me personally that I'm sure will get me excommunicated if anyone ever writes down the lyrics. Every time we stopped for water or coal, locals came out and stared at us like we were circus animals. Which, to be fair, we were — just a circus with more bayonets and fewer clowns. (Well, fewer clowns if you don't count Trotsky, but I digress.)

    Finally, we rolled into Tyumen. Beautiful city, if you like mud, drunkards, and horses that look suicidal. From there came the real fun: no rails to Tobolsk, the river Irtysh was frozen, so we walked.

    Do you know how long it takes to have 500 men walk through hundreds of kilometers of muddy roads in the middle of Siberia just as fall is starting to turn into winter, with us having to haul carriages full of supplies and gold for bribing red guards? Too long. The men hated it. Mosquitos, campfires, foraging and hunting for wildlife, the cold, the occasional the bandit getting cocky and trying to fuck with us. I told them not to worry, if they died at least they wouldn't have to listen to me singing anymore. That got a laugh, though I wasn't joking.

    At night, we made campfires on the riverbank and gave speeches about duty and glory. Then I challenged them to wrestling matches and let myself lose once in a while so they'd feel proud. Revolutionary Guard morale trick: beat your commander, feel like a hero. (Never mind that I could've broken most of their necks in two seconds.)

    We reached the gates of Tobolsk around November 20th, tired, dirty, and smelling like the inside of a drunk priest's cassock. But alive. And ready. I stood outside the city gates and told them all, "Comrades! Here we are. The Romanovs await. If you're lucky, maybe you'll get to meet an emperor. If you're unlucky, you'll die first. But either way, you'll get a story for your grandchildren!"

    They cheered. Idiots. Lovely, loyal idiots.

    November 20, 1917
    Tobolsk, Russia

    We made our way into Tobolsk like a touring band nobody asked for but everyone had to host anyway. Down icy streets, past peasants with dead eyes, straight to the governor's mansion — the grand provincial cage where the Romanovs were kept like rare zoo animals.

    Step one was the local Red Guard committee. On paper, they answered to Trotsky. In reality, they were a collection of sullen drunks with rifles, suspicious of outsiders and jealously guarding their little Siberian fiefdom. Nominal revolutionaries. Actual extortionists.

    Which, naturally, meant bribery.

    I opened the chests — neat stacks of gold, vodka by the barrel, salted fish, even some contraband cigarettes. You could practically watch their proletarian rage dissolve into proletarian gratitude in real time. Five minutes earlier, their leader had been frowning at me like I'd pissed in his soup. Ten minutes later, he was practically begging to shine my boots. "Yes, comrade Makarov, sir, the Romanovs are in the mansion. Would you like us to fluff your pillows? Polish your bayonet? Massage your balls?"

    Bribery. A tale as old as time. As old as prostitution, as old as monarchy, as old as bad taste. Sometimes I think about it the way I think about music: everyone pretends to have principles, but in the end, everyone just wants the same old chorus. Like Akina Nakamori's song Oh No, Oh Yes. You can pretend you're listening for the artistry, but let's be honest — it's just about mood and seduction. Same with bribery. No one cares about the ideology, just the rhythm of coins dropping in their hand.

    Satisfied, we moved on.

    The mansion loomed ahead — still impressive, though frost and poverty had made it less a palace and more a mausoleum with delusions of grandeur. I shed my black coat with its red armband, peeled off my bulletproof vest and helmet. Presentation mattered. Walk into a room armored and you look like a soldier. Walk in stripped down, smiling, and you look like a man in control.

    I rapped on the heavy oak door. A servant answered — around my wife's age, a little fatter though, but pretty. Pretty in that provincial, doomed way.

    "Who are you?" she asked.

    "Me?" I smiled, polite as a banker foreclosing on a widow. "I'm here to retrieve the Romanovs." My Russian always came out slightly Georgian, a rolling growl that made peasants nervous. "Mikheil Jugashvili. Commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Dispatched with men from the new government to escort the family to Petrograd. Safer there. Within our reach." I tilted my head toward the street, where a dozen heavily armed guards stood in the snow like patient executioners. "I'd suggest you fetch them while I'm still playing nice." I pulled out my revolver and waved it around. That got the message.

    Her lips quivered. She nodded, fled.

    A few minutes later, I was ushered into the mansion's living room. It smelled of candle wax and faded dignity. And there they were, the living relics of a crumbling dynasty: Nicholas Romanov, looking like a man perpetually caught between constipation and revelation; Alexandra, gaunt but still clinging to her faded German hauteur; five pale, nervous children lined up like broken porcelain dolls; and even a little dog, a spaniel — absurd, ridiculous, and somehow the most regal creature in the room.

    "Hello there," I said cheerfully, waving as though we were neighbors at a garden party. My boots squeaked on the parquet. A few of my men followed in, rifles casually slung, eyes scanning every corner.

    "My name is Mikheil Jugashvili," I continued, my voice carrying the same false warmth as a host introducing a new track on late‑night radio. "I'm commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. I've been sent to escort you all back to Petrograd. You have 5 minutes to pack whatever you can carry." I clapped my hands. "Get to it."

    They stared at me in silence. The tsar blinked, bewildered, like he still hadn't processed that the country no longer belonged to him. Alexandra clutched her rosary tighter. The children looked at me like I was some nightmare creature that had crawled out of the forest.

    The dog wagged its tail.
     
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    • Thanks for the chapter, wordsmith.
     
    Romanov Delivery New
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    • Embassy of the United States of America
    Moscow, U.S.S.R.
    April 28, 1934

    Excerpt from Confidential Memorandum
    William Christian Bullitt, Jr., United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union

    "There are but two places in Moscow where the future course of Soviet policy—both foreign and domestic—is truly decided: in the Politburo, and at the dinner table of Mikheil Vissarionovich Jugashvili, Politburo member and brother to Chairman Stalin."

    November 20, 1917
    Tobolsk, Russia
    The Governor's Mansion

    Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov, once Tsar of All the Russias, was attempting to enjoy what passed for a pleasant afternoon in exile. He sat in the drawing room with his family, tea laid out, the children whispering among themselves, while the cold Siberian light filtered through the frost-caked windows. Pleasant, of course, was relative. How pleasant could life be after seeing the empire you once ruled torn apart by two revolutions in less than a year?

    He had followed events in Petrograd as best he could. Even here, far removed from the maelstrom, news filtered through: strikes, shootings, parades, mutinies. And always, in the center of the stories, the same name whispered with unease: the Revolutionary Guard. Their actions during the July Days, their efficiency against Kornilov's mutiny and recently outside Pukilovo heights—these tales spread through newspapers and rumor alike. They were not soldiers in the traditional sense, but something darker, hungrier.

    Now the man himself had arrived.

    Mikheil Jugashvili, in his black boots polished to a dull gleam, a revolver at his side, and behind him a detachment of the Guard. Their uniforms were stark and merciless—black tunics with red armbands, steel helms painted red and stenciled with the skull and crossbones. A deliberate choice, Nicholas realized. These men did not wish to inspire loyalty or respect, only fear.

    Nicholas and his family stood there. Their imperial bearing had not entirely abandoned them, even if the empire itself had.

    "Well?" he asked, struggling to keep his voice steady. "What are you waiting for? I would prefer to be in Petrograd before Christmas."

    Mikheil smiled—an expression that was all teeth, boyish on the surface, but with nothing warm behind it. He tilted his head as though considering whether to shoot them or not.

    "This is very sudden," Nicholas pressed, mustering the most cordial tone he could manage when speaking to what he considered a bandit in uniform. "We need more ti—"

    The sentence was cut short by a deafening crack. Mikheil had drawn his revolver with casual grace and fired a shot into the ceiling. Plaster dust fell like snow.

    The room erupted in gasps and yelps. Even the family dog scrambled under a chair, whining. The children clutched at their mother. Nicholas himself flinched despite every instinct to appear unshaken.

    And there Mikheil stood, the pistol lazily smoking in his hand, still smiling that smile. It was the sort of smile one might remember for years afterward, surfacing in dreams, in nightmares—mocking, amused, infinitely cruel.

    "I'm being very polite right now," Mikheil said in a friendly, conversational tone, as though discussing the weather. "You should be grateful. Next time I'll have my men bayonet your servants and the dog too. And not just in front of you but front of the children. That would certainly get everyone moving, don't you think?"

    He chuckled softly, shaking his head, almost as if Nicholas himself had suggested the idea. Then, without warning, his expression hardened, voice dropping into a flat, cold register.

    "Now start packing. Whatever you can carry. I am in a generous mood today, so I will allow you ten minutes. Ten minutes, Mr. Romanov. Use them wisely."

    The red-helmed guards shifted behind him, boots scraping against the wooden floor, bayonets glinting in the dim light.

    Nicholas swallowed. For the first time in his life, he felt the weight of being commanded rather than commanding.

    He quickly ushered his family down the corridor, his wife and daughters clutching their shawls, the boy Alexei pale and feverish, whispering weakly as they walked. In their rooms they scrambled to pack, the clumsy desperation of people trying to gather fragments of a vanished life. Clothes were hastily folded into suitcases, icons snatched from walls, a few silver frames and holy images tucked away. The family Bible, its pages worn thin from years of devotion, was pressed tightly into the Empress's arms.

    By the time they reached the front doors of the mansion, Mikheil was already there, leaning against the frame with the insolent ease of a man utterly in control. He tapped at the silver watch on his wrist with theatrical precision, his grin spreading as he looked them over.

    "Look at that," he drawled. "Nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Impressive, Mr. Romanov. Your family works well under pressure. I might start timing all my prisoners—make it into a sport. Now then—" he clicked the watch shut with a snap, "—follow us. You'll be escorted to Petrograd."

    The Guards shifted behind him, rifles at their sides, their skull-emblazoned helmets gleaming dully in the weak light. The Romanovs hesitated for a fraction of a second, as though the act of stepping outside the mansion sealed their fate. And perhaps it did.

    But before they could move further, a voice rang out behind them.

    "Wait!"

    Nicholas turned instinctively, startled. At the far end of the hall stood Eugene Botkin, the loyal court physician, clutching his hat in his hand, his face pale but resolute.

    Mikheil pivoted lazily, one eyebrow raised. His expression was somewhere between amusement and irritation, as though he had been interrupted during a game of cards.

    "Who's that?" he asked, not to Botkin but to Nicholas, as though the doctor were a piece of furniture.

    "That is Dr. Eugene Botkin," Nicholas replied stiffly. "The court physician."

    "Ah, a doctor," Mikheil said, drawing the word out. His eyes lit with mischief. "Perfect. Every caravan needs a healer. Saves bullets when the men get sick. Bring him."

    One of the Guards immediately strode forward, seizing Botkin by the arm. The doctor resisted briefly, but the soldier yanked him along until he stood face-to-face with Mikheil.

    "So, doctor," Mikheil said with mock cheerfulness. "You'll be coming with us after all. Was that what you wanted?"

    Botkin shook his head, glancing at the boy who stood pale and trembling beside his mother. His voice cracked slightly.

    "No. I am here to plead for the Tsarevich. He is sickly. He will not survive such a journey. Please, I beg you—let him remain until spring."

    Mikheil followed the physician's gaze to Alexei, then back to the man. His face betrayed nothing but mild curiosity.

    "It's not even winter yet," he said with a shrug. "If the boy is so delicate, we'll bundle him up in blankets, put him in a carriage. He'll be fine. Siberian air is good for the constitution."

    Botkin's shoulders sagged with frustration. "No, you don't understand. The boy suffers from hemophilia. He is too fragile to travel by cart or foot. A bump, a bruise—it could kill him. We must wait until spring, when the river unfreezes and transport is safer."

    Mikheil's eyes narrowed slightly in thought. "Hemophilia, eh? That's the one where you bleed to death from a pinprick, isn't it?"

    "Exactly!" Botkin exclaimed. "That is why I beg you not to risk it. His health cannot endure such a journey."

    "No, no, no," Mikheil said, wagging his finger as if scolding a child. "That won't do at all. I promised the Central Committee I'd deliver the whole royal family, not most of it. And I'm certainly not spending the winter in this frozen shithole just to coddle a boy who bruises like a peach."

    He began pacing, humming tunelessly under his breath, boots clicking against the wooden floor. His men watched him with the wary familiarity of soldiers used to their commander's moods. For nearly a minute he said nothing, only tapping the revolver against his thigh as though weighing it against some private thought.

    Then he stopped abruptly, nodding as though the solution had been obvious all along.

    "I've got it. We'll carry him. Stretchers—we've used them for the wounded before. Two strong men will bear the boy on their shoulders the whole way. We'll wrap him up in blankets, so many he'll look like a loaf of bread. Doctor, you can hover over him like a nursemaid and keep him alive. Problem solved."

    Botkin looked stricken. "I strongly advise against it. Even then, the danger is—"

    Mikheil cut him off with a wave of the hand. "Doctor, you don't understand, I am not staying here. Congratulations—you're now part of the royal procession. Consider it a promotion."

    He clapped the physician on the shoulder with mock camaraderie, his smile returning, sharp as a knife.

    "Now," he said brightly, "let's get moving. The road is waiting, and I would like to be back in Petrograd before the snow buries us all alive."

    November 20 – December 13, 1917
    The Road to Tyumen

    The march was agony. The column crept forward at a pace so slow it felt like mockery—boots sinking into mud, then scraping against the jagged ice of newly frozen roads. The rains of autumn had only just hardened into winter frost, and the trade felt less like deliverance than exchanging one poison for another. Mud had drowned their wheels; now the cold gnawed at their bones.

    Nicholas felt it most through Alexei. Every cough from his son was like a nail hammered into his chest. Every stumble from the stretcher bearers sent a surge of panic through him. The boy's frail body, wrapped in layer upon layer of blankets, seemed so slight it could disappear entirely into the cloth. The man who bore him, a hulking Guard Mikheil mockingly nicknamed Bear, strained beneath both the weight and the responsibility, his breath steaming in the frozen air. Nicholas watched him constantly, half expecting to see Alexei slip away at any moment.

    Supplies dwindled rapidly. Bread, flour, salt—gone within days. The Guards began to forage and hunt in the forests: roots, berries, thin deer, even the occasional bear. Fish hauled from icy streams were a rare blessing. To Nicholas's humiliation—and worse, to his wife's horror—the family was ordered to join the labor.

    He still remembered the day clearly. A stag had been shot, dragged into camp. His wife had covered her mouth with her sleeve at the stench, recoiling when a Guard handed her a knife.

    "I will do it," Nicholas offered, stepping forward, but Mikheil had sneered before he could even finish.

    "No, no. Let the bitch learn how the proletariat works."

    The Guards roared with laughter, jeering as Alexandra gagged while cutting into the animal, her hands trembling as she pulled steaming entrails from its carcass. Nicholas felt a rage then—cold, suffocating rage—that surprised even him. From that day on, fear had a companion in his heart: hate. Hate for Mikheil Jugashvili and his sneering black-helmeted Guards.

    The days stretched into a blur of misery. The cold only deepened. Snow began to fall in thin, needling sheets, stinging their faces, coating their boots in white crust. The first coughs started—light, nervous sounds from men in the column. But even a single cough sent Nicholas into icy terror. Each time, he looked down at Alexei, praying it wasn't his son next.

    Mikheil noticed too. He always noticed. He ordered the coughing men shoved to the rear of the column. "If they die, they die at the back," he said simply. But sickness, like snow, spread to all. Soon half the column was coughing, sneezing, burning with fever. Mikheil pressed them forward regardless. If a man collapsed, he was hurled into a carriage like a sack of grain.

    And then came the bandits.

    Nicholas had known Siberia was dangerous, but he had not expected this. A day without shots fired became a rare blessing. Hungry men, half-wolves themselves, threw themselves at the column with rifles and knives, desperate for the supplies or the carriages. But they had not reckoned with Mikheil Jugashvili.

    When the Guards captured them alive, Nicholas almost wished they had not.

    Mercy was alien to Mikheil. Those who surrendered quickly discovered that death on the battlefield would have been a gift. He devised punishments that chilled even his own soldiers. Bandits nailed to trees, screaming until their voices broke. Others drowned, forced beneath the icy river until the current claimed them. Some burned alive, their howls echoing through the forest night. Others dangled on their arms while naked for hours in slow hangings while Mikheil's men joked and smoked cigarettes as though attending a play and burning the prisoners bodies with the butts of it.

    And always—always—the Romanov family was forced to watch. Nicholas held his daughters close, turned Alexei's face into his shoulder, but still the sights, the sounds, the smells pressed in. There was no hiding from Mikheil's theater of cruelty.

    By the time they staggered into Tyumen on December 13, the column had been cut to pieces. Of the original 500 men, little more than 300 survived. The rest lay frozen in the forest, or rotted in shallow graves, or thrown into the river.

    Mikheil greeted the station at Tyumen with his usual cheer, as though they had merely finished a hunting trip.

    "Well," he said, clapping his gloves together as they prepared to board the Trans-Siberian. "The hard part is over. Let's get you all to Petrograd."

    He paused, almost theatrically, before flashing Nicholas that wolfish grin.

    "Good news from the front as well. The war ended three days ago. Looks like my brother managed to negotiate a peace with Germany."

    Nicholas blinked. "A brother?"

    "Oh, that's right," Mikheil said, feigning surprise. He snapped his fingers as if only just remembering. "I never told you. I've got an older twin. Quite the fellow. You'll hear all about him on the way. Now—" he gestured toward the train, "—get on. Petrograd awaits."
     
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    • Is there really such a desperate need that Mikheil couldn't resupply in Tobolsk?
    His men managed to walk there from Tyumen so they knew how much food they needed on the return trip even slowed by a baggage train.
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    On a second look it appears a drop in temperature lead to sickness among hundreds of men so that must have did it.
     
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    Burning men alive!? Why!?
    These were bandits in a wilderness, not soldiers to be absorbed into your army!
    It takes him from cold hearted monster to bloodthirsty maniac!
     
    Will they do a move like the Chinese did with their emperor ?
     
    Aggressive negotiations New
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    • November 26, 1917
    Brest Fortress, Brest-Litovsk
    German-Occupied Russia

    Stalin had arrived 2 weeks ago to oversee the implementation of the armastice, and in that time he has come to despise this place. The fortress stank of damp stone and the stale breath of the defeated. German boots echoed in the corridors, heavy and arrogant, as though to remind him at every turn that he was a guest only by the grace of their bayonets. The air itself seemed foreign—cold, clinical, disciplined in the Prussian manner he instinctively despised.

    His staff was a sorry collection. Many were former tsarist officials, men who had learned long ago to bow and scrape, and now shifted their allegiance to the red banner with all the grace of beggars seeking bread. Some were too terrified to meet his eyes, their gaze fixed on the ground as though afraid of provoking him. Others attempted flattery—transparent, pitiful efforts to assure him of their loyalty. Stalin hated them both equally: the cowards who trembled at the sight of him, and the sycophants who thought words could purchase survival.

    At least he had the Revolutionary Guard at his side. They were Mikheil's men, handpicked and disciplined in a way that made them stand apart from the ragged ranks of most Bolshevik detachments Trotsky was trying to turn into an army; the exception being Dzerzhinsky's men. Their presence steadied the atmosphere around him. Whatever else could be said about Mikheil—and there was much to say—his men were reliable. Loyal. They obeyed without hesitation. If Stalin gave the order to have a man shot in the corridor, they would do it before the echo faded. That alone gave him a measure of comfort.

    And yet it was galling. These were not his men, but Mikheil's. This entire position—Commissar for Foreign Affairs, chief negotiator of the Bolshevik delegation—was not the fruit of his own climb, but the product of Mikheil's insistence towards Lenin. Without him, you would still be writing articles in Pravda, a voice in Stalin's head sneered. He loathed the thought. He owed too much to his brother. Dependence was a chain, and Stalin would never allow himself to be chained. Not forever.

    Even the servants were Mikheil's choice. They moved quietly, almost invisibly, attending to his meals, his clothes, his quarters. Stalin suspected them all the same. Poison could be slipped into a bowl of soup as easily as sugar, and a whispered word to the Germans could undo more than an army. Still, they had been vetted, tested. If Mikheil trusted them, they were likely trustworthy. Likely. Stalin reminded himself never to mistake "likely" for "certain." Trust, in politics and in life, was the luxury of fools. And he was no fool.

    Mikheil himself was a different matter. Twice in his life, he had saved Stalin from death. First, as boys in Gori, when a horse cart came careening down the street and Mikheil dragged him aside at the last instant. And then during the revolution, when a soldiers rifle cracked down the hall and Mikheil pushed him to the ground before Stalin even realized the danger. He still remembered the smell of the powder, the suddenness of his fall, and Mikheil's half-smile as he got up again.

    Stalin despised being in another man's debt. Gratitude was a weight heavier than iron, and it bent a man's spine if he carried it too long. Yet he could not deny it: without Mikheil, he would already be dead. And now, here he was, sitting in the fortress of the enemy, charged with negotiating the peace of the new Soviet state, his life secured and his position elevated because of his brother. The thought curdled in his stomach like spoiled milk.

    Still, Stalin knew himself well enough to accept this truth: debts could be repaid. A brother's loyalty today could be transformed into obligation tomorrow. And if Mikheil thought he had bound Stalin to him forever, he would learn—as so many before him had learned—that Stalin's gratitude was never permanent, only provisional.

    For now, though, the matter was survival, and survival required peace. The Germans thought themselves masters of this fortress, but Stalin knew better. He had survived seminary priests, gendarmes, exile in Siberia, hunger, betrayal, and bullets. He would survive Brest-Litovsk too. The Germans believed they were negotiating with a beaten people. Soon enough, they would discover that Russia—even in chains—was never so simple to bind.

    That evening he found himself seated at a long oak table opposite Prince Leopold of Bavaria, the German commander of the Eastern Front. A banquet was laid out before them, silver cutlery gleaming beneath chandeliers that seemed too ornate for a city that had been reduced to ashes. Stalin looked around the hall and thought it obscene—this ridiculous farce staged in a fortress within a city the Tsarist army itself had burned to the ground during its retreat. Here they sat, carving goose and pouring wine, while outside the walls the peasants still starved in the mud. The aristocracy could always be counted upon to feast on ruins, Stalin thought.

    Prince Leopold smiled often, a courteous man, polite in the Bavarian style, but beneath the genial surface Stalin detected the same stench of arrogance that clung to every aristocrat. Their kind wore the same expression whether they were in Tiflis, Vienna, or Munich: the face of a man convinced the world was made to bow before him. The prince's questions, filtered through Stalin's translator, were disarmingly simple—about the revolution, about the Bolsheviks, about Lenin. He seemed genuinely curious, yet it was the curiosity of a master speaking to what he assumed was a peasant servant.

    Stalin played the part required of him. He exchanged pleasantries, answered curtly where needed, let the translator soften the edges of his Georgian accent into Russian and then into German. Outwardly, he gave the impression of a man tolerant of the evening's necessity. Inwardly, his thoughts churned.

    He thinks this banquet is a stage, that I am an actor in his play, bowing to the old rituals of court and campaign. He thinks this food, this wine, is a kindness. He does not see that all of it is useless. Tomorrow we decide whether his army continues its war in the East or not. Tomorrow he will learn that the peasants and workers of Russia are not so easily moved by goose and ceremony.

    The evening blurred for him as it went on. He did not remember much of what was said or how long it lasted. He went through the motions—lifting his glass when the moment demanded it, offering the occasional sharp remark, nodding when addressed. None of it mattered. The real war, the real struggle, would begin in the negotiation chamber tomorrow. Words spoken tonight were smoke. Tomorrow's words would be iron.

    Still, he observed. He always observed.

    At the far end of the table sat the true players. Richard von Kühlmann, Germany's Foreign Minister, his expression thin and watchful, the calculating mind of a bureaucrat who measured each phrase like coin before spending it. Beside him, Count Ottokar Czernin of Austria-Hungary, a man already fraying at the edges, carrying the weary, desperate air of an empire rotting from within. The Ottomans had sent both their Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha, and Foreign Minister Nassimy Bey. Stalin regarded them coolly: men who thought themselves rulers of Islam but who in truth were German clients wrapped in turbans. The Bulgarians had dispatched Minister of Justice Popoff, later joined by their Prime Minister, Vasil Radoslavov. Both looked as though they were overeating at someone else's table, which in truth they were.

    Stalin studied each face, each posture, each careless gesture.

    Kühlmann will be the most dangerous. He is a man of detail, a spider counting the threads of his web. Czernin is weaker—Austria is bleeding, hungry for peace. He can be pulled apart with a little pressure. Talaat Pasha is a murderer who believes himself a statesman. Men like him are predictable: appeal to their pride and they will overreach. The Bulgarians? Tools, nothing more. They dance when Berlin plays the music. And Prince Leopold—he smiles, but smiles are only teeth. Let him smile while he can.

    The banquet droned on. Toasts were raised, the Germans and their allies congratulating one another on their victories, their conquests, their fine coordination. Stalin lifted his glass when required, though in his heart he despised the ritual. To him it was nothing but aristocratic theater, the clinking of glasses a substitute for real strength. We will see how their confidence endures tomorrow, when I place the grain of Ukraine before them like a pistol on the table.

    He sat, silent, his face carefully blank, but inside his mind the voice was relentless. This is all spectacle. Tomorrow is substance. Tomorrow they will expect a supplicant. Tomorrow they will discover a negotiator who speaks for a state that does not beg. And if I must lie, threaten, or stall, I will. I will give them enough to choke on, but never enough to kill the revolution.

    He sipped the wine again and placed the glass down carefully. Tomorrow the real battle started. Tonight, he endured.

    --------

    November 27, 1917
    Brest Fortress, Brest-Litovsk
    German-Occupied Russia

    The morning came gray and cold, the fortress walls sweating with frost. Stalin entered the conference room with his delegation in silence, his boots echoing against the stone. The long table was already crowded: Germans on one side, their allies fanned out beside them, like courtiers arranged around a throne. Stalin noted at once how Kühlmann had positioned himself directly opposite him—a deliberate move, the mark of a man who saw himself as the true master of the proceedings.

    They began with the same nonsense as the night before. Kühlmann rose, speaking through his translator, thanking all parties for attending, offering the obligatory remarks about "historic opportunity" and "lasting peace." Another quick toast followed, as if glasses of wine could disguise the reality that this was not a dinner but a dissection table, with Russia splayed across it. Stalin did not smile. He raised his glass, swallowed the wine, and waited.

    Then the negotiations began.

    Kühlmann, with his lawyer's precision, asked the essential question through the interpreter: What are Russia's conditions for peace?

    Stalin leaned forward, his face impassive, his voice low but steady. He spoke Russian, letting the translator carry the weight of his words across the table.

    "Russia," he said, "is willing to cede all territories presently occupied by the German and Austrian forces. You have taken them, and you may keep them. We will not contest what is already in your hands. We are willing to return to the previous borders within the Caucasus despite the upper hand we hold in the region. As for reparations—" he paused deliberately, watching Kühlmann's eyes narrow—"we understand both Germany and Austria are facing food shortages. Your people are hungry. Your armies must be fed. We are willing to guarantee grain shipments from Russia and Ukraine in place of reparations."

    The words hung in the air, flat, heavy, final. Stalin let them settle like stones dropped into a pond, watching the ripples in the faces across the table.

    Inside, his thoughts raced. Give them what they already hold, and nothing more. They expect us to crawl, but I will make them believe this is generosity. Grain instead of gold—better to feed their soldiers than strengthen their bankers. The revolution cannot survive if we bleed it with reparations. Let them choke on bread if they wish, but they will not bleed us dry.

    He leaned back slightly, hands folded before him, his expression carved in stone. He had said what he came to say.

    Kühlmann whispered something to Czernin. Talaat Pasha exchanged a glance with Nassimy Bey. The Bulgarians looked restless, their hands fidgeting with papers they could not read aloud without Berlin's approval. The Germans were preparing their answer.

    Now comes the true test, Stalin thought, eyes narrowing as the translator began to stir again. Let them speak their demands. Let them show their greed. Every empire eventually shows its hunger. And when they do, I will know exactly where to drive the knife.

    The Central Powers were about to make their demands.

    The silence after his statement stretched thin. Kühlmann whispered again to Czernin, then straightened in his chair. The translator leaned forward, eyes darting nervously as though even he understood the weight of the words he was about to repeat.

    "Germany," the translator began carefully, "seeks peace, yes—but a peace that reflects the realities of this war. The territories now occupied by German and Austrian forces—Poland, Lithuania, and Courland—shall no longer be considered part of Russia. They will determine their own futures, free from Petrograd."

    Stalin's eyes did not flicker. He listened, his fingers drumming once against the table, then stilling.

    The translator continued.

    "Further, the territories of Livonia and Estonia will be administered separately until their peoples may establish self-rule. Finland too must be recognized as independent."

    Czernin now leaned in, his voice rougher, more tired, but no less determined.

    "For Austria-Hungary, the matter of Galicia is not to be disturbed. The question of Ukraine must also be addressed. A delegation of Ukrainians will arrive soon to declare their independence, and their aspirations must be recognized."

    Stalin's jaw tensed. Independence. A puppet, nothing more. Bread for the Germans, under a flag of their choosing.

    The translator pressed on.

    "As for the Ottoman Empire," he said now, turning slightly toward Talaat Pasha, "the lands lost to Russia in the 1878 war shall be confirmed, Kars, Ardahan and Batum."

    Talaat inclined his head with a faint smile, as though to say: This is the minimum I expect.

    The Bulgarian delegate, Popoff, shuffled his papers before speaking. "And Bulgaria," the translator relayed, "seeks recognition of its territorial gains in Macedonia, and the assurance of economic access through the Black Sea."

    The demands fell upon the room like a hammer. Poland, Lithuania, Courland—gone. The Baltics—cut away. Finland—lost. Ukraine—poised for "independence" under German bayonets. The Caucasus abandoned to the Ottomans.

    Stalin leaned back, face unreadable. He allowed the silence to return, to stretch, to thicken. He stared at Kühlmann across the table, eyes dark, unblinking.

    So this is it. They mean to carve Russia like a carcass on the butcher's table. They speak of "self-determination" but mean occupation. They speak of "independence" but mean German garrisons, Austrian railways, Ottoman slaughter. They want a corpse that does not move, that does not resist. But Russia is not a corpse. Not yet.

    He folded his hands, carefully, deliberately.

    Stalin leaned forward, his face composed, his voice deliberate, low, but hard enough to strike stone. The translator hesitated, glanced at him once, then began repeating the words in German.

    "Poland, Lithuania, and Courland," Stalin said, "are already under your control. You have taken them by force of arms. Russia does not dispute what is already lost. They are yours to do with as you please. Whether they live under your bayonets or under your so-called 'independent governments,' that is your matter, not ours. We recognize their independence if you grant it."

    He paused. A faint stir ran down the German side of the table. Then he went on.

    "But Ukraine—Ukraine remains under Russian control. And it will remain so. If you desire Ukraine, then you must occupy it yourselves. You will find it a costly prize. And remember this—America is in the war now. Every day you waste chasing Ukrainian fantasies is another day American soldiers and American rifles arrive in France. Every delay makes your western front weaker, not stronger."

    The translator's voice quavered as he relayed Stalin's words, but Stalin pressed on, eyes fixed on Kühlmann like a knife point.

    "If you attempt to march into Ukraine, you are free to try. But understand: we will burn it behind us. Every field, every barn, every factory—we will leave you nothing but ashes and empty mouths to feed. Our Bolshevik forces are already moving to secure the countryside. These are no idle threats."

    He let the words hang in the air a moment, then leaned back slightly, allowing his tone to harden into false magnanimity.

    "Still, Russia is not without reason. We understand your need. Grain—we can give you. As much as you require. Let that be the price of peace, not the destruction of Ukraine."

    He shifted his gaze now toward Talaat Pasha, his eyes narrowing.

    "As for the Ottomans. You will gain nothing. Recall that on your front, the Russians have not been beaten. We have advanced into Anatolia. You are losing. We are prepared to return to the pre-war frontier—nothing more. Take it, or risk losing more when the war resumes."

    Talaat's smile froze on his face.

    Stalin turned then toward the Bulgarian delegation. His tone changed—calmer, almost generous.

    "Bulgaria is free to do as it pleases in the Balkans. Russia will not interfere. Your conquests will be recognized. Your access to the Black Sea is guaranteed."

    He returned his gaze to the Germans, his voice iron again.

    "As for Estonia, Livonia, and Finland—if you want them, then you must occupy them yourselves. Russia will not recognize their separation otherwise. Until you pay for them in blood, they remain Russian lands."

    The words were spoken. The room went still, heavy with the echo of his defiance.

    Inside, Stalin's thoughts burned. Let them choke on this. Enough concessions to seem practical, enough fire to make them cautious. They will see I am not a supplicant, not a fool. I have given them Poland and the Baltics they already hold—let them feel victorious in that. But Ukraine? Ukraine is the key. If they overreach, they will bleed themselves white before they taste a single loaf of bread. Let them think on that.

    He folded his hands before him, expression unreadable, and waited.

    The room erupted, not with shouts but with the subtle chaos of diplomats caught between outrage and calculation.

    Kühlmann's jaw tightened, his thin lips pressing into a bloodless line. He did not raise his voice—he was too careful for that—but his fingers drummed once against the table, sharp and deliberate. He spoke in clipped German, the translator nearly stumbling over the pace.

    "Germany will not accept threats. Ukraine is no fantasy. It is the breadbasket of Europe. If Russia refuses to recognize its independence, then Russia refuses peace. Our armies have reached Riga, they can reach Kiev as well. Do not mistake our patience for weakness."

    Czernin, Austria-Hungary's weary foreign minister, leaned forward now, his eyes sunken but alive with a desperate urgency.

    "Do you think you can starve us into submission?" he snapped. "Vienna is hungry, Budapest is hungry. We need Ukraine's grain, not your promises of shipments you cannot even deliver. Your revolution has thrown your country into chaos. You cannot even feed your own capital, Petrograd! And yet you claim you will feed us?" He shook his head, muttering to Kühlmann, but loud enough for the room to catch: "This is madness."

    Stalin's face did not move. Good. Let them show their hunger. Hungry men make mistakes.

    Talaat Pasha leaned forward, his voice low and oily, a smile stretched taut across his face.

    "The Ottoman Empire has no intention of returning to the old frontier. You have advanced into our lands, yes—but the war is over now, and you no longer have the strength to hold them. Armenia, Kars, Erzurum—these will not be restored to you. Do not insult us by pretending otherwise."

    Stalin's eyes narrowed, but he did not respond. Murderer. He thinks because he slaughters Armenians he can stare down Russia. He forgets that his empire survives only because Berlin props it up like a rotting doorframe.

    The Bulgarians, for their part, exchanged glances. Popoff shifted uncomfortably, then spoke, his voice careful, almost apologetic.

    "Bulgaria… is satisfied with recognition of its gains and access to the Black Sea. We seek only peace and stability."

    It was a small thing, but Stalin noted it. They want their crumbs, nothing more. They will not fight harder than they must. They are pliable. That is useful.

    The Germans pressed hardest. Kühlmann adjusted his spectacles, his voice turning cold, precise, each word like a nail hammered into wood.

    "Understand this. The Central Powers will not accept a peace that leaves Ukraine under Bolshevik control. If you will not recognize its independence, then we will deal with the Ukrainians ourselves. And if you make good on your threat to burn their land, then you will answer for it in the next round of war. Do not delude yourself. Your Red Guards are not yet an army. You cannot resist us in the field."

    Czernin nodded, adding bitterly, "We need certainty, not revolutionary slogans. Either you recognize Ukraine, or we will recognize it without you."

    The room fell silent again, the air sharp with the aftertaste of accusation.

    Stalin's hands rested on the table, motionless. His face gave nothing away, but inside his mind the voice seethed.

    They are desperate. Austria is starving. Germany is stretched thin. The Ottomans cling to their scraps. They think this show of unity frightens me. They think I will fold. But every empire here is bleeding. Their demands are bold because their time is short. If I can hold them, if I can feed them scraps while denying them the feast, the revolution survives. They believe they are carving Russia apart. They do not see that their own carcass is already rotting.

    He leaned back slowly, giving them only the faintest nod, as though acknowledging their words without granting them power.

    The negotiations were only in their first hour, and already the knives were out.

    Stalin waited until the translators were ready, then spoke slowly, each word meant to cut like steel.

    "You misunderstand," he began. "Russia is already offering you what you need most—grain. Free of charge. Not tribute, not reparations—grain, guaranteed. You say Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. But Ukraine is not under German occupation. It remains Russian. Therefore it is not yours to demand."

    His eyes shifted back to Kühlmann, pinning him like an insect.

    "You may speak of independence, of puppet governments, of lines drawn on maps. But unless your soldiers stand in Kiev, Ukraine is not yours. And if you wish to put them there, you will pay the price in blood. Consider it carefully. America is in this war. Their troops are already landing in France. Each day you waste sending divisions east to chase burned fields is another day American rifles and shells arrive on the Western Front."

    The translator's voice shook slightly, but Stalin pressed on, louder now, the edge of anger sharpening his tone.

    "Ask yourselves: how many men will it cost you to occupy Ukraine? How many supplies? How much rail transport—already strained to breaking—will you divert from your Western armies to hold a land we are prepared to burn to the ground before you set foot in it? At best, you inherit ashes. At worst, you inherit ashes and more mouths to feed."

    He paused, letting the silence weigh on the table, then added with cold finality:

    "If Germany wishes, you may send observers, even troops, to guarantee the grain shipments. That can be arranged. But Ukraine remains Russian. This is not negotiable."

    He turned now toward the whole table, his voice lower, steadier, but no less firm.

    "Do you want to lose this war over imperial arrogance? You are already fighting on too many fronts. Russia is giving you a way out. Take what you already hold. Beyond that—everything else is off the table."

    His gaze shifted to Talaat Pasha, narrowing.

    "As for the Ottomans—you boast of strength, but in the Caucasus you are losing. Russian troops stand on your soil. Armenia does not kneel to you. A return to the pre-war frontier is more than reasonable. You should thank us for such an offer, not insult us with demands."

    Then he looked at the Bulgarians. His tone softened, measured.

    "To Bulgaria, however—we thank you for your reason. Your terms are modest, clear, and acceptable. Russia is prepared to recognize your gains and guarantee your access to the Black Sea. If necessary, we will sign a separate treaty with you today."

    The Bulgarians shifted in their seats, startled at the unexpected olive branch. Talaat scowled, Czernin muttered darkly to Kühlmann.

    Stalin leaned back, folding his hands. His face gave nothing away.

    It will be a long negotiation, he thought bitterly. But I will fight for every scrap, every line, every field of grain. Let them dream of carving Russia apart. I will bleed them dry before I let them feed on us.

    The room sat heavy, each delegation weighing its next move.

    The battle at Brest-Litovsk had only just begun. And he wouldn't just give up parts of Russia away for nothing.
     
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    • Stalin seems to be a deeply distrustful man if both his pride and trust in Mikheil is getting triggered over how deep in his brothers pockets he is.
    The man saves you papers over your running off from family then gives you the tools of power in shared pursuit and you think he's doing this over a chance of a throne or Vizier position?
    Me thinks you need to spend time in a mirror then have a serious talk with Mikheil on what he wants

    Probably would have been a healthier headspace if his son Yakov cane with him.
     
    Xodarap said:
    Stalin seems to be a deeply distrustful man if both his pride and trust in Mikheil is getting triggered over how deep in his brothers pockets he is.
    The man saves you papers over your running off from family then gives you the tools of power in shared pursuit and you think he's doing this over a chance of a throne or Vizier position?
    Me thinks you need to spend time in a mirror then have a serious talk with Mikheil on what he wants

    Probably would have been a healthier headspace if his son Yakov cane with him.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Well, it's Stalin.

    The guy's whose famous quotes included: "I trust no one, not even myself."
     
    Stalin is pretty on point. He is distrustful to the extreme. He'd rather see trusted men shot and then shoot the men who shot them to be sure that no one person will have the ability to chain him.
     
    Oh awesome this is on QQ as well.

    Stalin, the greatest diplomat ever produced by the Soviet Union.

    Truly a man of subtle charisma and gentle compromise.
     
    A heart of ice and steel New
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    • Excerpt from a May 27, 1987 Interview with Mamoru Oshii, following the release of The Red Spectacles in Japan

    Interviewer: The armor and design of the Kerberos in your movie The Red Spectacles is so distinctive—almost militaristic in its imagery. Where did the inspiration come from? Many people are saying it's a copy of the Kremlin Guard Regiment of the Soviet Revolutionary guard corps. Is that true?

    Mamoru Oshii: Yes, that's absolutely true. The Kerberos armor is a direct riff on what I saw in the Kremlin Guard Regiment. The idea first came to me after a friend's son returned from a student exchange program in Moscow. He brought back photographs of the Kremlin and of the Guard. What struck me was the Guards themselves—this very deliberate presentation of power.

    They wore these heavy composite black armor and broad-shouldered jackets laced with crimson red Soviet emblems that made every man look larger than life, almost more like statues than people. Their helmets were smooth, rounded steel with black visors, and when the visors came down, the eyes glowed red from the type of stained glass they used. It was designed to be both practical and symbolic: protection for the soldier, but terror for anyone who looked into those lenses. They carried Kalashnikovs with grenade launchers, RPK's, RPD's, machine guns, Drugsnovs, drum fed shotguns, and on parade they marched with rocket launchers that looked more like industrial tools than weapons. To see them all moving in lockstep was like watching a living machine.

    I tried to imagine what it must feel like to face off against them. The idea that these men, faceless behind armor, would be the ones sent after you if you tried to kill the Soviet President—that's where the seed of The Red Spectacles really came from.

    After seeing those pictures, I wanted to see it firsthand. So I booked a plane ticket to Moscow. With the help of my guide and translator, I was able to observe the Guards up close.

    What struck me most was the paradox: the image they projected versus who they were in person. From a distance they seemed almost inhuman, this armored wall of order and menace. But when I actually spoke to them—thanks to my translator—I found most were surprisingly approachable, even warm in their own way, though always professional and direct. I even spoke with one of their captains briefly. He was polite, intelligent, and generous with his time—but I left with the sense that you would never want to be on the receiving end of his RPD.

    That tension—between humanity and menace—is what I tried to capture in the movie. It wasn't about making them villains, but about showing how institutions can turn ordinary men into something larger, something both awe-inspiring and frightening. And with the Revolutionary Treaty Organization (RTO) still a looming presence from Manchuria all the way to Europe, that imagery hasn't lost its resonance.

    December 10, 1917
    Brest Fortress, Brest-Litovsk
    German-Occupied Russia

    Stalin did not flinch. His expression was granite, his jaw set like a stone wall, as he scrawled his signature across the final treaty parchment—ratifying peace between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers.

    Outwardly, he was calm, mechanical even. But inside, a furnace of rage smoldered beneath the surface. His hand may have moved with steadiness, but it took every ounce of discipline not to snap the pen in two. To have to give them—those imperial vultures in brass buttons—so much. It was obscene.

    Still, he had salvaged what he could. That was the task. Not to posture like Trotsky had proposed after the revolution. No, Stalin dealt in realities. And the reality was simple: their military strength was embryonic, barely coherent; the state was a cracked shell; the civil war was only just beggining. The Germans had the guns, the railroads, the advantage. He had leverage—but not enough.

    And yet, he'd made them bleed for every clause. They had demanded Finland. He said no—if they wanted it, they'd have to take it. They pushed for the Caucasus. He reminded them they were losing ground there, not gaining it. Estonia, Livonia? Not occupied. Not negotiable. "This is a surrender, not a buffet," he had told them coldly on the third day.

    But Ukraine—that was the bone in the throat.

    The Germans needed it. Not for territory, not out of ideology, but for food. Grain. Without it, their armies would starve, their workers would riot, and their empire would crack. Stalin knew it, and so did they.

    It was a brutal arithmetic. While negotiations sputtered on in their smoke-filled room, the Bolsheviks advanced. Kharkov had fallen just a week after the talks began. Poltava followed in the weeks after. Trotsky's nascent Soviet army, partisans—all moving westward, torch in one hand, rifle in the other. It was not a clean war. It was not meant to be.

    Then the Rada delegation arrived—dandies in national dress and lace-cuffed dreams. They had the gall to present themselves as equals, as sovereigns. Stalin had merely stared at them as if they were beetles under glass.

    "You are losing your country, have you not heard who occupies Kharkov?" he had told them bluntly when they first came. "You think you can secure a nation with pretty words and not guns? Don't make me laugh."

    They had stormed out, furious, humiliated. But the Germans listened. They still considered propping up the Rada as a puppet regime. Stalin saw through that, of course. "If you do," he had said with a faint smile, "we'll burn every bushel of grain from Odessa to Kiev. And then we'll see how long your war with the entente lasts."

    That had sobered them.

    In the end, he made them blink.

    Ukraine would go to the Germans, yes—but only the western half, up to the Dnieper. Beyond that, the Bolsheviks would retain the east through force of arms. The Rada would not be recognized, not by the Bolsheviks, neither would Poland, Lithuania and Courland. Germany and Austria were free to do whatever they pleased with them, even give them independence if they wanted. But in the eyes of the Bolsheviks they would be nothing but German occupied territory with autonomy.

    He allowed himself a rare, quiet smile as he remembered the look on the German officer's face when he agreed to that. Victory, even in defeat.

    And now the ink was dry.

    With that final stroke, he had officially surrendered every inch the Germans had occupied. Poland, Courland, Lithuania—gone, for now. Ukraine west of the Dnieper—ceded. It was a bitter pill. But poison, taken carefully, can sometimes kill one's enemies too.

    He rose from the table, nodding curtly to the other Bolshevik officials. They understood what this was: not an end, but a delay. A breathing space. Stalin had no illusions about peace. Peace was a tool. Like a knife. You use it, until you find a sharper one.

    ------

    December 11, 1917
    Brest Fortress, Brest-Litovsk
    German-Occupied Russia

    He left Brest at dawn. The snow had not yet begun to fall, but the air held the weight of it—cold, sharp, final. His Revolutionary Guard detachment moved with quiet discipline, their black coats buttoned high, rifles slung like shadows across their backs. The train groaned to life beneath them, iron grinding on frost-covered track.

    He sat alone in a private compartment, curtains drawn, the samovar hissing softly in the corner. His coat hung beside him like a shed skin. His anger had cooled, but not disappeared. It sat deeper now, lower in the chest—calcified rather than burning. Less a fire, more a stone.

    The trip to Petrograd would take four days—longer than usual. The rail network was shattered: strikes, theft, sabotage. The Ministry of Rail Transport was a fiction, its orders ignored or intercepted by commissars who answered only to themselves. The war had broken the arteries of Russia. The revolution had hacked at the nerves.

    He had time to think. And he did. For hours, in silence, arms crossed over his chest like a corpse in a coffin, eyes staring past the frost-bitten window.

    Mikheil. Always Mikheil.

    "Germany will collapse anyway," Mikheil had said just days before he left to fetch the Romanovs, in that same casual tone of his over dinner. "Let them have their grain and their land. They'll choke on both. Austria's already rotting from the inside. America will land millions of troops in Europe and overwhelm them. Once Germany loses the war we'll march back in and take what we lost."

    He had nodded then. Agreed, even. It was true, of course—strategically sound. But it wasn't the logic that unsettled him. It was who had said it. Mikheil. The brother who laughed through gunfire, who joked while laying out battle plans, who seemed to bounce from victory to victory on sheer audacity.

    The same man who had saved his life—not once, but twice.

    And not just his life. The cause.

    Kornilov's putsch? Supressed with the help of Mikheil's guard corps. The July Days and Kerensky's compromise, Mikheil's work. The Revolutionary Guard? Mikheil's. The National Guard? Formed under his supervision along with the so-called KGB—his brainchild.

    Even Trotsky's army and their success in Ukraine—that too rested on the foundation Mikheil had poured in, the factories, the black markets, the taxes, all while the rest of the Party argued over semantics and slogans.

    Stalin exhaled slowly. He hated how much of their power rested on his brother's shoulders.

    Mikheil hadn't even asked for recognition. He didn't need to. He operated like a crime boss, not a commissar—power was not a position, it was leverage. He had it all: arms, men, information, money. Their brother-in-law Aleksander, now Commissar for Strategic Resources, ensured the trains ran, the troops were fed, the oil moved.

    And now—now Mikheil would return from the east with the Romanovs in chains, paraded like circus animals, the final symbols of a dying order humiliated for the world to see.

    The prestige it would bring.

    Too much. Too fast.

    It was obvious. He was positioning himself. Not openly, never openly. That wasn't Mikheil's way. He wore his intentions like a second coat—casual, layered, always plausible.

    A second Bonaparte in the making. And here he was, Joseph Stalin, signing away half of Russia at a table full of Germans, looking like a loser in the newspapers.

    He would have to kill him. Eventually.

    He thought it plainly. Not in anger, not even with malice. Just necessity. Like war. Like famine. A brother, yes. But a threat too. That was the nature of revolution—it devoured everything, even blood.

    But then… the shame.

    It crept up slowly, like the cold seeping into the train car. He stared out at the frozen steppe, endless and white, the trees blackened with frost. His breath fogged the glass. It was so easy to think of murder.

    And yet—

    "You look like shit."

    The memory arrived unbidden. The first words Mikheil had said when they reunited after the first revolution in February, right there in front of his apartment.

    Then the hug. Tight. Fierce. Like they were boys again.

    He remembered seeing Yakov again that night—Kato's son, no, not only Kato but his as well. With her eyes. Her hair. And Mikheil had raised him, just like he promised in those painful days after her death, while he ran off into the revolutionary underground then exile. Their mother, too. Mikheil had brought her back into his life. Quietly. Carefully. Like patching a cracked vase.

    And then another memory. Childhood. The smell of blood and vodka. Their father's belt. Mikheil's voice, whispering as he dabbed his wounds, "Don't worry, Joe. Once we're big enough, we'll beat the shit out of Dad. I'll let you have the first hit."

    He'd meant it.

    And again—Winter Palace. The sound of gunfire, the chaos of revolution. Mikheil tackling him to the ground as bullets cracked overhead. Then that voice, cocky as ever:

    "Would you look at that," he said, pulling open his jacket to reveal the bulletproof vest. "Guess that makes twice I've saved your life, Joe."

    The smirk. That infuriating, lopsided smirk.

    But it was true.

    Mikheil had given him everything. The guard. The network. The legitimacy. The political backing. Even the position at Brest. Stalin knew damn well he hadn't been the natural choice. It had been Mikheil's recommendation to Lenin that placed him there. And in his mind, it all spiraled to one bitter, unavoidable truth:

    His rise was not his own.

    It was Mikheil's.

    And that tore at him. Pride—the one thing he still held sacred.

    He clenched his jaw. Looked back out at the fields. Snow now. Endless snow.

    "Mikheil," he muttered to the window, to the frost, to the silence. "What the hell am I supposed to do with you? Or without you?"

    The train rolled on through the white. And Stalin sat there, very still, torn between love and calculation. Between a brother's debt—and that sinking feeling that maybe his brother was plotting against him.

    December 12, 1917
    En Route to Petrograd
    Somewhere near Mogilev

    The train continued it's journey as he reflected on his life. It whistled long and low as it pulled through the countryside, vast and empty beneath the blanket of snow. A blizzard had begun during the night—gentle at first, but now growing thick, fat flakes drifting past the window like ash. The countryside was a blur of gray and white, but his thoughts remained sharp, precise, coiled like wire.

    He'd barely slept. He didn't like to sleep. Sleep bought dreams, dreams of Kato, of their brief time together, of baby Yakov. Dreams tore at the ice that had formed over his heart and threatened to melt it. He sat wrapped in his coat, half-reclined, boots still on. His tea had gone cold as had the breakfast that had been recently served for him. His eyes were red-rimmed and dry. And his thoughts kept taking him back to the same place, again and again, to Mikheil's quarters in Smolny. To his mother keke, to his brother in law Aleksander, to Mikheil, to his nephews, to his son's, to Aleksandra.

    To Aleksandra.

    Kato's sister.

    The first time he saw her after reuniting with his brother—he felt his stomach twist. Not in lust, not even in mourning. Just confusion. Recognition. She had Kato's cheekbones. Her quiet mouth. The same dark, serious eyes that flicked to him with wary understanding.

    It was obscene. A trick of biology. A godless taunt.

    She had never spoken much to him, even though he'd practically lived with Mikheil ever since they reunited. She kept the house clean, cooked quietly, supervised the children with a soft authority. He respected her for that. She was not loud, not weak, not empty. She was like Kato—but not. A shadow, a fragment, a living memory that wouldn't rot.

    It made him uncomfortable. He never stayed long in the same room with her. He never tried to speak to her except for the bare minimum of what was socially acceptable, courtesies, comments, and messages Mikheil passed to her while he was busy working.

    And then there was Kato, the child, his niece.

    His niece by blood, but it was more than that. Every time she ran through the hallway, laughing, clinging to Yakov's coat, he saw her. His Kato. Reborn, somehow, but younger, brighter. Innocent.

    It was unbearable.

    She had that same habit—curling her hair behind her ear with two fingers, blinking too much when excited. He had once caught her humming a Georgian lullaby, one his Kato used to sing when Yakov was sick or while she cooked for him and Yakov. Aleksandra must have taught her. Or maybe Mikheil remembered it.

    He thought of asking. He never did. He couldn't bear it.

    Aleksander and Iosif, the sons. His nephews.

    The younger one—Aleksander—was quiet, methodical, too serious for his age. Mikheil said he would join the Revolutionary guard and be a general when he was old enough. Stalin believed it. The boy had the same stare as his—stern, distant, assessing. But it was the older one—Iosif—that left a mark.

    Named after him. His name.

    Because you're my brother, Mikheil said. But the boy was different from him; cheerful, clever, prone to mischief, and with that same easygoing attitude and charm Mikheil seemed to have. When Stalin had scolded him for pranking a Smolny guard during a storm, the boy simply crossed his arms and muttered, "How could I have known he was drunk uncle Joe?" Mikheil laughed for ten minutes. Stalin hadn't.

    And Yakov—his son—how they treated him.

    Not as a cousin. Not as a guest. As a brother.

    They shared food. Fought over books. Played tricks on the guards. Yakov followed Iosif like a shadow, when frightened—after a nightmare, a thunderclap, a fever—it was always Iosif who kept him company. Stalin had seen it once, through the door, and had backed away silently.

    No orders were needed. No lectures about loyalty. The boys simply were a unit. A family.

    A whole one.

    He watched it all from the sidelines. Their dinners. Their jokes. The whispered stories after curfew. The effortless belonging. He was always treated as Mikheil's son.

    It had been made clear to him shortly after he reunited with Mikheil. When Yakov called his brother papa during dinner. Then froze. Looked at him, wide-eyed.

    He had said nothing. Just nodded, slowly.

    He didn't blame the boy. He would have done the same too

    Stalin rubbed his temples. The train shook slightly, wheels scraping over the worn track. Somewhere in the distance, dogs barked, distant and mournful.

    He thought of Mikheil, sitting at the table, listening to Aleksandra hum while she cooked, the children shouting over a chess games. Thought of the man who had saved his life, then gone home to that warmth like it was nothing and he following after him.

    His tea was still cold. As was his breakfast. He didn't care.

    He looked out at the snow again, face pale and still.

    There was no envy in him. No jealousy. No longing.

    His pride refused to consider it.

    Note: For anyone that's curious, look up Kerberos Panzer Cops and the movie Jin-Roh

    Now imagine those guys being responsible for security at the Kremlin.
     
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    • Excerpt from a memo from the Soviet consulate in Jackson Mississippi to African American citizens who have accepted relocation to the USSR under Project Deliverance:

    Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
    People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs
    Soviet Consulate, Jackson, Mississippi
    Memo No. 17/ПД
    Date: January 21, 1930

    To: All African-American Citizens Accepted into Resettlement under Project Deliverance
    From: The Soviet Consulate in Jackson, Mississippi
    Subject: Initial Orientation and Conditions of Resettlement in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

    Comrade,

    We extend our warmest greetings and revolutionary solidarity to you and your family as you prepare to embark upon a historic journey toward justice, dignity, and full participation in the building of the international socialist order. This memorandum is intended to serve as your official guide to the basic conditions you may expect upon your arrival in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, pursuant to your acceptance into Project Deliverance.

    I. Climatic Conditions and Preliminary Advice

    It is of utmost importance to understand that the climate of the USSR, particularly in the regions assigned for settlement, differs significantly from that of the American Deep South. The general climate is akin to that of the New England region of the United States, characterized by long, cold winters with snowfall and short, temperate summers.

    You are strongly advised to bring as many articles of winter clothing as possible, including but not limited to: insulated coats, gloves, scarves, thermal undergarments, boots, and hats. In the event that you are unable to secure sufficient winter apparel prior to departure, you must report immediately upon arrival to the Commissariat Officer at the Processing and Orientation Center in Leningrad (Petrograd). There, suitable clothing will be issued to you free of charge as part of your integration support package.

    II. Living Conditions and Employment

    Under the current Hundred-Year Development Plan, also known internally as Plan Ural, you and your family—if they accompany you—will be settled in newly established industrial and civic zones located beyond the Ural Mountains. These zones represent the vanguard of Soviet progress and are instrumental in the construction of a truly classless, egalitarian society.

    Each family will be provided with a state-owned apartment, complete with access to indoor plumbing, electricity, and basic furnishings. Apartments are assigned based on family size and are free of rent, though all residents are expected to maintain cleanliness and report any damage or issues to the local Housing Maintenance Committee. Handymen and repair equipment will be made available upon request.

    Furthermore, every adult settler will be guaranteed employment in one of the regional People's Factories (народный завод), with assignments based on skill, background, and national labor needs. Children will be enrolled in Soviet schools to ensure full ideological and academic formation.

    You may travel freely throughout the Soviet Union during officially designated vacation periods. However, as stipulated under the binding agreement of Project Deliverance, you and your family are required to maintain legal residence in your assigned city or oblast for a minimum of twenty (20) years. Voluntary relocation, refusal to work, or attempts to circumvent this requirement will result in the revocation of Soviet citizenship for you and all dependents. You will be repatriated to the United States at your own expense and may be barred from future reentry into the USSR.

    III. Orientation and Integration Program

    Upon arrival in the USSR, you and your family will remain for fifteen (15) weeks in the city of Leningrad, during which time you will undergo comprehensive orientation. This includes:

    Formal Russian Language Instruction

    Political Education and Cultural Integration Seminars

    Basic Soviet Civil Code and Workplace Conduct Training

    During this period, all adult settlers must achieve, at a minimum, intermediate proficiency in the Russian language—defined as the ability to hold daily conversations, comprehend written texts, and understand workplace directives. All children are expected to reach functional literacy in Russian by the end of the orientation period.

    Failure to meet these basic linguistic and cultural integration standards will result in disqualification from the program. In such cases, citizenship will be revoked and the entire family unit will be returned to the United States. Travel expenses in such instances will be borne by the State.

    -------

    October 6, 1917
    Petrograd, Russia

    Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky stood at the edge of Nevsky Prospect, arms crossed over what used to be officer's coat, his chin tilted just slightly upward, as if daring history to unfold properly in front of him.

    Before him, the Revolutionary Guard marched down the avenue in crisp formation—long black coats cinched tight at the waist, red armbands stark against the grey mist of Petrograd's autumn. Their boots struck the cobblestones in perfect cadence, not like peasants stumbling in formation, but like soldiers. Real soldiers. Behind them rolled horse-drawn carts and commandeered automobiles piled high with captured weapons—shiny machine guns, crates of rifles, sabers, even a brass Cossack bugle bouncing with every jolt of the wheels. Spoils of war from the fools who'd tried to retake the city earlier today.

    Cossacks. Routed at Pulkovo Heights. He'd heard the rumors swirling even before the smoke had cleared. They'd marched on Petrograd thinking it was still the Russia of yesterday—weak, divided, frightened. They met something new instead. A steel spine under the revolution's red cloak.

    Tukhachevsky gave a thin, satisfied smile.

    It had only been weeks since he escaped Ingolstadt, slipping through the Swiss border like a phantom and smuggling himself back into a country he hadn't seen in years. He'd been a prisoner longer than a soldier, a ghost behind bars while the old Russia devoured itself.

    He had half-thought to return to the front. To rejoin what remained of the Imperial Army and resume the fight against the Germans. The noble war. But what he found upon returning made that idea laughable. The army had collapsed—disbanded, demoralized, decomposing. Its officers disgraced, its men turned to bandits or beggars. Discipline was a memory. Honor, a relic.

    No, there was no war left. Only this.

    For the last few weeks, he had been lingering in Petrograd like a specter with no name. He stayed in the flat of an old acquaintance of his father—an aging academic who brewed bitter tea and cursed every government in equal measure. Tukhachevsky passed his days doing odd jobs and listening, watching, waiting. Always calculating. Where would power settle? Where would ambition be welcomed?

    Then came the night of the Revolution.

    He had fallen asleep in a country paralyzed by fear and indecision, one that couldn't even police its capital. By morning, it belonged to the Bolsheviks.

    Not that much had changed—not visibly. The stores remained open, the soup kitchens fed the poor. Even the brothels, gambling dens, and opium joints hummed along like nothing had happened. Only now, they had red-paper licenses and Bolshevik agents watching quietly from the corners.

    Revolutionary oversight, they called it.

    But beneath the surface, something had shifted. He could feel it in the way the people spoke, hushed but electric. Tales of victory at Pulkovo, of discipline, of purpose. Of the Revolutionary Guard, defending the city, defending the revolution.

    He had been raised a soldier. It was etched into his bones. Even in the gilded halls of his family estate, he had dreamed not of court balls but of maps and uniforms, of war and greatness. And now he watched these Guardsmen with a tactical eye—their organization, their equipment, their confidence. They were not the rabble-turned-army he'd expected. No, they looked like the future.

    As the last of the parade passed—the final carriage rattling along with captured sabers clinking together like wind chimes—Tukhachevsky made up his mind.

    He would join them.

    He left Nevsky Prospect and turned down one of the narrower side avenues, boots splashing in the slush, mind already calculating the angles. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for: a church, guarded by two men in the black coats of the revolution guard, each with rifles slung across their backs and steel in their eyes.

    He approached.

    "Are you here to pray," one of them asked, eyeing him without interest, "or to cause trouble?"

    "Neither," Tukhachevsky replied, voice smooth as polished wood. "I'm here to join the Revolutionary Guard Corps."

    The guard didn't blink. Didn't care.

    "Go to Smolny," the man muttered, shifting the cigarette in his mouth. "They'll process you there."

    It wasn't the answer he wanted, but it was the one he needed.

    Tukhachevsky gave a curt nod, turned on his heel, and made for Smolny.

    At the gates of the former girls' school—now the nerve center of Bolshevik power—he was met by another cluster of Guardsmen. These ones wore the same clean uniforms, good rifles, the same arrogance in the way they held themselves.

    The captain stepped forward.

    "Name and intention?"

    He straightened his posture. Let them see him.

    "Mikhail Tukhachevsky," he said. "Former Second Lieutenant, Russian Imperial Army. I seek to enlist in the Revolutionary Guard."

    The captain narrowed his eyes, gave him a once-over, then glanced at one of the younger guards.

    "Petrov. Take him to the recruitment office."

    No questions about loyalty. No demands for credentials. No snide remarks about noble birth. Just movement. Process.

    Tukhachevsky smiled inwardly.

    He followed Petrov through the echoing halls of Smolny, past peeling portraits of saints and red banners hanging where crucifixes once were. This place had once taught noble girls to be docile. Now it trained men to make history.

    He stepped into the office, boots echoing on the worn floorboards. The room was cramped and cold, its window cracked open despite the autumn chill. Dust clung to the edges of the desk, but the man behind it was sharp and alert. Late fifties, maybe early sixties. Gray hair trimmed close. Civilian coat over a faded Red Army tunic. He wasn't writing when they entered—he was waiting.

    Petrov stepped forward. "Sir, this man claims to have been an officer in the former tsarist army. He wishes to join the Guard."

    The older man looked up, dark eyes landing on Tukhachevsky with a flicker of disinterest—and calculation. His gaze moved from boots to shoulders to face. A practiced glance. Not respectful. Not impressed. Just measuring.

    "Return to your station, Petrov," he said without looking away. "I'll handle him."

    Petrov gave a quick nod and stepped out, the door shutting with a dull thud.

    Tukhachevsky stood still, waiting. The man didn't offer a name, only gestured to the chair across from him.

    "Sit."

    He did. Spine straight, legs apart, posture crisp without being stiff. The man's eyes flicked to a worn notepad.

    "Name. Rank. Record."

    Tukhachevsky didn't hesitate.

    "My name is Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky. Former Second Lieutenant of the Imperial Army, Semyonovsky Guard Regiment." He let that settle a moment before continuing. "Captured near Przasnysz in February 1915. Taken prisoner by the Germans. Moved through several POW camps. Escaped four times. Declared a persistent flight risk, eventually sent to Ingolstadt fortress in Bavaria. Escaped five weeks ago. Crossed into Switzerland. Reentered Russia shortly before the revolution."

    The man raised his eyebrows slightly at Semyonovsky. He leaned back in his chair, fingers laced across his chest. "The Imperial Guard," he said. Not a question. "And now you wish to join ours."

    Tukhachevsky nodded. He knew how this sounded. How it looked.

    "Why?" the man asked. "Why would a man who once stood beside the Tsar now offer himself to us? Why shouldn't I assume you're some plant from the Whites, here to sniff around before you cut a few throats?"

    Tukhachevsky's tone remained calm, clipped, firm. "You're welcome to verify my story. My name, my regiment, my capture. There are German records, Swiss records. I stayed with Professor Malinovsky on Gorokhovaya Street. You can ask the National Guard to watch me if you like. I haven't exactly been hiding."

    "Mm," the man muttered, noncommittal. "I asked why. Not how I might confirm your story."

    Tukhachevsky didn't blink.

    "Because I've seen the future."

    The recruiter narrowed his eyes.

    "This morning. Nevsky Prospect. I saw the Revolutionary Guard march past with discipline, unity, purpose. They looked like an army. Not a mob. Not a militia. An army. The first I've seen in months. I realized in that moment—this isn't a rebellion anymore. It's a state. A force. And I want to be part of that. Not hiding in some apartment. Not watching from the sidelines. In uniform. Marching forward."

    The recruiter leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. His voice was low now.

    "That's very pretty, Lieutenant. Very polished."

    "I'm a soldier," Tukhachevsky replied, "not a politician. I don't need to be pretty. I need to be useful."

    They held the silence between them for a beat. Then the man reached into a drawer, withdrew a pencil, and scribbled something on a slip of paper.

    "Report back to this office tomorrow at 0800 hours. Bring whatever belongings you have. You'll be assigned to barracks and quartered with a new intake unit."

    He looked up again, the corner of his mouth twitching as if amused.

    "My name is Captain Alekseivich. If you're lying, you'll be gone in a week. If you're not—maybe you'll live long enough to matter."

    Tukhachevsky stood, snapped a salute, and pivoted smartly on his heel.

    "Sir."

    As he stepped back into the hall, the cold hit him like a tide—but he barely felt it. He didn't know whether it was pride or adrenaline humming in his chest, but he felt taller, heavier, realer.

    This was the beginning. And he knew it.

    He walked out of Smolny like a man about to conquer the world.

    -------

    December 25, 1917
    Finland Station
    Petrograd, Russia

    Captain Mikheil Tukhachevsky stood tall at the head of his company—one hundred men, handpicked and polished like a saber's edge. Snow collected in the creases of his greatcoat and melted down his collar, but he barely noticed. The wind off the Gulf of Finland bit deep, but he didn't shiver.

    He was too busy calculating.

    A little over two months. That's all it had taken. Two months of fighting, hustling, bleeding, and drinking himself hoarse at commissar banquets to claw his way from nothing to this moment. His rise had been neither quiet nor clean.

    He remembered the start—a handful of men, new recruits like him, barely trained, pulling night duty with the National Guard in the slums and alleys of Petrograd. Putting down what remained of the Provisional Government's backers, cracking Menshevik skulls, dragging anarchists from cellars. Street by street. Bullet by bullet.

    They threw rocks at him. Then grenades. Once, he took a knife in the thigh from a teenager pretending to be a courier. He returned the favor with a pistol round to the stomach and didn't blink. He didn't have time to blink.

    "Either a general by thirty," he whispered to himself, "or a corpse."

    He meant it.

    He could fight, yes—but so could every man in the city with a rifle and a grievance. The edge came from everything else.

    He had learned to flatter. To charm. To smooth the egos of tired officers and hungover commissars. He brought vodka when others brought excuses. He remembered names. He lied when it was useful and told the truth when it was devastating. He made himself useful to everyone. Officers began saying: "Tukhachevsky—reliable. Get him to do it."

    So they did.

    Now he was no longer a nameless lieutenant begging for a rifle. He wore a captain's bars stitched in red thread. His company was well-fed, well-armed, better trained than Trotsky's nascent army . And today, they stood on ceremonial duty—not to guard a warehouse or protect a soup line, but to receive Mikheil Jugashvili himself.

    Comrade Makarov.

    The head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The architect of the military, national guard and revolutionary guard. Everyone knew the name. Everyone had a story. Some said he laughed while giving execution orders. Some said he wept when he saw orphaned children. Some said he danced to American music with his wife at a dinner party with the central committee and slept with a pistol under his pillow.

    All agreed on one thing: you didn't fuck with Mikheil.

    Tukhachevsky licked his lips and adjusted his gloves. There was something else—the Romanovs were with him. The former imperial family, returned under heavy guard from wherever they'd been buried during the storm of revolution. No one knew exactly what Mikheil planned for them. A show trial? Exile? Propaganda theater? Or something darker?

    And then there was Stalin. The older twin.

    He stood among the receiving party, silent as a winter grave. Not a word since they'd met, save for a few clipped orders and one look—the kind of look that made you check for knives. That man didn't smile. He didn't blink much either. Just watched. Always watched.

    Tukhachevsky didn't like being watched.

    The man's silence unnerved him far more than shouting ever could. It was like standing near a pit and wondering how deep it went. He was Commissar for Foreign Affairs, but in practice he was something else—Mikheil's master, darker than the man himself.

    And if Stalin viewed him as a threat? Tukhachevsky had no doubt: he'd already be dead.

    Still, he clung to what he'd heard—Mikheil was different. Jovial, they said. Talked like a street thug, drank like a sailor, loved his family. But he'd also ordered the surviving enemy to execute their former comrades after Pulkovo Heights if they wanted to live and join him. Tukhachevsky had spoken to one of the prisoners who made it back, he was now a guardsman too.

    "He smiled while we killed each other," the man said. "Laughed while some of us begged."

    More human than Stalin. But maybe worse for it.

    The cold deepened, and the light dimmed behind the smoke-grey clouds. Across the platform, bundled figures shifted in the snow—his company, standing proud in black coats, red armbands bright like fresh blood. Their boots were shined. Their rifles gleamed. He had drilled them mercilessly all week for this moment.

    This was the show.

    And it wasn't just his men waiting.

    There was also the Jugashvili family.

    He saw the wife, wrapped in furs, talking softly with the children. Three of them—two boys and a girl, all with pale faces and heavy coats. A nephew, slightly taller and awkward. An elderly mother, bundled like a babushka from a fable. Stalin—and his and Mikheil's brother-in-law, the commissar of strategic resources, arms crossed, cigarette in hand. They looked like a family torn out of a Tolstoy novel and flung headfirst into the 20th century.

    He was afraid of Stalin. But the rest? They looked…ordinary.

    He reached into his coat pocket and rubbed his small wooden Perun figurine, smooth from years of handling. A bit of old faith, smuggled into a new world. For luck. For strength. For war.

    Then the whistle came. The train.

    A howl of steel and steam.

    He stepped forward, boots crunching in the snow. His men straightened behind him like chess pieces aligned on a battlefield. He gave them a sharp nod, breath clouding in front of him.

    Showtime.
     
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