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

[iceknight90]

Dun dun dunnnnn.

Going to be an interesting conversation.

 

[BuilderOne]

So the cat is out of the bag now. Let's see how Joe handles the fallout, and the actual revelation.

 

[valaraanth]

Oh, I can't wait to see that pan out! TYFTC!

 

[AAAustinYu]

THIS CLIFF IM GUNNA JUMP OFF IT

 

[Alenco98]

Excerpt from the Wikipedia page on the Soviet Economic Miracle

The Soviet economic miracle (Russian: Советское экономическое чудо, lit. "Soviet economic miracle"), also known as the Miracle on the Moskva River, was the rapid reconstruction and development of the economy of the USSR and the nations in its sphere of influence following the Second World War.

Beginning with the implementation of the Revised Economic Policy (Пересмотренная экономическая политика, PEP), an era of sustained economic growth and low inflation was overseen by Premier Joseph Stalin, and continued under Premier Yakov Stalin following Stalin's death in 1956. The period is often regarded as a golden age of the Soviet economy, which grew at an average annual rate of 6 to 10 percent until the Great Middle Eastern Crisis of 1973.

The REP, crafted primarily by a team of economists led by Lev Gatovsky, Evsei Liberman, and Alexei Kosygin, introduced measures such as profitability incentives for state-owned enterprises and the decentralization of state enterprise management. These reforms, together with the revival of the private sector and the integration of the Soviet economy into international institutions such as GATT, the IMF, and the World Bank, as well as the influx of Marshall Plan aid, laid the foundations for the USSR's transformation from a developing country into a developed one.

July 13, 1923
The Kremlin
Moscow, Soviet Union

We sat looking at each other. Neither of us spoke. I let my eyes drift to the lamp on his desk for a few seconds, just to have somewhere else to look. He was in control of the room, of the silence, of everything, that much was obvious. I needed some kind of edge, even a small one.

"That's disappointing," I said, in Georgian. "The lamp isn't getting any bigger. I'm not getting hypnotized either."

He looked up, brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?" Georgian as well, low and even.

"A story I read once." I leaned back in the chair. "Some man gets attacked, knocked unconscious. And while he's out, years pass in the dream. He meets a woman, marries her, has children, he lives out this whole quiet, happy life. One day he's sitting in his living room and he notices a lamp. Something about it just feels off to him and he can't stop staring at it. At first its only for a few minutes, then hours, and finally he stares at it for days at a time. His wife panics, she calls the doctors, people try to move him and can't, he's frozen, just...hypnotized. And then the lamp starts growing. Fills his whole vision. He hears voices, screaming, all kinds of noise, he feels pain. And then he wakes up on a sidewalk, surrounded by strangers and missing teeth. The whole marriage, the children, the life, all of it had been a dream, stretched out in the space of a single knockout blow."

I let out a breath, something between a laugh and a sigh. "I used to think it would happen to me too when we were kids. I thought one day I'd find the lamp, I'd wake up and I'd be back with my family, my parents, my siblings, my fiance. You remember don't you? How I used to stare at ours for minutes at a time. Not just at home. At the seminary. In my quarters in Petrograd after Maria died. I kept waiting to wake up out of all this. Out of this nightmare."

He studied me for a long moment. "You're not even denying it."

"What would be the point? You tore the page out yourself. My guess is you've read everything by now." I met his eyes. "I had safeguards. Decoy journals, false trails. And still you found the real one. I'll tell you whatever you want to know, but you owe me this much Joe. After everything I've done for you. How did you find it?"

"I owe you nothing." His voice didn't rise, but something in it sharpened. He looked at me the way he had the first time I woke from the fever after Kronstadt, that same stare. Back then it had terrified me. Not now. My political position was stronger now, my nerves were steadier, my mind felt like it was in one piece rather than the feverish mess. "You," he said, "have a great deal to explain."

He finished signing whatever document sat in front of him, set the pen down with deliberate care, and finally gave me his full attention.

"Even as children, you were different. Mama said it. Father said it. The priests at the seminary said it, I still hear it, even now. Why can't you be more like your brother? Every time, those same words." His jaw tightened, something old and raw moving behind his eyes before it vanished again, folded back beneath the calm. "And now this."

He opened the drawer at his side and drew out a single sheet of paper, laying it down on top of my journal, the first page, the one he'd taken. His thumb rested on it a moment, as if weighing something.

"I read your journal again and again," he said. "I have tried to explain it away. I have gone back through every memory of us from when we were children until now, searching for the version of events that makes sense without it." His eyes didn't leave mine. "There is only one conclusion left. So tell me, what are you?"

"Originally," I said, "you were an only child."

That landed. I watched something flicker across his face, the faintest crack in his composure before I kept going.

"It's all true. Petrograd. Kronstadt. Kerensky. I don't know the exact shape it would have taken without me, but I know the civil war was won regardless. Lenin died a few years after it ended, a stroke, of all things, which is how I knew exactly what you meant the moment you had me summoned back from Central Asia. The succession turned into a fight between you and Trotsky, just like now. You won. He was exiled, and a couple decades later you had him killed while he was exiled in Mexico, you sent several assassins, one of them killed him by stabbing him in the back of the head with an ice-pick." I laughed at that, Joe's mouth briefly twiched. "I would have personally used poison, less embarrassing, more quiet." I continued. "But we can kill Trotsky once we defeat him." I shrugged.

"You sound awfully arrogant." He said.

"When you hold the future in your palms you tend to develop a bit of a god complex." I said. "After all, remember how I told you to back Lenin back when he returned after the revolution?"




He scowled. "Go on."

"As all that with Trotsky happened, Germany had already rearmed and plunged Europe into war. Then they invaded the USSR, you led the country through it. Your armies took Berlin. And just as that war ended, you began a war with the Americans in every way except shooting, it was a rivalry that shaped the rest of the century, right up until the country came apart at the seams."

I kept my voice level, though it cost me something to do it. "You made plenty of mistakes along the way. Old friends, comrades, family, if I remember my teacher's lectures right, a lot of them ended up executed on your order. As for you, you died a few years after the war with Germany. Another stroke, like Lenin. By the end you'd gotten so paranoid your own guards were too frightened to check on you when you didn't come out of your room. Your maid found you on the floor. The Politburo was summoned, and while you lay there dying, having soiled yourself and everything, they were already circling each other, carving up who'd take what." A short, disbelieving laugh escaped me. "There's a whole film about it, if you can believe that. A comedy, of all things. My best friend showed it to me once. We watched it over drinks."

"As for what I am." I let the humor drain out of my voice. "Even I don't fully know. One moment I was on a ladder, helping my stepfather patch our roof. The next, I was a newborn, screaming, in Georgia." I exhaled slowly. "The closest I can come to describing it, I'm a castaway. Stranded in a time I don't belong to, a culture that was never mine to begin with. I miss everything about where I came from. Food that could be delivered to your home in an hour. Variety, real variety, more than you could imagine. Television. The internet. Music you could summon out of thin air. Games. Cruises. You've read enough of the journal to have some idea what all that means, even if the words themselves probably read like nonsense."

I paused, remembering. "When I went to Cuba, I ate real food for the first time since I landed in this body. Actual food, not whatever I've had to choke down here for years from mama or the servants. And more than that, for one stretch of days, I was just a person. Nobody staring at me like I was something to fear, or worship, or extract something from." My throat tightened, and I let it. There was no point hiding it from him, not anymore. "But mostly Joe, I'm lonely. Every other Bolshevik in your circle is afraid of me. Not one of them wants anything close to friendship. They think I'm unstable, and they're not entirely wrong to. I can't relate to a single one of them. I've done terrible things in the name of this fucking revolution, saved it several times, and every single time, it just makes them fear me more. You too probably if I'm honest."

I let out a long breath, something between a laugh and exhaustion.

"Honestly? I feel relief. Just relief that I don't have to carry this alone anymore, hidden behind a false journal a locked drawer and elaborate explanations." I looked at him directly. "You can kill me, if that's what you decide. But." I allowed myself a small, tired smile. "If you kill me, everything in that journal becomes worthless to you. It would be like handing a medieval peasant a manual for building a sub-machine gun, complete with all the parts, and no earthly way to understand a word of it."

"A medieval peasant." He repeated the words slowly, like he was turning them over for a blade hidden inside. "That's what you think of me?"

I smiled, good, that had landed exactly where I wanted it. "It's what I think of everyone in this government. Not just you." I didn't hesitate saying it. I couldn't afford to; hesitation here would read as fear, and fear would get me killed faster than the truth ever could. "Zinoviev. Trotsky. Kamenev. Lenin. Bukharin. Dzerzhinsky. It wouldn't matter if I had been born as any of their siblings instead of you. If any of them decided to kill me, the outcome would be identical. None of them could use what I actually have." I shrugged. "Think of a fish in a lake. To that fish, the lake is the entire world, every possibility, every limit, ever set of rules and regulation. I grew up outside the lake. I got dropped into it as an adult and already knowing there's more to that lake. That's the only reason that journal is worth anything at all. Without me alive to read and consult it, it's just ink."

His scowl deepened, but I let my voice soften before he could answer.

"But," I said, "you're also my brother. Even as kids, before I knew what you'd become, before any of this, I protected you. Every beating from Father, I took my share standing between you and him. Every kid who mocked Mama or laid a hand on you, I made sure they regretted it." I let a small smile through. "And what happened to Father at the end. That's still one of the proudest things I've ever done. I'd do it again without blinking."

"Again?" His eyes sharpened.

"Yes."

"Explain yourself."

"Not long after I joined the police in Tiflis." I kept my voice even, almost fond. "I changed my look. Wigs, false beards. I bought him drink after drink until he couldn't stand straight. And then, my hands were around his throat, and I didn't stop until there was nothing left to strangle. His body went into the Kura that same night." I let the smile show fully now. "You remember what I told you back at the seminary? That I'd kill him myself, for what he did to you, to me, to Mama? Even now I still remember all the beatings he delivered on me as a kid. Its why I refuse to hit my own kids unless necessary."

For a moment, something shifted in his face, an old look, one I hadn't seen directed at me in years. It took me back to the seminary itself, to the day I beat the shit out of our father while Soso watched.

"I made my peace with it a long time ago," I went on. "This is the life I have now. There's no road back to what I was."

I paused, tapping two fingers against the desk. "There's a line from a book I read once, something like, Even if we painstakingly piece together something lost, it doesn't mean things will ever go back to how they were. Even if none of this were real, even if it's all some fever dream..." I tapped the desk once more, slower. "It has felt real. Every day of it. The good and the terrible both." My throat tightened, just slightly. "Maria. My children. Mama. You. Kato. Elsa. Yakov. All of it, I love every one of you, and I still do, completely. And the terrible things too, the men, the women, the children I've sent to their deaths, the ones whose blood is on my hands specifically, not some abstract order passed down a chain. If none of this were real, I would be furious. That all of it, every bit of hell I've walked through happened for absolutely nothing. There's no version of me that goes back to a normal life after this. That door's closed for good."

I stopped tapping. "I don't know why I ended up in this body, in this life. What I do know is I can do real good with what's in my head. The war that's coming will be the bloodiest in human history, tens of millions dead, if it plays out the way it did before. If you let me keep working at your side, that number comes down. Every innocent life I've already burnt through won't have been spent for nothing." I let myself smile again, thinner this time. "And more than that, I know roughly how this war unfolds. Which offensives happen, when, where the major turns come." I raised a finger before he could respond. "But there's a catch. You've read about the butterfly effect in there, I'm sure."

He said nothing, though his expression had eased considerably. "Go on."

"Simple enough," I said. "The more I change, the faster my knowledge becomes worthless. I can predict a battle, plan around it, turn it into a rout, but the moment I do, everything downstream of that battle shifts, and my foreknowledge stops applying. I have a plan for that too, which is exactly why killing me would be a mistake even if you wanted to." I leaned back into the chair, letting the moment breathe.

"You have a real gift for irritating people. You're aware of that?"

"I am." I nodded. "But you're going to like this part." I leaned forward again. "I'm already building the groundwork. German-speaking Comintern men, vetted, loyal, good men, and I intend to seed them through the Nazi party itself. We're going to help Hitler rise. Roll out the red carpet for him, personally. Get our people into his inner circle, then scatter them further, through the party, through what becomes the German military, through their secret police. By the time Germany marches on Moscow, they won't have the faintest idea we've been reading their mail the entire time." My grip tightened on the arm of the chair. "We won't just take Berlin. I promise you, our armies will be standing on the Rhine before that war ends."

I sat back, and let my voice change, softer now, no performance left in it.

"But more than any of that." I held his eyes. "I don't want you to die the way you did, where I came from." My tone gentled further. "You're going to become a tyrant, a murderer that makes Genghis Khan look gentle. If there's a hell waiting, the two of us have first-class tickets there together, I call the window seat by the way." A small, tired laugh escaped me. "But you're still my brother. And I don't want you dying the way you did, alone, surrounded by vultures and terrified men who never loved you. I want you to go out surrounded by people who actually care about you. I want that for myself too when it's my turn." I exhaled. "Call it soft. Sentimental. I won't argue, I am both those things, clearly. But it's what I feel, and I'm done pretending otherwise." I met his eyes and held them. "So I need an answer. Right now. Either finish this, kill me and be done with it, or give me some sign, some indication, that I'm not going to end up in an unmarked grave or in a basement in Lubyanka for telling you the truth. Because I won't play this game the way the others do. I am not one of your lackeys that is going to be used up and discarded when they're no longer convenient. I am your brother, that counts for something and I know it.

He said nothing for a long moment. Then he rose, crossed to me, and took the journal from the desk, sliding the first page back into place with a care that felt almost reverent. He carried it to the shelf behind him, opened the safe set into the wall, placed the journal inside, and closed it with a heavy, final click.

He sat back down and studied me. "That journal belongs to me now." His voice left no room for argument. "If you want it, you come through me. If you need to consult it, you come through me." A pause. "You belong to me, Mika. I decide when you live. I decide when you die."

I let out a short laugh. "No 'I love you, brother'? No hug, even?"

"Don't get arrogant with me." His scowl deepened, though something in his eyes stayed less hard than his voice. "From this point forward, every decision you make, every action you take, you explain yourself to me first. In full detail. Nothing held back."

"You actually believe all of this?"

"Do I have another explanation that fits?" His jaw tightened. "There isn't one. You may share my blood, Mika, but that does not mean I let you move through this world however you please."

"And Kato? Yakov?"

He scowled harder, but nodded once. "That, I will allow."

"And after?"

"After what?"

"You and I both know you won't rule forever." I kept my tone light, careful. "I've already told you, I want Yakov ruling eventually, Kato at his side. After them, our grandchildren, and theirs after that." I tapped the desk once, softly. "You've read what happens in that journal. Do you really trust whoever comes after you to protect what you've built? Better to keep it in the family. Don't you think?" I let a small smile surface.

"Don't push your luck, Mika." His voice dropped low, final. "You're useful. That does not mean my patience has no bottom."

"Understood." I rose from the chair. "Will that be all?"

"Report to Lubyanka tomorrow. As usual."

I nodded and let myself out, I walked through the halls, not saying a single word and barely making a sound. I entered the room, closing the door, it was only there that I finally collapsed, sitting in front of the door and taking several deep breaths, shuddering. "Holy shit." I said in English. "That was too close."

 

[iceknight90]

What a great chapter. And now Stalin knows all.

The upcoming succession crisis and the build up to WW2 is going to be very interesting.

 

[Siryapsalot]

Now it's time to go full-throttle or cautious since Joe will want to be on top of things.

 

[spectre678]

"But... I love you. I need you. I missed you so much, Elsa."

Click to shrink...

run back to your winter palace and build snowmen, let him go

 

[Alenco98]

January 7, 1990
Catoca diamond mine
Lunda Sul, People's Soviet Republic of Angola

Jae-il Kim stood at the edge of a small creek, taking a piss as the rain came down on him, steady and warm in the way only tropical rain could be. It was the middle of rainy season now, and he'd stopped bothering to seek shelter from it weeks ago. He'd been in-country since early September. The first three months had been a blur of pre-service training, weapons handling, Russian language drills late into the night, small-unit tactics, demolitions, breaching and clearing houses in the mock village they'd built outside the training camp. It was only last week that he'd finally "graduated," sworn into the corps alongside the rest of his cohort in the presidential palace in Luanda, standing at attention in front of President dos Santos himself while sweat ran down the back of his new uniform.

His cohort numbered a little over three thousand men, and this was just for Angola, just the ones slated to serve in-country from January through December of this year. It was a strange mix of people, now that he thought about it. Some, like him, were there for practical reasons: a meal ticket, an easy foot in the door with their country's Communist Party back home. Others were true believers, he thought of the handful of Americans in his unit, earnest young men who actually seemed to mean every word when they talked about solidarity and revolution. Then there was Dragos, a Romanian built like a brick house, already a soldier back home, chasing a spot in officer's school that his lack of Party connections would never have earned him otherwise. And then there were the GRU and Spetsnaz men, off in their own orbit entirely. He'd barely exchanged more than a few words with any of them the whole time. They kept to themselves, spoke rarely, and when they did, it was short and clipped. But their eyes told him everything their mouths didn't. They'd seen things. Things he hoped he never would.

He finished, tucked himself back in, and zipped up, taking a moment just to stand there and look out at the stream, at the wall of green jungle stretching endlessly in every direction around him. Being here didn't feel real in a sense, he never thought it would be. It was nothing like Korea, not even close. Sometimes he'd catch himself staring out at the treeline and feel like he'd been dropped onto another planet entirely.

He sighed and glanced down at his right hand, at the small ring resting on his finger. A short laugh escaped him.

He thought back to the week before he'd shipped out, how he'd proposed to Sayeon by accident. They'd just made love and were lying together in her small apartment when the words had simply come out of him. "We should get married."

He remembered the way her face had gone red, how she'd propped herself up on one elbow to look at him. "Jae-il... what are you talking about?"

"I remembered something," he'd told her, already half-regretting how unromantic it sounded. "Since I'm a corps volunteer, if you marry me your college stipend doubles. You could actually enjoy yourself while I'm away. And my resettlement allowance doubles too, we could split the difference. You keep half the extra, I keep the rest. And if you want, we get divorced after I'm back. And if I don't come back you'd be eligible for widow's benefits."

He'd regretted that last sentence as soon as he said it. Sayeon broke down crying, and it took nearly an hour before she calmed down enough to speak. He'd been forced to spend the rest of that day trying to make it up to her, eventually walking her to their favorite chimaek place just to see her smile again. But in the end she'd said yes. They were married two days before he left, a small, quiet ceremony, just her older sister Samin, his own parents standing witness, as well as the Chondoist elder that administered the ceremony.

He crouched by the edge of the creek, letting his mind drift away from all that and spotted a handful of flat stones scattered in the shallow water. He picked one up, turned it over in his palm, and threw it the way his cousin Sieun had taught him years ago when they were kids. He counted the skips under his breath. Three.

He sighed. "Sieun could do ten," he muttered, then reached for another stone. Then another, and another, working steadily through the small pile until there was nothing left to throw. He glanced back toward camp, then out at the water one more time. Technically, they were far from the fighting down south, and the rains had slowed everything to a crawl this time of year, but that didn't mean he could afford to stretch a bathroom break any longer than it needed to be.

He crouched down again anyway, scanning the creek bed for one last stone. "Just one more," he told himself. That was when something caught his eye in the water, not quite the right shape for a stone, but close enough that he almost dismissed it. He reached in and picked it up anyway. It felt heavier than it looked, solid in a way that made him pause. He dipped it back into the current, rubbing away the film of dirt clinging to its surface, and that was when he saw the color underneath.

Pink.

He went still. He looked around, no one nearby, the camp still a hundred meters off through the trees. He took a slow breath, and without meaning to, one of the very first lessons from training surfaced in his mind, word for word, the way it had been drilled into all of them: All resources found during your service in Angola are the property of the Angolan state, and by extension, of every soviet state enterprise operating under the auspices of its government. Anyone found hoarding or stealing these resources will be shot.

He looked down at the stone again, turning it slightly so it caught what little light made it through the clouds. For just a moment, one single moment, he considered it. It was only natural, wasn't it? He was only human, and no one was watching. But then he thought of Sayeon. Of home, and the ring on his finger, and everything waiting for him if he actually made it back in one piece. He stood up, slid the stone into his pocket, and started back toward camp. Whatever it was worth, it wasn't worth dying over. Nothing in this shithole was.

He walked back through the perimeter, nodding to the guards as he passed, and made his way straight to the commander's tent without stopping. Regulations were clear about reporting finds like this. Two soldiers stood outside the tent entrance, rain running off the brims of their caps. He came to a halt and saluted.

"Name, rank, and nature of your business," one of them said. His Russian was sharp and clean, the kind of accent that could only come from Moscow. Something about the way he stood, the cut of his uniform, told Jae-il exactly what he was looking at. Spetsnaz, almost certainly.

"Private Second Class Jae-il Kim, Thälmann Brigade, Internationalist Corps." He hesitated only a fraction of a second. "I found something in the creek nearby. A diamond."

The word landed the way he expected it to. He reached into his pocket and held the stone out, and the instant it left his hand, something in his chest loosened, like he'd just stepped back from a ledge he hadn't fully realized he was standing on. The two guards traded a glance before turning their attention back to him.

The one holding the diamond turned it over once in his fingers, studying it in silence for a moment. "Wait here." He ducked into the tent, leaving Jae-il standing alone in the rain with the other guard. He tried a little small talk to fill the silence, but got nothing back except short, flat answers, and eventually gave up. A few minutes passed before the first soldier stepped back out. "Go in."

Inside, several men were gathered—staff, he guessed, to whoever commanded this outpost. He'd never actually spoken to the man directly before, only saluted him in passing or during formation. Ignatiev, his name was. Up close, in the lamplight, he looked even older than Jae-il had expected—older than his own father, certainly. Jae-il straightened and saluted. "Sir."

"Sit." Ignatiev gestured toward the chair across from his desk.

Jae-il sat. "Comrade Zaitsev's already briefed me on the situation," Ignatiev said, his eyes flicking briefly to the diamond now resting on the desk between them. "I just need a short report from you. How exactly you came across it."

"Yes, sir." Jae-il kept it simple, he'd been on a bathroom break when a piece of his equipment slipped into the water, and going after it, he'd stumbled onto the diamond instead. He left out the part about skipping stones. He left out the moment of temptation, the second he'd actually considered pocketing it and walking away. He told it the way it needed to be told: that the instant he recognized what it was, he remembered the regulations and brought it straight in. Off to one side, a man he took for a secretary wrote it all down as he spoke, pen scratching steadily against paper.

When he finished, Ignatiev nodded, apparently satisfied. The secretary handed the finished report across the desk; Ignatiev skimmed it briefly before passing it to Jae-il along with a pen. "Acknowledgment form," he said. "Read it, sign it. You'll see a portion of its value added to your resettlement allowance once your service is complete."

Jae-il read it over, signed his name at the bottom, and handed it back. "Anything else you need from me, sir?"

"No." Ignatiev waved a hand, already turning his attention back to the papers on his desk. "Back to your post. Good work. Dismissed."

Jae-il rose and saluted. "Sir."