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

[OverseerEX]

When is our Comrade joining the Central Committee? Or will he first join Dzerzhinsky in the GPU/OGPU? He has to help Lenin create the overall structure of the state and party constitution, after all...

 

[GarfRed]

I wonder what seat or position he is going to get by the end of this? Also the I want to see the faces of the Americans when the telegram comes and just states that the man who killed Kerensky apologized for killing him in a American Car.

 

[Alenco98]

I pledge allegiance, to the party, of the ideals of Marx and Lenin, and to the union, which it upholds, one nation, one party, fighting for the unity of the workers of the world

-The soviet pledge of allegiance, published by comrade Mikheil Jugashvili shortly after the end of the civil war

October 26, 1917 (Old style)
Smolny institute
Petrograd, Russia

I leaned against a column by the Smolny entrance and watched the parade of humanity that marched in and out: soldiers, officials, clerks—humans in state-issued seriousness—the whole lot of them flowing in and out like a very grim tide. A few spared me looks; a couple whispered and pointed, the sort of furtive gestures that say, Who invited him? I smiled, waved like a congenial lunatic, and took another drag from my cigarette.

As I exhaled, the smoke braided into the gray sky and I let my mind rewind the last few months since Joe and I found one another again. When we first met he was fresh from exile, the Bolsheviks were still the underdog in the Petrograd soviet, and I was…well, whoever you are before history gives you a title. Now look at us: government toppled, Kerensky shot—by me, thank you very much—and the nation teetered in our hands like a particularly volatile teapot.

Of course, the teapot was probably going to explode soon. Civil war hung in the air like cigar smoke—inescapable and likely to make someone cough. One of my men, a kid from a junker family who defected the day I took the palace (ambition is such a charming disease), whispered that the old officers were already grumbling before Kerensky hit the floor. Now they were probably plotting counterrevolutions in their sleep. Delightful.

I had plans—oh, the plans. I was due to see Dzerzhinsky; I intended to tell him about these budding mutinies so he could order me to march into their schools and show them how discipline is taught (with executions). Part of me just wanted to storm things, arrest things, and generally rearrange the furniture of dissent immediately. But bureaucracy, that majestic system of people managing people, had other ideas. Yesterday had almost been a shit-show thanks to me, and hierarchies are allergic to spontaneity. So I swallowed my temper and my impulses and waited. The waiting was fun in the way a toothache is fun: educational.

The best part of all this however was that I was no longer a nobody. I had Stalin's ear—probably Lenin and Trotsky's too. If I played my cards right I could nudge policy, tilt events, possibly even rewrite entire footnotes in the future history textbooks. Speaking of the future: Nazis, holocaust, World War II, Cold War—tens of millions dead—mountains of bodies that would make cartographers rethink topography. Charming. My new status felt like a third-division Spanish football team unexpectedly promoted to the first division and was now set to play versus Barcelona and Real Madrid. Which reminded me, when this was all over—if all was ever over—I'd like to go to Spain and watch some real fucking Football. Priorities, right?

I chuckled, which probably read as morbid to any nearby moralists. The image of those future mountains of corpses flitted through my head like an unfortunate postcard. And there I was: a degenerate, immature asshole from the twenty-first century dropped into the middle of this historical shit-show. "What a pain in the ass," I muttered and inhaled again.

A hand landed on my shoulder, and then a Georgian speaking voice emerged. "Who's a pain in the ass?" Joe's voice—calm, like a lake that has swallowed grenades and still looks serene.

"Hey Joe. Is Dzerzhinsky ready?"

"Yes. Follow me."

We threaded into the building, past the same fearful, awed faces who now looked as if history itself might bite them. We reached a heavy door; I assumed the person behind it was Dzerzhinsky, or paperwork dressed as a man. Stalin slipped a hand onto my other shoulder, close enough to be paternal and worrying enough to be tactical.

"Remember," he said, "everything you do or say reflects on me. Don't fuck things up and make me look bad."

I smiled, shrugged with the casual innocence of somebody who already had one or two things dangerously bent in his pocket. "Please. You and I both know I haven't fucked up so far."

"Keep it that way," he said, and the hand tightened, which was either encouragement or a warning. Both suited me.

The door sighed open and let me into a room that could charitably be called spare. A battered desk, three chairs that had seen better revolutions, and a single lamp throwing a pool of tired light. Behind the desk Dzerzhinsky sat like a punctuation mark: abrupt, immovable, the room's only human full stop. The rest of the space belonged to paperwork—an empire of paper, all of it being politely strangled by his pen.

I closed the door behind me, inclined my head in that courteous way people do when they're trying to look smaller than the trouble they've just caused. "Comrade Dzerzhinsky."

"Have a seat, Comrade Jugashvili." His voice was flat, not unkind—more like a statement of policy. I sat opposite him. We'd exchanged a few words back when we were both tasting Kresty's brick walls after the July Days; he'd been a man of few syllables then, and that core of silence hadn't softened. If looks could bore holes, his would have drilled straight into the underside of my soul and left me more honest than I felt.

"Comrade Dzerzhinsky, to what do I owe the honour of a one-on-one?" I asked, keeping the tone breezy, which is to say I grinned like someone who enjoys being dangerous in a cardigan.

"To assess you." He tapped his pen. The sound was businesslike—the sound of decisions being made at the scale of lives.

"Assess me?" I let the word hang, like a particularly enjoyable noose.

"Yes." He nodded once. "Comrade Lenin has put me in charge of managing counterrevolutionary activity. After yesterday's events…and your service over the last months…I am interested in recruiting you to serve under me."

Well. Not a bad week's work: one coup, one assassination, and now an interview with internal security. New regime, new jobbing opportunities.

"What would the job consist of?" I asked, as though I were asking whether the office came with coal or electric heat.

"Putting down and repressing counterrevolutionary activity," he said, the understatement of the century. He might as well have said "making tea."

"So, a Soviet Okhrana, then?" I raised an eyebrow. It is important to introduce your metaphors with a wink. It keeps people on their toes.

He scowled. "Not exactly."

"Please." I waved a hand. "No need to bullshit me. Revolutions demand unpleasant housekeeping in their initial stages. If you require a willing butcher, I can arrange an apron."

He didn't flinch. He made a note—small, precise. He liked details, and I liked that he liked details. It made him predictable, which is useful.

"A little exam," he said finally. "Imagine you supervise a city. You capture a prisoner with vital information about an imminent attack. He stubbornly refuses to speak. He spits in your face. What do you do?"

He was probing for gentleness—wanted to know whether I slept with a conscience. The obvious answer would have been to describe some textbook brutality. But that is the language of amateurs and dinner-party fascists. I decided to show him the mind behind the hands.

"Well it depends, is he a local from the town? Do I know who his friends and family are?"

"Let us assume you do."

"Then its simple, I bring him into a room, have my men bring out tools, knives, scalpels, hammers, pincers, needles, cleavers. Then I bring his family and friends in, his mom, wife, lover, father, children, anyone and everyone remotely related to him. Then I tell him, 'tell me everything you know. Or I will have my men work on your mother, then your children, then your wife. I will have them all tortured, beaten and used by my men for their amusement until they finally do the world a kindness and die'. Torture is too simple, inefficient, if you torture a man he will do anything to make it stop. If you have their family in your hands. He will do anything to protect them, and you can keep them around to ensure the information was accurate."

Dzerzhinsky didn't say anything. He merely wrote down what I said onto his paper. He looked at me once he finished. "And if you can't get access to anyone. What if he is alone, no friends, family, or other co-conspirators?"

"A mix of good cop and bad cop. One day I torture him until he can't handle it, another I tend to him, bathe him, fix up his wounds, another day I merely starve him and deprive him of sleep. A constant cycle of uncertainty to keep him off balance and allow more leverage."

"And if time is running short?"

"Same as above, but with a faster time-table."

He set the pen down. "Enough. You may go now, Comrade Jugashvili."

"One more thing," I said, because one always keeps a last thing in reserve—an ace, a joke, a detonator.

He lifted his head. The blankness at the edge of his face sharpened into interest. "Tell me."

"The Junkers," I said. "Several defected yesterday when I took the palace. I've spoken to some of them. Many of their former comrades in the academy keep reactionary sentiments and are from the aristocracy, the same aristocracy we oppose. They're probably going to try something. With your permission, I'd like to place men around their academies and have a chat with them."

"Do as you see fit," he said. "However, I want them crushed the moment they even show a shred of defiance."

"As you command."

He dismissed me like a man signing off an execution roster, and I stood, bowed once more for ceremony and left. The corridor smelled of wet wool and boots—normal smells for revolutionary mornings. I felt my cigarette pack in my pocket as an old, ridiculous comfort. There was one left. My mother, in my previous life, used to tell me smoking was bad for you in the way saints advise sinners—earnest and irritating. She was right, of course, which is why I shrugged, laughed softly at her ghost, and tossed the pack onto the floor of Smolny.

A small, pointless act of rebellion against a city already breathing revolution. Then I walked away—leaving paper, pens, and the new machinery of power to do their work—while I went to get my men and crush the silly little junkers.

October 27, 1917 (Old style)
Outside Mikhailovsky Castle
Petrograd, Russia

The midnight moon hung over the city, pale and a little stingy with its light—waning, like a miser counting change. I'd pulled together several Red Guard units under Dzerzhinsky's authority: lads from Vyborg who smelled of brine, dockworkers with oil under their nails, and a handful of factory men who could dismantle a machine with a glare. There was something intoxicating about authority: point a badge and a bloodied pistol in the right direction and strangely obedient humans appear. Add to that the small reputational boost of having shot the unpopular prime minister yesterday, and people followed orders almost as if they liked me.

I had roughly six hundred men cupped around the castle; the Vladimir Military School and the School of Ensigns of the Engineering Troops were ringed by another five hundred apiece—Red Guards with rifles, bayonets, and the kind of cheerful brutality that does paperwork later. My new junker subordinate, Sergey Megeryev, swore those academies were where the Junkers were made—fancy boys in neat uniforms, taught how to look commanding at balls and murderous on parade grounds. Charming.

So here I was: me, a makeshift general with a cigarette habit I'd acquired like a bad souvenir and was now trying to kick, surrounding a clutch of military academies full of young officers who, according to military logic, were effectively just stupid children in epaulets. I chewed my thumb—instinct, anxiety, nicotine withdrawal; take your pick—then accepted a white flag from one of my sergeants. White flags make you feel diplomatic even as you prepare to do unpleasant things.

I stepped out of our barricade, boots crunching on mud and the gusts of discarded slogans, and marched up to the castle gates waving the flag like a man who'd misunderstood what a parley looked like. "I am here to have a parley!" I bellowed, which is a public service announcement in case anyone was hoping for theatrics.

There were silhouettes on the walls: machine guns trained, rifles cocked, fingers that could've once written letters now curled on triggers. Cute. Hope is an ugly accessory on soldiers; it never matches the uniform.

"We're sending someone out!" someone called from within.

A few minutes later the castle doors eased open and a man emerged—middle-aged, bald, with a handlebar mustache and the facial expression of someone permanently displeased with the world's playlist. He wore disdain like a sash. "And who am I speaking with?" he demanded.

"Mikheil Jugashvili," I announced, with all the modesty of a man who'd recently been on the front page of more than one poster. "The man who murdered your prime minister yesterday. Your name?" I smiled and held his gaze. You could almost see his scowl harden into something animal and offended.

"I am Georgy Petrovich Polkovnikov." He spat. "And you have some nerve to show yourself like this."

"And you have the nerve to remain a counterrevolutionary after the government's been overthrown." I patted his shoulder, a casual intimacy designed to be insulting and oddly paternal. "Here's my offer. Three options. One: any of you who want to join me — go on, keep your ranks, we'll feed you, give you ammo, and you might even enjoy it. Two: you can leave the city with your families and go back to your lands. Three: you can fight. If you choose that, I'll order my men to kill you to the last man. One hour to decide. Tell your men exactly what I've offered."

He went pale, then red, then moral outrage; a spectrum of offended monarchism. "You're a monster. A butcher."

"Yeah, I get that a lot. One hour, or I shoot everyone. Those are the parameters. Play fair." I turned and walked back to the barricade, handing the flag to a man who looked pleased to be involved in something history-shaped.

"Did your friends deliver the messages to Vladimir and the School of Ensigns?" I asked Megeryev without looking at him.

"Yes, Comrade Jugashvili."

"Good. Now we wait."

Waiting has a taste: copper, anticipation, and a little sweetness if you like watching people decide their value. I lay down on the cold ground, boots pressing into the dirt, and stared up at the waning gibbous moon. It threw a thin silver on our circle—romantic, if you ignore the part about imminent slaughter.

My mind drifted to the throne room, to the faces that had been carved into my memory that day: Lenin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky, Sverdlov, Bubnov, Milyutin, Dzerzhinsky, Muranov, Rykov, Kalinin, Bukharin…names that had been textbook notes until February turned them into people. I'd only known Stalin, Trotsky, and Lenin from school; the rest were abstract until they weren't. Dzerzhinsky, of course, was a walking interrogation manual. The more I thought of it, the tighter the idea squeezed my ribs: these names, these faces—where had the others gone? Why had I never been taught about them? The simplest, ugliest conclusion leaked through: maybe Stalin killed them all.

The thought chilled me like a draft under a door. Would he kill me? His own brother? We'd shared everything: I'd pulled him out of the path of a carriage, I took the beating meant for him from our father, dipped my hand into his fever when smallpox nearly took him, helped him with Russian and seminary lessons. I'd even raised his son for a time and was arranging a marriage that would bind our families further. Loyalty is the strangest capital: you spend it, and you hope it pays dividends.

But history doesn't care for past investments. I couldn't run to America anymore; the line between exile and spectator had blurred; there was no ticket home. The only honest way forward was through—through blood, through bureaucracy, through choices that tasted like pennies and frightened pigeons.

I drew my knees up against my chest and stubbed out a mental cigarette on the reality of it all. Somewhere beyond the gate, men debated their options; somewhere above, the moon watched like an indifferent magistrate. I laughed softly to myself—half a joke, half a small, resigned prayer—and kept waiting.

About twenty minutes later the castle doors sighed open again and a line of cadets filed out, hands up like apologetic choirboys. "Let them through!" I shouted as they reached our positions. We processed them fast — the sort of efficiency you only get when everyone's future is on the line. About a third wanted to join us, eager or sensible; the remaining two-thirds wanted only to shuffle home to their mothers and Sunday suppers. We frisked them, stripped off weapons and ammo, and sent the walking ones on their way with the tacit promise that the city gates would still be standing when they got there.

The ones who wanted to switch sides did not get to keep their toys. I had their rifles taken and marched straight to Smolny with a squad of my men; ideological education is a time-consuming business, and there are worse things than being bored into orthodoxy. I did run a quick interrogation — conversational, if you will — and extracted a headcount: roughly 230 men in the castle, of which some ninety had already defected or simply decided desertion was preferable to heroics. Not bad, I thought. Numbers are everything until they aren't.

Megeryev returned about half an hour later wearing the sort of face people wear when they're delivering bad news that is, in fact, perfectly expected. He checked his watch like a man who kept time for the revolution. "Comrade Jugashvili — time's up."

I nodded, took back the white flag, and strode to the barricade where the mud met purpose. "This is Jugashvili!" I bellowed. "Polkovnikov — last chance! Once you fire, we will not spare you. Mercy is cheap now, but it's still available: think of your mothers, your wives, your children. Go home today and argue with history another day!"

"Go fuck yourself!" he roared from the parapet, which is a respectable, if predictable, reply.

"Are you sure about this?!" I called up, directing it not at him so much as to the men behind his guns. "To the men on the wall — you can still betray your commander. Bring him down and you and your comrades will be spared."

Their answer came like a drumbeat. "Never!"

I smiled, which felt faintly obscene under a moon that had already seen worse. "So be it, then," I murmured, which was the nicest way I could find to say, prepare to die. I shrugged as if shrugging off old clothes, turned toward my men and let my voice do the work it had practiced on many other nights.

"Get ready to assault the castle."

"Yes, sir." One of them snapped a salute with a kind of wet, hungry precision. The sort of salute you give when you expect to be given orders that will make you famous or infamous — the market will be open either way.

Note: As you can see, Mika will be a Chekist

 

[OverseerEX]

But history doesn't care for past investments. I couldn't run to America anymore; the line between exile and spectator had blurred; there was no ticket home. The only honest way forward was through—through blood, through bureaucracy, through choices that tasted like pennies and frightened pigeons.

Click to shrink...

I mean, he still could. It would be hard, especially since he has family, and to bring them would more than double the risks involved, but it could still happen. On the other hand, even if he did, would the intelligence agencies and states leave him be? I think not. Unless he can barter some sort of asylum for himself and his family. Then with modern knowledge, become filthy rich, and live life to the fullest. Maybe as a last resort if all else fails.