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.