Origins: The Reich (7 page)

Again Stalin turned toward Lenin’s body lying in state and bellowed, “DEPARTING FROM US, COMRADE LENIN YOU ENJOINED US TO GUARD THE UNITY OF OUR PARTY, WE VOW TO YOU, COMRADE LENIN, THAT THIS BEHEST, TOO, WE SHALL FULFILL WITH HONOR!”

Once more Stalin turned from delivering his pledge to the fallen leader to recite a stanza to the crowd praising them for breaking free from the slavery of serfdom and exploitation.  He implored them to maintain the alliance between workers and peasants, for alone they could not have defeated the landlords or capitalists.

Next, Stalin expounded upon the virtues of accepting diversity among the nations as Lenin so vehemently preached.  Russians and Ukrainians, Bashkirs and Byelorussians, Georgians and Azerbaijanians, Armenians and Daghestanians, Tatars and Kirghiz, Uzbeks and Turkmenians were all equals under the communist ideals.

Again Comrade Stalin pledge to the body of Lenin, along with thousands from the crowd.  “DEPARTING FROM US, COMRADE LENIN YOU ENJOINED US TO STRENGTHEN AND EXTEND THE UNION OF REPUBLICS. WE VOW TO YOU, COMRADE LENIN, THAT THIS BEHEST, TOO, WE SHALL FULFILL WITH HONOR!”

Stalin stopped speaking for a moment and allowed the fervor of the crowd to die down for his final words to hit every listener with clarity.  “More than once did Lenin impress upon us that the respite we won from the capitalist states might prove a short one.  More than once did Lenin point out to us that the strengthening of the Red Army and the improvement of its condition is one of the most important tasks of our Party.  The events connected with the Great War once more confirmed that, as always, Lenin was right. Let us vow then, comrades, that we shall spare no effort to strengthen our Red Army.”

Once more, all those in the million strong crowd declared to their fallen leader along with Joseph Stalin, “DEPARTING FROM US, COMRADE LENIN, YOU ENJOINED US TO STRENGTHEN THE RED ARMY. WE VOW TO YOU, COMRADE LENIN, THAT THIS BEHEST, TOO, WE SHALL FULFILL WITH HONOR!”

With those inspired words, any doubts Oleg still harbored concerning Stalin’s dedication to Lenin’s true legacy of leading the worker’s fight against the privileged classes was washed away.  He vowed at that moment to follow Stalin’s leadership of the USSR until the end of his days.

“
that was a
fine speech that you delivered yesterday,” Valnor commended while gazing out the General Secretary’s window into the snow swept streets of Moscow.  Workers outside the House of Trade Unions labored below to clean up after the funeral of Vladimir Lenin.

Millions of people braved the thirty degree below zero conditions for hours in order to make their pilgrimage.  In endless lines, the people marched past the bier holding Lenin’s embalmed body and for four days and four nights they never stopped marching.  It was something unsurpassed and awe-inspiring for him to personally witness.

Valnor observed the light from the last trashcan fire, used by the crowds to stay warm, go out.  In that moment he concluded that it was time for him to move on as well.  He narrowed the focus of his eyesight to the point he no longer saw the scene beyond the windowpane, but rather the reflection of Joseph Stalin sitting at his desk reviewing a stack of papers.  The man professed to be of the people and dedicated to their collective prosperity, but Valnor knew better.  This was a hard man.  Everything about his physical appearance conveyed a need for power, but for Valnor, the eyes were what truly gave him away.

Those dark orbs conveyed an emotionless soul dominated by fierce intellect and a ruthless, selfish nature. Those dark windows into his inner thoughts left no doubt in Valnor’s mind that Joseph Stalin was capable of almost anything; good or evil.  All Stalin needed to bring his true nature to the surface was for someone to show him the way, and much to his chagrin, that someone was Valnor.

Though his face was still several inches away from the glass, an intense chill penetrated the barrier to the point Valnor could barely feel his nose.  He turned back toward the room to look upon the General Secretary and finish his complimentary statement.  “In fact, I don’t think the events over the last few weeks could have gone any better for you.”

Stalin let escape a guttural grunt of frustration before looking up from his papers to meet Valnor’s eyes.  “If only the People knew what a traitor Lenin turned out to be toward the true ideals of our revolution.  Tens of millions worship his memory without realizing their idol was actually a closet capitalist.”

“And you,” Stalin declared with an accusing finger pointing at Valnor.  “You had me stand before the entire nation and foster this false hero worship.  Do you have any idea how many times I had to pause and choke back a river of bile threatening to spew forth during that speech?”

“I certainly hope your gag reflex is warmed up, because today you’ll lead the ceremony to rename Petrograd as the city of Leningrad,” Valnor declared with a touch of amusement behind his words.

“Ridiculous,” Stalin spat.  “We defeat the Tsar along with all his rich industrialists and land owners.  The People finally take back what was rightfully theirs, and what was the first thing Comrade Lenin tried to do when we hammered the guns of our civil war back into plows and sickles?  He tried to reestablish private enterprise!”

“To be fair, his proposed new system of ‘State Capitalism’ kept banking, foreign trade, and large industry under state control,” Valnor offered.

“Bah,” Stalin fired back, dismissing the notion with a wave of his hand across the air between him and Valnor.  “Any private enterprise promotes private profits, which quickly leads to a class system once more.  He betrayed our communist ideals, and for this betrayal we rename a city to honor his memory?”

“No,” Valnor said softly with an equally gentle shake of his head.  “I orchestrated an assassination attempt and ultimately succeeded in poisoning Lenin for betraying the revolution.  Now you name a city after the man so that the people will believe you are his devoted disciple.  You will promote the cult of Lenin and put his face on everything communist.  His mausoleum will stand as a Mecca for Communism and the people will love you for it.  They will accept you with open arms as Lenin’s pupil and successor of his great vision.  They will regard you as Lenin reincarnate.”

“From this day forward, to question Stalin is to doubt Lenin’s wisdom and thereby question the legitimacy of the revolution.  You will make that an act of heresy not tolerated by any true Soviet.  Through Lenin’s worship you will gain the initiative and the entire nation will follow your leadership without question.”

Stalin still looked frustrated enough to overturn his desk and hurl it out the window.  To put any such notion to rest, Valnor added a little sweetener to make his plan more palatable.  “If it makes you feel any better, you and I both know Lenin himself would not approve of his hero worship.  Before the third and final stroke took his ability to speak, I heard Lenin say numerous times to others ‘Wherever you look, they are writing about me’.”

“He considered this emphasis on the individual to be un-Marxist and ultimately harmful to the cause.  In essence, you are desecrating his legacy by making him a hero to the people.  It serves you and insults him at the same time, what could be better?” Valnor concluded with a glowing smile.

“All of this is too fast, too aggressive, too transparent,” Stalin countered.  “Owning the loyalty of every peasant will do me no good when Trotsky returns to Moscow with the whole of the Red Army backing him and his allies within the party.  They will put a loaded pistol in my mouth and either pull the trigger or make me their puppet.  Either way my influence will be at an end.”

“There is a reason I timed Lenin’s death to coincide with Leon Trotsky’s illness,” Valnor instructed.  “His absence from the memorial proceedings did not go unnoticed by anyone, by the people or the party leaders.”

“Every single party leader, to a man, knows full well Leon would have been here; sick with malaria or not.  Everyone knows it was my telegram giving him the wrong date of the funeral that kept Trotsky away,” Stalin protested.  “All of this was too soon, too aggressive.  You should never have killed Lenin; the party will never follow me now.”

It was Valnor’s turn to sport the frustrated face of a man wanting to destroy something.  “It had to be now.  As it is, Lenin’s liberal economic policies may have already done too much damage for us to recover from in time.  Your reforms, your calls for central economic planning and the massive industrialization of our great nation fell on deaf ears while Lenin lived.  It had to happen for us to stand on our own against the western powers.  It had to happen for us to keep their monarchies, their greedy capitalists, and their robber baron industrialists out of our country for good.  Otherwise the revolution would have been for nothing as we traded one set of oppressors for another rather than controlling our own destiny.”

“What of Trotsky and his supporters?  He commands the Red Army, he holds all the cards,” Stalin said with a hint of deference entering his tone.  He wanted to believe Valnor.

“Purge him,” Valnor answered without hesitation.  “Purge them all while you still own the hearts and minds of the People amid the afterglow of your stirring tribute to Lenin.”

“Purge?  You mean have them all killed?  You want me to order the murder of our fellow patriots of the revolution?” Stalin asked seeking clarity.  The man tried his best to sound appalled at the notion, but his ability to deliver a convincing speech to the masses was far more advanced than his theatrical skills.  If anything, Valnor was quite certain he saw the desk Stalin sat under rise up six inches upon hearing the suggestion.  Valnor knew all the man needed was a gentle nudge in the right direction to bring out his inner monster.

“The generals are the ones loyal to Trotsky.  The men and their Commissars, like me, stand loyal to the cause; the cause you lead,” Valnor instructed.  “The generals will not be missed.  Nor will the schemers who vie for political position behind closed doors.  The people follow vision and strength.  Be strong for us now, Comrade Stalin.  A nation waits to follow you.”

A loaded silence filled the Secretary General’s office while Joseph Stalin considered his options.  He leaned back in his chair and looked toward the ceiling as if the answer was floating above him.  In slow motion, his head rotated toward Valnor and the change was obvious.  The once timid man had hardened his resolve into solid iron.  Stalin now eyed Valnor like a lion spying a lone antelope among the tall grass of the Serengeti; deciding if the kill was worth the effort.  It was only after Stalin shifted his gaze back to the papers on his desk that Valnor felt comfortable that he was not on the menu.

Without looking up Stalin commanded in a quiet yet powerful voice, “Purge them all.”

**********

“Humor my ignorance of Russian history, but how many people did Stalin have killed at Valnor’s prodding to solidify his power?” Dr. Holmes asked.  “Are we talking five or ten or was it several hundred?”

Jeffrey expected a serious answer to his morbid question, but what he got was Hastelloy’s eyes growing wide in surprise along with a chuckle of disbelief.  Apparently the naivety of the question momentarily won out over its severe nature. 

“The number is a bit north of that I’m afraid,” Hastelloy said after regaining his composure.  “The Great Purge, as it came to be known, was all encompassing and staggering in scope.  In the Red Army alone, three of five Field Marshals were eliminated along with ninety percent of the generals, three quarters of the Colonels and every single regional commander; all of them.  In the end, some thirty thousand military officers were eliminated.”

It was Dr. Holmes’ turn to let loose an inappropriate laugh.  The enormity of the answer was ridiculous, but one glance at his brother’s stoic face put an end to the laughter.  An affirmative nod from Mark let him know the figures were no exaggeration, leading Hastelloy to continue with the staggering body count of the purge.

“The Great Purge wasn’t confined to the military alone.  The entire Politburo and most of the Central Committee went away.  Along with them, foreign communists living in the Soviet Union, numerous intellectuals, bureaucrats, and factory managers vanished.  No one was safe from Stalin’s iron fist.”

“The total count of people imprisoned or executed during The Great Purge numbers upward of two million,” Hastelloy went on.  “The mass terror was little known to the outside world, and many western intellectuals believed that the Soviets had created a successful alternative to a capitalist world, a world which was suffering mightily from the effects of the Great Depression during this time.”

“It was brutal in the extreme, but it worked,” Dr. Holmes heard his younger brother say.  “Stalin established the Gosplan, a State Planning Commission, and the result was an explosion in heavy industry and education.  Within a decade, the Soviet Union transformed itself from a backwater, agrarian based economy into an industrial superpower.  In fact, their industrial capacity grew faster long term than any nation in history.  Even the American industrial revolution pales in comparison.”

“You sound like quite a fan,” Hastelloy chided without the least bit of surprise.  “Doesn’t the scope or brutality used by Stalin shock you?”

“It was all for the greater good right?” Mark mocked by throwing Hastelloy’s favorite phrase back at him.  “By your own admissions you have racked up quite a body count during your time on our planet.  What’s two million more at this point?”

“Those were Joseph Stalin’s murders, not mine,” Hastelloy protested.  He opened his mouth to expound upon his position, but was preempted by Mark.

“Oh no, you do not get to wash your hands of this.  Per your own telling of our history, your man instigated Stalin’s actions.  A military officer is responsible for the actions of those under his command.  You own this, along with all the other atrocities you’ve committed over the last four millennia.”

Mark shifted in his seat and leaned away from Hastelloy in a clear sign that he wanted to distance himself from the man and asked, “And now you expect me to put you in front of the President of the United States?  You, the greatest war criminal in the history of mankind?”

Hastelloy was as cool a customer under adversity as Dr. Holmes had ever observed, but Mark’s accusation all but shattered that demeanor.  “How dare you?  Every single decision leaders with real authority make, even those with noble intentions, result in people dying.  Start a war or not, send troops into a foreign land to stop genocide, or sit idle and watch it happen. Allocate foreign aid to a nation of starving people or impose crippling economic sanctions.  Grant medical research funds to a university, or use the money to build tanks.  Every prominent leader plays god to some degree by savings some and condemning others.”

“Some leadership decisions have more direct lines leading to people dying than others,” Mark countered.  “Yours looks pretty straight and narrow to me right now.”

“Perhaps,” Hastelloy conceded, his anger now subsiding.  “For you and your people it is a good thing, because the man who in reality was the greatest war criminal of all time was about to be unleashed, and without me your world could not have contained him.”