The Beginning of the Counterattack
“Supervisor Svanize. I have something to show you.”
Ivan, the section chief, said.
His tone and expression were so grave that I followed him without knowing what was happening.
He led me to a room no one had entered before.
“Section Chief Ivan. What is this place….”
“… This is the office of the factory director who has gone missing for now.”
At the word “factory director” from Ivan’s mouth, my heart sank.
Nikolai Golitsyn, Duke.
The last prime minister of the Russian Empire, who succeeded Alexander Trepov.
According to Professor Pavelsky, surprisingly, he had been the factory director of the Third Galoshi Factory.
“Please come in.”
At Ivan’s invitation, I entered the room.
ㅡ Squeak…
As soon as Ivan entered the room, he locked the door with a bolt.
Then he bent down under the desk in the corner where anything was placed and groped with his arms.
Surprisingly, the wooden wall crumbled easily in his hands, revealing a safe inside.
ㅡ Click, click, click, thud!
With skilled fingers, Ivan turned the dial and quickly opened the safe door.
He took out a leather bag from the safe, placed it on the desk, and undid the lock on the bag.
“W-what is all this, Chief?”
I couldn’t help but stammer.
It was because the bag was filled with chervonets like a mountain.
“Emergency funds hidden by the factory director.”
Ivan continued with a serious face.
“The director told me: If you disappear without a trace and a great crisis hits the factory, use this.”
“Golitsyn… the factory director predicted that he would disappear, is that right?”
“Although Supervisor, you now know his identity, but he was a man who was dragged in by Cheka agents five times and released each time. He always hid emergency funds in various places while worrying about the safety of those around him. This room in the Third Galoshi Factory was one of them.”
Ivan raised his head and continued calmly, as if reminiscing about the past.
“… The factory director Golitsyn disappeared last July. The factory director who came out after a light investigation as usual didn’t return after that day….”
After Golitsyn disappeared, the factory fell into rapid decline.
“He must have thought that even if he was captured, he could run the factory without problem, but the Red Triangle Trust changed its tune as soon as the factory director disappeared.”
The trust deliberately excluded the Third Galoshi Factory from meetings regarding production plans and raw materials.
Ivan continued to protest, but each time he got only the answer ‘decision from above’.
“Eventually, I couldn’t hold on anymore. The day after Labor Day, I tried to close the factory… but even that was flatly rejected. The secretary said he wanted the factory to continue. If that’s the case, I don’t understand why they deliberately excluded us until now….”
Ivan said with a desolate face.
“Only after the closure application was rejected did I realize what they wanted: not to close the factory door, but to prevent us from fulfilling the production plan.”
Something suddenly came to mind from his words.
There can only be one person in Leningrad called ‘secretary’ — Zinoviev…
Thinking that far, I recalled why Zinoviev had sent me here.
Golitsyn is a symbolic figure as the last prime minister of the empire. It was Zinoviev who wanted to eliminate him for some reason. And Zinoviev… after being scolded severely by Brusilov at the Smolny Institute, he gave me a fierce expression and said something.
At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but soon after, the order to be appointed as production supervisor was issued, so I assumed it was just a simple revenge or retaliation.
But now, thinking about it, it was clearly a deployment with impure motives.
He must have been trying to create a pretext to naturally send me to Siberia…
Closing an unprofitable factory was the trust’s natural right, and the person responsible for not achieving the production plan had to be sent to Siberia.
The one who blocked the closure of the factory on the brink of death and imposed an unreasonable production plan was apparently the humiliation’s revenge from that day.
Order the officer to forcibly appoint me as production supervisor after making me a reserve cadet, and send me to the Siberian labor camp…
Zinoviev’s scheme was becoming clear.
Why would he send a political officer candidate as a production supervisor in the first place?
It was to quietly remove him.
… Well, even if I think about it now, it won’t change anything.
I looked away from the bag and at Ivan.
“Actually, I already knew that they tampered with the benzene adhesive. But there was no way around it. So we were just waiting for the day to slowly wither away.”
He continued, clasping his hands in front.
“So I was planning to distribute this emergency fund to the female workers and stay alone in the factory to face punishment calmly. Until before Supervisor Svanize was appointed here.”
“Section Chief Ivan….”
“But thanks to Supervisor Svanize’s valiant efforts, our factory has escaped from under the trust. We no longer have to worry about the trust’s eyes!”
“It’s all thanks to Professor Pavelsky… what have I done?”
After visiting the factory, Pavelsky immediately petitioned the chairman of the All-Union Council of the National Economy of the USSR (VSNKh CCCP) to designate the Third Galoshi Factory as an ‘innovative technology demonstration factory’.
“Hey, Supervisor Svanize, do you have any connections in the party…?”
“…Yes?”
“After only half a day since submitting the petition, a reply arrived from Moscow. Normally it takes about a week, but it passed unusually quickly.”
“… Then isn’t that good?”
“It’s strange. It shouldn’t have been accepted so quickly…?”
“Perhaps it’s because of Professor’s reputation.”
“Those guys… even for small things like equipment support, they make you wait two weeks. … If you’re not a scion of a high-ranking official, it’s impossible to explain.”
At Pavelsky’s words, I shivered, but probably the fact that my father is ‘Stalin’ has nothing to do with this matter.
Of course, the current chairman of the All-Union Council of the National Economy being ‘Felix Dzerzhinsky’, head of the OGPU, is also unrelated.
Anyway, thanks to Pavelsky’s help, we were transferred from the ‘Leningrad Regional Economic Council’ to the ‘Science and Technology Department under the All-Union Council of the National Economy of the USSR’.
In other words, the Third Galoshi Factory is no longer a subordinate organization of the Red Triangle Trust, but has been moved to an independent department!
As a bonus, we no longer had to listen to the words of the Leningrad City Council.
Ivan said with tears welling up.
“It’s all thanks to Supervisor Svanize… I don’t know how to express this favor….”
“It’s not a favor. Nothing has ended yet. We’ve just caught our breath.”
I said that.
Ivan stopped wiping his tears and looked at me.
“Yes…?”
“If our affiliation changes, will the trust and the Leningrad City Council just sit still?”
It was a plan that took 11 months of work.
I don’t know what he was thinking, but Zinoviev had pushed this factory to the brink of the cliff and tried to push it off the cliff along with him.
But my unexpected valiant efforts shattered his plan in an instant.
Looking back on everything so far, Zinoviev was not the kind of person who would just watch quietly.
The wateriness left Ivan’s face.
As if he understood my words, he asked with a dazed expression.
“… Supervisor. Then what should we do now?”
“First, we will implement the guidelines issued by the trust as is.”
“Two, two months to produce 30,000 pairs?”
“Of course. If the new adhesive is made quickly.”
ㅡ Tap tap.
I tapped the desk with my finger.
“During the Great War, the Russian Imperial Army built toluene distillation towers in every oil factory to make TNT (trinitrotoluene), a military explosive. So toluene should be easy to obtain. If I submit an application, they might even be happy about it.”
“Is that so?”
Unlike benzene adhesive, toluene adhesive is less volatile, safer, and cheaper.
Cheap means the cost of the adhesive is reduced in the production cost.
Then the price of galoshes produced in our factory will naturally decrease, and with the lower price, competitiveness will be gained.
Perhaps we can even compete in the American market.
“Section Chief Ivan. Now it’s our turn to strike back.”
“Supervisor Svanize….”
The man from the trust said he was definitely producing galoshes for export to the West.
If galoshes with competitiveness in the world market are produced, the trust can’t ignore our factory’s products.
The trust, Zinoviev, Dzerzhinsky, and…
Stalin too.