The Impossible Has Never Once Stopped Anything From Happening

"Lick my boots, is it? What a grotesque little hobby you've developed."

In his office at Smolny, Zinoviev finished Yakov's letter with a snort, folded the paper twice, and set it down on the desk.

"Hmph..."

He snapped the letter open again.

He traced that single line with a fingertip, and the laughter left his face.

If Yakov's purpose had been to rattle Zinoviev, he had already succeeded. The Chairman's fingers, tapping the desk with nowhere else to go, said as much.

Zinoviev walked to the window.

The rains that had begun in August showed no sign of tiring; they had stretched on for a solid month. The Ingrian marshes had long since dissolved into a hopeless mire, and most of the roads laid down in the imperial era sat underwater, ruined.

The city's people were voicing their discontent without the slightest pretense of restraint, and the councilors, in their own quieter way, were demanding he produce an answer. The most urgent matter before Zinoviev, then, was a plan to meet the floods.

His teeth ground together.

"Svanidze. This is all that Svanidze bastard's doing!"

If they had only had galoshi, they might have soothed the citizens' anger the way they had last year. This year, with bitter irony, those same galoshi had made the whole affair larger than ever.

"If that brat had never crossed my sight, none of this would have happened!"

He laid the blame on the young Georgian who, for reasons he could not name, called the General Secretary's face to mind.

Zinoviev crumpled Yakov's letter in both hands, shoved it into his mouth, and chewed.

"What are you counting on, coming at me like this, Svanidze?!"

He said it aloud. There was no one in the room to answer him.

He spat the wad of paper into the ashtray. The ink, tannic as strong black tea, had melted into his saliva and left his tongue bitter. Swallowing the taste, he returned to the desk and picked up the telephone.

A moment later, a secretary hurried through the door.

"Has Comrade Yershov not returned yet?"

"Well — that is..."

"Don't tell me he's still in Moscow?"

"The only word we've had was a reply two days ago, saying his stay would have to be extended!"

Comrade Yershov in Moscow. The OGPU branch chief incommunicado. Typical. The lot of them vanish the moment they're actually needed.

Zinoviev's fingers began to drum the desk again.

Without Yershov and Yagoda, there was no branding Yakov a counterrevolutionary.

Then perhaps Gittis, the Military District Commander... No. That card ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠has to be saved for last.

He formed another plan instead.

"Then call someone else."

"Whom shall I call?"

Zinoviev glanced once more at the muck beyond the window. The factory district of the Red Triangle filled his view.

If the Trust would not move and the OGPU would not move, he would have to do it himself.

"Send for Ivan Bakayev, Chairman of the Control Commission. Tell him there is a Party member to be stripped of his membership."

"Yes, Comrade Chairman!"

The door creaked shut. Zinoviev looked down at the wet wad of paper in the ashtray.

"That's right. Go on and run wild, you Georgian yokel. I won't stop either — not until you're dead."

"Thank you, truly, for making the long journey despite how busy you all must be."

I had invited the factory directors of the Red Triangle Trust to our plant.

"When the true master of the Svanidze Galoshi — the hottest thing in the city — sends for you, who'd dare stay away?"

Smirnov, director of the Red Triangle's First Factory, said it as he took his assigned seat.

"It is nothing but an honor to receive such distinguished men in a place as humble as this."

"Hmph. Spare us the polished empty talk and get to the point. What did you call us here for?"

I had expected Smirnov's brusqueness. I did not blame him. He was only an unlucky victim whose back had been broken in the squeeze between Zinoviev and me.

"I asked the distinguished factory directors of the Red Triangle here today because I learned, belatedly, of the ordeal you've been put through."

"Ordeal? What ordeal?"

"When an incompetent administrator who has never spent a single day on the shop floor starts barking orders like an expert and crushing you with political power — if that isn't an ordeal, what is?"

The room went silent in an instant. No one, I suspected, had ever cut Zinoviev down this openly, or this sharply. Smirnov was looking at me now with something like genuine interest.

"Chairman Zinoviev will almost certainly pin the blame for this crisis on all of you. But heaven knows, earth knows, and everyone knows that we have done nothing wrong."

"Every fault lies with that ignorant Chairman. A man who has never even made a galoshi, applying secondhand knowledge uniformly to every factory — does that even make sense?"

"Hear, hear! Of course it doesn't!"

The director of the Third Factory slapped his knee in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠agreement. Smirnov shot him a look and he shut his mouth at once — but there was not a man in that room who did not feel the same.

"So."

Smirnov held the stirred-up directors down with one hand.

"What is it you actually want, Comrade Supervisor? You didn't drag us here just to sit around talking behind Comrade Chairman Zinoviev's back."

"Of course not. I wouldn't have called factory directors as busy as yourselves for that."

"Then what, exactly..."

I set down my teacup.

"W-what?"

"What did you just say?"

"Exactly what I said. I mean to expel Chairman Zinoviev from Leningrad."

"I-is that even possible?!"

Shock erupted around the table.

Smirnov half-rose from his chair with a sharp scrape.

"Comrade Supervisor Svanidze. That is impossible! Chairman Zinoviev is the Leningrad Soviet Chairman and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. On top of that, the Control Commission itself is in his grip. Driving him out of Leningrad is the same as turning the entire Union upside down!"

He was right. Put in modern terms, it was as if Zinoviev were simultaneously the mayor of the capital, the leader of the ruling party, and the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

"Th-that's right, Comrade Supervisor. You've gone too far. 'Expulsion' is not a word proletarians like us should be throwing around."

"Do you all truly believe that?"

Not a single man among them could step forward and say that no, he thought the same as I did. And not a single man could drive the nail home and declare that yes, I had gone too far.

An uneasy silence. That silence was Leningrad, laid bare.

They feared the man who ruled this city. And so, no matter how unjust the order they were given, they turned their faces away, kept their silence, swallowed their grief, and carried it out.

In a way, they and I were alike in a great many things.

I did not like that.

"We have our pride."

I was not scolding them.

"We have a just cause, too."

"We even have the right to resist."

A life of submitting to injustice, day after day, without a fight. The fact that such a life held true in every age and every place filled me not with fear, but with anger.

Because I had already decided I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would not live that way anymore.

"Think of how the kulaks who oppressed us vanished. The nobles. The Tsar himself. Think of who did it — and how."

I no longer needed to be afraid. None of us did.

"Our beginning was the soviet of the proletariat — the council."

"The soviet...!"

Revolution and struggle were, without question, the very colors of the Soviet Union.

Soviet. Someone repeated the word under their breath.

The eyes of the Seventh Factory's director were wet.

Every man here had lived through the Revolution. Each one of them was the living history of the Soviet Union. I had not taught them anything new. I had only dug back up what the years and their fear had briefly buried.

I could feel the temperature in the room change.

The fear of Zinoviev had not lifted entirely. But beneath it, the will to fight was lifting its head for the first time.

"...It sounds fine when you say it, Comrade Supervisor. But we have to look at reality."

Smirnov sat back down slowly and went on.

"Our superior is still Chairman Zinoviev, and we still have to carry out his orders. The moment we disobey, the Control Commission will throw us out of the Party and ship us off to some labor camp in Siberia."

"Th-that's true, Comrade Supervisor..."

"We're nothing but machine parts. Replaceable whenever they like..."

Machine parts. To call yourself a component instead of a human being. Stalin would have loved that — parts cannot move on their own, which means someone has to move them.

"And if you didn't need to disobey Zinoviev's orders?"

"...There's a way to do that?"

"Yes. It's simple."

I opened the desk drawer.

I set it down in front of them all — the revolutionary invention born of a twentieth-century genius chemist and a twenty-first-century graduate student. The Ultra Vulcanization Accelerator.

"With this, you can make excellent galoshi without disobeying a single one of Zinoviev's orders."

Natural rubber's high unsaturation means accelerators take too readily, causing premature vulcanization — scorch — which makes galoshi production impossible. But this ultra accelerator had been designed around scorch resistance rather than vulcanization speed, making it usable ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠even with natural rubber.

The stuff they call tetrakis(2-ethylhexyl)thiuram disulfide. TOTD.

"And this..."

I pushed the accelerator forward.

"I intend to give to every one of you."

"What?!"

"Th-that — what do you..."

Smirnov's face flooded with disbelief.

"Th-that's absurd! You're just giving this away? Wasn't this your factory's highest secret?"

"It was. The treasure of our plant that Zinoviev never did manage to find."

"Th-then why on earth..."

Smirnov's voice caught.

"This is what our factory exists for in the first place."

I went on, smiling.

"So that every one of us can live with a smile. So that we can lead happy lives."