The Fall of Moscow (3)
The Moscow Battle (3)
“Are you telling me to abandon the revolution?!”
“We start over from the beginning. Petrograd still stands firm. You must go there and prepare for the future.”
Go to Petrograd? Just how many times was he supposed to run? Had the situation grown so dire that they had to flee all the way from Moscow to Petrograd?
Petrograd was the symbolic cradle of the revolution, the city where the Soviets had first risen. Returning there meant going back to square one. Lenin refused to accept it.
“No. Not yet.”
“Comrade Lenin?”
Stalin, the People’s Commissar for State Information Control of the Soviet Union, watched Lenin’s unfocused eyes and realized the man’s former brilliance had completely vanished. Lenin looked as if his soul had fled his body.
Lenin spread out a map of the Moscow region.
“Semyon Budyonny’s Red Cavalry will pierce the princess’s flank and deliver a decisive blow. That will crush Anton Denikin and Pyotr Wrangel—those reactionaries—once and for all.”
“Comrade, Budyonny’s cavalry has already been repelled by the Cossack reactionaries.”
“If Comrade Yegorov’s Red Guards strike Denikin’s rear, we can still turn this around.”
“Comrade. Yegorov does not have enough combat-ready troops to launch an effective attack. His offensive has already failed.”
Stalin shook his head as he listened. Red Guards? The term referred to the predecessor of the Red Army, the militia that had existed before Trotsky formally established the Red Army. How desperate must things be for Lenin to speak of the Red Guards instead of the Red Army? Even if they somehow had enough men to strike Denikin’s rear, they lacked the weapons to do so.
“Where the hell did all those troops go?! Stalin! If you had simply held Tsaritsyn, none of this would have happened!”
“I am sorry, Comrade.”
“Everyone, get out!”
At Lenin’s furious command, Stalin left the office. As he stepped into the corridor, a single thought echoed in his mind.
‘A complete and utter failure.’
The final gamble had been Semyon Budyonny’s Red Cavalry. They were supposed to risk everything to break through the rear, capture or kill the princess—the very symbol of the White Army. Yet rumor had it that the princess had been at the very front of her forces. Instead of victory, Budyonny’s cavalry had been shattered by the Cossacks. Some even said the princess had been taken alive.
Now the only option left was to grind the people into meat shields to hold the line. Even if that succeeded in defending Moscow, it would spell the end of the Bolsheviks. They might not even manage to hold the city at all.
Could the revolution truly collapse this quickly? Could one surviving princess bring down everything they had built?
The execution of the Tsar’s family had been Stalin’s own proposal, but the timing had been disastrous. Killing them without restraint when there had still been a chance to use them had dealt a devastating blow. Lenin had become a devil who now sent Bolshevik citizens to their deaths as human waves.
‘Of course, some people still fight while cursing the princess.’
But the situation made that difficult. The princess had been shamelessly dropping propaganda leaflets from airplanes, promising amnesty to anyone who surrendered.
It was infuriatingly effective. Such leaflets would have been useless against the White Army, but for the people of Moscow, they were dangerously tempting. To maintain control, the hardcore Bolsheviks at the front would have to be pulled back into the city, which would only drain more manpower from the lines.
‘We have lost completely.’
Where had it all gone wrong? It was as if the princess, Anastasia, had anticipated every move the Soviets planned—like an Ohrana agent embedded within their ranks. She had implemented reforms before they could, rendering their grand plans meaningless. From that moment, the people had grown disillusioned with the Soviets.
No. That wasn’t the root of it. The real mistake had been failing to kill Anastasia in the first place. It would have been better to keep her alive and turn her. If the converted Tsar’s family had gone around preaching in support of the Bolsheviks, the White Army would have collapsed. And if the Soviets had eventually taken control of all Russia, they could have executed the Romanovs later without issue.
“That damned Trotsky.”
In truth, Stalin himself shared some of the blame for not stepping forward at the time. He had silently consented to the executions. If he had tried to stop Trotsky then, the man might have branded him a reactionary. Stalin had no desire to die a martyr. He valued his own life too much.
Moscow was somehow still holding, but the disparity in strength was obvious. The longer the battle dragged on, the more unrest would spread among the citizens. In that case, they would have to use Lenin as a shield.
The respect Stalin once held for Lenin had long since disappeared. The man knew nothing but agitation. He had handed over land to the peasants, while the princess continued to seize the initiative. Meanwhile, they had failed to carry out any meaningful reforms.
Stalin was a communist, but he was also a cold realist who accepted facts as they were. Lenin had been defeated by a girl—Anastasia—whose blood had barely dried behind her ears. At the very least, they should have been discussing countermeasures against her. But Lenin’s limits were clear.
Russian communism had been defeated by the seductive facade of Modified Capitalism that Anastasia had put forward. At this point, even Stalin began to question whether what he believed in was truly correct. If Modified Capitalism—that blend of capitalism and socialist welfare—took root in Russia, communism would be finished. It would become nearly impossible for communism to regain a foothold here.
Then they would have to flee abroad. Chaotic China might work. Or perhaps the defeated Ottoman Empire or Austria, both still reeling from the Great War. Or Germany?
Yes. For a new dawn of communism to rise, Lenin—the symbol of the revolution—would have to die here. The problem was that Stalin and his inner circle needed to escape Moscow first. Only then could Lenin be sacrificed.
But there was an obstacle. Lenin had declared he would remain in Moscow. If that happened, those who had risen with him could not flee either. Would they all have to die here?
Already, many citizens of Moscow—while not openly hostile—had begun to harbor impure thoughts, refusing to follow the Soviets. They were being suppressed, but if even the Ohrana had infiltrated their ranks, how long could Moscow possibly hold?
Surrender to the princess? She might be young, but she was an imperialist. The fact that she had appointed a governor for Mongolia, advanced into North Manchuria, and loudly proclaimed the reconstruction of the empire made her intentions perfectly clear. A communist could not kneel before an imperialist.
Besides, even if they begged for their lives, the princess’s parents and siblings had been killed. She had risen to power precisely because of that tragedy. There was little hope their lives would be spared.
Between the best and the second-worst option, the choice was obvious. They would have to eliminate Lenin here and flee to Petrograd. Or rather, they didn’t necessarily have to kill him. Rendering him unconscious for a while would suffice. Once they reached Petrograd, they could prepare for exile.
The question was how to seize Lenin. There was only one way.
‘We have no choice but to take extreme measures.’
Fortunately, his wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, was currently working in Lenin’s office. Yes. That was the only path left.
Stalin did not want to die in a place like this.
As the Battle of Moscow continued, the Moscow defensive line was crumbling. Whenever the people died, others were thrown in to fill the gaps, but those too were ground down. They were nothing more than meat shields for the preservation of Bolshevik power—nothing more, nothing less.
Yet the reason this line still held was simple.
“Comrades! The leader of the reactionaries, the princess herself, is coming! Are you really going to tuck your tails and run now?”
It was because hardcore Bolsheviks stood behind the people, guns pointed at their backs. It was already too late to turn back. Unless they died as the princess had promised, they could not escape being labeled as Reds. These true-believer Bolsheviks shot any citizen who tried to flee in fear.
A fingernail’s worth of hope for survival versus bullets flying from behind. The choice should have been obvious. But even that desperate motivation was beginning to lose its effect.
“Then you go fight! You think we’re your meat shields?!”
“You bastards are worse than the Tsar!”
“Y-you reactionaries—!”
The moment a Red Army officer raised his gun to execute a citizen tainted by reactionary thought, a gunshot rang out.
Bang!
The officer fell first, killed by the people’s own bullets. If you showed weakness, there was no telling where or when a bullet might come flying for your head. The citizens who had fought until now had witnessed their comrades being torn apart by massive steel treads and turned into nothing but bloody carpets. Their thoughts began to change.
Would they feel rage and a desire for revenge? Even that required a certain level of possibility. These so-called comrades had been dragged here from all over the country with no prior connection. They had simply sympathized with one another in the same miserable circumstances and grown close. When such horror unfolded before their eyes, the instinct for survival took precedence.
The White Army surged forward like a wave, while the officers pushing them to die were few. Moreover, they didn’t even have to fight. The princess had promised amnesty to those who surrendered.
“I-I’m going to surrender. The princess said she’d pardon anyone who surrenders except the top Bolshevik leaders.”
“Me too. I’m surrendering.”
The soldiers who had seen the leaflets dropped by White Army aircraft had already reached a point of no return. If there was any chance of survival, joining the Whites was clearly better. The Red Army officers had become nothing but walking targets.
When they drew their guns and threatened the men, they were shot by their own troops instead. The soldiers were too busy trying to surrender. As reports of this flooded in, Red Army officers stopped pressuring their men too harshly. Instead, they began trying to coax them.
“Comrades, think carefully. Do you really believe they will spare us?”
“Don’t say ‘us.’ You hardcore Reds might not be spared, but we were dragged here against our will!”
The more the officers tried to persuade, the more the soldiers mocked them and proudly raised white flags. Of course, there were still more Red Army troops filling the gaps left by those who surrendered, but the tide had clearly turned.
Mikhail Frunze had increased rations for the troops and desperately tried to prevent desertions and surrenders. He promised that if they could just win this defensive battle, a true Soviet paradise would unfold. With such persuasion, he had barely managed to maintain the line.
But no matter what he did, the collapsing front could not be restored.
“The Black Baron is truly formidable.”
Anton Denikin’s forces had been held back through the combined efforts of Trotsky and Yegorov. But Pyotr Wrangel—the Black Baron—was different. With the princess at the front, morale was sky-high, and the army he commanded fought with terrifying efficiency.
The blitzkrieg tactics led by those steel monsters called tanks tore through Moscow’s thickly fortified defenses like paper. The defenders felt like candles flickering before a raging storm.
Budyonny’s Red Cavalry, which had tried to surprise and end the war by targeting the princess, had been swept aside like dry leaves by the Cossack cavalry under the Black Baron and returned as broken remnants.
How much longer could they hold the Black Baron back?
In the first place, the reason Frunze had been assigned to defend Moscow was because the Red Army currently lacked any renowned commanders from the Tsarist era. No matter how he looked at it, there was no visible way to stop the onslaught.
The people clung to the tanks to immobilize them, rendering the machines temporarily useless, but the infantry following behind the tanks fired just as mercilessly. To the enemy, the Reds were nothing but prey and test subjects for their combat effectiveness.
In the original history, Mikhail Frunze had been the one to crush Pyotr Wrangel’s White Army. Now the roles were reversed, and he was the one being pushed back by the Black Baron.
The imperialist powers must be rejoicing at the sight of the Soviet collapse. Holding out with nothing but defensive battles was already difficult. Recently, even officers from the old Tsarist regime had begun surrendering to the Whites. The Red Army was held together almost entirely by coercion and threats.
If they had had more time, perhaps things would have been different. But the Red Army had failed completely and lost the hearts of the people. As a hardcore communist, Frunze could not possibly surrender to that imperialist princess.
In that case, they truly had to retreat from Moscow. He needed to tell Comrade Lenin that they must withdraw from Moscow. But how should he phrase it?
At that moment, a soldier burst into the command tent, panting heavily.
“Comrade Commander!”
“What is it?”
Could it be that the Black Baron’s army had finally broken through the defensive line? It didn’t seem so.
“C-Comrade Lenin… has collapsed!”
The worst possible situation had arrived.