The Monster I Created
I had created a monster.
Among the prisoners we had taken, the ones I recognized from my Korean days were Mikhail Frunze and Semyon Budyonny, who had been leading the Red Cavalry with great enthusiasm before getting thoroughly beaten by the Cossacks—like dust flying on a rainy day—and captured. Besides them, the female revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai and Alexander Shlyapnikov had also been taken. The two of them had apparently tried to commit suicide before being caught. And then… there was Lenin.
To be precise, it was Lenin who had completely lost consciousness. Someone must have tried to take him away. He had been found on a carriage; the driver had been killed by White Army gunfire, allowing us to capture him. We had caught the man I had dreamed of capturing! Beyond that, I felt almost nothing. If he had been conscious and captured as a defeated revolutionary seething with rage over the failure of the revolution, that would have been one thing. But right now, unconscious Lenin looked like nothing more than a homeless man you might toss onto the street. No one would see him as a revolutionary.
“Why is Lenin unconscious?”
“It appears someone attempted to assassinate him. Traces of massive chloroform inhalation were found in his office.”
“It couldn’t have been the Ohrana.”
If the Ohrana had done it, they would have reported it immediately. They hadn’t. And yet the captured Mikhail Frunze had also nearly died from chloroform. This reeked strongly of Stalin. The only problem was that the man himself was nowhere to be seen.
Leon Trotsky. We had searched Moscow from top to bottom, but he was gone. If he wasn’t here, he must have already fled. That seemed the most likely explanation.
“Unfortunately, there was no major figure like Trotsky. We did manage to capture Stalin, however. He was taken by some lost German troops.”
Ah, so that bastard really did get caught.
“It must have been a White Army soldier who spoke suspiciously good German.”
We had no foreign troops helping us. There were only White Army soldiers who happened to speak various languages.
“What do you plan to do with the surrendered Bolsheviks?”
“As scheduled, we will execute the top Communist Party leaders—including Mikhail Frunze—by firing squad without trial. A trial is a luxury Bolsheviks don’t deserve. The political officers below them will be executed or sent to Siberia depending on how actively they participated in combat.”
In the original timeline, Mikhail Frunze had later clashed with Stalin and died in 1925 on the operating table from an overdose of chloroform. It was said to be Stalin’s conspiracy, and given that man’s future Great Purge, it wasn’t impossible. From the White Army’s perspective, there was no reason to keep him alive. After all, he had tormented us until the very end in Moscow. Even from a historical perspective, the man deserved to die. Sending him to Siberia would only risk another escape, which would be a nuisance.
Most of the other Bolsheviks were to be killed as well. How many had fled after being sent to Siberia? The truly dangerous ones had to die. I might have shown mercy as a saint, but if I spared them, what would happen? The White Army would grumble about how I was protecting revolutionary forces, and the Reds might pretend to surrender while plotting behind our backs. Execution was the way to purge the plague.
“Understood.”
The White Army generals who had fought in the civil war were experienced veterans who had achieved repeated victories. They would be in no way inferior to the famous Soviet commanders of the original history. When you considered how Stalin had purged most of them during World War II, pushing the rest aside, the answer was obvious. Therefore, I absolutely could not spare the famous names just because of historical sentiment. The communists would never submit to me anyway.
Leon Trotsky had probably headed for Petrograd. Once Moscow had fallen to the White Army, the only place left for him to flee to was the cradle of the revolution—Petrograd.
“Your Highness. The Reds are fleeing westward in droves. Lieutenant General Ungern is pursuing them.”
Westward. So it really was Petrograd. Trotsky would be among them.
“Those Reds are truly disgusting. At this rate, they’re determined to make their last stand in Petrograd.”
The Bolsheviks refused to accept defeat and had fled anyway. Ungern’s Asiatic Cavalry Division was diligently hunting down the escaping Red Army, but Trotsky wouldn’t be with them. In the current situation, the only place worth going was Petrograd. He had run away, but Trotsky wasn’t the type to beg for his life… was he? Maybe he would. We needed to press Petrograd quickly.
“Tell Yudenich that we will conditionally recognize Finland’s independence if he attacks Petrograd.”
“You intend to accept Finland’s independence?”
There was no helping it. If Finland hadn’t already declared independence, things might be different. But they had done so on their own and were now cautiously watching us. As long as the conditions were right, we could afford to recognize their independence.
“Yes. The new Russia must not become a thuggish nation that oppresses its neighbors by force. Tell them that if I am allowed to serve as the nominal King of Finland, we will grant independence. Beyond that, we will respect them as a sovereign state.”
“You mean to keep them within your sphere of influence.”
“If we simply grant them full independence, the other ethnic minorities who want the same will start causing trouble.”
Having only just seized the momentum in the civil war, such complications would be nothing but a headache. Now then. It was time to execute the Reds who had surrendered in Moscow.
The Bolshevik executions took place on the outskirts of Moscow. The White Army disarmed the Red Army officers and herded them into a corner.
“H-hey, comrades! Didn’t you say you’d spare us if we surrendered?”
“We only surrendered because we believed that promise!”
“The only ones we will forgive are those who were forced to become Bolsheviks under threat. You lot simply surrendered like foxes when things turned against you. All of you are to be executed by firing squad!”
Bang! Bang bang bang!
The Red Army officers who had once felt ecstasy gunning down imperial officers were now personally executed by White Army officers. For a while, a bloody wind of Red blood blew through Moscow. The Bolsheviks who had once boasted that they had achieved the revolution and that the world now belonged to them received not a shred of mercy. As if paying the price for all the people they had slaughtered, the hardcore Reds died miserably under a hail of bullets. The red blood spilled by the Red Army officers would become fertilizer for the new Russia.
“Your Highness. Lenin has regained consciousness.”
“He woke up after all.”
Then it was time to go meet Lenin. As the victor, wasn’t it my duty to taunt him?
Lenin had only just risen from his sickbed when White Army soldiers dragged him out and forced him to his knees before me. He glared at me with bloodshot eyes.
“What a murderous expression.”
Of course he looked like that. He was facing the enemy who had destroyed the revolution. But the same was true for me. I was standing before the man who had overthrown the empire. Of course, my previous life had been as a Korean, but that was beside the point. This body was Anastasia, and I had personally defeated the infamous Lenin. How could I possibly contain this feeling of triumph?
“Princess! Even if we die here, the proletarian revolution will never stop! In the end, communism will triumph!”
Oh, he spoke well. But what could he do? It wouldn’t be that easy. If the Soviet Union had truly succeeded, maybe. But in the end, it had failed. During the Russian Civil War in the original history, Stalin and the other Red Army leaders had threatened peasants to confiscate grain, burned villages that resisted, and publicly executed deserters. Of course, the White Army hadn’t exactly been saints either. The point was that the Soviet regime, built on such lofty rhetoric, had been far too authoritarian and violent. What hypocrites.
I drew my baton and lifted Lenin’s chin with it.
“You speak well. But unfortunately, that will never happen.”
“!?”
“What you speak of is nothing but idealism. Whether it’s the escaped Trotsky or anyone else, no matter which country they flee to, the result will be the same.”
“What are you saying?”
Yes. What was I saying? I looked at Lenin with a relaxed smile and spoke.
“Russia has already experienced one civil war, and we intend to make the suppression of communism our national policy. No matter where communism takes root, we can use you as a pretext for invasion. Because the civil war happened because of you, future Russians will tremble with hatred at the mere mention of your name. The newly reborn Russia will see it as its destiny to eradicate communism across the world.”
“What…”
From now on, Russia would live with the nickname of the first nation to experience a communist civil war. And that Russia would come to loathe communism with extreme prejudice. Suppressing communism would become something like a national destiny.
“Leon Trotsky, was it? He’ll probably flee from Petrograd once he’s cornered. Whether to China, the New World, or Europe—anywhere.”
“!!”
He must have understood the meaning behind my words. The Russia that would be reborn would appear to be embarking on a new imperialism, extending its power in all directions under the banner of “suppressing communism.” What better justification could there be?
“Thank you. Thanks to you, the Russian Empire will rise again.”
Lenin’s face, already red, turned so crimson it looked like it might burst. Yes. This was the face I had wanted to see. The realization that the very things they had done would cause the world to plunge even deeper into imperialism. He was probably having a stroke right now. Everywhere they tried to take root, we would intervene, invade, and the new Russia would rise as an even stronger imperial power. The communists would unintentionally become the vanguard of imperialism. It was the perfect taunt.
No matter how much they tried to scurry away like cockroaches, they would only create more justification for Russia to intervene. In his eyes, I must have looked like the final boss of imperialism.
“We will conquer every country where you planted your seeds. The world will be drenched in blood. The workers you fed moderate carrots with different ideologies will die as disposable tools, never realizing they were being used.”
“I… I have created a monster.”
Lenin’s eyes trembled violently. He looked at me as if he had seen an actual monster, utterly terrified. He actually bought it, the idiot Red bastard. Or perhaps his innate Red instincts had sensed something. In that case, I should play along even more.
“Thank you. Thanks to you, my eyes have been opened. As I said, there will be no trial. Tomorrow, execute him by cannon—not a firing squad. Just like the British did to the Indian rebels. Deal with Mikhail Frunze and all the other Reds the same way. Cannon fire for all of them.”
“Yes!”
Lenin was dragged away by the waiting White Army soldiers. Tomorrow, he would be blown apart by cannon fire alongside the communists who had resisted in Moscow. The revolutionary idol who had founded the Soviet Union would be torn to pieces and scattered everywhere.
“Your Highness. What you said to Lenin earlier…”
Chief of Staff Drozdovsky, who had been watching our conversation, seemed curious about what I had meant. At first listen, it sounded like I was dreaming of ambitions that Russia currently had no capacity for.
Of course, even I didn’t think it was realistic.
“Ah, it was just trolling.”
“Trolling?”
Ah, that term probably didn’t exist in this era. I cleared my throat.
“In other words, I was just mocking the loser. It won’t actually happen. After this, communism will almost certainly disappear into the back pages of history.”
“That… might actually be a good method.”
“Pardon?”
“Of course, conquering the world is nonsense, but at the very least, it would be more than enough justification for war when necessary.”
Why was he reacting so seriously? Theoretically, it did sound plausible, but still. Right now, the civil war was far more urgent. Yes. Like dealing with Stalin, for example.
“I suppose you could look at it that way. By the way, where is Stalin?”
“About that… I actually had something to report to Your Highness. It’s just that…”
He seemed reluctant to speak. Was there something wrong?
After hesitating for a while in a manner unbefitting his age, the words that finally left Pyotr Wrangel’s mouth were utterly shocking.
“He was crippled by a German bullet?”
“According to the doctor, the bullet struck a particularly unfortunate spot.”
“You mean he’s been castrated?”
“Yes.”
For a moment, I barely managed to hold back my laughter. That Stalin had become a eunuch. Hadn’t he become just a little too pitiful?