Chapter 249

< World War II - Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin >

April 12, 1942

Capital of the Soviet Union, Moscow – STAVKA (Supreme High Command of the Soviet Armed Forces)

The high command of the Soviet Union was gathered.

Chief of the Soviet General Staff, Alexei Antonov, was delivering his report, drenched in a cold sweat.

“After crossing the Dnieper River, the Free Ukrainian Army has launched an all-out offensive and is in the process of occupying the entire Ukraine Theater. Kherson, Zaporozhye, Poltava, and Shostaka have fallen.

They are now advancing on Stalino and Kharkiv.”

The eastern part of Ukraine, on the East Bank of the Dnieper, which the Soviet Army had tried to defend with everything it had, was mostly lost, or would be soon.

“With the defeat of General Zhukov’s main force and the capture of Kursk, the railroad connection between Moscow and the south has been effectively severed. Army Group South is being annihilated after repeated defeats, and we have no way to defend Ukraine.

If this continues, even Stalingrad could be threatened.”

One of Stalin's loyal servants, political officer Khrushchev, was speechless.

“General Malinovsky's Army Group North is doing its best, but the French-Finnish Allied Forces have formed a massive salient in the Tikhvin area. De Gaulle's French armored units are using interior lines to roam within the salient, relentlessly striking at the vulnerabilities of Army Group North and pushing them back.”

Molotov, once Stalin's mouthpiece who had aimed to be the second-in-command of the Soviet Union, also remained silent.

“The Western Front under Marshals Voroshilov and Budyonny has been routed by the Polish Army and the Free Russian Army.

They’ve lost Vitebsk and Smolensk and have been pushed back to Velikiye Luki and Rzhev. If the breakthrough by the French-Finnish and Polish-Free Russian forces continues, the connection between Moscow and Leningrad could be severed, and the entire Western Front could be isolated.”

Andrei Zhdanov, who was treated as Stalin's de facto successor, could not hide his pale complexion.

Antonov, who had been explaining while pointing at the map, swallowed dryly and added.

“…Comrade General Secretary. We are being routed on all fronts.

Our losses are so great they are impossible to tally.”

Even NKVD Chairman Yuri Andropov was biting his lip.

Stalin, his face grave, maintained his silence before slowly opening his mouth.

“…If Shaposhnikov repels the French Army, we can prevent the isolation of Moscow and Leningrad, can we not?”

Hearing Stalin’s words, Antonov, who was sweating profusely, squeezed his eyes shut.

He eventually opened them and spoke.

“Comrade General Secretary.

Marshal Shaposhnikov's unit…”

Meeting Stalin's puzzled gaze, Antonov spoke as if prepared for a death penalty.

“At General Zhukov’s request, it was committed to stop the collapse of the Kursk front, but it was defeated by the German Army.”

A chilling silence descended upon the meeting room.

Unable to bear the deathly stillness, Antonov blurted out, as if to say, ‘to hell with it all.

’

“Moscow and Stalingrad are in immediate danger, Comrade General Secretary. We no longer have any opportunity to defeat them.

Even if we do our best, the limit of our ability is to inflict as much damage as we can on the enemy and delay our defeat while retreating to the Urals.”

Stalin’s thick mustache quivered as he clenched his fists.

As Antonov watched with a pale face, the General Secretary slammed his fist on the conference table.

That was the full extent of the anger expressed by the powerful dictator who moved the vast Soviet Union, a man who could send hundreds of thousands to their deaths with a single word.

A long silence followed.

As the General Secretary showed no further reaction, Khrushchev, Molotov, and Zhdanov frantically exchanged looks.

In the end, Molotov, the least powerful of the three, reluctantly spoke.

“Comrade General Secretary, I deeply apologize, but… we must end the war now.”

Meeting Stalin’s hazy gaze, Molotov spoke with a grim face.

“We… have been defeated.”

Still, Stalin did not answer.

Growing impatient, Stalin's three loyal servants exchanged more frantic looks, but if the General Secretary said nothing, there was nothing they could do.

The war started by the Soviet Union had resulted in not millions, but over ten million deaths. To end it, they would have to give up at least the territory the enemy had occupied, if not more.

Naturally, a scapegoat was needed to take responsibility for such a surrender.

And that had to be the General Secretary.

Everyone expected it.

Even without Andropov needing to say it, Stalin's own loyal servants gathered here desperately wanted it.

But after a long silence, Stalin stood up and simply walked out of the meeting room.

“He drove the Soviet Union to ruin, and now he doesn't want to die by his own hand.”

A dry voice echoed in the meeting room, now empty of the General Secretary.

Who said it no longer mattered.

The only thing that mattered was the fact that no one in this gathering of the Soviet high command rebutted the statement, which was said loudly enough for all to hear, nor would anyone go snitching to the General Secretary.

---

April 16, 1942

Capital of the Soviet Union, Moscow – The Kremlin Palace

His birth name as a Georgian was Ioseb Besarionis Dzhugashvili.

The man who was once the terror of the world and the symbol of all power in the Soviet Union sat in his office chair, dressed in his General Secretary’s uniform.

He no longer went down to his dacha to rest.

He simply focused on procuring supplies and organizing movement paths for the generals who were desperately trying to reorganize the retreating armies.

He had none of the personal time he had occasionally allowed himself after becoming the General Secretary.

Amidst the mountain of documents on Stalin's desk, only two pieces of paper lay on top.

One was a telegram.

The report of his eldest son, Captain Yakov Jugashvili, missing in action.

His artillery unit in Shostaka had been annihilated by the German Army’s merciless shelling and bombing.

Stalin knew better than anyone that this MIA report actually meant, ‘He is dead, we just haven't confirmed it.’

The other was a letter.

The letter from his only daughter, Svetlana, contained just one sentence.

[You are the worst kind of person.

]

This was the result of sacrificing everything as an individual to remain ‘Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin,’ the great General Secretary of the Soviet Union.

As Stalin diligently processed the documents, he glanced down at his feet.

Red blood had risen to his ankles.

When he looked straight ahead, countless people he had sacrificed stood there with expressionless faces.

In front of those countless people stood Trotsky, whom he had considered his lifelong rival.

And beside him today was the man he had feared and revered the most.

The founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, stood with Trotsky, looking at him with a blank face.

The man whose preserved corpse was enshrined in Red Square had appeared as a vision for the first time.

Seeing this, Stalin vaguely guessed that his time had come.

As he was buried in paperwork, a knock came from the door.

Stalin quietly put down his pen, stood up, and looked in the mirror.

There was a shabby man, far older than he remembered himself to be.

His perpetually stern mustache and uniform, rather than adding to his dignity, only highlighted his wretchedness.

Feeling a faint sense of regret, Stalin spoke.

“Come in.”

The person who entered the office, much to Stalin's anticipation, was his physician.

Feeling an inner sense of anticlimax, Stalin spoke.

“…It's time for my medicine already.”

“Yes, Comrade General Secretary.”

The physician walked through the visions and the sea of blood.

Not a single drop of blood stained his clothes.

Stalin quietly accepted the cup of water and medicine the physician handed him.

He was about to toss it into his mouth but paused.

“There's a pill I haven't seen before.”

“You have been complaining of insomnia, Comrade General Secretary, so I have slightly altered the prescription to match.”

The physician’s attitude was strictly business-like.

Stalin once again tried to toss it into his mouth, but then he realized the visions were all smiling eerily.

Stalin slowly lowered his hand.

Still, the physician said nothing.

Stalin slowly turned his gaze to meet the eyes of the physician who had cared for him for so long.

“I never thought it would be you.”

The physician’s gaze did not waver.

He simply stared at Stalin with an impassive face.

For the eyes of a man who once held pity for Stalin, there was too little life, too little warmth.

“…I never thought it would come to this either, Comrade General Secretary.”

Stalin let out a hollow laugh and asked.

“May I ask why?”

“…My wife and I were widowed early, after she gave me our only son, Comrade General Secretary.”

There was no pity, no hatred, no fear in the physician’s eyes—nothing at all.

“That boy was at Kursk.”

After a long, heavy silence, Stalin spoke.

“My eldest son was there too.”

“This war should have ended long ago, Comrade General Secretary.”

No reply was exchanged.

The assassin was not anxious about his failure.

The man of power did not blame or rage at the traitor.

There were only two empty humans, reflecting each other like mirrors, with no will to live and nothing left to protect.

After an indeterminable silence, a knock sounded.

Neither Stalin nor the physician answered.

Another knock, slightly more impatient.

Still, only silence filled the office.

Finally, as if their patience had run out, the door burst open.

Nikita Khrushchev, who had once acted like a dog and proclaimed himself Stalin's loyal servant, rushed into the room, only for his eyes to widen at the sight of Stalin sitting perfectly fine at his desk with the physician standing before him.

“C-Comrade General Secretary. An urgent report has come in…”

Stalin looked at Khrushchev, who was stammering nonsense in his fluster, and let out a hollow laugh.

“The adjective ‘trustworthy’ is truly not a word suited for human beings.”

Stalin had expected, or perhaps hoped, it would be Andropov.

But in the end, it was his most servile, loyal servant.

Thinking the physician had snitched on him, Khrushchev's eyes trembled uncontrollably as he spoke.

“C-Comrade General Secretary. I don’t quite understand what you mean…”

Khrushchev then froze stiff as he saw Stalin pull a pistol from his desk drawer.

“C-Comrade General—”

A gunshot rang out.

Khrushchev collapsed, sinking into the sea of blood that filled the office and disappearing from Stalin's sight.

As soon as the gunshot echoed, a commotion began outside the office.

Even so, the physician did not stir.

Only a man who had resigned himself to everything stood in that spot.

Stalin slowly turned his gaze.

Vladimir Lenin. Once his comrade, his mentor, the man who had been most wary of him and tried to check his power, the wall he had wanted to overcome his entire life.

Leon Trotsky. Once the most dependable father of the Red Army, but ultimately a man who could not escape his fantasies and drowned in his own dreams.

Nikolai Bukharin. Once his closest friend and ideological compatriot, but for that very reason, an unfortunate man who had to be eliminated for the sake of his authority.

Nikolai Yezhov. The hunting dog who had disposed of his countless political enemies, but who had hunted them so well that he aroused Stalin’s own wariness and was disposed of in turn.

After meeting the gazes of countless other visions, Stalin felt an inner sense of relief that his eldest son, Yakov, was not among them.

Even if it was just the expression of a futile hope that he was still alive.

His close associates who had rushed over, Molotov and Zhdanov, were frozen in a state of flustered horror.

Stalin felt it was like a cheap comedy.

Were they accomplices? Or were they genuinely surprised because they didn't know?

Was it a coincidence that they were near my office at this exact moment?

Was Andropov’s absence meant to create an alibi, or was he carrying out his mission?

Did any of it even matter?

It was all fine.

Stalin smiled and raised the medicine that had been in his hand all this time.

Watching the physician, whose face had been emotionless all day, show bewilderment for the first time, Stalin felt a sense of amusement.

He tossed it into his mouth and swallowed it with water.

Putting down the water cup, Stalin smiled with a more satisfied expression than ever before.

Ah.

Death, come to me.

From the moment he seized power, he was the Soviet Union itself.

The life of Ioseb Jugashvili was erased, and only the General Secretary of Steel remained in his place.

If so, it had to be that way until the very end.

Along with an excruciating pain that felt like his stomach and throat were on fire, Stalin coughed up blood.

Even through the agony, his smile did not fade.

He wanted to stand tall, but his knees, having lost their strength, buckled against his will.

Still, Stalin did not let go of his smile.

I am sorry, Yakov. I am sorry, Svetlana.

But this was him.

He was only himself, right up until the moment of his death.

Finally, after coughing up blood once more, Stalin collapsed.

He sank into the sea of blood amid the laughter of the ghosts he had killed.

Until the very last moment, he was the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin.