Chapter 53: Patriotic Organization (2)

As far as I knew, Russia already had a forced penal labor system called katorga.

Those who staged ethnic uprisings were mainly the ones dragged off to such places to open up Siberia and the Far East, and the famous Dostoevsky himself was a katorga alumnus.

But sending nobles or their henchmen to a katorga like that was bound to draw complaints that it was far too harsh a measure.

So I dug through Seong-jun’s knowledge and, in place of that penal labor, established a brand-new institution under the name of labor reeducation camp.

See, it’s fundamentally different from the punishment those lowborn wretches get, okay?

“After all, doesn’t the Orthodox Church itself teach that labor is a means of atonement and salvation? For men whose souls have rotted through enough to commit treason, I believe purifying those souls through labor is only the natural course.”

-And what if they die doing it?

Then they were weak, that’s all.

They should have gotten some exercise now and then; spending every waking day scheming how to fleece the workers and peasants is exactly why they went so soft.

Nicholas II must have felt much the same, because he approved it without much deliberation.

It fit the teachings of the Orthodox Church perfectly, the justification was airtight, since they had harmed the national interest and could now repay it in kind, and it even served the clear purpose of developing Manchuria and Siberia.

It was truly a scheme to kill three birds with one stone.

-Hey, hey, hey, this is a Gulag.

Tsk. How dare you wave around such a ghastly name from some commie socialist state.

Kindly call it a patriotic reeducation camp, established by His Majesty the great Tsar for the good of the nation.

-Come to think of it, the Okhrana feels less like the KGB and more like the NKVD…

Yeah, no.

The Okhrana is the finest patriotic organization in all of Russian history, the likes of which has never existed and never will again.

-I mean, once you become Tsar, it’ll basically be the Tsar’s personal guard… which is scarier, actually?

If this affair taught me anything all over again, it’s that the nobles will never stop.

And if the nobles are acting like this, it’s safe to predict that the revolutionaries won’t change their ways so easily either.

At times like this, half-hearted mercy only hands them an excuse to strike back.

Half-baked tolerance, half-baked forgiveness.

History as it stood, and Seong-jun’s knowledge besides, offered no shortage of examples of people who showed that kind of grace and promptly got stabbed in the back for it.

“With my old man’s temperament, he couldn’t do it in a million years. So it has to be me, doesn’t it?”

It’s all for the comfort and happiness of my parents and my darling younger siblings.

-Behold, a filial son for the ages.

Damn right. And I suspect I owe this, too, to Seong-jun’s memories, coming as he did from a culture that prizes propriety and filial piety.

Take a father the nobles despise and make him an absolute monarch; rip out everyone who might threaten him, roots and all.

Anyone can see I’m a filial son, right?

One for the ages, at that.

* * *

The verdict on Dmitri’s ring came down at lightning speed.

They were deployed to the Manchurian coalfields, where development was needed most urgently.

Dragged out of his comfortable Paris mansion, Dmitri was loaded like cargo into a freight car crossing Siberia.

His family’s promise to protect him became a scrap of waste paper before the train even left the station.

The couriers who had dirtied their hands alongside him and the officer in charge at the Nobles’ Land Bank tumbled into the same fate, one after another.

Yakov handed over the list with a satisfied smile.

“All eleven have been sent to Manchuria. The mines there are shortest on labor right now.”

“My, the right men in the right place.”

-A good long grind out there, experiencing the sacred value of labor, should air out those blocked-up skulls of theirs a little.

Grind? Such crude language.

We’re giving them the opportunity to devote themselves to the Empire’s progress.

“You understand, of course? The treatment must be better than katorga.”

“Of course. Better ‘than katorga’, certainly. Rest assured.”

Rumors were already spreading through Petersburg.

Stories of how the men who had meddled with the Emperor’s enterprise had vanished overnight.

“Ah, and since applicants may surge in the future, we’d best expand the facilities well in advance. That will need approval from His Majesty and Chairman Witte.”

“Chairman Witte is already voicing enthusiastic opinions on how the labor reeducation camps should be run. He seems to be enjoying it more than anyone.”

As expected, Chairman Witte and I are of one mind.

Dear traitors, please savor the scent of Manchurian soil to your hearts’ content.

* * *

Around the time this unseasonable craze for labor reeducation was sweeping the Russian homeland.

After nearly half a day of careful maneuvering, Trotsky succeeded in meeting Lenin without catching anyone’s eye.

“You need to take a hard look at what’s happening inside Russia right now, Comrade Ilyich.”

“I am looking. The Tsar and the nobility are rolling on the ground with their hands at each other’s throats.”

A faint sneer crossed Lenin’s lips.

“The ruling class has split in two and is carving off its own flesh. For us, cornered as we are, is that not the opportunity of a lifetime?”

“M doesn’t see it that way. Neither do I.”

“…And why is that?”

“We must strike the nobility, not the Tsar.”

Lenin’s hand froze midway to his coffee cup.

“What? Strike the nobility? What sort of nonsense is that?”

“…….”

“To my ears, that sounds like telling us to become the Tsar’s dogs. Crouch at the Emperor’s feet and sink our teeth into whatever he points at, is that it?”

Contempt dripped from every word.

“Didn’t we see plainly last year what happens when we clash head-on? How much of the organization is even left now? One more blow like that and we’ll be torn out by the roots.”

“So we should kneel?”

“No. We should survive. Unless we want history to stuff and mount us as the idiots who killed Russia’s chance at revolution forever.”

It wasn’t simply death he feared.

But going down in history as the fool who snuffed out a revolution that might have been possible in Russia, that he did fear.

The mere thought of the name Trotsky being recorded as a byword for hopeless morons was enough to make his knees buckle.

“I have seen countless men dress up their betrayal in the fine language of survival. Are you trying to join their ranks?”

“Haah….”

“Strike the nobility? Fine. Then who fills the vacuum? The Tsar. In the end we’d be playing the hammer in the Emperor’s hand.”

“That is exactly what reform from above means. Haven’t I already told you there is no other way?”

Sweep away the nobles and reform the system; enthrone the successor M was grooming at the heart of Russian power; then let the revolutionaries complete the reform.

Right now, that was the only solution Trotsky and M could offer.

“I don’t understand. What is there to fear from the likes of Nicholas II? That indecisive, dull-witted creature…”

“That is precisely the thinking you must discard.”

How many times did he have to say it before the man grasped the gravity of the situation?

Trotsky let out a frustrated sigh and pressed on quickly.

“Erase every trace of the Nicholas II in your head. That fool of an emperor never existed in the first place. Forget everything and draw him again from scratch.”

“…It’s that bad?”

“Just picture the most capable, cunning emperor you can imagine, then assume he’s somewhat better than that. Then you’ll barely be in the neighborhood.”

Lenin stared at Trotsky, dumbfounded.

Understandable. He had been the same himself, at first.

“You… what on earth happened to you? You went all the way to Petersburg saying you would see M for yourself. You actually met him, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“…Truly? In person? You spoke with him?”

“We spoke by written conversation, with a single door between us. I never did see his face, but it was M himself, without question.”

Lenin studied Trotsky in silence for a long while before slowly opening his mouth.

“With a head like yours, you must have some guess at the man’s identity. Am I wrong?”

“You’re not… At this point I’ve all but confirmed it.”

Trotsky gave Lenin a brief account of M.

And the two men’s minds began turning at almost exactly the same speed.

M was someone who had seen through from the very beginning the fact that the Tsar was hiding such abilities.

Even the nobles had been utterly deceived, but only by assuming M knew did everything fall into place.

“To recognize Nicholas II’s true colors, he would have to be someone who was there to witness the moment his genius briefly showed itself in childhood.”

“Someone advanced in years, free to come and go from the imperial household… a figure carrying enough weight in the religious world that even Father Gapon wouldn’t dare treat him lightly.”

The same face rose naturally, and simultaneously, in both titans’ minds.

“The Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod….”

“Pobedonostsev.”

The old tutor of the Tsar, Nicholas II, an elderly man said to still drop by the imperial palace now and then to chat with him.

No one else could possibly be M.

That was the conclusion the two titans of the revolution reached.

* * *

In the streets of Petersburg, cries of “Long live the Tsar” rang out almost daily, and prayer meetings were held for the Tsar’s health.

The meeting room of the Nobles’ Committee, by contrast, might as well have been a funeral parlor.

“Dmitri has been taken in the end. Two of the couriers were transported to Manchuria along with him, I hear.”

“Good heavens….”

A heavy silence crushed the room.

Bobrinsky, who had kept his mouth shut for a long while, worked his parched lips and barely managed to speak.

“I had laid three layers of camouflage screen over it. All contact was by word of mouth; not a single sheet of paper was left as evidence. So how in God’s name….”

“Of course, men being men, some trace of evidence is unavoidable, but to find it in so short a time….”

A hollow laugh crept into Durnovo’s voice.

“Pressure through hearings, flanking moves with capital and talent, even an operation run beyond the border, all smashed to pieces. At this point, does anything we do mean anything at all?”

“Are you telling me those Okhrana curs have planted eyes even in the back alleys of Paris?”

No one could readily answer.

It was Sukhomlinov, who had sat with his arms crossed the whole time, who broke the silence.

“Let us admit it already. The Tsar is a step above us. Unmistakably so.”

Not one step but several at the very least, though admitting that was no easy thing.

There was a world of difference between conceding that Nicholas II was no pushover and accepting that he was a man far superior to themselves.

“Haah….”

“The Tsar sits perched atop our heads, looking down on every next move we might make. Has anything we’ve done ever once escaped his predictions?”

No one spoke.

Because it was a truth no one could refute.

“If we mean to defend our rights against a monster like this, half-measures won’t come close.”

“Then what would you have us do? We’ve tried everything there is to try.”

It was around then, as sighs of resignation ruled the room.

“…There is one thing. An urgent report came up from my estate…”

The great magnates who held vast farmland hesitantly laid the reports sent up from their estates on the table.

“This year’s harvest looks grim indeed. The Volga basin hasn’t seen a drop of rain since spring, they say.”

“The Black Earth region is no different. At this rate, some are even saying the autumn harvest will fall by half.”

At first it was little more than grumbling over family income.

But one by one, the eyes of the quick calculators in the room began to change.

“…Wait. Did you say crop failure?”

“Yes. It looks to be quite severe.”

In that instant, a diabolical scheme flashed through Durnovo’s mind.

“This is it. This will work.”

“Whatever do you mean…….”

“However much of a genius the Tsar may be, could he have predicted the whims of heaven? By what means does one prepare in advance for a famine that arrives without warning?”

A stir ran through the assembly.

They had a rough idea of what Minister Durnovo was driving at.

“While the people starve to death, what is the imperial family doing? Instead of hurrying to develop Manchuria, they think only of monopolizing it to fatten the treasury.”

“Y-yes, exactly! Turning their backs on starving citizens while stuffing their own bellies… that would make quite the picture.”

Bobrinsky, too, nodded slowly.

“Very well. We keep up the appearance of concern for the citizens, while thoroughly shaping public opinion to condemn the Tsar’s hypocrisy.”

“One of the Tsar’s great strengths right now is the citizens’ overwhelming support, is it not? Bring that down alone and our work will be far easier from here on.”

Life surged back into the dying room in an instant.

For the fourth time this season, this time it’s different.

Was it mere coincidence that an unexpected crop failure struck at the very moment the Tsar revealed such wicked designs?

Surely this was a warning that God Himself would not stand idly by before the Tsar’s tyranny.

If human strength alone could not manage it, then they would borrow heaven’s strength and fight.

This would work.

No, it had to work. Please.

~~~

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