Interlude
Sovnarkcom, the Council of Peoples’ Commissars: Beware the Hun
The fire roaring in the hearth, combined with the body heat of the men assembled in the meeting chamber of the Central Committee, managed to bring the temperature in the room up to stifling—no mean feat in early spring in Petrograd. All the Party Commissars, from State to Railway Affairs, were gathered around the long wooden table that dominated the center of the room. Sitting at the head of the table, sweat glistening on the dome of his massive bald forehead, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin listened intently to the newly elected minister of agricultural affairs, Semyon Sereda. Sereda was the fourth man in as many months to occupy the Agricultural Commissariat since the October Revolution.
Lenin’s eyes were red-rimmed with lack of sleep and darted nervously about the room, from the faces of the Commissars to the doors and back again as he listened to Sereda’s litany of bad news. Seated at Lenin’s right hand, Yakov Sverdlov regarded his friend and leader with frank concern. It was only two months since the last assassination attempt on the man, less than that since they’d forcibly disbanded the democratically elected Constituent Assembly.
The strain is visibly aging Ilyich before us.
Still, worn ragged or not, no other man had the same vision, the same will. The Revolution needed Vladimir Ilyich Lenin at its helm. Sverdlov had long since renounced the God of Abraham, so he eschewed prayer, contenting himself with a fervent hope that Lenin would remain cogent and healthy enough to continue the work for a while longer.
Semyon finished his doom-laden report.
“. . . in summary, comrades, we have shortfalls in every crop imaginable. Worse than that, our ability to move produce from the farms to the cities before those crops spoil is diminishing daily due to sabotage by monarchists and other undesirables. Furthermore, the kulaks often hide the grain we so desperately need—or if we don’t send sufficient force, will often fight our troops to keep their grain.”
“Bloodsucking rich bastards,” Lenin said. “We know the problems, Semyon, what solutions might we enact?”
“Comrades, I wish your permission to commit a larger body of troops to redistribution activities and to incur summary punishment for kulaks who do not cooperate,” Sereda said. “The kulaks will be less likely to resist once they see a few of their neighbors hanging from a scaffold. Also, if we can focus the peasants’ and workers’ anger and anxiety on the rich landowners, that binds them all the more tightly to the Revolution.”
Lenin leaned back and stroked his goatee for several seconds.
“Yes,” Lenin said. “An excellent thought, Semyon, work with Trotsky to allocate the troops. Is there anything else?”
In the silence that followed, Trotsky looked at Sverdlov for permission to bring up the reports from Hungary. Sverdlov nodded slightly.
“Comrades, I have a matter that may be of some import,” Trotsky said.
“What is it, Leon?” Lenin asked.
“The first item is that the Germans have been recruiting former Imperial Guardsmen, in numbers that wouldn’t matter to their war in the west, but that could matter to us. In relation to this, comrades in Hungary offered us, as a show of good faith, a potentially troubling bit of intelligence. Reports of strange activities on the part of the German Army there,” Trotsky said.
“Where in Hungary?” asked Lenin.
“Somewhere around Budapest, but our friends have not been able to pinpoint a site.”
“That is hardly our concern,” Sereda said. “We are now neutral in their war. Besides, no location? It could be all fanciful.”
“Agreed,” Trotsky said. “It could be. But what if it’s not and the Germans want them for further operations against us? Perhaps something covert?”
“That seems a little fanciful, too,” Sereda said.
“Is it?” Sverdlov interrupted. “The Germans saw to it Comrade Lenin made his way back to Russia when it suited them. If our Revolutionary activities are worrying them now, it’s not inconceivable they might use the same tactics twice.”
“An excellent point,” Lenin said. “Ensure we keep funds flowing to our friends in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. If the Germans intend to use our own people against us, we must know about it.”
“What else, Leon?”
“Someone massacred a group of bandits who were attempting to rob the Trans-Siberian near Yekaterinburg. A retired colonel named Plestov claimed to have organized the resistance there, but our man on the ground didn’t believe it was possible. This Plestov is practically senescent, and the train’s other passengers were no soldiers. We didn’t have any Red Guards in the area at the time, nor were any of the White Army formations, as far as we can tell. So who would have done it?
“And then there was a ship that blew up, taking one of our destroyers with it. The timing is too good, too precise. I think the Germans have already introduced some people to thwart the revolution by raising a counterrevolution. Ten men here, twenty men there, and pretty soon the kulaks are in arms against us, with competent leadership and maybe weapons.”
“That could be troublesome,” Lenin agreed. “A series of sparks that ignite a forest fire.”