He is as corrupt a man as I have ever seen, and the list of his crimes goes on and on—robbery, extortion, bribery, racketeering, and of course we cannot forget his subversive propaganda, his traitorous organizing in the shadows of this city. He should be locked up forever, but then that would only be my headache for as long as the man is under my guard. I am told the final decision on his exile will be made today, so we shall see what fate has in store for him. We shall see…
The greatest part of that fate was lying in wait for all of Russia, but few, if any, could see that far ahead, or ever believe what they would see if they could. The Revolution, like all rebellions against an established order, began with discontent, perceived injustice and oppression, and basic inequity in the distribution of wealth and services. It was the same story everywhere. Elite families husbanded wealth and power, while the common man or woman scrounged out a living as best they could. Capitalism had a genius for generating wealth, but its mechanism continued to move it higher and higher on the social pyramid, until the barest few at the very top controlled more wealth that all the rest combined.
The Revolution started as an idea, as grand and compelling in the minds of its creators as any other great social edict, and it began with every good intention. Yet like all social systems created by men, it would slowly become corrupt over time. The British writer George Orwell wrote his now famous parody of the Russian Revolution in the book Animal Farm, where the grand experiment began with the catchphrase “All Animals are equal!” Yet it did not take long before it was evident that “some Animals are more equal than others.” The same story played out in the United States, which had boldly proclaimed “all men are created equal! Soon, however, it was evident that those who were not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and those who came to America from foreign shores, were deemed less equal than others.
The oppressive world that Orwell painted in his more serious book 1984 was one path this inherent inequality of society could take. The other path was that described by Aldus Huxley in his landmark novel Brave New World.
No one knew it at that moment, though Colonel Martynov might have been one to suspect, that a man like the one he was ruminating over might one day seize real power, overthrow the old order, and become the “Big Brother” that Orwell was writing about in 1984, and it would not take nearly that long. Today was the day the Colonel had waited for, the final sentencing and banishment of the man he had been grumbling about, and at that moment, the thought that this same man would rise to seize control of the entire government of Russia was unthinkable.
He would use all the same old tactics and ploys that the Colonel saw him crafting in prison. He would sew suspicion and spread rumors to prompt others to take action against his perceived enemies. He would manipulate everyone around him to the service of his devious plots, and slowly breed an atmosphere of terror and fear. He would eliminate his opposition, one man after another, until no one dared oppose him. Even after they all fell into line, he would continue to decimate the ranks with grand purges to slake his own inner fear.
Then, all over Siberia, the place where he would be banished, he would build little prisons and detention camps like the one he found himself in now. What was good for the goose, was good for the gander. Everyone would suffer as he had suffered. There would be no exceptions. Even his most trusted associates would fall under his suspicion, particularly anyone who had gained any measure of popularity and respect. One by one, he would eliminate them all… in the purges, executions, labor camps… in the Gulags.
And it all started here.
Chapter 33
Bailov prison was a dark and cheerless place, a place of terror, and isolation, and the misery squeezed from one man after another where they huddled in the cold stone cells, behind heartless bars of iron. One man sat there, brooding, yet scheming in his mind. He had been arrested for his persistent criminal acts against the order of the state. The tall, fearsome agents of the Okhrana had finally tracked him down and dragged him before a court of censure, where he was lucky to have only been sentenced to 18 months in this rat’s nest.
He was born 18 December 1878 in a little town in the Caucasus called Gori. His mother had been a simple housekeeper, his father a cobbler who often drunk himself into a stupor and beat him cruelly in the early years of his life, where the world also branded him with the scars of smallpox, and physical ailments in his feet and left arm that would plague him in later years. Yet he endured the abuse, as if he was nothing more than another piece of stone beat upon by his father, and he grew to a handsome man in his twenties.
That childhood was perhaps the reason why he forsook his real name long ago, becoming a chameleon of sorts, changing names and identities, and moving in the shadows. He had come to Baku to rouse the oil workers, to rob and steal in order to fund other revolutionary cells, to drink and brawl, and hatch subversive plans.
His rebellious spirit soon found him in the activist circles and hidden meeting rooms of the incipient revolution in Russia. He read forbidden literature, the writings of men named Lenin and Marx, and soon began to agitate on their behalf. He wrote and circulated papers condemning the wealthy oil barons and bankers who had come to Baku at the edge of the Caspian Sea, and he helped organize workers strikes against them there. He joined the Bolsheviks, helped to print and spread their propaganda, and recruited new cells. He robbed the bankers he saw bleeding the country dry and used their money to foment further revolutionary activity… and he was tracked down by the Tsar’s secret police and arrested.
The Okhrana had been watching him for years, other shadows that seemed to follow him everywhere, instilling in him the ever present fear of being discovered. It came to a point where he could trust no one, and he was always looking over one shoulder, even with his most trusted associates, and he let them all know why he was so ardent in the pursuit of perceived enemies and spies.
“Betrayal is the worst fate a man can endure in his mind,” he told them. “The betrayal of someone with whom you’ve shared everything is so horrible, that no actor or writer could ever express it. It is worse than the very bite of Death!”
This dark sentiment would be a blight upon all of Russia one day, for he would never still his suspicion, his constant fear of betrayal, the urge to root out and eliminate anyone he perceived as a threat.
By the same token, he could never operate in one location for very long, and he learned to disassemble, move, and reassemble his printing press as a matter of course. Movement was life, stagnation death. Loyalty was an illusion, distrust the bitter way of life. That was how he saw things. In many ways, he was like a deadly virus in the body politic of his time, infecting the masses, always pursued by the antibodies of the Tsar’s secret police, then mutating to come again in another guise. And for this man, there was no vaccine.
The prisoner was a man with no heart, for it had died with his young wife of 23 years the previous autumn, a shattering life tragedy that left a terrible mark on Koba. He told his associates how he felt in no uncertain terms: “…Now she is dead, and with her passing goes my last drop of feeling for mankind.” He placed his hand on his breast in anguish. “Here, in here, everything is empty, unutterably empty.”
Now he sat in the prison of Bailov, brooding on how he might soon regain his freedom and continue with his revolutionary zeal. He had a plan, and it was all arranged. He would feign illness, something terrible like tuberculosis, so he could be taken from his cell to the infirmary, and there he would switch places with another patient being discharged, and escape. He had secretly sent messages to his comrades outside, and they would arrange a coach and driver to spirit him away into the cold countryside where he would travel north and east, far away from the black hole in which he now found himself. He would then change his name again, assuming another alias like so many other comrades in the struggle, and he would find another cell to infect and breed the virus of revolution. As Colonel Martynov had surmised so well, he was a man with a hundred identities.