FICTIONAL HISTORY

1923 :A FICTIONAL HISTORY


His lips were turning bluer as the Winter of 1923 got closer.
My party boss was not yet aware of it but my experience told me that Lenin was being poisoned slowly with cyanide by his long time doctor Zelinspeski.
Of course, it was a conspiracy inspired or directed by Bronski, that busybody of a first general of the Red Army, who controlled the commissars in their murderous overnight trials of disaffected army officers or holdovers from the Czarist times.
But, if I go ahead with this accusation and Trotsky becomes the successor of Lenin, I and my boss will be flushed to Siberia.

As of now, we control all hiring of worthy party members by the central government in Moscow. Our three hundred thousand bureaucrats against Trotsky's people's army. My guess is we will win as we did against the misguided White Russians. I calculated the risk of telling my friend Lavrenti about my surmising. After all, he was indebted to Stalin but too young to respond rationally in a political crisis in which both Stalin and Trotsky will pull every painful stop to win the leadership of the party.
Well, my decision to speak was better than no action at all ; and it could result in a more prominent position for me and for Lavrenti. He will urge the boss to announced his intentions to the people on all-Russian radio as soon as the good doctor finishes the job that I suspected he was doing on Lenin, the indisputable, god-like figure of the October Revolution.

I have read comrade Lenin's unpublished articles on the Dictatorship of the so-called Proletariat, just another word for impoverished peoples. Good philosophical stuff but in my measured opinion impractical and dangerous. Lavrenti surely would agree. He will use the secret police against the intellectuals first; that means control of all media of public communication, both intraparty as well as extra-party. None will know what happened here. History will be rewritten to show only our absolute success.

As I had thought, Lavrenti accepted the risk of talking to Stalin. He chose the propitious occasion of Stalin's daughter birthday, a happy moment for all concerned. Lavrenti told me: "let it be". Was that Stalin's answer? Perhaps, but I then knew my head was on a noose and my feet were on a gallows at worse and at the door of leadership in a worker's paradise, at best. I have told Lavrenti of my plans to marry his sister Pollyanna in the Spring. He consented on the condition that I supported his bid for Lieutenant or deputy director of the political arm of the Checka. He hated violence but loved the intrigues of party politics. He always knew who was for or against Stalin from the very beginning. Even at the level of the International Communist Party congress, Lavrenti could ferret out the lukewarm, pro neutrality socialist delegates by memory. He disliked keeping written records, dossiers on top party leaders that could be used for good or for evil. His wisdom proved right in light of the events that history will record with extreme partiality by Winter's end. About two thirds of those delegates were eliminated before the following Congress by Stalinist agents.

I never worry about what people may think when a "fait accompli" is about to become public knowledge under our management of the news. The truth telling will always be favorable to our cause as long as the boss controls the "politburo", a kind of modern archetype of Pontius Pilate, always washing its hands before the mob.
I was in love with Pollyanna. An aristocrat in a plebeian environment, she was as gracious as she was attractive. Above all she was a good judge of character. I needed her beside me at this life changing point. She could dance in this tragic moment. She could laugh just as easily as she could draw at will a tear. But, it was her smile as she turned away that fascinated me. She knew when she was lording over anyone, anything; when her time had come to stay; when her every step would have a loyal follower;when she was my freedom, my Juno in the clouds, all powerful, relentless.
Marriage, a social status in rapid evolution, disappeared after the revolution. But, she was free to turn to bourgeois traditions whenever she thought the circumstances merited it, and our union was one of those.
Lenin, the demigod, died and was embalmed for immortality. I kept his books though as a reminder that the dangers of new philosophies may be as great as the perils of embracing new theories.
j.a.canto, MBA