Ch.349Let’s Use a Commie the Right Way (3)

* * *

White hair now cascades down abundantly, and seeing that makes me think how fortunate I am not to have aged.

Especially for women, age—or rather youth—is such a powerful asset.

I crossed my legs and gave an eye-smile.

Relaxed, more elegant than anyone, and with a sweet smile that seemed to prove just how young I still am.

Stalin, witnessing my youthfulness with his own eyes, furrowed his brow with a shudder.

“What’s wrong?”

“Hmph, they called you a saint, and truly you haven’t aged a day. Meanwhile, I’m covered in white hair.”

You Red. Jealous? Well then, you should try meeting an old man too.

Then even in a bomb attack, you’d only feel like your body had turned to rubber.

“That’s why I’m right and communism is finished. If communism—if the revolution—had been right, wouldn’t it have kept someone—you, Lenin, or Trotsky—from aging, allowing you to hold power as long as I have?”

Logically speaking, even that old man must know that I’m more correct.

“Are you mocking me as the victor now that I’m old? Or is this just wordplay?”

“I didn’t particularly mean to. It’s just the truth, but fine. Let’s get to the point. In exchange for writing a letter to persuade Trotsky, you want to become a free man and have the means to live out your old age?”

“That’s right.”

He doesn’t seem to be asking for anything more.

Should I believe that he truly just wants to become a free man?

“You’re not harboring other thoughts, are you?”

“Do I look like I still have that kind of vigor in the Tsar’s eyes?”

No, he doesn’t. He’s grown too old.

Stalin is now just an old man waiting for his death day, too old to do anything.

“Too old for revolution.”

He’s aged too much.

Originally, he should have died by now, but unlike in the original history, he’s living longer.

Considering he became General Secretary and died in ’53, the fact that he’s still alive now suggests that life in the camp wasn’t too bad.

“That’s right. I still believe the proletarian revolution was correct. Isn’t it true that even the Tsar implemented social welfare reforms because we existed?”

“I won’t deny that.”

More precisely, that would be the original history, but anyway, we just extracted the essence from the Reds of the original history.

“But now I want to live in this changed world. I think I helped when the Tsar needed to use the Bolsheviks.”

That’s right. Thanks to Stalin persuading the Bolsheviks or selling them out, Russia was able to use the Bolsheviks for various large-scale construction projects.

This is an unavoidable reality.

“Wasn’t it you who caused my parents’ deaths?”

I have to acknowledge what needs to be acknowledged, right?

At my words, Stalin laughed so hard that his wrinkles deepened.

“Hahaha! If you wanted to kill me for that, you would have done so long ago. Wouldn’t you? I think that despite the distance between us, the Tsar and I understand each other best.”

Stalin was indeed clever.

He’s confident that I won’t kill him.

“You’re not wrong. Among the Bolsheviks, you’re the only one besides Trotsky who directly confronted me. As enemies who competed against each other’s systems, we understand each other well. I can let you rest comfortably in your old age. Like a bourgeois.”

I’ll make you live like the bourgeoisie you so despise.

“Puhahaha! At this age, what more do I have to hide? I just want to live properly in my final years.”

Right. He wants to live properly in his final years. In exchange, I’ll let him live as a bourgeois.

Personally, as he was once a man… I feel a kind of pity as a fellow man.

I mean, this guy is over 70 and impotent.

I heard his wife found another man in the camp. That’s where my personal sympathy comes from.

When seeing someone like me, any man would turn his head at least once, but Stalin just looks after me.

He must truly be impotent.

“Choose between Moscow and your homeland. If you want to stay in Moscow, I’ll give you a newly built mansion. If you prefer Georgia, I’ll assign you any place you want there.”

I’m really being too generous here.

I’m actually giving Stalin a chance to live.

Who else would give such an opportunity to someone who caused their parents’ deaths?

“No matter what, I can’t live in the same city as my Tsar. Give me a farm or something in Georgia so I can live like a bourgeois. Then I can write 100 letters to persuade Trotsky.”

If he can just persuade Trotsky like hypnosis or brainwashing, I can do anything for him.

The question is whether he has the writing skills for it.

“Good. I’ll take special care of you. I’ll also make you a new ID card.”

This is a Stalin different from the original history.

I can at least do that much for him.

“Then I’ll write a letter to persuade Trotsky.”

With that, Stalin was escorted out by the Okhrana.

A letter to persuade Trotsky.

If he writes a good letter, this is an opportunity to act moderately without unnecessarily provoking America.

“Will that fellow write it properly? I just hope he doesn’t write a letter calling for a fight to the death.”

Maria said suspiciously.

I can see why she’d think that. After all, Stalin is a revolutionary.

It’s certainly not ideal to release Stalin as a revolutionary.

But after all these years, the malice in his eyes has faded.

Perhaps it’s natural since he’s living past his original death date.

With not much time left to live, rather than remaining hostile until the end, he’s compromising with reality while still believing that communism is right.

That’s within an acceptable range.

“Stalin has seen the entire history of the United States of Russia while living. The unification of Europe too. The word ‘revolution’ doesn’t even come up in people’s conversations anymore. It’s meaningless now. Would he lie at his age?”

If I were Stalin, I’d think: I don’t have the confidence to succeed like the Grand Duchess even if the revolution succeeds.

After all, I’ve brought Russia to where it is today with this immortal ability, running around everywhere.

Perhaps in the future, Russia won’t become a bully nation picking fights everywhere.

I don’t see that happening.

Stalin must have that much insight. Even if he had taken power, he couldn’t have achieved this much.

My approach has proven far superior to the proletarian revolution, which is why I won.

He may not admit it verbally, but he must understand it himself.

“But he did terrible things to the previous Tsar.”

“Yes. He did terrible things to the previous Tsar. You could see it that way.”

But so what?

As I always say, I am Anastasia but also a Korean in my previous life.

I feel pity and sympathy, but I don’t feel anger as the Tsar’s child.

I even forgave those who threw bombs at me. Why couldn’t I forgive Stalin?

There’s also Trotsky with his chicken shop, but anyway.

It was those damned Ural Soviets who killed the Tsar, not Stalin directly.

If he hadn’t done his job well, I would have sent him radioactive tea long ago, but he did his job well, didn’t he?

So there’s no reason for me to torment him.

“Let’s see how he writes the letter.”

I’m really curious about how he’ll write it.

If it doesn’t work, then my East Asian Trotsky Chicken business plan will fail miserably, but perhaps Trotsky has had enough of revolution by now?

“Paris remains a city punished by the Saint, but if we rebuild it, shouldn’t we pay quite a bit of attention to it? Or would it be better to abandon it?”

“Well, we still need to create something like that.”

Let’s assume we deal with all the Red corpses and skulls in the Paris catacombs. By then, we’ll rebuild it under the Saint’s grace.

That doesn’t sound bad, does it?

A city of Paris newly decorated in Roman style. It sounds plausible.

We’ll tear down the Eiffel Tower too. And build anew.

This place will now be a province of Rome, but that’s cool.

“It seems like a waste of budget.”

“I suppose so. France is now Vichy France, and we could establish a Western Rome headquarters on British soil instead of Paris.”

It will probably cost an enormous amount of money.

Well, didn’t we start with the Roman Treaty first?

“Then I’m curious why you want to rebuild Paris.”

“Paris has been the capital of France for a long time, and we can’t ignore that history. Also, not just Reds but all kinds of wanderers could swarm into Paris.”

It’s about gaining a minimum level of public support.

The Roman Treaty Organization rebuilds the land destroyed by Pétain at Russia’s suggestion.

Of course, it’s known that we gave Pétain the nuclear weapon through Alisa Rosenbaum’s radio that day. But at least Russia shows willingness to rebuild.

Just showing this much is sufficient.

We rebuilt Petrograd for the same reason.

The issue of rebuilding Paris would have come up even without us.

Then, isn’t it economically better to do it now when we can use legal slaves?

“They say enormous piles of bones are flowing out of the catacombs. I’m worried we might get caught because of that.”

I’m sure. They say bones flow out every day.

Including the bodies of irradiated Reds.

“Louis XVI made a mistake. If you think about true urban beautification, filling the city underground with skulls is not right.”

The Black Death was unavoidable, but now Europe has moved beyond the past and become one.

Then shouldn’t we finish rebuilding Paris together by mobilizing all the Reds?

They say each country has poured in all their Red Front communists.

That should make the cleanup quick.

If it’s completely unusable, then we really need to end Paris. We can’t leave it and risk Reds flowing in again or turning it into a lawless zone.

“Trotsky will be shocked when he hears this news.”

“Well, he’ll be frying chicken, so that’s fortunate.”

“Do you really intend to make him fry chicken?”

Yes, seriously.

I’m not trying to mock him; it really has to be done.

KFC was like the American Communist Party here, and Trotsky’s chicken shop was buried in America with the fall of KFC.

As it became known that KFC recruited Black power through the chicken business, the chicken that should have appeared in America hasn’t even emerged yet.

In other words, history has changed because of me, so I need to save Trotsky and write the history of chicken.

As much as I hate to admit it, he’s now a giant in the chicken industry.

Unfortunately, the chicken made in Europe doesn’t even match half of what Trotsky makes.

We’ve stolen Trotsky’s chicken recipe, but if we can use him, it’s better to use the man himself.

We’re in the position of making chicken from scratch.

We need to make delicious chicken somehow.

After changing history, it would be sad if there were no chicken in the modern era.

“He has to fry it. Chicken is delicious.”

Hate the Reds, but chicken is innocent.

I considered just burying Trotsky, but without him, the history of chicken would struggle to develop here.

“But isn’t the important thing this spaceship?”

“That’s right.”

More important than chicken is this spaceship.

Computer development is going smoothly, but spaceship development is really hit or miss.

If a spaceship is developed, can we really fly into space?

“I wonder if humans can really fly out into space.”

At Maria’s words, I sighed.

Even I honestly wonder if it’s really possible.

Although history has changed, it’s still the 50s.

America will probably compete with us in making spaceships, but I’m needlessly worried.

I wonder if there might be problems with spaceship development due to the snowball I’ve set in motion. There’s potential for development, but still, you never know.

“It should be possible. That’s why I’m planning to visit the research institute myself.”

I’m thinking of visiting the place that has been greatly expanded and reborn as the Roman Space Development Institute.

Of course, the institute for spaceship experiments is far to the east, but spaceship research itself was taking place in Moscow.

The judgment was that Moscow was better positioned to gather space engineers from the Roman Treaty Organization.

If we’re being specific, Russia was selected because it has enough territory to experiment with rockets, satellites, and various other things.

Thus, Moscow came to be known as the city of space science.

So how could the Tsar just sit still?

I can’t visit Teacher Tsiolkovsky directly, but I should do this much.

I should provide ideas by pulling out all the knowledge I have in my head.

We’ll rebuild Paris slowly while investing the Roman Treaty’s budget in space development and computer development.

It’s now the era of raising the tech tree.