The Gathering Storm - Gameplay Thread (Late 1939)

[KaiserDave]

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics:
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

Kremlin Senate: Private Study of the General Secretary


Comrade Stalin put down the telephone, with which he had been speaking to the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs on a recent missive from Warsaw. He was now just flipping through NKVD files on counter-revolutionaries, foreign agents, fifth columnists, and various saboteurs. Occasionally he would strike a line through a name. But today there was the question of adding a new name to that last, specifically People's Commissar for Water Transport Nikolai Yezhov, who had spent much of the last few years meeting out punishment to those on these lists as chief of the NKVD. But Yezhov had become too powerful, while he zealously performed his duties he had accumulated a great deal of authority within the NKVD, at times so much that it interfered with his abilities as a revolutionary. And this had dire consequences. Genrikh Lyushkov, who had been personally protected by Yezhov, had defected to the Japanese fascists, and was now giving up copious intelligence to the warlords of Tokyo. Furthermore, Yezhov had become entirely incompetent as of late, and often drunk and useless. In a world where the world's only worker's state was under constant assault, this kind of behavior was unacceptable. Stalin had decided Yezhov was to be removed. First he would be denounced in Presidium, then demoted again, and then arrested, confess his offenses, and be executed. He could probably be scapegoated as well for some of the more unpopular excesses of the purges, necessary as they were, it was not a bad idea to point the grief of many in the Union against such a despised figure like Yezhov.

As for the purges themselves, it was an appropriate time to wind them down, and to reduce the pace of arrests. The Bonapartists and foreign spies the army had been purged, and the fifth columnists and Trotskyists in the party had been removed. The plots against the state had been defeated. It would take time to fill the gaps with loyal men in the party, the state, and the army. Beria would remain busied with work against foreign plots and internal subversion, but the hysteria could be brought to an end.

[KaiserDave]

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics:
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

Kremlin Senate: Private Study of the General Secretary


Comrade Stalin had determined that a resistance war would continued to be waged in Spain, but this time exclusively by the Leninist forces. Stalin was entirely in concurrence with the Spanish communists now in Moscow, that the war against the forces of reaction in Spain must continue. Stalin had already signed the orders for Soviet intelligence to undertake operations of sabotage against the Spanish State, nothing was off limits to maximize chaos and minimize reconstruction, to destroy the rule of the fascists. Republican militias would be supported, though the truly meaningful support would be exclusively to the communists. Meanwhile, the French government had directed thousands of German and Italian militants and now refugees from the conflict to the Soviet Union, where they would undertake NKVD training, and be prepared to undertake the missions of international socialism, in Spain or elsewhere. The Spanish gold would remain safely stored in Soviet vaults, no questions asked.

There was also the issue of the continuing Trotskyite plots against the worker's state, no doubt implicating numerous officials, and no doubt directed by the old Yid himself, hiding away in Mexico. Stalin was only now writing the orders to Beria to have imprisoned Trotskyites executed at once, including Christian Rakovsky and other rightists. Blokhin would of course have no trouble dealing with these enemies of the people. As for Trotsky himself, Stalin had ordered the NKVD to draw up plans for his assassination, a logistically tiring effort no doubt, but with time one that could be completed.

Stalin had also kept his attention on Asian affairs, where the Japanese mad dog was committing horrific crimes on the Chinese Republic, and old ally of the Union. While the first priority was always the elevation and promotion of Mao Tse-Tung's Communist Party, the bourgeois and socialist camps had made peace for the destruction of the Japanese imperialists, an imperialist power which posed an immense threat to the Union if not contained. Stalin could only imagine with error what would occur if China was entirely subjugated, leaving three (Germany, China, Japan) fascist superpowers on the borders of the world's only worker's state. It would be a disaster. For that reason Stalin ordering the Commissar for Foreign Affairs to write to Chiang Kai-Shek to promise him the continuing friendship of the Soviet Union, and was ordering the deployment of a new mission of Soviet officers, both military-intelligence, and civil to uphold the Chinese war effort, and the unity of the United Front. He was also ordering that the Soviet military presence in Mongolia and Manchuria be improved. While these areas had been spared much of the violence of the purges, there were still some vacant officers posts where rightists and fifth columnists had once been, and these would have to be filled with loyal men.

Then there was the most pressing issue of the Baltic states. It would always be the aspiration of Moscow to bring these renegades back into the fold and fraternal embrace of socialism, but it would never be permitted by the bourgeois or fascist powers of Europe. But if one could detach Germany, or Italy, and come to an accord with the union on the affairs of Eastern Europe, then there would be no need to worry on the response of the French and British liberals. A red-brown pact had been considered for Stalin for some time, but it was officially considered treason. Perhaps it would be necessary, to buy time at least, and for the Union to consolidate. The Union had spent many years spilling blood to protect the Party and the country from subversion, and it needed a few years to recover and restructure. The nation wasn't ready for a war yet. Stalin knew Hitler's books, he admired the man's ideological single-mindedness, but he knew that he was utterly devoted to the destruction of the Soviet Union. A temporary agreement could buy valuable time, and perhaps, just perhaps, Hitler could be persuaded of the merits of peace with the Soviet Union. So Stalin sent direct feelers to Berlin and Rome (going around the foreign affairs commissar), while ordering Soviet forces to gather on the Baltic borders.