The tractor was brand new. It was an American Fordson, painted a cheerful bright red.
It sat in the middle of a muddy field in the Ukraine, sinking slowly into the black earth. Smoke poured from its engine, but the wheels didn't turn.
Jake stood in the mud, staring at the machine. He had paid fifty ounces of gold for this.
"Why is it stopped?" Jake asked. His voice was dangerously quiet.
The chairman of the 'Path to Socialism' Collective Farm, a man named Pyotr, trembled. He wrung his cap in dirty hands.
"The mechanic, Comrade Stalin... he put water in the oil tank," Pyotr whispered. "He thought it would cool the engine faster."
Jake closed his eyes.
He remembered teaching this. The Great Leap Forward. The Soviet Collectivization. He remembered telling bored high school students that you couldn't just throw technology at a feudal society and expect miracles.
He had promised himself he would be different. He would educate them first. He would send manuals, not just machines.
But the centrifuge in the Urals needed electricity. The electricity needed the dam. The dam needed grain exports to pay for the turbines.
"Where is the mechanic?" Jake asked.
"He ran away," Pyotr said. "He was afraid you would shoot him."
Jake looked at the silent fields. They should have been plowed by now. Instead, they were overgrown with weeds. The peasants were standing by their huts, watching him with sullen, hateful eyes.
"I don't want to shoot him," Jake said, mostly to himself. "I want to teach him."
He walked over to the tractor. He patted the hot metal hood.
"Fix it," Jake ordered. "Find a man who can read. I will send an engineer from the city."
"Comrade," Pyotr hesitated. "The men... they are too weak to work the fields. The ration... it is very small."
Jake looked at the chairman. He saw the hollow cheeks. The loose skin.
He knew what was happening. The local officials, terrified of missing the quotas Jake had set, were stripping the villages bare. They were taking everything—even the food meant for the farmers.
"I issued a directive," Jake said sharply. "Order 44. 'Do not seize the consumption minimum.' Did you not receive it?"
Pyotr looked at the ground.
"The District Commissar came yesterday," Pyotr whispered. "He said your Order 44 was for the newspapers. But the Quota... the Quota was from God."
Jake felt a cold sickness in his stomach.
He had created a monster. He had built a machine of terror so efficient that his own attempts to show mercy were being ignored. The system assumed he was lying when he tried to be kind.
"Who is the District Commissar?" Jake asked.
"Comrade Blohin."
Jake nodded. "Give the men your private reserve, Pyotr. Feed them today."
"But... the Commissar will arrest me."
"Let him try," Jake said. He climbed back into his car. "I am going to have a word with Comrade Blohin about the difference between a quota and a death sentence."
The District Office.
Commissar Blohin was a fat man. In a starving province, that was a crime in itself.
He sat behind a desk piled high with confiscated sacks of flour. He was eating a pickled cucumber.
When Jake kicked the door open, Blohin choked.
"Comrade General Secretary!" Blohin gasped, wiping vinegar from his chin. "What an honor! We have exceeded the collection target by twenty percent!"
Jake walked to the desk. He picked up a sack of flour. It was small. A family's weekly supply.
"I told you to leave the seed grain," Jake said. "I told you to leave the milk cows."
"But the export demands..." Blohin stammered. "You said we needed gold for the machines! I was being a good Bolshevik!"
"You are being a locust," Jake snapped.
He threw the sack at Blohin. It burst, covering the fat man in white dust.
"If the peasants die, who grows the wheat next year?" Jake shouted. "Do you think I want a graveyard? I want a farm!"
He paced the room. He was the history teacher now, furious at a student who didn't understand the assignment.
"You are squeezing them too hard," Jake hissed. "If you break the tool, you can't build the house."
"But... terror is the tool," Blohin whispered, confused. "That is what you taught us."
Jake stopped.
The words hit him like a physical blow. That is what you taught us.
He had purged the officers. He had shot the slackers. He had turned the country into a prison camp. And now he was surprised that his subordinates were acting like wardens?
He couldn't fix this by being nice. If he showed weakness now, the whole chain of command would shatter. They would think he was going soft.
He had to be Stalin. Even to save the peasants, he had to be a monster.
"You are right," Jake said slowly. "Terror is the tool."
He pointed at the window.
"But you applied it to the wrong people. You attacked the workers. You should have attacked the Kulaks—the hoarders."
"I... I couldn't find any Kulaks," Blohin admitted. "Everyone is poor here."
"Then you should have looked in the mirror," Jake said.
He turned to Taranov.
"Take him outside," Jake ordered. "Shoot him for 'Dizziness with Success.' For excessive zeal that harms the Party."
Blohin screamed as Taranov dragged him away.
Jake stood in the flour-dusted office.
He had just killed a man for following his orders too well. It was the only way to send a signal to the other Commissars: Back off. Leave them enough to survive.
He was managing a famine with a firing squad.
The Train to Moscow.
The countryside rolled past the window. Grey huts. Grey snow.
Jake sat in his private car, reading reports.
The news from the Urals was good. The Finn had secured a shipment of high-grade steel from Krupp in Germany. The centrifuges were multiplying.
But the agricultural report was a disaster.
LIVESTOCK SLAUGHTER, the headline read.
In response to collectivization, peasants are killing their animals rather than handing them over to the state. 50% of horses gone. 60% of cattle gone.
Jake slammed his fist on the table.
"They are burning the future," he muttered.
He knew this would happen. He had read about it in textbooks. The peasants would rather eat their cows today than give them to the collective tomorrow.
He had tried to prevent it. He had offered to pay for the animals in government bonds. But the bonds were worthless paper, and the peasants knew it.
"We have no horses," Jake said to the empty room. "We have no tractors because the mechanics are idiots. We are going to have to pull the plows with human beings."
He felt a wave of exhaustion.
He was trying to speedrun the industrial revolution. In England, it took a hundred years and caused misery. He was trying to do it in five.
The misery wasn't just a byproduct. It was the fuel.
The door opened. Nadya walked in. She held a tray with tea and biscuits.
She looked worried.
"Koba," she said softly. "I saw... I saw people at the station."
"What people?"
"Beggars," she said. "Children. Their bellies were swollen. The guards were chasing them away."
Jake took the tea. His hand was steady, but his heart wasn't.
"There is a shortage in the south," Jake said. "Transport issues."
"They said they were from the Ukraine," Nadya said. "They said the army took everything."
She looked at him. Her eyes were pleading.
"You can fix it, can't you? You can open the reserves?"
Jake looked at her.
He had reserves. Massive silos of grain near Moscow. Enough to feed the starving peasants for a month.
But he had already sold that grain to the Italians for aircraft engines. If he canceled the sale, the engines wouldn't come. The Red Air Force would remain grounded. And when the British bombers came...
It was the Trolley Problem on a continental scale. Kill a million peasants now, or risk losing the entire nation later.
"I cannot open the reserves," Jake said. His voice was flat.
"Why?"
"Because the reserves are for the war," Jake said.
"What war?" Nadya cried. "There is no war! We won!"
"The war never ends, Nadya!" Jake snapped. He stood up, towering over her. "The wolves are at the door! They are waiting for us to stumble! If we stop building, we die! If we stop selling grain, we die!"
He saw the fear in her eyes. He was scaring her.
He forced himself to calm down. He sat back down.
"It is a hard winter," Jake said gently. "But spring is coming. We just have to hold on."
Nadya didn't look convinced. She looked at the biscuit on the tray. It was made of white flour.
"I don't want this," she whispered.
She left the room.
Jake looked at the biscuit. He picked it up and ate it.
He hated himself. But he needed the calories. He had a universe to bend.
The Kremlin. The Next Morning.
Menzhinsky was waiting.
"The slaughter of livestock continues," Menzhinsky said. "We will have no meat for the cities by summer."
Jake looked at the map.
He had tried the carrot. He had tried the bonds. It failed.
Now, he had to use the stick. But a precise stick.
"Issue a new decree," Jake said. "Any peasant found killing a breeding animal is to be treated as a saboteur."
"Ten years?" Menzhinsky asked.
"No," Jake said. "Twenty."
He rubbed his temples.
"But... issue a second decree. 'The Garden Plot Act.'"
Menzhinsky frowned. "Garden plots?"
"Allow every peasant family to keep one small plot of land," Jake said. "For themselves. For their own vegetables. And one cow. One pig. Private property."
"But Comrade Stalin," Menzhinsky protested. "That is capitalism! That goes against the Collective ideal!"
"I don't care about the ideal!" Jake roared. "I care about the calories! If they won't work for the state, let them work for themselves on the weekends. It will keep them alive."
He was compromising. He was backing down. The history books would call it a tactical retreat.
"Give them a tiny piece of freedom," Jake said, staring at the map. "Just enough so they don't starve. But keep the collective fields for the export grain."
"It will create a dual economy," Menzhinsky warned. "Black markets."
"Let them trade turnips in the dark," Jake said. "As long as I get the wheat for the Germans."
He picked up his red pencil.
He had tried to avoid the famine. He failed. The system was too broken, the resistance too deep.
Now, he was just trying to manage the body count.
"Send the Twenty-Five Thousanders back to the cities," Jake ordered. "They are doing more harm than good. Send the tractors to the Machine Tractor Stations. Centralize the repair shops."
He looked at the report of the dead fat Commissar.
"And find me more men like Blohin," Jake whispered. "We need scapegoats. The people need to blame someone for the hunger."
"And who do we blame?"
Jake lit his pipe.
"Blame the local officials," Jake said. "Say they distorted the Party line. Say Stalin is good, but his servants are bad."
It was the oldest lie in Russia. If only the Tsar knew.
Now, Jake was the Tsar. And he knew everything.
"Get out," Jake said.
He sat alone in the office.
He opened the drawer where he kept his secret file. The blueprints for the bomb.
"You better be worth it," Jake whispered to the paper. "You better be worth every single life."