I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 191

The war that killed over ten million Chinese people in eight years was over.

But now that the war was over, a more savage current was blowing across the Chinese continent than when the war was raging.

“Our Communist Party must be recognized for its sovereignty over the territories we have secured. Isn’t this common sense?”

“…”

Jiang Jieshi gritted his teeth as he watched Mao Zedong spout shameless nonsense. Mao Zedong’s face was even more flushed.

‘He really thought he could make this his world.’

Mao Zedong had no shame as he stuffed his mouth with the exquisite dishes that the president’s staff had prepared. He had always been brazen, not just for a day or two.

What did the communist bandits do during the eight years of war when the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China fought against Japan! They only expanded their own power in the rear, and incited the foolish masses to join the bandits.

But there was a reason why he couldn’t shoot Mao Zedong right now and take five million National Revolutionary Army soldiers to wipe out the bandit horde.

Jiang Jieshi knew very well who was behind Mao Zedong.

Stalin, the world’s strongest power who brought Germany to its knees and took Europe into his hands. Mao Zedong was nothing but a puppet compared to him.

Stalin’s army had smashed the Japanese Kwantung Army, which the Chinese army had failed to defeat for eight years, in just a few weeks, and liberated major cities such as Beijing, Tianjin, Harbin, and Changchun.

“In the five provinces of Shandong, Hebei, Shanxi, Suiyuan, and Gansu, we will establish a coalition government led by the Communist Party, and in the rest of the provinces, you, President Jiang, can do as you wish. Isn’t this a big concession?”

“…Tell me more about your demands.”

“Also, we want to be recognized for our right to have our own independent army under the Communist Party. We think we need a minimum of security in case the situation worsens.”

Mao Zedong kept reciting their demands without stopping.

The ‘foreign army’ in the Chinese continent, that is, the withdrawal of the US troops. 

The Communist Party’s independent territory and army. 

A democratic election to elect the representatives of the whole people, but anyway, in the Communist Party’s occupied territory, they would establish a political system led by the Communist Party.

Jiang Jieshi felt his anger rising as he heard Mao Zedong’s declaration that was not a declaration. Mao Zedong was openly saying that he would rig the elections in his territory.

“Do you want a China that is split into many pieces, not one China? The withdrawal of the US troops? Then what about the Soviet troops stationed in the three northeastern provinces?”

“That is a matter that you have to discuss with the Manchurian Communist Party, which established an autonomous Soviet republic in Manchuria. It is not something that can be resolved by talking here. We can talk to the Soviet Union about the withdrawal of their troops, but…”

‘Damn bastard, puppet bastard…’

The Soviet Union had occupied the land of Manchuria and set up a puppet regime, and was plundering the property of the Chinese people there.

Jiang Jieshi could not stand the fact that the countless facilities that the Japanese had built by squeezing the blood of the Chinese people were all handed over to the Soviet Union.

The United States had been urging an agreement, but an agreement and peace with the bandit hordes! Wouldn’t those dogs pounce and bite as soon as the Nationalist Party lost its strength?

He unconsciously gritted his teeth. 

Mao Zedong was babbling as if he was drunk on his situation, but he seemed to flinch at some point. Jiang Jieshi smiled a familiar smile.

“Go on, go on, tell me more.”

***

While the two leaders were discussing how to shape the future of China in the clouds, the gunfire did not stop in the provinces.

“Die! You pro-Japanese bastard!”

Bang! Bang! 

A Nationalist Party official spat blood from his mouth and fell. He was unlikely to survive, as he had been hit by two bullets in the chest.

Red terror and white terror were rampant everywhere.

The main rhetoric of the red terror was always ‘pro-Japanese’, ‘plunderers who suck the blood of the people’.

“This guy collaborated with the Japanese and sold out the patriotic martyrs of China, and then clung to the Nationalist Party and led a miserable life. People, let’s overthrow the Nationalist Party and its collaborators!”

“Get him! That red bastard!”

“Long live the Chinese Communist Party! Long live!”

The young man shouted “Long live!” as he fired a few more bullets into the back of the man who had fallen, spitting blood.

“Long live! Lon…! Aaargh!”

The police who ran over hit the young man hard on the head with a baton, and dragged him away with thick handcuffs on his wrists.

“This guy is a vicious communist bandit! Everything he says is nonsense, so don’t pay any attention, people, and go about your business.”

“…”

Was it true? Or not?

No one knew.

The Nationalist Party had to cooperate with the warlords and local bosses in various places to rule this vast Chinese continent.

They had no way of knowing what those bosses had done in the past, and they didn’t bother to tell unless they were very famous.

If the Japanese were the enemy on the skin, communism was nothing but a parasite stuck in the heart. They had to do anything to eradicate communism.

“Liar bastard… How great is this person…”

The police muttered and clenched their teeth as they dragged the unconscious young man.

The Communist Party didn’t always act for the ‘greater good’. 

They sometimes hired naive young men from other places, or those who had a grudge against the target, to attempt assassinations.

The name was up to them. It was hard enough to find out who did what in this chaos. If the Communist Party manipulated the incident well and pinned the blame, the young men who were loyal to the people would pick up guns or bombs.

“Puff, puhuhuhu! Huh…”

“Talk, you bastard. Be nice. Huh? Who told you to do it!”

“Hehehehe… Who told me… The Chinese people and the historical wave that flows with them.”

“That won’t do. Keep going!”

Brrrrrr… As they dunked the young man’s head into the cold water of the bathtub, bubbles gushed up.

The Nationalist Party’s police were not incorruptible. They didn’t hesitate to torture the assassins to find the link to the communist organization, the mastermind behind the assassination.

Even as his consciousness faded, the young man sneered at the torturers until the end, as if he was completely sure of his actions.

“Ha… This bastard is tough.”

“That’s right. Next time…”

Of course, the Nationalist Party’s intelligence police had many methods. They had turned the techniques they had used to catch the Japanese spies during the anti-Japanese war against the communist spies.

They started with the ‘basic’ methods like water torture and electric torture, and then used various new methods they had developed in the fight against the Japanese.

The intelligence police were determined to use all those methods to expose the communist assassination squad.

“Huff, huff, huff… This bastard, he’s still breathing.”

“Breath… He does. He’s breathing.”

“Yeah? Then let’s call a doctor and get him treated first, and then do it again.”

They had a purpose for torturing the assassins so brutally.

The Communist Party had persistently targeted the intelligence police, Jiang Jieshi’s sword, ‘Nan Yishi’.

The one who was assassinated earlier was a high-ranking police officer on the surface, but in reality he was a senior officer of Nan Yishi, and his identity was kept secret, but the Communist Party had succeeded in finding him somehow.

Was he the next target? Nan Yishi’s agents, the intelligence police officers, were most afraid of that. 

They had to root out the ones who were after their lives as soon as possible, so they could sleep with their legs stretched out.

***

It wasn’t just sniping or stabbing.

The Communist Party followed Mao Zedong’s line and hid among the people, in the vast ocean of China’s rural areas. 

They hid among the hundreds of millions of peasants who still maintained the lifestyle of hundreds, thousands of years ago, even in the age when airplanes flew in the sky and submarines swam in the sea.

“The Communist Party will give you land. Why does that landlord take half of what you harvest while you work your bones off and he does nothing but eat and play?”

“That’s… because it’s always been like that…”

“This is not that time anymore. A new era is dawning! You, who work so hard that your spine bends and your marrow aches, are the masters of this era!”

Under the dim lantern, the young man with a flushed face gave a passionate speech to the dark-faced tenant farmers.

Normally, they would have ignored such words and just gone to sleep as they had always lived, but this time they listened to the young man’s words.

“Herman… Are you saying we can really take everything we harvest?”

“Of course! Don’t work, don’t eat! With the money that those landlords smoke opium and stagger around, you can pay for the medicine for Mr. Hwa’s mother, and Mr. Jin’s children can go to school.”

“Hehe… Mr. Jang, you raised your son well.”

The young men who had gone to school in the city and became fascinated by the revolutionary ideology came back and started to ignite the spark of revolution in their hometown.

At first, they didn’t listen to such nonsense, but they couldn’t help but be tempted by the land distribution, which was the wish of all the peasants.

“Now, let’s listen to this.”

[The Voice of China brings you…]

The young man took out a small Soviet-made transistor radio from his heavy bag. 

The people looked at the strange foreign object with wide eyes.

They were so deep in the mountains that the radio waves were hardly caught, and the sound quality was poor, but they could still barely understand.

“Huh… Are you saying they’ll give us land, even us ignorant fools?”

“Yes! That’s right. And why are you calling yourselves ignorant fools?”

“Hey, Jang Sam. You went to school, but we don’t even know how to write our own names, you bastard. We learned somewhere, but we forgot.”

“But you know how to farm, don’t you, the greatest skill.”

The young man’s voice had a kind of religious fervor.

The peasants laughed softly or listened to the young man’s words with some seriousness.

“In this world, those people who are so great, those writers who are doctors and professors, how can they live without people like you? You can live without doctors and professors, but you can’t live without peasants. Farming is the great foundation of the world, and peasants are the ones who deserve to be the masters of this country!”

“Is that so? Hahahaha!”

“Jang Sam, you speak well!”

They were just quoting the words from Mao Zedong’s quotations, but the simple peasants who had never heard such words from someone who had learned were just moved.

“Now, folks. I’ll leave this here. You can turn it on and off like this, like this…”

“Hmm… I see.”

“Listen to it! There are a lot of useful things to hear.”

“Sure! We have to do what our Jang Sam says.”

If Jiang Jieshi had known this, he would have fumed that this was the material evidence that the Soviet Union was behind the Communist Party, but his eyes couldn’t even catch the radios in the rural villages.

The transistor, which the Soviet Union had developed to use as a proximity fuse component for shells, became a radio component and spread to the rural areas of the third world, including India and China.

[The Voice of India brings you…]

[Today, the Voice of China will tell you about the incident that occurred in Beijing…]

[The Voice of Egypt will be broadcast again at the same time tomorrow.]

The voice of the Soviet Union began to echo around the world.