I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 6

Whirr, whirr, whoosh! Hee-haw!

How long has it been since I rode a horse and galloped to my heart’s content? 10 years? 20 years?

In the late 1910s, during the Red-White Civil War, he organized the Red Army’s cavalry and became a commander of a division at the age of 30. 

He was too important to run on the battlefield with his horse. 

During the Soviet-Polish War, he also wanted to ride at the front, but everyone stopped him. 

His heart was strong and his blood was still red, but his position prevented him from running.

The horse’s mane fluttered. 

The leather reins decorated with bronze shone. 

The muscles that had been sleeping for a long time between the fat that had settled on his thighs over the years stretched and began to tremble, as if asking why he had called them now, finally, at last.

“Ura! Ura!!! Long live the Red Army!”

Budyonny was at the head of thousands, tens of thousands of cavalrymen and spurred his horse. 

The brave warriors of the Red Army responded to his shout and cheered.

Be happy that you are alive! 

How beautiful is life? 

When he ran on his horse, he was happy. 

The gallop of Budyonny, the Soviet Union’s head of state and hero of the people, continued like that.

The operation that Budyonny had devised was good enough to erase some of the prejudice against him. 

The idea was to cut off the supply lines of the Central Group of Forces’ Smolensk advance and delay them.

Using the still alive Pripyat Marshes’ railway network, he deployed cavalry as a mobile force that consumed less transport capacity and struck at the railway junctions. 

If done well, he could blow up the German army’s supplies that were piled up and support the troops that were isolated in Minsk and fighting street battles in the city!

By hitting the rear of the Central Group of Forces once like this, he could also put the flank of the 1st Panzer Group that was pressing hard on Zhitomir within range. 

It was the best way to relieve the pressure on the front from the enemy in the current situation.

When the Stavka approved this operation, Budyonny looked like he was about to fly.

There was a kind of love for horses in his blood. 

He wanted to breathe the air of battle while running on the battlefield with his horse at least once more before he got older. 

The blood of a warrior who wanted that flowed in his heart. 

He was an old man who would have grandchildren by tomorrow or the day after, but he wanted to go to the battlefield so much. 

‘I’ couldn’t understand it. 

No, maybe even Stalin couldn’t understand it. 

In fact, none of them in Stavka seemed to truly understand him.

The Bolsheviks who ruled over cities made of steel and concrete, symbols of material civilization and modernity in the 20th century, would never understand him. 

Budyonny had been our comrade for a long time, but he was fundamentally different, a human of grasslands and fields, and nothing had changed in decades.

Was it because he believed in the romance of war?

The generals saw off Budyonny who mounted on an iron horse with a clank. 

As I waved my hand from the balcony of Moscow Central Station, countless soldiers saluted me. 

And Budyonny waved his hand brightly among them with a smile.

“Come back victorious!”

“Yes! Comrade Secretary General!”

As a loud voice announced the departure, the train started running towards the battlefield. 

A strange feeling welled up in my chest. 

Until now, I had sent countless troops to war in many games with clicks and keyboard taps, and looked at the number of deaths without much emotion. 

Just as we didn’t reflect on each unit’s life when we saw Hatem’s kill count in StarCraft, we only looked at them as numbers… But they had lives and meanings and hopes and dreams too. 

When else would I see the faces of legendary revolutionaries directly? 

They stuck to the window and waved their hands as if asking me that. 

The soldiers who said their last farewell to their families. 

The children who sent their fathers to war and the women who parted with their husbands.

Moscow Central Station was crowded with such people.

Even after Budyonny, a wild horse, ran across the field and wrote a romantic epic poem behind him, ‘my’ administrative work had to continue. 

Stavka decided that there was no need to introduce factories in key cities – Kiev, Leningrad, Kharkov – yet. 

If it had been real history, they would have been trampled by the German army before they could even tear down the factories as the defense lines were pushed back, but there was still some room.

In the north, while Pskov was tanking, Leningrad’s KV-1 factory was running and producing the medium tank that the German army feared the most. 

The KV-1s that came out like this were sent to Odessa and Kiev, where counterattack operations were being planned for the most important defense line in the center, Smolensk and Zhukov’s Southern Front. 

While the Northwest Front scraped off the medium tanks they had and lent them to the counterattack operation, the south repeated small-scale battles and delayed the German army, preparing for a powerful blow.

The light tank forces that were assigned to the 12 divisions under the 1st Guards Cavalry Army that entered the Pripyat Marshes were experimentally reorganized into a mechanized division. 

This force was sent to Kirponos’ Southwest Front along with about 200 T-34s that were desperately produced in Kharkov after the outbreak of war. 

Kirponos would use this mobile force as a spearhead and stab at the stretched flank of the 1st Panzer Group.

These tasks were not easy at all. 

This is just a summary, but in actual production management?

“Hey! The production quantity of No. 9 Gun Factory doesn’t match! What happened?”

“The steel drill line of No. 9 Gun Factory malfunctioned due to a machine failure…”

“What about Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory?”

“What did Kirov Design Bureau do with the blueprint?”

Stalin’s work style was simple. 

He held all the power and supervised every detail. 

He choked the necks of local bureaucrats who thought they could get away with corruption and inefficiency, scoundrel mentality and sloppy work.

I,Stalin, who had risen to absolute power by wiping out his rivals, always suffered from a chronic disease of paranoia. 

That’s why everything that happened in every corner of the vast Soviet territory came to me, who had entered Stalin’s body. 

I had to give orders to the staff who supervised the production of war materials, while talking loudly.

“Tell the neutral countries that we urgently want to buy precision machinery. Do you think a few kilograms of gold matter right now?”

“If there is a shortage of manpower at the Chelyabinsk factory, grant exemption from conscription to the skilled workers there. Do you want to waste them like cannon fodder by taking them away?”

“Transport the heavy artillery from the South Russian Caucasus military district… Huh… Take out the trains you need with my authority! This is an order!”

The administrative officers of our headquarters and staff headquarters were working themselves to death. 

As for me, who worked non-stop under the pretext of being the supreme leader and setting an example, a 60-year-old who was soaked in alcohol and cigarettes? 

I caught a summer cold that didn’t even affect dogs, just two weeks after the start of the war.

“Uh… Ughhhhh…”

Even though it was June, the night air in Moscow was colder than I thought. 

I opened the window of my office wide, hoping to cool off a bit from the direct sunlight, and fell asleep working until dawn. 

I ended up with a terrible fever and a nasty cold.

I wanted to rest and recover in a big and soft bed, eating homemade borscht…-actually, I wanted kimchi stew- but the duty of the wartime supreme leader was not so easy. 

My chief secretary, Alexander Poskrebyshev, brought a desk next to my bed and sat down to write documents based on my instructions. 

I had to grasp the issues and handle the administrative work with my head that was not working well.

“Comrade Secretary General, it’s time for your medicine.”

“Ah, ah! Yes… medicine, I need to take medicine… You go out and take a break. Smoke a cigarette too.”

I took out a high-quality cigar from my drawer with a trembling hand and handed it to Poskrebyshev. 

I pushed him out as he hesitated and glanced at the remaining administrative documents for today. 

Why? You know why.

In my dedicated medical office in the Kremlin Palace, there were several doctors who were in charge of me. 

I didn’t think they would be much help considering the medical level of this era… but these doctors did one thing well. 

They hired pretty nurses…!

She came in, shaking her plump buttocks left and right in a tight skirt that was shockingly short by this era’s standards – although the Soviet Union was already more open than the contemporary capitalist countries, to the point where Kolontai advocated the ‘glass of water’ theory – in a white nurse uniform that looked suffocating on her chest. 

My body was in its 60s after going through hell and back, but my essence was a vigorous 20-something young man! 

Hitler, you were wrong… Slavic women are much prettier than German women! 

Even my dead thing seemed to twitch a little.

She was holding a tray with a bowl of medicine that was steaming. 

When I swallowed my saliva, the nurse smiled with a cute wink, thinking that I was nervous about the bitter taste of the medicine.

“Oh my, Comrade Secretary General… Are you worried that the medicine will be bitter? I have prepared a sweet snack for you too, hehe”

Yeah… It would be sweet… Ouch…

“Oops… Oh no!”

Ahem, it was not intentional, but I spilled the bowl of medicine. 

The hot and sticky liquid splashed on her clothes and the blanket. 

I have to wipe it off for her! 

If you think I swallowed my saliva, that’s your reactionary illusion. 

In the revolutionary Soviet Union, even the supreme leader would kindly fix the mistakes of his subordinates.

“Come here, let me wipe it for you.”

When I gestured, she bit her lips and trembled in panic. 

Hehe… She looked cute like that…?

I lifted the blanket and brought it close to her chest that was bouncing huge. 

Her neck was slender and white like a deer, and it seemed to shiver, but it must have been an illusion of my eyes. 

Well, illusion or not. 

This was nothing but an ideal boss’s gesture of caring for a subordinate who made a ridiculous mistake. 

How could this evil nurse harm the health of the Secretary General, the supreme leader? 

The merciful Secretary General was taking care of her…

But suddenly my consciousness started to blur. 

Was it because I was too excited? I felt short of breath. 

Oh… Oh no…!

A few hours later, I woke up surrounded by doctors. 

According to the chief doctor, I had a temporary fainting due to excessive sympathetic nerve stimulation. 

He politely advised me to refrain from strenuous work and emotional excitement in the future.

Really… Is it impossible?