Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. Lenin.
The name hit Jake like a hammer. He stood frozen in the middle of the street while the noise of Tbilisi blurred into nothing. The slip of paper in his hand felt impossibly heavy—a direct message from the Tsar's inner circle asking about the very soul of the revolution.
Kamo leaned over his shoulder, frowning. "The agrarian question? Something about peasants, right?" To him, it sounded absurd—too academic, too soft. "Why would a man like Stolypin care about that?"
Jake knew instantly. The "agrarian question" wasn't theory. It was the core of Russia's instability—the land, the peasants, the empire's beating heart. Stolypin was rewriting Russia itself through land reform, trying to build a loyal class of small landowners. Lenin, exiled in London, was shaping a rival vision that could set the countryside on fire.
Stolypin wasn't asking for analysis. He was probing his greatest ideological enemy. This was reconnaissance at the highest level—a question from one architect of the future to another. And Jake, trapped between them, was their unwilling courier.
But he was cornered. His modern knowledge was too general. He understood the theory, but not Lenin's current position in early 1907—the fine details of debates happening in London's cramped revolutionary flats. To guess would expose him. To delay too long would invite suspicion.
He needed the truth.
He needed to ask Lenin himself.
The thought was madness. Stalin—Soso Jughashvili—was a small-time enforcer, a provincial strongman, not a theoretician. Writing directly to Lenin would look arrogant, even ridiculous. But it was the only move he had left.
He locked himself in the cellar and cleared the table. The ledgers and coded reports fell to the floor. One sheet of paper remained. One pen.
He started writing, and failing, and writing again. Each draft died halfway, torn apart by its own tone—too humble, too bold, too clumsy. The floor soon vanished under crumpled attempts. Then, slowly, he found the balance.
He opened with deference:
Comrade Ulyanov, I write to you from Tbilisi, where the struggle against the Tsar is matched only by the confusion sown by the Socialist Revolutionaries…
He described Georgia in vivid, authentic detail, weaving his historical knowledge into a believable present. He painted a picture of workers' debates, of peasants seduced by false promises of simple land division. Then, carefully, he began to flatter.
Your analysis in "To the Rural Poor" remains our guiding light, he wrote. But the SRs twist your words, claiming our call for nationalization is a threat to the smallholder. How do we best counter this distortion? What is the dialectical approach that will win the peasantry to our side? What are the latest resolutions of the London group on this question, so we may align our agitation with the central line?
The letter read as genuine—humble, intelligent, loyal. It was also a perfect disguise for Stolypin's request. Jake was feeding the Prime Minister's question straight to Lenin under the guise of party devotion.
Then came the matter of the signature. He couldn't sign as Soso, the petty thug. Nor as Jughashvili, the Georgian provincial. He needed something sharper, harder—something that sounded like conviction forged into metal.
He remembered an old name, a fusion of his childhood alias and a new self he barely recognized.
K. Stalin.
He signed it, the ink drying like blood. The first time he claimed the name, it felt both triumphant and fatal—a mask he could never take off again.
He sealed the letter and sent it through the underground courier network. It might take weeks to reach London, if it reached at all.
But he couldn't wait empty-handed. That same night, he wrote a second message—this one for Stolypin.
Initial inquiries underway. Ulyanov's stance under discussion. Factional divisions delaying clear statement. Full report to follow.
It was a careful stall, designed to buy time.
When he put down the pen, the room felt smaller, the air heavier. He was now speaking to two of the sharpest minds of his century—Lenin and Stolypin—each capable of remaking or destroying empires.
And he was lying to both.
The cellar's single lantern flickered as he stared at the papers on the table. He was no longer fighting for control of Tbilisi. The battlefield had shifted—to the mind of Russia itself.