Lenin had built a state on the promise of order. Now, his capital city was drowning in whispers.
He sat opposite Felix Dzerzhinsky, the ascetic, unwavering leader of the Cheka. For the first time since the seizure of power, Iron Felix looked strained. His desk, usually a model of revolutionary austerity, was piled high with the same denunciation reports that were plaguing Trotsky's maps. They were the physical manifestation of the city's paranoia.
Dzerzhinsky held up a stack of papers nearly a foot high, his hand trembling with a tightly controlled fury. "This is from one morning, Vladimir Ilyich. For one district. My men are chasing their own tails. The entire Cheka, the sword and shield of the revolution, is grinding to a halt."
He leaned forward, his eyes burning with a cold, righteous fire. "Worse, the people are now reporting on us. Koba's leaflets have given them a vocabulary of suspicion, and they are turning it on my agents. Three of my best undercover men were nearly beaten by a factory mob yesterday. They were accused of being 'rumor-mongers' for asking simple questions."
Lenin felt a chill that had nothing to do with the winter draft seeping through the window frames. This wasn't just a political maneuver. It was a systemic attack. Koba wasn't trying to win a battle; he was trying to break the entire machine of state security.
"He has turned our greatest weapon—public vigilance—against us," Dzerzhinsky continued, his voice low and intense. "He is teaching the people to fear and distrust the very instrument of their protection."
"And the nurse?" Lenin asked, his voice sharp. "The supposed source of all this?"
A flicker of contempt crossed Dzerzhinsky's face. "Trotsky's obsession. He has Menzhinsky focused on her exclusively. But it is a waste of our best resources. She does nothing. She goes from the hospital to her home. She buys bread. She is a ghost. The real war, Vladimir Ilyich, is happening out here, in the streets. In the minds of the people."
After Dzerzhinsky left, the weight of his words remained, a toxic presence in the room. Lenin stood and paced the worn carpet of his office. He pulled out the thin folder he kept on Ioseb Jughashvili. Koba.
He scanned the contents. Exile. Bank robberies. A ruthless party organizer in Baku. A man of action. A loyal, if sometimes crude, enforcer. He had always seen Koba as a blunt instrument, a tool to be aimed and fired.
He was wrong. Utterly, catastrophically wrong.
The man who had orchestrated this city-wide chaos with a few printing presses, the same man who had crafted the brilliant Ural decree—this was not a thug. This was a political artist of the highest and most dangerous order. He had not been managing a tool. He had been nurturing a rival.
The dynamic in his mind shifted with the force of a tectonic plate. The game was not about controlling his attack dog anymore. It was about surviving a battle against a rival king. A king who was playing by a set of rules Lenin didn't fully understand.
The door opened and Trotsky strode in, his face flushed with the arrogant confidence of a man who believes he has just won a great victory.
"The situation is under control, Vladimir Ilyich," Trotsky announced, taking a seat without being asked. "The Finn was a dead end. A simple black marketeer. Menzhinsky will have the nurse soon. Koba's little propaganda game has failed."
Lenin stopped pacing. He turned and looked at the Commissar of War, at his self-satisfied expression, at his complete and utter blindness.
"You are a fool, Leon," Lenin said. His voice was not loud, but it was as cold and hard as steel.
Trotsky's triumphant smile vanished, replaced by a look of stunned disbelief. "What did you say?"
"You see a game of chess," Lenin continued, stepping closer to the desk, his hands clasped behind his back. "Koba is not playing chess. He is setting fire to the building the chessboard is in. This chaos is not a distraction from your mission; it is the mission. He is teaching the people to distrust the Cheka. He is severing the connection between the state and the street, the very bond on which our power depends."
The ideological rift between them, always present, cracked wide open. Trotsky saw a simple spy hunt, a matter of tactics. Lenin saw a fundamental, existential attack on the legitimacy of their new government.
"That's absurd," Trotsky scoffed, recovering his composure. "He is a brutish amateur, throwing stones. We must remain focused on the source of the infection—the nurse!"
Lenin stared at him. He saw a man so blinded by his own brilliance that he was leading them all off a cliff. He had to end this. Now. He had to reassert his authority over Trotsky, over Koba, over the entire chaotic mess.
He made a decision. A brutal, pragmatic calculation. The revolution was a fragile infant. It could not survive this internal rot. He would have to perform surgery, even if it meant cutting out a vital organ.
"Your spy hunt is over, Leon," Lenin said, his voice dropping to a near whisper, making it all the more menacing. "It has failed. You have provoked this storm, and now I will end it."
Trotsky shot to his feet, his face a mask of outrage. "What are you going to do? Give in to him? Let him win?"
"No," Lenin said, looking at Trotsky with eyes devoid of all warmth. "I am going to remove the piece from the board entirely."
He turned his back on Trotsky and picked up the telephone that connected directly to the Lubyanka.
"Get me Menzhinsky."
A moment later, the quiet voice of the bureaucrat of terror was on the line.
"Your surveillance operation on the nurse, Sister Anna, is terminated," Lenin said into the receiver, his voice calm and absolute. "Your new order is to arrest her. Tonight. On any charge you can fabricate. Espionage, counter-revolutionary activity, it doesn't matter."
He paused, then delivered the final, devastating blow.
"And I want you to make certain that Commissar Koba knows I am the one who gave the order."
He hung up the phone. He was no longer trying to manage Koba. He was no longer playing a game of chess.
He had just declared open war.