I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 83

In France, the Resistance was boiling and harassing the Nazi occupation forces. 

In Spain, communists and liberals who had infiltrated among the workers and citizens were gradually expanding their underground networks. 

In Britain, resistance activities were carried out by coal miners’ unions and local lords.

In Italy, radical Catholic priests and former communists joined hands to oppose the fascist government. 

Even in Germany, the homeland of Nazism, spontaneous anti-war and pro-socialist groups emerged.

Of course, this was more like a series of red and white terror in the urban setting than a traditional war. 

The largest anti-government armed group in Western Europe was barely a few hundred strong. It was far from a war.

But in Eastern Europe, especially in the Balkans, a ‘war’ was raging between the Axis occupation forces and the local partisans.

The German army easily drove out Peter II, who had staged an anti-German coup and seized power in Yugoslavia, and took over the entire territory of Yugoslavia.

The Axis powers tore up the Yugoslav territory and established a puppet state called the Independent State of Croatia. 

They divided the remaining land among themselves. But as easily as they occupied Yugoslavia, they had to pay a price.

The Yugoslav army, which was disbanded without any measures, became partisans. With Soviet support, the partisan army led by Tito grew to hundreds of thousands.

The Axis powers had to station hundreds of thousands of troops in the Balkans, which they thought they had completely occupied, to suppress the huge Yugoslav partisans, or rather, the Yugoslav Liberation Army.

They also organized an anti-communist militia called Ustasha in Croatia, a puppet state. 

They consumed resources that were scarce for the German army.

They also negotiated with the Yugoslav royal family who had fled overseas because of the Axis attack. 

They tried to bring the royalist resistance Chetniks, who were loyal to them, to their side. 

They wanted to make the Yugoslav partisans public enemies and build a united front against them.

But despite the joint offensive of the Axis powers, the strength of the Yugoslav Liberation Army was growing.

“There are rebels hiding there! A local informant said that’s the regional headquarters of the Resistance!”

“Are you sure? It looks like just a rural village.”

“…I know, right?”

The German army’s pride, tanks, could not move in the rugged mountains of the Balkans. 

They couldn’t climb up and down the mountains with hundreds of soldiers. 

They brought soldiers in a few trucks, but what they found was just a quiet mountain village.

Of course, that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. 

The partisans knew the geography much better and had more local support. 

They hid in all kinds of villages and attacked the German army. 

The residents who had awakened their sense of nationality cooperated with them to drive out the Germans.

“Lieutenant, you go talk to them.”

“Me? You want me to talk?”

“Who else? The captain is disappointed with you.”

The road leading to the village was narrow and curved, making it difficult for trucks to pass. 

They wanted to crash into the village with their soldiers on trucks, but they were afraid of damaging their precious vehicles.

The captain ordered his lieutenant to go ahead. 

The lieutenant reluctantly straightened his shoulders and entered the village. 

He approached a passerby and started talking.

“They say there’s no such thing as partisans here!”

“Really? Hmm…”

The lieutenant came back with a puzzled look on his face. 

It seemed true. Well, who would be stupid enough to say that our village is the headquarters of partisans? 

Come and burn it down! But the village looked peaceful.

“Wait, why is he running?”

“Huh?”

He didn’t notice until then that the man he had talked to ran into the village.

A chill ran down his spine. 

The peaceful rural village now looked like a vicious partisan base disguised as one.

“Damn it, get your guns out!”

“Emergency! Emergency!”

The surroundings were eerily quiet. 

A rural village that seemed to have no way of making a living. 

The snow around the village was neatly cleared away, but there was plenty of snow on the slopes where livestock could come and go.

“We… this…”

Whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

A strange sound came from the village. Something with a red tail flew towards the trucks.

The German soldiers knew what it was just by hearing it.

“Rockets! Take cover!”

Tatatatatatatatatatata tatatatatang! 

From what looked like a barn in the village came a sound like frying beans along with machine guns. 

The soldiers threw themselves out of their trucks and rolled on the ground.

The veterans held their old Kar98 rifles and fired back while lying on the snowbank. But they couldn’t do anything about machine guns and rocket launchers hidden in the barn. 

Red blood began to spread on the white snow.

“Damn it, contact the headquarters…”

“The radio is in the truck!”

As soon as he said that, a few more rockets hit and blew up the truck.

Bang! 

The fuel tank must have been hit. 

The truck exploded with a loud noise and spewed red flames and black smoke. 

Could anyone see that smoke? 

The captain thought so, but he doubted it. 

From the village, people who looked like partisans started shooting their guns.

“Fire back! Fire back!”

Bang! Bang! The German army, which had started to operate heavy tanks on their front lines, gave the old BT light tanks that they no longer used to the partisans in the Balkans.

“What the hell… A tank? Shit!”

“Why is there a tank here?”

“Anti-tank rifle! Anyone?”

The German army’s weapons were poor in the second-rate front of the Balkans. 

They didn’t even have artillery, let alone anti-tank weapons. 

All they had were grenades, old rifles, and a few trucks. 

On the other hand, the partisans had dozens of Soviet-made new rifles.

The BT tank, with its thin armor, was called a ‘friendly door knocker’ by the PaK 36 and easily blown up, but it was enough to be a death god to the infantry armed with rifles and grenades.

Thanks to its tracks and light weight, it had the advantage of being able to drive in the mountains, which shone in the Balkans, not in the vast plains of the Eastern Front.

“Retreat! Retreat!”

He couldn’t throw his men as food for machine guns and heavy weapons. 

The captain shouted retreat until his throat burst, but the dead soldiers couldn’t come back. 

He ran away from the pouring rain of steel. 

Until a partisan sniper shot him down.

***

“Comrade Secretary! Nice to meet you!”

“Hmm, comrade Tito, nice to meet you too.”

At the historic summit, Tito maintained a humble attitude towards ‘me’. 

The Soviet Union was the biggest and almost the only supplier of the Yugoslav partisans.

Hundreds of old tanks and aircraft passed through Romania, which had turned to the Soviet side, and flowed into Tito’s partisan army. 

Of course, they were obsolete from the Soviet army’s point of view, but they were precious weapons for the partisans.

“Our Soviet Union is truly amazed by the remarkable achievements of the Yugoslav partisans. We will continue to support the struggle of the Yugoslav people as a brotherly socialist country with all our might!”

“Thank you, comrade Secretary!”

Yugoslavia was now able to harass the Germans in places they thought were ‘rear’ with a more modern army. 

The Yugoslav Liberation Army, which had escaped from guerrilla warfare between infantry and infantry in mountainous areas and gained the ability to wage a modern ‘war’, acted as if they could take away their teeth at any moment.

From our Soviet perspective, it was a win-win situation to dispose of equipment that would be scrapped anyway and divert the German army’s armor and air force to other fronts.

Tito was a smart leader. 

He seemed to face coldly what side the hegemony over Eastern and Central Europe would go to in the future, and what he could do and where he would be in that situation.

“Comrade Secretary, the Balkans have suffered from ethnic division and conflict for a long time. But we, the Yugoslav Liberation Army, want to avoid ethnic conflict and aim for a republic of united people under socialism. The Soviet aid has been very helpful and I hope…”

“What if… you become the leader of a united Yugoslavia? Then… what would you do to heal ethnic conflicts?”

“Huh? Well… First of all, I think the biggest problem in Yugoslavia is Serbian hegemony. To suppress it…”

He seemed to think for a moment, but he had a lot of thoughts. 

Most of them were things that Tito actually did in history.

To forget the past and build a new country, he embraced some of the Ustasha collaborators who had cooperated with the Nazis. 

He also exterminated Serbian nationalists who had been his comrades at one time.

He was ready to do anything for Yugoslavia’s future.

“But this is still a preparatory stage, comrade Secretary. You are undoubtedly an expert on ethnic issues. I can’t even follow your footsteps.”

“No, ethnic issues are always something that only those involved can be experts on. Comrade Tito, you are very admirable.”

By now, that is, until the 1940s, there were many crazy incidents involving ethnicity in the world.

The Wannsee Conference, which would have discussed the ‘final solution’ for Jews at this time in real history…

After World War I, Greece and Turkey exchanged people who had corresponding identities in each other’s territories by forcibly expelling them. 

There were similar things that happened a little differently in quantity and quality.

There were those who were openly persecuted like Jews or Gypsies. 

There were also those who became victims after being perpetrators like Germans who were expelled from East Prussia after the war.

But forced migration was never a complete solution. 

The conflicts buried under the surface eventually came out in times of economic or political turmoil and claimed their share.

Humanity until the late 2010s that I knew was also unable to escape from that limit. 

Even in advanced countries like Britain, France, or America, ethnic conflicts were at the forefront of social issues.

And Soviet Russia in the 1940s was not free from ethnic problems either.

The Baltic rebels cooperated with Nazis like Croatia and joined SS to point their guns at Soviet Russia. 

By the end of Soviet Russia, Baltics and Ukraine cooperated with Yeltsin’s attempt to break up Soviet Russia.

Using Stalin’s power, I wondered if I could send all the Balts to Siberia and erase their ethnic identity. 

Maybe that would solve the problem, but… then Ukraine might be a problem. And there could be other problems.

“The armored equipment and radio equipment to be provided to the Liberation Army will arrive in ten days for the third delivery. We wish you good luck in your fight.”

“Thank you! Comrade Secretary!”

Ethnic issues seemed to be something I had to worry about until the day I died. 

Of course, Stalin succeeded in effectively suppressing the ethnic issues of Soviet Russia. It was more like suppression than a solution.

The ethnic minorities in Soviet Russia did not dare to raise their heads during Stalin’s era.

In the midst of the Great Patriotic War, Russia’s traditional ethnic values became the representative values of Soviet Russia and effectively infiltrated each region. 

For several decades, they had to be silent as if they were dead.

It was not until the 1980s and 1990s that they erupted again during the thawing period and eventually destroyed Soviet Russia.

“Once we finish off the Germans in the north, we will send a large number of troops to the Balkans. We hope for your cooperation then.”

“Of course! We will do our best to fight with Soviet Russia!”

The ethnic issues underwent a great change during Stalin’s era.

The tribal communities of the Balkans and the traditional networks of Islamic society in Central Asia were destroyed, and a new network of power and success centered on Moscow emerged, replacing the pre-modern tribal society with a secular socialist state.

This was entirely dependent on the characteristics of Stalin’s era. 

The intelligentsia of the imperial era disappeared mostly by being purged as collaborators with the West or reactionaries.

Many veteran Bolsheviks who joined the Bolsheviks as internationalists walked the same path. 

The representative example would be Trotsky, who had no ‘country’ as a Jew from his childhood and attended international schools.

And the native people from rural areas and workers rose to prominence in times of turmoil.

In this process, the newly emerged bureaucratic class was loyal to Soviet Russia.

To them, Soviet Russia was nothing short of a new world.

Soviet Russia rescued the people from industrial development from the miserable and filthy pit of ignorance where they grew up, repelled foreign invasions that they always feared, and led them to become leaders of a new era. 

How could they not be loyal to Soviet Russia and Stalin at its peak?

Therefore, they abandoned the ethnic concept that became an old-fashioned notion and devoted their loyalty to their new master, Soviet Russia.

On the contrary, those who could not escape from their pit and had to live by digging the ground while others became masters of the world, only accumulated resentment.

Eventually, when the bureaucrats who escaped from their pit, ‘bidvizhenchi’ (promoted ones), became nomenklatura, communist nobility, and society stagnated, those who remained in their pit turned it into muddy water.

Some ambitious people who appeared in between, like Yeltsin, succeeded in overthrowing Soviet Russia by using their discontent. 

In the process, those who cooperated with him to destroy Soviet Russia for a piece of cake that would fall off made Soviet Russia collapse.

There were still 50 years left until that time, so what could I do with my old body in my 60s… Anyway. 

The passionate young Tito felt somehow new to me.