I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 1 (June 22, 1941)

This can’t be happening…

Was it a mistake to take a long nap before starting to study for the exam? 

I was sure I fell asleep in my stuffy dorm room, but when I woke up, everything around me had changed. 

I ran out of the bed, which was clearly filled with soft cotton instead of the cheap mattress of the dorm.

My body felt heavy. 

I didn’t exercise much, but… I wasn’t used to feeling soggy and limp like a wet sponge. 

I grabbed my shaky legs and looked for a mirror nearby.

“Aaaah!”

In the mirror, a wrinkled old man with a bushy mustache stared at me with a horrified expression. 

The old man in the mirror covered his mouth with his hand and screamed. 

Exactly what I was doing.

I was just an ordinary college student in the 21st century – well, I had an excessive interest in military and World War II history, but – why did I end up in the body of Stalin, the worst dictator and the protagonist of the biggest war in history? 

I had no idea.

“What… what is this…”

I blurted out in confusion, but Russian came out naturally, a language I didn’t know how to speak at all. 

Stalin’s memories, which were clearly his own, bubbled up in my head as if they were boiling over.

The voices of my friends who called me Koba and the voices of my friends who called me by my original – Korean – name overlapped. 

The contents of the final exam for the first semester that I saw yesterday and the contents of the war report were mixed together.

Aaaaaaaaah!!!

Moscow, Soviet High Command (STAVKA)

The conference room was quiet. 

The highest seat at the end of the table was empty, and the people sitting next to it were either closing their eyes and holding their heads or sighing deeply.

The secretary-general, who should have led the war after receiving the report of the surprise attack by the German army, was shocked by his wrong prediction and locked himself up in his dacha (Russian-style villa). 

The secretary-general did not respond to any contact from STAVKA or the Politburo.

“Most of the main forces of the Western Front Army were surrounded in the Bialystok salient. A small number of troops escaped from the encirclement and gathered on the defensive line of Minsk, but it will be difficult to defend Minsk as the command system collapsed…”

Minsk, the capital of Belarus SSR, fell. 

The commanders murmured for a moment. 

The report continued, but most of it was about how the German army surrounded, annihilated, and routed the Soviet army units.

It was estimated that some of our troops were killed in combat with an unknown number of German troops, and it seemed that the German army advanced to somewhere. 

Defeat, defeat, defeat. 

The report filled the conference room with nothing but defeat. 

A man raised his hand to stop the liaison officer from reading on.

He still held his forehead and bowed his head. 

When most of the commanders stopped murmuring, he got up from his chair with his shoulders slumped as if they were heavy. 

He looked down at the conference room as he fiddled nervously with his round glasses. 

He cleared his throat.

“First of all, we informed the people that the war had started. The filthy fascists of Germany will pay for staining our motherland with blood.”

We should make them pay indeed. 

The problem was that we were already paying for it. 

The Soviet Union made a wrong judgment that it could hold on to Nazi fascists with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. 

And now we were paying for it. 

With blood of our people and soldiers.

“Comrade Secretary-General is currently staying at his dacha, but today I and some others plan to visit him and ask him to lead us again. If not… well, let’s think about it later.”

The Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, nervously stroked his mustache. 

The secretary-general both checked and trusted him, and virtually gave him the position of second-in-command. 

And Molotov knew it well. 

It was thanks to the secretary-general that he came to this position.

Those who were better than him were mostly hostile to him. 

And they were purged. 

Trotsky, who led the enemy to bring all Russia into Bolsheviks’ arms; Bukharin, who was said to be the best theorist except Lenin; Kamenev, Zinoviev and other senior Bolshevik leaders.

Molotov did not think he was incompetent himself. 

But he was not so arrogant as to think that he had the ability to handle and lead such a huge war.

But those who could lead Bolsheviks in war, the veterans of the Red Army, were all executed or exiled. 

Molotov himself recalled signing the orders to execute dozens of generals and hundreds, thousands of officers. 

He didn’t know then that the war would break out. 

As he didn’t until a few days ago.

‘Can we win…?’

A dark meeting passed by. 

Even without saying it, many in the conference room seemed to have similar thoughts.

Let’s summarize the situation.

No matter how hard I pinched my body or slapped my face to wake up from sleep, I couldn’t wake up. 

For some unknown reason, I was possessed by Stalin at the time when Operation Barbarossa had just started, that is, at the end of June 1941, and I could recall Stalin’s memories.

From the faint memories of his very young childhood to the report that Operation Barbarossa had started a while ago. 

I could also remember clearly the emotions he felt. 

Shock, confusion, and fear.

And my memories as a college student living in the 2010s were also clear. 

Especially, the knowledge of this side.

I could remember one by one the exact numbers of how the Soviet army suffered defeat, how many people died, and what sacrifices they made to win the Operation Barbarossa that had just started. 

Nearly 20 million people died, and the most productive territories of the Soviet Union were ravaged, and civilians were also trampled, raped, and starved by the cruel German army.

But I had no idea how to go back.

How could I know how to go back when I didn’t even know why I was possessed by Stalin’s body and memories? 

But there was one thing I could think of. 

I don’t know how to go back.

If I could go back by being shot by Nazi Germany, I would do it. If I could wake up as if I had a nightmare by pulling the trigger on my – Stalin’s – head with the pistol in that drawer right now, I would blow this head off with a bullet.

But… what if I just die? 

What if I can never go back to my original life and end there? 

What if it’s not like a convenient plot of a fantasy novel where you wake up in your original world after you die? 

Stalin dies of a stroke in ’53 in history. 

That’s 12 years from now, and that might be all the time I have left.

And what if I commit suicide or deliberately sabotage here and make the Soviet Union lose the war and things go differently from real history? 

Even if I go back then, will that world be the same? 

Nazi might have crushed even Soviet Union and conquered the world. 

My fate as a Korean could be a second-class subject of the German loyal ally, Japanese Empire, or maybe my ancestors died in a nuclear war and I wasn’t even born!

If I don’t know how the future will go, I have no choice but to struggle to live better with what I know. 

Whether I go back as a Korean or not.

While I was running wild with various fantasies in my head, someone knocked on the door. 

I was so lost in thought that I didn’t notice, but there seemed to be quite a lot of people outside the room, as I felt several presences. 

I was momentarily flustered and couldn’t say anything, but the door opened and people started pouring in.

They were mostly familiar faces. From Stalin’s memories or ‘my’ memories.

“Molotov… Kaganovich… Zhukov… Voroshilov…”

I muttered the names of the people I could recognize. 

The faces I had seen in photos from history books and the vivid images I had seen in Stalin’s memories overlapped. 

The people whose names were called flinched a little. 

They all couldn’t hide their tension, biting their lips or clenching their fists. 

Ah, I think I know why they came here.

“Comrade Secretary-General, the Nazi fascists’ army is now…”

“I know.”

Yeah, life is a play anyway. 

You have to act out the role given to you in your role. 

Only God, the playwright, knows the script…

But I already know how the events unfolded!

Then I have no choice but to be faithful to the given role. 

What I used to do in my imagination or by clicking the mouse with computer games, now I just do it with real voice and gestures. 

I know everything about the toxic war, and this is just a repetition.

As a result, I can make the world a better place, and I get a bonus of living a pretty luxurious life.

“Let’s go to STAVKA. I have a plan ready. Report on the situation briefly, focusing on the confirmed front lines and enemy positions.”

“Yes! Understood, Comrade Secretary-General!”

The people who received my order saluted loudly and ran out. 

Molotov had a smile on his face as if his tension had been relieved. 

They came here to take away my authority if I couldn’t come to my senses until the end, but ‘I’ reacted so actively that they must have felt less burdened.

To many people, Stalin was nothing less than a god. 

He was a fellow party member during the revolution, but he seized the bureaucrats and built this huge state and made them work for him, holding the largest country in the world in one hand. 

That’s what they thought of Stalin.

But Stalin made a mistake. 

Stalin was convinced that Hitler would never invade the Soviet Union at this point, but he was wrong. 

What did people think when he was shocked and locked himself up? 

Didn’t they feel like the world was collapsing?

But now that god has returned armed with the knowledge of the future. 

And he will somehow win this war.