Chapter Text
"That's dictatorship you're advocating!"
Trotsky snarled across the table, rising from his chair to shove his finger in Lenin's face, a vein springing from his forehead as if it was fit to burst.
"There is no other way."
Leon could do no more than splutter at the sickeningly calm-faced man stood opposite him. He had heard of Lenin, a member of the party little older than himself, and infamously difficult. "Difficult", however, was not the word that Trotsky had in mind at that moment. Cunt, perhaps, may have been more fitting. Trotsky bit down on his lip as his face flushed bright red with the sort of righteous anger that had made Jesus turn tables. His clenched fists trembled as he met Lenin's eye. What a smug piece of shit. Perhaps the Jesus metaphor was inaccurate, Trotsky's pacifist disposition was generally much easier to override.
Lenin seemed to revel in Trotsky's anger. He cocked one eyebrow at his opponent, challenging him to escalate.
"You might want to wipe your glasses there, Leo."
Plekhanov offered, puncturing the tension as Trotsky sat reluctantly back in his chair, wiping the steam off his glasses with the cuff of his sleeve.
"It might not be pretty," continued Lenin, "But Russia is too far behind to support the sort of spontaneous movement that Marx dreamed of. The only way to free the proletariat is to lead them, and to lead them with an iron fist. A small, disciplined party, organised with a military precision, and selected on the basis of unconditional commitment is the only way. Anyone who says different is dreaming."
He slammed his fist on the table defiantly, his words greeted with a chorus of "here here!" from the men on his side of the table. Trotsky stared fixedly at his drink, his cheeks burning as he counted the beer-glass rings left on the clearly ancient wooden table.
The rest of the party could do nothing but sigh. It had been 13 hours of this: the second congress of the RSDLP's central committee, and all that had been achieved was an argument that had split the party in two irreconcilable halves. Solidarity my asshole. The RSDLP was smashed to pieces, and what stood in its place was two opposing factions- the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Lenin, ever the optimist, had named his side of the rift "the majority" despite the fact that for many years they would be the opposite, and apparently the Mensheviks hadn't the heart to argue.
Lenin drained the last of his tankard of Vodka, stood, and began to shake out his coat.
"I've said what I needed to say." He announced to the room, "If you're with me, you're with me."
It was with a stony silence that the comrades filtered out of the pub and into the cold Belgian night. They went one by one, leaving appropriate gaps between their exits to pay metaphorical lip service to the fact that this was a secret meeting. The RSDLP would pay for their carelessness in that regard, a fact which one of the attendees knew more than any of the others.
As they ascended onto the frosted streets, only two of them thought of the old German who had once lived just miles away from where they stood, but they were too blinded by strategic differences to hear that their twin hearts beat for the same Russia.
Trotsky was the last but one to leave, he'd caught sight of an oddly specific detail on the man sat next to him's notebook. "Lenin stayed in the Brook Estaminet, Rue Neuve Street." it had read. He'd hung behind to see if he could catch another glimpse of what his comrade had written- it struck him as distinctly odd that he had found it necessary to note the inn where Lenin was spending the night. However much he hated the bastard, he couldn't shake the feeling that his ex-partyman was in danger, and the fear sloshed in his stomach like an unwise swig of vodka. He felt it unwise to confront the man, however. It had been a long day, and there was nothing inherently wrong with being detail oriented. Instead, he resolved to pay closer attention to Roman Malinovsky in future. For now, his focus was on reuniting the party, however difficult that smug bastard made it.