Chapter 68: Propaganda
To say that the Red Army had doubled in size since the death of Leon Trotsky and the 80,000 men beneath his command at Saint Petersburg was an understatement. The new year had begun, and with it the winter was slowly starting to die out.
Ample preparations had been made after the citizens of Tsaritsyn had revolted, seizing control of the means of production and using them to enhance their military capabilities.
They knew it was only a matter of time until the Tsar's forces launched a full scale offensive against them. And currently, Tsaritsyn was defended by 100,000 members of the Red Army. Which though they did not know it yet, would be 4x larger than the forces sent to take the city back from them.
Trotsky's death was not the serious blow to the Bolshevik movement that Bruno thought it would be. At the end of the day, such an insidious and destructive ideology was harder to stamp out than a colony of roaches.
His death had earned him the fabled status of martyrdom. Not in some brave and heroic display of one's faith in God. But rather in the most absurd and wicked kind. His cowardly death after sending 80,000 men to meet the devil to whom they owed their souls was not how the Bolshevik leaders depicted Trotsky.
It wasn't exactly a noble and chivalric image to inspire the masses, after all. No, the Bolsheviks did what they did best: Lie, subvert, and manipulate. They painted Trotsky as a heroic defender of the masses. One fighting against a tyrannical monarch, a despotic aristocracy, and of course the savage presence of foreign mercenaries.
Never mind the fact that it was Trotsky who had besieged the peaceful city of Saint Petersburg and in doing so, shelled the city and the innocent civilians within it without any regard to civilian casualties.
Nor did they reveal the truth that the Tsarist Officers stood in the Trenches defending the city from the Red Army's multiple attacks, whereas the Bolshevik Officers hid in the relative safety of their fortifications while sending the men beneath their command to their deaths.
No, such truths would not exactly inspire any man to pick up a rifle and fight for the spineless Bolshevik leaders who were the true despots and tyrants. Of course, when Bruno returned to Saint Petersburg and learned of such slanderous recruitment tactics. He devised a sinister propaganda campaign of his own.
The heritage of the Bolshevik leadership was quickly uncovered, as were their more atheistic tendencies and their affluent backgrounds. It was not exactly a secret, or at least not in Bruno's past life that the overwhelming majority of Marxist revolutionary leaders throughout Europe were not what they preached to be.