Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette.Volume XIII

Mikhail sighed. "Not easily, Bernie. From what I understand, your Mike Stearns was setting up a government from scratch. There was no government in place because it had been left in the future."

"Yeah, mostly. There was the mayor and stuff, but he sorta stepped back from it right at the start."

"Somehow, I don't think the boyars and men of the cabinet are going to politely step aside." Mikhail grinned, but his eyes were kinda sad. Somehow Bernie figured that if he could, Czar Mikhail Fedorivich Romanov would step aside faster than Henry Dreeson had.

Mikhail and his father were already consulting with the "brain cases," as Bernie called them. Mikhail wanted a way out of the trap the up-time history had put him in. Since the history of that other future had leaked, people with power were not happy. He and his father, as czar and patriarch, had been carefully dancing in the mine field of Russian politics, focusing on the danger of a return to the time of troubles to keep the various factions in check. Even so, power was shifting between the factions. The one led by Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev, for instance. Sheremetev felt that the information from the up-timers and the actions of Peter the Great really sort of ruined the Romanov credentials as arch-conservatives.

"Interesting, perhaps." Fedor Ivanovich set his glass on the table. They had been discussing the history of the United States of America and its constitution. "Interesting, but not that impressive. It was their day in the sun, that's all. The Mongols had theirs and this United States had theirs. They were only two hundred years old. Barely a youth, as nations go."

Mikhail looked across the table at him. There were only three men at dinner tonight. Filaret, Mikhail and Fedor. Mikhail wanted Fedor's support. "I am more concerned with something else. The general agreement-and I read this over and over again-was that Russia continued to lag behind much of the rest of the world. We can change that, and I believe we should. Right now, we should start. Because right now, everyone is four hundred years behind Grantville. We have Bernie here and Vladimir in Grantville. We can modernize."

Fedor nodded, but Mikhail didn't think he was listening. Not properly at any rate. "The army, most assuredly. Right away. That I agree with. But this other? This constitution? Why? A firm hand on the reins. That is all that is needed, Mikhail. A firm hand on the reins of Rus."

Mikhail shook his head. No, Fedor wasn't listening.

Fedor Sheremetev left the dinner and considered most of the way home. He understood what Mikhail and Filaret were contemplating. Oh, yes. He knew that Mikhail was afraid of power. Let every peasant vote. Introduce a constitutional monarchy, maybe even that perverted idea, a democracy. He snorted. Hardly.

Fedor had a lot more sympathy for Joseph Stalin than he had for Nicholas Romanov. Stalin, if he had nothing else, had had a firm hand. And a firm hand was what Russia needed. Always had and always would.

Fedor looked down at the hands that gripped the reins of the horse. Mikhail didn't ride, did he? No. Always the carriage. Always the passenger. Never in control. That described Mikhail Romanov as well as any other phrase.

"I don't care if he wants to fuck the czarina," Mikhail Borisovich Shein said. "We have our own up-timer now, and he's one who can fight."

His aide took it in stride. General Shein was a volatile man by nature. The calculation hidden by the volatility was harder to see; most people never did. "What should we do with him, sir?"

"Stick him in the gun shop." The Russian army had a dacha of its own that was not publicized. The general snorted. "And keep him away from anyone important. Question him extensively, but not harshly. If that doesn't work, we can use stronger measures. From what I understand, the main reason we got him is that he managed to piss off or piss away the opportunities in Grantville. No one will miss him much."

The aide made a note and went on to the next item on the agenda. "The musketeers are arguing with the outlander solders about their walking walls again." The aide was a bureaucratic noble and therefore an officer in the Russian army. He didn't think all that well of the foreign mercenary companies. Or the city musketeers, the Streltzi -who, when not called to active service made up the merchant class in Muscovy.

The general gave him the look. Mikhail Borisovich Shein had commanded a force made up mostly of musketeers at Smolensk during the last war with Poland. They had held out for twenty months against a force ten times their size. Whatever the traditional animosity between the two classes, General Shein didn't share it. At the same time, he was fully conversant with the Russian army's need to modernize. Slowly, he began to smile. "But what is modernize in a world where we have people from the future? Find me two men, Georgi Ivanov. Rough men. One outlander officer and a musketeer. Put them in a room with the up-timer and let them argue about it."

Cass Lowry found Russia to be cold, and-after his education at the hands of Natasha's guards-more than a bit frightening. That impression was in no way diminished when he met Ivan Mikhailovich Vinnikov and Samuel Farthingham.

The issue was whether the Russian moving forts were useful. Cass wasn't entirely sure what a moving fort was, so the first thing Ivan and Samuel had to do was arrange a demonstration.

"Have you seen the latest?" Pavel Egorovich Shirshov asked, handing a pamphlet to Ivan Mikhailovich Vinnikov.

The guard captain looked at the pamphlet and began to read silently.

"Out loud if you don't mind," Pavel Egorovich said testily. Though a skilled craftsman, he didn't read.

Ivan Mikhailovich cast him an apologetic look and began to read out loud. "If we are to have a constitution it must ensure the rights of all Russian citizens…" He continued reading. It was an argument that without a section limiting government, the constitution would be just another way to tie the people down. The writer actually seemed to wonder if a constitution was a good idea at all. Then he went on to-purportedly-quote a conversation between members of the boyar class. A cousin and a younger son of one of the great families. They were reported to have said that the great families thought that a constitution would be a great thing if they got to write it. The conversation was supposed to have been overheard in a brothel.

"Any idea who wrote this?" Ivan asked, a bit nervously. This was the sort of thing that could get people in serious trouble.

Pavel shook his head. "A boy in Muscovy was selling them on the street. Couldn't have been more than ten or so." That was happening more and more frequently. Scandals mixed with political opinion.

"I talked to one of them a bit a few days ago." Pavel commuted back and forth between the Army's dacha and the Kremlin every few days. "He sells his papers to make a bit of money. He buys them from a man he thinks is a Bureau man, but it could be a merchant. There is apparently more than one man, and they don't all meet in the same place."

"It says here that this Patriarch Nikon caused it." Colonel Pavel Kovezin stared at the broadsheet with distaste clearly showing on his face.

Machek Speshnev, who had brought this news to the colonel, nodded. A lieutenant in this regiment of Streltzi, the musketeers, Machek was a pious man. This information had struck a chord with him, as well as with many other members of the Palace Guard Regiments.

"I'm surprised this information became public, but it has. The question is, is there anything we can do about it?" Machek's family would most definitely wind up as oppressed "Old Believers," he was sure. "I don't think I'd care to be sent up north, chasing, beating and killing priests."