October Revolution – Stalin's secrets. History according to Assassin's Creed
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Leading figures associated with the communist doctrine have long been good nourishment for the Assassin's Creed fantasy. Anyone who played Syndicate will surely remember how big a role Karl Marx, the main ideologue of proletarian socialism, played in the plot. The German regularly requested help from the Frye twins, who once even saved his life. But Assassin's Creed's relations with the leading figures of communism do not end there. Both Templars and the Assassins played major parts in the Bolshevik Revolution and the shaped the subsequent fates of the Russian Republic and later the Soviet Union.
Suffice it to say that in the Assassin's Creed universe, Vladimir Lenin himself, one of the founders of the Communist Party and the first leader of Soviet Russia, had strong ties to the brotherhood. Although he himself was not an assassin, his brother Aleksandr and close friend Nikolai Orelov, were. Lenin ordered Orelov to murder Nicholas II, but the order wasn't fulfilled – instead, Tsar and almost his entire family were murdered by the Templars. The Bolshevik leader continued to support the Assassins, enabling them to research technology in Russia and diligently guarding their secrets. Unfortunately for the Brotherhood, his successor, Joseph Stalin, was not as willing to cooperate. Deluded by the Templars, he began to favor them by helping to trigger World War II and persecuting the Assassins. The Brotherhood took revenge in 1953, when Assassins managed to poison Stalin and fake his death from a stroke.
Stalin was of course not killed by some assassins, but there was plenty of people around who would gladly see him dead. Thus, the leader of the USSR took extraordinary precautions: whenever possible, he did not leave his office, during public appearances he would use doubles, he thoroughly tested his meals for poison, and he would famously travel in a convoy of identical cars. A possible assassination could have taken place during his regular drive to his dacha in Kuncewa, but the road to it, according to some sources, was guarded 24 hours a day by more than 1,000 NKVD officers. Even the assassins could therefore have a hard time eliminating Stalin. Photo: Public domain.
Thus, Assassin's Creed creates an image of Lenin as "the good one," and Lenin as his evil successor. In fact, both men caused millions of casualties, both resultant of the repression of the Communist apparatus of state, and the great famine, the Holodomor, caused by the reforms they'd introduced, which killed at least 3.5 million people in Ukraine. But while in Lenin's case, the question of his death does not leave much room for wild conspiracy action – the ailing, overworked and powerless Bolshevik leader died in front of his wife in 1924 – but in the case of Uncle Joe, as the ruthless leader was referred to in American press, there are far more possibilities. That's because Stalin ruled with iron fist, eliminating anyone he but suspected of treason. It's possible that Stalin was given an adrenaline injection or poison – although official propaganda claimed that his death was the result of a cerebral hemorrhage.
