The next two years were a testament to the power of a single, focused will. While Supervisor Volgin watched with a hawk's resentful gaze, Volkovo was utterly transformed. The once-sleepy valley became a symphony of relentless industry. The main foundry rose from the earth, a cathedral of brick and iron. The towering form of a Bessemer converter, a design Alexei had helped bring to life from Mikhail's "heretical" drawings, dominated the skyline. A rolling mill, capable of turning steel ingots into rails and plates, was under construction next to it. The initial investments from Witte's consortium were being turned into tangible assets with a speed that defied belief.
This rapid, successful growth was a source of profound alarm in the halls of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Plehve, fed by Volgin's increasingly anxious reports, saw a rival power base taking shape, one built on a new and dangerous model. If political and economic attacks had failed, he would resort to a more insidious weapon, one he understood intimately: subversion.
The trouble began subtly. New workers, hired as part of the expansion, brought with them whispers of discontent. Well-printed pamphlets, far too sophisticated for a provincial press, began to appear, speaking of the "chains of wage slavery" and the "Baron's capitalist exploitation." The language was Marxist, but the funding, Mikhail knew instinctively, was purely reactionary. It was Katorov's money being directed by Plehve's agents. They sought to use the language of revolution to destroy a force of modernization they feared even more.
Mikhail, possessing Alistair's grim knowledge of 20th-century history, recognized the tactic instantly. He knew that a direct, brutal crackdown, the typical response of a Russian landowner, was exactly what his enemies wanted. It would create martyrs, validate the agitators' claims, and brand his enterprise as just another site of oppression. He chose to fight on a different battlefield.
First, he preemptively stole his enemies' thunder. He established the "Volkovo Workman's Cooperative." He built a clean infirmary staffed by a proper doctor from Pskov, offering free medical care—an unheard-of benefit. The communal kitchen was enlarged, and soon, wagons that once hauled bricks were returning from Pskov laden with sacks of flour and potatoes. By buying in bulk directly from wholesalers, Mikhail ensured that the meals served to his men were both hearty and cheap, a stark contrast to the costly, meager fare available in the village shops. He understood that loyalty couldn't be demanded; it had to be earned, paid for not just in coin but in security. These measures were the mortar binding his men to him, creating a foundation too strong for the poison of outside agitation to crack.
But good food and medicine could only guard against an appeal to misery. The appeal to ideology required a different kind of defense. For that, he needed Ivan. The stolid farmer had become his most trusted man, a natural anchor of authority among the workers. "I need eyes and ears, Ivan," Mikhail said simply. "Not to spy on our own people. I need you to choose a few sharp, quiet men. Find the newcomers who talk too much and work too little. I want to know where these pamphlets are coming from."
The agitators, finding the fertile ground of worker misery they expected to be barren, grew desperate. Their leader, a charismatic firebrand named Stepan, finally made his move, calling for a general strike to demand a doubling of wages and a halving of hours—demands designed to be impossible.
The morning of the proposed strike, Mikhail called an assembly of the entire workforce. Nearly two hundred men gathered before the rising edifice of the steel mill, their faces a mixture of confusion, loyalty, and fear. Stepan and his handful of core agitators stood near the front, ready to ignite the spark of rebellion. Volgin observed from the porch of the manor, expecting to witness the collapse of the Baron's great experiment.
Mikhail climbed onto a stack of timbers, his voice carrying in the cold air. He held no weapon, only a set of papers.
"I am told you wish to strike," he began. "I am told your wages are unfair. Let us look at the facts."
He then proceeded, with cold, irrefutable logic, to lay out their reality. He stated their current wage, and compared it to the average at Katorov's mill in Pskov—a wage they were paid nearly double. He pointed to the infirmary, to the co-op, to the new bunkhouses. "You are told you are oppressed," he said. "Look around you and ask yourselves: is this oppression? Or is this progress?"
A murmur of agreement went through the crowd. Stepan, seeing he was losing them, shouted out. "These are just gilded cages! He is a Baron, an owner! He profits from your sweat! He is the enemy!"
"Am I?" Mikhail replied, his eyes locking onto Stepan. "I do profit. But my profit is turned into this," he gestured to the half-built foundry. "An enterprise that will one day employ a thousand men, not two hundred. An enterprise that will make Russia strong. But let us speak of your profits, Stepan."
At his signal, Ivan stepped forward and handed him a small ledger.
"You arrived here two months ago from Tver," Mikhail continued, his voice like ice. "You claimed to be an ironworker. Yet my foreman says you are clumsy with a hammer. Perhaps because your real trade is this." He held up one of the revolutionary pamphlets. "These are printed on a fine German press. The ink is from St. Petersburg. Very expensive. How could a poor, oppressed worker afford such things?"
He then read from the ledger. "A payment of fifty rubles, deposited into a Pskov bank account in your name two months ago. Another fifty last week. The funds were transferred from a holding company owned by… Nikolai Katorov."
The crowd went dead silent. The betrayal was palpable. Stepan's face went white.
"This man does not want to help you," Mikhail declared, his voice rising with controlled fury. "He is paid by my enemy to destroy what we are all building together. He wants to see you unemployed and starving so his master in Pskov can continue to sell cheap bricks and pay miserable wages. He is the parasite. Now, I ask you. Who is your enemy?"
The crowd turned as one, a low growl rumbling through them as they stared at Stepan and his cohort. There was no violence. There didn't need to be. Their cause had been surgically dismantled. Their support had evaporated.
Later that day, Ivan and his men quietly detained the agitators and handed them, along with the damning evidence of Katorov's payments, over to a stunned Supervisor Volgin. The Baron had presented him with a perfectly wrapped political problem. To punish Mikhail would be to punish a man for expertly quashing a seditious plot. To ignore the evidence against Katorov would be dereliction of duty. Any report he sent to Plehve would only highlight his own inability to control the situation at Volkovo.
A week later, two letters found their way to him. One was a short note from Sofia, her script elegant and sharp. "Mikhail, I am told your valley is remarkably free of sedition. It seems good management is the best preventative. A lesson some in the capital could stand to learn. S." The other was an official letter of commendation from the Governor's office, praising Baron Volkov for his decisive action in maintaining social order and rooting out seditious elements.
Mikhail stood on a hill overlooking his valley, the commendation in his hand. His enemies had tried to burn him down with politics, with economics, and now with social poison. Each time, they had failed. Each time, they had only succeeded in forcing him to build his fortress stronger, its walls now reinforced not just with steel, but with the unshakeable loyalty of the men inside them.