I know, was supposed to be a one-shot, but I really found myself remembering details after the first chapter and realised I'm not much good with names, so here goes. And thanks for your reviews and comments! xx
"I can't even pronounce half of these!"
"Half of what?" he turned away from the control panel, unaware of what the girl next to him had been muttering about. Rose frowned in frustration. "Zee-no...Zi-no? Vev? Vie-e-ev?"
"Zinoviev. Zi-no-ve-ev," he sounded.
"Ta. What about this one?"
Holding up the book to show him, Rose pointed to one of many words of the page that she had difficulty in understanding. The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "That's one of the easiest!"
"Yeah, well, I'm not Russian. I'm also not a nine-hundred year-old egotistical alien who's probably met these people."
"Book-ar-in."
"What?"
"That's how you pronounce it. Book-ar-in. Bukharin! You don't need to be Russian to know that. And yeah, he was an idiot. All of them were...Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Kamenev. Said my ears were too big."
"But they ar -"
"Shut it!"
"Fine, fine," Rose grinned, holding up her free arm in defeat, before turning back to her book. "So...what's the deal between them and this Stalin bloke? Sounds like a lot of back-stabbing."
"Stalin allied with Zinoviev and Kamenev - they're Leftists - to cover up Lenin's Testament. Lenin basically said in this will that Stalin was dangerous and should be dismissed, but it had a lot of unfavourable mentions about other important people. They also got Trotsky dismissed - I told you about him earlier - and he went into exile..."
"And the others?"
"...Stalin then promoted 'Socialism in one country' -"
"Which was...?"
The Doctor frowned. "The USSR would become strong and THEN try to bring a world-wide communist revolution. And stop interrupting. Anyway, Stalin went and sided with the Rightists - that's Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky - and Zinoviev and Kamenev were dismissed in 1927. Then those gullible idiots were kicked out themselves two years later."
Rose nodded slowly, taking all this in - or attempting to. "Right."
"You never paid much attention to History in school, did you?"
"Nope."