Hang Together

Hang Together is a short story by Harry Turtledove published in CoDominium: Revolt on War World in 1992. The time period of the story is late 21st Century toward the end of the CoDominium period. It is written in two parts with two POVs. The first part is a short prelude set in Moscow with a POV by Yuri Ilyich Kronov, a mid-level Russian beaurcrat in the CoDominum Bureau of Relocation. The second, main part of the story is set in the Tallinn Valley on the planet Haven. Its POV is that of Anton Pats, an Estonian political deportee and a leader of the Estonians in exile in Tallinn Town.

Kronov came to work in the Moscow offices of the BuReLoc as usual despite the rioting and the violent put-down of a Russian Nationalist group two days before in Red Square. After he settle in, his supervisor Genadi Ivorovich Kirichenko bustled in with an armload of papers. These were deportation orders to be processed of some 300 Russian Nationalists. Kirichenko informed Kronov he was to process them and told him he could take the afternoon off if he finished early. This was an insult since it was at least tweleve hours work if Kronov followed the rules and respected the dispersal ratios.

Because Kronov was a secret Nationalist supporter and because he dispised his supervisor, he chose to ignore the ratios. He looked first for a possible deportation site that contained Ukrainians (the same nationality as Kirichenko) but failed to find anywhere satisfactory. He settled for Estonians in Tallinn Valley on Haven.