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The Devils Alternative

148 statements
27 feature instances
0 referencing feature instances

The Devils Alternative	type	TVTItem
The Devils Alternative	label	The Devils Alternative
The Devils Alternative	page	TheDevilsAlternative
The Devils Alternative	comment	“The Devil’s Alternative” is a 1979 Cold War thriller novel written by Frederick Forsyth.The novel, set in 1982, tells the tale of a world crisis caused by converging events.The Soviet Union is faced with famine when a batch of fungicide is mixed improperly and ends up contaminating most of the Soviet harvest. A schism within the Politburo takes place over how to resolve this crisis, with Soviet president Maxim Rudin and his supporters willing to make concessions to the West in exchange for the needed grain. Opposing them is a faction led by his rival Yefrem Vishnayev who press for the invasion and conquest of Western Europe, disbelieving evidence that the US would resort to nuclear war rather than suffer the long-term decline that would result from losing Europe to the Soviets.Concurrently a group of Western-born ethnic Ukrainians and Jewish refugees led by Andriy Drach concoct a plan to humiliate the Soviet regime and hopefully trigger anti-Russian rebellions across the Soviets' empire. While the plan succeeds, the two Jews who carried it out are captured in West Berlin after hijacking an airliner and the Soviet government manages to cover up their success. Drach organizes the hijacking of the world's biggest supertanker in the North Sea and threatens to create the largest oil spill in history if the two men are not released to Israel and allowed to give a press conference. Were Drach's demands met, the disgraced Rudin would fall and Vishnayev would take control, leading to World War III.In the middle of this are two ex-lovers, MI6 agent Adam Munro and KGB secretary Valentina. Valentina provides Munro and his superiors with information directly from the Politburo, giving the US and British governments a first-hand look at the unfolding crisis and the high-stakes involved.The convergence of the two crisis eventually leaves US President William "Bill" Matthews (a fictionalized Jimmy Carter) facing the titular dilemma: no matter what course he chooses - placating the Soviet government or the terrorists - disaster and massive loss of life is guaranteed.
The Devils Alternative	fetched	2023-07-20T18:28:49Z
The Devils Alternative	parsed	2023-07-20T18:28:49Z
The Devils Alternative	processingComment	Dropped link to CoolPlane: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Devils Alternative	processingComment	Dropped link to GrayAndBlackMorality: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
The Devils Alternative	processingComment	Dropped link to GrayAndGrayMorality: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
The Devils Alternative	processingUnknown	GrayAndBlackMorality
The Devils Alternative	processingUnknown	GrayAndGrayMorality
The Devils Alternative	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Devils Alternative / int_1206d299	type	Can't Kill You, Still Need You
The Devils Alternative / int_1206d299	comment	Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The American and British politicians realize that they need Maxim Rudin in charge of the Soviet Union, due to his support of a non-military solution to the famine.
The Devils Alternative / int_1206d299	featureApplicability	1.0
The Devils Alternative / int_1206d299	featureConfidence	1.0
The Devils Alternative	hasFeature	The Devils Alternative / int_1206d299
The Devils Alternative / int_1235f055	type	Dirty Coward
The Devils Alternative / int_1235f055	comment	Dirty Coward: Komarov, the Minister of Agriculture. He supports Vishnayev to save himself from Rudin for the famine crisis, and at the end when the odds are in Rudin’s favor he switches sides and gives Rudin his vote of confidence. Rudin reflects coldly that his last-minute switch will not save him.
The Devils Alternative / int_1235f055	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_1282bf4f	type	No Celebrities Were Harmed
The Devils Alternative / int_1282bf4f	comment	No Celebrities Were Harmed: the American President William "Bill" Matthews and British Prime Minister Joan Carpenter are obviously fictional versions of Jimmy Carter and Margaret Thatcher. Notably this one of the few occasions Forsyth does this rather than simply include real-life figures in his work. Likewise, Matthews' National Security Advisor, "that damned Polack" Stanislaw Poklewski, is an obvious stand-in for Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzeziński.
The Devils Alternative / int_1282bf4f	featureApplicability	1.0
The Devils Alternative / int_1282bf4f	featureConfidence	1.0
The Devils Alternative	hasFeature	The Devils Alternative / int_1282bf4f
The Devils Alternative / int_18d15922	type	Title Drop
The Devils Alternative / int_18d15922	comment	Title Drop: British spy Adam Munro to the US President: "It has happened before, and it will happen again. We call it the Devil's Alternative."
The Devils Alternative / int_18d15922	featureApplicability	1.0
The Devils Alternative / int_18d15922	featureConfidence	1.0
The Devils Alternative	hasFeature	The Devils Alternative / int_18d15922
The Devils Alternative / int_23015b1f	type	Magnificent Bastard
The Devils Alternative / int_23015b1f	comment	Magnificent Bastard: One of the Americans expresses respect for Andriy Drach's masterminding the coup to bring down the USSR. Maxim Rudin is revealed to be this at the end. When Vishnayev proposed war in Europe, he had enlisted Valentina to romance Adam Munro and feed him information about the Soviet political situation.
The Devils Alternative / int_23015b1f	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_3e95582f	type	The Greatest Story Never Told
The Devils Alternative / int_3e95582f	comment	The Greatest Story Never Told: The death of the KGB head would be a great triumph in other circumstances, but with it putting the world on the brink of war this event and its perpetrators have to be silenced.
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The Devils Alternative / int_40cc0c7e	type	Bittersweet Ending
The Devils Alternative / int_40cc0c7e	comment	Bittersweet Ending: The Ukrainian revolutionaries are killed, the tanker Freya and its crew are rescued and stable relations between America and the Soviet Union are maintained. But Munro’s career as a spy is blown and he must retire, and he can never see Valentina again, though he is assured that she is safe and rewarded for her role in averting the crisis. Likely counts as bittersweet too for Ukrainians and other subject peoples in the Soviet empire, as their chance for freedom from the Communists' iron-fisted rule has been nipped in the bud.
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The Devils Alternative / int_44989f6f	type	"Could Have Avoided This!" Plot
The Devils Alternative / int_44989f6f	comment	"Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: If the workers at the plant had been more disciplined and careful in their job, the crops would not have been contaminated.
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The Devils Alternative / int_454b2f2b	type	Secretly Dying
The Devils Alternative / int_454b2f2b	comment	Secretly Dying: Rudin is struck with leukemia and has less than a year. No one outside of his closest associates knows about it.
The Devils Alternative / int_454b2f2b	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_4cacfcc3	type	Honey Trap
The Devils Alternative / int_4cacfcc3	comment	Honey Trap: Valentina, whom Munro thought was his Forbidden Love, is revealed to have been an operative for Rudin all along, allowing him to pass vital information to the Western powers and avoid war, without the knowledge of his cabinet. Rudin assures Munro that Valentina is "very fond" of him, just not in love with him, and certainly not in love enough to leave her home country and be a housewife in Scotland.
The Devils Alternative / int_4cacfcc3	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_4e7c4536	type	Wham Line
The Devils Alternative / int_4e7c4536	comment	Wham Line: Maxim Rudin to Munro, “She asked me to tell you. She will not be a housewife in Edinburgh, she will not be Mrs Munro, she cannot see you again – ever. But she is safe, secure, a patriot among her people. She asked me to tell you not to worry.”
The Devils Alternative / int_4e7c4536	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_63d861f8	type	Even Evil Has Loved Ones
The Devils Alternative / int_63d861f8	comment	Even Evil Has Loved Ones: KGB Chairman Yuri Ivanenko has an elderly mother. She ends up as bait by Mishkin and Lazareff to get to Ivanenko.
The Devils Alternative / int_63d861f8	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_6bda9a30	type	Meaningful Name
The Devils Alternative / int_6bda9a30	comment	Meaningful Name: Andriy Drach takes the codename “Svoboda”, which is Ukrainian for “freedom”.
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The Devils Alternative / int_7464705c	type	Arc Words
The Devils Alternative / int_7464705c	comment	Arc Words: “No alternative.” The phrase is used by various characters throughout the story, and is even a codeword at one point.
The Devils Alternative / int_7464705c	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_7fbb2a3	type	Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!
The Devils Alternative / int_7fbb2a3	comment	Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Mishkin and Lazareff escape Russia by hijacking a Soviet plane headed to West Germany. But their tempers run high, they shoot the pilot and they end up imprisoned in a West German jail.
The Devils Alternative / int_7fbb2a3	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_8042e814	type	Actually Pretty Funny
The Devils Alternative / int_8042e814	comment	Actually Pretty Funny: After finding out that his true love, Valentina, is actually an agent for Rudin, that she was never in danger from the KGB, and has dumped him now that he is no longer a conduit to British Intelligence, Adam Munro walks in a daze down a Moscow street for a few blocks, then starts laughing his head off. Because it actually is pretty funny: he's been a spy for so long that he's introduced to the reader as an instructor for agents in training, yet he's been suckered by an espionage technique that's older than the Bible (i.e., a honey trap.
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The Devils Alternative / int_950bbfa7	type	Take a Third Option
The Devils Alternative / int_950bbfa7	comment	Take a Third Option: The Devil's Alternative is this. Adam Munro leads a carefully timed operation to solve the Sadistic Choice above: he drugs Mishkin and Lazareff with slow-acting poison that will keep them alive until their comrades have left the Freya, but will kill them before they open their mouths.
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The Devils Alternative / int_9e1e14ea	type	Ambition Is Evil
The Devils Alternative / int_9e1e14ea	comment	Ambition Is Evil: Yefrem Vishnayev, Maxim Rudin’s rival. He is willing to begin an invasion of Western Europe for the wealth of that region as a solution to the famine, and not incidentally gaining him the Soviet premiership as a result. Red Army Marshal Kerensky and Rudin's other supporters, hoping to secure their own political gains by supporting Rudin's plan regardless of the risk to world peace.
The Devils Alternative / int_9e1e14ea	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_babc974	type	Sadistic Choice
The Devils Alternative / int_babc974	comment	Sadistic Choice: The Freya hijacking puts the USA, with influence on Germany, in this position. If they make the Germans release Mishkin and Lazareff, the Russians will cancel their deal for grain and wheat and will go ahead with invading Western Europe. But if Mishkin and Lazareff aren’t released, the oil tanker will be blown up, the North Sea will be polluted and the USA’s political reputation falls severely AND there will still be war.
The Devils Alternative / int_babc974	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_bc74ef27	type	Berserk Button
The Devils Alternative / int_bc74ef27	comment	Berserk Button: Don’t ever talk about Russian patriotism in front of the Ukrainian revolutionary leader Andriy Drach.
The Devils Alternative / int_bc74ef27	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_c3648b87	type	Teeth-Clenched Teamwork
The Devils Alternative / int_c3648b87	comment	Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Americans and Russians cooperate awkwardly but out of necessity. The Americans’ relations with the British are less strained, but the British firmly tell the Americans to back off over their information supply.
The Devils Alternative / int_c3648b87	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_d397657d	type	Hoist by His Own Petard
The Devils Alternative / int_d397657d	comment	Hoist by His Own Petard: Andriy vents a million gallons of oil into the ocean. When he flees on a boat through the fog, it ends up getting stuck in the oil and makes him a sitting duck.
The Devils Alternative / int_d397657d	featureApplicability	1.0
The Devils Alternative / int_d397657d	featureConfidence	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_d45c0b86	type	Refuge in Audacity
The Devils Alternative / int_d45c0b86	comment	Refuge in Audacity: Andriy Drach will dare any venture to bring down the USSR. His feats include assassinating the head of the Soviet Security Service, and later on hijacking an oil tanker.
The Devils Alternative / int_d45c0b86	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_dcbe8a6e	type	Chekhov's Gunman
The Devils Alternative / int_dcbe8a6e	comment	Chekhov's Gunman: Lev Mishkin and David Lazareff, as the killers of KGB head Yuri Ivanenko, are the only ones who know the full details that confirms their truth. The hijacking of the Freya tanker takes place to get them out of prison. Valentina, codenamed the Nightingale, passes information to Britain and America regarding the Soviet situation.
The Devils Alternative / int_dcbe8a6e	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_f32d85ab	type	20 Minutes into the Future
The Devils Alternative / int_f32d85ab	comment	20 Minutes into the Future: The novel was written in 1979, but is set in 1982.
The Devils Alternative / int_f32d85ab	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Devils Alternative / int_f8e010ce	type	Evil Cannot Comprehend Good
The Devils Alternative / int_f8e010ce	comment	Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Vishnayev’s solution to the Soviet famine is to invade and conquer Western Europe. A devout Marxist-Leninist with zero real exposure to the West, he is blithely dismissive of the possibility of US intervention, claiming that the decadent Americans would not risk their cities being nuked for the sake of foreigners. The horrified foreign minister, who has much more experience dealing with the USA, bluntly contradicts him with a more realistic assessment.
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The Devils Alternative / int_name	itemName	The Devils Alternative

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