Gregor Zelinsky
Actor: Peter Stormare
Name: Gregor Zelinsky*Russian name:* Григорий Зелинский*Nationality:* Soviet*Affiliations:* Soviet Union, then Allied Forces*Title:* Doctor*Occupation:* Scientist*Specialisms:* Physics, relativity, time travel*Major invention:* Soviet time machine*Associates:* Anatoly Cherdenko, Nikolai Krukov, Robert Bingham*Game:* Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
Status: Alive in the Allied campaign; fate varies depending on the campaign.Gregor Zelinsky is a brilliant Soviet physicist and one of the most gifted scientists of his time. An expert in relativity and physics, he is charged by Anatoly Cherdenko with a top-secret project designed to provide the Soviet Union with a weapon of last resort: a device capable of time travel.
After around a year of research, Zelinsky achieves the impossible.
He builds a genuine time machine.
But unlike Cherdenko, Zelinsky does not immediately regard his invention as a miracle weapon.
Above all, he realises that no one knows what might happen if history were deliberately altered.
The Soviet Union’s Last Chance
In the timeline leading up to Red Alert 3, the Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse.
The Allied Forces have virtually destroyed the Red Army and Moscow is under siege. The Soviet government appears doomed.
Cherdenko then takes General Nikolai Krukov to a secret facility located beneath the Kremlin.
He introduces him to Zelinsky and reveals the existence of the project the scientist has been working on for a year.
Cherdenko’s solution is radical:if the Soviet Union cannot win the war in the present, it will change the past. Zelinsky protests immediately.
His machine has not been properly tested and no one can foresee the consequences of a major alteration to history. But Cherdenko refuses to listen to him and forces the scientist to accompany them.
1927
Zelinsky, Cherdenko and Krukov use the machine.
They are transported to Brussels in 1927, during the Solvay Conference, where they meet a young Albert Einstein.
Cherdenko knows his target inside out.
Einstein is responsible for much of the technological advantage enjoyed by the Allied Forces.
By removing him from history, Cherdenko hopes to prevent the emergence of the technologies that enabled the Allies to defeat the Soviet Union.
Zelinsky immediately realises what he is about to do.
He tries to stop Cherdenko from killing Einstein. But Krukov holds him back.
Cherdenko then shakes Einstein’s hand, causing him to vanish from the timeline.
The three men then return to their own time.
And discover a completely different world.
A new timeline
At first glance, the plan seems to have worked perfectly.
The Soviet Union still exists.
Better still, its political situation has completely changed.Anatoly Cherdenko is now Premier of the Soviet Union, Krukov commands the army and Zelinsky is regarded as one of the country’s greatest scientists.
No one else seems to remember the old timeline.
But Zelinsky quickly realises that their intervention has had consequences they had absolutely not anticipated.
The disappearance of nuclear weapons
Einstein was not only responsible for Allied military technologies.
His disappearance also prevented certain fundamental scientific developments.
In this new timeline, nuclear weapons do not exist.
This change completely alters the global geopolitical balance.
Above all, Einstein’s disappearance has paved the way for the emergence of a power that did not previously exist in this form:
the Empire of the Rising Sun. Whilst Cherdenko and Krukov are celebrating their new status, the Soviet Union receives catastrophic news.
Japan has become a technological and military superpower.
The Empire of the Rising Sun launches a massive invasion of the Soviet Union.
Zelinsky immediately realises the connection.
The world they know is a consequence of their journey through time.
It is at this moment that he utters one of his most significant lines:
“Who knows what nightmares we have created…”
The line sums up virtually his entire character:Zelinsky created the machine that was meant to save the Soviet Union, but he is the first to realise that this victory over history may have created something far worse.## Zelinsky’s remorse
Unlike Cherdenko, Zelinsky cannot bring himself to accept what they have done.
He considers himself partly responsible for the new war and the emergence of the Empire of the Rising Sun.
He therefore gradually begins to turn against the regime.
This development is significant:Zelinsky is not initially a dissident or an allied spy.
He is a Soviet scientist who eventually betrays his government because he realises that Cherdenko has used his invention to rewrite history and that the consequences are spiralling out of control.
Soviet Campaign: Revealing the Truth
In the Soviet campaign, Zelinsky eventually makes secret contact with the Soviet Commander.
The Commander has just helped destroy the main forces of the Empire of the Rising Sun and is preparing to continue the war.
Zelinsky then decides to reveal the truth to him.
He explains that Cherdenko was not always Prime Minister, and recounts the journey into the past as well as the elimination of Einstein. He asks the Commander to make the truth known.
However, the communication is cut off.
Shortly afterwards, Zelinsky disappears.
Dasha states that the Soviet services believe that Cherdenko is responsible for his disappearance.
One must therefore remain cautious regarding his fate in this campaign.
It is reasonable to assume that Cherdenko had the scientist neutralised after discovering his betrayal, but Zelinsky’s death is not explicitly shown.
Allied campaign: the defection
The Allied campaign gives Zelinsky an even more important role.
After the Battle of Tokyo, he decides this time to break completely with the Soviet Union.
Zelinsky defects to the Allied Forces. He makes contact with Field Marshal Robert Bingham and reveals the existence of the time machine to him.
The Allies thus learn that the war they are currently fighting is the result of Soviet manipulation of history.
Cherdenko and Krukov have travelled into the past.
They have eliminated Einstein.
And the entire current reality stems from this intervention.
Cherdenko’s secret plan
Zelinsky also possesses another crucial piece of information.
He warns Bingham that the Soviet Union is secretly preparing something in Cuba.
The Allies therefore send a team led by the Allied Commander and Giles Price to investigate.
They then discover the full extent of the Soviet plan.
Hangars containing modified Kirov Airships are concealed beneath several Cuban stadiums.
These craft carry extremely powerful bombs and are to be sent against the main Allied cities.
Thanks to Zelinsky’s intelligence, the operation is uncovered before it can achieve its objective.
The Allies destroy the facilities and intercept the Kirovs.
His defection therefore contributes directly to Cherdenko’s ultimate defeat.
The Fall of Cherdenko
After Cuba, the Allies go on the offensive.
Cherdenko finally attempts to leave Earth aboard a rocket, proclaiming that he is heading for the only place that has not been corrupted by capitalism:
space. However, the Allied Commander launches an assault on Leningrad and prevents his escape.
Cherdenko is captured.
In this branch of the story, Zelinsky therefore survives the war.
Imperial Campaign
The Empire of the Rising Sun campaign offers yet another version of Zelinsky’s fate.
The Japanese, too, discover the truth about their own existence.
Thanks to the spy android Howard T. Ackerman, Yoshiro and Tatsu learn that Zelinsky, Cherdenko and Krukov have altered history.
The revelation is particularly significant for the Empire.
It means that the world in which it became a superpower should never have existed in this form.
Zelinsky, in fact, regards the Empire as an aberration born of his temporal experiment.
Amsterdam
In this campaign, Zelinsky eventually joins the Allies and works in particular with FutureTech.
When the Empire attacks Amsterdam, he takes part in the efforts to halt the Japanese offensive.
In particular, he has a prototype Chronosphere at his disposal.
Facing the Imperial Commander, Zelinsky asserts that he can still rectify the temporal error from which the Empire arose.
But he will not get the chance.
The Imperial forces eventually defeat the defenders of Amsterdam.
In this narrative branch, Zelinsky’s fate is therefore linked to the Allies’ ultimate defeat at the hands of the Rising Sun.
Who is truly responsible for Red Alert 3?
Technically,Zelinsky builds the machine that makes the entire story of Red Alert 3possible.
But it would be incorrect to portray him as the true, deliberate cause of the catastrophe.
He does not decide to erase Einstein.
On the contrary:Zelinsky builds the machine → Cherdenko decides to use it → Zelinsky warns that it has not been tested → Cherdenko forces him to travel with him → Zelinsky attempts to prevent Einstein’s assassination → Krukov restrains him → Einstein disappears. Zelinsky therefore bears scientific responsibility– which he feels very keenly, incidentally – but the political and intentional responsibility lies with Cherdenko.
This sense of guilt subsequently explains his defection.
Zelinsky and Einstein
There is also a striking symmetry between Albert Einstein and Gregor Zelinsky.
Einstein sets off the first Red Alert by using a time machine to erase Adolf Hitler from history.
Decades later, Zelinsky in turn builds a time machine.
But this time, the target becomes Einstein himself.
The structure is therefore:
**Einstein creates time travel → Einstein eliminates Hitler → new Red Alert timeline → Zelinsky creates a new machine → Cherdenko eliminates Einstein → new Red Alert 3 timeline.**In both cases, the aim is to prevent a war.
In both cases,altering the past ultimately triggers a new war that the time travellers had not foreseen.
This is probably one of the central themes of the entire Red Alert saga.