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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,

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Speaker 1: which is a podcast about cool people who did stuff

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Speaker 1: cool cool stuff. It's a very specific title. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Margaret Kiljoy, and this week I've got my friend io On,

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Speaker 1: who was a designer, a comic book writer, general ne'er

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Speaker 1: do well say hello? Io? That's me Hello, Hi, thanks

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Speaker 1: for having me on. What are you famous for? Io? Oh? Oh,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna put me on? Black? I did I did

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Speaker 1: the BA do crime thing, and now I gotta live

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Speaker 1: with it. Cast I cast I cast a long shadow

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Speaker 1: upon this fallen age and now it haunts me. It

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Speaker 1: haunts me, and you know who else did crime? I

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Speaker 1: actually can't speak to their sexuality enough. Unfortunately I tried

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Speaker 1: to do that research. Oh but also speaking of crime,

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Speaker 1: we have our producer Sophie also eavesdropping if you want

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Speaker 1: to say hello hello. Um, she has us both up

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Speaker 1: to electric shock collars, but she won't need them. Will

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Speaker 1: be good. Maybe I'm not afraid of anything. So alright,

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Speaker 1: so this week you're really excited. This week we're talking

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Speaker 1: about that sixties subculture. Okay, you know you've heard of them.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sound of Summer. Yeah, they rejected everything about

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Speaker 1: their parents worldview. They refused military service, They crammed together

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Speaker 1: into flop houses, fought for women's liberation. The boys grew

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Speaker 1: their hair long, the women cut their short. Huge beard,

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Speaker 1: weird sunglasses, funny hats. You know, the disaffected student movement

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Speaker 1: that lounged around listening to poetry and started a lot

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Speaker 1: of fires until inevitably their subculture was cracked down on,

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Speaker 1: leaving only hardened revolutionaries behind who started blowing shut up.

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Speaker 1: That's right, you guested Io. We're talking about the young

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Speaker 1: nihilists of the eighteen sixties Russia. Yeah, I, oh, you've

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Speaker 1: heard of the nihilists. Yeah, oh, I've heard of the

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Speaker 1: nihilist I you know, like like any queer grew up

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Speaker 1: in the Bay Area, I've dabbed. I've dabbled in the

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Speaker 1: modern nihilism myself. But as for the historical context, um,

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Speaker 1: I more or less only really know they we're a

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Speaker 1: bunch of bunch of wicked freaks who eventually they eventually

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Speaker 1: just turned the czar into blood, and that they were

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Speaker 1: all I all I essentially know is that they were

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Speaker 1: like the Michael Jordan's of blowing guys up. That's pretty cool. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: big fan. I've always wanted to. I've always wanted to

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Speaker 1: find a book about them, but you know, life, life

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Speaker 1: gets in the way and it finds a way. But

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Speaker 1: I was just waiting for one of my friends to

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Speaker 1: have a podcast about it. They're actually a little bit

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Speaker 1: more of the Thomas the Tan Pinshion of blowing dudes up,

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Speaker 1: because explain, if they really really try, they really put

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Speaker 1: work in, they might be able to eventually do it.

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Speaker 1: Or wait, no, I actually don't. Is that timeAs the

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Speaker 1: tank engineers the little engine that could, it's the little

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Speaker 1: engine that could they both. So the shortest version, just

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Speaker 1: to get everyone acquainted, is that there was this youth

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Speaker 1: subculture in nineteenth century Russia called the Nihilists. They were

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Speaker 1: into edgy philosophy and we'll get we'll get more into

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Speaker 1: that later, but just to start understand that they wanted

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Speaker 1: to reject everything about Zara society, and in the process

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Speaker 1: they decided the best way to do that was just

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Speaker 1: end the Czar, which led them to kind of more

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Speaker 1: less invent political terrorism. Alright, So to start us off,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about not my favorite of the

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Speaker 1: nihilist but I feel like a good um, a good

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Speaker 1: example one, and I'm going to do that annoying mandatory

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Speaker 1: thing where I apologize for butchering basically every name I

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Speaker 1: run across in this uh coming hours. Um, but I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about Dmitri carcass Off. And he was

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Speaker 1: born in eighteen forty in the Russian city of Coast Roma.

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Speaker 1: He was chronically ill. He he was partially deaf. He

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Speaker 1: was not a very happy man or boy. I presume

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Speaker 1: he was the child of minor nobility, but nobility is

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Speaker 1: kind of meant a different thing in the middle of

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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century in Russia. Like he's so minor in

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Speaker 1: his nobility that history books always talk about how he's

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Speaker 1: a commoner. Um, he was not a commoner. He was nobility,

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Speaker 1: but you know, he wasn't like important nobility. Growing up

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Speaker 1: in a country without nobilities is all very alien to me, okay.

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Speaker 1: But so he goes off to university and he's a

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Speaker 1: nihilist like basically everyone else in his generation. And he

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Speaker 1: gets expelled from one school for rioting, then another school

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Speaker 1: a few years later because he wasn't paying tuition. So

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Speaker 1: we like this guy, and he joins his cousin's revolutionary

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Speaker 1: organization in Moscow called organization. It's the name of the

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Speaker 1: organization that he joins, affecting something like like the People's

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Speaker 1: Revolution or the People's put whatever in They really they

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Speaker 1: took a lunch break for that, for the naming portion.

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Speaker 1: I know, good for them. I respect that. It's like

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Speaker 1: three styles of nihilist namings. One of them is like

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Speaker 1: the People's blah blah blah Subcommittee of the Revolution of

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Speaker 1: Russia or whatever. Yeah, boring, one of them is organization.

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Speaker 1: And then there was a subsect of organization called Hell. Yeah. Oh, never,

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Speaker 1: never mind. I'm not on team organization. I'm on team Hell,

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Speaker 1: as I have been all my life. So, because organization

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Speaker 1: does a lot of propaganda and outreach and education and stuff,

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Speaker 1: Hell blackmails rich people, steal ship, and kills people, or

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Speaker 1: at least tries to. There's not a lot of concrete

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Speaker 1: information about Hell. In fact, a lot of the history

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Speaker 1: books argue about whether Hell is real, which is like

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Speaker 1: a lot of other books that argue about whether Hell's real. Okay, So,

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Speaker 1: so our boy Dmitri he's suicidal, and he decides if

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Speaker 1: he's going down, he's taking out the czar with him.

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Speaker 1: So he heads off to St Petersburg. His pockets stuff

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Speaker 1: full of manifestos and leaflets to distribute to rile up

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Speaker 1: the masses. And once he gets there, he keeps chickening

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Speaker 1: out and he kind of just like bums around St.

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Speaker 1: Petersburg trying to rile up the masses, but he keeps

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Speaker 1: getting thrown out of everywhere. He tries to stay because

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Speaker 1: he has no money and no idea. But a local

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Speaker 1: radical that we'll talk about later, who sucks, gives him

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Speaker 1: money to buy a gun. That's not what he sucks for.

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Speaker 1: He sucks about other stuff. And then a doctor gives him,

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Speaker 1: because good doctors at this time, the nihilist doctors, give

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Speaker 1: him a poison, acid and morphine. I want you to

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Speaker 1: try and guess what these various things are for. Huh, Well,

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Speaker 1: morphine for fun um, we're talking. We're talking. No acid

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Speaker 1: was the other sixties. Yeah, he had different kinds of acid. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is the disfiguring acid. Just uh, you know, hopefully

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Speaker 1: throw that in the tsar's face, pow right in the processor.

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Speaker 1: It's actually for his own face. WHOA. If he gets

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Speaker 1: away and he needs to disc figure himself, he can

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Speaker 1: he can put he can acid himself. Yeah, and if

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Speaker 1: and if he isn't going to get away, he can

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Speaker 1: take the Stryck nine and die. Mhmm. So anyway, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's roughly. But he was essentially trying to do like

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Speaker 1: one of the most elaborate suicide by cops. Yeah. Yeah, basically,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to kill the monarch and then die is

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Speaker 1: kind of like his plan. But everyone's a little like,

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Speaker 1: don't carry yourself, bud, But they're also a little like,

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Speaker 1: I mean, fill this out though, that's cool. Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: he waits outside the winter gardens, the small crowd eager

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Speaker 1: to see our man's our Alexander the second Star comes

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Speaker 1: out and Dmitri draws his gun and he misses. Not

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Speaker 1: a lot of times spent at the range. You gotta understand,

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Speaker 1: he just he just got the gun. He ain't that

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Speaker 1: Ain't that just the way. And so here's where I

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Speaker 1: get into there's like, there's fucking propaganda everywhere all over

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Speaker 1: the history of all of this off and I maybe

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Speaker 1: someone in the crowd jostled him. The monarchist propaganda at

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Speaker 1: the time wants you to believe that someone jostled him

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Speaker 1: because the people they love their father, they love the

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Speaker 1: father's are and that's why this man jostled his elbow

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Speaker 1: or whatever and the gun misfired. The Bolsheviks, on their part,

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Speaker 1: are like, no, everyone hated the Tsar and it never

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Speaker 1: happened in it was total lie and we don't know

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Speaker 1: what happened, but maybe maybe he got jostled. Either way,

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Speaker 1: he misses, and he also probably never takes a second

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Speaker 1: shot in his two barrel gun. He gets captured, the

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Speaker 1: Ar comes over and he says to him, what do

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Speaker 1: you want? Nothing? Dmitri answers, because he's a fucking nihilist.

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Speaker 1: Nothing and Dmitri, we don't make demands. Yeah, he's just

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Speaker 1: And so I feel like he's like such a good

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Speaker 1: character to start with because he literally tries to shoot

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Speaker 1: the Zar and says he wants nothing. Uh. So he

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Speaker 1: gets thrown in the Fortress of St. Peter and Paul,

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Speaker 1: which keeps coming up over and over again in this story.

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Speaker 1: It's basically the cool kids prison. Um, it's where the

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Speaker 1: cool kids get sent for doing cool shit. Uh. He

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Speaker 1: also then gets hanged, which is happens to way too

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Speaker 1: many cool kids, including in this story. None of his

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Speaker 1: pals get hanged, though his cousin the sort of leader

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Speaker 1: of both hell and organization gets like mock executed. He's

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Speaker 1: up on the gallows and they put the noose around

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Speaker 1: his neck and then they kill his cousin and then

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Speaker 1: they get to him and they're like no, just kidding,

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Speaker 1: and they take the news off. Just just Josh and yeah,

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Speaker 1: which actually means he could do that meme where he's

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Speaker 1: on he has a noose around his neck and he

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Speaker 1: says like first time to the next guy, you know,

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Speaker 1: if he gets if he gets back up there, and

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Speaker 1: he didn't. He really missed an opportunity to be funny.

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Speaker 1: I know, he really could have. The meme wasn't out yet,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, um so he instead he got sent to

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Speaker 1: Siberia and went insane. And actually there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: people in the story who go insane from repression, especially

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Speaker 1: in Siberia. It seems like Beery will do that to

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Speaker 1: you that that's the impression I get that in like

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Speaker 1: solitary confinement and prison and general. Yeah, that's why that's

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Speaker 1: why they still do it. Anyway, Yeah, what I thought

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Speaker 1: all this was fixed. Now, this is a story about history,

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Speaker 1: pal There's no Russian autocrats that need killing. This is

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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. We're talking about you're you're right, I'm

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Speaker 1: getting I'm getting into bummer territory. Anyway, let's talk about

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Speaker 1: the guys who wanted to die killing the R. Yeah, well, okay,

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Speaker 1: let's talk about another guy dead really quick, the arm Jostler.

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Speaker 1: He gets held up as like a propaganda hero everyone

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Speaker 1: the monarchists sort of like, hooray arm Josseler whose name

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Speaker 1: I didn't bother to, right down, and they give him

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Speaker 1: hereditary nobility. He's this commoner and they give him a

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Speaker 1: hereditary nobility, whereupon he drinks himself to death fairly quickly. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so now we know that nihilism involves at least attempting

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Speaker 1: to shoot the R and saying you want nothing beyond that.

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Speaker 1: We need to talk about with nile ism is and

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Speaker 1: everyone thinks that nihilism means something, and everyone thinks something

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Speaker 1: different than the other people who think that they know

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Speaker 1: what nihilism means. Mm hmm. The annoying thing is that

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Speaker 1: all of those people are right. Yeah. Yeah, there's so

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Speaker 1: many definitions of nihilism to the point where it's kind

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Speaker 1: of a meaningless word from my point of view. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: let's pretend like it has a meaning. Come come to

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Speaker 1: come to the same conclusion like in my in my youth,

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Speaker 1: I think I interpreted it basically like a sort of

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Speaker 1: like a more active sort of Taoism for lack for

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Speaker 1: lack of a better comparison, like I was just you know,

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Speaker 1: the I it's very romantic, extreme acts as affirmations of

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Speaker 1: life and knowing life wasn't meant to be this way,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't meant to be any sort of way. Um,

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Speaker 1: But we wound up with this nightmare anyway. And there's

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Speaker 1: nothing more cool than you can that you and do

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Speaker 1: with life than taking revenge upon the forces that made

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Speaker 1: it this way. Um. But yeah, nihilism is a nonsense word.

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Speaker 1: That's why I still that's why I still like it.

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Speaker 1: You actually would have done really well with the Russian

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Speaker 1: Nihilists with that particular definition. That's great, Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: thank you. So the Russian Nihilists weren't the very first

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Speaker 1: time that the word nihilist was used. It was like

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Speaker 1: kind of thrown around as like a pejorative to describe

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Speaker 1: medieval heretics, and I guess sometimes like against various philosophers

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Speaker 1: or something, But these are the first people to call

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Speaker 1: themselves nihilists, at least in any kind of large number,

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Speaker 1: and interesting politically, they weren't actually necessarily incredibly radical. Most

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Speaker 1: of them. There were like anarchists amongst them, and some

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Speaker 1: of them ended up Marxists later once Marxism hit Russia,

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Speaker 1: but overall most of them would probably be like Bernie

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Speaker 1: guys and stuff today. Um, Like, most of them were

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Speaker 1: like progressives and social democrats. But the thing is is that,

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Speaker 1: like when you live within absolute dictator and everything is terrible,

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Speaker 1: like really really terrible, being a progressive or social democrat

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Speaker 1: actually makes you incredibly radical, so radical that you might

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Speaker 1: you know, throw bombs of people. Yeah, the terrain is

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Speaker 1: quite different. Um okay, And actually you did a pretty

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Speaker 1: good job of defining nihilism. They're they're specific thing was

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Speaker 1: that basically was the rejection of the existence rather than

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Speaker 1: like it. They didn't reject the idea that something might

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Speaker 1: replace the existent, but that's not what they were focused on.

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Speaker 1: So it wasn't like nothing better could ever happen, But

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Speaker 1: it's like, we're not focused on that. What we're focused

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Speaker 1: on is destroying the existence. Um yeah, And it wasn't

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Speaker 1: just be political go ahead to have to imagine that

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Speaker 1: you're going to both like diagnose the problem and come

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Speaker 1: up with the cure. Is kind of like kills a

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Speaker 1: lot of people in in there like revolutionary thought, like

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Speaker 1: at the beginning of them sort of thinking that way.

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Speaker 1: Um oh yeah, because they don't have all the answers yet. Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, what, well, you know, this sucks, but what

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Speaker 1: else am I supposed to do? Oh that this idea

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Speaker 1: could turn out even worse? And that's I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: imagining that one a human has like a lifespan far

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Speaker 1: longer than you do. We're not elves who are gonna

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Speaker 1: like be able to build the world after after the

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Speaker 1: Great War happens or whatever. Um. But you don't need

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Speaker 1: to really be like a genius or have a degree

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Speaker 1: to be like, wow, this ship ships really fucked. And

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Speaker 1: I think we should all be willing to take the

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Speaker 1: chance that we maybe won't know exactly where to go

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Speaker 1: after destroying this old order. And sounds like that's what

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Speaker 1: they were all about, and I'm down with it, especially

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Speaker 1: when you have an absolute monarch like in Russia, which

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Speaker 1: seemed to be kind of for that time period, really

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Speaker 1: a really unique sort of monarch on the world, on

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Speaker 1: the world stage. Yeah, as as far as ordained by God.

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Speaker 1: Dudes who can do whatever they want. Go. Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: managed to hold on to some autocracy past past pretty

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Speaker 1: much everyone else, at least in Um, at least in Europe.

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Speaker 1: Um they were they were good at that those was

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Speaker 1: it the Romanovs. You'd think i'd know because I just

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Speaker 1: did all this research and I'm doing a podcast about it,

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Speaker 1: But I'm actually less focused on Yeah, I'm less focused

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Speaker 1: on the bad people. Well, in my mind, the bad

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Speaker 1: people are the Czars that the good people are trying

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Speaker 1: to kill Bazars, So I'm more focused on them. But

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Speaker 1: that's nice, perrtue. Yeah. Um, but okay, so it was

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Speaker 1: a rejection not only the political order, but it was

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Speaker 1: also a rejection of basically Russian society and it's like

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Speaker 1: standard and f X, and it was a rejection of

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Speaker 1: the Orthodox Church. But it actually wasn't necessarily atheistic. It

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Speaker 1: was more agnostic in character, which also was kind of

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Speaker 1: cool to me. Um, And it rejected social norms and

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Speaker 1: gender relations. It also rejected high fashion. And I put

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Speaker 1: in here my notes that this is the place where,

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Speaker 1: if I really wanted to, I could talk about dialectics

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Speaker 1: and how it's a dialectical process. But I'm not going to.

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Speaker 1: You know, I thought you were going to say, if

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Speaker 1: I really wanted to, I could talk about crass, because

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Speaker 1: because immediately I was just like hell, yeah like crass. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so crass is more interesting to me in the dialectics.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, snooze, snooze fest. I will say that, Okay.

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Speaker 1: One of their main influences was before the anarchist author

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Speaker 1: bakun In was an anarchist. He was just a revolutionist.

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Speaker 1: And in eighteen forty two he wrote an essay called

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Speaker 1: Reaction in Germany, and he has the following quote, which

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Speaker 1: is one of the more interesting, I think quotes of

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Speaker 1: bacun In and of nineteenth century politics. Let us therefore

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Speaker 1: trust the eternal spirit, which just stroys and annihilates, only

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Speaker 1: because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life.

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Speaker 1: The passion for destruction is a creative passion too. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: he got he got some stuff right. Yeah, you didn't

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Speaker 1: get everything right. And we're actually gonna get into some

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Speaker 1: stuff he got wrong in this episode. Oh good, I

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Speaker 1: love to dunk on that dead old man. Most of

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Speaker 1: what's written about the Nihilists talks about where they are

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Speaker 1: in terms of political philosophy. Um, But as far as

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Speaker 1: I can tell, the average nihilists really didn't care about that.

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Speaker 1: Most actively rejected political participation. And I think it's like

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Speaker 1: less useful to talk about, like, here's how the nihilists

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Speaker 1: react to the young Hegelians and the relationship between materialism

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Speaker 1: and idealism. But instead, I'm going to argue that the

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Speaker 1: more interesting way to describe the nihilists might be they

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Speaker 1: all wore blue tinted glasses day and night, and the

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Speaker 1: men grew their hair long and the women cut their short,

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Speaker 1: and they hung out in graveyards and they got into

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Speaker 1: fist fights with seminary students because first and foremost, at

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Speaker 1: the very beginning, it was a subculture or a counterculture,

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Speaker 1: and it was a fucking interesting one. And they they

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Speaker 1: basically they were trying to live their lives and take

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Speaker 1: agency over their own fate in a way that had

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Speaker 1: been denied to them, which of course eventually led to

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Speaker 1: assassinations and bombings and basically inventing political terrorism in the

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Speaker 1: modern sense, because they were just trying to live their

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Speaker 1: weird lives. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna split nihilism

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Speaker 1: into into two parts. And I'm stealing this, this dichotomy

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Speaker 1: or way of understanding it from an indigenous nihilist anarchist

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Speaker 1: named Ericorn who was alive until very recently. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: he called the first part of it foundational nihilism, and

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Speaker 1: then that developed into revolutionary nihilism. So those are the

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Speaker 1: those are the two parts. And the revolutionary nihilists they

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Speaker 1: dropped a lot of the subcultural fashion, but they captain

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Speaker 1: intensified the rejection of the current order. And Okay, so

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Speaker 1: just like the word nihilism itself, who wasn't wasn't a

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Speaker 1: nihilist is really blurry and really up to subjective analysis.

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Speaker 1: Some of the people who are in this story who

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Speaker 1: I'm going to call nihilists are going to be called

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Speaker 1: nihilists by history and all of these things. And they

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Speaker 1: might have hung out with nihilists, but they might have

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Speaker 1: personally been like, well, I'm not a nihilist, I'm a

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Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. Right. The important thing is

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Speaker 1: the real nihilist wouldn't give a ship if you describe

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Speaker 1: them that way or not. Yeah, I think that that's true.

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Speaker 1: If we can get if we can get a medium

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Speaker 1: in here to ask them. That's how we'll know. Yeah, Yeah, Sophie, Actually,

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Speaker 1: could we get a medium for part two? At least

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Speaker 1: just one? I'd love to have different opinions. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: feel like I feel like if we're gonna, if we're

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Speaker 1: gonna do this, there should be at least three so

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Speaker 1: that we have you know that twink who has a

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Speaker 1: Netflix show where he talks to dead people. Um and

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Speaker 1: Miss Cleo. Turns out, I don't know many mediums along

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Speaker 1: the Long Island Medium from from Really Bad Caple TV

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Speaker 1: and the Long Island Medium, get the get them in

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Speaker 1: here right away. I'll wait. So while we're waiting, let's

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Speaker 1: do some background on Russia. Okay, I actually feel like

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Speaker 1: this does matter, and because one of the things I

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Speaker 1: learned while while doing this research is that all of

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Speaker 1: the things that tie into it and create the contexts

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Speaker 1: are so important to understand why they're rejecting what they're rejecting.

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Speaker 1: And the other thing I've learned about doing this research

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Speaker 1: is that everyone has an opinion about Russia, and everyone's

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Speaker 1: opinion about Russia absolutely flavors what they think about what

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Speaker 1: actually happened and what people thought and what mattered to

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Speaker 1: whom and even just the objective facts of what happened,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's all partisan. Basically, everyone who writes Russian

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Speaker 1: history has like an opinion about what happens in nineteen seventeen.

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Speaker 1: I also have an opinion about what happens in nineteen seventeen,

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Speaker 1: but I'm not going to talk about my opinion about

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. And I'm trying to take the Nihilis on

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Speaker 1: their on their own as much as I can. I

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Speaker 1: don't have an opinion on nineteen seventeen, but that's because

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Speaker 1: I'm humble. That's why we brought you on. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: I and I can't abide arguing with Tanky's on Twitter,

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Speaker 1: where I would inevitably develop more opinions on it. Yeah. See,

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Speaker 1: that's that's that's my fault, that's my grant fault. You

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Speaker 1: got you gotta life. Life is too short. That's what

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to learn in this rudderless world. You cannot

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Speaker 1: you cannot content yourself with arguing with Tanky's on Twitter.

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Speaker 1: It's not good for you. It's not good for you, Margaret.

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Speaker 1: But you're trying to remove my one source of joy

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Speaker 1: in this world. Okay, So I'm going to talk about surfs,

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Speaker 1: and that's where you thought, I assume this would come

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Speaker 1: understanding serfdom. I feel like it's important understanding everything that's

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Speaker 1: going on in Russia and basically a surface like kind

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Speaker 1: of halfway between an enslaved person and a peasant, though

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Speaker 1: to be honest, they're closer to when a slave person

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Speaker 1: than a peasant. It's basically the idea that there's people

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Speaker 1: who belong to the land, and whoever owns the l

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Speaker 1: and owns the people who are on the land. If

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Speaker 1: you sell the land, the people stay with it. If

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Speaker 1: you're born a surf, you die a surf. They're the

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Speaker 1: property of the owner. There's also house surfs, and they

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Speaker 1: don't they're like, don't even have any land to work on.

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Speaker 1: And actually Russia experimented with basically factory surfs, which let

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Speaker 1: urban rich own their workers as well. Yeah, they're really

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Speaker 1: ahead of the curve on this. And the one advantage

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Speaker 1: of being a surf is that you supposedly aren't supposed

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Speaker 1: to be able to be ripped apart from your family

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Speaker 1: and sold to a neighbor because you belong to the

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Speaker 1: land instead, and there are ostensible limitations on what owners

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Speaker 1: could do too inserfed people. I don't know the polite

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Speaker 1: way to say, someone who has made a surf by

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Speaker 1: society somebody and so okay. So. But the thing, one

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Speaker 1: of the things that's most interesting me about this is

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Speaker 1: that everyone talks about how backwards Russia is, and Russia

398
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Speaker 1: was very backwards, that they got rid of all of

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Speaker 1: these things way later than everyone else. They still got

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Speaker 1: rid of serfdom before the US got rid of chattel

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Speaker 1: slavery um, and back in the day in Russia like

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Speaker 1: everywhere else, used chattel slavery um. But by sixteen seventy

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Speaker 1: nine the field slaves were converted into surfs, and in

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Speaker 1: seventeen twenty three the house slaves were converted into surfs.

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Speaker 1: And this didn't really change that much for most of

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Speaker 1: the people who had been enslaved um. Some laws got

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Speaker 1: put into place, no one was really enforcing them. People

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Speaker 1: still got sold internationally, there was a lot of It

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Speaker 1: wasn't like a good deal. It wasn't a good thing

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Speaker 1: to be a surf. Uh. They The way they lived though,

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Speaker 1: was that they basically lived in communes. They would be

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Speaker 1: part of their household, which would be part of a village,

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Speaker 1: which should be part of a commune, and the communes

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Speaker 1: were sort of autonomously run and very egalitarian lee run.

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Speaker 1: They would be run in such a way where like

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Speaker 1: the farmland was divided up into strips. I think it's

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Speaker 1: called strip farming, which said's very different than like strip mining,

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Speaker 1: for example, And basically so that way by having these

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Speaker 1: like long strips of land, everyone gets some decent land.

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Speaker 1: And so a commune's farming wasn't everyone farms the communal fields.

421
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:13,000
Speaker 1: It was like everyone farms their little chunk, and but

422
00:24:13,080 --> 00:24:15,760
Speaker 1: those are arranged so that everyone has equal access to

423
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:18,800
Speaker 1: the ability to produce. And what happens at the end

424
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:21,200
Speaker 1: of that is then their owners take about a third

425
00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:25,000
Speaker 1: of everything they produce and also make them do extra labor.

426
00:24:25,240 --> 00:24:29,280
Speaker 1: About a third of their labor is also getting used

427
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 1: for whatever purposes. And once again you run into weird

428
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:38,240
Speaker 1: bias in terms of everything you read about it, because

429
00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:42,479
Speaker 1: everyone wants to like compare everything to US slavery, and

430
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:46,640
Speaker 1: usually their goal is to kind of downplay chattel slavery

431
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:48,960
Speaker 1: in the US, Like everyone's trying to be like, oh,

432
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:54,440
Speaker 1: everyone had this stuff, It's fine, it was a rough

433
00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:57,280
Speaker 1: time all over. What do you want? What do you want? Yeah, exactly,

434
00:24:58,240 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, uh, and they're just really different

435
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:04,400
Speaker 1: and they shouldn't be compared. It's like my primary takeaway

436
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:08,760
Speaker 1: from all of the work I've done about it. And yeah,

437
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:12,119
Speaker 1: the only the only take I've ever heard uh that

438
00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:15,080
Speaker 1: I was like, huh, all right, point is they were like, well,

439
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:20,719
Speaker 1: you know, at least surfs got like off compared compared

440
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 1: to know. Oh yeah, that's true. There's the whole like

441
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:27,879
Speaker 1: feudalism actually leaves you with more free time than modern capitalism.

442
00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 1: You're talking about that I have to do something after

443
00:25:30,320 --> 00:25:37,359
Speaker 1: this call. I don't know what you're talking about. Um, yeah, okay.

444
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:40,400
Speaker 1: So but people in Russia knew that surfdom was bad,

445
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:43,400
Speaker 1: and for a lot of different reasons. Mostly people thought

446
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,920
Speaker 1: surfdom was bad because it didn't really allow like industrialization

447
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:49,320
Speaker 1: and capitalism and for everyone to like compete on the

448
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 1: world stage. Is not that they actually cared about how

449
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:55,280
Speaker 1: people lived. And maybe like people shouldn't like own a guy,

450
00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 1: you know, like just overall, like as a general rule,

451
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:00,560
Speaker 1: that's like not where people were at, but people were

452
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:05,560
Speaker 1: there a good bedrock to build on. People should own guy.

453
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:12,359
Speaker 1: This is a broad categorization and so in eighteen fifty five,

454
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 1: Czar Alexander the Second comes into power after the death

455
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:18,280
Speaker 1: of Nicholas the First. Nicholas the First was like a

456
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:21,919
Speaker 1: classic tyrant, and Alexander the Second was an absolute monarch,

457
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:25,000
Speaker 1: but he was like a reformer. And his whole thing

458
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:26,639
Speaker 1: is he kind of people try and paint him as

459
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:29,119
Speaker 1: like a reformer because he cared about people, and he

460
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: probably cared about people a little bit, but he basically,

461
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:33,920
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, he was a reformer

462
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:37,919
Speaker 1: because he didn't want everyone to overthrow him, and he

463
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:40,280
Speaker 1: thought that maybe some reforms would keep that from happening.

464
00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:42,840
Speaker 1: And then also he really was aware of how backwards

465
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 1: Russia was compared to everyone else, and so he wanted

466
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 1: to bring some capitalism and industrialization to the picture. Yeah,

467
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:56,199
Speaker 1: it's it always struck me reading world leaders from the

468
00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 1: worst possible standpoint um that one, he was embarrassed for

469
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:04,159
Speaker 1: his country, as well he should be, and he just

470
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 1: wanted to make a big show of these phantom pangs

471
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:09,640
Speaker 1: of a non existent conscience that he kept getting. Yeah,

472
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:13,280
Speaker 1: I like that phrasing a lot. So in in eighteen

473
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:15,360
Speaker 1: sixty one, I keep almost say in nineteen sixty one,

474
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:20,040
Speaker 1: but the century that matters. Here's eighteen hundreds. Um, the

475
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:23,160
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty one, he he frees the surfs with

476
00:27:23,359 --> 00:27:26,399
Speaker 1: a stroke of his pen. And when he does this,

477
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:29,280
Speaker 1: he basically like locks them all into into debt and

478
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 1: into continued servitude, but just from a capitalist point of view. Instead, uh,

479
00:27:35,520 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 1: he the peasants now owe him a lot of money

480
00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:42,119
Speaker 1: for the land that they are given, which is the

481
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:45,160
Speaker 1: worst land. And then he is like gives the money

482
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:47,800
Speaker 1: to the nobles who have lost their property or whatever.

483
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:52,679
Speaker 1: And so surf's got a really shitty deal, except kind

484
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 1: of interestingly, the surfs in Poland got a way better deal.

485
00:27:56,280 --> 00:27:59,440
Speaker 1: And the reason is that Bizarre hated Poland and one

486
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 1: of the noble to suffer, so he made the serfs

487
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 1: have a better time there, which really goes to show

488
00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 1: like he does not care about people. Uh what he

489
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 1: sees the nobles as more representing Poland than the majority

490
00:28:14,359 --> 00:28:18,440
Speaker 1: of Poland. And yeah yeah um. And so these were

491
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 1: called redemption payments and they were the serfs owed them

492
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:24,200
Speaker 1: for their freedom until nineteen o seven, almost fifty years later, which,

493
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:27,400
Speaker 1: of course, if you know about like the Haitian Revolution,

494
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:30,640
Speaker 1: when Haiti won its independence in they wind up owing

495
00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 1: France and their former enslavers would amounted to one billion

496
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:37,440
Speaker 1: dollars in today's money. So this is like a thing

497
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 1: that they like, you know, people like doing. It's a

498
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:43,520
Speaker 1: a if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yeah, we

499
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 1: want you to stay poor and locked into this particular

500
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:50,800
Speaker 1: economic system. And also those are didn't bother free in

501
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: the state owned serfs until five years later, and we

502
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:57,960
Speaker 1: too live under a system of capitalism. Here's some ads

503
00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 1: and we're back and we're talking about the serfs, and

504
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:09,920
Speaker 1: we're talking about how Czar Alexander the second sort of

505
00:29:10,120 --> 00:29:13,480
Speaker 1: read them and he stayed in Autocrat, but he gave

506
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:16,760
Speaker 1: himself the name of the Czar Liberator and people were like, okay,

507
00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:20,320
Speaker 1: cool constitution and he was like, no, you don't understand.

508
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:23,080
Speaker 1: I was chosen by God to rule Russia. You can't

509
00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: rule yourselves because you know autocrat. Oh you don't want

510
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 1: to get God angry? No, yeah, that's true. Imagine what

511
00:29:30,760 --> 00:29:36,240
Speaker 1: would have happened and it's cold, chill runs from my spine. Yeah,

512
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:41,240
Speaker 1: Hell would have been involved somehow. Oh, I can't avoid

513
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 1: that forever. But back to our story. So there were

514
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: other there were other reforms that he made that also mattered. Um.

515
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: He overhauled the taxes to encourage entrepreneurship. A state bank

516
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:56,440
Speaker 1: was founded. There was more local governments in the form

517
00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 1: of what we're called the Zemstva, which is the plural

518
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 1: of zemps foe. And they also kind of more importantly

519
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:07,120
Speaker 1: to our story, the universities were more. Universities were opened.

520
00:30:07,280 --> 00:30:09,960
Speaker 1: Women were allowed to audit some classes. They weren't allowed

521
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: to attend, God forbid, but they were allowed to go

522
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 1: learn a little bit, and public education became available to

523
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 1: more people, and for a brief period of time, they

524
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 1: universities were even given some autonomy about what they taught

525
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 1: until people started learning stuff and thinking for themselves and

526
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: putting on scary, scary blue glasses and also starting fires everywhere.

527
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:38,600
Speaker 1: So that will happen. You gotta gotta get rid of

528
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 1: the blue glass of salesman first than the university professors

529
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:49,040
Speaker 1: teaching I don't know anything other than flatters stuff basically,

530
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:53,640
Speaker 1: And so everyone is convinced, oh wow, these serfs got

531
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 1: a bum deal and they're gonna know it and they're

532
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 1: going to revolt, and that's what everyone is like, that's

533
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 1: going to happen, and so that's the stage onto which

534
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:12,320
Speaker 1: steps are heroes. The nihilists ray there all right, mew beu,

535
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:16,000
Speaker 1: that's my airhorn. It probably started eighteen fifty five, about

536
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 1: six years before the serfs were freed. It did not

537
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:20,320
Speaker 1: have a name. They did not have a name for themselves.

538
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: They were just a subculture, and they were mostly young students.

539
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 1: Some of them came from the upper classes, let people

540
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 1: had long had access to higher education, and they were

541
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:32,760
Speaker 1: like revolting against their parents generation, like the whole thing

542
00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: is a lot of funk, you dad energy. But the

543
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 1: bulk of them were this class called the razno chintzi,

544
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:41,479
Speaker 1: which I might be pronouncing correctly and I might not

545
00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 1: be pronouncing correctly, and which could most easily translate at

546
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 1: the time to the lower middle class or the classless people,

547
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: as it's sometimes called. A hundred years earlier, it had

548
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:54,520
Speaker 1: meant the miscellaneous minor nobles, but by this point it

549
00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:57,120
Speaker 1: actually doesn't mean nobility at all. This is the lower

550
00:31:57,160 --> 00:31:59,800
Speaker 1: middle class. This is like the children of clerks and

551
00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:04,320
Speaker 1: clergy and low ranking officers and people who had previously

552
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:06,719
Speaker 1: not been able to be students, but now they were

553
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 1: allowed as commoners to go to university. And people were

554
00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:12,280
Speaker 1: fucking into it. And so this is where you first

555
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 1: get the like lower class intelligencia. And everything about this

556
00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:20,320
Speaker 1: subculture was rooted in the fact that like we are

557
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: like science nerds, we are intelligentsia. Everything about their aesthetic,

558
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 1: their mannerisms. Um, it's like if the hippies were just nerds.

559
00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 1: I'm putting together some dots with some people in my life. Yeah,

560
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:38,360
Speaker 1: maybe maybe that ought to get cut, but whatever. Yeah,

561
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:43,320
Speaker 1: we've all met these people, you know. Yeah, And and

562
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:47,640
Speaker 1: they were actually revolutionarily subcultural. Subcultural people kind of talk

563
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:49,480
Speaker 1: about the subculture is just like this thing that they

564
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:52,040
Speaker 1: had to go through before they could like actually do

565
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:56,240
Speaker 1: the real work of politics. But the subculture itself got

566
00:32:56,240 --> 00:33:00,640
Speaker 1: them facing constant repression because they were, you know, wearing

567
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:04,760
Speaker 1: the wrong clothes and like basically scaring people by their existence.

568
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 1: There's some like chicken in the egg question about like

569
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: did they start setting fires around St. Petersburg before they

570
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:12,440
Speaker 1: were repressed or after they were you know, like, um,

571
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:16,320
Speaker 1: like we don't, I totally don't know exactly how it

572
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 1: maps out, but as as somebody hasn't always been politically active,

573
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:23,640
Speaker 1: but who has been young before? Young people love to

574
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 1: start fires, like who knows who cares totally? Is there

575
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 1: information about like if it's started in a I've always pictured, um,

576
00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 1: these people starting as like a I learned about it

577
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:42,560
Speaker 1: as like a little bit of a subculture, but it's

578
00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 1: it's surprising to see like the parallels between like any

579
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:51,200
Speaker 1: other subculture that I know about, except they like had

580
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:55,520
Speaker 1: a more less like going to shows or doing art

581
00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:58,440
Speaker 1: or getting drunk together thing and more like going to

582
00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: kill cops together thing. Um. Did it center around a

583
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: specific city at first? Or was it just a what

584
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:10,880
Speaker 1: like this thing that settled over Russia where where a

585
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:12,880
Speaker 1: lot of the youth were like, you know, what funk this?

586
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:16,040
Speaker 1: And they all kind of came to the same fairly

587
00:34:16,080 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: obvious conclusion, which is burned down. Well, okay, so they

588
00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:22,839
Speaker 1: actually did meet at shows and and all of that

589
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 1: stuff too, And I'm going to talk about in the minute,

590
00:34:25,040 --> 00:34:27,799
Speaker 1: same as it ever was. Exactly, it's all the same

591
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:30,000
Speaker 1: as it ever was. I personally can't point to a

592
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:32,840
Speaker 1: specific city where it started because it started so amorphous.

593
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:35,560
Speaker 1: Lee there was about six or seven years before it

594
00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 1: even had its name where it was starting to develop.

595
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:42,919
Speaker 1: I only personally read more about the Nihilis of St.

596
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: Petersburg and Moscow, and so my like instinct is that

597
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:48,719
Speaker 1: it more started there, but I honestly couldn't tell you.

598
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 1: But I am gonna but now I'm gonna tell you

599
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:54,399
Speaker 1: about their subculture and how fucking cool they were. And yeah,

600
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:58,799
Speaker 1: first I'm going to quote. I'm gonna quote from an

601
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:02,680
Speaker 1: anonymous article called Dressed to Kill Illegal Dandyism that came

602
00:35:02,680 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 1: out about ten years ago. And to be clear, it

603
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:06,920
Speaker 1: came out in a magazine that I edited, but I

604
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:09,279
Speaker 1: didn't actually write this. A lot of people think I

605
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:12,279
Speaker 1: wrote it, but I did not. Um this is how

606
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 1: I first learned about the Nihilists, was the person who

607
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:18,400
Speaker 1: submitted this article to me. And unfortunately, some of the

608
00:35:18,440 --> 00:35:20,279
Speaker 1: information in this article is a little bit harder to

609
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:23,880
Speaker 1: track down with other sources. This particular article, because the

610
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:27,000
Speaker 1: author comes from has more access to an Eastern European

611
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:33,319
Speaker 1: context and non English sources. Okay, so the Nihilists, they

612
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:36,399
Speaker 1: fancied wearing blue sunglasses even at night, and wearing long

613
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 1: black silk jackets, cutting a style of the priestly robe,

614
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 1: but adorned with intricate designs. Young Nihilist men kept their

615
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:46,040
Speaker 1: hair long and unmanaged, while the women streaked their hair

616
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:49,520
Speaker 1: with lye and braided cotton fuses into it. Both male

617
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 1: and female nihilists took to adorning their clothes with dried

618
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:55,040
Speaker 1: flowers pilfered from the graveyards where they often met. The

619
00:35:55,080 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 1: men carried straight razors sheathed on their belts in case

620
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:00,680
Speaker 1: they decided to take their own lives at any moment,

621
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:03,520
Speaker 1: and the female nihilists strolled the seats streets of St.

622
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:07,480
Speaker 1: Petersburg with lockets filled with poison, deadly sharp hat pins

623
00:36:07,680 --> 00:36:11,320
Speaker 1: and gentleman's walking sticks. Both male and female nihilists smoked

624
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:16,359
Speaker 1: with elongated and oriental ivory cigarette holders. And there's some

625
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:20,360
Speaker 1: stuff in there that doesn't come up elsewhere about specifically

626
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:23,800
Speaker 1: anything that's about ornamentation, because a lot of their stuff

627
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,919
Speaker 1: that you read about now is about how they rejected ornamentation.

628
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:29,399
Speaker 1: But as I'm gonna get to in a little bit,

629
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 1: they also really consciously rejected ornamentation in this way that

630
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 1: actually meant they put an enormous amount of effort into

631
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 1: looking like they weren't pretty effort into what they did.

632
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: It's all that's all really exciting to hear about, because

633
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: from like the sort of cursory understanding I had about

634
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:51,080
Speaker 1: them before, which is why I'm like brought up crass earlier,

635
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 1: because I heard like they just dressed in straight up

636
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:59,160
Speaker 1: like black button nuts and black pants and black shoes

637
00:36:59,200 --> 00:37:02,480
Speaker 1: and more black sun glasses at all times. To hear

638
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:07,239
Speaker 1: that they had had some panash, some flair to it. Hell, yeah,

639
00:37:07,640 --> 00:37:09,840
Speaker 1: I love these This sounds like, sounds like my friends.

640
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:13,879
Speaker 1: I love them. The stealing of the dried flowers from

641
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:22,320
Speaker 1: light tube stoves, Yeah, it's so edgy, braiding cotton fuses

642
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 1: into your head. I wrote that down, like remember to

643
00:37:26,239 --> 00:37:31,160
Speaker 1: do start doing okay, and the other thing that the

644
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:34,319
Speaker 1: same article talks about that Again, because so little of

645
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 1: the English language stuff focuses on their time as a subculture,

646
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:41,360
Speaker 1: I couldn't find as much information about. But apparently seminary

647
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:43,880
Speaker 1: students would come out and fight them in the graveyards

648
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 1: and in the streets, and if the seminary students won,

649
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 1: they'd cut the men's hair and the like, shred the

650
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: women's masculine clothes. They don't quite say what the the

651
00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:56,600
Speaker 1: nihilists would do if they want, I don't know, um

652
00:37:56,680 --> 00:38:00,480
Speaker 1: And but later a different person is quoted as saying

653
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:02,959
Speaker 1: that the Czar if he saw a Nihilist or any

654
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:07,479
Speaker 1: young student at all, he shook with fear. I've I've

655
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 1: heard that one, and boy, yeah it's it's more than

656
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:13,279
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago. But I get a lot of

657
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:18,640
Speaker 1: delight thinking about that. That nasty old fuck just shaken

658
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: in his boots when he saw somebody in sunglasses. Yeah,

659
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: which I mean, it makes sense because a lot of

660
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,000
Speaker 1: them tried to kill him, and eventually some of them

661
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:35,680
Speaker 1: even succeeded. Spoiler spoiler alert. Yeah, sorry, sorry, he's our fans.

662
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:40,520
Speaker 1: But he gets he gets blowed up, he gets exploded. Um,

663
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: how many people have tried at this point? Do we know?

664
00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:47,280
Speaker 1: I guess we're sort of talking about. This is early,

665
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 1: pretty wide period this. Yeah, and actually what I'm talking

666
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:52,919
Speaker 1: about right now is before anyone has tried. The first

667
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:58,160
Speaker 1: attempt on the Tsar's life is eighteen six, Is that, Dimitri? Yeah,

668
00:38:58,200 --> 00:39:00,200
Speaker 1: he's the first one in eighteen sixty six, just a

669
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:03,320
Speaker 1: little bit after the initial stuff that I'm currently talking about.

670
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:06,960
Speaker 1: Oh okay. He actually marks the sort of end of

671
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 1: the foundational period of the Nihilists and starts the revolutionary

672
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:13,520
Speaker 1: period of the Nihilists because he takes it to the

673
00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:18,560
Speaker 1: shooty phase. But so for now they're all crazy radical students.

674
00:39:19,840 --> 00:39:24,399
Speaker 1: And the blue sunglasses they wore weren't sunglasses. It turns out,

675
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 1: I had to do it. Took me a while digging

676
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 1: through to figure this out. They were reading glasses. When

677
00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:32,160
Speaker 1: reading glasses were first invented, they were mostly blue and

678
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:34,880
Speaker 1: green because it was seen as favorable to the health

679
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:38,240
Speaker 1: of the eyes. And so it's they were all walking

680
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:42,359
Speaker 1: around wearing affectatious fake reading glasses all the time because

681
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 1: they're so serious about their studies. They're so they're so

682
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 1: serious about their studies, but they're also very like for

683
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:51,479
Speaker 1: people who don't care about anything, they really serious about

684
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:54,799
Speaker 1: looking cool. Yeah, exactly. And they're uncombed hair. They were

685
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:57,239
Speaker 1: really into like going ungroomed. Is actually one of the

686
00:39:57,239 --> 00:39:59,080
Speaker 1: ways that they were distinguished from some of the younger,

687
00:39:59,120 --> 00:40:03,319
Speaker 1: the older, the prior to them radical subcultures that were

688
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:07,880
Speaker 1: very into like careful grooming. The uncombed hair and the

689
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:10,359
Speaker 1: grown up beards and stuff. Was just because they didn't

690
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:12,319
Speaker 1: want to waste their time grooming because they were too

691
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:17,920
Speaker 1: busy doing serious science stuff. Um, and that's cute. I

692
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:20,960
Speaker 1: love him. Yeah, that's when I was. When I was

693
00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:24,120
Speaker 1: a little, a little, a little nasty train hop in Google.

694
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:29,040
Speaker 1: I would always keep some like nice ish, some nice

695
00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:34,680
Speaker 1: clothes in my bag for you know, you've I needed

696
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:37,600
Speaker 1: it a lot, Like I was exhausted and I'm in

697
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 1: a hotel, like, oh, my friend's gonna show up later.

698
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: Can I just hang out in the lobby and catch

699
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:46,440
Speaker 1: a fuzes for three hours or whatever? And it's worth it,

700
00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:50,759
Speaker 1: But respected dedication to just like fuck it, I'm gonna

701
00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:54,160
Speaker 1: look like a rat king just walking around walking around St.

702
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 1: Petersburg all day. And that's that's what they did. And

703
00:40:57,360 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 1: they also to see me coming tremble in his boots.

704
00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:06,239
Speaker 1: And they were doing some serious science stuff. You don't

705
00:41:06,280 --> 00:41:08,560
Speaker 1: build bombs of that, learning chemistry, and one of them

706
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:10,759
Speaker 1: kind of invented rocket science. But we'll get to that later.

707
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:14,320
Speaker 1: Uh oh my, oh wow. This is a found This

708
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:17,719
Speaker 1: is gonna be a foundational history podcasts. I've looked for

709
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 1: books about these guys before and I just haven't found any.

710
00:41:20,280 --> 00:41:24,160
Speaker 1: It's glad you well, thanks, um okay. They were also

711
00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: quite into the arts, and especially they look westward to

712
00:41:26,520 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 1: the the Enlightenment of Europe. To quote from that same source,

713
00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:33,759
Speaker 1: illegal dandyism since Most Nihilists came from educated families. They

714
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 1: often had musical training in various instruments. They would meet

715
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:40,400
Speaker 1: in bone amphitheaters, the holding crypts and Russian Orthodox cemeteries

716
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:43,319
Speaker 1: and played decadent music from France and England. They read

717
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:47,040
Speaker 1: aloud from Western poems smuggled into the country. They spoke

718
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: together in an argot of Russian peppered liberally with nonsense

719
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:54,359
Speaker 1: slang as well as French and English words, and there

720
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:57,439
Speaker 1: their fashion choices were influenced by the West as well.

721
00:41:57,520 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: They one of the things that they wore way more

722
00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:01,319
Speaker 1: than like a Boughton up or something like that. They

723
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:05,879
Speaker 1: all wore like Scottish tartans or their interpretation of them.

724
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:08,320
Speaker 1: They call it wearing a plaid and it was basically

725
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:11,160
Speaker 1: a sort of shawl. And they also a lot of

726
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:15,279
Speaker 1: them were like funny Italian military hats. This sort of

727
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 1: goes to the non like it's it's the stuff that

728
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:23,360
Speaker 1: was fashionable like decades earlier at various points um and

729
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:27,040
Speaker 1: it's because of random popular books from the West, and

730
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 1: so it's it's really got that like more that like

731
00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 1: old punk vibe of wearing like military surplus. You know,

732
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:35,120
Speaker 1: when I was a teenager, and I'd walk around in

733
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:39,800
Speaker 1: my like German army surplus coat that was three sizes

734
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:44,480
Speaker 1: too big and stuff. And the the women's the women's

735
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 1: fashion in particular was a huge departure from the style

736
00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:50,120
Speaker 1: at the time. They avoided corsets and colonel ns, which

737
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 1: are hoop skirts, and to look that up personally, because

738
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 1: everyone I noticed calls them hoop skirts, and instead they

739
00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:58,920
Speaker 1: went for for plane garb. And they were completely obsessed

740
00:42:58,920 --> 00:43:01,320
Speaker 1: with this anti fashion. And I put hours and hours

741
00:43:01,320 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 1: of work into looking like they didn't put effort into

742
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:07,280
Speaker 1: it at all, which again anti fashion matches so perfectly

743
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:14,840
Speaker 1: with my my punk friends and listen to the sex pistols.

744
00:43:14,840 --> 00:43:17,040
Speaker 1: So okay. So one historian who wrote about their fashion

745
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:20,680
Speaker 1: was this woman Vera Breida who in the nine seven

746
00:43:20,680 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 1: book Apostles into Terrorists, Women in the Revolutionary Movement and

747
00:43:24,040 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: in Russia of Alexander the Second It's a long book title,

748
00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:30,360
Speaker 1: and okay, so Vera herself was really interesting, um like

749
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:32,920
Speaker 1: something that every time I researched Russian history, I run

750
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:36,759
Speaker 1: across things like this. Her mother, the historian's mother had

751
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:40,640
Speaker 1: been exiled for fighting the czar and then later was

752
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:45,120
Speaker 1: executed by the Bolsheviks for being a social democrat. Um,

753
00:43:45,239 --> 00:43:50,440
Speaker 1: so it goes. But but Vera described the nihilist like so,

754
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:54,399
Speaker 1: the true Russian nihilist wore his baggy trousers tucked into

755
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:58,520
Speaker 1: unpolished and clumsy boots. His peasant blouse of cheap cotton

756
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:01,480
Speaker 1: was held around the waist by leather strap. A so

757
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 1: called plaid or rug was hung over one shoulder. The

758
00:44:05,239 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 1: hair was worn long, and the face overgrown with a

759
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:11,400
Speaker 1: beard and further obscured by dark glasses. Many of the

760
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:14,440
Speaker 1: students were indeed very poor and underfed, and this contributed

761
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 1: in some measure to the drab appearance. The female counterpart,

762
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:21,720
Speaker 1: a very new phenomenon, also dressed with deliberate plainness. Heavy

763
00:44:21,760 --> 00:44:25,360
Speaker 1: boots showed under somber black skirts topped with high necked blouses.

764
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:28,400
Speaker 1: The hair was worn short, and there were of course

765
00:44:28,719 --> 00:44:38,640
Speaker 1: dark glasses and yet worse cigarettes. All right, later, I'm

766
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:41,160
Speaker 1: going to talk about this, uh, this would be assassin

767
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 1: named Vera Zasul. But first i'mone talked about the clothes

768
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:47,840
Speaker 1: she wore to go commit the assassination. She planned it

769
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 1: out really carefully because she knew she'd be photographed. And

770
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:55,880
Speaker 1: this is a quote from Margaret Maxwell's you Know, I Know.

771
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:00,400
Speaker 1: This is a quote from Margaret Maxwell's book Nara Nick Women.

772
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:03,839
Speaker 1: It's self quoting from a woman who saw Vera. Vera

773
00:45:03,880 --> 00:45:06,600
Speaker 1: wore a shapeless gray outfit that might be best described

774
00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:08,920
Speaker 1: as a good sized piece of linen, and in the

775
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:11,479
Speaker 1: center of which had been cutting a hole for her head,

776
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:14,239
Speaker 1: and on the sides two holes for her arms. This

777
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 1: piece of linen was held in with a narrow belt,

778
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 1: but its edges hung down on all sides, fluttering in

779
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:22,600
Speaker 1: the wind. On her head there was something not a hat,

780
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:26,240
Speaker 1: but more like a pie, made out of cheap gray material.

781
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:29,680
Speaker 1: On her feet were wide, clumsy looking boots that she

782
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:32,399
Speaker 1: later explained to me had been specially made for her

783
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 1: according to her own design. Her linen body covering, of course,

784
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:38,840
Speaker 1: had no pockets, so in place of a handkerchief, she

785
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:41,080
Speaker 1: simply picked up the edge of one of the hanging

786
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 1: corners of the material. If you brought this up to

787
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:52,880
Speaker 1: one of the Looney Tunes animators, they would say, two cartoon, Yeah,

788
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:56,719
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to make a show here. I would

789
00:45:56,800 --> 00:46:00,240
Speaker 1: love to get a visual of the pie on her head.

790
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:03,960
Speaker 1: She's literally wearing a potato sack and a pie on

791
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 1: her head that she spent hours and hours working on

792
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:10,319
Speaker 1: and had custom made for her. Yeah, and and like

793
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:13,920
Speaker 1: she wasn't like maybe I deserve pocket. Yeah no, I

794
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:17,960
Speaker 1: know that women's live didn't go to the right places. Okay,

795
00:46:17,960 --> 00:46:20,879
Speaker 1: so reactionaries still not there. No, that's true, we still

796
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:23,920
Speaker 1: don't have pockets. I gotta weary dang fanny pack with

797
00:46:23,920 --> 00:46:25,799
Speaker 1: with all my dresses. I was about to say, I

798
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:29,799
Speaker 1: wear a fanny pack with my dresses. Yeah. Okay, So

799
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 1: reactionary sources like to focus on how it's like slumming nobility,

800
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:36,800
Speaker 1: but Soviet sources seem to focus on how they're all commoners.

801
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:39,759
Speaker 1: And basically, the best I can tell is both true.

802
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:42,080
Speaker 1: It seems like a bell curve. The Nihilists were mostly

803
00:46:42,400 --> 00:46:45,160
Speaker 1: lower middle class and then their outliers in both directions.

804
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:48,719
Speaker 1: Does it seem like the Soviets are This might be

805
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:51,160
Speaker 1: a little off topic, but it seems like the Soviets

806
00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 1: are trying to discredit them a bit because they do

807
00:46:54,680 --> 00:46:58,960
Speaker 1: have a tendency like pre revolution, everyone working towards revolutionary

808
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 1: ends gets a little bit credit for stuff. Yeah. No,

809
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:04,200
Speaker 1: actually I think the Soviets like them and generally they

810
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 1: kind of want to call them naive for like carrying

811
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:10,960
Speaker 1: about subculture and carrying about not having a hard party

812
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: line and like having syncratic politics and stuff. I'm gonna

813
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:18,080
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit about later. But overall, the

814
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:20,399
Speaker 1: Soviets want to bring them in and be like, oh,

815
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 1: these people totally would have loved Bolshevism, uh, which does

816
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:27,480
Speaker 1: not map to my understanding of these people's beliefs. Some

817
00:47:27,560 --> 00:47:30,439
Speaker 1: of them, I'm sure absolutely some of them. M Via

818
00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:33,439
Speaker 1: actually ends up a menshevik um. We'll talk more about

819
00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:35,239
Speaker 1: her later. There's a lot of people named Vera in

820
00:47:35,239 --> 00:47:36,760
Speaker 1: this case, I mean the one who I just described

821
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:41,600
Speaker 1: with the pie in her head. Yeah, potato sack via Um,

822
00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:43,840
Speaker 1: it's actually really cool, but we can call her potato

823
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:47,040
Speaker 1: saia um okay. And then the other thing, though, is

824
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:50,719
Speaker 1: that the lower class folks were less likely to be

825
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:53,600
Speaker 1: as obsessed with the fashion, the high anti fashion, and

826
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:56,279
Speaker 1: overall dressed a little like we're more into it for

827
00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:58,920
Speaker 1: the rejection of society and a little less like particular

828
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:02,799
Speaker 1: about the clothes. Um. But when cops would try and

829
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:05,400
Speaker 1: infiltrate just to make this even more like punk, when

830
00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:07,239
Speaker 1: cops are to try and infiltrate. They would do two

831
00:48:07,320 --> 00:48:09,960
Speaker 1: things wrong that would get them out. One is they

832
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:12,360
Speaker 1: would try and dress the part, but they would like

833
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:15,279
Speaker 1: have the wrong sized glasses and everyone would be like,

834
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:17,680
Speaker 1: ha ha ha, that person is obviously a cop. Look

835
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 1: at the size of their blue glasses. And and then

836
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 1: later um a Russian anarchist of the time, crop hot

837
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:30,720
Speaker 1: Can pointed out that informers about informers, he might possess

838
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:33,239
Speaker 1: the perfect nihilist slang and manners, but he could never

839
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:35,880
Speaker 1: assimilate the sort of nihilist ethics which had grown up

840
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:40,080
Speaker 1: amongst the Russian youth. Spies can imitate anything else but ethics.

841
00:48:41,400 --> 00:48:45,120
Speaker 1: And obviously they did get infiltrated here and there, but

842
00:48:45,160 --> 00:48:49,719
Speaker 1: this is how they tended to catch people. M hmm. There. Yeah,

843
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:53,480
Speaker 1: there's there's still a lot of stories about you know,

844
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 1: the good, the good infiltrators who really studied their craft

845
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:00,799
Speaker 1: or like you know, people we just may not have

846
00:49:00,800 --> 00:49:05,840
Speaker 1: been paying close attention, but still still infiltrators by and

847
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: large just really make clown Speaking of clown shoes, there

848
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:16,360
Speaker 1: are things that you can buy. Other things that you

849
00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:19,920
Speaker 1: can buy or consume in other ways. Are the things

850
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 1: that you'll hear about in these ads, and we are

851
00:49:27,880 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: back and we're talking about nihilists. I guess you knew

852
00:49:31,200 --> 00:49:33,440
Speaker 1: that because you probably didn't start listening to this episode

853
00:49:33,640 --> 00:49:37,840
Speaker 1: about halfway or two thirds through. Welcome person who started

854
00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:42,200
Speaker 1: halfway through. We're glad you're friends. Welcome to the show.

855
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:45,960
Speaker 1: Way to run against the grain. Okay, So the Nihilists, right,

856
00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:50,120
Speaker 1: they the whole thing was actually uniquely rush Russian. There's

857
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:51,480
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about how they look to the West,

858
00:49:51,520 --> 00:49:55,280
Speaker 1: and that's true, but they actually really influenced Russian literature

859
00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:58,359
Speaker 1: and art and kind of everything. Obviously the politics too,

860
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:00,520
Speaker 1: because they fundamentally changed well who's a live and who's

861
00:50:00,560 --> 00:50:03,240
Speaker 1: not and things like that. But to to quote Kropokin

862
00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:07,040
Speaker 1: again about them, it is nihilism again, and it's various manifestations,

863
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:09,960
Speaker 1: which gives to many of our writers that remarkable sincerity,

864
00:50:10,239 --> 00:50:13,760
Speaker 1: that habit of thinking aloud, which astounds Western European readers.

865
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:17,040
Speaker 1: And all right, and to to to sum it up

866
00:50:17,040 --> 00:50:20,439
Speaker 1: with one more Cropocin quote about the nihilists sounds a little.

867
00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:23,919
Speaker 1: This one's just about their belief structure. First of all,

868
00:50:24,080 --> 00:50:26,840
Speaker 1: the Nihilist declared war upon what may be described as

869
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:31,200
Speaker 1: the conventional lies of civilized mankind. Absolute sincerity was his

870
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 1: distinctive feature, and in the name of that sincerity he

871
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:37,760
Speaker 1: gave up and asked others to give up those superstitions, prejudices, habits,

872
00:50:37,760 --> 00:50:41,719
Speaker 1: and customs which their own reason could justify. He refused

873
00:50:41,719 --> 00:50:44,440
Speaker 1: to bend before any authority except that of reason, and

874
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:47,080
Speaker 1: in the analysis of every social institution or habit, he

875
00:50:47,120 --> 00:50:51,320
Speaker 1: revolted against any sort of of more or less mass sophism.

876
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:54,320
Speaker 1: He broke, of course, with the superstitions of his father's

877
00:50:54,400 --> 00:50:57,600
Speaker 1: and in his philosophical conceptions he was a positivist and agnostic,

878
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 1: a Spencerian evolutionist or sign typic materialist. And while he

879
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:04,279
Speaker 1: never attacked the simple, sincere religious belief, which is the

880
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:08,319
Speaker 1: physiological necessity of feeling, he bitterly fought against the hypocrisy

881
00:51:08,360 --> 00:51:11,000
Speaker 1: that leads people to assume the outward mask of a religion,

882
00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 1: which they repeatedly throw aside as useless ballast. The life

883
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:19,760
Speaker 1: of civilized people is full of little conventional lies. Persons

884
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:22,440
Speaker 1: who hate each other meeting in the streets make their

885
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 1: faces radiant with a happy smile. The nihilist remained unmoved

886
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 1: and smiled only for those whom he was genuinely glad

887
00:51:29,719 --> 00:51:33,600
Speaker 1: to meet. All those forms of outward politeness, which are

888
00:51:33,680 --> 00:51:36,920
Speaker 1: mere hypocrisy, were equally repugnant to him, and he assumed

889
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:39,840
Speaker 1: a certain external roughness as a protest against the smooth

890
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:43,239
Speaker 1: amiability of his father's He saw them wildly talking as

891
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:46,560
Speaker 1: idealist sentimentalists and at the same time acting as real

892
00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:50,160
Speaker 1: barbarians towards their wives, their children, and their serfs, and

893
00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:53,280
Speaker 1: he rose in revolt against that sort of sentimentalism, which,

894
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 1: after all, so nicely accommodated itself to anything but ideal

895
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:03,239
Speaker 1: conditions of Russian life. Yeah. Basic, they were like crass hell, yeah,

896
00:52:03,520 --> 00:52:05,799
Speaker 1: trying to bring it back around to the band a

897
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:10,319
Speaker 1: bunch of penny rimbas. But like I've always pictured them

898
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:13,279
Speaker 1: in a back room of some bar somewhere, like some

899
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:18,000
Speaker 1: guy named like st. Stale Dale and the widow maker,

900
00:52:18,200 --> 00:52:21,600
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes above a bunch of black powder, making making

901
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:26,839
Speaker 1: round cartoon bombs. That's not so far off, makes it sound,

902
00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:29,319
Speaker 1: makes it sound so romantic, and that's how I want

903
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:34,000
Speaker 1: to Yeah, I mean that's that's yeah, it's my interpretation

904
00:52:34,040 --> 00:52:36,800
Speaker 1: of it, Okay. And so they tried their hardest to

905
00:52:36,840 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 1: bring this rejection of the sort of barbarity of polite

906
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:44,040
Speaker 1: society into their interpersonal relationships. Nihilist women left their husbands

907
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:47,440
Speaker 1: unless they loved them. They refused marriage without love, except

908
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 1: of course, when they organized marriages of conveniences, which they

909
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:54,000
Speaker 1: did all the time. Women at the time apparently had

910
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 1: their passports controlled either by their fathers or their husbands,

911
00:52:56,920 --> 00:52:59,360
Speaker 1: so nihilist would just marry each other like willy nilly

912
00:52:59,360 --> 00:53:02,800
Speaker 1: in order to give women their own passports back. Basically,

913
00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:06,279
Speaker 1: um wow, I said, I said it before, but same

914
00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:10,120
Speaker 1: as it ever was totally. I've onto more green card

915
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:13,120
Speaker 1: marriages than I have really, but I love weddings, so

916
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:16,719
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Um And usually the parents will pay

917
00:53:16,719 --> 00:53:18,759
Speaker 1: for it either way, which is also another reason that

918
00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:20,560
Speaker 1: they used to get married, was in order to get

919
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:23,879
Speaker 1: their parents money in order to build bombs hell. Yeah,

920
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:26,759
Speaker 1: I get your parents to throw throw you a nice

921
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:30,560
Speaker 1: party and make some bonds along the way. When when

922
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:34,799
Speaker 1: they refused chivalry towards women, they thought it was condescending.

923
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:37,520
Speaker 1: They were blunt and terse and told hypocrites and bureaucrats

924
00:53:37,520 --> 00:53:41,040
Speaker 1: alike what was on their mind. And they were also okay,

925
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:44,160
Speaker 1: they were really into adultery, except not they were like,

926
00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 1: adultery is chill and good, but they were all a

927
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:52,000
Speaker 1: bunch of prudes. They were like they all wanted to

928
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:54,640
Speaker 1: be free love, polyamorous or whatever, but they were all

929
00:53:54,680 --> 00:53:58,239
Speaker 1: like really obsessed with the asceticism and self denial, so

930
00:53:58,320 --> 00:54:01,480
Speaker 1: they like just didn't really hook up. And they would

931
00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:03,640
Speaker 1: move four to five people into a room, and they

932
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:06,520
Speaker 1: would blow all their families money, starting workers cooperatives, and

933
00:54:06,560 --> 00:54:09,240
Speaker 1: the men would refuse to join the military, and women

934
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 1: like ran to the cities to learn professions and avoid

935
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:16,279
Speaker 1: domestic labor. And they also spent apparently most of the

936
00:54:16,320 --> 00:54:19,960
Speaker 1: year eighteen sixty two setting fire to everything all over St. Petersburg.

937
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:24,480
Speaker 1: That sort of brings up something that a few weeks ago,

938
00:54:24,680 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 1: I was on my friends podcast Gender Reveal, and we

939
00:54:27,960 --> 00:54:34,000
Speaker 1: were talking about you have other podcasts, Oh, I wish

940
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:36,400
Speaker 1: you didn't have to find out this way. It's fine.

941
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:38,440
Speaker 1: If the nihilists can handle it, I can handle it.

942
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:46,000
Speaker 1: We were talking about how there's like queer history is

943
00:54:46,040 --> 00:54:49,120
Speaker 1: a fairly recent thing, and it's not something that was

944
00:54:49,480 --> 00:54:53,160
Speaker 1: talked about even in like fairly radical circles, and certainly

945
00:54:53,200 --> 00:54:56,880
Speaker 1: didn't survive to the modern era in in tons of

946
00:54:56,920 --> 00:55:01,440
Speaker 1: instances you really have to dig to find it, but

947
00:55:01,760 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 1: you can find the evidence in it of you know,

948
00:55:08,160 --> 00:55:12,160
Speaker 1: free love movements and the and women's lib movements and

949
00:55:12,239 --> 00:55:17,280
Speaker 1: like places that were While while it totally makes sense

950
00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:19,800
Speaker 1: that these would be like a bunch of like self

951
00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:26,160
Speaker 1: serious prudes, um, it stands to reason, they still had

952
00:55:26,239 --> 00:55:35,840
Speaker 1: like very progressive views about like what sex and romance

953
00:55:36,080 --> 00:55:38,560
Speaker 1: could look like in the first place, which is why

954
00:55:38,640 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 1: I choose to sort of interpret a lot of the

955
00:55:42,160 --> 00:55:47,560
Speaker 1: historical like anarchists are just like freak like anti state

956
00:55:47,680 --> 00:55:53,880
Speaker 1: movements as things that had that couldn't be described as

957
00:55:53,960 --> 00:55:57,719
Speaker 1: queer but had certainly queer occurrents running through them that

958
00:55:57,760 --> 00:56:01,520
Speaker 1: we just have like very little reviving text of. I

959
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:06,040
Speaker 1: just wanted to sort of sort of point point that

960
00:56:06,120 --> 00:56:09,600
Speaker 1: out as maybe it's my fan pick, but I think

961
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:11,600
Speaker 1: I would I would love to hear a history and

962
00:56:11,680 --> 00:56:14,000
Speaker 1: argue with me about it. I'm hard to argue with.

963
00:56:14,400 --> 00:56:16,239
Speaker 1: I would love to watch you argue with this story

964
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:18,120
Speaker 1: and about it because that makes honestly a lot of

965
00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:21,000
Speaker 1: things kind of fit into place when you just start

966
00:56:21,080 --> 00:56:23,680
Speaker 1: understanding queerness, especially the way it's like not only a

967
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:26,000
Speaker 1: race from history, but like not talked about even at

968
00:56:26,000 --> 00:56:32,200
Speaker 1: the time, you know, yeah, yeah, we even like less

969
00:56:32,200 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 1: than a hundred years ago. It's really hard to come

970
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:40,040
Speaker 1: up with instances where people talked in depth about it

971
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:44,920
Speaker 1: unless somebody was being particularly brave up until like AIDS

972
00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:48,400
Speaker 1: really made it. You know, it's not it's not a

973
00:56:49,080 --> 00:56:50,920
Speaker 1: I wouldn't paint it as a as a good thing,

974
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:53,520
Speaker 1: but it really made it impossible to ignore in the

975
00:56:53,600 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: historical context anymore. That is sort of where word explodes

976
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:04,960
Speaker 1: on the historical stage as an undeniable fact. And while

977
00:57:06,040 --> 00:57:08,920
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that there were people like this who

978
00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:11,400
Speaker 1: I don't think that there was a lot of homophobia

979
00:57:11,560 --> 00:57:14,399
Speaker 1: amongst the amongst people who didn't give a shit about

980
00:57:14,440 --> 00:57:19,439
Speaker 1: anything like the nihilists um or transphobia, or a lot

981
00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:25,600
Speaker 1: of enforcing of gender norms or anything, um. And where

982
00:57:26,160 --> 00:57:31,480
Speaker 1: there are subcultures like that, that is inevitably going to flourish.

983
00:57:31,720 --> 00:57:33,959
Speaker 1: While they didn't have the language that we have now,

984
00:57:34,160 --> 00:57:36,960
Speaker 1: so which is another reason why I didn't have survived

985
00:57:37,560 --> 00:57:40,040
Speaker 1: through like the text we can read now. It's still

986
00:57:40,080 --> 00:57:44,680
Speaker 1: like I believe, I believe that it's there in many

987
00:57:45,840 --> 00:57:50,920
Speaker 1: many freak centered social movements. I think you're right. I

988
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:55,080
Speaker 1: am only somebody who you know has has read read

989
00:57:55,120 --> 00:57:57,800
Speaker 1: a bit of history. But you know, if anybody listening

990
00:57:57,840 --> 00:58:03,040
Speaker 1: to this podcast has has some instances of that um

991
00:58:03,480 --> 00:58:08,720
Speaker 1: or Like, I know that there are queer historians out there, UM,

992
00:58:08,800 --> 00:58:12,760
Speaker 1: but I've never seen one who specifically studies radical tradition,

993
00:58:13,920 --> 00:58:15,800
Speaker 1: and I would love to hear that because I think

994
00:58:15,800 --> 00:58:19,520
Speaker 1: that those were maybe the some of the biggest hotbeds

995
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:22,560
Speaker 1: of gay stuff going on back then. I know that

996
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:25,200
Speaker 1: there was a lot of um I've read like throwaway

997
00:58:25,240 --> 00:58:28,240
Speaker 1: lines from a hundred years ago that talk about like, well,

998
00:58:28,240 --> 00:58:29,920
Speaker 1: if you go hang out the anarchist, that's where you

999
00:58:29,920 --> 00:58:34,680
Speaker 1: can find the homosexuals and the men who like dressing

1000
00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 1: as women. I don't remember exactly how they phrased all

1001
00:58:36,680 --> 00:58:38,919
Speaker 1: of it, but I actually really like that it distinguished

1002
00:58:38,960 --> 00:58:43,840
Speaker 1: between like, uh basically trans and gay in the in

1003
00:58:43,880 --> 00:58:46,080
Speaker 1: the way it described it, and it it made me

1004
00:58:46,120 --> 00:58:47,840
Speaker 1: really happen again. It was like a throwaway line I

1005
00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:51,040
Speaker 1: read once in like a history of Queer Anarchism or something, um.

1006
00:58:51,120 --> 00:58:53,400
Speaker 1: But it but it was written, you know, a hundred

1007
00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:54,720
Speaker 1: years ago. I was like someone just being like, Oh,

1008
00:58:54,760 --> 00:58:56,280
Speaker 1: if you want to find the gays, just go over

1009
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:58,960
Speaker 1: and hang out the anarchist club or whatever, you know, which,

1010
00:58:59,000 --> 00:59:01,200
Speaker 1: of course, you know, maybe if I came from a

1011
00:59:01,200 --> 00:59:03,880
Speaker 1: different ideological background, I would find that somewhere else also,

1012
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:08,360
Speaker 1: but it still makes me happy. Um yeah, speaking of books,

1013
00:59:08,400 --> 00:59:09,920
Speaker 1: we're not talking about books, but and A's what we're

1014
00:59:09,920 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 1: gonna talk about now. We're gonna talk about books because

1015
00:59:12,840 --> 00:59:15,040
Speaker 1: the Nihilists eventually got their name. And how did the

1016
00:59:15,120 --> 00:59:17,200
Speaker 1: Nihilists get their name? They got it from a book,

1017
00:59:17,560 --> 00:59:21,400
Speaker 1: a book called Fathers and Sons written by Ivan Turgenev,

1018
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:25,120
Speaker 1: whose name I should have looked up before I started recording,

1019
00:59:25,160 --> 00:59:27,160
Speaker 1: but I didn't. I looked up several the other names,

1020
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:31,840
Speaker 1: and books were like really fucking important. It's hard to

1021
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:36,000
Speaker 1: overstate how important books were culturally at the time, right

1022
00:59:36,040 --> 00:59:38,840
Speaker 1: because there weren't as many other mediums going on. And

1023
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:41,600
Speaker 1: some people actually claimed that Turgenev's earlier collection of short

1024
00:59:41,640 --> 00:59:44,680
Speaker 1: stories called Sportsman Sketches is what convinced Alexander the Second

1025
00:59:44,720 --> 00:59:48,920
Speaker 1: to free the serfs. But the Fathers and Sons, I know, right,

1026
00:59:49,040 --> 00:59:53,560
Speaker 1: like he influenced the Czar, the Nihilists and Cat Stevens

1027
00:59:54,240 --> 00:59:58,880
Speaker 1: years later. Um okay, so Fathers and Sons is a

1028
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:01,080
Speaker 1: is a book about jen ration gap, and it's like

1029
01:00:01,080 --> 01:00:04,320
Speaker 1: basically like millennials versus boomers the book which actually really

1030
01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:07,360
Speaker 1: tracks I kind of like this because that makes millennials

1031
01:00:07,360 --> 01:00:10,000
Speaker 1: the disaffected students and then who like kind of starts

1032
01:00:10,040 --> 01:00:12,040
Speaker 1: some fires here and there, and then gen Z is

1033
01:00:12,080 --> 01:00:16,200
Speaker 1: going to like really kick stuff up a notch um,

1034
01:00:16,240 --> 01:00:18,160
Speaker 1: And so I'm excited about this read whether or not

1035
01:00:18,200 --> 01:00:21,840
Speaker 1: at whether or not it's true, just interject some hope

1036
01:00:21,840 --> 01:00:25,680
Speaker 1: into the conversation, you know. And Okay, So in this book,

1037
01:00:25,800 --> 01:00:29,080
Speaker 1: there's a young nihilist named Basirov and he calls himself

1038
01:00:29,080 --> 01:00:31,360
Speaker 1: a nihilist, and it's the first time that that's where

1039
01:00:31,360 --> 01:00:33,440
Speaker 1: the name comes from. Basically he's not the main character

1040
01:00:33,480 --> 01:00:35,600
Speaker 1: even but he's the main character even though he's he's

1041
01:00:35,640 --> 01:00:37,520
Speaker 1: like the one that the author clearly is paying the

1042
01:00:37,560 --> 01:00:42,400
Speaker 1: mist attention to. We're the name or the or the word.

1043
01:00:43,040 --> 01:00:47,919
Speaker 1: So nihilist, nihilist nihilism was a word before that, yes,

1044
01:00:48,000 --> 01:00:51,320
Speaker 1: but again it was like really rarely used. Um. It's

1045
01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:53,360
Speaker 1: kind of actually like the history of the word anarchism,

1046
01:00:53,360 --> 01:00:56,520
Speaker 1: where until Pruden was like I am an anarchist, it

1047
01:00:56,560 --> 01:00:58,800
Speaker 1: was just like kind of thrown around like to be

1048
01:00:58,880 --> 01:01:04,000
Speaker 1: mean for hundreds of years, um. And so basiov is

1049
01:01:04,040 --> 01:01:07,920
Speaker 1: basically describing his attitude as nihilism, and he's like, whole

1050
01:01:07,960 --> 01:01:11,600
Speaker 1: thing is that he's like, I refuse sentimentality and blah

1051
01:01:11,640 --> 01:01:14,520
Speaker 1: blah blah, and Okay, to be real, like the book

1052
01:01:14,560 --> 01:01:18,400
Speaker 1: is kind of dumb, um because his big problem is

1053
01:01:18,440 --> 01:01:21,360
Speaker 1: that he falls in love and he's like, oh, no,

1054
01:01:22,000 --> 01:01:26,360
Speaker 1: love is that's you, That's your first mistake. He he's like,

1055
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:29,800
Speaker 1: this is ikey, it complicates my feelings of true nihilism

1056
01:01:29,840 --> 01:01:33,000
Speaker 1: and whatever bullshit I believe in. And so he doesn't

1057
01:01:33,040 --> 01:01:34,560
Speaker 1: even like hook up with her or anything, but he

1058
01:01:34,640 --> 01:01:36,160
Speaker 1: just like falls in love and he gets a crush

1059
01:01:36,200 --> 01:01:38,080
Speaker 1: and it's enough to like throw him into torment, which

1060
01:01:38,120 --> 01:01:39,760
Speaker 1: I want to laugh at, but then I remember that

1061
01:01:39,800 --> 01:01:44,080
Speaker 1: I was young once too. You know that happens, um.

1062
01:01:44,120 --> 01:01:47,120
Speaker 1: And so anyway, Basierov spoiler or he he's like doing

1063
01:01:47,160 --> 01:01:50,120
Speaker 1: a science because he's a very serious science nihilist, and

1064
01:01:50,200 --> 01:01:52,720
Speaker 1: he's doing an autopsy and then he gets blood poisoning

1065
01:01:52,760 --> 01:01:55,360
Speaker 1: and then he dies and on his deathbed, the girl

1066
01:01:55,440 --> 01:01:59,080
Speaker 1: he likes, on his death bed, the girl he likes

1067
01:01:59,120 --> 01:02:02,800
Speaker 1: kisses him on the flour, which is you know, kind

1068
01:02:02,800 --> 01:02:05,600
Speaker 1: of a thing because the nihilists were sucking prudes. But

1069
01:02:08,920 --> 01:02:12,000
Speaker 1: and then but but Turgenev wasn't a nihilist when he

1070
01:02:12,000 --> 01:02:13,840
Speaker 1: wrote this book, and so the nihilists were a little

1071
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:16,880
Speaker 1: bit like, I don't know how I feel about this representation.

1072
01:02:17,120 --> 01:02:19,920
Speaker 1: But then tons of people joined their movement in eighteen

1073
01:02:19,960 --> 01:02:22,360
Speaker 1: sixty two after this thing, and so they were like,

1074
01:02:22,560 --> 01:02:25,320
Speaker 1: we have come around on it, and we accept this book. Um,

1075
01:02:26,760 --> 01:02:30,400
Speaker 1: and uh, we don't. We didn't hate it, and therefore

1076
01:02:31,000 --> 01:02:34,520
Speaker 1: that's as good as liking it. Yeah. Basically they decided

1077
01:02:34,520 --> 01:02:38,880
Speaker 1: to roll with it and give him a pass and um.

1078
01:02:38,920 --> 01:02:42,560
Speaker 1: And apparently turg was like really upset that people thought

1079
01:02:42,600 --> 01:02:46,560
Speaker 1: he didn't like Bazaroff, apparently Karpokin and the anarchist that

1080
01:02:46,600 --> 01:02:49,840
Speaker 1: I'll talk about sometimes. He said to him, because Karpokin

1081
01:02:49,920 --> 01:02:51,440
Speaker 1: his friends with him. He said, I like basierof, but

1082
01:02:51,480 --> 01:02:54,040
Speaker 1: it seems like you didn't love him, And Targanov said, no,

1083
01:02:54,160 --> 01:02:56,600
Speaker 1: I I loved him. It made me cry to to

1084
01:02:57,120 --> 01:02:59,240
Speaker 1: end the book with his death. And in fact, turgon

1085
01:03:00,120 --> 01:03:03,040
Speaker 1: Uh for the rest of his life he kept a

1086
01:03:03,080 --> 01:03:06,360
Speaker 1: diary as if he was Basireoff the Nihilist, and he

1087
01:03:06,360 --> 01:03:09,720
Speaker 1: would respond to current events in his own journal as

1088
01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:14,360
Speaker 1: Basioff instead of as himself whoa in his in his job,

1089
01:03:14,560 --> 01:03:17,960
Speaker 1: like he didn't publish it anywhere, he just he like he.

1090
01:03:18,080 --> 01:03:20,520
Speaker 1: I think he understood nihilism as Actually, it's kind of interesting.

1091
01:03:20,560 --> 01:03:23,000
Speaker 1: It's kind the way I understand nhilism. It's a I'm

1092
01:03:23,000 --> 01:03:25,160
Speaker 1: probably not a nihilist, but I'm very sympathetic and I

1093
01:03:25,200 --> 01:03:29,000
Speaker 1: really like having that lens available to me. Um, and

1094
01:03:29,040 --> 01:03:31,880
Speaker 1: so I think that he did. That's my my guess

1095
01:03:31,960 --> 01:03:35,560
Speaker 1: is that he liked having that lens available to him. Um. Wow,

1096
01:03:35,600 --> 01:03:38,080
Speaker 1: he just larped his way through the rest of his

1097
01:03:38,160 --> 01:03:42,760
Speaker 1: life as a nihilist, but but secret a secret nihilists,

1098
01:03:42,760 --> 01:03:46,320
Speaker 1: a secret larpin. I love that. Though. I understand a

1099
01:03:46,400 --> 01:03:50,400
Speaker 1: nihilist as somebody who understands love very deep. I know exactly.

1100
01:03:51,800 --> 01:03:53,880
Speaker 1: But this is they were new to it, you know.

1101
01:03:55,320 --> 01:03:58,120
Speaker 1: It's yeah, they're just getting they're just getting off the runway.

1102
01:03:58,600 --> 01:04:02,160
Speaker 1: And also nihilism is a nonsense yeah, um okay. And

1103
01:04:02,200 --> 01:04:04,800
Speaker 1: then another random anecdote about ten he had his portrait

1104
01:04:04,840 --> 01:04:06,800
Speaker 1: taken by this guy named Felix Nadar, who I'm going

1105
01:04:06,840 --> 01:04:09,120
Speaker 1: to talk about in future episodes. I'm certain, who is

1106
01:04:09,120 --> 01:04:11,800
Speaker 1: basically the photographer who took all of the pictures of

1107
01:04:11,800 --> 01:04:13,680
Speaker 1: all of the random revolutionaries. If you ever see a

1108
01:04:13,680 --> 01:04:15,959
Speaker 1: picture of like a random important person in the nineteenth century,

1109
01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:19,280
Speaker 1: especially revolutionaries, is probably taken by this guy. I'm literally

1110
01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:22,120
Speaker 1: wondered this before. I'm like, this motherfucker didn't have money

1111
01:04:22,120 --> 01:04:25,160
Speaker 1: to get his portrait taken. What's going on? So there

1112
01:04:25,240 --> 01:04:29,800
Speaker 1: was like this French hipster photographer named Nadair who loved

1113
01:04:29,800 --> 01:04:31,240
Speaker 1: all this stuff and took pictures of it. He also

1114
01:04:31,320 --> 01:04:33,840
Speaker 1: defended the Paris Commune with a hot air balloon, and

1115
01:04:33,880 --> 01:04:39,800
Speaker 1: he invented He invented airmail because airmail was invented by

1116
01:04:39,800 --> 01:04:42,240
Speaker 1: a photographer radical who wanted to get letters out of

1117
01:04:42,280 --> 01:04:46,240
Speaker 1: the besieged Paris Commune. And he also invented He took

1118
01:04:46,280 --> 01:04:49,440
Speaker 1: the first aerial photography. He took the first aerial photos

1119
01:04:49,440 --> 01:04:52,280
Speaker 1: in a hot air balloon. Um, and so is there

1120
01:04:52,280 --> 01:04:54,640
Speaker 1: an aerial photo of the Paris community. I actually don't

1121
01:04:54,640 --> 01:04:56,280
Speaker 1: know the answer to that, but I will know the

1122
01:04:56,280 --> 01:04:58,680
Speaker 1: answer to that by the time that you listeners are

1123
01:04:58,760 --> 01:05:00,280
Speaker 1: listening to this, because I will be you in an

1124
01:05:00,320 --> 01:05:06,880
Speaker 1: episode about the Paris Commune. I google this later and Okay,

1125
01:05:06,880 --> 01:05:09,000
Speaker 1: so that's Fathers and Sons, and that was like a

1126
01:05:09,120 --> 01:05:12,200
Speaker 1: very very important book. But the more important book that

1127
01:05:12,200 --> 01:05:14,880
Speaker 1: actually hasn't come through history as much, but was far

1128
01:05:14,920 --> 01:05:17,320
Speaker 1: more important to the nihilists themselves, that comes from the

1129
01:05:17,360 --> 01:05:20,400
Speaker 1: nihilist movement itself, is a book called What Is to

1130
01:05:20,440 --> 01:05:25,240
Speaker 1: Be Done by Nikolai Chernishevski And oh who who could

1131
01:05:25,280 --> 01:05:28,160
Speaker 1: that be? Well? Never? He was an author who was

1132
01:05:28,200 --> 01:05:30,120
Speaker 1: a nihilist, and he actually wrote the book from his

1133
01:05:30,200 --> 01:05:33,400
Speaker 1: prison cell. He was in prison for organizing with the

1134
01:05:33,480 --> 01:05:36,600
Speaker 1: neuron Necks, which I'll talk about at some point, and

1135
01:05:37,560 --> 01:05:39,880
Speaker 1: he was locked up in Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul,

1136
01:05:39,920 --> 01:05:43,000
Speaker 1: the cool kid prison I was talking about, um, And incidentally,

1137
01:05:43,040 --> 01:05:45,480
Speaker 1: Kripakin ten years later is the first kid who was

1138
01:05:45,520 --> 01:05:47,520
Speaker 1: too cool for school and broke out of the cool

1139
01:05:47,560 --> 01:05:52,840
Speaker 1: kids prison. He sure sure, Santa in his sleigh got

1140
01:05:52,880 --> 01:05:55,760
Speaker 1: out and went to, Uh, yeah, I'm sure, I won't.

1141
01:05:55,800 --> 01:05:57,800
Speaker 1: I won't, I won't blow the story. I'm sure you'll

1142
01:05:57,840 --> 01:06:02,040
Speaker 1: do an episode about Kropok eventually. Um. Okay. So the

1143
01:06:02,080 --> 01:06:04,400
Speaker 1: book What Is to Be Done gets its title from

1144
01:06:04,400 --> 01:06:06,640
Speaker 1: the Bible, which is sort of interesting with the obsessive

1145
01:06:06,680 --> 01:06:11,080
Speaker 1: nihilism or people's perceps presumptions about nihilism. It actually it

1146
01:06:11,080 --> 01:06:14,560
Speaker 1: gets it from Luke three ten, which is what should

1147
01:06:14,600 --> 01:06:18,200
Speaker 1: we do? Then the crowd asked, John answered, anyone who

1148
01:06:18,240 --> 01:06:21,280
Speaker 1: has two shirts should share with the one who has none,

1149
01:06:21,560 --> 01:06:25,480
Speaker 1: and anyone who has food should do the same. Um,

1150
01:06:25,520 --> 01:06:27,720
Speaker 1: which is kind of a handy take if you're ever

1151
01:06:27,800 --> 01:06:29,640
Speaker 1: talking to it, like one of those fake Christians who

1152
01:06:29,640 --> 01:06:35,160
Speaker 1: thinks that Christianity means capitalism. The Bible fucking slaps sometimes Yeah,

1153
01:06:35,280 --> 01:06:42,400
Speaker 1: it's like it's yeah, but um, Jesus kicking the ship

1154
01:06:42,480 --> 01:06:45,680
Speaker 1: out of money lenders. Okay. And then the other thing

1155
01:06:45,720 --> 01:06:47,120
Speaker 1: about what is to be done? The book is you

1156
01:06:47,120 --> 01:06:48,760
Speaker 1: have to be careful not to confuse it with that.

1157
01:06:49,760 --> 01:06:54,240
Speaker 1: The then the other Russian book by Tolstoy called what

1158
01:06:54,440 --> 01:06:57,880
Speaker 1: is to be Done, or that Russian political pamphlet by

1159
01:06:57,960 --> 01:07:03,360
Speaker 1: Lenin which is called what is to be Done? Um, say,

1160
01:07:03,480 --> 01:07:05,880
Speaker 1: it was the same guy all things well, Okay, to

1161
01:07:05,880 --> 01:07:08,280
Speaker 1: be fair to Tolstoy, his title is actually slightly different

1162
01:07:08,280 --> 01:07:12,040
Speaker 1: in Russian. Um, But Lennon just like straight up was

1163
01:07:12,080 --> 01:07:14,240
Speaker 1: like it's like if I was like, man, I love

1164
01:07:14,280 --> 01:07:16,080
Speaker 1: the book that dispossessed, I'm going to write a pamphlet

1165
01:07:16,120 --> 01:07:18,320
Speaker 1: about something completely different and how I should be in

1166
01:07:18,440 --> 01:07:20,160
Speaker 1: charge of everything. And I'm going to call that book

1167
01:07:20,480 --> 01:07:26,520
Speaker 1: The Dispossessed. I do like that. UM. In whenever I

1168
01:07:26,560 --> 01:07:29,080
Speaker 1: got mail orders, I was including this zine for a

1169
01:07:29,120 --> 01:07:31,800
Speaker 1: while that I really liked. That was after the George

1170
01:07:31,800 --> 01:07:37,440
Speaker 1: Floyd uprising. Um. Someone wrote how it might should be done. Yeah,

1171
01:07:37,560 --> 01:07:42,040
Speaker 1: it's quite quite good, big big fan of that one. Yeah.

1172
01:07:42,120 --> 01:07:46,120
Speaker 1: I think that in this you know, yeah, yeah, continuing

1173
01:07:46,160 --> 01:07:49,600
Speaker 1: the tradition a hundred years after the last one. Yeah,

1174
01:07:49,640 --> 01:07:53,040
Speaker 1: I know of at least so the first one, Sharnishevski

1175
01:07:53,200 --> 01:07:56,320
Speaker 1: is about. It's about nihilist women who start sewing cooperatives.

1176
01:07:56,320 --> 01:07:58,480
Speaker 1: They're basically like, oh, we should do this in order

1177
01:07:58,520 --> 01:08:01,520
Speaker 1: to you know, the is how we challenge the society

1178
01:08:01,560 --> 01:08:04,320
Speaker 1: we're in. And because once again fashion is actually part

1179
01:08:04,360 --> 01:08:08,000
Speaker 1: of the resistance movement, but that it's constantly ignored. UM.

1180
01:08:08,040 --> 01:08:11,320
Speaker 1: But that said, Schernishowski was also ignoring nihilist fashion himself

1181
01:08:11,360 --> 01:08:14,160
Speaker 1: because he didn't actually understand it really UM. And his

1182
01:08:14,240 --> 01:08:17,200
Speaker 1: characters didn't make clothes for nihilists. They made like fancy

1183
01:08:17,240 --> 01:08:22,000
Speaker 1: clothes for rich people. UM. And there was a side

1184
01:08:22,080 --> 01:08:25,320
Speaker 1: character in that book named Rakhmatov, whose name I do

1185
01:08:25,360 --> 01:08:27,280
Speaker 1: not know how to pronounce. And this is the guy

1186
01:08:27,280 --> 01:08:30,840
Speaker 1: that everyone gets obsessed with instead of um, you know

1187
01:08:31,240 --> 01:08:33,679
Speaker 1: who they should be obsessed with, which is anyway whatever.

1188
01:08:33,840 --> 01:08:38,640
Speaker 1: He's like this total um, self negating revolutionary saint. He

1189
01:08:38,640 --> 01:08:40,679
Speaker 1: sleeps on a bed of nails. He only eats black

1190
01:08:40,680 --> 01:08:43,160
Speaker 1: bread and steak. He lifts weights and halls boats around,

1191
01:08:43,160 --> 01:08:46,400
Speaker 1: and he doesn't drink or fuck. And Lennon copied the

1192
01:08:46,439 --> 01:08:49,800
Speaker 1: weightlifting thing. Uh, nietzschev is an Asshole'm gonna talk about

1193
01:08:49,840 --> 01:08:53,120
Speaker 1: later slept on a bed of nails. Nikolaia shooting the

1194
01:08:53,160 --> 01:08:55,080
Speaker 1: cousin of the assassin the gut, the guy who got

1195
01:08:55,320 --> 01:08:58,559
Speaker 1: mock executed earlier he did the boat hauling thing. And

1196
01:08:58,680 --> 01:09:02,200
Speaker 1: the Russian American anarchist Alexander Berkman used the pseudonym Rakhmatov

1197
01:09:02,560 --> 01:09:05,120
Speaker 1: when he was conspiring to shoot industrious Henry clay Frick,

1198
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:10,640
Speaker 1: so very influential, and then Scherrechovsky himself got mock executed.

1199
01:09:10,680 --> 01:09:11,960
Speaker 1: It was like the style of the time, I guess

1200
01:09:11,960 --> 01:09:14,640
Speaker 1: and sent a sentence to hard labor, and then the

1201
01:09:15,240 --> 01:09:17,280
Speaker 1: almost on talking about the books. The other important thing

1202
01:09:17,280 --> 01:09:19,360
Speaker 1: that happened with the nihilis and books. Is that Dosievsky

1203
01:09:19,960 --> 01:09:22,840
Speaker 1: hated the nihilists and he spent his entire career writing

1204
01:09:22,880 --> 01:09:25,920
Speaker 1: novels about how much he hated them. That's like all

1205
01:09:25,920 --> 01:09:28,840
Speaker 1: he did, because he wrote he there's the genre called

1206
01:09:28,840 --> 01:09:35,960
Speaker 1: the anti nihilist novel, and it's him. It's basically him. Um,

1207
01:09:36,000 --> 01:09:44,280
Speaker 1: Which is enough about books, No, let's keep going about books. Yeah,

1208
01:09:45,720 --> 01:09:49,720
Speaker 1: I should make an entertaining podcast. I mean a lot

1209
01:09:49,760 --> 01:09:52,480
Speaker 1: of the stories about nihilism just talking about those books,

1210
01:09:52,520 --> 01:09:56,479
Speaker 1: but they actually are They're important enough that they they

1211
01:09:56,520 --> 01:10:01,000
Speaker 1: need to be included. Um. And which is kind of

1212
01:10:01,000 --> 01:10:05,280
Speaker 1: bringing us back around to the mid eighteen sixties when

1213
01:10:05,280 --> 01:10:08,000
Speaker 1: we get our our guy we started this story with,

1214
01:10:08,439 --> 01:10:11,240
Speaker 1: and this is probably the where we're gonna end on today.

1215
01:10:11,479 --> 01:10:14,840
Speaker 1: We're going to talk more about organization and hell because

1216
01:10:14,880 --> 01:10:17,439
Speaker 1: this is kind of where it switches over switches gears,

1217
01:10:17,800 --> 01:10:20,040
Speaker 1: and so we're gonna talk first really quickly about my

1218
01:10:20,120 --> 01:10:23,240
Speaker 1: least favorite nihilist, who's named Ivan. Almost everyone in this

1219
01:10:23,240 --> 01:10:26,839
Speaker 1: story is named Ivan. If they're not named Vera Ivan

1220
01:10:27,640 --> 01:10:31,240
Speaker 1: could uh and I should like him. He's a he's

1221
01:10:31,240 --> 01:10:33,120
Speaker 1: a nihilist. He was an nihilist and a folklorist. But

1222
01:10:33,160 --> 01:10:36,439
Speaker 1: he totally sucked, or maybe the book I read about

1223
01:10:36,479 --> 01:10:41,120
Speaker 1: him was reactionary garbage because it's so hard to tell. Um. Okay,

1224
01:10:41,400 --> 01:10:44,519
Speaker 1: as a kid, ivan like to pull on horses tails.

1225
01:10:44,800 --> 01:10:48,200
Speaker 1: You just like liked annoying horses. Um. Can you guess

1226
01:10:48,240 --> 01:10:51,559
Speaker 1: how that went for him? You got kicked in the head,

1227
01:10:52,240 --> 01:11:00,880
Speaker 1: He got kicked in the nuts. Oh that's classic comedy

1228
01:11:00,960 --> 01:11:03,080
Speaker 1: right there. I don't care who you are. He got

1229
01:11:03,160 --> 01:11:07,559
Speaker 1: kicked so hard in the nuts. He never reached physical maturity,

1230
01:11:11,080 --> 01:11:14,679
Speaker 1: or it's all transphobic shit written by reactionaries who didn't

1231
01:11:14,720 --> 01:11:18,080
Speaker 1: like him. I don't know. Because he couldn't He had

1232
01:11:18,120 --> 01:11:20,160
Speaker 1: a high pitched voice, and he couldn't grow a beard.

1233
01:11:22,479 --> 01:11:24,679
Speaker 1: So I know plenty of people like that, and they didn't.

1234
01:11:24,720 --> 01:11:28,400
Speaker 1: And then him pull on no horses tails? Yeah? Um?

1235
01:11:28,439 --> 01:11:31,000
Speaker 1: And then he but and in his own memoir I

1236
01:11:31,040 --> 01:11:33,840
Speaker 1: had trouble interpreting it. Either he masturbated constantly or he

1237
01:11:33,920 --> 01:11:37,000
Speaker 1: never masturbated. I think he never masturbated, and he hated

1238
01:11:37,040 --> 01:11:40,360
Speaker 1: everyone who masturbated. Does he talk about pulling horses tails

1239
01:11:40,360 --> 01:11:43,880
Speaker 1: in his own memoirs? That this is self? I don't know.

1240
01:11:44,040 --> 01:11:47,160
Speaker 1: The thing I know I only read the book about him.

1241
01:11:47,200 --> 01:11:50,120
Speaker 1: I didn't read the book by him. Um And I

1242
01:11:50,200 --> 01:11:53,040
Speaker 1: kind of he's not quite an important enough character. But

1243
01:11:53,120 --> 01:11:58,200
Speaker 1: he's just an interesting, I don't know, interesting little foil

1244
01:11:58,840 --> 01:12:03,519
Speaker 1: somebody who grows up, uh pulling horses tails and and

1245
01:12:03,560 --> 01:12:08,759
Speaker 1: then fox up nihilism a little bit and here's your sign. Yeah,

1246
01:12:08,920 --> 01:12:12,040
Speaker 1: he kind of just embarrasses nihilism. Really, he actually doesn't

1247
01:12:12,040 --> 01:12:13,920
Speaker 1: have that big of an impact, but he's an example

1248
01:12:13,920 --> 01:12:16,120
Speaker 1: of an embarrassing nihilist. I feel like it's important to

1249
01:12:16,160 --> 01:12:18,120
Speaker 1: balance this out because I like most of these nihilists

1250
01:12:18,120 --> 01:12:21,200
Speaker 1: a lot. Um. Okay, So Ivan was a folklorist, but

1251
01:12:21,240 --> 01:12:24,040
Speaker 1: he kept not being allowed to do folklorism because basically

1252
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:26,120
Speaker 1: the authorities were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you could spread

1253
01:12:26,160 --> 01:12:31,560
Speaker 1: revolutionary propaganda through folklore, which rules and is a good idea. Um.

1254
01:12:31,600 --> 01:12:34,360
Speaker 1: And he also got refused jobs because of his clothes,

1255
01:12:34,360 --> 01:12:36,439
Speaker 1: I think because of his nihilist outfit, and so he

1256
01:12:36,560 --> 01:12:38,880
Speaker 1: like and he hung out with the St. Petersburg Crue

1257
01:12:38,960 --> 01:12:41,679
Speaker 1: nihilist so like, so far, so good, right, But then

1258
01:12:42,160 --> 01:12:44,639
Speaker 1: he took on a reach research assistant a young woman

1259
01:12:44,720 --> 01:12:48,360
Speaker 1: and married her. And then there's a problem. She wanted

1260
01:12:48,400 --> 01:12:51,240
Speaker 1: to funk all of the time and he likes to

1261
01:12:51,280 --> 01:12:53,400
Speaker 1: complain about how much she wanted to funk. I think

1262
01:12:53,439 --> 01:12:55,240
Speaker 1: it had to do with how bourgeoish she was that

1263
01:12:55,320 --> 01:12:58,719
Speaker 1: she wanted to fuck. He constantly complained about it, probably

1264
01:12:58,720 --> 01:13:02,240
Speaker 1: more often than she complained about wanting to fuck tendency

1265
01:13:02,360 --> 01:13:06,559
Speaker 1: known as horny I know exactly. And he also she

1266
01:13:06,720 --> 01:13:09,559
Speaker 1: wasn't a very good research assistant after they got married

1267
01:13:09,680 --> 01:13:13,080
Speaker 1: because she just wanted to funk all the time. So

1268
01:13:13,400 --> 01:13:16,320
Speaker 1: the original take my wife please guy is this fun

1269
01:13:16,600 --> 01:13:22,200
Speaker 1: Russian he fucking He goes on a trip abroad. At

1270
01:13:22,200 --> 01:13:23,800
Speaker 1: first he tries to go without her, and she's like, oh,

1271
01:13:23,800 --> 01:13:25,559
Speaker 1: I'm coming, and then he's like okay, So he tries

1272
01:13:25,600 --> 01:13:28,639
Speaker 1: to go home without her and he tries to ditch her,

1273
01:13:29,240 --> 01:13:32,280
Speaker 1: and there's something going on I don't understand, because even

1274
01:13:32,360 --> 01:13:35,080
Speaker 1: later when he's sent to Siberia, he's like, finally I

1275
01:13:35,080 --> 01:13:37,600
Speaker 1: can leave my wife and she's like I'm coming, and

1276
01:13:37,720 --> 01:13:40,000
Speaker 1: like he does not deserve her. I don't know enough

1277
01:13:40,040 --> 01:13:43,400
Speaker 1: about her, but he does not deserve this woman. Um.

1278
01:13:43,439 --> 01:13:45,360
Speaker 1: He also wrote a bunch of racist ship against like

1279
01:13:45,439 --> 01:13:49,200
Speaker 1: Jews and Latvians and Germans and really I'm kind of

1280
01:13:49,200 --> 01:13:51,280
Speaker 1: including and just to include how nihilist could be like

1281
01:13:51,400 --> 01:13:54,519
Speaker 1: really shitty and how counterculture doesn't solve misogyny even when

1282
01:13:54,520 --> 01:13:57,080
Speaker 1: you like claim to be feminist and all that ship

1283
01:13:57,640 --> 01:14:00,240
Speaker 1: important to include in the cool people who do cool

1284
01:14:00,240 --> 01:14:03,960
Speaker 1: stuff is that sometimes there's a bad apple and it

1285
01:14:04,040 --> 01:14:08,360
Speaker 1: didn't spoil the bunch. Yeah it's time he Um. The

1286
01:14:08,400 --> 01:14:12,439
Speaker 1: cool thing he did was he he gave our boy

1287
01:14:12,520 --> 01:14:14,720
Speaker 1: karak Is off the the assassin. He gave him the

1288
01:14:14,720 --> 01:14:16,760
Speaker 1: money for the gun um. He should have given him

1289
01:14:16,760 --> 01:14:19,160
Speaker 1: money for range time, but he only gave him money

1290
01:14:19,160 --> 01:14:23,439
Speaker 1: for the gun um. And also I know and when

1291
01:14:23,439 --> 01:14:25,200
Speaker 1: he was rounded up, you'll be shocked to know he

1292
01:14:25,280 --> 01:14:29,439
Speaker 1: snitched like crazy, Uh, but he made up funny stuff

1293
01:14:29,479 --> 01:14:32,120
Speaker 1: when he confessed, like he made up this secret society

1294
01:14:32,120 --> 01:14:33,920
Speaker 1: in Europe that was going to kill all of the

1295
01:14:34,000 --> 01:14:36,519
Speaker 1: rulers of Europe and had been sending him money and

1296
01:14:36,600 --> 01:14:40,599
Speaker 1: like super special secret fancy bombs. Uh. Anyway, fun him.

1297
01:14:40,640 --> 01:14:43,080
Speaker 1: Let's talk about cooler. Yeah, yeah, he snitched, but at

1298
01:14:43,160 --> 01:14:48,000
Speaker 1: least he got a fun type five out of it. Um. Okay,

1299
01:14:48,800 --> 01:14:52,640
Speaker 1: so organization and hell, the most influential member was this

1300
01:14:52,640 --> 01:14:56,679
Speaker 1: guy Nikolaiah shooting. He was the cousin he gets mock executed, etcetera.

1301
01:14:57,160 --> 01:14:59,200
Speaker 1: And they do a bunch of cool stuff. One of

1302
01:14:59,200 --> 01:15:01,360
Speaker 1: the things they do is a teen sixty four organization

1303
01:15:01,400 --> 01:15:06,240
Speaker 1: helps a Polish socialist named Yaroslav Dombrowski escape transport to Siberia.

1304
01:15:06,280 --> 01:15:08,800
Speaker 1: He's been arrested as part of this Polish rebellion in

1305
01:15:08,840 --> 01:15:10,600
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three that I wish I had time to

1306
01:15:10,640 --> 01:15:13,160
Speaker 1: go into but do not. Uh, And this guy was

1307
01:15:13,200 --> 01:15:15,840
Speaker 1: cool to get more Paris Commune ties. This guy he

1308
01:15:15,880 --> 01:15:18,519
Speaker 1: ends up in Paris after he escapes, after they bust

1309
01:15:18,600 --> 01:15:20,800
Speaker 1: him out, and when the Paris Commune happens, he's the

1310
01:15:20,800 --> 01:15:22,280
Speaker 1: only one who has any like or he has the

1311
01:15:22,320 --> 01:15:25,559
Speaker 1: most military training, so he becomes the commander of all

1312
01:15:25,600 --> 01:15:27,840
Speaker 1: of the armed forces of the Paris Commune, which means

1313
01:15:27,840 --> 01:15:30,719
Speaker 1: he negotiates the surrender, so everyone thinks he's a sellout.

1314
01:15:30,760 --> 01:15:32,760
Speaker 1: And then he dies of the wounds that he got

1315
01:15:32,800 --> 01:15:35,080
Speaker 1: on the barricades, and he's like, you think I'm gonna

1316
01:15:35,080 --> 01:15:37,559
Speaker 1: sell out now? Like literally his last words were, do

1317
01:15:37,640 --> 01:15:40,519
Speaker 1: they still say I'm a trader? I just like all

1318
01:15:40,520 --> 01:15:43,000
Speaker 1: the weird tiny characters. I'm not tiny. This guy lived

1319
01:15:43,000 --> 01:15:46,000
Speaker 1: an amazing life, but I do love theme, like like

1320
01:15:46,120 --> 01:15:49,080
Speaker 1: nothing to learn from it, but I love the characters

1321
01:15:49,120 --> 01:15:52,800
Speaker 1: who were like who had a bit of moral compromise

1322
01:15:52,920 --> 01:15:56,400
Speaker 1: that was able to be passed down through to us

1323
01:15:57,520 --> 01:16:01,880
Speaker 1: later on, where they still struggle with that later. Last time,

1324
01:16:02,000 --> 01:16:07,040
Speaker 1: like as as a quick aside, like I um, last

1325
01:16:07,040 --> 01:16:10,400
Speaker 1: time I was in gay Paris, I went to the

1326
01:16:11,560 --> 01:16:16,960
Speaker 1: to the cemetery where some people from the Paris Commune

1327
01:16:17,000 --> 01:16:20,519
Speaker 1: are and also Jim Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde, and

1328
01:16:20,600 --> 01:16:23,320
Speaker 1: there was a bunch of fucking freaks is just uh

1329
01:16:23,680 --> 01:16:25,559
Speaker 1: wandering around and like, I know what you're here for.

1330
01:16:27,000 --> 01:16:28,519
Speaker 1: And I went up to the little wall that they

1331
01:16:28,520 --> 01:16:31,439
Speaker 1: had um for the Paris Commune I had, and I

1332
01:16:31,479 --> 01:16:34,439
Speaker 1: had like a little, a little, a sweet little moment

1333
01:16:34,760 --> 01:16:37,600
Speaker 1: um and then I started walking away and it and

1334
01:16:37,760 --> 01:16:42,759
Speaker 1: this like super spiky punk with a huge backpack walks

1335
01:16:42,840 --> 01:16:48,479
Speaker 1: up to the wall and he pulls this like half

1336
01:16:48,560 --> 01:16:53,920
Speaker 1: full forty out of his or like yeah something what

1337
01:16:54,760 --> 01:16:57,920
Speaker 1: uh a large amount of alcohol that he downs in

1338
01:16:57,960 --> 01:17:00,559
Speaker 1: front of the wall and he smashes the ass in

1339
01:17:00,600 --> 01:17:02,880
Speaker 1: front of it, and then any and he like walks

1340
01:17:02,920 --> 01:17:06,439
Speaker 1: away and I'm like, fun, we don't speak the same language,

1341
01:17:06,479 --> 01:17:13,599
Speaker 1: but dude, let's hang out, okay. So I hope he's

1342
01:17:13,640 --> 01:17:19,840
Speaker 1: doing well, whoever he is. Organization and hell organization. We

1343
01:17:19,920 --> 01:17:24,000
Speaker 1: kind of talked about them at the beginning, and basically

1344
01:17:24,360 --> 01:17:26,800
Speaker 1: they're important now because they basically end the period of

1345
01:17:26,840 --> 01:17:30,120
Speaker 1: foundational nihilism, at least as I've read, and you know,

1346
01:17:30,200 --> 01:17:33,360
Speaker 1: the suicidally depressed car because Off goes and tries to

1347
01:17:33,479 --> 01:17:37,960
Speaker 1: kill the czar says nothing, nothing, he only took one

1348
01:17:37,960 --> 01:17:41,240
Speaker 1: shot with a two barreled gun. And then the white

1349
01:17:41,360 --> 01:17:46,400
Speaker 1: terror begins. A guy with the nickname Hanger mirav Is

1350
01:17:46,479 --> 01:17:49,840
Speaker 1: Off gets put in charge of the oppression. Two radical

1351
01:17:49,880 --> 01:17:52,160
Speaker 1: journals are shut down, a lot of the educational reforms

1352
01:17:52,160 --> 01:17:54,200
Speaker 1: are walked back. Some of the educational reforms got walked

1353
01:17:54,200 --> 01:17:57,200
Speaker 1: back earlier when people are setting fires too. And this

1354
01:17:57,280 --> 01:18:00,000
Speaker 1: kind of ends nihilist fashion in a mainstream way, apparent

1355
01:18:00,000 --> 01:18:03,760
Speaker 1: really almost overnight. Men cut their hair, women grew theirs out.

1356
01:18:04,760 --> 01:18:06,400
Speaker 1: Some do it because they're done with the whole thing

1357
01:18:06,400 --> 01:18:07,840
Speaker 1: and just want to go back to their lives. And

1358
01:18:07,880 --> 01:18:10,200
Speaker 1: some do it because they figure, look, if I'm gonna

1359
01:18:10,240 --> 01:18:12,280
Speaker 1: keep trying to kill motherfucker's I should blend into the

1360
01:18:12,280 --> 01:18:15,200
Speaker 1: crowd a little better. Let's go underground. Yeah, yeah, And

1361
01:18:15,240 --> 01:18:17,360
Speaker 1: that's where we're gonna end it for today. When we

1362
01:18:17,400 --> 01:18:20,479
Speaker 1: come back, it's Bomb's time and hippies back to the

1363
01:18:20,560 --> 01:18:25,680
Speaker 1: land time, boy boy Boy. Finally, finally we get to

1364
01:18:25,680 --> 01:18:29,439
Speaker 1: the round cartoon Bomb Round Cartoon, bomb time and the

1365
01:18:29,479 --> 01:18:33,720
Speaker 1: Hippies back to the land time. So, so, how are

1366
01:18:33,720 --> 01:18:39,120
Speaker 1: you feeling about these nihilists? Oh, big fan? At this point,

1367
01:18:39,720 --> 01:18:43,719
Speaker 1: um reminds me of a lot, a lot of my buddies,

1368
01:18:44,080 --> 01:18:47,240
Speaker 1: and and I can't help but but root for them

1369
01:18:47,360 --> 01:18:50,840
Speaker 1: all the all the flaws, warts and all I must.

1370
01:18:51,080 --> 01:18:54,120
Speaker 1: I must root for them, um. And I'm sure it

1371
01:18:54,160 --> 01:18:56,880
Speaker 1: will continue. I'm sure that the next episode will get

1372
01:18:56,880 --> 01:18:58,880
Speaker 1: me put on some sort of list for how hard

1373
01:18:58,920 --> 01:19:05,240
Speaker 1: I root for them. Yeah, that might be true. I Oh,

1374
01:19:05,400 --> 01:19:08,080
Speaker 1: do you have anything you want to plug before we

1375
01:19:08,120 --> 01:19:14,519
Speaker 1: head out? Yeah? I have Twitter and an Instagram and

1376
01:19:14,560 --> 01:19:19,200
Speaker 1: they are bum lung bum like the thing that doesn't

1377
01:19:19,240 --> 01:19:22,439
Speaker 1: work and lung like the thing that works. Sometimes if

1378
01:19:22,479 --> 01:19:28,120
Speaker 1: you're me, Um and uh, I have I have a store.

1379
01:19:28,240 --> 01:19:31,960
Speaker 1: I still prints and I make comics and stuff like that.

1380
01:19:32,400 --> 01:19:35,599
Speaker 1: It's also under the same name. Awesome Margaret. Where can

1381
01:19:35,640 --> 01:19:39,120
Speaker 1: people follow you? Well, I have a I have a

1382
01:19:39,120 --> 01:19:41,200
Speaker 1: new podcast out that people can listen to. It's called

1383
01:19:41,280 --> 01:19:43,920
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. I'm on Twitter at

1384
01:19:43,920 --> 01:19:46,720
Speaker 1: Magpie kill Joy and I'm on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy.

1385
01:19:46,880 --> 01:19:49,320
Speaker 1: And if you follow me on Instagram, I will probably

1386
01:19:49,360 --> 01:19:51,240
Speaker 1: just talk about how much I love my dog and

1387
01:19:51,280 --> 01:19:53,800
Speaker 1: then have pictures of videos and me playing piano. But

1388
01:19:53,880 --> 01:19:57,760
Speaker 1: on Instagram, no, the other one, Twitter, that's where I'm

1389
01:19:58,040 --> 01:20:02,920
Speaker 1: pick fights and m smart. There's also dog pictures on

1390
01:20:02,960 --> 01:20:05,719
Speaker 1: that one though. Oh, it's a great, great dog. Everybody,

1391
01:20:05,720 --> 01:20:10,519
Speaker 1: you gotta see this dog. Yeah, I can't recommend Margaret's dog.

1392
01:20:12,640 --> 01:20:14,439
Speaker 1: And then and then we'll be back with her two

1393
01:20:14,720 --> 01:20:20,599
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. Just cool and good. Yeah, you can say

1394
01:20:20,640 --> 01:20:25,639
Speaker 1: cool and good on ironically in this show fine Cool

1395
01:20:25,680 --> 01:20:28,160
Speaker 1: People Who Did Cool Stuff as a production of cool

1396
01:20:28,240 --> 01:20:31,439
Speaker 1: Zone Media. Or more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit

1397
01:20:31,439 --> 01:20:34,200
Speaker 1: our website cool zone media dot com, or check us

1398
01:20:34,200 --> 01:20:37,000
Speaker 1: out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

1399
01:20:37,040 --> 01:20:38,760
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts