WEBVTT - Part One: Beria: Stalin's Pedophile Cop & the Soviet Oppenheimer 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:05.440 Also media here, everyone, Robert Evans here, and before we 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:08.640 get to the episode, obviously a lot of people in 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:11.159 Gaza need a lot of different help. But we've been 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:15.120 connected to the Algazawi family by a friend of ours 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:18.400 who's doing aid work there right now. They are trying 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:21.560 to get fourteen members of their family out of Gaza 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:25.960 before you know, things get any worse for them, and 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:29.000 they're raising money to do so on go fund me. 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:33.159 If you google help al Gazawi family escape Gaza go 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:35.760 fund Me, you can find it. Algazawie is spelled a 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:39.120 l g h a zz a w I. 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:40.120 Yeah. 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:42.879 We're trying to help them, you know, get to a 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:48.919 safer place, so please consider donating if you can. Oh, 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:53.360 welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast that 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:56.520 makes you sad. That's the promise we make with Behind 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.440 the Bastards is that after listening to this episode, your 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:02.200 life will be worse. And to help me make your 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:07.440 life worse, the Great Joe Kasebian Joe, welcome to the program. 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:09.880 Hey, thanks for having me back. I'm glad to finally 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:12.280 get my my Behind the Bastards hat trick. 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.920 Yeah, yeah, yeah, wait, what's the hat trick? 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:19.120 So that's a sports reference that you know that you 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:19.959 should really know. 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:21.960 I was about to say, because I don't. I don't 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:23.520 know you as a hat guy, Joe. 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:28.840 Three times in oh okay, yeah, okay. 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:30.520 So for everybody listening, they have to take their hat 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.160 off and throw it somewhere anyway. 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:37.319 Okay, okay, Well, well, well they're all busy doing that, 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.840 I'm gonna throw you a story of a real piece 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:41.200 of ship. 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:41.720 Joe. 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:44.920 What do you know? Joe Kasabian, host of the Lions 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:49.000 Led by Donkeys podcast, author of several books. What's your latest, Joe? 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:54.840 So my latest up front? Now, yeah, I have a 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.920 military science fiction series coming out. The first two books 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:05.360 are are currently out. You have The Undying The whole 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:07.640 series is called The Undying Legion. So if you look 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:10.639 up the Undying Legion series or my name, you could 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:13.680 find it. Uh. And the first two books are currently 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:16.280 out and the third book will be out next month. 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:20.320 Excellent, exegon excellent. And you also have your work of nonfiction, 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:23.920 The Hooligans of Kandahar. People should check out all of 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:29.040 your books. Now you know who didn't write fiction, but 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:33.560 did lie enough to be considered a fiction writer. Oh boy, 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:40.320 Lavrinti Barrio. What do you know about Lavrinti Barria. No, yeah, oh. 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:42.160 I would be brought in for Burrio, wouldn't I? 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:45.760 Oh he is. 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:46.240 He is. 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.160 If you've watched the Death of Stalin, he's the bad guy. 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:51.119 I mean everyone is the bad guy and the Death 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:54.160 of Stalin except for maybe Zukov, but he's the bad guy, 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.520 and the Death of Stalin's the dad guy everything. He 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:01.320 was the bad guy in real life too, one of them. 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:01.720 You know. 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:05.200 We open like a lot of our episodes with like 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:09.200 comparisons to the usually the Nazis. Right, we'll call King 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.400 Leopold the Hitler of African colonialism, or like the British 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.560 Empire slow Nazis, because Nazis are like everyone's touchstone for 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.239 the absolute depths of human evil. And one of the 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:23.239 things that's interesting about Laventi Barria is that Stalin himself 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.040 compared him to a Nazi during the Yalta I think 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:27.960 it was the Yalta Conference. When he's talking to like 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:31.600 FDR he calls Barria r Himmler. Like that's how he 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:35.640 introduces Barrier to the President, like, this is my Himmler. Yeah, 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:36.400 I got one too. 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:41.560 We all got a Himmler. Everybody's got Churchill after Churchill 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:44.640 like said, Stalin is a bastard, but he's our bastard. 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:46.520 He's like, yeah, he's Himmler, but he's our Himmler. 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:49.720 He's our Hemmler. It's cool, we got one. I actually 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:53.320 don't agree with that comparison. He's not much like Himmler. 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:56.560 I guess he kind of you know, Himler runs the SS, 0:03:56.760 --> 0:03:59.480 Barrier runs the Secret Police, because that's the comparison. But 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:03.880 like Himmler is a hardcore believer, right, Himler is not 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.720 like a like a fair weather Nazi. He's like he's 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.560 like into the occult. He's trying to He's got a 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:12.680 castle where he's doing rituals and shit. 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:12.880 Like. 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:14.680 One thing you can say about Himler is he believed 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:19.000 all that kookie nonsense, really into witches, really into witches. 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:22.760 I don't think Barria believed. I don't think Barria was 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:25.120 really like in his I don't think Barria Barry was 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:27.039 a communist and that that was like the system he 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:28.640 worked in. But I don't think he was like a 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:30.160 hardcore believer. 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:30.800 Right. 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.000 Maria was a was a power guy, right, and he 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:35.960 was going to do whatever would get him into power. 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:39.400 He I think he was the kind of guy my 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.560 knowledge of Barria is like he would have been. He 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.520 would have glommed onto any system that would allow him 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:48.479 to do what he did right right. 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:50.440 He would have at least attempted to do, which I don't 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:53.479 do to like take any blame away from the horrible 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:57.440 state communist system that existed in the USSR, particularly under Stalin. 0:04:57.880 --> 0:04:59.919 It's just that's not the kind of dude Barria was. 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:06.280 He was a consummate opportunist. It's just the love of 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:08.760 the game. He just loves being an asshole in a government, 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:09.000 you know. 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:13.960 He was. He would have the excels. That's just such 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:14.600 a good. 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:17.479 Piece of ship. I had a line in here about 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:19.720 how he's got a body count only rivaled by these 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:22.159 Australian dudes I met once in a Berlin hostel, but 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:24.400 I wasn't sure if that was an obvious enough joke. 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:32.279 Don't don't room next to Australians and a hostile guys. 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:34.560 It's it's it's just a mess, you know. The don't 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:39.799 true Australians. Don't room next to Australians anywhere. Don't stay away. 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:41.359 That's why they're on that island. 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:43.840 You know they need to be there. It's the only 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:47.799 thing that contains them is the isolation and countless venomous 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:49.880 animals that will murder them if they step on a line. 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:52.200 Would you get kicked out of the UK for being 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:54.640 too much of a hooligan? You know it says something. 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:58.760 There's one thing I can say positive of Australians. I 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:04.000 love the national pastime of hooning. Yes, I have to 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:06.800 give them shit because Australians and Texans are the two 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:09.360 peoples on the world that are like closest in their 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.520 in their overall temperament, and neither of us likes to 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:15.080 hear it, but it's it's undeniable when you spend time 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:15.559 with both. 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:20.560 Australia is Texas. If Texas wasn't connected to anything else, yeah, 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:22.600 if we will vacuum. 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:27.240 Speaking of Texas, a lot of people say that Texas 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:30.080 of Eastern Europe is Georgia. I don't know if anyone's 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:30.599 ever said that. 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.640 Joe actually as someone who lived in both Texas and Georgia. 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:38.440 All lot, Well, that's where our friend Barria is born 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.080 and Georgia the country is in a tough historic position. 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:42.920 If you just look at. 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:45.000 A map, you can and you and you have a 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.800 vague knowledge of like the last thousand years, you can 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:50.279 like put together in your heads some of the problems 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:52.919 Georgia was likely to have had. Right, they're kind of 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.160 in the middle. If you're if you're the Terps, right, 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:57.839 if you're the Ottomans, Georgia is in the way of 0:06:57.880 --> 0:06:59.560 where you want to get to, right. 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.200 That's Europe. 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.160 George is also in the way of getting to places 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:07.800 you want to go. If you're Russia, George's in the way. 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:10.640 They're just kind of they're one of those speed bump countries, 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:13.080 and they're gonna wind up having kind of a tumultuous 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:15.600 history as a result of just kind of being in 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:18.280 the middle of a bunch of shit. So, by the 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:20.880 end of the seventeen hundreds, Russia has won most of 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:24.160 Eastern Georgia in a gentleman's game of murder each other 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.960 with the Ottomans. Russian interest in the area peaked whenever 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:30.320 the Turks looked tired or weak, and would fade whenever 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.000 Turkey looked like it really wanted to throw hands. By 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:34.760 the middle of the eighteen hundreds, this tug of war 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:37.440 had gone Russia's way often enough that most of Georgia 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.200 winds up in possession of the Czars, who treated the 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.560 Georgians about as carefully as they treated everything else. Right, 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.480 not great, it's not great, about. 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:49.600 As great as Russia currently treats Georgians within sporters. 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:52.800 Yeah, that's a generally accurate way to look at it. 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:55.520 So Georgians buy and larger, not thrilled with this situation. 0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:58.520 But since the Turks hadn't really been any better, some 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:01.360 of them started looking at some radical solutions to their 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:04.920 having a government problem. And socialism's kind of the new 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:08.080 hotness at this point. So in Georgia, socialism is kind 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.920 of it becomes kissing cousins with nationalism, right, And by 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:14.480 the start of the nineteen hundreds there were two broad 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:18.080 socialist groups that were kind of gaining influence in Georgia. 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:21.800 You got your Mensheviks and you got your Bolsheviks. Bolsheviks 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:26.240 basically means the majority party and Mensheviks means the minority party. 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:29.360 But the Mensheviks are much more numerous than the Bolsheviks. 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:31.520 It's a little bit of a fuck game there, right. 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:34.520 The Mensheviks are kind of it's not really accurate to 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:36.960 view them as social Democrats the way we know them, 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:39.679 but they're closer to that than what becomes the government 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:42.640 of the Soviet Union, right, and that sounds pretty good 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:44.880 to a lot of Georgians. And so the Mensheviks are larger, 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:47.160 they're more organized than the Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks are 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:49.920 going to spend all of subsequent history pretending it had 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:51.240 always been the other way around. 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:56.160 Right Again, that sounds very familiar, exact same like, I'm 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:01.880 Armenian and Georgians and Armenians are the brothers culturally, very 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:05.360 very very similar. Even in our own revolutionary history of 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:07.760 like the First Republic of Armenia, the conflict between the 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:12.440 Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks is literally identical. Yes, yes, it's 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:16.359 through the Caucuses in general, the story is, the story rhymes. 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:18.240 And this is you know, Barria is a little more 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:20.320 Georgia focused, but he also he spends most of his 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.440 early career in his aerba Jan and he is kind 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.520 of his whole life is his whole early political career 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:27.920 is in the trans Caucuses. Because you, as you said, 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:31.959 you can't really separate a zerba Jan, Armenia, Georgia during 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:34.520 this kind of revolutionary period and what had once been 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:37.560 the Russian Empire, like they're all very tied together. 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:39.600 Once they became the one country. 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:43.840 Yeah, yes, exactly. So our subject for this week, Lavrenti 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:45.720 is born right in the middle of this kind of 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:49.839 surge in socialist organizing in Georgia on March twenty ninth, 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:53.320 eighteen ninety nine. So I believe he's an ares pisces 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.400 cusp the worst. 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:00.320 I don't know anything about signs. I just know whenever 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.680 a sign is pronounced, the people that I know that 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.079 are into them always just like cy heavily, like of 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:09.560 course God, or that's exactly what he is. 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:12.640 That's always by response whatever somebody brings up, like oh yeah, 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:14.480 and this famous person is this sign. You roll your 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:19.720 eyes and go, oh God, obviously whatever you just said. 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:23.440 Becoming the head of the NKVD. What a pisces move, 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:29.079 that's classic. It's right on the pisces. Yeah, the doing 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:33.200 the Caden massacre, Katian massacre, that's a classic airy shit, right. 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:35.040 Not surprised he's got vote in him. 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:37.320 Yeah, you wouldn't expect that from say, a cancer. 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.400 Oh god, no, no, no, no, no, I'm sure one 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:44.760 of the Nazis was a cancer. They anyway, Lavrenti Pavlovitch. 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:48.520 Barria Is becomes a baby March twenty ninth, eighteen ninety nine. 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:52.120 He's born in a small village, Merculi, which is kind 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:54.640 of out in the boonies near the Black Sea coast. 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.360 His family are Mingrelian, which is an ethnic minority in 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.080 Georgia with its own language but not a written one, 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:03.680 so they use the Georgian language for writing, but they've 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:06.120 also got their own language. That's kind of just an 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:09.200 oral tradition. The fact that he's Mingrellian is going to 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.960 become relevant much later near the end of his life 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:15.120 because Mingrellians are different, right, They're not the same as 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:18.800 everyone else in Georgia. And in the late stalin Is period, 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.559 anyone who's part of an ethnic group that isn't Russian 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.960 or mainstream Georgian is gonna have a bad time. 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:28.720 Right unfortunately, still kind of currently true. 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:32.120 Well, still, this is if you know one period in 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.280 Russian history, there's some broad strokes you'll be accurate about 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:39.800 in most of it, right. So Barrias Georgia was considered 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:42.680 by Western Europeans to be among the most backwards parts 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:45.880 of the continent. One visitor in eighteen ninety one from 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:49.280 Germany claimed they didn't even know about crop rotation, which 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:52.760 might speak more to his racism than actual agricultural practice. 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:55.360 But it's undeniable that this was seen as the middle 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:57.600 of nowhere in most people's eyes, and as a result, 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:00.440 it's much more culturally isolated than most parts of the 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:05.160 Western Russian Empire. It's not a very cosmopolitan place. Barrya's mother, 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:09.040 Marta Ivanova, was twenty seven when she had him, which 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:10.280 is pretty late in that. 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:14.160 Yeah, surprising. I was expecting you to say fourteen or something. 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like, I mean, she'd had some 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:20.360 other kids, I think before. And she is described by 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:24.160 barry a biographer Amy Knight as a quote simple, deeply 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:28.880 religious woman who attended church regularly all her life. Some sources, 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:32.800 including Knight's biography, claim she came from a noble background, 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.600 although it was a branch of the nobility that had 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:39.120 no money. Another biographer, I read a guy named Sangster, 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:41.640 and a couple other people have come into argue that 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:43.840 he was probably had no noble blood. It was kind 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:46.040 of a rumor, might have been like a family legend. 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:48.760 We've got this ancestry, but there's not evidence of it. 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:50.440 But a lot of this comes down to like family 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:52.200 law as opposed to something that likes. 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:54.439 It's very much a Caucasian thing to have, like deep 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:58.239 family lore that is not at all grounded in reality, 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:02.120 Like he started as like her great great uncle once 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:05.959 removed story and then like spreads throughout your family till 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.760 it's just spoken as just unassailable fact. 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:12.440 And it's tough because part of it there's probably almost 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:16.360 certainly everyone has some noble ancestry because nobles fuck a 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:19.000 lot of their servants and have a lot of illegitimate children. 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:22.520 Like Stalin is going to be taken care of by 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:25.320 this rich guy his mom worked for, right, Like he's 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:27.160 this rich guy's gonna give them a lot of money, 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:29.520 and Barry, his mom's gonna have the same situation. And 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:31.520 we don't know, Well, was it just because she worked 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:33.480 for this guy he considered her part of the family, 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:35.559 so he helped out. Is it because they were stopping? 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:38.560 Is it because there's like that he had an illegitimate 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:40.400 kid with her, right, Like we will never know. 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.000 You know, maybe she's working the whole time. You know, 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:44.360 maybe she's working. 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:46.079 The whole time, right, Maybe she's got a little that 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.640 in Nancy Reagan magic. Nothing against that, you. 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.960 Know, Barry a family, the mcgrellian throat goats. 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:58.800 So it's interesting to note that a lot of Marxist 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:01.959 rebel lee like Marxist leaders, because all Marxists are kind 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:04.680 of members of an illegal party in this period, whether 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:07.520 you're kind of more in the Menshevik or the Bolshevik side, 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.600 the Tsar doesn't like what you're doing. Most of the 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:14.800 leaders of these Marxist organizations have a background where there's 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:17.640 some nobility. A lot of them come from the cashless nobility, 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:19.440 which is like a big thing all throughout Europe. You've 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:21.320 got like your nobles who are rich, and you've got 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:23.840 your nobles who squandered everything. So they've got the blood 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:27.600 but nothing else. I know, the the ones I respect more, yes, yes, 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:30.640 And a lot of leftist leaders in this period, particularly 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:33.120 if youth organizations, are these like cashless nobles, and it 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:35.520 makes sense because they they tend to benefit from much 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:38.680 more of an education. But they're not really even though 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:40.600 they're nobles, they're not really the same class as the 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:42.640 people with money because they don't have any fucking money. 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:45.880 So it's not hard to see, right, like why that 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:51.040 would be the case. MARTA's got a pretty difficult life. 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:53.880 Her first marriage gives her one son, who dies young. 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:57.040 Her husband dies too, so she marries again. She has 0:14:57.080 --> 0:15:00.480 three more kids, one of them, Anna, is born deaf mute, 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:03.760 another who is Barry, his brother we know nothing about, 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:07.280 so he probably died young too. And then she's got Barria, 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:10.520 who's the only boy we know survived to adulthood. And 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:12.680 by the way, her second marriage with Barry his dad 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:14.280 in the same way as the first, and that her 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:18.560 husband dies the Barry of family husbands have a proud 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.240 tradition of dying instantly after making kids. 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.120 We don't know if Laventi had something to do with 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:25.560 any of this. 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.680 It's not a zero percent chance, right. 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:32.040 If someone told me, like, you know, when he was 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:35.360 barely able to walk, he sank a knife into someone's neck, 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:36.640 I'd be like, yeah, cross. 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:39.000 You hear a lot about like, yeah, you know, this 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:42.360 kid killed his mom and childbirth or whatever. Right, common story. 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:45.360 Barria pops out with a knife and shanks his dad. 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:49.600 Right in the gut. I mean, from my own family history, 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:50.760 you know what, I'm okay with this. 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:55.160 So Barry is going to be the only boy to 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:57.320 make it to adulthood. And it's probably not surprising that 0:15:57.360 --> 0:15:59.840 Marta dobts on him, right. He is a mama's boy. 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:02.840 Stalin is as well. And another thing I've noticed when 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:05.560 you read about a lot of the more influential like 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.280 rebel leaders in Russia in this period, decent number of 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:09.840 them are mom as boys, you know. 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:10.760 Huh. 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:13.320 So if you want your kid to overthrow the government, 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:15.800 spoil them a little bit, moms, you know, it's good 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:16.200 for him. 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:20.600 Rama's boy grown up. So I guess I'm just waiting 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:21.200 for my time. 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:24.960 Yeah, no, no, no, don't let the uh, don't let 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:26.640 the immigration board hear that. 0:16:27.920 --> 0:16:30.440 I already got my residency cars. 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:34.440 So one of his peers later recalled that he quote 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:36.680 grew up on the hands of his mother, who earned 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:39.320 by her sewing. So that's kind of how she keeps 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.840 the lights on, although the lights are not like electric lights, 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:44.680 so she actually keeps the lights on by it. It's 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.040 how you buy the candles, yeah, buying candles. 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:48.240 Yeah. 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.200 So here's how Night describes Laventi as an adolescent in 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:55.560 the book, Barria, Stalin's first lieutenant. Barria was a mediocre student, 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:58.760 not excelling in any subject but considered cunning and devious. 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.240 After completing school and Sukumi in nineteen fifteen, Barria went 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:04.639 to the city of Baku, in a Zerbajan, where he 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:08.760 enrolled in the Baku Polytechnical School for Mechanical Construction, remaining 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.959 there for the next four years. Baria probably chose Baku 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:14.439 for his studies instead of Tabilisi, which was much closer 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:16.679 to home, because it offered the specific course he was 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:20.200 interested in. Nonetheless, Baku was almost six hundred kilometers from home, 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:23.000 quite a distance for a boy of only sixteen. Barria 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:25.840 says in his autobiography that he supported himself, his mother, 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.600 his sister, and young niece by doing office work during 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:33.560 school vacations. Now, these claims that Barria is a shitty student, 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.160 but you know, supports his family and somehow gets into 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.720 Baku Polytechnic are primarily supported by a family friend and 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:44.040 later comrade in the USSR government named Danilov. And Danilov 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:45.639 is the guy who's like, yeah, he wasn't book smart, 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.040 he was a shitty student, but he's just cunning. We 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:51.160 get a different version of what happened in a summary 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:54.000 of Barria I found on globalsecurity dot Org, which is 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:56.480 a think tank founded in two thousand that focuses on 0:17:56.520 --> 0:17:59.720 defense and foreign policy. Bob Woodward likes them. I don't 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:01.920 know much more about them beyond that, but they seem 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:04.240 to be relatively credible, and this scans with some other 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:07.280 things I've read. In school, Barria did very well as 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:09.560 the best student the villager's pride. He went to study 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:13.200 in Sukumi. Apparently they always moved in vain desire to advance, 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:16.240 to be the first in any cost. And this is 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:18.440 kind of a discrepancy. You'll get like Barry is either 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.399 this shitty student who's super cunning and gets by on 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.520 being a schemer, or he's a pretty good student who's 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:26.800 like really well respected in town because he's this local 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.000 boy who does well. The fact that there are discrepancies 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:32.399 in this and almost every other fact about the man 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:35.320 comes down to the fact that most of what we 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:38.879 know about Barria comes from either coworkers who later helped 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:41.640 to murder him and thus wanted to make him look bad, 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:45.080 or his own cult of personality right, which is also 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:48.359 full of shit. So it is really hard to know 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:53.960 much for certain about, particularly his early life. Polish writer 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.639 Thaddeus Whitlan an early Barria biographer even called Barria the 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:01.840 man without history. Of course, Andrew Sankster notes, he then 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.199 spends pages on his early life, how he dressed, and 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.840 even his thought processes, how he behaved in school, and 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:09.480 from this the reader can only assume it is mere conjecture. 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:14.440 So again, like, there's so much bullshit about this guy, 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:17.159 even in the pretty good biographies. And I'm not shitting 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:19.160 on night here. I think her book is generally quite good, 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.600 but like there's just a lot of maybees with Barry. 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:24.480 That's like, you know, kind of part and parcel with 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:27.240 a guy like Barrier, right, yes, yes, he when he 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:30.359 comes to power, he's known for being terrifying, which you know, 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:32.760 obviously we'll get to and one of the most terrifying 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:34.359 things you can do, and something that he had the 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:36.840 power to do was erase his own history. Then you 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:39.800 can't use it against them, right, And that's a part 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:42.159 of it. And also one thing Sangster will note is 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:45.760 that most early Barrier biographies are written after his execution 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:49.879 when he becomes so Stalin dies they kill Barria and 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:53.080 guys like Krushchev comes into power next, and Krushchev and 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:56.720 everyone who kind of survives from the Stalinist era. They're 0:19:56.760 --> 0:19:59.679 all complicit in the crimes of the Stalinist era, and 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:01.840