Speaker 1: Also media here, everyone, Robert Evans here, and before we
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Speaker 1: the Bastards podcast Bad People tell you all about Them.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to our epic four parter on the Vrinti Barrier.
Speaker 1: Every Buddy's second favorite Georgian who went on to commit
Speaker 1: crimes against humanity?
Speaker 2: Yeah, even the people of Georgia's second favorite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely the people of Georgia's second favorite.
Speaker 2: He is he is not quite winning against against our
Speaker 2: buddy Stalin, But who is winning today is our guest
Speaker 2: in this fine podcast Joe Kasabian, Joe, welcome to the
Speaker 2: pro Hey, thanks for I'm happy to be the second
Speaker 2: Joe mentioned so far in this episode. Yeah, it's good
Speaker 2: to be back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're gonna want to become like the
Speaker 1: unquestioned head of the USSR, you're going to need a
Speaker 1: pithier last name than Kassebian. It's just not going to sell.
Speaker 2: I mean, just like Joseph Stalin had to change his
Speaker 2: last name, I'm gonna have to change mine.
Speaker 1: Have you considered a different alloy, Joe, tungsten?
Speaker 2: That could work. I'm more of like a man of
Speaker 2: aluminum type guy. Depending on the year, that could be
Speaker 2: very valuable, but not all that really Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: speaking of useful but not all that reliable.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to the story of Lavni Barrier. When
Speaker 1: we left off our buddy, he had kind of finally
Speaker 1: worked his way into Stalin's good books. He had succeeded Yazov,
Speaker 1: the man that everybody called a homicidal dwarf, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that he was five feet tall, which is a
Speaker 1: like a normal human height.
Speaker 2: I think somebody says, like Napoleon was sure he was
Speaker 2: just normal size. It's more fun to think of evil
Speaker 2: people as short, because then there no kind of adorable
Speaker 2: and innocent Yeah.
Speaker 1: As opposed to someone with millions of people's blood on
Speaker 1: their hands. I don't know why we think it makes
Speaker 1: it better, but I guess people did. But anyway, Yezov
Speaker 1: is out. He's going to be killed pretty soon after
Speaker 1: this because he's a guy who lost his job as
Speaker 1: secret policeman in the Soviet Union. And that's what happens
Speaker 1: when you're a secret policeman.
Speaker 2: Yes, severance packages are normally you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: how much oker have bullet costs, but it's worth about
Speaker 2: that much money. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The severance packages are measured in millimeters plait Lubkov hid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's more or less what happens to Yezov. So
Speaker 1: so by kind of the late nineteen thirties thirty seven
Speaker 1: or so Barria is thirty eight, like late nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 1: Barria is the head of the NKVD. He's gotten close
Speaker 1: to Stalin by becoming his mom's nurse and then attending
Speaker 1: his mom's funeral in lieu of Joseph Stalin, which is
Speaker 1: great Stalin. At least two biographers they've read say Stalin
Speaker 1: always felt bad about this. I don't know that I
Speaker 1: believe Stalin felt bad about things.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't think Stalin ever felt bad about anything. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Perhaps maybe it's like a Darth Vader thing where he's
Speaker 1: like doing the big like cheesy, no is he is?
Speaker 2: He did?
Speaker 1: Did Stalin have a powered body armor that acted as
Speaker 1: a life support system?
Speaker 2: I assume so it worked all the way until he
Speaker 2: collapsed into a pile of his zone piss in his office. Yes. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: November of nineteen thirty eight, KVD head at Yezov had
Speaker 1: been forced to resign citing his health and the strait
Speaker 1: of being overworked. Laverni Barria replaces him, and he does
Speaker 1: the normal thing you do when you take over for
Speaker 1: the secret Police, which is purge all of the guys
Speaker 1: who had been loyal to the dude before you. Right now,
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens whenever this goes on
Speaker 1: is that you wind up purging all of the people
Speaker 1: who had done the last round of purges, which which
Speaker 1: Barria does. And that's really kind of the safe move, right.
Speaker 1: You want the people who are really good at carrying
Speaker 1: out a purge out of there, because you know that's
Speaker 1: not going to benefit you at all if they're sitting
Speaker 1: around with their finger on any triggers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like any company, however, that has like a
Speaker 2: complete one percent turnover rate in three years. You got
Speaker 2: to start getting a little bit worried about where you like.
Speaker 2: The only way to secure, to make sure that you
Speaker 2: don't end up in a ditch, is to put everybody
Speaker 2: else in a dish. Yeah, it's an Amazon did about
Speaker 2: kind of situation. Yeah, maybe he does assume this is
Speaker 2: how every Amazon warehouse works, but with robots.
Speaker 1: And like an Amazon warehouse. His first job is to
Speaker 1: hound his predecessor's wife into suicide, which he does of
Speaker 1: course Jesus. She wants taking poison that is supplied by
Speaker 1: his old boss, Sergo, who has also been killed by
Speaker 1: this points widow. So Sergo's wife is like, I know
Speaker 1: the plan, Like, look, your husband got fired, you should
Speaker 1: probably just take this poison.
Speaker 2: I promise it's what. It's better to eat this than
Speaker 2: what Lavrenti has planned for you otherwise. It is nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight in the Soviet Union. Things aren't going to
Speaker 2: get better anytime soon.
Speaker 1: You really don't want to be around for the next
Speaker 1: like seven years.
Speaker 2: It's all bad. Yeah, maybe we should take her daily
Speaker 2: vitamin suicide pill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just go ahead and take this. You'll you'll
Speaker 1: miss out on some bad times. So the rate of
Speaker 1: arrests and executions does decline after late nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 1: but not by as much as you'd think, Like people
Speaker 1: will generally agree this is the end of the error,
Speaker 1: but they're still executing quite a few people, and now
Speaker 1: it's Barria kind of doing the executions. Three arrested Politbureau
Speaker 1: members are killed in early nineteen thirty nine, and Barria
Speaker 1: handles those executions. But these proved to be that a
Speaker 1: deer of this particular level of fear, at least for
Speaker 1: high ranking Soviet officials. The next thing Barry is going
Speaker 1: to do is follow in his former bosses footsteps, purging
Speaker 1: Red Army officers. And since all of the really good
Speaker 1: ones are gone, he's not even purging the top guys
Speaker 1: at this point, right he's.
Speaker 2: Taking out random lieutenants.
Speaker 1: There's one Marshal here. Right after he moves to Moscow
Speaker 1: to like take over the NKVD, he's going to wind
Speaker 1: up like torturing Marshall. Blucher b l i U k
Speaker 1: h e Er is how it's usually anglicized. And Barria
Speaker 1: he's not great at He's not as good at torturing
Speaker 1: as he's going to be, so he kind of accidentally
Speaker 1: beats this guy until he loses an eye and dies
Speaker 1: a few weeks later from his injuries.
Speaker 2: On the job injuries. You know, it's a bummer.
Speaker 1: You know you're not supposed to torture them quite that much.
Speaker 1: But what do you do when you've accidentally killed this
Speaker 1: guy too fast? You torture his wife? Right? Uh?
Speaker 2: Sure, that's what it says in my employee handbook.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's the norm for podcasters. And this Marshall's
Speaker 1: wife is later going to claim she felt that Barrya
Speaker 1: tortured her just for sadistic curiosity, kind of because he
Speaker 1: had killed her husband too early. I don't know how
Speaker 1: well to judge that.
Speaker 2: He's got to get better at it. You know, he
Speaker 2: needs on.
Speaker 1: The job twenty ten thousand hours of torturing to get
Speaker 1: really good at it. That's what that Malcolm Gladwell book
Speaker 1: is about.
Speaker 2: If I'm remembering it priorly, I think it might actually
Speaker 2: have been.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that book is torture, so I get it now.
Speaker 1: As the killing receded, a sense of cautious optimism emerged
Speaker 1: among the men of Stalin's inner circle, and Barria is
Speaker 1: now officially among them. At the eighteenth Party Congress in
Speaker 1: March of nineteen thirty nine, the gang was met with
Speaker 1: thunderous applause, and Stalin announced that the recent purges had
Speaker 1: made the USSR more resilient than ever in the face
Speaker 1: of ongoing fascist pressure. And again, this is the justification
Speaker 1: guys like Molotov are going to be parrotting until literally
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty that this great terror that kills all of
Speaker 1: the officers who know how to do anything in the
Speaker 1: army was necessary because you didn't want unreliable men around
Speaker 1: when this inevitable conflict with fascism starts out.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows the first step of every emergency is to
Speaker 2: take the nearest firearm and just shoot the tip of
Speaker 2: your own dick off. Yeah. Yeah, there's someone that dick
Speaker 2: getting in the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now they can't shoot you in the dick. You've
Speaker 1: already suffered the worst that you can suffer, exactly. That
Speaker 1: is kind of the logic they're working on here. It's
Speaker 1: one of those you know, it's it's fair to say
Speaker 1: that Stalin at least always expresses that war with the
Speaker 1: Nazis is inevitable, and obviously Hitler believes that war with
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union is inevitable because he starts one. That said,
Speaker 1: not everybody is convinced that this is in fact the case,
Speaker 1: and kind of some of the evidence for this is
Speaker 1: that the Soviet Union in Nazi Germany are kind of
Speaker 1: engaging in wargames and joint training exercises through the mid thirties,
Speaker 1: and a much more direct threat to actual Soviet territorial
Speaker 1: integrity in the late thirties is the Empire of Japan,
Speaker 1: and they're actually going to wind up fighting the Empire
Speaker 1: of Japan well before they wind up in a direct
Speaker 1: conflict with the Nazis. Yeah, in Mongolia, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: over Mongolia, that's right, because you know, the Japanese Army
Speaker 1: has occupied Manchuria since thirty one, and they're kind of
Speaker 1: continually expanding through the thirties, which eventually locks them into
Speaker 1: a series of border conflicts with the Soviets. This kind
Speaker 1: of culminates in the Battle of Lake Kasan in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight. That's kind of the really big engagement in
Speaker 1: this series of clashes, and then there's a series of
Speaker 1: kind of lower stakes battles until the calamitous battles of
Speaker 1: Kulkin Gol in Mongolia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one was real bad. It's really bad. Yes.
Speaker 2: The Soviets built an entire rail line just to get
Speaker 2: all of their supplies there, while japan made all their
Speaker 2: dudes mark hundreds of miles on foot.
Speaker 1: And by the way, not easy to make the Russian
Speaker 1: army look efficient, but the Japanese manage it. During this fight,
Speaker 1: it's a sizable battle for the time, by like World
Speaker 1: War II standards. This is like a skirmish, right, There's
Speaker 1: like tens of thousands of men and hundreds of tanks
Speaker 1: on each side, which does not make it hugely noteworthy
Speaker 1: within the conflict that's going to happen. But this is
Speaker 1: one of the first massive tank battles in history, right,
Speaker 1: and it's where Georgi Zukov is going to earn his reputation.
Speaker 1: And Zukov is going to be a big player in
Speaker 1: the war that's coming up, right.
Speaker 2: I think I've heard of him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, he's kind of noteworthy. The Japanese sixth Army
Speaker 1: is defeated, and it's kind of clear to everybody that like,
Speaker 1: the Empire of Japan is probably going to keep doing
Speaker 1: Empire of Japan stuff, right. So again, within sort of
Speaker 1: the gang that's running the USSR at this point, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of concern about Hitler planning and invasion, but
Speaker 1: you could be forgiven for being like, well, maybe Japan's
Speaker 1: kind of the more immediate thing reret at this stage,
Speaker 1: because I mean the first war.
Speaker 2: That they thought there was the Russo Japanese War as well,
Speaker 2: that's right disastrous. Yeah, And this is kind of like
Speaker 2: you do have to look at also, like if you're
Speaker 2: these guys who have overthrown and replaced the czar, it's
Speaker 2: pretty good for them to be like, well, when we
Speaker 2: fought Japan, it went to hell of a lot better. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we didn't lose the whole navy. Even at the end
Speaker 2: of World War two, the Soviet Union would be uh,
Speaker 2: retaking things that the Empire of Japan took during the
Speaker 2: Russo Japanese War. So it was all like petty grievances
Speaker 2: forty years later. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, and again within kind of the gang of people
Speaker 1: around Stalin, there's still overall much more of a focus
Speaker 1: on Hitler, which is going to prove to be pretty
Speaker 1: wise in the long run, although how they actually prepare
Speaker 1: for war with Hitler is not wise, because they don't
Speaker 1: really prepare for war with Hitler, you know, see Robert
Speaker 1: I disagree.
Speaker 2: They prepared plenty by murdering everyone who knew what they
Speaker 2: were doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get rid of all these guys, a final war
Speaker 1: except for Zukhov thankfully over in Mongolia. Now there's a
Speaker 1: couple of different plans that they kind of have for
Speaker 1: how to play this. Stalin's first idea is to try
Speaker 1: and develop a situation wherein Britain and France invade Germany
Speaker 1: and he just sort of chills, which, if that had worked,
Speaker 1: would have been a much better plan for the Soviet Union. Right,
Speaker 1: hard not to see why you would prefer that. Now,
Speaker 1: Since nineteen thirty five, the general policy of the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union had been the popular Front against fascism, and a
Speaker 1: lot of officials thought this meant that kind of inevitably
Speaker 1: we're going to wind up in some sort of alliance
Speaker 1: with Britain and France, right because they are clearly like
Speaker 1: obviously just based on World War One. Not hard to
Speaker 1: see why you would expect that that's how things are
Speaker 1: going to break down, right, But it's not going to
Speaker 1: wind up being that simple, as she liftitz Patrick rights.
Speaker 1: When Britain put its negotiator on a slow boat to
Speaker 1: Leningrad in August nineteen thirty nine, Stalin and Molotov had
Speaker 1: had enough. Molotov was offended that the British had sent
Speaker 1: a Foreign Office official of the second class, straying to
Speaker 1: negotiate and straying like other Western diplomats who encountered him
Speaker 1: in his first months as a foreign minister. Was struck
Speaker 1: by Molotov's lack of diplomatic technique as well as social finesse.
Speaker 1: He had no sense of negotiation, the British ambassador later recalled,
Speaker 1: and would just stubbornly and woodenly repeat his own point
Speaker 1: of view and ask innumerable questions of his interlocutors. And
Speaker 1: you know, Molotov, because of the pact with the Nazis
Speaker 1: that's going to come out of this, I think, has
Speaker 1: this kind of reputation for being a good negotiator. He's
Speaker 1: certainly not at this point. And again it's also not
Speaker 1: hard to see why his immediate kind of reaction to
Speaker 1: these Western powers isn't going to be positive, because these
Speaker 1: guys had been enemies of the USSR since the Civil War,
Speaker 1: right since before it's like settled as a state. So
Speaker 1: it's not really surprising that one of the things that's
Speaker 1: happening in this period contrad to what's going to happen later,
Speaker 1: is there is some serious talk of allying with the Nazis.
Speaker 1: That is probably never that's certainly never Stallian's plan, but
Speaker 1: it's something Molotov thinks actually might happen for a while.
Speaker 2: I mean that you also have to remember, like during
Speaker 2: and after the Russian Civil War, the British, the French,
Speaker 2: the Americans, and the Japanese all were actively invading Russia.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, this is not like and also historically it's
Speaker 1: not weird, right Otto von Bismarck had worked very hard
Speaker 1: to develop an alliance with the Russians. Are because Bismarck,
Speaker 1: being reasonably intelligent, is like, well, if we have an
Speaker 1: alliance with the Russians, we just can't be invaded, Like
Speaker 1: you can't take Germany if Russia is backing it up,
Speaker 1: Like it's just not really.
Speaker 2: Realistic, it's pretty so do you fight that war? Right
Speaker 2: And obviously, like the fucking Kaiser fucks all of that up,
Speaker 2: which is part of why World War One goes the
Speaker 2: way it does. Again, Stalin has never liked or trusted Hitler.
Speaker 2: He sees some sort of conflict a war as pretty inevitable.
Speaker 2: But there's definitely a period where even Stalin is like,
Speaker 2: we might have we might be able to like temporarily
Speaker 2: have some sort of an accord with the Germans that
Speaker 2: will give us time to rebuild the Red Army, which
Speaker 2: I know, I kind of fucked up, right, And this
Speaker 2: is what leads to the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the like three treaties everybody learns
Speaker 2: about in high school. Now, the terms in broad are
Speaker 2: that neither state is going to attack the other or
Speaker 2: help with someone else's attack on the other. That's the
Speaker 2: public stuff in this pact, And this is a pretty
Speaker 2: major reversal from the Popular Front against fascism obviously, right,
Speaker 2: you can't call this the popular Front against fascism. Now,
Speaker 2: that's the popular Front with fascism. Yeah. Yeah, secret agreements
Speaker 2: of like, you know, let's have this cake shape like Poland, Yeah,
Speaker 2: how would you like divvy it up a bit? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we'll get to that there. But the fact
Speaker 1: that there is this dissonance between the old Popular Front
Speaker 1: against Fascism and this new pact. This is like severe
Speaker 1: enough that it causes some real issues within sort of
Speaker 1: the Soviet power structure, and it's these are serious enough
Speaker 1: that Stalin has to kind of take them seriously and
Speaker 1: he actually sits down with a lot of his underlings
Speaker 1: to try to explain the necessity of the move. Barrya's
Speaker 1: son would later claim that this never works on Barria
Speaker 1: and that he's privately unenthusiastic about the pact. I don't
Speaker 1: know how seriously to take that. You know, the keyword
Speaker 1: is certainly private. And was he really enthusiastic about anything
Speaker 1: other than murder, Yeah, marrying teenagers, you know, police, Yeah,
Speaker 1: beating people until they go blind.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Obviously Barria knows that his new position in Moscow is
Speaker 1: still pretty shaky, and all the comfort that it brings
Speaker 1: him relies on continuing to suck up to Stalin. Khrushchev
Speaker 1: in this period describes Barria as constantly manipulative and always
Speaker 1: working to ingratiate himself with Stalin and provide dirt on
Speaker 1: his colleagues. Stalin, who does have kind of a sixth
Speaker 1: sense for when people are kind of getting too far
Speaker 1: up his ass. Would regularly whenever kind of Barry would
Speaker 1: get too close, would do something to try to remind
Speaker 1: him of his place. And we get a good example
Speaker 1: of this in September of nineteen thirty nine, when at
Speaker 1: a dinner, Barria kept pushing the German embassy counselor Gustav
Speaker 1: Hilger to drink to excess. Hilger later claimed Stalin soon
Speaker 1: noticed that Barry and I were in dispute about something
Speaker 1: and asked to cross the table. What's the argument about?
Speaker 1: When I told him, he replied, well, if you don't
Speaker 1: want to drink, no one can force you, not even
Speaker 1: the chief of the NKVD himself, I joked, whereupon he answered,
Speaker 1: here at this table, even the chief of the NKVD
Speaker 1: has no more say than anyone else, which is bull.
Speaker 2: She assumes is going to make him go visit his
Speaker 2: mom again. Yeah, go see my mom again. Oh she's
Speaker 2: dead at this point. Fuck off, Go hang out at
Speaker 2: her grave. I'm sick of here. Get out of here, Barrier.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is Barry is kind of doing to
Speaker 1: this Nazi what Stalin had him do to kind of
Speaker 1: the other guys in the Soviet power structure, which is
Speaker 1: he's kind of the dude at their dinner who's often
Speaker 1: pushing people to drink more, which Stalin.
Speaker 2: Likes to see.
Speaker 1: But Stalin doesn't get anything out of making this Nazi
Speaker 1: get hammered, right, He's still trying to keep good relations
Speaker 1: with him at this period, so he's kind of just
Speaker 1: like Bury, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: Man? Like, he wants to get the best, get really
Speaker 2: drunk so he can draw dicks on his face. You know,
Speaker 2: really watch cowboy movies. You're gonna pass out and then
Speaker 2: you're gonna wake up, and now I'm gonna laugh really hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tomato in your pocket and a cock on your cheek.
Speaker 2: So however he got about the tomato in the pocket,
Speaker 2: it's my favorite. It's strange.
Speaker 1: It's hard not to like that part of Stalin, Right,
Speaker 1: That's just such a fun little prank. It's something like
Speaker 1: a twelve year old boy would do.
Speaker 2: Okay, I kind of did something similar when I was
Speaker 2: I wasn't necessarily kid. I was like sixteen maybe fifteen,
Speaker 2: going to house parties getting drunk, and one of my
Speaker 2: favorite things to do was like when one of my
Speaker 2: friends had like a dog or a cat or whatever
Speaker 2: is like find where they had the cat or dog food,
Speaker 2: and then like slide my hand into people's pockets and
Speaker 2: deposit fifthfuls of dog or cat food into their pockets
Speaker 2: without the moticing. I have no idea why I thought
Speaker 2: it was so funny.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us have our like little
Speaker 1: little psychopathic thing we did to our friends when they
Speaker 1: were I used to light my friend's pants on fire,
Speaker 1: you know, just a little bit, not all that much, right,
Speaker 1: as a bit, you know, as a fun bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not bad if you're like, ah, I got
Speaker 2: you as you go, jeans are going up and fres
Speaker 2: and if you can't have them executed for not laughing
Speaker 2: at the bit, right, I think that's key. That is
Speaker 2: the ultimate punchline. Yeah, it's throwing someone in a mass
Speaker 2: gray you will laugh or else. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, however Barry feels about this pact with the fascists,
Speaker 1: he presides over a purge of the People's Commissariat of
Speaker 1: Foreign Affairs to wipe out any diplomats who have a
Speaker 1: strong anti German history. As soon as Stalin is like,
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna be friends with the Nazis for a
Speaker 1: little while Barry is like, well, it's time to kill
Speaker 1: every diplomat who doesn't like the Nazis. Right, that's going
Speaker 1: to be a problem when you just had like the
Speaker 1: Coalition against Fascism, like, right, I would like everybody in
Speaker 1: the diplomatic off was like wait, wait, I thought anti
Speaker 1: fascism was our thing.
Speaker 2: God, sorry, where are we on this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And this is I mean, the main purpose of this
Speaker 1: is not just to get rid of anti Germans. It's
Speaker 1: largely an opportunity to take out any diplomats who are
Speaker 1: not totally committed to Stalin, right, because a lot of
Speaker 1: there's a lot of diplomats in the foreign policy chunk
Speaker 1: of the USSR who are just like diplomats, right, And
Speaker 1: that's the thing that they actually wanted to do, is
Speaker 1: like be it functional diplomats. And what's happening in this
Speaker 1: period is the NKVD is gaining what's going to be
Speaker 1: semi permanent oversight over like the actual foreign services. Right,
Speaker 1: Barria is going to have men in there for most
Speaker 1: of the rest of the time that he's alive. And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of what they're doing in this period.
Speaker 1: And one of these guys, one of these anti German
Speaker 1: diplomats is the dude named Litvinov who had supported forming
Speaker 1: an Antian block with the West. Litvanov is one of
Speaker 1: the guys who's like, well, Stalin, you keep saying we're
Speaker 1: gonna fight these Nazis, we should probably have a thing
Speaker 1: set up with the British and the French. That just
Speaker 1: seems like good business. You know, you'll probably need this
Speaker 1: on paper and not just vibes. Yeah, not just a
Speaker 1: vibe thing. And Barry is going to respond to that
Speaker 1: by having the NKVD surround Litvanov's house, and Litvanov you
Speaker 1: get the feeling he's kind of like a cool customer
Speaker 1: because when he sees he's entirely surrounded by the secret police,
Speaker 1: he calls Barria on the phone and he's like, what
Speaker 1: the fuck are you doing? And Barria responds, you just don't.
Speaker 2: Know you're worth man. I gotta protect you. You're in danger, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I do seem to be in danger, that is christ
Speaker 2: I will agree with you.
Speaker 1: This seems unsafe now. Another arrestee in this moment is
Speaker 1: a diplomat named Nazarov who gets busted on charges of
Speaker 1: spying for Italy, not because he had actually spied for Italy,
Speaker 1: but based on the undeniable fact that he had been
Speaker 1: born in Genoa, and he'd been born in Genoa because
Speaker 1: his parents were longtime committed Communist revolutionaries who had to
Speaker 1: flee after the revolution right in nineteen oh five, which
Speaker 1: is like really unfair to this guy. You know, your
Speaker 1: parents are like so committed to the cause that they
Speaker 1: have to go into exile. And then people are like, well,
Speaker 1: you're clearly an Italian spy.
Speaker 2: You're trying to.
Speaker 1: He's trying to steal our sauces for their goddamn bostas.
Speaker 2: You were born in Genoa and only eat pasta. Fuck,
Speaker 2: he cannot be trusted. This passage from Amy Knight's book
Speaker 2: gives good context on how brutal some of these arrests
Speaker 2: tended to be and just the sheer level of like
Speaker 2: bullying that dominated them. Right.
Speaker 1: Quote, Ganadan, who's one of these guys who gets arrested,
Speaker 1: recalls how he was taken to Barry's office after he
Speaker 1: had refused to confess to the espionage charges that Kobilov
Speaker 1: had accused him of. When he continued to deny the charges, Kobolov,
Speaker 1: who weighed more than three hundred pounds and his assistants
Speaker 1: began beating him on the skull as Barra sat complacently watching.
Speaker 1: Then Baria impatiently ordered Ganadan to lie on the floor,
Speaker 1: where he was kicked repeatedly by several prison employees. Ganadan
Speaker 1: had one final session with Barria, who at first adopted
Speaker 1: a thoughtful, cultured manner, asking Gannadan calmly if he had
Speaker 1: finally decided to confess again. When Gannadan steadfastly asserted his innocence,
Speaker 1: he was brutally beaten Barry. His last words to Ganadan were,
Speaker 1: with such a philosophy and such provocations, you only make
Speaker 1: your situation worse.
Speaker 2: Christ, Oh, what good would have been done to Like,
Speaker 2: even if they are in a sent most of the time,
Speaker 2: I'm going to assume they're probably innocent. It's like, okay,
Speaker 2: you got me, I'm guilty. I did all this shit.
Speaker 2: Well you're just gonna die anyway. You might as well
Speaker 2: make him work for it. You know, you're still gonna
Speaker 2: kill me, but you're gonna kill me tired.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is often the decision people are
Speaker 1: making is like, well, if I admit it, it'll hopefully
Speaker 1: be over faster.
Speaker 2: Right, of course, of course some of the reason why
Speaker 2: torture doesn't work as an interrogation tactic, like I'll tell
Speaker 2: you whatever you want as long as you stop pulling
Speaker 2: out my fucking fingernails.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's why I am kind of amazed by
Speaker 1: the few people it doesn't work on who are like,
Speaker 1: torturing me all you want. The one thing I have
Speaker 1: is not giving in on this, you know. And you
Speaker 1: do run into a couple of those guys. Not many
Speaker 1: of them, obviously, because most people, for understandable reasons, don't
Speaker 1: hold up under that forever. But there are a couple anyway. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least tougher. Barria was given a Datcha on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of Moscow that had once belonged to the former
Speaker 1: chairman of the USSR who'd been arrested in thirty eight
Speaker 1: and executed that year. It was furnished by the same
Speaker 1: architect Stalin used, who was later sent to a goolag
Speaker 1: and killed in thirty nine. Like most powerful men in
Speaker 1: the USSR, barrias Datcha had a movie theater. Svetlana Stalin's
Speaker 1: daughter claims that on Sundays at the Datcha, Barria would
Speaker 1: relax by shooting at targets and then watching American and
Speaker 1: German films in the evening. Afterwards, he would disappear. To quote,
Speaker 1: no one knew where. We'll probably never know precisely how
Speaker 1: barr has spent his off hours. But the largest allegation
Speaker 1: you'll hear involves that he was committing rampant rape, often
Speaker 1: of children.
Speaker 2: Now, I was about to say, at any point there's
Speaker 2: a long period of time where nobody can pinpoint Barria's location.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming someone is suffering.
Speaker 1: Someone is having the worst day of their life, and
Speaker 1: if you want to have the best day of your life,
Speaker 1: purchase these products. We're back and we're talking about Barria's
Speaker 1: extracurricular activities. Now, the fact that Barria is like a
Speaker 1: rampant sex criminal is often taken as a given by
Speaker 1: people discussing his life. It is worth hammering home that
Speaker 1: a lot of what's alleged about him comes from fellow
Speaker 1: members of the Inner Circle, who again wanted to pin
Speaker 1: all of the blame for Stalin's excesses on Barria. This
Speaker 1: is in like fifty three after Stalin dies. After his arrest,
Speaker 1: Barrya's bodyguard is going to produce a list of thirty
Speaker 1: nine women who Barria was said to have had sex with,
Speaker 1: and this is presumably a mix of just actual consensual
Speaker 1: affairs and non consensual stuff. Another bodyguard made this allegation
Speaker 1: summarized by night quote. Another bodyguard, Nadaria, confessed at his
Speaker 1: trial in nineteen fifty five that he and Sarsakov picked
Speaker 1: up young women off the streets and transported them to
Speaker 1: Barry's house, where he would rape them. According to another source,
Speaker 1: young women in Moscow came to be terrified just by
Speaker 1: a glimpse of barious pictures in the press. Stalin, who
Speaker 1: was a professed aesthetic in sexual matters, must have heard
Speaker 1: what Barria was up to, but apparently chose to ignore it.
Speaker 1: And again it's really hard, like I don't doubt this,
Speaker 1: but it's also like you do have to keep the
Speaker 1: province in mind, which is other guys who are being
Speaker 1: tortured to confess.
Speaker 2: I one hundred percent believe that there's truth to both
Speaker 2: sides of this, or Barrio was absolutely a monster in
Speaker 2: his personal time as well, especially because like look where
Speaker 2: they kept finding skeletons for example, as well as everybody
Speaker 2: making him seem like, you know, one hundred thousand times
Speaker 2: worse than he actually was, which is not a defense.
Speaker 2: I mean, like especially because like Stalin went like totally
Speaker 2: new when you'll like, I like, I think we already
Speaker 2: talked about it. Is like he told his daughter to
Speaker 2: never go near Barry alone. Yeah, Like, yeah, he did
Speaker 2: that for a reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't think like the fact that Svetlana
Speaker 1: seemed to have always been aware that there was something
Speaker 1: unsafe about this guy is some of the best evidence
Speaker 1: we get, right, because I don't see why she would necessarily,
Speaker 1: like why she would not have felt that way, right
Speaker 1: if there wasn't an actual danger.
Speaker 2: It does make me wonder when it started, because he's
Speaker 2: had a fair amount of power for quite a long time,
Speaker 2: and I highly doubt he waited until you know, he's
Speaker 2: the head of the NKVD to flip a switch and
Speaker 2: like all right now, I'm gonna do this for fun
Speaker 2: on my free time. Like there there had to be
Speaker 2: something we just don't know about, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see it being a situation where, just
Speaker 1: like when he's earlier in his career in Georgia, there's
Speaker 1: just not enough good info left from that period of
Speaker 1: time that we have many of these stories because of
Speaker 1: how many people get purged, right, and so it's when
Speaker 1: he gets to Moscow and there's more survivors from that
Speaker 1: time that we get these stories. That seems plausible to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the stories you'll hear from his bodyguards is
Speaker 1: that they were ordered to hand each of his victims
Speaker 1: a flower bouquet as the victim left Barra's house, and
Speaker 1: the implication was that this made it consensual and if
Speaker 1: they refuse the bouquet, they would be arrested and probably
Speaker 1: don't have to guess what would happen. Then, one of
Speaker 1: Barria's bodyguards, Sarkasov, reported that a woman who had been
Speaker 1: brought to Barria rejects the flower bouquet and flees his office,
Speaker 1: and Sarkisov hands her the flowers anyway, and Barry is like, no,
Speaker 1: it's not a bouquet. Now, it's a wreath and may
Speaker 1: it rot on her grave.
Speaker 2: Christ. So yeah, again, I don't really have trouble believing this.
Speaker 2: I don't either. It seems to be as kind of
Speaker 2: his thing. Yeah, it's it's it's probably you know. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't have trouble believing it. And when you when
Speaker 2: you hear the same story from so many different sources. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it is convincing, and there's no reason, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it makes sense that they would lie and sheld make
Speaker 2: Barry look worse to cover their own asses, But it
Speaker 2: makes no sense from the lie and come up with
Speaker 2: incredibly elaborate flower based murderer reason. Right, that feels really specific. Right,
Speaker 2: that's not something someone just pulls out of their ass,
Speaker 2: Like it would be very easy for them to lie
Speaker 2: and like, yeah, he was a rapist and a murderer,
Speaker 2: not suddenly he has a flower game and he has
Speaker 2: this flower based system. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Now, there are some folks who will say that this
Speaker 1: is all buppkis. You know. One former NKVD employee has
Speaker 1: stated he thinks it's unlikely Barria would have had time
Speaker 1: to do this because he had so much self control
Speaker 1: when he was so busy. And Barry's wife says the
Speaker 1: same thing, which, like, you know, and maybe she's honestly
Speaker 1: saying this, Like her claim is that like he was
Speaker 1: always working already have found the time to do this,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, but he was very powerful and
Speaker 1: it would have been easy for him to light you
Speaker 1: about this and you know, and hardly be the first
Speaker 1: serial killers, right, spouse no idea that they were doing
Speaker 1: what they're doing. I mean, he was killing so many
Speaker 1: other people, right, how would she even notice that she
Speaker 1: that he killed thirty eight or so other people as
Speaker 1: like a side gig. Yeah, And that's kind of where
Speaker 1: I land is, like, yeah, you can. You can find
Speaker 1: people from the United States and the seventies who were
Speaker 1: married to someone who was committing like serial murders and
Speaker 1: didn't know it. I don't have trouble believing that the
Speaker 1: head of the NKVD could get away with a version
Speaker 1: of that, you know.
Speaker 2: Like the Green River Killer's wife had no idea that
Speaker 2: he was the Green River killer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't need to actually think that she's trying
Speaker 1: to cover up something to think that, like she's not
Speaker 1: right when she states that, you.
Speaker 2: Know, and I don't feel like Barry is the most
Speaker 2: open soul when it comes out deeping meaningful conversations with
Speaker 2: their skins.
Speaker 1: I would not be surprised to hear that he was
Speaker 1: not great at communication with sort of his relayation ship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably a fair assessment, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So anyway, this is a thing that is debated
Speaker 1: and it's kind of worth talking about the degree to
Speaker 1: which some of this is uncertain. Knight concludes the argument
Speaker 1: around it this way. Even if the stories circulating in
Speaker 1: Moscow were exaggerated, they almost certainly had some foundation. They
Speaker 1: were corroborated by Edward Ellis Smith, a young American diplomat
Speaker 1: who was serving in the US embassy in Moscow after
Speaker 1: the war. Smith noted that Barry's escapades were common knowledge
Speaker 1: among embassy personnel at the time because his house was
Speaker 1: on the same street as a residence for Americans, and
Speaker 1: those who lived there saw girls brought to Barry's house
Speaker 1: late at night in a limousine.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: But, like Knight says, I think it's almost certain that
Speaker 1: he was committing what we would consider to be a
Speaker 1: pretty huge number of sex crimes. That seems easy to argue,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like a well regarded journalist at Grover
Speaker 2: Furr would probably disagree.
Speaker 1: So on November thirtieth, nineteen thirty nine, the USSR invaded Finland.
Speaker 1: This would prove to be not the best idea that
Speaker 1: ever happened out of the Stalinist era, largely because Finns
Speaker 1: are notably bullish on remaining fins. This kind of goes badly.
Speaker 1: The USSR gets expelled from the League of Nations, although
Speaker 1: that's not really a huge loss for them, but they
Speaker 1: do suffer titanic casualties, which further contributes to the kind
Speaker 1: of collapse of the Red Army which appeared so total
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty that Hitler grew convinced he only needed
Speaker 1: to kick in the door to couse the whole house
Speaker 1: to collapse. And obviously Hitler is not accurate here, but
Speaker 1: the Red Army is not looking good after the invasion
Speaker 1: of Finland.
Speaker 2: For his part, small plug here my show, we did
Speaker 2: a series on the Winter War. Yehile ago, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a good one to listen to to figure out
Speaker 1: how Finland can hold off the Red Army and inflict
Speaker 1: what like around a million casualties.
Speaker 2: It didn't go great for the Soviet Yeah yeah, don't
Speaker 2: piss off guys who are into butterflies.
Speaker 1: It turns out that hins Back. For his part, Barrier
Speaker 1: did crucial work on the Finnish front. Largely he established
Speaker 1: the NKVD ensemble of song and dance to ensure the
Speaker 1: young boys being sent to die to finish snipers had
Speaker 1: one last night of very mid entertainment. That is such
Speaker 1: an imagine being sent to get shot to death by lepidopterists.
Speaker 1: And your last relaxing experience is the nkv D Song
Speaker 1: and Dance Unit. This sounds like the most depressed song
Speaker 1: and dance like what are what is the the the
Speaker 1: goth version of theater? Kids like that? That's the kind
Speaker 1: of energy I expect to be brought here. Yeah, everybody's dancing,
Speaker 1: no smiles in any faces? There yea, and there there
Speaker 1: music listing all ska.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh hey, now that would be a nice last night.
Speaker 2: If it's good.
Speaker 1: Scott brings some real big fish out there before you
Speaker 1: get murked on the finish front, nobody nice style.
Speaker 2: Like their horn player barely knows how to play. Nobody's skinning.
Speaker 1: They're just doing that fucking mighty mighty boss Stones album
Speaker 1: about the George Floyd. Oh what a horrible time.
Speaker 2: Hey look there's a landmine. Pick it up, Pick it up,
Speaker 2: pick it up, pick it up.
Speaker 1: So Barria also spends a lot of time fucking up
Speaker 1: his new position as the center of Foreign Affairs now
Speaker 1: that the NKVD is basically overseeing the Foreign Affairs office
Speaker 1: and watching over every diplomat's every move. Barria found the
Speaker 1: temptation to fuck with things too great to endure. As
Speaker 1: part of the German Soviet packed the Nazi sent a
Speaker 1: battle cruiser to Russia as payment for raw materials. Barria
Speaker 1: had his men try to entrap the Nazi naval officer
Speaker 1: who brought the ship. The goal was to turn him
Speaker 1: into a double agent. But they were really bad about this,
Speaker 1: and Hitler found out and complained to Stalin, and Stalin's like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck are you doing?
Speaker 2: We needed this boat. Why are you doing this? Nobody
Speaker 2: told you to fuck with them this way. Barry is
Speaker 2: such a weirdo he can't even honeypot. Someone correctly, no,
Speaker 2: He's far too weird for that. So the Nazi Soviet
Speaker 2: Treaty was publicly just a non aggression pact, but like
Speaker 2: any good treaty, it included a bunch of secret protocols,
Speaker 2: and these laid out how when the Nazis carried out
Speaker 2: their invasion of Poland, the Red Army would be allowed
Speaker 2: to move into eastern Poland and some of the Baltic states. Right,
Speaker 2: and this doesn't happen kind of all at once. They
Speaker 2: move into Poland first, the Baltic States kind of stay
Speaker 2: independent on paper for a while, and the Red Army
Speaker 2: moves into the Baltic States. But this process starts in
Speaker 2: September nineteen thirty nine, and when it does, Barria finds
Speaker 2: himself presiding over a vast number of captured Polish officers
Speaker 2: and soldiers, something like two hundred thousand men. Oh no, oh,
Speaker 2: that's the really good sign.
Speaker 1: No, no, you certainly don't want to be one of
Speaker 1: these Polish officers now.
Speaker 2: So I don't think anybody loves a good protocol quite
Speaker 2: like the Russian Secret Police at any given era of time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're loving good protocols, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want I mean, none of this is
Speaker 1: going to be a good situation. Now, About half these
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand guys are freed pretty quickly, because holding
Speaker 1: prisoners is expensive and kind of a pain in the ass.
Speaker 2: You got to feed them, and shit, you gotta.
Speaker 1: Feedom you gotta take. It's just the logistic problems. But
Speaker 1: this is going to quickly turn into a very ugly situation.
Speaker 1: As Timothy Snyder lays out in this passage from Bloodlands Lavnti,
Speaker 1: Berria had come to a conclusion. Perhaps inspired by Stalin,
Speaker 1: Barria made it clear in writing that he wanted the
Speaker 1: Polish prisoners of war dead. In a proposal to the
Speaker 1: polit Bureau and thus really to Stalin, Barria wrote on
Speaker 1: fifth March nineteen forty that each of the Polish prisoners
Speaker 1: was just waiting to be released in order to interactively
Speaker 1: into the battle against Soviet power. He claimed that counter
Speaker 1: revolutionary organizations and the new Soviet territories were led by
Speaker 1: former officers, unlike the claims about the Polish military organization
Speaker 1: a couple million of years before. This was no fantasy.
Speaker 1: The Soviet Union had occupied an annexed half of Poland,
Speaker 1: and some Poles were bound to resist. Perhaps twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand of them took part in some kind of resistance
Speaker 1: organization in nineteen forty. True, these organizations were quickly penetrated
Speaker 1: by the NKVD and most of these people arrested, but
Speaker 1: the opposition was real and demonstrable. Barrier used the reality
Speaker 1: of Polish resistance to justify his proposal for the prisoners,
Speaker 1: quote to apply to them the supreme punishment shooting. So
Speaker 1: they take this chunk of Poland, a chunk about a
Speaker 1: quarter of the people they initially take prisoner, engage in
Speaker 1: some kind of resistance activity like you do when your
Speaker 1: home is invaded and occupied. And Barria uses the resistance
Speaker 1: that's there to justify shooting as many of these guys
Speaker 1: as we possibly can. Right now, there's debate, is this
Speaker 1: a thing that Barria proposes and Stalin rubber stamps. Is
Speaker 1: this this thing that Stalin made clear in a conversation
Speaker 1: like Barria, I want you doing this, and then Barrier just.
Speaker 2: Carries it out.
Speaker 1: You get the kind of debate with a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that Barria does, Right, is.
Speaker 2: This a third time believing he's committing such a wide
Speaker 2: scale massacre without some kind of official approval.
Speaker 1: Certainly some kind of official approval, But I also Stalin's
Speaker 1: doing enough that I wouldn't be wildly surprised if it's
Speaker 1: Barria saying, hey, I think this is a good idea
Speaker 1: and Stalin going yeah, man, let's fucking let's go for it.
Speaker 2: You know, That's what that really probably was. Much like
Speaker 2: there's no written order from Hitler to commit the Holocaust.
Speaker 2: They's like, yeah, going.
Speaker 1: Really, how the guy worked? You know, he's got a
Speaker 1: lot on his plate. Regardless it is Barria, who is
Speaker 1: in position and is going to take responsibility for the
Speaker 1: massacre of a great number of Polish captives. To do this,
Speaker 1: he had to revive the logic and tools of the
Speaker 1: Great Terror. A new Troika system was established to go
Speaker 1: through the files of every Polish pow. Most of these
Speaker 1: men had already been interrogated and generally shown to have
Speaker 1: been nothing but soldiers who had done their duty. Barria
Speaker 1: instructed the troikas to ignore all previous conclusions and issue
Speaker 1: new verdicts. They would not actually need to interview any
Speaker 1: of these prisoners to do this, of course, as in
Speaker 1: the Terror, Berria gave his men a quota. In all,
Speaker 1: ninety seven percent of the nearly fifteen thousand Poles and
Speaker 1: various camps were put to death, along with six thousand
Speaker 1: Polish officers held in prisons and another thirteen hundred and
Speaker 1: five who were arrested in April of nineteen forty. This
Speaker 1: was disguised until the last moment, with prisoners who were
Speaker 1: evacuated being told that they would be sent back to
Speaker 1: their homes. It's likely many of them realized something was fishy,
Speaker 1: but there was little to do but queue up for
Speaker 1: the buses. And trains that eventually took them to a
Speaker 1: train station. Snyder continues quote there they found themselves disembarking
Speaker 1: from the train into a cordon of NKVD soldiers with
Speaker 1: bayonets fixed. About thirty of them at a time. Entered
Speaker 1: a bus which took them to the Goat Hills at
Speaker 1: the edge of a forest called Caton. There, at an
Speaker 1: NKVD resort, they were searched and their valuables taken. One officer,
Speaker 1: Adam Soulski, had been keeping a diary up to this moment.
Speaker 1: They asked about my wedding ring. The prisoners were taken
Speaker 1: into a building on the complex, where they were shot.
Speaker 1: Their bodies were then delivered, probably by truck, in batches
Speaker 1: of thirty to a mass grave that had been dug
Speaker 1: in the forest. This continued until all four hundred and
Speaker 1: ten prisoners sent from Kozeltsk had been shot. The six
Speaker 1: thousand some odd Poles held in prisons in Belarus and
Speaker 1: Ukraine were executed indoors rather than in a field. Snyder
Speaker 1: tells one hideous story of an NKVD officer shooting the shit,
Speaker 1: just kind of bullshitting with an eighteen year old boy
Speaker 1: while he waited for the executions to start. He asked
Speaker 1: the kid, like, what was your job in the Polish Army?
Speaker 1: The kid says telephone operator. He's like, how long did
Speaker 1: you do it? The kid says six months? And then
Speaker 1: he goes and shoots the kid in the back of
Speaker 1: the head. Christ this kid, and in six three hundred
Speaker 1: and thirteen other prisoners at least were handcuffed in a
Speaker 1: soundproof sell and shot in the base of the skull.
Speaker 1: So this is like pretty bad stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not good being uh you know, it's
Speaker 2: the NKVD found him guilty of high crime in the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, which is being Polish, being a Polish dude. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, one of Barry's main triggerman is a guy named
Speaker 1: the Silly Blokin Vasilly had been an MKVD executioner during
Speaker 1: the terror and he had done the deed on some
Speaker 1: of the highest ranking prisoners that were purged. Today, Blooken
Speaker 1: holds the official Guinness World Record for most prolific official executioner.
Speaker 2: I checked out what's a high ward? What a high honor?
Speaker 2: And did he escape being purged himself?
Speaker 1: He does, I think eventually get purged, you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't have that on here. I probably should have,
Speaker 1: but I what I do have on here Joe I
Speaker 1: found his official Guinness website page for his his world record.
Speaker 1: And boy howdy does the website design of the Guinness
Speaker 1: website seem inappropriate for hosting an article about this guy?
Speaker 1: Check this shit out, souff. He's got to put the
Speaker 1: most Prolific Official exit. They didn't even capitalize every the
Speaker 1: first letter and every word of that.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, what is this? What is this title?
Speaker 2: It's like it's like most Prolific Official Executioner above, like
Speaker 2: an image that's just like a cut of like the
Speaker 2: tallest man in the world. Yeah, people like the biggest
Speaker 2: bad photoshop a lady with long fingernails, a guy balancing
Speaker 2: a bike on his chin. Meanwhile, no picture of him?
Speaker 2: What's it like? This are what is happening? Yeah? He's
Speaker 2: a stinky leg right, he's doing this? Thank you. It's
Speaker 2: fucking incredible. This is one of those records that, like
Speaker 2: Guinness wouldn't have up anymore for fear of someone attempting
Speaker 2: to break it, But like this one, I think I
Speaker 2: feel like we're safe on this one.
Speaker 1: Because you note that Joe immediately after This pretty grotesque
Speaker 1: graphic comes the note this record is currently inactive and
Speaker 1: no applications are being accepted for it. They closed this one.
Speaker 2: And here I thought Jeremy Renner would finally beat a
Speaker 2: Guinness World record. We don't know what he's doing spare time.
Speaker 2: This could have been his. Ah. God, that is sad, though, folks.
Speaker 2: I know it.
Speaker 1: Someone at home has a dream to be the Sillies
Speaker 1: record and I am sorry, but the Guinness people have
Speaker 1: made up their minds.
Speaker 2: Some poor civil servant that works for the state of
Speaker 2: Texas immediately got let down. There's a postal worker driving
Speaker 2: around listening to this show who's just like, a rats,
Speaker 2: damn it because I have to go back to growing
Speaker 2: my fingernails now.
Speaker 1: It would not if you're paying for your own bullets.
Speaker 1: This is not a cheap world record to meet because
Speaker 1: they estimate this guy's kill total at some seven thousand people,
Speaker 1: so you.
Speaker 2: Can't do that anymore these days.
Speaker 1: WHOA, Yeah, he's an interesting guy vacilly. He wears a
Speaker 1: leather cap apron and long gloves to keep clean. He
Speaker 1: uses German pistols. If you're got a mass execute people,
Speaker 1: you're gonna want a German handgun.
Speaker 2: Right, so you certainly don't want a Russian times. No,
Speaker 2: you definitely don't want a Russian one, right. You know,
Speaker 2: in nineteen eleven probably would have been great for field executions,
Speaker 2: but I understand maybe they were hard to find. I'm
Speaker 2: guessing a Mauser pretty reasonable gun to use for that
Speaker 2: at this period of time, small caliber, less splattered. He
Speaker 2: is wearing an apron. The man is well prepared, he
Speaker 2: has his Merit badge in preparedness. You have to assume
Speaker 2: he was good at this, right, Yeah, otherwise you have
Speaker 2: been fired after like I don't know, A doesn't.
Speaker 1: No, No, he keeps doing this and he's during this
Speaker 1: massacre of these Polish officers. He's in just other soldiers.
Speaker 1: It's not all officers. He's going to execute about two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty men each night personally.
Speaker 2: Which is a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a lot of dudes to shoot on your own.
Speaker 2: He's going to get a repetitive stress injury and his
Speaker 2: trigger finger, he gets a fucking carpal tunnel. He used
Speaker 2: to wear one of those little risk guard things before
Speaker 2: he goes to bed at night, gets like whatever their
Speaker 2: purple heart is for repetitive stress injuries. In the field
Speaker 2: of genocide. Yeah, Christ's that's good, that's nice. It's really
Speaker 2: sad that he probably survives World War two, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's unfortunate. I think, well, yeah, you know what, I'll
Speaker 2: edit that in here when I look it up. But first, Joe,
Speaker 2: you know what, I don't have to edit my love
Speaker 2: for these products and services. I'm really glad that your
Speaker 2: ad finally sold me the proper risk support I need
Speaker 2: for pulling the trigger hundreds of times. Yes, yeah, Look,
Speaker 2: if you're going to be like the silly bloken, you
Speaker 2: need a wrist brace. It's just irresponsible to kill seven
Speaker 2: thousand men without one. He makes it to fifty three. Oh,
Speaker 2: that motherfucker, he makes it. He did the end of Stalin, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he does, he does. He's forcibly retired after Stalin dies.
Speaker 2: He gets stripped of his rank during the destolinization process
Speaker 2: by Khrushchev. And then it does seem like he dies,
Speaker 2: maybe just as a result of being super unhealthy and sick.
Speaker 2: He kills himself officially execution. It may have been a
Speaker 2: heart attack, and yeah, well, the only person who can
Speaker 2: kill me is me, the guy who knows how to
Speaker 2: do with the best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will say, living to sixty when you're this
Speaker 1: guy is not bad. Yeah, I mean it's bad because
Speaker 1: he's bad. But that's impressive for the guy who shoots
Speaker 1: seven thousand.
Speaker 2: Normally, the death squad guy isn't the one that survives
Speaker 2: this long. No. No, that's a good span for the
Speaker 2: death squad guy. The stars that burn the brightest, burning fast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, while all of these prisoners are still alive, Barry
Speaker 1: had allowed them to communicate with their families, like send
Speaker 1: letters back and forth, not out of humanity, but because
Speaker 1: again he's about to do another crime against humanity. He
Speaker 1: wants to collect the names and addresses of their family members.
Speaker 1: And after he executes all of these people, he takes
Speaker 1: the friends and family that they had been communicating with
Speaker 1: and he rounds them up and deports them to Kazakhstan.
Speaker 1: This winds up being something like sixty something thousand people,
Speaker 1: and in in KVD transport documents they're described as family
Speaker 1: members have quote former people.
Speaker 2: Oh god. This is around the same time the Soviet
Speaker 2: Support Law large numbers of Chechens and Dahkistani's to Kazakhstan.
Speaker 1: A lot of deportations are happening right at this time,
Speaker 1: right This is kind of the This is kind of
Speaker 1: like he's sort of breaking the seal on doing mass deportations.
Speaker 1: And Baria is the mass deportation guy because he's good
Speaker 1: at logistics, right, Like he's brutal for a lot of
Speaker 1: people are dying during this, but he's good at moving
Speaker 1: lots of people, you know. And again, I probably don't
Speaker 1: have to labor on the fact that this is a
Speaker 1: miserable situation for the people being deported. These evacuees, to
Speaker 1: use the Nazi term, were not properly cared for or fed.
Speaker 1: They were put to an unfamiliar land, They were separated
Speaker 1: from their homes and their support networks, and thousands of
Speaker 1: them die. Their situation is so bad that on May twentieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty, a group of these Polish children write Stalin
Speaker 1: a fawning letter, swearing, please Stalin, we will be loyal
Speaker 1: Communists and then begging it's hard to live without our fathers.
Speaker 2: So that's bleak. I really hope Barria doesn't read that
Speaker 2: and he's like, okay, well I'll send you to your fathers.
Speaker 2: Then that is how Barria would read that letter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably good that he didn't get access to this. Now,
Speaker 1: these NKVD executioners and the guys who manage the deportations,
Speaker 1: Barria does make sure they get a cash bonus, you know,
Speaker 1: because he's a good boss.
Speaker 2: At least.
Speaker 1: You had mentioned the other deportations. There's a lot of them.
Speaker 1: In March of nineteen forty, Barria had ordered the deportation
Speaker 1: of any Poles who refused a Soviet passport, arguing that
Speaker 1: they had rejected the Soviet system. Now there are good
Speaker 1: reasons to not want this passport, because this passport, and
Speaker 1: this passport system is pretty new at the time, lists
Speaker 1: your ethnicity, and that had been used to target members
Speaker 1: of national groups.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of people deported in this first wave
Speaker 1: of deportations are Jewish refugees who had fled to Eastern
Speaker 1: Poland from Western Poland, making the best choice they could
Speaker 1: at the time, which is like, well, the Communists are
Speaker 1: probably better for us than the Nazis, right, And then it's.
Speaker 2: A rough choice to have to make. It's not a lot.
Speaker 1: It's not like as much better as you'd hope, right,
Speaker 1: because the Nazis are going to try to kill everybody,
Speaker 1: and Barry is just going to force all of these
Speaker 1: people further to the east, where a lot of them died,
Speaker 1: but not all of them, right, And.
Speaker 2: The Soviet passport, by the way, never takes your ethnicity
Speaker 2: off of it the entire length of the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: No, that is always a major thing, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be. There's also a lot of these guys who
Speaker 1: are like Western Polish Jews are like, well, we're not
Speaker 1: we're refugees. We had to flee here to not die.
Speaker 1: But like, I'm not a Soviet citizen. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a Soviet citizen, right, I want to go
Speaker 1: back home at some point, which is why they you know,
Speaker 1: but that's seen as like a sign that they're not
Speaker 1: reliable of disloyalty, rather than a pretty normal response to
Speaker 1: the situation that they're in right.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: That said, you know, at least a lot of these
Speaker 1: people do survive, and maybe they wouldn't have, probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have if they'd stayed in Western Poland.
Speaker 2: You know. So I don't know, I don't know where
Speaker 2: you want to like place, it's a rough time. It's
Speaker 2: like trying to pick which kind of shit is the
Speaker 2: best or in the right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at least maybe you live through this kind of shit,
Speaker 1: you know. Now, at the same time Barry is managing
Speaker 1: all these mass deportations, they get much broader than this.
Speaker 1: Right again, a lot of not too long from now,
Speaker 1: a lot of Chechens are going to be deported like this.
Speaker 1: This is a pretty widespread program. Barry is also presiding
Speaker 1: over the vast expansion of the Gulag system. Now, Gulag
Speaker 1: is an acronym and it stands for main Administration of
Speaker 1: Corrective labor Colonies. But you know, whatever that is in Russian,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't speak it. By March of nineteen forty,
Speaker 1: as Barria expelled Jewish refugees from West Poland, the Gulag
Speaker 1: system included about fifty three full camps, four hundred twenty
Speaker 1: five corrective labor colonies, and fifty colonies for children. In total,
Speaker 1: I think something like one point six to one point
Speaker 1: seven million people are intermed.
Speaker 2: Those numbers have a little flex right, everybody knows, like
Speaker 2: a good for any good empire is to have prison
Speaker 2: colonies for children. Yeah, that puts you on the right
Speaker 2: side of history. And there's no debating that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why wouldn't you want camps just for little kids
Speaker 1: to be forcibly separated from their families.
Speaker 2: Their little fingers can get into machinery, right, right, right
Speaker 2: that you have. I mean, that is kind of where
Speaker 2: this goes, because like any sort of large scale labor
Speaker 2: camp program, these are largely an economic incentive, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's why what the gulag system is in large degree. Now,
Speaker 2: some historians like Alex Nov will argue that you should
Speaker 2: include people in prisons and so called NKVD special settlements
Speaker 2: as well in the number of people in gulags. If
Speaker 2: you do that, it brings the number of human beings
Speaker 2: incarcerated under Barria's nominal supervision to something like three and
Speaker 2: a half million by the outbreak of war. Again, it's
Speaker 2: debated how you should consider this. One Soviet source puts
Speaker 2: the number. It is still terrifying, two point three million.
Speaker 2: This is a lot of nation number, and larger than
Speaker 2: several Soviet satellite countries. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a significant amount of people are in various
Speaker 1: camps and prisons that Barria is running. And the gulags
Speaker 1: are not death camps, right. Most people who are in
Speaker 1: turn there do survive, and that's important because these are
Speaker 1: not the same as what the Nazis are doing.
Speaker 2: But they are not good. Right, you know.
Speaker 1: A death camp, right, right. The goal is not to
Speaker 1: wholesale exterminate populations, but that's really the only nice thing
Speaker 1: you can say about them, right. A lot of people
Speaker 1: still die there. Between thirty four and fifty three, probably
Speaker 1: about a million people die in gulags.
Speaker 2: This is debated. It's not a small number though, right.
Speaker 2: I think numbers are quite unreliable. It's not like they're
Speaker 2: keeping tracks how many people that died, right, right, You're
Speaker 2: not going to get a precise count. And how deadly
Speaker 2: these places are varies based on what's happening in the
Speaker 2: rest of the US. Are in with the war, Right,
Speaker 2: During the worst years of the gulag system, some accounts
Speaker 2: will say, like a twenty five percent mortality rate, right,
Speaker 2: it was usually under ten percent. Now, both of those
Speaker 2: are bad, right, those is a good situation. I'm not
Speaker 2: trying to mitigate it. But all it changes in terms
Speaker 2: of how deadly it is based on what else is
Speaker 2: going on right right now. And again, when I say
Speaker 2: the purpose of these gulogs is not to eliminate people,
Speaker 2: it's because the purpose is to profit from their labor,
Speaker 2: and you can really only do that if they're well
Speaker 2: enough to work, or at least if most of them
Speaker 2: are right. And I'm going to continue with a quote
Speaker 2: from Amy Knight's book here. The most important economic activity
Speaker 2: of the NKVD was construction of roads, railways, waterways, and
Speaker 2: power stations. Some projects were undertaken directly by the NKVD
Speaker 2: and some by Gulog workers contracted out to other commissariates.
Speaker 2: Mining of gold and nonferest metals and lumbering were other
Speaker 2: key areas of production for the Gulag. To have such
Speaker 2: a vast economic enterprise under his control was an awesome
Speaker 2: responsibility for Barria, though he left the a to day
Speaker 2: administration to his lieutenants. According to most accounts, Barria's group
Speaker 2: was more effective in the utilization of camp labor than
Speaker 2: Yezov's had been. In an effort to raise productivity and
Speaker 2: more rationally exploit forced labor, Barria improved physical conditions in
Speaker 2: the camps and increased food supplies. As a result, camp
Speaker 2: death rates declined from what they were under Azov, and
Speaker 2: forced labor became a more productive element of the national economy,
Speaker 2: so you could argue compared to how they had been
Speaker 2: under his predecessor. Broadly speaking, Gulags are less deadly and
Speaker 2: miserable under Barria. And this is pretty consistent with how
Speaker 2: he treats, for example, captured Nazi scientists, not out of
Speaker 2: the goodness of his heart, because he needs work from them, right,
Speaker 2: And he's good at logistics. He's like, well, people who
Speaker 2: are starving to death don't work as well, and I
Speaker 2: want them to produce economic value for me, right, the
Speaker 2: animal of arithmetic, you.
Speaker 1: Know, exactly, exactly, And again these are still not nice places.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty one, and internal report showed that prisoners
Speaker 1: that the Gulogs lacked soap, water, clothing, and food, and
Speaker 1: were often made to work twelve hour shifts with regularity.
Speaker 2: If you're building roads for sixteen hours, right, why would
Speaker 2: you need soap? You know? Yeah.
Speaker 1: In October of nineteen forty one, nearly fifteen hundred people
Speaker 1: died at just two in KVD railway construction camps. Former
Speaker 1: Gulag prisoner Antov antonov Ovsenko later described Barrio's influence on
Speaker 1: the Gulags this way. The Gulags existed before Barria, but
Speaker 1: he was the one who built them on a mass scale.
Speaker 1: He industrialized the Gulag system. Human life had no value
Speaker 1: for him, and you know, human life didn't, labor did.
Speaker 1: But later you give him a lot of credit for that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, of course that's the point is like, it's
Speaker 1: not that he made the gulogs more humane, as he
Speaker 1: made them more efficient, right, he made them work better,
Speaker 1: you know, because why wouldn't you in his situation? But
Speaker 1: you know what works really well, Joe? Oh no, you
Speaker 1: as a podcast host and author, you want to tell
Speaker 1: people where they can find your work.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah. I am the host of the Lines led
Speaker 2: by Donkeys podcast. We talked about military history, disasters, and
Speaker 2: also occasionally assholes like Barrier. We also did a series
Speaker 2: on the Winter War, and we did a series in
Speaker 2: the Battle of Stalingrad and several other things that are
Speaker 2: loosely connected to this topic. I'm also an author. I'm
Speaker 2: currently in the middle of writing a military science fiction
Speaker 2: trilogy and you can find it anywhere you find your books.
Speaker 2: It's called The Undying Legion.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, check out The Undying Legion. Check out the
Speaker 1: Lions led by Donkeys podcast. And look, if you ever
Speaker 1: want to start a system of forced labor camps, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe have a sandwich instead. See if fixing
Speaker 1: your blood sugar. Maybe it makes you less want to
Speaker 1: run a series of labor camps. I thought I wanted
Speaker 1: this labor camp system. It turned out my blood.
Speaker 2: Shirt was well, I'm just getting out hungry. I had
Speaker 2: some fruit loops.
Speaker 1: Feeling a lot better now, to be honest, guys, if
Speaker 1: only anyway, everybody go to Hell.
Speaker 2: I Love you. Behind the Bastards is a production of
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit
Speaker 2: our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.