Speaker 1: Oh oh man, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the
Speaker 1: podcast that's just as refreshing as as pounding a great
Speaker 1: zba um m. That's good Zbia. Jeff May guest, thanks friend, podcaster,
Speaker 1: co host of Tom and Jeff Batch batman Jeff has
Speaker 1: cool friends um and and and stand up comedian Jeff.
Speaker 1: This is part three of our series on on Zar
Speaker 1: Nicholas the second. How are you holding up great? I'm
Speaker 1: feeling good. Uh well, I'm ready to talk. Man. This guy, this,
Speaker 1: this fucking guys, fucking rupe, this fucking do love that.
Speaker 1: Like that's the like before this, I think they're like
Speaker 1: talking about Philippe, who has his you know, as we
Speaker 1: talked about last time, his his first mystic con man
Speaker 1: who got into the family and then rescuting. There's like
Speaker 1: this media image of resputant. Is this like supernaturally charming,
Speaker 1: like incredible, uh mysterious sort of like um figure who's
Speaker 1: just like in humanly charismatic and like No, the truth
Speaker 1: is that like literally any con man could have won
Speaker 1: one over on these people. They were really stupid. It's
Speaker 1: so much that people it's almost like it's like there
Speaker 1: there's a punch card for what con Man is going
Speaker 1: to be in charge at the time. It's like the
Speaker 1: morning Ralph Mornan Sam situation. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just
Speaker 1: so funny. Um and yeah, this is this is it's
Speaker 1: important to note that that, like that's kind of what
Speaker 1: you get with monarchy, right, Like that's the situation where
Speaker 1: if your thing is ultimate power is invested in a dude,
Speaker 1: Like a decent number of those dudes are going to
Speaker 1: be the kind of people who would respond to a
Speaker 1: Nigerian prince email scam like yeah, like I don't know
Speaker 1: if you like, I think we all have dumb relatives.
Speaker 1: So the idea that that like inherited divinity in anyway
Speaker 1: or inherited power or intellect or what, that's just the
Speaker 1: dumbest Like if if fucking Nicholas the second had been
Speaker 1: alive and the Tsar of all Russia is today, all
Speaker 1: of Russia would be owned by a Macadonian seventeen year
Speaker 1: old who had like managed to fish his email if something, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be it would be like Exxon would own
Speaker 1: Russia if that were the case, Yeah, it would be.
Speaker 1: Someone would have gotten to him. Like I can just
Speaker 1: imagine l Ron Hubbard sliding into the Tsars court and
Speaker 1: just complete control in like seven hours. It would have
Speaker 1: been carved up like like nineteenth century after it would
Speaker 1: have just been like just absolutely colonized and and and colonized,
Speaker 1: with like Nikki still on the throne, smiling all day
Speaker 1: about like, oh, my friends from xon Mobil are here.
Speaker 1: Look at my magic friends from x On Mobile. They
Speaker 1: can they can pull their fingers off, you see. Look
Speaker 1: at that they are doing magic. Look at that people's
Speaker 1: quarter from behind my ear. So as we start this episode,
Speaker 1: the situation with Japan is continuing to spiral out of control.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o two, Japan had signed a defensive pact
Speaker 1: with Great Britain. Um in, Nikki's English cousins had forced
Speaker 1: him to withdraw from man Chariot. Now, obviously he was
Speaker 1: not going to do this, um, but his minister's got
Speaker 1: him to at least degree for it, to agree with
Speaker 1: it for a while. Um. And you know, they keep
Speaker 1: trying to talk him out of this, saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: like taking over Tibet maybe not a great idea, probably
Speaker 1: not going to work all that well. Um. But Nicholas
Speaker 1: doesn't really spend a lot of time around his advisors.
Speaker 1: He prefers the company of Bezobrazov and his cousin the Kaiser, who,
Speaker 1: as we talked about last time, I think Um had
Speaker 1: started calling himself Admiral of the Atlantic and calling Nicky
Speaker 1: Admiral of the Pacific, right man. Yeah, it's like giving
Speaker 1: yourself your own nickname when you go to college. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's so sad, like because the and it's
Speaker 1: sad because the Kaiser gives them both this nickname, and
Speaker 1: Nikki makes fun of the Kaiser, and then Nikki starts
Speaker 1: using the nickname completely and ironically. Um, He's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it is a cool nickname. I'm not going
Speaker 1: he's good at nicknames. He may be duvrous, but I
Speaker 1: got to say this nickname it fun. Look at this
Speaker 1: idiot coming up with nicknames. I'm going to steal though.
Speaker 1: Absolutely mine is my nickname now, so Um one of
Speaker 1: his ministers, because this is this is like a source
Speaker 1: of incredible frustration for these these educated and like august
Speaker 1: ministers and nobles and whatnot who are trying to like
Speaker 1: run the empire around him. That he's listening, He's given
Speaker 1: this Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a theme. It's just
Speaker 1: all these like well read intellectuals with experience in geopolitical
Speaker 1: theory are just like, what the funk are you doing? Man?
Speaker 1: And one of his ministers, again named Leave, who was
Speaker 1: again a raging anti semite um but a much smarter
Speaker 1: person than the Czar, explains the Czar's way of thinking
Speaker 1: here Um in a manner that I think is really
Speaker 1: relevant today. That is, trust of ministers is common to
Speaker 1: all sovereigns. Starting with Alexander. The first autocrats listened to
Speaker 1: their ministers outwardly agree with them, but always turned to
Speaker 1: outsiders who appeal to their hearts and inspire suspicion of
Speaker 1: their ministers, accusing them of encroaching on autocratic law. Like
Speaker 1: we've seen that, right, Like we've all been through that
Speaker 1: here right question. Yeah, my cool friends don't actually question me.
Speaker 1: They think I'm cool. Yeah. I brought my wife's boyfriend
Speaker 1: in and he said we should try this, or like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this guy, this lawyer that I was
Speaker 1: friends with when I was younger, Like, let's have him
Speaker 1: make our policy here. Like we all lived through a
Speaker 1: version of this with Trump, and it's just like to
Speaker 1: the nth degree with Nikki, because there's absolutely no checks
Speaker 1: on his behavior. Um. So they kind of settle into
Speaker 1: this pattern for a while Russia for the next year
Speaker 1: and a half or so, where Bezo Brazof will like
Speaker 1: escalate in some wild way. He'll provoke the Japanese or
Speaker 1: he'll make a move on on on Chinese occupied territory, um,
Speaker 1: and there will be like some big war panic, and
Speaker 1: Nikki will back off at the last moment and like
Speaker 1: pull his troops back because he doesn't really want a war,
Speaker 1: Like he talks this big game about like wanting to
Speaker 1: show Japan what for, but he's also like there's a
Speaker 1: part of him that's reasonable enough to know that, like, well,
Speaker 1: if you are the absolute sovereign and you lose a war,
Speaker 1: that doesn't that that can be bad, you know, asked
Speaker 1: Japan exactly, asked Japan a minute after this. It's it's
Speaker 1: funny too, because we all know this guy, the guy
Speaker 1: that's like talking shit at the bar and then as
Speaker 1: soon as somebody's like, all right, well let's go, and
Speaker 1: then they're like yeah, and and fucking Nikki is that
Speaker 1: guy because he doesn't really want to fight. Bezo Brasov
Speaker 1: is the guy who like does that and also like
Speaker 1: he'll throw down. He's not good at it, like he
Speaker 1: can't throw a punch to save his life. He's way
Speaker 1: too drunk to be starting ship. But he will throw
Speaker 1: that punch if you know, going to be starting somebuddy
Speaker 1: will back him up, um so nikki like for a
Speaker 1: little while, like there, his ministers are able to get
Speaker 1: him to pull back, get him to pull back, um,
Speaker 1: and then he'll poke at them or Bezo Brazof will
Speaker 1: poke at them again. And you know this kind of
Speaker 1: happens a couple of times. Um And after a while
Speaker 1: the Japanese get really tired of this and they give
Speaker 1: they present these are with an incredible offer, like this
Speaker 1: is actually really quite and again I say generous. They're
Speaker 1: offering someone else's land. But like they're like, hey, Czar,
Speaker 1: I don't want to deal with this like constant like
Speaker 1: dick measuring game that year is how about you get
Speaker 1: all of Mancharia that's yours, Russia gets all of Mancharia,
Speaker 1: we get Korea. How about that? Which I'm the czar.
Speaker 1: I don't have to fight a war. Really, I could
Speaker 1: just take this huge, just chunk of land longer than larger,
Speaker 1: I think than any country in Western Europe that I
Speaker 1: get to just add to Russia for free seems like
Speaker 1: a great deal for me. These are right, Nikki says no. Uh,
Speaker 1: Nikki's like, well, yeah, sure, that would wipe out the
Speaker 1: stain of defeating Crimea and make me maybe the greatest
Speaker 1: expansion It's star of the last century. Probably would have
Speaker 1: distracted from all my domestic failures. But that means I
Speaker 1: don't get Korea too when I really want Korea. Because
Speaker 1: I can't get he wants to collect them all. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he wants like those cops who got fired for trying
Speaker 1: to get that pokemon. You know who among us hasn't
Speaker 1: ignored our civic duty in order to collect the snore life? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's we. We all have that friend who like,
Speaker 1: wasn't able to make rent one month because he bought
Speaker 1: too many fucking um what are those what are those
Speaker 1: nerd bobblehead type things called because he bought too many
Speaker 1: funco Are you just looking behind me and looking for
Speaker 1: something to make fun of. I mean, it's fine when
Speaker 1: it's a funko pop, but because he's the Czar of
Speaker 1: all Russias, his funco pops are like entire nations of
Speaker 1: millions of people in in a it's it's like entire
Speaker 1: ethnic groups that that he wants to collect and put
Speaker 1: in his little Russia box and probably racially discriminate against
Speaker 1: um because he is the guy that he is. So
Speaker 1: he he says no to Japan's again very generous offer
Speaker 1: with other people's territory um, and then he doesn't leave Mancheria.
Speaker 1: But so he doesn't agree to this, and he also
Speaker 1: stays in Mancheria, which is kind of saying to Japan,
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to invade Korea, Like we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna take Korea from you, right, Like, that's what you're saying.
Speaker 1: If you're like, no, I don't want you to give
Speaker 1: me Mancheria, but I'm not gonna leave, you're saying, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna funk with your ships some more. Right.
Speaker 1: That's that's exactly what he's saying. That's as good as
Speaker 1: an act of war, really if you if you're not unreasonable,
Speaker 1: and Japan takes it this way. Um. Simon Montfio writes, quote,
Speaker 1: Bezobrazov had taught the emperor that treaties could be broken,
Speaker 1: and Nicholas was convinced that Russia could defeat those macaques.
Speaker 1: He's calling them monkeys because Japan was a barbarian country,
Speaker 1: and cool Potkin told Nicholas that the Japanese army, who's
Speaker 1: one of his military advisors, that the Japanese army was
Speaker 1: a colossal joke, but he did not want a war.
Speaker 1: The Emperor blithely ordered the viceroy, I don't want war
Speaker 1: between Russia and Japan and will not permit this war.
Speaker 1: Take all measures so that there is no war. Japan
Speaker 1: made for their offers to Russia for a compromise, but
Speaker 1: wondered if the inconsistence z are was capable of negotiating
Speaker 1: a treaty yet alone honoring it. So he gets every
Speaker 1: chance in the world to make this work right. I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting to note that we are actually looking
Speaker 1: at two nations that have just really honestly westernized their
Speaker 1: militaries or and when I say westernized, I mean modernized.
Speaker 1: Let me let me rephrase it, because you know, Japan
Speaker 1: obviously had to make a big leap forward during the
Speaker 1: mid to lady nineteenth century as well. Um, and we
Speaker 1: know we talked about in previous episodes what Russia Russia
Speaker 1: has just gotten their military to be kind of in
Speaker 1: not really in line as we'll talk about when World
Speaker 1: War One hits, but they're closer to in line with
Speaker 1: like Germany and France, and so it's almost like they
Speaker 1: both got new toys. They're like, you know what, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's a big thing. You know. Japan has
Speaker 1: just modernized and gotten their military kind of really rolling
Speaker 1: along at the same point that China is falling apart,
Speaker 1: which provides this opportunity for Japan to take a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of China and get a bunch of ship that
Speaker 1: being from an island they maybe didn't have access to before. Russia.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like with the Japanese government, this
Speaker 1: is much more of like a kind of grim real politique,
Speaker 1: like we need to take as much as we can.
Speaker 1: Um there's this awareness that like the colonial powers, like
Speaker 1: they will do that to us, what they're doing to Africa,
Speaker 1: what they're doing to other parts of Asia, if we
Speaker 1: don't assert ourselves and get powerful, and the best way
Speaker 1: to do this to take enough land that we can
Speaker 1: can continue to build up our military and not be
Speaker 1: able to be fucked with by them. Right, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of it's a lot harsher of an understanding with Russia.
Speaker 1: Nikki's this mix of like he's got these new toys
Speaker 1: he does want to play with and his he he
Speaker 1: has people talking to about how easy it will be
Speaker 1: to be Japan and an easy victory will deal with
Speaker 1: all these domestic troubles. But he's also he's like re
Speaker 1: sitable enough to know that he probably would actually be
Speaker 1: a bad idea to go to war. And he has
Speaker 1: a lot of ministers like into including like wit and
Speaker 1: the other kind of the intelligent ministers he has saying like, dude,
Speaker 1: you're hanging on by a thread right now, Like people
Speaker 1: are not happy this is that there's there's riots and
Speaker 1: ship all over the country. Um, what we don't want
Speaker 1: now as a war because it's probably not going to
Speaker 1: go great. And so there's this push and pull for
Speaker 1: a while. And for a while Nikki's kind of in
Speaker 1: the middle of those sides. Um, but he eventually kind
Speaker 1: of sides with the folks who start telling him and
Speaker 1: and and this includes pleave his anti Semite minister buddy
Speaker 1: that a small victorious war might distract everybody, right, So
Speaker 1: he eventually lines up on that I just love the
Speaker 1: phrase anti Semite minister. But well that's he's got the
Speaker 1: minister buddies who are racist and the ones who are racist,
Speaker 1: but not in terms of their policy, because every they're
Speaker 1: all racist. Yeah, Like the best guy in this story,
Speaker 1: that's far is his attitude is like, well, if you
Speaker 1: can't drown all the was, I guess they should have
Speaker 1: civil rights. Subversive statement, I guess now. On New Year's Day,
Speaker 1: n four, the Emperor of all the Russia's decides to
Speaker 1: make an ultimatum to Japan. He tells the Japanese ambassador
Speaker 1: Russia was not just a country, but a part of
Speaker 1: the world. In order to avoid a war, it was
Speaker 1: better not to try her patients or it could end badly.
Speaker 1: On the twenty four January, Japan breaks off diplomatic relations.
Speaker 1: So after like this back and forth, he issues basically
Speaker 1: like shut the funk up, let me do whatever it
Speaker 1: is I'm going to do, and if you talk to
Speaker 1: me again, like I might throw hands. That that's kind
Speaker 1: of what he's don't even yeah, don't even fucking sucks me.
Speaker 1: Don't even talk to me, stugging talks to me. If
Speaker 1: swhere to God, if you fucking talk to me once
Speaker 1: it's over and to continue our bar ANALYSI drunken Nicholas
Speaker 1: slurs that out to the Japanese, turns around to grab
Speaker 1: another drink from the bar, and while his back is turned,
Speaker 1: they hit him in the back of the head with
Speaker 1: a bottle of Schlitz, like we've all been there or whatever.
Speaker 1: Um they fuck him up. The next day, while the
Speaker 1: Czar is out watching at the theater watching a play,
Speaker 1: the Japanese fleet attacks Port Arthur, which you know Russia
Speaker 1: had taken a little bit earlier, and they do serious damage,
Speaker 1: like wipe out a significant chunk of his Asian fleet.
Speaker 1: I would add second worst thing to happen in a
Speaker 1: theater to a ruler. Oh man, there was a great
Speaker 1: this Halloween. I think I haven't said this on the show.
Speaker 1: This Halloween, we were out taking some friends kids of
Speaker 1: mine trick or treating and as we were like walking
Speaker 1: back to the car, there was just this dude dressed
Speaker 1: up as a dead Lincoln sitting in a chair in
Speaker 1: front of his house with a bucket of candy like
Speaker 1: up stock straight looked like a statue almost, And one
Speaker 1: of my friends asked him, hey, how was the play,
Speaker 1: and he without missing a beat, responded, I left early.
Speaker 1: I gotta be honest with you, Like he probably had
Speaker 1: like a list of way he was ready to say
Speaker 1: new New Dead Lincoln feature eight realistic words sounds. So
Speaker 1: the Russo Japanese War kicks off from this, right, Japan
Speaker 1: attacks at Port Arthur. The Russians are very angry and
Speaker 1: they start fighting. There's this whole big series of battles,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a war war. Stuff occurs um and
Speaker 1: on the ground there's this you know, land warfare that's
Speaker 1: largely happening in in Manchuria between like these couple hundred
Speaker 1: thousand troops that Russia has there and the Japanese Expeditionary
Speaker 1: Force and the Russians do okay here they lose basically
Speaker 1: every big battle, but Japan often loses more men in
Speaker 1: the battle, so like they're kind of it's like pyric
Speaker 1: victories for the Japanese where they're like, yeah, we keep
Speaker 1: winning these battles, but funk, there's a lot of Russians
Speaker 1: and like, we can't keep this up for a while.
Speaker 1: That is the story of they there's a lot of
Speaker 1: Russian Japan has the same experience everyone else does fighting Russia,
Speaker 1: which is Jesus Christ. There's no end of these people.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about the land differences, maybe like oh,
Speaker 1: so we're like what we're like the like the Moscow
Speaker 1: suburbs are our entire island, you know, there's so many
Speaker 1: of Yeah, yeah, I think we need the entire island
Speaker 1: of just to do anything to um And so this this,
Speaker 1: you know, on land, the Russians kind of duke it
Speaker 1: out with the Japanese until the Japanese are, you know,
Speaker 1: after repeatedly winning, kind of on the verge of collapse
Speaker 1: by some sources. So it's going okay on the land.
Speaker 1: It's not going great obviously, because it never does go
Speaker 1: great for Russia either, but like they win awards sustainable situation,
Speaker 1: it's not in the navy. So Japan starts the war
Speaker 1: by wiping out one of three Russian fleets, the Pacific Fleet,
Speaker 1: And you know, Nikki has a choice here. One of
Speaker 1: them would be like, well, I could kind of potentially
Speaker 1: give up Port Arthur, or at least give up relieving
Speaker 1: it from the sea. I could not try to funk
Speaker 1: with the in the ocean anymore because I don't need to.
Speaker 1: I'm directly connected by land to the battle space. You know,
Speaker 1: I can just throw a ship lord more dudes in
Speaker 1: Demandcharia and probably eke out if not like a win,
Speaker 1: you know, a negotiated settlement that gives me what I
Speaker 1: could have gotten without fighting a war anyway. But like
Speaker 1: looks good on paper, you know, he has kind of
Speaker 1: that option. But he's you know, Russia's pride as its navy.
Speaker 1: And it's not Russia's pride, it's it's the Czar's pride.
Speaker 1: And it's this way with all of these guys in
Speaker 1: this same period. Kaiser Wilhelm is like helping to make
Speaker 1: World War One b a thing by repeatedly like tweaking
Speaker 1: the British by building up the German fleet, because that's
Speaker 1: the thing the British don't want to see, is the
Speaker 1: Germany have a fleet that can rival the British fleet,
Speaker 1: because Germany already has an army that Britain can't handle. Um,
Speaker 1: But the Britain doesn't like when anybody has They don't
Speaker 1: like when anybody has a navy, No, they sure don't.
Speaker 1: I don't believe are the only ones with boats a reason.
Speaker 1: So the Kaiser and it's like it's this whole thing
Speaker 1: of like it's like it's it's like warhammer for the Kaiser.
Speaker 1: Like he gets to he gets to get these little boats,
Speaker 1: these boats that he gets to have a say in designing,
Speaker 1: and like look at all the big guns and he
Speaker 1: gets to move them around on a map and sail
Speaker 1: around in his yacht and look at the boats that
Speaker 1: he owns and umunds it does sound dope, right, it
Speaker 1: sounds pretty sick. And it's like that with the Kaiser too.
Speaker 1: And and Russia, you know, has a has a traditionally
Speaker 1: pretty powerful navy. Their best fleet is their Baltic fleet though, right,
Speaker 1: because that's like that's home shores, right, that's what's gonna
Speaker 1: be fucking with Turkey. Russia's big enemy for forever is Turkey.
Speaker 1: Um So they've got they lose their Pacific fleet to
Speaker 1: the Japanese with like out really getting to fire much
Speaker 1: of a shot. Um So, Nikki gets obsessed with the
Speaker 1: idea of getting revenge and with the idea of proving
Speaker 1: himself to be the Admiral of the Pacific. You can't
Speaker 1: be the Admiral of the Pacific if your fleet gets
Speaker 1: sunk and you don't do anything about it. So he
Speaker 1: takes this massive Baltic Fleet, the pride of the Russian
Speaker 1: Navy and the lynchpin of their territorial power, and he
Speaker 1: sends the whole thing to fight the Jackas fleet. Um,
Speaker 1: which takes like a year. Like it's not easy to
Speaker 1: get from the Baltic to the coast of China in
Speaker 1: this period. Yeah. Yeah, they're not flying on no, and
Speaker 1: they can't really they're not good at at boating at
Speaker 1: this point, you know, they're they're steaming slowly ahead there. Um,
Speaker 1: well they had a rough go. Yeah, it's exhausting. They
Speaker 1: accidentally murder some fishermen on the way that belonged to
Speaker 1: some European country or another. Um. Yeah, they get panicked
Speaker 1: and they think that it's a Japanese uh torpedo boat
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um. I mean that's yeah, really funny. Really,
Speaker 1: you know, we all agree that it's while those deaths
Speaker 1: are tragic, the historical context of the humor in that
Speaker 1: is it is pretty funny to be like a dude
Speaker 1: on a fishing boat and get get marked by the
Speaker 1: entire Russian Baltic Fleet. Um. Yeah, you're just like I'm
Speaker 1: out to catch up, you know. And and it's worth
Speaker 1: noting the Russian Baltic fleet will perform a lot better
Speaker 1: against these unarmed fishermen than they do against the Japanese
Speaker 1: Navy standard standard move for them. So while they're or
Speaker 1: to ring their way slowly to Asia. Um, and Russia
Speaker 1: is kind of having this very mixed, ugly ground war
Speaker 1: in Manchuria. Um, and you know the fact that there's
Speaker 1: a war, they start being more protests, they start being
Speaker 1: more riots, they start being more strikes among the workers. Well,
Speaker 1: all this is going on, the Czar's son, Alexei is born. Um,
Speaker 1: this is a cause for a lot of finally some
Speaker 1: good finally, some good news. I've got a handle on it.
Speaker 1: Now I have a boy. This couldn't go anywhere. But
Speaker 1: up as the empire is crumbling in tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of men are dying. He's like, good news, everybody, We're
Speaker 1: gonna be able to keep this thing going for another generation.
Speaker 1: Good news everywhere. One more Romanov for you all to
Speaker 1: deal with. So there's this big celebration, right, huge state
Speaker 1: celebration because now there's an heir to the throne. Um.
Speaker 1: But then shortly thereafter this are and his wife realized
Speaker 1: their boy has hemophilia. He's like, you know, the belly
Speaker 1: button thing when the thing falls out of it after
Speaker 1: you pull the baby out. Um. That the umbilical cord. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the babilical cord. His when they cut it, it doesn't
Speaker 1: stop bleeding, right, because he's hemophiliac. You know That's that's
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Um, you bleed more than his ideal um.
Speaker 1: And so there's this suddenly realization that like the Tsar's
Speaker 1: Air basically has a death sentence because like in this
Speaker 1: period of time, I think there's a bunch of things
Speaker 1: you can do. They really don't have medicine back then. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have, you have opium, and you have spiritualists. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean you have you have conmon and you have
Speaker 1: doctors who are like three percent better than conman um.
Speaker 1: But there's nothing really to do about this, and pretty
Speaker 1: much everyone but the Czar and Czarina except like, oh ship,
Speaker 1: well he's not going to make it to twenty. Like
Speaker 1: this kid's not gonna last long. Um. Yeah, this kid's fucked.
Speaker 1: They cannot take that because at this point, she's kind
Speaker 1: of worn out. She's had five kids. They're not easy
Speaker 1: pregnancies for her. She's not as young anymore. Um, and
Speaker 1: she's like I can't have another child wild and because
Speaker 1: he does love his wife, the czar is not going
Speaker 1: to force her. You know, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: monarchs would have been like the funk you say, like
Speaker 1: you're we're going to roll these dice again. I don't
Speaker 1: care what happens. I'm sorry, what was that? I like
Speaker 1: how you're like, by the way, it's like it wasn't
Speaker 1: an easy pregnancy. I'm like, yeah, I think that's just
Speaker 1: because it was in nineteen what's four, um, nineteen o five? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this, you know, so this is like horribly devastating
Speaker 1: for the Romanov family because it kind of means like
Speaker 1: we're going to have to hand over ruling to like
Speaker 1: one of our cousins or something like. This isn't going
Speaker 1: to keep going, and that means that's to the czar,
Speaker 1: even though there's like protests and uprisings and a an
Speaker 1: increasingly disastrous war. That's what makes Nikki feel like a failure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's a it's a boy, but it's not you know,
Speaker 1: it's a boy who's not going to live long enough
Speaker 1: to continue making bad decisions that affect the lives of
Speaker 1: millions anyway. Um, Nicholas is while he's trying to deal
Speaker 1: with this and dealing with the fact that his wife
Speaker 1: is increasingly having breakdowns over the fact that her son
Speaker 1: is kind of constantly on the edge of death, which
Speaker 1: understandable reason to have a breakdown. Um, Russia is kind
Speaker 1: of breaking down because the war is going poorly. People
Speaker 1: are protesting, yeada, YadA, YadA. Nicholas reshuffles his generals, and
Speaker 1: his minister's basically does this thing of like, well, it
Speaker 1: has to be someone else's fault that none of this
Speaker 1: is going well, So I'm just going to kind of
Speaker 1: randomly fire and replace people until things start to work better. Um,
Speaker 1: the problem can't be with me. Uh yeah, how could
Speaker 1: it be? Yeah, and you're so adept. Nick. So one
Speaker 1: of the guys he brings on is this new minister Mursky,
Speaker 1: who points out like, hey, there's this campaign among liberals
Speaker 1: to create like a Congress, basically a constitutional representation for
Speaker 1: the people, you know, which folks have been lobbying for
Speaker 1: for a while. His grandpa was about to put one through,
Speaker 1: and Mursky's like, hey, this is really popular, and because
Speaker 1: it's really popular, if you do it, a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who are protesting and striking right now might
Speaker 1: stop and like you can focus on the other million
Speaker 1: problems you've created. Um and maybe if you don't do this,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a revolution. And the Emperor Nicholas the
Speaker 1: second does not take this very well. His responses quote,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't hold autocracy for my own pleasure.
Speaker 1: I act in this sense only because it's necessary for Russia.
Speaker 1: I'll never agree to a representative form of government because
Speaker 1: I consider it harmful to the people whom God has
Speaker 1: entrusted to me. So, hearing this, Minsky's responses, everything has failed.
Speaker 1: Let us build jails, of course. Yeah, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to throw a lot of people in prison, or they're
Speaker 1: gonna murder us. So Minsky at least seems to have
Speaker 1: the lay of the land reasonably well. On Sunday, January
Speaker 1: nine is the Russian army launch is a huge offensive
Speaker 1: in Mancharia. A protest march of thousands of workers swarms
Speaker 1: towards the palace where Nicholas and his family live. Troops
Speaker 1: at the palace open fire and charge the protesters on horseback,
Speaker 1: and they kill more than a thousand people. This is
Speaker 1: not like a kin states or a deal. We're like
Speaker 1: a couple of guys panic and there's you know, a
Speaker 1: handful of people die and like everybody like stars in shock.
Speaker 1: This is like ranks of men firing in mass into
Speaker 1: a crowd and then running them down on horseback with sabers.
Speaker 1: Classic not to whitewash kin state, but this is like
Speaker 1: three hundred or so of them. And at the same time, Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm from Boston where we had a bombing
Speaker 1: where like three people died, and we're like, this is
Speaker 1: the worst thing that has ever happened. So I understood
Speaker 1: in Russia happens on a different scale. And on this
Speaker 1: day when his troops kill a thousand civilians in order
Speaker 1: to defend his regime from protest, Nicholas writes this in
Speaker 1: his diary, A terrible day, Lord, how painful and sad.
Speaker 1: Mama arrived from town, lunched with everyone, went for a
Speaker 1: walk with Misha. Mama stayed the night. Big, big, big
Speaker 1: deal for you, hey, for you. Thousand people died, Mama came.
Speaker 1: What a day? I think mostly a lot on your maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the main thing. Um, It's very funny, how like
Speaker 1: completely sociopathic. These people are too, like the suff suffering
Speaker 1: and death of their subjects on on a staggering scale.
Speaker 1: But you know who did care their subjects and doesn't
Speaker 1: ignore their horrible demises. I'm gonna guess it's your sponsor's right.
Speaker 1: That's right when you die. Our sponsors, every one of
Speaker 1: them genuinely sad, and they'll write about it in their diaries,
Speaker 1: and they've predicted those deaths. They have they know exactly
Speaker 1: when you're going to die. So maybe you know on
Speaker 1: this ad they'll tell you the exact moment that you'll expire.
Speaker 1: Ah really present you really? Um? So, Jeff, We're we're
Speaker 1: we're we're in a we're in a dicey time for
Speaker 1: for the Romanov dynasty as this is happening, um or
Speaker 1: if not that long after this is happening, and like
Speaker 1: well cup of months. So May of that year, May fourteen,
Speaker 1: the Baltic Fleet reaches uh, the war zone right, um
Speaker 1: reaches Southeast Asia broadly, right, you know, it's a big area.
Speaker 1: They're kind of trying to get to Port Arthur, um
Speaker 1: and they're steaming around all these you know, hugging the
Speaker 1: coast and while they're sort of getting into the battle space,
Speaker 1: the Japanese admiral, a guy named Togo Um spots them
Speaker 1: ahead of time and is smarter than anybody who has
Speaker 1: ever worked for the Czar. Um. Togo is very good
Speaker 1: at what he does. He actually believes he's the reincarnation
Speaker 1: of Horatio Nelson Um, the British admiral who wanted whatever
Speaker 1: that fucking famous sea battle. Um. He's a bit of
Speaker 1: a loon, but he's really good at running a navy.
Speaker 1: And he spots the Russian Navy and he sets his
Speaker 1: troops up in an ambush and one night, the supposedly
Speaker 1: the reason this all happens is that like some dude
Speaker 1: on a medical ship in the Russian fleet forgets to
Speaker 1: close a window and it allows the Japanese fleet to
Speaker 1: spot them in the flow at night, Um, and the
Speaker 1: Japanese fleet ambushes the pride of the Russian Navy and
Speaker 1: wipes them out. Thirty ships sunk to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the sea, and like a day and a half or so,
Speaker 1: including the flagship of the Russian Navy, and they don't
Speaker 1: really lose anybody. It's like more than a thousand Russian
Speaker 1: sailors dead and like a hundred Japanese sailors. Dad or
Speaker 1: something like that it's like it is. It is a
Speaker 1: it is a terrible disaster. It goes into yeah, um
Speaker 1: it is. It goes as badly as it possibly could
Speaker 1: have done. Um, somebody called the match. Yeah yeah they
Speaker 1: are this is this is really like, um, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's the who's a boxer who killed somebody? Emil Griffith.
Speaker 1: This is an Emil Griffith situation. That's Togo. Um, he's
Speaker 1: he's just he's just permanently knocked the Baltic fleet unconscious.
Speaker 1: Um and they are never getting out. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have that equation of like that that like stone cold
Speaker 1: Steve Austin coming in, ravaging them and just leaving while
Speaker 1: he's laying on the ground. That's kind of what the
Speaker 1: Japanese fleet does. So this number one leads very quickly
Speaker 1: to the Russians capitulating. You know, they lose the Russo
Speaker 1: Japanese war. Um, and this is kind of the thing.
Speaker 1: They have now lost two thirds of their entire navy effectively,
Speaker 1: Daddie in my toye, Daddy, I've lost my bets and
Speaker 1: they can't like it's one of those things. Not only
Speaker 1: is this just the disaster like it would be for
Speaker 1: any country. But this is also like the first time
Speaker 1: that a major European power has lost a war, a
Speaker 1: modern war to people who are not white, um, and
Speaker 1: that is like that people start flipping out all over
Speaker 1: the damn world about this ship. Um. And this really
Speaker 1: pisses off everyone in Russia's piss The right wing is
Speaker 1: pissed because it's like us, we're the ones who lose
Speaker 1: a war to the Japanese UM, and the people who
Speaker 1: aren't right when are are pissed because like, how many
Speaker 1: of our guys did you get killed for no reason?
Speaker 1: I Like, the two different reasons are like we lost
Speaker 1: to them, and the other on the other side is like, wait,
Speaker 1: we didn't. My brother's dead. So more protests. Well, Russia,
Speaker 1: the battleship Timpkin mutinies in Odessa, which is goes on
Speaker 1: to be a pretty famous moment um. And Nicholas the
Speaker 1: second well, all this is going on, well the Timpkins mutinying,
Speaker 1: while large chunks of Russia are no longer under the
Speaker 1: control of the Russian state, Like that's the extent to
Speaker 1: which the government loses control. Nikki accepts an invitation from
Speaker 1: his cousin the Kaiser, to go hang out on their
Speaker 1: yachts together class. So like the Baltic and CAUCUSUS have
Speaker 1: have overthrown the government and like murdered local officials and
Speaker 1: are independent principal or independent republics right now. And Nikki's like,
Speaker 1: I need to get away from it all. I'm going
Speaker 1: to sail on a boat with my cousin. He's like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna jet you guys. You got this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this seems fine, right, Yeah, you got this. I mean
Speaker 1: to be honest, if I was one of his his ministers, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: get the get him the funk out of here. No.
Speaker 1: I think it's that this is the right move forever
Speaker 1: one is to have him be like I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get the I'm gonna get you. Why don't you
Speaker 1: take an extra couple of months, you know, just really
Speaker 1: clear your head. Yeah, why did you go to hang
Speaker 1: out with that dipshit cousin? So? Um Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote now from the Oxford University Press. In nineteen o five,
Speaker 1: there were three thousand, two hundred and twenty eight agrarian
Speaker 1: disorders that caused twenty eight million, eight hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: two thousand seven hundred and fifty nine roubles worth of damage. ROBERTA.
Speaker 1: Manning and her study of the nineteen o five Revolution stated,
Speaker 1: under these conditions of near total breakdown in government authority
Speaker 1: and paralysis of the government in elite, which temporarily lost
Speaker 1: faith in its ability to administer the nation, rural Russia
Speaker 1: rose up to join its urban partners in the greatest
Speaker 1: most destructive series of agrarian uprisings since the Pugachev Rebellion
Speaker 1: of the eighteenth century. So by the end of nineteen
Speaker 1: o five, there are thirteen thousand, nine hundred ninety five
Speaker 1: recorded strikes. There are riots, there are there are like
Speaker 1: thousands of assassinations over this period of time. Like they
Speaker 1: are massacring government officials by by the fucking football team's worth. Um,
Speaker 1: that seems egregious, right, I mean yeah, like I get
Speaker 1: I get it. But also at the same time, it's
Speaker 1: like I feel like a couple of guys got a
Speaker 1: lot caught off. Yeah, I mean it's pretty bad, Like
Speaker 1: it's really ugly, and it's ugly and because like not
Speaker 1: to take anything from like the ministers or from the
Speaker 1: terrorists who are in some of these are acts of
Speaker 1: were like just a guy will shoot this dude who
Speaker 1: was like a police commissioner who was like specifically like
Speaker 1: you did this crackdown, I'm gonna kill you. Some of
Speaker 1: them are like, we're going to set off eighty pounds
Speaker 1: of T and T in a crowded neighborhood to like
Speaker 1: take this guy out. You know. Um, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of it is really ugly. And part of why it's
Speaker 1: really ugly is these are kind of established that. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was his dad established back in the eighteen sixties
Speaker 1: when their grandpa was assassinated that like, well, whenever there's unrest,
Speaker 1: we kill people in huge numbers, and that's how we
Speaker 1: deal with unrest is man murder. And the czar has
Speaker 1: a thousand people killed, you know, at at the gates
Speaker 1: of his palace. Like that is the way the Russian
Speaker 1: state handles unrest. So when people rise up against the
Speaker 1: Russian state, where are the stakes? This is how you fight?
Speaker 1: You fight by killing huge numbers of people. I learned
Speaker 1: from watching you dad, you know, Like that's pretty bit's
Speaker 1: a pretty base answer too, And it's just like, I
Speaker 1: mean that's like the number one thing you go to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what I guess this is how this works. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the government's the first thing they always have to
Speaker 1: like throw out obviously, like every other government when there's
Speaker 1: you know, any kind of popular unrest and programs are happening.
Speaker 1: In this period, it's very messy time. So you've got
Speaker 1: obvious and some of those programs are like these these
Speaker 1: right wing groups, um, the Black Hundreds, which are like Czarists,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about them in a little bit. Some of
Speaker 1: them are happy are some of them are being done
Speaker 1: by like left wing groups, saying most of it is
Speaker 1: from the right, most of these programs. A lot of
Speaker 1: it though I probably the bulk of it isn't isn't specifically,
Speaker 1: it's just like it's reactions to the things that the
Speaker 1: that the left you're doing. So you'll have like a
Speaker 1: striker and uprising in Odessa, or you'll have a terrorist
Speaker 1: attack that kills this minister, and then people will blame
Speaker 1: it on the Jews and there will be a pagram
Speaker 1: and you know, like that's that's kind of the way
Speaker 1: this whole thing goes. It's a very messy period of time. UM.
Speaker 1: Russia does not have cops really like they have police,
Speaker 1: and they try to tamp down on unrest um. But
Speaker 1: they don't. There's not there's like one of them for
Speaker 1: every several thousand people. So whenever they really need to
Speaker 1: crack heads, it's the army. UM. But the army's mutinying
Speaker 1: all over because they've just lost this war, just like
Speaker 1: the navy. UM. So the only thing you can really
Speaker 1: get the army to crack down on is the Bolsheviks. Right.
Speaker 1: So when you have these left wing uprisings, these are
Speaker 1: can generally get military units and to fight them. But
Speaker 1: when you have these programs that are responses to these uprisings,
Speaker 1: in some cases you can't convince the army is not
Speaker 1: going to go crack down on them because the army
Speaker 1: is like, well, we're pretty racist too, and the cops
Speaker 1: are like actively participating in the pagram, so they're not
Speaker 1: going to do no. That part's cool. So Nicholas also
Speaker 1: comes to see that like, well, maybe these programs are
Speaker 1: a good thing because all of the people doing the
Speaker 1: revolutions are Jews, which is not true, um, but they are.
Speaker 1: There are a number of them are Jewish people because
Speaker 1: Jewish people are particularly oppressed by this. Are is someone
Speaker 1: lying about Jews so they can do violence towards them,
Speaker 1: that there's this thing. Later in life, when he gets
Speaker 1: over through the fact, he spends a lot of time
Speaker 1: listing out all of the revolutionaries and like their secret
Speaker 1: Jewish roots. Um, which is wrong about a lot of
Speaker 1: them were not Jewish. That he just like found ways
Speaker 1: to believe they were Jewish because he he comes to
Speaker 1: believe that, like all resistance to his regime, is rooted
Speaker 1: in the Jews. Um. He writes this in a letter
Speaker 1: to his mom, quote, nine tenths of the troublemakers are Jews.
Speaker 1: The people's whole anger turned against them. That is how
Speaker 1: the programs happened. It is amazing how they took place
Speaker 1: in the towns of Russia and Siberia. Now there's a
Speaker 1: lot of debate as to whether or not those are
Speaker 1: deliberately incited and organized programs as a way to regain
Speaker 1: control and alps distract people from attacking the state. Whether
Speaker 1: or not he had any sort of plan, the violence
Speaker 1: often worked out exactly as one assumes he would have wanted.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote now from an academic study
Speaker 1: in Monde, russ After the astounding news of the October
Speaker 1: Manifesto demonstrations and meetings with red flags began to occur
Speaker 1: now and then they were accompanied by excesses insulting to
Speaker 1: the Czarist throne. This is like the start of the
Speaker 1: left wing revolution against the Tsar. Portraits of Nicholas the Second,
Speaker 1: so revered by monarchists, were taken down by walls and
Speaker 1: sometimes from walls and sometimes destroyed, and meetings. Money was
Speaker 1: collected for Nicholas's burial on Kiev on the balcony of
Speaker 1: the city Duma building. One of those in a meeting,
Speaker 1: cut a hole in Aazarist portrait and sticking his own
Speaker 1: threat head through the hole, replacing the Tsar's face, shouted, now,
Speaker 1: I am the sovereign. You have to imagine that guy
Speaker 1: was pretty pretty drunk. I gotta be honest, man, that
Speaker 1: sounds like that. That's a good time and son of
Speaker 1: a bit, that does sound fun. This is the good timing,
Speaker 1: son of a bitch part. It takes a turn here um.
Speaker 1: The the admirers of autocracy old customs in order regarded
Speaker 1: such events as an outrage, a triumph of Jews and
Speaker 1: Sadistas in seditious intelligencia, and came out with a furious protest.
Speaker 1: Real cases of offenses to monarch as symbol similar to
Speaker 1: that described above were not ubiquitous. Sometimes they were exaggerated
Speaker 1: or just invented from nothing by pre pre program rumors,
Speaker 1: often with preposterous accusations of outrages against Orthodox shrines or
Speaker 1: Czarist portraits. For example, right before a program and Kiev,
Speaker 1: rumors circulated about an attack by slur against Jewish people
Speaker 1: to a monastery, Black Hundreds organized belligerent counter demonstrations, sometimes
Speaker 1: under pretext of celebrating the ninth anniversary of the ascension
Speaker 1: of Nicholas the Second to the throne, which clashed with
Speaker 1: left wing meetings and fights turned into programs. Depending on
Speaker 1: the possibility or desire of local authorities to restore order,
Speaker 1: these could continue for days. Almost inevitably, the Czar's portrait
Speaker 1: was present at these disgraceful events. Black Hundred demonstrations were
Speaker 1: often were very often physically organized around the Emperor's portrait.
Speaker 1: It played an important symbolic role, highlighting the assembled crowds
Speaker 1: loyalty to the throne and as if it had provided
Speaker 1: Zara sanction to the program a programs, rumors spread wildly
Speaker 1: that Nicholas Second the Second permitted them to reckon smash
Speaker 1: and beat the seditious anti's, anti monarchy rebels and tumpsk.
Speaker 1: The following ritual was observed. A crowd would come up
Speaker 1: to a store and the one walking up front would
Speaker 1: turn to the portrait of Nicholas and ask, your majesty
Speaker 1: do you allow us to destroy this store? The one
Speaker 1: carrying the portrait would answer, I permit it. So it's
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on a limb and
Speaker 1: say that that's not on the level I mean officially
Speaker 1: state saying it isn't. It isn't because the state's not
Speaker 1: sending in troops to stop this. And later on in
Speaker 1: the wake of this, Nicolas pardons a lot of the
Speaker 1: programasts um and as he just wrote to his mom,
Speaker 1: like he sees most of the revolutionaries as Jewish, he
Speaker 1: sees the people's anger against Jewish folks. He sees these
Speaker 1: programs as like an expression of honest and fair anger.
Speaker 1: So while he's not he is not saying go out
Speaker 1: and destroy Jewish businesses. But when these crowds take his
Speaker 1: portrait and use it to like justify their destruction of
Speaker 1: Jewish businesses, they're not making that up out of whole cloth,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, um, yeah, and uh, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty ugly. There's one cool moment and some of
Speaker 1: this stuff where so one of the things that will
Speaker 1: happen is these processions, these black hundreds marching with porches
Speaker 1: of the Czar will like walk around and they'll demand
Speaker 1: people on the street, um remove their caps and like
Speaker 1: bow to the czar and if you don't do this,
Speaker 1: you'll get the ship beaten out of you, right Like
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of like this gang being like, hey,
Speaker 1: you gotta like the guy in our picture or we're
Speaker 1: gonna kick the funk out of you. You know. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they murder people and there's we've had that. We've had
Speaker 1: that in America pretty pretty recently, and we will again.
Speaker 1: There's a beautiful moment. There's this Bolshevik v Morozov who
Speaker 1: encounters one of these processions and they're like, hey, you
Speaker 1: gotta take your hat off and you've got to declare
Speaker 1: loyalty to this picture of those are um And he
Speaker 1: doesn't do that, v moros off. Instead, he calls the
Speaker 1: ars scoundrel, pulls out a gun, shoots two of the
Speaker 1: people carrying the portrait to death um and does get
Speaker 1: beaten so badly that he nearly dies, but he survives.
Speaker 1: I mean he killed two people and a and a portrait.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty good response. He did get nearly beaten
Speaker 1: to death, though, so you know, mileage may vary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he made it into the book. They're all dead in
Speaker 1: the story now, but he made it into the book.
Speaker 1: We do all it probably sucked at the time, but
Speaker 1: we do all know he was a badass. Now damn right, hey, man,
Speaker 1: ass kickings happen. That just that's gonna happen. And what's
Speaker 1: happened shooting two guys holding a portrait of an assholes forever?
Speaker 1: That literally, that's that's your new that's your new master
Speaker 1: card commercial, even though they haven't made those commercials. And
Speaker 1: what is a little dated, But you know what's not
Speaker 1: a dated ad is these ads right now? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we are back so those modern those modern ads we
Speaker 1: just had shamefully honored. So Jews were not the only
Speaker 1: racial victims of these prosarist moms right back from ats
Speaker 1: so funny. Yeah, that was some great anyway, The Jews
Speaker 1: weren't the only there were other races that the Czarists
Speaker 1: saved it. Yeah, in northern Central Russia. I guess these
Speaker 1: aren't racial victims, but students and academics are targeted and
Speaker 1: often murdered. Like they'll they'll beat up college kids and
Speaker 1: professors and assassinate them the right will because of their
Speaker 1: connections to Yeah, yeah kind of. It's also like a
Speaker 1: lot of the people. Often it will be a case
Speaker 1: of like, yes, some like college students who got radicalized
Speaker 1: will set off a bomb to kill these local officials,
Speaker 1: and then as a result, some like people in the
Speaker 1: town will go murder their professor. You know, ship like
Speaker 1: that's happening too. It's ugly, you know, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a civil war is going on in Russia right now,
Speaker 1: and it's very much a prelude for the civil war
Speaker 1: that will happen not all that long in the future
Speaker 1: and kill what four million people? Um, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are other targets. Im Baku Armenians were targeted by
Speaker 1: the Tsarists. Getting any kind of comprehensive death toll would
Speaker 1: be impossible, But during October of nineteen oh five, at
Speaker 1: least six hundred and twenty two people were murdered uh
Speaker 1: and three thousand four injured in programs alone. That's just
Speaker 1: deaths from these kind of like right wing masses of violence. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those numbers come from police sources, though, which probably under
Speaker 1: counts the death toll. Shlomo Lambrosa, who's a scholar, calculates
Speaker 1: more than three thousand, one hundred three deaths just among
Speaker 1: Jews during the nineteen o five programs. Now, historians seem
Speaker 1: in agreement that Czar Nicholas the Second did not have
Speaker 1: a concerted plan to spark programs. He was kind of
Speaker 1: okay with them. He did not devote a lot of
Speaker 1: effort to stopping them. But there were there were For
Speaker 1: years afterwards, people would like theorize that he had orchestrated
Speaker 1: the programs. There really does not seem to be evidence
Speaker 1: of that that it was a central plan. But we
Speaker 1: do know that anti Sism, anti Semitism was stoked purposefully
Speaker 1: by the Tsar's men, whether or not he gave the order. Um,
Speaker 1: there was this. This is kind of found out afterwards
Speaker 1: that in a corner of the St. Petersburg Police Department
Speaker 1: there's a secret printing press which is putting out pamphlets
Speaker 1: this entire time urging people to quote kill Jews, to
Speaker 1: tear them apart into tiny pieces. Um. Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: a not a lot of like wiggle room. There not
Speaker 1: a lot of room for yeah interpretation. Just just kill them.
Speaker 1: It's fine, joke, he's joke, he's joke, but please, no,
Speaker 1: we're kidding. Kill them. But the guy printing this is
Speaker 1: a as a gendarme officer named Kamissarov Um and he's
Speaker 1: has a role in spreading the uh the protocols of
Speaker 1: the Elders of Zion to um and he's like he's
Speaker 1: funneling them using police resources from St. Petersburg through right
Speaker 1: wing organizations who spread them around the country and oftentimes
Speaker 1: these things will spread to an area and then there
Speaker 1: will be pagrams. UM. So this is where again maybe
Speaker 1: Nikki wasn't explicitly aware of all this, but like his
Speaker 1: dudes were doing it in the city where he was living, um,
Speaker 1: using his money. So the idea that people suspect he
Speaker 1: had a role in directly inciting pagrams, it doesn't come
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. You know. Again, we may have seen
Speaker 1: something like this relatively recently in our country. Yeah, thankfully
Speaker 1: not with that kind of death toll. But it is
Speaker 1: kind of like the the plausible deniability of the autocrat
Speaker 1: you know who's like, oh, yeah, I mean people, it's
Speaker 1: horrible when people do violent things. I don't think those
Speaker 1: violent things are wrong, but like I'm not organizing it.
Speaker 1: They just happened, and I say it's okay, but it's
Speaker 1: also bad at the same time when anyone pushes me
Speaker 1: on it, you know, like, yeah, we've seen this, we
Speaker 1: may I'm not gonna lie. That's something we've seen. So
Speaker 1: the wave of rebellions, um, you know, the programs kind
Speaker 1: of burned themselves out after enough people get the murder
Speaker 1: out of their systems and the stealing out of their systems. Um.
Speaker 1: The rebellions, the actual like kind of left wing uprisings
Speaker 1: against the state are put down by the military, and
Speaker 1: Nikki orders exceptional brutality to be used in defense of
Speaker 1: his regime. When the St. Petersburg workers district is stormed
Speaker 1: by Russian troops his he has his soldiers use artillery
Speaker 1: to pound populated districts of his own capital, killing three
Speaker 1: thousand people, um christ um a lot, which is like,
Speaker 1: that's as many minister that's as many like government officials
Speaker 1: as the revolutionaries kill in a period of years. Um.
Speaker 1: And they're just like the shelling of his own capital.
Speaker 1: The emperor writes in his diary, quote, the armed rebellion
Speaker 1: in Moscow has been crushed. The abscess was growing. Now
Speaker 1: it's burst. When one of his generals in the Baltics
Speaker 1: is not putting down the locals with enough brutality for
Speaker 1: Nicki's liking, bizarre, sends a man to tell him, quote,
Speaker 1: the only thing you'll get in trouble for is not
Speaker 1: being brutal enough. He then immediately executes a thousand prisoners. So, like,
Speaker 1: he sees this guy puts down this rebellion, and he's like,
Speaker 1: you're taking a lot of prisoners alive. Like, I might
Speaker 1: get angry at you for that, but if you all
Speaker 1: a bunch of them, there's no amount of people you
Speaker 1: could kill and piss me off. So this guy kills
Speaker 1: a thousand people and like very rightly, being like, well,
Speaker 1: these are basically just said I should murder more of
Speaker 1: these folks. I like that. He was like given permission.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, let's just go for the whole thing. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess I guess we'll try. Uh. Simon Montfior writes
Speaker 1: when he heard that a punitive detachment had accepted the surrender,
Speaker 1: of rebellious Lavonians. He insisted the town should have been destroyed.
Speaker 1: Arrests were celebrated with the word power. This is Nikki
Speaker 1: writing in his own diary, while the summary execution of
Speaker 1: twenty six rebellious railway road workers earned an imperial Bravo. Bezobrazov,
Speaker 1: brother of Nikki's Far East adviser and one of his
Speaker 1: favorite guards officers, staged ghoulish public shows shows of bodies
Speaker 1: dangling on gibbets. When Commander Richter, son of Alexander the
Speaker 1: Third's crony, now leading a punitive detachment in the Baltics,
Speaker 1: not only shot his prisoners but hang the bodies. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: Nicholas wrote another bravo. Trip Off informed him that Cossacks
Speaker 1: had overused their whips. Very well done, applauded Nicholas. When
Speaker 1: he heard of more executions, he commented, this really tickles me.
Speaker 1: So this is how he writes about, like the crimes
Speaker 1: against humanity. I'm tickled by the fact that you've executed
Speaker 1: these people. Oh well done. They whipped people to death. Bravo. Definitely,
Speaker 1: it definitely sees that that, like um, that disconnect when
Speaker 1: you're raised like the poppish child of privilege and power.
Speaker 1: It is really like if you ever played a game
Speaker 1: like Civilization or you know, Age of Wonders or whatever,
Speaker 1: where you like build an empire and there's sometimes people
Speaker 1: rebel and you crack down on these like fake people
Speaker 1: who don't really exist. He feels that same way about
Speaker 1: like the lives of thousands of real people. It's like
Speaker 1: he's playing a video game. He's like looking at his
Speaker 1: maps and someone saying, we put them down, and we
Speaker 1: we executed a thousand of them, or like how many
Speaker 1: of us would you like to kill out of these
Speaker 1: that we've captured, and he makes a note of how
Speaker 1: many people he once killed, and like then he goes
Speaker 1: home feeling like he's winning the game finally, I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like a win. Yeah, yeah, are all a
Speaker 1: winner getting to hear this story. So in total, Bizar's
Speaker 1: men kill fifteen thousand people um at least, and deport
Speaker 1: forty more, cracking down on the rebellion. And this time
Speaker 1: it's enough, you know, like this is enough that he
Speaker 1: is able to hold onto power barely. Um. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: eight years, things aren't going to go so well. Now,
Speaker 1: before we roll out today, Jeff, we should probably talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about ra Ra Rasputine, lover of the
Speaker 1: Russian queen, hell boy villain boy villains. Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the better hell boy villains. Um. Guy, I get told
Speaker 1: I look like on a not a regular basis. Um,
Speaker 1: I can see that. Yeah, well, um, And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things. He is definitely the single most famous
Speaker 1: person today in the whole Romanov story. As a general rule,
Speaker 1: the only reason people talk about Nicholas the second or
Speaker 1: his wife, um is either to talk about Anastasia or
Speaker 1: to talk about Rasputin, and generally both at the same time.
Speaker 1: Like in the Disney movie I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: you look like Rasputing. For the record, there's there's there's
Speaker 1: more love in your eyes. Thank you, Sophie. That's very
Speaker 1: sweet of you. Know. This is Robert. So it's one
Speaker 1: of those things pop history is right, and that this
Speaker 1: guy really is as influential as as the popular you know,
Speaker 1: depictions make him say he's a huge part of the
Speaker 1: regime and why a bunch of stuff happens. Um. It's
Speaker 1: also like wrong in some weird ways because he is
Speaker 1: like it always portrays him as this malevolent force and
Speaker 1: he gives a lot of bad advice, his advice, but
Speaker 1: he also is like one of the people saying like,
Speaker 1: you should probably stop being shitty to Jewish people. Um,
Speaker 1: you should probably not get into World War One. Now,
Speaker 1: that's why people don't like it's also a rapist. Um
Speaker 1: like there's he's not a good person. We'll do an
Speaker 1: episode on Rasputin someday in the future. But I'm genuinely
Speaker 1: surprised you haven't. Well, people keep telling me I look
Speaker 1: like him, and it makes me you do not self conscious,
Speaker 1: thank you, Sophie. So for now, the cliffs notes are
Speaker 1: that he was a poor kid from the east of
Speaker 1: fucking nowhere who got in trouble for like stealing some
Speaker 1: ship and sleeping around, and he gets kicked out of
Speaker 1: the town he comes from. He becomes a priest, he
Speaker 1: sucks a bunch more people, and gradually he turns into
Speaker 1: this like guru type cult figure. Um, he's kind of
Speaker 1: a cult leader. He's not quite what we recognized as
Speaker 1: a cult leader because he doesn't have like this group
Speaker 1: who have a shared identity, and that identity is like
Speaker 1: worshiping him, because like that would be too much for
Speaker 1: the Czar and Czarina, right, the Czar's kind of his
Speaker 1: own cult. You don't get to be a cult leader
Speaker 1: like we know of a cult leader in Russia in
Speaker 1: this period. Um no, because that's there. Yeah, but he's
Speaker 1: kind of like cult cuckolding Bizar because the Czars kind
Speaker 1: of his follower. It's it's it's an odd situation. And
Speaker 1: again he follows, you know, in the footsteps of a
Speaker 1: Philippe who really very very conscientiously uh seasoned to the
Speaker 1: ground in front of or behind, so that this guy
Speaker 1: would have an easier time pulling one over on the
Speaker 1: biggest Rube in all of history. Um. So rest buten,
Speaker 1: you know, as he starts to like develop this cult following,
Speaker 1: he starts he claims that he calls himself a healer um.
Speaker 1: And he begins traveling around wealthy St. Petersburg's circles, you know,
Speaker 1: the families of the nobles and the wealthy, basically like helping.
Speaker 1: A lot of times, it will be like a woman
Speaker 1: has some sort of hysteria, and obviously his prescription is, well,
Speaker 1: you should probably funk rescutin. And it works a lot
Speaker 1: at the time, I guess because because he keeps keeps
Speaker 1: getting word of mouth, you know, that's well yeah, um,
Speaker 1: he winds up having a making his first connection to
Speaker 1: the Romanov family through a Romanov named Nikolasha, who's like
Speaker 1: a cousin of the czar um And Nikolasha is kind
Speaker 1: of competent. He's one of he's a soldier, and he's
Speaker 1: one of the few Romanovs who actually like isn't just
Speaker 1: like doing that to dress up like he's not a
Speaker 1: complete idiot when it comes to military matters. Um. He's
Speaker 1: known as the Terrible for his temper, and the Czar
Speaker 1: bres him in close to the family in the nineteen
Speaker 1: o five uprisings because he thinks he might need to
Speaker 1: appoint a dictator, Like it's going bad enough in nineteen
Speaker 1: o five. That is, like, I might need to make
Speaker 1: my cousin the dictator so that I don't have to
Speaker 1: take the stink on me of doing some of this
Speaker 1: ugly shit. It doesn't wind up, I mean, why not
Speaker 1: have somebody with the nickname the Terrible. Hey, cousin the Terrible?
Speaker 1: I got this like problem now. Nikolasha again, competent, soldier,
Speaker 1: kind of a crazy person. He wanted to be a
Speaker 1: medieval night. He kept a court of dwarves around him.
Speaker 1: I think because he read that in a medieval storybook
Speaker 1: at some point and decided it sounded cool. Um. That's
Speaker 1: what he describes them as, a cult of a court
Speaker 1: of of dwarves. I think it's you know, um, it's
Speaker 1: it's nineteen o six. Um. And for an example, I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not judging the words at this point in time.
Speaker 1: You should judge the pretty nice thing to say in
Speaker 1: nineteen o six because another thing he's famous for is
Speaker 1: he gets really drunk at a party, wants and he
Speaker 1: wants to show off his favorite sword, and the way
Speaker 1: he does that is by using it to cut his
Speaker 1: pet dog in half. All Right, well, that's not I
Speaker 1: would say, I'm gonna go out on a that's not good.
Speaker 1: It's not. That's probably worse than some questionable linguistic choices
Speaker 1: he's made. Um. Now, like most nobles in this period,
Speaker 1: he believes in what he described as the divine origin
Speaker 1: of Czarist power. He felt God had given Nicholas the
Speaker 1: Second some special secret strength um that would lead him
Speaker 1: out of that would help him lead Russia out of
Speaker 1: like its problems. So obviously he falls immediately for everything
Speaker 1: Russia's suns. Guy. I thinks he's a medieval night. He's
Speaker 1: like very gullible. He buys into all this right the
Speaker 1: funk away um, and this is going to be the
Speaker 1: way in which Rasputin um lover of the Russian queen Um.
Speaker 1: Not really, but that's what a lot of Russians believe
Speaker 1: at this time. Um. That's how he winds up getting
Speaker 1: into the family. And we will talk more about that
Speaker 1: and more about everything else in our conclusion to the
Speaker 1: epic saga Nicolas the second. What a dick, Jeff, He
Speaker 1: got any plugg doubles to plug? First? Yeah, like you
Speaker 1: mentioned before, I have a great show called Jeff Has
Speaker 1: Cool Friends, bi weekly interview show with all of my
Speaker 1: cool nerdy compatriots, and you can find that at picture
Speaker 1: on dot com slash Jeff May for early uncensored episodes
Speaker 1: with bonus content. I also have a great monthly show
Speaker 1: called Fine with Kim Crawl, among others. You can also
Speaker 1: check me out on Tom and Jeff. Watch Batman on
Speaker 1: the gameplay Unemployed Network. We gotta have you on one
Speaker 1: of those episodes, Robert. Absolutely, I have. I have watched
Speaker 1: a Batman or two in my time. We sure we've
Speaker 1: watched the Law. We sure have. You can also check
Speaker 1: out you Don't Even Like Sports and Unpopular Opinion, both
Speaker 1: on the Unpops Network. You can find me on social
Speaker 1: media at hey there, Jeff Row on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: Don't find me on Facebook, don't don't be weird. Don't
Speaker 1: find him on Facebook, but find us talk and if
Speaker 1: he's not on TikTok, deep fake him. I'm not should
Speaker 1: I be? I feel too old. I'm too old for tikto.
Speaker 1: I think everyone is. I think the twelve year olds
Speaker 1: TikTok or too old for TikTok. I'm too old. I'll
Speaker 1: be starting an account next week. Um. Speaking of next week,
Speaker 1: we'll be back tomorrow or Thursday whatever later this week
Speaker 1: with more episodes about the czar Um and I have
Speaker 1: a novel. You can find it in preorder it and
Speaker 1: get a signed copy by googling a k Press after
Speaker 1: the revolution. Um, so go do that. Do it now?
Speaker 1: Do it that way? Now do it now? Okay, good,
Speaker 1: thank you for doing that now everybody bam