Speaker 1: Welcome to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst
Speaker 1: people in all of history and also at the same
Speaker 1: time a podcast where I explore my Boston accent and
Speaker 1: see how much better I can make it, and and
Speaker 1: and to help me, today we have professional Boston coach
Speaker 1: Jeff May. Jeff, welcome to the program. Hey, their kid,
Speaker 1: what's going on? Wow? Incredible? Of course? Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: I prefer I prefer to do my accent a little
Speaker 1: bit more authentic. Let me let me run this one
Speaker 1: by a Jeff boy croiy Aim from Boston. That's more
Speaker 1: of a North Shore accent, like yeah, yeah, no, that
Speaker 1: that's that's very much. If you were to go up
Speaker 1: to like, you know, like Malden or something like, really
Speaker 1: get up there, Um, that's where you have so regional
Speaker 1: dialect is wild out there? Critical question, Brock part of
Speaker 1: Boston or not? Yeah? Of course, I mean, all right,
Speaker 1: that's great. So that you're on Jamie. You're on Jamie's
Speaker 1: side of this. How much is she paying you? But
Speaker 1: let me Jamie. But here's the thing is that I
Speaker 1: lived three thousand miles away from my hometown, right, so
Speaker 1: if where I am now when people ask where I'm
Speaker 1: from I tell them Boston. In reality, I'm from a
Speaker 1: small farming hamlet in central Massachusetts called Charlton, regionally related
Speaker 1: to Worcester, Massachusetts. So it's hard for me when people
Speaker 1: are like, Jeff's from Boston and I'm like yeah, And
Speaker 1: then when someone presses me a little bit, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: not really though, um, but I've always counted. I mean
Speaker 1: because Brockton. Brockton is like the sort of heart of
Speaker 1: fighting in Boston, which is something that I did. Makes sense,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, So I relate that and often once
Speaker 1: and I did want to fight somebody. Everyone would have
Speaker 1: fought you there, jeffs a Boston accent was so much
Speaker 1: better than yours. Robert, I'm sorry. His was really strong.
Speaker 1: It was strong. It wasn't regionalized well, but it was strong.
Speaker 1: Yours was very marky Mark MACKI Mack freaking Walberg. You
Speaker 1: should do an episode on him. The only people that
Speaker 1: like the Walberg with the people that are related to
Speaker 1: the Walburg. Have you ever eaten at a wall Burgers?
Speaker 1: I would rather fucking die. Is that a real place?
Speaker 1: I don't want to be mean, but it is the
Speaker 1: worst burger I've ever had in my life. Well, so
Speaker 1: you know, I think Mark Wahlberg getting a burger chain
Speaker 1: is evidence of one of the many crimes of capitalism.
Speaker 1: And you know who hated capitalism, Donnie Wallburg. That might
Speaker 1: be true, but also the subject of today's episode, Nikolai
Speaker 1: Chauchco Dictator of Romania. We just start doing an entire
Speaker 1: thing about the wall Berg family and never get to
Speaker 1: the actual topic. That wouldn't put that could do it,
Speaker 1: I could do, I could do an hour I related bastards.
Speaker 1: I mean, we are talking about one corrupt family and
Speaker 1: another corrupt family. So the chow Chesscus and the Wallbergs.
Speaker 1: Who's who has caused more death and destruction? So Robert,
Speaker 1: I need you to say, welcome to and you're ready
Speaker 1: for go behind the Bastards. Welcome to Behind the Bastards. No,
Speaker 1: that's not it. That was you nailed it. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Jeff. I gotta be like I thought that
Speaker 1: you had just replayed what I said back to me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been practicing my mimicry, like whatever kind of bird
Speaker 1: mimics things. You're like, yeah, yeah, something like that. Jeff,
Speaker 1: what do you know about nikolaicha chessco I try to
Speaker 1: not know as much as I can about Romanian people.
Speaker 1: I know that he was a lot of Nylon sweatsuits. Uh,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of cologne on. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: look if you want, because Romania is kind of like
Speaker 1: edge of the Balkans, right, sometimes it's considered part of
Speaker 1: the Balkans. Some people be like, na, Eastern Europe is
Speaker 1: not really in the whatever, This is not the place
Speaker 1: to litigate that. But what you can say, what I
Speaker 1: can say about Romanians, which I can also say about
Speaker 1: Serbians and Bosnians and um Um a number of other
Speaker 1: people in that area, is that their track suit game
Speaker 1: is incredibly strong, unbelievable. It's like they're like, yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: If you want to if you've gotten a good Adida's
Speaker 1: track suit in that part of the world, you're basically
Speaker 1: a king. Um just squatting and smoking cigarettes. It rules.
Speaker 1: Romania is an interesting country, um and Nikolai Chauchesco is
Speaker 1: interesting because you know, we've got all these like communist
Speaker 1: dictators like Stalin Um who There are a lot of
Speaker 1: folks today, particularly on the Internet, who will defend these guys.
Speaker 1: A lot of like weird authoritarian communists who who have
Speaker 1: never met a dictator they don't like. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that's interesting about our subject today, Cchessco, is
Speaker 1: that he is the one that no one will defend.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure you can find a couple of
Speaker 1: Cichessco stands out there, but they're almost nobody will back
Speaker 1: this guy up because he sucked so comprehensively. It's funny.
Speaker 1: It's funny when, yeah, when you look at the old
Speaker 1: Soviet Block and you look at like some of the
Speaker 1: dictators they had, and you look at the old the
Speaker 1: like the older people that lived through it, and like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you have to make hard decisions and
Speaker 1: it's like hard got killed like a hundred thousand people,
Speaker 1: and like, well, you know, the ruling is difficult. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is very interesting to see the apologists of like
Speaker 1: the really terrible people in in Russia. They're just like
Speaker 1: sometimes you set I like. What I do like is
Speaker 1: that he his fate was sealed on I believe if
Speaker 1: I recall correctly, yes, Christmas, Yeah, he was. Him being
Speaker 1: murdered was a Christmas present for the whole Romanian and
Speaker 1: really the world. But we're getting ahead of ourselves a
Speaker 1: little bit. So we're gonna talk about Nikolai Cichescu, but
Speaker 1: we're also going to have to talk about Romania and
Speaker 1: give some history because I don't think most Americans know
Speaker 1: a lot about Romania. Um it's a part of the
Speaker 1: world that you know. It's interesting because, like, there was
Speaker 1: a period of time where Cichesco was kind of like
Speaker 1: the good communist. He was very close friends with Richard Nixon. Um.
Speaker 1: He was spoken up positively by by Ronald Reagan. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: He's like a scholarist who Nixon loved, and Reagan was like,
Speaker 1: he's a good guy. It's wild stuff. Those are two
Speaker 1: people whose endorsements I could go without. Yeah yeah, um so,
Speaker 1: But before we get into how he came to power
Speaker 1: and what he did, we're gonna have to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit of history because there's some there's some context
Speaker 1: that is important if you're going to understand how would
Speaker 1: guy like what do you know that he was when
Speaker 1: he was younger? He was extremely hot that we can discuss. Sophie. Um.
Speaker 1: I I definitely don't see that because he looks like
Speaker 1: a muppet as he gets older, like up, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the land of the muppets. UM. Well, it was
Speaker 1: known as Dacia uh d A c I A back
Speaker 1: in the day and like the classical period um. If
Speaker 1: you've ever seen, like read a book about the Roman
Speaker 1: Empire and it talks about them fighting the Dacians and
Speaker 1: conquering the Dactions. That's Romania prior to Roman contact. Um.
Speaker 1: Dacia is like one of the last provinces that gets
Speaker 1: conquered by the Roman Empire, and it's one of the
Speaker 1: first they abandoned, so they're only only hang around there
Speaker 1: for a little bit less than three hundred years and
Speaker 1: then they leave into b C. This energy that they
Speaker 1: bring to living in Romania, it's too dark, too many
Speaker 1: mountains because like vampires, they're gonna be a thing here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like, we conquered a lemon, We're gonna get the
Speaker 1: hell out of here. Yeah. Well they kind of get
Speaker 1: out of here obviously, like we talk about, oh, the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire conquers this place, who leaves this place to
Speaker 1: b C. When the Roman Empire leaves, most people living
Speaker 1: in the region probably would not have noticed much of
Speaker 1: a change, because, for one thing, they're still trading with
Speaker 1: the Romans. There's still a lot of Roman soldiers in
Speaker 1: the region, and in fact, the reason that we call
Speaker 1: it Romania now is because the like Roman soldiers who
Speaker 1: were stationed there like bread with the local population, and
Speaker 1: this is something they're they're pretty proud of, like the Romania.
Speaker 1: Like the name Romania is kind of hearkening back to
Speaker 1: the fact that there is a lot of Roman ancestry
Speaker 1: in the area. Now, this ties back to for everyone
Speaker 1: that took like seventh and eighth grade languages. Remember when
Speaker 1: you would take like an introduction to like Spanish or
Speaker 1: French or Latin or whatever, and they would say, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever language you're learning, Spanish or French, they're like, they're
Speaker 1: one of the five Romance language is that's my That's
Speaker 1: where I'm from in Massachusetts. That's the accent. And it's
Speaker 1: like you hear Spana, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian and
Speaker 1: when they say Romanian, you're like what, like why, like
Speaker 1: why why them? That doesn't make sense on a map
Speaker 1: that that would be the language. Yeah, yeah, it is weird,
Speaker 1: especially since again if you're in that region and further
Speaker 1: into the Balkans, the language they're speaking is very different, right,
Speaker 1: But but in Romania it is this kind of like
Speaker 1: latinized tongue. Um, so that's cool. Um, Roman romance. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's nothing as sexy as a as a man making
Speaker 1: a pizza and doing violent hand gestures. I mean you're
Speaker 1: not wrong about that. Yeah. Um, the center of Roman
Speaker 1: Asia is a place that is known today as Transylvania.
Speaker 1: That's actually like the province that the Romans conquered. So again,
Speaker 1: when I say they left because of Dracula, that's that
Speaker 1: is historically true. Um, although Dracula dude didn't exist yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about him for just a little bit.
Speaker 1: Did you do have you done for yet? No? No? No,
Speaker 1: Well we are kind of doing a little bit of
Speaker 1: Lad Tepis right now. Um let me tell you real quick.
Speaker 1: I know you're about to do that. But as somebody
Speaker 1: who taught about the Middle Ages and I used to
Speaker 1: do for my literacy classes, I would have them write
Speaker 1: a research paper, and I'm like, you can pick anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm so I got so burnt out reading term papers
Speaker 1: from eighth graders about Vlad Tepis. And it's not that
Speaker 1: he's not interesting, it's just that it's boring when you
Speaker 1: read the same paper thirty times a year. Well, Well, Jeff,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to give you a little bit different
Speaker 1: of a paper because we're gonna be focusing on a
Speaker 1: slightly an aspect of lads time running Romania, um that
Speaker 1: people don't tend to talk about as much. Obviously, the
Speaker 1: thing everyone knows about Vlad Tepez flat the Impaler, is
Speaker 1: that he impaled a bunch of people, specifically a bunch
Speaker 1: of Ottoman soldiers. And if you like hang out and
Speaker 1: read sort of the weird right wing kind of retellings
Speaker 1: of of medieval history, a lot of them will focus
Speaker 1: on him as like the Shield of the West, and
Speaker 1: this is something that like within the Romanian right wing,
Speaker 1: it gets talked about a lot that like Romania was
Speaker 1: the what protected you know, Christendom from the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 1: and and Vlad Tepez, you know, was this was this
Speaker 1: heroic figure who was hard enough in order to like
Speaker 1: keep the Muslims out. Yeah, this is not accurate to
Speaker 1: the actual history. Pieces of it are accurate, but the
Speaker 1: broad picture is wrong. Um. So, first off, his name
Speaker 1: was legitimately Vlad Dracula because his his dad was Dracule,
Speaker 1: which was a name he got when he got given
Speaker 1: an award by the holy Roman Empire emperor. I think
Speaker 1: it was sigismund um and Dracula means son of the dragon,
Speaker 1: because Dracule means the dragon um. But it also at
Speaker 1: the same time means son of the devil, which is
Speaker 1: why the guy who wrote the Dracula book thought he
Speaker 1: was he was a good pick for a horrible monster character.
Speaker 1: Name like the guy like he like his name isn't
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that dude, what's his name? Bram
Speaker 1: the Dracula guy, but not Dracula. Sharon Lewis the the
Speaker 1: guy who yeah, yeah, yeah, shitty vampire book the first Twilight,
Speaker 1: we could say, the the yeah, the the prelude to
Speaker 1: Twilight before we we really figured out what we wanted
Speaker 1: from our vampires. Um sparkles and chizzled abs. M m,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. No cum gutters on the original Dracula,
Speaker 1: probably because he was he was riddled with various diseases.
Speaker 1: So Gary oldman have like a huge six pack in
Speaker 1: that movie with that stupid little hair do. But he's
Speaker 1: just like the check out my rippling abs. This is
Speaker 1: the thing we should be using that AI shipped to
Speaker 1: do is go back and go back to like movies
Speaker 1: that were made decades ago and give the male leads
Speaker 1: back then who didn't have access to modern fitness technology,
Speaker 1: just unbelievably shredded cum gutters, like go back to to
Speaker 1: uh gone with the wind and and throw some cum
Speaker 1: gutters in uh in uh in in red and throw
Speaker 1: some throw some cum gutters on that guy who dies
Speaker 1: to you know, the Confederate boy soldier. I would like
Speaker 1: to come gutters all of them. The rock in to
Speaker 1: kill a mocking bird, like the rock to kill a
Speaker 1: rocking bird. Yeah, where he actually just kills everybody in
Speaker 1: town in order to stop that guy from getting the
Speaker 1: rock bottom as they're trying to out. M hm m hmm.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good idea. Also, put stone Cold
Speaker 1: Steve Austin in uh in that that that uh the
Speaker 1: oh ship now I've you've gone rails, Citizen Kane. We
Speaker 1: could do that. No, no, no, the movie in the
Speaker 1: movie where that guy goes to Washington, DC. Mr Smith
Speaker 1: goes to Washington, goes to Washington, throw stone Cold Steve
Speaker 1: Austin and Mr Smith goes to Washington and have them
Speaker 1: do a stone cold stunner and all those old Congress
Speaker 1: fools Stone Cold Smith goes to, uh, what does this
Speaker 1: have to do with our script? Very very very little.
Speaker 1: So the actual historical Dracula, who is kind of your
Speaker 1: first like he's often seen as like one of kind
Speaker 1: of the founding figures of Romania in like Romanian nationalist
Speaker 1: discourse because he's kind of this this first figure on
Speaker 1: the scene. And this is back when Romania is called Wallachia.
Speaker 1: Who becomes super famous. Um and he becomes famous yeah
Speaker 1: for the impaling people. Um lad Tepez is the ruler
Speaker 1: of Wallachia on three non consecutive occasions, which happens a
Speaker 1: lot actually in in their history. At this point, they've
Speaker 1: got this weird system that by which they pick who
Speaker 1: their ruler is going to be, where you have these
Speaker 1: basically this group of nobles who gets to vote on
Speaker 1: who's going to run things, and it leads to a
Speaker 1: shipload to turnover. From fourteen eighteen to fourteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: Wallachia has eleven princes who are in power for about
Speaker 1: five years each. So he gets into power, gets thrown
Speaker 1: out of power, comes back into power several times. Um
Speaker 1: and yeah. Common in Europe um, but in Romania it
Speaker 1: is a particularly like violence system and This makes sense
Speaker 1: when you look at just kind of where Romania is located, right,
Speaker 1: Not only are they right next to the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 1: but they're right next to Hungary UH and the Holy
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, and there's just they are just constantly dealing
Speaker 1: with different groups coming in and trying to basically run things. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's not only the the Ottomans that they're fighting,
Speaker 1: And repeatedly Romanian leaders will side with the Ottomans in
Speaker 1: order to protect themselves against the Hungarians or whatever. Like
Speaker 1: this is a common thing. So so Dracula, like actual
Speaker 1: Lad Dracula, spends a decent chunk of his career fighting
Speaker 1: alongside the Ottomans. He also, for a point of it,
Speaker 1: when he's technically a vassal to the Ottomans, is leading
Speaker 1: like an illegal underground war against them. All this stuff
Speaker 1: is going on. But I think what's more to the
Speaker 1: point is that rather than kind of being a shield
Speaker 1: against like the Muslim world who was defending Christendom, Vlad
Speaker 1: is more concerned with maintaining his relative independence from an
Speaker 1: ocean of surrounding threats. Who covet Transylvania UM and the
Speaker 1: rest of Romania um Transylvania, specifically the area that the
Speaker 1: Romanians fight with the Hungarians over a lot, and it
Speaker 1: changes hands all the time. And he is a pretty
Speaker 1: brutal vlad Draculus a pretty brutal ruler to his own people.
Speaker 1: And this is the thing that gets discussed less we
Speaker 1: talk about the impaling of all of these uh, these
Speaker 1: Ottoman soldiers as he's trying to like throw back this
Speaker 1: invasion from the Sultan. And I want to quote now
Speaker 1: from the wonderful book Children of the Night by Paul Kenyon,
Speaker 1: because this was a little piece of dracula history that
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard. It was around this time, during the
Speaker 1: first couple of years of Dracula's rule, that he organized
Speaker 1: a notorious feast for all the beggars of targo Viste.
Speaker 1: The event appeared to be a great humanitarian gesture. The
Speaker 1: hall was hired and tables were filled with food and wine.
Speaker 1: Invitations were put out around the city to the cripples,
Speaker 1: the blind, that diseased in the destitute. They all concreated
Speaker 1: in a large wooden hall toasting Dracula's generosity. But towards
Speaker 1: the end of the meal, someone noticed smoke coming from
Speaker 1: the walls. They ran to the door, only to find
Speaker 1: Draculus troops had locked it from the outside and set
Speaker 1: the place ablaze. Many hundreds were trapped, and a bonfire
Speaker 1: of souls was left burning into the dark Wallachian sky.
Speaker 1: The Bonfire of the Beggars, as it became known, was
Speaker 1: a warning becking would not be tolerated. It was a
Speaker 1: drain on the finances of the most decent and generous
Speaker 1: and society, said Dracula, a crime as evil as theft.
Speaker 1: While Achians were an easy It was one thing killing
Speaker 1: the rich, but to massacre the poor in such violent circumstances.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, draculus tactics did seem to be working,
Speaker 1: and crime fell. It was said that Draculus guards would
Speaker 1: test the townsfolk by leaving a purse full of gold
Speaker 1: coins in a busy marketplace. When the guards came to
Speaker 1: collect it in the evening, the purse was always left untouched.
Speaker 1: The admiration for authoritarian solutions would also resonate down the centuries.
Speaker 1: So that is this is kind of like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: gonna be effective because you know of the murder. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: when you murder enough people, um, you you can decrease
Speaker 1: the crime rate. Um, that that is, that is and
Speaker 1: this is a lesson that no Romanian leader is ever
Speaker 1: going to forget. And it kind of like he Vlad
Speaker 1: is sort of setting the tone here for an awful
Speaker 1: lot of their history, right down to the fact that
Speaker 1: you've got this kind of peasant population that is getting
Speaker 1: mistreated by its leaves enough that many people are starving
Speaker 1: in the streets, and so the solution of the ruler is, well,
Speaker 1: what if we just light those people on fire? This
Speaker 1: would be this is like a Facebook comments section gone
Speaker 1: to life, like this is this is what a lot
Speaker 1: of people from my hometown would like to do. Oh,
Speaker 1: Matt Walsh is totally down for this. Yeah. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: Daily Wire is already writing a think piece on how
Speaker 1: Vlad Dracula had the right how literal Dracula had the
Speaker 1: right idea on improving our our civic spaces. The New
Speaker 1: York Times is going to post an editorial that says,
Speaker 1: are there too many poor people? Yeah? What if we
Speaker 1: just light them on fire? You know? Um? And I
Speaker 1: think you know, this is one of those areas where
Speaker 1: my my moral sort of uh compass is at odds
Speaker 1: with the intellectual side of me, because on a moral level.
Speaker 1: I think it's always okay to set fires, but clearly
Speaker 1: sometimes fires can be bad, and this is something I'm
Speaker 1: still grappling with. Jeff. Yeah, I mean, well, fires can
Speaker 1: have disastrous results, but fire itself is awesome. Like I
Speaker 1: keep I keep fire with me when I'm recording. At
Speaker 1: all times, I have to have an open flame near
Speaker 1: me or else. What's the point. What if wolves came
Speaker 1: in while I was recording. You're not gonna keep the
Speaker 1: wolves away if you don't have a fire. Like I'm
Speaker 1: in San Francisco right now as we record this, and
Speaker 1: I have a fire on me at all times, because famously,
Speaker 1: San Francisco is a city with a wonderful history of
Speaker 1: fires that I want to celebrate. You know, all of
Speaker 1: the good fires, San Francisco. It's called knowing your history.
Speaker 1: That's right, That's right. Um. So Romania in the years
Speaker 1: after Dracula, who gets who gets murdered? Uh before he's
Speaker 1: very old again, none of these Romanian princes last all
Speaker 1: that long. So Romania spends a lot of most of
Speaker 1: the medieval period as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire um.
Speaker 1: And this actually, this state of affairs last until pretty recently. Um,
Speaker 1: the country does not get its independence until the Russo
Speaker 1: Turkish War of eighteen seventy seven to eighteen seventy eight. Um,
Speaker 1: it becomes an independent kingdom with a hohensall learned regent.
Speaker 1: So you know whenever they have these because this happens
Speaker 1: a lot where you're you're having these chunks of Europe
Speaker 1: become independent from either their former masters or from the
Speaker 1: Ottomans or whatever, and they all need kings, right because
Speaker 1: it's still the attitude in the eighteen hundreds that every
Speaker 1: new country ought to have some sort of kings. So
Speaker 1: there there's this kind of like constant It causes a
Speaker 1: lot of conflict. This is a lot of what sets
Speaker 1: up World War One. But um, Romania, because of how
Speaker 1: close it is to Germany, winds up with a hawns
Speaker 1: all learned region, which which, like theoretic lee should mean
Speaker 1: that they're going to side with the Germans on everything. Um,
Speaker 1: that's actually not what happens in practice, but that's certainly
Speaker 1: what the Germans think when when they make sure Romania
Speaker 1: gets this uh this guy who's related to the Kaiser. Um. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's also the mess that by the time
Speaker 1: World War one rules around, like the country has this
Speaker 1: hahns all learned king, but it also has a queen
Speaker 1: who's one of Queen Victoria's grandchildren, which is also super common, Right,
Speaker 1: everybody's got one of Victoria's kids or grandkids somewhere in
Speaker 1: their fucking royal family. They're collecting pokemon, yeah, exactly, um,
Speaker 1: and the hohans all learns have caught at least one.
Speaker 1: And she's actually, she's actually kind of rad um. They
Speaker 1: have this horrible war um in like nineteen twelve nineteen
Speaker 1: thirteen where Romania tries because when Romania becomes independent, they
Speaker 1: don't have Transylvania, right, Transylvania is still property of the Hungarians.
Speaker 1: So at one point they invade aid Hungary right before
Speaker 1: World War One, and it goes just absolutely terribly. But
Speaker 1: Queen Mary, who's this um victorious grandkid, winds up like
Speaker 1: working as a combat nurse in this front line position
Speaker 1: and it it really she becomes very beloved by the
Speaker 1: Romanian people, and she seems to be legitimately the only
Speaker 1: royal in Europe during this period of time who doesn't
Speaker 1: completely suck because while the rest of them are starting
Speaker 1: a series of of wars that will kill ten civilians.
Speaker 1: She's just sort of like working as a trauma nurse
Speaker 1: the entire time's like trying to do good. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: seems dope. Actually, the Hungarians, I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: ever covered this on the thing, but what do you
Speaker 1: know about like their nomenclature, right, like the history of
Speaker 1: that name that they were just so it was yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're Magyars and then when people saw them, they
Speaker 1: were like, ah, they fight like the Huns. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like how we called Native Americans. They do whole
Speaker 1: like you guys are Hungarians, You're like the Huns and
Speaker 1: there like, no, we are our own people. That's that
Speaker 1: reminds me of like where the word barbarian came from,
Speaker 1: which is that the Greeks just thought everyone who wasn't
Speaker 1: Greek sounded like they were going by bar bar bar
Speaker 1: bar bar all the time. Yeah. It's like, uh yeah,
Speaker 1: racism before racism, it's it's it's that deep racism. Um,
Speaker 1: it's true pure races. Yeah, it's absolutely uncut by the
Speaker 1: later you know, the corruption that would enter racism later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it before racism got so commercial, you know. M Yeah,
Speaker 1: just a bunch of guys looking at people who live
Speaker 1: over the hill near them and saying it sounds they
Speaker 1: all talk weird. Yeah yeah, they did it for the
Speaker 1: love of the game. Yeah yeah, it's the the Honus
Speaker 1: Wagner of racism. That's the that's Europeans in this well,
Speaker 1: at least in ancient history. So um. Yeah. So you've
Speaker 1: got Romania. They have this disastrous war where they try
Speaker 1: to take and the reason why they lose the war
Speaker 1: because it goes well for like a day and then
Speaker 1: everybody gets sick from mosquitoes and starts dying, which is
Speaker 1: not an uncommon story. And yeah, um, but outside of that,
Speaker 1: when kind of World War one starts to break out,
Speaker 1: Romania is kind of in in a decent position because
Speaker 1: they've got this king, their first king, Carol, uh, the
Speaker 1: first who's in charge right up until nineteen fourteen, and
Speaker 1: he drops kind of right before the war drums starts sounding,
Speaker 1: and the king who follows, Ferdinand, is as a pretty
Speaker 1: smart guy, and it's like, I don't think World War
Speaker 1: one's gonna go well for anybody. I don't want to
Speaker 1: get involved in this ship. I just would like to
Speaker 1: I can sell food and fuel because Romani has got
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of oil. I'll just sell
Speaker 1: that shipped to the Germans and we won't send all
Speaker 1: of our guys off to die, which is a good
Speaker 1: strategy um and and would have been a winner if
Speaker 1: they had stuck with it um. But they are not
Speaker 1: going to stick with it um now. Part of the
Speaker 1: reason why the new king is kind of hesitant to
Speaker 1: get involved in World War One and doesn't want to
Speaker 1: like is because he doesn't want to risk upsetting the peasants. Um.
Speaker 1: Romanian political history in this period up to pretty much
Speaker 1: the modern day, a huge amount of it is kind
Speaker 1: of based around the struggle between these urbanized populations which
Speaker 1: are are still a very small chunk of the country
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds UM and the majority of
Speaker 1: the country, which is the peasantry and the peasants, especially
Speaker 1: in the late uh in the early nineteen hundreds, late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds are they're not quite surfs, but they also
Speaker 1: are basically renting land from the whatever noble owns it
Speaker 1: um and paying them kind of ruinous taxes in order
Speaker 1: to get to farm it. So it's kind of a
Speaker 1: worse situation than being a serf because they're actually like
Speaker 1: they're technically free, but they have to pay their boss being,
Speaker 1: you know whatever nobles in charge of the area for
Speaker 1: the privilege of getting to work the land enough to
Speaker 1: produce enough food to not starve to death, which is
Speaker 1: a bad Like one of the most common foods that
Speaker 1: Romanian peasants live on in this period of time is
Speaker 1: like cheese that's infested with maggots. Um that and like
Speaker 1: pickled vegetables is a lot of their their their diet
Speaker 1: um magot cheese. Still it's like illegal, but it's like
Speaker 1: a super delicacy from there, right they still do that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's from Roman. I know there's
Speaker 1: a cheese in Sicily that's all maggoty, like. I think
Speaker 1: there's probably a few different versions of it. But back
Speaker 1: in the day it is not a nice food, right
Speaker 1: it's I think maybe now it's become a delicacy. But
Speaker 1: then it's like, well, we're not gonna not eat this
Speaker 1: cheese just because it's filled with maggots, because otherwise we'll die,
Speaker 1: so speat. The products and services that support this podcast
Speaker 1: will add maggots to any order you make. Hit us up.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, we're back and I just had a HOGI
Speaker 1: made entirely out of maggots delicious. Oh yeah, yeah. Maggot
Speaker 1: proteins the cleanest burning protein out there. Um, you can't
Speaker 1: do better than maggot's. That's that's that's the motto of
Speaker 1: this podcast behind the Bastards. You can't do better than maggots. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's it. It's the true super feud. If you just
Speaker 1: all you actually need in your diet, just a fifty
Speaker 1: fifty mix of maggots and a sai berries and and
Speaker 1: you'll never die. H Yeah. I looked up Cassu Marzoo
Speaker 1: just to see that's the cheese, and boy that was
Speaker 1: the Romanian one. Yeahah, it's it's like a pecorino from
Speaker 1: sheep's milk. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is not a
Speaker 1: delicacy at the time. Yeah. Um. So one of the
Speaker 1: big like reasons that that King fred Frederick doesn't want
Speaker 1: to go to war, doesn't want to get involved in
Speaker 1: World War One, is because he doesn't feel like he
Speaker 1: has a good handle on the peasantry kind of as
Speaker 1: they go into this period. And a big part of
Speaker 1: why is that there's an uprising and like nineteen oh seven, right,
Speaker 1: which is you know, pretty recent still in nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: and this uprising, this peasants uprising starts because this guy
Speaker 1: named I think, I think it's basically pronounced John Dohesku
Speaker 1: traveled to a protest outside of the mayor's house in
Speaker 1: a town called Flamazi, and Dohescu and his fellow peasants, again,
Speaker 1: they're basically starving. This feudal system that that governs their
Speaker 1: lives is super corrupt, and the way that it works
Speaker 1: is you've got these these royals who own the land,
Speaker 1: and these royals basically higher a group of middlemen to
Speaker 1: manage it for them. And so the middlemen get their
Speaker 1: money off of skimming what they can off the top,
Speaker 1: and anything they're skimming is extra ship that the peasants
Speaker 1: are paying for, right in addition to the pretty ruinously
Speaker 1: high taxes that the royals are imposing. Um Kenyan in
Speaker 1: his book notes that the peasantry in Romania is quote
Speaker 1: so comprehensively exploited that they were effectively paying their landlords
Speaker 1: for the priv ledge of working. So there's this protest
Speaker 1: outside of the mayor's house and these peasants, including John Dohesku,
Speaker 1: wind up outside yelling at this estate manager who's again
Speaker 1: kind of like this middle manager type guy and he
Speaker 1: throws a rock at one of them and it hits
Speaker 1: Dohescu in the eye. Um. This, for whatever reason startship
Speaker 1: you know sometimes like oh, yeah, that's gonna star ship.
Speaker 1: You ever been hit in the eye of the rock? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: You're not not gonna throw a punch after that, no, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: But this also starts on a bigger scale, like everyone
Speaker 1: gets outraged on the behalf of this guy. Um, which
Speaker 1: should like this, you know, it happens here too, Like
Speaker 1: you'll have the same kind of horrible violence being done
Speaker 1: by the same people every day, and then one day
Speaker 1: suddenly thousands of people take to the streets, right, um,
Speaker 1: and and this is this is that version of that
Speaker 1: thing happening in Romania. So the peasants around Dohescu form
Speaker 1: a mob and they start going through town and attacking
Speaker 1: all of the middlemen that these local aristocrats have been
Speaker 1: using to manage their land. And for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: most of these middlemen are Jewish, right, that's just who
Speaker 1: the aristocracy is, like, yeah, we'll have these guys. It's
Speaker 1: actually kind of a conscious decision by the aristocracy because
Speaker 1: like if you have if like, you have this group
Speaker 1: of people managing your stuff and they're all Jewish. When
Speaker 1: the peasants get angry, you can just use racism to
Speaker 1: deflect from the fact that you're really the one responsible
Speaker 1: for their suffering. Um so that that works very well
Speaker 1: in this case. And so the peasants revolt that follows
Speaker 1: is both an act of protest against economic exploitation that
Speaker 1: is very justified and a vicious, a vicious racist program
Speaker 1: that is not justified. You know what's funny is every
Speaker 1: time I do the show that phrase vicious racist program
Speaker 1: shows up, I'm just like, oh yeah, let's bring it on.
Speaker 1: Let's see, let's see who's doing terrible things to to
Speaker 1: decent people. To be fair, we keep bringing you on
Speaker 1: for episodes that are about Europe from like eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: to nineteen five D So you're gonna have to talk
Speaker 1: about it's gonna nowhere that doesn't have them a little
Speaker 1: playfully violent anti semitism to get us through the day
Speaker 1: every time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good stuff, good stuff. So
Speaker 1: the Peasants Revolt starts with these peasant mobs marching through towns,
Speaker 1: dragging Jews out of their homes and then lighting the
Speaker 1: homes on fire. Um. But as the revolt wears on,
Speaker 1: because it's nineteen o seven, nineteen o five, Russia has
Speaker 1: just had an unsuccessful socialist revolution, and a lot of
Speaker 1: these revolutionaries who are kind of like on the on
Speaker 1: the run from the Czar, wind up heading over to
Speaker 1: Romania and they start preaching to the masses that like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: the Jews as a group are not responsible for your
Speaker 1: suffer ng. It's the property holding class who's exploiting you. Um.
Speaker 1: And this actually has a positive impact. There's there's less programs.
Speaker 1: Kind of later in the Peasants uprising, they were just
Speaker 1: attacking rich people. So that's good. Yeah, they relaxed a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah. Um. The whole thing comes to a
Speaker 1: head in April of nineteen o seven when six thousand
Speaker 1: peasants gather with axes to protest for redistribution of land right.
Speaker 1: And what they're protesting for is like, we we want
Speaker 1: to own the land that we live on and work
Speaker 1: our entire lives, rather than it being owned by some
Speaker 1: guy who can just like jack up the rent and
Speaker 1: starve us effectively. So the government of Romania is like,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, because the people who have control of the
Speaker 1: artillery are the people who own the land. So those
Speaker 1: people just have the military fire artillery directly into the crowd,
Speaker 1: killing sex six people in a matter of minutes. By
Speaker 1: the yeah, I know, it's pretty well. Actually, by the end,
Speaker 1: I mean the whole revolt, they kill about eleven thousand people.
Speaker 1: Um so if they do they killed, that's a good
Speaker 1: number of people killed. That's pretty good. That's pretty good
Speaker 1: solid for a few minutes, if I'm being honest, like
Speaker 1: it's it takes man hotten project level ship to get
Speaker 1: numbers like that, uh so quickly. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: this goes on for a few months, but like eleven
Speaker 1: thousand people, it's pretty blood So King Ferdinand, who takes
Speaker 1: over seven years after this, is like, we just tested
Speaker 1: the peasantry a little bit and it we got closer
Speaker 1: to losing control than we want to admit. So I
Speaker 1: really don't want to, like have to conscript a bunch
Speaker 1: of people and deal with the problems that that might cause.
Speaker 1: We dipped the toes in a little bit and found
Speaker 1: out that we get butchered. So yeah, and staying out
Speaker 1: of World War One absolutely would have been the right
Speaker 1: call for Romania. But here's the problem. Jeff, British people exist,
Speaker 1: and British people keep whispering in the Romanian King's ear.
Speaker 1: Oh god, not you want that Transylvania. Do you What
Speaker 1: are you doing? My English? Oxen? What I'm doing, I'm
Speaker 1: doing an English accent, Sophie. He was like, night, Jesus,
Speaker 1: we got a little comm in. So so that's what
Speaker 1: the British Empire is whispering into the ears of King Frederick. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, basically the promise they're making him is
Speaker 1: again like hey, you, you guys are like Transylvania's majority
Speaker 1: Romanian population, it's controlled by Hungary. We agree that's unjust.
Speaker 1: If you come into the war on our side and
Speaker 1: like help us throw us a wrench in the fucking
Speaker 1: German war effort, will make sure that you wind up
Speaker 1: with this greater Romania thing that all the nationalists in
Speaker 1: Romania are are super gung ho about when the war
Speaker 1: finally ends. Um, and eventually, this this kind of thought
Speaker 1: of getting Transylvania back and all of these others a
Speaker 1: couple of other provinces too, is too enticing for the
Speaker 1: king and sort of the nationalists in the Romanian government
Speaker 1: to not try to do so. In nineteen sixteen, Romania
Speaker 1: enters World War One on the side of the the
Speaker 1: unentant and they attack the Central Powers. This briefly goes
Speaker 1: well for about six weeks. Romania takes back like a
Speaker 1: bunch of Transylvania, they take a couple other areas from
Speaker 1: from Hungary. They're like they're having a real good time
Speaker 1: for for like six weeks um. But then then then
Speaker 1: the Germans show up. Now, the Imperial German Army is
Speaker 1: an army so competent that it took the entire world
Speaker 1: to beat them in this war, like literally everyone else.
Speaker 1: It's reminded. It's a good reminder that the German military
Speaker 1: and obviously, you know when you trace back to Otto
Speaker 1: von Bismarck and basically his description of creating a country
Speaker 1: based on the world's greatest army, like that was his
Speaker 1: whole thing. Yeah, and like so like yeah, like that's
Speaker 1: gonna be that's gonna be a big deal because they're
Speaker 1: so they're just so good at war. That's been like
Speaker 1: their whole thing. They've been training for this, and they
Speaker 1: are the Germans at this point are obviously they are
Speaker 1: tied up two years into the war on the Western Front,
Speaker 1: which has killed more men more quickly than probably any
Speaker 1: other war in history prior to this point. They're also
Speaker 1: fighting all of Russia, which is a fifth of the
Speaker 1: planet's land mass, not that far from Romania. And then
Speaker 1: Romania enters and so the Germans take like a tiny
Speaker 1: little chunk of their forces and they send it towards
Speaker 1: Romania and they just curb stomp them like yeah. Within days,
Speaker 1: it becomes clear that like, oh, they are going to
Speaker 1: occupy the entire country, Romania will no longer be in it,
Speaker 1: Like they're coming for the capital. The Royals start fleeing, right,
Speaker 1: they are fucking getting the hell out of town. Um.
Speaker 1: And so the British decide, well, first off, this didn't work. Um.
Speaker 1: Clearly Romania did not have what it took to take
Speaker 1: the Germans out of the fight. So fu around they
Speaker 1: found out, um, which you know, as the British Empire
Speaker 1: is always our preference someone other than us find out.
Speaker 1: But now we have this problem. Romania has like basically
Speaker 1: the largest oil reserves in Europe is certainly at this point,
Speaker 1: and Germany does not have any oil right on its
Speaker 1: own pretty much. So the Germans are about to gain
Speaker 1: access to these oil fields that would effectively allow them
Speaker 1: to gain an enormous material advantage in this war. That
Speaker 1: is kind of a squeaker. So the Germans send over
Speaker 1: or the British send over a guy, this lieutenant colonel
Speaker 1: named John Norton Griffiths, who sounds like a war crimes
Speaker 1: guy and is about to do him a war crime
Speaker 1: because he lights every oil field in Romania on fire. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just like set it all on fire. Fuck this
Speaker 1: ship he does like a Saddam Iraq. Yeah. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: like blots out the sun. It's obviously it's an ecological disaster, um,
Speaker 1: but it's a military success. He does stop the Germans
Speaker 1: from gaining access to Romania's fuel reserves um, which you
Speaker 1: know is the smart play on a millie. It's just awful. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's what of of the natural resources. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Romania does not do well in in World War One.
Speaker 1: They get occupied the Germans, but a couple of years later,
Speaker 1: the Germans eventually do lose the war. And when they
Speaker 1: lose the war, Romania actually kind of winds up in
Speaker 1: a really good position and we're not going to get
Speaker 1: into like all of the wheeling and dealing that occurs
Speaker 1: but you know, a lot of folks feel like they
Speaker 1: kind of a lot of folks who side with the
Speaker 1: central powers kind of feel like they get fucked over.
Speaker 1: This is particularly an issue with the Italians right where
Speaker 1: italyast like we did all this fucking dying fighting Austria
Speaker 1: and we got basically nothing at the end of the war. Like,
Speaker 1: what the fund is wrong with you people? Um, Romania
Speaker 1: does really well, they get Transylvania. Um. Like the British,
Speaker 1: to their credit, actually do give them what they had
Speaker 1: promised here. And so after World War One, Romania is
Speaker 1: like thirty or forty larger, and as a substantially larger population,
Speaker 1: a whole lot of resources and really productive land. Um.
Speaker 1: That's called buying low and sell high. That's right. They're
Speaker 1: they're like, we're not gonna do much to help you
Speaker 1: win this war, but we will reap the benefits they
Speaker 1: bought the dip, Yeah, European civilization, the moon. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: after World War One, romanias in this really interesting position.
Speaker 1: They are subject to a lot of the same forces
Speaker 1: that are you know, going wild in Russia. This is
Speaker 1: the height height of the Russian Civil War. Um. So
Speaker 1: the left has this huge surge in popularity. But Romania
Speaker 1: also has a pretty stable constitutional monarchy with this like
Speaker 1: parliamentary system right um and so because and you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that it works this way. But rather than
Speaker 1: kind of all of the the energy on the left
Speaker 1: that is obviously like plays a huge role in what
Speaker 1: happens in Russia, rather than that leading to the establishment
Speaker 1: of a super radical political part left wing political party
Speaker 1: in Romania that wants to get rid of the monarchy,
Speaker 1: changed the nature of the state entirely institute a socialist state,
Speaker 1: they get a left wing political party called the National
Speaker 1: Peasants Party UM, which is is very large. I think
Speaker 1: it wins like seventy eight per end of the vote
Speaker 1: and it's it's most successful election UM. And it's advocating
Speaker 1: for like a lot. Well it's because they're saying, like,
Speaker 1: we want land reform, right, this thing that they had
Speaker 1: just had an uprising about. But they don't ever get
Speaker 1: like an organized large communist movement. And in fact, for
Speaker 1: most of the twenties and thirties, there's maybe a thousand
Speaker 1: like organized communists in all of Romania, which is not
Speaker 1: a ton, like there's several million people in the country.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a very small population. Now, the organized
Speaker 1: far right is a lot larger than the communist left. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's still a smaller chunk of the country because Romania,
Speaker 1: Romanian people tend to vote sort of progressive left in
Speaker 1: this period. Um, but the organized far right in Romania
Speaker 1: is very aggressive and very organized, and they start carrying
Speaker 1: a lot out, a lot of violent fascist marches and
Speaker 1: particularly attacks against the Jewish population of towns and cities,
Speaker 1: and it becomes more and more common in the twenties
Speaker 1: and thirties. Um. So yeah, uh uh. This is the
Speaker 1: country and the political situation that our hero for this week,
Speaker 1: Nikolai Chowchesco, is born into on January twenty three, nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: So he like comes into being right as this, you know,
Speaker 1: post World War One, Romania starts to be a thing.
Speaker 1: His father, whose name is Andrew Toa, owned a small
Speaker 1: farm in a village called scournish Cesti. And I'm I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try on the names here. I listened to pronunciations.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get all of these right, guys.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, there's a lot of Romanian names and I
Speaker 1: I look, I scored a sesty's probably close enough. His
Speaker 1: dad raised cheap and worked part time as a tailor.
Speaker 1: The family was about as poor as it as possible
Speaker 1: to be, uh, and any money that did come into
Speaker 1: them went swiftly to Andrewda's drinking habit. So he is
Speaker 1: a religious extremist and an alcoholic. Um And for mysterious,
Speaker 1: mysterious reasons, Nikolai Chesko is going to decide he does
Speaker 1: not want to live around this guy for much longer. Um.
Speaker 1: Very shocking. Uh. So there's this journalist, Romanian journalist Catalan
Speaker 1: Gruia who interviewed people in Curchescu's hometown after his demise.
Speaker 1: Here's what he writes about Andrew dub. He didn't take
Speaker 1: care of his kids. He stole, he drank, he was
Speaker 1: quick to fight, and he swore, said the old priest
Speaker 1: from scorn Sesti. His mother was a submissive, hard working woman.
Speaker 1: The families slept on benches along the walls of a
Speaker 1: two room house. Corn mush was their staple food. Nikolai
Speaker 1: went to the village school for years. The teacher taught
Speaker 1: simultaneous classes for different years in a one room schoolhouse.
Speaker 1: The young Cechescu did not have books, and he often
Speaker 1: went to school barefoot, an outsider from early on, he
Speaker 1: did not have friends. He was anxious and unpredictable. You
Speaker 1: brought a lot of Boston energy to the beginning there. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Quick to fight all the time,
Speaker 1: always down at the chowder house. That's right, Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: very good, getting into fights at the duncan um Yeah,
Speaker 1: and curchesco. He doesn't ever fit in, right, He's not.
Speaker 1: He certainly doesn't fit in in this small rural village. Um.
Speaker 1: He's an anxious kid. He's got a stutter. Um. He
Speaker 1: seems to be pretty smart. Surviving records indicate he did
Speaker 1: well in primary school. He had like the third highest
Speaker 1: grade in his class. But education was never going to
Speaker 1: be like a focus on his early life. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, at age eleven, he leaves home.
Speaker 1: He just is like fuck fuck living with an abusive
Speaker 1: religious fundamentalist. I'm going to go to buch Arest and
Speaker 1: live with my sister. Um so he ever and he
Speaker 1: yeah at eleven when hard back then, Yeah, eleven is
Speaker 1: like a hard twenty eight like nowadays. Yeah, eleven is
Speaker 1: like eleven is like twenty eight from like the grizzledest
Speaker 1: guy that you knew in your twenties, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the toughest nails. This is like lift for ultimate fighting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has as many stories of woe, is like a
Speaker 1: seventy five year old Irish farmer by this point, Like
Speaker 1: when you see those like pictures of like twenty five
Speaker 1: year olds coming back from war, You're just like, oh no, yeah.
Speaker 1: So he he gets to buk arreest he moves in
Speaker 1: with his sister. He's he's working as a shoemaker, and
Speaker 1: this is what first brings him into contact with Romania's
Speaker 1: fairly small communist movement, because the guy he apprenticed for
Speaker 1: was a member of the Romanian Communist Party and he
Speaker 1: takes Nikolai under his wing. This is an act of
Speaker 1: pure happenstance. Again, the National Peasants Party is pretty left wing,
Speaker 1: uh and a lot more popular. Um So, there's just
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of people who do fall in
Speaker 1: with the Communists in this period, and the fact that
Speaker 1: Nikolai wound up under the influence of one of the
Speaker 1: fairly few active Communists in buch Arest is a wild
Speaker 1: stroke of faith that would prove pretty bad for everyone involved,
Speaker 1: including the Communists. At first, though Chachko just did odd
Speaker 1: jobs for his boss. The Romanian Communist Party had been
Speaker 1: made illegal by the king um because royals don't tend
Speaker 1: to like communists, um and vice versa. So even basic
Speaker 1: things like sending letters and distributing newspapers had to be
Speaker 1: done underground. It was illegal to advocate for the Communist Party.
Speaker 1: So Nikolai is kind of a low level errand boy
Speaker 1: helping them do this, helping them keep up communication between
Speaker 1: different cells, helping them distribute newsletters and all that stuff
Speaker 1: in this communist underground. That's kind of growing up in
Speaker 1: buch Arest. Um. He did not occupy a privileged position,
Speaker 1: and and to his credit, he seems to be the
Speaker 1: kind of kid who had no problem throwing down in
Speaker 1: the street for his beliefs. He is not like um,
Speaker 1: he's not like taking a taken a the easy jobs right,
Speaker 1: not arrest. He's not a Twitter pundit here, No, he
Speaker 1: is not a Twitter pundit. One thing you have to
Speaker 1: give the kid is that he is putting his skin
Speaker 1: in the game. His first arrest is at age fifteen,
Speaker 1: when he gets picked up in this massive street fight
Speaker 1: outside of a strike. Basically, he's like siding with a
Speaker 1: bunch of striking workers and the police show up and
Speaker 1: he winds up brawling in the street with the fucking
Speaker 1: cops and such. Next year, if you're if somebody's ever
Speaker 1: like they were caught brawling in the street with the cops,
Speaker 1: you're like, all right, Yeah, at this point, he's a
Speaker 1: fifteen year old boy who's been arrested for throwing hands
Speaker 1: in order to him striking workers. Yeah. The next year
Speaker 1: he gets busted for circulating a petition protesting the treatment
Speaker 1: of rail workers who had unionized illegally. Right, so the
Speaker 1: state is punishing these workers because they're not allowed to
Speaker 1: unionize and they try to, and he circulates a petition
Speaker 1: being like that's fucked up, and he goes to jail again. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's it's some historians. There's a debate here between
Speaker 1: at least the people that I've encountered, as to whether
Speaker 1: or not is Certescu a a committed, ideologically committed communist
Speaker 1: or is this kind of just something he falls into
Speaker 1: and winds up committing to because of other reasons. Um
Speaker 1: Kittlin Gria puts it this way. The switch from a
Speaker 1: world in which he couldn't find his place, his own
Speaker 1: village to another in which he still couldn't find his place.
Speaker 1: The intimidating city marked him. His initiation into the marginalized
Speaker 1: movement of the communist was his alternative solution for integrating
Speaker 1: into social life, says sociologist Pavel Campingu, author of the
Speaker 1: book Chochesco the count Own. So it's one angle that
Speaker 1: that that that camping you and and it certainly seems
Speaker 1: Gruya are pushing, which is that like, he doesn't really
Speaker 1: fit in anywhere, and the communist movement, even though it
Speaker 1: is a very fringe and dangerous to be involved with,
Speaker 1: it offers him like this sense of belonging that he
Speaker 1: hasn't found anywhere else. So this is kind of his
Speaker 1: way of having a social life. Um, there's a different argument,
Speaker 1: and Paul Kenyon makes it in his book. Uh that
Speaker 1: is also kind of adjacent to that one. It's just
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Uh. Quote contemporary said he had little genuine
Speaker 1: interest in politics and might easily have chosen the Green
Speaker 1: Shirts or the Green Shirts of Qadriano's Iron Guard, which
Speaker 1: is like the fascist movement. But Nikolai Chowchesku wanted to
Speaker 1: meet girls, and some of his friends had told him
Speaker 1: the prettiest were in the Communist Party. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe both of those things are true. That he falls
Speaker 1: in with the Communists because it's the kind of the
Speaker 1: only place he fits in socially, and also part of
Speaker 1: why he thinks he'll fit in socially there is someone
Speaker 1: tells him the prettiest girls are Communists. Seems like he
Speaker 1: might be just going with the flow, that his ideologies
Speaker 1: are not ironclad, that he's just like, yeah, alright, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go to there. I think that seems realistic,
Speaker 1: that like he's looking for friends and he's looking to
Speaker 1: hit on chicks, and the Communists offer him that opportunity.
Speaker 1: And also over time, is he like fights with them
Speaker 1: in the street and does time, he just kind of
Speaker 1: gets more committed because when you when you do prison
Speaker 1: time for a cause, maybe you wind up reading about it,
Speaker 1: which I think is kind of the way his his
Speaker 1: his story goes, Also, you don't want to double you
Speaker 1: want to double down if you've done damn, If like
Speaker 1: you've damaged yourself because of your commitment to a belief.
Speaker 1: It's so much harder to reject that belief than it
Speaker 1: is to be like, let me tell you why I
Speaker 1: was right. I still defend my choice to get a
Speaker 1: Sega Genesis over a Supernintendo, even though I know I
Speaker 1: was wrong. Well, and as I always say, being a
Speaker 1: Second Genesis kid in the nineties is the being a
Speaker 1: communist underground activist of of nineteen twenties Romania. You know, same,
Speaker 1: essentially identical experiences, right down to the fact that Jeff
Speaker 1: you in the nineteen seventies wound up in charge of
Speaker 1: a small Eastern European nation that you then led into
Speaker 1: tremendous calamity. How did I do it? You know, things
Speaker 1: have happened. You should at least you didn't get a Dreamcast.
Speaker 1: Then then we'd be dealing with a death toll in
Speaker 1: the millions. Let me tell you, I had a friend
Speaker 1: you could just bootleg games on Dreamcast. What a time
Speaker 1: that was. You could just these days Eugen's ears, don't know,
Speaker 1: with your with your steams and your whatever Nintendo's you got. Now,
Speaker 1: we we used to have real variety in gaming. There
Speaker 1: was that game with the Dolphin. There was taxi game
Speaker 1: that was kind of like Grand Theft Auto. Was that
Speaker 1: Simpson's game that was a rip off of that taxi game? Oh?
Speaker 1: It was a glorious age. Uh huh, what a time
Speaker 1: to be alive. That was I worked video game I
Speaker 1: worked at the Toys Arrests video game section then, so
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I can name all of these things.
Speaker 1: So Nikolai Chochcu is uh, you know, he's the he's
Speaker 1: the he's the second dreamcast, uh, owner of the of
Speaker 1: the Romanian political spectrum. I guess um by which I mean.
Speaker 1: He was very, very vocal about his beliefs and very
Speaker 1: committed at a certain point, at least to them. But
Speaker 1: he was also not the most competent activist, and a
Speaker 1: number of his fellow communists would later argue that, like
Speaker 1: the fact that he kept getting arrested for the cause
Speaker 1: was not evidence that he was like a very good
Speaker 1: at what he was doing. More than just that like
Speaker 1: he was he had like a short fuse and would
Speaker 1: get into fights, and he kept getting arrested, and he
Speaker 1: was bad at hiding from the cops and and not
Speaker 1: getting scooped up. It was like, let's put him in
Speaker 1: charge of everything. Yeah, yeah, just fighting everybody in the streets.
Speaker 1: One of the fun things about Esco is no one
Speaker 1: ever says that, and he winds up in charge anyway,
Speaker 1: he's you know, it's very Andrew Jackson energy. Yeah. Um, yes,
Speaker 1: he is here. He'll have one or two things in
Speaker 1: common with Jackson. Um although I guess his big wheel
Speaker 1: of cheese would have been filled with maggots. Although I
Speaker 1: think Jackson's big wheel of cheese was probably filled with
Speaker 1: maggots too. Um. So. Regardless the fact that he keeps
Speaker 1: doing time, and he keeps getting the funk beaten out
Speaker 1: of him by the cops and tortured and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: obviously this earns some respect even from the people who
Speaker 1: are like Jesus, dude, like try running, you know, like
Speaker 1: trying getting arrested every time you go out into the street.
Speaker 1: That's a New England thing too, where it's like I
Speaker 1: know I'm gonna die, but I'm going to fight you
Speaker 1: in this public restroom, yeah doing like Yeah, the entire
Speaker 1: world is his waffle house in South Carolina. Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: he he gets busted repeatedly. His biggest prison sentence so
Speaker 1: far comes when he gets sentenced to two years in
Speaker 1: ninety eight. Um. And and by that time he is
Speaker 1: a pretty notable figure in the Romanian Communist Party, even
Speaker 1: though he's not universally respected now. Nineteen thirty eight is
Speaker 1: an important year in Romanian politics. After the death of
Speaker 1: King Ferdinand, his young son Michael was technically regent, but
Speaker 1: a council of guys governed in his stead. They were
Speaker 1: sympathetic to the main conservative party in Romania, and when
Speaker 1: the National Peasants Party wins a resounding victory in the elections,
Speaker 1: the head of the National Peasants Party decides to try
Speaker 1: and reduce his enemies power by bringing in a new king. Right.
Speaker 1: So you've got this child king who has like this
Speaker 1: guy basically governing for him as a as regent um,
Speaker 1: and that guy is sympathetic to the Conservatives. So when
Speaker 1: this kind of liberal left party takes power, they decide,
Speaker 1: well to bring in a new king who wants to
Speaker 1: work with us. Then we can sideline this guy and
Speaker 1: that'll be good for the Peasants Party. Unfortunately, the new
Speaker 1: king they pick is Prince Carol the Second. Now Carol
Speaker 1: the Second up to this point has been like a
Speaker 1: playboy royal. He spent actually a lot of his life
Speaker 1: outside Romania because he falls in love with this chick,
Speaker 1: but he's not allowed to marry her because she's not
Speaker 1: royal enough. So he's like fucking move man, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go live somewhere else with this broad um.
Speaker 1: And he had been, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: kind of a political most of his life. Again, he's
Speaker 1: mostly interested in like fucking and partying um, and was
Speaker 1: probably most famous in when at the outbreak of World
Speaker 1: War One, he's in a military unit like a lot
Speaker 1: of royals are, and he immediately deserts. He's just like
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Oh yeah, man, i am not doing a
Speaker 1: World War One. So again, unproblematic so far, but once
Speaker 1: he gets brought in as king, he well, I mean,
Speaker 1: he immediately proves to be problematic. Actually, so, Carol the
Speaker 1: Second effectively derails the progressive, land justice oriented policies of
Speaker 1: the National Peasants Party while playing the conservative and the
Speaker 1: growing far right parties off of each other. And this
Speaker 1: is a pretty impressive balancing act at the time that
Speaker 1: he's able to kind of like weaponize all these groups
Speaker 1: against each other to solidify his own power. Throughout this period,
Speaker 1: the Great Depression hits and Romania is obviously suffering as
Speaker 1: much as at least as much as everywhere else is.
Speaker 1: And the fact that Carol the Second is kind of
Speaker 1: derailing the Peasants Party's ability to push for real reform
Speaker 1: leads leaves a lot of voters to abandon them and
Speaker 1: abandon kind of the progressive left and start sighting with
Speaker 1: these weird domestic fascists that have started to become very
Speaker 1: popular in Romania called the Iron Guard. Never happen here, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: It's only happens in the Romania this one time. So
Speaker 1: the Iron Guard are also called the Legionaries or the
Speaker 1: Legionary Movement. Again, like Romania, there's a big heart on
Speaker 1: especially in kind of like the nationalist side of things,
Speaker 1: for for Roman history, so they are kind of consciously
Speaker 1: like talking back to their Roman heritage and calling these
Speaker 1: guys the legion Eary Movement. UM. The Iron Guard are
Speaker 1: founded by a fascist Death Squad member and a medieval
Speaker 1: myst mystic named Cornelio Quadriano UM and Kadriano will an
Speaker 1: episode on him at some point. He's a fascinating fascist
Speaker 1: and one that we don't talk about enough. He's fascinating,
Speaker 1: he is fascinating. UM. He is kind of a mix
Speaker 1: between like there's an element of him that's like the
Speaker 1: Gavin McGinnis proud boy type where he forms this street
Speaker 1: fighting organization. But he also like he becomes famous because
Speaker 1: he assassinates a dude like he. One of the things
Speaker 1: he's he tells his young followers is you need to
Speaker 1: be forming death squads and murdering people, and it's okay
Speaker 1: if we get executed, like that's actually dope. If we
Speaker 1: get killed for assassinating leftists, like, that's the thing that
Speaker 1: we should seek to do. Um So he definitely sucks.
Speaker 1: Another one of his beliefs is that he needs to
Speaker 1: father thousands of children with women at all levels of
Speaker 1: Romanian society because the saint that he liked, he believes
Speaker 1: did that too. Um So it's a good way to
Speaker 1: find a saint man, which saint is all about straight
Speaker 1: fucking this horny fascist, uh fucking mystic who yeah, dresses
Speaker 1: like himidieval like basically dresses in rin fair gear, marching
Speaker 1: from town to town and inciting pagrams. Right, that's Kadrian,
Speaker 1: who's like primary method of tour. He's an anti smack tour. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously Hitler loves this guy. Hitler is a big Kadrian
Speaker 1: new fan. Um and as his means power, the Nazis
Speaker 1: starts shipping guns over to the Iron Guard, right, kind
Speaker 1: of like underground, here have some guns. We'll be over
Speaker 1: there pretty soon, guys, so get ready. Um. King Carol
Speaker 1: the Second he finds the Iron Guard useful in some ways,
Speaker 1: and he's, you know, perfectly willing to overlook a few pagrams,
Speaker 1: even though his mistress is Jewish, um, because he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever helps me, whatever helps me stop these
Speaker 1: peasant people from reducing the power of of the royals.
Speaker 1: Political anti semites were selective in their choice of enforcement.
Speaker 1: That's shocking. Another thing that only occurred once in Romania.
Speaker 1: So King Carol the Second generally considers the fascist useful,
Speaker 1: whereas the socialists and the Peasants Party people they want
Speaker 1: to reduce his power, so he he sides with them
Speaker 1: a lot throughout the twenties, um, in early thirties. But
Speaker 1: then in like nineteen thirty seven, the Iron Guard starts
Speaker 1: to win larger and larger shares of the vote. I
Speaker 1: think they top out at of the vote in the
Speaker 1: thirty seven election. Um, and he's like, oh shit, well,
Speaker 1: I can't really control these guys necessarily right like the
Speaker 1: they were it was a good bet to back them earlier,
Speaker 1: but now Quadrian who's like getting within spitting distance of
Speaker 1: real power and he doesn't owe me anything, right, Like
Speaker 1: he's not I can't actually trust this guy. He could
Speaker 1: fuck me up even worse than these Peasants party people would.
Speaker 1: So Carol the second starts to panic. So hard for
Speaker 1: me not to hear you go party people whenever you
Speaker 1: say party people. By the way, yeah, I mean most
Speaker 1: of these parties would have would have sucked, asked. I
Speaker 1: mean I assumed the National Peasants Party parties would have
Speaker 1: been Okay, not a lot of there it is happening
Speaker 1: and apparently, hey, all the all the hot people are
Speaker 1: at the mean this party, so that sounds that sounds
Speaker 1: like it could be good. Um, although you might wind
Speaker 1: up fucking Nikolai Chauchesco, which is a mixed bag, although
Speaker 1: Sophie says he's hot, so you know, Sophie is down.
Speaker 1: Only one photo. I take it back, only one photo. Oh,
Speaker 1: he was just one of those guys that got caught
Speaker 1: at a good angle once. It looked almost like a
Speaker 1: mug shot. I don't know if it actually is or not,
Speaker 1: but there was like one photo and then you like
Speaker 1: look at the rest of your like, oh no, sharing
Speaker 1: the hot Stalin photo. Yeah yeah, which is not not
Speaker 1: act shockingly, you can't rely on on pictures of Joseph
Speaker 1: Stalin to know how he actually looked. Um, But you
Speaker 1: know what, you can rely on Robert Us and no
Speaker 1: one else and the products and services that support the show.
Speaker 1: Well sure, I just don't separate between us and the
Speaker 1: product and services that support our show. You know, we're
Speaker 1: one beautiful amalgam that you should just I have into
Speaker 1: and let it. Let it, let it subsume you swim
Speaker 1: in us, swimming us, stop or it in here. You
Speaker 1: know what, I love goods and services that are provided
Speaker 1: by the sponsors of this podcast. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: it should be known that I am a subscriber slash
Speaker 1: purchaser slash user of all of these things. Yet Jeff's
Speaker 1: buying gold, He's joined the Washington State Highway Patrol um,
Speaker 1: He's he's doing all of the things our sponsors are
Speaker 1: just to do. He's engaging in sports betting. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: I'm doing all those things, just really doing them. And
Speaker 1: we're back. So in the seven elections, the Iron Guard,
Speaker 1: when the vote and the Peasants Party has like a
Speaker 1: collapse of their power. You know, they they've gotten something
Speaker 1: north of like a few years ago, and they get
Speaker 1: the vote in that election, which is short of the
Speaker 1: I mean that means that they have they do technically
Speaker 1: the best, but they need forty of the vote to
Speaker 1: form a government. Right, so since they don't meet that threshold,
Speaker 1: the King's going to get to help form the government.
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's not going to end well. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from the book Children of the Night
Speaker 1: here and now it was for the King to decide
Speaker 1: who had become prime minister. He knew the public wanted
Speaker 1: to change, and began looking down the table of results.
Speaker 1: In fourth place, behind Quadriano's legionaries was the moderately fascist
Speaker 1: National Christian Party led via Octavian Goga. The anti semitic
Speaker 1: poet was a great friend and supporter of the King
Speaker 1: and Quadriano's most bitter rifle. He had scored just nine
Speaker 1: percent of the vote. As far as Carol was concerned,
Speaker 1: he was perfect for the job, and anti semitic poet
Speaker 1: is the most fascinating combination of two words in history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just just a racist pope. But a moderate fascist
Speaker 1: would be like Nazi Ballerina, Like, there's just there's certain
Speaker 1: words that you don't necessarily conflate the two things together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you don't. Also, you don't hear a lot of
Speaker 1: moderate fascists uh these days, but I guess it is.
Speaker 1: I mean it is actually a thing in this period,
Speaker 1: Like it's a it's reasonable to draw a line between
Speaker 1: the two of them because the Iron Guard UM and
Speaker 1: the National Christian Party are pretty pretty bitter rivals and
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time fighting each other. I would
Speaker 1: add this. I would add that we have that here
Speaker 1: with the quote law and order. Uh, people that that
Speaker 1: really they're like, well, you know, I don't believe in
Speaker 1: all of these things, but you know, we should make
Speaker 1: sure that anybody that commits a crime is shot in
Speaker 1: the face. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's those weirdos who are like,
Speaker 1: I think we should execute people for spraying graffiti during protests,
Speaker 1: but also funck the January six folks, where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're a moderate fascist. Yeah yeah, yeah, so that's who. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's who. Uh. This moderate fascist poet uh anti Semite
Speaker 1: Googa gets made Prime Minister by the King and within
Speaker 1: two days of his appointment, um, he has shut down
Speaker 1: both of the large Jewish owned newspapers in Romania. UM.
Speaker 1: He has the Bucharest Bar suspend the licenses of every
Speaker 1: Jewish lawyer that they can find. Uh. He resends the
Speaker 1: right to sell liquor and tobacco by Jewish shopkeepers. UM.
Speaker 1: And he withdraws citizenship from all two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: thousand naturalized Romanian Jews. Now, so I'm going to go
Speaker 1: out on a limb here. Not not cool, not cool,
Speaker 1: not cool. Sorry if I'm sorry if I'm courting controversy here.
Speaker 1: But that is an uncool move, kind of a dick move,
Speaker 1: some would say. And this podcast is brought to you
Speaker 1: by the letter P for programs, because that's what that's
Speaker 1: what comes next is there's a bunch of programs because
Speaker 1: I don't support that that specific one. I do not do.
Speaker 1: I do not I do not consume that. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: I mean, we never know who's going to sponsor the
Speaker 1: show in the programmatic ads, so it's not impossible. But
Speaker 1: we we we do, we do. We do have a
Speaker 1: hard no program line our in our ad sheet and
Speaker 1: back to our regularly scheduled program. Um. So there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of programs. There's also fighting in the streets between
Speaker 1: and his green Shirts, uh and between these moderate fascists,
Speaker 1: right because they're the Green Shirts are angry that they
Speaker 1: don't get the full fascism. They get some programs, but
Speaker 1: not all of the prams that they wanted. The idea
Speaker 1: of a moderate anything getting into a fist fight is
Speaker 1: just very h I want racism, I want slightly less racism.
Speaker 1: And so this is all basically a con by King Carol,
Speaker 1: like he knows that well, if I put you know,
Speaker 1: this fucking yoga guy in power, he's going to do
Speaker 1: a bunch of horrible ships and also the legionaries are
Speaker 1: going to try to do them in uprising and it's
Speaker 1: going to be this big, gnarly mess. And it is
Speaker 1: this big, gnarly mess. And he uses that to be like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: parliamentary democracy just can't work for some reason. So you
Speaker 1: know what we're putting an into that. I'm suspending the
Speaker 1: constitution and now I'm the dictator king. Uh. So he
Speaker 1: does that in the tenth of February ninety eight, he
Speaker 1: becomes the dictator king of Romania. Um So that's cool, good,
Speaker 1: good for him. Uh. And he's not going to be
Speaker 1: good at this, right, Carol. The second is kind of
Speaker 1: shitty and everything. Um. The good thing that he does,
Speaker 1: I will give him credit for one thing, which is
Speaker 1: that he has Quadrianna murdered. Um. They arrest him in
Speaker 1: a bunch of his supporters and just execute them at
Speaker 1: a black site basically, um. And that's okay, I'm i'm
Speaker 1: I'm not against that. Um. But he mainly executes Quadrianna
Speaker 1: because he's creating his own fascist movement that is very
Speaker 1: deliberately ripping off the legionaries. He basically like does the
Speaker 1: does the fucking Kirkland brand Iron Guard movement. Um. And
Speaker 1: in fact, like Hitler and the Nazis will like make
Speaker 1: fun of him for being a fake fascist. They're like,
Speaker 1: look at this guy, He's not even like a real fascist.
Speaker 1: He's just being this dude he murdered. It's like when
Speaker 1: Transformers came out and sci Fi had trans morphers. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he has the trans morphers of Romanian fascism. Um. He
Speaker 1: also steals a huge percentage of the national budget to
Speaker 1: siphon into his private bank account for when he inevitably
Speaker 1: gets forced out of the country and has to abdicate.
Speaker 1: We couldn't have this happening soon. Yeah, we we would
Speaker 1: not have this happening anytime soon in America. No, No,
Speaker 1: of course not, of course not because we don't call
Speaker 1: them kings. So it's fine. Um. Yeah. So the you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's not a very successful royal dictator. He is
Speaker 1: not going to last long. Um. And while he is
Speaker 1: kind of trying to solidify his hold on power, the
Speaker 1: USSR and Nazi Germany are deciding that, you know, why
Speaker 1: can't we be friends, which is what that song is about. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's about the Molotov ribbon trop packed. Um. So the
Speaker 1: USSR and the Nazis have them a packed and they're like,
Speaker 1: what if we what if we met in Poland and
Speaker 1: and kissed at the lie we draw in and enforced
Speaker 1: with an unbelievable quantity of human blood. Fair By the way,
Speaker 1: that song is by the band War mm hmm. So
Speaker 1: it really it really does fit it does It's actually
Speaker 1: kind of perfect. Um. So, yeah, the USSR and Nazi
Speaker 1: Germany are like briefly BFFs in in taking Poland and
Speaker 1: the Molotov ribbon trup packed. A lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know this, but it contains some secret provisions, and one
Speaker 1: of those secret provisions is the Nazi saying Stalin, you
Speaker 1: can take best Arabia from Romania, which is best Arabia
Speaker 1: is like one of the wealthiest parts of Romania. It's
Speaker 1: like literally a third of like the population and the
Speaker 1: economy of Romania is in best Arabia. So when the
Speaker 1: Soviets moving and take it, Romania is like Hitler, come on, guy,
Speaker 1: we're kind of fascists. What you want to have our back?
Speaker 1: And Hitler's like, no, man, you killed my boy Coadrian,
Speaker 1: Who fuck you guys? So this doesn't work great for anybody.
Speaker 1: It does certainly does not increase Carol the seconds popular
Speaker 1: already back home. Um, so that's gonna be one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why he doesn't last very long. And while
Speaker 1: all this is going on, right in the late thirties,
Speaker 1: you've got this fascist movement becoming ascendant. Um, You've got
Speaker 1: increasing crackdowns on the communist there's maybe seven hundred of them,
Speaker 1: many of whom are not free in the country at
Speaker 1: this point in time. Um. But Chochesco, you know, manages
Speaker 1: to stay alive. Uh he in part because the fascists
Speaker 1: are not obviously like the Romanian fascist, like all fascists,
Speaker 1: have a lot of anti communist rhetoric, but the Communists
Speaker 1: are not the Iron Guards focus because there's just not
Speaker 1: that many of them, right, It's not like they're They're
Speaker 1: actually have bigger threats from the state, um, and so
Speaker 1: that's who they focus on. And so, you know, while
Speaker 1: Chowchesco is continuing his his string of getting arrested for
Speaker 1: a bunch of bullshit, he doesn't, you know, get murdered
Speaker 1: by the Nazis. And he doesn't, I don't think spends
Speaker 1: a particularly large amount of time fighting with them in
Speaker 1: the street. What he does do is spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time hitting on the women of the Romanian Communist Party.
Speaker 1: This is how in nineteen thirty nine he meets his
Speaker 1: future wife, Lena Petrescu. She had grown up in a
Speaker 1: tiny rural village like Nikolai and become a Communist after
Speaker 1: moving to the city. Elena did not do well in school.
Speaker 1: Unlike Nikolai, she does not appear to be a good
Speaker 1: book learner. Um she failed basically every class. But in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties she gets a job at a black
Speaker 1: market pill mill and decides that this means that she's
Speaker 1: a chemist, So her lifelong ambition is going to be
Speaker 1: to become a chemist because she works at a pill
Speaker 1: mill that's basically reverse engineering diet pills and and then
Speaker 1: pressing them. Um, if you were in a place that's
Speaker 1: going to war a lot, having what is essentially speed
Speaker 1: on demand, that's great. Give me some of that bootleg idea.
Speaker 1: So in the summer of nineteen thirty nine, the Romanian
Speaker 1: Communist Party holds a picnic uh and a small fare
Speaker 1: that like includes a fundraising competition. And the way they
Speaker 1: do this competition is that, like, all of the girl
Speaker 1: roles get together and they give each of them a number, um,
Speaker 1: and the girl who is able to basically sell the
Speaker 1: most tickets to raise funds at this party is named
Speaker 1: Queen of the ball. Now, Elena is not a charismatic person. Um.
Speaker 1: She is not good at talking to people, She does
Speaker 1: not like crowds, she is not social. She is not
Speaker 1: someone who is going to be very good at selling
Speaker 1: tickets on her own. But Nikolai seems that pretty much
Speaker 1: falls in love with her at first sight. Um. He
Speaker 1: has just gotten out of prison for distributing communist propaganda
Speaker 1: at this point, and he is like. She obviously likes
Speaker 1: him too, because he's this like hard son of a bit.
Speaker 1: She's just gotten out of prison, he's like a fighter
Speaker 1: for the party, and so they make eyes and kind
Speaker 1: of as his first gesture to win her favor, he
Speaker 1: threatens to beat up all of his friends if they
Speaker 1: don't buy tickets from Elena Uh in order to so
Speaker 1: that she can win Queen of the Ball, which is
Speaker 1: both will show because in the future he is going
Speaker 1: to do like the nationwide version of this, like sending
Speaker 1: out squads to beat the ship out of people who
Speaker 1: don't vote for the Communist Party. Also, she looks like
Speaker 1: the kid from Dick Tracy, Yeah, does like the nerd
Speaker 1: from Can't Hardly Wait? If you remember, she looks exactly
Speaker 1: like that dude. Yeah she is that that's a good
Speaker 1: way of looking at her, and and a handsome woman.
Speaker 1: Nikolai Chochesco looks like a muppet version of a communist um.
Speaker 1: Like he's got that big head that you could if
Speaker 1: you look at a picture of adult Chesco, you can't
Speaker 1: imagine him talking normally. You can only imagine the entire
Speaker 1: of his head flapping backwards. He looks like Sam Eagle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has, he has strong Sam Eagle characteristics. So, um,
Speaker 1: this is I don't know, it's kind of sweet. It's
Speaker 1: there's a darker tone to it because he's going to
Speaker 1: like violently fake an election later in his life. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of sweet now that he's doing that
Speaker 1: to to, you know, make this girl he likes feel pretty.
Speaker 1: So that's that's kind of nice. Um in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if she if the thing is this, like look not
Speaker 1: for nothing, but seeing her win a beauty contest, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, all right, well this is clearly a fix.
Speaker 1: Right Well yeahologies to her family, no, no, I mean
Speaker 1: her family is terrible. Um anyway, so yeah, that that
Speaker 1: goes great for him, and the two of them hook
Speaker 1: up and they get married, and he's going to spend
Speaker 1: a lot more time in prison. But they seem to
Speaker 1: have legitimately been a love match. Now normally that's sweeter
Speaker 1: than it turns out to be, because they are both
Speaker 1: some of the worst people who have ever lived. But
Speaker 1: I'll give him one thing. They seem to have been
Speaker 1: legitimately in love. So that's yea monsters can be in love,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. Yeah, Yeah, there you go. Um. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty Carol, the seconds dictatorship collapses with some help
Speaker 1: from the Nazis, and the new cat in town is
Speaker 1: a military man named Marshall Antonescu who basically runs a
Speaker 1: military dictator ship with fascist trappings. Um. He uses the
Speaker 1: Iron Guard UM he like puts them adjacent to power.
Speaker 1: But Antonescu he's a monster, but he's not ideologically a
Speaker 1: fascist like you can like. Again, this is where we
Speaker 1: get into the terms, because he like is a major
Speaker 1: player in the Holocaust. He's a terrible, terrible person. Not
Speaker 1: saying that to be like, he's not as bad as
Speaker 1: he's fascists. He just he is a military dictator. He
Speaker 1: is not a fascist dictator. And he doesn't really like
Speaker 1: the Iron Guard all that much. He's willing to use
Speaker 1: them because he has he's a strong nationalist UM, but
Speaker 1: he considers them way too radical to actually run things.
Speaker 1: And while all this is going on, all of Romania's
Speaker 1: Communists are either in prison or hiding out in the USSR.
Speaker 1: And again there's maybe six or seven hundred of them
Speaker 1: in the country. Still. The leaders of the movement in
Speaker 1: Romania are Anna Poker, a Jewish woman and a veteran
Speaker 1: revolutionary Stalinist and Georgie Georgiou Day. He's an electrician who
Speaker 1: became an illegal train union organized her and spends some
Speaker 1: of Chauchesco's first arrests are like supporting his uh Jorjiu
Speaker 1: Day's um um illegal train strikes. And he's also a Stalinist.
Speaker 1: Everybody's a Stalinist, right um So, Georgie was a poor
Speaker 1: peasant with what Marxist considered unimpeachable proletarian pedigrees. He's basically
Speaker 1: like the the archetype of the kind of guy Stalin
Speaker 1: pushed as the ideal new Soviet man. He's this like
Speaker 1: born poor, working his entire life organizing unions and fighting
Speaker 1: in the streets to support the rights of workers to
Speaker 1: organize poker. Meanwhile, she's also does a lot of time
Speaker 1: for the cause. She is a tough lady. In fact,
Speaker 1: she gets the nickname the Iron Woman of the Iron
Speaker 1: Lady of Romania. But she's also an intellectual, right, She's
Speaker 1: one of these people who comes to communism like through
Speaker 1: reading about it and and is a is a like
Speaker 1: as opposed to like Georgiu Day does not read books, right,
Speaker 1: does not does not talk a lot about reading. He's not,
Speaker 1: citing a lot of like passages from Marxist tracks, which
Speaker 1: Parker is um. She is fiercely devoted to the cause, um. Which,
Speaker 1: But the fact that she's also on kind of this
Speaker 1: creative ideological side of things means that she's going to
Speaker 1: run into conflict. During the messy early years of the
Speaker 1: u s s R. And and for a little while
Speaker 1: Parker is in Stalin's good books. She she flees to
Speaker 1: the USSR for a period. She goes to this Soviet
Speaker 1: school for revolutionaries where she studies tactics to help her
Speaker 1: build the covert communist movement in Romania. But she also
Speaker 1: encounters a lot of difficulties because number one, she's Jewish
Speaker 1: and number two she's a woman, and so those things
Speaker 1: are not good at the time, not not great at
Speaker 1: the time. It's perfect for all of those people, especially
Speaker 1: in America. Yeah, yeah, everything's everything's fine now, um, But
Speaker 1: but back at the time, back back in the day, difficult. Uh.
Speaker 1: And she also runs into problems because she she runs
Speaker 1: a foul of Stalin and she gets executed for being
Speaker 1: or and and her husband gets executed for being a Romanians. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't believe he is. I've never seen any evidence
Speaker 1: that Poker's husband was spying for anyone who seems to
Speaker 1: have been a really committed communist. But he gets executed
Speaker 1: over in the USSR and Anna finds out about it.
Speaker 1: While she's four years into a ten year prison sentence
Speaker 1: in Romania. She had formed a group of prisoners called
Speaker 1: the Women's Collective of Anti Fascist Prisoners, and when the
Speaker 1: news reaches them that Anna's husband has been executed, she
Speaker 1: doesn't even get time to mourn him before the other
Speaker 1: women demand that she explained why she'd married a traitor.
Speaker 1: A criticism session is held in prison, in which Anna
Speaker 1: is blamed for not warning the party that her husband
Speaker 1: was an agent provocateur, and eventually Anna tells them, I
Speaker 1: am now racking my brain to find something, a sign
Speaker 1: of any kind that would have led me to believe
Speaker 1: he was an enemy of the people. I'm not placing
Speaker 1: any doubt on the party's decision. The party knows better
Speaker 1: than I. But I did not see anything. And as
Speaker 1: much as I searched my soul, my recollections, my memory,
Speaker 1: I don't find anything that could prove such a thing,
Speaker 1: which is like almost certainly true and kind of a
Speaker 1: devastating thing to imagine this woman who's stuck in prison
Speaker 1: has just found out the love of her life has
Speaker 1: been killed by the state and is now like, well,
Speaker 1: the party must have been right in killing him, but
Speaker 1: I just didn't see a sign of it. Um, it's
Speaker 1: super fucked up. And the rest of the best way
Speaker 1: to handle that is to just be like, well, look,
Speaker 1: I'm sure the people that are still alive with the guns,
Speaker 1: they had great reason to do that. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: I personally didn't see it, but they probably nailed that ship.
Speaker 1: I just maybe he was tricking me. It doesn't go
Speaker 1: well for her because she doesn't she does not like
Speaker 1: repudiate him fully. And so these these ladies that she's
Speaker 1: formed into a group in prison like sind backward to
Speaker 1: Stalin saying Anna won't denounce her dead husband. Um, And
Speaker 1: this winds up being one of the justifications Stalin would
Speaker 1: later use for backing Georgie over Anna, because she she
Speaker 1: winds up. Yeah, it would be funny if it was
Speaker 1: like a real true lies scenario where he was like
Speaker 1: this huge, checked like Austrian sounding guys like computers. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It doesn't work out that way, unfortunately. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Um, anyway, in any case, Georgie Georgiu Day
Speaker 1: also spends his war years locked away in a fascist
Speaker 1: prison because the Antonesque regime is not quite as Nazi
Speaker 1: as the straight up Nazis wanted it to be. Um,
Speaker 1: communists and concentration camps there did have a higher rate
Speaker 1: of survival than they did in like Germany. So what
Speaker 1: actually happens is once all these people get thrown into
Speaker 1: these prisons, they kind of settle out what the communist
Speaker 1: government of the future Romania is going to be in
Speaker 1: these prison cells. Which is a thing that happens every
Speaker 1: time you throw a bunch of radical revolutionaries into prison
Speaker 1: cells together, is they wind up sorting out the future
Speaker 1: regime that they're going to bring into power at I mean,
Speaker 1: they got they got time, Yeah, exactly, They've got time
Speaker 1: to like read books about communism and figure out who's
Speaker 1: going to do what when they eventually wind up in
Speaker 1: power comes up, we're going to have to go ahead
Speaker 1: make a perfect communist government. Yeah, and that's exactly what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Um. So George you Day is obviously
Speaker 1: I think everyone kind of is aware, just because he's
Speaker 1: such a powerful person that he's going to wind up
Speaker 1: being like the top man if they ever do wind
Speaker 1: up in power and show. Cescu sees this and he
Speaker 1: is again. He's he's got gets thrown into prison again
Speaker 1: during the World War two years for conspiring against the
Speaker 1: social order, and he kind of turns himself into a
Speaker 1: gopher for George you Day. He makes himself available for
Speaker 1: like whatever sort of side jobs they need done. He
Speaker 1: does everything that will keep it like he doesn't care
Speaker 1: what he has to do, no no matter how like
Speaker 1: Banel or Low, the task is as long as it's
Speaker 1: going to keep him on the lips of his betters. Right.
Speaker 1: I just want to stay around George you Day, you know,
Speaker 1: as long as he keeps seeing me and knows me
Speaker 1: is like this guy who can handle anything he wants. Like,
Speaker 1: that's That's what I'm gonna do. Um. Just jazz to
Speaker 1: be on the show man. Yeah, just happy to be here, man,
Speaker 1: Just happy to be here. Um. And this strategy works
Speaker 1: works ended ly. As Paul Kenyon writes, they had a
Speaker 1: lackey in prison, a young hooligan who brought them food
Speaker 1: packages and ran messages. His name was Nikolai Chowchescu. A
Speaker 1: twenty two year old trainee cobbler who was regularly in
Speaker 1: trouble for fighting and delivering communist leaflets. Some of his
Speaker 1: fellow inmates thought him weird and said that they avoided
Speaker 1: him because he was such a bore with absolutely no
Speaker 1: sense of humor. In the presence of big men like
Speaker 1: George you Day, Chesko remained largely silent and deferential. He
Speaker 1: avoided speaking whenever possible because of the stutter so severe
Speaker 1: it made his leg shake. But he also possessed a
Speaker 1: powerful memory and an instinctive intelligence and sat among the
Speaker 1: future leaders, listening to everything they said and slowly learning.
Speaker 1: And this actually works out well for him because since
Speaker 1: he's too kind of scared and nervous to speak up
Speaker 1: or say anything, he never winds up running a foul
Speaker 1: of George you Day, Right, he doesn't. He's never He
Speaker 1: puts himself in positions to help with stuff, but he's
Speaker 1: never running anything that can like go badly and reflect
Speaker 1: poorly on him. Um. And he he pays attention to
Speaker 1: the social relationships and kind of worms his way closer
Speaker 1: and closer to Georgiu Day over time, um, which which
Speaker 1: is the I mean this Stalin does a virgin of this,
Speaker 1: that's how he rises to power. To this. This is
Speaker 1: a pretty effective tactic. So if you are ever in
Speaker 1: a revolutionary underground movement that's seeking to overthrow the state
Speaker 1: and institute a new form of government, keep an eye
Speaker 1: out for like the weird quiet kid who just hangs
Speaker 1: around doing chores. Shoot that guy pretty quick. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: I do need to have in my in my Uh.
Speaker 1: I need to have that written down. Yeah. Just drop
Speaker 1: that kid before he gets too far. Yeah, can again
Speaker 1: him a moves ready, you know legally. And Aubert does
Speaker 1: not mean that literally. I do mean that literally. I
Speaker 1: know he does. Before you overthrow the government, kill the
Speaker 1: quiet kid in your movement, just drop them all. What
Speaker 1: a Draculus book, Burn him in a thing, put him
Speaker 1: all in a building and light it on fire. Only
Speaker 1: let the loud assholes inherit power because that will never
Speaker 1: go badly. No, we've as we just mostly just get podcasts. Yeah, exactly. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I think that's gonna do it for our part
Speaker 1: one of Chowchescu and uh boy, howdy have you had
Speaker 1: a good time here? Jeffrey, It's all I could ask for. Jefftoberfest,
Speaker 1: that's me. That's that's who I am. I'm glad that
Speaker 1: you got my name per correct. That's right, That's right,
Speaker 1: That's that's you and the festival dedicated to celebrating your
Speaker 1: many accomplishments every October. I gotta say I love being here.
Speaker 1: I love spending time with you guys. It's a real blast.
Speaker 1: I love relearning. Sometimes I'm like that degree I got
Speaker 1: wasn't worth anything, And I do this show every once
Speaker 1: in a while, and I'm like, that's good enough, Jeff.
Speaker 1: You gotta plug anything here before we roll out. Are
Speaker 1: people still listening at this point in time when we
Speaker 1: do plugs? Let's do it, man um. I So, depending
Speaker 1: on when this goes up, I run a stand up show,
Speaker 1: a live stand up show at a toy store in Burbank,
Speaker 1: California called Mint on Card at a store called Blast
Speaker 1: from the Past on Magnolia in Burbank, California. You can
Speaker 1: check that out the second Friday every month. I have
Speaker 1: a great podcast called Jeff Has Cool Friends, where I
Speaker 1: interview my friends that I think have really cool jobs
Speaker 1: and I think you should pay attention to them. You
Speaker 1: can get that for free, or you can get early
Speaker 1: access to uncentered episodes with bonus content at patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash Jeff meg It's just my name. I also
Speaker 1: have shows like Fine, Isn't that easy? It's so easy?
Speaker 1: Uh Fine, my monthly show with Kim Crawl. And I
Speaker 1: also have a great show called nerd with Drey Alvarez
Speaker 1: that we do, um we do on the Patreon and
Speaker 1: for free. Um, and that is we just do deep
Speaker 1: dives on Nerdy Ship. I also do Tom and Jeff
Speaker 1: watch Batman on the game Fully Unemployee Network, which we
Speaker 1: keep needing to bring you onto. I know you like
Speaker 1: you want to do Batman stuff. I do want to
Speaker 1: do Batman stuff, by which I mean I want to
Speaker 1: I want to beat up bore people in the street
Speaker 1: while wearing ten thousand dollars in body armor. In armor, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, as as an Olympic level athlete, yes yeah,
Speaker 1: dr martial artists, beating the ship out of a heroin
Speaker 1: addict in an alley, perfect. Yeah, just breaking someone's back
Speaker 1: for stealing a magnavox. Um. And you can also hear
Speaker 1: me on Unpopular Opinion and you don't even like sports,
Speaker 1: both on the un Popps network. UM. Other than that,
Speaker 1: you know, thank you. This is fun. We have fun. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had fun here. Yeah, yeah, I wish I still
Speaker 1: have health insurance after this. That's what I'm saying. So look,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things said at the end there, Buddy,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not going to give our followers bad advice
Speaker 1: about how to form their underground anti government terrorists cell.
Speaker 1: The question is, why aren't you giving that advice, so Fie,
Speaker 1: because it really like having health insurance. Well, I like
Speaker 1: making sure that some weird quiet kid doesn't wind up
Speaker 1: in charge up to the revolution and murders gone. I thought,
Speaker 1: I thought, there's a lot of really like, I've encouraged
Speaker 1: violence against so many. I hear what you're saying, and
Speaker 1: I know that you're like, well, I know worse and
Speaker 1: like you have. But I particularly hate Sophie. Sophie. This
Speaker 1: is unfortunately, this was Sophie's choice to hate that Sophie's
Speaker 1: choice joke. We did it, get it, We did the
Speaker 1: whole thing. And she has a Boston accent in that movie. Yep,
Speaker 1: so do I. Anyway, that's going to be the episode.
Speaker 1: Come back tomorrow, while not tomorrow, but soon Thursday, and
Speaker 1: there will be more more Choo, less Romanian uh history,
Speaker 1: more more getting into the weeds of chow cho, So
Speaker 1: stick around for that oaks. It ends in tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of starving orphans, as it always does. Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.