Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: You're a weekly reminder that when there's bad things, there's
Speaker 2: people trying to do good things, or at least interesting things.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest this week
Speaker 2: is Katie Stole. Hi.
Speaker 3: How are you ugh, I'm okay, I'm good. I'm glad
Speaker 3: to be here, happy to be here.
Speaker 2: In fact, Yeah, the world's going great.
Speaker 3: The world's going great. Nevertheless, I would love to hear
Speaker 3: some stories about cool people who did cool stuff. Not
Speaker 3: that we don't have a ton of cool people doing
Speaker 3: cool stuff right now at this moment in time.
Speaker 2: It's true. Hey, completely unrelated. There's been all this stuff
Speaker 2: about people bringing down the stock value of Tesla. But anyway,
Speaker 2: through all kinds of methods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, I'm happy to be here. I feel like
Speaker 3: this is a bright light in the world, being able
Speaker 3: to commit talk about good things.
Speaker 2: I know, and people want to hear more good things.
Speaker 2: Which of your various news shows should they listen to
Speaker 2: or watch?
Speaker 3: Oh well, I'll plug even more news. People know us
Speaker 3: from some more News. A lot of people know me
Speaker 3: and Cody from that, which is our YouTube show. But
Speaker 3: we also have our podcast Even More News, which we're
Speaker 3: now doing twice a week. Monday's we release one we
Speaker 3: record Monday morning, release Monday evening, I know, and then
Speaker 3: another one that we record Thursday's release Friday. We just
Speaker 3: needed to add an extra episode because there's so much
Speaker 3: to talk about and we couldn't get through it all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that actually makes sense.
Speaker 3: And also we now are doing video versions of them,
Speaker 3: putting on YouTube because apparently a lot of people like
Speaker 3: to listen to podcasts with their eyes. I don't know,
Speaker 3: so we're doing that.
Speaker 2: I don't understand it. I'm going to pretend to understand
Speaker 2: it once they make us pivot to video, but for now,
Speaker 2: I don't understand it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a whole other world out there, but yeah,
Speaker 3: sure plug that. We try to We try to find
Speaker 3: bright spots out there too, but we do talk about
Speaker 3: the bad spots.
Speaker 2: That makes sense. Yeah, So, Katie, have you ever thought
Speaker 2: about what it would be like to be a journalist
Speaker 2: or a writer during like an authoritarian regime?
Speaker 3: Is that every cross my mind from time to time?
Speaker 3: It sure does.
Speaker 2: Just a fun thought experiment. This week, for no particular reason,
Speaker 2: I thought, what a fun and random time to tell
Speaker 2: the story about how people have continued cultural production and
Speaker 2: news during dictatorship. But first, I'm being reminded by my
Speaker 2: producer Sophie that I should do the rest of my introduction,
Speaker 2: like introducing Sophie. Here's my producer, Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 1: How are you, Hi, Magpie. Hi Katie. You're doing great, Magpie.
Speaker 2: Thanks. Thanks. And we also have an audio engineer named Rory.
Speaker 1: Hi Rory, Hey, Roy, Hi Rory.
Speaker 2: And our theme music is written for us by unwoman.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the rest of the introduction. You
Speaker 2: think I would know. I'm on episode like a one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty. Well, actually like three hundred, because there's
Speaker 2: two of every thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, congratulations, that's a lot of episodes.
Speaker 2: Thank you. It's it's been a wild ride. It's every
Speaker 2: now and then. I have these moments where I'm like,
Speaker 2: like my most recent like substack post is basically like
Speaker 2: it's a really weird moment to read history books for
Speaker 2: a living, but you actually read news for a living,
Speaker 2: and that's maybe even weirder.
Speaker 3: Also a weird thing to do for a living, especially
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeahm h. So we're going to just tell a
Speaker 2: fun family story for no particular reason about continuing cultural
Speaker 2: production during dictatorship. This week's story is about samas dot,
Speaker 2: the underground publishing within the Soviet Union and the Communist
Speaker 2: Bloc countries during the Cold War. You ever you ever
Speaker 2: heard much about this stuff?
Speaker 3: No, not at all.
Speaker 2: Actually, I like it's funny because so many people use
Speaker 2: samas dot as a I mean, I hadn't run across
Speaker 2: it a ton myself. It's one of those words where
Speaker 2: if you don't know what it means, you kind of
Speaker 2: just ignore it because you're like, I don't know what
Speaker 2: that means, and arrest the sentence makes sense that you
Speaker 2: just sort of ignore the word. Yeah, Okay, there's an
Speaker 2: irony here. I'm doing this whole episode about how people
Speaker 2: created stuff and distributed it during the dictatorship of the
Speaker 2: Soviet era. This is the single episode where I could
Speaker 2: not find a source that was not behind an academic paywall.
Speaker 2: This is the most i'vory towered. I had to talk
Speaker 2: to all of my friends with academic privileges to get
Speaker 2: access to this. Yeah, so there's a little irony there
Speaker 2: that's interesting. Yeah, the shortest version of it is, for
Speaker 2: more or less the entire time, there was a Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: there was strict censorship of the press, and the entire
Speaker 2: time there strict censorship, they were people evading that censorship
Speaker 2: through various means. By the time you get to the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies, there's this whole culture
Speaker 2: that springs up around samisdot or self publishing. But we'll
Speaker 2: talk about why. It's actually a really clever play on
Speaker 2: words later, in which people would distribute hand typed copies
Speaker 2: of poems, novels, and news because they couldn't even access
Speaker 2: like xerox machines. These were generally typed on carbon paper
Speaker 2: and then retyped by their recipients like chain letters.
Speaker 3: But good, that's yeah, beautiful actually, yeah. Just the idea
Speaker 3: of people receiving a hand type poem or what have
Speaker 3: you and then typing it up and paying it sending
Speaker 3: it forward, I think is really beautiful.
Speaker 2: I know totally, especially with the like crime level where
Speaker 2: you're like, well, I can go to jail for the
Speaker 2: foreseeable future if they catch me with this poem about
Speaker 2: being sad about the ocean or whatever it is, because
Speaker 2: not all of it political, but it was all wildly illegal,
Speaker 2: and there was a body count attached, although by the
Speaker 2: end of it people are mostly getting time in prison
Speaker 2: in a camp that kills about ten percent of the people,
Speaker 2: but better than earlier where they're just dying. And samas
Speaker 2: dot as a culture lasted until basically nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: when Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: relaxed censorship and people were finally able to publish what
Speaker 2: they wanted. That's one version of it. It's possible, and
Speaker 2: I've read two different sources that have different positions on this,
Speaker 2: that political samas dot actually continued for a few more
Speaker 2: years until the USSR actually fell completely in think nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two. Okay, because at least some people seem to
Speaker 2: be censored still despite this like overall loosening.
Speaker 3: It might be some mixture of both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like almost everyone got to start publishing, and
Speaker 2: basically the anarchosynical list didn't, is the best I can tell.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other annoying thing about researching samas dot, which actually
Speaker 2: overall I really enjoyed, besides the whole Ivory Tower problem,
Speaker 2: is that because it was caught up in the Cold War,
Speaker 2: there's this Western narrative around it. That's basically like some
Speaker 2: good anti communists who wanted individual liberty and capitalism risked
Speaker 2: everything to spread the one real truth about what was happening.
Speaker 2: And there is a little bit of that, right, But
Speaker 2: there's not a lot a bit of that. Nor was
Speaker 2: this a like we're all desperate for novels from the West. Please, Westerners,
Speaker 2: come and save us with your superior storytelling. Some literature
Speaker 2: from the West snuck in and was distributed to samas dot.
Speaker 2: But a lot of it was about cultural production in
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. And actually a lot of it was
Speaker 2: about getting cultural production out of the Soviet Union in
Speaker 2: really cool ways. There's like all this like spy shit
Speaker 2: where people are like using microfiche like little m hm
Speaker 2: and like fucking taking photos of all of the book
Speaker 2: manuscript pages and then like giving them to like foreign
Speaker 2: dignitaries and shit who are like smuggling them out.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And not all of it was even like this
Speaker 2: is how it is in the Soviet Union. Some of
Speaker 2: it was like this is my poem about how I
Speaker 2: wish I didn't have cancer or whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: But mostly samisdat was a culture samis dot was fun
Speaker 2: and exciting. It was inherently cool because it was countercultural.
Speaker 2: A lot of it was parody, a lot of it
Speaker 2: was like artsy as fuck. Something that we've seen again
Speaker 2: and again in our episodes where we talk about resistance
Speaker 2: to authoritarian communism in particular, is that a lot of
Speaker 2: the people who are out in front challenging like Soviet
Speaker 2: era rules and things like that are artists, and they're
Speaker 2: basically challenging dictatorship through cultural production of plays and poems
Speaker 2: and songs and all of this stuff. And a lot
Speaker 2: of it was self consciously what they could called ludic playful.
Speaker 2: And the CIA has poisoned all of our brains about
Speaker 2: the USSR, to be clear, but not in the way
Speaker 2: that authoritarian leftists claim. If you've ever critiqued the USSR
Speaker 2: on social media, you end up with a lot of
Speaker 2: people who are like, but actually, you know, everything was
Speaker 2: perfect there and you only are listening to the CIA's
Speaker 2: lies or whatever. Right, And the thing is is that
Speaker 2: the CIA did lie about the Soviet Union and build
Speaker 2: this false narrative, but not in the way that people claim.
Speaker 2: The CIA worked hard in the twentieth century to make
Speaker 2: sure that every bit of dissidence in the USSR was
Speaker 2: co opted to seem like it's pro capitalism and pro
Speaker 2: Western But while there's some of that, almost everything I've
Speaker 2: seen about resistance to the USSR from within the Soviet
Speaker 2: Bloc comes from socialists, people who believe that we should
Speaker 2: all take care of each other. They just didn't want
Speaker 2: a corrupt state apparatus. They didn't want this like weird
Speaker 2: bad oligarchy instead.
Speaker 3: I know, it's so interesting how we boil things down
Speaker 3: to either you're a capitalist or you are a socialist,
Speaker 3: or it's like yeah, you know, it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I know I want this thing, but not by that person.
Speaker 3: It's like I want our food system to be overhauled,
Speaker 3: just not by our FK.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, you know, totally. No. This is such a
Speaker 2: perfect example of it, where you're like, well, I too
Speaker 2: want more natural food in my diet. I also want
Speaker 2: to keep getting vaccines on a regular basis exactly and
Speaker 2: not have the worms eat my brain. Ideally, Yeah, that
Speaker 2: should happen after I die. It's like a general rule.
Speaker 3: Yes, then I'm fine, please have at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's that's my hope for one day, but not
Speaker 2: for now. So for some weird reason. I think studying
Speaker 2: how people lived and acted and resisted under authoritarian regimes
Speaker 2: is going to be increasingly important. And Okay, this is
Speaker 2: a kind of tangent. I'm now offscript. There's this thing
Speaker 2: where like we all kind of look at what's happening
Speaker 2: right now, and it's very very easy to draw connections
Speaker 2: to Nazi Germany. Right, that is a reasonable place to
Speaker 2: look for our historical parallels. But it's not the only place,
Speaker 2: Like the world is full of dictatorships that we can
Speaker 2: look to.
Speaker 3: I know, I was just recently, like yesterday, I had
Speaker 3: this thought of, like we could compare it to so
Speaker 3: many things, maybe we should start mixing it up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: instead of just well, it's the most readily available for
Speaker 3: most people to you know, totally relate to, but.
Speaker 2: Most especially white people in America and probably just people
Speaker 2: raised in the American educational system. Yeah, know a hell
Speaker 2: of a lot more about Nazi Germany than they do
Speaker 2: about like other terrible systems, including the one that's slaved
Speaker 2: and genocided here on this very continent called the United
Speaker 2: States of America.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, we know way more about that than our
Speaker 3: own history.
Speaker 2: But AnyWho, and so there's all these other places that
Speaker 2: we can look and like. The thing that's interesting about
Speaker 2: the USSR and Soviet block countries, especially by the time
Speaker 2: you're talking about the sixties and seventies, is you're talking
Speaker 2: about what does resistance look like for people who like
Speaker 2: grew up inside this authoritarian system, you know, whereas when
Speaker 2: we look at the directly fascist governments, they didn't last
Speaker 2: an entire generation. They were well, Franco did, actually, so
Speaker 2: franco Is Spain is another good place that we can
Speaker 2: look to for I don't know. I think this is
Speaker 2: the thing I'm going to be doing for a little
Speaker 2: while is looking at how people resisted dictatorships for no
Speaker 2: good reasons.
Speaker 3: Again, no apparent reason. Yeah, feels like a good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to do it until.
Speaker 3: It might be how can information in there for no
Speaker 3: real reason?
Speaker 2: But maybe yeah, yeah, exactly. So what we have instead
Speaker 2: of the commune system is the capitalist system, and it
Speaker 2: asks that we interject this program with the sponsors.
Speaker 4: So, oh, here are those sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 3: So the context, you should see her face, big old smile.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Russia has a long history of people passing around
Speaker 2: manuscripts rather than finished books in order to bypass censorship,
Speaker 2: because it is worth noting it wasn't like the Bolsheviks
Speaker 2: came in and before that, like they were like happy
Speaker 2: and free under the Czar, you know, like serfdom had
Speaker 2: only been abolished in sixty seventy years earlier, and like
Speaker 2: it was a very big unevened in autocratic society. In
Speaker 2: seventeen ninety there was this book that was opposed to Serfdom,
Speaker 2: a Journey from Peter's to Moscow, and it was confiscated
Speaker 2: by the cops. So folks started passing around person to
Speaker 2: person the actual original manuscripts of it, and they're just like,
Speaker 2: so you have this like kind of lending library basically.
Speaker 2: And then in eighteen twenty five you have the Decembrist Revolts,
Speaker 2: which I think we've covered a little bit in the
Speaker 2: Nihilist episodes, but there's so many revolts during all of
Speaker 2: this time, which is where the band gets its name.
Speaker 3: But I was going to ask, but I just said
Speaker 3: to me in my brain, I went and like, don't ask.
Speaker 3: That's a silly question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it almost certainly is. I haven't even specifically
Speaker 2: looked it up, but like that's where they get their name.
Speaker 2: That's who the Decembrists are is a group of revolutionaries. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Cool, love that even more.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And they had people passing around manuscripts, and folks
Speaker 2: started having shit published internationally, like especially like printed in England,
Speaker 2: and then smuggled into the country. Maybe most famously of
Speaker 2: all these pre Soviet Samas Dots, which don't have that
Speaker 2: name yet. That name isn't coined until either fifty eight
Speaker 2: or sixty two, probably sixty two, but I've read both.
Speaker 2: In eighteen forty eight, Doskievsky, whose name I will probably
Speaker 2: die not knowing how to pronounce properly, he got eight
Speaker 2: years in prison for passing around a letter that criticized
Speaker 2: the Orthodox Church and for trying to use a private
Speaker 2: printing press to evade censors. So it's not a not
Speaker 2: a fucking free society, Nope. But as far as I
Speaker 2: can tell, in the Czaris Times, it was largely the intelligentsia,
Speaker 2: the sort of upper middle class of academics and shit,
Speaker 2: who had access to this sort of proto samis Dot.
Speaker 2: As cool as secret handwritten publishing is, it doesn't break
Speaker 2: out of a specific social circle, and it doesn't break
Speaker 2: across class barriers and things that are mass produced have
Speaker 2: a much better chance of actually like reaching the masses.
Speaker 2: By the dawn of the twentieth century, a lot of
Speaker 2: illegal literature is being kind of mass produced. As best
Speaker 2: as I can tell, the Bolsheviks themselves, who sort of
Speaker 2: whatever we've done, like probably at least ten episodes about
Speaker 2: the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and the anarchists and the
Speaker 2: s rs and all of that, the people who are
Speaker 2: going to have the revolution but aren't able to have
Speaker 2: it yet. Yeah, the Bolsheviks themselves relied on underground publishing
Speaker 2: before the revolution, And I've read a while ago for
Speaker 2: a different episode a ton about how different radical groups
Speaker 2: were regularly getting shit printed overseas and smuggled into the country,
Speaker 2: and often in bulk. Like I think people were like
Speaker 2: going to Switzerland and printing like a fuck ton of
Speaker 2: leaflets and pamphlets and stuff, and then like bringing them
Speaker 2: back in however they can, into Russia. But the Bolsheviks,
Speaker 2: even from the beginning, while they believe that they should
Speaker 2: be able to print whatever they want, they don't think
Speaker 2: that other people should be able to print whatever they want, Okay,
Speaker 2: including other socialists, some communists and the anarchists and all
Speaker 2: of those people. And I will compare this too, and
Speaker 2: I suspect that the Mensheviks and the SRS also probably did.
Speaker 2: But I do know that the anarchists did believe in
Speaker 2: a free press. And so even when the Bolsheviks were
Speaker 2: like in the middle of attacking the anarchists, the anarchists
Speaker 2: were like, well, we can't tell you can't print your newspapers.
Speaker 2: We can only tell you that you can't take over
Speaker 2: you know, Yeah, which I think is cool as shit. Yeah, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: in our anarchist society in Ukraine, you can print anti
Speaker 2: anarchist stuff. Why would we tell you that you can't.
Speaker 3: Well, right, that's the point. If you want freedom of
Speaker 3: the press, you have to include things that you don't
Speaker 3: necessarily like totally.
Speaker 2: And I don't know whether they I don't know whether
Speaker 2: or not they expanded that to like the monarchists who
Speaker 2: were trying to kill them all. I don't know how
Speaker 2: far it.
Speaker 3: Went or not, but yeah, like what's the line.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but they probably weren't killing the poets. We'll
Speaker 2: get to them. We'll get to the Bolsheviks killing poets
Speaker 2: in a little bit. Actually, in the next paragraph. We'll
Speaker 2: get to it, oh perfect, as soon as the Bolsheviks
Speaker 2: seized power and put down the Russian Revolution. My super
Speaker 2: short version of it that's very biased by my position
Speaker 2: is that it was a pluralistic revolution of all sorts
Speaker 2: of different socialist factions, and then the Bolsheviks were like,
Speaker 2: just kidding, it's our revolution, went into a civil war
Speaker 2: to kill all of the other competing factions and put
Speaker 2: them down by force, and they instituted censorship. By the
Speaker 2: time the USSR came into being in nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 2: all literary production was state controlled and sponsored, which is like,
Speaker 2: there's an upside to this, right, if you're a professional writer,
Speaker 2: the States like, all right, well, we'll pay you to
Speaker 2: be a poet, will pay you to make books and stuff.
Speaker 2: Right if they liked you. If they didn't like you, well,
Speaker 2: depending on who's in charge that year, they'll kill you,
Speaker 2: or they'll put you in prison into a labor camp,
Speaker 2: or they'll send you to Siberia, or if you're really lucky,
Speaker 2: they just won't publish you and you'll be unemployed.
Speaker 3: It's like a step in the right direction and concept,
Speaker 3: but not in execution when we're still utilizing the tactics
Speaker 3: from before against people that frighten you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And it was not just like people who
Speaker 2: wrote anti Bolshevik stuff. It was like literally just well,
Speaker 2: we don't like that. You know. They had very specific
Speaker 2: rules about what kind of literature and what kind of
Speaker 2: art was encouraged and allowed and published. And among those
Speaker 2: that they started killing right away were poets, I guess. Okay,
Speaker 2: so it's like worth pointing out when we think about
Speaker 2: poetry nowadays, we're like, oh, poetry is really cool, or like, oh,
Speaker 2: poetry is that thing that we hate when our friends
Speaker 2: tell us that they do, because then they'll try and
Speaker 2: make us read their poetry. But we don't want to
Speaker 2: read their poetry because we don't want to tell them
Speaker 2: how we feel about it because that would hurt their feelings.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, before the fucking modern era, well, I
Speaker 2: guess the modern era includes all this before like TV
Speaker 2: and shit, poetry was the They were like the fucking
Speaker 2: rock stars, you know, like in England you have people
Speaker 2: like lining up around the block for the new poem
Speaker 2: that drops from Lord Byron or whatever the fuck you know.
Speaker 2: And I mean it's not because they were like inherently
Speaker 2: like smarter and cooler they totally would have watched TV
Speaker 2: if they had TV.
Speaker 3: But right, that's but that was what was available.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But also you thought differently of poetry in general.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. And so when we say they're coming for
Speaker 2: the poets, it's a different thing. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 2: this person with this kind of niche hobby where they're
Speaker 2: sort of self indulgent or whatever. I really like poetry
Speaker 2: and modern poetry. I'm not trying to talk shit, just
Speaker 2: it's seen differently. Yeah, and I don't want to read
Speaker 2: your poetry, dear listener, I'm sorry or whatever. Anyway, Okay,
Speaker 2: there was this poetry movement called the Acmeists that started
Speaker 2: in the early twentieth century I want to say the
Speaker 2: nineteen tents, but don't quote me and the Acmeists. Acme
Speaker 2: comes from the same place as like literally like roadrunner
Speaker 2: and shit, right, you know, like the Acme brand or whatever,
Speaker 2: because Acme comes from like a Greek word that sort
Speaker 2: of means like it's used to mean the best. It's
Speaker 2: like the okay, the top of a game or whatever.
Speaker 2: So the Acmists they were a response to the symbolists
Speaker 2: who came before them, and they were like, if you
Speaker 2: want to write about something, just write about it as
Speaker 2: clearly and succinctly as you can. And so this makes
Speaker 2: it sound like they're poetry is going to be all
Speaker 2: like utilitarian and kind of blocky, but it actually really isn't,
Speaker 2: at least not the poet I read for this. The
Speaker 2: poet I read for this is now one of my
Speaker 2: favorite poets. And it's just it's beautiful stuff. And I
Speaker 2: don't know enough about how to contrast it to symbolism,
Speaker 2: because I'm like, well, there's still metaphor in it, you know, right,
Speaker 2: But the Bolsheviks they're killing people. For example, they kill
Speaker 2: one of the Acmists, a poet named Nikolai Gumelev, and
Speaker 2: he was not a lefty. He was a monarchist, and
Speaker 2: he was executed in nineteen twenty one without a trial.
Speaker 2: He wasn't executed for taking action against the communist revolution,
Speaker 2: but writing poetry that they didn't like and having ideas
Speaker 2: they didn't like. Wow, So art begins to go underground,
Speaker 2: and artists learn whole new methods of distribution right away,
Speaker 2: including and I don't know if they actually use this,
Speaker 2: but they could have our sponsor, our perennial sponsor, the potato.
Speaker 2: Did you know that you can print with a potato?
Speaker 2: Did you know that you can cut a potato in
Speaker 2: half and then carve out whatever you would like and
Speaker 2: put it on an ink blot or whatever you call
Speaker 2: those things pad an ink pad. I didn't.
Speaker 3: I did not know that.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, that's why the potato is so perfect.
Speaker 2: I know you can do anything with a potato.
Speaker 3: I've got some potatoes in the fridge, leftovers tonight.
Speaker 2: I want potatoes now, our French fries after this. Anyway,
Speaker 2: besides potatoes, apparently there's some other ads for some weird reason,
Speaker 2: and here they are, and we're back back. We're so back.
Speaker 2: So artists start learning whole new methods of distribution, including
Speaker 2: why I literally have no evidence that they did potato woodcuts.
Speaker 2: They probably didn't. It would not have been the most
Speaker 2: effective means. But take, for example, the acmeust poet Anna Akmatova,
Speaker 2: who has been heralded as one of the country's great
Speaker 2: poets before and during the revolution. And she's the main
Speaker 2: poet who I read during that. Yeah, no, she's fucking amazing.
Speaker 2: Her poetry is like puts a little rip into your soul.
Speaker 2: But then it's like but it's okay. It's okay, like
Speaker 2: pets the wound.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like that's kind of poetry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was not a monarch. You can't say like
Speaker 2: the acmeus had the following political tendency, at least that
Speaker 2: I've found, because I've read about three of them, and
Speaker 2: one of them was lefty him, one of them was
Speaker 2: a political and one of them was a socialist. She
Speaker 2: was the non political one. She didn't seem to stop
Speaker 2: the communists and I don't know whatever, Yeah, just trying
Speaker 2: to write poetry. Later, the communists worked hard to sort
Speaker 2: of claim she was a good Soviet patriot. She wasn't
Speaker 2: that either. She was just a poet. When all of
Speaker 2: her friends started emigrating during the revolution and after the
Speaker 2: Bolshevik stole the Revolution in particular, and started like doing
Speaker 2: things like killing poets, she refused to leave, which is
Speaker 2: probably a familiar thought to everyone living in this country
Speaker 2: right now is marginalized in a way that might make
Speaker 2: them vulnerable. She would say shit like a poet can
Speaker 2: only write in the country she's from, which I don't
Speaker 2: think that's true, but you're allowed to decide that for yourself.
Speaker 3: That was her truth. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, since she's already kind of a big deal poet.
Speaker 2: When the Bolsheviks capture all the big rich villas and
Speaker 2: shit from all the rich people, they offer all the
Speaker 2: big deal artists people places to stay in those palaces,
Speaker 2: so she gets to live kind of one of my dreams,
Speaker 2: which is to live collectively, which is like you and
Speaker 2: all your friends take over some rich person's palace and
Speaker 2: then all live in a palace. But you just just
Speaker 2: like eighty of you or whatever.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, that is the dream.
Speaker 2: But they're like, okay, you can move here. But then
Speaker 2: they're like, but we don't actually like your poetry. It's
Speaker 2: not the right kind of poetry, so they refuse to
Speaker 2: publish her. She's not towing the party line. She's not
Speaker 2: really writing politically, near as I can tell. Later she's
Speaker 2: going to write politically and response to what happens to her.
Speaker 2: But she used to be married to Gumalev, the monarchist
Speaker 2: that they'd executed, but she'd actually divorced him, but she
Speaker 2: divorced him well before the revolution started, and so they
Speaker 2: weren't married when he died. But she does have a
Speaker 2: kid with him. She has a kid named Lev Gumalev
Speaker 2: and pretty much because Lev was the kid of someone
Speaker 2: that they'd executed without a trial, they throw him.
Speaker 3: Into jail ah Man.
Speaker 2: So Anna starts hanging out outside the jail every day.
Speaker 2: She starts writing a poem about it, about her time
Speaker 2: hanging outside this prison. And the poem is called Requiem,
Speaker 2: and she has to write it line by line because
Speaker 2: it's not just like she's like, Oh, I'm going to
Speaker 2: write it and I can't publish it. She's like not
Speaker 2: allowed to fucking write.
Speaker 3: It, you know, wow at all, Like not even just
Speaker 3: in your journal.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She writes it line by line and then burns
Speaker 2: each line in her ash tray after she finishes writing it, wow,
Speaker 2: because if the censors see it, they will throw her
Speaker 2: into prison. And so she memorizes this with her friends.
Speaker 2: She goes line by line and whispers it to her
Speaker 2: friends until they memorize it too. People did this for
Speaker 2: poetry sometimes sometimes just until Stalin dies in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: two three. Sometimes they're doing it until the fall of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. You know, this poem does not get
Speaker 2: published in the USSR until nineteen eighty seven or eighty eight, wow,
Speaker 2: or eighty nine. I've read both eighty seven and eighty nine.
Speaker 2: Eighty eight didn't never.
Speaker 3: Mind, well that's right in between.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, exactly. And the story of how she
Speaker 2: came to write this poem is right in the opening
Speaker 2: of the poem. Most of it is more proper poetry,
Speaker 2: but there's like a prose paragraph kind of section at
Speaker 2: the top, and so I'm just going to read that.
Speaker 2: During the frightening period of the Yezhov Terror, which is
Speaker 2: the name of one of the guys leading Stalin's purchase,
Speaker 2: I spent seventeen months waiting in prison cues in Leningrad.
Speaker 2: One day, somehow someone picked me out. On that occasion,
Speaker 2: there was a woman standing behind me, her lips blue
Speaker 2: with cold, who of course had never in her life
Speaker 2: heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor characteristic of
Speaker 2: all of us, she said into my ear. Everyone whispered
Speaker 2: there could anyone ever describe this? And I answered I can.
Speaker 2: It was then that something like a smile slid across
Speaker 2: what had previously been just a face. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: after spending seventeen months hanging out outside this prison waiting
Speaker 2: to find out what's going to happen to her kid,
Speaker 2: who's done literally nothing wrong. She writes this poem and
Speaker 2: it survives because her and other people memorized it. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to read some of that poem. I don't
Speaker 2: sometimes I read poetry on this show, but it's not
Speaker 2: a huge thing I do.
Speaker 3: We've read that other piece very well.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks, And I kind of figure like this is
Speaker 2: such an important part of the culture resistance, so I
Speaker 2: feel like reading some of it. Yeah. Also, I think
Speaker 2: some of it applies right now as we watch people
Speaker 2: getting disappeared off of the streets. Because that is happening.
Speaker 3: I mean it's chilling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because we often are like, well, what if
Speaker 2: they come for us? They are already coming for people
Speaker 2: in this country.
Speaker 3: This is just a we've been doing a fun bit
Speaker 3: about how it's for no particular reason why this is important.
Speaker 3: Obviously it's the same thing, bit different, but the same
Speaker 3: for people speaking out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for criticizing El Salvador.
Speaker 3: For yeah, these people, all Salvador people trying to get
Speaker 3: into this country and their social media being checked. What
Speaker 3: are we talking about here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Anyway, it's funny because the people who are listening
Speaker 2: to this a year from now are either going to
Speaker 2: be like, who we pulled back from that cliff, or
Speaker 2: people are going to be like, oh, that was really
Speaker 2: cute that those are your biggest problems. Back now anyway,
Speaker 2: here's a piece, a bit of requiem. We are everywhere
Speaker 2: the same, listening to the scrape and turn of hateful keys,
Speaker 2: and the heavy tread of marching soldiers, waking early, as
Speaker 2: if for early mass walking through the capital, run wild,
Speaker 2: gone to seed, we'd meet the dead life, the sun
Speaker 2: lower every day, the never mistier, but hope still sings
Speaker 2: forever in the distance. It happened like this, when only
Speaker 2: the dead were smiling, glad of their release. You were
Speaker 2: taken away at dawn. I followed you, as one does
Speaker 2: when a corpse is being removed. Children were crying in
Speaker 2: the darkened house. A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God.
Speaker 2: The cold of an icon was on your lips, a
Speaker 2: death cold sweat on your brow. I will never forget this.
Speaker 2: I will gather to wail with the wives of the
Speaker 2: murdered STRELSTI inconsolably beneath the Kremlin towers.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I'm just like, yeah, I had heard of
Speaker 2: her before. She's one of my best friend's favorite poets,
Speaker 2: but I hadn't really sat down with her before this.
Speaker 2: Yeah the poet almost published abroad in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: but yeah, published in Russia in nineteen eighty seven or
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine. Her Son spent years in prison. They
Speaker 2: let him out long enough to fight in World War
Speaker 2: Two in the Red Army.
Speaker 3: Oh how nice of them, and.
Speaker 2: Then they put him back in prison afterwards.
Speaker 3: Come on, fucking wild.
Speaker 2: I know, Okay, I did the one thing, lev her Son.
Speaker 2: He's a bastard. Like when he gets out, he gets
Speaker 2: out when Stalin dies, he becomes a bastard race scientist man.
Speaker 2: He builds up this whole belief system that ethnicities are
Speaker 2: like their own organisms that have their own characteristics, and like,
Speaker 2: oh no, he's a heavy influence on fucking Putin's race science. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: you know, but he hadn't done any of that before
Speaker 2: they locked him.
Speaker 3: Up, and maybe maybe some of that happened to him inside.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, yeah, it's funny because there's a couple of
Speaker 2: these moments where I'm like, look, some of the people
Speaker 2: that they locked up, we're bad people.
Speaker 3: But like, yeah, sure, but the principle of it has
Speaker 3: remains true.
Speaker 2: It's like, I still got to give people trials and.
Speaker 3: Like exactly, even the shitty people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So his mom's crew of acmists. They're having a
Speaker 2: hell of a hard time under the new Bolshevik regime.
Speaker 2: One of the more prominent early victims of Bolshevik crackdown
Speaker 2: and self publishing was a Jewish socialist named Ossip Mandelstam.
Speaker 2: He's one of the acmists. He supported the revolution. I
Speaker 2: think he was with the SRS and then later the Bolsheviks.
Speaker 2: And soon after the Bolsheviks take power, they're like, all right,
Speaker 2: all art must serve the revolution and he's like, wait,
Speaker 2: what h.
Speaker 3: That's not what I was revolutionarying for evlutionary ing.
Speaker 2: Well whatever, Yeah, I like Oscar Wilde's take on this,
Speaker 2: which is, you don't have art for socialism sake, your
Speaker 2: socialism for art's sake. Yeah.
Speaker 3: That one always the right phrasing. Yeah, yeah, that was good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And unfortunately the Bolsheviks must not have heard of
Speaker 2: Oscar Wilder. They totally wouldn't have become Bolsheviks. They were like, no,
Speaker 2: we don't really like that free expression stuff. And so
Speaker 2: he starts writing politically but not actually about politics. He
Speaker 2: starts writing about the autonomy of the individual versus giving
Speaker 2: yourself over to the state, and he starts writing the
Speaker 2: personal as political in a really direct way, like literally,
Speaker 2: it becomes a revolutionary or counter revolutionary if you're a
Speaker 2: Bolshevik act to write about individual love, not even like oh,
Speaker 2: loving a person is better than loving the state, just
Speaker 2: literally being like I'm in love with this person, yeah,
Speaker 2: instead of writing about the love for your comrades. So
Speaker 2: he's struggling to get published as a poet, and he
Speaker 2: supports himself writing children's books. Throughout the nineteen twenties, you
Speaker 2: get the first culture of what will later be called Samisdak,
Speaker 2: but it's still not called that at this time, and
Speaker 2: kind of around Osip, the Jewish socialist guy, they're called
Speaker 2: underwoods because of the brand of typewriter that everyone was
Speaker 2: using is an underwood, and they would pass around their
Speaker 2: poetry and their books an original manuscript like type written form.
Speaker 2: Osip is very aware the eye of Sourn is like
Speaker 2: on him, so for I had to get a Lord
Speaker 2: of the Rings reference in here so much, that's right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So for a while he and his wife fuck off
Speaker 2: to Armenia basically one of his higher up. He's like,
Speaker 2: the literary scene is kind of close to power, and
Speaker 2: so like Stalin's like kind of paying attention to him, right,
Speaker 2: and he's like, I don't like that. And so one
Speaker 2: of his other friends is a little bit more in
Speaker 2: with everyone gets them basically being like, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 2: totally need someone over in Armenia while you go over
Speaker 2: there for a while. And he's like, I will.
Speaker 3: Bid move sounds like I know, I know.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, he has this friend named Vladimir Mayakovsky, and nineteen thirty,
Speaker 2: this poet Vladimir kills himself. And this man had been
Speaker 2: a committed Bolshevik revolutionary. He had spent years writing pro
Speaker 2: communist poetry during the revolution. He was like the soul
Speaker 2: of Soviet poetry according to everyone for a while, right
Speaker 2: until he found himself banned and censored like all other
Speaker 2: people who actually believed in art and beauty and shit
Speaker 2: like that. And so he killed himself, and in my
Speaker 2: mind as yet another victim of Stalin. From my point
Speaker 2: of view, many many of the original Bolsheviks are killed
Speaker 2: by Stalin. In the nineteen thirties. After he died, Stalin
Speaker 2: was like, oh, he was great, and he loved us
Speaker 2: and we loved him, which has just got to be
Speaker 2: a horrid fate for your legacy. Osip comes back from
Speaker 2: Armenia and he starts writing poetry that he couldn't publish
Speaker 2: because well, he just couldn't get anything published. So at
Speaker 2: this point he's like, he starts writing poetry about how
Speaker 2: he's doomed to die, that the Bolsheviks are going to
Speaker 2: kill him. That is the poetry he writes. And then
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty three he wrote a poem that accused
Speaker 2: Stalin of murder ooh, and two of the lines from
Speaker 2: it are he rolls the executions on his tongue like berries. Oooh.
Speaker 2: He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.
Speaker 2: He didn't even publish this, he just started spreading it
Speaker 2: mostly by word of mouth and on like one or
Speaker 2: two typewritten manuscripts, And most of his friends are like,
Speaker 2: the fuck are you doing?
Speaker 3: And they're like, why would you even say that to me? Man?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he was arrested and tortured and exiled and
Speaker 2: then died in a prison camp of heart failure. YEP.
Speaker 2: Poets and authors kept going memorizing everything that they could,
Speaker 2: so that it could be public one day when society
Speaker 2: was free once more. One author, Marina zvechya Yeva, sold
Speaker 2: her little hand bound, hand sewn poetry journals and called
Speaker 2: it Overcoming Gutenberg. Other people called it quote writing for
Speaker 2: the desk drawer, since they knew it could never go anywhere.
Speaker 2: They were just like, I'm writing this other one for
Speaker 2: no one, But you couldn't actually keep it in a
Speaker 2: regular old desk drawer because that's what's going to be
Speaker 2: tossed by the fucking series.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, it doesn't sound like you
Speaker 3: should leave it just laying around and needs to be
Speaker 3: hidden under some floorboards or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are literally burying it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. During the peak of Stalin's terror in the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties and forties, there weren't underwoods going around anymore. Not really.
Speaker 2: There weren't people passing manuscripts anymore. There were just whispered
Speaker 2: words and memorization like Requiem. People would have to hide
Speaker 2: the fact that they were writers at all. Many of
Speaker 2: them were writing from labor camps where they'd been sent
Speaker 2: for writing. But then in nineteen fifty three, Joseph Stalin
Speaker 2: made perhaps his great contribution to global communism. He died.
Speaker 2: The man who replaced him for about ten years was
Speaker 2: a guy named Nikita Krushev, And the overall vibe of
Speaker 2: this guy is like, hey, I'm not Stalin, which is
Speaker 2: a good vibe to have coming in after Stalin. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: this fundamental dictorial nature of the USSR doesn't go away
Speaker 2: under him, but he lessens it up quite a lot.
Speaker 2: It's not like free press, but more stuff is getting
Speaker 2: approved right, Okay, not free, but for your yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: You can't just do whatever you want willy nilly like
Speaker 2: writes stuff down and let people read it.
Speaker 3: Sure, that would be wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's easier to get it approved. And so
Speaker 2: some people are able to start writing again under Krushev.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, like ten years old is going to get
Speaker 2: ousted for not being whatever. Yeah, and more stuff is
Speaker 2: allowed through, including a book by perhaps the most famous
Speaker 2: author going to talk about this week. He is not
Speaker 2: quite cool people who did cool stuff, but he's a
Speaker 2: complicated guy who did cool stuff.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: A reoccurring theme on this show.
Speaker 3: Uh oh, that's could be its own spinoff. I guess,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: Really that's the secret subtext of half of the episodes.
Speaker 2: It's like your heroes were more complicated than you thought. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but not in a like so fuck them forever way,
Speaker 2: but you know, no, well some of them, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, but you can understand that people are complex.
Speaker 3: In fact, we all are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well not me. I fortunately have been blessed by
Speaker 2: never doing anything wrong.
Speaker 3: Good for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, and uh, anyone who tries to bring it
Speaker 2: to my attention I've done something wrong is actually the
Speaker 2: one doing something wrong is really important for people who
Speaker 2: you're in the Goolag.
Speaker 1: You're perfect, We've been established, and.
Speaker 2: That's why I should be in charge the Narco Gulag.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely, that's right. If they criticize you, then there
Speaker 3: must be something deeply evil about them.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was thinking, like, well, they're not like permanently flawed.
Speaker 2: They could just be taught again. We'll call them teaching
Speaker 2: again camps. Oh yeah, do it better this time? Is
Speaker 2: the subtitle build back Better?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: And that book, the more famous one and the author
Speaker 2: and the rise of Samasdak culture, which I still hasn't
Speaker 2: even been called that yet. We're going to talk about
Speaker 2: on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Ooh, Wednesday, I know, I don't know, I just wanted
Speaker 3: to add some flair. I don't know.
Speaker 2: How are you feeling about underground publishing so far?
Speaker 3: I think this is really rad. There's so many parallels
Speaker 3: to be brought to as we've established modern day. I
Speaker 3: think it's cool. It sounds pretty punk rock, Yeah, complicated, scary, terrifying,
Speaker 3: potentially demoralizing era where people such as these that you've
Speaker 3: outlined here are vital.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I think about on a
Speaker 2: regular basis. A long time ago, I did an episode
Speaker 2: about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and when I think about that,
Speaker 2: like closed doomed society, the things that they smuggled in.
Speaker 2: There was three things that mattered to them, which was food, arms,
Speaker 2: and the means of printing. Like, the means of printing
Speaker 2: was so important to people, and I think that's a
Speaker 2: thing that we sometimes take for granted. And obviously it
Speaker 2: would be harder to silence the free production of stuff
Speaker 2: in the modern era, but not impossible. Like, for example,
Speaker 2: did you know that every commercially available like home printer,
Speaker 2: leaves a fingerprint that can be tracked forensically.
Speaker 3: I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. Isn't that fun? It's one of
Speaker 2: those things where you're like, when you're in like normal
Speaker 2: time society, you're like, well, all right, I mean I'm
Speaker 2: not doing anything wrong, so whatever. You know, there's free speech.
Speaker 2: But when you're like, oh, if you live in a dictatorship.
Speaker 3: Right, we're actually so much more traceable, trackable, detectable, yeah,
Speaker 3: than you could even imagine, even if you're reading something
Speaker 3: on your computer and not posting it. Well, it's I
Speaker 3: guess that's imaginable at this point, people have access to
Speaker 3: your hard drives.
Speaker 2: But yeah, depending, but yeah.
Speaker 3: Depending, and then there's other forms of censorship. It's it's
Speaker 3: all relatable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's not hopeless. And I mean, one, we're
Speaker 2: also not there yet, or we might not get there.
Speaker 2: We might continue to have it not free speech, well
Speaker 2: except for, of course, the people who get pulled off
Speaker 2: the streets for participating in protective free speech activities. Besides
Speaker 2: those people, God damn it, what a fucking time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I like to remind myself we aren't. Actually
Speaker 3: it's happening, but it's we're not the endgame. There's still
Speaker 3: time for us to change this outcome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, But I also think it's it's worth people
Speaker 2: understanding that, among other things to prepare for. I think
Speaker 2: it's worth people thinking about how they would continue to
Speaker 2: produce culture under different circumstances.
Speaker 3: Now is the time to have those conversations and to
Speaker 3: have with yourself with other people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we're not going to tell you how we're
Speaker 2: gonna Well, we're just going to keep going forever because
Speaker 2: everyone loves us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't stop me from podcasting. Maybe they could, Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: that's hope.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 5: I don't think it's like that's like a conversation Robert
Speaker 5: and I have like every couple hours, like, hmmm, we
Speaker 5: could keep doing this, I think.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, totally, yeah, yeah, probably.
Speaker 2: Anyway, we'll probably be back on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: We'll probably see you Wednesday, folks.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, listen to you know, all the things
Speaker 1: that we that we do.
Speaker 3: While while you can, oh yeah, while you can.
Speaker 2: When politics with prop Listen to sixteenth Minute of Fame,
Speaker 2: Listen to Better Offline. That's it. Those are all the
Speaker 2: cools on media shows.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: No, no, those other.
Speaker 5: Ones forgot it could happen here. Forgot weird little guys.
Speaker 2: Oh I did forget weird little guys. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: I mean, and also it could happen here and behind
Speaker 2: the Bastards and behind the Bastards, which has a lot
Speaker 2: more about. If you want to learn more about Stalin,
Speaker 2: listen to the really old episodes of US Yeah, and
Speaker 2: listen to actual news on the even more Variety Yeah,
Speaker 2: or the some more variety.
Speaker 3: We got that news. We've got it, some of it
Speaker 3: and even more of it.
Speaker 2: I first actually heard about you, not on Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 2: but on Worst Year Ever. Really that was a good show.
Speaker 2: I really liked I know, we did.
Speaker 3: I miss that. Yeah, it was fun. It was also
Speaker 3: very hard to balance all everything.
Speaker 1: We did it during one of the hardest times in
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we burnt ourselves out. Nice, But then you guys
Speaker 3: also launched all of your other shows and lots of things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now we're even more tired.
Speaker 3: Now we're even more even more tired.
Speaker 2: And then there's also this thing where I'm like, even
Speaker 2: though I'm tired and a little bit burned out, there's
Speaker 2: also like a fire under me a little bit more
Speaker 2: where I'm like, yeah, for sure, oh I better. Like
Speaker 2: researching this stuff was like, well, I want to know
Speaker 2: about how they did this, you know, and like all
Speaker 2: of them. I mean, that's the thing I like about
Speaker 2: my show is I genuinely care about the things that
Speaker 2: I talk about, but like it's been I don't know. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: it allows me to run on fumes sometimes, is how
Speaker 2: much I care about motivate stuff.
Speaker 3: Right, It's an extra bit of motivation, but it's also
Speaker 3: feels like a necessity at times, like I've got to Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: I know what you're saying. It's hard to articulate, but yeah, And.
Speaker 2: I want to not be entirely self aggrandizing about the
Speaker 2: podcasting field here. I know that everyone is experiencing this.
Speaker 2: I want to be really clear about that.
Speaker 3: Oh, everybody has their own relationship to it, regardless of
Speaker 3: what you do for a living or yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the apocalypse, or we still have to pay
Speaker 2: rent and yeah, yep, we'll see you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Bye.
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