Speaker 1: You know who else was over with star Nicholas the
Speaker 1: Second Sophie. By the end of this episode, all of
Speaker 1: the people in Russia, the people, they made their opinions
Speaker 1: on him very clear. This is behind the bastards. The
Speaker 1: podcast that is not particularly competently handled by me, but
Speaker 1: is competently handled by my producer Sophie and our guest
Speaker 1: on this beautiful, beautiful day, Jeff May Jeff, it's me.
Speaker 1: It's me. Aren't you people sick of me yet? No? No,
Speaker 1: never get sick of you. And but you know who
Speaker 1: I am kind of sick of as like Sophie said,
Speaker 1: Nicholas the Second of Russia, Nicholas Romanov, ready for him
Speaker 1: to be dead? Huh, we're all there will be a
Speaker 1: four partner because you need to understand the position of
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks, who also were like kind of wish this
Speaker 1: guy wasn't around anymore. Yeah, Like all we did is
Speaker 1: just talk about him. Yeah, they had the living with
Speaker 1: them for a long time. Yeah. So I think maybe
Speaker 1: we can all understand why in this period after the
Speaker 1: Russo Japanese War, increasing numbers of people are like, well,
Speaker 1: we probably had to kill that guy at some point. Huh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he should no longer have hit. You know, he has
Speaker 1: a fist that I would like to shoot in basement.
Speaker 1: He is a man that they no longer should be
Speaker 1: living and definitely not the ruling large country. Unfortunately for Russia,
Speaker 1: they would not get better at picking people to lead
Speaker 1: large country. It's pretty much like it hasn't been downhill
Speaker 1: since Nicholas, because as we've established he was he was terrible,
Speaker 1: But it hasn't been uphill. It's just kind of been
Speaker 1: like this flat plane of Russian history. Russian history is
Speaker 1: a series of lateral moves. Really, it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those things we could try to like you can try
Speaker 1: to parse out who you think was like Worstan objective terms,
Speaker 1: the ussr or Zist Russia. But it's like they we're
Speaker 1: going from a good system to a bad system. They
Speaker 1: were like going from all right, I've I've eaten a
Speaker 1: lot of food out of his drunk dumpster filled with poop.
Speaker 1: Now I eat from trash. Can see if better? And
Speaker 1: no it was not. It was not much better. You know. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the joys of this episode for the listener,
Speaker 1: Jeff is going to be hearing you do a much
Speaker 1: better job of a Russian accent than I do. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I always think I'm good at stuff and
Speaker 1: then I hear it later and I'm like that sounds
Speaker 1: like shit. Yeah, that is also somethings are Nicholas the
Speaker 1: second probably could have identified with. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a lot better at running Russia than I turned out
Speaker 1: to be. I did not expect to have my head
Speaker 1: get cut up. Who knows, you know, it's you win
Speaker 1: some youel lose something. I mean, he kind of keeps
Speaker 1: his head. Um, he just doesn't get to do anything
Speaker 1: else with it past a certain point. So one thing
Speaker 1: we didn't get to last time but should probably talk
Speaker 1: about now is that is a part of his attempt
Speaker 1: to put down the rebellion. Nicholas does give Russia a
Speaker 1: constitution on October seventeenth, nineteen o five. So he cracks
Speaker 1: down brutally, kills a shipload of people, um allows programs
Speaker 1: to occur across the country. But he does be like,
Speaker 1: all right, you get your duma, you know. He he
Speaker 1: agrees that you get to have like the Russian people
Speaker 1: get to have some representation government. Now all right, all right, fine, fine,
Speaker 1: we will let you speak after I shoot thousand w
Speaker 1: you get to vote. Um, it is good trade, good
Speaker 1: trade because he's the autocrat of Russia. In the documents
Speaker 1: that like announced this constitution, it's framed as the czar
Speaker 1: imposing civil rights on the people, like I am forcing
Speaker 1: you to have rights. Now, you better believe you are
Speaker 1: going to live rights. Um. But they do get a
Speaker 1: bicameral parliament. One of the houses of parliament has like
Speaker 1: pretty full representation of the people who get to vote
Speaker 1: with kind of close to universal suffrage um. And the
Speaker 1: other house is kind of like a House of lords.
Speaker 1: Situation was a little bit less representation, but it's a
Speaker 1: lot more than people had before. Like it is it's
Speaker 1: one of those things on objective terms, Oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a big move forward towards democracy in Russia and
Speaker 1: towards like a more representative you know, social uh and
Speaker 1: political system. Um. But Nicholas doesn't really take it seriously
Speaker 1: because he doesn't think he should have had to do this,
Speaker 1: Like he hasn't been convinced this is a good idea.
Speaker 1: He just tried to bribe people with it. And he
Speaker 1: spends the rest the next several years basically anytime things
Speaker 1: happen that he doesn't like he dissolves the Duma UM,
Speaker 1: and he like makes there be elections for a new
Speaker 1: one until he gets his way, and he's kind of
Speaker 1: plotting to get rid of it from day one. He
Speaker 1: is not he isn't bought in on this as a
Speaker 1: good idea. Part of his comeback plan after the Civil
Speaker 1: War and the horrible disaster um in fucking uh with
Speaker 1: fighting Japan is to create a far right anti Semitic militia. UM.
Speaker 1: He had kind of a far right anti Semitic militia
Speaker 1: in the Black hundreds, but those were very organized. They
Speaker 1: did a lot of economic damage to He wants to
Speaker 1: do a better job, you know, he wants his proud boys. UM.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say. Yeah. Also, something that we have
Speaker 1: seen similarly, it is uncomfortable how many of the things
Speaker 1: in the story of Russia, the Czaris, Russia falling apart,
Speaker 1: are like, all right, well that's not that, that's not
Speaker 1: that unfamiliar. We had one of those like the other day.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's going on right now up in Canada. Okay.
Speaker 1: So this, this anti Semitic militia he forms is called
Speaker 1: the Union of Russian People, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: a political and respectable equivalent to the Black Hundreds. By
Speaker 1: nineteen o six, it had three hundred thousand members. In
Speaker 1: the wake of the Revolution, Nikki grew a lot more
Speaker 1: anti Semitic, as did Alexandra, his wife, the Czarina. Simon
Speaker 1: Montfior writes Nicholas's table talk was peppered with anti Jewish banter,
Speaker 1: typical of many a European aristocrat of this era telling
Speaker 1: his mother how a courtier amused us very much with
Speaker 1: funny Jewish stories, wonderfully good at imitating Jews, and even
Speaker 1: his face suddenly looks Jewish. That's pretty cringe. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a that's one of those things where you're like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, this is this is even beyond it's
Speaker 1: the times. Yeah, we're like, yo's the time. But I
Speaker 1: think even at this time people would be like, man,
Speaker 1: it's not no, he is and like again his he
Speaker 1: A lot of his ministers are repeatedly like the the craze,
Speaker 1: the sex crazed rapist monk is like cool it with
Speaker 1: the anti semitism. Maybe calm down a little bit. When
Speaker 1: rest Boutin is like sitting you down, we need to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the things you're saying. People are
Speaker 1: starting to talk, you will not look um. Alexandra regularly
Speaker 1: would talk about quote rotten vicious jews um. After like
Speaker 1: someone would say the name of someone which sounded like
Speaker 1: they might be Jewish, um, she would like call out whenever,
Speaker 1: like so she would have all these arguments with her
Speaker 1: husband about like the ministers say to do this, and
Speaker 1: she doesn't like it because the ministers were usually saying,
Speaker 1: you need to give a little more power to the people,
Speaker 1: you need to not be so anti semitic, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: and Alexander would be like, no, funk that you've got
Speaker 1: to be powerful. Who said that? And he'll say someone's
Speaker 1: name and she'll be like, oh, that's gotta be at
Speaker 1: jew um, Like she's that kind of person. She sucks
Speaker 1: too again Yeah, I was going to say, I think
Speaker 1: you just say she sucks, yeah, because of her her
Speaker 1: ending is so tragic and her children absolutely did not
Speaker 1: deserve to be gunned down like that. Because of how
Speaker 1: sad the end is. She gets this kind of rap
Speaker 1: as being like maybe a little bit histrionic, but like
Speaker 1: basically a sympathetic person and like she's trashed, terrible person.
Speaker 1: She's a really really bad human being. She's a bastard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she sucks really bad. Um. Yeah, and racism was kind
Speaker 1: of it was not this is not as we're talking about.
Speaker 1: This is not in line with things because Nicholas Jewish
Speaker 1: people are. This isn't just like he learned some slurs
Speaker 1: and like he goes back to some some jokes that
Speaker 1: are kind of racy because he doesn't really think about it.
Speaker 1: Jewish people represent modernity to him, um, and that's the
Speaker 1: thing he hates more than anything, because modernity is the
Speaker 1: enemy of czarist power. Um. He saw he would stay
Speaker 1: say stuff like the Englishman is a yid um like,
Speaker 1: which is a slur against Jewish people, like to say that,
Speaker 1: like yeah, really fucked up. And the reason he's saying
Speaker 1: that is like, well, they're modern and they're successful and
Speaker 1: they're they've they've they're not an autar like a monarchist
Speaker 1: state in the same way that I am. Like people
Speaker 1: have power, like they've they have modernized with the times
Speaker 1: and mechanized and like that's gotta be Jewish influence because
Speaker 1: that's the only reason people wouldn't want to live as
Speaker 1: literal slaves to his are Um, he's just like out
Speaker 1: of his mind, kind of which is what being a
Speaker 1: king does to you. I think I was going to
Speaker 1: go on kind of rude, Yeah, kind of, it's kind
Speaker 1: of rude in December of nineteen o five and anti
Speaker 1: Semitic forgery. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which
Speaker 1: we have done several episodes about bad book. I would
Speaker 1: I would say, Um, this gets published by the Petersburg
Speaker 1: Military District Press, probably under the orders of Nikolasha, that
Speaker 1: guy who cut his dog in half. Um and wit
Speaker 1: who's his prime minister. There's as prime minister discovers that
Speaker 1: the Interior Ministry is printing up the Protocols of the
Speaker 1: Elders of Zion and like sending them out all throughout
Speaker 1: nineteen o five and nineteen at late nineteen and nineteen
Speaker 1: o six during these programs, and when he reports this
Speaker 1: to Nicholas writes quote, his Majesty was silent and appeared
Speaker 1: familiar with all the details. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who will allege that the Protocols of the Elders
Speaker 1: of Zion, which have a big role in the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of like all of the programs that
Speaker 1: occur in Russia during the Russian civil war was deliberately
Speaker 1: directed by the art that he like approved it. It
Speaker 1: was definitely again there's a lot of kind of debate
Speaker 1: over the exact origin of it, but it was definitely
Speaker 1: spread by his secret police um. In The Last Czar,
Speaker 1: author Edward Radzinski cites several people close to Nicholas the
Speaker 1: Second who claimed that he did not create He did
Speaker 1: not order the creation of the protocols, and he didn't
Speaker 1: believe they were real. They were the result of a
Speaker 1: secret police conspiracy within Russia. This like right wing conspiracy
Speaker 1: that acted under the tsars no os Um. And in
Speaker 1: this telling of events, this conspiracy was actually angry at
Speaker 1: Nicholas because he didn't buy into the protocols of the
Speaker 1: Elders of zion Um and he refused to back as
Speaker 1: much violence as they wanted. I think this is kind
Speaker 1: of a lie, and I'll tell you why. Because when
Speaker 1: Nicholas gets kicked out of office and he's sitting it
Speaker 1: alone in like a safe house with his family, one
Speaker 1: of the things he reads his daughters and son is
Speaker 1: the protocols of the Elders of zion Um. So even
Speaker 1: if he didn't sign off on it, it's not exactly
Speaker 1: like he's like, yeah, don't listen to it. I will
Speaker 1: say I don't think he signed off on it specifically,
Speaker 1: and I don't think he ordered its creation. And the
Speaker 1: reason why is because that was a very competent job
Speaker 1: that did a lot of damage and was successful, and
Speaker 1: I don't think Nicholas could have been a part of
Speaker 1: something successful. Is that a deleted scene from Anesthesia? Yeah,
Speaker 1: where he helps spread the protoct where his his soldiers
Speaker 1: spread the protocols of the elders of his zion to
Speaker 1: cartoon bat Yeah where where while rest butan is like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, it kind of seems like a
Speaker 1: little like that might buy you a NYS. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: bad guy breaks the fourth wall. We don't actually believe
Speaker 1: these Disney if it was a Disney movie instead of uh,
Speaker 1: I forget the company. I thought it was Disney until
Speaker 1: this exact second. Yeah, many people do. But if it
Speaker 1: was a Disney movie, that scene would have been in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um yes, and that would have been most of the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: resputing would have been the villain, but for a different reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the That would have been the thesis statement of
Speaker 1: the movies. Um. So, by the end of nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: the royal couple had already met with rescput and twice
Speaker 1: he gets introduced by nikolasha Um and they meet him
Speaker 1: the first couple of times at like functions with other nobles,
Speaker 1: because again he's kind of this like cult leaders slash curiosity.
Speaker 1: So if you're having a party, yeah, bring Resputant because
Speaker 1: he's he's both this healer and this mystic, but he's
Speaker 1: also a peasant um and noble people are like fast
Speaker 1: needed by peasants. There's a lot of like idolization of
Speaker 1: of of peasants. There's this ideal of the peasants is
Speaker 1: like this noble like salt of the earth, the soul
Speaker 1: of Russia, and they have this sacred bond with the Romanovs,
Speaker 1: that this this beautiful and like almost religious thing that
Speaker 1: the Romanovs believe in, that they have this like psychic
Speaker 1: connection to the peasantry, and all of the nobles feel
Speaker 1: this way. It's not that different from how a lot
Speaker 1: of multimillionaire conservative thought leaders like Ben Shapiro will like
Speaker 1: pose with their f one fifties and cowboy hats, even
Speaker 1: though it's like Ben, you've never needed a truck, You've
Speaker 1: never needed a truck. Not once in your life. Are
Speaker 1: you helping move? Yeah, And you've never needed a hat.
Speaker 1: You don't go outside that often. And also that hat
Speaker 1: looks like it's a twenty gallon hat on your head.
Speaker 1: But you know it's like Ronald Reagan going to his
Speaker 1: ranch or George Bush going to and like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: chop some firewood, you know, I'm gonna put up a
Speaker 1: fence or whatever. Like it's I will say this. At
Speaker 1: least with Bush, he grew up ranching. He had more
Speaker 1: experience with it than but a lot of these guys do.
Speaker 1: And there's this idea that like this connects me to
Speaker 1: the regular people. And it's kind of like how nowadays,
Speaker 1: if you're kind of a right wing political leader, you're
Speaker 1: gonna want a lot of appearances where you're gonna like
Speaker 1: sit down with farmers and truckers and you can be
Speaker 1: like seen with them or like a minor blue collar
Speaker 1: It's it's blue collar tokenism, is what it is. And
Speaker 1: there's a peasant tokenism within the upper crap class in Russia.
Speaker 1: But also they're all too scared to meet with real
Speaker 1: peasants because sometimes peasants like revolt and stuff and they're gross.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, for whatever reason, obviously occasionally I
Speaker 1: don't go to go to a bar in any in
Speaker 1: your hometown. Yeah. Just go to any bar, not the
Speaker 1: night before Thanksgiving in your hometown and just take a
Speaker 1: look around. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's that's what these people
Speaker 1: don't want to do. So they want that connection with
Speaker 1: the essence, but they don't want to like sit at
Speaker 1: a sports bar at eleven thirty on November five and
Speaker 1: like here the kinds of things people say at sports bars.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, I've been I've gone in my
Speaker 1: fair share of Boston bars to watch like Patriots games
Speaker 1: or something and been like I'm sorry, what was that?
Speaker 1: You think we've heard some anti semitism today, dude, the
Speaker 1: amount of times you can hear like the phrase like
Speaker 1: one of the good ones, like well, I'm sorry, what
Speaker 1: was that? So this is I mean, Resputant is kind
Speaker 1: of this token peasant who the nobles. He shows up
Speaker 1: at these and that, and that's how the Romanovs meet him,
Speaker 1: is like look at this. He's both this mystic and
Speaker 1: this healer, and he's also this peasant who represents this
Speaker 1: this sacred connection that we we Romanovs justify our rule
Speaker 1: by um. So they meet him a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but the first really close meeting they have is in
Speaker 1: October of nineteen o six when Resputant telegrams them. So
Speaker 1: you can tell already even before he's in good with
Speaker 1: the family, he's he's savvy enough and is like made
Speaker 1: enough of a connection at these parties that like he
Speaker 1: can telegram this arena directly. It's like having a cell
Speaker 1: phone in the eighties, Yeah, exactly, Like what do you do?
Speaker 1: If Resputin had been in the eighties, he would have
Speaker 1: had a massive car phone and he would have done
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess his body weight and cocaine every forty
Speaker 1: eight hours. He would have been an entire season of
Speaker 1: Miami Vice. Yeah, and it would have he would have
Speaker 1: died in a shootout with somebody. Um yeah, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a zero percent chance he does not die in a
Speaker 1: swimming pool, like he absolutely machine gunned by the whichever
Speaker 1: cartel isn't sponsoring us. Um yeah, So rest Mutant telegrams
Speaker 1: the Zarnz arena and says like, Hey, I'm coming into
Speaker 1: town and I have a sacred icon for you. Right. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a picture of a saint in
Speaker 1: like precious metals and stuff icons generally in the Orthodox religion,
Speaker 1: or just shitty paintings because you weren't supposed to make anything.
Speaker 1: Look yeah, yeah, yes, that would be that would be idolatry.
Speaker 1: He's got this shitty painting. He wants to give it
Speaker 1: to them, um, and they're like okay, so they agree
Speaker 1: to see him. And when he arrives, it just so
Speaker 1: happens that Alexei has, like the czar son has like
Speaker 1: hurt himself and his bleeding. And this happens a bunch
Speaker 1: like he'll he'll like walk into a door knob or
Speaker 1: some ship and then he'll bleed for seventeen days. You
Speaker 1: see him like folding up his pocket knife and putting
Speaker 1: it away. Something happened. So Resputon comes in and he
Speaker 1: sees that Alexei's bleeding um, and he sees how scared
Speaker 1: the Romanovs are for their son, uh. And he talks
Speaker 1: with them for more than an hour and they take
Speaker 1: him into the nursery to pray over Alexei. And this visit,
Speaker 1: everything he says during it leaves this profound impression on
Speaker 1: the r and Zarny they find him very comforting, and
Speaker 1: from this moment on, Restputant is increasingly difficult to separate
Speaker 1: from the royal family. The Czar will say to his ministers,
Speaker 1: who get disturbed by the fact that, like Number one,
Speaker 1: it's a state secret that their son has hemophelia. People
Speaker 1: can't know that. But this, this dude who just like
Speaker 1: who will He'll spend a day with the royal family
Speaker 1: and then he'll go drinking and whoring in St. Petersburg
Speaker 1: and his ministers will be like, this is a problem.
Speaker 1: You gotta you gotta get rid of this guy, and
Speaker 1: these are will be like, look, I will deal with
Speaker 1: like any number of outrages caused by this dude doing
Speaker 1: whatever he wants to do if he can stop one
Speaker 1: like hysterical fit that my wife has. I mean, who
Speaker 1: among us? Am I right? I mean? What? Seriously? Like?
Speaker 1: I not even like I have. I have both been
Speaker 1: the person in a relationship with fucking PTSD and been
Speaker 1: in a relationship with somebody with PTSD. And man, if
Speaker 1: if there was just a dude I could call and
Speaker 1: he would stop one or both of us from losing
Speaker 1: our minds for the better part of a day. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I probably would have told that dude some ship, you know,
Speaker 1: like yeah, man, I mean the the wife whisper and
Speaker 1: just fix the problem. It's both because it's not just
Speaker 1: he's able to calm down to the tsar arena. I
Speaker 1: think he is able to calm down the tsar. Again.
Speaker 1: These are for all their faults. People who really love
Speaker 1: their kid, and their kid is like they have their
Speaker 1: traumatized by this, like being your son several times a
Speaker 1: year nearly bleed to death, Like is a trauma that's
Speaker 1: going to like damage you. And it's it's also should
Speaker 1: be reminded that reciput and is is charming. Yeah he's
Speaker 1: good at this. Yeah yeah, like you know, he's got
Speaker 1: a silver tongue. There's a reason he finds himself in
Speaker 1: the situations he is. He's smart, he's charming. He fuss
Speaker 1: that crazy and it's it's also like people shouldn't take
Speaker 1: this he is. I think he is a grifter. I
Speaker 1: think he knows there's an extent to which he's a
Speaker 1: con man um. But I also think he recognizes that, like, well,
Speaker 1: sometimes it is a good thing just to be able
Speaker 1: to calm people down when they're freaking out, especially like
Speaker 1: sick and scared children and like their moms. And I
Speaker 1: can see how this guy could be like, well, actually
Speaker 1: I'm doing a good thing here, Like these people are
Speaker 1: are need me um, and they kind of do. Like
Speaker 1: that's the thing he's not. He is a grifter. He's
Speaker 1: not grifting them. They're really getting value out of this.
Speaker 1: He is in a lot of ways. A lot of
Speaker 1: people say, for this arena, he's like a therapist um,
Speaker 1: which don't exist at that point in time. And that's
Speaker 1: the closest thing. Yeah, is the Russian the turn of
Speaker 1: the century version of Ms. Cleo. Yeah, And he's he's also,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting, not really that bad an influence on
Speaker 1: the Czar and Zarina. He will later on give them
Speaker 1: some really stupid advice, but like he's they the Czar
Speaker 1: comes up with worse advice on his own for himself,
Speaker 1: you know, Like this is not a man who was
Speaker 1: making great decisions consistently before Rasputin. So one of the
Speaker 1: things he's able to do is he's really able to
Speaker 1: like calm down Alexei. They noticed that Alexei seems to
Speaker 1: recover more quickly um from his bleeding episodes when Rasputin
Speaker 1: is around Um and he's he's he's great with the
Speaker 1: daughters to like, they all love him, they'll talk to him,
Speaker 1: they can fight in him. He brings them gifts. Um
Speaker 1: Montfior Sebastia or Simon Montfior notes that Grigory Resputin had
Speaker 1: a way of quote making even Tzars feel they were
Speaker 1: privileged to be in his company. And from what I
Speaker 1: can tell, the way he did this with Nicholas was
Speaker 1: by playing on the fact that the Romanovs have this
Speaker 1: belief in like the sacred union of Czar and the peasants.
Speaker 1: This is the center of Nikki's concept of the universe.
Speaker 1: The fact that Um like this is the center of
Speaker 1: Nikki's concept of the universe, that he has this bond
Speaker 1: with the peasants, but also the government that he runs
Speaker 1: spends billions a year making sure that he's never in
Speaker 1: direct contact with the peasants. So getting to spend time
Speaker 1: with rest mutant, who he would regularly call a real
Speaker 1: Russian peasant, that's how he would introduce him to other
Speaker 1: rich people was like he said, like he's a transformer
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, yeah, we got a real peasant here. Um.
Speaker 1: This is intoxicating to him because because rest mutants like,
Speaker 1: of course I have a mystical connection with you, mis
Speaker 1: are of course like I and every other peasant, we
Speaker 1: really love you like and that's that's what Nicholas wants
Speaker 1: to hear. He doesn't want to feel like, well, I
Speaker 1: just had to kill fifteen thousand people to secure my reign.
Speaker 1: He wants to hear that like, no, no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: a peasant and trust me, all the peasants love your ass. Man. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you didn't. You haven't been at the peasant meetings because
Speaker 1: you know, obviously you can't be you twenty for seven bro.
Speaker 1: I mean we're there's fan clubs, we have merch there's
Speaker 1: there's people have you on t shirts? Oh yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's cool. Um. So, he's he's both
Speaker 1: able to be like this living embodiment of the connection
Speaker 1: there has to the peasants of Russia, and he's also
Speaker 1: able to convince Thesar that he has special powers given
Speaker 1: to him by God which are going to save the
Speaker 1: Czar's air. Um. So, I think Nikki felt on some
Speaker 1: level that like God had sent this magical peasant to
Speaker 1: him to like as a reward for killing all those
Speaker 1: people kind of Um, you get that feeling. And you
Speaker 1: know who else will reward you for killing people? Jeff,
Speaker 1: some very interesting sponsors. And guess that's right, all of
Speaker 1: our sponsors, Sophie. What yeah, um, you know in particular, Uh,
Speaker 1: just send him proof of of the crime and they
Speaker 1: will send you a free meal box, a free free
Speaker 1: William refrigerator perry with enough flag points. Yeah that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so get get on down to dot com and
Speaker 1: also commit murder. We're back sated. Yeah, you've all, you've
Speaker 1: all killed one person and gotten your female box. Have
Speaker 1: you slaked your thirst for blood? That? One of the
Speaker 1: things that all behind the Bastards fans know is that
Speaker 1: when you draw your machete, you can't sheathe it again
Speaker 1: until it's tasted the blood of an enemy whose death
Speaker 1: gets you a meal box from. I mean, how else
Speaker 1: are we gonna eat? How else we're gonna eat? Well, cannibalism.
Speaker 1: But as Resputant grew closer to the Royals, their ministers
Speaker 1: and the family grew to hate him. Um so like
Speaker 1: the other Romanovs, like the cousins and whatnot, his uncles
Speaker 1: and ship they are, they don't like this guy because
Speaker 1: like they keep getting edged out by him. The ministers
Speaker 1: don't like Rasputin because they're like, he's not listening to us,
Speaker 1: He's just listening to this this dude who, by the way,
Speaker 1: smells horrible and fox all their wives, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: that's the rest. I don't pay that. I'm gonna fuck
Speaker 1: all your wives. Yeah, no, we've seen that guy. You've
Speaker 1: seen We've seen him in college. He had to truly,
Speaker 1: he played Djurido and he fucked everybody's wives. Um, and
Speaker 1: that's that's Rasputin. So there's a lot of reasons he's
Speaker 1: unpopular with the people around the romanovs um and his
Speaker 1: Despite all this, his council becomes increasingly influential. Um. He's
Speaker 1: generally anti war, probably because he's a pretty smart guy
Speaker 1: and he recognizes, like, I got a good thing going here.
Speaker 1: This dude's not good at anything. If he gets into
Speaker 1: a war, he might wind up getting overthrown. And then
Speaker 1: where's Rasputin gonna be? Also, Resputen lover or not a fighter?
Speaker 1: I think we've estoundished. Definitely a lover, not a fighter,
Speaker 1: although I gotta say, based on some of the stories,
Speaker 1: probably would have been a good boxer. He could take hits.
Speaker 1: I feel I feel like that very man's got a
Speaker 1: strong chin. Yeah, the real fight of the century would
Speaker 1: have been Grigory Resputant and Joe Frasier, Right, are just
Speaker 1: the They just inherited that Russian steel jaw. Um so
Speaker 1: he uh. Yeah, I should note something here, probably about
Speaker 1: the kind of parents that Nicholas and Alexandra were. They
Speaker 1: get a lot of credit historically because again they did
Speaker 1: love their kids. Um. They put their kids sometimes before
Speaker 1: the lives of millions and millions of Russians. Um. But
Speaker 1: if you're and so, yeah, if you are rating totalitarian
Speaker 1: dictators as parents, he's probably top of the list. He's
Speaker 1: definitely a better father than Saddam, better father than Stalin, um,
Speaker 1: better father than Castro, better father than you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but char Alissad's probably a bad father. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean his one of his sons repeatedly murdered people
Speaker 1: at parties, would like machine gun the women dancers and
Speaker 1: stuff during like drunken bachan als. That's not great parenting.
Speaker 1: Was that was? Or that was? I think I think
Speaker 1: that was? Yeah, I get him mixed up. Sometimes. My friend,
Speaker 1: my friend was in the marines, and he sent back
Speaker 1: this photo of him holding like a gold ak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was just like, we went into the pells,
Speaker 1: look what we got. There were a lot of those
Speaker 1: around at the time. Yeah, they sure were. Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: they they're probably better parents than most dictators, but he
Speaker 1: and his wife were not great parents. Uh. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to read a quote from the Romanovs that I
Speaker 1: think makes that clear. The Empress concentrated on baby sweet Alexei,
Speaker 1: who was escorted by two Cossack bodyguards at all times,
Speaker 1: while she treated her daughters, known by the collective acronym
Speaker 1: O t m A or OTMA for Oga, Tatiana, Maria
Speaker 1: and Anastasia as a single entity, dressing them in identical
Speaker 1: clothes or when the older two could no longer wear
Speaker 1: youthful dresses, in pairs the big two and little to
Speaker 1: The girls shared rooms and twos slept on hard beds
Speaker 1: and suffered cold baths every morning, so they grew up
Speaker 1: without a trace of hatur. Their only luxury was a
Speaker 1: single pearl and diamond for their birthday, and each had
Speaker 1: their own favorite coutier sent The family, especially the girls,
Speaker 1: embraced photography, taking thousands of family shots with their box
Speaker 1: brownie cameras. Anastasia even pioneered the selfie sitting on a
Speaker 1: mirror on a chair before a mirror, holding a camera
Speaker 1: at her waist. So that's kind of weird, right, the
Speaker 1: it seems unnecessary. Yeah, and to give them a shitty
Speaker 1: it's like a shitty one unit. Yeah. Man. Cold baths, Yeah,
Speaker 1: cold baths, which I don't know that the czar and
Speaker 1: Czarina are taking. Um. And just also well, all of
Speaker 1: the sun is his own person. All of our daughters
Speaker 1: are collectively one child autma. That's a little messed up.
Speaker 1: That is. That is especially because you could make it mote. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's Alexei. As he grows up becomes kind of
Speaker 1: there's some quotes that he's kind of he's pretty spoiled.
Speaker 1: He doesn't sound like a pleasant kid to be around.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into detail on that because
Speaker 1: he is a small child who's sick his whole life
Speaker 1: and then gets murdered. So I don't really want to
Speaker 1: like dunk on Alexei Romanov. That kind of seems fucked up,
Speaker 1: um because he had a bad enough run of it.
Speaker 1: But I don't think they're very good parents. I just
Speaker 1: think they're not abusive parents. Um, not to everyone, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean to the people. Not they are, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just kind of like weird and sort of shitty
Speaker 1: to their daughters, but not in like a mean way.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's it's uncomfortable to me. Referring to
Speaker 1: four girls as a single person. Um to save time
Speaker 1: is kind of not great. I'm emblematic of a future problem. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that didn't get to happen because Bolsheviks had access to handguns.
Speaker 1: But um it probably I don't know, there probably would
Speaker 1: have been some fascinating therapy sessions if these people had
Speaker 1: all like gotten to live out their lives. So the
Speaker 1: Romanov girls were as much as as possible, pretty normal
Speaker 1: kids for their socioeconomic status. Alexei didn't really get that
Speaker 1: chance because again, he's dying most of his childhood. He's
Speaker 1: gonna be in bubble wrap. Yeah, like anything could do it,
Speaker 1: Like he could fun again, he could like walk into
Speaker 1: a door knob and that could be the end of him. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a rough childhood for little Alexei, which
Speaker 1: is why we're not going to dunk on him too
Speaker 1: much for growing up kind of spoiled. It would be
Speaker 1: hard not to spoil your son if he was always
Speaker 1: on death store um. Yeah. And also the rightful and
Speaker 1: to a sixth of the world's land mass. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: A big part of resputants appeal is that he was
Speaker 1: able to convince Nicholas the Second that Alexei was going
Speaker 1: to live long and inherit the realm. He would say
Speaker 1: stuff like oh yeah, ohya was what respute and called
Speaker 1: Alexei will triumph because he's not an ordinary earthly being.
Speaker 1: There's never been such a zar. The look in his
Speaker 1: eyes is similar to Peter the greats. I mean, Peter
Speaker 1: the Great was dead and Alexei was half dead, so
Speaker 1: I guess that's part of it. No, this it's so hard,
Speaker 1: Like every there were there's obsession with Peter the Great.
Speaker 1: You either loved him or hate him. Yeah, And then
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the night. It's the thing that you
Speaker 1: can if you're if you're trying to get like these
Speaker 1: are drunk on the possibility of the future. You try
Speaker 1: to convince him that his son is going to be
Speaker 1: a new Peter the Great, because then he'll that Peter
Speaker 1: the Great was a strong tsar and he also didn't
Speaker 1: die at age thirteen or whatever. Um it was a giant.
Speaker 1: He was a big man. Um Alexei was not ever
Speaker 1: going to be a big man. UM boiler alert. He
Speaker 1: was never going to end up a man. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is. That is one of our classic Vladimir
Speaker 1: ilioch Lennon spoilers. Um so ras mutant was also capable
Speaker 1: of calming down the increasingly anxiety riddled, riddled hypochondriacts arena.
Speaker 1: Nicholas needed this because in nineteen oh seven there's another
Speaker 1: attempt at overthrowing his government. Now this one occurs through
Speaker 1: the Douma UM and it's it's an attempt to democratically
Speaker 1: take more power for the people from the czar. We
Speaker 1: might call this the people of Russia being like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we should have an absolute ruler anymore, because it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to work very well. Let's try and change
Speaker 1: this a little bit. But Nikolai, yeah, yeah that. Nicholas
Speaker 1: dissolves the government, He arrests all of the Socialist elected
Speaker 1: leaders he can get his hands on. Um, he destroys
Speaker 1: the Social Democratic Party through purges. Now Nicholas is Prime
Speaker 1: Minister at the time. A guy named Stolypin begs him
Speaker 1: to allow more democratic reforms and lift restrictions placed upon
Speaker 1: the Jews. Um. Stolypin is the guy who's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know when the Tsar is ranting about Jews being
Speaker 1: behind the over the revolution, you know, one day Stolypin's like, well,
Speaker 1: I think if I was Jewish and had to live
Speaker 1: under your government, I would be throwing bombs at your men.
Speaker 1: To um, He's he's one of these occasional rational humans
Speaker 1: who wanders into the Tsar's orbit. Yeah, then just just
Speaker 1: drops a little piece of information, but it's just for
Speaker 1: the wrong century. Yeah, it's not going to get through
Speaker 1: the Tsar's head. Now is not the time? Yeah, Stolypin
Speaker 1: season and the revolution coming, and again he's kind of
Speaker 1: trying to head it off. He does. He's rational enough
Speaker 1: to be like, well, the Tsar is not going to
Speaker 1: wind up, is not going to be able to be
Speaker 1: the absolute ruler fresher forever. But we can probably work
Speaker 1: out a situation where he has some power and his
Speaker 1: family keeps their wealth and influence and like doesn't get
Speaker 1: murdered in abasement. But Nikki is not going to have
Speaker 1: that ship. Uh Nicholas tells on my watch, keep my
Speaker 1: family alive, not if I'm in Judge NICKI tells Stolypin quote,
Speaker 1: an inner voice keeps insisting more and more that I
Speaker 1: don't take this decision. So far, my conscience has not
Speaker 1: deceived me. I intend to follow its dictates. The heart
Speaker 1: of the czar is in God's hands, so be it.
Speaker 1: So he's saying it's pronounced Soviet. Yeah, that's what's coming.
Speaker 1: Was Soviet. Um. Yeah, he's like, he's like, me, keep
Speaker 1: my watch, not on my watch. And he's also saying
Speaker 1: that like, because I don't want to give up power,
Speaker 1: and because God put me here, it means God doesn't
Speaker 1: want me to give up power, which some could call
Speaker 1: circular logic. Yeah, that is that is right there. That's
Speaker 1: that's royalty one on one. Yeah. They do that ship.
Speaker 1: They pull that ship off all the time. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: get magna carted because of it, and sometimes you don't. Yep,
Speaker 1: that is that is the way it works. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: feel like a magna carta. Sometimes you feel like having
Speaker 1: your family get massacred in the basement because you've got
Speaker 1: everyone roped into World War One, which is what we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about. Oops. So um. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: is h Nicholas, you could. It would probably be fair
Speaker 1: to say Nicholas does not have as much guilt in
Speaker 1: starting World War One as Kaiser Wilhelm Um, who's probably
Speaker 1: the one dude who gets the most blame. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean you could. Obviously there's history involved
Speaker 1: in that, but I mean you can. That's all the
Speaker 1: way back to the Franco for sure. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things Blaming any individual ruler is almost like because
Speaker 1: they're all locked into these systems, these systems of alliances
Speaker 1: and grievances and like promises to back one another up.
Speaker 1: That like everyone was going to so mad that they
Speaker 1: got their dicks pushed in the dirt. And then to
Speaker 1: then have the treaty the Palace of Versailly where they
Speaker 1: signed the armistice, the treaty, like that's so insulting that
Speaker 1: like you you know that there's gonna I mean they
Speaker 1: literally called it, yeah, exactly, And it's one of those things,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot to say about like the the
Speaker 1: decisions these guys made that made World War One happen,
Speaker 1: but like if it had been a totally different set
Speaker 1: of rulers could have happened ten years earlier. Ten years later,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, I don't know that if it's
Speaker 1: fair to say it was. It had to happen because
Speaker 1: they did pull their fat out of the fire A
Speaker 1: bunch of times before this. There's like ship in nineteen
Speaker 1: o nineteen o nine or whatever, like a bunch of
Speaker 1: different things. Times this almost happens, Like there's this um
Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight, there's this um like um Nicholas
Speaker 1: helps arrange a revision of this treaty UM with Austria
Speaker 1: that creates fheres of influence over the Balkans. So like
Speaker 1: Austria gets to be influential over this because the Balkans
Speaker 1: have been controlled by the Ottomans for a while, right um,
Speaker 1: and they've kind of lost control in this period, and
Speaker 1: like who's gonna wind up in charge your different chunks
Speaker 1: of the Balkans? Is this big, this thing that keeps
Speaker 1: threatening to cause a giant European war. So Nikki makes
Speaker 1: this like treaty with the Austrians that splits up influence
Speaker 1: over the Balkans um. And then there's this whole conflict
Speaker 1: breaks out with the Serbs, who the Czar considers to
Speaker 1: be basically Russians and the Serbs want to take Bosnia,
Speaker 1: and the Austrians are like, well, no, this is like
Speaker 1: part of our sphere of influence and like we don't
Speaker 1: want you to do that. And so basically, this deal
Speaker 1: that Nicholas has made over the Balkans with Austria goes
Speaker 1: sour almost immediately, and Austria and Russia very nearly go
Speaker 1: to war in nineteen o eight, which would have been
Speaker 1: a World War One situation. All of those alliances were
Speaker 1: still in place. So it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: like they're right up to the shooting before this kind
Speaker 1: of thing gets pulled off. Yeah, they're playing Jenga, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Gets at some point in time the tower is going
Speaker 1: to go down. It's just when's it going to go? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And the reason, the big reason why it doesn't go
Speaker 1: this time is that Russia is in the process of
Speaker 1: rearming and reorganizing its military after the revolution, and Nikki's
Speaker 1: advisors are like, basically like, we don't we don't have
Speaker 1: the toys you want. We just got our asses kicked. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't want to get into a European war right now,
Speaker 1: we couldn't handle Japan. Like give us some give us
Speaker 1: some time. We couldn't hear we couldn't handle one island
Speaker 1: that we were racist about. Yeah, we couldn't handle one
Speaker 1: island we were racist about. Who had to ship troops
Speaker 1: in um from overseas, and and you want to start
Speaker 1: a war with all of Europe, Like, no, that's not
Speaker 1: gonna work out, buddy, And Nicholas does take the good
Speaker 1: advice uh in this in this time they backed down,
Speaker 1: but there's this understanding that like, well, it's gonna happen. Eventually,
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen. Um. So some things do go better
Speaker 1: for Nikki. In the years leading up to the war.
Speaker 1: He starts to appoint some more competent ministers, a guy
Speaker 1: named Sukomlinov who arms the military and reorganizes it and
Speaker 1: does get it into much better shape. Russia starts to
Speaker 1: get some more money. Um, they like pay for this
Speaker 1: rearming because they have this this run of really good
Speaker 1: harvests and this railway system that had been one of
Speaker 1: the few good things that Nicholas and his dad put
Speaker 1: through was they they massively expanded the railways in Russia.
Speaker 1: And in this period right after the Russo Japanese War,
Speaker 1: that starts to bring up a bunch of money. Um,
Speaker 1: So things are going better domestically for Nikki at this period,
Speaker 1: but there's also constant scandals with rasputant Um letters between
Speaker 1: he and the Czar, and he and one of his
Speaker 1: daughter's leak, and particularly the letters with Resputin and Alexandra.
Speaker 1: They really seem sexual. They're like talking about like I
Speaker 1: went to lay my head on you. I can't wait
Speaker 1: until you're back. And that's obviously like the rumor seems
Speaker 1: mildly scandalous. Yeah, and it's unlikely. I don't like Rasputint
Speaker 1: fucked damn near everybody. But he was also pretty smart,
Speaker 1: and I think he would know like, well, that's the
Speaker 1: one thing you don't want to do, like never put
Speaker 1: it in writing. No, Well, yeah, I don't want Well
Speaker 1: he did put it, I mean he yeah, he wrote
Speaker 1: letters to her, But I don't think he would have
Speaker 1: liked that's like too much of a risk to have
Speaker 1: sex with the Zarna, because that's gonna piste off the zar.
Speaker 1: You can keep Tisar going forever and you can fuck
Speaker 1: everybody else's wife, but if you suck the Zarina also,
Speaker 1: what if she gets angry at you? Right, you've got
Speaker 1: this grift going. You don't want to mess that up
Speaker 1: with starting a relationship. Um. I don't think he's that dumb.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't believe that that resputant and the
Speaker 1: Tzarrena actually did anything, but a lot of people believe
Speaker 1: they do in this period. Yeah, I mean yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's it's like it it's just kind of like fuels
Speaker 1: the anti Esarist you know movement that like okay, now,
Speaker 1: like this this monk is in and and who knows
Speaker 1: what kind of decisions the Romanovs are making because the
Speaker 1: Tsars being concolded by this monk and um, his wife's German.
Speaker 1: We don't like that either, YadA YadA, YadA. Um. And
Speaker 1: well all this is going on. Um, So he gets Sputin,
Speaker 1: gets kicked out for a while, right like these letters leak,
Speaker 1: and the Czar does send him away um because he
Speaker 1: he gets embarrassed by this. Um. But then in late
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, Alexei gets sick again and it's serious enough
Speaker 1: that the priests do last rites on the little boy,
Speaker 1: like they really think he's right about to die. Um.
Speaker 1: So the Zarns are gonna get desperate and they telegram
Speaker 1: rest mutant and he responds saying the little one will
Speaker 1: not die and advises them not to let the doctors
Speaker 1: bother Alexei too much. Um, and Alexei recovers and so
Speaker 1: obviously that brings rest muting back into the family, right,
Speaker 1: he just says, and he's get back in here. You
Speaker 1: Harry's son of a bit. He does seem to have
Speaker 1: an ability to like heal this kid like people at
Speaker 1: the time. I can't really explain it. There's a number
Speaker 1: of theories. Probably the most likely is that he would
Speaker 1: tell them not to send the doctors back in, and
Speaker 1: the doctors were prescribing Alexei blood thinners without knowing what
Speaker 1: they were doing. And that's not good for if your
Speaker 1: blood doesn't clot, you don't want blood vennings. You want
Speaker 1: to blood thicker, Yeah, you want to thick it. You
Speaker 1: want to put some like pepped in up in that,
Speaker 1: you know, really really thicken that blood up, a little bit,
Speaker 1: pour a little bit of corn starch in it, you know, um,
Speaker 1: that kid of cornstarch ivy. That'll fix him. But so
Speaker 1: there's a theory that like maybe all it's as simple
Speaker 1: as like resputant doesn't trust doctors and the doctors are
Speaker 1: not good at what they're doing in this period, and
Speaker 1: so keeping the doctor's away helps him recover. It's possible,
Speaker 1: you know what, to help An apple a day. An
Speaker 1: apple a day, is that a blood thicker that is?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how many apples he eats.
Speaker 1: He does eat a lot of guava jam that's brought
Speaker 1: by John Hercules, friend, John Hercules coming back with the
Speaker 1: guava jam to paste up those wounds. Yeah, it's fucking amazing. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: So in nineteen fourteen, things are broadly speaking doing better
Speaker 1: for Nicholas the second. The economy of Russias in great shape.
Speaker 1: The military has reformed itself to a significant degree. It's
Speaker 1: been going to gym. He had been going to the gym.
Speaker 1: You know, he's lost some weight's little less depressed. He
Speaker 1: got a he got a calm subscription too, So he's
Speaker 1: on like a good level. Yeah. Yeah, he started taking
Speaker 1: CBD just like at night. But it's really helped with
Speaker 1: his sleep patterns. Um. He's just in a good He's
Speaker 1: just in a good place. Um. And it's actually like
Speaker 1: this is a period of time in which it kind
Speaker 1: of seems to guys like Lennen that Zarism has won
Speaker 1: Lennon writes like these letters where he's despairing in this
Speaker 1: period that like, well, we almost had them in like
Speaker 1: nineteen o five, but it seems as if they've they've
Speaker 1: they've beaten us, and they've they've successfully you know, it's
Speaker 1: gonna keep going another three hundred years. Like he's really
Speaker 1: like kind of heartbroken in this period about Lenin. Yeah, buddy,
Speaker 1: don't give up. Yeah, don't give up. Man. You're right,
Speaker 1: You're almost there. Yeah, you're on the cusp. Baby, you're
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, you are going to get to do
Speaker 1: some real, real ship very soon. Um. Yeah. There's a
Speaker 1: one of the things that disappoints Lennon. There's this big
Speaker 1: work strike and I think nineteen fourteen in one region
Speaker 1: that gets put down by like shooting a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty people to death, and all of the socialists in
Speaker 1: Russia are like, oh, we're gonna have another nineteen o five,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have another revolution. This is gonna like spark
Speaker 1: things off. Um, but nothing happens because everyone else is
Speaker 1: like things are going well enough for the rest of
Speaker 1: Russia that people are like, well, I didn't know those
Speaker 1: people that he shot, so I'm not gonna stare things up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: next time, don't get shot. Yeah. Speaking of not getting shot,
Speaker 1: you know who sucked at not getting shot, the Archduke
Speaker 1: of Austria. God. At least we've got a medium good
Speaker 1: band's name out of it, which one Frans Ferdinand? Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, of course. Yeah. It's a history restaurant. You
Speaker 1: know what, ads are about to happen. But instead of
Speaker 1: listening to these ads, just put this, put this on
Speaker 1: mute for a couple of minutes. Queue up some Franz Ferdinand.
Speaker 1: Just just rock out for a little bit, you know, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: have some of you time we're back. So did you
Speaker 1: enjoy that? That too? Was an odds eram I tell
Speaker 1: you nothing gets me up like Franz Ferdinand. I liked them, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I enjoyed them when they were I have no issues
Speaker 1: with them. Um. You know who did have an issue
Speaker 1: with Franz Ferdinand Kvrolo, Prince EP Prince Prince and the
Speaker 1: Black Hand, Yeah, I believe, which he expressed via bullets
Speaker 1: on June. UM. This makes everybody big mad. This is
Speaker 1: a real problem for for for Europe. Um. And part
Speaker 1: of the problem is that the Black Hand as you noted,
Speaker 1: the terrorist group this guy's a member of had kind
Speaker 1: sort of been trained by Serbian military intelligence. Now this
Speaker 1: is the start of this is like a historical Rube
Speaker 1: Goldberg machine. Yeah, like that's literally the first the first
Speaker 1: like the coin going in this tiny dominoes start falling
Speaker 1: and they end with um, the entire modern world. Uh yeah, yeah, exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is a problem for Calist because Serbia is
Speaker 1: kind of like a satellite state of Russia. Right. The
Speaker 1: Slavs are like cousins to the Russians, like we have
Speaker 1: this the Southern Slavs are cousins to the Russians, like
Speaker 1: we have this responsibility to the Serbs. Um. So his
Speaker 1: government is giving aid to the Serbian government, and the
Speaker 1: Serbian government trains this terrorist group that then murders the
Speaker 1: Archduke of Austria, which is allied to Germany. Um. And
Speaker 1: so like you know, things start to go awry. Um.
Speaker 1: The Kaiser, being a very smart man, gives Austria a
Speaker 1: blake check to respond to Serbia. Um. Russia is forced
Speaker 1: to be like, well, will defend Serbia um, And France
Speaker 1: is like obviously forced to say like, well, we'll come
Speaker 1: in on your side, and the British are like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't want to get involved, but the Germans say, well,
Speaker 1: then we're going to invade fucking um, what is it,
Speaker 1: the fucking the Belgium in order to get to France
Speaker 1: and France up faster, and the Jury and the English
Speaker 1: are like, well, if you invade Belgium then we're going
Speaker 1: to get involved in the war. And pretty soon, you know,
Speaker 1: just sitting here like, come on, we've been waiting for
Speaker 1: this is great to great for us. There are many
Speaker 1: Frenchmen already we have been waiting for this for like
Speaker 1: what thirty years now is something like that, come on, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll smack your bit up. And that is there's a
Speaker 1: lot of excitement among some people for this. Um. Nikki
Speaker 1: kind of checks out for a large chunk of the
Speaker 1: lead up to World War One. Um, he's on his yacht.
Speaker 1: This is the summer, this is when he goes yachting.
Speaker 1: So he's like classic Nikki, classic Nikki. He's on his
Speaker 1: fucking boat when this is all going down. That's so Nikki.
Speaker 1: From the Romanovs quote, Nicholas's decision to remain closeted there
Speaker 1: is strange, even with his new phones, he was still
Speaker 1: too removed. At the great test of his hard one autocracy,
Speaker 1: the autocrat was barely present, leaving the initiative to Sazanov
Speaker 1: in the generals. Now, none of these generals or ministers
Speaker 1: are like all that good. Um. His Stolypin, the guy
Speaker 1: who was like pretty smart, who was his minister for
Speaker 1: a while, gets killed by a bomb. Um. Again, this
Speaker 1: happens a lot, O know. He gets shot to death,
Speaker 1: He gets bombed but survives, and then get shot to death.
Speaker 1: There's constant terrorist attacks against all of his our's men.
Speaker 1: You you, you mix them up sometimes, um, But he
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of Nikki doesn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of good people around him. Um. The generals want to
Speaker 1: partially mobilize. Um, well, some of them want to mobilize.
Speaker 1: Some of them want to partially mobilize. Nikki agrees to
Speaker 1: partially mobilize because he doesn't want to like commit fully
Speaker 1: because again he's kind of like this milk toast dude.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to He doesn't really like he's never
Speaker 1: He's the guy who will get drunk and talk ship
Speaker 1: but he doesn't want to throw punches. Um. But then
Speaker 1: his generals will say we can't just partially mobilize. We
Speaker 1: have to fully mobilize. We can't fight Germany without a
Speaker 1: full military. So then he'll say we're going to do
Speaker 1: a full mobilization. And then his cousin, the Kaiser, calls
Speaker 1: him and threatens him, and then he reverses again and
Speaker 1: goes back to a partial mobilization. But then his generals
Speaker 1: are like, are you going to really take that ship?
Speaker 1: And then he mobilizes the army um and yeah. As
Speaker 1: he as a situation grows more serious and things get
Speaker 1: closer and closer to war, the Czar gets overcome with
Speaker 1: panic and anxiety. Rest Mutant telegrams his wife, who sends
Speaker 1: this message to her husband. This is Resputin talking to
Speaker 1: the zarins Arena. A terrible storm hangs over Russia, disaster, grief,
Speaker 1: murky darkness and no light. You are this, our father
Speaker 1: of the people. Don't allow the madmen to triumph and
Speaker 1: destroy themselves in the people. Yes, they'll conquered Germany, but
Speaker 1: what of Russia. Never for all time as a land
Speaker 1: suffered like Russia drowned in her own blood. Great will
Speaker 1: be the ruin grief without end, which is kind of
Speaker 1: make you think he might have he might have had
Speaker 1: a little bit of a bee line to something because
Speaker 1: he's got he's no domin that ship. Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: a bad description of the next decade or so, well,
Speaker 1: couple decades of Russian history, to be fair though, that's
Speaker 1: pretty much a good forecast for most of Russian history.
Speaker 1: If you know your Russian history, A good forecast is
Speaker 1: grief without end. Yeah, grief without end. Storm clouds are rising,
Speaker 1: well yeah, yeah, they've been here for quite some time now. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: long story short, we have a World War One. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: Nicholas gets, you know, some blame for that because of
Speaker 1: his decisions, but obviously there's not great options here. If
Speaker 1: he'd abandoned Serbia, they'd probably would have been rioting because
Speaker 1: it would have piste off the Russian right wing. But
Speaker 1: a lot fewer Russians would have died if he had
Speaker 1: abandoned Serbia. That part is that doesn't happen with war.
Speaker 1: If you're not in a war, generally less of your
Speaker 1: population population dies. Um. Now, the war doesn't go well.
Speaker 1: There's a couple early victories against the Austrians, but then
Speaker 1: the Germans get involved, and boy howdy, the Russian military
Speaker 1: just cannot go toe to toe with the Germans in
Speaker 1: this period. Like, I know that the Germans have an
Speaker 1: interesting history. You know, their win loss record isn't particularly great,
Speaker 1: but they generally have a formidable military. Pound for pound,
Speaker 1: they're pretty good at fighting. And Russia learns this very quickly,
Speaker 1: to the loss of several hundred thousand Russian soldiers. She's
Speaker 1: like those helmets with point on head, they look very silly,
Speaker 1: and then they just stabbed them with their helmet point. Yeah, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: was the primary German tactic. It was extremely effective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was. It was very like you know
Speaker 1: Looney Tunes ask a variation of fighting. Yeah, the pointy
Speaker 1: helmet and the machine gun really changed warfare forever. You
Speaker 1: know what it is. They saw they saw the human
Speaker 1: cannonball one time at a circus, and they were like that, honestly,
Speaker 1: isn't that far off from some of the things the
Speaker 1: Kaiser did. So Nikki, when this war starts to go badly,
Speaker 1: does the thing that he does when his own decisions
Speaker 1: go badly, and he starts firing and reshuffling generals and ministers.
Speaker 1: Eventually he decides the only way to turn this desperate
Speaker 1: situation around is for the most competent man in Russia
Speaker 1: to take personal control of the army. And of course,
Speaker 1: in Nikki's view, the most competent man in Russia is
Speaker 1: Nicholas the Second, So he this is gonna go great.
Speaker 1: What he'd wanted to do this in nineteen o five
Speaker 1: in the war against Japan and had been argued down,
Speaker 1: And like, there's a wonderful counter factual, like what if
Speaker 1: Nikki had sailed off with that fleet, you know, wound
Speaker 1: up at the bottom of the sea, could have saved
Speaker 1: everybody a lot of grief. Yeah, he's he's in the
Speaker 1: he's in there and his yacht. Yeah, everybody else is
Speaker 1: in their massive military Uh they're they're big boats and everything.
Speaker 1: Like that's a big fleet and then just some little
Speaker 1: schooner right next to it. Um. So yeah, he gets
Speaker 1: his way. Um And yeah. Part of why he's convinced
Speaker 1: that this is a good idea because again his ministers
Speaker 1: are this time, like, you don't want to do this
Speaker 1: if it's a bad idea for you to take. You
Speaker 1: don't really know how to do anything with the military,
Speaker 1: Like you shouldn't be handling this at all. But rasp
Speaker 1: Mutant is like, well, Yeah. Absolutely, you've got to be there.
Speaker 1: You know, your your God's chosen vessel. That's just the right.
Speaker 1: You got to the picts, the people that are like
Speaker 1: in charge of just like we've talked about this man,
Speaker 1: he's taking personal command of the army. Why oh good.
Speaker 1: The dude who fucked my wife said so yeah, that
Speaker 1: guy that cut me last week. Co that's that's smelly
Speaker 1: dude over there with the lice in his beard. I
Speaker 1: mean he is. He is actively fucking my wife right
Speaker 1: now as we're talking about this, just making eye contact
Speaker 1: with me. This pre manson asshole over here is just
Speaker 1: banging out my wife telling you to go to war.
Speaker 1: Everything is gonna go poorly. Nick, Nick, Nick, stop it.
Speaker 1: Somebody needs to have an intervention with him. Nick does
Speaker 1: the thing that Nick does his entire life, which is
Speaker 1: not listened to anyone who knows anything. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote what comes next from a write up in History Net.
Speaker 1: When he left to take up his new heavy responsibility,
Speaker 1: as he described it, Alexandra praised him for having fought
Speaker 1: this great fight against the overwhelming consensus of advisers and
Speaker 1: commentators for your country and thrown alone and with bravery
Speaker 1: and decision you bravely. It's like you've got an electrician
Speaker 1: over at the house, like rewiring something, and your wife's
Speaker 1: like what, you're just letting him get in there. Why
Speaker 1: don't you do that? NICKI go grab a four can
Speaker 1: stick it in that socket. Fight the battle against the house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone's against you, but I believe you can fix this. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great, she continued. Never have they seen such firmness
Speaker 1: in you before. God appointed you at your coronation. He
Speaker 1: placed you where you stand, and you have done your duty.
Speaker 1: Our friends, prayers arise day and night for you to heaven,
Speaker 1: and God will hear them. It is the beginning of
Speaker 1: the great glory of your reign. He said so, and
Speaker 1: I absolutely believe it. I mean, this is where we're going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and rast mutant is just pouring that for him, like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, this is this is what God wants now.
Speaker 1: Nicholas believed his presence would inspire peasant soldiers the quote
Speaker 1: devoted souls, um, who he believed loved him. Um. Initially, uh,
Speaker 1: this seemed to be the case because again there is
Speaker 1: this like attitude that like, well the nobles are ship
Speaker 1: but the czar is good. We do like the czar
Speaker 1: loves us, he just doesn't know about the fucked up ship.
Speaker 1: So like at first when he shows up in you know,
Speaker 1: hanging out around the army, meeting the troops like this
Speaker 1: is uh, kind of has a magical effect on so
Speaker 1: it's really motivating. You know. Like even the generals who
Speaker 1: are critical about this about him taking commander, like, well,
Speaker 1: the soldiers do this really does make them happy. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this really does like have an initially positive impact, but
Speaker 1: it has this negative effect to which is that before
Speaker 1: he takes command, if things go bad on the battle front,
Speaker 1: it's some general's fault, it's some noble's fault. It's not
Speaker 1: his fault. Now, everything that happens is his personal fault.
Speaker 1: He's all you, baby, Yeah, it's all you. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: When you take control. He wants the ball. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's like Jordan's he can give me the ball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the ball. I'm gonna continue with that quiote from History Net.
Speaker 1: The Czarina's warped intrigues to strengthen the Ours resolve. We're
Speaker 1: part of her campaign to make her husband a more
Speaker 1: forceful person and essentially timid man. A picture of loving tenderness.
Speaker 1: In their domestic life, Nicholas tended to stutter when facing unpleasantness.
Speaker 1: His wife's shining ambition was to persuade him to rule
Speaker 1: like Ivan the Terrible. The Emperor unfortunately is weak, she
Speaker 1: had told the British ambassador when he questioned the decision
Speaker 1: to change command. But I am not and I intend
Speaker 1: to be firm. Okay, is this really the moment that
Speaker 1: you want to have your courage found? Yeah, this might
Speaker 1: be the moment to be like putting some of them
Speaker 1: Jim's in a lockbox in Switzerland to get the family
Speaker 1: out of the country. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe we'll do
Speaker 1: the next but maybe like a small uprising is what
Speaker 1: you want. You dip your toe. You don't dive in
Speaker 1: the deep end. No, you know, you don't dive in
Speaker 1: the deep end with like you don't want to start
Speaker 1: your career as a military commander in the middle of
Speaker 1: World War One, in the middle of something called the
Speaker 1: Great the Great War, Maybe not a time for the
Speaker 1: amateurs to like get up in there again. Recently, you
Speaker 1: got your your ass beat by an island that you
Speaker 1: were racist against. Yeah, do you think you're gonna like yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and by the way Japan part of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: part of the world. Um, who you have now started
Speaker 1: a fight with? You have now a warred with? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in her daily letters and telegrams, Alexandra repeatedly urged
Speaker 1: her husband to be stern. She seemed to think that
Speaker 1: if he was displeased and enraged instead of gentle when
Speaker 1: his generals failed and got a lot of men killed,
Speaker 1: then they'd lead better. She's like, well, when they lose
Speaker 1: this battle and a hundred thousand men die, you're not
Speaker 1: being mean enough to them, because that is the problem.
Speaker 1: You know, They're just not clearly the problem. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: what it's worth. A lack of confidence and decisiveness was
Speaker 1: one of Nikki's many shortcomings as a war leader. He
Speaker 1: had one really excellent general, a guy named Bruce Lav
Speaker 1: who several times carried out offensive offensives that would beat
Speaker 1: back the Austrians and like open up. They would like
Speaker 1: win such a big victory that it would open opportunities
Speaker 1: to attack the Germans and maybe even make some major
Speaker 1: gains because like, oh, this Austrian army just collapsed and
Speaker 1: now we can get around the flank of this German army.
Speaker 1: And every time Bruce a of does this Nikki fails
Speaker 1: to give him reinforcements. Um, because he sucks at everything,
Speaker 1: because he's bad at everything. Yeah, I think he's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's he's bad at all of the stuff he tries.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to say yeah. And he's unfortunately
Speaker 1: trying a lot right now. Um. Bruce Alov later blamed
Speaker 1: a lot of this on the royal attendants around Nicholas,
Speaker 1: who quote failed to use the most decisive measures, including
Speaker 1: even force, to dissuade Nicholas the Second from assuming those
Speaker 1: duties for which he was so ill suited by reason
Speaker 1: of his ignorance, inability and utterly flaccid. Will I do
Speaker 1: like the idea of somebody just kicking the ship out
Speaker 1: of him to get him. Bruce law is looking back
Speaker 1: at the guys in the Kremlin, the other the dudes
Speaker 1: in the capital and being like you should have fought
Speaker 1: him to keep him away from the army, Like you
Speaker 1: really literally should have fought him a kick his ass.
Speaker 1: Someone needs to hit him and I cannot, but you,
Speaker 1: he has cousins. He's not going to kill you if
Speaker 1: you punch him. Um, stop this ship? Uh so Nikki,
Speaker 1: Uh generally would lose himself in the day to day
Speaker 1: tasks of of being in a military camp rather than
Speaker 1: actually commanding, which is probably not for the worst. He
Speaker 1: loved watching his soldiers in their splendid uniforms march around
Speaker 1: quote the Supreme Commander's view of the war during that
Speaker 1: Supreme National crisis was of maps with brightly colored pins
Speaker 1: indicating true positions, and have picked regiments, some amazingly beautiful
Speaker 1: and astounding, he enthused, whirling in review. His Stavka, that's
Speaker 1: his command post stay became an enlarged version of summer maneuvers.
Speaker 1: These are much enjoyed the reviews the reviewers were so tidy, clean,
Speaker 1: cleanly and well dressed and equipped such as I have
Speaker 1: seldom seen even in peacetime. Truly excellent. At least one
Speaker 1: plan yeah strong, Kim John Eel vibes on this motherfucker
Speaker 1: at this point time, while actively losing a war. Again,
Speaker 1: it can work if nobody's fighting a war with you,
Speaker 1: because you've got nukes. You know, it doesn't work so
Speaker 1: well when the Germans are sixteen feet away. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be rough. There's at least one case where a planned
Speaker 1: defensive is delayed because he wanted to review the Imperial
Speaker 1: Guard units that we're going to take part. He wanted
Speaker 1: to see the march in front of him. Um, but
Speaker 1: he couldn't do that because the Tsarevich his his son
Speaker 1: was bleeding and so like, well, we can't have the
Speaker 1: we can't have the offensive until they get to see
Speaker 1: these guys march. And I got to take care of
Speaker 1: my kids. So like, can we push this two weeks?
Speaker 1: I need a post blood parade before war can happen. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: not great as military things go. While the Czar is
Speaker 1: playing with his toy soldiers, his real soldiers are dying.
Speaker 1: In Titanic numbers, one and a half million Russians would
Speaker 1: die fighting in the war and another million are still missing.
Speaker 1: So you know, like something like that, two or three
Speaker 1: million dead conservatively, probably another four million would be wounded.
Speaker 1: More than one point three million civilians also perished. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Tzar was mostly focused on the fact that he
Speaker 1: missed his wife during this period of time. Um. So
Speaker 1: that's that's great again, good to love your life, not
Speaker 1: when you've just gotten like five million is people killed.
Speaker 1: Maybe ignore your wife. You have bigger problems. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but you do. I mean, who among us hasn't accidentally
Speaker 1: cost anywhere from three to five million lives just because
Speaker 1: you were I mean one time, but like I was young,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, we all have that sewing your wild
Speaker 1: oats period. So when he visited field hospitals, Nicholas would
Speaker 1: hand out huge racks of medals to his injured soldiers.
Speaker 1: He was convinced they found this inspiring. One of his
Speaker 1: generals felt otherwise, noting that those are quote did not
Speaker 1: know how to speak with the troops and thus tended
Speaker 1: to just not say anything. So he's just kind of
Speaker 1: mutely handing medals to dying men, and they didn't. They
Speaker 1: were not inspired by this. They were like, oh, this,
Speaker 1: this seems weird. Maybe this guy shouldn't be a charge.
Speaker 1: Does this mean I can stab you with these medals?
Speaker 1: You've lost my legs, sir. There's this one wild moment
Speaker 1: where there's this again. One of these few generals he
Speaker 1: has who's competent General alexeiev Um, he's not a nobleman.
Speaker 1: He's actually like a normal person who just rose to
Speaker 1: command by dint of being good at things. Um, And
Speaker 1: Alexandra fucking hates him because during this whole war, while
Speaker 1: like millions are dying. She keeps trying to like give
Speaker 1: noble boys who say nice things to her regiments to command.
Speaker 1: She's like writing Nikki, like could you give this man
Speaker 1: control of this regiment? I think he'd really appreciate it,
Speaker 1: And oftentimes like rass Buten is like advising her of like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, give this regiment to this guy, probably because
Speaker 1: he wants something. Um And General Alexeiev is like no
Speaker 1: and tells these are like, you can't do this. We're
Speaker 1: fighting a war. Your wife doesn't get to determine who
Speaker 1: runs these military units from the capital. She doesn't know
Speaker 1: anything about this, And Alexandra starts writing and he and
Speaker 1: when Alexia finds out that rest mutant is behind a
Speaker 1: lot of this, he starts telling this are like, you
Speaker 1: can't listen to this, dude, and you have to stop
Speaker 1: sending letters home across this vast expanse of country with
Speaker 1: military secrets in them. It could end badly. Um, please
Speaker 1: please stop doing that. Please stop doing this. Alexandra writes
Speaker 1: her husband that any person quote so terribly against our
Speaker 1: friend who's rest Sputin couldn't possibly be blessed by God.
Speaker 1: And when he gets cancer in nineteen sixteen, she celebrates
Speaker 1: telling her husband that God had sent him cancer for
Speaker 1: disrespecting Resputin. Um. He's like the one dude keeping your
Speaker 1: military of flow. Yeah, Like, there are two competent guys here,
Speaker 1: and you've sat on both of them because they don't
Speaker 1: like your friend to the priest who fox everybody's wife. Now,
Speaker 1: by the end of that year, Nicholas is thoroughly broken
Speaker 1: by the realities of war and by his own incompetence.
Speaker 1: One of his noble officials noted that he seemed quite
Speaker 1: apathetic and was no longer seriously interested in anything he goes.
Speaker 1: He's a pathetic loser. Yeah, um yeah, so things aren't
Speaker 1: going great. He keeps taking battlefield advice from rest mutant
Speaker 1: um and um, yeah, it's it's it's just kind of
Speaker 1: a disaster. Um. He Some of this advice, like in
Speaker 1: June of nineteen sixteen, leads to this uh like failure
Speaker 1: to support Bruslov again in the situation that causes like
Speaker 1: what could have been a victory to be a horrible defeat. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of the fact that this goes
Speaker 1: so badly and that it's so clearly the Tzaar's fault
Speaker 1: sends his army for the first time to the verge
Speaker 1: of mutiny. Soldiers start openly mocking him as the little
Speaker 1: colonel Um, and protest protests and riots start to break
Speaker 1: out in Russia again, just like in nineteen oh five.
Speaker 1: Soldiers start joining revolutionaries, sometimes even handing over their guns. Um.
Speaker 1: Everything gets really ugly. By the end of nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: there's this conspiracy of Romanov nobles to murder rasputin Um
Speaker 1: and they get the job done. Uh. This sends the
Speaker 1: r into a tailspin emotionally, and by the start of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, Nikki's prime minister has to sit him down
Speaker 1: and warn him that people hate him and his wife
Speaker 1: so much that if he doesn't install a new government
Speaker 1: he will be overthrown by force. This prime minister, a
Speaker 1: guy named Brazianko, gives him some of the first good
Speaker 1: advice he actually listens to. Sire, not a single honest
Speaker 1: or reliable man is left in your entourage. All the
Speaker 1: best have either been eliminated or have resigned. The Czar
Speaker 1: responds by asking Rodzianko. He asks his new prime minister
Speaker 1: like he has this moment of lucidity, and asks is
Speaker 1: it possible that for the last twenty two years I
Speaker 1: have just done nothing but funk up constantly, and God
Speaker 1: bless him. Rodzianko, who is in all of our position
Speaker 1: in this, says, yes, like you have. You have been
Speaker 1: doing the wrong thing the entire time you've been Zara right.
Speaker 1: He's just like, no, it's the children who are wrong. Nope, No,
Speaker 1: it's you. You, you were wrong, you were wrong. It's
Speaker 1: always been you and m The dynasty does not last
Speaker 1: much longer. Alexandra urges him to fight to the last,
Speaker 1: to rally troops crusted the rebellion, kill as many Bolsheviks
Speaker 1: in the street as he has to do anything but
Speaker 1: give up his power. She thinks he needs to prove
Speaker 1: that he has quote the autocrat, without which Russia cannot exist.
Speaker 1: But out in the streets, the people of Russia have
Speaker 1: decided they don't really need a czar anymore. Now we
Speaker 1: don't need to dial into the details of this. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's other stories you can find, including the Revolutions podcast,
Speaker 1: of what is actually happening in the streets. But on
Speaker 1: March fifteenth, nineteen seventeen, Nicholas the Second abdicates the throne.
Speaker 1: A broken man and I'm gonna quote from history at
Speaker 1: one more time. Here quietly these are remark that he
Speaker 1: had been born for misfortune, a notion many of his
Speaker 1: subjects shared. Russians believed that the Tsars were either lucky
Speaker 1: or unlucky, and that Nicholas fell into the latter category
Speaker 1: for many reasons, including mass deaths caused by a stampede
Speaker 1: of celebrance in his coronation and more deaths in nineteen
Speaker 1: o five during the war with Japan. He himself, when
Speaker 1: defending his faithful decision to lead the army, had reminded
Speaker 1: an imperial cousin that he had been born on the
Speaker 1: Saints Day of Job the righteous sufferer. Perhaps he reflected
Speaker 1: a scapegoad was needed to save Russia, and he was
Speaker 1: ready to accept his destiny. I mean to be the victim.
Speaker 1: The czar had said, may the will of God be done,
Speaker 1: which is some real narcissist ship to pull. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: and so he was, He's doing this, born under a
Speaker 1: bad sign ship, and it's like, no, dude, you did
Speaker 1: you did this. You're not unlucky. You didn't. You're not
Speaker 1: the scapegoat who is like sacrificing himself nobly for Russia.
Speaker 1: You caused all of this, like you because I did
Speaker 1: all this ship Yeah, um, yeah he's the guy from that.
Speaker 1: I think you should leave sketch in the banana costume,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, we're all trying to find the guy that
Speaker 1: did that. Yeah, that's that. That is Nikki in this period. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, he abdicates a lot of people celebrate,
Speaker 1: and you know the government um doesn't last a lot longer.
Speaker 1: He initially gives it up to his m his younger
Speaker 1: brother Mikhail, who becomes briefly the czar for like a minute. Um,
Speaker 1: brief is the understatement of the century. Yeah, Michael is
Speaker 1: a bit smarter than his big brother and like quits
Speaker 1: pretty much immediately, like gives power to the newly formed
Speaker 1: provisional government. Um. That that's his whole job at this point,
Speaker 1: it's just like right off. Yeah. The Zar tries to
Speaker 1: make one last speech as the monarchy has dissolved, to
Speaker 1: his troops, asking for God's blessing and victory in the war. Um.
Speaker 1: But the new government suppresses this speech because they're like,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna win this war. Like, no, have you
Speaker 1: seen Germany? They're fighting all of us and kind of winning, right,
Speaker 1: now we're not going to squeak this one out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've got cool boats. Yeah. Um. Nicholas was still insistent
Speaker 1: upon the end that he was not hated by his soldiers. Quote,
Speaker 1: my soldiers hated me, not they hated my crown and throne.
Speaker 1: But once I was divested of them, they made no
Speaker 1: accusation against me. What injustice have my people suffered that
Speaker 1: I haven't suffered with them? And that is really unhinged
Speaker 1: and inaccurate at the time he says it. It eventually
Speaker 1: does come true because one of the things that we've
Speaker 1: talked about, Nicholas has repeatedly had groups large groups of people,
Speaker 1: including women and children, killed and and starved in order
Speaker 1: to keep his government in power. He's been doing that
Speaker 1: for twenty two years um. And now after he has
Speaker 1: thrown out of power, his family is going to suffer
Speaker 1: in a way that a lot of families in Russia
Speaker 1: have been suffering under the tsars Um. They're going to
Speaker 1: feel it. Yeah, he I don't think it's kind of
Speaker 1: like obviously number one, a bunch of little kids get murdered. Uh,
Speaker 1: so you can't feel good about that. And also I
Speaker 1: don't think Nicholas ever realized, like even for a moment. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, the thing that's happening to your family is
Speaker 1: the thing you spent twenty two years doing to anyone
Speaker 1: who stepped out of line. Maybe you're a monster. He's
Speaker 1: just not that kind of guy. No, And I think
Speaker 1: nobody's really going to know. I think they're the bad guy,
Speaker 1: even when they are clearly the bad guy. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and he he doesn't uh, he gets you know. He
Speaker 1: and his family get moved around from one place to
Speaker 1: the other. There's this provisional government under Kerensky and the
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks eventually take over. There's the White Russians, these kind
Speaker 1: of some of them are pro monarchists, a lot that
Speaker 1: they're all anti communists. You know, they rise up and
Speaker 1: there's this big war. This Zar and his family get
Speaker 1: moved around a bunch, and they finally end up in
Speaker 1: the House, the House of Special Purpose. Um. And the
Speaker 1: reason why he and the other Romanovs are all massacred
Speaker 1: because it's not just his family they killed. The Bolsheviks
Speaker 1: round up all the Romanovs in Russia they can get
Speaker 1: their hands on and execute them kind of one by one. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, Lenin plays a big role in this he
Speaker 1: certainly signs off on it. The Soviet of Uhlan. I
Speaker 1: think it is like the regional Soviet really wants doesn't
Speaker 1: want to keep these people alive, because there's debate between
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks of like do we keep them alive or do
Speaker 1: we kill them? The locals who are actually responsible for
Speaker 1: like housing them want to murder them, and Lennon signs off.
Speaker 1: Um in part because the White armies are advancing and
Speaker 1: they don't want the Czar and his family to get captured,
Speaker 1: and YadA, YadA, YadA. Um there's this again. I think
Speaker 1: that the justified thing would have been to like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's have a you know, a trial, or if we
Speaker 1: can't have a trial, just execute the Zar in this
Speaker 1: arena because they committed a bunch of crimes. Um. But
Speaker 1: instead they decided to shoot the entire family in a basement,
Speaker 1: which is not justified. Um No, I mean that's not
Speaker 1: fully justified. Yeah, killing Theazar and his wife fine, Killing
Speaker 1: like a ten year old hemophiliac boy and like four
Speaker 1: teenage girls is not cool. Um. That's how you stop
Speaker 1: a batman from happening. Yeah, that is how you stop
Speaker 1: a batman. Um. You know, like you if you don't
Speaker 1: kill him, then baby, you got yourself a batman going.
Speaker 1: You know, that's how they I think it is justified. Um.
Speaker 1: Certainly like within kind of Bolsheviks circles, it is uh.
Speaker 1: One of the things again we've talked about some of
Speaker 1: the ways in which like popular representations of this are sanitized.
Speaker 1: One of the things that sanitized is how fucking ugly
Speaker 1: these killings are. Um. Yeah, people, I remember I had
Speaker 1: gotten written up in when I was a teacher for
Speaker 1: like being too graphic about history, about the descriptions of stuff.
Speaker 1: And he's like, remember, like I didn't have the smartest
Speaker 1: principle that I worked with. And he's like, remember we're
Speaker 1: we're we're doing this like P it's PG. Think it
Speaker 1: his PG. I'm like, in what world was history? PG? No? Um?
Speaker 1: And it is important to note, like so the Czar
Speaker 1: and Zarina die pretty much immediately when the shooting starts.
Speaker 1: All of their kids have all of the diamonds, seventeen
Speaker 1: pounds of diamonds sewn into their clothing and like they
Speaker 1: act as body armors. So the kids survived the initial
Speaker 1: flood of bullets. Um, isn't that isn't that just it?
Speaker 1: The royalty even gets diamond body arms, diamond body armor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um so one of the Bolsheviks then kills Alexei by
Speaker 1: shooting him in the head. Um, but the girls are
Speaker 1: still untouched. Um and I'm gonna read one last quote
Speaker 1: from the Romanovs here. We set about finishing them off.
Speaker 1: As Eurowski and Ermakov stepped over the bodies towards them,
Speaker 1: they scrambled, ouched and covered their heads. Urowski shot Tatiana
Speaker 1: in the back of the head, splattering Olga in a
Speaker 1: shower of blood and brains. Next, the blood drenched Iermakov
Speaker 1: kicked her, kicked her down and shot her in the jaw.
Speaker 1: But Maria, wounded in the leg and Anastasia were still alive,
Speaker 1: crying out for help. Ermakov wheeled round to stab Maria
Speaker 1: in the chest, but again the bayonet wouldn't pierce her bodice.
Speaker 1: He shot her. Anastasia was the last of the family moving.
Speaker 1: Slashing his bayonet through the air, Ermakov cornered her, but
Speaker 1: stabbing manically against her diamond armored bodice, he missed and
Speaker 1: hit the wall. She was screaming and fighting until he
Speaker 1: drew another pistol and shot her in the head now
Speaker 1: berserk with intoxicated blood lust, burning Ermakov's fun back to
Speaker 1: Nicholas and Alexandra, wildly stabbing first one then the other,
Speaker 1: so hard that his bayonet cracked bones and pinned them
Speaker 1: to the floorboards. One of the servants, Anna Diemidova, suddenly stirred,
Speaker 1: Thank God, God had saved, God has saved me. Ermakov
Speaker 1: stabbed her until she was silent. This is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so God didn't fully save, fully save um. This is like,
Speaker 1: that's pretty It's one of those things. We've been talking
Speaker 1: a lot about the brutality of the Czarist regime. Um.
Speaker 1: The Bolsheviks rightly get a ton of credit for how
Speaker 1: brutal a shipload of stuff that they did was. They
Speaker 1: are about to kill a few million people, UM, through
Speaker 1: a variety of ways, mostly through starvation. UM. But I
Speaker 1: think you have to also see the brutality in this
Speaker 1: killing as a as part of this cycle of violence
Speaker 1: that has been present in Russia for forever and largely
Speaker 1: exists to stop threats to the monarchy. Right, these you
Speaker 1: don't murder as viciously as these people murder the Romanovs
Speaker 1: do if you are not filled with hate. Lenin was
Speaker 1: filled with hate because his brother is executed in eight
Speaker 1: six for taking partner in a plot against the ar right,
Speaker 1: Like you know how you know in true crime when
Speaker 1: they're like, this was clearly a crime of passion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what we're seeing here, is like these aren't These
Speaker 1: aren't summary executions of political enemies. These are passionate massacres. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are passionate massacres driven by generations of hate and violence. Um,
Speaker 1: and it it it's it's you can't understand how things
Speaker 1: get so much uglier for Russia after this point if
Speaker 1: you don't understand how brutal and horrific Zar Nicholas the
Speaker 1: Second's regime was. And that's why this has been a
Speaker 1: great story, Jeff. Some could say, some could say a bastard,
Speaker 1: and that's gonna do it for our epic four partner
Speaker 1: on Czar Nicholas the second, the last romanov uh In,
Speaker 1: A real dick, a real piece of it was. It
Speaker 1: was so delightful spending a fortnite talking about this son
Speaker 1: of this. We didn't talk more about Zar Nicholas the
Speaker 1: Second than I have ever talked about Zar Nicholas the
Speaker 1: Second before. That's fair, and that's that's about you know,
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that I've you know, of all
Speaker 1: the stuff I've studied, it's very interesting to see it
Speaker 1: from that fresh perspective of like, you know, the last
Speaker 1: time I studied this twenty years ago. Yeah, so like
Speaker 1: it's nice to get that refresher of like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: fun this guy. Yeah, it's this. It's this weird thing that, like,
Speaker 1: I think, just because we're so distant from them historically,
Speaker 1: probably in part because of how horrible their end was,
Speaker 1: we tend to put these guys in a different basket,
Speaker 1: kings in general, in a different basket from like Stalin
Speaker 1: and Saddam and Bashar al Assad and like dictators. No,
Speaker 1: he was a dictator, Like he was the same dude,
Speaker 1: you know, monarch be that. Yeah. Uh so yeah, good stuff.
Speaker 1: Um well, Jeff, you got any plugable to plug? Well,
Speaker 1: I I tell you what if if you if you
Speaker 1: enjoyed our time together, which of course we did, you
Speaker 1: guys should check out I have a lot of really
Speaker 1: great podcasts that you would we would really like. Um.
Speaker 1: I do a bi weekly interview show called Jeff Has
Speaker 1: Cool Friends, or interview all of my very interesting friends. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you can check that out Patreon dot com slash
Speaker 1: Jeff May for early uncensored episodes with bonus content, as
Speaker 1: well as access to shows like with Kim Crawl, which
Speaker 1: is a great monthly podcast I do as well. You
Speaker 1: can also check out Tom and Jeff watch Batman on
Speaker 1: the game Fully Unemployed Network with Tom Ryman, who's done
Speaker 1: the show before. Friend of the Pod, you guys know,
Speaker 1: and then of course, uh, Pops and you don't even
Speaker 1: like sports, both on the Unpopular Opinion Network and then
Speaker 1: you know, Hey, I'm on the internet. Find me at
Speaker 1: Hey there, Jeff row Yeah, I like to talk and
Speaker 1: make jokes and things. Yeah, find him on the internet.
Speaker 1: Tell him why you think we need to go back
Speaker 1: to having a zar in Russia? You know, my monarchist
Speaker 1: listeners get out there. You know, we kind of have one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got your wish friends. Yeah, I was. I was, like,
Speaker 1: we've had one since like two thousand and six. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: he's good at it. Oh, I mean he's a he's
Speaker 1: a talented, very very good at being bizarre. Much better
Speaker 1: than Nicholas the Second Jesus Christ. No, Nicholas the Second
Speaker 1: was good at extending it a little, but yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: he was you know what, he was fine at being
Speaker 1: a czar. He was bad at doing all the stuff
Speaker 1: stars have to do. Yeah, if he had, like ironically,
Speaker 1: if he'd given the people what they wanted and become
Speaker 1: like a ceremonial monarch, he could probably could have lived
Speaker 1: the rest of his life as a very happy, rich person,
Speaker 1: not dealing with stress. He owned a yacht like a motherfucker. Like, dude,
Speaker 1: why do you need to be in charge of everything?
Speaker 1: You suck at it? It seems miserable, like it's job.
Speaker 1: You know, when you see these things where people like,
Speaker 1: you know, something like Seinfeld makes like, you know, three
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars or something like that, and then they're
Speaker 1: like and then he's like, I gotta make a new thing.
Speaker 1: I would be like, no, I'm I'm done. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: done forever. I'm just gonna sunk off for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life and my entire lineage will be set forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the you know, the only person in all of
Speaker 1: human history who's actually been smart enough to do that
Speaker 1: is the MySpace guy from perfect perfect way to handle it.
Speaker 1: You know, dude, he probably buy an island and just
Speaker 1: take off six million dollars. You don't need to do
Speaker 1: other things, like I can't go for the just get
Speaker 1: out for the life of me. And I understand people
Speaker 1: like we get bored. I'm like, I don't know, take
Speaker 1: a painting. Yeah, like the the idea of people that
Speaker 1: are just like, well, I just have to keep creating.
Speaker 1: And it does make me feel like kind of a
Speaker 1: piece of ship. Yeah, Like I think like if I
Speaker 1: won the lottery, I'd be like, oh, I'm done. Just
Speaker 1: not companies. It's like Bill Waterson, you know, retiring from
Speaker 1: Calvin and Hobbs, He's still painting ship. He just doesn't
Speaker 1: feel the need to show everybody because he's fine. He
Speaker 1: made his money. Yeah, and he made that money, by
Speaker 1: the way, without making merch, without selling out. Yeah. Who's
Speaker 1: the who's the dictator equivalent of Bill Waterson? Probably poll
Speaker 1: Pot Actually that's not a really positive one. But he
Speaker 1: didn't sell out, you know, because I was thinking of
Speaker 1: the other version around, who would be the biggest dictator
Speaker 1: of um, the comic strip world too, That would be Schultz.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, Jim, David Jim, Yes, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: that is the right answer. That is the right answer, right,
Speaker 1: because he seems like he because he doesn't do the
Speaker 1: work anymore, right, Like he doesn't know Jim kind of
Speaker 1: like he's done with all of those like airport novelists do.
Speaker 1: He's like Jim Patterson or whatever, James. You guys do
Speaker 1: it like in comics. In comics when they have like
Speaker 1: these superstar artists and then you find out later that
Speaker 1: all they do is like draw the head of the
Speaker 1: character and then like everything he has like a studio.
Speaker 1: Some very famous comic book artists rarely touch pencil to
Speaker 1: paper anymore. That's why I stand Derek Robinson. Derrick Robertson's great.
Speaker 1: I love that dude. He's so nice too. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: well fuck these are well, I mean he got fun
Speaker 1: maybe yeah he kind of sucked himself. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not he really this is this is really the funk
Speaker 1: around and find out illustrated. Yeah, it's the funk around
Speaker 1: and find out. And also your your children are going
Speaker 1: to find out because you insisted on sucking around for
Speaker 1: so much longer than it should have been obvious to
Speaker 1: you to stop sucking around. But no funk around. Everyone
Speaker 1: finds out. Yeah, and then there's no more romanovs um.
Speaker 1: But at least we get to dunk on you on
Speaker 1: a podcast that century later. It is funny. He was
Speaker 1: so scared of being seen as a bad ruler and
Speaker 1: he did all of the things that shared everyone now knows. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the worst of the czars. Like that's the guy
Speaker 1: who sucked the most at it. I would say Ivan
Speaker 1: the Fourth still owns like the historical He's still got
Speaker 1: like the gold medal as far as like history is concerned.
Speaker 1: Because Ivan was efficient and good at the job Nicholas was.
Speaker 1: Nicholas was inept, and so that's even somehow it's somehow
Speaker 1: way worse. At least Ivan the Fourth was like unadept motherfucker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, you know, I have more respect
Speaker 1: for a dictator who had to fight to become a dictator.
Speaker 1: You know, Saddam Hussein had to Like he didn't get
Speaker 1: handed that ship. You know, nobody was gonna nobody was
Speaker 1: gonna give Saddam Hussein I rack. He had to take it.
Speaker 1: You know, Nikki had taken a lot of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he showed did he showed did Well. That's that's probably
Speaker 1: enough for today. Um, come see us next week. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about someone who is not czar Nicholas the second,
Speaker 1: all right, look forward to it, and and uh, we'll
Speaker 1: hope to come back someday in the future. Absolutely, all right,