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Speaker 1: You know, Cody, the nice thing about felonies is that,

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Speaker 1: oh ship, we're recording, aren't we. Uh. The bad thing

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Speaker 1: about felonies, felonies are terrible. Don't commit them? Oh no,

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Speaker 1: there the always started in the middle of our conversation

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Speaker 1: about how felonies are bad and don't you don't do

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Speaker 1: crimes straight, don't crimes? Yeah, exactly, avoid crimes and embrace

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Speaker 1: head to resensuality. The motto of this podcast, Well, we

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Speaker 1: were talking about that is what we were talking about.

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Speaker 1: This is horrible, you guys. No, this is the best

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Speaker 1: introduction yet, Sophie, The introduction we planned that we're doing

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Speaker 1: now is the best one yet. Speaking of not doing crimes,

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Speaker 1: you know who was the best at not committing crimes? Ah,

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Speaker 1: the best at not committing crimes, the best at not

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Speaker 1: committing crimes. I mean, I was gonna say Jesus, but

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Speaker 1: that's the opposite. That's not true at all. He committed crime.

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Speaker 1: That was Jesus whole thing. Huge crimer huge crimer um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: watch him, he's a crimer um. I don't know me,

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Speaker 1: Joseph the Sarianovitch Stalin really yeah, yeah, yeah, we're where

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Speaker 1: did I introduce the show's name. No, this is behind

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Speaker 1: the bast Welcome to the Don't Do Crimes Podcast with

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Speaker 1: Cody Johnston, my co host for Today and Today every day.

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Speaker 1: In this podcast, we talk about a terrible person from

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Speaker 1: history and revealed details from their past that the listeners

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Speaker 1: do not know. And today we're talking about the childhood

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Speaker 1: of our old best friend j Stall Joey, Joey Joe Steel,

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Speaker 1: little Joey, okay, little joe bo s bus like his

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Speaker 1: baby crimes, some of them, yeah, some baby crimes in here. Yeah. Okay.

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Speaker 1: Are you a fan of Joseph Stalin. I'm aware of

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Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin Okay, okay, not a Stalin stand not a

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Speaker 1: Stalhead standing standing, Yeah, standing, standing is what they call him. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: a job bro, Joe Bro. There we go. Um, what

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Speaker 1: do you know about Stalin's childhood? Not much actually about

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Speaker 1: his childhood. That's good here because otherwise this episode would

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Speaker 1: be disappointing. I know all about I know all about

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Speaker 1: his baby crimes, all about his his very tiny crimes. Well, Cody,

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Speaker 1: Joseph Vassarianovitch Juggas Veeley was born in eighteen seventy eight

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Speaker 1: in Gory, Georgia, And I will try to pronounce Jugashvilley

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Speaker 1: close to correct, but I won't, I won't, it won't happen.

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Speaker 1: At the time, Gory was a very tiny town on

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Speaker 1: the outskirts of the Russian Empire, sparsely popular, did and

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Speaker 1: largely underdeveloped. The area around Gory was beautiful. The czar's

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Speaker 1: brother kept a palace there, but it was also remote.

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Speaker 1: The future ruler of Russia would count himself lucky that

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Speaker 1: he came up in Gory, though see in the whier

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Speaker 1: CAUCUSUS region, only one in thirty children were allowed to

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Speaker 1: go to school because they just weren't that many schools

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Speaker 1: in Georgia, though one in fifteen children got to have

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Speaker 1: an education. Uh. This is because Gory had a large

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Speaker 1: merchant population and comparently a comparatively outsized amount of development.

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Speaker 1: The small town of seven thousand where Stalin grew up

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Speaker 1: featured four schools, including a two story church founded in

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighteen. In Gory, one in ten boys attended school.

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Speaker 1: He's all right, yeah, yeah, he's won the lottery. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean, what is what is your ideal ratio of

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Speaker 1: of of people to attend school? My ideal ratio is

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Speaker 1: a hunt. It's uh, one out of one ten out

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Speaker 1: of ten. I think that should just be me and

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Speaker 1: out of all of them. Yeah, so like one out

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Speaker 1: of billions, it's you. Yeah, because all we really need

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Speaker 1: is one podcaster and a lot of people to dig.

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Speaker 1: That's true, to go to school to dig. Who's who's

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Speaker 1: teaching you? Though? At this school? Then uh, that is

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Speaker 1: a mystery. Nobody knows. You just walk into a building

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Speaker 1: and you just walk out, and I know where to

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Speaker 1: tell people to dig. And that is the ideal society.

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Speaker 1: So you've you're just like a dig major. Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: ok yeah, digging and uh philosophy, but you're not but

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Speaker 1: you're not like good enough to do the digging yourself. Well,

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Speaker 1: there's plenty of diggers. Someone needs to tell them where

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Speaker 1: to dig. Otherwise you just have a bunch of random

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Speaker 1: holes that's not gonna or like very coordinated holes. Yeah okay,

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Speaker 1: yeah yeah, And then I can tell people now we eat,

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Speaker 1: now we continue digging, and then they do it. Well,

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Speaker 1: I sip dacharies exactly one person, Yeah, which I've earned

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Speaker 1: and learned how to make in school, which is taught

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Speaker 1: by a mystery. All right, back to Stone. Joseph's parents

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Speaker 1: were Vissarian, juggish, Villey and a Katarina Gelazi. They'd been

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Speaker 1: married back in eighteen seventy two, when Vissarian was twenty

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Speaker 1: two and she was seventeen. Now Vissarian went by Basso

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Speaker 1: for regions that I'm sure makes sense to Georgians, and

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Speaker 1: a Katerina went by Keke, which does kind of make

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Speaker 1: sense to everybody. Uh. Beso was handsome, broad shouldered, intelligent

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Speaker 1: and industrious. He was a cobbler by trade and widely

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Speaker 1: seen as the best bootmaker in town. Keke was gorgeous

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Speaker 1: and charming and beloved by just about everybody in the town.

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Speaker 1: They had conceived two children before Joseph's birth. Bezo was,

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Speaker 1: in his wife's words, almost mad with happiness when the first, Mikhail,

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Speaker 1: was born in eighteen seventy five. Tragically, he died two

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Speaker 1: months later, driving Basso equally mad with grief. He began

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Speaker 1: to drink, but this was the nineteenth century, and he

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Speaker 1: didn't let something like a dead baby stop you from

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Speaker 1: rolling the dice on another baby. The Jugish Belis had

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Speaker 1: another son a year later, Georgy geergy g e I

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Speaker 1: R g I Uh. He died six months later, which, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to pronounce all these jeergy. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: He died six months later, which, from an optimistic point

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Speaker 1: of view, is a three improvement in his linking of

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Speaker 1: the first kid. They're doing it, they're making progress. Do

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Speaker 1: you think pointing that out to them would have made

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Speaker 1: them less set? I really don't. I feel like the

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Speaker 1: other of the other child. You know, when you look

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Speaker 1: at this statistically, you're a way better parent than you

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Speaker 1: were before. Look at how much O. That's called learning.

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Speaker 1: That's growth right there, that's growth right there. Don't worry

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Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, It's sort of like when you look

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Speaker 1: at the number of people who die on my jet

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Speaker 1: ski and just just total numbers, it looks like I'm

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Speaker 1: a bad jet ski pilot. But when you compare the

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Speaker 1: number of people who have died on my jet ski

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Speaker 1: in the last three years to the prior nine years,

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Speaker 1: I'm a great jet ski pilot. I've improved immensely. They're

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Speaker 1: exactly That's that's how you look at that is how

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Speaker 1: you look at statistics. So when Joseph was born that

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Speaker 1: December in eight his mom and his dad had reason

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Speaker 1: to be less than enthusiastic about his chances of survival.

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Speaker 1: So so as they called him. Was weak, fragile, and thin.

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Speaker 1: The second and third toes of his left foot were webbed.

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Speaker 1: He was sit constantly, and he was always on the

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Speaker 1: verge of death. And I don't normally say if only

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Speaker 1: that baby had died, but this is Stalin died two

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Speaker 1: out of three. You were so I thought the time

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Speaker 1: was a charm. Oh No, before Joseph's birth, Baso it vowed,

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Speaker 1: just let the child survive, and I'll crawl to Jerry

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Speaker 1: on my knees with a child on my shoulders. But

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Speaker 1: of course, promises to God are the easiest ones to ignore.

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Speaker 1: And once Joseph came out alive, Baso sort of forgot

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Speaker 1: about this. But then Joseph got sick, and Basso assumed

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Speaker 1: this was God, being like, you made a promise, and

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Speaker 1: now you're welching someone to murder your baby, because that's God.

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Speaker 1: That was the deal. So he keke walked to the

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Speaker 1: church and donated a sheep to the priests. Now, unlike

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Speaker 1: his older brothers, Stalin survived, and in the early years

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Speaker 1: the family thrived. Gorey was a poor town and most

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Speaker 1: of the houses were made of mud, but bezos shoemaking

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Speaker 1: business did well enough for him to hire apprintices and

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Speaker 1: eventually ten employees. For a while, the family lived well.

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Speaker 1: Kek later recalled our family happiness was limited. One of

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Speaker 1: bezos apprentices later said he lived better than anyone else

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Speaker 1: of our profession. They always had butter in their house.

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Speaker 1: Gives you an idea of like where things are for

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Speaker 1: society at this point, he's got butter. But yeah. Now

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Speaker 1: this would later be very embarrassing for adults Stalin because

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Speaker 1: communist heroes are not supposed to come from prosperous middle

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Speaker 1: class roots. Yeah, they're not supposed to be butter haers.

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Speaker 1: You get fucking you get fucking starved to death for

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Speaker 1: having butter. Yeah. As an adult, he ruefully admitted, I'm

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Speaker 1: not the son of a worker. My father had a

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Speaker 1: shoeworkshop up, employing apprentices and exploiter. We didn't live badly,

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Speaker 1: and that was like, if only we'd lived badly, I wish,

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Speaker 1: I wish it had harder times. But luckily for his

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Speaker 1: future socialist credentials, his family happiness did not last long.

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Speaker 1: Bezo had started drinking after his first son's death, and

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Speaker 1: continued drinking for the rest of his life. He made

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Speaker 1: friends with a local Russian exile named Paca, who'd been

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Speaker 1: basically forced to flee to Georgia for his connections to

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Speaker 1: a group called the People's Will, a terrorist organization who

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Speaker 1: would repeatedly be tried and eventually succeeded to murder the Czar.

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Speaker 1: Some of Joseph's earliest memories were made talking to PoCA,

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Speaker 1: who liked Little So So and bought him a canary.

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Speaker 1: Like Bezo, Poco was a hardcore alcoholic. One winter, he

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Speaker 1: passed out on the snow and died, and Beaso had

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Speaker 1: to go to one sright. I didn't know that. You

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Speaker 1: was really abrupt. Yeah, that's fucking life back there. Everybody

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Speaker 1: knows someone who dies in the snow. I know it's

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Speaker 1: it's it really sounded like You're like, here's like a

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Speaker 1: fun little story about a time he got drunk. But

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Speaker 1: then the story ended, like all Stalin store in a miserable, miserable,

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Speaker 1: unthinkable death. Yeah. Yeah, So after his drinking buddy died,

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Speaker 1: Baso had to go to one of the local priests,

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Speaker 1: father Chuck Fianni, to find a drinking buddy. As an adult,

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Speaker 1: Stalin had a vivid memory of his dad and the

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Speaker 1: priest stumbling home, singing out a tune. He recalled the priest, saying,

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Speaker 1: you're a good bloke, Beso, even for a shoemaker, and

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Speaker 1: his father responded, you're a priest, but what a priest?

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Speaker 1: I love you all right, all right. So times in Georgia,

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Speaker 1: some characters, some characters. Now, Bezo was not a happy drunk,

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Speaker 1: and as he descended more and more to drink, he

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Speaker 1: became increasingly obsessed with local rumors about Joseph's parentage. See

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Speaker 1: Ke was close friends with a guy named dav Ri Chiwi,

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Speaker 1: the chief of police. The town mayor later testified that

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Speaker 1: Joseph was actually this guy's real son. There were also

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Speaker 1: rumors that a famous explorer who had crossed through the

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Speaker 1: town named Price Evolski had betted Keke and produced Joseph.

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Speaker 1: Some townsfolk declared that one of the town's for you

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Speaker 1: Jewish men was his real dad, But the most commonly

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Speaker 1: sighted potential father for Stalin was a guy named Yakov Ignatashvili.

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Speaker 1: Ignatashvili was the wealthiest man in town, a wine merchant

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Speaker 1: and a great boxer. Kek worked in his household from

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Speaker 1: time to time, and ignotish Villy did take a deep

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Speaker 1: liking to the family. He was named Joseph's godfather and

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Speaker 1: later paid for his education. There's no way to know

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Speaker 1: the truth, but we absolutely knew they were rumors. Some

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Speaker 1: locals accused KK of basically being a sex worker. Even

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Speaker 1: decades later, a reporter from the Washington Post who went

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Speaker 1: to Gory and talked to some of the people old

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Speaker 1: enough to have known Kek and Joseph uh found claims

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Speaker 1: that young Stalin called his mother the prostitute when they

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Speaker 1: had arguments. So we don't really know, yeah, or if

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Speaker 1: Kek was in fact a prostitute, or if she was

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Speaker 1: just really well liked, like like a snotty thing for

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Speaker 1: a kid to say. Yeah. And it's compounded by the

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Speaker 1: fact that in Georgian culture, men were expected to have

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Speaker 1: multiple mistresses, um, and like everybody was just fucking all

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Speaker 1: the time, which definitely makes it harder to know what

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Speaker 1: was actually going wrong. Right, Well, what else? What else

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Speaker 1: are you gonna do? It's joy I'll tell you what

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Speaker 1: else you're gonna do later, because it's fun as hell.

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Speaker 1: Um Yeah. Keke herself did little to downplay the rumors

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Speaker 1: that she had been sleeping around a lot, and Joseph

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Speaker 1: could be anybody's kid. In her old age, she urged

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Speaker 1: Labrinty Barrier that the head of the n k v

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Speaker 1: D Stalin's like secret belief. She urged his wife Nina

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Speaker 1: to take an illicit lovers and basically insinuated that she'd

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Speaker 1: done the same, saying, when I was young, I cleaned

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Speaker 1: house for people, and when I met a good looking boy,

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Speaker 1: I didn't waste the opportunity. So who knows? Yeah, there

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Speaker 1: it is. Yeah. As an aside, k was quite a character.

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Speaker 1: The book Young Stalin by Sebastian sebag Montfior includes a

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Speaker 1: number of bizarre anecdotes about her, usually based on her

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Speaker 1: own recollections. And I'm gonna read you one right now

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Speaker 1: to give you a sense of this woman's personality. Quote.

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Speaker 1: She managed to attract so So with a flower, at

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Speaker 1: which point keke jovially pulled out her breasts and showed

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Speaker 1: them to the toddler, who ignored the flower and died

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Speaker 1: for the breasts. But the drunk ruction exile Polka was

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Speaker 1: spying on them and burst out laughing. So I buttoned

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Speaker 1: up my dress. So this is like her playing with

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Speaker 1: little Yeah, these are like the story she tells to

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Speaker 1: everybody when her son is the ruler of Russia. She's

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Speaker 1: she's a character, kek rules. Yeah yeah, all right, all right, yeah.

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Speaker 1: So most historians seem to think that Basso was in

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Speaker 1: fact Joseph's real father, but the rumors at least were real,

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Speaker 1: and they drove an increasingly drunken Baso into regular rages.

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Speaker 1: On one occasion, he came home wasted and threw Joseph

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Speaker 1: on the ground so hard he pied blood for days.

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Speaker 1: He would regularly charge home drunk, looking for young Stalin

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Speaker 1: and screaming where is Keke's little bastard hiding under the bed?

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Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, less less whimsical. Yeah, things switched

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Speaker 1: hard in old time e Georgia between whimsical and beating

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Speaker 1: a child until he p's blood for a couple of days. Yep.

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Speaker 1: One of young Stalin's schoolmates later recalled undeserved beatings made

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Speaker 1: the boy as hard and heartless as the father himself,

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Speaker 1: and this person came to believe that Bezo's abuses how

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Speaker 1: Stalin learned to hate people. Stalin did, in fact, spend

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Speaker 1: much of his early childhood hiding from his drunken father

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Speaker 1: or watching his dad beat his mom. By the time

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Speaker 1: he was five, his dad's business wasn't shambles, and Keke

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Speaker 1: was increasingly supporting the family. She started to fight back,

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Speaker 1: to punching her husband in retaliation for his violence. This

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Speaker 1: eventually cowed Bezo, and by the time has Joseph was six,

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Speaker 1: his father had fled the home. And this seems like

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Speaker 1: the best case scenario, right, Like it's like the Lifetime movie,

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Speaker 1: like she's abused, but then she learns to fight back

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Speaker 1: and father leaves the house. Unfortunately, violence doesn't work that way. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 1: And as one friend of the family later recalled, quote,

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Speaker 1: his mother was head of the family now and the

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Speaker 1: fist which had subdued his father was now applied to

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Speaker 1: the upbringing of her son. She beat him unmercifully for disobedience.

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Speaker 1: So that's kind of reality saying, yeah, if you learn

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Speaker 1: to solve your problems with punching, maybe probably Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: the tragedy of the fists. Bummer. Yeah, I came on

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Speaker 1: here to have a good time, a good time learning

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Speaker 1: about j Staalah apparently all right. Decades later, on his

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Speaker 1: last visit home to see his mother in the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: Dictator of All Russia Joseph Stalin asked his mother why

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Speaker 1: she'd beaten him so much. She replied, it didn't do

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Speaker 1: you any harm. But yeah, I shouldn't have said, kek

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Speaker 1: rules like she's a character that if I sort of

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Speaker 1: gesture to everything around yea, yeah, did you no harm? Yeah? Now,

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Speaker 1: Stalin's biographers are very much sort of of multiple minds

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Speaker 1: on this. Sebastian sebag Montfiori, who was certainly the most

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Speaker 1: entertaining Staln biographer, draws a direct line between all this

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Speaker 1: childhood abuse and Stalin's future violence. Um. And he also

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Speaker 1: points out that Gory was a wild lea violent town

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Speaker 1: in a pretty fun way. And I'm going to quote

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Speaker 1: directly from the book Young Stalin Now. Gory was one

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Speaker 1: of the last towns to practice the picturesque and savage

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Speaker 1: custom of free for all town brawls with special rules

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Speaker 1: but no holds barred violence. The boozing, praying, and fighting

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Speaker 1: were all interconnected with drunken priests acting as referees. The

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Speaker 1: saloon bars of Gory were incorrigible stews of violence and crime,

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Speaker 1: town brawls, wrestling tournaments, and schoolboy gang warfare, where the

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Speaker 1: free Grelli fighting traditions at festivals Christmas and Shrove Tide.

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Speaker 1: Before Lent, both quarters fielded a parade led by transvestites.

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Speaker 1: Are actors writing as carnival kings on camels and donkeys,

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Speaker 1: surrounded by pipe players and singers and fancy dress. At

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Speaker 1: the Kenoba Carnival to celebrate Georgia's sixteen thirty four victory

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Speaker 1: over Persia, one actor played the Georgians are another the

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Speaker 1: Persian Shaw, who was soon pelted with fruit than doused

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Speaker 1: in water. The males in each family, from children upwards

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Speaker 1: also paraded, drinking wine and singing until night fell, when

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Speaker 1: the real fund began. This assault of free boxing. The

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Speaker 1: sport of Creavy was a mass duel with rules. Voice

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Speaker 1: of three wrestled other three year olds, Then children fought together,

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Speaker 1: then teenagers, and finally the men threw themselves into an

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Speaker 1: incredible battle, by which time the town was completely out

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Speaker 1: of control, a state that lasted into the following day.

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Speaker 1: Even at school, where classes fought, classes shops were often pillaged.

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Speaker 1: Isn't that since that's wild, That's that's so cool, That's like,

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Speaker 1: that's the only town that does what. No, it's not

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Speaker 1: the only town. It was one of the last ones

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Speaker 1: that used to be super common in big chunks of

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Speaker 1: like Eastern Europe and the Caucuses. This is the alternative

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Speaker 1: to sex you mentioned, right, Yeah, this everybody beat the

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Speaker 1: ship out of each other. The day where we all

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Speaker 1: fight believable. Let's all get wasted and just ruin each

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Speaker 1: other in the middle of the street. The priests will

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Speaker 1: be refereaced. Fight club town amazing. Everybody's drunk, everybody's punching

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Speaker 1: each other. It just it sounds like the best time.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's like that's your dream. That's like an

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Speaker 1: amusement park. Yeah, it's like the good purge, Like instead

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Speaker 1: of it being like abusive, it's a way for the

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Speaker 1: whole town to celebrate by just wailing on each other.

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Speaker 1: Like I wish we still did that. Hey you can dream.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you're in America, you can do whatever you Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we could make this the new holiday that could get

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Speaker 1: rid of our partisan divide. Nationalist fight day. Yeah, bring

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Speaker 1: them together to beat the ship exactly. Everyone will feel

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Speaker 1: a little bit better and a little bit worse. Mm hmm. God,

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Speaker 1: what a great thing that would be. If we had

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Speaker 1: universal healthcare there it is, or or legal street drinking.

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Speaker 1: But you need one of the two. Yeah. So for

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Speaker 1: so first term universe healthcare and then second term is like, well,

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Speaker 1: now we got to fight each other. Yeah, now we

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Speaker 1: have to fight now that we know we'll be taken

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Speaker 1: care of now we can we have to get our

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Speaker 1: money's worth from this fucking health care exactly. Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: I mean I wish we did that just as a

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Speaker 1: podcasting team. Like it's a like a like a team

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Speaker 1: building retreat. Yeah, like we all fight in a pit

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Speaker 1: and Sophie gets really drunk and dressed as a priest

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Speaker 1: and referees. Yeah, it's a good plan, Sophie, were doing this.

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Speaker 1: You've got a new job. This is how we're celebrating

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Speaker 1: Shrove Tide when we figure out when Shrove Tide is.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna figure it out, and we're gonna we're gonna

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Speaker 1: do some trust falls. But then we're gonna be each

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Speaker 1: other fights. O. Katie is going to be in the

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Speaker 1: pit with everybody. We're all gonna be. It's gonna she's

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Speaker 1: got good reach. It's going to be quite a fist fight. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna have to change your attitude because you're you're

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Speaker 1: gonna be You're gonna be the referee. And the priest.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, she's turning around, she's turning it. I'm

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Speaker 1: just trying to picture that out. It's all about the

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Speaker 1: outfit and then everybody. It sounds like a little black

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Speaker 1: and white, you know, from the blood. I bet we

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Speaker 1: could get a lot of businesses to support, like a

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Speaker 1: national fist Fight Day. Yeah, yeah, like just like we'll

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Speaker 1: put your name on our jerseys and yeah, I hate

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Speaker 1: this continue okay, yeah, okay, it's easy. It's easy to

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Speaker 1: draw a direct line between the gigantic town wide beat

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Speaker 1: downs that Joseph uh Like participated in as a small

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Speaker 1: child and the terrific violence that he unleashed as the

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Speaker 1: Red CSAR of the U s SR. Citation. Well, there's

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Speaker 1: actually a lot of disagreement about this. There's a lot

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Speaker 1: of disagreement about another. Stalin. Historian Stephen Cottkin cautions against

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Speaker 1: that kind of thinking in his biography Stalin quote, a

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Speaker 1: sizeable chunk of humanity was beaten by one or more parents.

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Speaker 1: Nor did Gorey suffer from an especially violent Oriental culture.

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Speaker 1: Of these town wide fist fights, cat Can notes such

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Speaker 1: uh festive violence, mad cap bear fists followed by sloppy embraces,

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Speaker 1: was typical of the Russian Empire, from Ukrainian market towns

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Speaker 1: to Siberian villages. Gorey did not stand it out in

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Speaker 1: the least. So basically everybody is doing this like it's

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Speaker 1: weird to be like to focus on how this affected

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Speaker 1: Stalin's rule when it was like this was just the norm. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 1: So well, two things I guess I take away from

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Speaker 1: that is one is that we should definitely do this now,

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Speaker 1: because we should definitely. If they're arguing that it didn't

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Speaker 1: affect him, then it won't affect us and we should

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Speaker 1: do it. Um, absolutely, But nobody's arguing with that, right.

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Speaker 1: But also, um, most of those people who experienced that

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Speaker 1: didn't become dictators, so there's not really like a control group,

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Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, I guess the point is that like

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Speaker 1: the violent the kind of violence unleashed under Stalin was new, um,

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Speaker 1: but every generation of Russian ruler prior to Stalin had

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Speaker 1: kind of grown up in the same or yeah, and

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Speaker 1: so like the like, so it's weird to be like

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Speaker 1: suddenly it it mattered, right, like obviously, like everything that

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Speaker 1: happened to Stalin matter because he wound up with like

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Speaker 1: this kind of like incredible power. It's weird to focus

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Speaker 1: just on this thing that was a factor in all

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Speaker 1: of these other people's lives who didn't do that right.

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Speaker 1: It's more just like, well, this is uh not the reason,

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00:22:09,840 --> 00:22:14,360
Speaker 1: but it is an element of you know what led him? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and uh, we're gonna talk more about um joy Stall

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Speaker 1: and what made him into the man he became. But first,

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Speaker 1: you know what, Stalin would have loved Cody as a

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Speaker 1: committed communist. Um, I was gonna say, beating people. If

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00:22:36,119 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 1: there's one thing communists love, it's capitalism. Yep, we go

390
00:22:42,080 --> 00:22:45,960
Speaker 1: Stone sending out a lot of promo codes. Oh, Stalin

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Speaker 1: loved promo. If you needed to know where to buy

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Speaker 1: a mattress, Joseph Stalin was the guy to ask. I

393
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Speaker 1: believe that. Yeah, that's why they call them Casper's because

394
00:22:55,600 --> 00:22:57,360
Speaker 1: of all the go oh we shouldn't make that joke.

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Speaker 1: Had break time, Yeah, we're back. We were talking about

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00:23:13,119 --> 00:23:16,200
Speaker 1: the cargo cult of masculinity. Uh, and how all those

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Speaker 1: weird Daily Wire Ben Shapiro guys love to pose with

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Speaker 1: cigars and other like totems of masculinity without actually doing

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Speaker 1: anything that might be considered brave or courageous, and you know,

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00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:31,360
Speaker 1: it's frustrating and annoying and deeply irritating. But it might

401
00:23:31,359 --> 00:23:34,040
Speaker 1: be why this right wing power grab has been such

402
00:23:34,080 --> 00:23:36,359
Speaker 1: like a slow creep, rather than the kind of things

403
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Speaker 1: we see people like Stalin carry out, people like Hitler

404
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Speaker 1: carry out, people who, while they were gigantic pieces of ship,

405
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:46,320
Speaker 1: grew up being very accustomed to immediate and terrible violence,

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Speaker 1: and they were very hard pussyfoot around. Yeah, as opposed

407
00:23:49,880 --> 00:23:54,639
Speaker 1: to be all these like uh ivylie ivy league dorks

408
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:58,520
Speaker 1: do with their leather chairs and cigars, talking about how

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Speaker 1: it's a republic not a demaocracy and nobody needs to

410
00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:04,760
Speaker 1: really vote and yeah, but but doing it dressing it

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00:24:04,840 --> 00:24:06,440
Speaker 1: up so it doesn't sound like they're saying we should

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Speaker 1: have fascism. Anyway, Let's go back to the good old

413
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:16,160
Speaker 1: fashioned clean living of Joseph Stalin. Yeah, it's probably unfair

414
00:24:16,240 --> 00:24:19,560
Speaker 1: to say that historians focused too much on the darker

415
00:24:19,600 --> 00:24:21,920
Speaker 1: aspects of Stalin's upbringing, because you've got this guy who

416
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Speaker 1: killed millions of people. So let's talk about he was

417
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Speaker 1: beaten as a kid, who his town had all these

418
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Speaker 1: gigantic drunken fights, how he was impoverished and abused um.

419
00:24:31,080 --> 00:24:33,640
Speaker 1: But Joseph actually had like focusing on all that stuff.

420
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:35,520
Speaker 1: It's real, it's important, it's a factor in what he

421
00:24:35,560 --> 00:24:37,680
Speaker 1: grew up to be. But it's also important to note

422
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:40,960
Speaker 1: that Joseph had, all things considered a pretty happy childhood

423
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:42,879
Speaker 1: considering the time he grew up in the place that

424
00:24:42,920 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 1: he grew up, and he said so repeatedly as an adult.

425
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:48,480
Speaker 1: Even the fact that his father's business collapse when he

426
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:52,119
Speaker 1: was ten and impoverished his family wasn't hugely traumatic, he

427
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 1: later joked. He became a proletarian, so his ruin was

428
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:58,440
Speaker 1: my advantage. The same year his father left, Joseph caught

429
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:01,000
Speaker 1: smallpox when an epidemic swept through town, killing six of

430
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 1: his godfather's children. Young Stalin survived, perhaps thanks to a

431
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:07,439
Speaker 1: faith healer and his His mother took him to in desperation,

432
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:09,920
Speaker 1: but his face was horribly scarred, and the other children

433
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:13,600
Speaker 1: nicknamed him POxy. Luckily, Joseph and Keke had a wide

434
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:17,600
Speaker 1: circle of family friends who absolutely adored young Stalin. They

435
00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:20,760
Speaker 1: paid the family's medical bills and helped secure Joseph admission

436
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:23,440
Speaker 1: into the very best of local schools. So he has

437
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:26,119
Speaker 1: all these traumas, but he's also hugely supported by this

438
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 1: community that thinks he's brilliant and loves him from a

439
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:31,480
Speaker 1: very early age. He never feels like he's alone. He's

440
00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:35,800
Speaker 1: unsupported as a community of support, a community who like

441
00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: is willing to sacrifice for him, which is not emphasized enough,

442
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:42,080
Speaker 1: like and people talking about his upbringing like this is

443
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:44,439
Speaker 1: as much of a factor as him getting hit by

444
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 1: his mom and stuff. Yeah, because I mean we all

445
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:53,440
Speaker 1: want we want to supportive community for our children. Yeah. Now, um,

446
00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:56,240
Speaker 1: These wide circle of family friends also helped secure Joseph

447
00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 1: admission into the very best of the schools in Gory,

448
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: which is not that he knew did a whole lot

449
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:03,360
Speaker 1: of help. He needed the money, but he was brilliant

450
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:05,639
Speaker 1: as a child, and when he sat the examination he

451
00:26:05,720 --> 00:26:07,840
Speaker 1: did so well that the school started him off in

452
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:10,320
Speaker 1: the second grade immediately. So he just skipped the first

453
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:14,320
Speaker 1: grade because he was such like an autodidact so learned already.

454
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:17,720
Speaker 1: Uh didn't have much money, but Joseph's wealthy godfather ensured

455
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:20,000
Speaker 1: he showed up to that first day of school in style.

456
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 1: One of his classmates later recalled, I saw among the

457
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 1: school children an unknown boy wearing a large formal Georgian

458
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:28,680
Speaker 1: coat down to his knees, new boots with high legs,

459
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 1: a tight, wide leather belt, and a black peak cap

460
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:34,720
Speaker 1: with lacquer advisors shining in the sun. This very short person,

461
00:26:34,800 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: quite thin, was wearing tight trousers and boots and a

462
00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:39,879
Speaker 1: pleated shirt with a scarf and a red Chintz school bag.

463
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:42,040
Speaker 1: No one else dressed like that in the whole class,

464
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:45,959
Speaker 1: the whole school. School boys surrounded him in fascination. So

465
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 1: he is hipster, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, dressing for I

466
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:54,880
Speaker 1: guess attention well, but also like being dressed by these

467
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:58,880
Speaker 1: adults who adore him for attention because they think he's special. Um,

468
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:00,919
Speaker 1: and we're willing to lie. They want to present, they

469
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:04,439
Speaker 1: want to present, present their special boy to the world. Yeah.

470
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:07,680
Speaker 1: And as the strangest boy in school, Joseph was obviously

471
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:09,840
Speaker 1: a target for bullies, but he gave as good as

472
00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:12,760
Speaker 1: he got. The town priest, father shark Viani, claimed there

473
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 1: was hardly a day when someone had not beaten him up,

474
00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:17,439
Speaker 1: sent him home crying, or when he hadn't beaten up

475
00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:20,280
Speaker 1: someone else. So he is always fighting as a boy,

476
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: which is normal and like in Georgia at this point, right,

477
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:25,120
Speaker 1: he would have been a weird from the fight down,

478
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 1: he said, he's from the fight down where we show

479
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:31,680
Speaker 1: our love through fist punch. Yeah, yeah, um and yeah.

480
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:33,960
Speaker 1: I mean as soon as you you bring attention to

481
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:36,320
Speaker 1: yourself at that age, you're like, all right, I'm a

482
00:27:36,359 --> 00:27:39,400
Speaker 1: target now, and yeah, I'm a target now, and that's

483
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:41,119
Speaker 1: just gonna make me into a tough son of a bit,

484
00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 1: which he objectively was. One time he fought with his

485
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:47,600
Speaker 1: friend Aramis Velley in the playground. The fight wound up

486
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 1: as a draw, but when Aramish Velly turned around, Stalin

487
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:52,439
Speaker 1: leapt on him from behind and tackled him to the grass.

488
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 1: He was famous for fighting dirty and was regularly beaten

489
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:57,560
Speaker 1: within an inch of his life. As a result. Young

490
00:27:57,640 --> 00:27:59,919
Speaker 1: Stalin developed a habit of changing out of his fancy

491
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,400
Speaker 1: clothing with its tall white collars after bidding his mother

492
00:28:02,480 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: farewell in the morning. It was the only way to

493
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:07,119
Speaker 1: stop it from being stained with his and other children's blood.

494
00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:10,440
Speaker 1: So this is yeah, this was a goal for him.

495
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:13,240
Speaker 1: He was like, this is my plan. I'm gonna get

496
00:28:13,240 --> 00:28:14,840
Speaker 1: the ship kicked out of me, or I'm gonna kick

497
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:16,680
Speaker 1: the ship out of someone else, And I really don't

498
00:28:16,720 --> 00:28:18,800
Speaker 1: care which because it is a day of the week.

499
00:28:19,240 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 1: It is a day of the week, and I am eleven.

500
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:27,600
Speaker 1: It's a little kid. He's a time to go get

501
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 1: covered in blood like I do every single day, taking

502
00:28:31,040 --> 00:28:36,760
Speaker 1: out his fancy clothes, putting on his fighting outfit. Again,

503
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 1: I believe all children should be raised this way. Um,

504
00:28:39,800 --> 00:28:44,680
Speaker 1: this is clear, like kids in all towns that lack

505
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: sufficient Internet access. The children of Gory divided up into

506
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:51,160
Speaker 1: rival street gangs based on neighborhood. These gangs battled regularly

507
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 1: with each other, but they also played, and there was

508
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 1: an odd kind of equality in the streets. Stalin played

509
00:28:55,880 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 1: and fought, but the children of princes in generals, He

510
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: and his friends would wander off into the wood with knives, bows,

511
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:05,200
Speaker 1: and slingshot to damage whatever they came across one just

512
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 1: like on a mission to damage. Here's your weapons, boys,

513
00:29:11,080 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 1: things destroy time. Okay, yeah, boys, this is what you do.

514
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 1: Gonna go destroy something. One favorite target was the apple

515
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:27,320
Speaker 1: orchard of a local prince, and George is filled with princes.

516
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:30,600
Speaker 1: Like prince means like special, like fancy boy thing there

517
00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 1: there's like you're like you're definitely like of a higher

518
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:37,280
Speaker 1: class than other people, but like everywhere's littered with princes.

519
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:40,280
Speaker 1: They're filthy with them. So one of their favorite targets

520
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: was the apple orchard of a local prince. One time,

521
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:45,280
Speaker 1: young Stalin set this orchard on fire, and we don't

522
00:29:45,320 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 1: really know why the property. He just liked doing it. Yeah, yeah,

523
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 1: you know again, it was a day of the week.

524
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:58,440
Speaker 1: It was the day of the week, and just another

525
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 1: reason I deeply identify I with Joseph. Still, he hadn't

526
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 1: getting into a big enough fight. He definitely got into

527
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 1: a fight earlier that day. Yeah, but it wasn't it

528
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:10,400
Speaker 1: wasn't enough. So we had to start a fire, which

529
00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 1: is essentially a fight with the land exactly. Yeah, man

530
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:17,520
Speaker 1: versus nature today. Yeah, I'm gonna quote again from Sebastian

531
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:21,600
Speaker 1: sebag Montfjor's Young Stalin quote. So So was very naughty.

532
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: His younger friend Georgie recalls through the streets. He loved

533
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:28,640
Speaker 1: his catapult and homemade bowl. Once a herdsman was bringing

534
00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: his herd home when so So jumped out and catapulted

535
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:33,080
Speaker 1: a cow in the head. The ox went crazy, the

536
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:36,040
Speaker 1: herd stampeded, and the herdsman chase so So, who disappeared.

537
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: Already elusive, he used to slip through my hands like

538
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:40,760
Speaker 1: a fish, wrote another school friend, and it was no

539
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 1: use trying to catch him. So So once terrorized a

540
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: shopkeeper by igniting some explosive cartridges to the straightest shop.

541
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:50,200
Speaker 1: His mother had to hear a lot of cursing about

542
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:56,240
Speaker 1: her son, her son, the terrorists. Like the terrorists just

543
00:30:56,440 --> 00:31:01,400
Speaker 1: blowing up things as a small ship. Believable, I mean believable,

544
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:11,560
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's amazing. Terrorists, little fancy little prince boots

545
00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:15,959
Speaker 1: just going out starting fires, little lord fauntleroy suits blowing

546
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:21,680
Speaker 1: up businesses with explosives. On another occasion, so So shoved

547
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:23,960
Speaker 1: a young child into a fast moving river and almost

548
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: drowned him. When the boy complained, young Stalin shrugged and said,

549
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: in essence, will you figure out how to swim? Didn't you? Dang?

550
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:37,960
Speaker 1: That is that is some abusive ship. Ah, he's the best.

551
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:45,120
Speaker 1: It's called it's called tough love. It's not all right. Yeah,

552
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:48,720
Speaker 1: but Stalin was also known to be a steadfast friend

553
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:51,440
Speaker 1: much larger boys, without a second thought to defend one

554
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 1: of his friends. One of these friends later wrote that

555
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:56,560
Speaker 1: Stalin reserved most of his rage and violence for quote

556
00:31:56,760 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: people who vote through greater age or strength dominated because

557
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: they seem like his father. He developed a vengeful feeling

558
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 1: against everyone positioned above himself. So he for for the people,

559
00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:09,959
Speaker 1: fighting for the people. He's taking out, he's taking out

560
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: the bullies. And I think that might be a better

561
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: sort of source of kind of some of his early

562
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:17,840
Speaker 1: like this idea, like he has this domineering father and

563
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 1: then this dominating mother, and it inculpates him in this

564
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 1: like inability to have anyone in charge. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah,

565
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 1: you're gonna resist any kind of authority and anything is yeah,

566
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: being a bully, and so you're gonna but he desperately

567
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:33,800
Speaker 1: needs to have authority over his friends, like over the

568
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 1: people around him, Like and he'll he'll fucking take a

569
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:39,840
Speaker 1: bullet for you if you will do whatever he's so, yeah,

570
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: if you'll be But if you resist him at all,

571
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 1: he's going to light an orchard on fire because in

572
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 1: the water. Yeah, because then you're the bully by saying no,

573
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:52,120
Speaker 1: thank you, says Joseph had a pathological need to be

574
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 1: in charge, and his friendship was definitely contingent upon being

575
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 1: the unquestioned leader of any group. He found himself in

576
00:32:57,920 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 1: his buddy Aramash Veeley wrote that he quote could be

577
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 1: a good friend so long as one bowed to his

578
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:05,560
Speaker 1: dictatorial will. When one of his friends stole communion bread

579
00:33:05,600 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 1: and another boy ratted him out, Joseph quote cursed his life,

580
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 1: called him an informer, a spy, made him hated by

581
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:14,800
Speaker 1: the other boys, and then he beat him black and blue.

582
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:18,560
Speaker 1: On March thirteenth one, when Joseph was three, the Emperor

583
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:21,080
Speaker 1: Alexander the Second had been assassinated by members of the

584
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 1: people's will the a giant comical bombs thrown into his carriage.

585
00:33:24,600 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: His successor, Alexander the Third, head crackdown on descent for

586
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:30,840
Speaker 1: some reason. This included banning the Georgian language from being

587
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 1: taught in schools and so By the time so So

588
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:36,040
Speaker 1: was in school, he and his students were required to read, write,

589
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 1: and speak in Russian. Slipping up and speaking in his

590
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:41,480
Speaker 1: native tongue was punishable by Quote having to stand in

591
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 1: a corner or holding a long piece of wood for

592
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:46,240
Speaker 1: a whole morning, or being locked in a detention cell

593
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 1: without food or water and in complete darkness until late evening.

594
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 1: So yeah, good times, teacher, Make those kids hold a

595
00:33:56,520 --> 00:33:59,800
Speaker 1: piece of wood for a whole morning. Learning is good

596
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 1: m M. The most despised teacher in the school was

597
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 1: a man named Lavrov. He was a Russian and who

598
00:34:06,280 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 1: nursed a violent hatred of Georgian culture. He made young

599
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,799
Speaker 1: Joseph the best student in class his assistant a job

600
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:14,760
Speaker 1: that mainly involved having Joseph inform on any students speaking

601
00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 1: in Georgian. Now, young Stalin had zero issue informing on

602
00:34:18,239 --> 00:34:20,360
Speaker 1: other kids, as we'll see, but he was a proud

603
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 1: Georgian and he was not willing to put up with

604
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:25,840
Speaker 1: basically clamping down on his ancestral language. So he gathered

605
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:27,880
Speaker 1: up a small gang of eighteen year old students in

606
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:31,680
Speaker 1: ambushed Lavrov in an empty classroom. Stalin promised to murder

607
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:34,040
Speaker 1: his teacher if he continued to punish kids for speaking

608
00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 1: Jordan's which is a nice similarity between him and uh

609
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 1: fucking Saddam Hussein, Like they both threatened to murder one

610
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:48,279
Speaker 1: of their educational leaders at one point at while they

611
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:53,560
Speaker 1: were school. Yeah, that's an interesting parallel right there. Well,

612
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:56,320
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Saddam was a big fan of

613
00:34:56,400 --> 00:35:02,640
Speaker 1: j stal So it's a bold evolutionary It's like one

614
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: of those yeah, those uh late eighties movies where you

615
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:09,520
Speaker 1: take over the school, no more homework, No more homework,

616
00:35:09,680 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 1: but like you murder the teacher instead, Yeah, you have

617
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:17,680
Speaker 1: teenagers kill your teacher for you, just like in I

618
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:19,960
Speaker 1: want to say, Revenge of the Nerds. Know that was

619
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 1: just a rape movie. Yeah, yeah, different. Yeah. Lavrov backed

620
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:29,200
Speaker 1: down in the face of these threats because, yeah, because

621
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:31,799
Speaker 1: he didn't want to get murdered. Now it would not

622
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:34,440
Speaker 1: be accurate to view Stalin as just some hard nosed

623
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:37,360
Speaker 1: child gangster. He also loved many of his teachers and

624
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:40,520
Speaker 1: was beloved by them. His favorite was the singing teacher Simon.

625
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:43,399
Speaker 1: Simon wrote that young Stalin had a beautiful, sweet, high

626
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 1: voice and was always his first choice for solos. He

627
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 1: also noted that so So had a gift for working

628
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:50,399
Speaker 1: a crowd and performing. In fact, he was so good

629
00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:52,319
Speaker 1: at this that he started up a side business as

630
00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:57,959
Speaker 1: a wedding singer. What yeah, young Stalin just burning down

631
00:35:58,080 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 1: vineyards orchards of constant fistfights and and a wedding singer.

632
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:09,839
Speaker 1: Complicated guy, you know, yeah, Simon recalled. People would turn

633
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 1: up just to watch him sing, saying, let's go see

634
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:17,360
Speaker 1: how the Jugishvili voy amazes everyone with that voice. Yeah,

635
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 1: Joseph was also a gifted painter and actor, and even

636
00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:22,759
Speaker 1: a comedian. All of his classmates agreed he was something

637
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 1: of a prodigy, talented it just about everything he tried.

638
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 1: This was not easy for him. Young Stalin spent all

639
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:30,919
Speaker 1: of his spare time reading and constantly had his nose

640
00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:33,040
Speaker 1: in a book. He would walk around town with books

641
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 1: shoved into the belt of his trousers. He was the

642
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 1: very top of the class and never skipped school or

643
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: showed up late. But so So was also a good

644
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 1: tutor and volunteered hours of his time to help worse

645
00:36:42,640 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 1: students in class with their studies. He happily volunteered to

646
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:47,960
Speaker 1: inform on his classmates too, whenever they were late to

647
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 1: class or cheated on tests. He was nicknamed the Gendarme,

648
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 1: which means his classmates all basically called him a cop.

649
00:36:54,280 --> 00:37:01,800
Speaker 1: So Yeah, Yeah, Bezo. His father was impoverished and frequently

650
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:03,840
Speaker 1: out of work by the time Joseph was an adolescent,

651
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:06,160
Speaker 1: and normally he was happy to let kek take the boy,

652
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:08,080
Speaker 1: but from time to time he'd be seized by a

653
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:11,040
Speaker 1: drunken impulse to kidnap his son and take charge of him.

654
00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:13,600
Speaker 1: At one point, according to KK, Bezo burst into the

655
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 1: school drunkenly to grab so So by force. After this,

656
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: Joseph had to be smuggled into class every day under

657
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:21,840
Speaker 1: the coats of his uncle's key, claimed that everyone in

658
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:24,160
Speaker 1: town helped to hide him, lying to Bezo that he'd

659
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 1: switch schools. Jeez, this this is a complicated young boy. Yeah,

660
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:32,719
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff going on with this kid. It

661
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 1: is a a full childhood. He's gonna he's gonna get

662
00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:40,360
Speaker 1: smuggled in and then also find a place to change

663
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 1: into his fighting clothes after he gets smuggled him so.

664
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 1: Stalin's early childhood was complex and multifaceted, filled with abuse

665
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: and trauma, but also love and an incredibly supportive community.

666
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:56,320
Speaker 1: None of the ship Bezo put him through stopped Stalin

667
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:59,920
Speaker 1: from consistently excelling academically. In fact, the only thing that

668
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 1: made him miss school for any length of time was

669
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:05,320
Speaker 1: his apparently magnetic attraction to being run over by carriages.

670
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:11,319
Speaker 1: You take me on a wild ride here, Robert, what

671
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:16,120
Speaker 1: do you I don't know. I don't even know why.

672
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:18,920
Speaker 1: I'm surprised at this point. That was a sentence that

673
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:22,400
Speaker 1: you said out loud to me about a person. You

674
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:25,720
Speaker 1: cannot stop, young Stalin from getting hit by fucking carriages.

675
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:31,359
Speaker 1: You know I wouldn't want to. I'm gonna quote again

676
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 1: from young Stalin. The boys enjoyed playing chicken grabbing the

677
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: axles of galloping carriages. Perhaps this was how Stalin was

678
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:42,799
Speaker 1: hurt once again. The poor mother was mad with fear,

679
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,359
Speaker 1: but the doctors treated him for free or ignot aged.

680
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:48,719
Speaker 1: Villy was quietly paying the bills, her son said later

681
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:50,719
Speaker 1: also called in the village quack, who doubled as the

682
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:53,440
Speaker 1: local barber. The accident gave him yet another reason. On

683
00:38:53,480 --> 00:38:55,759
Speaker 1: top of his web foot pock marks and rumors of

684
00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:59,320
Speaker 1: bastardy for vigilance and inferiority for being different. It permanently

685
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:01,360
Speaker 1: damaged his left arm, which means he could never be

686
00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 1: the bow ideal of the Georgian warrior. He later said

687
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 1: it prevented him from dancing properly, but he still managed

688
00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:09,239
Speaker 1: to fight. Yeah, he did. So he gets hit by

689
00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:13,479
Speaker 1: a carriage playing chicken with his friends, fox up his arm. Uh. Now,

690
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:15,480
Speaker 1: Joseph did not want to be a shoemaker, which is

691
00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: what his dad wanted him to probably yeah, yeah, yeah,

692
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:23,480
Speaker 1: So after his dad kidnapped him, he returned home and

693
00:39:23,560 --> 00:39:26,719
Speaker 1: went back to school um and the pre Cintifla Yeah

694
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:29,799
Speaker 1: so yeah, sorry. So his dad kidnaps him um at

695
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: a couple of different points. At one point like takes

696
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:34,319
Speaker 1: him into like the town to go like learn to

697
00:39:34,320 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: be a shoemaker. Um and basically Keck has to go

698
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: to like the pre Cintiflis and force um them to

699
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: like make his dad give their son back to her

700
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:46,680
Speaker 1: Um and so So continues his studies until eighteen ninety.

701
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:48,600
Speaker 1: Went on a school trip with the choir. He's hit

702
00:39:48,640 --> 00:39:52,319
Speaker 1: by another runaway carriage. Um. Yeah. The twelve year old

703
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:54,640
Speaker 1: Stalin's legs were shattered by the wooden wheels and he

704
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:56,560
Speaker 1: was taken to Tiflis again and spent months out of

705
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:58,960
Speaker 1: school recovering. His legs were so damaged that for the

706
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:01,520
Speaker 1: rest of his life he walked with an awkward sideways gate.

707
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:06,320
Speaker 1: From this, he acquired his second nickname, crimped. So people

708
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:11,520
Speaker 1: call him pockmarked and crippled basically and a cop. Yeah,

709
00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:15,600
Speaker 1: three nicknames. He was brought to Tifflis, the nearby city,

710
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 1: to recover. Now by this point, so So had moved

711
00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:19,800
Speaker 1: there to work in a shoe factory, and once he

712
00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:21,759
Speaker 1: learned his son was in town, he waited outside the

713
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 1: hospital and yet again kidnapped Stalin and hit him from

714
00:40:24,719 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: his mother. His kid gets kidnapped many times as he

715
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 1: gets hit by wide range of fun activity. Again, he's

716
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 1: like twelve at this point of course. Yeah yeah, this

717
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 1: is like right after he got a bunch of eighteen

718
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:41,920
Speaker 1: year olds to threaten to murder his teacher. Yes. Yeah.

719
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 1: Beso forcibly enrolled his son as an apprentice at the

720
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:47,239
Speaker 1: shoe factory where he worked. When Keke tried to take

721
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:50,279
Speaker 1: Joseph back, he screamed at her. Beso screamed at her,

722
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:52,080
Speaker 1: you want my son to be a bishop, over my

723
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:54,520
Speaker 1: dead body. He'll be educated. I'm a shoemaker and my

724
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:57,440
Speaker 1: son will be one two. Keke did not take this

725
00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:01,320
Speaker 1: lying down eight hundreds. Georgia was, you know, pretty obviously

726
00:41:01,320 --> 00:41:04,240
Speaker 1: a very patriarchal place. Fathers tended to get their way,

727
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:07,360
Speaker 1: but that did not happen in this case. Biographer Stephen

728
00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 1: Cotkin writes, Kek brooked no compromise. She rejected the Tiffless

729
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:14,000
Speaker 1: church's authorities proposed solutions that social be allowed to sing

730
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:16,479
Speaker 1: in their Tiffless school choir or remaining with his father.

731
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 1: She accepted nothing less than so So's return to gory

732
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:20,800
Speaker 1: for the start of the next school year in September

733
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety. Her triumph over her husband in a deeply

734
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 1: patriarchal society was reported by family friends who took the

735
00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 1: woman's side, and by the boy himself in the parental

736
00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:31,880
Speaker 1: tug of war between becoming a priest or a cobbler,

737
00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:35,600
Speaker 1: so so preferred school and therefore his mother. So it's

738
00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 1: like a really strange thing that she gets her way

739
00:41:38,520 --> 00:41:41,279
Speaker 1: in this, Stalin gets his way in this. It's kind

740
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:45,080
Speaker 1: of tells you what sort of person she was. Interesting that, Yeah,

741
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:52,160
Speaker 1: if the if society, uh, like that's an issue, and

742
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:55,839
Speaker 1: if the dad got his way, then uh, things would

743
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 1: have turned out way differently. They might have, they might

744
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:03,919
Speaker 1: have might have might have might have. Uh. Stalin's months

745
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:06,000
Speaker 1: of absence from school seemed to have no impact on

746
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:08,359
Speaker 1: his grades. He caught up instantly and was right back

747
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:10,080
Speaker 1: to being at the top of his class, but his

748
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:15,400
Speaker 1: behavior was notably different. After his second kidnapping from his father, Yeah,

749
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:19,880
Speaker 1: well weird, how weird How that has an impact? He

750
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: started facing regular punishment from his teachers, and he organized

751
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: his first protest against a school inspector named Butterski, who

752
00:42:26,160 --> 00:42:30,439
Speaker 1: viciously punished students for using Georgian Stalin organized a protest, which,

753
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:33,520
Speaker 1: fueled by his rhetoric, almost turned into a riot, and

754
00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:37,040
Speaker 1: this is his first like mass demonstration with Stalin organizes.

755
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:40,560
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety two, when Joseph was fourteen, a group

756
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:42,960
Speaker 1: of three peasant bandits were captured by the police and

757
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 1: sentenced to die by hanging. Because it was the eighteen nineties,

758
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 1: the school's teachers decided the right thing to do was

759
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:50,240
Speaker 1: to take their young students out to go watch several

760
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:54,480
Speaker 1: strangers die horrifically. Some biographers suspect again that this brutality

761
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:57,839
Speaker 1: had a deep impact on Stalin's future violence, but this

762
00:42:57,880 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: misses the point. The condemned men had stolen a cow

763
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:03,320
Speaker 1: and killed a policeman. They'd spent months living in the forest,

764
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:06,000
Speaker 1: attacking rich people and handing out food to other peasants.

765
00:43:06,160 --> 00:43:08,919
Speaker 1: They were basically Georgian Robin Hood's, only not very good

766
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:11,720
Speaker 1: at it. Stalin and his friends sympathized with the bandits,

767
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:13,480
Speaker 1: and they felt it was wrong for the priests who

768
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:16,719
Speaker 1: taught them thou shalt not kill, to participate in gleefully

769
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 1: sanctioned state murder. Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean, yeah,

770
00:43:21,560 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: so Stalin winds up like very sympathetic with these revolutionaries

771
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:28,800
Speaker 1: and kind of recognizing gradually that the like, the order

772
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:31,759
Speaker 1: of his society is fucked up, um partly as a

773
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 1: result of this. Like, it doesn't seem like he gains

774
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:36,640
Speaker 1: like a blood thirst for execution from this this, Right,

775
00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:39,240
Speaker 1: it's more of a view of society and less unlike

776
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:43,080
Speaker 1: what to do about it? Yeah, now, Cody, you know

777
00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:46,000
Speaker 1: what won't execute peasants for stealing a cow and killing

778
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 1: a cop. I do know. It's products. It's products, and

779
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 1: it's products and services. That's right. That's right. All of

780
00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 1: the products and services in this are firmly pro cow stealing.

781
00:43:57,120 --> 00:44:01,200
Speaker 1: And can we say that so for orchard definitely pro

782
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:04,919
Speaker 1: orchard fires. Yeah, so lightning orchard on fire and buy

783
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:14,840
Speaker 1: some of these products. We're back. So. Stalin loved to

784
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:17,480
Speaker 1: read Big, Big Bookworm as a kid, and one of

785
00:44:17,520 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 1: his favorite books as a teenager was Darwin's The Origin

786
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 1: of Species. He fell madly in love with the book,

787
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:25,560
Speaker 1: and he pushed on all of his friends. Darwin's theories

788
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 1: seemed to have helped pushed the young Joseph, whose mother

789
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:30,759
Speaker 1: desperately wanted him to be a priest into atheism. One

790
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:33,200
Speaker 1: of his friends, Grisha, later recalled a day when he

791
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 1: and Stalin lay on the grass talking about the injustice

792
00:44:35,520 --> 00:44:39,320
Speaker 1: of poverty. He claims, young Stalin suddenly said, God's not unjust.

793
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:43,080
Speaker 1: He doesn't actually exist. We've been deceived. If God existed,

794
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:46,240
Speaker 1: he'd have made the world more just. When Grisha pressed

795
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:48,720
Speaker 1: him on this, he referred his friend to Charles Darwin.

796
00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:52,520
Speaker 1: The revelation did not immediately stop Stalin from pursuing a

797
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:54,879
Speaker 1: career in the clergy, though, for a young brilliant boy

798
00:44:54,920 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: in a town like Gory, the seminary was basically the

799
00:44:57,200 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: only way to ever actually build a future or get

800
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 1: an education Asian. So when he was fifteen years old,

801
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:06,000
Speaker 1: Stalin took the entrance exams for the Spiritual Seminary in Tiflis, Georgia.

802
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:09,520
Speaker 1: This was an extremely prestigious institution, and Keke had to

803
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,239
Speaker 1: once again polls strings and colin favors from friends to

804
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:15,719
Speaker 1: get Stalin in. Even with his exceptional grades, the Spiritual

805
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:18,200
Speaker 1: Seminary was not cheap, and Stalin was by far the

806
00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:20,759
Speaker 1: poorest child in the school. Keke had to work her

807
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:22,800
Speaker 1: fingers to the bone in order to pay for his schooling,

808
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 1: but to her it was worth it to give ric

809
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:28,200
Speaker 1: Son a chance to become a bishop. Now. The seminary

810
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:30,840
Speaker 1: enforced a brutal schedule for its students, so So was

811
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:33,160
Speaker 1: expected to wake up at seven am, attend a prayer

812
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:35,560
Speaker 1: session before an active breakfast, and then attend classes and

813
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:38,520
Speaker 1: prayers until ten pm. The schedule was only broken up

814
00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:40,239
Speaker 1: by luncheon, dinner, and an hour and a half in

815
00:45:40,239 --> 00:45:42,240
Speaker 1: the late afternoon, where he was free to go about

816
00:45:42,239 --> 00:45:45,120
Speaker 1: in the city. Despite or perhaps because of this discipline,

817
00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:48,120
Speaker 1: the seminary in Tifflis had a tendency to breed rebels.

818
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:50,719
Speaker 1: A huge number of the Bolshevik rebels who overthrew the

819
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:55,359
Speaker 1: Czar's empire came from this specific seminary in Georgia. Yeah yeah,

820
00:45:55,360 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 1: it was like a school for revolutionaries. Unwittingly, yeah uh.

821
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty five, a little before Stalin went there,

822
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:04,880
Speaker 1: a student had beaten up one of his teachers for

823
00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:07,840
Speaker 1: saying Georgian was a dog's language. The next year, that

824
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:12,920
Speaker 1: same rector was murdered with a sword. So yeah, the

825
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:19,560
Speaker 1: Saint your Daddy's grand escalation. Yeah yeah. There were constant

826
00:46:19,560 --> 00:46:22,640
Speaker 1: student strikes in protests, and years later another Bolshevik would

827
00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:25,719
Speaker 1: claim no secular school produced as many atheists as the

828
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:30,280
Speaker 1: Tiffless Seminary. Outside of class hours, Stalin drank and probably

829
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 1: carried on a handful of romantic liaisons. There are even

830
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:35,759
Speaker 1: semi credible rumors that he may have fathered a child

831
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:38,200
Speaker 1: during this time. But the bulk of his time was

832
00:46:38,239 --> 00:46:41,440
Speaker 1: spent writing poetry. He contributed several of his poems to

833
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:43,640
Speaker 1: a local newspaper, and they were good enough that Ilia

834
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:46,719
Speaker 1: Chop Chattavis. I'm not going to pronounce that right. The

835
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: greatest poet in Georgia met directly with Stalin. He ordered

836
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:53,279
Speaker 1: the magazine to publish five of Stalin's poems and called

837
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:57,080
Speaker 1: him the young man with the burning eyes. Poetry was

838
00:46:57,239 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 1: huge in Georgia at the time in a way that

839
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:01,320
Speaker 1: we really can't under stand, and poets were some of

840
00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:04,839
Speaker 1: the land's greatest heroes. And Stalin actually becomes famous for

841
00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:07,879
Speaker 1: his poetry while he's still a teenager. Um. He wrote

842
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:11,040
Speaker 1: it under the pseudonym Socello. But he was extremely popular

843
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:13,200
Speaker 1: and and famous as a poet before he was ever

844
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 1: famous as a revolutionary, and his work is actually still

845
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:19,360
Speaker 1: praised as quite good today. Um, it's like one of

846
00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:21,040
Speaker 1: those things you have a lot of stories of, like

847
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:24,880
Speaker 1: bad artists who become dictators. Install is the opposite, Like

848
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 1: every artistic endeavor he took part, and he was really

849
00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: good at yeah, he was really talented in general at yeah. Yeah,

850
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:36,080
Speaker 1: And some of the poems he wrote hold a few

851
00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 1: hints about the man that he became. And I'm gonna

852
00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:41,400
Speaker 1: quote from young Stalin again. So Solo's next poem, A

853
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 1: Crazed Ode to the Moon, reveals more of the poet.

854
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:47,000
Speaker 1: A violent, tragically depressed outcast in a world of glaciers

855
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:49,719
Speaker 1: and divine providence is drawn to the sacred moonlight. And

856
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:52,880
Speaker 1: his third poem, Stalin explores the contrast between violence and

857
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:55,800
Speaker 1: man and nature and the gentleness of birds, music and singers.

858
00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:58,720
Speaker 1: The fourth is the most revealing. Stalin imagines a prophet

859
00:47:58,760 --> 00:48:01,760
Speaker 1: not honored in his own country, a wandering poet poisoned

860
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:05,000
Speaker 1: by his own people. Now seventeen, stolen already envisions a

861
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:08,800
Speaker 1: paranoiac world where great profits could only expect conspiracy and murder.

862
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:18,560
Speaker 1: So he's a little little kind of kind of goth Yeah, yeah, conflicts.

863
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: He's very successful and his later like the bank robbery,

864
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:24,279
Speaker 1: that's one of his first famous actions. Part of why

865
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:25,799
Speaker 1: he's able to carry it out is that, like one

866
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:28,799
Speaker 1: of the guards that he relies on for inside information

867
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:32,000
Speaker 1: is a huge fan of his poems. Um yeah, it's yeah,

868
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: it's yeah. But he doesn't keep it up for very long.

869
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:37,440
Speaker 1: After like a year or so of incredible success, Joseph

870
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: stops writing poetry. Um. And he later explains, I lost

871
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: interest in writing poetry because it requires one's entire attention

872
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:45,680
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of patients, and in those

873
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:48,879
Speaker 1: days I was like quicksilver. Just he just gets bored

874
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, he's got too much running through his brain. Yeah, yeah,

875
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:56,200
Speaker 1: because yeah, many fist fights to get in right. Well yeah,

876
00:48:56,320 --> 00:49:00,440
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, you need like quiet reflection and uh peace,

877
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:04,640
Speaker 1: And he's not got a lot of peace inside him. Yeah,

878
00:49:04,680 --> 00:49:08,480
Speaker 1: that is not the guy he is. It is likely

879
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:11,000
Speaker 1: that Stalin's interest in writing poems was overwritten by a

880
00:49:11,040 --> 00:49:14,800
Speaker 1: new interest in revolutionary socialist literature. The seminary had a

881
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:17,120
Speaker 1: small group of rebellious students who would gather together at

882
00:49:17,200 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 1: night and read forbidden works of political theory, eventually graduating

883
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:24,040
Speaker 1: to heavy hitters like the Communist Manifesto. Stalin and his

884
00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:26,600
Speaker 1: friends joined a local club for reading illegal books the

885
00:49:26,719 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: Cheap Library, which basically worked as a book sharing program.

886
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:32,720
Speaker 1: They also bought books from the local store, and Stalin

887
00:49:32,760 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 1: would regularly steal books too, joking to his friends that

888
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:39,160
Speaker 1: he had expropriated them for the revolution. They would wait

889
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:41,640
Speaker 1: until lights out to read when the priests were all asleep.

890
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 1: Most nights, so So would stay up until the wee

891
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 1: hours of the morning, sacrificing most of a night's sleep

892
00:49:46,239 --> 00:49:48,640
Speaker 1: for the chance to read a legal literature. He was

893
00:49:48,680 --> 00:49:51,960
Speaker 1: caught several times, usually reading books by Victor Hugo. His

894
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:55,480
Speaker 1: favorite book was The Patricide by Alexander Kezbeggie, which featured

895
00:49:55,520 --> 00:49:58,960
Speaker 1: a bandit hero named Koba. Coba was a Georgian partisan,

896
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:02,720
Speaker 1: basically a terrorist, fighting for liberation from Russia. Young Stalin

897
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:05,720
Speaker 1: fell in love with Coba. One of his friends recalled Coba,

898
00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:08,200
Speaker 1: became so So's god and gave his life meeting. He

899
00:50:08,239 --> 00:50:11,360
Speaker 1: wished to become Coba. He called himself Coba and insisted

900
00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 1: we call him that. His face shown with pride and

901
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 1: pleasure when we called him Coba. The name meant a

902
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:18,520
Speaker 1: lot to Stalin. The vengeance of the Caucasus Mountain people's

903
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:22,160
Speaker 1: the ruthlessness of the bandit, the obsession with loyalty and betrayal,

904
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 1: and the sacrifice of person and family for a cause.

905
00:50:24,840 --> 00:50:27,279
Speaker 1: It was a name he already loved his substitute father.

906
00:50:27,719 --> 00:50:29,960
Speaker 1: Years later, Stalin would adopt the named coba Is one

907
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:36,040
Speaker 1: of his revolutionary pseudonyms. So he's basically like, he gets

908
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:40,239
Speaker 1: super into fucking fan fiction. Yeah, he's a big old

909
00:50:40,239 --> 00:50:42,279
Speaker 1: fan boy dork, like they all are, like Hitler with

910
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:47,120
Speaker 1: his cowboy novels. Yeah, it's all the same, like gamers

911
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:52,279
Speaker 1: who become Nazis and wrongly sort of like fetishize. I

912
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:57,320
Speaker 1: don't know, the god Emperor from Warhammer. Yeah. Yeah, it's

913
00:50:57,360 --> 00:51:01,040
Speaker 1: this train in authoritarian personality, like every personality. I guess

914
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:02,960
Speaker 1: we all are vulnerable to it. Everybody picks a cool

915
00:51:03,040 --> 00:51:06,400
Speaker 1: person from history or fiction, Like, yeah, everyone wants to

916
00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:08,480
Speaker 1: be the special boy does the special Everybody wants to

917
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 1: be the special boy who does the special thing. It

918
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:14,760
Speaker 1: is a powerful human needs. By the late eighteen nineties,

919
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:17,840
Speaker 1: uh Stalin had gone from romantic poet to Marxist fanatic.

920
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:20,920
Speaker 1: His reading had convinced him that quote the revolutionary proletariat

921
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:23,719
Speaker 1: alone is destined by history to liberate mankind and bring

922
00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:27,480
Speaker 1: the world happiness. This apothesis, he believed would require trial

923
00:51:27,520 --> 00:51:30,719
Speaker 1: and suffering and change, but would ultimately result in scientifically

924
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:34,280
Speaker 1: proven socialism. After a couple of years of diligent reading,

925
00:51:34,520 --> 00:51:36,919
Speaker 1: Joseph got frustrated by the fact that all his group

926
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:39,200
Speaker 1: did was read. Though. He complained to the leader of

927
00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:42,360
Speaker 1: the reading circle, a guy named DevD Aarni, and insisted

928
00:51:42,400 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: that the group get involved in something real, something violent.

929
00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:48,000
Speaker 1: DevD Aarreini refused, and Stalin broke off to make his

930
00:51:48,040 --> 00:51:50,839
Speaker 1: own study group dedicated to fucking ship up as well

931
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 1: as reading. The first outlet for his youthful rage would

932
00:51:54,080 --> 00:51:57,719
Speaker 1: be a particularly aggressive seminary priest nicknamed black Spot for

933
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 1: a hideous mole on his head. And eighteen ninety seven,

934
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:03,319
Speaker 1: Stalin had been caught thirteen times reading band books, and

935
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:05,719
Speaker 1: as a result, black Spot launched a crusade to break

936
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:08,439
Speaker 1: up these secret reading circles. He would search the boy's

937
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 1: foot lockers and dirty laundry. Over the months, he grew

938
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:13,719
Speaker 1: obsessed with catching Stalin. And I'm gonna quote again from

939
00:52:13,719 --> 00:52:16,759
Speaker 1: young Stalin. At prayers, the boys had the Bible open

940
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:18,920
Speaker 1: on their desks and read marks are plucking off the

941
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:21,880
Speaker 1: sage of Russian Marxism on their knees. In the courtyard

942
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:24,239
Speaker 1: started a huge pile of firewood in which Stalin and

943
00:52:24,280 --> 00:52:26,799
Speaker 1: Iramushvili would hide the band works in where they would

944
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:30,640
Speaker 1: sit and read them. Abashidze whose black Spot, waited for

945
00:52:30,680 --> 00:52:32,359
Speaker 1: this and then sprang out to catch them, but they

946
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:34,640
Speaker 1: managed to drop the books into the logs. We were

947
00:52:34,680 --> 00:52:36,719
Speaker 1: locked up in the detention cell at once, sitting late

948
00:52:36,719 --> 00:52:39,160
Speaker 1: into the evening and darkness without food. But hunger made

949
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:41,080
Speaker 1: us rebellious, so he banged on the doors until the

950
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:43,799
Speaker 1: monk brought us something to eat. Stalin grew his hair

951
00:52:43,800 --> 00:52:46,880
Speaker 1: out long as an active protest, deliberately targeting black Spot.

952
00:52:47,040 --> 00:52:49,200
Speaker 1: When the priest demanded he cut it, Stalin thumbed his

953
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:51,359
Speaker 1: nose at the man. This prompted the priest to crack

954
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:53,920
Speaker 1: down harder, and one night he finally succeeded in catching

955
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:56,520
Speaker 1: their reading circle in the act writing filthy jokes in

956
00:52:56,520 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 1: a notebook. The priests leapt into the room and grabbed

957
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:01,400
Speaker 1: the journal out of stalin His hand, and young Stalin

958
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:03,400
Speaker 1: refused to give it up, and they wound up fighting

959
00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:07,280
Speaker 1: over the book. The priest won black Spot March. Stalin

960
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:09,439
Speaker 1: back to his room and forced the boys to soak

961
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:12,600
Speaker 1: their journal with wax and then lighted on fire. After this,

962
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:15,879
Speaker 1: he continued stalking Stalin, catching him again a few nights later,

963
00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:18,359
Speaker 1: reading forbidden books. This was enough to get a letter

964
00:53:18,440 --> 00:53:20,880
Speaker 1: sent home to Keke, who rode to Tiflis immediately to

965
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:23,320
Speaker 1: talk with her son. They had what Josepher called is

966
00:53:23,360 --> 00:53:26,400
Speaker 1: their first argument over this. At one point Keke told him,

967
00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:28,719
Speaker 1: my son, you're my only child. Don't kill me. How

968
00:53:28,719 --> 00:53:31,080
Speaker 1: will you be able to defeat Emperor Nicholas the second

969
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:33,839
Speaker 1: leave that to those who have brothers and sisters. Hurt

970
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 1: by his mother's pain and fear, Joseph shared her that

971
00:53:36,080 --> 00:53:41,960
Speaker 1: he was not a rebel. Keke called this his first lie. Yeah, yeah,

972
00:53:42,680 --> 00:53:46,760
Speaker 1: it was. Joseph's behavior continued to degrade, and his grades

973
00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:48,960
Speaker 1: finally slipped to He was still one of the best

974
00:53:48,960 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: students at the seminary, but was no longer at the

975
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:53,960
Speaker 1: top of the class. Seminary journals note that he declared

976
00:53:54,000 --> 00:53:56,920
Speaker 1: himself an atheist, refused to pray, talked in class, and

977
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 1: would not take his hat off as a sign of

978
00:53:58,640 --> 00:54:01,400
Speaker 1: respect to the monks. He received eleven warnings in the

979
00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:03,520
Speaker 1: space of a few days which prompted black Spot and

980
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:07,799
Speaker 1: his fellow priests to search his possessions. Um. Yeah, so

981
00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:12,040
Speaker 1: he's he's he's uh you could say, acting out at

982
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:14,719
Speaker 1: this point. Yeah. I mean he's being radicalized. Yeah, he's

983
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:20,879
Speaker 1: he's been radicalized and he's acting out. Yeah. Um so uh,

984
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:23,880
Speaker 1: this all kind of comes to a head, um with

985
00:54:24,120 --> 00:54:26,560
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a fight between Stalin and this monk,

986
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:29,800
Speaker 1: the black Spot, who is like his his like really

987
00:54:29,840 --> 00:54:33,279
Speaker 1: the guy who pushes Stalin out of you know, what

988
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:35,600
Speaker 1: might be considered a normal path in life and kind

989
00:54:35,600 --> 00:54:38,200
Speaker 1: of on this revolutionary course. Like he's clearly his head

990
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 1: was leading him there, but this is the guy that

991
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:44,239
Speaker 1: he's sort of binds all of those feelings of frustration

992
00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:47,320
Speaker 1: up in. Right. It's like, yeah, you go to college

993
00:54:47,320 --> 00:54:50,680
Speaker 1: and you read and learn, and you like find these

994
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:52,440
Speaker 1: groups of people, but you don't have Yeah. This sort

995
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:58,720
Speaker 1: of like uh this you you like uniting figure. Yeah,

996
00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:02,800
Speaker 1: that pushes you yeah farther, Yeah, abbasids the black Spot.

997
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:05,840
Speaker 1: This like this this priest kind of becomes the symbol

998
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:09,880
Speaker 1: of everything that's wrong with society to Stalin. Yeah. Uh

999
00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:11,600
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote one more time from the book

1000
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:13,759
Speaker 1: Young Stalin about sort of the last fight they have

1001
00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:17,160
Speaker 1: in the seminary. They sprinted back into the seminary just

1002
00:55:17,239 --> 00:55:19,800
Speaker 1: in time to see the inspector force open Stalin's trunk

1003
00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:23,040
Speaker 1: and find some forbidden works. Abashidz grabbed them and was

1004
00:55:23,080 --> 00:55:25,239
Speaker 1: triumphantly bearing his prize up the stairs when one of

1005
00:55:25,239 --> 00:55:27,799
Speaker 1: the group charged and rammed the monk, almost loosening his

1006
00:55:27,800 --> 00:55:30,200
Speaker 1: grip on the books, but black Spot held on valiantly.

1007
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:32,480
Speaker 1: The boys jumped on him and knocked the volumes out

1008
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:34,920
Speaker 1: of his hands. Stalin himself ran up, seized the books

1009
00:55:34,960 --> 00:55:37,400
Speaker 1: and took to his heels. He was banned from visiting

1010
00:55:37,400 --> 00:55:39,560
Speaker 1: town and Kelby and his like the friend who had

1011
00:55:39,640 --> 00:55:43,000
Speaker 1: charged the priest, was expelled. Yet ironically so so schoolwork

1012
00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:45,759
Speaker 1: seemed to improve. He received very good fours from most

1013
00:55:45,760 --> 00:55:48,279
Speaker 1: subjects in a five for logic. Even now, he still

1014
00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:51,400
Speaker 1: enjoyed his history lessons. Indeed, he so liked his history teacher,

1015
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:53,919
Speaker 1: the only seminary teacher he admired, that he later took

1016
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:56,560
Speaker 1: the trouble to save his life. Meanwhile, the black Spot

1017
00:55:56,560 --> 00:55:59,000
Speaker 1: had lost control of Stalin, but could not restrain his

1018
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:01,920
Speaker 1: own obsessive pursuit of this malcontent. They were getting closer

1019
00:56:01,960 --> 00:56:03,920
Speaker 1: to the breaking point, the monk crept up on him

1020
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:06,279
Speaker 1: and peaked at him, reading yet another forbidden book. He

1021
00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:08,920
Speaker 1: then pounced, taking the book from him, but Stalin simply

1022
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 1: wrenched it out of his hands, to the amazement of

1023
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:13,560
Speaker 1: the other boys. He then went on reading it. Abshidze

1024
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:15,840
Speaker 1: was shocked. Don't you know who I am? He shouted.

1025
00:56:16,120 --> 00:56:18,480
Speaker 1: Stalin rubbed his eyes and said, I see the black

1026
00:56:18,520 --> 00:56:21,880
Speaker 1: spot and nothing else. He had crossed the line. Yeah.

1027
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:25,040
Speaker 1: Joseph was expelled in May of eighteen ninety nine. The

1028
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:27,759
Speaker 1: official cause was non appearance at exams, but this is

1029
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:30,560
Speaker 1: not entirely accurate. For years, Joseph would claimed that he

1030
00:56:30,600 --> 00:56:33,800
Speaker 1: had been expelled from Marxist propaganda. His mother, however, claimed

1031
00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 1: that he had been taken out of school against his

1032
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:38,319
Speaker 1: will by her when he caught pneumonia. But the real

1033
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:40,439
Speaker 1: cause seems to be more banel than either of these.

1034
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:43,359
Speaker 1: The black Spot raised the tuition rates just high enough

1035
00:56:43,400 --> 00:56:45,720
Speaker 1: that Keke could no longer afford to pay for Joseph

1036
00:56:45,719 --> 00:56:47,959
Speaker 1: to stay enrolled, and this seems to be what forced

1037
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:51,680
Speaker 1: him out of seminary. But this was not a great

1038
00:56:51,680 --> 00:56:54,279
Speaker 1: tragedy for young Stalin. He had long ago decided he

1039
00:56:54,320 --> 00:56:57,759
Speaker 1: was never going to become a priest. According to Sebastian Montfiore,

1040
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: black Spot had perversely turned stal And into an atheist

1041
00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 1: Marxist and taught him exactly the oppressive tactics surveillance, spying,

1042
00:57:04,600 --> 00:57:07,399
Speaker 1: invasion of inner life, violation of feelings, and Stalin's own

1043
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:10,320
Speaker 1: words that he would recreate in his Soviet police state.

1044
00:57:10,960 --> 00:57:15,600
Speaker 1: And that Cody takes us up to Stalin's adulthood. What

1045
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:21,920
Speaker 1: a fun childhood, j Stall baby, Yeah, a little baby

1046
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:31,800
Speaker 1: Joe doing crimes, learning lessons, right, having secret yeah, secret teachers,

1047
00:57:31,880 --> 00:57:36,920
Speaker 1: priest fights, sworn enemy, is a p yeah, yeah, putting

1048
00:57:36,920 --> 00:57:41,320
Speaker 1: on his fight clothes. But getting getting kidnapped a couple

1049
00:57:41,360 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 1: of times, kidnapped more times than any of the other

1050
00:57:45,080 --> 00:57:48,720
Speaker 1: students we've talked or subjects we've talked about. He really

1051
00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:51,280
Speaker 1: got kidnapped a lot. Well, And I mean, you know,

1052
00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:54,200
Speaker 1: usually you get kidnapped once and that's kind of that's

1053
00:57:54,680 --> 00:57:58,880
Speaker 1: that's the one. Mm hmm. Good ship. Yeah, Well, Cody

1054
00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:01,440
Speaker 1: has changed your openny of our old buddy j Stall

1055
00:58:01,520 --> 00:58:05,360
Speaker 1: at all. Um. I wouldn't say it's changed. I would

1056
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:12,480
Speaker 1: say it's more robust. It's some illuminations, Um, yeah, what

1057
00:58:13,040 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 1: I mean, it's sort of every step of the way,

1058
00:58:15,320 --> 00:58:17,880
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, he took

1059
00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:19,880
Speaker 1: that way, he took that with him, carried that with

1060
00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:22,720
Speaker 1: him for a long Yeah. That that one stayed with him. Yeah,

1061
00:58:22,720 --> 00:58:24,520
Speaker 1: and just sort of every action he took and every

1062
00:58:24,520 --> 00:58:26,640
Speaker 1: action taken against it's like, yep, all right, there you go.

1063
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:34,440
Speaker 1: That's yeah, very eliminating. Cool ship, cool ship. Well, Cody,

1064
00:58:35,440 --> 00:58:38,120
Speaker 1: has this convinced you to start your own Marxist utopia

1065
00:58:38,200 --> 00:58:43,280
Speaker 1: in the steps of Russia? It convinced me more. Yah, yeah, Okay,

1066
00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna fight days, We're gonna get just

1067
00:58:46,960 --> 00:58:49,880
Speaker 1: going to be fighting fight days and kidnapping children. I

1068
00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:53,160
Speaker 1: learned the opposite lesson there that I've learned that kidnapping

1069
00:58:53,240 --> 00:58:55,640
Speaker 1: is good, So it is good. This has always been

1070
00:58:55,640 --> 00:58:58,240
Speaker 1: a pro kidnapping podcast. That's okay. I didn't I didn't

1071
00:58:58,240 --> 00:59:00,920
Speaker 1: want it. I didn't want to presume. So no, Sophie,

1072
00:59:00,920 --> 00:59:04,720
Speaker 1: we're sponsored by the concept of kidnapping, right, I mean, yeah,

1073
00:59:04,800 --> 00:59:08,320
Speaker 1: it's their number one sponsor is the concept of kidnapp

1074
00:59:08,520 --> 00:59:15,480
Speaker 1: Promo code do it d o I TA point point

1075
00:59:15,480 --> 00:59:19,000
Speaker 1: promo code kidnapping at the New app Kidnapper with no

1076
00:59:19,120 --> 00:59:24,320
Speaker 1: e Take the Children dot Com, Take the Children dot Com.

1077
00:59:24,320 --> 00:59:26,440
Speaker 1: Oh boy, Cody, you want to plug your plug doubles?

1078
00:59:26,480 --> 00:59:29,160
Speaker 1: I can't wait and so I won't. I'll do it now.

1079
00:59:29,680 --> 00:59:31,840
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I got a show called some More News.

1080
00:59:32,000 --> 00:59:34,440
Speaker 1: You can check it out on YouTube. We got a Twitter,

1081
00:59:34,680 --> 00:59:38,040
Speaker 1: my personal twitters Dr Mr Cody. We have podcasts my

1082
00:59:38,120 --> 00:59:41,720
Speaker 1: cost Katie Stole, Even more News. I've got another podcast

1083
00:59:41,960 --> 00:59:44,280
Speaker 1: with my co host Katie Stole and my other co host,

1084
00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:48,560
Speaker 1: Robert Evans, called Worst Year Ever. Check out that sounds

1085
00:59:49,200 --> 00:59:51,960
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. Um, it's terrible in terms of the

1086
00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:56,280
Speaker 1: subject matter and the time in which it's recorded. Um.

1087
00:59:56,360 --> 00:59:58,520
Speaker 1: And yeah, our patreon dot com slash some more News

1088
00:59:58,520 --> 01:00:01,400
Speaker 1: if you want to support that, and I don't. What's up, guys,

1089
01:00:01,760 --> 01:00:06,480
Speaker 1: How are you doing? Hey? Are you doing? The Democrats

1090
01:00:06,640 --> 01:00:09,560
Speaker 1: are losing the impeachment vote as we speak, because the

1091
01:00:09,600 --> 01:00:14,120
Speaker 1: Democrats are losers apparently. Yeah, the Democrats. You know, what

1092
01:00:14,240 --> 01:00:17,080
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin wouldn't have done is taken no for an

1093
01:00:17,080 --> 01:00:22,120
Speaker 1: answer from Congress. But that's not a good thing. Yeah, yeah,

1094
01:00:24,160 --> 01:00:26,360
Speaker 1: maybe not something that they should do. So by the

1095
01:00:26,360 --> 01:00:29,400
Speaker 1: time this episode comes out on Thursday, because the Senate's

1096
01:00:29,480 --> 01:00:33,360
Speaker 1: voting on Wednesday, big old losers, a bunch of losers. Yeah,

1097
01:00:33,400 --> 01:00:36,680
Speaker 1: they already lost the witness vote today. Our only hope

1098
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:39,840
Speaker 1: is that the coronavirus makes it into a really nice

1099
01:00:39,920 --> 01:00:44,880
Speaker 1: DC steakhouse. It thins up Congress a little bit. I

1100
01:00:44,960 --> 01:00:49,160
Speaker 1: feel like the other things are going to happen. Nope,

1101
01:00:49,200 --> 01:00:52,360
Speaker 1: that is it. I feel like if that happens and

1102
01:00:52,600 --> 01:00:55,520
Speaker 1: it's spread more and maybe maybe it won't be contained

1103
01:00:55,520 --> 01:00:57,440
Speaker 1: to just a few members of Congress, that we want

1104
01:00:57,480 --> 01:01:01,560
Speaker 1: to go away. Nope, nope, all right, that's it. That

1105
01:01:01,640 --> 01:01:04,360
Speaker 1: is the only hope, and your only hope is to

1106
01:01:04,440 --> 01:01:07,240
Speaker 1: listen to more Behind the Bastards. You can find us

1107
01:01:07,280 --> 01:01:09,440
Speaker 1: on the internet along with the sources for this episode,

1108
01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards dot com. You can find me on

1109
01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:13,640
Speaker 1: Twitter at I right, okay, you can find us on

1110
01:01:13,640 --> 01:01:17,480
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram at at bastards pod. Um. You know

1111
01:01:17,680 --> 01:01:21,040
Speaker 1: that's the that's the episode. Uh, Go go out into

1112
01:01:21,040 --> 01:01:24,600
Speaker 1: the world and remember the most important lesson of Joseph Stalin.

1113
01:01:25,120 --> 01:01:29,880
Speaker 1: Regularly fistfight all of your neighbors. Then catapult the cow. Yeah,

1114
01:01:30,000 --> 01:01:34,520
Speaker 1: catapult the hell out of a cow. Wait, wait, wait,

1115
01:01:38,400 --> 01:01:39,480
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry listening