WEBVTT - The Childhood of Joseph Stalin 0:00:02.640 --> 0:00:05.680 You know, Cody, the nice thing about felonies is that, 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:11.320 oh ship, we're recording, aren't we. Uh. The bad thing 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:15.239 about felonies, felonies are terrible. Don't commit them? Oh no, 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:18.400 there the always started in the middle of our conversation 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:21.000 about how felonies are bad and don't you don't do 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:27.960 crimes straight, don't crimes? Yeah, exactly, avoid crimes and embrace 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:31.520 head to resensuality. The motto of this podcast, Well, we 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:33.960 were talking about that is what we were talking about. 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:36.760 This is horrible, you guys. No, this is the best 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:40.480 introduction yet, Sophie, The introduction we planned that we're doing 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:45.159 now is the best one yet. Speaking of not doing crimes, 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:51.159 you know who was the best at not committing crimes? Ah, 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:54.160 the best at not committing crimes, the best at not 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:57.440 committing crimes. I mean, I was gonna say Jesus, but 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:00.440 that's the opposite. That's not true at all. He committed crime. 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:08.360 That was Jesus whole thing. Huge crimer huge crimer um. Yeah, 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:13.360 watch him, he's a crimer um. I don't know me, 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:25.440 Joseph the Sarianovitch Stalin really yeah, yeah, yeah, we're where 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.080 did I introduce the show's name. No, this is behind 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:33.440 the bast Welcome to the Don't Do Crimes Podcast with 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.520 Cody Johnston, my co host for Today and Today every day. 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:39.840 In this podcast, we talk about a terrible person from 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:42.720 history and revealed details from their past that the listeners 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:46.920 do not know. And today we're talking about the childhood 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:53.040 of our old best friend j Stall Joey, Joey Joe Steel, 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:58.560 little Joey, okay, little joe bo s bus like his 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:03.440 baby crimes, some of them, yeah, some baby crimes in here. Yeah. Okay. 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:06.480 Are you a fan of Joseph Stalin. I'm aware of 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:11.080 Joseph Stalin Okay, okay, not a Stalin stand not a 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:16.440 Stalhead standing standing, Yeah, standing, standing is what they call him. Yeah, 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:23.880 a job bro, Joe Bro. There we go. Um, what 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.440 do you know about Stalin's childhood? Not much actually about 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:30.960 his childhood. That's good here because otherwise this episode would 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:33.919 be disappointing. I know all about I know all about 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:39.000 his baby crimes, all about his his very tiny crimes. Well, Cody, 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:44.040 Joseph Vassarianovitch Juggas Veeley was born in eighteen seventy eight 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:48.800 in Gory, Georgia, And I will try to pronounce Jugashvilley 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:53.320 close to correct, but I won't, I won't, it won't happen. 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.480 At the time, Gory was a very tiny town on 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:00.320 the outskirts of the Russian Empire, sparsely popular, did and 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.080 largely underdeveloped. The area around Gory was beautiful. The czar's 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:06.720 brother kept a palace there, but it was also remote. 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:09.520 The future ruler of Russia would count himself lucky that 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.560 he came up in Gory, though see in the whier 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:15.519 CAUCUSUS region, only one in thirty children were allowed to 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:17.720 go to school because they just weren't that many schools 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:20.720 in Georgia, though one in fifteen children got to have 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:23.840 an education. Uh. This is because Gory had a large 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.799 merchant population and comparently a comparatively outsized amount of development. 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:30.560 The small town of seven thousand where Stalin grew up 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:34.359 featured four schools, including a two story church founded in 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:39.200 eighteen eighteen. In Gory, one in ten boys attended school. 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:45.280 He's all right, yeah, yeah, he's won the lottery. Yeah. 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:47.840 I mean, what is what is your ideal ratio of 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:51.640 of of people to attend school? My ideal ratio is 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:55.440 a hunt. It's uh, one out of one ten out 0:03:55.320 --> 0:04:00.600 of ten. I think that should just be me and 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:04.720 out of all of them. Yeah, so like one out 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:09.080 of billions, it's you. Yeah, because all we really need 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.480 is one podcaster and a lot of people to dig. 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:14.160 That's true, to go to school to dig. Who's who's 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:17.200 teaching you? Though? At this school? Then uh, that is 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:19.720 a mystery. Nobody knows. You just walk into a building 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:23.000 and you just walk out, and I know where to 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:26.040 tell people to dig. And that is the ideal society. 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:31.280 So you've you're just like a dig major. Yeah yeah, 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:36.039 ok yeah, digging and uh philosophy, but you're not but 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:39.240 you're not like good enough to do the digging yourself. Well, 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.040 there's plenty of diggers. Someone needs to tell them where 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:44.200 to dig. Otherwise you just have a bunch of random 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:49.720 holes that's not gonna or like very coordinated holes. Yeah okay, 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:52.400 yeah yeah, And then I can tell people now we eat, 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:56.719 now we continue digging, and then they do it. Well, 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:01.200 I sip dacharies exactly one person, Yeah, which I've earned 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:03.680 and learned how to make in school, which is taught 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:09.160 by a mystery. All right, back to Stone. Joseph's parents 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:13.280 were Vissarian, juggish, Villey and a Katarina Gelazi. They'd been 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.159 married back in eighteen seventy two, when Vissarian was twenty 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.599 two and she was seventeen. Now Vissarian went by Basso 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:22.160 for regions that I'm sure makes sense to Georgians, and 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:24.640 a Katerina went by Keke, which does kind of make 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:29.360 sense to everybody. Uh. Beso was handsome, broad shouldered, intelligent 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:32.480 and industrious. He was a cobbler by trade and widely 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:35.719 seen as the best bootmaker in town. Keke was gorgeous 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:38.839 and charming and beloved by just about everybody in the town. 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:42.960 They had conceived two children before Joseph's birth. Bezo was, 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:46.719 in his wife's words, almost mad with happiness when the first, Mikhail, 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:50.080 was born in eighteen seventy five. Tragically, he died two 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:53.760 months later, driving Basso equally mad with grief. He began 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:56.320 to drink, but this was the nineteenth century, and he 0:05:56.320 --> 0:05:58.240 didn't let something like a dead baby stop you from 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:01.200 rolling the dice on another baby. The Jugish Belis had 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:04.719 another son a year later, Georgy geergy g e I 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:08.600 R g I Uh. He died six months later, which, yeah, 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:12.080 I'm not going to be able to pronounce all these jeergy. Yeah. 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:15.080 He died six months later, which, from an optimistic point 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.280 of view, is a three improvement in his linking of 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:22.120 the first kid. They're doing it, they're making progress. Do 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:24.280 you think pointing that out to them would have made 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:30.880 them less set? I really don't. I feel like the 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:33.600 other of the other child. You know, when you look 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:36.880 at this statistically, you're a way better parent than you 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:39.719 were before. Look at how much O. That's called learning. 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:42.880 That's growth right there, that's growth right there. Don't worry 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:46.000 about it. Yeah, It's sort of like when you look 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:48.080 at the number of people who die on my jet 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:51.440 ski and just just total numbers, it looks like I'm 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:53.640 a bad jet ski pilot. But when you compare the 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:55.159 number of people who have died on my jet ski 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:57.760 in the last three years to the prior nine years, 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:01.400 I'm a great jet ski pilot. I've improved immensely. They're 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.240 exactly That's that's how you look at that is how 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:07.840 you look at statistics. So when Joseph was born that 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:11.000 December in eight his mom and his dad had reason 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:13.600 to be less than enthusiastic about his chances of survival. 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.880 So so as they called him. Was weak, fragile, and thin. 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:19.800 The second and third toes of his left foot were webbed. 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:22.040 He was sit constantly, and he was always on the 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:24.640 verge of death. And I don't normally say if only 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:31.440 that baby had died, but this is Stalin died two 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:34.000 out of three. You were so I thought the time 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:38.880 was a charm. Oh No, before Joseph's birth, Baso it vowed, 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:41.360 just let the child survive, and I'll crawl to Jerry 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:43.640 on my knees with a child on my shoulders. But 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:46.080 of course, promises to God are the easiest ones to ignore. 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:48.680 And once Joseph came out alive, Baso sort of forgot 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.760 about this. But then Joseph got sick, and Basso assumed 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:54.000 this was God, being like, you made a promise, and 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.560 now you're welching someone to murder your baby, because that's God. 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:00.880 That was the deal. So he keke walked to the 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:04.720 church and donated a sheep to the priests. Now, unlike 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:07.200 his older brothers, Stalin survived, and in the early years 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:09.480 the family thrived. Gorey was a poor town and most 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:12.040 of the houses were made of mud, but bezos shoemaking 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:14.360 business did well enough for him to hire apprintices and 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:17.760 eventually ten employees. For a while, the family lived well. 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:21.840 Kek later recalled our family happiness was limited. One of 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:25.040 bezos apprentices later said he lived better than anyone else 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:27.559 of our profession. They always had butter in their house. 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:30.520 Gives you an idea of like where things are for 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:36.600 society at this point, he's got butter. But yeah. Now 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:39.559 this would later be very embarrassing for adults Stalin because 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.319 communist heroes are not supposed to come from prosperous middle 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:47.760 class roots. Yeah, they're not supposed to be butter haers. 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:51.120 You get fucking you get fucking starved to death for 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:57.520 having butter. Yeah. As an adult, he ruefully admitted, I'm 0:08:57.520 --> 0:08:59.319 not the son of a worker. My father had a 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:03.160 shoeworkshop up, employing apprentices and exploiter. We didn't live badly, 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:07.040 and that was like, if only we'd lived badly, I wish, 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.120 I wish it had harder times. But luckily for his 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:13.559 future socialist credentials, his family happiness did not last long. 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:16.440 Bezo had started drinking after his first son's death, and 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:18.560 continued drinking for the rest of his life. He made 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.080 friends with a local Russian exile named Paca, who'd been 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:23.760 basically forced to flee to Georgia for his connections to 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:26.480 a group called the People's Will, a terrorist organization who 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:29.800 would repeatedly be tried and eventually succeeded to murder the Czar. 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:32.800 Some of Joseph's earliest memories were made talking to PoCA, 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:35.000 who liked Little So So and bought him a canary. 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:38.719 Like Bezo, Poco was a hardcore alcoholic. One winter, he 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:41.040 passed out on the snow and died, and Beaso had 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:44.360 to go to one sright. I didn't know that. You 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:49.400 was really abrupt. Yeah, that's fucking life back there. Everybody 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:51.760 knows someone who dies in the snow. I know it's 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:53.760 it's it really sounded like You're like, here's like a 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:56.439 fun little story about a time he got drunk. But 0:09:56.480 --> 0:10:02.520 then the story ended, like all Stalin store in a miserable, miserable, 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:07.080 unthinkable death. Yeah. Yeah, So after his drinking buddy died, 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:09.120 Baso had to go to one of the local priests, 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:12.400 father Chuck Fianni, to find a drinking buddy. As an adult, 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:14.320 Stalin had a vivid memory of his dad and the 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:18.000 priest stumbling home, singing out a tune. He recalled the priest, saying, 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:20.840 you're a good bloke, Beso, even for a shoemaker, and 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:23.760 his father responded, you're a priest, but what a priest? 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:29.360 I love you all right, all right. So times in Georgia, 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:35.040 some characters, some characters. Now, Bezo was not a happy drunk, 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:36.679 and as he descended more and more to drink, he 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:40.400 became increasingly obsessed with local rumors about Joseph's parentage. See 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.000 Ke was close friends with a guy named dav Ri Chiwi, 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:46.040 the chief of police. The town mayor later testified that 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:49.280 Joseph was actually this guy's real son. There were also 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:51.640 rumors that a famous explorer who had crossed through the 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:54.840 town named Price Evolski had betted Keke and produced Joseph. 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:56.959 Some townsfolk declared that one of the town's for you 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:59.600 Jewish men was his real dad, But the most commonly 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:03.240 sighted potential father for Stalin was a guy named Yakov Ignatashvili. 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.920 Ignatashvili was the wealthiest man in town, a wine merchant 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:09.439 and a great boxer. Kek worked in his household from 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:11.480 time to time, and ignotish Villy did take a deep 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:14.240 liking to the family. He was named Joseph's godfather and 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:17.000 later paid for his education. There's no way to know 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:19.480 the truth, but we absolutely knew they were rumors. Some 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:22.600 locals accused KK of basically being a sex worker. Even 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.320 decades later, a reporter from the Washington Post who went 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:27.160 to Gory and talked to some of the people old 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.560 enough to have known Kek and Joseph uh found claims 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.439 that young Stalin called his mother the prostitute when they 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:39.959 had arguments. So we don't really know, yeah, or if 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:42.000 Kek was in fact a prostitute, or if she was 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:46.160 just really well liked, like like a snotty thing for 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:49.320 a kid to say. Yeah. And it's compounded by the 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:52.480 fact that in Georgian culture, men were expected to have 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:57.319 multiple mistresses, um, and like everybody was just fucking all 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:00.120 the time, which definitely makes it harder to know what 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.520 was actually going wrong. Right, Well, what else? What else 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:04.959 are you gonna do? It's joy I'll tell you what 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:06.760 else you're gonna do later, because it's fun as hell. 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:11.640 Um Yeah. Keke herself did little to downplay the rumors 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:13.920 that she had been sleeping around a lot, and Joseph 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.680 could be anybody's kid. In her old age, she urged 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:19.199 Labrinty Barrier that the head of the n k v 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:22.600 D Stalin's like secret belief. She urged his wife Nina 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:25.319 to take an illicit lovers and basically insinuated that she'd 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:27.880 done the same, saying, when I was young, I cleaned 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:29.840 house for people, and when I met a good looking boy, 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:34.080 I didn't waste the opportunity. So who knows? Yeah, there 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:38.080 it is. Yeah. As an aside, k was quite a character. 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:41.760 The book Young Stalin by Sebastian sebag Montfior includes a 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.240 number of bizarre anecdotes about her, usually based on her 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:46.679 own recollections. And I'm gonna read you one right now 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:49.200 to give you a sense of this woman's personality. Quote. 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:51.760 She managed to attract so So with a flower, at 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:54.240 which point keke jovially pulled out her breasts and showed 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:56.200 them to the toddler, who ignored the flower and died 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:58.800 for the breasts. But the drunk ruction exile Polka was 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:01.480 spying on them and burst out laughing. So I buttoned 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:05.840 up my dress. So this is like her playing with 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:10.520 little Yeah, these are like the story she tells to 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:14.360 everybody when her son is the ruler of Russia. She's 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:20.480 she's a character, kek rules. Yeah yeah, all right, all right, yeah. 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:23.200 So most historians seem to think that Basso was in 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:26.320 fact Joseph's real father, but the rumors at least were real, 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:29.320 and they drove an increasingly drunken Baso into regular rages. 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:32.240 On one occasion, he came home wasted and threw Joseph 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:35.000 on the ground so hard he pied blood for days. 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:37.959 He would regularly charge home drunk, looking for young Stalin 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:41.000 and screaming where is Keke's little bastard hiding under the bed? 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:48.040 So yeah, yeah, yeah, less less whimsical. Yeah, things switched 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:51.559 hard in old time e Georgia between whimsical and beating 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:55.640 a child until he p's blood for a couple of days. Yep. 0:13:56.600 --> 0:14:00.280 One of young Stalin's schoolmates later recalled undeserved beatings made 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:02.640 the boy as hard and heartless as the father himself, 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:05.200 and this person came to believe that Bezo's abuses how 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:09.040 Stalin learned to hate people. Stalin did, in fact, spend 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:11.360 much of his early childhood hiding from his drunken father 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:13.800 or watching his dad beat his mom. By the time 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:16.160 he was five, his dad's business wasn't shambles, and Keke 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:19.280 was increasingly supporting the family. She started to fight back, 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:22.560 to punching her husband in retaliation for his violence. This 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:25.320 eventually cowed Bezo, and by the time has Joseph was six, 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.000 his father had fled the home. And this seems like 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:31.640 the best case scenario, right, Like it's like the Lifetime movie, 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:34.040 like she's abused, but then she learns to fight back 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:42.720 and father leaves the house. Unfortunately, violence doesn't work that way. Yeah. Um, 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.160 And as one friend of the family later recalled, quote, 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:46.880 his mother was head of the family now and the 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:49.240 fist which had subdued his father was now applied to 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:53.240 the upbringing of her son. She beat him unmercifully for disobedience. 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:59.320 So that's kind of reality saying, yeah, if you learn 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:05.080 to solve your problems with punching, maybe probably Yeah, it's 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:10.840 the tragedy of the fists. Bummer. Yeah, I came on 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.840 here to have a good time, a good time learning 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:18.680 about j Staalah apparently all right. Decades later, on his 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.040 last visit home to see his mother in the nineteen thirties, 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.240 Dictator of All Russia Joseph Stalin asked his mother why 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.480 she'd beaten him so much. She replied, it didn't do 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:33.280 you any harm. But yeah, I shouldn't have said, kek 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:37.320 rules like she's a character that if I sort of 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:45.600 gesture to everything around yea, yeah, did you no harm? Yeah? Now, 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:49.200 Stalin's biographers are very much sort of of multiple minds 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:51.840 on this. Sebastian sebag Montfiori, who was certainly the most 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.720 entertaining Staln biographer, draws a direct line between all this 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:58.080 childhood abuse and Stalin's future violence. Um. And he also 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:00.960 points out that Gory was a wild lea violent town 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:03.160 in a pretty fun way. And I'm going to quote 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.960 directly from the book Young Stalin Now. Gory was one 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:09.960 of the last towns to practice the picturesque and savage 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:12.880 custom of free for all town brawls with special rules 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:16.000 but no holds barred violence. The boozing, praying, and fighting 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:19.440 were all interconnected with drunken priests acting as referees. The 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.800 saloon bars of Gory were incorrigible stews of violence and crime, 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:26.400 town brawls, wrestling tournaments, and schoolboy gang warfare, where the 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:30.120 free Grelli fighting traditions at festivals Christmas and Shrove Tide. 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:33.280 Before Lent, both quarters fielded a parade led by transvestites. 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:36.280 Are actors writing as carnival kings on camels and donkeys, 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:39.480 surrounded by pipe players and singers and fancy dress. At 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:42.720 the Kenoba Carnival to celebrate Georgia's sixteen thirty four victory 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:45.960 over Persia, one actor played the Georgians are another the 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:48.760 Persian Shaw, who was soon pelted with fruit than doused 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:51.480 in water. The males in each family, from children upwards 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:54.320 also paraded, drinking wine and singing until night fell, when 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.800 the real fund began. This assault of free boxing. The 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.920 sport of Creavy was a mass duel with rules. Voice 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:03.960 of three wrestled other three year olds, Then children fought together, 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:06.879 then teenagers, and finally the men threw themselves into an 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.760 incredible battle, by which time the town was completely out 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:12.400 of control, a state that lasted into the following day. 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:16.280 Even at school, where classes fought, classes shops were often pillaged. 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:24.760 Isn't that since that's wild, That's that's so cool, That's like, 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:28.760 that's the only town that does what. No, it's not 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:30.880 the only town. It was one of the last ones 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:33.359 that used to be super common in big chunks of 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:36.040 like Eastern Europe and the Caucuses. This is the alternative 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:38.800 to sex you mentioned, right, Yeah, this everybody beat the 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:41.400 ship out of each other. The day where we all 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:45.400 fight believable. Let's all get wasted and just ruin each 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.200 other in the middle of the street. The priests will 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:53.959 be refereaced. Fight club town amazing. Everybody's drunk, everybody's punching 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:56.360 each other. It just it sounds like the best time. 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:58.199 I mean, that's like that's your dream. That's like an 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:02.399 amusement park. Yeah, it's like the good purge, Like instead 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:04.960 of it being like abusive, it's a way for the 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.760 whole town to celebrate by just wailing on each other. 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:14.120 Like I wish we still did that. Hey you can dream. 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:16.439 Maybe you're in America, you can do whatever you Yeah, 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:18.800 we could make this the new holiday that could get 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:23.800 rid of our partisan divide. Nationalist fight day. Yeah, bring 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:26.840 them together to beat the ship exactly. Everyone will feel 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:31.040 a little bit better and a little bit worse. Mm hmm. God, 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:32.679 what a great thing that would be. If we had 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:37.639 universal healthcare there it is, or or legal street drinking. 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:39.879 But you need one of the two. Yeah. So for 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:42.719 so first term universe healthcare and then second term is like, well, 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:44.960 now we got to fight each other. Yeah, now we 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:46.680 have to fight now that we know we'll be taken 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:48.280 care of now we can we have to get our 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:53.600 money's worth from this fucking health care exactly. Oh my god, 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:58.119 I mean I wish we did that just as a 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:02.640 podcasting team. Like it's a like a like a team 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:05.360 building retreat. Yeah, like we all fight in a pit 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:07.800 and Sophie gets really drunk and dressed as a priest 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:14.439 and referees. Yeah, it's a good plan, Sophie, were doing this. 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:17.840 You've got a new job. This is how we're celebrating 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:20.320 Shrove Tide when we figure out when Shrove Tide is. 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:22.840 We're gonna figure it out, and we're gonna we're gonna 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:28.160 do some trust falls. But then we're gonna be each 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:31.840 other fights. O. Katie is going to be in the 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.840 pit with everybody. We're all gonna be. It's gonna she's 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:38.880 got good reach. It's going to be quite a fist fight. Yeah. Well, 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.200 you're gonna have to change your attitude because you're you're 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:44.280 gonna be You're gonna be the referee. And the priest. 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:50.680 Oh yeah, yeah, she's turning around, she's turning it. I'm 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:54.000 just trying to picture that out. It's all about the 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:56.320 outfit and then everybody. It sounds like a little black 0:19:56.320 --> 0:20:01.679 and white, you know, from the blood. I bet we 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:03.919 could get a lot of businesses to support, like a 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.800 national fist Fight Day. Yeah, yeah, like just like we'll 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:10.480 put your name on our jerseys and yeah, I hate 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:15.119 this continue okay, yeah, okay, it's easy. It's easy to 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.639 draw a direct line between the gigantic town wide beat 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:23.119 downs that Joseph uh Like participated in as a small 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:26.480 child and the terrific violence that he unleashed as the 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:31.080 Red CSAR of the U s SR. Citation. Well, there's 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:33.360 actually a lot of disagreement about this. There's a lot 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:38.040 of disagreement about another. Stalin. Historian Stephen Cottkin cautions against 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:41.760 that kind of thinking in his biography Stalin quote, a 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:44.720 sizeable chunk of humanity was beaten by one or more parents. 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:48.359 Nor did Gorey suffer from an especially violent Oriental culture. 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:51.080 Of these town wide fist fights, cat Can notes such 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.879 uh festive violence, mad cap bear fists followed by sloppy embraces, 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:57.720 was typical of the Russian Empire, from Ukrainian market towns 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:00.320 to Siberian villages. Gorey did not stand it out in 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:03.440 the least. So basically everybody is doing this like it's 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:05.879 weird to be like to focus on how this affected 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:10.320 Stalin's rule when it was like this was just the norm. Yeah. Um, 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:13.000 So well, two things I guess I take away from 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:14.720 that is one is that we should definitely do this now, 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:17.160 because we should definitely. If they're arguing that it didn't 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:19.440 affect him, then it won't affect us and we should 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:23.000 do it. Um, absolutely, But nobody's arguing with that, right. 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:27.680 But also, um, most of those people who experienced that 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:33.040 didn't become dictators, so there's not really like a control group, 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:36.680 I guess. Yeah, I guess the point is that like 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:42.399 the violent the kind of violence unleashed under Stalin was new, um, 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:45.439 but every generation of Russian ruler prior to Stalin had 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:48.600 kind of grown up in the same or yeah, and 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:51.000 so like the like, so it's weird to be like 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:55.280 suddenly it it mattered, right, like obviously, like everything that 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:57.359 happened to Stalin matter because he wound up with like 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:01.560 this kind of like incredible power. It's weird to focus 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:03.480 just on this thing that was a factor in all 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:05.840 of these other people's lives who didn't do that right. 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:09.600 It's more just like, well, this is uh not the reason, 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:14.360 but it is an element of you know what led him? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:19.480 and uh, we're gonna talk more about um joy Stall 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:22.760 and what made him into the man he became. But first, 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:26.199 you know what, Stalin would have loved Cody as a 0:22:26.200 --> 0:22:36.080 committed communist. Um, I was gonna say, beating people. If 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:41.359 there's one thing communists love, it's capitalism. Yep, we go 0:22:42.080 --> 0:22:45.960 Stone sending out a lot of promo codes. Oh, Stalin 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:48.920 loved promo. If you needed to know where to buy 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:52.000 a mattress, Joseph Stalin was the guy to ask. I 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:55.600 believe that. Yeah, that's why they call them Casper's because 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:57.360 of all the go oh we shouldn't make that joke. 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:13.080 Had break time, Yeah, we're back. We were talking about 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:16.200 the cargo cult of masculinity. Uh, and how all those 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:19.280 weird Daily Wire Ben Shapiro guys love to pose with 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:24.080 cigars and other like totems of masculinity without actually doing 0:23:24.119 --> 0:23:28.040 anything that might be considered brave or courageous, and you know, 0:23:28.160 --> 0:23:31.360 it's frustrating and annoying and deeply irritating. But it might 0:23:31.359 --> 0:23:34.040