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Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.

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Speaker 1: Doctor Joshua Sanborn is a historian of Russia in the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century, and if you want to understand World War

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Speaker 1: One from a Russian perspective, you simply can't miss his books.

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Speaker 1: If you've listened through this season of Unobscured, you already

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Speaker 1: know what an expert he is on imperial state politics

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Speaker 1: and the nasty mess the Royal family found themselves in.

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Speaker 1: But Dr Sandborn's books and his conversation with this season's

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Speaker 1: writer Carl Nillis, covers so much more than that. His

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Speaker 1: scholarship is a deep exploration of the connections between war

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Speaker 1: and politics in the Romanov Empire and the way that

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Speaker 1: the bloodshed rippled out across all of Russian society, from

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Speaker 1: high to low. So it's a pleasure to offer you

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Speaker 1: this conversation. But strap in because this train moves at

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Speaker 1: one hundred miles an hour and we're headed for the

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Speaker 1: Eastern Front of the Great War. This is the Unobscured

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Speaker 1: Interview series for season four. I'm Aaron Minky for Unobscured podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Carl Nellis, and I'm joined today by Dr Joshua Sanborn.

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Speaker 1: Dr Sandborn is professor of history at Lafayette College in

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Speaker 1: eastern Pennsylvania. He has been recognized with numerous awards for

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Speaker 1: his teaching and scholarship, including a fellowship from the National

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Speaker 1: Endowment for the Humanities. In two thousand three, he published

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Speaker 1: Drafting the Russian Nation, Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass

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Speaker 1: Politics from nineteen o five to and more recently he

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Speaker 1: published Imperial Apocalypse, The Great War and the Destruction of

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Speaker 1: the Russian Empire with Oxford University Press. Dr Sanborn is fantastic,

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Speaker 1: His writing is great. I hope you grated and check

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Speaker 1: out his books if you're interested in really digging into

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Speaker 1: the history of this period. Um, it's fantastic to have

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Speaker 1: you joined us on Unobscured. Dr Sanborn, welcome. Oh, it's

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Speaker 1: great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. So let's

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Speaker 1: start kind of from that general picture of your work, UM,

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Speaker 1: maybe with Imperial Apocalypse in particular, that you've written a

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Speaker 1: fascinating book here on the internal dynamics of the late

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Speaker 1: Russian Empire, especially the significance of the resistance to Russian

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Speaker 1: control in the border countries, but all the ramifications of

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Speaker 1: that as well, can you say a few things about

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Speaker 1: what brought you to this work in particular? Sure. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: As as with many scholar careers, it sort of follows

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Speaker 1: a certain kind of trajectory. UM. I got interested in

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Speaker 1: Russia and in Russian history actually back in high school.

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Speaker 1: I grew up at the very end of the Cold War,

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Speaker 1: very interested in what was happening in terms of arms control, disarmament,

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Speaker 1: as very concerned about UM, the way the world was

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Speaker 1: headed and the possibility of of nuclear war between the

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Speaker 1: two superpowers. I was firmly convinced that UM better better

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Speaker 1: relations between the two countries were necessary. By the time

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Speaker 1: I graduated college in the Soviet Union was ending, and

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Speaker 1: so when I was in graduate school in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the nineteen nineties, that same conflict wasn't present. But

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Speaker 1: but I certainly had already caught the caught the Russia hug,

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Speaker 1: and I did have this interest in UM in UH

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Speaker 1: in thinking about security and thinking about UM military affairs,

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Speaker 1: not from the perspective of a military practitioner, of an

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Speaker 1: officer or people that that work in in in the

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Speaker 1: defense departments saying, but from the perspective of someone that

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Speaker 1: wanted to look at military affairs UH through through a

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Speaker 1: broader lens, through social, political, or cultural lenses. So UM,

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Speaker 1: that's how I got onto the topic of military conscription.

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Speaker 1: Of chapters in there not only about about conscription itself,

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Speaker 1: but also about women and UH and women soldiers in

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Speaker 1: World War One, about draft resistors and conscientious objectors. It

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Speaker 1: allowed me to sort of think about a lot of

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Speaker 1: the ways that that nationhood was constructed through the performance

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Speaker 1: of violence. UM. And so that was what that that

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Speaker 1: book was about. And one of the things UM, as

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Speaker 1: I was doing the research for that book, I realized

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Speaker 1: that there was a real UM opening and a real

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Speaker 1: potential UH to write a book about World War One. UM.

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Speaker 1: The centennial World War One was coming up. I published

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Speaker 1: this book on the Hunter the anniversary of the UH

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Speaker 1: the start of the war, and there were other historians,

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Speaker 1: many other historians who were who were also developing projects

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Speaker 1: at this time. UM and I began this project as

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Speaker 1: sort of, UM yeah, a an investigation of life in

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Speaker 1: frontline zones. I was really interested in the civilian experience,

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Speaker 1: what happened to civilians that we're living in these occupied

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Speaker 1: territories who were subject to deportations, millions of whom became refugees, um.

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Speaker 1: Were tossed back and forth between these empires and had

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Speaker 1: this really interesting political experience as nationalism really sort of

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Speaker 1: grew in the period too UM. And so I moved

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Speaker 1: from that to to a larger conception of the war,

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Speaker 1: not just as a lived experience, but also as this

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Speaker 1: moment of decolonization. At this moment where European empires, UM,

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Speaker 1: we're collapsing, the big Land empires were collapsing, the German Empire,

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Speaker 1: the Austriungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire.

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Speaker 1: And what relationship did the did the war have to that?

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Speaker 1: In other words, was it just sort of the final

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Speaker 1: blow or was it something more more substantial? And so

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Speaker 1: that was that was what was beginning to govern the

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Speaker 1: way I then structured and wrote the book m HM.

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Speaker 1: And if someone who is not a historian or is

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Speaker 1: not a specialist was to pick up Imperial Apocalypse, UM,

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Speaker 1: what would you hope that they would take away from

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Speaker 1: reading it? So, if if that was the idea coming

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Speaker 1: in to discover, what would you hope that a reader

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Speaker 1: would come away thinking about the relationship between the end

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Speaker 1: of European empires? And Yeah, so in the first place,

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Speaker 1: it was an attempt to give especially English language readers,

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Speaker 1: the possibility to learn more about the war looked like

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Speaker 1: from the Eastern Front. Um. There have been many works

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Speaker 1: actually written on the Eastern Front, but most of the

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Speaker 1: ones that sort of had a um uh an ability

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Speaker 1: to sort of look at the thing in the whole

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Speaker 1: um uh. Many of those were quite dated back to

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, and the archives had opened since then.

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Speaker 1: There were a lot of new ways about thinking about

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Speaker 1: Russian politics and the Russian Revolution um and so this

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Speaker 1: is a relatively compact way for them to get to

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Speaker 1: know what's going on on the Eastern Front. So I

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Speaker 1: talked about the stical things that are going on and

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Speaker 1: talk about these social experiences, but I also talk about

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Speaker 1: the military events um and and and and all of

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Speaker 1: these are are tightly linked. As as I try to

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Speaker 1: show in the book, that you can't actually understand um

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Speaker 1: what's happening on the front without understanding what's happening in

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Speaker 1: the home front and vice versa. So that's the first thing,

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Speaker 1: this sort of compact understanding of of of the Eastern

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Speaker 1: Front and World War One UM and the second thing

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Speaker 1: is to understand this relationship between empires, wars and revolutions. UM.

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Speaker 1: Empires are not just big states. There are states that

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Speaker 1: are built around the principle of inequality. Right, one political

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Speaker 1: society is dominating other ones UM. And the metropolitan centers

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Speaker 1: are privileged, whether you're in London or in St. Petersburg,

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Speaker 1: And the colonial spaces are dominated, right, whether you're in

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Speaker 1: Ireland or in Poland. Right, those are places that that

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Speaker 1: you are not UM, you know, sort of experiencing equality

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Speaker 1: in the in the years building up to DA fourteen.

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Speaker 1: And this domination is enacted by the state UM. And

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Speaker 1: so when wars weakened states, as they sometimes do, and

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Speaker 1: they definitely did in Eastern Europe at this time, you

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Speaker 1: get opportunities for different kinds of political futures, including social

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Speaker 1: revolutions which we see in the in the period, but

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Speaker 1: also nationalist bits for independence. Would you briefly describe the

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Speaker 1: role in that imperial context that autocracy played in Russian

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Speaker 1: life and maybe in Russian life and consciousness, or you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of a cultural history approach to it UM at

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Speaker 1: the end of the eighteen hundreds into the early nineteen

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Speaker 1: dred How would you characterize the relationship between the czaars

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Speaker 1: and the people they ruled. And and this is a

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Speaker 1: little curve of maybe on the question that I handed you,

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Speaker 1: But would you want to make a distinction between the

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Speaker 1: relationship between the oars and the people in the center

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Speaker 1: of Russian and thestars and the people elsewhere? Yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: this is a this is surprisingly difficult question to answer. Actually,

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Speaker 1: it's it's hard to know what the relationship between that's

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Speaker 1: are and the people were. Um uh, in large part,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you were right, there no surveys, there

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Speaker 1: are no polls, there are no there's no way to

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Speaker 1: really get at this question. And so much of what

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Speaker 1: we have is the representation of the autocracy itself for

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Speaker 1: how it wanted that relationship to be, how it wanted

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Speaker 1: it to look, and they had a lot of resources

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Speaker 1: in order to sort of have that happen. Indeed, in

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Speaker 1: the years building up to World War One, there are

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Speaker 1: a series of celebrations um that sort of Um yeah,

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Speaker 1: they they they they heightened this um that they were

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Speaker 1: intended to heighten this bond between the monarch and the people,

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Speaker 1: and these build up to the um the term centenary,

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Speaker 1: the anniversary of the Romanov dynasty itself in nt UM

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Speaker 1: and so they have big celebrations that always always are

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Speaker 1: trying to stress this bond between that's Are and the people.

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Speaker 1: And generations actually of historians have um have sort of

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Speaker 1: accepted this in a lot of ways. Uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: have accepted this notion that, yeah, there was this thing called, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, popular monarchism where the peasants they loved That's Are.

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Speaker 1: They might not like their landlord, but they love their

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Speaker 1: It's Are. That's Are represented Russia for them, UM. And uh,

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Speaker 1: there's just not a lot of evidence to to support that. UM.

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Speaker 1: There's not a lot of evidence to suggest that it

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Speaker 1: wasn't there either, UM, other than what actually ends up

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Speaker 1: happening in the war. And so my argument ultimately is

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Speaker 1: that you know, when you see this revolt against it's Are, UM,

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Speaker 1: you start to get these signals UM. And indeed these

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Speaker 1: have been building for years that um. Uh that that peasants,

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Speaker 1: who you know, the farmers, Russian farmers throughout the empire, UM,

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Speaker 1: are not satisfied with UM with That's Are. Do not

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Speaker 1: look at him as a little god, do not look

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Speaker 1: at them him as their as their little father. UM.

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Speaker 1: And so you know, it's kind of hard to know

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Speaker 1: that now the relationship between um that's are in ethnic

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Speaker 1: Russians and and and those on the periphery UM that

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Speaker 1: is certainly different um and and that's going to vary

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Speaker 1: widely depending on where in the Russian Empire you are.

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Speaker 1: So nationalism uh and anti Russian nationalism is developing more

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Speaker 1: strongly in certain places than in others, most notably in

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Speaker 1: Poland um Uh, but also beginning to develop that by

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Speaker 1: the time we get to the twentieth century in places

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Speaker 1: like UH, like Ukraine and in the Baltic State it's

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Speaker 1: uh and even to a certain extent, um more broadly

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Speaker 1: into sort of the Asian territories of the Russian Empire too.

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Speaker 1: M um And I guess, you know, just finally, I

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Speaker 1: guess if I were to characterize this relationship, I think

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Speaker 1: the thing we have to remember is that this relationship

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Speaker 1: is distant. That's are always wanted to see this as

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Speaker 1: an intimate relationship, but but it was a distant one.

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Speaker 1: You know, most people, of course never saw that's aar

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Speaker 1: um And you know, they lived their lives in their

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Speaker 1: local regions, in these local contexts, and that's oar was

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Speaker 1: something that was was very far away, and they had

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Speaker 1: and they thought had very little impact, probably on their lives. Um.

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Speaker 1: One movement in the prelude to the collapse of the

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Speaker 1: Russian Empire was the process called Russification or Russianization. You

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Speaker 1: write that it entailed assaults on churches, language schools. At

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Speaker 1: the precise moment when the Great reforms from the eighteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: we're creating conditions in which the social basis of nationalism

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Speaker 1: could develop. Would you give us kind of a brief

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Speaker 1: overview of Ruscification, Um, it's relationship to nationalism maybe, and

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Speaker 1: especially beyond the metropole of the Russian Empire. Yeah. Sure. Um.

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Speaker 1: The first thing we have to keep in mind is

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Speaker 1: that the Russian Empire was created before nations were born,

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Speaker 1: including the Russian nation. UM. So nationalism is a fairly

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Speaker 1: late development historically, not just in Russia but but everywhere.

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Speaker 1: We can see its early growth among elite educated populations

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Speaker 1: in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, but it's not really

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Speaker 1: until the late eighteenth century and especially in the nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century that it begins to take off in Europe, in

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Speaker 1: the America's and of course the Romanov dynasty had been

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Speaker 1: founded in the seventeenth century. UM, and in the nineteenth century.

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Speaker 1: It's at the same time that we're seeing not only

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Speaker 1: the great reforms in Russia, which you're intended to sort

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Speaker 1: of create a more modern empire, um, but we see

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Speaker 1: mass industrialization, we see the beginning of mass politics and Russia,

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Speaker 1: and certainly it's wide expansion elsewhere in Europe. We see

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Speaker 1: mass education take root, um, huge strides in literacy and

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Speaker 1: the ability of people to be uh to be reading

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Speaker 1: newspaper articles about about what's going on. UM. Now, the

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Speaker 1: political power of nationalism, including its ability to mobilize much

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Speaker 1: stronger armed forces, was evident quite quickly to politicians UM.

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Speaker 1: And so you have all of these pre national multi

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Speaker 1: ethnic states, the Habsburg Empire, the romanof Dynasty, the Ottoman Empire,

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Speaker 1: all of them are trying to nationalize themselves over the

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Speaker 1: course of the nineteenth century. And so their problem is

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Speaker 1: in a multi ethnic state, as all of them are,

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Speaker 1: as Russia certainly, is they either have to figure out

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Speaker 1: how to fashion a multi ethnic national project, that is

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Speaker 1: to say, a nation that is not founded on a

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Speaker 1: single ethnicity, or to engage in building ethnic nationalism. In fact,

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Speaker 1: Russia tried to do both, but it was this latter

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Speaker 1: project defending the idea that the Russian Empire was for

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Speaker 1: the benefit of ethnic Russians and could be defined by

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Speaker 1: Russian characteristics in terms of language and church. That caused

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Speaker 1: the problems of Rucification. So, in concrete terms, what roots

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Speaker 1: vacation is it's an attempt to uh to to limit

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Speaker 1: let's say, um uh Polish participation in politics, UH to

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Speaker 1: forbid the publishing of of Ukrainian language texts, UH to

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Speaker 1: ensure that local schools, these new schools that are that

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Speaker 1: are building, are being taught in Russian with a Russian sylla,

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Speaker 1: with Russian curriculum basically right. So that's on a concrete level,

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Speaker 1: what what's happening is they're going into these regions and say, no,

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Speaker 1: you have to go to a Russian language school. No,

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Speaker 1: the Orthodox Church is the preferred church, not not not

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Speaker 1: Catholicism or Lutheranism as it as it is for many

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Speaker 1: the populations, especially in the west of the Empire or

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Speaker 1: islam in in in the large squas of of of Asia.

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Speaker 1: They're going into all these regions and they're saying, no, Russian,

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Speaker 1: this is the Russian Empire and you have to learn Russian.

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Speaker 1: This um And you can see why imperial administrators might

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Speaker 1: want to say, okay, well, look, Ukrainian nationalism is as

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Speaker 1: a problem we have to figure out. Let's solve it

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Speaker 1: by by teaching all these Ukrainian kids Russian history and

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Speaker 1: the Russian language, and maybe we'll we'll sort of forestall it.

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Speaker 1: But in fact, it was the visit that took place

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Speaker 1: at the very moment. Like people before the nineteenth century

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Speaker 1: didn't think of themselves as Ukrainians, they didn't think of

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Speaker 1: themselves as Russians. They thought of themselves as peasants or

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Speaker 1: as Christians, but they didn't have these these strong ethnic

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Speaker 1: identifications that that that linked them to these political projects.

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Speaker 1: So the very moment they're learning about this their their

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Speaker 1: their earliest the earliest political experiences is one of imperial

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Speaker 1: oppression basically, and so this helps to generate these ethnic

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Speaker 1: nationalists on the periphery. They had long tried to say, hey,

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Speaker 1: you guys are all Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians will be like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm kind of a peasant, I'm kind

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Speaker 1: of a Christian. And now they're coming along and now

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Speaker 1: they finally have the proof. They're like, see, your Ukrainians,

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Speaker 1: the state is punishing for being a Ukrainian. Now they say, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: now I see you mean like I can't go to

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Speaker 1: the church I want to go to. My kids are

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Speaker 1: speaking some weird language when they come home from school

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Speaker 1: with a weird accent, right like that, all of that

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Speaker 1: becomes too much more concrete for them. And so as

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Speaker 1: a result, rusification, which is intended to to limit the

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Speaker 1: spread of ethnic nationalism, actually helps to develop it, especially

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Speaker 1: in the western borderlands Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Lava Estonia. This

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Speaker 1: is where a lot of the roots vacation is happening,

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Speaker 1: and where you see this huge surge and nationalism at

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Speaker 1: the end of the nineteenth century. And you write this

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Speaker 1: is later on in your work, especially in nineteen sixteen,

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Speaker 1: about events in Central Asia. Um. Do we know much

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Speaker 1: about how Siberia experienced specification? Um? Yeah, So Siberia is

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Speaker 1: an interesting case. UM. And you know what had happened

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Speaker 1: over the course of conquest in Siberia Um, from the

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Speaker 1: sixteenth into the into the seventeenth centuries. Basically, UM, is

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Speaker 1: that there had been especially in the north. The further

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Speaker 1: north you went, they tended to be very small communities

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Speaker 1: that got conquered and sort of incorporated into into the

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Speaker 1: Russian Empire and also settled by by ethnic slaws. Again,

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Speaker 1: there there wasn't a strong sense of there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of sort of people we were now called ethnic Ukrainians.

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Speaker 1: We are doing this colonizing work out in out in

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Speaker 1: Siberia and elsewhere. Um. The more you got on the

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Speaker 1: big rivers in Siberia and and especially down towards towards

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Speaker 1: Central Asia, you you had more a large scale and

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Speaker 1: settled Muslim communities, the remnants of the Mongol Empire basically

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Speaker 1: and um and and those were places where they had

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Speaker 1: a much more complicated time um sort of dealing with

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Speaker 1: these this question of russianists and honestly, especially from the

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Speaker 1: early nineteenth century, Uh, the goal was, the goal over

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Speaker 1: the centuries of the Russian administration was let's let's not

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Speaker 1: do things to make people upset. We don't have a rebellion.

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Speaker 1: So if people want to go to their own church, fine,

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Speaker 1: who cares if if Muslims go go to a mosque,

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Speaker 1: We we're not going to force them to go to

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Speaker 1: an Orthodox church. They go to a mosque, as long

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Speaker 1: as they're paying taxes and they're not rebelling, um, you know,

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Speaker 1: and their elites are basically on board. We're we're fine

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Speaker 1: with all of this and so. But you know, it's

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Speaker 1: only in the nineteenth century again that you start to

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Speaker 1: see these pressures towards um, towards greater assimilation in a

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Speaker 1: certain way. And this is more possible for the ones

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Speaker 1: that are closer to or conceived of as more possible

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Speaker 1: for for those who are closer to the to the

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Speaker 1: Russian Empire and had been conquered much earlier, especially along

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Speaker 1: the Volga, the so called tatars Um along the Vulgar River,

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Speaker 1: than it is for the newly conquered territories in the

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Speaker 1: middle of the nineteenth century and what's called Turkestan at

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Speaker 1: the time, what's now Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, parts of Kyrkistan. So,

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Speaker 1: so this region is newly conquered, um. And and this

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Speaker 1: is a very special it's it's it's a colonial territory.

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Speaker 1: It's it's treated um as sort of you know, as

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Speaker 1: sort of the British retreat a colony in Africa or

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Speaker 1: in Asia. M Um. So starting to look a little

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Speaker 1: more detailed towards war and revolution and war and revolution again. Um,

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Speaker 1: would you say a few words about how the nineteen

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Speaker 1: o four Russo Japanese War and the Revolution of nineteen

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Speaker 1: o five. Well, in your book you say it transformed

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Speaker 1: the international balance of power. And we you know, when

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Speaker 1: we're talking about World War One, when we're talking about

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Speaker 1: the downfall of Russia, we have to understand the rest

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Speaker 1: of Japanese War and what change in Russian life and

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Speaker 1: governance in nineteen o five. Can you talk about how

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Speaker 1: those things were linked and what happened beyond the borders

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Speaker 1: and of Russia. Right, Yeah, So, so the Russo Japanese

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Speaker 1: War happens at a very let me start with the

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Speaker 1: international question first, it happens at a very volatile moment internationally, Um,

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Speaker 1: you're in the midst of this huge arms race which

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Speaker 1: is going to culminate in in World War One, the

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Speaker 1: rise of of new powers challenging sort of the pre eminence,

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Speaker 1: let's say, of the of of especially of the British Empire.

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Speaker 1: That the story of sort of the German challenge to

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Speaker 1: the British Empire is well known, and we're fully in

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Speaker 1: the midst of that by by nineteen o four and

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Speaker 1: in nineteen o five. But also you're seeing emerging powers

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Speaker 1: elsewhere in the world. Most notably Japan UM which is

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Speaker 1: striving to be sort of the first non European member

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Speaker 1: of the Club of Great Powers UM. At this stage

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Speaker 1: they're not quite there. They have they have established um

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Speaker 1: UH dominance in in East Asia that in they want

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Speaker 1: to war against China. The Qing Empire is is certainly

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Speaker 1: um in the midst of of fading on the verge

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Speaker 1: of collapse, which we'll do in a couple of years UM.

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Speaker 1: And so Japan is clearly um UH the most significant

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Speaker 1: power and they want to be recognized as such. And

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Speaker 1: what happens as China becomes a target of global imperial

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Speaker 1: control UM you know, you start to have the push

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Speaker 1: for concessions, not only among the British, who had had

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Speaker 1: concessions for a while, but also among the Russians. The

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Speaker 1: Americans now are are are are are trying to take

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Speaker 1: take take part in this scramble for China. Japan is

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Speaker 1: really trying to assert itself as as a regional power

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Speaker 1: and and hopefully as as a global power. And and

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Speaker 1: this um UH. The European powers are generally unwilling to

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Speaker 1: do this, and Russia is for a varide of reasons,

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Speaker 1: especially unwilling to do this and part of this has

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Speaker 1: to do with Nicholas himself. Um. He had done a

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Speaker 1: tour before he became sorrow when he Saraevitch in into Asia,

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Speaker 1: had traveled through through Japan, held a series of quite

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Speaker 1: openly racist views towards towards the Japanese um and and

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Speaker 1: did not want to think about the Japanese as a

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Speaker 1: potential um imperial threat to to Russian imperial power um And.

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Speaker 1: This leads to a series of diplomatic incidents and then

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Speaker 1: finally to a surprise attack by the Japanese in nineteen

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Speaker 1: o four upon the Russian political Pacific fleet in Port

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Speaker 1: Arthur And this results in a disastrous war for Russia.

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Speaker 1: They lose. They have three main naval fleets in the

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Speaker 1: in the Pacific and the Baltic and in the Black Sea.

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Speaker 1: They lose two of them. The third one is bottled

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Speaker 1: up in the Black Sea because they can't get through

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Speaker 1: the Straits um but their Pacific fleet is sunk. Basically

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Speaker 1: at the beginning of the war, they send their Baltic

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Speaker 1: fleet all the way around the world. The Japanese sink

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Speaker 1: it to in the Straits of Sushima. Um And they

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Speaker 1: lose almost all these All the major land battles, and

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Speaker 1: so it's it's a complete disaster. And what it triggers

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Speaker 1: is this mass mobilization not only for for a military

397
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Speaker 1: for the military, but also kind of a political mobilization.

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Speaker 1: At the same moment, you have a political crisis in

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Speaker 1: nineteen o five, so it leads to revolution, or it

400
00:21:06,240 --> 00:21:09,240
Speaker 1: helps lead to revolutionary events those have also social revolution

401
00:21:09,280 --> 00:21:11,560
Speaker 1: has been developing on its own track basically in Russia

402
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Speaker 1: at the same time, from the eighteen sixties onward. UM

403
00:21:15,359 --> 00:21:18,399
Speaker 1: and so you have the culmination of this political mobilization

404
00:21:18,520 --> 00:21:21,840
Speaker 1: around social issues, especially with the rise of of of

405
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Speaker 1: important Marxist parties UM. But also you have the this

406
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Speaker 1: UM this international crisis, and this all explodes in this

407
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Speaker 1: in this massive revolution in nineteen o five UM, which

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Speaker 1: leads to very famous events one called Bloody Sunday in

409
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Speaker 1: January nineteen o five and which um UH peaceful protesters

410
00:21:38,840 --> 00:21:42,440
Speaker 1: are are shot by UM by by palace guards basically

411
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Speaker 1: at the command of the Czar UM and and it

412
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Speaker 1: leads very nearly to the UM to to the end

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Speaker 1: of the romanof dynasty in nineteen o five. And it's

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Speaker 1: only because of the efforts of especially competent conservatives, especially

415
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Speaker 1: one named seraghe Vitam, who both signs the peace treaty

416
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Speaker 1: gets out of the war with Japan and the summer

417
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Speaker 1: of nineteen o five and also convinces that's are to

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Speaker 1: sign a new um UH basically set of agreements with

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Speaker 1: society that allows for the formation of a parliament. That

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Speaker 1: that begins UH sends Russia down the road towards potentially

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Speaker 1: a constitutional monarchy. It's only that that basically cools things

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Speaker 1: off in the fall of nineteen o five. And once

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Speaker 1: sort of the moderate and liberal opposition is appeased by

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Speaker 1: these by these constitutional um quasi constitutional measures, then they

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Speaker 1: can go after the left wing with in in earnestness

426
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Speaker 1: and and and this is what Piotr Stelipin, who will

427
00:22:34,359 --> 00:22:37,119
Speaker 1: eventually become Prime Minister, becomes famous for, is sort of

428
00:22:37,200 --> 00:22:39,239
Speaker 1: helping to lead this repression against left wing groups who

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Speaker 1: do not want to UM see peace in nineteen o five. UM.

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00:22:45,359 --> 00:22:49,000
Speaker 1: Within Russia, you write that that year and those events

431
00:22:49,560 --> 00:22:52,800
Speaker 1: that you just talked about, UH flip a switch in

432
00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:56,360
Speaker 1: Russian politics. UM. And you've started to describe a little

433
00:22:56,400 --> 00:22:59,639
Speaker 1: bit about what those things were. UM, could you just

434
00:23:00,119 --> 00:23:02,880
Speaker 1: give a little bit more of a sense, maybe from

435
00:23:02,960 --> 00:23:05,359
Speaker 1: the lived perspective or or however you want to take it,

436
00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:08,359
Speaker 1: what it felt like to live in Russia at that

437
00:23:08,480 --> 00:23:12,040
Speaker 1: time before the establishment of the Duma and then after, Um,

438
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:15,600
Speaker 1: you know, obviously, like you said, Nicholas and and the

439
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:18,440
Speaker 1: government felt like they were making huge concessions, and maybe

440
00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:21,919
Speaker 1: there were others who experienced a big shift. What did

441
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:25,480
Speaker 1: it feel like? No, this and it it's very important

442
00:23:25,520 --> 00:23:30,920
Speaker 1: moment because, um, look, the Romanov dynasty and the cyst autocracy,

443
00:23:31,560 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 1: these were non mobilizational conservative regimes. That is to say,

444
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:38,200
Speaker 1: they did not want people, even their supporters, out on

445
00:23:38,280 --> 00:23:40,920
Speaker 1: the streets right Their idea of what a public should

446
00:23:40,920 --> 00:23:43,560
Speaker 1: do is that it should be quiet and satisfied. They

447
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 1: did not want large numbers of people out on the streets,

448
00:23:45,920 --> 00:23:49,280
Speaker 1: um organizing for them. They didn't want political parties, even

449
00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:52,679
Speaker 1: right wing political parties, and the early right wing political parties,

450
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:55,359
Speaker 1: the monarchist parties that form in Russia are almost I

451
00:23:55,400 --> 00:23:57,879
Speaker 1: mean they say in sort of the organizing documents, we

452
00:23:57,960 --> 00:23:59,359
Speaker 1: wish we didn't have to be a party, but now

453
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:01,119
Speaker 1: that we have a lament, we sort of have to

454
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 1: play this game. And um, this is very important to

455
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 1: understand because it's so different from twentieth century politics. Right,

456
00:24:07,840 --> 00:24:10,760
Speaker 1: we can there are plenty of military dictatorships and other

457
00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:15,159
Speaker 1: and especially fascist dictatorships that rely on public mobilization, right,

458
00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:17,679
Speaker 1: that have these big, you know, torchlight rallies. I mean

459
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:19,760
Speaker 1: you think about what Hitler is doing in the thirties.

460
00:24:20,040 --> 00:24:22,000
Speaker 1: I mean, it would have made Nicholas a skin crawl

461
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:24,639
Speaker 1: to think of all those people out there being mobilized

462
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:27,320
Speaker 1: for political ends. Um, that's not what you know. The

463
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:29,359
Speaker 1: only way he wanted them, as we see at the

464
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:30,959
Speaker 1: beginning of the war, is sort of praying with him

465
00:24:30,960 --> 00:24:32,679
Speaker 1: at a moment and then saying, go do your thing. Right.

466
00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:36,359
Speaker 1: So that's his vision of politics, is that power comes

467
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:38,639
Speaker 1: from him and he gives it to other people, not

468
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 1: that it flows up from the streets, not that it

469
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: flows up in and he and he's sort of sort

470
00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 1: of sort of part of that mobilizational process. Um. And

471
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:48,920
Speaker 1: so they had consistently tried to thwart that mobilization. So

472
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:50,359
Speaker 1: what we see when we see in the nineteen o

473
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:53,720
Speaker 1: five that we see actually revolutionary activities many many cities

474
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 1: in the Russian Empire. You have these mass demonstrations, You

475
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:59,680
Speaker 1: have pitched battles between revolutionaries and and policemen. You have

476
00:25:00,280 --> 00:25:03,520
Speaker 1: large meetings pressing for constitutional change. You have people talking

477
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 1: about elections and political parties and and you know, recruiting

478
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: people all that stuff. It's just a different mode of politics.

479
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:14,000
Speaker 1: It's modern politics, its mobilizational politics, and and that's completely

480
00:25:14,119 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 1: different from what the Tsars had tried to had tried

481
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:20,159
Speaker 1: to have over the previous you know, not only previous

482
00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:22,560
Speaker 1: three hundred years, but but but going going back even

483
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:25,879
Speaker 1: further of course. So so that's the switch that gets flipped.

484
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 1: Now we're in an era of mobilizational politics, and that's

485
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:31,960
Speaker 1: really going to inform what happens in World War one

486
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:36,720
Speaker 1: UM because immediately upon the declaration of war, most of

487
00:25:36,800 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 1: the Tsars um people led by military men, who had

488
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 1: been pushing for a mobilizational um UH structure for years

489
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:44,639
Speaker 1: for reasons I can go into if you'd like, but

490
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:47,440
Speaker 1: they had really wanted this sort of active mobilization and

491
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,520
Speaker 1: enthusiasm on the part of the population. UM. Now, when

492
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:53,120
Speaker 1: war gets declared nineteen fourteen, they say, great, let's mobilize.

493
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:55,960
Speaker 1: We need to mobilize everybody. And so this old autocratic

494
00:25:56,080 --> 00:25:59,000
Speaker 1: dream of just sort of controlling things from above UM

495
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 1: is fundamentally just Troid in the very first day of

496
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:03,040
Speaker 1: the war, and the last person to come to realize

497
00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 1: this actually is Nicholas himself, and that's one of the

498
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:06,879
Speaker 1: things that that leads to the problems at the end

499
00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: of the at the end of the regime. So you

500
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:15,359
Speaker 1: mentioned that one of the things that happens here is

501
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 1: the establishment of the parliament, the Numa. Um, could you

502
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,840
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what it was, how did

503
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,280
Speaker 1: it work, what, what's what's the numa when it gets

504
00:26:24,280 --> 00:26:28,119
Speaker 1: set up. Yeah, it's a very troubled early history in

505
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:31,640
Speaker 1: particular because again, you know, not only Nicholas, but many

506
00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:35,159
Speaker 1: in the administration sort of have this belief that at heart,

507
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:39,440
Speaker 1: most people want to be uh, good subjects of that's

508
00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:42,080
Speaker 1: are they They're gonna want to vote for parties that

509
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:44,320
Speaker 1: that that are supportive of them, that the people are

510
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:45,959
Speaker 1: behind them. In other words, that's that's what they want

511
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: to believe. And there's just all these rabble rousing revolutionaries

512
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:50,639
Speaker 1: out there. Um, there's a lot of anti Semitism. So

513
00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:53,440
Speaker 1: they're saying, oh, all the rabble rousing Jewish revolutionaries out there,

514
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: and once the true Russian people have their voice, you know,

515
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 1: they're gonna they're gonna vote for us. They're still a

516
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:01,119
Speaker 1: little worried about it. They don't city dwellers very much.

517
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 1: And so they create this system in which more power

518
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: is given basically to rural areas, and those rural areas

519
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:11,320
Speaker 1: are also dominated by by the nobility, by landowners. It's

520
00:27:11,359 --> 00:27:13,880
Speaker 1: not one person, one vote. You vote in a certain

521
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:16,640
Speaker 1: curia in which you know, so you know, let's say

522
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 1: the peasants in the region get one representative and the

523
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:22,560
Speaker 1: nobles in the region get get one representative. Well, you know,

524
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 1: there's you know, peasants and five percent nobles, and so

525
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 1: it's not an equal sort of relationship there, and so

526
00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:30,440
Speaker 1: you end up with many, many more nobles. And there's

527
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:34,240
Speaker 1: also an upper house of Parliament that is um. Half

528
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: of it is appointed by that tsar and the other

529
00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:39,280
Speaker 1: half is based on sort of jobs that are also

530
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 1: basically highly sort Sara has driven so a guaranteed conservative

531
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:46,880
Speaker 1: upper house and and pro monarchist upper house as well.

532
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:50,440
Speaker 1: With all of that said, they get the first doom

533
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:54,640
Speaker 1: elections and um the people vote for moderate or left

534
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:58,200
Speaker 1: wing parties overwhelmingly, and you have this huge conflict um

535
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: over basic things like land form and lander form obviously

536
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: is uh is just sort of code for saying, we're

537
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:04,800
Speaker 1: going to take the land from the landowners and give

538
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:06,399
Speaker 1: it to the peasants that are working it. UM. So

539
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 1: the landowners hate that idea, but but the Duma wants

540
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:10,960
Speaker 1: to do it, so they disband the first Duma. The

541
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:14,560
Speaker 1: second Duma they they do the same thing. Um. It

542
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:16,239
Speaker 1: doesn't get much better, even though they try to ban

543
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 1: many of the parties at this time in the second

544
00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:21,399
Speaker 1: Duma UM and and that also doesn't work. And so

545
00:28:21,600 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 1: it's only with the third Duma. And this again is

546
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 1: something that Piotr stileep In um accomplishes uh in in

547
00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 1: seven UM he says, Okay, we're gonna switch this the

548
00:28:31,119 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: electro system even more. We're gonna wait even more in

549
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:36,120
Speaker 1: favor of people that we know are going to vote

550
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 1: for us, and then they get even then, you know,

551
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: it's sort of a moderate system, sort of the the

552
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:43,520
Speaker 1: it's moderates that are that are that are at the

553
00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: heart of that system. And left wing parties are almost

554
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: complete but not completely but almost completely marginalized, and right

555
00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: wing parties get get much more, get much more voice.

556
00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:53,640
Speaker 1: In both the third and the fourth dumas UM and

557
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: and those again are gonna last all the way. The

558
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:57,720
Speaker 1: fourth Duma is the one that that is gonna be

559
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 1: being played throughout the war. Well. And this speaks really

560
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:05,320
Speaker 1: to what you were saying earlier about uh, not knowing

561
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 1: how what the people actually thought of the Czarre that

562
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 1: when you when you finally get elections, the Duma ends

563
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:15,000
Speaker 1: up looking like people who want to take land away

564
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 1: from the established. Yeah. Percent. When you ask people, um,

565
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: do you want rich people to continue to run the lander?

566
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 1: Do you want to farm your own land? It's not

567
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: it's not unclear clear what they're going to vote for,

568
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 1: so they're they're definitely anti monarchist at that point. Let's

569
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about sleep In you and

570
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: and and and other historians have talked about him as

571
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:43,920
Speaker 1: the most important political figure of this period. Um, who

572
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 1: was he and what was his role in governing the

573
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: Russian Empire at this point? Yeah, I mean steleepan Ism

574
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 1: is a really interesting figure. Um. A lot of people

575
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:55,560
Speaker 1: end up becoming bureaucrats in the over the course of

576
00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:58,400
Speaker 1: the Russian Empire of varying levels of talent, because this

577
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:00,400
Speaker 1: was not um, I mean, no sister as a pure

578
00:30:00,440 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 1: meritocracy but the Russian imperial bureaucracy definitely wasn't. UM connections

579
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 1: played a large role. UM. You know, whether you know

580
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 1: you sucked up to the CSAR and I played a

581
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 1: large role. All of these things over time meant that

582
00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: you had quite a hodgepodge of abilities. UH in that spectrum.

583
00:30:16,280 --> 00:30:21,520
Speaker 1: Stealipin was unusually talented, unusually competent UM and UH and

584
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: this UM this helped account for for his importance in

585
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:27,920
Speaker 1: in the short period four or five years in which

586
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:31,880
Speaker 1: he's he's he's prime minister um in UH in this

587
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:36,040
Speaker 1: quasi constitutional system. Uh. He's assassinated in nineteen eleven UM.

588
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:38,720
Speaker 1: And I'll talk about that in just a second. He

589
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:41,960
Speaker 1: comes from the imperial borderlands. UM, he's uh, you know,

590
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:46,080
Speaker 1: he's he has UM in Lithuania and Belarus. He has

591
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 1: positions as he sort of moves around the UM the

592
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:52,240
Speaker 1: sort of UM system by which bureaucrats sort of moved

593
00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 1: from post to post. But he's actually in in in

594
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:58,360
Speaker 1: Russia and Sarata UH in the nineteen o five revolution.

595
00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:01,040
Speaker 1: And he again distinguishes since off in nineteen o five

596
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 1: not only by sort of competence but also his his

597
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: brutality against against left wing revolutionaries. And and so it's

598
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 1: gonna be this mix for him of of on the

599
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,600
Speaker 1: one hand being sort of a competent bureaucrat, but also

600
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:19,400
Speaker 1: his reputation as being uh sort of especially anti left

601
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:21,560
Speaker 1: wing and willing to use force against them. That is

602
00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 1: gonna endear him in a certain way to the to

603
00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 1: to the administration and briefly to the CSAR himself. And

604
00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 1: and this is going to allow him the ability to

605
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 1: try to put forward reforms in the period from nineteen

606
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:35,280
Speaker 1: o seven to nineteen eleven, which are really quite important ones.

607
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: STI leap In, at the end of the day, is

608
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 1: a Russian nationalist UM. And nationalism is a mass mobilizational

609
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:42,920
Speaker 1: structure of the kind that I talked about before. So

610
00:31:43,120 --> 00:31:44,760
Speaker 1: stileep In is trying to figure out how can we

611
00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 1: incorporate nationalism into this empire, make it more participatory, um,

612
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 1: but also not completely alienate all the non Russians. Um.

613
00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:57,080
Speaker 1: It's a really difficult task. UM. But he knows, and

614
00:31:57,280 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 1: he's a modern politician. He he builds, he solicits interest groups.

615
00:32:01,160 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 1: You make sure he has their support at various times

616
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: for particular programs and and not others. So you know,

617
00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 1: he's trying to play this politics all the time, both

618
00:32:08,560 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: with the Dooma and with other people within the Czarist administration. So,

619
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:15,080
Speaker 1: for instance, their educational reforms, he's moving towards the idea

620
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 1: of of universal mass education. The most famous one is

621
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 1: an agricultural reform, in which he wants to break up

622
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:25,080
Speaker 1: the Russian Commune and build a system basically independent family farmers,

623
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 1: sort of like the American Midwest in a certain way, um,

624
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: you know, and and and break up the old Russian

625
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 1: commune UH as a way of sort of stimulating agricultural

626
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:37,280
Speaker 1: capitalism uh and strengthening Russians. But he also has a series,

627
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 1: especially in Poland, of of attempts to make sure that

628
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 1: that Polish nationalists and and also other kinds of nationalists

629
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 1: don't get too much power. And so he's he's always

630
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:50,800
Speaker 1: forwarding a Russian nationalist line there um. And he's also

631
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:54,320
Speaker 1: the author of several military reforms that that are that

632
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:57,240
Speaker 1: that are also of of importance as he realizes the

633
00:32:57,320 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: importance of of of the growing arm racing the likelihood

634
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 1: of of European war in the near future. So Stleapan

635
00:33:03,960 --> 00:33:07,400
Speaker 1: is doing all of these things, um. And he he

636
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:09,400
Speaker 1: has already earned the hatred of the left, but he's

637
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 1: also now earning the displeasure of that's are in many conservatives,

638
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:16,000
Speaker 1: because he is pushing a quite a different system than

639
00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:19,000
Speaker 1: the one that they are imagining. And he's also running

640
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:23,840
Speaker 1: a foul of entrenched interests within within the CSAR bureaucracy, right,

641
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:27,600
Speaker 1: these people that get sort of sweetheart deals in terms

642
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 1: of state budgets, and he's pushing other budgetary budgetary priorities

643
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:33,840
Speaker 1: for instance. Um and so he begins to be seen

644
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:36,920
Speaker 1: as this sort of um as an outsider who's causing

645
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:39,960
Speaker 1: more trouble than is necessary. And um, so he's already

646
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:41,960
Speaker 1: lost the faith of that ts are by the time

647
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:44,880
Speaker 1: that he's assassinated in Kiev at the Opera House in

648
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:49,320
Speaker 1: Kiev in in nineteen eleven, um and so and so

649
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: there's sort of a side relief, almost on an audible

650
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: side relief from the Tsar when he's when when he's assassinated,

651
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 1: not that he wanted to seem assassinated, but um, there's

652
00:33:56,640 --> 00:33:58,240
Speaker 1: a cide relief because now he can go back to

653
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:02,120
Speaker 1: sort of a much more traditional set of prime ministers

654
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:04,280
Speaker 1: who are basically just going to be yes men for

655
00:34:05,080 --> 00:34:07,560
Speaker 1: for him right, that are going to be traditionally sort

656
00:34:07,600 --> 00:34:10,800
Speaker 1: of subservient in a way, and stileap It was clearly

657
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 1: an independent political force that UM that made that star nervous. UM.

658
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:24,360
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that Stileapen's attempts not to alienate you know,

659
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:28,879
Speaker 1: non I think Russian to think about how to keep

660
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:36,320
Speaker 1: the periphery functioning without revolution building. UM. That's contrasted with

661
00:34:36,600 --> 00:34:39,239
Speaker 1: what Nicholas and Alexandra throw of the territories at the

662
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: center of their vast domain, right versus say, Ukraine in Poland,

663
00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:48,600
Speaker 1: Siberia to the earls and things westwards Europe. UM. If

664
00:34:48,719 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 1: if Stileapen was really worried about not alienating people, what

665
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:55,000
Speaker 1: did Nicholas and Alexandra think, what do we know about?

666
00:34:55,840 --> 00:34:57,600
Speaker 1: How how much of a contrast that was with the

667
00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:01,560
Speaker 1: way the ore stung. Yeah, you know, Nicholas and Alexander

668
00:35:01,600 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 1: didn't want to UM didn't want to alienate people either.

669
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:09,280
Speaker 1: But again, in this traditional view, UM, people just should

670
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:12,239
Speaker 1: just be loyal subjects of their monarch, regardless of what

671
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: ethnicity they were. UM. And and sort of organizing the

672
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:21,719
Speaker 1: monarchy around a national basis was um uh was kind

673
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:24,360
Speaker 1: of problematic for them in some ways I mean to

674
00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 1: be I mean in sort of racial terms ethnic, the

675
00:35:28,680 --> 00:35:31,880
Speaker 1: racial ethnic term which people were increasingly using now by

676
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 1: their early twentieth center. Over the of course of the

677
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:37,480
Speaker 1: nineteenth and twentieth century, um, much of the Romanov family

678
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:40,239
Speaker 1: was was German. Uh. You know, virtually all of the

679
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:43,360
Speaker 1: stars over the course of the nineteenth century had chosen

680
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:46,080
Speaker 1: brides from from the German principalities and then and then

681
00:35:46,200 --> 00:35:49,359
Speaker 1: from from Germany itself, and so many of them had

682
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 1: had had had German mothers. And this has been going

683
00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:56,880
Speaker 1: back for again for for generations, um. And and this

684
00:35:57,160 --> 00:35:59,880
Speaker 1: was starting to become a problem for them, right Alexander,

685
00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: it would eventually be sort of be criticized for being

686
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 1: pro German because she had this German background. Um. But

687
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:07,279
Speaker 1: it's not the way that earlier dynasties thought. Of course,

688
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:09,279
Speaker 1: you would marry someone from another You wouldn't marry one

689
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: of your own princes and princes or princesses because that

690
00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:15,320
Speaker 1: would just complicate your domestic affairs. You find royalty or

691
00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:18,879
Speaker 1: elsewhere that that that's where you're gonna find your your

692
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:21,240
Speaker 1: bride if you are, if you're the heir to the throne.

693
00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:23,719
Speaker 1: So it wasn't a problem, but but increasingly it is

694
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:26,400
Speaker 1: becoming a problem. And so again you're seeing this distinction.

695
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:30,720
Speaker 1: As Nicholas and Alexander think about um, Poland and Ukraine,

696
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 1: they think, well, the polls should be grateful to us.

697
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:35,440
Speaker 1: We're saving them from the Germans and and the Armenians,

698
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:37,680
Speaker 1: and the Georgians should be happy that that they're not

699
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:41,520
Speaker 1: overrun by Turks. And Ukrainians, in their view are just

700
00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:44,239
Speaker 1: sort of Russians with a weird accent, you know, like

701
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:46,920
Speaker 1: that that was sort of their their view of the world.

702
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:51,200
Speaker 1: And and and and the notion that these um uh,

703
00:36:51,719 --> 00:36:54,200
Speaker 1: you know, that there might be legitimate in certain senses

704
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:57,120
Speaker 1: national movements that you had to deal with as a politician,

705
00:36:57,360 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 1: in the way that Stelipan was dealing with them was

706
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:03,319
Speaker 1: um was problematic for them. So so again these are

707
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:05,799
Speaker 1: and and again it's not as if Stalepin was giving

708
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:08,240
Speaker 1: a lot of concessions, uh, you know, his his famous

709
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:10,800
Speaker 1: slogan was that, um uh, you need to build a

710
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:12,840
Speaker 1: great Russia. This was going to be Russian Empire with

711
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 1: russianness at its center, but again with an administrative awareness

712
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:19,000
Speaker 1: that that other political forces were out there that needed

713
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 1: to be built MH. You mentioned earlier the christ and

714
00:37:23,560 --> 00:37:27,360
Speaker 1: Tenary celebrations for the romana Um. Can you say a

715
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: few more things about that? What did they think they

716
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:32,480
Speaker 1: were doing with that? How significant did they think it was?

717
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:35,440
Speaker 1: And but what do they actually signal to the various

718
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 1: factions in Russian life at the time, whether we're talking

719
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:42,480
Speaker 1: about peasants or administrators or regional you know, or the

720
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: people in their court internationally? How significant were the Chrishan

721
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 1: Tennery celebrations to the various parties of it? Yeah? Yeah,

722
00:37:50,239 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: I think it was a an attempt, as I sort

723
00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 1: of mentioned earlier, there's an attempt to have their vision,

724
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:00,759
Speaker 1: their narrative of the relationship of it's are and the people,

725
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:03,920
Speaker 1: one that they believed in themselves, be enacted for them

726
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:07,240
Speaker 1: in front of them. And and when much of this happened,

727
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,239
Speaker 1: you know, there's a great article by a historian, Richard

728
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:13,920
Speaker 1: Wartman called Invisible Threads about Um about these celebrations, in

729
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:17,160
Speaker 1: particular about the stars business to visit to customer Um

730
00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 1: a city not not too far from from Moscow in

731
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 1: which you have these big celebrations and the nobility welcome

732
00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:25,160
Speaker 1: you and the crowds of cheering peasants. This is exactly

733
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:27,600
Speaker 1: what Nicholas wanted to see, and it's he's able to

734
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:30,800
Speaker 1: convince himself that that this is um uh, that this

735
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 1: is the political reality. And so it's dangerous in a

736
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 1: certain way right when you when you start using your

737
00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: own product. But he had always sort of used his

738
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:39,800
Speaker 1: own product, right, He he was always imbewing himself with

739
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:43,040
Speaker 1: this notion that he was a popular um Russian star,

740
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:45,680
Speaker 1: and that stars don't get their authority by being voted

741
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:48,799
Speaker 1: or survey But but it's just this mystical thing. You're

742
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 1: born with it, and then and then the peasants recognize it,

743
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 1: and it helps to to reinforce that now there there

744
00:38:54,719 --> 00:38:56,880
Speaker 1: is you know. Warman also points out in this article,

745
00:38:56,960 --> 00:38:58,600
Speaker 1: you know that there are those that are critical of

746
00:38:58,719 --> 00:39:01,239
Speaker 1: this and saying, you know, you need to you need

747
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:04,280
Speaker 1: to be have a more complicated sense of what politics

748
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 1: actually looks like, um, if you're gonna understand this, because

749
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 1: many people are not happy with this. Indeed, some some

750
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:12,880
Speaker 1: of the nobility boycott the visit. They're not really visible

751
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:15,880
Speaker 1: uh to him at that moment, because you know, there

752
00:39:15,920 --> 00:39:18,680
Speaker 1: are big problems and uh, and and sort of having

753
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 1: these big parades is not solving them. And there's a

754
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:26,280
Speaker 1: point when King Hacken of Norway, who of course was irrelevant.

755
00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:29,560
Speaker 1: I think, you know, all those related to each other. Uh.

756
00:39:29,719 --> 00:39:31,959
Speaker 1: And this is reported widely in the in the US

757
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: press of the time, and I just found it so

758
00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:36,400
Speaker 1: fascinating that one of his royal relatives was saying, if

759
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 1: you want to stave off real trouble, you know, he's

760
00:39:38,560 --> 00:39:42,319
Speaker 1: thinking revolution, You've got to let Poland have independence. You've

761
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:45,919
Speaker 1: got to let the little Russians, you know, Ukraine have independence,

762
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:49,279
Speaker 1: and you've got to institute these reforms. How would how

763
00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 1: would Nicholas have received something like that? I mean, we

764
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:54,000
Speaker 1: kind of know he did nothing along those We kind

765
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:55,279
Speaker 1: of know how he received them, but it would be

766
00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 1: great to have you just say, how would Nicolas have

767
00:39:57,719 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 1: received that from another monarch who's telling and hey, institute

768
00:40:01,200 --> 00:40:05,080
Speaker 1: some democratic reforms. Yeah, you know this. I mean it's

769
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:08,920
Speaker 1: important to understand that when comes along, it's it's at

770
00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: you're already having sort of a early crest of this

771
00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:16,960
Speaker 1: decolonizing process. Uh, you're seeing it already in the Balkans um. Uh.

772
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:19,319
Speaker 1: You know, there are two Balkan wars that proceede UM

773
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:21,800
Speaker 1: World War one and and you see the Ottoman Empire

774
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 1: being pushed out Uh, not only and not not in

775
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:28,360
Speaker 1: favor of other empires, but in favor of new nationalizing

776
00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:33,759
Speaker 1: states like Serbia and Bulgaria. UM. So in you're seeing

777
00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:36,120
Speaker 1: the same thing in Britain. The home rule debate over

778
00:40:36,200 --> 00:40:39,480
Speaker 1: Ireland is feverish in the in the months leading up

779
00:40:39,520 --> 00:40:42,840
Speaker 1: to fourteen. And this is the kind of thing that

780
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:44,720
Speaker 1: was being proposed. And I think this is what Hawkins

781
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:47,799
Speaker 1: is saying, to write, give home rule, not necessarily independence

782
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:50,200
Speaker 1: to Poland and Ukraine, but home rule to them, and

783
00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:54,879
Speaker 1: try to make some concessions to have UM something other

784
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:57,600
Speaker 1: than sort of a completely Russian dominated state, gives some

785
00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:02,080
Speaker 1: voice to your to your stituents. And this fell on

786
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 1: UM welcome ears. Not not among the c's are UH

787
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 1: and his family, but but among others in the Russian

788
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:10,600
Speaker 1: political system who did see this as and especially for

789
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:13,239
Speaker 1: centrist and left wings, centrist, the Cadet Party, the Constitutional

790
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:16,680
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, this was their vision that they're pushing what

791
00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: that would eventually call federalism UM, a federal solution to empire,

792
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:23,439
Speaker 1: which is to say, okay, we realize that people don't

793
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: like the empire because Russia has dominated all of you.

794
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:27,279
Speaker 1: But what if we had a multi ethnic state in

795
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:31,160
Speaker 1: which everybody had um sort of regional representation and authority

796
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 1: within their own regions, some sort of federal solution. And

797
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:36,719
Speaker 1: this becomes the dream of many who don't want to

798
00:41:36,719 --> 00:41:38,399
Speaker 1: give up on the idea of a of a large

799
00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:41,399
Speaker 1: Russian state. But I want to acknowledge that there are

800
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:45,319
Speaker 1: legitimate political demands by by other ethnic groups within the state.

801
00:41:45,680 --> 00:41:48,280
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the direction that I think Hacken

802
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:51,320
Speaker 1: is suggesting. And again, that's not something that that that

803
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 1: Nicholas is inclined to want to want to do. The

804
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 1: difficulty is that Nicholas himself um, starting in nineteen fourteen,

805
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:02,920
Speaker 1: become begins to play a much larger role in developing

806
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:06,320
Speaker 1: ethno politics, to encouraging the idea that you should mobilize

807
00:42:06,320 --> 00:42:08,759
Speaker 1: around your ethnicity and so um. He tries to do

808
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: some of that in the midst of the war as well. So,

809
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:13,240
Speaker 1: and this is this is the toxic combination that explodes

810
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:16,759
Speaker 1: over the course of the war. Could you say a

811
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:19,839
Speaker 1: few more words on that toxic combination? What's going through

812
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:23,399
Speaker 1: and why is it so bad? Yeah? So, the first

813
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:25,799
Speaker 1: thing many of these empires do, they're bordering each other, right,

814
00:42:25,880 --> 00:42:27,719
Speaker 1: many of them have the same ethnic groups on either

815
00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:30,280
Speaker 1: side of the Let's take Ukrainians for instance. They're Ukrainians,

816
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 1: and the Austraungarian Empire their Ukrainians and the Russian Empire. Um,

817
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:36,400
Speaker 1: you know, there are Poles in the German Empire, there

818
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:39,120
Speaker 1: are polls in Austerngarian Empire, they're polls in the Russian Empire.

819
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 1: So the first thing they think of is, Okay, let's

820
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:45,120
Speaker 1: let's leverage this nationalism. Let's try to defeat our enemy

821
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:47,720
Speaker 1: by leading to revolutions. So we're gonna try to encourage

822
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:50,160
Speaker 1: Poles in the Russian Empire to push for independence if

823
00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 1: you're in Germany, and vice versa. The Germans tried to

824
00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:56,600
Speaker 1: convince umh Islamic leaders all over the world that they

825
00:42:56,680 --> 00:42:59,640
Speaker 1: need to launch a jahad against the British and Russian empires.

826
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 1: That doesn't go anywhere really, But but the idea is,

827
00:43:02,239 --> 00:43:06,000
Speaker 1: let's stimulate nationalism ethno nationalism as a way of undermining empire.

828
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:08,080
Speaker 1: The problem is, of course, you are also in a

829
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:10,840
Speaker 1: multi ethnic empire at the polls are also living in Germany.

830
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: So like if you're gonna have an independent Poland, you're

831
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: also and the other side is also doing that, right,

832
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: So pow camps get get aligned around ethnic groups and

833
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:20,680
Speaker 1: you send them back into their into their countries to

834
00:43:20,719 --> 00:43:22,799
Speaker 1: try to be subversives. And so they all of them

835
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:26,560
Speaker 1: mobilized nationalism. Um, and it helps, I mean, nationalism grows

836
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 1: immensely over the course of the war, and all of

837
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 1: these empires collapse at the end of the war. And

838
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 1: they helped it happen because this is the exposure combination.

839
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:35,759
Speaker 1: They because they had to mobilize, and because they thought

840
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: that nationalism was the most powerful mobilizational tool. They encourage nationalism,

841
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:42,600
Speaker 1: which is anti imperial at its at its core, and

842
00:43:42,719 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 1: that that helps break all these empires apart. Mhm um.

843
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:50,080
Speaker 1: Before you know, on the on the road to war,

844
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:56,480
Speaker 1: you note that Russian politicians wanted to avoid war. You

845
00:43:56,520 --> 00:43:59,279
Speaker 1: include Nicholas and this of course you even right that

846
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:00,960
Speaker 1: he was kind of pr Marry among the people who

847
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:04,080
Speaker 1: thought war would be a bad thing. Um. Can you

848
00:44:04,120 --> 00:44:07,600
Speaker 1: say a little bit about how each of these you know,

849
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:10,320
Speaker 1: maybe different levels of the blood of the state, of

850
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:15,799
Speaker 1: the Russian state, Duma, Nicholas, Um, why did they why

851
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:19,319
Speaker 1: did they want to avoid war? Yeah, all of them

852
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: thought that war was not in their interests, especially in

853
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:27,040
Speaker 1: the short term. There's no real lobby for war in

854
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 1: in the Russian Empire. They're they're all very well, look,

855
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:32,840
Speaker 1: we've already discussed nineteen o five, the last war had

856
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:35,080
Speaker 1: almost led to the end of the regime. UM it

857
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:36,840
Speaker 1: caused a lot of problems. They all knew that it

858
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:40,040
Speaker 1: caused problems. They were trying. They had a large military

859
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:42,960
Speaker 1: expansion plan that was just underway. Um they were going

860
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:45,799
Speaker 1: to be much more strong in five years than they were,

861
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: you know, in nineteen fourteen. This was one of the reasons,

862
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 1: by the way, that Germany wanted to launch war in

863
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, because they also knew that that that Russia

864
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:54,480
Speaker 1: was going to be much stronger as time went on.

865
00:44:55,200 --> 00:44:58,239
Speaker 1: UM So they didn't want any they didn't want any

866
00:44:58,880 --> 00:45:02,239
Speaker 1: any part of of the war. Uh So, the question

867
00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:03,480
Speaker 1: is how how do they end up in a war

868
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 1: that they that that they don't want to see. And

869
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:08,400
Speaker 1: this is a very complicated and much studied process that

870
00:45:09,080 --> 00:45:11,800
Speaker 1: called the called the July crisis uh in which in

871
00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:13,800
Speaker 1: the month before the outbreak of the war, all of this,

872
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:16,640
Speaker 1: all of this wrangling happens. The short answer to this

873
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:19,920
Speaker 1: is that UM Russia believes that if it backs away,

874
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:22,840
Speaker 1: if it lets Serbia be conquered basically by Austria Hungary,

875
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:25,799
Speaker 1: then they will have lost their seat at the Club

876
00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:28,360
Speaker 1: of Great Powers. They're gonna have shown fundamental weakness and

877
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:31,120
Speaker 1: they have to show strength. Um. And they knew what

878
00:45:31,200 --> 00:45:33,680
Speaker 1: happened to empires that that that fell out of the club.

879
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 1: Look what happened to the Ottoman Empire, Look what happened

880
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:37,279
Speaker 1: to the Chinese Empire. These are places that are being

881
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:40,400
Speaker 1: you know, colonized and dismembered by by by the victors.

882
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: And so you have to remain a member of that

883
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:44,520
Speaker 1: great power club. And they convinced themselves that they have

884
00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:47,400
Speaker 1: to stand firm for for Serbia in order to do so.

885
00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 1: So what they tried to do is they try to

886
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:51,719
Speaker 1: isolate Austria Hungary from Germany right to say, look, you know,

887
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 1: if we can make this between Russian and Austria Hungry,

888
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: they're going to have to back back down or we'll

889
00:45:56,600 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 1: beat them one on one in a war. Um, we

890
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: just don't want war with with Germany. At the same time,

891
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:03,920
Speaker 1: so what happens over the course of this um of

892
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:06,359
Speaker 1: this process is they want to they want to sort

893
00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:08,359
Speaker 1: of move from a position of strength. They want to say, look,

894
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:10,839
Speaker 1: we're gonna We're gonna forcefully say we're going to defend them,

895
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 1: and that's gonna be a deterrent because Germany probably also

896
00:46:13,640 --> 00:46:16,480
Speaker 1: doesn't want war, and Austria Hungary can't afford to fight

897
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:19,520
Speaker 1: us alone, so we're gonna try to divide that alliance. UM.

898
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 1: So they're they're early partial mobilization is only mobilization on

899
00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:26,440
Speaker 1: the border of the Austra Hungarian Empire. UM. Nicholas and

900
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:29,600
Speaker 1: uh sends telegrams to to to Wilhelm saying, look, I

901
00:46:29,640 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 1: don't want war. What can we do to avoid this? UM.

902
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:35,560
Speaker 1: Nicholas personally again doesn't want to see this, I think

903
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:38,319
Speaker 1: both for just he doesn't much like war, but he also,

904
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:41,400
Speaker 1: you know, sees the problems that that it can create. UM.

905
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:44,080
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, they say, look,

906
00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:46,520
Speaker 1: we can't back down at this moment, uh and and

907
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:48,600
Speaker 1: we have to. We have to mobilize because it's gonna

908
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:50,480
Speaker 1: take us longer to mobilize than than it's gonna take

909
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:53,120
Speaker 1: Germany to mobilize. So UM, you know this this the

910
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:56,319
Speaker 1: logic of the end of this process is that they're

911
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:59,160
Speaker 1: going to move towards a general mobilization, which they continue

912
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: to insist to Germany doesn't have to mean war. We're mobilizing,

913
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:05,279
Speaker 1: just don't invade us. But Germany insists throughout the July

914
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:09,359
Speaker 1: crisis any movement towards mobilization is a declaration of war. Um. Now,

915
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 1: many historians after the fact have also accepted that. They said, look,

916
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:14,560
Speaker 1: Russia created the war because they mobilized, but it's not

917
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:17,400
Speaker 1: mobilization isn't a declaration of war. Its only the Germans

918
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:19,080
Speaker 1: said it. That's that that's the only reason that people

919
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 1: are are taking it as a declaration of war, right,

920
00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:24,239
Speaker 1: And this gets back to the larger question of why

921
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:27,360
Speaker 1: Germany wants war at that particular moment, and why Austria

922
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:30,239
Speaker 1: Hungary wants war at that particular moment, and and and

923
00:47:30,400 --> 00:47:32,320
Speaker 1: that's you know, obviously there's been a lot of discussion

924
00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:34,160
Speaker 1: about that, but but that's how Russia goes to war

925
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 1: despite the fact that there's no constituency for it within

926
00:47:36,640 --> 00:47:40,000
Speaker 1: the Russian political system. And you've already said a few

927
00:47:40,080 --> 00:47:43,960
Speaker 1: things about why you refer to World War One in

928
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:47,359
Speaker 1: your book as the Third Balkan War. Would you want

929
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:50,360
Speaker 1: to elaborate on that A little bit. Yeah, sure, it

930
00:47:50,440 --> 00:47:54,319
Speaker 1: certainly begins that way. Um. As I mentioned before, there

931
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:58,839
Speaker 1: are two wars that are called the Balkan Wars um UH,

932
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: that were the occasion for getting the Ottoman Empire out

933
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:06,840
Speaker 1: of the Balkan, out of the Balkan peninsula. These happened

934
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:09,840
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve and in nineteen thirteen. In nineteen twelve,

935
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:13,960
Speaker 1: you get all of these um regions, all these nationalists movements,

936
00:48:14,360 --> 00:48:17,320
Speaker 1: many of which have support from Russia, being able to

937
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:20,839
Speaker 1: push the Ottomans off. So we're looking at you know, Serbia, um,

938
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:26,880
Speaker 1: we're a greater Serbia, who are looking at um Uh, Bulgaria, Greece,

939
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:31,360
Speaker 1: all of these countries, Macedonia. Yeah, while Macedonia is contested,

940
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:35,360
Speaker 1: Montenegro also being a part of this coalition, and they

941
00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:37,719
Speaker 1: win the war quite quickly against the Ottomans. And this

942
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:40,439
Speaker 1: is quite clearly an anti imperial war. That is to say,

943
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:42,759
Speaker 1: it's on the part of nationalist movements, and it's not

944
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 1: saying we prefer one empire over another. We're saying that

945
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:48,960
Speaker 1: that imperial rule as such is something that ought to

946
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:51,840
Speaker 1: be contested. So that's that's why it's kind of a

947
00:48:51,920 --> 00:48:55,360
Speaker 1: decolonizing war. But as with many decolonizing wars. This just

948
00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:58,239
Speaker 1: opens up a new question of regional power and you

949
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:00,799
Speaker 1: get these new nations states start to act like many

950
00:49:00,840 --> 00:49:04,080
Speaker 1: empires themselves, most notably Serbia in this case, and this

951
00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:06,800
Speaker 1: is what causes the second Balkan War between Serbia and

952
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:11,080
Speaker 1: Bulgaria over the question of Macedonia Um. And so already

953
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:13,799
Speaker 1: you see that de colonization isn't an and another words,

954
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: nationalism doesn't just come when the empire leaves. That just

955
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: opens up at the more interesting phase of politics, honestly,

956
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:22,160
Speaker 1: and the more and the more violent phase frankly, of

957
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:25,719
Speaker 1: of the politics of the colonization. And so you have

958
00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:28,480
Speaker 1: these first two Balkan wars, and the third wars, as

959
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:31,680
Speaker 1: we all know, is triggered in in the Balkans in

960
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:35,520
Speaker 1: Sarajevo with the assassination of the heir to the Austro

961
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:38,840
Speaker 1: Hungarian throne. This is an assassination that is not random.

962
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:43,400
Speaker 1: H Franz Ferdinand is in Sarajevo to oversee military maneuvers um.

963
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:47,000
Speaker 1: They have just recently a next the territory uh they

964
00:49:47,040 --> 00:49:49,600
Speaker 1: had occupied it since since eighteen seventy eight, and they're

965
00:49:49,640 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 1: just recently formally next it in nineteen o eight, and

966
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:56,120
Speaker 1: you have these um uh, these young radicals who are

967
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 1: inspired both by nationalism but also by the Russian revolution

968
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:04,040
Speaker 1: nary movement UM now looking to to change the dynamic

969
00:50:04,120 --> 00:50:07,359
Speaker 1: on the ground. These are not the people that kill France.

970
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:10,360
Speaker 1: Ferdinand are not sponsored by Russia, They're not even sponsored

971
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:13,160
Speaker 1: by the top Serbian leadership. They are sponsored by the

972
00:50:13,200 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 1: head of military intelligence UM, who is trying to run

973
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:18,640
Speaker 1: his own sort of radical paramilitary revolutionary movement at the

974
00:50:18,680 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: same time that he's that he's heading military intelligence. But

975
00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:23,839
Speaker 1: Serbia has just had two wars in the last two years.

976
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 1: They're not in any position to fight Austro Hungary at

977
00:50:26,080 --> 00:50:28,520
Speaker 1: this point, and so they really drive these events and

978
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,160
Speaker 1: and it's and it's for that reason that we have

979
00:50:31,360 --> 00:50:33,960
Speaker 1: this as a third Balkan War. Christopher Clark and his

980
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:36,839
Speaker 1: well respected and and and and uh and really great

981
00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:40,960
Speaker 1: book Sleepwalkers, talks also about how you have this bal

982
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 1: Balkan inception scenario that that develops in France, England, Germany

983
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 1: at the same time over the course of nineteen thirteen

984
00:50:49,160 --> 00:50:51,880
Speaker 1: UM by which they begin to expect that war might

985
00:50:52,040 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 1: might happen, and which side they would take if it did. Um,

986
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:58,120
Speaker 1: and so all of these things sort of come together

987
00:50:58,360 --> 00:51:02,640
Speaker 1: to have this third Balkan War, then metastasize into a

988
00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:08,360
Speaker 1: broader European war, and then of course into a World War. M. So,

989
00:51:08,680 --> 00:51:15,000
Speaker 1: in the as the Russian army mobilizes and conflict begins,

990
00:51:15,719 --> 00:51:19,040
Speaker 1: you write that many Russian officers were already inclined to

991
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 1: look at the world through ethnic lenses. In we We've

992
00:51:21,960 --> 00:51:25,239
Speaker 1: talked a bit about that already. Um, but you you

993
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:27,880
Speaker 1: didn't say that the war prompted the high command to

994
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:33,160
Speaker 1: almost universally deploy an ethnic grid of reliability. Would you

995
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:37,359
Speaker 1: say a few words about how ethnic suspicions fed fear

996
00:51:37,440 --> 00:51:41,359
Speaker 1: of spies and overtime motivated violence even against civilian populations.

997
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:46,080
Speaker 1: How ethnic you know, reliability and ethnic lines and divisions

998
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:49,320
Speaker 1: became so crucial to Russia during the war in the

999
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:54,320
Speaker 1: Russian military, Yeah, for sure. Um. The as I mentioned

1000
00:51:54,360 --> 00:51:57,440
Speaker 1: that they they were already well trained culturally as well

1001
00:51:57,520 --> 00:51:59,960
Speaker 1: as professionally to think of the world in ethnic term

1002
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:02,920
Speaker 1: ms Uh. Virtually all of them were anti Semitic. That

1003
00:52:03,080 --> 00:52:06,680
Speaker 1: is to say, they held a wide range of beliefs

1004
00:52:06,719 --> 00:52:09,440
Speaker 1: about what, um, what Jews believed, what Jews did, and

1005
00:52:09,600 --> 00:52:12,520
Speaker 1: especially how Jews thought about the army um. They thought

1006
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 1: that on the one hand that they were um subversive

1007
00:52:15,239 --> 00:52:16,640
Speaker 1: in pro German and on the other hand that they

1008
00:52:16,680 --> 00:52:19,960
Speaker 1: were all cowardly draft dodgers. So they had this wide

1009
00:52:20,160 --> 00:52:23,040
Speaker 1: ranging and very toxic view of of of Jews in

1010
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:28,279
Speaker 1: the region, and they were they believed, not completely unreasonably

1011
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:30,680
Speaker 1: that ethnic Germans, there are plenty of ethnic Germans living

1012
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:32,960
Speaker 1: in the in the Russian borderlands, we're going to be

1013
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:35,520
Speaker 1: sympathetic to the German armies that that we're moving in.

1014
00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: By the same token, there pan Slavism inclined them to

1015
00:52:40,120 --> 00:52:42,000
Speaker 1: think that at the end of the day, the polls

1016
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:44,320
Speaker 1: would rather be part of Russia than part of Austria,

1017
00:52:44,360 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 1: Hungary or Germany. This was not true for the most case,

1018
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:50,920
Speaker 1: but most of them believed it um And so what

1019
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:53,960
Speaker 1: what they end up doing is um. And this was

1020
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:55,680
Speaker 1: a lot of the archival work I did was looking

1021
00:52:55,719 --> 00:53:00,040
Speaker 1: through the sort of cases of of purported espionage in

1022
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:01,920
Speaker 1: these frontline zones. In the first couple of years of

1023
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:05,000
Speaker 1: the war, they go through and counter intelligence agents, they

1024
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:07,080
Speaker 1: will go through and they'll arrest all of the Jews,

1025
00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:09,239
Speaker 1: they will deport all the Germans, and then they'll be

1026
00:53:09,320 --> 00:53:12,000
Speaker 1: surprised that there are still spies there because they're the

1027
00:53:12,560 --> 00:53:15,640
Speaker 1: Germans Austerngarians. They're they're sending polls, but they're also just

1028
00:53:15,719 --> 00:53:18,840
Speaker 1: hiring local Russians there, you know, like the the espionage

1029
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:22,960
Speaker 1: is not being conducted solely on on on ethnic terms.

1030
00:53:23,120 --> 00:53:25,480
Speaker 1: But that's the sort of grid of reliability that I'm

1031
00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:28,279
Speaker 1: talking about here. So when the Russian army moves into

1032
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:31,000
Speaker 1: these territories, and remember many of these territories are on

1033
00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:32,840
Speaker 1: the Russian side of the border, but you now have

1034
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:35,759
Speaker 1: this massive amount of troops coming in there, and they

1035
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:38,000
Speaker 1: need to requisition goods, they need to make sure there's

1036
00:53:38,000 --> 00:53:40,200
Speaker 1: no rebellions, they need need need to make sure there's

1037
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:44,920
Speaker 1: no espionage. They start basically engaging in ethno politics and

1038
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:50,440
Speaker 1: this ranges from you know, suspicion to deportation to executions. Um,

1039
00:53:50,600 --> 00:53:54,040
Speaker 1: your your your political stances is assumed to be flowing

1040
00:53:54,120 --> 00:53:57,799
Speaker 1: from your ethnic belonging. So let's talk a little more

1041
00:53:57,840 --> 00:54:02,640
Speaker 1: about anti German sentiment. Um, how widespread was it? Say?

1042
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:08,879
Speaker 1: In nine Yeah, Um, anti German sentiment really develops. Well,

1043
00:54:08,960 --> 00:54:12,200
Speaker 1: it has a history. Um, already before the war, the

1044
00:54:12,280 --> 00:54:16,560
Speaker 1: German communities in the Russian Empire. UM. Many of them

1045
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:20,839
Speaker 1: were UM UH, they retained their German nous, they lived

1046
00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:23,600
Speaker 1: in their their own villages UM, and they were often

1047
00:54:23,680 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 1: quite prosperous. Uh. They're stretched out across the Vulgar River.

1048
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:31,120
Speaker 1: There's many of them in Ukraine. UM. And and also

1049
00:54:31,239 --> 00:54:34,359
Speaker 1: there are many UH German businessmen basically in the big

1050
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:37,920
Speaker 1: cities UM who who control a lot of the UM,

1051
00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:40,200
Speaker 1: who control a lot of finance and control a lot

1052
00:54:40,239 --> 00:54:42,719
Speaker 1: of manufacturing honestly in in in the big cities in

1053
00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:45,640
Speaker 1: the in the Russian Empire too. So there's already sort

1054
00:54:45,680 --> 00:54:49,480
Speaker 1: of this potential for UM for social antagonism by by

1055
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:51,840
Speaker 1: ethnic Russians who say, why are these guys making all

1056
00:54:51,880 --> 00:54:54,000
Speaker 1: the money in our country when we're when when we're

1057
00:54:54,040 --> 00:54:56,040
Speaker 1: not able to why are they dominating us? This is

1058
00:54:56,120 --> 00:54:59,279
Speaker 1: the propaganda theme is German dominance, German dominance. How do

1059
00:54:59,320 --> 00:55:02,000
Speaker 1: we undo German dominance in our country? And this is

1060
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:04,440
Speaker 1: gonna get linked, as I said before to Alexandra, eventually

1061
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:07,759
Speaker 1: the UM because of her German upbringing, but it it

1062
00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:11,000
Speaker 1: has its roots much much deeper in these social antagonisms. Now,

1063
00:55:11,040 --> 00:55:13,640
Speaker 1: when war gets declared and you have a massive propaganda

1064
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:17,520
Speaker 1: campaign unleashed, all across Europe to sort of demonize your enemies.

1065
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:20,400
Speaker 1: The same thing happens in Russia, and they're good reasons

1066
00:55:20,440 --> 00:55:23,480
Speaker 1: why anti Germanism is gonna spread quite quickly in the borderlands.

1067
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:25,360
Speaker 1: The Germans do come in and in a couple of

1068
00:55:25,440 --> 00:55:28,760
Speaker 1: notorious incidents, as they had in Belgium, they raised towns,

1069
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:32,360
Speaker 1: they they execute civilians, They do UM a lot of

1070
00:55:32,800 --> 00:55:36,320
Speaker 1: brutal things, and and this leads um UH to rumors

1071
00:55:36,400 --> 00:55:40,280
Speaker 1: of German beast reality basically spreading throughout UM, spreading throughout

1072
00:55:40,400 --> 00:55:42,919
Speaker 1: the big cities in the Empire too. This is gonna

1073
00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:45,840
Speaker 1: culminate UM at the very beginning of the big Russian

1074
00:55:45,880 --> 00:55:50,040
Speaker 1: defeats in nineteen fifteen, in a series of pogroms in

1075
00:55:50,200 --> 00:55:54,200
Speaker 1: Moscow in particular, in which UH not only German but

1076
00:55:54,520 --> 00:55:58,400
Speaker 1: virtually all are Many foreign stores um are are are

1077
00:55:58,520 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 1: attacked UH as as part of by popular mobs and

1078
00:56:02,600 --> 00:56:05,239
Speaker 1: looted UM by virtue of being German, and the state

1079
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:09,080
Speaker 1: then moves or to also sequester this property or and

1080
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:12,720
Speaker 1: sees land and factories and such from from from German

1081
00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:17,760
Speaker 1: speakers and especially from people who remain German citizens. Mhm

1082
00:56:18,680 --> 00:56:25,360
Speaker 1: UM is also when we see a retreat from Poland

1083
00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:29,000
Speaker 1: UM by the Russian military. Can you talk a little

1084
00:56:29,040 --> 00:56:32,239
Speaker 1: bit about that and who was taking responsibility for strategic

1085
00:56:32,400 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 1: decisions during night? Yeah. So when the war begins, UM

1086
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:42,400
Speaker 1: Nicholas considers briefly UM going to the front as commander

1087
00:56:42,440 --> 00:56:44,520
Speaker 1: in chief himself. There had been a long tradition of

1088
00:56:44,680 --> 00:56:47,680
Speaker 1: thinking about the autocrat as the military leader of the country.

1089
00:56:48,239 --> 00:56:50,000
Speaker 1: But there was also a tradition, most notably in the

1090
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:54,200
Speaker 1: Napoleonic Wars, of of of of delegating most of the

1091
00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 1: command authority or near all the command authority to professional generals.

1092
00:56:58,200 --> 00:57:01,120
Speaker 1: And so UM He's persuad did at that point to

1093
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:04,200
Speaker 1: UM to appoint a commander in chief UM. He commit

1094
00:57:04,640 --> 00:57:08,840
Speaker 1: uh appoints his his relative, the Grand Duke Nikola Nikolaevitch,

1095
00:57:08,880 --> 00:57:11,960
Speaker 1: who had had a military career UM who then assembles

1096
00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:15,160
Speaker 1: a staff, most notably his um UH his chief of

1097
00:57:15,239 --> 00:57:18,720
Speaker 1: staff UM a guy named General Youanshkyevitch UH. And it's

1098
00:57:19,520 --> 00:57:21,760
Speaker 1: they are the head of the so called Stavka or

1099
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:26,960
Speaker 1: or supreme headquarters. But there's significant um Uh. There's significant

1100
00:57:27,160 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 1: UM influence also for UM front commanders and individual army commanders.

1101
00:57:32,040 --> 00:57:34,640
Speaker 1: It's a huge army, and each front has several armies

1102
00:57:34,720 --> 00:57:36,960
Speaker 1: under it, and and then each of those commanders are

1103
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 1: are also going to have are gonna have significant authority.

1104
00:57:40,720 --> 00:57:43,480
Speaker 1: But ultimately it's going to be Grand Duke Nikola Nikolaevitch

1105
00:57:43,560 --> 00:57:46,560
Speaker 1: and his in his chief of staff Youngshkevich. Um. This

1106
00:57:46,720 --> 00:57:50,240
Speaker 1: retreat happened, I mean, and much of the reason for

1107
00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:53,880
Speaker 1: this retreat um has to do with with mismanagement on

1108
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:57,960
Speaker 1: the part of General Headquarters. Um. It begins near the

1109
00:57:58,360 --> 00:58:02,000
Speaker 1: uh sort of the north end of the Carpathian Mountains,

1110
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:06,640
Speaker 1: near the Polish towns of Garliza and tarnough Um. But

1111
00:58:06,720 --> 00:58:09,000
Speaker 1: then it's gonna spread all the way first actually kind

1112
00:58:09,040 --> 00:58:11,280
Speaker 1: of through through Ukraine before you have the big big

1113
00:58:11,320 --> 00:58:14,280
Speaker 1: blow into sort of Congress Poland or or the Russian

1114
00:58:14,320 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 1: Kingdom of Poland Um later on in the summer of

1115
00:58:17,040 --> 00:58:20,840
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen. UM. And the basic problem is they're not

1116
00:58:20,920 --> 00:58:23,640
Speaker 1: able to mobilize reserves to to patch the holes in

1117
00:58:23,680 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 1: the line that get that get blown apart in a

1118
00:58:25,760 --> 00:58:29,880
Speaker 1: couple of these battles. It's this is a consistent problem

1119
00:58:29,960 --> 00:58:33,640
Speaker 1: in World War One for all armies, which is that uh,

1120
00:58:33,800 --> 00:58:36,080
Speaker 1: they most of them believe that you have to could

1121
00:58:36,560 --> 00:58:39,280
Speaker 1: gather these enormous amounts of shells and break a hole

1122
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:41,919
Speaker 1: in the enemy's line and then break through and force

1123
00:58:41,960 --> 00:58:43,920
Speaker 1: a retreat that way. But the problem is, once you

1124
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:45,960
Speaker 1: consolidate all of that, they can see you doing that,

1125
00:58:46,040 --> 00:58:48,160
Speaker 1: and when you start bombarding, they know where you're gonna

1126
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:49,880
Speaker 1: hit it, and they retreat from it. And then you

1127
00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:52,880
Speaker 1: break through the lines, and then the reserves come up

1128
00:58:52,920 --> 00:58:55,880
Speaker 1: to to to push you back. So it's quite frequently

1129
00:58:55,920 --> 00:58:57,960
Speaker 1: the case, actually on all fronts, that that the first

1130
00:58:58,000 --> 00:59:00,560
Speaker 1: line of trenches is taken by by enemies. This notion

1131
00:59:00,640 --> 00:59:03,080
Speaker 1: that they never get across no man's land is simply

1132
00:59:03,160 --> 00:59:05,640
Speaker 1: not true. Um But the problem is that reserves are

1133
00:59:05,720 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 1: usually um deployed with sufficient um uh skill that that

1134
00:59:09,360 --> 00:59:12,440
Speaker 1: you're unable to develop that breakthrough into something more strategically

1135
00:59:12,520 --> 00:59:15,840
Speaker 1: meaningful and um the difference in nineteen fifteen is that

1136
00:59:15,880 --> 00:59:18,400
Speaker 1: the Russians mismanage those reserves and they are able to

1137
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:21,480
Speaker 1: achieve this breakthrough. And once you have this breakthrough, you know,

1138
00:59:21,600 --> 00:59:24,080
Speaker 1: once you get behind the lines, uh, it forces a

1139
00:59:24,080 --> 00:59:26,080
Speaker 1: retreat all across the line so that people don't get

1140
00:59:26,160 --> 00:59:28,600
Speaker 1: pinned in between in between two forces. So most of

1141
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:31,560
Speaker 1: the retreat happens um uh you know, not because you're

1142
00:59:31,600 --> 00:59:35,560
Speaker 1: being fought from uh, from the troops that are facing you,

1143
00:59:35,800 --> 00:59:37,680
Speaker 1: but you're worried about troops coming into the back of you,

1144
00:59:37,720 --> 00:59:39,720
Speaker 1: and you have to flee backwards, and then you get

1145
00:59:39,760 --> 00:59:42,800
Speaker 1: harassed and chased UM as you're being driven back. And

1146
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:46,240
Speaker 1: this it's gets called the Great Retreat in Russia. They

1147
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:50,400
Speaker 1: basically abandoned all of Poland, UM, much of Ukraine, UM,

1148
00:59:50,560 --> 00:59:53,200
Speaker 1: much of Lithuania, much of Belarus. UH. It's it's an

1149
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:58,360
Speaker 1: enormous retreat. It's the most significant um UH offensive in

1150
00:59:58,640 --> 01:00:01,880
Speaker 1: in in the European theater really throughout the war. I mean,

1151
01:00:02,120 --> 01:00:04,600
Speaker 1: you can make a case for nineteen eighteen and what

1152
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:06,920
Speaker 1: happens on the Western Front, but but that actually is

1153
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:09,520
Speaker 1: less territory than than then you're seeing here in nineteen

1154
01:00:09,560 --> 01:00:14,600
Speaker 1: fifteen mm hm. And you're right that this is also

1155
01:00:15,080 --> 01:00:19,520
Speaker 1: the real fracture of the imperial political system that occurs

1156
01:00:19,600 --> 01:00:22,280
Speaker 1: during the summer of nineteen fifteen. What were those events

1157
01:00:22,520 --> 01:00:24,760
Speaker 1: that you know, So if nineteen o five is when

1158
01:00:25,600 --> 01:00:28,880
Speaker 1: that mass mass politics, that switch is flipped, but here's

1159
01:00:28,880 --> 01:00:32,360
Speaker 1: where we real fracture of empire. What what was it

1160
01:00:32,480 --> 01:00:35,920
Speaker 1: that happened here? So nineteen fourteen when the wars declared,

1161
01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:40,240
Speaker 1: there's an agreement made by virtually all political parties, excluding

1162
01:00:40,320 --> 01:00:43,840
Speaker 1: the far far left like the Bolsheviks, excluding them, but

1163
01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:46,479
Speaker 1: virtually everyone else enter what they call a sacred union.

1164
01:00:46,720 --> 01:00:48,880
Speaker 1: They said, Okay, we're gonna quit politics, We're gonna disband

1165
01:00:48,920 --> 01:00:51,920
Speaker 1: the Duma. Um, We're gonna let the Sarus government run

1166
01:00:51,960 --> 01:00:54,400
Speaker 1: the war and we'll get back to our political questions

1167
01:00:54,520 --> 01:00:56,360
Speaker 1: when when the fighting is done. But we're gonna let

1168
01:00:56,400 --> 01:00:58,680
Speaker 1: that's our fight and run this war effort and his

1169
01:00:58,760 --> 01:01:01,960
Speaker 1: administration fight and run the war. In the space of

1170
01:01:02,720 --> 01:01:05,600
Speaker 1: uh less than a year, they've runned into the ground. Uh.

1171
01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:09,080
Speaker 1: You know, there are massive problems with supplies, there's massive

1172
01:01:09,120 --> 01:01:12,160
Speaker 1: problems with treating wounded soldiers. There are you have this

1173
01:01:12,360 --> 01:01:16,320
Speaker 1: huge retreat. Um, you have the encirclement of the Second

1174
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:19,640
Speaker 1: Army in nineteen fourteen and the suicide of its commander.

1175
01:01:19,680 --> 01:01:22,840
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a disaster that that Thats administration

1176
01:01:22,920 --> 01:01:27,000
Speaker 1: has demonstrated that it's incapable of effectively running this war effort.

1177
01:01:27,480 --> 01:01:32,280
Speaker 1: And that's um, you know that that problem uh means

1178
01:01:32,680 --> 01:01:35,360
Speaker 1: the end of the sacred union. People as patriots have

1179
01:01:35,480 --> 01:01:37,560
Speaker 1: to say, look, we can't just sit here and watch

1180
01:01:37,600 --> 01:01:39,440
Speaker 1: this happen anymore. We have to get involved, we have

1181
01:01:39,520 --> 01:01:41,120
Speaker 1: to do something. And they do this sort a wide

1182
01:01:41,200 --> 01:01:44,720
Speaker 1: variety of ways, um from forming you know, sort of

1183
01:01:44,800 --> 01:01:48,600
Speaker 1: relief agencies to building hospitals to um a wide variety ways.

1184
01:01:48,600 --> 01:01:50,360
Speaker 1: But they also do it politically. They started to say, okay,

1185
01:01:50,400 --> 01:01:52,360
Speaker 1: we need to get more involved politically. We have to

1186
01:01:52,440 --> 01:01:55,080
Speaker 1: have um, you know, discussions between thats are and his

1187
01:01:55,120 --> 01:01:58,520
Speaker 1: administration and these other public figures, especially those prominent figures

1188
01:01:58,640 --> 01:02:01,520
Speaker 1: centrist figures in the Duma, who can bring the country

1189
01:02:01,520 --> 01:02:03,400
Speaker 1: along and we can maybe start to repair some of

1190
01:02:03,480 --> 01:02:06,000
Speaker 1: the some of the damage that's done. So this is

1191
01:02:06,040 --> 01:02:08,080
Speaker 1: the movement that happens over the course of the of

1192
01:02:08,160 --> 01:02:10,400
Speaker 1: the summer. At the same time, you're starting starting to

1193
01:02:10,400 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 1: see a reinvigration of the strike wave. Strikes had basically

1194
01:02:13,400 --> 01:02:16,800
Speaker 1: ceased in nineteen fourteen, labor unrest had basically ceased, But

1195
01:02:16,840 --> 01:02:19,760
Speaker 1: now nineteen fifteen you're starting a number of big strikes again,

1196
01:02:20,240 --> 01:02:22,920
Speaker 1: many of them are being shot at by by policemen. UM.

1197
01:02:23,120 --> 01:02:25,360
Speaker 1: So you're starting to see that social unrest building again,

1198
01:02:25,800 --> 01:02:29,240
Speaker 1: and you you get what gets called the progressive block

1199
01:02:29,400 --> 01:02:32,280
Speaker 1: that is supposed to sort of help that's ours administration

1200
01:02:32,560 --> 01:02:35,320
Speaker 1: sort of jointly now run the war effort. UH. And

1201
01:02:35,400 --> 01:02:38,320
Speaker 1: what happens in nineteen fifteen is this progressive block gets

1202
01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:41,400
Speaker 1: built from again on a spectrum from the left to

1203
01:02:41,560 --> 01:02:44,640
Speaker 1: the to the conservative right UM and they say, okay,

1204
01:02:44,640 --> 01:02:46,360
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this, and at the last minute that's

1205
01:02:46,360 --> 01:02:48,320
Speaker 1: our backs out and says, no, this is an aggregation

1206
01:02:48,360 --> 01:02:51,520
Speaker 1: of constitutional power. I'm going to disband the DOOMA, I'm

1207
01:02:51,520 --> 01:02:53,520
Speaker 1: gonna fire most of my ministers, and I'm going to

1208
01:02:53,640 --> 01:02:55,000
Speaker 1: run this war effort and I'm going to go to

1209
01:02:55,040 --> 01:02:57,720
Speaker 1: the front personally to do it. So he completely rejects

1210
01:02:57,800 --> 01:03:01,800
Speaker 1: this at this political effort to um uh to work together.

1211
01:03:02,200 --> 01:03:05,680
Speaker 1: And now the people on the outside are left basically saying, okay,

1212
01:03:05,720 --> 01:03:07,840
Speaker 1: what what can we do to try to save our country?

1213
01:03:08,200 --> 01:03:10,120
Speaker 1: And that's that's the story of the next sort of

1214
01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:12,200
Speaker 1: year and a half is you know, how do they

1215
01:03:12,240 --> 01:03:14,000
Speaker 1: continue to try to run the government, how do they

1216
01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:17,000
Speaker 1: continue to try to help refugees while at the same

1217
01:03:17,080 --> 01:03:19,360
Speaker 1: time saying, look, we're not going to we're not going

1218
01:03:19,400 --> 01:03:22,760
Speaker 1: to solve this problem until we get rid of the autocracy. M.

1219
01:03:23,400 --> 01:03:26,720
Speaker 1: And it's it's in October of fifteen, after all of

1220
01:03:26,760 --> 01:03:31,200
Speaker 1: these events that Nicholas rights to Stanley Washburn, we have

1221
01:03:31,440 --> 01:03:33,960
Speaker 1: no public opinion in Russia, and you've already talked a

1222
01:03:33,960 --> 01:03:36,200
Speaker 1: little bit about his kind of rejection of ground up

1223
01:03:36,200 --> 01:03:38,760
Speaker 1: politics and and the way that he thinks politics should run.

1224
01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:41,960
Speaker 1: But you know, so I've asked you here to describe

1225
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:43,560
Speaker 1: what he meant by that. You've kind of already given

1226
01:03:43,640 --> 01:03:47,800
Speaker 1: us a picture. Maybe instead, how could he still think

1227
01:03:47,880 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 1: this like after this summer, after so much clear popular opposition,

1228
01:03:52,760 --> 01:03:57,120
Speaker 1: whether it's strikers, whether it's you know, political parties opposing

1229
01:03:57,240 --> 01:04:01,520
Speaker 1: him his rule, how can he still think this way? Yeah? Yeah,

1230
01:04:01,600 --> 01:04:05,200
Speaker 1: I mean the capacity for self deception among humans is

1231
01:04:05,280 --> 01:04:09,280
Speaker 1: quite high, you know. It's um and and this again,

1232
01:04:09,520 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 1: he's for him to recognize that that politics in Russia

1233
01:04:15,080 --> 01:04:18,320
Speaker 1: was modern politics, That you do have things like coalescing

1234
01:04:18,800 --> 01:04:21,440
Speaker 1: public opinion, that you do have pressure groups, that you

1235
01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:25,400
Speaker 1: do have constituencies rather than a passive population that you

1236
01:04:25,560 --> 01:04:29,480
Speaker 1: run by divine right. It is fundamentally something that if

1237
01:04:29,520 --> 01:04:31,360
Speaker 1: you were to accept that, it would mean he would

1238
01:04:31,360 --> 01:04:33,240
Speaker 1: have to accept that he's not a legitimate Sorry, he's

1239
01:04:33,240 --> 01:04:35,880
Speaker 1: not a legitimate leader. Um And he's he's unwilling to

1240
01:04:35,960 --> 01:04:38,400
Speaker 1: do that. Um And and he doesn't understand it. Right that.

1241
01:04:38,800 --> 01:04:42,480
Speaker 1: You know, earlier in this conversation with Washburn, Um, Washburn

1242
01:04:42,560 --> 01:04:46,440
Speaker 1: is expressing his his regret over American politics, and he

1243
01:04:46,520 --> 01:04:48,400
Speaker 1: says Nicholas sort of blinks and looks at him, says,

1244
01:04:48,400 --> 01:04:50,960
Speaker 1: I don't understand anything about your politics, Like he doesn't

1245
01:04:51,040 --> 01:04:53,400
Speaker 1: understand how electoral politics really work, even though he's had

1246
01:04:53,400 --> 01:04:55,480
Speaker 1: the doom over the last you know, he doesn't understand

1247
01:04:55,560 --> 01:04:58,800
Speaker 1: about sort of why, why why Wilson is is in

1248
01:04:58,920 --> 01:05:01,080
Speaker 1: trouble or not in trouble, like all of that stuff

1249
01:05:01,200 --> 01:05:03,520
Speaker 1: is just um. He just says, I don't understand it. Um.

1250
01:05:03,560 --> 01:05:06,200
Speaker 1: It's it's not the way that um uh that that

1251
01:05:06,360 --> 01:05:09,440
Speaker 1: he thinks about politics, so um. And that's what he

1252
01:05:09,480 --> 01:05:11,200
Speaker 1: means by no public opinion. It's not that people don't

1253
01:05:11,240 --> 01:05:13,400
Speaker 1: have opinions. He knows people have opinions, and you know

1254
01:05:13,560 --> 01:05:16,160
Speaker 1: that that that there's no consolidation of this in a

1255
01:05:16,240 --> 01:05:18,920
Speaker 1: way that would represent the national will. Right, That's what

1256
01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:21,480
Speaker 1: public opinion really means. And this is the distinction that

1257
01:05:21,560 --> 01:05:24,520
Speaker 1: begins to happen, is that that's a believes that he

1258
01:05:24,680 --> 01:05:27,480
Speaker 1: by definition represents the nation and what's happening over the

1259
01:05:27,520 --> 01:05:30,000
Speaker 1: course of the war is that Russians are understanding no,

1260
01:05:30,160 --> 01:05:33,280
Speaker 1: our national interests, our national identity, our national community is

1261
01:05:33,320 --> 01:05:35,120
Speaker 1: defined by us. It's not defined by that'sar. And in

1262
01:05:35,240 --> 01:05:38,880
Speaker 1: fact that SSAR is alien to that and and working

1263
01:05:38,920 --> 01:05:42,360
Speaker 1: against its best interests. And when and when that finally

1264
01:05:42,400 --> 01:05:45,080
Speaker 1: gets realized, that of course makes it untenable for that's

1265
01:05:45,120 --> 01:05:50,840
Speaker 1: are to continue. M So you say Nicholas disbands the

1266
01:05:50,920 --> 01:05:53,840
Speaker 1: Duma at the time, this wasn't the first time, right,

1267
01:05:53,840 --> 01:05:56,440
Speaker 1: How is Nicholas thinking about the Duma relating to it?

1268
01:05:56,480 --> 01:05:58,480
Speaker 1: If you're saying, well, there's no there's no public opinion.

1269
01:05:59,760 --> 01:06:02,240
Speaker 1: He so, you know, kind of functionally he says, there's

1270
01:06:02,240 --> 01:06:04,680
Speaker 1: no Duma either, I'm just gonna run this war. Can

1271
01:06:04,720 --> 01:06:07,840
Speaker 1: you say a little bit more about how Nicholas dealt

1272
01:06:08,160 --> 01:06:12,000
Speaker 1: with the Douma and and political functionaries below. Yeah, yeah,

1273
01:06:12,040 --> 01:06:14,960
Speaker 1: I mean fundamentally, the way he does it is by

1274
01:06:15,080 --> 01:06:18,280
Speaker 1: having his his prime minister at um deal with it

1275
01:06:18,360 --> 01:06:20,760
Speaker 1: and his other ministers deal with it um. Uh. He

1276
01:06:20,880 --> 01:06:23,480
Speaker 1: doesn't want to appear before the Dooma. When he does,

1277
01:06:23,560 --> 01:06:27,800
Speaker 1: he normally insults them and and there's sort of bad relations,

1278
01:06:27,840 --> 01:06:29,760
Speaker 1: and so he wants to have as little to do

1279
01:06:29,840 --> 01:06:31,920
Speaker 1: with them as possible, even the ones that the centrist

1280
01:06:31,960 --> 01:06:36,360
Speaker 1: ones UM, guys like Alexander Gutchkov UM, who are basically

1281
01:06:36,480 --> 01:06:39,200
Speaker 1: working for to to try to stabilize the system. He

1282
01:06:39,360 --> 01:06:42,240
Speaker 1: dislikes them personally. He he doesn't you know, he doesn't

1283
01:06:42,280 --> 01:06:44,480
Speaker 1: want to have anything really to do with them, and

1284
01:06:44,680 --> 01:06:47,280
Speaker 1: so he kind of insists that his his, his ministers

1285
01:06:47,360 --> 01:06:49,040
Speaker 1: do that work. And that's one of the problems in

1286
01:06:49,080 --> 01:06:51,280
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen is that is that the ministers have done

1287
01:06:51,280 --> 01:06:53,520
Speaker 1: that work, and and all but one of them basically

1288
01:06:53,560 --> 01:06:55,440
Speaker 1: agrees that, yeah, we have to work together with them.

1289
01:06:55,720 --> 01:06:58,360
Speaker 1: And so nineteen sixteen, the doom is gonna meet a

1290
01:06:58,360 --> 01:07:00,960
Speaker 1: couple more times, briefly early in the year and then

1291
01:07:01,000 --> 01:07:04,240
Speaker 1: in a very um explosive section session late in the year,

1292
01:07:04,320 --> 01:07:07,880
Speaker 1: in in November leading up to December. UM that UM,

1293
01:07:08,120 --> 01:07:09,760
Speaker 1: they're they're going to sort of force their way back

1294
01:07:09,800 --> 01:07:14,520
Speaker 1: onto onto the agenda. UM. And so uh Nicholas contents

1295
01:07:14,600 --> 01:07:16,280
Speaker 1: himself with thinking, Okay, well, I'm going to be at

1296
01:07:16,320 --> 01:07:18,400
Speaker 1: the front. He's actually not doing a lot of the

1297
01:07:18,840 --> 01:07:21,520
Speaker 1: military leadership at that point. UM. That's his chief of staff,

1298
01:07:21,520 --> 01:07:24,760
Speaker 1: a guy named Mikhail Alexeyeff, who's doing most of that work. UM.

1299
01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:28,800
Speaker 1: And um and frankly, um, most of the political work

1300
01:07:28,840 --> 01:07:30,920
Speaker 1: in the country is being done outside of the formal

1301
01:07:31,000 --> 01:07:33,640
Speaker 1: government itself. That is to say, if you're asking who's

1302
01:07:33,680 --> 01:07:37,920
Speaker 1: providing food to refugees, who's building hospitals for soldiers, it's

1303
01:07:37,920 --> 01:07:40,680
Speaker 1: actually not the government anymore. It's it's these it's these uh,

1304
01:07:41,040 --> 01:07:44,720
Speaker 1: it's these public organizations uh that that that are doing

1305
01:07:44,720 --> 01:07:46,760
Speaker 1: a lot of this work. And so politics has moved

1306
01:07:46,800 --> 01:07:49,280
Speaker 1: out of the state and into these sort of paris

1307
01:07:49,280 --> 01:07:54,280
Speaker 1: statal organizations. You write that one concrete outcome of the

1308
01:07:54,360 --> 01:07:57,840
Speaker 1: offensives of nineteen sixteen was that progressive projects for social

1309
01:07:57,880 --> 01:08:02,200
Speaker 1: renovation and mobilization could be married to political demands forre dictatorship.

1310
01:08:03,120 --> 01:08:06,480
Speaker 1: Just say a few more words on that. Yeah, Um,

1311
01:08:07,040 --> 01:08:09,480
Speaker 1: you know there's this What I'm trying to describe in

1312
01:08:09,520 --> 01:08:13,600
Speaker 1: that chapter is the development of a kind of technocratic progressivism.

1313
01:08:13,720 --> 01:08:16,479
Speaker 1: That is to say, this is not that that um

1314
01:08:17,120 --> 01:08:21,040
Speaker 1: progressivism defined by expertise. Um, that you're going to achieve

1315
01:08:21,120 --> 01:08:25,080
Speaker 1: progressive goals by having experts determine how to run an

1316
01:08:25,400 --> 01:08:29,680
Speaker 1: education system, a healthcare system, or military system for that matter. Right. So, um,

1317
01:08:30,120 --> 01:08:33,240
Speaker 1: so you don't need necessarily to have to deal with

1318
01:08:33,320 --> 01:08:36,719
Speaker 1: the messy politics of of of mass politics and elections

1319
01:08:36,760 --> 01:08:39,160
Speaker 1: and all those sorts of things. And so you're seeing

1320
01:08:39,240 --> 01:08:41,280
Speaker 1: these efforts to say, Okay, we know best how to

1321
01:08:41,400 --> 01:08:44,240
Speaker 1: fix this war effort because we're experts where government experts

1322
01:08:44,280 --> 01:08:48,880
Speaker 1: were scientists or whatever, um and um, and these movements

1323
01:08:48,920 --> 01:08:50,920
Speaker 1: to try to fix the war through this, through this

1324
01:08:51,000 --> 01:08:54,960
Speaker 1: sort of progressive technocratic lens um lends itself in a

1325
01:08:55,040 --> 01:08:58,720
Speaker 1: certain way towards saying, okay, well let's think about how

1326
01:08:58,880 --> 01:09:02,240
Speaker 1: we would run the in wartime. And this is definitely

1327
01:09:02,280 --> 01:09:04,680
Speaker 1: not the majority of you. I think most progressive um

1328
01:09:05,040 --> 01:09:08,200
Speaker 1: want to see something much more um democratic frankly um

1329
01:09:08,600 --> 01:09:11,600
Speaker 1: than uh than the autocracy or military dictatorship would be.

1330
01:09:11,840 --> 01:09:14,680
Speaker 1: But within the military itself and within Alex say for

1331
01:09:14,760 --> 01:09:17,960
Speaker 1: Alex say of himself as the chief of staff, the

1332
01:09:18,040 --> 01:09:20,880
Speaker 1: notion that look all of this, all of the Csars family,

1333
01:09:20,920 --> 01:09:24,000
Speaker 1: they're causing all these problems, um uh you know, so

1334
01:09:24,240 --> 01:09:27,200
Speaker 1: much sort of confusion, um, all of these sort of

1335
01:09:27,280 --> 01:09:29,960
Speaker 1: groups running around, we're not coordinating them. Well, we're wasting

1336
01:09:30,000 --> 01:09:32,280
Speaker 1: a lot of money. If we just have a military

1337
01:09:32,320 --> 01:09:36,360
Speaker 1: dictatorship that is able to to consolidate the war effort, um,

1338
01:09:36,439 --> 01:09:37,760
Speaker 1: then we're gonna be able to win the war and

1339
01:09:37,800 --> 01:09:40,439
Speaker 1: then we can figure out the politics later. And so

1340
01:09:40,640 --> 01:09:43,320
Speaker 1: that's again sort of thinking about it in terms of

1341
01:09:43,400 --> 01:09:46,280
Speaker 1: that competence. Now, this is an assumption of military competence

1342
01:09:46,320 --> 01:09:47,800
Speaker 1: that is not borne out at One of the points

1343
01:09:47,840 --> 01:09:49,599
Speaker 1: I try to make in the book is that throughout

1344
01:09:49,640 --> 01:09:51,640
Speaker 1: the military keep military keeps saying, oh, we we know

1345
01:09:51,760 --> 01:09:53,840
Speaker 1: best how to do this. If we run it, it's

1346
01:09:53,880 --> 01:09:56,000
Speaker 1: going to be orderly, because we're the military things that

1347
01:09:56,080 --> 01:09:58,280
Speaker 1: we orderedly. In fact, when the military takes over these

1348
01:09:58,320 --> 01:10:00,439
Speaker 1: state functions, they do a really bad job of it

1349
01:10:00,520 --> 01:10:02,960
Speaker 1: and at least to chaos in many places. So this

1350
01:10:03,680 --> 01:10:06,600
Speaker 1: automatic assumption that the military means order, um, which is

1351
01:10:06,640 --> 01:10:09,200
Speaker 1: widespread not only Russia but obviously around the world, is

1352
01:10:09,439 --> 01:10:11,320
Speaker 1: sort of a dominant feature of the way that the

1353
01:10:11,360 --> 01:10:13,880
Speaker 1: military perceives itself, turns out not to be the case

1354
01:10:14,040 --> 01:10:16,600
Speaker 1: many times on the ground, and so, um, you know,

1355
01:10:16,640 --> 01:10:19,880
Speaker 1: I think a military dictatorship would have been um, quite disastrous.

1356
01:10:20,160 --> 01:10:22,840
Speaker 1: You know, there was already kind of military dictatorship in

1357
01:10:22,880 --> 01:10:25,040
Speaker 1: the front line zones, and I described throughout the book

1358
01:10:25,040 --> 01:10:28,320
Speaker 1: about the problems that emerged there. So you write that

1359
01:10:28,479 --> 01:10:31,280
Speaker 1: on the surface, the period between the great retreat and

1360
01:10:31,400 --> 01:10:35,400
Speaker 1: the revolutionary crisis of seventeen was marked by statist But

1361
01:10:35,880 --> 01:10:38,080
Speaker 1: how would you sketch out the important changes occurring in

1362
01:10:38,160 --> 01:10:42,920
Speaker 1: Russian society? While attention was focused on scrutin, the kadok

1363
01:10:42,920 --> 01:10:45,880
Speaker 1: were led of ministerial appointments. He inspired Petrograd kind of

1364
01:10:46,120 --> 01:10:50,360
Speaker 1: palace intrigue and suspicion of Germans. What was actually happening

1365
01:10:50,920 --> 01:10:55,800
Speaker 1: while the kind of intrigue was taking the focus UM,

1366
01:10:55,960 --> 01:11:00,680
Speaker 1: A number of of things are making the experience of

1367
01:11:00,760 --> 01:11:02,880
Speaker 1: people in the empire much worse. So if you're in

1368
01:11:03,000 --> 01:11:05,559
Speaker 1: the front line or near the front line, UM, you're

1369
01:11:05,560 --> 01:11:09,160
Speaker 1: experiencing a lot of personal insecurity in terms of violence.

1370
01:11:09,200 --> 01:11:11,200
Speaker 1: You're starting to see a breakdown of social order in

1371
01:11:11,280 --> 01:11:14,599
Speaker 1: many of these places, led in many cases by by

1372
01:11:15,120 --> 01:11:18,360
Speaker 1: deserting or off duty soldiers. But even far away from

1373
01:11:18,400 --> 01:11:20,960
Speaker 1: the front um, one of the key things that happens

1374
01:11:21,000 --> 01:11:23,240
Speaker 1: over the course of the war is UM is a

1375
01:11:23,320 --> 01:11:27,680
Speaker 1: worsening standard of living driven by rapid inflation UM and UH.

1376
01:11:27,880 --> 01:11:30,280
Speaker 1: This is a problem that that curs government can't get around.

1377
01:11:30,600 --> 01:11:34,120
Speaker 1: It mismanages its monetary policy, but it also just fails

1378
01:11:34,160 --> 01:11:37,120
Speaker 1: to come to terms with the UM. Big changes in

1379
01:11:37,200 --> 01:11:39,640
Speaker 1: supply and demand for various things in the Empire over

1380
01:11:39,680 --> 01:11:41,760
Speaker 1: the course of the war. Plus they attack many of

1381
01:11:41,800 --> 01:11:44,680
Speaker 1: the merchants and and and arrest them right because um,

1382
01:11:44,840 --> 01:11:48,040
Speaker 1: because they're suspicious of merchants, and especially of Jewish merchants.

1383
01:11:48,080 --> 01:11:51,080
Speaker 1: And so this, all of this leads to UM to

1384
01:11:51,800 --> 01:11:53,719
Speaker 1: on the one hand, inflation and on the other hand,

1385
01:11:53,880 --> 01:11:56,559
Speaker 1: um good shortages. And so you're starting to see by

1386
01:11:56,600 --> 01:11:58,960
Speaker 1: the especially by the time we get to the turn

1387
01:11:59,000 --> 01:12:01,439
Speaker 1: of the yr into nineteen seven and team um you

1388
01:12:01,479 --> 01:12:05,120
Speaker 1: know breadlines, UM, the discussion of the need for rationing. UM,

1389
01:12:05,160 --> 01:12:08,400
Speaker 1: You're starting to see the supply situation deteriorate in terms

1390
01:12:08,479 --> 01:12:10,559
Speaker 1: of trains being able to to ship what they need

1391
01:12:10,640 --> 01:12:13,799
Speaker 1: to on time. Um. All of these things are are

1392
01:12:13,880 --> 01:12:16,920
Speaker 1: beginning to deteriorate, and social relations are also becoming more

1393
01:12:16,960 --> 01:12:19,840
Speaker 1: and more poisonous. Ethno politics has done its role there.

1394
01:12:20,160 --> 01:12:23,560
Speaker 1: This wide sort of influx of of refugees and the

1395
01:12:23,640 --> 01:12:26,960
Speaker 1: difficulties of dealing with them has has helped poison the

1396
01:12:27,520 --> 01:12:31,240
Speaker 1: um UM, the social relationships and above all this feeling

1397
01:12:31,360 --> 01:12:33,840
Speaker 1: that the rich are doing okay in this war and

1398
01:12:33,920 --> 01:12:36,200
Speaker 1: the rest of us are bearing this burden. And look

1399
01:12:36,240 --> 01:12:38,960
Speaker 1: at how badly they're managing it. This is becoming more

1400
01:12:39,040 --> 01:12:42,640
Speaker 1: and more dominant among all sectors of society. And so

1401
01:12:43,240 --> 01:12:45,960
Speaker 1: you know, kind of what who rest Putin thinks should

1402
01:12:45,960 --> 01:12:49,479
Speaker 1: be the Minister of you know, of whatever, you know,

1403
01:12:49,760 --> 01:12:52,880
Speaker 1: Minister of Interior, let's say, UM, that doesn't have a

1404
01:12:52,960 --> 01:12:56,000
Speaker 1: huge bearing on people's lives. You know, they're seeing things

1405
01:12:56,120 --> 01:12:58,960
Speaker 1: just just collapsing. And and it's not the result of

1406
01:12:58,960 --> 01:13:01,200
Speaker 1: a particular minister any thing. It's the whole structure. It's

1407
01:13:01,240 --> 01:13:03,880
Speaker 1: it's autocracy itself that has led them into this problem.

1408
01:13:04,880 --> 01:13:09,759
Speaker 1: M Can you describe the class dimensions of women serving

1409
01:13:09,840 --> 01:13:12,000
Speaker 1: as sisters of Mercy during the war. We'll talk a

1410
01:13:12,040 --> 01:13:14,559
Speaker 1: little bit more about dealing with the wounded and how

1411
01:13:14,680 --> 01:13:19,120
Speaker 1: significant casualties were. Um, let's start with sisters of mercy?

1412
01:13:19,160 --> 01:13:21,720
Speaker 1: Who were they? And you write really meaningfully about the

1413
01:13:21,800 --> 01:13:25,560
Speaker 1: class dimensions of service. Yeah, So women are looking to

1414
01:13:25,600 --> 01:13:28,240
Speaker 1: get involved in the war quite early and and and

1415
01:13:28,360 --> 01:13:31,360
Speaker 1: many of them quite earnestly, um throughout the war. And

1416
01:13:31,760 --> 01:13:34,559
Speaker 1: you know, there are a number of good um recent

1417
01:13:34,640 --> 01:13:37,920
Speaker 1: studies of nurses during the war, most notably by Laurie Staff,

1418
01:13:38,280 --> 01:13:41,920
Speaker 1: who has done the most extensive work on on them. UM.

1419
01:13:42,160 --> 01:13:45,280
Speaker 1: And so you you do end up getting people from UH,

1420
01:13:45,520 --> 01:13:48,599
Speaker 1: from UH, from a range of backgrounds serving in medical

1421
01:13:48,680 --> 01:13:51,960
Speaker 1: services women UM UM throughout the war. But at first

1422
01:13:52,040 --> 01:13:54,960
Speaker 1: there's this expectation that you want to get aristocratic women

1423
01:13:55,000 --> 01:13:56,640
Speaker 1: to do it, that that you want to get um

1424
01:13:56,920 --> 01:13:59,360
Speaker 1: sort of well behaved, well born women to to do

1425
01:13:59,520 --> 01:14:02,280
Speaker 1: this had to do this uh dirty work with with

1426
01:14:02,439 --> 01:14:06,160
Speaker 1: wounded and naked men frankly right, UM. And this notion

1427
01:14:06,320 --> 01:14:08,439
Speaker 1: that UM that you had to have a certain sort

1428
01:14:08,439 --> 01:14:11,479
Speaker 1: of UM social background in order to achieve this well

1429
01:14:11,720 --> 01:14:15,519
Speaker 1: UM was was was prominent UM early in the war

1430
01:14:15,920 --> 01:14:19,479
Speaker 1: for the Red Cross more than that necessarily than for

1431
01:14:20,040 --> 01:14:23,000
Speaker 1: UM sisters are mercy more broadly. But that's going over

1432
01:14:23,040 --> 01:14:25,120
Speaker 1: the course of the war. They're going to expand at

1433
01:14:25,160 --> 01:14:27,800
Speaker 1: the demand um um growth. It's going to expand more

1434
01:14:27,840 --> 01:14:31,759
Speaker 1: and more. And so that that but that that question

1435
01:14:31,840 --> 01:14:35,160
Speaker 1: of the social background of these women UM, that is

1436
01:14:35,200 --> 01:14:39,680
Speaker 1: not quite so clear and classified mhm UM. In the

1437
01:14:39,760 --> 01:14:43,120
Speaker 1: first two years of the war, more than two point

1438
01:14:43,240 --> 01:14:47,240
Speaker 1: eight million men are wounded on the Russian side, two

1439
01:14:47,280 --> 01:14:51,920
Speaker 1: point five million of them require hospitalization. You've already talked

1440
01:14:51,920 --> 01:14:54,240
Speaker 1: a little bit about about hospitals and who was building them,

1441
01:14:54,320 --> 01:14:57,599
Speaker 1: and you write that the planned capacity of the medical

1442
01:14:57,680 --> 01:15:01,320
Speaker 1: response fell far short and the reality ease fell even

1443
01:15:01,360 --> 01:15:05,120
Speaker 1: below the plans. Um. Can you just say a little

1444
01:15:05,120 --> 01:15:07,920
Speaker 1: bit more about how failures to treat the wounded contributed

1445
01:15:07,960 --> 01:15:12,040
Speaker 1: to political opposition. Yeah, and this was again, this was

1446
01:15:12,320 --> 01:15:15,439
Speaker 1: enormously widespread. What happens at the beginning of the war, Uh,

1447
01:15:15,680 --> 01:15:19,400
Speaker 1: the scale of casualties um surprises everyone. It shouldn't have

1448
01:15:19,439 --> 01:15:21,240
Speaker 1: surprised the Russians as much as it did. There were

1449
01:15:21,439 --> 01:15:24,599
Speaker 1: quite large casualties in the Russian research Japanese war. Uh.

1450
01:15:24,640 --> 01:15:27,600
Speaker 1: They knew what industrialized warfare could do. But still it

1451
01:15:27,720 --> 01:15:30,559
Speaker 1: was you know, at a scale that um that they

1452
01:15:30,560 --> 01:15:32,960
Speaker 1: should have planned for more. But the fact was that

1453
01:15:33,040 --> 01:15:37,519
Speaker 1: that again that SARS administration was incapable um of getting

1454
01:15:37,560 --> 01:15:41,080
Speaker 1: the job done. They the structure didn't allow them to

1455
01:15:41,120 --> 01:15:43,519
Speaker 1: do it, the finances didn't allow them to do it. Um.

1456
01:15:43,840 --> 01:15:46,559
Speaker 1: And and as a result, you know, they just didn't

1457
01:15:46,600 --> 01:15:49,040
Speaker 1: have hospital beds. At the beginning of the war, you

1458
01:15:49,120 --> 01:15:52,200
Speaker 1: had trains filled with wounded and dying men that were

1459
01:15:52,280 --> 01:15:54,760
Speaker 1: going nowhere. Basically there was no place for them to

1460
01:15:55,400 --> 01:15:59,880
Speaker 1: unload their their their human cargoes. Um. And this creates

1461
01:16:00,000 --> 01:16:02,760
Speaker 1: immediate crisis and uh, you know up to the very

1462
01:16:02,840 --> 01:16:06,200
Speaker 1: highest levels. You know, the royal family itself is besieged

1463
01:16:06,280 --> 01:16:11,040
Speaker 1: with with complaints by you know, aristocratic kids are dying

1464
01:16:11,080 --> 01:16:13,360
Speaker 1: in these train cards too. It's not just lower class

1465
01:16:13,360 --> 01:16:16,960
Speaker 1: people and so so people are complaining quite spaciferously, quite early,

1466
01:16:17,200 --> 01:16:19,240
Speaker 1: and they still can't quite get it together. And this

1467
01:16:19,360 --> 01:16:21,200
Speaker 1: is when you get this public effort by the Union

1468
01:16:21,240 --> 01:16:23,559
Speaker 1: of Towns and Union of Cities. These are again sort

1469
01:16:23,560 --> 01:16:26,280
Speaker 1: of public organizations think about them, maybe a sort of

1470
01:16:26,520 --> 01:16:30,000
Speaker 1: NGOs or charitable organizations something like that. Um, they're the

1471
01:16:30,080 --> 01:16:32,960
Speaker 1: ones that run these fund drives. They they have these

1472
01:16:33,040 --> 01:16:35,400
Speaker 1: you know, they go around and people collect money to

1473
01:16:35,479 --> 01:16:37,640
Speaker 1: build a hospital and and they're the ones that that

1474
01:16:37,760 --> 01:16:40,200
Speaker 1: generate all these extra beds and indeed these these extra

1475
01:16:40,280 --> 01:16:42,360
Speaker 1: hospital trains. And that's one of the things that gives

1476
01:16:42,400 --> 01:16:46,240
Speaker 1: them um uh sort of prestige moving forward. And indeed,

1477
01:16:46,280 --> 01:16:49,639
Speaker 1: the very first sort of um head of the provisional

1478
01:16:49,720 --> 01:16:52,400
Speaker 1: government after that start abdicates is the head of this

1479
01:16:52,600 --> 01:16:55,120
Speaker 1: Union of Towns of cities because he has this political

1480
01:16:55,360 --> 01:16:58,280
Speaker 1: um weight as a result of these efforts during the war.

1481
01:17:00,280 --> 01:17:05,120
Speaker 1: Um you've already said a little bit about food scarcity,

1482
01:17:05,160 --> 01:17:09,640
Speaker 1: food supply breadlines, um and and how that kind of

1483
01:17:09,680 --> 01:17:11,559
Speaker 1: put pressure on the Czar's government. So we can kind

1484
01:17:11,560 --> 01:17:15,280
Speaker 1: of step by that, UM. But would you briefly sketch

1485
01:17:15,400 --> 01:17:19,240
Speaker 1: for us the events that finally did leave this lead

1486
01:17:19,280 --> 01:17:22,000
Speaker 1: these are to step down. Yeah, this is the so

1487
01:17:22,120 --> 01:17:26,840
Speaker 1: called February revolution. Um. You know, as as folks probably know,

1488
01:17:27,040 --> 01:17:30,080
Speaker 1: the calendar in Russia was was different up until nineteen eighteen,

1489
01:17:30,120 --> 01:17:32,360
Speaker 1: so many of these famous revolutionary days actually take place

1490
01:17:32,400 --> 01:17:35,439
Speaker 1: in different months now. But in any case, um uh,

1491
01:17:35,680 --> 01:17:39,439
Speaker 1: this it begins on International Women's Day, which was a

1492
01:17:39,479 --> 01:17:44,040
Speaker 1: relatively new socialist holiday instituted in UH as a result

1493
01:17:44,200 --> 01:17:46,960
Speaker 1: of the Triangle shirtwaist fire in New York City. UM

1494
01:17:47,160 --> 01:17:50,840
Speaker 1: and uh and and again driven by socialist parties and

1495
01:17:50,880 --> 01:17:52,920
Speaker 1: by labor movements as as a way to sort of

1496
01:17:53,000 --> 01:17:57,400
Speaker 1: recognize women within within the socialist movement. And UM so

1497
01:17:57,560 --> 01:18:01,840
Speaker 1: International Women's Day is provides the the opportunity for many

1498
01:18:01,880 --> 01:18:05,920
Speaker 1: women across the city of Petrograd to UM to go

1499
01:18:06,040 --> 01:18:09,679
Speaker 1: out on marches and and what they want to protest

1500
01:18:09,760 --> 01:18:13,479
Speaker 1: at this point, um is a series of things, the war, UH,

1501
01:18:13,720 --> 01:18:16,720
Speaker 1: the Tsarist administration and the fact that their lives have

1502
01:18:16,840 --> 01:18:20,080
Speaker 1: now been taken over by increasingly long breadlines. Many of

1503
01:18:20,120 --> 01:18:21,679
Speaker 1: them are having to wake up in the pre dawn

1504
01:18:21,760 --> 01:18:23,800
Speaker 1: hours to stand in line to maybe get a loaf

1505
01:18:23,880 --> 01:18:25,760
Speaker 1: of bread, and then going off to a ten hour

1506
01:18:25,840 --> 01:18:27,920
Speaker 1: shift and then bringing that loaf of bread home to

1507
01:18:28,040 --> 01:18:31,400
Speaker 1: their kids when maybe they're they're you know, their husband

1508
01:18:31,479 --> 01:18:34,280
Speaker 1: is also working or or their husband is off at

1509
01:18:34,280 --> 01:18:37,400
Speaker 1: the war. UH and you know, and and this has

1510
01:18:37,439 --> 01:18:41,000
Speaker 1: become a completely untenable situation. And they're putting the blame

1511
01:18:41,080 --> 01:18:43,560
Speaker 1: for this where it actually belongs on the SAR and

1512
01:18:43,680 --> 01:18:45,640
Speaker 1: on the and on the war itself. They're they're not

1513
01:18:45,720 --> 01:18:49,240
Speaker 1: wrong about who has led them to this, to this situation.

1514
01:18:49,760 --> 01:18:53,080
Speaker 1: And so you actually have um marches of of working

1515
01:18:53,120 --> 01:18:55,120
Speaker 1: class women in the working class districts. You have marches

1516
01:18:55,160 --> 01:18:57,120
Speaker 1: of middle class women in the more middle class districts

1517
01:18:57,160 --> 01:18:58,679
Speaker 1: of the city. But it's the one in the working

1518
01:18:58,720 --> 01:19:00,920
Speaker 1: class districts that that gets the most weight because they

1519
01:19:01,000 --> 01:19:04,600
Speaker 1: ask big um groups of workers from defense factories to

1520
01:19:04,680 --> 01:19:06,599
Speaker 1: join them, and when the defense factories also go out

1521
01:19:06,640 --> 01:19:09,479
Speaker 1: on strike and join them, it becomes a crisis for

1522
01:19:10,120 --> 01:19:13,200
Speaker 1: for the police in Petrograd. UH. They attempt to deal

1523
01:19:13,280 --> 01:19:17,120
Speaker 1: with this um by using UH by by blocking off

1524
01:19:17,160 --> 01:19:19,160
Speaker 1: bridges by doing a series of other things. They shoot

1525
01:19:19,200 --> 01:19:21,760
Speaker 1: into the crowd at several moments, but then they feel

1526
01:19:21,800 --> 01:19:23,280
Speaker 1: that they have to call in the army. The army

1527
01:19:23,320 --> 01:19:25,200
Speaker 1: has several barracks in the city and they have to

1528
01:19:25,280 --> 01:19:27,599
Speaker 1: call those soldiers up to help them police the city.

1529
01:19:27,920 --> 01:19:29,400
Speaker 1: And when they do that, it turns out that the

1530
01:19:29,439 --> 01:19:32,240
Speaker 1: soldiers are on the on the side of the protesters.

1531
01:19:32,600 --> 01:19:35,839
Speaker 1: You have mass mutinies among the soldiers in the Petrograd garrison.

1532
01:19:35,920 --> 01:19:39,400
Speaker 1: They drive the police away, the police throw away their uniforms,

1533
01:19:39,439 --> 01:19:42,800
Speaker 1: they flee on trains, they hide um uh, they break

1534
01:19:42,840 --> 01:19:45,439
Speaker 1: open the jails, they start burning court records. All this

1535
01:19:45,520 --> 01:19:49,040
Speaker 1: stuff is happening. That's are orders troops to be sent

1536
01:19:49,160 --> 01:19:51,600
Speaker 1: to from the front to put down the rebellion in

1537
01:19:51,640 --> 01:19:55,479
Speaker 1: the city, um, And the first groups of those when

1538
01:19:55,520 --> 01:19:58,720
Speaker 1: they arrive in the outskirts, their commanders quickly realized that

1539
01:19:59,040 --> 01:20:00,760
Speaker 1: UM that if they said troops into the city, those

1540
01:20:00,760 --> 01:20:02,320
Speaker 1: troops are also going to rebel and then they're going

1541
01:20:02,360 --> 01:20:04,200
Speaker 1: to have a real problem on their hands. So they

1542
01:20:04,240 --> 01:20:08,439
Speaker 1: start to withdraw. And when they withdraw from um from

1543
01:20:09,439 --> 01:20:12,920
Speaker 1: from those suburbs, the high command um that CSAR is

1544
01:20:12,920 --> 01:20:15,280
Speaker 1: also coming back to to this suburb town where his

1545
01:20:15,320 --> 01:20:19,280
Speaker 1: family is living UM and Uh. They put his train

1546
01:20:19,360 --> 01:20:22,040
Speaker 1: on a siding in the city called Scoff and they

1547
01:20:22,080 --> 01:20:24,240
Speaker 1: convince him that he has to abdicate. UM. So it's

1548
01:20:24,320 --> 01:20:26,240
Speaker 1: at the final end of the day, it's his generals

1549
01:20:26,280 --> 01:20:28,639
Speaker 1: that that tell him he can can can no longer

1550
01:20:28,720 --> 01:20:31,560
Speaker 1: continue UM and that UM and that he has to

1551
01:20:31,640 --> 01:20:33,639
Speaker 1: find some and they have to find a way forward

1552
01:20:33,640 --> 01:20:36,400
Speaker 1: to to fight the war to a victorious conclusion without him. Uh.

1553
01:20:36,479 --> 01:20:39,120
Speaker 1: They think about abdicating in favor of his sickly son

1554
01:20:39,439 --> 01:20:42,360
Speaker 1: UM that turns out not to be UM uh feasible,

1555
01:20:42,720 --> 01:20:44,920
Speaker 1: then in favor of his brother, who wisely says, this

1556
01:20:45,040 --> 01:20:47,200
Speaker 1: is not a job I particularly wanted this moment. And

1557
01:20:47,320 --> 01:20:48,960
Speaker 1: so at the end of the day he abdicates in

1558
01:20:49,000 --> 01:20:50,840
Speaker 1: favor of no one, and they're you know, in an

1559
01:20:50,840 --> 01:20:54,320
Speaker 1: autocratic system, there's no UM, there's no system in place

1560
01:20:54,360 --> 01:20:56,840
Speaker 1: to sort of ensure that a non monarch takes place.

1561
01:20:57,320 --> 01:21:00,280
Speaker 1: The only group that has been elected nationwide at that

1562
01:21:00,360 --> 01:21:02,320
Speaker 1: point is the Duma, and they form what they call

1563
01:21:02,400 --> 01:21:05,240
Speaker 1: a provisional committee and eventually a provisional government that says, Okay,

1564
01:21:05,240 --> 01:21:07,760
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna hold power until we can have

1565
01:21:07,960 --> 01:21:10,000
Speaker 1: a constituent assembly, that is to say, kind of a

1566
01:21:10,120 --> 01:21:13,240
Speaker 1: constitutional convention. Uh. Maybe we should wait to do that

1567
01:21:13,800 --> 01:21:15,680
Speaker 1: till the end of the war. Um. Things are kind

1568
01:21:15,680 --> 01:21:18,360
Speaker 1: of crazy right now, Let's not have a constitutional convention. Uh.

1569
01:21:18,439 --> 01:21:20,920
Speaker 1: And that sets up the dynamic for nineteen seventeen, where

1570
01:21:20,960 --> 01:21:24,720
Speaker 1: you have, um, this provisional government without any legitimacy, UM,

1571
01:21:24,800 --> 01:21:28,200
Speaker 1: now having to deal with this massive wave of political

1572
01:21:28,280 --> 01:21:33,160
Speaker 1: demands from from all from all sides. Right, and instead

1573
01:21:33,200 --> 01:21:36,000
Speaker 1: of ending conflict, you know, rather than bringing stability the

1574
01:21:36,080 --> 01:21:41,640
Speaker 1: following years see revolution, a protracted civil war. UM. But

1575
01:21:41,720 --> 01:21:43,639
Speaker 1: I think we'll cover those just kind of in the script.

1576
01:21:43,680 --> 01:21:45,720
Speaker 1: I'd like to get to the questions and and how

1577
01:21:45,840 --> 01:21:51,400
Speaker 1: you speak on the So UM, would you describe why

1578
01:21:51,479 --> 01:21:54,479
Speaker 1: and how the Eastern Front and the really significant events

1579
01:21:54,479 --> 01:21:58,439
Speaker 1: we've been talking about today right about, Um, why have

1580
01:21:58,600 --> 01:22:01,360
Speaker 1: they been overlooked in his streas of the Great War

1581
01:22:01,520 --> 01:22:05,400
Speaker 1: of World War One? Yeah? I think there's uh, there's

1582
01:22:05,400 --> 01:22:09,200
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons for that. Uh. First, first of all,

1583
01:22:09,479 --> 01:22:13,320
Speaker 1: you know, we're talking largely about English speaking audiences here. Uh,

1584
01:22:13,400 --> 01:22:15,720
Speaker 1: And there weren't many English speakers fighting there, And you know,

1585
01:22:16,160 --> 01:22:18,680
Speaker 1: there's there's an element of that sort of parochialism, that

1586
01:22:18,800 --> 01:22:21,960
Speaker 1: that's always going to always going to slip in. Um,

1587
01:22:22,160 --> 01:22:25,080
Speaker 1: there's a desire to see where your boys were fighting

1588
01:22:25,120 --> 01:22:28,439
Speaker 1: as the most important places. And that's true both of

1589
01:22:28,479 --> 01:22:30,840
Speaker 1: World War One and of World War Two, where you

1590
01:22:30,920 --> 01:22:33,360
Speaker 1: know where English speakers aren't fighting, those those are seen

1591
01:22:33,400 --> 01:22:37,200
Speaker 1: as not as as as consequential, when uh, in many

1592
01:22:37,240 --> 01:22:40,880
Speaker 1: cases they are. So that that's I think that's one reason, um,

1593
01:22:41,000 --> 01:22:43,280
Speaker 1: probably the largest reason why it's it's it's not known

1594
01:22:43,360 --> 01:22:47,000
Speaker 1: as well, um, there are no victors to write this

1595
01:22:47,160 --> 01:22:50,599
Speaker 1: war story on the Eastern front. Um all the empires

1596
01:22:50,720 --> 01:22:54,000
Speaker 1: lose all of your German Empire, the Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire,

1597
01:22:54,040 --> 01:22:56,400
Speaker 1: as Ungarian Empire. That there's there's no victors to to

1598
01:22:56,479 --> 01:22:58,799
Speaker 1: write this history. And indeed in many of these places

1599
01:22:58,960 --> 01:23:02,920
Speaker 1: that uh there the system is is hostile to U

1600
01:23:03,000 --> 01:23:04,560
Speaker 1: to the regime that preceded it, most notably in the

1601
01:23:04,640 --> 01:23:06,639
Speaker 1: Russian Empire. Right, they don't want to tell a heroic

1602
01:23:06,720 --> 01:23:08,880
Speaker 1: tale of what happened in World War One, and it

1603
01:23:08,960 --> 01:23:10,920
Speaker 1: wasn't a particularly heroic tale. So it's it's not that

1604
01:23:11,000 --> 01:23:12,720
Speaker 1: hard for them, not not not not to have to

1605
01:23:12,760 --> 01:23:14,559
Speaker 1: do it. So and they do have this heroic moment

1606
01:23:14,600 --> 01:23:16,240
Speaker 1: of the revolution that they can talk about. And so

1607
01:23:16,560 --> 01:23:18,560
Speaker 1: in Russia that the focus is going to be on

1608
01:23:18,600 --> 01:23:21,479
Speaker 1: the revolution UH. In Britain and America it's going to

1609
01:23:21,520 --> 01:23:24,240
Speaker 1: be on UH. And France obviously it's going to be

1610
01:23:24,320 --> 01:23:27,080
Speaker 1: on on the Western Front. And as a result, the

1611
01:23:27,080 --> 01:23:30,519
Speaker 1: Eastern Front um has traditionally been been talked about last,

1612
01:23:30,600 --> 01:23:33,479
Speaker 1: especially by English speaking audiences. And that's too bad, um,

1613
01:23:33,680 --> 01:23:35,280
Speaker 1: because as I tried to articulately in the beginning of

1614
01:23:35,360 --> 01:23:37,960
Speaker 1: the book, I think it's not just sort of another theater.

1615
01:23:38,040 --> 01:23:40,560
Speaker 1: I think we see something really important happening here on

1616
01:23:40,600 --> 01:23:44,040
Speaker 1: the Eastern Front, which is this process of European d colonization,

1617
01:23:44,280 --> 01:23:46,800
Speaker 1: which you're not seeing on the Western front um, and

1618
01:23:47,160 --> 01:23:49,320
Speaker 1: and and which but but which is very very prominent

1619
01:23:49,800 --> 01:23:52,879
Speaker 1: as we see the rise of not only of social revolution,

1620
01:23:53,200 --> 01:23:56,320
Speaker 1: but also of nationalist independent movements and more generally of

1621
01:23:56,400 --> 01:24:00,439
Speaker 1: decentralizing movements, of efforts to think about, let's say, what

1622
01:24:00,479 --> 01:24:02,639
Speaker 1: a federal state might look like, or or these other

1623
01:24:02,720 --> 01:24:05,479
Speaker 1: ways of thinking about a world after empire, and so

1624
01:24:05,960 --> 01:24:09,000
Speaker 1: all of those things make the Eastern front um, UH,

1625
01:24:09,760 --> 01:24:16,040
Speaker 1: you know, really really important. Do you think that the

1626
01:24:16,320 --> 01:24:20,120
Speaker 1: fall of imperial Russia and this this breakdown of empire

1627
01:24:20,640 --> 01:24:24,560
Speaker 1: was inevitable in some meaningful sense or is there a

1628
01:24:24,640 --> 01:24:27,360
Speaker 1: better way of thinking and talking about what happened? Yeah,

1629
01:24:27,560 --> 01:24:29,559
Speaker 1: this is there's a long standing debate within the field

1630
01:24:29,600 --> 01:24:32,200
Speaker 1: of of Russian history. That is to say, did uh

1631
01:24:32,479 --> 01:24:36,360
Speaker 1: did the war? Uh? Did the war delay revolution? This

1632
01:24:36,479 --> 01:24:38,439
Speaker 1: is one argument is that revolution was about to happen

1633
01:24:39,200 --> 01:24:42,960
Speaker 1: and delayed it by a few years, or did it accelerate? Um,

1634
01:24:43,240 --> 01:24:46,639
Speaker 1: you know, revolution in the end of the empire. UM.

1635
01:24:47,920 --> 01:24:49,640
Speaker 1: I tend not to be a historian that thinks in

1636
01:24:49,760 --> 01:24:52,400
Speaker 1: terms of inevitability very much. It's it's not a very

1637
01:24:52,479 --> 01:24:55,800
Speaker 1: persuasive way for me to think about this, but it's

1638
01:24:56,360 --> 01:24:59,920
Speaker 1: you know, the question of of sort of likely outcome

1639
01:25:00,200 --> 01:25:03,120
Speaker 1: I've thought about quite a bit um. And you know,

1640
01:25:03,240 --> 01:25:06,320
Speaker 1: once the war happens, I think there there are a

1641
01:25:06,439 --> 01:25:10,840
Speaker 1: relatively small set of of likely outcomes. Um. Uh. I

1642
01:25:10,960 --> 01:25:16,160
Speaker 1: think it's quite unlikely um that uh, that the Tsaris

1643
01:25:16,200 --> 01:25:19,400
Speaker 1: regime is gonna preserve itself in a sort of non

1644
01:25:19,479 --> 01:25:23,200
Speaker 1: constitutional monarchy, non constitutional monarch form, that is to say,

1645
01:25:24,000 --> 01:25:25,120
Speaker 1: it's not going to go back to the way it

1646
01:25:25,320 --> 01:25:28,360
Speaker 1: was uh. And you know, I think too much will

1647
01:25:28,400 --> 01:25:30,760
Speaker 1: have changed over the course of that. Even if let's

1648
01:25:30,800 --> 01:25:34,200
Speaker 1: say no February revolution happens, let's say the Germans decide

1649
01:25:34,240 --> 01:25:37,280
Speaker 1: to sign a negotiate a piece in early nineteen seventeen,

1650
01:25:37,640 --> 01:25:38,840
Speaker 1: I don't think you're going to go back to that,

1651
01:25:39,120 --> 01:25:41,439
Speaker 1: to the status quo ante. I think the most likely

1652
01:25:41,479 --> 01:25:43,719
Speaker 1: outcome is is the one that happens throughout Eastern Europe

1653
01:25:43,720 --> 01:25:46,320
Speaker 1: after the war, which is a military dictatorship of some kind,

1654
01:25:46,640 --> 01:25:50,080
Speaker 1: right wing military dictatorship of some kind. Um. That's that

1655
01:25:50,160 --> 01:25:52,120
Speaker 1: seems to be the most likely outcome in it very

1656
01:25:52,160 --> 01:25:55,160
Speaker 1: nearly happened in Russia as well. And in Russia, what

1657
01:25:55,280 --> 01:25:57,639
Speaker 1: what you end up having is, uh is a left

1658
01:25:57,680 --> 01:26:01,439
Speaker 1: wing military dictatorship along with the revolutionary program um. And

1659
01:26:01,600 --> 01:26:05,920
Speaker 1: that was obviously not not um uh not not inevitable,

1660
01:26:05,960 --> 01:26:09,160
Speaker 1: and it certainly wasn't likely. Um. You know, I don't

1661
01:26:09,200 --> 01:26:12,920
Speaker 1: know where you'd put the number at. You know, the

1662
01:26:12,960 --> 01:26:15,880
Speaker 1: bullshwicks hit their number. Um. You know, sometimes it happens

1663
01:26:15,920 --> 01:26:18,400
Speaker 1: in history that that a non probable thing happens, and

1664
01:26:18,920 --> 01:26:20,800
Speaker 1: and I think that's what what happens. A number of

1665
01:26:20,840 --> 01:26:22,880
Speaker 1: things have to go quite right for the bulls shwiks

1666
01:26:22,920 --> 01:26:27,040
Speaker 1: to to to seize power. Over the course of nineteen seventeen. UM.

1667
01:26:27,439 --> 01:26:30,920
Speaker 1: But you know again, um, I don't think that sort

1668
01:26:30,960 --> 01:26:34,760
Speaker 1: of I don't see sort of an autocracy surviving into

1669
01:26:34,800 --> 01:26:38,000
Speaker 1: the twenty one century. You know if if you know,

1670
01:26:38,400 --> 01:26:41,240
Speaker 1: you can see something like the British monarchy, although it

1671
01:26:41,280 --> 01:26:43,040
Speaker 1: two is in trouble right now, but you know, you

1672
01:26:43,080 --> 01:26:45,720
Speaker 1: can see something like the British monarchy, uh, you know,

1673
01:26:46,120 --> 01:26:48,000
Speaker 1: that kind of system. But that would be so completely

1674
01:26:48,040 --> 01:26:50,120
Speaker 1: different from what, um, what was present in Russian the

1675
01:26:50,120 --> 01:26:55,240
Speaker 1: beginning of twenty century. It's not really the same thing. Hmm. Yeah.

1676
01:26:55,280 --> 01:26:58,439
Speaker 1: And then finally taking some of what you've written and

1677
01:26:58,600 --> 01:27:01,679
Speaker 1: thinking about some of the people we're gonna be talking

1678
01:27:01,720 --> 01:27:04,880
Speaker 1: about with this season of Unobscured in our program, you've

1679
01:27:04,920 --> 01:27:08,679
Speaker 1: written that state failure does not need to be brought

1680
01:27:08,800 --> 01:27:12,959
Speaker 1: on by anti imperial revolutionaries. Imperial states can self destruct,

1681
01:27:13,560 --> 01:27:18,240
Speaker 1: either knowingly or unintentionally, and in popular history a lot

1682
01:27:18,280 --> 01:27:20,519
Speaker 1: of times, because the focus is on the person of

1683
01:27:20,680 --> 01:27:25,439
Speaker 1: Nicholas or Alexandra or resputen Um, the collapse of imperial

1684
01:27:25,560 --> 01:27:29,720
Speaker 1: Russia is credited to their personal actions, their personal limitations,

1685
01:27:29,800 --> 01:27:32,240
Speaker 1: blind spots, that kind of thing. So to what extent

1686
01:27:32,880 --> 01:27:36,719
Speaker 1: do you think any one of these people were directly

1687
01:27:37,640 --> 01:27:42,960
Speaker 1: directly responsible for the end of ourist rule. Yeah, you know,

1688
01:27:43,080 --> 01:27:45,479
Speaker 1: the when I wrote that line, I guess I have

1689
01:27:45,560 --> 01:27:47,960
Speaker 1: two quick answers to that. So when I wrote that line,

1690
01:27:48,000 --> 01:27:50,840
Speaker 1: what I was thinking about actually was the institutional martial

1691
01:27:50,960 --> 01:27:53,559
Speaker 1: law at the beginning of the war, which I think

1692
01:27:53,640 --> 01:27:56,920
Speaker 1: breaks the back of imperial governance in the borderlands. So

1693
01:27:57,120 --> 01:27:59,040
Speaker 1: that's what the first couple of chapters of the book

1694
01:27:59,040 --> 01:28:01,120
Speaker 1: are about. What happens. And you take these experience and

1695
01:28:01,240 --> 01:28:05,080
Speaker 1: perial administrators and you remove them, or they remove themselves,

1696
01:28:05,160 --> 01:28:07,280
Speaker 1: they flee in many cases, and you replace them with

1697
01:28:07,439 --> 01:28:14,040
Speaker 1: completely inept basically military officers to try to govern these territories.

1698
01:28:14,320 --> 01:28:17,640
Speaker 1: And what you end up with is economic disaster, um uh,

1699
01:28:17,960 --> 01:28:20,400
Speaker 1: ethnic deportations. You get a whole series of really terrible

1700
01:28:20,439 --> 01:28:23,559
Speaker 1: things that undermines society and state in these in these regions.

1701
01:28:23,680 --> 01:28:25,920
Speaker 1: So that's the process of peril self destruction. I'm talking

1702
01:28:25,920 --> 01:28:28,320
Speaker 1: about the sort of modus vivendi. Even if it was

1703
01:28:28,439 --> 01:28:31,719
Speaker 1: an unpleasant one for Poles and Ukrainians, they were prepared

1704
01:28:31,720 --> 01:28:33,080
Speaker 1: to live with it for the long term. Many of

1705
01:28:33,160 --> 01:28:34,960
Speaker 1: them were talking about living with it for the long

1706
01:28:35,080 --> 01:28:37,519
Speaker 1: term in nineteen thirteen and and that was no longer

1707
01:28:37,560 --> 01:28:39,200
Speaker 1: the case by the time to get to nineteen fifteen.

1708
01:28:39,200 --> 01:28:41,479
Speaker 1: And that's largely the result of a series of really

1709
01:28:41,880 --> 01:28:46,679
Speaker 1: bad mistakes that that are driven from above. Now Nicholas

1710
01:28:46,720 --> 01:28:48,559
Speaker 1: makes those decisions, He's not the only one making those

1711
01:28:48,840 --> 01:28:51,519
Speaker 1: those decisions about martial law, for instance. Now the question

1712
01:28:51,600 --> 01:28:54,000
Speaker 1: of sort of how important the royal family and dress

1713
01:28:54,040 --> 01:28:58,040
Speaker 1: putin is, you know, I I I don't see that.

1714
01:28:58,080 --> 01:29:00,360
Speaker 1: I mean, they certainly have importance. That is to say

1715
01:29:00,479 --> 01:29:01,960
Speaker 1: that Nicholas, at the end of the day does make

1716
01:29:02,000 --> 01:29:05,519
Speaker 1: these decisions, and the decisions he makes, um, quite frequently

1717
01:29:05,680 --> 01:29:07,639
Speaker 1: are are ones that are going to lead them down

1718
01:29:07,680 --> 01:29:11,760
Speaker 1: the road to disaster. A better monarch, a monarch that

1719
01:29:11,840 --> 01:29:16,120
Speaker 1: let's say, had Stalepin isn't assassinated or if it isn't, um,

1720
01:29:16,360 --> 01:29:18,120
Speaker 1: you know, you can think of a series of quite

1721
01:29:18,160 --> 01:29:21,800
Speaker 1: talented Russian politicians, UM, who might have helped prevent this, uh,

1722
01:29:21,880 --> 01:29:25,400
Speaker 1: this situation from from from getting to where it did. Um. Yeah,

1723
01:29:25,640 --> 01:29:27,840
Speaker 1: Nicholas is responsible for not allowing that to happen, for

1724
01:29:27,920 --> 01:29:31,439
Speaker 1: not promoting that that that that from happening. UM. I

1725
01:29:31,560 --> 01:29:34,479
Speaker 1: think the sort of the criticism of Alexandra and then

1726
01:29:34,520 --> 01:29:37,080
Speaker 1: by extension rasputin. A lot of it is wrapped up

1727
01:29:37,120 --> 01:29:41,800
Speaker 1: in quite um uh, I don't know the best way

1728
01:29:41,880 --> 01:29:42,800
Speaker 1: way to put it. I mean, a lot of it

1729
01:29:42,800 --> 01:29:44,760
Speaker 1: is wrapped up obviously in anti Germanism, a lot of

1730
01:29:44,800 --> 01:29:48,559
Speaker 1: it is wrapped up in in in sexism obviously. Uh.

1731
01:29:48,720 --> 01:29:51,000
Speaker 1: You know that that's a lot of the criticism that's

1732
01:29:51,000 --> 01:29:54,280
Speaker 1: happening for them, um. But it also doesn't reflect the

1733
01:29:54,320 --> 01:29:56,160
Speaker 1: fact that I talked about before, which is that the

1734
01:29:56,240 --> 01:29:59,040
Speaker 1: decisions they're making in nineteen six after Nicholas leaps for

1735
01:29:59,080 --> 01:30:01,560
Speaker 1: the front in the nineties sixteen, let's say they're not

1736
01:30:01,800 --> 01:30:04,160
Speaker 1: that consequential. I don't think it actually matters that much

1737
01:30:04,160 --> 01:30:07,240
Speaker 1: to the Minister of Interior, Minister of Communications, It's right.

1738
01:30:07,439 --> 01:30:09,720
Speaker 1: I just don't think it matters too much. Most of

1739
01:30:09,760 --> 01:30:11,840
Speaker 1: the actual work that's being done is being done by

1740
01:30:11,840 --> 01:30:14,479
Speaker 1: people that that they don't have control over, especially in

1741
01:30:14,479 --> 01:30:17,559
Speaker 1: the military, and so you know, I don't see them

1742
01:30:17,640 --> 01:30:19,760
Speaker 1: as that important now in terms of the loss of

1743
01:30:19,840 --> 01:30:22,960
Speaker 1: public faith on the part of the Petersburg elite, which

1744
01:30:23,040 --> 01:30:25,639
Speaker 1: is something important that the faith of your political elite

1745
01:30:25,720 --> 01:30:28,040
Speaker 1: is something important in a political system. It's obvious that

1746
01:30:28,080 --> 01:30:30,280
Speaker 1: they have an effect on that. So for sure, they

1747
01:30:30,320 --> 01:30:33,120
Speaker 1: have an influence on that. And that's why the you know,

1748
01:30:33,960 --> 01:30:36,080
Speaker 1: that's why it's conservatives and and ultra right right wing

1749
01:30:36,120 --> 01:30:38,640
Speaker 1: people that assassinate rest Putin, right, is because they're the

1750
01:30:38,720 --> 01:30:40,800
Speaker 1: ones that are that are most affected by this right.

1751
01:30:40,840 --> 01:30:43,760
Speaker 1: It's it's not left wing terrorists that assassinate your ress Putin, right,

1752
01:30:44,280 --> 01:30:47,800
Speaker 1: He's irrelevant to them, you know. It's it's the right wing, uh,

1753
01:30:47,880 --> 01:30:50,080
Speaker 1: and the political elite that is that that is most

1754
01:30:50,080 --> 01:30:53,519
Speaker 1: consumed by him. But to take a brief counterfactual, maybe

1755
01:30:53,720 --> 01:30:57,280
Speaker 1: if Resputin never existed, does the Russian Empire collapse as

1756
01:30:57,360 --> 01:30:59,479
Speaker 1: it does? And I think yes, I don't think even

1757
01:30:59,520 --> 01:31:02,200
Speaker 1: the timing shifted by that. Um. So it's it's hard

1758
01:31:02,240 --> 01:31:04,439
Speaker 1: for me to see that he has sort of a

1759
01:31:04,560 --> 01:31:07,160
Speaker 1: large macro effect, even if his micro effect on the

1760
01:31:07,200 --> 01:31:09,600
Speaker 1: way that people discussed the revolution and the collapse of

1761
01:31:09,600 --> 01:31:11,840
Speaker 1: the empire is quite large, both at the time and

1762
01:31:11,880 --> 01:31:15,280
Speaker 1: then afterwards. Because he's an interesting, um, salacious and um

1763
01:31:15,640 --> 01:31:18,200
Speaker 1: and controversial figure. It's it's understandable why people want to

1764
01:31:18,240 --> 01:31:19,880
Speaker 1: read about and want to talk about him both at

1765
01:31:19,920 --> 01:31:26,559
Speaker 1: the time and now. Beautiful, that's great, that lines right

1766
01:31:26,680 --> 01:31:32,920
Speaker 1: up with the thesis. Good. Yeah, so that's what I

1767
01:31:33,040 --> 01:31:35,120
Speaker 1: have for us, and uh yeah, do you want to

1768
01:31:35,160 --> 01:31:37,120
Speaker 1: be respectful of your time and letting you get out

1769
01:31:37,120 --> 01:31:40,960
Speaker 1: of here? But terrific. It's a lot of fun. That's

1770
01:31:41,000 --> 01:31:44,960
Speaker 1: it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after

1771
01:31:45,080 --> 01:31:48,040
Speaker 1: this short sponsor break for a preview of what's in

1772
01:31:48,200 --> 01:31:55,759
Speaker 1: store for next week. When I went away and looked

1773
01:31:56,240 --> 01:31:59,400
Speaker 1: and homed in and focused on the very end of

1774
01:31:59,439 --> 01:32:02,480
Speaker 1: their lives side pretty much from when they were imprisoned

1775
01:32:02,920 --> 01:32:06,240
Speaker 1: at the Alexander Palace, and then I I honed it

1776
01:32:06,479 --> 01:32:10,360
Speaker 1: in even closer to the last two weeks of their

1777
01:32:10,479 --> 01:32:13,479
Speaker 1: lives in a Kaschemberg in the Party of Haus. I

1778
01:32:13,560 --> 01:32:17,920
Speaker 1: suddenly realized it was a really interesting and exciting scenario

1779
01:32:18,200 --> 01:32:21,400
Speaker 1: there that had never been explored, which was looking at

1780
01:32:21,439 --> 01:32:25,160
Speaker 1: the family really close up. How were they what was

1781
01:32:25,200 --> 01:32:28,080
Speaker 1: going through their minds? How did they deal with captivity?

1782
01:32:28,800 --> 01:32:32,640
Speaker 1: What were the tensions being trapped in a house in

1783
01:32:33,160 --> 01:32:37,720
Speaker 1: western Siberia knowing that probably the writing was on the wall.

1784
01:32:49,800 --> 01:32:53,360
Speaker 1: Unobscured was created by me Aaron Minky and produced by

1785
01:32:53,400 --> 01:32:57,160
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thayne in partnership with

1786
01:32:57,320 --> 01:33:00,920
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, with research by Sam l Bertie, writing

1787
01:33:01,040 --> 01:33:04,840
Speaker 1: by Carl Nellis and original music by Chad Lawson. Learn

1788
01:33:04,920 --> 01:33:08,960
Speaker 1: more about our contributing historians, source materials, and links to

1789
01:33:09,080 --> 01:33:12,080
Speaker 1: our other shows over at grim and mild dot com,

1790
01:33:12,479 --> 01:34:00,240
Speaker 1: Slash Unobscured, and, as always, thanks for listening. Four