Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, a
Speaker 2: podcast about the people who did stuff that was cool
Speaker 2: who I like. Usually I'm Margaret Kiljoy and I'm your host,
Speaker 2: and every week I talk about a new subject, except
Speaker 2: for the following three weeks where I talk about related
Speaker 2: subjects of the Russian Revolution. And this is part two,
Speaker 2: and my guest is Mia Wong.
Speaker 3: Heiya, Hello, I'm back again. I had a momentary moment
Speaker 3: of panic before we started recording, because I I do
Speaker 3: so many podcasts that I was going, oh no, I
Speaker 3: don't have an intro written. What am I going to do?
Speaker 3: And then to do the intro? Yeah, what else's episode?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 3: What else doing? Today?
Speaker 2: You are doing a much harder job, which is pretending
Speaker 2: to be the podcast idiot about a subject that you
Speaker 2: know at least as much about as I do.
Speaker 3: That's definitely not I've forgotten so much of I haven't
Speaker 3: done fair enough a Russia dive in half a decade,
Speaker 3: so it's all it's all like in one year the.
Speaker 2: Other now, Yeah, fair enough. Our producer is Sophie Hi.
Speaker 3: Sophie Hi.
Speaker 2: Our audio engineers Daniel Hi, danel Hide. Our theme music
Speaker 2: was written for us by a woman, and as promises,
Speaker 2: it's too part of a sixth part about the crown
Speaker 2: Stout Rebellion, and by doing that, I decided to cover
Speaker 2: all of all of the Russian Revolution. I'm actually have
Speaker 2: a specific thing where I'm going to talk about the
Speaker 2: anarchists in Ukraine and Makno and Maria Niki Farova later,
Speaker 2: but like not as part of the series, but it's
Speaker 2: just as part of the show separately, So it's not
Speaker 2: everything about the Russian Revolution.
Speaker 3: Don't worry, There'll be more Russian Revolution for you. There's
Speaker 3: so much revolution, so much I know it.
Speaker 2: This is this is the big overview one and where
Speaker 2: you last left off, I introduced the concept of Russia,
Speaker 2: the concept of socialist revolutionaries, the concept of social democrats
Speaker 2: who are the Marxists who are going to become the Bolsheviks,
Speaker 2: and the concepts of the Russian anarchists.
Speaker 3: And now.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about nineteen oh five, which was
Speaker 2: a revolution. I first heard about the nineteen oh five
Speaker 2: revolution because of a band and an arcopunk band called
Speaker 2: nineteen oh five. They have a good song about one
Speaker 2: brick today is one less for Tomorrow about like it's
Speaker 2: very posi it's very like Turn of Millennia an Arco punk,
Speaker 2: where they like stop in the middle to like rant
Speaker 2: about like early Posi anarchist stuff. They're so good if
Speaker 2: you're listening nineteen oh five, I like your band that.
Speaker 2: It was a big important thing for me when I
Speaker 2: was a baby anarchist. Anyway, I since then, I was like,
Speaker 2: why are they called nineteen oh five? That seems random?
Speaker 2: And then people were like because of the year that
Speaker 2: the revolution in Russia happened. I was like, that's nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 2: and they're like, no, there's more than one. And I
Speaker 2: was like, how many revolutions these people need? Save some
Speaker 2: for the rest of us. And then and the other
Speaker 2: thing about nineteen oh five is that I used to
Speaker 2: sleep on the roof of a not abandoned school right
Speaker 2: next to a house. And the house was the address
Speaker 2: was nineteen oh five. This is in Portland, but I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna tell you where, but you probably know what.
Speaker 2: Someone listening knows what roof I used to sleep on.
Speaker 2: And there was like a punk house next door, and
Speaker 2: it was nineteen oh five was the address.
Speaker 3: And I was like, that's so cool.
Speaker 2: And they were like why, And I was like never mind,
Speaker 2: and one time I'll just go full full on embarrassing.
Speaker 2: So I had scabies and I was like, I need
Speaker 2: somewhere to sleep because I couldn't stay in anyone's house.
Speaker 2: So I went to go sleep on the roof. And
Speaker 2: I like covered myself in poisonous ointment in someone's garage
Speaker 2: and went to go sleep on this roof, and I
Speaker 2: brought a handle of whiskey, and I was like stopped
Speaker 2: and talked to the skateboarding guy who was just like
Speaker 2: hanging out at midnight on this street next to the house,
Speaker 2: nineteen oh five, and he told me, you know that
Speaker 2: permethine cream like it it's already attacking your liver. If
Speaker 2: you drink that handle of whiskey, you might not wake up.
Speaker 2: Oh no, So thank you skateboarding man for saving my
Speaker 2: life next to the house nineteen oh five. That's not
Speaker 2: what we're talking about today.
Speaker 3: Good thing.
Speaker 2: I totally told you all that story. So revolutionary fervor
Speaker 2: or revolutionary terror, depending on how you want to call it,
Speaker 2: it's spreading across Russia. General strikes or the order of
Speaker 2: the day. Students are striking, workers are striking, and workers
Speaker 2: are bringing revolutionary ideas back to their families in the countryside,
Speaker 2: which is really cool. One of the things that people
Speaker 2: don't like. They're like, oh, the peasant and the worker
Speaker 2: near the twains shall meet. They're like, it's the kids
Speaker 2: of the peasants who became the workers, like it happened.
Speaker 2: This is the generation where it happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is one of these things that I think,
Speaker 3: like some Marxists figure this out, but they don't figure
Speaker 3: it out until later, which is like the most revolutionary
Speaker 3: generation of like like working class city kids are the
Speaker 3: first generation out of the countryside, Like, those are the
Speaker 3: people who are most likely of anyone to go into revolt.
Speaker 3: But Marxists don't figure this out for another like till
Speaker 3: it's a little too late years. Yeah, it takes a
Speaker 3: long time for them to really get there.
Speaker 2: Like why won't hey revolt?
Speaker 3: Come on? Why won't.
Speaker 2: Class My dad had and my grandma had, and so
Speaker 2: to get a sense of the of the the revolutionary
Speaker 2: fervor at the time, A lyricist at the time, Alexander
Speaker 2: Block wrote a you know, it's referred to as a lyricist,
Speaker 2: but I read it as poetry. We will set the
Speaker 2: world a flame, bitter woe to all bourgeoisie with blood
Speaker 2: will set the world a flame. Good Lord, give us
Speaker 2: thy blessing that rules. Yeah. So that's the attitude at
Speaker 2: the time. And that guy's like important enough. I didn't
Speaker 2: read it, but he has this whole Wikipedia page. It's
Speaker 2: like he's not famous as a revolution he's just a
Speaker 2: famous lyricist or whatever. So you have all these people
Speaker 2: living in an autocracy who wish they didn't live in
Speaker 2: an autocracy. The peasant population has exploded somehow. Okay, this
Speaker 2: part the math doesn't track to me, but a historian
Speaker 2: who's very good named Paul Averich, wrote that the population
Speaker 2: went from five million to eighty million in a single
Speaker 2: generation of the peasants. That doesn't I don't get it,
Speaker 2: but I'm sure it went up and maybe even went
Speaker 2: up that much. MIAs also doing a like I'm not
Speaker 2: sure about that math.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hm. They had a lot of kids. I
Speaker 1: know that is a baby, all of who lived. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Anyway, people were living in one room
Speaker 1: wooden huts with dirt floors. They were living off of bread, cabbage,
Speaker 1: and vodka, and folks were supplementing their farming through cottage
Speaker 1: industry work like and they had been for years, right.
Speaker 1: They were like, Oh, we're gonna like make nails and
Speaker 1: sad and whatever the fuck we can make when we're
Speaker 1: done farming, because that's how we're going to make enough
Speaker 1: money to live. But all of a sudden, there's in
Speaker 1: these industrial factories and they're just spitting out nails. How's
Speaker 1: a nail farmer supposed to compete? One ethnicity in particular
Speaker 1: was particularly fucked. That ethnicity was the Jews. Even within
Speaker 1: the Pale, there are new limitations on where they can
Speaker 1: go and what they can do. There are reverse quotas
Speaker 1: where schools can't have more than like ten percent Jewish students.
Speaker 1: Even in the Pale. They're no longer allowed in the
Speaker 1: sort of small regional governmental assemblies, and there are constant programs.
Speaker 1: More and more Jewish folks are leaving the more moderate
Speaker 1: organizations like the boond to join the anarchists. I think
Speaker 1: less because they think they'll win, and more because they'll
Speaker 1: go down fighting. It gives them the chance to do
Speaker 1: something concrete and immediate. The Booned overall argued against the
Speaker 1: terrorism approach of robbing the rich and killing right wing
Speaker 1: politicians who are organizing the oppression, although soon enough some
Speaker 1: people were like, well, we don't want to leave the
Speaker 1: Boon to become anarchists, but you know what, can we
Speaker 1: just have a faction of the Boon that's like down
Speaker 1: with like Stabin guys. And they were like, I guess,
Speaker 1: so it seems like there's a lot of guys who
Speaker 1: need Stabin since there's pograms happening.
Speaker 3: Did they have their own combat organization?
Speaker 2: I believe so, but I'm not entirely certain they had
Speaker 2: a group of I don't know whether they called themselves maximalists.
Speaker 2: There's like all these ways like we were talking about
Speaker 2: last time, where it's like, oh, the left wing of
Speaker 2: this in the center of this and whatever. The maximalist
Speaker 2: position is usually the like we're going to get to
Speaker 2: the revolution right away through Stabin, you know. But I
Speaker 2: don't know whether the Boon specifically had their own of
Speaker 2: that or what they called it. And they're all looking
Speaker 2: for a chance when what happens. But in nineteen oh four,
Speaker 2: Russian and Japan got in an argument about who got
Speaker 2: to colonize Korea and Manchuria, and Japan was like, well,
Speaker 2: what if you get Manchuria and we get Korea, And
Speaker 2: like presented a I mean, it's all evil, it's all colonization, right,
Speaker 2: It's two empires fighting, but they like presented a colonial compromise,
Speaker 2: and we've talked actually, if you want to hear a
Speaker 2: lot of Japanese labor history, listen to MIA's episodes on
Speaker 2: it could happen here. And then I've also done a
Speaker 2: couple also on this show that people can listen to,
Speaker 2: especially in episodes about women who keep trying to kill emperors,
Speaker 2: if you want to hear more about that, And it's
Speaker 2: specifically how it ties into the struggle against the colonization
Speaker 2: of Korea by Japan. But anyway, Russia's like, no, we
Speaker 2: want a buffer zone. We don't want to be near
Speaker 2: you or whatever, so where we want the following buffer
Speaker 2: zone that I guess keeps them out of mainland China
Speaker 2: was I guess part of the big deal about this.
Speaker 2: And Japan was like, well, what if we sneak attack
Speaker 2: and destroy your entire eastern fleet? And then Russia was like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we're just going to easily win this war because not white.
Speaker 1: Do you know the story about how that whole fleet
Speaker 1: got wiped out? I just turned as a sneak attack
Speaker 1: it will tell me really funny. Well, so the thing
Speaker 1: that happens in that battle is this is the first
Speaker 1: time Japan wipes out a fleet, right, because they do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the first one. Is the first one.
Speaker 3: And one of the problems that the Russian Navy has
Speaker 3: is that basically all of their admirals are just like
Speaker 3: some guy's cousin. They have guy knows Yeah, they have
Speaker 3: one guy who actually knows what he's doing this, a
Speaker 3: guy named Barkov. He's the guy who invented the icebreaker,
Speaker 3: so he's like, he's legitimately a good admiral. However, Kama
Speaker 3: Japan does its first volley at unbelievable maximum maximum possible
Speaker 3: range of cannonball could possibly be fired and hit something.
Speaker 3: And this is an era of warfare where like your
Speaker 3: guns are so inaccurate, you're not like pointing a gun
Speaker 3: at a ship, You're pointing it in like the general
Speaker 3: direction of a ship. And one of their cannonballs just
Speaker 3: like perfectly good, like just perfectly shreds the bridge of
Speaker 3: the Russian flagship, kills Macrov, kills Markov, and then but
Speaker 3: does it in a way where I think I can't
Speaker 3: rever's mark off from Bacroff, one of the two. It
Speaker 3: kills the animal and does it in a way. The
Speaker 3: wrestler ships don't realize that they're that the flagship's like
Speaker 3: bridge is gone, and so all the rest of the
Speaker 3: ships and the Russian fleet are waiting for orders and
Speaker 3: they never get orders because everyone's dead on the flagship,
Speaker 3: and so Jetpe just run them through.
Speaker 2: So it was a lucky shot combined with like the
Speaker 2: failures of hierarchy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like they accidentally like knocked out the toothpick
Speaker 1: that was supporting the entire Russian aristocracy, and the entire
Speaker 1: Russian aristocracy somed me had to do something on their own.
Speaker 3: They just fell over and died. It's staggery. That's hilarious.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So so basically Russia declares war, which makes sense in
Speaker 2: this context, and they're like, all right, we just got
Speaker 2: to figure out how to get a bunch of guys
Speaker 2: over there with guns. And everything I've read is that
Speaker 2: they just straight up assumed that white people are the
Speaker 2: best in Japan and they chance because like their eyes
Speaker 2: are funny whatever, Like I mean, no racist, it's really staggered. Yeah,
Speaker 2: racism will get you killed, hopefully indirect and immediate ways,
Speaker 2: but sometimes just by underestimating Japan.
Speaker 3: There's a good way to don't do that. Get cad
Speaker 3: so terrifying, terrifying militarist society in the late nineteen hundreds
Speaker 3: yea early twentieth century, probably at least for a couple
Speaker 3: hundred more years, people aren't going to underestimate Japan. Yeah, ough,
Speaker 3: bad memories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, my granddad lived in a submarine as
Speaker 2: a torpedoist for a very long time and almost died
Speaker 2: multiple times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because there's my grandma thought she was an orphan
Speaker 3: growing up because her mom like picked up her older
Speaker 3: sister and just physically ran, like like just started running
Speaker 3: and didn't stop running until she was like halfway across
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like just nightmare stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Really, it's really so thick.
Speaker 2: And that's like like no one in the West pays
Speaker 2: any attention to this, isn't okay, let's not talk about Okay,
Speaker 2: Well we'll go back to the topic instead of talking
Speaker 2: about the Pacific theater of World War two one day.
Speaker 2: I want to talk to you more about that. So
Speaker 2: Japan bee is the shit out of Russia. Russia had
Speaker 2: this mighty navy, but it was on the western side
Speaker 2: of Russia, based out of this little island fort called
Speaker 2: Kronstat just west of Saint Petersburg. So they sailed all
Speaker 2: the way the fuck around the world, like down past
Speaker 2: Africa and all the way back up just to get
Speaker 2: wiped off the map by the Japanese navy. And Russia
Speaker 2: had been really late to the railroad game in general,
Speaker 2: so they kept trying to like move troops east, but
Speaker 2: they had I think, like single track like so they
Speaker 2: couldn't send like a train one way and back or whatever.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't have the details about this in front of me.
Speaker 2: Their railroad system sucked and they could not get an
Speaker 2: army over there except by ship effectively. So they lost.
Speaker 3: They lost like fuck.
Speaker 2: And the war against Japan had been this big nationalist,
Speaker 2: patriotic thing. We all love our two headed eagle flag
Speaker 2: or the best it's okay that we're all starving or whatever,
Speaker 2: just this moment because we're better than someone else. And
Speaker 2: with the loss, people were like, this really isn't Amorican.
Speaker 3: You guys lost to Japan. I know, really the Liberals
Speaker 3: are on one in this.
Speaker 2: Oh were they like specifically, like, what the hell's wrong
Speaker 2: with you lost to Japan?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well they were okay, they were slightly
Speaker 1: less racist than the czar, which is you know, it's.
Speaker 2: Like saying Biden is left of Trump. Well that's sort
Speaker 2: of true, and most did not. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's also like very little consolation if you're in Palestine. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So people are not excited, and and actually a
Speaker 2: lot of the stuff kicks off before I'm playing a
Speaker 2: little fast and loose with a specific time. A lot
Speaker 2: of the stuff kicks off before the war is like
Speaker 2: totally lost. I mean, it's always doomed.
Speaker 3: It's dumb war.
Speaker 2: Well, from Russia's point of view, it was not a
Speaker 2: well thought thought out military campaign, and general strikes are
Speaker 2: getting more and more common. And you have this group
Speaker 2: that I sort of don't talk about as much during
Speaker 2: this the sort of centrist reformist organizations, like they're honestly
Speaker 2: kind of center right. I think there's this guy named
Speaker 2: Georghi Gapon, and he's a moderate Russian Orthodox priest who's
Speaker 2: a reform minded group that only Russian Orthodox people can join.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm calling him center right. I think he
Speaker 2: was racist I don't have that evidence in front of me.
Speaker 2: I am conjecturing. They start the meeting with the lords.
Speaker 2: They're like reform meetings. They start with the lord's prayer
Speaker 2: and they close out by singing, God save the Cizar.
Speaker 3: Oh my God.
Speaker 2: That is how not revolutionary this group is. And he Georghi,
Speaker 2: believed that the czar had a right to rule, and
Speaker 2: he worked with cops constantly, and he just wanted the good,
Speaker 2: loyal Russian workers to be treated a bit better by
Speaker 2: their father, the czar. Do you have this like autocratic
Speaker 2: idea at the time, where like the czar is like
Speaker 2: your dad is like the dad of everyone you know,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people believed it. There are all
Speaker 2: these revolutionary groups running around, the SRS, the social democrats
Speaker 2: and the anarchists. But I think the average person in
Speaker 2: Russia just wanted a fucking duma like a congress. They
Speaker 2: wanted maybe a constitutional monarchy, or they wanted everything the same,
Speaker 2: but just not starving, like a lot of people probably
Speaker 2: would have been happy with no more control and just
Speaker 2: more food. So Georgi led us a worker's march. I
Speaker 2: almost had a strike. It was absolutely not a strike,
Speaker 2: but this like peaceful workers march to the Winter Palace
Speaker 2: to present a petition to the Tzar. The revolutionary stayed
Speaker 2: home from this. They were like, this is some reform shit.
Speaker 3: This is not us.
Speaker 2: And Georgy agreed it wasn't a revolution. Like people were
Speaker 2: like in his group were like ripping up the revolutionary propaganda.
Speaker 2: They're like, no, we're the good guys. And Georgy sent
Speaker 2: a copy of his petition ahead of time and was like, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm coming on January twenty second, don't worry. Oh, he
Speaker 2: actually wrote January ninth. But that's because Russia worked on
Speaker 2: a different calendar before the nineteen seventeen revolutions.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: Figure dates the October revolution that happened in November. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Georgy and either three thousand or fifty thousand of
Speaker 2: his closest buds. I love history. It's so great. Either
Speaker 2: three thousand or fifty thousand of his closest buds marched along,
Speaker 2: singing God Save the Czar and holding up like religious
Speaker 2: icons and all that shit. So the soldiers shot them,
Speaker 2: ran them down with horses, cut them with swords. The
Speaker 2: best averagest guess is that a thousand people died there's
Speaker 2: a lot of fucking people to die in March. This
Speaker 2: gets called bloody Sunday, like so many Sundays in history,
Speaker 2: and GEORGI didn't want a revolution, but a revolution it
Speaker 2: would be. People were not happy about bloody Sunday. Georgy himself,
Speaker 2: he actually made it. Have you heard about how he
Speaker 2: met his fate?
Speaker 3: No? Actually, I mean I knew the part about the
Speaker 3: Russian Revolution being started by a police informant, but I
Speaker 3: didn't know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he makes it out alive, and he leaves the
Speaker 2: country to hang out with all the revolutionists and next
Speaker 2: Isle and actually at this point he's a little bit like, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe we need a revolution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it tends to happen when you get
Speaker 1: to watch a bunch of soldiers killing a thousand people
Speaker 1: of the street who were following you.
Speaker 2: I believe he refers to it as like the river
Speaker 2: of blood that stands between us and the czar.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so he's an exile and he starts hanging out
Speaker 2: with the SRS and the anarchists. But he wanted to
Speaker 2: play both sides, and I think it was less than
Speaker 2: he was like a Tzaris spy among the revolutionaries. I
Speaker 2: think he genuinely thought, well, I want to play both
Speaker 2: sides because in the end, I'm going to make peace
Speaker 2: with everyone. That's my I'm not a Georgy expert. I'm
Speaker 2: just proud that I looked up how to pronounce his
Speaker 2: first name because it looks like Georgie. So he's like,
Speaker 2: I think it's best if I work with both the
Speaker 2: hard and revolutionaries and the secret police of the Czar.
Speaker 2: But he said that where some hard and revolutionaries could
Speaker 2: hear him, So they hanged him in his room in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh six. Yeah, they were what'd you think is
Speaker 2: gonna happen?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no good at it. Well, I mean, I
Speaker 3: guess there's a version of the story where he lives
Speaker 3: long enough to get to nineteen seventeen where they burn
Speaker 3: all the police archives and then we can figure out
Speaker 3: who all the informants were. Totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had eleven, like twelve years to make it
Speaker 1: through it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or just not talking to the fucking cops. God, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not that hard, friend of the pod, don't talk
Speaker 2: to cops. Actually, you know what that's our ad today is,
Speaker 2: don't talk to the police. It makes everything worse. Here's
Speaker 2: your ads, Hi, Margaret Kiljoy here, boy. The world sure
Speaker 2: is a mess right now? Huh. Seems like every day
Speaker 2: there are more and more reasons to get out into
Speaker 2: the streets and protest. That's why when I get arrested,
Speaker 2: there's only one strategy. I trust, I shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2: I say, I would like to remain silent, I would
Speaker 2: like to talk to my lawyer, and then I shut
Speaker 2: the fuck up. In the United States of America, it's
Speaker 2: constitutionally protected and recommended by the National Lawyer's Guild. That's
Speaker 2: shut thch f u c k up. Once again, that's
Speaker 2: shut thch e f uck up. Because you can't talk
Speaker 2: yourself out of custody, but you can talk yourself into
Speaker 2: a conviction.
Speaker 4: Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and situations,
Speaker 4: giving name an address expedient in most circumstances. Never discuss
Speaker 4: the events leading to arrest with anyone except your lawyer, doctor,
Speaker 4: or therapist. Hosting pictures of protests and actions on social
Speaker 4: media may lead to complications.
Speaker 3: If you have.
Speaker 4: Already talked to cops or experienced confusion about talking to cops,
Speaker 4: call your attorney immediately, as these may be signs of
Speaker 4: more serious legal problems. The concept of not talking to
Speaker 4: cops does not provide legal advice, and the foregoing statements
Speaker 4: are for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions,
Speaker 4: consult an attorney.
Speaker 3: And we're back.
Speaker 2: So after Bloody Sunday, strikes break out even more and
Speaker 2: half of Russia's industrial workers total are going on strike.
Speaker 2: In this early time, Poland, however, throws the fuck down.
Speaker 2: Ninety three point two percent of Polish workers are on
Speaker 2: so oh why god, yeah, incredible. One hundred strikers are
Speaker 2: killed in Warsaw. One hundred and thirty are killed in Rigo,
Speaker 2: which is now not Latvia but was Russia at the time.
Speaker 2: Universities closed because of the upheaval, so students all join
Speaker 2: the revolution. Saint Petersburg and Moscow are soon shut down
Speaker 2: by workers' strikes, and it just spreads. The revolution spreads,
Speaker 2: and it it like never quite knows exactly when it's
Speaker 2: a revolution and when it's a general strike and when
Speaker 2: it's a you know, and like, and that's kind of
Speaker 2: one of the kind of interesting and cool things about it.
Speaker 2: I actually I thought I was going to like blow
Speaker 2: right past the reason this game of six part it
Speaker 2: was going to be a four Parter, and then I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, the nineteen oh five revolution like needs
Speaker 2: some attention to understand nineteen seventeen and especially nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 2: which is what we're building too, you know. So for
Speaker 2: the most part, this is self organized political groups like
Speaker 2: the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks are running to catch up
Speaker 2: a pattern we've seen time and time again. And if
Speaker 2: you read some histories, they're like, and then the Bolsheviks
Speaker 2: and the Mensheviks set up all of the following things,
Speaker 2: And then if you read the other histories, they're like,
Speaker 2: and then the other things got set up, and the
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks showed up and tried to say that they were theirs.
Speaker 2: Which is not to say that the Bolsheviks are boring
Speaker 2: and late to everything, but rather than the organized groups
Speaker 2: in general, the professional revolutionaries and the vanguards are usually
Speaker 2: caught with their pants down. During actual revolutions and rebellions,
Speaker 2: sailors start mutineering all over the place, including at Cronstadt,
Speaker 2: which is the military the island fortress that's later going
Speaker 2: to be the center of what we're talking about. But
Speaker 2: I read one history and who said, and I believe
Speaker 2: it the reason this particular revolution didn't work is that
Speaker 2: the rebellion in the military stays relatively minor and uncoordinated. Overall,
Speaker 2: the military stays loyal to the czar and is therefore
Speaker 2: able to One of the best ways to stop a
Speaker 2: revolution is to kill everyone, but they don't succeeded that yet.
Speaker 2: The revolution is still going on. In towns, workers start
Speaker 2: forming soviets, and these are the first soviets that I
Speaker 2: found reference to, and people talk about it specifically coming out.
Speaker 3: Of this revolution.
Speaker 2: That's why I want to talk about this revolution so
Speaker 2: much is the soviets, and these are councils or assemblies
Speaker 2: used to coordinate actions. The first one was in the
Speaker 2: city of Ivanovna. The strike committees at a textile strike
Speaker 2: turned into an elected body of all the workers in town.
Speaker 2: Soon enough, soviets formed in sixty different towns. These councils
Speaker 2: are attended by delegates elected from various factories in workplaces,
Speaker 2: and these delegates are subject to immediate recall if they
Speaker 2: don't do what they've been mandated to do. So this
Speaker 2: isn't like what we think of as democracy in America,
Speaker 2: which isn't fundamentally democracy. This is like, oh, well, we
Speaker 2: can all go to the meeting. So Mia, you're going
Speaker 2: to go to the meeting to represent cool Zone media,
Speaker 2: but you're not there to come up with what you
Speaker 2: want to do. You're there because we've all talked together
Speaker 2: about what we want to do, and you're just there
Speaker 2: to report for us and stuff like that, you know,
Speaker 2: and if you don't, if you like start wilden out
Speaker 2: and try and talk about some bullshit that we don't
Speaker 2: care about, well then we'll send someone else next time.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a pretty good system.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's funny because later versions of these I
Speaker 3: didn't episode I don't know when this is gonna come out,
Speaker 3: but I did an episode like God some time ago
Speaker 3: about the revolution in Algeria. And they also also end
Speaker 3: up setting up a bunch of these workers councils. But
Speaker 3: one of the reasons they don't work is because they
Speaker 3: they're not they don't run on delegates, they're just basically
Speaker 3: elected politicians. Yeah, and because this season sort of nested
Speaker 3: like electoral things, they're not designed to represent the like
Speaker 3: the actual views of the group. They're designed to have
Speaker 3: one person in charge whose decisions get like kind of
Speaker 3: rubber stamped by like the mass things, and it's it's
Speaker 3: it's really interesting that the the original ones of these
Speaker 3: didn't work like that. They worked more like like how
Speaker 3: you would expect an anarctive system to work well.
Speaker 2: That actually gets to the crux, and we'll talk about
Speaker 2: it in a little bit about how this model was
Speaker 2: purposefully changed by Lenin, the most famous of these Soviets.
Speaker 2: If you read a brief history of nineteen oh five revolution,
Speaker 2: you're only going to hear about the Saint Petersburg Soviet
Speaker 2: of workers Deputies built out of the Great October Strike
Speaker 2: that started with printers and sued Lenda workers shutting down
Speaker 2: all the railways in Russia. And the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
Speaker 2: were both heavily involved in that Soviet. However, it's not
Speaker 2: as directly, I believe, as later Bolshevik history presents it.
Speaker 2: There's this revolutionary he's back from exile named Leon Trotsky,
Speaker 2: and he I mean, he's not a slacker, I will
Speaker 2: say about him.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately for all of us.
Speaker 2: I know he's the one who like actually, in like
Speaker 2: I believe nineteen oh four wrote about how, hey, if
Speaker 2: we do exactly what the Bolsheviks are planning to do later,
Speaker 2: it's going to go really badly. I should have written
Speaker 2: that quote into the scripts, and I didn't. But he
Speaker 2: has this quote about that, and then he didn't follow
Speaker 2: his own advice. At this point, he is neither a
Speaker 2: Bolshevik nor Menshevik. He had been in the Menshevik faction
Speaker 2: and then he left the Menshevik faction because he was like,
Speaker 2: the Bolsheviks are kind of shitty and authoritarian, I don't
Speaker 2: like Lenin, and the Mensheviks are kind of boring and liberal.
Speaker 2: So he's like, I'm just a social democrat. I'm a
Speaker 2: non affiliated, non party affiliated social democrat. So at this
Speaker 2: point he's like, I haven't got anything against him right now.
Speaker 2: You know, he gives speeches that hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: people attend, at least according to like literally they're like
Speaker 2: two hundred thousand people. Half the workers in Saint Petersburg
Speaker 2: came to see him talk, and maybe I don't know,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of people. Yeah, but oh, and he
Speaker 2: is the vice chair of this Soviet And the way
Speaker 2: that the nineteen oh five revolution went down completely flabbergasted
Speaker 2: the Marxists. Is not often I get to use the
Speaker 2: word flabbergasted, but it is the perfect word for what.
Speaker 3: Happened to the Marxists.
Speaker 2: They rush to keep up both organizationally and then what's
Speaker 2: fun because I'm a nerd. They had to rush to
Speaker 2: keep up theoretically because general strikes and self organized soviets,
Speaker 2: these are the two core things of the nineteen oh
Speaker 2: five revolution that become the core of the later revolution.
Speaker 2: Well thatden like the check on a bunch of evil shit.
Speaker 2: But neither of these two things, general strikes and self
Speaker 2: organized soviets are in the rule book for how a
Speaker 2: scientific revolution led by the vanguard of the proletariat is
Speaker 2: supposed to go down. Because did you know that Marxists
Speaker 2: hate general strikes?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I have, I I I oh god, this is
Speaker 3: a whole thing. Oh I to talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know I've been like this is yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of us are grinning.
Speaker 3: That is how deep nerds, all three of us are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're like all teeth right now.
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's only like two other things that I
Speaker 1: think mea is it more nerdy about one?
Speaker 4: Which is sending me things about football that She's like,
Speaker 4: what the fuck is happening?
Speaker 3: You don't want star Wars?
Speaker 2: Yes? Fuck? Yeah, So okay, I'm going to go through
Speaker 2: what I'm my understanding event, and you should correct or
Speaker 2: add or anything you want. General strikes are for anarchists,
Speaker 2: according to the Marxists. In eighteen seventy three, Frederick Engels
Speaker 2: the like the other half of the marx pair and
Speaker 2: the one that I have nothing nice to say about. Terrible,
Speaker 2: he wrote in the Bacoonist Anarchist Program. A general strike
Speaker 2: is the lever employed by which the social revolution is started.
Speaker 2: But that's like bad according to him. Yeah, and so
Speaker 2: the Marxists, instead of changing their dogma to fix the
Speaker 2: facts the way that science works, they just reworded everything.
Speaker 2: General strikes are hopelessly utopian. So what had happened were
Speaker 2: mass strikes? These are different, you see. And I wrote
Speaker 2: in my script I don't want to get two into
Speaker 2: the weeds here, but I kind of do because it's fun.
Speaker 2: So the difference between these two ideas is really funny
Speaker 2: to me. Because Angles defined a general strike like roughly
Speaker 2: as like a single organized strike where one day everyone
Speaker 2: wakes up and has a general strike, right, And he's like,
Speaker 2: and that's a terrible plan. No one had ever it's
Speaker 2: a strong man argument. No anarchist had ever put forth
Speaker 2: that definition. Of a general strike or had because that
Speaker 2: is a terrible plan. That's not how general strikes hap.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like a chartless thing like the British in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty. Okay, like no one believes that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so he claims that this is the anarchist
Speaker 2: theory and this is not true. That's like one of
Speaker 2: his favorite things to do is claim things that are
Speaker 2: our theories and they're not. So these later Marxist theories theorists,
Speaker 2: they have to develop the mass strike instead in response
Speaker 2: to these revolutions that happening. And this is good and
Speaker 2: Marxist compared to the anarchist general strike and the mass strike,
Speaker 2: it's actually just like more anarchistic. It's a bit more organic.
Speaker 2: It's something that builds and ebbs and flows, you know.
Speaker 2: So they just described how anarchists actually viewed and used
Speaker 2: the general strike all the time. Yeah, okay. And then
Speaker 2: the other thing. The Soviets too, were fulfillment of anarchist principles.
Speaker 2: They are fundamentally what collectivists and communist anarchists are fighting for.
Speaker 2: But Marxists didn't have anything like them in their books
Speaker 2: by Marx and Engels, which advocated for the seizure of
Speaker 2: state power instead of building bottom up power. And so
Speaker 2: the way that the Bolsheviks decided to incorporate the Soviets
Speaker 2: is to treat them like you were saying, what happened
Speaker 2: in Algeria. Later, I guess to treat them like little
Speaker 2: parliaments to be attended by political parties and eventually, ideally
Speaker 2: only the Bolsheviks. The small scale of the Soviets was
Speaker 2: not a feature but a bug, according to them. Lennin
Speaker 2: wrote nineteen oh seven that his party could utilize Soviets
Speaker 2: for quote, the purpose of developing the social democratic movement,
Speaker 2: but soon they would be supliferous. So he's saying exactly
Speaker 2: what he's going to do ten years later, which is
Speaker 2: use the revolutionary program to centralize power and then get
Speaker 2: rid of the revolution. However, credit where's due the Mensheviks. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: they're like still Marxists, right, but they're like kind of pragmatic.
Speaker 2: They're like, I don't know, Soviets seem cool, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's just do the Soviets. This seems great, like whatever.
Speaker 2: I kind of like them. And it gets really funny
Speaker 2: because later the anarchists are going to be like more
Speaker 2: siding with the Bolsheviks, because the anarchists are idiots and
Speaker 2: are going to like be like.
Speaker 3: Well, they're more radical, so they're therefore better.
Speaker 2: You know, by the time I finished writing that part
Speaker 2: of the script, maybe all of a different attitude, and
Speaker 2: I've done a lot of work on the rest of it. Anyway,
Speaker 2: that's my difference between general strike and mass strike. And
Speaker 2: there are real and serious differences between all these various
Speaker 2: factions of leftists. But it seems to me that the
Speaker 2: things that happened in nineteen seventeen and onward, only the
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks wanted to do those things. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 2: I'm wrong, and we only know one thing that happened,
Speaker 2: which is that the Bolsheviks did these bad things right.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons that anarchism gets left out
Speaker 2: of the story of nineteen oh five is because anarchism
Speaker 2: wasn't party politics. They rarely were like this is now
Speaker 2: an anarchist Soviet or an anarchist general strike. Soviets in
Speaker 2: general strikes were just the anarchist position. But that's not
Speaker 2: how the people involved in the uprising ideologically would have
Speaker 2: necessarily called themselves anarchists. Although in Poland and several other
Speaker 2: places they were. And now I'm gonna talk about what
Speaker 2: the anarchists in Poland were doing during the revolution, which
Speaker 2: is where I promised you bombs. A Black Banner was
Speaker 2: highly So now am I talk about the organizational structure.
Speaker 2: The Black Banner was highly organized into federations, and I
Speaker 2: have read that it was organized into multiple federations, each
Speaker 2: of about three hundred members. And I have read and that
Speaker 2: was the first person account the original source. The secondary
Speaker 2: source claimed that there was three hundred total in Black Banner.
Speaker 2: I find that unlikely. I tended not because the primary
Speaker 2: source is inherently better, but I am based on what
Speaker 2: he describes whatever. Anyway, the federations each represent this or
Speaker 2: that branch of an industry. They had huge meetings where
Speaker 2: the members themselves discuss theory and strategy together. And apparently
Speaker 2: it's like the whole revolution is just like endless meetings.
Speaker 2: It's like fighting and meetings and like. But the meetings
Speaker 2: are kind of like the social thing because you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: are you going to that like theoretical talk where we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about like theory that one hundred years
Speaker 2: from now people are still going to be talking about,
Speaker 2: And people like yeah, I'm gonna go to that. I'm
Speaker 2: going to go to the other thing and whatever.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like Twitter that you have to go to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And so they've set up these organizations and
Speaker 2: whenever someone was mistreated by a boss or a landlord
Speaker 2: or even a teacher abusing their students, they went to
Speaker 2: Black Banner, and Black Banner would dish out some justice.
Speaker 2: Most of the time they met in like their houses
Speaker 2: or whatever. But the other main gathering place for them
Speaker 2: was graveyards, which is cool as shit.
Speaker 3: That's so cool.
Speaker 1: Anarchists have never changed, no single time I have been
Speaker 1: to graveyard meetings before.
Speaker 3: Zero changes ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And overall, the revolution of nineteen oh five didn't
Speaker 2: fully succeed. It did not succeed, but it it got
Speaker 2: slightly more than sometimes is given credit for. The army
Speaker 2: stayed loyal to the Tzar, and so repression was pretty bad.
Speaker 2: A bunch of nationalists did a bunch of pograms against Jews,
Speaker 2: probably with the help of the Tzar.
Speaker 3: I've read that.
Speaker 2: During this period of uprisings about three thousand Jews were killed.
Speaker 2: There's one notable exception. The Jews in the anarchist quarter
Speaker 2: of bial Stock in the heart of Black Banner territory.
Speaker 2: Right wing thugs, cops nor the military dared to go there,
Speaker 2: and there were other Jewish combat organizations that fought off
Speaker 2: programs every now and then. But I just had read
Speaker 2: that specific Like a guy who was there was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know even that, Yeah, it was like pretty terrible,
Speaker 2: the anti Semitism and stuff. There's one place they wouldn't go,
Speaker 2: Like that's cool. They have like bomb factories and shit,
Speaker 2: they're just like rocks, and they're just like when they
Speaker 2: get bored, they throw dynamite into someone's house.
Speaker 3: That's bad.
Speaker 2: Like I am also certain they occasionally threw dynamite into
Speaker 2: houses of people who weren't bad, and like later, well,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about what happens after the revolution. They managed
Speaker 2: to win some suit serious demands. Not necessarily anarchists, but
Speaker 2: the revolution managed to win some serious demands, and they
Speaker 2: managed to fundamentally change organizing in Russia. It laid the
Speaker 2: groundwork for the nineteen seventeen Revolution, and much like how
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty Uprising in the US laid the groundwork
Speaker 2: for the future revolution here, only this time we'll have
Speaker 2: learned enough history to not let authoritarian communist sweep in
Speaker 2: at the last minute instead of a dictatorship. The way
Speaker 2: that the nineteen oh five revolution ended is kind of
Speaker 2: fun I hadn't heard this before. I knew, like, there's
Speaker 2: one part of it that I think is funny that
Speaker 2: I hadn't heard before. There's a centrist politician, the guy
Speaker 2: who spearheaded Russian industrialization. His name is Sergei Witte or
Speaker 2: Wit or something. I know how to pronounce its first name, Witta.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, but I know how to pronounce sir
Speaker 2: gay gay. Someone's gonna tell me I didn't pronounce that right,
Speaker 2: but maybe anyway.
Speaker 3: Look, if you ever do a podcast your listener, you
Speaker 3: too will learn that daves are hard.
Speaker 2: I know, I look up almost all of them, and
Speaker 2: then there's like one that'll slip through the cracks or
Speaker 2: like I know how to pronounce that, and then I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I spent so long on the first name.
Speaker 3: Listen.
Speaker 2: We do the best we can.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he wrote the October Manifesto, and it laid out
Speaker 2: a bunch of reforms like have a constitution and create
Speaker 2: a Duma which is like a congress, and all men
Speaker 2: can vote, and Zar Nicholas was like, no, you don't understand.
Speaker 2: And I think he believed this. He was like, I
Speaker 2: am honor bound to stay the autocratic czar like hundreds
Speaker 2: of years of my ancestors, Like who am I to
Speaker 2: turn away from my like divine duty to be the
Speaker 2: father of Russia. And it's funny because he's like just
Speaker 2: a fucking shitty czar who sucks at everything. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: like he can't do anything right and like I can't
Speaker 2: remember I Rasputants on the picture now or not or
Speaker 2: if that's a couple of years later. But he's like
Speaker 2: not an impressive example of leadership. So he asked Grand
Speaker 2: Duke Nicholas to lead up a military dictatorship. Grand Duke
Speaker 2: Nicholas looks at his first cousin, once removed Zar Nicholas
Speaker 2: the second, and says, I'm gonna give you a choice.
Speaker 2: Either you accept the October Manifesto or I'm gonna shoot
Speaker 2: myself in the head right now.
Speaker 3: Shit, I heard this far. That was the part I
Speaker 3: hadn't heard before. And it works while.
Speaker 2: Because this is like like his kind of his uncle,
Speaker 2: Like this is the guy who's like, yeah, Zar Nicholas
Speaker 2: is a seconds like grandfather had been another czar whatever,
Speaker 2: fucking royalty. And as soon as these reforms are promised,
Speaker 2: the rebellions stopped, those strikes stopped, and then the reforms
Speaker 2: didn't come, and the revolution actually reached its peak in
Speaker 2: that December, primarily led by the Bolsheviks and Saint Petersburg
Speaker 2: as best as I can tell, before they were put
Speaker 2: down by the army. Only the leftist groups like the
Speaker 2: SRS and the Social Democrats and the anarchists and shit
Speaker 2: wanted to keep going. Everyone else was like, woo, we
Speaker 2: can vote now if these things go through. The revolutionists
Speaker 2: doubled down and tried to go for it, and they
Speaker 2: they failed, and nineteen oh six Russia became a constitutional
Speaker 2: monarchy with a multi party system. But it was except
Speaker 2: Nicholas the second was like, well, except I'm just still
Speaker 2: going to be an autocrat and you can have like
Speaker 2: the trappings of democracy, and he like slowly he made
Speaker 2: the doom a powerless. There was this brief moment at
Speaker 2: the end of nineteen oh five where there's free press
Speaker 2: and a ton of groups put out a ton of material,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the material is like, hey, everyone,
Speaker 2: let's organize and put a bunch of holes in the
Speaker 2: czar until there's no more czar, and so all of
Speaker 2: these groups build up their ranks because the nineteen oh
Speaker 2: five revolution was fairly spontaneous and not necessarily party led.
Speaker 2: But during what came after, the parties were like, oh,
Speaker 2: we can organize, and then free speech was like immediately revoked.
Speaker 2: But do you know what else is free speed?
Speaker 3: No, it's not.
Speaker 2: People pay a lot of money to have people advertise
Speaker 2: to you. You know who else has given a lot
Speaker 2: of money to feed my dog is the sponsors of
Speaker 2: this podcast, who you can listen to if you want,
Speaker 2: or you can press forward a couple times on the
Speaker 2: little thing on your phone, or you can subscribe to
Speaker 2: Cooler Zone Media and give the money directly to my
Speaker 2: dog and then you don't have to hear the ads
Speaker 2: or the ads are great and you're like, man, I
Speaker 2: just love getting to hear what's going on in the
Speaker 2: world and learn about why I should gamble. Here's ads
Speaker 2: and rebec So for several years you have the rise
Speaker 2: of political violence and there's like more strikes and rebellions
Speaker 2: going on, like kind of this echo of nineteen oh five,
Speaker 2: and here's where we get what we promised you last time.
Speaker 2: The kind of pissing match between sars and anarchists to
Speaker 2: see who can like kill the most motherfuckers. The SRS
Speaker 2: had their own split. He was the maximalist faction that
Speaker 2: wanted to bring about an immediate revolution, who turned to
Speaker 2: revolutionary violence. But things slowly settled down again. In that
Speaker 2: pattern we see again and again after the mass movement fails,
Speaker 2: the diehards keep going, like the how in the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties to nineteen seventies. You know, partly things settled down
Speaker 2: because the crackdowns on the leftists were pretty fucking successful.
Speaker 2: The leaders and organizers of most of the revolutionary parties died,
Speaker 2: were imprisoned in Siberia, or went into exile around the country.
Speaker 2: This includes a bunch of the major figures. Leon Trotsky
Speaker 2: was sentenced to Siberia but escaped during transport made it
Speaker 2: to London. I do want to hear that story of
Speaker 2: that escape. I don't know it, but you randomly know it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. I don't actually know that one. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: that's right, we're into the territory of leftist prison breaks.
Speaker 3: They don't know the story. I don't know. It's just
Speaker 3: I just don't like Trotsky.
Speaker 2: No, I know That's one of the things about this
Speaker 2: is like, yeah, like spoiler alert for anyone who's like
Speaker 2: wondering why we're like, but Trotsky seems like the reasonable
Speaker 2: one you're all talking about. Trotsky is the one who's
Speaker 2: going to lead the attack on Kronstad and put down
Speaker 2: and like lead the counter revolution, and he's he's the
Speaker 2: guy who should have known better, unlike Vladimir Lenin is
Speaker 2: the next one we're gonna talk about. He actually sat
Speaker 2: the nineteen oh five revolution out. He wrote from London
Speaker 2: about how the Russian Bolsheviks should get involved in all
Speaker 2: the armed insurrection and mass terror and expropriation, because overall
Speaker 2: the Bolsheviks back then were like, that's not really our deal,
Speaker 2: Like that's more Maximus stars and anarchists who do that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. And Lenin's like, but why not us?
Speaker 2: Can't we do it too? And by us doing it,
Speaker 2: I mean you, I'm going to write a letter and
Speaker 2: then you can do it, and then I'm going to
Speaker 2: stay in London. And I actually don't think Lennon was
Speaker 2: a coward. That's not an accusation I'm trying to make.
Speaker 2: But there was some serious lead from the back energy happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: After the Tsar accepted the Manifesto and was briefly liberalizing,
Speaker 2: Lenin went home to Saint Petersburg and the Bolsheviks joined
Speaker 2: the s RS and the anarchists and doing the rob
Speaker 2: the rich, kill the rulers stuff. Most famous of these
Speaker 2: Bolshevik bank robbers was the admittedly attractive, later mass murderer
Speaker 2: Joseph Stalin.
Speaker 3: Okay, I want to clear something up here. The picture
Speaker 3: of young Stalin that everyone points out is not real.
Speaker 3: Wait what, yeah, it's it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 3: propaganda picture that Stalin distributed and has hundreds of years.
Speaker 2: Well, not necessarily the shirtless one, just that even the
Speaker 2: one with him like like the picture where like him
Speaker 2: with like a mustache and yeah, yeah that's fair to
Speaker 2: look like the from one direction not real. I don't
Speaker 2: know reference is that. Nobody on this thing but me.
Speaker 3: I just don't know what Zaye looks like that. I
Speaker 3: was a one direction hater.
Speaker 2: So the like, if you google young Stalin, it's like
Speaker 2: a porky. That's not it's not like shirtless whatever, you're
Speaker 2: just hot.
Speaker 3: That's not him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fake. Yeah, that's someone else that they as
Speaker 1: the Stalin thing.
Speaker 3: I literally showed you.
Speaker 1: A screen by screen of Zaye and the fake Stalin thing.
Speaker 2: Oh no, yeah, no, I to listening. Yeah, fake Stalin
Speaker 2: is even hotter than Zaane would It would be so
Speaker 2: fun if he was in a boy band. Sorry, the
Speaker 2: world would have been a better place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, someone should have silo him there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like, all right, Saddam wrote romance novels Stalin
Speaker 1: was in a boy band, like, that's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do it for the girlies.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, by the time Joseph Stalin, who is apparently not
Speaker 2: as attractive as I was led to believe, was robbing banks,
Speaker 2: Lenin was already out of the country again. He moved
Speaker 2: to Switzerland and then Paris, where he argued that instead
Speaker 2: of educating the Russian masses, the important thing was that
Speaker 2: the existing intelligency. I should lead the working class. I
Speaker 2: see where the anti intellectual anarchists were coming from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do the anti intellectual. The intellectual was Lenin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly if the intellectual meant I get to learn
Speaker 2: things and you don't, yeh like if everyone gets to
Speaker 2: learn things, It's cool that sometimes people focus on learning things.
Speaker 2: Nesser Makno the anarchist who's going to be important later
Speaker 2: he goes to Siberia for killing a cop and a
Speaker 2: lot of the maximalists, and I'm a little bit confused
Speaker 2: about whether Sr's were the only ones who could be
Speaker 2: called maximalists. I also feel like I've heard anarchists referred
Speaker 2: to as maximalists or maybe ultras. At this time, I
Speaker 2: get there's so many All of the words that are
Speaker 2: used for the left everywhere else in the West are
Speaker 2: not the words that people use in Russia anyway. An
Speaker 2: awful lot of the people doing the terrorism take their
Speaker 2: own lives rather than be arrested. Death is the sister
Speaker 2: of liberty, when anarchists put it before ending his life,
Speaker 2: I believe to the court many of them took their
Speaker 2: own lives by self immolating, like setting themselves on fire.
Speaker 2: One anarchist at the time, a guy who's later are
Speaker 2: going to become Bolshevik anti anarchist. His name is Victor Serge.
Speaker 2: He referred to it, Yeah, he referred to it. It
Speaker 2: was like a collective suicide. And actually the fact that
Speaker 2: Victor Surge is one of the people writing about this
Speaker 2: is part of what makes it so hard. All of
Speaker 2: this stuff is clouded in misinformation, you know, because the
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks have a specific way that they want to paint
Speaker 2: the anarchists, and what they want to paint the anarchists
Speaker 2: as is bandits. So they want to play up the
Speaker 2: disorganized nature, the fractious nature, and the like noble sack
Speaker 2: self sacrificing.
Speaker 3: Like fool.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, that happens too, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: those anarchists who were arrested generally gave Baller's speeches or
Speaker 2: just refused to talk to the court at all, refusing
Speaker 2: to dignify the proceedings. One young anarchist woman on trial
Speaker 2: for killing a priest and then trying to kill a cop,
Speaker 2: told the court proudly and bravely, we shall mount the scaffold,
Speaker 2: casting a look of defiance at you. Our death like
Speaker 2: a hot flame, will ignite many hearts. We are dying
Speaker 2: as victors forward, then our death is our triumph.
Speaker 3: Rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she took cyanide pills in captivity. That seems to
Speaker 2: be the attitude of a lot of these people, because
Speaker 2: you're you're living in a dirt floor house, oppressed like hell,
Speaker 2: and you're like, oh, we almost had a revolution.
Speaker 3: It didn't work.
Speaker 2: I'm not going back to starving, like, yeah, I will
Speaker 2: take as many months out with me and I knew
Speaker 2: that the end result of living is death, and I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do it as nobly as I can. Other final
Speaker 2: words to court are things like you yourself should be
Speaker 2: sitting on the bench of the accused. Down with you, all,
Speaker 2: villainous hangmen, Long live anarchy, and that the anarchists would
Speaker 2: take away quote your privileges and idleness, your luxuries and authority,
Speaker 2: death and destruction to the whole bourgeois order. Hail the
Speaker 2: revolutionary class struggle of the oppressed. Long live anarchism and communism.
Speaker 2: They also promised that they were the first swallows of
Speaker 2: a coming spring, and they were right. Actually, it's a
Speaker 2: shame that spring was hijacked by power hungry tyrants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it rapidly became winter. And yeah, as springs are
Speaker 3: wont to do.
Speaker 2: I know, stupid cycles. Why can't we just have utopia,
Speaker 2: gonna stop the earth?
Speaker 3: Yeah vie. Yeah.
Speaker 2: With all the mass arrests happening, the Russian left turned
Speaker 2: to a group that had been active for decades, the
Speaker 2: political Red Cross. This was a group, or rather several
Speaker 2: groups working together that helped political prisoners in Russia. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: this predates the modern Red Cross by several years, at
Speaker 2: least under that name. Yeah, no, I this one like
Speaker 2: I fell into a hole about well, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: what could probably call this podcast is.
Speaker 3: Margaret reports from the hole that Margaret fell in this week.
Speaker 2: But where all the groups got the name of the
Speaker 2: Red Cross was at in eighteen sixty four, the first
Speaker 2: Geneva Convention picked the Red Cross as an international symbol
Speaker 2: for don't shoot, contrary to some pictures that have come
Speaker 2: out of Gaza over the past couple decades. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: is the symbol of neutrality and armed conflict is what
Speaker 2: the Red Cross was designed as, not even specifically medical.
Speaker 2: It's obviously become that, but it was like it's it's
Speaker 2: the don't shoot symbol. And I'm sure that other groups
Speaker 2: use the name, but the first one I'm aware of
Speaker 2: is the political Red Cross in Russia, which is later
Speaker 2: going to become the anarchist Black Cross. To be clear
Speaker 2: to where I'm going with this, it was formed in
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy, whereas the International Committee of the Red Cross,
Speaker 2: the group that we talk about today, picked its name
Speaker 2: in eighteen seventy six, the Political Red Cross fundraised and
Speaker 2: offered support to political prisoners that had been doing it
Speaker 2: since eighteen seventy. They fundraised basically the same way that
Speaker 2: people do now like again, and then nothing ever changes.
Speaker 2: First bail support group, it is, it absolutely is. They
Speaker 2: did it through benefit shows, oh my god, donations from
Speaker 2: leftists with middle class jobs and or generational wealth and crime.
Speaker 2: Nothing has ever changed, nothing has ever changed. To be fair,
Speaker 2: To be fair, I do want this on the record,
Speaker 2: we don't actually fund bail funds with crime. That's actually
Speaker 2: not a thing that happens.
Speaker 3: But yeah, fair enough. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They first started off by supporting the Nerodniks, the eco hippies,
Speaker 2: the Back of the Landers, and then the nihilists, the
Speaker 2: eco hippies plus guns, and then all the various political
Speaker 2: groups after the nineteen oh five revolution failed is where
Speaker 2: they went next. But here's the interesting part. The group
Speaker 2: was meant to be non ideological right. But then the
Speaker 2: Social Democrats. I believe this means the Bolsheviks, but what
Speaker 2: I read was the Social Democrats. They started only helping
Speaker 2: their own folks. Oh, after nineteen oh five, as the
Speaker 2: political Red Cross, so the anarchist Red Cross split off
Speaker 2: and what matters about this? And it mattered then and
Speaker 2: it matters now, and I think is crucial for understanding
Speaker 2: the Russian Revolution. The Anarchist Red Cross split off to
Speaker 2: support not the anarchist prisoners, but all political prisoners, regardless
Speaker 2: of their ideology, whereas the Bolsheviks used the larger umbrella
Speaker 2: name Polytical Red Cross to only support their folks. Anarchists
Speaker 2: in the Russian Revolutions were fighting for an anarchist society,
Speaker 2: they almost always did so in a way that encouraged
Speaker 2: and supported ideological pluralism. So as compared to the Bolsheviks,
Speaker 2: who would take the big umbrella name but mean the
Speaker 2: tiny click and they've been doing it since the beginning,
Speaker 2: since they got the name Bolsheviks. They are the smaller
Speaker 2: group that takes the larger umbrella group name and then
Speaker 2: turns it into the tiny elite banguard. This new Anarchist
Speaker 2: Red Cross started spreading across the world as Russians went
Speaker 2: into exile. At some point along the way, I think
Speaker 2: the late nineteen oughts, but I'm not sure, it changed
Speaker 2: its name to Anarchist Black Cross to avoid being confused
Speaker 2: the International Red Cross, and good on it. That is
Speaker 2: a better name for this particular project is the Anarchist
Speaker 2: Black Cross. Is still around today and it is one
Speaker 2: of the best entry points into anti authoritarian politics for
Speaker 2: folks who are interested but don't know.
Speaker 3: Where to start.
Speaker 2: ABC chapters. Anarchist Black Cross chapters put on political prisoner
Speaker 2: letter writing nights and support all politicized prisoners, not just anarchists,
Speaker 2: and have since the start. There are even still chapters
Speaker 2: in Russia. They are officially marked as undesirable organizations by
Speaker 2: the state, which means that they are prohibited from organizing
Speaker 2: and disseminating information. The first time that you're caught is
Speaker 2: a fine. After that it is a jail sentence. But
Speaker 2: that's where we're going to leave Russia for this week.
Speaker 2: They've had a mostly failed revolution, all the radicals are
Speaker 2: dead or in jail or in exile or desperately supporting
Speaker 2: imprisoned comrades. And then famously nothing happened in Europe for
Speaker 2: the nineteen tens except World War One and a string
Speaker 2: of revolutions, including the most famous of all revolutions, the
Speaker 2: Russian Revolution, which is really three revolutions, the sort of
Speaker 2: liberal one, the more radical one, and then a desperate
Speaker 2: revolutionary attempt against the Bolshevik counter revolution, which we'll get
Speaker 2: at into. That wasn't right grammar, but I'm going with it.
Speaker 2: We're gonna get at into in parts three, four, five,
Speaker 2: and six. Fuck yeah, our first six parter. Any thoughts,
Speaker 2: of course, it's cronstat that no other episode could possibly.
Speaker 3: Have been for six partner.
Speaker 2: No, it could have been a two parter, Kross I
Speaker 2: could have been two parter if I had already done
Speaker 2: the enough of the Russian Revolution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but but just morally it had to be cross
Speaker 1: sixth part.
Speaker 2: I think Kronschat is one of the single pivotal moments
Speaker 2: of human history.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is, like.
Speaker 2: And I was surprised years ago when I used to
Speaker 2: make my living selling buttons on Etsy. I tried to
Speaker 2: be clever all the time for a living, and I
Speaker 2: made one that said I'm still mad about Kronstadt, and like,
Speaker 2: I thought that was gonna be my like ten people
Speaker 2: are gonna buy this. Ever, that was one of my
Speaker 2: most popular buttons.
Speaker 3: I've seen them in the wild. Before I knew you,
Speaker 3: i'd seen those in the wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been one hundred years, We're still bad.
Speaker 3: You ruined literally all of human history. Congratulations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and It's funny too, because it's like one of
Speaker 2: the things that I used to think, oh, Cronshot was
Speaker 2: when the anarchists tried to stop the Bolsheviks. No, it's
Speaker 2: when everyone who was a communist tried to stop the Bolsheviks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like it.
Speaker 2: Was when socialism tried to stop a terrible thing. Oh, anyway,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about all those revolutions next week, but first
Speaker 2: we'll talk about your plugs. Yeah, you can find me
Speaker 2: a podcasting could happen here. We do it every day
Speaker 2: except Saturdays and Sundays. Yeah, and you two can figure
Speaker 2: out how to not have this happen to you again.
Speaker 2: That is one of the I really appreciate the like
Speaker 2: strategic analysis that you all do with current events as
Speaker 2: well as like historical events and how they relate to
Speaker 2: current events. I actually, I was really I was really impressed.
Speaker 2: People should check out Gare's recent breakdown of organizing in
Speaker 2: Atlanta and like updates that are fairly recent. This is
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks old now at this point, but
Speaker 2: Garret did a good talk that just is like here's
Speaker 2: how people try to organize, and here's what works, and
Speaker 2: here's what didn't, and that's the kind of you know,
Speaker 2: that's the kind of without like talking trash on each
Speaker 2: other and being like, oh, y'all are fools, Just be like,
Speaker 2: well this didn't work. What can we try instead? And
Speaker 2: that's what I'm doing with these episodes.
Speaker 1: My episode is called Crackdown on Stop Cup City.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you if you're looking for it. My main
Speaker 2: plug is a September twenty fourth, I have a new
Speaker 2: book coming out. It is actually my debut novel in
Speaker 2: a ton of books, but they are all either short
Speaker 2: novellas or long novellas, like a Country a Ghost is
Speaker 2: like right on the line between novella and novel, and
Speaker 2: so I'm going with con a long novella. And this
Speaker 2: is my debut novel. It's called The Sapling Cage and
Speaker 2: it is a crossover book, and crossover is a marketing term.
Speaker 2: It means it's a ya book that like a young
Speaker 2: adult book that knows that it's mostly adults who are
Speaker 2: going to read it. And it is about a young
Speaker 2: person who wants to go be a witch. But they
Speaker 2: have one major problem, which is that they were born
Speaker 2: a boy and their best friend has been promised for
Speaker 2: the witches and they go in their friend's place and
Speaker 2: learn all about magic and in the meantime have.
Speaker 3: To save the world.
Speaker 2: Because it's a high fantasy book and I hope you
Speaker 2: like it is the first book in the Daughters of
Speaker 2: the Empty Throne trilogy, because of course that's the title
Speaker 2: of my trilogy, Rules Kingdom that Doesn't have a King.
Speaker 2: It comes out September twenty fourth. I'll be talking about
Speaker 2: a lot more. It's going to go for pre order
Speaker 2: probably in June. And it's from Feminist Press. And there's
Speaker 2: a new Pool Zone media podcast called sixteenth Minute, and
Speaker 2: it is by someone who wrote about hot dogs. And
Speaker 2: you don't need to know anything else about Jamie Besides.
Speaker 2: That's what's so great is that everyone can have the
Speaker 2: one thing that people decide they're famous for and then
Speaker 2: never deviate from that ever. Yeah.
Speaker 3: For me, it's ice must be Destroyed. Yes, that's all
Speaker 3: I got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I even like when I'm like, oh wow,
Speaker 2: like Margaret writes fiction too, It's like, look, I know,
Speaker 2: my podcast is probably the widest reaching thing I've ever done.
Speaker 2: Writing about history is way newer to me than writing
Speaker 2: fantasy and science fiction. I've been doing that for a
Speaker 2: long time. Anyway, Sixteenth minute. I somehow made it about me,
Speaker 2: but it's not at all. It's about Jamie Loftus and
Speaker 2: you should check it out in May June May you
Speaker 2: may check. Nope, not gonna do it by everyone seeing
Speaker 2: it next week.
Speaker 3: Bye.
Speaker 2: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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