1
00:00:01,840 --> 00:00:05,680
Speaker 1: Also media here, everyone, Robert Evans here, and before we

2
00:00:05,720 --> 00:00:08,880
Speaker 1: get to the episode, obviously a lot of people in

3
00:00:08,960 --> 00:00:11,399
Speaker 1: Gaza need a lot of different help. But we've been

4
00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:15,360
Speaker 1: connected to the Algazawi family by a friend of ours

5
00:00:15,080 --> 00:00:18,640
Speaker 1: who's doing aid work there right now. They are trying

6
00:00:18,680 --> 00:00:21,759
Speaker 1: to get fourteen members of their family out of Gaza

7
00:00:22,600 --> 00:00:26,200
Speaker 1: before you know, things get any worse for them, and

8
00:00:26,239 --> 00:00:29,240
Speaker 1: they're raising money to do so on go fund me.

9
00:00:29,480 --> 00:00:33,440
Speaker 1: If you google help al Gazawe family escape Gaza go

10
00:00:33,520 --> 00:00:35,960
Speaker 1: fund me, you can find it. Algazawie is spelled a

11
00:00:36,200 --> 00:00:40,880
Speaker 1: l g h a zz a w. I. Yeah, we're

12
00:00:41,240 --> 00:00:44,040
Speaker 1: trying to help them, you know, get to a safer place,

13
00:00:44,080 --> 00:00:49,480
Speaker 1: so please consider donating if you can. Oh yeah, it's

14
00:00:49,600 --> 00:00:54,160
Speaker 1: behind the Bastard's a podcast that opens in a different,

15
00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:59,120
Speaker 1: slightly less competent way each week. Because when you you know,

16
00:00:59,240 --> 00:01:02,160
Speaker 1: when you're on top, baby, it's time to slack off.

17
00:01:02,280 --> 00:01:04,840
Speaker 1: It's time to just really really fuck up hard.

18
00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:07,679
Speaker 2: That's how I that was so annoying.

19
00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:10,800
Speaker 3: What are you doing, Sophie? Are all annoying?

20
00:01:11,360 --> 00:01:15,520
Speaker 1: Who are we? Where are we? When are we? These

21
00:01:15,560 --> 00:01:16,360
Speaker 1: are all questions.

22
00:01:16,440 --> 00:01:18,240
Speaker 2: I mean I could answer them, but I feel I

23
00:01:18,240 --> 00:01:19,840
Speaker 2: could be also annoying.

24
00:01:20,800 --> 00:01:25,039
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of not annoying, true, Joe Kasabian, our guest

25
00:01:25,440 --> 00:01:28,200
Speaker 1: host of the co host of the Lions Led by

26
00:01:28,240 --> 00:01:32,840
Speaker 1: Donkeys podcast, author of numerous books of science fiction and

27
00:01:32,920 --> 00:01:34,440
Speaker 1: one book of non fiction.

28
00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:39,680
Speaker 3: Joe, Hello, Hey, it's it's good to still be here

29
00:01:39,680 --> 00:01:43,960
Speaker 3: getting you know, intensely very appilled with everyone else. Oh no,

30
00:01:44,240 --> 00:01:46,399
Speaker 3: Barry appelled is a bad, bad way to turn that.

31
00:01:47,120 --> 00:01:49,760
Speaker 3: I've already said it. I didn't poison quite a few people.

32
00:01:50,360 --> 00:01:52,520
Speaker 3: I do already have spies coming to Oregon.

33
00:01:53,040 --> 00:01:55,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I mean we all do, right.

34
00:01:55,760 --> 00:01:59,160
Speaker 1: That's the lesson from Laverni Barria is always be spying

35
00:01:59,240 --> 00:02:02,080
Speaker 1: on your friends and co workers. It's the only way

36
00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:04,639
Speaker 1: to stay ahead of them, you know, which is why

37
00:02:05,120 --> 00:02:08,560
Speaker 1: I've got you know, I don't actually know what joke

38
00:02:08,600 --> 00:02:12,160
Speaker 1: to make about this, because it will get increasingly creepy,

39
00:02:12,480 --> 00:02:16,359
Speaker 1: just like Laventi Barria, who has gotten increasingly creepy by

40
00:02:16,360 --> 00:02:20,760
Speaker 1: this point in the story. Now, Joe, when we left off,

41
00:02:21,320 --> 00:02:24,960
Speaker 1: Lavrenti is, you know, helping to run the cheka in

42
00:02:25,440 --> 00:02:29,359
Speaker 1: George I A. He has helped to overthrow the nationalist

43
00:02:29,400 --> 00:02:34,560
Speaker 1: movements and the Mensheviks in the rest of the caucuses

44
00:02:34,600 --> 00:02:38,720
Speaker 1: and deliver them to the USSR neatly wrapped and packaged

45
00:02:38,840 --> 00:02:44,000
Speaker 1: with a bow on top. Thank yeah, thanks for that.

46
00:02:44,160 --> 00:02:46,120
Speaker 1: It's gonna go great. It's gotta go great now, Joe.

47
00:02:46,960 --> 00:02:50,440
Speaker 1: One criticism often lobbied against the modern Western left is

48
00:02:50,480 --> 00:02:52,520
Speaker 1: that it is basically a bunch of cliques and friend

49
00:02:52,520 --> 00:02:55,640
Speaker 1: groups organized around a political tendency, and not really a

50
00:02:55,680 --> 00:02:58,959
Speaker 1: mass movement capable of building or holding power. Now, there

51
00:02:58,960 --> 00:03:02,240
Speaker 1: are fair aspect to this criticism, but one interesting thing

52
00:03:02,280 --> 00:03:03,880
Speaker 1: that you get beat over the head with when you

53
00:03:03,919 --> 00:03:07,000
Speaker 1: study Stalin is that the leadership cast of the Soviet

54
00:03:07,080 --> 00:03:10,280
Speaker 1: Union was just a handful of cliques and friend groups,

55
00:03:10,320 --> 00:03:13,440
Speaker 1: all of which were also increasingly cults of personality. Right,

56
00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:16,320
Speaker 1: it was like people's friend groups, and they were all

57
00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:18,880
Speaker 1: shitty friends, but they were all kind of buddies, and

58
00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:22,679
Speaker 1: like the ruling cast was like a bunch of buds

59
00:03:23,600 --> 00:03:24,720
Speaker 1: fucking each other over.

60
00:03:24,880 --> 00:03:25,080
Speaker 2: You know.

61
00:03:25,720 --> 00:03:28,640
Speaker 3: The only thing that separates like, you know, your theory

62
00:03:28,720 --> 00:03:32,240
Speaker 3: reading group and the central Soviet is having a bunch

63
00:03:32,280 --> 00:03:34,880
Speaker 3: of people like Barrio willing to fill mass graves for you.

64
00:03:35,040 --> 00:03:38,840
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And that is how Stalin ruled in the

65
00:03:38,880 --> 00:03:41,960
Speaker 1: early days of the USSR. After Lenin died in Trotzky

66
00:03:42,040 --> 00:03:45,600
Speaker 1: was expelled, Stalin and his gang of buddies ruled from

67
00:03:45,640 --> 00:03:48,280
Speaker 1: a compound in the capitol and basically spent all of

68
00:03:48,320 --> 00:03:52,080
Speaker 1: their time together. Stalin's gang would use the familiar form

69
00:03:52,200 --> 00:03:54,880
Speaker 1: t y to refer to him, which I understand is

70
00:03:54,880 --> 00:03:57,240
Speaker 1: the Russian equivalent of like calling someone bro, but really

71
00:03:57,280 --> 00:03:59,840
Speaker 1: meaning it right, like this big. It's the same thing

72
00:03:59,840 --> 00:04:01,920
Speaker 1: that people in Hitler's inner circle would use, like the

73
00:04:01,960 --> 00:04:04,880
Speaker 1: familiar term do with him, where it's like, we don't

74
00:04:04,920 --> 00:04:08,240
Speaker 1: really have this in English as like grammatical constructs, but

75
00:04:08,280 --> 00:04:11,000
Speaker 1: it's like casually referring to somebody instead of being like

76
00:04:11,600 --> 00:04:15,440
Speaker 1: grand you know, leader or fewer or whatever, you're like, hey, buddy,

77
00:04:15,680 --> 00:04:19,000
Speaker 1: you know it only really you know, weird, you know

78
00:04:19,040 --> 00:04:24,880
Speaker 1: it's crazy in there. Oh my god. Definitely. So one

79
00:04:24,920 --> 00:04:28,480
Speaker 1: term you'll hear applied to Stalin's crew is commanda, which

80
00:04:28,520 --> 00:04:33,000
Speaker 1: is the Russian word for team. Sheila Fispatrick, author of

81
00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:35,920
Speaker 1: on Stalin's Team, which is a book about said team,

82
00:04:36,320 --> 00:04:40,240
Speaker 1: prefers this word. She uses the term team, but notes

83
00:04:40,320 --> 00:04:42,920
Speaker 1: quote alternatives are available. You could call it a gang

84
00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:45,400
Speaker 1: sika if you wanted to claim that its activities ruling

85
00:04:45,400 --> 00:04:48,279
Speaker 1: a country had an illegitimate quality that made them essentially

86
00:04:48,320 --> 00:04:50,880
Speaker 1: criminal rather than governmental. You could call it the polit

87
00:04:50,920 --> 00:04:53,479
Speaker 1: bureau that is, the executive organ of the Communist Party's

88
00:04:53,480 --> 00:04:56,680
Speaker 1: Central Committee, elected by a periodic party congresses, which is

89
00:04:56,720 --> 00:04:59,479
Speaker 1: semi correct since the membership was very similar, but owing

90
00:04:59,480 --> 00:05:03,080
Speaker 1: the Stalin preference for informal working groups, never quite the same.

91
00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:06,159
Speaker 1: Or you could call it a faction, another pejorative term

92
00:05:06,200 --> 00:05:09,880
Speaker 1: and Soviet discourse. For my part, when I read histories

93
00:05:09,880 --> 00:05:12,719
Speaker 1: that really discuss, especially the social dynamics of the people

94
00:05:12,760 --> 00:05:15,719
Speaker 1: around Stalin, I see a lot that's familiar to the

95
00:05:15,720 --> 00:05:19,560
Speaker 1: way that like cults of personality form online around influential

96
00:05:19,600 --> 00:05:22,839
Speaker 1: people who grow deranged and throw their followers into increasingly

97
00:05:22,880 --> 00:05:25,920
Speaker 1: aggressive crusades against whoever they hate. I'm thinking about a

98
00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:28,160
Speaker 1: specific moment on Twitter where a lady made chili for

99
00:05:28,240 --> 00:05:30,839
Speaker 1: somebody and it just brokes some people out of their

100
00:05:30,880 --> 00:05:33,440
Speaker 1: fucking minds because they were all friendsly of this one

101
00:05:33,480 --> 00:05:36,480
Speaker 1: fucking freak, and yeah, spend their time abusing each other

102
00:05:36,520 --> 00:05:36,719
Speaker 1: on the.

103
00:05:36,720 --> 00:05:38,960
Speaker 3: Internet or the door dash discourse.

104
00:05:41,240 --> 00:05:42,880
Speaker 1: Right, you get these like you get a couple of

105
00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:45,560
Speaker 1: influential people and then their hangers on and buddies and

106
00:05:45,600 --> 00:05:48,039
Speaker 1: they all just kind of like have these private little

107
00:05:48,080 --> 00:05:50,480
Speaker 1: groups where they chat and lose their minds together. Right,

108
00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:54,080
Speaker 1: That is kind of what happens with the gang around Stalin,

109
00:05:54,160 --> 00:05:57,960
Speaker 1: with him and his buddies, as they as the time

110
00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:00,920
Speaker 1: that they're in power gets longer, and thus the distance

111
00:06:00,960 --> 00:06:02,920
Speaker 1: between the period of time in which they lived anything

112
00:06:02,960 --> 00:06:05,960
Speaker 1: that resembled a normal life gets further away. You can

113
00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:08,800
Speaker 1: also see like when people get crazy rich suddenly, right,

114
00:06:09,120 --> 00:06:13,600
Speaker 1: how they increasingly lose touch with reality and eventually lose

115
00:06:13,680 --> 00:06:17,520
Speaker 1: their minds. Yeah, it's exactly. And these people, like, once

116
00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:19,560
Speaker 1: you're in power in the way that Stalin and his

117
00:06:19,560 --> 00:06:21,880
Speaker 1: friends are, you're able to bend a lot of reality

118
00:06:21,920 --> 00:06:24,839
Speaker 1: around you, and it does derange you to an extent. Right,

119
00:06:25,240 --> 00:06:27,560
Speaker 1: there's dynamic much power that much.

120
00:06:27,520 --> 00:06:31,000
Speaker 3: Well can end up normal regardless of what their intentions are.

121
00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:32,280
Speaker 3: It's fucking impossible.

122
00:06:32,400 --> 00:06:34,920
Speaker 1: The last thing Kanye got right before he lost his

123
00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:37,599
Speaker 1: mind for the same reasons. Right, No one man should

124
00:06:37,640 --> 00:06:40,760
Speaker 1: have all that power, No one friend group should have

125
00:06:40,800 --> 00:06:41,680
Speaker 1: all that power.

126
00:06:42,120 --> 00:06:44,159
Speaker 3: No one man should have that much power, and that

127
00:06:44,279 --> 00:06:46,080
Speaker 3: one man should not have a record deal.

128
00:06:46,520 --> 00:06:50,760
Speaker 1: No, No, absolutely not so less sinister, but perhaps not

129
00:06:50,960 --> 00:06:54,240
Speaker 1: much less dangerous. I also see very normal dynamics of

130
00:06:54,279 --> 00:06:58,599
Speaker 1: friendship replicated in a situation where decision makers had absolutely

131
00:06:58,720 --> 00:07:03,000
Speaker 1: zero outside accountability or real access to the world outside

132
00:07:03,040 --> 00:07:05,520
Speaker 1: of their little circle of buds. And I'm going to

133
00:07:05,600 --> 00:07:08,560
Speaker 1: quote from Sheila again here, to a degree unusual among

134
00:07:08,600 --> 00:07:11,880
Speaker 1: political leaders, Stalin's political and social life were intertwined. He

135
00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:15,000
Speaker 1: socialized largely with the team in their Krimlin apartments or

136
00:07:15,040 --> 00:07:17,600
Speaker 1: out at his datcha. And by the way, when we

137
00:07:17,680 --> 00:07:19,480
Speaker 1: use the term datcha, this is like a normal thing.

138
00:07:19,600 --> 00:07:22,400
Speaker 1: And it's not just Russia, in Russian life, but like

139
00:07:22,480 --> 00:07:24,680
Speaker 1: I mean, it's normal in Ukraine too. Most a lot

140
00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:27,360
Speaker 1: of people have like a little country house. Sometimes it's

141
00:07:27,520 --> 00:07:29,800
Speaker 1: just like a little shack or a cabin, yeah, that

142
00:07:29,880 --> 00:07:31,640
Speaker 1: you like go to during the summer. You have a

143
00:07:31,680 --> 00:07:35,040
Speaker 1: garden there, you know. In Stalin's case, the datcha is

144
00:07:35,360 --> 00:07:38,760
Speaker 1: like a mansion, you know, but it's where you go

145
00:07:38,840 --> 00:07:40,680
Speaker 1: to hang out on the weekend to get away from it.

146
00:07:41,120 --> 00:07:47,080
Speaker 3: Not my people's revolutionary hero in his Soviet country house. Yeah,

147
00:07:47,400 --> 00:07:52,040
Speaker 3: all true. You know, revolutionaries for the common man have

148
00:07:52,240 --> 00:07:54,200
Speaker 3: multiple homes in picturesque places.

149
00:07:54,320 --> 00:07:57,760
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, very normal behavior. Yeah, so it is important

150
00:07:57,760 --> 00:08:00,680
Speaker 1: to note that Stalin's gang or friend group are not

151
00:08:00,760 --> 00:08:05,320
Speaker 1: just inconsequential toadies. While Stalin always exercised the ultimate power,

152
00:08:05,400 --> 00:08:07,520
Speaker 1: the men that he surrounded himself with were not just

153
00:08:07,680 --> 00:08:11,000
Speaker 1: there to like fluff him up. They ran important ministries

154
00:08:11,280 --> 00:08:14,440
Speaker 1: and sometimes did so competently. Right, Some of these guys

155
00:08:14,520 --> 00:08:17,000
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, at least in some situations. Now,

156
00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:19,400
Speaker 1: nearly all of them get into positions where the things

157
00:08:19,400 --> 00:08:22,240
Speaker 1: they have power with wildly exceed their capabilities.

158
00:08:22,320 --> 00:08:22,480
Speaker 3: Right.

159
00:08:22,520 --> 00:08:25,240
Speaker 1: That happens often, but they all most of them have

160
00:08:25,440 --> 00:08:29,480
Speaker 1: actual areas of expertise too, where they're actually reasonably competent,

161
00:08:29,760 --> 00:08:31,760
Speaker 1: which is why some stuff that, like, you know, the

162
00:08:31,840 --> 00:08:35,000
Speaker 1: USS are it's not the Nazis, right, the Nazis. The

163
00:08:35,040 --> 00:08:37,920
Speaker 1: only thing the Nazi state ever accomplishes is death. The

164
00:08:37,960 --> 00:08:41,520
Speaker 1: Soviet Union does stuff like completely reverse the state of

165
00:08:41,559 --> 00:08:45,959
Speaker 1: illiteracy in the Russian aaries right like, it has legitimate success.

166
00:08:46,800 --> 00:08:48,000
Speaker 1: It actually is a state.

167
00:08:48,240 --> 00:08:53,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, not every empire is like black and white evil

168
00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:56,040
Speaker 3: at the We all like to think of them that

169
00:08:56,040 --> 00:08:59,480
Speaker 3: way because it makes conceptualizing them much much easier. Yeah,

170
00:08:59,559 --> 00:09:02,400
Speaker 3: that they ever did anything good for their citizens, and

171
00:09:02,480 --> 00:09:05,800
Speaker 3: even the most horrific empires of all time. There wasn't

172
00:09:05,800 --> 00:09:09,240
Speaker 3: that positive for people in it for a period of

173
00:09:09,240 --> 00:09:11,720
Speaker 3: time until it hits its termal decline, right at some point.

174
00:09:11,760 --> 00:09:14,280
Speaker 1: Right, it's important to remember, like the USSR doesn't beat

175
00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:17,280
Speaker 1: the US to getting a man into space on accident. Right,

176
00:09:17,320 --> 00:09:20,640
Speaker 1: there were things they did well, right because unlike the Nazis,

177
00:09:20,640 --> 00:09:23,920
Speaker 1: they weren't just dedicated to murdering everything around them. You know,

178
00:09:24,240 --> 00:09:27,400
Speaker 1: there were things that were accomplished, and it's accomplished by

179
00:09:27,400 --> 00:09:29,160
Speaker 1: a lot of these guys. Right, they're parts of this

180
00:09:29,400 --> 00:09:32,280
Speaker 1: because they're not bad at everything. So you know the

181
00:09:32,360 --> 00:09:34,960
Speaker 1: kind of core group what becomes the core group because

182
00:09:34,960 --> 00:09:37,400
Speaker 1: Barry is not part of Stalin's inner circle yet, but

183
00:09:37,760 --> 00:09:40,200
Speaker 1: as you know, if you watch the movie Death of Stalin,

184
00:09:40,240 --> 00:09:43,520
Speaker 1: it eventually includes guys like Molotov of the Molotov Ribbon Trot,

185
00:09:43,600 --> 00:09:48,200
Speaker 1: packed our buddy Laveria Malankov, Nikita Krushchev. You know, these

186
00:09:48,200 --> 00:09:50,440
Speaker 1: guys are all kind of they're not all in his

187
00:09:50,520 --> 00:09:52,840
Speaker 1: inner circle yet, but they're kind of coming together in

188
00:09:52,880 --> 00:09:54,800
Speaker 1: his inner circle during this period of time.

189
00:09:54,720 --> 00:09:57,839
Speaker 3: Around drinking and watching cowboy movies. They which was.

190
00:10:00,000 --> 00:10:02,959
Speaker 1: I hated doing that, Stalin loved to make them do that. Yes,

191
00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:05,320
Speaker 1: it's the thing that he did that I like the most. Like,

192
00:10:05,400 --> 00:10:07,439
Speaker 1: un ironically, that's pretty cool.

193
00:10:07,920 --> 00:10:10,240
Speaker 3: It's like an ultimate flexx is We're gonna sit around

194
00:10:10,240 --> 00:10:15,720
Speaker 3: watching shitty spaghetti westerns like Blackout and pissing on yourselves

195
00:10:15,720 --> 00:10:18,320
Speaker 3: from my own entertainment. It's kind of be a version

196
00:10:18,320 --> 00:10:19,000
Speaker 3: of a court jester.

197
00:10:19,360 --> 00:10:24,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, exactly people's jester. So for a man of

198
00:10:24,040 --> 00:10:26,840
Speaker 1: Barry's ambition in this period, rising up the ranks of

199
00:10:26,840 --> 00:10:29,320
Speaker 1: the Cheka in Georgia and making a name for himself

200
00:10:29,720 --> 00:10:32,480
Speaker 1: was like, this was not his ultimate goal. This was

201
00:10:32,520 --> 00:10:35,200
Speaker 1: he saw it as an integral part of his plan

202
00:10:35,320 --> 00:10:38,520
Speaker 1: to worm his way into Stalin's gang. And Barry it

203
00:10:38,600 --> 00:10:41,600
Speaker 1: was savvy enough to recognize that emulating the Great leader's

204
00:10:41,679 --> 00:10:44,000
Speaker 1: tactics was what was going to help him form his

205
00:10:44,040 --> 00:10:47,360
Speaker 1: own power base within Georgia and later the USSR. So

206
00:10:47,480 --> 00:10:49,959
Speaker 1: Barry began to gather a gang of the worst killers

207
00:10:49,960 --> 00:10:54,720
Speaker 1: and rapists in the Secret Police around himself. They socialized together. Yeah, yeah,

208
00:10:54,720 --> 00:10:59,320
Speaker 1: he's kind of doing a mimicry of Stalin's inner circle, right,

209
00:10:59,520 --> 00:11:02,040
Speaker 1: you know, he gets these guys together, they hang out together,

210
00:11:02,120 --> 00:11:05,360
Speaker 1: they socialize, they eat, they drink, they brainstorm new methods

211
00:11:05,400 --> 00:11:06,320
Speaker 1: of torturing people.

212
00:11:06,880 --> 00:11:10,360
Speaker 3: Just normal everyday guy stuff. Yeah, just guys, be bros.

213
00:11:10,440 --> 00:11:15,120
Speaker 1: You know. Victor Surge a Russian Marxist revolutionary who fought

214
00:11:15,160 --> 00:11:17,160
Speaker 1: as a Bolshevik. He starts out as an anarchist, but

215
00:11:17,200 --> 00:11:20,200
Speaker 1: he fights as a Bolshevik during the revolution and becomes

216
00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:23,280
Speaker 1: a critic of Stalin described Baria and his friends this way.

217
00:11:23,679 --> 00:11:27,040
Speaker 1: The only temperaments that devoted themselves willingly and tenaciously to

218
00:11:27,080 --> 00:11:31,679
Speaker 1: this task of internal defense were those characterized by suspicion, embitterment, harshness,

219
00:11:31,679 --> 00:11:35,000
Speaker 1: and sadism. The check has inevitably consisted of perverted men

220
00:11:35,080 --> 00:11:37,600
Speaker 1: tending to see conspiracy everywhere and to live in the

221
00:11:37,600 --> 00:11:42,160
Speaker 1: midst of perpetual conspiracy themselves. Now this is part two,

222
00:11:42,280 --> 00:11:44,320
Speaker 1: and I'm sure after part one we've already got some

223
00:11:44,360 --> 00:11:48,480
Speaker 1: weird Soviet Union stands attacking these episodes as anti Communist propaganda,

224
00:11:48,520 --> 00:11:50,920
Speaker 1: which is why I bring up Surge. Most of the

225
00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:55,120
Speaker 1: lurid details of Barious crimes come from other Communists, because

226
00:11:55,120 --> 00:11:58,480
Speaker 1: that's mostly who he murdered. At this point. In fact,

227
00:11:58,559 --> 00:12:01,640
Speaker 1: Barria's biographers spend a lot of time busting myths about

228
00:12:01,720 --> 00:12:04,520
Speaker 1: him by other communists because some of those guys were

229
00:12:04,559 --> 00:12:06,200
Speaker 1: just making up shit about him to hide their own

230
00:12:06,280 --> 00:12:09,600
Speaker 1: crimes in the post Stalinist era. Not Surge though. I

231
00:12:09,600 --> 00:12:13,600
Speaker 1: think he's a pretty reasonable on the ball dude, and

232
00:12:13,640 --> 00:12:15,680
Speaker 1: we'll stop talking about him soon. But I do want

233
00:12:15,679 --> 00:12:19,800
Speaker 1: to show Joe a picture of Victor Surge, because my god,

234
00:12:19,840 --> 00:12:21,679
Speaker 1: this guy had Look at the drip on this man.

235
00:12:21,920 --> 00:12:25,880
Speaker 1: Look at this outfit, Sophie, look at that.

236
00:12:26,480 --> 00:12:27,280
Speaker 3: Oh the hell?

237
00:12:27,480 --> 00:12:30,760
Speaker 1: Yeah that he's got like a fucking like fur lined

238
00:12:30,880 --> 00:12:33,640
Speaker 1: cape on a military uniform. He's got these like circle

239
00:12:33,640 --> 00:12:38,240
Speaker 1: glassle he's got his hair slicked back like he's just undeniable.

240
00:12:38,320 --> 00:12:40,720
Speaker 3: Drip. You can he looks like he's about to fight

241
00:12:40,760 --> 00:12:43,800
Speaker 3: the photographer. Yes, he sure does. He's got that look

242
00:12:43,840 --> 00:12:50,040
Speaker 3: on his face. Just incredible drip. Now.

243
00:12:50,240 --> 00:12:55,760
Speaker 1: Another Georgian, Jaranti Kikozzi, described barious checkists this way as

244
00:12:55,880 --> 00:12:58,560
Speaker 1: quote men without kith or kin, who in most cases

245
00:12:58,600 --> 00:13:01,120
Speaker 1: knew no trade, had no ad ucation, and were skilled

246
00:13:01,160 --> 00:13:04,240
Speaker 1: only an espionage and murder. Some were sadists by nature.

247
00:13:04,280 --> 00:13:07,840
Speaker 1: Some entered the service as insurance for themselves. And this

248
00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:10,560
Speaker 1: is definitely in line with how most people want to

249
00:13:10,640 --> 00:13:12,800
Speaker 1: view the kind of humans who carry out crimes of

250
00:13:12,840 --> 00:13:16,240
Speaker 1: this nature, but I don't really think it's broadly accurate.

251
00:13:16,440 --> 00:13:18,160
Speaker 1: It's at least I mean, there's some guys that that

252
00:13:18,320 --> 00:13:21,240
Speaker 1: is absolutely a fitting description of who are in the cheka,

253
00:13:21,280 --> 00:13:24,760
Speaker 1: but it doesn't fit everybody. Biographer Amy Knight tells the

254
00:13:24,800 --> 00:13:27,280
Speaker 1: story of a check a man named Schulmann, and it's

255
00:13:27,280 --> 00:13:31,800
Speaker 1: like shul apostrophe m a n He was responsible for

256
00:13:31,840 --> 00:13:34,600
Speaker 1: guarding prisons and carrying out executions, and is known to

257
00:13:34,640 --> 00:13:37,320
Speaker 1: have murdered at least three hundred people with his bare hands.

258
00:13:38,040 --> 00:13:40,280
Speaker 1: God Like, I don't know if he was strangled like like,

259
00:13:40,400 --> 00:13:42,840
Speaker 1: but like personally killed three hundred people, right.

260
00:13:42,920 --> 00:13:45,640
Speaker 3: Like, once you start hitting the hundreds, he probably switches

261
00:13:45,679 --> 00:13:47,680
Speaker 3: it up just to keep Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

262
00:13:47,880 --> 00:13:50,040
Speaker 1: You want to avoid getting like the murderer's equivalent of

263
00:13:50,040 --> 00:13:51,120
Speaker 1: tennis elbow.

264
00:13:53,080 --> 00:13:57,080
Speaker 3: Murderer's niece in the Tommy John surgery because you blow

265
00:13:57,080 --> 00:14:00,640
Speaker 3: out your elbow killing political Yeah yeah, yeah, you get fucking.

266
00:14:00,320 --> 00:14:03,280
Speaker 1: Carpoald tunnel because you're strangling so many dudes.

267
00:14:03,920 --> 00:14:05,720
Speaker 3: Doctor said, I got to do a knife next.

268
00:14:05,840 --> 00:14:12,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a medicinal gutting knife. So despite this, and

269
00:14:12,360 --> 00:14:17,200
Speaker 1: contrary to Kekozzi's description, Shulman was a family man, you know,

270
00:14:17,280 --> 00:14:19,480
Speaker 1: outside of his murdering job. He's known as being like

271
00:14:19,520 --> 00:14:22,760
Speaker 1: a pretty good husband and father and seems to have been.

272
00:14:22,760 --> 00:14:25,240
Speaker 1: He's described as being inclined by nature to just be

273
00:14:25,280 --> 00:14:28,640
Speaker 1: a bureaucrat, a paper pusher. He was so not naturally

274
00:14:28,680 --> 00:14:30,600
Speaker 1: suited to being a killer that in order to psych

275
00:14:30,680 --> 00:14:34,200
Speaker 1: himself up to execute people, he had to quote in

276
00:14:34,280 --> 00:14:37,320
Speaker 1: This is Night writing, create in himself the necessary bloodthirsty

277
00:14:37,360 --> 00:14:40,480
Speaker 1: mood of the commandment of death by narcoticizing himself by

278
00:14:40,480 --> 00:14:43,280
Speaker 1: every means available and bringing himself to a complete state

279
00:14:43,320 --> 00:14:46,520
Speaker 1: of insanity. So he basically he has to get fucking

280
00:14:46,880 --> 00:14:49,760
Speaker 1: blackout drunk to murder people, right, because he just doesn't

281
00:14:49,800 --> 00:14:50,760
Speaker 1: quite equivalent of a.

282
00:14:50,720 --> 00:14:54,640
Speaker 3: Berserker, right, right, right? I Mean that's also a lot

283
00:14:54,680 --> 00:14:58,160
Speaker 3: of people want to believe the most simple thing, most easily,

284
00:14:58,440 --> 00:15:01,080
Speaker 3: the most thing easy for them to understan and to

285
00:15:01,160 --> 00:15:03,440
Speaker 3: them as a normal human being, is like, well, I

286
00:15:03,480 --> 00:15:05,480
Speaker 3: wouldn't do that. No one I know would do that.

287
00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:08,960
Speaker 3: Only insane, bloodthirsty maniacs would do something like that, And

288
00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:11,960
Speaker 3: that is just demonstrably untrue throughout history. Yeah, whether it

289
00:15:12,000 --> 00:15:17,680
Speaker 3: be dudes in the Checha ss Indset's group in Gestapo,

290
00:15:17,800 --> 00:15:21,440
Speaker 3: you name it, Like, the vast majority of people are normal,

291
00:15:21,560 --> 00:15:25,800
Speaker 3: and that is why it's terrifying. That's easy alt bloodthirsty psychopaths.

292
00:15:25,800 --> 00:15:27,440
Speaker 3: But the reason why it's scary is because it's it

293
00:15:27,480 --> 00:15:28,640
Speaker 3: could be your fucking neighbor.

294
00:15:29,360 --> 00:15:31,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are don't don't get me wrong. There

295
00:15:31,800 --> 00:15:34,000
Speaker 1: are a number, a higher number than average, and an

296
00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:35,840
Speaker 1: average group of people among the czech I just like

297
00:15:35,880 --> 00:15:39,680
Speaker 1: the ass are fucking bug fuck nuts. Oh, but not

298
00:15:39,920 --> 00:15:42,320
Speaker 1: most of them at any given point in time, because.

299
00:15:42,120 --> 00:15:44,000
Speaker 3: They're just normal people.

300
00:15:44,280 --> 00:15:47,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like you need more people than just the crazies

301
00:15:47,640 --> 00:15:50,400
Speaker 1: to get all this killing done. You know. Now, we

302
00:15:50,480 --> 00:15:53,360
Speaker 1: don't know how many people Barria had executed in Georgia

303
00:15:53,440 --> 00:15:56,920
Speaker 1: during this period. Former chechist Dumbadzi, a major source on

304
00:15:57,040 --> 00:15:59,960
Speaker 1: Baria in this time, estimates that about eighty percent of

305
00:16:00,080 --> 00:16:03,440
Speaker 1: executions were never publicized. Right, so we just will not

306
00:16:03,640 --> 00:16:06,440
Speaker 1: know how many people were killed. One of the bloodiest

307
00:16:06,440 --> 00:16:08,960
Speaker 1: moments in Bria's tenure came after a rebel leader, if

308
00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:13,000
Speaker 1: Aliko Zugeli, was captured. He had been planning a revolt

309
00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:15,480
Speaker 1: and once he gets captured, he begs the Cheka, hey,

310
00:16:15,840 --> 00:16:18,640
Speaker 1: let me tell my comrades don't do this, like give

311
00:16:18,760 --> 00:16:20,960
Speaker 1: up trying to fight the state. It'll save a lot

312
00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:23,200
Speaker 1: of lives. But Barry is like, no, no, no, we

313
00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:26,600
Speaker 1: want there to be an uprising because when there's an uprising,

314
00:16:26,880 --> 00:16:28,880
Speaker 1: then we can kill a bunch of people. Right then

315
00:16:28,880 --> 00:16:30,840
Speaker 1: we can actually get rid of these folks rather than

316
00:16:30,880 --> 00:16:33,680
Speaker 1: letting them lie dormant in the state. And for a

317
00:16:33,720 --> 00:16:36,040
Speaker 1: few days, this revolution carries off, and it's like a

318
00:16:36,080 --> 00:16:39,600
Speaker 1: Menshevik uprising right against the Bolsheviks. It has a lot

319
00:16:39,640 --> 00:16:42,440
Speaker 1: of particularly and kind of like the rural and areas

320
00:16:42,440 --> 00:16:45,280
Speaker 1: outside of the big cities. They hold a decent amount

321
00:16:45,280 --> 00:16:47,960
Speaker 1: of territory for a while, right again, mostly in these

322
00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:50,600
Speaker 1: areas where the Mensheviks had been dominant. But by September

323
00:16:50,640 --> 00:16:53,520
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty three, the Cheka had cracked down, arresting

324
00:16:53,560 --> 00:16:56,160
Speaker 1: the ringleaders, and Baria made an offer to the arrested

325
00:16:56,200 --> 00:16:59,360
Speaker 1: prisoners as they awaited execution. You are defeated, but the

326
00:16:59,360 --> 00:17:01,720
Speaker 1: fighting contains use here and there. You the Committee, are

327
00:17:01,760 --> 00:17:05,040
Speaker 1: able to stop these armed detachments. Make a declaration urging

328
00:17:05,119 --> 00:17:07,479
Speaker 1: these isolated attachments to put down their arms, and on

329
00:17:07,800 --> 00:17:10,159
Speaker 1: our side, we will not harm them. We will stop

330
00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:12,080
Speaker 1: all the rests and mass executions.

331
00:17:12,800 --> 00:17:14,080
Speaker 3: I feel like that was a lie.

332
00:17:14,920 --> 00:17:17,320
Speaker 1: Look, if you are carrying out an uprising and the

333
00:17:17,359 --> 00:17:19,639
Speaker 1: people say, if you give up and go home, we

334
00:17:19,680 --> 00:17:22,800
Speaker 1: won't kill any of you, They're absolutely going to kill

335
00:17:22,840 --> 00:17:23,199
Speaker 1: all of you.

336
00:17:23,480 --> 00:17:24,160
Speaker 3: Right, I can't believe.

337
00:17:24,160 --> 00:17:27,280
Speaker 1: I can't trust levent I Beria. I know who can

338
00:17:27,320 --> 00:17:28,439
Speaker 1: you even trust anymore?

339
00:17:28,480 --> 00:17:30,200
Speaker 3: If not Baria.

340
00:17:30,320 --> 00:17:33,680
Speaker 1: So the arrested leaders signed a document in which they

341
00:17:33,720 --> 00:17:39,080
Speaker 1: identified themselves as upper class revolutionaries, which was not entirely true,

342
00:17:39,840 --> 00:17:42,320
Speaker 1: and once Barria has this document, he uses it as

343
00:17:42,320 --> 00:17:45,320
Speaker 1: the pretext to carry out mass arrests and executions anyway,

344
00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:48,320
Speaker 1: using this sign confession to publicize that the uprising had

345
00:17:48,359 --> 00:17:51,960
Speaker 1: really been like wealthy, recidivist spoil sports trying to end

346
00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:55,600
Speaker 1: the people's revolution. This provided all the justification needed for

347
00:17:55,640 --> 00:17:58,639
Speaker 1: a full purging of the countryside and all remaining Menshevik

348
00:17:58,720 --> 00:18:03,200
Speaker 1: sympathizers Therein night rights, armed detachments composed of army and

349
00:18:03,280 --> 00:18:06,400
Speaker 1: Cheka troops raided villages and killed entire families and one

350
00:18:06,440 --> 00:18:09,560
Speaker 1: Georgian village, all families bearing one particular last name were

351
00:18:09,560 --> 00:18:13,200
Speaker 1: completely annihilated, including women and small children. Some estimates on

352
00:18:13,240 --> 00:18:15,639
Speaker 1: the number of those arrested and executed by the Cheka

353
00:18:15,760 --> 00:18:18,640
Speaker 1: ranged as high as seven thousand to ten thousand, including

354
00:18:18,680 --> 00:18:23,360
Speaker 1: prominent Menshevik leaders. Good God, So yeah, got to get

355
00:18:23,400 --> 00:18:24,200
Speaker 1: those kids killed.

356
00:18:24,240 --> 00:18:27,840
Speaker 3: You know those kids are plotting. Yeah, you know, they're

357
00:18:27,840 --> 00:18:29,320
Speaker 3: not going to go to bed on time, They're not

358
00:18:29,359 --> 00:18:31,560
Speaker 3: gonna want to go to school in the morning. Can't

359
00:18:31,600 --> 00:18:33,600
Speaker 3: handle that kind of kind of revolutionary behavior.

360
00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:36,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's we go back to like the killing

361
00:18:36,240 --> 00:18:38,240
Speaker 1: of the czar and his family. And I think it

362
00:18:38,240 --> 00:18:40,800
Speaker 1: was absolutely justified to kill the czar and his wife, right,

363
00:18:41,080 --> 00:18:43,719
Speaker 1: they had done sure, committed crimes against humanity, They had

364
00:18:43,760 --> 00:18:45,920
Speaker 1: millions of deaths on their hands. What else are you

365
00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:48,320
Speaker 1: supposed to do to those people? But when you kill

366
00:18:48,359 --> 00:18:51,399
Speaker 1: their kids, And I've heard the counter argument that, like, well,

367
00:18:51,640 --> 00:18:54,080
Speaker 1: you know, these people had been so brutalized by the czars,

368
00:18:54,160 --> 00:18:55,760
Speaker 1: if those kids were alive, they would have been a

369
00:18:55,760 --> 00:18:59,400
Speaker 1: threat to the revolution. And like, I understand how that

370
00:18:59,440 --> 00:19:03,200
Speaker 1: logic can take hold, But the unfortunate reality is when

371
00:19:03,240 --> 00:19:06,080
Speaker 1: you start your revolution by murdering kids, you tend to

372
00:19:06,160 --> 00:19:07,199
Speaker 1: keep murdering kids.

373
00:19:07,480 --> 00:19:10,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, that wall has been broken down. Yeah, yeah, like

374
00:19:10,680 --> 00:19:14,919
Speaker 3: that taboo no longer exists, even though it should. And

375
00:19:15,080 --> 00:19:18,200
Speaker 3: like you know, there's troubling parts of history that were

376
00:19:18,240 --> 00:19:22,760
Speaker 3: like you can simultaneously understand the motivations of a group

377
00:19:22,800 --> 00:19:26,480
Speaker 3: of people while also saying, yeah, that was incredibly fucked yup.

378
00:19:26,840 --> 00:19:29,240
Speaker 1: It's like Nat Turner's rebellion where they killed the children

379
00:19:29,240 --> 00:19:32,120
Speaker 1: of slave owners, and it's like, I get where their

380
00:19:32,160 --> 00:19:35,080
Speaker 1: heads are right to the extent that it's possible, but

381
00:19:35,160 --> 00:19:38,040
Speaker 1: those kids didn't do anything because they're babies, you know,

382
00:19:38,240 --> 00:19:41,560
Speaker 1: Like it's both of those things can be true. So,

383
00:19:42,119 --> 00:19:44,600
Speaker 1: as is usually the case of this period of time,

384
00:19:44,680 --> 00:19:48,000
Speaker 1: these corpses are tossed into mass graves and buried in secret,

385
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:50,680
Speaker 1: which is a deliberate provocation to the cultural values of

386
00:19:50,720 --> 00:19:54,120
Speaker 1: the Georgian countryside in which Barria had been raised. Funerals

387
00:19:54,119 --> 00:19:57,440
Speaker 1: are like this huge community endeavor, like where everybody gets

388
00:19:57,480 --> 00:19:59,800
Speaker 1: together there. It is supposed to be a thing with

389
00:19:59,840 --> 00:20:02,480
Speaker 1: a lot of ceremony to it. And so this is

390
00:20:02,520 --> 00:20:05,840
Speaker 1: specifically like him kind of turning his back on a

391
00:20:05,840 --> 00:20:08,760
Speaker 1: lot of the culture he had been raised in by

392
00:20:08,800 --> 00:20:11,240
Speaker 1: wiping out these people and then denying them any kind

393
00:20:11,240 --> 00:20:12,960
Speaker 1: of acknowledgment that they'd ever existed.

394
00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:16,520
Speaker 3: You know that that's unsurprising because like the Soviet Union,

395
00:20:16,560 --> 00:20:20,000
Speaker 3: as a whole is a project of Russian chauvinism, and

396
00:20:20,160 --> 00:20:23,200
Speaker 3: as a Georgian man, he has to go above and

397
00:20:23,240 --> 00:20:27,480
Speaker 3: beyond divorcing himself from his Georgian identity to advance in

398
00:20:27,600 --> 00:20:28,160
Speaker 3: the culture.

399
00:20:28,480 --> 00:20:30,320
Speaker 1: And that is definitely the argument you'll hear from a

400
00:20:30,320 --> 00:20:32,600
Speaker 1: lot of writers, you know, especially ones who like are

401
00:20:32,720 --> 00:20:35,359
Speaker 1: kind of writing more from the Georgian perspective about this guy.

402
00:20:35,880 --> 00:20:38,080
Speaker 1: And it works, by the way, in terms of like

403
00:20:38,200 --> 00:20:41,000
Speaker 1: us making his name right. This is his first foray

404
00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:44,439
Speaker 1: into real mass killing, and Stalin takes note of the

405
00:20:44,480 --> 00:20:47,160
Speaker 1: fact that, like, ah, this guy is a talented amateur.

406
00:20:47,240 --> 00:20:48,720
Speaker 1: You know, we might want to bring this guy in

407
00:20:48,760 --> 00:20:50,520
Speaker 1: a little bit, see how many more people he could kill?

408
00:20:50,600 --> 00:20:53,440
Speaker 1: Voris But the sheer scale of your amateur how would

409
00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:55,399
Speaker 1: you like to go pro? Yeah? How would you like

410
00:20:55,480 --> 00:20:59,199
Speaker 1: to be the the Travis Kelcey of filling mass graves?

411
00:20:59,200 --> 00:21:03,240
Speaker 1: Did I say name right? Zoviy nailed it. So the

412
00:21:03,320 --> 00:21:07,400
Speaker 1: sheer scale of the violence necessitated some backpedaling from Moscow

413
00:21:07,480 --> 00:21:10,440
Speaker 1: as well. In October of nineteen twenty four, they released

414
00:21:10,440 --> 00:21:13,640
Speaker 1: a report from a commission which basically concluded that unreliable

415
00:21:13,680 --> 00:21:17,439
Speaker 1: elements in the Cheka had gone too far. Some of

416
00:21:17,440 --> 00:21:21,280
Speaker 1: these people were disappeared, but not Barria. For the next

417
00:21:21,320 --> 00:21:23,560
Speaker 1: three years through nineteen twenty six, he would have his

418
00:21:23,640 --> 00:21:26,160
Speaker 1: men shoot at least five hundred Communists who were allegedly

419
00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:28,560
Speaker 1: too close to the old Minsheviks for the new regime's comfort.

420
00:21:28,920 --> 00:21:31,480
Speaker 1: Barry was promoted in nineteen twenty six to chairman of

421
00:21:31,520 --> 00:21:34,479
Speaker 1: the GPU, which is the current name that the secret

422
00:21:34,480 --> 00:21:37,440
Speaker 1: police that had succeeded the Cheka were under. I'm still

423
00:21:37,440 --> 00:21:39,080
Speaker 1: going to wind up calling them the check a sum.

424
00:21:39,160 --> 00:21:41,040
Speaker 1: It's the GPU, now you get it. We don't need

425
00:21:41,119 --> 00:21:44,840
Speaker 1: that same thing. It's the same deaf baby. He survived

426
00:21:44,840 --> 00:21:48,000
Speaker 1: at least one assassination attempt, and, according to some accounts,

427
00:21:48,119 --> 00:21:50,720
Speaker 1: rather heroically fired on the people trying to kill him

428
00:21:50,760 --> 00:21:54,280
Speaker 1: to allow several other wounded chechists to escape. He receives

429
00:21:54,320 --> 00:21:57,120
Speaker 1: an award for bravery. Who knows if this is true? Right,

430
00:21:57,560 --> 00:22:00,919
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like him, because that sound like him. He

431
00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:03,320
Speaker 1: also owed much of his success to the man who

432
00:22:03,359 --> 00:22:05,880
Speaker 1: was his superior for a good chunk of this period,

433
00:22:06,240 --> 00:22:09,480
Speaker 1: Sergo or Zonikids, who I will not be saying that

434
00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:11,840
Speaker 1: last name anymore. We're gonna call him Sergo from now on.

435
00:22:12,640 --> 00:22:16,240
Speaker 1: Sergo Sergo winds up in Moscow around nineteen twenty seven

436
00:22:16,560 --> 00:22:19,640
Speaker 1: with this coveted position, right, like he's a He comes up,

437
00:22:19,800 --> 00:22:24,480
Speaker 1: you know, from the sticks, essentially gets this job in Moscow,

438
00:22:24,800 --> 00:22:27,639
Speaker 1: and he's close to Stalin, right, so he is going

439
00:22:27,720 --> 00:22:30,359
Speaker 1: to be the first kind of prominent guy who's gonna

440
00:22:30,359 --> 00:22:34,200
Speaker 1: feed praise, this like solid drip of praise about Barria

441
00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:38,000
Speaker 1: to Stalin. And it's Sergo who ensures that Barria doesn't

442
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:40,240
Speaker 1: get punished for this massacre of the Mensheviks when a

443
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:43,119
Speaker 1: bunch of other people do. And in return, Barria is

444
00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:47,800
Speaker 1: going to exhibit what's his primary and undeniable skill, which

445
00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:52,880
Speaker 1: is kissing ass. Right, this man licks boots with the

446
00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:55,720
Speaker 1: best of them, right, there are very few people have

447
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:59,840
Speaker 1: ever licked boots to more of a shine than fucking

448
00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:05,359
Speaker 1: Larenti Barrier. He names his son Sergo after this. He

449
00:23:05,480 --> 00:23:08,919
Speaker 1: sends in letters filled with oily praise, including lines like

450
00:23:09,320 --> 00:23:11,880
Speaker 1: your trust in me gives me all my energy, initiative

451
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:15,040
Speaker 1: and ability to work. Without you, Sergo, I would have

452
00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:17,480
Speaker 1: no one. You are more than a brother or father

453
00:23:17,600 --> 00:23:17,800
Speaker 1: to me.

454
00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:19,080
Speaker 3: You're my lover.

455
00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:25,560
Speaker 1: Just like six pages of describing as cock follows, they

456
00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:28,479
Speaker 1: just settled down and explored each other's Yeah yeah, then

457
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:29,240
Speaker 1: they get married.

458
00:23:30,840 --> 00:23:32,720
Speaker 3: He's too old for LAVENTI.

459
00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:38,000
Speaker 1: Mmmm, that is definitely true. Those same letters always included

460
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:40,920
Speaker 1: like in the midst of this, like oily praise rumors

461
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:44,280
Speaker 1: about the misbehavior of barious colleagues, like oh, I love

462
00:23:44,280 --> 00:23:46,360
Speaker 1: you so much. You know, you're the light of You're

463
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:48,960
Speaker 1: my own personal Jesus, the light of my life. Also,

464
00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:51,320
Speaker 1: let me tell you what this fucking dude in the

465
00:23:51,359 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 1: office one over is doing. Right, And this is probably

466
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 1: how he gets promoted to head the checka right because

467
00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:00,679
Speaker 1: he throws his then boss under the bush. He always

468
00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:03,119
Speaker 1: paints himself as an innocent. He would kind of describes

469
00:24:03,200 --> 00:24:05,960
Speaker 1: himself as naive, like I would never have thought that

470
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: my colleagues and the secret murder police would do secret murders.

471
00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:13,879
Speaker 3: How could this happen? Kiddy, I'm just I'm just a

472
00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:16,920
Speaker 3: little guy. I'm just a little funny lude.

473
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:19,840
Speaker 1: Now, obviously he's as corrupt as anybody else he's He

474
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:23,439
Speaker 1: acquires mansions and country homes during this period, often owned

475
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 1: by his former superiors who he helped get merged.

476
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:29,600
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how you're gonna get got right, Lavrenti

477
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:32,919
Speaker 3: Berryer's boss. You just secured your datcha from you know,

478
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:37,080
Speaker 3: the People's Central Committee of Reassigning Dachas or whatever the fuck.

479
00:24:37,800 --> 00:24:40,320
Speaker 3: And you know BARRYA comes over to visit, You're gonna

480
00:24:40,359 --> 00:24:42,840
Speaker 3: put some fucking cabbage on the grill or some shit,

481
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 3: and Barry's like, nice house, and then you have to

482
00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:48,200
Speaker 3: be like shit, shit shit.

483
00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: Fuck uh speaking of nice houses. If you want to

484
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:58,119
Speaker 1: make your house nicer, buy whatever comes on next. You know,

485
00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:01,400
Speaker 1: even if that's the Washington State Highway patrol by the fuckers.

486
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 1: Put him in your living room.

487
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:03,880
Speaker 3: You know. See if that.

488
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:05,919
Speaker 1: Works, they might show open your living room, whether you

489
00:25:05,920 --> 00:25:08,080
Speaker 1: buy them or not. If you live in Washington, it's

490
00:25:08,119 --> 00:25:08,920
Speaker 1: never impossible.

491
00:25:14,320 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 3: And we're back.

492
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:18,760
Speaker 1: So the abuses that Barria and other high ranking men

493
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:22,200
Speaker 1: in Georgia carried out generated enough complaints that in nineteen

494
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:25,879
Speaker 1: twenty nine, Stalin and Sergo ordered another committee investigation. And

495
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:28,879
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from Sangster's book here. Much of this

496
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: may have been prompted by Barria's letters of criticism about

497
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:34,360
Speaker 1: senior men, but he himself was aware that the investigation

498
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:37,719
Speaker 1: might look towards him, and cleverly warned Sergo that everyone

499
00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:40,360
Speaker 1: tended to blame him. It was in actute but crafty

500
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:43,400
Speaker 1: move of prophylactic self defense, pointing out that those under

501
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,680
Speaker 1: investigation would of course blame the GPU. In a letter

502
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:49,200
Speaker 1: to Sergo, he suggested that he should be transferred out

503
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:52,920
Speaker 1: of Georgia, undoubtedly seeking promotion, which is political mentor ignored.

504
00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:55,439
Speaker 1: But on the other hand he shielded Barria from criticism.

505
00:25:56,000 --> 00:25:58,680
Speaker 1: Hey man, I just want to let you know, everybody's

506
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:01,360
Speaker 1: gonna blame me for this shit I did. But it's

507
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 1: these other guy's fault. I'm just this little guy.

508
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 3: I arrested them. This is unfair. This is the worst

509
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 3: kind of discrimination against me.

510
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:13,120
Speaker 1: Do we really want to live in a state where

511
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: men can be punished simply for their actions the things

512
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:16,440
Speaker 1: they do?

513
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:19,200
Speaker 3: No, we fought against that.

514
00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 1: Now at the end of the nineteen twenties, this is

515
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 1: before the great terror or the holodomor has kicked off, right,

516
00:26:28,160 --> 00:26:31,239
Speaker 1: but an astute observer can see things ramping in that

517
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:35,160
Speaker 1: direction towards this period. During this period, one clear sign

518
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:38,360
Speaker 1: was the increasing brutality with which the regime treated peasants.

519
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:41,919
Speaker 1: A good deal of the theory that the branch of

520
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:45,000
Speaker 1: Marxist theory that these Bolsheviks are working under is focused

521
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 1: on like urban factory workers, right, which is the center

522
00:26:48,119 --> 00:26:51,240
Speaker 1: of Bolshevik power, right, rather than cities in the countryside.

523
00:26:51,359 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 1: You can see some of this is the fact that

524
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:57,040
Speaker 1: in Ukraine there's this big anarchist revolution that controls a

525
00:26:57,080 --> 00:26:59,760
Speaker 1: significant part of the land mass for a while, and

526
00:26:59,760 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: why ends up fighting against the Red Army, right, And

527
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:05,120
Speaker 1: it's because these are peasants, right, Peasants tend towards more

528
00:27:05,280 --> 00:27:08,040
Speaker 1: anarchists thought than they do towards this Bolshevik thought, because

529
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:11,560
Speaker 1: they're not all like laborers and factories, you know, right,

530
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: And Georgia.

531
00:27:12,200 --> 00:27:16,560
Speaker 3: Policies like adversely affect the normal everyday peasant, like they're

532
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 3: not serfs anymore, but like, yeah, they are still kind.

533
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:24,040
Speaker 1: Of yeah, and you know, the Mensheviks had kind of

534
00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:27,640
Speaker 1: been more popular with the peasantry in Georgia. And since

535
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: the Mensheviks are dead or hiding at this point, and

536
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:33,159
Speaker 1: the peasantry it's not going to be in anybody's good books,

537
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:33,560
Speaker 1: who's in it?

538
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:37,440
Speaker 3: What would the peasantry support them when their only contact

539
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:39,680
Speaker 3: of them is the death squad showing up and wiping

540
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:41,240
Speaker 3: out villages, right.

541
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:45,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's your primary interaction with the government. So barry

542
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: A focuses on the peasantry next, massively escalating the confiscation

543
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,679
Speaker 1: of lands and shooting so many peasants that it provokes

544
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,120
Speaker 1: another uprising. And the idea here this is justified as

545
00:27:54,400 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 1: you've got a bunch of peasants who have huge tracts

546
00:27:57,040 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: of land, and there are some wealthy peasants with a

547
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,439
Speaker 1: lot of land and it's getting reappropriated. A lot of

548
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,359
Speaker 1: this is like people who are maybe middle class or

549
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:09,320
Speaker 1: people who just aren't Marxists, you know, but are not

550
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 1: like wealthy peasants. Right, so everyone, you know, both people

551
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:16,360
Speaker 1: who own these vast tracts of land and also people

552
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:17,760
Speaker 1: who just have like a small farm. A lot of

553
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:19,359
Speaker 1: them get caught up in this and a lot of

554
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:20,159
Speaker 1: them get killed.

555
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:23,359
Speaker 3: And so then they say that they're all part of

556
00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:24,000
Speaker 3: these you know.

557
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:28,040
Speaker 1: Yes ulocks or yeah they're coulocks. Yes, and this you know,

558
00:28:28,080 --> 00:28:31,560
Speaker 1: this uprising that Baria kind of insights. It plays well

559
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:35,040
Speaker 1: with Stalin's Revolution from Above, which is a program to

560
00:28:35,119 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: industrialize the country that involve the forcible confiscation of lands.

561
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:42,360
Speaker 1: Peasants were not happy selling their grain for the low

562
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: prices mandated by the state. And thus the wealthiest of

563
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 1: the peasants had to be wiped out. That's at least

564
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 1: the justification at the top. In October of nineteen twenty nine,

565
00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:53,400
Speaker 1: just three point five percent of households in Georgia had

566
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:57,160
Speaker 1: been collectivized. A year later, more than sixty percent were

567
00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:01,040
Speaker 1: This is a rapid change. You can only make a

568
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:06,240
Speaker 1: change like this through hideous, wild violence in Georgia. Barria

569
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:09,120
Speaker 1: was the man who orchestrated it. In one noteworthy case,

570
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 1: he shut down and uprising by peasants by again promising like, hey,

571
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 1: if you all go home, you'll get amnesty. And then

572
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 1: I need to tell you what he does. Right, he

573
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:20,280
Speaker 1: shoots the fuckers. You know, Stalin loves all this. He

574
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,080
Speaker 1: grows closer to Barrier. But the unthinkable scale of the

575
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: violence caused outrage across the Caucuses, and Stalin wrote an

576
00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 1: article in Pravda. And this article is generally known as

577
00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 1: the dizzy with Success article. And it's it's interesting get

578
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:34,960
Speaker 1: you see a lot about Stalin in this where he

579
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:37,320
Speaker 1: frames it. He starts by talking about, like the staggering

580
00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:41,440
Speaker 1: success of the collectivization movement. Right, you know, we've done

581
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 1: this so fast, no one guessed that we could have

582
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:45,719
Speaker 1: done it this fast and done it this well. What

583
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 1: an incredible achievement. But then he goes on to note

584
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 1: the successes have their seamy side, especially when they are

585
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:55,880
Speaker 1: attained with comparative ease unexpectedly. So to speak, such successes

586
00:29:55,960 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 1: sometimes induce the spirit of vanity and conceit we can

587
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 1: achieve anything, there's nothing we can't do. People not infrequently

588
00:30:02,280 --> 00:30:05,840
Speaker 1: become intoxicated by such successes. They become dizzy with success,

589
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:09,600
Speaker 1: lose all sense of proportion and the capacity to understand realities.

590
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:12,960
Speaker 1: The article continues with a bunch of fun claims, like

591
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:16,720
Speaker 1: when Stalin claims that the success of collectivization rested entirely

592
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:20,560
Speaker 1: on the voluntary character of the collective farm movement. Right,

593
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: we did this all and everyone volunteered to have their

594
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: farms taken away, and then everybody clapped, and then everybody clapped.

595
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:31,320
Speaker 1: Now the real purpose of this article. It's framed as like,

596
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: what a success, But he's slamming the brakes on the

597
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 1: collectivization profit process because, like, it turns out that disrupting

598
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: the way that all your food is made kind of

599
00:30:40,720 --> 00:30:43,520
Speaker 1: causes problems. And this is again, you know, when I

600
00:30:43,560 --> 00:30:45,160
Speaker 1: was a kid. This was framed as like a unique

601
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: evil of the Soviet system, all of these famines caused

602
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 1: by this collectivization. This is not wildly different from what

603
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:55,080
Speaker 1: the East India Company does in a capitalist terms in

604
00:30:55,080 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 1: India in the late seventeen hundreds, which kills thirty million people.

605
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:00,440
Speaker 1: It's this idea where you get guys who are not farmers,

606
00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: who don't know shit, but are sure that the farmers

607
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 1: are dumb ingrates who don't know the most efficient way

608
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:07,240
Speaker 1: to do things and change.

609
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 3: Every about the top. But I'm sure you're doing it wrong.

610
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, exactly, And when you do that with where

611
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:16,840
Speaker 1: all the food comes from, you're going to have issues,

612
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: which is why they need to slam the brakes on

613
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:23,760
Speaker 1: this shit to an extent. Barria and his boss, Stalin's

614
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:26,840
Speaker 1: brother in law, a guy called Reddens, wrote another letter

615
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 1: blaming a bunch of other officers in his Aerbijan and

616
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:32,560
Speaker 1: Armenia and Georgia for the brutality of collectivization and the

617
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 1: fact that it had caused shortages and stuff like tea

618
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 1: night writes quote Baria and Reddins painted a grim picture

619
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 1: of the situation in the Transcaucasian countryside deliberately exaggerating the

620
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:47,280
Speaker 1: extent of anti Soviet rioting and protests. Apparently they felt

621
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:49,480
Speaker 1: that the GPU had not been given enough leverage to

622
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:52,480
Speaker 1: suppress these actions because they claimed that the situation was

623
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: exacerbated by the mildness of the authorities and dealing with

624
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 1: the Kulaks and other rebels, which is very cop brained.

625
00:31:58,720 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 3: Shit.

626
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 1: Wow, all the brutality we did add consequences. It's probably

627
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: because we weren't allowed to be brutal enough. You know,

628
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 1: that would have solved it.

629
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:11,440
Speaker 3: We would have truly been able to bring the hammer

630
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:14,400
Speaker 3: down and secure this place if it wasn't for woke.

631
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 1: If it wasn't for the woke peasantry. I guess so

632
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter, Barry is gonna throw Raidens under the bus too.

633
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: He claims that Reddins had smashed down the door of

634
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:28,600
Speaker 1: a female colleague's home and had drunken rage and gotten

635
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 1: so hammered that he walked home naked. He makes a

636
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: lot of claims about how like drunken and abusive this

637
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 1: guy is. They all may have been true, right, you know, sure,

638
00:32:37,520 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 1: Whether or not it is, though, doesn't matter. What matters

639
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:43,560
Speaker 1: is that it worked. Stalin transferred Reddins, and by November

640
00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty, Barria was a member of the Georgian

641
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:49,960
Speaker 1: Central Committee. By this point, he's also a friend to

642
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: Stalin's Another assassination attempt may have contributed to the growing romance.

643
00:32:54,600 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 1: There's a story that like a gunman tries to kill

644
00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:00,440
Speaker 1: Stalin and barr A shields him with his body, may

645
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:01,440
Speaker 1: or may not have been true.

646
00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 3: Who knows? Does that sound like Barria?

647
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:06,680
Speaker 1: Also though it would sound like Barria to have a

648
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 1: guy try to shoot Stalin like so he can throw

649
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:13,600
Speaker 1: his body in front of the leader right to like orchestra.

650
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 1: I don't know, Hi, yeah, fake gun?

651
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:17,000
Speaker 3: Who knows?

652
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: By late nineteen thirty, Barria was a regular visitor from

653
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 1: to Stalin's vacation home in Sochi. He's not in the

654
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:26,880
Speaker 1: inner circle yet, He's not hanging out and drinking and

655
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,400
Speaker 1: eating with Stalin every day. He's not living in Moscow, right,

656
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 1: but he like starts going to Sochi, which is where

657
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:35,160
Speaker 1: Stalin has his vacation house every summer, and he actually

658
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:38,800
Speaker 1: like in order to justify always being there, he gives

659
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:42,040
Speaker 1: himself the job of handling security for Stalin's Datcha. He's

660
00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 1: basically like your current guys. You can't trust him. They're

661
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:46,520
Speaker 1: not safe enough. You know, I'll do this job. And

662
00:33:46,560 --> 00:33:48,959
Speaker 1: once he's in charge of security, he's got an excuse

663
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 1: to kind of always be hanging around getting FaceTime with

664
00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 1: the big boss.

665
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 3: Right, it's a great security guy you have on your datcha.

666
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 3: It'd be a shame if you went missing.

667
00:33:56,720 --> 00:33:59,720
Speaker 1: He died, must not have been great at security. Let

668
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:03,080
Speaker 1: me take take over here. So tragically, Yeah, he in

669
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:05,440
Speaker 1: an accident. He fell down six flights of stairs and

670
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:07,160
Speaker 1: shut himself twice in the back of that A yeah,

671
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:08,560
Speaker 1: right into a pair of bullets.

672
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 3: Tragic.

673
00:34:09,800 --> 00:34:11,800
Speaker 1: We got to stop keeping these things at the bottom

674
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:17,320
Speaker 1: of staircases. Stalin responded by rapidly promoting Barria to first

675
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:21,000
Speaker 1: Secretary in Georgia and second Secretary of the trans Caucasus

676
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:24,160
Speaker 1: Central Committee. By the age of thirty two, Barria was

677
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 1: one of the most prominent young leaders in the whole USSR.

678
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:30,719
Speaker 1: Now I should note that nineteen thirty two to thirty

679
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:32,800
Speaker 1: three were the years in Ukraine that came to be

680
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: known as the Hole of doomor This was all part

681
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:39,399
Speaker 1: of the anti Koulock forced collectivization efforts in Ukraine, which

682
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 1: were similar but much more brutal to the ones that

683
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:46,200
Speaker 1: Baria carried out in Georgia. Baria killed thousands, maybe more.

684
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:48,920
Speaker 1: The Hola Doomor kills between three and a half to

685
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: five million Ukrainians. Right, yeah, I think we're we're going

686
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:53,719
Speaker 1: to get a super precise death toll because of how

687
00:34:53,719 --> 00:34:56,799
Speaker 1: it's carried out. But it is a hideous, hideous time

688
00:34:56,840 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 1: and I don't mean to be papering over it. It's

689
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 1: just it doesn't really deal directly with Barria. It doesn't

690
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:02,680
Speaker 1: that he is doing a lot of the same stuff

691
00:35:02,680 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 1: to Georgia, but obviously it does not lead to the

692
00:35:05,040 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 1: same death toll in Georgia that it does in Ukraine. Anyway,

693
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:11,319
Speaker 1: the whole thing, the Holodomor is awful enough that it

694
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:15,920
Speaker 1: reaches the ears of Stalin's wife, Nadya al Yeva, one

695
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 1: of the few people in his life who could safely

696
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:21,319
Speaker 1: talk shit about other people to Stalin, and she becomes

697
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:23,399
Speaker 1: aware also of the shit that Barry has been doing,

698
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:26,479
Speaker 1: and she starts talking to Stalin and being like, this guy,

699
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:29,239
Speaker 1: you can't trust him, right, this is a bad man.

700
00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 1: He's doing like a lot of really brutal stuff. And

701
00:35:32,719 --> 00:35:35,279
Speaker 1: it's interesting because like one of the things that has

702
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:37,200
Speaker 1: happened in this period of time is that by the

703
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: late twenties, she's grown tired of being locked away in

704
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:42,759
Speaker 1: the Kremlin with the other wives of powerful men. And

705
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: because of again, one of the real accomplishments of the

706
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:49,399
Speaker 1: Soviet Union is that women's rights improved dramatically to where

707
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:51,359
Speaker 1: they had been in the Tzaris period. Now we are

708
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: not saying there's any kind of real equality, but it's

709
00:35:54,200 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: much better than it had been under the Csars. And

710
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:59,000
Speaker 1: because the new Soviet woman was supposed to have agency,

711
00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:02,240
Speaker 1: was supposed to be able to career, Nadya's like, look, Stalin,

712
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:04,799
Speaker 1: I'm not just gonna stay in the fucking krimlin being

713
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:07,800
Speaker 1: your wife. I want to go get learned to do something.

714
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:09,800
Speaker 1: And so she goes and becomes a chemistry student. She

715
00:36:09,880 --> 00:36:13,480
Speaker 1: enrolls in college. Now the students that she's becoming friends

716
00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:15,879
Speaker 1: with don't really know who she is. They certainly don't

717
00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: know that she's Stalin's wife, Otherwise they would not have

718
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 1: been saying some of the things that they start to

719
00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:20,280
Speaker 1: say to Nadia.

720
00:36:20,719 --> 00:36:23,480
Speaker 3: You contevited over to a house party with your Like,

721
00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:26,399
Speaker 3: your friend's at your friend's house and it's like, oh,

722
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 3: this is this is my husband, like you look from

723
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:32,719
Speaker 3: oh fuck, oh no, oh, no, gotta go. I really

724
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 3: don't to watch cowboy movies. I really gotta go.

725
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:40,040
Speaker 1: New contact with young students brought Nadia information about the

726
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,799
Speaker 1: reality behind the Holy domor and the bloodshed that had

727
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:46,320
Speaker 1: backed up her husband's collectivization policy. She went to Stalin

728
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 1: eventually and told him he was butchering the people. Stalin

729
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:52,239
Speaker 1: responded by arresting her new friends, or rather he had

730
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:55,200
Speaker 1: Barriya arrest her new friends, and Nadya fell into a

731
00:36:55,239 --> 00:36:59,160
Speaker 1: deep depression, eventually taking her own life. As shitty a

732
00:36:59,239 --> 00:37:02,600
Speaker 1: husband as he was, he seems to have loved maybe

733
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:05,759
Speaker 1: the wrong word, but like after she dies, it is

734
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: generally agreed that things get a lot darker with Stalin.

735
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:12,319
Speaker 1: He gets a lot crueler. It does fuck him up

736
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:14,000
Speaker 1: to some extent. I don't know how you want to

737
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 1: translate that in terms of love or not, but it

738
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 1: has an impact on him.

739
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:21,440
Speaker 3: Maybe the closest thing Stalin was capable of fondness for

740
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:21,960
Speaker 3: another year.

741
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:25,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems to be the case. The fringe group

742
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:29,480
Speaker 1: slash cult around Stalin and the Kremlin increasingly shuts out

743
00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:31,319
Speaker 1: the rest of the world after this point, as she

744
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:35,080
Speaker 1: Liftitzpatrick rights, he socialized largely with the team, and their

745
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:37,439
Speaker 1: kremlin apartments are out at his datcha. This was true

746
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:39,000
Speaker 1: in the early days of the team, when his wife

747
00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:41,400
Speaker 1: Nadya was alive and he and many of his colleagues

748
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:44,880
Speaker 1: had young children, and continued after Nadya's suicide in nineteen

749
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:46,799
Speaker 1: thirty two, when the team and his in laws from

750
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: two marriages provided virtually all of his social life, which

751
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:52,719
Speaker 1: focused around his datcha. He was a lonely man after

752
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:55,399
Speaker 1: Nadya's death, and even lonelier after the Great Purges broke

753
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:58,440
Speaker 1: up his surrogate family of in laws. His daughters Sveetlana

754
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 1: was left for company, but that ended when she grew

755
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:03,360
Speaker 1: up and married during the war. The company of the

756
00:38:03,400 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 1: team became all the more important to Stalin after the war,

757
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 1: and participants have left memorable accounts of the awfulness of

758
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:12,920
Speaker 1: enforced nightly socializing at the datcha now in contrast to

759
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 1: the thirties without wives and children, and the burden it

760
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 1: imposed on the team. That's kind of, you know, Sheila's

761
00:38:18,600 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 1: account of sort of how shit with Stalin shifts, But

762
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:24,200
Speaker 1: you see, some things are always true, which is that

763
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:27,200
Speaker 1: he is always isolated with this group of people, this

764
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:30,600
Speaker 1: ever kind of shrinking circle of people, and when Nadia

765
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:33,320
Speaker 1: is alive in the early days, it's a broader circle.

766
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:36,040
Speaker 1: He doesn't have total power over everyone, yet he's not

767
00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:39,840
Speaker 1: killing everyone he has a disagreement with, and increasingly after

768
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:42,160
Speaker 1: the case with her, some people will argue this feeds

769
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:43,840
Speaker 1: in a lot to the great terror. I don't know

770
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 1: how much credence you want to give that, but it

771
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:49,920
Speaker 1: is generally agreed that he becomes darker and crueler after

772
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:51,320
Speaker 1: her death and also lonely.

773
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:56,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, his circle is growing increasingly smaller, more insular,

774
00:38:56,920 --> 00:38:59,440
Speaker 3: and his last real connection with you know what you

775
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:03,279
Speaker 3: consider normal people being students that his wife went to

776
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 3: school with, where you know he considered treason us whatever

777
00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 3: it was, they said. So I can only imagine the

778
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:14,840
Speaker 3: horrific feedback loop that happens in these dudes. Dudes weekends

779
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:15,680
Speaker 3: out of the datcha.

780
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:18,520
Speaker 1: It doesn't these do not get to be more fun

781
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:21,280
Speaker 1: as parties. Yeah, no, much worse parties.

782
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 3: They've graduated from being like the fun happy drunk or

783
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:27,040
Speaker 3: like dude who doing club drugs or whatever, to like, yeah,

784
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:29,360
Speaker 3: the dude doing Heroin in a dark basement alone.

785
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:33,600
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So Barry is again not yet a member

786
00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: of Stalin's close friends circle, nor again is he a

787
00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 1: factor in the Holy Duomoor. He is strictly a regional

788
00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:40,719
Speaker 1: leader at this point, and that would not do for

789
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:43,960
Speaker 1: a man of his ambition. He is, however, close to Stalin,

790
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:46,839
Speaker 1: a trusted tody, and he's going to be working at

791
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:48,839
Speaker 1: getting into that inner circle, which he knows is going

792
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 1: to require living in and around the Krimlin. So Barry

793
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:54,879
Speaker 1: has set himself up to slide into position there the

794
00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 1: only way he knew how, with his unparalleled skill in

795
00:39:58,239 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 1: boot looking and also his willingness to commit murder. In

796
00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:04,239
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four he was elected to full membership of

797
00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:07,080
Speaker 1: the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and this marks

798
00:40:07,120 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 1: his entry as a national level figure in the USSR.

799
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:14,200
Speaker 1: And we're going to cover what happens after that. But first, Joe,

800
00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:17,360
Speaker 1: you know, who's not a national level figure in the USSR.

801
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:22,000
Speaker 3: I would assume the advertisers of products and services available

802
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:24,279
Speaker 3: to us, it would be weird if they were right.

803
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 1: It would be it would be weird if they were,

804
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 1: you know, so famously.

805
00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:33,759
Speaker 3: Central Factory number sixteen. Yeah, what was it, Blata? I

806
00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:35,120
Speaker 3: forget which car they made?

807
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:39,120
Speaker 1: Oh fuck yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll have to have

808
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 1: to cut in the right name for that fucking car. Anyway,

809
00:40:41,960 --> 00:40:50,520
Speaker 1: buy a fucking car. Here's some ads. Ah, we're back.

810
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:54,520
Speaker 1: So nineteen thirty four, Barria is in the Central Committee

811
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 1: of the Communist Party. He is now finally out of

812
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:03,240
Speaker 1: the caucuses. You know, there are protests about his promotion

813
00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: within the party because a lot of people know Barria

814
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:07,840
Speaker 1: is a dangerous creep. At this point, a number of

815
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:10,239
Speaker 1: high ranking official sin stolen letters that are like, this

816
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:13,400
Speaker 1: guy is a maniac, please don't promote him. And stalin

817
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 1: the caucuses. Yeah yeah, Stala does not listen. Barria sets

818
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:21,279
Speaker 1: to work, probably because they don't like him, purging every

819
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 1: other leader in the trans Caucasus region who might act

820
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 1: as a barrier to his rise.

821
00:41:26,520 --> 00:41:27,480
Speaker 3: And this means he's.

822
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 1: Killing all of the veteran communist organizers who would like

823
00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:33,960
Speaker 1: brought the revolution to the Caucases in the first place.

824
00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:37,400
Speaker 1: You know, that is again we talk about it, and

825
00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:40,040
Speaker 1: to be fair, even most of like the tankies I know,

826
00:41:40,280 --> 00:41:42,000
Speaker 1: will say that Barria was a piece of shit. Now

827
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:43,800
Speaker 1: I think they go too far and saying like everything

828
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: bad that happened during Stalin was Barria. You know, you

829
00:41:46,680 --> 00:41:50,319
Speaker 1: do run into that sometimes, But like I have occasionally

830
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 1: come into like people who try to rehabilitate Barria. I

831
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:55,960
Speaker 1: think they are in a minority even within that set,

832
00:41:56,000 --> 00:42:00,480
Speaker 1: because again, all the people he's murdering are good Bolsheviks, right,

833
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:04,239
Speaker 1: like y that is his primary victim here, well and

834
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:06,920
Speaker 1: a bunch of peasants, right, But he does kill like

835
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 1: all of these people who had.

836
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:09,640
Speaker 3: Done the revolution, you.

837
00:42:09,600 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 1: Know, started from the bottom. Now you're dead, yeah, exactly.

838
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:16,760
Speaker 1: In his Arabijan, he also presides over a massive increase

839
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 1: in the productivity of oil wells in the Caucasus. In

840
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: Stalin's personal life, he becomes a gopher, using his position

841
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 1: as head of the Soshi security to repeatedly visit and

842
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:28,719
Speaker 1: do small favors for his boss. He becomes like Setlana's

843
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:32,560
Speaker 1: babysitter from time to time. Oh that's creepy in retrost, Yeah,

844
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:33,960
Speaker 1: horrible babysitter.

845
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:36,960
Speaker 3: Do not let Lavrenti Barrio watch your kid, you know,

846
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 3: not good. No, no, don't do that.

847
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:44,879
Speaker 1: Night, writes quote. Photos of Barria and Sveetlana taken when

848
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 1: the latter was young convey a proprietary manner on Barria's part.

849
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:51,080
Speaker 1: In one photographs, Fetlana, who appears to be about nine

850
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 1: or ten years old, is perched uncomfortably on Barria's lap.

851
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,080
Speaker 1: Judging from her expression, she did not enjoy being in

852
00:42:57,120 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: his possessive grasp, particularly at her age.

853
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:02,400
Speaker 3: Who would who would?

854
00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:03,319
Speaker 1: Yeah?

855
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:06,040
Speaker 3: Only, But there's never been a human being that's enjoyed

856
00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 3: the touch of Larenti Berry.

857
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: No, no, and like, look, she is analyzing a photograph.

858
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 1: That's not a thing you can say objectively. But having

859
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:16,719
Speaker 1: looked at those photographs, she Svetlana does not look like

860
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 1: she wants to be on that lap.

861
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 3: Not a fan. There's not many laps I would like

862
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:24,360
Speaker 3: to be on, but I specially wouldn't want to be

863
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 3: on Larenty Berry's lap.

864
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:29,640
Speaker 1: No, no, no, just lee pace. So the closer he

865
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:33,600
Speaker 1: got to Stalin, the more Barrier came to understand his boss,

866
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:36,840
Speaker 1: and particularly the fact that he was a massive narcissist.

867
00:43:37,040 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 1: Right at the seventeenth party congress, Stalin had received fewer

868
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:43,960
Speaker 1: votes to continue heading the party than he had expected.

869
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:46,840
Speaker 1: Now he still easily wins reelection, but the fact that

870
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 1: he doesn't win it by as much as he had

871
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:49,400
Speaker 1: thought he would.

872
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:50,080
Speaker 3: Triggers.

873
00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:52,839
Speaker 1: If you know anything about Jay Stall, pretty paranoid guy,

874
00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: and this really really jacks his paranoia gland into overdrive.

875
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:01,239
Speaker 1: The boss begins to rant about Dubbert double dealers within

876
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:04,400
Speaker 1: the party and complains to Barria that he stood alone.

877
00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:08,759
Speaker 1: Barrier responded by making himself head of Stalin's unofficial but

878
00:44:08,840 --> 00:44:13,680
Speaker 1: actually very official cult of personality sangster rights. Barria ensured

879
00:44:13,719 --> 00:44:16,839
Speaker 1: Stalin's picture appeared everywhere and arranged a new monument over

880
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 1: Stalin's birthplace in Gory. He even went so far in

881
00:44:19,960 --> 00:44:23,239
Speaker 1: the subsequious behavior to bring Stalin's mother to Tbilisi, where

882
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 1: he and his wife took care of her. When Stalin

883
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:27,799
Speaker 1: visited his mother in nineteen thirty five, it was with

884
00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:31,279
Speaker 1: her career Baria. He was making every conceivable effort to

885
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:34,360
Speaker 1: ingratiate himself in the leader's eyes and behaved like a

886
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:39,600
Speaker 1: courtier looking after a dowager impress. He takes care of

887
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: his mom for him. He becomes a nurse for Stalin's

888
00:44:44,120 --> 00:44:46,640
Speaker 1: mom to get in on his good side. That is

889
00:44:47,160 --> 00:44:51,279
Speaker 1: ace level toadying man. That is like some mister Smithers

890
00:44:51,280 --> 00:44:56,040
Speaker 1: shit dedication to the craft. Yeah, you have to respect

891
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,560
Speaker 1: the toadying. Yeah, what if Smithers had a hell of

892
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:02,360
Speaker 1: a body count? Yeah right, Like what if Smithers was

893
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 1: killing people left and right?

894
00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:05,360
Speaker 3: We don't know that he wasn't.

895
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:07,960
Speaker 1: We Yeah, it is kind of implied in a couple

896
00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:13,080
Speaker 1: of episodes, that is true. Yeah, despite being Georgian himself,

897
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:16,320
Speaker 1: Stalin had not been a very significant part of organizing

898
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 1: actual Bolshevik groups in Georgia. Right, this is not where

899
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:24,040
Speaker 1: he is primarily active, and he is profoundly insecure about

900
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:26,880
Speaker 1: this fact, and in fact hated the Georgian communists who

901
00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:30,799
Speaker 1: had actually done that work, particularly though he hated the

902
00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 1: Marxist historians who insisted on writing accurate histories of the

903
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:39,640
Speaker 1: Bolshevik movements and the Caucuses. That is not fuckers, You

904
00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:43,960
Speaker 1: want to talk about an unsafe job writing accurate histories

905
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:47,560
Speaker 1: of Bolshevik organizing in the caucases in nineteen thirty one.

906
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:49,839
Speaker 3: Right, you do not want to be doing that, bro

907
00:45:51,080 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 3: I flink Russian Roulette with your own citations. Yeah.

908
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:57,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. This starts in late nineteen thirty one, when Stalin

909
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:00,600
Speaker 1: himself wrote a letter to an academic journ to complain

910
00:46:00,640 --> 00:46:03,560
Speaker 1: about an article critical of Lenin written by a historian

911
00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:09,280
Speaker 1: with the incredible last name Slutski, spelled exactly like you'd hope,

912
00:46:09,360 --> 00:46:14,480
Speaker 1: exactly like amazing last name. Dude's wrong, sounds like you

913
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:16,879
Speaker 1: like it literally sounds like you're accusing him of being

914
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:19,520
Speaker 1: a slut and being a little racist against Russians. But

915
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 1: that's just his name. Amazing stuff. Barry It took note

916
00:46:23,600 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 1: of this, and he launched a series of attacks in

917
00:46:25,520 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen thirties against historians who had written histories

918
00:46:28,520 --> 00:46:31,520
Speaker 1: that didn't center Stalin. One of these guys later had

919
00:46:31,520 --> 00:46:33,920
Speaker 1: to go before the Party of Congress and apologize for

920
00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 1: leaving Stalin out. In a very funny turn of phrase,

921
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:40,640
Speaker 1: he claimed that when he'd written the book, Stalin's role

922
00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:43,239
Speaker 1: in the Bolshevik movements in the CAUCUSUS quote had not

923
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 1: yet come to light.

924
00:46:45,960 --> 00:46:48,200
Speaker 3: We were telling this light. Yeah, when I wrote the book,

925
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 3: you didn't give me the cliff notes of your last

926
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:54,759
Speaker 3: cult meeting. I didn't know I was supposed to fake this.

927
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 3: That is so fucking funny. You love to see it,

928
00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 3: Oh my god. So published public challenges and attacks against

929
00:47:02,480 --> 00:47:06,040
Speaker 3: objective historians, many of whom were purged later. He also

930
00:47:06,120 --> 00:47:09,000
Speaker 3: hired a writer or writers to author a history book,

931
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 3: which he took credit for. The book had the banger

932
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:16,200
Speaker 3: title on the History of Bolshevik Organizations in trans Caucasia,

933
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 3: which I don't know, Joe, you and I are both

934
00:47:18,200 --> 00:47:21,200
Speaker 3: title guys. I don't call that a good one. No,

935
00:47:22,840 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 3: I mean maybe like a mid level, like young adult book.

936
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 1: Sure I would have used the title what's Transcaucasian my Bolsheviks?

937
00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:34,160
Speaker 1: You know, that's pithy, that's got some that's got some

938
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:37,880
Speaker 1: bounce to it. Right, So this book pausits a holy

939
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:41,359
Speaker 1: new view of Bolshevik history, wherein Stalin was the main

940
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:45,200
Speaker 1: organizer and figurehead of the Bolshevik movements in Armenia, Georgia

941
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:49,319
Speaker 1: and to Zerbaijan. Now the book is fucking nonsense, as

942
00:47:49,320 --> 00:47:53,040
Speaker 1: this passage by Night makes clear. Barria attributed to him

943
00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 1: an incredibly active role in practical revolutionary work at the

944
00:47:56,520 --> 00:47:59,200
Speaker 1: time that he was still a student. Thus, various books

945
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:01,720
Speaker 1: stated that an eighteen ninety eight Stalin led no fewer

946
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:04,840
Speaker 1: than eight workers circles. By the seventh edition, the number

947
00:48:04,920 --> 00:48:08,560
Speaker 1: was increased to eleven, and also organized a large railway strike.

948
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 1: As the historian Bertram Wolf observed, These were rather remarkable feats,

949
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 1: considering that Stalin was enrolled at the Tifless Seminary, where

950
00:48:15,719 --> 00:48:19,160
Speaker 1: students were virtually kept under lock and key. Barius claim

951
00:48:19,160 --> 00:48:21,920
Speaker 1: did not accord with earlier accounts about the same time period,

952
00:48:21,960 --> 00:48:26,120
Speaker 1: including one given by Stalin himself. Barrious History asserted that

953
00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 1: Stalin was leading a large movement. In fact, the Georgian

954
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:32,720
Speaker 1: social democratic movement was overwhelmingly menshevik, and, as one observer

955
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:36,120
Speaker 1: pointed out, Stalin had only a small following quote. He

956
00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:38,839
Speaker 1: succeeded in gaining only a few adherents, rarely more than

957
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 1: ten supporters, whom he would quickly organize into groups or clusters,

958
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:44,719
Speaker 1: giving immediately the grand title of committee.

959
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 3: So that rules so hard. It's like very group of historians,

960
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 3: and Barrius slides this book up in front of you.

961
00:48:53,200 --> 00:48:56,640
Speaker 3: He's like, go ahead, prove you wrong. Yeah, yeah, I

962
00:48:56,920 --> 00:48:59,960
Speaker 3: fucking dare you. Yeah, let's do some peer review.

963
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:04,320
Speaker 1: Guys, what do you think Nobody even cracks the first page?

964
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 1: Like looks good, boss, it's good, good stuff, good stuff,

965
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:10,280
Speaker 1: red stamped. You need a jacket, quote, need a blurb?

966
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:11,240
Speaker 3: Yeah?

967
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:13,000
Speaker 1: And why didn't you just write it and sign my

968
00:49:13,120 --> 00:49:16,880
Speaker 1: name to it? We're good and again. So you know today,

969
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:18,839
Speaker 1: if you were doing this in a revolution, you would

970
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:21,560
Speaker 1: just use chat GBT to generate because no one's gonna

971
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:24,120
Speaker 1: read this fucking thing. To generate your bullshit book about

972
00:49:24,120 --> 00:49:27,520
Speaker 1: how Stalin did everything. In this case, you had to

973
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 1: get ghost writers. And Barry would later say there were

974
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:33,760
Speaker 1: multiple ghost writers. He says this when he's like being tortured. Basically,

975
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:34,560
Speaker 1: so who knows.

976
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:35,319
Speaker 3: How many there were.

977
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:39,320
Speaker 1: It's generally agreed that at least one of the guys

978
00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:42,000
Speaker 1: who wrote this book was a real writer, not a

979
00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:45,719
Speaker 1: his story and just a writer named Badilla. B Edia

980
00:49:46,040 --> 00:49:51,640
Speaker 1: is the anglicization and this guy. So BARRYA has Bedia

981
00:49:51,719 --> 00:49:53,640
Speaker 1: write this book for him, and then he has him

982
00:49:53,640 --> 00:49:56,160
Speaker 1: shot in nineteen thirty seven. He's a great purchase of

983
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:58,680
Speaker 1: cover to kill his ghost. He makes him a literal

984
00:49:58,760 --> 00:49:59,400
Speaker 1: ghost writer.

985
00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:02,719
Speaker 3: Nobody tell James Patterson this.

986
00:50:03,400 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think James Patterson is already doing this. Yeah,

987
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:09,120
Speaker 1: great work on the Pelican Brief.

988
00:50:09,160 --> 00:50:09,399
Speaker 3: Three.

989
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:11,440
Speaker 1: Why don't you come into my office for a second.

990
00:50:11,520 --> 00:50:13,399
Speaker 1: Turn you back, look out this window. I'm just gonna

991
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:15,560
Speaker 1: rummage around in my desk for a second. If you

992
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:18,800
Speaker 1: hear a click, don't don't stop looking out the window.

993
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:21,960
Speaker 3: Close that suspiciously thick door behind you when you come in. Please.

994
00:50:24,920 --> 00:50:27,520
Speaker 1: Now, the book is a huge hit, by which I

995
00:50:27,560 --> 00:50:30,120
Speaker 1: mean Stalin liked it, and so everyone else had to

996
00:50:30,160 --> 00:50:32,719
Speaker 1: pretend it was great and buy a copy, which you know,

997
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 1: I have considered becoming the center of a revolutionary movement,

998
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:39,560
Speaker 1: murdering my enemies, and becoming the totalitarian ruler of a state,

999
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 1: because it would really be good for my book salesman.

1000
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:45,960
Speaker 3: That is how I'll finally secure my nebula is. Yeah,

1001
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:48,080
Speaker 3: is creating a personality call.

1002
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:52,359
Speaker 1: All of the other writers are dead. Congratulations, you have

1003
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:54,120
Speaker 1: no choice about one vote?

1004
00:50:54,480 --> 00:50:55,520
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1005
00:50:55,560 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 1: So yeah, it does great. And this is you know,

1006
00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:01,560
Speaker 1: Stalin likes this a lot. This is maybe the biggest

1007
00:51:01,560 --> 00:51:04,000
Speaker 1: thing Barria does for him in this period, even more

1008
00:51:04,040 --> 00:51:07,360
Speaker 1: than the murders, because Stalin is a weird egomaniac. But

1009
00:51:07,440 --> 00:51:09,440
Speaker 1: Stalin also he never wants to give any of his

1010
00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:12,719
Speaker 1: minions too much praise, So after thanking Barrier for this,

1011
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:16,120
Speaker 1: he has the polit Bureau reprimand Barrier for republishing some

1012
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:19,239
Speaker 1: of Stalin's old writing without getting permission, basically like a

1013
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:20,360
Speaker 1: copyright violation.

1014
00:51:20,920 --> 00:51:22,280
Speaker 3: Revolutionary megging.

1015
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 1: It is so funny, Starting in nineteen thirty six, the

1016
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:32,240
Speaker 1: same year the terror began, Barria launched his own regional

1017
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:36,480
Speaker 1: cult of personality. He starts naming everything he can across

1018
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 1: the Caucasus after himself, from movie theaters to farms to

1019
00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:44,240
Speaker 1: sports stadiums. His portrait gets put in schools and governments

1020
00:51:44,239 --> 00:51:48,200
Speaker 1: buildings across the area. Newspapers start putting out regular articles

1021
00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:51,320
Speaker 1: about all the great shit he's doing, and Barria follows

1022
00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:54,760
Speaker 1: this with a slurry of new articles rewriting Stalin's history

1023
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:57,480
Speaker 1: and thus the history of the whole revolution. He was

1024
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:01,200
Speaker 1: not a particularly revolutionary thinker himself self, and his decision

1025
00:52:01,239 --> 00:52:04,000
Speaker 1: to do this was basically, He's not like even inventing

1026
00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 1: propaganda for Stalin. He's copying less successful Soviet propagandists who

1027
00:52:08,680 --> 00:52:11,560
Speaker 1: were just worse at toadying than them. He's like plagiarizing

1028
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:16,000
Speaker 1: other boot lickors, but just better at it. They can't

1029
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:18,799
Speaker 1: give him the Soviet version of a copyright strike if

1030
00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:24,400
Speaker 1: they're all dead. That's right, that's right, Yeah, that's fucking

1031
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:27,720
Speaker 1: where Sam Altman's heading. Barry was able to get away

1032
00:52:27,719 --> 00:52:30,320
Speaker 1: with this because by nineteen thirty six he had become

1033
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:34,160
Speaker 1: one of the few pillars of Stalin's emotional support. This

1034
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:37,000
Speaker 1: is a difficult time for Jay stall the mid late night,

1035
00:52:37,080 --> 00:52:41,160
Speaker 1: early late nineteen thirty emotional support area. Yeah, my emotional

1036
00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:49,040
Speaker 1: support mass murderer, this is my comfort checkist. So it

1037
00:52:49,160 --> 00:52:51,560
Speaker 1: is a tough time for Stalin. Trotzky is still alive

1038
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:53,880
Speaker 1: in a broadened exile at this point and has called

1039
00:52:53,880 --> 00:52:57,879
Speaker 1: for his removal. Stalin started facing more internal resistance within

1040
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:00,520
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union because the economy kind of in the

1041
00:53:00,520 --> 00:53:03,880
Speaker 1: shitter right now, right, you know, it turns out doing

1042
00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:08,040
Speaker 1: a starvation genocide not great for food production or economics.

1043
00:53:08,239 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, you burn your area known as like the empire. Yeah,

1044
00:53:15,200 --> 00:53:16,680
Speaker 3: I burned this to the ground. Yeah.

1045
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:20,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like Ukraine is so valuable in that sense

1046
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:23,360
Speaker 1: that like the Nazis are willing to risk everything to

1047
00:53:23,400 --> 00:53:25,520
Speaker 1: have it, and Stalin and his friends just light it

1048
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:26,120
Speaker 1: on fire.

1049
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:30,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't kill everybody if we kill everybody first. Yes, Oh, we'll.

1050
00:53:30,520 --> 00:53:35,000
Speaker 1: Show you killing everybody. In the late nineteen thirty four,

1051
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 1: Sergei Kirov, a popular and powerful politician who becomes the

1052
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:42,759
Speaker 1: namesake of the Kirov Warship and Red Alert Too, one

1053
00:53:42,800 --> 00:53:46,839
Speaker 1: of the better Red Alert games, was assassinated. Kirov had

1054
00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:48,920
Speaker 1: been close to Stalin, but he's also he's one of

1055
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:50,480
Speaker 1: these he's kind of one of the last guys in

1056
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 1: Stalin's inner circle that everybody really likes, right, Like Kirov

1057
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:57,880
Speaker 1: is just like really popular. He's I think he was

1058
00:53:57,920 --> 00:53:59,279
Speaker 1: probably just a cool.

1059
00:53:59,120 --> 00:54:01,200
Speaker 3: Dude to hag out, that's why he had to go.

1060
00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:05,279
Speaker 1: But he's killed mysteriously, and like, there are theories that

1061
00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:07,360
Speaker 1: it was Stalin who did it. Most of the historians

1062
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:10,600
Speaker 1: I've read think that that probably isn't what happened, but

1063
00:54:10,640 --> 00:54:14,239
Speaker 1: it's not impossible because of how popular he is. It

1064
00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:18,640
Speaker 1: wouldn't be against Stalin's later behavior to have this guy.

1065
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:20,759
Speaker 3: Right, there can't be a cool guy in the girl.

1066
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:24,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also some people will say Barrier probably kills Kiirrov,

1067
00:54:24,960 --> 00:54:27,680
Speaker 1: maybe on Stalin's orders, Maybe he's doing it for himself.

1068
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:30,560
Speaker 1: We don't really know, right This is still a mystery today.

1069
00:54:30,880 --> 00:54:32,759
Speaker 1: You can read a bunch of theories on it. You know,

1070
00:54:32,840 --> 00:54:36,200
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not competent to say what's most likely.

1071
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:39,360
Speaker 1: But he's dead, and this is going This causes a

1072
00:54:39,440 --> 00:54:41,880
Speaker 1: huge uproar from one thing, because this guy is so

1073
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:46,040
Speaker 1: popular and so powerful. There's legitimate paranoia on behalf of

1074
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:49,080
Speaker 1: everyone that's Stalin or the people around him, like, oh shit,

1075
00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:52,040
Speaker 1: who's next, Right, they can get kirof you know, assuming

1076
00:54:52,080 --> 00:54:55,440
Speaker 1: Stalin didn't do it. Stalin's literally like kind of scared

1077
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:57,120
Speaker 1: because they were able to kill Kiov.

1078
00:54:57,200 --> 00:54:58,719
Speaker 3: You know, we don't really know.

1079
00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:02,200
Speaker 1: But the which is what the secret police go by

1080
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:05,839
Speaker 1: at this point, spins nineteen thirty five, carrying out an investigation,

1081
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:08,440
Speaker 1: by which I mean they torture a shitload of people

1082
00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: until said people admit that they had been plotting to

1083
00:55:11,120 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 1: kill Stalin, and that's how Kirov got murdered. Right, It's

1084
00:55:14,640 --> 00:55:17,839
Speaker 1: unclear if there was really a plot. There may have been.

1085
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:20,600
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be weird if there had been a plot

1086
00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:21,640
Speaker 1: to kill Stalin.

1087
00:55:21,480 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 3: All right, fucking people are always plotting, right exactly.

1088
00:55:25,120 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 1: But this is the pretext that Stalin needs to tell

1089
00:55:27,600 --> 00:55:30,400
Speaker 1: the NKVD to really ramp up the mass arrests and

1090
00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:33,160
Speaker 1: murder of everyone who'd ever looked at him. Funny, now,

1091
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:36,440
Speaker 1: Kirov's death came at a great time for Stalin. The

1092
00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:39,520
Speaker 1: economic collapse that followed collectivization had done a lot of

1093
00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:42,239
Speaker 1: damage to his standing and to the Soviet Union, and

1094
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:45,279
Speaker 1: in some ways, the Great Terror comes out of the

1095
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 1: like you could also, you could, you could, and a

1096
00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:48,759
Speaker 1: lot of people do so basically say that the terror

1097
00:55:48,880 --> 00:55:52,600
Speaker 1: kind of starts in the reaction to Kirov's assassination, right,

1098
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:55,960
Speaker 1: That's what gets the balls rolling that become the great Terror,

1099
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:59,359
Speaker 1: And in some ways it's a great distraction campaign from

1100
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:02,120
Speaker 1: the problem that Stalin's government is having at this period

1101
00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 1: of time, and it also allows him to consolidate his power,

1102
00:56:05,040 --> 00:56:06,600
Speaker 1: which is a big part of why so many people

1103
00:56:06,600 --> 00:56:09,400
Speaker 1: think he killed care Off, right, because like, well it

1104
00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:11,319
Speaker 1: kind of it kind of works out for him. But

1105
00:56:11,360 --> 00:56:13,200
Speaker 1: like as we all know with nine to eleven, things

1106
00:56:13,200 --> 00:56:15,759
Speaker 1: can work out great for a mass murdering piece of shit,

1107
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:18,240
Speaker 1: and they didn't necessarily start the process.

1108
00:56:18,360 --> 00:56:19,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, something can blow up in your face and you

1109
00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 3: still take advantage.

1110
00:56:20,800 --> 00:56:23,360
Speaker 1: Of it, Yeah, exactly. And these guys are all the

1111
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 1: only reason these people are alive is they're skilled opportunists

1112
00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:29,800
Speaker 1: like Stalin and Maria are both very good at taking

1113
00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:34,000
Speaker 1: opportunity of events that occur. You know, starting in nineteen

1114
00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:37,839
Speaker 1: thirty six, the NKVD begins jailing and killing people who

1115
00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:41,200
Speaker 1: had been influential Bolsheviks. A lot of them were people

1116
00:56:41,200 --> 00:56:43,880
Speaker 1: who had just been close to Stalin like anyone who

1117
00:56:43,960 --> 00:56:47,720
Speaker 1: had been his friend that he knew well in previous periods.

1118
00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:49,520
Speaker 1: He kills a lot of people just because they knew

1119
00:56:49,520 --> 00:56:51,320
Speaker 1: too much about him, right at least, that's kind of

1120
00:56:51,360 --> 00:56:53,839
Speaker 1: the way you'll hear this described. A lot of them

1121
00:56:53,840 --> 00:56:57,000
Speaker 1: wind up in camps, the infamous Gulags, and the only

1122
00:56:57,080 --> 00:56:59,880
Speaker 1: people who are spared are kind of his current friend group,

1123
00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:04,120
Speaker 1: guys like Molotov and Kaganovitch. Right now, I say spared,

1124
00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:07,120
Speaker 1: but it's worth noting even the guys that he's close

1125
00:57:07,160 --> 00:57:10,560
Speaker 1: to who don't get killed or imprisoned often get charged

1126
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:14,680
Speaker 1: with something. At some Pointachslav Molotov is indicted for the

1127
00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:17,800
Speaker 1: killing of Kirov, right And I don't know if it's

1128
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: because Stalin legitimately didn't trust him for a while, or

1129
00:57:21,200 --> 00:57:23,040
Speaker 1: if he's like he did with Barria when he like

1130
00:57:23,280 --> 00:57:25,600
Speaker 1: gives the copyright strike to him, if he just wanted

1131
00:57:25,600 --> 00:57:27,560
Speaker 1: to make sure Molotov wasn't too comfortable.

1132
00:57:27,680 --> 00:57:30,960
Speaker 3: Right, So there's appear to know his place that right here,

1133
00:57:31,280 --> 00:57:34,920
Speaker 3: you might be the foreign minister, but you're not untouchable.

1134
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:36,640
Speaker 1: And he's not at this point, by the way, the

1135
00:57:36,680 --> 00:57:39,520
Speaker 1: foreign minister. Yet we are we will be talking about

1136
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:43,040
Speaker 1: that process. But like Molotov gets indicted for killing Kirov

1137
00:57:43,080 --> 00:57:44,600
Speaker 1: for a while, but then he gets dropped from the

1138
00:57:44,600 --> 00:57:47,800
Speaker 1: indictment and when he comes back into favor, he's added in.

1139
00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:49,440
Speaker 1: In retrospect, he was like, oh, they were going to

1140
00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:52,840
Speaker 1: kill Molotov. You know, that's how Molotov knows that things

1141
00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:54,960
Speaker 1: are okay. When he gets added to the list of

1142
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:56,280
Speaker 1: potential victims, they.

1143
00:57:56,320 --> 00:57:59,440
Speaker 3: Get to wreckon his personal history that you know, it's

1144
00:57:59,480 --> 00:58:01,200
Speaker 3: a Molotov rebuild.

1145
00:58:01,400 --> 00:58:05,080
Speaker 1: Like you can't make other except for the horrible body count.

1146
00:58:05,120 --> 00:58:08,720
Speaker 1: Like it's all really funny, Like these are the Stalin

1147
00:58:08,800 --> 00:58:11,960
Speaker 1: and his inner circle are the messiest bitches in history.

1148
00:58:12,080 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing. It's the cruelty of the absurd and

1149
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:20,400
Speaker 3: the absurdity of cruelty in one incredibly annoying group of dickheads.

1150
00:58:20,760 --> 00:58:23,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting to me that like as horrible. Maybe

1151
00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:26,440
Speaker 1: it's just because he didn't get all that long in power.

1152
00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:29,520
Speaker 1: Hitler's in power a little more than a third of

1153
00:58:29,560 --> 00:58:32,200
Speaker 1: the time that Stalin's in power, right like twelve years,

1154
00:58:32,240 --> 00:58:35,200
Speaker 1: you know, Stalin's like thirty. It's interesting to me that

1155
00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:37,320
Speaker 1: like Hitler has the Night of Long Knives, he does

1156
00:58:37,360 --> 00:58:40,040
Speaker 1: have that one big spade of purges. And then maybe

1157
00:58:40,040 --> 00:58:42,280
Speaker 1: it's just because the war starts so soon after and

1158
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:45,040
Speaker 1: he really can't afford it. But like he doesn't, we

1159
00:58:45,080 --> 00:58:48,080
Speaker 1: don't have the same kind of purges of Hitler's friends

1160
00:58:48,280 --> 00:58:51,240
Speaker 1: that you get, people fall out of favor, they lose jobs.

1161
00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:53,240
Speaker 1: But he doesn't do the same thing Stalin does in

1162
00:58:53,320 --> 00:58:56,080
Speaker 1: terms of like absolute clean sweep, And maybe it's just

1163
00:58:56,120 --> 00:58:58,200
Speaker 1: because you know, the war is on and he can't

1164
00:58:58,200 --> 00:59:00,439
Speaker 1: really afford to start massacre his.

1165
00:59:00,360 --> 00:59:03,840
Speaker 3: Friends like that. He also like targeted purges, I mean,

1166
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:07,880
Speaker 3: especially like after the assassination attempt with and then yeah

1167
00:59:08,040 --> 00:59:10,000
Speaker 3: you know he yeah, yeah, yeah, a ton of people,

1168
00:59:10,320 --> 00:59:13,600
Speaker 3: and then even people he was kind of remotely suspicious of,

1169
00:59:13,680 --> 00:59:17,400
Speaker 3: like Rommel, for example. He's never been completely solidified if

1170
00:59:17,400 --> 00:59:19,880
Speaker 3: he was in a right not a little unclear. And

1171
00:59:19,960 --> 00:59:22,360
Speaker 3: Hitler's always was very very jealous of him because of

1172
00:59:22,400 --> 00:59:23,960
Speaker 3: how popular it was. He's like, no, man, you've got

1173
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:25,840
Speaker 3: to kill yourself. Yeah.

1174
00:59:25,840 --> 00:59:27,680
Speaker 1: I kind of do think that if Hitler had like

1175
00:59:28,160 --> 00:59:30,760
Speaker 1: either hadn't done World War Two and had stayed in

1176
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:33,600
Speaker 1: power or had somehow won, like he would have wound

1177
00:59:33,680 --> 00:59:35,400
Speaker 1: up doing a lot of this stuff himself.

1178
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:36,600
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, you.

1179
00:59:36,600 --> 00:59:41,120
Speaker 1: Probably because he was intensely pid right right, and everyone

1180
00:59:41,160 --> 00:59:44,040
Speaker 1: around him is a piece of shit, you know, so

1181
00:59:44,800 --> 00:59:46,560
Speaker 1: kind of what comes out of this period one of

1182
00:59:46,600 --> 00:59:48,280
Speaker 1: the things that happens to all these people who are

1183
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:52,120
Speaker 1: close to Stalin. If you want to survive, part of

1184
00:59:52,160 --> 00:59:55,840
Speaker 1: how you solidify your position and make yourself not seem

1185
00:59:55,880 --> 00:59:59,880
Speaker 1: suspicious is to go after your friends in close colleagues,

1186
01:00:00,080 --> 01:00:03,000
Speaker 1: the people that you like most and rely on your

1187
01:00:03,040 --> 01:00:05,880
Speaker 1: subordinates and coworkers, the people that you like, not just

1188
01:00:05,920 --> 01:00:07,280
Speaker 1: like somebod who works in the same office, but the

1189
01:00:07,280 --> 01:00:09,000
Speaker 1: guy that you're really relying on to do a lot

1190
01:00:09,040 --> 01:00:11,480
Speaker 1: of work, right, the people who are best at their jobs.

1191
01:00:11,800 --> 01:00:14,400
Speaker 1: That's who you're going to give up for execution. And

1192
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:16,240
Speaker 1: in part of it, that's how you show your loyalties.

1193
01:00:16,280 --> 01:00:18,320
Speaker 1: Like this guy's my fucking brother in law. He's great

1194
01:00:18,360 --> 01:00:20,160
Speaker 1: at his job. I just had him shot in the

1195
01:00:20,160 --> 01:00:20,960
Speaker 1: back of the head.

1196
01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:23,439
Speaker 3: For you, buddy. You know, that's how loyal I am. Right.

1197
01:00:24,360 --> 01:00:29,120
Speaker 1: What independence the Politbureau had had faded away at this point. Terrified,

1198
01:00:29,200 --> 01:00:32,560
Speaker 1: they passed a resolution to permit torture during interrogations, which

1199
01:00:32,640 --> 01:00:36,960
Speaker 1: was already common. There are field executions ordered by the NKVD,

1200
01:00:37,640 --> 01:00:40,680
Speaker 1: and they start assigning arrest quotas in nineteen thirty seven

1201
01:00:40,800 --> 01:00:44,240
Speaker 1: using the same troika system originally pioneered by the Cheka.

1202
01:00:44,360 --> 01:00:46,520
Speaker 1: So like this the same way Barry is doing shit

1203
01:00:46,640 --> 01:00:50,000
Speaker 1: in Georgia in his early career. This becomes how the

1204
01:00:50,000 --> 01:00:51,480
Speaker 1: Great Terror is executed.

1205
01:00:51,560 --> 01:00:53,360
Speaker 3: And previous to the.

1206
01:00:53,320 --> 01:00:57,400
Speaker 1: Great Terror, the Bolsheviks had had a lot of people purged. Obviously,

1207
01:00:57,440 --> 01:00:59,920
Speaker 1: we were just talking about that. It had generally not

1208
01:01:00,160 --> 01:01:03,560
Speaker 1: been the thing, particularly in like Russia, to go after

1209
01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:07,360
Speaker 1: old Bolsheviks, right if you did, they were kind of

1210
01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:10,760
Speaker 1: like forced out of jobs, but you wouldn't execute them, right.

1211
01:01:11,240 --> 01:01:14,400
Speaker 1: It happens sometimes, but not in mass. This is when

1212
01:01:14,440 --> 01:01:18,520
Speaker 1: they start mass executing old Bolsheviks, right like even within

1213
01:01:18,640 --> 01:01:22,600
Speaker 1: sort of like the center of Russia, and somewhere between

1214
01:01:22,600 --> 01:01:25,120
Speaker 1: about a million and two million people are executed or

1215
01:01:25,200 --> 01:01:27,200
Speaker 1: worked to death in gulags by the time the Great

1216
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:31,400
Speaker 1: Terror ends in nineteen thirty eight. It's worth noting that

1217
01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:34,240
Speaker 1: a major factor in the Terror is anti Semitism. About

1218
01:01:34,240 --> 01:01:38,000
Speaker 1: a third of the NKVD was Jewish before the Great Terror.

1219
01:01:38,920 --> 01:01:41,960
Speaker 1: Many of these people are massacred and replaced with Georgians

1220
01:01:41,960 --> 01:01:45,720
Speaker 1: and Russians by nineteen thirty nine, only about four percent

1221
01:01:45,760 --> 01:01:47,600
Speaker 1: of NKVD officers are Jewish.

1222
01:01:48,080 --> 01:01:50,240
Speaker 3: Similar purge, whatt and fucking bullets.

1223
01:01:50,240 --> 01:01:53,120
Speaker 1: Those guys theres and you have to assume very canny,

1224
01:01:53,360 --> 01:01:56,360
Speaker 1: right like that four percent. Those are some tough scents

1225
01:01:56,400 --> 01:01:59,320
Speaker 1: of bitches. They had to throw a lot of people

1226
01:01:59,360 --> 01:02:03,200
Speaker 1: under the bus to not get killed themselves. A similar

1227
01:02:03,280 --> 01:02:06,120
Speaker 1: purge takes place in the Red Army, not just of Jews,

1228
01:02:06,120 --> 01:02:10,400
Speaker 1: but of most of the officer class. Fifteen of sixteen

1229
01:02:10,680 --> 01:02:14,080
Speaker 1: Army commanders are arrested, and like it's worth noting because

1230
01:02:14,120 --> 01:02:16,040
Speaker 1: of what a shit show the Red Army is in

1231
01:02:16,080 --> 01:02:18,600
Speaker 1: the invasion of Finland and in the initial the first

1232
01:02:18,720 --> 01:02:22,000
Speaker 1: year and change of like the of World War two,

1233
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:26,200
Speaker 1: after Operation Barbarossa, it has this reputation is being a

1234
01:02:26,240 --> 01:02:29,120
Speaker 1: total mess until like it gets rebuilt under guys like

1235
01:02:29,200 --> 01:02:32,360
Speaker 1: Zukov during the war. Right, that's not really the accurate.

1236
01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:35,880
Speaker 1: The Red Army that Trotsky builds is like I mean,

1237
01:02:35,920 --> 01:02:38,200
Speaker 1: it's literally a revolutionary army, but it actually is like

1238
01:02:38,240 --> 01:02:43,360
Speaker 1: a revolutionarily advanced fighting force. They are pioneering a lot

1239
01:02:43,400 --> 01:02:47,240
Speaker 1: of what will become like modern warfare tactics, and Trotsky

1240
01:02:47,280 --> 01:02:48,920
Speaker 1: the part of why they win the Civil war is

1241
01:02:48,920 --> 01:02:52,120
Speaker 1: Trotsky builds a really good army, right, the Red Army

1242
01:02:52,400 --> 01:02:57,000
Speaker 1: the company start purging, was quite competent. Yes, it will

1243
01:02:57,040 --> 01:02:59,720
Speaker 1: not stay that way because when you kill everyone who

1244
01:02:59,760 --> 01:03:01,480
Speaker 1: knows to do things, they don't.

1245
01:03:01,320 --> 01:03:05,360
Speaker 3: Work as well. In the like, the incredible amount of

1246
01:03:05,360 --> 01:03:09,000
Speaker 3: elimination that happened in all branches of the Red military,

1247
01:03:09,000 --> 01:03:11,600
Speaker 3: specifically the army and the Air force is kind of

1248
01:03:11,600 --> 01:03:15,240
Speaker 3: astounding when you look at statistics, like there wasn't many

1249
01:03:15,400 --> 01:03:19,000
Speaker 3: like officers at general level even left standing by the

1250
01:03:19,040 --> 01:03:21,960
Speaker 3: time the Winter War begins.

1251
01:03:22,600 --> 01:03:24,520
Speaker 1: And one of the things this tells you is that

1252
01:03:24,880 --> 01:03:27,720
Speaker 1: despite what a lot of the propaganda in the USSR

1253
01:03:27,800 --> 01:03:32,240
Speaker 1: says about the fascists in Germany, this is not that's

1254
01:03:32,280 --> 01:03:35,120
Speaker 1: not seen as the primary threat by Stalin at this point.

1255
01:03:35,160 --> 01:03:35,920
Speaker 3: It can't have been.

1256
01:03:36,040 --> 01:03:39,000
Speaker 1: You wouldn't do this if you were worried that you

1257
01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:41,280
Speaker 1: were just a few years away from being invaded.

1258
01:03:41,800 --> 01:03:46,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, no fucking way, even in Stalin's paranoid mind,

1259
01:03:46,560 --> 01:03:50,479
Speaker 3: would he shoot himself in the foot so spectacularly if

1260
01:03:50,480 --> 01:03:52,760
Speaker 3: that was the case, And if he if he did,

1261
01:03:53,440 --> 01:03:57,120
Speaker 3: then like we've we've left the realm of paranoia and

1262
01:03:57,160 --> 01:03:58,720
Speaker 3: into our right insanity.

1263
01:03:58,840 --> 01:04:03,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you'll, like Molotov as late as nineteen eighty

1264
01:04:03,400 --> 01:04:05,320
Speaker 1: when interviewed, would be like, we had to do this

1265
01:04:05,720 --> 01:04:08,560
Speaker 1: because these people were unreliable and we knew the war

1266
01:04:08,640 --> 01:04:11,120
Speaker 1: was coming. You can't have unreliable people in the military.

1267
01:04:11,200 --> 01:04:14,280
Speaker 1: And maybe that's what Malotov believed. But it is worth

1268
01:04:14,320 --> 01:04:17,680
Speaker 1: noting that in the mid thirties the USSR has very

1269
01:04:17,720 --> 01:04:21,640
Speaker 1: close relations with the Nazis. They do joint military training

1270
01:04:21,680 --> 01:04:26,600
Speaker 1: exercises because they are betraying riots. Yeah, they're pariah states together, right,

1271
01:04:26,760 --> 01:04:29,600
Speaker 1: The Nazis and the Soviet Union not popular internationally, so

1272
01:04:29,600 --> 01:04:33,600
Speaker 1: they like they're like their armies are practicing together. You know.

1273
01:04:34,680 --> 01:04:37,080
Speaker 1: In one fell Swoop, the Red Army is shorn of

1274
01:04:37,120 --> 01:04:40,360
Speaker 1: its very best officers and left in a chaotic, lobotomized

1275
01:04:40,360 --> 01:04:42,440
Speaker 1: state under which it would enter World War Two. This

1276
01:04:42,480 --> 01:04:45,520
Speaker 1: does work out very well for Finland. I just say

1277
01:04:45,560 --> 01:04:47,920
Speaker 1: that best thing you could have done for the Finns.

1278
01:04:48,360 --> 01:04:51,040
Speaker 1: There were purges as well of people of Polish descent,

1279
01:04:51,160 --> 01:04:55,160
Speaker 1: like actual like Soviet citizens of Polish ancestry. Part of

1280
01:04:55,160 --> 01:04:58,160
Speaker 1: how this happens is in nineteen thirty eight, internal passports

1281
01:04:58,160 --> 01:05:01,360
Speaker 1: are introduced to the USSR, and people are required to

1282
01:05:01,520 --> 01:05:04,920
Speaker 1: list their ancestry for the first time right polls, and

1283
01:05:04,960 --> 01:05:07,760
Speaker 1: other members of diaspora communities in the Soviet Union are

1284
01:05:07,800 --> 01:05:12,040
Speaker 1: then forbidden from changing their nationality, and this is part

1285
01:05:12,080 --> 01:05:15,280
Speaker 1: of the pretext to an ethnic cleansing. Writing about this

1286
01:05:15,320 --> 01:05:18,640
Speaker 1: in the book blood Lands, historian Timothy Snyder claims the

1287
01:05:18,680 --> 01:05:21,720
Speaker 1: only national minority that was highly overrepresented in the end

1288
01:05:21,760 --> 01:05:24,120
Speaker 1: of in the NKVD at the end of the Great

1289
01:05:24,200 --> 01:05:27,840
Speaker 1: Terror were the Georgians Stalin's own. This Third Revolution was

1290
01:05:27,880 --> 01:05:31,720
Speaker 1: really a counter revolution, implicitly acknowledging that Marxism and Leninism

1291
01:05:31,720 --> 01:05:34,400
Speaker 1: had failed. In its fifteen or so years of existence,

1292
01:05:34,440 --> 01:05:36,600
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union had achieved much for those of its

1293
01:05:36,640 --> 01:05:39,480
Speaker 1: citizens who were still alive as the Great Terror reached

1294
01:05:39,480 --> 01:05:42,720
Speaker 1: its height. For example, state pensions were introduced, yet some

1295
01:05:42,880 --> 01:05:46,880
Speaker 1: essential assumptions of revolutionary doctrine had been abandoned. Existence, as

1296
01:05:46,880 --> 01:05:51,000
Speaker 1: the Marxists had said, was no longer preceded essence. People

1297
01:05:51,000 --> 01:05:54,200
Speaker 1: were guilty not because of their place in the socioeconomic order,

1298
01:05:54,400 --> 01:05:57,960
Speaker 1: but because of their ostensible personal identities or cultural connections.

1299
01:05:58,320 --> 01:06:01,400
Speaker 1: Politics was no longer comprehensive in terms of class struggle.

1300
01:06:01,640 --> 01:06:04,600
Speaker 1: If the diaspora ethnicities of the Soviet Union were disloyal.

1301
01:06:04,640 --> 01:06:06,800
Speaker 1: As the case against them went, it was not because

1302
01:06:06,840 --> 01:06:09,640
Speaker 1: they were bound to a previous economic order, but because

1303
01:06:09,640 --> 01:06:12,800
Speaker 1: they were supposedly linked to a foreign state by their ethnicity.

1304
01:06:14,920 --> 01:06:18,200
Speaker 3: And it's so interesting that Stalin does this, like surrounds

1305
01:06:18,240 --> 01:06:22,480
Speaker 3: himself the Cheka becomes overwhelmingly Georgian because he himself, like Barria,

1306
01:06:22,560 --> 01:06:25,400
Speaker 3: attempted to divorce himself from his Georgian identity and become

1307
01:06:25,560 --> 01:06:29,680
Speaker 3: as Russian as I mean, that's why his name is Stalin. Yeah,

1308
01:06:29,720 --> 01:06:33,240
Speaker 3: and he did not rule as Joseph Jugas viewy.

1309
01:06:33,480 --> 01:06:37,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, why would you terrible name? It's the same, yeah,

1310
01:06:38,000 --> 01:06:39,080
Speaker 1: rolls off the tongue.

1311
01:06:39,400 --> 01:06:40,000
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1312
01:06:40,160 --> 01:06:43,480
Speaker 1: Now Barria is again not yet head of the NKVD.

1313
01:06:43,840 --> 01:06:45,840
Speaker 1: The job during the Great Terror. The head of the

1314
01:06:45,920 --> 01:06:50,880
Speaker 1: NKVD is this insanely violent dude named Yesov or as

1315
01:06:50,960 --> 01:06:53,360
Speaker 1: ofv is how it's spelled in some of the books.

1316
01:06:53,360 --> 01:06:55,880
Speaker 1: These are anglicizations, right, like, because his name is not

1317
01:06:55,920 --> 01:07:00,000
Speaker 1: written in that like, it's written in a totally different

1318
01:07:00,080 --> 01:07:03,720
Speaker 1: set of characters. So Barria is a major figure in

1319
01:07:03,760 --> 01:07:06,760
Speaker 1: the organization, though he rises to deputy commander of the

1320
01:07:06,840 --> 01:07:09,800
Speaker 1: NKVD by nineteen thirty eight, which is generally like agreed

1321
01:07:09,840 --> 01:07:11,960
Speaker 1: upon us the last year of the Terror. And of

1322
01:07:12,000 --> 01:07:14,560
Speaker 1: course he was leading the secret police in Georgia during

1323
01:07:14,560 --> 01:07:16,640
Speaker 1: this time. So he is a part of the machinery

1324
01:07:16,640 --> 01:07:19,040
Speaker 1: of the Great Terror, but he's not directing all of it.

1325
01:07:19,560 --> 01:07:19,880
Speaker 3: Now.

1326
01:07:20,800 --> 01:07:23,080
Speaker 1: Some of the books I've read, I think Knight's book

1327
01:07:23,120 --> 01:07:26,520
Speaker 1: makes this case, argues that he personally informed on a

1328
01:07:26,600 --> 01:07:30,600
Speaker 1: number of Red Army commanders and orchestrated a significant part

1329
01:07:30,640 --> 01:07:33,760
Speaker 1: of the process of purging the Red Army. One Soviet

1330
01:07:33,760 --> 01:07:36,680
Speaker 1: official later claimed after World War Two that quote the

1331
01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:39,280
Speaker 1: barrier Cleek had picked up a giant crystal of oz

1332
01:07:39,360 --> 01:07:42,840
Speaker 1: containing eighty two thousand of the best, most experienced and

1333
01:07:42,960 --> 01:07:45,720
Speaker 1: qualified commanders and political workers in the army and navy

1334
01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:49,600
Speaker 1: and smashed it on the rocks. That's true for what

1335
01:07:49,800 --> 01:07:53,280
Speaker 1: happens to the army and navy. It I would say

1336
01:07:53,520 --> 01:07:55,800
Speaker 1: it seems to me, at least based on what I've read, again,

1337
01:07:55,840 --> 01:07:59,880
Speaker 1: not a historian here, that that's an overstatement of Barria's role, right,

1338
01:08:00,400 --> 01:08:03,040
Speaker 1: because he's not right now. And again some people will

1339
01:08:03,040 --> 01:08:07,600
Speaker 1: say he was kind of putting the whisper in Yazov's ear,

1340
01:08:07,720 --> 01:08:11,120
Speaker 1: and he was a major figure in this The officer

1341
01:08:11,160 --> 01:08:14,000
Speaker 1: that Barria is most often accused of informing on and

1342
01:08:14,040 --> 01:08:16,960
Speaker 1: getting killed is this general level officer, a major figure

1343
01:08:16,960 --> 01:08:20,760
Speaker 1: in the army that the Germans had also leaked information on.

1344
01:08:20,920 --> 01:08:24,000
Speaker 1: Like the German the Nazis basically claimed that he had

1345
01:08:24,040 --> 01:08:26,240
Speaker 1: been spying on the government for them because they want

1346
01:08:26,240 --> 01:08:28,720
Speaker 1: this guy out of the way, because he's a competent commander, right,

1347
01:08:28,760 --> 01:08:31,200
Speaker 1: they know it's going to happen next to him. Yes,

1348
01:08:32,040 --> 01:08:35,520
Speaker 1: other accounts I've read paint Barrier as just as terrified

1349
01:08:35,520 --> 01:08:38,040
Speaker 1: as everyone else on the Central Committee. You know, he

1350
01:08:38,160 --> 01:08:40,599
Speaker 1: is doing this, He is having people killed and stuff,

1351
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:43,679
Speaker 1: but not because he is wanting to orchestrate a purge

1352
01:08:43,680 --> 01:08:46,360
Speaker 1: as much as because he's scrambling to save his own ass.

1353
01:08:46,600 --> 01:08:49,000
Speaker 1: And he's kind of it's kind of a miserable period

1354
01:08:49,000 --> 01:08:51,599
Speaker 1: for him under this version of events, because he's having

1355
01:08:51,640 --> 01:08:54,519
Speaker 1: to burn a lot of people he trusts. You know,

1356
01:08:54,560 --> 01:08:56,960
Speaker 1: he's having to throw a lot of his good subordinates

1357
01:08:57,000 --> 01:08:57,599
Speaker 1: to the wolves.

1358
01:08:57,880 --> 01:08:58,880
Speaker 3: And he's not.

1359
01:08:58,960 --> 01:09:01,320
Speaker 1: Sad about that because it hurts him emotionally. But he

1360
01:09:01,360 --> 01:09:03,760
Speaker 1: said about that because like, useful people are useful, and

1361
01:09:03,760 --> 01:09:05,720
Speaker 1: he's having to kill a lot of useful people, you know,

1362
01:09:06,160 --> 01:09:09,360
Speaker 1: and that causes problems for him down the line. I

1363
01:09:09,360 --> 01:09:11,440
Speaker 1: want to read a quote from the book on Stalin's

1364
01:09:11,439 --> 01:09:14,360
Speaker 1: Team by Sila Fitzpatrick. Here, it was one of the

1365
01:09:14,400 --> 01:09:16,800
Speaker 1: conventions of the process that when there were arrests in

1366
01:09:16,840 --> 01:09:19,120
Speaker 1: your own bailiwick, you had to sign off on them.

1367
01:09:19,280 --> 01:09:20,120
Speaker 3: Well, what could you do?

1368
01:09:20,240 --> 01:09:23,160
Speaker 1: Varoshaalov had to supervise the purging of the military, though

1369
01:09:23,200 --> 01:09:26,200
Speaker 1: he was not happy about it. Danov, Khrushchev and Baria,

1370
01:09:26,280 --> 01:09:28,680
Speaker 1: the last two not yet Politburo members, were doing the

1371
01:09:28,720 --> 01:09:30,800
Speaker 1: same in the regions they headed, though they did it

1372
01:09:30,880 --> 01:09:35,120
Speaker 1: under local NKVD direction and without particular enthusiasm since it

1373
01:09:35,200 --> 01:09:36,839
Speaker 1: was their people they were purging.

1374
01:09:37,560 --> 01:09:38,400
Speaker 3: So again, that's kind of.

1375
01:09:38,400 --> 01:09:41,880
Speaker 1: The two pictures of Baria and you both can't be true, right.

1376
01:09:41,920 --> 01:09:45,360
Speaker 1: One is that he has caught masterminding aspects of the terror.

1377
01:09:45,400 --> 01:09:47,639
Speaker 1: He's really into it. He's a major role in purging

1378
01:09:47,720 --> 01:09:50,680
Speaker 1: the army because he sees it, as you know, benefiting

1379
01:09:50,720 --> 01:09:53,519
Speaker 1: his own consolidation of power. And the other is, well,

1380
01:09:53,560 --> 01:09:55,479
Speaker 1: he's wrapped up in this like everyone else, but his

1381
01:09:55,560 --> 01:09:58,880
Speaker 1: primary motivation is trying not to get killed, right, And

1382
01:09:58,960 --> 01:10:03,519
Speaker 1: that's why to be a lit true like aspects of both. Sure, yeah, yeah.

1383
01:10:03,320 --> 01:10:05,479
Speaker 3: I mean I do believe in that one thing that

1384
01:10:05,520 --> 01:10:09,280
Speaker 3: you were saying before, like proving his loyalty through brutality

1385
01:10:09,400 --> 01:10:12,920
Speaker 3: of close and important people. And he's doing that because

1386
01:10:13,760 --> 01:10:16,360
Speaker 3: I think anybody in the Soviet Union is seeing how

1387
01:10:16,400 --> 01:10:20,760
Speaker 3: wildly spiraling this violence is getting, and it's coming for everyone,

1388
01:10:21,000 --> 01:10:24,000
Speaker 3: says I have to go into overdrive doing what I

1389
01:10:24,040 --> 01:10:29,800
Speaker 3: was already doing before. Yes, to save my own fucking ass. Yeah, exactly.

1390
01:10:29,840 --> 01:10:32,720
Speaker 3: And I'm not one to give Barria any benefit of

1391
01:10:32,760 --> 01:10:35,559
Speaker 3: the doubt, but there's no real reason to believe he

1392
01:10:35,680 --> 01:10:38,880
Speaker 3: was not just as terrified and wrongfooted as everyone else

1393
01:10:39,040 --> 01:10:42,000
Speaker 3: was by this whole nightmare. The Great Purge hit most

1394
01:10:42,000 --> 01:10:45,320
Speaker 3: heavily at the second tier of the political hierarchy in

1395
01:10:45,360 --> 01:10:47,840
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union. In other words, the men who were

1396
01:10:47,840 --> 01:10:51,519
Speaker 3: a level below Stalin's team and the Politbureau, which are

1397
01:10:51,560 --> 01:10:54,839
Speaker 3: nearly one and the same two thirds of the nineteen

1398
01:10:54,920 --> 01:10:59,080
Speaker 3: thirty four Central Committee were killed in the purges. Barria

1399
01:10:59,240 --> 01:11:03,839
Speaker 3: himself was not protected by close daily association with Stalin

1400
01:11:04,120 --> 01:11:06,360
Speaker 3: to the extent that that even protected you, and he

1401
01:11:06,439 --> 01:11:10,080
Speaker 3: did come close to being annihilated. He was nearly arrested

1402
01:11:10,080 --> 01:11:12,599
Speaker 3: in the Midsummer of nineteen thirty eight, but was warned

1403
01:11:12,600 --> 01:11:15,040
Speaker 3: ahead of time and flies to Moscow to make his

1404
01:11:15,120 --> 01:11:18,639
Speaker 3: case directly to Stalin, and this apparently works. Now it's

1405
01:11:18,680 --> 01:11:21,720
Speaker 3: unclear to me the degree to which Berria influenced Yesov's

1406
01:11:21,760 --> 01:11:24,840
Speaker 3: behavior working as his deputy, but my guess is he

1407
01:11:24,960 --> 01:11:26,920
Speaker 3: tried to stay as clear of the man as possible.

1408
01:11:26,920 --> 01:11:29,400
Speaker 3: At this point, he's been through several rounds of purges

1409
01:11:29,640 --> 01:11:33,240
Speaker 3: and he knows that, like after the violence subsides, the

1410
01:11:33,320 --> 01:11:36,320
Speaker 3: people who were doing the killing there are going to

1411
01:11:36,360 --> 01:11:39,360
Speaker 3: be scapegoats because then the government has to kind of apologize.

1412
01:11:39,400 --> 01:11:41,720
Speaker 3: Stalin has to backpedal a little. That's the way this

1413
01:11:41,840 --> 01:11:44,040
Speaker 3: process works. And the last thing you want to be

1414
01:11:44,439 --> 01:11:47,080
Speaker 3: is the guy at the head of the NKVED when

1415
01:11:47,080 --> 01:11:49,479
Speaker 3: that happens, Hey, I would be the next guy down.

1416
01:11:49,600 --> 01:11:51,720
Speaker 3: He want to be the next guy down. So when

1417
01:11:51,720 --> 01:11:55,200
Speaker 3: they all get wiped out, like time for my promotion now.

1418
01:11:55,240 --> 01:11:57,439
Speaker 1: One of the funny so Yezov and a lot of

1419
01:11:57,479 --> 01:12:01,160
Speaker 1: the writings, specifically on a lot of the writings Soviets

1420
01:12:01,200 --> 01:12:03,839
Speaker 1: who were survivors of the purges, when they write about Yazov,

1421
01:12:03,840 --> 01:12:07,960
Speaker 1: they'll call him the bloodthirsty dwarf, and I assumed at first, like, well,

1422
01:12:08,000 --> 01:12:10,200
Speaker 1: is he actually like a little person. No, he's just

1423
01:12:10,240 --> 01:12:13,599
Speaker 1: five foot tall, right, that's why they call him that,

1424
01:12:12,800 --> 01:12:15,000
Speaker 1: which is that short for the period?

1425
01:12:15,080 --> 01:12:17,200
Speaker 3: You just a little guy. He's a little guy.

1426
01:12:17,240 --> 01:12:20,959
Speaker 1: He is a little guy, right, And he was generally

1427
01:12:21,040 --> 01:12:23,880
Speaker 1: seen as being terrible at anything but cruel to you

1428
01:12:23,920 --> 01:12:26,080
Speaker 1: will hear some people who will argue, actually, he was

1429
01:12:26,120 --> 01:12:28,040
Speaker 1: like kind of a thoughtful, quiet dude, and we were

1430
01:12:28,080 --> 01:12:30,720
Speaker 1: really surprised when he murdered all those people. I don't know,

1431
01:12:30,800 --> 01:12:33,479
Speaker 1: I didn't know the man after the terror died down,

1432
01:12:33,520 --> 01:12:36,280
Speaker 1: though he was forced out, he's eventually executed and in

1433
01:12:36,400 --> 01:12:39,320
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, at the very end of nineteen thirty eight,

1434
01:12:39,680 --> 01:12:42,200
Speaker 1: Barria had been put in his place as head of

1435
01:12:42,240 --> 01:12:43,160
Speaker 1: the NKVD.

1436
01:12:44,040 --> 01:12:45,519
Speaker 3: Some of Stalin's.

1437
01:12:45,000 --> 01:12:52,000
Speaker 1: Trust is five eight Okay, so he's taller, but tall.

1438
01:12:52,160 --> 01:12:53,840
Speaker 3: I mean, he's not going to start on the Soviet

1439
01:12:53,880 --> 01:12:54,960
Speaker 3: basketball too many times.

1440
01:12:54,960 --> 01:12:59,360
Speaker 2: No, I still think that that's like, you know, tiny.

1441
01:12:59,600 --> 01:12:59,960
Speaker 3: It's weird.

1442
01:13:00,080 --> 01:13:03,200
Speaker 1: Had to call him a dwarf for being fi Yes,

1443
01:13:03,479 --> 01:13:07,240
Speaker 1: I think, right, yeah, that's.

1444
01:13:07,040 --> 01:13:09,360
Speaker 3: A perfectly like that's fine.

1445
01:13:09,880 --> 01:13:12,760
Speaker 1: Well no, no, no, they're calling Yesov a dwarf because he's

1446
01:13:12,760 --> 01:13:16,000
Speaker 1: five feet tall. No one calls Barria that. But it's

1447
01:13:16,000 --> 01:13:17,880
Speaker 1: weird to me that they call Yesov that because like

1448
01:13:17,920 --> 01:13:20,320
Speaker 1: five feet like my grandma was five feet tall.

1449
01:13:20,479 --> 01:13:25,799
Speaker 3: I mean I'm six three, bloody dwarf. Yeah, blood there, Joe,

1450
01:13:26,120 --> 01:13:27,360
Speaker 3: just like I'll do it.

1451
01:13:27,400 --> 01:13:28,080
Speaker 2: I'll take Bud.

1452
01:13:28,240 --> 01:13:31,479
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm coming. I'm stomping out of the Caucuses mountains

1453
01:13:31,479 --> 01:13:33,800
Speaker 3: for revenge.

1454
01:13:34,600 --> 01:13:37,400
Speaker 1: Some of Stalin's trust in Barria was surely the result

1455
01:13:37,479 --> 01:13:39,960
Speaker 1: of the charm campaign that Barria was still waging on

1456
01:13:40,040 --> 01:13:44,160
Speaker 1: the Boss Night writes quote. In nineteen thirty seven, Stalin

1457
01:13:44,240 --> 01:13:48,040
Speaker 1: failed to attend his mother's funeral in Georgia, Barria acting

1458
01:13:48,080 --> 01:13:51,480
Speaker 1: as his surrogate, making the arrangements and presiding over the ceremony.

1459
01:13:51,760 --> 01:13:54,599
Speaker 1: Whatever the reasons were, Stalin's absence, it was not only

1460
01:13:54,640 --> 01:13:56,720
Speaker 1: a terrible insult to the memory of his dead mother,

1461
01:13:57,000 --> 01:13:59,720
Speaker 1: but also a shocking breach of the cultural and societal

1462
01:13:59,720 --> 01:14:02,360
Speaker 1: trade in a country where veneration of the dead is

1463
01:14:02,400 --> 01:14:05,920
Speaker 1: accorded the highest importance. Barria was then not simply a

1464
01:14:05,920 --> 01:14:10,280
Speaker 1: sycophant who gained Stalin's favor by insidious means. He actively

1465
01:14:10,360 --> 01:14:14,200
Speaker 1: encouraged Stalin's neurosis and his sense of self alienation stirred

1466
01:14:14,240 --> 01:14:16,960
Speaker 1: him up as no one else could do. Stalin depended

1467
01:14:17,000 --> 01:14:20,240
Speaker 1: emotionally on Barria, who was at his side constantly. From

1468
01:14:20,280 --> 01:14:23,960
Speaker 1: the early nineteen forties onward. Barria acted as the unofficial

1469
01:14:24,000 --> 01:14:27,240
Speaker 1: toastmaster at Stalin's Endless dinners, which all members of his

1470
01:14:27,280 --> 01:14:30,400
Speaker 1: inner circle were required to attend, forcing the guests to

1471
01:14:30,439 --> 01:14:34,400
Speaker 1: consume large quantities of alcohol and making crude scatological jokes.

1472
01:14:35,320 --> 01:14:37,680
Speaker 1: What a cool group of dudes to hang out with.

1473
01:14:37,880 --> 01:14:40,599
Speaker 1: Barria was just a bit guy. He was a bit guy.

1474
01:14:40,640 --> 01:14:43,120
Speaker 1: He loved a good bit. Stalin's a bit guy too.

1475
01:14:43,160 --> 01:14:43,280
Speaker 2: You know.

1476
01:14:43,560 --> 01:14:45,559
Speaker 1: One of his favorite things was to shove a tomato

1477
01:14:45,640 --> 01:14:48,280
Speaker 1: in someone's pocket, and you had to pretend you didn't

1478
01:14:48,280 --> 01:14:51,160
Speaker 1: see him put the tomato there, and then he'd smash

1479
01:14:51,200 --> 01:14:53,560
Speaker 1: it or you'd sit down and squash it. Oh, he

1480
01:14:53,680 --> 01:14:57,000
Speaker 1: just had to do it. Comic, He's a prop comic. Look,

1481
01:14:57,160 --> 01:14:59,640
Speaker 1: this is why we should execute Carrot Top. I've been

1482
01:14:59,680 --> 01:15:02,080
Speaker 1: saying this for years. I mean, these days, that's gonna

1483
01:15:02,080 --> 01:15:04,840
Speaker 1: be one hell of a fight. Yeah, no, he is.

1484
01:15:05,080 --> 01:15:07,479
Speaker 3: He would be tough to bring down. That man is

1485
01:15:07,560 --> 01:15:10,600
Speaker 3: more trend than man at this point, so I.

1486
01:15:11,000 --> 01:15:13,960
Speaker 2: I fact checked that ys have height, and I just

1487
01:15:14,000 --> 01:15:16,479
Speaker 2: want you to know that he is described as four

1488
01:15:16,560 --> 01:15:18,679
Speaker 2: foot eleven and one half inch.

1489
01:15:19,240 --> 01:15:23,280
Speaker 3: Oh my half inch. I just want you to know

1490
01:15:23,439 --> 01:15:24,640
Speaker 3: he there's okay.

1491
01:15:26,040 --> 01:15:27,960
Speaker 2: From my experience, there's at least a couple of inches

1492
01:15:28,000 --> 01:15:30,240
Speaker 2: added there. But they do add that he was also

1493
01:15:30,360 --> 01:15:32,840
Speaker 2: called the poison Dwarf, which is.

1494
01:15:34,320 --> 01:15:35,639
Speaker 3: Which is really cool.

1495
01:15:35,920 --> 01:15:41,960
Speaker 1: That is pretty dope. That is pretty dope. Say hair

1496
01:15:42,000 --> 01:15:43,400
Speaker 1: metal band fronted by Gimley.

1497
01:15:44,160 --> 01:15:49,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be so cool. I'm on board, shout out Gimley.

1498
01:15:50,320 --> 01:15:52,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, he never poisoned anybody that we're aware of.

1499
01:15:53,680 --> 01:15:56,720
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, John Rice Davies definitely is poisoned at

1500
01:15:56,800 --> 01:16:01,360
Speaker 1: least one person. That's why slide he's got that last season.

1501
01:16:01,920 --> 01:16:03,280
Speaker 1: I don't think he was even on the show at

1502
01:16:03,280 --> 01:16:03,599
Speaker 1: that point.

1503
01:16:03,640 --> 01:16:07,920
Speaker 2: Actually, Gimley gave us one of my favorite movie lines

1504
01:16:07,920 --> 01:16:10,320
Speaker 2: of all time, toss me. You're going to have to

1505
01:16:10,320 --> 01:16:12,080
Speaker 2: toss me.

1506
01:16:14,040 --> 01:16:16,760
Speaker 3: That's what he's into. He just likes being thrown. I

1507
01:16:16,840 --> 01:16:19,519
Speaker 3: know how often do you get to use that? Just

1508
01:16:19,960 --> 01:16:21,360
Speaker 3: just throw me, just please.

1509
01:16:22,040 --> 01:16:23,680
Speaker 2: I mean, this is just like a great way to

1510
01:16:23,760 --> 01:16:26,360
Speaker 2: end this episode is just to like really be happy

1511
01:16:26,360 --> 01:16:28,679
Speaker 2: about Gimbley right, Robert.

1512
01:16:28,840 --> 01:16:31,559
Speaker 1: Yeah, Look, there's a lot that's I won't go to

1513
01:16:31,600 --> 01:16:33,720
Speaker 1: bat for about John Ryce Davies, but he's a hell

1514
01:16:33,760 --> 01:16:35,800
Speaker 1: of an actor. You know, you got to give him that.

1515
01:16:38,000 --> 01:16:40,680
Speaker 1: He's super conservative. I don't think he's I don't think

1516
01:16:40,680 --> 01:16:43,759
Speaker 1: he's a particular I haven't heard any particular monsters.

1517
01:16:44,520 --> 01:16:45,759
Speaker 3: I don't care. It's fine.

1518
01:16:45,800 --> 01:16:48,880
Speaker 1: He was. He was good as Gimley. He's good in Sliders.

1519
01:16:50,200 --> 01:16:53,200
Speaker 1: There's some problematic aspects of him in the Indiana Jones movies,

1520
01:16:53,240 --> 01:16:58,920
Speaker 1: but by god, he's charismatic anyway, Joe, where can people

1521
01:16:58,960 --> 01:17:01,320
Speaker 1: find you? I am the host of the Lions, Little

1522
01:17:01,320 --> 01:17:06,240
Speaker 1: by Donkeys podcasts. We talk about military disasters, interesting things

1523
01:17:06,240 --> 01:17:10,480
Speaker 1: from military history, and much like your show, incredibly depressing things.

1524
01:17:10,600 --> 01:17:13,719
Speaker 3: That you know you can fall asleep to. I'm also

1525
01:17:13,800 --> 01:17:17,519
Speaker 3: an author. You can find my books anywhere you find

1526
01:17:17,560 --> 01:17:20,400
Speaker 3: your books, and I currently have a science fiction series

1527
01:17:20,439 --> 01:17:22,920
Speaker 3: out called The Undying Legion, and check that out if

1528
01:17:22,960 --> 01:17:24,760
Speaker 3: you'l like science fiction.

1529
01:17:26,360 --> 01:17:28,880
Speaker 1: Yes, check that out. And you know what you should

1530
01:17:29,120 --> 01:17:32,360
Speaker 1: check out the check a by forming your own secret police,

1531
01:17:32,400 --> 01:17:35,759
Speaker 1: you know, be the secret police you want to see,

1532
01:17:35,800 --> 01:17:40,439
Speaker 1: purge your inner circle in your life, you know, just

1533
01:17:40,439 --> 01:17:42,800
Speaker 1: just to start digging holes, folks. You know, I say

1534
01:17:42,800 --> 01:17:46,320
Speaker 1: it a lot, but start digging holes. You know, making lists.

1535
01:17:47,080 --> 01:17:48,559
Speaker 3: Never ready to purge people.

1536
01:17:48,640 --> 01:17:49,920
Speaker 1: You never know when you're gotta need to do a

1537
01:17:49,960 --> 01:17:52,880
Speaker 1: purge to make some weirdo happy, make it get to

1538
01:17:52,920 --> 01:17:54,639
Speaker 1: be able to watch a Cowboy movie with him.

1539
01:17:54,680 --> 01:17:55,840
Speaker 3: Look, always be.

1540
01:17:55,840 --> 01:17:58,120
Speaker 1: Thinking about which one of your friends and loved ones

1541
01:17:58,400 --> 01:18:00,680
Speaker 1: you're willing to kill so you can stay up light

1542
01:18:00,800 --> 01:18:06,679
Speaker 1: late watching Cowboy movies. Anyway, We'll be back next week

1543
01:18:06,720 --> 01:18:07,800
Speaker 1: with parts three and.

1544
01:18:07,720 --> 01:18:09,599
Speaker 3: Four, unless we get purged.

1545
01:18:13,360 --> 01:18:16,080
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1546
01:18:16,439 --> 01:18:19,720
Speaker 2: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia

1547
01:18:19,880 --> 01:18:23,080
Speaker 2: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1548
01:18:23,160 --> 01:18:26,200
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.