Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your
Speaker 2: weekly podcast of which I'm the host, Parker Kiljoy, of
Speaker 2: which this time Miawong is the guest.
Speaker 3: Amya, Hello, I'm back again. We're crunched at two Cronstead harder. Yeah,
Speaker 3: excited to be here. Three to Tokyo Drift already. I
Speaker 3: don't I don't know how you count the episode pairs.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm not sure. Yeah, because this is I mean,
Speaker 2: this is part three of a six parter. But since
Speaker 2: I always think of him as double no.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: We're in the middle, we're entering the middle period. But
Speaker 2: fortunately here to guide us along is our producer, Sophie Hy. Sophie,
Speaker 2: it's me.
Speaker 1: The producer, Sophie Hi.
Speaker 2: As one of the other people makes it happen is Daniel.
Speaker 2: He's an audio engineer, Daniel. Our theme music was written
Speaker 2: for us by un woman, and I promised Mia right
Speaker 2: before we recorded that today I am going to talk
Speaker 2: about what I believe to be the largest moral and
Speaker 2: strategic misstep in anarchist history.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This is wild to be because I think, wow,
Speaker 3: this is this is this is this, This is worse
Speaker 3: than working with the government in Catalonia's is worse than
Speaker 3: going off the barricades. It's like, oh wow, this is
Speaker 3: this is this is worse than the Chinese anarchists working
Speaker 3: with Chen Kai Sheck.
Speaker 2: That one I don't know about, but it might be
Speaker 2: comparable to working with Chinese.
Speaker 3: This is probably worse because by that point they're just
Speaker 3: worked than many of them.
Speaker 2: I have a feeling that this is probably why they
Speaker 2: worked with Shanghai Shek to be for anyone who's listening,
Speaker 2: that's the nationalists general who the Maoist Army was fighting
Speaker 2: in China.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I that that one. Yeah, I can explain
Speaker 3: really briefly basically that one was there was a faction
Speaker 3: of anarchists who were just like friends with him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so they backed Chan Kay Sheck. Also partially as a
Speaker 3: result of a bunch of anarchists getting killed in Russia.
Speaker 3: A lot of other anarchists refused to back them and
Speaker 3: were like, what are you guys doing? This guy is
Speaker 3: like this kuys he like right drug barn like right wing,
Speaker 3: like nationalist weirdo. But you know, that's for another episode.
Speaker 2: Although I want to see at the end of part
Speaker 2: four how you feel about that decision that they made
Speaker 2: because where we last left our heroes and soon to
Speaker 2: be antagonists, the revolution of nineteen oh five had largely
Speaker 2: failed in Russia. Right, this is our sixth part about
Speaker 2: the cronstat Uprising, but it's it's secretly the entire nineteen
Speaker 2: oh five to nineteen twenty one Russian Revolution series so
Speaker 2: that I can eventually do other spinoff episodes that talk
Speaker 2: about these things and have done more of the research
Speaker 2: myself and or you all have had options to hear it.
Speaker 2: So nineteen oh five revolution is largely failed, most of
Speaker 2: the militant revolutionaries are dead, imprisoned or in exile. And
Speaker 2: of all of the different socialist factions, and once again,
Speaker 2: you've got the s RS, who are the agrarian socialists
Speaker 2: that came out of Russia's own nineteenth century social movements.
Speaker 2: You've got the Marxists who are the social democrat, and
Speaker 2: then you've got the anarchists and all of these factions.
Speaker 2: You also have the Cadets, which are like the like
Speaker 2: liberal centrists. Actually will they come later, But there are
Speaker 2: other factions, but these are the like leftist factions.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: All of these factions have their own internal divisions, Most
Speaker 2: famously the Marxists are split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks,
Speaker 2: and the Bolsheviks are headed up by Vladimir Lenin, who
Speaker 2: wanted an elite vanguard of middle class intellectuals to drag
Speaker 2: the working class kicking and screaming into the revolution. And
Speaker 2: you have the Mensheviks who are just kind of like
Speaker 2: a little bit less fiery and a little bit less vanguardy,
Speaker 2: and so in some ways they're kind of like better,
Speaker 2: and in some kind of ways they're I mean, I
Speaker 2: like it those things like better, and I like the Bolsheviks,
Speaker 2: but they have some great one liners.
Speaker 3: I remember it was like an art class in college.
Speaker 3: But we revent this line of this Venshevik in like
Speaker 3: I think nineteen eighteen going talking about the Bolsheviks saying
Speaker 3: you can't build socialism the way the Pharaoh's built the pyramids,
Speaker 3: which I always liked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a great line.
Speaker 3: But they great wood lighters, less great organizing in politics.
Speaker 2: So maybe I mean they're still better than the Bolsheviks, like,
Speaker 2: but anyway, well they didn't do as good of a
Speaker 2: job as it because the Bolsheviks win, But you can
Speaker 2: say that about everyone else. We're gonna talk about today, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because the Bolsheviks beat everyone, including themselves and all of
Speaker 2: the people who followed anyway. Whatever, So the SRS have
Speaker 2: their moderate wing and their extreme wing. The extreme wing
Speaker 2: are the Maximalists. The anarchists are less like divided into
Speaker 2: two factions as much as they are a series of
Speaker 2: different ideologies who sometimes work together and sometimes don't. In general,
Speaker 2: you've got the least revolutionary, who are the anarcho syndicalists,
Speaker 2: and then you have the anarcho communists, and then you
Speaker 2: have the anarco communists who are like too radical for
Speaker 2: the other a narco communists who are like, we don't
Speaker 2: like you Kropotkinists, you all are too democratic. Whatever, nothing changes.
Speaker 2: All of the more extreme factions of each of these groups,
Speaker 2: from the Bolsheviks to the left s RS and the
Speaker 2: Maximalists to the most of the anarchists, are running around
Speaker 2: killing motherfuckers, robbing motherfuckers, and just generally trying to utilize
Speaker 2: terrorism for political lens. By and large, they've all failed
Speaker 2: at this point, so most of them are writing about
Speaker 2: all this in exile or getting political education from other
Speaker 2: imprisoned radicals, or being dead, which was another popular pastime
Speaker 2: of failed revolutionaries worldwide.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, great way to pass the time. It will
Speaker 3: pass all of your time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all everything's past tense at this point. This quiets
Speaker 2: down Russia a little bit. But to be honest, it
Speaker 2: was mostly just angry peasants and workers who were doing
Speaker 2: all the uprising, not the ideologues of any of these
Speaker 2: groups or parties. So things stayed kind of spicy. And
Speaker 2: you've got Tzar Nicholas the Second, who never wanted to
Speaker 2: be czar. He's pretty every single historian that I have
Speaker 2: run across, of every lee and right, agrees this guy
Speaker 2: was just weak and spineless as far as autocrats go.
Speaker 2: And he was just like the wimpy Tzar, and most
Speaker 2: historians tend to be like, there was no way he
Speaker 2: was going to survive as Zar Zardam was fucking done
Speaker 2: no matter how it went with this guy in charge.
Speaker 2: With the possible exception as if he had really leaned
Speaker 2: into constitutional monarchy after nineteen oh five and had basically
Speaker 2: just like stepped back, him and his family could have
Speaker 2: survived and Russia could have been like the UK of
Speaker 2: the Netherlands.
Speaker 3: But I think the problem with that is like Azar
Speaker 3: could have done that. Zar Nicholas the guy could not
Speaker 3: have done that now, like he is too much of
Speaker 3: a micromanager. He is too much of a like I'm
Speaker 3: going to be the czar guy, yeah, which is because
Speaker 3: he didn't even want a bizarre like yeah, it is
Speaker 3: a fiasco.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess I'm gonna be the most czarish tzar
Speaker 2: because I.
Speaker 3: You could just not be the czar. But no, I know,
Speaker 3: I know so easy to not be the czar. I'm
Speaker 3: doing it right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am eighty percent committed to not be in
Speaker 2: the czar. So the Zar promised to Duma, which is
Speaker 2: a congress of sorts, and even though it barely had
Speaker 2: any power, and he still kept disbanding it and getting
Speaker 2: annoyed at it because of micromanagy autocratic stuff, and then
Speaker 2: he would like call for new elections every time it
Speaker 2: seemed like politically necessary. People were getting really annoyed by this,
Speaker 2: and lots, but not all of the revolutionaries are boycotting
Speaker 2: Duma elections, which actually sort of worked as far as
Speaker 2: I can tell. Like, boycotting elections is sometimes a strategy
Speaker 2: that does not work, and sometimes is a strategy that works.
Speaker 2: Whenever people are like this is the revolutionary strategy that works.
Speaker 2: I'm always like, yeah, it's always a crapshoot, just always.
Speaker 2: So the only fun part about talking about inter revolutionary
Speaker 2: Russia is that we get to talk about everyone's favorite
Speaker 2: piece of shit, Rasputant. Eh, he's so cool that Bonie
Speaker 2: m wrote a six song about him. It was covered
Speaker 2: by the folk metal band Teresis because it's.
Speaker 1: Please stop, please stop telling us that Robert looks like him.
Speaker 2: We've heard your theories. I, after having done more research
Speaker 2: about Rasputin, would never say that about Robert.
Speaker 1: Please stop, please stop doing that theory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like so Rasbuten is not cool. People did cool stuff,
Speaker 2: and I used to think he's interesting people who survived
Speaker 2: a lot of assassination attempts. Right, Realistically, he only survived
Speaker 2: one assassination attempt, which is more assassination attempts than I've survived.
Speaker 3: That's true, but like that's also he's also on the
Speaker 3: list of like on the like the the memorial Hitler
Speaker 3: list of that guy shouldn't have made it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, And so we're going to talk about him
Speaker 2: because he's he's still kind of funny. Is interesting because
Speaker 2: this is the part of the story where you can
Speaker 2: point to royal inbreeding as being the driving force of
Speaker 2: the Russian Revolution in world attempts to stay socialism if
Speaker 2: you really want to pull your red yarn out as
Speaker 2: far as it can go. Because Nicholas the Second his
Speaker 2: wife Alexandra, was a German princess and was granddaughter of
Speaker 2: Queen Victoria of the UK. Because everything that you think about,
Speaker 2: how in bread and incestuous and the aristocracy was an
Speaker 2: entirely different class of people that ruled all of Europe.
Speaker 3: However bad you think it was, you're right, that's how
Speaker 3: bad it was. Yeah, they're all cousins. Yeah, Like it's terrible.
Speaker 2: The Royal line is famous for being a pretty straight
Speaker 2: and narrow family tree, and it means as certain traits
Speaker 2: are more likely to occur. Alexandra was a carrier for hamophilia,
Speaker 2: which means that blood doesn't clot properly. If you get cut,
Speaker 2: you can bleed out.
Speaker 3: It's not great.
Speaker 2: I mean people have it, and I'm not trying to
Speaker 2: be like, ah, everyone has it sucks like, but you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't a good thing to have. At the beginning
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century, it was also called the Royal disease.
Speaker 2: Because so many men in the family had it, and
Speaker 2: so the heir to the throne, Nicholas's own son, Alexey,
Speaker 2: had it, and they tried to hide it from everyone,
Speaker 2: and they tried everything to solve the problem, especially doctors.
Speaker 2: But doctors didn't help. Because it's the beginning of the
Speaker 2: twentieth century, and eventually people will say the same thing
Speaker 2: about doctors now because we're all still learning. Enter the
Speaker 2: wandering mystic Grigory Rasputin. He was born a Siberian peasant
Speaker 2: and people know almost nothing about his upbringing. Okay, The
Speaker 2: thing that I like about him, he is kind of
Speaker 2: this blank thing that you can like project whatever you
Speaker 2: want onto.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, but so was Louis Napoleon, so Napoleon the third,
Speaker 3: so you know, not not necessarily a good yeah.
Speaker 2: Fair enough. He was not formally educated. Was Robert formally educated?
Speaker 2: And also was Robert born a Siberian peasant is an
Speaker 2: unknown We may never know. Much like Robert Evans, nothing
Speaker 2: is known about this man's past. He was probably a
Speaker 2: rowdy kid. Okay, this part does a lineup. And then
Speaker 2: when he's like twenty eight and he had like a
Speaker 2: wife and kids and stuff, he was like oh shit,
Speaker 2: I'm having visions I should go wandering. In the process,
Speaker 2: he became friends of the pod XVX. He swore off
Speaker 2: meat and alcohol.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, usually it's revolutionary, so I talk about our XVX
Speaker 2: on this show. But apparently this piece of shit sexual
Speaker 2: assault or spoil alert. He's a massive rapist.
Speaker 3: Did do people even know what XVX? Because like, I
Speaker 3: didn't know what that was, even though everyone says that.
Speaker 2: I'm sure, like, no, Okay. So XVX is punk shorthand
Speaker 2: for vegan straight edge, and that means that you don't
Speaker 2: eat animal products, and you don't drink alcohol or do
Speaker 2: drugs besides caffeine. And it's a thing that some people
Speaker 2: are I'm not. I'm vegan almost edge. It's a different thing.
Speaker 2: I don't get the cool points for it. I'm also
Speaker 2: not a wandering mystic until I get this van done. Anyway,
Speaker 2: He's like he attracted a following. He joined a cool,
Speaker 2: probably terrible, but interesting self flagellation and orgy cult and
Speaker 2: one day I'm going to do a whole episode just
Speaker 2: about weird Russian cults when I'm like not doing actual
Speaker 2: cool people the cool stuff, and I'm just doing weird stuff.
Speaker 2: Because the very first episode that I ever did of
Speaker 2: this show in terms of research was about the Russian Nihilists,
Speaker 2: and I fell down this two day rabbit holes before
Speaker 2: I knew how to do this properly, where I have
Speaker 2: to put out a two episodes every week. I found
Speaker 2: on a two day rabbit hole about this like castration
Speaker 2: cult that was really big in Russia where they were
Speaker 2: all like chopping off dix and nuts and stuff all
Speaker 2: the time. I think it might have only been nuts,
Speaker 2: but I can't remember. It might have been dicks too.
Speaker 2: I have all the notes about it. And it was
Speaker 2: this like wild cult that like came out of Siberian peasantry.
Speaker 2: And then like was it kind of like the Masons
Speaker 2: where it was like this like secret society that like
Speaker 2: this is completely offscript anyway, that's a different weird cult stuff.
Speaker 2: So he's in a weird cult. He is not a
Speaker 2: formal priest or doctor or anything, much like Robert Evans
Speaker 2: is not actually a doctor, regardless of what he tells you,
Speaker 2: And soon enough he is basically the personal physician to
Speaker 2: this six Czar's kid. You ever read about how he
Speaker 2: actually managed to cure the hemophilia of the Czar's kid,
Speaker 2: wasn't that.
Speaker 3: They stop giving him arsenic or something or like lead.
Speaker 2: Willow bark ah aspirin. So all the doctors have been
Speaker 2: failing to heal this kid, and so this faith healer
Speaker 2: who came in and just like prayed over him and
Speaker 2: like made him lay in bed did And there's two
Speaker 2: possible explanations. One is that the praying worked and the
Speaker 2: you know various God or God's intervened on the behalf
Speaker 2: of this child. And the other is that since he
Speaker 2: had scared off the doctors, the doctor stopped gilia of
Speaker 2: giving him aspirin basically willow bark which is a blood thinner.
Speaker 2: So bed rest was not aspirin helped. Because sometimes nothing
Speaker 2: better than what doctors do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially especially pre like full pre them figuring out
Speaker 3: how the human body sort of works. Doctors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Again, I never want to come too hard
Speaker 2: for old timey doctors because I'm like, that is what
Speaker 2: people will say about us if the human race survives
Speaker 2: the oh yeah, climate crisis, They'll be like, they thought.
Speaker 3: What is like you guys were doing surgeries by cutting
Speaker 3: people's bones with saws. What is wrong with you?
Speaker 2: People, Yeah, and they'll like conflate. They'll be like old
Speaker 2: timey medicine, and they'll be like, they'll conflate like ether
Speaker 2: and like ssries and the four humors all into one.
Speaker 2: They'll be like, you know anyway, So Rasputin he is
Speaker 2: almost certainly a sex chrize piece of shit who sectually
Speaker 2: assaults people and extorts influence favors for sexual favors. He's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have a wrecked line to the Czar and the
Speaker 2: Tzarina in particular. Well, I guess the Tsar's wife, and
Speaker 2: I think Zorina means she's regnant ruling, but.
Speaker 3: I'm not actually sure.
Speaker 2: Anyway, He's like, yeah, you do this thing for me,
Speaker 2: I'll do this thing for you. And it's funny because
Speaker 2: the main thing people argue about is whether or not
Speaker 2: he was sleeping with the Czar and the Empress, which
Speaker 2: he may or may not have been, But that's so
Speaker 2: much less important to me than understanding that multiple women
Speaker 2: came forward accusing him of rape, one of whom was
Speaker 2: immediately disbelieved in fired she was a governess for the
Speaker 2: young daughters. There's a lot of fairly reasonable ideas that
Speaker 2: he was mistreating the young daughters of the royal family.
Speaker 3: He sucks.
Speaker 2: That's the Even though the people who dislike him are
Speaker 2: super right wing, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: He sucks. Yeah he was actually, so he just sucks
Speaker 3: for a different reason than the right wing people hate
Speaker 3: him for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, because they hate him because there's a wild
Speaker 2: scandal going on, like about whether he's fucking the czar
Speaker 2: in the wife and like whether or not, you know,
Speaker 2: like I don't know whatever, And the royal family keeps
Speaker 2: defending him. They're like, well, he's holy everything, he's practically
Speaker 2: a saint. He can't do anything wrong. And the Russian people,
Speaker 2: both high born and low are like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: fuck this guy. It is seriously impacting Nicholas the Second's
Speaker 2: reputation internally and internationally that this is happening. And I
Speaker 2: don't know if you knew this, mehm. Overall during this
Speaker 2: time period, the people of Russia are not afraid to
Speaker 2: assassinate people. Yeah, it's like kind of a thing, not
Speaker 2: saying anyone should bring that back in Russia right now.
Speaker 2: But oh wait, well there's the whole dead oligarchs thing.
Speaker 2: But that's the other direction, that's state sponsored killing. So
Speaker 2: The first attempt on his life was by this peasant
Speaker 2: woman who didn't have a nose named Keonia, Gussia, and
Speaker 2: she was thirty three, and she stabbed him and screamed,
Speaker 2: I've killed the Antichrist. Just pretty cool. It's kind of
Speaker 2: up there with six temper Tyrannus.
Speaker 3: It's pretty good. But it has this issue. This is
Speaker 3: the thing I've run into a lot of like in
Speaker 3: the history of political assassination, just like you got to
Speaker 3: go for multiple stabs and you have to you have
Speaker 3: to do follow up shots. Oh yeah, sure they're actually dead.
Speaker 3: This is this happens all the time. Always take the
Speaker 3: second shot. This is this is my advice to the
Speaker 3: aspiring I don't know, guy who wants to solve some
Speaker 3: problems in Russia, right, yeah, directly, Yeah, take the second
Speaker 3: shot and possibly the third one.
Speaker 2: You might also need number four, you know, going until
Speaker 2: the problem is certainly solved, reload, keep spare mags like whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, And they didn't have like CSI or whatever, so
Speaker 2: they didn't know that, like when people die of stab wounds,
Speaker 2: they have like thirty seven stab wounds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, And that's the thing I think to
Speaker 3: this day, people like there's this weird thing that comes
Speaker 3: from movies and video games where people think that like
Speaker 3: you can just like like killing someone with a knife
Speaker 3: is like really quiet and they just instantly die. No,
Speaker 3: this is like the loudest conceivable way to kill someone
Speaker 3: that's not like an anti aircraft gun. Yeah, it takes
Speaker 3: a long time. And yeah, and so it didn't work.
Speaker 3: He ran away, she chased him. He turned around and
Speaker 3: like fought her in a crowd formed and you know,
Speaker 3: she gets arrested. Later, she's released after the revolution, and
Speaker 3: then she tries to kill a bishop, and I think
Speaker 3: she's like then sent into an asylum at some point. Wait,
Speaker 3: you're the revolutionary censor decided we're trying to kill a bishop. Okay, wow, Wow,
Speaker 3: they're betraying their Marxist principles here.
Speaker 2: This is really by trying to Wait now, I don't
Speaker 2: I don't think she was a Marxist. She was just
Speaker 2: released by the revolution.
Speaker 3: Yeah sure, But if you if you're a revolutionary, if
Speaker 3: you're like a Bolshevik, are you supposed to be fine
Speaker 3: with people killing bishops?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: I see what you're saying. Well, we're going to get
Speaker 2: to how little the Bolsheviks care about what that's But first,
Speaker 2: do you know what the Bolsheviks do care about?
Speaker 3: Is is it the products and services that support the podcasts.
Speaker 2: That's right, because they are universally loved. They are so
Speaker 2: universally loved that even anti capitalists put their ads into
Speaker 2: their shows, and even authoritarian anti capitalists like the Bolsheviks
Speaker 2: also love them.
Speaker 3: Here in the words, in the words of the of
Speaker 3: another Bolshevik destended party, the Chinese Communist Party, I follow
Speaker 3: the party started business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, actually no, the Bolsheviks don't let people do that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: fair enough, Okay, well here's the adsoper back. And then
Speaker 2: some nobles do take out Respute and they take them
Speaker 2: out in nineteen sixteen. The story is like pretty murky
Speaker 2: and retold in different ways, and it's almost certainly told
Speaker 2: in a very sensationalist way, but that very weighs fun,
Speaker 2: so I'll tell it, which is that they like lured
Speaker 2: him into the basement. They gave him a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of poisoned cakes and he ate like ten of them,
Speaker 2: and he was like, those are good, and they were like, here,
Speaker 2: drink this wine. It's totally not poison, but it was poison.
Speaker 2: And then he drank like three glasses and he was like,
Speaker 2: I'm happy, this is good, which and then they shot
Speaker 2: him in the chest and then he was like leaped
Speaker 2: up like a horror movie and was like, ah, I
Speaker 2: like chase the person who had shot him in the chest,
Speaker 2: and so they had to put a bullet in his
Speaker 2: head and throw his body into the river in order
Speaker 2: to stop him. Later people were like, he didn't eat
Speaker 2: sweet things. That didn't happen, which also implies that either
Speaker 2: he also didn't drink or he had started drinking again.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about his who knows. The problem
Speaker 2: with him is he's a fucking edge breaker. That's the
Speaker 2: problem with him, which is what you call someone who's
Speaker 2: straight edge who stops being straight edge. Anyway, the most
Speaker 2: likely story is that some aristocrats were like, we don't
Speaker 2: like this guy, and then they shot him in the
Speaker 2: head and then it was done. One bullet anyway, resput
Speaker 2: and weird guy glad he's dead. But it plays a
Speaker 2: big part in the downfall of Yeah, because people were
Speaker 2: really unhappy about this, which is you should be upset
Speaker 2: when there is a rapist and executive power like you do.
Speaker 2: After the next election, you would think, but yeah, because
Speaker 2: resputants running, That's what I'm trying to say. I would
Speaker 2: never make any allegations about any candidates besides resputant.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 2: More important to the story is the old World War One.
Speaker 2: So check that off on your bingo cards. It's nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 2: Resputant still isn't dead. At this point, some Bosnian Serbs
Speaker 2: assassinated an Austro Hungarian guy, and then Austro Hungary was like,
Speaker 2: fuck you, Serbia, and then Russia was like, well, we
Speaker 2: don't have treaty obligations, but we like kind of consider
Speaker 2: Serbia to be part of the general Russian sphere of influence.
Speaker 2: So Nicholas the second was like, all right, fuck it,
Speaker 2: let's go, and so mobilized to defense Serbia, and Germany
Speaker 2: was like, well, then we had a cclar war, and
Speaker 2: then Russia was like, well then we're going to attack,
Speaker 2: and that's the start of World War One.
Speaker 3: And herbal idea, Yeah, can all of you worst No, yeah, don't, don't.
Speaker 3: Don't be ruled by kings. Yeah, did not go well
Speaker 3: for anybody this particular war. I'm going to ask the Bolsheviks.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's true, Okay, it did go well. For the Bolsheviks,
Speaker 2: although the first thing that they did was get out
Speaker 2: of anyway, so no one who is involved.
Speaker 3: Did it go well for Yeah?
Speaker 2: Nicholas's second was, like, you know, last time I threw
Speaker 2: a war in order to stave off revolution, it didn't
Speaker 2: work out at all and I almost died. Surely this
Speaker 2: time it all go better. Because there's all this propaganda
Speaker 2: about ho, Russia is going to like roll right into
Speaker 2: Germany and conquer. This did not happen. As per usual,
Speaker 2: Russia did what Russia does best in a war, have
Speaker 2: a very large army full of conscripts with very bad
Speaker 2: leadership and bad equipment, and throw bodies at the problem.
Speaker 2: Has no comparison to now famously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although they were fighting a much like no no
Speaker 3: offense to the Ukrainian army, which is fought above its capacity,
Speaker 3: but like the N eighty fourty German Army, Oh boy,
Speaker 3: do you not want to fight that arby? Like Jesus,
Speaker 3: those guys are scary. Like those people.
Speaker 2: They went to war against the entire world and almost won,
Speaker 2: yeah twice twice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's like like really like especially in World
Speaker 3: War One, like all of their allies are a joke Okay,
Speaker 3: so they're terrifying arby zero out of ten. Don't let
Speaker 3: the Germans form an army because yeah, never good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, they're famous for their efficiency,
Speaker 2: and unfortunate efficiency is an incredibly important part of war,
Speaker 2: so famously. Also, soldiers don't like being sent to war without.
Speaker 2: Some of them don't have boots and are basically told
Speaker 2: get boots off the guy next to you and he dies.
Speaker 2: And like this is also a like like I've read
Speaker 2: accounts from people who fought in the Red Army during
Speaker 2: World War Two and like were told to attack tanks
Speaker 2: with their bare hands. You know, most of the peasants
Speaker 2: were drafted from the peasant class. Families watched their sons
Speaker 2: leave pretty sure that they'd never see their sons again,
Speaker 2: and they were mostly right. Yeah, and people are really
Speaker 2: fucking poor. As per usual, a third of the draftees
Speaker 2: have to be rejected for medical reasons because ill health
Speaker 2: is so rampant. World War One doesn't do anyone any favors.
Speaker 2: It's the first time European powers have the machine gun
Speaker 2: to use in a war against each other instead of
Speaker 2: colonized people, and so they're just throwing bodies into the grinder,
Speaker 2: and it's bad times all around. The only thing good
Speaker 2: thing that came out of World War One is, of
Speaker 2: course Lord of the Rings and almost the Russian Revolution,
Speaker 2: the Lord of the Ring things that Tolkien fought in
Speaker 2: World War One, and that influenced his decision around how
Speaker 2: to make the most important book of our time. So
Speaker 2: the Russian Revolution almost was really cool and came out
Speaker 2: of World War One.
Speaker 3: So that's like close, yes, like one in a quarter,
Speaker 3: one in an eighth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hate the big Man theory of history. Everything
Speaker 2: I've read, you can kind of blame the destruction of
Speaker 2: socialism at the feet of Latimer Lenin more than anyone else,
Speaker 2: because he engineered again, this is the best I can tell.
Speaker 2: He engineered the Bolsheviks into doing what even they didn't
Speaker 2: want to do, at least at first. And I think
Speaker 2: all of them were fine with taking power and stuff.
Speaker 2: But the way in which the Bolsheviks did this, which
Speaker 2: we'll get to, but we'll get to that he's not
Speaker 2: even in the country at this point. He's in Switzerland,
Speaker 2: so without any of the leaders of the revolution. I
Speaker 2: just wanted to point out that Lenin wasn't there because
Speaker 2: I'm a little salty anarchist bitch.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So without any of the so called leaders of the revolution,
Speaker 2: including all the anarchists, right, like, they're all fucking locked
Speaker 2: I mean, the leaders of the anarchist movement or whatever.
Speaker 2: We're all locked up to right or in exile or dead.
Speaker 2: Russia is going to have a revolution without everyone, and
Speaker 2: they're going to call it the February Revolution because it
Speaker 2: happened in March. That's a little switching calendar's joke for you.
Speaker 2: All throughout World War One, the Zars kind of like
Speaker 2: off at war, becoming increasingly popular, and Alexandra is acting
Speaker 2: as sort of a tzarina and no one likes her
Speaker 2: at all. Their general strikes all over a massive upheaval
Speaker 2: over a year and a half. They had four prime ministers,
Speaker 2: five ministers of the Interior, three four ministers, three war ministers,
Speaker 2: three ministers of transport, and four ministers of agriculture.
Speaker 3: That's so that look, they have adopted the British mode
Speaker 3: of government, which is very traditionally aside, things are going great, yeah,
Speaker 3: because it's hanging cabbages outside, one for every minister.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so the Duma is like, hey, can this
Speaker 2: bad ruler Alexandra stop being ruler. And Saint Nicholas. No,
Speaker 2: Nicholas the Second not a saint. Oh wait, they did
Speaker 2: saint him, the Russian Orthodox Church of Saint.
Speaker 3: Would you see this is a Russian whatever anyway, Oh
Speaker 3: my god.
Speaker 2: So Nicholas the Second dissolved the Douma yet again, instead
Speaker 2: of doing what they asked him to do, which was
Speaker 2: the reasonable thing, and they announced that the Interior Minister
Speaker 2: was dictator. And this was not a popular move. So
Speaker 2: one morning in February or March nineteen seventeen, We're going
Speaker 2: to go with March eighth, because I am cool Zone
Speaker 2: Media's officially Western calendar bigots. So March nineteen seventeen, Russia
Speaker 2: throws a revolution. It is a balmy sixteen degree day,
Speaker 2: sixteen degrees in the real temperature scale, of course, fahrenheit,
Speaker 2: but soon it gets way colder. Like all the best revolutions,
Speaker 2: they did not know they were throwing a revolution, and
Speaker 2: so often is the case, it was started by women. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. That's like I probably learned that
Speaker 2: in high school. To be clear, that's not like a
Speaker 2: hidden fact, but like I didn't realize that the first
Speaker 2: Russian Revolution of nineteen seventeen, was started by women for
Speaker 2: years at this point, as the war and misery the
Speaker 2: peasants and the workers, the aristocracy who was still like
Speaker 2: eating cake and going to the theater and drinking champagne
Speaker 2: and everyone else is starving at home or starving at
Speaker 2: the front or dying violently in one of.
Speaker 3: Those two places.
Speaker 2: And so they're like, all right, we're going to do
Speaker 2: something about it, you know, right. And the cool thing
Speaker 2: about internationalism is as international. So I'm going to tie
Speaker 2: the roots of this particular thing to the United States.
Speaker 2: Only then I'm going to tie it back to Russia.
Speaker 2: Because there's this woman, Teresa Machel. She was born a
Speaker 2: Russian Jew, born in what's now Ukraine. She was born
Speaker 2: on May Day, May one, eighteen seventy four. Ah, yeah,
Speaker 2: before there was a May Day even. She was seventeen
Speaker 2: when her family emigrated to the Lower East Side of
Speaker 2: New York City and she got to work as a cloakmaker.
Speaker 2: She organized the Infant Cloakmakers Union of New York because
Speaker 2: people knew how to dress their babies back then in
Speaker 2: cloaks with chainmail.
Speaker 3: Wait, we got it, okay, I have I now know
Speaker 3: people who have babies We've got it. We've got to
Speaker 3: bring this back. We can do this.
Speaker 2: Since the main expense in diy in a cloak is
Speaker 2: that it costs hundreds of dollars of wool to make.
Speaker 2: Ask me how I know infant cloaks are a discount.
Speaker 2: It's a sweet deal. Bonus sponsor infant cloaks because not
Speaker 2: even an ad break. That's just how excited I am. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Teresa represents her union through various labor federations and such
Speaker 2: and winds up in the Socialist Party of America. Supposedly,
Speaker 2: the Socialist believes in equal rights for women, and she,
Speaker 2: like a lot of other people, tried to make that
Speaker 2: actually true by fighting for it. And she pitched that
Speaker 2: there should be a national Women's Day, and it was
Speaker 2: first on February twenty eighth, nineteen nine. By nineteen eleven,
Speaker 2: the International Socialist Women's Conference managed to get in International
Speaker 2: Women's Day and over a million people participated in that
Speaker 2: first one so International Women's Day. Nineteen seventeen, women in
Speaker 2: Russia went on a one day strike and the strike
Speaker 2: was focused in Saint Petersburg. And this was not a
Speaker 2: polite and peaceful affair. They demanded bread and peace. They
Speaker 2: marched through the streets, looting stores to distribute like rich
Speaker 2: pastries that were just for rich people.
Speaker 3: Rules unbelievably based, no, I know.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons I point that out is because,
Speaker 2: like there is no clear history of the Russian Revolution
Speaker 2: that's ever been written as far as the cantel. Everyone
Speaker 2: either their own angle, yes, and so I'm just trying
Speaker 2: to be really upfront about my own angle here. But
Speaker 2: like everything you read from all of these different sources,
Speaker 2: because there's also so much happened chaotically that it's not
Speaker 2: like these sources are lying. It's that they're choosing which
Speaker 2: facts to represent or even only know about certain facts, right.
Speaker 3: I Mean, there's like, like len It Lenden's best lying
Speaker 3: about this period that I really felt drink twenty twenty
Speaker 3: was there are decades where nothing happens, in weeks where
Speaker 3: decades happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And this is the decades are happening, like right
Speaker 4: here totally in eight days, they ended a three hundred
Speaker 4: year didnesting and like the thing that took years for
Speaker 4: them to try to get in nineteen oh five happened
Speaker 4: in eight days.
Speaker 3: And some of the accounts of this the reason I'm.
Speaker 2: Pointing out that these folks looted on the very first
Speaker 2: day of it was because some of the accounts are like,
Speaker 2: and then they let everyone out of jail, but they
Speaker 2: didn't just let the good political prisoners let out. They
Speaker 2: let everyone else out too, and suddenly there was looting,
Speaker 2: you know, And it's like, I'm sure that a lot
Speaker 2: of the people that they let out of jail looted,
Speaker 2: there's no doubt in my mind. Also a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of people who weren't in jail already looted.
Speaker 3: Because it's cool. It turns out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so some troops refused to fire on them because
Speaker 2: there were women, and frankly and very importantly, morale among
Speaker 2: soldiers was fucking, to use your phrase, dog shit at
Speaker 2: this point. Men joined in soon enough. There's actually there
Speaker 2: was men there at the beginning too, But like overall,
Speaker 2: more of the workers now are coming out and there
Speaker 2: are more general strikes have been happening among different industries,
Speaker 2: happening immediately prior to this.
Speaker 3: But the version of it that I heard was like,
Speaker 3: part of what goes on is like, so it's an
Speaker 3: international Women's Day event, and a lot of the like
Speaker 3: the male political group for like, eh, we're not going
Speaker 3: to go out, and so people are like running from
Speaker 3: factory to factory yelling like get out here, like what
Speaker 3: are you people doing? Which rules?
Speaker 2: And I believe you that makes more sense, frankly. And
Speaker 2: it takes them a while to even get the political
Speaker 2: parties involved, because so many actual uprisings start with marginalized people,
Speaker 2: and eventually political groups attach themselves once they realize that
Speaker 2: the momentum can't be stopped, because usually they want to
Speaker 2: be like, well, we want to be the ones who
Speaker 2: have done it right. Revolution takes eight days. On March twelfth,
Speaker 2: the military in Saint Petersburg switched teams to join the revolution,
Speaker 2: killing the officers that wouldn't let them. A few days
Speaker 2: after that, Nicholas the Second was like, okay, fine, I
Speaker 2: give up. You can have your country back, you fucking peasants,
Speaker 2: all without any central organizing to the revolution. None of
Speaker 2: that has happened yet at this point. About thirteen hundred
Speaker 2: people or so died during that revolution. And then you
Speaker 2: have the classic rhythm like that's so few people I
Speaker 2: know for a system of government that is like twice
Speaker 2: as old as like the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's it's it's incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like respect to those thirteen hundred people who died,
Speaker 2: but it is such an incredibly low number, and you
Speaker 2: have this classic problem, a power vacuum. Don't worry, plenty
Speaker 2: more people are going to die because of this revolution.
Speaker 2: It was not during the immediate revolution, but.
Speaker 3: They did the first the first revolution, they did a
Speaker 3: really good job. They did everyone everything subsequent to that,
Speaker 3: they did issues emerge.
Speaker 2: It's the people who tried to take power that anyway whatever.
Speaker 2: So two forces step into the vacuum and with a
Speaker 2: really uneasy alliance. And the laziest way that people talk
Speaker 2: about the February Revolution is that the provisional government took over.
Speaker 2: The accurate way is that the provisional government had to
Speaker 2: figure out how to share power with the Soviets because
Speaker 2: the Soviets are back. The provisional government is composed of
Speaker 2: people from the Duma and shit, and so the last
Speaker 2: time that they've been elected was nineteen twelve, and so
Speaker 2: they're like, they kind of know they're not ready to
Speaker 2: be the elected officials of the government, right, But they're
Speaker 2: the kind of middle class version of the revolutionists. At
Speaker 2: that point, it's mostly centrists and liberals and the Duma
Speaker 2: because everyone else has been boycotting elections and stuff. The
Speaker 2: Soviets are filled with socialists of all kinds, unless you
Speaker 2: read a Bolshevik history, in which case they were all Bolsheviks.
Speaker 2: Sh And the Provisional Government is like, all right, we're
Speaker 2: going to become a republic and have elections and shit
Speaker 2: and solve the land problem for the peasants. Just not yet.
Speaker 2: We got to stay in World War One. We can't
Speaker 2: ditch the Allies. We can't like redistribute all the land
Speaker 2: and stuff, because we're in the middle of a war.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Everyone else is like, well, why are we in the
Speaker 2: middle of this war? Yeah, But their plan is to
Speaker 2: eventually have a constituent Assembly that is voted for and
Speaker 2: this would become the government and they would be a republic,
Speaker 2: but for now they would be in charge. The Soviets,
Speaker 2: who are an elected body already and they've been elected
Speaker 2: in a grassroots direct delegate way, are like, well, the
Speaker 2: people of Russia aren't at war with Germany. The Russian
Speaker 2: Empire was at war and that's gone. So they disagreed.
Speaker 2: The Provisional Government had like the symbols and stuff. The
Speaker 2: symbolic parts of the state. The Soviets had the actual
Speaker 2: practical power because they had the workers and the peasants
Speaker 2: and the soldiers. So the provisional government is like, hey, socialists,
Speaker 2: could you please please join us? You can join us now,
Speaker 2: hey do you want to? You want to join us?
Speaker 2: And the Soviets and a lot of them do, a
Speaker 2: lot of the SRS in particular, which is the largest
Speaker 2: group by popularity and delegates, it is the most important
Speaker 2: socialist group at this point. And the Soviets are like,
Speaker 2: all right, our order number one, it's literally their order
Speaker 2: number one is that the provisional government orders will only
Speaker 2: be followed if we if we want.
Speaker 3: To which rules, more people should do this. This is great.
Speaker 2: No, it's so frustrating because it's like, the Soviets are
Speaker 2: the good guys here. I mean that the provisional government
Speaker 2: I like kind of get where they're coming from. I'm
Speaker 2: not trying to be like, oh, what a bunch of assholes, right,
Speaker 2: but like, no, there's this bottom up electoral system that's
Speaker 2: already in place. Just fucking go with it and not
Speaker 2: do what Lenin's about to do. And seven hundred of
Speaker 2: these Soviets spread across the country. And this is like
Speaker 2: I think actually has further reach overall than the provisional
Speaker 2: government doesn't have as much reach in the peasant areas,
Speaker 2: is my understanding, but I'm not one hundred percent certain
Speaker 2: about that because you read like eight different things and
Speaker 2: they all disagree. But what everyone does agree about is
Speaker 2: that these are deals that you should totally listen to
Speaker 2: and not do this thing that would be really easy
Speaker 2: to do, which is press the four fifteen second button
Speaker 2: on your phone as soon as you hear the theme
Speaker 2: music and then wait until you hear the theme music
Speaker 2: again and then stop pressing forward. You shouldn't do that, never.
Speaker 2: You should listen to all of these advertisers and then
Speaker 2: do whatever they tell you to do.
Speaker 3: And we're back.
Speaker 2: So things are unstable in Russia after this revolution. All
Speaker 2: the revolutionaries are suddenly let out of prison all over
Speaker 2: the country, and so are a lot of other people.
Speaker 2: So there's looting, I mean whatever, Like I'm like looting
Speaker 2: to get the cakes. It's also like, I'm sure it's
Speaker 2: also kind of bad and hard to be alive right now.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like interesting, it's not boring, but like
Speaker 2: it's also dangerous I'm not trying to let everyone's like starving.
Speaker 3: I mean like that's that's the other element of this.
Speaker 3: It's just like totally. It's like, wow, I wonder why
Speaker 3: these starving people are stealing cakes from the cake shop.
Speaker 3: It's like, I know, no one could possibly answer this.
Speaker 3: It must be the criminal elements.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you heard about Lenin's return during this I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about a little bit, and you need
Speaker 2: to fill in any gaps because this is the this
Speaker 2: is the tea so wild so imperial Germany really wants
Speaker 2: the provisional government overthrown because it wants Russia to get
Speaker 2: out of the war so that Germany can focus on
Speaker 2: the Western Front. And they're like, well, if we let
Speaker 2: the Kamis overthrow, the provisional government will have one less
Speaker 2: antagonist in our war. Lenin wants to overthrow the provisional
Speaker 2: government to institute a dictatorship, not a dictatorship of the proletariat,
Speaker 2: but a dictatorship by him. As we talked about last time.
Speaker 2: His whole thing was to try and use the Soviets
Speaker 2: and then they become superliferous, right, and so the German
Speaker 2: government finances him and sends him back to Russia on
Speaker 2: a train that's there so with a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: money and shit, hoping he'll do exactly what he goes
Speaker 2: on to do. That's the version I heard. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: really wild because it's like, for all that every single
Speaker 2: one of sort of Lenin's ideological to SAand insequendy spent
Speaker 2: all their time accusing everyone else of being a psyopist,
Speaker 2: like your guy was literally paid by the German government
Speaker 2: to do this like him.
Speaker 3: It's like, come on, and.
Speaker 2: Actually, the interesting lesson here isn't that Bolshevism is a
Speaker 2: psyop It's that sometimes powerful groups finance other groups in
Speaker 2: order to try and get what they want. It doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that Lenin wanted Imperial Germany to get what it wanted.
Speaker 2: Lenin wanted what he wanted and had no p problems
Speaker 2: taking a bunch of money from the people that his
Speaker 2: country had been at war with, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And it's also I mean, I think the ever
Speaker 3: thing here is like, this is something you see a
Speaker 3: lot with empires, is they'll hand someone a bunch of
Speaker 3: money and that person will just turn around and then
Speaker 3: go do whatever they want with it. Yeah, totally. It
Speaker 3: turns out it doesn't always work well for the people
Speaker 3: handing them the money and the guns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I am not saying this to say that
Speaker 2: Lenin is a pawn of the German government. I am
Speaker 2: saying that Lenin that Germany wanted to use him as
Speaker 2: a pawn, and that Germany got what it wanted out
Speaker 2: of it. But anyway, Lenin gets back to Russia and
Speaker 2: he sets up trying to engineer the whole a further revolution,
Speaker 2: and he does that by bringing the Bolshevik position closer
Speaker 2: to the anarchist position, by bringing their tactics and strategies
Speaker 2: but not their goals closer in line to anarchism. Anarchism
Speaker 2: was the main ideology at this point that had been
Speaker 2: promoting an immediate revolution, whereas Bolshevism was still kind of
Speaker 2: gradual even at this point. So, at least according to
Speaker 2: some of the histories I read when Lenin wrote his
Speaker 2: like big important theory book, The State and Revolution, at
Speaker 2: this time, this fundamentally changes the Marxist revolutionary strategy. And
Speaker 2: it's also kind of an appeal to the anarchists and
Speaker 2: to the other people who are like, well, we got
Speaker 2: to do this now. So anarchists saw this as Bolsheviks
Speaker 2: coming to them rather than them going to the Bolsheviks,
Speaker 2: as they start having more and more of an alliance
Speaker 2: going forward over these next few months. And he also
Speaker 2: in the State and Revolution pushes that all states have
Speaker 2: the right to secede. He will not hold to this
Speaker 2: very long. Yeah example, Yeah, Later the Democratic Republic of
Speaker 2: Georgia will split off formed by Mensheviks, only to be
Speaker 2: invaded by the Bolsheviks, and then of course Ukraine and whatever. Anyhow,
Speaker 2: so Lenin's back, oh boy. Provisional government is headed up
Speaker 2: by an SR a guy named Kerensky. He's not right away,
Speaker 2: he's in April, but because in April they're like, please
Speaker 2: socialists come join us, right And one part I didn't
Speaker 2: know about. That's a little bit tea in a different direction.
Speaker 2: One someone one person who came out of exile to
Speaker 2: help advise Kerensky was our buddy Peter Kropakin. This part, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, like the tracks.
Speaker 3: A lot of.
Speaker 2: Anarchists are not stoked about Kripakin. We talked about him
Speaker 2: a little bit last time. He' an abolutionary biologist and
Speaker 2: a former prince who is very interesting and very important
Speaker 2: to anarchist communist theory, and also modern mutual aid and
Speaker 2: why animals are gay theory. He's a very interesting man.
Speaker 2: So he wanted anarchists to side with the Allies in
Speaker 2: World War One to stop imperial Germany felt like more
Speaker 2: important than viewing things specifically along class lines. Most anarchists
Speaker 2: were against any participation in yeah war.
Speaker 3: It was like, this is a terrible idea, Like what
Speaker 3: are you doing?
Speaker 2: So the anarchists in nineteen seventeen generally supported the Bolsheviks,
Speaker 2: as did a lot of the Actually we need a
Speaker 2: real revolution people. Lenin is really appealing to people. He's
Speaker 2: running around shouting all power to the Soviets. That's his thing.
Speaker 2: When people say all power to the Soviets, what they
Speaker 2: mean is not provisional government, the top down body, but yes,
Speaker 2: the bottom up body that was actually already elected. And
Speaker 2: people are into it. And his slogan is a piece
Speaker 2: bread in land, and people like those things. I like
Speaker 2: those things as best as you can figure out. In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen, here and there and afterwards, the anarchists were
Speaker 2: useful idiots for the Bolsheviks. The anarchists did the dirty
Speaker 2: work because we believed in revolution, and because we also
Speaker 2: believed in political pluralism. It is the tolerance paradox. Right
Speaker 2: anarchists at this point tend to believe in political pluralism,
Speaker 2: including having political pluralism and allies with groups that don't
Speaker 2: believe in political pluralism. And in nineteen seventeen in Russias
Speaker 2: on stable as fuck and you have revolution one point
Speaker 2: five that happens in July. It's called the July Days
Speaker 2: and it's an uprising by socialists of all different stripes,
Speaker 2: actually kind of less the Bolsheviks than like skin the people, yeah,
Speaker 2: because because Lenin didn't order them to do it, and
Speaker 2: they were like, but some Bolsheviks were.
Speaker 1: Part of it.
Speaker 2: And then also it's like history is so annoying and
Speaker 2: hard to read because it's like I also read accounts
Speaker 2: that were like and then the Bolsheviks did this thing,
Speaker 2: but that was like a Western capitalist reading of the history.
Speaker 2: So like everyone who's bad as a Bolshevik, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: which is sometimes though they formed that like meme without
Speaker 2: two arms or holding hands, because they both want to
Speaker 2: blame everything on the Bolsheviks, because the Bolsheviks think the
Speaker 2: thing was good and the capitalists think that the thing
Speaker 2: was bad. But it wasn't done by the Bolsheviks at all.
Speaker 2: Is done by like srs or anarchists or people who
Speaker 2: know political ideology. And what happened in July is that
Speaker 2: that sr. Kerensky was pushed for a military offensive against Germany,
Speaker 2: and that actually kind of worked for a minute, but
Speaker 2: at home it made everyone remember how much they didn't
Speaker 2: want to be in a war. And the only socialist
Speaker 2: who had enjoined the provisional government were the radicals, and
Speaker 2: so therefore everyone else had to back the offensive, right
Speaker 2: because they were in the government that it declared it,
Speaker 2: you know, the same way they could have.
Speaker 3: Not, but they're just like, you know, they just sort
Speaker 3: of fell in line. It's just like, yeah, you could
Speaker 3: have not done this, but well, I mean you can.
Speaker 3: Taking power destroys your brain. See.
Speaker 2: The best thing that came out of World War One
Speaker 2: is the Lord of the Rings, which is the parable
Speaker 2: about why you have to throw the ring of power into.
Speaker 3: The fire mountain.
Speaker 2: Anyway, So the Bolsheviks, the anarchists and some of the
Speaker 2: other like left stars and stuff, where the I think
Speaker 2: some of the left users were a lot of the
Speaker 2: only people involved in the July Days, which was a
Speaker 2: big uprising by people. It's always like everyone wants to
Speaker 2: have the labels, but it's like a lot of times
Speaker 2: there's just people. People are mad, you know. And Lenin
Speaker 2: was like, no, we're not ready yet. But the uprising
Speaker 2: was put down by the provisional government including Mensheviks and
Speaker 2: s rs, and Lennon runs off to Finland. Street demonstrations
Speaker 2: are banned, so the counter revolution, to be fair, started
Speaker 2: before the Bolsheviks take power. Yeah, And like Kerensky's like
Speaker 2: pretty explicit about this, I remember, right, like he's he's
Speaker 2: I mean, he's also every single person in this like
Speaker 2: Kkin wrote a history of the French Revolution that like
Speaker 2: I think is longer than capital, Like every single one
Speaker 2: of these people is. It's a French revolutionary history, nerd.
Speaker 2: And Kerensky's thing is he's like I'm gonna like be
Speaker 2: the directorate or something from the the front from the
Speaker 2: French Revolution. So I'm gonna be the guy who comes
Speaker 2: in after and like ends the revolution. Yeah, like produces
Speaker 2: a stable government. So they all, like all these people
Speaker 2: have their sort of I am this person, even though
Speaker 2: Marx is very explicit that like don't do this, like
Speaker 2: this is actually bad, but nobody listened to him, because welcome,
Speaker 2: welcome to the history of Marxism, where no one listens
Speaker 2: to Marx fair enough, and sometimes I'm really glad when
Speaker 2: people don't listen. But there is some stuff everyone once
Speaker 2: in a while, like he's more than stop clock, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's like he's wrong several times a day, not just twice,
Speaker 2: but still not an act. But yeah, but so sometimes
Speaker 2: he's like, don't put on the costumes of the previous revolution.
Speaker 3: You have to. Well, I think it's exactly line. It
Speaker 3: was like, the revolution must take us poetry from the future,
Speaker 3: which I always loved. Yeah, the weight of dead generations
Speaker 3: or whatever, what is the Yeah, the memory of dead
Speaker 3: generations weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living. Yeah,
Speaker 3: another great one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So the counter revolution has begun. Soon enough,
Speaker 2: Lennon will be back from Finland and he'll take power
Speaker 2: in the October Revolution, which happens in November, of course,
Speaker 2: and we'll talk about it on Wednesday, unless you follow
Speaker 2: the Russian Old calendar, in which case it's Tuesday.
Speaker 3: That's not true. I was trying to put the math
Speaker 3: on that. I was like, I'm not a great.
Speaker 2: Math person, but Yeah, weeks and dates are unrelated to
Speaker 2: each other by in large. Yeah, but what is related to.
Speaker 3: Nothing?
Speaker 2: This is the worst segue I've ever had, is Mia,
Speaker 2: what do you do with your life that people could
Speaker 2: pay attention to?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: I do a podcast called a kadap in here that
Speaker 3: also has some truly abominable segues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fun time job you gets me up in the morning.
Speaker 2: It's the segue from waiting it anyway. Sorry.
Speaker 3: I start doing it in real life and I'm just like,
Speaker 3: oh no, it's too late for me. I'm too far gone.
Speaker 2: It's all I do it in my collective meetings, and
Speaker 2: people kind of enjoy it.
Speaker 3: I think so annoying.
Speaker 1: You have to be friends with other people who get
Speaker 1: it because they do it too, and then it's just normal.
Speaker 1: But if you're ever around people who are just not podcasts,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the people that work in the podcast space,
Speaker 1: but that like are not podcast listeners, they look at
Speaker 1: you like, I'm sorry, are you okay? And it's like yes,
Speaker 1: And by the way, here's a fun fact about how
Speaker 1: okay I am podcast.
Speaker 3: Promod Bye. We will win with that. See you Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.