WEBVTT - Part Two: Samizdat: How to Self-Publish During a Dictatorship

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<v Speaker 1>Cool Zone Media.

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<v Speaker 2>Hello, and welcome to Cool People who did Cool Stuff,

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<v Speaker 2>your weekly podcast that you're probably listening to by audio

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<v Speaker 2>format and not a hand typed transcript. And if it

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<v Speaker 2>was a hand type transcript, I'm terribly sorry to whoever

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<v Speaker 2>had to type it, because I would have written more succinctly.

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<v Speaker 2>I'm your host, Martya Kiljoy and my guest today is

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<v Speaker 2>Katie Stall. How are you.

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<v Speaker 3>Hi, I'm good. I'm excited for part two. And I

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<v Speaker 3>don't think you need to apologize. If someone loves your

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<v Speaker 3>show and wants to type it out, they want all

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<v Speaker 3>of you, They want all of your words.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay, fair enough. But I was thinking Katie Stole

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<v Speaker 2>is a nice short name. So if if I ever

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<v Speaker 2>have to start writing samas dot, maybe I'll name a

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<v Speaker 2>character after you, just because it doesn't take very long

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<v Speaker 2>to type, you know.

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<v Speaker 3>Oh gosh, I would be honored. And yeah it is.

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<v Speaker 3>It's pretty to the point.

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<v Speaker 2>Our audio nope weight producer. Our producer is Sophie. Hi, Sophie,

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<v Speaker 2>I'm so so.

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<v Speaker 1>My dog Truman is standing on the other side of

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<v Speaker 1>the room with me and barking at me.

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<v Speaker 2>Hi, Triman and eating your pillow or no, and.

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<v Speaker 1>Just being a menace to society today. She has not

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<v Speaker 1>been able to do full hurting dog activities today, and

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<v Speaker 1>so she is letting me know that I am unacceptable

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<v Speaker 1>to her, and that's fair.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you're acceptable to us.

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<v Speaker 1>Thank you. Did you hear that, Truman? Did you hear that?

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<v Speaker 1>She's like, oh, are you petting me?

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<v Speaker 3>Now?

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<v Speaker 1>I've forgiven you for all your all your bad behavior.

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<v Speaker 2>My dog does a thing where he comes to the

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<v Speaker 2>back door as if he wants to get let in,

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<v Speaker 2>and as soon as you open the door, he runs

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<v Speaker 2>away because his trick is to try and get you

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<v Speaker 2>to come outside to play with him.

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<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, it's a trick.

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<v Speaker 1>Truman does the same thing.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so annoying. I mean sometimes I let him. This

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<v Speaker 2>is probably partly why he does it, but exactly.

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<v Speaker 1>It works like it's so annoying because I'm just like, yeah,

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<v Speaker 1>whatever you want, girl.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well do what I want. Is also to finish

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<v Speaker 2>my introduction, which is that our audio engineers Rory hi, Rory.

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<v Speaker 3>Hi, or hello Hi. I don't know, I don't know

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<v Speaker 3>what their voice sounds like.

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<v Speaker 2>And our theme music was written forced by un woman.

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<v Speaker 2>And we are on part two talking about samas Dot

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<v Speaker 2>the Soviet self publishing revolution wasn't a revolution, but a

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<v Speaker 2>way to try to continue to make things happen despite

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<v Speaker 2>intense censorship. The cliffhanger for last week, I promised you

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<v Speaker 2>the most famous author we're going to talk about this week,

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<v Speaker 2>which I mean I I've actually literally read one of

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<v Speaker 2>his books, but I still didn't recognize his name. But

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<v Speaker 2>that's because I'm basically like, I'm both name blind and

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<v Speaker 2>face blind. It's really not good. I just like don't

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<v Speaker 2>recognize people.

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<v Speaker 3>You know, Well, I'm going to assume it's, you know,

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<v Speaker 3>not a name that's around a lot here. Maybe it's

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<v Speaker 3>hard to pronounce in some capacity.

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<v Speaker 2>I don't know.

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<v Speaker 3>Maybe not. Yeah, I shouldn't have guessed you're about to

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<v Speaker 3>say it.

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<v Speaker 2>I am about to say it. So the guy that

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<v Speaker 2>we're going to talk about. His name is Alexander Solzhenitsen.

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<v Speaker 3>Steve rolls right off the tongue. I can't know if

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<v Speaker 3>you forgot that name anyway, I know.

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<v Speaker 2>And then there's also this thing where, like everything that's transliterated,

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<v Speaker 2>you're gonna run across multiple spellings on the internet, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>because the actual spelling isn't this at all. It's you know,

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<v Speaker 2>in cyrillic. And the thing about Alexander, which is what

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<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna call him, is that he's kind of nobody's hero.

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<v Speaker 2>He doesn't like the West, he doesn't like the USSR,

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<v Speaker 2>he's not a monarchist. By the end of his life,

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<v Speaker 2>he maybe liked Putin, but then I've also read that

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<v Speaker 2>that was like entirely played up by Putin.

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<v Speaker 3>I don't know which is believable.

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<v Speaker 2>I know Jordan Peterson likes talking about him, which is

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<v Speaker 2>the grossest thing about him.

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<v Speaker 3>Red Flag, I know, I know, Yeah, but that doesn't

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<v Speaker 3>mean that this guy would like Jordan Peterson talking about.

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<v Speaker 2>Him, right, and like, And I've read so many contradictory

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<v Speaker 2>things about this man and his beliefs, and so I

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<v Speaker 2>tried to read his beliefs directly as much as possible.

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<v Speaker 2>But the thing is, he is caught up in Cold

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<v Speaker 2>War culture war, sure, and so both sides want desperately

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<v Speaker 2>for him to be their guy. Well, the US has

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<v Speaker 2>alreadyn't want him to be their guy. They kicked him out,

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<v Speaker 2>but that's a spoiler. But like post Soviet Russia, Yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>he is one of the most famous anti communist writers

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<v Speaker 2>of the twentieth century. So the right Wing gloms onto him,

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<v Speaker 2>and I know I talked a big game about how

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<v Speaker 2>most of the samas dot writers and people purged by

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<v Speaker 2>Stalin and Shit were socialists. Alexander he's kind of an

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<v Speaker 2>exception of that. He's one of many exceptions to that.

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<v Speaker 2>I mean, he's a lot of different things over the

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<v Speaker 2>course of his life. On the whole. Near the end

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<v Speaker 2>of his life, he's a grouchy Eastern Orthodox guy who

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<v Speaker 2>liked to write history and write about his experiences in

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<v Speaker 2>the gulags. Basically, he wrote about how much he fucking suffered.

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<v Speaker 2>That's what this man liked doing.

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<v Speaker 3>Okay, okay, sure.

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<v Speaker 2>Alexander was born on December eleventh, nineteen eighteen, during the

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<v Speaker 2>Russian Revolution. His father died before he was born, and

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<v Speaker 2>he grew up with his mother in a dilapidated hut.

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<v Speaker 2>His family was Eastern Orthodox, but he converted to atheism

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<v Speaker 2>as a teen and joined the Communist youth. He is

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<v Speaker 2>a brilliant scientist, especially a mathematician. He gets married to

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<v Speaker 2>a chemist. By the time World War II was doing

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<v Speaker 2>its thing, he commanded an artillery battery as a loyal

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<v Speaker 2>Red Army soldier off to rid the world of Nazism.

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<v Speaker 2>Math is a really useful skill when you're talking about

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<v Speaker 2>where shells land when you shoot them from artillery batteries.

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<v Speaker 2>But he made a mistake. He wrote one of his

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<v Speaker 2>friends a private letter during the war in which he

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<v Speaker 2>made fun of a certain man with a mustache. So

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<v Speaker 2>he sent to prison. Wait because he's making fun of Stalin.

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<v Speaker 3>Oh I thought you met the other man with a mustache.

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<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, no, that would be now. This is after

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<v Speaker 2>when Stalin and Hitler were no longer friends, when they

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<v Speaker 2>were on shooting terms.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeh, gotcha.

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<v Speaker 2>They sent him off to prison. I think after the

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<v Speaker 2>war they're like, oh, you did bad, but we need

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<v Speaker 2>you to keep doing some.

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<v Speaker 3>Math on We need you to keep adding yeah.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And so for a while he just went and

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<v Speaker 2>dug clay in a labor camp. Eventually they realized he

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<v Speaker 2>was a science guy and the Gulag system was just

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<v Speaker 2>fucking ginormous at this point in history. These days, it

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<v Speaker 2>seems likely that about fourteen million people were held in

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<v Speaker 2>the Gulag system. Wow, about ten percent of them would

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<v Speaker 2>die in captivity or immediately after being released. Everything about

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<v Speaker 2>this is argued because of the fucking Cold War. There's

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<v Speaker 2>like Soviet apologists who were like, well, the numbers of

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<v Speaker 2>people who died are really high because they let people

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<v Speaker 2>free right before they died. And I'm like, well, why

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<v Speaker 2>does that make it better?

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<v Speaker 1>Right?

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<v Speaker 3>I'm like, and your point is what?

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah? And his estimates, Alexander's estimates during his lifetime is

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<v Speaker 2>sixty million people in the gulag system instead of fourteen million.

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<v Speaker 2>And there's that was a believable number that he came

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<v Speaker 2>to through for good reason, I believe, but I'm not

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<v Speaker 2>certain because everyone's arguing about this shit. I believe it's

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<v Speaker 2>more like fourteen million people, which is, to be clear,

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<v Speaker 2>too many fucking people.

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<v Speaker 3>A ton of people. Yeah, neither of these numbers are.

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<v Speaker 2>Okay, yeah, one time, Okay, it's unrelated. It's like Margaret anecdote. Time.

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<v Speaker 2>One day I was at a farmer's market in Canada

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<v Speaker 2>and I met a guy whose father had been a

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<v Speaker 2>Polish guy who was held in a gulag in Siberia.

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<v Speaker 2>And this guy he kept staring at me. And my

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<v Speaker 2>friends were like punks and were like playing according and

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<v Speaker 2>stuff at the farmer's market. He's just glaring at us.

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<v Speaker 2>He does not like us. And finally I like, go over,

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<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna go off script and just tell the story.

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<v Speaker 2>I go over and he's tabling this book. It's called

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<v Speaker 2>The Shadow of Caiton and I'm like, oh, it's this book.

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<v Speaker 2>And he's like, what do you know about World War

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<v Speaker 2>II history? And I'm like, let's talk about Finland's and

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<v Speaker 2>World War Two. I love talking about Finland and World

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<v Speaker 2>War Two. And I talked to him for a while

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<v Speaker 2>and he goes, you and your friends you're not Bolsheviks,

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<v Speaker 2>are you? And I was like no. In my mind,

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<v Speaker 2>I'm like, who the fuck is a Bolshevik? Uh?

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<v Speaker 3>What?

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah? I'm like, no, We're anarchists. And his eyes light

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<v Speaker 2>up as soon as I say that we're anarchists. He

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<v Speaker 2>picks up a copy of his father's memoir. He flips

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<v Speaker 2>through it to find the chapter where his father's life

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<v Speaker 2>was saved by an anarchist fellow prisoner in the gulag system. Wow,

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<v Speaker 2>and so like that act of kindness in a nineteen

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<v Speaker 2>forties like, yeah, made me a friend in the twenty tens. Yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>and it was really nice. Wow.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I love that anecdote.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, a lot of people are in the gulags and

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<v Speaker 2>it's like me and this, like the anarchist and the

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<v Speaker 2>Polish guy had did not the same politics, right, but

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<v Speaker 2>the Polish guy had literally was just thrown in there

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<v Speaker 2>because the USSR had invaded. Yeah, Poland anyway, whatever, whole

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<v Speaker 2>separate story. So the Gulag system not a nice place, Alexander.

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<v Speaker 2>He's digging clay and then they're like, wait a second,

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<v Speaker 2>you can do science. And the nice thing about having

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<v Speaker 2>a really big gulag system is you can have all

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<v Speaker 2>these like specialized work camps, like, for example, the Forced

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<v Speaker 2>Science Experiment work camp. They had so many people in

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<v Speaker 2>gulags that they had a dedicated advanced research team of

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<v Speaker 2>imprisoned scientists. What's wild that is?

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<v Speaker 3>Well, I guess with that many people, it's not that unbelievable.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And I'm sure they're arresting the intelligencia and like

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<v Speaker 2>educated people and whatever. And uh So he spends three

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<v Speaker 2>years out of his eight years in a advanced research

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<v Speaker 2>science camp for imprisoned people. And he says that this

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<v Speaker 2>is how he survived being in the camps, is that

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<v Speaker 2>only five of the years were in like the horrible

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<v Speaker 2>clay digging parts.

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<v Speaker 3>You know, he's probably right, Yeah.

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<v Speaker 2>But he kept talking shit, and he talked shit on

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<v Speaker 2>the scientific research of the guy who ran the place,

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<v Speaker 2>basically being like, oh, that guy doesn't know how to fucking

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<v Speaker 2>do science, Am I right? And people are like, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>I'll have to like say that shit. So he gets

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<v Speaker 2>sent to Kazakhstan, back to a regular gulag time.

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<v Speaker 3>Oh man.

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<v Speaker 2>While he's there, he learned how to memorize his own

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<v Speaker 2>writing by using a rosary, and each bead represented a

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<v Speaker 2>line of writing. And he wasn't even religious at this point.

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<v Speaker 2>I think kind of shortly after this he converts to

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<v Speaker 2>orthodox I think he's still an atheist at this point,

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<v Speaker 2>but they're like, well, they'll give you a rosary if

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<v Speaker 2>you ask, And so he did, and he would pass

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<v Speaker 2>the bead and it would be like another line, Like

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<v Speaker 2>each bead represented a different line of what he was writing. Wow,

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<v Speaker 2>the kind of skills that I have not developed in

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<v Speaker 2>my life.

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<v Speaker 3>I say that sounds complicated.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah. After he was released, he was totally free to

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<v Speaker 2>do whatever. No, I'm just kidding. He had to go

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<v Speaker 2>to Siberia. Oh, there's there's internal exile at this point

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<v Speaker 2>in history, where if you I had a friend who

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<v Speaker 2>was sent to internal exile. Actually, he was arrested in Georgia,

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<v Speaker 2>and found guilty eve though it should have been self

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<v Speaker 2>defense case for like a defending himself from a gay bashing,

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<v Speaker 2>and then they put him. Georgia has this specific law

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<v Speaker 2>where they can exile you into a different part of Georgia,

0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:36.800
<v Speaker 2>and so we had to go to a different county

0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:39.360
<v Speaker 2>and live in exile. And it's like small rural town.

0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:46.160
<v Speaker 3>That's so weird. Yeah, internal exile, out of county jail.

0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:48.080
<v Speaker 2>Well, no, he isn't a jail. He's just living in

0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:48.480
<v Speaker 2>a town.

0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:52.400
<v Speaker 3>Oh I see, Oh okay, huh weird.

0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:55.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So it's like, so when when our guy Alexander,

0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.520
<v Speaker 2>we're no longer talking about my friend in Georgia. When

0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:02.040
<v Speaker 2>he sent to Siberia. He's free, but he's free to

0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:03.920
<v Speaker 2>go live in Siberia. He's not free to live in

0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:08.200
<v Speaker 2>Western Russia. Gotya, And he's having a rough go of it.

0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:11.280
<v Speaker 2>His wife divorced him while he was in prison, and

0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:13.559
<v Speaker 2>he started teaching in the school. I've read. He was

0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:16.840
<v Speaker 2>like a high school science teacher basically, and he started

0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:21.000
<v Speaker 2>secretly writing poems in plays. He was thirty five, he

0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:24.000
<v Speaker 2>was divorced and he was struggling with cancer. He recovered

0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:28.040
<v Speaker 2>from the cancer. He remarried his ex wife, and then

0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:32.079
<v Speaker 2>after the death of Stalin, the courts invalidated his original conviction.

0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:35.240
<v Speaker 2>They retroactively decided it was okay to make fun of

0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:37.120
<v Speaker 2>the man with a mustache and a private letter to

0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:39.880
<v Speaker 2>a friend, and he was allowed to move back to

0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:45.000
<v Speaker 2>Western Russia. Wow, so everything's fixed forever. At this point,

0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.560
<v Speaker 2>he publishes his first famous book, A Day in the

0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.240
<v Speaker 2>Life of Ivan Denosovich, which is the book that I

0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:55.319
<v Speaker 2>read and I wasn't like I'm reading about Russia. It

0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:57.000
<v Speaker 2>was just like a book I ran across. It's short,

0:12:57.080 --> 0:12:59.960
<v Speaker 2>and it's about life and a gulug. It was interesting

0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:05.640
<v Speaker 2>and it was actually published in the USSR. Khrushchev himself,

0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:09.440
<v Speaker 2>the new leader, he signed off on publishing this book

0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:12.679
<v Speaker 2>because while it's critical of the gulag system, it's not

0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:15.880
<v Speaker 2>a particularly radical book. It's like Khrushchev is down with

0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:22.240
<v Speaker 2>shit that criticizes Stalin, you know. Yeah. But soon after that,

0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.760
<v Speaker 2>after this book comes out to like great, everyone likes it,

0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:27.320
<v Speaker 2>and he starts writing some other books and some of

0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.079
<v Speaker 2>them get published in a West and whatever. It's complicated.

0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:34.360
<v Speaker 2>He's soon persona non grata in the literary scene of Russia.

0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:38.400
<v Speaker 2>The government decides they don't want him writing anymore, and

0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:42.800
<v Speaker 2>they steal all of his manuscripts. His repression leads to

0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:46.240
<v Speaker 2>this massive cultural boycott of the USSR, and all of

0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:48.520
<v Speaker 2>these writers get together and are like, are you kidding?

0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:51.480
<v Speaker 2>Why are we doing this to this you know, important writer.

0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:56.880
<v Speaker 2>And this includes Western leftists like Sart and Vonnegut, you

0:13:56.880 --> 0:13:59.160
<v Speaker 2>know who probably wouldn't join in a cultural boycott if

0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:01.079
<v Speaker 2>it affected their botty line.

0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:03.520
<v Speaker 3>I couldn't begin to think of an answer.

0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:05.160
<v Speaker 2>It's the sponsors of this show.

0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:08.520
<v Speaker 3>The sponsors, of course, it's the sponsors of this show.

0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:12.880
<v Speaker 2>I know they would do whatever's best morally at all times, right, Sophie,

0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:15.040
<v Speaker 2>we could say that all of our sponsors always do

0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:19.320
<v Speaker 2>it's correct morally.

0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:21.520
<v Speaker 1>I don't know.

0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:23.240
<v Speaker 3>We love sponsors.

0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:27.240
<v Speaker 2>This podcast is brought to you by Don't Gamble. Here's

0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:41.040
<v Speaker 2>to Nuts, and we're back. So Alexander in Secret starts

0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:44.000
<v Speaker 2>writing what's going to become his most famous book, or

0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:47.160
<v Speaker 2>at least his most influential book. It takes him ten

0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:49.760
<v Speaker 2>years to write this book, from nineteen fifty eight to

0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:53.080
<v Speaker 2>nineteen sixty eight. So if you're listening to this, my

0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.320
<v Speaker 2>editor at Feminist Press, to whom I owe book. Hey,

0:14:56.360 --> 0:15:00.680
<v Speaker 2>I'm writing faster than this guy did. Book he writes

0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:05.920
<v Speaker 2>is called Gulag Archipelago, and it is this long, damning

0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:08.840
<v Speaker 2>history of the Gulag system. It's written in novel form,

0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:13.120
<v Speaker 2>but it's like Russian novels are very often like, look,

0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:15.320
<v Speaker 2>I'm basically writing nonfiction, but every now and then I'm

0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.720
<v Speaker 2>gonna have some characters in it, you know, hmm. And

0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:22.920
<v Speaker 2>it's a very Russian novel. Is three hundred thousand words long,

0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:26.880
<v Speaker 2>which is baby shorter than all of the Lord of

0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:28.240
<v Speaker 2>the Rings books put together.

0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.720
<v Speaker 3>You know, I would struggle through it these days, I

0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:34.840
<v Speaker 3>have the attention span of a goldfish. Lately, I know

0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:36.160
<v Speaker 3>topic for another day.

0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:37.760
<v Speaker 2>I feel like I'm gonna have to like live in

0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:39.440
<v Speaker 2>the woods for a solid way. I do live in

0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:40.640
<v Speaker 2>the woods. I'm gonna have to live in the woods

0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.880
<v Speaker 2>without the internet. It's the internet for a year before

0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:45.960
<v Speaker 2>I can finally read more and piece by Tolstein.

0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:48.880
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's a real problem. I might cut all the

0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:53.120
<v Speaker 3>chords soon, but anyway, not during this show done via internet.

0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:54.000
<v Speaker 2>Nope.

0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:59.320
<v Speaker 1>Do you ever read Tolsoy' is the Death of Ivan Iliot.

0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:03.400
<v Speaker 1>It's like a novella of his that's like about a funeral.

0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:05.760
<v Speaker 2>It's not okay, No, I've I read this one about

0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:09.480
<v Speaker 2>a soldier going off somewhere and hiding in the mountains.

0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:12.640
<v Speaker 1>No, this one's like all about grief. It's like, okay,

0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:16.440
<v Speaker 1>what's it called? The death of Ivan Illy? I could

0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:18.000
<v Speaker 1>be pronouncing the last name a.

0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.440
<v Speaker 3>Real theme with the titles of these writers. Yeah, a dain,

0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:23.840
<v Speaker 3>the Life of Ivan whatever his last name is.

0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:24.680
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.

0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:26.440
<v Speaker 1>I feel like a lot of these things were like

0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:31.560
<v Speaker 1>as generically titled as possible, somewhat on purpose, you know.

0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:35.360
<v Speaker 2>Sure. Yeah, Tolstoy was I mean, everyone like sort of

0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:37.480
<v Speaker 2>loved him, but he was also a Christian anarchist and

0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:39.200
<v Speaker 2>like sometimes hated him. You know.

0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.360
<v Speaker 1>That was like my first to intro to Tolstoy, and I

0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:47.960
<v Speaker 1>was like, Jesus Christ, that was depressing, give me more.

0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:51.080
<v Speaker 2>What I did is I just had I had a

0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:53.360
<v Speaker 2>really good friend who was really into reading Tolstoy, and

0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:55.680
<v Speaker 2>I would just like make her tell me what she

0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:57.840
<v Speaker 2>was reading as too, So I didn't actually read them,

0:16:57.880 --> 0:16:59.680
<v Speaker 2>but I like not the blow.

0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:01.840
<v Speaker 3>By blow, you know, yeah, like the cliff notes.

0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:06.119
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, one day I'm going to read warm Piece and

0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:07.960
<v Speaker 2>one day, which is actually gonna come up later. There

0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:09.639
<v Speaker 2>is gonna be a joke about a grandma tricking a

0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:13.320
<v Speaker 2>granddaughter into reading warm Piece later in this oh and

0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:17.879
<v Speaker 2>one day I'm going to read a Goolag Archipelago. So

0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:20.280
<v Speaker 2>he writes his long, damning history and I don't know

0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:22.040
<v Speaker 2>if this is exactly why he can't get it published,

0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:24.160
<v Speaker 2>but one of the things he does is he traces

0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:28.680
<v Speaker 2>the origins of the system to before Stalin. He traces

0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:32.640
<v Speaker 2>it back to nineteen eighteen and Lenin and like, whoops,

0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:35.600
<v Speaker 2>you're not allowed to criticize anyone but Stalin. Everyone has

0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:37.240
<v Speaker 2>to be like, the only thing that was ever wrong

0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:39.720
<v Speaker 2>with the USSR was just Stalin. Is what everyone wants

0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:43.000
<v Speaker 2>to pretend, you know. Oh God. He works with a

0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:45.080
<v Speaker 2>number of people to get this book smuggled out to

0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:49.399
<v Speaker 2>the West on microfilm. Paris wants to publish it, but

0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.320
<v Speaker 2>he desperately wants to try to leverage everything he can

0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.720
<v Speaker 2>to get it published in the USSR first one, because

0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:59.120
<v Speaker 2>he wants to have more impact to There's like, if

0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:01.800
<v Speaker 2>you get stuff published in the West while you're living

0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.639
<v Speaker 2>in Russia, you're like guaranteed that the USSR is never

0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:06.280
<v Speaker 2>going to touch it, Like is never going to let

0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:10.960
<v Speaker 2>you publish it at that point. And there's only three manuscripts,

0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:15.439
<v Speaker 2>three copies of the manuscript in the USSR, and I

0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:18.080
<v Speaker 2>believe all three of them were literally buried. I know

0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:21.960
<v Speaker 2>that two of them were. One was buried in Estonia

0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:28.080
<v Speaker 2>by his friend's daughter. Another copy one of his typists

0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:30.600
<v Speaker 2>knew where it was because he was working with typists.

0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.480
<v Speaker 2>Sometimes the isamas dot publisher. Typists are getting paid, sometimes

0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:37.000
<v Speaker 2>they're not, Sometimes they're volunteer. I don't know enough about

0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:40.800
<v Speaker 2>this particular person. I do know that because she typed

0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:45.560
<v Speaker 2>this book, the state captures her and tortures her, and

0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:48.680
<v Speaker 2>she gives up the location of the manuscript, so the

0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:52.960
<v Speaker 2>KGB go and they burn it. And then as soon

0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:55.720
<v Speaker 2>as she's released, she is found hanging in her own

0:18:55.760 --> 0:19:01.160
<v Speaker 2>apartment building stairwell. It's either murder or suicide. Yeah, But honestly,

0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:04.320
<v Speaker 2>I think claiming that she was murdered by the state,

0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:07.400
<v Speaker 2>whether or not she tied the rope herself, is perfectly fair.

0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:09.600
<v Speaker 3>I agree, I completely agree.

0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:14.600
<v Speaker 2>Meanwhile, the USSR's Writers Union has kicked him out in

0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:18.320
<v Speaker 2>nineteen sixty nine, and he's hiding on his friend's property.

0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.480
<v Speaker 2>He's kind of I think openly hiding on his friend's

0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:24.240
<v Speaker 2>property because the USSR is like totally equal. Everyone's equal

0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:26.639
<v Speaker 2>in the USSR. But he has a friend who's a

0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:30.000
<v Speaker 2>world famous cellist, and because he's a world famous cellist,

0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:33.080
<v Speaker 2>he gets his own villa like a dacha. Okay, he

0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:36.080
<v Speaker 2>gets his own fancy house just outside of town. And

0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:38.000
<v Speaker 2>because he's world famous and has his own datcha, the

0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:41.600
<v Speaker 2>KGBS like kind of not allowed to search his place. Okay,

0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:43.760
<v Speaker 2>you know, so that's where he's hiding in the good

0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:47.120
<v Speaker 2>and equal society of the USSR. People have probably caught

0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:49.000
<v Speaker 2>on by now that I'm not a big.

0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:53.960
<v Speaker 3>Fan and oh, okay, now I see, which means that

0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:56.080
<v Speaker 3>I love the US and capitalism.

0:19:56.840 --> 0:20:00.040
<v Speaker 2>That's the obvious logical conclusion. Only one thing can be

0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:06.120
<v Speaker 2>bad at a time, right. Anyway, he wins the nineteen

0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:09.800
<v Speaker 2>seventy Nobel Prize for Literature. Goolog Archipelago isn't even out yet,

0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.160
<v Speaker 2>but he's written these other books. He's unable to attend

0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:16.920
<v Speaker 2>the event. It's in I think Stockholm because he's convinced

0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:18.879
<v Speaker 2>that if he leaves, the USSR will never let him

0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:21.920
<v Speaker 2>back in again, right, which isn't something that my friends

0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:23.480
<v Speaker 2>are thinking about. Now at all. I don't know what

0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:24.320
<v Speaker 2>you're talking about.

0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:25.399
<v Speaker 3>No, I can't relate.

0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:29.000
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but he wrote a banger speech that he sent

0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:32.480
<v Speaker 2>out there that included that ordinary man was obliged quote

0:20:32.520 --> 0:20:36.399
<v Speaker 2>not to participate and lies. Basically, his whole speech was like,

0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:40.400
<v Speaker 2>tell the fucking truth. That's it. That's the goal, that's

0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:43.240
<v Speaker 2>the whole fucking point of doing anything, is to tell

0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:47.360
<v Speaker 2>the fucking truth. And when he won this Nobel prize,

0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:50.520
<v Speaker 2>the people who took the biggest risk, inmates from his

0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:54.520
<v Speaker 2>former prison camp, risked everything to smuggle notes out to

0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:59.800
<v Speaker 2>congratulate him. And that's fucking cool. It is really cool.

0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:05.280
<v Speaker 2>Along the way, he divorces his wife, the scientist Natalia,

0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:08.600
<v Speaker 2>to marry and yeah, well this time she divorced him,

0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:11.560
<v Speaker 2>and then they get back together. And then this time

0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.640
<v Speaker 2>he's like, well, actually I'm sorry my wife, the scientist Natalia.

0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:18.840
<v Speaker 2>I'm in love with another woman, a scientist named Natalia.

0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:23.880
<v Speaker 3>He's got a type. Well, this is another complicated figure.

0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:27.959
<v Speaker 2>I don't I actually I don't know. I have no

0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:30.119
<v Speaker 2>particular reason to believe that this new Natalia is like

0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:32.919
<v Speaker 2>agent appropriate or anything like that. You know, it's like

0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:35.919
<v Speaker 2>they're actually working together and they're falling in love, I think,

0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:36.680
<v Speaker 2>is what's happening.

0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:41.160
<v Speaker 3>I'm making a joke. Life happen. It could have been good,

0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:42.000
<v Speaker 3>it could have been bad.

0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:44.080
<v Speaker 2>I spent a while trying to find out, and I

0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:45.359
<v Speaker 2>didn't find the answer.

0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.679
<v Speaker 3>It's also like she did divorce him the first time.

0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:52.280
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, I also reasonably certain there's like only ten

0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:55.439
<v Speaker 2>first names available in the USSR. There's also that somewhere

0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:56.760
<v Speaker 2>in here there's a joke about how they had to

0:21:56.760 --> 0:22:01.040
<v Speaker 2>share the names because of communism. And so he's getting

0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:03.840
<v Speaker 2>real paranoid because the States after him, you know, and

0:22:03.880 --> 0:22:06.879
<v Speaker 2>they killed his typist. Sure, and so he sleeps with

0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:10.040
<v Speaker 2>a pitchfork by his bed, which is classy and strange.

0:22:10.840 --> 0:22:12.240
<v Speaker 3>That is both of those things.

0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:13.760
<v Speaker 1>You know.

0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:17.760
<v Speaker 3>I'm not sure it gives you a fighting chance, Okay.

0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:22.360
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean, like, honestly, a pitchfork by your bed

0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:25.240
<v Speaker 2>is really just to like take me down fighting. It's like, like,

0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:27.200
<v Speaker 2>I don't want to go alive, That's all it says.

0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:29.880
<v Speaker 2>If you have a pitchfork by your bed, yeah, totally.

0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:33.960
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, after his typist is found dead, he's like,

0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:36.960
<v Speaker 2>all right, Paris, go ahead and publish Gulag Archipelago. It's

0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:39.959
<v Speaker 2>clearly not getting published in Russia. Yeah, and so they

0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:44.240
<v Speaker 2>publish it. In nineteen seventy three, one guy Azaiah Berlin

0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:49.639
<v Speaker 2>wrote about it, quote, until the Gulag Archipelago, the Communists

0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:52.800
<v Speaker 2>and their allies had persuaded their followers that denunciations of

0:22:52.840 --> 0:22:57.800
<v Speaker 2>the regime were largely bourgeois propaganda. And so basically it's like,

0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:03.040
<v Speaker 2>this first handily detailed account of the Gulags broke the

0:23:03.080 --> 0:23:04.879
<v Speaker 2>myth because the Communist Party was like, what are you

0:23:04.960 --> 0:23:09.520
<v Speaker 2>talking about. There's not sixty million, fourteen million people in Gulags. No,

0:23:09.640 --> 0:23:14.440
<v Speaker 2>it's just like three guys named Nikolai. Yeah, that's all

0:23:14.480 --> 0:23:18.119
<v Speaker 2>we got. It's just the Nicolai camp. You know, a

0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:21.640
<v Speaker 2>lot of academics in the West hated Gulag Archipelago. Frankly,

0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:23.560
<v Speaker 2>I think because they're associated with the Communist Party in

0:23:23.600 --> 0:23:27.920
<v Speaker 2>the West that's the And people who survive the Gulag

0:23:28.359 --> 0:23:30.760
<v Speaker 2>are like, no, this is pretty dead on, whereas the

0:23:30.880 --> 0:23:33.480
<v Speaker 2>people in the West are like, nah, it can't be true,

0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:38.440
<v Speaker 2>you know. Yeah, And finally the USSR is like, get

0:23:38.480 --> 0:23:42.280
<v Speaker 2>the fuck out of our country. He is deported to

0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:45.399
<v Speaker 2>West Germany and then he moves to Vermont. This is

0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:49.160
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen seventy four in Vermont. His family soon joins

0:23:49.200 --> 0:23:52.119
<v Speaker 2>him the new wife I believe, only one of the

0:23:52.160 --> 0:23:55.120
<v Speaker 2>one of the wives. Yeah, he's not actually a big

0:23:55.119 --> 0:24:01.080
<v Speaker 2>of us anyway. Yeah, and this is where I wish

0:24:01.119 --> 0:24:03.760
<v Speaker 2>the story was he just pivoted into being a Vermont guy.

0:24:04.040 --> 0:24:06.920
<v Speaker 2>He would have been such a good Vermont guy. There's

0:24:07.000 --> 0:24:09.159
<v Speaker 2>like pictures of him, and he looks just like a

0:24:09.280 --> 0:24:12.520
<v Speaker 2>Vermont almost amish guy. He's got the big beard.

0:24:12.640 --> 0:24:14.639
<v Speaker 3>Are you telling me this is Bernie Sanders?

0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:19.080
<v Speaker 2>Oh, no beard? Yeah, imagine if Bernie Sanders was in

0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:20.320
<v Speaker 2>like eighteen seventy.

0:24:21.000 --> 0:24:22.119
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

0:24:22.680 --> 0:24:25.639
<v Speaker 2>Instead, he goes into exile mode, which is perfectly reasonable.

0:24:26.760 --> 0:24:30.119
<v Speaker 2>All he does is write, eat and sleep. He starts

0:24:30.119 --> 0:24:32.760
<v Speaker 2>writing what he intends to be as magnum Opus, a

0:24:32.840 --> 0:24:35.240
<v Speaker 2>series of books he never finishes, although he finishes like

0:24:35.280 --> 0:24:37.920
<v Speaker 2>four of the books. I can't talk shit. It's called

0:24:37.960 --> 0:24:40.600
<v Speaker 2>The Red Wheel and it is a complete history of

0:24:40.640 --> 0:24:44.800
<v Speaker 2>the Russian Revolution. Oh and it's turned down for Soviet

0:24:44.840 --> 0:24:50.400
<v Speaker 2>publication because he refuses to uncapitalize the word God, which

0:24:50.440 --> 0:24:53.360
<v Speaker 2>is just like two petty people fighting, and I kind

0:24:53.400 --> 0:24:54.359
<v Speaker 2>of respect it, you know.

0:24:54.680 --> 0:24:54.960
<v Speaker 1>Yep.

0:24:57.040 --> 0:24:59.639
<v Speaker 2>He's famous as hell because of the US is trying

0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:01.679
<v Speaker 2>hard to just turn him into like a cold warrior,

0:25:01.840 --> 0:25:05.400
<v Speaker 2>you know. Yeah, yeah, but all of his neighbors chip

0:25:05.400 --> 0:25:07.679
<v Speaker 2>in to help him keep his privacy. They put up

0:25:07.680 --> 0:25:11.399
<v Speaker 2>a sign in town saying no directions to the souls

0:25:11.400 --> 0:25:13.120
<v Speaker 2>in it sens so they're like, no, we're not gonna

0:25:13.119 --> 0:25:14.919
<v Speaker 2>tell anyone where to find you, Like, you can just

0:25:14.960 --> 0:25:18.120
<v Speaker 2>live in your weird writing retreat in Vermont.

0:25:18.800 --> 0:25:22.399
<v Speaker 3>I love that. Also, I'd be like, low key horrified

0:25:22.400 --> 0:25:23.840
<v Speaker 3>if every time I drove by a.

0:25:23.800 --> 0:25:26.560
<v Speaker 2>Sign no directions to the stoles.

0:25:27.280 --> 0:25:30.720
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you're like that, yeah, but also way to go.

0:25:31.520 --> 0:25:37.440
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. His wife, Natalia runs a relief fund for Soviet prisoners,

0:25:37.560 --> 0:25:40.399
<v Speaker 2>and all the proceeds from Gulag Archipelago go directly to

0:25:40.440 --> 0:25:43.439
<v Speaker 2>supporting her fund. So they're like, okay, doing a thing together,

0:25:44.119 --> 0:25:48.840
<v Speaker 2>all right, Natalia. Yeah, but instead of becoming a cool guy,

0:25:48.880 --> 0:25:53.520
<v Speaker 2>he kind of just starts increasingly alienating everyone from all political.

0:25:53.000 --> 0:25:55.160
<v Speaker 3>Sides, more and more complicated.

0:25:55.520 --> 0:25:57.960
<v Speaker 2>Uh huh. Partly this is kind of cool. It's impossible

0:25:58.000 --> 0:25:59.840
<v Speaker 2>to make him the stooge of the CIA or anyone

0:25:59.840 --> 0:26:02.320
<v Speaker 2>else because he's mad at the US. Yeah, you want

0:26:02.320 --> 0:26:03.280
<v Speaker 2>to know. One of the things he's mad at the

0:26:03.359 --> 0:26:06.560
<v Speaker 2>US about it makes sense from his position, Yeah, I

0:26:06.640 --> 0:26:14.720
<v Speaker 2>do abandoning the Vietnam War, okay. And also, to quote

0:26:14.720 --> 0:26:17.240
<v Speaker 2>the New York Times from their obituary of him, quote,

0:26:18.160 --> 0:26:21.920
<v Speaker 2>he criticized the US's music as intolerable and attacked its

0:26:22.040 --> 0:26:25.400
<v Speaker 2>unfettered press, accusing it of violations of privacy.

0:26:26.280 --> 0:26:29.120
<v Speaker 3>Wow. So he's like, you just really can't get this right,

0:26:29.200 --> 0:26:30.480
<v Speaker 3>can you, Goldilocks?

0:26:30.720 --> 0:26:30.880
<v Speaker 2>Oh?

0:26:31.800 --> 0:26:32.000
<v Speaker 1>Oh?

0:26:32.080 --> 0:26:33.520
<v Speaker 3>The unfettered press.

0:26:33.840 --> 0:26:35.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he doesn't like that it's unfettered press.

0:26:36.000 --> 0:26:38.240
<v Speaker 3>The music thing. I'm like, yous just sound like a

0:26:38.240 --> 0:26:39.120
<v Speaker 3>cranky old guy.

0:26:39.440 --> 0:26:42.320
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but he's also a cranky, old, weird Russian man

0:26:42.400 --> 0:26:43.000
<v Speaker 2>on top of it.

0:26:43.320 --> 0:26:44.880
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, complicated.

0:26:45.960 --> 0:26:48.760
<v Speaker 2>After the fall of the USSR, he goes back home.

0:26:49.160 --> 0:26:51.840
<v Speaker 2>He's accompanied by a news crew to capture his response,

0:26:52.440 --> 0:26:55.040
<v Speaker 2>and he's basically just like, fuck, it's all crime and corruption,

0:26:55.720 --> 0:26:58.760
<v Speaker 2>and also the ethnic Russians are not being protected in

0:26:58.800 --> 0:27:03.239
<v Speaker 2>the former block country. I have spent a bunch of

0:27:03.280 --> 0:27:06.400
<v Speaker 2>time reading arguments on both sides about whether or not

0:27:06.480 --> 0:27:09.560
<v Speaker 2>he was an ethnonationalist, whether or not he was an

0:27:09.560 --> 0:27:13.360
<v Speaker 2>anti Semite, and all of this stuff. And the problem

0:27:13.440 --> 0:27:18.200
<v Speaker 2>is everyone is so politically engaged around him that it's

0:27:18.240 --> 0:27:21.000
<v Speaker 2>hard to peace out like he did in two thousand

0:27:21.000 --> 0:27:24.240
<v Speaker 2>and two write a like book covering hundreds of years

0:27:24.240 --> 0:27:28.399
<v Speaker 2>of the history of Jewish people in Russia. But in

0:27:28.440 --> 0:27:33.160
<v Speaker 2>it he's critical of all of the anti Semitic policies

0:27:33.200 --> 0:27:36.760
<v Speaker 2>of the government and like talks about the problem with

0:27:36.800 --> 0:27:40.480
<v Speaker 2>the programs and like all of this stuff. But also

0:27:40.520 --> 0:27:44.080
<v Speaker 2>he I don't know, like earlier he had like he

0:27:44.160 --> 0:27:46.320
<v Speaker 2>might be an anti Semite. He certainly meets some people's

0:27:46.320 --> 0:27:49.040
<v Speaker 2>definitions of anti Semite, but he also like, yeah, isn't

0:27:49.119 --> 0:27:51.600
<v Speaker 2>the kind of anti Semite that you imagine when you

0:27:51.640 --> 0:27:53.000
<v Speaker 2>imagine a Russian anti Semite.

0:27:53.240 --> 0:27:55.280
<v Speaker 3>Kind of don't even need to try to put him

0:27:55.320 --> 0:27:59.200
<v Speaker 3>into one box or another. He's a complicated figure of

0:27:59.240 --> 0:28:02.600
<v Speaker 3>a very complicated a time, with different influences and clearly

0:28:02.600 --> 0:28:06.200
<v Speaker 3>doesn't subscribe to one thing or another. Yep, there's this influence.

0:28:06.240 --> 0:28:09.640
<v Speaker 3>There's that he might be anti Semitic, but doesn't mean

0:28:09.720 --> 0:28:13.119
<v Speaker 3>that he thinks the Polgrims were good.

0:28:13.400 --> 0:28:13.679
<v Speaker 1>You know.

0:28:14.080 --> 0:28:16.280
<v Speaker 2>Well, it's also hard because the only thing I've read,

0:28:16.800 --> 0:28:18.960
<v Speaker 2>I didn't read everything. I read several articles about it.

0:28:19.000 --> 0:28:22.960
<v Speaker 2>But he was accused of anti Semitism because he, like,

0:28:23.040 --> 0:28:25.240
<v Speaker 2>for example, he was saying that the programs.

0:28:24.760 --> 0:28:25.800
<v Speaker 3>Were anti Zionists.

0:28:25.880 --> 0:28:28.360
<v Speaker 2>Sorry, oh no, if that would have actually been interesting.

0:28:29.080 --> 0:28:31.959
<v Speaker 2>He was claiming that the programs didn't come from the

0:28:32.000 --> 0:28:35.159
<v Speaker 2>top of society, but instead like came bottom up from

0:28:35.200 --> 0:28:37.280
<v Speaker 2>the Russian peasants, but not in a way where he

0:28:37.359 --> 0:28:39.880
<v Speaker 2>was like, and therefore it's good, you know, And I'm like,

0:28:40.760 --> 0:28:43.880
<v Speaker 2>I think that's true. I think that it was a

0:28:43.920 --> 0:28:47.880
<v Speaker 2>bottom up populist revolt of horrible racist bullshit, you know,

0:28:48.200 --> 0:28:48.480
<v Speaker 2>m h.

0:28:48.960 --> 0:28:52.000
<v Speaker 3>Because he's they're tapping into something and that's coming from somewhere.

0:28:52.480 --> 0:28:55.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but he is also sort of an ethnopatriot about

0:28:55.880 --> 0:28:59.120
<v Speaker 2>like Russian people, and he wants to leave I don't

0:28:59.120 --> 0:28:59.960
<v Speaker 2>know whatever he's fucking.

0:29:00.000 --> 0:29:02.040
<v Speaker 3>It's also interesting given all that he's been through.

0:29:02.320 --> 0:29:06.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you know, totally. In nineteen ninety four he went

0:29:06.800 --> 0:29:08.960
<v Speaker 2>before the Russian Parliament and was like, this is not

0:29:09.000 --> 0:29:11.880
<v Speaker 2>a democracy but an oligarchy, and then continuing on his

0:29:11.960 --> 0:29:14.080
<v Speaker 2>like he can't make friends on either side. In two

0:29:14.120 --> 0:29:17.760
<v Speaker 2>thousand and five, he criticized NATO. He told the Times

0:29:17.800 --> 0:29:20.200
<v Speaker 2>of London and I actually think this is sick. He

0:29:20.320 --> 0:29:23.040
<v Speaker 2>told The Times of London that democracy is quote not

0:29:23.200 --> 0:29:26.320
<v Speaker 2>worth a brass farthing if it is installed by bayonet,

0:29:27.680 --> 0:29:30.080
<v Speaker 2>and so he's like criticizing the like bomb countries into

0:29:30.120 --> 0:29:33.400
<v Speaker 2>democracy thing that's been going on, you know. Yeah, But

0:29:33.480 --> 0:29:36.320
<v Speaker 2>also I think Putin likes him, and Jordan Peterson likes

0:29:36.360 --> 0:29:39.920
<v Speaker 2>him and whatever. Fucking you know. He died at eighty

0:29:40.000 --> 0:29:43.640
<v Speaker 2>nine years old in two thousand and eight, and people

0:29:43.800 --> 0:29:46.000
<v Speaker 2>want to use him to prop up this or that position,

0:29:47.080 --> 0:29:49.320
<v Speaker 2>including people who know more about him than I do. Right,

0:29:49.440 --> 0:29:53.400
<v Speaker 2>But my takeaway was grouchy old man who had a hardish,

0:29:53.440 --> 0:29:57.360
<v Speaker 2>shit life, who grew up in a dilapidated hut, whose

0:29:57.400 --> 0:30:03.280
<v Speaker 2>writing helped break through the lives of the Soviet shame. Yeah. Yeah,

0:30:03.320 --> 0:30:06.760
<v Speaker 2>but do you know what doesn't know how to transition

0:30:06.840 --> 0:30:07.880
<v Speaker 2>to ads?

0:30:08.640 --> 0:30:12.680
<v Speaker 3>Me? That's not true, Margaret, You're so good at it.

0:30:12.800 --> 0:30:15.520
<v Speaker 2>Okay, you're right, Oh, thank you, thank you. Even this

0:30:15.680 --> 0:30:18.120
<v Speaker 2>was a clever ruse of a because I actually was

0:30:18.160 --> 0:30:20.440
<v Speaker 2>transitioning to ads, I think very.

0:30:20.280 --> 0:30:25.960
<v Speaker 3>Well, perfectly. Thank you, and anybody listening at home, that's like, ugh,

0:30:26.520 --> 0:30:27.400
<v Speaker 3>how hard could it be?

0:30:27.720 --> 0:30:29.280
<v Speaker 1>It can be hard.

0:30:29.920 --> 0:30:33.040
<v Speaker 3>It can be hard to find a graceful transition and

0:30:34.560 --> 0:30:36.360
<v Speaker 3>respect it as I do.

0:30:37.560 --> 0:30:48.160
<v Speaker 2>Here's the ads and we're back him.

0:30:48.160 --> 0:30:50.000
<v Speaker 3>So glad to be back from those ads.

0:30:50.400 --> 0:30:53.000
<v Speaker 2>I know, I know, I learned so much about so

0:30:53.080 --> 0:30:55.960
<v Speaker 2>many wonderful things. Sometimes we do get ads for good things.

0:30:55.960 --> 0:30:57.680
<v Speaker 2>I will say that every now and then. I want

0:30:57.680 --> 0:30:59.280
<v Speaker 2>the listeners to use their own discretion.

0:31:00.040 --> 0:31:01.360
<v Speaker 3>It's true.

0:31:02.080 --> 0:31:06.480
<v Speaker 2>So Alexander's work was a little bit influential as samas Dot,

0:31:06.640 --> 0:31:08.960
<v Speaker 2>but honestly, a lot of what was influential about it.

0:31:09.160 --> 0:31:11.200
<v Speaker 2>I didn't really expect to go on this like Longhold

0:31:11.640 --> 0:31:13.280
<v Speaker 2>rabbit Hole about him, but I just spent so long

0:31:13.320 --> 0:31:14.080
<v Speaker 2>reading about him.

0:31:14.400 --> 0:31:16.520
<v Speaker 3>It was fascinating. I'm glad to have learned about him.

0:31:17.000 --> 0:31:20.760
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but a lot was influential about his work was

0:31:20.920 --> 0:31:24.640
<v Speaker 2>what broke containment and was published widely. There had been

0:31:24.680 --> 0:31:28.280
<v Speaker 2>other similar pieces before. For example, in nineteen fifty one,

0:31:29.080 --> 0:31:32.560
<v Speaker 2>a poll named Gustav Girlin had written a World Apart

0:31:32.920 --> 0:31:36.040
<v Speaker 2>about three years in a prison camp. It was spread

0:31:36.160 --> 0:31:39.840
<v Speaker 2>by carbon copies that were spread around and retyped. And

0:31:39.920 --> 0:31:42.520
<v Speaker 2>also that one stands as an exception. This is that's

0:31:42.560 --> 0:31:47.080
<v Speaker 2>before samas Dot culture Stalin's Alive in nineteen fifty one.

0:31:47.640 --> 0:31:51.360
<v Speaker 2>Gustav Girland was risking an awful fucking lot by writing

0:31:51.360 --> 0:31:54.760
<v Speaker 2>about that. Yeah, but by the end of nineteen fifties.

0:31:54.760 --> 0:31:56.400
<v Speaker 2>In the USSR, you get the culture of what we

0:31:56.440 --> 0:32:01.600
<v Speaker 2>call samas dot properly, so the word samas dot. The

0:32:01.680 --> 0:32:04.959
<v Speaker 2>various publishing houses run by the state all had names

0:32:05.040 --> 0:32:08.720
<v Speaker 2>like gosses dot, which is the state publishing house, or

0:32:08.760 --> 0:32:13.160
<v Speaker 2>polisi dot, the publishing house for politics. So this poet

0:32:13.240 --> 0:32:17.240
<v Speaker 2>named Nikolai Glaskov, when he started self publishing his poems,

0:32:18.080 --> 0:32:23.040
<v Speaker 2>he ironically put the word samsabiyazdt as the publisher on them,

0:32:23.200 --> 0:32:26.560
<v Speaker 2>which meant the self publishing house instead of the state

0:32:26.600 --> 0:32:30.400
<v Speaker 2>publishing house or of the politics publishing house. And he

0:32:30.480 --> 0:32:33.360
<v Speaker 2>shortened it to samas dot and it gets translated as

0:32:33.360 --> 0:32:37.200
<v Speaker 2>self publishing. But it's really more clever than that. Despite

0:32:37.200 --> 0:32:40.640
<v Speaker 2>the word coming into regular usage in Soviet Russia, no

0:32:40.760 --> 0:32:44.520
<v Speaker 2>Soviet dictionary ever included it. It was a non word.

0:32:45.200 --> 0:32:50.840
<v Speaker 2>It's just so petty, you know. Yeah, Nikolai Nikolai Glaskov,

0:32:51.720 --> 0:32:54.160
<v Speaker 2>his dad had been killed during the Great Purge, the

0:32:54.280 --> 0:32:57.480
<v Speaker 2>late nineteen thirties thing where Stalin killed most the original Bolsheviks,

0:32:58.640 --> 0:33:01.160
<v Speaker 2>and he was very aware of the stakes of what

0:33:01.200 --> 0:33:04.080
<v Speaker 2>he was doing, but he didn't use it to be like,

0:33:04.640 --> 0:33:07.760
<v Speaker 2>here's the self publishing to bring down the regime. He

0:33:08.280 --> 0:33:12.240
<v Speaker 2>wanted to publish poetry. Yeah, and sometimes as a kind

0:33:12.240 --> 0:33:15.080
<v Speaker 2>of kind of a joke or like a to be clever,

0:33:15.360 --> 0:33:18.360
<v Speaker 2>he would self censor the poems, like do fake censorship

0:33:18.400 --> 0:33:20.840
<v Speaker 2>on them to make a point. He was just a

0:33:20.880 --> 0:33:23.200
<v Speaker 2>clever poet trying to do his thing. He once wrote

0:33:23.200 --> 0:33:25.760
<v Speaker 2>a poem. I couldn't find it in English, but I

0:33:26.360 --> 0:33:28.160
<v Speaker 2>read the description of it and it's still clever enough

0:33:28.160 --> 0:33:30.920
<v Speaker 2>to repeat. It's a rewrite of The Raven by Edgar

0:33:30.960 --> 0:33:33.800
<v Speaker 2>Allan Poe, which I think most people know this. But

0:33:33.800 --> 0:33:36.640
<v Speaker 2>there's a depressed author and he's like sitting around and

0:33:36.680 --> 0:33:38.760
<v Speaker 2>he's like, oh, woe is me? Will I ever be happy?

0:33:38.800 --> 0:33:41.239
<v Speaker 2>And a bird comes in it's like never more, you know,

0:33:41.560 --> 0:33:43.520
<v Speaker 2>and he's like, ah, I'm extra sad. The bird told

0:33:43.600 --> 0:33:45.280
<v Speaker 2>me I'm doomed or whatever. It's been a while since

0:33:45.320 --> 0:33:48.400
<v Speaker 2>I read this, And so he did a rewrite of

0:33:48.440 --> 0:33:52.200
<v Speaker 2>it where at the end the character just looks the

0:33:52.320 --> 0:33:55.160
<v Speaker 2>raven is like, yeah, if you're so smart, name a

0:33:55.240 --> 0:34:00.040
<v Speaker 2>city in Chile. And the bird, I think just the

0:34:00.040 --> 0:34:02.120
<v Speaker 2>implication is the bird just as never more again, and

0:34:02.160 --> 0:34:04.640
<v Speaker 2>the author's like, yeah, you're just a bird doing bird shit. Whatever.

0:34:04.680 --> 0:34:08.960
<v Speaker 2>I don't care. Yeah, his poems spread word of mouth

0:34:09.200 --> 0:34:12.200
<v Speaker 2>or re typed, and like all ssamisdat, they entered a

0:34:12.239 --> 0:34:14.840
<v Speaker 2>sort of folk art tradition where they were subtly changed

0:34:14.840 --> 0:34:18.720
<v Speaker 2>from person to person. The closest comparison I can find

0:34:18.920 --> 0:34:22.719
<v Speaker 2>is poetry and translation. You know, it's slightly different every

0:34:22.760 --> 0:34:27.600
<v Speaker 2>time you read different translations of things. Soon enough, samisdad

0:34:27.719 --> 0:34:30.600
<v Speaker 2>is a culture in the nineteen sixties. It's mostly in Russia.

0:34:31.680 --> 0:34:34.440
<v Speaker 2>It picked up in particular after the brief period of

0:34:34.480 --> 0:34:36.520
<v Speaker 2>the more open Krushchev came to an end in the

0:34:36.560 --> 0:34:39.000
<v Speaker 2>early nineteen sixties because for a little while people didn't

0:34:39.000 --> 0:34:40.600
<v Speaker 2>want to do samasdot because they're like, well, I can

0:34:40.640 --> 0:34:44.960
<v Speaker 2>probably get this published officially, right. You know. By the

0:34:45.120 --> 0:34:49.240
<v Speaker 2>nineteen seventies it spreads to the satellite states and rather

0:34:49.320 --> 0:34:52.480
<v Speaker 2>than presenting it, the CIA version of samas dot is

0:34:52.560 --> 0:34:56.560
<v Speaker 2>like the heroic struggle against Stalinism and you know, Soviet oppression.

0:34:57.360 --> 0:35:01.400
<v Speaker 2>But it was more a way to have fun. Mikhail

0:35:01.480 --> 0:35:06.040
<v Speaker 2>Botten wrote an essay that samasdt was basically homebrew alcohol,

0:35:06.920 --> 0:35:10.560
<v Speaker 2>said that boredom led to quote binge drinking and its

0:35:10.640 --> 0:35:16.600
<v Speaker 2>variants binge sexual activity and binge reading. Binge reading. I

0:35:16.680 --> 0:35:18.560
<v Speaker 2>kind of love that as a cultural idea.

0:35:18.920 --> 0:35:21.560
<v Speaker 3>I do too. It's like, watch out, it's going to

0:35:21.680 --> 0:35:22.880
<v Speaker 3>lead to binge reading.

0:35:23.320 --> 0:35:28.200
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I have read Homebrew as a description of the

0:35:28.239 --> 0:35:30.480
<v Speaker 2>stuff in a number of places, Like so, I think

0:35:30.520 --> 0:35:32.319
<v Speaker 2>it was usually called samasdot, but I think it was.

0:35:32.440 --> 0:35:34.319
<v Speaker 2>I think literally people someone are just just calling it

0:35:34.360 --> 0:35:38.200
<v Speaker 2>homebrew basically, Okay. Often it was a parody of the

0:35:38.200 --> 0:35:42.200
<v Speaker 2>official channels. The official newspaper was called Pravda or Truth,

0:35:42.480 --> 0:35:45.799
<v Speaker 2>and so they were like presenting a counter truth. But

0:35:46.320 --> 0:35:49.920
<v Speaker 2>mostly they wanted to critique the idea that there was

0:35:49.960 --> 0:35:53.480
<v Speaker 2>such thing as one truth. They wanted to present that

0:35:53.520 --> 0:35:56.000
<v Speaker 2>literature could in fact be divorced from politics and could

0:35:56.040 --> 0:35:59.759
<v Speaker 2>be autonomous and ambiguous. So while they were quote neo

0:35:59.800 --> 0:36:04.719
<v Speaker 2>rests who challenge Soviet realism by offering counter truths, which

0:36:04.719 --> 0:36:06.760
<v Speaker 2>is kind of what you would say that Alexander's writing

0:36:06.880 --> 0:36:09.000
<v Speaker 2>was doing, right, is that you're like, He's like, no,

0:36:09.080 --> 0:36:12.319
<v Speaker 2>I will present the real truth. You know, a lot

0:36:12.320 --> 0:36:15.719
<v Speaker 2>of people, especially younger writers, were like, what if we

0:36:16.360 --> 0:36:20.120
<v Speaker 2>offer hypotheses instead of goals? What if we don't have answers,

0:36:20.120 --> 0:36:25.240
<v Speaker 2>we have questions? And I think that's coolest shit. Yeah,

0:36:25.360 --> 0:36:29.040
<v Speaker 2>access to copy machines was tightly controlled. So was all

0:36:29.080 --> 0:36:31.760
<v Speaker 2>this type written stuff by and large on carbon paper

0:36:31.800 --> 0:36:35.560
<v Speaker 2>and tissue paper, like literally toilet paper I think sometimes.

0:36:36.400 --> 0:36:39.120
<v Speaker 2>And this was easier to conceal and therefore easier to

0:36:39.200 --> 0:36:42.359
<v Speaker 2>destroy because you know, you get caught with it, you're

0:36:42.480 --> 0:36:43.040
<v Speaker 2>doing time.

0:36:44.000 --> 0:36:46.919
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's actually smart, delicate but smart.

0:36:46.960 --> 0:36:49.280
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, totally, which I mean, you know, it's just funny

0:36:49.280 --> 0:36:50.799
<v Speaker 2>because it's getting past around hand to hand, so it's

0:36:50.800 --> 0:36:52.880
<v Speaker 2>probably gonna all fucked up and like, yeah, one of

0:36:52.880 --> 0:36:55.359
<v Speaker 2>the like esthetic qualities of it is that often you're

0:36:55.400 --> 0:36:59.240
<v Speaker 2>doing like multiple layers of like onion skin, carbon paper

0:36:59.719 --> 0:37:01.600
<v Speaker 2>and so so like the last one is like barely

0:37:01.640 --> 0:37:05.520
<v Speaker 2>readable at all, you know. Yeah. Sometimes they would distribute

0:37:05.560 --> 0:37:08.719
<v Speaker 2>things by photographing them and then like printing photos, but

0:37:08.840 --> 0:37:14.040
<v Speaker 2>photos were bulkier and harder to conceal. Yeah, the esthetics

0:37:14.040 --> 0:37:17.600
<v Speaker 2>of samas dot soon had their own value. A type

0:37:17.600 --> 0:37:20.360
<v Speaker 2>written thing on carbon paper or tissue paper or whatever

0:37:20.840 --> 0:37:25.040
<v Speaker 2>was inherently subversive and interesting. Here's where I get the

0:37:25.080 --> 0:37:27.719
<v Speaker 2>joke I promised you. There's a Soviet era joke that

0:37:27.760 --> 0:37:30.680
<v Speaker 2>a grandmother can't get her granddaughter to read War and Peace,

0:37:31.239 --> 0:37:34.480
<v Speaker 2>so she stays up late at night furiously and retypes

0:37:34.480 --> 0:37:37.920
<v Speaker 2>it all as samas dot and then it no longer

0:37:37.960 --> 0:37:40.200
<v Speaker 2>looks official, so her granddaughter reads it.

0:37:40.880 --> 0:37:41.760
<v Speaker 3>That's really funny.

0:37:42.040 --> 0:37:47.680
<v Speaker 2>I know, underground authors started writing so much that it

0:37:47.760 --> 0:37:51.200
<v Speaker 2>started being called graphomania and obsession with writing as much

0:37:51.239 --> 0:37:51.880
<v Speaker 2>as possible.

0:37:52.480 --> 0:37:52.880
<v Speaker 3>Wow.

0:37:53.520 --> 0:37:55.120
<v Speaker 2>And I think this is interesting because like when I

0:37:55.160 --> 0:37:58.200
<v Speaker 2>was first reading about how goolog Archipela goes three hundred

0:37:58.239 --> 0:38:00.279
<v Speaker 2>thousand words long, and part of it is he never

0:38:00.360 --> 0:38:02.360
<v Speaker 2>got to write the whole thing at once. He couldn't

0:38:02.400 --> 0:38:04.400
<v Speaker 2>look at the old pages while he was writing the

0:38:04.400 --> 0:38:06.879
<v Speaker 2>new pages, right, And so I'm like, yeah, of course

0:38:06.880 --> 0:38:10.200
<v Speaker 2>it's going to be longer and more repetitive and less. Yeah,

0:38:10.239 --> 0:38:13.799
<v Speaker 2>he needs an editor very desperately. And so it makes

0:38:13.840 --> 0:38:17.680
<v Speaker 2>sense to me this like graphamania thing. It also ties

0:38:17.719 --> 0:38:20.439
<v Speaker 2>into the long Russian tradition of elevating the written word

0:38:20.520 --> 0:38:23.720
<v Speaker 2>and the author, and also elevating the idea of everyone

0:38:23.719 --> 0:38:28.920
<v Speaker 2>writing unbearably long books. In fact, they started writing stories

0:38:29.280 --> 0:38:32.960
<v Speaker 2>making fun of themselves for writing some laws and writing

0:38:33.040 --> 0:38:38.520
<v Speaker 2>so much. There's a nineteen sixty story called Graphomaniacs, and

0:38:38.560 --> 0:38:44.320
<v Speaker 2>the author Sinoviski wrote, I am born for poetry insists

0:38:44.360 --> 0:38:46.160
<v Speaker 2>a young man who looks like he should have been

0:38:46.160 --> 0:38:50.040
<v Speaker 2>a boxer. Galkin laughs. We are all born for it,

0:38:50.440 --> 0:38:54.160
<v Speaker 2>a general national penchant for refined letters. And do you

0:38:54.200 --> 0:38:58.120
<v Speaker 2>know what we have to think censorship the government itself,

0:38:58.200 --> 0:39:01.960
<v Speaker 2>damn it gives you the right, the inalienable right to

0:39:02.040 --> 0:39:06.400
<v Speaker 2>consider yourself an unacknowledged genius. That's funny.

0:39:07.000 --> 0:39:10.000
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I like some self awareness.

0:39:10.239 --> 0:39:13.040
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, totally. It kind of reminds me of how like,

0:39:13.040 --> 0:39:15.839
<v Speaker 2>like sometimes the like punk or like genres that are

0:39:15.960 --> 0:39:19.080
<v Speaker 2>very political, you kind of put up with like things

0:39:19.080 --> 0:39:21.440
<v Speaker 2>that aren't quite as good because you agree with them,

0:39:21.640 --> 0:39:24.640
<v Speaker 2>you know. And I think that there's like a certain

0:39:24.640 --> 0:39:26.840
<v Speaker 2>amount of like, well, if it's Samisdad, it doesn't have

0:39:26.880 --> 0:39:29.160
<v Speaker 2>to be good because it's inherently edgy and radical because

0:39:29.160 --> 0:39:29.799
<v Speaker 2>you wrote it.

0:39:29.760 --> 0:39:32.200
<v Speaker 3>Right, Yeah, but I'm pro it no matter what.

0:39:32.560 --> 0:39:37.080
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, totally. Yeah. And some of this stuff was that

0:39:37.120 --> 0:39:40.400
<v Speaker 2>they wrote was very serious too. There were entire newspapers

0:39:40.400 --> 0:39:44.160
<v Speaker 2>and journals published this way. One was a bulletin called

0:39:44.360 --> 0:39:48.120
<v Speaker 2>Chronicle of Current Events, and it started in April nineteen

0:39:48.200 --> 0:39:51.440
<v Speaker 2>sixty eight and it appeared every two weeks, and it

0:39:51.480 --> 0:39:55.640
<v Speaker 2>collected human rights abuses within the Soviet regime. It stopped

0:39:55.680 --> 0:39:57.719
<v Speaker 2>for a year and a half due to repression, but

0:39:57.760 --> 0:40:01.160
<v Speaker 2>then it picked up again in nineteen seventy two. This

0:40:01.239 --> 0:40:04.560
<v Speaker 2>more political samas DOT was actually the second wave of SAMASDT,

0:40:04.960 --> 0:40:07.040
<v Speaker 2>and it worked through the channels that have been built

0:40:07.080 --> 0:40:11.600
<v Speaker 2>by artists. It reached a readership of somewhere between ten

0:40:11.680 --> 0:40:16.160
<v Speaker 2>thousand and one hundred thousand readers per issue, with roughly

0:40:16.320 --> 0:40:19.600
<v Speaker 2>one thousand to ten thousand copies being made of each edition.

0:40:20.000 --> 0:40:23.879
<v Speaker 2>They estimated ten people read each copy, right, Yeah, yeah,

0:40:23.920 --> 0:40:29.160
<v Speaker 2>but each of those fucking ten thousand copies is fucking typed. Wow.

0:40:29.480 --> 0:40:31.799
<v Speaker 2>That is so much fucking.

0:40:31.640 --> 0:40:35.080
<v Speaker 3>Work, an unfathom of wolameta work.

0:40:35.520 --> 0:40:40.440
<v Speaker 2>Yep. Besides a general we don't like the dictatorship we

0:40:40.480 --> 0:40:44.240
<v Speaker 2>live under journal, other political and religious positions started publishing

0:40:44.280 --> 0:40:47.880
<v Speaker 2>samasdat as well. There's one for Ukrainian Independence. There's the

0:40:48.040 --> 0:40:51.800
<v Speaker 2>Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church. There's the Zionist Herald

0:40:51.880 --> 0:40:55.759
<v Speaker 2>of Exodus, there's the Herald of the Evangelical Christian Baptists.

0:40:56.120 --> 0:40:59.320
<v Speaker 2>There's a Russian nationalist journal, and there's one called Jews

0:40:59.360 --> 0:41:02.560
<v Speaker 2>in the USSI, which I am guessing by the context

0:41:02.600 --> 0:41:05.120
<v Speaker 2>because it's not the Zionist Herald of Exodus is the

0:41:05.160 --> 0:41:08.239
<v Speaker 2>anti Zionist Jewish paper of the time.

0:41:08.840 --> 0:41:10.320
<v Speaker 3>Okay.

0:41:10.480 --> 0:41:13.800
<v Speaker 2>The typewritten thing became a style that everyone would imitate,

0:41:13.840 --> 0:41:16.000
<v Speaker 2>including in the West, and the thing that I want

0:41:16.000 --> 0:41:17.719
<v Speaker 2>to try and figure out but I don't have any

0:41:17.800 --> 0:41:20.040
<v Speaker 2>answer to yet. You know how in the nineties, like

0:41:20.120 --> 0:41:24.400
<v Speaker 2>everything that was like edgy and grunge us a typewriter font. Yeah,

0:41:24.719 --> 0:41:28.680
<v Speaker 2>I think that might come from samas dot Okay, because

0:41:29.520 --> 0:41:35.439
<v Speaker 2>typewriter became the like counter cultural iconic thing to do,

0:41:36.160 --> 0:41:39.400
<v Speaker 2>and that style got imitated in the West.

0:41:40.040 --> 0:41:42.520
<v Speaker 3>Fascinating, and you're probably right, yeah.

0:41:42.400 --> 0:41:44.640
<v Speaker 2>I mean I could be wrong. It might also come

0:41:44.680 --> 0:41:46.960
<v Speaker 2>from like Zene culture, right, it could.

0:41:47.040 --> 0:41:49.440
<v Speaker 3>Maybe it's a mixture of both. But you know, it

0:41:49.480 --> 0:41:53.320
<v Speaker 3>becomes a style that seeps over and then people started

0:41:53.320 --> 0:41:56.200
<v Speaker 3>adopting it. Which came first the chicken or the egg. Yeah,

0:41:56.239 --> 0:41:57.160
<v Speaker 3>good theory though.

0:41:58.280 --> 0:42:00.879
<v Speaker 2>And folks were ignoring design can iterations when they made

0:42:00.920 --> 0:42:03.040
<v Speaker 2>this stuff overall and tried to cram as much text

0:42:03.040 --> 0:42:08.320
<v Speaker 2>onto the page as possible. Ana Komoromi said, quote. Highly

0:42:08.360 --> 0:42:12.279
<v Speaker 2>circulated type scripts became brittle and worn from handling. The

0:42:12.280 --> 0:42:15.560
<v Speaker 2>physical page seemed as embattled and fragile as the Soviet

0:42:15.560 --> 0:42:19.240
<v Speaker 2>author himself. And so you get a copy of samas

0:42:19.239 --> 0:42:22.200
<v Speaker 2>dot and you would type up like four copies yourself sometimes.

0:42:22.600 --> 0:42:27.040
<v Speaker 2>And then it seemed like on cursory reading, my cursory reading,

0:42:27.440 --> 0:42:29.719
<v Speaker 2>it seems that the majority of the authors were men

0:42:29.800 --> 0:42:32.520
<v Speaker 2>and the majority of the typists were women, and that

0:42:32.560 --> 0:42:35.919
<v Speaker 2>women took a substantial chunk of the risk. Yeah, that's

0:42:35.960 --> 0:42:39.120
<v Speaker 2>my own interpretation based on what I read. And then

0:42:39.120 --> 0:42:41.040
<v Speaker 2>also a pattern I've seen time and time again.

0:42:41.560 --> 0:42:45.320
<v Speaker 3>Well, knowing that about that typist that was jailed and

0:42:45.360 --> 0:42:47.799
<v Speaker 3>then committed suicide, that's a perfect example of it.

0:42:48.000 --> 0:42:51.120
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, totally, And this is like absolutely still a thing

0:42:51.160 --> 0:42:53.720
<v Speaker 2>to this day in the West of the publishing industry.

0:42:53.960 --> 0:42:57.640
<v Speaker 2>Is like how you could take podcasting. A lot of

0:42:57.680 --> 0:43:00.880
<v Speaker 2>prodcast producers are women, and a lot of podcasts voices

0:43:00.880 --> 0:43:04.400
<v Speaker 2>are men. You know, yeah, absolutely, but I mean, you

0:43:04.440 --> 0:43:07.640
<v Speaker 2>know they I want to point this out and not

0:43:07.760 --> 0:43:09.760
<v Speaker 2>to be like on fuck these men who wrote stuff

0:43:09.800 --> 0:43:11.920
<v Speaker 2>like whatever, No, like, they were also risking things, and

0:43:13.239 --> 0:43:16.279
<v Speaker 2>so typists would also make editorial changes sometimes when they

0:43:16.280 --> 0:43:18.279
<v Speaker 2>are typing these things, and so there's like kind of

0:43:18.280 --> 0:43:22.400
<v Speaker 2>a fun playing around with it. A typist named Natalia

0:43:22.520 --> 0:43:25.000
<v Speaker 2>Trauberg would translate works from English. Oh yeah, also just

0:43:25.040 --> 0:43:26.600
<v Speaker 2>gets called the typist. She's a translator.

0:43:26.760 --> 0:43:32.520
<v Speaker 3>Another Natalia Natalia would translate works from English and would

0:43:32.560 --> 0:43:34.920
<v Speaker 3>cut out the redundant passages in like GK.

0:43:35.040 --> 0:43:39.440
<v Speaker 2>Chesterton. Good for her, I know, I know. Also I

0:43:39.440 --> 0:43:40.840
<v Speaker 2>saw some of the photos of there's a lot of

0:43:40.880 --> 0:43:44.400
<v Speaker 2>ssamis doant like collections and stuff like that. And sometimes

0:43:44.400 --> 0:43:46.520
<v Speaker 2>the typewrit and covers were basically like ASKI art, where

0:43:46.560 --> 0:43:49.640
<v Speaker 2>they would like do the title in big letters by

0:43:49.680 --> 0:43:54.279
<v Speaker 2>just doing x's, you know, and like organizing them. Some

0:43:54.320 --> 0:43:57.080
<v Speaker 2>folks resisted the samas dot style and tried to make

0:43:57.080 --> 0:44:01.680
<v Speaker 2>it look official, like Alexander Ginsburg's see once again another Alexander.

0:44:01.800 --> 0:44:04.400
<v Speaker 2>Every time I do a Russian thing, there's like four.

0:44:04.239 --> 0:44:06.320
<v Speaker 3>Names, Alexander and Natalia.

0:44:06.840 --> 0:44:10.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Alexander Ginsberg did a book called Syntoxis, which looks

0:44:10.640 --> 0:44:13.520
<v Speaker 2>like an art book and it ran from nineteen sixty

0:44:13.520 --> 0:44:16.600
<v Speaker 2>to nineteen sixty one. Or there would be poetry editions

0:44:16.600 --> 0:44:20.959
<v Speaker 2>with hand drawn covers and hand sewn bindings. Authors would

0:44:20.960 --> 0:44:23.960
<v Speaker 2>sometimes bind their books. Often they were signed. This is

0:44:23.960 --> 0:44:25.960
<v Speaker 2>the thing that kind of surprised me. You would think

0:44:26.000 --> 0:44:28.359
<v Speaker 2>that they would all be like, I'm writing this shit

0:44:28.400 --> 0:44:30.680
<v Speaker 2>anonymously because I don't want to spend my life in prison.

0:44:31.200 --> 0:44:32.040
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:44:32.120 --> 0:44:35.080
<v Speaker 2>They mostly, I think because there's this like culture. This

0:44:35.160 --> 0:44:38.760
<v Speaker 2>is my inference, because there's this culture of prestige around

0:44:38.760 --> 0:44:42.279
<v Speaker 2>being a writer in Russian society. They were writing their

0:44:42.320 --> 0:44:44.839
<v Speaker 2>name on these things and often their addresses.

0:44:45.520 --> 0:44:48.120
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, they're like, I want the credit for this. You

0:44:48.160 --> 0:44:50.319
<v Speaker 3>know it might kill me, but I want the credit.

0:44:50.440 --> 0:44:52.360
<v Speaker 2>Which I guess, like tagging culture is like a.

0:44:52.360 --> 0:44:55.200
<v Speaker 3>Little bit that you know, sure it's human nature.

0:44:55.480 --> 0:44:59.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, good degree. Sometimes books were unbound so that multiple

0:44:59.840 --> 0:45:02.719
<v Speaker 2>p people could read them faster, each person passing the

0:45:02.760 --> 0:45:05.239
<v Speaker 2>page they finished on to the next person. So you

0:45:05.280 --> 0:45:07.239
<v Speaker 2>get like five people sitting in a circle and you

0:45:07.360 --> 0:45:09.439
<v Speaker 2>just all people reading the same book at the same time.

0:45:10.200 --> 0:45:11.520
<v Speaker 3>See that sounds kind of fun.

0:45:11.920 --> 0:45:14.920
<v Speaker 2>It really does. Although what if you're the slower reader,

0:45:15.000 --> 0:45:16.920
<v Speaker 2>You're just like, I know, you got I guess you

0:45:16.960 --> 0:45:19.040
<v Speaker 2>got to go in the end. Yeah, you know, you

0:45:19.160 --> 0:45:21.440
<v Speaker 2>just like arrange the city. We got to implement a

0:45:21.480 --> 0:45:24.799
<v Speaker 2>speed reading test before we Yeah, I think as you go,

0:45:25.040 --> 0:45:27.279
<v Speaker 2>you can be like, okay, clearly you're reading slower than

0:45:27.320 --> 0:45:28.480
<v Speaker 2>you and then you know, like.

0:45:28.680 --> 0:45:30.720
<v Speaker 3>Switch around you're right, all are welcome here.

0:45:30.920 --> 0:45:35.839
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, totally. And there were other spin offs from samas Dot.

0:45:36.719 --> 0:45:39.920
<v Speaker 2>Ratazot were books and others such that were broadcast by

0:45:39.960 --> 0:45:44.080
<v Speaker 2>foreign radio stations that Soviet dissidents would then dutifully transcribe.

0:45:45.239 --> 0:45:49.680
<v Speaker 2>Maganizot was Samazot music recorded by tape recorder. I think

0:45:49.719 --> 0:45:52.240
<v Speaker 2>the origin of the word is like magnet for like tape,

0:45:52.760 --> 0:45:54.839
<v Speaker 2>you know, they record with magnets or whatever. I could

0:45:54.880 --> 0:45:56.400
<v Speaker 2>be wrong. I don't know. I didn't actually look up

0:45:56.400 --> 0:45:57.000
<v Speaker 2>the etymology.

0:45:57.080 --> 0:46:01.040
<v Speaker 3>I'm saying as if I know, Yeah, okay, sounds good.

0:46:01.200 --> 0:46:04.400
<v Speaker 2>And this music was sometimes foreign radio broadcasts. Sometimes it

0:46:04.440 --> 0:46:06.640
<v Speaker 2>was like DIY production. People would like record songs in

0:46:06.640 --> 0:46:08.320
<v Speaker 2>their living room and put it on tape and spread

0:46:08.360 --> 0:46:11.520
<v Speaker 2>it around. And then there was Thomas Dot, which is

0:46:11.239 --> 0:46:15.240
<v Speaker 2>the more famous after samas Dot. Thomas Dot is anything

0:46:15.280 --> 0:46:17.880
<v Speaker 2>that was smuggled out of Russia to be published elsewhere.

0:46:19.000 --> 0:46:21.920
<v Speaker 2>Often Thomas Dot would then be smuggled back into Russia

0:46:22.120 --> 0:46:26.320
<v Speaker 2>as samas dot. So you, okay, you write a book,

0:46:26.800 --> 0:46:29.160
<v Speaker 2>you put it on microfiche, you get it smuggled out

0:46:29.200 --> 0:46:32.240
<v Speaker 2>Paris publishes it, and then it comes back into Russia

0:46:32.320 --> 0:46:36.799
<v Speaker 2>and then someone hand types it you know, okay, it

0:46:36.880 --> 0:46:40.080
<v Speaker 2>wasn't a perfect and happy underground and wasn't like everyone

0:46:40.200 --> 0:46:41.960
<v Speaker 2>was like noble and good. I was going to tell

0:46:41.960 --> 0:46:43.640
<v Speaker 2>an anecdote that I thought was going to go really

0:46:43.640 --> 0:46:47.560
<v Speaker 2>differently until I read more about this man. Years ago,

0:46:47.920 --> 0:46:49.920
<v Speaker 2>I was in Prague and I went to the punkash

0:46:49.960 --> 0:46:51.400
<v Speaker 2>show that I felt like I'd ever been to in

0:46:51.400 --> 0:46:54.360
<v Speaker 2>my life. It was a solo show by this round

0:46:54.400 --> 0:46:57.160
<v Speaker 2>bald accordion player named Jim Chirt, and I think that

0:46:57.200 --> 0:47:00.200
<v Speaker 2>means like Jim Devil. I was there with a friend

0:47:00.200 --> 0:47:02.720
<v Speaker 2>who had escaped across the Iron Curtain to the West

0:47:02.719 --> 0:47:05.600
<v Speaker 2>when she was four years old, and she was then

0:47:05.680 --> 0:47:07.879
<v Speaker 2>living back in Prague, so we went to go see

0:47:07.880 --> 0:47:10.920
<v Speaker 2>this accordion player who had been an illegal accordion player

0:47:11.040 --> 0:47:15.880
<v Speaker 2>performing illegal shows during the Soviet era. And Jim Cherit

0:47:15.960 --> 0:47:18.839
<v Speaker 2>was screaming over this accordion while old guys with ponytails

0:47:18.920 --> 0:47:21.600
<v Speaker 2>danced on tables, bashing into the low ceiling of a

0:47:21.640 --> 0:47:25.400
<v Speaker 2>literally underground pub. And Jim Chait wasn't singing like I

0:47:25.440 --> 0:47:27.600
<v Speaker 2>hate the government. He was singing like most of it

0:47:27.719 --> 0:47:29.080
<v Speaker 2>was in Check, but some of it was in English,

0:47:29.080 --> 0:47:30.440
<v Speaker 2>and it was like I have to go to Mexico

0:47:30.480 --> 0:47:32.880
<v Speaker 2>to smoke weed, you know, like like it's just like

0:47:32.920 --> 0:47:34.000
<v Speaker 2>a guy, you know.

0:47:34.800 --> 0:47:37.160
<v Speaker 3>Sorry, you're just making me remember about how much weed

0:47:37.200 --> 0:47:38.280
<v Speaker 3>I smoked in Prague.

0:47:38.560 --> 0:47:39.520
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's amazing.

0:47:39.880 --> 0:47:42.919
<v Speaker 3>It was the best time of my life, very strong weed.

0:47:42.960 --> 0:47:46.920
<v Speaker 2>Anyway, continue, I just drank an obscene amount in Frog

0:47:47.440 --> 0:47:50.640
<v Speaker 2>that too, the whole nights. I don't remember. The worst

0:47:50.640 --> 0:47:51.880
<v Speaker 2>thing I ever did while I was drunk, which I

0:47:51.880 --> 0:47:56.239
<v Speaker 2>will not say on air right now, I did in Prague.

0:47:56.840 --> 0:48:01.040
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't morally bad, it was just embarrassing. No, Yeah, anyway,

0:48:01.239 --> 0:48:02.680
<v Speaker 2>So I was like going to tell this story to

0:48:02.680 --> 0:48:05.120
<v Speaker 2>be like, and here's an example of a guy who

0:48:05.160 --> 0:48:07.720
<v Speaker 2>made music illegally. And so then I like was reading

0:48:08.200 --> 0:48:12.799
<v Speaker 2>check Wikipedia about him and like through auto translate. He uh,

0:48:13.040 --> 0:48:15.680
<v Speaker 2>he was absolutely part of the samas dot scene U

0:48:15.800 --> 0:48:19.920
<v Speaker 2>and he snitched out one of his best friends, who

0:48:19.960 --> 0:48:22.920
<v Speaker 2>then spent eighteen months in prison for publishing samas dot. Okay,

0:48:23.840 --> 0:48:27.799
<v Speaker 2>Jim Chaird apologized for it since, and that's good. You know,

0:48:28.160 --> 0:48:30.279
<v Speaker 2>we've all read nineteen eighty four. We all understand that

0:48:30.320 --> 0:48:33.080
<v Speaker 2>sometimes people have rats in cages put on the face

0:48:33.120 --> 0:48:33.480
<v Speaker 2>or whatever.

0:48:34.360 --> 0:48:40.319
<v Speaker 3>But it complicated time things. Yeah, yeah, taking accountability not

0:48:40.400 --> 0:48:41.439
<v Speaker 3>the worst person in the world.

0:48:41.520 --> 0:48:44.600
<v Speaker 2>Then, Yeah, his friend who went to prison died four

0:48:44.680 --> 0:48:49.160
<v Speaker 2>years before he apologized, before his official letter of apology

0:48:49.239 --> 0:48:49.760
<v Speaker 2>was published.

0:48:50.320 --> 0:48:53.480
<v Speaker 3>That is something that you probably don't get over.

0:48:54.239 --> 0:48:54.920
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, totally.

0:48:55.760 --> 0:48:58.120
<v Speaker 3>But to your point, you know, you said, it's not

0:48:58.280 --> 0:49:01.680
<v Speaker 3>like it was all roses this movement. It's complicated. And

0:49:02.120 --> 0:49:05.920
<v Speaker 3>do you think that that people get so easily dissuaded

0:49:06.200 --> 0:49:10.400
<v Speaker 3>from different movements because of infighting or complications or not.

0:49:11.000 --> 0:49:13.640
<v Speaker 3>You expect that, Oh, I've designated myself as a part

0:49:13.680 --> 0:49:16.200
<v Speaker 3>of this, Well we all immediately agree on something that's

0:49:16.239 --> 0:49:16.760
<v Speaker 3>not true.

0:49:16.880 --> 0:49:17.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, totally.

0:49:17.719 --> 0:49:20.920
<v Speaker 3>You know, you can't get so worked up that you're

0:49:20.960 --> 0:49:23.840
<v Speaker 3>turning your back on all of it just because there's

0:49:24.000 --> 0:49:27.640
<v Speaker 3>different factions within it. And there's no perfect movement, is

0:49:27.680 --> 0:49:30.440
<v Speaker 3>my point. We're all human beings with different opinions, and

0:49:30.480 --> 0:49:31.200
<v Speaker 3>that's a good thing.

0:49:31.760 --> 0:49:35.759
<v Speaker 2>Totally. There's this quote by a science fiction author who

0:49:35.760 --> 0:49:38.480
<v Speaker 2>I can't remember his name, and I remember not particularly

0:49:38.520 --> 0:49:40.920
<v Speaker 2>liking him as a person, but he has a quote

0:49:41.040 --> 0:49:42.640
<v Speaker 2>that I think about all the time, which is that

0:49:42.680 --> 0:49:45.920
<v Speaker 2>there's no ideology so pure that you cannot find assholes

0:49:45.960 --> 0:49:49.839
<v Speaker 2>practicing it exactly. Yeah, And then like and this guy

0:49:49.840 --> 0:49:52.239
<v Speaker 2>wasn't even a sad an asshole. He just gave in

0:49:52.280 --> 0:49:53.200
<v Speaker 2>to state pressure.

0:49:53.600 --> 0:49:57.080
<v Speaker 3>He definitely made a mistake or yeah, maybe I don't

0:49:57.080 --> 0:49:59.879
<v Speaker 3>know the calculations. At the moment in time, you gave it, right.

0:50:00.200 --> 0:50:03.640
<v Speaker 2>So, for some weird reason, the paragraph I read through

0:50:03.680 --> 0:50:07.040
<v Speaker 2>auto translated Wikipedia and from Czech didn't give me enough

0:50:07.040 --> 0:50:10.560
<v Speaker 2>context to make a moral judgment about the same, you know,

0:50:10.640 --> 0:50:12.640
<v Speaker 2>even though shouldn't have done that and you shouldn't do it.

0:50:13.800 --> 0:50:16.879
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, and then after so like the first wave

0:50:16.880 --> 0:50:19.120
<v Speaker 2>of samas dot is just like poetry and art, the

0:50:19.200 --> 0:50:22.080
<v Speaker 2>second wave is more of this political stuff from all

0:50:22.200 --> 0:50:25.600
<v Speaker 2>different corners. And then academia is sort of the third

0:50:25.600 --> 0:50:29.240
<v Speaker 2>wave of samas dot because you couldn't really do certain

0:50:29.280 --> 0:50:34.120
<v Speaker 2>types of science in Soviet times, right, which feels really

0:50:34.160 --> 0:50:36.920
<v Speaker 2>accurate to right now when suddenly all of the funding

0:50:37.000 --> 0:50:40.120
<v Speaker 2>is being cut. If it like literally has the word

0:50:40.239 --> 0:50:40.640
<v Speaker 2>gay in.

0:50:40.560 --> 0:50:43.560
<v Speaker 3>It or transition, if transitions in the word, it is

0:50:43.640 --> 0:50:48.080
<v Speaker 3>out of here. It doesn't matter what the context is diversity, Nope,

0:50:48.160 --> 0:50:48.720
<v Speaker 3>you're done.

0:50:49.040 --> 0:50:54.240
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And so they started publishing anyway, and historical studies

0:50:54.280 --> 0:50:59.480
<v Speaker 2>were published, legal studies were published. One writer, Georgia Vladimov

0:50:59.640 --> 0:51:03.080
<v Speaker 2>put it, quote there are now two kinds of art

0:51:03.080 --> 0:51:06.920
<v Speaker 2>in the country. One is free and uninhibited, whose distribution

0:51:07.000 --> 0:51:10.880
<v Speaker 2>and influence depends only on its genuinely artistic qualities, and

0:51:10.920 --> 0:51:14.800
<v Speaker 2>the other, one, commanded and paid for, is badly mutilated,

0:51:14.880 --> 0:51:18.000
<v Speaker 2>suppressed and uppressed. It is not hard to predict which

0:51:18.000 --> 0:51:22.800
<v Speaker 2>of these two arts will be victorious and so like. Yeah,

0:51:23.160 --> 0:51:25.400
<v Speaker 2>by and large, as far as I can tell, people,

0:51:25.400 --> 0:51:28.480
<v Speaker 2>when they look at the literature of Soviet era, they're like, well,

0:51:28.520 --> 0:51:32.319
<v Speaker 2>the underground shit was kind of the real shit. Yeah,

0:51:32.680 --> 0:51:35.640
<v Speaker 2>it was different in every country. We've mostly focused on Russia.

0:51:36.280 --> 0:51:39.840
<v Speaker 2>In Poland, folks actually had access to more copy machines

0:51:40.040 --> 0:51:42.960
<v Speaker 2>and so there was xerox, samas dot there, and a

0:51:42.960 --> 0:51:45.120
<v Speaker 2>lot of it was political as hell. They had things

0:51:45.200 --> 0:51:47.759
<v Speaker 2>like the Committee for the Defense of the Workers because

0:51:47.800 --> 0:51:53.000
<v Speaker 2>once again politics against the USSR is often fucking socialist anyway. Yeah,

0:51:53.040 --> 0:51:57.080
<v Speaker 2>and they were putting out a bi monthly bulletin. There

0:51:57.080 --> 0:51:59.480
<v Speaker 2>were at least thirty of these radical newspapers running by

0:51:59.480 --> 0:52:03.080
<v Speaker 2>the late seven in Poland. In the Czech Republic, there

0:52:03.120 --> 0:52:06.960
<v Speaker 2>was this more professional vibe. It was like hand bound

0:52:07.040 --> 0:52:11.000
<v Speaker 2>and like hand typed art manuscripts and shit, and they

0:52:11.000 --> 0:52:13.960
<v Speaker 2>would literally say in the front like this is mine,

0:52:14.000 --> 0:52:15.520
<v Speaker 2>don't copy it, you.

0:52:15.480 --> 0:52:18.560
<v Speaker 3>Know, oh wild, yeah different.

0:52:18.760 --> 0:52:22.000
<v Speaker 2>And the typists were generally paid and they were like sold.

0:52:22.880 --> 0:52:24.920
<v Speaker 2>But even though they were like bougie or an artsier,

0:52:25.880 --> 0:52:28.960
<v Speaker 2>they were still going to prison over this. Like if

0:52:29.000 --> 0:52:30.839
<v Speaker 2>you have this in a safe hidden in your house

0:52:30.880 --> 0:52:33.680
<v Speaker 2>and they catch you, you're going to fucking jail. Right

0:52:34.640 --> 0:52:36.600
<v Speaker 2>in China, there was this whole other culture of it

0:52:36.640 --> 0:52:38.000
<v Speaker 2>that I won't be able to get into as much

0:52:38.000 --> 0:52:40.799
<v Speaker 2>as I'd like. And they used posters where they would

0:52:40.800 --> 0:52:43.239
<v Speaker 2>paint in huge letters and hang them up around the

0:52:43.239 --> 0:52:46.320
<v Speaker 2>city because there was a specific provision in the nineteen

0:52:46.360 --> 0:52:50.160
<v Speaker 2>seventy five constitution that said basically like, yeah, we can't.

0:52:50.200 --> 0:52:51.640
<v Speaker 2>You can't do a lot of stuff, but you can

0:52:51.880 --> 0:52:54.080
<v Speaker 2>you can hang up posters with giant letters in public

0:52:54.080 --> 0:52:55.400
<v Speaker 2>places if you need to say something.

0:52:55.840 --> 0:52:57.160
<v Speaker 3>And they're like, got it.

0:52:58.040 --> 0:52:59.919
<v Speaker 2>And then by nineteen seventy nine they were like, wait,

0:53:00.200 --> 0:53:02.759
<v Speaker 2>we didn't mean like that, might take it back, and

0:53:02.840 --> 0:53:04.759
<v Speaker 2>so they started putting people in prison over it. And

0:53:04.800 --> 0:53:07.440
<v Speaker 2>then in nineteen eighty the constitution was like not just kidding,

0:53:07.480 --> 0:53:10.960
<v Speaker 2>you can't do that at all. Wow. And also in China,

0:53:11.000 --> 0:53:13.160
<v Speaker 2>they would make like political journals, and they would use

0:53:13.200 --> 0:53:16.319
<v Speaker 2>handcut stencils for mimiograph machines. And I have studied a

0:53:16.320 --> 0:53:18.359
<v Speaker 2>lot about various methods of printing, and I could not

0:53:18.400 --> 0:53:19.359
<v Speaker 2>tell you exactly what that.

0:53:19.320 --> 0:53:22.839
<v Speaker 3>Means something about printing, Yeah.

0:53:22.560 --> 0:53:27.279
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, exactly. Radical journals there often had print runs in

0:53:27.320 --> 0:53:30.520
<v Speaker 2>the thousands or tens of thousands, but people were regularly

0:53:30.520 --> 0:53:35.000
<v Speaker 2>getting like fifteen year sentences for running them. Wow. SAMASDT

0:53:35.040 --> 0:53:37.280
<v Speaker 2>has been used as a way to describe self publishing

0:53:37.320 --> 0:53:40.279
<v Speaker 2>against official censorship, not just in communist countries, but in

0:53:40.320 --> 0:53:43.959
<v Speaker 2>places like Iran or Chile and various like just dictatorships

0:53:44.000 --> 0:53:48.880
<v Speaker 2>in general, whether right wing, left wing, or theological. It

0:53:48.960 --> 0:53:52.520
<v Speaker 2>ebbed and flowed, though by nineteen eighty two, samas dot

0:53:52.560 --> 0:53:56.400
<v Speaker 2>was pretty successfully repressed by the USSR, But then in

0:53:56.480 --> 0:54:00.160
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty seven, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR,

0:54:00.719 --> 0:54:03.400
<v Speaker 2>started breaking down the systems of censorship in what was

0:54:03.440 --> 0:54:07.399
<v Speaker 2>called glossknot, and samasdot became less necessary because you could

0:54:07.480 --> 0:54:11.640
<v Speaker 2>publish again. I did read about one piece of samasdot

0:54:11.719 --> 0:54:15.560
<v Speaker 2>after nineteen eighty seven, though, or rather I've read two sources,

0:54:15.600 --> 0:54:18.000
<v Speaker 2>and one claims that this was SAMASDT, and one claims

0:54:18.040 --> 0:54:21.080
<v Speaker 2>that it was officially allowed to be printed, and I

0:54:21.120 --> 0:54:25.279
<v Speaker 2>don't know which one's true, okay, but this piece. In

0:54:25.360 --> 0:54:28.720
<v Speaker 2>nineteen sixty two, there was this big strike in Russia.

0:54:29.320 --> 0:54:33.040
<v Speaker 2>Fourteen thousand workers, after their pay was docked by a third,

0:54:33.680 --> 0:54:38.280
<v Speaker 2>went on strike for days and they were massacred. Twenty

0:54:38.280 --> 0:54:42.600
<v Speaker 2>six strikers were killed, hundreds were wounded. Seven of the

0:54:42.719 --> 0:54:45.600
<v Speaker 2>organizers or people accused of being organizers, were later sentenced

0:54:45.640 --> 0:54:47.800
<v Speaker 2>to death, and tons of people served years in prison.

0:54:49.080 --> 0:54:52.040
<v Speaker 2>The bodies of the slain were buried in a secret grave,

0:54:52.239 --> 0:54:54.879
<v Speaker 2>the location of which wasn't revealed to their families until

0:54:54.880 --> 0:54:56.120
<v Speaker 2>fucking nineteen ninety four.

0:54:57.080 --> 0:54:59.120
<v Speaker 3>What yeah, wow.

0:54:59.280 --> 0:55:01.640
<v Speaker 2>And so it's like we never hear about strikes in

0:55:01.680 --> 0:55:04.759
<v Speaker 2>the USSR, largely because they didn't happen, because you all

0:55:04.800 --> 0:55:07.080
<v Speaker 2>got killed if you did it. I mean just kidding.

0:55:07.120 --> 0:55:09.880
<v Speaker 2>It was a glorious workers republic and everyone was paid equally,

0:55:09.920 --> 0:55:11.560
<v Speaker 2>so it didn't matter, and no one needed to strike,

0:55:11.600 --> 0:55:13.600
<v Speaker 2>and if they did strike, it's their fault for being

0:55:13.600 --> 0:55:18.960
<v Speaker 2>counter revolutionaries. They're probably capitalists. Anyway. There was no news

0:55:19.000 --> 0:55:22.640
<v Speaker 2>about this in the official press of Russia, and one

0:55:22.719 --> 0:55:26.040
<v Speaker 2>of the participants was an anarcho syndicalist worker named Peter Suda,

0:55:26.800 --> 0:55:30.440
<v Speaker 2>who spent years in prison after the strike. In nineteen

0:55:30.480 --> 0:55:34.280
<v Speaker 2>ninety eight, when samas Dot supposedly had stopped because censorship

0:55:34.320 --> 0:55:39.000
<v Speaker 2>had lifted, the narcosyndicalist group he worked with KAS still

0:55:39.000 --> 0:55:41.160
<v Speaker 2>had to put out their journal in an underground fashion.

0:55:41.360 --> 0:55:43.040
<v Speaker 2>According to one thing I read, the other thing was

0:55:43.080 --> 0:55:45.600
<v Speaker 2>that they could finally do it because of whatever klasmod

0:55:46.840 --> 0:55:50.600
<v Speaker 2>Either way, in nineteen eighty eight, Peter was finally able

0:55:50.600 --> 0:55:53.000
<v Speaker 2>to publish his account of what he'd experienced at the

0:55:53.080 --> 0:55:57.799
<v Speaker 2>state twenty six years earlier in nineteen sixty two, but

0:55:58.840 --> 0:56:02.480
<v Speaker 2>probably related to that, in nineteen ninety, a year before

0:56:02.520 --> 0:56:04.640
<v Speaker 2>the end of the USSR, Peter was beaten to death

0:56:04.680 --> 0:56:06.960
<v Speaker 2>by the KGB. Wow.

0:56:07.960 --> 0:56:12.880
<v Speaker 3>So anyway, right, Like was it, yeah, finally able to

0:56:13.040 --> 0:56:15.480
<v Speaker 3>and then he dies It's yeah.

0:56:15.040 --> 0:56:16.200
<v Speaker 2>I know, And it's like, well, he could have been

0:56:16.239 --> 0:56:18.920
<v Speaker 2>killed also just for being an anarchist organizer. I don't know,

0:56:19.440 --> 0:56:24.160
<v Speaker 2>but like the implication in both things I read was, yeah,

0:56:24.280 --> 0:56:26.560
<v Speaker 2>that like absolutely, because he's the one who like kind

0:56:26.600 --> 0:56:32.440
<v Speaker 2>of broke the news on this thing years decades later. Anyway,

0:56:33.239 --> 0:56:35.919
<v Speaker 2>getting around censors is cool and good and it rules

0:56:35.960 --> 0:56:37.799
<v Speaker 2>that people were able to do so much with it.

0:56:38.360 --> 0:56:42.080
<v Speaker 2>They tracked the abuses of the dictatorial system, despite official

0:56:42.080 --> 0:56:45.279
<v Speaker 2>attempts to claim that no repression was ever happening. They

0:56:45.400 --> 0:56:48.839
<v Speaker 2>kept entire legacies of literature and art alive, and they

0:56:48.920 --> 0:56:53.239
<v Speaker 2>kept their spirits up with their homebrew reading mania, their

0:56:53.280 --> 0:56:57.320
<v Speaker 2>binge reading, just like their binge sex. And they probably

0:56:58.120 --> 0:57:00.200
<v Speaker 2>got really, really tired of typing all the time time.

0:57:01.120 --> 0:57:04.040
<v Speaker 3>I'm sure they did. I'm sure they were over it,

0:57:04.320 --> 0:57:06.960
<v Speaker 3>but it was so vital and this is a beautiful

0:57:07.000 --> 0:57:10.279
<v Speaker 3>story and it's such an important one inspiring. I mean,

0:57:11.080 --> 0:57:14.800
<v Speaker 3>it's the long period of time to be navigating different

0:57:14.920 --> 0:57:19.280
<v Speaker 3>versions of censorship and imprisonment and death and the stakes

0:57:19.280 --> 0:57:23.760
<v Speaker 3>and exile. But the spirit feels pretty unbreakable, and that's

0:57:23.800 --> 0:57:26.720
<v Speaker 3>why they were ultimately able to make some changes. Although

0:57:26.920 --> 0:57:28.520
<v Speaker 3>I'm not positive that rushes.

0:57:28.840 --> 0:57:30.880
<v Speaker 2>No, it didn't didn't work out great.

0:57:30.920 --> 0:57:35.920
<v Speaker 3>I feel super free to say whatever. I'm sure in theory,

0:57:35.960 --> 0:57:38.760
<v Speaker 3>but you're watching your back if you're saying whatever you

0:57:38.800 --> 0:57:43.440
<v Speaker 3>want right now. Yeah, you know, the journey continues, but

0:57:43.480 --> 0:57:47.560
<v Speaker 3>it is super inspiring and important reminder right now how

0:57:47.680 --> 0:57:52.560
<v Speaker 3>vital art is and sharing of information and organizing.

0:57:53.240 --> 0:57:57.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and that's why librarians are fucking crucial and important.

0:57:57.920 --> 0:58:01.080
<v Speaker 2>Keep archives of things. Archivists are fun and crucial and important.

0:58:01.720 --> 0:58:06.120
<v Speaker 2>And encrypting your hard drive. My final plug of this

0:58:06.200 --> 0:58:10.000
<v Speaker 2>show is learn about encrypting your hard drive and especially

0:58:10.080 --> 0:58:13.600
<v Speaker 2>any kind of backup drive you have. Encrypt it not

0:58:13.760 --> 0:58:16.040
<v Speaker 2>just with like the kind of password you want to

0:58:16.040 --> 0:58:19.200
<v Speaker 2>type in every day all the time, but like six

0:58:19.320 --> 0:58:21.520
<v Speaker 2>or seven randomly picked dictionary.

0:58:21.000 --> 0:58:24.480
<v Speaker 3>Words, something that I will forget and never remember.

0:58:24.680 --> 0:58:26.200
<v Speaker 2>Well, what you have to do is you create anamonic

0:58:26.280 --> 0:58:28.720
<v Speaker 2>around it. It's like you have to actually practice to

0:58:28.720 --> 0:58:30.440
<v Speaker 2>do it. This is actually why I say that, like,

0:58:30.960 --> 0:58:32.320
<v Speaker 2>although in a weird way. Actually, if you do it

0:58:32.320 --> 0:58:35.160
<v Speaker 2>as your like regular open your computer thing, then you

0:58:35.200 --> 0:58:38.320
<v Speaker 2>can remember it because you type it every day. Right.

0:58:38.880 --> 0:58:46.760
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, like preserve information. It's important. Much like I

0:58:46.800 --> 0:58:50.240
<v Speaker 2>was actually thinking, I'm probably gonna download most of Coolsen

0:58:50.320 --> 0:58:52.400
<v Speaker 2>Media and keep it on encrypted hard drive somewhere.

0:58:52.640 --> 0:58:53.440
<v Speaker 3>Not a bad idea.

0:58:54.760 --> 0:58:59.400
<v Speaker 2>It's got to be an archive, yeah, But in the

0:58:59.440 --> 0:59:02.320
<v Speaker 2>meantime you don't need that. You can just use your

0:59:02.360 --> 0:59:05.800
<v Speaker 2>regular podcast app or subscribe to Cooler Zone Media and

0:59:05.840 --> 0:59:08.480
<v Speaker 2>get all of the same content without the ads. Because

0:59:09.200 --> 0:59:11.360
<v Speaker 2>maybe for good we live in a society where you

0:59:11.360 --> 0:59:12.920
<v Speaker 2>can do that. But at least right now.

0:59:12.800 --> 0:59:15.640
<v Speaker 3>You can, yep, take advantage of it.

0:59:16.280 --> 0:59:19.320
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the kind of thing that I took for fucking granted.

0:59:20.360 --> 0:59:22.520
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, while you still can.

0:59:23.400 --> 0:59:25.959
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you got anything you want to plug?

0:59:27.000 --> 0:59:31.480
<v Speaker 3>Oh my goodness, Well we ourselves over at somewhere News.

0:59:31.520 --> 0:59:34.840
<v Speaker 3>Do have a Patreon that you can subscribe to and

0:59:34.880 --> 0:59:38.400
<v Speaker 3>get ad free versions of all of our things and

0:59:39.280 --> 0:59:43.480
<v Speaker 3>some bonus content. Yeah, do that, but you know, some

0:59:43.520 --> 0:59:47.080
<v Speaker 3>more news, even more news are shows, watch listen. You

0:59:47.120 --> 0:59:50.400
<v Speaker 3>can do both through all the shows. Hell yeah, watch

0:59:50.440 --> 0:59:54.240
<v Speaker 3>it or listen whatever you prefer while it lasts.

0:59:54.560 --> 0:59:58.040
<v Speaker 2>Let's see if you're not listening to it could happen here,

0:59:58.520 --> 1:00:02.080
<v Speaker 2>It could happen here. Is also it's on the cool

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<v Speaker 2>Zone Media network, and there's been a bunch of good

1:00:04.160 --> 1:00:08.000
<v Speaker 2>episodes recently about things like should you leave the country

1:00:08.400 --> 1:00:10.840
<v Speaker 2>and the answer is like probably not unless the answer

1:00:10.880 --> 1:00:12.400
<v Speaker 2>is yes, But you know.

1:00:12.400 --> 1:00:15.040
<v Speaker 3>It's I will. Let's definitely listen to that episode because

1:00:15.040 --> 1:00:16.640
<v Speaker 3>that's a conversation I keep having.

1:00:16.960 --> 1:00:18.800
<v Speaker 2>It's a good breakdown of it. It's a good breakdown

1:00:18.800 --> 1:00:21.840
<v Speaker 2>of like, look like for most people, that's not going

1:00:21.920 --> 1:00:25.800
<v Speaker 2>to be the answer you know, surround yourself with things

1:00:25.800 --> 1:00:29.760
<v Speaker 2>that don't inspire despair but also don't inspire you to

1:00:29.800 --> 1:00:31.600
<v Speaker 2>stick your head in the sand, is what I would

1:00:31.640 --> 1:00:37.920
<v Speaker 2>have to say. And that's my plug. Yeah, mine too, Sophie.

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<v Speaker 1>You got anything, Yeah, I mean, just listen to our

1:00:41.400 --> 1:00:44.160
<v Speaker 1>every Friday on It could happen here. We do episodes

1:00:44.240 --> 1:00:47.520
<v Speaker 1>called Executive Disorder. Listen to that if you want to

1:00:47.560 --> 1:00:50.280
<v Speaker 1>be the most up to date on things going on politically.

1:00:51.560 --> 1:00:54.240
<v Speaker 2>Do you think that there's a joke that could be

1:00:54.280 --> 1:00:59.040
<v Speaker 2>made a sort of school house age level like crude

1:00:59.120 --> 1:01:01.200
<v Speaker 2>joke around and ed?

1:01:01.880 --> 1:01:04.000
<v Speaker 1>Do you think I keep trying to get us sponsored

1:01:04.040 --> 1:01:07.400
<v Speaker 1>by a thing that goes with that joke.

1:01:09.560 --> 1:01:10.800
<v Speaker 3>That feels like a gimme.

1:01:11.080 --> 1:01:14.520
<v Speaker 1>And I just need them to do their jobs. Well,

1:01:14.720 --> 1:01:17.320
<v Speaker 1>it'll happen. I'm manifesting it. It's gonna happen.

1:01:17.480 --> 1:01:19.560
<v Speaker 2>Sometimes we get the ads for like the girl version

1:01:19.960 --> 1:01:21.840
<v Speaker 2>of Pills.

1:01:21.520 --> 1:01:24.480
<v Speaker 1>For I just I just uh want once we're once

1:01:24.520 --> 1:01:27.200
<v Speaker 1>we're off recording, I'll tell you a very funny thing

1:01:27.240 --> 1:01:28.760
<v Speaker 1>about this entire situation.

1:01:29.160 --> 1:01:32.080
<v Speaker 2>Haha. And what's gonna happen after we stop recordings. I'm

1:01:32.080 --> 1:01:33.880
<v Speaker 2>going to say the most embarrassing thing I've ever done

1:01:33.880 --> 1:01:36.160
<v Speaker 2>while drunk, but you don't get to listen to it.

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<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah hahaha, Bye bye bye bye.

1:01:45.720 --> 1:01:48.200
<v Speaker 1>Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1:01:48.240 --> 1:01:51.320
<v Speaker 1>cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,

1:01:51.480 --> 1:01:55.000
<v Speaker 1>visit our website coolzonemedia dot com. Check us out on

1:01:55.040 --> 1:01:59.080
<v Speaker 1>the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:02:00.040 --> 1:02:01.160
<v Speaker 1>Will it You're Happen