Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff that you didn't start at part five. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Margaret Kiljoy and with me today is my
Speaker 1: guest Mia Wong.
Speaker 2: Hello, Amya, how are you well? I can't hear out
Speaker 2: of one ear, so things going great. We're about to
Speaker 2: see whether you could podcast like this. My guess is yes. However,
Speaker 2: if I say anything wrong, that's immediately. My excuse is
Speaker 2: that I can't hear and this has destroyed my brain.
Speaker 2: So we're doing the caveats beforehand.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, fortunately we've taken our producer, Sophie's audio and
Speaker 1: routed it through one part of the stereo channel and
Speaker 1: my voice to the other part of the stereo channel.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Sophie. Hi, Sophie, Hi, My dog just
Speaker 1: sneeze seven times? Are you okay? Everyone is having a day?
Speaker 1: Is what we have learned before recording.
Speaker 2: You see seven times here, Andrew.
Speaker 1: That's so many sneezing.
Speaker 3: Oh most traumatic. I saw her. She went, why am
Speaker 3: I doing this so many times? And I don't know.
Speaker 1: Rentrow has started doing this thing that I'm very excited about.
Speaker 1: Where he when I record, he used to hang out
Speaker 1: on the futon behind me, but now he hangs out
Speaker 1: at my feet. Oh, hi Rentrow, if you can hear me,
Speaker 1: you're the best boy. And our audio engineer is Daniel
Speaker 1: Hi Danel. Yeah. Our theme musical was written forced by
Speaker 1: un woman. We are in deep. This is part five,
Speaker 1: our first ever part five on cool people did cool stuff,
Speaker 1: which is funny because we will get to a bunch
Speaker 1: of cool people did a bunch of really cool stuff
Speaker 1: finally this week. But first, either of you ever heard
Speaker 1: of a song called roast Chicken?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, So my favorite Soviet era anarchists song, because I
Speaker 1: have one of those, is this song called roast Chicken.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to tell you a little bit about
Speaker 1: it beforehand, and then Sovie's gonna hit play on it
Speaker 1: in a little bit. There's a song called roast Chicken.
Speaker 1: I first learned about it from a Bulgarian friend of
Speaker 1: mine who grew up in Communist Bulgaria, and I was
Speaker 1: learning to play accordion, and she was like, oh, you
Speaker 1: have to learn how to play this song roast Chicken.
Speaker 1: And I actually theoretically know how to play the song
Speaker 1: on accordion, but it's been a very long time since
Speaker 1: I made playing accordion, so I wouldn't hold it past
Speaker 1: me right now, and I was like, hm, this song
Speaker 1: seems familiar. It sounds like part of Go Go Bordello's
Speaker 1: song Start Wearing Purple, and it is because it's part
Speaker 1: of it. There is this song that comes from the
Speaker 1: war communism era of the USSR. It's a children's song,
Speaker 1: but it's the anarchist children's song. And all throughout the
Speaker 1: Soviet era, whenever Soviets made movies about the Civil War
Speaker 1: and they wanted to like talk trash about anarchists, the
Speaker 1: anarchists would come in as like sailors on a boat
Speaker 1: or on an armored train or whatever in the armored
Speaker 1: train and be called anarchy or whatever, and they'd be
Speaker 1: singing roast Chicken. And this song is amazing because this
Speaker 1: the song that is meant to make fun of war communism,
Speaker 1: but it became the song to make fun of the
Speaker 1: anarchists were making fun of war communism. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you the lyrics after we listen to a little bit,
Speaker 1: which we're gonna do now.
Speaker 3: See Polo now.
Speaker 2: Shooting me push old panes.
Speaker 3: You, oh my Molly Iris.
Speaker 2: So much, must.
Speaker 3: See my shu yan you say yes, Si, I aquitely
Speaker 3: give me son.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is my favorite Soviet era anarchist song.
Speaker 1: This song is about exactly what you think it would
Speaker 1: be about. The lyrics are I'm gonna paraphrase here. So
Speaker 1: there's like this roast chicken, this steam chicken, and he's
Speaker 1: walking down the street and the cops are like, hey,
Speaker 1: you can't be walking down the street. Show me your passport.
Speaker 1: Let's see some papers. And the Chicken's like, I don't
Speaker 1: have any papers. I'm a fucking chicken. I'm a roast chicken.
Speaker 1: Why would I have papers? And so they take the
Speaker 1: chicken to jail. You know, that's the song Oh my god.
Speaker 1: There's also versions where like the chicken is so scared
Speaker 1: it poops its pants. The song rules and so that
Speaker 1: particular version was Arcadie Severni, who is a Soviet era
Speaker 1: a folk musician from primarily the sixties who got famous
Speaker 1: Plaine prison songs, and that was like the way that
Speaker 1: he played all of the band's Soviet songs, like he
Speaker 1: has these he sings songs about like I'm an anarchist
Speaker 1: time and anarchist or whatever, and he gets away with
Speaker 1: it because he's like, oh, I'm just playing the prison songs.
Speaker 3: Incredible.
Speaker 1: So he's like outlaw folk. This is the outlaw folk
Speaker 1: or outlaw country the rules of the Soviet Union, And
Speaker 1: I don't know, I really like it.
Speaker 3: It's so fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you ever want to see all, not all,
Speaker 1: of most of the clips of this song, in all
Speaker 1: the different Soviet things, there's one page that anthologizes them all.
Speaker 1: And the way I always find it when I can't
Speaker 1: remember as I type into Google roast Chicken Anarchists song,
Speaker 1: because this song you've probably never run across this particular problem.
Speaker 1: When you leave the Western language set, I forget the
Speaker 1: name of the Roman alphabet. It becomes harder to find
Speaker 1: things with Google. Yeah, Like, if you like just search
Speaker 1: roast chicken song, you're not getting anything useful, But if
Speaker 1: you search it in cyrillic, you get what you're looking for. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's my unrelated well what's related, But that's my aside
Speaker 1: that I got really excited about. I realized I could
Speaker 1: shoehorn into here. I was never good enough to sing it,
Speaker 1: but I would play this song while busking a lot.
Speaker 2: That's so cool.
Speaker 1: So where we left off, we talked a lot about
Speaker 1: the Civil War, last time, and the civil war is
Speaker 1: now over. The Whites are defeated, the Whites being the
Speaker 1: sort of bizarrest forces or the not the revolution forces.
Speaker 1: I think by the end a lot of even more
Speaker 1: like moderate socialists started joining the White Army because they
Speaker 1: were like the Bolsheviks, they're terrible, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get this a lot where it's like you
Speaker 2: have these really weird constellations of groups because whose sole
Speaker 2: uniting factor is the Bolsheviks. You're trying to kill us all.
Speaker 2: And like that's the thing you see like repeated down
Speaker 2: through history. You got all these really weird political coalitions
Speaker 2: that are like, yeah, the Marxists are killing us all.
Speaker 2: So you know, guess we're all in this boat now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. And so the Black Army did the defeating
Speaker 1: of the Army in Ukraine, but that Black Army has
Speaker 1: now also been defeated, as have millions of people trying
Speaker 1: to live the promise of the revolution down there. They've
Speaker 1: been defeated, not necessarily all killed. That'll come a little later.
Speaker 1: We're not going to talk about the famines and stuff
Speaker 1: too much. All the while, the Bolsheviks are promising like, hey,
Speaker 1: don't worry this war communism thing that's only for a while.
Speaker 1: We're at war, and to some degree people believed them,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of what they held onto this whole time.
Speaker 1: People were like, well, we just got aside with the
Speaker 1: Red Army and the grain, you know, them coming by
Speaker 1: and stealing all the grain and stuff for so long.
Speaker 1: We got to make sacrifices to defend the revolution. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows that. And by sacrifices, when we're talking about the
Speaker 1: Russian Civil War, we're somewhere in the six million to
Speaker 1: twelve million people range of sacrifice, which makes it one
Speaker 1: hell of a civil war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's extraordinarily bloody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, compared to the February Revolution of thirteen hundred people
Speaker 1: who don't The anti Bolshevik left continues to grow as
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks keeps showing themselves for what they really are.
Speaker 1: Of course, the Bolshevik party itself was also growing because
Speaker 1: they were the only game in town and it kept,
Speaker 1: you know, killing everyone who didn't join it. Like I've
Speaker 1: used several sources for example, throughout that I think I've
Speaker 1: talked about where it was people who weren't Bolsheviks and
Speaker 1: then suddenly they were Bolsheviks because it was kind of
Speaker 1: join or die, and plenty of revolutionaries chose join when
Speaker 1: offered join or die, and plenty of revolutionaries chose die
Speaker 1: when given that same choice. All throughout the revolution in
Speaker 1: the Civil War, revolutionaries are pouring into the country from
Speaker 1: exile or being deported back to Russia, since one of
Speaker 1: Russia's primary exports for decades at this point had been
Speaker 1: hardened revolutionaries of every stripe. And it's honestly hard to
Speaker 1: imagine just how great this betrayal must have felt, how
Speaker 1: hopeful everyone was when they were turned home only to
Speaker 1: find out what was happening. And I'm going to give
Speaker 1: a couple examples of that, because they're kind of fun stories,
Speaker 1: even if they don't end super great. People who listen
Speaker 1: to my podcast are familiar with this arc. Take as
Speaker 1: an example, the case of the staff of the newspaper
Speaker 1: Golos Truda Russian for the Voice of Labor, because again,
Speaker 1: anarchists have only two ideas of how to name newspapers.
Speaker 1: It's either labor paper or it's like the blast, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's black and then object, Oh that's true, so
Speaker 1: you black flag, black wave, black tide. Yeah, which doesn't
Speaker 1: work as well as in the American context, but that
Speaker 1: never stops people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Voice of Labor was started at nineteen eleven
Speaker 1: in New York City by the Union of Russian Workers
Speaker 1: in the United States and Canada. Speaking of how we
Speaker 1: choose to name things historically, the Union of Russian Workers
Speaker 1: of the United States and Canada, which was an anarchist organization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: incredible stuff, guys, No notes, and this is an anarcho
Speaker 1: synicalist labor organization started by political exiles who had fled
Speaker 1: the nineteen oh five revolution. This union had helped new
Speaker 1: exiles integrate into New York. They had set up English
Speaker 1: classes for refugees, they'd put out books in Russian and generally,
Speaker 1: we're just being cool. They had about ten thousand members
Speaker 1: across the US and Canada, and of course a monthly newspaper.
Speaker 1: How can you do anything without a newspaper. I swear
Speaker 1: to God. The accidental subtext this podcast is just Margaret
Speaker 1: talks about tuberculosis and old radical newspapers in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: give this general amnesty in Russia. So everyone involved in
Speaker 1: the newspapers like, holy shit, here we go. It's the
Speaker 1: fucking revolution. Let's get home and transform the entire fucking world.
Speaker 1: The largest country in the world is having a revolution
Speaker 1: and the anarchists are at the forefront among in a pluralistic,
Speaker 1: great cool way. They're very excited. One of them goes
Speaker 1: first and is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, come on over,
Speaker 1: you know. And their journey itself was kind of epic
Speaker 1: and beautiful, like nothing bad happened, but they did all
Speaker 1: the anarchy stuff along the cultural stuff along the way.
Speaker 1: They boarded a boat from Vancouver to Japan and then
Speaker 1: went over to Siberia and then took a train to
Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in many such cases, yeah, now, yeah, the go
Speaker 1: literally all the way around the world in order to
Speaker 1: do this. And because they're anarchists, they can't go anywhere
Speaker 1: without doing cultural events and printing a newspaper. So the
Speaker 1: whole time they're on this ship out to Japan, they
Speaker 1: organized lectures and put on plays for all the passengers
Speaker 1: on board.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: And they put out a newspaper while they were on
Speaker 1: the boat. Oh my god, it was called the Float.
Speaker 3: Rules. I know, I know.
Speaker 1: Did they like bring a printing press like they must?
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about it. I get all of
Speaker 1: the different time periods around this era, because like what
Speaker 1: people would print with kept changing so quickly around this
Speaker 1: era that I can't remember exactly what they would have
Speaker 1: been using. But yeah, they must have brought a little
Speaker 1: hand press or something like that.
Speaker 3: Incredible.
Speaker 1: Once they made it to Saint Petersburg, they started printing
Speaker 1: The Voice of Labor again in Saint Petersburg, and they
Speaker 1: tried and of course famously failed, to turn the revolutionary
Speaker 1: tide away from authoritarianimism and Bolshevism. This is in between
Speaker 1: the February and October revolutions. The most famous member of
Speaker 1: this group was this Jewish anarchist guy named Volin. And
Speaker 1: when I say famous, I mean in the context of
Speaker 1: you and I have heard of Volin and yeah, I've
Speaker 1: read his book The Unknown Revolution. Yeah yeah, yeah, famous
Speaker 1: gifts context here, Yeah, well known in certain anarchist circles, think, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He had fled Russia in nineteen oh five. He was
Speaker 1: a Jewish anarchist who fled Russia nineteen oh five and
Speaker 1: became an anarchist while in exile. Actually I think he
Speaker 1: started off I think in the SRS. And he is
Speaker 1: most famous again famous guests quotes as the man that
Speaker 1: is behind what is called synthesis anarchism, which is basically
Speaker 1: the like, hey, all different kinds of anarchism are valid,
Speaker 1: we should figure out how to create a unity and
Speaker 1: diversity set of anarchist organizations in which syndicalist communists and
Speaker 1: individualists and insurrectionary anarchists can all just coordinate and offer
Speaker 1: one another solidarity and mutual daid. This of course made
Speaker 1: everyone that oh yeah, no, totally for one hundred years,
Speaker 1: but it's not the worst idea. My friend Brian is
Speaker 1: always like, one day, Margaret, you're going to unite all
Speaker 1: of the anarchist factions because they're all going to unite
Speaker 1: in their anger against you for trying to unite them
Speaker 1: all and stop all the infighting.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I think synthesis anarchism is great. It builds on the
Speaker 1: anarchists without adjectives that Malatests and all these other people
Speaker 1: were putting forward. And anyway, I like his ideas. I
Speaker 1: haven't read The Unknown Revolution yet, to be clear. It's
Speaker 1: on my shelf and I'm excited about.
Speaker 3: It, but it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Slightly weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense to me. It turns out there's
Speaker 1: an awful lot of books you can read about the
Speaker 1: Russian Revolution. Yeah, someone should do a really long podcast
Speaker 1: series about the Russian Revolution.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, wrong, cool, micy right sort revolutions. I was
Speaker 2: talking to him well, like on Twitter about that show,
Speaker 2: and I was like, Okay, you're gonna do the because
Speaker 2: so there's like a bunch of other revolutions that happened
Speaker 2: around that time, right, there's one in Italy, there's Germany.
Speaker 2: There's something we talked about in the show. Its Argentina.
Speaker 2: So I was like, okay, are you going to cover
Speaker 2: the other ones? And he was like, We're going to
Speaker 2: cover a lot of it, and then no, there was
Speaker 2: simply too much Russian Revolution to get to any of
Speaker 2: the other ones except Germany because Jermany is the one
Speaker 2: that like most directly matters for Russia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting to me because part of learning about
Speaker 1: the Russian Revolution, and part of the reason I think
Speaker 1: it's important enough to do this, you know, six part
Speaker 1: series or whatever about it is how much it influences
Speaker 1: everything else we've talked about on this show. You know,
Speaker 1: everything is in the context of this until about World
Speaker 1: War two, and then everything's in the context of World
Speaker 1: War Two. It's still probably the most influential revolution since
Speaker 1: like either the French or Haitian realm, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of by a lot of I mean, historians who are
Speaker 1: talking about this revolution have all said that this is
Speaker 1: the most influential event of the twentieth century and like
Speaker 1: single event, And I mean, is that a World War two?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and you know, but the thing with World
Speaker 2: War two is you can argue that like World War
Speaker 2: two is a direct product of this.
Speaker 1: Right totally, which yeah, and would have been real different
Speaker 1: if our heroes of today had pulled some stuff off.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so our guy Volin, he spends a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of time in Ukraine influencing things there, setting
Speaker 1: up a synthesis organization called Nabot that's spread throughout Ukraine,
Speaker 1: and later he's going to become the chairman of the
Speaker 1: Military Revolutionary Council, the machnivist Ukrainian anarchist thing that we
Speaker 1: talked about last time. And I think the reason he
Speaker 1: ended up the Military Revolutionary Council chairman is because he
Speaker 1: was like, he was not a pacifist, but he spent
Speaker 1: his whole time doing that trying to curb the excessive
Speaker 1: violence of the revolutionaries because there is no army that
Speaker 1: is not committing war crimes, and that absolutely included the
Speaker 1: anarchist army. You know, there is no ideology so pure
Speaker 1: that it will prevent people from abusing power in different circumstances. However,
Speaker 1: you can put a lot of work in to curb
Speaker 1: that and keep that from happening. And it sounds like
Speaker 1: that's why Volin was involved in sense idea. Yeah. Volin
Speaker 1: was arrested on his sick bed by the Cheka and
Speaker 1: only released basically because the Bolsheviks needed a cozy up
Speaker 1: to the anarchists, you know, because we talked about last time.
Speaker 1: The Bolsheviks were like, oh, we're resting all the anarchists,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden they're fighting alongside the anarchists.
Speaker 1: So they keep doing this back and forth, depending on
Speaker 1: how much they need the anarchists.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The Bolsheviks actually tried to recruit him. They offered to
Speaker 1: make him a commissar in Bolshevik Ukraine, and he was like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not going to fucking happen. Yeah, So the Bolsheviks
Speaker 1: arrested him again a little bit later. Once again, political
Speaker 1: pressure got him released and deported. In nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: and the anarchists take care of their own even though
Speaker 1: a lot of syndicalists didn't like his theories because his
Speaker 1: theories were Syndicalism is not the only correct belief structure.
Speaker 1: The most prominent German anarchis syndicalist who's come up a
Speaker 1: bunch on this show before Rudolph Rocker put him up
Speaker 1: in his own house, like gave him the attic room
Speaker 1: and took care of him.
Speaker 2: Oh that's really sweet.
Speaker 3: I actually didn't know.
Speaker 1: That, I know. And then there's like this also this
Speaker 1: whole thing where like Volin helped escape Ukraine, and then
Speaker 1: they like got into this huge fight because yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no reason that you, dear listener should care about this,
Speaker 1: but Makno wanted platformism, which was all anarchists have unity
Speaker 1: of theory, where a synthesis anarchism is unity and diversity,
Speaker 1: and so they were like arguing about that and then
Speaker 1: they Uh, Makno's wife was like, could you just shut
Speaker 1: the fuck up and be friends again? And they became
Speaker 1: friends again because listen to women.
Speaker 2: And it's funny too because I'm pretty sure unknown revolutions
Speaker 2: written like in the part where they're feuding, so there's
Speaker 2: just like a bunch of random like mackno slander in it.
Speaker 1: I believe it. I believe it. There's so much from
Speaker 1: this time period of people being like, I don't know
Speaker 1: where the Magno is even really anarchists, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in gate keeping that.
Speaker 2: They absolutely feud like anarchists.
Speaker 1: So yeah, totally. Uh. Anyway, Volin from exile, he writes history.
Speaker 1: He gets into arguments about anarchist theory. He describes Bolshevism
Speaker 1: as red fascism, and if anyone would know that firsthand,
Speaker 1: it's him. He lived in near poverty in France. He
Speaker 1: had to go in hiding once more in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: because it was not a good time to be Jewish
Speaker 1: in Nazi occupied countries, and friends tried to get him
Speaker 1: to go to Mexico and they were like, we'll get
Speaker 1: you out, We'll get you to Mexico, and he left Paris,
Speaker 1: but he was like, I am fucking staying in France.
Speaker 1: We are going to kick out the fucking Nazis and
Speaker 1: we're going to have a goddamn anarchist revolution, or I'm
Speaker 1: going to cut damn by trine. And he died of
Speaker 1: tuberculosis in Paris in nineteen forty five, cool guy Volin
Speaker 1: back to his newspaper and the early days of the revolution. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that I ran across
Speaker 1: sometimes is some of these old papers actually had advertisements
Speaker 1: in them. I don't know whether the Voice of Labor
Speaker 1: had advertisements or not, but I'm aware that a lot
Speaker 1: of radical newspapers throughout time have had advertisements, and keeping
Speaker 1: in that tradition, we've decided to one time only allow
Speaker 1: sponsors to go and give us money in exchange for
Speaker 1: space for them to talk about things for a little while.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to do, just in the
Speaker 1: spirit of historical accuracy, and we're back in the early
Speaker 1: days of the revolution. The Voice of Labor accurately saw
Speaker 1: the writing on the wall. Immediately after the October Revolution.
Speaker 1: They wrote, once their power is consolidated and legalized, the
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks will begin to rearrange the life of the country
Speaker 1: and of the people by governmental and dictorial methods imposed
Speaker 1: by this center. Your soviets and your other local organizations
Speaker 1: will become, little by little, simply executive organs of the
Speaker 1: will of the central government, in place of healthy, constructive
Speaker 1: work by the laboring masses in place of free unification.
Speaker 1: From the bottom, we will see the installation of an
Speaker 1: authoritarian and status apparatus, which will act from above and
Speaker 1: set about wiping out everything that stands in its way
Speaker 1: with an iron hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not even like it wasn't even just like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're going to totally be authoritarian. It was like, this
Speaker 1: is exactly the way they will do it and how
Speaker 1: it will play out. A lot of people are like, oh, early,
Speaker 1: people just didn't know how it was going to go.
Speaker 1: Some people knew.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: By August nineteen eighteen, the Bolsheviks suppressed the Voice of Labor,
Speaker 1: So these editors from New York they put out a
Speaker 1: different paper, the Free Voice of Labor, and then they
Speaker 1: got arrested again in nineteen twenty one. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that later, about how the anarchist are crack down
Speaker 1: on real hard after.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to do my version of this where
Speaker 2: we have to put out free it could happen here,
Speaker 2: and then freer it could happen here.
Speaker 1: It might happen here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the final one is the freest.
Speaker 2: It already happened yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 1: Might happen here. We might pull we might pull out
Speaker 1: of a tailspin. So famously, it's not like the USSR
Speaker 1: was the only place it was hard to be a
Speaker 1: leftist at this time. Well, okay, it's not the USSR.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Russia whatever. Famously, the US was
Speaker 1: not exactly tolerant of actual leftists either.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The first Red Scare hit the anarchists particularly hard, especially,
Speaker 1: and actually I didn't realize this. The main group as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell by numbers that hit was
Speaker 1: the Union of Russian Workers, this anarcho syndicalist union that
Speaker 1: the newspaper folks have been working with, which kept going
Speaker 1: after its newspaper edit. It turns out you can actually
Speaker 1: have a movement without a newspaper, I know, shocking.
Speaker 2: But every trotsky I simultaneously running in circles and streaming.
Speaker 1: I know. On March twelfth, nineteen nineteen, its headquarters was
Speaker 1: raided in New York and one hundred and sixty two
Speaker 1: people were arrested. Jeez, and they only managed to get
Speaker 1: criminal anarchy charges against two of them. New York still
Speaker 1: has criminal anarchy.
Speaker 2: On the books, oh my god.
Speaker 1: And it's not criminal being an anarchist. It's like criminal
Speaker 1: disorderly conduct or whatever. But it's every anarchist I know
Speaker 1: he's gotten that charge is a little bit like.
Speaker 2: Incredible.
Speaker 1: The news was full of talk about how these Russian
Speaker 1: agents were just waiting to throw the US, which is
Speaker 1: I mean, well, I guess that's true, Like you know.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by
Speaker 2: Russian agent. It's like, right, agent, who is Russian?
Speaker 1: Totally? They're not agents of the Bolsheviks. They are Russian
Speaker 1: revolutionaries who would also be imprisoned in Russia because that's
Speaker 1: what happened to them in Russia. And so this led
Speaker 1: to the justification of the Palmer raids in nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: and this time the Union of Russian Workers was raided again,
Speaker 1: and this time is really really violently. People were beaten
Speaker 1: with clubs and blackjacks. Just people on the street are like,
Speaker 1: why are all these bloody people pouring out of this building?
Speaker 1: And on December twenty one, nineteen nineteen, two hundred and
Speaker 1: forty nine anarchists were deported to Russia, including friends of
Speaker 1: the pod Emma Goldman, the anarchist advocate of birth control
Speaker 1: has come up time and time again and her sometimes lover,
Speaker 1: Alexander Berkman, who had spent fourteen years in prison for
Speaker 1: trying and failing to kill an industrialist during a strike. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: at first, these two are excited Russia was having a revolution.
Speaker 1: They knew they were anarchists involved, and that that revolution
Speaker 1: that was happening was the hope of the entire leftist world.
Speaker 1: Berkman said that that he arrived in Russia was even
Speaker 1: better than the day he walked free after fourteen years
Speaker 1: in prison. They spent nineteen twenty traveling around the country
Speaker 1: trying to put together a history of the revolution for
Speaker 1: a museum. So they like hit the ground running and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, we gotta you know, the revolution's here.
Speaker 1: We got to make sure to document it, you know,
Speaker 1: because we love it. We love the revolution. And what
Speaker 1: they found as they traveled around the country to see
Speaker 1: the effects of the revolution was not the liberation of
Speaker 1: the working class, but instead it's a miseration. Lenin met
Speaker 1: with them personally and was like, Hey, don't worry. As
Speaker 1: soon as the war is done, we'll go back to
Speaker 1: free speech. I promise. It's me.
Speaker 3: It's Lenin narrator. It's never right yet.
Speaker 1: Either didn't mean it, or he meant it and then
Speaker 1: just didn't bother to do it. I don't know. War
Speaker 1: communism is tearing everyone up. Lenin wrote about it. The
Speaker 1: essence of war communism was that we actually took from
Speaker 1: the peasant all of his surpluses, and sometimes not only
Speaker 1: the surpluses, but part of the grain the peasants needed
Speaker 1: for food. So they're running around taking grain, horses, everything
Speaker 1: they can get, and like, you know, they're not just taking,
Speaker 1: they're also taking like the stuff people are supposed to
Speaker 1: plant next time and things like that.
Speaker 2: It is also deeply funny the main Bolshevik anti anarchist
Speaker 2: lines that their bandits. It's like, okay, so one of
Speaker 2: these two groups of people is running around the countryside
Speaker 2: stealing stuff a gunpoint, and the other one is the anarchists.
Speaker 1: I know, really, I know, because the anarchists are running
Speaker 1: around stealing stuff a gunpoint from the rich. And the
Speaker 1: reason that the anarchists are getting called bandits is because, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks are mad at the anarchists for expropriating too
Speaker 1: much and too early, because the Bolsheviks are trying not
Speaker 1: to totally piss off the rich. But I think they're
Speaker 1: expropriating too at this point. By now, I'm not actually
Speaker 1: sure exactly when they start robin hood in also, but anyway,
Speaker 1: so the peasants get really good at hiding grain. One
Speaker 1: estimate says that a third of the food was successfully
Speaker 1: hidden from the bulshit bandits. Yeah, and peasants also just
Speaker 1: like they stopped growing more food than was personally needed
Speaker 1: because they knew whatever they grew would gets stolen by
Speaker 1: band Like, why work harder if there's nothing in it
Speaker 1: for you, It's just all going to get stolen. Autocracy
Speaker 1: meant that Russia only grew less than half of what
Speaker 1: it grew before the war. And since one of the
Speaker 1: primary justifications people have of war communism is oh, it
Speaker 1: was necessary to get as much food as possible to
Speaker 1: run this war. We needed strong authoritarian measures in order
Speaker 1: to do it, here's how it backfired. Besides just morally
Speaker 1: it backfired and that people suddenly didn't have any reason
Speaker 1: to grow food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although it's funny because this discreens into just a
Speaker 2: sort of self justifying loop, because then the argument is like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we need more authoritarianism to crack down and the peasants,
Speaker 2: because the peasants are like the culocks are food hoarding.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, yet they're food hoarding because they're going
Speaker 2: to starve if because you keep taking all of their food,
Speaker 2: so you know it's not actually working.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Goldman later would write a book called My
Speaker 1: Disillusionment in Russia, and Berkman wrote the Bolshevik Myth. Basically,
Speaker 1: by the end of nineteen twenty there's no more justification
Speaker 1: available anymore for the Bolsheviks to people. You can only
Speaker 1: promise people that war communism is temporary for so long.
Speaker 1: And actually, one of the things that I don't think
Speaker 1: I talked about too much last time. The Civil War
Speaker 1: came in waves and the Green Army, the peasants who
Speaker 1: were revolting. A lot of that came after the White
Speaker 1: Armies were destroyed, and you had a lot of soldiers
Speaker 1: going back home and seeing what was happening, and you
Speaker 1: also just had like, well, your justification is done, you know,
Speaker 1: And things eventually came to a head in March nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one or February, depending on how you count it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as the final leftist rebellion against Bolshevism,
Speaker 1: because these rebellions cropped up from time to time and
Speaker 1: will continue to wherever they're authoritarianism, and I suspect we'll
Speaker 1: have to do more revolts against Bolshevism in our future,
Speaker 1: although maybe people will just learn from the past and
Speaker 1: then we won't have to. Bad stuff will still come,
Speaker 1: but we could just have a different bad thing next time.
Speaker 1: That would be great.
Speaker 2: Okay, I figured out. I figured out how we neutralize
Speaker 2: them preemptively. We have to start the argument over whether
Speaker 2: Jucha is Bolshevism right now, and this will keep them
Speaker 2: arguing with each other for so long that they will
Speaker 2: not be able to.
Speaker 1: Effectively do anything. Wait, who is Bolshevik?
Speaker 2: Whether Jeucha? Which is the revolution? Well, okay, it's the
Speaker 2: nominal ideology of North Korea.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, okay, Yeah, No, that is a good idea.
Speaker 1: Like we can get them too caught up arguing with
Speaker 1: each other on at least that I know of, at
Speaker 1: least three.
Speaker 3: American communist parties to split over this.
Speaker 1: So excellent, excellent.
Speaker 3: Keep going, guys, keep doing this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, the rebellious period of early nineteen twenty one
Speaker 1: is sort of the final hurrah of what if the
Speaker 1: Soviet Revolution actually empowered the Soviets and gave workers control
Speaker 1: over their own lives. And we're going to start with
Speaker 1: the symbolic death of hope for the working class, for emancipation,
Speaker 1: the death of Peter Kropotkin, and now, interestingly, Peter Kurpakin
Speaker 1: was not incredibly popular with the anarchists at this time,
Speaker 1: but he was still respected. He wasn't particularly popular because
Speaker 1: of stuff that people still want to hash out on
Speaker 1: Twitter today and I don't care enough, which was that
Speaker 1: he you know, famously did support the Allied fight in
Speaker 1: World War One and wanted Russia to stay involved in
Speaker 1: the war because he wanted the Allies to win, because
Speaker 1: he thought that bourgeois democracy was a better system than
Speaker 1: the German empire and monarchy. And it's one simplified way
Speaker 1: of looking at it.
Speaker 2: But whatever.
Speaker 1: So Kerpakin had been living in exile in Canada. In
Speaker 1: June nineteen seventeen, he returned to Russia, whereupon he refused
Speaker 1: cabinet seat from the provisional government, but continued to advocate
Speaker 1: that Russia continue in the war, which was not a
Speaker 1: popular position. His reputation as a socialist is like not
Speaker 1: super high right now, and there are two versions of
Speaker 1: his last days in Russia. The official account written by
Speaker 1: the victorious Bolsheviks has him welcomed in lovingly by Lenin,
Speaker 1: with whom he was great friends. In this version of
Speaker 1: the story, he decided the hustle and bustle of Moscow
Speaker 1: was too much for him because he was kind of old,
Speaker 1: so he moved to the countryside, to a town called Dimitrov.
Speaker 1: It is true that Kropawkin was treated better than many
Speaker 1: other anarchists by Lenin for whatever reason, and Kropakin leveraged
Speaker 1: that as best as he could to get his fellow
Speaker 1: socialists srs and anarchists alike out of Bolshevik jail, and
Speaker 1: he kept trying to sell Lenin on a like don't
Speaker 1: do this bro plan. But Kropawkin's friend Alexander Berkman paints
Speaker 1: a different story than the one that Lenin paints. Quote
Speaker 1: on two occasions were the Kropotkin apartments in Moscow requisite
Speaker 1: and the family forced to seek other quarters. It was
Speaker 1: after these experiences that the Kropowkins moved to Dimitrov, where
Speaker 1: Old Peter became an involuntary exile. His only visitors were
Speaker 1: peasants and workers of the village, and some members of
Speaker 1: the intelligentsia, whose wont it was to come to him
Speaker 1: with their troubles and misfortunes. He had always kept in
Speaker 1: touch with the world through numerous publications, but in dmitrov
Speaker 1: he had no access to these sources. His only channels
Speaker 1: of information now were the two government papers. His comrades
Speaker 1: from abroad, as well as the anarchists of Ukrainia, often
Speaker 1: sent him food packages. Once he received some gifts from Makno,
Speaker 1: at that time heralded by the Bolsheviki as the terror
Speaker 1: of the counter revolution in southern Russia especially, did the
Speaker 1: Kropawkins feel the lack of light? When I visited them
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty, They were considering themselves fortunate to be
Speaker 1: able to have even one roomlet. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: Kropotkin worked by the flicker of a tiny oil lamp
Speaker 1: that nearly drove him blind. During the short hours of
Speaker 1: the day, he would transcribe his notes on a typewriter,
Speaker 1: slowly and painfully, pounding out every letter. That's really pleache,
Speaker 1: I know, But the real reason that Kerpakin suffered wasn't
Speaker 1: the lack of lamp oil. It was that hope was
Speaker 1: draining away from him. At one point, the Bolsheviks said
Speaker 1: that for every Bolshevik killed by the SRS, they would
Speaker 1: execute ten imprisoned sars Jesus. So he tried to stop
Speaker 1: that plan by writing Lenin and you know, putting his
Speaker 1: leverage as much as he could. He also tried to
Speaker 1: stop the no more private printing houses plan, and failed
Speaker 1: at that one too, because at this point literally only
Speaker 1: state run papers. He spent his last days despairing, drawing,
Speaker 1: and playing piano. He caught pneumonia in January nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: and all his friends rushed to be by his side,
Speaker 1: but most arrived an hour late, and the Bolsheviks offered
Speaker 1: him a state funeral, but the anarchists refused it. They
Speaker 1: basically had to beg the Soviets to let them organize
Speaker 1: the funeral themselves, getting special permission to print a pamphlet
Speaker 1: commemorating the most influential anarchist thinker in history. As his
Speaker 1: body left the village, the entire village came out to
Speaker 1: pay its respects. In Moscow, twenty thousand anarchists marched with
Speaker 1: him one last time. They marched with him five miles
Speaker 1: to the graveyard in a mile long procession of red
Speaker 1: and black banners, students and children at the front holding wreaths.
Speaker 1: They passed the Tolstoy Museum and lowered their banners to
Speaker 1: honor another one of the great Russian anarchists.
Speaker 3: We're hitting all of them today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we've already had tuberculosis and Tolstoi. Oh I
Speaker 1: think Volin organized with the industrial workers of the world,
Speaker 1: but I can't remember. Wait, I know who did, and
Speaker 1: we'll get to him real soon.
Speaker 3: Very great bingo day for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Tolstoyan's came out and played Chopin's Funeral March,
Speaker 1: which is the like dun d dun d d du
Speaker 1: dun dun dun song, which probably didn't seem cliche at
Speaker 1: the time. Actually, while I was reading this, I like
Speaker 1: listened to a bunch of versions of It's really beautiful,
Speaker 1: and like I got real like this is the part
Speaker 1: where I cried while writing. Okay, seven of his friends
Speaker 1: were released from jail for the day to attend, and
Speaker 1: there was supposed to be like twenty more, but then
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks were like, well, they refused, and it was
Speaker 1: that like the anarchists had been like lied to about
Speaker 1: what was involved or whatever, and they were like, we
Speaker 1: don't trust you. So seven of his friends were released
Speaker 1: from jail, and anarchist later turned Bolshevik victor Surge described
Speaker 1: what happened. Aaron Baron, who organized with IWW, there's my connection, okay.
Speaker 1: Aaron barn arrested in the Ukraine due to return that
Speaker 1: evening to a prison from which he would never again emerge.
Speaker 1: Lifted as emaciated, bearded, gold spectacled profile to cry relentless
Speaker 1: protests against the new despotism, the butchers at work in
Speaker 1: their cellars, the dishonor shed upon socialism, the official violence
Speaker 1: that was trampling the revolution underfoot. Fearless and impetuous, he
Speaker 1: seemed to be sowing the seeds of new tempests. Aaron's wife, Fanya,
Speaker 1: who was also in prison, will be executed before the
Speaker 1: year is out. Aaron himself will live in the prison
Speaker 1: system before his execution. In nineteen thirty seven. This was
Speaker 1: the last anarchist demonstration of any size in Russia until
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union collapsed almost seventy years later. By the
Speaker 1: end of that year, Kerpawkin's writings were banned by the
Speaker 1: Bolshevik government and the movement. He'd given his life to
Speaker 1: gave it one last push, one last try, much like
Speaker 1: how we have one last push to sell you on
Speaker 1: advertisements unless you're one of those weirdos who lifts in's
Speaker 1: after the end, but year's ads and we're back.
Speaker 3: That might be the bleakest ad pivot of full time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, as I described the thing that
Speaker 1: had me crying and as the end of I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not the end of the anarchist movement. We're still
Speaker 1: in it, but it is a thing that signaled a
Speaker 1: thing metaphorically symbolically whatever people kept doing uprisings, and this
Speaker 1: next batch, like all of the other cool uprisings that
Speaker 1: had happened, started with uprisings in Saint Petersburg. So the
Speaker 1: nineteen oh five revolution had started. This how the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen revolution had started. Okay, I've actually heard that it
Speaker 1: kind of started in Moscow. But the thing that kind
Speaker 1: of immediately kicked off what we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: happened in Saint Petersburg. It started with friend of the
Speaker 1: Pod general strikes and bread riots. Bread rations had been
Speaker 1: reduced by a third over the course of ten days,
Speaker 1: which tends not to make people happy, especially when party
Speaker 1: members continue to eat well enough. It's the same shit
Speaker 1: that had led to previous revolutions, watching the wealthy eat
Speaker 1: while you starve. Only these wealthy were instead the like
Speaker 1: party bureaucrats, many of whom were the czarist officers from
Speaker 1: before the old aristocracy. Yep. And one of the ways
Speaker 1: that this uprising happened was like one factory and had
Speaker 1: all these things set aside, like winter clothes and shoes
Speaker 1: that were supposed to go be a reserved for Bolsheviks,
Speaker 1: and they just started giving them to everyone. That was
Speaker 1: the uprising. That was the thing that the socialists had
Speaker 1: the communists had to crush. Okay, one thing that came
Speaker 1: out of me reading this. People are always like, magpie,
Speaker 1: what's an anarchist, what's the socialist, what's a communist? What's
Speaker 1: the difference between them? I actually do get this question.
Speaker 1: It sounds like I'm joking, but and it's hard to
Speaker 1: answer because it depends on the context of when people
Speaker 1: were talking. But here when we are talking about it
Speaker 1: in Russia, and this is one of the things that
Speaker 1: has filtered down through the ages. The communists mean the
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks right now because they have changed their name to
Speaker 1: the Communist Party, the socialists by and large means the socialists,
Speaker 1: the SRS, the Socialist revolutionaries, and the anarchists means the anarchists,
Speaker 1: and all of them are socialists, and most of the
Speaker 1: anarchists and all of the communists are communists in terms
Speaker 1: of what they actually believe ideologically. But I kind of
Speaker 1: went through when I wrote all this to make sure
Speaker 1: I just wrote Bolsheviks and not communists throughout. But a
Speaker 1: lot of the sources of the time are going to
Speaker 1: start calling all these people communists, and that's what they
Speaker 1: mean by it, as they mean people who are part
Speaker 1: of the Bolshevik Party, which is now the Communist Party.
Speaker 1: One Damama just to do a like I don't whenever
Speaker 1: I try and explain, like, here's the difference between the three,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, it really depends on what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: And I know that this is annoying and messy. The
Speaker 1: general aim of these uprisings was to end war communism.
Speaker 1: In the city. It was like, we want better bread
Speaker 1: rations in the countryside. A lot of it was about
Speaker 1: the return to free labor, the ability for small perducers
Speaker 1: to buy and sell without using the state as it
Speaker 1: go between, which will actually we're going to kind of
Speaker 1: win this one. We'll talk about that. These uprisings are
Speaker 1: put down, but not easily. The Red Army showed up
Speaker 1: in forced and proclaimed martial law. The Checha arrested thousands
Speaker 1: of people, including sr's anarchists and Mensheviks. Even within the Bolsheviks,
Speaker 1: they're starting to be resistance to this centralization of power.
Speaker 1: You have two different opposition groups. You have the workers
Speaker 1: Opposition faction and the group of Democratic Centralism, which ironically
Speaker 1: advocated for decentralization. Yeah, because words.
Speaker 2: Are random, Yeah, this is the thing with Like, this
Speaker 2: is the thing especially inside of this Like if you're
Speaker 2: trying to figure out Soviet factions, like the names are
Speaker 2: not going to tell you anything, like, yeah, it's a disaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Fortunately, you don't have to remember those two again.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to bring them up again in this script.
Speaker 1: If you are like trying to be a historian of
Speaker 1: the Russian Civil War and how things went badly, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to remember them. But for now, just understand
Speaker 1: what does matter is to understand that not all of
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks approve of what's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess I could mention so I
Speaker 2: know a bit about the workers opposition. They're kind of
Speaker 2: like the last off ramp if you're a Bolshevik, for like,
Speaker 2: if you're a Bolshevik who like genuinely believes in like
Speaker 2: the power of the Soviets, like this is your last
Speaker 2: like thing and everyone else going forward from that, Like
Speaker 2: there are going to be people who like, like Trotsky
Speaker 2: is going to make this pivot where he starts talking
Speaker 2: about democracy and it's like, well, no, like this is
Speaker 2: all your fault, like specifically right, And it's like that
Speaker 2: these are sort of the last people who are like
Speaker 2: even in some sense committed to what the Bolsheviks were,
Speaker 2: like saying that they believed in like early nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: That makes sense to me, and that's actually gonna be
Speaker 1: a big part of the crunch Dat rebellion. People are like,
Speaker 1: there's this over simplified thing where people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: the Cronschat rebellion was the anarchist versus the Bolsheviks. The
Speaker 1: Kronschat rebellion was political pluralism versus the Bolsheviks, And that
Speaker 1: means it was the Bolsheviks versus the Bolsheviks. To some
Speaker 1: degree too. There's several hundred of them. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: them more later, although they didn't stay Bolsheviks see the
Speaker 1: off ramp part anyway, So the worker uprisings set fire
Speaker 1: to the imaginations and the can infuses eh of perhaps
Speaker 1: the single most powerful military faction of the Red Army,
Speaker 1: the Sailors of Kronstadt, which we'll talk about Wednesday, because yeah, baby,
Speaker 1: five parts context to one part Kronstat. I believed in
Speaker 1: me and I have done it incredible.
Speaker 2: When I first heard this episode, I was like, that's
Speaker 2: a really six episodes about Cronstat. That's a really granular
Speaker 2: look like. And then I was like, it's probably gonna
Speaker 2: be a lot of context. But even I didn't expect
Speaker 2: it's gonna be five episodes of text in one cross step.
Speaker 1: I thought we'd at least get to yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I continue to believe I think that this research. I
Speaker 1: knew the broad strokes of most of this, right, and
Speaker 1: I knew the more granular of a bunch of specific
Speaker 1: anarchy things like Cronchdad and Ukraine and a little bit
Speaker 1: about Siberia and some other stuff, right. But I actually
Speaker 1: think that reading about the Russian Revolution more broadly and
Speaker 1: learning about it has influenced my thinking about revolution and
Speaker 1: history probably more than any other single thing that I've
Speaker 1: researched for this show. And maybe it's because like a
Speaker 1: lot of the things I've researched for the show are
Speaker 1: things that I already knew more about, right, But this
Speaker 1: is just such a like big complicated thing that like
Speaker 1: it's really really worth understanding. I don't know how to
Speaker 1: put it other than that, but I think that it influences,
Speaker 1: you know, like my friends are like, how are you
Speaker 1: doing this week? And I'm like, I'm kind of fucked.
Speaker 1: I'm like lost in thought in a really intense way,
Speaker 1: thinking about things that happened one hundred years ago. Like
Speaker 1: I I got lost in this story more than most
Speaker 1: of the times, and not because some other stories I
Speaker 1: see myself in more easily, right, Like I don't I mean,
Speaker 1: I know i'd be an anarchist, but I don't know
Speaker 1: where I'd be positioned within this story. Whereas like when
Speaker 1: I you know, read about like late sixties radical movements,
Speaker 1: it's real easy for me to position myself or even
Speaker 1: like you know, a lot of nineteenth century stuff, it's
Speaker 1: really easy. This one's like messier. But I really am
Speaker 1: I don't know, I wish I had my epiphanies, but
Speaker 1: all I have is the story so far. The epiphanies
Speaker 1: will come later. Any grand epiphanies for us, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I it's been I think I said this at the beginning,
Speaker 2: It's been a really long time since I've been in
Speaker 2: the Russia trenches in terms of like really granularly going
Speaker 2: through this revolution.
Speaker 3: But I think.
Speaker 2: I think there's the sort of like pop left conception
Speaker 2: of what the Russian Civil War was. It has a
Speaker 2: lot of triumphalism in it that really really just completely
Speaker 2: ignores how unbelievably bloody it was and how you know,
Speaker 2: and how many And this is the thing that like,
Speaker 2: you know, you can see this in like the Culture
Speaker 2: Revolution too, of like the parts of it that don't
Speaker 2: that have just vanished, which is that like almost I
Speaker 2: mean not almost all, but enormous numbers of the people
Speaker 2: who are being killed by the bulsh or other communis.
Speaker 2: This is the same thing in the Cultural Revolution. It's
Speaker 2: like like the vast but and this is you know,
Speaker 2: I've talked about on other shows, like the vast majority
Speaker 2: of people who get killed in the Culture Revolution are
Speaker 2: killed by the rebel factions, they're killed by the government.
Speaker 2: It's it's this process of you know, and and I
Speaker 2: guess in some sense, like I think you can make
Speaker 2: this argument that the vulture of revolution like really ends
Speaker 2: in the great terror of the purges, because like, from
Speaker 2: a macro perspective, what it is is it's this process
Speaker 2: of every single person who made the revolution just systematically
Speaker 2: being fed into a meet writer and killed.
Speaker 4: And that's a apocalyptically bleak although oddly karmac h everyone
Speaker 4: who's going to be involved in putting down the crunch
Speaker 4: at revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean that's the Yeah, all all those
Speaker 2: people have d nineteen thirty six, nineteen thirty seven next
Speaker 2: to their names.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to talk a bit more about that
Speaker 1: the next one too. But yeah, that is a there's
Speaker 1: this thing where people want to say it all went
Speaker 1: wrong when Stalin got in charge, you know, and clearly
Speaker 1: Stalin is one of history's great monsters. It's almost like, hey,
Speaker 1: what was the first behind the bastards? Was that the
Speaker 1: Stalin one? Was it Hitler's sex life or was it Hitler? No?
Speaker 2: I think it was about Carl May, the author who
Speaker 2: I's obsessed with.
Speaker 1: That I could be wrong, because that was nine hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two thousand years ago. Yeah, the earliest ones
Speaker 1: I remember is the Carl May and then Hitler's Drinking Buddies.
Speaker 1: I mean Stalin's Drinking Buddies. But I didn't start listening
Speaker 1: at the beginning. I just like went back, which is
Speaker 1: what you all should do, is go back and listen
Speaker 1: to all the because you're not going to get to
Speaker 1: hear part six until Wednesday, and so you have almost
Speaker 1: twenty four hours maybe forty eight if you listened to
Speaker 1: this early enough to go and listen to every episode
Speaker 1: of Cool People to Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: I feel like, well we can, we can. You can
Speaker 2: accelerate it to okay, okay, you play one in each
Speaker 2: ear and you move it up to like ten times speed.
Speaker 1: Well you can't do that.
Speaker 3: That's true. I only go, well one, I can.
Speaker 1: I can listen to that. That's not always fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people were like Oscar, I could read both sides of
Speaker 1: the page at once. I'm like, I don't believe you.
Speaker 1: But that said, I watch YouTube at about two x speed.
Speaker 1: I listen to podcasts at one x speed because I'm
Speaker 1: doing something else when I'm listening to a podcast, shout
Speaker 1: out to everyone who right now is walking their dog
Speaker 1: or cleaning or driving a car. But YouTube, if I
Speaker 1: have to like sit down and watch a thing, it's
Speaker 1: got to be at least one point five or two
Speaker 1: x speed, so I understand people who listen at high speed. Anyway,
Speaker 1: You got anything you want to plug?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a podcast that I'm one of the
Speaker 2: people on. It's called dicodapp and here it's about the
Speaker 2: present day and how bad it is and how you
Speaker 2: can make it less bad. And you can find it
Speaker 2: wherever there's podcast. I guess you can't find it on SoundCloud.
Speaker 1: Unless you pirate it and then upload it and put
Speaker 1: relaxing beats behind it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Legally, I don't know if I could advocate that, but
Speaker 2: you know, oh, okay, don't do that. Yeah, you can't
Speaker 2: do that. It's in fact impossible technologically. No one has
Speaker 2: ever overcome this.
Speaker 1: No, all right, well, if you want to. I actually
Speaker 1: wrote about a bunch of Russia revolutions stuff on my
Speaker 1: substock a couple of weeks ago. By the time you
Speaker 1: all hear this, it's called the Lost Promise of the Soviets.
Speaker 1: If you're like, man, that's not enough. I need to
Speaker 1: hear Margaret go over it again and talk about it
Speaker 1: differently and more emotionally. Well, that's where you can do
Speaker 1: it and see everyone else on Wednesday. Cool People Who
Speaker 1: Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 3: Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.