Part One: Beria: Stalin's Pedophile Cop & the Soviet Oppenheimer

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media here, everyone, Robert Evans here, and before we
get to the episode, obviously a lot of people in
Gaza need a lot of different help. But we've been
connected to the Algazawi family by a friend of ours
who's doing aid work there right now. They are trying
to get fourteen members of their family out of Gaza

(00:22):
before you know, things get any worse for them, and
they're raising money to do so on go fund me.
If you google help al Gazawi family escape Gaza go
fund Me, you can find it. Algazawie is spelled a
l g h a zz a w I.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
We're trying to help them, you know, get to a
safer place, so please consider donating if you can. Oh,
welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast that
makes you sad. That's the promise we make with Behind
the Bastards is that after listening to this episode, your
life will be worse. And to help me make your

(01:02):
life worse, the Great Joe Kasebian Joe, welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Hey, thanks for having me back. I'm glad to finally
get my my Behind the Bastards hat trick.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, wait, what's the hat trick?

Speaker 3 (01:16):
So that's a sports reference that you know that you
should really know.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
I was about to say, because I don't. I don't
know you as a hat guy, Joe.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Three times in oh okay, yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
So for everybody listening, they have to take their hat
off and throw it somewhere anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Okay, okay, Well, well, well they're all busy doing that,
I'm gonna throw you a story of a real piece
of ship.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Joe.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
What do you know? Joe Kasabian, host of the Lions
Led by Donkeys podcast, author of several books. What's your latest, Joe?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
So my latest up front? Now, yeah, I have a
military science fiction series coming out. The first two books
are are currently out. You have The Undying The whole
series is called The Undying Legion. So if you look
up the Undying Legion series or my name, you could
find it. Uh. And the first two books are currently

(02:13):
out and the third book will be out next month.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Excellent, exegon excellent. And you also have your work of nonfiction,
The Hooligans of Kandahar. People should check out all of
your books. Now you know who didn't write fiction, but
did lie enough to be considered a fiction writer. Oh boy,
Lavrinti Barrio. What do you know about Lavrinti Barria. No, yeah, oh.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
I would be brought in for Burrio, wouldn't I?

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Oh he is.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
He is.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
If you've watched the Death of Stalin, he's the bad guy.
I mean everyone is the bad guy and the Death
of Stalin except for maybe Zukov, but he's the bad guy,
and the Death of Stalin's the dad guy everything. He
was the bad guy in real life too, one of them.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
We open like a lot of our episodes with like
comparisons to the usually the Nazis. Right, we'll call King
Leopold the Hitler of African colonialism, or like the British
Empire slow Nazis, because Nazis are like everyone's touchstone for
the absolute depths of human evil. And one of the
things that's interesting about Laventi Barria is that Stalin himself

(03:23):
compared him to a Nazi during the Yalta I think
it was the Yalta Conference. When he's talking to like
FDR he calls Barria r Himmler. Like that's how he
introduces Barrier to the President, like, this is my Himmler. Yeah,
I got one too.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
We all got a Himmler. Everybody's got Churchill after Churchill
like said, Stalin is a bastard, but he's our bastard.
He's like, yeah, he's Himmler, but he's our Himmler.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
He's our Hemmler. It's cool, we got one. I actually
don't agree with that comparison. He's not much like Himmler.
I guess he kind of you know, Himler runs the SS,
Barrier runs the Secret Police, because that's the comparison. But
like Himmler is a hardcore believer, right, Himler is not
like a like a fair weather Nazi. He's like he's

(04:07):
like into the occult. He's trying to He's got a
castle where he's doing rituals and shit.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
Like.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
One thing you can say about Himler is he believed
all that kookie nonsense, really into witches, really into witches.
I don't think Barria believed. I don't think Barria was
really like in his I don't think Barria Barry was
a communist and that that was like the system he
worked in. But I don't think he was like a
hardcore believer.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Maria was a was a power guy, right, and he
was going to do whatever would get him into power.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
He I think he was the kind of guy my
knowledge of Barria is like he would have been. He
would have glommed onto any system that would allow him
to do what he did right right.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
He would have at least attempted to do, which I don't
do to like take any blame away from the horrible
state communist system that existed in the USSR, particularly under Stalin.
It's just that's not the kind of dude Barria was.
He was a consummate opportunist. It's just the love of
the game. He just loves being an asshole in a government,

(05:08):
you know.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
He was. He would have the excels. That's just such
a good.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Piece of ship. I had a line in here about
how he's got a body count only rivaled by these
Australian dudes I met once in a Berlin hostel, but
I wasn't sure if that was an obvious enough joke.
Don't don't room next to Australians and a hostile guys.
It's it's it's just a mess, you know. The don't

(05:34):
true Australians. Don't room next to Australians anywhere. Don't stay away.
That's why they're on that island.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
You know they need to be there. It's the only
thing that contains them is the isolation and countless venomous
animals that will murder them if they step on a line.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Would you get kicked out of the UK for being
too much of a hooligan? You know it says something.
There's one thing I can say positive of Australians. I
love the national pastime of hooning. Yes, I have to
give them shit because Australians and Texans are the two
peoples on the world that are like closest in their
in their overall temperament, and neither of us likes to

(06:12):
hear it, but it's it's undeniable when you spend time
with both.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Australia is Texas. If Texas wasn't connected to anything else, yeah,
if we will vacuum.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Speaking of Texas, a lot of people say that Texas
of Eastern Europe is Georgia. I don't know if anyone's
ever said that.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Joe actually as someone who lived in both Texas and Georgia.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
All lot, Well, that's where our friend Barria is born
and Georgia the country is in a tough historic position.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
If you just look at.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
A map, you can and you and you have a
vague knowledge of like the last thousand years, you can
like put together in your heads some of the problems
Georgia was likely to have had. Right, they're kind of
in the middle. If you're if you're the Terps, right,
if you're the Ottomans, Georgia is in the way of
where you want to get to, right.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
That's Europe.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
George is also in the way of getting to places
you want to go. If you're Russia, George's in the way.
They're just kind of they're one of those speed bump countries,
and they're gonna wind up having kind of a tumultuous
history as a result of just kind of being in
the middle of a bunch of shit. So, by the
end of the seventeen hundreds, Russia has won most of
Eastern Georgia in a gentleman's game of murder each other

(07:24):
with the Ottomans. Russian interest in the area peaked whenever
the Turks looked tired or weak, and would fade whenever
Turkey looked like it really wanted to throw hands. By
the middle of the eighteen hundreds, this tug of war
had gone Russia's way often enough that most of Georgia
winds up in possession of the Czars, who treated the
Georgians about as carefully as they treated everything else. Right,
not great, it's not great, about.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
As great as Russia currently treats Georgians within sporters.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, that's a generally accurate way to look at it.
So Georgians buy and larger, not thrilled with this situation.
But since the Turks hadn't really been any better, some
of them started looking at some radical solutions to their
having a government problem. And socialism's kind of the new
hotness at this point. So in Georgia, socialism is kind
of it becomes kissing cousins with nationalism, right, And by

(08:11):
the start of the nineteen hundreds there were two broad
socialist groups that were kind of gaining influence in Georgia.
You got your Mensheviks and you got your Bolsheviks. Bolsheviks
basically means the majority party and Mensheviks means the minority party.
But the Mensheviks are much more numerous than the Bolsheviks.
It's a little bit of a fuck game there, right.

(08:32):
The Mensheviks are kind of it's not really accurate to
view them as social Democrats the way we know them,
but they're closer to that than what becomes the government
of the Soviet Union, right, and that sounds pretty good
to a lot of Georgians. And so the Mensheviks are larger,
they're more organized than the Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks are
going to spend all of subsequent history pretending it had
always been the other way around.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Right Again, that sounds very familiar, exact same like, I'm
Armenian and Georgians and Armenians are the brothers culturally, very
very very similar. Even in our own revolutionary history of
like the First Republic of Armenia, the conflict between the
Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks is literally identical. Yes, yes, it's

(09:12):
through the Caucuses in general, the story is, the story rhymes.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
And this is you know, Barria is a little more
Georgia focused, but he also he spends most of his
early career in his aerba Jan and he is kind
of his whole life is his whole early political career
is in the trans Caucuses. Because you, as you said,
you can't really separate a zerba Jan, Armenia, Georgia during
this kind of revolutionary period and what had once been
the Russian Empire, like they're all very tied together.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Once they became the one country.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, yes, exactly. So our subject for this week, Lavrenti
is born right in the middle of this kind of
surge in socialist organizing in Georgia on March twenty ninth,
eighteen ninety nine. So I believe he's an ares pisces
cusp the worst.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
I don't know anything about signs. I just know whenever
a sign is pronounced, the people that I know that
are into them always just like cy heavily, like of
course God, or that's exactly what he is.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
That's always by response whatever somebody brings up, like oh yeah,
and this famous person is this sign. You roll your
eyes and go, oh God, obviously whatever you just said.
Becoming the head of the NKVD. What a pisces move,
that's classic. It's right on the pisces. Yeah, the doing
the Caden massacre, Katian massacre, that's a classic airy shit, right.

(10:33):
Not surprised he's got vote in him.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, you wouldn't expect that from say, a cancer.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Oh god, no, no, no, no, no, I'm sure one
of the Nazis was a cancer. They anyway, Lavrenti Pavlovitch.
Barria Is becomes a baby March twenty ninth, eighteen ninety nine.
He's born in a small village, Merculi, which is kind
of out in the boonies near the Black Sea coast.
His family are Mingrelian, which is an ethnic minority in

(10:58):
Georgia with its own language but not a written one,
so they use the Georgian language for writing, but they've
also got their own language. That's kind of just an
oral tradition. The fact that he's Mingrellian is going to
become relevant much later near the end of his life
because Mingrellians are different, right, They're not the same as
everyone else in Georgia. And in the late stalin Is period,

(11:19):
anyone who's part of an ethnic group that isn't Russian
or mainstream Georgian is gonna have a bad time.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Right unfortunately, still kind of currently true.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Well, still, this is if you know one period in
Russian history, there's some broad strokes you'll be accurate about
in most of it, right. So Barrias Georgia was considered
by Western Europeans to be among the most backwards parts
of the continent. One visitor in eighteen ninety one from
Germany claimed they didn't even know about crop rotation, which

(11:49):
might speak more to his racism than actual agricultural practice.
But it's undeniable that this was seen as the middle
of nowhere in most people's eyes, and as a result,
it's much more culturally isolated than most parts of the
Western Russian Empire. It's not a very cosmopolitan place. Barrya's mother,
Marta Ivanova, was twenty seven when she had him, which
is pretty late in that.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, surprising. I was expecting you to say fourteen or something.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like, I mean, she'd had some
other kids, I think before. And she is described by
barry a biographer Amy Knight as a quote simple, deeply
religious woman who attended church regularly all her life. Some sources,
including Knight's biography, claim she came from a noble background,
although it was a branch of the nobility that had

(12:35):
no money. Another biographer, I read a guy named Sangster,
and a couple other people have come into argue that
he was probably had no noble blood. It was kind
of a rumor, might have been like a family legend.
We've got this ancestry, but there's not evidence of it.
But a lot of this comes down to like family
law as opposed to something that likes.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
It's very much a Caucasian thing to have, like deep
family lore that is not at all grounded in reality,
Like he started as like her great great uncle once
removed story and then like spreads throughout your family till
it's just spoken as just unassailable fact.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
And it's tough because part of it there's probably almost
certainly everyone has some noble ancestry because nobles fuck a
lot of their servants and have a lot of illegitimate children.
Like Stalin is going to be taken care of by
this rich guy his mom worked for, right, Like he's
this rich guy's gonna give them a lot of money,
and Barry, his mom's gonna have the same situation. And

(13:29):
we don't know, Well, was it just because she worked
for this guy he considered her part of the family,
so he helped out. Is it because they were stopping?
Is it because there's like that he had an illegitimate
kid with her, right, Like we will never know.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
You know, maybe she's working the whole time. You know,
maybe she's working.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
The whole time, right, Maybe she's got a little that
in Nancy Reagan magic. Nothing against that, you.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Know, Barry a family, the mcgrellian throat goats.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
So it's interesting to note that a lot of Marxist
rebel lee like Marxist leaders, because all Marxists are kind
of members of an illegal party in this period, whether
you're kind of more in the Menshevik or the Bolshevik side,
the Tsar doesn't like what you're doing. Most of the
leaders of these Marxist organizations have a background where there's
some nobility. A lot of them come from the cashless nobility,

(14:17):
which is like a big thing all throughout Europe. You've
got like your nobles who are rich, and you've got
your nobles who squandered everything. So they've got the blood
but nothing else. I know, the the ones I respect more, yes, yes,
And a lot of leftist leaders in this period, particularly
if youth organizations, are these like cashless nobles, and it
makes sense because they they tend to benefit from much
more of an education. But they're not really even though

(14:38):
they're nobles, they're not really the same class as the
people with money because they don't have any fucking money.
So it's not hard to see, right, like why that
would be the case. MARTA's got a pretty difficult life.
Her first marriage gives her one son, who dies young.
Her husband dies too, so she marries again. She has
three more kids, one of them, Anna, is born deaf mute,

(15:01):
another who is Barry, his brother we know nothing about,
so he probably died young too. And then she's got Barria,
who's the only boy we know survived to adulthood. And
by the way, her second marriage with Barry his dad
in the same way as the first, and that her
husband dies the Barry of family husbands have a proud
tradition of dying instantly after making kids.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
We don't know if Laventi had something to do with
any of this.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
It's not a zero percent chance, right.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
If someone told me, like, you know, when he was
barely able to walk, he sank a knife into someone's neck,
I'd be like, yeah, cross.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
You hear a lot about like, yeah, you know, this
kid killed his mom and childbirth or whatever. Right, common story.
Barria pops out with a knife and shanks his dad.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Right in the gut. I mean, from my own family history,
you know what, I'm okay with this.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
So Barry is going to be the only boy to
make it to adulthood. And it's probably not surprising that
Marta dobts on him, right. He is a mama's boy.
Stalin is as well. And another thing I've noticed when
you read about a lot of the more influential like
rebel leaders in Russia in this period, decent number of
them are mom as boys, you know.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
So if you want your kid to overthrow the government,
spoil them a little bit, moms, you know, it's good
for him.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Rama's boy grown up. So I guess I'm just waiting
for my time.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, no, no, no, don't let the uh, don't let
the immigration board hear that.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
I already got my residency cars.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
So one of his peers later recalled that he quote
grew up on the hands of his mother, who earned
by her sewing. So that's kind of how she keeps
the lights on, although the lights are not like electric lights,
so she actually keeps the lights on by it. It's
how you buy the candles, yeah, buying candles.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
So here's how Night describes Laventi as an adolescent in
the book, Barria, Stalin's first lieutenant. Barria was a mediocre student,
not excelling in any subject but considered cunning and devious.
After completing school and Sukumi in nineteen fifteen, Barria went
to the city of Baku, in a Zerbajan, where he
enrolled in the Baku Polytechnical School for Mechanical Construction, remaining

(17:08):
there for the next four years. Baria probably chose Baku
for his studies instead of Tabilisi, which was much closer
to home, because it offered the specific course he was
interested in. Nonetheless, Baku was almost six hundred kilometers from home,
quite a distance for a boy of only sixteen. Barria
says in his autobiography that he supported himself, his mother,
his sister, and young niece by doing office work during
school vacations. Now, these claims that Barria is a shitty student,

(17:33):
but you know, supports his family and somehow gets into
Baku Polytechnic are primarily supported by a family friend and
later comrade in the USSR government named Danilov. And Danilov
is the guy who's like, yeah, he wasn't book smart,
he was a shitty student, but he's just cunning. We
get a different version of what happened in a summary
of Barria I found on globalsecurity dot Org, which is

(17:54):
a think tank founded in two thousand that focuses on
defense and foreign policy. Bob Woodward likes them. I don't
know much more about them beyond that, but they seem
to be relatively credible, and this scans with some other
things I've read. In school, Barria did very well as
the best student the villager's pride. He went to study
in Sukumi. Apparently they always moved in vain desire to advance,
to be the first in any cost. And this is

(18:16):
kind of a discrepancy. You'll get like Barry is either
this shitty student who's super cunning and gets by on
being a schemer, or he's a pretty good student who's
like really well respected in town because he's this local
boy who does well. The fact that there are discrepancies
in this and almost every other fact about the man
comes down to the fact that most of what we
know about Barria comes from either coworkers who later helped

(18:38):
to murder him and thus wanted to make him look bad,
or his own cult of personality right, which is also
full of shit. So it is really hard to know
much for certain about, particularly his early life. Polish writer
Thaddeus Whitlan an early Barria biographer even called Barria the
man without history. Of course, Andrew Sankster notes, he then

(19:01):
spends pages on his early life, how he dressed, and
even his thought processes, how he behaved in school, and
from this the reader can only assume it is mere conjecture.
So again, like, there's so much bullshit about this guy,
even in the pretty good biographies. And I'm not shitting
on night here. I think her book is generally quite good,
but like there's just a lot of maybees with Barry.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
That's like, you know, kind of part and parcel with
a guy like Barrier, right, yes, yes, he when he
comes to power, he's known for being terrifying, which you know,
obviously we'll get to and one of the most terrifying
things you can do, and something that he had the
power to do was erase his own history. Then you
can't use it against them, right, And that's a part
of it. And also one thing Sangster will note is
that most early Barrier biographies are written after his execution

(19:45):
when he becomes so Stalin dies they kill Barria and
guys like Krushchev comes into power next, and Krushchev and
everyone who kind of survives from the Stalinist era. They're
all complicit in the crimes of the Stalinist era, and
they all I want to blame everything that went bad
in that period on Barria because it's it really works
out well for them. So the books about him in

(20:06):
this period are basically just novels with Barria as the villain,
and he was a villain. But that doesn't mean everything
in those novels is true, right, Yeah, For his part,
Sangster agrees that Barria was actually probably a really good student,
and I kind of think he's right about this because
from what I've read, Baku Polytechnic's a pretty competitive school
and it's not super common for kids like Baria from

(20:28):
poor villages to go there if they're not really good students,
you know. Yeah, I mean, far be it for me
to say anything positive about the city of Baku. But
everything written about the Polytechnic is very, very good. Yeah,
I've never heard it as like, you know, it's not
a schlup school or anything like that, and especially being
from a village, being from a cashlest noble family or

(20:51):
just maybe a regular poor family, whichever family, Yeah, you
had to show some kind of promise in order to
get in it, and they're not going to allow some
mass who's coasting by on mediocre grades. But is quote
unquote cunning. You can cunning on standardized testing.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah maybe if he was getting like an English degree
where bullshitting was part. But he's like an architecture, right,
you presume he had to show some promise.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
It's always the architects, Robert, you.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Can't never Look, I've been saying this for years, Joe.
We have to kill all the architects, you know, and
I know that's half of our listeners. We're huge among architects,
but you're all, you're all the death of this world.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
And you can't trust them. I don't know what it is.
It's a lot like horses. I don't know what it is. Yeah,
don't trust them.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
No horses, no architects. That's the new that's the new
anarchist flag. I'm gonna I'm gonna try to get people
to adopt.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
But if you hate architects, you know who's working to
destroy them all and end all laws about how you
can and can't build a house are sponsors. So buy
from them and help them lobby Congress to make it
legal to do your own electrical work, you know, say

(22:02):
we're back and I just in the break rewired my
entire home. I've I've found out that if you don't
put that plastic coat around the wires, it really cuts
down on the weight, you know, of your house, which
is helpful.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah, and now I have nothing but mail to mail plugs,
like the suicide plugs holding all together. I'm really happy
that they ponied up the money to get like, you know,
awareness out there for Rube goldberg S ways to kill
yourself of electricity. I'm all on board for it.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, let's let's let's actually, Sophie, can we get a
sponsorship from the people who make those mail to mail
plugs on Amazon that burn down your house and kill
your family?

Speaker 2 (22:42):
I think that's for them.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
Probably not.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
I would just assume.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
No, buy him anyway, folks, They're probably safe. It's speaking
of product to buy once. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Barrier would
have liked them. He liked killing people. So there's a
weird mentioned by one of the first Soviets to chronicle
Barrier's life, that he and his family were supported by
cash gifts from a wealthy noble that his mom worked

(23:08):
as a servant for kind of again makes me wonder
if she was maybe getting some strange There are rumors
that actually Baria might be this guy's son. It's plausible,
but you get this like literally the same thing happened
with Stalin. So I think the fact is just this
is not a really uncommon social relationship. Like if your
mom was hot in rural Georgia, she probably had like

(23:29):
a wealthy patron, right, and why not. It's hard to
get by back then. You know your husband's gonna die
three times in your life. You need money from somewhere.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
I mean, what are your options, right, You're a penniless
dirt farmer, or you let some like rich guy clap
them cheeks for like fifteen seconds every two weeks. Who
wouldn't Who wouldn't signed me up?

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, yeah, I'm on board. I'm well, no, actually, you
and I are both dying at age nineteen after fathering
our fifth child.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
In the climate.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
So when Barrio was five or six, Russia gets convulsed
by revolution for the first time in his life. We
know now that this was the prelude to the nineteen
seventeen Revolution, but at the time a lot of people
would have seen the complete and devastating crackdown by the
Tsar as evidence that the regime was pretty strong. Right,
you get this this, this does not go well and
the Tsar kills so many fucking people. Now in those

(24:26):
days again, the left wing opponents of the Tsari system
are Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks are a tightly centralized
party led by Lenin, who is not in country for
a lot of this period, and they want a one
party right, he's in Germany for a spell. I think
he moves around a bit. I'm not an expert on
his whole movements, but he's he's out of the he's
out of the country leading from Afar for most of

(24:46):
Barrie's early life, and the Bolsheviks are very centralized. They
are a one party state that wants one party control
of a proletarian dictatorship. Right, that's the whole idea. The
Mensheviks are again, closer to social demo and as a result,
are more popular for most of Barry's childhood because most
people generally prefer not one party rule to one party rule.

(25:08):
That does change rapidly at points.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
But whenever anybody throws around a term like dictatorship. It's
to turn off.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
I'm not on board. I'm not generally on board. Now
in this case, you can debate, like, if your choice
is dictatorship of the proletariat to the czar, don't I
don't think you're wrong in saying like, well, let's try anything,
but having a fucking czar.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
I get it. You know, if I was ruled by
Zar Nicholas, I would accept anything that is not to Zarna.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Anything that's not Theizar. It makes sense to me, logical step.
From the age of sixteen on, Barry is going to
be his mother's primary means of financial support, which means
that he's able to when he moves to Baku. Kind
Of one of the things he does he gets involved
in socialist organizing and one of his jobs for the
student organization he's in. Because he's working full time, he

(25:54):
has a lot of connections with workers that are also
organized in different Marxist like unions and stuff, and he's
able to make connections between the student group that he's
ad at the college and these like laborers who are
not super educated. Right, So that's kind of his earliest
job as a not even quite a revolutionary but certainly
an activist at this.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Stage, more just like your run of the mill organizer
at the time.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah. Now to note though, there is a revolutionary aspect
to even being run of the mill as an organizer,
because this is still treason, right, like, this is illegal,
you know, light treason, you might call it, but treason.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Nonetheless, you're still going to get a visit by some
dudes who are going to drag you into a dark basement,
right right, the Okrana is not going to be thrilled
with what you're getting up to. And by the time
the big dub dub uno is underway, that's World War One.
Everyone hates it when I when I use those terms
for them, I gotta say, I'm not a fan.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Not No, nobody likes it. I don't like it, but
I'm doing it much like having a czar. It's it's
just one of those things that can't change until there's
a bloody revolution, so you know, I.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Guess or.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Anyway, So by the time World War One starts, he's
sixteen or so, and he and several fellow students set
up in a legal study circle, pouring over the works
of Marxist theory. Baria is treasurer of the group, and
in March of nineteen seventeen he joins the Bolshevik Party.
Now this only happens, he only becomes a Bolshevik after
the revolution gets that czar out of their hair, right

(27:20):
they wash him out. And prior to that point, Baria
is into again radical politics, but we don't have any
evidence of him participating in like armed revolutionary activity. So
right after he joins the Bolshevik Party, he gets conscripted
into the army and he's sent to the Romanian Front
to serve as essentially a combat engineer, right, I think
he's actually doing like hydraulic shit, probably to make sure

(27:43):
that troops have water, is as best as I can
term it.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Make sure this water only has the minimum amount of
colra necessary.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't what too little cholera, right,
Like you know, a growing soldier needs some cholera.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, it makes it strong, like one of those things.
It's like, there's so many episodes in that arc that
would make the world a much better place. If a
bullet sailed just like five centimeters to the left of
the right.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Oh my god, there's that sad, sad story about that
British sniper who has Hitler in his sights, and we
know this is true because like he remembered it, and
Hitler's like, yeah, I saw this guy get a beat
on me and the brit The brit was like, well,
the fighting was basically over. They were in retreat, and
I was like, I don't want one more boy to
die today. And you can't blame a man for doing that, but.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Motherfucker must have kicked his own ass harder than anyone else.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
It's one of those moments from history. It's like, what
is the lesson here? Kill more teenagers?

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Like never take mercy on your enemies because one of
them might be Hitler.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
It's like that woman who like stops Hitler from committing
suicide by trying to like talk him out of it.
And it's like, yeah, what what do you get from this?
Like where do you?

Speaker 2 (28:59):
Where do we? Where do we truide? Hitler puts her
arm rounders, like have you heard of betterhelp?

Speaker 1 (29:08):
Don't learn lessons from history people, That's the primary lesson
of this podcast. Ignore everything I say and get on
with your life.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Especially if you got a motherfucker at your crossairs and
he has a weird little mustache. You have no choice.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Shoot anyone with a mustache. That's that's really the lesson.
So by this point, when Barria gets sent to the
Romanian Front, Russia is you know, the Czar is no
longer in power, and the government that replaces it is
essentially democratic, right, this the Bolsheviks are not in charge yet.
This is not the USSR. It's kind of a socialist

(29:41):
democratic state. It's not a very functional socialist democratic state, right,
which is right? Yeah, And this is the Caucuses, so
things are even like a little messier. But this ailing
new democracy is still fighting the Tsar's war, right, which
is a bad call. There's they probably should have done something. Besides,
it's continuing to fight World War One. It seems like

(30:02):
a like a like an easy uh self, like an
easy own goal. It's like, you know, it's really unpopular
or that drove revolution. I have I have an idea.
What if he keeps doing it? Yeah, let's keep throwing
down with the Germans.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
If we beat him at another generation of our men
into a grinder to make some kind of multi ethnic mush.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah yeah, great, great call. So it doesn't go well, right,
and there's going to be a Bolshevik revolution, and we're
all familiar with kind of the broad terms of this,
and this is when Barria kind of gets involved. Right
during this this very chaotic period, he becomes the Bolshevik
revolution party representative for his military unit, because all of
the units have like effectively these unions, and his is

(30:46):
a Bolshevik one. And when the war finally ends, he
moves back to Baku, where the Bolsheviks are now ascendant,
and the rest of his Aerbijan, I think it's still
more Menshevik, but like Baku, the Bolsheviks are really starting
to pick up a lot of steam. And he gets
a position on the staff of the head of the
Baku Soviet of Workers Deputies. Right, so he's he's it's
kind of just because he's known as And this again

(31:07):
makes me think those things about him not being a
good student are not accurate. He keeps getting positions that
are kind of high despite not having much experience, because
the stuff he's doing is always like he's the treasurer,
he's organizing, he's doing like bureaucratic shit because most people
don't want to do that, and he's got that kind
he's got that, he's got an organizer brain. Right, he's

(31:28):
good at organizing, like like departments in shit, and he's
willing to do that kind of boring but necessary work
to lay the grounds to like actually have a large
organization that does shit. And that's why he keeps getting
put in positions because like most people want to do
the sexy stuff, and Barry is like, I'll do the hard,

(31:49):
bullshit paperwork stuff. It's not bullshit Like.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
That's that's the key to power is doing the stuff
that nobody else wants to do and doing it well. Well.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
Again, I say this a lot. This is also the
story if like Chochescu, if you overthrow the government and
are running a revolutionary party and there's a quiet little
dude who doesn't say much but he's always taking on
bullshit work and you know, really helpful. Shoot that guy
immediately immediately, you.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Know, he volunteers to run the people's DMV. Take that
motherfucker out back immediately.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, exactly. That man needs to end up in a
fucking quiet little grave. So this was not an auspicious
time to be helping to run the Baku Soviet because
with Russia, you know, breaking out in revolution, a lot
of people are like trying to take advantage of this,
and one of the people trying to take advantage of
this as a result of the war is Turkey, right,

(32:40):
and Turkey's like, maybe we can have a little Azerabashan
as a treat. So they invade and they wind up
in charge of Baku for a little while in nineteen eighteen.
They are not in power there long because spoiler after
nineteen eighteen, the Ottoman Empire doesn't do great.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
No, it doesn't do very well, man, but they sure
did a lot of damnfull they finally died. They shared it.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
They went out like they went out like heroes if
heroes are constantly fucking up everything around. They went out
like a dying empire. I guess it's probably better.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
To say so.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Pretty soon, you know, the Turks are back out, and
the Bolsheviks kind of wind up in quasi power. You know,
they have a lot of power in the city. After
the Turks leave, they're not in absolute power, and they're
kind of fighting with another party for actual control of
the city. Now, Baria, being young enough that he's not
yet well known in politics, is picked to be a

(33:34):
mole for this party, the Musabat party that are kind
of have turned themselves into the primary opposition of the Bolsheviks,
and they are to this day the oldest party in
a Aerbijan. Still they're gonna They spend long periods of
time kicked out of the area, exiled, a lot of
their people get killed, but they still do exist. And
Baria being you know, a pretty young guy, and being

(33:57):
this dude who he's had some prominent roles, He's got
some trust in the Bolsheviks, but he's also not a
face man, right Like, he's somebody that is not super
well known personally, is picked as a perfect mole to
infiltrate the Musavut Party. And I'm going to quote from
that write up in Global Security. He worked as a
clerk at the Caspian company White City, performed various assignments

(34:18):
trapped underground. In the fall of nineteen nineteen, Berria joined
the counterintelligence of the Committee of National Defense of the
Azerbaijan Republic. Subsequently, this period of Barrie's life caused a
lot of rumors. It was said that he consciously worked
on the Azerbaijani nationalists and even was an agent of
the British And you'll basically get claims that he was
working every side of like the political conflicts in azerba

(34:38):
Jan in this period. He's some people will say he
was actually a Musavut agent, like spying on the Bolsheviks.
He was a Bolsheviks spying on the Musavuts.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
He was like.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
Spying for the British on everybody. There's no real evidence
for most of that. I think the likeliest thing here
is that he is spying for the Bolsheviks on the
Musavut party.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
I do love that a Georgian guy is like a
hardline as Azerbaijani nationalist.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah. Yeah, he's like he's going hard for that, which
like spoilery, he's not at all in the Zerban nationalist
He is going to kill a lot of Zerbashani nationalists
along with a lot of Armenian and Georgian nationalists. That's
going to be his first real big gig for the
US is what's happens.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
When you give someone from the Caucas's power over the Caucases. Yeah,
because nobody hates us more than we hate ourselves.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yeah again, much like Texans exactly. So if you read
more casual articles about Barria, they will all note that
he's a member of this anti Bolshevik Musavat Party and
calling them anti Bolshevik is like not entire It's close
enough if you're getting like a broad summary of what's
going on there. But I think Amy Knight's biography does

(35:49):
a better job of contextualizing who these folks were and
what Burya did with them. Quote. The Musabat Party had
originally been formed in nineteen eleven to nineteen twelve by
a group of intellectuals associated with the RSDRP. It later
shifted ideologically to the right and became the party of
the Rising a Zherbashani bourgeoisie. After a period of cooperation
with the Bolsheviks and Baku, during which they supported the

(36:10):
Soviet the Musivitists increasingly opposed Bolshevik policies by late nineteen seventeen.
In early nineteen eighteen, they had become the Bolsheviks' most
formidable rivals. In the autumn of nineteen nineteen, Berry was
assigned by the Bolsheviks to conduct counterintelligence within the ruling
Musovak government. So you have this party that is it
starts as an intellectual party that's pretty left wing, but

(36:31):
like social democrat right, and they're willing to work with
the Bolsheviks and Baku for a period of time when
kind of in the most chaotic post revolutionary period. But
as the Bolsheviks start to gain power and it becomes
clear that they are not willing to compromise or share
power with anyone else, the Musivitists, in part because they
represent a lot of people in the bougeoisie, but also

(36:53):
because they just aren't a one party state, increasingly reformed
themselves as an opposition party to the Bolsheviks, right, And
that's kind of what happens here. And again you can
find sources who say Barry is working with them legitimately,
and that wouldn't be so weird because he's an opportunist
and they are in power for a period of time,
so it's not impossible that he is. He's doing both that,

(37:15):
like he's really trying to hedge his bets here. He's
feeding some information to the Bolsheviks in case the Bolshoviks win,
but he's also trying to help the Mucivitists because maybe
they're going to win. And Barria is this kind of
like wherever the wind blows is kind of where I'm
going to try to make, you know, a place for
myself right.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
A few days old have now he would just work
for like the Young Turks Network or something. Yeah, like
that audience Capri failed, you just go work for Ben Shapiro.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
You know, he is one of these guys who like
would absolutely have made a hard right turn if that
had been the way to gain power, right. But the
Whites are never really like, I know, there's ever a
period where they're like winning well enough where he is
that he would have considered that right, But it does
kind of look like they're superiod where he's willing to
make maybe make his peace with the Musavits, you know,

(38:03):
if that's going to be who winds up in power.
But you know, we don't really know. And certainly the
Bolsheviks believe that he is legitimately spying on the Mucivitists
for them, right, And this is going to become a
problem for Barria right away because while he's going to
get a bunch of other gigs spying, you know, back
in Georgia, the Bolsheviks are going to keep using him
as a spy. In like nineteen twenty, not long after

(38:25):
this period, after the Bolsheviks win, he's going to be
tried by the Central Committee in his Aerbuzhan for being
a mucivitist spy, and the case is resolved in his favor.
But every time he gets in trouble within the party,
the allegations come back up because it's the easiest way
to like fuck with him, right, is to point out that, like,
well you did this at one point, we don't really
know whose side you were on.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
That's a good example of like how he becomes the
guy he is because he got picked as a spy
being disloyal or whatever, goes to trial, gets away with that,
he's like in the future, he's like, well, that's never
gonna have again.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah. Now, one thing that definitely suggests he was a
legitimate spy for the Bolsheviks is again they keep using
him as one. And after the Bolsheviks kind of gain
the upper hand in Baku, he gets sent back home
to Georgia to do some spying, right, And in Georgia,
into Blisi, the Mensheviks are in charge, right, they are
the dominant party when he gets sent there, and the

(39:22):
Bolsheviks are not cool with this, so they have guys
like Baria go among the peasants to try to prod
them into maybe overthrowing the government again and seeing if
that works out better for everybody. So Baria moves to Tablizi,
where he constructs his very first spying network. And Joe,
do you remember when you constructed your first spying network
to overthrow the government in power?

Speaker 4 (39:44):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (39:44):
I was but a young boy.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You make a lot of mistakes, right,
We all make a lot of mistakes when we're overthrowing
a political party. You know, it happens, and that's gonna
this is a messy period for Baria. I'm gonna quote
from Knight's biography here. Not surprisingly, he was soon arrested
along with the entire Bolsheviks Central Committee in Georgia. Thanks
to the efforts of the Georgian Bolshevik Georgi Sturia, Baria

(40:07):
was freed on the condition that he leave Georgia within
three days, but he remained adopting the false name Lakerbea
and working in the Russian embassy. So he makes this
promise to leave, and then instead of leaving, he flees
to the embassy and he gets right back to working
as a spy to try to because this is the
Russian embassy and the Russian government is controlled by the
Bolsheviks at this point. I know, there's this is a

(40:29):
very messy period of time, right, this would have been
what the first Georgian Republic period, so right, yes, yeah,
And so he is hiding out in the Russian embassy
because that is a Bolshevik embassy, and still continuing to
work to try to overthrow the Mensheviks in Georgia, and
kind of right around this time, the Russian government concludes
a treaty with Georgia, but like most treaties between Russia

(40:52):
and a neighbor, it's more of a wink by the
Russians than a promise. The Mensheviks take their side of
the treaty seriously, though, and they free all of the
imprisoned Bolsheviks that who had just tried to overthrow the government,
and they even make it legal for the Bolsheviks to
have meetings and publish newspapers. Again, the Mensheviks are really
this is again another lesson, don't give anyone the benefit
of the doubt in a revolution.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
You know, yeah, someone tries to overthrow the government, maybe
you like keep him.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
In prison, right, yes, maybe this is relevant in the
United States.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
I've never read anything about our recent history. So when
the latest Bolshevik plot to take power is revealed, because
they try again, Barya gets arrested again and he goes
on a hunger strike, but it's like one of those
he skips dinner hunger strikes, you know, it doesn't last
very long, and he gets sent out of Georgia on
a prison convoy. By August, he's back in a Zerbashan

(41:43):
and he gets back to being a student. He kind
of goes back to school for a while, and he
catches a side gig for the Bolsheviks, who at this
point are doing very well in Baku. But Lenin has
demanded at this point that Zerbazhan be brought over into
what's becoming the USSR wholesale and the Bolsheviks in Baku
start a serious effort to do just that. It's possible

(42:05):
that this is when Baria meets Stalin for the first time,
because Stalin is part of this effort that Lennon's pushing.
Gives a speech in Baku in November of nineteen twenty.
Now at this time, bury a specific job is Executive
Secretary of the Extraordinary Commission for the Expropriation of the
bourgeoisie and the improvement of working life. And they love titles,

(42:25):
They fucking love titles. That's too long for a job title, right,
And what that job actually is is he's taking shit
from like rich people in middle class people and theoretically
splitting it up among the working class. Now, how much
of that gets split up and how much of that
gets lost to rampant corruption? Well, it's a zherbash yet
you know thinks so.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
That has changed. Let's be fair.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
It's the Caucasus, right, it's heastern Europe again.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Thankfully, this no longer happens.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
It's a place populated by humans, so a lot of
it disappears into corruption. The Night Rights of this period
in his life, this organization was charged with forcibly seizing
property on behalf of the Bolsheviks rather unsavory business, and
Baria again was doing the paperwork. When the commission was
abolished in February nineteen twenty one, Beria took the opportunity
to persuade the Central Committee to support him in his

(43:15):
studies as an architect builder. He received a stipend from
the Baku Soviet, but only after a couple of weeks
the Central Committee made him abandon his studies to work
in the Azerbaijan political police, the infamous Cheka. And this
is when he becomes a secret policeman. And that's what
we're going to get to after this next ad break.
So be the secret police in your life and arrest

(43:39):
these products into your home.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Cop. Don't tell people to be cops.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
But cops of products, Sophie.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Is it a cop or is it a spy or
is it both? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Both, spy on these products. Whatever it takes to get
them into your home. You know, that's what we believe.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
Don't listen to him.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
We're back.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
So the Cheka are the secret police in Georgia and
the Jereberson and everywhere, right, and they're going to go
through several This is what ends up the different checkas
all eventually end up as the NKVD, right, which all
eventually ends up as the KGB. You know, this is
like a process.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Right. If there's one thing that Soviet Union likes more
than titles, it's changing those titles arbitrary.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
God, so many, I'm going to call them the Cheka.
For most of the period before like Barria is in
Moscow and the USSR is fully settled, but they go
through some different names, right, but it's generally everyone still
generally calls them the Checka at various points because they're
still the secret police, right, whatever titles they're picking. Right,
this is the position where Barry is going to truly

(44:50):
shine because the first big task the Bolsheviks need from
him is to overthrow the Armenian government. Now, Joe, have
you ever tried to overthrow the Armenian government?

Speaker 2 (44:58):
I cannot legally answer that question.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
It's a whole thing, right, it's this we gotta do stuff.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
Did I make it this long of life without knowing
Barrier was involved in the overthrow of the first Median republics?

Speaker 1 (45:12):
Absolutely? Yeah, And of.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Course he came from Azerbaijan to do it, God damn it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Well at this point he's coming in from Georgia, but
through but through Baku. Right there in the.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Mix, they're in the mix there.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Yeah, it's clear. So there's a lot that you have
to do to overthrow the first Armenian Republic, and Barria,
along with several of his colleagues, put together different plans
for how they might make this happen. Right, And it's
one of those things where like there's a lot of
like different pitches, and Barrias is kind of the one
that winds up being the the kind of basis for

(45:47):
the plan they eventually And I've been.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
In a lot of writers room and I feel like
a writer's room with Lavrenti Berry would be the worst
one ever. It is.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
It's a terrible writer's room. He's always suggesting fucking bottle episodes.
So Barrya's boss is a guy named Mirkafar Bagarov. He's
just a twenty four year old who's in head of
the Baku Cheka. He's got a reputation for brutality, and
he likes Baria because Barrya is willing to do fucking anything.
He is perfectly willing to get his hands dirty. So

(46:16):
at twenty one, Barria gets promoted to be Bagarov's assistant.
And this is, you know, the start of a fairly
rapid series of promotions. Because people are killing and dying
so rapidly, it's easy to move up if you're really
willing to kill, you know. And it's interesting. Bagarov is
kind of the only guy other than Stalin maybe that

(46:37):
Barria ever works under without later overthrowing or killing. Right,
This is like one of the very few people who
is Barrya's boss that he does not murder or otherwise
help to destroy.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
I wonder what the difference was, because it wouldn't be
like dirt, like Barria was more than comfortable killing people
who had dirt on him.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
Yeah, I think maybe truly friends.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
There's likes one friend.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
Yeah, they might have just kind of been buds. And
also I think it's that, like he knows Bagarov is
never really rising above a certain level, so he doesn't
need to write. He kind of can leap frog over
him without fucking him. And it's useful to have a
guy like Bagarov who like owes you a favor that
you can, you know, trust. That's as much as.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Barry It's more likely than Barria having an actual friend.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Yeah, well like his one buddy. Now. Andrew Sangster argues
that Barria begins in the check a quote a lifelong
habit of intrigue against his own superiors and the hope
that he could destabilize them to his own advantage. His
next boss, Ivan Pavlinowski, pleaded at staff meetings for his
deputy Barria to cease intrigues against him. So like Dry
please stop plotting to overthrow me to it.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
Joh, stop it, O god, it's a complaint to have
in your employee record. Like I know personally, I have
never been publicly told at like you know, like the
firefighter's board or whatever by my captain to please stop
plot against it.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Please stop plotting my murder. You can't, you have to.
You can't do this anymore. It is really funny.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
You know.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
Again, the death of Stalin not wildly accurate to the
to the direct history. I do think it gets like
the broad strokes of the relationships pretty well. Yeah, but
the Armando Ynucci, the writer is also the guy who
did a veep and he did a show that Veep
is kind of based on that was based on UK politics.

(48:28):
I always forget the name, and he's like, I want
to see him do like a three season series about
the early Soviet politics and the Caucuses, because you could
make a wildly entertaining comedy about this. Like a lot
of people die, but everyone is such a piece of shit.
There's all so much backstabbing and overthrowing each other.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
A lot of fun, like a young Stalin treatment. Yeah, yeah,
like Coba.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
If you ever watched the there's a really good TV show,
The Great, which is about Oh, it's wonderful. Yeah, it's
one of what's her name, the great, uh fucking Catherine, Yeah,
the who's who's a czar Zarita Zarza. I always forget
the proper term when it's the woman, but she's fully
in charge and Zorena anyway, Zarena. But one of the
things that show gets really well and again wildly inaccurate

(49:18):
to the literal like steps of history, but it gets
really well the kind of constant backstabbing and like overthrowing
and shit in that that's a long time hallmark of
Russian politics.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah, and to its credit, it never even attempts to
be accurate and even says like this is not accurate
in like the ticker before the show starts every episode.
It's still fucking wonderful.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
It's fun, it's got got some got some great performances
by h Nicholas Holt, one of my favorite actors. Good
ship check it out, three real solid seasons. So Barria
is going to prove no less brutal to his colleagues
than he is to the citizens of a Zerabash and
Georgia and Armenia. Sangster writes, quote. The Czecka's main task

(50:05):
was to crush any counter revolutionary group, which was interpreted
with the whitest possible guidelines. It was a time of
festering chaos, distrust, in sheer brutality. In nineteen twenty one,
the Troika system was announced, which was a three man
committee empowered to judge and execute on the spot, and
Barria played a major role in such proceedings. In his
area of responsibility in his very early twenties, he had

(50:25):
become accustomed to having people killed, not in the front
line of war, but dragged off the streets or out
of their homes and shot in police cells. But so
much more personal though, Yeah, yeah, it really is.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
There's a difference between a guy who's, you know, seen
a lot of conflict and kills people in the trenches
of World War One, because that's largely impersonal, and you know,
a soldier's mindset is much different than a guy who's
murdering someone in a dank basement.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Yeah, you always you have, at least on your conscience,
like because obviously war focks people up, but like, yeah,
I shot some people because they were shooting at me,
as different from I pulled this guy away from his
family during dinner. This dude I'd worked with for years,
and I shot him in the back of the head.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Right that they can't fight back. They're in a damp basement, probably, Yeah,
a lot of torture has happened before this.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
Yes, and this causes a tremendous amount of paranoia, right,
even among the winners in these conflicts, right, they they
It kind of breaks everybody's mind, right, and the atmosphere
grows paranoid enough that occasionally the right people are arrested. Right.
Sometimes that even happens off people.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
You'll eventually grab someone guilty.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
Yeah, and one of those people is Barria. Shortly after
his appointment to the Checke, he gets taken into custody
by the Cheka under suspicion of anti revolutionary activity. Now,
this was right, because he is executing a lot of revolutionaries.
But all of the people he's killing pretty much are socialists, right,
But this is not accurate in the way they care about,
and he is set free and continues to work killing revolutionaries. Now.

(51:59):
I noted a few times I'm not wildly in love
with any single source for these episodes, largely because trying
to do a biography. If a guy like Barria is
just this horrifying task, given how much disinfo is pumped
out in his lifetime, Knight's book seems pretty good. I've
definitely found a couple of conclusions in her book that
I've considered shaky. I like Sangster's writing, and I think

(52:21):
he's reasonably careful, but he also might be kind of
a weird right winger. Like just looking at his bibliography,
I don't see anything overly insane, but his book contains
like a casual Jordan Peterson quote. Oh yeah, so that
was one of the things. So I'm like, well fuck,
And I had like looked into the guy and like,
I don't see anything right. No, his biggest thing is

(52:44):
he's like obsessed with this guy. Yeah, he's he's a professor,
and he writes this book about Alan Brooke, Churchill's right
hand critic, like this this reappraisal of Lord Alan Brooke,
who's this World War two British military officer. Like I
don't know much about Alan Brook, but I don't see
anything that's like inherently crazy about any of this. So

(53:05):
I don't know. I just want to let you be
Jordan Peterson quote into worried man. Wait was that in
his book about Barrier?

Speaker 2 (53:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Yeah, yeah, were he like it's that is.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
The most.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Possibly be It immediately made me like backtrack and check
on a bunch of shit that I had. And again
I didn't run into anything that was like obviously wrong.
Most of what he said lines up with most of
what Knight said. And like again that was.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
Like like biography done in Jordan Peterson's voice.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
Right, yeah, the thing about Barrier, I didn't love it. Yeah,
And I've got like a couple of different quotes from
this or books that I use for this Night's book,
Sangster's book. There's another book called On Stalin's Team that
I use a lot later that's about like the whole
gang around Stalin. There's a little bit of the Stalin
hype house. Yeah, the Stalin hype house. So like I

(53:54):
tried to be broad with this, and again I didn't
catch Sangster just lying about anything, but you should. No,
you're not going to find any like perfect sources on
a guy around whom there's so much disinfo, right, and
broadly speaking, the two big I think the two big
things that you can argue about in terms of like

(54:14):
what kind of Guyberia was that you can support with
a lot of evidence. One is he was an absolute
psychopath and one of like the most unhinged, violent evil
people within the Soviet government. And the other is he
was as violent and evil as he had to be
to survive within the system, and he was a guy
who wanted to maintain power and was willing to do

(54:35):
terrible things to keep himself alive, but was not wildly
worse than most of his colleagues, which doesn't mean he's good. Right,
Those are kind of, broadly speaking, the two barriers that
you can make the case see both.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Yes, Like I can see those the caveat of being like, yeah,
he was surrounded by yeah, human beings. Yeah, but there's
not many people that rose to the the lengths that
he did this, so of union asterisk that we're aware of, Yeah,
did the things that he did on his own personal time.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yes, and that we will be talking about that later
as well. It takes a bit to build that because
a lot of that starts to happen. At least we
have documentation of the sex abuse stuff once he hits Moscow,
which we're not at yet right, So anyway, I just
wanted to like, FYI, you should know this about our sources.
You know, Area has layers like an ogre. Yeah, yes,

(55:31):
and so do his biographers. And speaking of sayingster you
get lines like this during a discussion of how Barria
and his fellow checkists abuse their powers that I found interesting.
Even modern day police officers and an open liberal democracy
sometimes querry the activities of their next door neighbors. And
it is understandable that in a ruthless society the sense
of suspicion and doubt increases exponentially. And what he's not

(55:54):
wrong in that, like, yeah, modern police officers abuse their
powers to spy on like women they're stalking and their
neighbors and shit all the time.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
Would hire Leventi Barry.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Yeah, it's that part of makes me think, like, well,
maybe the Jordan Peterson thing was like not evidence of
anything sinister, because he's kind of being like, modern cops
are terrible in a lot of the same way as
Barrio was, And I don't disagree.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
Actually, this is when those horrible moments, even the worst
guy in the world is right, you know.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
Not not in not inherently and unreasonable cabins.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
So many other quotes you could pick before you sit
al John fucking Peterson.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
It's you know, my dad likes Jordan Peterson. And my dad,
for the record, like voted for Trump once and didn't
the second time and now considers the Republicans to be
like a very unhinged and dangerous anti democratic, like anti
democracy party. But he still thinks Jordan Peterson's like he's
not on Twitter, you know, he doesn't see it.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
You have an opinion on the Chinese uh dick sucking
machines that pet Peterson.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
He didn't believe me when I told him that. So
you do have to keep in mind there are some
normies out there that like casually read Jordan Peterson's self
help book about and we're.

Speaker 3 (57:12):
Like across it a lot, like a lot of a
lot of on like when you when you meet somebody
like for the first time they and you ask them,
like what they're reading. A lot of times it's that,
and it's very innocent because they're not criminally online.

Speaker 4 (57:27):
Like we are, Like they just don't know or are
not focused on politics at all, and and they just
come across a self help book and they're like, Wow,
this is really interesting, and it's like oh, and then
you have to give them a bad news about him,
and you're.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Like, believes the Chinese government is harvesting come from prisoners.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
And actually, sir, did you know? And it also means
they haven't listened to an interview from Jordan Peterson in
the last several years.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
It's they have it's this the book, same thing. I
have some like friends who are not online and fairly
nice people who like listened to Joe Rogan ten years
ago and are like, yeah, he seems fine, and it's like, well, yeah, yeah,
Like how much is it worth arguing about this?

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Like I myself was the first podcast I ever listened
to is Joe Rogan, And you know, I listened to
it for a fair amount of time until like Brett
Weinstein and shit started coming on and I was like, ooh,
this is this is too fucked up for me.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Yeah yeah, So I don't know. I haven't listened to
Sangster's podcast appearances, but like I haven't run into anything
at least in his bibliography that makes me think he's
like clearly insane. But people should be aware of this
caveat so even within the checkup, Barria is controversial. He
was accused of repeatedly convicting the wrong people for political
gain or plain mean spiritedness, and for allowing actual political

(58:53):
enemies of the New State to escape. Right Like, he's
constantly letting people who are actually trying to like bring
back the monarchy to get out of jail and executing
like socialists who had fought against the czar.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
When you put when you put so much resources into
taking out your own political opponents, you kind of missed
the broader spectrum of actual political opponents.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Right right, And in between executing and arresting basically whoever,
he engaged in some light pedophilia. All right, Yeah, there
we you go. We're not getting into like the most
problematic stuff, but this is bad. He first met Nina
Gagechkory age sixteen, through one of her relatives, who was
a prominent Georgian Bolshevik. He had spent this guy her

(59:35):
Her relative had spent time in prison with Baria and
apparently told Nina, hey, I was locked up with this
weird murderer everybody scared of. He should go on a
date with this guy. I mean that's how I met
my first wife. Sure, right, you know who wouldn't take
that that bitch.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
I mean so yeah, I say, you know, it's one
more thing he hasn't cobbled with Stalin.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Yeah girls, instead of his his online dating profile. Instead
of like holding up a fish, it's this like bloody dude.
He shot in the back of the head, like you know,
thanks to a pickup truck once again, Yeah Texans and
his quotes from Jordan Peterson. So they go on a
date or whatever, and Barria proposes soon after, and when

(01:00:18):
they get married in nineteen twenty one, she is still
a child. Now we get different accounts of what I
don't know, if you'd call you wouldn't call this a
meet cute, But we get different accounts of how they
actually meet, and none of them are from flawless sources.
One story comes from Stalin's daughters, Fetlana Alilujeva, who was
a bit of a mess herself, although it is hard
to blame her for that, right Stelen is her dad.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
You get some grace from me for that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
She claims that Barria visited Nina's village when he was
promoted to the same job that he did for the
Checka in Baku, but Intoblisi, Nina came to him to
beg for her brother's release.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Barria had arrived in a special train, Nina entered his
car and never again saw her native village. She was
carried off her beauty, having caught the police boss's fancy.
He locked her up in a compartment. That was how
she became his wife. Now that's a pretty horrifying story.
The timing of Barry's actual promotions with when we know
he met Nina doesn't quite match up. Now, it's it's

(01:01:14):
very likely, in fact that Svetlana might have the broad
strokes right, but have gotten some dates and stuff wrong.
You know, wouldn't be weird, Sangster notes. Quote the story
Stalin's daughter relates probably grew from the possibility that they
had eloped on Barry's train. Despite his sexual predatory nature.
The marriage lasted end quote. She remained in love with
her charmer for the rest of her life.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
How many people get whisked away in their own personal train,
you know, right?

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
I mean that is pretty romantic if you discount all
of the horrible things.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
You want to get on my murder train, baby girl? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
Yeah, who doesn't Who doesn't want to murder train? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
I know? I could go for a murder train, so
I have to settle for a public train. Sucks.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Yeahs no, no, no, there's cameras. It's fucked up.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
So Amy Knight provides a different accounting of events. She
notes that Barria met Nina when Nina was fifteen, and
Nina comes to visit her relative in prison when he's
locked up with Barria. Baria, from prison is enraptured by
the beauty of this child and remains obsessed with her.
When the Bolsheviks take Georgia, Nina moves to Tableisi with
her adopted family, and Baria becomes a regular HouseGuest. Quote.

(01:02:22):
Nina was still young and a lighthearted schoolgirl. She once
carelessly joined other students in a demonstration against the Bolsheviks,
despite the fact that she was living in the home
of a prominent Bolshevik. She later recalled in an interview
given when she was already in her mid eighties how
on that occasion she came home soaking wet because the
police had sprayed the student demonstrators with water. Sasha's wife, Mary,
was furious, threatening to whip Nina because she had expressed

(01:02:45):
opposition to the Bolsheviks. One day, Barria stopped her on
her way to school and asked her to meet him
later for a talk. Nino agreed, and when they met,
barr a proposed marriage. She recalled, We sat on a
bench Lavnti was wearing a black topcoat and a student's
service cap. He told me that for a long time
he had been very taken with me. What is more,
he said that he loved me and wanted to marry me.
I was sixteen years old at the time. And so

(01:03:06):
that's the version of events that she would later give,
you know, Nino would later you see it both as
Nino and Nina. That's the version that she would give, right.
And in this version of events, which like, I don't
know which of these all of these are bad because
she is a child in all of these, her recollection
of events is that like, yeah, he kind of like
sweeps her off her feet, right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
No, did romantic hopeless romantic romantic Baria. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
Now, in this version of events, Barria wanted to go
to Belgium to study oil processing for the Soviet government,
but they wouldn't send an unmarried man, and she agrees
to marry him because it's better to have one's own
family than to live in someone else's, which is not
an uncommon story that like, and again you have to
think this is a different time. She's like living with
her parents and under her dad's roof and is like, well,

(01:03:53):
I would rather be the number two person in my
household than.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
A child in my household. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
So you know, I'm not trying to give Barria any
slack here, but like that's her recollection of why she
makes the call.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Right sixteen for the era wouldn't have been too out
of pocket or anything.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
It was not the norm, but it was not something
that most people would have considered really problematic either, right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
It's not like, you know, like the story about Stalin's
underage mistress is much more glaring because I believe she
was either thirteen or fourteen.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Yeah, thing, and He's there's a lot going to be
a lot more problematic shit about Barrier, underage people and
just women in general that's coming later.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
This is the most the most innocent thing about him,
because at least it was romantic.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
But at least that's how Nino recalls it. Right now, again,
I want to really emphasize every variant of the story here,
including Nino's agrees that Barry had deliberately sought out a
child bride, right, calling the pedophile very fair.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Yeah, yeah, I take back what I said gross.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
Her version of events is that like, I was down
because it meant more freedom for me, basically being number
two in a household as opposed to a child, which
again that's what she recalls.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
And she gets to go to Belgium, who doesn't.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
Tragically, Baria never winds up visiting Belgium. This just doesn't happen.
In late nineteen twenty two, he gets transferred to to
Bleezy as part of a plan by the Bolsheviks to
make their suppressing suppression of outlying territories seem less like
a foreign occupation by having locals do the mass murdering
of dissonance. And again this is part of why Svetlana's
account that he kidnaps her on a train doesn't quite work,

(01:05:34):
because they have already met by the time he's made
head of the Cheka, right or deputy head of the
check or something like that. There's a lot of different
titles he goes through, so by this point, although still
pretty young, Barrya's personality is fully formed and his driving
motivation seems to be the desire to improve his own
situation through cunning and brutal violence. He becomes known for

(01:05:56):
such quotes as, when we Bolsheviks want to get something done,
los our eyes to everything else. Never a good sign,
good way to do some mass murdering, I always say,
Sophie will tell you. That's my catchphrase. Baby podcasters are
the same way.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Georgian nationalism was still a major force in the area,
which threatened Soviet plans to unite it with the Zerbazan
in Armenia as a single block within the Greater USSR.
Barya is tasked with crushing this desire for independence. Mensheviks
are also murdered in moss and by nineteen twenty two,
mass graves had become a common sight Sangster rights. During
these early years, Barra proved to be cunning and proficient

(01:06:34):
at seeking out and killing the opposition. Whole families and villages.
People with the same surnames or the slightest connections were
murdered by the Checha and the army. There was no mercy.
It amounted to thousands upon thousands of victims of his
own participation in these crimes. Barya would later write whatever
cruelty that the checha had to carry out receded in
my youthful conception at the time into the foggy distance,

(01:06:55):
and I pictured only the difficult, dangerous obligations in the
name of humanity's happiness. This is accurate also to Sam
Bankman Freed, who recently got sentenced to twenty five years
in prison. If you can't tell anyone anything that I
do is justified because I'm doing it for the happiness
of humanity. Again, you gotta shoot them, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
You know, the one thing that really improves humanity's happiness
from my own personal experience is mass graves.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Yeah yeah, Oh my god, who doesn't love a nice
mask grave. You can have a picnic on them and
flowers grow wells green.

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Ass.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
People talk about the downside of mass graves all the time,
but never any of the benefits.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
You know, everybody's so negative all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
A couple generations later, free bones. Who doesn't like bones?
You know, skulls are expensive. I know, my skull guy
is fucking taking an arm and a leg out of
me these days.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
And you know, several generations, you know, thousands of years
in the future. Boom oil uh huh, that's right again.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
It's almost green Joe, you know, circ thinking, Yeah, exactly exactly.
You turn them from people who are using oil and
polluting to people who are generating oil.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
And natural energy. Baby mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
It's like a solar panel. So barius thoroughness earned him
the respect of Stalin, who was known to deport several
loyal Bolsheviks to the East for the crime of not
getting along with Barria. In one case, Barria asked for
a deported rifle to be recalled to Tablizi so that
he could beat the man for fun. Other gifts given
to Barria for his service in nineteen twenty two included

(01:08:31):
a gold watch for courage and a pair of Browning
automatic rifles, which is a legitimately rad gift. A pair, yeah,
a pair. Can't just have one, bar Man, you gotta
double down on that shit.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
Do you have barrier fucking bars at Kimbo, which is
like the ultimate version h fuck.

Speaker 4 (01:08:51):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
By the spring of nineteen twenty two, the Federation of
Transcaucasian Republics, which Barria and his colleagues had battered into
submission on Moscow's orders, was inducted into the USSR. As
a single entity. The actual road to this point was
so brutal. Again, they have to kill all of these
Armenian and Azeri and Georgian nationalists, politicians and all of

(01:09:12):
these like kind of middle of the road's social democrats
who had wanted their to want an independent Armenian or
a Zeri republics right or Georgian republics. You have to
kill all of these people, right. And this means that
like Barria and his colleagues are murdering so many people
that Lenin becomes aware of how many people have been
massacred to avoid and this isn't just to avoid them

(01:09:34):
entering the USSR. A lot of its people are killed
to avoid having them join the USSR as separate CAUCAUSUS
states right for whatever reason, this is important, and Lenin
gets kind of pissed off and he demands the check
US sees its violence in Georgia. Now, this is going
to be a pattern. Every time there's like a mass
purge that kills a shitload of people, whoever's running the

(01:09:54):
USSR will have to once it ends, punish the people
who did the massacre in order to lie try and
make the survivors not rebel basically right, because.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
Like Lennon is a guy who really fucking hated the Caucuses,
and even he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
Down, her, buddy, you kill how many people?

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
Come on? Man?

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
And I think part of why he's pissed is that, like,
he is aware that a lot of the people who
get killed were people who like made the revolution happen, right,
and then get murdered. Now by then, most of the
people who might have provided resistance to an ambitious man
like Barria were dead, and he used his position in
Georgia as an engine to repel, to propel himself upwards

(01:10:37):
into the hierarchy of the USSR. During this time, revolutionary
fervor was still fresh, and men like Barria were expected
to live somewhat experimental lifestyles in line with their radical beliefs.
Private displays of wealth were frowned upon, and Barria eventually
formally requested to share quarters with his boss because communal
living was seen as proper communist stuff. Again, yeah, horrible roommate,

(01:11:01):
he's planning to kill you constantly. Actually, it's a lot
like most roommates I've had.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
Yeah, that's fair.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
So he spends a significant amount of time with lower
ranking checkists, which historian antonov Osinko notes was absolutely to
spy on them.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
At first everyone trusted Lavarenti Barria completely, but upon knowing
him better, they were not able to be friendly with him.
He was a master of intrigue and denunciation like no
one else. He was able at the right moment to
unleash a nasty rumor in order to ensnare his rivals
on the weight to the top. Then he would persecute
them one by one. In doing so, the young Barrio,
whenever necessary, would convincingly play the role of a good

(01:11:36):
old chap, simple and jolly. That's how we remember him,
jolly old Barria.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
I always think of Laventi Barrias as a jolly old chap.
And then has this guy ever been in a room
with anyone he wasn't actively spying on?

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
Well, no, but you know who amongst us hasn't constantly
spied upon our bosses and subordinates in order to sophie
hey present company excluidedo.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
I have like three guys going through my producer's trash
as we speak.

Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
Normal stuff. Speaking of normal Joe, That's the end of
part one.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
Of four.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
What do you got for plugs to be plugged?

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
I am the host of the Lines of My Donkey's podcast.
We talk about military disasters, crazy stories from military history,
and also all around horrible shit, much like your show.
And I'm also a science fiction author. And you can
find my newest series, The Undying Legion anywhere that you

(01:12:40):
procure your books from.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Yeah, well, check out Joe's books, check out Joe's podcast.
And you know, get really good at digging if you
intend to get into revolutionary politics. You know, always good
to be able to dig a big hole. You know
a lot of things you can do with a whole
lot of things. You can put the whole.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
So the supervisors, you can put in the whole.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Supervisors, your boss, your roommate, your roommate boss, put them
all in the hole. That guy, problem's gone. Yeah, that
guy you dislike. That guy you like everyone. Yeah, yeah,
that's the number one person to put in the hole.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
This has been Behind the Bastards, Goodbye.

Speaker 3 (01:13:27):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast

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Stuff You Should Know

The Nikki Glaser Podcast

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Beria: Stalin's Pedophile Cop & the Soviet Oppenheimer