Part Four: Tzar Nicholas II Was A Real Dick

Robert is joined by Jeff May for part four of our series on Tzar Nicholas II.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
You know who else was over with star Nicholas the
Second Sophie. By the end of this episode, all of
the people in Russia, the people, they made their opinions
on him very clear. This is behind the bastards. The
podcast that is not particularly competently handled by me, but
is competently handled by my producer Sophie and our guest

(00:25):
on this beautiful, beautiful day, Jeff May Jeff, it's me.
It's me. Aren't you people sick of me yet? No? No,
never get sick of you. And but you know who
I am kind of sick of as like Sophie said,
Nicholas the Second of Russia, Nicholas Romanov, ready for him
to be dead? Huh, we're all there will be a

(00:48):
four partner because you need to understand the position of
the Bolsheviks, who also were like kind of wish this
guy wasn't around anymore. Yeah, Like all we did is
just talk about him. Yeah, they had the living with
them for a long time. Yeah. So I think maybe
we can all understand why in this period after the

(01:08):
Russo Japanese War, increasing numbers of people are like, well,
we probably had to kill that guy at some point. Huh. Yeah,
he should no longer have hit. You know, he has
a fist that I would like to shoot in basement.
He is a man that they no longer should be
living and definitely not the ruling large country. Unfortunately for Russia,
they would not get better at picking people to lead

(01:29):
large country. It's pretty much like it hasn't been downhill
since Nicholas, because as we've established he was he was terrible,
But it hasn't been uphill. It's just kind of been
like this flat plane of Russian history. Russian history is
a series of lateral moves. Really, it's it's one of
those things we could try to like you can try

(01:50):
to parse out who you think was like Worstan objective terms,
the ussr or Zist Russia. But it's like they we're
going from a good system to a bad system. They
were like going from all right, I've I've eaten a
lot of food out of his drunk dumpster filled with poop.
Now I eat from trash. Can see if better? And
no it was not. It was not much better. You know. Um.

(02:12):
One of the joys of this episode for the listener,
Jeff is going to be hearing you do a much
better job of a Russian accent than I do. I
don't know. I always think I'm good at stuff and
then I hear it later and I'm like that sounds
like shit. Yeah, that is also somethings are Nicholas the
second probably could have identified with. I thought it was
a lot better at running Russia than I turned out
to be. I did not expect to have my head

(02:33):
get cut up. Who knows, you know, it's you win
some youel lose something. I mean, he kind of keeps
his head. Um, he just doesn't get to do anything
else with it past a certain point. So one thing
we didn't get to last time but should probably talk
about now is that is a part of his attempt
to put down the rebellion. Nicholas does give Russia a
constitution on October seventeenth, nineteen o five. So he cracks

(02:56):
down brutally, kills a shipload of people, um allows programs
to occur across the country. But he does be like,
all right, you get your duma, you know. He he
agrees that you get to have like the Russian people
get to have some representation government. Now all right, all right, fine, fine,
we will let you speak after I shoot thousand w

(03:17):
you get to vote. Um, it is good trade, good
trade because he's the autocrat of Russia. In the documents
that like announced this constitution, it's framed as the czar
imposing civil rights on the people, like I am forcing
you to have rights. Now, you better believe you are
going to live rights. Um. But they do get a

(03:38):
bicameral parliament. One of the houses of parliament has like
pretty full representation of the people who get to vote
with kind of close to universal suffrage um. And the
other house is kind of like a House of lords.
Situation was a little bit less representation, but it's a
lot more than people had before. Like it is it's
one of those things on objective terms, Oh yeah, this

(04:00):
is a big move forward towards democracy in Russia and
towards like a more representative you know, social uh and
political system. Um. But Nicholas doesn't really take it seriously
because he doesn't think he should have had to do this,
Like he hasn't been convinced this is a good idea.
He just tried to bribe people with it. And he
spends the rest the next several years basically anytime things

(04:22):
happen that he doesn't like he dissolves the Duma UM,
and he like makes there be elections for a new
one until he gets his way, and he's kind of
plotting to get rid of it from day one. He
is not he isn't bought in on this as a
good idea. Part of his comeback plan after the Civil
War and the horrible disaster um in fucking uh with

(04:42):
fighting Japan is to create a far right anti Semitic militia. UM.
He had kind of a far right anti Semitic militia
in the Black hundreds, but those were very organized. They
did a lot of economic damage to He wants to
do a better job, you know, he wants his proud boys. UM.
I was gonna say. Yeah. Also, something that we have
seen similarly, it is uncomfortable how many of the things

(05:04):
in the story of Russia, the Czaris, Russia falling apart,
are like, all right, well that's not that, that's not
that unfamiliar. We had one of those like the other day.
Oh yeah, that's going on right now up in Canada. Okay.
So this, this anti Semitic militia he forms is called
the Union of Russian People, and it was kind of
a political and respectable equivalent to the Black Hundreds. By

(05:27):
nineteen o six, it had three hundred thousand members. In
the wake of the Revolution, Nikki grew a lot more
anti Semitic, as did Alexandra, his wife, the Czarina. Simon
Montfior writes Nicholas's table talk was peppered with anti Jewish banter,
typical of many a European aristocrat of this era telling
his mother how a courtier amused us very much with

(05:47):
funny Jewish stories, wonderfully good at imitating Jews, and even
his face suddenly looks Jewish. That's pretty cringe. Yeah, that's
a that's one of those things where you're like, I
don't know, man, this is this is even beyond it's
the times. Yeah, we're like, yo's the time. But I
think even at this time people would be like, man,
it's not no, he is and like again his he

(06:07):
A lot of his ministers are repeatedly like the the craze,
the sex crazed rapist monk is like cool it with
the anti semitism. Maybe calm down a little bit. When
rest Boutin is like sitting you down, we need to
talk about some of the things you're saying. People are
starting to talk, you will not look um. Alexandra regularly

(06:29):
would talk about quote rotten vicious jews um. After like
someone would say the name of someone which sounded like
they might be Jewish, um, she would like call out whenever,
like so she would have all these arguments with her
husband about like the ministers say to do this, and
she doesn't like it because the ministers were usually saying,
you need to give a little more power to the people,
you need to not be so anti semitic, YadA, YadA,

(06:51):
and Alexander would be like, no, funk that you've got
to be powerful. Who said that? And he'll say someone's
name and she'll be like, oh, that's gotta be at
jew um, Like she's that kind of person. She sucks
too again Yeah, I was going to say, I think
you just say she sucks, yeah, because of her her
ending is so tragic and her children absolutely did not
deserve to be gunned down like that. Because of how

(07:12):
sad the end is. She gets this kind of rap
as being like maybe a little bit histrionic, but like
basically a sympathetic person and like she's trashed, terrible person.
She's a really really bad human being. She's a bastard. Yeah,
she sucks really bad. Um. Yeah, and racism was kind

(07:32):
of it was not this is not as we're talking about.
This is not in line with things because Nicholas Jewish
people are. This isn't just like he learned some slurs
and like he goes back to some some jokes that
are kind of racy because he doesn't really think about it.
Jewish people represent modernity to him, um, and that's the
thing he hates more than anything, because modernity is the

(07:52):
enemy of czarist power. Um. He saw he would stay
say stuff like the Englishman is a yid um like,
which is a slur against Jewish people, like to say that,
like yeah, really fucked up. And the reason he's saying
that is like, well, they're modern and they're successful and
they're they've they've they're not an autar like a monarchist

(08:13):
state in the same way that I am. Like people
have power, like they've they have modernized with the times
and mechanized and like that's gotta be Jewish influence because
that's the only reason people wouldn't want to live as
literal slaves to his are Um, he's just like out
of his mind, kind of which is what being a
king does to you. I think I was going to
go on kind of rude, Yeah, kind of, it's kind

(08:35):
of rude in December of nineteen o five and anti
Semitic forgery. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which
we have done several episodes about bad book. I would
I would say, Um, this gets published by the Petersburg
Military District Press, probably under the orders of Nikolasha, that
guy who cut his dog in half. Um and wit

(08:58):
who's his prime minister. There's as prime minister discovers that
the Interior Ministry is printing up the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion and like sending them out all throughout
nineteen o five and nineteen at late nineteen and nineteen
o six during these programs, and when he reports this
to Nicholas writes quote, his Majesty was silent and appeared
familiar with all the details. So there's a lot of

(09:19):
people who will allege that the Protocols of the Elders
of Zion, which have a big role in the Holocaust,
and a bunch of like all of the programs that
occur in Russia during the Russian civil war was deliberately
directed by the art that he like approved it. It
was definitely again there's a lot of kind of debate
over the exact origin of it, but it was definitely
spread by his secret police um. In The Last Czar,

(09:43):
author Edward Radzinski cites several people close to Nicholas the
Second who claimed that he did not create He did
not order the creation of the protocols, and he didn't
believe they were real. They were the result of a
secret police conspiracy within Russia. This like right wing conspiracy
that acted under the tsars no os Um. And in
this telling of events, this conspiracy was actually angry at

(10:04):
Nicholas because he didn't buy into the protocols of the
Elders of zion Um and he refused to back as
much violence as they wanted. I think this is kind
of a lie, and I'll tell you why. Because when
Nicholas gets kicked out of office and he's sitting it
alone in like a safe house with his family, one
of the things he reads his daughters and son is
the protocols of the Elders of zion Um. So even

(10:26):
if he didn't sign off on it, it's not exactly
like he's like, yeah, don't listen to it. I will
say I don't think he signed off on it specifically,
and I don't think he ordered its creation. And the
reason why is because that was a very competent job
that did a lot of damage and was successful, and
I don't think Nicholas could have been a part of
something successful. Is that a deleted scene from Anesthesia? Yeah,

(10:50):
where he helps spread the protoct where his his soldiers
spread the protocols of the elders of his zion to
cartoon bat Yeah where where while rest butan is like,
I don't know, man, it kind of seems like a
little like that might buy you a NYS. Yeah, the
bad guy breaks the fourth wall. We don't actually believe
these Disney if it was a Disney movie instead of uh,

(11:14):
I forget the company. I thought it was Disney until
this exact second. Yeah, many people do. But if it
was a Disney movie, that scene would have been in it. Yeah,
um yes, and that would have been most of the movie. Yeah,
resputing would have been the villain, but for a different reason. Yeah,
that's the That would have been the thesis statement of
the movies. Um. So, by the end of nineteen o six,

(11:37):
the royal couple had already met with rescput and twice
he gets introduced by nikolasha Um and they meet him
the first couple of times at like functions with other nobles,
because again he's kind of this like cult leaders slash curiosity.
So if you're having a party, yeah, bring Resputant because
he's he's both this healer and this mystic, but he's
also a peasant um and noble people are like fast

(12:00):
needed by peasants. There's a lot of like idolization of
of of peasants. There's this ideal of the peasants is
like this noble like salt of the earth, the soul
of Russia, and they have this sacred bond with the Romanovs,
that this this beautiful and like almost religious thing that
the Romanovs believe in, that they have this like psychic
connection to the peasantry, and all of the nobles feel

(12:22):
this way. It's not that different from how a lot
of multimillionaire conservative thought leaders like Ben Shapiro will like
pose with their f one fifties and cowboy hats, even
though it's like Ben, you've never needed a truck, You've
never needed a truck. Not once in your life. Are
you helping move? Yeah, And you've never needed a hat.

(12:42):
You don't go outside that often. And also that hat
looks like it's a twenty gallon hat on your head.
But you know it's like Ronald Reagan going to his
ranch or George Bush going to and like I'm gonna
chop some firewood, you know, I'm gonna put up a
fence or whatever. Like it's I will say this. At
least with Bush, he grew up ranching. He had more

(13:02):
experience with it than but a lot of these guys do.
And there's this idea that like this connects me to
the regular people. And it's kind of like how nowadays,
if you're kind of a right wing political leader, you're
gonna want a lot of appearances where you're gonna like
sit down with farmers and truckers and you can be
like seen with them or like a minor blue collar

(13:23):
It's it's blue collar tokenism, is what it is. And
there's a peasant tokenism within the upper crap class in Russia.
But also they're all too scared to meet with real
peasants because sometimes peasants like revolt and stuff and they're gross.
I mean, you know, for whatever reason, obviously occasionally I
don't go to go to a bar in any in

(13:45):
your hometown. Yeah. Just go to any bar, not the
night before Thanksgiving in your hometown and just take a
look around. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's that's what these people
don't want to do. So they want that connection with
the essence, but they don't want to like sit at
a sports bar at eleven thirty on November five and
like here the kinds of things people say at sports bars.

(14:09):
Let me tell you, I've been I've gone in my
fair share of Boston bars to watch like Patriots games
or something and been like I'm sorry, what was that?
You think we've heard some anti semitism today, dude, the
amount of times you can hear like the phrase like
one of the good ones, like well, I'm sorry, what
was that? So this is I mean, Resputant is kind
of this token peasant who the nobles. He shows up

(14:30):
at these and that, and that's how the Romanovs meet him,
is like look at this. He's both this mystic and
this healer, and he's also this peasant who represents this
this sacred connection that we we Romanovs justify our rule
by um. So they meet him a couple of times,
but the first really close meeting they have is in
October of nineteen o six when Resputant telegrams them. So
you can tell already even before he's in good with

(14:52):
the family, he's he's savvy enough and is like made
enough of a connection at these parties that like he
can telegram this arena directly. It's like having a cell
phone in the eighties, Yeah, exactly, Like what do you do?
If Resputin had been in the eighties, he would have
had a massive car phone and he would have done
I'm gonna guess his body weight and cocaine every forty

(15:13):
eight hours. He would have been an entire season of
Miami Vice. Yeah, and it would have he would have
died in a shootout with somebody. Um yeah, yeah, there's
a zero percent chance he does not die in a
swimming pool, like he absolutely machine gunned by the whichever
cartel isn't sponsoring us. Um yeah, So rest Mutant telegrams

(15:36):
the Zarnz arena and says like, Hey, I'm coming into
town and I have a sacred icon for you. Right. Basically,
it's kind of like a picture of a saint in
like precious metals and stuff icons generally in the Orthodox religion,
or just shitty paintings because you weren't supposed to make anything.
Look yeah, yeah, yes, that would be that would be idolatry.
He's got this shitty painting. He wants to give it

(15:57):
to them, um, and they're like okay, so they agree
to see him. And when he arrives, it just so
happens that Alexei has, like the czar son has like
hurt himself and his bleeding. And this happens a bunch
like he'll he'll like walk into a door knob or
some ship and then he'll bleed for seventeen days. You
see him like folding up his pocket knife and putting
it away. Something happened. So Resputon comes in and he

(16:22):
sees that Alexei's bleeding um, and he sees how scared
the Romanovs are for their son, uh. And he talks
with them for more than an hour and they take
him into the nursery to pray over Alexei. And this visit,
everything he says during it leaves this profound impression on
the r and Zarny they find him very comforting, and
from this moment on, Restputant is increasingly difficult to separate
from the royal family. The Czar will say to his ministers,

(16:44):
who get disturbed by the fact that, like Number one,
it's a state secret that their son has hemophelia. People
can't know that. But this, this dude who just like
who will He'll spend a day with the royal family
and then he'll go drinking and whoring in St. Petersburg
and his ministers will be like, this is a problem.
You gotta you gotta get rid of this guy, and
these are will be like, look, I will deal with

(17:04):
like any number of outrages caused by this dude doing
whatever he wants to do if he can stop one
like hysterical fit that my wife has. I mean, who
among us? Am I right? I mean? What? Seriously? Like?
I not even like I have. I have both been
the person in a relationship with fucking PTSD and been
in a relationship with somebody with PTSD. And man, if

(17:28):
if there was just a dude I could call and
he would stop one or both of us from losing
our minds for the better part of a day. Um, yeah,
I probably would have told that dude some ship, you know,
like yeah, man, I mean the the wife whisper and
just fix the problem. It's both because it's not just

(17:49):
he's able to calm down to the tsar arena. I
think he is able to calm down the tsar. Again.
These are for all their faults. People who really love
their kid, and their kid is like they have their
traumatized by this, like being your son several times a
year nearly bleed to death, Like is a trauma that's
going to like damage you. And it's it's also should
be reminded that reciput and is is charming. Yeah he's

(18:11):
good at this. Yeah yeah, like you know, he's got
a silver tongue. There's a reason he finds himself in
the situations he is. He's smart, he's charming. He fuss
that crazy and it's it's also like people shouldn't take
this he is. I think he is a grifter. I
think he knows there's an extent to which he's a
con man um. But I also think he recognizes that, like, well,

(18:34):
sometimes it is a good thing just to be able
to calm people down when they're freaking out, especially like
sick and scared children and like their moms. And I
can see how this guy could be like, well, actually
I'm doing a good thing here, Like these people are
are need me um, and they kind of do. Like
that's the thing he's not. He is a grifter. He's
not grifting them. They're really getting value out of this.

(18:56):
He is in a lot of ways. A lot of
people say, for this arena, he's like a therapist um,
which don't exist at that point in time. And that's
the closest thing. Yeah, is the Russian the turn of
the century version of Ms. Cleo. Yeah, And he's he's also,
it's worth noting, not really that bad an influence on
the Czar and Zarina. He will later on give them
some really stupid advice, but like he's they the Czar

(19:20):
comes up with worse advice on his own for himself,
you know, Like this is not a man who was
making great decisions consistently before Rasputin. So one of the
things he's able to do is he's really able to
like calm down Alexei. They noticed that Alexei seems to
recover more quickly um from his bleeding episodes when Rasputin
is around Um and he's he's he's great with the

(19:41):
daughters to like, they all love him, they'll talk to him,
they can fight in him. He brings them gifts. Um
Montfior Sebastia or Simon Montfior notes that Grigory Resputin had
a way of quote making even Tzars feel they were
privileged to be in his company. And from what I
can tell, the way he did this with Nicholas was
by playing on the fact that the Romanovs have this
belief in like the sacred union of Czar and the peasants.

(20:03):
This is the center of Nikki's concept of the universe.
The fact that Um like this is the center of
Nikki's concept of the universe, that he has this bond
with the peasants, but also the government that he runs
spends billions a year making sure that he's never in
direct contact with the peasants. So getting to spend time
with rest mutant, who he would regularly call a real
Russian peasant, that's how he would introduce him to other

(20:24):
rich people was like he said, like he's a transformer
or something. Yeah, yeah, we got a real peasant here. Um.
This is intoxicating to him because because rest mutants like,
of course I have a mystical connection with you, mis
are of course like I and every other peasant, we
really love you like and that's that's what Nicholas wants
to hear. He doesn't want to feel like, well, I

(20:45):
just had to kill fifteen thousand people to secure my reign.
He wants to hear that like, no, no, no, I'm
a peasant and trust me, all the peasants love your ass. Man. Yeah, man,
you didn't. You haven't been at the peasant meetings because
you know, obviously you can't be you twenty for seven bro.
I mean we're there's fan clubs, we have merch there's
there's people have you on t shirts? Oh yeah, and yeah,

(21:09):
it's it's it's it's cool. Um. So, he's he's both
able to be like this living embodiment of the connection
there has to the peasants of Russia, and he's also
able to convince Thesar that he has special powers given
to him by God which are going to save the
Czar's air. Um. So, I think Nikki felt on some
level that like God had sent this magical peasant to

(21:31):
him to like as a reward for killing all those
people kind of Um, you get that feeling. And you
know who else will reward you for killing people? Jeff,
some very interesting sponsors. And guess that's right, all of
our sponsors, Sophie. What yeah, um, you know in particular, Uh,

(21:51):
just send him proof of of the crime and they
will send you a free meal box, a free free
William refrigerator perry with enough flag points. Yeah that's right. Yeah,
So so get get on down to dot com and
also commit murder. We're back sated. Yeah, you've all, you've

(22:20):
all killed one person and gotten your female box. Have
you slaked your thirst for blood? That? One of the
things that all behind the Bastards fans know is that
when you draw your machete, you can't sheathe it again
until it's tasted the blood of an enemy whose death
gets you a meal box from. I mean, how else
are we gonna eat? How else we're gonna eat? Well, cannibalism.

(22:44):
But as Resputant grew closer to the Royals, their ministers
and the family grew to hate him. Um so like
the other Romanovs, like the cousins and whatnot, his uncles
and ship they are, they don't like this guy because
like they keep getting edged out by him. The ministers
don't like Rasputin because they're like, he's not listening to us,
He's just listening to this this dude who, by the way,

(23:07):
smells horrible and fox all their wives, right, Like, that's
that's the rest. I don't pay that. I'm gonna fuck
all your wives. Yeah, no, we've seen that guy. You've
seen We've seen him in college. He had to truly,
he played Djurido and he fucked everybody's wives. Um, and
that's that's Rasputin. So there's a lot of reasons he's
unpopular with the people around the romanovs um and his

(23:30):
Despite all this, his council becomes increasingly influential. Um. He's
generally anti war, probably because he's a pretty smart guy
and he recognizes, like, I got a good thing going here.
This dude's not good at anything. If he gets into
a war, he might wind up getting overthrown. And then
where's Rasputin gonna be? Also, Resputen lover or not a fighter?

(23:51):
I think we've estoundished. Definitely a lover, not a fighter,
although I gotta say, based on some of the stories,
probably would have been a good boxer. He could take hits.
I feel I feel like that very man's got a
strong chin. Yeah, the real fight of the century would
have been Grigory Resputant and Joe Frasier, Right, are just

(24:14):
the They just inherited that Russian steel jaw. Um so
he uh. Yeah, I should note something here, probably about
the kind of parents that Nicholas and Alexandra were. They
get a lot of credit historically because again they did
love their kids. Um. They put their kids sometimes before
the lives of millions and millions of Russians. Um. But

(24:37):
if you're and so, yeah, if you are rating totalitarian
dictators as parents, he's probably top of the list. He's
definitely a better father than Saddam, better father than Stalin, um,
better father than Castro, better father than you know, I
don't know, but char Alissad's probably a bad father. Yeah.
I mean his one of his sons repeatedly murdered people

(25:00):
at parties, would like machine gun the women dancers and
stuff during like drunken bachan als. That's not great parenting.
Was that was? Or that was? I think I think
that was? Yeah, I get him mixed up. Sometimes. My friend,
my friend was in the marines, and he sent back
this photo of him holding like a gold ak. Yeah,
and he was just like, we went into the pells,

(25:20):
look what we got. There were a lot of those
around at the time. Yeah, they sure were. Um so yeah,
they they're probably better parents than most dictators, but he
and his wife were not great parents. Uh. And I'm
going to read a quote from the Romanovs that I
think makes that clear. The Empress concentrated on baby sweet Alexei,

(25:40):
who was escorted by two Cossack bodyguards at all times,
while she treated her daughters, known by the collective acronym
O t m A or OTMA for Oga, Tatiana, Maria
and Anastasia as a single entity, dressing them in identical
clothes or when the older two could no longer wear
youthful dresses, in pairs the big two and little to
The girls shared rooms and twos slept on hard beds

(26:02):
and suffered cold baths every morning, so they grew up
without a trace of hatur. Their only luxury was a
single pearl and diamond for their birthday, and each had
their own favorite coutier sent The family, especially the girls,
embraced photography, taking thousands of family shots with their box
brownie cameras. Anastasia even pioneered the selfie sitting on a
mirror on a chair before a mirror, holding a camera

(26:24):
at her waist. So that's kind of weird, right, the
it seems unnecessary. Yeah, and to give them a shitty
it's like a shitty one unit. Yeah. Man. Cold baths, Yeah,
cold baths, which I don't know that the czar and
Czarina are taking. Um. And just also well, all of
the sun is his own person. All of our daughters

(26:45):
are collectively one child autma. That's a little messed up.
That is. That is especially because you could make it mote. Yeah.
And there's Alexei. As he grows up becomes kind of
there's some quotes that he's kind of he's pretty spoiled.
He doesn't sound like a pleasant kid to be around.
I'm not going to go into detail on that because
he is a small child who's sick his whole life
and then gets murdered. So I don't really want to

(27:06):
like dunk on Alexei Romanov. That kind of seems fucked up,
um because he had a bad enough run of it.
But I don't think they're very good parents. I just
think they're not abusive parents. Um, not to everyone, but yeah,
I mean to the people. Not they are, but yeah,
they're just kind of like weird and sort of shitty
to their daughters, but not in like a mean way.

(27:29):
I don't know. It's it's uncomfortable to me. Referring to
four girls as a single person. Um to save time
is kind of not great. I'm emblematic of a future problem. Yeah. Yeah,
that didn't get to happen because Bolsheviks had access to handguns.
But um it probably I don't know, there probably would

(27:49):
have been some fascinating therapy sessions if these people had
all like gotten to live out their lives. So the
Romanov girls were as much as as possible, pretty normal
kids for their socioeconomic status. Alexei didn't really get that
chance because again, he's dying most of his childhood. He's
gonna be in bubble wrap. Yeah, like anything could do it,

(28:11):
Like he could fun again, he could like walk into
a door knob and that could be the end of him. Um.
So it's it's a rough childhood for little Alexei, which
is why we're not going to dunk on him too
much for growing up kind of spoiled. It would be
hard not to spoil your son if he was always
on death store um. Yeah. And also the rightful and
to a sixth of the world's land mass. Yeah. Um.

(28:33):
A big part of resputants appeal is that he was
able to convince Nicholas the Second that Alexei was going
to live long and inherit the realm. He would say
stuff like oh yeah, ohya was what respute and called
Alexei will triumph because he's not an ordinary earthly being.
There's never been such a zar. The look in his
eyes is similar to Peter the greats. I mean, Peter
the Great was dead and Alexei was half dead, so

(28:55):
I guess that's part of it. No, this it's so hard,
Like every there were there's obsession with Peter the Great.
You either loved him or hate him. Yeah, And then
I mean, it's the night. It's the thing that you
can if you're if you're trying to get like these
are drunk on the possibility of the future. You try
to convince him that his son is going to be
a new Peter the Great, because then he'll that Peter
the Great was a strong tsar and he also didn't

(29:17):
die at age thirteen or whatever. Um it was a giant.
He was a big man. Um Alexei was not ever
going to be a big man. UM boiler alert. He
was never going to end up a man. Yeah yeah, yeah,
that that is. That is one of our classic Vladimir
ilioch Lennon spoilers. Um so ras mutant was also capable

(29:38):
of calming down the increasingly anxiety riddled, riddled hypochondriacts arena.
Nicholas needed this because in nineteen oh seven there's another
attempt at overthrowing his government. Now this one occurs through
the Douma UM and it's it's an attempt to democratically
take more power for the people from the czar. We
might call this the people of Russia being like, hey,

(29:59):
maybe we should have an absolute ruler anymore, because it
doesn't seem to work very well. Let's try and change
this a little bit. But Nikolai, yeah, yeah that. Nicholas
dissolves the government, He arrests all of the Socialist elected
leaders he can get his hands on. Um, he destroys
the Social Democratic Party through purges. Now Nicholas is Prime
Minister at the time. A guy named Stolypin begs him

(30:22):
to allow more democratic reforms and lift restrictions placed upon
the Jews. Um. Stolypin is the guy who's like, hey,
you know when the Tsar is ranting about Jews being
behind the over the revolution, you know, one day Stolypin's like, well,
I think if I was Jewish and had to live
under your government, I would be throwing bombs at your men.
To um, He's he's one of these occasional rational humans

(30:46):
who wanders into the Tsar's orbit. Yeah, then just just
drops a little piece of information, but it's just for
the wrong century. Yeah, it's not going to get through
the Tsar's head. Now is not the time? Yeah, Stolypin
season and the revolution coming, and again he's kind of
trying to head it off. He does. He's rational enough
to be like, well, the Tsar is not going to
wind up, is not going to be able to be

(31:07):
the absolute ruler fresher forever. But we can probably work
out a situation where he has some power and his
family keeps their wealth and influence and like doesn't get
murdered in abasement. But Nikki is not going to have
that ship. Uh Nicholas tells on my watch, keep my
family alive, not if I'm in Judge NICKI tells Stolypin quote,

(31:29):
an inner voice keeps insisting more and more that I
don't take this decision. So far, my conscience has not
deceived me. I intend to follow its dictates. The heart
of the czar is in God's hands, so be it.
So he's saying it's pronounced Soviet. Yeah, that's what's coming.
Was Soviet. Um. Yeah, he's like, he's like, me, keep
my watch, not on my watch. And he's also saying

(31:53):
that like, because I don't want to give up power,
and because God put me here, it means God doesn't
want me to give up power, which some could call
circular logic. Yeah, that is that is right there. That's
that's royalty one on one. Yeah. They do that ship.
They pull that ship off all the time. Sometimes you
get magna carted because of it, and sometimes you don't. Yep,
that is that is the way it works. Sometimes you

(32:13):
feel like a magna carta. Sometimes you feel like having
your family get massacred in the basement because you've got
everyone roped into World War One, which is what we're
about to talk about. Oops. So um. Yeah, and that
is h Nicholas, you could. It would probably be fair
to say Nicholas does not have as much guilt in
starting World War One as Kaiser Wilhelm Um, who's probably

(32:36):
the one dude who gets the most blame. Um, Yeah,
I mean, I mean you could. Obviously there's history involved
in that, but I mean you can. That's all the
way back to the Franco for sure. It's one of
those things Blaming any individual ruler is almost like because
they're all locked into these systems, these systems of alliances
and grievances and like promises to back one another up.

(32:59):
That like everyone was going to so mad that they
got their dicks pushed in the dirt. And then to
then have the treaty the Palace of Versailly where they
signed the armistice, the treaty, like that's so insulting that
like you you know that there's gonna I mean they
literally called it, yeah, exactly, And it's one of those things,

(33:22):
like there's a lot to say about like the the
decisions these guys made that made World War One happen,
but like if it had been a totally different set
of rulers could have happened ten years earlier. Ten years later,
Like I don't know, I don't know that if it's
fair to say it was. It had to happen because
they did pull their fat out of the fire A
bunch of times before this. There's like ship in nineteen

(33:43):
o nineteen o nine or whatever, like a bunch of
different things. Times this almost happens, Like there's this um
in nineteen o eight, there's this um like um Nicholas
helps arrange a revision of this treaty UM with Austria
that creates fheres of influence over the Balkans. So like
Austria gets to be influential over this because the Balkans

(34:04):
have been controlled by the Ottomans for a while, right um,
and they've kind of lost control in this period, and
like who's gonna wind up in charge your different chunks
of the Balkans? Is this big, this thing that keeps
threatening to cause a giant European war. So Nikki makes
this like treaty with the Austrians that splits up influence
over the Balkans um. And then there's this whole conflict

(34:24):
breaks out with the Serbs, who the Czar considers to
be basically Russians and the Serbs want to take Bosnia,
and the Austrians are like, well, no, this is like
part of our sphere of influence and like we don't
want you to do that. And so basically, this deal
that Nicholas has made over the Balkans with Austria goes
sour almost immediately, and Austria and Russia very nearly go

(34:45):
to war in nineteen o eight, which would have been
a World War One situation. All of those alliances were
still in place. So it's one of those things where
like they're right up to the shooting before this kind
of thing gets pulled off. Yeah, they're playing Jenga, Yeah exactly.
Gets at some point in time the tower is going
to go down. It's just when's it going to go? Yeah, exactly.
And the reason, the big reason why it doesn't go

(35:07):
this time is that Russia is in the process of
rearming and reorganizing its military after the revolution, and Nikki's
advisors are like, basically like, we don't we don't have
the toys you want. We just got our asses kicked. Um,
you don't want to get into a European war right now,
we couldn't handle Japan. Like give us some give us
some time. We couldn't hear we couldn't handle one island
that we were racist about. Yeah, we couldn't handle one

(35:31):
island we were racist about. Who had to ship troops
in um from overseas, and and you want to start
a war with all of Europe, Like, no, that's not
gonna work out, buddy, And Nicholas does take the good
advice uh in this in this time they backed down,
but there's this understanding that like, well, it's gonna happen. Eventually,
it's gonna happen. Um. So some things do go better

(35:53):
for Nikki. In the years leading up to the war.
He starts to appoint some more competent ministers, a guy
named Sukomlinov who arms the military and reorganizes it and
does get it into much better shape. Russia starts to
get some more money. Um, they like pay for this
rearming because they have this this run of really good
harvests and this railway system that had been one of

(36:14):
the few good things that Nicholas and his dad put
through was they they massively expanded the railways in Russia.
And in this period right after the Russo Japanese War,
that starts to bring up a bunch of money. Um,
So things are going better domestically for Nikki at this period,
but there's also constant scandals with rasputant Um letters between
he and the Czar, and he and one of his

(36:35):
daughter's leak, and particularly the letters with Resputin and Alexandra.
They really seem sexual. They're like talking about like I
went to lay my head on you. I can't wait
until you're back. And that's obviously like the rumor seems
mildly scandalous. Yeah, and it's unlikely. I don't like Rasputint
fucked damn near everybody. But he was also pretty smart,

(36:56):
and I think he would know like, well, that's the
one thing you don't want to do, like never put
it in writing. No, Well, yeah, I don't want Well
he did put it, I mean he yeah, he wrote
letters to her, But I don't think he would have
liked that's like too much of a risk to have
sex with the Zarna, because that's gonna piste off the zar.
You can keep Tisar going forever and you can fuck
everybody else's wife, but if you suck the Zarina also,

(37:17):
what if she gets angry at you? Right, you've got
this grift going. You don't want to mess that up
with starting a relationship. Um. I don't think he's that dumb.
I don't. I don't believe that that resputant and the
Tzarrena actually did anything, but a lot of people believe
they do in this period. Yeah, I mean yeah, And
it's it's like it it's just kind of like fuels

(37:41):
the anti Esarist you know movement that like okay, now,
like this this monk is in and and who knows
what kind of decisions the Romanovs are making because the
Tsars being concolded by this monk and um, his wife's German.
We don't like that either, YadA YadA, YadA. Um. And
well all this is going on. Um, So he gets Sputin,
gets kicked out for a while, right like these letters leak,

(38:03):
and the Czar does send him away um because he
he gets embarrassed by this. Um. But then in late
nineteen twelve, Alexei gets sick again and it's serious enough
that the priests do last rites on the little boy,
like they really think he's right about to die. Um.
So the Zarns are gonna get desperate and they telegram
rest mutant and he responds saying the little one will

(38:24):
not die and advises them not to let the doctors
bother Alexei too much. Um, and Alexei recovers and so
obviously that brings rest muting back into the family, right,
he just says, and he's get back in here. You
Harry's son of a bit. He does seem to have
an ability to like heal this kid like people at
the time. I can't really explain it. There's a number
of theories. Probably the most likely is that he would

(38:47):
tell them not to send the doctors back in, and
the doctors were prescribing Alexei blood thinners without knowing what
they were doing. And that's not good for if your
blood doesn't clot, you don't want blood vennings. You want
to blood thicker, Yeah, you want to thick it. You
want to put some like pepped in up in that,
you know, really really thicken that blood up, a little bit,

(39:07):
pour a little bit of corn starch in it, you know, um,
that kid of cornstarch ivy. That'll fix him. But so
there's a theory that like maybe all it's as simple
as like resputant doesn't trust doctors and the doctors are
not good at what they're doing in this period, and
so keeping the doctor's away helps him recover. It's possible,
you know what, to help An apple a day. An

(39:28):
apple a day, is that a blood thicker that is?
I mean, I don't know how many apples he eats.
He does eat a lot of guava jam that's brought
by John Hercules, friend, John Hercules coming back with the
guava jam to paste up those wounds. Yeah, it's fucking amazing. Yeah. Um,

(39:49):
So in nineteen fourteen, things are broadly speaking doing better
for Nicholas the second. The economy of Russias in great shape.
The military has reformed itself to a significant degree. It's
been going to gym. He had been going to the gym.
You know, he's lost some weight's little less depressed. He
got a he got a calm subscription too, So he's
on like a good level. Yeah. Yeah, he started taking

(40:10):
CBD just like at night. But it's really helped with
his sleep patterns. Um. He's just in a good He's
just in a good place. Um. And it's actually like
this is a period of time in which it kind
of seems to guys like Lennen that Zarism has won
Lennon writes like these letters where he's despairing in this
period that like, well, we almost had them in like

(40:31):
nineteen o five, but it seems as if they've they've
they've beaten us, and they've they've successfully you know, it's
gonna keep going another three hundred years. Like he's really
like kind of heartbroken in this period about Lenin. Yeah, buddy,
don't give up. Yeah, don't give up. Man. You're right,
You're almost there. Yeah, you're on the cusp. Baby, you're
right there. Yeah, you are going to get to do

(40:53):
some real, real ship very soon. Um. Yeah. There's a
one of the things that disappoints Lennon. There's this big
work strike and I think nineteen fourteen in one region
that gets put down by like shooting a hundred and
fifty people to death, and all of the socialists in
Russia are like, oh, we're gonna have another nineteen o five,
We're gonna have another revolution. This is gonna like spark
things off. Um, but nothing happens because everyone else is

(41:15):
like things are going well enough for the rest of
Russia that people are like, well, I didn't know those
people that he shot, so I'm not gonna stare things up. Yeah,
next time, don't get shot. Yeah. Speaking of not getting shot,
you know who sucked at not getting shot, the Archduke
of Austria. God. At least we've got a medium good
band's name out of it, which one Frans Ferdinand? Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(41:37):
of course, of course. Yeah. It's a history restaurant. You
know what, ads are about to happen. But instead of
listening to these ads, just put this, put this on
mute for a couple of minutes. Queue up some Franz Ferdinand.
Just just rock out for a little bit, you know, Yeah, yeah,
have some of you time we're back. So did you

(41:58):
enjoy that? That too? Was an odds eram I tell
you nothing gets me up like Franz Ferdinand. I liked them, Yeah,
I enjoyed them when they were I have no issues
with them. Um. You know who did have an issue
with Franz Ferdinand Kvrolo, Prince EP Prince Prince and the

(42:19):
Black Hand, Yeah, I believe, which he expressed via bullets
on June. UM. This makes everybody big mad. This is
a real problem for for for Europe. Um. And part
of the problem is that the Black Hand as you noted,
the terrorist group this guy's a member of had kind
sort of been trained by Serbian military intelligence. Now this

(42:42):
is the start of this is like a historical Rube
Goldberg machine. Yeah, like that's literally the first the first
like the coin going in this tiny dominoes start falling
and they end with um, the entire modern world. Uh yeah, yeah, exactly. Um.
So this is a problem for Calist because Serbia is
kind of like a satellite state of Russia. Right. The

(43:03):
Slavs are like cousins to the Russians, like we have
this the Southern Slavs are cousins to the Russians, like
we have this responsibility to the Serbs. Um. So his
government is giving aid to the Serbian government, and the
Serbian government trains this terrorist group that then murders the
Archduke of Austria, which is allied to Germany. Um. And
so like you know, things start to go awry. Um.

(43:25):
The Kaiser, being a very smart man, gives Austria a
blake check to respond to Serbia. Um. Russia is forced
to be like, well, will defend Serbia um, And France
is like obviously forced to say like, well, we'll come
in on your side, and the British are like, well,
we don't want to get involved, but the Germans say, well,
then we're going to invade fucking um, what is it,
the fucking the Belgium in order to get to France

(43:47):
and France up faster, and the Jury and the English
are like, well, if you invade Belgium then we're going
to get involved in the war. And pretty soon, you know,
just sitting here like, come on, we've been waiting for
this is great to great for us. There are many
Frenchmen already we have been waiting for this for like
what thirty years now is something like that, come on, yeah,

(44:08):
we'll smack your bit up. And that is there's a
lot of excitement among some people for this. Um. Nikki
kind of checks out for a large chunk of the
lead up to World War One. Um, he's on his yacht.
This is the summer, this is when he goes yachting.
So he's like classic Nikki, classic Nikki. He's on his
fucking boat when this is all going down. That's so Nikki.

(44:31):
From the Romanovs quote, Nicholas's decision to remain closeted there
is strange, even with his new phones, he was still
too removed. At the great test of his hard one autocracy,
the autocrat was barely present, leaving the initiative to Sazanov
in the generals. Now, none of these generals or ministers
are like all that good. Um. His Stolypin, the guy

(44:52):
who was like pretty smart, who was his minister for
a while, gets killed by a bomb. Um. Again, this
happens a lot, O know. He gets shot to death,
He gets bombed but survives, and then get shot to death.
There's constant terrorist attacks against all of his our's men.
You you, you mix them up sometimes, um, But he
doesn't have a lot of Nikki doesn't have a lot
of good people around him. Um. The generals want to

(45:13):
partially mobilize. Um, well, some of them want to mobilize.
Some of them want to partially mobilize. Nikki agrees to
partially mobilize because he doesn't want to like commit fully
because again he's kind of like this milk toast dude.
He doesn't want to He doesn't really like he's never
He's the guy who will get drunk and talk ship
but he doesn't want to throw punches. Um. But then
his generals will say we can't just partially mobilize. We

(45:35):
have to fully mobilize. We can't fight Germany without a
full military. So then he'll say we're going to do
a full mobilization. And then his cousin, the Kaiser, calls
him and threatens him, and then he reverses again and
goes back to a partial mobilization. But then his generals
are like, are you going to really take that ship?
And then he mobilizes the army um and yeah. As
he as a situation grows more serious and things get

(45:57):
closer and closer to war, the Czar gets overcome with
panic and anxiety. Rest Mutant telegrams his wife, who sends
this message to her husband. This is Resputin talking to
the zarins Arena. A terrible storm hangs over Russia, disaster, grief,
murky darkness and no light. You are this, our father
of the people. Don't allow the madmen to triumph and
destroy themselves in the people. Yes, they'll conquered Germany, but

(46:19):
what of Russia. Never for all time as a land
suffered like Russia drowned in her own blood. Great will
be the ruin grief without end, which is kind of
make you think he might have he might have had
a little bit of a bee line to something because
he's got he's no domin that ship. Yeah, that's not
a bad description of the next decade or so, well,

(46:40):
couple decades of Russian history, to be fair though, that's
pretty much a good forecast for most of Russian history.
If you know your Russian history, A good forecast is
grief without end. Yeah, grief without end. Storm clouds are rising,
well yeah, yeah, they've been here for quite some time now. Yeah, So,
long story short, we have a World War One. Um. Now,

(47:02):
Nicholas gets, you know, some blame for that because of
his decisions, but obviously there's not great options here. If
he'd abandoned Serbia, they'd probably would have been rioting because
it would have piste off the Russian right wing. But
a lot fewer Russians would have died if he had
abandoned Serbia. That part is that doesn't happen with war.
If you're not in a war, generally less of your

(47:22):
population population dies. Um. Now, the war doesn't go well.
There's a couple early victories against the Austrians, but then
the Germans get involved, and boy howdy, the Russian military
just cannot go toe to toe with the Germans in
this period. Like, I know that the Germans have an
interesting history. You know, their win loss record isn't particularly great,
but they generally have a formidable military. Pound for pound,

(47:45):
they're pretty good at fighting. And Russia learns this very quickly,
to the loss of several hundred thousand Russian soldiers. She's
like those helmets with point on head, they look very silly,
and then they just stabbed them with their helmet point. Yeah, which, yeah,
was the primary German tactic. It was extremely effective. Yeah,

(48:05):
it was. It was. It was very like you know
Looney Tunes ask a variation of fighting. Yeah, the pointy
helmet and the machine gun really changed warfare forever. You
know what it is. They saw they saw the human
cannonball one time at a circus, and they were like that, honestly,
isn't that far off from some of the things the
Kaiser did. So Nikki, when this war starts to go badly,

(48:27):
does the thing that he does when his own decisions
go badly, and he starts firing and reshuffling generals and ministers.
Eventually he decides the only way to turn this desperate
situation around is for the most competent man in Russia
to take personal control of the army. And of course,
in Nikki's view, the most competent man in Russia is
Nicholas the Second, So he this is gonna go great.

(48:50):
What he'd wanted to do this in nineteen o five
in the war against Japan and had been argued down,
And like, there's a wonderful counter factual, like what if
Nikki had sailed off with that fleet, you know, wound
up at the bottom of the sea, could have saved
everybody a lot of grief. Yeah, he's he's in the
he's in there and his yacht. Yeah, everybody else is
in their massive military Uh they're they're big boats and everything.

(49:12):
Like that's a big fleet and then just some little
schooner right next to it. Um. So yeah, he gets
his way. Um And yeah. Part of why he's convinced
that this is a good idea because again his ministers
are this time, like, you don't want to do this
if it's a bad idea for you to take. You
don't really know how to do anything with the military,

(49:34):
Like you shouldn't be handling this at all. But rasp
Mutant is like, well, Yeah. Absolutely, you've got to be there.
You know, your your God's chosen vessel. That's just the right.
You got to the picts, the people that are like
in charge of just like we've talked about this man,
he's taking personal command of the army. Why oh good.
The dude who fucked my wife said so yeah, that

(49:57):
guy that cut me last week. Co that's that's smelly
dude over there with the lice in his beard. I
mean he is. He is actively fucking my wife right
now as we're talking about this, just making eye contact
with me. This pre manson asshole over here is just
banging out my wife telling you to go to war.
Everything is gonna go poorly. Nick, Nick, Nick, stop it.

(50:21):
Somebody needs to have an intervention with him. Nick does
the thing that Nick does his entire life, which is
not listened to anyone who knows anything. And I'm gonna
quote what comes next from a write up in History Net.
When he left to take up his new heavy responsibility,
as he described it, Alexandra praised him for having fought
this great fight against the overwhelming consensus of advisers and

(50:42):
commentators for your country and thrown alone and with bravery
and decision you bravely. It's like you've got an electrician
over at the house, like rewiring something, and your wife's
like what, you're just letting him get in there. Why
don't you do that? NICKI go grab a four can
stick it in that socket. Fight the battle against the house. Yeah,

(51:06):
everyone's against you, but I believe you can fix this. Um. Yeah,
it's great, she continued. Never have they seen such firmness
in you before. God appointed you at your coronation. He
placed you where you stand, and you have done your duty.
Our friends, prayers arise day and night for you to heaven,
and God will hear them. It is the beginning of
the great glory of your reign. He said so, and

(51:28):
I absolutely believe it. I mean, this is where we're going. Yeah,
and rast mutant is just pouring that for him, like,
oh yeah, this is this is what God wants now.
Nicholas believed his presence would inspire peasant soldiers the quote
devoted souls, um, who he believed loved him. Um. Initially, uh,

(51:51):
this seemed to be the case because again there is
this like attitude that like, well the nobles are ship
but the czar is good. We do like the czar
loves us, he just doesn't know about the fucked up ship.
So like at first when he shows up in you know,
hanging out around the army, meeting the troops like this
is uh, kind of has a magical effect on so
it's really motivating. You know. Like even the generals who

(52:11):
are critical about this about him taking commander, like, well,
the soldiers do this really does make them happy. So yeah,
this really does like have an initially positive impact, but
it has this negative effect to which is that before
he takes command, if things go bad on the battle front,
it's some general's fault, it's some noble's fault. It's not

(52:33):
his fault. Now, everything that happens is his personal fault.
He's all you, baby, Yeah, it's all you. That's the thing.
When you take control. He wants the ball. He's like,
you know, he's like Jordan's he can give me the ball. Yeah,
the ball. I'm gonna continue with that quiote from History Net.
The Czarina's warped intrigues to strengthen the Ours resolve. We're

(52:53):
part of her campaign to make her husband a more
forceful person and essentially timid man. A picture of loving tenderness.
In their domestic life, Nicholas tended to stutter when facing unpleasantness.
His wife's shining ambition was to persuade him to rule
like Ivan the Terrible. The Emperor unfortunately is weak, she
had told the British ambassador when he questioned the decision

(53:13):
to change command. But I am not and I intend
to be firm. Okay, is this really the moment that
you want to have your courage found? Yeah, this might
be the moment to be like putting some of them
Jim's in a lockbox in Switzerland to get the family
out of the country. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe we'll do
the next but maybe like a small uprising is what

(53:34):
you want. You dip your toe. You don't dive in
the deep end. No, you know, you don't dive in
the deep end with like you don't want to start
your career as a military commander in the middle of
World War One, in the middle of something called the
Great the Great War, Maybe not a time for the
amateurs to like get up in there again. Recently, you
got your your ass beat by an island that you

(53:56):
were racist against. Yeah, do you think you're gonna like yeah,
and and and by the way Japan part of the world. Yeah,
part of the world. Um, who you have now started
a fight with? You have now a warred with? Yeah.
So in her daily letters and telegrams, Alexandra repeatedly urged
her husband to be stern. She seemed to think that

(54:17):
if he was displeased and enraged instead of gentle when
his generals failed and got a lot of men killed,
then they'd lead better. She's like, well, when they lose
this battle and a hundred thousand men die, you're not
being mean enough to them, because that is the problem.
You know, They're just not clearly the problem. Yeah, for
what it's worth. A lack of confidence and decisiveness was
one of Nikki's many shortcomings as a war leader. He

(54:39):
had one really excellent general, a guy named Bruce Lav
who several times carried out offensive offensives that would beat
back the Austrians and like open up. They would like
win such a big victory that it would open opportunities
to attack the Germans and maybe even make some major
gains because like, oh, this Austrian army just collapsed and
now we can get around the flank of this German army.
And every time Bruce a of does this Nikki fails

(55:01):
to give him reinforcements. Um, because he sucks at everything,
because he's bad at everything. Yeah, I think he's. Yeah,
he's he's he's bad at all of the stuff he tries.
I think it's important to say yeah. And he's unfortunately
trying a lot right now. Um. Bruce Alov later blamed
a lot of this on the royal attendants around Nicholas,

(55:22):
who quote failed to use the most decisive measures, including
even force, to dissuade Nicholas the Second from assuming those
duties for which he was so ill suited by reason
of his ignorance, inability and utterly flaccid. Will I do
like the idea of somebody just kicking the ship out
of him to get him. Bruce law is looking back
at the guys in the Kremlin, the other the dudes

(55:43):
in the capital and being like you should have fought
him to keep him away from the army, Like you
really literally should have fought him a kick his ass.
Someone needs to hit him and I cannot, but you,
he has cousins. He's not going to kill you if
you punch him. Um, stop this ship? Uh so Nikki,
Uh generally would lose himself in the day to day

(56:05):
tasks of of being in a military camp rather than
actually commanding, which is probably not for the worst. He
loved watching his soldiers in their splendid uniforms march around
quote the Supreme Commander's view of the war during that
Supreme National crisis was of maps with brightly colored pins
indicating true positions, and have picked regiments, some amazingly beautiful
and astounding, he enthused, whirling in review. His Stavka, that's

(56:29):
his command post stay became an enlarged version of summer maneuvers.
These are much enjoyed the reviews the reviewers were so tidy, clean,
cleanly and well dressed and equipped such as I have
seldom seen even in peacetime. Truly excellent. At least one
plan yeah strong, Kim John Eel vibes on this motherfucker
at this point time, while actively losing a war. Again,

(56:50):
it can work if nobody's fighting a war with you,
because you've got nukes. You know, it doesn't work so
well when the Germans are sixteen feet away. It's gonna
be rough. There's at least one case where a planned
defensive is delayed because he wanted to review the Imperial
Guard units that we're going to take part. He wanted
to see the march in front of him. Um, but
he couldn't do that because the Tsarevich his his son

(57:12):
was bleeding and so like, well, we can't have the
we can't have the offensive until they get to see
these guys march. And I got to take care of
my kids. So like, can we push this two weeks?
I need a post blood parade before war can happen. Yeah. Um,
not great as military things go. While the Czar is
playing with his toy soldiers, his real soldiers are dying.
In Titanic numbers, one and a half million Russians would

(57:35):
die fighting in the war and another million are still missing.
So you know, like something like that, two or three
million dead conservatively, probably another four million would be wounded.
More than one point three million civilians also perished. Uh.
The Tzar was mostly focused on the fact that he
missed his wife during this period of time. Um. So

(57:55):
that's that's great again, good to love your life, not
when you've just gotten like five million is people killed.
Maybe ignore your wife. You have bigger problems. I'm sorry,
but you do. I mean, who among us hasn't accidentally
cost anywhere from three to five million lives just because
you were I mean one time, but like I was young,

(58:17):
you know, yeah, we all have that sewing your wild
oats period. So when he visited field hospitals, Nicholas would
hand out huge racks of medals to his injured soldiers.
He was convinced they found this inspiring. One of his
generals felt otherwise, noting that those are quote did not
know how to speak with the troops and thus tended

(58:39):
to just not say anything. So he's just kind of
mutely handing medals to dying men, and they didn't. They
were not inspired by this. They were like, oh, this,
this seems weird. Maybe this guy shouldn't be a charge.
Does this mean I can stab you with these medals?
You've lost my legs, sir. There's this one wild moment
where there's this again. One of these few generals he
has who's competent General alexeiev Um, he's not a nobleman.

(59:01):
He's actually like a normal person who just rose to
command by dint of being good at things. Um, And
Alexandra fucking hates him because during this whole war, while
like millions are dying. She keeps trying to like give
noble boys who say nice things to her regiments to command.
She's like writing Nikki, like could you give this man
control of this regiment? I think he'd really appreciate it,

(59:22):
And oftentimes like rass Buten is like advising her of like,
oh yeah, give this regiment to this guy, probably because
he wants something. Um And General Alexeiev is like no
and tells these are like, you can't do this. We're
fighting a war. Your wife doesn't get to determine who
runs these military units from the capital. She doesn't know
anything about this, And Alexandra starts writing and he and

(59:44):
when Alexia finds out that rest mutant is behind a
lot of this, he starts telling this are like, you
can't listen to this, dude, and you have to stop
sending letters home across this vast expanse of country with
military secrets in them. It could end badly. Um, please
please stop doing that. Please stop doing this. Alexandra writes
her husband that any person quote so terribly against our

(01:00:05):
friend who's rest Sputin couldn't possibly be blessed by God.
And when he gets cancer in nineteen sixteen, she celebrates
telling her husband that God had sent him cancer for
disrespecting Resputin. Um. He's like the one dude keeping your
military of flow. Yeah, Like, there are two competent guys here,
and you've sat on both of them because they don't
like your friend to the priest who fox everybody's wife. Now,

(01:00:29):
by the end of that year, Nicholas is thoroughly broken
by the realities of war and by his own incompetence.
One of his noble officials noted that he seemed quite
apathetic and was no longer seriously interested in anything he goes.
He's a pathetic loser. Yeah, um yeah, so things aren't
going great. He keeps taking battlefield advice from rest mutant

(01:00:51):
um and um, yeah, it's it's it's just kind of
a disaster. Um. He Some of this advice, like in
June of nineteen sixteen, leads to this uh like failure
to support Bruslov again in the situation that causes like
what could have been a victory to be a horrible defeat. Um.

(01:01:11):
And this is kind of the fact that this goes
so badly and that it's so clearly the Tzaar's fault
sends his army for the first time to the verge
of mutiny. Soldiers start openly mocking him as the little
colonel Um, and protest protests and riots start to break
out in Russia again, just like in nineteen oh five.
Soldiers start joining revolutionaries, sometimes even handing over their guns. Um.

(01:01:32):
Everything gets really ugly. By the end of nineteen sixteen,
there's this conspiracy of Romanov nobles to murder rasputin Um
and they get the job done. Uh. This sends the
r into a tailspin emotionally, and by the start of
nineteen seventeen, Nikki's prime minister has to sit him down
and warn him that people hate him and his wife
so much that if he doesn't install a new government

(01:01:54):
he will be overthrown by force. This prime minister, a
guy named Brazianko, gives him some of the first good
advice he actually listens to. Sire, not a single honest
or reliable man is left in your entourage. All the
best have either been eliminated or have resigned. The Czar
responds by asking Rodzianko. He asks his new prime minister

(01:02:15):
like he has this moment of lucidity, and asks is
it possible that for the last twenty two years I
have just done nothing but funk up constantly, and God
bless him. Rodzianko, who is in all of our position
in this, says, yes, like you have. You have been
doing the wrong thing the entire time you've been Zara right.
He's just like, no, it's the children who are wrong. Nope, No,
it's you. You, you were wrong, you were wrong. It's

(01:02:37):
always been you and m The dynasty does not last
much longer. Alexandra urges him to fight to the last,
to rally troops crusted the rebellion, kill as many Bolsheviks
in the street as he has to do anything but
give up his power. She thinks he needs to prove
that he has quote the autocrat, without which Russia cannot exist.
But out in the streets, the people of Russia have

(01:02:57):
decided they don't really need a czar anymore. Now we
don't need to dial into the details of this. Uh.
There's other stories you can find, including the Revolutions podcast,
of what is actually happening in the streets. But on
March fifteenth, nineteen seventeen, Nicholas the Second abdicates the throne.
A broken man and I'm gonna quote from history at
one more time. Here quietly these are remark that he

(01:03:19):
had been born for misfortune, a notion many of his
subjects shared. Russians believed that the Tsars were either lucky
or unlucky, and that Nicholas fell into the latter category
for many reasons, including mass deaths caused by a stampede
of celebrance in his coronation and more deaths in nineteen
o five during the war with Japan. He himself, when
defending his faithful decision to lead the army, had reminded

(01:03:40):
an imperial cousin that he had been born on the
Saints Day of Job the righteous sufferer. Perhaps he reflected
a scapegoad was needed to save Russia, and he was
ready to accept his destiny. I mean to be the victim.
The czar had said, may the will of God be done,
which is some real narcissist ship to pull. Like yeah,
and so he was, He's doing this, born under a

(01:04:01):
bad sign ship, and it's like, no, dude, you did
you did this. You're not unlucky. You didn't. You're not
the scapegoat who is like sacrificing himself nobly for Russia.
You caused all of this, like you because I did
all this ship Yeah, um, yeah he's the guy from that.

(01:04:23):
I think you should leave sketch in the banana costume,
Like yeah, we're all trying to find the guy that
did that. Yeah, that's that. That is Nikki in this period. Um.
But you know, he abdicates a lot of people celebrate,
and you know the government um doesn't last a lot longer.
He initially gives it up to his m his younger

(01:04:43):
brother Mikhail, who becomes briefly the czar for like a minute. Um,
brief is the understatement of the century. Yeah, Michael is
a bit smarter than his big brother and like quits
pretty much immediately, like gives power to the newly formed
provisional government. Um. That that's his whole job at this point,
it's just like right off. Yeah. The Zar tries to

(01:05:07):
make one last speech as the monarchy has dissolved, to
his troops, asking for God's blessing and victory in the war. Um.
But the new government suppresses this speech because they're like,
we're not gonna win this war. Like, no, have you
seen Germany? They're fighting all of us and kind of winning, right,
now we're not going to squeak this one out. Yeah,

(01:05:28):
they've got cool boats. Yeah. Um. Nicholas was still insistent
upon the end that he was not hated by his soldiers. Quote,
my soldiers hated me, not they hated my crown and throne.
But once I was divested of them, they made no
accusation against me. What injustice have my people suffered that
I haven't suffered with them? And that is really unhinged

(01:05:49):
and inaccurate at the time he says it. It eventually
does come true because one of the things that we've
talked about, Nicholas has repeatedly had groups large groups of people,
including women and children, killed and and starved in order
to keep his government in power. He's been doing that
for twenty two years um. And now after he has

(01:06:09):
thrown out of power, his family is going to suffer
in a way that a lot of families in Russia
have been suffering under the tsars Um. They're going to
feel it. Yeah, he I don't think it's kind of
like obviously number one, a bunch of little kids get murdered. Uh,
so you can't feel good about that. And also I
don't think Nicholas ever realized, like even for a moment. Hey,

(01:06:32):
you know, the thing that's happening to your family is
the thing you spent twenty two years doing to anyone
who stepped out of line. Maybe you're a monster. He's
just not that kind of guy. No, And I think
nobody's really going to know. I think they're the bad guy,
even when they are clearly the bad guy. Yeah. Um,
and he he doesn't uh, he gets you know. He

(01:06:54):
and his family get moved around from one place to
the other. There's this provisional government under Kerensky and the
Bolsheviks eventually take over. There's the White Russians, these kind
of some of them are pro monarchists, a lot that
they're all anti communists. You know, they rise up and
there's this big war. This Zar and his family get
moved around a bunch, and they finally end up in
the House, the House of Special Purpose. Um. And the

(01:07:16):
reason why he and the other Romanovs are all massacred
because it's not just his family they killed. The Bolsheviks
round up all the Romanovs in Russia they can get
their hands on and execute them kind of one by one. Um.
You know, Lenin plays a big role in this he
certainly signs off on it. The Soviet of Uhlan. I
think it is like the regional Soviet really wants doesn't

(01:07:36):
want to keep these people alive, because there's debate between
Bolsheviks of like do we keep them alive or do
we kill them? The locals who are actually responsible for
like housing them want to murder them, and Lennon signs off.
Um in part because the White armies are advancing and
they don't want the Czar and his family to get captured,
and YadA, YadA, YadA. Um there's this again. I think

(01:07:58):
that the justified thing would have been to like, yeah,
let's have a you know, a trial, or if we
can't have a trial, just execute the Zar in this
arena because they committed a bunch of crimes. Um. But
instead they decided to shoot the entire family in a basement,
which is not justified. Um No, I mean that's not
fully justified. Yeah, killing Theazar and his wife fine, Killing

(01:08:19):
like a ten year old hemophiliac boy and like four
teenage girls is not cool. Um. That's how you stop
a batman from happening. Yeah, that is how you stop
a batman. Um. You know, like you if you don't
kill him, then baby, you got yourself a batman going.
You know, that's how they I think it is justified. Um.
Certainly like within kind of Bolsheviks circles, it is uh.

(01:08:42):
One of the things again we've talked about some of
the ways in which like popular representations of this are sanitized.
One of the things that sanitized is how fucking ugly
these killings are. Um. Yeah, people, I remember I had
gotten written up in when I was a teacher for
like being too graphic about history, about the descriptions of stuff.

(01:09:04):
And he's like, remember, like I didn't have the smartest
principle that I worked with. And he's like, remember we're
we're we're doing this like P it's PG. Think it
his PG. I'm like, in what world was history? PG? No? Um?
And it is important to note, like so the Czar
and Zarina die pretty much immediately when the shooting starts.

(01:09:24):
All of their kids have all of the diamonds, seventeen
pounds of diamonds sewn into their clothing and like they
act as body armors. So the kids survived the initial
flood of bullets. Um, isn't that isn't that just it?
The royalty even gets diamond body arms, diamond body armor. Yeah.
Um so one of the Bolsheviks then kills Alexei by

(01:09:47):
shooting him in the head. Um, but the girls are
still untouched. Um and I'm gonna read one last quote
from the Romanovs here. We set about finishing them off.
As Eurowski and Ermakov stepped over the bodies towards them,
they scrambled, ouched and covered their heads. Urowski shot Tatiana
in the back of the head, splattering Olga in a
shower of blood and brains. Next, the blood drenched Iermakov

(01:10:08):
kicked her, kicked her down and shot her in the jaw.
But Maria, wounded in the leg and Anastasia were still alive,
crying out for help. Ermakov wheeled round to stab Maria
in the chest, but again the bayonet wouldn't pierce her bodice.
He shot her. Anastasia was the last of the family moving.
Slashing his bayonet through the air, Ermakov cornered her, but
stabbing manically against her diamond armored bodice, he missed and

(01:10:31):
hit the wall. She was screaming and fighting until he
drew another pistol and shot her in the head now
berserk with intoxicated blood lust, burning Ermakov's fun back to
Nicholas and Alexandra, wildly stabbing first one then the other,
so hard that his bayonet cracked bones and pinned them
to the floorboards. One of the servants, Anna Diemidova, suddenly stirred,
Thank God, God had saved, God has saved me. Ermakov

(01:10:53):
stabbed her until she was silent. This is like, Okay,
so God didn't fully save, fully save um. This is like,
that's pretty It's one of those things. We've been talking
a lot about the brutality of the Czarist regime. Um.
The Bolsheviks rightly get a ton of credit for how
brutal a shipload of stuff that they did was. They
are about to kill a few million people, UM, through

(01:11:17):
a variety of ways, mostly through starvation. UM. But I
think you have to also see the brutality in this
killing as a as part of this cycle of violence
that has been present in Russia for forever and largely
exists to stop threats to the monarchy. Right, these you

(01:11:37):
don't murder as viciously as these people murder the Romanovs
do if you are not filled with hate. Lenin was
filled with hate because his brother is executed in eight
six for taking partner in a plot against the ar right,
Like you know how you know in true crime when
they're like, this was clearly a crime of passion. Yeah,
that's what we're seeing here, is like these aren't These
aren't summary executions of political enemies. These are passionate massacres. Yeah,

(01:12:03):
these are passionate massacres driven by generations of hate and violence. Um,
and it it it's it's you can't understand how things
get so much uglier for Russia after this point if
you don't understand how brutal and horrific Zar Nicholas the
Second's regime was. And that's why this has been a

(01:12:24):
great story, Jeff. Some could say, some could say a bastard,
and that's gonna do it for our epic four partner
on Czar Nicholas the second, the last romanov uh In,
A real dick, a real piece of it was. It
was so delightful spending a fortnite talking about this son
of this. We didn't talk more about Zar Nicholas the
Second than I have ever talked about Zar Nicholas the

(01:12:45):
Second before. That's fair, and that's that's about you know,
some of the stuff that I've you know, of all
the stuff I've studied, it's very interesting to see it
from that fresh perspective of like, you know, the last
time I studied this twenty years ago. Yeah, so like
it's nice to get that refresher of like, oh yeah,
fun this guy. Yeah, it's this. It's this weird thing that, like,

(01:13:07):
I think, just because we're so distant from them historically,
probably in part because of how horrible their end was,
we tend to put these guys in a different basket,
kings in general, in a different basket from like Stalin
and Saddam and Bashar al Assad and like dictators. No,
he was a dictator, Like he was the same dude,
you know, monarch be that. Yeah. Uh so yeah, good stuff.

(01:13:33):
Um well, Jeff, you got any plugable to plug? Well,
I I tell you what if if you if you
enjoyed our time together, which of course we did, you
guys should check out I have a lot of really
great podcasts that you would we would really like. Um.
I do a bi weekly interview show called Jeff Has
Cool Friends, or interview all of my very interesting friends. Uh,
and you can check that out Patreon dot com slash

(01:13:54):
Jeff May for early uncensored episodes with bonus content, as
well as access to shows like with Kim Crawl, which
is a great monthly podcast I do as well. You
can also check out Tom and Jeff watch Batman on
the game Fully Unemployed Network with Tom Ryman, who's done
the show before. Friend of the Pod, you guys know,
and then of course, uh, Pops and you don't even

(01:14:16):
like sports, both on the Unpopular Opinion Network and then
you know, Hey, I'm on the internet. Find me at
Hey there, Jeff row Yeah, I like to talk and
make jokes and things. Yeah, find him on the internet.
Tell him why you think we need to go back
to having a zar in Russia? You know, my monarchist
listeners get out there. You know, we kind of have one. Yeah,
you got your wish friends. Yeah, I was. I was, like,

(01:14:39):
we've had one since like two thousand and six. Unfortunately,
he's good at it. Oh, I mean he's a he's
a talented, very very good at being bizarre. Much better
than Nicholas the Second Jesus Christ. No, Nicholas the Second
was good at extending it a little, but yeah, boy,
he was you know what, he was fine at being
a czar. He was bad at doing all the stuff

(01:15:00):
stars have to do. Yeah, if he had, like ironically,
if he'd given the people what they wanted and become
like a ceremonial monarch, he could probably could have lived
the rest of his life as a very happy, rich person,
not dealing with stress. He owned a yacht like a motherfucker. Like, dude,
why do you need to be in charge of everything?
You suck at it? It seems miserable, like it's job.

(01:15:22):
You know, when you see these things where people like,
you know, something like Seinfeld makes like, you know, three
hundred million dollars or something like that, and then they're
like and then he's like, I gotta make a new thing.
I would be like, no, I'm I'm done. Yeah, I'm
done forever. I'm just gonna sunk off for the rest
of my life and my entire lineage will be set forever. Yeah,

(01:15:43):
it's the you know, the only person in all of
human history who's actually been smart enough to do that
is the MySpace guy from perfect perfect way to handle it.
You know, dude, he probably buy an island and just
take off six million dollars. You don't need to do
other things, like I can't go for the just get
out for the life of me. And I understand people

(01:16:04):
like we get bored. I'm like, I don't know, take
a painting. Yeah, like the the idea of people that
are just like, well, I just have to keep creating.
And it does make me feel like kind of a
piece of ship. Yeah, Like I think like if I
won the lottery, I'd be like, oh, I'm done. Just
not companies. It's like Bill Waterson, you know, retiring from
Calvin and Hobbs, He's still painting ship. He just doesn't
feel the need to show everybody because he's fine. He

(01:16:26):
made his money. Yeah, and he made that money, by
the way, without making merch, without selling out. Yeah. Who's
the who's the dictator equivalent of Bill Waterson? Probably poll
Pot Actually that's not a really positive one. But he
didn't sell out, you know, because I was thinking of
the other version around, who would be the biggest dictator
of um, the comic strip world too, That would be Schultz.

(01:16:50):
I was gonna say, Jim, David Jim, Yes, yeah, you're right,
that is the right answer. That is the right answer, right,
because he seems like he because he doesn't do the
work anymore, right, Like he doesn't know Jim kind of
like he's done with all of those like airport novelists do.
He's like Jim Patterson or whatever, James. You guys do
it like in comics. In comics when they have like

(01:17:10):
these superstar artists and then you find out later that
all they do is like draw the head of the
character and then like everything he has like a studio.
Some very famous comic book artists rarely touch pencil to
paper anymore. That's why I stand Derek Robinson. Derrick Robertson's great.
I love that dude. He's so nice too. Yeah. Um,

(01:17:31):
well fuck these are well, I mean he got fun
maybe yeah he kind of sucked himself. Yeah, yeah, that's
not he really this is this is really the funk
around and find out illustrated. Yeah, it's the funk around
and find out. And also your your children are going
to find out because you insisted on sucking around for

(01:17:52):
so much longer than it should have been obvious to
you to stop sucking around. But no funk around. Everyone
finds out. Yeah, and then there's no more romanovs um.
But at least we get to dunk on you on
a podcast that century later. It is funny. He was
so scared of being seen as a bad ruler and
he did all of the things that shared everyone now knows. Well,
that's the worst of the czars. Like that's the guy

(01:18:14):
who sucked the most at it. I would say Ivan
the Fourth still owns like the historical He's still got
like the gold medal as far as like history is concerned.
Because Ivan was efficient and good at the job Nicholas was.
Nicholas was inept, and so that's even somehow it's somehow

(01:18:34):
way worse. At least Ivan the Fourth was like unadept motherfucker. Yeah,
it's kind of like, you know, I have more respect
for a dictator who had to fight to become a dictator.
You know, Saddam Hussein had to Like he didn't get
handed that ship. You know, nobody was gonna nobody was
gonna give Saddam Hussein I rack. He had to take it.
You know, Nikki had taken a lot of stuff. Yeah,
he showed did he showed did Well. That's that's probably

(01:18:59):
enough for today. Um, come see us next week. We'll
talk about someone who is not czar Nicholas the second,
all right, look forward to it, and and uh, we'll
hope to come back someday in the future. Absolutely, all right,