Part One: Tzar Nicholas II Was A Real Dick

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Oh, it's Behind the Bastards again. The podcast that is
every week, but it's also this week, and we'll be
the next week until the heat death of the universe
or the end of my contract. This is a podcast
where we talk about the worst people in all of
history and folks, we got a banger for you this week,

(00:21):
and to help me deliver give birth to this banger,
the midwife of of several hours of of of Russian history.
Jeff consider right now, like I'm gonna get your hands
up in They're gonna get all do it really get
in there, just get all the placenta of information all over.

(00:42):
We do male placenta to every one of our guests.
Don't ask where it comes from that it's I take
it from my vitality. It is one of my favorite
moments traveling was in Japan, going to like a pharmacy
to get contact solution and stumbling onto an entire aisle
of placina based products, mostly horse um, but I had

(01:02):
not been aware that it was used for that until
that point. It was a fun moment. Are you gonna
get strong erna? Exactly? If you're not taking horse Place
center to get you going? That's why I run so fast. Yeah,
I run like, you know, forty five miles an hour
when I read now, Jeff, Jeff May, you are a
stand up comedian. You are also a podcaster. UM. You

(01:25):
do a podcast on the game Fully Unemployed Network Friends
of the Pods, Tom and Dave have both also been
on the show where you talk about Batman. Tom and
Jeff watch Batman. You also have the Jeff May Has
Cool Friends podcast Jeff has called Friends, Jeff Has Cool Friends. Um.
Anything else you want to plug up here at the top. Yeah,
I also do a show called You Don't Even Like
Sports with Adam Todd Brown, sports podcast for people that

(01:48):
hate sports, um, and which is most of my fan
base because I am a professional nerd specifically, as well
as you have a Batman podcast, I do. Well. It's
funny too because Jeff Has Well Friends used to be
a corporate podcast for a big nerdy company and then
we we split up, and I was just like, well,
I'm just going to change the name and keep doing

(02:09):
what I was doing. Mm hmm. Well, Jeff, speaking of
what you were doing, were you having a good day
up until this point? No? No, no, no no no.
For two years, that's that's good because we're going to
talk about somebody really unpleasant. How do you how do
you feel about czars? Well, I don't know. I mean

(02:29):
I think you knew this about me, but I am.
Before I got into stand up and this, I was
a teacher, taught world history, including Russian history. Uh. And Buddy,
let me tell you there's a few of them that, yeah,
you got a favorite, are or at least favorite. I mean,

(02:50):
I would say that if we're if we're going through
like the entire history of up since the inception of
the words, are up towards Nicholas the Second, I gotta
be honest. Peter the Great is fascinating to me. He
was pretty great because people were like, this man is
a seven foot tall giant monster that toward Europe and
came back and decided to just shave everyone's beards or
tax them on it. And that's just wild to me.

(03:12):
What a life. Yeah, Pete the Great's a fun one.
We're not talking about a fun one today, Jeff. You're
talking about the least impressive of the czar's Nicholas the Second.
Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And it's so it's one of
those things like there's this weird thing Americans kind of
have with royalty sometimes. Right, there's a lot of Americans

(03:34):
who love the British royal family FETs your thing, like whatever. Um,
there's a weird number of Americans thereout history who've gotten
really obsessed with the Romanoffs since you know, they were
all killed by the Bolsheviks. Right, there's like movies and
that's really comes down to, Right, it's like Anastasia. Yeah,
they got a bad rap and they It's one of
those things where there's this attitude people have. Obviously the

(03:55):
kids got a bad rap, right, kids never deserved to
be machine well gunned down by a variety of forms
in a basement. That's always bad. Um. But Nicholas and
Alexandra get who's the czar and the arena, get a
lot of like slack from people. They're they're nearly always
portrayed even when like they're shown to be incompetent. You

(04:16):
can't really show Nicholas is being anything but incompetent um.
But you know, like, well, he was a good man,
he loved his wife and his kids. He was you know,
he was you know, broken down by the weight of
this impossible job, and like he was a terrible person.
He loves a monster. I love what people are like,
he's a good person. He loves his family. It's like,

(04:37):
that is not the criteria for being a good person.
I hate to break it to you, but that's just biology. Yeah,
a lot of people love their families and manned concentration camps.
There's pictures of them with their kids outside Auschwitz. You know,
you know, you know. But he said, it's just a
horrible crap. Yeah, yeah, it's it's um. He's like, he's

(04:57):
he gets way more slack than he deserves. And this
is going to be an episode about trying to put
him in his proper context, because I think if you've
seen Nicholas the Second and Alexander accurately, they're like Bashar
al Assad, they're like Hitler, They're like like they're they're
real bad people who kill a lot of folks to
stay in power. They there's a reason that they finished
the way they did. Ye not for nothing. I think

(05:21):
we put Resputant, we give We were like, well, Resputin
was bad and he victimized these people. So yeah, and
it's one of those things where like if you actually
read the history, Resputin is not not the most objectionable person,
and in fact, there's times when he's the guy being
like boy seems like, yeah, I'm pretty anti Semitic. I'm
not down with that. It's this is I have a

(05:44):
feeling because obviously it's been a while. I've I've been
retired for almost a decade now, and i haven't been
in college in twenty years. But at this point in time,
like it seems like a story that's not going to
have a lot of heroes in it. No, no, um,
not none at all really now, um, And I think
that's that is really the overarching story when we talk

(06:04):
about like the murder of the entire Romanov family, when
we talk about the tragedies that came in the Russian
Civil War and the millions that died in that Um,
part of why everything was so ugly and so violent
was that the system that the Romanovs perfected over the
course of generations was inherently brutalizing, and when it collapsed,

(06:26):
there was nowhere for things to go but really badly.
I mean, that's Russia. That's Russia. Baby. Let's tell you
that there's so many there's so much retroactive like, well,
they did what they could they say things were different.
It was bad time. Yeah, you know what Ivana people

(06:47):
on giant frying pan. It's just what you do when
you have power. Is intense part of world. You know,
he's crazy. He did the next Siberia. Granted he killed
many people there, but he didn't exit. And you do
have when you go over to that part of the
world to have conversations with people. They are often very
phlegmatic like that where it's like, you know, it was

(07:08):
a rough time. Everyone did what they could. We tried
to do what we want, but you know, things that
sometimes your rule or cut your head off. There's nothing
you can do about that. You just move forward. It's
all like Russian literature is so depressing. Yeah, like all
the happiest stories are like and then he died in prison,
isn't that nice? Yeah, it finally was over. So UM,

(07:33):
I think we need to start by noting that because
number one, monarchy thankfully has has mostly passed um, although
it's getting its little resurgence in some areas. UM people
tend to forget how successful monarchism wasn't a lot of cases,
and how successful the Romanov version of monarchism was. This
is by by any reasonable if you're looking at this

(07:55):
as a historian, by any reasonable judgment of you know, success,
the Romanov dominated monarchy in Russia was one of the
most successful governments in human history. The Romanov family came
to power in sixteen thirteen after a civil war and
like ten years of fighting and stuff in the death
of the previous are and they stayed in power for
more than three hundred years. That's longer than the United

(08:17):
States has existed. This one family ruled Russia. UM. While
the Romanovs were in charge of the Russian Empire, it
grew consistently by an average of fifty five square miles
per day twenty thousand miles per year. By the end
of the eighteen hundreds and the events of the story
we're talking about this week, the Russian Empire ruled one
sixth of the land mass of planet Earth. Um. They

(08:38):
were good at this. I like how they're basically like
you can describe their monarchy like the blob. Yeah, I mean,
people are just like and then within three months look
at what we've predicted. It's like that scene in the
Thing where they used the apple too to show you
what's going to happen to the world. Yeah, yeah, that's
what That's what the Romanovs were doing for like a

(08:59):
couple of centuries without a whole lot of pushback that
was effective. You know, you get your moments. There's always
you know, military successes and reversals, but like they really
kept chugging along. And the benefit that they always have
is that, like, yeah, their military is usually not the
best or the most easiest to maneuver into place, and
their their navy, you know, waxes and wains and its efficacy.

(09:20):
But there's just so much Russia that that you never
want to start a fight with them. No, you never
get into land war in Asia. I think we've learned
that very specifically. Yeah, now, yeah, yeah, well, but before
they came to power, czar was more or less before
the Romanovs, um czar was just kind of an interchangeable
word for king, right, Like it didn't being a zar

(09:41):
wasn't wildly different than being a king and a lot
of other parts of like the feudalist Europe in that period.
But it means right, yeah, it comes from Caesar's same
root word as kaiser, right, Both kaiser and tsar come
from Caesar, which is you want to talk about having
an influence on history that used to just be a family,
Like that's the last name that became our by word
for billions of people for king. I mean, that's that's

(10:05):
influence right there, that's that's influenced baby's. Yeah. And actually
you could say czar has kind of had its own
journey like that because like especially, I think people say
it less now, it really in like the eighties and
early nineties, constantly you would hear like, oh, the president
has appointed a drugs are you know, someone to like
oversee the specific aspect of the government or a trade

(10:25):
gaps are or whatever. Um, So it's you know, the
Romanovs are really responsible for that because by the modern era,
being a czar is not like being a king kings
and most of Europe there's constitutional monarchies, there's limits on
their power. The nobles will hold. Even in a lot
of areas where there's not really democracy, it's still ceremonial
because the nobles are the ones in charge and the

(10:46):
king is more of a figurehead, um. And it's not
that way with the czar's and they are really um,
they're totalitarian rulers in a way that very few government
in history have ever really been. The czar is in
the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds very close
to an absolute autocrat um. That means no real checks

(11:09):
on their power, no real influence from the people. This
starts to change in Nicholas period, but um czars maintained
total power long after pretty much every other crowned head
of Europe has been either turned into a figurehead or
reduced to just another organ of the government. And that's
that's significant. That says a lot about what the Romanov
family valued that they maintained that kind of absolute power. UM.

(11:32):
You could probably argue that Russian the Tsarism was kind
of the most controlling sort of feudalism practiced on the
largest scale, at least in Europe UM, and you can
make a case for worldwide, because again it's a sixth
of the world's land mass. For most of the history
that the Romanovs are in charge, the vast majority of
people in Russia are serfs. They're pretty close to slaves.

(11:54):
They are bound to the land. They are kind of
the property of the noble that controls that land. UM.
And the way the whole system works is the nobles
maintained the peace in their little area, and they pay
taxes to the czar. In an exchange, the czar uses
those taxes to build an army, to take more land,
to exercise more power, and to maintain this absolute structure.

(12:14):
So these are let's the nobles have total control over
their little area, and in exchange, he's the absolute monarch
of the entire country. It's like an MLM scheme. Yeah,
it is a lot. I mean, yeah, feudalism absolutely is right.
When I used to teach feudalism, I used to teach
it based on like the kids working their desks. I
was like that, you're the surf, this is your plot
of land you have to work. I am your noble,

(12:36):
I have a noble my principle that I have to
answer to, and then he has a superintendent that he
has to answer to. And it all kind of like
you know, it's it's all. It's all a similar structure
to to most things. When you read break down what
feudalism is. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yes, we could talk
a lot about the way our system works, um, and yeah,
yeah that's that's a fair point. Um. But this is

(12:58):
obviously a more hints a version because you don't have.
You don't have you don't have the ability to like
move around. Um. And this is one of those things
that works pretty well when kind of everybody's doing it. Um.
As things modernize, you suddenly have this problem of like, well,
how do you industrialize if somebody is a part of
the land that they live on, as opposed to an
individual who can move to a city and get training

(13:20):
to be a machinist or um. And in fact, oftentimes
when zars were overthrown or killed and these are romanovs
was we're talking about, it wasn't because they'd been super brutal.

(13:41):
It was because they had used a mix of brutality
and like liberalizing things. So they had given people some
power and then not liked what they did with it
and like tried to crack down. And that often leads
to like the kind of upset that gets as are killed. Um,
it's not Simon Montfiore, who was a historian who wrote
a great book called the Romanovs um describes it as

(14:01):
like the problem a lot of Tsars have as not
being consistently harsh. Right, Um, that's the thing that will
get you killed as czar. And that's the thing when
you're a kid, if you're going to inherit the Romanov dynasty,
that's what's drilled into your head throughout childhood is you
have to be consistently harsh. Um, And it's a dangerous gig.
Six of the last twelve Romanovsars are assassinated in office. Um. Yeah,

(14:26):
that's that's not that bad. Yeah, Like I feel like
I could make it through, you know, yeah I could.
I feel like I could have been a great czar.
I bet I would have been. Yeah, I know I
would have been killed. Yeah, I don't think I would
have a great czar. I'm pretty chill. Yeah, so, like,
you know, I'd be like, you guys can do that.
You're gonna kill me, Okay, I guess I saw this

(14:46):
one coming. If the way I played video games with
confidence not a job for you, I think I'd be
a great czar. Hey, again, it's just consistent brutality. Yeah,
so Iphie would be better. Usually when tsars were assassin senated.
In fact, all of the times ours were assassinated up
to the modern period, it's never the peasants, right, There's
not that you don't have successful peasant revolutions in Russia. Um,

(15:10):
like not during the time the Romanovs are in power,
it's the noble. It's the nobility who murders them, like
it's someone sums are does something that pisces off these
nobles that are also powerful, and they kill the czar
and others are winds up in charge, you know, tail
as old as time. That's that's like that happens every
time you see some kind of assassination. It's very rare

(15:30):
that somebody bumps into an archduke or you know, successfully
breaks through the walls of the Imperial Palace or whatever.
Not counting you know, recent events in American history. The
populace will have access to people at that level. Yeah,
you do not, um. And in fact, part of why

(15:51):
Tsars actually really tend to be at least most historians
tend to think that the Csars were beloved generally by
the peasants. And this is because of the distance they
have it because the peasants don't ever get to see
this are really uh. They referred to him as the
literal the little Father Um God is you know, the
big Father Um and he was kind of this benevolent
but almost ethereal force because the nobles who ruled them directly,

(16:14):
were the ones they had issues with. Right, That's kind
of the brilliance of this system. All the peasants are
gonna hate the noble who's telling them what to do.
But the tzarre like you never see that motherfucker, Like
he doesn't know what's going on. Right, he make life
easier for you. But the nobles, you know, they got
to do their thing, and I'm I try to be
hands off. You know. Yeah, you actually hear this story.

(16:37):
If you read people talking about like like kind of
political discontent with the Nazi Germany. A lot of Nazis
would when when members of the Nazi high command would
do ship that like even Nazis thought was fucked up.
They'd be like, well, Hitler must not know about this, right, Like,
he wouldn't do this to us. He must just not
be aware of what's going on. Classic good guy Hitler, Hitler,

(16:57):
he just got again. I'm good. I'm doing I've been
paintings this whole time. Just Hitler fumbling with papers like
Chevy Chase at his desk. I'm just playing with my
my good German shepherd here. Why would I be doing
anything evil? Allav There's this very common phrase among the peasantry. Um,

(17:21):
that is the czar is good. The nobles are wicked, right,
so he is he is beloved. Often at least that's
what you're not getting Gallops, not rolling through the Russian
steps and being like how do you feel about this? Right?
There's I think and I do tend to think that
this is so consistent. I'm not gonna obviously, I'm not
gonna second guess a bunch of historians who write stuff

(17:41):
like this, but it's also consistent enough that I think, well,
the czar believe this, and maybe that's why that went
down in history, but maybe a lot of peasants would
have been like, well, actually funk that, dude. Yeah, it's
definitely you definitely see the cult of personality in situations
like that where you where you see you know, the
person that's on a annable up at the top, Yeah,
they're great. He's the champion. And the people that I

(18:03):
actually have to deal with our assholes. Yeah. And part
of why I do think this is probably still broadly
accurate is that you see this today, right, you see
a lot of like a conservatives who will be like, well,
I don't like this thing that happened under Trump, but
I don't like I like Trump, and like he probably
just like couldn't do anything about this, you know. Um,
it's just how human beings work, you know, like Russian
serfs and Americans in Kentucky or or California are all

(18:26):
the same people. Basically, they're just in different circumstances. Um
at the table, you don't know what's happening at the table, right,
And it's easy to just pretend that this guy that
you've been conditioned to like by a shipload of propaganda,
and there has a lot of propaganda. It's very easy
to just be like, oh, he's like God, you know,
like I don't have to think about him as a
person because he's not a person, you know, he's this

(18:47):
like semi divine figure. And there are really is they
would not say it that way. Desires did not pretend
to be divine, but they are chosen by God. Like
that's the whole thing about this. Are they are picked
by God to absolutely rule Russia. And so there's this
attitude that like if you question those are or if
people want to have input in their own ruling, that
is satanic because God has set down this this system. Obviously,

(19:11):
this happens other parts of the world, you know, the
Mandate of Heaven, YadA, YadA, YadA. Um. This is not
the only time this sort of thing happens. But what's
unique kind of about Russia is that up until the
modern era, the tzar is owns everything in Russia. He
is the personal owner of basically a sixth of the
world's land mass. Like, we can talk about who the

(19:31):
richest person in history was, it's almost certainly whatever the
last Tsar was, because he was the personal owner of
all of Russia effectively. Um, Like, it doesn't get much
wealthier than that, Jeff Bezos doesn't, can't pretend to that ship. Um,
And like, well, wealthy enough that when they tried to
gun down the Tsar's family, it was it took a

(19:53):
ton of bullets and a ton of time because people
bullets kept getting stopped by all of the diamonds sewn
into their clothing. They removed set and teen pounds of
diamonds from from the dead Romanov family. Um, they could
have done better. That's just what they could get out
of the palace, you know, Like that's how fucking rich
these people are. Um. Yeah, And so this is a

(20:15):
really totalitarian system um and probably the most totalitarian system
could be in an era before modern technology, and being
the center of that as the czar, like fox with
your head and I want to read a quote from
the book The Romanovs by Simon Montfior which describes kind
of how what this does to a person? Then this
is him kind of giving a broad overview of czarism.

(20:38):
All of the monarchs were dutiful and hard working, and
most were charismatic, intelligent and competent. Yet the position was
so daunting for the normal mortal that no one sought
the throne anymore. It was a burden that had ceased
to be enjoyable. How can a single man manage to
govern Russia and correct its abuses? Asked the future Alexander
the First. This would be impossible, not only for a
man of ordinary abilities like me, but even for a genius.

(21:01):
He fantasized about running off to live on a farm
by the Rhine. His successors were all terrified of the
crown and avoided it if they could. Yet when they
were handed the throne, they had to fight to stay alive. Yeah,
it's not good to be the king, like it really is.
Not all it's great to be a noble, it's great
to be like the younger brother of this r or whatever. Um,

(21:21):
you know, there's a lot like those guys get up
to some ship and exercise a lot of power. But
being the czar kind of, especially in the last hundred
years of the Romanov monarchy, is a fucking trash gig.
Some could say heavy is the head that wears the crown.
That quote me on that we could we could turn
that into like a soap brand. Yeah, don't google it,

(21:44):
just just take my word for it. Don't google anything
in this show as a rule. Um, we are the Google. Yeah, yeah,
we we did it for you. Don't need to learn
anymore than what we give you. That's part of what
makes it a good cult. Um. You know what else
is a good culture of the cult of personality. But

(22:05):
the cult of the products and services that support this
podcast all have cult followings, especially the Washington State Highway Patrol.
Real culty. Motherfucker's there. Oh we're back, So I'm gonna
involve myself and all those things. Yeah, yeah, it's during

(22:28):
the cult of all of those sponsors. So the thing
to keep in mind when we're talking about these are
is that this is a job people hate. It is
a job that like destroys you over time. It's it's
an incredible amount of like effort and labor you have
to do. You're the head of the church. Effectively, you're
the head of the military. You're the head of state,
like you're kind of the pope and the commander in chief. Um,

(22:52):
And like all of Congress at the same time, and
think about like like all of our presidents, even the
really really bad ones, uh, think of like what eight
years in office does to them, how much they age.
Most Czar's rule more than twenty years, Like like you're
out of your mind by the end of this. Yeah, yeah,

(23:12):
I mean that that that that has to be just
so like try doing two things. Yeah, when you're when
it was like when I when I started moving more
to podcasting, I'm like, well, stand up is going to
have to take a huge step back, and those are
both easy jobs. And I'm like, no, no, I can't
imagine if you had to do stand up podcasting and

(23:32):
reform the Russian military while leading every major state religious
service every single year. I mean I feel like I
could do that. I do feel like you could do that. Um,
especially given your experience reforming national militaries. Jeff, A lot
of people don't know this. You're the guy who reformed
the El Salvadorian military. Yeah, you know, I don't like

(23:54):
to brag, but yeah, it's just like it's a side gig. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know, everybody needs like stand up. Doesn't pay all
the bills every now and then you got to go
like overseas and you know, use a lot of US
AID money to arm paramilitaries. It's just what, you know, Yeah,
it's very it's a very Jeff of Arabia existence that
I'm having over here. Yet. So the thing about this

(24:17):
is like fucked up. As this is the system works
pretty good for like two hundred and fifty years or so,
um like time too as old at time, right, yeah,
we're dealing with right now. This formal government works pretty
good for up to yeah, up to but not past.
I've never when when when the Czaris system really starts

(24:38):
to show its age in a calamitous way. Is the
Crimean War which happens in like the eighteen fifties, and
this is a battle. This is some people will say
this is kind of like the First World War in
some ways, there's like five or six wars people say,
are the First World War, you know, um, but this
is like this is basically everybody and fighting Russia. Um.
And it's like Russia trying to take the Crimea, which

(25:00):
they took recently from Ukraine, but we're trying to take
it back then and like Turkey gets involved in the
British get involved in the French get involved. Um. I
think there's Austrians up in that bitch. Like it's this
whole fucking thing. Um. And it doesn't go really well
for Russia. It's it's a fucking disaster for Russia. And
a big part of why is that their army is
hideously outdated. Not just like their guns aren't modern. Um,

(25:20):
they don't have an advanced rail system in the country
so and they don't have like their navy isn't as
as nimble as it needs to be. So everyone's running
circles around him. You know, who needs a system. They're
such a compact and tight. There's so little Russia. Why
would you need ray Town, you know, That's what that's
what everyone says about Russia, the smallest country. Yeah, there's

(25:43):
five whole sixth of the rest of the world that's
not Russia. Come on, it's one is the smallest number,
that's right, less than one. So so this this is
a fucking ship show for Russia. Um, they kind of
get their butts kicked. There's also a pretty good poem
that comes out of it, Charge of the lie Brigade,
which which you know you can you can like or

(26:05):
see his problematic depending on how you feel about men
charging into lines of guns on horseback. I think it's
rad and we should do more of it, but other
people have different opinions. Crimean war, Yeah, so like, yeah,
I think we can give problematic a bit of a
bit of a push on something written years ago. Well yeah, um,

(26:25):
so yeah this is uh, Russia gets its butt kicked
and like that bums everybody out in Russia. Um. And
so there's this big drive to modernize, right every it's
it's you're kind of made aware of how flawed the
whole system is. And so Russia really rapidly industrializes, and
they do this by going hideously into debt to a
bunch of Western nations. And the Czar who takes another

(26:46):
tale is all this time right, yeah, everybody does this
ship um and the Czar who takes charge during this period,
he actually comes to power, like in the last year
of the Crimean War eighteen fifty five. This is our
is a guy named Alexander the Second and he's Nicholas's
and Paul. He's the grandfather of the Last Star. Um.
So he walks out of that war dedicated to reforming things.

(27:06):
And he's like a bold dude. This is not one
of those like Joe Biden kind of nothing will fundamentally
change guys. Um. Alexander the Second is a very courageous
person because it is not easy to make big reforms
in Russia. Um and the spoilers it doesn't end well
for him. No, No, there's always there's always there's always
people pushing back. Generally, half the time it's the Orthodox Church, Yeah,

(27:30):
that pushes back, and they have a lot of influence
as well. And then half the time it's the nobility. Yeah.
And he fights with all of that. But that's actually
not who's gonna wind up being his undoing um So,
his number one, Alexander the Seconds number one, claimed to fame.
The biggest thing that he does, and this is a
pretty titanic change, is he abolishes serfdom in eighteen sixty one.

(27:50):
Um So, the start of the U. S. Civil War
is when Russia decides every single person basically in the
country is no longer part of the land that someone
else owns. Um So, that's a good move. I would say,
do you think somebody's like, uh, there's something going on
over in the United States? Seems like it doesn't. There's

(28:11):
something about house divided? Very Ugo. President has big problems
over there. Long beard, though we have complex history, good
Russian beard on that guy, which is also very Russian.
Um So, Obviously, abolishing serfdom, like every other massive social
change in every other country in history, is not like

(28:32):
a super even process. It's not like one day everything
is different. You know. We talked about this somewhat in
our two part or on nestor mak No. It's it's
a messy thing. It's a really big change. Um but
it does lead to like an enormous, unthinkable social to
Everything that happens in the Soviet Union is possible in
part because serfdom starts being a thing. Right. That's why
Russia is able to industrialize, It's why they develop a proletariat,

(28:54):
It's why everything else that happens happens, you know, um,
and Alexander becomes known as the Czar Liberal Raider for
for freeing the serfs. Um. So a lot of people
feel pretty good about Czar Alexander the Second. A lot
of peasants feel pretty good about this dude, but not
all of them. He is not popular everywhere, particularly among
the kind of this is when Russia is starting to

(29:15):
have a socialist movement and all pretty much all these
early socialists are like rich or nobles, right, Like, that's
a lot of this early period of like Russian socialism
is guys who are like very highly born, because that's
who has access to like education and gets to read
books and stuff. You know. Um, not a lot of people,
like a lot of peasants aren't coming into contact with

(29:35):
the communist manifesto in eighteen fifty you know whatever, m
or my uncle would disagree, Okay, so Alexander, uh yeah,
So the socialists really don't like Alexander the Second because
they see fundamentally his reforms are conservative. He's freed the serfs,
but he's done it to maintain this system of absolute autocracy.

(29:59):
He just wants to have a government that a country
that works a little bit better. But he doesn't want
to up end any of the social or class relationships. Um,
he just wants to really be able to like more
efficiently use the people that he still owns, which is accurate.
The Socialists are not misreading this situation like, well, he's
not He's not trying to make anything better. He's just
trying to make the country work better for the ship
that the rich people want to do, you know, Um,

(30:22):
which is true. Yeah, I mean, not for nothing, but
like if I was in that position, I'd be like, yeah,
I would like to also solidify my power prevent myself
from being murdered. Yeah. Yeah, And they they fundamentally like
see through what he's doing. He also adds a bunch
of capitalistic elements to the Russian economy, which hadn't really
been in place before. That's how he wants to like
fund the reformation of the military. He's trying to make

(30:42):
the state more efficient economically. This also pisces off the
Marxists for you know, obvious reasons. They're not not huge
on capitalism, the Marxists. This is surprising to a lot
of people now hold the phone bold statements about ideology
behind bastards state communists. I need a refund on my

(31:04):
education because that is not what I remember. So on
April fourth, eighteen sixties six, a guy named Dmitri Kara
CAUs Off attempts to shoot Alexander the Second in the
middle of the capital uh St Petersburg. He's a socialist, obviously,
he misses and is arrested and executed. Um And this
is a huge moment in Russian history. And I want
to quote now from the English Historic Review. Russian emperors

(31:26):
were no strangers to attempts on their life. Indeed, Paul
the First had been strangled to death in his own
bedroom in eighteen o one. But Paul had been murdered
by a group of noblemen, and these palace coups had
been the principal threat to the tsar's before mid nineteenth century.
Karakozov's assassination attempt was the first occasion in which an
ordinary Russian had tried to kill the monarch, motivated by
a desire to bring down the Russian regime. So that's

(31:47):
a big moment, right, Suddenly there's forces in part maybe
because like we we we freed us some motherfucking surfs.
Now the people are going to play an increasing role
in like Badge it happening Tasaars. I would like to
add they said ordinary Russian, he was extraordinary. He was extraordinary,
not quite extraordinary enough, but no, no, his aim wasn't extraordinary.

(32:08):
His name was was not extraordinary, but his his his
go get itness. Yeah, I really, I really admire the
way he tried to shoot the Tsar to death. You know,
can't you can't teach that, you know, can't teach HERT. Yeah,
you can't teach HERT. That's the key. He would have
been an incredible baseball player. So this brings us to

(32:29):
May six, eight sixty eight, when Nikolai the second Alexandrovitch
Romanov was born in the Alexander Palace south of St. Petersburg.
He was the first child of the Crown Prince or
Zarevitch Alexander Alexandrovitch and his wife, Prince Princess Dagmar of
Denmark Um, which brings up an interesting point. The Tsars
of all Russia, we're not really Russian, not like by blood,

(32:53):
you know, yeah, royalty kind of that's how it works.
How many I'm an English monarchs were French, you know, Yeah,
I mean Queen Victoria is the grandmother of all of
the crowned heads of Europe at World War Two, you know, right, Yeah.
Edward Razinski in his book The Last Star explains, as

(33:14):
a result of countless dynastic marriages, by the twentieth century,
scarcely any Russian blood flowed in the veins of the
Russian romanovs Rs. Nicholas. His mother was the Danish Princess,
his grandmother the Danish Queen. He called his grandmother the
mother in law of all Europe. Her numerous daughters, sons
and grandchildren had allied nearly all the royal houses. You know,
I need the continent in this entertaining manner, from England
to Greece. So this is a very incestuous family, which

(33:38):
will there will be some issues for that for Nicholas
the second later on here. Yeah, I was gonna say,
there's gonna be some problems when you interbreed that much.
But maybe just being like the guy who gets all
of the power and owns everybody is a complete roll
of the dice based on the same family marrying each
other off to other members of their family for forever.
Maybe not the best system. Legitimately, one of my favorite

(34:01):
things to teach about was the Habsburgs, because I was
just like, these motherfucker's were like, look at this they had.
They had jowls. The whole family of of of emperors
with jowls. Yeah, because they're all married to their first
cousins and they have been for forever. And that's not
great for anybody, especially Europe. It ends really bad for

(34:25):
like what eighteen million young men roughly. Yeah, but what
are we gonna apologize for that? Yeah? Yeah, you know,
at least there's less traffic. You know. I think about
how bad the traffic would be in London if there
hadn't have been a World War One. I mean, so

(34:46):
don't think about that. The m one is already a mess.
I was gonna say how much traffic was in World
War One? Was there like nine cars? A couple of
million boys? Less worth of it after the end of it.
So for a while in the in the the Tzarevitch's household,
Nicholas's dad's household, the Crown Prince's household, things are pretty good.
Nicholas comes from a rare, happy royal home, so this

(35:08):
isn't something that starts with him. His parents, like really
genuinely loved each other, which is again very uncommon with
like most royal marriages, like they have separate castles. They
don't talk to each other outside of like dealing with
the kids and stuff. Um, it's pretty abnormal for like
his dad and his mom though, love each other, and
that's probably why he winds up marrying for love later
in life too. Write is he like this is how

(35:30):
he's raised. He's not raised with like, well, you're just
your your your partners, whoever is your partner, and you
see them when you have to make an air. How
bummed would they be to look at divorce rates now
and they're like, what was it you guys were arranged to?
And like, no, we we did it for this was
all us. It turns out we're just bad at it. Yeah,

(35:51):
it turns out we just don't know what that word
means at all. Very just pretty hard. Actually, yeah, man,
when you're not living in a giant palace with seventeen
hounds of diamonds just hanging around yet the willy nilly
things good, rob Let me give you advice on marriage. First,
be owner of one sixth of the world helps a lot.

(36:12):
It's only finest non poisoned meats and Jesus. So his
family is real happy. His father was faithful to his mother,
which everyone at the time found really shocking because when
he was when he was a kid, he was a
real horn dog like most crown princes. He's fucking his
way across Russia. But then, as far as we know,
he meets his wife and he's that that that's it

(36:33):
for him. Um, so he actually is. I don't know.
You know, it's like learning about a monogamous baseball player. Yeah,
we're a professional cyclist who isn't on a shipload of
drugs and you're like, no, no, that's not right. Yeah. Now,
the first years of Nicholas's life very very happy. He

(36:53):
has a bunch of siblings. They spend a lot of
time playing outdoors at various vacation palaces with their dad.
Die Airy. Entries from Nicholas's youth that he writes contains
passages like this, Papa turned on the hose. Then we
ran through the jets and caught terribly wet. That's the
height of technology. Yeah, they had hoses. They were very excited.
Yeah like that, that's like having a PS five. These

(37:19):
are have you heard about the new hose? Four. It's
all out of stock, but I've got one on pre
order and when it comes in. We ordered one from
hose Stop. We got the pre ordinary. You can put
handover in then it makes different shapes. Oh, yes, he
got he got a little adapter that makes it look
like a fan coming out is great. It's great. So. Um,

(37:43):
Nikki's dad pretty loving, definitely kind of your best case scenario.
Royal upbringing that said, he's also a czar. He's a
very strict guy. Nicholas wrote that his dad could not
tolerate weakness. Um, but he also was never physically abusive
that we know. Um. The kind of most aggressive story
we get from his dad as a as a parent
is one time when Nicholas let a playmate take the

(38:05):
blame for something bad that he'd done. His father yelled,
you're a girly at him. Um. So that's like the
extent to which this guy gets punished as a kid. Really,
this guy is a better dad than like most of
us had. Yeah, this guy wasn't beating his kids in
the seventies. Yeah that is wild to me. Yeah, yeah,

(38:26):
so nailing it as a parent. Alexander the second dare
the Rod, but also kill a shipload of peasants, like not,
don't spare the rod on the peasants. Spare the rod
on your own child so you can use more of
the rod on the peasants. Yeah, spare the rod on
your child so they can learn how to use the
rod on large indistinct to them masses of civilians. And

(38:50):
to the civilians, you spare the hose. Yeah, I don't know.
They don't get they don't get hoses. Uh So, while
his kids played, um, and while Alexander second is enjoying
being the crown prince, revolutionary discontent is building in Russia.
One group called the People's Will, who are like nihilists. Um. So,
there's definitely there's a number of influences they have, but

(39:11):
they're like Russian nihilists being Russian. Yeah, it's just like
being Russian. Um, that's not a big stretch. And there
I think, broadly speaking, people who are super into Russian
politics will be screaming at me for for narrowing it
down this way, I'm sure. But like they spend a
bunch of time early on as an organization trying to
organize and radicalize peasants to revolt um and eventually We're like, well,

(39:33):
this is hopeless. We're never going to get these people
to revolt. We'reever we're gonna overthrow the system that way.
So let's just murder the czar and maybe that will
send the whole system into a tailspin and we'll get
what we want that way, and if we don't fuck it,
at least we killed as are right, Like, you get
the sense that, like more than anything, they're just like,
funk this guy, Let's kill him. You know, there's a
very slot machine vibe to that where it's like, you know,

(39:55):
like happen. We we have these folks today, right, Um,
these people. I think it's more understandable because again, if somebody,
if somebody makes you their property, I think it's fine
to try to try to kill them, you know, like
it's the slave thing if if you're if somebody makes
you their slave and you can kill them, well okay, good,

(40:15):
Oh you should amistad that ship immediate. You have to
do that, you absolutely should. Yeah. Um. And they try
a bunch of times, seven times unsuccessfully to kill Alexander
the second and he survives. I think like twenty something
assassination attempts. Lots of people are trying to kill the liberator.
You know, like the people cannot try enough to kill
this guy. And god, he is just he's unkillable. He's

(40:40):
pretty hard, well quite, but he's pretty hard to kill.
You gotta give him credit for that. So he survives, Yeah, right, right, right,
that's pretty good. Um. So he survives like seven assassination
temps from people's will alone, and he executes twenty one
of their members as a result ofly, you know, people
have failed and they get captured whatnot. Um, but you know,

(41:02):
the people's will, despite like the intense death toll taken
on their organization from these failed attempts. They were the
kind of folks who took bacun In seriously when he
said the revolutionary is a doomed man. Their attitude is like,
we're all already dead, like, so fuck it, We're gonna
keep trying. God, this is so Russian. It's very Russian.
It's also pretty I ra a yeah, yeah with with

(41:23):
with like a dollarp of Sylvia Plath in there by
the poetry a little bit of that up in there. Yeah,
your fatalism needs to exist in a long term situation.
Put some fertilizer in the bell jar and hook it
at his are. I remember, dude, I remember being in
like in like tenth grade and we read like a
Day in the Life of Ivan Dvinovich or whatever. And

(41:45):
while I was reading this, I was like, why are
you making us do this? Like I was so I
was so hurt they may they subjected me to something
like that. Ah, yeah, I need to read more Russian literature.
Um I did. I did read that. That one poem
about the Turk in the Russian Ivan Petrovsky scove are

(42:05):
pretty good poem that a Turk in a Russian killing
each other? Um classic, check it out. I read it
on the back of a beer. Try trying to find
like good Russian literature that isn't about somebody with a
gun hard to find. It's like trying to find Irish
literature that doesn't start with a man masturbating through his
hole in his pocket, right yeah yeah yeah, and then

(42:26):
and then eventually dying of liver failure. Yes. So um,
these guys keep right on their stick tuitiveness and trying
to kill the czar is laudable. And on March one
one they get it right. Uh, they throw a punch
of bombs. This is they kill a lot of people
as a general rule, not a lot of Like you know,

(42:46):
you're not discriminating when you're trying to assassinate ahead of
state with a bomb. You're accepting that, Like we're gonna
kill a shipload of folks, you know, like we're setting
off It's like Stalin robbing banks and killing seventy people
with bombs. It's just like how things are back then.
It's horrible, it's fucked up damage. But yeah, it's terrorism,
you know. That's how it works. People set off a
lot of bombs, kill a shipload of people. It's all

(43:07):
pretty ugly. Um, you get things done. They do. In
this case, they they set off one bomb and like
the Czar Alexander gets out of his like carriage to
be like what what the hell is going on? And
then they blow his legs like two pieces. Um, so
it's like a gnarly death. He doesn't die immediately, his
legs are just like shredded. The whole Royal family, including

(43:31):
thirteen year old Nicholas, who had been ice skating at
the time, are like rushed away from ice skating to
like see their grandpa bleed to death from a bomb wound.
Um and again even though these people are like the
most privileged folks at the time, it's an ugly period.
They have a like they see some ship as kids.
Know you're going to keep going back to that. Well,

(43:51):
but yeah, it is extremely Russian. You know you must
see this. Yeah, So Nicholas watches his grandpa bleed to
death after he receives last communion Um and then his
dad becomes the czar because you know that's how Zarism works.
Nicholas's dad is Alexander the third Um, and he pretty
immediately decides he's going to be a real different kind
of ore from his father, uh, from the father that

(44:14):
he watched explode. That he watched explode. So he sees
his father pass all his liberalizing reforms and then get exploded,
and he's like, well, that doesn't seem like the right
way to go. I don't want I don't want that
specific thing. I don't want to explode. It looks like
a bad deal. I'm probably gonna die, but I'd rather
get strangled in my bed than have my legs blown off.

(44:34):
Yeah yeah, um. So he two months after his dad's assassination,
he issues what's called the Manifesto on Unshakable Authority, which
is co written by one of the heads of the
Russian Orthodox Church. Now, this manifesto said, in short, that
Alexander the Liberator had been wrong to push for more
liberal attitudes rather than what Alexander the Third called unshakable autocracy.

(44:56):
Alexander the Third argued that unshakable autocracy wasn't just a
form of government, but it was what God commanded. It
was their sacred duty as the chosen of the Lord
to rule Russia this way. So he cancels a plan
right before getting killed. His father had like agreed to
create a legislative assembly a Duma for Russia for the
first time. Like they were gonna, okay, we're gonna have

(45:17):
like a congress basically that people have some representation. And
Alexander the Third is like, oh, that's not fucking happening,
absolutely not. Um and that one yeah yeah, big old,
big old in y e t right on that one.
A couple of backwards punctuation points and we're good to go. Um.
So instead he launches a huge crackdown and I'm gonna
quote from the romanofs here, troops were deployed to restore

(45:40):
order and in September, Alexander's signed emergency laws to preserve
state security, followed in eighty two by temporary regulations on Jews,
which banned pogroms. But we're more concerned with protecting the
interests of the local populace by banning Jews from living
in the countryside or outside the pale. The Paliff settlement
is the area in Russia you're allowed to live as
a Jew. Which, uh, it's really interesting that he's banning

(46:03):
pogroms while also being like you can't be here. Yeah,
like that's that is in of itself. Yeah, it is.
It's like, no programs, but all of these people have
to leave immediately. Don't kill him though, But I'm not
going to do anything to stop this. And like there
are programs, right, there's a there's a wave of violence
against you because they get they get blamed for this.

(46:23):
Jewish people do represent a higher percentage of revolutionary organizations
than of the general population. I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder as they're forced on several diasporas out of Russia,
and there's some amazing moments, one of Nicholas the seconds
we're going forward in time by decades. But one of
his advisers, like his prime minister at one point, is like, motherfucker,

(46:46):
If I were a Jew, I'd be throwing bombs too.
It's rough for them out there. You've made a bad
situation for them. Um and boy, howdy, Alexander the Third
is not a good czar for Jewish people. Um that one. Yeah,
there's not like there's a lot of great ones and
people around Alexander the Third. Note that he also kind

(47:07):
of goes mad with power immediately. Uh. And I'm gonna
quote from Simon montfior here. When a female political prisoner
insulted a gendarme, Alexander ordered flog her. His minister asked
for a lesser sentence than the maximum hundred strokes, since
she was fragile, but the Czar insisted give her the
hundred strokes. They killed her. He is not wicked, wrote

(47:27):
the diplomat Vladimir Lambsdorf, but he's drunk with power. His
war minister, General Vanowski, joked that he was like Peter
the Great with his cudgel, except here is only the
cudgel without the Great Peter. Alexander's contempt for his own
ministers was a feudal attitude in the modern world and
his reverence for his autocracy. He failed to see that
his own arbitrary nous was a flaw. Sire explained one

(47:50):
of his advisers. We have a terrible, evil lack of law,
but I always stand for compliance with the laws. The
Czar replied, I'm not talking about you, but about your administration,
which uses its power today. Russia is like a colossal
boiler in which pressure is building. When it gets a hole,
people with hammers rivet them. But one day the gases
will blow out a hole that can't be filled and

(48:10):
will suffocate, and we'll explode your goddamn legs off. Yeah, yeah, dude,
did you not watch what Happened to your dad? I
love that he's like, I don't think you understand what happened. Also,
the way Alexander the third season is like, well, yeah,
because he tried to liberalize it. That's why you've got
to be consistently a dick. I don't know, man, if
I was born with a target on my head, i'd

(48:32):
be I'd be trying to be cool as hell. Let
me translate this in a way I think will make
sense to our male listeners. At least you know how.
A lot of times you pretend to not know how
to do things because then it will get done for you, like,
oh boy, do it. Yeah, exactly, It's like that. But
it's with murdering people where if you if you just
don't let people know that you can be nice, then

(48:54):
maybe they won't funk with you. That's Alexander the Third's idea.
So if he looks very angry furious, are you mad
about the murdering part. No, for the fact that I
need help cleaning my room. Yeah, I could use some
help cleaning my room. So in eighteen eighty two, Nicholas
gets a gift from his mother, a golden edged book
of souvenirs bound with wood. This became his first diary,

(49:16):
and for the remainder of his life he would make
daily entries in it. For example, began writing in my
diary on the first of January eighteen eighty two. In
the morning, drank hot chocolate, dressed in my life Guard
reserves uniform, took a walk in the garden with Papa.
We chopped and sawed wood and made a great bonfire.
Went to bed at about half past nine. Papa, Mama
and I received two deputations, presented me with a magnificent

(49:39):
wooden platter inscribed the peasants of Verona's and there's to
the Tsarevich with bread and salt and a Russian towel.
That's like his diary injuries. I would like to add
that hot chocolate cost a thousand dollars back then. Yes, yes,
this is. This is they had. They had to just
straight up shoot four people to afford that. Hot chocolate

(50:00):
was the thing that's stuck out in that entire thing.
To me, I was like, you know, that's nice that
you've got some hot chocolate. Dude. Yeah, I mean, he
owns more of the world than anyone else pretty much
ever has. I mean maybe one of the cons, you know,
So it was kind of one on Russia. Yeah. And
also the cons devolved a lot more power to local
areas and ship than the czars did. They were a

(50:20):
mom yeah, yeah, they were pretty dope. So it was
the kind of idyllic childhood for Nicholas that you only
get when your father owns like most of the inhabited
world or a big chunk of it. It's so wild too,
But when you think about that, like hot chocolate, like
no peasant has had ever had hot chocolate, and they
never would. They would live their life dying without ever
tasting anything sweet. Yeah, and then we think about it's

(50:43):
like some weird sweet thing. Yeah, yeah, a date, that's
But then we think about I could just go over
to my cabinet and eat like a czar two. That's
so goddamn wild. Yeah yeah, you you you probably eat
a lot better than Bazar because Russian cook I don't know,
there's some great Russian meals, but hit or miss on

(51:04):
some things. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't need stroke
enough to get me through the day exactly. I do
eat sort of like in a medieval way, Like I
ate a lot of eggs. Yeah, it's pretty medieval. Or
it's just like and then I had nine eggs and
they're like, I remember, I had a fascinating story, And
I get a guy who he had He had been
the Hitler youth as a kid. He was fourteen when

(51:24):
World War two ended, and so he grew up in uh,
you know, this this Germany that still had shades of
the of the Imperial Germany to it, and his family
was Prussian and his big memory was that like they
didn't have enough money for everybody to have eggs. So
every morning during breakfast, they would get you know what
stuff they got, and they would all sit around to
watch their father eat a single egg because that was

(51:46):
like the way that you did it right, Like it
was of course the father is going to get the egg.
He has to go out and like you know, make
things happen for the family, and everyone would watch in
awe as he ate this single egg every morning. It's
like watching people play video games on YouTube. What are
you doing? Don't you want to play the game? No,
we just want to see. There's so few eggs that
we have access to. We just want to watch it.

(52:08):
And I'll just go to a farmer's market and then
buy a dozen eggs and then eat a dozen eggs.
It's like how like back in the forties and stuff,
like people used to send around pineapples while they were
ripening and like put them out at parties and like
brag that, like we have a pineapple and eventually we're
gonna get to eat it. But until then, look at
this pineapple. You know they do you ever hear the

(52:28):
story of Louis and the Pineapple? Know when they introduced
the pineapple to him and sparing what actually he was
portrayed in artistically. He did not look like what the
pictures did. He was a very corpulent man, and he
was a relatively greedy eater. And somebody presented him with
a pineapple and he didn't know what it was, so

(52:50):
he tried to eat it like like whole like an apple,
and just shredded the ship out of his mouth. Got
embarrassed and then like stu ass like and then he
like banned pineapples for France because he was a stupid
asshole about it. Look, there's some ship that like I
can knock down to like, oh yeah, if you if

(53:10):
you're not instructed on how to eat certain things, it's confusing.
But a pineapple is not that. Like you look at
a pineapple and you're like, well, I should probably cut
into this, Like this doesn't look like a bite into fruit.
I forget who did the tweet, but somebody talked about
how like pineapple is the most metal food on the
planet because it just like it dissolves your tongue when
you eat it, and it's covered in like thick bark

(53:33):
of pineapple. Now you're making the fiend for pineapple and
the leaves are sharp, even the leaves are violent on
a pineapple can fall down and kill you like a coconut.
It is good. Don't they grow on um like bushes,
coconut bushes. Yes, yes, sure, let's go with that. Oh sorry,
I'm thinking of iguanas. So yeah, he the Czar has

(53:57):
a pretty great childhood. All things can sidered. One of
the few things that's kind of traumatic for him as
a kid is that he realizes his parents prefer his
brother Georgie to him. His younger brother is like the favorite. Um,
and he like acknowledges as a kid, like they don't
really love me. They love my brother, not in a
way that like they're shitty to him because he's the
oldest one. He's going to be the czar. They just

(54:18):
think Georgie is a better kid. And also he is
like Georgie's way smarter, like Nicholas sucks. Georgie will become
like the guy who's a voice of reason. Um a lot.
Do you have a sibling, yes, who who's better? Oh?
I mean geez i I he might listen to this podcast, um,
but clearly me right obviously if he's listening to your podcast, Yeah,

(54:42):
absolutely right, he doesn't have a fucking podcast just has
you know, a good hasn't gone and traumatized himself for
very little reason in random parts of the world, you know,
like a like a jerk. It's like, why don't you
go to war? Yeah, asked anyway, Um No, he's he's

(55:03):
a much better person than me. Um. You see. That's
that's the thing is like there's all there always is
a sibling that's a better person for sure. And in
this case it's Georgie um and and Nicholas knows this.
And in the Romanovs, Simon Montfior claims his adolescent insight
did not make him mean, sullen or less obedient. He
simply became reticent. So he kind of becomes like hesitant,

(55:24):
like he doesn't like to make decisions or like calls
because he I think he just kind of feels insecure.
He doesn't want to like push anything that will make
somebody not like him, which is a problem when you're
about to own all of Russia, right, you should really
need to be decisive. Um. As we've talked about, it's
one of the things that stops you from getting murdered.
So the news are Alexander the third Nicholas. His dad
picks a tutor for his son, a guy named oh

(55:46):
Boy Pabetta notes Papetta, notes of Pabetta, notes of like,
come on, people, you expect me to get all these
Russian names, right, I can't get English towns America. We're
gonna call him Popo. Okay. So Popo is a traditionalist,
and he's such a traditionalist that he would have been
a fascist in a different country and time. Um. He

(56:06):
lectured young Nicholas about how foolish his grandfather's reforms would be.
His argument to Nicholas was that Russia was unique, special
and stuff like a free press would lead to inevitable collapse.
Like other countries can maybe handled this, but not Russia.
We're just not. We're very different. We're different kinds of people. Um.
They viewed themselves as as Rome. Yeah, yeah, as the
as the as the heirs to the Roman Empires, the

(56:29):
third Rome. Yeah. Um. Now one of his other tutors,
when of Nicholas's other tutors didn't feel the need to
actually educate him. You know, this is the guy who's
supposed to be teaching him, because he believed quote mysterious
forces emanating during the sacrament of coronation, provided all the
practical data required by a ruler. Well, we teach this
kid about the world, God's gonna tell him how to
do his job. He's going to get a ghost learning.

(56:52):
That's not everybody. Other tutors of his have a more
realistic view of education. Um, but none have a lot
of luck teaching Nikki things. He's immature, he's not particularly
keen to learn. Popo noted that during one of history
lesson quote, I could only observe that he was completely
absorbed picking his nose. Um, which is a fine, normal
kid thing to do, right, but also not a great

(57:13):
sign when you're going to rule the world. And maybe
why people shouldn't rule one six of the world as
their personal property. I mean, you know what that might
be just like one time and this guy is just
like dwelling on it, and he might have had something
sits there for history in history forever. Yeah, like we're
talking about it and like a hundred and fifty years later.
It is pretty funny. It's just like one time this

(57:35):
kid had like a little crunchy in there. They had
to work his way out. God picks their nose, Yeah,
I know. Where you're going with this, And I'm very
excited that that's the segway that you're using. It's the
Washington State Highway Patrol and probably and we're bad. Ah,

(58:01):
look at the ads. Good ads knows the whole time.
I know, I know it was. It was unsettling. Yeah,
it did seem good. So as an adolescent, Nicholas joins
the army, but he joins the army the way that
like czar kids joined the army. This doesn't mean like
he's not doing like push ups in the mud or anything. Basically,
as a teenager, he gets to he becomes a member

(58:22):
of the Lifeguards, which is the special military unit dedicated
to the royal family. When he joins the Cadet Corps
for training, his textbook included this line that gives you
an idea of how the Russian military saw itself. Russia
as a state is neither commercial nor agricultural, but military,
and it's calling is to be the wrath of the world.
Parentheses pretend we did not get our asses kicked like

(58:46):
like immediately yesterday. Basically, I mean, though that is Russia's history,
Like the Crimean War is kind of weird because like
they lose and then lose as opposed to most of
Russian military history. Is they lose, they lose, they lose,
they lose, they win. Yeah, it's it's a long game.
What it is is the Russians know that they can

(59:07):
outlast a battle of attrition. M like they're just like
they will just throw bodies at whatever. A problem is, Oh,
Germany is invading. We have empty space is bigger than Germany.
Multi problem? How many lives will it cost us? Deal? So,
in his biography, the Last Czar Radzinsky explains quote the

(59:29):
armyment obedience and diligence above all else, both these qualities
which the shot youth already possessed, the army would foster ruinously.
So Nicholas is instantly put in charge of half a
company worth of men. But this was fine because the
unit's only real duties were marching and working out. His
regimental boss was the Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovitch, who's his
his uncle, so his dad's brother, the Russian ass name

(59:52):
I've ever and Sergey is a Russian motherfucker. He is brutal,
he loves him some programs, he loves him some crack
down violently on on on socialists. Uh, he's hugely religious
and he is also very gay, so he hates himself
and everything around him because he has these urges that
he thinks are sinful, and because he's in the he's

(01:00:13):
leading the Lifeguards, like, which is this fundamentally like pretty
gay unit. It's this closed military tradition where like Radzinski
writes that the unit quote encouraged pederasty and heavy drinking, right, like,
all these dudes are fucking and getting wasted all the time.
And then Surge gets really angry because he's super religious
and thinks that's wrong. But it's also how he spends

(01:00:34):
all his time. So he's just kind of this very angry,
violent man with a lot of power and a lot
of repressed issues. Mike Penn's energy there, real, Mike Penn's energy. Yeah,
it's bad. It's a problem. The Crown Prince Sergey becomes
an issue. Um, Now, since Nicholas was the Crown Prince
and was straight, he probably was not exposed to a
lot of like the horny nous within the Lifeguards, right.

(01:00:56):
I don't think he was involved. I think they probably
were like, well, we don't want we don't want this
are of itch to see. That's probably not like something
to do around him. I mean, there certainly is, like,
but there's there's a difference between sexual preference, yes, being
gay and and like that sort of like military or prison.
Within the military, where all these men kept together, people

(01:01:18):
have this need for intimacy. Yeah, it definitely is one
of those things where like the fact that sexuality is
a spectrum is very common in all male locations where
you know, there aren't the options for that, people explore
that sexuality a lot more willingly. Yeah, this is not
a unique kind of military formation in history. The ship

(01:01:38):
happens all the time. I forget with their names. It
wasn't the Spartans, but it was somebody like the Spartans.
It was the sacred Band of Thebes where they were
like explicitly all right in like in homosexual like relationships.
It was like a hundred and fifty couples and the
idea was like, well, nobody's gonna like run and abandon
their romantic partner on the battlefield. And they were like
for a while, yeah, for a while, until then till

(01:01:59):
the macadone came around. You know, you get your your
Philip and your Alexander and that doesn't that breaks up eventually,
but like, yeah, they had a pretty really good combat record. Um.
So Nicholas probably is not exposed to the horny nous um,
but he definitely took part in the drinking, as this
quote from his diary makes clear. Yesterday during training, we
drank a hundred and twenty bottles of champagne. I was

(01:02:21):
sentury for the division at I took my squadron out
on the battlefield at five an inspection of military institutes
under a pouring rain. So he then gets drunk with
the boys that night, and he wrote this unintentionally hilarious line.
Woke up and felt as if a squadron had spent
the night in my mouth. Maybe he did know a
little thing, figured I don't think that's what he means,

(01:02:44):
you know, I think he means it taste my mouth
tastes like a bunch of horses ship in it, or
a whole squadron. You never know the lemember you're you're
interpreting from from the language you are. And I am
certain there's some really horny are Nicholas and Dukes Sergey
fan fiction out there, and more power to you. I
would also like to add, how funny it is, um

(01:03:06):
that like it was champagne. I know, obviously like alcohol,
it's like what they drink, but like I expected it
to be vodka, and then it's like champagne, And I'm like, man,
could you imagine that like from somebody like a desert
storm like Darlan. We got fucked up on like four

(01:03:27):
cases of champagne. And I swear to fucking god, I
woke up and in my mouth tasted like hounded brute
and the Bradley. It tasted like a whole group of
marines that spent the night in my teeth. I went
to fucking town and I swear to god, I got
married last night. Yeah, so Grand Dukes Sergey was responsible

(01:03:47):
for picking the drinking games, and he was really good
at this, for all of his other shortcomings. His favorites
were Elbows, in which a glass the length of a
forearm would be filled and drank in one gulp, The Staircase,
which involved lining a staircase with drinks and pounding them
one step at a time until you passed out drunk.
And then there was Till the Wolves, in which all
of the men would strip naked as a group run

(01:04:09):
into the frozen outdoors, where a servant would bring them
a tub of champagne that they would all drink naked
together in the freezing cold. Sucks. That does sound like
a shitty drink. Sucks. I can we just play drink
the beer, Sergey. Because he's got this religious conflict, is
really angry all the time, Like he'll have these nights
of indulgence and then he'll just be like furious at

(01:04:31):
the world, and then he'll suggest that his brother or
his nephew do a bunch of violent things. Whereas Nicholas
is like pretty even tempered. I think for most of
his life. Um, so I just I don't think he's
like I don't think he's repressing anything. Um it doesn't
seem like it seems to do something he regrets. Yeah,
I don't that. It just doesn't seem likely that that

(01:04:53):
was like a thing he grappled with. Um. Yeah, now
Nicholas drank definitely. He does not say people had a
p problem. His father did, and became more of an
issue as the czar got older. Alexander the Third had
a habit of getting wasted with his friends, and, according
to one witness quote, would lay on his back and
waved his arms and legs about, behaving like a child,

(01:05:13):
trying to get to his feet and then falling down,
grabbing the legs of anyone who walked past. And again,
this man owns a sixth of the world. So what
do you do when he's like that drunk. You know,
he's just a good time and son of a bitch.
I would be I would be stoked if you're like,
if if somebody told me that Trump sometimes would have
his buddies over, they would get fucked up and just

(01:05:35):
collapse on the ground and just like wail around grabbing
a people's legs and stuff, I'd be like, well, at
least that's kind of cool. Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, that's
a human thing he did. It's a fun time and thing,
you know. Yeah, get that wet, Yeah, I get that
wasted pretty regularly. Um. So, his binges started to cause
health problems by the eighteen eighties, and his doctors forbade

(01:05:56):
him from drinking um. He but also, you can't really
stop the Emperor of Russia from like doing stuff he
wants to. Um, So his wife like keeps enough of
a watch on him that he has to hide it.
So Alexander the third orders jack boots made with special
compartments that hold flasks large enough to fit a whole
bottle of konyak. So these must have been big shoes.

(01:06:16):
It looks like kiss fucking shoes hold the whole bottle
of kneak? Could you imagine that? Like, Uh, we have
a question about this, Uh about this this memo you
sent out here? Do you really want an eight foot
platform heels? Yes, hollow, very hollow with a tube coming

(01:06:40):
out of them, trying to sneak wine into like a
baseball game or soon ship. Yeah. And they'll do this
like the Czar and his friends whenever, like they're at
state functions, Like his wife will step out of the
room and be like, all right, everybody drank really really fast,
pound him down, you know, the perfect crime. Yeah. On October,
Nicholas the second has a first close brush with death.

(01:07:01):
He's on the Royal train with his father and family
when it has a wreck outside of Kharkoff and modern Ukraine.
And it has a wreck because his dad is drunk
and is telling like the the guy who's in charge
of the railway, the director of the railway, This dude
named Sergey Witt um, he's like, make it go faster,
make it go faster. And Serge is like, we're already
going as fast as he can, and these oars like

(01:07:22):
what are you? Would you make it go faster? And
then it crashes. Russian, very Russian, very god. He's like,
the guy's just like, you know this is train, yeah, comes,
I don't know if you know this one railway. Very

(01:07:47):
little steering can do here. Remember, but this railway relatively
new building. We are Russian, We're not great at these yet.
And Niki later wrote in his diet writes in his
diary of this train crash and this is fun. This
gives you some insight into how he grows up viewing
the lives of other humans who aren't Royals. A fateful

(01:08:09):
day for us all. We might all have been killed,
but by the Lord's will, we were not. During breakfast,
our train jump, the rails, the dining car and coach
were demolished, but we emerged from it all unscathed. However,
twenty people were killed and sixteen injured. Kind of burying
the lead on that one, isn't it Twenty people die
and he's like, thank god, everyone who matters is fine.

(01:08:29):
It really is like, oh, you deserve to die for
having that mentality for your whole life. Yeah, that that
is his entire life. And it's also worth noting that
like twenty people die because his dad is drunk and
like make it go faster. Yeah, this is uh what
what is it suffering from affluenza? Yeah, they have it
pretty hard in in the Romanov family. So this accident

(01:08:53):
brings Sergey with the director of the railway into Romanov
orbit after the crash, which gets promoted to run the
railways for the whole empire. Then Alexander the third decides
to make him communications minister. Before he hands in that job,
he asks, are you a friend of the Jews? Because again,
pretty racist guy? Uh now, wit who would go down
in history as a campaigner for reforming Russia's anti Semitic

(01:09:16):
laws answers, Since we can't drown them all in the
Black sea, we should treat them as humans. So for
an idea of where anti semitism is, this is the
good guy, this is the advocate for Jewish liberation, being like, well,
we can't drown them all, so we should treat him better.
That's the most progressive thing any Russian had said. Yeah,
it wasn't Jewish. Well if we can't, well, if we

(01:09:36):
can't drown them, we can. Yeah, So for a heads up,
pretty bad, pretty bad people in a lot of ways.
Um As both his father's son and the heir to
all Russia, Nicholas the second had the option to have
a lot of casual sex if he really wanted to.
Many young tsarovitch Is, including his father, were playboys, you know,

(01:09:58):
in their youth and often as an adult to you know.
But Nicholas was a deeply religious and dedicated person, and
he was dedicated to waiting for love. This next story
is based on the recollections of a noble woman named
vera Uran neva Uh and she claims of his first
like infatuation quote, he adored walking. There was a rumor
that he had met a beautiful Jewis on a walk

(01:10:19):
and a romance had sprung up. There was a lot
of gossip about that in Petersburg, but his father acted
as decisively as ever. The Jewis was sent away along
with her entire household. Nicholas was in her home while
all this was going on. Only over my dead body,
he declared to the governor. Matters did not go as
far as dead bodies. However, he was an obedient son
and eventually he was broken and taking away to his
father at Anchikov Palace. And the Jewis was never seen

(01:10:42):
in the capital again. So in the capital, in the capital,
yeah it may have been. I mean, Alexander the Third
would not have been above a little bit of murder. Um.
So we've moved out to a farm upstairs. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's bleak um. So right around the same time,
Uncle Sergey leads a crackdown against Jewish people living in

(01:11:02):
and around the capital, and Alexander the Third signs off
on this crackdown. In Moscow, Uncle SERGEI closes the Great
Synagogue and he sends his Cossacks to break into Jewish
homes and like beat and rob people. It's a knight
of It's a knight of broken glass kind of ship. Right. Um.
He expels all Jewish citizens of Moscow. The only exceptions
are women who were togree to register as prostitutes. That

(01:11:25):
seems that's having your cake and eating it. Two guys,
come on, yeah, um, well not for him actually, but yeah,
as a as a matter of jurisprudence, I guess um,
Jewish immigration in the United States increases to one hundred
and thirty seven thousand people a year. This is like
the five will goes west, you know. Stuff like this
is this is when you start getting huge waves of

(01:11:47):
Jewish people immigrating to the United States in particular. Um,
some of them do, a lot of them do like
wind up further western Europe. But like this, these crackdowns
are what starts. Like why you you start to get
this like huge Jewish population in York City and stuff,
It's because a lot of people are like, it really
doesn't seem like Russia is a great place to be Jewish.
We might need to get the funk out of here.
You know what, maybe Europe and as a whole is

(01:12:10):
probably the best place to get out of there. I
don't think this is heading in a good direction. I'm
hearing some pretty rough stuff out west to Let's go
to America. Let's go to America, Bill, they'll hate us
without being too violent about yeah. Yeah. In the early
eighteen nineties, the young Kaiser of Germany, Nicholas's cousin, uh
you know, auto or Wilhelm fires Otto von Bismarck, who

(01:12:32):
had been the brains of the Reich for a while
and had organized a German Russian defensive alliance. When the
Kaiser sacks Bismarck, he also refuses to renew the treaty,
and so Alexander the Third signs and alliance with France instead.
The Kaiser, being an idiot, recognizes like, oh, no, I
fucked up. I shouldn't have done that. Like it's immediately like, oh,
this could go badly for Jerremany is this is gonna

(01:12:53):
be rough in about twenty four years. And one of
the things you got to realize is all of these
these royals who are like cousin are texting each other constantly.
Basically they have telegrams so they can actually like basically
text with one another. And as soon as like this happens,
he starts sending a bunch of like frantic telegrams to
the Russian royal family inviting them to hang out on

(01:13:14):
his yacht and party with him and like trying to
get back into their good books. Um. And also, we
have cool helmets with spikes on the baby check it out, um.
And Alexander the Third doesn't really want to hang out
with kaiserville helm because nobody, nobody ever wants to hang
out with Kayserville Helm No. Um, so he picks Nikki

(01:13:34):
to go do that job. He's like, Hey, you're you're
gonna be the bizarre one day. Why don't you go
hang out with your weird cousin and sail around in
circles with his stupid boats. Um. So that's what Nikki
does a bunch of when he's a young man. Um
And for a look at how he starts coming together
as a young person, I want to quote again from
the Romanovs. The Air Now twenty four, wrote the Deputy

(01:13:55):
Foreign Minister Lambsdorff makes a strange impression. Half boy, half
man's all of stature, thin and undistinguished. He had also
obstinate and thoughtless. His mother had tended to infantilize her boys.
He wore his literal sailor suits longer than most boys do,
noted Countess zz Naryshkina. He was a man with a
small horizon and a narrow outlook, and for years had

(01:14:16):
barely gone beyond the wall of the Anchikov and then
Gecina Palace gardens. Even when Nikki was a guard's colonel,
his mother still addressed him as my dear little soul,
my boy His diary tells of hide and seek, drinking games,
and contests with conkers and fur cones well into his twenties.
So he's like being dressed like Donald Duck. He's like
a twenty year old. It has um, it has very

(01:14:40):
blueth energy there. Yeah, because like he's just gets to
be this little boy forever, because nobody can ever say, like, hey,
maybe maybe the little sailor suits might not be the
thing to be wearing to this party twenty one year
old future emperor. So he just kind of does it.
You know, he's flexing mm hmm. I mean, there's a
way you can see that as as as healthy. I'm

(01:15:03):
gonna add, by the way, I also dressed like a child,
but it's more just like I wear like, oh look,
I like Spider Man and I only wear pajamas. I
get it. Yeah. So, uh, he's kind of a sweet boy.
Most people will agree on that. But he's also very
much like a boy rather than the kind of person
suited to be the iron ruler of all the rushes.
You know, like he does he everyone kind of notices, oh,

(01:15:25):
you're not going to be hard enough for this job.
A little sailor sailor suit. Yeah, I'm not not quite
tough enough for this big lollipop and floppy blonde curls
and duty. Um. So he had developed his intellectual talents
by this point. He's not an idiot. He's really good
at learning languages. And in fact, one of the things
people will notice is that his English is perfect, and

(01:15:45):
he writes a lot of letters to and from his
wife that are like flawless English. Um. He also falls
in love with British romance novels. He spends a lot
of time reading romance novels. Um. And if you were
a member of the oppressed classes kind of eyeing this
guy from a scullery or whatever, you might have expected
him to be like, well, when this guy gets into power,
he'll be better than Alexander the Third. You know, the

(01:16:06):
dude who's constantly cracking down on everybody but a Simon who, Yeah,
the dude who jumped to train because wasted d u
I with a train. But as Simon Montfior makes clear,
little Niki definitely took after his father, uh quote. Nikki
embraced his father's Muscovite vision of the throne, founded on

(01:16:26):
the mystical union of Czar and peasants whose devout loyalty
was pure and sacred compared to the filthy decadence of Petersburg,
Liberal Europe and Jewish modernity. Nicholas the second worship his
imperial father, but Tzar Alexander the Third knew his son
had no aptitude for the job awaiting him. When Wit
suggested putting Nicholas on the committee organizing construction of the
Trans Siberian Railway so we could get some on the

(01:16:49):
job experience, the Zar responded, have you ever tried discussing
anything of consequence with his Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke?
Don't tell me you never noticed. The Grand Duke is
an absolute child. His opinions utterly childish. How could he
preside over such a committee? And like, that's a bad
sign if your kid is gonna inherit the throne literally
the instant you die and you're like, well, he can't

(01:17:11):
build a railroad, like, dude, to be fair, I don't
know if you should be living in a pretty glass
house railroad stones, buddy, Yeah, yeah, maybe it'll be Also,
maybe it'll be shipping on Nikki about railroad stuff. How buddy,
how much did you black out that night? Yeah? Do
you remember that, remember the people people. Yeah, so Nicholas

(01:17:34):
did eventually get added to that committee in the end,
but he doesn't receive a lot of training on the
job from his dad. His dad's the only one who
can give him this, and his dad, you kind of
get the feeling his dad is just irritated by him
and like doesn't want him around, so he doesn't teach
him a whole lot. Um. He just length, Yeah, he's
an asshole. You know. Um, this might have been fine, right,

(01:17:55):
Alexander's young, you know, he had time to gradually learn
things and pick them up from ministers. Um, Alexander the
Third was like not old, you know, when Nicki's in
his twenties and he was expected to have like people
are generally expecting. Nicholas probably wouldn't inherit the third Throat
until he was closing on forty. Um, but that's not
quite what happens. So, Uh, Nicholas meets Alexandra Fyodorovna when

(01:18:18):
he's in his early twenties. She's a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
She's a German and a Protestant. Her childhood had been rough.
Her mother was depressed and constantly ill. Her brother had hemophilia,
which was called the English disease because it was so
common with royalty. Um, and he died bleeding from bleeding
after he fell out of a window. When she was six,
her mom died along with her favorite sister, from diphtheria.

(01:18:40):
So Alexandra is always going to be kind of nervous
and scared of losing everyone around her because that's how
her childhood goes, because that's what happened, because that's what
happened obviously. Yeah, that's like being like, oh man, I'm
afraid I'm going to vomit because I vomit literally every day. Yeah,
that's and she she grows into an unpleasant person, but like,

(01:19:02):
you know, it's understandable, like why she does a lot
of the things she does. Her background makes it makes sense.
Tense all the time. Yeah, she's just never okay with anything. Um. Yeah,
And and so she's she is, though kind of insufferable.
She's like a lot to deal with. And all of
the Romanovs except for Nicholas, feel this way about her,
like he falls in love immediately and the rest of

(01:19:24):
his family's like her. We've all been there. Yeah, it
is that kind of story. Somebody that's like really into
the person they're dating, and we're all just like okay,
But like, is it like a different person? Yeah? Is
she completely different every moment that we're not around? Um?
Or is she like, are do you have like a
different plane of existence? Is she's saying different things in

(01:19:46):
the quantum realm that we're not seeing here? Yeah? Is
he just like hiding everything about himself when he's around
us and only plays beer pong when he's around us
and the rest of the time he has a personality? Um.
So there's other reasons why Alexandra isn't popular as a
choice for Nicholas's partner. For one thing, she's Protestant, right,

(01:20:07):
all of the Romanovs you have to be Orthodox, you know,
you're you're like the Russian Orthodox Church. It's you're the
head of it, as these are. Your wife can't be
a Protestant um. And Yeah, there's other reasons. There's like
weird royal bloodline reasons, I don't we need to get into.
There's like a lot of reasons people are not happy
with this, this this match. Um. But Nicholas is in
love with this woman, um, and she's in love with him. UM.

(01:20:30):
But there's like a years of conflict, right, they don't
get their way right away. Um, And it says a
lot about how strongly he felt that he goes through
the effort because there's like years of him trying to
convince his father and his father refuses. Um. Like most
love struck men, who can he decides to go on
a road trip to clear his head. Um and yeah, yeah,
He's like, well, I might as well go traveling, yeah,

(01:20:51):
on the train, because they have bad luck with those
trains and boats, and they have bad luck on this.
He and his brother Georgie go to I think Greece,
and Georgie gets tuberculosis, which eventually he kills him. Um,
So he has to head back home to like slowly
die of tv um. But Nikki gets to go to
Japan with his other friend and relative, the Prince of
Greece uh and this doesn't go great either, so they
spent up. The Russians usually have great luck with Japan,

(01:21:15):
Nicholas especially, so Nikki reads mostly romance novels and just
kind of walks around Nagasaki buying souvenirs. While he's in Japan,
Um hangs out with his cousin the Prince of Greece,
and since Prince George this is funny. Prince George has
a tattoo, and so Nikki decides to get one too,
of a dragon on his right floe arm. What a web.

(01:21:37):
This is a little bit of a weep. Right, goes
to Japan and gets a dragon tattoo, comes back there
in like a like a black trench coat. He gets katana. Yeah,
why are better than dubbed? It's very funny. Yeah, he
gets real into anime during this period of wall scrolls
in the palace. There's there, there's there's rioters at the

(01:21:58):
gates that he's building a gunda. It's just we'll make it.
So he's just kind of there to have a good time,
you know. But Japan has, I don't know if you
know this about Japan has a pretty intense right wing
um and they start developing all these conspiracy theories that
he's secretly in Japan to spy on their weaknesses so

(01:22:20):
Russia can attack. They credit him with being a much
more capable person than he is. The Japanese not always
stoked on outside influence in any right, right. Yeah, So
a lot of people are real honory about this and
they're angry, like he doesn't The first thing he does
isn't go about or the emperor. He like goes and
does other stuff first because he's kind of on vacation.

(01:22:41):
He's he's not trying to be disrespectful, he's just like
doesn't really doesn't know anything about Japan. You know, Um,
there's nothing about the Yamato clan. Yeah in English, Uh,
romance novels, Yeah, exactly, which is all he knows. So
one of these paranoid right wingers is a cop names Sanzo,
who was supposed to be one of them in guarding

(01:23:02):
the futures are And I'm going to read a quote
from Japan today here. According to the Julypaper eyewitness account,
Sanzo quote drew his sword and struck at the Prince's neck.
His Royal Highness, who was writing at the head of
a long line of rickshaws with two coolies drawing him,
jumped back as Sando cut at him, and the force
of the blow was broken by his cap. However, he
was cut on the head, and it is said that

(01:23:23):
a small piece of the skull was chipped off. Prince George,
seeing the attack from Afar, jumped out of his rickshaw
and ran to after Sando, striking him with his bamboo cane.
It did not bring him down, but fortunately two rickshaw
drivers abandoned their strollers and sprinted towards Sando. The attack,
which occurred in only a few seconds, rippled across two
competing nations. Nicholas suffered all his life from headaches and

(01:23:45):
had been traumatized enough to ask every May eleven that
the Russian public prey for his well being. The nine
centimeter wound would be a lifelong reminder of how close
to death he'd been. This is like a pretty serious incident.
That's an assassination attempt. Yeah. Yeah, a dude tries to
kill him with a katana um and get pretty close.
I'm not sure how that goes because it's you're you're

(01:24:09):
looking at a sort of likely starts himself to death
in prison. That's what I was wondering, is if he
was forced to, if he chose to or force to
commit su and the to the two rickshaw drivers who
saved the Czar's life, the Japan gives them a it's
like thirty six dollar a month pension, which I think
is is decent at the time. Um, but Nicholas gives

(01:24:29):
them like a fortune, like dollars, like the equivalent of
of of that much at the time in in roubles,
which is like a fortune dollars. Yeah, he makes them rich. Um,
so at least you do. He he has someone who's
capable of being like, well, I owe, yeah, I should probably,
I should probably let it be known that you get
rich if you stop Bazar from getting murdered instead of

(01:24:53):
we get rich. Yeah when there is murdered. Yeah. Um.
So when he gets back from his his his trip,
he meets a ballerina with the last name I'm not
going to try to pronounce it starts with the kuh.
He feels deeply he falls in love with this girl.
He's really conflicted about the fact that he's still in
love with Alexandra, but he's now fallen in love with
this other girl. And he writes in his diary, would

(01:25:15):
it be right to conclude from this that I am
very amorous? Which no, dude, falling in love with two
people over the course of your entire life does not
make you very amorous. I mean it's cute though he
loves love. What can you say about that? You know? Yeah, yeah,
that's cute. Um, it's oh, this must mean I'm a player,

(01:25:36):
I've I've fallen in love with the second person. Um,
they do. Fuck. This is encouraged by the Romanov family.
They're kind of hoping, like his dad seems to be hoping,
like maybe this will take his mind off of you know,
encouraged while it was happening, We're all around him cheering
him on. It's it's not all that far from that,
like they're not actually in the room, but like everyone

(01:25:56):
is like really setting this up for him. Um, and yeah,
it doesn't stop him from being in love with Alexandre.
He does eventually wear the rest of his family down
and he gets engaged to marry her. They go back
to England to celebrate with the English side of the family.
Queen Victoria always liked to see her grandchildren married off,
and so she hosts a party at one point for
the new you know, crown Prince and his his uh,

(01:26:20):
his wife to be um and she invites a rich
Jewish man to the party, right, Queen Victoria, Yeah, and
everyone the English relatives are like fine with this, they
don't think much of it, but Nicholas is terrified of him.
He won't go near him, like, it becomes obvious that
he's treating him like he's got the plague, and all
of his English relatives make fun of him for being
a racist. In a letter home to his mother, Nicholas writes,

(01:26:43):
I tried to keep away as much as I could
and not to talk. Alright, bro, I know again can
understand how racist this dude is. I'm pretty sure he
poisoned the punch bowl. How specifically racist? Because one are
the weird things about him. He has his tire pretty
much entire time. Azar. He has a guy who's kind

(01:27:04):
of like a body assistant almost named John Hercules, who
is a black American man who like Hercules incredible name, Yeah,
unbelievable name. It's going to go right past that. By
the way, John seems to really like this gig. You

(01:27:25):
think I think he's treated well, he's paid well. He
like goes on vacation for months every year and like
comes back with jam for the royal family that like
they can't get in Russia. Um. There's rumors that like
after the monarchy falls, he like spends the rest of
his life dressed in like a fading like household uniform,
wandering around Moscow, Like I don't know. It seems to
be like a pretty good situation for him until everything

(01:27:48):
falls apart. One of the main parts of this person's
job was to deliver jam. No, that wasn't his job,
that was just what he did. He would go back,
he would go back to the US for like vacation
to see his family, and he would bring back guava
jam because all of like the royal kids loved it,
and he was like part of the household, so he
like he cared about the kids and he wanted to

(01:28:09):
bring him jam. You know, hopefully it wasn't that jam
from the f d A episode you got. Yeah, yeah,
I would think you would. You would be very careful
about your jam buying if you're purchasing for the Czars kids.
Um So, Nikki and family get back from England, um
and the Emperor. Pretty much immediately his dad gets sick.

(01:28:31):
Um probably all the drinking didn't help. It's a kidney
infection jam jam poisoning. He gets jammed. Yeah, m Um,
I don't think John Hercules was in the picture at
this point. Again, outstanding name. Um So. Alexander the Third
dies on November nine at the age of forty nine

(01:28:53):
h Nicholas was there, as was his cousin Sandro, who
later recalled he took me by the arm and led
me downstairs to his room, whom we embraced and cried together.
Then he exclaimed, Sandro, what am I going to do?
What's going to happen to me, to you, to Xenia,
to Alex to Mother, to all of Russia. I'm not
ready to be czar. I never wanted to become one.
I have no idea of even how to talk to

(01:29:14):
the ministers. It's a good sign, not a great sign.
And again Simon wat Fior notes that, like, it's pretty
normal for you to freak out when you're about to
become the r which does make sense, right, Like you
know not, but but Nikki is convinced from the beginning
that like, I'm not going to be a good czar,
and by god, he's right. Might be the only time,

(01:29:37):
but he is right. He's gonna suck at this ah
and that story is coming. But you know what's coming. First,
you're plug dobles, Oh plugable, So I thought you were.
I thought we were doing um sponsorships. No, no, no, no,
We're done with that funk. That ship well, I don't
know you mentioned this earlier before, but I have cool
friends and I have a podcast called Jeff Has Cool Friends.

(01:29:58):
Can check that out at picture on dot com slash
Jeff May where I have lots of other stuff like
ug Fine with Kim Crawl, which is a monthly show,
and I got other stuff coming that's going to be
really exciting. You can also check out Tom and Jeff
watch Batman on the game Fully Unemployed network, as well
as Unpopular Opinion and you Don't Even Like Sports, both
on the un pops Network. You can find me on
Twitter and Instagram and hey there, Jeff Row. That's fun,

(01:30:20):
Like Jeff stalk him. I mean that this is a
way better way to do it than the last time
that you said my name on a podcast. Yes, I
do sorry for alleging that you were friends with Gil
and Maxwell. I mixed you up with another Jeff. It
was so it was it was was reading me Twitter

(01:30:40):
at the time, but trying to think of Jeff Davis.
It was. It was so funny because one person did
call me an old pedophile in my um inbox messages,
which means that they are an early adopter of your podcast. Right.
That thing was only up for like an hour and
then Rob, Yeah, we fixed that pretty quick. I've made

(01:31:02):
a terrible error. Deed, we have to fix this now.
We shared a shared listener contact me was like, hey,
I don't know if this is true or not, but
you might want to look into this. Yeah, I write
your message to me about that one. And then I
said I was like, hey, guys, real quick, love the show,
wondering why it's said that I was friends with a

(01:31:24):
billionaire sex pedophile. Yeah, that was a mistake. Um, but
everyone I think I enjoyed Jeff May best friends with
Momarkaddafi Jeff May who Yeah he was daffy. Al Right,
well that's gonna do it for us. Now we will
come back with God, there's so much more z O

(01:31:45):
Nicholas to go, Um, Jesus Christ, a second Nicholas. There
were too many Nicholaises, Nichols, Nicholson's No, that's something else.
Nichols son, Nickels, sons of them, nickelsons of bitches. That's
right there. Bam h

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