Part Three: Tzar Nicholas II Was A Real Dick

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

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Oh oh man, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the
podcast that's just as refreshing as as pounding a great
zba um m. That's good Zbia. Jeff May guest, thanks friend, podcaster,

(00:23):
co host of Tom and Jeff Batch batman Jeff has
cool friends um and and and stand up comedian Jeff.
This is part three of our series on on Zar
Nicholas the second. How are you holding up great? I'm
feeling good. Uh well, I'm ready to talk. Man. This guy, this,
this fucking guys, fucking rupe, this fucking do love that.

(00:46):
Like that's the like before this, I think they're like
talking about Philippe, who has his you know, as we
talked about last time, his his first mystic con man
who got into the family and then rescuting. There's like
this media image of resputant. Is this like supernaturally charming,
like incredible, uh mysterious sort of like um figure who's

(01:10):
just like in humanly charismatic and like No, the truth
is that like literally any con man could have won
one over on these people. They were really stupid. It's
so much that people it's almost like it's like there
there's a punch card for what con Man is going
to be in charge at the time. It's like the
morning Ralph Mornan Sam situation. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just

(01:31):
so funny. Um and yeah, this is this is it's
important to note that that, like that's kind of what
you get with monarchy, right, Like that's the situation where
if your thing is ultimate power is invested in a dude,
Like a decent number of those dudes are going to
be the kind of people who would respond to a
Nigerian prince email scam like yeah, like I don't know

(01:52):
if you like, I think we all have dumb relatives.
So the idea that that like inherited divinity in anyway
or inherited power or intellect or what, that's just the
dumbest Like if if fucking Nicholas the second had been
alive and the Tsar of all Russia is today, all
of Russia would be owned by a Macadonian seventeen year

(02:13):
old who had like managed to fish his email if something, Yeah,
it would be it would be like Exxon would own
Russia if that were the case, Yeah, it would be.
Someone would have gotten to him. Like I can just
imagine l Ron Hubbard sliding into the Tsars court and
just complete control in like seven hours. It would have
been carved up like like nineteenth century after it would

(02:36):
have just been like just absolutely colonized and and and colonized,
with like Nikki still on the throne, smiling all day
about like, oh, my friends from xon Mobil are here.
Look at my magic friends from x On Mobile. They
can they can pull their fingers off, you see. Look
at that they are doing magic. Look at that people's

(02:57):
quarter from behind my ear. So as we start this episode,
the situation with Japan is continuing to spiral out of control.
In nineteen o two, Japan had signed a defensive pact
with Great Britain. Um in, Nikki's English cousins had forced
him to withdraw from man Chariot. Now, obviously he was
not going to do this, um, but his minister's got

(03:19):
him to at least degree for it, to agree with
it for a while. Um. And you know, they keep
trying to talk him out of this, saying like, hey,
like taking over Tibet maybe not a great idea, probably
not going to work all that well. Um. But Nicholas
doesn't really spend a lot of time around his advisors.
He prefers the company of Bezobrazov and his cousin the Kaiser, who,

(03:39):
as we talked about last time, I think Um had
started calling himself Admiral of the Atlantic and calling Nicky
Admiral of the Pacific, right man. Yeah, it's like giving
yourself your own nickname when you go to college. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's so sad, like because the and it's
sad because the Kaiser gives them both this nickname, and
Nikki makes fun of the Kaiser, and then Nikki starts

(04:02):
using the nickname completely and ironically. Um, He's like, well,
you know, it is a cool nickname. I'm not going
he's good at nicknames. He may be duvrous, but I
got to say this nickname it fun. Look at this
idiot coming up with nicknames. I'm going to steal though.
Absolutely mine is my nickname now, so Um one of
his ministers, because this is this is like a source

(04:24):
of incredible frustration for these these educated and like august
ministers and nobles and whatnot who are trying to like
run the empire around him. That he's listening, He's given
this Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a theme. It's just
all these like well read intellectuals with experience in geopolitical
theory are just like, what the funk are you doing? Man?

(04:45):
And one of his ministers, again named Leave, who was
again a raging anti semite um but a much smarter
person than the Czar, explains the Czar's way of thinking
here Um in a manner that I think is really
relevant today. That is, trust of ministers is common to
all sovereigns. Starting with Alexander. The first autocrats listened to
their ministers outwardly agree with them, but always turned to

(05:05):
outsiders who appeal to their hearts and inspire suspicion of
their ministers, accusing them of encroaching on autocratic law. Like
we've seen that, right, Like we've all been through that
here right question. Yeah, my cool friends don't actually question me.
They think I'm cool. Yeah. I brought my wife's boyfriend
in and he said we should try this, or like,

(05:26):
you know, there's this guy, this lawyer that I was
friends with when I was younger, Like, let's have him
make our policy here. Like we all lived through a
version of this with Trump, and it's just like to
the nth degree with Nikki, because there's absolutely no checks
on his behavior. Um. So they kind of settle into
this pattern for a while Russia for the next year
and a half or so, where Bezo Brazof will like

(05:47):
escalate in some wild way. He'll provoke the Japanese or
he'll make a move on on on Chinese occupied territory, um,
and there will be like some big war panic, and
Nikki will back off at the last moment and like
pull his troops back because he doesn't really want a war,
Like he talks this big game about like wanting to
show Japan what for, but he's also like there's a

(06:09):
part of him that's reasonable enough to know that, like, well,
if you are the absolute sovereign and you lose a war,
that doesn't that that can be bad, you know, asked
Japan exactly, asked Japan a minute after this. It's it's
funny too, because we all know this guy, the guy
that's like talking shit at the bar and then as

(06:32):
soon as somebody's like, all right, well let's go, and
then they're like yeah, and and fucking Nikki is that
guy because he doesn't really want to fight. Bezo Brasov
is the guy who like does that and also like
he'll throw down. He's not good at it, like he
can't throw a punch to save his life. He's way
too drunk to be starting ship. But he will throw
that punch if you know, going to be starting somebuddy

(06:52):
will back him up, um so nikki like for a
little while, like there, his ministers are able to get
him to pull back, get him to pull back, um,
and then he'll poke at them or Bezo Brazof will
poke at them again. And you know this kind of
happens a couple of times. Um And after a while
the Japanese get really tired of this and they give
they present these are with an incredible offer, like this

(07:14):
is actually really quite and again I say generous. They're
offering someone else's land. But like they're like, hey, Czar,
I don't want to deal with this like constant like
dick measuring game that year is how about you get
all of Mancharia that's yours, Russia gets all of Mancharia,
we get Korea. How about that? Which I'm the czar.
I don't have to fight a war. Really, I could

(07:35):
just take this huge, just chunk of land longer than larger,
I think than any country in Western Europe that I
get to just add to Russia for free seems like
a great deal for me. These are right, Nikki says no. Uh,
Nikki's like, well, yeah, sure, that would wipe out the
stain of defeating Crimea and make me maybe the greatest
expansion It's star of the last century. Probably would have

(07:56):
distracted from all my domestic failures. But that means I
don't get Korea too when I really want Korea. Because
I can't get he wants to collect them all. Yeah, yeah,
he wants like those cops who got fired for trying
to get that pokemon. You know who among us hasn't

(08:17):
ignored our civic duty in order to collect the snore life? Yeah,
I mean it's we. We all have that friend who like,
wasn't able to make rent one month because he bought
too many fucking um what are those what are those
nerd bobblehead type things called because he bought too many
funco Are you just looking behind me and looking for
something to make fun of. I mean, it's fine when
it's a funko pop, but because he's the Czar of

(08:39):
all Russias, his funco pops are like entire nations of
millions of people in in a it's it's like entire
ethnic groups that that he wants to collect and put
in his little Russia box and probably racially discriminate against
um because he is the guy that he is. So

(08:59):
he he says no to Japan's again very generous offer
with other people's territory um, and then he doesn't leave Mancheria.
But so he doesn't agree to this, and he also
stays in Mancheria, which is kind of saying to Japan,
we're gonna try to invade Korea, Like we're gonna we're
gonna take Korea from you, right, Like, that's what you're saying.
If you're like, no, I don't want you to give
me Mancheria, but I'm not gonna leave, you're saying, well,

(09:21):
I'm gonna I'm gonna funk with your ships some more. Right.
That's that's exactly what he's saying. That's as good as
an act of war, really if you if you're not unreasonable,
and Japan takes it this way. Um. Simon Montfio writes, quote,
Bezobrazov had taught the emperor that treaties could be broken,
and Nicholas was convinced that Russia could defeat those macaques.

(09:43):
He's calling them monkeys because Japan was a barbarian country,
and cool Potkin told Nicholas that the Japanese army, who's
one of his military advisors, that the Japanese army was
a colossal joke, but he did not want a war.
The Emperor blithely ordered the viceroy, I don't want war
between Russia and Japan and will not permit this war.
Take all measures so that there is no war. Japan
made for their offers to Russia for a compromise, but

(10:05):
wondered if the inconsistence z are was capable of negotiating
a treaty yet alone honoring it. So he gets every
chance in the world to make this work right. I
think it's interesting to note that we are actually looking
at two nations that have just really honestly westernized their
militaries or and when I say westernized, I mean modernized.

(10:26):
Let me let me rephrase it, because you know, Japan
obviously had to make a big leap forward during the
mid to lady nineteenth century as well. Um, and we
know we talked about in previous episodes what Russia Russia
has just gotten their military to be kind of in
not really in line as we'll talk about when World
War One hits, but they're closer to in line with

(10:48):
like Germany and France, and so it's almost like they
both got new toys. They're like, you know what, yeah,
and that's that's a big thing. You know. Japan has
just modernized and gotten their military kind of really rolling
along at the same point that China is falling apart,
which provides this opportunity for Japan to take a whole

(11:08):
bunch of China and get a bunch of ship that
being from an island they maybe didn't have access to before. Russia.
It's a little bit like with the Japanese government, this
is much more of like a kind of grim real politique,
like we need to take as much as we can.
Um there's this awareness that like the colonial powers, like

(11:29):
they will do that to us, what they're doing to Africa,
what they're doing to other parts of Asia, if we
don't assert ourselves and get powerful, and the best way
to do this to take enough land that we can
can continue to build up our military and not be
able to be fucked with by them. Right, there's a
lot of it's a lot harsher of an understanding with Russia.
Nikki's this mix of like he's got these new toys

(11:49):
he does want to play with and his he he
has people talking to about how easy it will be
to be Japan and an easy victory will deal with
all these domestic troubles. But he's also he's like re
sitable enough to know that he probably would actually be
a bad idea to go to war. And he has
a lot of ministers like into including like wit and
the other kind of the intelligent ministers he has saying like, dude,

(12:11):
you're hanging on by a thread right now, Like people
are not happy this is that there's there's riots and
ship all over the country. Um, what we don't want
now as a war because it's probably not going to
go great. And so there's this push and pull for
a while. And for a while Nikki's kind of in
the middle of those sides. Um, but he eventually kind
of sides with the folks who start telling him and

(12:32):
and and this includes pleave his anti Semite minister buddy
that a small victorious war might distract everybody, right, So
he eventually lines up on that I just love the
phrase anti Semite minister. But well that's he's got the
minister buddies who are racist and the ones who are racist,
but not in terms of their policy, because every they're

(12:54):
all racist. Yeah, Like the best guy in this story,
that's far is his attitude is like, well, if you
can't drown all the was, I guess they should have
civil rights. Subversive statement, I guess now. On New Year's Day,
n four, the Emperor of all the Russia's decides to
make an ultimatum to Japan. He tells the Japanese ambassador
Russia was not just a country, but a part of

(13:15):
the world. In order to avoid a war, it was
better not to try her patients or it could end badly.
On the twenty four January, Japan breaks off diplomatic relations.
So after like this back and forth, he issues basically
like shut the funk up, let me do whatever it
is I'm going to do, and if you talk to
me again, like I might throw hands. That that's kind

(13:37):
of what he's don't even yeah, don't even fucking sucks me.
Don't even talk to me, stugging talks to me. If
swhere to God, if you fucking talk to me once
it's over and to continue our bar ANALYSI drunken Nicholas
slurs that out to the Japanese, turns around to grab
another drink from the bar, and while his back is turned,

(13:59):
they hit him in the back of the head with
a bottle of Schlitz, like we've all been there or whatever.
Um they fuck him up. The next day, while the
Czar is out watching at the theater watching a play,
the Japanese fleet attacks Port Arthur, which you know Russia
had taken a little bit earlier, and they do serious damage,
like wipe out a significant chunk of his Asian fleet.

(14:20):
I would add second worst thing to happen in a
theater to a ruler. Oh man, there was a great
this Halloween. I think I haven't said this on the show.
This Halloween, we were out taking some friends kids of
mine trick or treating and as we were like walking
back to the car, there was just this dude dressed
up as a dead Lincoln sitting in a chair in
front of his house with a bucket of candy like

(14:42):
up stock straight looked like a statue almost, And one
of my friends asked him, hey, how was the play,
and he without missing a beat, responded, I left early.
I gotta be honest with you, Like he probably had
like a list of way he was ready to say
new New Dead Lincoln feature eight realistic words sounds. So

(15:03):
the Russo Japanese War kicks off from this, right, Japan
attacks at Port Arthur. The Russians are very angry and
they start fighting. There's this whole big series of battles,
you know, it's a war war. Stuff occurs um and
on the ground there's this you know, land warfare that's
largely happening in in Manchuria between like these couple hundred
thousand troops that Russia has there and the Japanese Expeditionary

(15:25):
Force and the Russians do okay here they lose basically
every big battle, but Japan often loses more men in
the battle, so like they're kind of it's like pyric
victories for the Japanese where they're like, yeah, we keep
winning these battles, but funk, there's a lot of Russians
and like, we can't keep this up for a while.
That is the story of they there's a lot of

(15:49):
Russian Japan has the same experience everyone else does fighting Russia,
which is Jesus Christ. There's no end of these people.
I mean, think about the land differences, maybe like oh,
so we're like what we're like the like the Moscow
suburbs are our entire island, you know, there's so many
of Yeah, yeah, I think we need the entire island

(16:13):
of just to do anything to um And so this this,
you know, on land, the Russians kind of duke it
out with the Japanese until the Japanese are, you know,
after repeatedly winning, kind of on the verge of collapse
by some sources. So it's going okay on the land.
It's not going great obviously, because it never does go
great for Russia either, but like they win awards sustainable situation,

(16:38):
it's not in the navy. So Japan starts the war
by wiping out one of three Russian fleets, the Pacific Fleet,
And you know, Nikki has a choice here. One of
them would be like, well, I could kind of potentially
give up Port Arthur, or at least give up relieving
it from the sea. I could not try to funk
with the in the ocean anymore because I don't need to.
I'm directly connected by land to the battle space. You know,

(17:00):
I can just throw a ship lord more dudes in
Demandcharia and probably eke out if not like a win,
you know, a negotiated settlement that gives me what I
could have gotten without fighting a war anyway. But like
looks good on paper, you know, he has kind of
that option. But he's you know, Russia's pride as its navy.
And it's not Russia's pride, it's it's the Czar's pride.

(17:21):
And it's this way with all of these guys in
this same period. Kaiser Wilhelm is like helping to make
World War One b a thing by repeatedly like tweaking
the British by building up the German fleet, because that's
the thing the British don't want to see, is the
Germany have a fleet that can rival the British fleet,
because Germany already has an army that Britain can't handle. Um,
But the Britain doesn't like when anybody has They don't

(17:43):
like when anybody has a navy, No, they sure don't.
I don't believe are the only ones with boats a reason.
So the Kaiser and it's like it's this whole thing
of like it's like it's it's like warhammer for the Kaiser.
Like he gets to he gets to get these little boats,

(18:03):
these boats that he gets to have a say in designing,
and like look at all the big guns and he
gets to move them around on a map and sail
around in his yacht and look at the boats that
he owns and umunds it does sound dope, right, it
sounds pretty sick. And it's like that with the Kaiser too.
And and Russia, you know, has a has a traditionally

(18:24):
pretty powerful navy. Their best fleet is their Baltic fleet though, right,
because that's like that's home shores, right, that's what's gonna
be fucking with Turkey. Russia's big enemy for forever is Turkey.
Um So they've got they lose their Pacific fleet to
the Japanese with like out really getting to fire much
of a shot. Um So, Nikki gets obsessed with the
idea of getting revenge and with the idea of proving

(18:46):
himself to be the Admiral of the Pacific. You can't
be the Admiral of the Pacific if your fleet gets
sunk and you don't do anything about it. So he
takes this massive Baltic Fleet, the pride of the Russian
Navy and the lynchpin of their territorial power, and he
sends the whole thing to fight the Jackas fleet. Um,
which takes like a year. Like it's not easy to
get from the Baltic to the coast of China in
this period. Yeah. Yeah, they're not flying on no, and

(19:08):
they can't really they're not good at at boating at
this point, you know, they're they're steaming slowly ahead there. Um,
well they had a rough go. Yeah, it's exhausting. They
accidentally murder some fishermen on the way that belonged to
some European country or another. Um. Yeah, they get panicked
and they think that it's a Japanese uh torpedo boat
or whatever. Um. I mean that's yeah, really funny. Really,

(19:32):
you know, we all agree that it's while those deaths
are tragic, the historical context of the humor in that
is it is pretty funny to be like a dude
on a fishing boat and get get marked by the
entire Russian Baltic Fleet. Um. Yeah, you're just like I'm
out to catch up, you know. And and it's worth
noting the Russian Baltic fleet will perform a lot better

(19:52):
against these unarmed fishermen than they do against the Japanese
Navy standard standard move for them. So while they're or
to ring their way slowly to Asia. Um, and Russia
is kind of having this very mixed, ugly ground war
in Manchuria. Um, and you know the fact that there's
a war, they start being more protests, they start being
more riots, they start being more strikes among the workers. Well,

(20:14):
all this is going on, the Czar's son, Alexei is born. Um,
this is a cause for a lot of finally some
good finally, some good news. I've got a handle on it.
Now I have a boy. This couldn't go anywhere. But
up as the empire is crumbling in tens of thousands
of men are dying. He's like, good news, everybody, We're
gonna be able to keep this thing going for another generation.

(20:37):
Good news everywhere. One more Romanov for you all to
deal with. So there's this big celebration, right, huge state
celebration because now there's an heir to the throne. Um.
But then shortly thereafter this are and his wife realized
their boy has hemophilia. He's like, you know, the belly
button thing when the thing falls out of it after
you pull the baby out. Um. That the umbilical cord. Yeah,

(21:00):
the babilical cord. His when they cut it, it doesn't
stop bleeding, right, because he's hemophiliac. You know That's that's
the whole thing. Um, you bleed more than his ideal um.
And so there's this suddenly realization that like the Tsar's
Air basically has a death sentence because like in this
period of time, I think there's a bunch of things
you can do. They really don't have medicine back then. Yeah, yeah,

(21:25):
you have, you have opium, and you have spiritualists. Um,
I mean you have you have conmon and you have
doctors who are like three percent better than conman um.
But there's nothing really to do about this, and pretty
much everyone but the Czar and Czarina except like, oh ship,
well he's not going to make it to twenty. Like
this kid's not gonna last long. Um. Yeah, this kid's fucked.

(21:47):
They cannot take that because at this point, she's kind
of worn out. She's had five kids. They're not easy
pregnancies for her. She's not as young anymore. Um, and
she's like I can't have another child wild and because
he does love his wife, the czar is not going
to force her. You know, I think a lot of
monarchs would have been like the funk you say, like
you're we're going to roll these dice again. I don't

(22:08):
care what happens. I'm sorry, what was that? I like
how you're like, by the way, it's like it wasn't
an easy pregnancy. I'm like, yeah, I think that's just
because it was in nineteen what's four, um, nineteen o five? Yeah,
and this, you know, so this is like horribly devastating
for the Romanov family because it kind of means like

(22:29):
we're going to have to hand over ruling to like
one of our cousins or something like. This isn't going
to keep going, and that means that's to the czar,
even though there's like protests and uprisings and a an
increasingly disastrous war. That's what makes Nikki feel like a failure. Yeah,
because it's a it's a boy, but it's not you know,

(22:50):
it's a boy who's not going to live long enough
to continue making bad decisions that affect the lives of
millions anyway. Um, Nicholas is while he's trying to deal
with this and dealing with the fact that his wife
is increasingly having breakdowns over the fact that her son
is kind of constantly on the edge of death, which
understandable reason to have a breakdown. Um, Russia is kind

(23:12):
of breaking down because the war is going poorly. People
are protesting, yeada, YadA, YadA. Nicholas reshuffles his generals, and
his minister's basically does this thing of like, well, it
has to be someone else's fault that none of this
is going well, So I'm just going to kind of
randomly fire and replace people until things start to work better. Um,
the problem can't be with me. Uh yeah, how could

(23:33):
it be? Yeah, and you're so adept. Nick. So one
of the guys he brings on is this new minister Mursky,
who points out like, hey, there's this campaign among liberals
to create like a Congress, basically a constitutional representation for
the people, you know, which folks have been lobbying for
for a while. His grandpa was about to put one through,
and Mursky's like, hey, this is really popular, and because

(23:54):
it's really popular, if you do it, a lot of
the people who are protesting and striking right now might
stop and like you can focus on the other million
problems you've created. Um and maybe if you don't do this,
there's gonna be a revolution. And the Emperor Nicholas the
second does not take this very well. His responses quote,
you know, I don't hold autocracy for my own pleasure.

(24:15):
I act in this sense only because it's necessary for Russia.
I'll never agree to a representative form of government because
I consider it harmful to the people whom God has
entrusted to me. So, hearing this, Minsky's responses, everything has failed.
Let us build jails, of course. Yeah, we're gonna have
to throw a lot of people in prison, or they're

(24:36):
gonna murder us. So Minsky at least seems to have
the lay of the land reasonably well. On Sunday, January
nine is the Russian army launch is a huge offensive
in Mancharia. A protest march of thousands of workers swarms
towards the palace where Nicholas and his family live. Troops
at the palace open fire and charge the protesters on horseback,
and they kill more than a thousand people. This is

(24:58):
not like a kin states or a deal. We're like
a couple of guys panic and there's you know, a
handful of people die and like everybody like stars in shock.
This is like ranks of men firing in mass into
a crowd and then running them down on horseback with sabers.
Classic not to whitewash kin state, but this is like
three hundred or so of them. And at the same time, Um,

(25:21):
I mean, I'm from Boston where we had a bombing
where like three people died, and we're like, this is
the worst thing that has ever happened. So I understood
in Russia happens on a different scale. And on this
day when his troops kill a thousand civilians in order
to defend his regime from protest, Nicholas writes this in
his diary, A terrible day, Lord, how painful and sad.

(25:44):
Mama arrived from town, lunched with everyone, went for a
walk with Misha. Mama stayed the night. Big, big, big
deal for you, hey, for you. Thousand people died, Mama came.
What a day? I think mostly a lot on your maybe, yeah,
that's the main thing. Um, It's very funny, how like

(26:06):
completely sociopathic. These people are too, like the suff suffering
and death of their subjects on on a staggering scale.
But you know who did care their subjects and doesn't
ignore their horrible demises. I'm gonna guess it's your sponsor's right.
That's right when you die. Our sponsors, every one of
them genuinely sad, and they'll write about it in their diaries,

(26:28):
and they've predicted those deaths. They have they know exactly
when you're going to die. So maybe you know on
this ad they'll tell you the exact moment that you'll expire.
Ah really present you really? Um? So, Jeff, We're we're

(26:50):
we're we're in a we're in a dicey time for
for the Romanov dynasty as this is happening, um or
if not that long after this is happening, and like
well cup of months. So May of that year, May fourteen,
the Baltic Fleet reaches uh, the war zone right, um
reaches Southeast Asia broadly, right, you know, it's a big area.
They're kind of trying to get to Port Arthur, um

(27:13):
and they're steaming around all these you know, hugging the
coast and while they're sort of getting into the battle space,
the Japanese admiral, a guy named Togo Um spots them
ahead of time and is smarter than anybody who has
ever worked for the Czar. Um. Togo is very good
at what he does. He actually believes he's the reincarnation
of Horatio Nelson Um, the British admiral who wanted whatever

(27:36):
that fucking famous sea battle. Um. He's a bit of
a loon, but he's really good at running a navy.
And he spots the Russian Navy and he sets his
troops up in an ambush and one night, the supposedly
the reason this all happens is that like some dude
on a medical ship in the Russian fleet forgets to
close a window and it allows the Japanese fleet to

(27:59):
spot them in the flow at night, Um, and the
Japanese fleet ambushes the pride of the Russian Navy and
wipes them out. Thirty ships sunk to the bottom of
the sea, and like a day and a half or so,
including the flagship of the Russian Navy, and they don't
really lose anybody. It's like more than a thousand Russian
sailors dead and like a hundred Japanese sailors. Dad or

(28:20):
something like that it's like it is. It is a
it is a terrible disaster. It goes into yeah, um
it is. It goes as badly as it possibly could
have done. Um, somebody called the match. Yeah yeah they
are this is this is really like, um, I don't
know what's the who's a boxer who killed somebody? Emil Griffith.

(28:40):
This is an Emil Griffith situation. That's Togo. Um, he's
he's just he's just permanently knocked the Baltic fleet unconscious.
Um and they are never getting out. Yeah. Yeah, I
have that equation of like that that like stone cold
Steve Austin coming in, ravaging them and just leaving while
he's laying on the ground. That's kind of what the

(29:01):
Japanese fleet does. So this number one leads very quickly
to the Russians capitulating. You know, they lose the Russo
Japanese war. Um, and this is kind of the thing.
They have now lost two thirds of their entire navy effectively,
Daddie in my toye, Daddy, I've lost my bets and

(29:22):
they can't like it's one of those things. Not only
is this just the disaster like it would be for
any country. But this is also like the first time
that a major European power has lost a war, a
modern war to people who are not white, um, and
that is like that people start flipping out all over
the damn world about this ship. Um. And this really

(29:46):
pisses off everyone in Russia's piss The right wing is
pissed because it's like us, we're the ones who lose
a war to the Japanese UM, and the people who
aren't right when are are pissed because like, how many
of our guys did you get killed for no reason?
I Like, the two different reasons are like we lost
to them, and the other on the other side is like, wait,
we didn't. My brother's dead. So more protests. Well, Russia,

(30:11):
the battleship Timpkin mutinies in Odessa, which is goes on
to be a pretty famous moment um. And Nicholas the
second well, all this is going on, well the Timpkins mutinying,
while large chunks of Russia are no longer under the
control of the Russian state, Like that's the extent to
which the government loses control. Nikki accepts an invitation from
his cousin the Kaiser, to go hang out on their

(30:32):
yachts together class. So like the Baltic and CAUCUSUS have
have overthrown the government and like murdered local officials and
are independent principal or independent republics right now. And Nikki's like,
I need to get away from it all. I'm going
to sail on a boat with my cousin. He's like, Hey,
I'm gonna I'm gonna jet you guys. You got this? Yeah,
this seems fine, right, Yeah, you got this. I mean

(30:55):
to be honest, if I was one of his his ministers, like, yeah,
get the get him the funk out of here. No.
I think it's that this is the right move forever
one is to have him be like I'm gonna I'm
gonna get the I'm gonna get you. Why don't you
take an extra couple of months, you know, just really
clear your head. Yeah, why did you go to hang
out with that dipshit cousin? So? Um Yeah, I'm gonna

(31:18):
quote now from the Oxford University Press. In nineteen o five,
there were three thousand, two hundred and twenty eight agrarian
disorders that caused twenty eight million, eight hundred and seventy
two thousand seven hundred and fifty nine roubles worth of damage. ROBERTA.
Manning and her study of the nineteen o five Revolution stated,
under these conditions of near total breakdown in government authority
and paralysis of the government in elite, which temporarily lost

(31:40):
faith in its ability to administer the nation, rural Russia
rose up to join its urban partners in the greatest
most destructive series of agrarian uprisings since the Pugachev Rebellion
of the eighteenth century. So by the end of nineteen
o five, there are thirteen thousand, nine hundred ninety five
recorded strikes. There are riots, there are there are like
thousands of assassinations over this period of time. Like they

(32:02):
are massacring government officials by by the fucking football team's worth. Um,
that seems egregious, right, I mean yeah, like I get
I get it. But also at the same time, it's
like I feel like a couple of guys got a
lot caught off. Yeah, I mean it's pretty bad, Like
it's really ugly, and it's ugly and because like not
to take anything from like the ministers or from the

(32:24):
terrorists who are in some of these are acts of
were like just a guy will shoot this dude who
was like a police commissioner who was like specifically like
you did this crackdown, I'm gonna kill you. Some of
them are like, we're going to set off eighty pounds
of T and T in a crowded neighborhood to like
take this guy out. You know. Um, it's a lot
of it is really ugly. And part of why it's

(32:45):
really ugly is these are kind of established that. I mean,
he was his dad established back in the eighteen sixties
when their grandpa was assassinated that like, well, whenever there's unrest,
we kill people in huge numbers, and that's how we
deal with unrest is man murder. And the czar has
a thousand people killed, you know, at at the gates
of his palace. Like that is the way the Russian

(33:07):
state handles unrest. So when people rise up against the
Russian state, where are the stakes? This is how you fight?
You fight by killing huge numbers of people. I learned
from watching you dad, you know, Like that's pretty bit's
a pretty base answer too, And it's just like, I
mean that's like the number one thing you go to. Yeah,
this is what I guess this is how this works. Um. So, yeah,

(33:27):
and the government's the first thing they always have to
like throw out obviously, like every other government when there's
you know, any kind of popular unrest and programs are happening.
In this period, it's very messy time. So you've got
obvious and some of those programs are like these these
right wing groups, um, the Black Hundreds, which are like Czarists,
we'll talk about them in a little bit. Some of
them are happy are some of them are being done

(33:49):
by like left wing groups, saying most of it is
from the right, most of these programs. A lot of
it though I probably the bulk of it isn't isn't specifically,
it's just like it's reactions to the things that the
that the left you're doing. So you'll have like a
striker and uprising in Odessa, or you'll have a terrorist
attack that kills this minister, and then people will blame
it on the Jews and there will be a pagram
and you know, like that's that's kind of the way

(34:12):
this whole thing goes. It's a very messy period of time. UM.
Russia does not have cops really like they have police,
and they try to tamp down on unrest um. But
they don't. There's not there's like one of them for
every several thousand people. So whenever they really need to
crack heads, it's the army. UM. But the army's mutinying
all over because they've just lost this war, just like

(34:34):
the navy. UM. So the only thing you can really
get the army to crack down on is the Bolsheviks. Right.
So when you have these left wing uprisings, these are
can generally get military units and to fight them. But
when you have these programs that are responses to these uprisings,
in some cases you can't convince the army is not
going to go crack down on them because the army
is like, well, we're pretty racist too, and the cops

(34:56):
are like actively participating in the pagram, so they're not
going to do no. That part's cool. So Nicholas also
comes to see that like, well, maybe these programs are
a good thing because all of the people doing the
revolutions are Jews, which is not true, um, but they are.
There are a number of them are Jewish people because
Jewish people are particularly oppressed by this. Are is someone

(35:19):
lying about Jews so they can do violence towards them,
that there's this thing. Later in life, when he gets
over through the fact, he spends a lot of time
listing out all of the revolutionaries and like their secret
Jewish roots. Um, which is wrong about a lot of
them were not Jewish. That he just like found ways
to believe they were Jewish because he he comes to
believe that, like all resistance to his regime, is rooted

(35:39):
in the Jews. Um. He writes this in a letter
to his mom, quote, nine tenths of the troublemakers are Jews.
The people's whole anger turned against them. That is how
the programs happened. It is amazing how they took place
in the towns of Russia and Siberia. Now there's a
lot of debate as to whether or not those are
deliberately incited and organized programs as a way to regain
control and alps distract people from attacking the state. Whether

(36:02):
or not he had any sort of plan, the violence
often worked out exactly as one assumes he would have wanted.
And I'm going to quote now from an academic study
in Monde, russ After the astounding news of the October
Manifesto demonstrations and meetings with red flags began to occur
now and then they were accompanied by excesses insulting to
the Czarist throne. This is like the start of the
left wing revolution against the Tsar. Portraits of Nicholas the Second,

(36:25):
so revered by monarchists, were taken down by walls and
sometimes from walls and sometimes destroyed, and meetings. Money was
collected for Nicholas's burial on Kiev on the balcony of
the city Duma building. One of those in a meeting,
cut a hole in Aazarist portrait and sticking his own
threat head through the hole, replacing the Tsar's face, shouted, now,
I am the sovereign. You have to imagine that guy
was pretty pretty drunk. I gotta be honest, man, that

(36:46):
sounds like that. That's a good time and son of
a bit, that does sound fun. This is the good timing,
son of a bitch part. It takes a turn here um.
The the admirers of autocracy old customs in order regarded
such events as an outrage, a triumph of Jews and
Sadistas in seditious intelligencia, and came out with a furious protest.
Real cases of offenses to monarch as symbol similar to

(37:06):
that described above were not ubiquitous. Sometimes they were exaggerated
or just invented from nothing by pre pre program rumors,
often with preposterous accusations of outrages against Orthodox shrines or
Czarist portraits. For example, right before a program and Kiev,
rumors circulated about an attack by slur against Jewish people
to a monastery, Black Hundreds organized belligerent counter demonstrations, sometimes

(37:29):
under pretext of celebrating the ninth anniversary of the ascension
of Nicholas the Second to the throne, which clashed with
left wing meetings and fights turned into programs. Depending on
the possibility or desire of local authorities to restore order,
these could continue for days. Almost inevitably, the Czar's portrait
was present at these disgraceful events. Black Hundred demonstrations were
often were very often physically organized around the Emperor's portrait.

(37:52):
It played an important symbolic role, highlighting the assembled crowds
loyalty to the throne and as if it had provided
Zara sanction to the program a programs, rumors spread wildly
that Nicholas Second the Second permitted them to reckon smash
and beat the seditious anti's, anti monarchy rebels and tumpsk.
The following ritual was observed. A crowd would come up
to a store and the one walking up front would

(38:13):
turn to the portrait of Nicholas and ask, your majesty
do you allow us to destroy this store? The one
carrying the portrait would answer, I permit it. So it's
I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on a limb and
say that that's not on the level I mean officially
state saying it isn't. It isn't because the state's not
sending in troops to stop this. And later on in
the wake of this, Nicolas pardons a lot of the

(38:35):
programasts um and as he just wrote to his mom,
like he sees most of the revolutionaries as Jewish, he
sees the people's anger against Jewish folks. He sees these
programs as like an expression of honest and fair anger.
So while he's not he is not saying go out
and destroy Jewish businesses. But when these crowds take his
portrait and use it to like justify their destruction of

(38:57):
Jewish businesses, they're not making that up out of whole cloth,
you know, yeah, um, yeah, and uh, it's it's it's
it's pretty ugly. There's one cool moment and some of
this stuff where so one of the things that will
happen is these processions, these black hundreds marching with porches
of the Czar will like walk around and they'll demand
people on the street, um remove their caps and like

(39:20):
bow to the czar and if you don't do this,
you'll get the ship beaten out of you, right Like
It's it's kind of like this gang being like, hey,
you gotta like the guy in our picture or we're
gonna kick the funk out of you. You know. Sometimes
they murder people and there's we've had that. We've had
that in America pretty pretty recently, and we will again.
There's a beautiful moment. There's this Bolshevik v Morozov who

(39:42):
encounters one of these processions and they're like, hey, you
gotta take your hat off and you've got to declare
loyalty to this picture of those are um And he
doesn't do that, v moros off. Instead, he calls the
ars scoundrel, pulls out a gun, shoots two of the
people carrying the portrait to death um and does get
beaten so badly that he nearly dies, but he survives.

(40:04):
I mean he killed two people and a and a portrait.
That's a pretty good response. He did get nearly beaten
to death, though, so you know, mileage may vary. Yeah,
he made it into the book. They're all dead in
the story now, but he made it into the book.
We do all it probably sucked at the time, but
we do all know he was a badass. Now damn right, hey, man,
ass kickings happen. That just that's gonna happen. And what's

(40:27):
happened shooting two guys holding a portrait of an assholes forever?
That literally, that's that's your new that's your new master
card commercial, even though they haven't made those commercials. And
what is a little dated, But you know what's not
a dated ad is these ads right now? Oh yeah,

(40:53):
we are back so those modern those modern ads we
just had shamefully honored. So Jews were not the only
racial victims of these prosarist moms right back from ats
so funny. Yeah, that was some great anyway, The Jews
weren't the only there were other races that the Czarists

(41:15):
saved it. Yeah, in northern Central Russia. I guess these
aren't racial victims, but students and academics are targeted and
often murdered. Like they'll they'll beat up college kids and
professors and assassinate them the right will because of their
connections to Yeah, yeah kind of. It's also like a
lot of the people. Often it will be a case
of like, yes, some like college students who got radicalized

(41:38):
will set off a bomb to kill these local officials,
and then as a result, some like people in the
town will go murder their professor. You know, ship like
that's happening too. It's ugly, you know, it's it's kind
of a civil war is going on in Russia right now,
and it's very much a prelude for the civil war
that will happen not all that long in the future
and kill what four million people? Um, I mean, yeah,

(41:59):
there are other targets. Im Baku Armenians were targeted by
the Tsarists. Getting any kind of comprehensive death toll would
be impossible, But during October of nineteen oh five, at
least six hundred and twenty two people were murdered uh
and three thousand four injured in programs alone. That's just
deaths from these kind of like right wing masses of violence. Uh.

(42:20):
Those numbers come from police sources, though, which probably under
counts the death toll. Shlomo Lambrosa, who's a scholar, calculates
more than three thousand, one hundred three deaths just among
Jews during the nineteen o five programs. Now, historians seem
in agreement that Czar Nicholas the Second did not have
a concerted plan to spark programs. He was kind of
okay with them. He did not devote a lot of

(42:41):
effort to stopping them. But there were there were For
years afterwards, people would like theorize that he had orchestrated
the programs. There really does not seem to be evidence
of that that it was a central plan. But we
do know that anti Sism, anti Semitism was stoked purposefully
by the Tsar's men, whether or not he gave the order. Um,
there was this. This is kind of found out afterwards

(43:04):
that in a corner of the St. Petersburg Police Department
there's a secret printing press which is putting out pamphlets
this entire time urging people to quote kill Jews, to
tear them apart into tiny pieces. Um. Yeah, that's not
a not a lot of like wiggle room. There not
a lot of room for yeah interpretation. Just just kill them.

(43:26):
It's fine, joke, he's joke, he's joke, but please, no,
we're kidding. Kill them. But the guy printing this is
a as a gendarme officer named Kamissarov Um and he's
has a role in spreading the uh the protocols of
the Elders of Zion to um and he's like he's

(43:47):
funneling them using police resources from St. Petersburg through right
wing organizations who spread them around the country and oftentimes
these things will spread to an area and then there
will be pagrams. UM. So this is where again maybe
Nikki wasn't explicitly aware of all this, but like his
dudes were doing it in the city where he was living, um,
using his money. So the idea that people suspect he

(44:10):
had a role in directly inciting pagrams, it doesn't come
out of nowhere. You know. Again, we may have seen
something like this relatively recently in our country. Yeah, thankfully
not with that kind of death toll. But it is
kind of like the the plausible deniability of the autocrat
you know who's like, oh, yeah, I mean people, it's
horrible when people do violent things. I don't think those
violent things are wrong, but like I'm not organizing it.

(44:33):
They just happened, and I say it's okay, but it's
also bad at the same time when anyone pushes me
on it, you know, like, yeah, we've seen this, we
may I'm not gonna lie. That's something we've seen. So
the wave of rebellions, um, you know, the programs kind
of burned themselves out after enough people get the murder
out of their systems and the stealing out of their systems. Um.

(44:55):
The rebellions, the actual like kind of left wing uprisings
against the state are put down by the military, and
Nikki orders exceptional brutality to be used in defense of
his regime. When the St. Petersburg workers district is stormed
by Russian troops his he has his soldiers use artillery
to pound populated districts of his own capital, killing three
thousand people, um christ um a lot, which is like,

(45:20):
that's as many minister that's as many like government officials
as the revolutionaries kill in a period of years. Um.
And they're just like the shelling of his own capital.
The emperor writes in his diary, quote, the armed rebellion
in Moscow has been crushed. The abscess was growing. Now
it's burst. When one of his generals in the Baltics
is not putting down the locals with enough brutality for

(45:42):
Nicki's liking, bizarre, sends a man to tell him, quote,
the only thing you'll get in trouble for is not
being brutal enough. He then immediately executes a thousand prisoners. So, like,
he sees this guy puts down this rebellion, and he's like,
you're taking a lot of prisoners alive. Like, I might
get angry at you for that, but if you all
a bunch of them, there's no amount of people you
could kill and piss me off. So this guy kills

(46:04):
a thousand people and like very rightly, being like, well,
these are basically just said I should murder more of
these folks. I like that. He was like given permission.
He's like, well, let's just go for the whole thing. Well,
I guess I guess we'll try. Uh. Simon Montfior writes
when he heard that a punitive detachment had accepted the surrender,
of rebellious Lavonians. He insisted the town should have been destroyed.

(46:24):
Arrests were celebrated with the word power. This is Nikki
writing in his own diary, while the summary execution of
twenty six rebellious railway road workers earned an imperial Bravo. Bezobrazov,
brother of Nikki's Far East adviser and one of his
favorite guards officers, staged ghoulish public shows shows of bodies
dangling on gibbets. When Commander Richter, son of Alexander the

(46:46):
Third's crony, now leading a punitive detachment in the Baltics,
not only shot his prisoners but hang the bodies. Afterwards,
Nicholas wrote another bravo. Trip Off informed him that Cossacks
had overused their whips. Very well done, applauded Nicholas. When
he heard of more executions, he commented, this really tickles me.
So this is how he writes about, like the crimes
against humanity. I'm tickled by the fact that you've executed

(47:08):
these people. Oh well done. They whipped people to death. Bravo. Definitely,
it definitely sees that that, like um, that disconnect when
you're raised like the poppish child of privilege and power.
It is really like if you ever played a game
like Civilization or you know, Age of Wonders or whatever,

(47:30):
where you like build an empire and there's sometimes people
rebel and you crack down on these like fake people
who don't really exist. He feels that same way about
like the lives of thousands of real people. It's like
he's playing a video game. He's like looking at his
maps and someone saying, we put them down, and we
we executed a thousand of them, or like how many
of us would you like to kill out of these
that we've captured, and he makes a note of how

(47:52):
many people he once killed, and like then he goes
home feeling like he's winning the game finally, I mean,
I feel like a win. Yeah, yeah, are all a
winner getting to hear this story. So in total, Bizar's
men kill fifteen thousand people um at least, and deport
forty more, cracking down on the rebellion. And this time
it's enough, you know, like this is enough that he

(48:13):
is able to hold onto power barely. Um. Yeah, in
eight years, things aren't going to go so well. Now,
before we roll out today, Jeff, we should probably talk
a little bit about ra Ra Rasputine, lover of the
Russian queen, hell boy villain boy villains. Yeah, one of
the better hell boy villains. Um. Guy, I get told

(48:35):
I look like on a not a regular basis. Um,
I can see that. Yeah, well, um, And it's one
of those things. He is definitely the single most famous
person today in the whole Romanov story. As a general rule,
the only reason people talk about Nicholas the second or
his wife, um is either to talk about Anastasia or
to talk about Rasputin, and generally both at the same time.

(48:58):
Like in the Disney movie I don't I don't think
you look like Rasputing. For the record, there's there's there's
more love in your eyes. Thank you, Sophie. That's very
sweet of you. Know. This is Robert. So it's one
of those things pop history is right, and that this
guy really is as influential as as the popular you know,

(49:20):
depictions make him say he's a huge part of the
regime and why a bunch of stuff happens. Um. It's
also like wrong in some weird ways because he is
like it always portrays him as this malevolent force and
he gives a lot of bad advice, his advice, but
he also is like one of the people saying like,
you should probably stop being shitty to Jewish people. Um,
you should probably not get into World War One. Now,

(49:42):
that's why people don't like it's also a rapist. Um
like there's he's not a good person. We'll do an
episode on Rasputin someday in the future. But I'm genuinely
surprised you haven't. Well, people keep telling me I look
like him, and it makes me you do not self conscious,
thank you, Sophie. So for now, the cliffs notes are
that he was a poor kid from the east of

(50:02):
fucking nowhere who got in trouble for like stealing some
ship and sleeping around, and he gets kicked out of
the town he comes from. He becomes a priest, he
sucks a bunch more people, and gradually he turns into
this like guru type cult figure. Um, he's kind of
a cult leader. He's not quite what we recognized as
a cult leader because he doesn't have like this group

(50:23):
who have a shared identity, and that identity is like
worshiping him, because like that would be too much for
the Czar and Czarina, right, the Czar's kind of his
own cult. You don't get to be a cult leader
like we know of a cult leader in Russia in
this period. Um no, because that's there. Yeah, but he's
kind of like cult cuckolding Bizar because the Czars kind

(50:43):
of his follower. It's it's it's an odd situation. And
again he follows, you know, in the footsteps of a
Philippe who really very very conscientiously uh seasoned to the
ground in front of or behind, so that this guy
would have an easier time pulling one over on the

(51:04):
biggest Rube in all of history. Um. So rest buten,
you know, as he starts to like develop this cult following,
he starts he claims that he calls himself a healer um.
And he begins traveling around wealthy St. Petersburg's circles, you know,
the families of the nobles and the wealthy, basically like helping.
A lot of times, it will be like a woman
has some sort of hysteria, and obviously his prescription is, well,

(51:24):
you should probably funk rescutin. And it works a lot
at the time, I guess because because he keeps keeps
getting word of mouth, you know, that's well yeah, um,
he winds up having a making his first connection to
the Romanov family through a Romanov named Nikolasha, who's like
a cousin of the czar um And Nikolasha is kind

(51:45):
of competent. He's one of he's a soldier, and he's
one of the few Romanovs who actually like isn't just
like doing that to dress up like he's not a
complete idiot when it comes to military matters. Um. He's
known as the Terrible for his temper, and the Czar
bres him in close to the family in the nineteen
o five uprisings because he thinks he might need to
appoint a dictator, Like it's going bad enough in nineteen

(52:06):
o five. That is, like, I might need to make
my cousin the dictator so that I don't have to
take the stink on me of doing some of this
ugly shit. It doesn't wind up, I mean, why not
have somebody with the nickname the Terrible. Hey, cousin the Terrible?
I got this like problem now. Nikolasha again, competent, soldier,

(52:28):
kind of a crazy person. He wanted to be a
medieval night. He kept a court of dwarves around him.
I think because he read that in a medieval storybook
at some point and decided it sounded cool. Um. That's
what he describes them as, a cult of a court
of of dwarves. I think it's you know, um, it's
it's nineteen o six. Um. And for an example, I'm

(52:51):
not I'm not judging the words at this point in time.
You should judge the pretty nice thing to say in
nineteen o six because another thing he's famous for is
he gets really drunk at a party, wants and he
wants to show off his favorite sword, and the way
he does that is by using it to cut his
pet dog in half. All Right, well, that's not I
would say, I'm gonna go out on a that's not good.
It's not. That's probably worse than some questionable linguistic choices

(53:16):
he's made. Um. Now, like most nobles in this period,
he believes in what he described as the divine origin
of Czarist power. He felt God had given Nicholas the
Second some special secret strength um that would lead him
out of that would help him lead Russia out of
like its problems. So obviously he falls immediately for everything
Russia's suns. Guy. I thinks he's a medieval night. He's

(53:37):
like very gullible. He buys into all this right the
funk away um, and this is going to be the
way in which Rasputin um lover of the Russian queen Um.
Not really, but that's what a lot of Russians believe
at this time. Um. That's how he winds up getting
into the family. And we will talk more about that
and more about everything else in our conclusion to the

(53:58):
epic saga Nicolas the second. What a dick, Jeff, He
got any plugg doubles to plug? First? Yeah, like you
mentioned before, I have a great show called Jeff Has
Cool Friends, bi weekly interview show with all of my
cool nerdy compatriots, and you can find that at picture
on dot com slash Jeff May for early uncensored episodes
with bonus content. I also have a great monthly show

(54:19):
called Fine with Kim Crawl, among others. You can also
check me out on Tom and Jeff. Watch Batman on
the gameplay Unemployed Network. We gotta have you on one
of those episodes, Robert. Absolutely, I have. I have watched
a Batman or two in my time. We sure we've
watched the Law. We sure have. You can also check
out you Don't Even Like Sports and Unpopular Opinion, both

(54:41):
on the Unpops Network. You can find me on social
media at hey there, Jeff Row on Twitter and Instagram.
Don't find me on Facebook, don't don't be weird. Don't
find him on Facebook, but find us talk and if
he's not on TikTok, deep fake him. I'm not should
I be? I feel too old. I'm too old for tikto.
I think everyone is. I think the twelve year olds
TikTok or too old for TikTok. I'm too old. I'll

(55:03):
be starting an account next week. Um. Speaking of next week,
we'll be back tomorrow or Thursday whatever later this week
with more episodes about the czar Um and I have
a novel. You can find it in preorder it and
get a signed copy by googling a k Press after
the revolution. Um, so go do that. Do it now?
Do it that way? Now do it now? Okay, good,

(55:26):
thank you for doing that now everybody bam