Stalin: After Dark

Let’s talk about Stalin, baaaaaaby! In this Bonus Episode, Robert is joined by Brandie Posey (comedian, writer & producer) and they discuss Josef Stalin who was a bank robber, a sex icon, the drunkest man in history and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello again, and welcome to Behind the Bastards. I'm Robert Evans,
and this is the show where we tell you everything
you don't know about the very worst people in history.
Today with me is Brandy Posey. Hello, Hello, thanks for
having me. How you doing, Brandy, I'm pretty fantastic excited
to get behind some bastards. Brandy is a comedian, podcaster,
funny person. Anything else you wanna say about yourself up front?

(00:23):
Good person? Uh, alleged good person exactly. Yeah. Well, today
Brandy and I are going to be talking about Joseph Stalin,
Joey Joe stall Yeah, yeah, Uncle Joe, the big man
in the Dictator. Maybe the most successful dictator of all time. Um,

(00:44):
he's in the running. Yeah, no, he probably is. Actually, yeah, yeah,
he's in the running. One of the more prolific mustaches
in the Dictator, very famous mustache, right up there with
the hitler Um, although some people still rock the Staalin. Okay,
so everybody in its kind of the cliffs notes of
Joseph Stalin's career. He uh took over the Soviet Union

(01:05):
after Lennon died in four He purged a bunch of people.
He starved several million more from nineteen two to thirty three.
During his time and power, he's estimated to have killed
at least six to nine million people, give or take
a few millions. Six to nine millions. Yeah, yeah, Like
he's right under Hitler in the in the murdering his
own people death toll um. He went up against Hitler
in one in World War Two. He might have heard

(01:27):
of that. Uh, and then he died and had a
movie made about that by the dude who created veep Um.
So that's a stalling everybody knows. That's the Stallin we're
not going to talk about today. Today is the story
is about the Stalin that you don't know. This is
Joseph Stalin after dark. Oh, this is a sultry Stalin. Okay, Well,
we're gonna start with some of j Stall's youth and

(01:49):
then we're gonna go into we're gonna talk about everything
but Stalin at work. So we're gonna talk about Stalin
at play, Stalin at dinner, Stalin on vacation, like a
weekend sta. Yeah, weekend Stalin. You know this, Stalin, Stalin's movies. Yeah,
all the stuff staling like you so, um, we're going
to kick this off with some backstory. Joseph Stalin was
born Joseph de Jugasville, which is a Georgian last name,

(02:13):
which is you know where he was born, uh, and Georgia.
At this point you might look at it as like
to the mainstream Czarist Russia, it would be like the
middle of nowhere Oklahoma. And in fact, it was commented
on his whole life that he had like a really
thick accent. Okay, yeah, gotcha, that's interesting. He was like
a kind of down home cowboy ish, that kind of drawl. Yeah.
If you were going to represent the politboro by accents,

(02:35):
most of them would have like East Coast or West coast,
like slick, you know, cosmopolitan accents. And Joseph Stalin be
talking like they is like a deep set, like like
a like a sharp out of bail Oklahoma. Act sing. Yeah,
he's like actually from Georgia. Yeah yeah, yeah, no, actually
that's that. I shouldn't used that Oklahoma. Yeah, that's funny. Wow.

(02:58):
He was the son of a shoe cobbler in the
Georgia in town of Gory. His father was a drunk
and beat the ship out of him. His mother Kiki
or k k K is how it's usually spelled kept
the peace, but not all that well because she also
beat the ship out of her. Um. Yeah, this is
a really dark version of that Adam Sandler movie about
being a shoe cobbler. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's it's actually

(03:20):
less dark because Sandler movie is devoid of soul. And
I'm just gonna pretend that Joseph Stalin's parents are Adam
Sandler and Jack and Jill. In my head, those are
his parents. Actually, just some deep Sandler cuts pulling out here.
Although when I start talking about Joseph Stalin, my mind
immediately goes to Adam Sandler. Sure, sure, shut out. That's

(03:40):
what he did every time he would sign an order
for execution forman exactly had a stroke at the end, right,
And that's actually what it sounded like, a lot of strokes. Yeah,
But people just assumed that he was okay because he
was such a Sandler fan, but he was actually just
having strokes. Since thank you, well, I'm not allegedly good person. Um.

(04:03):
Stalin's mom justified beating her son by saying she had
to quote govern her unruly treasure, which is like some
Norman Bates ship unruly treasures. It almost sends like how
you talk about trimming your pupid caret Absolutely have to
govern my unruly treasure, govern my unrulee Like she's always
looking at a giant bruch or a ring of some

(04:26):
kind when she's saying it her son off in the distance. Yeah,
that's definitely a sentence that you expect from a bruch wear.
She wore a cape every day. It's what that sentence
says to me as an adult. She told him the
beatings had done him no harm. Stalin insisted he had
a terrible childhood where he wept constantly, which is probably true,
probably something Stalin wasn't lying about. Um, it's a lot

(04:48):
of pressure being an unruly treasure. It's really a lot.
I just want to be a boy. So Joseph's dad
was out of the picture pretty quick, but he popped
in from time to time to insist that his son
take up the family trade of making shoes. Stalin did
not want to make shoes. He liked books like Sadam Hussein.
Um Kk realized that her boy was special and decided

(05:10):
that he should become a priest. Um because back then,
if you liked books, that was the default. Yeah. Hey, nerds. Yeah,
nobody was like, you should go to Hollywood. They were
like a priest. That's the gig for you. Go read
the book, the one book we allow. Yeah. Um. So
as a little kid, Stalin was successful in sort of

(05:32):
the low level children's gang warfare that was common in
his village. But when he hit yep, just classic children's
gang warfare, just good old late eighteen hundreds Russia. Um.
He had had a lessons though, and he stopped being
so successful because he was very short and suddenly was
less imposing. Other kids made fun of him because of

(05:52):
his small pox scars and his fucked up arm. His
left arm was two inches shorter than his right because
he'd been run over by a horse and buggy, which
is the most eighteen hundreds injury you can have. I
like that he's just like a like a Harold Lloyd
movie for the first eighteen years of his life. Basically,
that's amazing. Yeah, he's he's starting out rough. How do

(06:14):
you get rid of over by a horse and buggy? Yeah? You,
And I also would figure that you would specify either
the horse or the buggy hit you, but maybe he
got hit by both. Maybe, like all like four legs
and then four wheels. Yeah, so how does that make
your arm shorter? Is it just like it just guess
I just got like broken and it didn't grow right
something like that. Yeah. So I'm picturing that his parents

(06:36):
are Adam Sandler and Jack and Jill, and then he
is Chris Elliott from Scary Movie Too. You should really
get started on this screenplay perfect Like, it's a very
deep cut reference for five people that are listening. That's
who we do this podcast for. Um so. At age nine,
Stalin or Joseph at this point enrolled in a theological school.

(06:57):
He was devouted first and never missed a mass. Since
this was a religious school, most books were forbidden obviously uh,
and the teachers encouraged kids to write out their peers
for reading band literature. Stalin later admitted to writing out
a whole bunch of kids. So of course he loves
to snitch. Yeah, seeing seeds here, Joseph snitch Stalin okay uh.
At age thirteen, Joseph read a copy of Darwin's The

(07:19):
Origin of Species. He stayed up all night and told
KK his mom, I love the book so much, Mummy,
that I couldn't stop reading it Joseph decided that God
didn't exist, because if he did the world would be
more just. He dropped out of Jesus School at fourteen,
which horrified his mother. Fourteen, man, that's a man back then. Yeah,
that's true, Like most of you don't make it to fourteen.

(07:40):
Fourteen year old then has lived through most ship than
like a sixty year old today. Yeah, exactly, the haggard
staring off in the middle distance, thinking about all the
lives you've seen in all the horse and buggies have
been run over by Yeah. Um so now young and unemployed,
which is the thing fourteen year olds could be back then. Uh.
He wandered into a meeting for his local Bolshevik party. Uh,

(08:02):
so he started being a Bolsheviks seemed to like that.
He got a job at an observatory in eighteen nine.
It was part time, so he was able to keep
up his revolutionary ways. He spent a lot of time
reading Napoleon's memoirs, and he told his friends that he
planned to learn from Napoleon's mistakes, which is a normal
thing for a like sixteen year old to tell his friends.
I mean, what an intense kid, can you imagine? Just

(08:22):
like oh, I stayed up all night reading Darwin and
I love Napoleon God. Okay, Stalin, this is I think
the most I'm actually of a person that you could
be at sixteen. If he was alive today, the first
sentence out of his mouth and any given conversation would
be that he didn't own a TV. Would be that guy.
Oh boy. Um, he would have the same mustache though,

(08:44):
Oh yeah, definitely a lot more flannel. Yeah, so much flannel. Um.
Stalin or Joseph got a job working at an oil
refinery storehouse. Working conditions there were exactly what you'd expect
of bizarist oil refinery. So that's what you're saying, up
to code, and that code was not a thing. Um.
So Stalin was pissed that the workers were suffering and

(09:06):
toiling to make in his meat while the wealthy lived
in mansions and got to go to parties all the time,
which is totally understandable. I'm on board at this point.
I like that he organized protests. The protesters clashed violently
with police, and suddenly Stalin had to go on the run. Um.
He was arrested in nineteen o two and sent to Siberia,
which sounds like the worst thing that could happen to you. Yeah.

(09:29):
From I'm listening to another thing about rashputiness from Siberia
and everything they say about the area, I'm like, it
apparently wasn't that bad, Okay, because it wasn't He wasn't
sent to you getting to get sent to a prison
in Siberia. Just just got sent to a little town
in the middle of nowhere. And they gave you money
every month. That was what when they when they exiled you,

(09:50):
That's what they did, is they were just like, go
live in the middle of nowhere. Here's some money, so
you don't starve. Can I get excited? Yeah? I kind
of feel like that's a sweet gig. That sounds pretty
Can I just piss off the president enough that I
get to live somewhere else? Send me somewhere else and
give me I don't care if it's cold, it's getting
really hot, and though global warming is real, because it'll

(10:11):
be like a nice seventy by that time I get there, exactly.
Um So yeah, for the rest of his life, this
is like one of, if not the very best periods
of time in Stalin's whole life. He would talk about
it for the rest of his days. He would constantly
tell people a story about skiing into the Tiger, shooting
a dozen partridges, and then almost freezing to death on
his trip back. Stalin would brag about the time he

(10:32):
shot twelve birds and nearly died, even after he'd beat
Nazi Germany and conquered a fifth of the world, which
is weird. Wow, now he's really that that middle lot
to him? Yeah, yeah, I really had other things to
brag about by that point. Yeah, I mean well yeah. Uh.
Fast forward seven, Joseph was twenty nine and had grown

(10:52):
an influence among the Bolshevik party. Lenin came to see
him as the kind of guy who could all caps
get ship done. At this point, the bolshep X, We're
still fighting to overthrow the czar and it was not
going well. They were broke and they needed money for
more bombs to throw at the Zar's. Uh. Stalin was like,
I can get you some fucking money. His preferred method
of achieving this goal was a good old fashioned bank heist.

(11:12):
Stalin sat down with his boy Camo, which is what
you'd expect from the name of a guy you robbed
banks with, to figure out a plan. Uh. Stalin made
contact with the pro Bolshevik worker at a bank in Tifflis,
where he lived, who told him that a bunch of
money was due to arrive on June. So Stalin, Camo
and their fellow desperadoes all showed up at Yerevan Square
downtown to wait for the stage coach. It arrived at

(11:34):
ten thirty am, and they just started throwing grenades and
bombs all over the place like that was there, that
was their just throw bombs at everyone. So they made
off with the money, which was about three or four
million in modern dollars, and they killed forty or fifty people. Yeah, well, yeah,
it won't be the last time. No, no, this actually

(11:57):
counts as charity by the rest of Stalin's record, Yeah, exactly.
So it turned out that most of the stolen bills
were in like gigantic five thousand ruble notes that had
never been used before, and those as government had records
of all of the serial numbers on those bills. So
most of the money that Stalin had killed like fifty
people for, wound up being useless. Kom bolsheviks um. But
he'd still prove that he could, you know, get shipped done.

(12:19):
It wasn't entirely a wash, but it was a bummer.
In nineteen o seven was also a bummer because it
was the year that Stalin's wife died. She passed in
December from some illness or another. Knowing nineteen o seven,
it might have been like a stubbed toe that exactly
went bear shaped, and assuming she was fourteen, and she
said I've seen enough. Yeah, I've lived too long already,
even five children. It's time for me to leave. Stalin

(12:42):
claimed that quote with her died, my last feelings for humanity,
you can read that is super prophetic. But he wound
up falling madly in love again and remarrying, So he's
probably just being dramatic. I think he's just a very
dramatic person because he was told that he was a
ungovernable treasure. What was the quote was unruly treasure and
unruly treasure. Yes, an unruly treasure. And he's just like

(13:03):
that's the line that he used as a young twenty
something on women. And he'd be like, look, honey, I'm
just I'm just an unruly treasure. I could see it working, No,
especially with that mustache. No, and he's he we should
pull Okay, you've seen the young. He was a good
looking guy, Yes he was. He was a little Viti guy,
but he was a good looking guy. Exactly. No, he

(13:24):
had the charm, which believe, which is like, here's the thing,
I don't trust people that have always been attractive, and
this is the most exactly what percent of the time
they turned out to be stalid Exactly. I've seen that
guy at so many overpriced bars. You know, he's got
like a kefia on and like, yeah, he's just he's
sitting in the back of the coffee house. Maybe he's

(13:45):
got a guitar. Just always oh, what's see this, We'll
see this, just the effects of French accent, even though
he was born in Milwaukee. Exactly. Yeah, we all know
Stalin of a person Barret per Okay. So Stalin's career
kept lurching forward. He charmed Lennon, He wrote a bunch

(14:06):
of articles for Pravda. In May of nineteen twelve, Joseph
Jugos Feely became the editor at Pravda, which is, you know,
big old Bolshevik magazine. The next year he started to
use a noum revolution instead of Jugos Filly. He called
himself Stalin. We're steel so Joseph Steele. Yeah, I'm Joe Steele.
Is there a modern porn star whose name is Joseph Steele?

(14:27):
Because it feels like somebody is like, if it's not
untapped market, Yeah, untapped market to be tapped by Joseph
Steele's tapper. Come on, somebody tap that. Yeah, we're given
out a name here. While Stalin was so World War
One came in nineteen fourteen, had a big deal, didn't
go well for Zars to Russia didn't did not. Yeah,

(14:51):
you know the rest of the story. The Zar gets
overthrow in the nineteen seventeen there's a big st civil
war and the Bolsheviks wind up in charge. Lennen rules
for a while, then he dies, and then through a
combination of cunning and murder, Stalin's in charge by uh
he shared power with a group of magnates. He wasn't
an absolute ruler at this point. The magnates were powerful
political leaders who ruled over various aspects of the Soviet state.

(15:11):
These are the guys that the death of Stalin. The
movie focuses around, guys like Malinkov and and Khrushchev cabinet.
For lack of a better yeah, yeah, that's a good
term for them. Um, these guys were mostly young at
this point in their thirties and mostly self educated. They
all lived together in the same buildings in Moscow. They
worked and feasted and partied together. And friends, Yeah, they

(15:32):
were all. They were mostly friends. They all like had
had like sometimes a couple of like wives and girlfriends
in common. Um, they would all hang out all the time.
You know, Stalin would just drop by to like talk
to people about things. Stalin is the Phoebe of this group.
I was going to say, Rachel, Well yeah, probably actually Rachel.

(15:52):
I just feel like Stalin would run like an idiot.
And also like, if Stalin had ended up with a
Paul Rudd, the world would have been a better place. Yeah, yeah,
that's that's unquestionable. Sure, exactly, really weird movies, but probably
Paul Rud would have taken like a turn for the
art house cinema. But yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, okay. Um,
So Stalin got married to his second wife, Nadia Alujeva

(16:15):
in nineteen nineteen. She bore him a son, Vassili, and
a daughter's Lana. Stalin seemed to love his wife, but
they were both busy, career focused people. He wrote her
sweet love letters, saying he was quote lonely as a
horned owl without her, and uh, signing them my kisses
your Joseph. Yeah, he's a sweet guy at this point.
He's a sweet guy at this point. He's killed a

(16:39):
lot more people by this Yes, they're starving peasants, by
by the hundreds of thousands, right, yes, you're correct, well,
by the thirties. Yeah, um, but he's a sweet guy
to his friends. Uh exactly. Stalin had also turned into
a sex symbol at this point, though, by the time
he's in charge, and that did not help his marriage.

(16:59):
The Wonderful Book in the Court of the Red Zar
describes one of the letters he got from a female admirer,
a teacher. Dear Comrade Stalin, I saw you in my dreams.
I have hopes of an audience. I enclosed my photograph.
Damn girl, Stalin replied, comrade unfamiliar. I ask you to
trust that I have no wish to disappoint you, and
I'm ready to respect your letter. But I have to
say I have no appointment, no time to satisfy your wish.

(17:23):
I wish you all the best. Jay Stalin ps your
letter and photograph returned. Wow. I mean that's the most
proper way of it's actually he let somebody down. He's handled, actually,
Joseph Stalin, and this is handled being hit on by
a young woman better than most modern American politicians. Absolutely.
This is also like the first Tinder is what just happened?

(17:46):
He swiped right? Yeah, exactly, no, thank you, and he
did swipe left on a number of ladies. It's not
absolutely confirmed, but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence and
that and that Ada his wife was very angry about
some of that, you know, and maybe it wasn't true,
but she just suspected it. But either way, she thought

(18:06):
he was fooling around and she was pissed. When you
got that kind of ego, I assume you probably are
messing around. One woman isn't going to do it for you. No, no,
when not when you're the dictator of all Russia. Now,
when we get back, we're going to talk about the
dinner party that led to the end of Joseph Stalin's marriage, Yes,

(18:26):
and then we're going to get into Joseph Stalin's growing madness,
his wacky everything is is. We're just going to talk
more Stalin and coming up. We also have a whole
lot of drinking, a whole lot of partying, a whole
lot of vomiting, and what I'm just going to describe
as Joe stall pulling a chainey oh, all right, and more.

(18:50):
After sweet Lady Capitalism sings you her lilting lullaby welcome back,
we are talking about Joseph Stalin and his troubled marriage
to not Yet. At this point, Joseph Stalin is the
sexy leader of the New Soviet Union. Uh not yet

(19:14):
and he are very much in love, except she thinks
he's cheating on her, and things come to a head
at one banquet in nineteen thirty two. Oh she was
also angry at him for starving hundreds of thousands of
peasants to death, which is a fair fair Stalin. You
you know, we've all been there with a partner where
like you think they might be cheating on you and
they're starving the Ukraine. Well, it's like when you make

(19:36):
that pros and cons list of like trying to really
break down of this relationship, has you know, has the
legs to stand forever, and you're like, okay, I mean
really he bought me flowers but he's starved a lot
of starved three and a half to four million peasants. Yeah,
it's rough. It's rough. So that's where their relationship is. Uh.

(19:56):
There at this big party, everybody's drinking heavily, and Stalin
had not noticed that Nadia had dressed up for the event.
She wasn't a girly girl and she didn't dress up often,
so it was a big deal that he didn't notice it.
Stalin did eventually notice that Nadia wasn't drinking. I'm going
to quote here from in the Court of the Red Czar.
Why aren't you drinking? He called over, truculently, aware that

(20:17):
she and Bukaran shared a disapproval of his starvation of
the peasantry, She ignored him. To get her attention, Stalin
tossed an orange peel and flicked cigarettes at her. But
this outraged her, which of course it did, which she
became angrier and angrier. He called over, Hey, you have
a drink. My name isn't hey? She read toward it furiously.

(20:38):
Rising from the table, she stormed out, it was probably
now that, but Yanni, which is one of these magnates,
heard her shout at Stalin shut up. Shut up. Stalin
shook his head in the ensuing silence. What a fool,
he muttered. Wow. Yeah, so she shot herself later that night.
Oh yeah, Yeah, nobody really knows why. Yeah, it's a bummer.
It's a really sad story. Man, that's a girl I

(21:00):
would like wanted to hear her, like getting her groove
back movie. It's like the movie that's that's the one
we deserve. No, we do not get that movie. Um,
we we don't get anything like that movie. Nobody knows
why she did it. There's a bunch of theories, but
it broke stolid. There's no evidence of it. Yeah. Um.
He threatened to kill himself a bunch of times. When

(21:21):
Nadia's mother showed up, like while the body was still
in the house, one of the doctors offered her some
Valerian drops, which you're supposed to like calm you down
and like help you not freak out when the worst
thing ever is happening. She said she couldn't drink them,
and so Stalin grabbed the bottle and chugged them all
down himself. Um. He insisted his wife's suicide had crippled him,
and he did change after that. Prior to her suicide.

(21:42):
The Soviet Union, like I said, had been starving a
lot of people. But life in Moscow among the magnates
and their families had been wonderful in many ways. Nadya
suicide started the terror that followed. Where he's just killing
all these people who were close to him because he
kills most of her family. Oh yeah, yeah, over over
a course of years. But he butchers most of her family.
He butchers most of his first wife's family. I mean,

(22:02):
not really how the you should keep the memories? Not
really know. Most grief counselors recommend against massacring the families
of your dead spouse. I mean, no mother in law's
can be at pain in the ass, But I wish
I could do that. Yeah, um so uh. Stalin's friend
Nikita Krushchev, who took over after him, said that Stalin

(22:24):
was a different man at different times. I knew no
less than five or six Stalin's. At one point, Joseph
Stalin got angry at his son Vassily for using the
name Stalin. He said, but I'm a Stalin too, and
Stalin said, no, you're not. You're not Stalin, and I'm
not Stalin. Stalin is Soviet power. Stalin is what he
is in the newspapers and the portraits, not you know,
not even me. Wow. Yeah, he's like very self aware

(22:47):
of the thing that he's created. He would have been
great at marketing. He would have been terrifying at market yea.
He would have been Don Draper times a thousand. Yeah, exactly,
just as a trap, like just as attractive. Yeah, a
very similar character. Actually who I like, had a wife,
cheated on her, a whole bunch, drank a bunch, like,
doesn't go by his real name. All right. Yeah, it's

(23:10):
actually kind of weird how close those guys backstories are. Um.
Stalin was also described as very charming. He could be
graceful and sensitive. People love to be around him. He
was good with kids, and he could really read a room. Uh.
There's one story about a court singer who was performing
in the Kremlin. Stalin's colleagues each started demanding he's singing
different songs, and Stalin said, but I'm saying what he wants,

(23:32):
and then added, I think he wants to sing Lindsay's
Aria from on again. Everybody laughed. Although it's not really
a request. Stalin I was going to do Red Red
wine first said okay um. Stalin seemed to have a
genuine joy for manipulating people. In nineteen thirteen, while hiding
out in Vienna, he gave the daughter of the woman
hosting him a bag of candy every day. After a while,

(23:54):
he asked the kid's mother who she thought the child
would run to if they both called her. They both
tried it, and the girl ran to Stalin, Oh yeah,
which is like, that's a messed up power move from
the lady who's yeah exactly, And also just like why
just to be a dick? Yeah, why do you want this? Okay? Cool? Great, cool?
Now this kid likes you better than it's mom, and

(24:15):
you're gonna leave, And then his daughters like, where's my candy? Man?
He's just he's a bad dude. This is crossing my line.
That is crossing a line. Uh. He could be really
funny and pithy. He was also incredibly foul mouthed when
his friend Voroshilov gave a speech that Staln liked. Staln
sent Vos a note that said, a world leader, fuck
his mother. I've read your report. You criticized everyone, fuck

(24:38):
their mother, Joseph Stalin. Everybody def jam Stalin just drop
an FT bombs all over. I'd love to hear his
version of the aristocrats. His whole time in power was
his version of the aristocrat. That was those were his
last words, absolutely aristocrats. That's how that jokes started. Like

(25:03):
this is the darkest jokes. He really mean it went far,
but no, no, no, Stalin died and Bob Saget in
America just like feels something stands up and just starts
with slow applause. Just like that was game respects game
um as I said, Stalin was great with kids. He
would entertain them by throwing orange peels and wine corks

(25:25):
into their ice cream and dis guts into their teeth.
He loves throwing orange peels. I mean, I guess like
probably oranges are like a sign of wealth because like
everyone in Russia, I assume probably has scurvy at this
pain or he's killed them. So it's just like, oh yeah,
I'm just throwing the peels around cares. I do feel
that that's like the happiest Stalin ever is is just

(25:45):
throwing orange peels at people. Exactly. He just needed more
orange peels. Just keep oranges around him, please, He's gonna
throw him at you. It's fine not signing death list
when he's throwing orange peels. Seriously, just let him do it.
He just wanted to be a juggle are really bad lace.
He always had like round fruit around him at all time,
but he was his hands were too hard from all

(26:06):
the hard work and the in the oil rigs. He
would break the oranges and bruise them and that's why
he would throw them at people. We really really thought
this out. Yeah, you know. He was said to have
perfect pitch, a rare and sweet voice. Some of his
friends said that if he hadn't become a dictator, he
could have been a career singer. Well, but here's the thing, Uh,

(26:27):
if that wasn't true, you wouldn't say it. Well, I
think that some of this came out by people who
knew him after he was dead, and people are starting
to say, like, it's one of those things that I
don't think is just people blown up. He was just
really good at Like Miles um one of the many
things that our friend Miles Gray from the Daily Zeitgeist
as in common with Justin Stalin um cool. He's also

(26:50):
an unruly treasure. So from my point of view, Stalin's
real talent, though came as a captioneer. I have some
base is to judge this, since it used to be
my job to write all the article captions on the
Little Pictures and Cracked articles. Stalin did basically the same thing,
but to artworks that would be submitted to him for approval.
And we're going to look at some of those. Hell yeah,

(27:12):
he's like he invented tinder and memes, is what you're
telling me? Kinda yeah, it wouldn't be unfair to say
Stalin was a meme pioneer. This is from an article
called Stalin's Vulgar Sense of Humor on smart History blog.
The actual origin of these pictures is from a Telegraph article,
I think, but this blog actually put them out the best.

(27:32):
So I'm gonna hand you this, and I want you
to go through each picture and describe the picture, and
then read the caption. If you guys want to follow
along with the pictures, the links and stuff are on
the website. The first one here, I'll describe it. It
looks like it's a naked man with his butts just
out the shadow of a ball underneath. He's got his

(27:53):
hand up over his head and he's like leaning against
the wall as if he just like bombed at audition.
I live in Los Angeles, and the the caption said,
as you need to work, not wank. Time for re education.
Jayceonlin science like he's science because if yeah exactly, Yeah yeah, man,
we get it. Your handwriting is everywhere because you're the

(28:16):
supreme leader. You need to work not wank. I think
he actually maybe didn't. That means that he mented like
the cat posters in an office, like the hanging there.
This is like a very vulgar version of that. I
was going to say the New Yorker, Yeah, yeah, that's here.
Oh that's great. Okay, the next one, man, he's got
a lot of naked These are all pictures of naked

(28:38):
men for some reasons. Okay, great, Yeah, this next one
is like it's a These are all like black and
white sketches. This next one is like a naked man.
He's facing front this time. Um, he's got like a
beard and hair and a mustache, and he's like got
his hands up as if he is playing baseball, but
it looks like a piece of bread or something. He's

(28:58):
probably holding onto a rat because Stalin has um, you know,
starved everybody, and then the caption is, why are you
so thin? Mikhail Ivanovich? Do some work on is um
is no work? Trimarxism, Jay Stalinism, of course is masturbation.

(29:19):
I get it. I mean he's not unfunny. No, he's not. No,
like these aren't These aren't bad, Joe. It's not like
a Mike Huckabee tweets. These are solid getting not the
most original, but solid. I like that he wrote. He
he with an exclamation point. That's adorable. That's that's kind
of cute. Like do you think they didn't think about
him just like in his office, just like, oh my god, one,

(29:42):
they're gonna love this. Where were these published or were
these just like these just in the Soviet archives? The
Soviet archives got opened up like a twenty years ago
or something, and historians are still pouring through them, and
this is just something they found. So it's like pictures
of like Hitler's dead body. And then like all of these,
Stalin captioned perfect, all right. This next one is a

(30:03):
naked couple and the woman is like on the ground
and the guy is standing above her with his hand
behind his head and scratching it as if what's going
on and the caption is idiot, you've completely forgotten what
to do. I mean, it's hilarious. That's great. He didn't
sign this one. He was just like, well, this one's obvious.
Nobody's gonna think anybody but Jay stall would write this exactly.

(30:27):
Oh man, okay. The next one is another naked man
looking forward. Where did you get all these photos? And
it's just like from he has to approve these. So
these are art that Soviets have made that they want
to be able to publish, Like these are like paintings
and stuff. Oh, I see, I got it. They can't
go anywhere unless Stalin says yes, because he's the absolute ruler.

(30:47):
So this guy is just chilling on some boxes naked,
staring down at the ground and says, don't sit on
stones with your naked ass, go join comes some all
and rab fact workers university isn't quote, someone give this
guy underpan, Jay Stalin. I do imagine that as like
a little George Bush left. Yeah, he for sure. They

(31:10):
all have that same little laugh. Yeah. I think they're
so damn clever just because they're part of the illuminati.
These are so silly. Yeah, they're just ridiculous. Um, that's
probably good on those. Yeah, the underscrolling. Now, now the
podcast consists of me scrolling and looking at pictures of
naked men while you tell me about Stalin, So you know,
I mean, that's just for the listeners this podcast. That

(31:33):
was always the vision. Um. So the Soviets were great
record keepers, which is why we have all this stuff. Um.
Often the notes that we would have from like their
meetings of the Pullet Burero would include doodles, and sometimes
Stalin would take out a crand to write on the
doodle of like a colleague as well. Uh. And so
there's apparently one drawing of the countries of the USSRS
finance minister at the time, hanging from a rope by

(31:54):
his genitals in the margins. Stalin wrote to all members
of the pullet Buro for his pres sends the name
of the guy who's the finance minister should be hung
by his balls. If they hold up, he should be
considered not guilty, as if in a court of law.
If they give way, he should be drowned in a river.
This guy, this guy. Yeah, boy, Well it's also funny

(32:17):
because it's like the feminist response to um burning witches.
It's a finance minister test. That is also a bullshit
We'll kill you either way? Sure, why not? Yeah? Yeah,
it's a whimsical, fun way to kill people. It is.
He was all about whimsy. Um. He also had an
explosive temper. Surprise. I'm quoting here from a fun book
called A Brotherhood of Tyrants, Manic depression, and Absolute Power.

(32:39):
Stalin became known for violence when he was a young revolutionary,
which yeah, goes hand in hand. Yeah. Generally he would
lose control during arguments with party members, cursing them and
throwing objects such as stools, which Steve Balmer, the former
CEO of Microsoft, love to do. Quote. When he was
married to his first wife, Kato, Stalin's brutality was witnessed
by a man with whom they were living. Um, that's

(33:00):
what he is. Kato was pregnant then, and he used
to curse her in the most disgusting way and kick
her in the belly. Yeah. Yeah, did you go from Yeah?
Did he have any kids with the first with the
first wife one? Okay, yeah, you never hear about that one?
Yeah you never? I mean that one. That one wound
up dying in a Nazi concentration camp. Oh that's that's why. Yes, yeah,

(33:21):
um so Uh. During a second marriage to Nadya, Stalin
was known to throw food out the window if he
was bored with it. He'd slam his phone against the
wall if it gave him a busy signal. Stalin's rage
was often bafflingly mundane. Uh. Quote when he found a
large mirror in his new Kremlin apartment, he said, what's
a mirror here for? And kicked it to pieces. Oh

(33:41):
my god, what a baby, What a stupid tantrum baby,
change your diaper, Stalin. Jesus. Yeah, Stalin could go from
being your best buddy to wanting you dead in a
moment's notice. Yeah, there's another quote from a relative tyrant's uh,
No amount of friendship and loyalty was enough to win
the dictator's trust. Um. The book here is quoting his
daughter's fet Lana, who said the past ceased to exist

(34:02):
for him. Years of friendship and fighting side by side
and a common cause might as well have never been
difficult as it is to understand. He could wipe it
all out with one stroke. So you've betrayed me, some
inter demon would whisper, I don't even know you anymore.
So that's his daughter describing daddy. That's a that's some
daddy issues to deal with. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of
those things that makes me discount. I always just assume

(34:23):
Staling was like a cold heartless sociopath. Um, and I
don't think that anymore because it seems like like his
murdering his wife's families, like it's he's just he can't
deal with emotion. So he thinks about his wife and
gets sad, and then he like sees someone who was
related to her and he's like, well, what if I
just get rid of him? Yeah, he hulk smashes everything. Yeah,
he and it's like fits of peakue that he does

(34:44):
all this in with time, sometimes he would regret doing
terrible things to people. It wasn't uncommon for him to
calm down and come to regret a purge. I'm gonna
quote here from in the quarter of the Red Czar Uh.
Once he wandered up to one of his marshals who
had been arrested and released. I heard you were recent
lee in confinement. Yes, comrade Stalin, I was, but they
figured out my case and released me. But how many

(35:05):
good and remarkable people perished there. Yes, mus Stalin thoughtfully,
we've lost a lot of good and remarkable people. Then
he walked out of the room and into the garden.
The quarters turned to the Marshal. What did you say
to comrade Stalin, demanded Malenkov, who always behaved like the
school prefect. Why Then Stalin reappeared holding a bouquet of roses,
which he presented to the Marshal as a weird sort
of apology. Man, just he's just an emotional toddler. Sorry,

(35:29):
I killed your friends and sent you to be tortured.
Here's some roses, there's some flowers. Yeah, I feel like
we're cool. I didn't take the thorns off because I
am still Stalin. He just is a is an unformed
person who wound up in charge of a whole country,
which is a thing that has never happened before since

(35:49):
could let something like that? What a bunch of idiots
these people were letting that kind of a guy, boy,
Um Stalin wasn't consistently an asshole. Is the story of
an old woman who crashed into his car in World
War Two because the roads were strewn with ruined German
tanks and equipment. She was terrified obviously, but he was like, no, no,
it's not your fault. It's the war. Everything sucks. Like,

(36:11):
just go get your car repaired. Everything's fine. Can you
imagine getting out of the car you're ending being like,
oh god, I knew I should have been looking at
my phone. We gotta do some ads. I'm gonna go
read some ads, uh and sell you guys some things
and capitalize on your attention in a way that Stalin
would have hated. So if you hate Stalin by these products. Alright,

(36:39):
So we're back and we're talking about Joseph Stalin after dark,
and we are telling a tale right now of Stalin
on a visit to the front lines during World War two. Um,
mostly a pr thing, you know, getting pictured near the fronts.
People see that they're glorious. Leader is is, you know,
taking the fight to the Germans installed dub dubb dose

(37:02):
World War two? Uh? Okay, so um. During this visit
of the front lines, one of the nights they wind
up chilling at a peasant's house. Stalin like sleeps in
one of her spare bedrooms. It's mostly like a pr thing, Like, look,
he's so humble. Hitler's got all these bunkers. Stalin just
crashed into the ladies house. At the end of the visit.
He insisted on paying her for his stay, but he

(37:26):
couldn't figure out how much to pay her because he
hadn't handled money in decades and he had no cash,
and because all of the people with him were good Bolsheviks,
none of them had cash either, so nobody had any
money to pay thee there's some oranges. During the same visit,
as he was driving home in his armored car, Stalin
and his whole motor kaid stopped because quote, he needed

(37:46):
to defecate. Uh. He got out of the car and
asked if the bushes had any land mines or unexploded
ordinance in them, and nobody knew, and they couldn't guarantee it,
and since it's Stalin, nobody was willing to say that.
So anyway, the Premier and Commander in chief of the
Red Army dropped trout, squatted in the road, and took
a ship in front of all of his men. Fun
little part of World War two to have gotten to see.
That's just great. Can you imagine that the army is

(38:08):
just like working back and be like, oh, it's the
boss pooping in the road. Okay, glorious leader, this is
what we're doing now. Um. He was a guy with
weird priorities. At the height of the war, when he
had dozens of armies assembled to launch a massive assault
against the German lines, he decided that that was also

(38:28):
a good time to launch a massive nationwide song contest
to see who could create the new national anthem. I
mean there are Simon Cowell tendencies to this man. Yeah,
for sure, cowl ish figure, he could say, for sure.
Also a little guy. Also a little guy I've seen.
I've seen Simon Cowe. He wears real big heels. Why

(38:49):
just except that you're not tall. It's fine, it's fine.
It's more people should be little. It's fine. It's it's better.
It means you take up less resources, you're more ethical.
I'm horribly unethical. Uh okay. So the song contest led
to the Soviet national anthem we all know and love today.
It's objectively one of the coolest sounding anthems of all time,

(39:09):
regardless of your feelings on socialism. It's just it's intense. Uh.
Stalin was very happy about it. He threw a gigantic
party all of the magnates dressed up in ridiculous costumes
with gold braids and daggers and other nonsense. One foreigner
present said the Russians were as happy with their new
clothes as a little boy all dressed up in his
new Christmas present fireman suit. Um, he's more toddlers. Just yeah,

(39:30):
they're just a bunch of big kids who have a country. Now.
Like if you did the Muppet Baby's version of Stalin's USSR,
it would just be the exact same plot, but with
them in diapers. It's just emotional toddlers. So everybody got
outrageously drunk. The British ambassador quote fell flat on his
face onto a table covered with bottles and wine glasses

(39:52):
and cut himself. Uh. These quotes are all from in
the Court of the Red Czar, which is a wonderful book.
An American general, sadly and name showed up at the
party with two prostitutes. Uh. Stalin kept relatively sober um,
but after this this party was sort of like the
breaking point for that, and he started to drink more
once the risk of defeat was limited. You know, during

(40:14):
the early stages of World War Two, at most he
might put a little brandy in his tea after a
major victory like the victory at stalin Grad, and he
kept sober because like the whole world was at stake.
Yeah for sure. Well, and he probably you know, saw
what the the way that the Czar and z Arena
handled themselves during World War One, and was like, Okay, well,
I really gotta get this one right. I've learned a

(40:34):
couple of writing on this whole World War thing exactly.
So he starts drinking again after in like forty three,
and uh, it becomes very clear that he is off
the wagon. In a December nineteen forty three visit by
Charles de Gal to Moscow is sort of the exiled

(40:55):
leader of France at this point, Uh, Stalin and Degal
had a disagreement over French recognition of the Polish government
in an exile. The negotiations stalled out, and Stalin decided
to get RiPP shit drunk. Uh. He got hammered and
then complained that Degal was awkward and clumsy and everyone
needed to drink more wine so that everything could straighten out. Um,
just having a drink, we'll just talk about we'll figure

(41:15):
this out. That's not how wine works. That's not how
geopolitics works, the fate of tens of millions. Uh So,
Stalin chugged champagne and took over the job of toasting
from Molotov, who was the actual diplomat. H He cheered
Roosevelt and Churchill, who weren't in attendance, and ignored Degall,
which is great diplomacy. Molotov cocktail name bet for that guy.

(41:38):
Yeah yeah, because of the Finnish Russian War, I think,
um and uh yeah. He was also the guy who
made the big pact with Hitler that split Poland up.
He's he's important, dude. Um Stalin saluted several of his
own men who were present, and during the salutes he
would joke about the fact that he was probably going
to have them killed in the near future in front
of them. Just a lot of like high pitched like

(42:03):
side I laughing, happening in the forties, and nothing but
side I laughed. De gall was horrified by all this,
of course, uh Stalin noticed, so he leaned over to
the Frenchman and said, people call me a monster, but
as you see I make a joke of it, maybe
I'm not horrible at all. Oh my god, which you're
not convincing anyone you're not the worst. So just because

(42:25):
you're genocide has a punchline doesn't mean it wasn't a genocide.
So Molotov starts actually doing the work of diplomacy with
a French diplomat over the treaty. And while they're working
the reason this whole meeting is happening, Stalin shouts out,
bring the machine guns out, let's liquidate the diplomats. Oh
my god. Then he took his guests out for coffee

(42:47):
and movies. He hugged the frenchman at random, and staggered
around drunkenly. Uh. This marks the opening of the last
great stage in Joseph Stalin's life, which I call his
drunk as Fuck period because it was Kara derives by
nightmarish drinking sessions and a tremendous growth in practical jokes. Uh.
Stalin loved practical jokes, just a cloy example, during the

(43:09):
celebration of victory in World War Two, one of the
other magnates pulled the ceremonial knife out of a Russian
diplomat's uniform and replaced it with a pickle. Stalin laughed
about it the entire day. That is the funniest thing
he'd ever seen. He would have loved Kara top I
feel like Gallagher would have rocked Stalin's world, even America. Yeah.

(43:37):
He became more erratic after the war, possibly as the
result of several mini strokes in his increased drinking. Uh.
He purged more and more of his inner circle and
complained to Marshall Zukov, who was the Russian general who
won World War Two pretty much quote, I am a
most unfortunate person. I'm afraid of my own shadow. It's
almost like killing millions of people will catch up to

(43:58):
you sooner or later. Yeah. And Stalin apparently couldn't be
left alone, did not ever want to be alone for
any long period of time if you could avoid it.
And so every single night he would ask if all
of the magnates were free for dinner, and they would
come over to his house uh, and they would start
to eat, and these dinners would generally last six hours

(44:20):
or longer. Um. And that's just the dinner portion. As
I go through this, remember this is every day for
the men that are around Stalin, Like, how long is
your work day? And then you've got dinner after the
whole work day. This is the only work day. They
start eating and they start drinking mildly with bottles of wine,
weak liqueurs and sometimes champagne. Then as the evening war on,

(44:42):
they would switch to toasts of vodka, something called pepper
vodka which sounds like the worst, and brandy. Uh. They
would always proceed past tipsy and sauce into a state
of blind stinking drunkitude. Stalin would generally water down his
own drinks with mineral water on his doctor's advice, but
that just meant it took him younger to get wrecked
than everyone else, and so everyone else had to drink

(45:03):
more and longer. This is a quote from in the
Court of the Red CSAR. Forcing his tough comrades to
lose control of themselves became his sport and a measure
of dominance. The drinking started with Stalin, not Barrier. He
quote forced us to drink to loosen our tongues, wrote
McCoy in. Stalin liked the old drinking game of guessing
the temperature, which is literally that classic drinking game. He

(45:27):
would say to someone, Hey, Barrier, guess the temperature, and
Barry would say, I don't know, fifteen And if it
was eighteen, Barry would drink three shots of vodka. No
oh no, it's like one guy at the table that's
always like nine every time that guy would have died
of alcohol poison because they used selfius. Um. No one

(45:51):
but Stalin enjoyed these drinking vengeines. For the rest of
these guys, this is just a nightmare, an endless nightmare.
Every single day their their drink king not just excess,
but to nightmarish excess. I mean, he's just acting like
the worst divorce, like a frat boy divorce. Like it's
this weird mix of like frat leader and sad divorce. Yeah,

(46:16):
and it's and it's like your friends are like, hey man,
we're gonna go out, like we're gonna get you over her.
Don't worry about it, Like we're going to do this.
But like it's like he's not moving at all, doing
this forever. Yeah. It was very common for various magnates
to stagger out of the room mid meal, vomit, soiled themselves,

(46:38):
and then have to come back in to do more. Uh.
Sometimes they got too drunk to do even that and
they have to be carried home by their guards. But
people were puking like vomiting into their like. Know, the
dictator of Yugoslavia apparently once had to vomit down his
shirt sleeve in order to like keep going at this
party because they were just drinking so much. Um Molotov
and Khrushchev were the best drinkers in the group. Even so,

(46:59):
the spinges were so intense that Kruschev sometimes wet his
bed at night while passed out. Several magnates became desperate
to find a way to avoid drinking with Stalin. This
is a quote from a Brotherhood of Tyrants. At Stalin's dinners,
Krushchev states quote, there were often serious drinking bouts. I
remember Barria, Malenkov and mccoyon had to ask the waitress
to pour them colored water instead of wine because they

(47:21):
couldn't keep up with Stalin's drinking. He added that when
Stalin realized he had been deceived, he fumed with anger
and raised a terrible uproar. These guys are like pouring
colored water color wife, just trying not to die, trying
to yeah, we all have gout, dude. And again every
single day they would they would drink all night and

(47:42):
then go home, and by the time they woke up
Stalin to be calling them again saying, you guys want
to come from over for dinner. They have wives and kids,
doesn't matter. Stalin does not give a shit about that.
And also he jailed a lot of their wives. Yea,
the wives probably were like, fine, yeah, that's fine, cleaning

(48:02):
up my husband's piss, Yes, exactly. He cleared his own
vomit and see everything that I do for him. At
one point, Stalin found out that one of his friends
had been sneaking secret naps when he went to the
bathroom in order to sober up just a little bit,
and Stalin said, quote, want to be smarter than the rest,
don't you see you don't regret it later. Oh yeah,

(48:23):
he's just trying to like they Oh man, I hate him. Yeah,
he's the worst. The stakes on these drinking bitches were
incredibly high because if you said the wrong thing, he'd
kill you. And that was part of why he did it,
so that people would be honest, so that he could
like know if somebody was plotting against him. I figured,
if everybody's blackout drunk, nobody's hiding anything from me. Um,

(48:44):
what a paranoid, crazy person. Yeah. Yeah, everyone was way
too wasted to perform the peak ability and these are
very competent people. Uh So, in order to try to
stay alive, the magnates turned to crude, practical jokes to
keep Stalin occupied. They were not funny. One favorite joke
was just to shove people into the pond near Stalin's house.

(49:04):
I'm not gonna lie. That would make me laugh over
and over again for days. And it became such a
problem that Stalin's bodyguards had to drain the pond because
they were like one of these guys kind of fucking
drowned there too, drunk to swim, and they're not gonna
be able to help each other out. Like, if we
don't drain this pond, one of the leaders of the
Soviet Union is going to drown drunk and Stalin his

(49:26):
poor Like, we take a moment for Stalin's poor staff,
the people that had to like clean up after all
of this and make the food and get the booze
and like watch them at all. They're just like, oh
my god, and they all have to live a nocturnal
schedule to yeah, oh no, one night. Barry A drunkenly
suggested that they loose some caged quails and shoot them,
which was obviously a great idea. Great guns and blackout drunk, Yeah,

(49:48):
that always goes well. Stalin, equally drunk, grabbed a gun
and wandered out into the garden. He fired his gun
into the ground first, barely missing one of his friends,
and then he fired it into the air and hit
two of his bodyguards with birch shot. This is what
I meant when I said he pulled a change, pulled
a double cheney somewhere on an oxygen tank in Wyoming
right now, just like, why don't I get people to

(50:11):
come over? Just make them all drink. Stalin had a
mean sense of humor. H yeah, oh, we got it.
A Brotherhood of tyrants relates this story that Kruschev told
uh for some reason. This is Kruschev talking for some reason.

(50:31):
He found the humiliation of others very amusing. I remember
once Stalin maybe dance the gopak before some top party officials.
I had to squat down on my haunches and kick
out my heels, which frankly wasn't very easy for me,
but I did it, and I tried to keep a
pleasant expression on my face. Stalin was quite capable of
humiliating even his daughter once she had left childhood after
World War Two. At a dinner given for twelve Soviet Marshall,

(50:53):
Stalin said in his daughter's presence, Well, my friends, I
bet you don't know who's sucking her now because he's
the worst. Oh, he is the worst. He's the worst.
What is it about, like leaders having inappropriate relationships with
their daughters? It's crazy? Yeah, I would have that never
happened again. Yeah. Uh Kruschief said. Stalin sometimes got so

(51:14):
drunk that he took liberties, which means sexual assault today.
But back then method Stalin drunkenly throw tomatoes at his friends.
This became a trope among the drunken magnates. Marius started
sneaking tomatoes into mccoyan's suits and would then shove him
into a wall so the tomato would burst in his pants.
I'm not gonna lie. That's actually kind of funny. For years,
mccoyan would have to bring spare pants to dinner just

(51:36):
to deal with the inevitable tomato in the pants. Old
spare pants. Mccoya over here. Stal loved this. He loved
it when someone would sit on a tomato. He loved
it when his his friends would fill someone else's vodka
with salt so they'd vomit after drinking. He's just the
frat boy of all frat just like when was the
whoope cushion invented? Because I feel like he would have

(51:57):
lost goddamn mine with a safet on a tomatoes, Give
me a rubber chicken. It's hilarious. So these all night
drunken dinners are where the vast majority of Russian state
business was settled. So all of the ussr is political
decisions were done while these guys were just getting hammered.
Peopleould come in Stong would sign things, he was ordering executions,

(52:20):
he was he was making national policy for the Cold War,
and all these guys were while they were just not
just drunk, but I'm gonna say probably the drunkest any
human beings have ever been. I love the idea of
who's Who's president at this point. I think Truman for
a big part of this, Yeah, is that the idea
of like a split screen of of how they both

(52:42):
conducted their business and how the Cold War is ramping
up on both sides. That's what's amazing. From forty five
to fifty three, one of the world's two superpowers and
a nuclear power. For most of that was managed by
a bunch of wasted old men in between smashing tomatoes
into each other, and we didn't have a nuclear war.
That's inspiring it really like that does give me a

(53:03):
little bit of hope. Well, al right, okay, uh, just
keep a lot of tomatoes around. Apparently as the move.
So everything we've described so far is generally going up
to about two am in the morning. At two am ish,
Stalin would usually suggest that everyone come watch a movie
with him, so they're all the drunkest anyone's ever been

(53:26):
covered in tomato, and Stalin says, you, guys, want to
watch a movie? Oh boy, what's he? What's he pulling out?
His favorite movies were detective films, westerns, and gangster films
like The m p A. He loved fight scenes and
was disgusted by any hint of sexuality. H here's a
quote from In the Court of the Redsar when Boschakov,
who Bolshakov was his movie guy. I'll get in him
a little later, once showed him a slightly risque a

(53:47):
scene involving a naked girl. He banged the table and said,
are you making a bravo here Boschekov, and then he
walked out, followed by the pullet burrow, leaving poor Bolschikov
awaiting arrest. From then on, he cut even the slightest
glimpse of nudity. Oh boy, I like that. Stalin, on
top of everything else, is like a big prude of everything. Yeah. Man,

(54:08):
He's like, no, no, I can't get the boobs out
of here. Put some tomatoes in pockets instead, blow something up.
Boschakov was Stalin's film curator, and he had maybe the
worst job of anyone who likes movies has ever had. Uh.
He had to pick the movies for the night, which
was a tremendously dangerous job. That's so scary. Yeah, yeah,
because you don't want to give Stalin pick a movie

(54:30):
for Stalin that he doesn't want to see all those
poor actors movies too, can you imagine, being like most
of them are American movies. He loved American movies. Um.
Boschakov's two predecessors had both been executed. Uh. Stalin would
make Boschakov translate the foreign films that they watched. Boschakov
was not good at it, but that was okay because
Stalin mostly wanted to laugh at him sucking at the job.

(54:52):
I mean, okay, like, here's the thing, Like he's a
bad man, but his shades of gray every thing. You're like,
you know what, that sounds fun? Yeah yeah, I don't
just like that. Yeah No, that's the tricky thing about Stalin. Um.
Although when he watched his favorite movies, he'd get up
and perform his favorite scenes before they happen in the movie.

(55:16):
Guy that watch this, watch this, watch us, wait, wait,
watch this, watch this. It's coming. If he had seen Borat,
that would have been the only thing he ever said
for the rest of his life, was just quoting lines
from fucking Boy Like he's that guy. He's absolutely that guy.
Can you imagine my wife, my wife forever? But if
you don't laugh, he kills your family. You just have

(55:37):
to laugh. My wife for forever your life. It's it's
a nightmare. Um yeah. Many of the movies that Stalin
picked came with horrifying undertones. First colleagues, one film that
he watched repeatedly was about a pirate who stole a
bunch of gold and then murdered all of his co
pirates so he could keep it for himself. Stalin would
always shout, what a fellow, look at how he did it?

(56:00):
Oh my god. Christcheff said this was depressing and reminded
all of the other magnates that they were temporary people,
which would depress you. As his rain war on, Stalin's
obsession with cinema seemed to warp his view of reality.
At one point, he insisted on taxing the USSRS peasantry
in the middle of a horrific famine. The rest of
the politbrio told him this was a terrible idea, but
Stalin insisted that peasants could afford it because in the

(56:21):
parropaganda movies he'd seen, the peasants were all fat and
happy and had plenty of food. Hey man, do you
know what propaganda is? Let me explain. You literally ordered this? Yeah, yeah,
let me show you the B side of what we
got here. He was an early bene watcher. He'd usually
suggest a second movie after the first, which would have
elicited groans from his friends if groaning in his presence

(56:42):
wasn't a death sentence. Movie time generally finished like around
four or five something like that am, at which point
he would say, let's go grab a bite to eat.
If you have the time. Knowing no one could say
no to him. Late in the night, whilst wasted, Stalin
would insist on djaying for his hammered colleagues. Oh no,
isn't the j on top of everything else. He calls
to a DJ and he prefers comedic records, including one

(57:06):
with the warbling of a singer accompanied by the yowling
and barking of dogs, which always made him laugh with mirth.
So he's like a noise DJ. He's a drunken noise DJ.
Like five in the morning, after like eleven hours of
drinking and music, he's putting on noise music. Joseph Stalin
just needed Netflix and Coachella, and he would have been fine,

(57:28):
would have been the whole world would have been so
much better. It would have been Oh god, this is
the idea of being like having one headphone on his head,
just like you don't check this out out. That's what's happening.
That's what's happening. Um this The whole thing generally started

(57:50):
sometime in the late afternoon and would end well after dawn,
at which point Stalin would dismiss his drunken associates, lay
down to read and usually drink a little bit more
before pat sing out. Then, of course he would wake
up the next day sometime in the afternoon, call his friends,
and start the whole process over again. On February nineteen
fifty three, after a night of reckless drinking in Cowboy Movies,

(58:12):
Joseph Stalin had a stroke. He died five days later.
Peace Stalin Stalin after dark. Oh, man, if Joseph Stalin
pisses himself, do you acknowledge it? He did when he
had his stroke and they found him that he the
whole floor was covered and piss. This is like right
before he died. So he spent like two days soaked
in his own urine while everyone was too scared to

(58:33):
change him. Yeah, gotcha. I saw a death of Stalin.
And it's interesting because like they like nobody wanted to
go in the room because they're like, you want him
to do about this? And there's a lot of this controversial.
Just the death of Stalin is a fun movie. It's
not very accurate, but but that part, like the fact
that he was soaked in urine is very true. Yeah.
I mean, like of the Dictator deaths, I mean, you know,
he died in his sleep, of a stroke. He was

(58:56):
very successful. He died the way you want to die,
as the absolute ruler of a nightmare regime, which is
not being murdered by your subjects. Yeah, what why didn't
they murder? Well, I mean because it seems like I
know his propaganda. He's really great at marketing, so it
seems like he was really beloved. He was beloved by

(59:17):
the common people in the USSR. It was very popular
with some circles of the country. And anytime he got
a hint that someone didn't like him anymore, just kill you,
just kill him, which is why they all tried to
be his friend. Like these and these guys, you have
to think his inner circle would be the ones who
would be plotting any coup. And they're not going to
be able there they wasted all the time, like their

(59:39):
life is one perpetual hangover. They're not going to be
successfully plotting you just hanging on their fingernails. What a
way to make sure that your comrades don't kill you.
It's just like throw a frat party for the last
three years of your life or whatever. Yeah, I mean eight, Yeah,

(01:00:00):
isn't every night Because they went on vacation. He could
have some days where he worked and stuff, but like
a lot of nights, hundreds of nights like that, he's
just made of gout. It's like what it seems like
just God, all of them. That just sounds so it
does like like Christjeff Berry, the Molotov, these are not
like historically good people, but you can't not feel sorry

(01:00:22):
for them. Yeah, it's a nightmare. No, for sure, that
sounds awful. For like the better part of a decade.
You're just getting like college wasted. You're in your sixties,
Like nobody's in the shape as a human to be
Like maybe if they were twenty one, they could have
handled that kind of drinking for a couple of years exactly,
but no, it's just the worst man. That's just like uh,

(01:00:45):
father the Bride drunk for eight years straight, straight man. Yeah,
it's kind of shocking. Uh, the Cold War didn't go
worse time that this. This actually does give me a
lot out of faith just in general with like the
way the world is now to be. Like oh, okay, well,
I mean I don't these guys were idiots and drunk animals. Okay,

(01:01:09):
well he's were drunk monsters and we didn't have a
nuclear war. So yeah, so I mean, you guys happening
happening at I don't think they had a button, Like
I know, eventually they wound up with their own version
of the button, which they still have. I don't think
they had that quite yet. Like, I don't think their
arsenal was that advanced. So maybe if there had been
a button that Stale could have drunkenly pressed, he would
have he would have been checked out. He'd always have
his hand over it. He would have a fake button

(01:01:31):
and he'd be like, oh, they just pressed the button,
and they'd be like, what did you do? And he's like,
it's the fake buttons just pulling out of the ground
in the distance exactly. He like sets off a nuke,
but it's like made of tomatoes. He's just like, check
this out. But throwing tomatoes at Truman her eyes an
hour exactly missen to bomb full of orange peels to Washington.

(01:01:53):
Do see, that's what I want to do. Let's just
see what happens. Just throw the peels at eyes and
now or he'll know what it's about. Appeal that son
of a b up good exactly. Well alright, uh, brandy,
posey you want to tell the Internet where they can
find you, and you yeah, it's it's it's funny, like

(01:02:15):
giving where to find me after talking about Stalin for
an hour because it's like, oh, he knew where to
find everybody, but falls the record. Um. You can find
me on Twitter and Instagram at brand Dazzle uh. And
then my website is Brandy Posey dot com. I have
all my tour dates up on there. I'm a comedian
and I tore the country quite a bit. Um small
over the place, Come see me live. I'm very fun. Um.

(01:02:37):
I have an album called Opinion Cave that's available on
Spotify and iTunes and everywhere you buy albums or stream them. Uh.
And then I have a podcast as well called Lady
to Lady that is myself and two other female comics.
And then we just kind of like goof around and
hang out and do really dumb stuff like we take
French Stort to Sizzler and get him white wine. We
basically stalind French Stort at a Sizzler for a two episode,

(01:02:58):
So we do that kind of stuff. It's pretty fun.
Um And uh, yeah I do. I just have all
all over the place in l A. Have a monthly
show called Picture This that's comedians paired up with animators
and they light animate your jokes during your set, and
then it's really really fun and we get some huge names.
And that's at the Virgil once a month here in
Los Angeles, and it's free and it's super fun and

(01:03:18):
all infasive. Brandy Posey dot com. I am intimidated and
impressed by the things you're doing. I'm Robert Evans. I
have a book. You can find it on Amazon. It's
called A Brief History of Vice. It's me experimenting with
weird ancient drugs. If you can find me on Twitter
at at I right, okay uh And while you're online
looking us both up, you should swing on over to
the Behind the Bastard's website Behind the Bastards dot com,

(01:03:41):
or you can find us on Instagram and Twitter at
at Bastard's pod. Thanks a lot, See you next time,
and remember to subscribe to this podcast so you can
hear all about the worst people in history. Bye bye,