Part One: Kronstadt and the People Who Tried to Save the Russian Revolution

Margaret talks with Mia Wong about at least four Russian revolutions and general strikes, workers councils, and rebellions that tried to keep them on course.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your
weekly podcast that is this time three weeks, well, still weekly?
Why do I call it a weekly podcast? Once twice
a week. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and I talk
about cool people who did cool Stuff on my podcast
called Cool People Did Cool Stuff. And I have Mi
along with me as my guest. Himya Hello.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I am Oh. You know I said it was excited
for the last time I was on this show. I
am even more excited for this one. Oh God.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I ruined what it was going to be about because
I asked Mia to be part of a six parter
and I was like, I can't not tell her. Also
in on the loop is my producer, Sophie Hi.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Sophie Hi, MIA's here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Mia is the host of It Can Happen Here, which
is a daily podcast about things that could or could
not happen here wherever you're listening.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Every time I hear that we have a daily podcast,
I'm like, why did we do that?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
That's a lot of work.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
And then I'm like, oh, wait, we did agree to
do that, didn't We don't do daily podcast friends.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
The fun thing about it is that so I've been
doing this for about almost three years now, and the
number of episodes I have done exceeds the episode count
of entire like decade long running shows because you just
do so many of them.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
That's that's exactly true. Like like I genuinely feel because
of the amount of content we put on in Coal
Zone Media that we're just absorbing and spreading so much
information to people that like the and its quality despite

(01:54):
the quantity. And that's why we're so cool. It's just
like the whole paragraph of bragging.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Can we move off? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Also, really good at their job is Daniel, our audio engineer.
Every wants to say hi to Daniel.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
I'll miss you.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Our theme music is written for us by unwoman. And
here's something that I'm surprised none of us have talked
about sooner.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Mia.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Have you ever heard of revolution?

Speaker 3 (02:29):
No? Unfamiliar with the terms. Isn't that when the isn't
that when the hand on the clock goes around in
a circle?

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yes, and it can only go clockwise, not Witter shins.
That's this metaphor, isn't That's what it's called when you
are really into witchy pullshit?

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Aha?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah? Uh, sun Wise and Witter shins those are, but
that metaphor doesn't hold up. I guess you could have
a right wing and left wing room. We are today
the talking about a whole lot of Russian revolutions in
a short period of time, like we're going to talk
about four of them over the next two weeks three weeks.

(03:12):
We are going to talk about the Russian revolutions, the
ones you've heard of, plus a few others that were
part of the ones that you've heard of, and we're
going to talk about how they were hijacked by a
few power hungry authoritarians, and about how a pluralistic group
of rebels who actually cared about socialism fought like hell
to live up to the famous slogan of the Russian Revolution,

(03:33):
All power to the Soviets. I suppose here it's worth
pointing out that Soviet means workers council, like a decentralized,
bottom up decision making body that would be the center
of a communist society. The crux of this story is
the story of the Kronstadt Rebellion, when a bunch of

(03:55):
sailors in an island fortress declared that whether the Bolsheviks
liked it or not, the actual promised revolution was going
to happen. It was going to be politically pluralist, it
was going to be bottom up, it was going to
be democratic, it was going to be full of freedom
and equality. And they had an awful lot of guns
and artillery with which to back up that particular position

(04:16):
of theirs. They wanted a society where power resided in
the actual soviets, not in political parties. That was the
kind of core demand, was that it's not about one
political party ruling things, but instead a democratic, horizontal society.

(04:36):
These sailors from Cronstadt were the shock troops of the revolution,
and they had been for years. They were some of
the best fighters who had just won two revolutions in
a row and a whole ass civil war. They worked
in coordination with the workers in needby Saint Petersburg who
were being killed for strikes and labor organizing, and in

(04:58):
classic cool people who did cool stuff for They didn't
win the entire twentieth century and onward would look drastically
different if they had.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
There's a line from Oh God, some episode of Mike
Duncan's Revolutions podcast where he's talking about this, where there's
a line from one of the Bolsheviks where he says
we will be our own Thermidor in reference to the
Therridorian reaction that ended the sort of high revolutionary period
of the French Revolution. Yeah, and I think about that

(05:31):
all the time, because the Bolsheviks leadership was literally literally
just said we are going to do the counter revolution,
and then they did it, and then they rewrote history.
I think they would forget that they did it.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
That is one of the main things I keep running
across as I've been researching these episodes, which I'm not
even done researching. I'm like, I researched today's topics, but
I keep running across them being the people who created
the counter revolution, the Bolsheviks, who probably need no introduction,
but were the party that became the Communist Party and
ruled the USSR for an awfully long time.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
So many of them were so completely aware of exactly
what they were doing by becoming the counter revolution, and
some of them even called it ahead of time, like Trotsky.
Leon Trotsky, who will talk about more later, was like,
oh yeah in nineteen oh four, before the nineteen seventeen revolution,
he was like, oh, well, if we do it this way,

(06:29):
it's gonna lead to and then he described exactly what
went wrong with the Russian Revolution, and then he just
did it anyway. But if the Kranschatz Sailors had won,
there would be no moral leg to stand on in
the West to condemn Soviet Communism, because it would have
been communism. It would have been a stateless society of

(06:52):
free equals. The Krannschat Sailors didn't win. They fought like hell.
For each Krunschat soldier who died, ten of their foes
died first. A good chunk of them got away across
the ice to Finland, and in the end they lived
vaguely free for many years. Their battle forced the Bolsheviks
to lighten up on their authoritarianism, just the slightest bit

(07:14):
for a little while, just something. But it's a tragic story.
The collapse of the Kronschat Rebellion was the collapse of
the Russian Revolution. It was the final nail in the
coffin for the fight for actual socialism. Like a lot
of our stories, it's only a victory in that it's
a victory of the human spirit. People will always be

(07:36):
ready to fight for liberty, for free speech, and for
economic equality, so I'm gonna tell you this story about
Kronschat sailors. In order to do that, I'm going to
tell you the story of the Russian Revolution. And while
I'm at it, I'm going to tell you the story
of the revolution that came before the Russian Revolution, and
then the revolution that came before that, because there was

(07:57):
a lot of them. And to do that, I'm going
to tell you about the country it happened in Russia.
Going are we going back to the Mongols or is
it too we Oh, we're starting before the Mongols, Oh, Premongles, Yay,
we're starting with Vikings. I'm going to fast forward through

(08:18):
most of Russian history. But I like taking this little
big picture. If you the first time I cover a
country more in depth, you know, if you want to
hear more.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Do you like context, Margaret?

Speaker 2 (08:29):
I do?

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Like context?

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Oh wow, that's so interesting And I never do that
about you.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah. Context, the show that's.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
That did context stuff.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, people who did cool stuff to help other people
do cool stuff so that we might do cool stuff.
Is actually kind of the point. So the idea of
Russia goes back to around the late eight hundreds, depending
on you could just I mean there's been people living
there for a very long time, right, So it all

(09:01):
depends on how you're counting. The story of Russia actually
starts in Ukraine, or rather the city of Kiev, currently
the capital of Ukraine. In eight eighty two, a Viking
guy named Oleg captured Kiev in united Northern and Southern
Slavs under his rule, Slavs being the ethnic group that
was already living there in what was known as Kievan Rus.

(09:24):
And in this society, the Norse vikings or the aristocracy,
like the ethnic groups from elsewhere, were kind of in charge.
Eventually they sort of assimilated one hundred years ago, by
nine to eighty eight, they go formally Christian. Kievan Rus
lasted until the Mongols invaded twelve thirty seven to twelve forty.

(09:46):
And I think that history, like I think that Western
history doesn't talk enough about the Mongols.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
No, really, I mean this is one of the I
don't know. The Mongol divisions are really interesting because there's
you get like two very very well not very different,
but you get two written accounts of it from like
for very very different civilizations. You get you get you
get accounts from the various Chinese dynasties all getting destroyed,

(10:15):
and then you also get these the Islamic World accounts,
and both of them are just like, oh my god,
this is the worst thing that has ever happened, running
around screaming, and then the Western accounts of it are like, yeah,
there were trade routes now, and it's like like this
was this was literally the apocalypse for entire civilizations right then,
Like well all the water story's like, oh yeah, but

(10:38):
like you could move food from one side of the
world to the other. It's like, oh boy.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Okay, But how much of that is the fact that,
like Europe was kind of a backwater as compared to
places like the Islamic World and China, which were like
the centers of actual civilization and things like that.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
So oh, definitely a lot of it.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
So maybe Europe was like, oh, thank god, we have roads.
I don't know. Maybe I don't know. It probably was
pretty bad to get invaded by the Mongols. And one
of the things that I didn't realize when I was
younger about the Mongol invasion is it wasn't that they
just like kind of came and then killed everyone and
then left. Like the area that is now Russia was

(11:25):
there's a word for this. They had to give money
to the Mongols for hundreds of years. There's a word here,
I don't remember, vassal. It was a vassal state. The
main thing you'd call Russia at this point after the
invasion of the Mongols in twelve thirty seven is the
Grand Duchy of Moscow, and it is a vassal to

(11:46):
the Mongols, which they slowly start beating back over the
course of centuries. Ivan two did most of the hard
work of beating back the Mongols, and this Ivan hated Catholics,
so he set up kind of a curtain between Russia
and the West. As best as I can tell, this
is kind of where that idea that Russia's like not

(12:07):
Europe really starts coming in his kid Ivan the Third
was also named Ivan the Terrible. He was not a
great man. He set up the Zardam in five point
forty seven. Mister the Terrible got his name because he
killed everyone who disagreed with him. There's a lot of
like very Russian stuff that is still true today that

(12:30):
has been true for hundreds of years, and one of
them is this, like autocrats love Russia, you know, Yeah,
And The other is that the way that Russia is
going to solve like all of its war problems forever
is by having really bad guns, really bad coordination, and
just tons and tons of people and a complete lack

(12:51):
of care for the lives of those people. But by
sixteen thirteen you get Michael Romanov. I didn't look up
it's spelled Michael, but I don't think it's Michael. And
he's the first Romanov dynasty guy. The Romanovs are going
to rule until nineteen seventeen, and that's going to be
shattered by this week's protagonists bringing down three hundred years

(13:13):
of Roman navian Is, which is totally a word under
the Tsars. Russia really gets going. They're conquering Siberia like
it's their own wild West, which means that they're subjugating
indigenous people. As they go east. They're taking chunks of
what's now western Ukraine and Poland and Finland and what's

(13:36):
now the US. I think that people in the US
don't quite on some level. I think people know, like
oh I did. They used to have Alaska, but they
also had a bunch of Hawaii and a fort in
Sonoma County, California.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
Do you know that I think I knew about I
think I knew about Californa. I didn't know they were
in Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
I only know the real surface level of that part
of the story, as in I read one sentence that
said that that's all I know about their life, so nuts,
I know more about their Alaskan and Californian thing.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
Yeah, I feel like the thing with Russia is that. Okay,
so like one of the things that we've well, I
say we've a lot of people have become very good
at recognizing what an empire looks like when it looks
like the British Empire, where okay, so the British empier
has all these colonies. But then people look at Russia
and go, oh, this is one state, and it's like, no,
this is a this is a land empire. This is

(14:30):
an older kind of empire. But people don't recognize it
and don't recognize like the extent to which they just
sort of marched east and then also like went through
Alaska and yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, no, you're right. It's because it's contiguous. People are like, oh, well,
all that's Russia as if and I mean every country,
every single state in the world is on some level
this right, Like England isn't just the angles, you know,
like it was created, it's it. Yeah, No, I absolutely.

(15:04):
Russia is such a good example of this, like what
gets looked at as internal colonization, but is it wasn't
internal at the time.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, they just pushed through. I mean this is the
thing with China too, like you get you get these
land empires done, and China's later than most because I
mean they're still like the invade to bet in like
the late in like the forties. But yeah, people just
don't I don't know, there's there's there's something about the
sort of solidity, seeming solidity of nation state borders that

(15:34):
projects so legitimacy back to make people forget that, like, no,
they just conquered these places and killed the people there totally.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
And actually even like the when I was like, wow,
they had Alaska and part of California. The reason that
like blew my mind. On one level, it was like, oh,
because it's the US. But the other is that yeah,
it's where it wasn't contiguous, right, But it was just
they're like, well, we're just gonna keep going east, and
they're like, oh, there's some water, and they're like, well,
it's get on a boat and keep going east, you know,

(16:03):
and they It also is really useful to think about because,
like I think the average American listener is more aware
of indigenous populations in North America as indigenous populations, but
it's the same thing that they are doing as they
march east through Siberia and then they get to Alaska
and they absolutely fuck up and kill indigenous people there. Right.

(16:25):
They used Alaska as a fur trade center until they
depleted the population of bears and seotters and wolves and
foxes to where it wasn't profitable anymore, so they sold
it to the US in eighteen sixty seven for the
modern equivalent of one hundred and fifty seven million dollars.
They fought indigenous peoples all along the eastward expansion, and
those people fought back, and Russia was also constantly fighting

(16:49):
the Ottoman Empire to the south. Slowly gaining territory, Russia
becomes the largest country in the world, which it remains.
It is the largest country in the world, not by
population but by land mass. By seventeen twenty one, the
capitol moves from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, and this country,
this powerful empire. It is huge and powerful, so powerful.

(17:13):
I use powerful three times total in this sentence. And
it is generally seen as kind of backwards. It is
very agricultural, partly because do you know the reason it
stayed agriculture is because they didn't get the potato for
a really long time. Oh my god, that's so funny,
like because it is like not really the best. I mean,

(17:35):
obviously they grow a lot of wheat, especially in the
Ukraine area, right, but like overall, like you're talking about
like a lot of like kind of rugged terrain, right.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, this is like yat grazing land, but it's not
like it's not great.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah, And so potatoes, if you want to be like
sedentary and grow crops, the almighty potato is the like
way that you do it. And they didn't get it
until a little bit later, right, because it's an import
from the New World, you know, And so they had
to grow a ton of food in order not style.
All the time they kept trying to modernize and western eyze,

(18:10):
like when the Czar Catherine the Great, who coued her
own husband to take power in the mid eighteenth century,
I don't actually know a ton about her yet, But
and it stayed autocratic as fuck for years, and most
of the modernization didn't trickle down to the peasants. Russia
always had a huge army relative to its population, poorly
trained and armed, and their strategy was leaders throw poorly

(18:32):
armed conscripts at the problem until the problem is solved.
This was true for the Czars, and it's going to
be true for the Bolsheviks. It is, as people point out,
one of the strategies that defeated the Nazis. I think
that there could have been other strategies that could.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Have been used. As Yeah, we've.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Talked more about Russia in the nineteenth century. One of
our first episodes about the Nihilists, and of course about
its folklore bitten our episodes about Bobby Yaga, So if
you want, you can go back and listen to those.
But in the nineteenth century there's a whole bunch of
groups that are like what if not autocracy though, and
one of the ways that they're going to express their

(19:11):
disinterest in the Romanov dynasty is by shooting, stabbing, and
exploding their rulers. Also, interestingly, none of them map up
to like the Western leftist social socialist positions at the time.
These groups we are talking about they are not Marxists
and they are not anarchists. They are inspired by both

(19:32):
of those groups, especially the anarchists, but they're social democrats
with knives or some of them are like centrists, and
to be a centrist when you live under a zar,
you kind of got to go to war against the czar. Yeah,
like the center right has to go to war against
the czar. The center right is actually going to kick

(19:53):
off the nineteen oh five revolution, but we'll talk about
that in a minute. The crisis of rush On the
nineteenth century, according to most people who lived there, was
that everyone was poor and starving, and authoritarian rule sucks,
and specifically the freedom of the serfs didn't actually make
their lives batter enough. The crisis of Russia, according to

(20:14):
history books, is the crisis of modernization. They weren't good
at modernizing, and when they did, modernization challenged autocratic rule
because modernizing meant now you have new social classes, like
you have a middle social class, and you have the intelligentsia,
and you have students, and you have an industrial urban
proletariat and all those other troublesome classes also we have

(20:39):
all the angry peasants who are no longer serfs but
don't have any access to land. But you know how
they could have made their lot better. Mia buying potatoes
from our sponsor were comeing full circle, the almighty potato
our only sponsor. And if you don't want to buy it,

(21:01):
grow your own. They're great.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
I think I got a potato ad on here one time.
It was very hot.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, people have messaged me saying that.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
I'm I'm here for it, host red Ad. Don't necessarily
buy potatoes that you don't want, but growing potatoes and
the concept of potatoes real interesting. Although when I first
started this podcast, I didn't know quite as much about
how deep the potato goes. So here's ads for potatoes.

Speaker 4 (21:47):
And we're back.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
We've emerged from the potato hole. Yeah way down.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, Well, you just have to build up. You stack
up the dirt on top of the potato, you build
the hole. That's a little potato gardening advice with Margaret,
who has not eaten any potatoes she's grown, even though
she's tried several times. But that's because she doesn't stay
home long enough to harvest her crops. She travels too

(22:13):
much live alone anyway. So the nineteenth century is coming
to an end, and there's a revolution to foment, and
you have people who want to do the fomenting. By
the dawn of the twentieth century, you start getting a
bunch of the major players. And so we're going to

(22:34):
talk about them, and we're going to start with the
one that doesn't have a Western analog. We're going to
start with the least understood group, the SRS. Ah, Yes,
the socialist revolutionaries. Doesn't it sound simple. You hear the name, yeah,

(22:55):
and you try to figure out what the difference you
to left and or right SR is. It's like, oh, yeah,
what I love reading history books from this time because
they'll be like the moderate wing of the anarchists and
then the extremeist wing of the anarchists, or even the
right wing of the anarchists and the left wing of
the anarchists. And when they say that, they don't mean
right wing, like we have a right wing now. It

(23:15):
wasn't like an caps it wasn't an arco capitalist. It
was like the anarchists who didn't want to kill everyone,
or like the anarchists who are kind of liberal or whatever.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
You know.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
The srs. It sounds like they'd be simple. They're the
revolutionary socialists because they're socialist revolutionaries, right, But they don't,
like we've been saying, they don't map to a traditional
Western understanding of this. They grew out instead of a
different group, they grew out of a nineteenth century revolutionary tradition,

(23:50):
the Neurodnicks, and we talk about more than more on
the Nihilist episode. I really kind of like them, like
not necessarily, like, oh, their ideological theory is like the
best ideological theory or whatever, but like they're the eco hippies,
Like they're nice. I don't know if you have.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
It's funny because the one sentence description that like I
always see is people just call them populist, and it's
like that tells you literally nothing of what they actually believe.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Like now, calling them eco hippies is a better way
to describe.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
I think they were agrarian socialists, which meant they were
very specifically not Marxists, because Karl Marx, for all his
I was I have nothing whatever, he fucking hated peasants.
That's what I was saying, Karl Marx. The Neurodnicks were

(24:45):
basically these student hippies who decided to go be among
the people. So that's they're like populism, right, but yeah, no, populois.
Populus is a meaningless word. It can be used for everything.
And they're heavily inspired by a whole bunch of different people,
including I believe Peter Kropotkin and Bakunin, but also a

(25:07):
whole lot of non anarchists. Those are two big anarchist
theorists that we're going to talk about in a little bit.
And they're inspired by all these people and they're like, Okay,
we're going to go out among the people and live
there and talk about revolution and talk about like collectivizing
and you know, all this things and going to the
people to educate them about socialism and revolution. Didn't quite work.
But the way it's usually described as this abject failure,

(25:29):
and it wasn't an abject failure. It was a complicated mix.
After the serfs had been freed in eighteen sixty one,
they were basically cast unceremoniously into the malls of capitalism.
The neurotniks were like, well, what if we keep the
communes that you all were using, like to feed yourself

(25:49):
under when you were serfs, but just get rid of
the noble who owns you. Like, what if instead of
falling now into capitalism and splitting up the land and
no one can has enough good land to eat, you
keep the system that kept you fed, and then you
just get rid of the thing that was siphoning off
all your food, the noble. But most of them are

(26:11):
middle and upper class kids, and going to the people
didn't necessarily win people over end mass, but a ton
of them just like realized they liked peasant life and
stuck around. And also whenever you're like, oh, they were
like hippies or whatever, or like the state hunted them,
just absolutely like spread out across the country being like
are you all harboring hippies? You know? And there's all

(26:35):
kinds of stories of peasant villages banning together to defend
their hippie transplants. Yeah, it's like a whole They're like, no,
that guy taught me how to read. I'm not giving
him up, Like that's our doctor. Why would we tell
you where he is. One thing that came out of
the neurodnicks are the nihilists, who are basically social democrats

(26:58):
who like bombs an awful lot and they came out
of a kind of hipster class. That's like, they sort
of came out of the Ironnicks, and they sort of
came out of this group that was like called the Nihilists,
but wasn't quite what the Nihilists became. Like, the Nihilists
started off as like a like beatnicky kind of thing,
and then they were like, instead of just being a counterculture,
they were like, Okay, now we're serious heart and revolutionaries.

(27:19):
Much like how the sixties nineteen sixties culture counterculture like
gave way to the early seventies, you know, committed revolutionaries
in the United States. The exact same thing happened in
the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies in Russia. The Nihilists
eventually killed the vaguely progressive Alexander the Second in eighteen
eighty one, and so Alexander the Third took power and

(27:41):
was like, well, I'm a fucking autocrat. Fuck all of you,
fuck westernizing, fuck democracy, fuck free speech, fuck all the
ethnic minorities. We were obsessed with rucification. And in particular,
can you guess what ethnic minority they particularly hated.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Are they are the antisemites?

Speaker 2 (28:03):
They are they hated the Jews, oh God, which is
a long tradition in Russia. Yeah, Alexander the Third he
died young, but sadly he died of illness and not
of justice. The other thing that came out of the Neurotnicks,
and the reason we went on there's a whole long tangent,

(28:25):
is that the SRS came out of the neurotniks. They
formed in nineteen oh one or nineteen oh two. I
have read both from the neo neurotonics, which were the
group of people being like, man, those people sure had
it right, and then people were like, not only they
have it right, but we should form a revolutionary organization
and start trying to get some shit done. They are

(28:45):
a grarian socialists who aren't Marxists. They want to overthrow
the czar and redistribute land to the peasants. And you
know what most annoying things about there's a lot of
annoying things about leftism. One of the annoying things is
the split between the worker, by which people mean the
proletariat aka someone who works in a factory or whatever

(29:08):
in a city, and then the peasants. And famously marx
kept assuming peasants were all reactionaries and right wing. I
think this is fairly easy for the modern listener to understand.
Think about how modern liberals assume that all poor rural

(29:29):
people in America are Maga Trump supporters.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
Yeah, I think they're also Like part of it too,
is all of these people, everyone down the line, every
single one of these people who's going to be in
this revolution or like all of this intelligence of people's marks.
Two are like haunted by the French Revolution and in
the French Revolution, like there are a lot of like
you know, like the thing that they're haunted by is

(29:54):
like this image of like Paris standing alone is like
the loan revolutionary city, and this like whole nation of reactionaries.
It's like it was never quite true, but it's what
like it's what shapes the way that they all think
about this that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
And like, you know, all of the class analysis that
Marx did, And Marx did a lot of good work
as an economist, I will give him that. And the
class position of a peasant is very different than the
class position of a proletarian worker, Like the relationship to
the means of production is fundamentally different. And I can
see why he got the idea that there was therefore

(30:30):
something intrinsic to that relationship that made them right wing.
But you have this thing like the Paris Commune, Friend
of the Pod, one of the first episodes we did.
You go back and listen to it. We haven't done
the French Revolution yet. I have to find people I
like in it.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Sorry, A bunch of assholes killed a bunch of other
assoles and then killed each other. Somewhere along the way
there was a bunch of really good meaning people actually,
and at some point I need to just do the
fucking Enlightenment and all that shit. But I kind of whatever. Anyway,
during the Paris Commune, you have this thing too, right
where the Paris Commune stood alone, But there they didn't.

(31:05):
There were other communes in other smaller cities. And one
of the things that happened was Bakunin and a bunch
of anarchists and other people. I actually don't know if
Pacunen was an anarchist here at this point.

Speaker 4 (31:14):
No.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
I think he was went to I think Leon, but
I'm not sure off the top of my head. They
went to a smaller area and they were like, oh,
we're going to organize people. What was that was it marse.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
And my Marseille, I fague members of your merci. I
could be completely wrong about it. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
And Marx was like, fuck, you don't go to those.
You know, the peasants are all reactionary, you can't organize them.
And I've had conversations with like one of my friends
feels firmly that this is the reason that Paris stood
alone and therefore was not able to succeed, you know,
was that this idea of writing off everyone else is

(31:52):
counter revolutionary. But yeah, I mean, but it's also like
you look at rural America and it is not a
left wing space right now.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
You know.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Anyway, all of the Russian revolutionaries are, including the Marxists,
and I believe Marx himself are going to get over
themselves on this issue and be like, oh, actually, in Russia,
the peasants can be the revolutionary class. They're allowed.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
Yeah. It's funny because Marx, right like the end of
his life, he writes a letter to some of the
revolutionaries on Russia where he talks about like, oh, the
commune could be a basis, and then all of the
subsequent Bolsheviks basically ignore him. Yeah, nope, we need to
do hyper capitalism first to make these people proletarias and
then they could be socialists. Oh we'll talk about that part.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah. Oh god, I mean I think that that's actually
like again, like I am not a huge Marxist, that's
not my thing. I actually think that Marx was a
really interesting economist who was primarily incorrect about how revolutions work.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
That is my take.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
But the one thing that I got to hand it
to him, he wasn't a Marxist, you know, like I
think he even said that doesn't even core.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yes, it's like if yeah, it's like if this is
what Marxism is and I'm not a Marxist, and then
the product of that is there's been one hundred and
fifty years of people calling themselves Marxians because it's not Marxist.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Ex And like, from my point of view, I think
what the thing that I respect about Marx is that
on some level he was willing to take in new
information and change what he believed based on new information.
A lot of his fun not all of a huge
number of people who do come from the Marxist tradition
are also capable of doing that, but it's it's hit

(33:37):
or miss. So yeah, eventually the Marxist in Russia are
going to get over themselves because they're like, oh, only
people who are going to throw down our peasants, not
only people, but this is a peasant country, right, Yeah.
And later in the story you're going to have people
start talking about the toilers, which the first couple of
times I read that, I was like, why did someone

(33:58):
translate that word that way? I assume that they met
worker and they didn't. Toiler meant someone meant both the
workers and the peasants, And I thought that was cool.
It's not a it doesn't flow off the tongue.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah, you need well, I mean, to be fair, It's
better than the it's better than the Maoist formulation, which
is just to say workers and peasants every single time
and occasionally adding students. It's like, it's like because like
most not all, but like because of the history of
the left in China, like a lot of modern Chinese
leftists are still Maoists. So you'll you'll be reading something

(34:33):
they write and it's mostly fine, and then they'll start
talking about the student worker peasant alliance, all written out
like that. It's just like oh yeah, God.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
I get why it became cringy later, but I understand
why Graber and others came up with the ninety nine
percent as the way to formulate this. Yeah, there are
the people who make their money off of owning stuff,
and then there are people who make their money by
working anyway, So the SRS back to our socialist revolutionaries

(35:05):
who aren't Marxists. But as soon as they form they're like, well,
we actually do want to include the workers in this revolution,
the non peasant workers, and so they start kind of
bridging some gaps with Marxism and Marxists, and they do
a lot of urban organizing and start recruiting urban workers
as well, and overall at the beginning they're kind of
revolutionary moderates in some ways. They are down to throw down,

(35:27):
and they inherited some of the nihilist forebears love of
a good assassination. Yeah, they and the anarchists are going
to be in fierce competition for how many heads of
state can we put bonus holes into? So good so yeah,
but their general goals are the establishment of a republic,
a socialist republic, you know, rather than like whatever. They're

(35:48):
slightly more moderate some of their demands. The SRS are
a really major party and they're pretty interesting. Then I
swear to God, if you all make it through me
talking about Bolsheviks versus Mensheviks, we're gonna get We're gonna
get to some people setting fire to hay stacks of
rich people. We will get there. You just gotta you

(36:10):
gotta muscle through this with us, and we promise to
try and make it entertaining.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Interminable intra party disputes.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
But that's a bullet thing, I know. And that's actually
the thing that keeps coming up. Whenever you read history books,
they're always like and then and it's just like eighteen
pages of this version of the narcos syndicalist who're mad
at that version of the narcissentticlists And I don't care.
On some level, I care because it's it's necessary sometimes,
But overall, this is not gonna be a podcast about
like all of the different blow by blow and then

(36:37):
the Mensheviks and the blah blah blah blah blah. I'm
much more interested in the broad strokes, and I'm also
specifically with the Russian Revolution. I'm interested in how you've
got these like parties right, and then ideologies because the
anarchists aren't a party, but they're still kind of one
of them. And then you got everyone doing the revolution
and they're kind of not these groups like these are

(36:58):
the groups that are trying to direct an organic and
flowing force, but the force itself is literally made up
of the people and not party politics. But I think
it's still worth Everyone is always talking about the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party, Like I can't even stop in
at tractor supply in town here to pick up malch

(37:20):
and dog food. The cashiers talking about the Russian Social
Democratic Labor Party just kidding, only sort of kidding. This
is the group that will become divided between the Bolsheviks
and the Mensheviks. I'm willing to bet most people who
are listening to this have heard of at least the
Bolsheviks soon enough, like later they're going to change their

(37:40):
name to the Communist Party. So on some level, if
I hear a random person attractor supply talking shit about
the Communists, which hasn't actually happened, but it totally could,
they actually would be talking shit about the Russian Social
Democratic Labor Party because they're not talking about communism. When
people say the communist in the modern context, they're talking

(38:02):
about Bolshevism primarily, like if the random person in America,
not the random person who's like, no, I'm a Maoist
or whatever, cards on the table. As you all probably
figured out, I don't really like this group very much,
particularly the Bolsheviks. By the end of these episodes, you'll
understand why. The RSDLP, which I guess that's not what

(38:24):
they call themselves, because that's the America, the English version,
but whatever. The Social Democrats they formed an eighteen ninety
eight in Minsk and what's now Belarus, and their whole
thing was that they wanted to import Marxism to Russia.
And they were formed in a reaction to the neo Neuoniks,
the people who dared claim the peasants as a revolutionary class.

(38:45):
And there are some good people in this group, and
some good groups within this group, friends of the Pod,
the Jewish Labor Bund, who do good and bad things
all throughout the following thing. But so out, yeah, no
one's no one's coming out of this perfect no ideology
is coming out of the Russian Revolution being like, oh,
them's the good guys but props of the Social Democratic

(39:10):
group the RSDLP. It's illegal right from the start, I know,
but it's illegal, so that always you can have a
crappy name. But if your groups illegal, it's got some
got some cred and they're like, look, I know that
proletarian workers are only three percent of the Russian population,
but Marx said that the only the urban proletary can
be the revolutionary class. So that's what we're into. In

(39:33):
nineteen oh three, the group splits, because that's what Marxist
groups do. I mean, so do the anarchists. We'll get
to them. Well, the anarchists don't formally split, they just
talk shit. But they these groups formally split. They split
into the Bolsheviks, which means majority, and the Mensheviks, which
means minority. Here's the thing that you probably knew what

(39:53):
I didn't until I did this research. The Bolsheviks masters
of political propaganda, naming themselves the we're the smaller half.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
Yep. Do you know more about this?

Speaker 2 (40:07):
I've only got like a paragraph of what I put together, so,
oh god, I don't remember this.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
There was some very specific vote, yeah, that was happening
inside of the party, and Lenin had like a I
had like a very small majority for one vote, and
he declared that now his fashion was the majority. And
then like literally the next day it was like, well, no,
you're no longer, you don't have this majority anymore. But
they just the name just stuck.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah. I'm under the impression that they won that vote
because the Jewish labor booned and a bunch of other
people stormed out and refused to participate that day because
they were so mad.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
About it and the vote.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
I believe this particular one was about whether or not,
as the Mensheviks wanted, they would be sort of big
tent with membership and they would be like, anyone can
be in this group if they like are either directly
affiliated or a little bit loosely affiliated and like, and
the Bolsheviks were like, no, we need a specific, tight

(41:11):
elite group, a vanguard of highly disciplined folks, if you will. Yeah,
And this split is more or less permanent. The Mensheviks
will always be the more moderate, compromise minded and more
democratic faction. And what they do is disagree about next
only makes sense if you are so marx pilled that

(41:31):
you cannot see daylight. You see such cases oh do
they disagree about ads that They also disagreed about whether
or not this podcast should be sponsored advertisers. But they
don't have a say in it. They've all been dead
for a long time and I barely have a say

(41:53):
in it. And here's ads and we're back.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
The social democrats, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks alike, they want a revolution,
they want to create socialism. And there's a science to
these things. The immortal science is laid down in the
Gospel of Marks. Yeah, in that understanding of the world.
This is the thing that took me so long to
wrap my head around, because it makes no sense if
you don't come from a Marxist background. In that understanding

(42:32):
of the world, you can't go straight from an agrarian
autocratic society to a communist society. You can't even go
from an autocratic urban industrial society to a communist society. First,
a country has to go through a bourgeois revolution, one
that leaves the rich rather than the aristocracy in charge.
Like I used to think of aristocracy as the rich, right,

(42:52):
But it's like the aristocracy is like the nobles and shit, right,
whereas the capitalist rich or the bourgeoisie, right, is to
tell me I'm getting anything is wrong, but this is
my yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
Yeah, So like the y, the aristocracy is a specifically
a feudal classes, feudal social relations. It's like kingship, your
duke's Yeah, and the borschosi is supposed to be a
different class, but it isn't. Like that's the thing like
a lot of countries, like they're just the same people
like this. This is the germid experience, right, It's like
most of the most of the German bushes were just nobles.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Well, that's one of the things that like, and Marx
was really good at figuring out the economy of England,
where he like lived, even though it was German. But
the further you get from England, the more his like
his whole I don't even remember the name of it.
I feel like I probably can't even say it on air,
the way like the oriental Oh yeah, the Asiatic mode

(43:45):
of production, there's a there's a Slavonic one too that
everyone forgets. You forget the Slavonic mode of production, so
sheerris yeah, And so it's like no scientist working in
the nineteen century, no social scientists working in the nineteenth
century got everything right. But what we do when we

(44:06):
care about science is we build on those things, and
we critique the old things and we build new things. Anyway,
the social democrats are fighting to have a bourgeois revolution
to put the rich in charge instead of the nobles.
They are fighting to empower the wealthy, to create a
liberal society so that the groundwork can be laid for

(44:26):
the people to become industrial proletarians and then seize power
in the communist Revolution. If you ever want to be angry,
read what Engles had to say about the Irish people
as relates to any of this, or really anyone who
is in English. Both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks agreed that
this was the task in front of them, But what
they disagreed about so strongly that they could never work together.

(44:47):
I mean, they do eventually work together again on some stuff.
Is whether or not the revolutionary class of the bourgeois
revolution would be the bourgeois, or whether the peasants had
to the people to make the bourgeois revolution. The Bolsheviks
were like, fuck it, we'll get the peasants. There's more
of them. Like they seem to be angry anyway, we'll

(45:08):
have them do the revolution to empower the liberals, whereas
the Mensheviks are like, no, it's the liberals who will
help the proletariat to have a revolution to empower the liberals.
I I fucking can't with these people. It's so funny
because so these brain worms have never stopped being a thing.
I mean, there are like you can you can see
this in like Latin American elections. You will hear people

(45:30):
talking about how, oh well, we need to transition from
feudalism to capitalism because he never did it. Like the
Maoist Party in the Philippines, whove been doing this insurgency
for like fifty years. Their leader has an entire thing
about how the Philippines is still a feudalist society and
not a capitalist one because they don't have steel production.
I'm not making this up. It's in This brain worm
has stuck in the heads of people for hundreds of

(45:52):
years and that and that's why I feel the need
to explore this stuff in this week's episode, because I
think to unders stand what's going on in the Russian
Revolution and modern leftism, I think understanding these underlying ideas
is worthwhile. Even though it's a minefield of brain worms,

(46:13):
which is a strange and visceral image. So next I'm
gonna talk about the anarchists, and they don't start where
at least I expected. I don't know if they're going
to start where you expected. I mean, when you think
of Russian anarchists, do you think that the first Russian anarchists.
When you think of them, do you think of Christian
pastfest hippies?

Speaker 3 (46:34):
Oh well yeah, because of toll story.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah yeah, and we got into it. Okay, you're smarter
than my ones.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Well this is this is partially because, like I think,
Tolstoy was one of the first people I ever realized
was an anarchist, because like I grew up in a
really really Christian like community and that was like the first,
like I don't know, that was like the first kind
of thing I ran into as like little baby Mia.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
I mean, so your trajectory is very similar to the
Russian anarchist trajectory in this way. Two of the most
influential theoreticians of anarchism come from Russia. Possibly the two
most influential theoreticians of anarchism come from Russia. Bakunin and Kropotkin,
both of them, their heyday is over by the time
we're talking about Bakunin's heyday is over because he's been

(47:28):
dead for twenty four years by the turn of the century.
He died in eighteen seventy six. And his whole thing
was a little bit more insurrectionary, a little bit more,
you know, a little bit more he was into secret
societies and propaganda of the deed, and a little bit
more like cloak and daggers, emphasis on daggers. Kropotkin was

(47:50):
a biologist who studied and developed a lot of the
modern concepts of mutual aid, and his work is actually
still used when we talk about why animals are gay,
which is like one of my favorite things in the world.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Oh, that's so cool.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
Yeah, if you read an article about scientists talking about
gay animals, they're like, well, actually, competition is only one
part of evolutionary biology. And actually this old evolutionary biologist,
Peter Kropotkin, better known for his other works, you know,
developed the concept of mutual aid as a factor in evolution.
He wrote a book called Mutual Aida, Factor and Evolution, which,

(48:24):
by the way, he got a lot of those ideas
by studying the natural world and then also studying and
working with and living with indigenous populations in eastern Siberia.
But anyway, Pawkins, he's a little bit like he's not
afraid to afraid to throw down. He's not a pacifist,
but he's way more like, let's change culture, let's do
things a little bit more equally, whereas like Bakunin's like

(48:45):
the destructive urge is also creative urge and whatever. Kroppawkin's
heyday is over at this point because he's old now
and he's not so involved, and he's in exile. He's
living I think in England most of this time, although
maybe I think.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
This is after like a prison break and stuff. So
it's not like he said nextile because he wasn't doing anything.
It's just that he can't go back to Russia because
he's no.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
That's actually a really good point. A lot of people
are gonna be like self imposed exile. This man like
circumnavigated the world, yeah, after breaking out of prison. So
despite anarchism as a theory largely being shaped by these
Russian guys, anarchism is not a prevalent force in nineteenth
century Russia. The nihilist absolutely rubbed elbows with Bakunin, but
they were at the end of the day BOMBCRAI social democrats,

(49:30):
the Nerodnicks took some inspiration from I believe Bacun and
ankor Pockin. I've like, I'm a little confused on this
because I've did most of that research about a year
and a half ago. But they too were fighting by
and large for something that looks a little bit more
like a representational democracy or social socialist democracy. Kripakin built
a ton of the ideas of modern anarchism and mutual

(49:51):
aid by hanging out with and observing indigenous communities in Siberia.
Like I was saying, he also did a lot of
work to help it communities escape persecution by the Zar
and like help entire communities like find new homes in
Canada and stuff, which is cool. I know it is
a little bit trading on colonization in colonialism, but it's
it's still helping a group of people who are being

(50:11):
persecuted get away as good, you know.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Yeah, and like I mean as bad as the Canadian
government is, and like I am a famous Canada hater. Okay, okay,
the tzar is Russia was a worse place to be
than Canada. Even though Canada's cloud history is appalling, Czar's
colonialism is something else.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yeah, totally. He saved a ton of people's lives by
being like he wasn't just like an anthropological observer being like, oh,
you have this interesting mutual aid community. He was like,
y'all need to get out, Like we, uh, we kind
of we kind of cribbed most of our notes from
our ideology by watching you, we can help you get out.

(50:50):
And a lot of communism is built out of the
communes that surf sometimes lived on. Also, right, so a
lot of Okay, I'm I'm working on this theory. I
think anark in Russia is a bit like anarchism in
Ireland and Mexico and other colonized spaces. It's less of
something that was imported to the region and more of
something that people took inspiration from indigenous lifeways there sort

(51:12):
of ex anarchic ideas were exported to the anarchists and
then kind of re imported back again. And I've seen
this cycle happen with Siberia, Ireland, and Mexico, like I
was saying, and it's just come up on these shows.
On the show specifically as I do this research, and
I think it's happened a bunch of other places too.

(51:33):
But there were absolutely a bunch of specific nineteenth century
anarchists in Russia. And as you successfully called, and you
were the only person I could have had as a
guest who would have called this, they were Christian pacifists.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
James might have been able to do it. James, James
anarchism nowhere it was James is my co host, James
stout the co hosts.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
That's true, that's true. James would have had a chance.
I wouldn't have had a chance. I would have just
assumed there's a ton of anarchists among the nihilists, and
shit know better, weren't. This Christian quietism predates Leo Tolstoy,
so it also pre dates being called anarchism, and it
really hits his stride with Tolstoy and is more objectively

(52:16):
interconnected with anarchisms at this point. The War and Peace
guys who were talking about Leo Tolstoy, it is hard
to overstate how influential he was while he was alive.
These days, I know very few people who have actually
successfully read any of his books.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
They're really long. They are really long.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
And just read The Death of Ivan Lili, which it's
like a little novella. Get your slight Tolstoy piled it's
really depressing though.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
Russian literature.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Yeah, huh, imagine that. What are concept? But it's just
that was like the first thing I read for by Tolstoy.
It was a little novella.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Okay, Now I've read some of his short stories. Maybe
I read a short story that I watched a movie
based on about a deserter from the army, but I
don't remember a name of it.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
And unfortunately I'm an enormous nerd. And so the first
Tolstoy thing that I read that was The Kingdom of
God Is Within You, which is like anarchist book.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Oh and I've just looked it up and it looks
like there's a free pedia version of it online from
Stanford University, so hell yeah, I can read it for free.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Tolstoy, We're still not covering him in detail, but he
has woven his way like Quakers, and.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
He's not quite tuberculosis, but he does come out often.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah, and don't worry, I'm going to tie the industrial
workers of the world in later I'm sure you are. Yeah, no,
i am, it's in the script.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
First, more context.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Yeah, So Tolstoy never set out to lead anything, but
people followed his teachings anyhow, and his teachings were basically,
violence is bad, the state is bad, private ownership of
capital goods is bad. Christianity is good. Anarchism is good
except when it's violent, which it is way too often.
So a ton of people refused conscription, refused to pay taxes,

(54:08):
refuse to take any oaths, and like set up communes
and vibed and that's cool. Yeah, vibes is good. Good
for them. But the Russian anarchists, as we know and
love them today, the anarcho communists and anarcho syndicalists and
anarcho we don't have another adjective here, honestly, terrorists. The

(54:32):
anarcho terrorists, I think this be the thing they most
likely call themselves as a third group. They start at
the same time as all these other revolutionary groups, right
the fuck near the turn of the century. They never
form a political party per se, but they will maintain
ideological infraternal relations with each other and or disagree and
talk shit on each other, and even be like, oh,

(54:52):
that group's too violent, they say, while they're like building
a bomb to go blow up somebody like. But all
of the groups do that. All of the groups. The
anarchists are not unique and they're like murdering people at
this stage. To be clear, they are, unsurprisingly a bunch
of different groups and a bunch of different ideas. Most
of them come out of Western Russia parts that are
no longer Russia, especially Poland and Ukraine specifically, and not coincidentally,

(55:16):
they come out of the Pale of Settlement because in
Russia it was only legal to be a Jew in
certain parts of Western Russia, a place called the Pale
of Settlement. I had always assume that this is where
the phrase beyond the Pale comes from, but it's not.
Beyond the Pale comes from a different pale, which was
this area of eastern Ireland around Dublin that had been

(55:36):
properly colonized by the British. So beyond the Pale meant
the barbarian lands of the Celts.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
I need to start using that differently now that I
know that. It's like, oh, this is the cool part.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
I know, right exactly. So anyway, you can't overstate how
influential Jewish anarchism was, not to just anarchism, but the
broader labor movement. A ton of Jewish labor booned fock
folks wind up anarchists, though plenty of them stay social
democrats and are the enemies of the anarchists, and another
one stays social democrats and work with the anarchists. And

(56:08):
it's almost like you can't take a ethnic group and
say anything particular about their characters.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Yeah, who could have guessed?

Speaker 2 (56:17):
And what I find cool about this like export and
then import thing. One of the main ways that anarchism
is reintroduced to Russia is Yiddish language newspapers coming out
of London, which also means that they were inspired by
Ireland because it was the London anarchists who were picking
up on Irish ways of resisting landlordism and all that shit.

(56:40):
I love how interconnected.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
All this is.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Yeah, And so they're like and they're also like specifically
passing out things being like remember the Chicago Haymarket martyrs
in Ukraine and Poland nineteen o four.

Speaker 3 (56:53):
You know it's really incredible. Yeah, I mean there is
this joke about how like everyone everyone in other countries
knows about American political prisoners and American politic Americans don't. Yeah,
And it's like, this is to be fair, people in
the US did know about Haywark it, but yes, not
self spread like there were there were, I mean there
were riots like in Japan over it. Like it's stagnant.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
I would argue from some level of knowledge, but not
complete knowledge. The thing that I think about is about
how anarchists at the turn of the century, when they
didn't have fucking they had telegraphs, I guess, but they
didn't have fucking Twitter or email or reliable post. We're
having conversations about things happening all over the world, Yeah,

(57:41):
and including American anarchists knew about all the stuff happening
in Japan. You will hear about American anarchists talking about
Japanese anarchists and like fighting for them at the beginning
of the twentieth century, right, and you don't even see
that as much anymore. And it's embarrassing because like now
we have like we fucking Google trands right now. You know.

(58:01):
I think that one of the reasons for this is
that anarchism in the United States wasn't really American. It
wasn't primarily English speaking, and it was an immigrant ideology,
you know.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
That's like so it was also I mean, like one
of the things I remember researching stuff on Japanese anarchism
was so Japanese anarchism in like the twenties has to
split between the syndy clus and the narco communists. And
Rudolph the Rocker, who is like this really kind of famous,
well not that famous, but he's like a he's an
anarchist organizer in Germany, is like writing them letters being

(58:39):
like please don't split. And I can't explain that purely
by the sort of life Totally. I think that they
were just actually better at.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Being international comrades back then, and I think that that's
a thing that we need to come back to, you know.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
Yeah, I think another part of it was also just
people would go to play. Like a lot of Japanese
anarchism came from people going to Paris, yeah, and meeting
a bunch of anarchists in Paris and then coming back
totally we.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
I don't know, no, totally, especially American anarchists.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
Yeah, like those kind of like communication lines don't really
happen anymore, and.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
It's really bad, although part of that was because we
used to get exiled constantly. That's true, But you know,
isn't this an election year or anything could happen. So
you've got an arco communist and narcos syniclists. We're fighting
for a fairly orderly society, and they're overall focused on

(59:38):
labor organizing. And then you've got Black Banner and other
anarchists that called anti intellectual anarchists or sometimes anarcho terrorists.
And when I say that they're anti intellectual, like, I
was reading this whole essay about anarchism anti intellectualism, and
I'm like, I'm really sad that they're anti intellectual it.

(01:00:00):
You know how every word just means something completely different
depending on the context. Yep, yep, this is one of
them words. Great, they are not like we don't like books,
that they're bad burned, the books kill all the intelligentsia.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Mostly it's that they are action focused rather than theory focused,
and they are opposed to having an intellectual class, and
they believe that education should be broad and that every
peasant and the workers can become politically educated. And considering
around this time, one of the splits is going to
happen with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, actually I think versus
the Mensheviks, but not entirely certain is that Lenin is

(01:00:35):
going to be like no, no, no, fuck popular education.
We need to just have the intelligentsia leaders. We need
the smart vanguard. Everyone else could be a bunch of
dum dumbs.

Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
Yeah, And like Lenin's hole, the working class needs to
be led by middle class like coffee shop Dipshits has
had unfathomably terrible all the most annoying people you've ever met.
Like that. That's the reason why like this.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
And so Chernoe, Zanamia Black Banner, they are fighting against that.
They are working class intellectuals in as much as their
intellectuals at all. But actually they do spend half their
time talking about theory. So like whatever they started in
what's now Poland in nineteen oh three, mostly by Jewish anarchists,

(01:01:21):
but they were not a Jewish organization, and they had
a theory. The theory was, we are currently being oppressed,
but people who are dead can't oppress us, So what
if we just kill the people who are oppressing us?
And they set out to do it. They referred to
themselves as terrorists, and they even referred to what they

(01:01:42):
were doing as motiveless terror. And yet for all of that,
they were fairly restrained, although I have read two very
different takes on this, both from an anarchist position. But
they weren't just like wilding out on everyone. When they
robbed the rich, they didn't kill unless the person didn't
give them their money. And when they they interfered with

(01:02:06):
strikes by stabbing strike breaking bosses to death, they only
did so when all other means had been exhausted. And
they did it because the striking workers would come to
them and be like, hey, our strike isn't working. Could
you do a little like well stabby, Yeah, just like
extra blood in the scene. It might help, you know.

(01:02:27):
And so they they considered themselves working very closely with
the people. That's more the primary source version like that's
from a guy who was in it, whereas like a
later historian was a little bit like, oh, they were
a little bit more marginal than I don't know. But
they also raided gun shops and barracks for arms, They

(01:02:48):
bombed police stations, and they just did all kinds of shit.
They and the strikes and the movement at the time
that they represented included everyone from the nit yarkas, which
are the lowest of the workers, the female textile workers,
to students and even some soldiers. And there's also this
thing that happens, and I read mostly anarchist history, so
I have a bias here that could be tying into this.

(01:03:09):
I read about a ton of women in these groups,
like about a third of the names of the people
that I would read who would be like and then
this person blew up that person or whatever. Are women
doing those actions? And I don't see that as much
in the other ideologies. However, I have not studied the

(01:03:29):
other ideological factions as closely, so it is possible that
I am biasing anarchistics feminism.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Yeah. I think it's because I think I think part
of what was going on is, like, if I'm remembering correctly,
I think a lot of these organizations have like their
own women's groups that are like another thing, okay, And
that's part of why the uh the February Revolution nineteen
seventeen goes the way it does, because the feminist groups

(01:04:00):
are like, we're doing the revolution and all of the
doble groups are like bad day, eh, too early.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Yeah, I'm excited to get to the nineteen seventeen stuff.
Even before the Revolution of nineteen oh five, which we'll
get too soon, Black Banner was at war with the state. However,
they were like way more marginal before nineteen oh five
that they become way bigger of a deal during nineteen
oh five. And they're all based out of Bali Stock

(01:04:32):
in Poland, which turned into something. Well, they started there.
They actually spread great deal, but they start in Bali
Stock turned into something of a war zone in nineteen
oh four with fighting between the people, the anarchists and
the Tsars forces the police. Other anarchist groups are doing
this kind of shit too, and I believe that other
revolutionary groups are too. Every history book that I found

(01:04:54):
is written by more or less a partisan of one
of these leftist groups of the h and so they're
always like the Sars did everything, the anarchist did everything,
No one did anything till the Bolsheviks did it or whatever,
you know. But Black Banner was a really big deal,
and soon it spread to the countryside and to other
cities and regions. Each fighting group was largely autonomous their

(01:05:18):
newspaper because yeah, of course they had a newspaper had
a masthead, and the masthead had was a quote from
Gerta in the beginning there was the deed. And I
don't know enough about Gerta to say how that really
ties me. Neither old dead guy German. One of the
main sources we have about this group, Black Banner, is

(01:05:41):
this guy who probably was never himself in a fighting group,
was instead one of their chief propagandists and sort of ideologues.
At least according to himself, he was one of their
chief ideologues.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
According to someone else he never threw down, but I
don't know. And his name is Ayuda Grossmann Rosan. And
the problem with him as a source. The other problem
with the fucking Russian Revolution, yeah, is that when the
Bolsheviks take charge, they literally write all the history and
rewrite all the history. And so this man becomes a Bolshevik,

(01:06:18):
and so nineteen twenty four he writes about the thing
that I read about Black Banner. The longest thing I
read about Black Banner was from him, and was written
in nineteen twenty four, after he become a Bolshevik. But
half of the document is him saying, I swear I'm
a loyal Bolshevik. Please don't kill me for having ever
been an anarchist. I swear I know that Bolshevism is

(01:06:38):
the one true way, and I swear I know that
anarchism is bad. It is literally pages and pages of disclaimer.
Before then he talks about how fucking cool Black Banner was,
and so my reading behind it between the lines is
that he was a man who didn't want to die,
so he joined the Bolsheviks at some point, literally just

(01:07:02):
out of not to not die, I suppose, is a
kind of exile. He wrote about Black Banner groups sprang
up like mushrooms after a raign in cities, villages, and hamlets.
The alley stock was the organizational center, the heart of
the whole movement. The groups preserved complete autonomy, but delegates
were always turning up for directive of an ideological or

(01:07:23):
tactical character. Another anarchist group over in Ukraine called itself
the Union of Poor Peasants, which is a cool fucking name.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
Most famous among their members is a guy who's going
to become important of the story soon, a young Ukrainian
anarchist named Nestor makno Hey. During this time, he goes
to jail for killing a cop. And another sick name
of one of these groups is the Union of the Unreconcilable,
which is so sick.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):
Why have we never done that one again?

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
Well, in order to live up to them, you'd have
to assassinate an interior minister.

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
You know. Look, we could do like andorra or something.
There's gotta be like, there's gotta be places you can
do this.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
Did they meet someone kill wanting Blivia? What point?

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
These things happen. Meanwhile, other anarchists, especially the anarcho syndicalists
you'll be shocked to know, are decrying the terrorism, and
a lot of the anarcho and so like the anarcho
terrorists are like, we hate the Kropaccinites, and the Kropacinites like,
we hate the anarcho terrorists, and they actually and so
I read all this stuff about them fighting, but then

(01:08:34):
I read first person sources and then they were like, oh, yeah,
we're all hanging out at the graveyard and my friend,
the anarcho Kropaccainite was there, and I'm like, I think
people try to present the anarchists the Russian Revolution is
a little bit more fractured than they were, but I'm
not certain. I think it's like both are true, is
the best I can tell.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
Yeah, And I mean something like I've ran into in
like like modern anarchist spaces is like you get like
warring clicks, but then people are just friends with people
in both clothes and totally you know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Ah, you know, so it says it takunis and you're like,
we're still at the same party. Yeah. And so what
the Kropacanist anarchists are doing is that they're going to
the people again neronneck style, and they have pamphlets with
titles like how the Peasants will Succeed without Authority, which
is kind of cool based. Yeah, and it's I mean,

(01:09:29):
you know, and the pamphlet is like, well, you kind
of just keep doing what you're doing, only now there's
not a noble you know. But what there is is
no more script in part one because we didn't get
to the Russian Revolution of nineteen oh five, because that's
part two. But when we come back, all of these
groups they're all set up and everything's in crisis and

(01:09:51):
what's going to happen? And after you all patiently listen
to the Menshevik versus Bolshevik and the Narco terrorist versus
kroppacinist out there's going to be a revolution. But in
the meantime, if people want to hear you talk about stuff,
where can they do that?

Speaker 4 (01:10:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
The podcast, it could happen here wherever fine podcasts are distributed.
And I guess I'm at it mechr three on Twitter,
but I'm like trying to not be on there right now.
So yeah, don't go back there, terrible place zero.

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):
What if you get a blue check without permit without
asking why you're gone?

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
Oh? I saw that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
Why it's so aggroggressive? I know, it's like I swear
these people like me, much like how Lennon tried to
get Krapacin to pretend to be friends with them.

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
Great, it's very funny.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
Yeah, so yeah, listen to it could happen here. Listen
to cool people did cool stuff next Wednesday, and also
follow me on substack at Margaret Kiljoy dot substack dot com.
And I guess you can also follow me on Twitter
at Magpie Kiljoy or Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy. Oh, and

(01:11:12):
I got to announce my new book. I have a
book coming out on September twenty fourth, called The Sapling
Cage and is a trans which ya book.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
I got to write high fantasy about a girl who
doesn't quite isn't quite sure that she's a girl. She
was born a boy, but she really wants to be
a witch, and so she dresses up as a girl
and goes and joins the witches and in the meantime
saves the enclosure of the Commons. But magical because I
wrote it. It doesn't say enclosure in the Commons anywhere
in it. And you do not need to care about

(01:11:42):
Bolsheviks versus Mensheviks to read it. And it's coming out
from Feminist Press September twenty fourth. It'll be up for
pre orders probably in June. I will be talking about
it a bunch because I'm very excited about it. And
what else Sophia guys think to plug?

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
I'll plug a show that's coming out on cles and
Media in May.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
It's a sixteenth minute.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
It's sixteenth minute hosted by Jimmy Lostis. It is a
show that looks into the Internet's weirdest and greatest characters
and it's a weekly podcast and I'm very excited about it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
It's all about Elon Musk and how much Jamie loves
I can't even know. Yeah, no, that's too mean. It's
one thing that there's the been the bit of claiming
that Jamie Loft has killed a man, and that's fine,
but liking Elon Musk is a little bit low. I'm
excited for that podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
It'd be so good.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
See you all on Wednesday bybe.

Speaker 4 (01:12:42):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.