Part One: Tzar Nicholas II Was A Real Dick

Jeff consider right now, like I'm gonna get your hands up in They're gonna get all do it really get in there, just get all the placenta of information all over. We do male placenta to every one of our guests. Don't ask where it comes from that it's I take

it from my vitality. It is one of my favorite moments traveling was in Japan, going to like a pharmacy to get contact solution and stumbling onto an entire aisle of placina based products, mostly horse um, but I had not been aware that it was used for that until that point. It was a fun moment. Are you gonna get strong erna? Exactly? If you're not taking horse Place

center to get you going? That's why I run so fast. Yeah, I run like, you know, forty five miles an hour when I read now, Jeff, Jeff May, you are a stand up comedian. You are also a podcaster. UM. You do a podcast on the game Fully Unemployed Network Friends of the Pods, Tom and Dave have both also been on the show where you talk about Batman. Tom and Jeff watch Batman. You also have the Jeff May Has Cool Friends podcast Jeff has called Friends, Jeff Has Cool Friends. Um.

Anything else you want to plug up here at the top. Yeah, I also do a show called You Don't Even Like Sports with Adam Todd Brown, sports podcast for people that hate sports, um, and which is most of my fan base because I am a professional nerd specifically, as well

as you have a Batman podcast, I do. Well. It's funny too because Jeff Has Well Friends used to be a corporate podcast for a big nerdy company and then we we split up, and I was just like, well, I'm just going to change the name and keep doing what I was doing. Mm hmm. Well, Jeff, speaking of what you were doing, were you having a good day up until this point? No? No, no, no no no. For two years, that's that's good because we're going to talk about somebody really unpleasant. How do you how do

you feel about czars? Well, I don't know. I mean I think you knew this about me, but I am. Before I got into stand up and this, I was a teacher, taught world history, including Russian history. Uh. And Buddy, let me tell you there's a few of them that, yeah, you got a favorite, are or at least favorite. I mean, I would say that if we're if we're going through like the entire history of up since the inception of the words, are up towards Nicholas the Second, I gotta

be honest. Peter the Great is fascinating to me. He was pretty great because people were like, this man is a seven foot tall giant monster that toward Europe and came back and decided to just shave everyone's beards or tax them on it. And that's just wild to me. What a life. Yeah, Pete the Great's a fun one. We're not talking about a fun one today, Jeff. You're talking about the least impressive of the czar's Nicholas the Second.

Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And it's so it's one of those things like there's this weird thing Americans kind of have with royalty sometimes. Right, there's a lot of Americans who love the British royal family FETs your thing, like whatever. Um, there's a weird number of Americans thereout history who've gotten really obsessed with the Romanoffs since you know, they were all killed by the Bolsheviks. Right, there's like movies and

that's really comes down to, Right, it's like Anastasia. Yeah, they got a bad rap and they It's one of those things where there's this attitude people have. Obviously the kids got a bad rap, right, kids never deserved to be machine well gunned down by a variety of forms in a basement. That's always bad. Um. But Nicholas and Alexandra get who's the czar and the arena, get a lot of like slack from people. They're they're nearly always

portrayed even when like they're shown to be incompetent. You can't really show Nicholas is being anything but incompetent um. But you know, like, well, he was a good man, he loved his wife and his kids. He was you know, he was you know, broken down by the weight of this impossible job, and like he was a terrible person. He loves a monster. I love what people are like, he's a good person. He loves his family. It's like, that is not the criteria for being a good person.

I hate to break it to you, but that's just biology. Yeah, a lot of people love their families and manned concentration camps. There's pictures of them with their kids outside Auschwitz. You know, you know, you know. But he said, it's just a horrible crap. Yeah, yeah, it's it's um. He's like, he's

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

was bad and he victimized these people. So yeah, and it's one of those things where like if you actually read the history, Resputin is not not the most objectionable person, and in fact, there's times when he's the guy being like boy seems like, yeah, I'm pretty anti Semitic. I'm not down with that. It's this is I have a feeling because obviously it's been a while. I've I've been retired for almost a decade now, and i haven't been

in college in twenty years. But at this point in time, like it seems like a story that's not going to

have a lot of heroes in it. No, no, um, not none at all really now, um, And I think that's that is really the overarching story when we talk about like the murder of the entire Romanov family, when we talk about the tragedies that came in the Russian Civil War and the millions that died in that Um, part of why everything was so ugly and so violent was that the system that the Romanovs perfected over the course of generations was inherently brutalizing, and when it collapsed,

there was nowhere for things to go but really badly. I mean, that's Russia. That's Russia. Baby. Let's tell you that there's so many there's so much retroactive like, well, they did what they could they say things were different. It was bad time. Yeah, you know what Ivana people on giant frying pan. It's just what you do when you have power. Is intense part of world. You know, he's crazy. He did the next Siberia. Granted he killed

many people there, but he didn't exit. And you do have when you go over to that part of the world to have conversations with people. They are often very phlegmatic like that where it's like, you know, it was a rough time. Everyone did what they could. We tried to do what we want, but you know, things that sometimes your rule or cut your head off. There's nothing you can do about that. You just move forward. It's

all like Russian literature is so depressing. Yeah, like all the happiest stories are like and then he died in prison, isn't that nice? Yeah, it finally was over. So UM, I think we need to start by noting that because number one, monarchy thankfully has has mostly passed um, although it's getting its little resurgence in some areas. UM people tend to forget how successful monarchism wasn't a lot of cases,

and how successful the Romanov version of monarchism was. This is by by any reasonable if you're looking at this as a historian, by any reasonable judgment of you know, success, the Romanov dominated monarchy in Russia was one of the most successful governments in human history. The Romanov family came to power in sixteen thirteen after a civil war and like ten years of fighting and stuff in the death of the previous are and they stayed in power for

more than three hundred years. That's longer than the United States has existed. This one family ruled Russia. UM. While the Romanovs were in charge of the Russian Empire, it grew consistently by an average of fifty five square miles per day twenty thousand miles per year. By the end of the eighteen hundreds and the events of the story we're talking about this week, the Russian Empire ruled one sixth of the land mass of planet Earth. Um. They were good at this. I like how they're basically like

you can describe their monarchy like the blob. Yeah, I mean, people are just like and then within three months look at what we've predicted. It's like that scene in the Thing where they used the apple too to show you what's going to happen to the world. Yeah, yeah, that's what That's what the Romanovs were doing for like a couple of centuries without a whole lot of pushback that

was effective. You know, you get your moments. There's always you know, military successes and reversals, but like they really kept chugging along. And the benefit that they always have is that, like, yeah, their military is usually not the best or the most easiest to maneuver into place, and their their navy, you know, waxes and wains and its efficacy. But there's just so much Russia that that you never want to start a fight with them. No, you never

get into land war in Asia. I think we've learned that very specifically. Yeah, now, yeah, yeah, well, but before they came to power, czar was more or less before the Romanovs, um czar was just kind of an interchangeable word for king, right, Like it didn't being a zar wasn't wildly different than being a king and a lot of other parts of like the feudalist Europe in that period.

But it means right, yeah, it comes from Caesar's same root word as kaiser, right, Both kaiser and tsar come from Caesar, which is you want to talk about having an influence on history that used to just be a family, Like that's the last name that became our by word for billions of people for king. I mean, that's that's

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

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

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

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

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

the property of the noble that controls that land. UM. And the way the whole system works is the nobles maintained the peace in their little area, and they pay taxes to the czar. In an exchange, the czar uses those taxes to build an army, to take more land, to exercise more power, and to maintain this absolute structure. So these are let's the nobles have total control over their little area, and in exchange, he's the absolute monarch of the entire country. It's like an MLM scheme. Yeah,

it is a lot. I mean, yeah, feudalism absolutely is right. When I used to teach feudalism, I used to teach it based on like the kids working their desks. I was like that, you're the surf, this is your plot of land you have to work. I am your noble, I have a noble my principle that I have to answer to, and then he has a superintendent that he has to answer to. And it all kind of like you know, it's it's all. It's all a similar structure to to most things. When you read break down what

feudalism is. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yes, we could talk a lot about the way our system works, um, and yeah, yeah that's that's a fair point. Um. But this is obviously a more hints a version because you don't have. You don't have you don't have the ability to like move around. Um. And this is one of those things

that works pretty well when kind of everybody's doing it. Um. As things modernize, you suddenly have this problem of like, well, how do you industrialize if somebody is a part of the land that they live on, as opposed to an individual who can move to a city and get training to be a machinist or um. And in fact, oftentimes when zars were overthrown or killed and these are romanovs was we're talking about, it wasn't because they'd been super brutal. It was because they had used a mix of brutality

and like liberalizing things. So they had given people some power and then not liked what they did with it and like tried to crack down. And that often leads to like the kind of upset that gets as are killed. Um, it's not Simon Montfiore, who was a historian who wrote a great book called the Romanovs um describes it as like the problem a lot of Tsars have as not being consistently harsh. Right, Um, that's the thing that will

get you killed as czar. And that's the thing when you're a kid, if you're going to inherit the Romanov dynasty, that's what's drilled into your head throughout childhood is you have to be consistently harsh. Um, And it's a dangerous gig. Six of the last twelve Romanovsars are assassinated in office. Um. Yeah, that's that's not that bad. Yeah, Like I feel like I could make it through, you know, yeah I could. I feel like I could have been a great czar. I bet I would have been. Yeah, I know I

would have been killed. Yeah, I don't think I would have a great czar. I'm pretty chill. Yeah, so, like, you know, I'd be like, you guys can do that. You're gonna kill me, Okay, I guess I saw this one coming. If the way I played video games with confidence not a job for you, I think I'd be a great czar. Hey, again, it's just consistent brutality. Yeah, so Iphie would be better. Usually when tsars were assassin senated.

In fact, all of the times ours were assassinated up to the modern period, it's never the peasants, right, There's not that you don't have successful peasant revolutions in Russia. Um, like not during the time the Romanovs are in power, it's the noble. It's the nobility who murders them, like it's someone sums are does something that pisces off these nobles that are also powerful, and they kill the czar and others are winds up in charge, you know, tail

as old as time. That's that's like that happens every time you see some kind of assassination. It's very rare that somebody bumps into an archduke or you know, successfully breaks through the walls of the Imperial Palace or whatever. Not counting you know, recent events in American history. The populace will have access to people at that level. Yeah,

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

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

political discontent with the Nazi Germany. A lot of Nazis would when when members of the Nazi high command would do ship that like even Nazis thought was fucked up. They'd be like, well, Hitler must not know about this, right, Like, he wouldn't do this to us. He must just not be aware of what's going on. Classic good guy Hitler, Hitler, he just got again. I'm good. I'm doing I've been paintings this whole time. Just Hitler fumbling with papers like

Chevy Chase at his desk. I'm just playing with my my good German shepherd here. Why would I be doing anything evil? Allav There's this very common phrase among the peasantry. Um, that is the czar is good. The nobles are wicked, right, so he is he is beloved. Often at least that's what you're not getting Gallops, not rolling through the Russian steps and being like how do you feel about this? Right? There's I think and I do tend to think that

this is so consistent. I'm not gonna obviously, I'm not gonna second guess a bunch of historians who write stuff like this, but it's also consistent enough that I think, well, the czar believe this, and maybe that's why that went down in history, but maybe a lot of peasants would

have been like, well, actually funk that, dude. Yeah, it's definitely you definitely see the cult of personality in situations like that where you where you see you know, the person that's on a annable up at the top, Yeah, they're great. He's the champion. And the people that I

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

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

would not say it that way. Desires did not pretend to be divine, but they are chosen by God. Like that's the whole thing about this. Are they are picked by God to absolutely rule Russia. And so there's this attitude that like if you question those are or if people want to have input in their own ruling, that is satanic because God has set down this this system. Obviously, this happens other parts of the world, you know, the Mandate of Heaven, YadA, YadA, YadA. Um. This is not

the only time this sort of thing happens. But what's unique kind of about Russia is that up until the modern era, the tzar is owns everything in Russia. He is the personal owner of basically a sixth of the world's land mass. Like, we can talk about who the richest person in history was, it's almost certainly whatever the last Tsar was, because he was the personal owner of all of Russia effectively. Um, Like, it doesn't get much

wealthier than that, Jeff Bezos doesn't, can't pretend to that ship. Um, And like, well, wealthy enough that when they tried to gun down the Tsar's family, it was it took a ton of bullets and a ton of time because people bullets kept getting stopped by all of the diamonds sewn into their clothing. They removed set and teen pounds of diamonds from from the dead Romanov family. Um, they could

have done better. That's just what they could get out of the palace, you know, Like that's how fucking rich these people are. Um. Yeah, And so this is a really totalitarian system um and probably the most totalitarian system could be in an era before modern technology, and being the center of that as the czar, like fox with your head and I want to read a quote from the book The Romanovs by Simon Montfior which describes kind

of how what this does to a person? Then this is him kind of giving a broad overview of czarism. All of the monarchs were dutiful and hard working, and most were charismatic, intelligent and competent. Yet the position was so daunting for the normal mortal that no one sought the throne anymore. It was a burden that had ceased to be enjoyable. How can a single man manage to govern Russia and correct its abuses? Asked the future Alexander

the First. This would be impossible, not only for a man of ordinary abilities like me, but even for a genius. He fantasized about running off to live on a farm by the Rhine. His successors were all terrified of the crown and avoided it if they could. Yet when they were handed the throne, they had to fight to stay alive. Yeah, it's not good to be the king, like it really is. Not all it's great to be a noble, it's great

to be like the younger brother of this r or whatever. Um, you know, there's a lot like those guys get up to some ship and exercise a lot of power. But being the czar kind of, especially in the last hundred years of the Romanov monarchy, is a fucking trash gig. Some could say heavy is the head that wears the crown. That quote me on that we could we could turn that into like a soap brand. Yeah, don't google it, just just take my word for it. Don't google anything

in this show as a rule. Um, we are the Google. Yeah, yeah, we we did it for you. Don't need to learn anymore than what we give you. That's part of what makes it a good cult. Um. You know what else is a good culture of the cult of personality. But the cult of the products and services that support this podcast all have cult followings, especially the Washington State Highway Patrol. Real culty. Motherfucker's there. Oh we're back, So I'm gonna

involve myself and all those things. Yeah, yeah, it's during the cult of all of those sponsors. So the thing to keep in mind when we're talking about these are is that this is a job people hate. It is a job that like destroys you over time. It's it's an incredible amount of like effort and labor you have to do. You're the head of the church. Effectively, you're the head of the military. You're the head of state,

like you're kind of the pope and the commander in chief. Um, And like all of Congress at the same time, and think about like like all of our presidents, even the really really bad ones, uh, think of like what eight years in office does to them, how much they age. Most Czar's rule more than twenty years, Like like you're out of your mind by the end of this. Yeah, yeah, I mean that that that that has to be just

so like try doing two things. Yeah, when you're when it was like when I when I started moving more to podcasting, I'm like, well, stand up is going to have to take a huge step back, and those are both easy jobs. And I'm like, no, no, I can't imagine if you had to do stand up podcasting and reform the Russian military while leading every major state religious service every single year. I mean I feel like I could do that. I do feel like you could do that. Um,

especially given your experience reforming national militaries. Jeff, A lot of people don't know this. You're the guy who reformed the El Salvadorian military. Yeah, you know, I don't like to brag, but yeah, it's just like it's a side gig. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, everybody needs like stand up. Doesn't pay all the bills every now and then you got to go like overseas and you know, use a lot of US

AID money to arm paramilitaries. It's just what, you know, Yeah, it's very it's a very Jeff of Arabia existence that I'm having over here. Yet. So the thing about this is like fucked up. As this is the system works pretty good for like two hundred and fifty years or so, um like time too as old at time, right, yeah, we're dealing with right now. This formal government works pretty good for up to yeah, up to but not past. I've never when when when the Czaris system really starts

to show its age in a calamitous way. Is the Crimean War which happens in like the eighteen fifties, and this is a battle. This is some people will say this is kind of like the First World War in some ways, there's like five or six wars people say, are the First World War, you know, um, but this

is like this is basically everybody and fighting Russia. Um. And it's like Russia trying to take the Crimea, which they took recently from Ukraine, but we're trying to take it back then and like Turkey gets involved in the British get involved in the French get involved. Um. I think there's Austrians up in that bitch. Like it's this whole fucking thing. Um. And it doesn't go really well for Russia. It's it's a fucking disaster for Russia. And a big part of why is that their army is

hideously outdated. Not just like their guns aren't modern. Um, they don't have an advanced rail system in the country so and they don't have like their navy isn't as as nimble as it needs to be. So everyone's running circles around him. You know, who needs a system. They're such a compact and tight. There's so little Russia. Why would you need ray Town, you know, That's what that's

what everyone says about Russia, the smallest country. Yeah, there's five whole sixth of the rest of the world that's not Russia. Come on, it's one is the smallest number, that's right, less than one. So so this this is a fucking ship show for Russia. Um, they kind of get their butts kicked. There's also a pretty good poem that comes out of it, Charge of the lie Brigade, which which you know you can you can like or see his problematic depending on how you feel about men

charging into lines of guns on horseback. I think it's rad and we should do more of it, but other people have different opinions. Crimean war, Yeah, so like, yeah, I think we can give problematic a bit of a bit of a push on something written years ago. Well yeah, um, so yeah this is uh, Russia gets its butt kicked and like that bums everybody out in Russia. Um. And so there's this big drive to modernize, right every it's it's you're kind of made aware of how flawed the

whole system is. And so Russia really rapidly industrializes, and they do this by going hideously into debt to a bunch of Western nations. And the Czar who takes another tale is all this time right, yeah, everybody does this ship um and the Czar who takes charge during this period, he actually comes to power, like in the last year of the Crimean War eighteen fifty five. This is our is a guy named Alexander the Second and he's Nicholas's

and Paul. He's the grandfather of the Last Star. Um. So he walks out of that war dedicated to reforming things. And he's like a bold dude. This is not one of those like Joe Biden kind of nothing will fundamentally change guys. Um. Alexander the Second is a very courageous person because it is not easy to make big reforms in Russia. Um and the spoilers it doesn't end well for him. No, No, there's always there's always there's always

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

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

over there. Long beard, though we have complex history, good Russian beard on that guy, which is also very Russian. Um So, Obviously, abolishing serfdom, like every other massive social change in every other country in history, is not like a super even process. It's not like one day everything is different. You know. We talked about this somewhat in our two part or on nestor mak No. It's it's

a messy thing. It's a really big change. Um but it does lead to like an enormous, unthinkable social to Everything that happens in the Soviet Union is possible in part because serfdom starts being a thing. Right. That's why Russia is able to industrialize, It's why they develop a proletariat, It's why everything else that happens happens, you know, um, and Alexander becomes known as the Czar Liberal Raider for for freeing the serfs. Um. So a lot of people

feel pretty good about Czar Alexander the Second. A lot of peasants feel pretty good about this dude, but not all of them. He is not popular everywhere, particularly among the kind of this is when Russia is starting to have a socialist movement and all pretty much all these early socialists are like rich or nobles, right, Like, that's a lot of this early period of like Russian socialism is guys who are like very highly born, because that's who has access to like education and gets to read

books and stuff. You know. Um, not a lot of people, like a lot of peasants aren't coming into contact with the communist manifesto in eighteen fifty you know whatever, m or my uncle would disagree, Okay, so Alexander, uh yeah, So the socialists really don't like Alexander the Second because they see fundamentally his reforms are conservative. He's freed the serfs, but he's done it to maintain this system of absolute autocracy. He just wants to have a government that a country

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

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

the state more efficient economically. This also pisces off the Marxists for you know, obvious reasons. They're not not huge on capitalism, the Marxists. This is surprising to a lot of people now hold the phone bold statements about ideology behind bastards state communists. I need a refund on my education because that is not what I remember. So on April fourth, eighteen sixties six, a guy named Dmitri Kara CAUs Off attempts to shoot Alexander the Second in the

middle of the capital uh St Petersburg. He's a socialist, obviously, he misses and is arrested and executed. Um And this is a huge moment in Russian history. And I want to quote now from the English Historic Review. Russian emperors were no strangers to attempts on their life. Indeed, Paul the First had been strangled to death in his own

bedroom in eighteen o one. But Paul had been murdered by a group of noblemen, and these palace coups had been the principal threat to the tsar's before mid nineteenth century. Karakozov's assassination attempt was the first occasion in which an ordinary Russian had tried to kill the monarch, motivated by a desire to bring down the Russian regime. So that's a big moment, right, Suddenly there's forces in part maybe because like we we we freed us some motherfucking surfs.

Now the people are going to play an increasing role in like Badge it happening Tasaars. I would like to add they said ordinary Russian, he was extraordinary. He was extraordinary, not quite extraordinary enough, but no, no, his aim wasn't extraordinary. His name was was not extraordinary, but his his his go get itness. Yeah, I really, I really admire the way he tried to shoot the Tsar to death. You know, can't you can't teach that, you know, can't teach HERT. Yeah,

you can't teach HERT. That's the key. He would have been an incredible baseball player. So this brings us to May six, eight sixty eight, when Nikolai the second Alexandrovitch Romanov was born in the Alexander Palace south of St. Petersburg. He was the first child of the Crown Prince or Zarevitch Alexander Alexandrovitch and his wife, Prince Princess Dagmar of

Denmark Um, which brings up an interesting point. The Tsars of all Russia, we're not really Russian, not like by blood, you know, yeah, royalty kind of that's how it works. How many I'm an English monarchs were French, you know, Yeah, I mean Queen Victoria is the grandmother of all of the crowned heads of Europe at World War Two, you know, right, Yeah.

Edward Razinski in his book The Last Star explains, as a result of countless dynastic marriages, by the twentieth century, scarcely any Russian blood flowed in the veins of the Russian romanovs Rs. Nicholas. His mother was the Danish Princess, his grandmother the Danish Queen. He called his grandmother the mother in law of all Europe. Her numerous daughters, sons and grandchildren had allied nearly all the royal houses. You know, I need the continent in this entertaining manner, from England

to Greece. So this is a very incestuous family, which will there will be some issues for that for Nicholas the second later on here. Yeah, I was gonna say, there's gonna be some problems when you interbreed that much. But maybe just being like the guy who gets all of the power and owns everybody is a complete roll of the dice based on the same family marrying each other off to other members of their family for forever.

Maybe not the best system. Legitimately, one of my favorite things to teach about was the Habsburgs, because I was just like, these motherfucker's were like, look at this they had. They had jowls. The whole family of of of emperors with jowls. Yeah, because they're all married to their first cousins and they have been for forever. And that's not great for anybody, especially Europe. It ends really bad for like what eighteen million young men roughly. Yeah, but what

are we gonna apologize for that? Yeah? Yeah, you know, at least there's less traffic. You know. I think about how bad the traffic would be in London if there hadn't have been a World War One. I mean, so don't think about that. The m one is already a mess. I was gonna say how much traffic was in World War One? Was there like nine cars? A couple of million boys? Less worth of it after the end of it.

So for a while in the in the the Tzarevitch's household, Nicholas's dad's household, the Crown Prince's household, things are pretty good. Nicholas comes from a rare, happy royal home, so this isn't something that starts with him. His parents, like really genuinely loved each other, which is again very uncommon with like most royal marriages, like they have separate castles. They don't talk to each other outside of like dealing with

the kids and stuff. Um, it's pretty abnormal for like his dad and his mom though, love each other, and that's probably why he winds up marrying for love later in life too. Write is he like this is how he's raised. He's not raised with like, well, you're just your your your partners, whoever is your partner, and you see them when you have to make an air. How bummed would they be to look at divorce rates now and they're like, what was it you guys were arranged to?

And like, no, we we did it for this was all us. It turns out we're just bad at it. Yeah, it turns out we just don't know what that word means at all. Very just pretty hard. Actually, yeah, man, when you're not living in a giant palace with seventeen hounds of diamonds just hanging around yet the willy nilly things good, rob Let me give you advice on marriage. First, be owner of one sixth of the world helps a lot. It's only finest non poisoned meats and Jesus. So his

family is real happy. His father was faithful to his mother, which everyone at the time found really shocking because when he was when he was a kid, he was a real horn dog like most crown princes. He's fucking his way across Russia. But then, as far as we know, he meets his wife and he's that that that's it for him. Um, so he actually is. I don't know. You know, it's like learning about a monogamous baseball player. Yeah, we're a professional cyclist who isn't on a shipload of

drugs and you're like, no, no, that's not right. Yeah. Now, the first years of Nicholas's life very very happy. He has a bunch of siblings. They spend a lot of time playing outdoors at various vacation palaces with their dad. Die Airy. Entries from Nicholas's youth that he writes contains passages like this, Papa turned on the hose. Then we ran through the jets and caught terribly wet. That's the height of technology. Yeah, they had hoses. They were very excited.

Yeah like that, that's like having a PS five. These are have you heard about the new hose? Four. It's all out of stock, but I've got one on pre order and when it comes in. We ordered one from hose Stop. We got the pre ordinary. You can put handover in then it makes different shapes. Oh, yes, he got he got a little adapter that makes it look like a fan coming out is great. It's great. So. Um, Nikki's dad pretty loving, definitely kind of your best case scenario.

Royal upbringing that said, he's also a czar. He's a very strict guy. Nicholas wrote that his dad could not tolerate weakness. Um, but he also was never physically abusive that we know. Um. The kind of most aggressive story we get from his dad as a as a parent is one time when Nicholas let a playmate take the blame for something bad that he'd done. His father yelled, you're a girly at him. Um. So that's like the

extent to which this guy gets punished as a kid. Really, this guy is a better dad than like most of us had. Yeah, this guy wasn't beating his kids in the seventies. Yeah that is wild to me. Yeah, yeah, so nailing it as a parent. Alexander the second dare the Rod, but also kill a shipload of peasants, like not, don't spare the rod on the peasants. Spare the rod on your own child so you can use more of the rod on the peasants. Yeah, spare the rod on your child so they can learn how to use the

rod on large indistinct to them masses of civilians. And to the civilians, you spare the hose. Yeah, I don't know. They don't get they don't get hoses. Uh So, while his kids played, um, and while Alexander second is enjoying being the crown prince, revolutionary discontent is building in Russia. One group called the People's Will, who are like nihilists. Um. So, there's definitely there's a number of influences they have, but they're like Russian nihilists being Russian. Yeah, it's just like

being Russian. Um, that's not a big stretch. And there I think, broadly speaking, people who are super into Russian politics will be screaming at me for for narrowing it down this way, I'm sure. But like they spend a bunch of time early on as an organization trying to organize and radicalize peasants to revolt um and eventually We're like, well, this is hopeless. We're never going to get these people to revolt. We'reever we're gonna overthrow the system that way.

So let's just murder the czar and maybe that will send the whole system into a tailspin and we'll get what we want that way, and if we don't fuck it, at least we killed as are right, Like, you get the sense that, like more than anything, they're just like, funk this guy, Let's kill him. You know, there's a very slot machine vibe to that where it's like, you know, like happen. We we have these folks today, right, Um,

these people. I think it's more understandable because again, if somebody, if somebody makes you their property, I think it's fine to try to try to kill them, you know, like it's the slave thing if if you're if somebody makes you their slave and you can kill them, well okay, good, Oh you should amistad that ship immediate. You have to do that, you absolutely should. Yeah. Um. And they try a bunch of times, seven times unsuccessfully to kill Alexander

the second and he survives. I think like twenty something assassination attempts. Lots of people are trying to kill the liberator. You know, like the people cannot try enough to kill this guy. And god, he is just he's unkillable. He's pretty hard, well quite, but he's pretty hard to kill. You gotta give him credit for that. So he survives, Yeah, right, right, right,

that's pretty good. Um. So he survives like seven assassination temps from people's will alone, and he executes twenty one of their members as a result ofly, you know, people have failed and they get captured whatnot. Um, but you know, the people's will, despite like the intense death toll taken on their organization from these failed attempts. They were the kind of folks who took bacun In seriously when he

said the revolutionary is a doomed man. Their attitude is like, we're all already dead, like, so fuck it, We're gonna keep trying. God, this is so Russian. It's very Russian. It's also pretty I ra a yeah, yeah with with with like a dollarp of Sylvia Plath in there by the poetry a little bit of that up in there. Yeah, your fatalism needs to exist in a long term situation. Put some fertilizer in the bell jar and hook it

at his are. I remember, dude, I remember being in like in like tenth grade and we read like a Day in the Life of Ivan Dvinovich or whatever. And while I was reading this, I was like, why are you making us do this? Like I was so I was so hurt they may they subjected me to something like that. Ah, yeah, I need to read more Russian literature. Um I did. I did read that. That one poem about the Turk in the Russian Ivan Petrovsky scove are pretty good poem that a Turk in a Russian killing

each other? Um classic, check it out. I read it on the back of a beer. Try trying to find like good Russian literature that isn't about somebody with a gun hard to find. It's like trying to find Irish literature that doesn't start with a man masturbating through his hole in his pocket, right yeah yeah yeah, and then and then eventually dying of liver failure. Yes. So um, these guys keep right on their stick tuitiveness and trying to kill the czar is laudable. And on March one

one they get it right. Uh, they throw a punch of bombs. This is they kill a lot of people as a general rule, not a lot of Like you know, you're not discriminating when you're trying to assassinate ahead of state with a bomb. You're accepting that, Like we're gonna kill a shipload of folks, you know, like we're setting off It's like Stalin robbing banks and killing seventy people with bombs. It's just like how things are back then. It's horrible, it's fucked up damage. But yeah, it's terrorism,

you know. That's how it works. People set off a lot of bombs, kill a shipload of people. It's all pretty ugly. Um, you get things done. They do. In this case, they they set off one bomb and like the Czar Alexander gets out of his like carriage to be like what what the hell is going on? And then they blow his legs like two pieces. Um, so it's like a gnarly death. He doesn't die immediately, his

legs are just like shredded. The whole Royal family, including thirteen year old Nicholas, who had been ice skating at the time, are like rushed away from ice skating to like see their grandpa bleed to death from a bomb wound. Um and again even though these people are like the most privileged folks at the time, it's an ugly period. They have a like they see some ship as kids. Know you're going to keep going back to that. Well, but yeah, it is extremely Russian. You know you must

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

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

Yeah yeah, um. So he two months after his dad's assassination, he issues what's called the Manifesto on Unshakable Authority, which is co written by one of the heads of the Russian Orthodox Church. Now, this manifesto said, in short, that Alexander the Liberator had been wrong to push for more liberal attitudes rather than what Alexander the Third called unshakable autocracy. Alexander the Third argued that unshakable autocracy wasn't just a

form of government, but it was what God commanded. It was their sacred duty as the chosen of the Lord to rule Russia this way. So he cancels a plan right before getting killed. His father had like agreed to create a legislative assembly a Duma for Russia for the first time. Like they were gonna, okay, we're gonna have like a congress basically that people have some representation. And Alexander the Third is like, oh, that's not fucking happening,

absolutely not. Um and that one yeah yeah, big old, big old in y e t right on that one. A couple of backwards punctuation points and we're good to go. Um. So instead he launches a huge crackdown and I'm gonna quote from the romanofs here, troops were deployed to restore order and in September, Alexander's signed emergency laws to preserve state security, followed in eighty two by temporary regulations on Jews,

which banned pogroms. But we're more concerned with protecting the interests of the local populace by banning Jews from living in the countryside or outside the pale. The Paliff settlement is the area in Russia you're allowed to live as a Jew. Which, uh, it's really interesting that he's banning pogroms while also being like you can't be here. Yeah, like that's that is in of itself. Yeah, it is. It's like, no programs, but all of these people have

to leave immediately. Don't kill him though, But I'm not going to do anything to stop this. And like there are programs, right, there's a there's a wave of violence against you because they get they get blamed for this. Jewish people do represent a higher percentage of revolutionary organizations than of the general population. I wonder why. I wonder why. I wonder as they're forced on several diasporas out of Russia, and there's some amazing moments, one of Nicholas the seconds

we're going forward in time by decades. But one of his advisers, like his prime minister at one point, is like, motherfucker, If I were a Jew, I'd be throwing bombs too. It's rough for them out there. You've made a bad situation for them. Um and boy, howdy, Alexander the Third is not a good czar for Jewish people. Um that one. Yeah, there's not like there's a lot of great ones and people around Alexander the Third. Note that he also kind of goes mad with power immediately. Uh. And I'm gonna

quote from Simon montfior here. When a female political prisoner insulted a gendarme, Alexander ordered flog her. His minister asked for a lesser sentence than the maximum hundred strokes, since she was fragile, but the Czar insisted give her the hundred strokes. They killed her. He is not wicked, wrote the diplomat Vladimir Lambsdorf, but he's drunk with power. His war minister, General Vanowski, joked that he was like Peter the Great with his cudgel, except here is only the

cudgel without the Great Peter. Alexander's contempt for his own ministers was a feudal attitude in the modern world and his reverence for his autocracy. He failed to see that his own arbitrary nous was a flaw. Sire explained one of his advisers. We have a terrible, evil lack of law, but I always stand for compliance with the laws. The Czar replied, I'm not talking about you, but about your administration, which uses its power today. Russia is like a colossal

boiler in which pressure is building. When it gets a hole, people with hammers rivet them. But one day the gases will blow out a hole that can't be filled and will suffocate, and we'll explode your goddamn legs off. Yeah, yeah, dude, did you not watch what Happened to your dad? I love that he's like, I don't think you understand what happened. Also, the way Alexander the third season is like, well, yeah, because he tried to liberalize it. That's why you've got

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

maybe they won't funk with you. That's Alexander the Third's idea. So if he looks very angry furious, are you mad about the murdering part. No, for the fact that I need help cleaning my room. Yeah, I could use some help cleaning my room. So in eighteen eighty two, Nicholas gets a gift from his mother, a golden edged book of souvenirs bound with wood. This became his first diary, and for the remainder of his life he would make daily entries in it. For example, began writing in my

diary on the first of January eighteen eighty two. In the morning, drank hot chocolate, dressed in my life Guard reserves uniform, took a walk in the garden with Papa. We chopped and sawed wood and made a great bonfire. Went to bed at about half past nine. Papa, Mama and I received two deputations, presented me with a magnificent wooden platter inscribed the peasants of Verona's and there's to the Tsarevich with bread and salt and a Russian towel.

That's like his diary injuries. I would like to add that hot chocolate cost a thousand dollars back then. Yes, yes, this is. This is they had. They had to just straight up shoot four people to afford that. Hot chocolate was the thing that's stuck out in that entire thing. To me, I was like, you know, that's nice that you've got some hot chocolate. Dude. Yeah, I mean, he owns more of the world than anyone else pretty much ever has. I mean maybe one of the cons, you know,

So it was kind of one on Russia. Yeah. And also the cons devolved a lot more power to local areas and ship than the czars did. They were a mom yeah, yeah, they were pretty dope. So it was the kind of idyllic childhood for Nicholas that you only get when your father owns like most of the inhabited world or a big chunk of it. It's so wild too, But when you think about that, like hot chocolate, like no peasant has had ever had hot chocolate, and they

never would. They would live their life dying without ever tasting anything sweet. Yeah, and then we think about it's like some weird sweet thing. Yeah, yeah, a date, that's But then we think about I could just go over to my cabinet and eat like a czar two. That's so goddamn wild. Yeah yeah, you you you probably eat a lot better than Bazar because Russian cook I don't know, there's some great Russian meals, but hit or miss on some things. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't need stroke

enough to get me through the day exactly. I do eat sort of like in a medieval way, Like I ate a lot of eggs. Yeah, it's pretty medieval. Or it's just like and then I had nine eggs and they're like, I remember, I had a fascinating story, And I get a guy who he had He had been

the Hitler youth as a kid. He was fourteen when World War two ended, and so he grew up in uh, you know, this this Germany that still had shades of the of the Imperial Germany to it, and his family was Prussian and his big memory was that like they

didn't have enough money for everybody to have eggs. So every morning during breakfast, they would get you know what stuff they got, and they would all sit around to watch their father eat a single egg because that was like the way that you did it right, Like it was of course the father is going to get the egg. He has to go out and like you know, make things happen for the family, and everyone would watch in awe as he ate this single egg every morning. It's

like watching people play video games on YouTube. What are you doing? Don't you want to play the game? No, we just want to see. There's so few eggs that we have access to. We just want to watch it. And I'll just go to a farmer's market and then buy a dozen eggs and then eat a dozen eggs.

It's like how like back in the forties and stuff, like people used to send around pineapples while they were ripening and like put them out at parties and like brag that, like we have a pineapple and eventually we're gonna get to eat it. But until then, look at this pineapple. You know they do you ever hear the story of Louis and the Pineapple? Know when they introduced the pineapple to him and sparing what actually he was portrayed in artistically. He did not look like what the

pictures did. He was a very corpulent man, and he was a relatively greedy eater. And somebody presented him with a pineapple and he didn't know what it was, so he tried to eat it like like whole like an apple, and just shredded the ship out of his mouth. Got embarrassed and then like stu ass like and then he like banned pineapples for France because he was a stupid

asshole about it. Look, there's some ship that like I can knock down to like, oh yeah, if you if you're not instructed on how to eat certain things, it's confusing. But a pineapple is not that. Like you look at a pineapple and you're like, well, I should probably cut into this, Like this doesn't look like a bite into fruit.

I forget who did the tweet, but somebody talked about how like pineapple is the most metal food on the planet because it just like it dissolves your tongue when you eat it, and it's covered in like thick bark of pineapple. Now you're making the fiend for pineapple and the leaves are sharp, even the leaves are violent on a pineapple can fall down and kill you like a coconut. It is good. Don't they grow on um like bushes, coconut bushes. Yes, yes, sure, let's go with that. Oh sorry,

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

think Georgie is a better kid. And also he is like Georgie's way smarter, like Nicholas sucks. Georgie will become like the guy who's a voice of reason. Um a lot. Do you have a sibling, yes, who who's better? Oh?

I mean geez i I he might listen to this podcast, um, but clearly me right obviously if he's listening to your podcast, Yeah, absolutely right, he doesn't have a fucking podcast just has you know, a good hasn't gone and traumatized himself for very little reason in random parts of the world, you know, like a like a jerk. It's like, why don't you go to war? Yeah, asked anyway, Um No, he's he's a much better person than me. Um. You see. That's that's the thing is like there's all there always is

a sibling that's a better person for sure. And in this case it's Georgie um and and Nicholas knows this. And in the Romanovs, Simon Montfior claims his adolescent insight did not make him mean, sullen or less obedient. He simply became reticent. So he kind of becomes like hesitant, like he doesn't like to make decisions or like calls because he I think he just kind of feels insecure.

He doesn't want to like push anything that will make somebody not like him, which is a problem when you're about to own all of Russia, right, you should really need to be decisive. Um. As we've talked about, it's one of the things that stops you from getting murdered. So the news are Alexander the third Nicholas. His dad picks a tutor for his son, a guy named oh Boy Pabetta notes Papetta, notes of Pabetta, notes of like, come on, people, you expect me to get all these

Russian names, right, I can't get English towns America. We're gonna call him Popo. Okay. So Popo is a traditionalist, and he's such a traditionalist that he would have been a fascist in a different country and time. Um. He lectured young Nicholas about how foolish his grandfather's reforms would be. His argument to Nicholas was that Russia was unique, special and stuff like a free press would lead to inevitable collapse. Like other countries can maybe handled this, but not Russia.

We're just not. We're very different. We're different kinds of people. Um. They viewed themselves as as Rome. Yeah, yeah, as the as the as the heirs to the Roman Empires, the third Rome. Yeah. Um. Now one of his other tutors, when of Nicholas's other tutors didn't feel the need to actually educate him. You know, this is the guy who's supposed to be teaching him, because he believed quote mysterious forces emanating during the sacrament of coronation, provided all the

practical data required by a ruler. Well, we teach this kid about the world, God's gonna tell him how to do his job. He's going to get a ghost learning. That's not everybody. Other tutors of his have a more realistic view of education. Um, but none have a lot of luck teaching Nikki things. He's immature, he's not particularly keen to learn. Popo noted that during one of history lesson quote, I could only observe that he was completely

absorbed picking his nose. Um, which is a fine, normal kid thing to do, right, but also not a great sign when you're going to rule the world. And maybe why people shouldn't rule one six of the world as their personal property. I mean, you know what that might be just like one time and this guy is just like dwelling on it, and he might have had something sits there for history in history forever. Yeah, like we're talking about it and like a hundred and fifty years later.

It is pretty funny. It's just like one time this kid had like a little crunchy in there. They had to work his way out. God picks their nose, Yeah, I know. Where you're going with this, And I'm very excited that that's the segway that you're using. It's the Washington State Highway Patrol and probably and we're bad. Ah, look at the ads. Good ads knows the whole time. I know, I know it was. It was unsettling. Yeah,

it did seem good. So as an adolescent, Nicholas joins the army, but he joins the army the way that like czar kids joined the army. This doesn't mean like he's not doing like push ups in the mud or anything. Basically, as a teenager, he gets to he becomes a member of the Lifeguards, which is the special military unit dedicated to the royal family. When he joins the Cadet Corps for training, his textbook included this line that gives you

an idea of how the Russian military saw itself. Russia as a state is neither commercial nor agricultural, but military, and it's calling is to be the wrath of the world. Parentheses pretend we did not get our asses kicked like like immediately yesterday. Basically, I mean, though that is Russia's history, Like the Crimean War is kind of weird because like they lose and then lose as opposed to most of Russian military history. Is they lose, they lose, they lose,

they lose, they win. Yeah, it's it's a long game. What it is is the Russians know that they can outlast a battle of attrition. M like they're just like they will just throw bodies at whatever. A problem is, Oh, Germany is invading. We have empty space is bigger than Germany.

Multi problem? How many lives will it cost us? Deal? So, in his biography, the Last Czar Radzinsky explains quote the armyment obedience and diligence above all else, both these qualities which the shot youth already possessed, the army would foster ruinously. So Nicholas is instantly put in charge of half a company worth of men. But this was fine because the

unit's only real duties were marching and working out. His regimental boss was the Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovitch, who's his his uncle, so his dad's brother, the Russian ass name I've ever and Sergey is a Russian motherfucker. He is brutal, he loves him some programs, he loves him some crack

down violently on on on socialists. Uh, he's hugely religious and he is also very gay, so he hates himself and everything around him because he has these urges that he thinks are sinful, and because he's in the he's leading the Lifeguards, like, which is this fundamentally like pretty gay unit. It's this closed military tradition where like Radzinski writes that the unit quote encouraged pederasty and heavy drinking, right, like, all these dudes are fucking and getting wasted all the time.

And then Surge gets really angry because he's super religious and thinks that's wrong. But it's also how he spends all his time. So he's just kind of this very angry, violent man with a lot of power and a lot of repressed issues. Mike Penn's energy there, real, Mike Penn's energy. Yeah, it's bad. It's a problem. The Crown Prince Sergey becomes

an issue. Um, Now, since Nicholas was the Crown Prince and was straight, he probably was not exposed to a lot of like the horny nous within the Lifeguards, right. I don't think he was involved. I think they probably were like, well, we don't want we don't want this are of itch to see. That's probably not like something to do around him. I mean, there certainly is, like, but there's there's a difference between sexual preference, yes, being gay and and like that sort of like military or prison.

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

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

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

drank a hundred and twenty bottles of champagne. I was sentury for the division at I took my squadron out on the battlefield at five an inspection of military institutes under a pouring rain. So he then gets drunk with the boys that night, and he wrote this unintentionally hilarious line. Woke up and felt as if a squadron had spent

the night in my mouth. Maybe he did know a little thing, figured I don't think that's what he means, you know, I think he means it taste my mouth tastes like a bunch of horses ship in it, or a whole squadron. You never know the lemember you're you're interpreting from from the language you are. And I am certain there's some really horny are Nicholas and Dukes Sergey fan fiction out there, and more power to you. I would also like to add, how funny it is, um

that like it was champagne. I know, obviously like alcohol, it's like what they drink, but like I expected it to be vodka, and then it's like champagne, And I'm like, man, could you imagine that like from somebody like a desert storm like Darlan. We got fucked up on like four cases of champagne. And I swear to fucking god, I woke up and in my mouth tasted like hounded brute and the Bradley. It tasted like a whole group of

marines that spent the night in my teeth. I went to fucking town and I swear to god, I got married last night. Yeah, so Grand Dukes Sergey was responsible for picking the drinking games, and he was really good at this, for all of his other shortcomings. His favorites were Elbows, in which a glass the length of a forearm would be filled and drank in one gulp, The Staircase, which involved lining a staircase with drinks and pounding them one step at a time until you passed out drunk.

And then there was Till the Wolves, in which all of the men would strip naked as a group run into the frozen outdoors, where a servant would bring them a tub of champagne that they would all drink naked together in the freezing cold. Sucks. That does sound like a shitty drink. Sucks. I can we just play drink

the beer, Sergey. Because he's got this religious conflict, is really angry all the time, Like he'll have these nights of indulgence and then he'll just be like furious at the world, and then he'll suggest that his brother or his nephew do a bunch of violent things. Whereas Nicholas is like pretty even tempered. I think for most of his life. Um, so I just I don't think he's like I don't think he's repressing anything. Um it doesn't seem like it seems to do something he regrets. Yeah,

I don't that. It just doesn't seem likely that that was like a thing he grappled with. Um. Yeah, now Nicholas drank definitely. He does not say people had a p problem. His father did, and became more of an issue as the czar got older. Alexander the Third had a habit of getting wasted with his friends, and, according to one witness quote, would lay on his back and waved his arms and legs about, behaving like a child, trying to get to his feet and then falling down,

grabbing the legs of anyone who walked past. And again, this man owns a sixth of the world. So what do you do when he's like that drunk. You know, he's just a good time and son of a bitch. I would be I would be stoked if you're like, if if somebody told me that Trump sometimes would have his buddies over, they would get fucked up and just collapse on the ground and just like wail around grabbing a people's legs and stuff, I'd be like, well, at

least that's kind of cool. Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, that's a human thing he did. It's a fun time and thing, you know. Yeah, get that wet, Yeah, I get that wasted pretty regularly. Um. So, his binges started to cause health problems by the eighteen eighties, and his doctors forbade him from drinking um. He but also, you can't really stop the Emperor of Russia from like doing stuff he wants to. Um, So his wife like keeps enough of a watch on him that he has to hide it.

So Alexander the third orders jack boots made with special compartments that hold flasks large enough to fit a whole bottle of konyak. So these must have been big shoes. It looks like kiss fucking shoes hold the whole bottle of kneak? Could you imagine that? Like, Uh, we have a question about this, Uh about this this memo you sent out here? Do you really want an eight foot platform heels? Yes, hollow, very hollow with a tube coming out of them, trying to sneak wine into like a

baseball game or soon ship. Yeah. And they'll do this like the Czar and his friends whenever, like they're at state functions, Like his wife will step out of the room and be like, all right, everybody drank really really fast, pound him down, you know, the perfect crime. Yeah. On October, Nicholas the second has a first close brush with death. He's on the Royal train with his father and family when it has a wreck outside of Kharkoff and modern Ukraine.

And it has a wreck because his dad is drunk and is telling like the the guy who's in charge of the railway, the director of the railway, This dude named Sergey Witt um, he's like, make it go faster, make it go faster. And Serge is like, we're already going as fast as he can, and these oars like what are you? Would you make it go faster? And then it crashes. Russian, very Russian, very god. He's like, the guy's just like, you know this is train, yeah, comes,

I don't know if you know this one railway. Very little steering can do here. Remember, but this railway relatively new building. We are Russian, We're not great at these yet. And Niki later wrote in his diet writes in his diary of this train crash and this is fun. This gives you some insight into how he grows up viewing the lives of other humans who aren't Royals. A fateful day for us all. We might all have been killed,

but by the Lord's will, we were not. During breakfast, our train jump, the rails, the dining car and coach were demolished, but we emerged from it all unscathed. However, twenty people were killed and sixteen injured. Kind of burying the lead on that one, isn't it Twenty people die and he's like, thank god, everyone who matters is fine. It really is like, oh, you deserve to die for having that mentality for your whole life. Yeah, that that

is his entire life. And it's also worth noting that like twenty people die because his dad is drunk and like make it go faster. Yeah, this is uh what what is it suffering from affluenza? Yeah, they have it pretty hard in in the Romanov family. So this accident brings Sergey with the director of the railway into Romanov orbit after the crash, which gets promoted to run the railways for the whole empire. Then Alexander the third decides

to make him communications minister. Before he hands in that job, he asks, are you a friend of the Jews? Because again, pretty racist guy? Uh now, wit who would go down in history as a campaigner for reforming Russia's anti Semitic laws answers, Since we can't drown them all in the

Black sea, we should treat them as humans. So for an idea of where anti semitism is, this is the good guy, this is the advocate for Jewish liberation, being like, well, we can't drown them all, so we should treat him better. That's the most progressive thing any Russian had said. Yeah, it wasn't Jewish. Well if we can't, well, if we can't drown them, we can. Yeah, So for a heads up, pretty bad, pretty bad people in a lot of ways.

Um As both his father's son and the heir to all Russia, Nicholas the second had the option to have a lot of casual sex if he really wanted to. Many young tsarovitch Is, including his father, were playboys, you know, in their youth and often as an adult to you know. But Nicholas was a deeply religious and dedicated person, and he was dedicated to waiting for love. This next story is based on the recollections of a noble woman named vera Uran neva Uh and she claims of his first

like infatuation quote, he adored walking. There was a rumor that he had met a beautiful Jewis on a walk and a romance had sprung up. There was a lot of gossip about that in Petersburg, but his father acted as decisively as ever. The Jewis was sent away along with her entire household. Nicholas was in her home while all this was going on. Only over my dead body, he declared to the governor. Matters did not go as

far as dead bodies. However, he was an obedient son and eventually he was broken and taking away to his father at Anchikov Palace. And the Jewis was never seen in the capital again. So in the capital, in the capital, yeah it may have been. I mean, Alexander the Third would not have been above a little bit of murder. Um. So we've moved out to a farm upstairs. Yeah, yeah,

it's it's bleak um. So right around the same time, Uncle Sergey leads a crackdown against Jewish people living in and around the capital, and Alexander the Third signs off on this crackdown. In Moscow, Uncle SERGEI closes the Great Synagogue and he sends his Cossacks to break into Jewish homes and like beat and rob people. It's a knight of It's a knight of broken glass kind of ship. Right. Um. He expels all Jewish citizens of Moscow. The only exceptions

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

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

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

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

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

get back into their good books. Um. And also, we have cool helmets with spikes on the baby check it out, um. And Alexander the Third doesn't really want to hang out with kaiserville helm because nobody, nobody ever wants to hang out with Kayserville Helm No. Um, so he picks Nikki to go do that job. He's like, Hey, you're you're gonna be the bizarre one day. Why don't you go hang out with your weird cousin and sail around in circles with his stupid boats. Um. So that's what Nikki

does a bunch of when he's a young man. Um And for a look at how he starts coming together as a young person, I want to quote again from the Romanovs. The Air Now twenty four, wrote the Deputy Foreign Minister Lambsdorff makes a strange impression. Half boy, half man's all of stature, thin and undistinguished. He had also obstinate and thoughtless. His mother had tended to infantilize her boys. He wore his literal sailor suits longer than most boys do,

noted Countess zz Naryshkina. He was a man with a small horizon and a narrow outlook, and for years had barely gone beyond the wall of the Anchikov and then Gecina Palace gardens. Even when Nikki was a guard's colonel, his mother still addressed him as my dear little soul, my boy His diary tells of hide and seek, drinking games, and contests with conkers and fur cones well into his twenties. So he's like being dressed like Donald Duck. He's like a twenty year old. It has um, it has very

blueth energy there. Yeah, because like he's just gets to be this little boy forever, because nobody can ever say, like, hey, maybe maybe the little sailor suits might not be the thing to be wearing to this party twenty one year old future emperor. So he just kind of does it. You know, he's flexing mm hmm. I mean, there's a way you can see that as as as healthy. I'm gonna add, by the way, I also dressed like a child, but it's more just like I wear like, oh look,

I like Spider Man and I only wear pajamas. I get it. Yeah. So, uh, he's kind of a sweet boy. Most people will agree on that. But he's also very much like a boy rather than the kind of person suited to be the iron ruler of all the rushes. You know, like he does he everyone kind of notices, oh, you're not going to be hard enough for this job. A little sailor sailor suit. Yeah, I'm not not quite tough enough for this big lollipop and floppy blonde curls

and duty. Um. So he had developed his intellectual talents by this point. He's not an idiot. He's really good at learning languages. And in fact, one of the things people will notice is that his English is perfect, and he writes a lot of letters to and from his wife that are like flawless English. Um. He also falls in love with British romance novels. He spends a lot

of time reading romance novels. Um. And if you were a member of the oppressed classes kind of eyeing this guy from a scullery or whatever, you might have expected him to be like, well, when this guy gets into power, he'll be better than Alexander the Third. You know, the dude who's constantly cracking down on everybody but a Simon who, Yeah, the dude who jumped to train because wasted d u I with a train. But as Simon Montfior makes clear,

little Niki definitely took after his father, uh quote. Nikki embraced his father's Muscovite vision of the throne, founded on the mystical union of Czar and peasants whose devout loyalty was pure and sacred compared to the filthy decadence of Petersburg, Liberal Europe and Jewish modernity. Nicholas the second worship his imperial father, but Tzar Alexander the Third knew his son

had no aptitude for the job awaiting him. When Wit suggested putting Nicholas on the committee organizing construction of the Trans Siberian Railway so we could get some on the job experience, the Zar responded, have you ever tried discussing anything of consequence with his Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke? Don't tell me you never noticed. The Grand Duke is an absolute child. His opinions utterly childish. How could he

preside over such a committee? And like, that's a bad sign if your kid is gonna inherit the throne literally the instant you die and you're like, well, he can't build a railroad, like, dude, to be fair, I don't know if you should be living in a pretty glass house railroad stones, buddy, Yeah, yeah, maybe it'll be Also, maybe it'll be shipping on Nikki about railroad stuff. How buddy, how much did you black out that night? Yeah? Do

you remember that, remember the people people. Yeah, so Nicholas did eventually get added to that committee in the end, but he doesn't receive a lot of training on the job from his dad. His dad's the only one who can give him this, and his dad, you kind of get the feeling his dad is just irritated by him and like doesn't want him around, so he doesn't teach him a whole lot. Um. He just length, Yeah, he's

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

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

So Alexandra is always going to be kind of nervous and scared of losing everyone around her because that's how her childhood goes, because that's what happened, because that's what happened obviously. Yeah, that's like being like, oh man, I'm afraid I'm going to vomit because I vomit literally every day. Yeah, that's and she she grows into an unpleasant person, but like, you know, it's understandable, like why she does a lot of the things she does. Her background makes it makes sense.

Tense all the time. Yeah, she's just never okay with anything. Um. Yeah, And and so she's she is, though kind of insufferable. She's like a lot to deal with. And all of the Romanovs except for Nicholas, feel this way about her, like he falls in love immediately and the rest of his family's like her. We've all been there. Yeah, it is that kind of story. Somebody that's like really into the person they're dating, and we're all just like okay, But like, is it like a different person? Yeah? Is

she completely different every moment that we're not around? Um? Or is she like, are do you have like a different plane of existence? Is she's saying different things in the quantum realm that we're not seeing here? Yeah? Is he just like hiding everything about himself when he's around us and only plays beer pong when he's around us and the rest of the time he has a personality? Um. So there's other reasons why Alexandra isn't popular as a

choice for Nicholas's partner. For one thing, she's Protestant, right, all of the Romanovs you have to be Orthodox, you know, you're you're like the Russian Orthodox Church. It's you're the head of it, as these are. Your wife can't be a Protestant um. And Yeah, there's other reasons. There's like weird royal bloodline reasons, I don't we need to get into. There's like a lot of reasons people are not happy with this, this this match. Um. But Nicholas is in

love with this woman, um, and she's in love with him. UM. But there's like a years of conflict, right, they don't get their way right away. Um, And it says a lot about how strongly he felt that he goes through the effort because there's like years of him trying to convince his father and his father refuses. Um. Like most love struck men, who can he decides to go on

a road trip to clear his head. Um and yeah, yeah, He's like, well, I might as well go traveling, yeah, on the train, because they have bad luck with those trains and boats, and they have bad luck on this. He and his brother Georgie go to I think Greece, and Georgie gets tuberculosis, which eventually he kills him. Um, So he has to head back home to like slowly

die of tv um. But Nikki gets to go to Japan with his other friend and relative, the Prince of Greece uh and this doesn't go great either, so they spent up. The Russians usually have great luck with Japan, Nicholas especially, so Nikki reads mostly romance novels and just kind of walks around Nagasaki buying souvenirs. While he's in Japan, Um hangs out with his cousin the Prince of Greece, and since Prince George this is funny. Prince George has a tattoo, and so Nikki decides to get one too,

of a dragon on his right floe arm. What a web. This is a little bit of a weep. Right, goes to Japan and gets a dragon tattoo, comes back there in like a like a black trench coat. He gets katana. Yeah, why are better than dubbed? It's very funny. Yeah, he gets real into anime during this period of wall scrolls in the palace. There's there, there's there's rioters at the gates that he's building a gunda. It's just we'll make it. So he's just kind of there to have a good time,

you know. But Japan has, I don't know if you know this about Japan has a pretty intense right wing um and they start developing all these conspiracy theories that he's secretly in Japan to spy on their weaknesses so Russia can attack. They credit him with being a much more capable person than he is. The Japanese not always stoked on outside influence in any right, right. Yeah, So a lot of people are real honory about this and they're angry, like he doesn't The first thing he does

isn't go about or the emperor. He like goes and does other stuff first because he's kind of on vacation. He's he's not trying to be disrespectful, he's just like doesn't really doesn't know anything about Japan. You know, Um, there's nothing about the Yamato clan. Yeah in English, Uh, romance novels, Yeah, exactly, which is all he knows. So one of these paranoid right wingers is a cop names Sanzo, who was supposed to be one of them in guarding the futures are And I'm going to read a quote

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

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

the Russian public prey for his well being. The nine centimeter wound would be a lifelong reminder of how close to death he'd been. This is like a pretty serious incident. That's an assassination attempt. Yeah. Yeah, a dude tries to kill him with a katana um and get pretty close. I'm not sure how that goes because it's you're you're looking at a sort of likely starts himself to death

in prison. That's what I was wondering, is if he was forced to, if he chose to or force to commit su and the to the two rickshaw drivers who saved the Czar's life, the Japan gives them a it's like thirty six dollar a month pension, which I think is is decent at the time. Um, but Nicholas gives them like a fortune, like dollars, like the equivalent of of of that much at the time in in roubles, which is like a fortune dollars. Yeah, he makes them rich. Um,

so at least you do. He he has someone who's capable of being like, well, I owe, yeah, I should probably, I should probably let it be known that you get rich if you stop Bazar from getting murdered instead of we get rich. Yeah when there is murdered. Yeah. Um. So when he gets back from his his his trip, he meets a ballerina with the last name I'm not going to try to pronounce it starts with the kuh. He feels deeply he falls in love with this girl.

He's really conflicted about the fact that he's still in love with Alexandra, but he's now fallen in love with this other girl. And he writes in his diary, would it be right to conclude from this that I am very amorous? Which no, dude, falling in love with two people over the course of your entire life does not make you very amorous. I mean it's cute though he loves love. What can you say about that? You know? Yeah, yeah, that's cute. Um, it's oh, this must mean I'm a player,

I've I've fallen in love with the second person. Um, they do. Fuck. This is encouraged by the Romanov family. They're kind of hoping, like his dad seems to be hoping, like maybe this will take his mind off of you know, encouraged while it was happening, We're all around him cheering him on. It's it's not all that far from that, like they're not actually in the room, but like everyone is like really setting this up for him. Um, and yeah, it doesn't stop him from being in love with Alexandre.

He does eventually wear the rest of his family down and he gets engaged to marry her. They go back to England to celebrate with the English side of the family.

Queen Victoria always liked to see her grandchildren married off, and so she hosts a party at one point for the new you know, crown Prince and his his uh, his wife to be um and she invites a rich Jewish man to the party, right, Queen Victoria, Yeah, and everyone the English relatives are like fine with this, they don't think much of it, but Nicholas is terrified of him.

He won't go near him, like, it becomes obvious that he's treating him like he's got the plague, and all of his English relatives make fun of him for being a racist. In a letter home to his mother, Nicholas writes, I tried to keep away as much as I could and not to talk. Alright, bro, I know again can understand how racist this dude is. I'm pretty sure he poisoned the punch bowl. How specifically racist? Because one are the weird things about him. He has his tire pretty

much entire time. Azar. He has a guy who's kind of like a body assistant almost named John Hercules, who is a black American man who like Hercules incredible name, Yeah, unbelievable name. It's going to go right past that. By the way, John seems to really like this gig. You think I think he's treated well, he's paid well. He like goes on vacation for months every year and like comes back with jam for the royal family that like

they can't get in Russia. Um. There's rumors that like after the monarchy falls, he like spends the rest of his life dressed in like a fading like household uniform, wandering around Moscow, Like I don't know. It seems to be like a pretty good situation for him until everything falls apart. One of the main parts of this person's job was to deliver jam. No, that wasn't his job,

that was just what he did. He would go back, he would go back to the US for like vacation to see his family, and he would bring back guava jam because all of like the royal kids loved it, and he was like part of the household, so he like he cared about the kids and he wanted to bring him jam. You know, hopefully it wasn't that jam from the f d A episode you got. Yeah, yeah, I would think you would. You would be very careful about your jam buying if you're purchasing for the Czars kids.

Um So, Nikki and family get back from England, um and the Emperor. Pretty much immediately his dad gets sick. Um probably all the drinking didn't help. It's a kidney infection jam jam poisoning. He gets jammed. Yeah, m Um, I don't think John Hercules was in the picture at

this point. Again, outstanding name. Um So. Alexander the Third dies on November nine at the age of forty nine h Nicholas was there, as was his cousin Sandro, who later recalled he took me by the arm and led me downstairs to his room, whom we embraced and cried together. Then he exclaimed, Sandro, what am I going to do? What's going to happen to me, to you, to Xenia, to Alex to Mother, to all of Russia. I'm not ready to be czar. I never wanted to become one. I have no idea of even how to talk to

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

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

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

Like Jeff stalk him. I mean that this is a way better way to do it than the last time that you said my name on a podcast. Yes, I do sorry for alleging that you were friends with Gil and Maxwell. I mixed you up with another Jeff. It was so it was it was was reading me Twitter at the time, but trying to think of Jeff Davis. It was. It was so funny because one person did call me an old pedophile in my um inbox messages, which means that they are an early adopter of your podcast. Right.

That thing was only up for like an hour and then Rob, Yeah, we fixed that pretty quick. I've made a terrible error. Deed, we have to fix this now. We shared a shared listener contact me was like, hey, I don't know if this is true or not, but you might want to look into this. Yeah, I write your message to me about that one. And then I said I was like, hey, guys, real quick, love the show, wondering why it's said that I was friends with a

billionaire sex pedophile. Yeah, that was a mistake. Um, but everyone I think I enjoyed Jeff May best friends with Momarkaddafi Jeff May who Yeah he was daffy. Al Right, well that's gonna do it for us. Now we will come back with God, there's so much more z O Nicholas to go, Um, Jesus Christ, a second Nicholas. There were too many Nicholaises, Nichols, Nicholson's No, that's something else. Nichols son, Nickels, sons of them, nickelsons of bitches. That's right there. Bam h