Part Three: Tzar Nicholas II Was A Real Dick

Like that's the like before this, I think they're like talking about Philippe, who has his you know, as we talked about last time, his his first mystic con man who got into the family and then rescuting. There's like this media image of resputant. Is this like supernaturally charming, like incredible, uh mysterious sort of like um figure who's just like in humanly charismatic and like No, the truth is that like literally any con man could have won

one over on these people. They were really stupid. It's so much that people it's almost like it's like there there's a punch card for what con Man is going to be in charge at the time. It's like the morning Ralph Mornan Sam situation. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just

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

So the idea that that like inherited divinity in anyway or inherited power or intellect or what, that's just the dumbest Like if if fucking Nicholas the second had been alive and the Tsar of all Russia is today, all of Russia would be owned by a Macadonian seventeen year old who had like managed to fish his email if something, Yeah, it would be it would be like Exxon would own Russia if that were the case, Yeah, it would be.

Someone would have gotten to him. Like I can just imagine l Ron Hubbard sliding into the Tsars court and just complete control in like seven hours. It would have been carved up like like nineteenth century after it would have just been like just absolutely colonized and and and colonized, with like Nikki still on the throne, smiling all day about like, oh, my friends from xon Mobil are here. Look at my magic friends from x On Mobile. They can they can pull their fingers off, you see. Look

at that they are doing magic. Look at that people's quarter from behind my ear. So as we start this episode, the situation with Japan is continuing to spiral out of control. In nineteen o two, Japan had signed a defensive pact with Great Britain. Um in, Nikki's English cousins had forced him to withdraw from man Chariot. Now, obviously he was not going to do this, um, but his minister's got him to at least degree for it, to agree with

it for a while. Um. And you know, they keep trying to talk him out of this, saying like, hey, like taking over Tibet maybe not a great idea, probably not going to work all that well. Um. But Nicholas doesn't really spend a lot of time around his advisors. He prefers the company of Bezobrazov and his cousin the Kaiser, who, as we talked about last time, I think Um had started calling himself Admiral of the Atlantic and calling Nicky Admiral of the Pacific, right man. Yeah, it's like giving

yourself your own nickname when you go to college. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's so sad, like because the and it's sad because the Kaiser gives them both this nickname, and Nikki makes fun of the Kaiser, and then Nikki starts using the nickname completely and ironically. Um, He's like, well, you know, it is a cool nickname. I'm not going he's good at nicknames. He may be duvrous, but I got to say this nickname it fun. Look at this idiot coming up with nicknames. I'm going to steal though.

Absolutely mine is my nickname now, so Um one of his ministers, because this is this is like a source of incredible frustration for these these educated and like august ministers and nobles and whatnot who are trying to like run the empire around him. That he's listening, He's given this Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a theme. It's just all these like well read intellectuals with experience in geopolitical theory are just like, what the funk are you doing? Man?

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

their ministers, accusing them of encroaching on autocratic law. Like we've seen that, right, Like we've all been through that here right question. Yeah, my cool friends don't actually question me. They think I'm cool. Yeah. I brought my wife's boyfriend in and he said we should try this, or like, you know, there's this guy, this lawyer that I was friends with when I was younger, Like, let's have him

make our policy here. Like we all lived through a version of this with Trump, and it's just like to the nth degree with Nikki, because there's absolutely no checks on his behavior. Um. So they kind of settle into this pattern for a while Russia for the next year and a half or so, where Bezo Brazof will like

escalate in some wild way. He'll provoke the Japanese or he'll make a move on on on Chinese occupied territory, um, and there will be like some big war panic, and Nikki will back off at the last moment and like pull his troops back because he doesn't really want a war, Like he talks this big game about like wanting to show Japan what for, but he's also like there's a part of him that's reasonable enough to know that, like, well, if you are the absolute sovereign and you lose a war,

that doesn't that that can be bad, you know, asked Japan exactly, asked Japan a minute after this. It's it's funny too, because we all know this guy, the guy that's like talking shit at the bar and then as soon as somebody's like, all right, well let's go, and then they're like yeah, and and fucking Nikki is that guy because he doesn't really want to fight. Bezo Brasov is the guy who like does that and also like he'll throw down. He's not good at it, like he

can't throw a punch to save his life. He's way too drunk to be starting ship. But he will throw that punch if you know, going to be starting somebuddy will back him up, um so nikki like for a little while, like there, his ministers are able to get him to pull back, get him to pull back, um, and then he'll poke at them or Bezo Brazof will poke at them again. And you know this kind of

happens a couple of times. Um And after a while the Japanese get really tired of this and they give they present these are with an incredible offer, like this is actually really quite and again I say generous. They're offering someone else's land. But like they're like, hey, Czar, I don't want to deal with this like constant like dick measuring game that year is how about you get all of Mancharia that's yours, Russia gets all of Mancharia, we get Korea. How about that? Which I'm the czar.

I don't have to fight a war. Really, I could just take this huge, just chunk of land longer than larger, I think than any country in Western Europe that I get to just add to Russia for free seems like a great deal for me. These are right, Nikki says no. Uh, Nikki's like, well, yeah, sure, that would wipe out the stain of defeating Crimea and make me maybe the greatest expansion It's star of the last century. Probably would have distracted from all my domestic failures. But that means I

don't get Korea too when I really want Korea. Because I can't get he wants to collect them all. Yeah, yeah, he wants like those cops who got fired for trying to get that pokemon. You know who among us hasn't ignored our civic duty in order to collect the snore life? Yeah,

I mean it's we. We all have that friend who like, wasn't able to make rent one month because he bought too many fucking um what are those what are those nerd bobblehead type things called because he bought too many funco Are you just looking behind me and looking for

something to make fun of. I mean, it's fine when it's a funko pop, but because he's the Czar of all Russias, his funco pops are like entire nations of millions of people in in a it's it's like entire ethnic groups that that he wants to collect and put in his little Russia box and probably racially discriminate against um because he is the guy that he is. So he he says no to Japan's again very generous offer with other people's territory um, and then he doesn't leave Mancheria.

But so he doesn't agree to this, and he also stays in Mancheria, which is kind of saying to Japan, we're gonna try to invade Korea, Like we're gonna we're gonna take Korea from you, right, Like, that's what you're saying. If you're like, no, I don't want you to give me Mancheria, but I'm not gonna leave, you're saying, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna funk with your ships some more. Right. That's that's exactly what he's saying. That's as good as an act of war, really if you if you're not unreasonable,

and Japan takes it this way. Um. Simon Montfio writes, quote, Bezobrazov had taught the emperor that treaties could be broken, and Nicholas was convinced that Russia could defeat those macaques. He's calling them monkeys because Japan was a barbarian country, and cool Potkin told Nicholas that the Japanese army, who's one of his military advisors, that the Japanese army was a colossal joke, but he did not want a war.

The Emperor blithely ordered the viceroy, I don't want war between Russia and Japan and will not permit this war. Take all measures so that there is no war. Japan made for their offers to Russia for a compromise, but wondered if the inconsistence z are was capable of negotiating a treaty yet alone honoring it. So he gets every

chance in the world to make this work right. I think it's interesting to note that we are actually looking at two nations that have just really honestly westernized their militaries or and when I say westernized, I mean modernized. Let me let me rephrase it, because you know, Japan obviously had to make a big leap forward during the

mid to lady nineteenth century as well. Um, and we know we talked about in previous episodes what Russia Russia has just gotten their military to be kind of in not really in line as we'll talk about when World War One hits, but they're closer to in line with like Germany and France, and so it's almost like they both got new toys. They're like, you know what, yeah,

and that's that's a big thing. You know. Japan has just modernized and gotten their military kind of really rolling along at the same point that China is falling apart, which provides this opportunity for Japan to take a whole bunch of China and get a bunch of ship that being from an island they maybe didn't have access to before. Russia. It's a little bit like with the Japanese government, this is much more of like a kind of grim real politique, like we need to take as much as we can.

Um there's this awareness that like the colonial powers, like they will do that to us, what they're doing to Africa, what they're doing to other parts of Asia, if we don't assert ourselves and get powerful, and the best way to do this to take enough land that we can can continue to build up our military and not be able to be fucked with by them. Right, there's a lot of it's a lot harsher of an understanding with Russia.

Nikki's this mix of like he's got these new toys he does want to play with and his he he has people talking to about how easy it will be to be Japan and an easy victory will deal with all these domestic troubles. But he's also he's like re sitable enough to know that he probably would actually be

a bad idea to go to war. And he has a lot of ministers like into including like wit and the other kind of the intelligent ministers he has saying like, dude, you're hanging on by a thread right now, Like people are not happy this is that there's there's riots and ship all over the country. Um, what we don't want now as a war because it's probably not going to go great. And so there's this push and pull for a while. And for a while Nikki's kind of in

the middle of those sides. Um, but he eventually kind of sides with the folks who start telling him and and and this includes pleave his anti Semite minister buddy that a small victorious war might distract everybody, right, So he eventually lines up on that I just love the phrase anti Semite minister. But well that's he's got the minister buddies who are racist and the ones who are racist, but not in terms of their policy, because every they're

all racist. Yeah, Like the best guy in this story, that's far is his attitude is like, well, if you can't drown all the was, I guess they should have civil rights. Subversive statement, I guess now. On New Year's Day, n four, the Emperor of all the Russia's decides to make an ultimatum to Japan. He tells the Japanese ambassador Russia was not just a country, but a part of the world. In order to avoid a war, it was better not to try her patients or it could end badly.

On the twenty four January, Japan breaks off diplomatic relations. So after like this back and forth, he issues basically like shut the funk up, let me do whatever it is I'm going to do, and if you talk to me again, like I might throw hands. That that's kind of what he's don't even yeah, don't even fucking sucks me.

Don't even talk to me, stugging talks to me. If swhere to God, if you fucking talk to me once it's over and to continue our bar ANALYSI drunken Nicholas slurs that out to the Japanese, turns around to grab another drink from the bar, and while his back is turned, they hit him in the back of the head with a bottle of Schlitz, like we've all been there or whatever.

Um they fuck him up. The next day, while the Czar is out watching at the theater watching a play, the Japanese fleet attacks Port Arthur, which you know Russia had taken a little bit earlier, and they do serious damage, like wipe out a significant chunk of his Asian fleet. I would add second worst thing to happen in a theater to a ruler. Oh man, there was a great this Halloween. I think I haven't said this on the show.

This Halloween, we were out taking some friends kids of mine trick or treating and as we were like walking back to the car, there was just this dude dressed up as a dead Lincoln sitting in a chair in front of his house with a bucket of candy like up stock straight looked like a statue almost, And one of my friends asked him, hey, how was the play, and he without missing a beat, responded, I left early. I gotta be honest with you, Like he probably had like a list of way he was ready to say

new New Dead Lincoln feature eight realistic words sounds. So the Russo Japanese War kicks off from this, right, Japan attacks at Port Arthur. The Russians are very angry and they start fighting. There's this whole big series of battles,

you know, it's a war war. Stuff occurs um and on the ground there's this you know, land warfare that's largely happening in in Manchuria between like these couple hundred thousand troops that Russia has there and the Japanese Expeditionary Force and the Russians do okay here they lose basically every big battle, but Japan often loses more men in the battle, so like they're kind of it's like pyric victories for the Japanese where they're like, yeah, we keep

winning these battles, but funk, there's a lot of Russians and like, we can't keep this up for a while. That is the story of they there's a lot of Russian Japan has the same experience everyone else does fighting Russia, which is Jesus Christ. There's no end of these people.

I mean, think about the land differences, maybe like oh, so we're like what we're like the like the Moscow suburbs are our entire island, you know, there's so many of Yeah, yeah, I think we need the entire island of just to do anything to um And so this this, you know, on land, the Russians kind of duke it out with the Japanese until the Japanese are, you know, after repeatedly winning, kind of on the verge of collapse by some sources. So it's going okay on the land.

It's not going great obviously, because it never does go great for Russia either, but like they win awards sustainable situation, it's not in the navy. So Japan starts the war by wiping out one of three Russian fleets, the Pacific Fleet, And you know, Nikki has a choice here. One of them would be like, well, I could kind of potentially give up Port Arthur, or at least give up relieving it from the sea. I could not try to funk with the in the ocean anymore because I don't need to.

I'm directly connected by land to the battle space. You know, I can just throw a ship lord more dudes in Demandcharia and probably eke out if not like a win, you know, a negotiated settlement that gives me what I could have gotten without fighting a war anyway. But like looks good on paper, you know, he has kind of that option. But he's you know, Russia's pride as its navy. And it's not Russia's pride, it's it's the Czar's pride. And it's this way with all of these guys in

this same period. Kaiser Wilhelm is like helping to make World War One b a thing by repeatedly like tweaking the British by building up the German fleet, because that's the thing the British don't want to see, is the Germany have a fleet that can rival the British fleet, because Germany already has an army that Britain can't handle. Um, But the Britain doesn't like when anybody has They don't like when anybody has a navy, No, they sure don't.

I don't believe are the only ones with boats a reason. So the Kaiser and it's like it's this whole thing of like it's like it's it's like warhammer for the Kaiser. Like he gets to he gets to get these little boats, these boats that he gets to have a say in designing, and like look at all the big guns and he gets to move them around on a map and sail around in his yacht and look at the boats that he owns and umunds it does sound dope, right, it

sounds pretty sick. And it's like that with the Kaiser too. And and Russia, you know, has a has a traditionally pretty powerful navy. Their best fleet is their Baltic fleet though, right, because that's like that's home shores, right, that's what's gonna be fucking with Turkey. Russia's big enemy for forever is Turkey. Um So they've got they lose their Pacific fleet to the Japanese with like out really getting to fire much

of a shot. Um So, Nikki gets obsessed with the idea of getting revenge and with the idea of proving himself to be the Admiral of the Pacific. You can't be the Admiral of the Pacific if your fleet gets sunk and you don't do anything about it. So he takes this massive Baltic Fleet, the pride of the Russian Navy and the lynchpin of their territorial power, and he sends the whole thing to fight the Jackas fleet. Um,

which takes like a year. Like it's not easy to get from the Baltic to the coast of China in this period. Yeah. Yeah, they're not flying on no, and they can't really they're not good at at boating at this point, you know, they're they're steaming slowly ahead there. Um, well they had a rough go. Yeah, it's exhausting. They accidentally murder some fishermen on the way that belonged to some European country or another. Um. Yeah, they get panicked and they think that it's a Japanese uh torpedo boat

or whatever. Um. I mean that's yeah, really funny. Really, you know, we all agree that it's while those deaths are tragic, the historical context of the humor in that is it is pretty funny to be like a dude on a fishing boat and get get marked by the entire Russian Baltic Fleet. Um. Yeah, you're just like I'm out to catch up, you know. And and it's worth noting the Russian Baltic fleet will perform a lot better against these unarmed fishermen than they do against the Japanese

Navy standard standard move for them. So while they're or to ring their way slowly to Asia. Um, and Russia is kind of having this very mixed, ugly ground war in Manchuria. Um, and you know the fact that there's a war, they start being more protests, they start being more riots, they start being more strikes among the workers. Well, all this is going on, the Czar's son, Alexei is born. Um, this is a cause for a lot of finally some good finally, some good news. I've got a handle on it.

Now I have a boy. This couldn't go anywhere. But up as the empire is crumbling in tens of thousands of men are dying. He's like, good news, everybody, We're gonna be able to keep this thing going for another generation. Good news everywhere. One more Romanov for you all to deal with. So there's this big celebration, right, huge state celebration because now there's an heir to the throne. Um. But then shortly thereafter this are and his wife realized

their boy has hemophilia. He's like, you know, the belly button thing when the thing falls out of it after you pull the baby out. Um. That the umbilical cord. Yeah, the babilical cord. His when they cut it, it doesn't stop bleeding, right, because he's hemophiliac. You know That's that's the whole thing. Um, you bleed more than his ideal um.

And so there's this suddenly realization that like the Tsar's Air basically has a death sentence because like in this period of time, I think there's a bunch of things you can do. They really don't have medicine back then. Yeah, yeah, you have, you have opium, and you have spiritualists. Um, I mean you have you have conmon and you have doctors who are like three percent better than conman um.

But there's nothing really to do about this, and pretty much everyone but the Czar and Czarina except like, oh ship, well he's not going to make it to twenty. Like this kid's not gonna last long. Um. Yeah, this kid's fucked. They cannot take that because at this point, she's kind of worn out. She's had five kids. They're not easy pregnancies for her. She's not as young anymore. Um, and she's like I can't have another child wild and because he does love his wife, the czar is not going

to force her. You know, I think a lot of monarchs would have been like the funk you say, like you're we're going to roll these dice again. I don't care what happens. I'm sorry, what was that? I like how you're like, by the way, it's like it wasn't an easy pregnancy. I'm like, yeah, I think that's just

because it was in nineteen what's four, um, nineteen o five? Yeah, and this, you know, so this is like horribly devastating for the Romanov family because it kind of means like we're going to have to hand over ruling to like one of our cousins or something like. This isn't going to keep going, and that means that's to the czar, even though there's like protests and uprisings and a an

increasingly disastrous war. That's what makes Nikki feel like a failure. Yeah, because it's a it's a boy, but it's not you know, it's a boy who's not going to live long enough to continue making bad decisions that affect the lives of millions anyway. Um, Nicholas is while he's trying to deal with this and dealing with the fact that his wife is increasingly having breakdowns over the fact that her son is kind of constantly on the edge of death, which

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

it be? Yeah, and you're so adept. Nick. So one of the guys he brings on is this new minister Mursky, who points out like, hey, there's this campaign among liberals to create like a Congress, basically a constitutional representation for the people, you know, which folks have been lobbying for

for a while. His grandpa was about to put one through, and Mursky's like, hey, this is really popular, and because it's really popular, if you do it, a lot of the people who are protesting and striking right now might stop and like you can focus on the other million problems you've created. Um and maybe if you don't do this, there's gonna be a revolution. And the Emperor Nicholas the second does not take this very well. His responses quote, you know, I don't hold autocracy for my own pleasure.

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

the lay of the land reasonably well. On Sunday, January nine is the Russian army launch is a huge offensive in Mancharia. A protest march of thousands of workers swarms towards the palace where Nicholas and his family live. Troops at the palace open fire and charge the protesters on horseback, and they kill more than a thousand people. This is not like a kin states or a deal. We're like a couple of guys panic and there's you know, a handful of people die and like everybody like stars in shock.

This is like ranks of men firing in mass into a crowd and then running them down on horseback with sabers. Classic not to whitewash kin state, but this is like three hundred or so of them. And at the same time, Um, I mean, I'm from Boston where we had a bombing where like three people died, and we're like, this is the worst thing that has ever happened. So I understood

in Russia happens on a different scale. And on this day when his troops kill a thousand civilians in order to defend his regime from protest, Nicholas writes this in his diary, A terrible day, Lord, how painful and sad. Mama arrived from town, lunched with everyone, went for a walk with Misha. Mama stayed the night. Big, big, big deal for you, hey, for you. Thousand people died, Mama came. What a day? I think mostly a lot on your maybe, yeah, that's the main thing. Um, It's very funny, how like

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

when you're going to die. So maybe you know on this ad they'll tell you the exact moment that you'll expire. Ah really present you really? Um? So, Jeff, We're we're we're we're in a we're in a dicey time for for the Romanov dynasty as this is happening, um or if not that long after this is happening, and like well cup of months. So May of that year, May fourteen, the Baltic Fleet reaches uh, the war zone right, um reaches Southeast Asia broadly, right, you know, it's a big area.

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

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

wipes them out. Thirty ships sunk to the bottom of the sea, and like a day and a half or so, including the flagship of the Russian Navy, and they don't really lose anybody. It's like more than a thousand Russian sailors dead and like a hundred Japanese sailors. Dad or something like that it's like it is. It is a it is a terrible disaster. It goes into yeah, um it is. It goes as badly as it possibly could

have done. Um, somebody called the match. Yeah yeah they are this is this is really like, um, I don't know what's the who's a boxer who killed somebody? Emil Griffith. This is an Emil Griffith situation. That's Togo. Um, he's he's just he's just permanently knocked the Baltic fleet unconscious. Um and they are never getting out. Yeah. Yeah, I have that equation of like that that like stone cold Steve Austin coming in, ravaging them and just leaving while

he's laying on the ground. That's kind of what the Japanese fleet does. So this number one leads very quickly to the Russians capitulating. You know, they lose the Russo Japanese war. Um, and this is kind of the thing. They have now lost two thirds of their entire navy effectively, Daddie in my toye, Daddy, I've lost my bets and they can't like it's one of those things. Not only is this just the disaster like it would be for

any country. But this is also like the first time that a major European power has lost a war, a modern war to people who are not white, um, and that is like that people start flipping out all over

the damn world about this ship. Um. And this really pisses off everyone in Russia's piss The right wing is pissed because it's like us, we're the ones who lose a war to the Japanese UM, and the people who aren't right when are are pissed because like, how many of our guys did you get killed for no reason? I Like, the two different reasons are like we lost to them, and the other on the other side is like, wait,

we didn't. My brother's dead. So more protests. Well, Russia, the battleship Timpkin mutinies in Odessa, which is goes on to be a pretty famous moment um. And Nicholas the second well, all this is going on, well the Timpkins mutinying, while large chunks of Russia are no longer under the control of the Russian state, Like that's the extent to which the government loses control. Nikki accepts an invitation from his cousin the Kaiser, to go hang out on their

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

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

quote now from the Oxford University Press. In nineteen o five, there were three thousand, two hundred and twenty eight agrarian disorders that caused twenty eight million, eight hundred and seventy two thousand seven hundred and fifty nine roubles worth of damage. ROBERTA.

Manning and her study of the nineteen o five Revolution stated, under these conditions of near total breakdown in government authority and paralysis of the government in elite, which temporarily lost faith in its ability to administer the nation, rural Russia rose up to join its urban partners in the greatest most destructive series of agrarian uprisings since the Pugachev Rebellion of the eighteenth century. So by the end of nineteen o five, there are thirteen thousand, nine hundred ninety five

recorded strikes. There are riots, there are there are like thousands of assassinations over this period of time. Like they are massacring government officials by by the fucking football team's worth. Um, that seems egregious, right, I mean yeah, like I get I get it. But also at the same time, it's like I feel like a couple of guys got a

lot caught off. Yeah, I mean it's pretty bad, Like it's really ugly, and it's ugly and because like not to take anything from like the ministers or from the terrorists who are in some of these are acts of were like just a guy will shoot this dude who was like a police commissioner who was like specifically like you did this crackdown, I'm gonna kill you. Some of them are like, we're going to set off eighty pounds of T and T in a crowded neighborhood to like

take this guy out. You know. Um, it's a lot of it is really ugly. And part of why it's really ugly is these are kind of established that. I mean, he was his dad established back in the eighteen sixties when their grandpa was assassinated that like, well, whenever there's unrest, we kill people in huge numbers, and that's how we deal with unrest is man murder. And the czar has a thousand people killed, you know, at at the gates of his palace. Like that is the way the Russian

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

this is what I guess this is how this works. Um. So, yeah, and the government's the first thing they always have to like throw out obviously, like every other government when there's you know, any kind of popular unrest and programs are happening. In this period, it's very messy time. So you've got obvious and some of those programs are like these these right wing groups, um, the Black Hundreds, which are like Czarists,

we'll talk about them in a little bit. Some of them are happy are some of them are being done by like left wing groups, saying most of it is from the right, most of these programs. A lot of it though I probably the bulk of it isn't isn't specifically, it's just like it's reactions to the things that the

that the left you're doing. So you'll have like a striker and uprising in Odessa, or you'll have a terrorist attack that kills this minister, and then people will blame it on the Jews and there will be a pagram and you know, like that's that's kind of the way this whole thing goes. It's a very messy period of time. UM. Russia does not have cops really like they have police, and they try to tamp down on unrest um. But they don't. There's not there's like one of them for

every several thousand people. So whenever they really need to crack heads, it's the army. UM. But the army's mutinying all over because they've just lost this war, just like the navy. UM. So the only thing you can really get the army to crack down on is the Bolsheviks. Right. So when you have these left wing uprisings, these are

can generally get military units and to fight them. But when you have these programs that are responses to these uprisings, in some cases you can't convince the army is not going to go crack down on them because the army is like, well, we're pretty racist too, and the cops are like actively participating in the pagram, so they're not

going to do no. That part's cool. So Nicholas also comes to see that like, well, maybe these programs are a good thing because all of the people doing the revolutions are Jews, which is not true, um, but they are. There are a number of them are Jewish people because Jewish people are particularly oppressed by this. Are is someone lying about Jews so they can do violence towards them,

that there's this thing. Later in life, when he gets over through the fact, he spends a lot of time listing out all of the revolutionaries and like their secret Jewish roots. Um, which is wrong about a lot of them were not Jewish. That he just like found ways to believe they were Jewish because he he comes to believe that, like all resistance to his regime, is rooted in the Jews. Um. He writes this in a letter to his mom, quote, nine tenths of the troublemakers are Jews.

The people's whole anger turned against them. That is how the programs happened. It is amazing how they took place in the towns of Russia and Siberia. Now there's a lot of debate as to whether or not those are deliberately incited and organized programs as a way to regain control and alps distract people from attacking the state. Whether or not he had any sort of plan, the violence often worked out exactly as one assumes he would have wanted.

And I'm going to quote now from an academic study in Monde, russ After the astounding news of the October Manifesto demonstrations and meetings with red flags began to occur now and then they were accompanied by excesses insulting to the Czarist throne. This is like the start of the left wing revolution against the Tsar. Portraits of Nicholas the Second, so revered by monarchists, were taken down by walls and

sometimes from walls and sometimes destroyed, and meetings. Money was collected for Nicholas's burial on Kiev on the balcony of the city Duma building. One of those in a meeting, cut a hole in Aazarist portrait and sticking his own threat head through the hole, replacing the Tsar's face, shouted, now, I am the sovereign. You have to imagine that guy was pretty pretty drunk. I gotta be honest, man, that sounds like that. That's a good time and son of

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

that described above were not ubiquitous. Sometimes they were exaggerated or just invented from nothing by pre pre program rumors, often with preposterous accusations of outrages against Orthodox shrines or

Czarist portraits. For example, right before a program and Kiev, rumors circulated about an attack by slur against Jewish people to a monastery, Black Hundreds organized belligerent counter demonstrations, sometimes under pretext of celebrating the ninth anniversary of the ascension of Nicholas the Second to the throne, which clashed with left wing meetings and fights turned into programs. Depending on the possibility or desire of local authorities to restore order,

these could continue for days. Almost inevitably, the Czar's portrait was present at these disgraceful events. Black Hundred demonstrations were often were very often physically organized around the Emperor's portrait.

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

do you allow us to destroy this store? The one carrying the portrait would answer, I permit it. So it's I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that that's not on the level I mean officially state saying it isn't. It isn't because the state's not sending in troops to stop this. And later on in the wake of this, Nicolas pardons a lot of the programasts um and as he just wrote to his mom, like he sees most of the revolutionaries as Jewish, he

sees the people's anger against Jewish folks. He sees these programs as like an expression of honest and fair anger. So while he's not he is not saying go out and destroy Jewish businesses. But when these crowds take his portrait and use it to like justify their destruction of Jewish businesses, they're not making that up out of whole cloth, you know, yeah, um, yeah, and uh, it's it's it's

it's pretty ugly. There's one cool moment and some of this stuff where so one of the things that will happen is these processions, these black hundreds marching with porches of the Czar will like walk around and they'll demand people on the street, um remove their caps and like bow to the czar and if you don't do this, you'll get the ship beaten out of you, right Like It's it's kind of like this gang being like, hey, you gotta like the guy in our picture or we're

gonna kick the funk out of you. You know. Sometimes they murder people and there's we've had that. We've had that in America pretty pretty recently, and we will again. There's a beautiful moment. There's this Bolshevik v Morozov who encounters one of these processions and they're like, hey, you gotta take your hat off and you've got to declare loyalty to this picture of those are um And he

doesn't do that, v moros off. Instead, he calls the ars scoundrel, pulls out a gun, shoots two of the people carrying the portrait to death um and does get beaten so badly that he nearly dies, but he survives. I mean he killed two people and a and a portrait. That's a pretty good response. He did get nearly beaten to death, though, so you know, mileage may vary. Yeah, he made it into the book. They're all dead in the story now, but he made it into the book.

We do all it probably sucked at the time, but we do all know he was a badass. Now damn right, hey, man, ass kickings happen. That just that's gonna happen. And what's happened shooting two guys holding a portrait of an assholes forever? That literally, that's that's your new that's your new master card commercial, even though they haven't made those commercials. And what is a little dated, But you know what's not

a dated ad is these ads right now? Oh yeah, we are back so those modern those modern ads we just had shamefully honored. So Jews were not the only racial victims of these prosarist moms right back from ats so funny. Yeah, that was some great anyway, The Jews weren't the only there were other races that the Czarists saved it. Yeah, in northern Central Russia. I guess these aren't racial victims, but students and academics are targeted and

often murdered. Like they'll they'll beat up college kids and professors and assassinate them the right will because of their connections to Yeah, yeah kind of. It's also like a lot of the people. Often it will be a case of like, yes, some like college students who got radicalized will set off a bomb to kill these local officials, and then as a result, some like people in the town will go murder their professor. You know, ship like

that's happening too. It's ugly, you know, it's it's kind of a civil war is going on in Russia right now, and it's very much a prelude for the civil war that will happen not all that long in the future and kill what four million people? Um, I mean, yeah, there are other targets. Im Baku Armenians were targeted by the Tsarists. Getting any kind of comprehensive death toll would be impossible, But during October of nineteen oh five, at least six hundred and twenty two people were murdered uh

and three thousand four injured in programs alone. That's just deaths from these kind of like right wing masses of violence. Uh. Those numbers come from police sources, though, which probably under counts the death toll. Shlomo Lambrosa, who's a scholar, calculates more than three thousand, one hundred three deaths just among Jews during the nineteen o five programs. Now, historians seem in agreement that Czar Nicholas the Second did not have a concerted plan to spark programs. He was kind of

okay with them. He did not devote a lot of effort to stopping them. But there were there were For years afterwards, people would like theorize that he had orchestrated the programs. There really does not seem to be evidence of that that it was a central plan. But we do know that anti Sism, anti Semitism was stoked purposefully by the Tsar's men, whether or not he gave the order. Um,

there was this. This is kind of found out afterwards that in a corner of the St. Petersburg Police Department there's a secret printing press which is putting out pamphlets this entire time urging people to quote kill Jews, to tear them apart into tiny pieces. Um. Yeah, that's not a not a lot of like wiggle room. There not a lot of room for yeah interpretation. Just just kill them. It's fine, joke, he's joke, he's joke, but please, no,

we're kidding. Kill them. But the guy printing this is a as a gendarme officer named Kamissarov Um and he's has a role in spreading the uh the protocols of the Elders of Zion to um and he's like he's funneling them using police resources from St. Petersburg through right wing organizations who spread them around the country and oftentimes these things will spread to an area and then there

will be pagrams. UM. So this is where again maybe Nikki wasn't explicitly aware of all this, but like his dudes were doing it in the city where he was living, um, using his money. So the idea that people suspect he had a role in directly inciting pagrams, it doesn't come out of nowhere. You know. Again, we may have seen something like this relatively recently in our country. Yeah, thankfully

not with that kind of death toll. But it is kind of like the the plausible deniability of the autocrat you know who's like, oh, yeah, I mean people, it's horrible when people do violent things. I don't think those violent things are wrong, but like I'm not organizing it. They just happened, and I say it's okay, but it's also bad at the same time when anyone pushes me on it, you know, like, yeah, we've seen this, we

may I'm not gonna lie. That's something we've seen. So the wave of rebellions, um, you know, the programs kind of burned themselves out after enough people get the murder out of their systems and the stealing out of their systems. Um. The rebellions, the actual like kind of left wing uprisings against the state are put down by the military, and Nikki orders exceptional brutality to be used in defense of

his regime. When the St. Petersburg workers district is stormed by Russian troops his he has his soldiers use artillery to pound populated districts of his own capital, killing three thousand people, um christ um a lot, which is like, that's as many minister that's as many like government officials as the revolutionaries kill in a period of years. Um. And they're just like the shelling of his own capital. The emperor writes in his diary, quote, the armed rebellion

in Moscow has been crushed. The abscess was growing. Now it's burst. When one of his generals in the Baltics is not putting down the locals with enough brutality for Nicki's liking, bizarre, sends a man to tell him, quote, the only thing you'll get in trouble for is not being brutal enough. He then immediately executes a thousand prisoners. So, like, he sees this guy puts down this rebellion, and he's like,

you're taking a lot of prisoners alive. Like, I might get angry at you for that, but if you all a bunch of them, there's no amount of people you could kill and piss me off. So this guy kills a thousand people and like very rightly, being like, well, these are basically just said I should murder more of these folks. I like that. He was like given permission. He's like, well, let's just go for the whole thing. Well,

I guess I guess we'll try. Uh. Simon Montfior writes when he heard that a punitive detachment had accepted the surrender, of rebellious Lavonians. He insisted the town should have been destroyed. Arrests were celebrated with the word power. This is Nikki writing in his own diary, while the summary execution of

twenty six rebellious railway road workers earned an imperial Bravo. Bezobrazov, brother of Nikki's Far East adviser and one of his favorite guards officers, staged ghoulish public shows shows of bodies dangling on gibbets. When Commander Richter, son of Alexander the Third's crony, now leading a punitive detachment in the Baltics, not only shot his prisoners but hang the bodies. Afterwards, Nicholas wrote another bravo. Trip Off informed him that Cossacks

had overused their whips. Very well done, applauded Nicholas. When he heard of more executions, he commented, this really tickles me. So this is how he writes about, like the crimes against humanity. I'm tickled by the fact that you've executed these people. Oh well done. They whipped people to death. Bravo. Definitely, it definitely sees that that, like um, that disconnect when you're raised like the poppish child of privilege and power.

It is really like if you ever played a game like Civilization or you know, Age of Wonders or whatever, where you like build an empire and there's sometimes people rebel and you crack down on these like fake people who don't really exist. He feels that same way about like the lives of thousands of real people. It's like

he's playing a video game. He's like looking at his maps and someone saying, we put them down, and we we executed a thousand of them, or like how many of us would you like to kill out of these that we've captured, and he makes a note of how many people he once killed, and like then he goes home feeling like he's winning the game finally, I mean, I feel like a win. Yeah, yeah, are all a

winner getting to hear this story. So in total, Bizar's men kill fifteen thousand people um at least, and deport forty more, cracking down on the rebellion. And this time it's enough, you know, like this is enough that he is able to hold onto power barely. Um. Yeah, in eight years, things aren't going to go so well. Now, before we roll out today, Jeff, we should probably talk a little bit about ra Ra Rasputine, lover of the Russian queen, hell boy villain boy villains. Yeah, one of

the better hell boy villains. Um. Guy, I get told I look like on a not a regular basis. Um, I can see that. Yeah, well, um, And it's one of those things. He is definitely the single most famous person today in the whole Romanov story. As a general rule, the only reason people talk about Nicholas the second or his wife, um is either to talk about Anastasia or to talk about Rasputin, and generally both at the same time. Like in the Disney movie I don't I don't think

you look like Rasputing. For the record, there's there's there's more love in your eyes. Thank you, Sophie. That's very sweet of you. Know. This is Robert. So it's one of those things pop history is right, and that this guy really is as influential as as the popular you know, depictions make him say he's a huge part of the

regime and why a bunch of stuff happens. Um. It's also like wrong in some weird ways because he is like it always portrays him as this malevolent force and he gives a lot of bad advice, his advice, but he also is like one of the people saying like, you should probably stop being shitty to Jewish people. Um, you should probably not get into World War One. Now, that's why people don't like it's also a rapist. Um like there's he's not a good person. We'll do an

episode on Rasputin someday in the future. But I'm genuinely surprised you haven't. Well, people keep telling me I look like him, and it makes me you do not self conscious, thank you, Sophie. So for now, the cliffs notes are that he was a poor kid from the east of fucking nowhere who got in trouble for like stealing some ship and sleeping around, and he gets kicked out of the town he comes from. He becomes a priest, he sucks a bunch more people, and gradually he turns into

this like guru type cult figure. Um, he's kind of a cult leader. He's not quite what we recognized as a cult leader because he doesn't have like this group who have a shared identity, and that identity is like worshiping him, because like that would be too much for the Czar and Czarina, right, the Czar's kind of his own cult. You don't get to be a cult leader like we know of a cult leader in Russia in

this period. Um no, because that's there. Yeah, but he's kind of like cult cuckolding Bizar because the Czars kind of his follower. It's it's it's an odd situation. And again he follows, you know, in the footsteps of a Philippe who really very very conscientiously uh seasoned to the ground in front of or behind, so that this guy would have an easier time pulling one over on the

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

you should probably funk rescutin. And it works a lot at the time, I guess because because he keeps keeps getting word of mouth, you know, that's well yeah, um, he winds up having a making his first connection to the Romanov family through a Romanov named Nikolasha, who's like a cousin of the czar um And Nikolasha is kind of competent. He's one of he's a soldier, and he's one of the few Romanovs who actually like isn't just like doing that to dress up like he's not a

complete idiot when it comes to military matters. Um. He's known as the Terrible for his temper, and the Czar bres him in close to the family in the nineteen o five uprisings because he thinks he might need to appoint a dictator, Like it's going bad enough in nineteen o five. That is, like, I might need to make my cousin the dictator so that I don't have to take the stink on me of doing some of this ugly shit. It doesn't wind up, I mean, why not

have somebody with the nickname the Terrible. Hey, cousin the Terrible? I got this like problem now. Nikolasha again, competent, soldier, kind of a crazy person. He wanted to be a medieval night. He kept a court of dwarves around him. I think because he read that in a medieval storybook at some point and decided it sounded cool. Um. That's what he describes them as, a cult of a court of of dwarves. I think it's you know, um, it's

it's nineteen o six. Um. And for an example, I'm not I'm not judging the words at this point in time. You should judge the pretty nice thing to say in nineteen o six because another thing he's famous for is he gets really drunk at a party, wants and he wants to show off his favorite sword, and the way he does that is by using it to cut his pet dog in half. All Right, well, that's not I would say, I'm gonna go out on a that's not good.

It's not. That's probably worse than some questionable linguistic choices he's made. Um. Now, like most nobles in this period, he believes in what he described as the divine origin of Czarist power. He felt God had given Nicholas the Second some special secret strength um that would lead him out of that would help him lead Russia out of like its problems. So obviously he falls immediately for everything Russia's suns. Guy. I thinks he's a medieval night. He's

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

got any plugg doubles to plug? First? Yeah, like you mentioned before, I have a great show called Jeff Has Cool Friends, bi weekly interview show with all of my cool nerdy compatriots, and you can find that at picture on dot com slash Jeff May for early uncensored episodes with bonus content. I also have a great monthly show called Fine with Kim Crawl, among others. You can also check me out on Tom and Jeff. Watch Batman on the gameplay Unemployed Network. We gotta have you on one

of those episodes, Robert. Absolutely, I have. I have watched a Batman or two in my time. We sure we've watched the Law. We sure have. You can also check out you Don't Even Like Sports and Unpopular Opinion, both on the Unpops Network. You can find me on social media at hey there, Jeff Row on Twitter and Instagram. Don't find me on Facebook, don't don't be weird. Don't find him on Facebook, but find us talk and if he's not on TikTok, deep fake him. I'm not should

I be? I feel too old. I'm too old for tikto. I think everyone is. I think the twelve year olds TikTok or too old for TikTok. I'm too old. I'll be starting an account next week. Um. Speaking of next week, we'll be back tomorrow or Thursday whatever later this week with more episodes about the czar Um and I have a novel. You can find it in preorder it and get a signed copy by googling a k Press after the revolution. Um, so go do that. Do it now?

Do it that way? Now do it now? Okay, good, thank you for doing that now everybody bam