Behind the Bastards - Part Four: Tzar Nicholas II Was A Real Dick

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

Robert is joined by Jeff May for part four of our series on Tzar Nicholas II. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know who else was over with Tsar Nicholas II? By the end of this episode, all of the people in Russia. The people. They made their opinions on him very clear. This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast that is not particularly competently handled by me, but is competently handled by my producer Sophie, and our guest on this beautiful, beautiful day, Jeff May.

Jeff! It's me. Aren't you people sick of me yet? No. No, never get sick of you. But you know who I am kind of sick of? It's like Sophie said, Nicholas II of Russia. Nicholas Romanov, ready for him to be dead, huh?

We're all there. This needed to be a four-parter because you need to understand the position of the Bolsheviks, who also were like, kind of wish this guy wasn't around anymore. Yeah, like all we did is just talk about him. Yeah, they had to live under him. For a long time. Yeah. So I think maybe we can all understand why in this period after the Russo-Japanese war,

increasing numbers of people are like, boy, we probably had to kill that guy at some point, huh? Yeah, he should no longer have head. You know, he has a face that I would like to shoot in basement. Yeah, he's a man that no longer should be living and definitely not ruling large country. Unfortunately for Russia, they would not get better at picking people to lead large country. It's pretty much like, it hasn't been downhill since Nicholas, because as we've established, he was terrible, but it hasn't been uphill.

It's just kind of been like this flat plane of autographs. Russian history is a series of lateral moves. It really is. It is one of those things. You can try to parse out who you think was worst in objective terms, the USSR or Tsarist Russia, but it's like they weren't going from a good system to a bad system. They were like going from, alright, I've eaten a lot of food out of this drumster filled with poop. Now I eat some trashcan. See if better.

And no, it was not. It was not much better, you know? One of the joys of this episode for the listener, Jeff, is going to be hearing, you do a much better job of a Russian accent than I do. I don't know. I always think I'm good at stuff, and then I hear it later and I'm like, that sounds like shit. Yeah, that is also something Tsar Nicholas II probably could have identified with. I thought I was a lot better at running Russia than I turned out to be. I did not expect to have my head get cut off. Who knows? You win some, you lose some.

I mean, he kind of keeps his head. He just doesn't get to do anything else with it past a certain point. So one thing we didn't get to last time, but should probably talk about now, is that as a part of his attempt to put down the rebellion, Nicholas does give Russia a constitution on October 17th, 1905. So he cracks down brutally, kills a shitload of people, allows pogroms to occur across the country. But he does be like, alright, you get your duma. He agrees that you get to have, like, the Russian people get to have some representation in government now.

Alright, alright, fine, fine, we will let you speak. After I shoot thousand of you, you get to vote. It is good trade, good trade. Because he's the autocrat of Russia in the documents that like, announce this constitution. It's framed as the Tsar imposing civil rights on the people. Like, I am forcing you to have rights now. Better believe you are going to have rights. But they do get a bicameral parliament.

One of the houses of parliament has like, pretty full representation of the people who get to vote in kind of close to universal suffrage. And the other house is kind of like a house of lords situation, where there's a little bit less representation. But it's a lot more than people had before. It's one of those things, on objective terms, oh yeah, this is a big move forward towards democracy in Russia and towards like a more representative, you know, social and political system. But Nicholas doesn't really take it seriously.

Because he doesn't think he should have had to do this. Like, he hasn't been convinced this is a good idea. He just tried to bribe people with it. And he spends the rest, the next several years, basically any time things happen that he doesn't like, he holds the Duma and he like makes there be elections for a new one until he gets his way. And he's kind of plotting to get rid of it from day one. He is not, he isn't bought in on this as a good idea. Part of his comeback plan after the Civil War and the horrible disaster in fucking, with fighting Japan,

is to create a far-right anti-Semitic militia. He had kind of a far-right anti-Semitic militia in the Black Hundreds. But those weren't very organized. They did a lot of economic damage too. He wants to do a better job, you know? He wants his proud boys. I was going to say, yeah, also something that we have seen similarly. It is uncomfortable how many of the things in the story of Russia,

the Tsarist Russia falling apart are like, all right, well, that's not that unfamiliar. I kind of lived through that. We had one of those like the other day. Oh yeah, that's going on right now up in Canada. Okay. So this anti-Semitic militia he forms is called the Union of Russian People. And it was kind of a political and respectable equivalent to the Black Hundreds.

By 1906, it had 300,000 members. In the wake of the revolution, Nikki grew a lot more anti-Semitic, as did Alexandra, his wife, the Tsarina. Simon Montfiora writes, Nicholas's table talk was peppered with anti-Jewish banter, typical of many a European aristocrat of this era, telling his mother how a courtier amused us very much with funny Jewish stories, wonderfully good at imitating Jews,

and even his face suddenly looks Jewish. So that's pretty cringe. Yeah, that's one of those things where you're like, yeah, I don't know, man, this is even beyond the times. Some people are like, you know, it was the time, but even at this time, people would be like, man, it's not. No, he is. And like, again, a lot of his ministers are repeatedly,

like the sex-crazed rapist monk is like, cool it with the anti-Semitism. Maybe calm down a little bit. When Rasputin is like sitting you down, we need to talk about some of the things you're saying. People are starting to talk. You will not look good. Alexandra regularly would talk about, quote,

rotten, vicious Jews after, like, someone would say the name of someone which sounded like they might be Jewish. She would call out whenever like, so she would have all these arguments with her husband about, like, the minister say to do this and she doesn't like it, because the ministers were usually saying, you need to give a little more power to the people.

You need to not be so anti-Semitic, yada yada. And Alexandra would be like, no, fuck that. You've got to be powerful. Who said that? And he'll say someone's name and she'll be like, oh, that's got to be a Jew. Like, she's that kind of person. She sucks, too.

Yeah, that was going to say, I think you just say she sucks. Yeah, because of her, her ending is so tragic and her children absolutely did not deserve to be gunned down. Like, because of how sad the end is, she gets this kind of rap as being like, maybe a little bit histrionic but like basically a sympathetic person and like, she's trash, a terrible person.

She's a really, really bad human being. She's a bastard. Yeah, she sucks, really bad. Yeah, and racism was kind of, it was not, this is not, as we're talking about, this is not in line with things because Nicholas, Jewish people are, this isn't just like, he learned some slurs and like, he goes back to some jokes

that are kind of racy because he doesn't really think about it. Jewish people represent modernity to him and that's the thing he hates more than anything because modernity is the enemy of czarist power. He saw, he would say stuff like, the Englishman is a yid, like, which is a slur against Jewish people.

Like, to say that like, I'm like, yikes. Yeah, really fucked up. And the reason he's saying that is like, well, they're modern and they're successful and they're not like a monarchist state in the same way that I am. Like, people have power.

Like, they have modernized with the times and mechanized and like, that's got to be Jewish influence because that's the only reason people wouldn't want to live as literal slaves to czar. He's just like out of his mind, kind of, which is what being a king does to you. I think I'm gonna go on and on. Kind of rude.

Yeah, kind of a dick. He's kind of rude. In December of 1905, an anti-Semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which we have done several episodes about. Bad book, I would say. This gets published by the Petersburg Military District Press, probably under the orders of Nikolasha,

that guy who cut his dog in half. And Witt, who's his prime minister, the czar's prime minister, discovers that the interior ministry is printing up the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and like sending them out all throughout 1905 and 19, late 1905 and 1906 during these pogroms. And when he reports this to Nicholas, Witt writes,

quote, his majesty was silent and appeared familiar with all the details. So there's a lot of people who will allege that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which have a big role in the Holocaust and a bunch of, like all of the pogroms that occur in Russia during the Russian Civil War, was deliberately directed by the czar,

that he like approved it. It was definitely, again, there's a lot of kind of debate over the exact origin of it, but it was definitely spread by his secret police. In the last czar, author Edward Radzinski cite several people close to Nicholas II, who claimed that he did not create,

he did not order the creation of the Protocols, and he didn't believe they were real. They were the result of a secret police conspiracy within Russia, this like right-wing conspiracy that acted under the czar's nose. And in this telling of events, this conspiracy was actually angry at Nicholas because he didn't buy into the Protocols

of the Elders of Zion, and he refused to back as much violence as they wanted. I think this is kind of a lie, and I'll tell you why, because when Nicholas gets kicked out of office and he's sitting it alone in like a safe house with his family, one of the things he reads his daughters and son is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Yeah. So even if he didn't sign off on it, it's not exactly like he's like, yeah, don't listen to it. I will say I don't think he signed off on it specifically, and I don't think he ordered its creation. And the reason why is because that was a very competent job that did a lot of damage and was successful, and I don't think Nicholas could have been a part

of something successful. I mean, is that a deleted scene from Anastasia? Yeah, where he helps spread the protocol, where his soldiers spread the Protocols of the Elders of Zion throughout Europe. Yeah, it's a cartoon bat reading it off. Where Walras Buton is like, I don't know, man, it kind of seems like a little, like that might bite you in the ass.

Yeah, the bad guy breaks the fourth wall. We don't actually believe this. Yeah. Although to be fair, Walt Disney, if it was a Disney movie instead of, you know, I forget the company. Yeah, I have dream works or something. I thought it was Disney until this exact second. Yeah, many people do, but if it was a Disney movie,

that scene would have been in it. Yeah, yes, and that would have been most of the movie. Yeah. Rasputin would have been the villain, but for a different reason. Yeah, that would have been the thesis statement of the movies. So by the end of 1906, the royal couple had already met with Rasputin twice. He gets introduced by Nicolasha,

and they meet him the first couple of times at, like, functions with other nobles. Because again, he's kind of this, like, cult leader slash curiosity. So if you're having a party, bring Rasputin, because he's both this healer and this mystic, but he's also a peasant. And noble people are, like, fascinated by peasants.

There's a lot of, like, idolization of peasants. There's this ideal of the peasants as, like, this noble, like, salt of the earth, the soul of Russia, and they have this sacred bond with the Romanovs, this beautiful and, like, almost religious thing that the Romanovs believe in, that they have this, like, psychic connection to the peasantry. And all of the nobles feel this way.

And it's not that different from how a lot of multi-millionaire conservative thought leaders, like Ben Shapiro, will, like, pose with their F-150s and cowboy hats, even though it's like, Ben, you've never needed a truck. You've never needed a truck. Not once in your life have you needed a truck. Who are you helping move? Yeah. And you don't lift one bale of hay.

Ben, you've never needed a hat. You don't go outside that often. Yeah. And also, that hat looks like it's a 20-gallon hat on your head. You know, it's like Ronald Reagan going to his ranch, or George Bush going to the... And, like, I'm going to chop some firewood.

You know, I'm going to put up a fence or whatever. I will say this. At least with Bush, he grew up ranching. He had more experience with it than... But a lot of these guys do. And there's this idea that, like, this connects me to the regular people. And it's kind of like how nowadays,

if you're kind of a right-wing political leader, you're going to want a lot of appearances where you're going to, like, sit down with farmers and you can be, like, seen with them or, like, a minor. Oh, yeah. They don't... It's blue-collar tokenism is what it is. And there's a peasant tokenism

within the upper crack class in Russia. But also, they're all too scared to meet with real peasants because sometimes peasants like revolt and stuff, and they're gross. Have you ever... Yeah. I mean, you know, for whatever reason, obviously, occasionally,

I don't know, go to a bar in any... in your hometown. Yeah. A bar not the night before Thanksgiving in your hometown. And just take a look around. Yeah. Listen in.

Yeah. That's what these people don't want to do. So they want that connection with the peasants, but they don't want to, like, sit at a sports bar at 11.30 on November 5th and, like, hear the kinds of things people say at sports bars at 11.30 on November 5th. Oh, buddy.

Let me tell you. I've gone to my fair share of Boston bars to watch, like, Patriots games or something I'm sorry, what was that? You think we've heard some anti-Semitism today? Dude. The amount of times you can hear, like, the phrase, like, one of the good ones.

Yeah. I'm sorry, what was that? So this is... I mean, Rasputin is kind of this token peasant who the nobles... He shows up at these... And that's how the Romanovs meet him, is, like, look at this...

He's both this mystic and this healer, and he's also this peasant who represents this sacred connection that we Romanovs justify our rule by. So they meet him a couple of times, but the first really close meeting they have is in October of 1906 when Rasputin telegrams them. So you can tell already, even before he's in good with the family,

he's savvy enough and is, like, made enough of a connection at these parties that, like, he can telegram the Zarina directly. Yeah, that's like having a cell phone in the 80s. Yeah, exactly. He'd be like, what do you do? If Rasputin had been in the 80s, he would have had a massive car phone

and he would have done, I'm gonna guess, his body weight and cocaine every 48 hours. He would have been an entire season of Miami Vice. Yeah, and he would have died in a shootout with somebody. Yeah, there's a 0% chance that he does not die in a swimming pool. Like, absolutely, that would happen to him. Yeah, machined gun by the...

whichever cartel isn't sponsoring us. Yeah, so Rasputin telegrams the Zarinza arena and says, like, hey, I'm coming into town and I have a sacred icon for you, right? Basically, it's kind of like a picture of a saint in, like, precious metals and stuff. Icons generally in the Orthodox religion are just shitty paintings

because you weren't supposed to make anything look real. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that would be idolatry. He's got this shitty painting. He wants to give it to them. And they're like, okay, so they agree to see him and when he arrives, it just so happens that Alexei has, like, the Tsar's son

has, like, hurt himself and is bleeding. And this happens a bunch. Like, he'll, like, walk into a doorknob or some shit and then he'll bleed for 17 days. And you see him, like, folding up his pocket knife and putting it away. Oh, something happened to your kid. So Rasputin comes in and he sees that Alexei's bleeding

and he sees how scared the Romanovs are for their son and he talks with them for more than an hour and they take him into the nursery to pray over Alexei. And this visit, everything he says during it, leaves this profound impression on the Zarinza arena. They find him very comforting. And from this moment on Rasputin is increasingly difficult to separate from the royal family.

The Tsar will say to his ministers who get disturbed by the fact that, like, number one, it's a state secret that their son has hemophilia. People can't know that. But this dude who just, like, he'll spend a day with the royal family and then he'll go drinking and whoring in St. Petersburg and his ministers will be like, this is a problem.

You gotta get rid of this guy. And the Tsar will be like, look, I will deal with, like, any number of outrages caused by this dude doing whatever he wants to do if he can stop one, like, hysterical fit that my wife has. I mean, who among us? Am I right? I mean, seriously, like, not even like, I have both been the person in a relationship

with fucking PTSD and been in a relationship with somebody with PTSD. And man, if there was just a dude I could call and he would stop one or both of us from losing our minds for the better part of a day. Yeah, I probably would have told that dude some shit, you know? Like... Yeah, man, I mean, the wife whisperer,

step this guy come in and just fix the problem. It's both because it's not just, he's able to calm down the Tsarina. I think he is able to calm down the Tsar. Again, these are for all their faults. People who really love their kid and their kid is, like, they're traumatized by this. Like, seeing your son several times a year

nearly bleed to death, like, is a trauma. That's going to, like, damage you. And it also should be reminded that Rasputin is charming. Yeah, he's good at this. Yeah, like, you know, he's got a silver tongue. There's a reason he finds himself in the situations. He's smart. Yeah. He's charming. He fucks.

He fucks that. You know that? Crazy. He fucks. And it's also like, people shouldn't take this. He is, I think he is a grifter. I think he knows there's an extent to which he's a con man. But I also think he recognizes that, like, well, sometimes it is a good thing just to be able to calm people down when they're freaking out,

especially, like, sick and scared children and, like, their moms. And I can see how this guy could be like, well, actually, I'm doing a good thing here. Like, these people are need me. And they kind of do. Like, that's the thing. He's not... He is a grifter. He's not grifting them. They're really getting value out of this.

He is in a lot of ways. He's like a therapist. Which don't exist at that point in time. Yeah, that's the closest thing. Yeah. Is the Russian, the turn of the century version of Miss Cleo. Yeah. And he's also, it's worth noting, not really that bad an influence on the Tsar and Tsarina.

He will later on give them some really stupid advice, but, like, the Tsar comes up with worse advice on his own, for himself, you know? Like, this is not a man who was making great decisions consistently before Rasputin. So, one of the things he's able to do is he's really able to, like, calm down Alexi. They notice that Alexi seems to recover more quickly

from his bleeding episodes when Rasputin is around. And he's great with the daughters, too. Like, they all love him. They'll talk to him. They confide in him. He brings them gifts. Montfior, Simon Montfior, notes that Grigory Rasputin had a way of, quote, making even Tsar's feel they were privileged to be in his company. And from what I can tell, the way he did this with Nicholas

was by playing on the fact that the Romanovs have this belief in, like, the sacred union of Tsar and the peasants. This is the center of Nikki's concept of the universe. The fact that, um... Like, this is the center of Nikki's concept of the universe, that he has this bond with the peasants. But also, the government that he runs spends billions a year making sure that he's never

in direct contact with the peasants. So, getting to spend time with Rasputin, who he would regularly call a real Russian peasant, that's how he would introduce him to other rich people, was like... Like, he's a transformer or something? Yeah, yeah. He's like, well, we got the real thing here. Well, look at this, we got a real peasant here.

This is intoxicating to him. Because Rasputin's like, of course I have a mystical connection with you, my Tsar. Of course, like, I and every other peasant, we really love you. And that's what Nicholas wants to hear. He doesn't want to feel like, well, I just had to kill 15,000 people to secure my reign. He wants to hear that, like, no, no, no,

I'm a peasant and trust me, all the peasants love your ass, man. Yeah, man, you haven't been at the peasant meetings because, you know, obviously you can't be, but we... It is U247, bro. I mean, there's fan clubs, we have merch. There's people have you on T-shirts? Oh, yeah. And yeah, it's cool.

So, he's both able to be like, this living embodiment of the connection the Tsar has to the peasants of Russia. And he's also able to convince the Tsar that he has special powers given to him by God, which are going to save the Tsar's heir. So, I think Nicky felt on some level that, like, God had sent this magical peasant to him

to, like, as a reward for killing all those people, kind of. You get that feeling. And you know who else will reward you for killing people, Jeff? Some very interesting sponsors, I'm guessing. That's right. All of our sponsors. Sophie? What? Yeah. You know, in particular, just send them proof of the crime,

and they will send you a free meal box. You can win a free William refrigerator, Perry, with enough flag points. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, get on down to b*****g.com and also commit murder. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI

had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not in the good and bad-ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time,

and then, for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine,

I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost.

This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus, it's all made up?

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Is your bloodlust sated? Yeah, you've all killed one person and gotten your free meal box. Have you slaked your thirst for blood? One of the things that all behind the bastards fans know is that when you draw your machete, you can't sheath it again

until it's tasted the blood of an enemy whose death gets you a meal box from... I mean, how else are we going to eat? How else are we going to eat? Well, cannibalism. But as Rasputin grew closer to the royals, their ministers and the family grew to hate him. So, like the other Romanovs, like the cousins and whatnot, his uncles and shit, they don't like this guy because they keep getting edged out by him.

The ministers don't like Rasputin because they're like, he's not listening to us, he's just listening to this. This dude who, by the way, smells horrible and fucks all their wives, right? That's the rest. I don't pay that I'm going to fuck all your wives. Yeah, no, we've seen that guy. We've seen him in college. He had to truly, he played a didgeridoo.

And he fucked everybody's wives. Oh, yeah. And that's Rasputin. So, there's a lot of reasons he's unpopular with the people around the Romanovs. And despite all this, his council becomes increasingly influential. He's generally anti-war, probably because he's a pretty smart guy

and he recognizes like, I got a good thing going here. This dude's not good at anything. If he gets into a war, he might wind up getting overthrown. And then where's Rasputin going to be? Also, Rasputin, lover, not a fighter. I think we've established. Yeah, definitely a lover, not a fighter. Although, I got to say, based on some of the stories,

probably would have been a good boxer. He could take hits. I feel like we learned that very specifically. He could take some punishment. The man's got a strong chin. Yeah, the real fight of the century would have been Grigori Rasputin and Joe Frazier. Yeah, right.

I thought the Klitsch goes are just the, they just inherited that Russian steel jaw. So he, yeah, I should note something here probably about the kind of parents that Nicholas and Alexandra were. They get a lot of credit historically, because again, they did love their kids. They put their kids sometimes before the lives of millions and millions of Russians.

But if you're, and so, yeah, if you are raiding totalitarian dictators as parents, he's probably top of the list. He's definitely a better father than Saddam, better father than Stalin, better father than Castro, better father than, you know, I don't know, Bashar al-Assad's probably very...

Was Saddam a bad father? Yeah, I mean, his children, one of his sons repeatedly murdered people at parties with like machine gun, the women dancers and stuff during like Drunken Bacchanals. That's not great parenting. Was that Uday or? That was, I think, I think that was Uday.

Yeah, I get him mixed up sometimes. They were great people. My friend was in the Marines, and he sent back this photo of him holding like a gold AK. Yeah. And he was just like, we went into the palace, look what we got. There were a lot of those around at the time.

Yeah, there sure were. So, yeah, they're probably better parents than most dictators, but he and his wife were not great parents. And I'm going to read a quote from the Romanovs that I think makes that clear. The Empress concentrated on baby sweet Alexi, who was escorted by two Cossack bodyguards at all times,

while she treated her daughters, known by the collective acronym O-T-M-A, or OTMA, for Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, as a single entity, dressing them in identical clothes, or when the older two could no longer wear youthful dresses in pairs, the big two and little two. The girl shared rooms and twos, slept on hard beds,

and suffered cold baths every morning, so they grew up without a trace of hoture. Their only luxury was a single pearl and diamond for their birthday, and each had their own favorite coutier scent. The family, especially the girls, embraced photography, taking thousands of family shots with their box brownie cameras,

and Anastasia even pioneered the selfie, sitting on a chair before a mirror, holding a camera at her waist. So that's kind of weird, right? It seems unnecessary to give them all the cold showers and shit. Yeah, and to give them a shitty, it's like a shitty one unit. Yeah. Man, cold baths? Yeah, cold baths, which I don't know

that the Tsar and Tsarina are taking. And just also, well, the son is his own person. All of our daughters are collectively one child. Otma, that's a little messed up. That is, especially because you could make it moat. Yeah, and there's, Alexi, as he grows up, becomes kind of, there's some quotes that he's kind of, he's pretty spoiled. He doesn't sound like a pleasant kid to be around.

I'm not going to go into detail on that, because he is a small child who's sick his whole life and then gets murdered. So I don't really want to like dunk on Alexi Romanov. That kind of seems fucked up, because he had a bad enough run of it. But I don't think they're very good parents. I just think they're not abusive parents.

Not to everyone, but... Yeah, I mean, to their people... But not to no one either. But yeah, they're just kind of like weird and sort of shitty to their daughters, but not in like a mean way. I don't know, it's uncomfortable to me. Referring to four girls as a single person to save time

is kind of not great. It's emblematic of a future problem. Yeah, yeah, that didn't get to happen because Bolsheviks had access to handguns. But it probably, I don't know, there probably would have been some fascinating therapy sessions if these people had all like gotten to live out their lives. So the Romanov girls were as much as possible

pretty normal kids for their socioeconomic status. Alexei didn't really get that chance because again, he's dying most of his childhood. He's gonna be in bubble wrap. Yeah, like anything could do it. Like he could fuck, again, he could like walk into a doorknob and that could be the end of him. So it's a rough childhood for little Alexei,

which is why we're not gonna dunk on him too much for growing up kind of spoiled. It would be hard not to spoil your son if he was always on death's door. Yeah, and also the rightful heir to a sixth of the world's land mass. Yeah. A big part of Rasputin's appeal is that he was able to convince Nicholas II

that Alexei was going to live long and inherit the realm. He would say stuff like, Olya, Olya was what Rasputin called Alexei, will triumph because he's not an ordinary earthly being. There's never been such a czar. The look in his eyes is similar to Peter the Great's. I mean, Peter the Great was dead and Alexei was half dead. I guess that's part of it.

That's fair. There's that obsession with Peter the Great. You either loved him or hate him. It's the thing that you can, if you're trying to get like the czar drunk on the possibility of the future, you try to convince him that his son is gonna be a new Peter the Great because then Peter the Great was a strong czar

and he also didn't die at age 13 or whatever. He was a giant. He was a big man. He was never going to be a big man. No. Bullard, he was never gonna end up a man. Yeah, that is one of our classic Vladimir Ilyich Lenin spoilers.

So Rasputin was also capable of calming down the increasingly anxiety-riddled hypochondriac czarina. Nicholas needed this because in 1907 there's another attempt at overthrowing his government. Now this one occurs through the Duma and it's an attempt to democratically take more power for the people from the czar. We might call this the people of Russia being like,

hey, maybe we shouldn't have an absolute ruler anymore because it doesn't seem to work very well. Let's try and change this a little bit. But Nicholas... Yeah, Nicholas dissolves the government. He arrests all of the socialist elected leaders he can get his hands on. He destroys the social democratic party through purges.

Now Nicholas is prime minister at the time. A guy named Stolipin begs him to allow more democratic reforms and lift restrictions placed upon the Jews. Stolipin is the guy who's like, hey, when the czar is ranting about Jews being behind the revolution one day, Stolipin's like, well, I think if I was Jewish and had to live under your government, I would be throwing bombs at your men too.

He's one of these occasional rational humans who wanders into the czar's orbit. Yeah, and just drops a little piece of information, but it's just for the wrong century. Yeah, it's not going to get through the czar's head. Yeah, now's not the time. Yeah, Stolipin sees another revolution coming. And again, he's kind of trying to head it off.

He's rational enough to be like, well, the czar is not going to wind up. He's not going to be able to be the absolute ruler of Russia forever. But we can probably work out a situation where he has some power and his family keeps their wealth and influence and doesn't get murdered in a basement. But Nicky is not going to have that shit. Nicholas tells... Not on my watch, he says.

Not on my watch. Keep my family alive, not if I'm in charge. Yeah. Nicky tells Stolipin, quote, an inner voice keeps insisting more and more that I don't take this decision. So far, my conscience has not deceived me. I intend to follow its dictates.

The heart of the czar is in God's hands. So be it. So he's saying like... It's pronounced Soviet. Yeah, that's... What's coming is Soviet. Yeah, he's like... He's like, me keep my watch?

Not on my watch. And he's also saying like, because I don't want to give up power and because God put me here, it means God doesn't want me to give up power, which some could call circular logic. Yeah. That is... Right there, that's royalty 101. Yeah, it is.

They do that shit. They pull that shit off all the time. Sometimes you get magna-carded because of it, and sometimes you don't. That is the way it works. Sometimes you feel like a magna-carder. Sometimes you feel like having your family get massacred in the basement because you got everyone roped into World War One,

which is what we're about to talk about. Oopsie. So, yeah, and that is Nicholas... It would probably be fair to say, Nicholas does not have as much guilt in starting World War One as Kaiser Wilhelm, who's probably the one dude who gets the most blame. Yeah. I mean, you could...

Obviously, there's history involved in that, but I mean, you can... That's all the way back to the Franco-Prussian War. Sure, it's one of those things. Blaming any individual ruler is almost like... Because they're all locked into these systems, these systems of alliances and grievances and promises to back one another up

that everyone knew was going to end this way. France is so mad that they got their dicks pushed in the dirt and then to then have the Palace of Versailles be where they signed the armistice of the treaty. That's so insulting that you know that there's gonna... I mean, they literally called it la revanche. Yeah, exactly. And it's one of those things like...

There's a lot to say about the decisions these guys made that made World War One happen, but if it had been a totally different set of rulers, it could have happened 10 years earlier, 10 years later. I don't know that it's fair to say it had to happen because they did pull their fat out of the fire a bunch of times before this. There's like shit in 1908, 1909 or whatever,

like a bunch of different things. This almost happens. In 1908, there's this... Nicholas helps arrange a revision of this treaty with Austria that creates fears of influence over the Balkans. So like Austria gets to be influential over this... Because the Balkans have been controlled by the Ottomans for a while, right?

And they've kind of lost control in this period. And like, who's gonna wind up in charge or different chunks of the Balkans is this big... This thing that keeps threatening to cause a giant European war. So Nicky makes this like treaty with the Austrians that splits up influence over the Balkans. And then there's this whole conflict breaks out with the Serbs, who the Tsar considers to be basically Russians.

And the Serbs want to take Bosnia. And the Austrians are like, well, no, this is like part of our sphere of influence. And like, we don't want you to do that. And so basically this deal that Nicholas has made over the Balkans with Austria goes sour almost immediately. And Austria and Russia very nearly go to war in 1908, which would have been a World War I situation.

All of those alliances were still in place. So it's one of those things where like, they're right up to the shooting before this kind of thing gets pulled off. They're playing Jenga. Yeah, exactly. It's just like, at some point in time, the tower is going to go down.

It's just, when's it going to go? Yeah, exactly. And the reason, the big reason why it doesn't go this time is that Russia is in the process of re-arming and reorganizing its military after the revolution. And Nicky's advisors are like, basically like, we don't have the toys you want. We just got our asses kicked.

You don't want to get into a European war right now. We couldn't handle Japan. Like, give us some time. We couldn't handle one island that we were racist about. Yeah. We couldn't handle one island we were racist about who had to ship troops in from overseas. And you want to start a war with all of Europe.

Like, no, that's not going to work out, buddy. And Nicholas does take the good advice in this time. They back down. But there's this understanding that like, well, it's going to happen. Eventually, it's going to happen. So some things do go better for Nicky in the years leading up to the war.

He starts to appoint some more competent ministers, a guy named Sukumlanov, who re-arms the military and reorganizes it and does get it into much better shape. Russia starts to get some more money. They like pay for this re-arming because they have this run of really good harvests and this railway system that had been one of the few good things

that Nicholas and his dad put through as they massively expanded the railways in Russia. And in this period, right after the Russo-Japanese war, that starts to bring a bunch of money. So things are going better domestically for Nicky at this period, but there's also constant scandals with Rasputin. Letters between he and the Tsar

and he and one of his daughters, Leek, and particularly the letters with Rasputin and Alexandra. They really seem sexual. They're like talking, but like, I want to lay my head on you. I can't wait until you're back. And that's obviously like the rumors. That seems mildly scandalous.

Yeah. And it's unlikely. Rasputin fucked damn near everybody, but he was also pretty smart. And I think you would know like, well, that's the one thing you don't want to do. Never put it in writing. No.

Well, he did put it in. Yeah, he wrote letters to her, but I don't think he would have like, that's like too much of a risk to have sex with the Tsarina because that's going to piss off the Tsar. You can keep the Tsar going forever and you can fuck everybody else's wife. But if you fuck the Tsarina also,

what if she gets angry at you, right? It's grift going. You don't want to mess that up with starting a relationship. I don't think he's that dumb. I don't believe that Rasputin and the Tsarina actually did anything, but a lot of people believe they do in this period. Yeah.

I mean, the rumors happen. Yeah. And it's like, it just kind of like fuels the anti-Zarist, you know, movement that like, okay, now like this monk is in and who knows what kind of decisions the Romanops are making because the Tsar is being cuckolded by this monk and his wife's German.

We don't like that either. Yada, yada, yada. And while all this is going on, so he gets, Rasputin gets kicked out for a while, right? Like these letters leak and the Tsar does send him away because he gets embarrassed by this. But then in late 1912, Alexei gets sick again and it's serious enough that the priests

do last rites on the little boy. They really think he's right about to die. So the Tsar and Tsarina get desperate and they telegram Rasputin. And he responds saying, the little one will not die and advises them not to let the doctors bother Alexei too much. And Alexei recovers.

And so obviously that brings Rasputin back into the family, right? He just saved it. There he is. Ah, get back in here, you hairy son of a bitch. He does seem to have an ability to like heal this kid. Like people at the time can't really explain it. There's a number of theories.

Probably the most likely is that he would tell them not to send the doctors back in and the doctors were prescribing Alexei blood thinners without knowing what they were doing and that's not good for a kidney. If your blood doesn't clot, you don't want blood thinners? You want a blood thicker. Yeah, you want to put some like pectin up in that, you know?

Really, really thicken that blood up a little bit. Pour a little bit of cornstarch in it, you know? Give that kid a cornstarch IV. That'll fix him. But so there's a theory that like maybe all it's as simple as like Rasputin doesn't trust doctors and the doctors are not good at what they're doing in this period and so keeping the doctors away helps him recover.

It's possible. You know what'll help? An apple a day. An apple a day? Is that a blood thicker? That is. I mean, I don't know how many apples he eats. He does eat a lot of guava jam that's brought by John Hercules.

John Hercules. They're black friend. John Hercules coming back with the guava jam to paste up those wounds. Yeah, it's fucking amazing. Get a little guava jam in there. Yeah. So in 1914, things are broadly speaking

doing better for Nicholas II. The economy of Russia is in great shape. The military has reformed itself to a significant degree. It's been going to the gym. He's been going to the gym, you know? He's lost some weight. He's a little less depressed. He got a calm subscription too.

So he's on like a good level. Yeah, yeah. He started taking CBD just like at night, but it's really helped with his sleep patterns. He's just in a good, he's just in a good place. And it's actually like, this is a period of time in which it kind of seems to guys like Lenin that czarism has won.

Lenin writes like these letters where he's despairing in this period that like, well, we almost had them in like 1905, but it seems as if they've beaten us and they've successfully, you know, it's going to keep going another 300 years. Like he's really like kind of heartbroken in this period about Lenin, buddy, don't give up. Yeah, don't give up, man.

You're right. You're almost there. Yeah. You're on the cusp, baby. You're right there. Yeah. You are going to get to do some real, real shit very soon. Yeah.

There's one of the things that disappoints Lenin. There's this big worker strike in I think 1914 in one region that gets put down by like shooting 150 people to death. And all of the socialists in Russia are like, oh, we're going to have another 1905. We're going to have another revolution. This is going to like spark things off.

But nothing happens because everyone else is like, things are going well enough for the rest of Russia that people are like, well, I didn't know those people that he shot. So I'm not going to stir things up. Yeah. Next time, don't get shot. Yeah.

Speaking of not getting shot, you know who sucked it? Not getting shot. Who would that be? The Archduke of Austria. God, at least we got a medium good band's name out of it. Oh, which one? Franz Ferdinand. Oh, right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Of course. Yeah. It's a history reference.

You know what? Ads are about to happen. But instead of listening to these ads, just put this, put this on mute for a couple of minutes. Cue up some Franz Ferdinand. Just just rock out for a little bit. You know? Yeah.

Yeah. Have some of you time. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice system. They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys.

As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns.

He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. Nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band

called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space

with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price.

Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus, it's all made up? Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! Did you enjoy that 2000 aughts era alt rock? I tell you, nothing gets me up like Franz Ferdinand. I liked them. I enjoyed them when they were out. I have no issues with them. You know who did have an issue with Franz Ferdinand? Kevrolo Prinzepp.

Prinzepp and the Black Hand, I believe. Which he expressed via bullets on June 15, 1914. This makes everybody big mad. This is a real problem for Europe. And part of the problem is that the Black Hand, as you noted, the terrorist group this guy's a member of, had kind of been trained by Serbian military intelligence. This is like a historical Rube Goldberg machine.

That's literally the coin going in the slob. The tiny dominoes start falling and they end with the entire modern world. Yeah, exactly. This is a problem for Nicholas because Serbia is kind of like a satellite state of Russia. The slobs are like cousins to the Russians. The southern slobs are cousins to the Russians.

We have this responsibility to the Serbs. So his government is giving aid to the Serbian government. And the Serbian government trains this terrorist group that then murders the Archduke of Austria, which is allied to Germany. And so things start to go awry. The Kaiser, being a very smart man, gives Austria a blank check to respond to Serbia.

Russia is forced to be like, well, we'll defend Serbia. And France is obviously forced to say, well, we'll come in on your side. And the British are like, well, we don't want to get involved. But the Germans say, well, then we're going to invade fucking, oh, what is it, the fucking Belgium in order to get to France and fuck France up faster. And the English are like, well, if you invade Belgium,

then we're going to get involved in the war. And pretty soon, you know, things get ugly. And France is just sitting here like, come on, we've been waiting for this. This is going to go great for us. There are too many Frenchmen already. We have been waiting for this for like, what, 30 years now or something like that.

Come on. We'll smack your bitch up. And that is, there's a lot of excitement among some people for this. Nicky kind of checks out for a large chunk of the lead up to World War One. He's on his yacht. This is the summer.

This is when he goes yachting. So he's like. Classic Nicky. Classic Nicky. He's on his fucking boat when this is all going down. That's so Nicky. From the Romanovs, quote, Nicholas's decision to remain closeted there is strange.

Even with his new phones, he was still too removed. At the great test of his hard won autocracy, the autocrat was barely present, leaving the initiative to Sasanov and the generals. Now, none of these generals or ministers are like all that good. His Stolypin, the guy who was like pretty smart, who was his minister for a while gets killed by a bomb. Again, this happens a lot.

Oh, no, he gets shot to death. He gets bombed, but survives and then gets shot to death. There's constant terrorist attacks against all of Azar's men. You mix them up sometimes. But he doesn't have a lot of, Nicky doesn't have a lot of good people around him. The generals want to partially mobilize. Well, some of them want to mobilize,

some of them want to partially mobilize. Nicky agrees to partially mobilize because he doesn't want to like commit fully. Because again, he's kind of like this milk toast dude. He doesn't want to, he doesn't really like, he's never, he's the guy who will get drunk and talk shit, but he doesn't want to throw punches. But then his generals will say,

we can't just partially mobilize. We have to fully mobilize. We can't fight Germany without a full military. So then he'll say, we're going to do a full mobilization. And then his cousin, the Kaiser, calls him and threatens him. And then he reverses again and goes back to a partial mobilization. But then his generals are like, are you going to really take that shit?

And then he mobilizes the army. And yeah, as the situation grows more serious and things get closer and closer to war, the Tsar gets overcome with panic and anxiety. Rasputin telegrams his wife, who sends this message to her husband. This is Rasputin talking to the Tsar in Tsarina. A terrible storm hangs over Russia.

Disaster, grief, murky darkness and no light. You are the Tsar father of the people. Don't allow the madmen to triumph and destroy themselves and the people. Yes, they'll conquer Germany, but what of Russia? Never for all time has a land suffered like Russia, drowned in her own blood. Great will be the ruin.

Grief without end. Classic. Which kind of make you think he might have had a little bit of a beeline to something. He's got, he's no extra dom in that shit. Yeah, that's not a bad description of the next decade or so. Well, a couple decades of Russian history. To be fair though, that's pretty much a good forecast

for most of Russian history. If you know your Russian history, a good forecast is grief without end. Yeah, grief without end. Storm clouds are arising. Well, yeah. They've been here for quite some time now. Yeah.

So long story short, we have a World War I. Now, Nicholas gets, you know, some blame for that because of his decisions. But obviously there's not great options here. If he'd abandoned Serbia, there'd probably would have been rioting because it would have pissed off the Russian right wing. But a lot fewer Russians would have died

if he had abandoned Serbia. That part is... That does happen with war. If you're not in a war, generally less of your population dies. Now, the war doesn't go well. There's a couple early victories against the Austrians, but then the Germans get involved.

And boy howdy, the Russian military just cannot go toe-to-toe with the Germans in this period. Like, I know that the Germans have an interesting history. You know, their win-loss record isn't particularly great, but they generally have a formidable military. Yeah, pound for pound. They're pretty good at fighting. And Russia learns this very quickly

to the loss of several hundred thousand Russian soldiers. Russia's like, those helmets with point on head, they look very silly. And then they just stab them with their helmet point. Mm-hmm, yeah. Which, yeah. It was the primary German tactic. It was extremely effective.

Yeah, it was very like, you know, Looney Tunes-esque variation of fighting. Yeah, the pointy helmet and the machine gun really changed warfare forever. You know what it is? They saw the human cannonball one time at a circus and they were like... That honestly isn't that far off.

From some of the things the Kaiser did. So, Nicky, when this war starts to go badly, does the thing that he does when his own decisions go badly and he starts firing and reshuffling generals and ministers, eventually he decides the only way to turn this desperate situation around is for the most competent man in Russia to take personal control of the army.

And of course, in Nicky's view, the most competent man in Russia is Nicholas II. So, he... This is gonna go great. He'd wanted to do this in 1905 in the war against Japan and had been argued down and there's a wonderful counterfactual like, what if Nicky had sailed off with that fleet?

You know, wound up at the bottom of the sea. Could have saved everybody a lot of grief. Yeah, he's in there in his yacht. Everybody else is in their massive military. They're big boats and everything. It's a big fleet and then just some little schooner right next to it, his yacht. Not just... Daddy. Daddy.

So, yeah, he gets his way and yeah, part of why he's convinced that this is a good idea, because again, his ministers are this time like, you don't want to do this. It's a bad idea for you to take... You don't really know how to do anything with the military. Like, you shouldn't be handling this at all.

But Rasputin is like, well, yeah, absolutely, you've got to be there. You know, you're God's chosen vessel. You've got to pick the people that are like in charge or just like... We've talked about this, man. He's taking personal command of the army. Why? Oh, good.

The dude who fucked my wife said so. Yeah. Oh, that guy that cucked me last week. Cool. That smelly dude over there with the lice in his beard. I mean, he is actively fucking my wife right now as we're talking about this. Just making eye contact with me. Yeah, this pre-Manson asshole over here

is just banging out my wife, telling you to go to war. Everything is going to go poorly, Nick. Yeah. Nick, Nick, stop it. Somebody needs to have an intervention with him. Nick does the thing that Nick does his entire life, which is not listen to anyone who knows anything. And I'm going to quote what comes next

from a write-up in HistoryNet. When he left to take up his new heavy responsibility, as he described it, Alexandra praised him for having fought this great fight against the overwhelming consensus of advisors and commentators for your country and thrown alone and with bravery and decision. You bravely, it's like you've got an electrician over at the house like rewiring something and your wife's like,

what, you just letting him get in there? Why don't you do that? Nicky, go grab a fork and stick it in that socket. Fight the battle against this electrician. You should be rewiring the house. Yeah. Everyone's against you, but I believe you can fix this. Um, yeah, it's great.

She continued, Never have they seen such firmness in you before. God appointed you at your coronation. He placed you where you stand and you have done your duty. Our friends' prayers arise day and night for you to heaven and God will hear them. It is the beginning of the great glory of your reign. He said so and I absolutely believe it.

I mean, you shouldn't be drinking your own Kool-Aid. Yeah, and Rasputin is just pouring that for him. Like, oh yeah, this is, this is what God wants. Now, Nicholas believed his presence would inspire peasant soldiers. The quote devoted souls who he believed loved him. Initially, this seemed to be the case because again, there is this like attitude that like, well, the nobles are shit, but the czar is good.

We do like the czar loves us. He just doesn't know about the fucked up shit. So like at first when he shows up in, you know, hanging out around the army, meeting the troops, like this is kind of has a magical effect on, so it's really motivating, you know? Like even the generals who are critical about this, about him taking command are like,

well, the soldiers do, this really does make them happy. So yeah, this really does like have an initially positive impact, but it has this negative effect too, which is that before he takes command, if things go bad on the battlefront, it's some generals fault, it's some nobles fault, it's not his fault. Now everything that happens is his personal fault.

He's all you, baby. Yeah, it's all you. That's the thing when you take control. He wants the ball. He's like, you know, he's like Jordan. Give me the ball. Yeah. Me the ball.

I'm going to continue with that quote from HistoryNet. The czarinas warped intrigues to strengthen the czar's resolve were part of her campaign to make her husband a more forceful person. An essentially timid man, a picture of loving tenderness in their domestic life, Nicholas tended to stutter when facing unpleasantness. His wife's shining ambition was to persuade him to rule

like Ivan the Terrible. The emperor, unfortunately, is weak, she had told the British ambassador when he questioned the decision to change command, but I am not and I intend to be firm. Okay, is this really the moment that you want to have your courage found? Yeah.

This might be the moment to be like putting some of them gyms in a lockbox in Switzerland to get the family out of the country. Yeah, maybe, maybe we'll do the next, but maybe like a small uprising is what we want. Yeah. You dip your toe, you don't dive in the deep end. No, no, you don't dive in the deep end with like,

you don't want to start your career as a military commander in the middle of World War I. Yeah. In the middle of something called the Great War. The Great War, maybe not a time for the amateurs to like get up in there. Again, recently you got your, your ass beat by an island that you were racist against.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think you're gonna like, yeah. And by the way, Japan, part of the world. Yeah. Part of the world. Who you have now started a fight with. You have now warred with.

Yeah. So in her daily letters and telegrams, Alexandra repeatedly urged her husband to be stern. She seemed to think that if he was displeased and enraged instead of gentle when his generals failed and got a lot of men killed, then they'd lead better. She's like, well, when they lose this battle and 100,000 men die, you're not being mean enough to them.

Because that is the problem. You know, they're just not. It's clearly the problem. Yeah. For what it's worth, a lack of confidence and decisiveness was one of Nikki's many shortcomings as a war leader. He had one really excellent general, a guy named Brusilov, who several times carried out

offensives that would beat back the Austrians and like open, they would like win such a big victory that it would open opportunities to attack the Germans and maybe even make some major gains. Cause like, oh, this Austrian army just collapsed and now we can get around the flank of this German army. And every time Brusilov does this, Nikki fails to give him reinforcements

cause he sucks at everything. Cause he's bad at everything. I think he's, yeah, he's, he's, he's bad at all of the stuff he tries. Yeah. I think it's important to say. Yeah. And he's unfortunately trying a lot right now.

Brusilov later blamed a lot of this on the royal attendants around Nicholas who quote, failed to use the most decisive measures, including even force to dissuade Nicholas II from assuming those duties for which he was so ill-suited by reason of his ignorance, inability and utterly flaccid will. I do like the idea of somebody just kicking the shit out of him

to get him to wake the fuck up. Brusilov's looking back at the guys in the Kremlin, the other, the dudes in the capital and being like, you should have fought him to keep him away from the army. Like you really, literally should have fought him. Yeah. It's a kick his ass. Someone needs to hit him and I cannot,

but he has cousins. He's not going to kill you if you punch him. Stop this shit. So Nicky generally would lose himself in the day-to-day tasks of being in a military camp rather than actually commanding, which is probably not for the worst. He loved watching his soldiers and their splendid uniforms

march around quote, the Supreme Commander's view of the war during that Supreme national crisis was of maps with brightly colored pins indicating troop positions and have picked regiments, some amazingly beautiful and astounding. He enthused, whirling in review. His stavka, that's his command post, stay became an enlarged version of summer maneuvers.

The czar much enjoyed the reviews. The reviewers were so tidy, cleanly and well-dressed and equipped such as I have seldom seen even in peacetime. Truly excellent. At least one plan, yeah. Strong Kim Jong-il vibes on this motherfucker at this point in time. Yeah, while actively losing a war. Again, it can work if nobody's fighting a war with you

because you've got nukes, you know. It doesn't work so well when the Germans are 16 feet away. Yeah, it's going to be rough. There's at least one case where a plan defensive is delayed because he wanted to review the Imperial Guard units that were going to take part. He wanted to see them march in front of him. But he couldn't do that because the czarovich,

his son was bleeding and so like, well, we can't have the offensive until they get to see these guys march and I got to take care of my kids. So like, can we push this two weeks? I need a post blood parade before war can happen. Yeah. Not great as military things go. While the czar is playing with his toy soldiers,

his real soldiers are dying in titanic numbers. One and a half million Russians would die fighting in the war and another million are still missing. So, you know, like something like that. We haven't found them yet. Two or three million dead, conservatively probably. Another four million would be wounded. More than 1.3 million civilians also perished.

The czar was mostly focused on the fact that he missed his wife during this period of time. So that's great. Again. I miss my wife. Good to love your wife. Not when you've just gotten like five million-ish people killed. Maybe ignore your wife.

You have bigger problems. I'm sorry, but you do. I mean, who among us hasn't accidentally cost anywhere from three to five million lives just because you were... I mean, one time. But like, I was young, you know. Yeah, we were all in our 20s at one point, right? Yeah.

We all have that sowing your wild oats period. So when he visited field hospitals, Nicholas would hand out huge racks of medals to his injured soldiers. He was convinced they found this inspiring. One of his generals felt otherwise, noting that the czar, quote, did not know how to speak with the troops

and thus tended to just not say anything. So he was just kind of mutely handing medals to dying men and they didn't... They were not inspired by this. They were like, oh, this seems weird. Maybe this guy shouldn't be in charge. Yeah. Does this mean I can stab you with this medal?

Yeah. I've lost my leg, sir. There's this one wild moment where there's this... Again, one of these few generals he has who's competent general Alexiev. He's not a nobleman. He's actually like a normal person who just rose to command by dint of being good at things.

And Alexandra fucking hates him because during this whole war, while like millions are dying, she keeps trying to like give noble boys who say nice things to her regiments to command, she's like writing, Nicky, like, could you give this man control of this regiment? I think he'd really appreciate it.

And oftentimes like Rasbutin is like advising her of like, oh yeah, give this regiment to this guy, probably because he wants something. And general Alexiev is like, no. And tells the czar like, you can't do this. We're fighting a war. Your wife doesn't get to determine who runs these military units from the fucking capital.

She doesn't know anything about this. And Alexandra starts writing and when Alexiev finds out that Rasbutin is behind a lot of this, he starts telling the czar like, you can't listen to this dude and you have to stop sending letters home across this vast expanse of country with military secrets in them.

It could end badly. Please stop doing this. Please stop doing this. Alexandra writes her husband that any person quote, so terribly against our friend who's Rasbutin, couldn't possibly be blessed by God. And when he gets cancer in 1916, she celebrates telling her husband

that God had sent him cancer for disrespecting Rasbutin. He's like the one dude keeping your military of love. Yeah, like there are two competent guys here and you've shat on both of them because they don't like your friend to the priest who fucks everybody's wife. Now, by the end of that year, Nicholas is thoroughly broken by the realities of war

and by his own incompetence. One of his noble officials noted that he seemed quite apathetic and was no longer seriously interested in anything. He goes through. He's apathetic loser. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so things aren't going great. He keeps taking battlefield advice from Rasbutin.

And, yeah, it's just kind of a disaster. Some of this advice, like in June of 1916, leads to this, like, failure to support Brusilov again in the situation that causes, like, what could have been a victory to be a horrible defeat. And this is kind of the fact that this goes so badly and that it's so clearly the czar's fault, sends his army for the first time to the verge of mutiny.

Soldiers start openly mocking him as the little colonel. And protests and riots start to break out in Russia again, just like in 1905. Soldiers start joining revolutionaries, sometimes even handing over their guns. Everything gets really ugly. By the end of 1916, there's this conspiracy of Romanov nobles to murder Rasbutin.

And they get the job done. This sends the czar into a tailspin emotionally. And by the start of 1917, Nikki's prime minister has to sit him down and warn him that people hate him and his wife so much that if he doesn't install a new government, he will be overthrown by force. This prime minister, a guy named Razyanco,

gives him some of the first good advice he actually listens to. Sire, not a single honest or reliable man, is left in your entourage. All the best have either been eliminated or have resigned. The czar responds by asking Razyanco, he asks his new prime minister, he has this moment of lucidity and asks, is it possible that for the last 22 years

I have just done nothing but fuck up constantly? And God bless him. Razyanco, who is in all of our position in this, says yes. You have been doing the wrong thing the entire time you've been czar. Yeah, right? He's just like, no, it's the children who are wrong. No, it's you. You were wrong. It's always been you.

And the dynasty does not last much longer. Alexandra urges him to fight to the last, to rally troops, crush the rebellion, kill as many Bolsheviks in the street as he has to, do anything but give up his power. She thinks he needs to prove that he is, quote, the autocrat without which Russia cannot exist.

But out in the streets, the people of Russia have decided they don't really need a czar anymore. Now, we don't need to dial into the details of this. There's other stories you can find, including the revolutions podcast of what is actually happening in the streets. But on March 15th, 1917, Nicholas II abdicates the throne, a broken man. And I'm going to quote from history in that one more time here.

Quietly, the czar remarked that he had been born for misfortune, a notion many of his subjects shared. Russians believe that czars were either lucky or unlucky, and that Nicholas fell into the latter category for many reasons, including mass deaths caused by a stampede of celebrants at his coronation, and more deaths in 1905 during the war with Japan. He himself, when defending his fateful decision to lead the army, had reminded an imperial cousin that he had been born on the saint's day of Job,

the righteous sufferer. Perhaps he reflected. A scapegoat was needed to save Russia, and he was ready to accept his destiny. I mean to be the victim, the czar had said. May the will of God be done. Which is some real narcissist shit to pull. Yeah, and also he's doing this born under a bad sign shit, and it's like,

no dude, you did this. You did this. You're not unlucky. You're not the scapegoat who is sacrificing himself nobly for Russia. You caused all of this. You are bad at this. I guess we need somebody to blame just because I did all this shit. Yeah.

Yeah, he's the guy from that I think you should leave sketch in the banana costume. Yeah, we're all trying to find the guy that did this. Yeah, that is Nicky in this period. But, you know, he abdicates. A lot of people celebrate. And, you know, the government doesn't last a lot longer. He initially gives it up to his younger brother, Mikhail, who becomes briefly the czar for like a minute.

Brief is the understatement of the century. Yeah. Mikhail is a bit smarter than his big brother and like it quits pretty much immediately. Like gives power to the newly formed provisional government. That that's his whole job. Yeah. At this point. Yeah, it's just like I'm right off.

Yeah. The czar tries to make one last speech as the monarchy is dissolved to his troops, asking for God's blessing and victory in the war. But the new government suppresses the speech because they're like, we're not going to win this war. Like, no, have you seen Germany? They're fighting all of us and kind of winning right now. We're not going to squeak this one out.

Yeah, they've got cool boats. Yeah. Nicholas was still insistent upon the end that he was not hated by his soldiers. Quote, my soldiers hated me not. They hated my crown and throne, but once I was divested of them, they made no accusation against me. What injustice have my people suffered that I haven't suffered with them? And that is really unhinged and inaccurate at the time he says it.

It eventually does come true because one of the things as we've talked about, Nicholas has repeatedly had groups, large groups of people, including women and children, killed and starved in order to keep his government in power. He's been doing that for 22 years. And now after he is thrown out of power, his family is going to suffer in a way that a lot of families in Russia have been suffering under the czars. Yeah, they're going to feel it.

Yeah, I don't think it's kind of like, obviously, number one, a bunch of little kids get murdered. So you can't feel good about that. And also, I don't think Nicholas ever realized like, even for a moment, hey, you know, the thing that's happening to your family is the thing you spent 22 years doing to anyone who stepped out of line. Maybe you're a monster. He's just not that kind of guy. No, and I think nobody's really going to think they're the bad guy.

Even when they are clearly the bad guy. Yeah. And he doesn't, he gets, you know, he and his family get moved around from one place to the other. There's this provisional government under Kerinsky and the Bolsheviks eventually take over. There's the white Russians, these kind of, some of them are pro-monarchists. A lot of them, they're all anti-communists. You know, they rise up and there's this big war. The czar and his family get moved around a bunch and they finally end up in the House of Special Purpose.

And the reason why he and the other Romanovs are all massacred, because it's not just his family that killed. The Bolsheviks round up all the Romanovs in Russia. They can get their hands on and execute them kind of one by one. You know, Lenin plays a big role in this. He certainly signs off on it. The Soviet of Ulan, I think it is, like the regional Soviet really doesn't want to keep these people alive. Because there's debate between Bolsheviks of like, do we keep them alive or do we kill them? The locals who are actually responsible for like, housing them, want to murder them?

And Lenin signs off. In part because the white armies are advancing and they don't want the czar and his family to get captured and yada, yada, yada. There's this, again, I think the justified thing would have been to like, yeah, let's have a, you know, a trial. Or if we can't have a trial, just execute the czar and the czarina, because they committed a bunch of crimes. But instead they decided to shoot the entire family in a basement, which is not justified. No, I mean, that's not fully justified. Yeah, killing the czar and his wife, fine. Killing like a 10 year old hemophiliac boy and like, 14 age girls is not cool.

Well, that's how you stop a Batman from happening. Yeah, that is how you stop a Batman. You know, like, if you don't kill him, then baby, you got yourself a Batman going. You know, that's how they, I think it is justified, certainly like within kind of Bolshevik circles. It is one of the things, again, we've talked about some of the ways in which like popular representations of this are sanitized. One of the things that sanitized is how fucking ugly these killings are. Yeah, people, I remember I had gotten written up in when I was a teacher for like being too graphic about history, about the descriptions of stuff.

And he's like, remember, like I didn't have the smartest principle that I worked with. And he's like, remember, we're doing this like it's PG. Think of it as PG. I'm like, in what world was history PG? No. And it is important to note, like, so the czar and czarina die pretty much immediately when the shooting starts. All of their kids have all of the diamonds, 17 pounds of diamonds sewn into their clothing. They act as body armor, so the kids survive the initial flood of bullets.

Isn't that just it? The royalty even gets diamond body armor. Diamond body armor, yeah. So one of the Bolsheviks then kills Alexei by shooting him in the head. But the girls are still untouched. And I'm going to read one last quote from the Romanovs here. We said about finishing them off as Yurovsky and Irmakov stepped over the bodies towards them. They scrambled, crouched and covered their heads.

Yurovsky shot Tatiana in the back of the head, splattering Olga in a shower of blood and brains. Next, the blood-drenched Irmakov kicked her down and shot her in the jaw. But Maria wounded in the leg and Anastasia were still alive, crying out for help. Irmakov wheeled round to stab Maria in the chest. But again, the bayonet wouldn't pierce her bodice. He shot her. Anastasia was the last of the family moving, slashing his bayonet through the air. Irmakov cornered her, but stabbing manically against her diamond-armored bodice,

he missed and hit the wall. She was screaming and fighting until he drew another pistol and shot her in the head. Now berserk with intoxicated bloodlust, Irmakov spun back to Nicholas and Alexandra, wildly stabbing first one then the other, so hard that his bayonet cracked bones and pinned them to the floorboards. One of the servants, Anna Dimidova, suddenly stirred. Thank God, God has saved me. Irmakov stabbed her until she was silent.

This is like... Okay, so God didn't fully save her? Did not fully save her. This is like... It's one of those things. We've been talking a lot about the brutality of the Tsarist regime. The Bolsheviks rightly get a ton of credit for how brutal a shitload of stuff that they did was. They are about to kill a few million people through a variety of ways, mostly through starvation.

But I think you have to also see the brutality in this killing as part of this cycle of violence that has been present in Russia for forever and largely exists to stop threats to the monarchy, right? You don't murder as viciously as these people murder the Romanovs do if you are not filled with hate. And then it was filled with hate because his brother is executed in 1886 for taking part in a plot against the Tsar, right? You know in true crime when they're like, this was clearly a crime of passion? That's what we're seeing here is like, these aren't summary executions of political enemies.

These are passionate massacres. Yeah, these are passionate massacres driven by generations of hate and violence. You can't understand how things get so much uglier for Russia after this point if you don't understand how brutal and horrific Tsar Nicholas II's regime was. And that's why this has been a great story, Jeff. Some could say a bastard. And that's going to do it for our epic four-parter on Tsar Nicholas II, the last Romanov in a real dick. It was so delightful spending a fortnight talking about this son of a bitch with you.

We did talk more about Tsar Nicholas II than I have ever talked about Tsar Nicholas II before. That's fair. And that's about, you know, some of the stuff that I've, you know, of all the stuff I've studied. It's very interesting to see it from that fresh perspective of like, you know, the last time I studied this 20 years ago. Yeah. So like, it's nice to get that refresher of like, oh yeah, fuck this guy. Yeah, it's this weird thing that like, I think just because we're so distant from them historically,

probably in part because of how horrible their end was, we tend to put these guys in a different basket, kings in general, in a different basket from like Stalin and Saddam and Bashar al-Assad and like dictators. No, he was a dictator. Like, he was the same dude, you know? Yeah, monarchs tend to be that. Yeah. So yeah, good stuff.

Well, Jeff, you got any pluggables to plug? Well, I tell you what, if you enjoyed our time together, which of course we did, you guys should check out, I have a lot of really great podcasts that you would really like. I do a bi-weekly interview show called Jeff Has Cool Friends, where I interview all of my very interesting friends. And you can check that out. Patreon.com slash Jeff May for early uncensored episodes with bonus content, as well as access to shows like Ugh, Fine with Kim Crawl, which is a great monthly podcast I do as well.

You can also check out Tom and Jeff Watch Batman on the Gamefully Unemployed Network with Tom Reiman, who's done the show before, Friend of the Pod, as you guys know. And then of course, Unpops and You Don't Even Like Sports, both on the Unpopular Opinion Network. And then, you know, hey, I'm on the internet, find me at, hey there, Jeff Rowe. Yeah. I like to talk and make jokes and things. Yeah, find him on the internet.

Tell him why you think we need to go back to having a czar in Russia. You know, my monarchist listeners get out there, you know? We kind of have one. Yeah. You've gotten your wish, friends. I was like, we've had one since like 2006 or something. Unfortunately, he's good at it. Oh, I mean, he's a talented czar.

He's very, very good at being the czar. Much better than Nicholas II. Jesus Christ. No. Nicholas II was good at extending it a little bit. Yeah. Oh, boy. He was, you know what?

He was fine at being a czar. He was bad at doing all the stuff czars have to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ironically, if he'd given the people what they wanted and become like a ceremonial monarch, he probably could have lived the rest of his life as a very happy rich person, not dealing with stress. Dude, he owned a yacht like a motherfucker.

Like, dude, why do you need to be in charge of everything? You suck at it. It seems miserable. Like, it seems like the worst job. You know, when you see these things where people like, you know, like Seinfeld makes like, you know, $300 million or something like that. And then they're like, and then he's like, oh, I got to make a new thing. I would be like, no, I'm done.

Yeah. What, 35? I'm done forever. I'm just going to fuck off for the rest of my life. And my entire lineage will be set forever. Yeah. It's the, you know, the only person in all of human history who's actually been smart enough to do that is the MySpace guy. Oh, Tom from MySpace.

Yeah. Perfect. Perfect way to handle it, you know. Dude, you've probably already bought an island and just take off. $600 million. You don't need to do other things. Like, I can't. Just go.

Just get out of it. For the life of me. And I understand people are like, we get bored. I'm like, I don't know, take a painting. Yeah. Like the idea of people that are just like, well, I just have to keep creating. And it does make me feel like kind of a piece of shit. Yeah.

I mean, I think of like, if I won the lottery, I'd be like, oh, I'm done. It's not companies. It's like Bill Watterson, you know, retiring from Calvin and Hobbes. He's still painting shit. He just doesn't feel the need to show everybody because he's fine. He's fine. He made his money. Yeah.

And he made that money, by the way, without making merch. Mm-hmm. Without selling out. Yeah. Who's the, who's the dictator equivalent of Bill Watterson? Probably Polpod actually. That's not a really positive one, but he didn't sell out, you know. Oh, because I was thinking of the other version around who would be the biggest dictator of

the comic strip world, too. Oh, that would be Charles Schultz. Oh, I was going to say Jim Davis. Yes. Yeah, you're right. That is the right answer. That is the right answer. Right?

Because he seems like he, because he, he doesn't do the work anymore. Right? Like he doesn't. No, Jim Davis, he's done what all of those like airport novelists do. He's like Jim Patterson or whatever. James Patterson. You guys do it. Or like in comics, in comics, when they have like these superstar artists and then you

find out later that all they do is like draw the head of the character. And then like every, he has like a studio, some very famous comic book artists rarely touch pencil to paper anymore. That's why I stand Derek Robertson. Derek Robertson is fucking great. I love that dude. Yeah. He's so nice too.

Yeah. Well, fuck the czar. Fuck the czar. Well, I mean, he got fucked. I mean, fuck this arena. He kind of, yeah, he kind of fucked himself. Yeah. Yeah, that's not, he, he really, this is, this is really the fuck around and find out illustrated.

Yeah. Yeah. Fuck around and find out. And also your, your children are going to find out because you insisted on fucking around for so much longer than it should have been obvious to you to stop fucking around. But no. Fuck around. Everyone finds out.

Yeah. And then now there's no more Romanovs. But at least we get to dunk on you on a podcast that's century later. It is funny. He was so scared of being seen as a bad ruler and he did all of the things that ensured everyone now knows, well, that's the worst of the czars. Like that's the guy who sucked the most at it. I would say Ivan the fourth still owns like the historical, he's still got like the gold

medal as far as like history is concerned because Ivan was efficient and good at the job. Yeah. Yeah. Nicholas was, Nicholas was inept. And so that's even somehow, it's somehow way worse. At least Ivan the fourth was like an adept motherfucker. Yeah.

Like, you know, I have more respect for a dictator who had to fight to become a dictator. You know, Saddam Hussein had to like, he didn't get handed that shit. You know, nobody was going to, nobody was going to give Saddam Hussein a rack. He had to take it. You know, Nikki. Got taken a lot of stuff. Yeah. He sure did.

He sure did. Oh, well, that's, that's probably enough for today. Come see us next week. We'll talk about someone who is not Zara Nicholas the fucking second. I look forward to it and hope to come back someday in the future. Absolutely. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests.

It involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based

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