Behind the Bastards - Stalin: After Dark

Episode Date: May 1, 2018

Let’s talk about Stalin, baaaaaaby! In this Bonus Episode, Robert is joined by Brandie Posey (comedian, writer & producer) and they discuss Josef Stalin who was a bank robber, a sex icon, the drunkest man in history and more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 look 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 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?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello again and welcome to Behind the Bastards. I'm Robert Evans and this is the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in history. Today with me is Brandy Posey. Hello, hello, thanks for having me.

How you doing, Brandy? I'm pretty fantastic, excited to get behind some bastards. Brandy is a comedian, podcaster, funny person. Anything else you want to say about yourself up front? Good person, dog owner. Alleged good person, alleged dog owner. Yes, exactly. Well, today Brandy and I are going to be talking about Joseph Stalin.

Joey Stahl. Joe Stahl. Yeah. Uncle Joe, the big man in the dictator, maybe the most successful dictator of all time. He's in the running. Yeah, no, he probably is actually. Yeah, he's in the running. One of the more prolific mustaches in the dictator.

Very famous mustache, right up there with the Hitler. Although some people still rock the Stalin. Okay, so everybody knows kind of the Cliffs Notes of Joseph Stalin's career. He took over the Soviet Union after Lenin died in 1924. He purged a bunch of people. He starved several million more from 1932 to 1933. During his time in power, he's estimated to have killed at least six to nine million people. Give or take a few million.

Six to nine million. Yeah, like he's right under Hitler in the murdering his own people death toll. He went up against Hitler in one in World War II. You might have heard of that. And then he died and had a movie made about that by the dude who created Beep. So that's the Stalin. Everybody knows. That's the Stalin we're not going to talk about today.

Today is the story is about the Stalin that you don't know. This is Joseph Stalin after dark. Oh, this is a sultry Stalin. Okay. Well, we're going to start with some of Jay Stahl's youth. And then we're going to go into, we're going to talk about everything but Stalin at work. So we're going to talk about Stalin at play, Stalin at dinner, Stalin on vacation. Like a weekend Stalin.

Yeah, weekend Stalin, you know, late night Stalin. This casual Friday Stalin. Stalin's movies. Yeah, all the stuff Stalin liked you. So we're going to kick this off with some backstory. Joseph Stalin was born, Joseph Zyugosvili, which is a Georgian last name, which is, you know, where he was born. And Georgia at this point, you might look at it as like to the mainstream Tsarist Russia, it would be like the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma. And in fact, it was commented on his whole life that he had like a really thick accent.

Okay. Gotcha. That's interesting. See, it's like a kind of down home cowboy-ish, that kind of drawl. Yeah. If you were going to represent the Politburo by accents, most of them would have like East Coast or West Coast. Like slick, you know, cosmopolitan accents. And Joseph Stalin be talking like this, like a deep sat, like a, like a sharp, out of bell, Oklahoma accent.

Huh. Yeah. So he's like actually from Georgia. Yeah. Yeah. No, actually, I shouldn't use that in said Oklahoma. Yeah. That's funny.

Wow. He was the son of a shoe cobbler in the Georgian town of Gory. His father was a drunk and beat the shit out of him. His mother Kiki or Keke, K-E-K-E is how it's usually spelled, kept the piece, but not all that well because she also beat the shit out of her son. Oh, geez. Yeah. This is a really dark version of that Adam Sandler movie about being a shoe cobbler. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. It's actually less dark because the Adam Sandler movie is devoid of soul. I'm just going to pretend that Joseph Stalin's parents are Adam Sandler and Jack and Jill. In my head, those are his parents, actually. These are some deep Sandler cuts. Yeah, exactly. I'm pulling out here.

Although, when I start talking about Joseph Stalin, my mind immediately goes to Adam Sandler. That's what he did every time he would sign an order for execution. He was a very horseman. Yeah, exactly. Well, he had a stroke at the end, right? And that's actually what it sounded like. He had a lot of strokes. Yeah.

But people just assumed that he was okay because he was such a Sandler fan, but he was actually just having strokes instead. Thank you. I'm an allegedly good person. Stalin's mom justified beating her son by saying she had to, quote, govern her unruly treasure, which is like some Norman Bates shit. Govern her unruly treasure? It almost sounds like how you talk about trimming your pubic hair. No, absolutely. I have to govern my unruly treasure.

Like she's always looking at a giant brooch or a ring of some kind when she's saying it, her son off in the distance. Yeah, that's definitely a sentence that you expect from a brooch wear. Yeah, for sure. She wore a cape every day is what that sentence says to me. As an adult, she told him the beatings had done him no harm. Stalin insisted he had a terrible childhood where he'd wept constantly, which is probably true. Probably something Stalin wasn't lying about. It's a lot of pressure being an unruly treasure.

It's really a lot. I just want to be a boy. So Joseph's dad was out of the picture pretty quick, but he popped in from time to time to insist that his son take up the family trade of making shoes. Stalin did not want to make shoes. He liked books like Saddam Hussein. Keke realized that her boy was special and decided that he should become a priest. Because back then, if you liked books, that was the default. Yeah, no.

Hey, nerds. Nobody was like, you should go to Hollywood. They were like, ah, priest. That's the gig for you. Go read the book. Read the one book we allow. So as a little kid, Stalin was successful in sort of the low level children's gang warfare that was common in his village. But when he hit, yep.

Just classic children's gang warfare. Just good old late 1800s Russia. He had had a lessons though, and he stopped being so successful because he was very short and suddenly was less imposing. Other kids made fun of him because of his smallpox scars and his fucked up arm. His left arm was two inches shorter than his right because he'd been run over by a horse and buggy, which is the most 1800s injury you can have. I like that he's just like a Harold Lloyd movie for the first 18 years of his life, basically. That's amazing. Yeah, he's starting out rough.

How do you get run over by a horse and buggy? Yeah, and I also would figure that you would specify either the horse or the buggy hit you, but maybe he got hit by both. Maybe all four legs and then four wheels. Also, how does it make your arm shorter? I'm guessing he just got broken and it didn't grow, right? Got him. Something like that. So I'm picturing that his parents are Adam Sandler and Jack and Jill, and then he is Chris Elliott from Scary Movie 2.

You should really get started on this screenplay. Okay, great, perfect. It's a very deep-cut reference for five people that are listening. That's who we do this podcast for. So at age nine, Stalin, or Joseph at this point, enrolled in a theological school. He was devout at first and never missed a mass. Since this was a religious school, most books were forbidden, obviously, and the teachers encouraged kids to rat out their peers for reading banned literature. Stalin later admitted to ratting out a whole bunch of kids.

Of course, he loves to snitch. Yeah, seeing seeds planted here. Yeah, Joseph snitched Stalin, okay. At age 13, Joseph read a copy of Darwin's The Origin of Species. He stayed up all night and told KK, his mom, I love the book so much, mummy, that I couldn't stop reading it. Joseph decided that God didn't exist because if he did, the world would be more just. He dropped out of Jesus' school at 14, which horrified his mother.

14? 14. Man. That's a man back then. Yeah, that's true. Most of you don't make it to 14. A 14-year-old then has lived through more shit than a 60-year-old today. Yeah, exactly.

He's just a hacker staring off in the middle distance. Thinking about all the lives you've seen in. All the horse and buggies have been run over by. Yeah. So, now young and unemployed, which is the thing 14-year-olds could be back then, he wandered into a meeting for his local Bolshevik party. So, he started being a Bolshevik, seemed to like that. He started his job at an observatory in 1899.

It was part-time, so he was able to keep up his revolutionary ways. He spent a lot of time reading Napoleon's memoirs, and he told his friends that he planned to learn from Napoleon's mistakes, which is a normal thing for a 16-year-old to tell his friends. I mean, what an intense kid. Can you imagine? Just like, oh, I stayed up all night reading Darwin, and I love Napoleon. Oh, God.

Okay, Stalin. This is, I think, the most, um, actually, of a person that you could be at 16. If, today, the first sentence out of his mouth in any given conversation would be that he didn't own a TV. He would be that guy. Oh, boy. Um, he would have the same mustache, though. Oh, yeah.

Definitely. A lot more flannel. Yeah, yeah. So much flannel. Um, Stalin or Joseph got a job working at an oil refinery storehouse. Working conditions there were exactly what you'd expect of a czarist oil refinery warehouse. So, up to code is what you're saying.

Up to code in that code was not a thing. So, Stalin was pissed that the workers were suffering and toiling to make ends meet while the wealthy lived in mansions and got to go to parties all the time, which is totally understandable. Yeah, I mean, I'm on board at this point. I like that. He organized protests. The protesters clashed violently with police,

and suddenly Stalin had to go on the run. Oh, man. He was arrested in 1902 and sent to Siberia, which sounds like the worst thing that could happen to you. Yeah. I'm listening to another thing about Rasputin is from Siberia, and everything they say about the area, I'm like, why? It apparently wasn't that bad.

Oh, okay, good. He wasn't sent to, you get in and get sent to a prison in Siberia. Oh, just to live there. You just got sent to a little town in the middle of nowhere, and they give you money every month. Oh. That was what, when they exiled you, that's what they did, is they were just like,

go live in the middle of nowhere, here's some money so you don't starve. Can I get exiled? Yeah, I kind of feel like that's a sweet gig. That sounds pretty sick. Can I just piss off the president enough that I get to live somewhere else? Yeah, please, send me somewhere else and give me a stipend.

I don't care if it's cold. It's getting really hot in LA. Global warming is real. I'll go live in Siberia. I'll go, because it'll be like a nice 70 by the time I get there. Exactly. So yeah, for the rest of his life, this is like one of, if not the very best periods of time

in Stalin's whole life. He would talk about it for the rest of his days. He would constantly tell people a story about skiing into the taiga, shooting a dozen partridges, and then almost freezing to death on his trip back. Stalin would brag about the time he shot 12 birds and nearly died, even after he'd beaten Nazi Germany and conquered a fifth of the world, which is weird.

Wow. No, he's really, that meant a lot to him. Yeah, I feel he had other things to brag about by that point. Yeah, I mean, well, yeah. Fast forward to 1907, Joseph was 29 and had grown an influence among the Bolshevik party. Lenin came to see him as the kind of guy who could, all caps, get shit done.

At this point, the Bolsheviks were still fighting to overthrow the Tsar, and it was not going well. They were broke, and they needed money for more bombs to throw at the Tsars. Stalin was like, I can get you some fucking money. His preferred method of achieving this goal was a good old fashioned bank heist. Stalin sat down with his boy, Camo,

which is what you'd expect from the name of a guy you rob banks with, to figure out a plan. Stalin made contact with a pro Bolshevik worker at a bank in Tiflis where he lived, who told him that a bunch of money was due to arrive on June 26th. So Stalin, Camo, and their fellow desperados all showed up at Yerevan Square downtown

to wait for the stagecoach. It arrived at 10.30 a.m., and they just started throwing grenades and bombs all over the place. That was their... Great plan! They just throw bombs at everyone! They made off with the money, which was about three or four million in modern dollars,

and they killed 40 or 50 people. Yeah, well... That's what happens with the grenade heist. It won't be the last time! No, no, this actually counts as charity by the rest of Stalin's record. Yeah, exactly. So it turned out that most of the Stalin bills

were in gigantic 5,000 ruble notes that had never been used before, and the Tsarist government had records of all of the serial numbers on those bills. So most of the money that Stalin had killed like 50 people for wound up being useless to the Bolsheviks. But he'd still prove that he could get shit done, wasn't entirely a wash.

Not all talk. But it was a bummer, and 1907 was also a bummer because it was the year that Stalin's wife died. She passed in December from some illness or another knowing 1907. It might have been like a stubbed toe that went bear-shaped. I'm assuming she was 14, and she's like,

I've seen enough. I have to go. I've lived too long already. I've given you five children, it's time for me to leave. Stalin claimed that, quote, with her died my last feelings for humanity. You can read that as super prophetic, but he wound up falling madly in love again and remarrying, so he's probably just being dramatic.

I think he's just a very dramatic person because he was told that he was a ungovernable treasure, what was the quote? Yeah, unruly treasure. Yes, an unruly treasure. And he's just like, that's the line that he used as a young 20-something on women. And he'd be like, look, honey, I'm just

an unruly treasure. I could see it working. No, especially with that mustache, for sure. No, and he's handsome. Okay, you've seen the young Stalin pictures. He was a good looking guy. Yes, he was. He was a little viddy guy, but he was a good looking guy.

Yeah, exactly. No, he had the charm. Which is like, here's the thing, I don't trust people that have always been attractive, and this is the most successful. This is exactly what? Because 100% of the time, they turn out to be Stalin. Yeah, exactly.

I've seen that guy at so many overprice bars. No, you know, he's got like a keffiye on, and like, yeah, he's just sitting in the back of the coffee house. Maybe he's got a guitar, just always. Oh, what's this? What's this? Just a couple of chords.

He affects the French accent, even though he was born in Milwaukee. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we all know Stalin. Just a beret of a person. A beret of a person. Okay, so Stalin's career kept lurching forward. He charmed Lenin, he wrote a bunch of articles

for Pravda in May of 1912. Joseph Juggersvili became the editor at Pravda, which is, you know, big old Bolshevik magazine. The next year, he started to use a nom de révolution. Instead of Juggersvili, he called himself Stalin, or Steele. So... Joseph Steele. Yeah, I'm Joseph Steele.

Is there a modern porn star whose name is Joseph Steele? Because it feels like somebody is like... If it's not Untapped Market. Yeah. Untapped Market to be tapped by Joseph Steele's tapper. Yeah, come on, somebody tap that. Yeah, yeah. We're giving out a name here.

Yeah. Well, Stalin was. So, World War I came in 1914. Kind of a big deal. It didn't go well for Tsarist Russia. No, it didn't, by Nikki. No, it did not. Yeah.

You know the rest of the story. The Tsar gets overthrown in 1917. There's a big-ass civil war, and the Bolsheviks wind up in charge. Lenin rules for a while, then he dies, and then through a combination of cunning and murder, Stalin's in charge by 1924. He shared power with a group of magnates. He wasn't an absolute ruler at this point.

The magnates were powerful political leaders who ruled over various aspects of the Soviet state. These are the guys that the death of Stalin in the movie focused his round. Guys like Malenkov and Khrushchev and Molotov. Yeah, he's kind of like cabinet for lack of a better. Yeah, yeah, that's a good term for them. These guys were mostly young at this point in their 30s, and mostly self-educated.

They all lived together in the same buildings in Moscow. They worked and feasted and partied together. So, like friends. Yeah, they were all, they were mostly friends. They all had had sometimes a couple of wives and girlfriends in common. They would all hang out all the time. Stalin would just drop by to talk to people about things. Stalin is the Phoebe of this group of Russian.

I was going to say Rachel. Yeah, probably actually Rachel. I just feel like Stalin would run like an idiot. And also, if Stalin had ended up with a Paul Rudd, the world would have been a better place. Yeah, that's unquestionable, for sure. Exactly. Really weird movies, but probably Paul Rudd would have taken

like a turn for the art house cinema. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, okay. So, Stalin got married to his second wife, Nadia Aleyeva, in 1919. She bore him a son, Vasily, and a daughter, Svetlana. Stalin seemed to love his wife, but they were both busy, career-focused people. He wrote her sweet love letters,

saying he was, quote, lonely as a horned owl without her, and signing them, my kisses, you're Joseph. Yeah, he's a sweet guy at this point. He's a sweet guy at this point. They minus the 50 people he killed. He's killed a lot more people by this point. Oh, yes, you're right.

They're starving the peasants by the hundreds of thousands right now. Yes, you're correct. Never mind. Well, by the 30s. Yeah, yeah. But he's a sweet guy to his friends. Yeah, exactly. Stalin had also turned into a sex symbol at this point, though,

by the time he's in charge, and that did not help his marriage. The wonderful book in the court of the Red Czar describes one of the letters he got from a female admirer, a teacher. Wow. I mean, that's the most proper way of seeing somebody. It's actually he let somebody down. Actually, Joseph Stalin in this has handled being hit on by a young woman better than most modern American politicians.

No, absolutely. This is also like the first tinder is what just happened. Yeah, he swiped right? Yeah, exactly. He's like, no, thank you, but here are all of your things back. And he did swipe left on a number of ladies. It's not absolutely confirmed, but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence and that Nadia, his wife, was very angry about some of that.

And maybe it wasn't true, but she just suspected it. But either way, she thought he was fooling around and she was pissed. When you got that kind of ego, I assume you probably are messing around. One woman isn't going to do it for you. No, not when you're the dictator of all Russia. Now, when we get back, we're going to talk about the dinner party that led to the end of Joseph Stalin's marriage. Yes.

And then we're going to get into Joseph Stalin's growing madness, his wacky everythings, which is going to talk more Stalin. Great. And coming up, we also have a whole lot of drinking, a whole lot of partying, a whole lot of vomiting, and what I'm just going to describe as Joe Stahl pulling a chainie. Oh, okay, can't wait. And more after sweet lady capitalism sings you her lilting lullaby.

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Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. We are talking about Joseph Stalin and his troubled marriage to Nadja. At this point, Joseph Stalin is the sexy leader of the new Soviet Union. Nadja and he are very much in love, except she thinks he's cheating on her. And things come to a head at one banquet in 1932. Oh, she was also angry at him for starving hundreds of thousands of peasants to death.

Which is a fair, fair. Stalin, you got some splain into boo. You know, we've all been there with a partner where like, you think they might be cheating on you and they're starving the Ukraine? Well, it's like when you make that pros and cons list of like trying to really break down of this relationship has, you know, has the legs to stand forever. And you're like, hmm, okay, I mean, really, he bought me flowers,

but he's starved a lot of peasants. He's starved three and a half to four million peasants. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's rough. It's rough. That's a hard Thanksgiving. So that's where their relationship is. They're at this big party. Everybody's drinking heavily.

And Stalin had not noticed that Nadia had dressed up for the event. She wasn't a girly girl and she didn't dress up often. So it was a big deal that he didn't notice it. Oh, Stalin. Stalin did eventually notice that Nadia wasn't drinking. I'm going to quote here from in the court of the Red Czar. Why aren't you drinking? He called over truckulently, aware that she and Bukharin shared

a disapproval of his starvation of the peasantry. She ignored him to get her attention. Stalin tossed an orange peel and flipped cigarettes at her. This outraged her, which, of course it did, which she became angrier and angrier. He called over, hey you, have a drink. My name isn't hey, she retorted. Furiously rising from the table, she stormed out.

It was probably now that Budhiani, which is one of these magnates, heard her shout at Stalin, shut up, shut up. Stalin shook his head in the ensuing silence. What a fool he muttered. Wow. Yeah. Yikes. So she shot herself later that night.

Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody really knows why. Yeah, it's a bummer. It's a really sad story. Man, I wanted to hear her getting her groove back movie. That's the one we deserve.

No, we do not get that movie. Damn. We don't get anything like that movie. Poor lady. Nobody knows why she did it. There's a bunch of theories, but it broke, Stalin. I wonder if she was pregnant. There's no evidence of that.

Yeah, okay. He threatened to kill himself a bunch of times when Nadia's mother put up while the body was still in the house, one of the doctors offered her some valerian drops, which are supposed to calm you down and help you not freak out when the worst thing ever is happening. She said she couldn't drink them, and so Stalin grabbed the bottle and chugged them all down himself. Oh, boy.

He insisted his wife's suicide had crippled him, and he did change after that. Prior to her suicide, the Soviet Union, like I'd said, had been starving a lot of people, but life in Moscow among the magnates and their families had been wonderful. In many ways, Nadia's suicide started the terror that followed, where he's just killing all these people who were close to him. Oh, that's where all those lists and stuff started. Because he kills most of her family.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah, yeah. Over a course of years, but he butchers most of her family. He butchers most of his first wife's family. I mean, not really how the... You should keep the memories, not really how. No, no. Most grief counselors recommend against massacring the families of your dead spouse.

I mean, I know mother-in-law's can be a pain in the ass, but... Yay. I wish I could do that. Yeah, ying. Yeah. So, Stalin's friend Nikita Khrushchev, who took over after him, said that Stalin was a different man at different times. I knew no less than five or six Stalin's.

At one point, Joseph Stalin got angry at his son, Vasily, for using the name Stalin. He said, but I'm a Stalin, too. And Stalin said, no, you're not. You're not Stalin, and I'm not Stalin. Stalin is Soviet power. Stalin is what he is in the newspapers and the portraits. Not you, no, not even me. Wow.

Yeah. I'm so self-aware of the thing that he's created. He would have been great at marketing. He would have been terrifying at marketing. Yeah. He would have been Don Draper times a thousand. Yeah, exactly. Just as attractive.

Just as attractive. Yeah. A very similar character, actually, who had a wife, cheated on her a whole bunch, drank a bunch, doesn't go by his real name. All right. Yeah, it's actually kind of weird how close those guys' backstories are. Yeah. Stalin was also described as very charming.

He could be graceful and sensitive. People loved to be around him. He was good with kids, and he could really read a room. There's one story about a court singer who was performing in the Kremlin. Stalin's colleagues each started demanding he sing different songs, and Stalin said, let him sing what he wants. And then added, I think he wants to sing Lindsay's aria from Onigan. And everybody laughed, although it's not really a request.

Yeah, we gotta kinda do that. Stalin. I was gonna do red, red wine first, is that okay? Stalin seemed to have a genuine joy for manipulating people in 1913 while hiding out in Vienna. He gave the daughter of the woman hosting him a bag of candy every day. After a while, he asked the kid's mother who she thought the child would run to if they both called her. They both tried it, and the girl ran to Stalin.

Ooh. Yeah, which is like a messed up power move from the lady who's hosting you. Yeah, exactly. And also just like, why? Yeah, just to be a dick. Yeah. Why do you want this? Okay, cool.

Great. It makes you better than its mom, and you're gonna leave. And then this daughter's like, where's my candy? Man, he's just his bad dude. Yeah. This is crossing my line. That is crossing a line. He could be really funny and pithy.

He was also incredibly foul-mouthed. When his friend, Voroshilov, gave a speech that Stalin liked. Stalin sent Voroshilov a note that said, a world leader, fuck his mother. I've read your report. You criticized everyone. Fuck their mother. Joseph Stalin, everybody. I like Jeff Jam, Stalin.

Just drop an F on bombs all over the place. I'd love to hear his version of the aristocrats. His whole time and power was his version of the aristocrats. Those were his last words. No, absolutely. The aristocrats. That's how that joke started. It's like, this is the darkest joke, version of this joke.

Wow. He really, I mean, except Bob Saget went far, but no, no, no. Stalin died and Bob Saget in America just feels something stands up and just starts with slow applause. Just like that was game respects game. As I said, Stalin was great with kids. He would entertain them by throwing orange peels and wine corks into their ice cream, and this gets into their tea.

He loves throwing orange peels. He loves throwing orange peels. I guess probably oranges are a sign of wealth because everyone in Russia, I assume, probably has scurvy at this point. Or he's killed them. So it's just like, oh yeah, I'm just throwing peels around. I do feel that that's like the happiest Stalin ever is, is just throwing orange peels at people.

Yeah, exactly. He just needed more orange peels. Just keep oranges around him, please. He's going to throw them at you. It's fine. He's not signing death lists when he's throwing orange peels. Seriously, just let him do it. He just wanted to be a juggler really badly.

So he always had like round fruit around him at all times. But his hands were too hard for all the hard work and the oil rigs. And he would break the oranges and bruise them and that's why he would throw them at people. He really, really thought this out. He was said to have perfect pitch, a rare and sweet voice. Some of his friends said that if he hadn't become dictator,

he could have been a career singer. Well, but here's the thing. If that wasn't true, you wouldn't say it. Well, I think that some of this came out by people who knew him after he was dead. It's one of those things that I don't think is just people blowing his ass who's just really good at like miles. One of the many things that our friend Miles Gray

from the Daily Zeitgeist has in common with Joseph Stalin. Oh, okay. Cool. He's also an unruly treasure. So from my point of view, Stalin's real talent, though, came as a captioner. I have some basis to judge this since it used to be my job to write all the article captions

on the little pictures and cracked articles. Stalin did basically the same thing, but two artworks that would be submitted to him for approval. And we're going to look at some of those. Oh, hell yeah. He's like, he invented tinder and memes is what you're telling me. Kind of. Yeah.

It wouldn't be unfair to say Stalin was a meme pioneer. This is from an article called Stalin's vulgar sense of humor on the Smart History blog. The actual origin of these pictures is from a telegraph article, I think, but this blog actually put them out the best. So I'm going to hand you this, and I want you to go through each picture and describe the picture and then read the caption.

If you guys want to follow along with the pictures, the links and stuff are on the website. The first one here, I'll describe it. It looks like it's a naked man with his butts just out, the shadow of a ball underneath. He's got his hand up over his head and he's leaning against the wall as if he just bombed at audition. I live in Los Angeles.

The caption says, you need to work, not wank, time for reeducation. Jay Stalin. He's science. Look at his science. Yeah, he's science. As if people wouldn't know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, man, we get it.

Your handwriting is everywhere because you're the supreme leader. You need to work, not wank. I think he actually maybe didn't invent memes that he mented like the cat posters in an office, like the hang in there. This is like a very vulgar version of that. I was going to say the New Yorker caption kind of says, but either way. Yeah, yeah, that too. Oh, that's great.

Okay, this next one. Man, he's got a lot of naked naked guys. Yeah, these are all pictures of naked men for some reason. Okay, great. Yeah, this next one is like, these are all like black and white sketches. This next one is like a naked man. He's facing front this time. He's got like a beard and hair and mustache.

And he's like, got his hands up as if he is playing baseball. But it looks like a piece of bread or something. He's probably holding on to a ration because Stalin has starved everybody. And then the caption is, why are you so thin, Mikhail Ivanovich? Do some work. Onanism is no work. Trimarksism. Jay Stalin.

Onanism, of course, is masturbation. I get it. I mean, he's not unfunny. No, he's not. No, these aren't bad, Joe. It's not like a Mike Huckabee tweet. No, no, no. These are solid, not the most original, but solid.

I like that he wrote he-he with an exclamation point. That's adorable. That's kind of cute. Do you think, well, they didn't think he made him just like in his office, just like, oh, I got one. Oh, they're going to love this. Where were these published? Or were these just like things that he just did?

These were just in the Soviet archives. The Soviet archives got opened up like 20 years ago or something. Historians are still pouring through them, and this is just something they found. So it's pictures of Hitler's dead body and then all of these naked sketches. Yeah, these naked drawings that Stalin captioned. Perfect. All right. This next one is a naked couple, and the woman is laying on the ground,

and the guy is standing above her with his hand behind his head and scratching it as if, what's going on? And the caption is, idiot, you've completely forgotten what to do. I mean, it's hilarious. That's great. He didn't sign this one. No. He was just like, well, this one's obvious.

Nobody's going to think anybody but Jay Stahl would write this. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. Okay, this next one is another naked man looking forward. Where did he get all these photos? Are these just like from sketch classes? He has to approve these. So these are art that Soviets have made that they want to be able to publish.

Like, these are like paintings and stuff. Oh, I see. Okay, I got it. And they can't go anywhere unless Stalin says yes, because he's the absolute ruler. So this guy's just chilling on some boxes, naked, staring down at the ground and says, don't sit on stones with your naked ass. Go join Kamsomol and Rabfak, workers' university, is in quotes.

Yeah. Someone give this guy underpants, Jay Stalin. I do imagine that as like a little George Bush left. Yeah, he for sure. They all have that same little left. Yeah, they think they're so damn clever just because they're part of the Illuminati. Yeah. These are so silly.

Yeah, they're just ridiculous. That's probably good on those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just scrolling. Now the podcast consists of me scrolling and looking at pictures of naked men while you tell me about Stalin. So, you know, I mean, that's just for the listeners. You know, when I pitched this podcast, that was always the vision.

So the Soviets were great record keepers, which is why we have all this stuff. Often the notes that we would have from like their meetings of the Politburo would include doodles, and sometimes Stalin would take out a crayon to write on the doodle of like a colleague as well. Yeah. And so there's apparently one drawing of the countries of the USSR's finance minister at the time, hanging from a rope by his genitals. In the margins, Stalin wrote, to all members of the Politburo, for his present sense, the

name of the guy as the finance minister should be hung by his balls. If they hold up, he should be considered not guilty as if in a court of law. If they give way, he should be drowned in a river. A little Stalin humor for you there. This guy. This guy. Oh boy. Well, it's also funny because it's like the feminist response to burning witches.

It's basically, it's a finance minister test that is also bullshit and will kill you either way. Sure. Why not? Who cares? It's a whimsical fun way to kill people. It is. It was all about whimsy.

He also had an explosive temper. Surprise. I'm quoting here from a fun book called A Brotherhood of Tyrants, Manic Depression, and Absolute Power. It became known for violence when he was a young revolutionary. Yeah. Yeah. With all those problems.

Kind of goes hand in hand generally. Yeah. He would lose control during arguments with party members, cursing them and throwing objects such as stools, which Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, loved to do. Quote, when he was married to his first wife, Cato, Stalin's brutality was witnessed by a man with whom they were living. Scum, that's what he is. Cato was pregnant then and he used to curse her in the most disgusting way and kick her

in the belly. Oh, jeez. Yikes. Yeah. We go from, yeah. Yeah. And in kids with the first wife? No.

Yeah, one. One. Okay. Yeah. You never hear about that one. Yeah, you never. I mean, that one, that one wound up dying in a Nazi concentration camp. Oh, that's, that's why.

Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. So during a second marriage to Nadia, Stalin was known to throw food out the window if he was bored with it. He'd slam his phone against the wall if it gave him a busy signal. Stalin's rage was often bafflingly mundane. Quote, when he found a large mirror in his new Kremlin apartment, he said, what's a mirror

here for? And kicked it to pieces. Oh my God. What a baby. What a stupid tantrum baby. Change your diaper, Stalin. Jesus. Yeah.

Stalin could go from being your best buddy to wanting you dead in a moment's notice. Yeah. This is another quote from a Brotherhood of Tyrants, no amount of friendship and loyalty was enough to win the dictator's trust. The book here is quoting his daughter, Svetlana, who said, the past ceased to exist for him. Years of friendship and fighting side by side in a common cause might as well have never been difficult as it is to understand. He could wipe it all out with one stroke.

So you've betrayed me. Some inner demon would whisper, I don't even know you anymore. So that's his daughter describing daddy. Oh, that's some daddy issues to deal with. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things that makes me discount. I always just assumed Stalin was like a cold, heartless sociopath.

Yeah. And I don't think that anymore because it seems like, like his murdering his wife's families, like it's he's just, he can't deal with emotion. Yeah. So he thinks about his wife and gets sad and then he like sees someone who was related to her and he's like, well, what if I just get rid of him? Yeah. He just hulk smashes everything.

Yeah. And it's like fits of peak that he does all this in with time. Sometimes he would regret doing terrible things to people. Yeah. It wasn't uncommon for him to calm down and come to regret a purge. I'm going to quote here from in the court of the Red Tsar. Once he wandered up to one of his marshals who had been arrested and released, I heard you were recently in confinement.

Yes, comrades, Stalin, I was, but they figured out my case and released me. But how many good and remarkable people perished there? Yes, muse Stalin, thoughtfully, we've lost a lot of good and remarkable people. Then he walked out of the room and into the garden. The courtiers turned to the marshal. What did you say to comrade Stalin demanded Malenkov who always behaved like the school prefect? Why?

Then Stalin reappeared holding a bouquet of roses, which he presented to the marshal as a weird sort of apology. Man, just, he's just an emotional toddler. Sorry, I killed your friends and sent you to be tortured. Here's some roses. Here's some flowers. We cool? Yeah.

I feel like we're cool. I didn't take the thorns off because I am still Stalin. He just is an unformed person who wound up in charge of a whole country, which is a thing that has never happened before since. Yeah, for sure. How could we let something like that happen? What a bunch of idiots these people were, letting that kind of a guy, oh boy. Stalin wasn't consistently an asshole.

There's a story of an old woman who crashed into his car in World War II because the roads were strewn with ruined German tanks and equipment. Oh, God. She was terrified, obviously, but he was like, no, no, it's not your fault. It's the war. Everything sucks. Just go get your car repaired. Everything's fine.

Can you imagine getting out of the car? Rear ending Stalin? I mean, like, oh, God, I knew I should have been looking at my phone. We got to do some ads, so I'm going to go read some ads and sell you guys some things and capitalize on your attention in a way that Stalin would have hated. So if you hate Stalin, buy these products. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup?

Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts.

We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads, or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you

find your favorite shows. 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. 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. All right, so we're back and we're talking about Joseph Stalin. You're dark and we are telling a tale right now of Stalin on a visit to the front lines during World War II.

Mostly a PR thing, getting pictured near the front. People see that their glorious leader is taking the fight to the Germans. Jay Stahl's in Dub Dub Dose. That's how I refer to World War II. Okay, so during this visit to the front lines, one of the nights they wind up chilling at a peasant's house, Stalin sleeps in one of her spare bedrooms. It's mostly like a PR thing, like, look, he's so humble. Hitler's got all these bunkers, Stalin just crashed into a lady's house.

At the end of the visit, he insisted on paying her for his stay, but he couldn't figure out how much to pay her because he hadn't handled money in decades and he had no cash and because all of the people with him were good Bolsheviks, none of them had cash either, so nobody had any money to pay the woman. Here's some oranges. Here's some orange peels. During the same visit as he was driving home in his armored car, Stalin and his whole motor cade stopped because, quote, he needed to defecate.

He got out of the car and asked if the bushes had any land mines or unexploded ordnance in them and nobody knew and they couldn't guarantee it and since this was Stalin, nobody was willing to say that. So anyway, the premier and commander-in-chief of the Red Army dropped Trout, squatted in the road and took a shit in front of all of his men. Fun little part of World War II to have gotten to see. That's just great. Can you imagine, like, the army is just, like, walking back and being like, what the hell

is that? This guy. Oh, it's the boss pooping in the road. Okay. Well, glorious leader. Great. This is what we're doing now. He was a guy with weird priorities.

At the height of the war, when he had dozens of armies assembled to launch a massive assault against the German lines, he decided that that was also a good time to launch a massive nationwide song contest to see who could create the new national anthem. There are Simon Cowell tendencies to this man. Yeah, for sure. A cow-ish figure, we could say, for sure. Absolutely. Also a little guy.

Also a little guy. I've seen Simon Cowell. He wears real big heels. Why just accept that you're not tall? It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. More people should be little.

It's fine. It's better. It means you take up less resources. Exactly. You're more unethical. I'm horribly unethical. Yeah. Okay, so the song contest led to the Soviet national anthem we all know and love today.

It's objectively one of the coolest sounding anthems of all time, regardless of your feelings on socialism. It's just intense. Stalin was very happy about it. He threw a gigantic party, all of the magnets dressed up in ridiculous costumes with gold braids and daggers and other nonsense. One foreigner present said, the Russians were as happy with their new clothes as a little boy all dressed up in his new Christmas present fireman suit.

There's more toddlers. Yeah, they're just a bunch of big kids who have a country now. If you did the Muppet Baby's version of Stalin's USSR, it would just be the exact same plot, but with them in diapers. It's just emotional toddlers. So everybody got outrageously drunk. The British ambassador, quote, fell flat on his face onto a table covered with bottles and wine glasses and cut himself.

These quotes are all from in the court of the Red Tsar, which is a wonderful book. An American general, sadly unnamed, showed up at the party with two prostitutes. Stalin kept relatively sober, but after this, this party was sort of like the breaking point for that, and he started to drink more once the risk of defeat was limited. During the early stages of World War II, at most he might put a little brandy in his tea after a major victory, like the victory at Stalingrad, and he kept sober because the whole world was at stake. Yeah, for sure.

I probably, you know, saw it the way that the Tsar and Tsarina handled themselves during World War I, and was like, okay, well. I really got to get this one right. Yeah, I've learned a couple of things. I feel like a lot's writing on this whole World War thing. Yeah, exactly. So he starts drinking again after, in like 43, and it becomes very clear that he is off the wagon in a December 1943 visit by Charles de Gaulle to Moscow.

De Gaulle is sort of the exiled leader of France at this point. Stalin and de Gaulle had a disagreement over French recognition of the Polish government in exile. The negotiations stalled out, and Stalin decided to get ripped shit drunk. He got hammered and then complained that de Gaulle was awkward and clumsy, and everyone needed to drink more wine so that everything could straighten out. Let's have another drink, we'll just talk about, we'll figure this out. That's not how wine works.

That's not how geopolitics works. No, that's not how it works. Fates of tens of millions. So Stalin chugged champagne and took over the job of toasting from Molotov, who was the actual diplomat. He cheered Roosevelt and Churchill, who weren't in attendance, and ignored de Gaulle, which is great diplomacy. Is Molotov cocktail named after that guy?

Yeah, because of the Finnish-Russian war, I think. He was also the guy who made the big pact with Hitler that split Poland up. He's an important dude. Stalin saluted several of his own men who were present, and during the salutes he would joke about the fact that he was probably going to have them killed in the near future, in front of them. Just a lot of high-pitched side-eye laughing happening in the 40s and in the USSR. Nothing but side-eye laughing.

De Gaulle was horrified by all this, of course, Stalin noticed, so he leaned over to the Frenchman and said, people call me a monster, but as you see, I make a joke of it. Maybe I'm not horrible at all. You're not convincing anyone you're not the worst. Just because your genocide has a punchline doesn't mean it wasn't a genocide. So Molotov starts actually doing the work of diplomacy with a French diplomat over the treaty, and while they're working, the reason this whole meeting is happening, Stalin shouts out, bring the machine guns out, let's liquidate the diplomats, then he took his guests out

for coffee and movies. He hugged the Frenchman at random and staggered around drunkenly. This marks the opening of the last great stage in Joseph Stalin's life, which I call his drunk as fuck period, because it was characterized by nightmarish drinking sessions and a tremendous growth in practical jokes. Stalin loved practical jokes. During the celebration of victory in World War II, one of the other magnates pulled the ceremonial knife out of a Russian diplomat's uniform and replaced it with a pickle.

Stalin laughed about it the entire day. Oh man. It was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. He would have loved carrot top. I feel like Gallagher would have rocked Stalin's world. Oh my god, you've been like, you know, America, not that bad. Not so bad. Yeah, he became more erratic after the war, possibly as the result of several mini-strokes

in his increased drinking. He purged more and more of his inner circle and complained to Marshal Zhukov, who was the Russian general who won World War II, pretty much, quote, I am a most unfortunate person. I'm afraid of my own shadow. It's almost like killing millions of people will catch up to you sooner or later. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And Stalin apparently couldn't be left alone, did not ever want to be alone for any long period of time if he could avoid it. And so every single night he would ask if all of the magnates were free for dinner and they would come over to his house and they would start to eat, and these dinners would generally last six hours or longer. And that's just the dinner portion. As I go through this, remember, this is every day for the men that are around Stalin. Like, how long is your work day?

And then you've got dinner after like, you're just with him for another seven. This is the whole work day. Oh, okay, got it. This is the only work day. Got it, got it, got it. They start eating and they start drinking mildly with bottles of wine, weak liqueurs, and sometimes champagne. Then as the evening wore on, they would switch to toast of vodka, something called pepper

vodka, which sounds like the worst, and brandy. They would always proceed past tipsy and sauced into a state of blind, stinking drunkenude. Stalin would generally water down his own drinks with mineral water on his doctor's advice, but that just meant it took him longer to get wrecked than everyone else, and so everyone else had to drink more and longer. This is a quote from in the court of the Red Czar. Forcing his tough comrades to lose control of themselves became his sport and a measure of dominance.

The drinking started with Stalin, not Beria. He, quote, forced us to drink to loosen our tongues, wrote McCoyen. Stalin liked the old drinking game of guessing the temperature, which is literally- You know that classic drinking game. He would say to someone, hey Beria, guess the temperature. And Beria would say, I don't know, 15, and if it was 18, Beria would drink three shots of vodka. No.

Oh no. Yeah. It was like one guy at the table that's always like 69 every time. That guy would have died of alcohol poisoning because they used Celsius. No one but Stalin enjoyed these drinking vengeance. For the rest of these guys, this is just a nightmare, an endless nightmare. Every single day they're drinking not just to excess, but to nightmarish excess. I mean, he's just acting like the worst divorcee, you know?

Like a frat boy divorcee, like it's this weird mix of like frat leader and sad divorcee. Exactly. And it's like your friends are like, hey man, we're going to go out, like we're going to get you over her, don't worry about it, like we're going to do this, but like it's like he's not moving at all, he's just doing this forever. Wow. It was very common for various magnates to stagger out of the room, meal, vomit, soil themselves, and then have to come back in to do more.

Sometimes they got too drunk to do even that and they would have to be carried home by their guards, but people were puking, like vomiting into their, like Tito, the dictator of Yugoslavia apparently once had to vomit down his shirt sleeve in order to like keep going at this party because they were just drinking so much. Oh my gosh. Molotov and Khrushchev were the best drinkers in the group, even so these binges were so intense that Khrushchev sometimes wet his bed at night while passed out. Several magnates became desperate to find a way to avoid drinking with Stalin.

This is a quote from a brotherhood of tyrants. At Stalin's dinners, Khrushchev states, quote, there were often serious drinking bouts. I remember Beria, Malenkov, and Mikoyan had to ask the waitress to pour them colored water instead of wine because they couldn't keep up with Stalin's drinking. He added that, when Stalin realized he had been deceived, he fumed with anger and raised a terrible uproar. These guys are like pouring colored water, one color gets your wine, just trying not to die.

I'm trying. Yeah. We all have gout, dude. And again, every single day, they would drink all night and then go home and by the time they woke up, Stalin would be calling them again saying, you guys want to come over for dinner? Get, like, they have wives and kids, dude. Doesn't matter.

Don't give a shit about that. And also, he jailed a lot of their wives. Yeah, fair, fair. The wives probably were like, fine, fine, I don't, yeah, that's fine, we'll clean up my husband's piss. Yes, exactly. He'd clean up his own vomit and see everything that I do for him. At one point, Stalin found out that one of his friends had been sneaking secret naps

when he went to the bathroom in order to sober up just a little bit. And Stalin said, quote, want to be smarter than the rest, don't you? Let's see, you don't regret it later. Oh my God, he's just trying to, like, they, oh man, I hate him, I hate him. Yeah, he's the worst. The stakes on these drinking bitches were incredibly high because if you said the wrong thing, he'd kill you. And that was part of why he did it, so that people would be honest, so that he could like

know if somebody was plotting against him. He figured if everybody's blackout drunk, nobody's hiding anything from me. What a paranoid, crazy person. Yeah, yeah. And it was way too wasted to perform to peak ability, and these are very competent people. So in order to try to stay alive, the magnates turned to crude practical jokes to keep Stalin occupied. They were not funny.

One favorite joke was just to shove people into the pond near Stalin's house. I mean, I'm not going to lie, that would make me laugh a lot. They just did it over and over again for days, and it became such a problem that Stalin's bodyguards had to drain the pond because they were like, one of these guys is going to fucking drown. They're too drunk to swim. They're not going to be able to help each other out. Like if we don't drain this pond, one of the leaders of the Soviet Union is going to drown

drunk in Stalin's pond. His poor, like, who take a moment for Stalin's poor staff, the people that had to like clean up after all of this and make the food and get the booze and like watch him and all, they're just like, oh my gosh. And they all have to live in nocturnal schedule too. Yeah. Oh no. One night, Beria drunkenly suggested that they loose some caged quails and shoot them,

which was obviously a great idea. Oh great. Guns and blackout drunk. Yeah. That always goes well. Stalin equally drunk, grabbed a gun and wandered out into the garden. He fired his gun into the ground first, barely missing one of his friends, and then he fired it into the air and hit two of his bodyguards with bird shot.

This is what I meant when I said he pulled a chainie. He for sure pulled a chainie. He pulled a double chainie. Somewhere in an oxygen tank in Wyoming right now, just like, what if I get people to come over and all they got right now. I'll make them all drink. Stalin had a mean sense of humor. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, we got it. A brotherhood of tyrants relates this story that Khrushchev told. For some reason, this is Khrushchev talking, for some reason he found the humiliation of others very amusing. I remember once Stalin made me dance the gopok before some top party officials. I had to squat down on my haunches and kick out my heels, which frankly wasn't very easy for me, but I did it and I tried to keep a pleasant expression on my face.

Stalin was quite capable of humiliating even his daughter once she had left childhood. After World War II, at a dinner given for 12 Soviet Marshals, Stalin said in his daughter's presence, well my friends, I bet you don't know who's fucking her now, because he's the worst. Oh, he is the worst. He's the worst. What is it about like leaders having inappropriate relationships with their daughters? It's crazy.

Yeah. I'm glad that never happened again. Khrushchev said Stalin sometimes got so drunk that he took liberties, which means sexual assault today, but back then meant that Stalin drunkenly threw tomatoes at his friends. This became a trope among the drunken magnates. Barry started sneaking tomatoes into McCoyan's suits and would then shove him into a wall so the tomato would burst in his pants. I'm not going to lie, that's actually kind of funny, I kind of like that.

For years, McCoyan would have to bring spare pants to dinner just to deal with the inevitable tomato in the pants. Oh, spare pants, McCoy, over here. Stalin loved this. He loved it when someone would sit on a tomato. He loved it when his friends would fill someone else's vodka with salt so they'd vomit after drinking. He's just the frat boy of all frat boys.

When was the whoopee cushion invented? Because I feel like he would have lost his goddamn mind. It would have saved a lot of tomatoes and a lot of pants. Just like, give me a rubber chicken, it's hilarious. For these all night drunken dinners are where the vast majority of Russian state business was settled. So all of the USSR's political decisions were done while these guys were just getting hammered. People would come in, Stalin would sign things, he was ordering executions, he was making

national policy for the Cold War, and all these guys were, well, they were just not just drunk, but I'm going to say probably the drunkest any human beings have ever been. I love the idea of, who's president at this point? Is it true? I think Truman for a big part of this. Is that the idea of a split screen of how they both conduct their business and how the Cold War is ramping up on both sides? That's what's amazing.

From 45 to 53, one of the world's two superpowers and a nuclear power for most of that was managed by a bunch of wasted old men in between smashing tomatoes into each other and we didn't have a nuclear war. That's inspiring. If really like that does give me a little bit of hope, you're like, well, all right. Okay, just keep a lot of tomatoes around apparently is the move. So everything we've described so far is generally going up to about 2 a.m. in the morning. At 2 a.m. ish, Stalin would usually suggest that everyone come watch a movie with him.

So they're all the drunkest anyone's ever been covered in tomato and Stalin says, you guys want to watch a movie? Oh boy, what's he what's he pulling out? His favorite movies were detective films, westerns and gangster films. Like the MPAA, he loved fight scenes and was disgusted by any hint of sexuality. Here's a quote from in the court of the Red Star when Bolshekov, who Bolshekov was his movie guy, I'll get into him a little later, once showed him a slightly risqué scene involving a naked girl.

He banged the table and said, are you making a brothel here, Bolshekov? And then he walked out, followed by the Politburo, leaving poor Bolshekov awaiting arrest. From then on, he cut even the slightest glimpse of nudity. Bolshekov was Stalin's film curator, and he had maybe the worst job anyone who likes movies has ever had. He had to pick the movies for the night, which was a tremendously dangerous job. That's so scary. Yeah, yeah, because you don't want to give Stalin, pick a movie for Stalin that he doesn't

want to see. No. Oh, those poor actors in the movies too, can you imagine being like, what? Most of them were American movies. Well, that's true. He's loved American movies. Bolshekov's two predecessors had both been executed. Stalin would make Bolshekov translate the foreign films that they watched.

Bolshekov was not good at it, but that was okay because Stalin mostly wanted to laugh at him sucking at the job. I mean, okay, like, here's the thing, like, he's a bad man, but his shades of gray, they're a nice tone. Every third thing, you're like, ah, you know what, that sounds fun. Yeah, yeah, I'm like, okay, I don't just like that. Yeah, no, that's the tricky thing about Stalin. Although when he watched his favorite movies, he'd get up and perform his favorite scenes

before they happened in the movie. Oh no, he's that guy. He's that guy. Watch this, watch this, watch this. Wait, wait, wait, wait, watch this, watch this. It's coming. Wait, wait, wait. Like, if he had seen Borat, that would have been the only thing he ever said for the rest

of his life, was just quoting lines from fucking Borat. Like, he's that guy. He's absolutely that guy. Can you imagine? My wife. My wife. Oh, forever. But if you don't laugh, he kills your family.

You just have to laugh at my wife forever, forever, that's for your life. It's a nightmare. Oh no. Yeah, many of the movies that Stalin picked came with horrifying undertones for his colleagues. One film that he watched repeatedly was about a pirate who stole a bunch of gold and then murdered all of his co-pirates so he could keep it for himself. Stalin would always shout, what a fellow, look at how he did it. Oh my god.

Kruschev said this was depressing and reminded all of the other magnates that they were temporary people, which would depress you. Yeah. As his reign wore on, Stalin's obsession with cinema seemed to warp his view of reality. At one point he insisted on taxing the USSR's peasantry in the middle of a horrific famine. The rest of the Politburo told him this was a terrible idea, but Stalin insisted that peasants could afford it because in the propaganda movies he'd seen, the peasants were all fat and happy and had plenty of food.

Hey man, do you know what propaganda is? Let me explain. You literally ordered this. Yeah. Let me show you the beast side of what we got here. He was an early binge watcher. He'd usually suggest a second movie after the first, which would have elicited groans from his friends if groaning in his presence wasn't a death sentence.

Every time generally finished around 4 or 5 something like that AM, at which point he would say let's go grab a bite to eat if you have the time, knowing no one could say no to him. Yeah. Late in the night, whilst wasted, Stalin would insist on DJing for his hammered colleagues. Oh no, he's a DJ on top of everything else he calls it with DJ? And he prefers comedic records, including one with the warbling of a singer accompanied by the yowling and barking of dogs, which always made him laugh with mirth.

Oh, he's like a noise DJ? He's like a noise DJ. Oh no. He's a drunken noise DJ at like 5 in the morning after like 11 hours of drinking and music. Oh gosh. He's putting on noise music. Joseph Stalin just needed Netflix and Coachella and he would have been fine.

The whole world would have been so much better off. He really would have been. Oh God. The idea of him being like, hey, having one headphone on his head, just like, no, check this out. Check this out. That's what's happening. That's what's happening.

This bite. The whole thing generally started sometime in the late afternoon and would end well after dawn at which point, Stalin would dismiss his drunken associates, lay down to read and usually drink a little bit more before passing out. Then of course, he would wake up the next day sometime in the afternoon, call his friends and start the whole process over again. On February 28th, 1953, after a night of reckless drinking and cowboy movies, Joseph Stalin had a stroke.

Hell yeah. He died five days later. Peace, Stalin. Wow. Stalin after dark. Oh man. If Joseph Stalin pisses himself, do you acknowledge it? He did when he had his stroke and they found him, yeah, the whole floor was covered in

piss. This is like right before he died. So he spent like two days soaked in his own urine while everyone was too scared to change him. Yeah, gotcha. It's interesting because like nobody wanted to go in the room because they're like, little to do about this. There's a lot that's controversial.

The death of Stalin is a fun movie. It's not very accurate. Yeah, I assumed it was not. But that part, like the fact that he was soaked in urine is very true. That's so funny. Yeah, so. I mean, like of the dictator deaths, I mean, you know, he died in his sleep of a stroke. No.

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

He was beloved by the common people in the USSR. He was very popular with some circles of the country. And anytime he got a hint that someone didn't like him anymore, you just kill him. You just kill him, which is why they all tried to be his friend like these. And these guys, you have to think his inner circle would be the ones who'd be plotting any coup. And they're not going to be able, they're wasted all the time. Yeah.

Like their life is one perpetual hangover. They're not going to be successfully plotting a coup. Like what? They're just hanging on by their fingernails. What a way to make sure that your comrades don't kill you. Just like throw a frat party for the last three years of your life or whatever. Yeah. I mean, more like eight.

Eight? Yeah. Yeah, because they went on vacation. He did have some days where he worked and stuff, but like a lot of nights, hundreds of nights like that. He's just made of gout. Yeah. It's like what it seems like.

Just, oh God, all of them. That just sounds so awful. It does. And like Chris Jeff, Barry, these Molotov, these are not like historically good people, but you can't not feel sorry for them. Yeah. It's a nightmare. No, for sure.

That sounds awful. For like the better part of a decade, you're just getting like college wasted. I mean, you're in your 60s. Nobody's in the shape as a human to be like maybe if they were 21, they could have handled that kind of drinking for a couple of years. Exactly. But no, it's just the worst. Oh man.

That's just like father of the bride drunk for eight years straight. For eight years straight. Oh man. Yeah. It's kind of shocking that the Cold War didn't go worse during that time. This actually does give me a lot of faith just in general with like the way the world is now. Just to be like, oh, okay.

Well, I mean, I don't, these guys were idiots and fucking drunk animals. Okay. Well. These guys were drunk monsters and we didn't have a nuclear war. So. Yeah. So, I mean, you guys thought it would happen again. I don't think they had the, a button.

Like I know eventually they wound up with their own version of the button, which they still have. I don't think they had that quite yet. Like I don't think their arsenal was that advanced. So maybe if there'd been a button that Stalin could have drunkenly pressed, he would have. All right. Check this out. He would always have his hand over it.

He would have a fake button. And then he'd be like, oh, they just pressed the button. And they'd be like, what are you going to do? And he's like, it's the fake button. And the missile is just pulling out of the ground in the distance. Exactly. He like sets off on nuke, but it's like made of tomatoes. He's just like, check this out, nuke by tomatoes.

Just throwing tomatoes at Truman or Eisenhower. Exactly. I'm going to send a bomb full of orange peels to Washington, DC. That's what I want to do. Let's just see what happens. Just throw some peels at Eisenhower. He'll know what it's about. He could appeal that son of a bitch up good.

Exactly. Well, all right. Brandy Posey, you want to tell the internet where they can find you and docket your content? Yeah. It's funny, like giving where to find me after talking about Stalin for an hour. Because it's like, oh, he knew where to find everybody. But follow us at record. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at brandazzle.

And then my website is brandyposey.com. I have all my tour dates up on there. I'm a comedian and I tour the country quite a bit, small over the place. Come see me live. I'm very fun. I have an album called Opinion Cave that's available on Spotify and iTunes and everywhere you buy albums or stream them. And then I have a podcast as well called Lady to Lady that is myself and two other female

comics. And then we just kind of like goof around and hang out and do really dumb stuff. Like we take French Stewart to Sizzler and get him white wine. We basically Stalin French Stewart at a Sizzler for our 200th episode. So we do that kind of stuff. It's pretty fun. And yeah, I do. I do stuff all over the place.

In LA, I have a monthly show called Picture This that's comedians paired up with animators. And they live animate your jokes during your set and it's really, really fun and we get some huge names. And that's at the Virgil once a month here in Los Angeles. And it's free and it's super fun and all that info is at brandyposey.com. I am intimidated and impressed by the things you're doing. Aw, thank you. I'm Robert Evans.

I have a book you can find out on Amazon. It's called A Brief History of Vice. It's me experimenting with weird ancient drugs. Nice. You can find me on Twitter at atiriteok and while you're online looking us both up, you should swing on over to the Behind the Bastards website, behindthebastards.com, or you can find us on Instagram and Twitter at atbastardspod. Thanks a lot.

See you next time. And remember to subscribe to this podcast so you can hear all about the worst people in history. Bye. 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 look 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. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space?

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on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.