Empire: World History - 90. The Russian Revolution: Overthrowing the Tsar

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Russian politics is fast destabilising. Strikes, assassinations, and famines have made Russia increasingly turbulent at the turn of the century. Revolutionary politics is on the rise, as is dissatisfaction with the tsar. When compounded by the strains of the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, the nation stands on the verge of implosion. And on Europe's horizon is the Great War... Listen as William and Anita are joined by the great Antony Beevor to discuss the build-up to the revolution and the events of February 1917. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremberg. We're a little bit giddy today because we've got one of our favourite people on the podcast. I mean, it's very, very exciting. It's a real treat.

We're going to be talking about one of the most significant events in world history, the Russian Revolution. With one of the most significant historians of our time. I wanted to say that. The dashing. The debonair. The very, very brilliant. Sir Anthony Beaver is our special guest today.

You really do. Honestly, we are humble to have you on our podcast. No, true story, really. Oh, come on. I always feel those of us who earn a living with our history books kind of owe it to you, because Stalingrad really, in a sense, created the entire genre of people settling down to read 600 page. Doorstoppersome. Yes, but Willie, I mean, the thing which drove me up the wall was that all the journalists were asking me,

is history the new novel? And I said, no, it's not. Absolutely. It's much more exciting. I mean, you two go back a long, long time, but can I just tell a little I Love Anthony story? So we met at a history festival some years ago. And it was the great beaver. Someone said, oh, that's him.

And everyone talks about you, Antity behind your back. I know, that's a great Anthony Beaver is over there. So, of course, me being me, I just went plonked myself next to you. And you were having dreadful trouble with your mobile phone. That is very, very unlike you with. I've never seen you. I know there's some great mobile phone catastrophe. So I had an inn because I sorted it out.

Oh, wonderful. I think it was something really complicated, like a ringtone. which is kind of within my capability. Anyway, look, at the start of the book on the Russian Revolution, Orlando Fijis makes a case. He says the Russian Revolution is the most significant event in the last 100 years. It's a wonderful quote at the beginning of people's tragedy, yeah. Yeah, it is hard to think of an event or a series of events

that has affected the history of the past 100 years more profoundly than the Russian Revolution of 1917. A generation after the establishment of the Soviet system, one third of the human race was living under regimes, modeled more or less upon it. The fear of Bolshevism was a major factor in the rise of fascist movements leading to the outbreak of the Second World War. From 1945, the export of the Leninist model to Eastern Europe, China, Southeast Asia, and Central America engulfed the world in a long war, which came to an uncertain end only with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. First of all, is that something that you agree with? And were the seeds of this changing world planted in 1917, would you say?

I would entirely agree with that. I mean, I have one slight quibble, which was, I think it's much more the Russian Civil War, which actually affected world history. I think all of the historians, starting with German and then British historians, agreed that the First World War was the original catastrophe of the 20th century. But the Russian Civil War coming almost as a coda, really, to the First World War, was the one because of its horror, because of its cruelty and destruction and all the rest of it. 12 million deaths in the Russian Civil War. Is that the figure? Well, you know, it could be anything between six and 12, six in battle or with executions.

But, I mean, there were another six million who died from starvation and cold and all the rest of it, a disease. So, you know, statistics are impossible. I mean, it's even, it's as bad as the Second World War where you don't know whether it was 40 million or 60 million dead. And that's certainly the case with the Russian Civil War. But it was this circle of fear, this horror created by the Russian Revolution, which, of course, terrified the middle classes and the aristocracy. But it also, because of the white reaction, also terrified in the left and the liberals.

And this is where we see not just left and right and reds and whites, but then we see, as Orlando rightly says, then we see the communist versus fascists, we see the leading on to the Spanish Civil War, where, of course, again, we see this vicious circle of rhetoric. And I had lots of arguments with Spanish historians where they tried to say, oh, but Anthony, you know, words don't kill. Well, they do kill, and they can kill when you start ramping up the hatred in that particular way. But hatred, in many cases, comes from fear. And this was something which gerbils and which Soviet propaganda later realized. It was the combination of the two. Anthony, in your wonderful book,

which we're discussing today, Russia Revolution Civil War, 1917 to 1921, you open with a wonderful, very short, but very powerful pen portrait of Russia at the dawn of the 20th century, as this deeply anachronistic empire, which even sort of, you know, the Churchill's coming to visit from England regarded as something from their great-grandfather's day. Could you just give a description of Russia? Well, indeed, I was thrilled to find in an archive in Cambridge, this letter from the Duke of Moulbara to Winston Churchill describing a dinner and ball, a great reception given by the Tsar in 1902. And there you have about 3,000 people sitting down to dinner and about 3,000 servants looking

after them, you know, with plumes in their hats and all the rest of it, guards of honour standing to attention for two hours at a time with their swords up and bands playing, you know, God save the Tsar in virtually every single rule. Separate bands playing God's saying. Separate bands, yes. And I mean, you know, as Moulbram sort of said to Churchill in this letter, it was basically like Versailles at a time, and it was quite a significant remark, because when you compared this with, say, Maxim Gorki, the great Russian writer, and Gorky knew the underworld better than any Bolshevik,

the real poverty in the cities, in the workers living in these appalling slums, actually, not even slums. In many cases, they were just sort of hovels and dormitories, or the case of the peasant living in what were quite often almost slightly incestuous surroundings. There was terrible syphilis and all the rest of it. You said amazing death rates for children, few children making it to the age of five and no rural schools, no education. The myth of the sturdy Russian peasant was rather blend apart when it came to the recruiting for the First World War when they found that quite often almost

a third had to be rejected on medical grounds. We're going to talk about 1917, but just very briefly, just to remind those who have not listened to our previous podcast where we sort of brought us up to this era. I'm just going to give you a little bit of a snapshot of what's been going on. So there has been, Russia has been in a maelstrom of turmoil since 1850s. Our Alexander the second, we've mentioned him a few times in this podcast, was pursuing a policy of reform. That went through the 60s and 70s.

he's assassinated by a group called the People's Will in 1881. It's part of a backlash against the liberalization. His son, Alexander the Fed, you know, they like a nickname in Russia in Zaharis circles. He was named the Colossus because he was huge. He was big. He becomes colossal. But he was, you know, he really like so many Zars we've studied and Zarina's we've studied in this series, wants to do everything differently to his father.

They hate their dads. So many daddy issues in the Russian family. So he wants to reverse all these liberal reforms. He's a man who thinks that autocracy, Russian orthodoxy, patriotism, they are the things that are going to save the empire from revolution. I think that he's been given a God-given job to rule autocratically, regards democracy and liberalism as things almost sort of satanic. Is that fair?

Absolutely. And anti-Semitism. I mean, that came in very much with Alexander III and continued with his son, Nicholas II, who, of course, was Lillian like his father. You were saying, you know, what a vast man he was. I mean, there was this huge statue, equestrian statue of him on this vast horse, which was always known as the hippopotamus, you know. And he was, I promise you, he actually had these party pieces

where he used to bend horseshoes and twist pokers into knots and things like that. So poor Nicholas II, you talk about daddy issues, he was rather small. And he actually sort of said in tears to one of his cousins, you know, who's going to take orders from a dwarf like me? And I mean, all of the Romanoff Grand Dukes were all, most of them were all incredibly tall. You paint a picture of Nicholas II, Anthony, as this, sort of aversion to telephones, completely divorced from the 20th century. Personally, quite charming, but hopelessly autocratic, hopelessly out of touch. Give us a little pen portrait of him. Well, Nicholas was, as you say, sort of, you know, he could be charming and all the rest of it,

but he really was not very much in touch with reality. He was basically somebody who was a fatalist. And this meant actually there were also, he was incurious. He really did not try to understand what was going on. I think some of this was encouraged by his future wife, the Empress Alexandra, who was through her fanatical, obsessive religiosity, also believed, you know, everything will be in the hands of God and all the rest of it. And yet at the same time, this paradox, you know,

that she had to interfere in every way possible. But we'll come to that in the moment. I know that. Yeah, I mean, just, I mean, was he thick or was he pious? I mean, I've often thought this about Nicholas II because, you know, you're in a position of power. You have choices to make. You choose willfully to ignore some of the information.

that it was swirling around you. I mean, what was at the core of his intellect? Or is the information not getting to him? Is he cut off and surrounded by Sankafanson? Well, that is one of the problems, of course, yes. But even when ministers spoke to him in a frank way, he would just switch off. He was famous for just turning his chair in his study

and looking out of the window. And that meant basically, I am not hearing you, and you should get the signal. I know someone a lot like that, who sometimes I sit on podcasts and ends up facing the mic with his ear. I can see there's a window right behind. Yes, I know. We'll lose him in a minute.

Don't worry. Anyway, but the point was that he would listen to occasionally, but then he would change his mind when somebody else would come in. He couldn't, and he was terrified, of taking decisions. This was the problem. And he knew that he could never really match up to his father, the great autocrat. And I think that this was something which always gave him a terrible inferiority complex. And against that background of this royal couple isolated in Peterhoff, playing dominoes, going swimming,

having a kind of lovely family time and ignoring the world that's right. Paint us the picture of what's going on in sort of revolutionary Russia, Lenin's world and who is Lenin. Yeah. I mean, he wasn't born Lenin, was he? I mean, this is Vladimir Ilya Giulianov is who he has, He was born. Just tell us when he became Lenin and what he was before he was Lenny Nov. Well, Lenin, Monsmarra, was very much a child of what in the curious Tsarist system, you would have called probably the lower aristocracy. I mean, his father was an inspector of schools who was given the equivalent rank of sort of major general, because this goes back to Peter the Great, you know, the way that everybody at every level was given under military equivalent of rank. But the thing was that his elder brother was a revolutionary and took part in some of the assassinations by the socialist's revolutionaries and others, as you mentioned earlier, the people's will, you know, the Norodniks. He was executed for his part in one assassination.

And this for Lenin really marked his life, the way that from then on he was the most determined revolutionary. And of course, he was a real genius in one or two ways, particularly in his ability to look forward to analyze strategy, even when others, you know, would be completely blind. But, I mean, for example, later on, when he came to, for example, the Treaty of Breslitovsk in 1918 and other cases, Lenin was quite often at odds or at lobbyheads with other members of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks. but in the end he usually turned out to be absolutely right. And I'm really interested in the politics. So Lenin as a man in his late 20s or early 30s, as he's sort of coming into his own, there are two revolutionary parties that are forming in Russia

that are going to be hugely influential. One is the, I think it's 1898, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, early member, early official, Stalin, a man called Stalin, also not his real name. And also you've got, what was Stalin's real name was Jigashvili, wasn't it? Jigashvili, that's right.

Yes, yes. Joseph Vissaryonovych. Dugashvili, that's right. And then you've got in 1902, so soon on its heels, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, were they different or were they sort of, you know, same meat, different gravy? Well, the Socialist Revolutionary Party was very much a political, ideological dissent, really, from the people's will. The others were purely Marxist, the Social Democratic Party, which then will split into the Bolsheviks, so-called majority,

and the Mensheviks, the so-called minority. And in fact, I mean, the Bolsheviks were tiny. I mean, when it came to one particular conference, Trotsky pointed out that, you know, all of the internationalists could actually fit into two charabangs. Or two charabangs, I can't remember which it was, but anyway, something like that. The importance of it was to show the way that a tiny minority could actually achieve total power. Can I just ask a very quick?

I've really been curious about this. You know, this habit of taking a new name once you become a political figure. Stalin was not born Stalin, Man of Steel, Molotov. But why was this, is this part of a reincarnation that you are now a political life? Or, I mean, where does that come from? I mean, it's your normal year when you're working underground. And, you know, in the case of Stalin, he was very much disliked by the intellectuals in the party. They regard him as a pockmarked Georgian gangster because he was the one who was actually making all their money by by putting up banks.

Exactly. But, I mean, actually, it was quite funny. I meant to tell Seabag when he was working on his book of Stalin, in Georgia, I was told in Tbilisi that apparently as a young man, he wanted to impress a girl, and they were walking along the bank of this flooded river. And there was a calf stranded on an island. And so Stalin, to impress the girlfriend, waded out to the island and broke all four legs of this calf. To give you an idea, he thought that that would actually impress the girl.

There's also something that you guys don't know. I know you want to come in, William Welchard, but I just, if I don't say it now, sometimes on social media you get a list that comes up with unlikely hoties. A hotie, Anthony Bieber, is somebody who women find very attractive. You're a fair. I know, I know you. I look like an old fart. I do know what a hottie is.

Okay, so very high up on the list of unlikely hotties. And I urge you to go and look him up is the young Stalin because he was quite a looker. Just saying, anyway, carry on. On you go. serious history. Back to Ledyden for a second. This character is going to be incredibly important in this story. We have this sort of picture of him, bald-haired, Professor Beard, old ragged clothes, arm in the air, waving, hectoring. What's he actually like as a human being? What kind of impression do you get of him? He had an extraordinary analytical capacity. He totally despised

most of the people that he worked with, and he knew perfectly well that he was probably the only person who would actually be able to take the revolution through. And I think that's probably true. I mean, you know, one of the great counterfactual questions of the whole of the Russian revolution does hang on that rather dubious thing about the great man theory of history. To what degree the revolution would have failed, or the Bolshevik coup d'etat, rather of October, would have failed if Lenin had not been around. He is a charismatic character. He does have this bewitching quality on crowds. He can drive forward with great pragmatism and power and drive.

Well, to begin with, he was terrified by public speaking. It was quite interesting. It was Alexander Colontoy who had to sort of sit beside him and sort of calm, calm, you know, slow down or whatever. But then he soon picked it up. But his was a speech which was entirely based on really powerful sort of logic. This is where he was so brilliant. Unlike Trotsky, who was a superb orator. I mean, really a genius and inspired way. And I mean, Trotsky, for example, in his speeches in Petrograd, would immediately sort of pinpoint bourgeois in the audience

and start to tease them. Like a stand-up comic. Yeah, like a stand-up comic. And it could be very funny indeed. He was also a brilliant linguist. He spoke many languages. He was also sort of extremely polite in many ways to foreigners, to those he met and all the rest of it.

But he also had extraordinary flair and verve and courage. I mean, he was the one who went charging around the country in his sort of armoured's train, bringing aircraft which were packed in crates, you know, on the back of the train and his own special sort of cavalry escort and all the rest of it. And he would go charging up to the front. And in fact, there was one moment later in the Civil War when he, in fact, the whole of the forces defending Petrograd were about. like to run away and Trotsky mounts a horse and you know it's sort of it's really a sort of napoleonic

scene just on the triple threat of these three men again you know this sort of accident of history the one thing you know Stalin just being the heavy by and large you know sort of regarded as but the other two Trotsky and Lenin understood the power of proliferating a message so you know you've got the the imperial sitting in their Versailles completely inured to what's going on in the country that they're meant to be running but I mean Lenin started off with newspapers didn't the spark was something. He understood about getting your message out, getting it to as many people. And as you say, you know, you've got the other, as a brilliant speaker, Trotsky, you know, holding huge audiences in his hand in a way that's going to be memorable and then spread by word of mouth. I mean, the propaganda that they understood was quite new, wasn't it?

Yes. And what they did, what they did was, and they were quite right, they knew perfectly well that the illiterate masses, which would be the bulk of their audiences, would not be able to take in political arguments. and therefore it was slogans. And I mean, I have a description in the book of the way that, in fact, it was one of the Rumski-Korsakov family, curiously was sitting in this carriage, as these young Bolshevik orators were practicing their slogans. I mean, they were just going through, one slogan after another. And they knew that that was the only way repetition, drum it in. Well, Donald Trump, Joseph Goebbels, you know, quite, yeah. So, Anthony, let's home in on 1905.

the Russians have lost the Russo-Japanese war. There is massive discontent and uprisings in the countryside, manners are being burnt and peaceful marches are being shot at by the authorities. Well, there's a lot of strange goings on in the way that Father Gapon, who leads the great march in January 1905, to the Winter Palace, to the Winter Palace. We then start to find out that actually he's also working for the secret police. And this is happening in many cases, whether it's the assassin of Stolipin in Kiev, who was the prime minister, you know, there are some very, very murky, I think Donald Trump would describe it as deep state activities going on in Russia at this particular time. And the Tsar didn't seem to worry about it. He had a rough idea

that these sort of things were going on. He didn't particularly like Stolipin at the particular time. And so he sort of treated him and didn't even go to see him on his deathbed or whatever after he'd been shot. So you have this going on in 1905, the burning of manors. That had even started in 1904 towards the end of that particular year, which had been, of course, the Japanese with the war against Japan, which was totally and utterly disastrous. And that was really almost entirely the fault of Nicholas himself, having been encouraged not just by one or two ministers like Clever, but even by his, even by the cousin of his wife, by Vili, the German Kaiser, who wanted Russia to concentrate on the Far East, while sort of, you know, he built up the

strength in the West. In the West. In Europe. So the anger over the Russian-Japanese War was great enough already, especially with the call-up for troops and all the rest of it, because when these peasants were lined up and sort of selected for the army, their families knew that there was very little chance of them ever seeing them again. And they were sort of treated almost like sort of, you know, it was like their funeral as they were sort of marched off. So that created huge anger. You have, of course, the revolts

in the cities too amongst the industrial workers who are being so appallingly treated by the owners of the factories. And then the repression used with the army being sent out and shooting down peasants and sometimes with machine guns, but then quite often, you know, seizing prisoners and then whipping them with the rifle cleaning rods in the most atrocious way. So there was a lot to be angry about, as one can see. But within the aristocracy, there were a sort of minority who were liberal and more appalled by all of this. But then even within the same families, you've got some Pauling reactionaries who were thoroughly approved and that even took part in the repression of the peasants. Okay, so I mean, this sort of maltreatment of men who are meant to fight for you comes to a head in July 1905 when you have battleship Potemkin.

Some people will know this from the Eisenstein movie of the same name. What actually happens and what sparks that revolt and how important is it? Well, it's bad, bad food, bad treatment by very arrogant officers. maggots and the rotting meat that they're meant to eat. Yes. Well, actually, in many cases, I mean, do you remember two years before the mast and the way that quite often the crews were just given sheep fat to eat? You know, it's unbelievable how they were treated.

And this actually is terribly important. It goes right up today with the war in Ukraine. Because of the bad treatment of their soldiers in the past, and it's always gone on, and it's still going on. This is why Russian soldiers, on the whole, tend to be so brutal towards the civilian population, of course, especially the women, because they're venting their anger at the way that they themselves have been treated. And also, of course, in 1945, the mass rapes in Europe, in Germany and Poland and Hungary, very much came from that same bad treatment.

The brutalized becoming brutal. It's what I've always called the knock-on theory of oppression, you know. So 905 sort of almost becomes a forest fire. You know, you have the Zars forces putting one down and then another springs up and then another springs up. I mean, in what way do the Zah's forces deal with these uprisings? And does that actually give rise to more and more discontent and make a whole overthrow inevitable, do you think? Well, nothing is, as Willie knows, you know, for all historians, the word inevitable doesn't exist. But I rephrase it quite often by somebody sort of saying. It's very hard to imagine how. Okay, okay. Well, no, I'll take that. I'll take that. The point is, rather as I said just earlier, that yes, they sent in the troops

because one has to remember, I mean, the Russian army was fast, and they had garrisons everywhere, and so the troops went out to support the local landowners, and if they'd had any trouble, they would grab the peasants, try and identify the ringleaders, and then either execute them or gave them such a whipping that, you know, they were probably completely sort of handicapped and then incapable of working afterwards. Yeah, and was there any dissent? Because, you know, you were saying that some of the, you know, a lot of the rank and file were drawn from, you know,

poorer parts of the country. And so, you know, they are being ordered to sort of turn on fellow countrymen of a similar background. I mean, do you get the sense that this is an orderly army that will do its bidding every time, all the time, or is there chafing beginning even then? There aren't any, certainly not major examples of troops refusing orders at that stage. That came very much more towards the middle and the end, particularly after 1915 in the First

World War. It was an orderly army. You know, officers had the right to hit their soldiers in the face without sort of, you know, any legal or even, it wasn't like sort of company orders where they were sentenced to something. It was regarded as sort of almost perfectly natural. And they were treated like as absolute rubbish. Funny enough, Phil Marshall Wevel, who was a liaison officer with the Russian army. Then young Archie Weaver. Young Archie Wavel was absolutely fascinated by when he heard about two different companies, their company commanders had ordered they were going to have an eating competition. They were both going to get that sort of big his soldier to eat bread or whatever. And one of the company commanders,

who lost the vet because his soldier had packed up. And he summoned the company Sergeant Major or whatever. And he said, well, why did he pack up like that or whatever? And he said, well, I don't understand, sir. You know, we tried him out just beforehand, eating, eating loaves and loaves of bread or whatever. And, you know, he was perfectly okay. I mean, you know. Oh, poor man, we're so full up.

You're so full up. So full up. Oh, okay. Look, we should talk about the Duma at this time as well. well. Tell us about the Duma and what its functions and efficacy was. Well, the one thing that the czar, as an autocrat, did not want, was any break on his power or any interference. But because of the outbreaks of trouble in 1905 and the sort of real anger in the countryside and the strikes, Vita, Count Vita, his prime minister, but a brilliant, probably the most brilliant statesman of his

of his era, persuaded the Tsar that he had to have a Duma, they had to summon a Duma, a parliament, basically. And of course, the Empress was even more ferocious. I mean, she'd become sort of, you know, Pluh Holmanov-Kalehomanov in the sense that she felt that sort of autocracy had to be kept going. You know, their son has got to inherit an autocracy. It mustn't be messed around with any of these sort of ghastly democratic elements. And in fact, even Grand Duke, Nikolai Nikolaevich, who was the uncle of the Tsar, who was this immensely tall man, of course, even worse for Nicholas's imperiality. Self-esteem.

And self-esteem, indeed. He said, well, listen, if you don't accept a Duma or whatever, and you want me to be a military dictator, then I will shoot myself here and now, and it was sort of all very dramatic. And so Nicholas felt he had to give him. And so a Duma was summoned, which meant representatives from all different parts of the country and so forth. typical of Nicholas that he gives in to one of his own family rather than popular revolution.

And then of course he regretted it immediately and felt that he'd been tricked and so forth. And he then dismissed the first Duma and then there was the second Duma and then eventually there was a third Duma. I mean, each time it was because there was some sort of crisis and he felt he had no choice but to summon the Duma again. But each time it was, should we say, a reduction in his power. which he found very, very, very hard to accept. Now, as we move forward towards the outbreak of the First World War, there are warnings from many within the system, including Rasputin, that an outbreak of war at this stage would destroy both Russia and the Romanovs.

Yes. Bring us up to the outbreak. Well, it's quite interesting that there was a book by Norman Angel just beforehand, which had argued that a war in Europe was unthinkable because, know, Germany and France and everybody was now so interlinked through trade and communications that a war was unthinkable. And into marriage of the royal families. They're all first-guards.

And into marriage with the royal families. But that was not actually put up forward really very much in his arguments. Interestingly, it was a similar thing to Angela Merkel later with Putin, believing sort of, you know, war is unthinkable because, you know, we're so interlinked. So one mistake was made then, and it was certainly made again later. But the point was that the Russians at this particular stage had been rather humiliated with the previous Balkan wars. The real villains of the peace in a way was the Austrian-Hungarian Empire determined to crush Serbia. And so as soon as the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated, Austria leapt at the opportunity.

And Germany sort of supported her in her determination to sort of crush and humiliate Serbia completely in revenge, but also. as part of their own expansion. And for the Russians, the idea of the Serbs, fellow Slavs, fellow Orthodox Slavs, this was absolutely unacceptable. And that's why there was sort of a very strong war party in Russia, which the Tsar simply could not ignore. And then it came to the point when they said, well, we must at least do a partial mobilization on the Austrian front. And then the generals came back and told the Tsar, well, we can't do it. I mean, our railway system is such that we all have to do a complete mobilisation against Germany too. And that was what then triggered the war. This is clearly not what either the economy or society is prepared for.

Well, the economy is actually booming in those sort of years just before the First World War, which sort of has provided, should we say, ammunition to certain right-wing historians trying to sort of say, oh, well, you know, if the war hadn't started and all the rest of it, you know, then Russia would have been able to evolve. Well, you know, that's a possibility, but I wouldn't put much straw by it. But there's no doubt about it. The trouble was, Nicholas, to begin with, didn't want a war. And we have to remember, of course, that he also was being influenced by Rasputin, the so-called mad monk. He wasn't a monk. He probably wasn't mad. He was a brilliant opportunist in many ways, who had basically been brought in to the sort of the royal circle

because of his influence on the Tsarevich, the little boy, that he who was suffering from hemophilia. And he started to have a big influence. But then, curiously, although the Tsar had been greatly against the war, when it was actually forced upon him, partly by his then ministers, it wasn't necessary to go for full mobilization as they convinced him that it was. So, but then when he actually made his announcement of the war from the balcony of the Winter Palace in Petersburg then, but it was about to become petrograd, the whole crowd, melt on one would knee and started singing, God save the Tsar. And the Tsar, of course, got completely carried away by this and actually thrilled by the

idea that this was bringing the whole country together and it would put revolution out of the window. Well, he should have learned his lesson from the Japanese wall because, I mean, there, the whole idea was that we needed a small war so as to prevent a revolution. But in fact, of course, it did. It actually then triggered the revolts of 1905 and were about to find the same thing again. And so when the war started, they sent their armies into East Prussia to divert the Germans because they were advancing on Paris. This was actually a great sacrifice on the Russian part. And our armies were more or less destroyed. And it did save the French. There was the Battle of the Marne and the miracle there. And say from that point of view, the French, if you like,

always had a certain obligation towards Russia in that particular way. But the Russian army was simply not up to the fact he didn't have the artillery of the Germans. But extraordinary numbers, Anthony. I think you write that 15.3 million men were mobilized into the first. World War. Altogether, yes, absolutely. Astonishing. I mean, you've got some absolutely eye-watering numbers in this. In just one battle, 70,000 Russians are killed and wounded and 100,000 taken prisoner and then compare the Germans who lose only 15,000 men. That's the Battle of Tannenberg.

Yes. So, yeah, they're completely outgunned. Well, I know, but then also think of the Battle of the Somme. You know, 60,000 there. I mean, and what actually is staggering is everybody thinks about the deaths of the Second World War. In fact, actually, the rate of casualties was fairly similar to the Russian Army in the First World War. And Anthony, you paint a picture in your book of an army, the Russian Army, which is completely ill-equipped, not enough uniforms, many of them haven't got boots,

bullets are running out. There's not enough of anything. They've been given rotten food, being ill-treated by their commanders. The commanders are way back from the front, living in nice houses while the troops are freezing to death in trenches. Yes, there was a lot of that. The officer were not necessarily in nice houses. I mean, some of them were just sort of would take over a peasant Isba or, you know, log hut. But the point was that, yes, officers had a much, a far better life, even though they had a higher casualty rate, as was the case on the Western Front too. But the real trouble was, after 1914, there was this huge disastrous retreat, which carried on and they lost Warsaw. I mean, Poland have been part of, or most of Poland have been part of the Russian Empire up

until that particular point. So this is when the Tsar then made this catastrophic decision that he would take over as commander-in-chief. And Uncle Nikolaisha, the Grand Duke, Nicolaevich, was sent off as Viceroy of the Caucasus, and the Tsar took over, which meant, as he had been worn by all of his ministers, this means that you will be blamed for every single disaster which happens from now on. And that was indeed the case. I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't only, I mean, he says, you just wonder what is going on in this man's head, because not only does he decide he's going to be the fall guy in one way or the other, even though people are telling him that's exactly the position you're taking on. But he also decides to wage his own war against the Duma as well at the

same time. This is July 1915. We're going to take a break here. Join us after the break when we find out what happens after Nicholas II makes these, what will be, monumental decisions for Russia. Welcome back. So it's 1915. The Russian forces are experiencing terrible shortages in men and material. There's not enough bullets. There's not enough boots. The Russian forces are retreating. The Praetorian Guard are being massacred, the natural supporters of the Tsar. And in the middle of all this, Nicholas II agrees to recall. the Duma, but their request for responsible government leads to their dissolution. And the Tsar indefinitely postpones the Duma. This is obviously a huge mistake, Anthony. This is a great mistake,

because they're not only falling out, he's not only falling out with everybody of an intelligent, liberal, centrist views. He's even outraging some of the extreme right, who is his natural supporters, because they can see the disaster that is going on. whether it's a question of supplies to the army. I mean, everything is being very badly handled in that particular way. So, I mean, he, though, having taken over as commander-in-chief, is sort of making trips to the front. They're putting on sort of offences, but these are all, of course, entirely manufactured.

And it all looks very fine. They've concentrated all the artillery just in front of the Tsar, which means that everybody else on either side has got no artillery left at all. And he is absolutely thrilled and so gives sort of, you know, the highest award for gallantry, you know, to the general who's organized this and goes away convinced, in fact, that they're going to win the war. So, I mean, one's living again in this fantasy land. I mean, we know that the phrase about Potemptian villages is a complete false one from Catherine the Great. But, I mean, you know, this was basically the sort of the military equivalent during the First World War. Well, you know what they say.

You know, when the queen used to go on, she must have thought that everywhere smelt of French. fresh paint because that's, you know, it's like this is a man who's completely disconnected. We're going to talk about Rasputin in greater detail in another podcast, but he becomes the talisman for this sort of, you know, frothing now discontent that is developing with families who are losing their boys at the front and who don't have enough food and who, you know, things are going very, very badly. As I say, well, it's an extraordinary story. But the man is murdered in December 1916. Does that dissipate any of the rage, or then are they looking for somebody else to hate on? Because, you know, they've got rid of him. Does their focus immediately

then land on the Tsar? Well, it was far too late, if you like, to have an effect by that particular stage. Interestingly, what he did was that, of course, you know, the aristocracy and middle class celebrated the death of Rasputin. And, you know, Prince Usipov and the Grand Duke Dimitri were greeted as absolute heroes. But most of the workers and the soldiers thought, isn't it typical? The any time a peasant gets close to the Tsar, he's immediately murdered by the aristocracy. But then, look, so we're heading into 1917, and you're saying, you know, it's too late. You can't save the Tsar. You can't save anything by just getting rid of the one man. And I'm fascinating. I never thought of that, actually, that it would be interpreted by others

as you've killed one of ours because he got above his station. I hadn't accomplished. care to me. But 1917, so then you have strikes beginning. Are strikes alien to Russia until this point? Have there been strikes before? Well, there had been strikes and they had been suppressed with great savatory. You know, the troops again were brought in, fixed burnets and, you know, sometimes shoot. The difference with the strikes in this particular case in February 1970 was mainly about bread. And this was because the very cold winter had actually frozen the locomotives. And this was the disaster that the bread simply wasn't getting too Petrograd of that particular city. You make the point which I hadn't known before that, in fact,

there'd been very good harvest the year before. It wasn't that there wasn't grain. It's that it wasn't moving around the country and getting to the people. Exactly. Exactly. And this is why the Bolsheviks, when the uprising started in February, and it started really with a demonstration by women, part of International Women's Day, of demonstrating about the lack of bread. The Bolsheviks who were in Petrograd, and that remember, Lenin was in Switzerland, Trotsky was in North America, and Stalin was still in Siberia. And Lenin, when he hears about the beginning of unrest, is it a hoax? He doesn't believe that the revolution is actually, I think it won't happen in his own lifetime.

Well, no, but also, I think that he's actually rather offended that the revolution has happened. They started without him. The surprise also, certainly, there's a wonderful picture in the early part of your book of St. Petersburg at this point. And while all the kind of bread riots are beginning and strikes the beginning, there's still this sort of, you know, theatre, ballet, tango, champagne going on in the background. The two are happening simultaneously. Well, Shogin, who has this extreme right-winger, you know, he was furious where he was sort of saying, you know, here we are dancing a tango on the parapet of trenches. you know, crammed with our war dead. And I think there were some on the extreme right

because there was this extraordinary sort of, you know, fan of regime, corruption and all the rest of it. You know, the restaurants were full, the theatres were full. That whole Tolstoyan world of everyone at the theatre is still carried on. It was actually even worse than Telsoil because, of course, many of them were snorting cocaine. I mean, I'm always fascinated that even during the Russian Civil War, how they got their supplies of cocaine in the middle of Siberia.

Yes, that doesn't happen in war and peace, doesn't it? Gosh, but how do we know about the cocaine? How do we know? I mean, are there accounts of them snorting? Wow. And there's a whole novel about it called Novel with Cocaine by Agaev, which actually describes in Petrograd the way that the, when the commissars took over, the young commissars had their harims of young women, usually from the aristocracy, who were all, of course, have been deprived of everything. So they picked their mistresses there. And they were sort of handing out coke and alcohol and everything, you know.

And there's extraordinary orgies going on in Petrograd. It's a sort of strange mixture of the world of Tolstoy and almost the world of Gatsby and even more, that you've got the tango, you've got the music, you've got the jazz bands. And in the meantime, in the industrial districts, strikes, bread marches. And this begins to escalate as February comes, February the 23rd, 1917, the winter weather improves in Petrograd, and 100,000 workers take to the streets and begin demonstrations. Next day, it's 200,000. Yes, and the key point is that up until then, they've always been able to rely on

their troops, and especially the Cossacks, to disperse any revolt or any demonstration even. And there were the Cossacks, and they suddenly saw, the workers suddenly saw that they didn't have their whips, their Nagaikas, which were enough to kill somebody, you know, those whips. And they saw that the Cossacks hadn't brought them with them. And they realized that, and they suddenly saw that the Cossacks might have sort of pushed them aside a little bit with their horses, pushed going sideways or whatever. But they didn't stop them or sabre them. climbed under the horses to get through, to get across the bridges, because of course that was how

they had to cut off the demonstrations in Petrograd. And why is that, Anthony? Why are the Cossacks who've been loyal right up to this point brutal for the Romanovs? Why are they suddenly fraternising with the crowds and letting people pet the horses' heads and that sort of thing? Well, it's interesting. I mean, the only bit I came across was in one particular account, which was of soldiers angrily shouting at Cossacks who were being given food in the their mess hall or whatever and chatting at them sort of saying, you, Cossacks, are you going to, are you going to support the Zaris again? And the Cossack shout back, you know, do you think we're going to kill our fellow citizens just because we're being given some lentils and moldy,

moldy herring? No way. And so one does see that they've now turned against them. I mean, part of it was a war weariness. There was also a newer generation of Cossack, which is the sort of younger generation, who were more open-minded. Hempster Cossacks. Well, it's a nice idea, Willie, but I'm not sure that that's, okay. Deeply historical. Okay, we'll forget the Hempter Cossacks. Anyway, but the point was that the Cossacks, or particularly the younger ones,

some of the of the people were getting slightly left wing, which was unthinkable, because, I mean, the Cossacks were already, as we know, ferociously anti-Semitic and, you know, basically very pro the Tsar. They had always been the Tsar's forces. Two of the wonderful voices you have described. describing this melee in the streets of St. Petersburg, surprisingly, are Prokofiev and Nabokov. Both are there. That's amazing.

You can't do much better than that, can you? Give us their impressions of all this. Well, Prokofiev is still living in Petrograd and composing and also working with a sort of youth orchestra of some sort. And he doesn't have a clue of what's going on, which actually is rather good from a writer's point of view. because I think that was true of most people. He's walking out to rehearsals and coming to people...

We're just the streets are filled with people shouting. Tram windows, he say, are being smashed in and he doesn't understand why. Yes, and I say that he chats to workers and say forth to find out what's going on, and they tell him that he does not see actually the real cruelty and brutality. It's always thought that the February Revolution of 1917 was almost a bloodless one. Far from it. I mean, you know, the police were being massacred. often in very cruel ways.

Some of them were being just pushed down through a hole in the ice and things like that and thrown out of windows. It's the boot on the other foot now, the people are turning on the police. The police are bearing the brunt of it. And officers are being put up on bare nets of their own soldiers and this sort of thing. Well, that's much more at the front, funny enough, when that starts to happen at the front, and that will be a little bit later. At this particular stage, yes, there are soldiers sort of turning their backs on officers

but the actual killing of officers doesn't come until a little bit later. But in Petrograd, it is very much the pharaohs, as they're called, the police, are being killed by the rioters, by the workers there. It does get sort of bloodier and bloodier. And in fact, I'm afraid people get more and more of a taste for blood. Prokofiev doesn't see that. Prisoners begin to get released from the jail, symbols of the imperial family get torn down. It gets quite violent.

Well, not as farant as it's going to get, but this is still an early, an early period. Right. So just, I mean, just sort of taking it through, you know, the Duma has been dissolved, but it becomes the focal point for descent and people start occupying it. And the real spark that really sets this alight is Nevsky Prospect. This is, you know, workers who are descending on this town centre and soldiers open fire. Directly ordered by the Tsar.

And that becomes this sort of moment where everyone says, right, that's it, he's got to go. We don't want anything from him. We just don't want him anymore. Well, the whole question was, do they want the Remenovs? And should there be an abdication by the Tsar, either in favour of his young son, or in favour, as he then tried to do it, because he didn't want to lose his son, because he would obviously have to go and the son would remain, or otherwise of his younger brother, the Grand Duke Mekhail. And this is the point when the whole regime is,

obviously coming down completely, but it's also at the time when members of the Duma, particularly Rod Cianco, who is the president of the Duma, realizes that unless they step in and do something, it's going to be total chaos and, you know, it'll be blood on the streets even more than they're seeing at the moment. And it's surprisingly quick. I mean, I was amazed in your book by how I thought it would be a kind of long, drawn-out thing, the abdication of the Zab. In fact, it happens fairly rapidly. It is February, March. period? I think that in a revolution, you know, there's a long period. People say it's like bankruptcy, you know, it seems to go very, very slowly and then suddenly it's very rapid indeed.

And I think there's an element of there. But the important thing one sees very much in the February revolution here is the way that a revolution is successful when the ruling regime has lost confidence, the determination to hold on to power. And this is very, very, very, clear here. What's astonishing is how few, in fact, almost no officers were prepared to sort of raise their swords to defend the Tsar. Many of them talked about it, but maybe it really did everything. The any times that there were real revolts or fighting against the Bolsheviks were partly in Moscow, but also in sort of one or two other areas like Akuts in Siberia and so forth, when the news eventually got there, because one has to remember how slow news was to percolate,

across the fast Russian Empire. And just, and we'll end on this, because I think we should pick up in the next episode. But just do we know the manner in which the Tsar abdicates? Is it gracious? Is it public? Or is it something that sort of, you know, gets whispered out to the crowds and then passed along?

Nobody, none of the crowds really hear any details of the Tsar's abdication, which was reluctant, slightly embittered. He's got stuck on a train before all this, hasn't he? He's been setting off to Petersburg, and then he can't get there. Yes, he was trying to get back to Petrograd, then get stuck. The workers block the line. The railway workers blocked the line, which it had never occurred to him.

I mean, he did have, should we say, and this is certainly due, as I say, to his fatalism, he did have an extraordinary lack of imagination. So he was basically sort of stuck there, couldn't really move. And he was rapid. There's no doubt about it. But then the point was, you get to this day. and we're going to go on to this, obviously, in the next bit. Where we see what Alexander Hudson in the 19th century rightly described as the pregnant widow, that moment when one regime collapses,

but there is nothing in place really to take over. Anthony, what surprised me was that you paint this picture of Nicholas as someone who has at every stage opposed democracy, opposes the doomer, opposes all reforms, wants to cling on to autocracy at all costs. And yet, it's only a month of riots in Petersburg. It's only a few deaths in the relative scale of what's going to come that leads him to actually take the decision to abdicate. Does he think that if he abdicates, it'll pass to his son and carry on forever? Or what's in his mind?

Why is he agreeing to this? Because he's not in Petersburg. He hasn't seen the riots. Well, there are a number of things, the very personal, which is that he was homesick for his family. He just wanted to get back to his family. and I think he realized that he had completely screwed up and that there wasn't much he could do about it.

All his advisors are telling him very frankly for the first time. Well, and his generals, his generals are saying, listen, we're fighting a war. If there's a revolution which is going ahead and there is a complete breakdown of law and order and all rest of it, we've lost the war. So from that point of view, he feels a certain moral obligation that he can't ignore the advice of all the commanders in chief

of the Western Front, and in fact, even the naval chiefs were consulted. And he also feels that, as I say, his fatalism. You know, oh, if it's come to this, there's nothing I can do. It's all in the hands of God. Listen, it's a great place to end and to pick up for the next podcast. Anthony Beaver, thank you so very much. Join us for more on the next edition of Empa. Until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan.

And goodbye for me, William Durempal.