Empire: World History - 91. Lenin and The Rise of the Bolsheviks

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

The Tsar has abdicated and the provisional government rules Russia, but Petrograd is overflowing with revolutionaries who want more radical change. Lenin has returned from exile and is looking to seize power for the Bolsheviks. Their momentum is growing and with Russia still in the First World War, Kerensky and the provisional government's authority is draining away. Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by the great Antony Beevor to discuss the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks' consolidation of power in the civil war. 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 podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnond. And me, William Durimpole. And you know what? We are blessed because we have Anthony Beaver with us. Again, he left us on quite the cliffhanger. You're bursting to tell an Anthony Bieber story.

You got in there last time. Is it Chelsea? It's my mobile phone ring to. Your mobile phone story. Definitely won't up me. I have a little story too. And I should tell it. That when I first decided I wanted to write a history book, White Moguls,

I rang up Anthony and said, how do you go about writing these bloody books? And I got a little tutorial. I went round to Fulham to his house, got taken to his study. And he showed me, and I have Exhibit A. I'm sadly this is a podcast so none of you can see, but Anita can. I can.

A card index. A card. And he had a bag of card indexes. And he showed he had one box for the people in his book, and one box for the places and all the other systems that he had to write his books. And I have aped the beaver system ever since. And to this day, I use antiquated, antiquated card indexes. Can I just say that I got the card index thing from you?

So it is basically the beaver relay race through this. It's a terrible case of literary pox. Well, yes, indeed. I was thinking COVID. Yes, it was definitely nice. COVID that particular way. No, but it's funny enough, I've been asked you a few what's so-called masterclasses on the structure and marshalling of material from archives

and all the rest of it to make it easier for particularly PhD students or whatever to get there. Yeah, that's mine. Anita's holding up her card. The current book that I'm working on. Yes, my card index. It's funny you should say that because, I mean, I haven't really used a card index. for a very long time. You're now on some NASA data bank.

Oh my God. We're still Dickensian cards. Dear, that's the sound of two hearts breaking, Anthony Bieber. Can I also just tell you an observation while we were getting ready? Anthony Weber is the antithesis of you and I, Willie, because I did say to him, you know, that last episode was absolutely marvelous. And he went, oh, no, no, no, no, touch him. I was like, God, you're really different. I mean, anyone says anything half nice to us and we're rolling over our bags going to stroke me, stroke me.

One more little tickle under my chair. There's something else. Please tell me. Anyway, it's absolutely charming. This is all due to early imposter syndrome. Oh, well, I mean, I find that extraordinary as well. The great Anthony Beaver has imposter syndrome. Well, the great Anthony Viva, as you call him, El Gran Historiador, English, as the Spanish called Come me, failed his A-levels, history and English, a Winchester.

Shut the front door. Did you really? Yes. Did you really? Yes. I love it. Gosh. That's why I have imposter syndrome, if you like, from that point of, I think that's amazing. I think you've actually passed. We would give you an A star. You know, you passed. It's all right. Empire Party, UK, you get top mark.

A little gold star on your chart. Look, at the end of the last episode, the abdication had taken place. And what we haven't sort of said, because we're going to move on to what the provisional government decides to do in this power vacuum that exists immediately afterwards in just a moment. But while all of this is going on, while, you know, there's ours at the station and he's deciding what he's going to do, but it's not really a decision to make because he only has one choice, he's got to go. Is it true to say that Petrograd is being filled rapidly with revolutionaries? I mean, Lenin comes back. Who else comes back? What does it look like?

This is a very nice sort of two-way train, because just as the poor old Tsar has been blocked by the workers on the railway and can't get to Petrograd and has to go back and miserable has to abdicate, another train, special sealed train, is being laid on by the Germans for Lenin. who is being let through Germany, which is at war with Russia, in order to get him back to Russia, which the Germans know will undermine the Russian war effort. It's a very calculated and clever move by the German high command. Anthony, tell us about that. That's absolutely true, but it was quite a bit later. I mean, Lenin didn't actually reach Petrograd until April, so well after the February Revolution. The point was that the Germans quite rightly did realize that it was one way to accelerate the collapse.

of the Russian army on the Eastern Front because they wanted to transfer their troops back to the Western Front with America coming into the war, or the threat of America coming into the war in a very short space of time. So for no point of view, when Lenin finally arrives, and he has to go across Germany in the so-called sealed train. He has that lovely quote, isn't he? He says, in six months, we shall either be hanging or in power. Yes, he said that. The other interesting element was that typical, example of Linnean's micromanagement was that he even worked out a rotor on who was to use the lavatory at exactly which time.

Oh, that's wonderful. Central control of the land. This is definitely a central party control. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, they then sailed across the Baltic Sea to Sweden where all of his companions said, listen, you've got to get some new clothes. You can't go around, you know, looking like a tramp and all the rest of it. So he was forced to buy some new boots.

He arrived, and the famous thing, he arrived. at the Finland station. He made a quick speech to some of the revolutionary sailors who were there, and then made a speech from the top of an armored car outside the station. And later that night, I mean, this was all extraordinary with his ability to keep going. He then made another speech to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, and they were appalled by the extremism of his ideas of getting rid of banks, getting rid of the police, getting rid of the army, I mean, turning the whole of society completely upside down. Initially, he's not even recognised, is he? He turns up to his own party headquarters.

They refuse to believe that Lenin is there. Yes. Nobody knew what he looked like. You know, they'd heard of Lenin, but they just didn't know what he looked like. His photograph had never really been published, which actually was very lucky for him later on when under the provisional government they were hunting for him. But anyway, Lenin then makes these speeches. He then attacks the other socialist parties, the Mensheviks and the socialist revolutionists, all the rest of it. And nobody takes Lenin seriously because they think he's mad. He's far too extreme.

You know, this will never happen and all the rest of it. Very interesting. Very useful. Very useful. Yeah. Meanwhile, there are other revolutionists starting to arrive. It's not quite like after the October coup d'etat carried out by the communists by the Bolsheviks, when, you know, revolutionaries started arriving from all over the world.

But there were still very much the Russian revolutionaries were arriving from elsewhere. But they were still the Bolsheviks in a tiny minority. Meanwhile, the provisional government, as it's been called, came into being in a strange way. Maybe we should just pause a second there. What was the beliefs of the Bolsheviks? Where was it different from the other revolutionary groups? Well, there were a lot of arguments within the Bolshevik, Central Committee, and as I said, they were horrified by Lenin's extremism.

Even the Bolsheviks were alarmed by Lenin. Oh, I see. Oh, yes. Even many of the Bolsheviks were horrified. Needless to say, these, of course, were Bolsheviks who would never survive, certainly never survived Stalin. And anyway, all the old Bolsheviks actually, of course, were going to be killed under Stalin, except for perhaps Molotov. But the point was that Lenin argued frequently with the other members because he felt they were far too timid, their idea that the Bolsheviks were capable of seizing power at some stage. Simply, they found unbelievable. Can I just ask, the provisional government, did they, I mean, what were they calling themselves?

This is Alexander Kerensky is sort of a leading light of this. What did they deem themselves to be, the new government? Or would they, you know, they wouldn't have called themselves provisional or would they? What did they refer to themselves as? Well, they were not a full government by any means. This was one of the problems. It started off, really, with two committees within the Duma, One was the sort of right of centre group led by Mikhail Rogansko, who was the president of the Duma.

And then there was the old Petrograd Soviet from 1905. Soviet, we should say it just means a committee, doesn't it? Well, a Soviet means a committee. You're quite right, exactly. And it was the committee, basically, from 1905, which had a mixture, mainly of old social democrats in that particular period and Mensheviks and so forth. and it was an uneasy alliance, if you like, between the two of them. The reason why Kurenski came to power was that he was a member of both of them, and he was the only one.

And so as a result, he was able to, shall we say, keep the show on the road between the two of making sure that the committee of the Duma was not going to be too reactionary and that the Petrograd Soviet was going to be able to work with them. There's a delicious sort of connection between him and Lenin. I mean, you know, they're born in the same place, isn't it? Karenski's father actually teaches Lenin at some point. It's so improbable. The whole of Russia, there's thousands of miles.

I know. It is amazing in that particular way. But, you know, whether Karenski and Lenin ever had a proper conversation after the February Revolution is, I think, quite unlikely. They lived very, very separate lives. Kerenck, when he became, first of all, he was Minister of Justice and the Minister of War, He then started making these extraordinary journeys around the front, standing up in the back of an open automobile, talking to the soldiers. And he was another brilliant speaker. You said he could make soldiers weep in minutes.

Well, it was true. He could. I mean, I know that it's always said that the Russians are very emotional and all the rest of it. But even so, this was a pretty extraordinary achievement. Meanwhile, Lenin, who was working with the Central Committee, they had taken over, interestingly, the mansion, the glorious mansion, of the Tsars' former mistress, Zizhaya, who was a great ballet dancer, and so they seized her apartment, we've seen brother strange, you know, and interestingly, when he came to strikes later on, it was the general strike in 1917,

because in Chaya got out of the way, but her brother, who was part of the ballet group, he went on strike and more or less joined the Bolshevik. So one did have another interesting little paradox. And Lenin, we think of him today as this character who's much more into avert violence. A revolution without firing squads is meaningless. Is that his image at this time, or is he still very much participating in discussions and open to other parties and other points of view?

He absolutely despised any form of collaboration with other parties, but was, of course, prepared to break his own rules if he realized it was absolutely necessary. And later on, when the left socialist revolutionaries split from the right socialist revolutionaries, he even stole their main slogan, really, which was sort of land and liberty to the peasants. Lenin's brilliant, and the whole of the Soviet Union was in many ways founded on three lies. One was the promise to the peasants that they would have the land, when of course they had no intention of allowing them to have the land. In the long term, it would be collectivization, but in the short term, they needed to keep them on board simply to

make sure they could feed the cities. His promise to the workers in the factories was that they would control the factories through their own Soviets or councils, without ever admitting that, of course, they were never going to allow them that sort of liberty because it was going to be run entirely by the party and the state. And thirdly, he promised peace to the soldiers, when in fact he intended to turn the imperialist war against Germany into an international civil war. And this is the key thing about Lenin. He quite openly stated that civil war was the sharpest form of class conflict. He therefore knew that the only way to take absolute power to achieve all the things that he wanted to achieve,

which as I say it was a complete reversal of society, would be through civilized. Civil War. So I don't think there's any much doubt really there on sort of, you know, the whole question of when did the Civil War actually start, comes back rather to that particular issue. So Lenin had absolutely no compunction, A, of concealing what his real plans were, and B, going for absolute power, because he knew that that was the only way that he could achieve everything he wanted. And also, I mean, you know, just just looking at what this. this provisional government has to navigate. I mean, you've got, so you've got Lenin an absolute or nothing with his morale,

the moral of his story is absolutely everything or nothing at all. You've got also these Soviets, these collectives of people who all want different things and who all have, you know, sort of very loud voices. Let's talk about the Kronstadt Soviet of sailors, for example, you know, because they, you know, do they immediately repudiate this provisional government or do they turn against it? And what happens when they decide to? They don't repudiate provisional government, but the bout of the sailors are a mixture of anarchists and Bolsheviks and other parties. But the anarchists and the Bolsheviks were the sort of the leading lights

of the Kronstadt set up. Are the anarchists very strong at this point? I mean, it always seems like a rather sort of unworldly political belief in dissolution of the state. Is that a possibility at this point? Well, that was the case very much in, I mean, they were very unworldly, should we say, in Petrograd. But in Ukraine, in Southeast Ukraine, you have Makhno, Nesto Makhno and his anarchists, who spread throughout the whole area. Interestingly, Makhno comes up to Moscow later when they've moved to Moscow to talk to millennium and they have discussions. But basically, they reject both Bolshevism and, of course, the whites. but that's much more part of the civil war. But I think the real point is, going back to the so-called provisional government,

their problem was that they had ministers and ministries, but they had no power whatsoever, certainly not outside Petrograd. The police had all been destroyed. The whole administration of Tsarism had been destroyed. And this was precisely what Alexander Herzen had predicted in his thing of the pregnant widow. And you have this wonderful picture in your book of Total Chaos in St. Petersburg, with different groups of the Duma speaking over each other and arguments and sort of

workers striding in and with absolutely no functioning government at all at this point? Well, I mean, it functioned as much as it possibly could in the circumstances, but the problem was it was hardly able to achieve anything. Now, this created a huge frustration amongst, say, the peasants. They said, right, can we now take over the land? And they said, no, no, we've got to wait until the constituent assembly has been voted for and has set up. Now, the constituent assembly was going to be the new Duma, the parliament, if you like, of the post-Zarist society. And even the Bolsheviks felt obliged to pay lip service to the whole notion of the

constituent assembly. But of course, it took a lot of time. And, of course, the Bolsheviks sabotaged many of the different attempts to get it going. and eventually it took until all way until November, which was in fact after the Bolshevik coup d'etat to actually hold the elections. So, I mean, you know, you're right for a party of slogans, what do we want? A constituent assembly, what do we want it? It doesn't really carry.

So you've still got the resentment simmering even though the Tsar is gone. You've got these disparate groups who all want different things who are talking all over each other in a provisional government that has absolutely nothing to prop it up. There is also a small matter of the war, continuing. So, you know, July 1917, Russia's beginning a new offensive. I mean, it turns out to be an absolutely ridiculous and terrible decision for them to fight on the northern front. Partly because the army is totally disorganised. The troops are not obeying their officers. The officers are

being propped up on bare-nits every so often. There's no united force to repel the Germans at all. Well, there are certain key units, but the trouble is that they were put together by soldiers who were still loyal to their orders and their officers. But that took them away from the other regiments, and as a result, they were the really chaotic ones. So you basically were seeing Kurenski thinking that purely by the power of his oratory, he could inspire them to win a great victory over the Germans, and stupidly, he promised them that this would be the end of the war, so they could all go home. Well, of course, it wasn't. It was a total disaster. And then the Russian army had to flee right into Ukraine. So all of that became a sort of really disastrous setup. And the provisional government

was really struggling. Karetsky didn't make things worse. He was rather a fantasist in many ways. But the real disaster came when a, I think probably another fantasist who was called Lov, who was a member of the Duma, but was not a relation of Prince Lovov, who was one of the leaders of the provisional government, went to the General Cornelof, who was the commander-in-chief, basically implying that Kerensky wanted him to take over power, to prevent the disintegration of the army. And Cornelov said, well, that's very interesting, et cetera, et cetera. And he then went back to Kerensky and said, oh, General Cornelov thinks that really he should take over the army and the government or whatever in a military coup. And this is where Kerensky felt my

God, the right are now about to launch a counter coup against the revolution. And he, therefore, started to ally with the left and even with the Bolsheviks. And this is when the Bolsheviks were able to infiltrate the telephone exchanges, the counterintelligence organization, and all the rest of it. Are they better organized? Oh, far better, far better organized. Under Lenin's rotors and Trotsky. Because remember, It was Tretzky who organized basically the Bolshevik fighting force in Petrograd. They camouflaged it by pretending that it avoided any reference to the party. And they managed to sort of hide a lot of things in that particular way.

But basically, they were then able to start issuing orders, taking over the arsenals and taking over the armories. And so they were able to distribute more and more weapons to their own men. And this is why the so-called October revolution in the idea or the words or the propaganda of the Bolsheviks was, in fact, a coup d'etat. I mean, they were able to literally move in and there was very, very little fighting. Can we talk about the Mensheviks as well? Because who were they, who was sort of running that show? And how did they compare to the Bolsheviks? I mean, they were brilliant parliamentarians, if you like. But the very fact is that, you know, they were straightforward.

socialists. They were Democrats. And of course, Lenin despised democracy. There was no doubt about it. And he knew perfectly well that nothing could be really achieved with any alliance with them. How did they compare in numbers? I mean, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. Nobody has really clear figures. All we can say is that when it came to the elections for the constituent assembly, the Bolsheviks got 24% of the vote. The vast bulk went to the Socialist revolutionaries. So they're well organised, but at this stage, they're not particularly popular. Well, they're very popular in, shall we say, the industrial cities of the north. And this is one of the reasons why red terror was necessary from very early on, because when you're in the

minorities, we found also in the Spanish Civil War, when you're in a minority in a particular region, you know, to achieve power, you need to use terror. And that's what happens, I'm afraid, in the Civil War. Right. I mean, just one thing that we sort of said in It was interesting, but it might be important as well, that the Germans have sent Lenin back to go and do his worst. Does anybody accuse him of being a German agent? You were talking about deep statism? And how much did that stick to Lenin and the Bolsheviks?

You know what? You're just your German agents, and we are fighting them at the moment. People were more interested in ending the war than in worrying, I think, that much about the Germans. It was only really the officer class who were outraged at the idea. of Lenin and the Bolsheviks being sort of German agents as such. I mean, Lenin was prepared to take, you know, German gold, as it was said at the time. And I think it's almost certain now that he did take a lot of money from the Germans. But this was to set up the Bolsheviks' extraordinary

publishing empire. I mean, they had more newspapers and magazines than any other party political group. So from that point of view, yes, it was right to accuse some of that, if you like, But Lenin had no intention of actually doing things to help the Germans. If the Germans were going to profit from the fact that they could now move troops to face the British and the French, he had no compunction about that. As far as he was concerned, you know, let the capitalists go and destroy each other. He just wanted to get total power in Russia and then maybe international power later. Okay.

So the Bolshewiks are gaining traction. They're gaining power. they're, you know, sort of digging their roots deeper and deeper into the fabric of Russian society. Just take us to the, you know, the direct lead up to the October Revolution. What happens to sort of tip everything over the edge? Well, I think the main thing which tipped everything over the edge was the so-called Cornelof affair when General Cornelov, after this complete misunderstanding between him and Korensky, thought that Karenski wanted him to take over, he advanced on PetroG.

or sent troops from one of the cavalry corps. And this was seen and used as the fact of comrades, we must resist, you know, the white country revolution and all the rest of it. So that was, I think, the main tipping point, which made it all inevitable. And many who were, say, revolutionaries or on the left or whatever switched to the Bolsheviks because they felt they were there were anyone who were really organized and able to do something. something about facing down General Cornelof and his man. And Cornelov is arrested.

Indeed. And he's sent to a monastery as a prison. And so are other generals. And there they are waiting for to see what the outcome is. And of course, once it gets to the Bolshevik coup d'etat, they realise that their lives are going to be very much at risk. So take us now into the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks power is growing day by day, and the leadership of the Petrograd Soviet is now, is it being run by Bolsheviks?

Oh yes. Well, I mean, basically, Trotsky is the man behind the scenes and organizing all of the military preparations. Definitely now join the Bolsheviks formally. Oh, yes, absolutely. There you are. And so violence starts to escalate. September 1917, industrial strikes and armed conflicts between workers and government militias break out, peasant violence against landed estates in the countryside. It's getting much worse. Indeed. Take us forward. Well, I mean, in the beginning, quite often in the earlier part in the spring of 1917, landlords have been chased off their properties. By the summer and certainly

by the autumn, many of them were being killed. And there was terrible destruction. You know, they would, the peasants would come like a sort of a whole group with sides and pitchforks and what else. With size and pickforks and all the rest of it, to loot the manor house and basically to destroy all that was in it. And while all this is going on, are you having a kind of mass flood of landowners and Zaris abroad? Are they fleeing out of the country? Are they being rounded up and shot?

What's happening? Well, some of them have escaped to Petrograd and then flee to Finland. Others go down south into Ukraine, to Kiev, and into the Crimea. But, I mean, again, sort of fighting is soon going to start down there. So, yes, there's a tremendous sort of. of diaspora. When, of course, we get to the dissolution of the constituent assembly, for example, the right socialist revolutionaries all go to the Volga where they've got their largest amount of support and they start to set up later their own constitution or if you like the Comuch,

which is basically those who believe in continuing or reestablishing the constituent assembly. So you've got a lot of people going in different directions. the destruction of the manor houses is largely triggered in many ways by sort of an anger for the past. But then they find that sort of, you know, defiling the place, whether it's setting on your own fire or leaving shit everywhere or whatever it might be. Not surprisingly, afterward they've done it, they feel what doesn't make us feel any better. And that only really increased the anger. It was a sort of curious paradox there. And while all this chaos is swelling around the whites are moving southwards. Lenin in Petrograd is getting the Bolsheviks

ready to prepare for an armed insurrection against provisional government. And he comes back in disguise, doesn't he? I mean, they're really preparing, you know, they're revving up. He knows where he's taking this. Tell us about Lenin's arrival in Petrograd. Oh, there you go, blowing the disguise line. Yes, Lenin comes in disguise and appears in the Tori Palace, the palace, which is the Duma, to be ready for the outcome of the coup d'etat. And suddenly one of the Menshevik leaders spots him despite the guys and hurries out of the door. And Linden, of course, roars with laughter when he sort of sees basically the very fact of his appearance causing fear and chaos in his, shall we say, socialist rivals.

And Kerensi's flailing around trying to take control of the situation that is just fast completely becoming out of his control. He orders the closures of these. You mentioned the Bolsheviks were brilliant at having newspapers. I mean, most people have heard of bravda, but there's a whole sort of raft of these things that are hitting different parts of the country. So Kerensky says, right, we're closing those down. They are sources of trouble. And Trotsky then stands up and says, no, not doing that. This is a provocation.

So when is the face-off where they're sort of suddenly musseling up against each other suddenly going to turn into the first blow is struck? Well, there's one major face-off in July, which is the same time as the Kerensky offensive. And that's when Lenin has to go into hiding in Finland. Shotsky is arrested, but then for a comparatively short time. And a number of other Bolshevik leaders are also arrested. But the trouble is that the provisional government, especially Karenski, didn't want to make enemies of the Bolsheviks, or at least not too much. So they were not prepared to be ruthless at that particular stage. So when do we actually acknowledge that the coup d'etat is happening?

Is there a flare that goes up? Do all of these people suddenly say, right, action, action to action now? Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, they had their men prepared. Trotsky had armed them. He made sure that they seized the bridges, which were so vital in Petrograd or Petersburg. and everything, everything then was ready and they seized the telephone exchanges. There were some resistance, usually actually, from cadets, from officer cadets, from the military

schools. And these were boys who, you know, had rifles which were almost as big as them. I mean, it was pathetic in some cases, and many of them were just killed on the spot. And there were also some of them and some of the women's battalion defending the Winter Palace, where Karenski's ministers were waiting for Karenski, who had slipped out of Petrograd in an American embassy vehicle, to bring back cavalry. They thought loyal cavalry who would put down the coup d'etat. Well, that was the last they saw of Karenski. I mean, he had no chance of being able to persuade any of the generals to come in at that stage against the Bolsheviks.

So the Bolsheviks then take the Winter Palace? The Bolsheviks take the Winter Palace, a mixture of Kronstadt sailors. But forget, for God's sake, forget Eisenstein, forget the storming of the Winter Palace there. I mean, that was pure propaganda. You know, they just hung about because they didn't want to get killed. They kept in shelter, and then finally somebody found an open window around the back, and they started getting in there. Can I tell you a top fact?

Can I tell you a top fact? Can I tell you a top fact? It just tickles me to my bone marrow. More people were killed in the making of Eisenstein's store. of the Winter Palace, then we're killed in the actual storming of the Winter Palace. Did you know that? That is absolutely true. I did actually, yes.

But you're quite right to point you out, yes. The power of propaganda. You've got to have a bit of real blood. So it's happened, it's done. What happens the day after? I always find that's the most intriguing question. The day after the Winter Palace is stormed, what happens? The Bolsheviks are basically arresting under the

a certain number of people, but there was not the repression that came very soon afterwards. The news started to trickle out and get to Moscow and say, but I mean, there were large parts of Russia which didn't even know about the Bolshevik coup d'etat until even a couple of months later. One has to remember quite how isolated so much of the Russian territory was. What happens to Karenski, though? I mean, he doesn't hang around, does he? Does he leg it? Kerensky, having got to the headquarters of the Northern Army group, knows that now actually is the time to get out on, get out of the country. He ends up in France, doesn't he?

Well, he ends up in France and then he goes to the United States eventually. But yes, he just certainly doesn't want to be around. Okay, so now, you know, the Bolsheviks have control. What does victory mean to them? What do they do after that? Well, their attempt, of course, is to start to control everything. Trotsky writes in French to or being the language of diplomacy to all of the embassies abroad saying, you know, are you with us or are you against us?

If you're not with us, you are definitely counter-revolutionaries and you must vacate the embassy immediately. They try to basically take over the civil service, but they find all the civil servants go on strike. They try to close the banks and take the money from the banks. and the bank employees find every excuse where they can't hand over the money. So from this point of view, the Bolsheviks are getting very angry and very frustrated. And are they a mass movement or are they still kind of just better organized and more violent and better armed? Well, if you go by the votes, as I said, in the constituent assembly,

even allowing for lots of opportunists joining them and all the rest of it, then they're not still yet a mass movement. I mean, they're certainly less than well under 50% of the population. So you can't exaggerate or say that suddenly, you know, the vast majority are Bolsheviks. I mean, especially in the rural areas. I mean, the peasants have always voted socialist revolutionary. Some of them then will, especially those who have been. left socialist revolutionaries, will then join the Bolsheviks. But that's not the majority at all.

So the stage is set. You've got the Bolsheviks in charge, but not sort of on the shoulders of all the people. You've got chafing at every level and violence on the streets. Sounds like a civil war is on the horizon. Join us after the break. Welcome back. So when we left you, the civil war was about to break out. So, Anthony, tell us, first of all, how do the Bolsheviks get Russia out of the war before the civil war breaks out? The Bolsheviks want to get out of the war against Germany as soon as possible. And the Germans, of course, are thrilled with that because they've already started transferring all their troops to the Western Front or the vast majority. And therefore, it's the question of the whole negotiations which led up to the Treaty of Brestletovsk. Interestingly, you have Ukraine, which had already tried to declare independence.

You have Finland, which is already starting on a civil war itself, because although Lenin had said we must avoid any taint of Russian chauvinism, and therefore he declared for the self-identification, the self-decleration, of the component nationalities of the Russian Empire. But he thought that this wasn't going to be a problem, and this is where Putin is totally wrong for blaming Lenin for losing Ukraine. That's absolutely rubbish. He did lose Finland because the white Finns under General Manaheim,

their leader, former Tsarist general, were very well organized and they managed to defeat the Reds. In Ukraine, though, the Ukrainian nationalists were so weak that they had no chance of imposing any form of control. and the Germans insisted in the negotiations which took place at their headquarters of Breskli Tovsk on the sort of Polish border that they insisted that they were going to have, you know, large areas of the Baltic provinces of Belarus and the whole of Ukraine, because German cities and Austrian-Hungarian cities were all starving.

The British naval blockade of Germany at this particular stage was having a real effect. So there was intense negotiations. Trotsky, of course, played around in his way of sort of pretending he had a great slogan of neither peace nor war, which just irritated the Germans. And then he thought, well, what we'll do is we'll just walk out of the thing saying neither peace nor war without actually either accepting their terms or saying we're going to continue the war. And he said that, you know, if we then get attacked by the Germans, you know, the working classes of Europe, will rise up against them and all the rest of it. Well, of course, he was totally wrong. Lennon, on the other hand, was absolutely right. He realized that they had to accept this ghastly humiliation

of losing almost sort of the whole of the Western part of Russia. There is a lovely observation that you make, which is, you know, when the Soviet delegation goes for these talks, you know, they're meant to turn up with this, you know, cross-section of socialist Russia. And they turn up with soldiers, sailors, workers, women. And they were meant to turn up. come with peasants, but they forgot the peasant. Is it true? They just picked an old man off the street to be the peasant. Yes, absolutely. And he was thrilled. I mean, all this food and wine, and there's a wonderful moment when he's sitting next door to some German prince. And the waiter comes around and says, you know, do you want red wine or white wine? And he turns to the German

prince and says, which is the stronger? That's brilliant. Just brilliant. I'm thoroughly with that man. Anyway, the point is that Lenin was almost on his own against the rest of the Central Committee, and he said, we have got to accept their terms, however, humiliating, because we need both hands to strangle the whites. And it doesn't matter, you know, we may lose this, but he also foresaw that Germany would probably lose the war in the end, in which case the Germans would all retreat, and they could move back in again. But the vital thing was to make sure that they did not get involved.

involved in a guerrilla war against the Germans as left socialist revolutionaries and most of the Bolsheviks wanted. So this idea of having two hands to strangle white Russia very soon starts to be enacted. And just tell me, you know, this is a deliberate plan, one takes it from Lenin, that, you know, this has got to be a dictatorship. This is the only way we can strangle white Russia and finally be in charge. What are the steps that he takes to do that? Well, he is reacting, first of all, by in December of 1917, he gets Felix Chazinski to start the Chequer, which is going to be their secret police, basically to eliminate anybody who is a class enemy. And I think it's very striking that his order basically goes out,

which is the tantamount to class genocide. Chequer operatives are told, it doesn't matter whether somebody is innocent or not. All that matters is the background, their class. And so it's interesting when it came to 1948 and the definition of genocide was being debated at the United Nations, the Soviet Union fought tooth and nail to prevent class genocide being included under the definition. How interesting. So in this, you know, sending the checker out, are we talking about men, women, children, everybody being targeted? And what was their sort of manner of execution when they did go and find those people? What I think was the most appalling of all was the way that in some areas, particularly it turned out in Ukraine, the Bolshevik Chekker seemed to go in for torture without any question of trying to find out any information. It was just pure sadism. And the horrors were considerable. And this is, of course, part of the reason why the whole effect of the Russian civil war had this sort of huge influence on Europe as a whole later. But anyway, they also set up their checkers in every major time.

and we're basically trying to eliminate anybody who might possibly be an opponent to the regime. And your political views didn't make any difference. If you were sympathetic to Bolshevism but came from that background, you would still be eliminated. Well, no, if you were a Bolshevik, because let's face it, I mean, some of them, I mean Lenin from that point. Himself was that, exactly. Yes. So you couldn't do it entirely on that. But I know if somebody had been a recognized Bolshevik, then that was okay.

But what was interesting was that actually they were also recruiting many whites or czarist officials because the civil service, the banks and things when they tried to get things going again, rather like Trotsky creating the Red Army, they needed specialists. And Trotsky was perfectly prepared to recruit as many czarist officers as he possibly could. But their main threat, which they had to do with, first of all, started in the south with the Cossacks, the Don Cossacks. and they sent two armies, when I say an army. I mean, they weren't really much more than 2,000, each one of them, one towards Don Cossacks and the other into Ukraine.

And then there was also fighting in places in Siberia and other isolated spots. And the 9th of December, you get the Battle of Rostov. And you'll get the Battle of Rostov, but that is in the Don Cossack area, absolutely. With red guards and whites facing off in this first great battle of the Civil War. Well, it wasn't a great battle. It was a fairly small battle, but it was a pretty nasty and savage one. Yeah, I mean, just what was the response? You know, the Czechos going and wiping out white Russians. I mean, are they then organising in great numbers? Are they are they preparing for, I mean, do they know it's civil war? Do they know that's what it's going to be?

Well, they've got a pretty good idea that if there's any hope, they've got to fight. And you have General Alexaev, who was the chief of staff under the Tsar at the army headquarters. You have Cornelof, General Cornelof, who have already come of course, and others who go down, they manage to escape from the monastery where they've been in prison, and they escape down into the Caucasus to join the Don Cossacks and hope to raise the so-called volunteer army. And this was usually young officers, but even older officers. I mean, you had sort of colonels marching with rifles as ordinary private soldiers. That part is interesting.

I'm also fascinated with the response of the rest of the world, because they're watching this. I mean, they're watching this unfold. They know they've been worried about, you know, the Bolsheviks for some time. Are they pumping money into the white Russian cause? And if so, who's doing it and how much is coming in? Very little at the beginning. Most of the money to try and get the volunteer army into action was being raised, really, from sort of Russian merchants and businessmen and so forth.

But it wasn't really until after 1918, when the British, the Americans and others, but particularly the British and Americans, who had already made huge stock powers of arms and ammunition and so forth, both in North Russia, Malmansk and Anghenryl, but also in the far east of Vladivostok, to support the Tsarist armies in the fight against Germany. So they first of all started off by sending some troops, particularly Royal Marines, to guard these. Because what they were feared was that the Germans would now be able to march in after the Treaty of Bresciatov and take over all this weaponry. Then, when it came to the Supreme Allied Council in Paris, having to try and reorganize the world at the end of the First World War, and you can imagine the collapse of altogether three or four empires, all of the new frontiers which had to be drawn. I mean, you know, there was just so much going on.

But then we have Churchill, Winston Churchill, as the Secretary of State for War under Lloyd George, the Prime Minister. And you have Clemenceau, the French president, who hated the Bolsheviks and was determined to support the whites. Widrow Wilson, the American president, on the other hand, was rather ambivalent. He just wanted to get the war over. But at the same time, he was prepared to send in some troops, particularly about a division of troops, into the Far East, because he was very worried at the way that the Japanese were moving in. and the Japanese certainly had ambitions to try to take a huge chunk of Siberia. I mean, to me, this is fascinating because, I mean, on the one hand, it's a great

inconvenience if the rest of the world is pumping in money to your enemies. But for Lenin and the Bolsheviks, this could also be seen as a gift, because, you know, you can actually position yourself as the defender of Russia. That, you know, this is, you know, where you've had disparate groups, suddenly you can draw and, you know, make this identity that we are Russia, we stand against and everybody's, you know, like Millwall, everybody hates us, we don't care, you know, that kind of attitude. And is it effective? Is that what they do? Well, funny enough, it was only really effective when he came to the war against Poland in 1920,

because, A, they played upon the traditional Russian hatred of Poland. They've never forgotten the Polish occupation of Moscow. And the many, you know, Red Army officers, even General Brusilov, who'd been one of the most successful Tsarist commanders in the First World War, actually joined the Reds at that particular time. So I think it was only really with the Poles. They, of course, used it in their propaganda. You know, the Americans, the capitalists and all the rest of it, are trying to crush us in our cradle.

And tell us about the great ice march, the Red Army's marching south to crush Kornilov. What happens after that? Well, the Red Army is really not in existence quite at this stage. Trotsky's creation of the Red Army doesn't come until a little bit later. And even then, it's a sort of fairly slow process. But the white troops in the Ice March suffered. I mean, it was, you know, the accounts of that march of frostbite, of everything, starvation, sickness. I mean, almost half the force was ill.

On a retreat back as the Bolsheviks drive forward? Well, on a retreat deeper into the Caucasus, hoping that the other Cossacks, the Cuban Cossacks and others, would rise in their support because the Don Cossacks had been more or less crushed at that particular point, or temporarily crushed. And they'd disperally crushed. and they dispersed to their litigies. So they weren't fighting anymore at that particular point. But then, of course, the Reds treated them so badly that they dug up their rifles

and got out their hidden machine guns or whatever. And there was going to be another round of warfare with the Don Cossacks later. Right. During this ice march period, I mean, Kornilov is killed, and how much of a blow is that to the whites? It's in a shelling? Yeah, that's right, yes.

Well, he was, should we say, suffered from conspicuous bravery. He was warned that if he was going to make his headquarters in the one cottage which existed, it was bound to attract Red Artillery Fire. Oh, my goodness, really, that's what happened. So he was just there with a target painted on his head pretty much. He was there with a target, exactly. And that was smashed. He was killed.

And that's why General Deneke, who was going to be the sort of commander-in-chief of all the white armies in southern Russia later, took over. But anyway, then with the support of the Kuban Cossacks and revokes by the Don Cossacks around Rostov and just north, south of Rostov into the corpses, they started to accumulate quite an effective army and the Reds started to be chased out and defeated. Anthony, can we identify a time and a place where the whites are either crushed out of existence or just give up? And Lenin and the Bolsheviks can say, you know what? Russia is now ours. We do it our way. Well, the critical moment really came at a real tipping point in October 1990 when D'Enikin sent all of his forces in a great march on Moscow. And the trouble was, of course, that they came to what in military terms is described as the point of accumulation, i.e. they were exhausted, they were overstretched, the supply lines were

They were being attacked in the rear by Mahno and his anarchist groups, 50,000 of them in Southeast Ukraine, in all of the areas that we're reading about now. But in fact, I never believed that the whites actually could have ever won the war. Why not? Because, I mean, they're being supported from outside. They've got the generals from the old regime. Well, for a whole series of reasons. One is, and this is empire entirely, because of their imperial arrogance. Their obvious allies were Finland, Estes, and Poland, who all had very effective troops. But as I say, they were so rude about them and saying, you know, basically that, oh, well, you're just subsidiaries of the Russian Empire.

As soon as we've won, you know, you'll be back in amongst us. Well, you can imagine that infuriated them, and Tilsutski, the Polish leader, had no intention of doing any deal. I mean, Chachar was sort of almost wanting to pull out what little hair he had back in London. because here was the obvious alliance which they could make because the Poles were well-armed and effective and nothing was happening in that particular way. So that was one mistake. The other mistake was, of course,

that they were an incompatible alliance. While the Bolsheviks had a line of command, a chain of control coming all the way down from Lenin. And strict discipline. And strict discipline. The whites were chaotic. They were a mixture of volunteer army reactionary, are saraist officers, of Cossacks, violently anti-Semitic, but not really interested in fighting

outside Cossack areas. And the right socialist revolutionaries who were moderate socialists, and they were really only on the Volga and the Comuch. And they, of course, were completely crushed by the military component in the white armies. I think that's interesting. You never thought they had a hope. I didn't realize. I didn't even have a hope. And also, they didn't have a hope because they were so appalling in the way that they treated their occupied areas. I mean, the corruption of generals who were basically just trying to amass as much money as possible to pay for a more comfortable exile, because I think they knew bloody well they weren't going to win. I mean, there were moments of optimism, like when they were advancing on Moscow and General Udnich

was advancing on Petrograd. Lots of people thought, oh my God, the Bolsheviks are going to have to run for it. But in fact, that was total optimism. It was never really going to happen. But they also had the advantages of interior lines, i.e., because they occupied one area of the Reds with the northern cities, which was a good supply of manpower for their armies, but they also were able to reinforce their different fronts from one front to another. The whites had no connection between Siberia, between the Caucasus and Petrograd, and where Eugenic was trying to attack. Anthony, your book is full of the horrors of this extraordinary of war, 12, million dead, class genocide, innocent people, murdered, firing squad after firing squad.

But do you have a sort of grudging admiration for Lenin and Trotsky as leaders, as revolutionary organisers? Well, yes, but I mean, I think that they achieved what they wanted to achieve. But, I mean, it was a total disaster for everybody. And I think that the importance, I mean, I make no apologies for the horrors in the book because, in a way, the point of the whole book was to emphasize the fact that this horror, this fear on each side was really what created the pattern of the whole of the 20th century, and to a certain degree affects us today.

I mean, now what we see is that we have the dictatorships and the democracies. It's a change of access slightly from communist and capitalist, if you like, of the first Cold War. But the second war, I think, is a development, an inheritance, if you like, from that particular period. And we are seeing its effects today. Why do you think that Russia is unable to escape autocracy, that you're moving from one very small group who hold all the power, who are not willing to have democratic elections, to another who, very similarly, keep power very tightly in their high command and are distrustful of representative institutions? Well, whether it's the Tsar or the communists or whatever, they will justify the need for centralized control because the sheer size of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Empire, one-sixth of the world's surface, as communist propaganda used to emphasize. But also because the breakout from autocracy to democracy for the reasons we discussed about the provisional government and the

failure impossibility of the constituent assembly to get into action and take over, I think is something which they will never really manage to escape. I mean, this is the problem of a dictatorship and again, the whole phenomenon of the pregnant widow. I mean, I love that. I've learned pregnant widow from you. I mean, we should say, you know, it was December the 30th, 1922 that the USSR is firmly established. What is interesting, and it always has been interesting to me, is at the first point, under Gorbachev, when these constituents parts of this once Russian Empire, which is out the USSR, are allowed to decide their own future. Gorbachev right until the last minute thinks, you know, they have some romantic notion that he has of this great empire that should stay together.

But the moment they're allowed to choose, so many of them just decide to bugger off. They're not going to have this anymore. So there is, you know, although Russians, you know, you're often told are fatalistic and they think, you know, this is what they deserve. You hear that any happiness is tinged with the realization that there is a crushing blow suit to follow. There is hope at that point that, you know, they don't have to live life the way they have for so many chapters. William, we're coming to the end. Last thoughts. Last thoughts. I'm thinking of Lenin at the end. He, 1922, in the mid of his triumph, having defeated the whites, he has a stroke. He's almost paralyzed. He can't speak.

He asks Stalin for a cyanide pill. He wants to commit suicide. And Stalin, he wants to commit suicide. Colin won't give it to him. Paint a picture of Lenin at the end, this Victor who never gets to enjoy the fruits of his work. Well, he was in an emotional depression as well as obviously a political depression. He realized he made a big mistake by appointing Stalin, but Stalin had, as general secretary, had moved in his own supporters into key positions and was going to take over. And he said, in his sort of will, that even if Trotsky makes mistakes, he much preferred Trotsky to take over rather than Stalin. And Stalin also is unbelievably rude to Krupskaya. And when Lenin hears about this, he is absolutely furious. But at the same time, it is in Stalin's interest to keep Lenin alive

a bit longer so that he can continue his establishment, his seizure of power by, stealth. And Lenin knows this is what's happening. He sees this character. Lenin, I think, probably knows what's happening. Whether that was the reason he was, or because he was suffering from such appalling headaches and all the rest of it, we don't know. But I mean, it's a distinct possibility that he could have been caused by that as well. I mean, we often say that, you know, we do this series empire to inform us of, you know, what the world looks like today and why it looks this way. Can it also inform us about what the world could look like tomorrow? Is there anything that you've seen in the history books, which makes you prescient as to what might

happen next. With the current czar sitting in the end. No, I think one has to be very careful. You can learn some things from history, but that is no format for predicting the future. And I think it's always been very dangerous the way that politicians and journalists have always tended, for example, to refer to the Second World War whenever there's a crisis or a conflict or anything like that. And I mean, you know, the number of times that's sort of Stalingrad or Bachmout or whatever, they're always trying to make these comparisons,

thinking that something everybody will recognize. But it also comes from politicians wanting to sound like, sound Churchillian or Rooseveltian or whatever when they talk about warfare. So when I was always tries to emphasize the fact that history never repeats itself, but maybe echoes or rhymes or whatever,

but it never repeats itself. But you can. learn some of the mistakes which we go on making time and time again because we never managed to put ourselves into the minds of a dictator. So I think you're putting yourself into the boots of a dictator because that tends to help you think of what you would do in their position and that actually is democratic confirmation bias and this is why we got it wrong about Hitler and also we got it wrong about Putin. We could not believe that anybody would want to have another war in Europe as like the last one.

It has been an absolute privilege to have you on. Really enjoy it. Thank you so much. No small thing to take us through such an expanse of history and so many important ideas. And what a wonderful book. Again, I just recommend all our listeners, Anthony's brilliant new book, Russia, Revolution and Civil War. One of the great pleasures of doing this podcast is the opportunity to read these extraordinary books week after week. But I have never enjoyed a week of reading as much as I have with this book.

It has just been fantastic. Anthony, I know you'll hate all this, but he's absolutely right. He's been WhatsApping me like crazy, ridiculous times of the day and night. I mean, frankly, I'm sick of him. When I tried to call Anita and our producer, Callum, at 11 a.m. 11 p.m. A.m. would have been acceptable. It was 11 p.m.

But, Anthony, you did that. And I'm grateful that you did. Thank you. Anita, how do you put up with it? I think you've been going to put your foot down more firmly. She is quite good at it. Good Lord. I'm sure she is.

Well, thank you. That's Anthony B. completely standing by me, Anita Arnans. And not you. I will be having words. That's from me, William Drupal. Goodbye. Goodbye.