TRIGGERnometry - The Russian Revolution: An In-Depth Guide - Antony Beevor

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

Sir Antony Beevor is a British military historian. In his early life he served in the army, commanding a troop of tanks in the 11th Hussars in Germany before deciding in 1970 to leave the military and become a writer. He has published several popular historical works including the best-selling, Stalingrad (1998), Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (2002) and, most recently, Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921 (2022). His works have been translated into 35 languages and have sold over 8.5 million copies. Beevor has lectured at numerous military headquarters, staff colleges and establishments in Britain, the US, Europe and Australia. You can find more of Antony’s work here: https://www.antonybeevor.com/titles/ SPONSORS: https://GETSUPERBEETS.COM Use Promo Code: TRIG to get a free 30-day supply + 15% off your first order We are proud partners with GiveSendGo - a world-leading crowdfunding platform that believes in free speech. Go to https://givesendgo.com and raise money for anything important to you. Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the February Revolution breaks out, nobody lifts an arm or a sword even to save the Tsar. And Rasputin contributed to that in a very major way. Who were the Bolsheviks? They had a very strong leader in the form of Lenin. Now, his speeches were so extreme that even members of the Bolshevik party were sort of shot and thought this was madness. He wanted the abolition of the police. He wanted the abolition of money and of the finance and all the rest of it. It was going to be the party and the state combined together.

who were going to control everything with him up at the top. It really was, as I say, a coup d'etat. It was not a revolution. Anthony, you've written this brilliant book about the Russian Civil War and the Revolution. We're delighted to have you on. We've got you for a good period of time, which means we can really get to the core of it.

And the format of our show, as you may know, is we're two people who don't really know a huge amount about the things that we interview people about, which means that we ask the sort of questions that most ordinary people would want answered. So before we get into it, I thought one of the most interesting things to talk about would be what were some of the things that were happening in Russia prior to the Civil War and prior to the Russian Revolution that created the preconditions for the events that followed. The whole situation in Russia was one of great oppression in a way because the Tsar, Nicholas II, who actually was rather a weak character, had been so impressed by his father, Alexander III, who was a very strong character.

and he in turn had reacted against the liberalism of his father, Alexander II, who was the one who liberated the serfs. And the whole idea, therefore, the pressure, the moral pressure on the Tsar was to maintain the autocracy for him, for his son and for the future. And there was tremendous pressure from his wife that there should be no lessening up and no liberalisation. And he made this absolutely clear from as soon as he took over as czar. And he said that any hopes for change were senseless. Well, that automatically outraged a lot of people, as well as, of course, even depressing many monarchists because they felt if there's total inflexibility, it's likely to break.

But the conditions in the countryside, even though the serfs have been liberated by Alexander II, was still desperate. There had been some reforms brought in by Shalipin, who was prime minister in the early part of the century of the 20th century. But that was not enough. He was hoping to create a sort of far more rich peasantry, which A would be producing more food more effectively, but also, therefore, that you would win the peasantry over to the capitalist system. But this did not really work. And as a result, one saw total rigidity in the countryside.

Some of the landowners were liberal, wanted to improve the conditions, but they simply didn't have the money, and this was the trouble, because agriculture was so inefficient. But in the same time, in the cities, the Russian economy was starting, to pick up in the early years of the century, the trouble was that conditions in the factories were appalling, far worse than anything, even in sort of, you know, Dickensian Britain, and the treatment of the workers was abominable. I mean, there was the dangerous working conditions and all the rest of the result. There was tremendous resentment growing at this particular

time, and therefore there were revolutionary groups, whether it was the socialist revolutionaries who rarely emerged out of the sort of Narodniks, those who believed in the sort of the countryside and in the peasantry. And of course, then much more the social democrats later, Marxists and Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, who are developing revolutionary groups in the big cities. So all of this could be kept in a pressure cooker

because revolutions only succeed, of course, when the ruling class loses confidence, It's much more than as a result of just activism from below. But the real changes came because of the disaster, really, of the Japanese war. And this was, in many ways, sheer stupidity on the part of the Tsar. He'd been egged into it slightly by his cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had saluted the Emperor of the Pacific as he was the Emperor of the Atlantic. And others, some of the Tsar's ministers, were encouraging him to take a form of the Pacific.

more aggressive line in the Far East against China and seize more territory and all the rest of it. And then when it came to Japan, Japan at this particular stage already had ideas, their own version of Laban's arm of taking land on the Eurasian continent to allow for their surplus population. And the pressure was starting to start. and competition was starting to grow in the Far East. And the Tsar was persuaded to take a very, very firm line, but it was a very arrogant line in the way that they treated the Japanese because they assumed that being non-European, so it'd be easy to defeat.

Well, that led to the huge disaster of losing the whole of their fleet at Tsushima. This was the Baltic fleet, which had sailed all the way around the world to get there. And the consequences of that were actually up. uprisings in the countryside in Russia during the course of 1905. And then the Tsar was forced to accept what was known as the October manifesto, which was to accept a Duma, a parliament of some form or another, even though he had no intention really of allowing it to change the autocracy. But he was in tears himself, having felt that he'd surrendered the family, tradition and inheritance by allowing any form of liberalization. So all of this was making the situation quite a lot worse and was also stirring despair, even amongst certainly the intelligents here, of course, but even amongst the sort of the more

liberals who basically supported the monarchy. So from that point of view, he was really losing the support that he needed. So you've got a weak ruler who is attempting to cling on to the restrictive nature of power to autocracy, as you say. You've got a disaster in war and then World War I breaks out. Well, even before World War I wakes out, things get worse. I mean, as one of the leading members of the Duma said, you know, there's nothing worse than an autocracy without an autocrat. This was the trouble, you know. There was the weakness of the Tsar who was also a total fatalist. And really felt everything was the will of God. And of course, this was encouraged even more by the empress,

who was soon going to come under the influence of Rasputin. She already was under the influence of a French charlatan called Monsieur Filippe. And she was going to persuade the Tsar, again, not to shift. But the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was a disaster. Rasputin rightly predicted, of course, that this would mean the destruction of the dynasty, of the Romanov dynasty, after 300 years.

They had their 300th anniversary in 1913. And the problem was, of course, that Russia did not have the industry, and it certainly didn't have the finance, even though they'd had vast gold reserves, it just simply handled things so bad, and so incompetently. They never raised war bombs in the way that the other allied countries, France and Britain had.

And its troops were very old fashioned. They had the very long burnet. They weren't allowed to take the burnet off their rifle because this went back to Marshal Sufirov. And they were sort of hindered by tradition. The whole army was dominated by the Guards regiments, the lifeguard regiments. and they were literally sort of controlled the whole system.

And the disaster really started straight away when they advanced into East Prussia to take the pressure and they did in that way save the French and the British as the Germans advanced on Paris in the whole early stage of that Schlefen plan. But 1915, the disaster and the retreats. became worse and worse. And to compound the whole problem, the Tsar then suddenly announced

against the advice of all of his ministers and everybody, except of course the Tsarina, his wife, that he should take over the supreme command of the armies. Well, to take over the Supreme Command when already you're facing a disaster and a major retreat means that he was going to get blamed really for everything that went wrong, whether it was his fault or not.

And of course, he wasn't actually in control, really, of anything. He did have a very good chief of staff, General Alexeyev. But even so, there was a huge problem of ammunition resupply, particularly of artillery due to incompetence. And it wasn't really until 1916 when they had a very, well, late 15 and 16, when they had an excellent minister and general, Polivanov. But then because he didn't like Rasput. the Empress got rid of him, which was a total disaster.

I mean, at that stage, the Russian army structure was starting to recover. So it was, as I say, disaster compounded upon disaster. And then in the winter of 1917, sorry, the winter of 1916, 2017, you have in December, you have the assassination, the murder of Rasputin. The Tsar by then is in a state of collapse. The empress has been changing the government. It was known as ministerial leapfrog because she kept on firing somebody if she didn't feel that he admired or adored Rasputin as much as she did.

I mean it was about as bad as it could possibly get in that particular stage. And then the other problem was, although there was actually plenty of food or potential food in form of grain, the severity of the severity of the severity of the the late winter, or sorry, of that middle winter O'Reilly of 1916, 17, meant that most of the locomotives froze up. And so there were bread queues, and then there were bread riots, because the food simply could not be distributed. And it was a spontaneous revolution, which did break out in February 1917. And this was the true Russian revolution. When people talk about the Russian revolutionary thinking of the Bolshevik coup of October 1917.

But that was not, that was literally was a coup d'etat, but we will get onto that, but the important thing really is to understand a street revolution of February 1917. People are there saying, will Putin face another sort of February 1917? Absolute rubbish, no, of course he won't. He's got far too large and effective police force. as well as National Guard and all the rest of it, all incorporated within his security structure, but a very complicated one of 27 different security organisations.

And he has no intention of stepping down because he knows perfectly well that he would lose everything. And so parallels between 1917 and today should be resisted, should we say, with all energy. It's interesting, though, and we'll come back to the parallels between the past and the present day later on in the interview. There's a cliche, Anthony, that goes, behind every successful man, there is a good woman.

Is what happened with the czar, the inverse of that? Yes, I think that's a very good point, yes. You know, there was behind every real disastrous man, there might well be a disastrous woman. That's not necessarily true. I mean, it certainly was in this case, but I wouldn't say that was a general rule because there have been plenty of disastrous men who've ignored a far wiser wife. But so let's just touch on the Tsarina. So it sounded from a layman's point of view that she seemed to wield more power in the relationship than he did. Definitely. There was no doubt about it.

But this really only started during the war. She got a first taste for it when Nicholas had a bad attack in the Crimea, a bad attack of typhus. And she wouldn't allow anybody to come to see him. And eventually, Count Frederick's, the court, the minister of the court, as his title was, said that, you know, your imperial highness, you've got to understand. You know, this is against the constitution and all the rest of it. He has to be consulted the whole time. Otherwise there has to be a regency, in which case his younger brother, Grand Duke Mikhail, must step in as a regent.

Well, she hated the idea of that. So in the end, you know, Fredericks had to speak from behind a screen in the Tsar's bedroom, and he was allowed four minutes, no more than that. But I mean, this was when the first time when she started to feel the need for power. And of course, when it came to the Tsar moving to the Stavk, to the Supreme headquarters to command the armies on the, what we would, their Western Front, what we would have called the Eastern Front.

She then knew that that was her time. She was starting to appoint the ministers or telling the Tsar who to appoint. And of course, always on Rasputin's advice, you know. And our friend says, you know, we cannot trust so and so. He is not loyal to us, which basically meant he was not loyal, or he hated Brasfutin. And this is where the ministerial leapfrog began. The right window treatments change everything.

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get up to 50% off with minimum purchase, plus get a free professional measure at blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply. And Anthony, you talked, and this is, you know, I was born in Russia. I'm in Soviet Union, actually, and grew up. The notion that the Tsar was very weak is something that universally, I think, recognized both in Russia and around the world. But what do we mean by this exactly? I mean, you've alluded to some elements of it, which is he basically let his wife take over

the governance and choosing who's going to be appointed, etc. What does it mean to be a weak czar in Russia in that period of time? Well, in many cases, a weak leader is usually a very obstinate leader. And this was certainly the case with the Tsar. He, in many cases, refused to listen to his ministers. And, you know, he would, as soon as they were saying anything that was faintly disagreeable, especially a criticism of Rasputin, he would start tapping his fingers, light a cigarette, and turn towards the window and look out at the garden,

which basically was telling them to that he was simply not going to listen to what they said. But he had very little imagination. And the trouble was that, of course, he was kept away from those who could actually really tell him how real the situation was or how dangerous it was out in the countryside. Of course he was surrounded by psychophants, but that was the problem with any autocracy in that sense. And, you know, it was certainly also the problem with, to a certain degree with Stalin, and was also obviously the problem with Hitler as well, of simply refusing to acknowledge it. Hitler would even take down the blinds or lower the blinds, so that he didn't even see the damage in Berlin when his train arrived in Berlin.

and to a large degree why the Tsar was so keen to go to the headquarters at Stavka and take over as commander-in-chief was so that he wouldn't have to listen to politicians telling him the reality of the situation in the country and he could endure that and he would be surrounded by the most loyal people he knew which of course were army officers who all respected the chain of command going right up to the Tsar

and certainly nobody else and certainly not to politicians. Wow. I was going to say, So we have this almost bizarre dynamic, if you think about the leader of a country, where he's the only person he seems to be really listening to is his wife. But there's also a third person in this marriage who is Rasputin. So explain to us a little bit about who this person was. And how did he come to wield such power in the royal family in Russia? Well, it is an extraordinary story.

And it's a, in fact, it's a subject of my next book. and I'm not really going to go into it in great detail here, but it is one of the most fascinating aspects that how this whole situation, this whole chain of events, which has actually affected the whole world, not just Europe or certainly not just Russia, with the Civil War and with the Revolution and Civil War,

could all, I'm not saying, was caused by one man, caused by Russia Putin, but he was a major contributor to it. but that this total rigidity of government, rigidity of mentality, inability to adapt to the circumstances, which was a pre-revolutionary situation. I mean, this had been a pre-revolutionary situation before Rasputin was part of, if you like, the Royal Circle. I mean, he only really started at the end of 1905, and that was sort of really the first time

that he was introduced to the Tsar and the Tsarina. And he didn't have a huge amount of influence before, except on a sort of private basis and helping the Tsarevich, the son and heir of the empire, to get over or to deal and cope with the pain of his hemophilia. And of course, this is why the Tsarina or Zarica became completely besotted with Rasputin. I mean, she wrote letters to him, which were, I mean, you would have thought. I mean, they weren't erotic, they weren't having in any way of sexual affair. But, I mean, you know, reading them, you would have thought they probably, that might well be the case. I mean, it was quite astonishing how besotted she had become with Rasputin. And this is why he was able to manipulate her to a certain degree, but only really, I would have said from 1915,

but this was the sort of the really disastrous time. And of course, everybody in Petrograd, who wanted advancement, wanted this, that, or all the other, contributed to the most appalling corruption. I mean, Rasputin was certainly involved in it, and I mean, one's now actually even got incredible detail now, which was not available before, on the degree of whether it was government contracts and all the rest of it.

Not that he was necessarily sort of furthering his own nest in the future. I mean, he was, but he was spending the money straight away in technically profligate. a profligate style. But the whole point was that the story's got to the front, and this caused total demoralization in the Russian army. It's not surprisingly. And total cynicism, and it was one of the reasons when the February revolution breaks out

that nobody lifts an arm or a sword even to save the Tsar. And this was, should we say, total moral collapse of the whole regime. And Rasputin contributed to that in a very major way. And we come right back to the story, the narrative and the chronology of it. So you've got a country that already had a pre-revolutionary situation going on. You've got army after army being routed in the West, what we call the Eastern Front. Well, there was certain exceptions. I mean, the great Bruseloff offensive of 1916 managed to almost knock the Austrian

Hungarians out of the war. But the trouble was, of course, there was never, they didn't. They then ran out of the ammunition or they lost momentum and all the rest of it and then they had to come all the way back. But it wasn't quite as sort of, it wasn't a total disaster in every single way. But it showed the potential, but the trouble was it was messed up from behind the lines by the corruption and chaos in the rear. So the defeats are not universal, but broadly speaking, some armies have been defeated. There are a lot of casualties. There are problems with supply lines.

And then on the home front, you've got bread queues, bread riots, and then you have the February Revolution. Tell us about that. Well, the Tsar was convinced that his army would always be loyal. And this was the trouble, I mean, as his youth and most of the time, spending time with officers, he couldn't imagine how the army could anything be anything but loyal. And the trouble was, of course, most of the troops in Petroval,

grad itself, which was St. Petersburg, they changed the name, had been wounded or were new troops arriving desperate not to be sent to the front. And so from that point of view, they were all too ready in many cases to join the workers who were in revolt. And in the past, it had always been the Cossack regiments and units, which had broken up any of the riots before. I mean, in 1905, when there was the Bloody Sunday in January, in 1905, I mean, the Cossacks have played a major part there, as well as obviously part of the Imperial Lifeguard regiments, you know, shooting down the protesters. Now, the Tsar was reassured by General Kabbalov, who was in charge of the troops in Petrograd, that they were completely loyal.

Well, I mean the head of the Okrana Gorbachev was perfectly convinced, he knew perfectly well, that there should be no reliance on them whatsoever. So they were living in a sort of cloud cuckoo land thinking that even if there's another rat, you know, it'll all fall to pieces. Interestingly, the Bolsheviks themselves thought, well, this is just a bread rat. As soon as they distribute any more food, you know, it'll all come to an end. And they got that one completely wrong. I mean, there were none of the Bolshevik leaders there at all.

And even, as I say, there's Bolshevik senior members of the Bolshevik party in Petrograd, simply could not imagine that this was the revolution. And it was a genuine street revolution which created and swelled day by day. More and more people were out on the streets. It started with International Women's Day protesting, women protesting. women protesting. They were the ones who had to stand for hours in the bread queues, having walked sort of halfway across the city themselves.

And it was hardly surprising that they were exasperated. And so then the workers came out on strike from the factories and joined them. And then even when the police, because some of the thieves were sort of like cavalry, charged them, then suddenly the Cossacks changed sides. And nobody had imagined that. And I mean, I described in the book how they, the Cossacks were quartered in one of the barracks. And the soldiers sort of said, well, I suppose you're going to crush the workers again this time round. And they said, do you think we can be bought off for some rotten lentils and herring heads?

Not this time. And so that in a way was sort of the turning point in the 1917. in the February 1917 revolution. And at what point did the Tsar realize this is serious? Because like you said yourself, no one actually realized this was serious when it first started. No. So what was the moment?

Well, sorry, some people did realize. I mean, Rod Seanko, the president of the Duma, he was sending messages the whole time to the Tsar, saying, you know, your imperial, sorry, your majesty, you do not seem to realize what is happening in the city. And the Empress, the Tsarina, had been reassured by Protopopov, the Minister of the Interior. Oh, don't worry at all, you know, it's all under control and all the rest of it. They were living in a total cuckoo land in that point of view.

The Okrana, the secret police and the head there, knew perfectly well that, you know, there was no way that they could rely on the troops in the capital. And the trouble was that they thought, oh, well, the police. but the police were known as pharaohs. They had these sort of black uniforms and with sort of red stripes and they were hated by the populace. And they were the ones who actually bore the brunt of the revenge.

The soldiers on the whole tended to be ignored and they weren't really attacked by the crowds, partly because they themselves were not sort of really countering or counter attacking the crowds. But the police, I mean, they were being lynched and thrown under the ice and dragged behind cars and so forth. People talk of the February Revolution as a bloodless revolution.

It wasn't. It was very cruel and too. But one didn't sort of see it except it was in sort of through eyewitness accounts, really, but it was pretty horrific. So that being the case, when was the moment that the Tsar and his family came under real physical threat? Well, the Tsar was at Stavka, Mogilev, really on the same. sort of in Poland. And when he finally realized that this was it or whatever,

he tried to get back. All he was interested in actually was being back with his family at Zarcozelo and set off on his train. But of course was stopped by railwomen on the way who just blocked the line. So he couldn't get through. And by then the Empress and her family and the children, all of whom had measles or their grandparents, of the Grand Duchesses had measles,

were stuck in the Alexander Palace. And soon they realized that, you know, they may have a small loyal guard, but basically the troops, the rebel troops, were going to be coming out from Petrograd. So all of this was just within a few days. I mean, we're talking about the end of February, old style. I mean, in the old calendar.

And as I say, that's almost within three or four days, but by then, you know, this was already, the turning point had already taken place. And there was this curious case where there was even one of the Grand Dukes who marched his sailors of the Guard, the Marine Guard, you know, to the Duma, basically to support the revolution. And lots of others had started sort of, you know, knowing that this was the way it was going, because they felt if we don't control the revolution, it's going to be an absolute bloodbath and all rest of it. And so they were trying to work with Rodzianco and the, should we say, liberal conservatives in the Duma, basically the Octoberists, those who have been involved in the October manifesto,

which the Tsar had signed so reluctantly in 1905. And they hoped that they could sort of therefore control this revolution to make it if you like it's the old Lampedusa idea, you know, that everything has to change so that nothing changes, basically. And the, but at the same time, though, the Petrograd Soviet, which had been set up in 1905, basically of, on the whole, moderate socialist through to Mensheviks, not meant no Bolsheviks, really, on the committee. And so they worked more or less in tandem. And this is what really then evolved into what was called the provisional government.

And tell us about that, because when people think of the Russian Revolution, they think of the royal family being killed, replaced, etc. But the February Revolution doesn't result in anything of the kind. No, it doesn't. I mean, yes, there was killing, and there were a lot of officers killed in their apartments. or there were a lot of, I mean, some of the rebel troops would go from apartment to apartment, saying they were searching for arms from counter-revolutionaries,

but in fact, that was an excuse to loot the apartments and in some cases rape. But it was not, if you like, organized sort of Bolshevik control or anything like that, far from it. I mean, the Bolsheviks were absolutely tiny. I mean, we were talking, when we were talking probably in Petrograd at that particular time, you know, just probably a couple of thousand.

They suddenly swells later, but we'll come on to that on why suddenly there was this huge increase in their numbers. Lenin, of course, was still in Switzerland. Stalin was trying to make his way back from Siberia, and Trotsky was in North America and had to, it was Prince Love, who asked the British, you know,

will you allow the Canadians to, or you ask the Canadians to allow Trotsky to return? Well, I mean, should we say this is the way that liberalism could cut its own throat in a revolutionary situation by allowing Trotsky and people like that, you know, to return at that particular time, but it was a genuine liberalism. But here one comes to the fundamental paradox of the poor old provisional government, because as Alexander Healdson had predicted the previous century, when he made his remark about the pregnant widow. The widow being the old regime which was dying,

but the child which was being born, which was going to be an orphan, was totally vulnerable. And this is exactly what developed here in 1917. Because the so-called ministers of the provisional government, most of whom were liberals, right socialists, Karenski was one of them, and Karenski was a socialist,

And the reason why he became important was because he had a foot in both camps, i.e. he was a member of the Committee of the Duma and also a member of the Petrograd Soviet. That gave him this position where then he became Minister of Justice. And then, later, of course, he became Minister of War, which was really his major step-up later. But the point was that the ministers there at the time may have been in ministries, and they may even have still had civil servants working for them and all the rest of it, but they had no power. The police had all been destroyed in the February Revolution,

in the countryside, already manners were starting to be burnt down, and the land captains, as they were called, who sort of controlled the regions or the provinces, had all had to flee for their lives. And so there were huge areas of Russia, where there was absolutely no form of, control at all. And once news started to go, I mean, there were some places where it took about two months before they knew there'd been a revolution in Petrograd when communications

were so bad. But other areas very quickly, in Ni Neh Kutz, who was actually a civil war there, with young officer cadets sort of fighting the Red Guard who had emerged at that particular time. So you cannot sort of generalize about the situation in the whole country at all. But the mechanism of the provisional government was a way of taking power away from the Tsar and giving more control to the people, so to speak. Indeed, because what they were going to do, and this is again the vulnerability, was that everybody agreed at that stage, even the Bolsheviks, though Lenin had no intention of ever honoring it,

was that there was going to be a constituent assembly, which would be their parliament, there would be general elections for the constituent assembly, and then everybody would decide, you know, they might even vote to have a Tsar back or something like that. You know, so people could actually make up their own minds, you know, there could be a tiny monarchist party or something like that. But the whole point was that it would all depend in that particular way on the outcome of the vote. Well, the trouble was that, of course, Lenin was absolutely determined that there should have been nothing of the sort because he only believed in himself and in having total control.

And so therefore the Bolsheviks sabotaged anything they could of progress towards it, whether in discussions and how do you set up, how do you vote for a constituent assembly. And finally, it wasn't until after the Bolsheviks actually had seized power that they had the elections for the constituent assembly. And the Bolsheviks, to Lenin to his fury, found that, you know, they only got about 30% of the vote. But, I mean, that is huge in comparison to what they were in the spring.

And the interesting point is why they managed to achieve this vast increase in their numbers. And before we get to that, I think a really interesting point for our views at this point would be to unpack a little bit, Anthony, about the different political movements that you've referenced so much in the course of this conversation. So the different political groupings representing different views about the way the country should move forward,

you've got the Bolshevik, you've got the Mensheviks, and all sorts of others. Can you just give our view as a rundown of who are the major players at this point and what do they stand for? Well, you have, if you like, starting on the center right, you have the cadets, which were the constitutional Democrats. And they were really largely part of what I mentioned earlier of the. the octobists of liberal conservatives from the 1905 manifesto, and they're believing in having a proper parliament, a proper government elected by the people. And then, of course, further to the left, you have the socialist revolutionaries. Now, they were vast because they had basically the support of virtually all of the peasantry.

And they, when it came to the election's constituent assembly, they had the long. largest fate of all, but they at that particular stage were in the process of splitting, and you have between the left SRs or socialist revolutionists and the right SRs. The right SRs were moderate socialists. And when it came to the civil war, they actually would be part of the white alliance, and we'll certainly discuss that later. But the left SRs were basically going to join up with the Bolsheviks until they realized quite how appalling the Bolsheviks were going to be.

And then further to the left, if you like, certainly in Marxist terms, I mean, it's very difficult to sort of to map them all because rather like with the Spanish Civil War, you know, you have actually three different axes of conflict. It's not just between left and right. It's also between centrist and regionalists and also between libertarian anarchist, which was very much the case in Spain, was also the case in Russia. So yes, you do have anarchists in Russia, who in many ways were almost to the left of the Bolsheviks, believing in no government at all and in self-managing cooperatives. But you have the Bolsheviks, but then you have the Mensheviks, who actually were, I think one would best describe them as parliamentary socialists. Yes, they were sort of Marxists, but at the same time they believed in a parliamentary system. and then the one two other smaller socialist parties, but we don't need to necessarily.

We don't, but who were the Bolsheviks? Tell us more about that. Okay, well, the Bolsheviks were the most extreme part of what had been the Socialist Democrat Party, which had split into the Mensheviks, which were regarded as the minority party, and the Bolsheviks, which were, supposedly, the majority party. But that was the way that the Bolsheviks managed to sort of label the two, sides and those labels stuck. But I mean, the thing was that the Belgics were the best organized by far. They had a coherent ideology. There were disagreements and so forth, but basically it was pretty coherent. They had a very strong leader in the form of Lenin, who was not going to

take any trouble or knows for an answer. But even he had to negotiate to a certain degree, with their central committee, which was vital. And Lenin appears, coming, arriving at the Finland station, having come all the way from Switzerland, via Germany, because the imperial, the Wilhelmine regime of Kaiser Wilhelmop, realized that if they wanted to knock Russia out of the war, the Bolsheviks were gonna be the best way,

and then they could face, turn around, and bring all their forces, or the bulk of their forces from the Eastern Front to face the British and the French, and possibly the Americans, who were about to arrive in the First World War, in fact, which didn't really take place until 1918. But this was the time when already there was that sort of major shift coming. So the Germans then did support the Bolsheviks and with money as well. There's no doubt now about that. And Lenin, when he arrived at the Finland station, started to make his speeches.

Now, his speeches were so extreme that even members of the Bolshevik party, it was sort of shot and thought this was madness. He wanted the abolition of the police. He wanted the abolition of money and of the finance and all the rest of it. So there was no question for him of adapting the state, if you like, and reorientating it in line with the new ideology. He wanted the total destruction of the past. And this is why he encouraged and welcomed the destruction in the countryside as well, because he wanted to make sure that the past. was irrecoverable.

It was also one of the reasons why the imperial family were later slaughtered. It was to make sure that nobody could go backwards or hope of restoring old regimes in any way. And people were shocked. And actually, because the Bolsheviks were so few in number and because Lenin's speeches were so extreme, nobody took him seriously as a threat. And nobody took the Bolsheviks seriously as a threat. Until the July days, when the Bolsheviks

did make an attempt at an uprising, but it was really cack-handed. I mean, it had gone off, should we say, it would have gone off prematurely. It wasn't even properly planned, and Lenin was horrified. He had to flee to Finland in disguise. It was quite funny. I describe how Stalin is the one who has to shave off his beard, among wonders if any his hand had slipped at that moment. You know, history would have been very different.

And so, you know, at that stage, it looked at the Bolsheviks were finished. Trotsky was arrested. Most of their leaders were arrested and Lenin was in hiding. But during the course of that summer, and this shows Lenin's genius, he then started, he promised three great lies. And the three great lies were he promised to the soldiers at the front. peace, when in fact he wanted to turn the imperialist war against Germany into an international civil war, he promised land to the peasants when he never had any intention of allowing the peasants to have land. In fact, this was a policy which he'd pinched off the left socialist

revolutionaries, knowing that it was going to be popular, but had no intention of carrying it out. And he promised the factories through the Soviets, which amends their committees, to the workers, as if they were going to win their own factories. We have to have. and no intention of allowing them to do that. It was going to be the party and the state combined together who were going to control everything with him up at the top. And I think the thing is that Lenin with his genius, but also his arrogance, because he could never believe

that anybody else would have the ability of the organization, the managerial, and the ability to look forwards because he was extraordinary in that particular way to make the key decisions. this was why he envisaged a total, total centralised control. Anthony, we have talked about Lenin, and most people who will be listening to this will know of him as this figure in Russian history. And you've used the word genius and arrogance.

So let's talk a little bit before we move on about who was Lenin? What was he like? Why was he a genius? Why was he brilliant? and also the other side of him, which is the fact that he was an extremist. Well, extremist, yes, I think he's putting him mildly or quite right there. Lenin's brother was executed for taking part in one of the assassination attempts. During the period of the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century,

there was one assassination attempt after another during those periods of turbulence and anger and hatred of the Tsarist regime. And Lenin's brother, as I say, was executed as is when Lenin himself, even though he came from, I think one would describe as technically provincial nobility. And his father was given the sort of equivalent rank of a major general, which, of course, in the Petrine order of ranks, meant that he was actually a noble. But Lenin was absolutely determined, once he'd sort of read Marx and all the rest of it, Lenin was convinced that society had to be upended completely.

The old regime destroyed in every single form or kind, both culturally, socially, and in every imaginable way. So by, as I say, his abilities, I mean, there was no doubt about it. He did have an extraordinary ability. He was a very bad speaker to begin with until Alexander Colonti sort of gave him some She would say some notes and tips on how to improve his speaking style. But he was never as good as Trotsky. He was a brilliant speaker and terribly funny and could wind up the bourgeoisie in a sort of brilliant, brilliant way.

But Lenin just plodded away, as the wonderful Tithy, was a Russian writer, described. You know, it was the way that he hammered away and repeated his message that he got it. through as opposed to the brilliance of Trotsky. And but he knew that the only way really to achieve total power from being a complete minority was through ruthlessness. And I mean, you know, as far as he was concerned, he had no qualms at all about making these lies, these promises, which he had no intention of carrying through. So from that point of view, he knew what he wanted.

And in times of chaos, in times of uncertainty, the person who knows exactly what they want has a huge advantage. And this was the case. I mean, you know, the Mensheviks were fussing around over, you know, what would be the best constitution, what would be the best details for the constituent assembly and so forth. How do we sort of, you know, balance the interests and rights of the peremptory vis-a-vis, the industrial proletariat? Lennian didn't have any trouble with that. He knew perfectly well that the only way was to have total power, total control, and then getting everybody to do what you told them.

So from that point of view, as I say, he had a vast advantage over everybody else. And so going back to the story, so we have the Bolsheviks, powered by Lenin, a man who was utterly ruthless, knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted power. Absolutely. Was prepared to lie and steal and cheat and kill his way to get to where he wanted to be. So they're growing in power, the Bolsheviks. What happened next? The reason why the Bolsheviks then had this huge surge in numbers coming in to join them. It was partly because of Lenin's three great lies, but it was also because events played into their hands.

Kerenzky by now was becoming totally infatuated with his own image. He believed that he was the Napoleon of the Russian Revolution in some ways. And he then felt that they still owed their debt to the Allies that if they launched a huge offensive on the Southwest Front in the same time in July really in that summer, then it would carry through to victory. Well, actually, it was a total disaster. The troops were encouraged by Karenski's extraordinary rhetorical abilities. He would drive out there in the top of an open car and lecture from the back.

And many of these old tough soldiers would sort of break down in tears of emotion. I mean, there were British troops there on the Russian front, and there were some fascinating descriptions by Larka Lampson, who was their commander. of the way that Karetsky was able to have this effect. But then the trouble was that there was this total disaster. They didn't believe in victory anymore, and therefore Lenin's promise of peace was that much more attractive. But also, at this particular stage,

there was a collapse of discipline within the Tsarist armies. And General Cornelof, who was sort of the chief of the general staff, insisted that they had to reintroduce the death penalty, which had been abolished in the early days of the February Revolution, because otherwise they weren't going to be able to exert any form of control over their own troops, who were already packing up and going home, because they thought, well, the land is being divided up. If we don't go home, we won't get a share. And at that particular point, the officers were getting horrified, at their lack of control.

And Cornelof, who was totally exasperated by the situation, demanding the death penalty, said to Kerenzky, you know, we've really got to do something. Now, Korensky started dithering at this particular point. And then, and this is one of the sort of the tragedies in a way of Russian history, there was this, I think, deluded or even slightly bonkers, member of the Duma called Lvov. to do with Prince Lov, but with the same name, went to Kornilov, pretending that he'd come from Korensky, trying to sort of ache him on to start to send troops to Petrograd or to

stiffen the whole system. He then went back to Korenzky and then sort of said, oh, well, you know, General Kornilov is insisting on this and completely misrepresented the two sides. And this meant that Korensky suddenly felt that Kornilov was about to launch a coup. And Kornilov had actually told him, I want to move the cavalry corps of three cavalry divisions, you know, towards Petrograd, so that we can start to install discipline again amongst the troops in Petrograd. And Kerensky thought that this was going to be a right-wing coup. And, of course, there was fear of a right-wing coup at that particular time. You can imagine. I mean, rumors, there were newspapers were one thing, but I mean, you know, there were rumors rushing around the whole time. And of course, the left was terrified of a counter-revolution. And there were some who were definitely muttering about it. And so Karinsky then threw in his hand with the left, with the Bolsheviks in many ways, allowing them to take over the counter-intelligence organization. People were able to infiltrate all the telephone exchanges.

And of course their troops were members were carrying out propaganda in all of the barracks in Petrograd itself. So this meant already that they were in place. And this was the preparation of what became the coup, the October coup, when the Bolshevik seized power. So they had control of all the communication networks. At that point. Yes. So when was the moment? that they then decided, right, we're going to go for the juggler here, we're really going to be able

to seize power. Well, many members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party were saying to Lenin, oh goodness, listen, we were nearly crushed in July, you know, when things went wrong. If this doesn't come off, we'll all be crushed and in prison, and that'll be the end of the revolution. And Lenin basically told them that stopped being wet, you know, get a backbone and all the rest of it, you know, we're going for it. And Trotsky has... had managed to take over the military committee of the Petrograd Soviet, which meant that they could then send their orders to the arsenal. So they started handing out weapons to all of their supporters in the so-called Red Guards, who were already in existence in the factories. He were

volunteers from the factory floor defending or guarding or just acting as security for the factories in Petrograd. So he did have the nucleus of a force in that particular way, but But he also had the Latvian rifle regiments. The Latvians had been very badly treated by their Tsarist commanders in the defense of basically what really became Lithuania during the last stages of the fighting on the front in the Great War of the Eastern Front. And they had been pulled back

and they were going to basically be the Praetorian Guard of the Bolshevik Party. So they had these elements there. And the trouble was that, you know, Kerensky had basically could only count really on a battalion of women who had been used as a way of trying to shame the soldiers in the July offensive, counteroffensive against the Germans. And they were back in Petrograd, so he had those. And he basically had some officer cadets. But he basically had really no troops recognized. troops on whom he could count. So, you know, the whole of those images of storming the Winter

Palace and all the rest of it, total fantasy. I mean, those all come from the Eisenstein propaganda film made under the Soviet Union. And so all of these ideas of the October Revolution, I mean, the battleship, or sorry, the cruiser Aurora, which was sort of fired the famous shots, well actually it fired two blanks out of their guns at the Winter Palace, which was sort of the last place. And this is where Kerenzki's ministers were hold up because on the morning of the Bolshevik coup, Kerenzky left Petrograd in an American embassy vehicle, basically hoping to summon cavalry help from troops at the front. But because of the way that Kerenzky had thrown in his lot with the left, the, needless to say, the Tsarist

generals at the front weren't in any way interested in now helping Kerenzky get his own chestnuts out of the fire. So, I mean, you know, everybody on the non-Bolshevik side had played their cards so badly in every possible way that it was a walkover for the Bolsheviks. And what this really talks about is that when there's a revolution, people always like to talk about, you know, a revolution, they tend to romanticise it. But what we're effectively talking about here is utter chaos. And when there is utter chaos, all you really need is a clear-minded opportunist to come in who can take everything. Well, yes, that is, that was certainly true if you're talking about the February revolution. Again, this was not chaos in the sense that,

I mean, there was chaos beforehand, which is what the Bolsheiks were able to exploit. But when it actually came to their own coup d'etat, you know, No, it was very well-organized. So, you know, they knew exactly where to put their men. They had the bridges secured so that they could bring their supporters in across the River Neva. And they had secured the key parts of Petrograd within a matter of ours. So from that point of view, it really was, as I say, a coup d'etat. It was not a revolution.

So we're on the coup. The coups happened. Tell us briefly what actually happens in the coup itself. Well, the coup really consisted of the seizure of points of communication, like the telephone exchanges. The Latvian rifles were brought in. They fought a certain amount. This was all really concentrated in the center of Petrograd, around the winter palace. and really the symbolic moment was the so-called storming of the Winter Palace.

In fact, actually, what they happened was they found that one of the windows was open or unguarded and a whole lot of red guards slipped in there. And that was really the end of the resistance, as I say. It was certainly not a dramatic charge across the square and all the rest of it. So forget any of the cinematic versions. that you might have seen in that particular way. Anyway, so they, as soon as they felt they'd sort of secured the building,

which was pretty rapid to say the least, there were the ministers there who of course all surrendered and they were rounded up. And then the mass of the Red Guards and the others went straight down into the cellars and just started drinking and smashing open the bottles. And eventually the... authorities as they say you know the communists had to bring in the far brigade to

sort of do something about the finishing off the bottles and smashing the rest of them and siphoning out all of the wine but I mean there were many who had apparently even sort of drowned from the from the wine down below but it was total chaos once they and they started ripping up the whole place whether it was leather for their boots off the chairs or And so there was a huge amount of destruction. What happens to the royal family? The royal family, meanwhile, had been kept as prisoners

for a certain amount of time, a few weeks or more, out at their palace at Saskosheilo at the Alexander Palace. Then they were suddenly told that, really for their own safety, they were going to be sent off to Siberia. So any hope that they could be sent to Britain or accepted there, and there are a whole lot of complicated stories as to what degree it was the British royal family who were advised not to accept them

because of potential revolution in Britain, or to what degree it was the responsibility of the government at the time for putting pressure on the royal family, is still to this day not exactly clear. But the hope I was that this was, that this was their last chance. So they were then told, no way, sending you to Tobolsk in beyond the Ural's mountains in western Siberia.

And they were kept there in, shall we say, fairly civilized circumstances, not too bad, in the governor's house. And they had some of their servants looking after them, and it was a fairly boring existence and very limited one. But it wasn't as bad as the imprisonment which came later when they were moved to Echaterinburg in 1918 in the following year, which is where they were eventually going to be slaughtered every single one of them. And one of the things that you mentioned one of the Lenin's big lies was he promised peace on the Western Front. And the Bolsheviks do sign the Treaty of Bresdletovsk, which gives away huge...

Well, that's coming later, yes. Yes. Well, take us through towards that. In November, 1917, after they have taken power, one of the first things that Lenin wants to do is to negotiate peace with the Germans. And so he sends out peace feelers and messages in that particular way. Now, for the Germans, this is wonderful, but at the same time, they want to be certain of where things stand, because this is when they start to need to move their troops from the Eastern Front to the Western Front. And the headquarters of the German armies of what's called Ober Ost, the supreme headquarters in the east, is in the old fortress of Brestletovsk. And so to begin with, they send representatives.

Then they start to send a peace delegation, which is pretty hilarious because the Bolsheviks feel where we've got to have representatives, say we've got to have one socialist revolutionary, we've got to have a peasant and a soldier and a sailor as well as their sort of main negotiators. But they had, for some of the rise, they haven't got a peasant. And so they pick one up off the street, literally, to take with them. He doesn't know what luckies had.

You know, he was saying, I want to go home. And they said, no, no, no, we're going to take you. And he realised something he's onto a good thing because when Prince Leopold of Bavaria, who is the commander-in-chief in the, well, should we say the figurehead of German forces on the Eastern Front, gives a dinner on their arrival. The peasant sitting next to one German prince, when he's asked by one of the waiters, you know, which do you like red wine or what wine? So he turns to the prince and says, which one's the stronger?

It's almost like his Russian, Anthony. Well, I know. Sorry, the peasant was the one who wanted to know that whether it was red white wine or white wine. Yes. I don't get it. Oh, no. I was just going to say that obviously the person, anyway, it doesn't matter. It was an unfunny joke. Yeah, it was an unfunny joke. Sorry, crack on. Well, yes, anyway, I think that the certainly those present thought it was pretty funny. It was unlike any other negotiations. And then eventually the Germans started. to say, right, this starts to get serious.

Because by then, they wanted to move in all their troops into Ukraine because German cities were starving as a result of the British blockade of Germany. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was on the point of collapse because their cities were starving. And, you know, there were a million tons of grain just sitting there in Ukraine, which they wanted to get a hold of. and so when things started to be swarked, if you like, by the negotiating tactics. Trotsky thought, and he then took over the negotiations, that he could have sort of intellectual arguments and discussions, you know,

with his counterparts on the German side. And then finally, you know, from Berlin came the order, this has got to stop. And they then handed over to the Ukrainians. the Ukrainian radar, saying, right, well, we're moving in and we'll deal with you and not with the Bolsheviks. And this was a major blow, as you might imagine. And suddenly Lenin was trying to warn Trotsky, saying you've got to come to an agreement with the Germans, however humiliating it is. And Trotsky sort of said, no, I can't. And even by then the Bolsheviks had an almost an alliance with the left.

Socialist revolutionaries who are saying listen if the Germans continue the war you know the whole of Europe will rise up in our favor and all the rest of it we want peace but without any reparations or loss of territory well the Germans saying well you're not going to let you get away with that because of course you know they had the whip hand and Trotsky came back having declared at breastly 12 saying right we're off we want neither peace nor war and And the German negotiators said, you know, this is unheard of, you know, this is just not done. And so they started to move their forces forward and started seizing territory. And they were advancing almost towards Petrograd.

I mean, they'd seize the Baltic state, or as they were there in the Baltic regions. And Lenin said to the rest of the Bolshevik Central Committee, we have got to accept their terms, which would mean the loss of the Baltic states, the loss of Belarusia, and the loss of the whole Ukraine, he said, because we need both hands to strangle the white counter-revolution, which has already started in Don Territory in the Northern Caucasus and Southern Russia, as a counter-revolution to the Bolshevik-Sizier-of-Pah. and so from that point of view, Lenin again showed his ability to see that even though this would be the greatest humiliation ever for Russia, they still needed that if they were going to keep the power over the rest of the country. So they gave in and they had to sign the treaty of Brestlitz-Oz, which was a total humiliation and was the greatest achievement of Germany in the whole of the First World War.

And what strikes me listening to the story is how Lenin is a master tactician, but he's ultimately a pragmatist as well. Oh, well, to be a master tactician or a fact to be a master strategist, you have to be a pragmatist. He was saying, and he knew perfectly well, if you're going to have guerrilla resistance to the German advance, you know, we will be wiped out. We don't stand a chance. And it was true. I mean, there were places where one or two people tried to resist. I mean, you know, the Germans just swept them aside. They had their Ulans, their lancers, you know, advancing ahead.

And, I mean, you know, they were, as the major general who was in charge of the whole operation at Brestitovsk said, you know, this is the strangest war of all. We send forward a train and we capture yet another town. And already, you know, our troops are moving forward. And this is when the Bolsheviks said to Lenin, yes, you're right or whatever, and they had to buckle down and accept exactly this total humiliation. So the Bolsheviks give away huge chunks of territory to the Germans. Later, by the way, that they get back because Germany is ultimately defeated. But nonetheless, they give away huge chunks of swathes of territory in order to try and fight what is effectively the Civil War that has already started.

What is the start? The incipient civil war. There's a little bit in Siberia, and the main thing is actually the Don Cossacks. And actually, they then managed to disperse the Don Cossacks. And then they advanced on Kyiv against the Rada, which is the Ukrainian nationalist. I mean, they hardly have any troops at all. So even though an army in those days was sort of a thousand, two thousand men, Moraviev, who was leading the attack on Ukraine, on Kiev, was able to advance that in any problem at all. But as soon as the Germans start coming in in March, of course, they have to run for

it and get out of the way, because, you know, there's no way that they could face up to the occupation of the German forces under Phil Marshall von Neichon. And how does it go from there with the civil war that is essentially breaking out? Because you mentioned that there was these local rebellions, but ultimately it becomes a big war. It becomes a big war once the Germans withdraw. There is a volunteer army, as it's called, in the northern Caucasus, who've had to withdraw from Don Cossack territory as sort of the Red Guards arrive in two grades of strength. And they have what's called the Ice March. I mean, there are only literally, you know, a couple of thousand, less than a couple of thousand of them,

many of them in appalling condition dying. But by just keeping the fight going, they then link up with some of the Kuban Cossacks later, who again, of course, are fiercely anti-Bolshevik and also anti-Semitic. And then the Don Cossacks rise up again in revolt against the Reds because of the way that the Reds have treated them. And actually the Reds have been very stupid in the way that, you know, if you are going to repress a martial race like the Cossacks, they're going to come back. They buried their weapons and they dug up their weapons and got out their saddles again. And again, they had cavalry. And of course, the important point of the first stage of the Russian Civil War was that it was a cavalry or train war because the distances were so immense.

infantry didn't really stand a chance. And of course, the Reds only really had infantry. And so they were sort of marching over vast distances or had trains and advanced with the train. And this is why it was rather largely a railway war. And when Trotsky then starts setting up or trying to set up the red army, and he knows that the Red Guards on their own are going to be no good because they had no commanders or they voted for an officer or whatever, but they had no discipline or organization or military knowledge. He said, right, we're going to have to recruit czarist officers. And so he did. But this was, first of all, the reason for the split between Trotsky and Stalin, the idea of bringing in czarist officers to command red troops, because how can we,

how can we trust them? I mean, you can imagine the paranoia. And then Trotsky, realizes actually slightly later on that cavalry is essential, you know. So you have these amazing posters of, you know, proletarians to horse because Trotsky had despised cavalry as basically an aristocratic pastime and thought that sort of, you know, good proletarian infantry would always win. But this is when they started to create their own cavalry armies. And we've spoken about Lenin and we've mentioned Trotsky, but we haven't really discussed about the man himself. What was he like? And not only that, what role did he play in the revolution

and in the civil war? Well, his role in the revolution was vastly important. I mean, we mentioned earlier that Trotsky, of course, was the head of the military committee of the Petrograd Soviet, and he was the one who got the weapons from the arsenal into the hands of all of their Bolshevik supporters. for the coup d'etat of October. Trotsky then became a foreign minister.

He spoke many foreign languages. He had great charm. He was a brilliant orator, as I mentioned earlier. And he was able to, in many ways, force the foreign ministry or the diplomatic corps to make their choices. Did they support the Bolsheviks? Or should they just get out of their embassies elsewhere? had all these Russian Tsarist embassies all over the world.

Most of them, of course, did not join the Bolsheviks, any a tiny minority ever did. And for a large, quite a period of time, you know, the Bolsheviks had no control over foreign policy really in that way, and they had to send their own delegations. But when Trotsky's real role was the start of the creation of the Red Army, and he showed tremendous bravery as well that he would keep going to the front.

Lenin did not, should we say, display a great deal of physical courage. And he, in fact, of course, had been, already had one assassination attempt against him. And then there was the major assassination attempt in the summer of 1980, when Dora Kaplan managed to put two bullets in him, and he very nearly died. And this actually was the start of the personality cult of Lenin, because his revival was sort of almost portrayed in biblical terms of Jesus and so forth. It was extraordinary the way that the communists seized upon Christian iconography and not in a way. Trotsky, meanwhile, though, was basically fighting in the Volga region

where the right socialist revolutionaries had tremendous support. And this was again part of the paradox really of the counter-revolution of the whites because there you have what was called Comuch which was basically right socialist revolutionaries supporting the whites against basically they believed in the continuance of the Constitutional Assembly and wish to see a proper parliamentary democracy evolving. But of course, the allies from the Tsarist army, the officers, who in fact, of course, were bitter, embittered, and their hatred of the left and of the socialists was intense,

especially after their family of states had been burnt down, their manor houses destroyed, and all the rest of it. And you even had sort of young cavalry officers, as going out with Cossacks to beat up the peasants who had burned down or taken over their sort of family places. And of course the others were the Cossacks who were violently anti-Semitic. And so you had really a sort of three elements within the white armies, which were incompatible in many ways, because the Cossacks really were only interested in securing their Cossack regions. and they wanted to have a Cossack Federation, which would be almost independent.

Well, of course, this was fundamentally opposed to the old Tsarist Russian imperialist idea of Russia as one whole. And as far as they were concerned, you know, Poland should still be part of Russia. So should Finland and the Baltic states. But of course, and of course Ukraine. But of course Finland had managed to break free with its own civil war in the earlier part of late 1970 but very early 1918 Marshal Manaheim, General Manaheim, who's a Tsarist General, leading the White Finns.

And the trouble was, of course, that they were the obvious allies for the whites, but the imperial obsession, which we see today, of course, with Putin, the imperial obsession meant that, of course, they put up the backs of the Poles, the Finns, and the Baltic states. So the Estonians, who were, extremely well-organized, got very good, effective army together. The one thing they didn't want to have anything to do with was although they were both anti-Bolsheviks and anti-the-reds,

they didn't really want to have anything to do with the white generals, Junukovych and others, you know, leading the Tsarish forces. And it's so interesting because right the way through this, to me, this is a story about how clarity of ambition, but clarity of purpose, but also the fact that an army is united behind a common ideology can defeat practically all comers. Well, it's sort of, you know, Napoleon's argument, argument about morale, you know, that it's sort of worth three times almost anything else.

And there's a large element of truth there. It's a question of the coherent, discipline, and all the rest of it. If you've got that lot going, you're in a very strong position. I mean, the trouble with the whites was that many of them believe, in looting because they knew they'd probably be sent into exile. So certainly the generals were all trying to line their pockets as much as they could, which made them even more hated. I mean, quite often, you know, the white cavalry would arrive in a city or in a town which they'd liberated from the Reds. People would come out, the church bells would ring,

they would even kiss the stirrups of the cavalry in sort of not in submission, but in joy and relief, that they'd finally been liberated from the Reds, and within three days, they wanted the whites out, just as much as they wanted the Reds out, because of the way that they were looted and treated themselves. Well, and that is really the story of division on one side and unity, as Francis says, on the other, which is how we get to the Bolsheviks effectively seizing control of the country.

Now, one of the things we haven't touched on, and as we head towards the end of the conversation, is the ideology that Bolsheviks are motivated by, which was of course Marxism. Well, Marxist-Leninism rather than just pure Marxism. Marxism would not, in theory, have allowed them to launch their own coup d'etat in October of 1917. Because, and this was the Menshevik position, was that we have to go through a bourgeois revolution, first of all. Lenin was not going to mess around with a bourgeois revolution.

He wanted his own so-called proletarian revolution, which basically meant the Bolshevik Caesar of power. Yes. And I'm curious about how you see, you made several allusions to Vladimir Putin and what's happening in the modern world. And one of the things we've discussed on the show many times with people is how the idea, certain Marxist ideas seem like they're making a comeback in modern society with people, you know, being divided into oppressors and oppressed and all of this stuff. Are there any parallels that you see? Well, I think there's one or two in a way. I mean, Marx's prediction of capitalism developing, becoming completely monopolistic. One does see a certain amount of, particularly in the tech industry and all the rest of it,

and the feeling, therefore, of alienation by people, you can see certain elements of, shall we say, Marx's predictions coming true, but that does not mean that basically, you know, we are seeing a sort of repetition, because the one thing as a historian I find by having to do more and more, is to fight the idea that history repeats itself. It does not. And it's an absolute pernicious idea, particularly with the Second World War, which has become almost sort of the defining element of any crisis or conflict. People could start referring back to the Second World War,

which actually was a war like no other. So the way that people make parallels with it is ridiculous and misleading and very, very dangerous. And one has to be extremely careful, particularly when we have the first conflict on the Eurasian landmass, which we're seeing, obviously, in Ukraine at the moment, when people are immediately again trying to make somehow comparisons with the Second World War. And there are some superficial ones. I mean, you know, funny enough, it's not mentioned about the Sudetenland, about, you know, in some ways that's similar to what Putin was playing Hitler's game with the Sudan land in. splitting off part of Ukraine, the Russian-speaking part, just as Hitler did in Czechoslovakia. But leaving that one aside, when it comes to other things,

no, I think that the important, the real lesson of the Russian Civil War is that historians today accept that the First World War was the original catastrophe of the 20th century. But the Russian Civil War was actually the most influential of the lot because it was the circle of fear and horror of the sadism, the destruction, the total impoverishment for generation or more afterwards of all of the population, which made fear, created fear right across Europe and beyond. This is where one finds in 1935 and 1936 in Spain. You get this circle of fear with, again, Lago Caballero, trying to be the Spanish Lenin and prophesying the destruction of the middle class

and the annihilation of the middle class. I mean, all of this sort of genocidal rhetoric can obviously lead to violence. And so that is why, actually, the Russian Civil War created the pattern of the whole of the 20th century, and to a large degree, the, also the pattern of the first Cold War from 1989 through, sorry, from 1945 through to 1989. But now we're seeing a second Cold War. And the real danger today, which is, again,

part of the problem with Ukraine, is we're in a completely different geopolitical environment. I mean, even during the First Cold War, the West could rely more or less on the assurances or declarations of communist leaders, both in Russia and in China. Now you cannot rely for a second, either on what President Xi Jinping says or certainly not on what Vladimir Putin says. So how anyone is going to settle or negotiate the end of the crisis or the war in Ukraine

is almost impossible to tell. And what is the future of diplomacy in these sort of circumstances? But anyway, that I think is the main legacy, really, from the Russian Civil War. What has happened since the First Cold War is really that the axis of conflict has changed, not so much between left and right or communism and capitalism, but much more between autocracy and democracy. But, you know, where it develops from there, it would be difficult to see, but we're definitely seeing a lineup of the autocracies,

whether or not just China and Russia, but say Venezuela, Cuba or one or two other countries. And, you know, some people will say it's going to be in North versus South. I don't think, I think that's a bit too sweeping. It's going to be more complicated than that. And Anthony, before we head over to locals for our supporters questions and we ask you our last question that we normally ask, the one thing I noticed, we speak to a lot of historians on the show, frequently is often the people we've spoken to will talk about these great events in history

from a kind of big picture perspective they will talk about well this this movement was taking off of that movement taken off whereas with you I get the sense that you place a higher emphasis on the role of individuals in history is that a fair observation well I have some interesting debates over the great man theory of history I think one's got to look very carefully at the Russian Revolution and see that without Lenin, or if Lenin, for example, had been killed, I don't really like counterfactual history, but you should pose the questions. If Lenin had been killed by Fanny Kaplan or had not managed to get back to the Finland Station

or whatever it might be, then history might have been very different in that particular way. But there's no doubt about it. I think without Lenin, without his decision-making of over the Bresli tovsk, agreement and a whole number of other things. And also, but without his sort of clarity and determination, I'm not sure that the Bolsheviks actually would have won. I mean, the whites were appalling and incompetent and a whole lot of other things. But the Bolshek's also had so much against them.

History cannot is not predictable, of course, in any of those ways. But one should raise these questions. But you cannot rule out the role of major certain characters. You know, without Hitler, the Second World War, I'm sure there would have been a conflict in Europe. But without Hitler, would it have been, have taken the same form, genocidal form that it did in the Second World War? I don't think so. So, you know, characters, what about Napoleon? I mean, you know, to what degree would Europe have been different without him?

So there are key individuals, but there are also, of course, huge non-human forces at play, as has been shown by Minim, historians, whether it's a question of famine, whether it's a question of environmental change and a whole lot of other things. One's got to take all of these into account. But, you know, there is human agency too. It's been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for coming on the show. The final question we always ask is the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Before Anthony answers the final question, make sure to head over to our locals at the end of the interview.

The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. Trump has done the same thing. You know, you just hammer away, rather as Lenin did too. You just hammer away one or two, very simple ideas, who they need to hate. Why did communism happen in Russia, China and Vietnam, but not in the UK, Taiwan, Australia and other countries? Why does Stalin get a pass, but Hitler doesn't? Arguably, the former killed far more people. Yet everyone is a fascist these days, but no one calls anyone a Stalinist.

Well, in fact, it is very much linked to what we have been talking to. And that is we are seeing that the world is a far more dangerous place than we'd thought even two years ago, or three years ago, certainly. We underestimated the threat of Putin because, rather like with Hitler, we could not imagine that anybody would want to have another war in Europe like, you know, in a way like the Second World War. And this was something that we did with Hitler in the 1930s.

We couldn't imagine that after the First World War anybody would want anything. And this is the danger of looking at the world through through the, should we say, the confirmation bias of the democratic mentality.

We cannot really imagine people thinking in a slightly different way to us. And that has been our great weakness. And I'm afraid that means also a question of military expenditure.

We have not been preparing for war. And I'm afraid if you don't prepare for war now, we are going to be totally vulnerable in the future because there is no doubt about it. Putin is not just interested in Ukraine.

He would like to go a lot further. We've seen with the trouble now developing in Transnistria and he's determined to have back some of the Baltic states, even part of them or whatever. So, you know, for the fact that Europe has been under-spending, I'm afraid, has played entirely into the hands of Donald Trump.

And we have been very stupid it frankly or blind in that particular way and we've got to do something about it. Anthony, thank you so much for coming on the show. And head on over to locals where we ask Anthony your questions. What are the tear-your-tale signs we should be on the lookout for if we are to keep communism at bay in the West?