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

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00:00:31.000 When the February Revolution breaks out, nobody lifts an arm or a sword even to save the Tsar, 0.85

00:00:38.480 and Rasputin contributed to that in a very major way.

00:00:41.840 Who were the Bolsheviks?

00:00:43.020 They had a very strong leader in the form of Lenin.

00:00:45.720 Now, his speeches were so extreme that even members of the Bolshevik Party were sort of shot and thought this was madness,

00:00:51.760 because he wanted the abolition of the police, he wanted the abolition of money and of the finance and all the rest of it.

00:00:57.280 It was going to be the party and the state combined together, who were going to control everything, with him up at the top.

00:01:04.000 It really was, as I say, a coup d'etat. It was not a revolution.

00:01:07.900 Anthony, you've written this brilliant book about the Russian civil war and the revolution.

00:01:13.960 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.

00:01:18.780 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,

00:01:25.080 which means that we ask the sort of questions that most ordinary people would want answered.

00:01:29.520 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

00:01:37.960 and prior to the Russian revolution that created the preconditions for the events that followed?

00:01:42.420 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,

00:01:55.620 had been so impressed by his father, Alexander III, who was a very strong character.

00:02:01.620 And he, in turn, had reacted against the liberalism of his father, Alexander II, who was the one who liberated the serfs.

00:02:10.260 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.

00:02:24.820 And there was tremendous pressure from his wife that there should be no lessening up and no liberalization.

00:02:31.540 And he made this absolutely clear from as soon as he took over as Tsar.

00:02:36.680 And he said that any hopes for change were senseless.

00:02:42.060 Well, that automatically outraged a lot of people, as well as, of course, even depressing many monarchists,

00:02:49.740 because they felt if there's total inflexibility, it's likely to break.

00:02:54.000 But the conditions in the countryside, even though the serfs had been liberated by Alexander II, were still desperate.

00:03:01.840 There had been some reforms brought in by Shalipin, who was prime minister in the early part of the century, of the 20th century.

00:03:15.340 But that was not enough.

00:03:16.800 He was hoping to create a sort of far more rich peasantry,

00:03:21.480 which, A, would be producing more food more effectively,

00:03:26.880 but also, therefore, that you would win the peasantry over to the capitalist system.

00:03:32.660 But this did not really work.

00:03:34.760 And as a result, one saw total rigidity in the countryside.

00:03:39.760 Some of the landowners were liberal, wanted to improve the conditions,

00:03:46.100 but they simply didn't have the money.

00:03:47.680 And this was the trouble, because agriculture was so inefficient.

00:03:51.840 But in the same time, in the cities, the Russian economy was starting to pick up in the early years of the century.

00:03:59.640 The trouble was that conditions in the factories were appalling,

00:04:02.740 far worse than anything even in sort of, you know, Dickensian Britain.

00:04:06.160 And the treatment of the workers was abominable.

00:04:11.420 I mean, there was the dangerous working conditions and all the rest of it.

00:04:15.340 So as a result, there was tremendous resentment growing at this particular time.

00:04:19.840 And therefore, there were revolutionary groups,

00:04:22.420 whether it was the socialist revolutionaries who really emerged out of the sort of narodniks,

00:04:28.120 those who believed in the sort of the countryside and in the peasantry.

00:04:31.060 And, of course, then much more the social democrats, later Marxists and Mensheviks and Bolsheviks,

00:04:39.560 who were developing revolutionary groups in the big cities.

00:04:44.260 So all of this could be kept in a pressure cooker, because revolutions only succeed, of course,

00:04:50.500 when the ruling class loses confidence much more than as a result of just activism from below.

00:04:56.480 But the real changes came because of the disaster, really, of the Japanese war. 0.99

00:05:02.740 And this was, in many ways, sheer stupidity on the part of the Tsar. 0.98

00:05:07.080 He'd been egged into it slightly by his cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 0.99

00:05:11.640 who had saluted the Emperor of the Pacific as he was the Emperor of the Atlantic.

00:05:16.900 And others, some of the Tsar's ministers, were encouraging him to take a far more aggressive line

00:05:24.480 in the Far East against China and to seize more territory and all the rest of it.

00:05:30.860 And then when it came to Japan, Japan at this particular stage already had ideas,

00:05:36.660 as their own version of Lebensraum, of taking land on the Eurasian continent

00:05:46.360 to allow for their surplus population.

00:05:51.620 And so pressure was starting and competition was starting to grow in the Far East.

00:05:55.420 And the Tsar was persuaded to take a very, very firm line.

00:06:01.820 But it was a very arrogant line in the way that they treated the Japanese,

00:06:04.860 because they assumed that being non-Europeans, they'd be easy to defeat.

00:06:08.580 Well, that led to the huge disaster of losing the whole of their fleet at Tsushima.

00:06:14.680 This was the Baltic fleet, which had sailed all the way around the world to get there.

00:06:18.940 And the consequences of that were actually uprisings in the countryside in Russia during the course of 1905.

00:06:28.080 And then the Tsar was forced to accept what was known as the October Manifesto,

00:06:32.520 which was to accept a Duma, a parliament of some form or another,

00:06:38.080 even though he had no intention really of allowing it to change the autocracy.

00:06:43.680 But he was in tears himself, having felt that he'd surrendered the family, tradition and inheritance

00:06:51.260 by allowing any form of liberalisation.

00:06:55.120 So all of this was making the situation quite a lot worse,

00:06:59.820 and was also stirring despair, even amongst certainly the intelligentsia, of course,

00:07:06.600 but even amongst the sort of the more liberals who basically supported the monarchy.

00:07:11.140 So from that point of view, he was really losing the support that he needed.

00:07:15.960 So you've got a weak ruler who is attempting to cling on to the restrictive nature of power,

00:07:23.860 to autocracy, as you say.

00:07:26.000 You've got a disaster and war, and then World War I breaks out.

00:07:31.720 Well, even before World War I breaks out, things get worse.

00:07:34.460 I mean, as one of the leading members of the Duma said, you know,

00:07:39.540 there's nothing worse than an autocracy without an autocrat.

00:07:43.380 And this was the trouble, you know.

00:07:45.740 There was the weakness of the Tsar, who was also a total fatalist,

00:07:51.620 and really felt everything was the will of God.

00:07:55.980 And of course, this was encouraged even more by the Empress,

00:07:59.560 who was soon going to come under the influence of Rasputin.

00:08:04.780 She already was under the influence of a French charlatan called Monsieur Philippe.

00:08:12.300 And she was going to persuade the Tsar again not to shift.

00:08:16.640 But the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was a disaster.

00:08:23.520 Rasputin rightly predicted, of course, that this would mean the destruction of the dynasty,

00:08:29.640 of the Romanov dynasty, after 300 years.

00:08:33.180 They had their 300th anniversary in 1913.

00:08:37.760 And the problem was, of course, that Russia did not have the industry,

00:08:43.260 and it certainly didn't have the finance, even though it had vast gold reserves.

00:08:46.780 It just simply handled things so badly and so incompetently.

00:08:53.220 It never raised war bonds in the way that the other allied countries,

00:08:57.420 France and Britain, had.

00:09:00.960 And its troops were very old-fashioned.

00:09:04.220 They had the very long bernet.

00:09:05.660 They weren't allowed to take the bernet off their rifle

00:09:08.180 because this went back to Marshal Suforov.

00:09:11.720 And they were sort of hindered by tradition.

00:09:14.960 The whole army was dominated by the guards' regiments, the lifeguard regiments.

00:09:21.880 And they were literally sort of controlled the whole system.

00:09:27.840 And the disaster really started straight away when they advanced into East Prussia 1.00

00:09:34.080 to take the pressure.

00:09:35.380 And they did in that way save the French and the British

00:09:39.100 as the Germans advanced on Paris in the whole early stage of that Schlieffen plan.

00:09:45.640 But in 1915, the disaster and the retreats became worse and worse.

00:09:52.840 And to compound the whole problem, the Tsar then suddenly announced,

00:09:57.960 against the advice of all of his ministers and everybody,

00:10:01.340 except, of course, the Tsarina, his wife,

00:10:04.340 that he should take over the supreme command of the armies.

00:10:07.240 Well, to take over the supreme command when already you're facing a disaster

00:10:12.120 and a major retreat means that he was going to get blamed, really,

00:10:16.900 for everything that went wrong, whether it was his fault or not.

00:10:20.420 And, of course, he wasn't actually in control, really, of anything.

00:10:23.680 He did have a very good chief of staff, General Alexeyev.

00:10:26.600 But even so, there was a huge problem of ammunition resupply,

00:10:33.560 particularly of artillery, due to incompetence.

00:10:36.480 And it wasn't really until 1916 when they had a very, well, late 15 and 16,

00:10:41.880 when they had an excellent minister and general, Polivanov.

00:10:45.700 But then, because he didn't like Rasputin, the emperors got rid of him,

00:10:53.140 which was a total disaster.

00:10:54.720 I mean, at that stage, the Russian armies actually were starting to recover.

00:10:58.900 So it was, as I say, disaster compounded upon disaster.

00:11:02.900 And then in the winter of 1917, sorry, the winter of 1916, 217,

00:11:09.260 you have in December, you have the assassination, the murder of Rasputin.

00:11:13.860 The Tsar, by then, is in a state of collapse.

00:11:19.180 The empress has been changing the government. 0.98

00:11:22.360 It was known as ministerial leapfrog because, you know, she kept on firing somebody

00:11:26.420 if she didn't feel that he admired or adored Rasputin as much as she did.

00:11:34.000 I mean, it was about as bad as it could possibly get in that particular stage.

00:11:38.700 And then the other problem was, although there was actually plenty of food

00:11:42.860 or potential food in the form of grain, the severity of the late winter,

00:11:50.140 or sorry, of that middle winter, Aurelia of 1916-17, meant that most of the locomotives froze up.

00:11:56.560 And so there were bread queues and then there were bread riots

00:12:00.100 because the food simply could not be distributed.

00:12:02.980 And it was a spontaneous revolution which did break out in February 1917.

00:12:10.760 And this was the true Russian revolution. 0.69

00:12:13.060 When people talk about the Russian revolution,

00:12:15.140 I'm actually thinking of the Bolshevik coup of October 1917.

00:12:21.040 But that was not.

00:12:22.020 That literally was a coup d'etat.

00:12:23.960 But we will get on to that.

00:12:25.680 But the important thing, really, is to understand a street revolution of February 1917.

00:12:32.200 And people are there saying, you know, will Putin face another sort of February 1917? 0.97

00:12:37.480 Absolute rubbish. 0.98

00:12:38.180 No, of course he won't. 1.00

00:12:39.680 He's got far too large and effective police force,

00:12:44.580 as well as National Guard and all the rest of it,

00:12:47.200 all incorporated within his security structure,

00:12:51.740 but a very complicated one of 27 different security organizations.

00:12:56.520 And he has no intention of stepping down because he knows perfectly well

00:13:01.340 that he would lose everything.

00:13:04.100 And so parallels between 1917 and today should be resisted,

00:13:10.920 should we say, with all energy.

00:13:14.360 It's interesting, though, and we'll come back to the parallels

00:13:17.980 between the past and the present day later on in the interview.

00:13:22.780 There's a cliche, Anthony, that goes,

00:13:24.580 behind every successful man, there is a good woman.

00:13:28.260 Is what happened with the Tsar the inverse of that? 0.78

00:13:33.000 Yes, I think that's a very good point.

00:13:34.600 Yes, you know, there was behind every real disastrous man,

00:13:38.560 there might well be a disastrous woman. 1.00

00:13:39.960 That's not necessarily true.

00:13:42.140 I mean, it certainly was in this case.

00:13:43.400 But I wouldn't say that was a general rule,

00:13:45.460 because there have been plenty of disastrous men

00:13:48.280 who've ignored a far wiser wife.

00:13:51.540 But so let's just touch on the Tsarina.

00:13:55.440 So it sounded, from a layman's point of view,

00:13:59.360 that she seemed to wield more power in the relationship than he did.

00:14:03.820 Definitely.

00:14:04.720 There was no doubt about it.

00:14:06.440 But this really only started during the war.

00:14:09.540 She got a first taste for it when Nicholas had a bad attack in the Crimea,

00:14:16.580 a bad attack of Typhus.

00:14:18.920 And she wouldn't allow anybody to come to see him.

00:14:22.220 And eventually, Count Fredericks, the court,

00:14:25.680 the minister of the court, as his title was,

00:14:28.560 said that, you know, your Imperial Highness,

00:14:31.540 you've got to understand, you know,

00:14:32.640 this is against the Constitution and all the rest of it.

00:14:35.660 He has to be consulted the whole time.

00:14:39.300 Otherwise, there has to be a regency,

00:14:40.880 in which case his younger brother, Grand Duke Michal,

00:14:44.080 must step in as a regent.

00:14:46.380 Well, she hated the idea of that.

00:14:48.960 So in the end, you know,

00:14:50.400 Fredericks had to speak from behind a screen in the Tsars' bedroom,

00:14:54.700 and he was allowed four minutes, no more than that.

00:14:57.980 But, I mean, this was when the first time

00:15:01.220 when she started to feel the need for power.

00:15:05.600 And, of course, when it came to the Tsar moving to the Stavka,

00:15:09.660 to the supreme headquarters,

00:15:11.480 to command the armies on their western front,

00:15:15.900 what we would have called the eastern front,

00:15:17.800 she then knew that that was her time.

00:15:21.640 She was starting to appoint the ministers

00:15:23.380 or telling the Tsar who to appoint.

00:15:26.320 And, of course, always on Rasputin's advice, you know.

00:15:31.600 And our friend says, you know,

00:15:33.720 we cannot trust so-and-so.

00:15:34.960 He is not loyal to us,

00:15:37.160 which basically meant he was not loyal

00:15:38.640 or he hated Rasputin.

00:15:41.040 And this is where the ministerial leapfrog began.

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00:16:15.120 And Anthony, you talked,

00:16:16.880 and this is, you know,

00:16:17.520 I was born in Russia.

00:16:18.640 I'm in Soviet Union, actually, and grew up.

00:16:21.060 The notion that the Tsar was very weak

00:16:24.080 is something that universally,

00:16:25.980 I think, recognized both in Russia and around the world.

00:16:30.460 But what do we mean by this exactly?

00:16:32.340 I mean, you've alluded to some elements of it,

00:16:34.120 which is he basically let his wife take over the governance

00:16:38.020 and choosing who's going to be appointed, etc.

00:16:40.920 What does it mean to be a weak Tsar in Russia in that period of time?

00:16:45.060 Well, in many cases,

00:16:47.020 a weak leader is usually a very obstinate leader.

00:16:52.260 And this was certainly the case with the Tsar. 0.84

00:16:54.860 He, in many cases, refused to listen to his ministers.

00:16:59.560 And, you know, he would,

00:17:00.940 as soon as they were saying anything that was faintly disagreeable,

00:17:03.600 especially a criticism of Rasputin,

00:17:05.900 he would start tapping his fingers,

00:17:07.560 light a cigarette,

00:17:08.180 and turn towards the window and look out at the garden,

00:17:10.940 which basically was telling them

00:17:12.980 that he was simply not going to listen to what they said.

00:17:18.000 But he had very little imagination.

00:17:21.980 And the trouble was that, of course,

00:17:23.520 he was kept away from those

00:17:26.240 who could actually really tell him

00:17:28.440 how real the situation was

00:17:31.640 or how dangerous it was out in the countryside.

00:17:33.980 Of course, he was surrounded by sycophants.

00:17:37.000 But that was the problem with any autocracy in that sense.

00:17:42.060 And, you know,

00:17:43.480 it was certainly also the problem with,

00:17:45.360 to a certain degree,

00:17:46.060 with Stalin.

00:17:46.940 And it was also,

00:17:48.440 obviously,

00:17:49.260 the problem with Hitler as well,

00:17:50.900 of simply refusing to acknowledge it.

00:17:52.880 Hitler would even take down the blinds 0.89

00:17:55.000 or lower the blinds

00:17:56.660 so that he didn't even see the damage in Berlin

00:17:59.000 when his train arrived in Berlin.

00:18:01.820 And to a large degree,

00:18:02.940 why the Tsar was so keen

00:18:04.380 to go to the headquarters

00:18:05.460 at Stavka

00:18:06.220 and take over as commander-in-chief

00:18:07.780 was so that he wouldn't have to listen

00:18:09.580 to politicians

00:18:10.260 telling him the reality

00:18:11.880 of the situation in the country.

00:18:13.720 And he could ignore that.

00:18:15.080 And he would be surrounded

00:18:16.160 by the most loyal people he knew,

00:18:18.380 which, of course,

00:18:18.840 were army officers

00:18:19.580 who all respected

00:18:21.880 the chain of command

00:18:22.860 going right up to the Tsar 0.71

00:18:24.320 and certainly nobody else

00:18:25.740 and certainly not to politicians.

00:18:27.360 Wow.

00:18:28.220 I was going to say,

00:18:29.320 so we have this

00:18:30.680 almost bizarre dynamic

00:18:32.920 if you think about

00:18:33.820 the leader of a country

00:18:34.920 where the only person

00:18:36.580 he seems to be really listening to

00:18:38.000 is his wife.

00:18:38.840 But there's also a third person

00:18:40.580 in this marriage

00:18:41.460 who is Rasputin.

00:18:42.980 So explain to us a little bit

00:18:45.120 about who this person was

00:18:46.920 and how did he come

00:18:47.960 to wield such power

00:18:49.100 in the royal family in Russia?

00:18:51.860 Well, it is an extraordinary story

00:18:54.000 and it's a,

00:18:55.540 in fact,

00:18:55.960 it's the subject of my next book

00:18:57.280 and I'm not really going to go into it

00:18:59.260 in great detail here.

00:19:00.640 But it's,

00:19:01.360 it is one of the most fascinating aspects

00:19:04.840 that how this whole situation,

00:19:08.040 this whole chain of events,

00:19:10.800 which has actually affected

00:19:12.260 the whole world,

00:19:13.080 not just Europe

00:19:13.980 and certainly not just Russia,

00:19:15.960 with the civil war

00:19:18.000 and with the revolution

00:19:19.160 and civil war,

00:19:21.120 could all,

00:19:21.760 I'm not saying was caused

00:19:22.620 by one man,

00:19:23.380 caused by Rasputin,

00:19:24.560 but he was a major contributor,

00:19:26.080 contributor to it.

00:19:28.080 But that this

00:19:29.700 total

00:19:31.760 rigidity of government,

00:19:34.340 rigidity of mentality,

00:19:36.280 inability to adapt

00:19:37.820 to the circumstances,

00:19:39.040 which was a pre-revolutionary situation.

00:19:42.140 I mean,

00:19:42.360 this had been

00:19:42.700 a pre-revolutionary situation

00:19:44.120 before Rasputin

00:19:45.500 was part of,

00:19:46.980 if you like,

00:19:47.380 the royal circle.

00:19:48.840 I mean,

00:19:49.020 he only really started

00:19:50.340 at the end of 1905

00:19:51.640 and that was sort of

00:19:53.380 really the first time

00:19:54.140 that he was introduced

00:19:54.880 to the Tsar and the Tsarina.

00:19:56.320 and he didn't have

00:19:58.400 a huge amount

00:19:59.360 of influence

00:19:59.960 before,

00:20:01.140 except on a sort of

00:20:01.860 private basis

00:20:02.600 and helping

00:20:03.940 the Tsarovich,

00:20:05.900 the son and heir

00:20:07.160 of the empire,

00:20:09.120 to get over

00:20:10.080 or to deal

00:20:11.320 and cope

00:20:11.840 with the pain

00:20:13.120 of his haemophilia.

00:20:15.700 And of course,

00:20:16.100 this is why

00:20:16.800 the Tsarina

00:20:19.300 or Tsaritsa

00:20:20.140 became completely

00:20:21.740 besotted

00:20:22.160 with Rasputin.

00:20:23.720 I mean,

00:20:23.920 she wrote letters

00:20:24.700 to him which were,

00:20:26.320 I mean,

00:20:26.580 you would have thought,

00:20:27.600 I mean,

00:20:28.040 they weren't erotic,

00:20:28.900 they weren't having

00:20:29.500 in any way

00:20:30.300 a sexual affair.

00:20:32.320 But I mean,

00:20:33.080 you know,

00:20:33.380 reading them,

00:20:33.940 you would have thought

00:20:34.460 they probably,

00:20:35.520 that might well be the case.

00:20:36.840 I mean,

00:20:37.000 it was quite astonishing

00:20:37.740 how besotted

00:20:39.160 she had become

00:20:40.140 with Rasputin.

00:20:42.100 And this is why

00:20:42.760 he was able to

00:20:44.060 manipulate her 0.98

00:20:45.020 to a certain degree,

00:20:45.900 but only really,

00:20:46.920 I would have said,

00:20:47.520 from 1915.

00:20:49.340 But this was

00:20:49.720 sort of the really

00:20:51.000 disastrous time.

00:20:52.380 And of course,

00:20:52.860 everybody in Petrograd

00:20:54.520 who wanted advancement,

00:20:55.960 who wanted this,

00:20:56.600 that,

00:20:56.860 or the other,

00:20:57.900 contributed to

00:20:59.200 the most appalling

00:21:00.080 corruption.

00:21:02.480 I mean,

00:21:02.760 Rasputin was certainly

00:21:03.700 involved in it.

00:21:04.480 And I mean,

00:21:04.760 one's now actually

00:21:05.560 even got

00:21:06.080 incredible detail now,

00:21:09.120 which was not

00:21:09.940 available before,

00:21:11.500 on the degree

00:21:13.860 of whether it was

00:21:15.020 government contracts

00:21:16.080 and all the rest of it.

00:21:17.740 Not that he was

00:21:18.760 necessarily sort of

00:21:19.880 feathering his own

00:21:21.460 nest in the future.

00:21:22.960 I mean,

00:21:23.220 he was,

00:21:24.020 but he was spending

00:21:24.600 the money straight away

00:21:25.600 in totally

00:21:26.360 profligate style.

00:21:29.560 But the whole point

00:21:30.660 was that

00:21:31.420 the stories

00:21:32.660 got to the front

00:21:33.460 and this caused

00:21:34.200 total demoralisation

00:21:35.580 in the Russian army,

00:21:36.680 it's not surprisingly,

00:21:37.680 and total cynicism.

00:21:39.760 And it was one of the reasons

00:21:40.660 when the February

00:21:42.280 revolution breaks out

00:21:43.420 that nobody lifts

00:21:45.120 an arm or a sword

00:21:46.340 even to save the Tsar.

00:21:48.680 And this was,

00:21:49.640 shall we say,

00:21:50.060 a total moral collapse

00:21:51.340 of the whole regime.

00:21:53.200 And Rasputin

00:21:54.160 contributed to that

00:21:55.000 in a very major way.

00:21:55.920 And we come right back

00:21:57.220 to the story,

00:21:58.460 the narrative

00:21:58.960 and the chronology of it.

00:22:01.100 So you've got a country

00:22:02.160 that already had

00:22:03.820 a pre-revolutionary

00:22:05.320 situation going on.

00:22:07.260 You've got

00:22:08.040 army after army

00:22:09.720 being routed

00:22:10.760 in the West,

00:22:11.840 what we call

00:22:12.420 the Eastern Front.

00:22:13.480 Well,

00:22:13.800 there was

00:22:14.120 certain exceptions.

00:22:15.320 I mean,

00:22:15.660 the great Brusilov

00:22:16.360 offensive of 1916

00:22:18.420 managed to almost

00:22:20.560 knock the Austrian 1.00

00:22:21.880 Hungarians

00:22:22.420 out of the war.

00:22:24.200 But the trouble was,

00:22:25.120 of course,

00:22:25.360 there was never,

00:22:26.120 they then ran out

00:22:26.780 of the ammunition

00:22:27.340 or they lost momentum

00:22:28.540 and all the rest of it

00:22:29.200 and then they had to

00:22:29.900 come all the way back.

00:22:31.700 But it wasn't,

00:22:32.720 it wasn't quite a sort of,

00:22:35.720 it wasn't a total disaster

00:22:37.500 in every single way.

00:22:39.500 But it showed the potential.

00:22:40.960 But the trouble was,

00:22:41.720 it was messed up

00:22:42.940 from behind the lines

00:22:44.380 by the corruption

00:22:46.260 and chaos in the rear.

00:22:48.040 So the defeats

00:22:49.860 are not universal,

00:22:51.380 but broadly speaking,

00:22:52.520 some armies

00:22:53.220 have been defeated.

00:22:54.660 There are a lot

00:22:55.240 of casualties.

00:22:56.700 There are problems

00:22:57.200 with supply lines.

00:22:58.460 And then on the home front,

00:23:00.180 you've got bread queues,

00:23:01.700 bread riots,

00:23:02.460 and then you have

00:23:03.180 the February Revolution.

00:23:04.260 Tell us about that.

00:23:05.900 Well,

00:23:06.100 the Tsar was convinced

00:23:08.300 that his army

00:23:09.060 would always be loyal.

00:23:10.080 And this was the trouble.

00:23:11.000 I mean,

00:23:11.140 as his youth

00:23:12.400 and most of the time

00:23:13.560 spending time

00:23:14.500 with officers,

00:23:15.560 he couldn't imagine

00:23:16.940 how the army

00:23:17.800 could anything be,

00:23:18.980 be anything but loyal.

00:23:21.120 And the trouble was,

00:23:21.960 of course,

00:23:22.180 most of the troops

00:23:23.380 in Petrograd itself,

00:23:25.060 which was St. Petersburg,

00:23:26.480 they changed the name,

00:23:28.740 had been wounded

00:23:29.720 or were new troops

00:23:31.660 arriving desperate

00:23:32.660 not to be sent

00:23:33.320 to the front.

00:23:35.080 And so from that

00:23:36.200 point of view,

00:23:37.300 they were all too ready

00:23:39.880 in many cases

00:23:40.680 to join the workers

00:23:41.920 who were in revolt.

00:23:44.220 And in the past,

00:23:45.120 it had always been

00:23:45.600 the Cossack regiments

00:23:47.300 and units

00:23:47.880 which had broken up

00:23:50.380 any of the riots before.

00:23:51.940 I mean,

00:23:52.160 in 1905,

00:23:53.760 when there was

00:23:54.520 the Bloody Sunday

00:23:55.920 in January 1905,

00:23:58.980 I mean,

00:23:59.340 the Cossacks

00:24:00.320 had played

00:24:00.640 a major part there

00:24:01.700 as well as obviously

00:24:03.280 a part of the

00:24:04.060 Imperial Lifeguard regiments

00:24:05.880 shooting down

00:24:08.100 the protesters. 0.96

00:24:09.560 Now,

00:24:10.740 the Tsar 0.65

00:24:12.800 was reassured

00:24:13.960 by General Kabbalov,

00:24:15.340 who was in charge

00:24:16.440 of the troops

00:24:17.040 in Petrograd,

00:24:18.380 that they were

00:24:19.200 completely loyal.

00:24:20.360 Well,

00:24:20.540 I mean,

00:24:20.880 the head of the

00:24:21.780 Okhrana,

00:24:22.960 Gorbachev,

00:24:25.380 was perfectly convinced,

00:24:28.220 he knew perfectly well,

00:24:29.040 that there should be

00:24:29.860 no reliance

00:24:30.440 on them whatsoever.

00:24:31.180 So they were living

00:24:33.680 in a sort of

00:24:34.460 cloud cuckoo land

00:24:35.280 thinking that

00:24:36.020 even if there's

00:24:37.560 another riot,

00:24:38.340 you know,

00:24:38.520 it'll all fall to pieces.

00:24:40.140 Interestingly,

00:24:40.760 the Bolsheviks themselves

00:24:41.860 thought,

00:24:43.080 well,

00:24:43.180 this is just a bread riot.

00:24:44.300 As soon as they distribute

00:24:45.300 any more food,

00:24:47.200 you know,

00:24:47.580 it'll all come to an end.

00:24:49.580 And they got that one

00:24:50.620 completely wrong.

00:24:51.540 I mean,

00:24:51.800 there were none

00:24:52.180 of the Bolshevik leaders

00:24:53.360 there at all.

00:24:54.700 And even,

00:24:55.440 as I say,

00:24:55.940 those Bolshevik 0.98

00:24:56.580 senior members

00:24:57.960 of the Bolshevik party

00:24:58.880 in Petrograd

00:24:59.960 simply could not imagine

00:25:01.560 that this was

00:25:02.340 the revolution.

00:25:05.200 And it was

00:25:07.040 a genuine

00:25:07.660 street revolution

00:25:09.040 which created

00:25:10.600 and swelled

00:25:11.960 day by day.

00:25:12.920 More and more people

00:25:13.660 were out on the streets.

00:25:14.800 It started with

00:25:15.440 International Women's Day

00:25:16.660 protesting,

00:25:17.920 women protesting.

00:25:19.180 They were the ones

00:25:19.920 who had to stand

00:25:20.500 for hours

00:25:21.180 in the bread queues

00:25:22.100 having walked

00:25:23.240 sort of halfway

00:25:23.820 across the city

00:25:25.220 themselves.

00:25:26.340 And it was hardly

00:25:27.160 surprising

00:25:27.640 that they were

00:25:28.440 exasperated.

00:25:29.440 and so then

00:25:30.960 the workers

00:25:31.480 came out

00:25:32.040 on strike

00:25:32.480 from the factories

00:25:33.180 and joined them.

00:25:34.900 And then

00:25:35.280 even when

00:25:36.900 the police

00:25:37.560 because some

00:25:38.640 of the police

00:25:39.020 were sort of

00:25:39.420 like cavalry

00:25:39.980 charged them

00:25:41.400 then suddenly

00:25:43.080 the Cossacks

00:25:43.760 changed sides

00:25:45.080 and nobody

00:25:45.880 had imagined

00:25:46.720 that.

00:25:47.860 And I mean

00:25:48.160 I describe

00:25:48.600 in the book

00:25:49.060 how

00:25:49.400 the Cossacks

00:25:52.380 were quartered

00:25:53.040 in one of the

00:25:53.740 barracks 1.00

00:25:55.720 and the soldiers

00:25:57.960 sort of said

00:25:58.440 well I suppose

00:25:58.840 you're going to

00:26:00.100 crush the workers

00:26:01.500 again this time 0.95

00:26:02.400 round.

00:26:03.180 And they said

00:26:03.780 do you think

00:26:04.120 we can be

00:26:04.500 bought off

00:26:05.100 for some

00:26:05.680 rotten lentils

00:26:07.740 and herring heads?

00:26:10.240 Not this time.

00:26:12.280 And so that

00:26:13.260 in a way

00:26:13.920 was sort of

00:26:14.520 the turning point

00:26:15.540 in the 1917

00:26:17.080 in the February

00:26:17.720 1917 revolution.

00:26:19.600 And at what

00:26:20.120 point did

00:26:21.060 the Tsar 0.65

00:26:21.500 realise

00:26:22.180 this is

00:26:23.620 serious?

00:26:24.220 Because like

00:26:24.900 you said

00:26:25.800 yourself

00:26:26.100 no one

00:26:26.480 actually realised

00:26:27.320 this was

00:26:27.700 serious

00:26:28.020 when it

00:26:28.500 first started.

00:26:29.680 No.

00:26:30.460 So what

00:26:30.920 was the

00:26:31.220 moment?

00:26:31.880 Well sorry

00:26:32.420 some people

00:26:32.880 did realise

00:26:33.520 I mean

00:26:33.800 Rodsyanko

00:26:34.500 the president

00:26:35.000 of the

00:26:35.280 Duma

00:26:35.560 he was

00:26:36.980 sending

00:26:37.220 messages

00:26:37.660 the whole

00:26:38.080 time

00:26:38.460 to the

00:26:38.960 Tsar

00:26:39.280 saying

00:26:40.000 you know

00:26:40.880 your

00:26:41.660 majesty

00:26:42.960 you do

00:26:43.460 not seem

00:26:44.080 to realise

00:26:44.640 what is

00:26:45.080 happening

00:26:45.440 in the

00:26:45.860 city.

00:26:47.080 And the

00:26:48.160 empress

00:26:48.640 Tsarina

00:26:49.200 had been

00:26:49.680 reassured

00:26:50.440 by

00:26:50.720 Protopopov

00:26:51.380 the

00:26:51.620 minister

00:26:52.000 of the

00:26:52.240 interior

00:26:52.640 oh

00:26:54.420 don't worry

00:26:55.580 at all

00:26:56.060 you know

00:26:56.480 it's all

00:26:57.160 under

00:26:57.380 control

00:26:57.800 and all

00:26:58.160 the rest

00:26:58.420 of it

00:26:58.700 they were

00:26:59.740 living in

00:27:00.060 a total

00:27:00.400 cuckoo land

00:27:01.460 in that

00:27:01.760 point of

00:27:02.360 view.

00:27:03.360 The

00:27:03.460 Okhrana

00:27:03.900 the secret

00:27:04.620 police

00:27:05.140 and the

00:27:05.480 head

00:27:05.700 there

00:27:06.280 knew

00:27:08.060 perfectly

00:27:08.380 well

00:27:08.760 that

00:27:09.080 there was

00:27:09.940 no way

00:27:10.480 that they

00:27:10.800 could rely

00:27:11.400 on the

00:27:12.060 troops

00:27:12.320 in the

00:27:12.580 capital.

00:27:13.620 And

00:27:13.980 the trouble

00:27:14.640 was that

00:27:15.320 they thought

00:27:15.840 oh well

00:27:16.180 the police

00:27:16.700 but the

00:27:17.000 police were

00:27:17.440 known as

00:27:17.820 pharaohs

00:27:18.540 they had

00:27:19.500 these sort

00:27:19.900 of black

00:27:20.200 uniforms

00:27:20.800 and with

00:27:22.160 sort of

00:27:22.380 red stripes

00:27:22.860 and they

00:27:23.120 were hated

00:27:23.740 by the

00:27:24.120 populace

00:27:24.560 and they

00:27:26.100 were the

00:27:26.340 ones who

00:27:26.780 actually bore

00:27:27.580 the brunt

00:27:28.080 of the

00:27:29.100 revenge.

00:27:29.540 soldiers

00:27:30.280 and the

00:27:31.700 soldiers

00:27:32.300 and they

00:27:33.460 weren't really

00:27:33.920 attacked by

00:27:34.460 the crowds

00:27:34.900 partly because

00:27:35.440 they themselves

00:27:36.040 were not

00:27:36.440 sort of

00:27:37.040 really

00:27:37.300 countering

00:27:38.140 or counter

00:27:39.040 attacking

00:27:39.400 the crowds

00:27:40.040 but the

00:27:41.700 police

00:27:42.080 I mean

00:27:42.400 they were

00:27:42.780 being lynched

00:27:43.560 and thrown 0.95

00:27:45.320 under the

00:27:45.780 ice and

00:27:46.720 dragged

00:27:48.220 behind

00:27:48.780 cars and

00:27:49.900 so forth.

00:27:50.620 People talk

00:27:51.240 of the

00:27:51.500 February

00:27:51.720 revolution as

00:27:52.360 a bloodless

00:27:52.840 revolution.

00:27:53.400 It wasn't.

00:27:53.840 It was very

00:27:54.280 cruel and

00:27:54.800 too but

00:27:56.800 one didn't

00:27:57.460 sort of

00:27:57.760 see it

00:27:58.200 except it

00:27:58.760 was in

00:27:59.080 sort of

00:27:59.680 through

00:28:00.500 eyewitness

00:28:01.280 accounts

00:28:01.760 really but

00:28:02.280 it was

00:28:02.580 pretty

00:28:02.880 horrific.

00:28:04.360 So that

00:28:04.640 being the

00:28:05.120 case when

00:28:05.960 was the

00:28:06.360 moment that

00:28:07.080 the Tsar 0.65

00:28:07.680 and his

00:28:08.100 family came

00:28:08.740 under real

00:28:09.300 physical

00:28:09.740 threat?

00:28:10.920 Well the

00:28:11.500 Tsar was

00:28:12.700 at Stavka

00:28:14.500 at Mogilev

00:28:15.360 really on

00:28:16.140 sort of

00:28:16.480 in Poland

00:28:17.060 and when

00:28:19.820 he finally

00:28:20.360 realised that

00:28:21.180 this was

00:28:22.460 it or

00:28:22.880 whatever he

00:28:23.960 tried to

00:28:24.420 get back

00:28:25.020 all he was

00:28:25.580 interested in

00:28:26.200 actually was

00:28:26.720 being back

00:28:27.180 with his

00:28:27.480 family at

00:28:28.220 Tsar Koselo

00:28:28.840 and set

00:28:31.740 off on

00:28:32.120 his train

00:28:32.780 but of

00:28:33.760 course was

00:28:34.100 stopped by

00:28:34.560 rail women 0.99

00:28:34.980 on the

00:28:35.320 way who

00:28:35.720 just blocked

00:28:36.140 the line

00:28:36.620 so he

00:28:37.040 couldn't

00:28:37.340 get through

00:28:37.900 and by

00:28:39.640 then the

00:28:40.700 empress and

00:28:41.600 her family

00:28:42.360 and the

00:28:43.060 children who

00:28:43.740 all of whom

00:28:44.240 had measles

00:28:44.940 or most of

00:28:45.520 the grand

00:28:46.340 duchesses 0.99

00:28:46.700 had measles

00:28:47.440 were stuck

00:28:48.640 in the

00:28:49.200 Alexander

00:28:49.940 Palace

00:28:50.440 and soon

00:28:53.080 they realised

00:28:53.760 that sort

00:28:54.160 they may

00:28:54.880 have a

00:28:55.280 small

00:28:56.080 loyal

00:28:56.460 guard

00:28:56.980 but basically

00:28:57.860 the troops

00:28:58.460 the rebel

00:28:59.960 troops were

00:29:00.500 going to be

00:29:00.780 coming out

00:29:01.180 from Petrograd

00:29:02.440 so all of

00:29:03.240 this was just

00:29:03.800 within a few

00:29:04.320 days

00:29:04.760 I mean

00:29:05.060 we're talking

00:29:05.480 about the

00:29:05.880 end of

00:29:06.140 February

00:29:06.440 old style

00:29:07.200 I mean

00:29:07.600 in the

00:29:09.820 old calendar

00:29:10.340 and as I

00:29:13.220 say that's

00:29:13.700 almost within

00:29:14.240 three or four

00:29:14.720 days

00:29:15.040 but by then

00:29:15.800 you know

00:29:16.340 this was

00:29:16.740 already

00:29:17.080 the turning

00:29:17.920 point had

00:29:18.320 already taken

00:29:18.880 place

00:29:19.340 and there

00:29:21.060 was this

00:29:21.420 curious

00:29:22.340 case

00:29:23.220 where there

00:29:24.140 was even

00:29:24.480 one of the

00:29:24.840 grand dukes

00:29:25.460 who marched

00:29:25.980 his sailors

00:29:27.300 of the

00:29:29.140 of the

00:29:29.540 guard

00:29:29.900 the marine

00:29:31.540 guard

00:29:31.980 you know

00:29:32.360 to the

00:29:33.940 Duma

00:29:34.480 basically to

00:29:36.600 support the

00:29:37.220 revolution

00:29:37.660 and lots

00:29:40.160 of others

00:29:40.660 had started

00:29:41.240 sort of you

00:29:41.740 know knowing

00:29:42.220 that this was

00:29:42.720 the way it

00:29:43.100 was going

00:29:43.460 because they

00:29:44.160 felt if we

00:29:45.040 don't control

00:29:45.640 the revolution

00:29:46.180 it's going

00:29:47.160 to be an

00:29:48.060 absolute blood

00:29:49.160 bath and all

00:29:49.940 the rest of

00:29:50.220 it and so

00:29:51.160 they were

00:29:51.480 trying to

00:29:51.840 work with

00:29:52.460 Rodzyanko

00:29:53.300 and the

00:29:54.340 should we

00:29:54.920 say liberal

00:29:55.760 conservatives

00:29:56.380 in the

00:29:57.360 Duma

00:29:57.940 basically the

00:29:58.620 Octoberists

00:29:59.240 those who

00:30:00.160 had been

00:30:00.400 involved in

00:30:01.540 the October

00:30:02.160 manifesto

00:30:03.000 which the

00:30:03.480 Tsar had

00:30:04.760 signed so

00:30:05.520 reluctantly

00:30:06.100 in 1905

00:30:07.160 and they

00:30:09.740 hoped that

00:30:10.160 they could

00:30:10.480 sort of

00:30:10.820 therefore

00:30:11.060 control this

00:30:11.900 revolution

00:30:12.340 to make

00:30:12.720 it if

00:30:13.860 you like

00:30:14.160 it's the

00:30:14.520 old

00:30:14.740 Lampedusa

00:30:15.340 idea

00:30:15.940 you know

00:30:17.060 that

00:30:17.260 everything

00:30:17.780 has to

00:30:18.180 change

00:30:18.560 so that

00:30:18.920 nothing

00:30:19.160 changes

00:30:19.660 basically

00:30:20.080 and

00:30:22.060 the

00:30:23.480 but at

00:30:24.920 the same

00:30:25.240 time though

00:30:25.840 the Petrograd

00:30:26.440 Soviet

00:30:26.800 which had

00:30:27.440 been set

00:30:27.840 up in

00:30:28.180 1905

00:30:29.160 basically

00:30:30.880 of

00:30:31.480 on the

00:30:32.740 whole

00:30:33.180 moderate

00:30:34.220 socialists

00:30:35.220 through to

00:30:35.880 Mensheviks 0.90

00:30:36.880 not meant

00:30:37.860 no Bolsheviks 0.96

00:30:38.580 really on

00:30:39.340 the on

00:30:40.020 the committee

00:30:40.480 and so

00:30:42.920 they worked

00:30:43.660 more or less

00:30:44.160 in tandem

00:30:44.660 and this

00:30:45.080 is what

00:30:45.540 really

00:30:46.140 then evolved

00:30:47.560 into what

00:30:48.140 was called

00:30:48.640 the provisional

00:30:49.320 government

00:30:49.700 and tell us

00:30:51.240 about that

00:30:51.620 because

00:30:52.060 when people

00:30:53.580 think of the

00:30:54.020 Russian

00:30:54.220 revolution

00:30:54.620 they think

00:30:55.120 of the

00:30:55.380 royal family 0.98

00:30:55.900 being killed 0.95

00:30:56.680 replaced 0.99

00:30:57.220 etc

00:30:57.540 but the

00:30:57.940 February

00:30:58.160 revolution

00:30:58.600 doesn't result

00:30:59.340 in anything

00:30:59.940 of the kind

00:31:00.500 no it

00:31:01.720 doesn't

00:31:02.100 I mean

00:31:02.500 yes

00:31:02.760 there was

00:31:03.100 killing

00:31:03.540 and there

00:31:04.620 were a lot

00:31:05.120 of officers

00:31:06.340 killed in

00:31:06.960 their apartments

00:31:07.680 or there

00:31:08.420 were a lot

00:31:08.800 of I mean

00:31:09.820 some of the

00:31:11.280 rebel troops

00:31:12.540 would go from

00:31:13.600 apartment to

00:31:14.240 apartment

00:31:14.640 saying they

00:31:15.160 were searching

00:31:15.580 for arms

00:31:16.380 from counter

00:31:16.980 revolutionaries

00:31:17.620 but in fact

00:31:18.080 that was an

00:31:18.820 excuse to

00:31:19.880 loot the 0.72

00:31:21.060 apartments

00:31:21.520 and in

00:31:22.280 some cases

00:31:22.820 rape 0.93

00:31:23.260 but it

00:31:24.880 was not

00:31:25.460 if you like

00:31:27.060 organised

00:31:27.780 sort of

00:31:28.220 Bolshevik

00:31:28.760 control

00:31:29.640 or anything

00:31:30.080 like that

00:31:30.580 far from

00:31:31.040 it

00:31:31.260 I mean

00:31:32.520 the Bolsheviks 0.73

00:31:33.000 were absolutely

00:31:33.660 tiny

00:31:34.180 I mean

00:31:34.600 we were

00:31:34.920 talking

00:31:35.240 probably

00:31:36.180 in

00:31:37.520 Petrograd

00:31:39.020 at that

00:31:39.280 particular

00:31:39.660 time

00:31:40.220 you know

00:31:41.680 just probably

00:31:42.580 a couple

00:31:42.940 of thousand

00:31:43.520 they

00:31:45.400 suddenly

00:31:46.180 swelled

00:31:46.600 later

00:31:46.940 but we'll

00:31:47.320 come on

00:31:47.660 to that

00:31:47.920 on why

00:31:48.260 suddenly

00:31:48.600 there was

00:31:48.920 this huge

00:31:49.580 increase

00:31:50.040 in their

00:31:50.520 numbers

00:31:51.500 Lenin

00:31:53.280 of course

00:31:53.640 was still

00:31:54.020 in Switzerland

00:31:54.560 Stalin 0.57

00:31:55.880 was trying

00:31:57.000 to make

00:31:57.320 his way

00:31:57.620 back

00:31:57.840 from Siberia

00:31:58.720 and Trotsky

00:31:59.760 was in

00:32:00.060 North America

00:32:00.660 and had

00:32:02.260 to

00:32:02.520 it was

00:32:02.860 Prince

00:32:03.140 Lov

00:32:03.580 who asked

00:32:04.100 the British

00:32:04.620 you know

00:32:05.180 will you

00:32:05.520 allow the

00:32:06.040 Canadians

00:32:06.540 to allow

00:32:08.480 Trotsky

00:32:09.260 to return

00:32:10.000 well I

00:32:10.360 mean

00:32:10.520 shall we

00:32:11.760 say

00:32:11.940 this is

00:32:12.360 the way

00:32:13.360 that

00:32:13.540 liberalism

00:32:14.060 could cut

00:32:14.460 its own 1.00

00:32:14.860 throat

00:32:15.180 in a

00:32:15.520 revolutionary

00:32:15.900 situation

00:32:16.580 by allowing

00:32:17.840 Trotsky

00:32:18.300 and people

00:32:18.800 like that

00:32:19.200 you know

00:32:19.500 to return

00:32:20.100 at that

00:32:20.400 particular

00:32:20.740 time

00:32:21.180 but it

00:32:21.420 was a

00:32:21.760 genuine

00:32:22.100 liberalism

00:32:22.940 but here

00:32:23.680 one comes

00:32:24.340 to the

00:32:25.260 fundamental

00:32:25.720 paradox

00:32:26.180 of the

00:32:27.180 poor

00:32:27.500 old

00:32:28.040 provisional

00:32:28.640 government

00:32:29.040 because as

00:32:30.280 Alexander

00:32:30.840 Hertzsen

00:32:31.480 had predicted

00:32:31.980 the previous

00:32:32.520 century

00:32:33.000 when he

00:32:35.400 made his

00:32:35.800 remark about

00:32:36.600 the pregnant 0.92

00:32:37.280 widow

00:32:37.680 the widow

00:32:39.340 being the

00:32:40.220 old regime

00:32:40.920 which was

00:32:41.320 dying

00:32:41.800 but the

00:32:42.240 child which

00:32:42.960 was being

00:32:43.360 born

00:32:43.780 which was

00:32:44.220 going to

00:32:44.420 be an

00:32:44.680 orphan

00:32:44.960 was totally

00:32:46.780 vulnerable

00:32:47.320 and this

00:32:47.820 is exactly

00:32:48.360 what developed

00:32:49.340 here in

00:32:50.220 1917

00:32:50.860 because the

00:32:52.660 so-called

00:32:53.020 ministers

00:32:53.520 of the

00:32:54.320 provisional

00:32:54.700 government

00:32:55.180 most of

00:32:56.260 whom were

00:32:57.060 liberals

00:32:57.800 right

00:32:58.440 socialists

00:32:59.200 Kerensky

00:33:00.020 was one

00:33:00.460 of them

00:33:00.900 and Kerensky

00:33:01.660 was a

00:33:02.140 socialist

00:33:02.500 and he

00:33:03.220 was the

00:33:03.580 only the

00:33:04.140 reason why

00:33:04.540 he became

00:33:05.080 important was

00:33:05.700 because he

00:33:06.080 had a foot

00:33:06.420 in both

00:33:06.760 camps

00:33:07.200 i.e. he

00:33:07.980 was a

00:33:08.340 member of

00:33:09.540 the committee

00:33:11.280 of the

00:33:11.600 Duma

00:33:11.820 and also

00:33:12.780 a member

00:33:13.180 of the

00:33:13.800 Petrograd

00:33:14.160 Soviet

00:33:14.540 and that

00:33:16.380 gave him

00:33:17.000 this position

00:33:17.580 where then he

00:33:18.140 became

00:33:18.380 minister of

00:33:18.900 justice

00:33:19.240 and then

00:33:19.740 later of

00:33:20.280 course he

00:33:20.560 became

00:33:20.780 minister of

00:33:21.360 war

00:33:21.640 which was

00:33:22.320 really his

00:33:23.280 major step

00:33:24.080 up later

00:33:25.620 but the

00:33:26.460 point was

00:33:27.040 that the

00:33:27.380 ministers

00:33:27.780 there at

00:33:28.460 the time

00:33:28.980 may have

00:33:29.520 been in

00:33:29.880 ministries

00:33:30.340 and they

00:33:30.820 may even

00:33:31.240 have still

00:33:31.840 had civil

00:33:33.140 servants

00:33:33.560 working for

00:33:34.160 them and

00:33:34.420 all the

00:33:34.620 rest of

00:33:34.840 it but

00:33:35.140 they had

00:33:35.400 no power

00:33:36.000 the police

00:33:36.780 had all

00:33:37.060 been destroyed

00:33:37.740 in the

00:33:38.320 February

00:33:38.580 revolution

00:33:39.100 in the

00:33:39.440 countryside

00:33:39.860 already

00:33:40.960 manors

00:33:42.100 were starting

00:33:42.620 to be

00:33:43.040 burnt 1.00

00:33:43.420 down

00:33:43.900 and

00:33:44.780 the

00:33:46.020 land

00:33:47.260 captains

00:33:47.840 as they

00:33:48.140 were called

00:33:48.580 who sort

00:33:48.980 of controlled

00:33:49.580 the

00:33:49.980 regions

00:33:50.440 or the

00:33:50.780 provinces

00:33:51.180 had all

00:33:52.340 had to

00:33:52.680 flee for

00:33:53.040 their lives

00:33:53.740 and so

00:33:54.760 there were

00:33:55.320 huge areas

00:33:56.420 of Russia

00:33:57.280 where there

00:33:57.580 was absolutely

00:33:58.200 no form

00:33:59.480 of control

00:34:00.680 at all

00:34:01.240 and once

00:34:03.440 news started

00:34:04.720 to go

00:34:05.120 I mean there

00:34:05.480 were some

00:34:05.760 places where

00:34:06.440 it took about

00:34:07.140 two months

00:34:07.660 before they

00:34:08.100 knew there'd

00:34:08.480 been a

00:34:08.780 revolution

00:34:09.180 in Petrograd

00:34:09.860 when communications

00:34:10.960 were so bad

00:34:11.860 but other

00:34:12.680 areas very

00:34:13.280 quickly

00:34:13.660 Nini Nerkutz

00:34:14.760 who was

00:34:15.020 actually a

00:34:15.400 civil war

00:34:15.940 there

00:34:16.280 with young

00:34:17.320 officer

00:34:17.700 cadets

00:34:18.200 sort of

00:34:18.940 fighting

00:34:19.260 the Red

00:34:19.700 Guard

00:34:20.140 who had

00:34:22.120 emerged

00:34:22.560 at that

00:34:22.840 particular

00:34:23.140 time

00:34:23.760 so you

00:34:25.220 cannot

00:34:25.980 sort of

00:34:26.400 generalise

00:34:27.000 about the

00:34:27.500 situation

00:34:28.000 in the

00:34:28.260 whole country

00:34:28.680 at all

00:34:29.080 but the

00:34:29.660 mechanism

00:34:30.060 of the

00:34:30.460 provisional

00:34:31.140 government

00:34:31.560 was a

00:34:32.000 way of

00:34:32.440 taking

00:34:33.200 power

00:34:33.700 away

00:34:34.080 from the

00:34:34.580 from the

00:34:35.260 Tsar

00:34:35.540 and giving

00:34:36.600 more control

00:34:37.320 to the

00:34:37.760 people

00:34:38.040 so to speak

00:34:38.620 indeed

00:34:39.140 because what

00:34:39.820 they were

00:34:40.100 going to

00:34:40.420 do

00:34:40.660 and this

00:34:40.980 is again

00:34:41.440 the

00:34:41.720 vulnerability

00:34:43.840 was that

00:34:45.440 everybody

00:34:45.880 agreed at

00:34:46.420 that stage

00:34:46.960 even the

00:34:47.380 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:34:47.960 though Nelian

00:34:48.820 had no

00:34:49.500 intention

00:34:50.060 of ever

00:34:50.520 honouring

00:34:50.960 it

00:34:51.160 was that

00:34:51.920 there was

00:34:52.140 going to

00:34:52.320 be a

00:34:52.560 constituent

00:34:53.080 assembly

00:34:53.440 which would

00:34:53.920 be their

00:34:54.620 parliament

00:34:55.120 there would

00:34:56.500 be general

00:34:57.140 elections

00:34:57.620 for the

00:34:58.320 constituent

00:34:58.800 assembly

00:34:59.220 and

00:35:00.720 then

00:35:02.160 everybody

00:35:02.980 would decide

00:35:03.720 you know

00:35:04.060 they might

00:35:04.460 even

00:35:04.940 vote

00:35:06.260 to have

00:35:07.380 a

00:35:08.180 Tsar

00:35:08.860 back

00:35:09.220 or something

00:35:09.640 like that

00:35:10.100 you know

00:35:10.360 so people

00:35:10.740 could actually

00:35:11.120 make up

00:35:11.460 their own

00:35:11.800 minds

00:35:12.120 you know

00:35:12.380 there could

00:35:12.640 be a

00:35:12.880 tiny

00:35:13.100 monarchist

00:35:13.560 party

00:35:13.880 or something

00:35:14.220 like that

00:35:14.620 but the

00:35:15.180 whole point

00:35:15.520 was that

00:35:16.060 it would

00:35:16.260 all depend

00:35:16.820 in that

00:35:17.820 particular way

00:35:18.420 on the

00:35:19.060 outcome

00:35:19.440 of the

00:35:19.700 vote

00:35:19.940 well the

00:35:20.840 trouble

00:35:21.060 was that

00:35:21.600 of course

00:35:22.000 Lenin

00:35:23.600 was absolutely

00:35:24.100 determined

00:35:24.700 that there

00:35:25.120 should be

00:35:25.400 nothing

00:35:25.700 of the

00:35:26.020 sort

00:35:26.340 because he

00:35:27.440 only believed

00:35:29.220 in himself

00:35:29.780 and in

00:35:30.280 having

00:35:30.520 total

00:35:30.980 control

00:35:31.520 and so

00:35:33.500 therefore

00:35:33.880 the

00:35:34.100 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:35:34.480 sabotaged

00:35:35.300 anything

00:35:36.140 they could

00:35:36.900 of

00:35:38.420 progress

00:35:39.320 towards it

00:35:39.980 whether in

00:35:40.960 discussions

00:35:41.480 and how

00:35:41.940 do you

00:35:42.180 set up

00:35:42.660 how do

00:35:42.940 you vote

00:35:43.460 for a

00:35:44.060 constituent

00:35:44.560 assembly

00:35:44.900 and finally

00:35:46.100 it wasn't

00:35:46.500 until

00:35:46.960 after

00:35:48.820 the

00:35:50.120 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:35:51.120 actually

00:35:51.440 seized power

00:35:52.280 that they

00:35:52.860 had the

00:35:53.120 elections

00:35:53.500 for the

00:35:54.180 constituent

00:35:54.640 assembly

00:35:55.000 and the

00:35:55.980 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:35:56.560 to Lenin

00:35:57.340 to his

00:35:57.620 fury

00:35:57.840 found that

00:35:58.360 they only

00:35:58.840 got about

00:35:59.100 30%

00:35:59.600 of the

00:35:59.860 vote

00:36:00.100 but

00:36:00.860 Lenin

00:36:01.580 is huge

00:36:02.320 in comparison

00:36:02.920 to what

00:36:03.480 they were

00:36:04.020 in the

00:36:04.440 spring

00:36:04.780 and the

00:36:05.480 interesting

00:36:05.740 point is

00:36:06.360 why

00:36:06.880 they managed

00:36:07.940 to achieve

00:36:08.720 this vast

00:36:09.660 increase

00:36:10.080 in their

00:36:10.360 numbers

00:36:10.640 and before

00:36:11.100 we get

00:36:11.520 to that

00:36:11.840 I think

00:36:12.220 a really

00:36:13.120 interesting

00:36:13.440 point for

00:36:14.020 our viewers

00:36:14.400 at this

00:36:14.740 point would

00:36:15.180 be to

00:36:15.660 unpack a

00:36:16.520 little bit

00:36:16.880 Anthony

00:36:17.260 about the

00:36:18.220 different

00:36:18.500 political

00:36:18.980 movements

00:36:19.460 that you've

00:36:19.960 referenced

00:36:20.420 so much

00:36:21.060 in the

00:36:21.720 course of

00:36:22.100 this

00:36:22.700 conversation

00:36:23.220 so

00:36:23.560 the

00:36:24.500 different

00:36:24.940 political

00:36:26.520 groupings

00:36:27.520 representing

00:36:28.420 different

00:36:28.900 views

00:36:29.320 about the

00:36:29.740 way the

00:36:30.000 country

00:36:30.220 should

00:36:30.440 move

00:36:30.660 forward

00:36:31.120 you've

00:36:31.800 got the

00:36:32.120 Bolshevik

00:36:32.540 you've

00:36:32.760 got the

00:36:33.000 Mensheviks 0.90

00:36:33.380 and all

00:36:33.900 sorts of

00:36:34.200 others

00:36:34.360 can you

00:36:34.680 just give

00:36:35.080 our viewers

00:36:35.520 a rundown

00:36:36.240 of who

00:36:36.960 are the

00:36:37.240 major players

00:36:37.960 at this

00:36:38.320 point

00:36:38.580 and what

00:36:39.040 do they

00:36:39.380 stand for

00:36:40.020 well

00:36:40.400 you have

00:36:41.200 if you like

00:36:42.300 starting on

00:36:43.120 the

00:36:43.560 centre-right

00:36:44.520 you have

00:36:45.660 the

00:36:45.820 cadets

00:36:46.260 which were

00:36:46.640 the

00:36:46.760 constitutional

00:36:47.260 democrats

00:36:47.920 and they

00:36:49.760 were really

00:36:50.220 largely part

00:36:51.180 of what I

00:36:51.900 mentioned

00:36:52.220 earlier

00:36:52.740 of the

00:36:53.260 Octoberists

00:36:54.060 of

00:36:54.500 liberal

00:36:55.920 conservatives

00:36:56.520 from

00:36:58.500 the

00:36:59.280 1905

00:37:00.240 manifesto

00:37:01.100 and they're

00:37:01.480 believing in

00:37:02.040 having a

00:37:02.520 proper

00:37:02.880 parliament

00:37:03.840 a proper

00:37:04.220 government

00:37:04.640 elected by

00:37:05.320 the people

00:37:05.800 and then

00:37:07.640 of course

00:37:07.980 further to

00:37:08.440 the left

00:37:09.020 you have

00:37:10.900 the

00:37:11.420 socialist

00:37:11.760 revolutionaries

00:37:12.560 now they

00:37:13.800 were vast

00:37:14.300 because they

00:37:15.200 had basically

00:37:15.820 the support

00:37:16.380 of actually

00:37:16.900 all of

00:37:17.860 the peasantry

00:37:18.440 and they

00:37:19.440 when it

00:37:19.820 came to

00:37:20.300 the elections

00:37:20.860 in the

00:37:21.180 constituent

00:37:21.480 assembly

00:37:21.860 they had

00:37:22.940 the largest

00:37:23.460 fate of

00:37:23.840 all

00:37:24.060 but

00:37:24.680 they at

00:37:26.080 that particular

00:37:26.580 stage were

00:37:27.180 in the

00:37:27.380 process of

00:37:27.940 splitting

00:37:28.260 and you

00:37:28.640 have between

00:37:28.980 the left

00:37:29.340 SRs

00:37:30.020 or

00:37:30.200 socialist

00:37:30.520 revolution

00:37:30.960 and the

00:37:31.360 right SRs

00:37:32.080 the right

00:37:32.600 SRs

00:37:33.140 were

00:37:33.440 moderate

00:37:34.400 socialists

00:37:34.980 and when

00:37:35.960 it came

00:37:36.300 to the

00:37:36.540 civil war

00:37:37.120 they actually

00:37:38.040 would be

00:37:38.700 part of

00:37:39.540 the white

00:37:39.920 alliance

00:37:40.420 and we'll

00:37:41.120 certainly

00:37:41.980 discuss that

00:37:42.700 later

00:37:43.060 but the

00:37:44.160 left SRs

00:37:44.940 were basically

00:37:45.420 going to

00:37:45.720 join up

00:37:46.100 with the

00:37:46.340 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:37:46.860 until they

00:37:48.420 realized quite

00:37:49.120 how appalling

00:37:50.580 the Bolsheviks 0.73

00:37:51.240 were going

00:37:51.540 to be

00:37:51.900 and

00:37:54.080 and then

00:37:54.780 further

00:37:55.260 to the

00:37:55.960 left

00:37:56.200 certainly

00:37:56.920 in

00:37:57.080 Marxist

00:37:57.580 terms

00:37:58.100 it's

00:37:59.380 very difficult

00:37:59.720 to map

00:38:01.320 them all

00:38:01.940 because

00:38:02.300 rather like

00:38:02.820 with the

00:38:03.080 Spanish

00:38:03.320 civil war

00:38:04.020 you have

00:38:04.900 actually

00:38:05.160 three

00:38:05.420 different

00:38:05.820 axes

00:38:06.460 of conflict

00:38:07.260 it's not

00:38:07.980 just between

00:38:08.600 left and

00:38:09.060 right

00:38:09.420 it's also

00:38:11.260 between

00:38:11.640 centrists

00:38:12.320 and

00:38:13.120 regionalists

00:38:14.680 and also

00:38:15.400 between

00:38:15.780 libertarian

00:38:16.360 and anarchists

00:38:17.060 which was

00:38:18.260 very much the

00:38:18.680 case in

00:38:19.000 Spain

00:38:19.260 was also

00:38:19.700 the case

00:38:20.200 in Russia

00:38:20.980 so yes

00:38:22.080 you do have

00:38:22.620 anarchists in

00:38:23.240 Russia

00:38:23.480 who in many

00:38:24.220 ways were

00:38:24.600 almost to the

00:38:25.140 left of the

00:38:25.540 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:38:26.520 believing in

00:38:28.060 no government

00:38:28.560 at all

00:38:29.160 and in

00:38:29.680 self-managing

00:38:30.940 cooperatives

00:38:31.760 but

00:38:33.160 you have

00:38:34.360 the Bolsheviks 0.73

00:38:35.220 but then you

00:38:35.760 have the

00:38:36.080 Mensheviks 0.90

00:38:36.620 who actually

00:38:37.420 were

00:38:37.860 I think

00:38:39.080 one would

00:38:39.380 best describe

00:38:40.060 them as

00:38:40.540 parliamentary

00:38:41.160 socialists

00:38:42.200 yes they

00:38:44.300 were sort

00:38:44.640 of Marxist

00:38:45.200 but at the

00:38:45.600 same time

00:38:46.040 they believed

00:38:46.560 in a

00:38:46.800 parliamentary

00:38:47.120 system

00:38:47.680 and then

00:38:48.760 there were

00:38:48.940 one or two

00:38:49.240 other smaller

00:38:49.860 socialist

00:38:50.940 parties

00:38:51.360 but we

00:38:51.640 don't need

00:38:52.000 to necessarily

00:38:52.480 but who

00:38:53.120 were the

00:38:53.380 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:38:53.960 tell us

00:38:54.440 more about

00:38:54.840 that

00:38:54.980 okay

00:38:55.220 well the

00:38:55.540 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:38:56.020 were the

00:38:57.160 most extreme

00:38:57.940 part of

00:38:58.640 what had

00:38:58.940 been the

00:38:59.480 socialist

00:38:59.800 social

00:39:00.480 democrat

00:39:00.840 party

00:39:01.360 which had

00:39:02.280 split

00:39:02.640 into the

00:39:03.840 Mensheviks 0.90

00:39:04.240 which were

00:39:04.740 regarded as

00:39:05.800 the

00:39:06.780 minority

00:39:07.980 party

00:39:08.560 and the

00:39:09.020 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:39:09.460 which were

00:39:09.980 supposedly

00:39:10.840 the

00:39:11.420 majority

00:39:12.040 party

00:39:12.580 but that

00:39:13.860 was the

00:39:14.380 way that

00:39:14.840 the

00:39:14.980 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:39:15.380 managed to

00:39:16.200 sort of

00:39:16.820 label the

00:39:17.360 two sides

00:39:18.060 and those

00:39:18.360 labels

00:39:18.700 stuck

00:39:19.280 but I mean

00:39:20.480 the thing

00:39:21.020 was that

00:39:21.360 the Bolsheviks 0.73

00:39:21.820 were the

00:39:22.100 best

00:39:22.380 organised

00:39:23.040 by far

00:39:23.740 they had

00:39:24.960 a coherent

00:39:25.620 ideology

00:39:26.700 there were

00:39:29.040 disagreements

00:39:30.560 and so

00:39:30.960 forth

00:39:31.180 but basically

00:39:31.700 it was

00:39:32.460 pretty

00:39:32.800 coherent

00:39:33.340 they had

00:39:34.500 a very

00:39:34.800 strong

00:39:35.180 leader

00:39:35.520 in the

00:39:35.860 form of

00:39:36.180 Lenin

00:39:36.540 who was

00:39:37.140 not going

00:39:37.420 to take

00:39:37.820 any

00:39:38.380 trouble

00:39:40.760 or nose

00:39:41.420 for

00:39:41.660 an answer

00:39:43.100 but even

00:39:45.280 he had to

00:39:45.960 negotiate

00:39:46.440 to a certain

00:39:47.160 degree with

00:39:47.820 their central

00:39:48.380 committee

00:39:48.800 which was

00:39:49.920 vital

00:39:50.240 and Lenin

00:39:51.320 appears

00:39:51.920 arriving at

00:39:52.960 the Finland

00:39:53.240 station

00:39:53.660 having come

00:39:54.240 all the

00:39:54.560 way from

00:39:55.180 Switzerland

00:39:55.780 via Germany

00:39:57.100 because the

00:39:58.120 imperial

00:39:59.160 the

00:39:59.460 Wilhelmine

00:40:00.320 regime

00:40:01.180 of Kaiser

00:40:01.980 Wilhelm

00:40:02.340 realised

00:40:03.720 that if

00:40:04.200 they wanted

00:40:04.560 to knock

00:40:05.220 Russia

00:40:05.540 out of

00:40:05.860 the

00:40:05.980 war

00:40:06.280 the

00:40:07.060 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:40:07.500 were going

00:40:07.780 to be

00:40:07.900 the best

00:40:08.260 way

00:40:08.540 and then

00:40:09.000 they could

00:40:09.300 face

00:40:09.660 turn around

00:40:10.300 and bring

00:40:10.680 all their

00:40:11.000 forces

00:40:11.400 or the

00:40:11.720 bulk

00:40:11.900 of their

00:40:12.120 forces

00:40:12.460 from the

00:40:13.120 eastern

00:40:13.320 front

00:40:13.720 to face

00:40:14.860 the British

00:40:15.340 and the

00:40:15.640 French

00:40:15.900 and possibly

00:40:16.860 the Americans

00:40:17.460 who were

00:40:17.820 about to

00:40:18.220 arrive in

00:40:19.420 the First

00:40:19.980 World War

00:40:20.680 which didn't

00:40:23.520 really take

00:40:23.960 place until

00:40:24.460 1918

00:40:25.080 but this

00:40:26.220 was the

00:40:26.620 time when

00:40:27.160 already there

00:40:27.660 was that

00:40:28.000 sort of

00:40:28.360 major shift

00:40:29.560 coming

00:40:29.920 so the

00:40:32.160 Germans

00:40:32.640 then did

00:40:33.120 support

00:40:33.620 the

00:40:34.040 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:40:34.580 and with

00:40:35.120 money as

00:40:35.740 well

00:40:36.020 there's no

00:40:36.420 doubt

00:40:36.600 now about

00:40:37.080 that

00:40:37.480 and Lenin

00:40:39.180 when he

00:40:39.540 arrived at

00:40:40.100 the Finland

00:40:40.440 station

00:40:41.020 started to

00:40:42.840 make his

00:40:43.140 speeches

00:40:43.440 now his

00:40:44.000 speeches

00:40:44.300 were so

00:40:44.720 extreme

00:40:45.340 that even

00:40:46.500 members of

00:40:47.060 the Bolshevik 0.79

00:40:47.440 party were

00:40:47.980 sort of

00:40:48.240 shot and

00:40:48.720 thought this

00:40:49.040 was

00:40:49.180 madness

00:40:49.560 because he

00:40:49.880 wanted the

00:40:50.240 abolition

00:40:50.600 of the

00:40:51.540 police

00:40:51.880 he wanted

00:40:52.280 the abolition

00:40:52.760 of money

00:40:53.280 and of

00:40:53.620 the finance

00:40:54.260 and all

00:40:54.560 the rest

00:40:54.840 of it

00:40:55.120 so there

00:40:56.540 was no

00:40:56.800 question for

00:40:57.400 him of

00:40:59.140 adapting the

00:41:00.340 state if you

00:41:01.220 like and

00:41:02.360 reorientating it

00:41:03.700 in line with

00:41:05.600 the new

00:41:06.340 ideology

00:41:06.860 he wanted

00:41:07.840 the total

00:41:08.280 destruction of

00:41:08.860 the past

00:41:09.240 and this is

00:41:09.840 why he

00:41:10.260 encouraged and

00:41:10.960 welcomed the

00:41:11.840 destruction in

00:41:12.840 the countryside

00:41:13.280 as well

00:41:14.320 because he

00:41:16.000 wanted to make

00:41:16.560 sure that the

00:41:17.280 past was

00:41:18.320 irrecoverable

00:41:19.280 it was

00:41:20.500 also one

00:41:20.900 of the

00:41:21.060 reasons why

00:41:21.600 the imperial

00:41:22.540 family were

00:41:23.160 later slaughtered

00:41:24.040 it was to

00:41:24.900 make sure that

00:41:25.560 nobody could

00:41:26.100 go backwards

00:41:26.640 or hope of

00:41:27.660 restoring old

00:41:28.940 regimes in

00:41:29.640 any way

00:41:30.160 and people

00:41:31.980 were shocked

00:41:32.620 and actually

00:41:33.200 because the

00:41:34.240 Bolsheviks were 1.00

00:41:34.900 so few in

00:41:35.540 number and

00:41:36.540 because Lenin's

00:41:37.720 speeches were

00:41:38.860 so extreme

00:41:39.560 nobody took him

00:41:40.920 seriously as a

00:41:42.000 threat and

00:41:42.640 nobody took the

00:41:43.160 Bolsheviks 0.94

00:41:43.560 seriously as a

00:41:44.440 threat until the

00:41:45.740 July days when

00:41:46.700 the Bolsheviks 0.73

00:41:47.280 did make an

00:41:49.780 attempt at an

00:41:50.420 uprising but it

00:41:51.400 was really

00:41:51.760 cack-handed

00:41:52.400 I mean it

00:41:52.820 had gone off

00:41:53.440 prematurely

00:41:56.020 it wasn't even

00:41:57.420 properly planned

00:41:58.380 and Lenin was

00:41:59.280 horrified he

00:42:00.660 had to flee to

00:42:01.420 Finland in

00:42:02.260 disguise it was

00:42:04.160 quite funny I

00:42:04.720 describe how

00:42:05.400 Stalin is the 0.93

00:42:06.620 one who has to

00:42:07.120 shave off his

00:42:07.780 beard among

00:42:09.240 wonders if

00:42:09.800 any his hand

00:42:11.520 had slipped at

00:42:12.260 that moment

00:42:13.420 history would

00:42:14.420 have been very

00:42:14.800 different and

00:42:17.420 so you know

00:42:19.280 at that stage

00:42:20.120 it looks like

00:42:20.600 the Bolsheviks 0.73

00:42:21.060 were finished

00:42:21.620 Trotsky was

00:42:23.200 arrested most

00:42:23.900 of their leaders

00:42:24.480 were arrested

00:42:25.120 and Lenin

00:42:27.040 was in hiding

00:42:27.820 but during the

00:42:29.760 course of that

00:42:30.260 summer and

00:42:31.760 this shows

00:42:32.540 Lenin's genius

00:42:33.860 he then

00:42:36.100 started he

00:42:36.960 promised three

00:42:38.400 great lies

00:42:39.480 and the three

00:42:41.360 great lies were

00:42:42.520 he promised to

00:42:43.240 the soldiers at

00:42:44.020 the front

00:42:44.460 peace when in

00:42:46.700 fact he wanted

00:42:47.340 to turn the

00:42:48.340 imperialist war

00:42:49.040 against Germany

00:42:49.760 into an

00:42:50.520 international civil

00:42:51.280 war he promised

00:42:52.720 land to the

00:42:53.640 peasants when he

00:42:54.620 never had any

00:42:55.480 intention of

00:42:56.940 allowing the 0.66

00:42:57.700 peasants to have

00:42:58.220 land in fact this

00:42:59.020 was a policy which

00:42:59.900 he'd pinched off

00:43:00.840 the left socialist

00:43:01.640 revolutionaries

00:43:02.420 knowing that it

00:43:04.180 was going to be

00:43:04.600 popular but had no

00:43:05.860 intention of carrying

00:43:06.580 it out and he

00:43:07.400 promised the

00:43:07.860 factories through

00:43:08.960 the Soviets

00:43:09.600 which means their

00:43:10.700 committees to the

00:43:12.080 workers as if they

00:43:13.540 were going to own

00:43:14.040 their own

00:43:14.420 factories we had

00:43:15.200 no intention of

00:43:16.000 allowing them to do

00:43:16.740 that it was going to

00:43:17.520 be the party and the

00:43:18.960 state combined

00:43:19.780 together who were

00:43:20.860 going to control

00:43:21.440 everything with him

00:43:22.780 up at the top and I

00:43:24.540 think the thing is

00:43:25.360 that Lenin with his

00:43:26.580 genius but also his

00:43:27.880 arrogance because he

00:43:28.600 could never believe

00:43:29.300 that anybody else

00:43:30.280 would have the

00:43:31.880 ability of the

00:43:32.760 organization the

00:43:34.840 managerial and the

00:43:36.200 ability to look

00:43:37.360 forwards because he

00:43:38.140 was extraordinary in

00:43:39.000 that particular way

00:43:39.880 to make the key

00:43:42.000 decisions this was

00:43:44.420 why he envisaged a

00:43:46.800 total total

00:43:48.060 centralized control

00:43:50.060 Anthony we have

00:43:51.740 talked about Lenin

00:43:53.260 and most people who

00:43:54.460 will be listening to

00:43:55.280 this will know of

00:43:55.980 him as this figure in

00:43:58.460 Russian history and

00:44:00.740 you've used the word

00:44:01.640 genius and arrogant so

00:44:03.220 let's talk a little bit 0.96

00:44:04.200 before we move on about

00:44:05.280 who was Lenin what was

00:44:07.540 he like why was he a

00:44:09.020 genius why was he

00:44:10.360 brilliant and also the

00:44:12.320 other side of him which

00:44:13.480 is the fact that he was

00:44:14.920 an extremist

00:44:15.680 well extremist yes I

00:44:18.280 think he's putting it

00:44:18.860 mildly or quite right

00:44:19.740 there Lenin's brother

00:44:22.800 was executed for taking

00:44:24.940 part in one of the

00:44:25.900 assassination attempts

00:44:26.880 during the period of the

00:44:29.500 late 19th century and

00:44:30.980 the beginning of 20th

00:44:31.700 century there was one

00:44:35.260 assassination attempt after

00:44:37.380 another during those

00:44:38.880 periods of turbulence and

00:44:41.300 anger and hatred of the

00:44:42.900 Tsarist regime and

00:44:45.180 Lenin's brother as I say 0.51

00:44:47.460 was executed when Lenin

00:44:48.800 himself even though he

00:44:49.960 came from I think one

00:44:51.600 would describe as

00:44:52.280 technically provincial

00:44:53.320 nobility and I mean

00:44:56.980 his father was given the

00:44:58.020 sort of equivalent rank of

00:44:59.080 a major general which of

00:45:00.140 course in the Petrine

00:45:01.420 order of ranks meant that

00:45:02.940 he was actually a noble

00:45:03.920 people and but Lenin was

00:45:07.760 absolutely determined once

00:45:09.080 he'd sort of read Marx and

00:45:10.540 all the rest of it Lenin was

00:45:13.160 convinced that society had

00:45:15.460 to be upended completely

00:45:16.780 the old regime destroyed in

00:45:19.500 every in every single form

00:45:21.900 all kind both culturally

00:45:23.880 socially and in every

00:45:26.960 imaginable way and so by as I

00:45:31.120 say his abilities I mean there

00:45:33.720 was no doubt about it he did

00:45:34.700 have an extraordinary

00:45:35.300 ability he was a very bad

00:45:36.360 speaker to begin with until

00:45:37.660 Alexander Kolontai sort of

00:45:39.260 gave him some should we say

00:45:40.480 some notes and tips on how to

00:45:42.160 improve his speaking style

00:45:43.620 but he was never as good as

00:45:45.740 Trotsky he was a brilliant

00:45:46.780 speaker and terribly funny and

00:45:50.280 could wind up the bourgeoisie in

00:45:52.920 a sort of brilliant brilliant

00:45:54.300 way but Lenin were just

00:45:57.580 plodded away as the wonderful

00:45:59.460 Tiffy was a Russian writer

00:46:01.320 described you know it was it

00:46:05.360 was the way that he hammered

00:46:06.660 away and repeated his message

00:46:09.220 that he got it through as

00:46:11.520 opposed to the brilliance of

00:46:12.560 Trotsky and but he knew that

00:46:17.400 the only way really to achieve

00:46:21.120 total power from being a

00:46:24.940 complete minority was through

00:46:27.940 ruthlessness and I mean you

00:46:30.120 know as far as he was concerned

00:46:31.180 he had no qualms at all about

00:46:33.520 making these lies these promises

00:46:35.380 which he had no intention of

00:46:36.680 carrying through so from that

00:46:39.480 point of view he knew what he

00:46:41.700 wanted and in times of chaos and

00:46:43.740 times of uncertainty the person

00:46:46.100 who knows exactly what they want

00:46:48.460 has a huge advantage and this was

00:46:50.860 the case I mean you know the

00:46:52.360 Mensheviks were fussing around 1.00

00:46:54.760 over you know what would be the

00:46:55.940 best constitution what would be

00:46:57.800 the best details for the

00:46:59.000 constituent assembly and and so

00:47:01.240 forth how do we sort of you know

00:47:04.940 balance the interests and rights

00:47:09.220 of the peasantry vis-a-vis the

00:47:10.980 industrial proletariat Lenin didn't

00:47:13.320 have any trouble with that he knew

00:47:14.680 perfectly well that the only way was

00:47:16.480 to have total power total control and

00:47:19.020 then getting everybody to do what

00:47:20.360 you told them so from that point of

00:47:22.760 view as I say he had a vast

00:47:24.400 advantage over everybody else and so

00:47:27.700 going back to the story so we have

00:47:29.700 the Bolsheviks used powered by Lenin a

00:47:33.380 man who was utterly ruthless knew

00:47:35.900 exactly what he wanted he wanted power

00:47:38.780 absolutely was prepared to lie and

00:47:41.420 steal and cheat and kill his way to

00:47:43.860 get to where he wanted to be so they're

00:47:46.780 growing in power the Bolsheviks what 0.73

00:47:48.420 happened next the reason why the

00:47:50.520 Bolsheviks then had this huge surge in 0.99

00:47:53.520 numbers coming in to join them was

00:47:55.960 partly because of Lenin's three great

00:47:57.760 lies but it was also because events

00:48:00.340 played into their hands Kerensky by now

00:48:04.880 was becoming totally infatuated with

00:48:07.880 his own image he believed that sort of

00:48:10.200 he was the Napoleon of the Russian 0.97

00:48:11.620 revolution in some ways and he then felt

00:48:17.320 that they still owed their debt to the

00:48:20.260 allies that if they launched a huge

00:48:22.800 offensive on the southwest front in the

00:48:28.500 same time in July really in that summer

00:48:30.680 then it would carry through to victory

00:48:34.680 well actually it was a total disaster the

00:48:38.280 troops were encouraged by Kerensky's

00:48:40.820 extraordinary rhetorical abilities he

00:48:43.860 would drive out there in the top of an

00:48:45.660 in an open car and lecture from the back

00:48:48.960 and many of these old tough soldiers would

00:48:51.520 sort of break down in tears of emotion I

00:48:54.600 mean there were British troops there on

00:48:56.060 the Russian front and there's some

00:48:57.440 fascinating descriptions by Lachal Lampson

00:48:59.560 who was the commander of the way that

00:49:03.200 Kerensky was able to have this effect but

00:49:06.140 then the trouble was that there was this

00:49:09.040 total disaster they didn't believe in

00:49:11.340 victory anymore and therefore Lenin's

00:49:13.740 promise of peace was that much more

00:49:15.440 attractive but also at this particular

00:49:19.680 stage there was a collapse of discipline

00:49:23.260 within the Tsarist armies and General

00:49:27.100 Kornilov who was sort of the chief of the

00:49:29.600 general staff insisted that they had to

00:49:32.400 reintroduce the death penalty which had

00:49:34.040 been abolished in the early days of the

00:49:36.340 February Revolution and because otherwise

00:49:40.040 they weren't going to be able to exert any

00:49:42.040 form of control over their own troops who

00:49:44.860 were already packing up and going home

00:49:46.720 because they thought well the land is

00:49:48.420 being divided up if we don't go home we

00:49:51.060 won't we won't get a share and at that

00:49:54.860 particular point the officers were getting

00:49:59.700 horrified at their lack of control and

00:50:03.340 Kornilov who was totally exasperated by

00:50:05.880 the situation demanding the death penalty

00:50:08.780 said to Kerensky you know we've really got

00:50:13.780 to do something now Kerensky started

00:50:15.780 dithering at this particular point and

00:50:18.460 then and this is one of the sort of the

00:50:20.420 tragedies in a way of Russian history there

00:50:23.460 was this I think deluded or even slightly

00:50:27.320 a bonkers member of the Duma called Lvov

00:50:30.500 nothing to do with Prince Lvov but with the

00:50:33.560 same name went to Kornilov pretending that

00:50:39.140 he'd come from Kerensky trying to sort of

00:50:42.940 ache him on to start to send troops to

00:50:46.140 Petrograd or to to stiffen the whole system

00:50:49.840 he then went back to Kornilov and then sort of

00:50:52.180 said oh well you know General Kornilov is

00:50:54.020 insisting on this and completely misrepresented

00:50:58.520 the two sides and then this meant that

00:51:00.920 Kerensky suddenly felt that Kornilov was

00:51:03.260 about to launch a coup and Kornilov had

00:51:06.440 actually told him I want to move the

00:51:07.760 cavalry corps of three cavalry divisions you

00:51:11.480 know towards Petrograd so that we can start

00:51:14.980 to install discipline again amongst the troops in

00:51:18.880 Petrograd and Kerensky thought that this was

00:51:23.260 going to be a right-wing coup and of course

00:51:25.780 there was fear of a right-wing coup at that

00:51:27.660 particular time you can imagine I mean

00:51:29.160 rumors there were newspapers were one thing but

00:51:32.560 I mean there were rumors rushing around the

00:51:34.300 whole time and of course the left was

00:51:36.340 terrified of a counter-revolution and there

00:51:40.060 were some who were definitely muttering about it and so

00:51:44.000 Kerensky then threw in his hand with the left with the

00:51:47.140 Bolsheviks in many ways allowing them to take 1.00

00:51:50.320 over the counter-intelligence organization they

00:51:53.440 were the people were able to infiltrate all the

00:51:55.780 telephone exchanges and of course their troops

00:52:00.580 were members were carrying out propaganda in all of

00:52:04.900 the barracks in Petrograd itself so this meant already that

00:52:09.520 they were in place and this was the preparation of what

00:52:13.200 became the coup the October coup when the Bolshevik 0.84

00:52:17.340 seized power so they had control of all the

00:52:22.780 communication networks at that point yes so when was the

00:52:28.080 moment that they then decided right we're going to go for the

00:52:30.960 juggler here we're really going to be able to seize power well

00:52:34.260 many members of the central committee of the Bolshevik party were

00:52:37.560 saying to Lenin oh goodness listen we were nearly crushed in July

00:52:42.500 you know when things went wrong if this doesn't come off we'll all be

00:52:46.180 crushed and in prison and that'll be the end of the revolution

00:52:48.540 and Lenin basically told them that stop being wet

00:52:52.180 you know get a backbone and all the rest of it you know we're going for it

00:52:56.880 and Trotsky had managed to take over the military committee of the

00:53:01.920 Petrograd Soviet which meant that they could then send their orders to the

00:53:07.160 arsenal so they started handing out weapons to all of their supporters in the

00:53:11.320 so-called red guards who were already in existence in the factories they were

00:53:15.660 volunteers from the factory floor defending or guarding or just acting as

00:53:21.060 security for the factories in Petrograd so he did have the nucleus of a force

00:53:27.000 in that particular way but he also had the Latvian rifle regiments the

00:53:32.240 Latvians had had been very badly treated by their czarist commanders in the

00:53:38.080 defense of basically what was really became Lithuania during the last stages of

00:53:44.920 the fighting on the front in the Great War of the Eastern Front and they had been

00:53:51.520 pulled back and they were going to basically be the Praetorian Guard of the

00:53:57.460 Bolshevik party so they had these elements there and the trouble was that you know

00:54:04.080 Kerensky had basically could only count really on a battalion of women who had been 0.94

00:54:11.660 used as a way of trying to shame the soldiers in the July offensive counter-offensive against

00:54:18.260 the Germans and they were back in Petrograd so he had those and he basically had some officer

00:54:24.300 cadets but he basically had he had really no troops regular troops on whom he could count

00:54:30.080 so you know the whole of the those images of storming the Winter Palace and all the rest of it

00:54:37.460 total fantasy I mean those all come from the Eisenstein propaganda film made under the Soviet Union

00:54:44.620 and so all of these ideas of the October Revolution I mean the battleship or sorry the cruiser Aurora

00:54:54.600 which was sort of fired the famous shots well actually it fired two blanks out of out of their guns at the

00:55:02.340 Winter Palace which was sort of the last place and this is where Kerensky's ministers were

00:55:08.880 holed up because on the morning of the Bolshevik coup Kerensky left Petrograd in an American embassy vehicle

00:55:18.420 basically hoping to summon cavalry help from troops at the front but because of the way that Kerensky

00:55:27.860 had thrown in his lot with the left the needless to say the czarist generals at the front weren't in any

00:55:34.360 way interested in now helping Kerensky get his own chestnuts out of the fire so I mean you know everybody

00:55:41.140 on the non-Bolshevik side had played their cards so badly in every possible way that it was a walkover

00:55:49.200 for the Bolsheviks and what this really talks about is that when there's a revolution people always like

00:55:55.740 to talk about you know a revolution they tend to romanticize it but what we're effectively talking

00:56:00.260 about here is utter chaos and when there is utter chaos all you really need is a clear-minded opportunist

00:56:06.540 to come in who can take everything well yes that is that was certainly true if you're talking about

00:56:13.200 the February revolution again this was not chaos in the sense that I mean there was chaos beforehand

00:56:19.320 which is what the Bolsheviks were able to exploit but when it actually came to their own coup d'etat

00:56:24.600 you know no it was very well organized so you know they they knew exactly where to put their men

00:56:31.440 they had the bridges secured so that they could bring their supporters in across the river Neva

00:56:37.880 and they had secured the key parts of Petrograd within within a matter of hours so from that point

00:56:46.900 of view it really was as I say a coup d'etat it was not a revolution so we're on the coup the coup's

00:56:54.320 happened tell us briefly what actually happens in the coup itself well the coup really consisted of

00:57:05.000 the seizure of points of communication like the telephone exchanges the Latvian rifles were brought in

00:57:14.060 they've fought a certain amount this is all really concentrated in the center of Petrograd around the

00:57:21.620 winter palace um and uh the really the symbolic moment was uh the so-called storming of the winter

00:57:30.160 palace in fact actually what they happened was they found that one of the windows was um uh open or

00:57:35.200 unguarded and uh a whole lot of red guards slipped in there and that was really the end of the resistance

00:57:42.160 as I say it was certainly not a dramatic um charge against across the square and all the rest of it so

00:57:50.140 forget any of the cinematic versions that you might have seen on in that particular way uh anyway so

00:57:56.600 they um as soon as they felt they'd sort of secured the building which was pretty rapid to say the least

00:58:03.640 uh there were the ministers uh there who of course all surrendered and they were rounded up

00:58:09.000 and um then the mass of the red guards and the others uh went straight down into the cellars and just

00:58:17.600 started drinking and smashing open the bottles and uh eventually the uh uh authorities as they say

00:58:26.000 um you know the communists had to bring in um the fire brigade to sort of do something about the uh

00:58:33.520 finishing off the bottles and smashing the rest of them and siphoning out uh all of the wine but i mean

00:58:38.800 there were many who had apparently even sort of drowned from the uh from the wine down below but it was

00:58:44.560 total chaos once they and they started ripping up the whole place whether it was uh leather for their

00:58:50.880 boots off the chairs or uh and um so there was a huge amount of destruction what happens to the royal

00:58:59.840 family the royal family meanwhile had been uh kept as prisoners for a certain amount of time a few weeks

00:59:08.160 or more uh out at their palace at sasco's halo at the alexander palace um then they were suddenly told

00:59:15.520 that um really for their own safety uh they were going to be sent off to siberia so any hope that

00:59:22.480 they could be uh sent to britain or uh accepted there and there are a whole lot of complicated stories to

00:59:29.200 what degree it was the british royal family who were advised not to accept them because of potential

00:59:36.640 revolution in in britain uh or to what degree it was the responsibility of the government at the time

00:59:42.720 uh for putting pressure on the royal family um is still to this day not exactly clear but the hope

00:59:49.200 on was that this was their last chance so um they were then told no we're sending you to tobalsk in

00:59:56.720 beyond the urals uh mountains in western siberia um and um they were kept there in shall we say

01:00:05.680 fairly civilized circumstances not too bad uh in the governor's house and uh they had some of their

01:00:13.520 servants looking after them and uh it was a fairly boring existence and very limited one but it wasn't

01:00:20.240 as bad as the imprisonment which came later when they were moved to ekaterinburg um in 1918 in the

01:00:28.080 the following year which is where they were eventually going to be slaughtered um every

01:00:33.760 single one of them and one of the things that you mentioned one of lenin's big lies was he promised

01:00:39.440 peace on the western front and the bolsheviks do sign the treaty of brest-litovsk which is gives away

01:00:45.120 huge that's coming later yes yes well take us through towards that in uh november 1917 after they've taken

01:00:54.480 one of the first things that lenin wants to do is to negotiate peace with the germans and so he sends 0.97

01:01:02.400 out peace feelers and uh messages in that particular way now for the germans this is wonderful but at the

01:01:08.960 same time they want to be certain of where things stand because this is when they start to need to

01:01:14.960 move their troops from the eastern front to the western front and the uh headquarters of the german

01:01:22.320 armies of uh um what's called ober ost um the supreme headquarters in the east uh is in the old

01:01:30.160 fortress of brest-litovsk and so to begin with they send representatives then they start to send a peace

01:01:38.160 delegation uh which is pretty hilarious because uh uh the uh bolsheviks feel where we've got to have a 0.63

01:01:44.880 representative so we've got to have uh one socialist revolutionary we've got to have a um um a peasant

01:01:53.520 and uh uh a soldier and a sailor uh as well as their sort of main negotiators uh but they had to

01:02:02.240 suddenly realize that they haven't got a peasant and so they pick one up off the street literally 0.79

01:02:06.480 to take with them um he doesn't know he doesn't know what luckies had you know he was saying i want

01:02:12.880 to go home and they said no no no we're going to take you and he realized suddenly he's onto a good

01:02:16.720 thing because uh uh when prince leopold of bavaria who is the commander-in-chief in the uh well should

01:02:23.120 we say the figurehead of uh german forces on the eastern front uh gives a dinner on their arrival um

01:02:30.240 the peasant sitting next to one german prince uh when he's asked by one of the waiters you know which

01:02:35.600 do which would you like uh red wine or what wine so he turns to the prince and said which one's the

01:02:40.240 stronger um it's almost like he's russian anthony well i know well the sorry the peasant was the

01:02:47.920 one who wanted to know that whether it was a red white or white wine yes what i don't get oh no it

01:02:53.600 was i was just going to say that obviously the person anyway it doesn't matter he was an unfunny

01:02:58.000 joke yeah it was an unfunny joke sorry crack on well i think yes anyway i think that the uh certainly those

01:03:03.920 president thought it was those present thought it was pretty funny um it was unlike any uh any other

01:03:10.800 negotiations and then eventually the germans started to say right this is starts to get serious uh because

01:03:17.760 by then um they wanted to move in all their troops into ukraine uh because german cities were starving

01:03:25.120 as a result of the british blockade of germany uh the austro-hungarian empire was on the point of

01:03:30.640 collapse because their cities were starving uh and you know there were a million tons of grain just

01:03:37.280 sitting there in ukraine which they wanted to get there get a hold of um and so when things started

01:03:45.440 to be thwarted if you like by the negotiating tactics um trotsky thought and he then took over

01:03:52.560 the negotiations um that he could have sort of intellectual arguments and discussions you know with his

01:03:59.200 counterparts on the german side um and then finally you know from berlin came the order this has got to

01:04:04.800 stop and uh they then handed over to the ukrainians um the ukrainian rada um uh saying right well

01:04:15.520 we're moving in um and we'll deal with you and not with the bolsheviks uh and this was a major blow as

01:04:21.280 you might imagine and um suddenly uh lenin was trying to warn trotsky saying you've got

01:04:29.440 come to an agreement with the germans however humiliating it is and trotsky sort of said no

01:04:35.200 i can't and even by then the bolsheviks had a um an almost an alliance with the left socialist

01:04:41.520 revolutionaries who are saying listen if the germans continue the war um you know the whole of europe 0.71

01:04:48.400 will rise up in our favor and all the rest of it we want peace um but without any reparations or loss

01:04:55.600 of territory well the germans saying well you're not going to let you get away with that uh because

01:05:00.400 of course you know they had the whip hand and uh trotsky came back having declared at brestley 12

01:05:06.960 saying right we're off uh we want neither peace nor war and um the uh german uh negotiators said you

01:05:15.520 know this is unheard of you know this is just not done uh and so they started to move their forces

01:05:22.160 forward and started seizing territory uh and they were advancing almost towards petrograd i mean

01:05:27.120 they'd seize the um baltic states or them as they were then the baltic regions and um lenin said to

01:05:34.720 to the rest of the um bolshevik central committee uh we have got to accept their uh terms which would

01:05:43.440 mean the loss of the baltic states the loss of belorussia and the loss of the whole ukraine he said

01:05:49.200 because we need both hands to strangle the white counter revolution which was has already starting

01:05:56.160 in don territory in um the northern caucasus and uh and southern russia uh as a counter revolution to

01:06:06.640 the bolshevik seizure of power and so from that point of view lenin again showed his ability to see

01:06:15.280 that even though this would be the greatest humiliation ever for russia they still needed that if they were

01:06:21.440 going to keep the power uh over the rest of the country uh so they gave in and they had to sign

01:06:29.600 the treaty of brest litos which was a total humiliation and was the greatest achievement of 1.00

01:06:34.960 germany in the whole of the first world war and what strikes me listening to the story is how lenin

01:06:42.640 is a master tactician but he's ultimately a pragmatist as well oh well to be a master tactician or

01:06:49.600 a factory master strategist um you have to be a pragmatist um he was saying and he knew perfectly

01:06:55.680 well if you're going to have uh guerrilla resistance to the german advance you know we will be wiped out

01:07:02.240 we don't stand a chance and it was true i mean there were places where one or two people tried to resist i

01:07:07.600 mean you know the germans just swept them aside they had they had their uhlans their lancers you know

01:07:13.280 advancing ahead and i mean you know they were um as uh the major general who was in charge of the

01:07:20.400 whole operation uh at brest itosk uh said you know this is the strangest war of all we send forward a

01:07:27.040 train and uh we capture yet another town and already you know our troops are moving forward and this is

01:07:33.120 when uh the bolshevik said to lenin yes you're right or whatever and they had to had to buckle down and

01:07:39.760 uh accept exactly this total humiliation so the bolsheviks give away huge chunks of territory to 0.76

01:07:46.000 the germans later by the way that they get back because germany is ultimately defeated but nonetheless

01:07:51.360 they give away huge chunks of swathes of territory in order to try and fight what is effectively the

01:07:57.440 civil war that is what is the start the incipient civil war uh there's a little bit in um siberia

01:08:05.200 uh and there is the main thing is actually the don cossacks and actually they then managed to

01:08:11.360 disperse the don cossacks um and uh then they advanced on kyiv against the uh radar which is 0.77

01:08:19.520 the ukrainian nationalists um i mean they hardly have any troops at all uh so even though an army in

01:08:26.160 those days was sort of a thousand two thousand men um um moravyev who was leading the attack on uh

01:08:33.680 ukraine on uh kiev um was able to advance without any problem at all but as soon as the germans start

01:08:39.600 coming in in march you know of course they have to run for it uh and get out of get out of the way

01:08:44.640 uh because you know there's no way that they could face up to the occupation of the german forces under

01:08:50.880 field marshal von eichhorn and how does it go from there with the civil war that is essentially

01:08:55.760 breaking out because you mentioned that there was these local rebellions but ultimately it becomes

01:09:01.760 a big war it becomes a big war once the uh germans withdraw um there is a volunteer army as it's called

01:09:13.680 in the northern caucasus who've had to withdraw from don cossack territory uh as sort of the red

01:09:19.840 guards arrive in two greater strength um and they have what's called the ice march i mean they're

01:09:25.520 only literally um you know a couple of thousand less than a couple of thousand of them many of them

01:09:31.440 in appalling condition dying but by just keeping the fight going they then link up with some of the

01:09:37.840 kuban cossacks later who are again of course are fiercely anti-bolshevik and also anti-semitic

01:09:43.920 um and um then the don cossacks rise up again in revolt against uh the reds because of the way that 0.99

01:09:52.320 the reds have treated them and actually the reds have been very stupid in the way that you know if 0.99

01:09:56.960 you are going to repress a martial race like the cossacks um they're going to come back um they buried 1.00

01:10:05.680 their weapons and they dug up their weapons and got out their saddles again and again they had cavalry

01:10:11.920 and of course the important point of the first stage of the russian civil war was that it was

01:10:16.560 a cavalry or train war because the distances were so immense um infantry didn't really stand a chance

01:10:24.080 and of course the reds only really had infantry uh and so they were sort of marching over vast

01:10:28.960 distances or had trains and advanced with the train and and this is why it was rather largely a railway

01:10:35.520 war and when trotsky then starts setting up or trying to set up the red army uh and he knows that

01:10:43.200 the red guards on their own are going to be no good because they had no commanders or they voted for a 0.99

01:10:47.920 an officer or whatever but they had no discipline or organization or military knowledge um he said right 0.97

01:10:54.400 we're going to have to recruit czarist officers and so he did but this was first of all the reason for

01:10:59.680 the split with trotsky with uh between trotsky and stalin um the idea of bringing in um czarist

01:11:07.600 officers to command red troops because how can we how can we trust them i mean you can imagine the 0.97

01:11:11.920 paranoia um and um and then trotsky realizes actually um slightly later on that cavalry is essential you

01:11:21.360 know um so you have these amazing posters of you know proletarians to horse uh because trotsky 0.86

01:11:28.560 had despised cavalry as basically an aristocratic pastime um and thought that sort of you know

01:11:34.400 good proletarian infantry would uh would always win but um this is when they started to create their own 0.99

01:11:40.560 cavalry armies and we've spoken about lenin and we've mentioned trotsky but we haven't really discussed

01:11:47.440 about the man himself what was he like and not only that what role did he play in this in the revolution

01:11:57.280 and in the civil war well his role in the revolution was vastly important i mean we mentioned earlier

01:12:02.720 that uh trotsky of course was the uh head of the military committee of the petrograd soviet and he

01:12:08.880 was the one who got the weapons from the arsenal into the hands of the all of their bolshevik supporters 0.96

01:12:15.920 for the coup d'etat of october um trotsky then became a foreign minister um he spoke many foreign

01:12:24.160 languages he had great charm he was a brilliant orator as i mentioned earlier um and he uh was

01:12:32.400 able to uh in many ways uh force the foreign ministry or the uh diplomatic corps uh to make their

01:12:40.720 choices did they support the bolsheviks or should they just get out of their embassies elsewhere so you

01:12:45.680 had all these russian czarist embassies all over the world most of them of course did not join the

01:12:50.400 bolsheviks only a tiny minority ever did um and for a large to quite a little period of time um you

01:12:57.600 know the bolsheviks had no control over foreign policy really in that way and they had to send 0.95

01:13:01.760 their own delegations but um when trotsky's real role was the start of the creation of the red army

01:13:09.360 um and he showed tremendous bravery as well that he would keep going to the front um lenin was not did

01:13:16.800 not shall we say display a great deal of uh physical courage um uh and um he in fact of course

01:13:24.080 had been uh already had one assassination attempt against him um and then there was the major

01:13:29.520 assassination attempt in uh uh in the summer of 1918 uh when dora caplan managed to put two bullets

01:13:37.600 in him uh and he very nearly died and this actually was the start of the uh personality cult of lenin because

01:13:46.000 his his revival was sort of almost portrayed in biblical terms of jesus and uh and so forth it was

01:13:53.360 extraordinary the way that the communists seized upon christian iconography and not in a way uh trotsky

01:14:00.800 meanwhile though was uh basically uh fighting in the volga region uh where the right socialist revolutionaries

01:14:10.800 had tremendous support um and this was again part of the paradox really of the counter revolution of the

01:14:19.040 whites because there you have uh what was called kumuch which was basically right socialist uh revolutionaries

01:14:28.800 um supporting the whites uh against basically they believed in the continuance of the constitutional

01:14:36.880 assembly um and wished to see a proper parliamentary uh democracy evolving uh but of course the allies

01:14:46.720 from the czarist army the officers who in fact of course were bitter uh embittered and uh their hatred of

01:14:55.280 the left and of the socialists was intense especially after you know their family estates had been burnt

01:15:01.600 down their manor houses destroyed and all the rest of it and you even had sort of young cavalry officers

01:15:07.600 going out with cossacks to to beat up the peasants who had burned down or um taken over their sort of

01:15:13.760 family places um and of course the others were the cossacks who were violently anti-semitic um and so you

01:15:22.160 had really a sort of um three elements within the white armies which were incompatible in many ways

01:15:29.360 because the cossacks um really were any interested in securing their cossack regions and they wanted

01:15:35.680 to have a cossack federation uh which would be almost independent well of course this was fundamentally

01:15:41.680 opposed to the old czarist russian imperialist idea of russia as one whole and as far as they were

01:15:49.040 concerned you know poland uh should still be part of russia uh so should finland and um the baltic

01:15:56.000 states but of course and of course ukraine um but of course finland had managed to break free free

01:16:02.160 with its own civil war uh in the earlier part of well late 1917 but very early 1918 marshal manorheim

01:16:10.720 general manorheim was a czarist general uh leading the white fins um and the trouble was of course that

01:16:18.080 they were the obvious allies for the whites but the imperial obsession which we see today of course

01:16:24.240 with putin the imperial obsession meant that of course they put up the backs of the poles the fins

01:16:30.000 and um the baltic states so i mean the estonians who were extremely well organized um got very good

01:16:38.080 effective army together um the one thing they didn't want to have anything to do with was although they

01:16:43.600 were both anti-bolsheviks and anti the reds um they didn't really want to have anything to do with

01:16:48.400 the white generals um yanukovych and others you know leading leading the czarist forces and it's so

01:16:55.360 interesting because right the way through this to me this is a story about how clarity of ambition

01:17:02.160 but clarity of purpose but also the fact that an army is united behind a common ideology can defeat

01:17:09.680 practically all comers well it's it's um sort of you know napoleon's um argument argument about morale

01:17:16.480 you know that it's sort of uh it's it's sort of worth three times almost anything else uh and there's

01:17:22.400 a large element of truth there it's a question of the coherent discipline and all the rest of it if

01:17:27.920 you've got that lot going um you're in a very strong position i mean the trouble with the whites was 1.00

01:17:33.280 that many of them believed in looting because they knew they'd probably be uh sent into exile so uh

01:17:40.480 certainly the generals were all trying to line their pockets as much as they could which made them

01:17:44.640 even more hated i mean quite often you know the white cavalry would arrive in a city or in a town

01:17:51.280 which they'd liberated from the reds uh people would come out the church bells would ring um they would 1.00

01:17:56.720 even kiss the stirrups of the cavalry um in sort of not in submission but in joy and relief that uh

01:18:04.000 they'd finally been liberated from the reds and within three days they wanted the whites out just 1.00

01:18:08.000 as much as they wanted the reds out because of the way that they were looted and treated themselves

01:18:13.680 well it and that is really the story of division on one side and unity as francis says on the other

01:18:19.920 which is how we get to uh the bolsheviks effectively seizing control of the country now one of the things

01:18:25.840 we haven't touched on and as we we head towards the end of the conversation is the ideology the

01:18:31.360 bolsheviks are motivated by which was of course marxism uh and well marxist leninism rather than just

01:18:37.520 pure marxism yes marxism would not in theory have allowed them to launch their own coup d'etat in october

01:18:45.120 of 1917 um because the and this is the menschvik position was that we have to go through a

01:18:51.440 bourgeois revolution first of all lenin was not going to mess around with the bourgeois revolution

01:18:56.000 he wanted his own so-called proletarian revolution which basically meant uh the bolshevik seats are

01:19:01.200 apart yeah and i'm curious about um how you see you you made several allusions to uh vladimir putin and

01:19:08.960 what's happening in the modern world and one of the things we've discussed on the show many times

01:19:13.040 with people is how the idea of certain marxist ideas uh seem like they're making a comeback in modern

01:19:19.200 society with people um you know being divided into oppressors and oppressed and all of this stuff is

01:19:25.360 are there any parallels that you see well i think there is one or two in a way i mean marxist uh

01:19:31.200 prediction of uh capitalism developing uh becoming completely monopolistic uh one does see a certain

01:19:38.960 amount of sticking the tech um industry and all the rest of it um and the feeling therefore of alienation

01:19:46.240 by uh people you can see certain elements of shall we say marxist predictions uh coming true but that

01:19:52.320 does not mean that basically um you know we are seeing a sort of repetition because the one thing

01:19:59.200 as a historian i find i'm having to do more than more and more um is to fight the idea that history

01:20:05.600 repeats itself it's does not um and it's absolutely pernicious idea particularly with the second world war

01:20:12.720 which has become almost sort of the defining element of any crisis or conflict people could

01:20:17.840 start referring back to the second world war which actually was a war like no other um so for the way

01:20:22.720 that people make parallels with it is uh ridiculous and misleading and very very dangerous um and one has

01:20:29.600 to be extremely careful particularly when we have the first uh conflict on the eurasian landmass which

01:20:35.920 we're seeing obviously in ukraine at the moment uh when people are immediately again trying to make

01:20:40.720 somehow comparisons with the second world war and there are some superficial ones i mean you know

01:20:46.720 funny enough it's not mentioned about the sudetenland about uh you know in some ways that's similar to

01:20:52.720 what putin was playing hitler's game with the sudetenland in um splitting off part of uh ukraine the

01:21:01.280 russian-speaking part just as uh just as hitler did in in czechoslovakia but leaving that one aside

01:21:08.720 um when it comes to other things no i think that the important what one has to the real lesson of the

01:21:15.600 russian civil war is that historians today accept that the first world war was the original catastrophe

01:21:25.840 of the 20th century but the russian civil war was actually the most influential of the lot because it

01:21:30.880 was the circle of fear and horror of the sadism the destruction the total uh impoverishment um for

01:21:41.520 generation or more afterwards uh of all of the population which made fear created fear right across

01:21:49.440 europe and beyond this is where one finds in uh in 1935 and 1936 in spain uh you get this circle of fear

01:21:59.200 with again uh lago caballero uh trying to be the spanish lenin and prophesying the destruction of

01:22:06.800 the middle class and uh the annihilation of the middle class i mean all of this sort of genocidal 0.63

01:22:11.920 rhetoric can often obviously lead to violence and so that is why actually the russian civil war created

01:22:18.560 the pattern of the whole of the 20th century and to a large degree the also the pattern of the first cold

01:22:26.320 war from 1989 through um uh sorry from uh 1945 through to 1989 but now we're seeing a second cold war um

01:22:36.800 and the real danger today which is again part of the problem with uh ukraine is we're in a completely

01:22:43.920 different geopolitical environment i mean even during the first cold war uh the west could rely more or

01:22:50.640 less on the assurances or declarations of communist leaders both in russia and in china now you cannot

01:22:59.760 rely for a second either on what president xi sinping says or certainly not on what vladimir putin says

01:23:06.720 so how anyone is going to settle or negotiate the end of uh the crisis or the war in ukraine

01:23:15.040 is almost impossible to tell and what is the future of diplomacy in these sort of uh circumstances

01:23:21.440 but anyway that i think is the uh main legacy really from um the russian civil war um what has happened

01:23:29.120 since the first cold war is really that the axis of conflict has changed uh not so much between left

01:23:36.000 and right or communism and capitalism uh but much more between autocracy and democracy um but uh you know

01:23:44.640 where where it develops from there it'll be difficult to see but we're definitely seeing a

01:23:48.320 lineup of the autocracies whether or not just china and russia but say venezuela cuba uh or one or two

01:23:55.200 other countries um and uh you know some people will say it's going to be in north versus south i don't

01:24:01.360 think i think that's a bit too a bit too sweeping it's going to be more complicated than that

01:24:06.560 and anthony before we head over to locals for our supporters questions and we ask you our last question

01:24:11.840 that we normally ask the one thing i noticed we speak to a lot of historians on the show frequently

01:24:17.120 is often the people we've spoken to will talk about these great events in history from a kind of

01:24:23.840 big picture perspective they will talk about well this this movement was taking off of that movement

01:24:29.360 taken off whereas with you i get the sense that you place a higher emphasis on the role of individuals

01:24:35.520 in history is that a fair observation um well i have some interesting debates over the great man theory

01:24:43.680 of history um i think one's got to look very carefully at the russian revolution and see that without lenin

01:24:50.880 uh or if lenin for example had been killed i don't really like counterfactual history but

01:24:56.400 you should pose the questions if lenin had been killed by fanny caplan

01:25:00.480 um or had not managed to get back to the finland station or whatever it might be

01:25:06.640 uh then history might have been very different in that particular way but there's no doubt about it

01:25:10.320 i think without lenin without his decision making of over the brisly tosk uh uh agreement and a whole

01:25:17.040 number of other things uh and also but without his sort of uh clarity and uh determination um i'm not 0.96

01:25:24.800 sure that the bolsheviks actually would have won um i mean the whites were appalling and incompetent 1.00

01:25:31.680 and a whole lot of other things uh but the bolsheviks also had so much against them um history cannot

01:25:37.840 is not predictable of course in any of those ways uh but one should raise these questions but you cannot

01:25:44.880 rule out the role of major certain characters you know without hitler uh the second world war i'm sure

01:25:52.320 there would have been a conflict in europe but without hitler would it have been have taken the

01:25:57.600 same form genocidal form that he did in the second world war i don't think so um so you know characters

01:26:06.160 what about napoleon i mean you know to what degree would europe have been different without him so there

01:26:11.760 are key individuals but there are also of course huge uh non-human um forces at play um as has been

01:26:22.800 shown by many um historians whether it's a question of famine whether it's a question of environmental

01:26:29.200 change and a whole lot of other things um one's got to take all of these into into account but you

01:26:35.120 know there is human agency too it's been a fantastic conversation thank you so much for coming on

01:26:41.680 the show the final question we always ask is the same what's the one thing we're not talking about

01:26:46.400 as a society that we really should be before anthony answers the final question make sure to head over

01:26:53.120 to our locals at the end of the interview the link is in the description where you'll be able to see

01:26:59.200 this trump has done the same thing you know you just hammer away rather as lenin did too you just

01:27:04.880 hammer away one or two very simple ideas who they need to hate why did communism happen in russia china

01:27:11.120 and vietnam but not in the uk taiwan australia and other countries why does stalin get a pass but

01:27:18.080 hitler doesn't arguably the former killed far more people yeah everyone is a fascist these days but no

01:27:23.200 one calls anyone a stalinist i know this is very well in fact it is very much linked to what we have

01:27:30.400 been talking to and that is we are seeing that the world is a far more dangerous place than we'd thought

01:27:36.880 even two years ago or three years ago certainly um we underestimated the threat uh of putin because

01:27:45.200 rather like with hitler we could not imagine that anybody would want to have another war in europe

01:27:52.080 like you know in a way that like the second world war and this was something that we did with hitler

01:27:56.800 in the 1930s we couldn't imagine that after the first world war anybody would want anything

01:28:01.040 and this is the danger of looking at the world through um through the shall we say the um confirmation

01:28:10.720 bias of the democratic mentality we cannot really imagine people thinking in a slightly different

01:28:16.720 way to us and that has been our great weakness and i'm afraid that means also a question of military

01:28:23.040 expenditure we have not been preparing for war uh and i'm afraid if you don't prepare for war now we are

01:28:30.880 going to be totally vulnerable in the future because there is no doubt about it putin is not just

01:28:36.880 interested in ukraine um he would like to go a lot further we've seen with the trouble now in developing

01:28:43.760 in transnistria um and he's determined to have back some of the baltic states uh even part of them or

01:28:51.440 whatever so um you know for the fact that europe has been under spending i'm afraid has played entirely 0.97

01:28:58.720 into the hands of donald trump and uh we have been very very stupid frankly or blind in that

01:29:05.280 particular way and we got to do something about it anthony thank you so much for coming on the show 0.95

01:29:11.040 and head on over to locals where we ask anthony your questions

01:29:15.920 what are the tell your tell signs we should be on the lookout for if we are to keep communism

01:29:20.320 at bay in the west

TRIGGERnometry - April 21, 2024

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

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