186: From Czardom to Stalinism: Building the USSR & the Ascent of Joseph Stalin

“Comrade Stalin, now that he is general secretary, has concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of exercising this power with sufficient caution.” This is the story of Joseph Stalin’s path to becoming the dictator of the USSR. Ioseb (Joseph) Jughashvili, or little “Soso,” is a good student. A choir boy, in fact. But that changes as the Orthodox Georgian increasingly puts his faith in the Bolshevik branch of Russia’s Social Democrats. Under Vladimir Lenin’s leadership, Soso, now going by Joseph Stalin, becomes a true revolutionary. One who embraces violence and murder as an acceptable means to an end amid Russia’s shift from revolution to civil war. With Lenin’s passing in 1924, it’s clear that someone has to step into his shoes, and Stalin deftly outmaneuvers Leon Trotsky to be that someone. But he won’t just lead it. Stalin will remake the Soviet Union in his own image, industrializing and consolidating his power at all costs. Millions will die. Millions more disappear into the gulags, never to be seen again. This is the rise and reign of Joseph “the Man of Steel” Stalin. ____ Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com https://www.htdspodcast.com/ and go deep into episode bibliographies https://www.htdspodcast.com/bibliography and book recommendations https://www.htdspodcast.com/book-recommendations join discussions in our Facebook community https://www.facebook.com/groups/257926761619618/ get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette https://www.htdspodcast.com/newsletters-1 come see a live show https://www.htdspodcast.com/live-shows get HTDS merch https://htds-team-shop.fourthwall.com/ or become an HTDS premium https://htds.supercast.com/ member for bonus episodes and other perks. HTDS is part ofAudacy media network. https://www.audacy.com/ Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? ContactAudacyinc.com https://audacyinc.com/contact

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Greg Jackson?

  History that Doesn't Suck is supported by Indeed. I'm not afraid to say this. As HTDS has grown, the business requires skills I know I don't naturally possess. If I need to hire, I think this is a job for sponsored jobs. When you sponsor your job on Indeed, you'll find the candidates with the skills you're looking for. Indeed is genuinely all you need to find quality talent. Instead of putting a post out there and praying the right people see it, Indeed Sponsored Jobs proactively connects you with candidates who match your precise criteria, whether that's location, software experience, or industry experience. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 0:45Greg Jackson?

  And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job to the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Hello, my friends. Professor Jackson here, and I want to tell you about a podcast hosted by a friend of mine, the 11th archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan, and it's called In Pursuit Podcast. On this podcast, Colleen explores what we call the American experiment and how, over the last 250 years, we've learned a lot about what's worked and what hasn't.

• 1:29Greg Jackson?

  It dives deep into the lessons that we can learn from America's past to write the history of America's future. This season, Colleen and her guests explore the trials and triumphs of America's former presidents and first ladies. You'll discover why George Washington willingly gave up power at the end of the American Revolution, how Mary Todd Lincoln had to fight with her own independence in the wake of the Civil War, and what their stories can tell us about America today. New episodes are available every other week. In Pursuit Podcast by More Perfect is brought to listeners by PRX. Learn more at their website, inpursuit.org.

• 2:15Greg Jackson?

  It's a bit past 1 AM, July 17, 1918. We're deep in Russian territory, some fifteen hundred miles distant from Saint Petersburg, or Petrograd, as it's now known, more than a thousand miles east of Moscow, just over the Ural Mountains, in the city of Yekotirnburg's two-story mansion known as the Empatiyev House, where Yakov Yurovsky is waiting in his office for a phone call. He's nervous, understandable. Loyal Bolshevik revolutionary he may be, but it's no small thing knowing you're about to kill the royal family. Tell you what, let's leave Yakov to his thoughts for a minute, while I fill you in.

• 2:59Greg Jackson?

  As I trust you recall from episode 130, 1917 was a year of big change for Russia. In January, Czar Nicholas II of the Romanov Dynasty was on the throne, and Russia was an allied power in the Great War. By December, Russia had seen revolution, Nicholas's abdication, and Vladimir Lenin's radical Marxists, better known as Bolsheviks, emerging victorious over the provisional government to sign a ceasefire with Germany and claim authority over the nation. And yet, things have hardly stabilized in 1918. Civil war broke out between the newly ascended Bolsheviks, aka "The Reds," and a mixture of anti-Bolshevik forces, ranging from Russian Empire loyalists, classical liberals, and

• 3:44Greg Jackson?

  ambitious national groups, to foreign powers collectively dubbed "The Whites." In April, the Reds moved their most precious prisoners, the abdicated czar and his family, to a more secure and distant location. Yes, the Empatiyev House, here in Yekotirnburg. But now, with the Whites, or more specifically, with the Czech Legion fast approaching, the commandant of the house, Yakov Yurovsky, has been ordered to execute the Romanovs. And once that phone rings, the dark-haired, bandicued-bearded commandant's task begins. It's now 1:30 AM. The phone's sharp trill abruptly breaks the dark morning silence.

• 4:29Greg Jackson?

  Yakov Yurovsky answers. The flatbed truck that will haul off the bodies is on its way. Time to wake the Romanovs.

• 4:41Greg Jackson?

  About forty minutes later, the Romanovs and the few accompanying them are making their way to the mansion's basement. Everyone is calm. Yakov told them that they're being moved to another location due to safety concerns, and between that very plausible story and the commandant not rushing them as they dressed, there's just no reason to think otherwise. So, most willingly, the handsomely bearded former czar trudges along. He carries his fourteen-year-old but fragile, hemophilic son, Alexei, in his arms. Next is his German-born wife, the former czarina, Alexandra. Then their four daughters, the grand duchesses: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and their youngest

• 5:26Greg Jackson?

  girl, seventeen-year-old Anastasia, alternatively pronounced as Anastasia. Four loyal retainers are here too: their head cook, their head footman, Alexandra's lady-in-waiting, and the imperial doctor. Reaching the basement's southern end, Yakov opens a set of double doors. The group of eleven steps through to find a room measuring about twenty-five by twenty-one feet, with cream and beige striped wallpaper, one high-up window, and another set of double doors across the way. A single lightbulb hangs from the ceiling. That's it. The room's yellow-painted pine floor is entirely barren. Alexandra complains about the lack of chairs. No problem.

• 6:11Greg Jackson?

  Yakov has two chairs brought in. The former czarina takes the one nearest to the window. The other is placed toward the middle of the room. Ever so gently, Nicholas places his beloved boy on it. Yakov explains that they'll wait here for their truck, which will soon take them to a new location. And with that deceitfully true statement, he takes his leave, closing the double doors behind him.

• 6:38Greg Jackson?

  The Romanovs and their retainers soon hear a truck. Its engine roars outside. They have no idea that its loud idling is to help disguise the sounds that will soon be made in this very room. It's now 2:15 a.m. The doors open, and Yakov Yurovsky quickly enters, followed by nine soldiers forming two lines. The commandant now orders his prisoners to stand as he tells them: In view of the fact that your relatives continue their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Presidium of the Euro-Peruvian Soviet has decided to sentence you to death. Stunned, Nicholas answers:

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Lord, oh my god, oh my god! What is this?

• 7:22Greg Jackson?

  Confused, Dr. Eugene Botkin asks: So, we are not going to be taken anywhere? Nicholas asks that the order be read again. It's such a shock, I can't process this. Yakov acquiesces. He reads the order a second time. As he does, the once czarina crosses herself. Nicholas still can't reconcile himself to reality. He says repeatedly:

• 7:48Speaker 01

  What? What?

• 7:51Greg Jackson?

  Yakov pulls his pistol as he calmly answers: This?

• 7:56Greg Jackson?

  The bullet slams into Nicholas's chest. Blood sprays out of his khaki tunic. And then? The whole group joins in. Riddled with bullets, the 50-year-old former ruler of Russia drops dead. This wasn't the plan. Each executioner was supposed to aim at a different person, but as the revolutionary fervor took over, the entire squad fired at their former sovereign, hitting him and the three retainers nearby. The cook's body flies back, dead. The footmen's hit several times, then ended with a headshot, while the doctor, filled with bullets and deprived of his kneecaps, lies beside the dead czar he's still trying to save. Maria pulls at the room's second set of doors as a bullet rips through her leg.

• 8:41Greg Jackson?

  Alexandra crosses herself as Yakov's right-hand man, Peter Urmakov, takes careful aim and sends a bullet crashing through her skull. The executioners throw the doors open. Choking on the smoke from countless rounds fired in this small room, some collapse in the hallway. A few are crying. Though loyal revolutionaries, most of the men selected for this are not bloodthirsty and are sickened with the task. Particularly with what remains. Finishing off the doctor and killing the five Romanov children. They go back into the room. Yakov puts his mouths all but against the doctor's head and administers the coup de grace.

• 9:24Greg Jackson?

  As for the children, it's so vicious, perhaps it's best if I just leave it at this. The jewels hidden under their clothes shield them, dragging out their deaths, deflecting bullets and bloodlust in Peter Urmakov's repeatedly plunging bayonet. They first kill sickly little Alexei, then Tatiana, Olga, Maria, and finally Anastasia, only to find lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova rising. Peter's bayonet then slashes and slices her to death too. Within a total of ten minutes, every intended Romanov victim, man, woman, and child, is dead.

• 10:18Greg Jackson?

  Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story.

• 10:38Greg Jackson?

  As Yakov Yurovsky grimly, yet accurately said, "The trucks do take the Romanovs to their next location." The macabre detail he left out, of course, is that this destination, their final destination, was unmarked graves in the nearby woods. And yes, I'm sorry to say the story I just told you, where young Anastasia met a gruesome end, is true. I love the 90s cartoon as much as the next millennial, but sadly, she, like the rest of her family and their retainers, will lie in a forgotten grave for decades before being discovered. And did the Euroregional Soviet actually order their executions? Or did the orders come from Vladimir Lenin? Scholars will debate this well into the next century,

• 11:23Greg Jackson?

  with opinions as strong as they are different. But we'll leave it there, because even though the Romanov's tragic end provides crucial context to this episode's story, it isn't our main focus. After following the rise of fascist dictators Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in recent episodes, today, we're ready for the story of another World War II-era authoritarian from the other side of the political spectrum: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic's communist dictator, Joseph Stalin. We'll start by meeting Joseph as a child, little so-so as he was known, and follow him, from Georgian seminary student to aspiring communist and rising Bolshevik leader

• 12:04Greg Jackson?

  during Russia's 1917 revolutions and the Red vs. White Civil War. We'll then see how Vladimir Lenin's death leads to another war of sorts, as Stalin successfully edges out Leon Trotsky to take control of the Bolshevik, or Communist, Party in the 1920s. He'll then use that control to industrialize the USSR rapidly, but in a way that shows little to no regard for human life, as famine, the Great Purge, or Great Terror, and forced labor camps, known as Gulags, claim millions of lives. Yes, millions. Records are incomplete and estimates vary wildly, but conservatively, we're talking six to nine million dead, with some estimates at twice those numbers.

• 12:48Greg Jackson?

  Remember when I defined fascism in episode 183 and said that the far-right's fascism and the far-left's communism both lead to horrific authoritarian states, they just take vastly different paths to get there? Well, we've seen the fascist path in recent episodes, now we'll see the communist path, which will also help us understand how fascists in this era so effectively use Bolshevism, or even more broadly, Marxism, as their boogeyman. Finally, before we dive in, a word on definitions. Since I defined Marxism in detail in episode 151, I'll avoid complete repetition by giving you a broad reminder of its meaning as we come to it, while encouraging you to revisit 151 if you need more.

• 13:31Greg Jackson?

  I'll also point out how Lenin's ideas develop or deviate from Marxism to give us Leninism, and how Stalin's takeover evolves into Stalinism. Keep your ears tuned for those as they come. Phew, it's a lot to do, and our story begins a few decades back, in imperial Russia-ruled Georgia. Here we go. Rewind.

• 13:58Greg Jackson?

  In the late 19th century, Besarian Jugashvili and his wife Ekaterina Galazha, or Beso and Keke, as the young couple's friends know them, are carving out a life for themselves in the town of Gori, nestled among the rolling hills of eastern Georgia. That's Georgia the country, of course, not the US state, and as for the town, it's a small but happening place. Though only home to 7,000, Gori's location puts it on key local trade routes between Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and Europe. As for its residents, a growing number of Russians have made their homes here since Tsar Alexander I annexed Georgia into the Empire almost a century back. But most ingori remain either Armenian or Georgian.

• 14:43Greg Jackson?

  Besso and KK are the latter, and on a somewhat debated but likely December Day 1878, the Georgian couple welcomes a son into the world, Yosef Jogashvili. Anglicized, Yosef is Joseph, and we'll later know him as Joseph Stalin. But right now, we'll call him by the same familiar diminutive of his name most do in these early years: Soso. With hair as dark as his bearded shoemaker father's, Soso is the couple's third-born son. According to Georgian tradition, that makes him a gift from God, but he'll grow up as though he's an only child. Sadly, neither of his older siblings survived infancy. Soso will later say that his parents treated him well.

• 15:28Greg Jackson?

  In reality, both Besso and KK beat the child, even as KK contradictorily dotes on him. Meanwhile, Besso is mostly uninvolved, leaving his family soon after Soso's birth. KK will later blame his alcoholism for his abandonment, but Besso chalks it up to industrialization, rendering his cobbler skillset obsolete, forcing him to take on factory work. That, and he claims, KK is having numerous affairs. Whatever the real reason for his absence, little Soso is effectively fatherless by 1883, following his mother from one job and home to the next over the coming decade. During this time, the boy loses most of the use of his left arm. Did he have a sledding accident? Perhaps a wrestling accident?

• 16:13Greg Jackson?

  Did he play and lose the local game in which kids grab the axle of passing carriages? Or was it simply a genetic disorder? All of the above are possible, but we'll never know.

• 16:27Greg Jackson?

  As Soso enters his tween years in the early 90s, his mother manages, through hook and crook, to get him into a church school and Russian-language lessons. He becomes a total bookworm and does bad luck strike again? One account has a runaway carriage crushing the 12-year-old's legs, permanently affecting his walk. Though whether this is a second accident or just a confused retelling of his earlier arm injury is unclear. After this supposed accident, he briefly goes to live with his dad in the factory town of Tiflis, or Tiflis in Russian. Did his father kidnap him? Did Soso willingly go to recuperate? Again, unclear, as is the claim that this is where Soso gets his first taste of proletariat life.

• 17:11Greg Jackson?

  That is, the life of the working man. Perhaps he joins his father and other children in a tannery where he sees long days, low wages, and lack of job security amid the odious stench of raw leather. But perhaps this is just later Soviet myth-making. In short, sources conflict. But if Soso is getting the proletariat experience here, it is brief indeed. Returning to his mother in Gori only months later, she pushes past Russia's repression of Georgians and the family's lack of funds, working tirelessly to get him back in school and back on track that September. What can I say? KK doesn't really take "no" for an answer. As one of Soso's classmates will later put it,

• 17:53Greg Jackson?

  "Joseph Stalin's severity came from his mother." Soso makes it worth her while, though. Graduating in 1894, the 15-year-old's strong academic record and beautiful choral voice enable this faithful youth to continue his studies at Tiflis Theological Seminary. With a little help from his mother and others, he passes his exams. Soso is now well on his way to becoming a man of the cloth.

• 18:23Greg Jackson?

  The Georgian teen's star at the seminary is a strong one. He's a faith-filled and ardent student. He's crushing it in the choir. But the school is very strict. Its rigid schedule and harsh punishments for disobedience start to wear on the Georgian boy. Increasingly unhappy, Soso turns a bit rebellious. He joins underground political clubs, which is where Soso discovers his favorite book, "The Patrikide" by Alexander Kozbeki. He latches on to its revenge-driven protagonist, Koba. Coincidentally, Koba is also the name of his uncle, who helped him get into the seminary, and has filled the role of beloved surrogate father.

• 19:04Greg Jackson?

  Later, a boyhood friend-turned-exiled opponent, Yosef Irimashvili, will write in his biography of Stalin, quote, "Koba had become Soso's god, the sense of his life. He wanted to become another Koba, as famous a fighter and hero as he." Close quote. It's true. Soso wants that so badly, he adopts Koba as a nickname, and close friends will use it with him throughout his life. In fact, decades from now, when one such friend fallen from grace, Nikolai Bukharin, writes a letter pleading for mercy in 1938, he'll open with, "Dear Koba." Alas, no dice. Nikolai will still be executed. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

• 19:49Greg Jackson?

  Back at the seminary, Soso is picking up more than cool nicknames in these groups. He and his fellow students are interested in a growing Georgian nationalist movement and in politics. In 1898, he meets the cool new kid, Lado Katsovili, who was expelled from his last school for leading a student's strike. It's Lado who channels Soso's rebellion toward Marxism.

• 20:14Greg Jackson?

  Ah, yes, Marxism. Now, we already defined Karl Marx's thinking quite thoroughly in Episodes 130 and 151, so I'll encourage you to revisit both if you need to go deep. But in brief, Karl's historical materialism, that is, his idea that feudalism gives way to capitalism, then socialism, and eventually communism, has Sosso enamored. The 20-year-old Georgian is on board with the idea that the working class, or proletariat, must seize the means of production, such as factories and the land itself, to usher in a new world of egalitarianism. Sosso ditches his prayers to attend revolutionary meetings with Lotto.

• 20:55Greg Jackson?

  Meanwhile, in 1899, the seminary kicks him out. Is this because he's pushing Marxist propaganda, as he'll later claim, or because he can't pay a fee? Yet another mystery of Sosso's early life. Or should I say, Koba's early life? A small fish in Imperial Russia's growing Marxist movement, known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, Sosso, or Koba, is nonetheless making a name for himself in more than the nickname sense. He's a capable organizer and only growing more radical, especially after Lotto is reportedly shot and killed in his prison cell in August 1903.

• 21:36Greg Jackson?

  As social democrats experience a rupture that same year, Sosso's, or Koba's, radicalization leads him to pass on the more moderate, reform-minded faction, known as Mensheviks, literally translated as "the minority," to join the Bolsheviks, which translates to "the majority." A not always accurate name, but it pays propaganda dividends. The Bolsheviks are led by a law-trained intellectual, named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. The will called this balding radical with a Van Dyke beard by his more popular pseudonym: Vladimir Lenin. To be clear, right now, this party split isn't huge. Not yet. The big question is membership.

• 22:19Greg Jackson?

  Mensheviks want a big tent. Bolsheviks prefer a small one. A third future Soviet leader we want to start tracking. A bespectacled intellectual with a great head of hair who answers to the alias of Leon Trotsky, initially sides with the Mensheviks. But not for long. He soon settles into a non-committed middle ground, with the hope that the two sides will come back together. Lenin is beyond frustrated with Trotsky's refusal to pick between the factions. Moreover, party infighting takes a backseat amid revolutionary hopes in 1905. It begins with the Tsar's soldiers massacring demonstrators on a cold January day known as Bloody Sunday. The unrest spreads. Mutiny erupts on the battleship Potomkin.

• 23:04Greg Jackson?

  Russia loses its war with Japan. General strikes paralyze major cities. Notably, the First Workers' Council, aka "Soviet", forms as a strike committee. Begrudgingly, Tsar Nicholas II issues the October Manifesto, promising limited civil rights and a parliament. In other words, a constitutional monarchy. That constitution happens in 1906. Nonetheless, in 1907, Nicholas undercuts the new parliament's lower house, the Duma, leading many to see the revolution as a failure. With the Tsar somewhat stabilized, Soso/Koba, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky all spend much of the next decade in prison, exile, or on the run.

• 23:48Greg Jackson?

  Nonetheless, the three also come into greater intellectual alignment. Still just a middle-management organizer at this point, Koba catches Lenin's eye with his pamphlet, "Marxism and the National Question". "We won't sweat the details, but it's a Marxist take on the so-called 'national question', and Lenin loves it." This article also marks a significant moment, as Soso adopts yet another pseudonym: Stalin, which roughly means "man of steel". Ah, while friends will still use Koba, he's now Joseph Stalin. Or just Stalin to most. Like you and me. Meanwhile, Trotsky is developing his own twist on Karl Marx's idea of permanent

• 24:31Greg Jackson?

  revolution, arguing that Karl's stages of development aren't so rigid, that Russia can more or less skip the capitalist stage to jump straight to revolution. Though initially rejected by both social democratic factions, this line of thinking eventually pulls Trotsky toward the Bolsheviks. Yes, that internal rupture is complete by 1912, and by 1917, the two camps have settled like this: the Mensheviks remain closer to Karl Marx's original take. They believe capitalism must fully develop before the working class, or proletariat, can rise in revolution. Conversely, Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks believe that full capitalism is not necessary,

• 25:13Greg Jackson?

  that economically backward Russia doesn't need to wait. Further, they contend that the proletariat won't achieve the "class consciousness" required for revolution on their own, so a professional revolutionary vanguard must lead the way. That vanguard, naturally, is them, the Bolsheviks. Both of these deviations from, or further developments of, Marxism, it all depends on your point of view, are core tenets of developing Leninism. In short, while the Mensheviks stick closer to Karl's more gradual and flexible path of revolution and socialism, the Bolsheviks, who we could also call Leninists, are determined to force a Marxist revolution.

• 25:56Greg Jackson?

  Their approach is far more immediate, forceful, even violent, and largely uninterested in liberalism's concept of democracy, preferring the evolving system of workers' councils, known as Soviets. Meanwhile, revolution is here. In February 1917, or March by the Gregorian calendar, the bottled-up frustrations of decades, if not a century, of failure to modernize and repressive rule, mixed with the suffering caused by the ongoing Great War, erupt spontaneously in the capital of Petrograd with protests and cries for bread and reform. As we know from this episode's opening, this February revolution leads to Czar Nicholas

• 26:36Greg Jackson?

  II abdicating and the establishment of a liberalizing but weak provisional government. So weak, in fact, that multiple councils, or Soviets, are emerging as a parallel or dual power.

• 26:50Greg Jackson?

  This is exactly the opportunity Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin need. With Germany assisting Lenin, all three return to Russia from their various places of hiding or exile. In his April thesis, Lenin calls for the Soviets to seize power. But as the months pass and the dual-power situation continues, Lenin is determined to move. This won't be like 1905. They won't let this revolution slip through their fingers.

• 27:21Greg Jackson?

  It's the evening of October 10th, or the 23rd by the Gregorian calendar, 1917. Members of the Bolshevik Central Committee are arriving one by one at Galina Flakserman's ground-floor apartment on the edge of the Russian capital of Petrograd. Galina's mincevich husband would not approve of this gathering, but that's precisely why she convinced him to get a hotel in town tonight, by feigning concern about him traveling home from work in this awful weather. What can I say? Love and revolution can be complicated. But as these Bolsheviks shed their coats and try to warm up, let me point out two in particular. See the bespectacled man over there with the chevron mustache? That's Leon Trotsky.

• 28:05Greg Jackson?

  And the far more handsome one with the handlebar mustache? That's Joseph Stalin. By 10:00 PM, 11 of the 21 committee members are seated around Galina's table, eating sausages. It's at this moment that the man of the hour arrives. Yes, Vladimir Lenin. A clean-shaven Lenin, in a curly-haired wig, that is. Though having slipped back into Russia in April, the Bolshevik leader is still most unwelcome here. In fact, he spent a great deal of time hiding in Finland. Hence, the disguise. Lenin gets right to the point. With blankets covering the window, and an oil lamp casting flickering light, he declares that:

• 28:47Greg Jackson?

  "A sort of indifference to the question of insurrection has been noticeable. But this is impermissible if we are issuing the slogan of the seizure of power in all seriousness. Politically, the situation is fully ripe for taking power." Not everyone is convinced. Lev Kaminyev and Grigoriy Zinoviev push back. Warning: To proclaim an armed uprising now means to gamble not only with the fate of our party, but also with that of the Russian and international revolution. Hours pass. Heated voices rise. Trotsky insists that any uprising must appear defensive. Stalin tentatively supports Lenin.

• 29:31Greg Jackson?

  Finally, at nearly 3:00 in the morning, Lenin calls for a vote. With the resolution scratched out in a simple notebook, 10 of the 12 committee members, all save Lev and Grigoriy, vote for an uprising. Now, who will lead as they start this second revolution of 1917? Seven men present are selected to form the Political Bureau, or Politburo. They include the dissenters Lev Kaminyev and Grigoriy Zinoviev, as well as our key three: Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and the man we've been following from the start, Joseph Stalin.

• 30:13Greg Jackson?

  HTDS is sponsored by BetterHelp. Thanksgiving looks different for everyone. For some, it's travel, turkey, family, and football. For others, it's just another Thursday. Whatever your tradition, or none at all, I think it's worth pausing to make a little room for gratitude in our busy lives. And maybe giving ourselves permission to rewrite a few of the holiday rules that may actually add to your stress. If the season's expectations and emotions are weighing on you, talking it through with a professional can help. BetterHelp therapists are licensed, experienced professionals with at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience. A short questionnaire helps BetterHelp match you with a therapist who fits your needs and preferences.

• 30:56Greg Jackson?

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• 31:26Greg Jackson?

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• 32:12Greg Jackson?

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• 32:59Greg Jackson?

  The October Revolution, or November by the Gregorian calendar, isn't a spontaneous uprising like the February Revolution against the Tsar was. No, this second revolution of 1917 is planned and executed by the Bolsheviks. Vladimir Lenin drives the messaging, while the gifted orator Leon Trotsky, who's now the head of the Petrograd Soviet and Military Revolutionary Committee, handles the real mechanics of the upcoming takeover. Joseph Stalin, still lower ranked but a rising star, puts his editorial and organizational gifts to use. Two weeks after their meeting in Galina's apartment, their Red Guards seize key positions in Petrograd and storm the Winter Palace, toppling the provisional government.

• 33:43Greg Jackson?

  The timing is no accident. The Bolsheviks launched their seizure of power just as hundreds of delegates from Soviets across Russia gather in Petrograd for the Second All-Russian Congress. Now, most of these delegates hail from the more moderate Mensheviks, or the peasant-based social revolutionaries. But with many of them leaving in protest over the uprising, the remaining Bolsheviks and their allies have the numbers. The Bolsheviks use that dominance to claim the backing of the Soviets and legitimize October's Lenin-led revolution. Lenin is named chairman of the New Council of People's Commissars, or Sovnokom, and emerges as the leader of what will now be known, at least by its supporters, as Soviet Russia. Well, sort of its leader.

• 34:28Greg Jackson?

  Lenin has always been an act-now, figure-it-out-later kind of leader, and that's exactly where he and his crew, including Trotsky and Stalin, find themselves in the wake of their power grab. With no plan in place, the Bolsheviks, still a minority party despite the name suggesting otherwise, face immediate and widespread opposition. And yes, this is when Russia plunges into the massive, bloody civil war between Lenin's Red Bolsheviks and the Anti-Bolshevik Whites that we heard about in this episode's opening. I'll also remind you, as we learned in episode 150, that the United States plays a role in this loose, ideologically conflicted coalition known as the Whites. It sends troops later in 1918.

• 35:11Greg Jackson?

  It's also worth noting that this is the year Lenin has Russia adopt the Gregorian calendar, which means that we can finally stop juggling dual dates. As the war rages, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, and other Bolshevik leaders, or communist leaders, as they're now rebranding the Bolshevik Party as the Communist Party, feel the ominous threat of failure hanging over their Soviet Russia from all sides. Indeed, those fears propel their quick and territorially costly exit from the Great War with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the ruthlessness behind the Romanovs' execution. Meanwhile, as they fight the Whites, they're also fighting massive inefficiencies in government and production that lead to hunger and further revolts.

• 35:52Greg Jackson?

  By 1921, the secret police, aka the Cheka, report over a hundred peasant uprisings. That March, 15,000 Soviet sailors and soldiers rise up in the Kronstadt mutiny.

• 36:05Greg Jackson?

  But to shine the light on our protagonist—or antagonist—what is Joseph Stalin up to during the civil war? In 1918, he's commissar of the Southern Front. In this military and political role, Stalin's brutality and his future dictatorial ways become particularly evident as he seizes grain from peasant villages, suppresses revolts, and meddles with battle plans. When he falls short, Stalin employs a technique that will become his trademark: blaming his failure on secret plots against him, prompting purges of his own men and using the Cheka to execute alleged counter-revolutionaries. Lenin approves. No surprise there. Leninism accepts suppression and violent force in the name of the revolution, and right

• 36:49Greg Jackson?

  now, the Cheka is repressing dissenters with arrests and executions left and right. This campaign is known as the Red Terror, and while its death toll is unknowable, some estimates will put the final figure in the hundreds of thousands. But Trotsky, who's built the Red Army as the commissar of war, is not impressed with Stalin. Don't get me wrong, Trotsky's just fine with the Red Terror, but he and Stalin have never been big fans of one another, and now, he blames the Georgian-born Bolshevik for their failures on the Southern Front. In October, he writes to Lenin: "I categorically insist that Stalin must be recalled." Though removed along with his staff from the Southern Front, Stalin is far from down and out.

• 37:33Greg Jackson?

  He continues serving the Soviet cause as both commissar for nationalities and commissar for state control. But not-so-innocent Sosso will never forgive Trotsky for this. Their rivalry only deepens.

• 37:50Greg Jackson?

  While the Russian civil war isn't technically over, the writing is on the wall by late 1920 to early 1921. Foreign powers are withdrawing, and independence movements in Ukraine, Georgia, and other hopeful breakaways are failing. The Reds have this, and in December 1922, the nominally Federal Union of Autonomous National Republics, known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or the USSR—becomes official. But it isn't what Lenin envisioned. As the war peters out the next year, the death toll is estimated to be as high as 13 million—only a fraction from combat, the rest being from famine, disease, and political violence. Some 2 million have fled the country.

• 38:34Greg Jackson?

  What's more, the dreams that animated the Red Revolution have proven to be just that: dreams. The global communist uprising never materialized. Lenin's radical wartime policy, known as war communism, which all but eliminated private property, contributed to economic collapse and mass starvation rather than utopia. He tried to counter that last year, in 1921, by dialing back the socialist state with a temporary injection of liberalizing capitalism called "the New Economic Policy," or the NEP, which permits small businesses and taxes agriculture rather than requisitioning it. It proves to be a significant help, and this blend of economic pragmatism with the political

• 39:16Greg Jackson?

  repression of his nonetheless brutal revolutionary dictatorship all further defines Leninism. That said, the mounting stress is getting to him, so much so that Lenin suffers a stroke in May 1922. More will follow. Lenin leans on the new general secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, Joseph Stalin. It's a highly bureaucratic position: agenda-setting, staffing, paperwork. That might sound like small potatoes, but in an increasingly centralized state where disagreement equals dissent, with even the Orthodox Church coming under fire, in a tanked economy where government jobs are the surest path to steady sustenance, Stalin is quietly becoming quite powerful.

• 39:59Greg Jackson?

  He uses this role to stack the deck with loyalists who will stand by him in his growing rivalry with Trotsky. Oh, and that loyalty is important to Stalin. See, while Lenin is unquestionably the number-one man, Trotsky, the guy who organized the October Revolution, negotiated with the Germans, and built the Red Army, is just as evidently number-two. So with the bald head of state's health declining fast, Stalin wants all the loyalists he can get to help push his bespectacled rival out when the time comes.

• 40:32Greg Jackson?

  Increasingly incapacitated, particularly after a second stroke in December 1922, Lenin is nonetheless beginning to see how damaging Stalin could be. He tries to warn party leaders in a letter dated December 24, 1922, which reads in part: "Comrade Stalin, now that he is General Secretary, has concentrated immense power in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of exercising this power with sufficient caution." He adds to this warning on January 4, 1923: "Stalin is too rude, and this fault becomes unsupportable in the office of the General Secretary.

• 41:11Greg Jackson?

  Therefore, I propose to his comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position." Lenin expresses more confidence in Trotsky, but even then, he describes the late-tobolshevism revolutionary as cocky and self-assured to a fault. These notes, which will come to be called Lenin's Testament, aren't revealed until late May 1923, as Lenin is hospitalized following yet another stroke. His wife, Nadirza Dukrubsky, brings the documents to Grigorii Zinoviev, who shares them with several other senior Bolsheviks, including both Trotsky and Stalin. While some question the political implications or timing of the letter, its authenticity is not seriously doubted.

• 41:54Greg Jackson?

  To quote historian Oleg Klevnyuk: "Nobody among Lenin's comrades in arms, including Stalin himself, had any doubts about it." The men are shocked by this Testament's harsh assessment of Soviet Russia's top men. Stalin reportedly shouts: "He shit on himself, and he shit on us!" The small group agrees to keep it under wraps. If you're wondering why those less soiled than Stalin would go along, I'm sure his minions' dirt-digging helped with the decision. They even found a pre-revolution statement in which Trotsky called Lenin: "Molicious and morally repulsive."

• 42:35Greg Jackson?

  Ultimately, the Testament is kept from the public eye, allowing Stalin to continue consolidating power unchallenged. It truly seems Lenin doesn't want Stalin to lead the USSR. The soon-to-expire communist appears to prefer Trotsky's less-centralized vision of socialism. Alas, rendered mute by a third stroke in March 1923, there's little he can do, especially as the Central Committee is packed with Stalin loyalists. The only thing holding back Stalin's rise is Lenin's breathing. And that won't last much longer.

• 43:11Greg Jackson?

  It's 8 a.m. on Sunday, January 27, 1924. A bitter cold of sub-35 degrees Fahrenheit grips Moscow, but harsh temperatures haven't stopped the endless line of fur-clad mourners in recent days, and it won't stop them today, as government officials, loved ones, and journalists pack the trade union house's grand Corinthian column tall. They've all come to pay their respects to the recently-deceased Soviet leader, lying in a glass coffin atop a red-draped platform. Yes, it's Vladimir Lenin. The combined orchestras of the Grand Opera House and Conservatory of Music play several funeral dirges, culminating with everyone in the hall joining in, singing what New York Times reporter Walter Duranty calls

• 43:56Greg Jackson?

  "The Bolshevik Funeral March," entitled "You Fell Victim."

• 44:02Greg Jackson?

  With the music finished, thousands of wreaths and palms are cleared away. Six pallbearers, Joseph Stalin and Grigori Zinovya of the pall bureau and regular workers, lift the coffin. The procession passes between gray lines of troops and out of the trade union house. Pallbearers swap out as they continue in the cold. Alongside them, countless mourners march, holding torches of Lenin and banners, proclaiming, "All around us, everywhere, Lenin is completely with us." Finally, they come to a large wooden platform erected just days ago in the ancient city's historic red square. Grigori Evdekimov, a speaker with a booming voice, reportedly the loudest in Russia, shouts to the crowd, "We are burying Lenin!

• 44:47Greg Jackson?

  The world's greatest genius has left us! And even with his physical death, Lenin gives his great order: Workers of the world, unite!" Mourners stream past until 4 p.m., and the coffin is lowered into the vault. At this same moment, radios across the nation instruct all to,

• 45:07Speaker 01

  "Stand up, comrades! Yelich is being lowered into his grave!"

• 45:12Greg Jackson?

  And that they do. Across the nation, factory sirens, train whistles, fog horns, cannons and rifles erupt in a deafening salute. Then, five minutes of profound silence follows, as all of the USSR stops. A final message of mourning and hope then cuts across the radio waves.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Lenin has died, but Leninism lives.

• 45:39Greg Jackson?

  It's a somber, orderly, national ceremony. A striking contrast to the cold-blooded murder of the Romanovs, and their burial in anonymous graves. But if Leninism lives, who leads it now? And speaking of leadership, why wasn't Leon Trotsky at the funeral? Hoping to recover his health, Trotsky was en route to a resort on the Black Sea when he learned of Lenin's death. Stalin also sent word, effectively saying, "Don't worry about the funeral. There's no way you'll make it in time, so stay and rest." But then the funeral was delayed. And Trotsky could have made it. Was Stalin deliberately misleading him to sabotage his image? It's hard not to see the convenience.

• 46:22Greg Jackson?

  Especially with Stalin seizing the moment to control the narrative as the Second Congress of Soviets opens right after the funeral. Whether he intentionally undermined Trotsky or not, Stalin emerges as the man honoring Lenin's legacy. Frankly, his cult. Stalin renames Petrograd Leningrad, while Lenin's body is embalmed and preserved, ultimately to be displayed for the Soviet people to venerate forever. Never a fan of ceremony or adulation, Lenin would undoubtedly roll over at his grave if he had the privacy of resting in the ground. But the thing is, Stalin's hero-worshipping, while Trotsky is on vacation. Not a great look.

• 47:04Greg Jackson?

  Stalin also uses Trotsky's late alignment with Bolshevism in 1917 to further push the narrative that this bespectacled communist just isn't as invested.

• 47:16Greg Jackson?

  But Stalin's ascent isn't without its challenges. As the 13th Congress of the Russian Communist Party meets in May 1924, it's decided that Lenin's testament will be read aloud to the Central Committee Plenum. Lenin's damning description of Stalin cuts deep, but the General Secretary deftly deflects by embracing the criticism. "Well, yes, I am definitely rude. Illich proposes to you to find another person who differs from me only in external politeness." His allies Grigoriy Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, who formed a ruling triumvirate with him, quickly leap to Stalin's defense. One voice even answers:

• 47:57Greg Jackson?

  "We are not frightened by rudeness, our whole party is rude." Well then, it seems that by 1924, Stalin is clearly winning. The infighting nonetheless continues over the next few years. The triumvirate crumbles, while Trotsky leads the left opposition criticizing the capitalist leanings of the new economic policy and insisting that socialism must be a global movement. Stalin meanwhile, sticks with the NEP, at least for now, and promotes his new doctrine of socialism in one country, which gives the USSR permission not to take the ideological fight to the world. It's a message that the party likes more than Trotsky's continued internationalism. Stalin's power only grows as he outmaneuvers rivals.

• 48:42Greg Jackson?

  He pushes Trotsky out of his military roles in 1925, out of the Politburo in 1926, out of the party in 1927, into internal exile in 1928, and finally has his defeated rival expelled from the USSR in 1929. One country indeed, and a country held firmly in the tightening grip of comrade Joseph Stalin.

• 49:10Greg Jackson?

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• 49:54Greg Jackson?

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• 50:40Greg Jackson?

  and showed me a beautifully crafted sweater. She was thrilled to see it was every bit as professional and sharp as it looked online. More than that, it's durable, yet soft. She was thrilled. Everything is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands because Quince works directly with ethical factories to cut out the middlemen. And it's not just clothes. Fine jewelry, leather bags, hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was History That Doesn't Suck. It's the best way to support the show.

• 51:26Greg Jackson?

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• 52:09Greg Jackson?

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• 53:12Greg Jackson?

  With Trotsky exiled and rivals sidelined, General Secretary Joseph Stalin now sits unopposed atop the Soviet state in 1928. While Leninism and its emphasis on a disciplined revolutionary vanguard and flexible new economic policy laid the groundwork, Stalin has no intention of merely inheriting Vladimir Lenin's revolution. He means to remake the USSR in his own image, to transform the Soviet Union from an agrarian backwater into a modern industrial powerhouse. And fast. It's to this end that, in October 1928, Stalin launches his first five-year plan.

• 53:49Greg Jackson?

  The plan is ambitious. In Stalin's mind, it's a revolution as much as 1917 was, one that he says will be accomplished from above, on the initiative of the state and directly supported from below by the millions of peasants. It funnels vast resources into producing steel, coal, electricity, and heavy machinery, and ends private business as entire cities seem to spring up almost overnight. Millions of peasants pour into new Soviet factories. By official accounts, industrial output soars, coal production nearly doubles, steel surges, electricity spreads. But these seemingly instant cities come with a dark side, which is to say, the countryside,

• 54:32Greg Jackson?

  where the state is doing away with the new economic policy to collectivize agriculture. Yes, Lenin's small business and private farm permitting NEP is still in effect at this point. It has done wonders for the USSR. But remember, communist leadership only reluctantly accepted this infusion of capitalism. Further, Stalin doesn't trust that the richer peasants, known as kulaks, are providing all the grain they can for the nation. So, wanting to get these better-to-do farmers more securely under his thumb, and ideologically convinced that the state can get more out of them than the incentives of the free market, Stalin moves to seize their means of production, that is, their individual privately-owned farms,

• 55:16Greg Jackson?

  and make them state-run collectives with party surveillance and quotas. He expects the farms will become more efficient, allowing many peasants to become city-dwelling factory workers, even as the sparser-populated countryside provides excess grain to feed and pay for the people working in the new primarily industrialized economy. The results are catastrophic. Peasants oppose the seizure of their land, tools, and livestock. They burn fields, slaughter animals, and flat-out revolt. Party officials and secret police, like the Cheka, answer with arrests, deportations, and killings, particularly targeting the kulaks. Even as peasants do continue to farm,

• 55:57Greg Jackson?

  they've lost any personal incentive to work and are morally defeated by impossible quotas. It's particularly bad in Ukraine. With some 4,000 rebellions here, Stalin is determined to make an example of them for the other Soviet states. Ukraine's quotas are massively increased, while the people are not permitted to leave the Soviet state. It's a recipe for famine, and indeed, while hunger is common across the USSR, Ukraine's famine, known as the Holodomor, is downright criminal, resulting in between 3.5 and 7 million deaths. In 1933, Soviet author Mikhail Sholohov writes a letter to Stalin, telling him: "I saw things that I will remember until I die.

• 56:41Greg Jackson?

  During the night, with a fierce wind, with freezing temperatures, when even the dogs hide from the cold. They expelled a woman with a baby. She spent the night wandering through the village and asking that she and the baby be allowed inside to get warm. No one let her in. By morning, the child had frozen to death in the mother's arms." So yes, the USSR is industrializing, and rapidly. But the brutal truth is that, by the end of this first five-year plan in 1932, this rapid, forced transformation is coming at an enormous and cataclysmic cost of life.

• 57:27Greg Jackson?

  Stalin's power only grows in the 1930s. In 1933, he launches a second five-year plan that builds on the first. Nonetheless, as during the Russian Civil War, he starts to suspect there are enemies within the ranks: traitors. He needs a way to root them out. Ah, a purge. On December 1st, 1934, he gets his excuse. A popular party leader and senior Politburo member, Sergey Kirav, is shot and killed outside his office in Leningrad. Stalin claims the murder is part of a broad conspiracy against the state. Now, many suspect that Stalin himself ordered the hit, but whether that's true or not, the powerful General Secretary sets his new secret police, the People's Commissariat for

• 58:12Greg Jackson?

  Internal Affairs, or the NKVD, the successor to the Cheka and the predecessor to the future KGB, to find anyone attempting to subvert Soviet power. The NKVD casts a wide net. Clergy, authors, academics, even Stalin's former friends and allies are rounded up. Tortured until they falsely confess to crimes, they then disappear into the Gulag, which is a system or network of forced labor camps, mostly in remote Siberia. Prisoners build railroads, dig mines, and pour concrete for hydroelectric dams, often in brutal, freezing conditions. Several million will pass through the system. Many won't survive it.

• 58:54Greg Jackson?

  This campaign of repression becomes known as the Great Purge, or Great Terror. And it's not done in secret. The point isn't just to eliminate dissent, it's to broadcast what happens to those who dare to question Stalin. And the message is loud and clear: disloyalty is death.

• 59:14Greg Jackson?

  It's just past 12 noon, August 19, 1936. Three judges are seated on a platform in the center of the long, rectangular, red-draped October Hall inside Moscow's Trade Union House. Before them, sixteen nervous defendants wring their hands. Among them are Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev. That's right, the two men whom we met back in 1917 that opposed the October Revolution, who later formed the triumvirate with Joseph Stalin. Well, after that alliance fell apart, they had warmed up to Leon Trotsky, and in short, they and their fellow fourteen co-defendants now stand accused of working with the fallen

• 59:55Greg Jackson?

  exile, not only to kill Sergei Kirav, but to overthrow the Soviet Union. Serious accusations, but Lev, Grigori, and the others here have already pleaded guilty. Rumor has it that Stalin promised these men their lives in exchange for their confessions. This trial then is all spectacle. It's about the audience, and I don't mean the handpicked journalists and agents in the courtroom. I'm talking about the audience beyond these walls. The Russian citizens, and people around the world even, who will read about it in the news. This is a show trial. Over the coming days, each man is interrogated, and it's basically the same. No one puts up much of a fight.

• 1:00:37Greg Jackson?

  It all wraps with the thinly mustached and stout Chief Prosecutor, Andriy Vushinsky, delivering a closing argument, in which he dramatically proclaims: I demand that dogs gone mad should be shot, every one of them!

• 1:00:53Greg Jackson?

  It's now four days later, the morning of August 23rd. Each prisoner is permitted to make a final plea to the judges, but nothing will change. It's like reality TV. The phrasing might differ, but it's all a part of the script. And now, with the scruff likely filling in his salt-and-peppered Van Dyke beard, former deputy premier Lev Kamenev steps forward to deliver his lines. For ten years, if not more, I've waged a struggle against the party, against the government of the land of Soviets, and against Stalin personally. Such vast, pit- contemptible treachery into which we have fallen.

• 1:01:36Greg Jackson?

  His sad part played, Lev trudges back to his row and sits. But then, he suddenly shoots back to his feet. This isn't part of the script, but weakly, Lev dares to speak again, adding: I should like to say a few words to my children, standing maybe with one foot in the grave. I want to tell them, don't look back. Go forward, together with the Soviet people. Follow Stalin. The broken, former Bolshevik revolutionary then collapses again in his seat and buries his face in his hands. Silence falls over the room, as even the judges are moved. It doesn't matter, though.

• 1:02:21Greg Jackson?

  Of the sixteen men, all but the two planted agents in the group are sentenced to execution.

• 1:02:28Greg Jackson?

  The next day, Grigoriy Zinoviev, feverish and gasping for breath after torture targeting his asthma, is led from his cell, raving, screaming, and finally dragged away to be shot. Meanwhile, Lev takes his bullet stoically, as if in a dream. But it's not just these supposed criminals dying. In the coming months and years, all of their families will either be imprisoned or executed.

• 1:02:57Greg Jackson?

  The Great Purge ends in 1939, not because Stalin's grip loosens, but because he simply no longer needs it, especially as war looms. Estimates vary, but this three-year campaign of terror has sent some 700,000 people to their graves. Millions more are imprisoned or in forced labor camps. So now, there's simply no one left to remove. Stalin is a dictator in the full sense of the world. Indeed, brutal as Leninism was, Stalin has remade the Soviet Union into a highly centralized totalitarian state, one defined by the suppression of dissent, forced collectivization, rapid industrialization, and a cult of personality surrounding the supreme leader.

• 1:03:40Greg Jackson?

  Where Lenin envisioned socialism as an international movement, Stalin insists it can and must be built in one country. This is Stalinism, a system where absolute loyalty to the state and to Stalin himself supersedes all else, and ideology is enforced through terror. But while Stalin rules absolutely at home, Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime is gobbling up Europe. Stalin has no love for Adolf, but he does love protecting Soviet interests. And to do that, he needs more time to build up his military and defenses. That's why, on August 23rd, 1939, the Nazis and Soviets meet in Moscow to sign their non-aggression pact.

• 1:04:21Greg Jackson?

  Called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in a nod to both nations' respective foreign ministers, it's alternatively known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the German-Soviet Pact, even the Hitler-Stalin Pact. So call it what you will, but the terms are simple enough. Publicly, it's agreed that neither country will attack the other or support a third party that does. Then there's the secret part. Behind closed doors, they agree to divide Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. Most notably, they split Poland in half. The agreement is set to last 10 years, with an option for renewal. The world is stunned. In the West, the pact sends shockwaves, especially among leftists who know that fascism and communism are mortal enemies.

• 1:05:06Greg Jackson?

  How can the USSR do business with Nazi Germany? But again, for Stalin, this is purely strategic. The Soviet military isn't ready for war, and this deal gives him time to prepare. Only a week later, on September 1st, Adolf's Nazi war machine invades Poland from the west. While Britain and France answer with declarations of war on Germany on September 3rd, Stalin sends Soviet forces into what he sees as his part of Poland from the east on the 17th. The country is carved up as agreed. In November, the USSR invades Finland as well. But the ramifications of that campaign are a story for another day. Europe is descending rapidly into war while Stalin's power is absolute.

• 1:05:50Greg Jackson?

  Between all of this, he's a busy man, and yet, there's one loose end nagging at him: Leon Trotsky is still alive.

• 1:06:02Greg Jackson?

  It's about 6:30 in the afternoon, August 20th, 1940. Leon Trotsky is tending to his garden and rabbits at his rented adobe home in the Coayoacan neighborhood of Mexico City. Yes, the bespectacled Bolshevik revolutionary is far from home. In fact, he's bounced around quite a bit since his exile and subsequent expulsion, living in Turkey, France, and Norway previously. No, he isn't just taking in the sights in retirement, he's running. Trotsky being Trotsky, he hasn't stopped writing, speaking out, and publishing blistering critiques of Stalin's regime. He's even written a full, and far from flattering, biography of the Soviet dictator, even if it's yet to be published.

• 1:06:45Greg Jackson?

  And Stalin being Stalin, he's determined to silence him. The NKVD, Stalin's secret police, has been hunting him for years. They've already tried and failed at least once, back in May, when a machine-gun wielding squad attacked his home. Trotsky's pulled through, but it hasn't come without its costs. One of his sons, Lev Sedov, died under suspicious circumstances in a Paris hospital, likely poisoned. Another son, Sergey, disappeared in the Soviet Union, probably executed. His wife Natalia has called him "the last survivor of an annihilated legion."

• 1:07:22Greg Jackson?

  So now, as Trotsky feeds his rabbits this evening, a dark-haired, bronze-skinned, twenty-seven-year-old man is strolling out. He goes by the name Jacques Monard, supposedly the Belgian boyfriend of Trotsky's secretary's sister. He's not someone that the tired communist particularly likes, but one must be polite. Today, Jacques says he's brought an article that he wants Trotsky to review. Strangely, he's carrying a raincoat, though. There's no chance of rain. Well, no matter. Trotsky invites him inside, so he can look over the article in his study. The tired communist pulls up a chair in the sparse room and begins reading. But as he does, his guest silently slips behind him,

• 1:08:07Greg Jackson?

  sliding a hand into the raincoat and grabbing a hidden ice axe. Jacques then drives the ice axe into Trotsky's head with brutal force. Blood sprays across books and papers as the deeply wounded Bolshevik cries in pain, astounding that he's still alive, and fights back, biting deeply into his assailant's hand. Alarm sound, alerting guards and Natalia, who rush Trotsky to the hospital, but to no avail. He soon dies from the brain injury. Jacques Monard, as you likely guessed, is an alias. The assailant's real name is Ramon Mercader, and he's an agent of the NKVD. Ramon will spend the next nineteen years in prison,

• 1:08:52Greg Jackson?

  but will be honored by the USSR. More importantly, Stalin finally has what he's wanted for over twenty years: Leon Trotsky is dead. Of all the men, women, and children who once sat around the table in Galina Flexerman's apartment two decades earlier, Joseph Stalin alone remains. The rest have fled the country, been sent to rot in a gulag, or been killed.

• 1:09:17Greg Jackson?

  There's a quote often attributed to Joseph Stalin: “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that's only statistics.” Close quote. The line appeared in a 1947 Washington Post article, and versions of it go back a ways. But there's no solid evidence Stalin ever said it. Still, the sentiment fits disturbingly well with his legacy. By the time Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler, and tracked down and murdered his greatest rival, Leon Trotsky, he already had millions of deaths on his hands. Some are executed during the Great Purge or Great Terror. Others were worked to death in Gulags. Many more starved during the famines triggered by forced collectivization, especially in

• 1:10:01Greg Jackson?

  Ukraine's Holodomor. And long before that, Stalin killed without hesitation in the Russian Civil War. Truly, Stalin's path from a Georgian seminary to the dictatorial throne of the Soviet Union is one paved in blood. This is far from the last time we will see the Soviet Union's dictator. Indeed, the necessities of a Second World War will soon make this enemy of Uncle Sam's enemy his uncomfortable yet crucial friend. But we still have a lot of ground to cover before we get to those tales, and that starts with the ground that Adolf is out to take. That's right, next time, we'll follow Adolf's blitzkrieging path, from the Rhineland to Poland.

• 1:10:48Greg Jackson?

  History That Doesn't Suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson. Episode researched and written by Greg Jackson and comrade Will Keane. Production by Airship. Sound design by Molly Bock. Theme music composed by Greg Jackson. Arrangement and additional composition by Lindsey Graham and Airship. For our bibliography of all primary and secondary sources consulted in writing this episode, visit htdspodcast.com.

• 1:11:20Greg Jackson?

  HTDS is supported by fans at HTDSPodcast.com/membership. My gratitude to you kind souls providing funding to help us keep going, thank you. And a special thanks to our patrons whose monthly gift puts them at producer status. Adam Goran, Ahmed Chapman, Amy and Ross Hensman, Andrew Nissen, Andrew Sherwin, Anna M. Huta, Art Lang, Baby Nico, Bob Stinnan, Bonnie Brooks, Ryan Gavigan, Ryan Boils, Ryan Goodson, Bruce Hibbert, Kayden Hallitz, Charles Plendenin, Charles Starkey, Charlie Majes, Christopher Merchant, Christopher Lyle, Christopher Pullman, Christopher Young, Cody Brown, Colleen Martin, Colin Ferris Pennington, Connor Hogan, Craig Burhost, Dan G., Daniel Beecham, Daniel Lucana, Darren Chambers, Daryl the Kid Lovell, David Rifkin,

• 1:12:05Greg Jackson?

  Dean Heiser, Donte Spencer, Donald Moore, Eli Edwards, Elizabeth Chris Jansen, Ellen Stewart, Ernesto Franco, Ernie Lomaster, Ethan Lowery, Ethan Thompson, G2303, Jeffrey Nelson, George J. Sherwood, Gareth Griffin, Gina Johnson, Gordon Garwood, Henry Brunges, Holly Hamilton, Jake Gilbreth, James Bledsoe, James Blue, James Schlender, Jarrett Zangora, Jeffrey Moos, Jennifer Minjioni, Jennifer Ruth, Jessica Poppin, Joe Dobis, John Booby, John Frugal Dugal, John Huber, John Messmer, John Oliveros, John Rilevich, John Schaefer, Jonathan Schaff, Jordan Corbett, Joseph Curry, Joshua Steiner, Julian Wright, Justin Tolman,

• 1:12:46Greg Jackson?

  Karen Bartholomew, Carl Freedman, Carl Romer, Ken Culver, Kim R., Kimberly Pruitt, Kristen Pratt, Kyle Decker, L. Paul Goringer, Laura Norman, Lawrence Newbauer, Linda Cunningham, Mark D. Worrell, Mark Ellis, Marcia Smith, Mason Glenn, Matt Siegel, Michael Longus, Michael Sullivan, Nick Caprell, Nicholas Powell, Owen W. Sedlak, Paul Huguenroth, Philip May, Randy Keane, Rich Ruckel, Rick Brown, Rob Dravovic, Robert Shelton, Brock Gay, Ryan Fogelman, Sam Holtzman, Sarah Prescott, Sarah Traywood, Scott Hurst, Shane Smith, Shannon Hoagland, Sharon Thezen, Sean Baines, Sean Collins, Stacy Ritter, Steve Williams, The Creepy Girl, Thomas Churchill, Thomas Matthew Edwards, Thomas Sabbath, Tim and

• 1:13:31Greg Jackson?

  Sarah Turner, Todd Curran, Tom Bestafka, Travis Cox, Walter M. Ames, Wesley McKeat, William Durham, William Curry, William Thompson, and Zach Jackson. Join me in two weeks, or I'd like to tell you a story.