A Lager Boy In A Sea of Hobgoblins | Stalin: Rise to Power (Part 1)

This episode of Fin vs History is brought to you by Surfshark. Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code FVH for an extra 4 months at surfshark.com/fvh Order your Christmas crackers at comedycrackers.co.uk/FVH Clear your schedule and hang on to your prostates, its Stalin fortnight! Kicking it off with Stalin’s early life in Georgia, yes please, mah wife. Stalin: Rise to Power (Part 1) The show for people who like history but don't care what actually happened. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening and early access to series, become a Truther and sign up to the Patreon patreon.com/fintaylor Chapters: 00:00 - Russo-clusterfuck 10:58 - Yes please, mah wife 16:31 - Crazy Beso 22:49 - Industrial Capitalism (Timpsons) 25:34 - Kitchen sink Borat 29:39 - Stalin Allardyce 33:20 - I forgot my coat 39:05 - He loves Wolves 42:14 - Trotsky the Hob goblin 46:10 - RED ARMY 49:43 - Lenin is pussy whipped 53:57 - Russel branding it Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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  Crunching broccoli. You're really fat. We're literally doing an ad now, Charlie. Brilliant, that's good. Keep that in, keep that in. Christmas crackers are on sale now, retard-proof. Charlie reminded me to say that, actually. We've got more stock this year. In terms of jokes, now, this was too late for the deadline for this, but how's this for a joke? This is Rob Moriarty's joke, right? It's brilliant. I'm on the paleo diet. I paleo dicaprio the shit in my mouth.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Shout out, Rob.

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  Shout out, Rob. One of the most twisted minds on the comedy circuit.

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• 2:02Speaker 00

  Welcome back to Finn vs. History. I'm joined by Horatio Gould.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  And it's one of the big five.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  The big one.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  It's the big one for some.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  For me, I think it's sort of the thinking man's Hitler.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  I take issue with that statement out the gate.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Yes, all the stupid man Stalin, as I call Hitler.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  The thick lesbian, wotards Hitler. Today, we're talking about Stalin.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  I'm nervous, man. When I saw this in the diary, this is a big fixture. This is North London Derby. You circle this.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  Where we're watching that.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Where you're watching that, you clear the schedule. You just want to do it right. But yeah, it's like the big five in hunting. You have, you know, leopards, lions, elephants, buffalo.

• 2:38Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  This is in that territory for me.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Totally. If we're doing dictators, using the big five, I'd almost say that for dictators, it's like genders. Until about the 70s, there were two genders.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  Hitler and Stalin.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yes, so the original.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  The original two genders.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  Are you Hitler or are you Stalin?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  That's why this podcast works.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Hitler, Stalin.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  But then, you know, then the universities got hold of the idea, and suddenly, there's a, oh, I'm actually, I'm a Gaddafi. I'm an Idi Amin, I'm a Saddam Hussein, I'm a Pol Pot, I'm a Kim Jong-un. It's like, can we just get back to the two genders, Hitler and Stalin, the two genders, you know?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  LSD infiltrated the universities, and everything fractured and prizmed off, and now it was a million different.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  Now there's 100 dictators, but really, there are two dictators, Hitler and Stalin.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  Now, some of us-

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Buzzfeed quiz, are you Hitler or Stalin?

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  It's like, are you a bagel or a donut?

• 3:29Speaker 00

  I'm a Gaddafi trapped inside the body of a Hitler.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  This is too confusing.

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Arguably, that's true, actually, for me, actually. You know, I might present as a Hitler, but really, I'm a Gaddafi aside.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Right, but you're the repressed, you know, you're a repressed Gaddafi.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  It's the-

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Stalin is less on the surface than Hitler, I think.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  But I think you will agree, you have a newfound respect for Stalin. As a man who slagged him off-

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  In your book, which is hell.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  I feel bad that I, we didn't do Stalin before I wrote the book, because I now love the guy.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  He's much, I did Stalin at school, right? And he's much more of a laugh than I remember being taught.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  Now, obviously, that's because our institution's been ideologically captured. They can't teach kids a good time.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  They have to lie.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have to fame a great man.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Funny guy. Without doubt, my favourite communist.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Without doubt.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  I mean, that's not a high bar to clear.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Because you don't like any communist.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  I think Lenin and Trotsky are pricks, and then nowadays, it's just fucking annoying people who I'd love to Trotsky personally.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  But Stalin, I didn't realise how much of a, he's a guy's guy.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  He is a guy's guy.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  You know, he's like a big bear. And when you're talking about communism, I think it's only actually recently, when the Soviet archives got opened, that people realised that he was actually a true believer, because he kept all that stuff. He sort of, he kind of minimised himself in the story.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  In a way.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. Just thinking of all the massive statues of himself.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Compared to Hitler, who, and obviously, Hitler, when Hitler comes to power, Germany's a much more modern country than when Stalin takes power in Russia, so there's newsreels.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  A bit of a classier figure than Hitler, I'd say, potentially. He's a bit more restrained, you know? He's got a drier sense of humour, would you not say? Do you know what I mean? It's not as bombastic as a Gaddafi.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  No, yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  But there's a, you just have to peel away some of the surface, and then you get some of the funnier stuff.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Sorry, saying he's a more sophisticated figure when you're wearing that hat, it's quite different.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you're listening, we are wearing, you know, what Stalin, Stalin did a lot for the modern-day lesbian in midlife.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yes. Cause would not be cause without Stalin.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  Stalin, the long road to cause, to boxy fits for weedy thin men and lesbians.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Well, yes, I mean, me, as soon as I walk into a shop like cause and I see a lesbian, it's a race to get-

• 5:56Speaker 01

  To either, or the same with the Doc Marten shop, size 11 Doc Marten boots.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Fuck off, you dyke, they're mine. Yeah, it's a race to the blouse between skinny gangly men and big fucking midlife.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  We don't hang out, but we dress the same. That's a tough tension to find.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Gangly soyboys and lesbian midlife broadcasters are wearing the same fits.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  But Stalin managed to do-

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Weak men and strong lesbians dress the same.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Exactly, they do. And yeah, Stalin's a fun guy, which I didn't know at school.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:31Speaker 00

  But also, there's an argument, he's the most, probably the most important actor of the 20th century.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yes, for sure.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  And I would say that if he had more to do with the Russian Revolution, you could make that claim a bit stronger. Because, but to be around for the Russian Revolution, then to basically defeat Hitler, minute silence.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Then, to essentially start the Cold War off.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Even though he wasn't the key player of the revolution, he defined what the Soviet Union was.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  But also, what's funny is that, you know how, you know, he's the first guy to properly try communism.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  And you know how when people-

• 7:03Speaker 01

  And that's tough.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  Well, it is.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  To be the first one to do it.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  He had a go.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  Now, you know how people say, oh, communism's never been properly been tried? I mean, some of us argue fascism's never been properly tried.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  All right, that was Hitlerism. That's not fascism, yeah? Don't let, don't, you know, don't let the idea go the way of Hitler, you know? Anyway, it'd be interesting to know, interesting to, a parallel universe where it's not Stalin, it's someone else.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  And how communism would have played out. People-

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Ed Davis or someone.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Maybe it's Ed, maybe it's Ed Davey, you know? Maybe it's Ed Davey, yeah, maybe Ed Davey communism would be different.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. We don't know, it might be the exact same.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  But the whole, you know, it could be exactly the same.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  But maybe more bungee jumping and stuff like that, and-

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, more TikToks.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Playing FIFA and stuff.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  The Lib Dem terror.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  But it's interesting to know what, how communism would be thought of if Stalin hadn't got hold of it. And it's a very personal-

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Well, how Stalin defines the exact nature of it. Well, the big debate, as someone who was in, you know, communist cells at university, which is kind of an interesting perspective, because I sort of hung out there, but I did disagree with most of the things people said, where I just wanted, like, exciting ideas for the future.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  You just want to finger someone who watched a boring film, that's what you want to do. That's why we go to communist sock, yeah?

• 8:20Speaker 01

  But then, on my first day of communist sock, someone did say they didn't believe in prisons. And I was like, right, well, this is a, this is a tough start.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Kind of, the key narrative for British communists at university is that what would have been, if Lenin, Lenin was a great guy, if only Lenin had become the communist leader, it would have all been different. And Stalin sort of captured it with a sort of an evil, even though he did do a lot of good. He took Soviet Union from peasant society to space age.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Which is a very problematic thing to say. But yeah, Lenin also invented the Gulags, then it was unbelievably ruthless and brutal. No matter who would have been elected King of Russia, Supreme Leader of Russia, it would have been a bloodbath, because it's Russia. And it's never not been an absolute clusterfuck. This is why it's my favourite history Russians, because it's just consistently horrific and bleak from start to finish.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  Well, from our perspective, from their perspective, this is the golden age of-

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Pig and shit.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Absolute pig and shit, all right? You know, for us in the West, we say, there's no greater pleasure in life than watching your children grow up. In Russia, there's no greater pleasure than watching them all die in infancy, you know? You know, they send, they send the congratulations card after his miscarriage.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's character building.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  But it's very character building to make a good Russian kid. They die at six months.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  Brilliant.

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  Character building.

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• 11:57Speaker 01

  So you got a quote from Dostoevsky, "Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing."

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Come on, this is the kind of stuff.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  This is Russian, Russian grindset. So to start of an epic series, you know, trembling prostate stuff.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  But in a different way, the British dad, this is not, is, um, this is not the same retreat of the British dad, maybe. Maybe this is more of the North London British dad. I don't know. This is a slightly different shed, you know?

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is. It's more of a hobo.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's not like.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  It's a fucking wigwam in the garden.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's allotments. It's not the sort of drinking champers out the back of the Land Rover.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  No, it's industrial estate.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  It's a warehouse space, an industrial estate.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  So it's a sort of shed, but they can't afford a shed, so it's more of a.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah. No. So Stalin is obviously, he's not Russian, he is Georgian.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Similar to Hitler being Austrian, not German.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Napoleon being Corsican, not French.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  There is a, there is an outsider element to all these great figures. He is born on the 18th of December, 1878, in Georgia, the birthplace of wine. And it's also, I mean, what, what, what's going on in Georgia?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I'm asking you as the, as the kind of the scholar and the racist, what are you doing? I'm saying, just, I'm trying to get from my racism, is you can't be cerebral about it. You've got to go instinctual, right?

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  And so what's coming for me, you know, in Ratatouille where he's trying the cheese and the grapes, this is what I'm getting. I'm getting guys crossing their arms and doing this.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Right?

• 13:21Speaker 00

  I think that's more Ukrainian, but yeah.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Okay. And then I'm getting sort of.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  I'll tell you what I'm getting.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Their faces.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Folded in.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  You know, lips are over the noses. So I'm, and in terms of like how it's sounding, I'll be honest, I'm getting a lot of Borat.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  I'm getting a lot. My Borat radar, look at that. Georgian old man. I'm getting a lot of that. It's, you know, it's where Borat meets Turkey.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  They, they have great old people, Georgia. That's, that's what an old person should look like.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  I can't imagine a young Georgian. I'll be honest.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  My, one of my dad's ex-girlfriends was Georgian, of course. Shout Irene, great woman. She did try to kill him with a knife, but he did deserve it.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  That was an anniversary, wasn't it?

• 14:06Speaker 01

  She might have stolen his car as well, but, um, but she's a great, she's a good woman.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  And look, if you can't stand the heat, then get out of the game. All right? That, your dad is doing a sex tour of former Soviet countries. So, yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  He's trying to rebuild what Stalin destroyed.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  He's gonna need a few cars. All right?

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Yes. So it's hard to imagine a young Georgian, although Stalin is one, born at the tail end of the 19th century, in the kind of wild west of the Russian empire.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  So right on the frontiers of this huge continental empire.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  He fucks his birth year, so he actually says it a year later, so that he could celebrate his 50th by the time that he'd come to full power in Russia.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Right. You want a big 50th.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it's kind of like African football and stuff. How much is he, when is he actually born? Anyway, yes, Georgia is, it's Turkish, but it's Kazakhstan. Yes, please, my wife. That's kind of where we are.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  Everyone's old, everyone's top lip can go over their nose.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, their chins touch their foreheads.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah. The face is imploded. If you're looking at a photo on an iPhone, you just do that and it's Georgian. Right? Now, as you always say, how much should we read into these big figures' childhoods? You know, is it nature or nurture? But.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  He had a bad dad, so did everyone, pretty much.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  Some of us had quite nice dads, actually.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  No, no, but back then, of course.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Some of us had gay dads who ran drama departments, yeah, and really cared about the kids.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Look what happened.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  And look what happens. Yeah. They've had a bad son. You get a bad dad or a bad son.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  So he is born Joseph Bizerionis G. Yugashvili, nicknamed Soso, Soso. Now, his mother is deeply religious, as everyone I imagine is, and his father, who we should focus on, is called Beso, and he's a cobbler.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Now, he is born.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  He works at Timson's.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  Hey?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  He works at Timson's.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Timson's. Yeah, yeah. So he's an ex-convict who has got some responsibility and is really getting his life together, actually. They're very friendly in Timson's.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yes, great.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  But it is a faux pas to ask them how long they served them for what.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  Can you fix my car key? Also, what did you do?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why, why are you cutting my keys?

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Why are you a cobbler? Yeah? Yeah? What did you do? Was it rape or murder? Come on, come on, come on, come on. I want to know. I want to know who's making my shoes. Yeah?

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Where'd you get those tats?

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. Can I shake your hand? So he's born with webbed toes, young Stalin. Again, how important is this?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Yes, we don't know. This is.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  No.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  But you could probably do, if people were more interested in Stalin like they are in Hitler, like this was Hitler, there would be a documentary about how.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Hitler's toes, Hitler's feet. Yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  But Stalin does not have as much media about him, to be honest. He doesn't have the same apparent charisma.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  And this is why I found him initially quite dry and off-putting.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  You're right. There is a lack of charisma, a lack of media mastery, a dryness. Obviously, there's a bureaucracy to the communist thing that there isn't, you know? Hitler's Gag and pressing, it's Klopp. It's part, part, the other thing.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  A bit Hollywood. This is, this is maybe a bit more art house. You're sort of, you have to look for the narrative within.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  I don't want to work when I'm watching a film.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  All right? I watch a film because I've finished my work. Yeah?

• 17:07Speaker 01

  So when you're researching dictators, you don't.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  I don't want to find, I don't want to work to like the guy. Yeah? I just want to watch a reel of Hitler and go, I get him. I get it. I get why they liked him.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  So, yeah, smallpox at six, which leaves him permanently pockmarked. Now, obviously, he'd retouched all his photos, so you wouldn't see that. He's very short and he's thick-set.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Right? He's a short king. He might even be smaller than Napoleon was.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  I think he is, because Napoleon was 5'6", he's 5'4".

• 17:34Speaker 00

  He's short and he's boxy, so he's, yeah, he's, he's cos, cos stuff.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  Stalin's dad is probably the most impactful figure in his early life because he basically is an alcoholic who beats the fuck out of them because his cobbler shop runs into decline.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Because he's on the piss.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  He's on, well, what happens when a rapist cobbler in Timson's, when Timson's folds? The rapist is just on the streets.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  And society is actually at risk. So we must all go to Timson's, use it or lose it. You must go to Timson's for all your needs, otherwise.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  That's how Stalin happens.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  This, literally, a lot of rapists and murderers will be let out onto the streets. Now, two, two of his sons die, and so he turns to alcohol to celebrate, get the champagne out, double miscarriage. I'm so blessed. But his drinking is also exacerbated by there's a Georgian customer being paid in wine.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Right. Because they love wine, but they're wearing shit.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  But.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  But their wine is shit, though. So it's the oldest wine in the world, but it's crap.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  Well, that is, as you always say, people who invent things.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Because they don't, because they never innovate. They made the first bottle of wine, they go, well, that's brilliant.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Well done.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  There's no.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  There's no tweak it, they don't fine tune it. So I believe they're still.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Scottish toilets is the same.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Scottish toilets. They're still doing it in the ground, much like the Scottish are.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  I believe they make sort of cellars, the way the Indians make bread, they sort of hollow out a bit of thing and slap stuff underneath it.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  Egg shaped clay vessels called kevree. We did it on the wine series.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Traditional, maybe less traditions, actually. Maybe some more modern sort of.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Well, this is what Stalin does, you know. Anyway, so he beats his wife and his kids, does Stalin's dad, Beso. He once throws the young Stalin down so violently that Stalin urinates blood for days.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  So that'd be quite violent.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Where's this coming from, though? Who's saying, who's saying this? Where's this story come from? How do we know?

• 19:26Speaker 00

  The town knew him as crazy Beso.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  I'm Beso crazy.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  And.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  But that sounds like he's a bit more of a laugh, crazy Beso.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  Crazy Beso.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Crazy Beso is a good time.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Like Bez from Happy Mondays.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  This is what Stalin says in his memoirs, that his dad made him urinate for three days.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  This is what also needs to be coloured for his early life, because he's mythologised so much, it's trying to find the difference between building the great myth of him and the truth.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  So basically, his dad leaves when Stalin is, what, six, seven, something like that? Because he assaults a policeman.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Who had been rumored to be having an affair with his missus.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  And so he flees.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  And now Keke, because Georgian people are basically footballers, Brazilian footballers, is now a single mother. She's deeply religious in the orthodox sense.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  This is before she won the Ballon d'Or, right?

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Sorry, it's before Keke won the Ballon d'Or. We'll deal with Keke in a separate series.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  What an extraordinary life.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  One of the great Milan teams.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  She wanted Stalin to become a priest.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  But Stalin obviously is, you know, he's taking punishment from his dad. He has quite a warped idea of paternal love.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  So he's a bit of, he's a bit of a ruffian, a bit of an urchin.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  You know, he's a, he's sort of a proto gangster.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  So he set fires to, set fire to the orchard of a local prince.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  He leads a gang armed with knives and catapults. He terrorises shopkeepers by setting off explosives.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  He fires a catapult at a cow, which I, again.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Wanton anarchy.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  He's a laugh.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  You know.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  There's also that story that he, yeah, he crossed a, he was trying to impress a girl.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  And he crossed, he saw there was like an injured, like, young deer.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  And he just swam across a river, got to it, and then broke all its arms and legs and then its neck.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  And then the girl's like, ah, it's a bit weird. So he was, he was, he was developing his tone of voice.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Should have done the neck first.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he just thought it was calf, what did he say?

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Check this out.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Calf, not his neck, just his legs, and left it to die, yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  Oh, right, so he didn't break his neck. It was a calf.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  It was a calf, he said, check this out.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Broke his legs.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Snap, snap, snap.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that's a nick.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  It's a bit weird, yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  So he also pushed a younger boy into a river, claiming it taught him to swim.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  Which.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Which, that's very definitive, right? That's his view of his own children, that's his view of his entire country.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, definitely.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Because, you know, Stalin, when he becomes supreme leader, views himself as the father of the country, and he very much teaches his kids.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  He pushes Russia into a river.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and to be fair, the way he treats his kids is very similar to the way he treats, there's a consistency there.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  Well, we did with Stalin's children on the poaching, fascinating story. Yeah, he pushes the entire Russian nation into a river, and even though half of it drowns, he goes, well, you can swim now.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  So at age 12, he gets hit by a horse and carriage, which fucks his arm up.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  So this exempts him from military service, which is crucial.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  So maybe without this, he might have died.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Exactly, and he also can't. Yeah, because you were saying, part of the, the joy of Russian, of this period of Russian history is that it all is so random.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  And none of it seems predestined.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, this, this, this part of history, so much could have happened. There were so many moving parts, there was so much chaos, so much change. It's kind of fascinating who actually managed to grab hold of it. It feels like there's so many moments where it could have completely gone the other way. But yeah, what I like, he, he was injured, so he prevented him from dancing properly, but he was also, he had a beautiful singing voice, do you know that?

• 22:44Speaker 00

  Really?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  He had a gorgeous singing voice, and he would sing at weddings, this young Stalin.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think also, when he says it prevented him from dancing properly, I can imagine that he, maybe in another world, would have been a lovely.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  Musical theatre.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Musical theatre Stalin.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Stalin and musical theatre.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  But the injury put him on a different course.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  So he also was a poet, actually.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and not bad, not bad poetry.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  Well, supposedly, I, again, I don't know if the poems are good or not.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Our resident poet, the poet laureate of this podcast.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  Yes, do you want to read out Morning by Stalin, Charlie?

• 23:12Speaker 03

  The pinkish bud has opened, rushing to the pale blue violet, and stirred by a light breeze. The lily of the valley has bent over the grass.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Flower, oh my Georgia.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Let peace rain in my native land.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Now, because I don't understand subtext, is that a sex thing?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Bend me over the grass.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I think it's a celebration of.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  A pink bud opening.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  It's a nationalist poem about the beauty of the Georgian land, and trying to bring peace to it, I believe.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  But I would like that poem read over images of the famine in Ukraine, just the kind of, you know, there's two sides to every man, I guess.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Corpse is bent over a grass.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  If you can't handle me at my famine, you don't deserve me as a poet.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  That's why I don't trust poets.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  So now, after the crash, his dad, crazy Beso, comes back, kidnaps him and forces him to become, walk, to work in a shoe factory. So Stalin uses this in his mythology, saying, this is when I first encountered industrial capitalism.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Yes, he remembers the heat, the machines, the stuff, it was very, you know, influential.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  The smell of leather.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  And working with all the other rapists and timsins.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Yes, Charlie?

• 24:19Speaker 03

  What was your first encounter with industrial capitalism?

• 24:21Speaker 00

  I worked as a groundsman at the school my mum worked at in the summer holidays, and I fucking loved it.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Now, is that industrial capitalism?

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Well, there was machinery, and there was an old guy called Ray, he looked like a raisin, which we used to laugh about. And we had, it was eight till four, and there were, you'd have two hours of breaks within that. It was fucking brilliant, we used to drink tea and watch Jeremy Kyle, and then.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  And then we'd, you know, pool about, it's before health and safety really kicked off as well, so we'd like bum about, there's the big private school on like the back of a trailer, and we'd like fix up the tennis courts. The worst job, actually, this is my, this is, this is me, my experience of Stalin in the shoe factory, is there was one week where there was too many of us working, really. And so they gave us a job which was getting a dish scouring pad, and so they had a 50 metre Olympic swimming pool in the school. And behind the railing was all this scum, this algae they'd built up.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  So not just poor people.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Sorry, no, yeah, they were letting the state school next door use it. There's all this scum just lined up at the pool. And we had to shoot them all, no, we got a little dish, dish thing, and we had to, we had to go along the pool, scrubbing inside the railing, so it really hurt your knuckles, because your hand was basically trapped. They could have done it another way, but they basically just gave us all something to do, because there were too many of us.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Well, I believe this is sort of what Stalin was talking about.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Is that some people have, grew up in a shoe factory of rapists, and you were sort of gardening at your private school.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's chalk and cheese, really.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  I think the clearest depiction of it is the pie machine in Chicken Run, have you seen that? When she's.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Where it's like.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Mrs Tweedy's Chicken Pies.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  The cold face of like machine.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, the, the story of Mrs Tweedy's Chicken Pies is really about, you know, of fast, you know, farming and stuff like that.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  And when you're, when you're a kid, that definitely kind of.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  So that was your first experience of industrial capitalism?

• 26:08Speaker 00

  Watching Chicken Run.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, to be fair, yeah, it's quite a visceral experience for a young child to watch chicken.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Have you had any experience with industrial capitalism?

• 26:16Speaker 01

  I don't know, I, I did a work experience, well, like when I was a kid, I was sent to help in a care home where I reorganised this old bookshelf. And care homes are of course a response to industrialisation, they were made during the, so I guess there's that side to it, but it's not really cogs in a shit.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  I'm not a fucking boring woman with blue hair trying to finger.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  You're gonna get fingered, whether you like it or not.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, I've experienced industrial capitalism, yeah, I worked in a care home, which of course is a response to industrialisation, come here, you. Oh, disgusting. Anyway, so then his mum sends him to, oh no, some priests intervene and return him to some sort of seminary, but I really think we should, I don't care about the seminary. Russian Orthodox, who gives a fuck? He, he's, he's trying to be a priest for a bit.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  This is a very key part of his life, though, so. Yeah, because it takes him from being a rural Georgian peasant to being educated, and it's in this seminary that he reads loads and reads all the books that shape his whole life.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah? You know, like, he, the only, this is a key part of the story, right?

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, because he was accepted into priesthood, and that's the only way to become educated, that's the only way to sort of move up in the world. He was incredibly naturally smart child.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  And he found these banned books, which were Marxism.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  Hitler was writing banned books, I'll just say that. You know? Stalin's reading Hitler's writing.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  The bit I wanted to get to was where, so we did the seminary, reading all this stuff, but the key thing is that he encounters friend of the pod, Charles Darwin's theories on evolution. And this is what starts to undermine, undermine his faith in the church and pushes him towards Marxism. And this is the other thing that I think gets left out of the Stalin and Hitler comparisons, is that both Stalin and Hitler are using warped ideas of science to justify their means.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  What, what does, how does he use, because I thought his Darwinism was mainly just a rejection of God.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  It is, but in terms of what he finds in Marxism, he thinks Marxism is physics.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  And that it's like unavoidable, and so all these people.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  All these people are going to die because it's historical physics, it's what's going to happen. Hitler says the same things about biology, right?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  But, so I guess Marxism teaches you, historical protests will lead to a dictatorship, the proletariat, we just, all of history is leading towards this perfect utopia.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  I'm just going to fast forward this to get to there.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  And then Hitler is saying, inevitably, the white race will rule everything, because that's just inevitable progress of history.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Exactly, so it's two sides of the same coin.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  It's naughty science.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  So in, by 1898, he had joined Miss Amadassit, who is Georgia's major social democratic man. It's a group, okay, it's not a person.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is Borat if it was a drama.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Yes, which it is now, I think. I think they can't, he's trying to make all of it again, I think everyone's like, we want to see Borat's actual story.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Borat if it's kitchen sink.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Kitchen sink Borat.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Kitchen sink, yeah. Alan Bennett, but it's Borat.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  My wife.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  My wife comes through the window.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  I'm goner the castle.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Do not curse me, gypsy. But you can't laugh. It's trying to laugh, trying to, but it's Borat.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Do not curse me, gypsy.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Please. My wife.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  My wife.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  His wife believes him.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is in the Oscar sizzle reel where he's just nominated for best actor. My wife.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  Sacha Baron Cohen's there, just nodding. Yeah. Tear to his eye.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  So, when does he enter the revolutionary underground? May 1899. He's only 20. He fucks a seminary off and he becomes a full-time revolutionary. Now, this organisation is illegal because this is the sort of last era of the Tsar.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  So Marxism's gathering speed in Russia.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  But the Tsar is still in charge with his okrana, the secret police.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's many different secret police through every stage of Russian history and they're always doing the same shit, just for whoever's in power.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  Stalin remains in Tiflis, which is in Georgia, and starts working as a meteorologist.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  What?

• 30:07Speaker 00

  As the weatherman. Stalin, the weatherman.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  So what does that mean? What does he?

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Today, everyone hungry.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:14Speaker 00

  And this is when he adopts the name Kober.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Kober is a Georgian folk hero.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Is it?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Who, I think he fights back against a corrupt official who rapes someone. And that's why he took that name.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  Like Robin Hood.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Robin Hood, for Georgia.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Steals from the rich, doesn't give it to the poor, just takes it and the poor starve as well.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Everyone starves.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  Everyone starves. It's a lovely tale. And May Baron gets raped, probably.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Probably.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  He says probably.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  Probably. I don't know. You work it out. By late 1901, Stalin is in Batumi. And, you know, he's starting to get drawn to this figure Lenin. Who's this bald cunt I keep hearing about, right?

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Who's this Andres Iniesta sort of-esque figure?

• 31:00Speaker 00

  Why is everyone saying he's actually the best, you know? Why is he stealing focus from the front three?

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  This is also what I like about, sorry, about Stalin is that because he's not Lenin and Trotsky, right? Because he's not seen as the big thinker.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  Right. But yet he's the one that actually enacts communism.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's a great doer.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  There's an element of like, you know, we used to see those meetings of managers and it was like Pep, Klopp, Mourinho, Mareska, Arteta. Stalin's like Sam Allardyce.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  He's like, oh, just get rid of it.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  Get the ball, fuck off. Just kill him. Just kill everyone. Fuck off, kill him.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  But he is, he is much smarter than he lets on. It's just that he's got it.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Big Sam took Bolton into Europe.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  But at what, but at what cost?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Right. How many have had to starve for Sam to take Bolton into Europe?

• 31:50Speaker 00

  Exactly. You know, look what it did.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  I guess, yeah.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  Where Bolton now?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, he took agrarian Russia into the space age.

• 31:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, he took Bolton into Europe.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  20 years.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  Why is Yuri Jorka playing for Bolton, you know? Sam Allardyce is the Stalin of the Premier League. Anyway.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  So Stalin embraces the logic of the worse, the better.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Right. This feels very much key to the story. This is very Russian. The worse, the better. You have to really put yourself in the mind frame.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  That's on Russian teetotal. That's live, laugh, laugh. Die, hate, wank, I don't know.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Starve, cry, die.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  That's Russian kitchens. Yeah, that's kitch in Russia. Starve, cry, die. The worse, the better. Death is love. So he starts to favour confrontation and violent tactics. Is that because of his dad? We don't know. So he works at an oil refinery and this starts to lay the groundwork for a big strike. In 1902, there's a, I mean, there's lots of strikes and people are arrested. Anyway, Stalin avoids the fighting at this big demonstration and escapes.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  And he starts to, he starts to argue later after the strike, the only real power comes out of a long rifle.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  A bit horny.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. So he's starting, he's knocking about revolutionary circles. He is now, they're now watching him closely. He's arrested in 1902, sent to Siberia. And this is where we get the iconic headshot, the first, probably the most attractive headshot of a dictator, certainly until Saddam.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  You've got to remember, he's five foot four though. I just want people to bring that in. Like everyone's this fucking, you're getting a lot of middle-class mums saying, ooh, you know, I can have a little piece of Stalin. You have to remember, he's, now when you see that, you're like, is this a guy?

• 33:34Speaker 00

  He's wearing a fucking free Palestine rally thing as well.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Is this the kind of guy who's pinching bums in the Italian Mediterranean city? Do you know what I mean? A five foot four little guy.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Please.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. He looks like Zayn Malik X Factor. I want to say, what was that X Factor year where he had the fucking, can we get Zayn Malik up with, what would you even call this?

• 33:52Speaker 00

  Oh, that's real rapist stuff, that. That's Russell Brand stuff.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  That's a rapist scarf.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  They're very similar sort of vibes. What could have been. Yeah, like that is young Stalin. Look at that one with the big hat off.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  You're right. What happened to Zayn Malik?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  What happened to him?

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Was he in One Direction?

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was the first one to split off. He was sort of hoping to have a Robbie Williams-esque split off, but it didn't really work out for him. He's got a great voice though, Zayn. Like Stalin.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Much like Stalin. Much like Stalin. And he's also.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Stalin if his arm didn't get injured so that he could dance.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  Right. So there's the hot photo. Anyway, he's in exile in Siberia and there's a, there's a common theme here that he gets, he keeps getting sent to Siberia.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  He gets exiled nine times and escapes eight.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's pretty good.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  So he prefers drinking with the petty criminals rather than the actual political exiles because he's a guy. He's a bloke. This is why I like him.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  You know, he's hearing people talk about theory. It's like, fuck off. All right. There's no annoying women here to finger, right? I don't need this. I just want to hang out with the guys.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Where are those Timpson rapists like my dad? Let's hang out with them.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  I want to hang out with them, you know? If it's talking to the boring, blue-haired lot about fucking art house cinema or the Timpson, I mean, the Timpson guys lived alive. I want to hear what he's, what's he done? Yeah? Why are you copping my shoes? I want to hear your story, brother. Yeah? He went down for armed robbery, you know? Anyway, so he's, he tries, the first escape attempt, he basically doesn't even fucking have a coat and it's Siberia and winter.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  This is where you start the dramatic film, right? You have this, this frostbitten Stalin walking 50 miles and then realising that he's going to die.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  I forgot my coat.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Well, I feel that takes out of the drama.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  So that's the shot. It's him walking in the tundra. The camera pans in. I left my coat. And then he turns around and walks back. And people go, oh.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Well, I was thinking it was more like the opening to There'll Be Blood where you're starting to see, you know, the drama of him as a character, but yeah. I like the kind of the slow build. You're hearing the wind blowing and then you're.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  I forgot my coat. He looks down the power of the camera. I left my coat.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  And then he goes Stalin, title credits.

• 36:11Speaker 00

  And then walks back.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Anyway, so he travels 50 miles, the 4,000 mile journey before turning back.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  But this, it does sum up everything you need to know about Stalin, this story.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  He's a doer.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  He's a doer. I mean, that 50 miles in the freezing cold with just half a loaf of bread and a thin coat is pretty nuts.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. So.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  And that's why he doesn't mind sending people to their death so much. Cause he was like, well.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Well, I escaped. Yeah. Put yourself up. Right. So we need to get to him meeting Lenin. So by 1904, he's managed to black his way back to Georgia from exile. In December 1905, at a conference in Finland, these two huge figures meet for the first time and they're both a bit disappointed in the other one.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:55Speaker 00

  Because Stalin's been hearing about this guy.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  And he's like, oh.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Like he's this new Jesus sort of figure.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  And he's a bit like, oh.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, because he does look like a bank clerk.

• 37:03Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, he looks like he works at NatWest.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  I'm Lenin. Oh, fuck. Yeah.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  But Lenin supposedly, when he meets him again, 80 months later, has completely forgotten his name.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  So they're both kind of not that.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  He was described as like a grey blur, like he was just incredibly forgettable with a thick Georgian accent. He doesn't really fit in with the Russian intellectual class.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  Now, but he starts becoming more useful to Lenin and the Bolsheviks because the Bolsheviks are funding themselves through basically armed robberies.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  And Stalin is essentially a crook.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Lenin starts to value Stalin's willingness to do this violent, nitty gritty. So there's a big thing which we talked about in the Russian Revolution series called the Tiflis Bank robbery, which is an insane. I mean, it's like the main square in the capital of Georgia almost, or one of the, one of the big cities. 1907, a huge coach carrying money to the state bank is attacked with guns and homemade bombs. Forty are killed.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Forty people were killed. That's a lot of people.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  I mean, you know, you don't even get 40 people in a terrorist attack nowadays.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  These days.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  These days. These days. Prius, Promenad.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  When I was growing up, that would be every other week.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  Six, seven at most. Yeah. Call that a terrorist attack.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Ballards up in the Christmas markets and now it's like two or three.

• 38:18Speaker 00

  Two or three max, you know? Fucking nowadays it's just Narwhal, Tusk, London Bridge. Couple, right? Forty.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

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• 38:57Speaker 00

  They escape with the equivalent of nearly four and a half million pounds in today's money. So he then goes to Baku in Azerbaijan.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  And his gang continues to fund Bolshevism through the rackets, the robbery, kidnapping brothels. He's arrested again in Baku, into exile and then escapes again. This is a constant pattern. Now in 1912, he starts to use Stalin, man of steel.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  So steel is Stalin. So Elliot Stalin, our friend, the comedian Elliot Steele, Mark Stalin, his dad.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Huge leftists.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  They're both lefties who have like, who are on Radio 4. So it does, it's fine for you to say, oh, Mark Stalin's back on the Radio 4.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  Stalinism continues.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Spreading his trot bollocks.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah. The Stalinist capture of Radio 4 continues.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Of course, Mark Stalin, Elliot Stalin.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  So 1912 is when he becomes Stalin. Should we place 1912 for the listeners? 1912 is, well, do we know the exact month of 1912 that he starts calling himself Stalin? Because obviously the Titanic sinks in April 1912.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Yes, I was gonna say the Titanic.

• 40:03Speaker 00

  It's just before.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  So it's after the Titanic and it's before the suffragettes were jiu-jitsuing police officers with wedding cakes on their heads.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  I was gonna say it's after Franz Reichelt.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Oh, right, yeah.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  And before Liam Payne? Was he the right, was that the right one?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  So they're both two attempts to fly.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  And Liam Payne forgot his big trousers.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  I think. I don't really remember the ins and outs of the case, but I think he forgot to put his big trousers on.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Big One Direction episode, this, surprisingly.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  Huge, yeah. So now, a key moment in the Stalin story is February 1913. He's in St Petersburg looking for an underground base and he has this contact called Roman Malinowski, who's a Bolshevik leader. However, he's secretly one of the Okhrana's agents. And Malinowski invites Stalin to attend a fundraising dinner, which is a trap, and he's arrested.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  And this betrayal stays with Stalin, who becomes, will become one of the most paranoid men ever.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yes. Throughout the story, this betrayal stays with Stalin. It's hard to know which of the many betrayals.

• 41:10Speaker 00

  My dad beat me so hard, I pissed blood.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. Then everyone tries, in any story, they always try and pin it on something. I think it's the, just every week of his life, someone betraying him is probably where the paranoia comes from.

• 41:21Speaker 00

  So he is exiled for four years to Turukhan's Kryka.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Again, is this the ninth time he's been exiled then?

• 41:29Speaker 00

  Which is, now this is near the Arctic Circle.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Because this is his last exile.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  This is 1914.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  So he is, he kind of dodges World War One, partly through exile, but also I think he's medically unfit to serve.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:41Speaker 00

  So again, it's like, you know, the serendipity of it.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  So he remains there until the Tsarist regime collapses.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  But he was like, this is right in the Arctic Circle, who's in a hut for weeks on his own, circled with wolves.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  Just drawing wolves.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and apparently Churchill was talking to him about the split up of Europe. And Stalin wasn't listening, he was just drawing a big wolf.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  So clearly, you know.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  He loves wolves.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  I think the wolves that represent the fear and paranoia is what I was gonna go for.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Well, he loves, you know, I guess he loves wolves. That's a better read on that, maybe.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  Well, you know, as I say again, I'm not a libtiger trying to finger, right?

• 42:18Speaker 00

  So, yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  He loves wolves, is what you want to say. He loves wolves.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  I don't like subtext. Stalin draws wolves, he likes wolves. Next.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  He doesn't view his political opponents as wolves circling his hut. No, he loves wolves.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  No, he just likes wolves. That's why he's drawing wolves. He's a simple man, yeah?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  He loves wolves.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  He loves wolves. Take anything away from this episode, listeners, is that Stalin fucking loved a wolf, he did. He loved them. You know, because they're a bit like dogs.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Yes, but bigger and scary.

• 42:52Speaker 00

  Bigger and fluffier.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  So, in March 1917, the Tsar has fallen and Stalin travels to Petrograd and expects a welcome at the station, but he doesn't get one.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  And this is the key moment.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  This is the key moment.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  And this is why he spends it. He spends, this is a very sad moment. He's expecting, you know, it's your mum not picking you up from school and it stays with you. My mum got picked up late by my grandma. She still brings up, she was six years old. It's a defining memory.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Fucking hell.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, this sort of, this is key and he's expecting his mates to be there and no one's there.

• 43:29Speaker 00

  He stood up. He gets off the train. Where's my friend?

• 43:36Speaker 00

  That's the second scene in the film.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  I forgot my friend.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  I forgot my friend. Oh, no. Yeah, he gets back on the train.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  I do like a Stalin biopic where everything's serious apart from his voice. So everything's just filmed crudely, dramatically. Oh, no, my wife, my, my god.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  People are starving. Oh, you're hungry? Get the mowlet.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  I am king of the castle. This is what he gets. Look at me, king of the castle.

• 44:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, now Lenin later gets a huge revolutionary welcome.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, very famous.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  So, and this again, it's starting to set a grip of a grudge, the paranoia, the self pity, I suppose. Now, this is a really.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  To be fair to him, he doesn't let the self pity come out in bitterness. He's a watcher. Because he's the ultimate, he's the Tom Wambsgamer of this story, right?

• 44:21Speaker 00

  At this point, he is, yeah.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  He realizes being underestimated is his key asset.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Because everyone's doing, people like Trotsky are doing such flowery speeches, they're making such a big show.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Wanker.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  But yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, carry on, sorry.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  No, no, no. We should, we should just recap. We have a five parter on the Russian Revolution, which we would.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  It's one of my favourite series.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  Which we really recommend downing before you get onto this, but you have these three central figures. You have Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky. And Trotsky, as you say, is in the shadows, Wambsgaming it.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  Right. Whereas Lenin's the big brain.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, what's interesting about all three of those figures, they're all very intelligent, but they're also all men of action, to be fair to them. As much as there's a lot of flowery language, Trotsky in the Civil War is a great military commander. They've all got different skillsets. But Trotsky is like a, was like a freak prodigy genius. So he was born into a Ukrainian farming family with 12 siblings. And he was just like a freak genius.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Oh, my god.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  So he doesn't respect anyone he speaks to.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  Punchable face I've ever seen.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  He looks down on everyone. What?

• 45:28Speaker 00

  My liege. He's my liege.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  He also, he looks down on everyone.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  What's the matter, Lagerboy? I'm afraid you might taste something.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. He drinks a lot of craft. He's a hobgoblin.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Oh, he's a fucking hobgoblin, this guy. The size of his head, the pasne and the most annoying beard ever.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  And it's his fatal flaw, is what eventually means that he doesn't take power, is because he's such a hobgoblin.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  He's so annoying.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  He calls everyone that could have been his ally a Lagerboy.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  And that was the problem. And that's the tragic flaw of most hobgoblins.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Is they don't have, they don't have anyone to drink hobgoblins with because they think everyone else is a Lagerboy.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  So they just drink it by themselves. Yeah? Yeah. Some of us like Lager. Lager's great.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Lagerboys hang out as well.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, because they're with the boys. Lager is social.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  The hobgoblin.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  Hobgoblins is antisocial, right?

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, solitary creatures, the hobgoblins.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, so Trotsky is this.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  And Stalin's a Lagerboy, to be honest.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  This is why I like him, all right? That's why I don't like Trotsky. This is why I like, the more I hear about Stalin, the more I like him. Because, you know, relative to the other communists people are like in this story, he's my favourite.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  He's the Lagerboy in a room full of hobgoblins.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, he is. So Trotsky's a cosmopolitan intellectual.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  I don't think there's anyone I've wanted to punch in the face more.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Alive or dead.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, the guy who looks like me.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  So Trotsky thinks Stalin is a bureaucratic mediocrity. Calls him comrade index card, right? Savage wit from Trotsky.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  Yeah? I bet he says that and he turns to some girls and was like, huh? Yeah? Comrade index card over there?

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  But Stalin, now, when does, is Stalin general secretary at this point? He, no, he's not. So they take power, right, the three of them, and then World War One ends and, listen, the Russian Civil War is insane.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  And we can't really.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Civil wars are always horrific and bleak, but the Russian ones, it's tenfold. It's just.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  Also, the different things that happen. I mean, interestingly Churchill and the Brits are fighting with the, is it the Whites?

• 47:32Speaker 01

  The Whites, yeah.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  Against the Reds? They're funding, yeah.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  So in many ways, it's a continuation of World War One in some regard. Anyway. Stalin and Trotsky, the real story, the critical one, is that Stalin and Trotsky are rivals during the Civil War. And that intensifies because Trotsky commands the Red Army.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  He helps set up the Red Army. Yeah.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what they would say. Yeah, and.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Louis van Gaal's Red Army. Have you got that? Have you seen that, right?

• 47:59Speaker 00

  No.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Louis van Gaal's Red Army, look at this. So this is Louis van Gaal, who's got quite an unfortunate Dutch sort of guttural accent. This is him.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  One of the weakest chins in football?

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Yes, one of the weakest chins in football, and that's probably where the guttural noises come from. Look at this. So this is him trying to fit in with the new fanbase and it just comes out a bit strong, that one. So this is Trotsky gene people up with his oratory skills.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  Louis van Gaal's Red Army. Come on, Louis, can we have one from you? Louis van Gaal's Red Army.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, the Dutch and the lack of chin, really.

• 48:36Speaker 00

  But I imagine that's what Trotsky's saying, because he's so like, people say he's electrifying public speaker, but he's like, fuck it, who's brought that guy? Why is he in charge? Anyway, Stalin does not trust the former Tsarist officers that Trotsky wants to use to help command the Red Army. So what Stalin does is that he's in Saritsin, which has then become Stalingrad. He arrests the former Tsarists without trial, using the Cheka, which is the name of the new Okhrana secret police. And so 400 Tsarist officers are imprisoned on a barge in the Volga with one toilet, and they eventually, they all starve or get executed.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  Which is a blessing if they all had one toilet. One toilet to 400. It's like Charlie's house.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Well, Charlie doesn't need the toilet, so he'd be fine.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  He just chucks out the window, doesn't he? Anyway, so Trotsky becomes furious, demands Stalin gets removed, blah, blah, blah. He complains about Trotsky. Trotsky and Stalin are bickering to Lenin, right? And eventually Stalin gets recalled. There's a bit about the Polish campaign in 1920, when they're basically both arguing over whether to attack or to withdraw.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  I'd just say during the war Stalin knocks a lot of people off. What he's good at is organising a power structure that is unified and with one head. So in this, in the civil war, he's obsessed with killing people, basically, which is his management style. A management style.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  Well, yes, it's a robust management style, you'd say, you know. Everyone has to handle HR differently. Stalin does it very robustly. So the key moment is in April 22. He becomes the General Secretary of the Communist Party. Now, this is because Lenin is starting to get a bit ill. The civil war's been won.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  It's the roaring twenties.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  It's the twenties. Not in Russia, it's not. So Lenin, like the day-to-day stuff Lenin can't do anymore. Right. So Stalin does this, and what he, this is when he really wamsgams it, because he realises that many people think this role's a bit boring, but he's like, I control the appointments, I control who I appoint to roles, I can control who's in the room. And so suddenly, he builds this fleet of people who owe their careers to him. And so he's starting to inspire loyalty. And also, he speaks in plain language, whereas the other cunts are all fucking, you know. Dialectical materialism, fuck off, just speak normally.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  This is so clearly come from personal experiences, you in a kitchen in Bristol.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's one person I'm thinking about, who I'm still friends with, and I try and avoid talking to politics about, because this is just fucking, stop using shit words, it's a party. Yeah? Anyway, I have written a book. Anyway, in May 1922, weeks after becoming General Secretary, Lenin has a stroke, and he is paralysed, and he can't really speak. And then a second stroke hits him in the stomach, there's a second stroke, and Stalin becomes, suddenly Lenin's linked to the outside world. Can we get a photo up of Stalin and Lenin when he's ill? So Stalin's-

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Lenin's like in Breaking Bad, the guy who's flicking the bell.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  And when he's seeing that Stalin's gonna take over, he's like.

• 51:49Speaker 00

  So can I just say that that face is what Georgians look like, damn it. Yeah, so this is, yeah, that's Stalin in the chair. Now, there's a moment where Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krybskaya, is passing Stalin information, no, is passing Lenin information. And so Stalin regards this as interference, because the medical team had said, don't, he can't work, he's fucked. And so he confronts her by telephone in 1922, and then-

• 52:19Speaker 01

  And he's horrible to her.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  He's really mean, but he's a bloke.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  He's really mean.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  He's shit love.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  But you don't, nah, but you don't mean someone else's wife like that.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  Nah, he's a winding-necking love, would you? Right? He's fucked. He doesn't need this. He doesn't, he doesn't need you going at him as well. He's just taken power. And you're having a go at him.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  He talks about, you know, Lenin shagging other birds, it's a lot, it's a lot.

• 52:38Speaker 00

  So then Lenin then turns against Stalin, because, you know, he's whipped by his wife. And so it all gets to a head when in, on the 5th of March 1923, he dictates one of his final letters to Stalin, demanding that he apologise to Krybskaya, or he'll break everything off with him. You have been so rude as to summon my wife to the telephone and use bad language.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Ah, come on.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  It goes without saying, there was being done against my wife, I consider having been done against me as well. I ask you therefore to think it over, whether you are prepared to withdraw what you've said, and to make your apologies, or whether you prefer the relationship between us should be broken off.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 53:13Speaker 00

  So basically Stalin's just sworn at his wife down the phone, and Lenin won't have it.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  And then he does the most passive-aggressive apology ever.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, I'm sorry if she took offence.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sorry that you feel that way, is what he says, basically.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  I was just saying, like it is, I'm a straight shooter, right? Your wife can't handle it, right?

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Sorry that I'm a laugh, it is fucking-

• 53:29Speaker 00

  No, I genuinely have used that excuse before.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Really?

• 53:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  When you get told off for the way you treat, speak to Amanda's friends?

• 53:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, there's one moment where I-

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Your husband's cheating on you.

• 53:38Speaker 00

  No, I made a-

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Sorry that I'm a laugh.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  I made a joke, I made a joke about a friend of Amanda's love life, and then-

• 53:45Speaker 03

  To her?

• 53:46Speaker 00

  To her face, yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  What was the joke?

• 53:47Speaker 00

  I won't, I won't go into the details, but then it turned, but then she went and cried, and then Amanda had a go at me, and I was like, well, I'm sorry your friend's not a laugh. I genuinely said that. It was after our Shepherd's Bush show.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Were you sorry?

• 53:58Speaker 00

  No.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  So you weren't sorry that her friend's not a laugh?

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, I'm sorry her friend's not a laugh. That's what I'm sorry for, right?

• 54:04Speaker 01

  I'm sorry for you.

• 54:05Speaker 00

  I stirred a girl, I'm sorry to take that joke, yeah. I am sorry.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  It's heartbreaking.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Right. It's one of the saddest stories I've ever heard.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  I'm sorry that one of your oldest friends can't take a fucking joke. Anyway, not to bring domestic matters into the podcast, but it's, it's an argument that has quite a long tail. Anyway, what was it, Charlie?

• 54:25Speaker 03

  Have you ever had to give anyone a telling off for being rude to Amanda?

• 54:31Speaker 00

  No, Amanda can handle herself. Yeah. She can handle it, she can more than handle herself. If anything, I've got to apologise to people for what Amanda said, and, and the accent in which she said it, quite often. Amanda, we're at the school gates, please. Would you leave your alter egos at home?

• 54:47Speaker 00

  I'm not even joking. So Lenin has a huge stroke on the 10th of March, and this is, is this his final stroke, pretty much? Fourth, fourth stroke takes him out, and he dies of a cerebral haemorrhage on the 21st of January 1924. He's only 53.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  Now, by this point Stalin has been writing, Lenin's been writing letters saying, Stalin needs to fuck off, he's too crass, and he's rude. And it's not a cerebral hemorrhoid, Charlie, it's not piles on the head, he's not got head piles.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  In a way.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  Go on.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  In a way, that's what-

• 55:19Speaker 00

  You look like you've got head piles.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Because of this mask.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  Fucking hat, yeah. So now, this is, this is key, now Stalin is General Secretary, it's his job to arrange the fucking funeral, right? So now Lenin-

• 55:34Speaker 01

  The key thing, this is, this whole story is such a good lesson in how to take power. You've got all the checklists, right? One of the key things, you need to be in charge of organising the previous leader's funeral. That's like, that gives you so much control.

• 55:47Speaker 00

  It's what Gaddafi does, isn't it?

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  You know, and so Lenin's missus is like, let me bury him. Stalin's like, I'm gonna embalm him. And as we've always said, we're a huge embalming podcast.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  We hope to be embalmed.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  And again, one of the reasons I like Stalin, he's like, I'm gonna force the issue, we're having him embalmed, that's the end of it. Put my foot down, we're embalming him, right? So he also tells Trotsky that the funeral's another day.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Which is the key moment, because Trotsky's his key rival.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, it's on Saturday, mate, yeah, yeah.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  And he says, it's not just, it's not just that.

• 56:18Speaker 00

  See you there, mate, yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  It's better than that. He tells Trotsky that you're really struggling with your mental health. He says you're stressed. He says, on me, don't worry about it, I'm gonna pay for a two-week hunting trip in Siberia, so that you can relax, just take it, put your feet up. And then, not only is Lenin's funeral happening while he's doing it, but everyone's like, well, Trotsky doesn't give a fuck, he's on holiday.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  Awesome.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  Stalin's like, yeah, fuck it, I told them the funeral was today.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Right for some, fucking hell.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  So now, he still hasn't fully consolidated power, because there's so many bureaucrats. This is what I find a bit dizzying and a bit, it's off-putting, a lot of this stuff.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  It becomes a troika, which is a three-person leadership, with him, Zinonev and Kamenev.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  Zinoviev and Kamenev.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so those three are a troika in charge as an interim sort of group for the next four, five years.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, the key thing to say is that, just before Lenin dies, he starts to take the foot off the gas of the collectivisation and industrialisation, saying, we can't force socialism on this, we have to take our time. So what Stalin does, I think-

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Which gives a flavour of what his leadership might have been like.

• 57:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. What Stalin does, I think, is that he first defeats the left of the party? Or is it the right?

• 57:34Speaker 01

  I mean, he's the left of the party, to be honest.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  No, but there's someone, he, the people who, oh, fuck it, I can't remember who it is.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  There's moderates.

• 57:42Speaker 03

  Doesn't matter, I don't think it matters.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  Basically, he defeats the people who were against, who were saying Lenin wasn't moving fast enough. He quashes them, and then what he does is that he takes their arguments and use them to quash Bookerin, who is on the right of the party. And so he basically uses the left to defeat the right, then the right to defeat the left, whatever. So that by 1929, essentially, the two big players are Stalin and Trotsky, and Trotsky is exiled to Kazakhstan in 1928. So he then will settle in Mexico, and Trotsky will continue to publish books criticizing Stalin, but-

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Because Trotsky's a celebrity, he's got international acclaim, he was much more involved in the revolution, the civil war, but he's pissed everyone off. People like Stalin, because Stalin's kept his mouth shut, and they don't know what's hiding underneath Stalin. But Trotsky, apparently a lot, closest friends of Trotsky says, reflectively, he never asked me a question about me once.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, in my whole life.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  So these are all lessons about how to take power. Stalin, who I would not say is like a, exactly like the most loving guy, he remembered people's birthdays, he like, sorted people out with fixing their fridges and stuff, when they got new apartments in Moscow. Like, he just, little details like that.

• 58:57Speaker 00

  I'll do that for you, mate.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Don't worry about that. So, you know.

• 58:59Speaker 00

  Now Stalin's a nice guy, isn't he? He didn't have to do any of that.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  You know, there's genuinely a lot of life lessons about getting power in any field from these guys.

• 59:06Speaker 00

  People say that when Trotsky spoke in meetings, they could understand every third word, where Stalin, you knew-

• 59:11Speaker 01

  He was Russell Brand-ing it.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  He was. Trotsky is brand, he definitely does.

• 59:17Speaker 00

  But what do you mean though? What does stop mean in a metaphysical sense? You know, when you say stop having sex with me, what are you actually saying in the grand scheme of things?

• 59:25Speaker 01

  In the great scheme of things, you know, yes, no. What do these words mean? They're just linguistic ways of us understanding the cosmos.

• 59:31Speaker 00

  By 1929, Stalin has seized power. Okay, it is one of the most extraordinary seizures of power.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  I think we've seen, you know, other dictators, they don't have to work for it quite like Stalin does.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  And it's so methodical and it's over such a long period of time.

• 59:45Speaker 00

  He seizes power through admin.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  It's remarkable. He is the head of, uh, he's basically done a coup within a coup.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:52Speaker 00

  And he now has more people under his control than probably anyone else in Europe at this point. So we're gonna, we're gonna end this episode here. In the next episode, how will he use that power?

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Five-year plans. Ladies, we're gonna talk about agriculture. Okay, you may wanna duck out for the next episode until you've got a new pair of pants.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Don't eat either because it's gonna be a hungry one.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  It's a hungry episode, next one. Yeah. The entirety of this four-part Stalin series is on the Patreon, where we'll also be doing episodes on Stalin's children. And friend of the pod, a good man, uh, Beria.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Levindar Beria. Who's maybe one of the, the great rapists of all time. Great's the wrong, great in the sense of...

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  Capital G, capital R. Great rapists of all time.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  Grot. The Grot.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  The greatest.

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  The greatest. That's on the Patreon, for those who subscribe, where we are, we are bigger than Hamas. We are bigger than ISIS. Charlie, how big is Hezbollah? You know, we're not yet at the Taliban. How big is Hezbollah? Fifty thousand. Fifty thousand? Fuck, bigger than Hezbollah.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Bigger than Hezbollah, take that.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  And they know it.

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  Take that Hamas, take that ISIS.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  They are recruiting.

• 1:00:58Speaker 00

  Take that Hezbollah.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Because they know that we're growing so big.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  So now all of these, uh, you know, Iranian proxy forces are recruiting.

• 1:01:06Speaker 00

  Next episode, we'll deal with, uh, the hungry stuff. Uh, and so join us on Patreon to get all of it now. Uh, from all of us here at FinVas History, see you next time.

• 1:01:33Speaker 04

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• 1:01:53Speaker 02

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