Human Rights Are Red Tape | Stalin: Famine (Part 2)

Stalin Eliminates Clarkson and sends Caleb to the Gulag Stalin: Famine (Part 2) 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 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 Chapters; 00:00 - Man-made Famine 06:01 - Manifesting Industrialisation 10:41 - Charlies Gulag 13:29 - U-grain? Ukraine 17:45 - eliminating Caleb and Clarkson 23:52 - Human life is too important 26:04 - Collectivisation 29:00 - We’ve over done it 34:48 - Everyone is Albert Fish 36:36 - Cheer up love 40:23 - What I don’t eat in a day 46:35 - Things can only get better Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com/switch.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com.

• 0:46Speaker 03

  Does checking your bank statements feel like digging through a dusty attic full of forgotten subscriptions and old free trials? Experian can help take the pain out of cancelling by handling it for you. Think of it as Operation Get Your Sanity Back. Over 200 subscriptions are cancelable. So get started in the Experian app and see how much you could save. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. See experian.com for details. Experian.

• 1:27Speaker 04

  Welcome back to FinVasus History. Elisha Gold is here.

• 1:31Speaker 05

  All you have to be made is only game.

• 1:33Speaker 04

  And it's part two of the Stalin story. So we left off Stalin had risen to power. He had, he'd been by Lenin's side as he had a series of strokes. And thankfully he'd got rid of Trotsky.

• 1:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. This is what I'd do to you, by the way.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:51Speaker 05

  If you were ailing, I think I'd Stalin it.

• 1:54Speaker 04

  You think?

• 1:54Speaker 05

  You'd be begging to make sure that I don't, you know, take over. But I'd be just, you know, you can't speak. You're Elvis on the toilet.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. But I can eat though.

• 2:04Speaker 05

  Well, I'm feeding you.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:08Speaker 05

  And I'm slagging a man.

• 2:10Speaker 04

  I'm ringing the bell going, no, no, no. He's just gonna make this podcast. He's just gonna rank ChatGPT dictators. All it's gonna be is ranking. He can't do this.

• 2:16Speaker 05

  I'm calling Amanda a cow.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  That's my job.

• 2:22Speaker 05

  But yeah, this is the famine episode. And I think in the kind of.

• 2:25Speaker 04

  No, in all seriousness, this is the famine episode.

• 2:27Speaker 05

  But.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  What a U-turn that was.

• 2:29Speaker 05

  With the sort of naughty history, dictators is your sort of first step in. But then I think famines, it then goes genocide, then it goes famines for the kind of Wikipedia scrolls. I don't know. Would you find that for the long kind of male?

• 2:44Speaker 04

  A man-made famine.

• 2:45Speaker 05

  A man-made famine, sure.

• 2:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47Speaker 05

  Maybe, yeah, natural ones less interesting.

• 2:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:50Speaker 05

  But I guess, yeah, I'm just talking about those long scrolls where you first, first realised.

• 2:54Speaker 04

  Phoebe's just written never a woman-made famine. Extremism's got to stop.

• 2:58Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 2:58Speaker 04

  All right?

• 2:58Speaker 05

  She's a terrorist.

• 2:59Speaker 04

  Extremism has to stop.

• 3:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:01Speaker 04

  Woman-made famine.

• 3:02Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  Every night's a woman-made famine. It's called girl dinner.

• 3:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:05Speaker 04

  You don't fucking eat.

• 3:06Speaker 05

  We don't see gender, so.

• 3:09Speaker 04

  Yes. No, it's never a woman-made famine. But the whole reason it's a famine is that men are starving. Because men don't starve. They feed themselves because they're competent beings.

• 3:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:20Speaker 04

  Women, every day they're famine. It's a self-faming all the time.

• 3:24Speaker 05

  Autoerotic self-famineation.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  Exactly. You know, as we've said many times, the suffragettes, it was just trying, you have to eat something, otherwise you'll die.

• 3:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  Idiots. Anyway, the reason this is a catastrophe is because lots of Ukrainian men starve.

• 3:38Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  Right, that's why it's notable. But you're right, famine is a big part of.

• 3:42Speaker 05

  You've done a big Wikipedia scroll on famine, surely.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  Man-made famines.

• 3:45Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:45Speaker 04

  Yes. Famine as a tool.

• 3:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. Naturally occurring famines I don't really care about.

• 3:49Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  You know? But of course, a man-made famine.

• 3:53Speaker 05

  But this is, this is male true crime, I feel. This is like, this is the long, the stories of how it builds and stuff like that. It feels it hits all the beats, but just differently to Jeffrey Dahmer. It's just on a, on a big scale, you know?

• 4:06Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly.

• 4:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:07Speaker 04

  So by the end of the twenties, Stalin is kind of lord of all he surveys.

• 4:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  Now he turns his attention to what he sees as the inadequacies of the Soviet state. Now, this is an absolutely phenomenal period of growth for the Soviet Union.

• 4:22Speaker 05

  This is where Burnham is right now, basically.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. On the brink of a man-made famine.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:29Speaker 04

  Okay. Which is why we have to act now and get rid of Burnham. Okay? You thought trust was bad. Wait till this guy. Yeah. He's gonna turn everything into Greg's.

• 4:38Speaker 05

  Right.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  That's his, that's his, he wants to requisition Pret and he wants to make it Greg's.

• 4:42Speaker 05

  Buckingham Palace is now Greg's.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  He's said nothing sacred. Yeah. Pret's gone. Pret's the kulaks.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. They killed the Pret class.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  The Pret class has been killed. That's me and you gone. Yeah. And now everyone's just a Greg's shopper. Yeah. They've had to collectivise Pret into one massive Pret and they burned that. Anyway. So what Stalin will do over the course of this episode, can we just take morality out of it?

• 5:06Speaker 05

  No morality for this Ukraine famine episode.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  Okay, allegedly. The, right. What Stalin does is phenomenal.

• 5:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  In that he takes an essentially an agrarian, pretty much a feudal society.

• 5:20Speaker 05

  Incredibly backward society. Huge, but backward.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. Over the course of 12 years, right? He has made them an, almost an atomic superpower.

• 5:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  I mean, it is remarkable.

• 5:31Speaker 05

  It's the fastest, I sent you a ChatGPT ranking.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  Yes, you did.

• 5:34Speaker 05

  It was a relevant one.

• 5:36Speaker 04

  It was, it was one of the best rankings you've sent.

• 5:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. It was fastest industrialisations of all time.

• 5:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:42Speaker 05

  And top was Stalin with this, which is the 12 years from 1928 to 1940 is the quickest industrialisation of all time.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Of all time.

• 5:51Speaker 05

  How did he do that? We're gonna find out.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it doesn't matter how he did it. The fact is he did it.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  Okay?

• 5:55Speaker 05

  And if you think about it, it ends in about 1940, just as Hitler invades Russia. Now, not only did he manage to do it in that extraordinary amount of time, if he hadn't have done it in that time, would they have been able to defeat the Nazis in Operation Barbarossa?

• 6:10Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 6:11Speaker 05

  You know, so maybe it could be, his biggest achievement seen by many is that he won the World War Two. And a lot of people say, well, how much is that him? Was he really a great leader? He lost so many men. Is he actually a great leader? But the actual credit he should be given is the fact that he industrialised so quickly that he made Russia be able to defend itself against another industrialised nation.

• 6:33Speaker 06

  Is the worse the better, just the greater good? The Nazis were defeated, right? But for the price of the Russia stuff, right? And therefore it's the greater good. He's doing the greater good.

• 6:48Speaker 06

  Whatever.

• 6:49Speaker 05

  Saying whatever. Saying whatever, as if I just said that.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  You, you reacted at the end of that, how we react. You went.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  You said that and I went, oh, fuck, he's saying, what the fuck is all of that? It was you.

• 7:05Speaker 05

  A bit weird.

• 7:07Speaker 04

  You went, anyway, is that the greater good? Oh, fuck.

• 7:10Speaker 05

  Who the fuck was that?

• 7:11Speaker 04

  It was you, it was your face, you fucking idiot. Right. So.

• 7:18Speaker 05

  But yes, the quickest industrialisation of all time.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 05

  By quite a distance, actually.

• 7:22Speaker 04

  Well, the next quickest is South Korea. It was 30 odd years, nearly.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  So 12 years, how do you turn the biggest country in the world to industrialise quicker than anyone's ever done before? Surely it's an easy job. Surely, maybe it's just a good can-do attitude. I don't know. What would you say drives industrialisation? Is there, what methods can you do? I guess it's having team spirit.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  You have to, there are some, you're right, you can't be too sensitive.

• 7:48Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  When you're industrialising at this scale.

• 7:50Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 7:50Speaker 04

  Okay, there's a lot of, you have to be.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  You have to reach targets.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  You have to, you have to reach targets. You have to set achievable goals and you have to reach them.

• 7:57Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  By any means necessary.

• 7:59Speaker 05

  It's important, goal setting is an important way of being productive, right?

• 8:02Speaker 04

  Manifesting. Cosmic ordering.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  Yes, okay.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  You know, Noel Evans writes on his hand what he wants to happen in his life.

• 8:08Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 8:09Speaker 04

  It's called cosmic ordering.

• 8:10Speaker 05

  Right.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  And then it shall be so because he's written it on his hand.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Yes, okay. So, yeah, he's manifesting, he's visual.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Vision boards.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  Vision boards.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  Lots of Pinterest boards in the Kremlin.

• 8:18Speaker 05

  So Stalin has a Pinterest board for his five-year plans.

• 8:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 05

  And the mass industrialisation of the Soviet Union. And I guess that is that turning it steel production, you know, from, from agrarian society, I guess.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 05

  Is it on his vision board, 5 million Ukrainians starving?

• 8:34Speaker 04

  No, no, because that's not part of the plan. That's, you know, that's a necessary by-product of industrialisation.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  As we will find, when Burnham eradicates the Pret class.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. And we're out, all out on the street, he'll be like, well, it was just necessary to get to where inevitably the world is going, which is where everything is Greg's.

• 8:51Speaker 05

  And as we have, as you've said, and which I think is an undeniable fact, any great achievement is done with some form of slavery.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  Any great industrial achievement.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Stand by it.

• 9:01Speaker 05

  HS2 is a great example of our lack of slavery.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  Red tape.

• 9:06Speaker 05

  This is what happens when you try and do a lot.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  You say slavery, I say red tape.

• 9:09Speaker 05

  Right.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  We can't slave people. Well, how am I meant to get anything done then? How am I meant to build fucking anything?

• 9:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  If you keep banning slavery?

• 9:17Speaker 05

  The truth is HS2 is trying to do an infrastructure project with human rights. That's what happens.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So what, what do you want? Britain, what do you want? Do you want to get to Birmingham in 40 minutes or not?

• 9:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  Because there's a lot of people wearing lanyards that aren't working.

• 9:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  Right? And they're also, they're mobilised because they're on scooters.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  All right? And they've kind of got a digger arm, exactly, because they've got one crutch, right?

• 9:45Speaker 05

  So they're incredibly mobile lanyard class.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  Devastating lanyard class, right? The British seaside cavalry.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  Requisition them.

• 9:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Okay, and force them to dig with their crutches, whatever. I don't understand how you build Hs2.

• 9:56Speaker 05

  Also, they could stand.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  They can stand up.

• 9:59Speaker 05

  Well, you know, they could stand.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, take the lanyard off and stand up, all right?

• 10:04Speaker 05

  They're just trying to get on benefit.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course they are.

• 10:06Speaker 05

  They're trying to climb up the ladder through their own.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  I'll tell you what, no one who's digging a pit actually has ADHD. Right? Because you're not allowed to, because you're digging.

• 10:14Speaker 05

  There was, interestingly, in the Holodomor, how do you pronounce that?

• 10:17Speaker 04

  Holodomor.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  Holodomor. I'm gonna say it wrong every time.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 05

  Not Kart door, that's very different.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  Very different. The opposite of the Holodomor is the Kart door. Show him the Kart door. Show him the Holodomor.

• 10:29Speaker 05

  But I'm just saying, there's no ADHD in the Holodomor.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  Absolutely not. Just, yeah, we'll get to the Holodomor. But basically, Holodomor is the Ukrainian famine.

• 10:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  I looked into this on ChatGPT because I was interested about the linguistics and the etymology of the words.

• 10:44Speaker 05

  You're a Gemini guy, let's be honest. And you don't like ChatGPT because you think they're feminine.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  It's a gay woman in ChatGPT, whereas Gemini is a bloke. So I asked Gemini about the etymology of the word Holodomor. Because I thought it's interesting that there's the Holodomor and the Holocaust. And I thought, is there any kind of linguistic root? Hol. Hol, hol, hol. Any holes are gold.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Right. And it turns out it's a complete coincidence, but.

• 11:13Speaker 05

  He says as if that's like, turns out it's a complete coincidence. All right.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  Well, I thought, if you're interested, if you're interested, which I know our listeners are, Holocaust is from the Greek, which means completely burnt. That's what it means.

• 11:26Speaker 05

  So like a ruined barbecue?

• 11:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 05

  Okay. You've Holocausted that flank.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  Whereas the Holodomor means very hungry, I think.

• 11:35Speaker 05

  Really?

• 11:35Speaker 04

  It's completely starving, something like that, right? So basically, the ideal barbecue is somewhere in between the Holodomor and the Holocaust, right? You can't have all your guests turn up and there's no food. Also, you can't serve them something that's completely burnt, right? So we're looking for a kind of middle, a middle area between the two.

• 11:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. Anyway, I'm an amateur linguist and I'll just show my working there.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.

• 12:12Speaker 07

  Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com/specialoffer.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Upfront payment of $45 for three month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com.

• 13:10Speaker 04

  What's this, Charlie? It better be quick. There's so much history to get through.

• 13:13Speaker 06

  It's me digging your trench.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  Why are you covered in poo? I don't actually, I don't need to ask that. I don't need to ask that. I imagine that's how you wake up.

• 13:21Speaker 05

  This is what a lot of the Gulags will be doing in this period.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  Why are you in your own Gulag in your spare time? Are you in a Gulag? Look at the trees. Where are you? Where are you?

• 13:29Speaker 06

  Argentina.

• 13:30Speaker 04

  Play that again. Why are you, why are you in a self-imposed Gulag in Argentina?

• 13:34Speaker 06

  It was horrible.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  What are you doing there?

• 13:36Speaker 06

  I was doing it to volunteer for a.

• 13:38Speaker 04

  For who?

• 13:38Speaker 06

  For a little sort of rapey farm man. He had, he had a really young girlfriend, then we had to leave.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  What's he gonna do with that pit that you're digging?

• 13:46Speaker 05

  What was it? Did you not ask?

• 13:47Speaker 06

  No, we got out of there. It was.

• 13:49Speaker 05

  Was it weird?

• 13:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was a bit much. My friends were like, I want to stay. And I was like, no, my friends all wanted to leave. And I was like, we have to stay.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  This is fucking insane.

• 13:56Speaker 06

  And then I got convinced that we had to leave. It was a bit much. There was bedbugs. There was like weird young girlfriends.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  How much stuff are you sitting on? It's this fucking archive of insanity.

• 14:05Speaker 05

  But it is relevant, to be fair, because this is what, this is what the Gulags did look like.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  I know, but why is he doing that? What year is this?

• 14:11Speaker 06

  2018.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  2018, he's in a Gulag in Argentina.

• 14:13Speaker 05

  See, you would have been a good, he would have been a good digger, I think, Charlie. As, as a sort of just nameless, faceless guy to just dig a hole. Charlie is built for that sort of work.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  Why have you got mud on your back?

• 14:24Speaker 04

  I don't know. Anyway, listen. So Stalin, in 1928, he throws Lenin's new economic policy out the window. And he says, we're gonna have five-year plans.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 04

  We're gonna, in five years, I want to achieve this, right?

• 14:35Speaker 05

  Everything is targets. Everything is goals.

• 14:37Speaker 04

  Targets is everything.

• 14:38Speaker 06

  Is this the origin of the five-year plan?

• 14:39Speaker 04

  Yes, that's what this means. That's what a five-year plan is.

• 14:42Speaker 05

  What's another five-year plan?

• 14:43Speaker 06

  Uh, get marriage?

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it's not that. Stalin's not made on a five-year plan. In five years, where do I want to be? I want to be married with kids. Okay? That's on my vision board.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  Oh, you mean when people just use that?

• 14:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's, yeah, that's a Stalinism.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  It's a Stalinist trope. Yeah. Targets, okay? Right. Wife at any cost. I will kill whoever it takes to get a wife.

• 15:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 04

  Two kids, a dog and a, and a lovely car that I'm leasing.

• 15:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. And a drive, so the insurance is cheaper. That's my five-year plan.

• 15:12Speaker 05

  Right.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I will kill a million Ukrainians to make it happen.

• 15:16Speaker 04

  So the targets he sets for the five-year plans are deliberately insane because he's, this is, as you said, a very backward country. So in 29, he starts this new five-day working week called the Nebrevieka, where different workers take their rest day at different times. So factories continuously operate, but everyone hates it, so he abandons it. Now, the.

• 15:36Speaker 05

  That seems all right. What do you mean, everyone hates it and he abandons it?

• 15:40Speaker 04

  They don't know what's coming, though.

• 15:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, but that seems like weird, like, that seems reasonable. Everyone's like, we don't like it. Oh, if you don't like it, then we'll start.

• 15:46Speaker 04

  There's no food. Yeah, well, fuck you then. You'd be hungry.

• 15:51Speaker 05

  Very reasonable from Stalin.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  The problem is that in order to basically, like, fast forward, you know, all they have is grain. That's the only thing they produce is grain.

• 16:01Speaker 05

  The breadbasket of Europe.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Is Ukraine, which rhymes with grain. That's why it's called that.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  You want the grain? Ukraine.

• 16:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 16:08Speaker 04

  That's the advertising for.

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Ukraine.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  You're grain? Ukraine. Anyway, so all they have is grain, so they, that's all they have to sell. What Stalin wants is he wants machinery.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:22Speaker 04

  He wants expertise. He thinks that, as we said in the last episode, Marxist physics or materialism, or whatever fucking word Trotsky came up with, is the endpoint is that everyone's in cities and the city, a working class factory worker, is the proletariat.

• 16:40Speaker 05

  Marxists don't like peasants. It's the same with Mao, same with Lenin.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Someone I go on common with Marxists.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  Because they view peasants as rural, small-minded and obsessed with owning land, right? Marxism is a theory that's written around the industrial proletariat. It's about factory workers. Because they have the ability to become class-conscious in a way that peasants can't.

• 17:01Speaker 04

  Because they're too disparate and stupid and thick.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Stupid and thick.

• 17:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  And it's, you don't collectivise like you do in a factory. And they're all just trying to own land and have a small holdings.

• 17:09Speaker 04

  Have a nice life.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 17:11Speaker 05

  And have holdings. So that's why both Mao and Stalin, with their kind of grain thing, part of it is to sort of get rid of peasants as a class.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  Exactly. So that he thinks that everything will get, is get us to where we're all in cities. So basically, fuck the peasants, fuck the countryside. So he starts selling.

• 17:30Speaker 05

  To be fair, yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 04

  Fuck them. Yeah. He sells grain in order, did someone just fart? Did you just fart, Charlie? What was that noise?

• 17:38Speaker 06

  I actually don't know. I swear on the Bible.

• 17:40Speaker 05

  No, that was a notification, I think.

• 17:42Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 17:43Speaker 06

  My arse is notified.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  There's an introduction though.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  There's a poo coming.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  Your phone just got a message, poo coming.

• 17:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. His arse has notified the road that he needs to shit.

• 17:54Speaker 04

  Smart arse. You've got a link from your arse to your phone telling you when your poo coming. Because your arse, your arse is so baggy, it doesn't register farts. You've got to have some notification that tells you. Right. Please.

• 18:05Speaker 05

  Please, you've got a famine to get through.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  You've got a famine to get through. Can you stop farting? Right. So Stalin's solution is to basically finance industrialisation by selling out the farmers. Okay? So.

• 18:20Speaker 05

  So Clarkson would be livid.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Oh, Clarkson would hate this episode. Yeah. Clarkson and Caleb.

• 18:26Speaker 05

  This is the opposite of Clarkson this.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 04

  But Caleb is a kulak.

• 18:30Speaker 05

  Right. Yes, he is.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  Right. So grain is taken to feed the workforce. And what he does is he buys the state requisitions the grain at artificially low prices. So the peasants don't have any food and they don't have the money for the food.

• 18:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 04

  And what he does is he feeds the workers with their state-sponsored grain meal. That's all they get. Bread, I guess.

• 18:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  What are they eating in Soviet?

• 18:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, what's the, what is the grain? Does grain just become bread?

• 18:58Speaker 04

  Must do.

• 18:59Speaker 05

  Because it's all grain. So is that all just bread?

• 19:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, must be.

• 19:02Speaker 05

  Because everything's about grain.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is.

• 19:04Speaker 05

  It's not any other seeming food source.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  Like fish or cabbage. Where's that?

• 19:08Speaker 06

  Grain is good, though.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, I know, but we just, is this all about bread?

• 19:11Speaker 05

  Yes. Surely there's other stuff to.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  Most Soviet systems rely on dark rye bread, potatoes and cabbage supplemented by symbol porages.

• 19:18Speaker 05

  But why is there not a potato famine? Like in Ireland? And in many ways, Ukraine is Russia's island.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  It is in many ways. Yeah. You know, the Ukrainians, Ukrainian comics don't need jokes.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  Because they're just charming, aren't they?

• 19:35Speaker 04

  So grain, basically, they also sell grain abroad so that they can get hard foreign currency, which they then purchase machine tools, industrial equipment.

• 19:45Speaker 05

  Basically, Stalin looks at Britain and France. He's like, well, they're industrialised. We need to get there. How they've become industrialised, they've exploited their colonial empire.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 19:53Speaker 05

  We don't have a colonial empire. We just have a massive country.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  We've got a bunch of.

• 19:56Speaker 05

  So instead, he's treating his own country like Britain treats India. That's the whole idea, is that basically realise.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  He's treating the rest of Russia like the Brits treat India.

• 20:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  You know, giving them cricket, giving them railways.

• 20:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's brilliant.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  It's brilliant. So now Stalin hates peasants, as you said, because he's a communist. And so he wants to eliminate the peasantry.

• 20:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  Which is not something you'll hear anyone run on now, platform. I want to eliminate the peasantry.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  At Burdham's Labour Conference, it is like.

• 20:28Speaker 04

  Eliminate the peasantry. Eliminate, right? So these privately owned farms are to be replaced by the collective farm.

• 20:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Okay? And again, this is not a kind of cool commune fucky thing.

• 20:42Speaker 05

  Where people, middle-class people are called wet bark and stuff like that.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Exactly. No, no, it's none of that.

• 20:47Speaker 05

  No deodorant. Well, there's no deodorant, but that's not the.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  There's none of that. I recently went to a wedding where there was no deodorant. The whole thing ponged.

• 20:53Speaker 06

  That was the theme.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  An unofficial theme. Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  Subtext. That's subtext.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'd argue it was quite bold, the smell. Anyway, so peasants would be brought together into these large agricultural units whose production would be supervised by the state. And so machinery, like tractors, et cetera, would replace the traditional methods. And so this was called a Kolcos, was it? And the people, the class, were called the kulaks.

• 21:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:23Speaker 04

  So what Stalin did was he says, right, these, this is the enemy of the state, the kulaks, the.

• 21:28Speaker 05

  So they're just successful farmers, kulaks?

• 21:30Speaker 04

  Yes, they are.

• 21:31Speaker 05

  So they're all farmers, it's just the ones who have done well at all?

• 21:35Speaker 04

  They're doing well for themselves.

• 21:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  Right? If you want HS2 built.

• 21:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 04

  You have to just kill everyone in its path.

• 21:41Speaker 05

  Right.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  Right? Because they're doing well, they're doing well.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  Apart from the really thick ones who are doing terribly, they're brilliant. Then the ones who have shown any initiative are stealing evil.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Get rid of them. Yeah, exactly. So what, because what Stalin will ultimately do is he'll make heroes out of people who just work. So there's a guy called, this is a bit later on in the 30s, a guy called Alexey Stakhanov, who holds the record for the amount of coal mined in a single shift, 102 tonnes of coal in six hours, which is 14 times his required quota.

• 22:14Speaker 05

  Is it kind of like laser tag when you go there and you're like trying to beat the high scores and stuff? It's kind of incentivised like that?

• 22:20Speaker 04

  Fucking hell, he should dominate Oxford. I've talked about it before, but Laser Quest, Oxford Gloucester Green. Between the years of 2001 and about 2006.

• 22:32Speaker 05

  Prime Taylor.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Absolute. It was, it was, it was a laser Holocaust in there.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was lining people up, getting them in the laser showers.

• 22:40Speaker 05

  But you're incentivized by the scoreboard, right?

• 22:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:43Speaker 05

  That was the targets and beating your own PBs.

• 22:46Speaker 04

  I've got to beat 432. It's very Stikhanovite. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, Alexei Stikhanov basically becomes like a hero of the Soviet Union and he starts this, or they start this propaganda movement called the Stikhanovite movement, which so you'd have Stikhanovites in every industry and they'd be getting medals and shit and they'd be rewarded. But then they become a kind of like workman aristocracy. So they're then hated and resented and they get government favoritism and anyway. It's meant to encourage people to

• 23:18Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 23:18Speaker 04

  become a Stikhanovite. It doesn't really work. Anyway, so the kulaks are the problem. As you say, there's just successful farmers. Caleb from Clarkson's Farm must be liquidated. So they're rounded up and divided into categories. So the most dangerous, i.e. the people who are really good and just want to carry on.

• 23:33Speaker 05

  Just shot.

• 23:33Speaker 04

  Shot. Shoot Caleb, get rid of him. Some have their property confiscated and they get deported to Siberia. Others are just resettled into labour colonies. So between 1930 and 33, over 2 million people who are classed as kulaks are deported. Now 100,000 are sent to the gulags. The gulags basically become this, I mean, you'd say northern powerhouse.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  A hundred percent. Because if the gulag is the communist concentration camp, at least it's productive, you know?

• 24:01Speaker 04

  It's much more productive than the Auschwitz.

• 24:04Speaker 05

  They have, there's another goal to it.

• 24:06Speaker 04

  Sorry, have you seen the video of the almost certainly Jewish woman complaining about the prices in the cafe Auschwitz?

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Yes, I have. Of course, we've been sent it.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've been sent it.

• 24:15Speaker 05

  Don't worry, I'm across any of these things because I get sent, anything like this comes up, I'll be sent it 15 times in my DMs.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  And it's terrific. I just want to say it's terrific. She can't even say the word Auschwitz and she's complaining about the cost of a smoothie.

• 24:29Speaker 05

  Smoothie?

• 24:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 05

  I don't think it should do smoothies. I can understand how you're tea and coffee, but smoothie? Blending a banana Auschwitz?

• 24:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  It feels just a little jovial. I think it should be a more austere cafe.

• 24:42Speaker 04

  Well, everything is tasteless, isn't it?

• 24:44Speaker 05

  No, rye bread and tea, I think you can.

• 24:46Speaker 04

  No, because otherwise it's like an interactive experience.

• 24:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, but you just that one.

• 24:55Speaker 04

  Sorry, have you closed, did you close that? Is that still opening, is it?

• 24:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 05

  Smooth.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  Well, I guess, yeah.

• 25:01Speaker 05

  Big, big orange and green smoothies.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  Sorry, are you saying?

• 25:05Speaker 05

  Tango ice blaster Auschwitz.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  Are you saying the Nazis, are you saying the Nazis basically neuter bulleted the Jews? Is that what you're saying?

• 25:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, in many ways.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  It's a bit tasteless.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  Anyway.

• 25:15Speaker 05

  Ice cream van.

• 25:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, there is an ice cream van.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  There's a heatwave.

• 25:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think just a small, simple, it shouldn't be many choices, don't need like a huge, it shouldn't be an excellent cafe, it should just be functional, I believe. There's a way around it.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  What you don't want is for people to go.

• 25:28Speaker 05

  On food tourism there.

• 25:29Speaker 04

  I'm going to the cafe.

• 25:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  Like the Auschwitz, whatever, the cafe is awesome.

• 25:33Speaker 05

  Unbelievable. That's, this is my top tip.

• 25:35Speaker 04

  Top tip, yeah. Yeah. Go to Auschwitz. Do it quickly. Yeah, you can, you can do it, you can do it in like, I don't know, an hour.

• 25:42Speaker 05

  What's eating with Todd? He's got this big pulled pork burger.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  And the way, the cheese melt, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, you can't have.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, if I do Topjaw and I say the cafe Auschwitz, best restaurant in the world, you know, it shouldn't be that, you're right, it shouldn't be that. Anyway.

• 26:06Speaker 05

  If Stalin was watching this, he's like, can you not talk about my Auschwitz? Like, this is, this is my, this is my episode. How are we still talking about Hitler?

• 26:13Speaker 04

  Because he had more star quality. Sorry.

• 26:16Speaker 05

  What about my Auschwitz? This whole episode's about my Auschwitz.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, but people don't go and visit gulags.

• 26:21Speaker 05

  Do you know about the White Sea Canal project? So this is one of the more notorious ones, right?

• 26:27Speaker 04

  Yes, I've got two pairs of pants on, please continue.

• 26:28Speaker 05

  Yeah. So this was like especially brutal where they've got this thing where you have targets, right? But because you're not getting fed, the weaker you get, the more you get punished with higher, you get less food for how, if you don't reach targets.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 26:42Speaker 05

  So they're getting hungrier, so they're doing less work. And then they're getting punished for having less food because they're not hitting the target.

• 26:47Speaker 04

  It's your cycle.

• 26:48Speaker 05

  So the, these people, so many people were dying in building this White Sea Canal that they became part of the concrete.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 05

  Just become, they literally just, yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  Well, but then they, don't they then start actively going, great, because we can cut down on materials? And so we'll just use the people building it.

• 27:02Speaker 05

  And it kind of, at enormous human cost, they finally made this canal, it's not even a good canal because it's not deep enough for proper ships to go through because the people digging it are like not even giving proper.

• 27:14Speaker 04

  It's like Charlie with Charlie and the Machete, yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 05

  So, yeah, yeah.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  But this is, this is the thing, you can get huge things done if you think human life is expedient.

• 27:26Speaker 05

  Yes, this is another lesson of history.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. And why do we keep having to learn it?

• 27:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  You know, there's a reason this country is flagging.

• 27:35Speaker 05

  But would you?

• 27:35Speaker 04

  As a patriot member said to us on our cricket day out, no one wants to kill a million men anymore. No one wants to kill a million men anymore. No one wants to. And he's not wrong.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  He's not wrong. He wasn't wrong.

• 27:45Speaker 04

  Human life has become too important.

• 27:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Yeah?

• 27:48Speaker 05

  You've got air fryers.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 27:51Speaker 05

  You've got an air fryer and a flat screen telly. You're more valuable.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  It's more valuable.

• 27:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  So that's why HS2 isn't happening.

• 27:57Speaker 05

  Would you say, so Stalin's industrialization was broad scale a success?

• 28:01Speaker 04

  Huge success.

• 28:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 05

  Which you cannot say for Mao's? Would you say that Mao?

• 28:06Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, again.

• 28:06Speaker 05

  So Stalin actually had a lot more success where Mao tries to copy him and instead he's just having the starving?

• 28:12Speaker 04

  Well, as we keep, as we said in the Pol Pot series, you know, it's Chinese communist whispers.

• 28:16Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  Stalin, this is what it is. Mao's like, yeah, I got an idea. By the time he gets to Pol Pot, kill all the glasses, I don't know.

• 28:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  And just start again. And he doesn't have, they're too, no one really understands, there's no movement for communism in Cambodia.

• 28:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Anyway. So collectivization provokes this huge resistance, obviously. So Soviet activists from cities arrived in Ukrainian villages to enforce the policy because Ukraine, as you said, is the breadbasket of Europe.

• 28:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  And so peasants get summoned to face a Soviet official one to one and a pistol is placed on the table. To basically say that if you join the collective farm, we won't shoot you.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:59Speaker 04

  And so rather than surrender their property, peasants start destroying it, they slaughter their own.

• 29:04Speaker 05

  They are annoying, I guess. They are annoying, I guess.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. And also they slaughter their own livestock rather than hand it over to the collective farms, right? Which between 1928 and 33, the first five year plan, the number of cattle across the Soviet Union halves.

• 29:18Speaker 05

  Right.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  Right? That's, so that's a holocaust.

• 29:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  That's, can we get the numbers up, please? How many cattle is that? Okay, just as we must have made their name during the Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

• 29:29Speaker 05

  Moved their name.

• 29:30Speaker 04

  Move their name. I don't know what it would be. So Soviet representatives get beaten and driven out of villages, which then things start to ramp up, right? So they then sort of basically invade the peasantry. Fucking drops from 70 million cattle to 38 million.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  Christ.

• 29:49Speaker 04

  Incredible. So basically peasants, you're taking away any incentive for them to work, which is the great critique or the great capitalist critique of communism is that if the state is telling you to do something for a quota and you don't get any of it yourself, then you're like, well, I'm not fucking doing that.

• 30:05Speaker 05

  I mean, there is incentives.

• 30:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 05

  If you don't hit them, you'll die.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it's not, you know.

• 30:11Speaker 05

  I'll shoot you in the head if you don't do that. That's incentivizing.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  It is, but are you also inciting rebellion?

• 30:17Speaker 05

  Oh, I feel gee'd up.

• 30:18Speaker 04

  You know what? You've really motivated me there. Yeah, I'm ready to go to work today. Can I have some bread? No.

• 30:26Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  I do need bread to work though. Yeah. Hey, if you, if you, if you hit your targets, then you won't be in the canal today.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  Check obesity rates in Ukraine.

• 30:35Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  In this period.

• 30:37Speaker 04

  Yep, would love to know, does Stalin conquer obesity amongst his many triumphs? You would say that he does, actually.

• 30:45Speaker 05

  I would say so.

• 30:46Speaker 04

  One man's Holodomor is another man's Zempi.

• 30:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:49Speaker 04

  So.

• 30:50Speaker 06

  Is everyone really, you know, like there's hunger, you know, you get hangry.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  Yes, I think.

• 30:54Speaker 06

  Are they, are they absolutely?

• 30:54Speaker 05

  I think it might be past hangry.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:57Speaker 05

  They might be really upset.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really annoyed, actually. Really fucking annoyed.

• 31:04Speaker 06

  Because when does hunger end? Just leave and then you're just fucked.

• 31:07Speaker 05

  It's livid. They're livid.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  Livid, yeah, livid. And that's what they call the Holodomor.

• 31:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. A lot of more of this.

• 31:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, not more of this. Hic of it, to be honest.

• 31:20Speaker 05

  I'm hic of it. I'm hic of it.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  They've had enough.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  So now Ukraine, there's a crisis in 1932, right? Where the Soviet harvest in total was 40% below the previous year. Ukrainian harvest was 60% below. So now in this, in this sort of context of selling grain for abroad to buy machinery.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  Ukrainians themselves cutting their own cows to shit. You know, they don't, they don't help themselves, you know, burning their own farms.

• 31:52Speaker 05

  Right.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  Anyway, local Ukrainian communist officials are saying these targets are impossible.

• 31:57Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  In June 32, a senior Bolshevik, I don't even know how I'm saying that. H R Y H O R I I. Hora, put it up, ski.

• 32:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 04

  He writes to Stalin saying, we've greatly overdone it.

• 32:11Speaker 05

  His name sounds like a samurai committing harry.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, it does. He visited villages and finds that there's a considerable part of the countryside engulfed in famine.

• 32:21Speaker 05

  What does he mean by we have greatly overdone it? Is that 3 million people have starved to death?

• 32:26Speaker 04

  We fucked it.

• 32:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, we've greatly overdone it.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think we, yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 05

  We've overdone it.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  We had good intentions, but we fucked this.

• 32:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 04

  And so he appeals for urgent food relief and Stalin refuses and said, instead increases the quotas and made people personally responsible for meeting them.

• 32:42Speaker 05

  Tough on.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  The causes of hunger, tough on hunger, tough on the causes of hunger.

• 32:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, tough for the causes of hunger.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, sorry.

• 32:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, but that's what I like about Stalin is everyone's like, they think that it's ideological and they're like, oh, this hasn't worked. Everyone starved and Stalin was like, you know what? That was my plan all along.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  That's when you realise that actually it's gone exactly to plan.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  No, it's more just to like, yeah, yeah, I don't care if they're starving. Where are we going?

• 33:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  It's not about the journey, it's about the destination.

• 33:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. Stop dithering about.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  The opposite of Miley Cyrus's decline.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 05

  Where her whole thing is it's not about how fast you get there. It's not about what's waiting on the side, it's the climb. Whereas Stalin says it's not about the climb, it's about what's waiting on the side.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  On the other side, yeah.

• 33:25Speaker 05

  So Cyrus is actually a very anti-Stalinist position.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  The real victory is all the people that starved along the way.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. If Miley Cyrus was in Stalin's Russia, she would be executed for being anti-Stalinist.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  Well, to be honest, she looks like a communist does nowadays.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  So.

• 33:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 05

  Do with that.

• 33:41Speaker 04

  Do with that what you want. The great decline in communism, from Stalin to Miley Cyrus. So listen, by the summer of 1932, peasants are too weak to work. Too weak or too stubborn?

• 33:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  That's what Stalin says.

• 33:54Speaker 05

  Lazy.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, can you not work?

• 33:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, or won't you work?

• 33:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's the benefit system. It's the, it's Benefit Street.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  Can't cook, won't cook.

• 34:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  So on the, on 7th of August 32, he introduces the Seven Eighths Decree, which means any collective property, including food from a field, will result in 10 years imprisonment or execution. So if you, if you take anything that's not yours for your own hunger.

• 34:21Speaker 05

  10 years in a gulag.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Or death.

• 34:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. They also had these special steel poles, do you know what these?

• 34:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 05

  Where they just dig to make sure people weren't hiding grain in the ground. It was like designed so they could find out. Which I think is a bad vibe. Do you know what I mean? I think just have one, even to build one of those, it just doesn't. It feels like the vibes are really like, there's not a lot of positive energy.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  It feels like overreach.

• 34:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:45Speaker 05

  It just would make me feel a bit like, I don't know.

• 34:47Speaker 04

  So by the winter of 1932, famine is spreading across the Soviet Union and generations of Ukrainians would call it the Holodomor, right? Which means death by hunger or killing by starvation.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  This is completely hidden and so it doesn't become international thing and it's hard to even talk about because the information is so.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  So let's talk about what starvation actually does to the body.

• 35:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 04

  Okay. So first, the body burns through every bit of glucose it has.

• 35:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  Everything's about hunger.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  All thoughts are about food. At this point, this is just me when I wake up, right? As the reserves disappear, the body begins consuming stored fat. Now, I never got to that point in my life.

• 35:26Speaker 05

  You have to wait 20 minutes at least.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  I know, I just can't, I just can't. I have to just muck bang pastries downstairs before I get to point three. Now, once the fat is exhausted, it starts consuming itself. Protein is stripped from muscle to keep the organs functioning. The body becomes skeletal.

• 35:41Speaker 05

  Skipping lunch, this is what.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is, yeah, this is exactly, this is me at meat free Mondays for me. The body becomes skeletal and my legs and feet and abdomen swell because of the fluid. My, my, my skin becomes translucent, rashes and lesions appear. My immune system weakens dramatically, right? Eventually, the body can no longer sustain its basic functions, but then I have a burger and it's fine.

• 36:03Speaker 05

  But these guys died.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  Sorry, these guys, their organs failed and they died.

• 36:06Speaker 05

  It's pretty horrendous stuff.

• 36:07Speaker 04

  About one or two months after, without food. So people are trying to escape Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people are abandoning their villages. A hundred thousand people fled between December and February, right? So just in three months. Railway stations are filled with people looking for bread. They're bread mad. I mean, a lot of Russian history is about bread, isn't it? Because there's the bread protest in 1917.

• 36:28Speaker 05

  I think calling them bread mad is a little.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  They are mad for bread.

• 36:31Speaker 05

  I guess so.

• 36:32Speaker 04

  They are. I don't, I'm pushing back on this. They're the opposite of white women. They're, they love bread.

• 36:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, fine. Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 05

  I, yeah, it feels, especially them trying to escape and being forced back, it feels real.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  Because they're the bread basket.

• 36:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  And now they're just a basket.

• 36:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  Right?

• 36:52Speaker 05

  The empty basket.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  They're an empty basket.

• 36:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  And trucks are moving through the cities, collecting corpses.

• 36:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  So.

• 36:57Speaker 05

  It's, it's so fucking bleak. There's not one nice thing that's happened here. It's apart from that one guy, what's his name? The Stevonovit.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  Stekhanovit.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  That's the only positive thing I've seen in this entire period. It is so bleak.

• 37:09Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no, no. What's the end point of it?

• 37:12Speaker 05

  Right, exactly.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  You know? Don't think about the now, think about the, the future.

• 37:16Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  Where are we going?

• 37:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to do list may feel endless with new tasks and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built in business partner can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US. From household names like Jimm Shark, Rare Beauty and Heinz, to brands just getting started. Shopify has hundreds of ready to use templates that can help you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  And you can tackle all the important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. And if people haven't heard about your brand, you can get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you with easy to run email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they're scrolling or strolling. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com/real. Go to Shopify.com/real. That's Shopify.com/real.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgements, but that's weird. Okay, one judgement. Anyway, give it a try at MintMobile.com/switch.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Upfront payment of $45 for three month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate for three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at MintMobile.com.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  People in Ukraine are eating moss, leaves, acorns and shoes. But in the 30s, they were doing this as well.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  They were boiling old bones in the hope of trying to get some kind of nourishment from them. They would boil belts and shoes so they could chew leather.

• 39:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  By the spring of 33, there is cannibalism.

• 39:49Speaker 04

  People, right, this, this, people start accompanying their children to school because there is fears that they will be kidnapped and eaten.

• 39:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:58Speaker 04

  You'd have to say the government isn't working.

• 40:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:01Speaker 04

  When people are trying to protect their kids from being kidnapped and away from school and eaten.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  What does even school look like? I don't know how much is getting done.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Jamie's school dinners?

• 40:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. I don't think, it is Albert Fish, everyone's Albert Fish. Yeah, everyone's Albert Fish.

• 40:17Speaker 05

  It's a fishy in time.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  Hmm. So Soviet authorities.

• 40:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, the Soviets would say it's barbaric and like use it as racially profiling the Ukrainians like the Brits do with the Irish, saying like, look at these fucking savages eating their own, which does feel a bit insult to injury, to be honest.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, don't eat, don't eat your neighbour's kids.

• 40:36Speaker 05

  Right, okay, fine.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  Now, the precise death toll remains contested. At least 5 million people died in the Soviet famine, but with Ukraine, they think about 3 million. 10% of the population disappears between 32 and 33, which is not as many cows. So I think really the Holodomor should, you should take second place in the tragic, because the cows are the.

• 40:59Speaker 05

  The Holocaust.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  The Holocaust is first.

• 41:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  That's like that Holocaust, man.

• 41:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  So.

• 41:08Speaker 05

  Oh, there you go, the Holodomor.

• 41:09Speaker 04

  The Holodomor, Fabia said, the Holodomor.

• 41:11Speaker 05

  That's pretty good.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, the Holodomor.

• 41:13Speaker 05

  The Holodomor.

• 41:14Speaker 04

  While the countryside is starving, what's Stalin's home life like?

• 41:18Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  I enjoyed this bit of the story.

• 41:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:20Speaker 04

  So obviously, senior communist officials have access to nice shops.

• 41:26Speaker 05

  And you're wearing one of your fanciest watches today.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  Fancy watch, because it's a communist episode and that is ultimately what happens every time communist happens, is to go, oh yeah, nothing for you, but I'll, I'll have that.

• 41:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 04

  I'll have that.

• 41:35Speaker 05

  I mean, he's got a lot of work to do though, he does need to be sharp.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  Oh, of course.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  Your brain has to function, you know? He's, he's a, he's a stout guy, he probably needs about 3,000 calories a day.

• 41:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  Housing, daches, and Stalin's family lives within this world. Now, he married his second wife, Nadia, in 1918. She was 17 when they met and he was nearly 40. Ooh. Their daughter Svetlana is born in 1926. Now, we will deal with her because that's an amazing story on, on the Patreon. In the early 1930s, Stalin's marriage was quite volatile. Now, Nadia is disturbed by her husband's policies, right? But that's not your business.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  That's work.

• 42:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 42:17Speaker 04

  Okay. I feel like you're, you should, this isn't your.

• 42:20Speaker 05

  I don't want to take my work home with me.

• 42:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 05

  And what I do also, you enjoying this, Daka?

• 42:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:25Speaker 05

  Yeah. Do you like this life I built for you?

• 42:26Speaker 04

  I just think this is all gets paid for.

• 42:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. So it's easy for you to sit there and judge, but who's fucking paying for what you're wearing right now?

• 42:33Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 42:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. Do you not like the things I buy you?

• 42:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the tensions start to build. Now, at a Kremlin dinner in November 1932, right? Nadia makes an effort to dress nice for the occasion.

• 42:45Speaker 05

  Nice for once.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Stalin doesn't notice. He spends the evening drinking.

• 42:50Speaker 05

  He's busy.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's got, he's unwinding, right? He's drinking, he's flirting with other people's wives, you know? Cause he's just being a bloke.

• 42:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  And that's what admittedly you like about him.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  I like, this is why I like this bit of the story, right? So Nadia's, Nadia's not drinking and he's like, go on, love, fuck it, come on, have a drink, come on.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  Be a lot.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  And she's being like, sort of morose. And so he starts flicking pieces of orange peel and cigarettes at her to attract her attention.

• 43:15Speaker 05

  Are we having a laugh or not? Is this a, is this leisure or not?

• 43:17Speaker 04

  It's a party.

• 43:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  Fucking cheer up, love, it might never happen.

• 43:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  Anyway, he goes, hey, you drink. And she snaps back that her name was not hey, and leaves the room. And he's like, fuck it, I can't do anything right.

• 43:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Can't say anything.

• 43:31Speaker 05

  Imagine the biggest eye roll of all time, I imagine, when she leaves.

• 43:36Speaker 04

  Thank God she's gone. Absolute black hole sucking all the energy out of the evening. Anyway, she then goes back to her room and shoots herself in the heart.

• 43:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. Attention seeking.

• 43:46Speaker 04

  I mean, honestly, Christ, you've got to take responsibility for your own unhappiness.

• 43:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  It's not, it can't be up to me.

• 43:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  Uh, he, while she's doing that, he's, he's having an affair, but that, that's besides the point.

• 43:57Speaker 05

  He's playing grab ass.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, he's fucking someone in his Dacha, but that's what it's for.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:01Speaker 04

  Anyway, he sees it as an act of betrayal and never visits her grave. Awesome.

• 44:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. Passive aggressive with his done dead wife.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 05

  Like that.

• 44:10Speaker 04

  Wife got herself, well, fucking, you, you, you just, you think on it, you lie there.

• 44:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  Um, so supposedly, uh, he, he does take this quite hard, supposedly.

• 44:21Speaker 05

  But he takes it hard in a way, it's not feeling grief, it's feeling just betrayal, it's all betrayal. All his emotions are betrayal.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 06

  Feeling betrayed is horrible though.

• 44:29Speaker 05

  Because he's also, if you compare, he had his first wife, which was when he was 20 and she was 18. I forgot what her name was, I think she was Georgian. And he says that she was the only one who could soften him. And, uh, cause obviously at every point he tries to, people try and blame a different thing as to why he ends up being the way he is. When she died, he threw himself on her coffin.

• 44:47Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 44:47Speaker 05

  And had to be dragged away.

• 44:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:49Speaker 05

  So he views it as that was his true love and sort of never loved again.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  Very much Casino Royale, Daniel Craig, that.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  Kato, OJ's pool boy.

• 44:58Speaker 05

  Right, OJ's pool boy, makes another appearance.

• 45:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, um, so this famine is going on.

• 45:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  And Stalin's official explanation is saying, well, this is all the kulaks' fault. They're just getting their hoarding grain, uh, and they're sabotaging the collectivisation.

• 45:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 04

  And so officials are forbidden from using the word famine. And so doctors are told not to record starvation as a cause of death.

• 45:18Speaker 05

  Sup famine?

• 45:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. So.

• 45:20Speaker 05

  Little lads say that anymore.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  No, this is, in 37, there's a census and the population stands at around eight million below the expected figure.

• 45:28Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  So Stalin suppresses the census and then punishes those who produced it.

• 45:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, it kills them.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 45:34Speaker 05

  Just kind of great, that's a great, another great Stalin move. Don't like those numbers, bang.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  Sam Allardyce.

• 45:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:38Speaker 04

  Get it, get rid of it. Get it up the pitch. Fuck it off. So there are some journalists, some foreign journalists that, um, try and report about the famine. There's a guy called Walter Duranty.

• 45:50Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:50Speaker 04

  Uh, who had heard something was going on. And, uh, so he, he's, is he American, that guy? So he works for the New York Times?

• 45:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  Um, so he, uh, is publicly betraying the economic transformation as quite favourable.

• 46:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:03Speaker 04

  And he downplays the reports of mass starvation, even though he knew the death toll was in the millions and had gone and seen it and stuff.

• 46:09Speaker 05

  It's very much Tucker on Putin.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 05

  If you want to get the exclusive access, if you want the big interview, you've got to be positive.

• 46:16Speaker 04

  Piers Morgan.

• 46:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:18Speaker 05

  You know, that's the way to do it. You have to just kind of lie, cause then you get, he, he got a fucking two hour sit down with Putin.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  He's not lying though, is he? He's just not telling all of the truth.

• 46:27Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Cause the economic transformation is remarkable.

• 46:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  No, no, no, it is.

• 46:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  It is.

• 46:35Speaker 05

  Yeah. GDP is, is growing. GDP per head, I guess the heads are.

• 46:41Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, cause, no, it is growing, cause the heads have gone down. So it's a frac.

• 46:44Speaker 05

  The heads have fallen off.

• 46:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, the heads are, the heads are hungry and they've fallen off, but it doesn't matter, the GDP, you know, GDP at all costs, growth at all costs.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  Yes, it was very capitalist.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, this is trust stuff.

• 46:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  You know? No one's prepared to kill a million men.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  So.

• 46:59Speaker 05

  Lessons of history.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  Look, if you want, if you want to get to Birmingham in 40 minutes, you know what you have to do.

• 47:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  Anyway, um, now there's a Welsh journalist called Gareth Jones, um, probably the Welsh, I think everyone in Wales is called that at some point.

• 47:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, if you look at the Welsh rugby team, they're all called Gareth Jones.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, the Welsh census is just Gareth Jones times three million.

• 47:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:17Speaker 04

  Anyway, so he breaks the silence, he goes from Moscow towards Kharkiv, which is, uh, in Ukraine, isn't it? And so rather than staying in the controlled world that was being shown to foreign correspondents, he gets off the train.

• 47:29Speaker 05

  He takes the scenic route.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  Takes scenic route, walks the Ukrainian villages and he goes, fuck me, man.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  Jesus.

• 47:35Speaker 04

  Fuck it, hell.

• 47:36Speaker 05

  Jesus Christ.

• 47:37Speaker 04

  Here's what I don't eat in a day. Um, gutted.

• 47:42Speaker 05

  Wrong glass.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 05

  Empty glass, gutted.

• 47:48Speaker 04

  Uh, double parked, not parked at all. Not parked at all, nothing's parked. Um, so, uh, he says.

• 47:56Speaker 05

  God, famine Sandro would be fascinating to see what happens to Sandro in a famine.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  It would be fascinating to see what's under in a famine, yeah. Um, so basically he was on, he was on a, uh, he was on a train and there's a communist saying to him, there's no famine. Uh, so he, he flings across the bread into a spittoon, like a dish you spit in. And then a peasant runs up and eats it ravenously.

• 48:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:18Speaker 04

  Uh, he then throws a bit of orange peel into it and again, the peasant just downs it.

• 48:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um. Ukrainian eating with Todd.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. Uh, but also Ukrainian food is, is weird to westernise. So at this point you're thinking, is this just?

• 48:34Speaker 05

  I did go to Ukraine and the dish I had was, um, what's the cabbage soup called?

• 48:38Speaker 04

  Borscht.

• 48:39Speaker 05

  Borscht out of a cabbage. There was not even a, they just had a massive cabbage, they cut it open.

• 48:44Speaker 04

  They like doing that. In Lithuania, I had bread soup and a loaf of bread.

• 48:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:47Speaker 04

  And I was like, this is, guys, crockery.

• 48:50Speaker 05

  Was in Kiev, I thought I was ordering eggs, but it was actually a mistranslation and I ate testicles. So it's the sort of, I mean, it's a famine, famine cuisine.

• 49:01Speaker 04

  Famine cuisine.

• 49:01Speaker 05

  Whenever you're trying this sort of stuff, it's, you know, part of the reason maybe British cuisine is less exciting, quite bland, is there's not been big famines here in recent history.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  I'd say Irish cuisine is not that interesting.

• 49:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's true.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. Let's, let's slack off.

• 49:16Speaker 04

  Let's not, you know.

• 49:17Speaker 05

  Come on, guys.

• 49:18Speaker 04

  Fucking, he didn't even fucking get like fucking chow mein out of it.

• 49:21Speaker 05

  You guys were like a fucking test kitchen.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Look at Chinese cuisine, it's phenomenal after the great leap forward, yeah?

• 49:27Speaker 06

  Testicles are kind of eggs, but like boy eggs.

• 49:30Speaker 05

  And that's probably what the, the link was.

• 49:32Speaker 06

  Kind of some boy eggs.

• 49:33Speaker 04

  Etymologically.

• 49:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 06

  They're the inverse of an egg, really.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  They're not the opposite of an egg.

• 49:40Speaker 06

  They're the inverse of an egg. Are they not?

• 49:44Speaker 04

  Well, I don't think you can destroy an egg with a testicle, if that's what you mean.

• 49:49Speaker 06

  No, but you can complete one.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  Anyway, so Joan, Joan, Gareth Jones holds a press conference in Berlin and tells the world that millions are starving. And also they're eating boy eggs over there, it's disgusting.

• 50:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  Um, and Duranty fucking says that Jones is exaggerating and does not understand the reality of Soviet development, which is interesting. So even when it's out in the open, Duranty's like, yeah, but guys.

• 50:18Speaker 05

  New York Times, they're like, well, I trust him.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  And so Duranty had a better reputation, so his version of events kind of wins. Now, later, while working in Mongolia, he's kidnapped and murdered aged 29, which some attribute to Stalin and Soviet intelligence. Why is he in Mongolia in 1935?

• 50:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:35Speaker 04

  What are you doing there?

• 50:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, looking for trouble.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  So the famine deepens and this becomes part of a wider campaign to force the countryside into submission.

• 50:44Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 50:44Speaker 04

  And so churches are closed, Ukrainian folk music is banned.

• 50:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, cause it's a symbol of nationalism.

• 50:49Speaker 04

  Culturally associated with Ukrainian peasantry is suppressed. Ethnic Russians are moved into depopulated areas of Ukraine and given farms and.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  Similar to Ireland, Northern Ireland, wouldn't you say?

• 51:01Speaker 04

  Yes, the plantations, but also this is why, this is the start of the tensions and why Ukraine has such a large ethnic Russian population, which Putin is now seizing as causes belly.

• 51:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 04

  Anyway, the famine kind of ends in 33, when they realise they can eat other stuff apart from cabbage or whatever, uh, and food grain starts coming back. And to be fair to Stalin, he has largely achieved his objectives. The five year plan was a success.

• 51:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:28Speaker 04

  All right? Um, the broker, he's broken peasant resistance and he has control of agricultural production. And you know, Magnitogorsk, do you know about Magnitogorsk?

• 51:37Speaker 05

  No.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  This insane city that he builds, this like, sort of, it was a bit like Port Talbot.

• 51:42Speaker 05

  Where is it?

• 51:43Speaker 04

  Uh, it's in somewhere in Russia. Yeah, it's this mad.

• 51:45Speaker 05

  Monumental Stalin's architecture.

• 51:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:47Speaker 06

  Is it real?

• 51:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a city that basically all of them, it produces steel, steel.

• 51:52Speaker 05

  Is it still functioning?

• 51:54Speaker 04

  This is all questions for Charlie, who's just staring at the screen, like it's a plastic bag in American Beauty.

• 51:59Speaker 05

  Largest steel producer in the global, whereabouts is it?

• 52:02Speaker 06

  It's still active and it remains a major. It's in, um.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  No, but I mean.

• 52:05Speaker 06

  The banks of the Euro River.

• 52:06Speaker 05

  Okay, right, interesting.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, so he, he builds that and it's like, uh.

• 52:11Speaker 05

  When's the Trans-Siberian Railway built? Cause my, my dad's new wife's dad helped build that in Siberia, so when, what era is that?

• 52:19Speaker 06

  Your grandpa in law.

• 52:20Speaker 05

  My grandpa in law.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  Your step grandfather.

• 52:22Speaker 05

  My step grand, I guess, is that true? Is that, is that, is it genuine, my step grandad?

• 52:28Speaker 04

  She's your step mum.

• 52:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 04

  And it's, it's her dad.

• 52:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, so my step grandad.

• 52:33Speaker 04

  No, your step great grandad.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  My step.

• 52:35Speaker 04

  Or was it her dad or her grandad?

• 52:37Speaker 05

  Her dad.

• 52:38Speaker 06

  Step grandad?

• 52:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, your step grandad.

• 52:40Speaker 05

  Damn.

• 52:41Speaker 06

  I've got a step granny called Patricia.

• 52:42Speaker 04

  Step grandad gets stuck in a washing machine.

• 52:45Speaker 05

  Don't give a fuck about Patricia, I'm not gonna lie.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  Uh, I think he was probably your step great grandad, cause it was, uh, it was 90.

• 52:53Speaker 05

  I bet he was step great, yeah, it was step great grandad, yeah.

• 52:55Speaker 06

  She might be listening.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  Step great grandad gets stuck in a washing machine is a really, really bad film. It's just sad.

• 53:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. Gets stuck in the, in the, in the train tracks, building the Trans-Siberian Railway.

• 53:05Speaker 04

  I don't rate that old man out of that washing machine.

• 53:08Speaker 06

  Takes no time though.

• 53:09Speaker 04

  He's trying to wake.

• 53:10Speaker 05

  What do you mean takes no time?

• 53:11Speaker 06

  It'll take no time to get him out of there.

• 53:14Speaker 06

  That's all about putty.

• 53:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's true.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  This, okay, the harvest improves in thirty-three as well. So, you know.

• 53:23Speaker 05

  Things can only get better. Yeah, it's that sort of stuff.

• 53:27Speaker 04

  And, you know, yes, millions are dead, displaced and have been deported. But this is the price of progress.

• 53:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:36Speaker 04

  Okay, this is where we get the quote from Stalin, his most famous quote.

• 53:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:39Speaker 04

  The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.

• 53:43Speaker 05

  Spitting bars.

• 53:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 05

  He said this at Churchill, I think.

• 53:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 04

  Shrugged.

• 53:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 04

  Because once you've killed one, you know, you know, it's about the end goal.

• 53:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:53Speaker 04

  It's about HS2. So Stalin has broken the back of the Ukrainians.

• 54:00Speaker 05

  Their backs have been blown out.

• 54:01Speaker 04

  Their backs, they're blown out the backs of the red basket. And the tension is now turning towards the Communist Party itself and the people closest to them. In our next episode, we will explore, say it with me, brothers, the great terror.

• 54:16Speaker 05

  Because that wasn't a great terror in any way.

• 54:18Speaker 04

  No.

• 54:19Speaker 05

  But now we're actually going to go into something terrible.

• 54:22Speaker 04

  The assassination of that prick, Trotsky.

• 54:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  And the Nazi Soviet pact.

• 54:28Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  And Barbarossa. Oh, fuck, I'm gonna bust.

• 54:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:32Speaker 04

  Right? That's already on the Patreon, along with the entirety of this four-part series. Three pounds a month, join us, yeah? Instant access.

• 54:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, come everywhere on the Patreon, right? That's it for this episode. We'll see you next time for one of the biggest episodes to date.

• 54:50Speaker 05

  It's great.

• 54:50Speaker 04

  Doesn't get bigger than this. Stalin part, this is huge.

• 54:53Speaker 05

  It's Stalin, it's the great terror.

• 54:54Speaker 04

  It's Hitler, it's Stalin.

• 54:55Speaker 05

  It's, yeah, it's Operation Barbarossa.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  It's Ronaldo and Messi playing on the same team.

• 54:59Speaker 05

  But the Alclasco, you know, Kiara.

• 55:01Speaker 04

  It is Alclasco.

• 55:03Speaker 06

  It's potentially our biggest ever episode.

• 55:04Speaker 05

  No.

• 55:04Speaker 04

  It could be.

• 55:07Speaker 06

  Why would you say that?

• 55:09Speaker 05

  Well, I probably, probably isn't, it's part three of the.

• 55:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, yeah, but what happens in it? There's a lot going on in part three. Yeah, I'm excited, we'll see you there.

• 55:18Speaker 05

  Goodbye.

• 55:19Speaker 04

  Bye.

• 55:36Speaker 00

  Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.

• 55:52Speaker 07

  The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live US-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. Two, we sound the alarm at points of entry. Three, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/spotify. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  Does checking your bank statements feel like digging through a dusty attic full of forgotten subscriptions and old free trials? Experian can help take the pain out of canceling by handling it for you. Think of it as Operation Get Your Sanity Back. Over 200 subscriptions are cancelable. So get started in the Experian app and see how much you could save. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. See Experian.com for details.