Episode 131 – The Geopolitics of the Russian Revolution with Esha Krishnaswamy

Macro N Cheese – Episode 131
The Geopolitics of the Russian Revolution with Esha Krishnaswamy
July 31, 2021

 

[00:00:03.140] – Esha Krishnaswamy [intro/music]

Having a slave system like the Tsar did is very intensive. You need a lot of soldiers or police or death squads to kind of make people work against their will. Well, if you’re fighting World War I, suddenly a lot of these soldiers are not shooting at workers who are striking because they’re on the front.

[00:00:25.740] – Esha Krishnaswamy [intro/music]

There was a time where Lenin gets robbed at gunpoint and then the guards in the Kremlin say, OK, we can’t let you in because you don’t have your passes. And he’s like, “I’m Lenin.” And they’re like, “I don’t care.” So then Lenin has to wait in the guard tower and he calls somebody else. And then they are like, “Yeah, this guy’s the leader of our country. Let him in.”

[00:01:35.220] – Geoff Ginter [intro/music]

Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:01:43.050] – Steve Grumbine

All right, folks, it’s Steve, Macro N Cheese. And guess what? We are going to go to another period of time, another revolution that has been poorly explained, Americanized out of any recognizable reality. We are talking about quite literally, a different way of viewing the Russian Revolution.

And so why not bring my friend Esha back? Esha, who has been on the show before, she is the host of the podcast Historic.ly, and she also does a phenomenal series with, what is it, “Late Nights with Lenin?”

[00:02:19.980] – Esha Krishnaswamy

Yeah, the reason why I started this is because all these liberals are telling people, oh, you don’t know what’s practical. We have to wait 35 years for Medicare for All. And these people know nothing about how to make change when you don’t have power. When you have money, you just bribe somebody and boom, you get whatever you want.

But when you don’t have that billion dollars, everything changes. It’s a hard task that requires creative thinking, innovation. It’s a problem understanding the problem. And so what people don’t realize is that whatever we’re going through is not unique. Everything’s been done before and over and over.

And so I wanted to show people to do their homework and do some reading and understand what has been done so that they can understand what is going to happen next so that they don’t put their faith in electing 435 Justice Democrats. That’s not going to have a single effect because that’s not the person in charge. And so there’s a lot of complexity in explaining why each of these things is true.

And there’s a very logical, systematic, methodical way. But of course, we don’t have time for all that. But I’m kind of hoping to lead people towards the useful direction if their desire is having a system that works for them as opposed to the billionaires.

[00:03:58.650] – Grumbine

Well, I appreciate it. We had you on last . . . We talked about the propaganda of the centrist and

[00:04:06.270] – Krishnaswamy

Oh, God, yes.

[00:04:07.560] – Grumbine

You pushed me directly into the arms of “What is to be Done,” by Lenin and “Ten Days That Shook the World,” and all of this is stuff that has fueled me to read probably another 20 books since. So the appetite is on fire. The mouth is ready to rock and roll. The eyes are ready to read. The ears are ready to hear. So let’s just jump right in here.

Obviously, you can go back forever. I mean, history has got some long, long spans we could dive into. But I wanted to start with the end of Tsarist Russia. That was really important to me because as I watched a very reluctant Tsar Nicholas, a guy who was not really up to the task, who really didn’t have his heart in it for a variety of reasons, maybe wasn’t the most awful human being in the world at the time.

[00:05:00.090] – Krishnaswamy

Oh, no. He was. I’m sorry, but he was.

[00:05:02.340] – Grumbine

He was awful?

[00:05:03.420] – Krishnaswamy

Yes. He was one of the worst human beings on earth, so . . .

[00:05:06.240] – Grumbine

I got the impression he was like a boob, like just a goat, just sort of like a putz.

[00:05:12.550] – Krishnaswamy

He was pretty bad. He had programs like next to Adolf Hitler. I’m going to say he was pretty awful.

[00:05:19.750] – Grumbine

Well, let me take all that I just said back. This is a great way to get started. Before we even get five minutes in, we’ve already debunked a myth.

[00:05:28.390] – Krishnaswamy

Well, no, no, no. So there’s a very good reason. I can send you this article from this 1917 New York Times. And that was around the time when the publicity industry was popping up in the US and that was a direct result of Wall Street. And so Russia had a lot of minerals and natural resources and mines or whatever else the investors speculators would want to get their grubby hands on.

So they had a lot of pro-Tsar propaganda. For example, the New York Times correspondent was talking about how Lenin kicked him out of a press conference, and that was because The New York Times correspondent tried to cut in front of the line, and Lenin’s like, “No, you have to stand in line with all the other reporters and I’ll take questions one by one.”

And then The New York Times reporter said, “Nick never made me stand in line.” And Lenin was like, “Out.” And so if you’re going to call the Tsar, Nick, imagine the kind of incestuous relationship The New York Times Russia correspondent had. So what you noticed is that, for example, in around 1904, the Tsar had a mealy-mouthed literacy program. The New York Times wrote a really nice puff piece about it.

Lenin had universal literacy, abolished child labor, sent every kid to school and then they concern-trolled about whether or not the education is too antireligious or whatever. So they whitewash a lot of these things, mostly because the American establishment, Wall Street, were more than complicit. They were collaborators. So let’s talk about World War I. I think that’s where the important part happened.

[00:07:28.800] – Grumbine

Sure.

[00:07:29.490] – Krishnaswamy

1. So the Tsar of Russia’s wife was England King’s sister. So it’s a very incestuous relationship. And England was a super colonizer back then. They colonized India, lots of other countries in Asia, Africa. I can’t think of where they did not colonize.

But what was also going on is that because England was trying to colonize Asia, they were running against the Ottoman Empire and their colonies in the Middle East and Africa and parts of Europe. So they signed a secret treaty with the Tsar for mutual defense as in if somebody, quote-unquote, “attacks one of the colonies in England,” the Tsar of Russia would also send his troops to militarily defend his incestuous cousin.

On top of that, France had also signed a mutual defense agreement with the Tsar of Russia for the same exact reason. And this meant that if England was allegedly attacked, Russia would have to go into war because Russia is also now attacked. France would have to join this war. Does this make sense of how like this can create a big mess?

[00:09:04.870] – Grumbine

Oh, yeah. A big, huge geopolitical mess. Absolutely.

[00:09:08.680] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah. On top of that, there was another strange thing. The area we used to know as Yugoslavia, but now known as the Balkans, well, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary kind of divided it up in one of the most weirdest ways in that where half of the kingdom belonged to the Ottoman Empire, half of the kingdom belonged to the Austria-Hungarian empire.

And your family could be in a different empire and you’re just stuck and you can’t see your family. But during that time, there was a movement for a free Serbia and the Tsar of Russia had gotten involved. It wasn’t Nikolai, but it was his grandfather, Alexander II. So sometime in the mid-1800s, Serbia was carved out into being, quote-unquote “free,” but the Tsar of Russia had also signed a mutual defense agreement saying that if Austria-Hungary or the Ottoman Empire attacked Serbia, they were going to join a war, too.

But of course, we all know the reason why they were fighting these wars is because both in Europe, Asia, and also Africa, these kingdoms were trying to extract resources because they were all new capitalist empires. And if you have a factory, you’re going to need steel and you don’t have steel in England, so you’re going to have to go to Africa where you get steel or Asia where you get whatever else you need for your factory.

And then if you’re trying to compete in this capitalistic environment, you’re going to want to outcompete your rivals. And that’s where you are going to try to find a cheaper source of steel. And then if the Ottoman Empire had conquered that area first, oohhh, you were going to maybe want to go to war.

[00:11:19.780] – Grumbine

Uh-huh.

[00:11:19.780] – Krishnaswamy

And that is the economic reason behind World War I, but the geopolitical reason had to do with all these crazy mutual defense treaties. And the Tsar had signed these secretly without the knowledge of the Russian people.

[00:11:42.040] – Grumbine

Is this how Ferdinand ends up being part of this?

[00:11:45.490] – Krishnaswamy

Oh, yes. This is actually pretty funny. Now because parts of Bosnia was not free. There was a group of anarchists called The Young Bosnians, and what they asked is not unreasonable. They’re like, “We’re Slavs. We’re family. We don’t want to be in one kingdom. And we don’t want all these empires blocking us from reuniting with family.” That’s just a very reasonable request, right?

[00:12:16.190] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:12:17.850] – Krishnaswamy

So Austria-Hungary was managed in one of the weirder ways. They had two monarchies – the Hungarian monarch and the Austrian monarch. Archduke Ferdinand was the Austrian monarch and Serbia has a very strange religion. It’s Christianity, but it has a lot of local flavors that they inherited before Christianity if that makes sense.

[00:12:46.430] – Grumbine

Uh-huh.

[00:12:47.630] – Krishnaswamy

So they have these holy sites in what is known as Kosovo, and they celebrate something called Kosovo Day on June 15th or 28, I can’t remember, and what happened is on Kosovo Day, Archduke Ferdinand was coming to Sarajevo, and they had conquered Sarajevo, so it was like kind of like a brag, is like, ha ha ha, we have your land. You can’t do anything about it. And the funny thing is that the Serbian government at that time actually did try to warn the Archduke the climate’s not good and maybe you should not come.

[00:13:41.020] – Grumbine

Basically, they’re saying, “Hey, things ain’t so great right now. You better not come.” And he’s like, “Yeah, I’m going to come anyway.”

[00:13:46.150] – Krishnaswamy

Exactly. They warned them about these young anarchist groups. Maybe you shouldn’t come. It’s kind of funny because they actually tried to warn the Austrian embassy, but they did not succeed because he was like, “OK. Whatever. I’m coming that day.” And that was when Gavrilo Princip went and shot the archduke and killed him.

Austria demanded that Serbia completely investigate. Actually, kind of funny because World War I really did not need to happen because Austria demanded that Serbia allow the police to investigate and what not. And they basically said, “OK, you can do whatever you want, Austria.” But it was all ignored and Serbia basically allowed them to investigate.

And so on Monday, July 27, 1914, it says, Serbia reply accepted all of Austria’s conditions and even then it was not necessary. But what happened is that what Austria-Hungary saw was, “Oh, this is a nice time for us to colonize Serbia. They got freed from the Ottoman Empire. Let me just move in.” So that’s how World War I started.

But around the same time, there was the socialist movement that was very, very strong. And they had a conference in Berne. In the Berne Conference, all the socialist parties back then, they called them Social Democratic Party. It was the Second International. They had agreed that if there was war of conquest, that none of the socialist parties would vote for it and it was agreed upon in the Basel Manifesto of 1912.

It warned that there was going to be an imperialist war and these wars are going to be the wars of aggression. And they thought that if you’re a worker, you should not be collaborating and participating in these wars of conquest or aggression. But the first thing was that Austria tried to attack Serbia. Russia tried to come in.

Then Austria-Hungary had signed a treaty with the German Empire. And here this is where the German Social Democratic Party, which was very advanced – they had seats in their parliament. They had to vote on whether or not Germany should go into this war. And do you remember what happened in 2003 with Iraq and the Democratic Party?

[00:16:56.460] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:16:57.390] – Krishnaswamy

That’s exactly what the German Social Democratic Party did. They voted for the war credit and because of that, suddenly France’s Social Democratic Party also betrayed the Second International. And boom! We have one of the messiest world wars.

And all of it is being fought because, as Lenin would say like Germany and England are fighting over who gets to rob Turkey, that’s literally what he said and like yep. And the funny thing is that if you look Iraq back then was part of the Ottoman Empire. So even today, that’s all very telling.

[00:17:43.800] – Grumbine

Like the purse that keeps on giving, right?

[00:17:46.440] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah. So that was World War I. It was a mess. And the Tsar had a lot of British advisers surrounding him. He had American vultures surrounding him, and he didn’t really care. You don’t do that, but as a leader, you’re not supposed to send your soldiers to an unnecessary, brutal death. But he did. And that is where a lot of the financial dealings comes from.

So around that time, Chase Bank, for example, in 1916 bailed out the Tsar and invested a lot of money in this bank in Tsarist Russia in 1915. And there was so much speculation. So a lot of people were betting on Russia joining the war.

And the strategy was that England and France would push up against Germany from the east and Russia would push up against Germany from the west and they would choke out Austria-Hungary and Germany. And then that would lead to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and then they would enjoy the loot between them. Does that make sense at all?

[00:19:15.240] – Grumbine

Yes, it makes sense.

[00:19:16.890] – Krishnaswamy

OK, and the World War I was horrific. They had modern weapons and they were fighting in not the modern style. So people would just like die in trenches. I’ve made a Tic-Tac collection of these broken faces. If you’ve seen Wonder Woman, there’s a character there, Maru. She has a mask on.

It’s called a broken faith because of these World War I weapons that were just horrific. Millions were dying. And this was also not an opportunity, but having a slave system like the Tsar did is very intensive. You need a lot of soldiers or police or death squads or whatever you want to call them to kind of make people work against their will for . .  .

[00:20:08.220] – Grumbine

Uh-huh

[00:20:08.220] – Krishnaswamy

Well, if you’re fighting World War I, suddenly a lot of these soldiers are not shooting at workers who are striking because they are on the front. And this gave the Bolsheviks, who are the Russian Social Democratic Party, like an opportunity to breathe, I guess.

So that was the backdrop kind of like how Donald Rumsfeld underestimated or at least lied to the people about how easy it would be to conquer Iraq, that was the same either mistake or lie that both the British strategists and the Russian strategists and the French strategists kind of did.

They thought that it would be easy to roll over Germany and within six months everything would be done and everyone would go home. But that did not happen. So World War I kept on going and going. And so the Tsar of Russia had the double delicate task of trying to maintain his, for lack of a better word, slave kingdom, where there were hundreds of millions of peasants, as in rural people, who were basically in very similar to debt bondage.

Outright slavery was abolished in 1861, but it didn’t matter. They were slaves in every possible way you can imagine even often in names too or whatever. And so Lenin was in exile in Switzerland. He was banned from Russia for trying to overthrow the Tsar.

And we were in around 1915 and things were going bad to worse for the Tsar. So you need more than soldiers in order to fight a war. If you don’t have workers in a factory making bullets, the soldiers are not going to be fighting the war much longer. Right?

[00:22:09.480] – Grumbine

Exactly.

[00:22:10.680] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah. Well, these workers were going on strike and there was no death squads to actually make them go back to work or anything like that. And the problem was that the allies, Britain, America, and France were really kind of not very happy with the situation. This was inconvenient.

They had invested so much money into this Tsar of Russia and he was supposed to deliver by bringing them supplies from the east and also keeping them in war. So now, Lenin was very smart. What he did was he was telling the workers to convert this imperial war into a civil war or that it was essential to defeat one’s own government.

So he was basically telling all the soldiers that this was an unjust war and that they needed to turn around and point the gun at the Tsar and get rid of him because he’s the jackass who put these soldiers at risk, not for the defense of the country, but so that his inbred cousins can conquer more. And just so you understand how hard it was, the Tsar forcibly drafted 14 million soldiers.

[00:23:35.240] – Grumbine

Wow.

[00:23:35.990] – Krishnaswamy

And because he had drafted 14 million soldiers, mostly from the rural population, when you have slavery, you don’t have incentives to get things like tractors or even horses because the people are your cattle. Well, that had a cascading effect.

[00:23:55.970] – Grumbine

Yeah.

[00:23:56.230] – Krishnaswamy

So now they had a shortage of labor in these farms, which meant that people were going hungry. Some of the soldiers were sent to the front. I’m not kidding. According to the history of the CPSU, the population and the soldiers at the front went hungry, barefoot, and naked. Barefoot in Russia is very bloody cold.

[00:24:20.090] – Grumbine

Yeah.

[00:24:21.350] – Krishnaswamy

So on top of that, while the war was in progress, one of the Tsar’s main minister was a traitor and he also sabotaged him. So the Germans had already captured Latvia, Lithuania, what is now known as Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and they were coming via Eastern Front.

So on top of this, the workers were going on strike because they didn’t want to be basically forced to fight this stupid war. And with so much disturbance, finally, the investors who were really into the Tsar staying in power decided that they were going to have the Tsar, quote-unquote “abdicate.”

So in February of 1917, they had basically another mass famine because the Tsar didn’t really plan this and he drafted way too many soldiers and they didn’t have enough people to really just plow the land. And basically, the workers all went on strike and the allies were getting very upset that the Tsar did not follow his mandate and the final straw or the nail in the coffin was that sometime in either late February or March, depending on the calendar, and please don’t ask me to do this.

This is hard. The Tsar tried to use some soldiers to fire on these striking workers. The soldiers just was like, “I’m checking out.” And that was when basically they decided that, OK, we’re going to now do a half-assed, quote-unquote “democracy” because the Bolsheviks were asking people what the Bolsheviks wanted was a constitutional assembly that was representative of the people.

So then the West got in and actually put up some kind of puppet regime. By the way, just so we know, 40 percent of workers as, in fact, city workers, factory workers had also been forcibly drafted into this army.

[00:26:46.080] – Grumbine

Wow.

[00:26:46.830] – Krishnaswamy

And yeah, a lot of people were dying. And so it was kind of like they kept on trying new prime ministers. So there was a provisional government and then they put the Tsar’s, cousin or brother, or maybe both Michael in. The workers were like, “Yeah, this is not cool”. So they went through maybe eight to 10 different configurations. And at this time in April, this is really funny.

Lenin was in Switzerland and the Bolsheviks decided to smuggle him back to Russia.  And on top of that, the provisional government also promised to legalize the Russian Bolshevik Party. And they went back on that promise too. They also said we’re going to have a constitutional assembly in March right away. But then when March came, they’re like, “Oh, oops se dazy. We’re not ready yet. We’re going to go to having a constitutional assembly in April.”

April comes with, “Oh, well, we can’t because we’re still there. But if you wait, we’re going to have it in June.” They didn’t. And then they tried to do that in September again. And of course, the plan was to never have the constitutional assembly because they knew that the minute you gave power to the people and actually have a new constitution, they’re going to check out of the war.

And the allies needed Russia to stay in World War I. So if you look at the documents, I believe Wilson was the president, he has these like psychotic documents in the State Department that even visible right now where they’re like, oh, my God, what if Russia finds a separate peace with Germany? It’s really psychotic. Yeah. He’s like the worst thing that can happen is a separate peace in Asia.

And you’re like, no, it’s not. That’s really the best thing that can happen. But so that’s kind of where we are. So now, the Tsar has quote-unquote, “stepped down.” And the funny thing is that the Tsar at this point, because people have been so oppressed and hungry, finally they agree, all the capitalists, I guess capitalistic parties, they all call themselves various names.

It doesn’t even matter what they call themselves. But they basically turned on this guy named Kerensky and he was really ineffective, too. But the idea was that he was going to somehow keep Russia in World War I. And then, like towards the end of September, Wilson and the allies and everyone kind of realized that, oh, we can’t do that.

They had found their own Juan Guaido, and they were planning on assassinating Kerensky and putting in their own Juan Guaido as a way of keeping Russia in this really pointless, stupid war. By the way, the provisional government, of course, was supposed to be temporary until they convocated the constitutional assembly, but they kept on delaying that.

They didn’t even legalize the Bolshevik Party. On top of that, in July they shut down all the Bolshevik presses. In many countries, many parties have their own newspapers and they basically shut down all the Bolshevik newspapers.

[00:30:11.040] – Grumbine

Oh, my.

[00:30:12.240] – Krishnaswamy

So kind of like they were playing dirty. On top of it, the provisional government, what people don’t understand is property, what you imagine property today is not the same thing as that was property back in, say, 1857 in America. Right?

[00:30:31.330] – Grumbine

Right on.

[00:30:32.480] – Krishnaswamy

So when you abolish private property, it means a lot of different things. So there were a lot of people who were basically stuck in these feudal type of relationships in Tsarist Russia. So abolishing private property was very necessary because these landed states had just like literally robbed these rural people blind and they had to redistribute the land in a fair way.

So when you have nothing, if you needed a loan, for example, and you were a peasant, you had to give the landlord corvee laborers and free labor for a certain amount of time, but growing season’s very short. And if you give that to your landlord, you can’t grow your own land and then that just puts you in the cycle. So they had to redistribute the land.

And of course, the provisional government did not do that even. That was the most basic. They didn’t do that. And then finally in October or November, they were like, “OK, we’re going to move the constitutional assembly to sometime in 1918.” Everyone was like, “That’s it. You guys are gone.”

And so the Bolsheviks came in. And the funny thing is that that’s when they took state power. Kerensky he knew that the Western press was going to be adversarial. By the way, racism back then was even like a hundred times worse. So in the Western presses, Russians were not considered people, to be honest.

[00:32:07.820] – Grumbine

Oh, wow.

[00:32:09.080] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah. They were very, very, very racist. And on top of it, imagine these people who didn’t know how to read and write and you consider them lesser human beings. Most of Russia is in Asia. So, for example, you’ll see a lot of people obsess about whether or not Lenin’s eyes are too Asiatic.

[00:32:27.920] – Grumbine

Oh, my. Oh, my.

[00:32:29.240] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah, there’s a Guardian piece that’s really funny where this man in the first eight paragraphs mentions how Lenin does not have any Chinese guards and how there are not hordes of Mongols just like out there racism. So the idea is that these like Russians are barbarians who can’t be controlled.

So, what Kerensky did was put these like female soldiers right in front and then invited all these foreign presses to take pictures of the Bolsheviks, like mowing them down. But guess what? Kerensky did not know that all these female guards they were secretly Bolsheviks.

So when they came to take over the Winter Palace in Petrograd that night, the soldiers just like switched sides and went in and let the Bolsheviks in. And by the way, for those who claim that Joe Biden can’t do something because he’s only been for six months or whatever, on November 8th, Lenin did the decree on peace where he’s like, “OK, we check out of World War I. You guys go away.”

And all the soldiers checked out. He also abolished private property and then said that within three months they were going to negotiate an armistice. And then the next day, the provisional government did a decree on the land where what would happen is that these committees in the rural area would sit together and decide how to deal with the land.

And that’s about as democratic as you can do. And on top of it, just so we know, the Tsar was the biggest landlord and then the church was the second biggest landlord. So the church confiscated all the church’s land. So when he did this, like the people were like, “Oh, Lenin’s serious about actually having a constitution assembly.”

So then Lenin and the Soviets set the constitutional assembly to sometime in February. And then they started to do negotiations with Germany because Germany was on their border. So they eventually ended up signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. And then in March, they created the constituent assembly. And it was done in a very, very democratic way, kind of like how Bolivia made its constitution. It was very similar.

[00:34:59.970] – Grumbine

In what way?

[00:35:01.470] – Krishnaswamy

So what they would do is they had these rural districts where they would come and meet and they’d write their draft and then they’d elect their representatives to take their draft up one level and it went up the state level and so on until it went to the level of the Soviets, which is the highest level. And then they consolidated all the draft to make one system.

[00:35:36.340] – Intermission

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[00:36:25.510] – Krishnaswamy

And because Lenin nationalized the banks, oh, my God, Wall Street started to cry because in March of 1918, they had invested Chase, or back then it was a national bank. Oh my God. All these meant to protect. And what about our mines and all that. So. So now the British were really scared because oh that dude’s my cousin and they just got rid of him.

Why do we need the king? What if the people we’re oppressing, what if they decide they don’t need a king anymore? So this is where you got so much anti-Bolshevik propaganda that you go check The Guardian or The New York Times. They’re just like, completely insane.

The first one is they get Lenin’s name wrong and then they say that he’s actually a secret Baltic German. And then it’s just like this is where half the lies come from. You know how people acted with Bernie Sanders like the really crazy things.

[00:37:34.030] – Grumbine

Oh, yeah.

[00:37:34.330] – Krishnaswamy

But now, if you remember, Lenin actually won. So they just kind of went nuts. Well at that point what happened is that when they saw the Russians just check out all these people in the Austria-Hungarian empire was like, “I’m checking out of the war. OK, let’s go.” And then the Austria-Hungarian empires quickly disintegrated within a few months.

The Ottoman Empire, the same thing happened. And now this scared all the superpowers in the world a lot. So they all I’m not kidding, 14 countries conspired together to invade Russia to put back what their version of Juan Guaido is because they call it the Russian civil war. But literally from every end, because there was a lot of people profiting from having the Tsarist system in Russia, there was a lot of mineral extraction.

Anything you can imagine, there was a way to profit from exploitation. France had lots of investments, too. Americans, too, and 14 different countries invaded in all the directions. On top of that, if you look at the map of Tsarist Russia, what you’ll see is that countries like Finland did not exist. It was Russia. Poland did not exist. That was Russia.

The Czech Republic and Slovakia did not exist. That was Austria-Hungary. But what France did is they got their Juan Guaido, his name was Pilsudski, I think that’s it, Pilsudski.  And he was trained in France, armed in France. And his job was to balkanize what is now modern Poland. There was Baron Mannerheim. He was the same thing. He was to balkanize Finland.

They also tried to do that with this guy named Kolchak, but he was to balkanize the east in Siberia. And then there was Denikin, who was there to balkanize modern-day Ukraine area. So while they say it’s the Russian civil war, it was definitely kind of like the Syrian civil war, if that makes sense.

[00:40:00.170] – Grumbine

It presumes some prior knowledge, but sure, go ahead. Tell me, in what way would you consider them the same?

[00:40:06.200] – Krishnaswamy

In that it’s not a civil war because you have so many people fighting on behalf of foreign interests. For example, you know how Turkey sent the Free Syrian Army over so France sent Pilsudski to like balkanize from Tsarist Russia, the area that’s now known as modern Poland. And Mannerheim was armed and funded by Germany. The British armed and funded Kolchak and Denikin.

[00:40:33.680] – Grumbine

Understood. OK, keep going.

[00:40:36.020] – Krishnaswamy

On top of that, the Tsar had a humungous police force known as the Okhrana and that was four million people big. They kind of wanted to get the old system back. And on top of that, the former landlords or people related to the Tsar, they wanted this. They didn’t like this like Bolshevik thing.

So all of them kind of conspired and the Russians were being attacked from all sides. So the US by now has conquered Germany. Germany thought that once Russia is out, they were going to win the war, but that just didn’t work out for them. And they have to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

What they do is you have these people in a conference room in France, mostly British, French, and American, and they took what was former German colonies and just kind of drew little lines around it. They did that with the Ottoman Empire and they did a little afterwards, but not here.

And they made up these random countries. So Hungary, for example, there were ethnic Hungarians that they just kind of draw a little circle, and 60 percent of ethnic Hungarians were left out of Hungary. So no one’s really happy here, because when you have, like, random people from America, Britain and France deciding who’s your country like, no one is happy.

So that was the Treaty of Versailles. So what you have is basically a lot of unhappy people. And also Germany lost its overseas colonies and Wilson went back on his promise. So instead of like freeing those colonies, he gave it to Britain and France and allegedly Belgium and like. So all of this is kind of like an early model of what the U.S. and Britain continue to do.

So now that Germany, Austria was mostly taken care of, the British and French decided to invade from the north. America tried to invade in 1918 from Alaska side, and they sent in Kolchak and he was brutal. He exterminated entire villages in Siberia. He cut off people’s legs. It was disgusting. And so then the Red Army, who didn’t have much at that time, had to fight back.

The thing is there was a really funny Siberian song about Kolchak that his uniform is made from Britain, the tobaccos from Japan, the guns are from France and like Kolchak just leads this dance. He was a complete pawn. By the way, people loyal to the Tsars like they’re called the White Army, and they were on the western end trying to balkanize modern day Ukraine.

And Pilsudski, he was doing this in Poland, a campaign of what you call Polification. That meant that if you weren’t Polish, you had better leave or you got exterminated. And there were a lot of extermination camps around that time in 1919. And the allies, Britain, France, America all supported it. In fact, the US ambassador went to Poland and he’s like, “I don’t see any Jews being exterminated here,” while that area had like constant mass extermination campaign.

[00:44:21.170] – Grumbine

Wow!

[00:44:21.170] – Krishnaswamy

So that was the Russian civil war. And the Bolsheviks are kind of limited because they’re literally mostly peasants who have absolutely nothing and they fight. And now all these countries are invading with their imperial armies. So in the end, they managed to push back Pilsudski’s army into what is now modern day Poland. They completely get rid of Kolchak, thank God, but they had to give up Finland.

And in fact, the Soviet Union is the first country to recognize Finland. So sometime in around 1920, the allies finally concede defeat and you get the borders of what is the Soviet Union. And it’s much smaller than the tsarist borders. Poland’s gone. Finland gone. And there’s a little bit of strategy in that Siberian area with a lot more mineral rich. And the Bolsheviks somehow managed to capture that.

[00:45:36.130] – Grumbine

OK, so right now, as far as the wars go, we have the Bolsheviks starting to take over. If I’m not mistaken, Nicholas ends up giving . . .

[00:45:49.990] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah. Nicholas is killed in 1918, sometime in July, and that was mostly their thing was that he was with the British adviser. Lenin had told . . . OK, this is a little ridiculous, but there’s a lot of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories because of this, but there was a group called the Jewish Bolsheviks.

And if you were oppressed, like if you’re a Jewish person and somebody says, “I’m going to do a revolution. You’re going to go join them” because the system sucks for you, right?

[00:46:22.050] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:46:22.980] – Krishnaswamy

1. So there was a group of Jewish Bolsheviks and they were tasked with guarding the Tsar. And Lenin said, “OK, under no circumstance should you let the Tsar escape.” But he was conspiring with the British people. And if the Tsar had just hung out in his summer palace, the Bolsheviks actually would have just let him be in the summer palace and just die out and nothing would happen.

But he can’t do that. He has to be in power again. So he was conspiring with the British and he was with the British adviser and they had all this gold, diamonds, whatever they were trying to escape. These people were very young, inexperienced soldiers. Some of them were 16, 17, and that’s when they ended up killing the Tsar.

[00:47:04.530] – Grumbine

I’ve got to tell you. One of the funniest stories and how often is murder funny, right? But there’s two murders during this time period that are absolutely hilarious. The murder of Rasputin is like a comedy show. It’s almost like vaudeville.

[00:47:17.280] – Krishnaswamy

Oh, yeah. It was like ridiculously hard to kill him. And the Tsar wanted to kill him because he was a weirdo in that he . . . Yeah, it was extremely hard. And none of us understand why.

[00:47:29.820] – Grumbine

But then I don’t know whether I laughed or cried when Nicholas and his family were killed. First of all, the comedy of moving them from place to place.

[00:47:38.760] – Krishnaswamy

Because even Kerensky could not keep his soldiers from . . .they hated him. So the funniest thing is that if you look at some of Lenin’s articles, he seems to have inside information. And this is making the Tsar very paranoid. But then what we realize is that in Kerensky’s government, the Tsar thinks that Kerensky had fired all his servants.

But what we realized was the servants hated the Tsar so much that they begged Kerensky to let them go. And Kerensky’s like, “OK, fine.” And they had to, like keep him moving because Kerensky could not even trust his own soldiers not to shoot the Tsar. So there’s no hope that Lenin could have done anything and the Tsar should have just kind of bowed his head and been in his little summer palace, which is a palace.

And if he had been quiet and just like retired there, nothing would have happened. And the one rumor is about the Tsar’s kids. There were no kids. All of them were adults except for Alexei. So there was one child, not kids.

[00:48:41.190] – Grumbine

Now, weren’t they terrified of the possibility that he would wake up one day and decide to start a counter-revolution? And so the fear was if he stayed around, that ultimately when the people got back from the war, it would fuel a reclamation of the Tsarist.

[00:48:58.140] – Krishnaswamy

I don’t think he was killed on purpose because, like I said, Lenin didn’t order it. But once he was killed, it’s like, OK, whatever, because like I said, it was a very inexperienced, very called the Jewish Bolsheviks. Yakov Yurovsky, I believe, was one of them. So, yes, you’re right about that. They were wondering what to do with regard to the long-term plan precisely because of this.

But when he was killed in July of 1918, like I said, there’s no evidence that indicates it was anything more than these young, inexperienced soldiers kind of panicking because he was trying to escape and they were just kind of nervous and didn’t know what to do. And they kind of just went like boom, boom, boom.

[00:49:38.760] – Grumbine

The funny thing is, as they wake him up in the middle of the night,

[00:49:42.750] – Krishnaswamy

The British woke him up. They were escaping. He was with this British guy who was trying to get him to escape to a safer place. So the idea was to, of course, have a counter-revolution. That was definitely the British plan. It was just that they didn’t realize that the young Bolsheviks were watching and that’s when the young Bolsheviks came in and shot everyone.

[00:50:09.060] – Grumbine

And the way they described it, it was not just like any old shooting. I mean, they just lit the place on fire. They shot every bullet they had.

[00:50:17.940] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah, basically, because, like I said, these are not formally trained soldiers. They are very poor kids who most of them weren’t even 18. They had gotten a gun because they needed to fight. You know what I mean?

[00:50:32.610] – Grumbine

Absolutely. I do. It seems like every assassination attempt during this time could have been read to like a Laurel and Hardy background music, because it’s almost comedic the way it happens, though. It’s like everybody’s bumbling around trying to figure out how to take care of whatever it is that they’re trying to do. Like with Rasputin was just hilarious. But then Nicholas, it was both tragic in some weird sense.

[00:50:58.180] – Krishnaswamy

Oh, it was not tragic.

[00:50:59.320] – Grumbine

But you know what I’m saying like just in the sense of these guys were . . . He had no clue what was going on.

[00:51:05.480] – Krishnaswamy

Oh, my God. Yeah. His cluelessness was like, really, he’s like, “I can’t believe people hate me.” And it’s like you were a jackass. Of course, they hate you.

[00:51:15.590] – Grumbine

It just seemed like he was, “You’re not really going to kill me are you,” kind of? I mean, it’s like all I can envision in my head.

[00:51:21.980] – Krishnaswamy

Well, yeah. I did not understand why so many soldiers hated him so much. And it’s like you’re a jackass, that’s why. With Rasputin, it was one of the Tsar’s people. But it was comically hard to kill him. And we don’t know and no one understands why. So it’s just like an untold mystery.

[00:51:37.640] – Grumbine

Right. Enhances his mystique here. OK, so Nicholas is gone now. And where does this revolution take us to now?

[00:51:47.180] – Krishnaswamy

Well, what you have to remember is that Russia is a third-world country. They have nothing. So the first thing is that there are some hilarious stories. No one’s ever done this before. And this had never happened where peasants have actually like overtaken the tsar and fought eight different empires and won. Look, literally, this has never happened before.

So there’s no guidebook or planning or anything. Everyone’s kind of improvising. Let me read you this, like, really funny. This is a British guy who’s writing about some of it. So these are the first steps. But this is really funny. So this is S.S. Pestkovskii, who is the director of the new state bank, and he explains how he got his job.

He said, “The room was rather large. In one corner, the Secretary of the Sovnarkom, it’s an acronym for the committee, N.P. Gorbunov was working at a small table. Further on Menzhinskii was looking very tired and was lounging on a sofa over which a sign: “The People’s Commissariat of Finance” was there. I sat down near Menzhinskii and began to talk with him.

In the most innocent way, he started to question me about my earlier career and became curious in regard to my past studies. I answered I had worked at the University of London, where among other subjects I had studied finance. Menzhinskii suddenly arose, fixed his eyes upon me and categorically declared. In that case, we shall make you the director of the State Bank. I was frightened and answered that I had no desire to hold this position since this was entirely out of my expertise.

Saying nothing, Menzhinskii asked me to wait and left the room. He was gone for some time and he returned with the paper signed by Vladimir Ilyich, that’s Lenin, on which it stated that I was the director of the State Bank. I became even more dumbfounded and began to beg Menzhinskii to revoke this appointment.

As to what qualification Menzhinskii had to be the people’s commissar of finance, he said he had once clerked in a bank in France.” So the thing was that Russia had 12 percent literacy and most literate people were counterrevolutionaries on the side of Tsar. So the Bolsheviks had to kind of deal with like not having enough literate people to staff anything.

So they just kind of accepted anyone who came in. There was a time where Lenin gets robbed at gunpoint and then the guards in the Kremlin say, “OK, we can’t let you in because you don’t have your passes. And he’s like, “I’m Lenin.” And they’re like, “I don’t care.” So then Lenin has to wait in the guard tower and he calls somebody else and then they are like, “Yes, this guy’s the leader of our country. Let him in.”

So he was like, “OK, what are we going to do?” Lenin says, “I am Lenin. I cannot prove it because I have been robbed of my pass.” So there’s a lot of like chaos, disorganization and not that much direction. And a lie that you got is like, “Oh my God, communists are authoritarian.” Let me dispel that rumor. So, on March 1919, this is what Lenin literally decreed.

“Decrees are instructions which call for practical work on a mass scale. That is what is important. What is this doing that decrees do contain much that is useless, much that in practice cannot be put into effect. But they contain material for practical action for the purpose of a decree is to teach practical steps to hundreds, thousands and millions of people who heed the voice of the Soviet government.

This is a trial in practical action in the sphere of socialist construction. If we treat manners in this way, we shall acquire a good deal from the sum total of our laws, decrees and ordinances. We shall not regard them as absolute injunctions which must be put into effect instantly at all costs.” Like what kind of authoritarian leader says, “Hey, you don’t have to obey our orders if you don’t think it’s useful.”

The one thing that happens is that they did crack down on, say, financial corporations. They told them to get the bleep out. They crack down on the mining concessions. They’re like, OK, we’re not doing it. So if you are a Wall Street investor, Lenin was very strict with you. But for people, Lenin was like the total opposite. If you read The New York Times, yeah.

A lot of times they’re upset that, oh, my God, Lenin would not let them take whatever they need. But a lot of these outright lies come from the fact that the people who write our newspapers, New York Times like to do they cater for is Wall Street. And so from their point of view, yeah, sure, Lenin’s authoritarian, but not from a human point of view, if that makes sense.

[00:56:42.360] – Grumbine

And it kind of, I guess, brings us to this point here where we realize that peasants rose up. This wasn’t some wealthy class that had all the collateral in the world and assets . . .

[00:56:52.510] – Krishnaswamy

That’s where the hammer and sickle come from because they had nothing but a hammer and sickle.

[00:56:58.450] – Grumbine

And the other part of this that I think really stands out is the fact that once again, the people rose up, not the wealthy, the empowered interest, but the regular people did. And ultimately, you always have to worry about a counter-revolutionary fight. You always have to worry about assassination attempts.

[00:57:18.520] – Krishnaswamy

Oh. There’s plenty of that.

[00:57:20.980] – Grumbine

All that stuff has been going on not only in the Haitian Revolution but the French Revolution. We see the same thing. There’s always royalists waiting around the corner

[00:57:31.010] – Krishnaswamy

Um-hum.

[00:57:31.010] – Grumbine

To take back what you’ve taken for yourself. And so, once again, Russia is no different and fancy that wherever there’s assassination attempts or whatever, people die. So, yes, protecting your life, protecting your gains, sometimes people die. This isn’t like some mad dash to see how many people we can kill.

[00:57:50.770] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah, but a lot of those ideas about the Soviets being that is just outright extreme racism.

[00:57:57.940] – Grumbine

Propaganda and lies

[00:57:59.290] – Krishnaswamy

That’s right. For example, there’s some Guardian article where the Tsar had the official religion was Christianity. And then like this jackass of a British correspondent comes in and he’s like, “Oh, my God. All these Muslims are rolling down their carpets and praying and being Muslim in public.”

And he’s like, “Lenin decreed Mohammad Day.” And as in it’s like, yeah, OK, Muslims that should be allowed to pray in public if Christians are allowed. Right?

[00:58:29.420] – Grumbine

Uh huh, yeah.

[00:58:30.490] – Krishnaswamy

And like you’ll see so much propaganda from this time is just unhinged. Like this British guy being offended that you’re allowing Muslims to be Muslim in public and Jews to be Jewish in public.

[00:58:43.330] – Grumbine

So as I look at Lenin, one of the things that jumps out at me is, number one, he’s a witty guy. He was a very smart guy. He was not exactly somebody that was running out dancing and partying. And he was a little bit boring.

[00:58:56.440] – Krishnaswamy

And there’s a very good reason. The Tsar had a four million strong Okhrana that was constantly stalking Lenin. So if Lenin even like did one thing that was slightly out . . . Every press in the world would have been discrediting him . . . So, yeah, he did not smoke. In fact, he exiled all smokers to the chimney. He did not drink. He only allowed tea drunk in meetings because he thought that alcohol was sinful and bad.

[00:59:26.000] – Grumbine

Oh, my.

[00:59:27.670] – Krishnaswamy

So he was very prudish.

[00:59:30.070] – Grumbine

But ultimately, though, we’re talking about kind of a consistent thing. But I think the point I’m making is, is that every time the people have risen up, the storytellers of the establishment make it out to be that they’re dictators, that they kill everybody, that they’re the bad worst people in the world, and instead realizing that the conditions that they were living under were so bad that they finally couldn’t take it anymore.

[00:59:54.620] – Krishnaswamy

Exactly. And what you realize is Lenin was super merciful. The very first time these people tried to overthrow the government, they just put them in front of the judge and was like, “OK, we’ll take your guns. You can’t do this again.” And when the same people came back, that’s when they started cracking down. You’d be surprised at how merciful.

Like there’s another story which is really funny because it has to do with Romania after World War II. And these like maltreating fascists are like, oh, my God, these it’s called the Pitești Prison Experiment. And if you know what the Romanian Iron Guard did, they literally hung children from meat hooks. They were horrible.

[01:00:34.470] – Grumbine

Oh, my.

[01:00:34.470] – Krishnaswamy

For that what they did is they took them to like some scary castle and made them read some books and had some old lady yell at them. And the thing is that you have to kind of understand who’s telling the story. So when they say something like, “Oh, my God, the Soviet hurt my grandpa for having a book.”

You have to ask them what was the book? And then you’re like, “Oh, it was the accounting book with the list of Jews that your grandpa killed.” OK, that’s not exactly the entire story. You know what I mean?

[01:01:06.190] – Grumbine

You know, it’s funny you say this. Before I had talked to you the first time, I was just striking out on my own looking for material to read. And I found this history of the Russian Revolution and the first half of the book read fantastically. It didn’t seem slighted in the least.

I didn’t pick up any typical anti-human, pro-government, CIA kind of bullshit. None of it. Then I started hearing them talking about how Lenin looked like an imp. His face was squished . . .

[01:01:37.490] – Krishnaswamy

. . . because his grandfather was Mongolian.

[01:01:39.250] – Grumbine

Well, what I found out was the guy who wrote this book was actually a CIA prop. He was a jackass from the US who had been an anti-communist CIA guy. So his entire book ended up being complete and utter trash. So I got about four or five sentences deep past the stuff that was pretty benign once I got into the other stuff, oh, my God, I can’t read this anymore.

[01:02:03.550] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah.

[01:02:04.330] – Grumbine

At that point in time, I didn’t even have the insights that I have now, so I had no basis other than this just reads like garbage. This just reads like insanity.

[01:02:14.470] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah. Whenever conservatives tell me to read the Gulag Archipelago.

[01:02:18.400] – Grumbine

Yep.

[01:02:19.390] – Krishnaswamy

OK, you idiot. You have not read the Gulag Archipelago. So let me give you one sentence.

[01:02:25.090] – Grumbine

I actually have that stupid book because of somebody doing that.

[01:02:27.850] – Krishnaswamy

No, no, but this is really funny. OK, have you read the Gulag Archipelago? I’m like, OK, you have not. Because this is what he says about how the Bolsheviks arrested people. He says the traditional image of arrest is also a trembling hand packing for the victim, a change of underwear, a piece of soap, something to eat.

No one knows what you need, what is permitted, what clothes you get to wear. The security agents keep interrupting you. And I’m like, what? You get to pack underwear when you’re getting arrested in the Soviet Union?

In the US, you don’t you just kind of get handcuffed and it looks like they weren’t even handcuffed. There was like, oh, what . . . [crosstalk]  Sounds like you have . . . This sound does not sound effect . . . This sounds way to humaine for what you’ve done. Right?

[01:03:23.670] – Grumbine

Right.

[01:03:24.790] – Krishnaswamy

And he said the traditional image. So this gives me the impression that this is the normal way in which they arrest people and they always have a civilian witness. And you’re like, OK.

[01:03:36.910] – Grumbine

All right. Yeah.

[01:03:38.110] – Krishnaswamy

Conservatives always tell you to read books that they have not read.

[01:03:41.650] – Grumbine

Well, and the sad thing is, I actually went through that book, too, and I’ve listened to the propaganda because I didn’t know any better. And that’s really why you coming on the show was so important, because we want to put out the right stuff.

[01:03:56.260] – Krishnaswamy

Mm hmm.

[01:03:57.710] – Grumbine

We want people to be interested in reading and learning, because what we’re seeing today in the US and really around the world is there’s a lot of people that are just comfortable enough that the idea of doing something meaningful is a bridge too far.

[01:04:15.770] – Krishnaswamy

Yeah.

[01:04:16.050] – Grumbine

And for those of us who are really hurting and who are desperate and who are willing to keep fighting, we’re castigated as lefty splitters, crazy people, all these put downs and crap just like we’re dealing with them when you know that your heart is in the right place, you want the right things.

You’re fighting for the right causes, but you’re still made out to be the bad guy. And I think that’s interesting. I think people should find a way to read the right history. And so obviously we can’t cover the entire thing.

[01:04:45.920] – Krishnaswamy

My thing is you have to understand who’s the oppressed and who’s the oppressor. And for example, everyone knows that when Ben Shapiro yells about reverse racism, you don’t take him seriously. Right?

[01:04:58.690] – Grumbine

Right.

[01:04:59.660] – Krishnaswamy

But why do you do that when the Nazi who wrote Gulag Archipelago, the anti-Semitic dude . . .

[01:05:04.850] – Grumbine

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

[01:05:08.720] – Krishnaswamy

Yes. That guy. Yeah. You need to treat him like you would when any right winger is like reverse racism. But people don’t understand the context in what he’s leaving out. And the other thing that’s hard for Americans to believe is it’s possible to have a system where power didn’t corrupt.

Lenin is like one of the nicest guys in the world. He cares. You can tell he cares. The very first film that Lenin showed was how cruel the British colonization of India was. But Americans are so used to like evil people like Pelosi, and so they just can’t fathom that there’s a good guy if that makes sense.

[01:05:50.980] – Grumbine

Yup. And you see it in Cuba. You see it all around the world.

[01:05:55.200] – Krishnaswamy

Evo Morales. Exactly. He’s like such a humble guy and they’re trying to demonize him.

[01:06:00.320] – Grumbine

Exactly.

[01:06:01.850] – Krishnaswamy

And Pedro Castillo now is soon going to be the next victim. You know, the usual crap.

[01:06:06.800] – Grumbine

Absolutely. History and theory and discerning propaganda, I think, are vital in terms of shaping the world we want to live in tomorrow. Obviously, we can’t recreate the conditions of the time, but we can take the understanding we get from the conditions of the time and kind of inform our next steps because they didn’t get everything right either.

[01:06:31.460] – Krishnaswamy

No.

[01:06:31.970] – Grumbine

They didn’t have a playbook.

[01:06:33.500] – Krishnaswamy

We have their mistakes. Exactly.

[01:06:35.150] – Grumbine

That’s right. And so it’s very important to not waste that knowledge and it’s important to understand in its proper context. So, Esha, I’m hoping that I can have you come back on to go beyond this point, but for this week I really just want to thank you so much for taking us all the way up to this part of the revolution and let our audience know where we can find you and how we can follow your work.

[01:06:59.550] – Krishnaswamy

OK, well, the cool thing is that it all started with some professor made a boring comment about Stalin and he started trending. And then somebody asked me to look at the video and debunk whether or not they were right about the Soviet Union.

So now we’re doing something called Soviet Summers. It’s on Wednesdays at 9:00 or sometimes at 8:00. And we go through a very slow, detailed history and it’s on YouTube. You could also find my podcast historicly.substack.com. We have some very interesting interviews coming up – one with regards to Myanmar. There’s a lot of confusion.

So there was this lady that everyone glorified, but then she didn’t really turn out that way. But what you realize was just kind of racist all along. And there’s a mess going on there. So we are going to have Brian Berletic. We’re also going to have an episode about the Nation of Islam and how people misunderstood it. And we also are having an episode about Singapore. So a lot of it is just like working through US regime change propaganda.

[01:08:12.650] – Grumbine

Understood. Well, with that, Esha, thank you so much for joining us. And folks, I thank you for riding with us on this. We’ll be back next week with another podcast. But for this week, I’m Steve Grumbine. Got Esha. Thank you all so much. Have a great day, everybody. We’re out of here.

[01:08:35.100] – Ending Credits

Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts and promotional artwork by Mindy Donham. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.