Margaret talks with Robert Evans about the time that millions of Ukrainians rose a black flag and went to war against landlords, nationalists, and Bolsheviks.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did
cool stuff you were twice weekly reminder that sometimes amongst
all the bad things, there's people who try to do
the good things and sometimes even succeeded.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
The good things. I love the good things.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today is
Robert Evans.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi, Robert, I am Hi. How are you, Margaret?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I'm okay. Everyone's having a week, but I'm great.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I recreated climate change in minimum in it like a
smaller version in my bedroom this week, because I kept
feeling as I was sitting down on one corner of
my waterbed that I was probably shouldn't be sitting down
on that one corner all the time when I got
into bed, because it was putting strain on it. And
sure enough, I created a pinhole leak in my water bed.
(00:50):
Oh did you?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
So in a way, yeah, I recreated all of the
mistakes that have led us as a species to the
current point that we're in.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
And so there's rising waters, but it's the on the
floor of your well.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Thankfully, the whole waterbed is inside this big plastic container thing,
so I can contain it. I've got a patch kit.
I'm going to patch it, and then I'm going to
use a wetback to soak up the water that's spilled out,
so we should be good, which is like the equivalent
of cloud seating. I guess Roberto god Lord, yes, no,
(01:27):
just no.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Robert's trying to live the dream of the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Always. He always does this.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
And when he told me this story this morning, I
made this face magpie and I went, well.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
The other things that Robert does besides recreate global warming
is yeah, a podcast called Behind the Bastards, which is
sort of an inverse cool people show. Yeah, mine came first,
but you know it's fine, Yes, and Robert usually I
surprise guests about what this is about. But I think
you know what this one's going to be about, because
(02:05):
I probably told you m It's about the sex pistols
and the anarchy in the UK. Yeah, r ai n e.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Never mind the Ballocks, never mind the Balkans. That's that bad.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Wait, we're not talking about sex pistols.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
We're not talking Okay, we're not, so I don't okay, Well,
I know only one thing about the sex pistols, but
it's all of the lyrics to Forget in the Riggin,
which I can recite at will anytime you need.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
I would suspect, without doing a deeper dive, that if
we were to do this era, I would cover the
clash and you would cover the sex pistols.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I like the clash much better than the sex pistols.
But Frigging in the Riggin is a fine song.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I don't know that song.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I only know it was on the Good Ship Venus
by christ. You should have seen us. I can't, actually
shouldn't read the lyrics to that song because it's going
to get me canceled. It doesn't work as well if
it's not a pirate shand.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
We'll pretend that it's because of copyright reason.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, that's why read the lyrics to Friggin and the
Riggin and tell me I wouldn't be canceled for reading
those out on air.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
I've always liked. My favorite punk lyrics is I think
it's the exploited sex and violence. Do you know this song?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
No?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I think the only lyrics are sex and violence, sex
and violence, sex and violence, sex and violence, and then
it continues from there. It's a good song. You can
replace it with bread and hummus, if you're feeling very positive.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Sure, sure, I feel like that's kind of the negative
version of the much deeper clash song death or Glory.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah that's true. Yeah, well, actually we're going to talk
about some death or glory today, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Story.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, I wouldn't put it by asked them to have
straight up used that as a slogan the kind of
folks we're going to talk about, Okay, because today we're
going to talk about that time that millions of people
in southern Ukraine lived a horizontally organized society with equal
distribution of access to land and resources and an equal
saying governance during the Russian Civil War of nineteen seventeen
to nineteen twenty one. And I'm coming out with the
(04:20):
positive framing about like all the like communal land projects
and them all sharing most of what this period is
famous for. Is death really just the violence part of
sex and fundos?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yes, yes, lutily everyone dead, yes.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Including today's hero, although once again I'm going to remind
everyone that almost everyone who was alive during that point
is now dead anyway, so that part was going to
happen no matter what. But today we are going to
talk about the one of the women military commanders during
this period, and Adamanshah, which is the well, we'll talk
(05:01):
about that more later, but you know a word for
a woman military leader. She went from a self described
anarchist terrorist to becoming an art student and a French
soldier in World War One to an elected commander of
hundreds or thousands of fighters at war with the Nationalists,
the Germans and the Bolsheviks. She lived on as a
(05:24):
legend after her execution, only to have her history buried.
And honestly, her history is probably buried because of her gender. Yeah,
today we are talking about the legendary Maria Nikki Farova,
known also as Marusia, and that's what her friends called her,
and that's what everyone else called her. And she's Adamancha
(05:46):
to history if she exists at all.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's such a cool name.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I know.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
The more famous figure in all of this history is
a man named Nestr Makno. And when I first wrote
the script, I was expecting to use a different guest.
So at this point and I would reference people to
go listen to Robert Evans disgusting nest Bakna. So if
you like the obscure podcast Behind the Bastards. You might
be familiar with him as the star of one of
(06:11):
your reverse episodes.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah Yeah, are one of our annual Christmas episodes where
we do with this show.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Does Yeah, which I totally wasn't inspired by what I know.
I think everyone knows that I'm making a joke. This
show exists because of the Christmas reverse episodes. Nestor Makha
is also going to be woven into today's story, but
there's a really good telling of it that people can
go here. He absolutely earned and deserved his central role
(06:39):
in the story of Ukrainian history. Best as I can tell,
Marusia stood like an angel in black on his shoulder,
just telling him of his duties to the people and
the importance of well, to quote the title of probably
the best book that exists about her, the importance of
(07:01):
the revolution without delay, because whenever anyone else was doubting,
including Nester mackno people, every now and then we're like,
you know, our lives might be easier if instead of
immediately robbing the rich, we don't immediately rob the rich.
And then there's Mary Usia standing behind you, possibly with
a machine gun, saying no, we are going to take
(07:24):
all of their money away by whatever means we want to.
And first I'm going to talk some shit on some historians.
I'm not going to do it by name.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh okay, clever.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
There is a pattern I have noticed, and we're gonna
use MARIUSI as an example. But there's a pattern where
women are left out of history, and I've never.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Heard of that.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I know, well, there weren't any women in history or
be left out?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah yeah, yeah, that was that was my understanding.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, you mean you could put a little footnote like
someone probably did the washing, like I don't know. I mean,
otherwise it would have been all dirty and sad, all
the boys who did all.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Of this stuff. Yeah, they had to have done the laundry. Otherwise,
how could the pants be clean? Sure, yeah, exactly. It's
going to make someone unhappy.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Ukrainian nationalist historians don't write about her because she wasn't
a nationalist. Bolshevik historians don't write about her much because
she wasn't a Bolshevik. Sometimes, not the Bolshevik historians, but
the Bolsheviks who lived at the time did write a
lot about her because there was no escaping her at
(08:30):
the time, and mostly the Bolsheviks writing about her wrote
to argue about whether or not she was hot and
whether or not it was fair to just call her
a bandit. Most of them wrote that she was very
ugly and mannish and probably intersects. They did not use
that word. They used the word hermaphrodite, and other ones
(08:54):
were like, no, she's hot, and that's what's important to
the Bolsheviks writing about.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, the anarchists who fought alongside her wrote about her
because she was a big important part of everything, and
anarchist historians currently write about her. The shit I'm about
to talk is, at the entire middle of the twentieth century,
all of the people who were like the anarchist historians
(09:23):
who did the work of recording the sort of forgotten
history that was destroyed by the Bolsheviks and the West,
did not write about her. And I wonder how many
other women were left out of their history. And the
historians of the makhnov China, which is the name of
the Makno country, Yeah, didn't write about her. The participants
(09:49):
in it wrote about her because they were all kind
of terrified. Ever, yeah, and you know, it's gender. The
Golden era anarchists of like, this earlier period absolutely had
lots of women leaders. They were active feminists in many ways,
not all of them, right, but way better than people would.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Assume more of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, and the modern anarchists often the same way, and
the generation that wrote in all the histories did not
so much. And that's my shit talk to open up
the episode. Have you heard much about her before?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
No other than that, you know, when I did the
Makno episodes, people pointed out rightfully that I didn't talk
about her enough and pointed me to some sources where
it was like, oh shit, No, I definitely did not,
because she probably wasn't in the books that you read. No, No,
I don't like it. I don't. I want to think
she wasn't in the books that I read, because otherwise
(10:47):
I like deleted her myself. Yeah, and I hope I
wouldn't do that, But I also can't say I haven't
reread the book since then, right, So I'm gonna hopefully
lean towards it was the fuck The historians that I
picked also kind of zeroed her out of the history
rather than I did it myself. But it's not impossible
(11:08):
that I did it myself.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Well, in most of the things that I have read
about Maknow, and I haven't read a ton of books
about Manknomm. I've read more books about while there's a
book and a half about Marie Niki Farova in English, sure,
but a lot of the books about Macknow, if they
mention her, it's a little bit like prowaway lines and
(11:30):
a paragraph here or there. And it's our job as
pop historians, you knows, as entertainers to delete the characters
that are so minor that throwing them at the audience
just confuses things.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah, you know, Yeah, I just watched the Jerry Seinfeld
pop Tart movie and it's the King of that.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Where they just don't bother including people's names.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
No, where they just introduce little minor characters that seem
like they're going to go somewhere and then they go nowhere. Yeah,
it's it's like the best at that in a baffling way.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, It's like something that I learned from fiction is
that if if a character is not coming back, I
don't give them a name unless the name is specifically
interesting or a point of the thing, because I don't
I don't want to do that to the reader. And
I do that a little bit as a pop historian
telling these stories. A history book will need to include
(12:25):
all the names and all the things so that you
can do the cross referencing, you know. Yeah, so it's
completely possible that, like, if she's mentioned, and then a
lot of stories about Makno, Mackno is good. Okay, this
is the thing. I'm sorry everyone who doesn't yet know
who Maknow is. We'll get to that. Makno is presented
(12:46):
as good anarchist. He is the one who's like, rob
the rich, but give them back some cows, you know,
And Marusia is generally presented as the like kill the
rich side of it. And I can't tell how much
that is bias coming from different writers, and it frustrates me,
(13:09):
but I'll say I'll go through. I'm gonna tell this
story with what I know, which is not as much
in lots of contradictory things, but still one of the
coolest stories I've ever heard. Maria Niki Farova, who goes
by the nickname. The nickname for Maria is Marusia, was
(13:29):
born in eighteen eighty five or eighteen eighty seven in
a southeastern Ukrainian city then called Alexandrovisk, which is now
called Zeppr of Zuzia, and there's an awful lot of
murkiness to her history. Anarchists and Ukraine have recently on
earthed some of her journals as best as I understand,
like in the past couple years, and this sheds some
(13:52):
of the some light on the missing years of her life.
But they're scantly available in English. And for some odd reason.
I don't know if you knew this, Robert, but apparently
something's going on in Ukraine where everyone's busy.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's a mystery. But a lot of phone
calls going unreturned right now.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, I think they're all just, you know, just too
good for us and just hanging out.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
With their long week something. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah. And so again I'm working with what I have.
I'm hoping that in the next couple of years, far
more important things will happen in Ukraine that make them
all safe and happy and able to spend their time
translating these texts. Some said that her dad was a
Russian officer. One historian points out that she probably wouldn't
(14:43):
have had to leave home at sixteen broke if her
father had been an officer. I would suggest that that
was a male historian. And I know a lot of
people who had to leave home at sixteen without support
from their family. But it's over. The only conjecture anyone
has ever made is Russian officer dad, and that is
(15:07):
generally thought not to be true, but it's literally the
only story anyone's I've ever offering. Yeah, she did leave
home at sixteen, and she started working. First she was
a nanny, then she was a shop clerk, and then
she was a bottle washer in a vodka distillery. And
I'm impressed about how Russian that job is.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Look, I'm not an expert on how vodka distilleries work,
but doesn't vodka sterilize? Like, why would you need to
wash the bottles in a vodka factory? Does not the
vodka wash the bottles in the vodka factory. I'm wondering
if this is a fake job, is what I'm saying.
I don't mean to be critical of this woman's career,
but it doesn't seem necessary to wash the bottles in
the vodka factory.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Like she's doing something else there, you know, That's what
they're saying. Yeah, Yeah, is there something? Is there something?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Else going on, because that seems that's like a fake job,
you would invent that. It's like, she.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Was at this bottle factory because later she's going to
rob the hell out of it. But what about that factory?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Okay, it's an open question.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, okay, at this last job, probably she met the
anarchist communists and you know, instead of the whole their
whole difference from the other socialists and communists at the
time is there they didn't want to have a revolution
to empower the rich so that they could then have
a revolution to empower the poor, which is what the
(16:30):
Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were proposing at that time. You know,
the social democrats were proposing. Instead, they were like, well,
let's cut straight to it. And she's like sixteen or
you know, in her early teen or mid teens, and
she's like, yeah, I'm in They're like, all right, well,
let's establish a federation of free communes by way of
(16:50):
armed insurrection.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
And she's like, I'm always saying this, I'm I know, it's.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
It's what you're always saying, always be establishing a federation
of freaking communes by way of Armadencer m m. Nineteen
oh three was a little bit early for them to
pull that off in Russia.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
See that is that is going to be a bad
time to do any kind of armed insurrection in Russia.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, now there's times where you can get like better leeway.
There's never a time where it's like good fun and
a way to live a long and happy life. But
they did get there eventually for a short moment, and
that's going to be the thing we'll eventually get to.
There were anarchists all over the Russian Empire during the
(17:33):
revolutionary period of like nineteen oh three to nineteen oh seven.
Nineteen oh one to like nineteen oh five is when
all the ideological groups like really start organizing, and then
nineteen oh five is this big revolution that happens that
like almost happens. And we did a whole six parter
about this very recently if you want to know more
about it. But we talked, for example on that episode
(17:54):
about the Black Banner movement that came out of Poland
and then spread to Ukraine. It came out of the
pale of settlement where Jews were allowed to live, and
this was an anarcho communist movement that was incredibly well
organized and numerous and in Ukraine, not necessarily under the
name Black Banner. There were about ninety anarchist communist groups
(18:15):
in Ukraine trying to pull off this whole free Communes
by way of armed insurrection thing, about ten thousand active
members and a much broader base of support outside that.
So you see why they were like, oh, we might
be able to pull this off, right, because once you
know ten thousand people who believe a thing, you think
everyone believes that thing.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah, yeah, because it's very hard. Very few people have
ever known more than ten thousand other people.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, I mean to go in the opposite, like, this
is how the January sixth thing I think happened is
that they all thought everyone believes the stuff that they believe.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, And this is also how you get the like
why is ex policy happening? Everyone believes why? And it's like, well, no,
a lot of ten thousand people liked your posts saying why.
But there's a lot of people who have Maybe it's
a stupid all turn it view, maybe it's terrible, but right,
there's a lot more people in the country slash world.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Right, which is why on this show we prioritize hearing
voices of completely different people interjecting into the middle of
our episodes.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
To oh, people like advertisers.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Advertisers are the primary people who we sell advertisements to.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah. Yeah, we very rarely sell advertisements to non advertisers
because they're usually not buying advertisements. I know, I know.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
It's a shame if someone wants to buy an ad
or they just say the name of their cat over
and over again and have a lot of money spend
on that. Although that would make you an advertisement unless you.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Just weren't selling anything. Yeah, if you send us, you know,
a self addressed check for forty six hundred dollars, we
will read someone's address on air and try to incite
the audience against them or send them birthday greetings whichever.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, whichever we feel like, here's the ads.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, you don't have any choice, okay, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Ah, and we hope you enjoyed that rendition of John
Cage's four thirty three One day. I might do a
John Cage episode. He was an anarchist anyway, whatever, So
these folks, they're trying their best to have themselves a revolution,
and it famously did not succeed, but they famously tried
(20:41):
really really hard.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
They sure did.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
One of the strategies at the time they called economic terror,
which makes it sound like it should be like extra
scary boycotts, you know, like we're going to terrorize your economy,
but it actually meant kill landlords and bosses, rob the rich,
burn down their mansions, and they really put their backs
into it. To quote the t Czarists Minister of the Interior.
(21:05):
Between the years of nineteen oh six and nineteen oh eight,
anarchists as well as other factions like the Socialist Revolutionaries
were responsible for quote twenty six thousand, two hundred and
sixty eight attacks, six thousand, ninety one functionaries and private
citizens killed, more than six thousand wounded and more than
five million rubles estimatedly about two million euros by one
(21:28):
modern book I read.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
That actually doesn't sound that sounds like a lot less
than the other numbers people killed. Sounds like that, Wow,
that's a lot of people killed. Two million rubles, sounds like,
oh see, you guys like upset a coke bottling plant
for forty five minutes.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, yeah, well this is robbed at gunpoint from state car.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah, okay, yeah, I mean yeah, that's a lot. I'm not.
I've never robbed a million dollars at state gunpoints, so
I'm not trying to shit on them. I'm just saying, oh, no,
other numbers sound much bigger. Yeah, because twenty six thousand attacks.
In my mind, I have seen enough movies out crime
to assume that you're not getting a million bucks.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
It's not worth it, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I have to assume even if even their attempt to
like calculate for the change and what money is worth
hasn't quite gotten it accurately, because like there was like
twelve million dollars total on the planet at that time.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, total.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's where I'm I'm I'm parsing it out.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
No.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
And my least favorite thing, it's like bad enough to
take like old timey dollars to modern dollars, but like
types of money that may or may not exist anymore
to modern dollars is it's it's just fictitious numbers at
that point, whereas like what a life is is, you know,
roughly stays the same.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah. Yeah, And six thousand people is a lot to shoot.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, And this is from someone who had every incentive
to downplay the numbers because he didn't want to scare
off foreign investment. Right among these ten thousand or so
brave economic terrorists was our hero Marusia Nikki Farova. As
the revolution of nineteen oh five started to pick up,
(23:05):
anarchists moved from the economic terror to what they call
motiveless terror. And this basically meant like, instead of like,
fuck that following specific rich person for that following specific reason. Yeah,
it was a little bit more of a broad fuck
the rich. And this seething hatred of the rich didn't
come from nowhere. Many of the anarchists their parents had
(23:28):
been you know, fucking owned. Yeah, because serfdom was abolished
in eighteen sixty one, so forty years earlier, your family
had been owned. I feel like that changes your perspective
on what you think of class relations. Many of them
(23:50):
were still working for their former owners, and the regime
was violently repressing the revolution in the name of the rich.
So the revolution was like, well, we will repress the rich.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Right now, the.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Anarchists are robbing banks and robbing the rich in their houses,
they're setting up print shops to spread propaganda, and they're
building literal bomb factories. We talked about this last time,
but it's a fun fact, So I want to reiterate it.
During the pogroms by the right wing during the Revolution,
the anarchist neighborhood of Biali Stock in what's now Poland
was the one place in that area that the right
(24:21):
wing dared not go and they couldn't go harass the
Jews there because most of those Jews were anarchists and
they had bomb factories, and it's very hard to mess
with a neighborhood that does that.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, the bomb factory neighborhood is probably not where you
want to start shit.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
No, although I mean, on the other hand, it sounds
kind of explosive. It sounds like flammable.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those it's that you know,
that version of the don't tread on Me flag. It's
just a snake wrapped around the hand grenade that says
fuck with me and I'll kill us all. You know.
It's that. It's the it's the same thing as like
sticking a fucking propane tank on the side of your
bicycle and being like, hit meet cars. What do you
want to do in a way it's respectable. That is
(25:06):
in that is two paragraphs from now that is going
to happen. Okay, good Marosia and Nikki Farova. She's like
roughly twenty at this point, right, depending on when she
was born, which Matthew, you believe in, and she is
all in on this shit. She helped bomb a train
full of rich people, which didn't actually hurt anyone, but
it scared the shit out of everyone. Well, good, that
(25:27):
sounds non problematic. Yeah, I know. It's non violent bombing
of non violent terror bombing.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah. Yeah, it might have been an unsuccessful that might
have been.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
It's probably more accurate.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
She bombed one factory owner and turned him from a
person into a ghost. Then she bombed the commercial offices
of another factory, killing the manager and a security guard
before robbing seventeen thousand rubles, which this time got mathed
to fourteen thousand dollars. Who knows.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Again, everything sounds impressive except for the money, he know,
it seem like, Yeah, she killed a nine to eleven's
worth of people and blew up a city block. And
also she did forty six dollars in damage to the
local seven eleven.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, and she walked away with a cool crisp twenty yea.
This last one, the different problem happened. When I say
that they robbed a seventeen thousand rubles, they did not
get away with seventeen thousand rubles, because they did not
get away at all. Soon the cops show up and
she's surrounded, and she's like, fuck this. I saw that
(26:34):
movie Aliens, and I'm just gonna grip this grenade and
take out a bunch of the cops with me. But
the bomb didn't go off. Otherwise probably I wouldn't. She'd
be a footnote if I knew her name at all.
The bomb didn't go off, and she goes off to prison.
In nineteen oh eight, she is convicted of killing a
(26:54):
cop and a four counts of armed robbery, and first
they give her the death penalty, and then they're like, well,
you're only twenty, so we're going to commute it to
twenty years of forced labor.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Because you'd get more than that today for that. Yes,
that is the thing whenever you go back to these
like right, if you rebel against the Russian imperial government,
you either get executed and dumped into a mass grave
or get like a quarter of the sentence you'd get
today for the same crimes. So it's one of the two.
Yeah exactly, and adulthood for legal responsibility was twenty one
(27:32):
in Czaris Russia. So Czarist Russia, one of the worst
despotic governments of all time, substantially better about juvenile offenders
than yeah, well he's a can't go. Yeah, look, we'll
starve him in his entire family, We'll conscript him to
go die against the Austrians. But you know, you got
(27:52):
to have some mercy when it comes to prison sentences.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And uh So, in nineteen oh nine,
she and twelve other prisoners in the women's prison try
to bust out, and I wish, I so wish I
knew more about so many things that are about to happen.
She tried to bust out, she failed, and so the
state is like, all right, get the fuck to Siberia,
(28:17):
get the fuck out of here. You're too much to handle.
So they sent her off to Siberia, where a lot
of revolutionaries waited out until nineteen seventeen, when the revolution
freed them all. Not Maria Niki Farova. She stages a
riot and escapes. Her and her fellow prisoners riote and
(28:37):
break out, and then, according to one biography, the revolution
without delay, she quote fled through the Taiga to reach
the Trans Siberian Railway. She finally reached Vladivostok, then Japan.
Helped by local anarchist students who paid for a ticket,
she managed to arrive in the United States. There she
found temporary housing among the many anarchist migrants from the
(28:58):
Russian Empire, most of them of Jewish descent, who had
established themselves in New York and Chicago. Other historians are like, no,
it was Chinese anarchist students who bought her ticket to
the US. But the overall nothing has a lot of details.
But she circumnavigated the world through escape and solidarity.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
And she winds up in the good country finally.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
I know she's not going to stay.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Actually, well it's usually that's actually not an unwise decision.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
But yeah, she would have been Well, it's funny she
would have ended up back in Russia in nineteen seventeen anyway,
because the group that she falls in with is the
same group that the first Red Scare is about the
union of Russian workers who, like a ton of them,
including Emma Goldman and some other folks that we covered
last time, get deported back to Russia in nineteen seventeen,
(29:50):
nineteen eighteen, some year that I should know when I don't.
But by nineteen twelve she's like, I don't know. Oh
if I want to be in the States, like I
just I have literally no idea motive for going back
to Europe. I could conjecture I'm going to say that
the States was boring, So comrades smuggle her back into Europe.
(30:14):
She tries going to London, then Germany, than Switzerland, and
then she's like, nah, it's Paris. I gotta be a
Parisian because now she goes to art school. She fucking
breaks out of prison. She's a sixteen year old terar.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I didn't. I didn't think that's where this was going.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
I know, usually people go the opposite direction.
Speaker 5 (30:37):
Art school to become terror sixteen year old terrorist, sure,
who breaks out of prison, circumnavigates the world, writes for
newspapers in New York City, gets to Paris and goes
to art school and gets really into sculpture and painting.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
And this is the city where you're supposed to fall
in love, and she did. She married a Polish anarchist
named what told Bezosteck, and most accounts emphasize it was
a marriage of convenience. I think they did this because
anarchist historians are really annoying and they all have takes
(31:15):
and discourse infuses history, and you're like not supposed to
get married as an anarchist at this time, and so
in some ways.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It's like a hierarchy thing.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
I guess, yeah, no, totally, it's like it's a feminist thing.
It's a specific feminist thing where a lot of leftists,
including a lot of communists, they're not getting married at
this time. You have Emma Goldman saying those who married
you ill, and you have like all of this stuff
around because marriage is a property relationship.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it is largely. It's also like
a thing people basically do in every society. It doesn't
mean the same thing every time, but like, yeah, I
get it, I get it out exactly. And anarchists have
also been getting married the whole time, despite what the
anarchy rules say they're supposed to do. So people present
this as a marriage convenience because she keeps her own
(32:03):
last name and he doesn't always he's not always in
the same place with her as her. Okay, but as
best as I understand, and I've I've read some accounts
of the end of this story, and.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
I don't know all of it yet. I might have
more details by the time we record the next Purse
three and four. Okay, he dies in her command like
it's kinky, like he joins her military command later and
he is executed for the crime of being married to her.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Oh wow wow, And that doesn't sound like a marriage
of convenience. See, that seems really inconvenient to me. Actually,
Marcur I know.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I think that they were in love and they were anarchists,
so she kept her own name and he didn't think
he owned her. And they went different places at different times,
and they spent all their time trying to figure out
how to be together, and they died together. And it
is beautiful. I love this anarchist love story. I know
almost something about.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I do think, just as a general rule, you shouldn't
call it a marriage of cannvenience if it kills one
of them. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's not convenient at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And so because he is the he has the ultimate
wife guy fate.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, that is that, that's his wife. Guys.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
It gets yeah, and we stand anarchis wife guys of history.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
So that's another podcast we'll start soon.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah, exactly. She is one hundred percent part of the movement,
even when she's like in art school and getting married
and stuff. You know, doing all these things is waste
a time with art and love. While she's wasting her
time with art and love, she travels to Spain and
she's like, y'all think that's how you rob a bank.
Let me show you how to rob a bank. But
she gets wounded in Spain while robbing a bank, and
(33:46):
she's spirited away back to Paris to recover, okay, and
this is where no one knows whether or not she's
in her sex. One version of this history, okay, is
that while she's in recovery in Paris, she has some
kind of corrective surgery around her intersex condition.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Did they have that?
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I mean, they have been doing like to infants for
a very long time. I don't have all of this information,
but like this is also the era where you start
having the very first gender firming surgeries are happening in
a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yeah, yeah, I know that, and like in Germany, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Just yeah, okay, I do not know if this part
of it is true. There's very little information about this part.
And then if it did happen, we don't know. If
it was alike, well, you were injured and while we're
down there, we did this thing without your consent, as
happens to intersex people all the time, or whether she
was like, why you're down there, won't we do this thing?
(34:43):
I don't know, or if it happened at all, or
if she was intersex at all, it's conjecture from her
being ugly is some of the ways that it whatever.
I'm so annoyed at all this history, but she's so
fucking interesting and cool. Again, not the best time to
go go to Europe is nineteen thirteen. No, World War
(35:03):
one soon breaks out? And do you know what my
least favorite historical anarchist discourse of all time is?
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (35:12):
No, actually world War One? And whether or not anarchists
were supposed to support it?
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah, how is that a discourse because there's nothing, there's
nothing to support in World War One? Right? Well, what
happened was maybe Belgium, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yeah, the majority of the anarchist movement, as well as
I think the leftist and movement in general was like,
workers shouldn't kill workers, we shouldn't go to war, and
we will refuse the draft and we will be in
this context pacifists, because actually it's funny because passifist now
usually means like also nonviolent protest, whereas a historically pacifism
(35:50):
also sometimes just means anti war. You know, several major
anarchist thinkers supported the Allies in World War One, including
Peter Kopak and one of the people I've talked about
a ton on this show who was as anarchist biologist,
who I find very fascinating and cool. A lot of
people are mad now at this. However, a lot of
(36:12):
people in France were like, we don't want to get invaded,
so we should join the French army to stop the
German army. And this is the kind of discourse that's happening,
and it's a discourse that costs a lot of people
their lives because people go and join the French army.
(36:33):
And there's a lot of comparisons you can make about
like that. And how you know, in Ukraine right now
there are anarchist units fighting embedded in the regular Ukrainian
military against Russian invasion.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Now in that case, Ukraine is not historically a colonial power.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
It sure is not. It's literally the opposite. Yeah, exactly,
because I can get the whole like, well, you know, Germany,
if you're trying to apportion war or guilt, it's certainly
not like World War Two where it's really clear. But
you do have Germany fucking up Belgian neutrality from a
perspective of like, am I willing to suggest people go
die for Belgian neutrality? Well, Belgium is basically just kind
(37:13):
of ended the process of committing the greatest war crimes
in the history or the greatest crimes in the history
of African colonialism. So like, I don't know, I don't
give a shit about their neutrality really, and neither shit
anybody who was that informed on the matter.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. The majority of
anarchists and I believe communists and other leftists and stuff
at the time were like, we want to try and
get out of this war. We want to sit this
war out as much as possible. But Maurusia joined the
French army and went to go fight against the imperial
(37:48):
German invasion. As you know, as I believe she perceived it,
and I have no idea the means by which she
did this, And I am so mad that I don't
know how a woman joined the French Foreign Legion to
go fight on the front lines against Germany. I don't
know whether this means she was like a nurse. I
don't know whether I mean she was cross dressed. The
most likely thing I think is as she cross dressed
(38:12):
or I mean, were you used that?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Definitely people did that. I mean they did in the
Civil War too, yeah, absolutely, So all I know is
she goes and fights, and you know, anarchist armies not
a huge deal to be a woman.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
It's still not the norm at this time, right, but
you know, she fought at the front for the French army.
And then in nineteen seventeen Russia famously had a bit
of a revolution, and at first this time it was
the right time to do it. Yeah, totally. It almost
(38:48):
worked out. This time they got further along the process
to create a free society and had a bit of
a revolution. And at the first sign of this, she's like,
I I'm done with the French Foreign Legion. I'm going
back to Ukraine. And so once again, like it's probably
not an easy thing to desert the front lines and
(39:09):
go to Ukraine. Yeah, in this case Russia first. Actually
she goes yeah, but there's not a lot that Marcia
cannot do, so she does that. At this point, we're
gonna have to cliff notes the Russian Revolution, even though
he did a six parter on it, but first we
want a cliff notes.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
All of these.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Ads, including John Cages for.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
These ads will be over as fast as the rest
of the tsar's life.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
And we're back. And for some reason, people killed the
kids of these ads too. So you ever heard of
the Russian Revolution? Yes, there was a czar. He was
an autocrat. Some women had a strike on International Women's
Day in nineteen seventeen. The strike generalized. The military was like, yeah, fuck,
(40:11):
it will help you overthrow the czar, and the tzar
came tumbling down. This was called the February Revolution because
it happened with the rest of the world called March.
Russia was then controlled by what was called dual power.
There's the moderate socialist provisional government. It's full of folks
who've been elected to a powerless Congress five years earlier.
(40:31):
And then there's the Soviets, which start off kind of cool,
are really interesting, which is a federation of bottom up,
directly democratic workers' councils. Basically, they're not all necessarily the
most cool and radical. They're the people who've been elected
in these areas. Yeah, the two groups pretended like they
were going to share power. Really they just were vying
(40:54):
for power against each other for a while. In the
big picture. In October, a bunch of communists people who
like the Communes, including the Bolsheviks and the anarchists, use
guns and gunboats and shit to take power in the
name of the Soviets. This is called the October Revolution,
or which happened in November. But again, whatever, I don't
(41:16):
know why, I like keep liking pointing out that the
October Revolution happened November.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
It just entertains me.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
It's a discernible reason.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
But it's But it's better too write, like if I
if I were like responsible for I don't know, putting
together the propaganda or scripting this as like a movie
or something. November revolution just doesn't hit the same way
as October. I don't know why. I don't know why,
but it's better.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah, So the Bolsheviks Eventually they centralized power, They disenfranchise
the Soviets and become rulers of an authoritary, nightmare government
that paraded around in the skin of communism like some
kind of nightmare man wearing the skin face of someone
you love.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Sure, but happen happens often, many such cases. Yeah, what
hasn't happened yet? Yeah, Marusia shows up in Russia. It's
still dual power times, and she is with the diehard
anarchists yelling all power of the Soviets, and they're among
the very first people using that slogan and meaning it.
(42:15):
Between nineteen oh eight nineteen seventeen, there weren't a lot
of committed revolutionaries in Russia because they'd all been killed, imprisoned,
or forced into exile. Some folks kept the torch alive.
Of course, there was a bunch of anarcho syndicalists in
Kiev and Ukraine. But the nineteen seventeen revolution happened without
any of the ideologues, without the Bolsheviks, without the anarchists.
(42:36):
After the revolution, all the political prisoners were set free,
and they were really excited. They just spent ten years
in revolutionary finishing school aka prison. The Petrograd Federation of
Anarchist Groups soon had seventeen thousand active members, which again
is enough people to believe that everyone is on your
side except for five people who are mad at you. Yeah,
(42:59):
and they've got one big idea they want to present
to people. What if we just take all the rich
people's shit so that they're not richer than anyone else anymore. Okay,
because well, February Revolution had removed the aristocracy, it hadn't
fixed class relations. And one of the ways they did
(43:21):
this is one of my favorite things that always comes
up on the show Squatting. The Governor General of Moscow
had a summer home in the anarchist neighborhood of Saint Petersburg,
and so the anarchists were like, this isn't even this
guy's main house. This is definitely our house now, and
(43:42):
they set up a baker's union and childcare and a
library and meeting rooms, and the provisional government and a
Bolshevik controlled local Soviet are like, y'all can't take the
rich person's house, and the anarchists are like, but we
already did. It's our house now. There's a baker's union,
there's child care, so they barricaded themselves inside, and the
(44:04):
scary Kronshtat sailors came to protect them, and the supposedly
revolutionary government came and put them down, killing one defender,
sentencing a sailor to fourteen years of hard labor for
having too many grenades on him when they arrested him.
How many is took.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
I'm guessing one is considered too many grenades. It's kind
of like boeing whistleblowers to die. Yeah, like two is
a high number of whistleblowers to die. One is a
high number, much like hand grenades on you when you're arrested.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
But don't worry. He broke out a couple weeks later.
This kicks off the July Days, which is like a
Russian Revolution one point five, where they tried to create
communism and equality despite what the Bolsheviks and the provisional
government had to say on the matter, and in order
to do that they needed the Kronstat sailors. These are
(44:59):
the like fighting pride force of the revolution, and they're
also all stubbornly politically pluralist. They're like, they're not the
crunched sailors, aren't the anarchists. They're not the SRS, they're
not the Bolsheviks, they're the like. Well, no one group
should be in power, and people should be able to
choose what they want. And the way that they ended up.
Part of the July Days is that our girl Marushia,
(45:23):
the terrorist and sculptor, went over to the naval base
in nineteen seventeen and gave speeches. Apparently another thing she's
good at. She didn't single handedly spark this revolt, but
she was part of it. Her power as a speaker
becomes sort of legendary. In particular, she's good at talking
to groups of armed men who are like the toughest
(45:44):
motherfuckers about why they should support the revolution instead of
doing whatever they were already doing. She's not a good
like go speak to the like liberal middle class. She's alike, Oh,
right wing dudes with guns. I'll tell them to change
their minds. Thousands of soldiers and workers armed the teeth
(46:05):
took the streets, demanding all power to the Soviets before
the Bolsheviks and the provisional government put them down. Lots
of revolutionaries had to flee after this, Most went in
nearby Finland. Marushia, though, she was like, I miss Ukraine.
It's been a while. I'm gonna go home. So in
July nineteen seventeen, after eight years and literally traveling all
(46:27):
the way around the world, fighting in a whole ass war,
breaking out of prison at least once, and hanging out
with anarchists from Japan and the US and Europe, she's like,
all right, I'm going to Ukraine, where I think I
haven't finished writing the script. I think everything was peaceful
and fine, and she lived out the rest of her
life as a sculptor, and I think that's probably what
we're going to cover in part two.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
That sounds right, That's got to be part two.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, I can't think of anything else that happened.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
How everything was fine forever.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
No one read a history book between now and Wednesday.
One day, I'm going to just take one of these
and just go Have you ever been tempted to just
go entirely off the rails?
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Yeah, I mean I feel like that happens accidentally sometimes, Robert.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
You're asking Robert that question, like I would like one
day I'm going to make up a fictional character and
tell you all the story, and then they're just going
to like live out the rest of their days happy
after doing wild stuff.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Yeah, cool people who got away with doing cool stuff.
We talked about Jose Muhika. He kind of was that
kind of guy, which is this is the president of
Uruguay who was an anarchist, terrorist, bank robber and then
became the president. Yeah that's true. Yeah, he was kind
of like it wasn't a perfect president, but no one
ever is. Yeah, no, and there.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
Are plenty of people who do live out the rest
of their days happy. I just am always like tempted
to edit history as I go and I don't do it.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
But I'm always the trouble with history. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Yeah. But if people like history, do you have anything
that you could point them towards proberts?
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Yes. History tells us that the one thing you can
do to make yourself happy is to read Margaret Killjoy's
new book, The Sapling Cage.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
That's the only plug. But I'll take I'll take a
me plug.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
That's that's what I've got. That's my plug for this week, everybody.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
I have a book called The Sapling Cage. We just
did the cover reveal today as we recorded.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
This kind of stole my idea for a plug. But Okay, yeah,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Well, I've been thinking about starting a new show that's
the inverse of Cool People Did Cool Stuff. We're going
to call it Bad People Who Did Bad Things and
it's now available wherever you get your podcast and it's
hosted by me.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yeah. Sounds like the newest idea in podcasting. We'll check
that out, everybody.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Yeah, So, if you got anything to plug, like any
kind of new cool Zone Media podcasts or anything.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
Yeah, we have a new podcast called sixteenth Minute of
Fame that is live now on all the podcast apps.
It is a weekly podcast and Jamie Loftus has really
brought it. So check that out.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Wherever you get your podcasts, check it out.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Hell yeah, bye bye everyone.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did
cool stuff you were twice weekly reminder that sometimes amongst
all the bad things, there's people who try to do
the good things and sometimes even succeeded.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
The good things. I love the good things.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today is
Robert Evans.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi, Robert, I am Hi. How are you, Margaret?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I'm okay. Everyone's having a week, but I'm great.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I recreated climate change in minimum in it like a
smaller version in my bedroom this week, because I kept
feeling as I was sitting down on one corner of
my waterbed that I was probably shouldn't be sitting down
on that one corner all the time when I got
into bed, because it was putting strain on it. And
sure enough, I created a pinhole leak in my water bed.
(00:50):
Oh did you?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
So in a way, yeah, I recreated all of the
mistakes that have led us as a species to the
current point that we're in.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
And so there's rising waters, but it's the on the
floor of your well.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Thankfully, the whole waterbed is inside this big plastic container thing,
so I can contain it. I've got a patch kit.
I'm going to patch it, and then I'm going to
use a wetback to soak up the water that's spilled out,
so we should be good, which is like the equivalent
of cloud seating. I guess Roberto god Lord, yes, no,
(01:27):
just no.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Robert's trying to live the dream of the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Always. He always does this.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
And when he told me this story this morning, I
made this face magpie and I went, well.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
The other things that Robert does besides recreate global warming
is yeah, a podcast called Behind the Bastards, which is
sort of an inverse cool people show. Yeah, mine came first,
but you know it's fine, Yes, and Robert usually I
surprise guests about what this is about. But I think
you know what this one's going to be about, because
(02:05):
I probably told you m It's about the sex pistols
and the anarchy in the UK. Yeah, r ai n e.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Never mind the Ballocks, never mind the Balkans. That's that bad.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Wait, we're not talking about sex pistols.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
We're not talking Okay, we're not, so I don't okay, Well,
I know only one thing about the sex pistols, but
it's all of the lyrics to Forget in the Riggin,
which I can recite at will anytime you need.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
I would suspect, without doing a deeper dive, that if
we were to do this era, I would cover the
clash and you would cover the sex pistols.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I like the clash much better than the sex pistols.
But Frigging in the Riggin is a fine song.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I don't know that song.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I only know it was on the Good Ship Venus
by christ. You should have seen us. I can't, actually
shouldn't read the lyrics to that song because it's going
to get me canceled. It doesn't work as well if
it's not a pirate shand.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
We'll pretend that it's because of copyright reason.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, that's why read the lyrics to Friggin and the
Riggin and tell me I wouldn't be canceled for reading
those out on air.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
I've always liked. My favorite punk lyrics is I think
it's the exploited sex and violence. Do you know this song?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
No?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I think the only lyrics are sex and violence, sex
and violence, sex and violence, sex and violence, and then
it continues from there. It's a good song. You can
replace it with bread and hummus, if you're feeling very positive.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Sure, sure, I feel like that's kind of the negative
version of the much deeper clash song death or Glory.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah that's true. Yeah, well, actually we're going to talk
about some death or glory today, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Story.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, I wouldn't put it by asked them to have
straight up used that as a slogan the kind of
folks we're going to talk about, Okay, because today we're
going to talk about that time that millions of people
in southern Ukraine lived a horizontally organized society with equal
distribution of access to land and resources and an equal
saying governance during the Russian Civil War of nineteen seventeen
to nineteen twenty one. And I'm coming out with the
(04:20):
positive framing about like all the like communal land projects
and them all sharing most of what this period is
famous for. Is death really just the violence part of
sex and fundos?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yes, yes, lutily everyone dead, yes.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Including today's hero, although once again I'm going to remind
everyone that almost everyone who was alive during that point
is now dead anyway, so that part was going to
happen no matter what. But today we are going to
talk about the one of the women military commanders during
this period, and Adamanshah, which is the well, we'll talk
(05:01):
about that more later, but you know a word for
a woman military leader. She went from a self described
anarchist terrorist to becoming an art student and a French
soldier in World War One to an elected commander of
hundreds or thousands of fighters at war with the Nationalists,
the Germans and the Bolsheviks. She lived on as a
(05:24):
legend after her execution, only to have her history buried.
And honestly, her history is probably buried because of her gender. Yeah,
today we are talking about the legendary Maria Nikki Farova,
known also as Marusia, and that's what her friends called her,
and that's what everyone else called her. And she's Adamancha
(05:46):
to history if she exists at all.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's such a cool name.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I know.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
The more famous figure in all of this history is
a man named Nestr Makno. And when I first wrote
the script, I was expecting to use a different guest.
So at this point and I would reference people to
go listen to Robert Evans disgusting nest Bakna. So if
you like the obscure podcast Behind the Bastards. You might
be familiar with him as the star of one of
(06:11):
your reverse episodes.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah Yeah, are one of our annual Christmas episodes where
we do with this show.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Does Yeah, which I totally wasn't inspired by what I know.
I think everyone knows that I'm making a joke. This
show exists because of the Christmas reverse episodes. Nestor Makha
is also going to be woven into today's story, but
there's a really good telling of it that people can
go here. He absolutely earned and deserved his central role
(06:39):
in the story of Ukrainian history. Best as I can tell,
Marusia stood like an angel in black on his shoulder,
just telling him of his duties to the people and
the importance of well, to quote the title of probably
the best book that exists about her, the importance of
(07:01):
the revolution without delay, because whenever anyone else was doubting,
including Nester mackno people, every now and then we're like,
you know, our lives might be easier if instead of
immediately robbing the rich, we don't immediately rob the rich.
And then there's Mary Usia standing behind you, possibly with
a machine gun, saying no, we are going to take
(07:24):
all of their money away by whatever means we want to.
And first I'm going to talk some shit on some historians.
I'm not going to do it by name.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh okay, clever.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
There is a pattern I have noticed, and we're gonna
use MARIUSI as an example. But there's a pattern where
women are left out of history, and I've never.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Heard of that.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I know, well, there weren't any women in history or
be left out?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah yeah, yeah, that was that was my understanding.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, you mean you could put a little footnote like
someone probably did the washing, like I don't know. I mean,
otherwise it would have been all dirty and sad, all
the boys who did all.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Of this stuff. Yeah, they had to have done the laundry. Otherwise,
how could the pants be clean? Sure, yeah, exactly. It's
going to make someone unhappy.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Ukrainian nationalist historians don't write about her because she wasn't
a nationalist. Bolshevik historians don't write about her much because
she wasn't a Bolshevik. Sometimes, not the Bolshevik historians, but
the Bolsheviks who lived at the time did write a
lot about her because there was no escaping her at
(08:30):
the time, and mostly the Bolsheviks writing about her wrote
to argue about whether or not she was hot and
whether or not it was fair to just call her
a bandit. Most of them wrote that she was very
ugly and mannish and probably intersects. They did not use
that word. They used the word hermaphrodite, and other ones
(08:54):
were like, no, she's hot, and that's what's important to
the Bolsheviks writing about.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, the anarchists who fought alongside her wrote about her
because she was a big important part of everything, and
anarchist historians currently write about her. The shit I'm about
to talk is, at the entire middle of the twentieth century,
all of the people who were like the anarchist historians
(09:23):
who did the work of recording the sort of forgotten
history that was destroyed by the Bolsheviks and the West,
did not write about her. And I wonder how many
other women were left out of their history. And the
historians of the makhnov China, which is the name of
the Makno country, Yeah, didn't write about her. The participants
(09:49):
in it wrote about her because they were all kind
of terrified. Ever, yeah, and you know, it's gender. The
Golden era anarchists of like, this earlier period absolutely had
lots of women leaders. They were active feminists in many ways,
not all of them, right, but way better than people would.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Assume more of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, and the modern anarchists often the same way, and
the generation that wrote in all the histories did not
so much. And that's my shit talk to open up
the episode. Have you heard much about her before?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
No other than that, you know, when I did the
Makno episodes, people pointed out rightfully that I didn't talk
about her enough and pointed me to some sources where
it was like, oh shit, No, I definitely did not,
because she probably wasn't in the books that you read. No, No,
I don't like it. I don't. I want to think
she wasn't in the books that I read, because otherwise
(10:47):
I like deleted her myself. Yeah, and I hope I
wouldn't do that, But I also can't say I haven't
reread the book since then, right, So I'm gonna hopefully
lean towards it was the fuck The historians that I
picked also kind of zeroed her out of the history
rather than I did it myself. But it's not impossible
(11:08):
that I did it myself.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Well, in most of the things that I have read
about Maknow, and I haven't read a ton of books
about Manknomm. I've read more books about while there's a
book and a half about Marie Niki Farova in English, sure,
but a lot of the books about Macknow, if they
mention her, it's a little bit like prowaway lines and
(11:30):
a paragraph here or there. And it's our job as
pop historians, you knows, as entertainers to delete the characters
that are so minor that throwing them at the audience
just confuses things.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah, you know, Yeah, I just watched the Jerry Seinfeld
pop Tart movie and it's the King of that.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Where they just don't bother including people's names.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
No, where they just introduce little minor characters that seem
like they're going to go somewhere and then they go nowhere. Yeah,
it's it's like the best at that in a baffling way.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, It's like something that I learned from fiction is
that if if a character is not coming back, I
don't give them a name unless the name is specifically
interesting or a point of the thing, because I don't
I don't want to do that to the reader. And
I do that a little bit as a pop historian
telling these stories. A history book will need to include
(12:25):
all the names and all the things so that you
can do the cross referencing, you know. Yeah, so it's
completely possible that, like, if she's mentioned, and then a
lot of stories about Makno, Mackno is good. Okay, this
is the thing. I'm sorry everyone who doesn't yet know
who Maknow is. We'll get to that. Makno is presented
(12:46):
as good anarchist. He is the one who's like, rob
the rich, but give them back some cows, you know,
And Marusia is generally presented as the like kill the
rich side of it. And I can't tell how much
that is bias coming from different writers, and it frustrates me,
(13:09):
but I'll say I'll go through. I'm gonna tell this
story with what I know, which is not as much
in lots of contradictory things, but still one of the
coolest stories I've ever heard. Maria Niki Farova, who goes
by the nickname. The nickname for Maria is Marusia, was
(13:29):
born in eighteen eighty five or eighteen eighty seven in
a southeastern Ukrainian city then called Alexandrovisk, which is now
called Zeppr of Zuzia, and there's an awful lot of
murkiness to her history. Anarchists and Ukraine have recently on
earthed some of her journals as best as I understand,
like in the past couple years, and this sheds some
(13:52):
of the some light on the missing years of her life.
But they're scantly available in English. And for some odd reason.
I don't know if you knew this, Robert, but apparently
something's going on in Ukraine where everyone's busy.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's a mystery. But a lot of phone
calls going unreturned right now.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, I think they're all just, you know, just too
good for us and just hanging out.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
With their long week something. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah. And so again I'm working with what I have.
I'm hoping that in the next couple of years, far
more important things will happen in Ukraine that make them
all safe and happy and able to spend their time
translating these texts. Some said that her dad was a
Russian officer. One historian points out that she probably wouldn't
(14:43):
have had to leave home at sixteen broke if her
father had been an officer. I would suggest that that
was a male historian. And I know a lot of
people who had to leave home at sixteen without support
from their family. But it's over. The only conjecture anyone
has ever made is Russian officer dad, and that is
(15:07):
generally thought not to be true, but it's literally the
only story anyone's I've ever offering. Yeah, she did leave
home at sixteen, and she started working. First she was
a nanny, then she was a shop clerk, and then
she was a bottle washer in a vodka distillery. And
I'm impressed about how Russian that job is.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Look, I'm not an expert on how vodka distilleries work,
but doesn't vodka sterilize? Like, why would you need to
wash the bottles in a vodka factory? Does not the
vodka wash the bottles in the vodka factory. I'm wondering
if this is a fake job, is what I'm saying.
I don't mean to be critical of this woman's career,
but it doesn't seem necessary to wash the bottles in
the vodka factory.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Like she's doing something else there, you know, That's what
they're saying. Yeah, Yeah, is there something? Is there something?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Else going on, because that seems that's like a fake job,
you would invent that. It's like, she.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Was at this bottle factory because later she's going to
rob the hell out of it. But what about that factory?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Okay, it's an open question.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, okay, at this last job, probably she met the
anarchist communists and you know, instead of the whole their
whole difference from the other socialists and communists at the
time is there they didn't want to have a revolution
to empower the rich so that they could then have
a revolution to empower the poor, which is what the
(16:30):
Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were proposing at that time. You know,
the social democrats were proposing. Instead, they were like, well,
let's cut straight to it. And she's like sixteen or
you know, in her early teen or mid teens, and
she's like, yeah, I'm in They're like, all right, well,
let's establish a federation of free communes by way of
(16:50):
armed insurrection.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
And she's like, I'm always saying this, I'm I know, it's.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
It's what you're always saying, always be establishing a federation
of freaking communes by way of Armadencer m m. Nineteen
oh three was a little bit early for them to
pull that off in Russia.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
See that is that is going to be a bad
time to do any kind of armed insurrection in Russia.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, now there's times where you can get like better leeway.
There's never a time where it's like good fun and
a way to live a long and happy life. But
they did get there eventually for a short moment, and
that's going to be the thing we'll eventually get to.
There were anarchists all over the Russian Empire during the
(17:33):
revolutionary period of like nineteen oh three to nineteen oh seven.
Nineteen oh one to like nineteen oh five is when
all the ideological groups like really start organizing, and then
nineteen oh five is this big revolution that happens that
like almost happens. And we did a whole six parter
about this very recently if you want to know more
about it. But we talked, for example on that episode
(17:54):
about the Black Banner movement that came out of Poland
and then spread to Ukraine. It came out of the
pale of settlement where Jews were allowed to live, and
this was an anarcho communist movement that was incredibly well
organized and numerous and in Ukraine, not necessarily under the
name Black Banner. There were about ninety anarchist communist groups
(18:15):
in Ukraine trying to pull off this whole free Communes
by way of armed insurrection thing, about ten thousand active
members and a much broader base of support outside that.
So you see why they were like, oh, we might
be able to pull this off, right, because once you
know ten thousand people who believe a thing, you think
everyone believes that thing.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah, yeah, because it's very hard. Very few people have
ever known more than ten thousand other people.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, I mean to go in the opposite, like, this
is how the January sixth thing I think happened is
that they all thought everyone believes the stuff that they believe.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, And this is also how you get the like
why is ex policy happening? Everyone believes why? And it's like, well, no,
a lot of ten thousand people liked your posts saying why.
But there's a lot of people who have Maybe it's
a stupid all turn it view, maybe it's terrible, but right,
there's a lot more people in the country slash world.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Right, which is why on this show we prioritize hearing
voices of completely different people interjecting into the middle of
our episodes.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
To oh, people like advertisers.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Advertisers are the primary people who we sell advertisements to.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah. Yeah, we very rarely sell advertisements to non advertisers
because they're usually not buying advertisements. I know, I know.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
It's a shame if someone wants to buy an ad
or they just say the name of their cat over
and over again and have a lot of money spend
on that. Although that would make you an advertisement unless you.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Just weren't selling anything. Yeah, if you send us, you know,
a self addressed check for forty six hundred dollars, we
will read someone's address on air and try to incite
the audience against them or send them birthday greetings whichever.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, whichever we feel like, here's the ads.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, you don't have any choice, okay, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Ah, and we hope you enjoyed that rendition of John
Cage's four thirty three One day. I might do a
John Cage episode. He was an anarchist anyway, whatever, So
these folks, they're trying their best to have themselves a revolution,
and it famously did not succeed, but they famously tried
(20:41):
really really hard.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
They sure did.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
One of the strategies at the time they called economic terror,
which makes it sound like it should be like extra
scary boycotts, you know, like we're going to terrorize your economy,
but it actually meant kill landlords and bosses, rob the rich,
burn down their mansions, and they really put their backs
into it. To quote the t Czarists Minister of the Interior.
(21:05):
Between the years of nineteen oh six and nineteen oh eight,
anarchists as well as other factions like the Socialist Revolutionaries
were responsible for quote twenty six thousand, two hundred and
sixty eight attacks, six thousand, ninety one functionaries and private
citizens killed, more than six thousand wounded and more than
five million rubles estimatedly about two million euros by one
(21:28):
modern book I read.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
That actually doesn't sound that sounds like a lot less
than the other numbers people killed. Sounds like that, Wow,
that's a lot of people killed. Two million rubles, sounds like,
oh see, you guys like upset a coke bottling plant
for forty five minutes.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, yeah, well this is robbed at gunpoint from state car.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah, okay, yeah, I mean yeah, that's a lot. I'm not.
I've never robbed a million dollars at state gunpoints, so
I'm not trying to shit on them. I'm just saying, oh, no,
other numbers sound much bigger. Yeah, because twenty six thousand attacks.
In my mind, I have seen enough movies out crime
to assume that you're not getting a million bucks.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
It's not worth it, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I have to assume even if even their attempt to
like calculate for the change and what money is worth
hasn't quite gotten it accurately, because like there was like
twelve million dollars total on the planet at that time.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, total.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's where I'm I'm I'm parsing it out.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
No.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
And my least favorite thing, it's like bad enough to
take like old timey dollars to modern dollars, but like
types of money that may or may not exist anymore
to modern dollars is it's it's just fictitious numbers at
that point, whereas like what a life is is, you know,
roughly stays the same.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah. Yeah, And six thousand people is a lot to shoot.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, And this is from someone who had every incentive
to downplay the numbers because he didn't want to scare
off foreign investment. Right among these ten thousand or so
brave economic terrorists was our hero Marusia Nikki Farova. As
the revolution of nineteen oh five started to pick up,
(23:05):
anarchists moved from the economic terror to what they call
motiveless terror. And this basically meant like, instead of like,
fuck that following specific rich person for that following specific reason. Yeah,
it was a little bit more of a broad fuck
the rich. And this seething hatred of the rich didn't
come from nowhere. Many of the anarchists their parents had
(23:28):
been you know, fucking owned. Yeah, because serfdom was abolished
in eighteen sixty one, so forty years earlier, your family
had been owned. I feel like that changes your perspective
on what you think of class relations. Many of them
(23:50):
were still working for their former owners, and the regime
was violently repressing the revolution in the name of the rich.
So the revolution was like, well, we will repress the rich.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Right now, the.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Anarchists are robbing banks and robbing the rich in their houses,
they're setting up print shops to spread propaganda, and they're
building literal bomb factories. We talked about this last time,
but it's a fun fact, So I want to reiterate it.
During the pogroms by the right wing during the Revolution,
the anarchist neighborhood of Biali Stock in what's now Poland
was the one place in that area that the right
(24:21):
wing dared not go and they couldn't go harass the
Jews there because most of those Jews were anarchists and
they had bomb factories, and it's very hard to mess
with a neighborhood that does that.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, the bomb factory neighborhood is probably not where you
want to start shit.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
No, although I mean, on the other hand, it sounds
kind of explosive. It sounds like flammable.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those it's that you know,
that version of the don't tread on Me flag. It's
just a snake wrapped around the hand grenade that says
fuck with me and I'll kill us all. You know.
It's that. It's the it's the same thing as like
sticking a fucking propane tank on the side of your
bicycle and being like, hit meet cars. What do you
want to do in a way it's respectable. That is
(25:06):
in that is two paragraphs from now that is going
to happen. Okay, good Marosia and Nikki Farova. She's like
roughly twenty at this point, right, depending on when she
was born, which Matthew, you believe in, and she is
all in on this shit. She helped bomb a train
full of rich people, which didn't actually hurt anyone, but
it scared the shit out of everyone. Well, good, that
(25:27):
sounds non problematic. Yeah, I know. It's non violent bombing
of non violent terror bombing.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah. Yeah, it might have been an unsuccessful that might
have been.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
It's probably more accurate.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
She bombed one factory owner and turned him from a
person into a ghost. Then she bombed the commercial offices
of another factory, killing the manager and a security guard
before robbing seventeen thousand rubles, which this time got mathed
to fourteen thousand dollars. Who knows.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Again, everything sounds impressive except for the money, he know,
it seem like, Yeah, she killed a nine to eleven's
worth of people and blew up a city block. And
also she did forty six dollars in damage to the
local seven eleven.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, and she walked away with a cool crisp twenty yea.
This last one, the different problem happened. When I say
that they robbed a seventeen thousand rubles, they did not
get away with seventeen thousand rubles, because they did not
get away at all. Soon the cops show up and
she's surrounded, and she's like, fuck this. I saw that
(26:34):
movie Aliens, and I'm just gonna grip this grenade and
take out a bunch of the cops with me. But
the bomb didn't go off. Otherwise probably I wouldn't. She'd
be a footnote if I knew her name at all.
The bomb didn't go off, and she goes off to prison.
In nineteen oh eight, she is convicted of killing a
(26:54):
cop and a four counts of armed robbery, and first
they give her the death penalty, and then they're like, well,
you're only twenty, so we're going to commute it to
twenty years of forced labor.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Because you'd get more than that today for that. Yes,
that is the thing whenever you go back to these
like right, if you rebel against the Russian imperial government,
you either get executed and dumped into a mass grave
or get like a quarter of the sentence you'd get
today for the same crimes. So it's one of the two.
Yeah exactly, and adulthood for legal responsibility was twenty one
(27:32):
in Czaris Russia. So Czarist Russia, one of the worst
despotic governments of all time, substantially better about juvenile offenders
than yeah, well he's a can't go. Yeah, look, we'll
starve him in his entire family, We'll conscript him to
go die against the Austrians. But you know, you got
(27:52):
to have some mercy when it comes to prison sentences.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And uh So, in nineteen oh nine,
she and twelve other prisoners in the women's prison try
to bust out, and I wish, I so wish I
knew more about so many things that are about to happen.
She tried to bust out, she failed, and so the
state is like, all right, get the fuck to Siberia,
(28:17):
get the fuck out of here. You're too much to handle.
So they sent her off to Siberia, where a lot
of revolutionaries waited out until nineteen seventeen, when the revolution
freed them all. Not Maria Niki Farova. She stages a
riot and escapes. Her and her fellow prisoners riote and
(28:37):
break out, and then, according to one biography, the revolution
without delay, she quote fled through the Taiga to reach
the Trans Siberian Railway. She finally reached Vladivostok, then Japan.
Helped by local anarchist students who paid for a ticket,
she managed to arrive in the United States. There she
found temporary housing among the many anarchist migrants from the
(28:58):
Russian Empire, most of them of Jewish descent, who had
established themselves in New York and Chicago. Other historians are like, no,
it was Chinese anarchist students who bought her ticket to
the US. But the overall nothing has a lot of details.
But she circumnavigated the world through escape and solidarity.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
And she winds up in the good country finally.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
I know she's not going to stay.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Actually, well it's usually that's actually not an unwise decision.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
But yeah, she would have been Well, it's funny she
would have ended up back in Russia in nineteen seventeen anyway,
because the group that she falls in with is the
same group that the first Red Scare is about the
union of Russian workers who, like a ton of them,
including Emma Goldman and some other folks that we covered
last time, get deported back to Russia in nineteen seventeen,
(29:50):
nineteen eighteen, some year that I should know when I don't.
But by nineteen twelve she's like, I don't know. Oh
if I want to be in the States, like I
just I have literally no idea motive for going back
to Europe. I could conjecture I'm going to say that
the States was boring, So comrades smuggle her back into Europe.
(30:14):
She tries going to London, then Germany, than Switzerland, and
then she's like, nah, it's Paris. I gotta be a
Parisian because now she goes to art school. She fucking
breaks out of prison. She's a sixteen year old terar.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I didn't. I didn't think that's where this was going.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
I know, usually people go the opposite direction.
Speaker 5 (30:37):
Art school to become terror sixteen year old terrorist, sure,
who breaks out of prison, circumnavigates the world, writes for
newspapers in New York City, gets to Paris and goes
to art school and gets really into sculpture and painting.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
And this is the city where you're supposed to fall
in love, and she did. She married a Polish anarchist
named what told Bezosteck, and most accounts emphasize it was
a marriage of convenience. I think they did this because
anarchist historians are really annoying and they all have takes
(31:15):
and discourse infuses history, and you're like not supposed to
get married as an anarchist at this time, and so
in some ways.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It's like a hierarchy thing.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
I guess, yeah, no, totally, it's like it's a feminist thing.
It's a specific feminist thing where a lot of leftists,
including a lot of communists, they're not getting married at
this time. You have Emma Goldman saying those who married
you ill, and you have like all of this stuff
around because marriage is a property relationship.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it is largely. It's also like
a thing people basically do in every society. It doesn't
mean the same thing every time, but like, yeah, I
get it, I get it out exactly. And anarchists have
also been getting married the whole time, despite what the
anarchy rules say they're supposed to do. So people present
this as a marriage convenience because she keeps her own
(32:03):
last name and he doesn't always he's not always in
the same place with her as her. Okay, but as
best as I understand, and I've I've read some accounts
of the end of this story, and.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
I don't know all of it yet. I might have
more details by the time we record the next Purse
three and four. Okay, he dies in her command like
it's kinky, like he joins her military command later and
he is executed for the crime of being married to her.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Oh wow wow, And that doesn't sound like a marriage
of convenience. See, that seems really inconvenient to me. Actually,
Marcur I know.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I think that they were in love and they were anarchists,
so she kept her own name and he didn't think
he owned her. And they went different places at different times,
and they spent all their time trying to figure out
how to be together, and they died together. And it
is beautiful. I love this anarchist love story. I know
almost something about.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I do think, just as a general rule, you shouldn't
call it a marriage of cannvenience if it kills one
of them. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's not convenient at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And so because he is the he has the ultimate
wife guy fate.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, that is that, that's his wife. Guys.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
It gets yeah, and we stand anarchis wife guys of history.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
So that's another podcast we'll start soon.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah, exactly. She is one hundred percent part of the movement,
even when she's like in art school and getting married
and stuff. You know, doing all these things is waste
a time with art and love. While she's wasting her
time with art and love, she travels to Spain and
she's like, y'all think that's how you rob a bank.
Let me show you how to rob a bank. But
she gets wounded in Spain while robbing a bank, and
(33:46):
she's spirited away back to Paris to recover, okay, and
this is where no one knows whether or not she's
in her sex. One version of this history, okay, is
that while she's in recovery in Paris, she has some
kind of corrective surgery around her intersex condition.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Did they have that?
Speaker 1 (34:07):
I mean, they have been doing like to infants for
a very long time. I don't have all of this information,
but like this is also the era where you start
having the very first gender firming surgeries are happening in
a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yeah, yeah, I know that, and like in Germany, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Just yeah, okay, I do not know if this part
of it is true. There's very little information about this part.
And then if it did happen, we don't know. If
it was alike, well, you were injured and while we're
down there, we did this thing without your consent, as
happens to intersex people all the time, or whether she
was like, why you're down there, won't we do this thing?
(34:43):
I don't know, or if it happened at all, or
if she was intersex at all, it's conjecture from her
being ugly is some of the ways that it whatever.
I'm so annoyed at all this history, but she's so
fucking interesting and cool. Again, not the best time to
go go to Europe is nineteen thirteen. No, World War
(35:03):
one soon breaks out? And do you know what my
least favorite historical anarchist discourse of all time is?
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (35:12):
No, actually world War One? And whether or not anarchists
were supposed to support it?
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah, how is that a discourse because there's nothing, there's
nothing to support in World War One? Right? Well, what
happened was maybe Belgium, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yeah, the majority of the anarchist movement, as well as
I think the leftist and movement in general was like,
workers shouldn't kill workers, we shouldn't go to war, and
we will refuse the draft and we will be in
this context pacifists, because actually it's funny because passifist now
usually means like also nonviolent protest, whereas a historically pacifism
(35:50):
also sometimes just means anti war. You know, several major
anarchist thinkers supported the Allies in World War One, including
Peter Kopak and one of the people I've talked about
a ton on this show who was as anarchist biologist,
who I find very fascinating and cool. A lot of
people are mad now at this. However, a lot of
(36:12):
people in France were like, we don't want to get invaded,
so we should join the French army to stop the
German army. And this is the kind of discourse that's happening,
and it's a discourse that costs a lot of people
their lives because people go and join the French army.
(36:33):
And there's a lot of comparisons you can make about
like that. And how you know, in Ukraine right now
there are anarchist units fighting embedded in the regular Ukrainian
military against Russian invasion.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Now in that case, Ukraine is not historically a colonial power.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
It sure is not. It's literally the opposite. Yeah, exactly,
because I can get the whole like, well, you know, Germany,
if you're trying to apportion war or guilt, it's certainly
not like World War Two where it's really clear. But
you do have Germany fucking up Belgian neutrality from a
perspective of like, am I willing to suggest people go
die for Belgian neutrality? Well, Belgium is basically just kind
(37:13):
of ended the process of committing the greatest war crimes
in the history or the greatest crimes in the history
of African colonialism. So like, I don't know, I don't
give a shit about their neutrality really, and neither shit
anybody who was that informed on the matter.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. The majority of
anarchists and I believe communists and other leftists and stuff
at the time were like, we want to try and
get out of this war. We want to sit this
war out as much as possible. But Maurusia joined the
French army and went to go fight against the imperial
(37:48):
German invasion. As you know, as I believe she perceived it,
and I have no idea the means by which she
did this, And I am so mad that I don't
know how a woman joined the French Foreign Legion to
go fight on the front lines against Germany. I don't
know whether this means she was like a nurse. I
don't know whether I mean she was cross dressed. The
most likely thing I think is as she cross dressed
(38:12):
or I mean, were you used that?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Definitely people did that. I mean they did in the
Civil War too, yeah, absolutely, So all I know is
she goes and fights, and you know, anarchist armies not
a huge deal to be a woman.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
It's still not the norm at this time, right, but
you know, she fought at the front for the French army.
And then in nineteen seventeen Russia famously had a bit
of a revolution, and at first this time it was
the right time to do it. Yeah, totally. It almost
(38:48):
worked out. This time they got further along the process
to create a free society and had a bit of
a revolution. And at the first sign of this, she's like,
I I'm done with the French Foreign Legion. I'm going
back to Ukraine. And so once again, like it's probably
not an easy thing to desert the front lines and
(39:09):
go to Ukraine. Yeah, in this case Russia first. Actually
she goes yeah, but there's not a lot that Marcia
cannot do, so she does that. At this point, we're
gonna have to cliff notes the Russian Revolution, even though
he did a six parter on it, but first we
want a cliff notes.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
All of these.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Ads, including John Cages for.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
These ads will be over as fast as the rest
of the tsar's life.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
And we're back. And for some reason, people killed the
kids of these ads too. So you ever heard of
the Russian Revolution? Yes, there was a czar. He was
an autocrat. Some women had a strike on International Women's
Day in nineteen seventeen. The strike generalized. The military was like, yeah, fuck,
(40:11):
it will help you overthrow the czar, and the tzar
came tumbling down. This was called the February Revolution because
it happened with the rest of the world called March.
Russia was then controlled by what was called dual power.
There's the moderate socialist provisional government. It's full of folks
who've been elected to a powerless Congress five years earlier.
(40:31):
And then there's the Soviets, which start off kind of cool,
are really interesting, which is a federation of bottom up,
directly democratic workers' councils. Basically, they're not all necessarily the
most cool and radical. They're the people who've been elected
in these areas. Yeah, the two groups pretended like they
were going to share power. Really they just were vying
(40:54):
for power against each other for a while. In the
big picture. In October, a bunch of communists people who
like the Communes, including the Bolsheviks and the anarchists, use
guns and gunboats and shit to take power in the
name of the Soviets. This is called the October Revolution,
or which happened in November. But again, whatever, I don't
(41:16):
know why, I like keep liking pointing out that the
October Revolution happened November.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
It just entertains me.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
It's a discernible reason.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
But it's But it's better too write, like if I
if I were like responsible for I don't know, putting
together the propaganda or scripting this as like a movie
or something. November revolution just doesn't hit the same way
as October. I don't know why. I don't know why,
but it's better.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah, So the Bolsheviks Eventually they centralized power, They disenfranchise
the Soviets and become rulers of an authoritary, nightmare government
that paraded around in the skin of communism like some
kind of nightmare man wearing the skin face of someone
you love.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Sure, but happen happens often, many such cases. Yeah, what
hasn't happened yet? Yeah, Marusia shows up in Russia. It's
still dual power times, and she is with the diehard
anarchists yelling all power of the Soviets, and they're among
the very first people using that slogan and meaning it.
(42:15):
Between nineteen oh eight nineteen seventeen, there weren't a lot
of committed revolutionaries in Russia because they'd all been killed, imprisoned,
or forced into exile. Some folks kept the torch alive.
Of course, there was a bunch of anarcho syndicalists in
Kiev and Ukraine. But the nineteen seventeen revolution happened without
any of the ideologues, without the Bolsheviks, without the anarchists.
(42:36):
After the revolution, all the political prisoners were set free,
and they were really excited. They just spent ten years
in revolutionary finishing school aka prison. The Petrograd Federation of
Anarchist Groups soon had seventeen thousand active members, which again
is enough people to believe that everyone is on your
side except for five people who are mad at you. Yeah,
(42:59):
and they've got one big idea they want to present
to people. What if we just take all the rich
people's shit so that they're not richer than anyone else anymore. Okay,
because well, February Revolution had removed the aristocracy, it hadn't
fixed class relations. And one of the ways they did
(43:21):
this is one of my favorite things that always comes
up on the show Squatting. The Governor General of Moscow
had a summer home in the anarchist neighborhood of Saint Petersburg,
and so the anarchists were like, this isn't even this
guy's main house. This is definitely our house now, and
(43:42):
they set up a baker's union and childcare and a
library and meeting rooms, and the provisional government and a
Bolshevik controlled local Soviet are like, y'all can't take the
rich person's house, and the anarchists are like, but we
already did. It's our house now. There's a baker's union,
there's child care, so they barricaded themselves inside, and the
(44:04):
scary Kronshtat sailors came to protect them, and the supposedly
revolutionary government came and put them down, killing one defender,
sentencing a sailor to fourteen years of hard labor for
having too many grenades on him when they arrested him.
How many is took.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
I'm guessing one is considered too many grenades. It's kind
of like boeing whistleblowers to die. Yeah, like two is
a high number of whistleblowers to die. One is a
high number, much like hand grenades on you when you're arrested.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
But don't worry. He broke out a couple weeks later.
This kicks off the July Days, which is like a
Russian Revolution one point five, where they tried to create
communism and equality despite what the Bolsheviks and the provisional
government had to say on the matter, and in order
to do that they needed the Kronstat sailors. These are
(44:59):
the like fighting pride force of the revolution, and they're
also all stubbornly politically pluralist. They're like, they're not the
crunched sailors, aren't the anarchists. They're not the SRS, they're
not the Bolsheviks, they're the like. Well, no one group
should be in power, and people should be able to
choose what they want. And the way that they ended up.
Part of the July Days is that our girl Marushia,
(45:23):
the terrorist and sculptor, went over to the naval base
in nineteen seventeen and gave speeches. Apparently another thing she's
good at. She didn't single handedly spark this revolt, but
she was part of it. Her power as a speaker
becomes sort of legendary. In particular, she's good at talking
to groups of armed men who are like the toughest
(45:44):
motherfuckers about why they should support the revolution instead of
doing whatever they were already doing. She's not a good
like go speak to the like liberal middle class. She's alike, Oh,
right wing dudes with guns. I'll tell them to change
their minds. Thousands of soldiers and workers armed the teeth
(46:05):
took the streets, demanding all power to the Soviets before
the Bolsheviks and the provisional government put them down. Lots
of revolutionaries had to flee after this, Most went in
nearby Finland. Marushia, though, she was like, I miss Ukraine.
It's been a while. I'm gonna go home. So in
July nineteen seventeen, after eight years and literally traveling all
(46:27):
the way around the world, fighting in a whole ass war,
breaking out of prison at least once, and hanging out
with anarchists from Japan and the US and Europe, she's like,
all right, I'm going to Ukraine, where I think I
haven't finished writing the script. I think everything was peaceful
and fine, and she lived out the rest of her
life as a sculptor, and I think that's probably what
we're going to cover in part two.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
That sounds right, That's got to be part two.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, I can't think of anything else that happened.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
How everything was fine forever.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
No one read a history book between now and Wednesday.
One day, I'm going to just take one of these
and just go Have you ever been tempted to just
go entirely off the rails?
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Yeah, I mean I feel like that happens accidentally sometimes, Robert.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
You're asking Robert that question, like I would like one
day I'm going to make up a fictional character and
tell you all the story, and then they're just going
to like live out the rest of their days happy
after doing wild stuff.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Yeah, cool people who got away with doing cool stuff.
We talked about Jose Muhika. He kind of was that
kind of guy, which is this is the president of
Uruguay who was an anarchist, terrorist, bank robber and then
became the president. Yeah that's true. Yeah, he was kind
of like it wasn't a perfect president, but no one
ever is. Yeah, no, and there.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
Are plenty of people who do live out the rest
of their days happy. I just am always like tempted
to edit history as I go and I don't do it.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
But I'm always the trouble with history. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Yeah. But if people like history, do you have anything
that you could point them towards proberts?
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Yes. History tells us that the one thing you can
do to make yourself happy is to read Margaret Killjoy's
new book, The Sapling Cage.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
That's the only plug. But I'll take I'll take a
me plug.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
That's that's what I've got. That's my plug for this week, everybody.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
I have a book called The Sapling Cage. We just
did the cover reveal today as we recorded.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
This kind of stole my idea for a plug. But Okay, yeah,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Well, I've been thinking about starting a new show that's
the inverse of Cool People Did Cool Stuff. We're going
to call it Bad People Who Did Bad Things and
it's now available wherever you get your podcast and it's
hosted by me.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Yeah. Sounds like the newest idea in podcasting. We'll check
that out, everybody.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Yeah, So, if you got anything to plug, like any
kind of new cool Zone Media podcasts or anything.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
Yeah, we have a new podcast called sixteenth Minute of
Fame that is live now on all the podcast apps.
It is a weekly podcast and Jamie Loftus has really
brought it. So check that out.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Wherever you get your podcasts, check it out.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Hell yeah, bye bye everyone.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
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