In part two, Margaret continues to talk with Robert Evans about the time that millions of Ukrainians rose a black flag and went to war against landlords, nationalists, and Bolsheviks.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Cool Stuff, the podcast about people who had problems and
then tried to solve those problems. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy,
and my guest today is the one and only Robert Evans.
Hello Robert Evans, Hello Margaret Kiljoy. It's always fun to
refer to your friends by the first and last name.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's how we know that.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
You're proper and formal and formal is normal exactly. That
is what we've been saying for a very long time,
and why we're both wearing very nice evening dresses.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yes, I have a full tweed suit. It's actually a
four piece suit. A lot of people don't know about
the fourth piece that a suit can have.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Not a happy suit I wear. No, no, no, no,
it's a secret third thing.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
But if you listen to our second ad break, there'll
be an ad for the secret fourth piece of the suit.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
That's everyone you've ever seen in a three piece suit
not doing it right.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, just a We actually learned this from the Men's
War Twitter purs anyway. So our producer is Sophie Lichtermann. Hi,
Sophie Hi. Our audio engineer is Danel. Our theme music
was written for us by un woman. I never forget
this part of the introduction when I don't put it
in the script. If it wasn't in the previous one,
it was maliciously cut out by I can't blame Daniel
(01:27):
Hi to Daniel Hi, Danel Hi, Daniel Hey, Daniel, I'm
having a day, Roberts having a day.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We're doing great, sure for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Every well, sometimes when you have problems, you can solve
them through a combination of words and machine guns. Yeah,
where we last left are literally globe circling hero. I
can't say globe trotting hero because I don't know about
the literalness of her gait.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
It might have been a canter.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Marussia Nikki Farova. She had fled one failed revolution and
then returned to give another one a go over in Russia,
and she's just moved back to Ukraine. She heads on
home to Alexandrovsk, the local capital of its region, and
joins the Alexandrovsk Confederation of Anarchist Groups, which at the
time is about three hundred people, which is not enough
(02:18):
to pretend like you know that everyone agrees with you.
That's not enough people. But they're not getting enough done
for her taste. It is time to shake things up
and by that doing what she does best, agitation among
the workers and soldiers, combined with militant direct action and
support of existing above ground organizational structures, doing a revolution.
(02:41):
So she goes around and talks to everyone about how
cool anarchy is. And also, while she's at it, robs
the vodka distillery. Yeah, there we go, probably for having
given her a fake job.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I like to think it's like, you know how in
European countries that are like way better at actually bringing
the bottles back, Like in the Netherlands.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
You'd be around the glass and you could tell other
people of drag from it.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Sure, yeah, exactly, and you feel like you're part of
a long tradition of people consuming poison, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Anyway, she robbed a million rubles, which, as we've determined
as a fake number, but a way higher number than
all of the other robberies that we've discussed.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, this is finally sounding like some real money.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, at least some of the money she gives to
the local Soviet I'm inferring that the rest went to
her anarchist Federation or who knows, maybe she was this
lady was not keeping a second summer home never mind.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, I mean everyone does kind of have them in
that part of the world. Yeahoy's got a little statcha.
Maybe maybe she's just up in her datcha a little bit,
you know yourself. Sometimes.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, it's funny because I like wouldn't even be mad,
but I think that this person has given her entire
being to this revolution. Yeah, and she's in the local capital.
But Alexandrovsk is near a small town called Guye Poya,
which is about seventeen thousand people living there. One of
(04:11):
the people living there is another anarchist, one of the
most famous anarchist generals in history and a rather important
figure in Ukrainian history, a man named Nester Makno. There
we go and tonaw, we're gonna talk about Nester Maknow,
which Robert has never heard of. No, I didn't totally
re listen to the podcast about Nester Makno that Robert
(04:33):
did with Jamie Laftas before researching this episode. So Nestor
was a few years younger than Maryusia, either one year
or three years. Because history is full of mysteries.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Ah, you love to hear a story from this time
period where neither person is clearly a pedophile.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
That's true. They're also not going to date. But yeah,
later we're actually going to talk about Makno's wives.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
There's my man.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
But it's important that he's not a pedophile because his
nickname is Botko, which means father.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, which I famously lied to Jamie Loftus about for
the sake of saving the podcast.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Because otherwise it would have just been Jamie talking about
how his name making daddy making daddy jokes.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, it had to be done.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
I am guessing this nickname came later. He probably wasn't
running around as a little rug rat named dad, but
who knows. Maybe he was set. Maybe it was nominative determinism.
You know. His path looks a lot like his friend Maria's,
although he spent more time in actual jail instead of
jail for a moment before breaking out. No offense to him.
(05:43):
He just was not as successful at prison breaks. And
we know a lot more about his life than we
knew about Marusia's. He was born the youngest of five kids.
His parents, Ivan and Evdokia had been owned by a
guy because surfdom.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Therefore, Nestor started working when he was seven, tending livestock.
He got almost two years of schooling in like working
part time after school, you know, but he liked to
play hooky to go ice skating, And then when he
was ten, playtime is over time for full time labor.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, that's good. Ten, that sounds about right.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, I'm totally that's for some weird reason, he developed
an early understanding of class, something about working full time
for physically abusive bosses combined with stories from his mom
about what it was like to be owned by a guy.
When he was fourteen, he saw the landlord's son beating
up a stable hand, and his older stable hand helped
lead a revolt on the local farm. Anyway, after this,
(06:48):
he bounces around between jobs. So he finds his favorite
job one he's very good at anarchist revolutionary, but once again,
he kind of gets into the job before it's a
good idea. When the nineteen oh five revolution broke out,
he joined his town's anarchist communist group, the Union of
Poor Peasants, which is the only good name of a
(07:09):
group we have run across so far in this appe.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, no, that's a solid one.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah. It started as a book club. Soon they're getting
into shootouts. I'm under the impression and I think that
you talked about this part of it too, where it's
kind of like you're kind of like you show up
to the book club and once you prove your worth,
then you get invited to the shootout club.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah. Yeah, although I do like to think that just
like reading the right books leads inevitably to getting into shootouts,
Like if we if we could get enough people to
read the Pelican Brief, could we could wind up like
forging some sort of rebellion.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Historically that is that carries it out.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I think the Pelican Brief is what's going to do
it too.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I think so if not, it'll be some other animal
themed book. So soon enough, Nestor and his friends are
getting into shootout. They're stealing money to print propaganda, and
they're just robbinhood the shit out of everyone. Eventually, the
book club finds a police informant in their ranks, so
they kill that informant, and for some weird reason, Makno
(08:13):
is arrested. I think that there was some kind of
like specific Czarist era law where you weren't allowed to
kill police informants during that time.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Interesting. Interesting, Yeah, it's a weird law. Yeah, usually police
love it when you kill their informants. It's fucking tar.
That's how we know it was worse then than it
is now. Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, and Makno is convicted and sentenced to death. He
refuses to appeal. They commute his sentence anyway because he's
a little young guy, just a little tyke under twenty one,
I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Get on out of here, you little scamp.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Yeah, you just going to prison, but we're not going
to kill you. And so he goes off to anarchist
finishing school aka prison. He probably this is where he
learns how to read and write more, although he's in
book club and so I like, I wonder about this
half literate thing, But.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, I wonder if that's just that they had higher
standards for literacy back then, like literary, like if you
were literated, it meant that, like you you could recite
all your I don't know is Tolstoy no he yeah,
he like didn't know ancient Greek. Yeah, yeah, he had
some Latin and like he could read it, but not
speak it. Yeah, it's one of those things.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
His Latin was tenth year at best. Yeah, couldn't even
translate the neid from Latin to Greek. What a fool,
I know, it wasn't even had it was even seen
this guy's Sanskrit bush league.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, that's the real reason why people didn't always Actually
incredibly charming and people join him in a massive revolution.
But he runs into a friend of the pod in
prison named Tuberculosis Classic, which spoiler alert, is going to
kill him about twenty years.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, that's how tuberculosis do it.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah. He has a reputation as sort of arrogant and swaggering.
Other prisoners give him the nickname Modest, like oh, there's
Modest Mackno. Yeah, but because of what he represents. Okay,
The problem with Maria Nikki Farova is no one knows
anything about her except some people who are lying. The
problem with Nestor Mackno is everyone knows everything about him
(10:26):
and everyone is lying.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yeah that sounds he sounds like it major historical figure. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
He is argued about and vilified, and it is hard
to parse out exactly right because there's people who want
to paint him as a self centered, arrogant drunk.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Who murders everyone. Yeah, terrible bandit. And then there's other
people where it's like he's never even heard of alcohol
and he is a saint, like literally canonized by Yeah,
I assume he's from Orthodoxy as saints. Yeah, yeah, probably
there's the yeah, yeah that makes sense, and other to
(11:05):
anarchist historians, you know, he might be this like amazing
perfect figure. To anarchist at the time, it seemed like
he was impressive and people kind of liked him, and
he was also a bit too into himself.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah that makes sense. I mean I've always every time
you like read about it. And the area that he
you know, his forces managed is called is like named
after him. Yeah, that is a little bit of a like, well,
I feel like I feel like this guy probably was
a little full of himself. I also don't know that
someone who isn't can can can do that right totally.
(11:39):
It's like you need generals if you're going to do
a war. You need some people who are going to
like and those people are probably going to be a
specific kind of crazy, and you know, some of them
in a way that is all of them in a
way that's sometimes bad. But only certain kinds of people
are capable of leading thousands of commanding thousands and ten
(12:00):
of thousands of people to go die. Yep. So I
don't know, try to avoid war. Yeah no.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
And it's like yeah when I And it's like I
think that a lot of like you know, modern especially
modern anarchists, sort of avoid calling that area like Makinov
China because they like, well, doesn't sound great, you know,
because even like even Lenin, I mean, I guess you
get Lenin grad, but that's I think that's after he died,
Like Lenin wasn't like Lenin's Soviet Union.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah. Yeah, you have to you have to have it's
like that, you have to have someone force you. This
goes back to Caesar, right where Caesar's whole thing is, Oh,
you know, they tried to make me king three times
and I turned him down, you know every time. Yeah,
that's that's the kind of guy I am. And it's like, well,
you made him, You made him do that so that
you could turn it down because that's what you wanted
to do. You just understood how it looks.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And that is roughly Makno's deal. He is going to
end up like elected fairly as far as I can tell,
to the leader of like all kinds of unions and
soviets throughout his life and he is elected general, he
is like like people are into him and that's why
he's in charge. Absolutely, but he like he he often
(13:12):
painted as like, oh, well I really didn't want to,
but they made me do it. And then like other
folks from immediately, like Mariusia is like, no, you keep
putting yourself in charge and setting things up so that
you're in charge, and it's kind of annoying. Yeah, but
then again he kind of pulls it off. And the
reason that this thing failed has nothing to do with
(13:34):
the fact that he was in charge.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
No, it was probably just kind of an impossible situation.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, exactly. The reason that this thing failed is that,
as we're going to talk about, they are fighting events
about four different armies.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah, that's a lot of armies. Yeah, they made at
least one of them, like one and a half something
like that. Yeah, no, they do, I guess.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, there's a reason you could say that Makno's Black
Army is the reason and that the revolution didn't lose.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Because they beat the the What is it the Austrian
occupiers and then the whites.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
They beat first the Nationalists, then the Australia occupiers, and
then the whites. Yeah, they beat everyone but the final
boss of the revolution, which is always the Bolsheviks.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, they should have kept a couple of power ups.
But I know, I'm back seat Russian civil warring.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
It's hard not to.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
So at the moment he's in prison and he's modest makno.
I don't know what the Russian word is here. It
might have been modest nestor, but modest makno is more
fun in English. He's released with the other political prisoners
in March nineteen seventeen. During the revolution, he goes to
Moscow for a little while, and then his mom is like,
are you you're fucking kidding me? Right? Eight years? Eight years?
(14:55):
You're gonna fucking visit or what? And so, like Mariusia,
he goes home. She goes home to her big, bustling
regional city, and he goes to his village of seventeen
thousand people. Yeah, whereupon he started organizing his village into
an anarchist village. He actually kind of broke with the
other regional anarchists who are staying to stay a little safe.
(15:17):
I think they were a little like, we're just kind
of into propaganda now because we keep losing shootouts and
we don't like being dead. That's my best guess. So
he organizes a peasants union and he wounds up the
chairman of it, and some versions are like, oh, he
didn't want to be a leader, but folks insisted, and
(15:38):
others are like, yeah, the man wanted to be in
charge of non hierarchical organizations and managed to do it.
But whatever. Overall it was chill. There's no I've never
read anything at all reputable saying he misused his positions
of power. And soon enough he is in charge of
the town, or rather the peasants union is in charge
(15:59):
of the town. But it's not yet full revolution time.
He's organizing with the unions and they strike for demands
like give us twice the money or we'll kill you,
which is a pretty strong demand to come into organizing with.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, that is that is a nice place to start from.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And it worked, and wages went up, and they're not
yet expropriating the rich, right, they were like, we want
better wages. This is now our factory. Yeah, but the
peasants aren't supposed to be in charge at all. So
he has tensions with the larger regional provisional government, you know,
the half revolutionary government. He also has tension with some
of the other anarchists because they're like, well, you have
(16:39):
all this, why aren't you doing it? Like I thought,
the whole idea is that we like go right, yeah,
and one of his biggest critics. But I suspect also
based on like what I'm about to describe, he gets
like Mary Lucia gets presented as one of his biggest critics.
It sure seems like they are friends and co revolutionary
(17:00):
who respect one another, is what I actually read in
the text. Despite the historians being like most of the
historians like Mackno more than they like Mariusium. Sure, if
Markno is a mythical figure in terms of how he's
written into all the histories of the time, literally anarchist
country named after him, Marisy is mythical, and how she's
written into history as more of like a pure angel
(17:22):
of anarchy and retribution. I can't tell how much of
this is myth making and how much is true, but
it's interesting. So we're going to go with it as
a sort of narrative around it. I'm way more of
a Mackno girl in terms of my own actual like
moderate positions like disarm the police and rob the rich
rather than kill them. All right, Yeah, Marcy is presented
(17:45):
in contrast, is like the kill the cops, kill the
rich as a sort of foil for Mackno.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, it's it's the antithesis, synthesis, all that good stuff
that that dialectic.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
I guess the dialectic kill some of the cops and
some of the rich people, which is what they go for,
and it is probably the most effective way to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
I think she's more of like a stern mentor who
operated to keep his moral compass away from wielding power.
And there's like one narrative, there's one story that's a
little bit like her being like, hell, yeah, kill this guy,
and mack Know's like no, And we'll talk about that
in a second. But like most of the time, it
seems like the main thing she's whispering into his ear
(18:30):
is it's time to step it up. You've created these structures,
You've putting yourself into positions of power, you have to
do something with it, and kind of like the better
angel of his conscience in a way of yeah, but
also the destroying angel.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Of the worst. It's weird because any part of why
I'm drawn to anarchism in so many anarchists is that
you get these guys Mack Know's one of them. Jose
the Uruguayan president we talked about as another of them,
where they're these guys who are like if I was
in that same position, I would have probably supported killing
a lot more people. Spartacus would be like my earliest
(19:07):
I mean, the concept of anarchism didn't exist, but I
think he embodied it of like a oh wow, you
really were in a position to kill a lot of
people with total justification, and you didn't do it because
it's better not to kill people if you can avoid
it usually. But also all of those people do lose,
so I don't know, but so people who killed everybody,
(19:29):
you know.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Okay, So this is interesting then, right, because like if
I do an episode about Maurusium and in some ways
I am way more of a like like I don't
actually think it was justified for the Allies to bomb
German cities in World War Two.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Right, No, although I think it's also one of those
things where there was less data for a large portion
of that. There was a point well before the end
of the war where we knew it was not working right,
but there was also a point where it's like, well,
you know, what else are you going to try?
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Right? Well, and so it's like I have this like
more first work backwards from their framework, and so I
find myself interested in this figure of like fuck it
kill them all, you know, whereas I'm much more of
a mackno person at heart. And so then you're looking
(20:16):
for tempering, right, because yeah, I've heard you on your
podcast talk about being like, if we killed a lot
more of the Nazis after the war, the war might
have you.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Know, yeah, well the after the war might have gone better.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, yeah, No, it's no, it's just interesting to me
the what we're drawn towards, and you know, and I
find both of these figures and the conversations between them
to be just absolutely fascinating interesting. So Mariucia goes to
Gulia Poye, the small town, and it's like, hey, are
you more concerned with being in Charger and spreading anarchism
(20:48):
and some of the critique is like, hey, you're also
being too soft on the landlords, right, you're letting them
continue to be the landlords. But some of it was also, hey,
you're micromanaging, like learn how to actually try us the
people that in these structures that we're building, and she
kept pushing him towards revolt without delay. She said, quote,
(21:08):
we should move immediately to liberate the people from the
oppression of a modern state, to achieve a political overthrow
that aims to give self government to the people and
ensure a social revolution. By not doing anything, we perpetuate
capital and if it continues on this path, we risk
forgetting our real role. And almost all of the direct
quotes we have from her are from Mackno because I
(21:30):
don't think anyone wrote about her more than Mackno did.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Which speaks well of him.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah. Absolutely, like her being gone from the history is
not on Macno. And you know, the anarchists and Golie
Pollie were like, well, we're going to build our thing
and slowly spread it, but not antagonize the provisional government
more broadly or make more enemies than we need to,
which is like makes some strategic sense, whereas Mariusia is like,
(21:57):
social revolution. Now, overthrow the provisional government, smash the nationalists,
let's fucking go. But you know, the villagers had actually
been more successful than she had in her city, So
who knows, right and the most set for a movie
visualization of this tension. She's given a speech in town
square in the village and Makno gets two telegrams, one
(22:20):
from the revolutionary governments, from both the provisional government and
the Soviet and these telegrams are like, hey, the White army,
the forces of reaction that are going to go against
the revolutionary government are attacking. We need everyone to set
up militias and fight them off. And so he gets
these things, and someone in the crowd when he tells
everyone like, hey, hold on, we have this news. You know,
(22:41):
someone in the crowd is like, we have social enemies
right here. The former chief of police is right here
in this crowd listening, and so they kind of are like, yeah,
let's kill the ex cop. And in one version of
the story, mari Yucia comes down and sort of arrests
the cop right and Makna is like, no, you can't
(23:01):
do that. The exit part of the cop is very
important and saves the guy's life from mob violence.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
And I do think there's a you know, there's there's
tactical wisdom in that, right, it's the same reason why
you don't it's not wise to be like we don't
take prisoners. Well, then they have no they're only they
have no reason to do anything but fight to the death,
which is bad for you totally.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
There's a The Art of War is one of my
favorite books. Is I'm that kind of nerd, And there's like,
don't encircle your enemy completely is like a fundamental rule
of warfare, because you need to give them a chance
to run, even if you want to kill them all.
You circle them up almost completely, give them one place
to run, and then kill them all while they run. Yeah,
(23:46):
so this man is not killed the degree to which
Mariucia was going to kill him, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, And I wonder if it's also something they worked
out together, like you try to kill the guy, I'll
save them. This will this will do good for the
cops who are kind of on the fence. Should we
should we bounce? Should we get out of the job? Right,
it might have been like why wouldn't you, right, that's
not a bad tactic. And these are smart people.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah, no, you're I love that version, and I wouldn't
put it past them.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
These the goal is less cops and also less of
your guys getting shot. I don't know that makes sense
to me.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, And both of these people prove to be strategic masterminds, yes,
who win against impossible odds over and over again. In
response to the invasion of the White Army, and perhaps
in response to Mariusia's speech, the anarchist town of guy
Poye takes over its own means of production. The workers
(24:43):
are now in charge of the factories. It's no longer
pay us twice as much. It's literally just stop extracting
value from us. They start expropriating all the large landowners
and they distribute everything equally, including equally back to those
rich families. Right, you get your two cows and a
plow or whatever it is. Sure, And at this point
they disarm all the cops and the provisional government. Their
(25:06):
communal committees are actually kept around, but as an advisory group,
much like we work with a No, we don't this
is no. They have no advisory No.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
This was a.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
They ignored power much like we ignore the adverb. No, wait,
we love our ad whatever.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Here's yeah, here's some ads.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
And we're back, so our angel of vengeance, she's got
one more thing to do while she's still in town.
She's like, hey, y'all, y'all need better weapons. You got
the cops and the landlord's guns, but those are like
they have like revolvers and hunting rifles. Basically, yeah, so
it's not like disarming the cops in the modern era
(25:54):
where you would have an arsenal. Probably artillery. Good enough,
they're gonna have artillery. She gathers up two hundred fighters
with only a dozen rifles and some handguns between them,
and storms the nearby barracks, and the rank and file
is like, fuck, yeah, yeah, we totally surrender and we'll
join the revolution. We like you more than we like
(26:16):
our officers. And the officers are like, wait, this isn't
how we wish it was happening, because Mariusia walks around
and shoots them all, personally executing all of the officers
when they rob them of their guns.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Well you know where she stands, yep, with you as
she shoots you in the back of the head.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Yeah, for her being part of the quote cast of
commanding officers is a death sentence. Death to the aristocracy
and the officers and zaris Russia came from a separate
social class in the works, Oh yes, yeah, yeah, and
oh that gets real complicated. Her dad as an officer,
I could see it.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, yeah, I mean one of the revolutionaries that James
and I met fighting against the government of me was
the daughter of one of the generals leading the junta
who got airstriked, presumably on his orders in the jungle
with their friends. You know, although I don't think she
would have done this, but also was not in the
(27:16):
same the position. It's it's tough because I think I
probably I think me, being the kind of moral actor
that I actually am, if I was in her position,
probably would have supported her doing this. I think me,
being the kind of moral actor that I want to be,
would say, you shouldn't execute unarmed people if you can
avoid it. But you know they are also this is different, right,
(27:39):
Like these are not just you're not fighting a war.
These are not like captured people in a war.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
They don't have a pow camp to take them to.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
This is the ruling. This is the people who rule
you and operate the instrument of your oppression. So I
don't know, you know, yeah, I mean no wrong answers.
I guess there's no wrong ones and there's no right ones.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, but you know, they and the rank and file
soldiers don't seem to be too upset by this.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
No, I'm sure the officers were dicks.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah. Yeah. And so now they're really well armed, and
they start going around to factories being like, hey, you know,
we can just we can just like take this. There's
a revolution happening, we can everything is possible, And so
they just start spreading the revolution of did you know
that if you have guns you can be in charge
of your factory. Now, the provisional government is naturally enough
(28:35):
upset by this. Makno himself, the provisional government can't quite
arrest him because he's sort of he's actually officially in
charge of his area, because he's been elected by his
local Soviet and there's the dual power system going on, right. Sure,
but Mariusia, she's not elected to shit. I mean, she's
probably elected by her own the people that she's leading, right,
(28:55):
but it's not official. Yeah, So they just show up
and arrest her in the city she lives in, that
whose name might totally know how to pronounce and say
when it's not written into my script. Starts with an
alex and ends with the doc. And so they show
up and arrest her, and people are like, nah, now,
you can't do that. That's Mary Yucia. You can't arrest her.
(29:19):
Because the people who actually supported her might not have
been the Soviet It might not have been the provisional government,
it was the entire city that she lived in. Workers
go on strike and storm the prison. The guards hand
her over to the crowd, who carry her on her
on their shoulders to the local Soviet.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Man, which is kind of feel good. Yeah, probably the
best way to leave a prison, Yeah, I would say so.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Meanwhile, Mackno and the anarchists in Goliepolia haven't heard that
she's free yet, right, So Mackno shows up with a
train full of armed anarchists ready to storm the prison himself.
Because not only did the people of the town arms
storm the prison, people from the nearby village with guns
also came to town to storm the prison.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Look, it's you know, it's like one of those viral
viral things we're seeing with these protests, sometimes everyone gets
a good idea all at the same time. It's an
idea his time has come. Yeah, it's storm the prison
and prison yeah, okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
They find out that she's already free, and they just
have a big party, like the entire city just like
throws a party.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Shit, we thought we were going to have to fight
some guys. That's yeah, exactly. What if instead of getting shot,
we get drunk. Let's all go clean glasses at the
vodka factory.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah. And it was this event that basically spread anarchism
to the city because it forced the workers into tention
with the provisional government. Workers in the city now demand
new elections to the Soviet and it goes much much
further left then. The October Revolution happened in November. In November,
(31:00):
are the more radical factions take over. The anarchists, the
Bolsheviks and the left srs declared all power to the
Soviets and disbanded the provisional government.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
The thing that had already been happening grassroots radicals redistributing
the lands of the peasants and workers taking over their
factories was now official. Down in Ukraine, Marusia is really
excited about this and is like, well, there's one problem.
I think the Ukrainian nationalists are going to try and
have a counter revolution and we don't want that because yeah,
(31:30):
really fucking strategically for sure.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Sound as an aside, I do think that every phase
of this, you know, this whole the series of revolutions
that is the Russian Revolution, if you're doing like an
epic TV mini series of it, the proper way to like,
the proper way to do the soundtrack to every one
of these major scenes. Is Schools Out for Summer? Yes,
(31:53):
always the right song, Always the right song.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I think so. Yeah, although I will say, have you
heard the Ukrainian anarchist song mother Anarchy Loves her Sons?
Speaker 2 (32:05):
It's almost as good as School's Out for Summer? For sure,
I know similar messages. It's an also ran. It's a
very good song. People should check it out. I mean,
you want to understand, it's just going to sound like
Russian bombastic stuff. Oh, there's a bunch of good punk versions. Yeah,
it's a banger of the title, Yeah, I know, And
the lyrics just translate to like I'm only happy when
(32:27):
I'm killing my enemy and like I will find freedom
by looking down the sights of my machine gun and
like creeping through the dark with a knife that I
have made hot in the fire, which kind of there's
a reason that they use a lot of death imagery
in this particular group, because this is one of the
deadliest conflicts in human history, I think. But seven million
(32:47):
people die in the Russian Civil War. Yeah, they're going
to do a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
So before all of that, kind of at the start
of all of it, she sets up organizing what's called
the Black Guard. Basically, these are an because military units
ready to fight against the nationalists. We've talked about nationalism
way too often the show. It's messy as fuck. Even
the nationalism of oppressed people often gets really dark, although
(33:11):
not always. Ukrainian nationalists at this time have some good points.
Ukraine is, as you were talking about, is an oppressed
place that is like constantly being fucked over by Russia.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
It is the place that grows the most food, and
Russia is using it to grow food and continually kind
of murdering people who were like, well, but we're not
really getting an even share out of this whole making
all of your food deal that we're.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Doing and They're like, well, you could just die, and
then what if.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
We had Cossacks? How about that?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah? And Ukraine is culturally and ethnically not Russia, despite
what Russia to this day tries to insist, and Ukrainians,
understandably at the time, are like, what if we get
to speak Ukrainian instead of Russian?
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
And so there's this whole thing that happens where Bolsheviks
try to claim that makno is, especially Maria Niki forever,
actually we're Ukrainian nationalists and it's absolute nonsense. But the
kernel of truth is that they were often like, yeah,
we could speak Ukrainian instead of Russian.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah. And I do feel like, you know, there's that
great Orwell quote where he's like, when I see the
worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I
don't have to ask whose side I'm on. It's like,
if I see a situation in which one side has
made the speaking of the native language of a group
of people illegal, well, those are the bad guys in
that conflict. Yeah. Absolutely, it's pretty easy. There's never a
(34:42):
good reason to ban people from speaking their language, right, totally.
So when we talk about Ukrainian nationalists. If you're a Bolshevik.
Later in you're writing history, everyone who's like, hey, what
if Ukraine belongs to Ukraine or the people who live
in Ukraine, they're suddenly a nationalist and a counter revolutionary.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Right. But at the time, when you said a Ukrainian nationalist,
what you meant were reactionary racists. The nationalist organizations at
the time were generally I don't think this is universal,
but and again I'm reading a specific set of histories
when I write this, but they're full of racists. They
were looking for Ukrainians without the polls, the Romanians, the Germans,
(35:21):
the Russians, and the Jews.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
See, that's going to be a problem.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
And they also wanted the rich people to keep their
rich people stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Also a problem. Less of a problem than yeah so
the nationalists, but still a problem.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, not great. I'm a big fan of the no
one gets an ethno state as like a default position
to start from. Yeah, so the nationalists take advantage of
the chaos to try and ethnically cleanse everywhere they can,
which always extra means attacking Jews as well as in
this case defending the landowners against expropriations. Sure, but the
(35:56):
nationalists had a problem, like all of the people who
would shoot them whenever they tried to do it, Like
Marusia's Blackguards, for example, who in more than one city
directly and through violence, stopped the nationalists from doing their racism.
In Alexandrovsk, that city whose name I never forgot, the anarchists,
(36:20):
the left srs, and the Bolsheviks all worked together that
winter to overthrow the nationalists and start doing socialism. They
went around and they directly liberated and redistributed goods, which
is to say, they looted and then shared. And this
is like the Maria Niki ferovas special, like you know,
she's shown up in town when like you're breaking out
the store windows and sharing things. At this point, the
(36:45):
nascent Red Army wasn't a Bolshevik thing. It was an
all the socialists thing, and Marusia's force, the Blackguards were
part of the Red Army, and they marched north I
think this is December nineteen seventeen and liberated the city
of Kharkoff from the nationalists. The Black Guards were the
first into the city, much like anarchist partisans would later
be the first to liberate Paris from the Nazis. You
(37:07):
can read this as we're so brave and we're always
willing to be the first through the breach. You can
read this as I wonder why we keep getting used
as useful idiots by other forces. But it's something to
be proud of. The Bolsheviks who were mostly from Russia
and they were not local. Anarchism was way more in
style in Ukraine, and also I think left s RS.
(37:28):
They tried to finagle some stuff to take over the
local Soviet and ale Alexandrovsk after they'd taken power right
and the workers weren't having it, and our guy Makno
with eight hundred arm peasants showed up to the city
and was like, that's not going to happen. You can't
undermine the democratic process. Basically, so the local RevCom, which
(37:49):
is the Revolutionary Committee, which is a It's probably sounded
like a cool name at the time, but now it
just sounds like hopelessly Soviet, but so just the word
Soviet and those used to be cool whatever, it becomes
politically pluralist and it includes the anarchists. Marusio was elected
vice president of the RevCom and Makno is like the
visiting representative from Guye Poya in it, because, as was
(38:14):
shown time and time again in the Russian Revolution, the anarchists,
while they were fighting for anarchism, they believe that they
like the actual military fighting, was for the revolution and
against the rich. The battle for control of the direction
of the revolution was a fight that happened through political pluralism,
free speech, and to win the battle of ideas. That
(38:34):
is the best inference I can pull from everything that
I have read, which also matches what I think should
be the case, you know, where you can't just kill
people for having different ideas from you, but you can't
kill people from trying to stop you from creating a
free society where people aren't starving to death all the time. Yeah,
it's scanic, But did you know that you know who
(38:56):
doesn't want you to starve to death and wants you
to be happy? And it really depends on the sponsor
that comes next, But there's like a fifty percent chance
they don't. Yeah, and that's better odds than our heroes
have of pulling this off. Yeah, So here you go,
(39:24):
and we're back. The anarchist project in southeastern Ukraine was
beset by more enemies than it's easy to keep track of.
It is one of the hard things. Even since I've
put out the sixth parter on the Russian Revolution, like
a lot of listeners have been like, oh, it was great,
I had to take notes, and I'm like, yeah, me too.
I absolutely had to take notes. It's annoyingly complicated. As
(39:48):
soon as the Nationalists were driven back, the Bolsheviks were
kept from taking over, the White Army arrived. They are reactionary,
similar to the nationalists, but they want the recreation of
the Russian Empire. Fortunately, they're kind of splintered. They're not
a single centralized force, but some disparate groups that never
quite get their act together, in large part because of
(40:10):
the work of the Ukrainian anarchist Black Army that physically
prevents some of the White Armies from working together to
take Moscow. But that's later. First, in January nineteen eighteen,
the revolutionaries in Alexandrov's had a problem. The Cossacks were coming.
You mentioned that the Cossacks were going to come.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yeah, they always do.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
The way they handle these Cossacks is amazing. Cossack is
a word that gets used in a lot of different ways. First,
and perhaps Most importantly, the Cossacks are an ethnic group
whose culture is fiercely independent, nomadic, and quote unquote warlike,
semi militarized as I think the more modern phrase for that.
(40:53):
An awful lot of them have been mercenaries throughout the centuries.
But then there's Cossacks like as generally used as history books,
which is usually referring to the Cossack mercenaries who are
hired by the Tsar. They are the elite and scary
shock troops on horses with swords, fighting for reaction. Yeah,
the Cossacks are coming, But the thing is, a whole
(41:14):
bunch of the anarchists around here are Cossacks too.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Nester Makno is a Cossack. Yeah, And I'm unsure about
other anarchists in this story, like Mariusia. If you ever
get bored and read the Wikipedia talk page about her,
there's like a Russian guy saying that she must be
Russian based on her name, and then people are arguing
about how that's not enough reason to determine the ethnicity
of anyway. She might have been a Cossack, she might
(41:39):
have been ethnically Russian, she might have been a lot
of different things. Nester Makno is a Cossack. The Cossacks
are coming, and by this we mean the nomadic cavalry
mercenaries fighting against the revolution. Everyone in Alexandrov's anarchists and
Sr's and Bolsheviks, they're like, they try to reach out
to the Cossacks and are like, hey, let's like have
a negotiation instead of shooting each other. And the Cossacks
(42:01):
are like, did you know that we're Cossacks. We're not
going to do We're good. We're just going to show
up and win. So the anarchists are like, all right,
we'll go fuck them up.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
First.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
They lay in wait alongside the train tracks. There has
never been a more train focused war. Yeah, I've ever
been aware.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Of people had just figured out trains and specifically how
cool they are to have in a war.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, and I think I think these days we understand
trains are very good at moving supplies in people, but
are usually not fighting platforms themselves. Not in the Russian
Civil War.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
It's a mistake. We should go back.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Yeah, armored trains big part of all of this. This
one wasn't armored enough because the anarchists lay into machine
guns and the train tries to retreat, thing about trains
and retreating.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Terrible at retreating. Yeah, they've got flaws as a weapons platform.
Nobody's going to deny that.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
So it backs up and then runs into the other
train full of Cossacks behind it, and both of them
are derailed.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
See that's one of the downsides.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
A ton of people and horses die.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yeah. See, armored is a relative term, and when it
comes to bullets only some things are actually armored, and
when it comes to other trains, nothing is actually armed.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah, which numerous times, actually Maria Niki Fova is going
to like absolutely like ride into war on trains time
and time again.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, why wouldn't you.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
But so the Cossacks lose because they derailed because the
anarchists forced them to retreat. And the Cossacks come forward
to the RevCom of Alexandrovsk under the white flag and
they surrender. Soon they are disarmed, and along the way
folks try to convince them to switch allegiances and become revolutionaries.
(43:56):
And first the good communists, the Bolshev and the srs.
They go up and make all these speeches about all
the freedoms they are going to graciously grant the Cossacks,
and the Cossacks are like, what the fuck ever, and
they're literally laughing at the speakers, even though they've already surrendered.
They're laughing at these people, right, yeah. Then Maria Niki
(44:18):
Frova takes the stage, and this is where her most
famous quote comes from. She says to them, the anarchists
are not promising anything to anyone. The anarchists only want
people to be conscious of their own situation and sees
freedom for themselves. And she didn't mince words or people please,
she said quote, I am obliged to tell you, Cossacks
(44:42):
that hitherto you have been the executioners of the Russian workers.
Are you going to remain such in the future, or
will you at last come to grasp your despicable role
and return to the family of workers, which thus far
you have refused to acknowledge, and which for a ruble
from the czar or for a glass of wine you
were always ready to crucify alive ouch And it it works.
(45:09):
The Cossacks are like holding their hat in their hands.
A bunch of them are crying. Over the next few days,
tons of them show up to the anarchist offices and
are like, we are interested in your ideas. Can I
have a flyer? Please?
Speaker 2 (45:24):
You know?
Speaker 1 (45:25):
And later a ton of these surrendered troops join in
various anarchist unions units fighting in Ukraine for the revolution.
And I think it's because you've got this no nonsense
culture being told like, we're not promising you shit, but
if you're strong enough to fight for your own liberation,
(45:46):
we'll help you do it way more effective. So with
machine guns and speeches, the anarchists have saved the city.
Yet the fuck again. Also, and this one's going to
be my conjecture and pulling out my yarn on my
board on my wall. One of the white generals, this
guy Kaladin, he relied heavily on the Cossacks, and the
(46:07):
Cossacks eventually abandoned him and he kills himself. So I'm
not saying Mariusia killed a general by convincing the Cossacks
to abandon him, but I'm not saying she didn't.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Yeah, that's pretty based.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
It's like we know so little about her life, but
the little bits we know are like, and then she
rode a train into war, and then she convinced the
Cossacks to abandon the general and then she fucking people
are so mad she's in jail that they all storm
the you know, I just I really like her.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Makno and Mariusia are both like, you know what, I'm
not really the type to sit around in a city
and argue about politics with the Bolsheviks and the SRS,
and so they leave town. One version of the story
is that Makno has been trying to blow up the prison,
but the rest of the RevCom won't let him, and
so he like leaves in a huff because he's like,
no one lets me do my thing, just blow up
(46:57):
the prison. Aw which is particularly interesting because immediately before
that he had been in charge of the prisoners of
war basically, and he had been in charge he was
like the judge for all the people who were arrested,
and like overall he was like mostly pretty nice, but
then there was that thing that where he potentially the
prosecutor who had put him in jail. He was like, ah,
(47:19):
I'm putting you the fuck in jail. But so Makno
heads back to his village and his units there, and
Mariucia and her black Guard stay in the city. But
they need more guns and they have a tried and
true method of getting guns. They organize a joint action,
the city anarchists and the peasant anarchists working together, and
(47:41):
they go back to the same barracks that they robbed
the last time, which at this point was like half
nationalist armies and half white armies, because the two must
have been getting along together at that point, like.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Knowing exactly there at this point. At that point, it's
they're just basically arming the revolutionaries themselves, right, You're just
feeding guns to rebels if you keep filling this place up,
I know.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
And this is where Maria Niki Farova gets her first mortars.
They succeed. They get a ton of mortars and machine
guns and all the stuff that make the two of
them smile. Last time that the anarchist had raided the barracks,
the local revolutionary government had been mad about it. This time,
the Bolsheviks are like, yeah, cool, we get the guns, right,
(48:30):
And at this point mary Us has like nah, and
gives all of the guns to the newly growing explicitly
anarchist project in Guliapulia. Her military unit becomes the Free
Combat Drewsina. Drewsina is like a medieval word for the
military force of the local region, and they're officially recognized
and financed for a little while by the Red Army.
(48:52):
She had like made for all of the like she's
the most anarchy, ever, she's actually not. She doesn't come
out the gate being like and I hate the Bolsheviks
and I hate the SRS.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
She's literally makes sense to right, like, you can't, yeah,
the stuff hadn't happened. That is the reason why those
conflicts are so ingrained to us.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Exactly exactly, And she's like, well, you know, the main
difference in her mind is that she wants it immediately
without intermediary steps, and everyone else wants an intermediary steps.
But if they finance her doing it without intermediary steps,
then we're all on the same page. Sure, And she
(49:36):
is one of the only women commanders in the entire war.
They give her a new nickname, Atamansha. This part surprised me.
I found it really interesting. Atomologically, there are no Slavic
words for leader originally. That is interesting because they all
used to be pretty cool. All their words for leaders
are loanwords. Auteman and Autemansha come from Turkish word for leader,
(50:00):
so atamancha means the female chieftain basically.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Traditionally the military leader of a group of Cossacks was
elected by the soldiers, like Mariucio was, And you talked
about this, I think a little bit on your episodes
about how Makno for example, in some ways was drawing
on his own pritage about how to be a non
hierarchical military commander, where you need hierarchy in the military,
(50:27):
but non authoritarian hierarchy or whatever.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
The Yeah. Yeah, as a friend of mine put it,
who had seen some very heavy combat. Once you've been
through enough of that sort of thing, you know who
you're willing to listen to in a firefight. Yeah, Like,
it's not it becomes past a certain point, less about
rank and more about well, like I just know who
I'm going, who knows what they're saying about that in
that situation, you.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Know totally, which is why like is then people are like, oh,
democratic armies aren't effective. And then there's like a ton
of information from the Russian Civil War before before anti
democratic things were put back in place in the Red
Army where it was very effective for because people know who,
at least on the sergeant level. I can't tell you.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
One they or the other about Hyeah. Once you've actually
been fighting, you tend to know who's worth taking seriously
when they give a device in that situation.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
And now we get to my favorite part. Even more
than all of the robberies and cool prison breaks, the
weird cultural things about the Free Combat Drezina. They were
culturally distinct from the rest of the Red Army. They're hippies.
They covered their train in slogans like, well, this part
(51:41):
isn't hippie, but whatever, well, good hippie. They covered their
trains and slogans like the liberation of the workers is
the concern of the workers themselves, and long live anarchy,
and power creates parasites and peace in the home and
war in the palaces, and anarchy is the mother of order.
They didn't have an afeuniform. Instead, they had an unofficial one.
(52:03):
The men wore their hair long, which was not in
style at the time. They wore civilian coats, red pants,
and ammo belts. Everyone in all of this is like
dripping in guns, right, everyone had just covered in weapons.
There's an inner core of the Free Combat Jusina that
stays and other folks drift in and out from various units,
(52:24):
especially black sea sailors. One SR said, with their cannons
and black flags, the free combat Jusina was like pirates
sailing on the steps. And they were also like the
flying Dutchman, where they would appear out of nowhere. Right,
you had no idea when the free combat Jusina would
just show up and fuck your day up. If you're
in the White Army or a nationalist, this is so cool,
(52:46):
I know. And then according to one source that I read,
they would line their horses up into rows by color,
so that when they charged into battle, they formed stripes
of color moving across the fields. And they kept accordionists
riding in carriages in the back alongside the fame ta
chankas because Makno invented the modern technical the idea of
(53:11):
strap a machine gun onto a truck, but truck at
this time meant carriage pulled by a horse.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
Yeah, so you've got like the finally a bandit army
that weird al could have a place, and I love
that it's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
I think that modern technicals are not complete unless they
keep to tradition and have accordionists in the back.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, it's they're weird al in the middle of that
yuch of high lexes.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
As an accordionist, I would rather have my rifle than
an accordion. In a technical you.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
Can carry both. We can make some sort of a
Picatinny rail mount for an accordion, so it goes underneath.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
The ar okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, at least a concertina,
yeah yeah, or like a here's what you really do
because it accordions are a free read instruments, so there's
loose brass reads that are held on by wax and
as air moves over them, they make different notes. And
other instruments in this family include melodicas and harmonicas. So
(54:13):
you take the blowback system of the rifle and you
hook it up to a keyed system so that when
you shoot the gun, it makes different noises depending on
which keys you're pressing. And I know what you're thinking,
that won't work because the guns are really loud, but
I don't care.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
Sure if you just wrap the gas from the firing
gun through then it could work as a suppressor and
as an accordion. I think there's probably a way to
do that.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, that'll be my macno invented the technical you build
that I would love to see.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
Just challenge the ATF to regulate this. What do you
count this as? Huh?
Speaker 1 (54:54):
Is this a suppressor? This is what I go down for.
And so, yeah, you have this group of non uniformed
red pants covered in guns accordionist long hair. One version
I read said that they claimed that their pants were flared.
(55:15):
I think that was more of a sailor style, and
they're like on but they're not sailors, right, yeah, And
they're just coolest shit. And the other thing that made
them distinct from the rest of the Red Army is
that they were better fed and better armed, and partly
because they'd done so much work of securing those arms
themselves as the best bet. And then I think also
they just like prioritized cooks and stuff.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
I'm not yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
I'm inferring all. The only piece of information is that
multiple sources talk about them having better guns and better food,
but I don't know why. And so they just went
around Ukraine fighting nationalists, fighting the White Army, robbing the rich,
and setting up anarchist communes in their wake. They would
liberate a city from the nowtionalists. They would set up
(56:01):
new blackguards within the city. They would elect new soviets
that represented theoretically the people better, which wasn't They didn't
make it an anarchist town. I mean, I guess in
some ways I just said they made anarchist communes, but
they certainly like.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
It.
Speaker 1 (56:14):
Certainly helped influence people's decision making that the anarchists had
just saved them or whatever. And in those towns that
they had taken over, necessities were to be shared equally,
while barter was used for non essential goods. I can't
tell you that's the most efficient economy, but it sure
sounds more equal than.
Speaker 2 (56:31):
What we got.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
And all I know is that the Russian Civil War
is one of the worst possible times in places to
be alive in history. If someone gave me a one
way ticket to join the free combat Jerzina in nineteen eighteen,
I might take it, even knowing how it ends. They
yola the shit out of their short lives.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
It would be hard not to want to be along
for that ride.
Speaker 1 (56:55):
Yeah, But if you want to go along for that
ride in a way in which is you don't have
to put yourself in danger except the danger of Actually,
my phone always yells at me for listening to two
things too loud, so that's actually a danger. You can
listen to parts three and four where we talk about
how it all plays out next week.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
Next week, everybody, I'll be backed, We'll all be back.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
If you want to hear Jamie Loftus explain people who
used to be famous on the Internet, I'm hoping that
you just know who Jamie Loftus is and therefore you
know that the show is going to be amazing. You
can listen to sixteenth minute, sixteenth minute of Fame or sixteenth.
Speaker 2 (57:33):
Minute, sixteenth minute of Fame, okay.
Speaker 1 (57:37):
And if you want to hear modern politics explained in
possibly the best possible way, you could listen to Hood
Politics with prop And if you want to keep up
with ins and outs of complicated news, you can listen
it could happen here. And if you want to hear
bad people in history, you can listen Behind the Bastards
and the Tech Show. Wow.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
Yeah, better offline, stay off the Internet except for it
for those.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
For the d If you want to read my fiction,
you can have Well, I have a bunch of books
out already, but I now have a In June of
twenty twenty four, I will be kickstarting my first full
length novel, despite having written many novellas, called The Sapling Cage,
and if you look for it on Kickstarter now you
(58:24):
can sign up to be told when it goes live
and you'll be happy you did. I got to reveal
the cover weeks ago as you're listening to this, but
today as of recording, and I'm very happy about it.
Speaker 2 (58:38):
Excellent. Cool people Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and 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, the podcast about people who had problems and
then tried to solve those problems. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy,
and my guest today is the one and only Robert Evans.
Hello Robert Evans, Hello Margaret Kiljoy. It's always fun to
refer to your friends by the first and last name.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's how we know that.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
You're proper and formal and formal is normal exactly. That
is what we've been saying for a very long time,
and why we're both wearing very nice evening dresses.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yes, I have a full tweed suit. It's actually a
four piece suit. A lot of people don't know about
the fourth piece that a suit can have.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Not a happy suit I wear. No, no, no, no,
it's a secret third thing.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
But if you listen to our second ad break, there'll
be an ad for the secret fourth piece of the suit.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
That's everyone you've ever seen in a three piece suit
not doing it right.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, just a We actually learned this from the Men's
War Twitter purs anyway. So our producer is Sophie Lichtermann. Hi,
Sophie Hi. Our audio engineer is Danel. Our theme music
was written for us by un woman. I never forget
this part of the introduction when I don't put it
in the script. If it wasn't in the previous one,
it was maliciously cut out by I can't blame Daniel
(01:27):
Hi to Daniel Hi, Danel Hi, Daniel Hey, Daniel, I'm
having a day, Roberts having a day.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We're doing great, sure for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Every well, sometimes when you have problems, you can solve
them through a combination of words and machine guns. Yeah,
where we last left are literally globe circling hero. I
can't say globe trotting hero because I don't know about
the literalness of her gait.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
It might have been a canter.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Marussia Nikki Farova. She had fled one failed revolution and
then returned to give another one a go over in Russia,
and she's just moved back to Ukraine. She heads on
home to Alexandrovsk, the local capital of its region, and
joins the Alexandrovsk Confederation of Anarchist Groups, which at the
time is about three hundred people, which is not enough
(02:18):
to pretend like you know that everyone agrees with you.
That's not enough people. But they're not getting enough done
for her taste. It is time to shake things up
and by that doing what she does best, agitation among
the workers and soldiers, combined with militant direct action and
support of existing above ground organizational structures, doing a revolution.
(02:41):
So she goes around and talks to everyone about how
cool anarchy is. And also, while she's at it, robs
the vodka distillery. Yeah, there we go, probably for having
given her a fake job.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I like to think it's like, you know how in
European countries that are like way better at actually bringing
the bottles back, Like in the Netherlands.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
You'd be around the glass and you could tell other
people of drag from it.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Sure, yeah, exactly, and you feel like you're part of
a long tradition of people consuming poison, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Anyway, she robbed a million rubles, which, as we've determined
as a fake number, but a way higher number than
all of the other robberies that we've discussed.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, this is finally sounding like some real money.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, at least some of the money she gives to
the local Soviet I'm inferring that the rest went to
her anarchist Federation or who knows, maybe she was this
lady was not keeping a second summer home never mind.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, I mean everyone does kind of have them in
that part of the world. Yeahoy's got a little statcha.
Maybe maybe she's just up in her datcha a little bit,
you know yourself. Sometimes.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, it's funny because I like wouldn't even be mad,
but I think that this person has given her entire
being to this revolution. Yeah, and she's in the local capital.
But Alexandrovsk is near a small town called Guye Poya,
which is about seventeen thousand people living there. One of
(04:11):
the people living there is another anarchist, one of the
most famous anarchist generals in history and a rather important
figure in Ukrainian history, a man named Nester Makno. There
we go and tonaw, we're gonna talk about Nester Maknow,
which Robert has never heard of. No, I didn't totally
re listen to the podcast about Nester Makno that Robert
(04:33):
did with Jamie Laftas before researching this episode. So Nestor
was a few years younger than Maryusia, either one year
or three years. Because history is full of mysteries.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Ah, you love to hear a story from this time
period where neither person is clearly a pedophile.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
That's true. They're also not going to date. But yeah,
later we're actually going to talk about Makno's wives.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
There's my man.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
But it's important that he's not a pedophile because his
nickname is Botko, which means father.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, which I famously lied to Jamie Loftus about for
the sake of saving the podcast.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Because otherwise it would have just been Jamie talking about
how his name making daddy making daddy jokes.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, it had to be done.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
I am guessing this nickname came later. He probably wasn't
running around as a little rug rat named dad, but
who knows. Maybe he was set. Maybe it was nominative determinism.
You know. His path looks a lot like his friend Maria's,
although he spent more time in actual jail instead of
jail for a moment before breaking out. No offense to him.
(05:43):
He just was not as successful at prison breaks. And
we know a lot more about his life than we
knew about Marusia's. He was born the youngest of five kids.
His parents, Ivan and Evdokia had been owned by a
guy because surfdom.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Therefore, Nestor started working when he was seven, tending livestock.
He got almost two years of schooling in like working
part time after school, you know, but he liked to
play hooky to go ice skating, And then when he
was ten, playtime is over time for full time labor.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, that's good. Ten, that sounds about right.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, I'm totally that's for some weird reason, he developed
an early understanding of class, something about working full time
for physically abusive bosses combined with stories from his mom
about what it was like to be owned by a guy.
When he was fourteen, he saw the landlord's son beating
up a stable hand, and his older stable hand helped
lead a revolt on the local farm. Anyway, after this,
(06:48):
he bounces around between jobs. So he finds his favorite
job one he's very good at anarchist revolutionary, but once again,
he kind of gets into the job before it's a
good idea. When the nineteen oh five revolution broke out,
he joined his town's anarchist communist group, the Union of
Poor Peasants, which is the only good name of a
(07:09):
group we have run across so far in this appe.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, no, that's a solid one.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah. It started as a book club. Soon they're getting
into shootouts. I'm under the impression and I think that
you talked about this part of it too, where it's
kind of like you're kind of like you show up
to the book club and once you prove your worth,
then you get invited to the shootout club.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah. Yeah, although I do like to think that just
like reading the right books leads inevitably to getting into shootouts,
Like if we if we could get enough people to
read the Pelican Brief, could we could wind up like
forging some sort of rebellion.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Historically that is that carries it out.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I think the Pelican Brief is what's going to do
it too.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I think so if not, it'll be some other animal
themed book. So soon enough, Nestor and his friends are
getting into shootout. They're stealing money to print propaganda, and
they're just robbinhood the shit out of everyone. Eventually, the
book club finds a police informant in their ranks, so
they kill that informant, and for some weird reason, Makno
(08:13):
is arrested. I think that there was some kind of
like specific Czarist era law where you weren't allowed to
kill police informants during that time.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Interesting. Interesting, Yeah, it's a weird law. Yeah, usually police
love it when you kill their informants. It's fucking tar.
That's how we know it was worse then than it
is now. Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, and Makno is convicted and sentenced to death. He
refuses to appeal. They commute his sentence anyway because he's
a little young guy, just a little tyke under twenty one,
I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Get on out of here, you little scamp.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Yeah, you just going to prison, but we're not going
to kill you. And so he goes off to anarchist
finishing school aka prison. He probably this is where he
learns how to read and write more, although he's in
book club and so I like, I wonder about this
half literate thing, But.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, I wonder if that's just that they had higher
standards for literacy back then, like literary, like if you
were literated, it meant that, like you you could recite
all your I don't know is Tolstoy no he yeah,
he like didn't know ancient Greek. Yeah, yeah, he had
some Latin and like he could read it, but not
speak it. Yeah, it's one of those things.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
His Latin was tenth year at best. Yeah, couldn't even
translate the neid from Latin to Greek. What a fool,
I know, it wasn't even had it was even seen
this guy's Sanskrit bush league.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, that's the real reason why people didn't always Actually
incredibly charming and people join him in a massive revolution.
But he runs into a friend of the pod in
prison named Tuberculosis Classic, which spoiler alert, is going to
kill him about twenty years.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, that's how tuberculosis do it.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah. He has a reputation as sort of arrogant and swaggering.
Other prisoners give him the nickname Modest, like oh, there's
Modest Mackno. Yeah, but because of what he represents. Okay,
The problem with Maria Nikki Farova is no one knows
anything about her except some people who are lying. The
problem with Nestor Mackno is everyone knows everything about him
(10:26):
and everyone is lying.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yeah that sounds he sounds like it major historical figure. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
He is argued about and vilified, and it is hard
to parse out exactly right because there's people who want
to paint him as a self centered, arrogant drunk.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Who murders everyone. Yeah, terrible bandit. And then there's other
people where it's like he's never even heard of alcohol
and he is a saint, like literally canonized by Yeah,
I assume he's from Orthodoxy as saints. Yeah, yeah, probably
there's the yeah, yeah that makes sense, and other to
(11:05):
anarchist historians, you know, he might be this like amazing
perfect figure. To anarchist at the time, it seemed like
he was impressive and people kind of liked him, and
he was also a bit too into himself.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah that makes sense. I mean I've always every time
you like read about it. And the area that he
you know, his forces managed is called is like named
after him. Yeah, that is a little bit of a like, well,
I feel like I feel like this guy probably was
a little full of himself. I also don't know that
someone who isn't can can can do that right totally.
(11:39):
It's like you need generals if you're going to do
a war. You need some people who are going to
like and those people are probably going to be a
specific kind of crazy, and you know, some of them
in a way that is all of them in a
way that's sometimes bad. But only certain kinds of people
are capable of leading thousands of commanding thousands and ten
(12:00):
of thousands of people to go die. Yep. So I
don't know, try to avoid war. Yeah no.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
And it's like yeah when I And it's like I
think that a lot of like you know, modern especially
modern anarchists, sort of avoid calling that area like Makinov
China because they like, well, doesn't sound great, you know,
because even like even Lenin, I mean, I guess you
get Lenin grad, but that's I think that's after he died,
Like Lenin wasn't like Lenin's Soviet Union.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah. Yeah, you have to you have to have it's
like that, you have to have someone force you. This
goes back to Caesar, right where Caesar's whole thing is, Oh,
you know, they tried to make me king three times
and I turned him down, you know every time. Yeah,
that's that's the kind of guy I am. And it's like, well,
you made him, You made him do that so that
you could turn it down because that's what you wanted
to do. You just understood how it looks.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And that is roughly Makno's deal. He is going to
end up like elected fairly as far as I can tell,
to the leader of like all kinds of unions and
soviets throughout his life and he is elected general, he
is like like people are into him and that's why
he's in charge. Absolutely, but he like he he often
(13:12):
painted as like, oh, well I really didn't want to,
but they made me do it. And then like other
folks from immediately, like Mariusia is like, no, you keep
putting yourself in charge and setting things up so that
you're in charge, and it's kind of annoying. Yeah, but
then again he kind of pulls it off. And the
reason that this thing failed has nothing to do with
(13:34):
the fact that he was in charge.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
No, it was probably just kind of an impossible situation.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, exactly. The reason that this thing failed is that,
as we're going to talk about, they are fighting events
about four different armies.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah, that's a lot of armies. Yeah, they made at
least one of them, like one and a half something
like that. Yeah, no, they do, I guess.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, there's a reason you could say that Makno's Black
Army is the reason and that the revolution didn't lose.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Because they beat the the What is it the Austrian
occupiers and then the whites.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
They beat first the Nationalists, then the Australia occupiers, and
then the whites. Yeah, they beat everyone but the final
boss of the revolution, which is always the Bolsheviks.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, they should have kept a couple of power ups.
But I know, I'm back seat Russian civil warring.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
It's hard not to.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
So at the moment he's in prison and he's modest makno.
I don't know what the Russian word is here. It
might have been modest nestor, but modest makno is more
fun in English. He's released with the other political prisoners
in March nineteen seventeen. During the revolution, he goes to
Moscow for a little while, and then his mom is like,
are you you're fucking kidding me? Right? Eight years? Eight years?
(14:55):
You're gonna fucking visit or what? And so, like Mariusia,
he goes home. She goes home to her big, bustling
regional city, and he goes to his village of seventeen
thousand people. Yeah, whereupon he started organizing his village into
an anarchist village. He actually kind of broke with the
other regional anarchists who are staying to stay a little safe.
(15:17):
I think they were a little like, we're just kind
of into propaganda now because we keep losing shootouts and
we don't like being dead. That's my best guess. So
he organizes a peasants union and he wounds up the
chairman of it, and some versions are like, oh, he
didn't want to be a leader, but folks insisted, and
(15:38):
others are like, yeah, the man wanted to be in
charge of non hierarchical organizations and managed to do it.
But whatever. Overall it was chill. There's no I've never
read anything at all reputable saying he misused his positions
of power. And soon enough he is in charge of
the town, or rather the peasants union is in charge
(15:59):
of the town. But it's not yet full revolution time.
He's organizing with the unions and they strike for demands
like give us twice the money or we'll kill you,
which is a pretty strong demand to come into organizing with.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, that is that is a nice place to start from.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And it worked, and wages went up, and they're not
yet expropriating the rich, right, they were like, we want
better wages. This is now our factory. Yeah, but the
peasants aren't supposed to be in charge at all. So
he has tensions with the larger regional provisional government, you know,
the half revolutionary government. He also has tension with some
of the other anarchists because they're like, well, you have
(16:39):
all this, why aren't you doing it? Like I thought,
the whole idea is that we like go right, yeah,
and one of his biggest critics. But I suspect also
based on like what I'm about to describe, he gets
like Mary Lucia gets presented as one of his biggest critics.
It sure seems like they are friends and co revolutionary
(17:00):
who respect one another, is what I actually read in
the text. Despite the historians being like most of the
historians like Mackno more than they like Mariusium. Sure, if
Markno is a mythical figure in terms of how he's
written into all the histories of the time, literally anarchist
country named after him, Marisy is mythical, and how she's
written into history as more of like a pure angel
(17:22):
of anarchy and retribution. I can't tell how much of
this is myth making and how much is true, but
it's interesting. So we're going to go with it as
a sort of narrative around it. I'm way more of
a Mackno girl in terms of my own actual like
moderate positions like disarm the police and rob the rich
rather than kill them. All right, Yeah, Marcy is presented
(17:45):
in contrast, is like the kill the cops, kill the
rich as a sort of foil for Mackno.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, it's it's the antithesis, synthesis, all that good stuff
that that dialectic.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
I guess the dialectic kill some of the cops and
some of the rich people, which is what they go for,
and it is probably the most effective way to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
I think she's more of like a stern mentor who
operated to keep his moral compass away from wielding power.
And there's like one narrative, there's one story that's a
little bit like her being like, hell, yeah, kill this guy,
and mack Know's like no, And we'll talk about that
in a second. But like most of the time, it
seems like the main thing she's whispering into his ear
(18:30):
is it's time to step it up. You've created these structures,
You've putting yourself into positions of power, you have to
do something with it, and kind of like the better
angel of his conscience in a way of yeah, but
also the destroying angel.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Of the worst. It's weird because any part of why
I'm drawn to anarchism in so many anarchists is that
you get these guys Mack Know's one of them. Jose
the Uruguayan president we talked about as another of them,
where they're these guys who are like if I was
in that same position, I would have probably supported killing
a lot more people. Spartacus would be like my earliest
(19:07):
I mean, the concept of anarchism didn't exist, but I
think he embodied it of like a oh wow, you
really were in a position to kill a lot of
people with total justification, and you didn't do it because
it's better not to kill people if you can avoid
it usually. But also all of those people do lose,
so I don't know, but so people who killed everybody,
(19:29):
you know.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Okay, So this is interesting then, right, because like if
I do an episode about Maurusium and in some ways
I am way more of a like like I don't
actually think it was justified for the Allies to bomb
German cities in World War Two.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Right, No, although I think it's also one of those
things where there was less data for a large portion
of that. There was a point well before the end
of the war where we knew it was not working right,
but there was also a point where it's like, well,
you know, what else are you going to try?
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Right? Well, and so it's like I have this like
more first work backwards from their framework, and so I
find myself interested in this figure of like fuck it
kill them all, you know, whereas I'm much more of
a mackno person at heart. And so then you're looking
(20:16):
for tempering, right, because yeah, I've heard you on your
podcast talk about being like, if we killed a lot
more of the Nazis after the war, the war might
have you.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Know, yeah, well the after the war might have gone better.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, yeah, No, it's no, it's just interesting to me
the what we're drawn towards, and you know, and I
find both of these figures and the conversations between them
to be just absolutely fascinating interesting. So Mariucia goes to
Gulia Poye, the small town, and it's like, hey, are
you more concerned with being in Charger and spreading anarchism
(20:48):
and some of the critique is like, hey, you're also
being too soft on the landlords, right, you're letting them
continue to be the landlords. But some of it was also, hey,
you're micromanaging, like learn how to actually try us the
people that in these structures that we're building, and she
kept pushing him towards revolt without delay. She said, quote,
(21:08):
we should move immediately to liberate the people from the
oppression of a modern state, to achieve a political overthrow
that aims to give self government to the people and
ensure a social revolution. By not doing anything, we perpetuate
capital and if it continues on this path, we risk
forgetting our real role. And almost all of the direct
quotes we have from her are from Mackno because I
(21:30):
don't think anyone wrote about her more than Mackno did.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Which speaks well of him.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah. Absolutely, like her being gone from the history is
not on Macno. And you know, the anarchists and Golie
Pollie were like, well, we're going to build our thing
and slowly spread it, but not antagonize the provisional government
more broadly or make more enemies than we need to,
which is like makes some strategic sense, whereas Mariusia is like,
(21:57):
social revolution. Now, overthrow the provisional government, smash the nationalists,
let's fucking go. But you know, the villagers had actually
been more successful than she had in her city, So
who knows, right and the most set for a movie
visualization of this tension. She's given a speech in town
square in the village and Makno gets two telegrams, one
(22:20):
from the revolutionary governments, from both the provisional government and
the Soviet and these telegrams are like, hey, the White army,
the forces of reaction that are going to go against
the revolutionary government are attacking. We need everyone to set
up militias and fight them off. And so he gets
these things, and someone in the crowd when he tells
everyone like, hey, hold on, we have this news. You know,
(22:41):
someone in the crowd is like, we have social enemies
right here. The former chief of police is right here
in this crowd listening, and so they kind of are like, yeah,
let's kill the ex cop. And in one version of
the story, mari Yucia comes down and sort of arrests
the cop right and Makna is like, no, you can't
(23:01):
do that. The exit part of the cop is very
important and saves the guy's life from mob violence.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
And I do think there's a you know, there's there's
tactical wisdom in that, right, it's the same reason why
you don't it's not wise to be like we don't
take prisoners. Well, then they have no they're only they
have no reason to do anything but fight to the death,
which is bad for you totally.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
There's a The Art of War is one of my
favorite books. Is I'm that kind of nerd, And there's like,
don't encircle your enemy completely is like a fundamental rule
of warfare, because you need to give them a chance
to run, even if you want to kill them all.
You circle them up almost completely, give them one place
to run, and then kill them all while they run. Yeah,
(23:46):
so this man is not killed the degree to which
Mariucia was going to kill him, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah, And I wonder if it's also something they worked
out together, like you try to kill the guy, I'll
save them. This will this will do good for the
cops who are kind of on the fence. Should we
should we bounce? Should we get out of the job? Right,
it might have been like why wouldn't you, right, that's
not a bad tactic. And these are smart people.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah, no, you're I love that version, and I wouldn't
put it past them.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
These the goal is less cops and also less of
your guys getting shot. I don't know that makes sense
to me.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, And both of these people prove to be strategic masterminds, yes,
who win against impossible odds over and over again. In
response to the invasion of the White Army, and perhaps
in response to Mariusia's speech, the anarchist town of guy
Poye takes over its own means of production. The workers
(24:43):
are now in charge of the factories. It's no longer
pay us twice as much. It's literally just stop extracting
value from us. They start expropriating all the large landowners
and they distribute everything equally, including equally back to those
rich families. Right, you get your two cows and a
plow or whatever it is. Sure, And at this point
they disarm all the cops and the provisional government. Their
(25:06):
communal committees are actually kept around, but as an advisory group,
much like we work with a No, we don't this
is no. They have no advisory No.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
This was a.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
They ignored power much like we ignore the adverb. No, wait,
we love our ad whatever.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Here's yeah, here's some ads.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
And we're back, so our angel of vengeance, she's got
one more thing to do while she's still in town.
She's like, hey, y'all, y'all need better weapons. You got
the cops and the landlord's guns, but those are like
they have like revolvers and hunting rifles. Basically, yeah, so
it's not like disarming the cops in the modern era
(25:54):
where you would have an arsenal. Probably artillery. Good enough,
they're gonna have artillery. She gathers up two hundred fighters
with only a dozen rifles and some handguns between them,
and storms the nearby barracks, and the rank and file
is like, fuck, yeah, yeah, we totally surrender and we'll
join the revolution. We like you more than we like
(26:16):
our officers. And the officers are like, wait, this isn't
how we wish it was happening, because Mariusia walks around
and shoots them all, personally executing all of the officers
when they rob them of their guns.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Well you know where she stands, yep, with you as
she shoots you in the back of the head.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Yeah, for her being part of the quote cast of
commanding officers is a death sentence. Death to the aristocracy
and the officers and zaris Russia came from a separate
social class in the works, Oh yes, yeah, yeah, and
oh that gets real complicated. Her dad as an officer,
I could see it.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, yeah, I mean one of the revolutionaries that James
and I met fighting against the government of me was
the daughter of one of the generals leading the junta
who got airstriked, presumably on his orders in the jungle
with their friends. You know, although I don't think she
would have done this, but also was not in the
(27:16):
same the position. It's it's tough because I think I
probably I think me, being the kind of moral actor
that I actually am, if I was in her position,
probably would have supported her doing this. I think me,
being the kind of moral actor that I want to be,
would say, you shouldn't execute unarmed people if you can
avoid it. But you know they are also this is different, right,
(27:39):
Like these are not just you're not fighting a war.
These are not like captured people in a war.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
They don't have a pow camp to take them to.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
This is the ruling. This is the people who rule
you and operate the instrument of your oppression. So I
don't know, you know, yeah, I mean no wrong answers.
I guess there's no wrong ones and there's no right ones.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, but you know, they and the rank and file
soldiers don't seem to be too upset by this.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
No, I'm sure the officers were dicks.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Yeah. Yeah. And so now they're really well armed, and
they start going around to factories being like, hey, you know,
we can just we can just like take this. There's
a revolution happening, we can everything is possible, And so
they just start spreading the revolution of did you know
that if you have guns you can be in charge
of your factory. Now, the provisional government is naturally enough
(28:35):
upset by this. Makno himself, the provisional government can't quite
arrest him because he's sort of he's actually officially in
charge of his area, because he's been elected by his
local Soviet and there's the dual power system going on, right. Sure,
but Mariusia, she's not elected to shit. I mean, she's
probably elected by her own the people that she's leading, right,
(28:55):
but it's not official. Yeah, So they just show up
and arrest her in the city she lives in, that
whose name might totally know how to pronounce and say
when it's not written into my script. Starts with an
alex and ends with the doc. And so they show
up and arrest her, and people are like, nah, now,
you can't do that. That's Mary Yucia. You can't arrest her.
(29:19):
Because the people who actually supported her might not have
been the Soviet It might not have been the provisional government,
it was the entire city that she lived in. Workers
go on strike and storm the prison. The guards hand
her over to the crowd, who carry her on her
on their shoulders to the local Soviet.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Man, which is kind of feel good. Yeah, probably the
best way to leave a prison, Yeah, I would say so.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Meanwhile, Mackno and the anarchists in Goliepolia haven't heard that
she's free yet, right, So Mackno shows up with a
train full of armed anarchists ready to storm the prison himself.
Because not only did the people of the town arms
storm the prison, people from the nearby village with guns
also came to town to storm the prison.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Look, it's you know, it's like one of those viral
viral things we're seeing with these protests, sometimes everyone gets
a good idea all at the same time. It's an
idea his time has come. Yeah, it's storm the prison
and prison yeah, okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
They find out that she's already free, and they just
have a big party, like the entire city just like
throws a party.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Shit, we thought we were going to have to fight
some guys. That's yeah, exactly. What if instead of getting shot,
we get drunk. Let's all go clean glasses at the
vodka factory.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah. And it was this event that basically spread anarchism
to the city because it forced the workers into tention
with the provisional government. Workers in the city now demand
new elections to the Soviet and it goes much much
further left then. The October Revolution happened in November. In November,
(31:00):
are the more radical factions take over. The anarchists, the
Bolsheviks and the left srs declared all power to the
Soviets and disbanded the provisional government.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
The thing that had already been happening grassroots radicals redistributing
the lands of the peasants and workers taking over their
factories was now official. Down in Ukraine, Marusia is really
excited about this and is like, well, there's one problem.
I think the Ukrainian nationalists are going to try and
have a counter revolution and we don't want that because yeah,
(31:30):
really fucking strategically for sure.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Sound as an aside, I do think that every phase
of this, you know, this whole the series of revolutions
that is the Russian Revolution, if you're doing like an
epic TV mini series of it, the proper way to like,
the proper way to do the soundtrack to every one
of these major scenes. Is Schools Out for Summer? Yes,
(31:53):
always the right song, Always the right song.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I think so. Yeah, although I will say, have you
heard the Ukrainian anarchist song mother Anarchy Loves her Sons?
Speaker 2 (32:05):
It's almost as good as School's Out for Summer? For sure,
I know similar messages. It's an also ran. It's a
very good song. People should check it out. I mean,
you want to understand, it's just going to sound like
Russian bombastic stuff. Oh, there's a bunch of good punk versions. Yeah,
it's a banger of the title, Yeah, I know, And
the lyrics just translate to like I'm only happy when
(32:27):
I'm killing my enemy and like I will find freedom
by looking down the sights of my machine gun and
like creeping through the dark with a knife that I
have made hot in the fire, which kind of there's
a reason that they use a lot of death imagery
in this particular group, because this is one of the
deadliest conflicts in human history, I think. But seven million
(32:47):
people die in the Russian Civil War. Yeah, they're going
to do a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
So before all of that, kind of at the start
of all of it, she sets up organizing what's called
the Black Guard. Basically, these are an because military units
ready to fight against the nationalists. We've talked about nationalism
way too often the show. It's messy as fuck. Even
the nationalism of oppressed people often gets really dark, although
(33:11):
not always. Ukrainian nationalists at this time have some good points.
Ukraine is, as you were talking about, is an oppressed
place that is like constantly being fucked over by Russia.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
It is the place that grows the most food, and
Russia is using it to grow food and continually kind
of murdering people who were like, well, but we're not
really getting an even share out of this whole making
all of your food deal that we're.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Doing and They're like, well, you could just die, and
then what if.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
We had Cossacks? How about that?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah? And Ukraine is culturally and ethnically not Russia, despite
what Russia to this day tries to insist, and Ukrainians,
understandably at the time, are like, what if we get
to speak Ukrainian instead of Russian?
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
And so there's this whole thing that happens where Bolsheviks
try to claim that makno is, especially Maria Niki forever,
actually we're Ukrainian nationalists and it's absolute nonsense. But the
kernel of truth is that they were often like, yeah,
we could speak Ukrainian instead of Russian.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah. And I do feel like, you know, there's that
great Orwell quote where he's like, when I see the
worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I
don't have to ask whose side I'm on. It's like,
if I see a situation in which one side has
made the speaking of the native language of a group
of people illegal, well, those are the bad guys in
that conflict. Yeah. Absolutely, it's pretty easy. There's never a
(34:42):
good reason to ban people from speaking their language, right, totally.
So when we talk about Ukrainian nationalists. If you're a Bolshevik.
Later in you're writing history, everyone who's like, hey, what
if Ukraine belongs to Ukraine or the people who live
in Ukraine, they're suddenly a nationalist and a counter revolutionary.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Right. But at the time, when you said a Ukrainian nationalist,
what you meant were reactionary racists. The nationalist organizations at
the time were generally I don't think this is universal,
but and again I'm reading a specific set of histories
when I write this, but they're full of racists. They
were looking for Ukrainians without the polls, the Romanians, the Germans,
(35:21):
the Russians, and the Jews.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
See, that's going to be a problem.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
And they also wanted the rich people to keep their
rich people stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Also a problem. Less of a problem than yeah so
the nationalists, but still a problem.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, not great. I'm a big fan of the no
one gets an ethno state as like a default position
to start from. Yeah, so the nationalists take advantage of
the chaos to try and ethnically cleanse everywhere they can,
which always extra means attacking Jews as well as in
this case defending the landowners against expropriations. Sure, but the
(35:56):
nationalists had a problem, like all of the people who
would shoot them whenever they tried to do it, Like
Marusia's Blackguards, for example, who in more than one city
directly and through violence, stopped the nationalists from doing their racism.
In Alexandrovsk, that city whose name I never forgot, the anarchists,
(36:20):
the left srs, and the Bolsheviks all worked together that
winter to overthrow the nationalists and start doing socialism. They
went around and they directly liberated and redistributed goods, which
is to say, they looted and then shared. And this
is like the Maria Niki ferovas special, like you know,
she's shown up in town when like you're breaking out
the store windows and sharing things. At this point, the
(36:45):
nascent Red Army wasn't a Bolshevik thing. It was an
all the socialists thing, and Marusia's force, the Blackguards were
part of the Red Army, and they marched north I
think this is December nineteen seventeen and liberated the city
of Kharkoff from the nationalists. The Black Guards were the
first into the city, much like anarchist partisans would later
be the first to liberate Paris from the Nazis. You
(37:07):
can read this as we're so brave and we're always
willing to be the first through the breach. You can
read this as I wonder why we keep getting used
as useful idiots by other forces. But it's something to
be proud of. The Bolsheviks who were mostly from Russia
and they were not local. Anarchism was way more in
style in Ukraine, and also I think left s RS.
(37:28):
They tried to finagle some stuff to take over the
local Soviet and ale Alexandrovsk after they'd taken power right
and the workers weren't having it, and our guy Makno
with eight hundred arm peasants showed up to the city
and was like, that's not going to happen. You can't
undermine the democratic process. Basically, so the local RevCom, which
(37:49):
is the Revolutionary Committee, which is a It's probably sounded
like a cool name at the time, but now it
just sounds like hopelessly Soviet, but so just the word
Soviet and those used to be cool whatever, it becomes
politically pluralist and it includes the anarchists. Marusio was elected
vice president of the RevCom and Makno is like the
visiting representative from Guye Poya in it, because, as was
(38:14):
shown time and time again in the Russian Revolution, the anarchists,
while they were fighting for anarchism, they believe that they
like the actual military fighting, was for the revolution and
against the rich. The battle for control of the direction
of the revolution was a fight that happened through political pluralism,
free speech, and to win the battle of ideas. That
(38:34):
is the best inference I can pull from everything that
I have read, which also matches what I think should
be the case, you know, where you can't just kill
people for having different ideas from you, but you can't
kill people from trying to stop you from creating a
free society where people aren't starving to death all the time. Yeah,
it's scanic, But did you know that you know who
(38:56):
doesn't want you to starve to death and wants you
to be happy? And it really depends on the sponsor
that comes next, But there's like a fifty percent chance
they don't. Yeah, and that's better odds than our heroes
have of pulling this off. Yeah, So here you go,
(39:24):
and we're back. The anarchist project in southeastern Ukraine was
beset by more enemies than it's easy to keep track of.
It is one of the hard things. Even since I've
put out the sixth parter on the Russian Revolution, like
a lot of listeners have been like, oh, it was great,
I had to take notes, and I'm like, yeah, me too.
I absolutely had to take notes. It's annoyingly complicated. As
(39:48):
soon as the Nationalists were driven back, the Bolsheviks were
kept from taking over, the White Army arrived. They are reactionary,
similar to the nationalists, but they want the recreation of
the Russian Empire. Fortunately, they're kind of splintered. They're not
a single centralized force, but some disparate groups that never
quite get their act together, in large part because of
(40:10):
the work of the Ukrainian anarchist Black Army that physically
prevents some of the White Armies from working together to
take Moscow. But that's later. First, in January nineteen eighteen,
the revolutionaries in Alexandrov's had a problem. The Cossacks were coming.
You mentioned that the Cossacks were going to come.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yeah, they always do.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
The way they handle these Cossacks is amazing. Cossack is
a word that gets used in a lot of different ways. First,
and perhaps Most importantly, the Cossacks are an ethnic group
whose culture is fiercely independent, nomadic, and quote unquote warlike,
semi militarized as I think the more modern phrase for that.
(40:53):
An awful lot of them have been mercenaries throughout the centuries.
But then there's Cossacks like as generally used as history books,
which is usually referring to the Cossack mercenaries who are
hired by the Tsar. They are the elite and scary
shock troops on horses with swords, fighting for reaction. Yeah,
the Cossacks are coming, But the thing is, a whole
(41:14):
bunch of the anarchists around here are Cossacks too.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Nester Makno is a Cossack. Yeah, And I'm unsure about
other anarchists in this story, like Mariusia. If you ever
get bored and read the Wikipedia talk page about her,
there's like a Russian guy saying that she must be
Russian based on her name, and then people are arguing
about how that's not enough reason to determine the ethnicity
of anyway. She might have been a Cossack, she might
(41:39):
have been ethnically Russian, she might have been a lot
of different things. Nester Makno is a Cossack. The Cossacks
are coming, and by this we mean the nomadic cavalry
mercenaries fighting against the revolution. Everyone in Alexandrov's anarchists and
Sr's and Bolsheviks, they're like, they try to reach out
to the Cossacks and are like, hey, let's like have
a negotiation instead of shooting each other. And the Cossacks
(42:01):
are like, did you know that we're Cossacks. We're not
going to do We're good. We're just going to show
up and win. So the anarchists are like, all right,
we'll go fuck them up.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
First.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
They lay in wait alongside the train tracks. There has
never been a more train focused war. Yeah, I've ever
been aware.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Of people had just figured out trains and specifically how
cool they are to have in a war.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, and I think I think these days we understand
trains are very good at moving supplies in people, but
are usually not fighting platforms themselves. Not in the Russian
Civil War.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
It's a mistake. We should go back.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Yeah, armored trains big part of all of this. This
one wasn't armored enough because the anarchists lay into machine
guns and the train tries to retreat, thing about trains
and retreating.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Terrible at retreating. Yeah, they've got flaws as a weapons platform.
Nobody's going to deny that.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
So it backs up and then runs into the other
train full of Cossacks behind it, and both of them
are derailed.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
See that's one of the downsides.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
A ton of people and horses die.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yeah. See, armored is a relative term, and when it
comes to bullets only some things are actually armored, and
when it comes to other trains, nothing is actually armed.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah, which numerous times, actually Maria Niki Fova is going
to like absolutely like ride into war on trains time
and time again.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, why wouldn't you.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
But so the Cossacks lose because they derailed because the
anarchists forced them to retreat. And the Cossacks come forward
to the RevCom of Alexandrovsk under the white flag and
they surrender. Soon they are disarmed, and along the way
folks try to convince them to switch allegiances and become revolutionaries.
(43:56):
And first the good communists, the Bolshev and the srs.
They go up and make all these speeches about all
the freedoms they are going to graciously grant the Cossacks,
and the Cossacks are like, what the fuck ever, and
they're literally laughing at the speakers, even though they've already surrendered.
They're laughing at these people, right, yeah. Then Maria Niki
(44:18):
Frova takes the stage, and this is where her most
famous quote comes from. She says to them, the anarchists
are not promising anything to anyone. The anarchists only want
people to be conscious of their own situation and sees
freedom for themselves. And she didn't mince words or people please,
she said quote, I am obliged to tell you, Cossacks
(44:42):
that hitherto you have been the executioners of the Russian workers.
Are you going to remain such in the future, or
will you at last come to grasp your despicable role
and return to the family of workers, which thus far
you have refused to acknowledge, and which for a ruble
from the czar or for a glass of wine you
were always ready to crucify alive ouch And it it works.
(45:09):
The Cossacks are like holding their hat in their hands.
A bunch of them are crying. Over the next few days,
tons of them show up to the anarchist offices and
are like, we are interested in your ideas. Can I
have a flyer? Please?
Speaker 2 (45:24):
You know?
Speaker 1 (45:25):
And later a ton of these surrendered troops join in
various anarchist unions units fighting in Ukraine for the revolution.
And I think it's because you've got this no nonsense
culture being told like, we're not promising you shit, but
if you're strong enough to fight for your own liberation,
(45:46):
we'll help you do it way more effective. So with
machine guns and speeches, the anarchists have saved the city.
Yet the fuck again. Also, and this one's going to
be my conjecture and pulling out my yarn on my
board on my wall. One of the white generals, this
guy Kaladin, he relied heavily on the Cossacks, and the
(46:07):
Cossacks eventually abandoned him and he kills himself. So I'm
not saying Mariusia killed a general by convincing the Cossacks
to abandon him, but I'm not saying she didn't.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Yeah, that's pretty based.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
It's like we know so little about her life, but
the little bits we know are like, and then she
rode a train into war, and then she convinced the
Cossacks to abandon the general and then she fucking people
are so mad she's in jail that they all storm
the you know, I just I really like her.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Makno and Mariusia are both like, you know what, I'm
not really the type to sit around in a city
and argue about politics with the Bolsheviks and the SRS,
and so they leave town. One version of the story
is that Makno has been trying to blow up the prison,
but the rest of the RevCom won't let him, and
so he like leaves in a huff because he's like,
no one lets me do my thing, just blow up
(46:57):
the prison. Aw which is particularly interesting because immediately before
that he had been in charge of the prisoners of
war basically, and he had been in charge he was
like the judge for all the people who were arrested,
and like overall he was like mostly pretty nice, but
then there was that thing that where he potentially the
prosecutor who had put him in jail. He was like, ah,
(47:19):
I'm putting you the fuck in jail. But so Makno
heads back to his village and his units there, and
Mariucia and her black Guard stay in the city. But
they need more guns and they have a tried and
true method of getting guns. They organize a joint action,
the city anarchists and the peasant anarchists working together, and
(47:41):
they go back to the same barracks that they robbed
the last time, which at this point was like half
nationalist armies and half white armies, because the two must
have been getting along together at that point, like.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Knowing exactly there at this point. At that point, it's
they're just basically arming the revolutionaries themselves, right, You're just
feeding guns to rebels if you keep filling this place up,
I know.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
And this is where Maria Niki Farova gets her first mortars.
They succeed. They get a ton of mortars and machine
guns and all the stuff that make the two of
them smile. Last time that the anarchist had raided the barracks,
the local revolutionary government had been mad about it. This time,
the Bolsheviks are like, yeah, cool, we get the guns, right,
(48:30):
And at this point mary Us has like nah, and
gives all of the guns to the newly growing explicitly
anarchist project in Guliapulia. Her military unit becomes the Free
Combat Drewsina. Drewsina is like a medieval word for the
military force of the local region, and they're officially recognized
and financed for a little while by the Red Army.
(48:52):
She had like made for all of the like she's
the most anarchy, ever, she's actually not. She doesn't come
out the gate being like and I hate the Bolsheviks
and I hate the SRS.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
She's literally makes sense to right, like, you can't, yeah,
the stuff hadn't happened. That is the reason why those
conflicts are so ingrained to us.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Exactly exactly, And she's like, well, you know, the main
difference in her mind is that she wants it immediately
without intermediary steps, and everyone else wants an intermediary steps.
But if they finance her doing it without intermediary steps,
then we're all on the same page. Sure, And she
(49:36):
is one of the only women commanders in the entire war.
They give her a new nickname, Atamansha. This part surprised me.
I found it really interesting. Atomologically, there are no Slavic
words for leader originally. That is interesting because they all
used to be pretty cool. All their words for leaders
are loanwords. Auteman and Autemansha come from Turkish word for leader,
(50:00):
so atamancha means the female chieftain basically.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Traditionally the military leader of a group of Cossacks was
elected by the soldiers, like Mariucio was, And you talked
about this, I think a little bit on your episodes
about how Makno for example, in some ways was drawing
on his own pritage about how to be a non
hierarchical military commander, where you need hierarchy in the military,
(50:27):
but non authoritarian hierarchy or whatever.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
The Yeah. Yeah, as a friend of mine put it,
who had seen some very heavy combat. Once you've been
through enough of that sort of thing, you know who
you're willing to listen to in a firefight. Yeah, Like,
it's not it becomes past a certain point, less about
rank and more about well, like I just know who
I'm going, who knows what they're saying about that in
that situation, you.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Know totally, which is why like is then people are like, oh,
democratic armies aren't effective. And then there's like a ton
of information from the Russian Civil War before before anti
democratic things were put back in place in the Red
Army where it was very effective for because people know who,
at least on the sergeant level. I can't tell you.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
One they or the other about Hyeah. Once you've actually
been fighting, you tend to know who's worth taking seriously
when they give a device in that situation.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
And now we get to my favorite part. Even more
than all of the robberies and cool prison breaks, the
weird cultural things about the Free Combat Drezina. They were
culturally distinct from the rest of the Red Army. They're hippies.
They covered their train in slogans like, well, this part
(51:41):
isn't hippie, but whatever, well, good hippie. They covered their
trains and slogans like the liberation of the workers is
the concern of the workers themselves, and long live anarchy,
and power creates parasites and peace in the home and
war in the palaces, and anarchy is the mother of order.
They didn't have an afeuniform. Instead, they had an unofficial one.
(52:03):
The men wore their hair long, which was not in
style at the time. They wore civilian coats, red pants,
and ammo belts. Everyone in all of this is like
dripping in guns, right, everyone had just covered in weapons.
There's an inner core of the Free Combat Jusina that
stays and other folks drift in and out from various units,
(52:24):
especially black sea sailors. One SR said, with their cannons
and black flags, the free combat Jusina was like pirates
sailing on the steps. And they were also like the
flying Dutchman, where they would appear out of nowhere. Right,
you had no idea when the free combat Jusina would
just show up and fuck your day up. If you're
in the White Army or a nationalist, this is so cool,
(52:46):
I know. And then according to one source that I read,
they would line their horses up into rows by color,
so that when they charged into battle, they formed stripes
of color moving across the fields. And they kept accordionists
riding in carriages in the back alongside the fame ta
chankas because Makno invented the modern technical the idea of
(53:11):
strap a machine gun onto a truck, but truck at
this time meant carriage pulled by a horse.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
Yeah, so you've got like the finally a bandit army
that weird al could have a place, and I love
that it's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
I think that modern technicals are not complete unless they
keep to tradition and have accordionists in the back.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, it's they're weird al in the middle of that
yuch of high lexes.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
As an accordionist, I would rather have my rifle than
an accordion. In a technical you.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
Can carry both. We can make some sort of a
Picatinny rail mount for an accordion, so it goes underneath.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
The ar okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, at least a concertina,
yeah yeah, or like a here's what you really do
because it accordions are a free read instruments, so there's
loose brass reads that are held on by wax and
as air moves over them, they make different notes. And
other instruments in this family include melodicas and harmonicas. So
(54:13):
you take the blowback system of the rifle and you
hook it up to a keyed system so that when
you shoot the gun, it makes different noises depending on
which keys you're pressing. And I know what you're thinking,
that won't work because the guns are really loud, but
I don't care.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
Sure if you just wrap the gas from the firing
gun through then it could work as a suppressor and
as an accordion. I think there's probably a way to
do that.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
Yeah, that'll be my macno invented the technical you build
that I would love to see.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
Just challenge the ATF to regulate this. What do you
count this as? Huh?
Speaker 1 (54:54):
Is this a suppressor? This is what I go down for.
And so, yeah, you have this group of non uniformed
red pants covered in guns accordionist long hair. One version
I read said that they claimed that their pants were flared.
(55:15):
I think that was more of a sailor style, and
they're like on but they're not sailors, right, yeah, And
they're just coolest shit. And the other thing that made
them distinct from the rest of the Red Army is
that they were better fed and better armed, and partly
because they'd done so much work of securing those arms
themselves as the best bet. And then I think also
they just like prioritized cooks and stuff.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
I'm not yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
I'm inferring all. The only piece of information is that
multiple sources talk about them having better guns and better food,
but I don't know why. And so they just went
around Ukraine fighting nationalists, fighting the White Army, robbing the rich,
and setting up anarchist communes in their wake. They would
liberate a city from the nowtionalists. They would set up
(56:01):
new blackguards within the city. They would elect new soviets
that represented theoretically the people better, which wasn't They didn't
make it an anarchist town. I mean, I guess in
some ways I just said they made anarchist communes, but
they certainly like.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
It.
Speaker 1 (56:14):
Certainly helped influence people's decision making that the anarchists had
just saved them or whatever. And in those towns that
they had taken over, necessities were to be shared equally,
while barter was used for non essential goods. I can't
tell you that's the most efficient economy, but it sure
sounds more equal than.
Speaker 2 (56:31):
What we got.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
And all I know is that the Russian Civil War
is one of the worst possible times in places to
be alive in history. If someone gave me a one
way ticket to join the free combat Jerzina in nineteen eighteen,
I might take it, even knowing how it ends. They
yola the shit out of their short lives.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
It would be hard not to want to be along
for that ride.
Speaker 1 (56:55):
Yeah, But if you want to go along for that
ride in a way in which is you don't have
to put yourself in danger except the danger of Actually,
my phone always yells at me for listening to two
things too loud, so that's actually a danger. You can
listen to parts three and four where we talk about
how it all plays out next week.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
Next week, everybody, I'll be backed, We'll all be back.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
If you want to hear Jamie Loftus explain people who
used to be famous on the Internet, I'm hoping that
you just know who Jamie Loftus is and therefore you
know that the show is going to be amazing. You
can listen to sixteenth minute, sixteenth minute of Fame or sixteenth.
Speaker 2 (57:33):
Minute, sixteenth minute of Fame, okay.
Speaker 1 (57:37):
And if you want to hear modern politics explained in
possibly the best possible way, you could listen to Hood
Politics with prop And if you want to keep up
with ins and outs of complicated news, you can listen
it could happen here. And if you want to hear
bad people in history, you can listen Behind the Bastards
and the Tech Show. Wow.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
Yeah, better offline, stay off the Internet except for it
for those.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
For the d If you want to read my fiction,
you can have Well, I have a bunch of books
out already, but I now have a In June of
twenty twenty four, I will be kickstarting my first full
length novel, despite having written many novellas, called The Sapling Cage,
and if you look for it on Kickstarter now you
(58:24):
can sign up to be told when it goes live
and you'll be happy you did. I got to reveal
the cover weeks ago as you're listening to this, but
today as of recording, and I'm very happy about it.
Speaker 2 (58:38):
Excellent. Cool people Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and 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.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.