Part Two: Russian Nihilists: The Gender-bending Subculture that Blew Up the Tsar

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Io about the science hippies of the 1860s who wore sunglasses at night and invented modern terrorism.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff?
The podcast that says what it's about in the title,
so I'm not going to explain it. This is part
two of our two part series on the Russian Nihilists,
who were for the most part cool people who did
for the most part cool stuff. Um, a lot of
caveats put in there. I got to admit they went

(00:20):
all yeah and with me today is io who is cool?
No coveyats? Hello, Why don't you introduce yourself so that
I don't have to? Especially what you're famous for? Okay,
I used I used to be famous for for being
in bands and then sometimes being in comics, and then

(00:41):
I made a fucking meme uh that's aid be gay,
do crime, And now McDonald's and HBO uses it in
their advertisements, and it haunts the mansion of my mind,
and I'll never be rid of yep. But I have
a lot of feelings about be gay and doing crime.
However I can't. I have to separate myself from that

(01:05):
because the Bernie Sanders campaign takes it over and and
I gotta deal with it anyway. That's what I'm famous
for right now. Who knows next year's stay tuned, everybody. Yay,
I'm excited for you to get a break from that one. Yeah.
Hopefully that's not what it's on my tombstone, that did
the Bacon do crime meme? I promise if it is,

(01:28):
I'll steal your flowers and wear them please, and I'll
drink half a European forty and break it like you
wouldn't know. And also with us is our producer Sophie,
who has told us that if we do good that
we can take the shock collars off. Yeah, but only

(01:49):
if you do good. Well, so far we're doing okay,
So let's see if we can bump pump it up.
All right? So where we left left our all Ward heroes,
they were acting like punks or hippies or something. They
were all wearing weird clothes, getting two into very specific books,
starting a bunch of cooperatives, partaking in the occasional casual arson,

(02:10):
and just trying to live their little weird lives, except
for one of them tried to kill the czar in
eighteen sixty six and got hanged for it. Who can relate,
I know? Uh. And suddenly the Nihilists went from facing
a little repression to an awful lot of oppression, and
the era of nihilism has cool clothes was waning. The
era of nihilism as guns and bombs and pretending to

(02:32):
be peasants, however, is just beginning. So let's talk about terrorism,
and we'll talk about my second least favorite nihilist, Sergei
Nietzschiov Nietzschiev. I even looked up how to pronounce that,
but so it goes Nietzsiev. And this is the person
I'm gonna get a lot of hate mail for disliking.
I think he was actually a way worse person than

(02:54):
the other guy that we talked about in the first episode,
who liked to pull on horsetails or just like to
get talked about badly in his three books, but actually
was perfectly fine. Um. But at least Sergey was interesting.
So that that's why he's the second least favorite. Is
there a lot of Sergey Sergey stands out there? I
think so? And you when you find out what book

(03:16):
he wrote, you might have heard of it. Um, So, okay.
So he was born in eighty seven, and he's a
bit so he's a bit younger than of our previous heroes.
And his parents were ex serfs. I actually can't figure
out what that means. Someone out here listening knows what
that means, and I don't. His parents were freed as

(03:36):
serfs before the serfs were freed, so I don't entirely
know how the mechanism for that. But his dad was
a non surf sign painter by the time little Sergey
was born, and he went to St. Petersburg and he
became a student radical and a nihilist, and he spent
his days there doing what every student did at the time,
pondering how to kill the czar. So far, so good.

(03:58):
And while he's there he meets a fellow revolutionist and
he's into her, Vera Zasulitch, who we've met before. She
wore the really nice clothes and the potato, the potato
potato sack. Vera is this post? Is this post her? No?

(04:18):
This is ten years before her potato sack run? Yeah? Um.
She is just another student radical who likes talking about
killing the r and they have a lot in common.
They both want to kill this ar. So Sergey decides
that he's going to get out of Russia for a while,
and he professes his love to Ta Vera and she's like, no,
I'm good, and then he fox off to Geneva alone.

(04:39):
So he goes to Geneva and he meets up with
bacon In, who was the Russian anarchist who keeps coming
up besides the other Russian anarchist Capac and he keeps
coming up, and bakun In, who's he's an exile in Switzerland.
He also escaped. He escaped Siberia while back it was
his quote, the destructive urge is also a creative urge
that kind of sparked the whole chunk of the nihilist philosophy.

(05:00):
The surge shows up and um, okay, look, I actually
can't tell if he's a grifter or if he's such
a true believer that he thinks anything is justifiable, and
I actually somehow think it's both. But he shows up
and he's like, hey, bacun In, you like secret societies, right?
Bakun In is like, I do. I like secret societies
a lot, because back then he was really into secret societies,

(05:23):
as any self respecting anarchist would. Yeah, especially back then
when they were like mass action instead secret societies. Uh well, now,
posing okay, okay, So well if I got a good

(05:45):
one for you. Sarage says, this is not actual quotes.
He will be shocked to know the word for word
is not the word for word conversation. He says, he's
part of the Russian Revolutionary Committee, which is part of
a bigger secret society, the Russian section of the World
Revolutionary Alliance, and Russia have you know, is just on
the brink of revolution. He just needs a tiny little
bit of help with your campaign contribution. He's just sucking

(06:10):
making it up in the whole cloth, every single word
of it. I like him so far, baccun like that.
Rules let me help. I'll I want to buy that
bridge you're selling. I like bridges. So Baccunan gives him
a bunch of contacts and money and a whole bunch
of gets a whole bunch of propaganda printed up for him,

(06:30):
and all of his friends are like, baccoon, and I
love you, but what the funk are you doing? Bacunan
is like, what are you talking about? This man is
the voice of Russia. He has a bridge and he's
selling it, and what a deal again direct quotes, I'm
practically giving these bridges away. Yeah, and okay, so it's
during this time that old Sergei NIETZSCHEV writes his book, which,

(06:53):
as far as I can tell, is the the first
influential book for the nihilist that isn't a novel, that
isn't fiction. And I feel like there's a lesson in
here personally, I say, as a novelist, about how maybe
they would have all done better if they'd stuck with fiction.
His book is called Catechism of the Revolutionary. Have you
heard of this book? It's okay if you haven't, I

(07:13):
won't shame you, okay. Um, So, first of all, it's
another Christian reference. Catechism is a I had to look
this up. I was only technically raised catholic um. A
catechism is a summary of religious doctrine intended for children
or new initiatives. And this book is basically like, feelings

(07:34):
are counter revolutionary, Having your own life is counter revolutionary,
Compassion is counter revolutionary. The the modern writer I referenced
before the kind of at the beginning Aragorn who writes,
who's a nihilist himself? Or was? Now? He said? A
dead nihilist? I guess um. He argues that this this
book was kind of macho in a way that the

(07:56):
men of the sixties had never managed to be. And
here's a quote from this book that I don't totally love.
A revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no private interests,
no affairs, no sentiments, ties, property, nor even a name
of his own. His entire being is devoured on by
one purpose, one thought, one passion, the revolution heart and soul.

(08:17):
Not merely by word, but by deed. He has severed
every link with the social order and with the entire
civilized world with the laws, good manners, conventions and morality
of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues
to inhabit it with only one purpose to destroy it.
A revolutionary must infiltrate all social formations, including the police.
He must exploit rich and influential people, subordinating them to himself.

(08:41):
He must aggravate the miseries of the common people so
as to exhaust their patients and incite them to rebel.
And finally, he must ally himself with the savage world
of the violent criminal, the only true revolutionary in Russia.
And it's especially that last bit about how he must
aggravate the miseries of the common p bull to drive
them to rebel. That it's kind of the core of

(09:04):
my like, funk, this guy he wants to he wants
to lead these dumb, poor people towards what Yeah, what
is really really fucking them up? You know, I to
be honest, I I was a bit taken aback at
the beginning of that quote because I always thought the
Revolutionary as a doomed man was a baccun In quote,

(09:26):
And of the maybe two notes I had for this
podcast was Baccunan's quote the revolutionary is a doomed man,
which I thought was a big thing. I knew was
a big thing for the nihilist, but I thought Conan
had a bigger effect on it. But turns out he
just met this this macho dude who go on, I'm sorry, no,

(09:49):
but it's it's it's funny that you say this though,
because there's this huge argument about whether or not bacun
In wrote part of or all of Catechism of the
Revolutionary Um, and it gets into the this whole long
thing where people like to claim that he did or
didn't in order to push various agendas because they want
bacun In to either be good or bad based on

(10:10):
what they want to be true about politics. Um. And
it's almost certain that Baccunan looked over drafts of it.
It's also equally certain that he later wrote in a
letter when he was he figured out he got swindled.
He wrote a letter where he was like, your catechism
is bad, um, et cetera, paraphrasing UM, but my new hypothesis.

(10:33):
And since I'm a historian, I'm allowed of hypothesis. I'm
definitely not a historian, but I'm a lot of hypothesis anyway,
because I'm a person. Uh. I wonder how much of
this like no love, no feelings, only revolts ship is
because his fucking crush said no, like it's a thing
that can very easily Like I don't think he was
the first person to say it, but Alan Moore brought

(10:56):
brought up like the polls, like the famous sort of
grid that people see of like uh, economic left, economic
right libertarian said that right left um and anarchism is
at the farthest on one of the farthest poles. These
people sort of make it so it can sort of

(11:18):
like jump from that far pole of like libertarian left
all the way up to whatever whatever the funk he's
trying to do where you can justify literally anything but
still sort of consider yourself on the left. I mean,
I don't personally buy into the left right whatever dichotomy,

(11:40):
but yeah, I mean it's it seems like it's always
always been there, Like dudes who machismo. Machismo gets bled
into a movement and boy does it fox things up. Yep,
so much better. One dudes were just everyone was just
into fashion and killing Bazar, they would have got there eventually,

(12:03):
I believe in the I think I know they would
have done it. I know. And um okay. So the
first thing he decides to do with his newfound, his
his money and all this ship, His first big plan
is to get a whole bunch of his friends arrested
on purpose so that they might become more Oh yeah,
the the PSL strategy. Yeah, he sends hundreds of people

(12:28):
like pamphlets, like bundles of radical pamphlets through international mail,
knowing that they'll get caught. They all get arrested. Yeah, no,
no consent. No, the whole point was to get them arrested,
not like, hey, go stand in front of his cops
civil disobedience. No, it was I'm going to set you
up to go to prison. Let's climb the fence of

(12:50):
a nuclear power plan. Let's hear him out. I guess
sounds like he got a plan. Oh let's see where
he goes with this. I guess yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe
don't go well. So guess guess who he sends. Guess
who gets sent to prison. It's Vera. He gets Vera,
as a sulish stuff to prison for turning him down.

(13:15):
She spends four years in prison. Um, because he has
done this. Wow, that's like not a short amount of time. Yeah, yeah,
this isn't. Ah, I don't know what number I thought
you were going to say, but it wasn't four years. Yeah, yeah,
I am sort of. I am. I am attaching a

(13:40):
lot of like modern standards to to these people because
I see a lot of modern parallels. So I was like,
they'll probably he'll probably get three months like tops, which
which is still fucked up. But you know what, Wow,
four that's four years of your youth. Yeah, and Vera

(14:00):
gets an old age spoiler alert, But most of these
people don't get an old age Like most of the
people in this story don't hang out in their old
age um. So at the end of eighteen sixty nine,
he uses Bacunans contacts and he smuggles himself back into Russia,
and there he finally gets to do what he really
wanted to do, not date Verry doesn't get to do that.

(14:21):
She's in fucking jail. Um. He forms an actual secret society.
It's called the People's Vengeance or People's Vengeance or something
and People's Back. Yeah. He formed it by lying to everyone,
everyone who wanted to join. He gave the same lie
he gave to bakun in Um and it was all
justifiable to him because of his stupid book and his
stupid accelerationism. And but pretty quickly one of the new

(14:46):
recruits whose name is Ivan Ivanovich, Ivanovov ivanov Um, it's
too many Ivan's yeah, since everyone else in the stories
named Ivan. Also maybe it's I don't know, I'm sorry.
Everyone in America's name dumb things too, nor has the
same name. There's nothing wrong with the name Ivan. Everyone
in my family's name Margaret, so I understand. I used

(15:08):
a tour with a Japanese band uh called p lander
Z They're Great Um, that had a song about Americans
called so Many mics. Yeah exactly, thanks for saving me,
by the way on that one. Okay. Anyway, so one
of the new recruits is like, hey, um Ivan, Ivan

(15:29):
is like, is that secret society you're talking about? Is
that real? Because it sounds made up? I think you're
making it up. And you want to guess how NIETZSCHEV
handles this? Did he get him arrested? Oh that would
have been nice. No? Um? He he and three other
people lower him into the Moscow School of Agriculture, shoot

(15:51):
and strangle him to death, go out to a lake,
cut a hole in the ice, dump his body in
in what must be the most Russian crime of all time.
Holy smoke. Quite uh yeah, so they're really up in
their game, immediately using it on people on their own

(16:12):
team before they us on the enemy. I see there's
no before. He never anyway. Um. So the body is
found and Nietzschev's three buddies get caught, but not Nietzsche
and I can't find out why. But that's so sketchy,
since this whole thing is I can justify anything, the

(16:33):
fact that his three friends go down and he doesn't.
He gets out of Russia. Um, it sure sounds like
he didn't act in the spirit of solidarity, um. And
he so he foxs off out of Russian and he
goes back to Pacunan. And here, once again the sources
diverge about exactly how Baccunan handled his return. It's completely

(16:55):
possible Bacunan was immediately like, oh my god, fuck you
very much, and other sources claim that Bacunan was like
still friends with him for a little while afterwards before
he really figured out how much he had been lied
to or whatever. Um. But eventually Bacunan is like, you're
not a revolutionary, You're a jesuit like, which is like
basically him trying to dig as hard as he can.

(17:17):
He's like, you are like obsessed with this weird purity
revolution nonsense. And also yeah, it's like Baccoon And finally
like wakes like the old you know, dragon, except not really.
He doesn't actually do anything useful, just to just to say, hey,

(17:37):
fuck off. Yeah, and so he does. He fucks off
and then goes around and lies and says Baccunan has
my back, and that he travels around Europe being like
Baccoon and sent me I'm Baccoona this guy um. And
then he he wrote another book about how the perfect
society is regimented and authoritarian and like, and it's so

(17:58):
bad that Marx and Goals call it out for being authoritarian,
and they invent a term called barracks communism to make
fun of it. And then they basically make fun of
I hate being on marks and angles side, but they
make fun of Netchievan bakun In for having invented authoritarian communism. Basically, hey,
they got they got some stuff right, Yeah, they got

(18:20):
quite many things right. This is one. It's true. It's true.
You do. In fact, you have to hand it to them. Yes,
And so he wanders around Europe for a while, pretending
to speak for bacun In, and he gets run out
of everywhere because he's fucking dick, And eventually he gets
arrested and extradited Russia and he goes to prison, and
in the most cosmic justice part of this whole story,

(18:43):
he he has a lot of Conti's very charming, and
he manages to charm the guards into like passing along
information and all this ship and at one point he
gets word out to the people's will, we're gonna get
to them later. There though the some of the more
hardened UM people, and he gets a word out to
them and he's like, hey, bust me out of prison,
and they're like, hey, sorry, comrade, that would distract from

(19:04):
our work. The revolutionary is a doomed man and everything,
and so they just let him rot. What are you
going to do out here, motherfucker? Yeah? Um, So he
aggs in prison for a while and then eventually he's
found dead in his cell and I can't someone knows
how he died, but the the many sources I looked
into are like found dead and cell, which probably means

(19:26):
either murdered or suicide. I don't know a lot of
I'm I'm very impressed by um you. First of all,
what what a good friend I have in you. But
you're researching this podcast because this is a lot of
stuff that you really have to dig a lot of
sort of like somebody knows. But they are long dead

(19:48):
stuff that may exist in like one or two tax
out there that that you have found. Some of them
I've tried to, but some of them are a lot
of them are probably also in Russian and yeah, um,

(20:10):
And it feels like this is a logical time to
talk about the fact that this podcast actually is sponsored.
It's sponsored by people who pay to have their advertisements
appear and interrupt your listening so that you can hear
about what they do. And that's what's going to happen now.

(20:32):
And we're back. So anyway, buck that guy. So let's
talk about how women in Russia became doctors instead a
logical segue, Right, I'm good at my job. So most
of what most of the nihilists and revolutionaries were doing,
including into this revolutionary Nihilism period, actually had nothing to

(20:53):
do with murder and poison and daggers and bombs and
ship and it just doesn't get talked about as much.
And I'm going to play into that a little bit
because some of it isn't as dramatic of a history.
But one thing that the Nihilists did, and the both
the foundational Nihilists and those inspired by them, is basically
paved the way for women to become doctors in Russia.
In the eighteen seventies, in Russia, basically all women students

(21:14):
were assumed to be revolutionists, which rules and also probably
wasn't all that far off from the truth, and basically
women were suddenly allowed to audit some classes and also
then what happened is that women made their way internationally
to find teachers who would let them come in as students.
And so if some teacher in Zurich would let women
students in, word would get around and then all the

(21:35):
women would show up and start taking that person's classes. Um.
And then in eighteen seventy two, some of these women
actually managed to even open medical academies and other schools
in Russia, a total of four of them, and they
taught like a thousand students at a time. There are
a lot of rules in Russia that I don't totally
understand that basically we're like, this is the number of
students that are allowed to be educated in any given year, um,

(21:56):
and those numbers kept shifting because a talk or I
think the answer here is autocracy. And and women were
also involved in in like all stages of the nihilism.
I mean, I guess I've already talked about several and
I'll keep talking about more. But they did a lot
in the educational part, they did a lot in the
stabby shooty explode kind of nihilism. And one of the
more interesting things that I ran across is this idea

(22:18):
that the the women managed to mostly avoid the sort
of fuck you dad part of nihilism. The generation war well,
like older women would still wear the sort of proper
dress and like corsets and hoop skirts and things. They
were generally supportive of the younger women and it was
just like kind of all a lot chiller than what
the boys had going on. And I like that. It

(22:40):
makes me happy when mothers and daughters get along well
and are all in the revolution together and everyone can
wear hoop skirt or no hoop skirt as they're off
to go and autocracy and to go for another feel
good thing that the nihilists got up to. And Okay,
I'm using the word nihilists once again very loosely here.

(23:02):
Basically every revolutionary in Russia was called a nihilist during
this period, especially by Westerners, and all of the categories
were super blurry and people didn't fit in a nice box.
But the nice box I'm now going to throw everyone
into and conflate with nihilism is the NeuroD nicks, which
basically means the populists and the neuron NICs. I'm not

(23:23):
going to focus on as much um, but they did
this whole going to the people thing. And okay, Western
socialism was obsessed with the proletariat, it was obsessed with
like the urban poor, but Russian socialists instead looked to
the former serfs, who were not only the masses worth
inspiring to revolt, but they were also kind of where
the ideas for what a better society might come from.

(23:44):
The influence in general of the nihilist actually goes out
west instead of just coming from the west, you know. Um,
and specifically the the NeuroD NICs or the nihilists or whatever.
The revolutionists looked at the egalitarian communes the peasants were
generally oregan rised into and they were into it. Um.
There's a lot of idealization. Some of it was probably
kind of bad. Some of it was sort of like

(24:07):
almost like a noble savage level of like nonsense about
being like these perfect peasants, you know, Um, if only
they would be wiseened up with our great teachings. It's
it's not perfect. But basically, in the early eighteen seventies,
all of the like young student radicals again who are
mostly lower middle class and such, decided that they wanted
to live simpler lives and also teach the masses, not

(24:31):
like yes, teach them about revolution and stuff, but also
just like literally teach them like math and science and
all of this stuff. Um. And they had a lot
of kind of arguments about how to do it, but
there was no like central committee. There wasn't even kind
of a decentralized organization that did this. It was almost
more like a meme. It was like this like thing.
In the end, Kropocan ended up calling it the Mad

(24:53):
Summer of eighteen seventy four because everyone just like went
off and did it in groups of three or four.
They all like learned how to become cobbl pers and
ship and then we're like, all right, we're going to
the people. And uh, they started like traveling the countryside
and working alongside the people and preaching revolution, but also
like being doctors there and and and just trying to

(25:13):
help out. Um. And once again, everyone has completely different
ideas of how this played out. And I'm going to
go against the conventional wisdom here. The conventional wisdom is
that this was completely naive. The peasants like turned them
into the cops. No one listened to them. This is
all just a bunch of like on high nonsense and
didn't work and all of this stuff, and the more

(25:34):
recent historians I've read say that this is this is
a lie um. The the idea that they were like
completely naive is just a historical and it serves a
lot of different narratives to claim that they were naive.
If they were being viewed as missionaries, maybe that they
it might be that their work was a failure. But
they weren't Marxist missionaries. They weren't even anarchist missionaries or

(25:55):
nihilist missionaries. They didn't They believed their whole thing was
at the work of free the people, was the work
of the people themselves, and so instead their work is
to educate people, and they actually showed some success in it,
and in general they earned people's trust. A thousand of
them end up arrested, and a lot of sources claim
that the peasants turned them in. That's all based on

(26:15):
one time that one peasant turned in one nihilist and
turned him in because he was like being shitty to
the kids, to the guy's kid. Time and time again,
the cops would show up being like, we think you
have subversives here teaching you stuff, and they were like
they would literally answer like I'm sorry, I am at
one with the community and like stonewall them. Um. And

(26:39):
then like at one point a neurotnic physician was working
in Yeah, no, they were like, um and even if
they didn't like the guy, even if they were like, oh,
it's a little weird, but they're like, well, we're not
gonna turn you in, you know. Um yeah, they know
what it means as you have subversives here. Yeah, I'm
not a I'm not a fan, but yeah, like he

(26:59):
taught my kids how to read. What do you want
you know? And at one point like a physician, but yeah,
keep talking about the masses or something, but hey, my
kidness how to read. And I'm like, dude, I'm just
trying to grow grow must spuds. Yeah. Um. And so
at one point this physician is working in a village
and the cops are trying to build a case against him.

(27:20):
But the way it's written is, but he must have
been a very bad physician because everyone was suffering from
both deafness and amnesia because no one would snitch him out.
Everyone's like, I don't remember, and all the kids were like,
I think he talked to me, but I fell asleep. Um,
and it actually it came up a lot in the
huge trial. Go ahead, that's a blast. Yeah, I love that. Yeah,

(27:45):
all the fucking like a fucking cartoon level dumb cop.
Chief Wigham comes in. Everybody, everybody's everybody been struck in
that case, I am an easy Yeah. They won't tell
me where the subversion is. Yeah, okay. And then I've

(28:08):
been to talk about a bad neuronic during this whole time,
just to sort of flavor the soup and talk about
how the left was really anti Semitic everywhere and continues
to be to this day. One of the neuron NICs
I read about, um, he was like he kept talking
about how the peasants needed to rise up and slaughter
the nobility the czar and used a not nice word

(28:29):
for Jews because they were all idlers. Um, and left
anti Semitism has been going for a long long time.
There were there were absolutely Jews among the Nihilists, and
I'm gonna talk about a couple of them later. Um.
But in general, I don't have a really clear picture
of how common this sentiment was, but I believe it
was an evil that found its way into the left

(28:54):
at the time um, so it's always it's always peppered
in there. I know. You'll here's somebody who's right about everything,
and you're like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And then
they're like and it's because of the Jews, and you're like, wait,
hold hold on, yeah, come on, you had it, you
had it right there, and you had to invent invent this,

(29:14):
like yeah, and which which both sides agree on? These are?
You know, not this particular zar he didn't get a
chance too because he got blown up, but including by
a Jewish woman. But we'll get to that. Um. But
you know, the the protocols of the Elders of Zion
all come out of Czar Russia, conspiracy nonsense. And one

(29:37):
of the things that also happened is that the Neuronnicks
actually were converted by the people rather than just the
people them converting the people or whatever. And I see
this a lot in like my contemporary circles, right like
Earth first ors who go move out to go live
rural to do organizing, they just stay rural and adopt
the mannerisms in the culture, and it's it stops being
an affectation at some point and people are just like, actually,

(29:59):
I really like living out here and like working on
a farm and having a truck and stuff, you know,
and and that happened to a lot of the NeuroD
NICs as far as I can tell, um, and some
of them even converted to the religion of the people
that they would go out amongst. There's like a lot
of I wish I could go into it now. I
I genuinely want to do something about the weird different
cults and groups that were going on at the time.

(30:21):
But stay tuned for cool people who do cool stuff
after dark on the Patreon level. Um, yeah, I want
to talk about the SCOPESI, which was a castration cult
amongst the people at some point. But um, but basically
a lot of people who went out, including some of

(30:42):
the people who are like the leaders. Inasmuch as there
were some of the NeuroD Nicks joined the Spiritual Christianity movement,
including the Dalko Bars, which I don't have to pronounce.
We're sort of like these Christian anarchists who lived out
at least in Siberia, and actually apparently later anarchists like
Parkin for example, got a lot of his ideas when
he was exiled in Siberia. From hanging out with them

(31:04):
um about how cooperation works. And later the Christian anarchists Tolstoi,
the famous author War and Peace guy, helped pay to
get a bunch of the Doko bars whose names I
really should have looked up how to pronounce out of
the country and into Canada and oh and then some
of the people who did all of that ended up
converting to Christian anarchism and moved to Kansas and started

(31:27):
a commune for a while and tried to start a
new religion. Um, and it fell apart, Like every utopian
commune thing that's ever happened in the U S. Wealls apart,
same as it ever was. I would love I would
love to hear about that commune though. Yeah, I'm a
big I have a big interest in Christian anarchism, as
raise raises, a very very deep Irish Catholic. Okay, So

(31:53):
a thousand of them get arrested, a hundred ninety three
of them are held for trial. They're held for three
years in prison, and they're trying because they're tried. In
eight and fifty three of them are acquitted, and it's
called the Trial of the One and it's the largest
trial in Zarest, Russian history, and a lot of people
become hard and revolutionists as a result. And well, to

(32:14):
quote John F. Kennedy, those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable. And so just just like
and just like Lenen, just like Mars, I will say
again they have some good points. Yeah, so you have
too handed to them. So let's talk about violent revolution.

(32:39):
Let's talk about Land and Freedom. Let's talk about the
stuff that will be read in a court transcript for
you later, and let's talk about Okay, you know how
I said, there's three naming conventions. They either have terrible
names like the People's Association of Facre Secret Societies of Russia,
or they have like really obvious names organization. They also,

(33:02):
this group that folds into Land and Freedom is named
the Troug Delights, which rules Hell and the Troug Delights.
Yeah yeah, I mean like this is basically that movie

(33:22):
The Warriors, um yea. And so they come together after
the trial the one and form Land and Freedom, which
is actually the second group to be called Landed Freedom.
But there's only so much time in this world and
in this podcast, so I'm gonna talk about this Land
and freedom. We don't have time. You got you can
have the Internet, Wikipedia, but you know what, there is time.

(33:45):
There's time to listen to the people who are supporting
this podcast and hearing what they have to say. We're
back and we're now fin finally talking about veras a sulagh.
We keep referencing multiple times throughout the past couple episodes,

(34:06):
couple of this episode. In the previous episode, Yeah, she's
the woman who has spurned netchiev and might have accidentally
pushed him towards this little weird instell rent of the
Revolutionary Catechism. I wonder how much hate mail I'll get
for referring to it as an instell rent. Anyway, that's
ship that show biz folks from from experience a lot cool. Anyway.

(34:28):
You can find me my my Twitter handle as I right, okay,
so okay. Vera was born in eighteen fifty one and
she was descended from Like Minor and Broke nobility, which
seems to be again a constant thing is that like
nobility doesn't guarantee you. I mean, it's sure is nicer

(34:50):
than being a surf I'm sure no. Bidility was just
just a hageldy piggledy sort of thing back then. Yeah,
I feel like it practically meant like not owned by somebody.
It's more complex than that. But her dad died when
she was three, and as soon as she finished high
school in eighteen sixty six, she moved to St. Petersburg.
So she's like fifteen, and she found work as a clerk,

(35:11):
and she, in good nihilist fashion, went around and taught classes,
and she taught literacy classes for working women, and she
rolled with a whole bunch of different political factions. She
spurned that guy who asked her to emigrate with him,
and she didn't want to, so he goes off. Then
he gets their thrown in prison. It's totally not revenge, babe.
It's just the revolution, you know. The revolution just needs
you to be in jail. Um. She spends four years

(35:33):
in prison. She's released in eighteen seventy three, and she
moves to Kiev because, much like Russia's attempting to redo,
Ukraine was owned by the Russian Empire at this time.
Her and her friend Masha coland Kina are like, hey,
you know what, maybe some guys need to die like
like you do, like woms amongst us has not thought

(35:56):
that can you can you really imagine a better world
without coming to this inevitable conclusion. I can't wait for
this to be read in court, so so Vera. More,
I mean, we're obviously only talking about nineteenth century people.
These are the only people who need to die, So
we actually can't kill anyone until we built time machines

(36:16):
far past the statute of limitations. Can you use time
machines to, like, you kill someone and then you just
hop in the time machine to go forward statute of
limitations into the future. No, I've tried, Okay, um so okay.
More specifically, Vera decided that uh Fearedoor trip Off should die.

(36:38):
He'd spent about fifty years putting down revolts, especially in Poland,
which was also owned by Russia at this point. Um,
and he moved to St. Petersburg in eighteen sixty six.
He was a big part of that putting down the
nihilist thing, which she had succeeded that. He was a
successful crushing the nihilist type person. Um. But that's not
what got him put on Vera's list. Oh No, it

(36:59):
wasn't enough to just crush to the nihilists. Okay, So
this is other guy. And there's too many names in
the story already. So this guy's this guy. He's a nihilist.
He wasn't a big deal. I mean, I'm sure he
was in his own life and the people who loved him.
But one day he shows up I think is seventy six,
He shows up late to a demonstration. That demonstration gets
called and he goes. He has nothing to do with
the organizing or anything, and it had already been busted

(37:21):
up by the cops. So he gets arrested. He gets
into prison, I guess jail, but you know, he gets
into a not nice hole where you're stuck and he uh,
he's in prison with alongside all the trial the people
that I was just talking about, the people who went
to the people. And so Feodor trap Off comes into

(37:43):
the prison one day and this guy the wrong place,
the wrong time. Guy he doesn't take off his hat
in deference, so Feodor has him. Feodor has him flogged
to an inch of his life, which is kind of
shockingly the first time one of these young radicals is
flogged in prison, um or at least the first time
like a member of the Intelligencia is flogged in prison,

(38:04):
and it's like a big deal both in prison and
outside of prison. And so the whole prison riots because
a prisoner got beat up. Um, and he like really
got beat up. He goes insane. The wrong place, Wrong
time guy goes insane. He spends the rest of his
life in a psych word screaming and yelling about the
people who are trying to kill him, which is actually
a fairly reasonable conclusion for him to have reached based

(38:26):
on the fact that he showed up late to a
demonstration and then got thrown in prison where he was
beaten for not taking a hat off. Yeah, there's people
trying to kill him for not taking a hat off.
Imagine the people trying to kill him for real reasons. Yeah.
So Severa is like, all right, it's it's shooty time, right, um,
this guy not the not the wrong place guy, but

(38:46):
the fear door. And then her friend Masha picks another target.
She picks the prosecutor behind the trial of the one,
and they head out separately, and Vera finds Mr. Trap
Off and shoots him at I think maybe the first
time in this story someone successfully shoots somebody. Um, but
she she doesn't successfully assassinate he survives. I know he's

(39:11):
seriously wounded. Uh, it's again the best that people have
gotten to at that point. Um, he had an extremely
bad time. Yeah, and she actually used yeah exactly, it's
not nothing. Yeah, she's a revolver called a British bulldog,
which was the same type of gun that three years later,
Charles Gattaux in the US used to kill President Garfield

(39:34):
for basically no good reason. Like Charles Gatto doesn't It
was not like a political actor in any particular way.
He was like mad that he didn't get a job. Um,
and hey, I'm not I'm I'm not. I'm not here
to Yeah, no, I mean whatever, you know, I'm not.
I'm not here to talk down somebody who killed kill
the president. Wait, wait to go, my dude. Well, actually

(39:58):
this actually brings up something that been earlier, is that
when when Lincoln got killed, um, before any of the
people shot any of the people in Russia, at least
within my story, obviously some people have shot some people
in Russia before this. When Lincoln got killed, the revolutionists
in Europe were like mostly bummed because they kind of
liked Lincoln, right, because they hated the Confederacy, because they
weren't really big fans of slavery because they had like

(40:19):
a decent basic moral compass. But they all kind of
had this epiphany after Wilkes Booth kills Lincoln where they're
just suddenly like, you mean, you could just like kill
a guy. Okay. So Masha misses entirely, but she then
gets in a shootout with some cops and she ends
up winds up sentenced to Siberia Vera though she gets

(40:40):
caught and she goes on trial, but it's a jury trial,
which is kind of new at the time, and the jury,
after deliberating and hearing out what every want has to say,
it's like, you know what, fuck it? Like the guy
seems like he needed killing. I mean it's basically self defense. Um,
she's let off. Fuck nice. Yeah. So the guy is like,

(41:01):
you know what, this jury trial thing, it's not our
thing anymore? Was this? Was this a reform from from
the good Tsar Alexander the Second? I believe? So that
is my impression. Um, And so he rolls back and
it's no more juries for political trials. So Vera is like,
I hear Switzerland's nice. She gets the funk out of Russia.

(41:24):
She goes to Switzerland. Yeah, and she had We had
a good time, Vera, and nothing else bad happened to
you kind of yeah, she actually does all right. She
she becomes a Marxist, she becomes a Menshevik, which is
like the more reform minded of the Russian Marxist but
compared to the Bolsheviks. Um, and she kind of you know,

(41:44):
a lot of these people actually kind of later are like, well,
we gave it. The old college tried and it didn't work.
And so they're not like, man, I'm so sorry I
tried to kill that dude. But they are like, maybe
killing that dude wasn't the way to accomplish the things
that we're trying to accomplish, you know, if yeah, you
have you have your beliefs in your heart and you

(42:04):
have your beliefs in reality. Yeah, and in those days
they were they were a little more cut and dry
as as far as I see it, at least yeah,
I could see them. Um. So after uh, Masha and
Vera try to kill some people, a lot of ship
happens land and Freedom does a lot of ship kind

(42:25):
of all in and I'm not going to go blow
by blow, but after the you know, After all this
stuff happens, the police raid some radical presses and one
press operator named Ivan, of course Ivan Kobolski is like,
you know what, fuck you and he fights the police
with a dagger and a gun while his friends burn
all the incriminating documents. Um. Yeah, and he's he's captured

(42:48):
and he's tried. What a cool guy. And he's the
first political execute s of this like new era. It's
like been ten years since. Um. And then there's like
a while back and forth after that. Multiple people are
getting shot and stabbed. Nihilists kill an infiltrator, then they

(43:11):
shoot a prosecutor who also survives. Um. More than one
chief of police gets stabbed to death with a dagger
at this point. Uh, I'm gonna talk about one of
those in a little bit. I mean in Czaris Russia
and autocracy, Um yes yeah in Minecraft, Yeah no, I
think she is in rs Russia as our new Uh

(43:33):
in Minecraft is burned everybody talk about Inzaris Russia. Yeah, okay,
So one nihilist is named Michael Frelenko. He goes undercover
as a prison guard. He gets a job as a
prison guard, and he gets himself promoted to chief Warden.
So he took the advice of that that earlier pamphlet
or book. Yeah, that's true. Alright, alright, score one for Fornie.

(43:59):
When you were mentioned ings she has books, and I
was just like, who the funk would take the time? Yeah,
they would take the time. They took the time on
the internet. We found we found someone in this very script.
There's another one later. Actually there's two of them. Oh
my goodness. So Michael, now there's Chief Warden and a nihilist.

(44:23):
He just walks a bunch of them ato jail, just
like a bunch of people who are like on trial
for death, and he just walks him out of jail
and they spend like a week rowing away to safety
on the river. I want to watch the I want
to watch The down By Law. I want to watch
Tom Waits in this movie. Oh god, Tom Waits will

(44:44):
be good for it. Oh yeah, I just watched The
Shawshank Redemption for the first time in my life, which
wouldn't be a good template for it. But like, as
far as prison break movies go, you could you can
make an Oscar winning yeah story out of these guys.
Another nihilist infiltrated the secret police and then just provided

(45:06):
the nihilists with names of informants. Um, okay, hell yeah,
those are like just just as an aside the people
who do that in the modern day, the people who
infiltrate like neo Nazi words, and the people who like
I know, I know that it's like way less common
and way less open, but just just big, big ups

(45:33):
respect to those people. Yeah, it was a moment of silence.
Definitely still alive who I love very dearly, especially the
ones who do it so I r l that they
like can't hang out with their friends, you know, I
know they really put their lives on hold for for
that ship. Yeah, good for them anyway. Sorry, go on, no, no, no, okay,

(45:57):
Now I'm gonna talk about my favorite social democrat. It's
not Bernie. You'd think it'd be Bernie, but it's not. Um,
it's this guy named I know, Well, if Bernie could
do this, if Bernie could do this, it would it would.
I don't actually have a low opinion of him. I
just have a non opinion of him. Um. Yeah, he's fine,
he's a good he's seems a good guy. Okay, so Stepniac,

(46:22):
it's kind of a what hasn't he done? So he
was he was a Russian artillery officer. But then when
he was twenty in eighteen seventy one, he was like,
I don't like this and he quit right because he
got radicalized, became a nihilist or whatever I guess he
you know, complicated his personal definitions, and he joined the
going to the people. He got arrested. He then escaped
um and when he escaped, he went to Bosnia, which

(46:44):
was trying to free hisself from the Ottoman Empire at
the time, so he helped them do it or he
joined the struggle, and he then wrote a book about
guerrilla warfare while he's again in his twenties. He then
then fox off to Italy where he joins an anarchist
up rising in Benevento in eighteen seventy even, which is
basically like thirty people with rifles marching on villages in

(47:05):
in Italy and basically set all the tax and ownership
records on fire, and everyone's like this rules and like
the priest comes out and it's like thank you, these
people were sent by God deliberate us. And they do
this at two towns and then as they're marching the
third town, they all get rounded up and arrested, and
then he gets out of jail. And I actually don't
totally understand the mechanism by which he got out of jail.
I haven't done enough research, but it points to political

(47:27):
turmoil causes people to get out of jail more. Um.
Which is a good thing to remember that if you
like keep going, your friends are less likely to end
up staying in jail. So after he's done this, keep
that in mind. Listener for when you go back to Zaris, Russia, um,
which he did. He went back to Zaris, Russia, and
he then edited a journal. He was like, oh, I'm
gonna join edit a neun nick journal. And then right

(47:49):
around that time that press operator, the like dagger and
gun defender guy got um got executed. He uh found
the chief of the secret police and stabbed him to
death in this street, which is this is one of
the ones that I've heard about. Yeah, nice and he
like it's funny because they actually have a better track

(48:11):
record with daggers. Um. Yeah, a dagger is hard to
fail with. It's like one of those solid advice, most
solid piece of advice I've ever gotten is if somebody
pulls a gun. Here's what you do to disarm them.
If somebody pulls a knife, you run. Yeah, totally, Like
a knife, a knife isn't good is if you know

(48:34):
how to use a knife. Yeah, Like a knife isn't
isn't a good defensive weapon or offensive weapon unless you
know how to use it. Yeah, when it is these
and these guys knew at daggers, drawn, etcetera, etcetera. I know,
And I'm like, I wonder why he picked it, Like

(48:54):
he probably had better aim than the rest of these
guys because he was an artillery officer and whatever, but
he just the just the fucking showmanship of it, I know.
And so then he he hit hides underground in Russia
for like two years, and he makes his way to
London where he becomes a writer and he writes like
novels and stuff. And one thing I read a while
ago says that he was like the first Russian national

(49:15):
to write and publish a book in English. And I
feel like that's one of those things that people track
in different ways at different times, So don't please don't
hold me to that. But and and for all of
his like stabbing and guerrilla warfare and ship. He was
a social democrat. Um, and so so Bernie step it
up man uh and and then eight year old fuck.

(49:36):
And then he got hit by a train. Not Bernie Stepaniak.
He got hit by a train in the middle of
the night in London and died. Uh. He was probably
drunk and it might have been suicide. And no one
wants to talk about it. Everyone is like, no, he
just died. He was just hit by a train walking
home by but night. And I'm like, I struggle to
understand the mechanism by which I get hit by a
train unless I'm trying to hop it, trying to die.

(49:58):
That's it. That's the list of things and which I
would get training killed. Trains were newer, I don't know.
He has like a rogue trains running through the street. Um,
well a ghost train. Okay. So let's go back to
our nihilists, and in early seventy nine you have a
Jewish nihilist named Gregory Goldenberg who assassinates Prince Kropotkin, which

(50:24):
is only a funny thing to say to people who
pay attention to the fact that Prince Kropakin is also
the name of this anarchist that I keep quoting, but
Prince Kopakin, the anarchist, was a prince, and he had
a cousin who was also a prince named Prince Capakin,
who was the there was a governor general And was
this this related to Kropotkin, Yeah, he was his cousin. Uh.

(50:46):
I actually don't know. I think he probably was completely
fine with it, like way more than most people. Um.
I think that some of these people who come from
nobility are like actual class traders. Um. And that's my impression,
but I don't um, No, it does. See, it does
seem like there's a fair number of them come out

(51:06):
so so Gregory he wanted to kill Tazar and he
was like, I'm gonna kill Tasar, and then the rest
of land and freedom was like, actually, it would be
really sketchy if a Jewish person kills the czar. And
I'm struggling to understand whether this was a like because
we don't want programs to come out of it, or
if it was a like no because it defeats our

(51:27):
propaganda purposes or whatever. But I actually, based on everything
I've read, I actually leaned towards thinking that the Annihilists
were like, no, we don't want programs to happen, and
so Gregory is like, fine, I'll just go kill Cropokin instead. Um.
But spoiler alert, anything you do in Russia at this
time causes programs. Just I don't know. People are like,

(51:51):
I don't I actually don't want to make too much
of a joke about it. Just sucks. No, it's it's bad.
They really couldn't express their emotions without doing a program. Yeah,
and they're just fucking everyone's anti semitic on all sides
of everything at the point, so Goldenberg, he loses his
mind in prison, and again a couple different stories of
what happens. Either he confesses and snitches out his friends

(52:14):
to a cell mate who happens to be an informant,
or he has some kind of like loses his mind
moment and he confesses to a guard who he thinks
is like a religious figure and he's like talking to
the spirits. Either way, he gives up a bunch of names,
and then he realizes what he's what he's done, and
he uh despondently takes his own life from prison. Um.

(52:35):
And then in nine also another nihilist takes five shots
at the Czar and he misses all five times. Seriously,
someone needs to say that's the cooperative they should have
set up was a shooting range. The amount of times
revolutionaries have missed their targets over over since guns were

(52:57):
fucking invented, Yeah, every every time. I'm just I'm I'm
like everything hinges on, these bullets flying through and they're
and they're just fucking lock and load throwing it out
like some like some like they're playing a video game,

(53:17):
like they're playing video I have no idea what it's
like to be in that situation, Like I can imagine
it's quite stressful, and I can imagine that. Yeah, going
into that, you've gotta you got a lot to deal with.
But yeah, far far be it from me to judge,
But it is something that that that's the reason you

(53:41):
look back at history about all the people who have
missed who like the people who have who have shot
true have been like right up on right up on them.
Gun technology has come far, but it hasn't come that
far as far as like revolve first go and stuff. Yeah. Anyway, Um,

(54:04):
the crackdown against Nihilis is like way harsher this time
sixteen nihilists and have hanged four of them apparently fourteen
of them, apparently in Kiev. And after this, another nihilist
takes two shots at the General and Charge of Oppression
and mrs and after this, let we gotta have an

(54:25):
we gotta have a new n r a nihilist rifle associated. Um.
So after all of this ship, Land and Freedom splits
up and forms two new groups. They're not called Land
and Freedom. Uh. One of them is called Black Repartition,
and they're like, you know, we keep shooting and missing,
let's focus on propaganda. And the other one is the

(54:47):
people's will. And the people's will is like, but we
really have our hearts set killing set on killing the Zar.
And so that's who we're going to talk about in
the final stage of revolutionary nihilism. People's will two to
quote Aragorn again. After the dissolution of Land and Freedom,
the People's will devoted themselves to the assassination of the Czar.

(55:09):
They did not see this death as linked to a
larger social struggle. They did not have the infrastructure, social solution,
or desire to assume power and believe that the institution
of the Russian autocracy was firmly in place. Their desire
was not a coup. It was vengeance. The nihilists also
held onto the belief that if their positive actions towards
social change, like they're organizing of the peasants, were so

(55:29):
easily thwarted by the malevolence of the neglect by the state,
the negative action like assassination would more likely finally result
in substantive change to the system. Finally, there was a
fatalist and deeply held belief that destruction was worthwhile for
its own sake and not because of the humanitarian, political,
or social reasons. And and I read this quote because

(55:55):
the most of the mainstream histories again kind of talking
about how the the funny clothes people were naive, the
going to the people people were naive, the assassins were naive.
And and I think that's just written from a non
nihilist perspective by and large, because if you're trying to say, hey,
we're trying to spark a revolution, then absolutely they were naive. Right.

(56:15):
It didn't it didn't work. It wasn't going to work. Um,
but they knew what they were doing for good or ill.
It wasn't let's spark a revolution. It was like we
hate having a zarre. Let's fucking kill him. Yeah, who
the funk else got that much done with? Like they
I was, I was about to say, with that little work.

(56:35):
But they put they put some work into it. Oh,
they put some hours. They put some blood, sweat and
tears into this, into this thing, and everyone wants you know,
eventually they did have a change. But you know, you
just stabilize a movement, you take out somebody, you leave
a power vacuum. But well, the funk ever, like you

(56:59):
have a you have a plan for something. Look how
that worked out for the Bolsheviks worked the nights turned
out terrible for everyone else. Yeah, so this is welcome
to the wily coyote stage of nihilism. First, they tried
to blow up the Czar's train in Ukraine. They picked
three spots that the train would likely to be going through,

(57:20):
and they set a trap at each one. The first
spot near Odessa, Yeah, they got a nihilist into the
railway workforce. But then these are picked a different route
at the last minute. So in the second spot, a
nihilist opened a tannery as an excuse to make dynamite
and planted on the tracks or under the tracks or whatever.
But I guess the Nihilist wasn't very good at making
dynamite because none of it lit. So the third place,

(57:44):
because you know they're covering in their bases, they have
they have a plan, a fallback plan, a fallback, fallback plan.
The third time, they rent an apartment fifty ft from
the tracks and they start digging a tunnel to mind
the tracks. And this took a ton of people in
a ton of time, and neighbors noticed how many but
were like in and out of the apartment and Nihilists
were filling the spare bedroom with excavated dirt and so

(58:05):
much food. This part is weird. So much food kept
coming in to feed the workers that the Nihilists had
to explain it away to neighbors or something that's belonging
to a fictitious cat. They're like, oh, the food that
keeps coming into this for a cat. Um, you wouldn't
believe the size of this cat. I know. And so
finally don't talk to him about Monday or normals, but

(58:30):
we keep having to bring the lasagna in for him. Um.
So okay, they're they're tunneling through sandy soil and it
keeps almost caving in on them, and they're all really
freaked out, but they finally mine the tracks and the
train comes and they set it off and they blow
up the wrong car on the wrong train and get
a cargo car, so onward Wiley Coyote. In February, annihilist

(58:55):
probably named Tyler Dirton takes a job at the Winter Palace. Um.
Because it's pure fight club style, he takes a job
at the Winter Palace and he starts filling the basement
with dynamite, and their timing was off and they kill
eleven people, wounding fifty and missed the zar completely. And
this is the first time in my research, but again
there's probably more of it. It's the first time that

(59:17):
they just are like killing other people. And and for
me this actually marks um. They lose some sympathy with
me at this point. Um, I don't believe that if
you're like fukas are that's cool, but you're like, and
I'm willing to kill other people in the process, you
get really complicated quickly for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(59:37):
I mean that's ah, that's the stage that most most
revolutionary movements, it's true, tend to meet. Yeah, you gotta
contend with that. Um, Like all the plans to kill
Hitler and all that ship. We're all the same too,
you know. Um yeah, ira a same same ship. So
they're kind of out of the heroic stage and they're
in their wildly coyote stage. And so next they decided

(01:00:02):
to submerge a bunch of explosives under a bridge. But
then like a guy is late and they call the
whole plan off. So then they mine another road, but
then the Czar changes travel plans. So then they're like,
all right, you know what funk this? We're doing it right.
They tracked the Czar's movements carefully. They decided that routine
was clearest on Sundays. They picked a place they opened
up a cheese shop, and they started digging, and they

(01:00:23):
acted so weird at their cheese shop that people called
the cops on them, which almost ruined the whole thing.
But once again the cop is Chief Wigham, and Chief
Wigham comes in and he's like, I don't see any dirt.
It's only straw. I can't do it. I can't do
any accent to save my life, let alone a Chief
Wigham the room. Yeah, thanks, um, And basically they've been

(01:00:46):
covering all the like excavated dirt with straw on the floor,
and the cops are like, and then they leave, Um, yeah,
and so they get back to digging, uh, and they're
really not fucking around. In addition to mining the road,
they have four people on standby with grenades and someone
else has a gun and a dagger. And I really
appreciate that they included the dagger, because by god, it's

(01:01:07):
what they're good at, you know. And the leader of
the whole thing was I don't actually understand entirely how
their leadership structure worked, or whether a leader is a
euphemism or whether it was a definitely a leader. I
don't know. Um, the leader of the plot was arrested
two days before they were going to do it, so um,
his wife stepped up into the role and was the
leader of the plot. On the day of the carriage

(01:01:31):
doesn't go to the right place, but they have a plan,
and so they signal, hey, the carriage isn't going to
the right place. I think someone like waves a handkerchief
in the crowd. So they all go to the right
place and they all moved to the new spot. Zar's
carriage comes up first, grenade grenned, deer rows a bomb
under the carriage. It blows up boom. It doesn't do

(01:01:52):
anything to the carriage because it's like super armored. It
kills one of his guards and it injures a like
a peasant kid who's walking by. And uh, the Tsar
is like, what the hell is going on? So it
comes out of his carriage. So the second grenadier throws
a bomb at the at the feet of the Tsar,
and and not that's all she wrote. I did write

(01:02:14):
actually more than this. But the second bomb does the trick.
After all of this hard work. It blows up the
Tsar and the person who threw the bomb, neither of
whom die immediately. They both die horribly in pain. Over
a period a long time, the Tzar is rendered into
a red mist eventually dies later yea. And then the

(01:02:37):
third bomber. All right, here's where everything starts to unravel.
The third bomber, his version of the story that he
said in court to save his own life is that
the reason he ran over to thesear was to make
sure the Tsar's okay. And like every version of the
story I read is like, yeah, that's what happened. He
recanted at the last minute, And I'm kind of of
the like now he went over there to make sure

(01:02:58):
the tsar was going to I yeah, in for a penny,
in for a pound there with a bunch of you're
there with a bunch of grenades here. I mean, I'm
not I'm not trying to get this guy double arrested.
Years later, double jeopardy. Those mediums we have call are

(01:03:23):
gonna come. And I do love. I do love somebody
up on the stand. It's just like I shot President
Reagan and I'm gonna do it again and again and
again and again. Yeah, And then this person is the opposite.
This person is like I felt so bad that a
wave of patriotic joy came over me and I ran
over and and I was like, Papa, Yeah, And it

(01:03:43):
worked for him. He survives um, but then he also um.
The first bomber snitches and causes a raid on the headquarters.
One of the nihilists goes down shooting and then takes
his own life. Another nihilist just like shoots back and
gets captured. In the end, five nihilists are hanged, and
it's done like intentionally cruelly, where they don't drop the platform,

(01:04:06):
they just which breaks your neck and then you die quickly.
Instead they just strangle them basically slowly on the stand.
And a lot of people didn't like that, and it
actually people were like, whoa that this kind of sucks. Um.
And unfortunately, here's what we get back to the anti semitism. Hooray, Um.
You can't talk about history without talking about anti Semitism.

(01:04:28):
I not in Russia, you can for sure now And
so okay, one of the women who was arrested was Jewish,
and so Jews were blamed for the death of the
czar and a wave of programs went off across the
country um and left businesses and homes destroyed and people injured,
and many more people left destitute. And but fortunately a
radical labor union decided to chime in about the programs,

(01:04:51):
trying to stop the madness. Specifically, this labor union said,
brother workers, you are beating the Jews, but indiscriminately. One
should beat the Jews because he is a Jew in
praise to God in his own way. Indeed, God is
one and the same to all. Rather one should beat
him because he is robbing the people. He is sucking
the blood of the working man. Um. Oh yes, uh yeah,

(01:05:15):
so solved it. Dust dust your hands off, my my
my fellow worker to me that like sums up left
anti Semitism. It's the like, what, don't get mad at
because he's Jewish, Get mad at it because he's Jewish,
And don't get mad at him because of the religious belief.
Get mad at this imagined culture like cultural secret society

(01:05:40):
we've attached to them. Yeah, because we can't, because we're
so fucking like dimwitted as to just imagine that the
world is completely bad because monsters vie for power and
are able to achieve it very very, very very easily
without some like shady cabal pulling the strings. You fucking

(01:06:05):
knit with exactly you fucking knit with is the nicest
way that we can so. Um. After the death of
his father, Alexander the Third is now the Czar and
he crushes everyone who steps out of line and completely
ends the revolutionary Nihilists. Um. Yeah, I've heard a lot
of people be like, oh, and that once they killed

(01:06:27):
the tsar, it really really fucked up the revolutionary nihilist movement,
and like, you know, one without considering everything else, what else, Well,
they beat the game, what else can they do? They
fucking won, they'd be the final Boss in a way
that no other modern revolutionary movement that I can like

(01:06:50):
really think of has done as drastically um as like dramatically,
rather just like the czar steps out of his just
like what's going on, and they fucking turn them into
two difference ours. They tear off his middle. I want

(01:07:10):
to leave. I want to cover one more loose end
about all of this, because it's just one of my
favorite anecdotes about the Nihilists. There's this guy named Nikolai
Uh and he's the primary bomb maker, and he is
slowly suffocated on the stand, you know, like all of them.
And he's a literal rocket scientist. And as he's in

(01:07:31):
his cell awaiting execution, he meets with his lawyer. But
instead of being like, hey, buddy, here's my plan to
like not die right, here's what we're gonna do for
my case or whatever, he's like, I wrote up these papers,
and no matter what, you have to get these papers out.
This is so important. This is like my dying, which
you've got to get these papers out. And so the

(01:07:51):
lawyers like all right, and he gets the papers out,
but he doesn't. They get taken by the cops and
then they get locked up until But the papers are
the invention of UM modern rocketry. UM. The papers are like,
this is how you have a manned heavier than air
flight with rockets, and here's how you can use like

(01:08:13):
slow burning fuel in the following ways, and here's how
you would direct the direction of the rocket with like
by setting. You know, I'm not a rocket scientist, UM.
And it's it's heartbreaking to me because in the note
he's like, it's okay that I'm dying because I've done
this invention. This is like what matters that I offer
this to the scientific world and uh, and it doesn't

(01:08:36):
get seen until someone else invents it ten years later,
a German scientist invents it. Um. But but I like
his priorities, you know, his priorities is like kill the czar,
invent stuff that's really amazing. It's something that's very obviously

(01:08:57):
not going to be passed through the historical record to us.
But like, you know, we we see everything through this
realm of the this fucking burning circus tent of the
twenty one century, and we can look back to these

(01:09:20):
times before like every like you know, I can't imagine
a world beyond the Internet and they and like even
farther back before industrial like fully industrialized society, where you know,
when we have to have like these these these meetings

(01:09:43):
that we might consider like revolutionarily important. We are we're
meeting under bridges and skate parks, and everyone leave your
phones and these backpacks and we'll leave them outside and
all the and like all this like cloak and dagger
ship that like back then, they really had cloaks, and
they really really had daggers, and they were able to

(01:10:09):
see their lives in before the collapse of history. Like
to use a I don't even know where that phrase
comes from. I just use it sometimes. I assume it's
some academic bullshit that I've adopted as like nothing really
before when they could still see, like we can get

(01:10:31):
our hands at the levers of power because we're making
these fucking wiley coyote like black round bombs in the
back room of our friends bar and we're kind of
blow up the fuckings are blow up police chief and
let them know that we are. Like they're full full

(01:10:52):
on enemy, Like we're not. They're not into making negotiating
with us. We're not into negotiating a better world or
overthrowing them to impose our own order. We just want
to uh, We're not gonna put that pressure on ourselves.
We are like, yeah, funk this. Yeah. There's like the

(01:11:16):
if I'm being beat with a baseball bat and I'm like,
please stop beating me with a baseball bat, and the
person is like, well, what would you like instead? How
would society work in the world where I'm not beating
you with a baseball bat? And I'm like, we can
get to that later. We don't have to talk about
that now, could you? Could you could we switch it
out for a nerf baseball or could we have somebody else?

(01:11:39):
Could we have somebody else, perhaps in a different country,
beaten with the baseball or nerf baseball bat. Certainly in
the best of all worlds, Like, that's what I would want.
But the world has been overly complicated by us allowing
this to go on without people without motherfucker's wearing crowns

(01:11:59):
being blown up every single time they arise. Maybe by
the time this airs, the history of Russian regicide will anyway,
Thanks for listening, everyone, Thanks for listening everyone. Ah, it's this,
it's this as this is this is this the point

(01:12:20):
where we ask io for their plug ables. Yeah probably,
and I suppose it is. I am on Twitter and Instagram.
You can look up b U m l u n G,
which is bumm lung. That's me and I talked about
stuff on there. I make comics and I'm a printmaker.

(01:12:43):
I have a store that you can probably find. Um,
don't look up my old bands, etcetera. That's that's my tail.
And you can also by original be gay do crime
t shirts just just saying yeah, totally snitch on yourself

(01:13:04):
every single day with a big a new crime T shirt.
And uh. Listeners can follow Margaret two on where and
when they and what? Can follow me and how? I
don't know how. I suppose different buttons. So you can
follow me on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy and you
can follow me on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy. And you

(01:13:27):
can listen to my podcast is it funny if I
make the same joke twice? That you can listen to
my podcast as a new podcast. It's called Cool People
Who Did Cool Stuff, And you can listen to it.
You can find it on media, oh yeah, at cool
Zone Media on the instant in the Twitter for the things.

(01:13:47):
Oh and and we'll be back when when Margaret Days
and Wednesdays. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool
Zone Media, visit our website, pool zone media dot com
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. M