October 26, 2022 • 52 mins
In part two of this special reverse episode, Miriam continues her conversation with Margaret about Sholem Schwarzbard, the radical Jewish assassin.
Special thanks goes to Anna Elena Torres. Her forthcoming book, With Freedom in Our Ears can be found here.
Thanks to Eliui Damm, whose work can be found in There's Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart, available from AK Press, With Freedom in Our Ears and Tohubavohu, a zine available here.
Thank you to Ciarán Finlayson.
And thank you to Kelly Johnson, whose 2012 dissertation Sholem Schwarzbard: Biography of a Jewish Assassin was indispensable to the research for this episode.
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 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
I'm Miriam Rocheck. I stole this show from Margaret Kiljoy. No,
let me out of this barrel that you put me in.
Why a barrel? Why a barrel? Indeed, I sees the
(00:20):
means of podcast production, and I'm telling Margaret about Sulem
schwartz Bard, the early twentieth century anarchist poet, clockmaker, revolutionary assassin,
community self defense organizer. What's up? Clockmaker? Also like a
second time, just the esis they're double clockmaking? Yeah, I
(00:43):
mean he made way more clocks than the assassinated people,
you know. Yeah, Yeah, I mean I don't actually know
because I haven't heard the story yet, but I believe
you know, I haven't run the numbers either. I just
assumed so because he was a clockmaker for like twenty
five years or something, maybe he only need one really
good clock. Yeah. And also joining us is Sophie Lichterman,
(01:06):
who is the producer of this show that I have stolen.
Co signing the stolen this my accomplice. Yeah, totally partner
and said crime. No, I trusted you, You said, Margaret,
what's down there in the bottom of the barrel? Magpie
don't worry. I'll help you steal it back. Yeah see,
(01:30):
I'm I'm I'm a two team player, okay, okay, and
and I'm a much better crime accomplice than Peter the
Painter for those who listened to episode one. For those
who didn't listen to episode one, interesting choice to be
here listening to episode two, But I'm not going to judge.
Why are you here? Maybe they're captive audience like me.
(01:53):
Oh anyways, Maria, please please tell us more. All right? So, um,
when we left, Sulim had just married a woman named
Anna in Paris um and then promptly left to go
fight in World War One and been like really mystified
that that upset her because sucking dudes, man. But anyway,
(02:17):
let's um, let's rejoin him in World War one. The
war that went well for everyone. It was great, that
was nice. Everyone said after World War One, let's do
it again sometime, same same place, same villains, well, no,
(02:41):
very different set of villains, but geography geographically yeah, well,
you know, like I said, he's in the Foreign Legion
and uh he his unit is on the front lines
of trench warfare. You know, I think anyone with even
a cursory knowledge of twentieth century European history knows that
the trenches of France and World War One were just
a year's long horror show. Um. His unit is constantly
(03:03):
in the kind of battles that everyone seems to be
required to describe using the word meat grinder, you know,
just awful. He actually writes a poem about this, because
he is a poet, and I promised you last episode
that we'd hear some of his poetry, and today we will.
This poem is about watching a soldier dying in no
(03:24):
man's land, um, feudally waving a white flag, watched by
both sides and helped by neither. It's unclear in the
poem what side the soldier is from. Um. All we
know is that he is dying and no one is
helping him. Um. This translation is by Ali Damn, who
is kind enough to allow me to share it here.
(03:45):
So this is an excerpt through field glasses. They seemed
large from the camp, the cold evil warrior bandits warriors,
watched from both sides, his own friend and the opponent
to the enemy. With his last agony, his blood streams,
It flows like a well without end. One must see
him and rescue him. It is clear that no one
will come to save him. This wish of his the
(04:06):
last to be heard, to die amongst friend and acquaintance,
to lie in the grave with friends wounded. They looked,
looked and saw, looked and saw, and let him go.
And now the corpse of a raven decomposes, tattered and crumbled,
torn to pieces of worm and animal and all types
of bird. They carry its flesh and beak and claw.
And who would say, of these little bones that this
(04:27):
was the one who a moment ago lived, struggled and
begged to be saved from the terrible suffering. All this
left is the flag, white and fluttering. It tells us
that a person became exhausted, he suffered bitterly, and fought
the suffering, and with his life he must now part.
That's brutal. Yeah, so um, you know these are the
these are the experiences that he is having. His unit
(04:51):
is sent to Arras and I don't know how to
pronounce that, and no one can make me pronounce it correctly.
In Um during what turns out to be one of
the bloodiest days in the history of the French army,
most of his unit is killed or wounded. There are
five thousand frenchly journeys that go into this battle, and
at the end of it, only nine and thirty are
(05:12):
still fit to fight. The army declares this a victory um,
which Stolem respond to by writing another poem um with
the lines enough enough with being the victor, enough with
swimming and blood, and he meant it. He put his
money where his poetry was. His unit refused to return
to the fight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does like two
(05:34):
weeks in jail for this, which at this point he
can probably do standing on his head. Yeah, it's better
than chance of dying. Right. They're like, you're in jail
and he's like, oh no, I'm in a place where
no one is shooting at me. Totally. But they don't
get punished too badly because they were like not the
first unit to go on strike um. And at this
(05:57):
point the French army was like, ship, we have a
mutiney in our hands. We can't crack down on this
too hard, which is good. But anyway, he gets transferred
soon after from the foreign Legion to the regular French Army,
which means now he's like fighting alongside frenchman and not
foreigners like him. He's very popular in the new unit. Um,
partly because he's by all accounts, just a nice guy
(06:20):
if you're not, you know, married to him. And he's
like friendly, funny, he's encouraging. You know. He speaks terrible French,
which everybody seems to find sort of charming. So things
have changed in France. Yeah, that is, I speak no French,
so I have not been subject to the consequences of
(06:40):
speaking bad French. But more importantly, maybe he volunteers for
dangerous missions so other people don't have to go um,
which definitely contributes to his popularity. And he says about this,
I'm a Jew, and my conduct has to be exemplary.
I must leave the French with a good impression. So
you know, he's trying to be like one of the
good ones. Yeah. The French in the unit call him
(07:01):
a nickname, which is the little Clockmaker. Um, which I
won't try to say in French because it would just
be like me making a bunch of like raw noises
like at this point, um. Yeah, yeah, but I was
saying all little clockmaker, but the little Clockmaker, Yeah, I understand.
It is always allowed to make fun of the French. Yeah,
(07:23):
it's always funny. It's never not funny to try to
speak languages you don't. Yeah, it is kind of This
is kind of like a gross ignorant American. Uh yeah,
we're playing, isn't it. Mm hmmm, Um that I do
about the British all the time, and I pretend like
it's more okay there. But it's usually Americans trying to
(07:45):
pick the few countries that white Americans trying to pick
the few countries that they can point to and be like, well,
you're sort of worse than us, so we can make
fun of you. But it's not true. It's just not
true at all. Um, I rescind my making fun of
the French, and I don't know saying about my ignorance.
I just must speak French. Yeah no I don't. I
wish I spoke French. I wish I spoke French too.
(08:07):
I wish I spoke everything that would be great. So
really I'm making fun of myself for not speaking Yeah,
this particular other language, This introspective moment brought to you
by anyway, Um, please continue. Um. So they call him
the little Clockmaker, which I honestly, I think it's kind
of a cute nickname that probably beat the ship out
of the other nicknames on offer for the foreign Jew
(08:28):
who didn't speak great French and had weird subversive politics.
Fair He is also known for being a very good shot.
I wonder if that will come up again in this story.
I thought he was a passive it's not. He's never
claimed to be a pacifist as the one I mean,
I think he actually did at some point, But like,
(08:50):
he has done nothing but beat the ship out of
anti Semites, like and pull off terrible heists. No. After
a while, Shillan developed what was at the time called
shell shock you know, and what we would today call
what the funk do you expect would happen to people
subjected to the horrors of industrialized trench warfare for months
on end yep, and he is in a state of
(09:12):
suicidal despair, which he somehow survives to be transferred away
from the front where he has been for well over
a year closer to two actually. At this point he
wins the Crows de Guerre with the citation excellent Soldier
always volunteered for dangerous duty. On the first of March
nineteen sixteen, at La Chapelette while guard. While standing guard
at the end of an advanced trench, he was seriously
(09:34):
wounded while throwing grenades. Um, you know, being appreciated now,
those wounds. Yeah, not a coward, right, Uh, this is
this is the thing we know about him. Um. Those
wounds actually included a pierced lung, a shattered scapula, and
(09:55):
damage to the nerves controlling his left arm. The doctors
actually did not expect him to survive, but he did,
and he spent the next year and a half slowly
recovering and getting to the point where he could like
go to work for a little bit at a clockmaker's. Um.
He gradually got up to a fifteen hour work week,
which honestly, like World War One injuries aside of fifteen
(10:15):
hour work week sound stope, and it's about the right
number of hours to yeah, like that seems super reasonable.
So you know, he's plugging away at his physical recovery
when hey, when didn't you know it, the Russian Revolution happens.
What a whole revolution, a whole revolution, you know. So
obviously Sholom is like, well, I'm getting in on that right,
(10:38):
and it comes to join him and they had to Russia.
Hell yeah, he tries to join the fighting, but he
can't yet because you know, he was just shot almost
all the way to death, and he's he's just worked
his way up to doing a fifteen hour work week.
He's not physically ready to be back in war. So
they had to Ukraine and they have time for a
(10:58):
quick reunion with Sholom's father before Slim, you know, his
spighty sense goes off again and he's like, yep, but
grams are coming. His father's fucking cool. Oh, his father
is cool too. Yeah. I really like this multi generational
like throw down Jews, you know, like, yeah, that's fucking cool. Yeah. Um.
And in fact, the hardcore band they you know, they
(11:20):
get organizing defenses together. Um, and they're gonna they fight
on the barricades again. Throw down Jews. The Russian Civil War,
you know, which is what this period of the Russian
Revolution is called, where multiple sides are fighting in an
incredibly complicated conflict, which I think is best summed up
by the roughly fifty thou hours devoted to it by
(11:40):
Mike duncan over on the Revolutions podcast. It was overall
an absolutely terrible time and place to be Jewish almost
everyone is committing programs and we'll talk more about that
in a little bit, but right now, um, focusing on
the the organizing that Sholim is doing. It was wildly successful.
He got the support of the religious Jews this time.
(12:03):
They contribute a lot of material support, and they hastily
organized Jewish militia actually manages to fight back and scare
off the attackers because both the secular Jews and the
religious Jews like realize their common enemy of anti Semitism,
and like figure out their strengths and work together. Yeah yeah, okay,
and he and his dad man the barricades together again,
(12:26):
you know, years after having done it the first time.
I love it. Like good dads are like rare on
the ground, and so I really like them. Yeah. Um,
I know they sometimes get a little bit too much credit,
a little too easily because because they're rare. I'm not
trying to you know what I think. I think manning
(12:46):
the barricades alongside your son goes a little above like
the bear minimum total Dad's totally Yeah, Um, I think
it's super touching. And they they also like do a
little bit of bonding on a little kids these days.
NG together. Shulm complains that the young Jews who show
up to fight, He's like thirty two at this point.
By the way, old as we're quote reared in a dark,
(13:11):
poisoned atmosphere, without faith, without revolutionary tradition, without ideals, nourished
only by the bitter present of a chaotic today, which
sounds exactly like a boomer description of TikTok. They're not
religious enough and they're not revolutionary enough, like my generation
where I was the only one who was both of
those things exactly. Alright, alright, guy, but he did almost
(13:37):
he did get like shot to death and then survived,
so you know, yeah, yeah he can kids these days.
You know, I won't. I'm not. I'm not here to
stop him. Yeah, they were on his lawn, after all,
they were on his lawn. They were manning the barricades
on his lawn. But like still, yeah, like, don't get
(13:59):
off my law on continue to do that. But also
you need more revolutionary tradition and also faith. I mean
this is like I'm basically probably already at this stage myself,
So I can't really talk ship. Yeah, I don't know.
I just think it's funny, how like criticism of the
youth never once has changed. Yeah, No, I mean that's
because the youth are continuously incorrect. Um. And that's why
(14:22):
soon the Cool Zone podcast, Um the youth what they're
doing wrong and what I would do differently, sponsored by
old man Yells at Cloud. He's gonna say anyway, soon
after this, his father actually dies of natural causes, and
(14:43):
we actually don't It's hard to say exactly when because
Sulem never wrote about it. Huh. He wrote about so
much other stuff, but he's so devastated by this he
can't even really talk about it. So he ends up
finding his place fighting in the immigrant anarchist section of
Odessa's Red Guard. Not to be confused with the Red Army.
(15:04):
There are different things. The Red Guard is a unit
that this part that he's fighting in is made up
mostly of anarchists and Jews. As you can imagine, it
is a tough position to be in. You know, Bolsheviks
and Czarists alike are not fans of either anarchists or Jews.
But the Red Guard fought alongside the Red Army at
times they were decentralized and independent. But do you know
(15:27):
what would help the Red Guard keep up their fighting
spirit more than anything else. Well, what is that, Margaret?
What if there was a simple way to grow calories
in your own backyard that you could then eat and
sustain an army on the march? They store, well, they
(15:47):
famously never get blite. It is the potato. Sounds intriguing.
Well more, if you're interested in potatoes, I suggest you
investigate the concept of the potato. Who is the sponsor
of today's podcast? That's nice. I'm glad you have such
(16:09):
a wholesome sponsor. Yeah, only wholesome sponsors. Um, if any
else go through. If you hear any non wholesome sponsors,
that's because you're incorrect, And actually the sponsors are wholesome
and your own ethical alignment is incorrect. That's how that works, right,
sounds right? Yeah? Yeah, no, notes, Well, here's here's the
(16:32):
rest of the potato themed ads. And we are back
from interrupting Miriam in the middle of her sentence. Please continue,
all right, So, um, I was talking about you know,
Sholom has just joined the Red Guard, which is not
the Red Army. Keep that in mind. And when when
(16:54):
he joined the Red Guarden, Odessa had three jobs. The
first one is keep order whatever the stual funk that
means protect the factories and prevent pogroms. So one is
really excited about one of those tasks. I couldn't say
which factories big work. But he gets more and more
(17:14):
involved in the fighting, and he's coming increasingly into leadership roles,
which had never happened when he was fighting in World
War One. You know, he hated the fighting. He found
it miserable, and he never advanced beyond the rank of private.
But now you know, his heart is really in the
fighting and he's he's getting really involved. Um. He also
gets involved in a project of requisition ing rich people's
(17:36):
ship to support the revolution, and he takes over a
house or like a mansion. I guess to how is
something called the free Rationalist Children's school and shelter, because
this is like the peak of bad revolutionary names for
things are. But what I really love about this, though,
is that the rich lady who owns the house, she's
(17:56):
still there. They haven't kicked her out, just like guess what,
we're housing and teaching kids here now. And at first
she's pissed because she's like, oh no, I'm a rich lady.
Where will I keep all my diamond studded ponies with
all these free rationalist orphans in the way, you know.
But she ends up being so charmed by Salim's whole
deal and the importance of what they're doing that she's
(18:17):
finally like, okay, fine, you can all hang out here,
and then she ends up working alongside them to help.
This is the coolest part of the story so far.
I know, it sounds exactly like a bullshit leftist dream
of what happens during the revolution. This is like I
would write this in fiction and then people will be like,
uh huh, of course, But no, that rules. That makes
(18:38):
so much sense because it's not like you've got to
get out of the house because everyone needs a bedroom.
She just had a lot of them. Yeah, they're just like,
got these kids moving them in and like He's like, well,
I'm rich, but I'm not a total piece of ship.
He ends up helping. Yeah, so Slim heads off soon,
(19:00):
Comrade Sofia. Maybe I don't think Comrade Sophia would own
a mansion. That doesn't sound like the Comrade Sofia. I
know that's true. That's true. Um, so he ends up
heading never mind? Sorry was he? I honestly if he was,
she probably would have liked him less because his history
of treating women he's romantically involved with not great. Okay, well,
(19:23):
so all I know so far is that his wife
didn't want him to join World War One, and he
wanted to join World War one, so he did it anyway, Margaret.
He didn't even consult her. He just did it and
then was like and then she was like you did what?
And he's like, why do you have feelings about this? Yeah?
I guess they're making a life together, but like, I
do feel like even in a marriage, if you decided
(19:44):
to go join a war, that's like kind of on
on you do they have kids? It's totally it's totally
his decision. The thing that, well, we're gonna there's gonna
be more of this later. You're going to see this
as as a pattern. But it's more like, you know,
he makes this major decision that like it is clearly
going to affect her, and then is not only like
(20:06):
why are you mad? But he's sort of like, I
feel like I should be getting a whole bunch of
like hero worship for the fact that I'm going off
to fight, and instead you're having feelings about like your life,
which is honestly super selfish, right, and she was actually
right about World War One in the first place. In
the end, anyway, he this is actually real bad Okay,
(20:28):
I see okay, okay. So you know, so he's taken
over house. He's raising kids, other people's kids. Yeah, well, um,
I think I think all other people who are no
longer alive's kids. Um, I think they're orphans. So that's
what he's doing. But then he ends up heading joining
(20:48):
another anarchist battalion, um, and heading off to the front again.
Just because we can't be this far into an episode
about the Russian Civil War without ship talking. Um, you know,
state communists. I should mention that one of the groups
of anarchist Volunti's fighting alongside later end up being betrayed
and killed in their sleep by the Bolsheviks who they
(21:09):
were fighting alongside at the time, because yikes, yeah, and
speaking of bad ship people were doing. Um. I think
it's time to get back to the subject of programs,
because that's that we're really entering that part of the
story here. And um, you know, I think a lot
of Americans don't really know what a program is. I
(21:30):
think people know that they were violent attacks on Jewish communities,
but like, the full horror and violence of them is
something I honestly didn't fully understand until I was doing
this research. A lot of American imagination of programs, I think, unfortunately,
comes from Fiddler on the Roof, which is a musical,
not a history piece, where program is like, oh, the
(21:51):
Russians come and they break all your dishes, and then
you move to America and one of them marries your
daughter and you sing a song about it, you know,
And like, obviously I knew that was a very sanitized version,
and you know, it was also from prior to the
outbreak of the Civil War, But reading the accounts of
these programs to this research honestly still shocked me. Um.
In addition to massacres, there was mass sexual violence, which
(22:13):
was a huge part of these attacks. Um. You know,
women were raped in front of their families and then killed.
Babies were killed, people were tortured on mass um. There
are accounts of people being buried alive like this is
it is. I can't overstate how horrific this was. Who's
perpetrating these programs during the Civil War? That is the
very next paragraph. So it's important to understand here, like
(22:39):
these programs are not often are not always organized in
the sense that a commanding officer of any army is like, hey,
go and attack that Jewish community, um, so much as
the soldiers being like, let loose to do that. Also,
sometimes it's not soldiers. Also, sometimes it's just civilians. Um,
it's just mobs. The only people actively preventing programs, as
(23:00):
far as I can see at this point, are Jewish
groups and anarchists, um, notably the forces fighting under Nestor
mak Noo, Ukrainian anarchists and all around great guy. I would,
I would argue, even a cool person who did cool stuff. Yeah, um,
future friend of the pod nest mak No, I would
think so um. He not only had a lot of
(23:20):
Jews in his army and forbade his fighters from attacking
Jewish communities, he actually would defend Jewish communities and punish
perpetrators of programs. Okay um. Now, just for the raw numbers,
about a hundred thousand Jews were killed overall in the
programs of the Russian Civil War. Fifty thousand of those
deaths were in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian forces accounted for
(23:43):
about of all programs in that region, Like the Ukrainian
forces were the people perpetrating. Yes, we're people perpetrating of
the programs in Ukraine which killed fifty people, okay. And
so these are when you say Ukrainian forces with not armies,
is that the Red army and the White army? Is this? No, No,
(24:06):
that's the that's Ukrainian forces fighting for Ukraine. This is
the Ukrainian Nationalist Army, which is fighting against I'm trying
to Russian civil war is a mess. So there's the
Red Army and the Black Army which is the Bolsheviks,
and the White army. So the and the White army
which is bizarrests okay, the White Army is the Cizarrest
(24:28):
And then you have the Ukrainian Nationalist Army, who are
what the greens or something. I'm completely lost on the
color scale at this point, but there is a Ukrainian
nationalist force um separate from the you know, not not
nester mock. No. Yeah. But and I also, like I
want to say, I'm you know, I'm bringing this up
and like this feels like a very contemporarily, this feels
(24:50):
like a difficult thing to be talking about and like
this moment in history when like accusations of anti Semitism
are being used by Russia to ustify the invasion of Ukraine.
We all know that's bullshit, I think listeners to this
podcast hopefully no, that's bullshit. And so when I say
that the Ukrainian Army during the Russian Civil War was
(25:15):
perpetrating atrocities against Jews, UM, that should not be taken
as a statement of like what is happening now? That
feels too obvious to need to say, but I'm saying
it anyway. Sadly, so, those forces account for about of
the programs, the czarrest White Army about sevent and at
(25:37):
least officially, the Communist Red Army is not supposed to
be committing programs, there's like rules against it and ship
according to the leadership, but they still account for nine
percent of all programs, and the remaining or so are
just unaffiliated assholes mobs using the chaos of war as
an opportunity to do some of the violence that they
(25:57):
had been doing in this region for generations. UM And
the programs were also not all equal either, which is
important to understand. You know, there there were pulgrams that
were essentially mostly like historic there were programs that were
mostly attacks on property that we're just like, hey, we
don't like you, or or we're small scale violence, and
then numbre ones that were you know, full on massacres.
(26:20):
On average, thirty eight people were killed per Ukrainian Army program,
twenty five per White Army program, and only seven per
Red Army program. So in addition to committing more programs,
the Ukrainian forces are committing much more violent ones. These
numbers come from VO which is a fantastic research of
(26:43):
resource on Yiddish history, which you can find a EVO
dot org y I v O dot org. So that's
that's kind of the situation um right now. Now in
Sholem is in Odessa again, he's recovering from Typhus, and
he gets word that about ten members of his extended family,
(27:03):
including one of his uncles who he was really close to,
are among the many, many people who have been killed
in this horrifying wave of pogroms. He writes to his
cousin in America to tell him that his father is
dead and unable to rejoin the fighting. He said that
he was only able to quote bite his lip in pain.
Now Odessa is under the control of the Bolsheviks now um,
(27:25):
and even though he doesn't really like them, he's willing
to work with them. Um. So once recovered he starts
he resumes his work of organizing kindergartens and orphanages. Cool. Yeah,
I really like this about him. Like how many dudes
comes into revolution are like also out there ensuring adequate
childcare mid revolution? Yeah, he he genuinely loves this work. Um.
I think he probably would have happily continued doing it
(27:48):
for the rest of the war, just like making sure
that like all the kids in Odessa had milk. But
reports of pograms keep coming in and he just can't
stay in organized kindergartens when the is happening, So he
joins another mostly Jewish anarchist division and heads back to
the front to fight back. This is like the dark
part of the story, by the way, In case you
(28:08):
couldn't tell, His unit arrives in a city called Cherkas,
which had been hit by the Ukrainian forces. It had
had a population of about fifteen thousand shoes, of whom
one thousand had been killed. When an old Jewish man
sees how shocked the arriving troops are. He says, why
are you so surprised, and then tells them that this
place actually got off easy, that in towns and villages
(28:30):
with smaller Jewish populations, the Jewish communities had been wiped
out completely. Yepuck. Now Shulem witnesses the aftermaths of more programs,
and he has absolutely devastating experiences um which he writes
about some of them later in Yiddish publication called The
Worker's Friend. He writes them as like little short stories,
(28:52):
like vignettes. Um. I kind of I want to talk
about two of them in particular, which again I'm getting
this from Kelly Johnson's ortation about Schalm Scharstbard. But I
think they're really interesting, like especially in combination. They tell
us a lot about both what he's going through and
like how he's processing it. So both these stories, which
are you know, both true stories, are titled with words
(29:14):
said to him by a person that he meets in
the course of the story. The first is called The
Uncircumcised Will Hear and describes Sholem finding an old Jewish
man alone in the ruins of his home, having lost
everyone and everything, and Sholem starts to weep, and the
old man admonishes him not to cry in front of
the non Jews around them, saying, don't cry, my child.
(29:36):
The uncircumcised will hear H And this um this clearly
stuck with Shalom, and I think it resonated with how
you know, he's been at war for years now, basically continuously,
and he keeps hearing about and seeing all these horrible
things happening to people around him, to his community, to
his family, and he feels like he just has to
(29:56):
keep this brave you know, soldier persona on when all
he us to do is grieve and rage. And this
old man is echoing the voice in his head telling
him to keep it together, which is devastating. Now. The
other story involves him seeing to feel in and talus,
which are Jewish ritual objects scattered in the courtyard of
(30:17):
the home of a well off non Jewish peasant um
and show him assuming that this guy has participated in
a pogrom and and looted a Jewish home. Angrily confronts him,
threatening to shoot him, and the man is just like,
I haven't done anything. Go away, even at gunpoint. And
finally this peasant breaks down and confesses what he thinks
shol M is accusing him of, which is that he
(30:37):
is hiding two of his Jewish neighbors in his home
and begs stole him, who he thinks is another soldier
there to kill them, to spare their lives and show him.
Of course, reveals that he is also a Jew and
speaks to the hidden neighbors in Yiddish so that they
know that the it's safe to come out, and they
all laugh with relief at the nearly fatal misunderstanding. H uh.
(31:02):
And the story takes its name from what the peasants
says after they've all shared a meal together, which is,
by God, a comedy. This um, this well fits what
you've been describing as Jewish humor to me, right, yeah,
I think like this. Uh. These stories combine darkness, despair,
and grief in a way that and and humor in
(31:25):
a way like humor at the absurdity of how horrible
the situation is in a way that is very Jewish. Um.
And I think it shows that like Solan personally, despite
all of the horror and all of his anger, is
not losing his love for humanity, right, like he does
still showcase the story where a non Jew comes to
his neighbor's aid and also like nearly gets killed through
(31:49):
a misunderstanding. But yeah, so his unit keeps fighting against
the armies that are opposing the revolution and committing grahams,
including uh and this is important. The forces under the
command of a Ukrainian officer named Simon Petlura. Okay, yeah,
(32:11):
remember that name. Um, he will become Damnit Margaret Simon
pet Leora, Simon Petleora. Okay, don't worry, I'll say it
a bunch of more times in this story. He's going
to become important. His unit suffers defeat after defeat, and
Slim's unit is eventually disbanded. He heads back to Kiev
(32:32):
along with many Jewish refugees were fleeing Petliora's forces, and
he manages to get back to Odessa where Anna is
waiting for him, and he goes on a boat. Are
you ready for this? This is like the big like done,
done done moment of the story on a boat called
the Sophia. Comrade Sophia bought a boat. Yeah, Comrade Sophia's
(32:58):
back and she's a boat now. Yeah, what if she
was about the whole time. You know, it doesn't say
any word that she wasn't a vote. Yeah, whoa, all right, yeah,
it doesn't mean anything. I just like it. Um. So, Unfortunately,
when he gets to Odessa, it is now under the
control of the White Army, the Czarist forces, and Solan's
(33:21):
name is very much on a list of people to
hunt down and kill because he was listed as an
official due to his work feeding kids. And obviously, you know,
you can't let people who feed kids get away with
that ship. What's next not killing people based on their
ethnic origin? All right, you can't let that stand. Chaos. Yeah. Now,
(33:45):
Luckily for him, because of his service in the French Army,
he's able to get passage back to France where he
will be safe. He and Anna take that opportunity and
they go back to Paris. Um. It's the end of December,
and he has been either fighting, recovering from wounds, or
organizing revolutionary infrastructure sometimes all three basically NonStop. Since that's intense,
(34:09):
Yeah right, take a break, Yeah, you know how I
should take a break? Oh perfect, thank you, thank you.
That was actually like on ironically, that was a very
good ad transition, which I have now ruined. Yeah, draw
attention to these sorts of things. This show is sponsored
(34:31):
by the concept of advertising. Our sponsors are all advertisers,
and this is the most honest that any of the
transitions I've ever done has been. This podcast is sponsored
by honesty, not to be confused with Honest Tea, which
(34:51):
is a brand of iced tea that I don't like.
I don't like it either, unless it's one of the
sponsors that's about to follow, in which case we love drink. Yeah.
Because we're sponsored by the concept of honesty, the advertisers,
we cannot attest one way or the other to their
honesty unless they're honesty. I tried to make the same
(35:15):
joke y'all did, but didn't work as well. Here's some
ads and we are back. You were just talking about
how Sholom could use a break after all of that fighting,
and he takes one. Yeah self care. Yeah, for the
next six years things are quiet where which in Paris
(35:37):
he's uh, he's got an army pension and us working
as a seamstress. That gets them enough money for stol
him to open his own little clockmaker's shop. Yeah, you know,
so now he's got like stability. He owns a business
which he has like a ton of anarchist guilt about, obviously,
but he's got stability and that's great. And I wanted
(35:57):
to be just like a creepy clock shot up in
between two weird old bookstores where like bats are heard
every now and then you are so goth and you're
talking about I'm not recording this in a dark room
in front of a mirror and some drapery h. My
(36:18):
computer is literally on a coffin right now. Tell if
that's a joke or not. No, it's not. My computer
was a coffee table, and where I am currently recording
is a coffin. Great, but comrades over. I don't know
(36:39):
that whisper came through or not. If it didn't, then
you all in the audience will just have to wonder
what I said. I I love that for you. Why
don't you have a coffee table that's a coffin? Because
I've only recently become a person who stays in one
place and I have yet to um date someone who
buys me a coffin. That is the origin of the
(37:00):
often that my computer is on. You. You need to
prioritize that. Anyway, I do what if it was a
coffin maker, we had it, there was the anarchist undertaker,
no grave rock. I think you need less training to
be a coffin maker, like no shade to coffin makers,
but like I think that probably takes less training than
being a clockmaker. Coffins have fewer working fewer moving parts.
(37:22):
I think that's true. Yeah, so anyway, he's he's making
clocks though, but he's also you know, wrestling with a lot.
He's he's seen all this killing and destruction and he
doesn't understand why more people aren't as fired up about
it as he is. So for the next couple of years,
(37:42):
while making clocks, he mostly writes. He publishes stories and
poetry in Yiddish journals, and he's very active in the
anarchist expat community. He meets and writes about Emma Goldman,
friend of the show, and he gets along great with
her despite not agreeing on everything. And we're gonna again
come back to that as a theme. Wait, you can
(38:03):
get along with people you don't agree with everything about. Yeah,
it's a pretty innovative concept. But um sometimes he hangs
out with and works alongside of people who he doesn't
agree with. One of everything. And he doesn't even like
go on Twitter and talk shit about them or the
(38:23):
clear of them enemies. It's very very unhinged behavior, bizarre.
It seemed to have worked. Maybe we should try that. Listen,
I'm willing to give it a shot. Okay. So through
all of this he remains haunted by what he saw
during and following all of those programs. He describes the
memories as quote, a bloody, festering wound that cannot heal,
(38:47):
and his actual literal wound from the war also starts
acting up and for a while he's coughing up blood.
Which is this is it is a decade after the fact,
and honestly for a poet, very lazy metaphor his body
pulled off there. It's true. But hear me out. You
were claiming that I was exaggerating when I would suggest
(39:10):
that his clock shop would be very goth. But you
have now described a person who specifically writes about loss
and death, someone who's completely haunted by the death of
all these people. I I struggle to imagine how his
his shop would be anything but the goth shop where
(39:30):
each clock, every time a customer comes in, he points
to one and says, there is another clock, each tick
of which brings us closer to all of our doom,
where we will join those who came before. That's all
I'm saying. Yeah, I mean I think that's probably true,
you know. Or like he sells you a clock and
he's like, when this clock stops, your hour of doom
(39:54):
is at hand, and like, yeah, you're like ha ha,
what a weird thing to say, you know, And then
like you take the clock home and then you die
mysteriously and like your clock is found stopped at the
exact moment you died, yeah, exactly. Or he sells them
to rich industrialists and they're just bombs. Yeah, any of
(40:14):
those honestly, so many options. But yeah, so his body
is pulling off this lazy metaphor um coughing up blood. Yeah,
the body keeps the score and sometimes it is loud
and obvious about it. But then in December he gets
(40:35):
some life changing news. Simon Petlura has moved to Paris.
That's the name I remember. Yeah, it's the guy who
remembering that murdered his whole family basically, right. Yeah, so
he was the leader of the Ukrainian army during the
Russian Civil war, the one, you know, the army that
did all them, and he is the single man that
(40:59):
show momb Schwartz Bart holds as most responsible for the
programs that took place in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. Now,
this is probably a good time to ask the question,
were the pogroms pet Lura's fault? Actually? Were the programs
Petlari pet Simon's fault personally? So I'm glad you asked, Margaret.
(41:22):
Accounts and analysis differ um I waver between abs fucking
lutely yes and well not literally yes, but morally yes.
I think the absolute best thing you could say is
that pet Lura possibly maybe did not directly order programs
that said, he probably did, and he also directly commanded
(41:44):
an army in which he knew there to be a
ton of anti Semitism, and he did not stop that
army from carrying out put groms. And some people will
defend him on the basis that, like, hey, it's pretty
hard to stop your soldiers from murdering Jews sometimes, h
you know, to which I would say, if you tried rying,
like if you consider murdering Jews to be a very
bad thing, that you don't want people under your command
(42:06):
to do and you make it a high priority to
stop it, you know, you stop it, and pit Lara
didn't and Macno did. So m this is it like
whenever people make the like, oh he was a man
of his time argument for anybody, like, there's almost always
another man of his time doing, you know, like people like, oh,
some some shitty white person in the nineteenth century was
(42:28):
a man of his time and that's why he thought
it was okay to own people. And it's like John
Brown also a man of the same time. And then
also like you know, because it's like we always see
these like super exemplary people, right like John Brown, you know. Um.
But then like the more one of the main things
I'm learning by researching and doing this podcast is like
the counter examples are so numerous, you know, Like John
(42:52):
Brown was not the only white guy in the nineteenth
century US who was like, oh, I got an idea,
what if we shouldn't own people? You know, it was
like like there were entire religions that believed that. And
the same with like anti Semitism, Like yeah, anti Semitism
was a really big problem is still a really big problem.
But it was a really big problem in nineteenth century
(43:13):
and early twentieth century Europe and Russia, and there were
so many people who fought against it, you know, right,
And like I think, like when we bring this stuff
like this up, we're not saying like and that's why
white people are actually okay right when talking about like
slavery or and that's what exactly Exactly if John Brown
(43:36):
and macno could get on board, then like what's your
excuse other guys, you know, um, they just they sort
of sandy examples of like this was not inevitable, you know, yeah, exactly,
And I'm going to defer to uh because again I
could only do so much research on this, but um.
(43:56):
Stephen Leonard Jacobs in the Journal of Jenna Side Studies
and Prevention makes the case that one Simon Petlura was
the chief of state attaman in chief, with real power
to act when he's so desired. Two units of the
Ukrainian Army directly under his supervision, known as the Clans
of Death, committed numerous atrocities. Three insurgents depended upon pet
(44:20):
Laura for financial support and war material, and regularly committed
programs in his name. Four official organs of the Ukrainian
War Office, the government printing Works and the Information Bureau
of the National Army incited programs by vicious anti Semitic propaganda.
Five pet Lera reneged on promises made to Jews as
early as November nineteen seventeen that effective inquiries would be
(44:40):
made into programs. Six. There is good reason to believe
that Petlura may have ordered programs in Proskerov and Jitimer
in the early months of nineteen nineteen, and that he
was in the immediate vicinity of these towns when programs
were raging. Seven. Petlera's famous orders of August seven, nine
nineteen forbidding programs were issued eight months too late and
(45:01):
at a time when he held no real power. Okay,
so funk that guy. I think it's entirely fair to
place some more responsibility for all those deaths and associated
Horzon pet Laura. Like I think that is that should
be non controversial. Every defense of him that I've read
has come from a place of like Ukrainian nationalism, which
(45:24):
again I realized is complicated. But I have yet to
read a defense of him that isn't like. And also
Shallem Schwartzbard was a Bolshevik agent. Yeah, that doesn't sound
very likely based on the fact that his unit was
wiped out by Bolsheviks. Yeah. And I mean it's interesting
because I think, like, if I were trying to do
(45:46):
a defense of if for some reason I believed that
pet Laura was innocent, I would still be able to
look at these facts and be like, but it seems
like Shalom had really good reason to think he was
the one responsible, right, And I haven't read any offensive
pillar that says that, Like they're all they all seemed
to me to contain pretty blatant vale anti Semitism, So like,
(46:08):
I don't know, I'm not saying there aren't good defenses
of them out there. I'm just saying I haven't seen them.
Maybe somebody more knowledgeable about this history will disagree with me.
That's fine. Um, I think for me, he seems responsible
for this, and if nothing else, it seems very obvious
why sum would would think so. Right. Also, Like, that's
(46:32):
what hierarchy means. If you decide that you're going to
be in charge of a thing, you take responsibility for it.
That's the entire the only way you can defend the
concept of hierarchy. Morally is by claiming that the responsibility
lies at the top, you know, especially for something that
happens at a systemic level like this wasn't one private
(46:54):
went off and committed grams, you know, this was this
like system thing that was happening under his command. It's
his fault whether or not he ordered it. And it
sounds like, yeah, I don't funk this guy. Yeah, fun
this guy. And this By the way, it was widely
understood at the time among Jews, especially to the point
(47:17):
where they were like boogeyman stories about Petlero, Like sorry,
literally no, it's super weird. Jewish mothers would tell their
kids that if they weren't good, pet Lero would come
and take them away. Conservatively speaking, eleven guys are funked up.
I don't know. Ongoing genocidal violence makes it kind of
weird as a parent, I guess, yeah. But this was
(47:41):
also something that non Jews were aware of. In a
novel by Soviet writer Nikolai Ostrovsky, a character trying to
determine what's happening in the over shifting Civil War see
soldiers arriving in a town and says, let's wait a
bit and see if they start pillaging the Jews, we
shall know it's pet Leora as men whoa And In
another novel by a Soviet author Mikhail Bulgakov, the narrator
(48:04):
contemplates the body of a murdered Jewish man and says,
and the corpse was the only evidence that pet Leurro
was not a myth, but had really existed. Will anybody
redeem the blood that he shed? No, no one. The
snow would just melt, The green Ukrainian grass would grow
again and weave its carpet over the earth. The gorgeous
sunrises would come again, the air would shimmer with heat
(48:25):
above the field, and no more traces of blood would remain.
Blood is cheap on those red fields, and no one
would redeem it, no one. I wanted to read that
passage because spoiler alert, that's wrong. Someone is about to
redeem it. But who and but who? Who? Indeed, what
(48:49):
a good moment I think to end part two before
we know who the redeemer is. Yeah, before we know
who or how this blood will be redeemed. Yeah, I'm
gonna go away for a little bit and finish the
story later. How about that? Farewell? Okay, But if we
(49:11):
really want to hear it? Can we can we hear
it next Monday? Mmmm? I don't know that sounds a
good question for Sophie. I'm not. I'm just telling you
a story I don't can't confirm Part three Monday? Part three?
Is this our first one with more than two parts?
Apparently there's a lot of story here, there is, and
(49:35):
I'm so hooked awesome? All right? Is there is there
any final thoughts here? Anything we want to plug? Start orphanages,
be brave, Subtlety is for cowards. That's what I got
that seems good written? Any books lately? Yeah, I was
(49:58):
gonna say not lately, but I got one published recent.
Oh yeah, people can order. I was gonna say pre order,
but that would be if you were listening to us
in the past as a time traveler. We won't be
here tomorrow is a collection of short fiction available from
a K Press, and includes short fiction which is made
up stories that are not long stories. And you can
(50:22):
read it. It's really good. It's like so fucking good, Miriam,
I love it. Anything that you want to I want
to plug, No, I haven't. I haven't put anything out there,
um except this, So listen to this podcast that I'm doing. Now,
let's see. I think last week I plugged land back
dot org, which people should check out, and people should
(50:45):
also check out the i fac fund I F A
K f U n D on Twitter. Check those things out, ya.
You can also check out Bridget Todd's new podcast, Internet
Hate Machine that is in partnership with cool Zone Media
wherever you get your podcasts. It's really good. Hell yeah,
(51:06):
I'm really excited. Bridget Hodd was a guest on this
here podcast. So if you like this podcast, you'll like
that podcast. Say it as if I'm joking, but you
actually probably will like it. You will, you will and
co sign phrase I'm using a lot today apparently co signing.
I've been setting you up to do that, and then
I'm going to be sending some checks later. If you
(51:28):
could just look those over. Oh good, good, good call,
Thanks Margaret. I'll get right on that. Okay, good, okay. Bye.
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. But more podcasts and cool Zone Media.
Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
(51:50):
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
I'm Miriam Rocheck. I stole this show from Margaret Kiljoy. No,
let me out of this barrel that you put me in.
Why a barrel? Why a barrel? Indeed, I sees the
(00:20):
means of podcast production, and I'm telling Margaret about Sulem
schwartz Bard, the early twentieth century anarchist poet, clockmaker, revolutionary assassin,
community self defense organizer. What's up? Clockmaker? Also like a
second time, just the esis they're double clockmaking? Yeah, I
(00:43):
mean he made way more clocks than the assassinated people,
you know. Yeah, Yeah, I mean I don't actually know
because I haven't heard the story yet, but I believe
you know, I haven't run the numbers either. I just
assumed so because he was a clockmaker for like twenty
five years or something, maybe he only need one really
good clock. Yeah. And also joining us is Sophie Lichterman,
(01:06):
who is the producer of this show that I have stolen.
Co signing the stolen this my accomplice. Yeah, totally partner
and said crime. No, I trusted you, You said, Margaret,
what's down there in the bottom of the barrel? Magpie
don't worry. I'll help you steal it back. Yeah see,
(01:30):
I'm I'm I'm a two team player, okay, okay, and
and I'm a much better crime accomplice than Peter the
Painter for those who listened to episode one. For those
who didn't listen to episode one, interesting choice to be
here listening to episode two, But I'm not going to judge.
Why are you here? Maybe they're captive audience like me.
(01:53):
Oh anyways, Maria, please please tell us more. All right? So, um,
when we left, Sulim had just married a woman named
Anna in Paris um and then promptly left to go
fight in World War One and been like really mystified
that that upset her because sucking dudes, man. But anyway,
(02:17):
let's um, let's rejoin him in World War one. The
war that went well for everyone. It was great, that
was nice. Everyone said after World War One, let's do
it again sometime, same same place, same villains, well, no,
(02:41):
very different set of villains, but geography geographically yeah, well,
you know, like I said, he's in the Foreign Legion
and uh he his unit is on the front lines
of trench warfare. You know, I think anyone with even
a cursory knowledge of twentieth century European history knows that
the trenches of France and World War One were just
a year's long horror show. Um. His unit is constantly
(03:03):
in the kind of battles that everyone seems to be
required to describe using the word meat grinder, you know,
just awful. He actually writes a poem about this, because
he is a poet, and I promised you last episode
that we'd hear some of his poetry, and today we will.
This poem is about watching a soldier dying in no
(03:24):
man's land, um, feudally waving a white flag, watched by
both sides and helped by neither. It's unclear in the
poem what side the soldier is from. Um. All we
know is that he is dying and no one is
helping him. Um. This translation is by Ali Damn, who
is kind enough to allow me to share it here.
(03:45):
So this is an excerpt through field glasses. They seemed
large from the camp, the cold evil warrior bandits warriors,
watched from both sides, his own friend and the opponent
to the enemy. With his last agony, his blood streams,
It flows like a well without end. One must see
him and rescue him. It is clear that no one
will come to save him. This wish of his the
(04:06):
last to be heard, to die amongst friend and acquaintance,
to lie in the grave with friends wounded. They looked,
looked and saw, looked and saw, and let him go.
And now the corpse of a raven decomposes, tattered and crumbled,
torn to pieces of worm and animal and all types
of bird. They carry its flesh and beak and claw.
And who would say, of these little bones that this
(04:27):
was the one who a moment ago lived, struggled and
begged to be saved from the terrible suffering. All this
left is the flag, white and fluttering. It tells us
that a person became exhausted, he suffered bitterly, and fought
the suffering, and with his life he must now part.
That's brutal. Yeah, so um, you know these are the
these are the experiences that he is having. His unit
(04:51):
is sent to Arras and I don't know how to
pronounce that, and no one can make me pronounce it correctly.
In Um during what turns out to be one of
the bloodiest days in the history of the French army,
most of his unit is killed or wounded. There are
five thousand frenchly journeys that go into this battle, and
at the end of it, only nine and thirty are
(05:12):
still fit to fight. The army declares this a victory um,
which Stolem respond to by writing another poem um with
the lines enough enough with being the victor, enough with
swimming and blood, and he meant it. He put his
money where his poetry was. His unit refused to return
to the fight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does like two
(05:34):
weeks in jail for this, which at this point he
can probably do standing on his head. Yeah, it's better
than chance of dying. Right. They're like, you're in jail
and he's like, oh no, I'm in a place where
no one is shooting at me. Totally. But they don't
get punished too badly because they were like not the
first unit to go on strike um. And at this
(05:57):
point the French army was like, ship, we have a
mutiney in our hands. We can't crack down on this
too hard, which is good. But anyway, he gets transferred
soon after from the foreign Legion to the regular French Army,
which means now he's like fighting alongside frenchman and not
foreigners like him. He's very popular in the new unit. Um,
partly because he's by all accounts, just a nice guy
(06:20):
if you're not, you know, married to him. And he's
like friendly, funny, he's encouraging. You know. He speaks terrible French,
which everybody seems to find sort of charming. So things
have changed in France. Yeah, that is, I speak no French,
so I have not been subject to the consequences of
(06:40):
speaking bad French. But more importantly, maybe he volunteers for
dangerous missions so other people don't have to go um,
which definitely contributes to his popularity. And he says about this,
I'm a Jew, and my conduct has to be exemplary.
I must leave the French with a good impression. So
you know, he's trying to be like one of the
good ones. Yeah. The French in the unit call him
(07:01):
a nickname, which is the little Clockmaker. Um, which I
won't try to say in French because it would just
be like me making a bunch of like raw noises
like at this point, um. Yeah, yeah, but I was
saying all little clockmaker, but the little Clockmaker, Yeah, I understand.
It is always allowed to make fun of the French. Yeah,
(07:23):
it's always funny. It's never not funny to try to
speak languages you don't. Yeah, it is kind of This
is kind of like a gross ignorant American. Uh yeah,
we're playing, isn't it. Mm hmmm, Um that I do
about the British all the time, and I pretend like
it's more okay there. But it's usually Americans trying to
(07:45):
pick the few countries that white Americans trying to pick
the few countries that they can point to and be like, well,
you're sort of worse than us, so we can make
fun of you. But it's not true. It's just not
true at all. Um, I rescind my making fun of
the French, and I don't know saying about my ignorance.
I just must speak French. Yeah no I don't. I
wish I spoke French. I wish I spoke French too.
(08:07):
I wish I spoke everything that would be great. So
really I'm making fun of myself for not speaking Yeah,
this particular other language, This introspective moment brought to you
by anyway, Um, please continue. Um. So they call him
the little Clockmaker, which I honestly, I think it's kind
of a cute nickname that probably beat the ship out
of the other nicknames on offer for the foreign Jew
(08:28):
who didn't speak great French and had weird subversive politics.
Fair He is also known for being a very good shot.
I wonder if that will come up again in this story.
I thought he was a passive it's not. He's never
claimed to be a pacifist as the one I mean,
I think he actually did at some point, But like,
(08:50):
he has done nothing but beat the ship out of
anti Semites, like and pull off terrible heists. No. After
a while, Shillan developed what was at the time called
shell shock you know, and what we would today call
what the funk do you expect would happen to people
subjected to the horrors of industrialized trench warfare for months
on end yep, and he is in a state of
(09:12):
suicidal despair, which he somehow survives to be transferred away
from the front where he has been for well over
a year closer to two actually. At this point he
wins the Crows de Guerre with the citation excellent Soldier
always volunteered for dangerous duty. On the first of March
nineteen sixteen, at La Chapelette while guard. While standing guard
at the end of an advanced trench, he was seriously
(09:34):
wounded while throwing grenades. Um, you know, being appreciated now,
those wounds. Yeah, not a coward, right, Uh, this is
this is the thing we know about him. Um. Those
wounds actually included a pierced lung, a shattered scapula, and
(09:55):
damage to the nerves controlling his left arm. The doctors
actually did not expect him to survive, but he did,
and he spent the next year and a half slowly
recovering and getting to the point where he could like
go to work for a little bit at a clockmaker's. Um.
He gradually got up to a fifteen hour work week,
which honestly, like World War One injuries aside of fifteen
(10:15):
hour work week sound stope, and it's about the right
number of hours to yeah, like that seems super reasonable.
So you know, he's plugging away at his physical recovery
when hey, when didn't you know it, the Russian Revolution happens.
What a whole revolution, a whole revolution, you know. So
obviously Sholom is like, well, I'm getting in on that right,
(10:38):
and it comes to join him and they had to Russia.
Hell yeah, he tries to join the fighting, but he
can't yet because you know, he was just shot almost
all the way to death, and he's he's just worked
his way up to doing a fifteen hour work week.
He's not physically ready to be back in war. So
they had to Ukraine and they have time for a
(10:58):
quick reunion with Sholom's father before Slim, you know, his
spighty sense goes off again and he's like, yep, but
grams are coming. His father's fucking cool. Oh, his father
is cool too. Yeah. I really like this multi generational
like throw down Jews, you know, like, yeah, that's fucking cool. Yeah. Um.
And in fact, the hardcore band they you know, they
(11:20):
get organizing defenses together. Um, and they're gonna they fight
on the barricades again. Throw down Jews. The Russian Civil War,
you know, which is what this period of the Russian
Revolution is called, where multiple sides are fighting in an
incredibly complicated conflict, which I think is best summed up
by the roughly fifty thou hours devoted to it by
(11:40):
Mike duncan over on the Revolutions podcast. It was overall
an absolutely terrible time and place to be Jewish almost
everyone is committing programs and we'll talk more about that
in a little bit, but right now, um, focusing on
the the organizing that Sholim is doing. It was wildly successful.
He got the support of the religious Jews this time.
(12:03):
They contribute a lot of material support, and they hastily
organized Jewish militia actually manages to fight back and scare
off the attackers because both the secular Jews and the
religious Jews like realize their common enemy of anti Semitism,
and like figure out their strengths and work together. Yeah yeah, okay,
and he and his dad man the barricades together again,
(12:26):
you know, years after having done it the first time.
I love it. Like good dads are like rare on
the ground, and so I really like them. Yeah. Um,
I know they sometimes get a little bit too much credit,
a little too easily because because they're rare. I'm not
trying to you know what I think. I think manning
(12:46):
the barricades alongside your son goes a little above like
the bear minimum total Dad's totally Yeah, Um, I think
it's super touching. And they they also like do a
little bit of bonding on a little kids these days.
NG together. Shulm complains that the young Jews who show
up to fight, He's like thirty two at this point.
By the way, old as we're quote reared in a dark,
(13:11):
poisoned atmosphere, without faith, without revolutionary tradition, without ideals, nourished
only by the bitter present of a chaotic today, which
sounds exactly like a boomer description of TikTok. They're not
religious enough and they're not revolutionary enough, like my generation
where I was the only one who was both of
those things exactly. Alright, alright, guy, but he did almost
(13:37):
he did get like shot to death and then survived,
so you know, yeah, yeah he can kids these days.
You know, I won't. I'm not. I'm not here to
stop him. Yeah, they were on his lawn, after all,
they were on his lawn. They were manning the barricades
on his lawn. But like still, yeah, like, don't get
(13:59):
off my law on continue to do that. But also
you need more revolutionary tradition and also faith. I mean
this is like I'm basically probably already at this stage myself,
So I can't really talk ship. Yeah, I don't know.
I just think it's funny, how like criticism of the
youth never once has changed. Yeah, No, I mean that's
because the youth are continuously incorrect. Um. And that's why
(14:22):
soon the Cool Zone podcast, Um the youth what they're
doing wrong and what I would do differently, sponsored by
old man Yells at Cloud. He's gonna say anyway, soon
after this, his father actually dies of natural causes, and
(14:43):
we actually don't It's hard to say exactly when because
Sulem never wrote about it. Huh. He wrote about so
much other stuff, but he's so devastated by this he
can't even really talk about it. So he ends up
finding his place fighting in the immigrant anarchist section of
Odessa's Red Guard. Not to be confused with the Red Army.
(15:04):
There are different things. The Red Guard is a unit
that this part that he's fighting in is made up
mostly of anarchists and Jews. As you can imagine, it
is a tough position to be in. You know, Bolsheviks
and Czarists alike are not fans of either anarchists or Jews.
But the Red Guard fought alongside the Red Army at
times they were decentralized and independent. But do you know
(15:27):
what would help the Red Guard keep up their fighting
spirit more than anything else. Well, what is that, Margaret?
What if there was a simple way to grow calories
in your own backyard that you could then eat and
sustain an army on the march? They store, well, they
(15:47):
famously never get blite. It is the potato. Sounds intriguing.
Well more, if you're interested in potatoes, I suggest you
investigate the concept of the potato. Who is the sponsor
of today's podcast? That's nice. I'm glad you have such
(16:09):
a wholesome sponsor. Yeah, only wholesome sponsors. Um, if any
else go through. If you hear any non wholesome sponsors,
that's because you're incorrect, And actually the sponsors are wholesome
and your own ethical alignment is incorrect. That's how that works, right,
sounds right? Yeah? Yeah, no, notes, Well, here's here's the
(16:32):
rest of the potato themed ads. And we are back
from interrupting Miriam in the middle of her sentence. Please continue,
all right, So, um, I was talking about you know,
Sholom has just joined the Red Guard, which is not
the Red Army. Keep that in mind. And when when
(16:54):
he joined the Red Guarden, Odessa had three jobs. The
first one is keep order whatever the stual funk that
means protect the factories and prevent pogroms. So one is
really excited about one of those tasks. I couldn't say
which factories big work. But he gets more and more
(17:14):
involved in the fighting, and he's coming increasingly into leadership roles,
which had never happened when he was fighting in World
War One. You know, he hated the fighting. He found
it miserable, and he never advanced beyond the rank of private.
But now you know, his heart is really in the
fighting and he's he's getting really involved. Um. He also
gets involved in a project of requisition ing rich people's
(17:36):
ship to support the revolution, and he takes over a
house or like a mansion. I guess to how is
something called the free Rationalist Children's school and shelter, because
this is like the peak of bad revolutionary names for
things are. But what I really love about this, though,
is that the rich lady who owns the house, she's
(17:56):
still there. They haven't kicked her out, just like guess what,
we're housing and teaching kids here now. And at first
she's pissed because she's like, oh no, I'm a rich lady.
Where will I keep all my diamond studded ponies with
all these free rationalist orphans in the way, you know.
But she ends up being so charmed by Salim's whole
deal and the importance of what they're doing that she's
(18:17):
finally like, okay, fine, you can all hang out here,
and then she ends up working alongside them to help.
This is the coolest part of the story so far.
I know, it sounds exactly like a bullshit leftist dream
of what happens during the revolution. This is like I
would write this in fiction and then people will be like,
uh huh, of course, But no, that rules. That makes
(18:38):
so much sense because it's not like you've got to
get out of the house because everyone needs a bedroom.
She just had a lot of them. Yeah, they're just like,
got these kids moving them in and like He's like, well,
I'm rich, but I'm not a total piece of ship.
He ends up helping. Yeah, so Slim heads off soon,
(19:00):
Comrade Sofia. Maybe I don't think Comrade Sophia would own
a mansion. That doesn't sound like the Comrade Sofia. I
know that's true. That's true. Um, so he ends up
heading never mind? Sorry was he? I honestly if he was,
she probably would have liked him less because his history
of treating women he's romantically involved with not great. Okay, well,
(19:23):
so all I know so far is that his wife
didn't want him to join World War One, and he
wanted to join World War one, so he did it anyway, Margaret.
He didn't even consult her. He just did it and
then was like and then she was like you did what?
And he's like, why do you have feelings about this? Yeah?
I guess they're making a life together, but like, I
do feel like even in a marriage, if you decided
(19:44):
to go join a war, that's like kind of on
on you do they have kids? It's totally it's totally
his decision. The thing that, well, we're gonna there's gonna
be more of this later. You're going to see this
as as a pattern. But it's more like, you know,
he makes this major decision that like it is clearly
going to affect her, and then is not only like
(20:06):
why are you mad? But he's sort of like, I
feel like I should be getting a whole bunch of
like hero worship for the fact that I'm going off
to fight, and instead you're having feelings about like your life,
which is honestly super selfish, right, and she was actually
right about World War One in the first place. In
the end, anyway, he this is actually real bad Okay,
(20:28):
I see okay, okay. So you know, so he's taken
over house. He's raising kids, other people's kids. Yeah, well, um,
I think I think all other people who are no
longer alive's kids. Um, I think they're orphans. So that's
what he's doing. But then he ends up heading joining
(20:48):
another anarchist battalion, um, and heading off to the front again.
Just because we can't be this far into an episode
about the Russian Civil War without ship talking. Um, you know,
state communists. I should mention that one of the groups
of anarchist Volunti's fighting alongside later end up being betrayed
and killed in their sleep by the Bolsheviks who they
(21:09):
were fighting alongside at the time, because yikes, yeah, and
speaking of bad ship people were doing. Um. I think
it's time to get back to the subject of programs,
because that's that we're really entering that part of the
story here. And um, you know, I think a lot
of Americans don't really know what a program is. I
(21:30):
think people know that they were violent attacks on Jewish communities,
but like, the full horror and violence of them is
something I honestly didn't fully understand until I was doing
this research. A lot of American imagination of programs, I think, unfortunately,
comes from Fiddler on the Roof, which is a musical,
not a history piece, where program is like, oh, the
(21:51):
Russians come and they break all your dishes, and then
you move to America and one of them marries your
daughter and you sing a song about it, you know,
And like, obviously I knew that was a very sanitized version,
and you know, it was also from prior to the
outbreak of the Civil War, But reading the accounts of
these programs to this research honestly still shocked me. Um.
In addition to massacres, there was mass sexual violence, which
(22:13):
was a huge part of these attacks. Um. You know,
women were raped in front of their families and then killed.
Babies were killed, people were tortured on mass um. There
are accounts of people being buried alive like this is
it is. I can't overstate how horrific this was. Who's
perpetrating these programs during the Civil War? That is the
very next paragraph. So it's important to understand here, like
(22:39):
these programs are not often are not always organized in
the sense that a commanding officer of any army is like, hey,
go and attack that Jewish community, um, so much as
the soldiers being like, let loose to do that. Also,
sometimes it's not soldiers. Also, sometimes it's just civilians. Um,
it's just mobs. The only people actively preventing programs, as
(23:00):
far as I can see at this point, are Jewish
groups and anarchists, um, notably the forces fighting under Nestor
mak Noo, Ukrainian anarchists and all around great guy. I would,
I would argue, even a cool person who did cool stuff. Yeah, um,
future friend of the pod nest mak No, I would
think so um. He not only had a lot of
(23:20):
Jews in his army and forbade his fighters from attacking
Jewish communities, he actually would defend Jewish communities and punish
perpetrators of programs. Okay um. Now, just for the raw numbers,
about a hundred thousand Jews were killed overall in the
programs of the Russian Civil War. Fifty thousand of those
deaths were in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian forces accounted for
(23:43):
about of all programs in that region, Like the Ukrainian
forces were the people perpetrating. Yes, we're people perpetrating of
the programs in Ukraine which killed fifty people, okay. And
so these are when you say Ukrainian forces with not armies,
is that the Red army and the White army? Is this? No, No,
(24:06):
that's the that's Ukrainian forces fighting for Ukraine. This is
the Ukrainian Nationalist Army, which is fighting against I'm trying
to Russian civil war is a mess. So there's the
Red Army and the Black Army which is the Bolsheviks,
and the White army. So the and the White army
which is bizarrests okay, the White Army is the Cizarrest
(24:28):
And then you have the Ukrainian Nationalist Army, who are
what the greens or something. I'm completely lost on the
color scale at this point, but there is a Ukrainian
nationalist force um separate from the you know, not not
nester mock. No. Yeah. But and I also, like I
want to say, I'm you know, I'm bringing this up
and like this feels like a very contemporarily, this feels
(24:50):
like a difficult thing to be talking about and like
this moment in history when like accusations of anti Semitism
are being used by Russia to ustify the invasion of Ukraine.
We all know that's bullshit, I think listeners to this
podcast hopefully no, that's bullshit. And so when I say
that the Ukrainian Army during the Russian Civil War was
(25:15):
perpetrating atrocities against Jews, UM, that should not be taken
as a statement of like what is happening now? That
feels too obvious to need to say, but I'm saying
it anyway. Sadly, so, those forces account for about of
the programs, the czarrest White Army about sevent and at
(25:37):
least officially, the Communist Red Army is not supposed to
be committing programs, there's like rules against it and ship
according to the leadership, but they still account for nine
percent of all programs, and the remaining or so are
just unaffiliated assholes mobs using the chaos of war as
an opportunity to do some of the violence that they
(25:57):
had been doing in this region for generations. UM And
the programs were also not all equal either, which is
important to understand. You know, there there were pulgrams that
were essentially mostly like historic there were programs that were
mostly attacks on property that we're just like, hey, we
don't like you, or or we're small scale violence, and
then numbre ones that were you know, full on massacres.
(26:20):
On average, thirty eight people were killed per Ukrainian Army program,
twenty five per White Army program, and only seven per
Red Army program. So in addition to committing more programs,
the Ukrainian forces are committing much more violent ones. These
numbers come from VO which is a fantastic research of
(26:43):
resource on Yiddish history, which you can find a EVO
dot org y I v O dot org. So that's
that's kind of the situation um right now. Now in
Sholem is in Odessa again, he's recovering from Typhus, and
he gets word that about ten members of his extended family,
(27:03):
including one of his uncles who he was really close to,
are among the many, many people who have been killed
in this horrifying wave of pogroms. He writes to his
cousin in America to tell him that his father is
dead and unable to rejoin the fighting. He said that
he was only able to quote bite his lip in pain.
Now Odessa is under the control of the Bolsheviks now um,
(27:25):
and even though he doesn't really like them, he's willing
to work with them. Um. So once recovered he starts
he resumes his work of organizing kindergartens and orphanages. Cool. Yeah,
I really like this about him. Like how many dudes
comes into revolution are like also out there ensuring adequate
childcare mid revolution? Yeah, he he genuinely loves this work. Um.
I think he probably would have happily continued doing it
(27:48):
for the rest of the war, just like making sure
that like all the kids in Odessa had milk. But
reports of pograms keep coming in and he just can't
stay in organized kindergartens when the is happening, So he
joins another mostly Jewish anarchist division and heads back to
the front to fight back. This is like the dark
part of the story, by the way, In case you
(28:08):
couldn't tell, His unit arrives in a city called Cherkas,
which had been hit by the Ukrainian forces. It had
had a population of about fifteen thousand shoes, of whom
one thousand had been killed. When an old Jewish man
sees how shocked the arriving troops are. He says, why
are you so surprised, and then tells them that this
place actually got off easy, that in towns and villages
(28:30):
with smaller Jewish populations, the Jewish communities had been wiped
out completely. Yepuck. Now Shulem witnesses the aftermaths of more programs,
and he has absolutely devastating experiences um which he writes
about some of them later in Yiddish publication called The
Worker's Friend. He writes them as like little short stories,
(28:52):
like vignettes. Um. I kind of I want to talk
about two of them in particular, which again I'm getting
this from Kelly Johnson's ortation about Schalm Scharstbard. But I
think they're really interesting, like especially in combination. They tell
us a lot about both what he's going through and
like how he's processing it. So both these stories, which
are you know, both true stories, are titled with words
(29:14):
said to him by a person that he meets in
the course of the story. The first is called The
Uncircumcised Will Hear and describes Sholem finding an old Jewish
man alone in the ruins of his home, having lost
everyone and everything, and Sholem starts to weep, and the
old man admonishes him not to cry in front of
the non Jews around them, saying, don't cry, my child.
(29:36):
The uncircumcised will hear H And this um this clearly
stuck with Shalom, and I think it resonated with how
you know, he's been at war for years now, basically continuously,
and he keeps hearing about and seeing all these horrible
things happening to people around him, to his community, to
his family, and he feels like he just has to
(29:56):
keep this brave you know, soldier persona on when all
he us to do is grieve and rage. And this
old man is echoing the voice in his head telling
him to keep it together, which is devastating. Now. The
other story involves him seeing to feel in and talus,
which are Jewish ritual objects scattered in the courtyard of
(30:17):
the home of a well off non Jewish peasant um
and show him assuming that this guy has participated in
a pogrom and and looted a Jewish home. Angrily confronts him,
threatening to shoot him, and the man is just like,
I haven't done anything. Go away, even at gunpoint. And
finally this peasant breaks down and confesses what he thinks
shol M is accusing him of, which is that he
(30:37):
is hiding two of his Jewish neighbors in his home
and begs stole him, who he thinks is another soldier
there to kill them, to spare their lives and show him.
Of course, reveals that he is also a Jew and
speaks to the hidden neighbors in Yiddish so that they
know that the it's safe to come out, and they
all laugh with relief at the nearly fatal misunderstanding. H uh.
(31:02):
And the story takes its name from what the peasants
says after they've all shared a meal together, which is,
by God, a comedy. This um, this well fits what
you've been describing as Jewish humor to me, right, yeah,
I think like this. Uh. These stories combine darkness, despair,
and grief in a way that and and humor in
(31:25):
a way like humor at the absurdity of how horrible
the situation is in a way that is very Jewish. Um.
And I think it shows that like Solan personally, despite
all of the horror and all of his anger, is
not losing his love for humanity, right, like he does
still showcase the story where a non Jew comes to
his neighbor's aid and also like nearly gets killed through
(31:49):
a misunderstanding. But yeah, so his unit keeps fighting against
the armies that are opposing the revolution and committing grahams,
including uh and this is important. The forces under the
command of a Ukrainian officer named Simon Petlura. Okay, yeah,
(32:11):
remember that name. Um, he will become Damnit Margaret Simon
pet Leora, Simon Petleora. Okay, don't worry, I'll say it
a bunch of more times in this story. He's going
to become important. His unit suffers defeat after defeat, and
Slim's unit is eventually disbanded. He heads back to Kiev
(32:32):
along with many Jewish refugees were fleeing Petliora's forces, and
he manages to get back to Odessa where Anna is
waiting for him, and he goes on a boat. Are
you ready for this? This is like the big like done,
done done moment of the story on a boat called
the Sophia. Comrade Sophia bought a boat. Yeah, Comrade Sophia's
(32:58):
back and she's a boat now. Yeah, what if she
was about the whole time. You know, it doesn't say
any word that she wasn't a vote. Yeah, whoa, all right, yeah,
it doesn't mean anything. I just like it. Um. So, Unfortunately,
when he gets to Odessa, it is now under the
control of the White Army, the Czarist forces, and Solan's
(33:21):
name is very much on a list of people to
hunt down and kill because he was listed as an
official due to his work feeding kids. And obviously, you know,
you can't let people who feed kids get away with
that ship. What's next not killing people based on their
ethnic origin? All right, you can't let that stand. Chaos. Yeah. Now,
(33:45):
Luckily for him, because of his service in the French Army,
he's able to get passage back to France where he
will be safe. He and Anna take that opportunity and
they go back to Paris. Um. It's the end of December,
and he has been either fighting, recovering from wounds, or
organizing revolutionary infrastructure sometimes all three basically NonStop. Since that's intense,
(34:09):
Yeah right, take a break, Yeah, you know how I
should take a break? Oh perfect, thank you, thank you.
That was actually like on ironically, that was a very
good ad transition, which I have now ruined. Yeah, draw
attention to these sorts of things. This show is sponsored
(34:31):
by the concept of advertising. Our sponsors are all advertisers,
and this is the most honest that any of the
transitions I've ever done has been. This podcast is sponsored
by honesty, not to be confused with Honest Tea, which
(34:51):
is a brand of iced tea that I don't like.
I don't like it either, unless it's one of the
sponsors that's about to follow, in which case we love drink. Yeah.
Because we're sponsored by the concept of honesty, the advertisers,
we cannot attest one way or the other to their
honesty unless they're honesty. I tried to make the same
(35:15):
joke y'all did, but didn't work as well. Here's some
ads and we are back. You were just talking about
how Sholom could use a break after all of that fighting,
and he takes one. Yeah self care. Yeah, for the
next six years things are quiet where which in Paris
(35:37):
he's uh, he's got an army pension and us working
as a seamstress. That gets them enough money for stol
him to open his own little clockmaker's shop. Yeah, you know,
so now he's got like stability. He owns a business
which he has like a ton of anarchist guilt about, obviously,
but he's got stability and that's great. And I wanted
(35:57):
to be just like a creepy clock shot up in
between two weird old bookstores where like bats are heard
every now and then you are so goth and you're
talking about I'm not recording this in a dark room
in front of a mirror and some drapery h. My
(36:18):
computer is literally on a coffin right now. Tell if
that's a joke or not. No, it's not. My computer
was a coffee table, and where I am currently recording
is a coffin. Great, but comrades over. I don't know
(36:39):
that whisper came through or not. If it didn't, then
you all in the audience will just have to wonder
what I said. I I love that for you. Why
don't you have a coffee table that's a coffin? Because
I've only recently become a person who stays in one
place and I have yet to um date someone who
buys me a coffin. That is the origin of the
(37:00):
often that my computer is on. You. You need to
prioritize that. Anyway, I do what if it was a
coffin maker, we had it, there was the anarchist undertaker,
no grave rock. I think you need less training to
be a coffin maker, like no shade to coffin makers,
but like I think that probably takes less training than
being a clockmaker. Coffins have fewer working fewer moving parts.
(37:22):
I think that's true. Yeah, so anyway, he's he's making
clocks though, but he's also you know, wrestling with a lot.
He's he's seen all this killing and destruction and he
doesn't understand why more people aren't as fired up about
it as he is. So for the next couple of years,
(37:42):
while making clocks, he mostly writes. He publishes stories and
poetry in Yiddish journals, and he's very active in the
anarchist expat community. He meets and writes about Emma Goldman,
friend of the show, and he gets along great with
her despite not agreeing on everything. And we're gonna again
come back to that as a theme. Wait, you can
(38:03):
get along with people you don't agree with everything about. Yeah,
it's a pretty innovative concept. But um sometimes he hangs
out with and works alongside of people who he doesn't
agree with. One of everything. And he doesn't even like
go on Twitter and talk shit about them or the
(38:23):
clear of them enemies. It's very very unhinged behavior, bizarre.
It seemed to have worked. Maybe we should try that. Listen,
I'm willing to give it a shot. Okay. So through
all of this he remains haunted by what he saw
during and following all of those programs. He describes the
memories as quote, a bloody, festering wound that cannot heal,
(38:47):
and his actual literal wound from the war also starts
acting up and for a while he's coughing up blood.
Which is this is it is a decade after the fact,
and honestly for a poet, very lazy metaphor his body
pulled off there. It's true. But hear me out. You
were claiming that I was exaggerating when I would suggest
(39:10):
that his clock shop would be very goth. But you
have now described a person who specifically writes about loss
and death, someone who's completely haunted by the death of
all these people. I I struggle to imagine how his
his shop would be anything but the goth shop where
(39:30):
each clock, every time a customer comes in, he points
to one and says, there is another clock, each tick
of which brings us closer to all of our doom,
where we will join those who came before. That's all
I'm saying. Yeah, I mean I think that's probably true,
you know. Or like he sells you a clock and
he's like, when this clock stops, your hour of doom
(39:54):
is at hand, and like, yeah, you're like ha ha,
what a weird thing to say, you know, And then
like you take the clock home and then you die
mysteriously and like your clock is found stopped at the
exact moment you died, yeah, exactly. Or he sells them
to rich industrialists and they're just bombs. Yeah, any of
(40:14):
those honestly, so many options. But yeah, so his body
is pulling off this lazy metaphor um coughing up blood. Yeah,
the body keeps the score and sometimes it is loud
and obvious about it. But then in December he gets
(40:35):
some life changing news. Simon Petlura has moved to Paris.
That's the name I remember. Yeah, it's the guy who
remembering that murdered his whole family basically, right. Yeah, so
he was the leader of the Ukrainian army during the
Russian Civil war, the one, you know, the army that
did all them, and he is the single man that
(40:59):
show momb Schwartz Bart holds as most responsible for the
programs that took place in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. Now,
this is probably a good time to ask the question,
were the pogroms pet Lura's fault? Actually? Were the programs
Petlari pet Simon's fault personally? So I'm glad you asked, Margaret.
(41:22):
Accounts and analysis differ um I waver between abs fucking
lutely yes and well not literally yes, but morally yes.
I think the absolute best thing you could say is
that pet Lura possibly maybe did not directly order programs
that said, he probably did, and he also directly commanded
(41:44):
an army in which he knew there to be a
ton of anti Semitism, and he did not stop that
army from carrying out put groms. And some people will
defend him on the basis that, like, hey, it's pretty
hard to stop your soldiers from murdering Jews sometimes, h
you know, to which I would say, if you tried rying,
like if you consider murdering Jews to be a very
bad thing, that you don't want people under your command
(42:06):
to do and you make it a high priority to
stop it, you know, you stop it, and pit Lara
didn't and Macno did. So m this is it like
whenever people make the like, oh he was a man
of his time argument for anybody, like, there's almost always
another man of his time doing, you know, like people like, oh,
some some shitty white person in the nineteenth century was
(42:28):
a man of his time and that's why he thought
it was okay to own people. And it's like John
Brown also a man of the same time. And then
also like you know, because it's like we always see
these like super exemplary people, right like John Brown, you know. Um.
But then like the more one of the main things
I'm learning by researching and doing this podcast is like
the counter examples are so numerous, you know, Like John
(42:52):
Brown was not the only white guy in the nineteenth
century US who was like, oh, I got an idea,
what if we shouldn't own people? You know, it was
like like there were entire religions that believed that. And
the same with like anti Semitism, Like yeah, anti Semitism
was a really big problem is still a really big problem.
But it was a really big problem in nineteenth century
(43:13):
and early twentieth century Europe and Russia, and there were
so many people who fought against it, you know, right,
And like I think, like when we bring this stuff
like this up, we're not saying like and that's why
white people are actually okay right when talking about like
slavery or and that's what exactly Exactly if John Brown
(43:36):
and macno could get on board, then like what's your
excuse other guys, you know, um, they just they sort
of sandy examples of like this was not inevitable, you know, yeah, exactly,
And I'm going to defer to uh because again I
could only do so much research on this, but um.
(43:56):
Stephen Leonard Jacobs in the Journal of Jenna Side Studies
and Prevention makes the case that one Simon Petlura was
the chief of state attaman in chief, with real power
to act when he's so desired. Two units of the
Ukrainian Army directly under his supervision, known as the Clans
of Death, committed numerous atrocities. Three insurgents depended upon pet
(44:20):
Laura for financial support and war material, and regularly committed
programs in his name. Four official organs of the Ukrainian
War Office, the government printing Works and the Information Bureau
of the National Army incited programs by vicious anti Semitic propaganda.
Five pet Lera reneged on promises made to Jews as
early as November nineteen seventeen that effective inquiries would be
(44:40):
made into programs. Six. There is good reason to believe
that Petlura may have ordered programs in Proskerov and Jitimer
in the early months of nineteen nineteen, and that he
was in the immediate vicinity of these towns when programs
were raging. Seven. Petlera's famous orders of August seven, nine
nineteen forbidding programs were issued eight months too late and
(45:01):
at a time when he held no real power. Okay,
so funk that guy. I think it's entirely fair to
place some more responsibility for all those deaths and associated
Horzon pet Laura. Like I think that is that should
be non controversial. Every defense of him that I've read
has come from a place of like Ukrainian nationalism, which
(45:24):
again I realized is complicated. But I have yet to
read a defense of him that isn't like. And also
Shallem Schwartzbard was a Bolshevik agent. Yeah, that doesn't sound
very likely based on the fact that his unit was
wiped out by Bolsheviks. Yeah. And I mean it's interesting
because I think, like, if I were trying to do
(45:46):
a defense of if for some reason I believed that
pet Laura was innocent, I would still be able to
look at these facts and be like, but it seems
like Shalom had really good reason to think he was
the one responsible, right, And I haven't read any offensive
pillar that says that, Like they're all they all seemed
to me to contain pretty blatant vale anti Semitism, So like,
(46:08):
I don't know, I'm not saying there aren't good defenses
of them out there. I'm just saying I haven't seen them.
Maybe somebody more knowledgeable about this history will disagree with me.
That's fine. Um, I think for me, he seems responsible
for this, and if nothing else, it seems very obvious
why sum would would think so. Right. Also, Like, that's
(46:32):
what hierarchy means. If you decide that you're going to
be in charge of a thing, you take responsibility for it.
That's the entire the only way you can defend the
concept of hierarchy. Morally is by claiming that the responsibility
lies at the top, you know, especially for something that
happens at a systemic level like this wasn't one private
(46:54):
went off and committed grams, you know, this was this
like system thing that was happening under his command. It's
his fault whether or not he ordered it. And it
sounds like, yeah, I don't funk this guy. Yeah, fun
this guy. And this By the way, it was widely
understood at the time among Jews, especially to the point
(47:17):
where they were like boogeyman stories about Petlero, Like sorry,
literally no, it's super weird. Jewish mothers would tell their
kids that if they weren't good, pet Lero would come
and take them away. Conservatively speaking, eleven guys are funked up.
I don't know. Ongoing genocidal violence makes it kind of
weird as a parent, I guess, yeah. But this was
(47:41):
also something that non Jews were aware of. In a
novel by Soviet writer Nikolai Ostrovsky, a character trying to
determine what's happening in the over shifting Civil War see
soldiers arriving in a town and says, let's wait a
bit and see if they start pillaging the Jews, we
shall know it's pet Leora as men whoa And In
another novel by a Soviet author Mikhail Bulgakov, the narrator
(48:04):
contemplates the body of a murdered Jewish man and says,
and the corpse was the only evidence that pet Leurro
was not a myth, but had really existed. Will anybody
redeem the blood that he shed? No, no one. The
snow would just melt, The green Ukrainian grass would grow
again and weave its carpet over the earth. The gorgeous
sunrises would come again, the air would shimmer with heat
(48:25):
above the field, and no more traces of blood would remain.
Blood is cheap on those red fields, and no one
would redeem it, no one. I wanted to read that
passage because spoiler alert, that's wrong. Someone is about to
redeem it. But who and but who? Who? Indeed, what
(48:49):
a good moment I think to end part two before
we know who the redeemer is. Yeah, before we know
who or how this blood will be redeemed. Yeah, I'm
gonna go away for a little bit and finish the
story later. How about that? Farewell? Okay, But if we
(49:11):
really want to hear it? Can we can we hear
it next Monday? Mmmm? I don't know that sounds a
good question for Sophie. I'm not. I'm just telling you
a story I don't can't confirm Part three Monday? Part three?
Is this our first one with more than two parts?
Apparently there's a lot of story here, there is, and
(49:35):
I'm so hooked awesome? All right? Is there is there
any final thoughts here? Anything we want to plug? Start orphanages,
be brave, Subtlety is for cowards. That's what I got
that seems good written? Any books lately? Yeah, I was
(49:58):
gonna say not lately, but I got one published recent.
Oh yeah, people can order. I was gonna say pre order,
but that would be if you were listening to us
in the past as a time traveler. We won't be
here tomorrow is a collection of short fiction available from
a K Press, and includes short fiction which is made
up stories that are not long stories. And you can
(50:22):
read it. It's really good. It's like so fucking good, Miriam,
I love it. Anything that you want to I want
to plug, No, I haven't. I haven't put anything out there,
um except this, So listen to this podcast that I'm doing. Now,
let's see. I think last week I plugged land back
dot org, which people should check out, and people should
(50:45):
also check out the i fac fund I F A
K f U n D on Twitter. Check those things out, ya.
You can also check out Bridget Todd's new podcast, Internet
Hate Machine that is in partnership with cool Zone Media
wherever you get your podcasts. It's really good. Hell yeah,
(51:06):
I'm really excited. Bridget Hodd was a guest on this
here podcast. So if you like this podcast, you'll like
that podcast. Say it as if I'm joking, but you
actually probably will like it. You will, you will and
co sign phrase I'm using a lot today apparently co signing.
I've been setting you up to do that, and then
I'm going to be sending some checks later. If you
(51:28):
could just look those over. Oh good, good, good call,
Thanks Margaret. I'll get right on that. Okay, good, okay. Bye.
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. But more podcasts and cool Zone Media.
Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
(51:50):
us out on the I Heart Radio 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.
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.
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.