June 23, 2022 • 40 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with Ryan Tucker Jones, author of the new book “Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling.” Jones discusses the horrific impact of 20th century whaling, the Soviet Union’s place in whaling history and the efforts of scientists and activists to stop the practice – including scientists within the Soviet Union.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
This is Robert Lamb. My co host Joe is on
leave this week, so I have an interview for you.
(00:23):
I recently talked with Ryan Jones of the University of Oregon.
His new book is read Leviathan, The Secret History of
Soviet Whaling. So this is a fascinating book, and I
think we had a fascinating chat about the history, specifically
the twentieth century history of whaling and how that factors
(00:44):
into Russian history, the history of the Soviet Union, but
also global history as well. A word of caution that
this this interview will of course discuss whaling, which is
going to have some graphic details in it, so be
advised on that count. But on the other hand, I
want to stress that this will not just be a
parade of of horrors. Uh. There's a lot of interesting
(01:06):
historical and cultural information in here as well. So without
further ado, let's go straight to the interview. Hi, Ryan,
Welcome to the show. Rob Thanks for having me. So
your book concerns whaling, which humans have been engaging in
for thousands of years and yet twentieth century whaling stands
out in rather appalling ways. Can you set the scene
(01:28):
for us regarding twentieth century whaling and what truly sets
it apart from the sort of nineteenth century whaling that
many of us are probably familiar with from the likes
of Moby Dick. Yeah, that's right, Rob. I mean, nineteenth
century whaling, which was dominated by the Americans, was a
really low tech enterprise that still managed to manage to
(01:49):
sweep nearly the entire Earth specific Indian Atlantic Ocean, and
i had a pretty massive impact on certain whale species
like sperm way else others it left entirely untouched, especially
the fast whales, the big whales that many people be
familiar with, humpback whales, blue whales, fin whales, etcetera. And
(02:13):
major parts of the ocean that were just off limits
to people working with sale technology, like the Antarctic, which
is is the place where the most whales used to
live at least. And so twenty centure whalen was was
far I think, far less talked about, far less romanticized about.
(02:34):
There is no Herman Melville for the twentieth century industrial era,
and yet it was by an order of magnitude more
devastating for most whale species. Do you want Do you
want me to talk a little bit about the technology.
I'm mindful of not just going on and on with
my answers your readers. No, No, I think we'd we'd
(02:55):
all have to to have a little technological background at
My next question, in fact, was going to be about
the Stern slipway and what it was and why it
was so essential to modern whaling. Yeah, I mean the technology.
There was really a major change in the technological implementations
of whaling at the end of the nineteenth century, mostly
brought about by Norwegians who had been whaling in their
(03:18):
near shore waters, but perfected a few things like the
exploding harpoon gun, which actually, you know, sentti grenade into
a whale exploded inside its body, which was far more
lethal and far less lethal for humans because they could
kill the whale, often with one or two shots, rather
(03:39):
than having to tire it out over a long period
of time being attached to this gigantic, dangerous creatures they
had in sail whaling. So that was one of the
major changes that took place. The other was the Stern slipway.
Rabich you just mentioned, and uh, this was a classical
industrial piece of technology which allowed whale to be winched
(04:01):
on board the whale ship, which really fundamentally changed the
whole industry. It meant that you didn't have to process
whales either on this in the ocean on the side
of the ship, as you know, as people did in
in Moby Dick for example, or that you even had
to go ashore and process whales at shore factories. What
this meant was that you could stay out to see
(04:24):
with your your mother ship, your factory um, your factory ship,
and just process whales day after day after day. They'd
be brought to you by a fleet of catcher boats
taken to the mother ship, winched up at the stern slipway,
and then a whole team, whole army of industrial workers
(04:44):
would process that whale carcass into the products that people
in the twentieth century wanted, which increasingly was was margarine um,
you know, butter substitute. That was another technological in a
Asian the process of hydrogenation, which allowed people a scientist
to inject hydrogen. I better not maybe I would go
(05:09):
so firmly into the details of hydrogenation, but it allowed
them to uh to process whale meat in such a
way that it was basically stripped of any um, fishy flavor.
People didn't even know they're eating margarine um that come
from whales oftentimes, and this was the major driver behind
the twentieth century global industrial whaling. You also mentioned that
(05:33):
this allowed for the processing of the carcass to take
place out of sight. Right, this was made a little
more hidden. Yeah, that's right. I mean, certainly not for
those involved in it. For those involved in it, um,
you know, you could you would see just hundreds on
some days, literally hundreds of of whales being processed. But
(05:55):
it was it allowed the industry really to take place well,
first of all, in the Antarctic. The Antarctic started being
hunted in the nineteen tens based on this new technology UM,
and then really peaked in the twenties and thirties, so
far away from where any humans lived that you would,
you know, you'd get this product, this margarine, with really
(06:17):
no sense of what kind of labor um, what kind
of danger, what kind of slaughter had produced it. You know,
were previously, I mean, whaling had always taken place pretty
far from shore, but it had always been you know,
pretty closely connected with shore industry as well, since you know,
often processed the whales. It's on shore, et cetera. Often
(06:41):
hunted whales in many cases that were not that far
away from human population. So yeah, it allowed it really
changed the industry in a lot of ways, making it
um you know, some ways far more mysterious for most people.
And you mentioned to the twentieth century whaling also it
impacted more species of way old stra as compared to
(07:01):
the nineteenth century. Yeah, you know, whales, A lot of
whales are really hard to catch without industrial technology. They're
they're fast, they can standard water for a long period
of time. And as with fishing, the twenties century just
saw a series of innovations that allowed people to overcome uh,
(07:21):
you know, the whales ability to escape. First of all,
diesel engines of course, which are so much faster, allowed
them to to really run down any species they wanted to. Uh.
Then sonar after the Second World War came into greater
use airplanes which allowed them to spot you. Often on
(07:41):
this mother ship would have a helicopter or an airplane,
but usually a helicopter pad where helicopters would take off
and search the area for whales, telp people where the
large agglomerations were. Then they could chase them down with
these really fast ships and then process them on board.
I mean for whales, you can only imagine this was
(08:02):
a obviously devastating suite of technologies. They never faced predators
like this um on this scale or with this lethality.
They were really totally unprepared, especially the big ones like
blue whales and fin whales, you know, the two largest
species on Earth, which really sustained the whaling industry from
(08:25):
the nineteen tiens through the sixties. Yeah, in terms of
what it was like for the whales, you described this
as the breaking of their their quote, cultures and families.
Can you uh describe that a little bit for us? Yeah,
thanks for rop. This is one of things I wanted
to do with the book. Was it was to mean
the statistics can be numbing and it feels like an
(08:46):
industrial slaughter house, which of course it was in a
lot of ways. But you know, the whalers were catching
wild animals, wild animals that had as you know, scientists
are telling us these days they've done incredible research into
whale cultures and whale emotions, whale behaviors that you know,
whales are complex creatures. They passed down a lot of
(09:10):
the information necessary for their lives through cultural transmission. That is,
they learn it from um, the other whales around them.
It's not embedded genetically certain behaviors, migration routes, feeding areas,
feeding strategies, etcetera. And so it allows us to understand
what was happening with this unprecedented onslaught, which was not
(09:34):
just the kind of devastation of a population, but but
also the loss of of knowledge amongst whale communities. That
we have pretty clear evidence that whales, even as they've
rebounded since the end of industrial whaling in the eighties,
have failed to recolonize certain areas, places that they used
to go to to give birth, to maid, to feed, etcetera,
(09:58):
in part because there was just such a a loss
of cultural knowledge that was part of this slaughter. You know,
you killed so many nursing mothers, for example, right, who
have then failed to pass on to their offspring certain
important facets of what it meant to be a humpback whale. Uh.
And so that that's kind of knowledge reverberate that loss
(10:20):
reverberates today. Uh. Sperm whale mothers, for examples, seem to
be far less adapted keeping their calves alive than they
were before whaling. It surmised that this is one of
those knowledge losses that that happened as a result of
industrial whaling. So we still see the impacts even as
(10:40):
whale numbers are rebounding here in the twenty one century. Now,
Redd Levithan is the Secret History of Soviet whaling, So
I'm getting a little bit into the history of Soviet
whaling and all. So just the Russian history with whaling.
(11:03):
I'm always fascinated by a particular culture relationship with the sea,
and you discussed this in the book concerning Russia. So
how did Russia historically view the ocean and its resources
and how did this impact their involvement in whaling. Yeah,
you know, Russia, but it's such an interesting place to
think about humans relationship to the ocean. You know, you
(11:24):
think about Russia, it's this huge land empire, which it is,
of course, but it also has one of the longest
coastlines in the world. And Russians have been interacting with whales,
you know, for a couple of thousand years of all
sorts of different species, and the Pacific in the Arctic,
and the Baltic in the Ocean, you name it. The
(11:46):
Russians had had relationships with whales there, and I mean,
I think the important thing for Russians was that they
basically missed this period of sail whaling. Well they didn't
miss it exactly. They saw themselves as victims in this period. Americans,
British dominated that they had the capital to sustain these
long distance whaling expeditions. The Russians didn't. They were, you know,
(12:10):
quite poor compared to Western European and America nations. And
so what they saw is year after year Americans coming
to Siberian shores, for example, um and doing whatever they wanted,
even though this was part of what Russia thought of
as their own territory. Americans would come in and kill
(12:31):
as many whales as they wanted, basically laugh at in
any kind of Russian attempts to stop them. They trade
with indigenous people, uh Siberians, who in many cases depended
on whales for their own sustenance. Alaskans as well. You know,
Russia controlled part of Alaska in the nineteenth century, and
(12:52):
you know, from the Russian perspective is just outrageous. They
these capitalist whalers, Yankee whalers as they call them, We're
destroying indigenous livelihoods. Russians really actually cared about this. They
were destroying whales that Russians would have liked to have
made some money off of. And so that really helped
(13:13):
shape Russia's major entry into the industry. They came with
a you could say a lot of historical baggage into it.
And when when Russia finally established its own whaling industry
in the nineteen thirties, and you Stalin, Joseph Stalin, uh,
they thought of it not just as a way to
industrialize the country that was part of it, but as
(13:35):
a way to kind of rectify this historical wrong that
their whaling industry was Russia. Finally Russia getting its share
and finally able to sort of defend its own oceans
against Americans, British and increasing the Norwegians as well. Now
(13:55):
you get into the the mystry of whales as well.
I was taken by what you shared about the mystery
of baleen whales, including a tenth century Russian poem that
concluded that the the these whales fed on quote heavenly fragrances.
What are we to make of that? Yeah, whales are
pretty mysterious creatures. They were for humans, well they still
(14:20):
are in a lot of ways. You know, they spend
of their life underwater. Humans really only got to know
them when they were washed up on shore or once
they've been harpooned, and so that, you know, whales lent
themselves to a lot of mystery. Um. And one of
(14:40):
the interesting things that I found research in this book is,
you know, the really important work that the Soviet Union did,
especially as scientists, and kind of unraveling some of these mysteries.
You know, you you read this poem, this was a
great indication of the really almost total ignorance of whales
they humans had in the tenth century, but really up
(15:03):
until the twentieth century in a lot of ways. And
you know, the Soviets they killed more whales than any
country did after after the Second World War. They also
studied whales in greater depth than any other country did
their way. Their scientists were on the whale ships, you know,
digging through whale carcases, watching whales as they were being hunted. Uh,
(15:26):
using captive dolphins for study, you know, the Soviet Union
as much as any country, really advanced our knowledge of
what whales. Where no one was talking about them feeding
on Heavenly miss by the late twentieth century, the Soviets
were talking about them nearly going extinct, and they were
some of the first to understand how deep the crisis
(15:47):
was as well. Yeah. So, and this you're getting into
into what you refer to in the book, is that
the challenging contradictions that you encountered sometimes you're encountering in
interviews with Russian whalers and scientists. Can you can you
speak to this a little bit? Yeah, you know, I
came and I wrote. I wrote this book because I
it was horrified and shocked by a lot of things.
(16:08):
I've just been talking about, the numbers of whales killed,
the you know, the pain that wales felt. But you know,
to to try to understand this and the role specifically
that the Russian Soviet Union played, of course, I went
out and I talked to people who had been on
board these whales ships. I went to Ukraine and I
went to I went to Moscow and Colen and Grad
(16:29):
and other places and talked to people who had been
part of this and it was. It was hard not
to like them. Frankly, you know, they're there are people
who not only didn't think at the time that what
they were doing was wrong, many of them, um, some
of them did. I should make that clear that you know,
some people were really disturbed by the whaling that they
(16:52):
were doing. Many were not. And you know, frankly, most
people around the world didn't really care that whales were
being killed for most of the time period. But you know,
not not only that, but also that they were you know,
they were also really deeply interested in whales, you know,
like myself, really fascinated by these creatures. And uh, you
know when I talked to them, I talked to whale scientists,
(17:12):
you know, they they they wanted to talk. They they
were so um, you know, they wanted to relive their
experiences with whales. They expressed sympathy for these creatures, fascination
for them. You know, I met some of really the
greatest whale scientists, probably the twentieth century, people who are
still really who still really care about whales, who who
(17:33):
had tried to blow the whistle uh in the Soviet
Union about some of the the illegal whaling that was
taking place, and some of them turned out to be Um,
you know, as you said, Chaney contradictions. Uh, you know,
one of one of the whale scientists that I really
relied on for a lot of the information for these
books living in Odessa in Ukraine now and um, you know,
(17:56):
it's been emailing me telling me he can't wait for
Russia to come free Ukraine from the Nazis. You know,
he's a deep Russian patriot who really regrets the demise
of the Soviet Union as well. You know, people who're
not not easy to to pigeonhole them into easy dichotomies
(18:19):
that we often fall into. And looking at Russia, so
we touched a little bit already on the like the
history of of Russian whaling and their relationship with the
resources of the sea prior to the twentieth century. But
then what other reasons are pushing the Soviet Union then
to pursue industrial whaling so strongly during a time when
(18:41):
other countries are dropping out of the practice. Yeah, that
was the crazy thing about this, and that came really
came through heartbreaking details. I was reading scientists reports. You know,
the Soviet Union really expanded their whaling presence in the
late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, just at a time,
(19:02):
as you see, rob, when the Norwegians were starting to
drop out, the British were starting to drop out, the
Dutch were starting to drop out. The US wasn't waling anymore.
Everyone saw the writing on the wall. Look the large
profitable whales, We've wiped it out. You know, they're gone.
It's it's not gonna pay. And you know, the Soviet Union,
(19:22):
they they had a real belief in the power of science.
You know, this was a society that was had thrown
off God, thrown off religion. It was going to rely
on the expertise of people who weren't subject to those
kinds of uh, those kinds of superstitions. You know. They
(19:44):
were going to integrate all kinds of economic planning with
x with experts. So they had a real belief that
they were actually going to be really more responsible environmentally
than other countries. So it was it was just bizarre
to read you that they were the Soviet Union under
Nikita Khrushchev, I was thinking about building. They thought about
(20:07):
building nine new factories floating factories in the in the
nineteen fifties, UM which was you know, was going to
make them the biggest whaling country on Earth. And they
asked their scientists and it was just a good idea.
Every scientist sit now, they said, like the oceans are
in crisis, and they really were in the in the
nineteen fifties. It's easy to forget just how we had
(20:31):
exploited um whale and fish stocks at that time really recklessly.
And Soviet scientists understood this perfectly. They were they were
seeing it happened on board to a to a man,
and they were all men at that time. They they
advised the Soviet economic planners like, don't do this, it's crazy.
And what did they do? They said, Okay, instead of nine,
(20:54):
will build seven. They built seven new factory fleets UM,
which you know, dwarf everyone except the Japanese at a time,
as I said, when people were getting out of this
industry justified logic, uh, and it led to predictable disaster.
You know. The Soviets, having built these these huge fleets, UH,
(21:17):
found that there weren't whales to catch, so they started
catching the last of the whales that were prohibited, you know,
and they really you know, the special contribution that the
Soviets made was was catching those last few whales of
the species that really didn't make any economic sense to
catch the Soviets. For the Soviets, though, uh, they had
(21:38):
the capacity, they did it. They wiped out almost the
last of the humpback whales in the southern hemisphere, the
last of the southern right whales. So um, you know,
it's it's it's hard to read that stuff, and it
it really feels like, um, a kind of a tragic
failure of the Soviet belief that's that science would really
(22:02):
make them able to to operate more effectively in the world.
You know, they could have worked now the scientists told
them the right thing, and they ended up ignoring the advice,
really to the great tragedy of the whales around the world.
But they did end up sending scientists out on these
ships as well. Yeah. Oh, the Soviet Union had the
(22:22):
largest net of whales scientists really in the world, and said,
you know, they understood probably better than any country in
the world, what you know, exactly how deep the crisis
was with the world's whales. And that's that's the that's
the difficult contradiction here. So they were they were international
quotas at the time though, right, Um, how did how
did this playing into Soviet whaling activity at the time. Yeah, right, So,
(22:47):
you know, the Soviet Union was one of the original
signatories to the International Whaling UH Convention that established the
National Whaling Commission in six and they had agreed to
abide by quotas quota which at first were kind of
laughably generous. Um, they wanted to make sure that whalers
were still profitable, but became increasingly restrictive over the years,
(23:11):
and especially in the nineteen sixties that they had some
real teeth in them, and the Soviet Union pretended to
abide by those quotas. They would come back and every
year whalen nations would have to report how many whales
they'd killed that they at the medium of the IBC,
and so the Union would do this, they'd make their
(23:32):
reports and they started falsifying them in the nineteen fifties.
At first overstayed in the number of whales that they'd killed,
in part because they wanted to uh to look like
they were bigger whalers than they were, in part because
they you know, they wanted to establish a precedent for
having killed this MANI. But then after they built these
big fleets. They realized, you know, we we can't abide
(23:56):
by any of the stuff. Um, we're to make any
money from this at all, we're gonna have to cheat wildly,
and they did. Uh. And so throughout the late fifties
and sixties. Uh, they'd come back from the Antarctic and
say we killed three huntback whales and they'd killed twelve.
You know that kind of just devastating numbers, which flemmixed
(24:22):
people around the world. You know, whale scientists in Australia,
New Zealand who are monitoring local populations that migrated down
to the Antarctic starting in fifty nine, they they saw
that suddenly there were no whales coming back and they
couldn't understand why. They well, maybe there's some cheating going on. Uh,
(24:43):
but we'd have to you know, there'd have to be
tens of thousands of missing whales to explain what's happening.
No one's cheating like that. But actually the Soviets were.
It was an unbelievable crime. Really was was a tragedy.
Of course, no for whales, but um, you know for
those who were studying and cared about them. One that
(25:05):
wasn't unraveled until the nineteen nineties, you know, about thirty
forty years later. It was thanks to those same Soviet
scientists who who were really upset by this, and they
kept their own figures. They kept the real numbers, in
part because they hated to see their science messed up
by the fake numbers, and in part because they really
(25:26):
cared about the future of whale stocks. And thanks to them,
we actually know, uh, the extent of what was going on. Now,
could you take us to a pivotal point in the
the international reaction to Soviet whaling, the one that you
(25:46):
touch on several different times in the book, and that's
the green Peace protest in n Yeah. You know, green
Peace people are quitty familiar with the with the organizations
still around, of course, an important environmentalist organization, but they
really cut their start as an anti whaling group. They
(26:10):
tried some anti nuclear actions that were only mildly successful
in the early seventies, but they hit on this, this
strategy of going out to the open ocean and locating
whaling fleets and coming between them and their prey, trying
to stop them from killing whales, and of most importantly
(26:34):
photographing this all video recording it and letting the world know,
letting the world see just how brutal industrial whaling was,
just how how awful it was to see these whales
being killed. And so what's something Greenpeace called mind bomb
um crafting an image that would be so powerful that
(26:57):
it would immediately sway global opinion. And they were pretty
successful with this. Uh, this was kind of groundbreaking moment
in the history of global environmentalism. And it was the
Soviets that they decided to target. It was one Soviet
(27:19):
ship out of the Russian Siberian port of Lativo stock
that they located in June, and um was a ship
that had just been warned by Soviet authorities and especially
Soviet scientists not to take under sized sperm whales. UM.
(27:44):
Soviets were really nervous about bad publicity that was caught
red handed by green Pace in this moment, taking sperm
whales just off the coast of California that were really small,
um infants, really young spring whales, maybe not infants, And uh,
(28:06):
this was, you know, for the Soviets as well, one
of the turning points, you know. They the negative press
that they got was was really pretty um, pretty devastating
for them. They didn't end whaling right away, but one
could point to the Greenpeace confrontations. It's really the beginning
of the end for Soviet and industrial whaling um as
(28:29):
a whole. Now, how much of that came through to
the Russian people at that time or were they more
or less cut off from many of this in the media. Yeah,
you know, the Soviet Union did its best to hide
the confrontation from the Soviet people, but they had access
to Western media, a Western radio reports, television, Um, they
(28:53):
could get some of that. And Yeah, one of the
things that was I found really interesting in the book
was to trace Russian popular opinion around whaling, and it
was really changing as well by the nineteen seventies. You know,
I give green piece of ton of credit for for
saving the loss of the whales, but they're that's it's
not the it's not the whole story. And the whole
(29:14):
story really does connect to some of these same Soviet
scientists who by the nineteen seventies were publishing a lot
of their research in you know, for domestic consumption. Soviet
people love to read about the ocean. Um. They were
totally intrigued by it. Uh, and this they love. They
love to read these popular scientific accounts, and what they
(29:36):
were reading was was really changing. By the seventies, Soviet
scientists were in some ways kind of similarly to the West,
kind of rethinking what whales were. And a lot of
the popular publications at the time we're talking about whales
as humans best friend. You know, they're they're they're gentle creatures. Uh,
(29:57):
they're useful. Their dolphins are really loyal to humans, like
like dogs. Like. This is one of the things that
Soviet scientists were saying and people were reading about. Uh.
Some of the Soviet Union's indigenous authors, people from Chakota
Guy by the name of Your Red Hue in particular,
was was writing novels that really talked about whales from
(30:19):
an indigenous perspective as sentient, um intelligent creatures. And so
Soviet people, uh really gaining this this really different view
of wales, and it led them to question their own industry,
even aside from what Greenpeace was doing, and it comes
(30:39):
to quick quite clearly. They wrote letters to um members
of the Bolshevik Party, the Communist Party, demanding, for example,
that the dolphin hunt be ended, which the Soviet Union
did ended in nineteen sixty six, uh will before the
United States ended marine mammal hunting in nineteen seventy two,
(31:01):
and then increasingly letters to the newspapers, you know, saying, hey,
look are we really adhering to the IWC conventions? Are
we going to end whaling? What's going on here? Putting
a lot of pressure on the Soviet Union to end
this way and that that's a big part of the
(31:22):
That has to be part of the explanation for why
the Soviet Union ultimately agreed in to stop industrial whaling.
It's a it's a combination of Western environmentalists and and
some pressure from Russian people at home too. And did
the did the economic aspects of it play into it
at all? Or was that or was the whaling industry
(31:42):
kind of into the Soviet Union kind of insulated from
like market forces. Yeah, they did. It did play a role, um,
you know, Soviet whale It's unclear if they ever made
any money off of it. In another the like, I
don't know, tragedy in some way. Um if if they
really care about profits, they never would have built those
huge fleets in the sixties. But the Soviet Union was
(32:06):
entering into an economic crisis by the seventies, and so
these industries, like the whaling industry, which were lavishly financed,
people make great salaries in whaling, they begin to seem
like more of a problem as the Soviet economy as
a whole was slowing and then by the early eighties
(32:28):
really lurching into a crisis. And so it's the economics
did play a role. Yeah, so it was, you know,
the Soviets, like the Japanese, by the early eighties were
catching really small whales in comparison to the earlier catches,
minky whales mostly and some sperm whales. Uh, minkies are
(32:49):
you know, twenty thirty ft whale and that's a lot
less whale product than you got from eighty to h
foot blue whale back in the nineties fifties. So that
was a part of and they were trying to economize
on fuel and definitely played a role in getting rid
(33:11):
of the Soviet whaling industry. Um, but it hadn't had
a long history of operating without much attention to profits
or losses. So yeah, it is, it is part of
the explanation, but it's definitely not the whole explanation. So
why are Soviets barely a part of the history of whaling,
(33:32):
as you discussed in the book, despite playing such a
you know, obviously significant role in it. Yeah, you know,
I mean part of it is because Soviets were pretty
secretive about what they were doing. Uh. Part of it
is this period of industrial whaling. Um. Yeah, but I
(33:52):
don't think people really like to think back on it
that much. It was it was a grizzly history. It
was a depressing history, there's no question about it. But
I think, you know, maybe most of all this, you know,
the Soviet Union, despite producing this really top notch research,
despite killing so many whales and their scientists, weren't allowed
(34:18):
to travel around the world share their research, at least
not until the nineteen late seventies and early eighties, and
so a lot of what they were doing just the
world didn't know about, for better for worse. And you know,
that's that's part of what I wanted to do with
this book, was to bring that back into global attention
(34:40):
and you know, account you know for the destruction that
the Soviet Union reeked on our oceans. And you know
I should mentioned there. Look, it's not like just like
they were doing this in some far away corner of
the yearth One of the things that struck me was,
you know, when I went to the Ocean as a kid,
and in the North Pacific on the coast of California
(35:02):
and Oregon, you know, the lack of whales there. Well,
this was part of the Soviet Union's legacy. They were
killing whales just offshore, as were the Japanese you know,
as had American whaling stations as well. Um, but the
Soviet Union was impacted my own history here, so I
thought it was really important to to understand how and
(35:23):
why it had done this on you know, for the
for the globe, not just for those interested in Russia,
but also to give you know, to give the Soviets
there do especially in the way that they advanced our
knowledge of whales. Uh, they made really important contributions. We
wouldn't understand whales the way we do without the work
(35:46):
of their scientists, um, who did really incredible stuff, not
not not just an understanding whale behavior, which was their
main focus, but also in in keeping the records that
we have today of of exactly how many whales were
killed in the twentieth century as well. Yeah, I want
to stress to it to our readers that even though
the subject matter is is grim and in many in
(36:08):
many cases like the book is not just one endless
horror show. You know, there's there's so much fascinating content
about the people involved, the cultures involved in the UH
and and in the in the science of whales UM.
So I want to I want to stress that to everyone.
And and also you you do specifically mention you know
(36:29):
that there is there is light in an otherwise dark tale, right,
I appreciate that, Rob. Yeah, so you know the book,
the book does chronicle a lot of whales being killed. Yeah,
this is fundamentally kind of a I mean I turned
one chapter of the whale genocide. This is the story
of a number of species of creatures which it really
(36:50):
flourished on this planet for a long time. UM carved
out a really successful niche for themselves, really suddenly facing extermination.
And part of the book is, you know, it's chronicle
in that and trying to understand how whales did survive
through this, if barely. But the other part of it,
Roberts Calculus, you say, you know it's a UM people
(37:11):
lived rich lives even as they were, you know, destroying
these creatures and and actually, you know, the Soviet whaling
industry allows us to kind of look at you know,
some of the really really um messed up cynical aspects
of Soviet life, but also some of the great dreams
that people had and some of the ways that they
really found meaning uh in the communist project through their
(37:33):
own work, through adventure UM and the ocean. You know,
they've through through real scientific accomplishment. You know, there's I
used this story as a way to to think about
what life was like in the Soviet Union, all all
of it's really horrible and wonderful aspects and like like
any human society, and I had both and it comes
(37:56):
up pretty clearly in the way that people made um
you know, some really really meaningful lives for themselves aboard
whales ships, getting to see the world, getting to know
these creatures that they were killing, um in really unsurpassed detail. Uh.
And also you know the real pain that a lot
(38:16):
of whalers themselves experienced trying to reconcile all the great
experiences they were having with the with the fact that
they were destroying these families of whales. Uh. And they
couldn't they couldn't get they couldn't overlook that fact. All right.
The book is read Leviathan, The Secret History of Soviet Whaling.
It's out now in physical and digital formats. Um, we've
(38:40):
we've been chatting with Ryan Tucker Jones. Ryan, thank you
for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, all right,
Thanks once more to Ryan Tucker Jones for chatting with
me about the new book, Read Leviathan, The Secret History
of Soviet Whaling. You can get it right now in
physical or digital formats. Uh. Definitely, if you're if you
were interested in anything that we discussed in this episode,
(39:03):
definitely pick up a copy of this book. It's a
wonderful read. In the meantime, if you want to check
out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, our
core episodes published every Tuesday and Thursday, and the Stuff
to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. On Monday's you'll find
our listener mail episodes. On Wednesday's we tend to put
out a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and
(39:24):
on Friday's we set aside most serious concerns and just
talk about the weird film. Uh. Thanks as always to
Seth Nicholas Johnson for producing this episode. And if you
want to Get in touch with us about anything this episode,
future episodes, past episodes. You can do so by emailing
us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
(39:52):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts or where every listening to your
favorite shows. Bigger fourt
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
This is Robert Lamb. My co host Joe is on
leave this week, so I have an interview for you.
(00:23):
I recently talked with Ryan Jones of the University of Oregon.
His new book is read Leviathan, The Secret History of
Soviet Whaling. So this is a fascinating book, and I
think we had a fascinating chat about the history, specifically
the twentieth century history of whaling and how that factors
(00:44):
into Russian history, the history of the Soviet Union, but
also global history as well. A word of caution that
this this interview will of course discuss whaling, which is
going to have some graphic details in it, so be
advised on that count. But on the other hand, I
want to stress that this will not just be a
parade of of horrors. Uh. There's a lot of interesting
(01:06):
historical and cultural information in here as well. So without
further ado, let's go straight to the interview. Hi, Ryan,
Welcome to the show. Rob Thanks for having me. So
your book concerns whaling, which humans have been engaging in
for thousands of years and yet twentieth century whaling stands
out in rather appalling ways. Can you set the scene
(01:28):
for us regarding twentieth century whaling and what truly sets
it apart from the sort of nineteenth century whaling that
many of us are probably familiar with from the likes
of Moby Dick. Yeah, that's right, Rob. I mean, nineteenth
century whaling, which was dominated by the Americans, was a
really low tech enterprise that still managed to manage to
(01:49):
sweep nearly the entire Earth specific Indian Atlantic Ocean, and
i had a pretty massive impact on certain whale species
like sperm way else others it left entirely untouched, especially
the fast whales, the big whales that many people be
familiar with, humpback whales, blue whales, fin whales, etcetera. And
(02:13):
major parts of the ocean that were just off limits
to people working with sale technology, like the Antarctic, which
is is the place where the most whales used to
live at least. And so twenty centure whalen was was
far I think, far less talked about, far less romanticized about.
(02:34):
There is no Herman Melville for the twentieth century industrial era,
and yet it was by an order of magnitude more
devastating for most whale species. Do you want Do you
want me to talk a little bit about the technology.
I'm mindful of not just going on and on with
my answers your readers. No, No, I think we'd we'd
(02:55):
all have to to have a little technological background at
My next question, in fact, was going to be about
the Stern slipway and what it was and why it
was so essential to modern whaling. Yeah, I mean the technology.
There was really a major change in the technological implementations
of whaling at the end of the nineteenth century, mostly
brought about by Norwegians who had been whaling in their
(03:18):
near shore waters, but perfected a few things like the
exploding harpoon gun, which actually, you know, sentti grenade into
a whale exploded inside its body, which was far more
lethal and far less lethal for humans because they could
kill the whale, often with one or two shots, rather
(03:39):
than having to tire it out over a long period
of time being attached to this gigantic, dangerous creatures they
had in sail whaling. So that was one of the
major changes that took place. The other was the Stern slipway.
Rabich you just mentioned, and uh, this was a classical
industrial piece of technology which allowed whale to be winched
(04:01):
on board the whale ship, which really fundamentally changed the
whole industry. It meant that you didn't have to process
whales either on this in the ocean on the side
of the ship, as you know, as people did in
in Moby Dick for example, or that you even had
to go ashore and process whales at shore factories. What
this meant was that you could stay out to see
(04:24):
with your your mother ship, your factory um, your factory ship,
and just process whales day after day after day. They'd
be brought to you by a fleet of catcher boats
taken to the mother ship, winched up at the stern slipway,
and then a whole team, whole army of industrial workers
(04:44):
would process that whale carcass into the products that people
in the twentieth century wanted, which increasingly was was margarine um,
you know, butter substitute. That was another technological in a
Asian the process of hydrogenation, which allowed people a scientist
to inject hydrogen. I better not maybe I would go
(05:09):
so firmly into the details of hydrogenation, but it allowed
them to uh to process whale meat in such a
way that it was basically stripped of any um, fishy flavor.
People didn't even know they're eating margarine um that come
from whales oftentimes, and this was the major driver behind
the twentieth century global industrial whaling. You also mentioned that
(05:33):
this allowed for the processing of the carcass to take
place out of sight. Right, this was made a little
more hidden. Yeah, that's right. I mean, certainly not for
those involved in it. For those involved in it, um,
you know, you could you would see just hundreds on
some days, literally hundreds of of whales being processed. But
(05:55):
it was it allowed the industry really to take place well,
first of all, in the Antarctic. The Antarctic started being
hunted in the nineteen tens based on this new technology UM,
and then really peaked in the twenties and thirties, so
far away from where any humans lived that you would,
you know, you'd get this product, this margarine, with really
(06:17):
no sense of what kind of labor um, what kind
of danger, what kind of slaughter had produced it. You know,
were previously, I mean, whaling had always taken place pretty
far from shore, but it had always been you know,
pretty closely connected with shore industry as well, since you know,
often processed the whales. It's on shore, et cetera. Often
(06:41):
hunted whales in many cases that were not that far
away from human population. So yeah, it allowed it really
changed the industry in a lot of ways, making it
um you know, some ways far more mysterious for most people.
And you mentioned to the twentieth century whaling also it
impacted more species of way old stra as compared to
(07:01):
the nineteenth century. Yeah, you know, whales, A lot of
whales are really hard to catch without industrial technology. They're
they're fast, they can standard water for a long period
of time. And as with fishing, the twenties century just
saw a series of innovations that allowed people to overcome uh,
(07:21):
you know, the whales ability to escape. First of all,
diesel engines of course, which are so much faster, allowed
them to to really run down any species they wanted to. Uh.
Then sonar after the Second World War came into greater
use airplanes which allowed them to spot you. Often on
(07:41):
this mother ship would have a helicopter or an airplane,
but usually a helicopter pad where helicopters would take off
and search the area for whales, telp people where the
large agglomerations were. Then they could chase them down with
these really fast ships and then process them on board.
I mean for whales, you can only imagine this was
(08:02):
a obviously devastating suite of technologies. They never faced predators
like this um on this scale or with this lethality.
They were really totally unprepared, especially the big ones like
blue whales and fin whales, you know, the two largest
species on Earth, which really sustained the whaling industry from
(08:25):
the nineteen tiens through the sixties. Yeah, in terms of
what it was like for the whales, you described this
as the breaking of their their quote, cultures and families.
Can you uh describe that a little bit for us? Yeah,
thanks for rop. This is one of things I wanted
to do with the book. Was it was to mean
the statistics can be numbing and it feels like an
(08:46):
industrial slaughter house, which of course it was in a
lot of ways. But you know, the whalers were catching
wild animals, wild animals that had as you know, scientists
are telling us these days they've done incredible research into
whale cultures and whale emotions, whale behaviors that you know,
whales are complex creatures. They passed down a lot of
(09:10):
the information necessary for their lives through cultural transmission. That is,
they learn it from um, the other whales around them.
It's not embedded genetically certain behaviors, migration routes, feeding areas,
feeding strategies, etcetera. And so it allows us to understand
what was happening with this unprecedented onslaught, which was not
(09:34):
just the kind of devastation of a population, but but
also the loss of of knowledge amongst whale communities. That
we have pretty clear evidence that whales, even as they've
rebounded since the end of industrial whaling in the eighties,
have failed to recolonize certain areas, places that they used
to go to to give birth, to maid, to feed, etcetera,
(09:58):
in part because there was just such a a loss
of cultural knowledge that was part of this slaughter. You know,
you killed so many nursing mothers, for example, right, who
have then failed to pass on to their offspring certain
important facets of what it meant to be a humpback whale. Uh.
And so that that's kind of knowledge reverberate that loss
(10:20):
reverberates today. Uh. Sperm whale mothers, for examples, seem to
be far less adapted keeping their calves alive than they
were before whaling. It surmised that this is one of
those knowledge losses that that happened as a result of
industrial whaling. So we still see the impacts even as
(10:40):
whale numbers are rebounding here in the twenty one century. Now,
Redd Levithan is the Secret History of Soviet whaling, So
I'm getting a little bit into the history of Soviet
whaling and all. So just the Russian history with whaling.
(11:03):
I'm always fascinated by a particular culture relationship with the sea,
and you discussed this in the book concerning Russia. So
how did Russia historically view the ocean and its resources
and how did this impact their involvement in whaling. Yeah,
you know, Russia, but it's such an interesting place to
think about humans relationship to the ocean. You know, you
(11:24):
think about Russia, it's this huge land empire, which it is,
of course, but it also has one of the longest
coastlines in the world. And Russians have been interacting with whales,
you know, for a couple of thousand years of all
sorts of different species, and the Pacific in the Arctic,
and the Baltic in the Ocean, you name it. The
(11:46):
Russians had had relationships with whales there, and I mean,
I think the important thing for Russians was that they
basically missed this period of sail whaling. Well they didn't
miss it exactly. They saw themselves as victims in this period. Americans,
British dominated that they had the capital to sustain these
long distance whaling expeditions. The Russians didn't. They were, you know,
(12:10):
quite poor compared to Western European and America nations. And
so what they saw is year after year Americans coming
to Siberian shores, for example, um and doing whatever they wanted,
even though this was part of what Russia thought of
as their own territory. Americans would come in and kill
(12:31):
as many whales as they wanted, basically laugh at in
any kind of Russian attempts to stop them. They trade
with indigenous people, uh Siberians, who in many cases depended
on whales for their own sustenance. Alaskans as well. You know,
Russia controlled part of Alaska in the nineteenth century, and
(12:52):
you know, from the Russian perspective is just outrageous. They
these capitalist whalers, Yankee whalers as they call them, We're
destroying indigenous livelihoods. Russians really actually cared about this. They
were destroying whales that Russians would have liked to have
made some money off of. And so that really helped
(13:13):
shape Russia's major entry into the industry. They came with
a you could say a lot of historical baggage into it.
And when when Russia finally established its own whaling industry
in the nineteen thirties, and you Stalin, Joseph Stalin, uh,
they thought of it not just as a way to
industrialize the country that was part of it, but as
(13:35):
a way to kind of rectify this historical wrong that
their whaling industry was Russia. Finally Russia getting its share
and finally able to sort of defend its own oceans
against Americans, British and increasing the Norwegians as well. Now
(13:55):
you get into the the mystry of whales as well.
I was taken by what you shared about the mystery
of baleen whales, including a tenth century Russian poem that
concluded that the the these whales fed on quote heavenly fragrances.
What are we to make of that? Yeah, whales are
pretty mysterious creatures. They were for humans, well they still
(14:20):
are in a lot of ways. You know, they spend
of their life underwater. Humans really only got to know
them when they were washed up on shore or once
they've been harpooned, and so that, you know, whales lent
themselves to a lot of mystery. Um. And one of
(14:40):
the interesting things that I found research in this book is,
you know, the really important work that the Soviet Union did,
especially as scientists, and kind of unraveling some of these mysteries.
You know, you you read this poem, this was a
great indication of the really almost total ignorance of whales
they humans had in the tenth century, but really up
(15:03):
until the twentieth century in a lot of ways. And
you know, the Soviets they killed more whales than any
country did after after the Second World War. They also
studied whales in greater depth than any other country did
their way. Their scientists were on the whale ships, you know,
digging through whale carcases, watching whales as they were being hunted. Uh,
(15:26):
using captive dolphins for study, you know, the Soviet Union
as much as any country, really advanced our knowledge of
what whales. Where no one was talking about them feeding
on Heavenly miss by the late twentieth century, the Soviets
were talking about them nearly going extinct, and they were
some of the first to understand how deep the crisis
(15:47):
was as well. Yeah. So, and this you're getting into
into what you refer to in the book, is that
the challenging contradictions that you encountered sometimes you're encountering in
interviews with Russian whalers and scientists. Can you can you
speak to this a little bit? Yeah, you know, I
came and I wrote. I wrote this book because I
it was horrified and shocked by a lot of things.
(16:08):
I've just been talking about, the numbers of whales killed,
the you know, the pain that wales felt. But you know,
to to try to understand this and the role specifically
that the Russian Soviet Union played, of course, I went
out and I talked to people who had been on
board these whales ships. I went to Ukraine and I
went to I went to Moscow and Colen and Grad
(16:29):
and other places and talked to people who had been
part of this and it was. It was hard not
to like them. Frankly, you know, they're there are people
who not only didn't think at the time that what
they were doing was wrong, many of them, um, some
of them did. I should make that clear that you know,
some people were really disturbed by the whaling that they
(16:52):
were doing. Many were not. And you know, frankly, most
people around the world didn't really care that whales were
being killed for most of the time period. But you know,
not not only that, but also that they were you know,
they were also really deeply interested in whales, you know,
like myself, really fascinated by these creatures. And uh, you
know when I talked to them, I talked to whale scientists,
(17:12):
you know, they they they wanted to talk. They they
were so um, you know, they wanted to relive their
experiences with whales. They expressed sympathy for these creatures, fascination
for them. You know, I met some of really the
greatest whale scientists, probably the twentieth century, people who are
still really who still really care about whales, who who
(17:33):
had tried to blow the whistle uh in the Soviet
Union about some of the the illegal whaling that was
taking place, and some of them turned out to be Um,
you know, as you said, Chaney contradictions. Uh, you know,
one of one of the whale scientists that I really
relied on for a lot of the information for these
books living in Odessa in Ukraine now and um, you know,
(17:56):
it's been emailing me telling me he can't wait for
Russia to come free Ukraine from the Nazis. You know,
he's a deep Russian patriot who really regrets the demise
of the Soviet Union as well. You know, people who're
not not easy to to pigeonhole them into easy dichotomies
(18:19):
that we often fall into. And looking at Russia, so
we touched a little bit already on the like the
history of of Russian whaling and their relationship with the
resources of the sea prior to the twentieth century. But
then what other reasons are pushing the Soviet Union then
to pursue industrial whaling so strongly during a time when
(18:41):
other countries are dropping out of the practice. Yeah, that
was the crazy thing about this, and that came really
came through heartbreaking details. I was reading scientists reports. You know,
the Soviet Union really expanded their whaling presence in the
late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, just at a time,
(19:02):
as you see, rob, when the Norwegians were starting to
drop out, the British were starting to drop out, the
Dutch were starting to drop out. The US wasn't waling anymore.
Everyone saw the writing on the wall. Look the large
profitable whales, We've wiped it out. You know, they're gone.
It's it's not gonna pay. And you know, the Soviet Union,
(19:22):
they they had a real belief in the power of science.
You know, this was a society that was had thrown
off God, thrown off religion. It was going to rely
on the expertise of people who weren't subject to those
kinds of uh, those kinds of superstitions. You know. They
(19:44):
were going to integrate all kinds of economic planning with
x with experts. So they had a real belief that
they were actually going to be really more responsible environmentally
than other countries. So it was it was just bizarre
to read you that they were the Soviet Union under
Nikita Khrushchev, I was thinking about building. They thought about
(20:07):
building nine new factories floating factories in the in the
nineteen fifties, UM which was you know, was going to
make them the biggest whaling country on Earth. And they
asked their scientists and it was just a good idea.
Every scientist sit now, they said, like the oceans are
in crisis, and they really were in the in the
nineteen fifties. It's easy to forget just how we had
(20:31):
exploited um whale and fish stocks at that time really recklessly.
And Soviet scientists understood this perfectly. They were they were
seeing it happened on board to a to a man,
and they were all men at that time. They they
advised the Soviet economic planners like, don't do this, it's crazy.
And what did they do? They said, Okay, instead of nine,
(20:54):
will build seven. They built seven new factory fleets UM,
which you know, dwarf everyone except the Japanese at a time,
as I said, when people were getting out of this
industry justified logic, uh, and it led to predictable disaster.
You know. The Soviets, having built these these huge fleets, UH,
(21:17):
found that there weren't whales to catch, so they started
catching the last of the whales that were prohibited, you know,
and they really you know, the special contribution that the
Soviets made was was catching those last few whales of
the species that really didn't make any economic sense to
catch the Soviets. For the Soviets, though, uh, they had
(21:38):
the capacity, they did it. They wiped out almost the
last of the humpback whales in the southern hemisphere, the
last of the southern right whales. So um, you know,
it's it's it's hard to read that stuff, and it
it really feels like, um, a kind of a tragic
failure of the Soviet belief that's that science would really
(22:02):
make them able to to operate more effectively in the world.
You know, they could have worked now the scientists told
them the right thing, and they ended up ignoring the advice,
really to the great tragedy of the whales around the world.
But they did end up sending scientists out on these
ships as well. Yeah. Oh, the Soviet Union had the
(22:22):
largest net of whales scientists really in the world, and said,
you know, they understood probably better than any country in
the world, what you know, exactly how deep the crisis
was with the world's whales. And that's that's the that's
the difficult contradiction here. So they were they were international
quotas at the time though, right, Um, how did how
did this playing into Soviet whaling activity at the time. Yeah, right, So,
(22:47):
you know, the Soviet Union was one of the original
signatories to the International Whaling UH Convention that established the
National Whaling Commission in six and they had agreed to
abide by quotas quota which at first were kind of
laughably generous. Um, they wanted to make sure that whalers
were still profitable, but became increasingly restrictive over the years,
(23:11):
and especially in the nineteen sixties that they had some
real teeth in them, and the Soviet Union pretended to
abide by those quotas. They would come back and every
year whalen nations would have to report how many whales
they'd killed that they at the medium of the IBC,
and so the Union would do this, they'd make their
(23:32):
reports and they started falsifying them in the nineteen fifties.
At first overstayed in the number of whales that they'd killed,
in part because they wanted to uh to look like
they were bigger whalers than they were, in part because
they you know, they wanted to establish a precedent for
having killed this MANI. But then after they built these
big fleets. They realized, you know, we we can't abide
(23:56):
by any of the stuff. Um, we're to make any
money from this at all, we're gonna have to cheat wildly,
and they did. Uh. And so throughout the late fifties
and sixties. Uh, they'd come back from the Antarctic and
say we killed three huntback whales and they'd killed twelve.
You know that kind of just devastating numbers, which flemmixed
(24:22):
people around the world. You know, whale scientists in Australia,
New Zealand who are monitoring local populations that migrated down
to the Antarctic starting in fifty nine, they they saw
that suddenly there were no whales coming back and they
couldn't understand why. They well, maybe there's some cheating going on. Uh,
(24:43):
but we'd have to you know, there'd have to be
tens of thousands of missing whales to explain what's happening.
No one's cheating like that. But actually the Soviets were.
It was an unbelievable crime. Really was was a tragedy.
Of course, no for whales, but um, you know for
those who were studying and cared about them. One that
(25:05):
wasn't unraveled until the nineteen nineties, you know, about thirty
forty years later. It was thanks to those same Soviet
scientists who who were really upset by this, and they
kept their own figures. They kept the real numbers, in
part because they hated to see their science messed up
by the fake numbers, and in part because they really
(25:26):
cared about the future of whale stocks. And thanks to them,
we actually know, uh, the extent of what was going on. Now,
could you take us to a pivotal point in the
the international reaction to Soviet whaling, the one that you
(25:46):
touch on several different times in the book, and that's
the green Peace protest in n Yeah. You know, green
Peace people are quitty familiar with the with the organizations
still around, of course, an important environmentalist organization, but they
really cut their start as an anti whaling group. They
(26:10):
tried some anti nuclear actions that were only mildly successful
in the early seventies, but they hit on this, this
strategy of going out to the open ocean and locating
whaling fleets and coming between them and their prey, trying
to stop them from killing whales, and of most importantly
(26:34):
photographing this all video recording it and letting the world know,
letting the world see just how brutal industrial whaling was,
just how how awful it was to see these whales
being killed. And so what's something Greenpeace called mind bomb
um crafting an image that would be so powerful that
(26:57):
it would immediately sway global opinion. And they were pretty
successful with this. Uh, this was kind of groundbreaking moment
in the history of global environmentalism. And it was the
Soviets that they decided to target. It was one Soviet
(27:19):
ship out of the Russian Siberian port of Lativo stock
that they located in June, and um was a ship
that had just been warned by Soviet authorities and especially
Soviet scientists not to take under sized sperm whales. UM.
(27:44):
Soviets were really nervous about bad publicity that was caught
red handed by green Pace in this moment, taking sperm
whales just off the coast of California that were really small,
um infants, really young spring whales, maybe not infants, And uh,
(28:06):
this was, you know, for the Soviets as well, one
of the turning points, you know. They the negative press
that they got was was really pretty um, pretty devastating
for them. They didn't end whaling right away, but one
could point to the Greenpeace confrontations. It's really the beginning
of the end for Soviet and industrial whaling um as
(28:29):
a whole. Now, how much of that came through to
the Russian people at that time or were they more
or less cut off from many of this in the media. Yeah,
you know, the Soviet Union did its best to hide
the confrontation from the Soviet people, but they had access
to Western media, a Western radio reports, television, Um, they
(28:53):
could get some of that. And Yeah, one of the
things that was I found really interesting in the book
was to trace Russian popular opinion around whaling, and it
was really changing as well by the nineteen seventies. You know,
I give green piece of ton of credit for for
saving the loss of the whales, but they're that's it's
not the it's not the whole story. And the whole
(29:14):
story really does connect to some of these same Soviet
scientists who by the nineteen seventies were publishing a lot
of their research in you know, for domestic consumption. Soviet
people love to read about the ocean. Um. They were
totally intrigued by it. Uh, and this they love. They
love to read these popular scientific accounts, and what they
(29:36):
were reading was was really changing. By the seventies, Soviet
scientists were in some ways kind of similarly to the West,
kind of rethinking what whales were. And a lot of
the popular publications at the time we're talking about whales
as humans best friend. You know, they're they're they're gentle creatures. Uh,
(29:57):
they're useful. Their dolphins are really loyal to humans, like
like dogs. Like. This is one of the things that
Soviet scientists were saying and people were reading about. Uh.
Some of the Soviet Union's indigenous authors, people from Chakota
Guy by the name of Your Red Hue in particular,
was was writing novels that really talked about whales from
(30:19):
an indigenous perspective as sentient, um intelligent creatures. And so
Soviet people, uh really gaining this this really different view
of wales, and it led them to question their own industry,
even aside from what Greenpeace was doing, and it comes
(30:39):
to quick quite clearly. They wrote letters to um members
of the Bolshevik Party, the Communist Party, demanding, for example,
that the dolphin hunt be ended, which the Soviet Union
did ended in nineteen sixty six, uh will before the
United States ended marine mammal hunting in nineteen seventy two,
(31:01):
and then increasingly letters to the newspapers, you know, saying, hey,
look are we really adhering to the IWC conventions? Are
we going to end whaling? What's going on here? Putting
a lot of pressure on the Soviet Union to end
this way and that that's a big part of the
(31:22):
That has to be part of the explanation for why
the Soviet Union ultimately agreed in to stop industrial whaling.
It's a it's a combination of Western environmentalists and and
some pressure from Russian people at home too. And did
the did the economic aspects of it play into it
at all? Or was that or was the whaling industry
(31:42):
kind of into the Soviet Union kind of insulated from
like market forces. Yeah, they did. It did play a role, um,
you know, Soviet whale It's unclear if they ever made
any money off of it. In another the like, I
don't know, tragedy in some way. Um if if they
really care about profits, they never would have built those
huge fleets in the sixties. But the Soviet Union was
(32:06):
entering into an economic crisis by the seventies, and so
these industries, like the whaling industry, which were lavishly financed,
people make great salaries in whaling, they begin to seem
like more of a problem as the Soviet economy as
a whole was slowing and then by the early eighties
(32:28):
really lurching into a crisis. And so it's the economics
did play a role. Yeah, so it was, you know,
the Soviets, like the Japanese, by the early eighties were
catching really small whales in comparison to the earlier catches,
minky whales mostly and some sperm whales. Uh, minkies are
(32:49):
you know, twenty thirty ft whale and that's a lot
less whale product than you got from eighty to h
foot blue whale back in the nineties fifties. So that
was a part of and they were trying to economize
on fuel and definitely played a role in getting rid
(33:11):
of the Soviet whaling industry. Um, but it hadn't had
a long history of operating without much attention to profits
or losses. So yeah, it is, it is part of
the explanation, but it's definitely not the whole explanation. So
why are Soviets barely a part of the history of whaling,
(33:32):
as you discussed in the book, despite playing such a
you know, obviously significant role in it. Yeah, you know,
I mean part of it is because Soviets were pretty
secretive about what they were doing. Uh. Part of it
is this period of industrial whaling. Um. Yeah, but I
(33:52):
don't think people really like to think back on it
that much. It was it was a grizzly history. It
was a depressing history, there's no question about it. But
I think, you know, maybe most of all this, you know,
the Soviet Union, despite producing this really top notch research,
despite killing so many whales and their scientists, weren't allowed
(34:18):
to travel around the world share their research, at least
not until the nineteen late seventies and early eighties, and
so a lot of what they were doing just the
world didn't know about, for better for worse. And you know,
that's that's part of what I wanted to do with
this book, was to bring that back into global attention
(34:40):
and you know, account you know for the destruction that
the Soviet Union reeked on our oceans. And you know
I should mentioned there. Look, it's not like just like
they were doing this in some far away corner of
the yearth One of the things that struck me was,
you know, when I went to the Ocean as a kid,
and in the North Pacific on the coast of California
(35:02):
and Oregon, you know, the lack of whales there. Well,
this was part of the Soviet Union's legacy. They were
killing whales just offshore, as were the Japanese you know,
as had American whaling stations as well. Um, but the
Soviet Union was impacted my own history here, so I
thought it was really important to to understand how and
(35:23):
why it had done this on you know, for the
for the globe, not just for those interested in Russia,
but also to give you know, to give the Soviets
there do especially in the way that they advanced our
knowledge of whales. Uh, they made really important contributions. We
wouldn't understand whales the way we do without the work
(35:46):
of their scientists, um, who did really incredible stuff, not
not not just an understanding whale behavior, which was their
main focus, but also in in keeping the records that
we have today of of exactly how many whales were
killed in the twentieth century as well. Yeah, I want
to stress to it to our readers that even though
the subject matter is is grim and in many in
(36:08):
many cases like the book is not just one endless
horror show. You know, there's there's so much fascinating content
about the people involved, the cultures involved in the UH
and and in the in the science of whales UM.
So I want to I want to stress that to everyone.
And and also you you do specifically mention you know
(36:29):
that there is there is light in an otherwise dark tale, right,
I appreciate that, Rob. Yeah, so you know the book,
the book does chronicle a lot of whales being killed. Yeah,
this is fundamentally kind of a I mean I turned
one chapter of the whale genocide. This is the story
of a number of species of creatures which it really
(36:50):
flourished on this planet for a long time. UM carved
out a really successful niche for themselves, really suddenly facing extermination.
And part of the book is, you know, it's chronicle
in that and trying to understand how whales did survive
through this, if barely. But the other part of it,
Roberts Calculus, you say, you know it's a UM people
(37:11):
lived rich lives even as they were, you know, destroying
these creatures and and actually, you know, the Soviet whaling
industry allows us to kind of look at you know,
some of the really really um messed up cynical aspects
of Soviet life, but also some of the great dreams
that people had and some of the ways that they
really found meaning uh in the communist project through their
(37:33):
own work, through adventure UM and the ocean. You know,
they've through through real scientific accomplishment. You know, there's I
used this story as a way to to think about
what life was like in the Soviet Union, all all
of it's really horrible and wonderful aspects and like like
any human society, and I had both and it comes
(37:56):
up pretty clearly in the way that people made um
you know, some really really meaningful lives for themselves aboard
whales ships, getting to see the world, getting to know
these creatures that they were killing, um in really unsurpassed detail. Uh.
And also you know the real pain that a lot
(38:16):
of whalers themselves experienced trying to reconcile all the great
experiences they were having with the with the fact that
they were destroying these families of whales. Uh. And they
couldn't they couldn't get they couldn't overlook that fact. All right.
The book is read Leviathan, The Secret History of Soviet Whaling.
It's out now in physical and digital formats. Um, we've
(38:40):
we've been chatting with Ryan Tucker Jones. Ryan, thank you
for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, all right,
Thanks once more to Ryan Tucker Jones for chatting with
me about the new book, Read Leviathan, The Secret History
of Soviet Whaling. You can get it right now in
physical or digital formats. Uh. Definitely, if you're if you
were interested in anything that we discussed in this episode,
(39:03):
definitely pick up a copy of this book. It's a
wonderful read. In the meantime, if you want to check
out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, our
core episodes published every Tuesday and Thursday, and the Stuff
to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. On Monday's you'll find
our listener mail episodes. On Wednesday's we tend to put
out a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and
(39:24):
on Friday's we set aside most serious concerns and just
talk about the weird film. Uh. Thanks as always to
Seth Nicholas Johnson for producing this episode. And if you
want to Get in touch with us about anything this episode,
future episodes, past episodes. You can do so by emailing
us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
(39:52):
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