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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who's simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you could completely remove one phrase from your vocabulary, which phrase would you choose? I don't know. Correct answer. No, I meant I don't know which phrase, and the best way to banish I don't know from your life is by cramming your brain full of stuff you should know. Join your host, Josh and Chuck on the Super Popular podcast packed with fascinating discussions on science, history, pop culture and more episodes that ask, was the lost city of Atlantis Real? I don't know. Is birth order important? I don't know. How does pizza work? Well, I do know. Bit about that see? You can know even more, because stuff you should know has over 1500 immensely interesting episodes for your brain to feast on. So what do you say? I don't want to miss the stuff you should know. Podcast you're learning already. Listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, oh man, welcome back to behind the ******** the podcast that's just as refreshing as as pounding a great zibia. That's good zevia Jeff may, guest friend podcaster. Cohost of Tom and Jeff watch Batman. Jeff has cool friends. And and and stand up comedian Jeff. This is part three of our series on on Czar Nicholas the Second. How are you holding up? Great. I'm. I'm feeling good. I'm ready to talk, man. This guy this this ******* guy, you know this ******* rube. This ******* guy. Do love that like that's the like before this. I I think that like talking about Phillipe, who has his you know as we talked about last time his his first Mystic con man who got into the family and then Rasputin. There's like this media image of Rasputin. Is this, like, supernaturally charming, like incredible mysterious, sort of like figure who's just, like, inhumanly charismatic and like, no, the truth is that, like, literally any con man could have won one over on these people. They were really stupid. It's so much that people, it's almost like, it's like they're there's a punch card for what con man is going to be in charge at the time. It's like the morning, Ralph, Morning, Sam situation. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's just so funny. And yeah, this is, this is, it's important to note that that, like, that's kind of what you get with monarchy, right? Like that's the situation where if your thing is in ultimate power is invested in a dude, like, a decent number of those dudes are going to be the kind of people who would respond to a Nigerian Prince e-mail scam. Like, yeah, like, I don't know if you like, I think we all have dumb relatives. So the idea that that, like, inherited divinity. In any way. Or or inherited power or intellect or what? That's just the dumbest. Like if if if ******* Nicholas the Second had been alive and the czar of all rushes today, all of Russia would be owned by a Macedonian 17 year old who had like managed to fish his e-mail with something. Yeah, it it would be excellent. Yeah, it would be like Exxon would own Russia if that were the case. Yeah, it would be someone would have gotten to him. Like, I can just imagine L Ron Hubbard is sliding into the zars court and. Just complete control in like 7 hours. Yeah it would have been carved up like like 19th century Africa. It would have just been like just absolutely colonized and and and colonized with like Nikki still on the throne smiling all day about like ohh my friends from ExxonMobil are here. Look at the my magic friends from Exxon Mobil. They can they can pull their fingers off. You see look at that. They are doing magic. Look at that. He pulls quarter from behind my ear. It's crazy. So as we start this episode, the situation with Japan is continuing to spiral out of control. In 1902, Japan had signed a defensive pact with Great Britain, and Nikki's English Cousins had forced him to withdraw from Manchuria. Now, obviously he was not going to do this, but his ministers got him to at least agree for it, to agree with it for a while. And, you know, they keep trying to talk him out of this, saying, like, hey, like taking over Tibet. Maybe not a great idea. Probably not gonna work all that well, but Nicholas doesn't really spend a lot of time around his advisers. He prefers the company of Bessel Brazo VP and his cousin, the Kaiser, who, as we talked about last time, I think had started calling himself Admiral of the Atlantic and calling Nicki Admiral of the Pacific. Right. Man, yeah. That's like giving yourself your own nickname when you go to college. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's so sad, like cause. And it's sad because the Kaiser gives them both this nickname and Nikki makes fun of the Kaiser. And then Nikki starts using the nickname completely unironically. He's like, well, you know, it is a cool nickname. I'm not going to yeah, well, he's good at nicknames. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He may be doofus, but I got to say this nickname it ****. Look at this idiot coming up with nicknames. I'm going to steal, though. Absolutely. Mine is my nickname now. So one of his ministers, because this is, this is like, as a source of incredible frustration for these, these educated and, like, August ministers and nobles and whatnot who are trying to like. Run the empire around him that he's listening? Kind of. He's given this comment. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a theme. It's just all these, like, well read intellectuals with experience in in geopolitical theory are just like, what the **** are you doing, man? And one of his ministers, a guy named Pleve, who was again, a raging anti Semite, but a much smarter person than the czar, explains the czar's way of thinking here in a manner that I I think is really relevant today. The distrust of ministers is common to all sovereigns, starting with Alexander. First, autocrats listen to their ministers, outwardly agree with them, but always turn to outsiders who appeal to their hearts and inspire suspicion of their ministers, accusing them of encroaching on autocratic law. And, like, we've seen that, right? Like, we've all been through that here, right? Oh, could you question my cool friends don't actually question me. They think I'm cool. Yeah. I I brought my, like, wife's boyfriend in, and he said we should try this or, like, you know, there's this guy, this lawyer that I was friends with when I was younger. Like, let's have him. Take our policy here, like, we all lived through a version of this with Trump and it's just like to the enth degree with Nikki because there's absolutely no checks on his behavior. So they they kind of settle into this pattern for a while. Russia for the next year and a half or so, where Bezzo Brasov would, like, escalate in some wild way. He'll provoke the Japanese, or he'll make a move on on on Chinese occupied territory and there will be like some big war panic and Nikki will back off at the last moment and, like, pull his troops back because he doesn't really want to war. Like, he talks this big game about, like, wanting to show Japan what for. But he's also like, there's a part of him that's reasonable enough to know that, like, well, if you are the absolute sovereign and you lose a war that doesn't, that that can be bad, you know, it sure asked Japan in 1945. Exactly. Asked Japan a minute after this. It's it's funny, too, because we all know this guy, the guy that's like talking **** at the bar. And then as soon as somebody's like, all right, well, let's go. And then they're like, oh nice, yeah. And and ******* Nicki is that guy because he doesn't really wanna fight besso. Brasov is the guy who like does that. And also like, he'll throw down. He's not good at it. Like he can't throw a punch to save his life. He's way too drunk to be starting ****. But he will throw that punch if you know, going to be starting. Somebody will back him up. So Nikki, like, for a little while, like they, his ministers are able to, like, get him to pull back, get him to pull back, and then he'll poke at them or Beso Brazos, he'll poke at them again. And you know, this kind of happens a couple of times and after a while the Japanese get really tired of this and they give they they present this car with an incredible offer. Like, this is actually really quite. And again, I say generous. They're offering someone else's land, but like, they're like, hey Zar, I don't want to deal with this like constant, **** **** measuring game that year is how about. You get all of Manchuria, that's yours. Russia gets all of Manchuria, we get Korea. How about that? Which I'm bizarre. I don't have to fight a war, really. I could just take this huge, this chunk of land longer than in larger, I think, than any country in Western Europe that I get to just add to Russia for free. Seems like a great deal for me. The czar, right? Nikki says no. Nikki's like, well, yeah, sure, that would wipe out the stain of defeat in Crimea and make me maybe the greatest expansion at star of the last century. Probably would have distracted from all my domestic failures. But that means I don't get Korea, too, when I really want Korea because I can't get to benefit Korea. He wants to collect them all? Yeah, yeah, he wants poker. Like those cops who got fired for trying to get that Pokémon. You know who among us hasn't ignored our civic duty in order to collect the Snorlax? Yeah, I mean, it's we. We all have that friend too. Like wasn't able to make rent one month because he bought too many. ******* what are those? What are those nerd bobble head type things called **** because he bought too many Funko? Are you just looking behind me and looking for something to make fun of? I mean, it's fine when it's a funkopop, but because he's the czar of all rushes, his Funko pops are like entire nations of millions of people in in in a different area. It's it's like entire ethnic groups that that he wants to collect and put in his little Russia box and probably racially discriminate against 100% because he is the guy that he is. So he he says no to Japans again, very generous offer with other people's territory and then he doesn't leave Manchuria. So he doesn't agree to this and he also stays in Manchuria, which is kind of saying to Japan, we're going to try to invade Korea like we're going to, we're going to take Korea from you, right? Like, that's what you're saying. If you're like, no, I don't want you to give me Manchuria, but I'm not going to leave. You're saying, well, I'm going to, I'm going to **** with your **** some more, right? That's that's exactly what he's saying. That's as good as an act of war, really, if you if you're not unreasonable. And Japan takes it this way. Simon Montefiore writes, quote Bezos. Guys often taught the emperor that treaties could be broken, and Nicholas was convinced that Russia could defeat those macaques. He's he's calling them monkeys because Japan was a barbarian country. And Kuropatkin told Nicholas that the Japanese army was one of his military advisers, that the Japanese army was a colossal joke, but he did not want a war. The emperor blithely ordered the viceroy. I don't want war between Russia and Japan and will not permit this war. Take all measures so that there is no war. Japan made further offers to Russia for a compromise, but wondered if the inconsistent ZAR was capable of negotiating a treaty. Get a loan honoring it so he gets every chance in the world to make this work right. I think it's interesting to note that we are actually looking at two nations that have just really honestly Westernized their militaries or or and when I say Westernized, I mean modernized. Let me, let me rephrase it because you know Japan obviously had to make a big leap forward during the mid to late 19th century as well and we know we talked about in previous episodes. What Russia had. Yeah. Russia has just gotten their military to be kind of in not really in line, as we'll talk about when World War One hits, but they're closer to in line with like Germany and France. And so it's almost like they both got new toys. That is a fact. And they're like, you know what? Yeah, and that's that's a big thing. You know, Japan has just modernized and and gotten their military kind of really rolling along at the same point that China is falling apart, which provides this opportunity for Japan to take a whole bunch of China. And get a bunch of **** that being from an island they maybe didn't have access to before Russia. It's a little bit like with the Japanese government. This is much more of like a kind of grim real politic, like we need to take as much as we can. There's this awareness that, like the colonial powers, like they will do that to us, what they're doing to Africa, what they're doing to other parts of Asia. If we don't assert ourselves and get powerful and the best way to do this to take enough land that we can, can continue to build up. Our military and not be able to be ****** with by them, right. There's a lot of it's a lot harsher of an understanding with Russia. Nikki, this mix of like, he's got these new toys he does want to play with and his he has people talking to him about how easy it will be to beat Japan and an easy victory will deal with all these domestic troubles. But he's also, he's like reasonable enough to know that he probably would actually be a bad idea to go to war. And he has a lot of ministers, like, including like Wit and the other kind of the intelligent ministers he has saying like. Dude, you're hanging on by a thread right now. Like people are not happy. This is that there's there's riots and **** all over the country. We what we don't want now is a war, because it's probably not going to go great. And so there's this push and pull for a while and for a while, Nikki's kind of in the middle of those sides, but he eventually kind of sides with the folks who start telling him and and and this includes pleve his anti Semite minister buddy, that a small victorious war might distract everybody, right? So he eventually. Lines up on it's love that I just love the phrase anti Semite minister bike. Well, that's he's got the minister buddies who were racist and the ones who are racist, but not in terms of their policy because every they're all racist. Yeah, like the best guy in this story thus far is his attitude is like, well, if you can't drown all the Jews, I guess they should have civil rights, you know. Yeah, subversive statement, I guess. Now on New Year's Day 1904, the Emperor of all the Russias decides to make an. Ultimatum to Japan, he tells the Japanese ambassador. Russia was not just a country but a part of the world. In order to avoid a war, it was better not to try her patience or it could end badly. On the 24th of January, Japan breaks off diplomatic relations. So after like this back and forth, he issues basically like, shut the **** ** let me do whatever it is I'm going to do. And if you talk to me again like I'm, I might throw hands that that's kind of what he don't even don't even ******* sucks. Yeah, don't even talk to me. Staging talks to me. It's swear to God if you ******* talk to me once it's over and to continue our bar analysis, drunken Nicholas slurs that out to the Japanese, turns around to grab another drink from the bar and while his back is turned they hit him in the back of the head with a bottle of Schlitz like we've all been there or whatever. They **** him up the next day while the Zara is out watching at the theater, watching a play. The Japanese fleet attacks Port Arthur, which you know, Russia had taken a little bit. Earlier and they do serious damage like wipe out a significant chunk of his Asian fleet. I would add second worst thing to happen in a theater to a ruler. Oh man, there was a great this Halloween. I think I haven't said this on the show. This Halloween we were out taking some friends, kids of mine, trick or treating. And as we were like walking back to the car, there was just this dude dressed up as a dead Lincoln, sitting in a chair in front of his house with a bucket of candy like up stock straight. Looked like a statue almost. And one of my friends asked him, hey, how was the play? And he, without missing a beat, responded I left early. I got to be honest with you, like he probably had like a list. He was ready to say yeah new new dead Lincoln features 8 is realistic word sounds. So the Russo Japanese war kicks off from this, right. Japan attacks at Port Arthur. The Russians are very angry and they start fighting. There's this whole big series of battles, you know, it's a war. War stuff occurs and on the ground there's this, you know, land warfare that's largely happening in in Manchuria between like these couple 100,000 troops that Russia has there and the Japanese Expeditionary force and the Russians. You OK here? They lose basically every big battle, but Japan often loses more men in the battle. So, like, they're kind of, it's like pierick victories for the Japanese where they're like, yeah, we keep winning these battles, but **** there's a lot of Russians. And like, we can't keep this up for a while. That is the story of history. There's a lot of Russia. Japan has the same experience everyone else does, fighting Russia, which is. Yeah, Jesus Christ, there's no end to these people. I mean, think about the land differences maybe, like, oh, so we're like, what? Like a 30th. We're like the like, the Moscow suburbs are our entire island. You know, there's so many of these people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we need the entire island of Ohio just to do anything to these people. And so this this, you know? On land, the Russians kind of Duke it out with the Japanese until the Japanese are, you know, after repeatedly winning, kind of on the verge of collapse by some sources. So it's going OK on the land, it's not going great, obviously, because it never does go great for Russia either. But like, it's a they win a war. It's a vaguely sustainable situation. It's not in the Navy. So Japan starts the war by wiping out one of three Russian fleets, the Pacific fleet. And, you know, Nikki has a choice here. One of them would be like, well, I could kind of potentially. Give up Port Arthur or at least give up relieving it from the sea. I could not try to **** with the in the ocean anymore because I don't need to. I'm directly connected by land to the battle space. You know, I could just throw a **** load more dudes into Manchuria and probably eke out, if not like a win, you know, a negotiated settlement that gives me what I could have gotten without fighting a war anyway, but, like, looks good on paper. You know, he has kind of that option, but he's, you know, Russia's pride as its Navy, and it's not Russia's pride. It's it's the czar's pride and it's this way with all of these guys and this same. Kaiser Willhelm is like helping to make World War One be a thing by repeatedly like tweaking the British by building up the German fleet, because that's the thing the British don't want to see is the Germany have a fleet that can rival the British fleet because Germany already has an army that Britain can't handle. But this the Britain doesn't like when anybody has. They don't like when anybody has a Navy. No, they sure don't. I don't believe I I enjoy that that you're doing right now. They're the only ones with. Notes. Yeah. They said a reason you're doing that. So the Kaiser, and it's like it. It's this whole thing of like, it's like, it's it's like warhammer for the Kaiser. Like, he gets to, he gets to get these little boats, these these boats that he gets to have a say in designing and like, look at all the big guns and he gets to move them around on a map and sail around in his yacht and look at the boats that he owns. And, I mean, that sounds, it does sound dope, right? It sounds pretty sick. And it's like that with the Kaiser. To and and Russia, you know, has a has a traditionally pretty powerful Navy. Their best fleet is their Baltic fleet though, right? Because that's like, that's home shores, right? That's what's going to be ******* what's Turkey? Russia's big enemy for forever is Turkey. So they've got they lose their Pacific fleet to the Japanese with like out really getting the fire much of a shot. So Nikki gets obsessed with the idea of getting revenge and with the idea of proving himself to be the Admiral of the Pacific. You can't be the Admiral of the Pacific if your fleet. It's something. You don't do anything about it. So he takes this massive Baltic fleet, the pride of the Russian Navy and the linchpin of their territorial power, and he sends the whole thing to fight the Japanese fleet, which takes like a year. Like, it's not easy to get from the Baltic to the coast of China in this. Yeah. Yeah. They're not flying over. No. And they can't really. They're not good at boating at this point. You know, they're, they're steaming slowly ahead there. Well, they had a rough go. Yeah. It's exhausting. They accidentally murder some fishermen on the way. That belonged to some European country or another. Yeah. They get panicked and they think that it's a Japanese torpedo boat or whatever. I mean that's yeah really funny is really fun. We all, we all agree that it's while those deaths are tragic, the historical context of the humor in that is is under it is pretty funny to be like a dude on a fishing boat and get get murked by the entire Russian Baltic fleet. Yeah. You're just like, I'm out to catch you, you know, macaroni and and it's worth noting the Russian. Baltic Fleet will perform a lot better against these unarmed fishermen than they do against the Japanese Navy standard, standard move for them. So while they're motoring their way slowly to Asia and Russia is kind of having this very mixed ugly ground war in Manchuria and you know, the fact that there's a war there start being more protests, they'll start being more riots, they start being more strikes among the workers. While all this is going on, the Czars son Alexi is born. This is a cause for a lot of signally. Some good, finally, some good news. I've got got a handle on it now. I have a boy. This couldn't go anywhere but up as the empire is crumbling and 10s of thousands of men are dying, he's like, good news, everybody. We're going to be able to keep this thing going for another generation. Good news, everyone. One more Romanov for you all to deal with. So there's this big celebration, right? Huge state celebration, because now there's an heir to the throne. But then shortly thereafter, this aren't his wife realized their boy. Has hemophilia his like you know the belly button thing when the the thing falls out of it after you pull the baby out that the umbilical cord. Yeah the umbilical cord his when they cut it it doesn't stop bleeding right because he's hemophiliac you know that's that's the whole thing you bleed more than is ideal and so there's this suddenly realization that like the the czars air basically has a death sentence because like in this period of time I think there's a bunch of things you can do. They really don't have medicine back then. Yeah, it's why would you have medicine? Yeah. Yeah, you you have you have opium, and you have spiritualists. I mean, you have con man. Yeah, you have con men, and you have doctors who are, like, 3% better than con men. But there's nothing really to do about this and pretty much everyone but the Czar and Zarina except, like, oh, ****. Well, he's not going to make it to 20. Like, this kid's not going to last long. Yeah, this kid's ******. They cannot take that because at this point she's kind of worn out. She's had five kids. They're not easy pregnancies for her. She's not as young anymore, and she's like, I can't have another child. And because he does love his wife, the Zara is not going to force her. You know, I think a lot of monarchs would have been like, the **** you say. Like, you're going to roll these dice again. I don't care what happens. I'm sorry. What was that? I think you're like, by the way, it's like, it wasn't an easy pregnancy. I'm like, yeah, I think that's just because it was in 1901. Didn't like Tito 4? Umm. Or 1905. Yeah. And this, you know, so this is like a horribly devastating for the Romanov family. Cause it it kind of means like we're going to have to hand over ruling to like one of our cousins or something like this isn't going to keep going. And and that means that's to the Czar, even though there's like protests and uprisings and a an increasingly disastrous war. That's what makes Nikki feel like a failure. Well, yeah, because it's because it's a boy, but it's not. It's not raising the boy, it's a boy. It it's a boy who's not gonna live long enough to continue making bad decisions that affect the lives of 1,000,000. Daddy. Daddy anyway. Nicholas. He's while he's trying to deal with this and dealing with the fact that his wife is increasingly having breakdowns over the fact that her son is kind of constantly on the edge of death, which understandable reason to have a breakdown. Russia is kind of breaking down because the war is going poorly. People are protesting, yada yada yada. Nicholas reshuffles his generals and his ministers basically does this thing of like, well, it has to be someone else's fault that none of this is going well, so I'm just going to kind of randomly fire and replace people until things start to work better. The problem can't be with me. Yeah. How could it be? Yeah. And you're so adept, Nick. So one of the guys he brings on is this new minister Mersky who points out, like, hey, there's this campaign among liberals to create, like, a Congress, basically a constitutional representation for the people. You know, which folks have been lobbying for for a while. His grandpa was about to put one through and murski's like, hey, this is really popular. And because it's really popular, if you do it, a lot of the people who are protesting and striking right now might stop and, like, you can focus on. The other million problems you've created, and maybe if you don't do this, there's going to be a revolution. And the Emperor Nicholas the Second does not take this very well. His response is quote, you know, I don't hold autocracy for my own pleasure. I act in this sense only because it's necessary for Russia. I'll never agree to a representative form of government because I consider it harmful to the people whom God has entrusted to me. So hearing this Minsky's response is everything has failed. Let us build jails. Of course, yeah, we're going to have to throw a lot of people in prison or they're going to murder us. So Minsky at least seems to have the lay of the land reasonably well. On Sunday, January 9th, 1905, as the Russian Army launches a huge offensive in Manchuria, a protest March of thousands of workers swarmed towards the palace where Nicholas and his family live. Troops at the palace opened fire and charged the protesters on horseback, and they killed more than 1000 people. This is not like a Kent State sort of deal. We're like a couple of guys. Panic and there's, you know, a handful of people die and like everybody like stares in shock. This is like ranks of men firing and mass into a crowd and then running them down on horseback with Sabres. Classic not to whitewash Kent State, but this is like 300 or so of them and at the same time. I mean, I'm from Boston where we had a bombing where like three people died and we're like, this is the worst thing that has ever happened. So I I understand it in Russia happens on a different scale. And on this day when his troops kill 1000 civilians in order to defend his regime from protest, Nicholas writes this in his diary. A terrible day Lord, how painful and sad. Mama arrived from town, lunched with everyone, went for a walk with Misha, Mama stayed the night. Big, big, big deal for you, Nick. Big day for you, huh? 1000 people died. Mama came. What a day. I think mostly the math. A lot on your mostly that, maybe. Yeah, that's the main thing there. It's very funny how, like completely sociopathic these people are to like the suffering and death of their subjects on on a staggering scale. But you know, who do care? Their subjects and doesn't ignore their horrible demises. I'm. I'm going to guess it's your sponsor. Right. That's right. When you die, our sponsors, every one of them genuinely sad, and they'll write about it in their Diaries, and they've predicted those deaths they have. They know exactly when you're going to die. So maybe, you know on this ad they'll tell you the exact moment that you'll expire. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. 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This fall on revisionist history, is there anything that we haven't talked about or? I should have asked you if you'd like to add that seems relevant. You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Ohh, you're really prescient. Eerily. So Jeff, we're, we're, we're, we're at a we're in a dicey time for, for the Romanov dynasty as this is happening or if not that long after this is happening and like well a couple of months and so may of that year, May 14th, the Baltic fleet reaches the war zone, right, reaches Southeast Asia broadly, right. You know it's a big area. They're kind of trying to get to, to Port Arthur and they're steaming around all these little you know hugging the coast and while they're sort of getting into the. Battle space the Japanese Admiral, a guy named Togo. Spots them ahead of time and is smarter than anybody who has ever worked for the Czar. Togo is very good at what he does. He actually believes he's the reincarnation of Horatio Nelson, the British Admiral who wanted a whatever that ******* famous sea battle. He's a bit of a **** but he's really good at running a Navy and he spots the the the Russian Navy and he sets his troops up in an ambush and one night the. Supposedly the reason this all happens is that like a some dude on a. A medical ship in the Russian fleet forgets to close a window, and it allows the Japanese fleet to spot them in a flow at night, and the Japanese fleet ambushes the pride of the Russian Navy and wipes them out. 30 ships sunk to the bottom of the sea in like a day and 1/2 or so, including the flagship of the Russian Navy, and they don't really lose anybody. It's like a more than 1000 Russian sailors dead and like 100 Japanese sailors dead or something like that. It's like it is, it is a it is a terrible disaster. It goes bad. That's Japanese music, yeah. It goes as badly as it possibly could have done. Somebody called the match. Yeah. Yeah, they are. This is, this is really like, I don't know, what's a who's a boxer? Who killed somebody? Emile Griffith. This is an Emile Griffith situation. That's Togo. He's he's just he's just permanently knocked the Baltic fleet unconscious and they are never getting out. Yeah. Yeah, I I have that equation of like that, that like stone Cold Steve Austin coming in, ravaging them and just leaving while this is laying on the ground. That's kind of what the Japanese fleet does. So this, number one, leads very quickly to the Russians capitulating. You know, they lose the Russo Japanese war and this is kind of the thing, they have now lost 2/3 of their entire Navy, effectively. Daddy, daddy. My toys. Daddy. I've lost my boats and they can't like, it's one of those things. Not only is this just the disaster like it would be for any country, but this is also like the first time that a major European power has lost a war, a modern war, to people who are not white. And that is like that. People start flipping out all over the damn world about this **** man. Racism will get you, and this really ****** off everyone in Russia's. The right wing is ****** because it's like us. We're the ones who lose a war to the Japanese, and the people who aren't right wing are are ****** because, like, how many of our guys did you get killed for no reason? Like, I like the two different reasons are like, we lost to them and the other and the other side is like, wait, we did what? My brother's dead. So, more protests. Well, Russia, the battleship Potemkin mutinies in Odessa, which is a fate goes on to be a pretty famous moment. And Nicholas the Second well, all this is going on well. The potemkin's mutinying. While large chunks of Russia are no longer under the control of the Russian state like, that's the extent to which the government loses control. Nikki accepts an invitation from his cousin, the Kaiser, to go hang out on their yachts together. Classic. So, like the Baltic and Caucasus have have overthrown the government and. Like, murdered local officials and are independent principal or independent republics right now. And Nikki's like, I I need to get away from it all. I'm going to sail on a boat with my cousin. He's like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jet. You guys, you got this? Yeah. This seems fine, right? Yeah. Yeah. You got this. I mean, to be honest, if I was one of his his ministers, like, yeah, get the get him the **** out of here. No, I think it's that this is the right move for everyone is to have him be like, I'm going to. I'm going to get the. Gonna get the **** out. Yeah. You. Why don't you take an extra couple of months? You know, just really clear your head. Yeah. Why did you go hang out with that ******* cousin? He goes. So, yeah, I'm gonna quote now from the Oxford University Press. In 1905, there were 3228 agrarian disorders that caused 28 million, 872,759 rubles worth of damage. Roberta Manning and her study of the 1905 Revolution stated under these conditions of near total breakdown in government authority and paralysis of the government. Elite, which temporarily lost faith in its ability to administer the nation's rural Russia, rose up to join its urban partners in the greatest, most destructive series of agrarian uprisings since the Pugachev Rebellion of the 18th century. So by the end of 1905, there are 13,995 recorded strikes. There are riots. There are there are like thousands of assassinations over this period of time, like they are massacring government officials by by the ******* football teams worth. That seems egregious, right? I mean, yeah, like, I get, I get it, but also at the same time, it's like, I feel like a couple of guys got a lot caught up. Yeah. I mean it's pretty bad. Like it's really ugly and and it's ugly in part because like. Not to take anything from like the the ministers or from the terrorists who are in some of these are acts of were like just a guy will shoot this dude who was like a police Commissioner who was like specifically like you did this crackdown, I'm gonna ******* kill you. Some of them are like we're going to set off 80 pounds of TNT in a crowded neighborhood to like take this guy out. You know riot fever baby catch. It's a lot of it is really ugly and part of why it's really ugly is this are kind of established. I mean his he was his dad established back in the 18. 60s when their grandpa was assassinated. That like, well, whenever there's unrest, we kill people in huge numbers. And that's how we deal with unrest is mass murder. And the the Czar has 1000 people killed, you know, at the at the gates of his palace. Like that is the way the Russian state handles unrest. So when people rise up against the Russian state, where are the stakes? This is how you fight. You fight by killing huge numbers of people. I learned from watching you, dad, you know, like that's pretty, it's a pretty base answer too, because it's like, I mean, that's like the number one thing. Go to I guess this is what I guess this is how this works. So, yeah and the government's the first thing they always have to like throw out, obviously like every other government when there's, you know, any kind of popular unrest and pogroms are happening in this. It's very messy time get out. I mean so you've got obvious and some of those programs are like these, these right wing groups, the, the, the Black Hundreds, which are like zaris. We'll talk about them in a little bit. Some of them are happy are some of them are being done by like left wing groups. I think most of it is from the right, most of these programs, a lot of it. So I probably the bulk of it isn't isn't specifically it. It's just like it's reactions to the things that the that the left are doing. So you'll have like a striker, an uprising in Odessa, or you'll have a terrorist attack that kills this minister and then people will blame it on the Jews and there will be a program and you know, like that's that's kind of the way this whole thing goes. It's a very messy period of time. Russia does not have cops really. Like they have police and they they try to tamp down on unrest. But they don't there. There's not, there's like one of them for every several 1000 people. So whenever they really need to crack heads, it's the army. But the Army's mutinying all over because they've just lost this war, just like the Navy. So the only thing you can really get the army to crack down on is the Bolsheviks, right? So when you have these left wing uprisings, the Czar can generally get military units and to fight them. But when you have these programs that are responses to these uprisings, in some cases you can't convince the Army's not going to go crack down on them. If the army's like, well, we're pretty racist, too. And the cops are, like, actively participating in the program, so they're not gonna do they're like, no, that part's cool. So Nicholas also comes to see that like, well, maybe these programs are a good thing because all of the people doing the revolutions are Jews, which is not true, but they are. There are a number of them are Jewish people because Jewish people are particularly oppressed by the Czar. Is someone lying about Jews so they can do violence towards them? That's there's this thing later in life when he gets over the fact he spends a lot of time listing out all of the revolutionaries and like their secret Jewish roots, which he's wrong about. A lot of them were not Jewish, that he just like found ways to believe they were Jewish because he comes to believe that like all resistance to his regime is rooted in the Jews. He writes this in a letter to his mom. Quote 9/10 of the troublemakers are Jews. The people's whole anger turned against them. That is how the pogroms happened. It is amazing how they took place in the towns of Russia and Siberia. Now, there's a lot of debate as to whether or not those are deliberately incited and organized programs as a way to regain control and perhaps distract people from attacking the state. Whether or not he had any sort of plan, the violence often worked out exactly as one assumes he would have wanted, and I'm going to quote now from an academic study in Monday ruse. After the astounding news of the October manifesto, demonstrations and meetings with red flags began to occur now and then. They were accompanied by excesses insulting to the Czarist throne. This is like the start of the the left wing revolution against the Czar. Portraits of Nicholas the 2nd, so revered by monarchists, were taken down by walls and sometimes from walls and sometimes destroyed at meetings. Money was collected for Nicholas's burial on Kiev, on the balcony of the City Duma building. One of those in a meeting cut a hole in Azaris portrait and sticking his own thread through the hole, replacing Razor's face. Shouted. Now I am the sovereign. You have to imagine that guy was pretty, pretty drunk. I got to be honest, man, that sounds like that. That's a good time and *** ** * *****. Sound fun? This is the good timing. *** ** * ***** part. It takes a turn here. The admirers of autocracy, old customs and order regarded such events as an outrage, a triumph of Jews and sadistic, seditious intelligentsia, and came out with a furious protest. Real cases of offences to monarchist symbols similar to that described above were not ubiquitous. Sometimes they were exaggerated or just invented from nothing by pre pre program rumors, often with preposterous accusations of outrageous against Orchid Orthodox shrines or czarist portraits. For example, right before Agroman Kiev, rumors circulated about an attack by slur against Jewish people. To a monastery, black hundreds organized belligerent counter demonstrations, sometimes under pretext of celebrating the 9th anniversary of the ascension of Nicholas the 2nd to the throne, which clashed with left wing meetings and fights turned into pogroms. Depending on the possibility or desire of local authorities to restore order, these could continue for days. Almost inevitably, the Czars portrait was present at these disgraceful events. Black 100 demonstrations were often were very often physically organized around the Emperor's portrait. It played an important symbolic role, highlighting the assembled crowd's. Guilty to the throne and as if it had provided Zara sanction to the program. Among Programas, rumors spread wildly that Nicholas second, the second, permitted them to reckon, smash and beat the seditious aunties, anti monarchy rebels in Tomsk, the following ritual was observed. A crowd would come up to a store and the one walking up front would turn to the portrait of Nicholas and ask Your Majesty, do you allow us to destroy this store? The one carrying the portrait would answer. I permit it. So it's I'm going. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that's not on the level. Been officially state sanction. It isn't. It isn't because the the states not sending in troops to stop this and later on in the wake of this Nicholas pardons a lot of the pogroms lists. As he just wrote to his mom, like he sees most of the revolutionaries as Jewish. He sees the peoples anger against Jewish folks. He sees these programs as like an expression of honest and fair anger. So while he's not, he is not saying go out and destroyed Jewish businesses, but when these crowds take his portrait and use it to, like, justify their destruction of Jewish businesses, they're not making that up out of whole cloth, you know? Fair. Yeah. Yeah, and it it it's it's it's pretty ugly. There is one cool moment in some of this stuff where there. So one of the things that will happen is these processions, these black hundreds marching with torches of the Czar will, like, walk around and they'll demand people on the street remove their caps and like, bow to the czar. And if you don't do this, you'll get the **** beaten out of you, right? Like it's it's kind of like this gang being like, hey, you got to like the guy in our picture or we're going to kick the **** out of you. You know, sometimes they murder people. And there's, yeah, we've had we've had that in America pretty, pretty recently. And we will again. There's a beautiful moment. There's this Bolshevik VE Morozov who encounters one of these possessions and they're like, hey, you got to take your hat off and you got to declare loyalty to this picture of this car. And he doesn't do that. VE morozoff. Instead, he calls the Zara scoundrel, pulls out a gun, shoots 2 of the people carrying the portrait to death, and does get beaten so badly that he nearly dies. But he survives. I mean, he killed two people and A and a portrait. That's a pretty good response. He did get nearly beaten to death, though, so, you know. Ah, so mileage may vary. Yeah, he made it into the book. Made it. They're all dead in the story now. But he made it into the book. We do all. It probably sucked at the time, but we do all know he was a ****** now. Damn right. Hey, man, *** kickings happen that just that's going to happen. Like what happened? Shooting two guys holding a portrait of an *******? This forever? Yeah, that literally. That's that's your new. That's your new. MasterCard commercial, even though they haven't made those commercials and what like 15 is, it is a little dated. But you know what's not a dated ad is these ads right now. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. 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Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Ohh yeah, we are back. So those modern, those modern ads we just had shamefully modern. So Jews were not the only racial victims of these pros arrest mobs. Back for mats. So ******* funny. Yeah that was some great. Anyway, the Jews weren't the only one. There were other races that the Czarist sated. Yeah, in north and central Russia, I guess. These aren't racial victims, but students and academics are targeted and often murdered. Like they'll they'll beat up college kids and professors and assassinate them the right will because of their connections to townies. Yeah yeah, kind of. It's also like a lot of the people, often it'll be a case of like, yeah, some like college students who got radicalized will set off a bomb to kill these local officials. And then as a result, some, like people in the town will go murder their professor, you know, **** like that's happening too. Oh, fun. It's ugly, you know, it's it's kind of a civil war is going on in Russia right now, and it's very much a prelude for the Civil War that will happen not all that long in the future. And kill, what, 4 million people? I mean, yeah, there are other targets. In Baku, Armenians were targeted by the Tsarists. Getting any kind of comprehensive death toll would be impossible, but during October of 1905, at least 16122. People were murdered and 3000, four, 544 injured in pogroms alone. That's just deaths from these kind of like right wing masses of violence. Those numbers come from police sources, though, which probably undercounts the death toll. Shlomo Lambroza, who's a scholar, calculates more than 3103 deaths just among Jews during the 1905 pogroms. Now historians seem in agreement that Czar Nicholas the Second did not have a concerted plan to spark programs. He was kind of OK with them. He did not devote. A lot of effort to stopping them, but there were there for years afterwards. People would like theorize that he had orchestrated the programs. They're really does not seem to be evidence of that, that it was a central plan. But we do know that antischism anti-Semitism was stoked purposefully by the Czars men. Whether or not he gave the order, there was this. This is kind of found out afterwards that in a corner of the Saint Petersburg Police Department there's a secret printing press which is putting out pamphlets this entire time urging people to quote. Kill Jews to tear them apart into tiny pieces? Yeah, that's not a not a lot of, like, wiggle room. There's not a lot of room for yeah, for interpretation. Just just kill them. It's fine. Police? Yeah, no, we are kidding. Don't kill them. But to kill Guy Printing, this is a is a jandarm officer named, Sarov, and he's has a role in spreading the, the, the, the, the protocols of the Elders of Zion too. And he's like he's funneling them using police resources from Saint Petersburg through right wing organizations who spread them around the country. And oftentimes these things will spread to an area and then there will be programs. So this is where, like, again, maybe Nikki wasn't explicitly aware of all this, but like, his dudes were doing it in the city where he was living using his money. So the idea that people suspect he had a role in directly inciting pogroms, it doesn't come out of nowhere. You know, again, we may have seen something like this relatively recently in our country. Yeah, thankfully not with that kind of death toll. But it is kind of like the the plausible deniability of the autocrat, you know, who's like, Oh yeah, I mean people. It's horrible when people do violent. Things. I don't think those violent things are wrong, but like, I'm not organizing it. They just happen. And I say it's OK, but it's also bad at the same time when anyone pushes me on it, you know, like, yeah, we've seen this. We may have. I'm not going to lie. That's something we've seen. So the wave of rebellions, you know, the, the programs kind of burned themselves out after enough people get the murder out of their systems and the stealing out of their systems, the rebellions, the actual like kind of left wing uprisings against the state. Are put down by the military and Nikki orders exceptional brutality be used in defense of his regime when the Saint Petersburg Workers District is stormed by Russian troops. His he has his soldiers use artillery to pound populated districts of his own capital, killing 3000 people. Yeah, a lot. Which is like, that's as many, minister. That's as many like government officials as the revolutionaries kill in a period of years. And then, just like the shelling of his own capital, the Emperor writes in his diary. Quote, The armed rebellion in Moscow has been crushed. The Abscess was growing. Now it's burst when one of his generals in the Baltics is not putting down the locals with enough brutality for Nikki's liking. Bizarre sends a man to tell him, quote, the only thing you'll get in trouble for is not. Being brutal enough, he then immediately executes 1000 prisoners. So, like, he sees this guy puts down this rebellion and he's like, you're taking a lot of prisoners alive. Like, I might get angry at you for that, but if you kill a bunch of them, there's no amount of people you could kill and **** me off. So this guy kills 1000 people and like, very rightly being like, well, this are basically just said I should murder more of these folks. I like that he was like, given permission. He's like, well, let's just go for the whole thing. Yeah, well, I guess, I guess we'll try. Simon Montefiore writes when he heard that a punitive detachment. Accepted the surrender of rebellious Livonians. He insisted the town should have been destroyed. Arrests were celebrated with the word power. This is Nikki writing in his own diary while the summary execution of 26 rebellious railway Rd workers earned an imperial Bravo, Bezo Brasov, brother of Nikki's, Far East advisor and one of his favorite guards. Officers staged ghoulish public shows, shows of bodies dangling on Gibbets when Commander Richter, son of Alexander, the 3rd's crony now leading a punitive detachment in the Baltics. Not only shot his prisoners, but hanged the bodies. Afterwards, Nicholas wrote another Bravo trip off. Informed him that Cossacks had overused their whips. Very well done, applauded Nicholas when he heard of more executions. He commented. This really tickles me. So this is how he writes about like the crimes against humanity. I'm tickled by the fact that you've executed these people. Oh well done. They whipped people to death. Bravo. It definitely. It definitely sees that, that. Like that disconnect when you're raised. Like the boppish. Child of of privilege and and and power, be like, oh, Brava. It is really like, if you've ever played a game like civilization or, you know, age of wonders or whatever where you like, build an empire. And there's sometimes people rebel and you crack down on these like fake people who don't really exist. He feels that same way about like, the lives of thousands of real people. It's like he's playing a video game. He's like looking at his maps and someone saying we put them down and we we executed. 1000 of them are like, how many of us would you like to kill? Have these that we've captured, and he makes a note of how many people he once killed. And, like, then he he goes home feeling like he's winning the game finally. I mean, I feel like a winner. Yeah, yeah, we're all a winner getting to hear this story. So in total, the zars Min kill 15,000 people at least and deport 45,000 more cracking down on the rebellion. And this time it's enough, you know, like this is enough that he is able to hold on to power. Barely. Yeah, in eight years. Things aren't gonna go so well. Now. Before we roll out today, Jeff, we should probably talk a little bit. About RA, RA Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen, Hellboy, villain boy, villain. Rasputin. Yeah, one of the better Hellboy villains. Guy, I get told I look like on a not irregular basis. I can see that, yeah, well, and it's one of those things. He is definitely the single most famous person today in the whole Romanov story. As a general rule, the only reason people talk about Nicholas the Second or his wife is either to talk about Anastasia or to talk about. Rasputin and generally both at the same time, like in the Disney movie. I don't. I don't think you look like Rasputin. For the record, there's there's, there's more love in your eyes. Thank you, Sophie. That's very sweet of you. No, this is Robert. So it's one of those things pop history is right in that this guy really is as influential as as the the popular. You know, depictions make him seem he's a huge part of the regime and why a bunch of stuff happens. It's also like wrong in some weird ways because he is like, it always portrays him as this malevolent force and he gives a lot of bad advice, his advice. But he also is like one of the people saying like you should probably stop being ****** to Jewish people, you should probably not get into world. For one, now that's why people don't like he's also a ******. Like there's he's not a good person. We'll do an episode on Rasputin someday in the future, but I'm genuinely surprised you haven't. Well people keep telling me I look like him and it makes me you do not self-conscious. Thank you, Sophie. So for now the Cliffs notes are that he was a poor kid from the east of ******* nowhere who got in trouble for like stealing some **** and sleeping around. And he gets kicked out of the town he comes from. He becomes a priest. He ***** a bunch more people and gradually. Turns into this, like, guru type cult figure. He's kind of a cult leader. He's he's not quite what we recognize as a cult leader because he doesn't have, like, this group who have a shared identity, and that identity is like worshipping him because, like, that would be too much for this jar and Zarina, right, the zars kind of his own cult. You don't get to be a cult leader like we know of a cult leader in Russia in this. No, because that's the ZAR he. Yeah, but he's kind of like cult cuckolding. Are because the czar is kind of his follower. It it's it's it's an odd situation. And again he he follows, you know, in the footsteps of a Philippe who who really very, very conscientiously. Ease into the ground in front of or behind him so that this guy would have an easier time pulling one over on the biggest rube in all of history. So Rasputin, you know, as he starts to like, develop this cult following, he starts, he claims that he calls himself a healer, and he begins traveling around wealthy St. Petersburg circles. You know, the families of the nobles and the wealthy basically like helping. A lot of times it'll be like a woman has some sort of hysteria. And obviously his prescription is, well, you should probably **** Rasputin. You need that **** ****. And it works. But at the time, I guess cause because he keeps keeps getting word of mouth, you know, that's not all. He's getting enough mouth. Well, it's not. Yeah. He winds up having a making his first connection to the Romanov family through a Romanov named Nicolasa, who's like a cousin of the Czar. And Nicolasa is kind of competent. He's one of, he's a soldier and he's one of the few Romanovs who actually like isn't just like doing that to dress up like he's not a complete idiot when it comes to military matters. He's known as the terrible. For his temper. And the czar brings him in close to the family in the 1905 uprisings because he thinks he might need to appoint a dictator. Like, it's going bad enough in 1905 that it's like I might need to make my cousin the dictator so that I don't have to take the stink on me of doing some of this ugly ****. It doesn't wind up. I mean, why not have somebody with the nickname the terrible be in charge. Hey, cousin, the terrible. I got this, like, problem. Now nicolasa again. Competent soldier, kind of a crazy person. He wanted to be a medieval knight. He kept a quart of dwarves around him, I think because he read that in a medieval storybook at some point and decided it sounded cool. That's what he describes them as, a cult of of a quart of of dwarves. I think it's, you know. It's the it's 1906. And for an example of yeah, I'm not, I'm not judging the the words you should this point in time, but you should judge the pretty nice thing to say in 1906. Because another thing he's famous for is he gets really drunk at a party once and he wants to show off his favorite sword. And the way he does that is by using it to cut his pet dog in half. All right. Well, that's not, I would. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's not, that's not good. It's not. That's probably worse than some questionable linguistic choices he's made. Now, like most nobles in this. He believes in what he he described as the divine origin of czarist power. He felt God had given Nicholas the Second some special secret strength that would lead him out, that would help him lead Russia out of, like, its problems. So obviously he falls immediately for everything. Russia's sons. Guy thinks he's a medieval knight. He's like, very gullible. He buys into all this right the **** away, and this is going to be the way in which Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen. Not really, but that's what a lot of Russians believe at this time. That's how he winds up getting into the family, and we will talk more about that and more about everything else in our conclusion to the epic saga, Nicholas the 2nd. What * ****. Jeff. He got any plug cables to plug first? Yeah, like you mentioned before, I have a great show called Jeff has cool friends Bi weekly interview show with all of my cool nerdy compatriots and you can find that at patreon.com/jeff may for early uncensored episodes with bonus content. I also have a great monthly show called a fine with Kim Crawl among others. You can also check me out on Tom and Jeff watch Batman on the gameplay unemployed network. We gotta have you on one of those episodes, Robert. Absolutely. I have. I have my second. Watched a Batman or two in my time. We sure we've watched the lot. We sure have. You can also check out you don't even like sports and unpopular opinion, both on the UNPOPPED network. And you can find me on social media at hey there, jeffro on Twitter and Instagram. Don't find me on Facebook. Don't be don't be weird. Don't find him on Facebook. But find that's for my talk. And if he's not on Tik, T.O.K deepfake him. I'm not. Should I be? I'm feel too old. I'm too old for Tiktok. I think everyone is. I think the 12 year olds on Tik T.O.K are too old for Tiktok. Yeah, I'm too old. I'll be starting an account next week. Speaking of next week, we'll be back tomorrow or Thursday, whatever, later this week with more episodes about the jar. And I have a novel. You can find it in pre-order it and get a signed copy by Googling AK Press after the revolution. So go do that. Do it now. Do it now. That way now. Do it now. OK, good. Thank you for doing that now, everybody. Bam. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break our handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's SPREAK. Theyare.com in the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you could completely remove one phrase from your vocabulary, which phrase would you choose? I don't know. Correct answer. 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