Travelling Back In Time to Throw American Cheese at Lenin’s Head | The Russian Revolution of 1917 (Part 4/5)

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1:42Welcome back to Finn vs. History. I'm with Horatio Gulloski. And listen, this is part four of our plunge into the Russian Revolution. Our cold plunge. Our cold plunge. It's very cold. we've been bad our punishing Russian cold plunge into the revolution but because the only way we're going to reach enlightenment is by punishing ourselves exactly because the Russians there's only truth in pain peg yourself to death for salvation to be honest this couple of years is a bit of a holiday in Russian history this is some of the least painful years they have if you look back at this as a golden era this is the golden era only 15 million people died in four years oh halcyon days they're eating horses raw do you remember those beautiful days you don't know you're born if only you don't know you're born what's that queuing for bread I wish we have done a rough history of Russia up to this point we've explained a lot of the key characters but we are now I'd like to just I'd like to just we have to remember at all times that our audience are very very very very fat yep but also they're thick ungrateful they're ungrateful and they're thick yeah and this I think what we're about to delve into 1917 in Russia we're bitten off more than we can chew definitely now above our pay grade people might think you don't really chew much on this show um this is liquid food history which is what our listeners want because many of them are in care homes wide gullet all the way down they don't know that this is playing on the tv they can't stop it yeah so we need to be aware that they're there this is mainly for their carers this show we when we talk about 1917 there's a it's i texted you yesterday it's essentially the amount of stuff that happens in this year in Russia it's like the entirety of the troubles in six months but if before every bomb or protest they have a 10 hour committee meeting about it it's a blend it's incredibly exciting it's 9-11 decided by local council yeah it's so exciting every inch it's exciting and it's very boring it's true yeah it's both it's actually I don't think any event has been more like that in history where it's so unbelievably boring and exciting at the same time yeah simultaneously something so truly exhilarating and historic and it feels like the whole of human history is turning on a knife edge in one day and then you have a 15 hour meeting where nothing gets decided and it's so boring should we fly the second plane into the tower right first congress now in session what do you do about the second plane yeah and it takes 20 hours to decide well i guess on a sort of 9 11 scale when 9 11 happens in what a morning right you know in space about 20 minutes 20 minutes 9 11 and then it's titanic which is like uh 9 11 about five hours yeah right and then you have uh i guess the Russian Revolution where it's 9-11 that happens in about six or seven months and then you have the Troubles.

4:22So you should probably have a sort of scale with stretching out on 9-11. So 9-11 is T20 and then the Titanic I guess is Is it ODI or the 100? The 100. And then what was the other one you said? Well it would be Russian Revolution. Russian Revolution is I guess the one day maybe it's the World Cup one day World Cup. Right, right, right. Takes about six weeks. And then the Troubles is Test Cricket. Yeah, the Ashes. Yeah. The highest form of the game the Troubles. but then you can also view it as like uh the whole of russian history is an ultra test cricket you know because it is just the whole thing is a night that whole history is not the whole thing is an ultra marathon russian history is an ultra marathon as is reading any of their books it's a really tough mudder yeah yeah it's like like extremely tough actually yeah it's like a tough mudder but you die at the end and you get beaten by cossacks it's a fuck mudder yeah you have to eat the cossacks you know tough matter that you do with your recruitment team imagine that you get raped by cossacks basically yeah and also you're not doing it on your weekend that's your working week um so look let's just try in 1917 i think it's it's we must remember that people are listening to place it so to place 1917 first of all this is um uh before england won the world cup yep and it is after florence nightingale started um running her mouth titty fucking people in the um in the crimean war beds is that what she did she fucked them was she the first wet nurse right but so how does she take you fuck doesn't she well she'd get titty fuck i think yeah she gets all right she gets her tits out and then everyone feels a bit better and then she calls that nursing i think is what happens i'm not completely sure um yeah it's female history yeah so that that's female prehistory it's because female history starts around 1980 i think right so it's like sapiens yeah when the big um yeah i would like to write a sapiens but it's for women and it's like day dot year zero is like when the big sippy cups invented in the 2000s or the Stanley Cup yeah that's year zero for women before that there's just sort of unconfirmed rumours about whether it's completely spurious we can't know Joan of who?

6:24no unconfirmed anyway so what's going to happen in 1917 which will guide our next two episodes is that there's going to be a revolution in February there's a different revolution in October and then all hell breaks loose uh in between the two revolutions there's a lot of very mad shit as well so we're gonna get there slowly we're gonna try and take you with us uh we're gonna try and pour this some of you will be left behind some of you will be as you are in life we will not stop for stragglers we will we will leave men behind because we're gonna shoot our horses have a limp yeah our audience left behind every man for themselves um so january 1917 to pick up the timeline uh rask rat putin is dead yeah even though he's come back from like five times nicholas nicholas the second is now on the front line in charge of the with his big boy pants on big boy and his high-pitched voice oh excuse me can you not do that he's in charge of the russian forces on the line the world war one's going very badly yeah uh his son is a hebephile can't stop wanking over 14 year olds um he starts wanking he doesn't stop yeah uh and so his wife the tsarina uh i can't remember what her name is Alexandra um she is it's sort of in charge and it's all going very badly she's very woo woo mystics kind of crystals but she's now running an empire yeah and Russia's probably the least crystal-y place on earth in terms of like hippy dippy shit yeah um ironically i mean scary hippy dippy shit shit i guess when you get out into siberia and russ putin and stuff like that yes there's more cult like the sex cult i don't know if that's that's crystals hippy dippy shit is it i guess if you're fucking a crystal i don't know if that's still crystals i'm into crystals really yeah i shove them up my ass yeah it's not the same same thing um so but what's interesting about 1917 february is that that is when the kind of first revolution in the beginning of this revolutionary year yeah um but it kind of happens quite unexpectedly right all of the big players aren't in town no where are they where are the players starlin is in siberia still in exile and he's playing a bit of a background role at this point yeah uh so no one knows if he's going to be a big guy at all he's just been doing dirty work he's not really a big player at this point i'm a fool to do your dirty work that's a song about starlin steely dan yeah big starlin fan steely dan empathizing with Stalin's experience in the early revolution interestingly Steely Dan one of their big songs is a sort of mournful ode to being a pedophile right Hey 19 I don't know I'm not a big Steely Dan guy I'm a huge Steely Dan guy sort of this revolution tends into Steely Grain doesn't it it does tend into Steely Grain yeah but anyway Trotsky is in New York being arrogant chatting shit one of the biggest wankers of all time in my opinion what is it?

9:18Ponce nose? He's got Pazne. Pazne, which means pinch nose, right? Yeah, it's these little glasses that have no arms. Yeah, it's wanky. It's a strapless bra for your face. Yes. The ultimate fuck boy, one of the most, the biggest, you know, if you're in a kitchen with him, you're getting ghosted. He's got a tote bag. He's reading Sally Rooney and he'll never text you back. Trotsky founded COS. He does that slightly after February 1917. That's what he wears. He's a nightmare. And then Lenin. Lenin is in Zurich still furiously huffing and puffing. He's like, I'm going to die. I'm never going to be able to bust my revolutionary nut.

9:53Sex gets in the way of a good time for Lenin. He likes reading and writing. The only real cum he can have is the cum of the revolution, right? So sexual cums mean nothing to him. This is a very low pleasure. The only real pleasure is a proletariat, a dictatorship of the proletariat. That's the only time I feel like I can bust. He wants to wrap the bourgeoisie round his neck and then cum predatory at hammers and sickles. And I think that's, to be honest, of the great, we've studied a lot of history on this podcast. A theme of the great men of history is they are looking for the higher cum. Yeah.

10:28It's not these little cums here and there that you pigs are going after. The great men of history, they dedicate their life to one extraordinary cum. To searching for the hardest cum. Gaddafi, over his truck. Hitler. Hitler. It's about your life building up to one extraordinary uh you know cum that reverberates through the eyes on the prize the cum that was heard around the world that's gaddafi's at last days um so uh he's in jurick and they all you know there's there's definitely discontent in russia of course but the revolution takes them all by surprise basically there's a lot of strikes happening in petrograd mainly because the the train lines have been frozen uh so a lot of the bread isn't coming through and people love bread well they only have bread you're speaking as if it's a choice as if like they have lots of salad there's lots of different options we discussed russian salad is all bread and mayonnaise it's a disgrace it's still bread it's a disgrace and the bread's also it's like black bricks you could build a house with russian bread yeah it's like rye black bread yeah yeah but it's all they've got to eat it must all be very very bloated yeah as a people exactly because i guess it is interesting how um you know as someone who i struggle to digest a lot of bread you know a little bit gluten intolerant and the amount the it's quite triggering how much bread plays a part in you know in the lord's prayer yes give us this day our daily bread it doesn't take into account people who struggle to digest bread are you saying that's on the christianity to change i think they should i think it's like you know it's one food type and it's excluding a lot of people who maybe struggle with bread.

12:03To be surely the end point of woke is when gluten intolerant people are campaigning for the end of the Lord's Prayer. Well, it's just, you know, it's very specific. Can we not have a more kind of general food? Then why is the specificity of bread? Give us this day our daily rice? No, that's still, you know, it should be our daily food or something or like... Jesus turns into bread, doesn't he? I don't know. I don't care. Is Jesus a big loaf of bread? I don't know. I don't fucking care. Anyway, these strikes and demonstrations are increasing in Petrograd and on the 23rd of February there is an International Women's Day march.

12:36Yes. They're burning bras. This is the first one actually. Is it? This is a Leninist invention of International Women's Day and they are in Petrograd in the street and they are chanting for bread which again is very funny to think of white women in the streets chanting for bread. Yeah. Because nowadays obviously they'd be chanting no I don't they're scared of bread aren't they? They're scared of bread because it's going to put the pan. Salad, lettuce uh green cucumbers matcha exactly it'll be a matcha riot these days yeah but the juice cleanse diet uh but in these days the past a foreign country they're in russia they're chanting for bread this horrible black bread that you could build a house with yep and as russia a very sexist chauvinistic culture very traditional culture so having a the first women's march there is quite yeah it's mad it's mad it's strange um so these guys they're all wearing like pussy hats yeah well-behaved women don't make history that sort of stuff this is hashtag me too is the start of it as well um hashtag hashtag bread now i'm starving hashtag bread tool please and uh what happens is the the cossacks who are kind of the that i think i'm right in saying that we haven't explained the cossacks actually no i don't think we have to but but peter the great sort of invented a kind of praetorian guard i understand no that's the streltsy right so the cossacks are the it's kind of a to be honest the cossack in many ways is sort of like the american cowboy oh is it out or cavalry.

13:58And they often get conscripted to be an elite cavalry force. Right. But they're all over Russia, but mainly folks in the Don region around Ukraine. So instead of cowboys... The idea of the Cossacks is like a spirit. Instead of cowboys and Indians, you'd have like Cossacks and Eskimos. That's their version of it. Well, they have these... There's loads of racism in this region, but if you're not from this region... I'm listening. ...you all look the same. Right. That's what's funny about the kind of racial tensions in Russia is it's all specific types of other white. You know when you're ticking the boxes?

14:28White other. White other. Gypsy. Yeah. Just, you know, to all of us, you're all white other. So I don't know what you guys are fighting about. Yeah, exactly. But to them, it's like, he's completely different from me. It's like, he's Polish, he's Latvian. It's like, you're the same, lad. You're all the same. You've got good lager. You've got a strong work ethic. Terrible salad. Terrible salad. Nothing worse than an Eastern European salad. Yes. Actually, there's quite a lot worse. We're about to get into several places. Yeah, they do quite a lot of worse things. So the Cossacks are told, this is the czarist move, is you just shoot anyone who's facing you in your direction.

15:03The Cossacks... I guess it's probably seen as a socialist thing, the February version, because it's an innovation women's day, so it probably feels quite aggressive towards them. Yeah, I guess they go, none of this please. And so the Cossacks, they defy orders and they cross the picket line, I guess. Because they're fed up as well, because a lot of them are getting sent to the front line, dying there. They're also starving. So I think what I was going to say about the Praetorian Guard element was that they had been put into the meat grinder of the front because they were just putting so many men.

15:32So these troops, maybe they are Cossacks. And so if they hadn't fed the Praetorian Guard to the front, maybe they wouldn't have crossed the line here. Exactly, exactly. But the Cossacks go, fuck this, we're with these hot chicks wearing pussy hats. And there's annoying kind of like feminist allies that were on the march. this is what feminist looks like yeah exactly please get a picture of Benedict Cumberbatch with this is what feminist looks like we might need to go back over that at some point culturally that kind of 2013 2012 era when Nick Clegg was wearing it when I guess you don't know at the time how it's going to be looked back on oh my god look at the state of that yeah that's a very much that's a pre-2016 face isn't it yeah yeah because nowadays you wouldn't make that face with a slogan like that what would the slogan be stop the boats

16:25i think i'm right it's stop the boats like this no nowadays it is it's a lot of stop what but is it you smug about stop the boat i think we should stop the birds it'd be quite funny to have like a smug um right winger because it's always the left that are smug isn't it yeah and the and the right that are angry if it was the other way around yeah it'd be quite funny to have like a smug you know send send them back i think we should send them back they will not replace us i mean that is just we need to hang that in the museum as to like you know the past is a different country i think that's the smuggest face i've ever seen on anyone that is extraordinary two fingers i mean can you can you actually imagine a more punchable man he's called benedict cumberbatch and he's wearing a t-shirt feminist looks like oh christ what a fucking cunt looks like we should get t-shirts to say that this is what a cunt looks like at the time you must have felt like you were on the right side of history yes and that it'll be looked back on as he imagined in 15 years time we'd look back on and be like wow this person knew this was the right thing to do yeah and he couldn't be more wrong yeah that look has aged like sour it's aged pretty badly yeah um no one trusts those guys anymore no it turns out they're just looking for another way to get nookie yes exactly benedict come up your patch more like uh anyway anyway there's a huge uh march of big doughy women sure demanding bread black bread yeah and the cossacks cross the picket line they side with them and there are now big riots the 24th 27th of february the protests swell the soldiers mutiny the petrograd soviet is formed now do you want to explain what that is so a soviet was were formed in the 1905 revolution soviet is russian for sort of council or meeting so the soviet union is the union of meetings um which is incredibly boring it's the meeting of the union of meetings meeting each other for unions yeah yeah they make sure that we can union we need to meet and that's why we need to have one name before we do anything though we need to decide on this by having a meeting it's insane is this a meeting does the meeting start no this is a meeting about when we're gonna have the meeting yeah this is the union of people who want to start me who's gonna take a minute for this meeting let's have a meeting to decide and who's gonna take the minutes for that you know it's a russian doll is what this country is so but that that's so it's gone all over the country right and it's a way of a council of workers basically trade union trade union and some local representation but the petrograph soviet which was set up by trotsky in 1905 is becomes incredibly important because all of this change though there's lots of stuff happening all over the empire is going to be focused on the city of petrograd so these riots these bread riots this spontaneous February revolution is where the Tsarist regime collapses because Rasputin Rasclad Putin he's smoking spliffs in the sky he's done the Tsarina is she's got ME she's just sort of every historian I've heard talk about she's like oh she's just a bit shit they don't really qualify she's just bad completely delusional my people love me they'll never tell Queen Victoria was like shouldn't you give the Queen Victoria who's her grandma were saying, shouldn't you give the Russians a bit of democracy?

19:40And the Tsarina was like, no, no, no, I know Russians. They don't fucking want it. The Tsars are like gods. And this is months before they completely run out of town. So, basically it's only at this point that the Tsar sort of realises that maybe the game's up. And he goes to try and get back to St. Petersburg, Petrograd, but the revolutionaries have control of the railways or the railway workers basically don't let him get on the train back and then on the 2nd of March he's basically surrounded by his generals on the front and they essentially peer pressure him into abdicating it's not really, it's sort of a coup I think because of how tent everything's got and how explosive it could be and how explosive it becomes it is kind of interesting both with February and October how both of those actually kind of they go with like a sort of bit of a whimper yeah and after all this time it's sort of like the Tsar cuts a figure of sort of like Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh yeah he's quite just a down oh okay 300 years of a dynasty one family have ruled the biggest landmass in the planet in a train you should abdicate very well yeah he comes not with a bang but with a whimper this episode is brought to you by PayPal You know how a mom's bag has everything?

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21:50Push your limits. Train with precision. See the results. At Equinox, that's high-performance loving. Everything you need to lock in and unlock your potential at Equinox. Start today at equinox.com. And Sar Nicholas, because he never really wanted to be Sar. He didn't really like doing the job that much. So as much as he held onto it, I think he feels like he's just so worn down and tired. He goes, fine, I guess not. And so this is on 2nd of March. And then a provisional government is formed, initially led by a guy called Prince Lovov. yeah is that not his son no he's not his son no so he's going to abdicate in favour of his son the hebephile but he's too horny for 13 year olds and he's and he's young so they go that's not fair because it's still now that he's abdicated it's what's the next system we're going to use well no because then they say it's my I'll do it for my brother who's Michael because there's still a push for maybe a constitutional monarch yeah but then he Michael goes fuck that yeah this country's insane these people love suffering I don't want to be the figure for that so then basically they realise that the institution of monarchy is done and then they form a provisional government and the Romanov family they're all put together and their story is not over but they are placed under house arrest at the Alexander Palace in Sukhoi which is in Siberia and actually supposedly they have quite a nice time for the next eight months because one thing about as bad as the Tsar Nicholas II has been his decision making has been terrible how mad the Tsarina has been something that is kind of I guess more human about them is that they do genuinely love each other and they have a very happy family and they just kind of they just enjoy five girls and a little heap of all and they just have like quite an idyllic family life and for the next eight months for the next eight months he gets pretty nasty for a little bit but they're out in the countryside he's you know going for long walks and he's like this is what I want to do it's basically like wife swap yeah It's like, oh, fuck, do you know what?

23:55Outside the palace, where I've got to cut my own logs for the fire, I'm actually having a lovely time in the fresh air. I'm working. I'm sleeping better. Me and Alexandra are getting on better. You know, this is living. They're playing cards. I'm talking to my kids. Do you know what? I really like this. Well, it's first lockdown. It's first. It's exactly what it is. It's first lockdown. The weather's really nice. And what they don't know is that they've got the third lockdown coming, which I'll say this now. if only I had gone what they went through instead of the third lockdown. I lost my mind in the third lockdown.

24:30I listened to the same song on repeat for about four months. What, like a psychopath? Like a psychopath. What, like you making yourself Guantanamo Bay? This is where I started inventing just email addresses and characters pretending to be people and just messaging them. I started flirting with an agent. Yeah. An influencer's agent started flirting with him as a woman. I just went fucking mad. So you wish you'd been killed basically. I don't want to ruin the story because it's pretty mental but they don't live they don't last the year. Anyway, let's pray tell, now that the Romanovs have fallen and there's a provisional government what do our grotty little kitchen incels, what do they do now?

25:12Hold up because it's not only the provisional government but it's an agreement because the Petrograd Soviet is so powerful now because there's all the workers and some of the people in the Navy, the Kronstadt, which is that floating naval base, right? They set up a system called Dual Power. So it makes it even more meetings, even more bureaucracy. There's the provisional government and there's also the Petrograd Soviet and both of those are going to run the country, right? Or run Petrograd. But who's in charge? That's the thing. That's what's so mad about this period is that there's no authority because there's two...

25:50authority jackie weaver it's a lot of that it's jackie there's a lot of jackie weavers oh my god that's the reason i can't i've struggled with this is there's so many jackie weavers there's 10 jackie weavers and whoever the guy is saying you've got no authority that's me that's me i'm the one calling the council leader head commandant yeah or oba's alps and then i guess if you're lenin or trotsky uh hearing about this you can't believe it you know yeah you're dropping your cornflakes when you're reading about this in the papers sorry was there was that house party and there was a kitchen that I didn't lecture someone.

26:22Oh, fuck. I've missed it. Oh, no. Yeah. So now they're desperately trying to find a way back. Did I not tell someone that women should be paid the same? Oh, my God. What am I meant to do with myself? Yeah. Absolute wankers to a man. So they need to find a way to get back because this is all their life's work and now they're getting the ultimate FOMO. How's this happen without me being there? Yeah, because Lenin, stuff happens and then he, before he like does anything, he's like, well, I need to check what the theory says about this. because he's always trying to reinterpret events through the prism of Marx and Engels.

26:52Do you know what he finds? I couldn't care less. But how Lenin returns back to the city is he's obviously exiled in Zurich. To get back to Russia, you have to go through an active war zone and enemy territory. This is crazy, by the way. This is absolutely crazy, this bit of the story. Is he disguising himself yet? No. No, okay. It's a sealed train. Now, what does that mean? I don't really know. Obviously, Germans love a sealed train, famously. the opposite of an Indian train they're far too unsealed I'd say basically it doesn't have stops where people check or checks and balances just go straight through I imagine so it's a direct train it's a direct train no stops it's a bullet train yeah and basically there's a deal done with the Bolsheviks and the Germans that they'll send Lenin through as a sort of virus yeah there's a Churchill quote about this what it's that so they do send Lenin through Germany to Petrograd and Churchill says the Germans have unleashed the greatest weapon that they've ever known Lenin yeah yeah like basically yeah like a sort of a basilisk or a petri dish they basically want to it's a disease pangolin they're just sending hurtling towards Petrograd it's a guy fucking a bat in a train and they're just going to open it and obviously because Lenin's been had a really anti-war stance they're thinking if he goes and disrupts.

28:15I think war's actually really bad. They're just in Iraq for oil. I think war's really bad. That's a really good impression, actually. Yeah, that's Lenin. So they send this disease hurtling back to Petrograd. The Germans let it go through because it's going to destroy their warfare. Do you know how that is negotiated? It's negotiated with the Bolsheviks, and I think Stalin helps potentially. So the Bolsheviks, because when they arrive, everyone assumes, or there's a rumour that starts, that they're German spies, right? That happens a bit later. But because, like, that is a betrayal in a sense, isn't it?

28:46But Lenin doesn't view it as betrayal. No, of course not. Because he has no interest about how Russia does in the war because he thinks it's an imperialist war. That's not a war of the Russian peoples anyway. He's also Russian, so he loves suffering. Yes, so it's, like, brilliant. Yeah. A loss is a win for me. Yeah, exactly. Am I closer to being killed? Brilliant. I guess it's sort of every cloud in a way. It's the opposite of every cloud. What's that then? Every cloud could fall on me and I could die. so he arrives after this like how long is the journey? find out how long that journey is because it's a very famous it's probably one of the most famous train journeys of all time at this point there's a bustling network of trains that are going to become very famous in about 20 years oh here we go eight days so a sealed train implies that he's like in a cattle car but trains at this day and age are quite nice there's the dining car I don't know I know that there's one toilet between 20 people in there right uh they i think lenin started uh running organizing the toilet like communism we had to have a meeting before we had a poo genuinely genuinely it was like a really like there was like a really like the share of the toilet had to be completely oh my god a rising tide lifts all poos um i think so a lot of uh exiled bolsheviks on the train his wife's on the train his mistress is on the train his much untalked about he's in a polycule of course he's in a polycule he's in a sealed a polycule is a sealed train in many ways a sealed fuck train Lennon he's indefinitely wouldn't check his phone on the toilet he's one of those kind of guys Lennon while he's taking the shit stares into the middle distance until he's finished Lennon's raw dogging flights yeah Lennon 100 % 100 % he's raw dogging flights he's 24 hours to Australia just thinking about revolution not even reading just thinking just thinking about it he loves thinking this guy he loves it yeah that's why he's lost all his hair because it's just he just thought it all out the heat coming off his brain yeah you know that's why Charlie has so much hair on his head do you know what I'd love to do I'd love to go back in time and just slap him on the head like you know he doesn't seem like you're doing you're already changing the course of history are you no no I'd like to go back in time and shake Hitler's hand but I'd like to go back in time can I just shake your hand sorry can I just shake your hand he's a baby just thank you you don't know me you don't know me but I'm a big fan long time listener first time caller no I want to just slap Ed Lennon you know in the office that guy Malcolm who they D-bag yeah that's what I'd like to do is Lennon so what do you know what would be more satisfying American cheese from a distance yeah yeah yeah and you fling it and so he's in the middle of giving a very sincere earnest speech yeah and then I mean if you'd done this at this speech coming up it would have changed the course of history I'd love to go back in time and do that so when he arrives back from the sealed train and this is kind of one of the most iconic moments because there's so much that happens.

31:40There's kind of few like images that really define this. Wouldn't you say? Because even me looking through this history, I'm like, I don't know. There's not many tent poles that are in the popular imagination to hold on to. Because it's absolute chaos. It's chaos. But this seems to be one of the kind of really historic moments. After this eight days in a sealed train sharing one toilet with 20 other dirty commies, he, so much as his focus being the most awake man of all time. He's raw dog eight days. He's raw dog eight days. Yeah. As soon as he's arrived with all the jet lag, whatever, he immediately is met by all of this workers, Bolsheviks, but a huge crowd of people have gathered around at Finland stations.

32:20They've been paid to be there with free beer. Did you know that? Really? Yeah. Smart. The Bolsheviks have gone, Lenin's arriving and everyone's like, who the fuck's that? Because no one knows who he is. But the Bolsheviks are like, right, free beer. They're like, oh, great, beer, bread. Drink bread. Yeah, fizzy bread. Because also at this point and what's kind of, I find so thrilling about this story just for a narrative sense is just how the Bolsheviks from such a small fringe group, they managed to slowly grow support in the space of a couple of months. Lenin stands on top of the train and delivers a very important speech where basically he's one of the only people who's offering simple, clear solutions to people's problems.

32:56Get Brexit done. Yeah. Peace, land and bread, power to the Soviets, which he has no intention of doing, by the way. as Anthony Bevo would say it's one of his three great lies Anthony Bevo? Anthony Bevo yeah Bevo's uncle Bevo's grandad and he gives a great speech and riles people up they're pissed on beer now if you'd gone back in time with a bit of American cheese which they have no idea what that is this is Russia their cheese is not like that at all they don't have cheese and you just flung just perfectly and it had just slapped him it would have undermined this whole speech and the revolution would look very differently the butterfly effect yeah we would not know what world would we live in if I'd done that yeah or it's cheese or it's like a little petit faloo and just splatter yogurt like that and then it just sort of do you know who that man is who Mikhail Gorbachev right um uh he was of course he was there and um someone threw a yogurt on him do you know about the have we talked about the history of Russian leaders uh bald hairy bald hairy bald hairy we discussed that I don't think we have because now you brought up Gorbachev there's an extraordinary continuity of having a bald leader then a leader with hair then a bald leader then a leader with hair which continues to happen up until Putin but is Putin is balding uh bald hairy go on it's a it's got to turn Wikipedia page it's a common joke in Russian political discourse referring to the empirical rule of state leader succession defined as a change of bald or balding okay lead it to a hairy one or vice versa let's go through it so it goes all the way back it goes all the way back Nicholas I scroll down Alexander II so let's just go to the people we know so George he even does George Lvov right so he even talks about this so George Lvov who we've mentioned and we're going to come to Alexander Kerensky he's got hair he's got wonderful hair he's very much like a technocratic centrist he's Blair or Nick Clegg then it's Vladimir Ledin famously bald then it's Stalin hair well Beria doesn't really count because he was for like a week but he's bald he's bald he is bald and then it's Malenkov then it's Khrushchev bald then it's Brezhnev hair then it's Andropov bald then it's Chenenko hair then it's Korbachev bald then it's Yeltsin hair then it's Vladimir Putin balding then it's Medvedev hair then it's Putin again balding that's quite extraordinary incredible isn't it so it means when Putin falls yeah he needs to be looking at I can see Putin being so kind of like paranoid that he kills anyone with hair to make sure he just kills all people with hair to make sure that no one can take his face because the consistency of that is actually freaky.

35:37I guess with British prime ministers, you know, you don't have bald, hairy. If you go back to like, what, Callaghan, gay, Thatcher, fit, major gay. Thatcher, fit. Let me finish. Major gay, Blair, fit, brown gay, Cameron, fit. but then I think your idea of fit is so removed from the... I'm trying to get to Liz Truss fit. I've not counted this out. I mean, you've really, yeah. You've botched yourself to a corner there. We're just saying Thatcher fit. Liz Truss. Don't Google Liz Truss naked, Charlie. Put her in the Lorraine Kelly and the Cherie Blair pile. I'll tell you what Liz Truss would look great in.

36:21For names... A Mrs. Incredible outfit. Do you know what I mean? Elastigirl. Yeah. I could see Liz Truss being Elastigirl. You could dress Liz Truss in a slice of Palmerham and I'd be happy. just drape some ham over her yeah what was it scrape me on toast i'm finished was it what was the thing you said i can't remember yeah sounds like me anyway look we're we're hurtling so so lenin makes this big speech now we're gonna have to it is interesting if you care about this stuff there's so much it is it is interesting if you care about it yeah well that's not us no uh so we won't be able to go into a lot of the detail what happens in the next couple of months, apart from one of the key things is Alexander Kerensky, who I think is one of the key figures who people don't know.

37:04Yeah, I didn't know him before. I didn't know at all about him. Basically, Kerensky is a very popular lawyer. He is quite charismatic. He's got a full head of hair. He's been in the Duma. Yes. Which is the, uh, dumber, uh, of the parliament. Yes. The sort of fake parliament that has no power. Yeah, they're just sort of - Easy bake oven parliament. Have meetings. Yes. but how Kerensky came out when I was reading about him he seems to have that sort of Nick Clegg sort of centrist feel to him he is a socialist revolutionary a hollow centrism yes he is popular though and he basically is the least offensive candidate to all sides he's a socialist revolutionary but he's also moderate he is the only person to have a place on both the Petrograd Soviet and the provisional government and is he a Menshevik?

37:50I think no he's a socialist revolutionary which is the biggest party the socialists but it's kind of this quite disparate unclear vague are they the same as the parties the Bolsheviks no right they're all socialist parties yeah but there's so many different sects yeah there's the socialist revolutionaries the socialist revolutionaries break into two halves the right socialist revolutionaries and the left socialist revolutionaries which are so different they might as well be different parties yeah then there's the Mensheviks then there's the Bolsheviks then there's loads of others it's chaos chaos not one clean bottom between there's not one clean bottom to share not well they are they're sharing one towel that's why that's why they've got dirty bottoms when does the policy come in that they should only use one piece of toilet paper and pass it around I don't actually know I think they had a lot of extensive big meeting about it yeah so it took a while there was a toilet break during the meeting they didn't know what to do because it's like the old rules put it to a vote anyway so Kerensky is very popular at first and his story is kind of interesting he becomes minister of war and then goes to the front line and the people love him and he's giving these really um dramatic speeches he's a very flamboyant speaker he does these kind of like he's doing this tour of the front line where he's trying to uh get morale up yeah and he is so over the top that he will like faux faint a lot of the time like james brown yeah you've seen those clips of james brown so he's got like um he's got like a cloth and he's david that's what karensky's doing on the front yeah and he goes down and then someone comes around with a cloak and leads Kerensky off and then Kerensky throws the cloak off.

39:24It's like a And I think what's interesting about Kerensky is though he's quite a moderate level-headed guy who hasn't made many enemies, I do think that... Imagine Hitler doing that. I'd love to do that for Hitler. What? I'd love to be the guy that puts the cloak over Hitler as he's walking off and he's like and he goes back in. That'd be great. Anyway, sorry. Kerensky's making these big speeches. He's making these big speeches. Even though he's quite like a moderate common sense seeming guy, it does seem the kind of running with power, the speeches, from what I'm getting from him, does sort of warp him a little bit.

39:56Doesn't he call himself Napoleon or is that someone else? Yes, I think so. He views himself... He sees himself as like the Russia's Napoleon. Yes. Yeah. And he then, on a wave of support actually, he announces the Kerensky Offensive. Is it a wave of support? Because I think something we should talk about is the war is... Everyone hates the war. Yes, but there's a march in Petrograd with people with pictures of Kerensky and supporting him. So there is support for him. Okay, fine, fine. Or this guy's going to sort us out. This guy's going to be the new leader. Obviously, there's people who don't support him.

40:27He then launches the Kerensky Offensive. And for a tiny bit, it works. So there's a kind of boost of morale. Kerensky's going to save the war effort. He's now having these ideas that he's not only a politician, a lawyer, he's going to be a great historic military leader. And I think that's what's interesting about this whole story is a lot of these figures, so many of them could have been the people we talk about. Do you know what I mean? Like we only talk about Lennon because he ended up on top. There's all these figures who are... It's so... There's so many different permutations that could have happened.

40:58Yeah. Sort of more... It's not inevitable at all. No. February's inevitable. Yes. It's inevitable that the Sardin would fall via a popular thing but everything else past that it could have literally been anything. Is this the only time in history International Women's Day has actually done anything? Seemingly. because i can't remember one since where anything's changed

41:22it's also i think it must be i like the idea that there's someone at the back of the march going when's international men's day where's that when's international men's day can we have one oh we're having a revolution now okay fine no sorry never mind maybe that's what kicked off the revolution yeah it's someone when is international men's this is a disgrace there's Women on the street. When's men's day? Why don't we get a day? Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks and lists can easily begin to overrun your life.

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