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- [00:00]
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- [01:32]
Anthony Beevor
There is a very important debate of why Russia is the way that it is, why it is so different, if you like, to Western Europe. Some will say that it goes back to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. Russia has to be 200 years behind Western Europe to protect Russian tradition, to protect Russian culture. This time lag was essential.
- [01:55]
Co-host 1
People in the west look at their attitude to casualties and are quite frankly
- [02:00]
Anthony Beevor
there has always been this case whereby the attitude of meet the cannon, I mean the whole notion, the Russian steamroller, et cetera. The idea that simply out of sheer weight of numbers they can crush any enemy. But the real problem is that they have often treated their own people as badly as the enemy. This is a form of inhumanity which obviously in the west we find incomprehensible.
- [02:30]
Co-host 2
So Anthony Bieber, welcome back to Trigonometry.
- [02:32]
Anthony Beevor
Very back to be with you.
- [02:33]
Co-host 2
Oh, it's great to have you back. I was just saying to you before we started our first conversation with you, I think it did over a million downloads. If you include video and audio about the Russian Revolution today, you've obviously got a book about Rasputin out, which we'll touch on. But what we really wanted to talk about is Russia, the history of Russia, and actually to help unpack for people why Russia and Russians are the way they are today. And I think someone who comes from Russia, I think a lot of history is really valuable for understanding that. So can you just take us through the history of Russia starting at the very beginning?
- [03:08]
Anthony Beevor
Well, I wouldn't have said that I was a sufficient Russian expert on the earlier periods at all to be able to do that. But there is a very important debate of why Russia is the way that it is, why it is so different, if you like, to Western Europe. And even within Russia itself, one sees this tremendous split between the Westerner Slavophil traditions, this great mixture of Europe and Asia. And as a result, one needs to understand some of these contradictions. They'll never necessarily be resolved. Many argue that in the case of Russia, that the whole idea of conspicuous cruelty as a necessary weapon of war came from the Mongol invasions. And there may well be a lot of truth in that. Certainly the idea of encirclement and some of the element of Russian paranoia, I think, came from that particular era.
- [04:04]
Co-host 1
Siranti, sorry to bother you. There'll be people listening who don't know what conspicuous cruelty means, that term. Would you just.
- [04:10]
Co-host 2
Or the Mongol invasions, frankly. So we need to get into both of those.
- [04:14]
Anthony Beevor
Well, it's been a considerable debate, obviously amongst historians about where the Russian method of warfare has originated. Some will say that it goes back to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century with the sweeping in from the diep, coming from the Far east and the way that the original Rus settlements were then attacked. And in many ways this was the start of. Of a continual warfare which lasted for a long time. The Mongols certainly were the ones who believed that fire and sword laying waste, mass rape was an element, a natural element of warfare. And this actually became almost central element in the Russian view of warfare, of conspicuous cruelty, I think one can call it. And the interesting thing is, of course, Europe was just as bad in the 17th century. One thinks of the horrors of the wars of religion as bad as anything that had happened in Russia up till that time. But the difference came really, because afterwards there was the Enlightenment in Europe in the 18th century. There was also in the 19th century, very much more a codification of warfare, which attempted to make it not necessarily more civilized, but at least following certain rules. And then the invention of the Red Cross and Geneva Conventions and so forth, that did not affect Russia nearly so much, specifically in its expansion towards the east, down towards the south, into the Caucasus, and above all the conquests of Siberia, which was savage. So there is this difference very much between the Russian attitude and the European attitude which has gone on. But Russia itself is this extraordinary mixture. And one of the reasons of writing about Rasputin was that he summoned up so many of these contradictions himself. And I found it fascinating the way that, for example, in the 19th century, the great poet Fyodor Khrushchev saying Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone. And I think there's a lot of truth in that. There is all of these elements, as I say, contrasting themselves in the case of Al Jazz Putin, the deep spirituality mixed in with lasciviousness, corruption mixed in with incredible generosity. All of these sort of coming together in the same person, very much sort of represented, not so much an archetypal Russian, but if you like the potential conflicts within what might be talked about as, say, the Russian soul, the Russian mind. And I think it's intriguing. There is no DNA, a national DNA, but there is a certain self image in all countries. I think that they try to live up to a certain reputation, a certain tradition, and this is what one can not necessarily generalize about, because certainly with Russia, with so many different nationalities, you cannot say that sort of buriat is the same as somebody from the extreme Far east or from Moscow or anything like that. And this is part of the fascination of Russia itself.
- [07:49]
Co-host 2
And I think all of that's very true. And you can't understand Russia with the mind alone is a very good and accurate, well known observation. But coming back to the history, because I really want to just pause on the Mongol invasion first, because at this point there is no Russia. Exactly. There's a few principalities, as they're called,
- [08:11]
Anthony Beevor
or grand Rus and so forth.
- [08:13]
Co-host 2
Yes. And then you effectively have something like being invaded by isis, basically. Right. En masse on a huge scale. But not just invaded. You were kept under what the Russians called the yoke, the Tata Mongol yoke, for centuries. What is the impact of that sort of subjugation and the way that it was done for that period of time? I mean, I try to explain this to Americans. Sometimes the Russian people were subjugated by a force like Isis for about as long as America has been in existence. What is the impact of that on the psyche, on the mindset, on the way that people behave and think about things?
- [08:53]
Anthony Beevor
Well, that's an extremely good question, and it's certainly a very important one. I don't think there's an easy answer because there are those who very much reacted against it, of course. And this led to the extraordinary sort of intellectual flowering and artistic development in Russia which one sees particularly in the 18th century and onwards. I mean, when one goes to Tretyakov or some of the great galleries in Moscow, you see a sudden development which comes, and I think this is very much more when Russia started to escape from being the prisoner of its own past. And it was the prisoner of its own past. And as you say, it was an occupied, oppressive past for many centuries indeed, but it was also something which is still to this day, they cannot quite escape. So although the Orthodox Church, the whole idea of Holy Slava filled Russia, was a vital element in escaping from that Tata non Christian past. It's become so deeply embedded that we see today that Vladimir Bedinsky, Dugan, some of the ideological influences on President Putin, have this reaction of believing that Europe should be come under basically an Orthodox. Russian Orthodox influence all the way from Vladivostok to Dublin even said, which is sort of an astonishing idea, but it is somewhere sort of deep again in the Russian psyche, the old Russian psyche, if you like, that only this Russian spirituality deserves to spread and expand. But this, again is very much a reaction to the idea of having been crushed from. By the Tatar yoke and others over history as well.
- [11:09]
Co-host 2
But it's interesting you say something because I've been thinking about this for a long time. How much is it just like a time lag between where the west is and where Russia is, in the sense that, you know, 150 years ago, there's quite a lot of countries around the world who thought actually, you know, we have the right idea and we should spread this idea around the world. The British Empire did it and lots of others. Is it just maybe the Vladimir Putin is acting in an 18th century way in the 21st century world? Is that what's happening here?
- [11:36]
Anthony Beevor
Well, I was very struck. I was very struck by when the Duke of Marlborough went to, I think this was in 1902, went to Moscow and Petersburg, and at a reception with the tsar, with Nicholas ii, his wife asked Nicholas ii, you know, why is democracy not possible in Russia? And he said, Russia has to be 200 years behind Western Europe. And this was very much of an idea that to protect Russian tradition, to protect Russian culture, this time lag was essential. But it was also part of the idea that as soon as you loosen the chains, then chaos would break out. And in a sense, when you have such a landmass, such a vast landmass, how do you maintain control? So you could say that the expansion, in some ways is also the element slightly of the anxious billionaire mentality that, you know, that unless I get more money, I'm going to lose the whole lot. And this is very much, again, the attitude of. Of seeking more external abroad, near abroad, territory all the way to the Far East. And even then, the Tsar was interested in the disastrous Japanese War of 1904 and 1905, of again seizing more territory there. Now, part of that is an expansionist mentality like, as you rightly say, with other European colonial powers expanding. But at the same time, there is this sort of arria pense, of fearing that unless you keep expanding, you're going to contract. And this has obviously been one of the problems of warfare with, as Paul Kennedy, the rise and fall of the great Powers. If you keep on pushing and expanding too much, you're going to overstretch.
- [13:40]
Co-host 1
And so, Ansi, we've seen the. The history of Russia and we're talking about it at the moment, and people in the west look at their attitude to casualties and are quite frankly, horrified. The way that Russians seem almost nonchalant is probably not the right word, but a kind of nonchalantness when it comes to the casualties, et cetera. Does that come from their history or is there something else tied to that?
- [14:07]
Anthony Beevor
Well, I think there are two things there, but most of it comes from the history. You're quite right. There has always been this case whereby the attitude of meat for the cannon, in the Russian phrase is regarded because. Is assumed because of the size of their population. I mean, the whole notion, the Russian steamroller, et cetera, the idea that simply out of sheer weight of numbers, they can crush any enemy. And that has certainly been why the sort of, you know, the French were so desperate to have the alliance with Russian Empire for the First World War, and again to a certain degree later on, feeling that sort of only the sheer size and scope of it would save the west in the Second World War. But the real problem is that they have often treated their own people as badly as the enemy. I mean, I remember being horrified when researching in Moscow in the 90s at the scale of suicides amongst the Russian conscripts simply because of the way they were treated and bullied and all the rest of it. I mean, there were up to 5,000 a year. And I remember the British ambassador who was absolutely appalled when he went to see General Lebed, who made a joke about it. He thought it was terribly funny that in Siberia they had to make sure that they were digging enough graves for all the suicides for the next winter, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to bury them. In the Second World War, we see the way that. And I think this is a crucial element that the soldiers had so often been treated so badly and in fact, not as individuals. When, for example, at Stalingrad, and in fact, really through the whole of the advance towards Berlin afterwards, if there were any casualties or any desertions, an officer was expected to just grab any civilians they could and say, right, you're in the army now, or whatever. They'd never recorded their names. Their names were only recorded if they were suspected of treason or desertion and then investigated by SMERSH or the earlier, before that, the NKVD special detachments. This meant that actually there was a burning resentment. And this, in fact, is one of the major explanations for the mass rapes of 1945 in Poland, in Hungary, and above all in Germany. And it's also one of the explanations for the cruelty to Ukrainian prisoners of war and Ukrainian civilians in the war that we're seeing at the moment. But also, then don't forget the treatment to their own soldiers when and especially the foreigners who've been gruffed and tricked or press ganged into the Russian army fighting in Ukraine, where we've seen Africans who've had landmines strapped to their chests and are being forced forward as suicide bombers. I mean, this is a form of inhumanity which obviously in the west we find incomprehensible, but it's still something which Russia has not been able to get, an attitude which they have not been able to get rid of.
- [17:20]
Co-host 1
And how much do you think, if we go back to the Second World War, but also the Soviet empire, how much of that was exacerbated by the Communist mindset?
- [17:29]
Anthony Beevor
I think the Communist mindset raised the idea of ruthlessness as almost a romantic, admirable heroism. The idea of Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka, the idea that, you know, you have to crush your enemy totally. I mean, the poems about sort of crushing bones and all the rest of it written by members of the Cheka in their own sort of magazines are simply unbelievable. You know, even the Spanish Inquisition. I don't think that their torturers sort of wrote poems in that particular way. It is a very special mentality. But it was something which was, shall we say, there in the background and then which. The mentality of romantic communism, of achieving the future through total ruthlessness. And my husband, remember at the battle of Stalingrad, Russian snipers were ordered to shoot down starving Russian orphans who'd been bribed by German infantrymen with a crust of bread to fill their water bottle in the Volga. You know, it didn't matter who you were, what your origin was, whether you were innocent or not. That made no difference whatsoever when it came to what were regarded as the interests of the state.
- [18:52]
Co-host 1
And that being the case, do you think, in a way, it's a slightly gruesome question. Is it an effective mindset to have, particularly in warfare, particularly if you have the numbers that Russia does, just to treat your. Your own citizens and your own military with utter callousness?
- [19:08]
Anthony Beevor
I don't think it is. I mean, in terms of morale, the way that the Ukrainians offered their telephones to prisoners so that they could ring their parents, their mother at home or whatever, was a very effective propaganda device. Many of them felt tricked. I mean, not just foreigners who had been tricked to join up being told, oh, we'll train you up as bodyguards, or whatever it might be with some of the promises. But many of the ordinary conscripts who were not supposed to necessarily go to a front line, found themselves. Every single promise was broken. And although they'd been bribed quite often with an upfront charm, they then found they had no further control over their fate. And I think it was this feeling that they had completely lost any form of control over their own fate has a devastating effect on morality and on morale, rather. I mean, we seeing what are called now the disposables, and these are the. Either the Africans or others who are being used, but also even some of the amputees being sent back into the front. Well, I mean, the Russian attitude towards ramputees in the Second World War, they were known as samovars after they'd lost their limbs. And Stalin, having talked about the heroism of the Red army and all the rest of it in 1945, then bans any of them from the cities sent to the north just to get them out of the way because he doesn't want to have the cities cluttered up with limbless veterans. I mean, treatment like that does not exactly encourage, if you like, loyalty. Worse than that is when you also recruit from the Prisons, some of the most brutal members of society, and gang members of the worst order. They then become even more dehumanized by their experience at war and then they go back into civilian society. I mean, the reports of some of the horrors which have been committed by soldiers who've returned, who've been even more traumatized by what they've been through, are pretty horrific. So should we say the social consequences of the war in Russia are gonna be pretty devastating?
- [21:33]
Co-host 2
The news doesn't just tell you what's
- [21:35]
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- [21:38]
Co-host 2
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- [21:40]
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- [22:41]
Co-host 2
And coming back to this kind of Russian wear war maybe taking a different angle, is it a product of historically speaking of necessity as well? I mean, if you're Russia, it's much harder to grow food in Russia, it's much harder to have a sophisticated economy, it's much harder to be technologically advanced. And so what other advantages do you have other than a mass of soldiers and inability to be so cruel to them that you can make them basically do anything?
- [23:11]
Anthony Beevor
I think there's a question of mindset and a mindset which sort of refuses to change more than anything. And because it was the way that it's always been done and you're a tough man and all the rest of it, this is what's going to make the recruits tougher by treating them in that particular way. It's shall we say unenlightened, to put it mildly. And I would have thought in the long term, it's going to be much less professional in the effect that it has in your training.
- [23:47]
Co-host 2
Of course. Of course. Well, speaking of the mindset, I mean, one of the things I think people in the west really don't understand about Russia is how a number of formative experiences in Russian history have inculcated in people the idea that a strong, decisive leader is by far and away the most important thing. And Russian people will put up with almost anything, provided the leader is strong like that. And I think one of the times this comes from is the time, the period known as the times of trouble.
- [24:15]
Anthony Beevor
Yes.
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Co-host 2
After Ivan the Terrible kills his only viable heir in a fit of rage.
- [24:20]
Sponsor Announcer
And this follows.
- [24:22]
Co-host 2
Perhaps you'll be better at telling the story of what follows.
- [24:24]
Anthony Beevor
Well, I'm certainly not an expert on that particular period, but indeed, it did traumatize the country in many ways.
- [24:32]
Co-host 2
What happened?
- [24:34]
Anthony Beevor
Well, because of the Civil War, the massacres that were going on, and all the rest of it. I mean, in many ways, you could only really compare the time of Troubles, really, with, say, the European 30 Years War in the 17th century. So from that point of view, the effect of it eventually meant that everybody was so exhausted by the end that that was the opportunity when they made the Romanov dynasty start. And Mikhail Romanov was, to begin with, was being hidden by his mother because they were certain that it would lead to his death. Every other potential czar had been murdered, and that this would be his particular fate, too. But in the end, this was the start of the dynasty. And as soon as he and his descendants sort of acquired enough power, they knew perfectly well that if they were going to let it go, there was always going to be the fear of the time of Troubles. And that actually, you're quite right to bring it out, because it is very much there always in the back of the mind of the Russian mind, rather as. And then, of course, the civil war being another one after the Revolution, after the February Revolution, which even led to the point that sort of when Stalin died, almost everybody was in tears, not because of love of Stalin, necessarily, but because they feared that the collapse of centralized power might again lead to another period of time of Troubles or civil war or whatever. I mean, one has to remember the importance of the Russian Civil War. Historians, particularly German historians, were absolutely right in identifying the First World War as what they described the original catastrophe of the 20th century. But actually, it was the Russian Civil War which had the greatest influence because the sheer horror of it, the sheer scale, if you include those suffering from disease and starvation, you're talking of up to 10 million casualties. And this created such an effect not just across Europe, even across the world. Fear of the destruction, the cruelty spreading as a result of the split between red and white, but also fear on the left of white, counter reaction and fear on the right of the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy of the idea that there was going to be a genocide, a class genocide, and this leads to the Spanish Civil War, this vicious circle of rhetoric and fear, and also even into large elements and contribution to the whole of the Second World War. So in many ways, the Russian Civil War basically defined most of the pattern of history of certainly the first half of the 20th century, but also to a certain degree, then the split between communism and fascism, or, sorry, between communism and capitalism in the second half. And we're still seeing the effects of that today to a certain degree. But, I mean, the way that all of this played out during that particular period means that we are still. And this is why, I think with the shock of last year, that sort of the old order has suddenly changed and that the multipolar world, or if I'm going to call it that, has actually suddenly been shuffled. Large contribution, of course, now coming from President Trump in that particular way. And this is one of the great reasons for uncertainty, fear, and shall we say, even potential chaos in many areas. But it really does come very much more from that particular moment of the Russian Civil War, which, again, was an echo even of the time of troubles.
- [28:36]
Co-host 2
Well, I was going to say that the reason I bring this up is I think people in the West. I'm no fan of Vladimir Putin, but I also tried to explain to people in the west why he's popular in Russia. And this is one of the reasons. Because you talk about the Russian Civil War.
- [28:52]
Sponsor Announcer
Well, you have.
- [28:53]
Co-host 2
I mean, you talk in the book, you have a weak, not very smart, indecisive czar. Right? And then who precedes Vladimir Putin as Boris Yeltsin, who's seen by many people, initially, he, you know, he ran on the campaign slogan of strong, strong leader for a strong Russia. But he's not seen as a strong leader. He was kind of a strong leader for strong vodka. Yes, yes, exactly. And that strong vodka made him into a weak leader. And then along comes Vladimir Putin, and people go, oh, finally someone is gonna take charge. Right, Absolutely right.
- [29:26]
Anthony Beevor
I agree. But I mean, what one also needs, I think, to remember is how clever Putin was in bringing together the Two sides, if you like, from the Russian Civil War. He was the one who brought back various white generals to be reburied. The way that you won't see a hammer and sickle really anywhere around the Kremlin anymore. It's all a double headed eagle. And ditto on the palace on the Black Sea. So he also his criticism of Lenin and so forth. He may say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy, but his mentality is much closer to that of the Russian Empire.
- [30:08]
Co-host 2
Well, this is what I've been trying to say. I think in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, there were a lot of people who don't really understand Russia very much saying, oh, he's just trying to rebuild the Soviet Union. He's trying to rebuild the Russian Empire.
- [30:20]
Anthony Beevor
Yes, exactly.
- [30:21]
Co-host 2
Very different thing.
- [30:22]
Anthony Beevor
Yes, as we know. As we know certainly from sort of the ideologues influencing him. I mean, the whole of that particular essay was actually written by Medinsky, the one published before the invasion of Ukraine. And I mean, Medinsky, well, frankly, he's a fool in many ways. I mean, there was the extraordinary attempt to get Kazakhstan back in by making that film of General Pamphiloff and his 28 men or whatever, which was then proved to have been a complete propaganda invention. And Medinsky even said, anybody who doubts this, even if it's not true, they are below slime. It was a wonderful. It was unbelievably comic.
- [31:04]
Co-host 1
But that being the case, one of the things that I find really interesting with Russia is we've talked about the cruelty and that goes right the way up to the modern day. But there's also an obsession with spirituality, with religion.
- [31:16]
Anthony Beevor
Yes.
- [31:17]
Co-host 1
I mean, how do you marry those two? I mean, those two qualities, essentially.
- [31:22]
Anthony Beevor
Well, I mean, should we say religion and conspicuous cruelty have often been buried. And not just, I mean, in Islam, in Christianity, in virtually every single. In virtually every single religion. So I don't think it's unique to Russia necessarily in that particular way, but it's something which has persisted. And I mean, we see it, we see unbelievable things. I mean, for example, when the Tsar sends. Tsar Nicholas II wants to send his fleet from the Baltic all the way around the world to attack the Japanese in one of the most disastrous naval decisions in history. You know, he gets the priests on board to bless all the guns to help their accuracy. It's a mentality of the idea that somehow the power of the iconic, which was sort of distributed to the ships and the individuals and all the rest of It. These talismans, all of those sort of gave the idea of, you know, God is with us Gott mituns. Which, you know, the Germans had inscribed on their belt buckles. And, you know, the British used to say to themselves, you know, God's on our side. God is an Englishman. Nobody's really one escaped that particular idea. It is part of a national mentality.
- [32:42]
Co-host 1
But I suppose what I'm touching on is the extremities. On the one hand, you can be so callous, so cruel. And we've seen it with Russian leaders. You talk about it in the book. I mean, the way the czars. There was one instance where during a battle, there was. I think it was during the Japan War. The. There were tens of thousands of people who were dead soldiers. And then that very night, he went to a party as if nothing had happened. How can you have. On the instance you have that. And on the other hand, you know, this deep spirituality, religiosity. Surely there must be. I guess what I'm saying is a concern for your fellow man. Isn't that so important?
- [33:26]
Anthony Beevor
Yes, but he wouldn't necessarily regard them as fellow men. This was the trouble. He was the Tsar, they weren't. But also Nicholas II particularly believed in not showing emotion. He felt that that was the worst thing he could do. And this is the trouble whereby. Not necessarily stupidity, but, I mean, he wasn't a totally stupid man. But at the same time, he refused. He had no imagination, or he blocked off his imagination. He was different to his wife in a certain way. He believed that they should never show any emotion at all. And for example, there was a German prince staying in Petrograd who'd been invited to dinner. And as he suddenly heard that the tsar's uncle had been blown up in Moscow, so he immediately rang the palace to say, I assume that the dinner is being canceled or whatever. And he was told, oh, no, no, no, it's all. It's going ahead, it's going ahead. And he arrives and finds that the tsar and a cousin are having great fun trying to push the other one off the sofa. I mean, playing sort of childish games. So it's the question of blocking out anything that is uncomfortable to their worldview. But the idea that people have died in huge numbers, as you describe, in their defense or under their orders, is not something which troubles them. They regard that as part of the natural world. And Rasputin says at one point to the empress, when she is genuinely concerned at the casualties, he says, oh, you know, think of them Each one of them as candles lit at the throne of God. Well, it was a brilliant phrase to point of view of sort of calming her down, of saying, you know, all of this sacrifice is perfectly. It's a, it's a tribute. It's a tribute to the Almighty.
- [35:35]
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- [36:32]
Co-host 1
And what's interesting is that that overt religiosity or attitude to the spiritual, it leaves leaders potentially vulnerable to people like Rasputin. But not just Rasputin, others of his ilk who can come on, who can come in and be incredibly manipulative for their own ends.
- [36:51]
Anthony Beevor
Yes, I mean, it is fascinating that you're going to have that sort of contrast within the same person. But again, you know, this is yet one of the fascinating contradictions partly with, as I say, Rasputin and the relationship with the royal family, but also within the royal family itself, because there are other members of the royal family who were simply appalled. I mean, the Tsar's mother was horrified. Now she had actually been influenced by the fact of having this traumatic dream when she was pregnant with him and about a peasant chopping off the head of her baby. And then 38 years later, she finds that her son and daughter in law have become completely besotted with the Siberian peasant and she is absolutely certain that they will die in a revolution. Killed by. Killed by peasants.
- [37:44]
Co-host 2
And you mentioned the Russian Japanese war. It's something that very few people outside the history world know anything about.
- [37:52]
Sponsor Announcer
Why does that war happen?
- [37:54]
Anthony Beevor
Well, the war happens to a large degree because at this particular period, the Japanese 1904.
- [38:00]
Co-host 2
Right.
- [38:00]
Anthony Beevor
We're talking about 1904. Exactly. This is the period when Germany and Russia interested in seizing parts of the Chinese territory. One has to remember the way that the great Chinese resentment against the west is very much the unequal treaties which were forced on China when it was at its weakest in the 19th century. And the Russians, even in the imposed a railway which they built to accelerate the Trans Siberian Railway right across Mongolia. So the Chinese had a lot to resent. But the Japanese also were in this period of expanding population and wanting to colonize Vernier abroad, which basically meant Manchuria. And therefore there was an imbalance, if you like, certainly in power in that particular region. And the Tsar had been persuaded by a forerunner of Rasputin, another mystic con man, basically called Philippe, a Frenchman, saying that you should be the Emperor of the East. And actually the Kaiser Wilhelm II was saying, from sent a signal at sea to the Tsar, saying, from the Emperor of the Atlantic to the Emperor of the Pacific. Now, Nicholas at that particular moment thought, oh, well, that's ridiculous. But then he was encouraged by one of his ministers, particularly by Plava, that, you know, a war against the Japanese would be a huge advantage because it would be a quick, easy war. They're just Orientals, you know, they can't take on a modern Russian army. Well, modern is a doubtful phrase. And others were much more skeptical. But the Tsar rather liked the idea. And so on. The ambassadorial reception in 1904, in January, the New Year reception, he was pretty insulting to the Japanese ambassador, who bowed and said nothing, not realizing, in fact, that the Japanese were about to send huge numbers of troops across the sea to the Korean peninsula. And suddenly they were in a position where they were starting to attack at Port Arthur, which was the great Japanese, sorry, the great Russian port in the Far East. And from there, then, of course, they assembled a vast army where the Trans Siberian Railway was not ready sufficiently to equip them and to supply them. And then, as I mentioned, you know, there was the utter disaster of sending the Baltic fleet really all the way around the world. And they were destroyed in the Battle of Tsushima, one of the greatest naval victories, which the Japanese won easily. So it was a vast humiliation to Russia, especially to Nicholas II himself, and it forced him into accepting, basically, a constitution in October 2005, at a time when 1905. Sorry, I heard 1905. I know one easily skips a century. And this, of course, was because the war had created such anger, there being the march of Father Gapon, the protest in St. Petersburg in that January of 2005, where they were gunned down by the Imperial Guard and the Cossacks sent in and all the rest of it, and terrible repression in the countryside when houses, manor houses were set on fire. It was very much a prelude to the later Revolution, the 1905 disturbances. And you also then get, of course, the battleship Potemkin and the Mutiny in the Blacks Black Sea. So there Nicholas was in a very defensive position. He burst into tears after signing the. The document and felt that sort of. He betrayed the whole family because he had signed away, basically, he felt Romanov autocracy. And then, of course, the struggle between him and worst of all, from his point of view, the liberal conservatives in the Duma, who have been the only ones who could actually have saved or helped save the monarchy from itself. But because of his obstinacy, because of his lack of imagination and his insistence on trying to restore the Romanov autocracy, he actually became his own worst enemy.
- [43:12]
Co-host 2
And with. So the war really weakens him. Yes, well, losing the war really weakens him. And is it a case then that it's almost. You see this throughout history where you've got a fairly weak ruler who engenders resistance and rebellion, which he then, because he is a weak ruler, is way too brutal in putting down, generating more resentment which builds, but he's not actually able to bring the country with him. Is that basically what happened?
- [43:40]
Anthony Beevor
Yes, but there are two versions of that. There are also those who will argue that the collapse of regime is accelerated when they start making compromises. So, you know, it can work both ways. In his particular case, of course, it wasn't the just the repression Stolypin, the Prime Minister, had been known to repress as strongly as he could. And that was an effective repression. But for the time being, I mean, the hangings, everybody referred to him as Jolie Pin's necktie because of the mass executions. But it wasn't just the mass executions. The way the army was sent into the countryside and any rebellion, peasants were sort of beaten with an inch of their life with the cleaning rods of their rifles. And this, of course, created vast anger and bitterness and so forth. All of these elements were some form of preparation. But the real collapse in the authority of the Tsar Nicholas II came very much actually from the way that rumor and false rumor because of Rasputin and his relationship with the Empress. One of his letters to the Empress was stolen and then was circulated in which he said that she wanted to fall asleep forever on his shoulder. Well, this was interpreted automatically as the fact that she was sleeping with him. But of course she wasn't at all.
- [45:23]
Co-host 2
It was much worse than that.
- [45:26]
Anthony Beevor
And, I mean, then we start to get closer to the revolution. We get to that sort of pornographic fantasy which precedes, it seems, many revolutions, like with the French Revolution, the idea of Marie Antoinette and her relationship with the Princess de Lamballe and all that sort of stuff, that Rasputin was even sleeping with the teenage daughters and so forth. Again, totally untrue. But the point was that the Tsar, who refused to have any interference and refused to listen to warnings from his own cousins and uncles, was allowing his wife to entertain Rasputin in the palace on their own, which was obviously a complete breach of protocol and was ruining her reputation. And he decides, he describes in his diary, how, you know, I returned home and I found my wife and Rasputin, you know, chatting happily and I joined them and we had a very enjoyable evening without any imagination of what this was doing. I mean, even his own confessor was saying, don't you realize what you're doing to yourself? And he just refused me and said, why cannot I have my own private life? And everyone said, well, your life belongs to the country, you know. But he refused to accept that. And the idea in a patriarchal society like Russia that the Czar could be a cuckold was obviously going to really undermine any belief and confidence in him. And this is why, come February 1917, after the, should we say, rather delayed murder of Rasputin, which was too little, too late if it was going to ever happen, and also actually had a contradictory effect, the idea that suddenly we were going to save Russia from itself because we are saving the monarchy from Rasputin. Well, the trouble was that, yes, there was rejoicing amongst the rich and the aristocracy, and they were all jumping up and theaters were interrupted and people would sort of jump up to chair and sing the national anthem. But as far as the penitentiary were concerned, they're saying, well, you know, the bosses, they've just killed the only person who ever got close to the throne. In the end, as I say, it was too little, too late. But when it actually came to February, by then again, another disaster, because the Empress and Rasputin together had appointed not only 70 altogether new governors, they had changed most of the government. While the Tsar was at the headquarters, the Stavka, and away from St. Petersburg, from Petrograd, they had been appointing the ministers, basically, and just getting the. To rubber stamp it. And the worst of all was Protopopov, the last minister of the interior, who actually was suffering from syphilis and was talking as a result with terminal paralysis of the insane, was actually talking to icons and believed he could commune with the dead and so forth. And he said, I will take over the transportation system or whatever. And this was what actually brought the February revolution forward. Because the trains were all in the wrong places at the wrong times. They froze solid in that particular January of 1917. And it was hardly surprising, therefore, that there was although sufficient grain in the country, it wasn't in the right places. And that's why you started to get starvation in the cities. So the actual street revolution, which had nothing to do with the Bolsheviks, they were all away. Lenin in Switzerland, Trotsky in North America, Stalin in Siberia. The regime was completely vulnerable and so demoralized that none of the Imperial Guards officers were even prepared to draw their swords in defense of the regime.
- [49:28]
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- [50:56]
Co-host 2
our code Trigger at checkout and to
- [51:00]
Co-host 1
inject a note of empathy for the Tsar into proceedings. As I was reading your book, this it kept this idea kept replaying in my head, which was, I couldn't think of two people less suited to those positions than the tsar and the Tsarina.
- [51:15]
Anthony Beevor
No, you're quite right. You know, psychologically, I mean, talk about having daddy issues. The poor Tsar with his father, who was a mansion of a man and the tsar was absolutely always Tsar. Nicholas II was always conscious that he was one of the smallest of the Romanovs. You know, who's going to take orders from me? He sort of says, almost in tears when his father dies, he says to her cousin, and so he has this sort of permanent complex. And then he marries this woman who again, has her own complexes, partly because having been brought up in an impoverished court, then is very much sort of. You would have hoped that Queen Victoria, bringing her up as her granddaughter, would have had slightly better influence. But then you get this extraordinary transformation when, having refused to marry Nicholas because she didn't want to change her religion from being a Protestant to becoming a Russian Orthodox, she then becomes more Russian Orthodox than any Russian and in obsessive in her belief in the power of icons, in spirituality and the idea of, you know, the peasant alliance with the Royal House of Romanov, the Batushka czar and all the rest of that sort of stuff. Lack of imagination was one of the worst. Inability to listen to any advice was common to both of them. And the effect, of course, was utterly disastrous.
- [53:00]
Co-host 1
Absolutely. But he also, to be fair to him as well, he wasn't, because of the way his father died, and we can talk about that a little bit, he was left directionless.
- [53:10]
Anthony Beevor
Yes, it was true. The trouble was that one has to remember, first of all, the tsar, his father, Alexander iii, thought that he was going to have much longer time so to prepare his son. And anyway, he felt, well, I'd had no preparation or whatever, so surely he doesn't really need preparation either. So, again, lack of imagination. And, of course, he did treat his son as a weakling, which did not improve his confidence. And the only confidence Nicholas ever had was surrounded when he was surrounded by young army officers who, of course, all were fawning on him and so forth. And he was at his happiest when he was going to sort of regimental dinners where they would all cheer him. And then when he left, you know, he was treated as a hero. And this gave him the idea that the army would always be loyal, that, you know, that the power of the Romanos could never be shaken. The idea that that would ever change never occurred to him. And of course, until the Second World, sorry, the First World War. And right at the end when he suddenly saw the disintegration of his own
- [54:15]
Co-host 1
armies, and he also had a vulnerability, which is his heir and successor, Alexis was, or Alexei, rather, was deeply, deeply
- [54:24]
Anthony Beevor
ill. Well, the tragedy, of course, was it was called the English disease because hemophilia came through the line of Queen Victoria and it was on the mother's side who. The mothers who carried skipped a generation, going on to Alexandra, the Empress Alexandra, and the daughters, the four daughters were absolutely fine. And then Alexis, when he was. Died, when he was born, they realized that he had hemophilia.
- [55:00]
Co-host 2
Hemophilia is when your blood doesn't clot, basically, if you get a cut, you're going to bleed out.
- [55:04]
Anthony Beevor
It's obviously, it is a disease entirely of the blood which produces appalling pain in the joints particularly. And of course, this is what gave Rasputin his power. He didn't really have any power or influence at the beginning, but the moment that he started to be able to relieve the symptoms, mainly by the voice and by the touch and his eyes, some people say he was a hypnotist, but I'm not so sure about that. I mean, he did use those eyes in a sort of powerful way. But as far as the children were concerned, it wasn't just Alexis, Alexei, it was one or two others. He did have some extraordinary calming influence in that particular way. But I mean, that in a way is fascinating area of debate of whether he did have a certain power, particularly in his hands, without actually touching the body, which could make this influence. But a lot of it also was that the calming of the voice was able to bring down the blood pressure, which actually then released quite often the joints which were causing the extreme pain. But there was the great moment at Nspala, in a hunting lodge in Poland, where he came closest to death, and they really had given up hope. And it was only a telephone call from Rasputin which convinced the mother that he was going to survive and whether that just coincided with a break in the fever or whatever it was. But from then on, Rasputin's power was total, as everybody in the court realized in horror, because she believed he was a total saint and that God had worked through him and had saved the dynasty and that the crown prince, the Tsarevich, will be the definitely be the future czar.
- [57:07]
Co-host 2
So, Anthony, well, thank you so much for coming back on the show. As we wrap up, I had two questions for you. We always have the same question then. But before that, if you look at the history of Russia's relations with Europe, in particular in the west more broadly. There have been times when European countries have been at war with Russia. There have been times when Russia has been a participant with other European countries in wars against other European countries, etc. So those relationships, the relationship with Russia is up and down and flows in different directions through time. Do you think there will be a time, certainly in our lifetimes, when the relationship that we have with Russia will shift in a more constructive direction? Or do you think the impact of the war in Ukraine is such that it will. It will be a tarnishing force for a very, very long time?
- [57:56]
Anthony Beevor
I fear very much the latter. Yes. I think there'll be such bitterness after the war. It's impossible to predict, obviously, at the moment how it's going to turn out. But I think that the suffering in Russia will be considerable, partly not just because of the economic consequences. I mean, how will they be able to readapt their economy back to. To a, shall we say, a more civilian economy and demilitarize? It will be very, very hard. And that will cause vast suffering in the countryside and certainly outside the main cities, but even in the main cities themselves, I suggest. But also what we talked about earlier, about the traumatized and brutalized soldiers coming back from the war and what effect they will have on the whole place. So without going into any sort of predictions, I don't think Russia will split into different parts or anything like that, as some have tried to predict. But I do think that it will be a center of resentment and would be dangerous in that particular way. But a lot will depend on other elements of to what degree China will help Russia or to what degree China will actually exploit Russia's vulnerability at the end of the war with its own interests in Siberia and other areas.
- [59:27]
Co-host 2
The Chinese are taking over the far east of Russia, just demographically speaking already.
- [59:31]
Anthony Beevor
Yes, absolutely demographically already. But they're even changing the maps, as you've seen, with the names of Vladivostok and others now in Chinese. So there's little doubt about Putin being in need of the Chinese, but I think probably underneath afraid of them as well.
- [59:49]
Co-host 2
Well, and of course, the big question is what happens when Putin goes.
- [59:53]
Anthony Beevor
Exactly.
- [59:55]
Co-host 2
Well, thank you for coming back. We appreciate it. You said before we started, I will tell the public this, that this is the last podcast you're ever gonna do. I actually don't believe that. I think you'll be back because you're so great to have you on and you are so prolific with Your writing. We're delighted to have had you.
- [60:11]
Anthony Beevor
Well, no, what I enjoyed was, I mean, we were. Because we were talking in the large, rather just in the. In the specific. And I think that the problem has been that sort of, you know, people have just given away the whole story of their book. And for many people, they think, well, why do I bother to go and buy it now? But I mean, when one can actually have a really great discussion, that's a different matter. So, no, as I say, we look
- [60:35]
Co-host 2
forward to having you back is what I'm saying.
- [60:37]
Anthony Beevor
So that's a decision.
- [60:38]
Co-host 2
Hold on, hold on. Before you run, our final question, as is always is the same, which is
- [60:43]
Sponsor Announcer
what's the one thing we're not talking
- [60:44]
Co-host 2
about that we should be. Could be in the context of this, could be in the context of something else.
- [60:51]
Anthony Beevor
What do you mean? Well said about contemporary politics.
- [60:54]
Co-host 2
Could be about anything at all. Anything that's on your mind that you think, why doesn't anyone talk about this?
- [61:03]
Anthony Beevor
Well, at the moment, you know, what are going to be the environmental consequences? Let's face it, war is one of the worst environmental disasters you can imagine. And here we are with more wars around the world at the moment, more conflicts going on, whether in Africa or elsewhere, where already people are suffering water wars and climate disasters of one form or another. So the biggest issue really is, I'm afraid, going to come back again to immigration because of the side effects of everything else going on. And, you know, there's no way that Europe can be the lifeboat. And I remember actually, funny enough in a book that I wrote, was published in 1990, I remember predicting there that the possibility that perhaps the role of armies in the future are simply going to be to prevent mass immigration.
- [61:58]
Co-host 2
San Antonio, Beaver, thanks for coming on.
- [62:00]
Anthony Beevor
Not at all. Yeah, great pressure.