Speaker A
We are proud to announce our new video sponsor, Supremacy 1914.
Explores an alternate history where Russian White Forces win the Civil War, detailing Russia's early 20th-century struggles and revolutionary upheavals.
Key Takeaways
- Russia’s early 20th-century crises set the stage for revolutionary change and civil war.
- The failure of the Romanov regime and provisional government created a power vacuum exploited by the Bolsheviks.
- Military defeats and economic hardship fueled popular discontent and radical political movements.
- The Kornilov Affair highlighted tensions between military traditionalists and revolutionary forces.
- The October Revolution marked the decisive Bolshevik seizure of power, leading to civil war.
Summary
- Introduction to the sponsor Supremacy 1914, a grand strategy game set in a Great War context.
- Russia described as a mysterious and resilient nation facing repeated hardships in the 20th century.
- Overview of Russia’s military defeats and economic troubles leading up to the 1917 revolutions.
- The 1904 Russo-Japanese War exposed the weaknesses of the Romanov dynasty and fueled discontent.
- The 1905 liberal revolution planted seeds of resistance despite being suppressed.
- Russia’s failure to modernize politically and economically left it vulnerable compared to Western powers.
- The outbreak of World War I and Russia’s military struggles against Germany, including legendary battles like the March of the Dead Men.
- The 1917 February Revolution led to the provisional government under Alexander Kerensky.
- Lenin’s return and the rise of the Bolsheviks, exploiting popular discontent to gain power.
- The Kornilov Affair and subsequent Bolshevik October Revolution sparked the Russian Civil War.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
The kind people over at Bytro Labs saw that we were raising funds for our alt history videos and stepped in to help with their own alt history game.
Speaker A
Grand strategy fans will feel right at home in Supremacy 1914, which allows you to control any nation during a Great War setting.
Speaker A
The twist is, the game is fully online and hosts up to 500 players simultaneously.
Speaker A
It's a great grand strategy game that can be played on both mobile and browser.
Speaker A
With a 4.4 rating on Google App Store, I can warmly recommend Supremacy 1914.
Speaker A
You can join using the affiliate link in the description to get 15,000 gold and one month of premium subscription for free.
Speaker A
This offer is only valid for 30 days, so make sure to decide fast.
Speaker A
And now, enjoy the show, cats.
Speaker B
It was once said that Russia is an enigma wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a riddle.
Speaker B
Such a phrase speaks eloquently to the Western sense of Petrograd as the other, an inscrutable and menacing land that plays by its own rules.
Speaker B
A hard land with hard climate and hard people.
Speaker B
It would seem only fitting that a nation like Russia would suffer such tragedies in the 20th century and yet continue to rise from them.
Speaker B
Every time the Russian bear would return again, every time stronger, more menacing, more united.
Speaker B
For the Kaiser in Europe knows his true enemy lies east, as it always has.
Speaker B
There will be another war over Eastern Europe, that much is certain.
Speaker B
But if Germany is unlucky, she may have to fight two revanchist powers at once.
Speaker B
Caught between the rise of Western syndicalism and a resurgent Russia.
Speaker B
A trap is closing on the Kaiser.
Speaker B
Germany may soon face a new Russia, a Russia united under one people.
Speaker B
One nation.
Speaker B
One.
Speaker B
The turn of the 20th century would be marked by a series of military defeats and economic turmoil that would shake the foundations of the Russian Empire and her Romanov rulers.
Speaker B
Japan's humiliation of the ostensibly much stronger Russia in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War caught the attention of many Russians, who saw this defeat as a metaphor for the failures of the Romanov Dynasty.
Speaker B
In 1905, a first popular revolt raged through the massive Russian Empire.
Speaker B
This liberal revolution would ultimately be silenced, but not without minor reforms.
Speaker B
More importantly, it would plant in the hearts of the Russian people a seed of disobedience and resistance against the ruling status quo.
Speaker B
The population of Russia had long suffered under the yoke of serfdom and inept rule by an out-of-touch aristocratic class.
Speaker B
As the years progressed, however, things went from bad to worse.
Speaker B
Russia lurched into the 20th century, failing to modernize both politically and economically.
Speaker B
Staying behind other European powers in industrialization.
Speaker B
In the vaunted halls of London, Berlin, and Paris, it was whispered that Russia was a house of glass.
Speaker B
Magnificent, but a single crack could send her tumbling down.
Speaker B
Words that would forebode the dark future awaiting the vast Empire.
Speaker B
When Tsar Nicholas unilaterally declared war on Germany in defense of Serbia in 1914, he unknowingly sparked a worldwide calamity that would later be known as the Great War.
Speaker B
At the start of his Weltkrieg, the Kaiser made it a priority to crush France before turning his army east.
Speaker B
While Russian fighting spirit was unmatched, the Russian army would soon find themselves to be outmatched by the technologically superior German army.
Speaker B
The wars of the 20th century would be decided by the range of artillery and communication lines.
Speaker B
A difficult task for the vast and sparsely industrialized areas of the Russian front.
Speaker B
Still.
Speaker B
The outmatched Russians fought tenaciously as they were driven out of Poland and Galicia.
Speaker B
Many of these stories would ascend to become legendary tales of heroism, such as the March of the Dead Men.
Speaker B
Despite such propaganda victories, the war would push Russia's straining resources and military to the breaking point.
Speaker B
As famines ravaged the hinterland, soldiers began deserting en masse.
Speaker B
They would turn their attention in the opposite direction, taking their weapons to the Russian capital of Petrograd in a bid to secure better living conditions for the Russian people.
Speaker B
The situation rapidly became untenable.
Speaker B
It would not be long until soldiers and striking workers seized control of the capital and demanded the formation of a more democratic government.
Speaker B
This uprising led to the February Revolution of 1917.
Speaker B
A series of strikes that saw the Tsar seed considerable power to a democratically elected parliament.
Speaker B
Or as Russians refer to it.
Speaker B
The Duma.
Speaker B
Chosen to lead this new democratic government was the notorious Alexander Kerensky.
Speaker B
Kerensky was a lawyer and revolutionary who joined the provisional government by using the Socialist Revolutionary Party as a vessel.
Speaker B
And pro-democracy proponent and free press advocate, Kerensky had the ambition of using the crisis to transform Russia into a modern democracy.
Speaker B
However, the Germans saw this political instability as an opportunity to knock Russia out of the war entirely.
Speaker B
With the support of German secret agents, the revolutionary Lenin was sent back into the country.
Speaker B
Lenin's Marxist ideology began spreading like wildfire, and Kerensky soon found his own democratic institutions turning against him in a wave of popular revolt.
Speaker B
Russia's population in 1917 was tired, hungry, and demoralized from year after year of non-stop defeat.
Speaker B
Many began blaming Kerensky and the inept and corrupt military leadership for Russia's failures against Germany.
Speaker B
Lenin's Marxist ideology found fertile ground among the discontented workers and soldiers of Russia.
Speaker B
Soon they began organizing.
Speaker B
They formed revolutionary councils, so-called Soviets, to pressure the Kerensky government into far-reaching concessions and land reform.
Speaker B
These communist revolutionaries would become known as the Bolsheviks.
Speaker B
As Lenin's Bolsheviks took control of more and more of the Kerensky government, they clamored for peace and bread.
Speaker B
This defeatism was condemned by the Russian military elites, who hatched plans to remove the Bolsheviks from power by force.
Speaker B
These rising tensions between government and military would lead to a fateful incident.
Speaker B
Called the Kornilov Affair.
Speaker B
By 1917, Russia's old guard military leadership was blamed for the country's continuous failures against the German Empire.
Speaker B
Kerensky, pressured by rising Bolshevik sentiment, began replacing much of the chain of command.
Speaker B
This gave initiative to lower-ranking generals and officers, such as one Lavr Kornilov.
Speaker B
Kornilov, born to a family of Siberian Cossacks in present-day Turkistan, had known a decorated military career.
Speaker B
Kornilov served in the Russo-Japanese War and later as military attaché in China.
Speaker B
A staunch nationalist and military traditionalist, Kornilov would later go on to clash with the democratic Kerensky and Kolchak and support the rising nationalist parties of Russia.
Speaker B
Notorious for his hatred of the left and the Bolsheviks, Kornilov believed that Lenin's Petrograd Soviets formed a serious threat to Russia's capacity to fight the war.
Speaker B
He hoped to remove the Soviets in one fell swoop and began hatching a plan.
Speaker B
In late 1917, General Kornilov sent a detachment of cavalry to pacify and secure the city of Petrograd, a Soviet stronghold.
Speaker B
When Kerensky and his government caught wind of the coup, he was furious.
Speaker B
The government considered Kornilov's actions a rogue initiative.
Speaker B
And promptly dismissed the general.
Speaker B
In an unfortunate turn of events, Kerensky warned the Petrograd Soviets that Kornilov was approaching.
Speaker B
Prompting them to arm themselves and stop the oncoming attack.
Speaker B
The Soviets did so successfully, and Kornilov was arrested.
Speaker B
However, after the military coup was foiled, Bolshevik soldiers refused orders by the government to stand down.
Speaker B
Instead, sensing weakness, the communists launched a coup of their own.
Speaker B
This revolution would be later called the October Revolution and marked the start of the Russian Civil War.
Speaker B
As the Bolsheviks rallied large parts of the Russian army, the Russians turned their weapons on each other.
Speaker B
Two large factions emerged at the start of the Civil War, the communist Bolsheviks and the pro-government White forces that later united under Admiral Kolchak.
Speaker B
Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak was a popular and well-decorated Imperial Russian Admiral, having fought in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and the Great War.
Speaker B
He became recognized as the supreme leader and commander of all White forces by 1918.
Speaker B
Loyal to the Romanov Dynasty, but also a pro-democratic Republican, Kolchak was a popular figure with both the nobles, general population, and the military.
Speaker B
With Russia in crisis, White forces saw no better man to lead the war.
Speaker B
Even as the situation deteriorated rapidly.
Speaker B
Red forces quickly took control of the Russian industrial heartland, pushing the Whites out to the fringes and Russian hinterland.
Speaker B
More worryingly, Red forces intercepted the Tsar as he attempted to flee and imprisoned the royal family at Yekaterinburg.
Speaker B
By the time Kolchak's White forces arrived there, they found only bodies.
Speaker B
The execution of Tsar Nicholas and his family cratered White morale, but also rallied anti-Bolshevik sentiment in the White controlled areas.
Speaker B
Many moderates rose to condemn the brutal killing of the Imperial family and painted Lenin as a tyrant and murderer.
Speaker B
Ironically, not long thereafter, the Bolshevik leader would face a similar fate.
Speaker B
In the summer of 1918, Lenin toured an arms factory in Moscow.
Speaker B
When he approached the crowd to shake hands, a smiling woman reached out to him, drew a revolver and shot Lenin through the chest.
Speaker B
The Soviet leader dropped to the ground, dead upon impact.
Speaker B
The assassin attempted to flee the scene, but was captured.
Speaker B
She was later revealed to be Fanny Kaplan, a prominent anarchist in the Bolshevik coalition.
Speaker B
The death of Lenin sent shockwaves through the Red Army.
Speaker B
Rumors began spreading that Kaplan was working for another faction of the Red Front, and that the assassination was a plot to stop Lenin's growing influence.
Speaker B
Kaplan was shot without trial four days later.
Speaker B
Her legacy would be great, however.
Speaker B
Lenin's death would be a seminal downturn in the political unity of the Soviets and the Red Army.
Speaker B
Now that the playing field had been leveled, White forces rallied around several key individuals leading troops against the Bolshevik menace.
Speaker B
Kolchak and Kornilov settled their grievances after the death of the Tsar, and focused on the larger task of defeating the Red Army.
Speaker B
The staunch Republican and his nationalist rival were soon joined by two other prominent figures from their respective parties.
Speaker B
The democratic Viktor Chernov and authoritarian Boris Savinkov.
Speaker B
Viktor Chernov was a political leader from the democratic SR Party that was dominant in the Duma during the Civil War.
Speaker B
Together with Kolchak, he advocated for a new Russian Republic to emerge from the ruins of the Civil War.
Speaker B
Savinkov, on the other hand, was a fanatic militarist suspected of several high-ranking assassinations and even terrorism.
Speaker B
He was supported by Kornilov as being an effective statesman and grew popular with the soldiers and officers throughout the war.
Speaker B
These four men would continue to clash over their differing visions for Russia.
Speaker B
Even throughout the Civil War.
Speaker B
They found common ground on one thing, however.
Speaker B
Before all else, the Bolsheviks had to be destroyed.
Speaker B
Sensing weakness in the Red Front, the Western armies took Vitebsk and Petrograd and began contesting Smolensk.
Speaker B
With shortages of food and equipment, the Reds were forced to retreat.
Speaker B
This respite lasted for several months, allowing White forces to recapture key territories.
Speaker B
The 1919 Spring Offensive, later made legendary as the Run to the Volga, saw Kornilov uniting his forces with the rest of the army rather than attempting his own offensive on Moscow.
Speaker B
The Red counter-offensive against the Whites failed.
Speaker B
And many point to this event as the moment in the Civil War where the balance tipped decidedly in favor of White forces.
Speaker B
Political instability was not limited to the Red camp, however, as White leaders met for the second time at Ufa that year.
Speaker B
A fierce political battle erupted over the need for military leadership.
Speaker B
To keep the White Front united, Kolchak was forced to follow along with the Cadets and SRs and seed considerable power to the nationalist Kornilov.
Speaker B
The German Kaiser.
Speaker B
Fearing the communist uprising in the East, struck a secret deal with this military leadership through Ukrainian proxies.
Speaker B
Through these backroom channels, Kornilov was promised German aid against the Red menace.
Speaker B
While officially, Russia and Germany would remain in a state of war, commanders on both sides were ordered to minimize and avoid open conflict.
Speaker B
With the quiet backing of German forces, Red troops were forced to retreat further.
Speaker B
The Red Army was wounded by shortages of food, munitions, and widespread desertions.
Speaker B
The Whites saw their chance as the forward defenses of Moscow, capital city of the Russian Soviets, dissolved.
Speaker B
By the middle of 1920, Moscow was assaulted on all sides by White forces.
Speaker B
After fierce fighting, the city fell on August 31st, 1920.
Speaker B
What remained of the Red Army began a retreat to Arkhangelsk.
Speaker B
Where they were chased relentlessly.
Speaker B
Those few foreign Bolsheviks who managed to escape the country retreated to friendly syndicalist nations such as France and later the Union of Britain.
Speaker C
The Russian Revolution failed partly due to the gullible nature of the Soviet leadership.
Speaker C
After Lenin's assassination, Bukharin, Stalin and Trotsky squabbled over control, and I should have known then we were doomed.
Speaker C
At best, Trotsky was a gullible fool, and at worst, a soft-hearted idiot.
Speaker C
The deaths of millions of Soviet citizens can be blamed on his inability to see the internal threats tearing the combined Soviets apart.
Speaker C
Even as the Whites pressed us out of Yekaterinburg and our Western front collapsed, we were occupied mostly with political side-line arguments.
Speaker C
The anarchist wing of the party infected the Soviets like a cancer, planting in the men imbecilic and unsustainable ideas of a future in Russia without a government.
Speaker C
Kolchak and Kornilov learned from our internal division, and assembled a strong dictatorship to bring the Whites through the war.
Speaker C
I despise them for everything they stand for.
Speaker C
But in this they were not wrong.
Speaker C
When Moscow fell, we fled Russia as common criminals.
Speaker C
Hiding on freighters to Britain.
Speaker C
While the revolution failed in Russia, the international brigades would survive and reorganize in the United Kingdom.
Speaker C
After we helped the Syndicalists topple the monarchy, the British Red Terror that followed was swift and effective.
Speaker C
All voices of opposition within the party were silenced.
Speaker C
And total control was established.
Speaker C
The difference between the Bolsheviks and the British Republicans was that the British were prepared to cut once and cut deep.
Speaker C
I still hold that, on the British Isles, thousands of lives were saved by sacrificing a few hundred.
Speaker C
When we returned to Chicago, we vowed to remember the lessons we learned in Europe.
Speaker C
When we began allying the various Syndicates in the Greater Lakes Area.
Speaker C
We ensured no man would step out of line.
Speaker C
Only a strong leadership figure could assure the success of the American Revolution - the Combined Syndicates would not fail where the Soviets had.
Speaker C
We called this ideology one of total state control.
Speaker C
Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.
Speaker C
Total control, the name stuck.
Speaker C
Later on, the party would call us the Totalists.
Speaker D
On the 28th of January 1921, White forces declared victory in Russia.
Speaker D
To the surprise of many, Kornilov and the military did indeed relinquish their wartime powers by declaring that Petrograd would hold the Great Constitutional Assembly.
Speaker D
The victorious provisional government was reassembled under Alexander Guchkov.
Speaker D
Who became Russia's first president.
Speaker D
But while one war had ended.
Speaker D
Another still loomed.
Speaker D
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed between Germany and the Bolsheviks.
Speaker D
Not the White government.
Speaker D
This meant, technically, Russia and Germany were still at war.
Speaker D
White Russia's preoccupation with her civil war had seen German interests directed westward for most of the latter half of the war.
Speaker D
First to break the Entente outside Paris, and then to guard against the unprecedented French syndicalist revolution.
Speaker D
The radical militarist and nationalist factions, spearheaded by Savinkov, believed this was the perfect opportunity to continue the war against a distracted and exhausted Germany.
Speaker D
Their hastily prepared and highly unrealistic plan involved a rapid campaign to recapture Russia's breakaway provinces.
Speaker D
To the democratic government, however, the continuation of the largest war in human history on the heels of a civil war no less was nothing short of madness.
Speaker D
Order had not yet been restored across Russia's vast territories.
Speaker D
Famine was widespread.
Speaker D
And the country was on the verge of economic collapse.
Speaker D
This provisional government approved the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, originally negotiated by the fallen Bolshevik government on the 13th of October 1921.
Speaker D
While this was a sound move to any reasonable observer, in nationalist circles the treaty was seen as an incredible humiliation.
Speaker D
By signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the democratic government accepted the very defeatism of the Bolsheviks they defeated just months earlier.
Speaker D
It was in these turbulent times that Savinkov began his political rise.
Speaker D
The nationalist had emerged in the Duma as a popular fiery orator, promising everything to everyone.
Speaker D
Further land reform to the peasants, reconquest to the revanchists, and strong leadership to those convinced of Russia's failings.
Speaker D
In 1924, he broke with his former party, the right-wing SRs, and formed his own SZRS Party.
Speaker D
This Motherland Party incorporated both social revolutionaries and Cadets, who struggled to find a political home.
Speaker D
Savinkov's new Party of the People quickly attracted burgeoning support from the peasantry, student intelligentsia, and nationalist groups.
Speaker D
To the Russian populace, Savinkov seemed like a bold leader for a difficult era.
Speaker D
Many began to refer to him as the leader.
Speaker D
Or as it is called in Russian.
Speaker D
The Vozhd.
Speaker D
By 1925, Russia's troubles had only worsened.
Speaker D
As inflation truly spiraled beyond control.
Speaker D
Economic ties to the United States, once a source of strength, quickly became a liability as the Wall Street crash sent the American economy stumbling.
Speaker D
Soon, the Russian government found itself forced to turn to the hated Germans for aid.
Speaker D
A situation epitomized by the 1926 Vilnius Agreement.
Speaker D
The agreement provided a framework for broad German investment across Russia, which would pave the way for industrialization yet unseen in the country.
Speaker D
To opponents like Savinkov, however, this was yet another defeat.
Speaker D
A desperate measure taken at the cost of Russian sovereignty.
Speaker D
Not only had the democratic government signed the humiliating peace of Brest-Litovsk, they were now also subjecting themselves to the very German influence that cost them control over Eastern Europe.
Speaker D
The more Russia struggled, the stronger Savinkov grew.
Speaker D
The 1927 elections would bring more seats for his party.
Speaker D
Soon followed by a sweeping propaganda victory.
Speaker D
Worried by the election's results, the SRs and Cadets had introduced legislation to stifle and politically disarm the Motherland Party.
Speaker D
The move had exactly the opposite effect.
Speaker D
Now armed with legitimate complaints of unjust censorship and repression, Savinkov unleashed a barrage of accusations against the government.
Speaker D
Soon, the legislation failed.
Speaker D
And Savinkov emerged stronger than ever.
Speaker D
Still, he and his Motherland Party remained on the political fringe.
Speaker D
It would take something greater yet to propel him from the back seat of the Duma.
Speaker D
Into the halls of the Kremlin.
Speaker D
Fortunately, for Savinkov, despite all Russia's troubles, worse was yet to come.
Speaker D
This time it would be a humiliation all too familiar, and on all too familiar a field.
Speaker D
The rolling hills of Manchuria.
Speaker D
The Chinese Eastern Railway, or CER, running from the city of Chita in the Russian Far East to the city of Harbin in the heart of Manchuria.
Speaker D
Had been a matter of dispute since the early days of the Civil War nearly a decade before.
Speaker D
In early 1927, a minor incident at the border city of Manzhouli quickly escalated.
Speaker D
Neither Russia, nor Zhang Zuolin's Chinese authorities were entirely clear on how to respond.
Speaker D
The Russian Far Eastern District under General Konstantin Sakharov was only partially mobilized, and Zhang's forces were fiercely engaged with the Zhili clique to the south.
Speaker D
As negotiations dragged on and eventually proved futile.
Speaker D
The SR Cadet government recognized an opportunity.
Speaker D
Not just to strengthen their position over the railway, but also to beat Savinkov at his own game.
Speaker D
With the government's blessing, General Sakharov hastily amassed 200,000 troops.
Speaker D
50,000 of whom were soon marching across the border at Manzhouli.
Speaker D
The Chinese fought a fighting retreat.
Speaker D
But soon the Russians had secured all of Hailar.
Speaker D
And settled in as an occupying force north of the Greater Khingan Range.
Speaker D
Still fighting a war to the south.
Speaker D
The situation would only worsen for Zhang with the end of summer.
Speaker D
As a Russian flotilla crushed a Chinese riverine armada on the Amur.
Speaker D
And detachments of Cossacks began to raid into the countryside.
Speaker D
The Japanese, with their own agenda, thus far refused to intervene.
Speaker D
After two victories and no responses from the Japanese, Russian forces grew bolder.
Speaker D
Sakharov was convinced that the war could be pursued past mere border skirmishes.
Speaker D
The arrival of winter gave him a chance to redeploy both himself and some of his best forces into the Primorye.
Speaker D
Following the early thaw of 1928, Sakharov swept aside the Chinese forces left to guard the frontier.
Speaker D
And began his march westward.
Speaker D
Largely following the Trans-Siberian Railroad, toward his first objective on the road to Harbin, the cities of Mudanjiang and Ning'an.
Speaker D
However, not all was well in Sakharov's camp.
Speaker D
An unexpected snow squall in mid-March drastically slowed the advance and grounded his reconnaissance aircraft.
Speaker D
The narrow front of advance had likewise turned much of his army into a snaking column.
Speaker D
Navigating the valleys through which the railway had been built.
Speaker D
Worse yet, the unreliability of the dizzying array of radios the Russians were using meant communications, poor and largely unencrypted to begin with, had broken down within a week of the offensive.
Speaker D
Forcing Sakharov to rely on messengers.
Speaker D
Finally reaching Mudanjiang almost a week behind schedule.
Speaker D
Sakharov's forces began making quick progress.
Speaker D
Momentum was soon lost, however, as the defending Chinese forces proved stronger than expected.
Speaker D
Sakharov's incredulity would soon turn to horror.
Speaker D
As frantic messengers began arriving from his rear guard.
Speaker D
Though no two reports agreed with each other, what was clear was that a catastrophe was brewing.
Speaker D
Simultaneously, and at several different points along the column, Sakharov's army had come under attack by an unknown ambusher with surprisingly modern equipment.
Speaker D
When Russian forces saw the ambushers bear down upon their rear, their flag came into view.
Speaker D
With shock and horror.
Speaker D
Sakharov realized he was facing an old enemy.
Speaker D
Flying over the ambushed army were the colors of the Rising Sun.
Speaker D
The Empire of Japan had finally responded.
Speaker D
The Japanese Kwantung Army had observed Sakharov's buildup of forces in the Primorye with great interest.
Speaker D
When both scouts and intercepted radio transmissions proved his intentions without a doubt, the Japanese launched into action.
Speaker D
Aware of the Russians' avenue of advance, Japanese infantry had made a difficult trek into the highlands south of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, ready to strike as soon as Sakharov's troops stalled at Mudanjiang.
Speaker D
Others, wearing Chinese uniforms, had taken up positions in the city itself.
Speaker D
The results were immediate and decisive.
Speaker D
Overstretched and taken completely by surprise, Sakharov's rear guard was routed.
Speaker D
Despite attempts to turn his forces around and punch through the encirclement, the breakdown of supplies, command, and morale left only a foregone conclusion.
Speaker D
After a week of further futility, Sakharov bitterly resigned himself to surrender.
Speaker D
Nearly 30,000 soldiers of his special Primorye Corps were captured, wounded, or killed in the field.
Speaker D
The defeat was a political disaster for the SR Cadet government.
Speaker D
For all the damage years of symbolic defeats had done, and for all they had hoped to gain from a quick and easy victory.
Speaker D
An actual defeat in the field was something else entirely.
Speaker D
Unsurprisingly, Savinkov was quick to capitalize on the debacle.
Speaker D
Russia had yet again been humiliated.
Speaker D
And the government could not have been more unpopular.
Speaker D
Seeing the writing on the wall, democratic leaning General Vasily Boldyrev attempted a preventative putsch in 1929.
Speaker D
Hoping for support from the SRs and Cadets, hoping to use a combination of military might and political power to decisively crush the Motherland Party once and for all.
Speaker D
The necessary support never came.
Speaker D
Instead, the Russian government began what would later become known as the Christmas Purge.
Speaker D
A sweeping series of forced retirements and prosecutions.
Speaker D
Targeting allies of both Boldyrev and Savinkov.
Speaker D
Boldyrev fled the country.
Speaker D
And once again, Savinkov railed against the government.
Speaker D
Letting fly accusations of tyranny and repression.
Speaker D
According to Savinkov, only a weak government would fear those who had served and bled in its name.
Speaker D
Only a weak government would resort to such violent, extreme measures.
Speaker E
Boldyrev the Traitor they call me now, Boldyrev the exiled, Boldyrev, who sits in Georgia wringing his hands, plotting the downfall of Great Russia.
Speaker E
You fools.
Speaker E
My loyalists and I are the only ones up to the task of protecting Russia! Look around you, brothers, the Silver Skulls and black uniforms on the streets were once symbols of freedom.
Speaker E
Now, they remind us of the oppression of the Okhrana, the failing Romanov dynasty and the mass hysteria of the Bolshevik revolution.
Speaker E
Does it matter whether the flags your oppressor waves is black or red? They are snakes choking the foundations of the Russian Republic either way.
Speaker E
They say I have no popular support. They say I am an arrogant figment of Russia's past.
Speaker E
I do not have the people's support, because I am not a lying snake like Savinkov, dripping honeyed words into their ears with a knife behind his back.
Speaker E
Out here in Georgia, we dodge his assassins on a weekly basis.
Speaker E
I am pushed to the fringes, made politically mute and hunted, but I survive.
Speaker E
The dream of a Russian democracy survives with me.
Speaker E
Savinkov controls the radio. Savinkov controls the newspapers.
Speaker E
Savinkov controls the army.
Speaker E
Slowly his black tendrils wrap around the last vestiges of democracy and freedom in Russia, and you are all too blind to see it!
Speaker E
Like bleating sheep, his Motherland Party will lead you all to slaughter.
Speaker E
I organized the putsch as a last-ditch attempt to remove Savinkov his influence from the apparatus of state.
Speaker E
But I fear it may already be too late. Savinkov has once again succeeded in painting his opponents as enemies, and once more the Russian populace wades deeper into his lies.
Speaker E
There is a spectre haunting Russia.
Speaker E
It is the spectre of national populism.
Speaker E
And me and Viktor Chernov are the last men able to stop it.
Topics:Russian Civil WarWhite ForcesBolsheviksRussian RevolutionAlexander KerenskyKornilov AffairWorld War IRussian EmpireAlternate HistoryKaiserreich
