Anita's voice is so musical.

Anita sounds as erudite as William. I love listening to both of you!

And I had no idea she is married to Simon Singh whose books I've found most enjoyable many years ago. Small world really  :)

You forgot his prime role model: Ivan the Terrible. Invite Simon Sebag Montefiore, who has written on Stalin in two authoritative volumes.

Study the allied triumvirate of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, all remarkable leaders who were on top diametrically different in background and temperament but very much alike in other ways. All were doted on by their mothers after disappointing relationships with fragile fathers. And each early in their years were fiercely determined to make a mark in the world. Each were underestimated and not much regarded by their peers.  They each patiently plotted and took over leadership as compromise and crisis choices.  Rating each of the three I would say Stalin was the most natively intelligent, scholarly and literate.

Ironic that you are advertising AI. Our new “effective manager”.

The podcast hosts have a lot of stereotypes and incompetence, but they spread their own incompetence to their viewers.

Boycott content with ads

I didn’t realise that the word ‘thug’ contains the word ‘hug’
Maybe if we gave more hugs there would be less thugs😊

How do you deal with biases your own and those of the established narrative? How many biases are there?
We live with Churchill statues, Churchill wasn't a choirboy!

Don't get me wrong Love your Jugalbandi. If you know what I mean.

He was not reading  Lenin's что делать in the 1880's or 90s. It had not been written yet.

And you can learn a lot about savage violence from reading the Bible....

why, as historians, would you advertise AI? disappointing

The ideological origins of Social Democracy is Marxist. The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party was founded as a Marxist party as were all other Social Democratic Parties in Europe at the time.

But splits/factions naturally emerged in European Social Democracy. For the sake of simplicity, there were two main wings: the revolutionary wing and the reformist wing. The latter believed that liberal democracy gave working class parties the freedom to reform (via legislation) your way into socialism. Revolution was not necessary. The former rejected that premise as did the Bolsheviks, especially since they were living under Tsarist absolutism.

After the Bolshevik Revolution and the First World War, the two wings of Social Democracy became irreconcilable and became bitter enemies. Revolutionary Social Democrats rebranded as Communists while Social Democrats remained reformist socialists. In the 1950s, Social Democrats officially removed Marxism from their party platforms and many modern day Social Democrats now ideologically self-identify as 'democratic socialists.'

I really love Empire, but I do not agree with this kind of hidden admiration of Stalin so widely spread among European (pseudo) intellectuals. He is swimming in an ocean of blood bigger than Hitler whom rightly nobody admires (exept a rising number of far rightists).

Ha! :) First Georgian commenting here - I don’t believe in hell, but for this guy, I'm ready to make an exception.

I was so disappointed in the opening two episodes of this series.... Sadly depthless. Glib. Let me give one example: Stalin's abuse of Krupskaya over the phone what because he discovered that Lenin and Trotsky had been working together -- on the monopoly of trade and then the Georgian affair -- which is crucial to understanding the dynamic of that power struggle. In general, the picture of Lenin is just not really supported by the historical evidence. Sad to be disappointed. Gah.

Only in Russia could a failed bandit achieve such importance. We Georgians do not claim him - the best of our nation died in Stalin's purges. As he famously told his daughter, he was Georgian only in his childhood. It is a good point to mention Iran here: being in Tehran as a tsar healed something within him. 😂

AI is Satanic

You are touting Applebaum as a serious scholar on Soviet history? Come on, you can do better!

good looking fella