that were keeping up with technology. He managed to-- the Bolshevik Revolution managed to survive and communism spread, and that became the leading alternative to capitalism.
He was born in 1910 in St. Petersburg. His parents were Bolshevik functionaries, basically. So, he grew up during the Revolution.
ultimately the revolution did hit and one of smirnoff sons vladimir was actually put in a Bolshevik prison and he has been whar's left that his wife recorded so we actually know what happened to him and he was sentenced to death by firing squad he was actually dragged from his cell five different
He loves her, but he also wants to kill her at the same time. And the Bolsheviks . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like he-- Gleb is in love with her, but also.
is the height of the Red Scare. This is when the Bolsheviks were coming for your children to turn them into pantywaists. Like there was a lot of fear going around at this time.
We should be the master race. We've been threatened by a global Jewish-Bolshevik plot. We've been stabbed in the back in 1918 at the end of the First World War.
This notion that is embedded into Hitler's mind and into the minds of the Nazi party right from the word go is there is a big sort of global conspiracy, the Jewish-Bolshevik plot. I mean, completely misplaced that Jews and Bolsheviks go hand in hand and somehow dovetail, they don't, obviously.
we know that Stalin was trying to discredit Zinoviev, who was one of his rivals. And so there's a possibility that it was actually done to disrupt Bolshevik politics. It may have been forged by what we call White Russian interests.
breeding horses nice little aristocratic pastime and this is Vladimir the one who spent time in the Bolshevik prison and ultimately was responsible for the brand surviving one of the only pre Bolshevik brands that has survived and that is his wife and son Vladimir wife and son this
of global conspiracy, the Jewish-Bolshevik plot. I mean, completely misplaced that Jews and Bolsheviks go hand in hand and somehow dovetail, they don't, obviously. And the whole ideology is to crush this.
So, to go back to your original point, Lebensraum is absolutely part of it. So, what you do is you crush the Bolsheviks , you crush world Jewry, then you expand. You know, Britain has had this incredible empire, global empire.
That is, the people who weren't against the Bolsheviks , but who were Russians, a lot of whom were in exile in Germany or in France and in the Baltic states, busily intriguing and trying to get rid of the Bolshevik regime in Russia. And then, of course, you've got the whole convoluted state of British politics as well.
And so trying to find out whether a document like the Zinoviev Letter really was true was almost impossible. Because after all, you know, Bolshevik Russia is shrouded in-- it's a very secret state. They're not going to tell you much about it.
And it's an illustration of the dangers of being overly heavy handed in your approach to counterinsurgency, because that can backfire, as it in fact did for the French in Algeria. Because when you think about it, look at what happened with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, for example.
And not only just in the face of the auto industry, but really in the face of all America, in the eyes of everyone in America." So, the irony about Zora Arkus Duntov was he was raised as a Bolshevik . He was born in 1910 in St. Petersburg.
who enjoyed drinking way more than he enjoyed business also he was into breeding horses nice little aristocratic pastime and this is Vladimir the one who spent time in the Bolshevik prison and ultimately was responsible for the brand surviving one of the only pre Bolshevik
They came here to work. Some families stayed, and it was right before the Bolsheviks came into power. Starvation happened. Family members died, so on and so forth.
It may have been forged by what we call White Russian interests. That is, the people who weren't against the Bolsheviks , but who were Russians, a lot of whom were in exile in Germany or in France and in the Baltic states, busily intriguing and trying to get rid of the Bolshevik regime in Russia.
In World War I, The Wilson Administration, some geniuses in that administration, figured that if they could get white families to move to single family homes after the Russian Revolution, they wouldn't become Bolsheviks . And so the federal government had a program to propagandize starting in 1920, to propagandize white families to move to single family
And, of course, we now tend to associate Russia immediately, first and foremost, with communist revolution. But, actually, strangely enough, the Bolsheviks themselves, the ideologues of Bolshevism, thought that Germany was much more likely to go Bolshevik , and the German proletariat is much bigger.
It's much more ripe a place for a communist revolution. And, in fact, there were-- we, again, sort of tend to forget this, how close Germany came to becoming a Bolshevik communist country. There were at least, depending on how you count them, five or six revolutions between 1918, the ,, and in 1923.
So let me say a little bit about the Letter itself. Now, this document was a letter supposedly written by a man called Grigory Zinoviev, who was the head of the Bolshevik propaganda organization in Soviet Russia after the Revolution in 1917.
or indeed causing trouble in Moscow. Because it is possible that even if Zinoviev didn't write it, it might have been forged as part of an intra-Bolshevik power struggle, because at this point we know that Stalin was trying to discredit Zinoviev, who was one of his rivals.
There is a man called Vladimir Orlov. Now, Orlov had the distinction of having worked in the tsarist secret police, in the Bolshevik secret police, and then for White Russian organizations in exile.
With Gleb, yeah. Well, so, what I really love about this musical is that it does tie in real Russian history. And, as we all know, during that time period, the fall of the Bolshevik Revolution, which is where they went from a monarchy to king and queen to communism. And you have this guy that's kind of working his way up the ranks, this evil character, Gleb.
Came to America. Finds himself in Detroit. And you had the irony of the all-American sports car, the Chevrolet Corvette, being saved by a Bolshevik boy. But Zora argued--. This car would not be alive today, frankly, without this guy's vision and determination to save the car.
one of many strange moves, in retrospect, made by Hitler-- the Japanese didn't reciprocate. And when that happened, Churchill was chided for forming an alliance with Stalin because Churchill had been a great anti-Bolsheviker,