Part Two: Peter the Painter and the Latvian Revolution of 1905

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed human. No gloss, no filter. Just stories, spoken without fear. A person who is not generous cannot be an artist. The world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhachon on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. Courson Media. Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Fall Down Rabbit Hole. I am your host, Margot Kiljoy, and I fell down a rabbit hole this week. And with me to help extricate me from this rabbit hole, or actually what I actually do is just explain my rabbit hole to the microphone every week. With me is my guest, Beccaramus, how are you? Hello, I'm good. You are the person who produces every single podcast, and now you have your own podcast. Do you want to tell the audience about your podcast? Yes, you might know me from your favorite comedy shows on I Heart's network, Los Culturistas, TraderLab, Mess, but now I am producing my own show called Welcome to El Barrio, which is a podcast about all things Puerto Rican history, news and culture, where I spend some time every week interviewing Puerto Ricans that are redefining what it means to be Puerto Rican all in hopes that by the end of every episode, you feel a little closer to Borinquen, no matter where you are in the world. And one of the things I liked, you're explaining a little bit more about the show on our break between episodes. You talked about it as like an identity journey and how you're trying to learn through interviewing people. That's one of my favorite ways to learn is to be like, I'm interested in a thing, I'm finding the experts and making them explain it to me. Because I want to be acknowledging that as much as I am a thought leader in the sense that I am now behind in my talking, I am not the end all be all of Puerto Rican culture. And I think that is also kind of the impetus of Puerto Rican culture is that we are not this one thing and that there are so many ways to be Puerto Rican and why not get with the people who are doing it the best. No, it makes sense. It's also like a neat podcast as pedagogy, podcast is like a way of learning. And there's this thing that happens to me all the time and no one says it to my face, but every now and then like people are like, people think I know everything about history because I know all of the things that they've learned history. I'm doing a similar thing, not the same, but like I am learning about a subject every week. And so people are like, oh, you know all these things. I'm like, yes, because my job is to learn it and then explain it as quickly as possible at kind of an unsustainable, I mean a perfectly sustainable rate. And I could do this all the time. And it's just like a neat way of just being like, no, I don't know this thing. I'm gonna learn it. Hey, do you all wanna learn it with me? So. Exactly. Yeah. I think that's great. Thank you. It's been so much fun. I've learned so many things. I've met such amazing people along the way and I've really built, I sense a community that I have been longing for. The listeners are already so engaged and send me their own stories about their own identity journeys. And it's been, you know, you like make an idea, you make a show and you kind of like put in a vacuum. You know, you're like, okay, it exists, but like I don't know if anyone cares about it or is listening to it. Right, totally. So it's been cool to see that from the jump, it's a very new show. They already see so many DMs and messages and emails of people that are like, thank you for this. I really appreciate it. Cause like, you know, I was making it for me hoping that it was useful for somebody else. No, that's a good sign. And what's funny is that I feel bad. I don't get back to more than half of the messages I get. And if you are one of those people who've sent me the more than half message, I want you to know you were in perfectly good company. There's all kinds of amazing messages I haven't gotten back to. And that has much more to do with my own. This is an introvert job. You know, like, I mean, it's an extrovert job in sprints, but like it still helps me to hear from people being like, oh, this affected me. This, there's a reason you do this besides to feed your dog. You know? Yeah. So the thing we are learning about this week is a man named Peter the painter who is not named Peter, but is a painter who is, I thought a bystander to a burglary in London, but is in fact the military leader of one of the more important revolutions in world history that changed the course of history. At 23. Yeah, he hasn't even made it 23 yet. Yeah, he is, I think he's gonna run a ribbon factory in America by that point, but we're actually, we're not even actually going to get this week into his later life. This is an episode about the Lafayette Revolution that he is leading. Oh man, yep, no, I have got nothing on that. I absolutely did not lead a world changing revolution by the time I was 23 years old. I know both of you did, and I know that the statute of limitations is like starting to expire, and I'm really looking forward to y'all's joint show about that as soon as the statute of limitations is up. But one day I'm gonna start a show called statute of limitations, and it's just gonna be people talking about crime. I love that. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. Anyway, we are talking, this is part two of a, I don't know how I'm gonna break this up and understand it. This is part two about Peter the Painter. Where we last left our hero, he is named, I keep wanting to call him the street sweeper, the street cleaner. His name is the land surveyor, and he is the ghost that is haunting the czar in Latvia. And this big old revolution is happening, going full swing, and he's not, I mean, like that's the thing is whenever you do the big man in history thing, he's cool, he did all this awesome stuff. He's one of thousands of people who did stuff. And he would be the first to tell you, he's just one of thousands of people who did stuff. But this revolution, it has a bit of a problem, it has an ideological problem, because some portion of them, including their fighting group and their allies are strict Marxists, or ostensibly strict Marxists, which is a different thing then than it is now. There's specific an ideological framework by which revolution was supposed to happen. It was all mapped out scientifically. This is how we do it. But they weren't following that. The Latvians weren't especially. You're not really supposed to do these individual actions. You're more supposed to, like the Russian people weren't ready for revolution, according to the Marxists. When I say according to the Marxists, I feel like I'm being rude. A lot of the Marxists are like, yeah, but it's happening, so we're doing it. You know? But in Orthodox Marxism, you're supposed to have a bourgeois revolution where the rich take power, before you're allowed to have a communist revolution where the workers take power. And so the Latvian Marxists in particular were deviating from Orthodoxy, and the Russian Social Democratic Party was frustrated by them, even though the Latvians are kicking ass. The other problem with this is that when the Russian military began to defect to the revolution, so like more and more, you have like two different sailors, not sailors, ships full of sailors, naval vessels that defect. And they're essentially unable to organize the broader struggle, at least according to one historian I read, people love arguing about the Russian revolution. I'm not actually one of those people. I prefer to just be right and not talk about what could possibly be wrong about. It wasn't yet time for the military to join. It was still up to the people, according to some of the thinkers. So the military, when they defected, they weren't able to really plug in. And this is one of the things I've seen historians point to as part of the reason that revolution in 1905 failed. Orthodoxy and an unwillingness to adapt to the situation. Which is what I was thinking about when we were talking about the young lords who kicked ass and did all this amazing stuff and then struggled in Puerto Rico, is that some of them were like, ah, conditions on the ground are different. And some of them were like, nah, but we can't change how we do things. Yeah. And every ideology is guilty of that. I wanna be really clear. I do talk shit on specific ideologies a lot, but every ideology can fall into this. But the revolution spread, regardless of what the vanguard wanted, who also wanted to spread by and large. I feel weird talking shit about this particular point. But it spread over in Lafayette, especially in the countryside. And in small towns, one of the actions that was happening everywhere, I promised you people messing with churches, is that mostly women, or at least the ones I read about were women, would take over churches in the middle of mass. And women would just go up to the pulpit, and these weren't like outsiders, right? This isn't like the revolutionaries come to town and are messing up your church. This is the people who go to church, being like, I don't think you're right, Mr. Priest, man. And they would go up to the pulpit and denounce the czarist regime and demand independence. The Lutheran church was largely German and barely spoke Latvian. And it was increasingly unpopular with the masses. And the people in attendance would often just walk out and have labor rallies outside of church, instead of being inside, because the person was praying for the czar or whatever. And they were like, that's the guy who's trying to kill us. Telephone operators were spying on telegraphs and telephone calls of the czarist forces. This is one of the things that's really addictive about once revolutions and protests generalize, is you start realizing that like, this whole people power thing is true. When you're like, oh, this is like all of us. You know, when you watch like firefighters be like, oh, those Nazi storehouses can just burn, we don't care. Or like, when someone's like, ah, I'm supposed to arrest you, but I don't want to, you know? Telephone operators were on the side of the people because they were famously people. And Soviets, that is to say, workers councils or peasant councils in this case, directly democratic bodies started sometimes representationally, but like local democratic bodies would crop up in the countryside to handle the day-to-day life in place of the imperial state. And that's what makes a revolution is when the state is no longer in power, but instead the people are. But there were counter-revolutionary forces, and this part is gonna make me smile in a horrible bloodthirsty way. There are always counter-revolutionary forces because the people also includes all the right-wing dick bags, right? I mean, I know center-right people who would happily come over if shit was going certain way, whatever. But there's the Nazis everywhere, right? There's the actual state forces, like cops and soldiers, but everywhere I've read, there's revolutions. There's also basically racist militias. There's just every revolution I've read about, there's basically the patriot front. There's just always there trying to stop it. And the patriot front of Latvia and the rest of the empire, the Russian empire, were called the Black Hundreds, and I dislike that I like their name because that's a kind of sick name. But they do sound like a racist group. They do, yeah. Which is funny, because like the Black Hundreds is either a bunch of racists, a bunch of Black Power folks are doing awesome shit, or a bunch of anarchists who are like mostly good. Yeah. Those are the three different ones, and in this one it's the racist one. This one is the worst one. Yeah. Later there's another group called the Red Hundreds, but they're elsewhere and they're like commies, but I- And that sounds worse almost, but- I know, yeah. The police would give the Black Hundreds guns and be like, hey, go kill Jews, because you're thinking to yourself, but this wasn't a Jewish revolution. Why are they going and killing Jews? And then you would think, oh, right, I've read about antisemitism. That is always the plan. As soon as there is a popular uprising, the state, especially in Europe, rushes to say, how can we blame the Jews instead of us and redirect all of this violent hatred along ethnic lines to this group of outsiders who aren't actually outsiders, who've lived here for hundreds of years. Pogroms spread everywhere across the Russian Empire during 1905. And the state was very good at saying, like mad at poverty and the czar, try being mad at the Jews. What if you just practiced transference? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, they were like, if you consider this, we're very powerful and they're not as powerful. You'll probably win against them. And capitalists were excited about this plan too. The banks in Latvia were not only arming the black hundreds, they were bragging about doing it. I think they're like advertising. I think they were like, bank with us. We are the racist militia. But there was less antisemitism among the working class in Latvia than other parts of the Russian Empire. Because like, frankly, I have read so many Eastern European countries make this claim about themselves specifically, where they're like, we weren't as antisemitic as everyone else, we loved the Jews. We just didn't like them when it started to get difficult for us. Yeah, totally. But like, we were better than everyone else at it. And it's always convincing whenever I read these, like, cause they're always like, oh no, blah, blah, blah. And I'm gonna make a convincing case that the workers of Riga were less antisemitic than elsewhere. Because the black hundreds stayed a problem everywhere else, they're not gonna stay a problem in Riga. The black hundreds descended on the Jewish neighborhoods and they met Jew and Gentile alike ready to stop them. And the Latvian revolutionaries are armed to the fucking teeth. They have bomb factories, whole factories just for bombs. And it was bloody, but the revolutionaries stopped pogrom after pogrom. And they had a central dispatch that frankly, reminds me nothing more than the Minneapolis versus Ice stuff that me and my colleague James Stout went to Minneapolis and talked to people who were organizing Ice Watch there. In Riga, there's a central dispatch. If you see pogromists, you call in and tens or hundreds of people will rush out wherever is needed. And another thing that makes it similar to Minneapolis is in Minneapolis, while ostensibly the police is in control of the city, clearly the people were in control. Like literally there was people on every street corner looking for Ice. I was driving around a like out of state pickup truck. And so they would block me in. They would be like, man, we don't know who you are yet. And I'm like, I got a nose ring. You're like, I'm one of the good ones. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I just live in West Virginia, so I have a giant truck. You're like, I know it looks bad. The optics are bad. Yeah, I have a bird's nest on my dashboard. But the people were in control. Or at least there was a conflict about who is in control of the city. And mixed ethnicity militias would stay overnight to guard Jewish shops. But the black hundreds kept going, right? They didn't stop them yet. So they were killing random Jews on the street. And so Peter, the painter and his friends, they're like, why are we on the defensive? Isn't this our city? And they're like, we have a problem, which is that there's people and they're the black hundreds. What if there weren't those people anymore? Over the course of a few days, they ended the organizational capacity of the right wing militias by killing them. I was literally going to ask, I was like, so did they kill them? And also I have a follow up question. Were there 100 people in the black hundreds? No, there's more than 100 in the hundreds. Oh, well, that's more. I think it's like probably kind of a reference to how like you'd have military organizations going back to Rome that would be like centuries. So I think it's kind of saying the legions. Mm. But hundreds is kind of evocative because you're like, there's a lot of us, but not like an infinite number of us. Yeah, yeah, like a manageable number. And that's what Peter, maybe Peter, the painter was like, oh, there's only a hundred of them. We could do this. So they just shot them and blew them up and stuff because they knew where they met and they knew where they marched. So they just attacked them, but they didn't kill them all. They didn't have to. They only had to kill about 30 of them. And the rest lost their nerve and disarmed. Some went back to the cops, so given them the guns and were like, man, I lost my nerve. Here's your gun back. The others sold their guns to the revolutionaries. You got to make some money somehow. I know. You're like, we had potatoes. They were rotten. Yeah, totally. They pay the fucking black hundreds, rotten potatoes. And it seems like a good deal when it's that or it gets shot, you know? Yeah. And like this part, it just blew my mind when I read it because I've been reading about the black hundreds in different places. And I've been reading about all of these groups. And they're always like, oh, fuck, we like, we like, you know, we thought that they might come. So we got ready. No, and Latvia, they just fucking. Just like, you're not allowed to do that. I'm going to stop you. And the revolution was going pretty good. And the czar got scared. And the main way that people in power hold power when revolutions really get going. Well, there's two ways. First, they try and crush you to death. And if that doesn't work, they offer you concessions. And so the czar caved in October 1905. But since they were on an Orthodox calendar, I don't actually know if it was October. That's one of the annoying things about like the February revolution in March or whatever. Anyway, whatever. He released the October manifesto, which was basically a like, fuck, don't overthrow me, please. You can have some freedom and then like a Duma, which is basically a Senate, you know, a representational elected parliamentary body. And that they can like advise me, I guess. And they released a lot of political prisoners and Riga. And most of the refugees who fled to London and Boston, they came home because they're like, oh, we're like winning or one. And there was about three months of this awkward dual power where the army and police had a little power and the Soviets, the federated committees held most power. But there was also officially martial law by the government. So it was weird. He's like, here's a carrot, but also the stick at the same time. And to quote the historian Philip Ruff, quote, An illegal Congress of Baltic peasants delegates called for revolutionary councils in every parish to take control of all local institutions and to defend themselves if necessary with arms. Within two weeks of the Congress, councils of revolutionary peasants were elected in nearly all of the villages. They took over all public administration, telephones and telegraphs, formed a people's militia, demanded the immediate release of imprisoned peasants and occupied the estates of the barons who had fled. And so the revolution kept going. And Peter and his thousands, not hundreds, they kept going too. But do you know what keeps me going? Kind of in a literal sense, I guess. Does they pay me? And then I use that to defeat myself. The products and services that support this show. They're what keeps me hanging on. Love that. Yeah. Here they are. No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the sub-CD, Hachakar. Reach the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker, I've fallen down again. Yeah. I am not writing actively anymore and when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. Are you passionate about people and delivering top-notch customer service? We're looking for women to join our growing team of bus drivers at Go Cornwall Bus. But we welcome everyone who shares our passion for making a difference. With fully funded training and qualified pay of £17.00 per hour, Go Cornwall Bus offers careers that move with you. Plus, we provide a supportive mentoring scheme to help you thrive. Ready to drive change? Apply today. Search Go Cornwall Bus vacancies. And we're back and I personally vouch for every single one. Nope, that's not true at all. Nope, they are randomly selected. You never know what you're going to get. Yeah. Be careful. Boy, yeah. So these revolutionaries, they would regularly raid these barons' houses, right? These German barons who still kind of controlled. Society, which is so interesting to me that they're like, oh, we have to overthrow the Russians. Who are the political power and then the Germans who are like the nobility and the cultural power. All at the same time. And they would raid the barons' houses, basically the plantation houses on all these farms and they would burn them down. One participant said, quote, it was not a rebellion after the manner of Moscow's revolt. The peasants did not erect barricades. They simply dismissed the local officials and refused to recognize the authorities and only when necessary, defended their institutions with arms. So just a very like, I'm reading about all the violence and stuff because it's like, it's cool when they burn the rich person's house down or whatever, right? But like the core of the revolution is like, no, we just kind of don't need you. Fuck off. Peter, the land surveyor is leading from the front on the night of 23rd of November, 1905. He and a hundred others surrounded a manor house owned by a particularly loathsome baron, fought a fierce gun battle, took the place by force, executed the baron and set his house on fire. And their main demand here was lift martial law or will keep killing the aristocracy. And the czar was like, nah, instead any village that has rebellions will be fucking raised to the ground and will kill everybody. Because that's the like, they go like carrot, the stick, carrot stick, you know? And this is when Tulsi, Peter's hometown, was presumably raised to the ground. I know that his family survives or at least portions of his family survive. I don't know whether that's because they're not in the town. I don't know whether it's because they get out. And I know that because I know what, like what year his mom sold the farm, 1913, in case you were curious. Although, OK, wait, actually to spoil some of it and cut to the end, because we're actually not going to follow Peter all the way to the end in this week's episodes. Probably, because his mom sells the farm in 1913 and it's just like, oh, I still like pay off my kids' debts. And I don't know. I just kind of wanted to sell the farm and and names all of her kids, except Peter, right? Who's like on the run. She probably sold the farm to give him the money to start his new life in Australia. It was this like last act of parental love for this kid who's like been a refugee in like a thousand countries, which is an exaggeration, because there's not a thousand countries in the world. But quite a few. Yeah. But it it made me really happy to read that. Like, I just I love when the whole family is like, not we hate the czar. We got your back. My family hates this art. My family doesn't have any opinions about the czar. But if I was fighting the czar, they'd probably be very confused and support me. Anyway, 19,000 soldiers from Russia showed up and just started summarily executing people without trials. I swear to God, it's Star Wars. They wouldn't just kill fighters. They would kill anyone suspected of having served on any of the local governance councils. So literally, I was like, oh, you thought you could have a government without us. We're going to kill you for being in an elected official within your own community. And they would string them up on telephone polls because it's basically the Middle Ages. Well, it's telephone polls, so not quite the Middle Ages. It's a uniquely Russian thing to do to do a middle aged thing, but on telephone polls. That's Russia. They were like, no, no, no, we have tradition here. Yeah, absolutely. If you're not home when the soldiers come to kill you for having served on the local council, they'll just kill someone else in your family who answers the door in your place. They made people dig their own graves and then shot them. They publicly tortured people to death. It's the whole shitty nine yards, right? I tend not to focus on the atrocities when I do these episodes, but I feel like every now and then I got to remind them because whenever I'm like, and then they blew stuff up, I have to sell you on it a little bit. And I just, you know, well, not you. I've seen your list of crimes. Can't wait for y'all's episode podcast. Anyway, so. Of course. Yeah. Thousands of people were killed by the soldiers. Thousands more people were forcibly exiled to Siberia and then thousands of people fled the country. And the revolutionaries who stayed, the ones who were in the countryside, fled into the forest to live as partisans. And the ones who stayed in the cities moved underground to live as urban guerrillas and like safe houses and, you know, false fronts and all that stuff. And now I can introduce one of my favorite of these revolutionaries just because he has some good lines. His name is Bulldog. I'm going to tell you about Bulldog. His name is Fristis Svarz. And I do not know how to pronounce Lafayette and I tried. I'm sorry. I looked up a lot of these. I think he was a shipbuilder. He joined the party in 1904. So earlier than the revolution. So he's one of the, you know, first couple hundred people doing this thing. And he's one of the first and fiercest fighters, thus the name Bulldog, which you either get because you are fierce and a fighter or you're like kind of a coward. Everyone's making fun of you. You don't like to run. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. You're like out of breath all the time. But look cute. Later, he's going to become an anarchist and later still he's going to die in a fierce gun battle in London against Churchill. But who, you know, again, the short gen decided two to three million people. But first he's going to break out of prison multiple times in Riga. And at one point he was arrested in the summer of 1905 and the district chief, I think of the police comes up and was like threatening him because the Bulldogs like not scared. He's just like hanging out. And the chief of police is like, don't you know you face the death penalty? And Zvara's yelled back loud as hell, like literally was referred to by one person as loud as a hound from hell. He yelled back, I am not afraid of death. It's only a question of who stands closer to it. You or me. I am. And honestly, poetic. Yeah. And I don't know which because I don't know what happened to this particular district chief, but it's a toss up because he lives another six years before he dies in a gun battle. District chief starts shaking with fear in front of an arrested man. He is just arrested. Wow. Bulldog is out soon enough because soon enough, well, actually I lost track of which times he's rescued in what ways. But one of the times he is arrested for expropriation, like robbing people to pay for the revolution and the death of some police officers. And that time Comrade Storm the jail tied up all the guards and passed stalls to the prisoners who sawed their way to freedom. So at least at one point Bulldog sawed his way through the bars. But the October manifesto dimmed the revolution in general across Russia, including in Latvia. And people were like, you know, we've got some democracy. We could stop doing this revolution that's getting us all killed. Right. There's always that argument. It wasn't enough for the Latvian revolutionaries or for plenty of other revolutionaries. The 1905 revolutionary kind of it tapers off. A lot of revolutionaries like flare up and get crushed. The 1905 revolution like it flares up and then it slowly tapers off as there's this thing that when I studied a lot of the 60s and 70s radicals in the US, I started talking about the clandestinity spiral where you have like a mass movement, right? And everyone's into it. And you have this like kind of hardened core of people who are like gunslingers practically. And they're part of the mass movement and they're important to it. But then as the mass starts falling apart, either because things get too intense or like more of their demands are met, you have this committed core of people who get caught in what I call the clandestinity spiral where they become like more and more isolated from society, but still feel like they got to go. They got to do this thing, right? That's too late for them. They're not turning back. And usually I refer to this kind of in a negative way, like a melancholic way, right? But what's interesting about the 1905 clandestinity spiral, that's absolutely what happened, but you're still left with thousands and thousands of people who go clandestine. And so for like a decade, they're just assassinating people. They're just, and it's not just the anarchists, the social Democrats, instead of just voting, they're like voting with handguns really often. And it leads to these reprisals. It leads to all this stuff. It also leads to the 1917 revolution, which is sort of a toss up, but it got rid of the czar, you know? And they do seem to keep the flame alive. But meanwhile, we're not 10 years from now, we're still 1905, 1906. There's tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people going hard for freedom. And Peter and those closest to him and like the military leaders of the rebellion, they start breaking from party leadership around this time. The party becomes more cautious and doesn't want to approve the kinds of actions that the militants are perfectly willing to take on. And some of this is like, I don't know, when you watch a lot of Star Trek, I know I kept doing Star Wars, but I'm going to go Star Trek here. They're always like, Commander, I'm the admiral and you can't take that risk. And Cisco is like, of course I would never do that. And then he does it anyway, you know? That's Peter the painter. He's commander Cisco. I haven't finished Deep Space Nine yet. I'm watching it right now. This is how I'm going to lose all my cred. I'm going to admit that to everybody. Anyway, soon they're going to break from the party entirely because they realize that they want to support the Soviets, the councils that are running the villages, rather than the Duma or the party. Right? They're like, our loyalty is not to the party. We call ourselves social democrats because like whatever, we want to something to be better. Like what we care about are these Soviets. Also, maybe they just didn't want to run everything past the, you know, the people who are telling them not to go get into gunfights. And Peter led one more big action while he was in charge. All of the Russian soldiers would pour it into the country to occupy and pacify the place. Many of them were making sure that the factories kept running. That's my inference here because I'm like, why are there a ton of soldiers at this one factory? There's a rubber factory and it's being occupied by soldiers. And I think it's because they're forcing the workers to not strike at gunpoint. Which is kind of funny because whenever they criminalize striking, you're like, wait, I have to work? Isn't there a word for that? I thought there was a word for that. Huh, if you have to. Yeah, if they shoot you or arrest you, if you don't go to work. Anyway, whatever. I don't want to think too hard on that one. So the soldiers are in these factories making sure they keep going and they're fucking terrible people. Just whatever. They're doing all kinds of horrendous crimes, especially against women. And there's this one rubber factory and the soldiers were particularly brutal to the workers in the factories and particularly their sexually assaulting a ton of the women. And then one day, or maybe in rapids, a session, a soldier on a horse tramples a pregnant woman to death. And then another soldier kills one of the workers who's part of the fighting group. And so the fighting group is like, we actually have to go kill all these soldiers now. Or at least kill a lot of them and take their guns. We can't let them do this, right? And even though these soldiers outnumber us, we're going to go and fight them on their own territory where they live and ambush them at home. And I think Peter asked the party and the party was like, don't do that. But it's possible that Peter just didn't ask for permission at all. They knew they had to move quickly when they did it because hundreds of Cossacks were less than a mile up the road from the factory. So 30 fighters show up at the factory in the pre-dawn of the winter day and they give the guards fake worker IDs that are made out of tin. So I assume that's like tin. Sometimes we need to read tin in old books. It actually just means like cheap metal. It doesn't actually mean tin. Yeah, that makes sense. So they have like fake badges. They're like, oh yeah, we totally work here. We're totally not Latvian revolutionaries. I don't know what you're talking about. All these dirty Latvians look the same, I guess or whatever. So they let them in. Other fighters outside do their Latvian revolutionary special and cut all the telephone and telegraph wires. And then they signal the attack. The fighters inside the factory immediately ambushed the two centuries, killing them, and then they stormed the barracks. And they caught the soldiers armed with only swords because the Cossacks always carried swords. And then they were like hanging out in their barracks and the rifles are all stationed next door to them because who the fuck is going to attack them in their own barracks? Why would they need to carry around their own rifles? Swords famously not what you bring to a gunfight. Simply no. Yeah. And now the updated addition is you don't bring a knife to a gunfight. You know, it used to be you don't bring a sword to a gunfight. Yeah, neither one good for gunfights. Which makes me sad as an appreciator of swords. I wish I could like why not both that gift this. But the answer is that swords were specifically developed as a technology for killing other people. And so was the handgun. And the handgun is better at it. It's like, you know, evolution technology. Yeah. It's sometimes just kind of linear. I can't wait for the katana guys in my mentions for this. 17 soldiers were killed. 20 of them were wounded and they stole all 60 of the rifles and then they got away into the snow on horse sleighs and they disappeared into the snowy forest just as the dawn rose before the Cossacks could arrive. They would do these actions in like a matter of minutes. And I just really like them escaping on the sleighs. That's just I love that. So it's very gnarly. Ask. Yeah. Yes. Like no matter how long you live, that's going to be one of the memories you said. Possibly a terrible one. You just killed a bunch of people and maybe your friend died. And then you rode away on a sleigh into the forest as the sun rose. Soldiers showed up and one of the reasons that the party was like, please don't do these things is that there's reprisals, right? The soldiers show up and they're like, hey workers, which ones of you did this? And the workers can't point to who did it because all the people who did it left. So the soldiers shoot the unarmed workers and kill five of them. And Peter the painter, the famous land surveyor who haunted the Russians, he was demoted as a result of this by the central command for his anarchist tendencies, which is funny because later he's going to be like, yeah, you're right. But at the time he's like, what? But he's still in the crew and they have one more raid in them before they're forced to flee Riga. But do you know what will always be by your side and never force you to flee? It's the sponsors of the show, unless it's the highway state patrol or whatever, in which case they probably regularly force people to flee. But hopefully you're not going to get an ad for that. The addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the Saab Siddhi Khachakar, reached the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker and I've fallen down again. I am not writing actively anymore and when I see my old work it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt show on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. In Cornwall we value the moments that matter. We value friendship, we get to catch up while we travel. I value my time, taking the bus gives me extra time on my commute. I value family time, the family day ticket makes exploring easy. We have a range of fares to suit everyone and under fives travel free. Download the transport for Cornwall app for all the bus info you need. And we're back. So there's a popular canteen, cantina, like you know, cafe. I should use the word cafe but the name is Canteen Ostra and I really like the band Ostra and I don't know anything about the person who is in the band Ostra and if it's terrible I don't want to know but I really like this synth pop band called Ostra and so I've decided that Ostra is named after this Ostra because the canteen owner was named Ostra and this is like a fucking like old timey like you know like people were like hanging out having a good time like it's probably not a jazz club yet but like it's the equivalent of that you know and Ostra the woman who runs this place her and her whole family are active supporters of the revolution and this is like again made for the movie the fucking like bartender lady who owns the bar who literally hides guns in her stockings when the cops come to raid her and her sisters when they have to hide I think Latvian flags but maybe communist flags I'm not sure when they have to hide the flags when the cops raid they wrap them around their bodies and then like put them under their clothes and they're like you're not gonna mess with me I'm a girl you know and it's like oh you're gonna touch me now yeah yeah exactly yeah they hid guns and ammo and pamphlets for the revolutionaries she kept a hidden back room for the revolutionaries to meet she's like one of the most important figures in the revolution so of course she's barely mentioned why would the whole book be about her I wish it was the police raided all the time but they always like would they would hide shit in buckets and I kept trying to figure out why there's buckets of food all the time it's really cold in eastern northern Europe and so they didn't have any fridges so they would keep their food and buckets tied outside the window overnight and so like I saw a video about this like recently actually oh shit really yeah like they still do that in Russia like some wow okay no I learned about this like a few days ago reading about this uh and so they kept like smuggling things in buckets of food and it's just like this evocative it's a very Russian image you know I expect them to be in like part of Soviet brutalist but they're not that hasn't happened yet you know one police raid on canteen austra went a little further than most they they found like a gun on the windowsill and they were like who's gun is this and everyone's like oh I've never seen a gun before in my life is that a gun I never even heard was it how do you pronounce that is that a german word you know and so they started arresting a bunch of people including they managed to arrest luteins who's the new leader of the revolution after the demotation of the land surveyor and they're all taken back to the police station and they are tortured extensively including mock executions but no one broke and in particular they demanded to know the identity of this mysterious the land surveyor and so this is kind of funny because you have the guy who just replaced the guy right the land surveyors been demoted you're the land surveyors boss and you're being tortured to be like tell us the real leader tell us about the land surveyor but luteins he's not like that f**k a p on almond charge no he keeps his f**king mouth shut or actually probably screams horribly he's being tortured incredibly badly but he doesn't talk meanwhile austra the musician I began in my head I know neither of you know who I'm talking about like austra is f**king fantastic ran to tell her comrades about the raid and everyone was like f**k there's 160 soldiers stationed at that police station we can't go get our friends it's a suicide mission and then one dude is like 23 is like yeah we gotta do it anyway and everyone's like yeah we gotta do it anyway like what else is there to live for I know I mean honestly that's probably a big part of it like your family has been tortured to death at this point like you're like man we're either winning or dying yeah probably both you know like and so austra herself went to the prison pretending to be the fiance of a prisoner bringing a bucket of food and she bribed the guards and she bribed the guards with sweets and cigarettes and she kept flirting with the guards and all of the f**king cliches from all the tv shows it turns out they're real I mean we did not have as many rights back then there was only so many tools in you know a fem's handbook yeah and used it to incredible effect and in the bucket was a saw which didn't end up being used and a message I will come signed by like one of the revolutionaries and also the start of the erotic thriller that I'm going to write about this and that's the dirtiest thing I've ever said on this show and soon other women start showing up at jail every day to bring the arrestees food and they're all like oh I'm so in-sos wife and I think some of them are dating the men who are in prison but I think most of them are just like doing this thing and they decide it's going to take 12 fighters and four flirters who are left out of the number way too often way too often I've only read one account of this and they're not left out I'm entirely wrong okay 16 people even though 160 soldiers are living in the barracks on the second floor of the police station they're sending 12 people eight to wait outside to ambush anyone coming four to go in two of those are going to stay in the lobby to cover the stairs the barracks and guard against 160 soldiers and the other two are going to go into the jail and somehow figure it out but first the women smuggle two handguns to the prisoners straight up baked into pies just fucking yeah just I grew up watching duck tails and there's this like crime gang in it and the mom is always busting her kids out of prison by baking stuff into pies and on this show I've read multiple countries where this has worked I mean I think it even worked in US prisons for a long time before they caught on yeah one of the ones is actually the Lumbee folks when they're having their revolt immediately after the civil war in North Carolina one of their great escapes is like a file baked into a cake and I guess it's partly because like prison the real concept of the modern American penitentiary and a prison society hasn't really been invented yet and so it's like yeah people bring food to prisoners and you kind of show up and like I mean it's still a horrible thing like prison back in the day is not like a nice place or whatever but like you know the institutionalization where it's like school but even more worse to take that for co you know that's like a newish thing that's my best guess as to why you can give pies with handguns to prisoners in the middle of a police state so two fighters walk in including Peter the painter and they pretend they're lost they're like oh this is the passport office and people are like no and one of them starts stammering and he's like ah but is this the how do I find the and while they're doing that to distract everyone four women are already in there flirting or they just flirted and left but I think they're in there flirting and so they're distracting all the people in the lobby two others fighters walk in and they're just dressed in normal like clothes but they walk determinately like they own the place and they walk straight up to the back they go up to the guards and they say these are not the droids we're looking for they say oh we've got a meeting with mr smith we're here with the secret police get the fuck out of our way and they use the name carlins or carclands instead of smith but it's a very common name right and it works the two guards are like uh because this is one of the problems by having like a fucked up secret police is that like everyone's afraid of them and so you can kind of invoke them to get away with some weird shit right so they go in and there's 11 cops and one soldier and the soldier has a gun I think all the cops have guns but like the soldier's a rifle and it's like ready you know and someone's like who the fuck are you guys the bluff doesn't work as soon as they get in there and so one of the prisoners luteins the new leader he knows that the russian soldier doesn't speak latvian so he just shouts shoot the soldier in latvian soldier doesn't understand it so last thing you ever hear is they shoot the soldier boom prisoners and the fighters start shooting because two of the prisoners have guns and the cops who are actually not outnumbered they're like man fuck this and they get the fuck out of there including one who jumps through a glass window and falls to the street with a broken leg this really is just like a tv show it's so funny it is and it's written as the sober history yeah it's great story writing but it's like this is what fucking happened yeah i love it and prisoners and the fighters start shooting the cops beat a hasty retreat meanwhile in the front room the other two fighters they disarm the guards there they're like yeah look we got the drop on you drop your fucking weapons and then they cover the stairs to where upstairs 160 soldiers are waiting and they're like man i sure hope those 160 soldiers don't come out because there's two of us and we have handguns but the 160 soldiers chicken out and they just barricade themselves in and they don't help the police because they're like oh we don't know what's happening it might go badly the whole action was less than five minutes from walking in the door they get six of their people out unfortunately they don't get four of them out in time and the four prisoners who remain they get away clean they leave and the four prisoners who remain they are uh transferred but this is to be shot in the street and there's this thing that the russian police i originally wrote in the script used to do but they still do this they get you to fake escape they're like oh she was running away and then they shoot you in the back right and so they have to take you outside to do this and so they do they take these four prisoners outside and they are like oh look they're running away and they shoot them except one of them does successfully run away unfortunately his brother is with him is shot and killed right so it's not a nice time but he jumps across train tracks just as a train comes because why would it not be a fucking indiana joan's movie jesus and the reason i say that this happens to this day is that we've like two weeks ago did an episode about russian partisans fighting against the russian government in defense of ukraine and an anarchist in prison in russia right now they told him they were going to do this to him and it was like there but by the grace of god that they didn't fake an escape and then murder him but after that after this this prison break peter the painter moves to st petersburg whole town named after him only again he does not go by that name it is too hot for manriga and there he hangs out he's the leader of the always no longer the leader but the central committee of the social democrats has their own fighting group and his leader is a guy named vladimir lenin more famous for his later works so they meet lenin and lenin is like all right latvians go rob the russian bank in helsinki in finland like these people don't catch a fucking break right they're like all right i left riga now i'm in fucking st petersburg now we're off to finland and there's just one problem with their plan to rob a bank the well there's two problems there's actually multiple problems they're planned to rob a bank the crew that was picked for the bank robbery was infiltrated as fuck and two members of the zara's secret police were part of the bank robbing crew and specifically a zara's general wanted lenin to try and rob this bank because he thought it would fuck with the finnish russian relations finn it finland was a russian territory at the time they had a decent bit of autonomy and the general wanted to fuck with that was like oh if we send if the revolution spills into finland and it causes violence it's gonna help us and this wasn't because and lenin didn't do this because he was like corrupt and working with the general it's just that what he was doing was what the general hoped he would do but the latvians didn't know any of that so they pack up to finland two police informants in tow and they robbed the russian bank there they show up as customers they have their guns under their coat and then when they heard the signal they drew their guns and said they were arresting the vault in the name of the russian revolution the fins don't really like the zara so they're like all right that makes sense and no one was hurt no shots were fired they planted bombs to be like don't come after us or these bombs will go off later they found out their sardine cans wrapped in tinfoil that still smelled like fish but one of the undercovers pressed the secret alarm to bring the police running except the other revolutionaries were really good at their job so they'd already gone around the building and cut the wire of the alarm so again they don't have the lafian revolutionaries show up and think you're still gonna have communications i wonder what they do now do they like fuck up starlink i like because i'm sure lafian revolutionaries would still figure out a way to cut the wires oh yeah no police come running and the bank robbers get away except two of them were secret police so the police knew exactly who did it they made off with 170,000 rubles which is a meaningless number to me but it's not because fortunately most historians will leave it at that but this historian who is one of the main sources for this episode philip ruff who's kind of literally the guy who wrote the book on this he like did all of the research for this so there's not a lot of other sources on all of this he actually cares and knows about things 170,000 rubles is about 17,000 pounds which if you type into the little thing on the internet it'll tell you that's about three million dollars in today money damn fucking lot of money more than half of that made its way back to the social democrats in st. petersburg but six of the robbers were caught immediately and shout out to one of these guys who went out in style yannis because everyone's named yannis in this story yannis coke i don't know if it's pronounced that way but it is spelled like the soft drink they arrest coke and they take him to the police station whereupon he produces a knife stabs his arresting officer to death takes a gun off the table kills the other two cops in the room and then takes over the entire police station and holds off the entire police department for three and a half hours before he eventually surrenders he's sentenced to hard labor and he dies in a work camp about four years later but you know wow what a moment in time yeah you look back you'd be breaking rocks and you'd be like you know i was a god for three and a half hours not advocating this just an interesting thing that makes you an interesting character in history Peter though he always he escapes every time and he's not corrupt we have all of the reasons we have like so much evidence about what they would or wouldn't know we like know what people knew about him he just got the fuck away and he was already on his way to berlin by way of sweden where he showed up using the stolen money to buy guns for the revolution he and his friends bought 500 Mausers which are the broom handle guns they like they're a little like boxy if you ever see like crime guns from the early 20th century or revolutionaries this is like what the irish revolutionaries were using it's like a boxy gun where you can put a wooden stock on the back so you have a little pistol you can use ahead of its time they buy 500 of these three million rounds of ammo which is a pretty impressive gun to ammo ratio and a thousand kilos of dynamite to send back to latvia and it was while he was out of the country that he and his friends broke with the party they're no longer the social democrats they realized we are fighting for the actual soviets the democratic communities in the countryside not for the duma and not for the party and they didn't say oh i read the works of these theoreticians and anarchism is the right thing but they looked at what was happening and they said the best word for what we're already doing they didn't change what they believed the label that they picked was anarchism and soon enough they would be back in latvia fighting and soon enough he's going to flee to america then london then he's going to become the most fugitive figure in the world he's going to become the osama bin latin of his time even though he didn't actually do anything this particular time his friend the bulldog is going to die in a shootout after trying to rob a jewelry store but all of that's a story for another time because i ran out of time none of this was skippable wow anyway what do you think about peter the land surveyor painter incredible work a young revolutionary yeah guy and i think he's married and why would they bother telling me about his fucking wife but that said i haven't read everything about this man yet like i said right out of time hopefully doesn't end up being a bad wife guy and is a good wife guy i know but i do know because like like all the time when i read about these revolutionaries they're like and then they abandon their family uh and i do not believe he abandoned his family so we'll take it i know it's the bar that's like not only on the floor it's like buried beneath the ground yes but he's not tunneling down to that bar to trip on it so wow yeah which is the least we can ask for yeah and again 20 of them are women and one of the jewelry thieves when she's like running away from the scene of crime she's got a fucking fur hat in the moth she's doing it high fem and i got so much respect for that love yeah anyway you got anything you want to plug yeah i mean listen to welcome to el barrio on anywhere you get your podcast we have a sub stack that you can subscribe to for bonus content have i populated that much of it no because i still have to run for other podcasts but the goal is that there will be more content there and you can find our instagram at welcome to el barrio or me on instagram at the eccs ramos and you can email at welcome to el barrio at gmail.com for any inquiries your own barrio stories or you know any suggestions guest suggestions etc i'm excited about it genuinely i was explaining to sophie the other day that i listened to a lot of podcasts which makes sense because it's my job to make them but it's also like a medium that i just genuinely enjoy same i'm guessing if you're this far into this episode you also enjoy podcast to your listener but like i listen to every show that gulcan media puts out not every episode but like every show i listen to a lot of them and then i sometimes run out and i'm like but i'm still painting or but i have a drive to do or i'm doing my dishes how the hell you expect me to deal with my own thoughts literally me in my adhd that's how i think i got into podcasting and love of podcasting because like i actually couldn't do tasks without having some constant noise and you know it took another decade for me to get diagnosed but you know we got there eventually i know when people are like i don't have the attention span for podcasts i'm like do you think people just sit there and listen to them literally you think i'm just sitting in my room like against a wall like that is actually why i love podcasts over tv right because i can do it while i'm doing the 80 000 things i have to do and that's why i've become a lover of reality tv because i can kind of like a podcast interesting in the background but if i'm like i can't do the noise in the background thing i have to pay attention so what i need to do is i need to do one task that takes one half of my brain yeah and listen to a podcast and painting a room is a one half my brain thing yeah and i pause the podcast when i like have to do a part that takes my whole brain yeah well that is what happens or if anything i tend to re-listen often so yeah if you ever are lucky enough to have me as a listener of your podcast i will listen to your episode probably two to five times just so like get all the bits because i will have you doing something else that takes more yeah no totally yeah i love the different ways people listen to it i like genuinely i get why this is such a because i yeah i struggle with like i can watch tv at the end of the night yeah when i'm like done or i'm eating or something which i don't feel great about i want to become one of those people who like eat to the table yeah and have like intention or whatever you know but when i have to learn how to do something i use youtube to figure out how to do physical things all the time and i have to watch it like 2x speed yes or i can't pay attention yes and i often just wish it was a written instruction thing with pictures yes i feel the exact same way i am very much that way where i'm like i would prefer to download a manual and read it then yeah to watch a video that i'm going to end up putting on 2x speed and then also having to re-watch it absolutely yeah my undiagnosed ass in high school and i'm like i'm like why was i the kid who was smart and barely graduated and then i was like oh if i had had like a 1x speed that i could like no but teach me the math at 1x speed even if i have to watch it three times yeah i can't which is funny because i can have a conversation yeah i don't know what it is but i don't know what i think it's like your brain is just processing things so fast because like even in having a conversation i as we like derailed the podcast now to talk about adhd but oh it's fine we're at plugs as i'm learning about my because i literally got diagnosed like six months ago and it was very intense because it basically derailed my life to the point that my partner was like hey i need you to go see somebody and like we gotta figure this out because it's like really affecting our life and i'm like you're so right king but where are my car keys yeah it's like when you're in a conversation i know that i tend to like answer like try to finish somebody's sentence and thought and you know it can be it can come off rude but i think your brain is just moving that fast that you're like i know what you're gonna say it's like auto-filling it's like auto like almost not to give ai any credit but it's like populating like it's like automatically like oh well it's about as accurate as auto-fill and it is you know i'm like wrong all the time when i interrupt people to be like ah yes i know exactly what you mean and they're like i wasn't talking about the 1905 revolution margaret i actually people talk about things other than that and i'm like not on the week i'm researching an episode you don't that's the only thing that happened i talked to people who are like talking about organizing that's happening now and i'm like ah yes just like the conflict between the social democrats and the menschwicks and i'm like no wait no hold on no that's the annoying thing for me to do i'm so sorry it's just my job hilarious anyway so if you anything you want to plug yeah coolzone media is nominated for three webby awards this year under the podcast category you can vote for us and you can go to our social media we're at coolzone media and you can find those links but migrating to america dream with giant forest nominated under the podcast category documentary behind the bastards is nominated under the podcast category experimental and innovation and it could happen here is nominated under the category news and politics so if you feel like supporting us that way it would mean a lot thank you so much whoot whoot and you can also support us with cooler zone media which means you actually don't get the ads you just get the clever ad transitions and i have started putting in my sub stack i've started putting the sources are in the show notes but i've also been like i'm starting to talk on my sub stack about in addition to what i normally write i'm talking a little bit about those books more at length and i'm also starting to curate a list of books that i really like from this show through a book seller called firestorm which is a cooperatively owned bookstore in ashville north carolina and that's who i recommend buying books from and there'll be like the links to that in my sub stack that rocks yeah all right see you everyone next week bye cool people who did cool stuff is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts on cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts no gloss no filter just stories spoken without fear person who's not generous cannot be an artist the world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers listen to my weekly podcast the puja bhaj show on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts come for the honesty stay for the fire this is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human