The Bolsheviks had made their revolution promising Peace, Land, and Bread. But peace meant a deal with Germany, which could bring British and French subversion of their nascent revolution. How could Lenin get out of this impossible dilemma? By sending Trotsky to lead the negotiations with Imperial Germany. Did Trotsky go rogue? Was he following Lenin’s directives? Was he playing 5D chess? We conclude: he probably was.
World War Civ 44: The Agony of the Allies
It’s 1917. The French are suffering mutinies and the Entente is desperate for a breakthrough anywhere. It’s not to be. Arras, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Cambrai, and Caporetto – hundreds of thousands of men killed and no breakthrough. At the end of the year, the Germans have reason to believe they could win the whole war in the West if they could conclude a peace with the newly Bolshevik Russia…
World War Civ 43: America Enters the War
When Russia withdrew from the war, Britain and France were in the lurch, but America saved the day. Why? Successful war propaganda, propinquity, or making good on investments and seizing a chance for world domination?
AER 145: Remembering Nasrallah
Nora joins and we go over our memories of following Seyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speeches over the decades. He led the resistance for 32 years and freed Lebanon from occupation once. His successors will operate under a new set of rules of engagement.
World War Civ 42: The Origins of War Propaganda
The scientific principles of war propaganda that we’re all suffering from today were laid down by Anglo-American writers amazed by their own performance in World War 1. What are these principles? Why did Anglo-American propaganda work better than German?
World War Civ 41c: October 1917
From July through to Red October 1917. The Kornilov Affair to the Bolshevik takeover. The culmination of our series on the Bolshevik Revolution.
AER 144: The Seventh Venezuela Coup is Being Defeated
With Joe Emersberger. The co-authors of the Monthly Review Press book Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela, discuss the seventh coup attempt on Chavismo which is in the process of being defeated.
World War Civ 41b: Russian Revolution pt2 – Lenin and Trotsky
Way back in World War Civ 6,7, and 8, we covered the Russian Revolution of 1905 including future main characters Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Now as the 1917 Revolution unfolds we revisit these protagonists and study their actions and writings in the years leading to October 1917. Perhaps history is grand movements of masses, but if there are individuals who can make a difference in world history, these were some of them.
AER 143: Escape from Christian Zionism with Jamin Hubner
A scholar who grew up in a Christian Zionist tradition, Jamin Hubner joins to talk about how the ideology is unrolled to kids and how he found his way out of it.
World War Civ 41a: 1917 Russian Revolution pt1: to February
The leadup to the February 1917 Revolution, including the assassination of Rasputin, the abdication of tsar Nicholas II, and the rise of dual power between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet.