I found this one absolutely fascinating. So much so that I intended to have it on in the background while I got some other stuff done on the computer, but I became so fascinated by the story that I ended up just sitting doing nothing for 30 minutes while the episode played. I didn't want to miss a word.
This is the first episode that the anarchists have played a significant role in.
Mike Duncan, in his beginning to the Russian Revolution, made a big deal of talking about the differences between Marx and Bakunin and the split between them in the first 8 episodes. But then, ever since then, Bakunin's theories and anarchism have been completely absent from his narrative.
I had been worried that Mike Duncan had forgotten about the anarchists, but then I looked up Russian Anarchists on Wikipedia, and it looks like they haven't really played an important role in any of the events up until now. But now their finally back in the narrative. It'll be interesting to see how big a part they play in the future.
As always in these episodes, there are a lot of narrative threads being juggled here, and hopefully they'll all be done justice by the end of the series.
In the previous episode, Mike Duncan had said that Trotsky had gone back to Lenin, and that he would talk more about it in the next episode. Here it's only briefly mentioned, with no explanation of why Trotsky had come back to Lenin's side. Maybe that will still be covered in a future episode?
Likewise, the Left-SRs are only briefly mentioned here. Hopefully they'll be covered more in future episodes. (I know the Bolsheviks are the ones who eventually one, but I find the dissenting voices on the left, including the SRs to be an interesting part of the Russian Revolution story.)
Still, all in all, another fascinating episode. Can't wait for the next one now.
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