The new episode of Revolutions Podcast is out: 10.79- Reds and Whites: Time to head into the final lap...

As indicated in the subtitle (and as Mike Duncan makes clear in the opening minutes), this episodes marks the transition into the final chapter of the Russian Revolution--The Civil War.  

I'm a bit disappointed we're now in the final chapter.  (I'm enjoying this series so much that part of me wants it to go on forever.)  But it will also be interesting to hear about the Civil War.

It will be interesting to see how Mike Duncan handles the Civil War.  It sounds like the kind of thing that could either be headachy-confusing in its complexity, or fascinating in its complexity.  I'm the kind of person who is really interested in this kind of thing in the broad strokes, but might lose patience for all the confusing details.  Mike Duncan, as he makes clear in his opening, sounds like he's planning to try to choose a careful path between ignoring it completely, and getting too bogged down in the minutiae.  We'll see how he does.  (He's usually very good at making narratives out of complex history like this, so we should be in good hands.)

In this weeks' episode, there's already plenty of fascinating details.  For example, last week I got the impression that the Ukrainian Rada was bourgeois capitalist.  But this week we find out that they are actually SRs.  So neither the Germans nor the Bolsheviks are happy with them.  Well this is getting interesting already.

And that whole story about Finland!  How interesting is that?  And all of that fighting in Finland is before the Russians even get involved.  (Sidenote: As with the past two - weeks, I've got to wonder how Germany still has troops free to send into Finland at this point?  Aren't they just barely holding it together at this point in the World War I?)