And another new episode of Revolutions Podcast: 10.84- The End of The Old World: The end of WWI was a pretty big deal all things considered.

Oh man, this episode was so good.  There was so much fascinating stuff in here.

It is, for better or for worse, an episode that needs to be listened to careful, because the politics of this whole thing are starting to get really confusing.  I did my normal thing where I listened to this podcast as I was puttering around on my computer and also on my exercise walk.  I think I absorbed most of it.

This episode covers a lot of ground.  (As usual with the episodes in this series, the title really only indicates a fraction of the content.  It is about the end of World War I, but it's also about 100 more things as well.)

I'll make some random observations below:

* The dissolution of the old empires at the end of World War I should almost have been its own episode.  As Mike Duncan says, this is the fulfillment of the Revolutions of 1848.  Since Mike Duncan devoted a whole season of Revolutions Podcast to 1848, I almost feel like he should have devoted a full episode to its fulfillment at the end of World War I.  And yet at the same time, I'm glad he didn't.  The narrative needs to keep moving.

* Interesting that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is now dead.  (I had always kind of wondered what had happened to this treaty after the end of World War I, but had never known for sure.)  This humiliating treaty is always emphasized in every history of the Russian Revolution, it had always seemed like such a big deal.  I had never realized it was only ever in effect for 8 months.  Kind of makes you think that all that emphasis is over-blown.

* Interesting also that now that Brest-Litovsk is dead, the Bolsheviks seem intent on re-conquering the Russian Empire.  Mike Duncan adds some nuance here by saying that there is a both an ideological explanation for this and a cynical explanation.

Although, something I remember from my college course on modern Chinese history is that the Chinese were very impressed by the Bolshevik willingness to renounce territory conquered under Tsarist imperialism.  This was something I remember the professor emphasizing in class, and also something I mentioned in my term paper: The Formation of the Chinese Communist Party.  To quote myself: 

It was the Russian Revolution that brought Marxism to the attention of China. Lenin’s twisting of Marx now allowed the theory to be applied to pre-industrial nations, and his writings on imperialism appealed to the Chinese, who were victims of imperialism. More importantly, the Chinese were impressed by the policies of the new Soviet Union (Schwartz 7-8). On July 25, 1919, the Soviet Union formally announced its plan to return the Chinese Eastern Railroad to the Chinese people, as well as giving up any concessions enjoyed by the Czarist government. The Soviets also pledged to help the Chinese in their struggle for freedom. Within less than a month, over thirty important Chinese organizations expressed thanks to the Soviet Union (Houn 16). In contrast, at the same time the Chinese experienced continued exploitation by the rest of the Western powers, most evident at the Paris Peace Conference. This caused many Chinese to become disillusioned with the capitalist powers (Houn 15).

Maybe Mike Duncan will get to this part later?  It looks like this happened in the summer of 1919, and at the moment he's still wrapping up the fall of 1918.

* Also interesting to hear Mike Duncan talk about how Bolshevism had some support among the leaders of the Western countries during this time.  This is not how the story is told in socialist circles.  (We're taught that the Western governments were controlled by the capitalists, who were against the Bolsheviks from day 1.)  But undoubtedly there were a lot of intellectuals who supported the Bolshevik cause in the early days, and I guess I can imagine there might have been some government officials among them.  Reading ahead a little bit, it doesn't look like the Red Scare started until 1919.  This is another thing I hope will get fully covered in future episodes.   (Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were deported back to Russia during this time, so I hope that gets covered as well--looking at Mike Duncan's bibliography, it looks like he's planning on covering this.)

* I am super psyched to hear that next week's episode is going to cover the Revolution in Germany.  I had been hoping that Mike Duncan would devote an episode to this.  As Mike Duncan mentions, what was going on in Germany is crucial to understanding what the Bolsheviks were thinking, so its fitting that it will get its own episode.  And besides that, it's just a really - fascinating - story.  Looking forward to next week.