New episode of Revolutions Podcast is out: 10.87- Anarchy in Ukraine: Nestor Makhno thy time has come.  

In a previous episode (last week, if memory serves), Mike Duncan had briefly name dropped anarchist Nestor Makhno, and said something like, "Don't worry all you Nestor Makhno fanboys and fangirls, we will talk all about your boy when the time comes."  Which, I suspect, is what the subtitle to this episode, "thy time has come", is referring to.

I myself had never actually heard of Nestor Makhno before.  Which probably should be embarrassing to me considering I once set about to give a series of Youtube lectures on the history of anarchism.  (Yet another reminder that there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge, and that I need to read more and talk less.)  

But at any rate, it's fascinating to see the conflict between the Reds and the Blacks take center stage.  

...after all, the conflict between the Reds and the Blacks is how Mike Duncan originally started this whole series on the Russian Revolution.  Way back in 2019, Mike Duncan began his series on the Russian Revolution with a ten episode prologue describing the split between Marx and Bakunin and the conflict between communists and anarchists.  I got the impression from that opening that the rivalry between the communists and the anarchists would take center stage for the whole series.  But ever since then, the anarchists have been absent from the Russian Revolution.

At one point (several months ago), I looked up on Wikipedia the history of anarchists in Russia just to make sure Mike Duncan wasn't leaving anything out.  But to be fair to Mike, it looks like up until now the anarchists haven't really been paying a major role in events.  (They've been on the periphery in 1905, the February Revolution, the October Revolution, etc, but not major players.)

But now, here at last, that conflict between the Reds and the Blacks is finally back in the front of the story.

It will be interesting to see where things go from here.  I looked up Nestor Makhno on Wikipedia, and (spoiler alert), it looks like he survives the Russian Civil War and will go on to many more adventures before his death.

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Just posted Ep. 10.87--Anarchy in Ukraine. I swear I'm not doing this on purpose, it's just that history and current events are almost always basically the same thing. https://t.co/Df0sUHLTfE

— Mike Duncan (@mikeduncan) February 21, 2022

The original title had the definite article b/c it's obv meant as a direct reference, but in the end decided it wasn't worth people seeing it and assuming I was making an ignorant faux pas and rushing to correct/instruct me. https://t.co/NCQXciJjNr

— Mike Duncan (@mikeduncan) February 22, 2022

...actually as luck would have it, this last point dovetails with my grammar reading. On page 276 of The Grammar Book (which I just read a couple weeks ago) "the Ukraine" is listed as an example of a case where a region or a territory becomes a country, and thus loses the definitive article.  (The other two examples in the book were "the Sudan" and "The Gambia").