Wednesday, March 09, 2022

And another episode of Revolutions Podcast has come out: 10.89- The Collapse of the Whites: Spoiler Alert in the title.
As of this posting, the Revolutions Podcast website has not been updated with a link, so here's the Google Podcast link.  [Update: Link to website here]

I don't really have a ton to say about this one, other than that it was interesting.
Before listening to this podcast, I really knew nothing about the Russian Civil War, so it's been an interesting journey.  For example, the past several episodes I've enjoyed Mike Duncan breaking down how badly the Whites have mismanaged everything.  I know have a much clearer idea of why the Whites have lost the war.

This episode marks the collapse of the White forces, but Mike Duncan seems to indicate at both the beginning and the end of this episode that the Russian Civil War is still far from over.  (Thankfully! I'm not ready to say goodbye to this podcast just yet.)  
According to Wikipedia's dating, the Civil War lasts until 1923, so we've got a few years yet to get through.
And as is evident from this episode, there are a lot of players in this Civil War  Even with the collapse of the Whites, we still have the Japanese Army, the Black Army, the SRs, and the various national groups still left on the chess board.  So presumably the following episodes will focus on them.

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So, I get the impression from this episode that, with the exception of the Japanese, the allies are done now supporting the Whites.  I'm assuming that includes the Americans.
I was kind of hoping for more of a spotlight on the American involvement in the Russian Civil War.  I know it is a minor detail in context of the Civil War itself, but it's something that would be of interest to us Americans.  
It's perhaps the kind of thing that would have made a perfect supplemental episode--a supplemental episode on the American army in Russia during the Civil War--except that it looks like Mike has kind of stopped doing supplemental episodes.  (The earlier seasons of Revolutions Podcast had occasional supplemental episodes that would focus on interesting things that were tangential to the main narrative, but I don't think the Russian Revolution has had any supplemental episodes.)
I suppose there's still hope he might do something on it yet.

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Addendum: This isn't about this episode particularly, but this is from Mike Duncan's Twitter feed this past week and I thought it was funny. 

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