TRIGGERnometry: w/ Sir Antony Beevor on Russian Mindset (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of historian Sir Antony Beevor’s interview on TRIGGERnometry, June 6, 2026.

Editor’s Note: In this episode of TRIGGERnometry, historian Sir Antony Beevor joins the hosts for a deep dive into the historical roots of the Russian mindset and its enduring influence on contemporary politics. Drawing on his extensive expertise, Beevor unpacks the contradictions within the Russian psyche, exploring how historical events—from the Mongol invasions to the Russian Civil War—have shaped a culture that oscillates between deep spirituality and extreme ruthlessness. The conversation offers a compelling analysis of how past patterns, including Russia’s relationship with autocratic leadership and its approach to warfare, continue to inform the nation’s current geopolitical stance.

Introduction

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Sir Antony Beevor, welcome back to TRIGGERnometry.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Very glad to be back with you.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Oh, it’s great to have you back. I was just saying to you before we started, our first conversation with you, I think it did over a million downloads if you include video and audio, about the Russian Revolution. Today you’ve obviously got a book about Rasputin out, which we’ll touch on, but what we really wanted to talk about is Russia, the history of Russia, and actually to help unpack for people why Russia and Russians are the way they are today. And I think, as someone who comes from Russia, I think a lot of history is really valuable for understanding that. So can you just take us through the history of Russia starting at the very beginning?

The East-West Split and the Origins of Russian Identity

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, I wouldn’t have said that I was a sufficient Russian expert on the earlier periods at all to be able to do that. But there is a very important debate of why Russia is the way that it is, why it is so different, if you like, to Western Europe. And even within Russia itself, one sees this tremendous split between the Westerner, Slavophile traditions, this great mixture of Europe and Asia. And as a result, one needs to understand some of these contradictions. They’ll never necessarily be resolved.

Many argue that in the case of Russia, that the whole idea of conspicuous cruelty as a necessary weapon of war came from the Mongol invasions, and there may well be a lot of truth in that. Certainly the idea of encirclement and some of the element of Russian paranoia, I think, came from that particular era.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Sir Antony, sorry to bother you. There’ll be people listening who don’t know what conspicuous cruelty means, that term. Would you just—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Or the Mongol invasions, frankly. So we need to get into both of those.

The Mongol Invasions and the Roots of Russian Warfare

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, it’s been a considerable debate, obviously, amongst historians about where the Russian method of warfare has originated. Some will say that it goes back to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century with the sweeping in from the steppe, coming from the Far East, and the way that the original Rus settlements were then attacked. And in many ways, this was the start of a continual warfare which lasted for a long time.

The Mongols certainly were the ones who believed that fire and sword, laying waste, mass rape was an element, a natural element of warfare. And this actually became almost a central element in the Russian view of warfare — conspicuous cruelty, I think one can call it.

And the interesting thing is, of course, Europe was just as bad in the 17th century. One thinks of the horrors of the Wars of Religion, as bad as anything that had happened in Russia up till that time. But the difference came really because afterwards there was the Enlightenment in Europe in the 18th century. There was also in the 19th century very much more a codification of warfare which attempted to make it not necessarily more civilized, but at least following certain rules, and then the invention of the Red Cross and Geneva Conventions and so forth.

That did not affect Russia nearly so much, specifically in its expansion towards the east and towards the south into the Caucasus, and above all the conquest of Siberia, which was savage. So there is this difference very much between the Russian attitude and the European attitude, which has gone on.

Rasputin and the Russian Soul

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: But Russia itself is this extraordinary mixture. And one of the reasons for writing about Rasputin was that he summoned up so many of these contradictions himself. And I found it fascinating the way that, for example, in the 19th century, the great poet Fyodor Tyutchev said, “Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone.” And I think there’s a lot of truth in that.

There are all of these elements, as I say, contrasting themselves. In the case of Rasputin, the deep spirituality mixed in with lasciviousness, corruption mixed in with incredible generosity — all of these coming together in the same person very much represented not so much an archetypal Russian, but if you like, the potential conflicts within what might be talked about as the Russian soul, the Russian mind.

And I think it’s intriguing. There is no national DNA, but there is a certain self-image in all countries, I think, that they try to live up to — a certain reputation, a certain tradition. And this is what one cannot necessarily generalize about, because certainly with Russia, with so many different nationalities, you cannot say that a Buryat is the same as somebody from the extreme Far East or from Moscow or anything like that. And this is part of the fascination of Russia itself.

The Tatar-Mongol Yoke and Its Psychological Impact

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And I think all of that’s very true. And “Umom Rossiyu ne ponyat” — you can’t understand Russia with the mind alone — is a very good and accurate, well-known observation.

But coming back to the history, because I really want to just pause on the Mongol invasion first, because at this point there is no Russia exactly. There are a few principalities, as they’re called, or grand duchies.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Kievan Rus’ and so forth.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yes. And then you effectively have something like being invaded by ISIS, basically, on a huge scale. But not just invaded — you were kept under what the Russians call the yoke, the Tatar-Mongol yoke, for centuries. What is the impact of that sort of subjugation and the way that it was done for that period of time? I mean, I try to explain this to Americans sometimes. The Russian people were subjugated by a force like ISIS for about as long as America has been in existence. What is the impact of that on the psyche, on the mindset, on the way that people behave and think about things?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, that’s an extremely good question, and it’s certainly a very important one. I don’t think there’s an easy answer because there are those who very much reacted against it, of course. And this led to the extraordinary sort of intellectual flowering and artistic development in Russia, which one sees particularly in the 18th century and onwards. I mean, when one goes to the Tretyakov or some of the great galleries in Moscow, you see a sudden development which comes. And I think this is very much more when Russia started to escape from being the prisoner of its own past. And it was the prisoner of its own past. And as you say, it was an occupied, oppressive past for many centuries indeed.

But it was also something which to this day they cannot quite escape. So although the Orthodox Church, the whole idea of Holy Slavophil Russia, was a vital element in escaping from that Tatar, non-Christian past, it’s become so deeply embedded that we see today that Vladimir Dugin — some of the ideological influences on President Putin — have this reaction of believing that Europe should basically come under an Orthodox, Russian Orthodox influence all the way from Vladivostok to Dublin, they even said, which is an astonishing idea.

But it is there somewhere deep again in the Russian psyche — the old Russian psyche, if you like — that only this Russian spirituality deserves to spread and expand. But this again is very much a reaction to the idea of having been crushed by the Tatar yoke and others over history as well.

Russia’s Expansionist Mentality: A Time Lag?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But it’s interesting you say something, because I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. How much is it just a time lag between where the West is and where Russia is, in the sense that 150 years ago there are quite a lot of countries around the world who thought, actually, we have the right idea and we should spread this idea around the world. The British Empire did it and lots of others. Is it just maybe that Vladimir Putin is acting in an 18th century way in the 21st century world? Is that what’s happening here?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, I was very struck by when the Duke of Marlborough went — I think this was in 1902 — went to Moscow and Petersburg, and at a reception with the Tsar, with Nicholas II, his wife asked Nicholas II why democracy was not possible in Russia. And he said Russia has to be 200 years behind Western Europe. And this was very much the idea that to protect Russian tradition, to protect Russian culture, this time lag was essential. But it was also part of the idea that as soon as you loosen the chains, chaos would break out.

And in a sense, when you have such a vast landmass, how do you maintain control? So you could say that the expansion in some ways also has an element slightly of the anxious billionaire mentality — that unless I get more money, I’m going to lose the whole lot. And this is very much again the attitude of seeking more external, abroad, near abroad territory, all the way to the Far East. And even then, the Tsar was interested in the disastrous Japanese War of 1904-1905, of again seizing more territory there.

Now, part of that is an expansionist mentality, like as you rightly say with other European colonial powers expanding. But at the same time, there is this sort of arrière-pensée of fearing that unless you keep expanding, you’re going to contract. And this has obviously been one of the problems of warfare — as Paul Kennedy wrote in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers — if you keep on pushing and expanding too much, you’re going to overstretch.

Russian Attitudes Toward Casualties

FRANCIS FOSTER: We’ve seen the history of Russia and we’re talking about it at the moment, and people in the West look at their attitude to casualties and are quite frankly horrified — the way that Russians seem almost nonchalant when it comes to casualties. Does that come from their history, or is there something else tied to that?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, I think there are two things there, but most of it comes from the history, you’re quite right. There has always been this case whereby the attitude of “meat for the cannon,” in the Russian phrase, is assumed because of the size of their population. I mean, the whole notion of the Russian steamroller — the idea that simply out of sheer weight of numbers, they can crush any enemy. And that has certainly been — it’s why the French were so desperate to have the alliance with the Russian Empire for the First World War. And again, to a certain degree later on, feeling that only the sheer size and scope of it would save the West in the Second World War.

But the real problem is that they have often treated their own people as badly as the enemy. I mean, I remember being horrified when researching in Moscow in the ’90s at the scale of suicides amongst the Russian conscripts simply because of the way they were treated and bullied and all the rest of it. There were up to 5,000 a year. And I remember the British ambassador was absolutely appalled when he went to see General Lebedev, who made a joke about it. He thought it was terribly funny that in Siberia they had to make sure that they were digging enough graves for all the suicides for the next winter because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to bury them.

In the Second World War, we see the way — and I think this is a crucial element — that the soldiers had so often been treated so badly and in fact not as individuals. When, for example, at Stalingrad, and in fact really through the whole of the advance towards Berlin afterwards, if there were any casualties or any desertions, an officer was expected to just grab any civilians they could and say, “Right, you’re in the army now.” They’d never recorded their names. Their names were only recorded if they were suspected of treason or desertion, and then investigated by SMERSH, or before that, the NKVD special detachments.

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This meant that actually there was a burning resentment, and this in fact is one of the major explanations for the mass rapes of 1945 in Poland, in Hungary, and above all in Germany. And it’s also one of the explanations for the cruelty to Ukrainian prisoners of war and Ukrainian civilians in the war that we’re seeing at the moment.

But also, don’t forget the treatment of their own soldiers — and especially the foreigners who’ve been tricked or press-ganged into the Russian army fighting in Ukraine, where we’ve seen Africans who’ve had landmines strapped to their chests and are being forced forward as suicide bombers. I mean, this is a form of inhumanity which obviously in the West we find incomprehensible. But it’s still something which Russia has not been able to get rid of.

The Communist Mindset and Its Legacy

FRANCIS FOSTER: And how much do you think — if we go back to the Second World War, but also the Soviet Empire — how much of that was exacerbated by the communist mindset?

The Russian Mindset: Ruthlessness, History, and Power

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: I think the communist mindset raised the idea of ruthlessness as almost a romantic, admirable heroism. The idea of Brzezinski and the Cheka, the idea that you have to crush your enemy totally. The poems about crushing bones and all the rest of it, written by members of the Cheka in their own magazines, are simply unbelievable. Even the Spanish Inquisition — I don’t think their torturers wrote poems in that particular way.

It is a very special mentality, but it was something which was, shall we say, there in the background, and then which the mentality of romantic communism of achieving the future through total ruthlessness. And one has to remember at the Battle of Stalingrad, Russian snipers were ordered to shoot down starving Russian orphans who’d been bribed by German infantrymen with a crust of bread to fill their water bottle in the Volga. It didn’t matter who you were, what your origin was, whether you were innocent or not — that made no difference whatsoever when it came to what were regarded as the interests of the state.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And that being the case, do you think — it’s a slightly gruesome question — is it an effective mindset to have, particularly in warfare, particularly if you have the numbers that Russia does, just to treat your own citizens and your own military with utter callousness?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: I don’t think it is. In terms of morale, the way that the Ukrainians offered their telephones to prisoners so that they could ring their parents, their mother at home or whatever, was a very effective propaganda device. Many of them felt tricked. Not just foreigners who had been tricked to join up being told, “Oh, we’ll train you up as bodyguards,” or whatever it might be with some of the promises. But many of the ordinary conscripts who were not supposed to necessarily go to a front line found themselves — every single promise was broken.

Although they’d been bribed quite often with an upfront sum, they then found they had no further control over their fate. And I think it was this feeling that they had completely lost any form of control over their own fate that has a devastating effect on morality — on morale rather.

We’re seeing what are called now the disposables — these are either the Africans or others who are being used, but also even some of the amputees being sent back into the front. The Russian attitude towards amputees in the Second World War — they were known as “some of ours” after they’d lost their limbs. And Stalin, having talked about the heroism of the Red Army and all the rest of it in 1945, then bans any of them from the cities. They’re sent to the north just to get them out of the way, because he doesn’t want to have the cities cluttered up with limbless veterans. Treatment like that does not exactly encourage loyalty.

Worse than that is when you also recruit from the prisons some of the most brutal members of society and gang members of the worst order — they then become even more dehumanized by their experience at war. And then they go back into civilian society. The reports of some of the horrors which have been committed by soldiers who’ve returned, who’ve been even more traumatized by what they’ve been through, are pretty horrific. So shall we say, the social consequences of the war in Russia are going to be pretty devastating.

The Question of Necessity and Mindset

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Coming back to this kind of Russian war, maybe taking a different angle — is it a product, historically speaking, of necessity as well? If you’re Russia, it’s much harder to grow food in Russia, it’s much harder to have a sophisticated economy, it’s much harder to be technologically advanced. And so what other advantages do you have other than a mass of soldiers and an ability to be so cruel to them that you can make them basically do anything?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: I think there’s a question of mindset — a mindset which refuses to change, more than anything. Because it was the way that it’s always been done. You’re a tough man and all the rest of it, and this is what’s going to make the recruits tougher by treating them in that particular way. It’s, shall we say, unenlightened, to put it mildly. And I would have thought in the long term, it’s going to be much less professional in the effect that it has on your training.

The Times of Trouble and the Russian Fear of Weak Leadership

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Of course. Well, speaking of the mindset — one of the things I think people in the West really don’t understand about Russia is how a number of formative experiences in Russian history have inculcated in people the idea that a strong, decisive leader is by far and away the most important thing. And Russian people will put up with almost anything provided the leader is strong.

I think one of the times this comes from is the period known as the Times of Trouble — after Ivan the Terrible kills his only viable heir in a fit of rage. Perhaps you’ll be better at telling the story of what follows.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, I’m certainly not an expert on that particular period, but indeed it did traumatize the country in many ways.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What happened?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Because of the civil war, the massacres that were going on and all the rest of it — in many ways you could only compare the Time of Troubles really with the European Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century. The effect of it eventually meant that everybody was so exhausted by the end that that was the opportunity when they made the Romanov dynasty start.

Mikhail Romanov was, to begin with, being hidden by his mother because they were certain that it would lead to his death. Every other potential tsar had been murdered, and that this would be his particular fate too. But in the end, this was the start of the dynasty, and as soon as he and his descendants acquired enough power, they knew perfectly well that if they were going to let it go, there was always going to be the fear of the Time of Troubles.

And you’re quite right to bring it out, because it is very much there in the back of the Russian mind. And then of course, the Civil War being another one after the revolution, after the February Revolution — which even led to the point that when Stalin died, almost everybody was in tears, not because of love of Stalin necessarily, but because they feared that the collapse of centralized power might again lead to another period of Time of Troubles, or civil war, or whatever.

One has to remember the importance of the Russian Civil War. Historians, particularly German historians, were absolutely right in identifying the First World War as what they described as the original catastrophe of the 20th century. But actually, it was the Russian Civil War which had the greatest influence, because of the sheer horror of it, the sheer scale. If you include the disease, those suffering from disease and starvation, you’re talking of up to 10 million casualties.

This created such an effect — not just across Europe, even across the world. Fear of the destruction, the cruelty spreading as a result of the split between Red and White, but also fear on the left of white counter-reaction, and fear on the right — of the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy — of the idea that there was going to be a genocide, a class genocide. And this leads to the Spanish Civil War, this vicious circle of rhetoric and fear, and also even into large elements in contribution to the whole of the Second World War.

So in many ways, the Russian Civil War basically defined most of the pattern of history of certainly the first half of the 20th century, but also to a certain degree the split between communism and fascism — or sorry, between communism and capitalism — in the second half. And we’re still seeing the effects of that today to a certain degree.

The way that all of this played out during that particular period means that we are still — and this is why I think with the shock of last year, the old order has suddenly changed and the multipolar world, or if one’s going to call it that, has actually suddenly been shuffled. A large contribution, of course, now coming from President Trump in that particular way. And this is one of the great reasons for uncertainty, fear, and shall we say, even potential chaos in many areas. But it really does come very much more from that particular moment of the Russian Civil War, which again, was an echo even of the Time of Troubles.

Putin and the Appeal of Strong Leadership

KONSTANTIN KISIN: The reason I bring this up is I think people in the West — I’m no fan of Vladimir Putin, but I also try to explain to people in the West why he’s popular in Russia. And this is one of the reasons, right? Because you talk about the Russian Civil War, where you have a weak, not very smart, indecisive tsar.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Yes.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And then who precedes Vladimir Putin is Boris Yeltsin, who’s seen by many people initially — he ran on the campaign slogan of “strong leader for a strong Russia” — but he’s not seen as a strong leader. He was kind of a strong leader for strong vodka.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Yes, yes, exactly.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And that strong vodka made him into a weak leader. And then along comes Vladimir Putin, and people go, “Oh, finally someone is going to take charge.”

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Absolutely right, I agree. But what one also needs to remember is how clever Putin was in bringing together the two sides, if you like, from the Russian Civil War. He was the one who brought back various White generals to be reburied. You won’t see a hammer and sickle really anywhere around the Kremlin anymore — it’s all the double-headed eagle, and ditto on the palace on the Black Sea. And his criticism of Lenin and so forth — he may say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy, but his mentality is much closer to that of the Russian Empire.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, this is what I’ve been trying to say. I think in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, there were a lot of people who don’t really understand Russia very much saying, “Oh, he’s just trying to rebuild the Soviet Union.” He was trying to rebuild the Russian Empire.

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SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Yes, exactly.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Very different thing.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Yes. Certainly from the ideologues influencing him. The whole of that particular essay was actually written by Medinsky — the one published before the invasion of Ukraine. And Medinsky, frankly, he’s a fool in many ways. There was the extraordinary attempt to get Kazakhstan back in by making that film of General Pamfilov and his 28 men or whatever, which was then proved to have been a complete propaganda invention. And Medinsky even said, “Anybody who doubts this, even if it’s not true, they are below slime.” It was unbelievably comic.

Cruelty and Spirituality: A Russian Contradiction

FRANCIS FOSTER: But that being the case, one of the things that I find really interesting with Russia is — we’ve talked about the cruelty, and that goes right the way up to the modern day. But there’s also an obsession with spirituality, with religion.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Yes.

FRANCIS FOSTER: How do you marry those two qualities essentially?

Religion, Cruelty, and the Russian Psyche

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, should we say religion and conspicuous cruelty have often been married? And not just in Islam, in Christianity, in virtually every single religion. So I don’t think it’s unique to Russia necessarily in that particular way, but it’s something which has persisted.

We see unbelievable things. For example, when Tsar Nicholas II wants to send his fleet from the Baltic all the way around the world to attack the Japanese — in one of the most disastrous naval decisions in history — he gets the priests on board to bless all the guns to help the accuracy. It’s a mentality, the idea that somehow the power of the icon, which was distributed to the ships and the individuals and all the rest of it, these talismans, all of those gave the idea of, you know, God is with us, Gott mit uns, which the Germans had inscribed on their belt buckles.

The British used to say to themselves, God’s on our side, God is an Englishman. Nobody’s really escaped that particular idea. It is part of a national mentality.

FRANCIS FOSTER: But I suppose what I’m touching on is the extremities. On the one hand, you can be so callous, so cruel, and we’ve seen it with Russian leaders. You talk about it in the book. The way the tsars could — there was one instance where during a battle, I think it was during the Japan War, there were tens of thousands of people who were dead, soldiers. And then that very night he went to a party as if nothing had happened. How can you have, on the one hand, that, and on the other hand, this deep spirituality, religiosity? Surely there must be — I guess what I’m saying is — a concern for your fellow man. Isn’t that what’s so important?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Yes, but he wouldn’t necessarily regard them as fellow men. This was the trouble. He was the Tsar, they weren’t. But also Nicholas II particularly believed in not showing emotion. He felt that that was the worst thing he could do.

He wasn’t a totally stupid man, but at the same time, he refused — he had no imagination, or he blocked off his imagination. He was different to his wife in a certain way. He believed that they should never show any emotion at all.

For example, there was a German prince staying in Petrograd who’d been invited to dinner, and he suddenly heard that the Tsar’s uncle had been blown up in Moscow. So he immediately rang the palace to say, “I assume that the dinner is being cancelled.” And he was told, “Oh no, no, no, it’s all okay, it’s going ahead.” And he arrives and finds that the Tsar and a cousin are having great fun trying to push the other one off the sofa — playing sort of childish games.

So it’s the question of blocking out anything that is uncomfortable to their worldview. The idea that people have died in huge numbers in their defence or under their orders is not something which troubles them. They regarded that as part of the natural world.

And Rasputin says at one point to the Empress, when she is genuinely concerned at the casualties, he says, “Think of them, each one of them as candles lit at the throne of God.” Well, it was a brilliant phrase from the point of view of calming her down, of saying all of this sacrifice is a tribute. It’s a tribute to the Almighty.

The Russo-Japanese War and the Weakening of the Tsar

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You mentioned the Russo-Japanese War, something very few people outside the history world know anything about. Why does that war happen?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, the war happens to a large degree because at this particular period, the Japanese —

KONSTANTIN KISIN: 1904, right?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: We’re talking about 1904, exactly. This is the period when Germany and Russia were interested in seizing parts of the Chinese territory. One has to remember the way that the great Chinese resentment against the West is very much the unequal treaties which were forced on China when it was at its weakest in the 19th century. And the Russians even imposed a railway which they built to accelerate the Trans-Siberian Railway right across Mongolia. So the Chinese had a lot to resent.

But the Japanese also were in this period of expanding population and wanting to colonize abroad, which basically meant Manchuria, and therefore there was an imbalance in power in that particular region.

The Tsar had been persuaded by a forerunner of Rasputin, another mystic conman basically called Philippe, a Frenchman, saying that he should be the Emperor of the East. And Kaiser Wilhelm II sent a signal at sea to the Tsar saying, “From the Emperor of the Atlantic to the Emperor of the Pacific.” Now Nicholas at that particular moment thought, “Oh, well, that’s ridiculous.” But then he was encouraged by one of his ministers, particularly by Pleva, that a war against the Japanese would be a huge advantage because it would be a quick, easy war. “They’re just Orientals, you know, they can’t take on a modern Russian army.” Well, “modern” is a doubtful phrase. Others were much more sceptical, but the Tsar rather liked the idea.

And so at the ambassadorial reception in January 1904, the New Year reception, he was pretty insulting to the Japanese ambassador, who bowed and said nothing — not realizing that the Japanese were about to send huge numbers of troops across the sea to the Korean Peninsula. And suddenly they were in a position where they were starting to attack at Port Arthur, which was the great Russian port in the Far East.

From there, of course, they assembled a vast army where the Trans-Siberian Railway was not ready sufficiently to equip them and to supply them. And then there was the utter disaster of sending the Baltic Fleet all the way around the world, and they were destroyed in the Battle of Tsushima, one of the greatest naval victories, which the Japanese won easily.

So it was a vast humiliation to Russia, especially to Nicholas II himself. And it forced him into accepting basically a constitution in October 1905 —

KONSTANTIN KISIN: 1905.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Sorry, I meant 1905. One easily skips a century.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: And this, of course, was because the war had created such anger. There’d been the march of Father Gapon, the protest in Saint Petersburg in January 1905, where they were gunned down by the Imperial Guard and the Cossacks sent in and all the rest of it. And terrible repression in the countryside when manor houses were set on fire. It was very much a prelude to the later revolution — the 1905 disturbances. And you also then get, of course, the battleship Potemkin and the mutiny in the Black Sea.

So there Nicholas was in a very defensive position. He burst into tears after signing the document and felt that he had betrayed the whole family because he had signed away, basically, Romanov autocracy. And then, of course, the struggle between him and — worst of all, from his point of view — the liberal conservatives in the Duma, who had been the only ones who could actually have helped save the monarchy from itself. But because of his obstinacy, his lack of imagination, and his insistence on trying to restore the Romanov autocracy, he actually became his own worst enemy.

Repression, Rumour, and the Fall of Nicholas II

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And so losing the war really weakens him. Is it a case then that — you see this throughout history — where you’ve got a fairly weak ruler who engenders resistance and rebellion, which he then, because he’s a weak ruler, is way too brutal in putting down, generating more resentment which builds, but he’s not actually able to bring the country with him? Is that basically what happened?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Yes, but there are two versions of that. There are also those who will argue that the collapse of a regime is accelerated when they start making compromises. So it can work both ways.

In his particular case, of course, it wasn’t just the repression. Stolypin, the Prime Minister, had been known to repress as strongly as he could, and that was an effective repression, but only for the time being. Everybody referred to him as “Stolypin’s necktie” because of the mass executions. But it wasn’t just the mass executions — the way the army was sent into the countryside, and any rebellious peasants were beaten within an inch of their life with the cleaning rods of their rifles. This, of course, created vast anger and bitterness.

All of these elements were some form of preparation, but the real collapse in the authority of Tsar Nicholas II came very much from rumour and false rumour because of Rasputin and his relationship with the Empress. One of his letters to the Empress was stolen and then circulated, in which he said that she wanted to fall asleep forever on his shoulder. Well, this was interpreted automatically as the fact that she was sleeping with him. But of course, she wasn’t at all.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: It was much worse than that.

The Fall of the Romanovs: Rasputin, Revolution, and the Tsar’s Downfall

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: And then we start to get closer to the revolution. We get to that sort of pornographic fantasy, which precedes, it seems, many revolutions, like with the French Revolution, the idea of Marie Antoinette and her relationship with the Princesse de Lamballe and all that sort of stuff. That Rasputin was even sleeping with the teenage daughters and so forth. Again, totally untrue.

But the point was that the tsar, who refused to have any interference and refused to listen to warnings from his own cousins and uncles, was allowing his wife to entertain Rasputin in the palace on their own, which was obviously a complete breach of protocol. And was ruining her reputation. And he describes in his diary how he returned home and found his wife and Rasputin chatting happily, and he joined them and they had a very enjoyable evening, without any imagination of what this was doing.

I mean, even his own confessor was saying, “Don’t you realize what you’re doing to yourself?” And he just refused to. He said, “Why cannot I have my own private life?” And everyone said, “Well, your life belongs to the country.” But he refused to accept that. And the idea in a patriarchal society like Russia that the Tsar could be a cuckold was obviously going to really undermine any belief and confidence in him.

And this is why, come February 1917, after the, shall we say, rather delayed murder of Rasputin, which was too little too late if it was going to ever happen. And also actually had a contradictory effect — the idea that suddenly we were going to save Russia from itself because we are saving the monarchy from Rasputin. Well, the trouble was that yes, there was rejoicing amongst the rich and the aristocracy, and they were all jumping up and theatres were interrupted and people would sort of jump up to cheer and sing the national anthem. But as far as the Parisian trio were concerned, they’re saying, “Well, the bosses, they’ve just killed the only person who ever got close to the throne.”

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In the end, as I say, it was too little too late. But when it actually came to February, by then, again, another disaster because the Empress and Rasputin together had appointed not only 70 altogether new governors — they had changed most of the government while the Tsar was at the headquarters, the Stavka, and away from Saint Petersburg, from Petrograd. They had been appointing the ministers basically and just getting the Tsar to rubber stamp it.

And the worst of all was Protopopov, the last Minister of the Interior, who actually was suffering from syphilis and was talking as a result with terminal paralysis of the insane, was actually talking to icons and believed he could commune with the dead and so forth. And he said he would take over the transportation system or whatever. And this was what actually brought the February Revolution forward because the trains were all in the wrong places at the wrong times. They froze solid in that particular January of 1917.

And it was hardly surprising therefore that, although there was sufficient grain in the country, it wasn’t in the right places, and that’s why you started to get starvation in the cities. So the actual street revolution, which had nothing to do with the Bolsheviks — they were all away, Lenin in Switzerland, Trotsky in North America, Stalin in Siberia — the regime was completely vulnerable and so demoralized that none of the Imperial Guards officers were even prepared to draw their swords in defense of the regime.

The Tsar and Tsarina: Two People Ill-Suited for Power

FRANCIS FOSTER: And to inject a note of empathy for the Tsar into proceedings, as I was reading your book, this idea kept replaying in my head, which was I couldn’t think of two people less suited to those positions than the Tsar and the Tsarina.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: No, you’re quite right. Psychologically, I mean, talk about having daddy issues. The poor Tsar with his father, who was a munchkin of a man. Tsar Nicholas II was always conscious that he was one of the smallest of the Romanovs. “Who’s going to take orders from me?” he sort of says almost in tears when his father dies. He says to his cousin. And so he has this sort of permanent complex.

And then he marries this woman who again has her own complexes, partly because of having been brought up in an impoverished court. You would have hoped that Queen Victoria bringing her up as her granddaughter would have had slightly a better influence. But then you get this extraordinary transformation — having refused to marry Nicholas because she doesn’t want to change her religion from being a Protestant to becoming a Russian Orthodox, she then becomes more Russian Orthodox than any Russian. And an obsessive in her belief in the power of icons, in spirituality, and the idea of the peasant alliance with the royal house of Romanov, the batyushka tsar and all the rest of that sort of stuff.

Lack of imagination was one of the worst. Inability to listen to any advice was common to both of them. And the effect, of course, was utterly disastrous. Absolutely.

FRANCIS FOSTER: But he also, to be fair to him as well — because of the way his father died, and we can talk about that a little bit — he was left directionless.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Yes, it was true. The trouble was that one has to remember, first of all, the Tsar’s father, Alexander III, thought that he was going to have much longer time to prepare his son. And anyway, he felt, “Well, I’d had no preparation or whatever, so surely he doesn’t really need preparation either.” So again, lack of imagination. And of course, he did treat his son as a weakling, which did not improve his confidence.

And the only confidence Nicholas ever had was when he was surrounded by young army officers, who of course all were fawning on him and so forth. And he was at his happiest when he was going to sort of regimental dinners where they would all cheer him, and then when he left, he was treated as a hero. And this gave him the idea that the army would always be loyal, that the power of the Romanovs could never be shaken. The idea that that would ever change never occurred to him — and of course, until the First World War, right at the end when he suddenly saw the disintegration of his own armies.

Alexei’s Haemophilia and Rasputin’s Power

FRANCIS FOSTER: And he also had a vulnerability, which is his heir and successor, Alexei, was deeply, deeply ill.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, the tragedy, of course, was it was called the English disease because haemophilia came through the line of Queen Victoria and it was on the mother’s side who carried it. And it skipped a generation, going on to Alexandra, the Empress Alexandra. The four daughters were absolutely fine. And then when Alexei was born, they realized that he had haemophilia.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Haemophilia is when your blood doesn’t clot, basically. If you get a cut, you’re going to bleed out.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Exactly. It is a disease entirely of the blood, which produces appalling pain in the joints, particularly. And of course, this is what gave Rasputin his power. He didn’t really have any power or influence at the beginning, but the moment that he started to be able to relieve the symptoms — mainly by the voice and by the touch and his eyes — some people say he was a hypnotist, but I’m not so sure about that. He did use those eyes in a sort of powerful way. But as far as the children were concerned, it wasn’t just Alexei — it was one or two others. He did have some extraordinary calming influence in that particular way.

That in a way is a fascinating area of debate — whether he did have a certain power, particularly in his hands without actually touching the body, which could make this influence. But a lot of it also was the calming of the voice, which was able to bring down the blood pressure, which actually then released quite often the joints which were causing the extreme pain.

But there was the great moment at Niespala, a hunting lodge in Poland, where he came closest to death and they really had given up hope. And it was only a telephone call from Rasputin which convinced the mother that he was going to survive. And whether that just coincided with a break in the fever or whatever it was, but from then on, Rasputin’s power was total, as everybody in the court realized in horror, because she believed he was a total saint and that God had worked through him and had saved the dynasty, and that the Crown Prince, the Tsarevich, will definitely be the future Tsar.

Russia’s Future: War, Resentment, and the China Question

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So, Antony, thank you so much for coming back on the show. As we wrap up, I have two questions for you. We always have the same question at the end, but before that — if you look at the history of Russia’s relations with Europe in particular and the West more broadly, there have been times when European countries have been at war with Russia. There have been times when Russia has been a participant with other European countries in wars against other European countries, etc. So those relationships, the relationship with Russia, is up and down and flows in different directions through time.

Do you think there will be a time, certainly in our lifetimes, when the relationship that we have with Russia will shift in a more constructive direction? Or do you think the impact of the war in Ukraine is such that it will be a tarnishing force for a very, very long time?

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: I fear very much the latter. Yes, I think there’ll be such bitterness after the war. It’s impossible to predict, obviously, at the moment how it’s going to turn out. But I think that the suffering in Russia will be considerable, partly not just because of the economic consequences. How will they be able to readapt their economy back to a, shall we say, more civilian economy and demilitarise it — that will be very, very hard. And that will cause vast suffering in the countryside and certainly outside the main cities, but even in the main cities themselves, I suggest.

But also what we talked about earlier about the traumatised and brutalised soldiers coming back from the war and what effect they will have on the whole place. So without going into any sort of predictions, I don’t think Russia will split into different parts or anything like that, as some have tried to predict. But I do think that it will be a centre of resentment and would be dangerous in that particular way.

But a lot will depend on other elements — to what degree China will help Russia, or to what degree China will actually exploit Russia’s vulnerability at the end of the war with its own interests in Siberia and other areas.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, the Chinese are taking over the Far East of Russia, just demographically speaking, already.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Yes, absolutely, demographically already. But they’re even changing the maps, as you’ve seen, with the names of Vladivostok and others now in Chinese. So there’s little doubt about Putin being in need of the Chinese, but I think probably underneath afraid of them as well.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, and of course, the big question is what happens when Putin goes. Well, thank you for coming back. We appreciate it. You said before we started — I will tell the public this — that this is the last podcast you’re ever going to do. I actually don’t believe that. I think you’ll be back because you’re so great to have on, and you are so prolific with your writing. We’re delighted to have had you.

Closing Thoughts and Final Question

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, no, what I enjoyed was — we were talking in the large rather just in the specific. And I think that the problem has been that people have just given away the whole story of their book. And for many people, they think, “Well, why do I bother to go and buy it now?” But when one can actually have a really great discussion, that’s a different matter. So no.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: As I say, we look forward to having you back is what I’m saying. That’s a distinct possibility. Hold on, hold on, before you run. Our final question, as is always, is the same, which is what’s the one thing we’re not talking about that we should be? Could be in the context of this, could be in the context of something else.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: What do you mean? Well, said about contemporary politics?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Could be about anything at all, anything that’s on your mind that you think, “Why doesn’t anyone talk about this?”

The Environmental Cost of War and the Immigration Crisis

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Well, at the moment, what are going to be the environmental consequences? Let’s face it, war is one of the worst environmental disasters you can imagine. And here we are with more wars around the world at the moment, more conflicts going on, whether in Africa or elsewhere, where already people are suffering water wars and climate disasters of one form or another.

So the biggest issue really is, I’m afraid, going to come back again to immigration because of the side effects of everything else going on. And there’s no way that Europe can be the lifeboat. And I remember, funny enough, in a book that I wrote and was published in 1990, I remember predicting there that the possibility that perhaps the role of armies in the future are simply going to be to prevent mass immigration.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Sir Antony Beevor, thanks for coming on.

SIR ANTONY BEEVOR: Not at all. Yeah, great picture.