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The Fall of the USSR, Pt II · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Hey, Chuck, you ended
0:14
Speaker 2: the last one. You want to start this one.
0:16
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
0:19
Speaker 1: To my left is Josh Clark. Jerry's here in spirit
0:24
Speaker 1: and in reality this time. So this is part two
0:28
Speaker 1: of the Fall of the Soviet Union.
0:31
Speaker 2: Bravo.
0:32
Speaker 1: I hated doing that, by the way, Oh you did. Yeah.
0:35
Speaker 1: This feels like Robin putting on Batman's outfit or something.
0:40
Speaker 1: This is very strange.
0:41
Speaker 2: How do you know it's not Robin who announces the podcast.
0:44
Speaker 1: Or whatever Batman putting on Robin's outfit, although I heard
0:47
Speaker 1: he did that on the side as a kink.
0:49
Speaker 2: He did. But who hasn't. Who among us hasn't dressed
0:52
Speaker 2: up like Robin from Batman?
0:54
Speaker 1: That's true? Or Josh Clark from Stuff you Should Know,
0:56
Speaker 1: which is one and the same. Yeah, I dress up
0:59
Speaker 1: like you you do. Yeah, I have shirts and cute sweatshirts.
1:05
Speaker 2: I have to say you're you have stepped up your
1:08
Speaker 2: style game lately and it's it's nice. Hey, thanks, your
1:12
Speaker 2: traveling outfits are.
1:15
Speaker 1: Well. I was always into clothes growing up, and then
1:18
Speaker 1: I wore T shirts and cargo shorts for twenty five
1:20
Speaker 1: years and then remembered, Hey, I like fashion, so I
1:25
Speaker 1: back it.
1:25
Speaker 2: You brought it back. Yeah, you're basically the Tom Ford
1:28
Speaker 2: of the podcasting world.
1:31
Speaker 1: All right, So where we left off December eighth, nineteen
1:34
Speaker 1: ninety one, the USSR is formally dissolved by decree by
1:38
Speaker 1: the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. No one knows
1:42
Speaker 1: what's going to happen next with Russia. We've kind of
1:44
Speaker 1: covered the satellite states and the Soviet States themselves and
1:47
Speaker 1: what happened there, but everyone was sort of like, all right, well,
1:50
Speaker 1: Russia's still there, and like, what the heck is going
1:52
Speaker 1: to happen? And who rolls into town but Boris Yelston
1:57
Speaker 1: with a bottle of Stoli in his hand.
2:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, and another one in his belly.
2:02
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
2:04
Speaker 2: So Boris Yeltsen was the first president of Russia, which
2:10
Speaker 2: is kind of confusing because we said that Gorbachev was
2:13
Speaker 2: the president of the USSR. But remember Russia and the
2:16
Speaker 2: USSR were not one and the same. So for a
2:19
Speaker 2: little while there, Russia itself had pretty much two presidents
2:24
Speaker 2: at the same time. For a couple of months while
2:27
Speaker 2: Gorbachev was still in power, and while Yeltsen, who had
2:30
Speaker 2: been popularly elected in June of nineteen ninety one, while
2:34
Speaker 2: he was like, I'm President of Russia. So there was
2:37
Speaker 2: a what you could call a bit of a power struggle.
2:41
Speaker 2: And despite that, it wasn't until a three day coup
2:47
Speaker 2: was mounted, and they didn't plan for three days. They
2:49
Speaker 2: didn't know how long it was going to go on.
2:51
Speaker 2: It just turned out to be a three day coup,
2:52
Speaker 2: I guess, is what I'm trying to say. It wasn't
2:55
Speaker 2: until that was mounted against Gorbachev that his power was
2:58
Speaker 2: eroded enough to take his position away and for Yeltsin
3:04
Speaker 2: to take over and take Russia straight into the hands
3:07
Speaker 2: of the West, the open arms of the West. And ironically,
3:11
Speaker 2: that coup was by hardliners who wanted to keep who
3:16
Speaker 2: wanted to save communism and the USSR, but instead they
3:21
Speaker 2: managed to remove the power from the one guy who
3:24
Speaker 2: conceivably could have still helped that happen and gave it
3:27
Speaker 2: to the guy who was diametrically opposed to making that happen, Yeltsin.
3:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, And it was ended up being a failed coup. Technically,
3:37
Speaker 1: but it had the result of finally sort of getting
3:40
Speaker 1: Gorbachef out of power, so in a way it kind
3:43
Speaker 1: of worked, but it was technically a failed coup. What
3:45
Speaker 1: happened was, you know, Gorbachev came in with all these big,
3:50
Speaker 1: sweeping reforms, and so the conservative elites that he had
3:56
Speaker 1: previously worked with were terrified, obviously because they're existence depended
4:01
Speaker 1: on the Soviet Union being the Soviet Union, so they
4:04
Speaker 1: were like, Gorbachev is a trader. In nineteen ninety one,
4:08
Speaker 1: they put him under house arrest while he was on
4:10
Speaker 1: vacation in Crimea, and they sent tanks in to Moscow
4:15
Speaker 1: and took control of the government. They didn't storm the
4:17
Speaker 1: parliament building, but they lined up outside the parliament building.
4:21
Speaker 1: And then they made a mistake in that they let
4:25
Speaker 1: Boris Yeltsin, I keep saying, Yelston Yeltsin get on one
4:29
Speaker 1: of those tanks and address the people. And this is
4:34
Speaker 1: a time where they had not jammed the TV signals
4:37
Speaker 1: coming from outside the Soviet Union. So all of these
4:40
Speaker 1: Soviets all of a sudden are watching this unfold on
4:43
Speaker 1: the BBC or CNN, and they're seeing this Yeltsin guy
4:48
Speaker 1: sitting on top of a tank talking to them.
4:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically saying like, look at what the Communists are doing.
4:53
Speaker 2: They send in tanks to take over your government. Can
4:56
Speaker 2: you believe someone would do that? And it was not
4:59
Speaker 2: a good look for the Soviet Party, and not only
5:04
Speaker 2: did it make the party look bad, it made Yelton
5:06
Speaker 2: look really good. So remember he'd already been popularly elected,
5:10
Speaker 2: but there was a power struggle between him and Gorbachev
5:13
Speaker 2: going on. When the coup was overrun, the leaders were jailed,
5:18
Speaker 2: Gorbachev managed to come back to Moscow. But now he
5:22
Speaker 2: came back and like his authority had been directly challenged,
5:25
Speaker 2: and even though the coup had failed, it had had
5:28
Speaker 2: a huge impact on removing his legitimacy while at the
5:31
Speaker 2: same time boosting Yeltsin's legitimacy. And so Gorbachev was like,
5:38
Speaker 2: it's clear, I can't hold power any longer. So he
5:41
Speaker 2: very very peacefully, to his great credit, very peacefully handed
5:46
Speaker 2: over power and did away with any office that he held.
5:52
Speaker 2: Somebody else could have come along and filled and tried
5:55
Speaker 2: to challenge Yelton. He made sure that there would be
5:58
Speaker 2: no further political chaos. As much as he could manage.
6:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was like, I'm not president of the USSR anymore,
6:06
Speaker 1: and in fact, there is no president of the USSR.
6:08
Speaker 1: That office that I created no longer exists, and technically everybody,
6:13
Speaker 1: I'm the only guy to have ever done that. So
6:15
Speaker 1: just you know, keep that in your back pocket. And
6:19
Speaker 1: he said, here's the nuclear codes, Boris, please take care
6:23
Speaker 1: of those. Any Communists that are in public office. Well,
6:28
Speaker 1: there is no Communist party, so you're not even a
6:30
Speaker 1: valid member of that party because there is none. So
6:33
Speaker 1: you're not even if you were elected, because there's no
6:37
Speaker 1: such thing. Then you're out of your your seat. And
6:40
Speaker 1: Russia is now the Russian Federation.
6:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I didn't see what happened to those people.
6:46
Speaker 2: Was it just like I guess I'm independent all of
6:48
Speaker 2: a sudden, not by choice, or if they were like
6:51
Speaker 2: I guess I can't hold this office anymore. Who knows.
6:53
Speaker 2: But like that was just one small component of the
6:58
Speaker 2: sweeping political chain is that took place over the course
7:01
Speaker 2: of a few days. I think the whole thing really
7:03
Speaker 2: kicked off on December twenty fifth, nineteen ninety one, and
7:06
Speaker 2: by the turn of nineteen ninety two was basically over.
7:11
Speaker 2: I mean Russia became the Russian Federation, and that same
7:15
Speaker 2: anti communist spirit of renewal and revolution and like change,
7:24
Speaker 2: the winds of change you could even almost call it,
7:27
Speaker 2: had swept through Russia itself.
7:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were immediately no longer a superpower, all that
7:35
Speaker 1: national identity. You know, we talked about some of this
7:37
Speaker 1: stuff in Part one with Promise of More and that's
7:41
Speaker 1: right now because for a lot of the people in
7:44
Speaker 1: Russia it was like the fall of communism was a
7:48
Speaker 1: great thing, but for a lot of others that was
7:51
Speaker 1: you know, the Soviet man was labeled and it was,
7:54
Speaker 1: I guess a pejorative term, but Homo Sovieticus. That was
7:59
Speaker 1: just sort of the the average Soviet man who is
8:03
Speaker 1: you know, probably works in a factory and has lived
8:06
Speaker 1: his whole life with this ideology, this communist ideology and
8:11
Speaker 1: independent thought like which they you know, a lot of
8:14
Speaker 1: them voluntarily sort of bought into this thing. And so
8:18
Speaker 1: once that identity was removed and there was a vacuum
8:22
Speaker 1: in its wake, it was they were unmoored and did
8:27
Speaker 1: just like everything they knew was gone and they didn't
8:29
Speaker 1: know what to do.
8:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the patriotic of the USSR, like everyday citizens
8:37
Speaker 2: consider themselves one part of this larger collective, the Soviet experiment,
8:42
Speaker 2: and that was their identity. That's what a lot of
8:45
Speaker 2: like the way they thought came from basically, like you
8:47
Speaker 2: were saying. And so when you pull that out from
8:51
Speaker 2: underneath somebody, especially when it happened suddenly and essentially without warning,
8:57
Speaker 2: it just comes out of nowhere, like, it's really hard
9:02
Speaker 2: to put yourself in that position, like, yeah, how would
9:05
Speaker 2: you handle that kind of thing? You know. And certainly
9:08
Speaker 2: there were plenty of people who will see who were
9:11
Speaker 2: rejoiced at this change. They were glad communism went away,
9:14
Speaker 2: but there were a lot of people who were not
9:18
Speaker 2: happy that Communism had gone away, or that the Soviet
9:21
Speaker 2: Union had gone away.
9:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. You know, religion helped fill a little
9:25
Speaker 1: of that void. The recovered Russian Orthodoxy became a little
9:30
Speaker 1: more popular to help fill this moral vacuum that was
9:33
Speaker 1: left in its wake. But there was a guy in
9:37
Speaker 1: Dresden at the time. He was a KGB lieutenant colonel
9:42
Speaker 1: in his villa and dressed in Germany, and this was
9:45
Speaker 1: before a reunification. This was a nineteen ninety just sort
9:49
Speaker 1: of a mid level officer who as far as you know,
9:52
Speaker 1: criticism of the USSR in the Soviet way was very
9:56
Speaker 1: prideful and very much defended it and got really mad
9:59
Speaker 1: apparently super short views when it was criticized. His name
10:03
Speaker 1: was Vladimir Putin, and he saw everything that was going
10:07
Speaker 1: on around and there's a quote from him that kind
10:09
Speaker 1: of sums it up. He said, nothing different was proposed.
10:12
Speaker 1: That's what hurt is. They just dropped everything and went away.
10:15
Speaker 1: So you know, he sensed this vacuum, and you know,
10:19
Speaker 1: over here in the United States, like it felt like
10:23
Speaker 1: I felt like it. It kind of was a victory,
10:25
Speaker 1: like we won. The Cold War is over. Their experiment
10:28
Speaker 1: failed democracy wins, you know.
10:31
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure. The problem was is that the
10:33
Speaker 2: West wasn't like we're going to help. We want to
10:36
Speaker 2: dig in here, we want to help you, like rebuild.
10:38
Speaker 2: We want you to be a great nation and you know,
10:42
Speaker 2: a great partner to Europe and the rest of the
10:44
Speaker 2: West and the rest of the world. And one of
10:47
Speaker 2: the reasons why the United States didn't react like that
10:50
Speaker 2: at a really really crucial time, which was nineteen ninety
10:55
Speaker 2: one nineteen ninety two, was that President George H. W. Bush,
10:58
Speaker 2: who was a Cold war, if there ever was one,
11:02
Speaker 2: was leading the United States, and I saw it described.
11:05
Speaker 2: I think it was on a site called History Guild,
11:08
Speaker 2: which is magnificent by the way that he foiled his
11:11
Speaker 2: arms and turned his back and was basically like, good luck,
11:14
Speaker 2: We're glad you fell over, but we're not gonna help you.
11:16
Speaker 2: We hate you. We've hated you for decades now, so
11:21
Speaker 2: we're not really gonna step in and help you rebuild.
11:24
Speaker 2: Just figure out how to do it yourself. And that
11:27
Speaker 2: had that gone differently, who knows what Russia would be
11:32
Speaker 2: like right now. Who knows, We have no idea. Could
11:35
Speaker 2: be worse, it could have been better, It could be
11:37
Speaker 2: it could have played out exactly the same. But the
11:40
Speaker 2: fact that the West only helped in the most like
11:43
Speaker 2: specific economic terms and didn't in like a spirit of
11:48
Speaker 2: friendship and cooperation, really step in and basically basically the
11:52
Speaker 2: United States was a sore loser of the Cold War.
11:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I feel like most of that was sort
11:58
Speaker 1: of aimed at Russia's typically because I don't know how
12:02
Speaker 1: much they financially helped the former Russian states and satellite
12:05
Speaker 1: states and things like that, But it seems like the
12:10
Speaker 1: just the spirit of it all was more aimed directly
12:13
Speaker 1: at Russia and like, hey, these other countries are finally
12:16
Speaker 1: out from under your grip, so like good for them.
12:19
Speaker 2: Right exactly. I think we failed to say in the
12:24
Speaker 2: first episode, but Kyle helped us out with this our
12:27
Speaker 2: man in Great Britain or the UK or England even Yeah.
12:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, he provided the basis, and then when we started
12:33
Speaker 1: digging in, we were like, there's a lot more to
12:35
Speaker 1: this that we need to double up. And then you
12:38
Speaker 1: finished the job, buddy, in grand fashion.
12:40
Speaker 2: Thank you. So he found a movie called Goodbye Lenin
12:45
Speaker 2: from two thousand and three. It's a German film and
12:48
Speaker 2: it's a parody of this Time where it's about a
12:51
Speaker 2: man who tries to keep he tries to shield his mother,
12:55
Speaker 2: his East German mother, from finding out that communism has collapse. Yeah,
13:01
Speaker 2: and I guess it's probably hilarious. I gotta go see
13:03
Speaker 2: that one because I love a good German comedy like
13:05
Speaker 2: anybody else, you know.
13:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should see that too. So let's take a
13:09
Speaker 1: break and we'll talk a little bit about sort of
13:12
Speaker 1: the economics of this all in Russia right after this,
13:33
Speaker 1: all right, So we promised talk of economics and finances
13:37
Speaker 1: and the New Russia, or I guess the Russian Federation.
13:41
Speaker 1: Gorbachev at least was trying to instill like a gradual reform,
13:46
Speaker 1: which is kind of funny now looking back, because there's
13:49
Speaker 1: nothing gradual about it. But Boris Yeltsin was like, he
13:53
Speaker 1: really wanted to hit the gas economically, so he embraced
13:57
Speaker 1: this economist name I'm gonna pronounce at yegor Gaidar or Gaydar.
14:02
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's pronounced g ai dar. But he,
14:07
Speaker 1: along with some Harvard economists that were like, yeah, yeah,
14:10
Speaker 1: I do this. He had an idea called shock therapy,
14:14
Speaker 1: which was kind of crazy when you look back at
14:18
Speaker 1: like this was the idea because, like I said, you
14:21
Speaker 1: can't just flick a switch overnight and be like, all right,
14:24
Speaker 1: we're a free market now. They had no infrastructure for that,
14:27
Speaker 1: no history of doing that or what that looked like.
14:29
Speaker 1: They didn't know how to manage that, and so out
14:33
Speaker 1: of nowhere, all of a sudden, they said, all right,
14:36
Speaker 1: rushes open everybody. They flipped a sign in the window
14:40
Speaker 1: around and said we're open.
14:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So here's here's basically how it worked. There
14:48
Speaker 2: were several points. This is just a few of them.
14:50
Speaker 2: And this is just such a back of the envelope
14:51
Speaker 2: sketch of this whole thing. But right, some of the
14:54
Speaker 2: high points were, Remember the ruble was not recognized internationally,
14:58
Speaker 2: the Soviet ruble was. Well, now we had the Russian ruble,
15:02
Speaker 2: and to become recognized as currency on the international market,
15:06
Speaker 2: it couldn't be artificially propped up by the government any longer, right,
15:09
Speaker 2: it had to basically sink or swim on its own. Yeah,
15:12
Speaker 2: with maybe a little bit of monkeying like everybody does,
15:14
Speaker 2: but not one hundred percent monkeying with it. So that
15:17
Speaker 2: was a big one.
15:18
Speaker 1: Right, right, Yeah, that was a big one. They needed cash,
15:22
Speaker 1: like immediate inflow of cash, so they couldn't like take
15:26
Speaker 1: their time to ramp up stuff like that just by
15:28
Speaker 1: saying they're open. So the state owned businesses, we talked
15:31
Speaker 1: about them being privatized, which meant they were available for
15:35
Speaker 1: the rest of the world to invest in. They removed
15:38
Speaker 1: the terrace on foreign import so like trade could flow
15:42
Speaker 1: and the West did step up. I don't know, did
15:45
Speaker 1: the United States contribute at all to this?
15:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying, very narrowly and economically, Okay,
15:52
Speaker 2: In basically in exchange for whatever it was asking for.
15:56
Speaker 2: The United States helped them that respect. It wasn't like
15:58
Speaker 2: any magnanimous way, is what I was trying to say.
16:02
Speaker 1: It was about twenty billion dollars of the West in
16:04
Speaker 1: emergency loans, just like an infusion of cash, just to
16:08
Speaker 1: keep them from completely collapsing.
16:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I didn't see how much of that actually
16:11
Speaker 2: came through, but that was the proposal, right, right, So
16:15
Speaker 2: this is all like major high level macroeconomic stuff. To
16:20
Speaker 2: get more on the micro level, what they came up
16:22
Speaker 2: with was a voucher program, and they basically said, hey,
16:26
Speaker 2: here is a voucher for a bunch of shares or
16:29
Speaker 2: say ten shares in each of these state owned enterprises.
16:34
Speaker 2: We're going to privatize them. They're going to start selling
16:37
Speaker 2: this stuff on the world market, and we're going to
16:39
Speaker 2: distribute these vouchers equally among I think like ninety five
16:43
Speaker 2: percent of the Soviet citizenry. I didn't see why the
16:46
Speaker 2: other five percent had to sit out, But basically everybody
16:49
Speaker 2: got shares in all of these amazingly soon to be
16:53
Speaker 2: wealthy companies.
16:56
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, it wasn't like, you know,
16:58
Speaker 1: when they were making TVs. It was like our oil industry,
17:00
Speaker 1: in our steel industry, like big big stuff.
17:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so the point was that they could benefit
17:06
Speaker 2: directly from this new, amped up, juiced up Russian economy
17:11
Speaker 2: that was about to explode. Yeah, none of this went
17:16
Speaker 2: at all. Well, the shock therapy went so poorly that
17:20
Speaker 2: a lot of Russians at the time and probably still
17:23
Speaker 2: today believed that it was deliberately inflicted by the West
17:26
Speaker 2: to keep the USSR hobbled so that it couldn't possibly
17:29
Speaker 2: come back. Yeah.
17:31
Speaker 1: Was it like the these Harvard economists and stuff. Was
17:34
Speaker 1: that the deal?
17:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were very much in league with Jegol or
17:39
Speaker 2: guide are okay for sure.
17:42
Speaker 1: Well, what this led to was hyperinflation because their currency
17:46
Speaker 1: was like completely devalued, and a lot of Russians, like
17:52
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know the number, but I feel
17:54
Speaker 1: like a majority of the average Russians life saving just
17:58
Speaker 1: went away. Basically we've talked about the hyper inflation. Was
18:03
Speaker 1: it a whole episode on hyper inflation?
18:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I know we've talked about it many times,
18:07
Speaker 2: but we did we did something I think just on it. Yeah.
18:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was it was one of the worst
18:12
Speaker 1: cases of hyperinflation, like in world history. Consumer goods went
18:16
Speaker 1: like up in price by like four hundred percent. These
18:20
Speaker 1: state owned businesses, and we kind of touched on this
18:22
Speaker 1: in Part one, but it was an inside job. They
18:24
Speaker 1: were being pillaged from the inside by these ministers who
18:28
Speaker 1: had overseen them as part of the Soviet Union, and
18:31
Speaker 1: these vouchers. You know, a lot of the citizens were
18:34
Speaker 1: just like, this is I'm going to trade it for bread,
18:37
Speaker 1: like this means nothing.
18:38
Speaker 2: Exactly, and they did. So there were people out there
18:42
Speaker 2: who were like, sure, I've got some bread. Here have
18:44
Speaker 2: some bread, give me your vouchers. And they started getting
18:47
Speaker 2: their hands on as many vouchers as they possibly could.
18:50
Speaker 2: Because those vouchers were eventually able to be traded for shares, right,
18:57
Speaker 2: they weren't shares themselves quite yet, because things had to
19:00
Speaker 2: be organized a little more. So people ran around collecting
19:03
Speaker 2: these vouchers, and as a result, when those shares started
19:07
Speaker 2: coming out on the market and parts of these companies,
19:10
Speaker 2: these actually industries, were being auctioned off, they ended up
19:15
Speaker 2: in the hands of just a few people who had
19:17
Speaker 2: managed to collect a bunch of vouchers concentrate this stuff,
19:20
Speaker 2: and then they got together and said I got a
19:22
Speaker 2: bunch of vouchers. You have a bunch of vouchers. Let's
19:24
Speaker 2: come together form a cartel and we'll actually take over
19:27
Speaker 2: this oil company using these vouchers. Right, And those people
19:31
Speaker 2: became what we now call the Russian oligarchs, who did
19:35
Speaker 2: not exist before this, It just did not exist. And
19:38
Speaker 2: now all of a sudden there were eye poppingly wealthy
19:42
Speaker 2: people who just emerged out of the ashes, suddenly growing
19:49
Speaker 2: in size exponentially, just like Apache chief.
19:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. I know you hear that term a
19:57
Speaker 1: lot now, Russian oligarchs. And if you were always like,
20:01
Speaker 1: what the heck is that? Even that, this is where
20:03
Speaker 1: it comes from, the real big like what sent that
20:07
Speaker 1: over the top was this loans for shares privatization situation
20:13
Speaker 1: because they feared that if they had a communist victory
20:16
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six that that would be a bit
20:19
Speaker 1: a bad deal to all of a sudden reverse course
20:21
Speaker 1: on what had been happening. And so the government said,
20:24
Speaker 1: all right, all you knew oligarxies, super rich people, we
20:28
Speaker 1: got a deal for you. We'll loan you shares in
20:32
Speaker 1: our twelve biggest state owned businesses in exchange for like
20:36
Speaker 1: quick cash. Now, ended up being about eight hundred million dollars,
20:40
Speaker 1: essentially sort of allowing them to buy pieces of like
20:44
Speaker 1: oil companies and stuff like that.
20:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were loans like you said, these shares
20:49
Speaker 2: are controlling interests, but they never gave them back essentially,
20:53
Speaker 2: so the government sold it. Like you said, these were
20:55
Speaker 2: oil giants, metal producers, all like. This is where it
21:01
Speaker 2: really got consolidated. Before they were using vouchers and stuff.
21:05
Speaker 2: Now it was like they were buying directly from the government.
21:09
Speaker 2: They went to the wholesaler, right. And Putin was one
21:13
Speaker 2: of those those oligarchs. He had made some they started
21:17
Speaker 2: to make cash, I think, flipping real estate in Saint
21:21
Speaker 2: Petersburg in the very early nineties, and then started a bank,
21:26
Speaker 2: and then by the time this fire sale went on
21:29
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety six, he managed to secure a controlling
21:34
Speaker 2: stake in a nickel mining company by loaning one hundred
21:39
Speaker 2: and seventy million dollars to the government.
21:42
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I don't think anyone knows how much
21:44
Speaker 1: money he has today, right, No, and that kind of
21:47
Speaker 1: a mystery.
21:47
Speaker 2: We talked about it in our book.
21:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Will there ever be a trillionaire?
21:52
Speaker 2: I don't know. Will there.
21:55
Speaker 1: So these oligarchs were were and are greedy because they
22:00
Speaker 1: were like that wasn't even enough. They were like, you
22:03
Speaker 1: know what, how we can make more money is instead
22:06
Speaker 1: of having these big, great industries like helping out Mother
22:12
Speaker 1: Russia and the Russian Federation, we can actually strip these
22:15
Speaker 1: companies of the raw materials and sell them for more
22:17
Speaker 1: money on these international markets. And so that made them
22:22
Speaker 1: even richer. And then what that did was that that
22:25
Speaker 1: really created a wealth gap like they had never seen before,
22:29
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, factories are closing and entire
22:33
Speaker 1: towns and villages that were built around this central factory
22:37
Speaker 1: went into ruin and the safety net was gone, and
22:42
Speaker 1: like their their unemployment rate and there was just just
22:45
Speaker 1: like unbelievable, was like twenty two percent in nineteen ninety eight.
22:50
Speaker 2: Forty percent of the population was under the poverty line
22:53
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety five, just eye popping statistics. Because these
22:59
Speaker 2: oligarchs were allowed to basically pilfer the entire Russian economy
23:05
Speaker 2: for themselves, they carved out the middle classes another way
23:09
Speaker 2: to put it, and so like when they figured out,
23:13
Speaker 2: like we don't need to make stuff at home, we
23:16
Speaker 2: can sell that stuff for we can just sell the
23:18
Speaker 2: raw materials on the market and make more money. Yeah,
23:21
Speaker 2: so many people were put out of work. And then
23:24
Speaker 2: bear in mind there used to be a safety net,
23:26
Speaker 2: like the Soviet Union was Coluji. I heard a joke where,
23:32
Speaker 2: like an old Soviet joke that we pretend to work
23:35
Speaker 2: and the government pretends to pay us. That's just kind
23:38
Speaker 2: of how things went. But you still had childcare, you
23:42
Speaker 2: still had healthcare, you still had a free education. Like
23:46
Speaker 2: it might not have been very good, but the government
23:48
Speaker 2: was still doing what it could to deliver that stuff.
23:51
Speaker 2: Right after that, like you said, that safety net was
23:54
Speaker 2: just gone and people were just unmoored in adrift, and
23:58
Speaker 2: it was like good luck, You're going to have to
24:00
Speaker 2: go figure out what to do yourself because now this
24:03
Speaker 2: is a capitalist economy.
24:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I think I mentioned in part one,
24:08
Speaker 1: like they they slowed the rate of having children just
24:12
Speaker 1: because they couldn't afford it. I think by the end
24:13
Speaker 1: of the nineties there were three point seven million fewer
24:17
Speaker 1: children in Russia than in nineteen ninety so in the
24:20
Speaker 1: course of a decade. And alcoholism was you know, it's
24:24
Speaker 1: always been obviously a thing in Russia. With the free
24:28
Speaker 1: flowing of vodka. But after this it was really really bad.
24:32
Speaker 1: Heavy drinking accounted for two of every five deaths among
24:36
Speaker 1: Russian working age men in the nineties, and their life
24:40
Speaker 1: expectancy changed. Like, if you can like literally change a
24:43
Speaker 1: life expectancy over a decade, then something terrible has gone wrong.
24:48
Speaker 1: I think the male life expectancy went from sixty four
24:52
Speaker 1: to fifty seven over the course of three years between
24:55
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one and nineteen ninety four. Because again, these
24:58
Speaker 1: you know, the Soviet men, out of work, no ideals
25:04
Speaker 1: that they had grown up knowing and like believing in
25:07
Speaker 1: all of a sudden stripped, so they drank themselves to death.
25:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. I said earlier that a lot of Russians still believe,
25:14
Speaker 2: probably still believed, they definitely did the time that the
25:17
Speaker 2: West inflicted shock therapy upon them on purpose. I've also
25:22
Speaker 2: seen this shock therapy as being labeled as responsible for
25:28
Speaker 2: somebody like Putin to be able to come along and
25:30
Speaker 2: get the kind of support as a autocratic nostalgist, basically
25:36
Speaker 2: in very much the same way that Hitler was able
25:39
Speaker 2: to rise to power because of the deeply punitive measures
25:44
Speaker 2: in the Treaty of Versailles that just punished Germany, made
25:48
Speaker 2: Germany really unhappy with the rest of the world, and
25:51
Speaker 2: so somebody came along and said, I'm going to restore
25:53
Speaker 2: Germany to its former glory. That's how Hitler came to power.
25:57
Speaker 2: Putin came along and said I'm going to Russia to
26:02
Speaker 2: its former glory, and so he got support as an
26:05
Speaker 2: autocrat as well. It's just it's always interesting to me
26:08
Speaker 2: that you can find so many different streams of like
26:14
Speaker 2: events and goings on and just different decisions that can
26:18
Speaker 2: lead to such consequential actions. Yeah, it's like I was
26:23
Speaker 2: thinking about it, It's like nothing is black and white,
26:27
Speaker 2: and even fewer things are one sided. And that's a
26:30
Speaker 2: good example of that.
26:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So the decade that was the nineteen
26:37
Speaker 1: nineties over there. In ninety one, you know, we mentioned
26:41
Speaker 1: that Yeltsin was elected as the President of the Russian Federation,
26:46
Speaker 1: or actually I guess before that he was President of
26:48
Speaker 1: Russia and now the official elected president of the Russian Federation, right,
26:53
Speaker 1: And he was a you know, he stood up to
26:56
Speaker 1: a corrupt system, so he was very popular. You know,
26:59
Speaker 1: there wasn't a revolution in Russia like happened elsewhere in
27:05
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe. They you know, elsewhere the political elites were replaced.
27:09
Speaker 1: That didn't happen here. They didn't massively distribute or redistribute
27:14
Speaker 1: wealth and power like a lot of the people from
27:17
Speaker 1: the nomenclatura like they took care of them and they
27:22
Speaker 1: stayed in that that sort of it was an elite status.
27:26
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like the oligarchs. It was. It was
27:29
Speaker 1: now billionaires compared to working stuffs, whereas before it was
27:33
Speaker 1: more like sort of upper management versus working stuff.
27:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so yes, so these these people, the Soviet elite,
27:41
Speaker 2: just were like, oh, we're not communists anymore, but we're
27:44
Speaker 2: still going to stay elite, I guess. And right, yeah,
27:50
Speaker 2: wink wink, nudge, nudge. And so though George H. W.
27:55
Speaker 2: Bush turned his back on Russia, Clinton turned around and
27:58
Speaker 2: was like, hey, guys, let's get it on. We love you, Yelton.
28:02
Speaker 1: He's a lovable guy.
28:04
Speaker 2: He is. He's got big cheeks, he's like smiling all
28:07
Speaker 2: the time. And the reason why is because he was
28:08
Speaker 2: drunk constantly.
28:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, but I remember at the time though, it
28:13
Speaker 1: was like this isn't what like the old Soviet style,
28:16
Speaker 1: like this is a big teddy bear like you said,
28:19
Speaker 1: he's smiling all the time and he wants He seemed
28:21
Speaker 1: to be very Western friendly, and he was also well
28:26
Speaker 1: partially because the alcoholism is someone who I think Bill
28:29
Speaker 1: Clinton and people in the West knew that they could
28:31
Speaker 1: kind of control.
28:32
Speaker 2: Yes, so he was a party animal, like there's no
28:35
Speaker 2: two ways around it. There was. There's this one thing
28:39
Speaker 2: you can look up on YouTube where German Chancellor Helmet
28:43
Speaker 2: Cole came to visit Russia after the Soviet Union dissault,
28:47
Speaker 2: and it's a state visit. They're standing there watching a
28:50
Speaker 2: Russian military parade go by, and all of a sudden,
28:53
Speaker 2: Yelson just has moved to grab the baton from the
28:56
Speaker 2: military band conductor and he starts conducting band too, but
29:00
Speaker 2: like almost cartoonishly. Yeah, yeah, larger than life. He's blowing
29:05
Speaker 2: kisses at people and it's like when you watch it,
29:08
Speaker 2: like he's pretty drunk right now. And this is like
29:11
Speaker 2: an official state thing, and this was not unusual for him.
29:14
Speaker 1: Oh for sure. There was another famous story where when
29:17
Speaker 1: he was on an official state visit, one of the
29:19
Speaker 1: first ones, I think it might have been the first
29:21
Speaker 1: one to the United States, he was all of a
29:24
Speaker 1: sudden turned loose in the US and he was like,
29:27
Speaker 1: this is fantastic. So the Secret Service allegedly found him
29:33
Speaker 1: out trying to hail a cab in DC on Pennsylvania
29:36
Speaker 1: Avenue and his underwear, so he drunk so he could
29:39
Speaker 1: go get a pizza, and the Secret Service reins him
29:42
Speaker 1: in and they're like, forest, buddy, we'll get you a pizza. Like,
29:46
Speaker 1: come back inside.
29:46
Speaker 2: Again, that's not a legend, like that happened. Oh yeah,
29:51
Speaker 2: So a lot of people like so, yes, he was
29:54
Speaker 2: a lovable teddy bearer. He certainly looked that way. But
29:57
Speaker 2: and a lot of people point to Putin as the
29:59
Speaker 2: as the person who started autocratic rule or brought autocracy
30:04
Speaker 2: to Russia back to Russia. Yeah, as like he's the guy.
30:09
Speaker 2: And if you dial back history a few years to
30:13
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three, you can see very clearly that Boris
30:16
Speaker 2: Yelton was the one who kicked it off again. He
30:20
Speaker 2: because of his antics, because of the just general chaos
30:24
Speaker 2: of the transition out of the Soviet economy that he
30:28
Speaker 2: presided over or just failed to preside over. All of
30:32
Speaker 2: these oligarchs first starting to get super rich off of
30:35
Speaker 2: the government and off of what's supposed to belong to
30:37
Speaker 2: the people. He got very unpopular, as we'll see. I
30:41
Speaker 2: think at one point before he left office, his approval
30:44
Speaker 2: rating was six percent, yeah, in the tank, and I
30:48
Speaker 2: assume that that was with the margin of air plus
30:50
Speaker 2: or minus six percent.
30:54
Speaker 1: Him.
30:54
Speaker 2: So he was impeached by the legitimately elected parliament, and
31:00
Speaker 2: he didn't like that very much.
31:02
Speaker 1: No, he dissolved parliament, or tried to as a result
31:07
Speaker 1: of that, and Parliament was like, no, we're not dissolving.
31:11
Speaker 1: So he had the military come in and shell parliament,
31:16
Speaker 1: which was I mean, if you want to talk about
31:18
Speaker 1: an autocratic move, I mean, that's certainly it. But you
31:22
Speaker 1: know it was spun. Well, I don't know about spun.
31:24
Speaker 1: But in the West it was viewed as more of
31:26
Speaker 1: a like, hey, Clinton's like, look at this guy, like
31:30
Speaker 1: he's a hero of democracy. Like he's shelling communist parliament.
31:34
Speaker 1: Like that's how much he hates communists.
31:35
Speaker 2: Right exactly. That's how useful he was to the West
31:38
Speaker 2: that they were just like just tried to save him
31:42
Speaker 2: anyway they could. He managed to hang on to power.
31:44
Speaker 2: That Shares for Voucher Scheme, the Great Shares for Voucher
31:47
Speaker 2: Scheme in ninety six, that was designed to help Yelton
31:51
Speaker 2: stay into power. He so hated that the Communists were
31:54
Speaker 2: probably going to sweep the elections that year, and so
31:59
Speaker 2: I think Kyle with it that people felt cheated twice
32:02
Speaker 2: by Gorbachew first and then Yeltson afterward. So there was
32:06
Speaker 2: not a lot of happiness in Russia in the nineteen nineties.
32:12
Speaker 2: They say, we take our second break and come back
32:13
Speaker 2: and wrap it up. Let's do it, okay, Chuck, wrap
32:37
Speaker 2: it up. I'll take it. Do you remember that? So
32:43
Speaker 2: good though, You're easy to listen to and fun. It
32:48
Speaker 2: was that the Fabulous Thunderbirds.
32:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, fabulous Thunderbirds. Jimmy Vond Was it Jimmy in that one?
32:54
Speaker 2: Yeah?
32:54
Speaker 1: I think it was Stevie Rayvaughd's brother. Jimmy.
32:56
Speaker 2: Oh, Jimmy Vaughan. I thought you were talking about Jimmy
32:59
Speaker 2: love Bond, Simon Lebon's brother.
33:01
Speaker 1: Yeh, all right, So I knew we'd get a few
33:04
Speaker 1: laughs in here, you know. All right? So where are
33:09
Speaker 1: we here?
33:10
Speaker 2: We are?
33:11
Speaker 1: With Yeltsin, he had banned the Communist Party. That was
33:16
Speaker 1: challenged and that resulted in a nineteen ninety two trial
33:20
Speaker 1: that was televised and it was billed as like the
33:22
Speaker 1: big Russian Nuremberg Trial, and it was basically like, hey,
33:25
Speaker 1: we're going to reckon with our past as a party
33:28
Speaker 1: because of all the crimes committed under the name of
33:31
Speaker 1: communism against the people. The sort of hitch to this
33:37
Speaker 1: Nuremberg was that there were no actual defendants. It was
33:40
Speaker 1: just sort of a sort of a show. It seems
33:43
Speaker 1: like like they didn't actually prosecute individuals. It was just
33:47
Speaker 1: sort of demonstrating the history of criminality of communism.
33:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, like they put Soviet communism itself on trial, not
33:54
Speaker 2: the people who perpetrated it. And so that's a really
33:58
Speaker 2: good that's good evidence of what you were saying earlier
34:02
Speaker 2: that the nomenclatura, the party elites just stopped being party members,
34:07
Speaker 2: but stayed elite. They were still pulling the levers of power.
34:10
Speaker 2: So of course they're not going to let themselves be prosecuted,
34:12
Speaker 2: but they know that again the winds of change are
34:16
Speaker 2: moving against communism, so they're going to go along with
34:18
Speaker 2: the show trial. It's also really good evidence of just
34:22
Speaker 2: how strong those levers of power remained in Russia. Like
34:28
Speaker 2: the KGB, it was still around. It just changed its
34:31
Speaker 2: name to the FSB, the Federal Security Service, and there
34:35
Speaker 2: was I think a member of the Supreme Soviet the
34:39
Speaker 2: Parliament who suggested a illustration bill lustration is where you
34:44
Speaker 2: identify and remove public officials who are tainted from their
34:48
Speaker 2: association with the former regime. That member of parliament was
34:52
Speaker 2: assassinated in nineteen ninety eight. So there wasn't a lot
34:54
Speaker 2: of mood among the elites to really actually have some
34:58
Speaker 2: sort of reckoning, which again that in and of itself
35:02
Speaker 2: might have helped steer Russia in a different direction, but
35:05
Speaker 2: the people who had been in charge were still basically
35:08
Speaker 2: in charge. Outside of Russia, there were it was a
35:13
Speaker 2: lot easier to do that kind of thing because they
35:16
Speaker 2: could blame Russia.
35:17
Speaker 1: Right yeah, saying like, you know, we were under the
35:21
Speaker 1: thumb of communism as a state, so it was a
35:24
Speaker 1: lot easier to sort of rally people around this idea
35:27
Speaker 1: that they were free and had a new way forward.
35:31
Speaker 1: Yeltsin tried, you know, he tried to pull some other
35:34
Speaker 1: levers that weren't like huge economic reforms or whatever, that
35:37
Speaker 1: were just like, hey, let me let me readopt the
35:41
Speaker 1: Imperial tricolor and let me replace the Soviet anthem and
35:46
Speaker 1: these are all really divisive moves. I think he was
35:49
Speaker 1: trying to sort of he attempted to close the Linen
35:51
Speaker 1: Mausoleum and replace Revolution Day, so he was trying to
35:54
Speaker 1: say like, hey, let's move forward, and like this past
35:58
Speaker 1: is haunting us. But it was a really divided thing
36:01
Speaker 1: because after this pretty horrible decade of chaos and like
36:05
Speaker 1: financial ruin the I feel like sort of the broad
36:09
Speaker 1: view of your average Russian was like things were better before,
36:13
Speaker 1: and they started pining for the old days, and there
36:16
Speaker 1: was a nostalgia that came around, you know, for that
36:20
Speaker 1: old national anthem that Putin reverted in two thousand and
36:24
Speaker 1: that's when Putin, like, I mean, I think he really
36:28
Speaker 1: believed it, but I think he also really saw an
36:30
Speaker 1: opening there to come in and be like, I'm your guy,
36:34
Speaker 1: you missed the old days, just wait exactly.
36:38
Speaker 2: I saw. There was a Russian joke from the time
36:41
Speaker 2: that said the worst part of communism is post communism, right,
36:45
Speaker 2: and yeah, so Putin came along and was like, Hey,
36:47
Speaker 2: I'm going to bring Russia back, baby, just you know,
36:51
Speaker 2: trust me. He was appointed prime minister under Yeltsin. He
36:57
Speaker 2: was the fourth prime minister under Yeltsin in seven ten months.
37:00
Speaker 2: So Yeltsin was not doing very well by this time.
37:03
Speaker 2: This is like the very end of the nineties, and
37:05
Speaker 2: one of the first things that Putin did was just
37:08
Speaker 2: pound Chechnya, which was trying to break away from Russia itself.
37:14
Speaker 2: And I guess Russia had had quite enough of breaking
37:17
Speaker 2: away for one century, and they just punished Cheeshnia. Under Putin,
37:23
Speaker 2: he decided that he was going to make an example
37:25
Speaker 2: of them, and there were a lot of atrocities and
37:28
Speaker 2: it was just really bad. But in Russia itself they
37:32
Speaker 2: were like, oh, we like this guy. He gets stuff done,
37:35
Speaker 2: he takes no guff from anybody, and that helped support
37:39
Speaker 2: his ascendency to the presidency in nineteen ninety nine, when
37:43
Speaker 2: Yeltsin suddenly out of nowhere, was like, I'm not president
37:46
Speaker 2: anymore of this guy.
37:47
Speaker 1: Is yeah, And once he was president, he was like
37:50
Speaker 1: he started to reign in some of those market freedoms
37:53
Speaker 1: that had been installed. He was like, you know, this
37:57
Speaker 1: freedom of press thing isn't so great after so by
38:01
Speaker 1: twenty ten, most of that private media was once again
38:03
Speaker 1: owned by the government. He did kind of rein in
38:08
Speaker 1: the oligarchs, but you know, not completely. Obviously, I get
38:13
Speaker 1: the feeling he was sort of picking and choosing. Maybe,
38:16
Speaker 1: so it seemed like he was. Is that accurate.
38:19
Speaker 2: The impression I have is that he brought them all
38:21
Speaker 2: to heel. He basically made a deal saying like, you
38:24
Speaker 2: guys can have free reign on your respective industries, but
38:27
Speaker 2: you have to stay out of politics. That's my industry.
38:30
Speaker 1: Oh okay.
38:30
Speaker 2: And they complied, and one of them didn't, Mikhail Kodorkovski.
38:35
Speaker 2: Basically he was like, no, I'm going to generate a
38:37
Speaker 2: bunch of political power and try to remove Putin. He
38:40
Speaker 2: got jailed, his whole asset stripped, the state took over
38:43
Speaker 2: his oil company, and the rest of the oligarchs were like, oh,
38:46
Speaker 2: this guy's quite serious. We better listen. And then from
38:50
Speaker 2: those group or that group, Putin started to develop favorites
38:54
Speaker 2: and all that. That's my impression of it.
38:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds about right. And the great thing is
38:59
Speaker 1: I know that they're people that are real students of
39:01
Speaker 1: this stuff, and I can't wait to get some listener
39:03
Speaker 1: mails on this. But you know, things started to turn
39:06
Speaker 1: around financially too, because they had some booming oil expert
39:10
Speaker 1: exports happening and experts and that you know, all of
39:15
Speaker 1: a sudden, your average living standard was going up. It
39:18
Speaker 1: seems like this sort of just the chaos of the
39:20
Speaker 1: nineties started to wane and things started to get a
39:25
Speaker 1: little bit better enough to you know, for people to
39:29
Speaker 1: get behind Putin. And he was like, yeah, I'm restoring
39:33
Speaker 1: Russia and our place in the world. Like, get behind me.
39:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, because of the nineties were shameful to
39:40
Speaker 2: the average Russian, Like they did not feel good about
39:42
Speaker 2: what they had just gone through. And now there was
39:44
Speaker 2: a guy who was saying he was going to end
39:45
Speaker 2: at all and he did. I mean in a lot
39:48
Speaker 2: of ways. I mean, he inherited an economy that was
39:51
Speaker 2: just had just started to get back on course. So
39:54
Speaker 2: under Putin and what his twenty six year reign if
39:59
Speaker 2: you count when he was the prime minister to Medevyev's puppet, Yeah,
40:06
Speaker 2: twenty six years. Like Russia definitely came back financially and
40:10
Speaker 2: their quality of living increased, and he you know, he
40:13
Speaker 2: did a lot of stuff that he said he was
40:15
Speaker 2: going to do. Yet it's still Putin.
40:19
Speaker 1: I mean, he keeps winning those elections there, right, Yeah,
40:22
Speaker 1: fair and squats, that's are all legit, and so yeah.
40:26
Speaker 2: That brings us to today. Chuck.
40:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean is that it? Are we done?
40:31
Speaker 2: I think we're done. You did fantastic.
40:34
Speaker 1: You did too, Man. I really am super psyched about
40:36
Speaker 1: this one because this is one of those that I
40:38
Speaker 1: knew so little about because again, it was the end
40:41
Speaker 1: of high school in early college for me, and those
40:44
Speaker 1: those were days where I just wasn't paying attention and
40:46
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I was trying to score Pixies tickets.
40:50
Speaker 2: It was kind of like if this part of history,
40:53
Speaker 2: we're an iced sugar cookie. As kids, we had just
40:56
Speaker 2: kind of nibbled the sugar cookie part and now we've
40:58
Speaker 2: just bid into the first icing and consume the whole cookie,
41:02
Speaker 2: and we're just in sugar heaven right now.
41:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed. I enjoyed these.
41:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a better way to put it, Chuck, just laugh.
41:11
Speaker 2: So I think we should end this episode, this two
41:13
Speaker 2: part episode, and say it's time for listener mail.
41:19
Speaker 1: This is about our episode on the UK are shorty,
41:23
Speaker 1: hey guys, And this isn't don't worry, this isn't like
41:27
Speaker 1: completely scalding us. Okay, hey guys listening to the episode.
41:31
Speaker 1: And I thought, and I was thinking I bet they'll
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Speaker 1: do it, and you did, guys, England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.
41:37
Speaker 1: No Cornwall got about Cornwall.
41:40
Speaker 2: The thing come up in our research.
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Speaker 1: Ooh, I know you guys will see things official website
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Speaker 1: saying Cornwall is a county in England, but for one
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Speaker 1: it is a duchy, which is a different thing.
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Speaker 2: You got to pass. Secondly, left hands.
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Speaker 1: Secondly, Cornwall is a Celtic nation, guys, like Scotland, Whales
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Speaker 1: and Ireland, including Northern Ireland. And finally, the UK government
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Speaker 1: formally recognized the Cornish as a national minority under the
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Speaker 1: Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities,
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Speaker 1: granting them the same status as the Scots, Welsh and Irish.
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Speaker 2: Wow. No, we did not come across that at all.
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Speaker 1: I know, guys. Cornwall has its own language, Kernwick, I
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Speaker 1: think is how it's pronounced. It's closely related to Welsh
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Speaker 1: and barely distinguishable from Breton. Yes, Brittany is a Celtic
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Speaker 1: nation too, guys. It has its own flag, Saint Piran's flag,
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Speaker 1: which is Pirates. I'm not sure you pronounce it, which
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Speaker 1: is a white cross in a black background and there
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Speaker 1: are strong calls to establish the Cornish Assembly, similar to
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Speaker 1: the other Celtic nations in the UK. I hope you
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Speaker 1: give this a mention to correct the record. I love
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Speaker 1: your respectful and open approach to what you do guys,
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Speaker 1: so I figured you'd be interested. And then he posts
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Speaker 1: this Colonel beast Vickan which is Cornwall Forever. Don't think
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Speaker 1: he's talking about the game, hen you know, and this
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Speaker 1: is from G.
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Speaker 2: Thanks G. That was brand new info for us and
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Speaker 2: we appreciate it big time. I've always wanted to go
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Speaker 2: to Cornwall because they have a witchcraft museum there that
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Speaker 2: I've always wanted to see. Nice, So I'll see you eventually. G.
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Speaker 2: I'll let you know when I'm there and we can
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Speaker 2: go to the witchcraft museum if you want to be
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Speaker 2: like G and give us some brand new information we
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Speaker 2: had never heard before and didn't run across in our research.
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Speaker 2: We love that kind of stuff. You can wrap it up,
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Speaker 2: spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
43:34
Speaker 2: stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
43:40
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
43:43
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43:47
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