Douglas Brunt

And so he actually was, it was closer to like an Eastern, you know, Japanese where the, the God is a form of deity.

So it's like a hundred years ago, the Russians thought their, their leader was a deity.

Yeah.

Okay.

You know, here in the title, it's an industrial empire, you know, meant to be sort of a play on the czar's empire.

Work.

You say what?

You know, maybe in the context of the book, it's a damage.

When Russia, they were slowly advancing and there were liberalizing forces happening.

Russia might have been the one, you know, Britain had a revolution to become a constitutional monarch.

The king was beheaded.

Russia might've been the one, ironically, power, even though they're sort of trailing, they might've been the one power to sort of peacefully arrive at a constitutional monarchy.

And Stalin was saying, I don't even want these concessions from the Tsar because they undermine my goal of a violent revolution.

And so anytime the Tsar was sort of negotiating, he would try to undermine it and say, no, no, no, we only want blood.

We don't want concessions, we want blood.

And so...

And I would say ruthless and underestimated.

And as you say, so he was born impoverished on these hardscrabble streets of Georgia near Tiflis.

basically a kid in a street gang, sort of a gangster upbringing, but then studies to be a priest of all things, just the craziest thing.

And then while he's studying to be a priest, he's essentially in occupied Georgia.