Douglas Brunt

the Allies are both treating him with kid gloves because they don't want to throw him into the arms of the other.

You know, Germany's saying, well, we kind of got to be nice to Lenin because we don't want him to give all the oil over the Allies.

The Allies are sort of thinking the same thing.

We got to be nice to him or he's going to release all these 2 million German POWs and throw them with Germany and then we're in a real...

So he, because of the war and these external events, even though he is barely hanging onto control, even domestically, you know, he certainly doesn't have any kind of military power to take on a foreign power.

He can barely hang on to St.

Petersburg, but because of the external circumstances of the war, he threads this crazy needle

and survives despite everyone around the world thinking, oh, these Bolsheviks, they're going to hang on for like three weeks.

Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, they've never run any kind of organization, let alone this crazy empire.

And yet they do it.

We almost had a 20th century in which communism doesn't appear in Russia and therefore in China or Korea, Cuba, Vietnam.

I mean, there was almost a 20th century with no communism at all.

One of the advantages that the Bells had is, as I mentioned, they were building boilers and steam engines and diesel engines and munitions up in northern Russia.

They get an order for 100,000 rifles from the Tsar.

So they send one of the brothers down to the southern Russia in the Caucasus region where they have these walnut trees where they can access wood to build the rifle stocks for this order.

And while he's down there in southern Russia along the Caspian Sea, it's this ancient land of the internal flame where constant seeping gas is ignited.

And so they have this internal flame.

Pools of petroleum are forming on the surface where people skim it and use it as a lubricant or a salve.

And he says, well, geez, I'm not going to spend this bag of 25,000 rubles on wood.

I'm buying land.