Giles Milton
speaker
1,130 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 2d ago
Giles Milton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Warsaw.
They're almost uh there about to take the Polish capital, but they need more troops.
Where can those troops come from?
Well, Stalin has got a load of troops under his command, but Stalin is not interested in Warsaw.
He's interested in capturing the city of Livov.
And so he uses all his forces, all his energies, everything at his disposal to take the city of Lvov, which ends in Trotsky and his Red Army being defeated.
By the Poles.
The Poles see a glimmer of opportunity here.
They take it, they crush the Red Army outside the gates of Warsaw, and the Red Army is forced back into Soviet territory.
So this is a kind of a moment of humiliation for Trotsky, and he sees it, he blames it directly on Stalin, who could have come to his aid but didn't.
The landscape of all this, if you like, is the question of whether uh the Soviet revolution is a revolution in one country or if this is going to be a revolution that's going to spread right the way across Europe through all the Western democracies.
And there are very different points of view here between Lenin and Trotsky on the one hand, let's have rev try and promote revolution uh everywhere, and Stalin on the other hand, saying, hold on a minute, let's get let's consolidate the revolution within the uh Soviet Union.
So there's a sort of hinterland to this.
This whole whole story going, What's what's taking place?
The Palmer hand machine slicing Lenin's brain as well.
Yeah, this is a wonderful piece of stagecraft on the part of Stalin.
Stalin saw a unique opportunity at Lenin's funeral to present himself as the natural replacement, the natural leader to step into Lenin's shoes.
And so he engineers a funeral.
He orchestrates a whole event to make sure that Trotsky will not be there.
Trotsky is actually sick in hospital, but obviously wants to be there at the funeral.
Showing 141–160 of 1,130 · page 8 of 57
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