Josh Ireland

But actually, I think the more you look at it, the more you realise it's like they've both started playing a game, but...

But by the time the whistle's been blown, Stalin's already sort of bought the referee.

He's actually changed the rules of the game.

He's got sort of 20 players on his team and Trotsky only has one player on his team.

It wasn't a contest.

You know, he was so comprehensively, so quickly, so ruthlessly outmoving.

So it wasn't even a... Yeah, it was.

And I think he was bewildered by the speed with which that happened.

He just delivers the brainstorming speeches.

There's this weird thing about... So Trotsky, completely indifferent to other human beings.

You know, there's...

There's one of his closest friends writes a memoir later on where he says, I realised that after two decades of friendship, he'd never asked me a single question about myself.

He had no interest in me.

He barely knew what my name was.

Whereas Stalin, though we later kind of learn that he's one of the sort of great monsters of history, was this sort of paradoxical thing of someone who understood how to, you know, he remembered people's birthdays.

He like bought presents for my function.

He charmed the pants off the British Americans during the war.

He was incredibly clever at that sort of thing.

you know and obviously he will then turn against them but when he needs people he knows what he needs to do to give them he knows what they want he knows that you know this person will want a promotion this person wants a nice flat in you know near the Kremlin you know that's what he's very good at that sort of stuff right and Trotsky's nowhere that's so fascinating and when do we when does Trotsky find out that he's been tightly outmaneuvered so he's currently he has a job title is he still in charge of the army or no he he resigns from that okay um

and this is the thing Lenin even offered him the chance to be his nominal second commander in the party and he didn't take it so he kind of he takes a sort of a succession of slightly less important jobs and then becomes a sort of a kind of minister without portfolio so Stalin keeps him around for a bit yeah well I think the thing about