Michael Malice

And maintain that power and remake that society so drastically, so quickly, despite such opposition.

Yeah, Ludendorff, who was the German general, he's like, all right, we got to get

the Russians out of World War I, he's the one who's like, all right, let's get this lunatic Lenin who already tried and failed to have a revolution in Russia.

Let's send him back there.

And he's just going to cause problems to everybody.

And it's going to be great because it's going to weaken Russia.

And then our Eastern Front isn't going to have to be a problem.

And then to his surprise and everyone else's, including anarchists and communists worldwide, they pulled off this October Revolution.

And then for a while, it's like, all right.

I mean, I think my understanding is even people at the time in St.

Petersburg and in Moscow were like, what does this even mean, right?

Like no one took it seriously.

And then very quickly-

You had the Cheka and the secret police and all these other kind of implementations of the communist state.

And people are like, oh, they're not messing around.

But they're like, all right, this is not going to last for long.

And the USA, the US&A, we didn't even recognize the Soviet Union's legitimacy for a very long time.

There were no diplomatic relations.

And after a certain point, it's like,

If you don't recognize Lenin and Stalin's government, who's the government of Russia or the Soviet Union?