Sir Antony Beevor

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363 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 6 Jun

Sir Antony Beevor’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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TRIGGERnometry · The Russian Mindset and Where it Comes From - Historian Sir Antony Beevor · 6 Jun 2026 podcast

And that was an effective repression, but for the time being.

I mean, the hangings, everybody referred to him as Stolypin's necktie because of the mass executions.

But it wasn't just the mass executions.

The way the army was sent into the countryside and any rebellious peasants were sort of beaten with an inch of their life with the cleaning rods of their rifles.

And this, of course, created vast anger and bitterness and so forth.

All of these elements were some form of preparation.

But the real collapse in the authority of the Tsar Nicholas II

came very much actually from the way that rumor, and false rumor, because of Rasputin and his relationship with the Empress.

One of his letters to the Empress was stolen and then was circulated in which he said that she wanted to fall asleep forever on his shoulder.

Well, this was interpreted automatically as the fact that she was sleeping with him.

But, of course, she wasn't at all.

It was much worse than that.

And, I mean, then we start to get closer to the revolution.

We get to that sort of pornographic fantasy which precedes, it seems, many revolutions, like with the French Revolution, the idea of Marie Antoinette and her relationship with the Princesse de Lamballe and all that sort of stuff.

that Rasputin was even sleeping with a teenage daughter.

Again, totally untrue.

But the point was that the Tsar, who refused to have any interference and refused to listen to warnings from his own cousins and uncles,

was allowing his wife to entertain Rasputin in the palace on their own, which was obviously a complete breach of protocol and was ruining her reputation.

And he describes in his diary how, you know, I returned home and I found my wife and Rasputin, you know, chatting happily and I joined them and we had a very enjoyable evening.

without any imagination of what this was doing.

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