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

They froze solid in that particular January of 1917.

And it was hardly surprising, therefore, that there was, although sufficient grain in the country, it wasn't in the right places.

And that's why you started to get starvation in the cities.

So the actual street revolution, which had nothing to do with the Bolsheviks, they were all away, Lenin in Switzerland, Trotsky in North America, Stalin in Siberia.

The regime was completely vulnerable and so demoralized that none of the Imperial Guards officers were even prepared to draw their swords in defense of the regime.

You're quite right.

You know, psychologically, I mean, talk about having daddy issues.

I mean, the poor Tsar with his father, who was a muntin of a man, and the Tsar was absolutely always, Tsar Nicholas II, was always conscious that he was one of the smallest of the Romanovs.

You know, who's going to take orders from me, he sort of says, almost in tears when his father dies, he says to a cousin.

And so he has this sort of permanent complex.

And then he marries this woman who again has her own complexes, partly because of being brought up in an impoverished court.

Then is very much sort of, you would have hoped that Queen Victoria bringing her up as her granddaughter would have had a slightly better influence.

But then you get this extraordinary transformation when having refused to marry Nicholas because she didn't want to change her religion.

from being a Protestant to becoming a Russian Orthodox.

She then becomes more Russian Orthodox than any Russian and obsessive in her belief in the power of icons, in spirituality and the idea of, you know, the peasant alliance with the royal house of Romanov, the Batushka Tsar and all the rest of that sort of stuff.

Lack of imagination was one of the worst.

Inability to listen to any advice was common to both of them.

And the effect, of course, was utterly disastrous.

Yes.

It was true.

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