00:00Imagine this. It's early 1917 and you're a wealthy aristocrat in the Russian Empire.
00:06You have your very own country estate replete with servants and perhaps even a fashionable
00:11home in Petrograd with luxury porcelain and maybe even a Fabergé egg.
00:18On paper, you and your family are one of the luckiest people to have ever lived in the
00:23Russian Empire.
00:24Yet, the expensive clock on your wall was ticking ominously fast since your wealth was
00:32tied to a political system whose time was running out.
00:36But let's wind the clock back a bit.
00:39In Russia, the vast majority of the population were rural peasants who had lived in the same
00:45appalling conditions from the Middle Ages right up to the 20th century.
00:50In fact, for roughly 85% of all Russians, living standards had actually gotten worse over time,
00:59with brutal serfdom expanding between the 15th and 17th centuries.
01:05While serfdom had been formally abolished in 1861, its crippling legacy endured.
01:12By the start of the 20th century, only around 15% of the population lived in cities, and most
01:20of those people were urban labourers with just marginally better standards of living.
01:26A small middle class of shop owners and merchants was bringing fledgling industry to Russia.
01:32But beyond that, the wealth of the empire was in the hands of the aristocracy.
01:38This 2% of the population had held political and economic power for centuries, and it was
01:45a complicated mess of princes, counts, barons and minor nobles.
01:52At the top were the ancient princely families with ties to the ruling Romanov dynasty.
01:57Below them were the wealthy landowners, officers and government officials.
02:03Some came from prestigious dynasties older than the Romanovs themselves, while others had
02:10been personally ennobled by the Tsar for their service to the state.
02:14About a third of all aristocrats held personal nobility, which was not automatically inherited
02:21by their children, and most of them were in this middle category.
02:24Then, at the bottom, were the numerous minor nobles surviving on a small estate and the
02:31boast that their great grandfather had once met someone important.
02:36Some nobles in this category had become so impoverished after their serfs had been emancipated
02:42that they had sold their estates altogether, earning their keep by working in the government
02:47or military.
02:48You, of course, as a preeminent Petrograd aristocrat, would be far from such pitiful nobles and would
02:56be a lot closer to the imperial family.
02:59You were still close to the height of your power in 1914, when Germany and Austria declared
03:05war on Russia, dragging it into the First World War.
03:10The initial mobilisation and wartime euphoria might boost your income for a time, depending
03:16on your economic ties to the imperial army.
03:19Yet the imperial army's terrible performance against Germany in 1914 and 1915 would quickly
03:27blunt your enthusiasm.
03:29The Tsar would take personal command of the military in 1915, but his presence would do
03:36little to stop the Germans.
03:38Russia would make a big push in 1916 against Austria, almost knocking it out of the war,
03:45but at the end of the day, half a million soldiers perished with little to show for it.
03:51And this brings us to 1917.
03:55At this point, even if you had suffered no losses in your family due to the war, your wealth
04:01and influence would have tangibly weakened.
04:04The war had driven roughly 15 million men into the imperial army over the past three years,
04:12disrupting Russia's economy and causing persistent inflation.
04:16Your rubles would have lost about 70% of their purchasing power and the luxury goods you'd
04:23be accustomed to in your lavish lifestyle were becoming increasingly scarce.
04:28The rest of the population you were morally lording over were having it much worse, with persistent
04:35food and fuel shortages driving them towards desperation.
04:40And there were plenty of dissatisfied young aristocrats in the military who had learned that German artillery
04:46was indifferent to social class.
04:48In March, or February by the Russian calendar, a food strike broke out in Petrograd and the Tsar's
04:56garrison mutinied instead of suppressing it and turned to revolution.
05:02Tsar Nicholas was still leading the war effort near the front when he heard the news and raced back
05:08by train to the capital.
05:10But the revolutionaries had already seized control of Petrograd's railways, so he was stuck and
05:17after a tense day of consultation with his generals, he abdicated.
05:22In the span of a week, centuries of monarchical rule in Russia had come to an end.
05:29Your instinct might be to flee, but unfortunately commercial aviation had yet to take off in Russia,
05:36so taking a plane would be out of the question.
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06:46Now, if you had just seen the fall of the Tsar, your immediate reaction might actually be one of relief.
06:52There were plenty of nobles that disliked Nicholas and were looking forward to a new government that could win the
06:59war.
06:59In fact, your influence might actually increase if you were more liberally minded as the new provisional government sought to
07:08reform and democratize Russia.
07:10However, another political power was rising alongside the provisional government, the socialist Petrograd Soviet where workers and soldiers were agitating
07:21for increasingly radical measures.
07:24Many similar local Soviets were cropping up across Russia, outside the formal government but very much wielding real political power.
07:33So, as 1917 progressed, the countryside began turning against the aristocracy.
07:40At first, the peasant tenants on your estates might stop paying their rents, so a major source of your income
07:48would dry up.
07:49If you owned forests or pastures, the locals were very likely to start making use of them regardless of your
07:56ownership.
07:57If you had been particularly benevolent to your tenants, they might respect your ownership somewhat, but the general trend towards
08:05redistribution was unmistakable.
08:08What you could do in practice depended very much on where you were during these pivotal months.
08:14If you were at your country estate, you could hunker down with loyal servants and try to hold off the
08:20redistribution.
08:21But, choosing violence was a quick way to eventually get overrun and killed.
08:27Most aristocrats in the countryside chose the more measured approach of negotiation, and you might even participate in the local
08:35Soviets if you were well respected.
08:38If you were particularly lucky with this approach, you could even keep some land for yourself to cultivate, though at
08:45that point it's arguable just how much of a noble you were.
08:49If you were still in Petrograd, your best bet was probably to sell whatever assets you could and head for
08:56abroad with whatever you could carry.
08:58Very few nobles at the time could appreciate the scale of the coming changes, so this was a very radical
09:05solution that few aristocrats undertook in early 1917.
09:09Most aristocrats stayed and supported the provisional government, yet, regardless of how much influence and wealth you had, you'd be
09:18unable to steer the sinking ship.
09:21Unbeknownst to you, in April, a certain communist exile had returned from Switzerland to preach his own radical version of
09:29a communist future.
09:30Vladimir Lenin's return to Russia would hardly have been news to you.
09:36He was the leader of a small radical party in the Petrograd Soviet called the Bolsheviks, who were hardly on
09:43any aristocrats' radar in April.
09:46Yet, he would go on to carry the Bolsheviks to the top of the Petrograd Soviet in September on a
09:53platform of communism and an end to the war.
09:56Just a month later, the Bolsheviks launched an armed revolution in Petrograd, the second revolution in Russia that year, to
10:05depose the provisional government and seize power for themselves.
10:09It's difficult to overstate just how bad this event was for you.
10:14Within weeks, Lenin's new government would abolish your estates, invalidate your titles and nationalize all banks.
10:21If you were in Bolshevik-controlled territory, you'd abandon whatever property you couldn't carry and would flee Russia through Finland
10:30or Turkey, perhaps under a false name or through bribery.
10:34But there was an alternative.
10:37Unsurprisingly, not everyone in Russia went with the communists' barrage of change.
10:43An armed opposition called the Whites was organized as Russia descended into deadly civil war.
10:50If your estate was in southern Russia, you had a very good opportunity to join them and fight the Bolsheviks.
10:58Unfortunately, the Whites ended up losing the war after nearly five long years of brutal combat.
11:04So, in the end, you'd still have to flee abroad, but probably with far fewer assets, assuming you even survived
11:12the war in the first place.
11:13Your last option was to stay put and downplay your noble origins, perhaps under a new identity or as an
11:22ideologically committed servant to the new order.
11:26While the Bolsheviks were radical, they did show some pragmatism when absorbing the Russian Empire's bureaucracy and military.
11:34Former nobles were among the few in Russia with the expertise to serve in the army or government, so the
11:41Bolsheviks tolerated their existence there initially.
11:45There were no guarantees that you'd survive the later purges of Stalin, of course, but that's a different story.
11:52In the end, your best outcome would have been to emigrate abroad as soon as possible.
11:57You could have moved art and jewellery easily enough, but any Russian shares, bank deposits or land was certainly lost.
12:06You would have at least kept your life, which is your biggest asset, and then everything else would have been
12:13just a cherry on top.
12:15In any case, if you found our little tutorial helpful, consider supporting us on Patreon or buying our new merch.
12:23Don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned for the next disintegratingly privileged episode of SideQuest.
12:32What was Lenin's favourite legal practice?
12:36Seize and desist.
