In the finale of the series, we enter the "House of Special Purpose" - the ominous code name for the villa where the Romanov dynasty met its end. As the White Army closed in on Ekaterinburg in the summer of 1918, the Bolsheviks made a cold calculation: the Tsar could not be allowed to live as a banner for the counter-revolution.

We follow the family’s descent from imperial boredom behind painted-over windows to the terror of the night of July 16th.

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The most consequential revolution of the 20th century did not happened with a change of the guard. In this episode, we dismantle the myth of the "storming" of the Winter Palace to reveal the reality of the Bolshevik seizure of power: a methodical, invisible coup d'état masterminded by Leon Trotsky. While the citizens of Petrograd rode the trams and attended the opera, the Military Revolutionary Committee quietly seized the city's bridges, telegraphs, and banks without firing a shot.

We follow the surreal timeline of October 25th, from Prime Minister Kerensky fleeing the capital in a borrowed American car, to the "siege" of the Winter Palace—defended only by teenage cadets and the Women’s Battalion of Death. The episode concludes in the smoke-filled halls of the Smolny Institute, where Trotsky consigns his political enemies to the "dustbin of history" and Lenin announces the birth of the Soviet state.

Contact: whatcamebeforepodcast@gmail.com

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By the summer of 1917, the optimism of the February Revolution had dissolved into violence. Alexander Kerensky, the "Persuader-in-Chief," attempted to save the crumbling nation with a suicidal military offensive that destroyed the last remnants of the army's morale. The resulting power vacuum triggered the "July Days," a premature uprising of armed sailors that forced Vladimir Lenin to shave his beard and flee into the swamps of Finland.

The chaos culminated in the Kornilov Affair, a bizarre standoff between the socialist Prime Minister and a general with "the heart of a lion but the brain of a sheep." Facing a military coup, the government made a fatal calculation: opening the armouries and handing 40,000 rifles to the Bolsheviks, effectively arming their own executioners.

Contact: whatcamebeforepodcast@gmail.com

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