Benedict: okay the history of the soviet union
Benedict: is sometimes pretty unbelievable
Maxie: oh?
Benedict: yeah so like
Benedict: tsar nicholas’s kid alexei, the
Benedict: idk if they called him the prince, like they didn’t exactly use that system? he was something called a tsarevich though which i assume boils down to the same thing
Benedict: like whatever, monarchies, call your heriditary business whatever you want
Benedict: anyway one of the noble dudes was agitating for a plan to gradually free the serfs, modernize things like the west
Benedict: and alexei had none of this and so he exiled the dude
Benedict: and like
Benedict: there’s a reason the ussr tended to kill its political dissidents rather than exile them
Benedict: because this guy, piotr, during all the revolution stuff, manages to get a telegram to alexei
Benedict: piotr had led one of the mass emancipations and was marching on the palace
Benedict: and the telegram said
Benedict: “serfs rise, ‘vich. bet you thought you’d seen the last of me”
Maxie: so, full disclosure
Maxie: i was distracted and saw the punchline first.
Benedict: aw
Benedict: idk whether to include the full disclosure in the basketball post
Benedict: what do you think
Maxie: I mean, don’t do it if you think it hurts the joke
Maxie: it’s not like Ivano be terrible, here.
Maxie: (I’m sure I’ve used that before, but bear with me, here.)
Maxie: (You gotta lemming get in what jokes I can.)
Benedict: i. really shouldn’t try to one-up you with soviet puns, should i
Maxie: eh, USSR the only judge of that.
Maxie: sorry, that one was pretty exkruschevating.
Benedict: fuck
Maxie: by the way, you know the big difference between the Siberians and the Mongols?
Maxie: at least, historically
Benedict: i don’t.
Maxie: well, the mongols, of course, were a culture very big on their horses
Maxie: but siberia never had the conditions to make horseback riding practical, so the people there ended up developing cross-country as a method of making long journeys instead.
Maxie: basically
Maxie: it’s a question of trot/ski.
Benedict: hhhhhhhhhh
Benedict: i have no one to blame but myself
Benedict: also you
Benedict: mostly you
Benedict: fuck you
Maxie: so stalin’s reading glasses started giving him a really bad headache later in life, but he refused to get a new prescription
Maxie: said it would be revisionism
Benedict: i’m gonna break something