Brent Antonson

Who the Hell Were... the Decembrists?

They were the OG Russian revolutionaries — aristocrats with a conscience and a death wish. In December 1825, a band of officers and nobles staged a mutiny in St. Petersburg, demanding a constitution, civil liberties, and an end to autocracy. Basically: “Let’s overthrow the tsar before it’s cool.” They...

What the Hell Were... the Gulags?

The gulags were hell with paperwork — Stalin’s sprawling network of forced labor camps spread across the Soviet Union like scars across a body. The word “Gulag” is an acronym: Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei — Main Camp Administration. Bureaucratic, cold, and absolutely lethal. It wasn’t just a prison system — it was...