Crime and Punishment Part 3 - Fyodor Dostoevsky - Classic Literature - Russian Literature

Jonathan and Slava are back, and again they've dragged Kris and Josh into the chaos. In Part 3, Porfiry plays mind games, Raskolnikov slowly unravels, a painter randomly confesses to a murder he didn't commit, and Katerina remains everyone's least favorite character. Nobody is okay. Not the characters. Not the hosts. Not the guests. Especially not Josh.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the bleak heat of 19th-century St. Petersburg, Rodion Raskolnikov, a brilliant but destitute former student, wanders the streets nursing a dangerous theory. He believes that "extraordinary" men are above the moral law of the masses and have the right—even the duty—to commit crimes for the greater good.

To prove his superiority, Raskolnikov executes a cold-blooded plan to murder an unscrupulous old pawnbroker. The "perfect crime" quickly spirals into a psychological nightmare. Haunted by guilt, paranoia, and the mind games of investigator Porfiry Petrovich, Raskolnikov begins to crumble.

His only hope for redemption lies in Sonya Marmeladov, a young woman forced into hardship who maintains a self-sacrificing faith. As the walls close in, Raskolnikov must choose between a life of mental imprisonment or the path toward spiritual rebirth and confession.


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Host

Jonathan

Host

Slava

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The idea of buying a lottery ticket and what that potential has, that's the thing that you get wrapped up in your head and forget what's in front of you. I'm not saying everyone has to achieve high levels of success, but if you're going to talk it, then I'm going to hold your feet to the fire until you get burned alive. Welcome back, SideQuesters.

We are still in Crime and Punishment. Today we're going to cover a little bit of part four, and we'll see where we land in five and six. Gentlemen, welcome back.

Thank you for having me back again. Same. Sucks to be here, Slava, with you.

Thanks, buddy. Oh, is my mic on? Yes, yes. Yes, but the camera somehow turned off, so that's good.

Well, I want to start us off with a line that I thought was super interesting from part four by Profery Petrovich, when he says that I'm a bachelor, a man of no consequence, and no use to society. I think that was in chapter five. I don't know.

I just thought that was a pretty harsh toke there by Profery. So if I'm a bachelor, I'm no use to society. It could be three observations, too, that he is a bachelor.

He is of no use to society. So that could be connected in his mind, but back then, I would imagine needing to procreate, to continue your lineage, at the very least, and also have a family to work the fields. Not in his case, obviously.

He is higher up on the social strata, but I think back then, for women, for sure, being married by a certain age was seen as almost the end of the world. It was not viewed well. Yeah, I see that.

You made the observation a couple episodes ago, Slava. You're like, well, you were a spinster at 21. That's like, well, when you live to 32, yeah, you're basically dead.

But not everybody lived to 32. Plenty of people lived into their 80s and 90s during these times, too. It's infant and child mortality is what brought that average down.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, medicine wasn't as advanced as it is now, so child-bearing years were, you know, were a commodity almost, dare I say. So the older you got, the less chance you would have a healthy pregnancy, and that's it.

If you don't have enough kids to forget working the fields, I'm sure even people in Perfori's social strata, again, you needed sons and daughters to, you know, manage the household, continue on the father's traditions and his work and his, you know, even side projects, I'm going to use modern terms for them, that you needed kids to maintain a life. I'd be dead by now if I were living during this time. I mean, there's no insulin, and I'm a type 1 diabetic, so you would have lived longer than me, Josh.

They needed to do surgery on me day one, so, you know, I would definitely be dead. Good old days. Well, I also think that that comment was in some ways part of, I guess, the back and forth between him and Rodion, because he's also been trying to, like, downplay himself a little bit.

He's like, oh, we're just having a normal conversation, because I think later on, after saying that, he says, like, oh, it takes two normal people an hour and a half before they can actually talk about anything reasonable, you know, there's just, you get smart people together and they just do nothing, and so he's, that chapter is actually, to me, really interesting, because I remember when I was first listening to it, I wasn't sure how much of it was actually real, how much of it was Rodion's paranoia, and how much of it was an intentional game versus unintentional, and because it's told to us in a way that is from, you know, Raskolnikov's point of view, that these long, drawn-out monologues from character to character... Yeah, I imagine, and I thought about it this morning, I imagine Porfiry is just messing with Raskolnikov. Some of it is maybe commentary by Dostoevsky, what Josh picked up on. Most of it, I think, is him trying to get into Raskolnikov's head, being an interrogator, just breaking him down slowly, and using Raskolnikov's paranoia against him.

Yeah, because he walks through so many different things, I was like, oh, if I were to do this, I would do it, I would go through it this way, and that's exactly what he's doing, and alluding to these things that he knows about from Raskolnikov, but he also repeatedly says he doesn't have any actual evidence, so that might actually be in Part 5, when he talks to him, that he says that. Yeah, the latter part of Part 5. The conversation of like, well, these people get together, they don't talk about anything real, that still hit for me. I've talked to thousands of people, and oftentimes we don't actually say anything, because when you want to broach a real topic, they go, oh, well, you know, and they give a vague answer.

How was your weekend? Oh, the weather's great. Yeah, let's talk about the weather. Yeah, I've been outside, Tommy, moron.

Yeah, it's a cultural thing, and I hate to be that guy, because having been born overseas, and having grown up in a Russian bubble, I sound like an asshole with just Americans, but there, without any, you know, trying to be malicious, or at all trying to be malicious, there is a certain cultural aspect to that, that is just ingrained in American culture. Small talk is preferred to a deeper conversation, and to have a deeper conversation, you'd have to have a, you know, a relationship like me and Jonathan, which has been, you know, close to 20 years, and if Jonathan brings me into this friend group, automatically, you guys would feel more comfortable, more comfortable than if you met me at a coffee shop, and we had the same conversation, and that's not even a knock, that's just, I think, part of the culture, where it gets, you know, kind of annoying and banal, if you, again, maybe that's not the right word, is to Jonathan's point, when you're trying to have a conversation with somebody that is relatively close to you, and they throw these platitudes out to you, or they only want to talk about the weather, they don't want to talk about anything meaningful, and that's not to say that we have a trauma bond the second time we get together, but to be able to be vulnerable without feeling like you're sharing too much, or you're giving up some sort of, I don't know, invisible armor, and maybe I'm completely out base, I have three Americans, you know, born and raised here, sitting in front of me, so maybe you guys can tell me, am I reading that correctly, or am I off? No, there's two things, there's like, there's West Michigan, which is where most of us are located, which is absolutely its own weird breed of Dutch people, sorry Josh, that don't want to have a real effing conversation, because you need to be prim, proper, everyone needs to see you as like, buttons are tight, and things like that, and you have to look correct, but then it's all, bless your heart, and did you hear about so-and-so, and like, this person did, she's a whore, and it's just like, it's just this nonsense, like, and then you got me, and this is, take it for whatever you want, I'm the son of a Brooklyn Jew, we don't care, look, hey, let's talk money, let's talk politics, let's talk religion, and we can be different, we can have different opinions, Slava and I have huge different opinions about Christianity, and you know what, we have a sandwich afterward, and it's okay, and we just go, hey, you know what, we're still building the thing together, we're still friends, like, I still disagree with you on this point or this point, but these three, we agree on, and it's fine, and we can talk money, and we can talk, you know, marital problems, you can talk everything, it's life, guys, like, but it's America, but specifically, and like, absolutely would love to run these people over with a train, trolley car problem, it's West Michigan, and they complain about like, well, I don't like small talk, then stop being the f***ing problem. I think you're on to something about that, because, I mean, my dad and his family is Polish on that side, and so there's a lot more of a straightforwardness to it, except for, I guess, my aunts, who are into the gossip that might be because of the surroundings of West Michigan, because a lot of these long monologues, particularly with, in this book, with the female characters, like Katerina, and, or Raskolnikov's mother, whose name I never remember, they go off on these really long, just, oh, talking about everything, gossiping about everything, to where, I think, even at one point, where Sonya's like, oh, she invents all, my mother, Katerina, invents all of these fantasies, and she truly believes them, and she just takes stuff to far out places that aren't even real.

Yeah, I want to comment, though, and defend a little bit, something with what Jonathan said, because I think it's a uniquely, what Jonathan was commenting on with West Michigan, I think it's a uniquely American Dutch thing, where people from the Netherlands, who have been here for a long time, have developed that type of personality, I guess, if you will, but like, my Dutch grandparents, who were born in the Netherlands, are very direct, and like, actually, Dutch people, themselves, from the Netherlands, have this reputation of being very direct, and being like, what, like, talking about things like politics, religion, money, all these things, and my mom's parents, who were also Dutch, but like, had, were born and raised here, and for, I don't even know what generation ended up coming over, they were very much like, we don't talk about money, we don't talk about these things, and so, like, there was kind of a culture shock when they met my dad's parents, who were like, oh, my gosh, you're a barber? You can't make that much money, like, how much money do you make? And my grandmother, from the Netherlands, like, will be very direct about like, oh, you need to lose weight, like, you're, you're eating too much, you're, you know, all those kind of things she would say, and so, yeah, I think it is like a uniquely American thing that we have, but definitely, I have noticed it in West Michigan, compared to like, meeting people from other parts of the country. Literally any big city, anywhere else, I, we, we used to go to church with this, this one family that was from the Netherlands, and they were super direct, which was weird as a kid, because you're like, that's not how you talk to people here, it's how we talk to each other at home, but like, it's not how you talk to people here, but that's the thing, and my wife, she's the daughter of two immigrants, a Mexican and a Colombian, and the same thing, it's like, oh, hey, you need to, and her grandmother, oh my god, you are fat, you need to stop eating, you need to like, and then if they're too thin, like, why aren't you eating? It's literally just like, you don't stop yourself, you just say things, and frankly, these people are happier. Yeah, like, my boss is Brooklyn Jew, no, New Jersey Jew, and he's very direct, and he bristles a lot of folks, you know, and they all love him and love, you know, our little team, but some people get bristled, and like, a conversation I was having yesterday with him, I was explaining something to him, asking him for, I wrote a justification to take somebody on a team building trip, and their boss is being, you know, a twat about it, so I had to write a justification, and I started to talk to my boss, just to get like, am I writing this correctly? Like, because you're at the same level as his PM, I want to make sure this sounds normal, and I'm going to send this over, and I was distracted, and so I paused a couple times as I was talking to him to listen to somebody else, because there's like a chaos in the office, and he's like, hey, can you stop with the pauses and just tell me what you're trying to say? I didn't cry, I'm like, yeah, obviously, like, I was pausing, and he was like, what are you talking about? Stop pausing, and we also have a relationship, but I've seen him do that to new employees, he's like, stop right there, you need to stop talking, we need to be in a meeting, move it, I told you twice already, and like, to me and 90% of the office, nobody gets butthurt about it, but you can tell the people who are more, again, American, they're like, oh my gosh, you can't talk like that, you have to be more polite, he's like, he wasn't being impolite, he was just like, chop chop, we're late for a meeting.

Yeah, there's things to do, you can't tell a tale, we got stuff to do. I am that person at work, like, I get so many phone calls coming in, I'm just, what do you need? Thanks, and I immediately hang up, I have to call out and interact with, you know, hundreds of people on the radio, and I'm just like, tell me what I need, shut up, and get on with what you're doing, because I have 20 other people that need attention. There have been so many emails that I've, you know, acknowledged, best Slava, received.

Some people that I'm friends with, I'll spend a little bit more time, but if it's just another contractor, and he's given me a con op, which is a conceptual thing, like, for what we're doing with the campaign, I was like, received, boom, you know. I've even gotten hassled by my brother, my older brother, when we've dealt with contractors together, and the thing is, like, I've been on a call, this is literally for a big CRM that I'm sure a lot of you have heard of, and the guy's trying to sell us, hey, you should activate these extra things, whatever, and on the call, I'm asking him pointed questions, like, hey, what's the capability of this AI thing that you're talking about, like, does it fulfill these XYZ things, because I'm using a bunch of AI tools, and he's like, well, you know, he's salesing, right? And then he's like, well, let's do a follow-up, I was like, well, we're going to need a follow-up call, I'm not going to buy this, because it's on sale, like, I don't think it's actually going to do us any good. He follows up, and in the email, I'm like, well, we didn't have a follow-up call, because he's, like, pushing, and I think it was an automated email, but he's pushing, like, hey, we got it on sale right now, this is, like, back November or something.

And I was like, first off, I'm not going to buy it, we said we were going to have a second call, here are the discrepancies I still have, just direct, and then my brother comes up to me, he's like, wow, getting a little feisty there, I was like, it's a salesman, I don't want to buy, there's no reason to spend the money if it's not going to solve the problem, and I told him that on the call, I don't think I'm being crazy, like, I don't think I'm being, it's just direct communication, which is funny, because my brother is more direct than I am, so. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, moving along with the book, to be direct. The conversation in Profirio's office immediately ends, because the workman, Nikolai, who's, like, been interrogated or something, just bursts in and confesses, and that throws a wrench in some things in some very strange ways, because it seems to me like Profirio's men were coaching him, but yet Profirio still seems surprised that he busted in, he's like, no, it's too early, or it's not the time for this right now, and so, like, was the whole thing, like, because it seemed to me that Nikolai, the workman, was genuine in his confession of, like, his coached confession, he was genuine in that he was kind of broken down to give it. What's with the delirium back in the day? Yeah.

Well, but what I'm wondering about is, like, did he coach him, was he coached to do that for some ends of messing with Raskolnikov, because that's, like, that is so many layers of just, like, deviousness, like, what the heck, dude, if that's the case, and I don't know what necessarily to make of that. Like a profrovery, or how do you say these freaking names? The officer, you think he's coached the, it's the painter that confesses? Yeah. Well, I don't think he directly coached it, but he, like, had his other people in the office do it, because he seemed like he had a surprise, oh, wait, no, the surprise was the other person that jumped him in the street and was like, you're a murderer.

Yeah. That's what the surprise was, that's right, I got the two mixed up, but I still don't know what to make of that. So Porfiry is his name, and unless I'm looking at it, I sometimes forget, unless it's, like, Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky, a name that I've said a hundred thousand times, but it's Porfiry, yeah.

Yeah, once I see it. I'm trying to find, in my cliff notes, I'm trying to find Nikolai, what is his name, the guy who confesses, you just said? Yeah, it was Nikolai Nikolay, yeah, he was one of the two painters, because I know, oh, because the reason I was wondering if he was coaching that was because in part five, he admits to essentially staging a conversation in front of Razumikhin, knowing Razumikhin would come and, you know, talk to Raskolnikov about it. And in that one, they talked about, oh, yeah, Razumikhin was talking about how cunning that painter must have been to, you know, do all of that horsing around in the stairwell immediately after killing somebody to throw him off.

Right, I was reading that this morning, I had to power through the rest of the book because I didn't have time to read it during the week, so I, like, powered through parts of it yesterday, throughout the day, and this morning, and I was thinking the same thing, that the painter was either a setup, or he was delusional, and sometimes people give false confessions, and he came in because he was overburdened with his delusions, I guess, and confessed, and it threw a wrench into Porfiry's screwing with Raskolnikov. So I was going back and forth, I'm like, what is going on here? I had the same questions you did, Chris. But it's interesting to watch, it's fascinating to watch Raskolnikov in this portion of the book, because he's now over his sickness, he's now better, right, and you could still see that schism in him, where he's going back and forth, even in his confession later to Sonia about the murder, and before that, he tells her all this stuff, and says, tomorrow I will tell you who the murderer is, and he goes to decide whether or not he's going to confess to the cops or not, then he comes back the next day, confesses to her, she realizes she has an affinity for him beyond just a guy who's helped her once or twice, who was a friend of her dad's, or a drinking buddy of her dad's, she promises to go to him, to the slave labor camp, she keeps trying to preach the gospel to him in some way, and Raskolnikov, to me, in a more toned down way, is still going nuts, still is in battle with himself.

So it's funny to see this guy who we meet in the first chapter, who's this, you know, just degenerate, as Jonathan called him, and then him going crazy, him murdering, him going even more crazy, going into the depths of depression and, you know, delusion, then kind of evening out a little bit, but not to the degree where he's, you know, okay with what he did, or is, you know, suppressing the thoughts about what he did, or the emotions about what he did, but he kind of tones down a little bit, and that toning down, and guys tell me if I'm completely off base, that toning down is what ultimately leads to his confession later on in part six, despite him still being all over the place, he's just a toned down, you know, crazy person now. I think you're on to something, because any time, like going off of Nikolai confessing, and then the other surprise talking to him in the street, any time it seems that he's getting away with it, he seems to have this renewed energy of like, ah, yes, yes, yes, I'm getting away with it, and then life continues, and then he, you know, as things slow down, he, the weight of it all just kind of Right, and the other side of that coin, or the other side of that box, if you will, is this moment, and I forgot which chapter it was in, but this moment where he expresses remorse for Elizaveta, like he did, she was, you know, an unfortunate, you know, result of what he was doing, but that old crow, like, you know, almost like, f*** her, that's fine, the old crow deserved to die, I was doing what I had to, I was trying to make humanity better, I'm paraphrasing, and the old crow deserved it, but Elizaveta, that was unfortunate, that was unforeseen, that's something that, you know, weighs on me, again, paraphrasing what he is saying, I thought that was interesting too, and I think, going off to what I said earlier, I think him, evening out, for lack of a better term, having that moment, having the moments you just mentioned, Chris, with him, thinking he's getting away with it, he's now thinking about that victim, Elizaveta, and that's another kind of push into the direction of confessing, but at this point, he really doesn't care about the pawnbroker, you know, Aliona Ivanovna, I think her name is, he still considers her as a righteous kill, if you will. Yeah, we touched on that briefly last week, if I remember right, but when he was talking to Sonia about Elizaveta, something that struck me was Sonia talking about how they were friends, and how she gave Sonia her Bible, and that that's what they constantly met with each other, and reading it together.

What struck me was that, in a way, Elizaveta was both Sonia's salvation, and is the first steps to what would become Raskolnikov's salvation, through his, you know, murdering of her in her home. Yeah, and Elizaveta and Sonia exchanged religious objects, so there's this theological, spiritual, mystical thing that's going on between them, and they're friends, so Raskolnikov now is confronted not only with the guilt of the consequences of him trying to kill the old crow, which ended up killing Elizaveta, an innocent person, he now realizes that Sonia and her are buddies, and that further kind of drives him, you know, in his madness to confession. But I saw Jonathan's mind-blown face, so what you got there for us? Well, the blood of the martyrs speaks a better word for the condemned, to bring them to redemption.

I guess, yeah. I didn't think about that though, Chris, of like, Elizaveta being the precursor to Raskolnikov's redemption, if you will, you know, seeking of repentance. Well, it was the fact that Sonia made a point of saying that the Bible was hers, was Elizaveta's, that's what made that immediate connection, because it gave me the impression of that she wasn't religious and didn't read regularly until her friendship with Elizaveta.

So, do you think that there's a connection with the purposefulness that Dostoevsky put with the Lazarus story, sort of in that same conversation, is one question, and a follow-up question would be, did anyone else feel like Sonia is a little bit like a Mary Magdalene figure for Raskolnikov, where she's like... Yeah, I don't know who Mary Magdalene is, sorry. She was delivered from demons by Jesus and used to be a harlot. Yeah.

Can you tell, I don't read the Bible, really, but when you describe the story, I remember it well. So, with the Lazarus story, I think it's layered. I think it's somebody being raised from the dead, so it's Raskolnikov coming out of his secular mire, being weighed down by these secular leftist radical ideas.

I want to caveat that, Raskolnikov is not just hating on leftists, the radical leftist ideas, and coming over to the traditionalist, the Christian, the Orthodox Russian side, is him being raised like Lazarus, and also suffering. Remember, we talked about Dostoevsky saying suffering is part of this world, the traditionalist radicals, and specifically the leftist secular radicals, that's not the way to fix anything. Russia will suffer through this, ultimately, through Christianity, through tradition, through the people, through its soil, it will overcome all these things.

So, I think it's the suffering of the women in the Lazarus story, and Jesus says, you know, things will be okay, Lazarus shall live again. And then the dual meeting, or the spiritual meeting, for Raskolnikov specifically, is him being raised from the dead, my personal opinion. I think it plays a dual role for a guy like Dostoevsky.

Yeah, I definitely read that also, like his interest in the Lazarus story is being like a desire for himself to be raised from the dead, because in this murder, he essentially killed himself, which is something I think we talked about previously. So, what about the Mary Magdalene question, where she is received a redemption for herself, and so then she goes out and is basically a disciple of Christ to other people, because she's been freed from her own things. And you're saying, Nazaretha is this, or Sonia is this? I can see that.

I don't think Dostoevsky had that in mind, maybe he did, we can only speculate, but to speculate upon your speculation, I think that's a fair theory. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, looking at it that way. Yeah, when I was reading it, or going through it, I didn't get that, but no, I definitely see that.

We see that regularly in the Gospels, where someone receives something from Christ, and then they then become an evangelist, because they've received such wonderful freedom in their redemption. And so, although she is still in this harlot space, because of her circumstances, she's still like, but I've also received so much, and needs to share that. Why do you guys think Raskolnikov made Sonia read a story to him? That's a question that popped up into my head, because he's insistent that she read it to him.

He could have read it, and Dostoevsky could have made him just read it, but he's insistent. He even sits down, puts his hands over his eyes, dejected, sitting at the dinner kitchen table, wherever he is, and he makes Sonia read it. That struck me as him, almost in some way, trying to test her faith, because part of me thinks he was desperate for something in some way, of where he knows, I think he remembers what's in it, because he said he doesn't really read it, but he used to as a child.

So he obviously knows the Lazarus story, although I think she said something like, oh, you're looking in the wrong place for it. It's in the fourth gospel. It's in the other book.

He's like in Revelation. So he probably has a similar knowledge to me. I remember it, but I don't actually know it, but I feel like he was probably in a somewhat of a torturous mindset of wanting to, like, is your faith genuine, I guess.

I got this sense that he's kind of rejected Christianity and developed his own moral system, and so he almost doesn't want to pick up scripture himself and read it, but he knows that Sonia has this connection with scripture and with faith, and so he still has this curiosity and wants her to read it to him rather than him reading it himself, because he feels as though he has rejected it. My take was that he wanted to be washed, and so he couldn't do it himself. He needed someone else to usher him in, where he's like, the reason he couldn't read it, even though we know he's a writer and a reader and a researcher, is because he's like, I need someone to usher me in.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Sonia, in that moment, is acting as a representative of Christianity, and he's looking to her for absolvement, to be absolved, and she's acting like a priest, almost, in this sense to him, in his mind. So that's what I was gonna say.

So, hey, Jonathan, I agree in Christianity, or is this part of it? Partly, partly. Just the Russian Orthodox side. I think that makes sense, actually.

The reason why I was thinking that it might have been Tessie was because of how resisted she seemed to have been to it, but I think anybody being as forceful as he was would take on some kind of hesitant attitude, I guess. Russians are a lot, man. Let me tell you.

We're quiet, simple people. Shut up. Get the hell out of here.

Oh, goodness. But part four basically ends with him talking to the one guy on the street, asking him for forgiveness. He's like, ask God for forgiveness, which that struck me as weird because in Raskolnikov's mind, you have this person, oh, I'm sorry, I accused you of doing the thing you actually did, and then Raskolnikov's mind's like, I did the thing.

But that's where that ends, and part five is kind of his book ended around Katerina, Marmolatov's wife, or second wife, second widow. The second wife whom he has widowed. I don't know about you, but every chapter that's centered around her, I just found incredibly uncomfortable.

Yeah, because she's nuts, and she dies of consumption, so somebody at some point explain to me what that is. It's like a lung disease. I think it was tuberculosis or something similar to that.

Intellectually, I pity her, but just like my gut reaction is like, I need to be as far away from this person as possible. It's just how I felt every time she's out of age. She reminds me of archetype of the overbearing mother.

How so? Because she has two statuses, if you will, in the story. There's the story of her being overbearing to her husband, and also we see that with her children later, so there's that, but she has a glimpse of being a happy household at one point when Marmolatov tells us in the bar of like, well, there was a time where she was really great to me, but she reverted back to this mindset of like, he's allowed, he doesn't do anything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's that overbearing, like, you're stupid, men are stupid, they can't do anything, they're worthless, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Part of me wonders how much of that is her nature and how much of that is her, I guess, her being nurtured into that way because of Marmolatov's personal failings.

Oh yeah, I mean, it's definitely somewhat his fault. Slava, I don't know if you might have any thoughts on this, or any knowledge that might illuminate this possible perception of it. Earlier, with the dream of him as a child with the killing of the horse in the street, you talked about a lot of the different interpretations and meanings layered into that dream, and I had wondered if Dostoevsky was saying something about class, or like, the abolition of serfdom and stuff like that, because from what I, if I remember right, Katerina was born into a high and well-respected family, she talks about it all the time, like, oh, I have all these connections.

How much of that's real or her own fantasy, I'm not sure, because Marmolatov, from what I understood, was not highborn, he was just a soldier, which is like the one way a lowborn person in old times could actually have some form of status, is as being a soldier, because it sounded like in one of her fanciful tales, she talks about, oh, these people wanted me to marry this person, oh, but my heart belongs to another, and that, from what I understood, was Marmolatov. No, I think you're right on track with that, about the dreams, about Katerina, and Dostoevsky, you're on, you are on track, Chris, so he is talking about class, the horse being the property, he is one of the traditionalists that is vehemently against serfdom, he wants serfdom to end, he wants equality, and Katerina, the character, I think, is by nature that way, maybe her husband has pushed her, you know, into this more, like brought out the worst in her, but she also has this irrational dislike of immigrants, specifically German immigrants, who she says, just come here and don't learn the language, right, her landlady, for example, she goes on a whole rant, how apropos, she even talks about, like, who is her real father, is it, I don't know, Ludwig or something, and so she is who she is, and maybe her husband brings out the worst in her, so I'm willing to go that route, but yes, to your question, Chris, Dostoevsky is speaking out against classism, in my opinion here, based on what we've already discussed, and based on Katerina's prejudice towards German immigrants, all that stuff, yeah. Well, that's what I was wondering about it, though, is because, like, how, if, is it, it struck me as that, is it saying that the mixing of classes is bad, was, because, you know, the one case of this example in the book is, you know, the soldier and Katerina, and it just ends terribly, so I wasn't really sure what to make of it, if he was leaning into classism.

Yeah, I don't think Dostoevsky, and I could be wrong, maybe somebody smarter than me or a Dostoevsky scholar can correct me, I don't think Dostoevsky is saying that the mixing of classes is bad, I think Katerina, you know, he puts that into her mouth, and the comment there by Dostoevsky is, it's wrong, because it's in the, coming out of the mouth of a dislikable character, or unlikable character, excuse me, yeah. Right, okay, well, as Profiri, does he say his name, Profiri has said several times, that's the thing about this damn psychology, it can be taken two ways, or like 15 ways, you just try and prove whatever point you want to make. But the other part of this whole event with Katerina's funeral party, or whatever it was, is, is Luzhin, puddle man, trying to blackmail Sonya.

I thought that was a really great scene, that whole thing was, I'm like, holy cow, like, is this the Sanderlanch for Dostoevsky? Like a little mini Sanderlanch? Because it's, you know, it's not the end of the book, and it's not a true equivalent, but it was more tense than I think anything else in the book for me. Like, I was like, holy crap, you know, this is an intense scene, and then Sonya gets redemption again, because there's a witness, uh, who dismantles Luzhin's blackmail. His roommate.

Yeah, it was his roommate, who wasn't supposed to be there, he wasn't expected to be there. Why, why in this culture, in this time, do they keep trying to just, like, frame each other, and their only evidence is like, well, I'll testify? I don't know, but that's kind of, it's either a trope of that literature, that's just a smidgen of truth into what actually happened, or it could be that back then, with the lack of cell phones and recordings and, you know, forensic evidence, a nobleman who says, or whatever, either nobleman, the strata there, probably, is a little wider. Testimony of two people.

I will, you know, as a noble person, I will attest my nobility's in the line, and then people go, well, nobody would lie if they're a noble, right? So part of that is true, part of that is very much not true, nobles lie all the freaking time, and still do, um, but I think that's just the culture. Sorry, I'm still thinking about Katarina, the fact that that somewhat culminated into the reveal of her literally basically saying to the room, the whole room, strip search my stepdaughter, was basically how her outburst finally ends there, and that's talking about being an unlikable person. Yeah, no, that was a, that was a very, uh, that was a couple chapters, right? That was like one or two chapters? I mean, yeah, well, yeah, because I think the first, it was either first, or yeah, it was three chapters in a row from Luzhin giving the money to Sonia, then the funeral thingy, and then I think, then, yeah, so it's three chapters in a row of this whole, yeah, affair.

Because after that is then where it goes into, you know, her and, you know, Raskolnikov and Sonia in her room. Which is a very different, um, I feel like, style of writing versus today, right? Like where chapter by chapter, oftentimes we're jumping around to character and whatever, uh, but back then it's like, well, segment A happens, then, you know, one person leaves, we're following them, segment B happens where they do this next thing, then segment C is they're over at this third place, and it's just like a consecutive clip, or a consecutive life lived. I was visiting my dad a couple weeks ago, and I was telling him we were reading this book, and the, mentioned it being originally published as a serial, and something that he'd said is like, well, that was like what their entertainment was, you know, somebody would buy one of them, and they'd all be in a room, and they'd read it together.

And that's what made me think the writing style lends to that, of where I could, you can imagine, especially with the long drawn-out monologues of somebody, you know, reading a part, passing the books to another, and then another person, you know, almost like a, uh, a play, just like in somebody's sitting room. Absolutely, and I want to back up your theory, uh, with an anecdotal kind of story, or assessment of like the Russian folks that I've met. There is this part of Russian culture, Eastern European culture, that is theatrical, and I don't mean that they're, you know, they are theatrical in their mannerisms of speech, but a lot of people, you know, know how to play an instrument, you know, they will sit around and read poetry to each other, and they will act out scenes from books, and they'll do a decent job.

It's like, from an early age, you're kind of taught that, you know, you should be a little bit more cultured, or learned, or whatever, and consuming literature, and even acting it out in groups, and having fun drinking, you know, eating, reading poems to each other, that's a, like a normal part of this culture. So that, to get, so yeah, I agree with you, I think sitting there and reading a monologue, and even acting it out in a group, that was entertainment. There was no, no doom-scrolling, so, and maybe, they were probably better for it, but.

Well, the doom-scrolling was on a different page of the magazine. Yeah, and that brings up a different point, is like, they weren't entertained all hours of the day, let alone even once a day. They would get together probably, you know, with family regularly for meals, whatever, but then they'd have their time of, like, hey, in their sitting room, they're going to go through this story, and now is time for entertainment, and then back to work, right? Like, much less entertainment back in the day, because there was work to be done.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, let's keep moving forward. I want to talk a little bit about the confession in part five, and one thing that I thought was super, I don't know, I thought this was humorous, when he confesses to, it's Sonia, right, that he confesses to, and she tells him to, like, go out into the street and just yell out, I'm a murderer, like, yeah, I don't know, I gotta, I gotta kick out of that, I mean.

His confession's kind of softballed in too, he's just like, I was going to tell you who did it. She's like, oh, who did it? You know who did it, your guess. He didn't want to say it, though, because then he has to admit the fault, right? He makes her suffer some too, like, the way he, you know, he makes her suffer in the previous chapter by, like, prodding her, you know, with questions and, you know, kind of making fun of her a little bit, and even here, he's making her suffer a little bit.

I thought it was also fascinating to read that line where he, she tells him to go scream in the streets that he is a murderer. She is literally like a priest to him, just jumping back to what we talked earlier, and not only does she, you know, force him, challenge him, that's a better word, to confess, she even says that she will be with him, you know, also mentioned a little bit earlier, she'll be with him, and she'll follow him to Siberia, and she takes part in Raskolnikov's suffering, right? Some of it she takes upon herself, and as soon as she tells him this, he again begins to rationalize and explain and justify the murders, and she continues to reject the help that he offers her. Again, that's a very Christian motif, where there is this gospel that's presented, and the person who is in darkness continually rejects it, so I think that's a very Russian Orthodox, more mystical approach to it, but it's still very much in line with Christian understanding of, you know, life, this, you know, redemption.

He has a difficult time receiving that forgiveness, and receiving that gift that Sonya wants to give him, which, by the way, I need to find a woman like Sonya, like, he's murdered somebody, and she has murdered somebody that he's confessing murder of somebody, right? She was close to her girlfriend, right? A friend of her, and I will follow you to Siberia. So she's either a priest, or she has severe attachment, and what is that? A bad sense of character, and oh, what the hell? In psychology, is when you... Are you talking about the Stockholm? No, no, no, it's when somebody has a... It's not a disability, but it's kind of like a disorder, and that's too strong of a word. It's when they constantly try to fix somebody.

I just had it. Anyway, sorry, Josh. I know what you're saying.

Yeah. I know what you're saying. I don't know the term for that.

It'll come to me as soon as we end the recording, but anyway, anyway, we've gotten off track. To get back on track and to talk seriously, this is Sonya taking on the suffering, right? So we established that. I think you mean the side conflicts.

No, I don't think it's side conflicts. It's codependency. Codependency? There it is.

Codependency. I was thinking... Edit that out to make Slava seem like less of a retard. Thank you.

There's only so much our editor can do. It's in his genetics. I mean, you guys are reading a Russian novel right now.

You look very similar. With friends like these, it's no wonder a Skolnikov murders them. Look, I've had a good run.

I just want to see how far I can push you the line. He flies over from a different state and then Jonathan goes missing. I wouldn't fly.

That would leave a trail. I mean, I wouldn't do anything. How dare you accuse me of murder? If I'm going to murder him, I'm going to do it the right way.

Arson. I have the book right there. It just seems perfect.

It's about to jump in. But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I know how to do the murders. Anyway, so he rejects Sonia's attempt to take on some of his suffering, and he rejects her challenge to go confess at the crossroads.

And he does this because he fears the laughter of men who would call him a coward and a fool. A coward because he couldn't live up to his ideals. So there's this still this attachment to those ideals.

And a fool because he would follow the advice of a prostitute. So he is still he's still a Skolnikov, a schism man. And as he's having this internal dialogue, that's when she gives him the wooden cross, another kind of religious sign, mystical sign.

And he ultimately takes it. But he at the moment, rejects it. And I think this is again, I forget which one of you, Jen said this, but he's not prepared to acknowledge completely that the crime that he's committed.

Yes, he says to give it to him when he goes to actually turn himself in. Don't give it to him. Exactly.

Because he's insane. Just a little bit. This is the thing that frustrates me so much.

Well, I didn't think that that was him being insane. And I know why it frustrates you, Jonathan, because he's going back and forth in his noncommittal. Well, I think that is him being noncommittal.

But I think it's him trying to soft lie his way out of going forward. Yeah, because he's a child. He's a child who murdered two women.

But he's better that his ego and his hubris made him do that. So he's not the devil made me do it. Bro, just be a man.

It took us 50 chapters for him to admit to murdering one woman. OK, we it's going to take a bit more to get him to admit that he murdered the second one. If you want to murder people a la carte or like carte blanche, that's what I carte blanche.

Either one. Go to war. Go to war.

This moment. Usually I'm the insane rambling one. And I'm so happy to have a rambling session from Jonathan.

Rooting, tooting, hooting and hollering. Sick at that. Another thing I thought was interesting in this in this part of the book was, I don't know who argues this about you can cure the insane purely by logical argument.

I don't know. Can we cure Jonathan purely by logical argument? I don't know. No.

Slava has tried for many years. It's not possible. Chris has tried to for many years.

Not possible. I think that was in the next chapter talking about somebody was talking about Katarina, who dies at the end of this. At the end of part five, that she died in the part five.

Yeah. Where does she die in? Oh, yeah, she does. Part five, chapter five.

Raskolnikov is wandering the city and Katarina is like losing her shit in the middle of the street or something. Yeah. Yeah.

And the police come to like break it up and the children run away and she like collapses. They take her into somebody's room and she dies there. She's gathered a crowd, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Calling her children stupids because they can't sing and dance properly.

Yeah. Oh, my God. She's an overbearing mother.

Another interesting event here is Svidrigalov slides in and uses similar language to Raskolnikov to clue him in that he knows because only he could know me and Svidrigalov because he uses the exact same phrasing as Raskolnikov did confessing the murder to Sonia. Yeah. Yeah.

I wrote this note down that he says, you know, I told you we should come together again. I foretold it. It gave me like vibes like, it's just as I have ever seen.

Oh, gosh. As the prophecy foretold. Yeah.

Yeah. Ironic. It's good.

Yeah. And something else. Yeah.

Something else just came to me because we keep calling Raskolnikov, you know, the schism man, right? It's this, this personality of his, those dual personalities, again, exemplified with him being drawn to Sonya, but then also kind of repulsed by her because of, you know, the prostitution thing. And he, he even dislikes her ideas about suffering because so the whole, oh, she's a prostitute thing is one of his repulsions. But the other one, I think what's more just as he focuses on more is he dislikes her ideas about suffering, and then his need to go to prison, because he's still holding on to part of this ideal, or the idea that murdering the old crow, as he calls her, Alena Ivanovna, was a good thing.

So that's, that's the schism continues within him. Yeah, because he's a child. And if he admits it, then he has to and he's not willing to be a man.

And that's what we're littered with across all of society. And then you have big men who have power and money who make decisions and then little boys cry. It's a whole thing.

It's a whole thing. It pisses me off. I think I said this in an earlier part, he's married to his idea.

And he's slowly breaking away from that. It's not even necessarily, it's his idea of being wrong and him being prideful about it. And so there's multiple layers that are preventing him from, you know, confessing because he, I think in this part, his conversation with Sonya, he, he eventually admits that, okay, he is not Napoleon.

But he's still not saying the story is wrong. Yes, the Napoleon bit. I was reading that going, Oh, gosh, shut up.

Stop saying what you're saying. Oh, he, he, he repeats the Napoleon bit. But he also talks about Muhammad and a few other people as these people that you know, but like in all of these, like you're, he's not even in anywhere close to the same circumstances as them.

So it's like, even if we were to say his theory has merit, like, you're applying it to a situation that is, you know, and what's childlike to use Jonathan's terms, you know, what's childlike, he's like, well, if you know, I'm not Napoleon, I don't have France to conquer. I don't have, you know, x, y, and z to do the old crow, I guess. And Napoleon would have done the same.

Again, I'm paraphrasing guys, those in the comments who who've read this book in and out and know exactly what it was said. I'm just paraphrasing. But literally, if I was Napoleon, I'd have, you know, I'd have done this, or I'm not Napoleon, because I don't have France to conquer.

But if Napoleon wasn't my, if the only thing preventing Napoleon is that he just had to kill this one old woman, and then you'd be able to do all the great Napoleon things. This is my point. I have encountered so many people.

And here's, here's, let me just throw myself under the bus. First, I've been one of these people, because I grew up. And I was one of these people at some point.

And I think it's kind of just right of passage. But at some point, you're like, well, I could do that. And I bet the three of you have all said the same thing.

Well, I could do that. Here's the thing, then do it. Then do it.

I'm just channeling my Shia LaBeouf. Do it. Just do it.

But because you didn't, you didn't. And so you have no proof. And so you're just being arrogant.

No, I think going off of I know something you've said before in the past, Jonathan, is that everyone should try running a small business, and then fail at it. Because the learning experience of that is, you know, it in some sense of humbling a person, but also just the knowledge you'd gain from attempting something and failing. Yeah, because people think that they're so much better in their own heads, and they're not.

They're so arrogant, they can't see past their own deception and blindness. I'm going off here. They can't see past their own deception and blindness.

And so they just believe, well, I could do that, then do it. Prove it to the world. Prove that you can actually do it.

Because until I see the facts, until I see the numbers, you're actually worthless. Are they a louse? Oh, God, I hate that this brings me back to Katarina Ivanovna, because like, but her delusions, I feel like there is, she is the extreme end of delusions. But I feel like everyone's had at some point in their life, a little bit of delusion, even as something as simple as like, wondering, like, this lottery ticket, I'm going to win the lottery with this lottery ticket, and I'm going to do X, Y, and Z with it.

And of course, you know, society, your friends, they'll snap you out of it, or just, you know, you going through your daily routine, you realize, well, that was stupid of me. But you know, there are some people that don't get out of it, they buy 50 lottery tickets, you know, and they were, you know, every single drawing, they'll buy one, and then just throwing money away. Because they have this delusion of where they're going to do great things.

Yeah. So do it. Do great things.

Prove it. Well, I was gonna say, there's a lot of people that just think that they're going to the way that they're going to make money is by winning the lottery. And that's what's going to provide for them.

And they're not willing to go out and like, go through suffering to actually build this delusion. We're all guilty of it, to some degree is a daydream that we have. Oh, absolutely.

You know, where we put ourselves, just like a Skolnikov, and put ourselves into the situation, we play out this hypothetical, in our mind, and it's almost an escape, where it prevents us from doing the hard stuff in front of us. But if I just could only do this, and you play out the whole movie of your life, winning that million dollars, the $10 million, whatever the hell it is. And you put yourself in these little scenarios in your head, you play them out.

And whatever, half an hour later, a day later, after you're done, you're talking about in your own head, your circumstances has not changed. You did not you didn't even buy the lottery years later. You the idea of buying a lottery ticket and what that potential has.

That's the thing that you get wrapped up in your head. And forget what's in front of you, you'll forget to wash your own ass. But spend three hours imagining what $750 million, which, you know, you have one in a billion chance of winning will do for you.

And that's where I almost like for Katarina, how much of it that is pride for her, because I'm thinking about like the lottery ticket or anything, how much of that's pride and how much of that is just a child like lack of not even self awareness, but just a child like lack of awareness, you know, not even necessarily lack of self awareness, but just it's privileged because of the class she comes from, she didn't have to go through that level of suffering until her old age where she, you know, married down basically, right? In some senses, and then she's like, Oh, I have to actually confront these things. And but she hasn't formed the maturity through experience that's required from people who've been surfs. Yeah.

People don't understand the absolute astronomical amount of work you have to do to be successful. I'm going to say it a second time, you have to do a massive amount of work to be successful at anything. People don't just waltz up and go, Yeah, I'd like to do the Olympics this year.

They work for four years for an opportunity to have 30 seconds of fame, an opportunity that's not even guaranteed. Four years, day in day out strict diets, trainers, coaches, all of it at the opportunity and you think you're gonna walk in and just be successful. Got here.

No, but it's true, man. Like we're laughing. But what you're saying is true.

Like, and it doesn't matter whether it's Olympics, you're running a business, you're running a podcast, you want to get the promotion. Like I know a guy who just he, his position in life, and I'm not knocking him. His position is like, listen, I just want to work.

And I don't care about making a million dollars. I don't want to run my own business. I just want to have my own house.

I want to be able to work. I'm good at it stuff. That's it.

But you know what, even that guy, he comes into work, and gives 100% 110 when needed be because he wants to keep his job and he wants to get more money and at least advance in his career. Just because he doesn't have these grand plans or dreams. The thing in front of him, he still gives 100% and doesn't doesn't write you know, write blank checks but doesn't what doesn't phone it in doesn't phone it in.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I'm not saying and here's the thing, you can't misquote me.

I'm not saying everybody needs to be a hustle bro. I'm not saying everyone has to achieve high level of success. But if you're going to talk it, then I'm going to hold your feet to the fire until you get burned alive.

And you either quit and you stop or you actually succeed because I'd prefer you succeed. But most people don't have the endurance to go through the suffering to actually achieve it. Yeah.

And the person that you're mentioning Slava, I think that's great self awareness. Like I don't need to be the CEO of this company I work for or I don't need to be President of the United States. I just want to be able to provide for myself and my family.

That that still requires work. And it's not. It's realistic to you.

Anybody can do that. I think it's an issue we have here in the West where there's an unspoken entitlement. And I've seen this in people that I know close hand.

I'm going to keep it real vague that just believe, well, eventually I'll get there. No, you won't. You won't.

I don't think you understand the level of work that's required to get where you want to go. Well, one day I'll get a house and a wife or whatever. No, you got to put the work in, man.

You can't just be like, oh, I want these things and they're just going to happen. That's that's Hollywood fairytale. It's not going to happen.

You're going to die alone. You're just going to die alone. You have to put the work in.

You have to change jobs. You have to take risks. You got to do stuff.

I can't tell you. And the thing is, the reason I'm so passionate about this is because I was one of the retards. I was one of those people.

I was one of those people. And I'm so sick of watching young men be this way. When you have your whole life ahead of you, you're going to die one day and you're going to go, what'd you do? Well, I played apex a lot.

I did this thing. I, you know, cool. You could have changed the world.

You could have, but you didn't want to do the work because you knew better. Get out of here, man. You're a degenerate.

I'm, I'm, I know I'm making fun of you, Jonathan, but I'm really, I'm happy to see you this passionate. I enjoy that. I enjoy it.

And I don't mean that with any guile or poking fun at you. No, no. And, and I'm not taking, I just want to see people live the best life that they can, but that requires suffering.

It requires that you don't get a lot of ticket. You don't win. You got to work.

You got to work. You don't get to have your dreams. In fact, of your dreams, you might get three, maybe if you work really hard, but let me just say this, uh, to add onto that, let's say you do win the lottery ticket.

You know, the amount of work it takes to keep that money, how much discipline it will take? Like, let's say it's a lot of work. Let's just say you got a, a meager amount compared to some of the, the big, uh, uh, 5 million. I was going to say after taxes, all the power ball, all that nonsense, you have $10 million.

How much discipline would it take for you to take nine and a half of it and invest it into properties or the market or put it into a trust fund and take a hundred thousand dollars salary and still work. And that's spend it on Lamborghinis Bacardi's and 10 trips to Italy. You can't because it requires a level of education that only comes through suffering and reading something going like, I don't know what this is talking about.

What do you mean assets versus liabilities? What do you mean pay off that? Because you have to learn. You got to learn and put the work in. You've got to go through resistance and suffering to get where you want to go.

Even if you win the lottery. All right. Somebody help me out here.

No, I think most people would not know what to do with the $10 million. Um, I mean, hire me. I'll fight for you.

Yeah, no, I've worked in the answers. Give it to Jonathan. What Chris said, what would you do with the $10 million? The correct answer is give it to Jonathan.

I'll make sure that that 9.5 turns into 11, six at minimum so that I can take a big bonus of, you know, 7 million. Speaking of people, yep, and it's gone. Speaking of people who are well grounded, despite their social status and lot in life.

Chapter one of part six, resume again, taking care of dunya and taking on the responsibility. That is raskolnikov's responsibility technically given the social ramifications of him going away and the social kind of understanding of what the man is supposed to do in this time period and the status of women like resume again, who's just as poor as raskolnikov, you know, decides to take care of her, but not a degenerate because he's willing to work. Yeah.

Hmm. And that's what, that's what I find. So like, I think it was purposely done like the irony or the, just what was sad about this whole thing is that you can clearly see that even the fact that his old article, which had all of the ridiculous nonsense has started his theories off.

If he didn't kill the old woman, he actually would have had a really bright future for himself. Yeah. I feel like they, I feel like this, especially they've kind of like hinted at that, but I feel like part six in, you know, with, when he meets with resume again, when he meets with his sister dunya and who meets with his mother, I feel like that that's just like screaming is like, why on earth did you do this? And when, um, he confesses is the murder to Sonia Sonia's first answer at the responses.

Why did you do this to yourself? Yeah. I think was the way she phrased it. You know, it's not, not that.

Cause I think of like, if somebody told me they murdered somebody, why did you do this to yourself is not the first response I would have. But I think that the fact that that was her response is very poignant about like what, what everything in this book is going on about. Exactly.

Chris, what I think you hit the nail on the head with is Roscoe Nick of has now made contact with humanity, right? Cause from where we met him to what he did through his ups and downs, emotionally and mentally, his confession to Sonia, and even a little bit later here, where he gives his sister, mother to the care of resume can, and then not being afraid of porphyry anymore. That's where he becomes, um, more human again, right? Now that's it. That's his, uh, uh, Lazarus resurrection moment.

So I think you're absolutely right. You get these hints of his potential and what he did to destroy that potential. But to add to what you're saying, to dovetail what you're saying, it's his connection.

Now the reconnection to humanity that allows that I would say so. Yeah. And yeah.

And the fact that, you know, if he didn't do that, he could have been set up well in a situation like his friend Razumikin, as it were, he's smart and seems to have things mostly together, at least in comparison to Chris Kolakoff. Exactly. He's an alcoholic, right? Doesn't Razumikin drink a lot? Yeah, they do.

All of them do. And I've been saving this tidbit. That's just part of being Razumikin.

Thank you, Josh, for that segue. Yes. They, and they all talk about like, oh yeah, I was saying crazy shit last night.

That's because we were drinking and everybody's like, yeah, of course you could say crazy shit when you're drinking. It's okay. Here's the thing.

Russia's attachment to alcohol, to vodka, goes back to these times too. And after the secular utopian Marxist, you know, revolution, communist revolution, it was an embarrassment to those people because they're like, well, it's a utopia now that we don't have to get stinking drunk to forget where we're living in. But the harsh reality of life post revolution, you know, there was no utopia, and people still drank.

By the 50s and 60s, it had become an embarrassment because everybody abroad was going like, you know, those Russians. So it became an embarrassment to the government in that time. And they put a 30% tax on vodka.

Consumption did not drop a bit. Zero drop in consumption. So the czar put some tariffs down and people were like, well, guess we're going to be poor.

It wasn't a czar. It was the guy before Brezhnev was the bald guy who came to America waving a shoe at the United Nations. I forget his name.

Who's that president? Khrushchev. Khrushchev. Yeah, Khrushchev put a 30% tax on vodka.

This had to be late 50s, early 60s. I'm bad with dates. But consumption did not go down a bit.

Not even a percent. That's hilarious. Well, you know, it's funny.

I think I've been to New York a couple times now. And this is over. This is like a decade ago, I guess now.

So it's been a while. But I noticed how many people sideway. Well, I noticed how many people smoke.

And I'm pretty sure they have really high taxes on cigarettes. They do people still smoke away. So yeah, yeah.

I thought you were gonna tell me you went to the Russian side of that's a fun part. Nevermind. I did not do that.

Yeah. And smoking is coming back. At least anecdotally, to me, right? Because I see more people smoking smoke.

I've seen reels where people are commenting on the fact that more people are smoking again, smoke like Gen Xers kind of were the last ones to smoke, you know, heavily smoke. And even a lot of them had quit and the millennials didn't smoke as much. But now older millennials and even some younger millennials are taking up smoking at heavier rates than ever.

Would you like? Would you like the smoking section or the non smoking section? We have this small glass divider to keep the keep the smoke out of your area. Smoking section on an airplane. Gen Xers don't understand that.

But back in the steak and shakes and the Applebee's, they asked you, they used to ask you what smoking or non smoking. And the non smoking section was, you know, a piece of glass that's like this big, separating the two spaces, not a separate room, just a small fans are just going faster in the smoking section. But in the vents, that's it.

Yeah, okay. That's generous. Are you smoking yet? To comment also, again, going back to the drinking in Russia.

I have had Russian vodka. And that I don't really like I don't really care for vodka. That stuff is good.

I can see why you would consume that stuff. So just a shout out to possible sponsor, Russian standard platinum. So there's regular Russian standard, there's Russian standard black, and then Russian standard platinum.

It's 36 bucks for a bottle of vodka, which is something you can get more. That is the best Russian vodka you can buy this side of the pond. And beluga, which is, I think, like a Russian recipe, although it's not made in Russia.

But beluga and Russian standard for those who want a good Russian vodka. You can't go wrong. The conversation with Razumikhin and jumping back to that, from what I understood ended with him thinking that Raskolnikov was a political conspirator, in part, somewhat informed, because like, okay, he's acting weird.

He's not the murderer, because Nikolai confessed in the previous part. And because Svidrigailov gave a letter to Dunia, which put Dunia up in a big fuss. And so all of these things from Razumikhin's perspective, like, oh, okay, that must be why.

And he never says it outright. But the whole time, he's talking back on himself about how he actually had legitimate suspicions that Raskolnikov committed the murder as well. And then all of these things come together.

It's like, okay, I guess he didn't do it, which, again, makes the truth all the more tragic. But that sets us up into Profiri coming in for that last confrontation. And to me, the scenes between Profiri and Raskolnikov, which I guess we have, is this the third one or the fourth one? We've only had a few of them, but I've really enjoyed these chapters.

And this one, even more so, because he just kind of lays it all bare of like, no, this is how it is. You did it. I can't prove it, but you did it.

Yeah, so Profiri is, in the commentaries I've read, in preparation for this, this podcast, is Profiri is a Slavophile, like, like Dostoevsky. He is dedicated to that. He believes the Slavic people are a type of chosen people, and not in the sense that they're maybe better than anybody, but that they have a mission.

And maybe some of them believe that they were better than the rest of the world, but that they have like a mission. And he believes in the greatness of Russia. And he's constantly trying to help, you know, people around him.

So in the notes here that I found, therefore, he views Raskolnikov as a man of noble character, one of the young intellects of Russia, who could be great service to the state, if he learns to reject his radical ideals. So like an underlining commentary there, like in the conversations, there's obviously, plays out a little bit different. But people who have dissected this book, that's, that's the commentary that they put forth.

So and that goes back to your potential comment, Chris, like if he hadn't done this, what a life he could have had. Because you know, he is learned, he can write, he's a student, he does come from the poor side of town. So he understands suffering, he has suffered.

And if he didn't take the secular leftist, you know, view of things, and especially the more radical side of that, which is the great man theory, if he didn't take that route, and took the Slavic route, if you will, for Porfiry, according to the commentators, that's, that's the tragedy there. Do you think the call him saying that he needs fresh air is a callback to him and the state of his room? So I know early on laid out his room being, you know, an extension of him, and also a reinforcement of isolation. I think so.

I think so. Okay. Yeah, because acknowledging that his theory is wrong, and what he did is wrong.

And his his whole worldview is wrong. That's attached to his room. That is a visual representation of that theory to Porfiry.

Getting fresh air is shedding that ideology. Sure. I think it was either after this or, yeah, it was after this, he like spends a week or something, just like wandering the city and like sleeping outside and alleyways or something.

So he takes it quite literally. But does that process also change him into confessing or because in a way, it almost seems like he's trying to run away from it. Good question.

Yeah, he's just kind of like, marinating in everything that's happened the last two or three weeks of his life. I think it's the last thing you said. I think it's him marinating.

Yeah. Okay. I haven't thought about it until just now.

But if I was to answer in a spot, I think it's him marinating. And still Raskolnikov, so he's still going back and forth. But that literally marinating.

Yeah. And yeah. In the stew of life.

I wanted to make a comment on I think it was Shvidnikov that is like, listing out like his options. Raskolnikov's options here. And he mentions going to America.

Like, yeah, we'd love to take you. We'd love to take this murderer. You know, we love doing that.

Doesn't he tell the guy on the street before he shoots himself that he's going to America? Or am I losing my mind? Okay. Yeah, yeah, he does. Yeah.

He says, when they question you tell him he said he was going to America or something like that. Yeah. So is that the euphemism? Like, he's going out to the country or he went to a farm, farm upstate like, oh, he's going to America.

And the funny thing is, well, funny. I don't know if it's funny. I don't know if it's ironic.

Maybe it's just interesting to me. Like, America was a country, like an established country. But at this time, you know, I mean, it was a new country, it was a baby country.

But we were going through our own crap here was the Civil War was, you know, all yeah, years before that. Yeah, we're three years exactly ended in 63. And this is written in 66.

So I don't know what that's, that's neither here nor there. I'm not making any literary or social commentary connections here. I think it's just interesting that to read about America in a book references a real thing, because it was a real thing.

Like, you know, how, how far removed we are from the 1860s. How far we are removed from 1860s Russia. And I don't know, I'm going off on a tangent here.

But I just thought that was like a fascinating little thing. Well, I think what's interesting, maybe this going back to like, what we were talking about with the differences between America and other cultures, like, I don't know, I feel like we may feel more disconnected from 1860 America, whereas like, maybe somebody in Russia or in a European country will feel more connected to that time period in their own country. Or like, you know, I'm, I'm just thinking about, you know, grievances that people have in like, I don't know, in Ireland over like, what may have happened between what happened between them and England, you know, a few hundred years ago.

Like people will still get upset about those things, whereas here. Well, that, harkening back to what Jonathan said about, you know, West Michigan, not specifically West Michigan, but that could also just be our particular, I don't know, I guess, subculture in America, because there are some subcultures in America that, you know, very strongly still hold on to, you know, centuries old grievances. So I think, you know, the way we were raised was to either one, just not be told about them straight up, or to be told they don't matter.

And so we grow up thinking that they don't matter, whereas to other people, they're, you know, raised saying that these things do matter. Yeah. And I suppose some of those are real things, right? Again, you know, Dick slavery, for example, 1960s is when, you know, the Civil Rights Act was passed, or so, very recently.

You know, for us, it's 80 years ago, but it's within two generations. And for a living memory, and for a lot of people that is a grievance and a reasonable one. But to Josh's point, I think, I don't know, maybe the advancement of America and how we quickly grew, or maybe it's our culture, maybe it's the individualism aspect of it.

There's less collectivism. But in those countries, there are deeper connections to roots, maybe it's because we're all sons of immigrants or immigrants. And our collective understanding is like, we're Americans.

And then well, I'm an American from Texas, therefore, I do x, y, and z. I'm an American from Massachusetts, therefore, I am x, y, and z, where they're there, meaning Europe, Russia, there's a bit more of a collectivist historical culture to it. Yeah, they're still attached to their roots. And Slava, I just got to correct you on one thing.

The 1960s was 66 years ago. It's mostly just for the audience where it's like, it's not 80 years. We're not even at the hundred year mark.

We've got another 30 something years to go basically, before it's been 100 years since we like, like salt, salt is not the right word. But you I think you get the point like, since we addressed segregation. It's not even been 100 years before slavery ended before segregation was like, Oh, maybe we should stop doing this.

Correct. Right. And that's the thing is like we, as a as a country have said, we threw out all the old roots, and we planted new seeds.

And so we're building new roots, as is, which is why it feels like we're not connected to anything. But you've got China, like, deeply historical, Japan, deeply historical, Russia, deeply historical, Eastern Europe, deeply historical, the Mediterranean deeply historic. We're like the only country, South America, deeply historical, like, Oh, yeah, I remember when so and so, you know, the conquistadors came through, like, that's still something that they know.

We don't know anything. Well, not to get into the weeds, I think some of your examples might be wrong, but I think what it is right about it, though, I what I think is generally correct about it in the general sentiment, though, is like leaning into what I guess. I'm not a geologist, Dostoevsky, I forgot the author's name for a moment there.

Holy cow. Dostoevsky is leaning into it. This is the, you know, the radical leftist, progressive stuff that was, you know, taking over Europe and would take over Europe in the, you know, at the turn of the century.

How that they all sought to throw off ties to old histories. And that's something that people are hesitant to do. Because if you don't have it, you don't have a place, you don't know where you belong and you don't know how to live your life.

And you need some kind of connection. What did I get wrong? I don't want to say in a recorded session what specific setting you get, what specific examples you got wrong, because that would open up a three hour conversation that I don't want to get into. You've listened to like 16 hour podcasts.

You're like the guy to do. Well, OK, I'll give you one example. China, you're completely wrong about because they're the cultural revolution they had there.

They systematically wanted to remove all of these ties. And it's only recently in the last 20 years that they're kind of post hoc trying to remake connections to that, which most of those are only because of Taiwan having preserved a decent chunk of it. So let me let me I don't think we're saying different things.

Let me I'm here for it. No, it's all good. I don't want to get into it.

But so, Chris, I'm not saying that they are deeply historical in the sense of like they've never swayed culturally. That's not OK. I'm saying that like they haven't detached from the fact that they like their history as a whole, like by coming to America, we've detached from our history as a whole because we're a new identity, whereas somewhere like China, to just continue with the example, I still I still think you're completely wrong on that.

Well, what do you guys think in the comments? Am I right? Is Chris right? Are we both wrong? We got we got Chinese insurgents coming like typing in the comments like, actually, whatever. I just commented South and Central America. South and Central American countries are just as new as we are, right? I mean, those were also countries established by Europeans, but they assimilated the the yeah, they they indigenous peoples.

See, that's the mistake we made. We didn't rape the natives. This is the three hour conversation that we're now opening up.

Turns out that's what we turns out that's what the English should have done. If only the English raped all the natives, we would have had a tie. I had an idea.

Oh, boy. No, I'm wrong. So I think I think I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm starting to think Kipling was onto something. If you know, you know.

So anyway, I think that we want Raskolnikov to come to America. To tie things back. I'm sorry.

Looking like a disappointed father. Just take after the Russians. Always disappointed.

You'll never live up to my high expectations of you. All right, we need a segway that was good, though. No, that was.

I loved it. Here's a segway. Speaking of rape.

Sped you guy along. Oh, that's horrible. Look at Jonathan.

If someone else wants to get to a different segway, go ahead. I'm going to bow out. I read that this morning and I was thinking, man, Svitogolov is more of a piece of crap than I remember.

He's talking about 15 year old, then he's talking about some 13 year old that he was trying to give dance lessons to or pay for a dance lessons. And I was like, wow, you are. Well, as my comment there here says, vile, nasty, depraved, sensual man.

Well, it recontextualizes, in my mind, the letter that his mother wrote for Skolnikov, too, thinking back, oh, because Junius is like, oh, because he pulls out the pistol at him after he starts, you know, acting a certain way. And he's like, oh, I wondered where that old friend, my old friend went. Or whatever he said, referring to the pistol.

Yeah. And to get back to the commentary about Skolnikov, in these events, he becomes more and more disgusted with Svitogolov and the whole situation. I think one thing that struck Raskolnikov or, you know, triggered him is how there was a comment about Dunia's eyes can flash with fire or something.

Because the one thing I was thinking when I was going through the book was like, she has all these suitors. She must be like super beautiful. Like, did she just have these beautiful eyes? All Eastern European women are beautiful, Josh.

Didn't you know? Well, after a lot of vodka. I'm betraying my ignorance, but I'm not sure exactly what that means. Maybe it's talking to her beauty.

Maybe it's talking to her passion, how passionate she can get. Because a couple of times when she seems like this meek and demure girl, but she does speak her mind when she feels it's necessary. So it could be a reference to that.

Yeah. Basically, that seemed to me when she, that the way that that rejection, the whole scene builds up with her rejection. It's like exactly right after that.

He, was it before that or before they had the nightmares? But in any case, he basically after that, he's like, well, OK, that's it. Time to time to go to America. Yeah.

Well, we're getting to time here, guys. Are there any final thoughts before we call this crime and punishment a close? It's a crime that they had to listen to us this long. Well played.

I was going to make a joke about Fievel goes to America, but that might be too much in the nose. I love Fievel. There are no cats in America, Jonathan.

I know. Fievel is my favorite little Jewish mouse. Fievel Mouskiewicz and American Tale.

Oh, no. Fievel goes West. American Tale.

It's not Fievel goes to America. What am I talking about? I'm living in a different timeline. It's probably different in Russian.

American Tale and then the sequel, American Tale, Fievel goes West. I used to wake my dad up at 6 a.m. every day to watch the VHS. In undergrad, one of our teachers, when I took Jewish history, one of the classes, he made the kids watch the kids, the young adults watch that.

He's like, all right, I'm tired of lecturing. Here's a video to kind of explain some things in a very topical way. I was like, I think you're just phoning it in, but I get to watch a cartoon in college.

Okay. Fievel Mouskiewicz. It's a real deal.

That's where the episode ends then. Fievel Mouskiewicz. Stay tuned next time as we wrap up Crime and Punishment, part four, where we will discuss the ending, the two epilogues, and murder a lady on screen.

I didn't sign up for that. Bring your exes next week. Here's my letter of resignation for this sentence.

Due to personal reasons, I can no longer. Dying, but not from an ex. Hey, I have a favor to ask.

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