The Nobels Built Russia’s Oil Industry, Invented Dynamite and the Oil Tanker, But Were Still Crushed by the Bolshevik Revolution
About this episode
The episode explores the rise and fall of the Nobel family in the context of Russia's oil industry and the Bolshevik Revolution.
The Nobel family (which are the namesake of the Nobel prize), had a rags-to-riches story bigger than the Rockefellers or Morgans. The Nobel patriarch Emanuel fled debtor’s prison in 1837. He then travelled east and built a foundation for the largest oil empire in Russian history. Three generations of Nobels invented the world's first oil tanker, stopped the Royal Navy cold with undersea mines during the Crimean War, and outmaneuvered both Rockefeller and the Rothschilds in the world's first great corporate oil war. Then the Bolsheviks arrived. Lenin nationalized everything overnight, Stalin personally targeted the family patriarch for arrest, and the man who quietly made the Nobel Prize a reality had to escape revolutionary Russia in a horse-drawn cart wearing a disguise, with forged papers and three borrowed children to complete the ruse. It is one of the great lost stories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, overshadowing the very prizes that bear the family name. Today's guest is Douglas Brunt, author of The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel. We discuss how capitalism and Marxism grew up in the same Russian cities before their catastrophic collision, why Emanuel…
People in this episode
Host: History Unplugged
Guest: Douglas Brunt
Topics covered
- Nobel family history
- Russian oil industry
- Bolshevik Revolution
- capitalism vs Marxism
- engineering innovation
- historical narratives
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Nobel Prize, Royal Navy, Rockefeller, Rothschilds
Books & works: The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel
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