Stephen Kotkin: Stalin, Putin, and the Nature of Power

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Stephen Kotkin,

00:00:03.160 | a professor of history at Princeton University

00:00:05.440 | and one of the great historians of our time,

00:00:07.840 | specializing in Russian and Soviet history.

00:00:11.040 | He has written many books on Stalin in the Soviet Union,

00:00:14.240 | including the first two of a three-volume work on Stalin,

00:00:17.640 | and he's currently working on volume three.

00:00:19.980 | You may have noticed that I've been speaking

00:00:22.560 | with not just computer scientists,

00:00:24.440 | but physicists, engineers, historians, neuroscientists,

00:00:27.600 | and soon, much more.

00:00:29.600 | To me, artificial intelligence is much bigger

00:00:31.880 | than deep learning, bigger than computing.

00:00:34.560 | It is our civilization's journey

00:00:36.480 | into understanding the human mind

00:00:38.520 | and creating echoes of it in the machine.

00:00:41.480 | To me, that journey must include a deep, historical,

00:00:45.920 | and psychological understanding of power.

00:00:49.840 | Technology puts some of the greatest power

00:00:51.760 | in the history of our civilization

00:00:53.600 | into the hands of engineers and computer scientists.

00:00:56.580 | This power must not be abused.

00:00:59.200 | And the best way to understand

00:01:00.600 | how such abuse can be avoided

00:01:02.520 | is to not be blind to the lessons of history.

00:01:05.820 | As Stephen Kotkin brilliantly articulates,

00:01:09.840 | Stalin was arguably one of the most powerful humans

00:01:13.480 | in history.

00:01:14.920 | I've read many books on Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin,

00:01:18.440 | and the wars of the 20th century.

00:01:20.920 | I hope you understand the value of such knowledge

00:01:23.560 | to all of us, especially to engineers and scientists

00:01:26.880 | who build the tools of power in the 21st century.

00:01:31.040 | This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.

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00:01:38.000 | follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,

00:01:40.600 | or simply connect with me on Twitter,

00:01:42.680 | @lexfriedman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N.

00:01:45.920 | I recently started doing ads at the end of the introduction.

00:01:50.060 | I'll do one or two minutes after introducing the episode

00:01:52.720 | and never any ads in the middle

00:01:54.320 | that can break the flow of the conversation.

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00:03:05.440 | And now here's my conversation with Stephen Kotkin.

00:03:09.760 | Do all human beings crave power?

00:03:13.140 | - No.

00:03:15.080 | Human beings crave security.

00:03:18.000 | They crave love.

00:03:20.080 | They crave adventure.

00:03:22.840 | They crave power, but not equally.

00:03:25.460 | - Some human beings nevertheless do crave power.

00:03:29.840 | - For sure.

00:03:30.680 | - Is that deeply in the psychology of people?

00:03:34.680 | Is it something you're born with?

00:03:36.440 | Is it something you develop?

00:03:38.600 | - Some people crave a position of leadership

00:03:43.000 | or of standing out, of being recognized.

00:03:46.600 | And that could be starting out in the school years

00:03:51.800 | on the schoolyard.

00:03:53.320 | It could be within their own family,

00:03:55.320 | not just in their peer group.

00:03:56.980 | Those kind of people we often see

00:04:00.840 | craving leadership positions from a young age

00:04:04.160 | often end up in positions of power,

00:04:06.840 | but they can be varied positions of power.

00:04:09.560 | You can have power in an institution

00:04:11.760 | where your power is purposefully limited.

00:04:14.320 | For example, there's a board or a consultative body

00:04:18.400 | or a separation of powers.

00:04:20.980 | Not everyone craves power whereby they're the sole power

00:04:25.640 | or they're their unconstrained power.

00:04:28.800 | That's a little bit less usual.

00:04:30.680 | We may think that everybody does, but not everybody does.

00:04:34.260 | Those people who do crave that kind of power,

00:04:38.960 | unconstrained, the ability to decide

00:04:43.600 | as much as life or death of other people,

00:04:46.780 | those people are not everyday people.

00:04:49.560 | They're not the people you encounter

00:04:52.480 | in your daily life for the most part.

00:04:54.700 | Those are extraordinary people.

00:04:57.160 | Most of them don't have the opportunity to live that dream.

00:05:01.300 | Very few of them, in fact, end up with the opportunity

00:05:04.200 | to live that dream.

00:05:05.360 | - So percentage-wise, in your sense,

00:05:08.440 | if we think of George Washington, for example,

00:05:10.840 | would most people given the choice of absolute power

00:05:16.720 | over a country versus maybe the capped power

00:05:20.760 | that the United States presidential role,

00:05:24.680 | at least at the founding of the country, represented,

00:05:27.280 | what do you think most people would choose?

00:05:29.840 | - Well, Washington was in a position

00:05:32.200 | to exercise far greater power than he did.

00:05:34.860 | And in fact, he didn't take that option.

00:05:40.400 | He was more interested in seeing institutionalization.

00:05:46.360 | Of seeing the country develop strong institutions

00:05:49.960 | rather than an individual leader like himself

00:05:52.500 | have excess power.

00:05:54.300 | So that's very important.

00:05:55.500 | So like I said, not everyone craves unconstrained power

00:05:59.760 | even if they're very ambitious.

00:06:01.660 | And of course, Washington was very ambitious.

00:06:03.860 | He was a successful general before he was a president.

00:06:07.140 | So that clearly comes from the influences on your life,

00:06:12.720 | where you grow up, how you grow up, how you raised,

00:06:16.300 | what kind of values are imparted to you along the way.

00:06:20.780 | You can understand power as the ability to share

00:06:25.100 | or you can understand or the ability to advance something

00:06:28.380 | for the collective in a collective process,

00:06:32.060 | not an individual process.

00:06:34.100 | So power comes in many different varieties

00:06:37.740 | and ambition doesn't always equate to despotic power.

00:06:42.740 | Despotic power is something different

00:06:46.280 | from ordinary institutional power that we see.

00:06:51.280 | The president of MIT does not have unconstrained power.

00:06:55.440 | The president of MIT rightly must consult

00:06:59.680 | with other members of the administration,

00:07:01.880 | with the faculty members,

00:07:04.160 | to a certain extent with the student body

00:07:06.200 | and certainly with the trustees of MIT.

00:07:10.120 | Those constraints make the institution strong and enduring

00:07:15.120 | and make the decisions better than they would be

00:07:18.780 | if he had unconstrained power.

00:07:20.940 | But you can't say that the president is not ambitious.

00:07:24.140 | Of course, the president is ambitious.

00:07:26.980 | We worry about unconstrained power.

00:07:29.580 | We worry about executive authority that's not limited.

00:07:33.720 | That's the definition of authoritarianism

00:07:36.040 | or tyranny, unlimited or barely limited executive authority.

00:07:41.040 | Executive authority is necessary

00:07:44.180 | to carry out many functions.

00:07:46.260 | We all understand that.

00:07:47.380 | That's why MIT has an executive, has a president.

00:07:50.440 | But unlimited or largely unconstrained executive power

00:07:56.620 | is detrimental to even the person who exercises that power.

00:08:02.680 | - So what do you think, it's an interesting notion.

00:08:06.100 | We kind of take it for granted

00:08:07.660 | that constraints on executive power is a good thing.

00:08:11.680 | But why is that necessarily true?

00:08:14.140 | So what is it about absolute power

00:08:18.580 | that does something bad to the human mind?

00:08:21.880 | So, you know, the popular saying

00:08:23.900 | of absolute power corrupts absolutely.

00:08:26.300 | Is that the case, that the power in itself

00:08:30.300 | is the thing that corrupts the mind in some kind of way

00:08:35.100 | where it leads to a bad leadership over time?

00:08:38.780 | - People make more mistakes when they're not challenged,

00:08:42.340 | when they don't have to explain things

00:08:44.580 | and get others to vote and go along with it,

00:08:48.140 | when they can make a decision

00:08:50.180 | without anybody being able to block their decision

00:08:54.220 | or to have input necessarily on their decision.

00:08:57.460 | You're more prone to mistakes.

00:08:59.540 | You're more prone to extremism.

00:09:01.940 | There's a temptation there.

00:09:04.020 | For example, we have separation of powers

00:09:06.780 | in the United States.

00:09:08.380 | The Congress, right, has authority

00:09:13.140 | that the president doesn't have,

00:09:15.380 | as for example in budgeting, the so-called power of the purse.

00:09:19.400 | This can be very frustrating.

00:09:21.580 | People wanna see things happen

00:09:23.660 | and they complain that there's a do-nothing Congress

00:09:26.460 | or that the situation is stalemated.

00:09:29.300 | But actually, that's potentially a good thing.

00:09:33.820 | In fact, that's how our system was designed.

00:09:37.100 | Our system was designed to prevent things happening

00:09:40.500 | in government.

00:09:41.940 | And there's frustration with that,

00:09:43.900 | but ultimately that's the strength

00:09:46.100 | of the institutions we have.

00:09:48.340 | And so when you see unconstrained executive authority,

00:09:52.460 | there can be a lot of dynamism,

00:09:54.260 | a lot of things can get done quickly,

00:09:57.220 | but those things can be like, for example,

00:09:59.220 | what happened in China under Mao

00:10:01.620 | or what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin

00:10:04.620 | or what happened in Haiti under Papa Doc and then Baby Doc

00:10:08.780 | or fill in the blank, right?

00:10:10.780 | What happens sometimes in corporations

00:10:13.020 | where a corporate leader is not constrained

00:10:17.780 | by the shareholders, by the board or by anything.

00:10:21.540 | And they can seem to be a genius for a while,

00:10:23.940 | but eventually it catches up to them.

00:10:26.620 | And so the idea of constraints on executive power

00:10:30.100 | is absolutely fundamental to the American system,

00:10:33.100 | American way of thinking, and not only America,

00:10:38.100 | obviously large other parts of the world

00:10:41.140 | that have a similar system, not an identical system,

00:10:43.980 | but a similar system of checks and balances

00:10:46.500 | on executive power.

00:10:48.340 | And so the case that I study,

00:10:51.620 | the only checks and balances on executive power

00:10:54.820 | are circumstantial.

00:10:56.900 | So for example, distances in the country,

00:10:59.460 | it's hard to do something over 5,000 miles

00:11:04.180 | or the amount of time in a day,

00:11:06.580 | it's hard for a leader to get to every single thing

00:11:09.380 | the leader wants to get to

00:11:10.620 | because there are only 24 hours in a day.

00:11:13.260 | Those are circumstantial constraints on executive power.

00:11:16.700 | They're not institutional constraints on executive power.

00:11:20.420 | One of the constraints on executive power

00:11:23.060 | the United States has versus Russia

00:11:25.420 | may be something you've implied

00:11:28.300 | and actually spoke directly to

00:11:29.620 | is there's something in the Russian people

00:11:31.380 | and the Soviet people that are attracted

00:11:33.380 | to authoritarian power, psychologically speaking,

00:11:38.380 | or at least the kind of leaders

00:11:40.740 | that sought authoritarian power throughout its history.

00:11:45.100 | And that desire for that kind of human

00:11:49.580 | is a lack of a constraint.

00:11:50.980 | In America, it seems as people,

00:11:53.100 | we desire somebody not like Stalin,

00:11:57.220 | somebody more like George Washington.

00:11:59.020 | So that's another constraint,

00:12:00.900 | the belief of the people,

00:12:02.020 | what they admire in a leader, what they seek in a leader.

00:12:06.620 | So maybe you can speak to,

00:12:09.400 | well, first of all,

00:12:11.660 | can you speak briefly to that psychology of,

00:12:14.980 | is there a difference between the Russian people

00:12:18.140 | and the American people

00:12:19.700 | in terms of just what we find attractive in a leader?

00:12:23.900 | - Not as great a difference as it might seem.

00:12:26.180 | There are unfortunately many Americans

00:12:29.900 | who would be happy with an authoritarian leader

00:12:34.540 | in the country.

00:12:35.900 | It's by no means a majority.

00:12:38.380 | It's not even a plurality,

00:12:40.380 | but nonetheless, it's a real sentiment in the population.

00:12:43.860 | Sometimes because they feel frustrated,

00:12:46.220 | because things are not getting done.

00:12:48.420 | Sometimes because they're against

00:12:51.100 | something that's happening in the political realm,

00:12:54.060 | and they feel it has to be corrected and corrected quickly.

00:12:56.940 | It's a kind of impulse.

00:12:59.220 | People can regret the impulse later on,

00:13:01.380 | that the impulse is motivated

00:13:04.020 | by reaction to their environment.

00:13:07.180 | In the Russian case, we have also people who crave,

00:13:10.980 | sometimes known as a strong hand,

00:13:12.940 | an iron hand, an authoritarian leader.

00:13:15.980 | Because they want things to be done

00:13:17.860 | and be done more quickly that align with their desires.

00:13:22.860 | But I'm not sure it's a majority in the country today.

00:13:27.780 | Certainly in Stalin's time,

00:13:30.100 | this was a widespread sentiment.

00:13:32.300 | And people had few alternatives

00:13:34.940 | that they understood or could appeal to.

00:13:37.580 | Nowadays in the globalized world,

00:13:39.500 | the citizens of Russia can see how

00:13:42.380 | other systems have constraints on executive power.

00:13:45.900 | And the life isn't so bad there.

00:13:47.860 | In fact, the life might even be better.

00:13:49.780 | So the impatience, the impulse of quality,

00:13:54.140 | the frustration does sometimes,

00:13:57.180 | and people reinforce their craving

00:14:00.540 | for the unconstrained executive

00:14:03.060 | to quote, "Get things done," or "Shake things up."

00:14:06.220 | Yes, that's true.

00:14:08.460 | But in the Russian case, I'm not sure it's cultural today.

00:14:12.100 | I think it might be more having to do

00:14:15.100 | with the failures, the functional failures

00:14:19.300 | of the kind of political system

00:14:22.260 | that they tried to institute after the Soviet collapse.

00:14:26.900 | And so it may be frustration with the version

00:14:31.260 | of constraints on executive power they got

00:14:34.300 | and how it didn't work the way it was imagined,

00:14:37.820 | which has led to a sense in which

00:14:42.340 | non-constrained executive power could fix things.

00:14:45.660 | But I'm not sure that that's a majority sentiment

00:14:49.060 | in the Russian case, although it's hard to measure

00:14:51.540 | because under authoritarian regimes,

00:14:54.980 | a public opinion is shaped by the environments

00:14:59.980 | in which people live, which is very constrained

00:15:02.780 | in terms of public opinion.

00:15:04.700 | - But on that point, why, at least from a distance,

00:15:08.900 | does there seem to nevertheless be support

00:15:11.860 | for the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin?

00:15:15.740 | Is that have to do with the fact that measuring,

00:15:20.180 | getting good metrics and statistics on support

00:15:23.100 | is difficult in authoritarian governments,

00:15:25.540 | or is there still something appealing

00:15:28.180 | to that kind of power to the people?

00:15:30.660 | - I think we have to give credit to President Putin

00:15:33.660 | for understanding the psychology of the Russians

00:15:37.860 | to whom he appeals.

00:15:41.620 | Many of them were the losers

00:15:43.420 | in the transition from communism.

00:15:46.260 | They were the ones whose pensions were destroyed by inflation

00:15:50.340 | or whose salaries didn't go up

00:15:52.420 | or whose regions were abandoned.

00:15:55.340 | They were not the winners for the most part.

00:15:58.180 | And so I think there's an understanding

00:16:00.540 | on his part of their psychology.

00:16:02.660 | Putin has grown in the position.

00:16:04.340 | He was not a public politician when he first started out.

00:16:07.940 | He was quite poor in public settings.

00:16:10.700 | He didn't have the kind of political instincts

00:16:13.300 | that he has now.

00:16:14.740 | He didn't have the appeal to traditional values

00:16:17.540 | and the Orthodox Church

00:16:18.940 | and some of the other dimensions of his rule today.

00:16:23.940 | So yes, we have to give some credit to Putin himself

00:16:28.580 | for this, in addition to the frustrations

00:16:31.940 | and the mass of the people.

00:16:34.100 | But let's think about it this way in addition,

00:16:37.020 | without taking away the fact

00:16:38.580 | that he's become a better retail politician over time.

00:16:42.780 | And that sentiment has shifted because of the disappointments

00:16:46.860 | with the transition with the population.

00:16:49.100 | When I ask my kids, am I a good dad?

00:16:55.420 | My kids don't have any other dad to measure me against.

00:17:01.140 | I'm the only dad they know

00:17:04.140 | and I'm the only dad they can choose or not choose.

00:17:07.380 | If they don't choose me, they still get me as dad, right?

00:17:12.380 | So with Putin today, he's the only dad

00:17:17.420 | that the Russian people have.

00:17:19.300 | Now, if my kids were introduced to alternative fathers,

00:17:22.980 | they might be better than me.

00:17:24.580 | They might be more loving, more giving, funnier, richer,

00:17:29.580 | whatever it might be, they might be more appealing.

00:17:34.220 | There are some blood ties there for sure

00:17:36.740 | that I have with my kids,

00:17:38.460 | but they would at least be able to choose alternatives

00:17:41.100 | and then I would have to win their favor

00:17:44.700 | in that constellation of alternatives.

00:17:48.740 | If President Putin were up against real alternatives,

00:17:52.140 | if the population had real choice

00:17:55.100 | and that choice could express itself and have resources

00:17:58.700 | and have media and everything else the way he does,

00:18:02.100 | maybe he would be very popular

00:18:05.860 | and maybe his popularity would not be as great

00:18:08.540 | as it currently is.

00:18:10.460 | So the absence of alternatives is another factor

00:18:14.600 | that reinforces his authority and his popularity.

00:18:18.900 | Having said that, there are many authoritarian leaders

00:18:23.220 | who deny any alternatives to the population

00:18:26.660 | and are not very popular.

00:18:28.180 | So denial of alternatives

00:18:30.900 | doesn't guarantee you the popularity.

00:18:33.700 | You still have to figure out the mass psychology

00:18:36.420 | and be able to appeal to it.

00:18:38.100 | So in the Russian case, the winners from the transition

00:18:44.060 | live primarily in the big cities

00:18:48.060 | and are self-employed or entrepreneurial.

00:18:54.000 | Even if they're not self-employed,

00:18:58.220 | they're able to change careers.

00:19:00.900 | They have tremendous skills and talent

00:19:04.580 | and education and knowledge,

00:19:06.660 | as well as these entrepreneurial or dynamic personalities.

00:19:11.000 | Putin also appealed to them.

00:19:13.860 | He did that with Medvedev, and it was a very clever ruse.

00:19:18.700 | He himself appealed to the losers from the transition,

00:19:23.700 | the small towns, the rural,

00:19:27.220 | the people who were not well off,

00:19:30.220 | and he had them for the most part.

00:19:32.620 | Not all, we don't wanna generalize

00:19:34.620 | to say that he had every one of them

00:19:36.100 | because those people have views of their own,

00:19:38.100 | sometimes in contradiction with the president of Russia.

00:19:42.260 | And then he appealed to the opposite people,

00:19:44.680 | the successful urban base,

00:19:46.940 | through the so-called reformer Medvedev,

00:19:50.020 | the new generation, the technically literate

00:19:53.900 | prime minister who for a time was president.

00:19:56.900 | And so that worked very successfully for Putin.

00:19:59.220 | He was able to bridge a big divide in the society

00:20:03.700 | and gain a greater mass support

00:20:07.060 | than he would otherwise have had by himself.

00:20:09.140 | That ruse only worked through the time

00:20:12.940 | that Medvedev was temporarily president for a few years

00:20:18.820 | because of the constitution,

00:20:20.400 | Putin couldn't do three consecutive terms

00:20:23.300 | and stepped aside in what they call castling in chess.

00:20:29.300 | When this was over, Putin had difficulty

00:20:34.060 | with his popularity.

00:20:35.260 | There were mass protests in the urban areas,

00:20:38.480 | precisely that group of the population

00:20:41.560 | that he had been able to win in part

00:20:43.920 | because of the Medvedev castling

00:20:46.540 | and now had had their delusions exposed

00:20:51.580 | and were disillusioned.

00:20:53.000 | And there were these mass protests in the urban areas,

00:20:56.500 | not just in the capital, by the way.

00:20:58.940 | And Putin had to, as it were,

00:21:00.940 | come up with a new way to fix his popularity,

00:21:03.300 | which happened to be the annexation of Crimea,

00:21:07.460 | from which he got a very significant bump.

00:21:10.460 | However, the trend is back in the other direction.

00:21:15.460 | It's diminishing again, although it's still high

00:21:18.820 | relative to other leaders around the world.

00:21:21.880 | So I wouldn't say that he's unpopular

00:21:24.860 | with the mass in Russia.

00:21:27.220 | There is some popularity there, there is some success.

00:21:31.480 | But I would say it's tough for us to gauge

00:21:34.060 | because of the lack of alternatives.

00:21:36.500 | And Putin is unpopular inside the state administration.

00:21:40.640 | - At every level, the bureaucracy of the leadership?

00:21:44.780 | - Because those people are well-informed

00:21:47.660 | and they understand that the country is declining,

00:21:51.180 | that the human capital is declining,

00:21:53.180 | the infrastructure is declining,

00:21:55.380 | the economy is not really growing,

00:21:57.140 | it's not really diversifying,

00:21:59.200 | Russia's not investing in its future.

00:22:02.060 | The state officials understand all of that,

00:22:04.340 | and then they see that the Putin clique

00:22:07.820 | is stealing everything in sight.

00:22:10.180 | So between the failure to invest in a future

00:22:14.100 | and the corruption of a narrow group around the president,

00:22:18.180 | there's disillusionment in the state apparatus

00:22:21.180 | 'cause they see this more clearly or more closely

00:22:24.700 | than the mass of the population.

00:22:26.560 | They can't necessarily yet oppose this in public

00:22:32.420 | because they're people, they have families,

00:22:38.040 | they have careers, they have children

00:22:39.660 | who wanna go to school or want a job.

00:22:42.940 | And so there are constraints on their ability

00:22:45.360 | to oppose the regime based upon what we might call cowardice

00:22:50.480 | or other people might call realism.

00:22:52.660 | I don't know how courageous people can be

00:22:54.820 | when their family, children, career are on the line.

00:23:00.660 | So it's very interesting dynamic to see

00:23:04.180 | the disillusionment inside the government

00:23:06.340 | with the president, which is not yet fully public

00:23:10.500 | for the most part, but could become public.

00:23:12.980 | And once again, if there's an alternative,

00:23:14.860 | if an alternative appears, things could shift quickly.

00:23:18.500 | And that alternative could come from inside the regime.

00:23:22.080 | - From inside the regime, but the leadership,

00:23:24.460 | the party, the people that are now,

00:23:27.880 | as you're saying, opposed to Putin,

00:23:30.380 | nevertheless, maybe you can correct me,

00:23:34.200 | but it feels like there's structurally is deeply corrupt.

00:23:39.200 | So each of the people we're talking about

00:23:41.960 | are don't feel like a George Washington.

00:23:47.620 | - Once again, the circumstances don't permit them

00:23:50.080 | to act that way necessarily.

00:23:52.080 | George Washington did great things,

00:23:55.800 | but in certain circumstances.

00:23:58.500 | A lot of the state officials in Russia

00:24:01.360 | for certain are corrupt, there's no question.

00:24:04.540 | Many of them, however, are patriotic.

00:24:07.320 | And many of them feel badly

00:24:11.560 | about where the country has been going.

00:24:14.260 | They would prefer that the country was less corrupt.

00:24:17.120 | They would prefer that there were greater investment

00:24:20.060 | in all sorts of areas of Russia.

00:24:24.180 | They might even themselves steal less

00:24:26.780 | if they could be guaranteed

00:24:28.880 | that everybody else would steal less.

00:24:31.980 | There's a deep and abiding patriotism inside Russia,

00:24:36.980 | as well as inside the Russian regime.

00:24:40.380 | So they understand that Putin in many ways

00:24:43.280 | rescued the Russian state from the chaos of the 1990s.

00:24:47.840 | They understand that Russia was in very bad shape

00:24:51.680 | as an incoherent failing state almost when Putin took over.

00:24:56.680 | And that he did some important things

00:25:00.840 | for Russia's stability and consolidation.

00:25:04.400 | There's also some appreciation

00:25:08.840 | that Putin stood up to the West

00:25:11.960 | and stood up to more powerful countries

00:25:14.560 | and regained a sense of pride and maneuverability

00:25:18.760 | for Russia and the international system.

00:25:21.300 | People appreciate that and it's real.

00:25:23.680 | It's not imagined that Putin accomplished that.

00:25:26.680 | The problem is the methods that he accomplished it with.

00:25:31.840 | He used the kind of methods, that is to say,

00:25:35.200 | taking other people's property,

00:25:37.280 | putting other people in jail for political reasons.

00:25:40.480 | He used the kind of methods that are not conducive

00:25:43.320 | to long-term growth and stability.

00:25:46.040 | So he fixed the problem, but he fixed the problem

00:25:48.840 | and then created even bigger

00:25:50.800 | long-term problems potentially.

00:25:53.360 | And moreover, all authoritarian regimes

00:25:55.640 | that use those methods are tempted to keep using them

00:26:00.640 | and using them and using them

00:26:02.400 | until they're the only ones who are the beneficiaries.

00:26:05.640 | And the group narrows and narrows.

00:26:08.320 | The elite gets smaller and narrower.

00:26:11.440 | The interest groups get excluded from power

00:26:14.640 | and their ability to continue

00:26:18.360 | enjoying the fruits of the system.

00:26:20.480 | And the resentment grows.

00:26:22.520 | And so that's the situation we have in Russia.

00:26:24.640 | Russia is a place that is stuck.

00:26:27.920 | It was to a certain extent rescued.

00:26:30.400 | It was rescued with methods that were not conducive

00:26:35.080 | to long-term success and stability.

00:26:37.880 | - The rescue you're referring to

00:26:39.080 | is the sort of the economic growth

00:26:40.720 | when Putin first took off the system?

00:26:43.560 | - Yes, they had 10 years.

00:26:44.600 | They had a full decade of an average of 7% growth a year,

00:26:49.120 | which was phenomenal and is not attributable

00:26:52.440 | predominantly to oil prices.

00:26:55.020 | During President Putin's first term as president,

00:26:58.180 | the average price of oil was $35 a barrel.

00:27:01.960 | During his second term as president,

00:27:05.300 | the average price was $70 a barrel.

00:27:08.500 | So during those two terms,

00:27:11.040 | when Russia was growing at about 7% a year,

00:27:14.680 | oil prices were averaging somewhere around $50 a barrel,

00:27:19.680 | which is fine, but is not the reason

00:27:23.400 | because later on, when oil prices were over $100 a barrel,

00:27:28.400 | Russia stagnated.

00:27:30.840 | - So the initial growth,

00:27:31.840 | do you think Putin deserves some credit for that?

00:27:34.240 | - Yes, he does, because he introduced

00:27:36.760 | some important liberalizing measures.

00:27:40.160 | He lowered taxes.

00:27:42.080 | He allowed land to be bought and sold.

00:27:44.620 | He deregulated many areas of the economy.

00:27:50.160 | And so there was a kind of entrepreneurial burst

00:27:54.000 | that was partly attributable,

00:27:57.200 | partly attributable to government policy

00:27:59.780 | during his first term.

00:28:01.800 | But also he was consolidating political power.

00:28:04.980 | And as I said, the methods he used overall

00:28:08.200 | for the long term were not able

00:28:10.840 | to continue, sustain that success.

00:28:14.840 | In addition, we have to remember

00:28:17.360 | that China played a really big role

00:28:19.280 | in the success of Russia

00:28:22.360 | in the first two terms of Putin's presidency,

00:28:25.240 | because China's phenomenal growth

00:28:30.120 | created insatiable demand for just about everything

00:28:34.240 | that the Soviet Union used to produce.

00:28:37.160 | So fertilizers, cement, fill in the blank,

00:28:41.560 | chemicals, metals, China had insatiable demand

00:28:46.560 | for everything the Soviet Union once produced.

00:28:50.120 | And so China's raising of global demand overall

00:28:56.800 | brought Soviet era industry back from the dead.

00:29:00.940 | And so there was something that happened.

00:29:04.360 | Soviet era industry fell off a cliff in the 1990s.

00:29:08.920 | There was a decline in manufacturing

00:29:11.360 | and industrial production greater

00:29:13.120 | than in the Great Depression in the US.

00:29:15.860 | But a lot of that came back online in the 2000s.

00:29:20.120 | And that had to do with China's phenomenal growth.

00:29:23.960 | The trade between China and Russia was not always direct.

00:29:28.280 | So this was an indirect effect,

00:29:30.560 | but raising global prices for the commodities

00:29:33.980 | and the products, the kind of lower end,

00:29:37.880 | lower value products in manufacturing,

00:29:41.000 | not high end stuff, but lower end stuff,

00:29:44.260 | like steel or iron or cement or fertilizer,

00:29:49.260 | where the value added is not spectacular,

00:29:52.660 | but nonetheless, which had been destroyed by the 1990s

00:29:56.760 | after the Soviet collapse, this was brought back to life.

00:30:00.640 | Now you can do that once.

00:30:02.540 | You can bring Soviet era industry back to life once.

00:30:06.600 | And that happened during Putin's first two terms,

00:30:09.240 | in addition to the liberalizing policies,

00:30:12.500 | which spurred entrepreneurialism

00:30:14.280 | in some small and medium business.

00:30:17.000 | The crash of the ruble in 1998,

00:30:20.560 | which made Russian products much cheaper abroad

00:30:23.900 | and made imports much more expensive,

00:30:27.020 | also facilitated the resuscitation,

00:30:30.040 | the revival of domestic manufacturing.

00:30:33.500 | So all of this came together for that spectacular 10 year,

00:30:38.500 | 7% on average economic growth,

00:30:43.020 | and moreover, people's wages after inflation,

00:30:47.660 | their disposable income grew more even than GDP grew.

00:30:52.580 | So disposable income after inflation, that is real income,

00:30:57.400 | was growing greater than 7%, in some cases 10% a year.

00:31:01.800 | So there was a boom and the Russian people felt it,

00:31:04.920 | and it happened during Putin's first two terms,

00:31:08.440 | and people were grateful, rightly so, for that.

00:31:12.540 | And those who don't wanna give Putin credit

00:31:15.880 | give oil prices all the credit.

00:31:18.140 | But I don't think that oil prices can explain this.

00:31:23.520 | Having said that, that doesn't mean

00:31:25.600 | that this was sustainable over the long term.

00:31:28.240 | - Right.

00:31:29.460 | So you've briefly mentioned,

00:31:32.500 | sort of implying the possibility,

00:31:34.920 | Stalin held power for, let's say, 30 years.

00:31:38.620 | You briefly mentioned that, as a question,

00:31:41.960 | will Putin be able to beat that record,

00:31:45.100 | to beat that?

00:31:46.440 | So can you talk about your sense of,

00:31:49.000 | is it possible that Putin holds power

00:31:51.840 | for that kind of duration?

00:31:54.060 | - Let's hope not.

00:31:54.920 | Let's hope not for Russia's sake.

00:31:58.660 | The primary victims of President Putin's power are Russians.

00:32:04.160 | They're not Ukrainians, although to a certain extent,

00:32:08.640 | Ukraine has suffered because of Putin's actions.

00:32:11.800 | And they're not Americans.

00:32:14.400 | They're Russians.

00:32:16.000 | Moreover, Russia has lost a great deal of human talent.

00:32:19.240 | Millions and millions of people have left Russia

00:32:23.840 | since 1991 overall.

00:32:27.120 | Somewhere between five and 10 million people

00:32:29.560 | have left the country,

00:32:30.800 | and are beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union.

00:32:35.560 | So they left the Soviet space entirely.

00:32:38.680 | Moreover, the people who left are not the poor people.

00:32:41.800 | They're not the uneducated.

00:32:44.240 | They're not the losers.

00:32:45.760 | The people who've left are the more dynamic parts

00:32:48.680 | of the population.

00:32:50.080 | The better educated, the more entrepreneurial.

00:32:53.000 | So that human capital loss that Russia has suffered

00:32:56.700 | is phenomenal.

00:32:58.340 | And in fact, right here where we're sitting at MIT,

00:33:01.600 | we have examples of people who are qualified,

00:33:05.360 | good enough for MIT,

00:33:07.600 | and have left Russia to come to MIT.

00:33:10.240 | - You're looking at one of them.

00:33:11.840 | And the other aspect, just to quickly comment,

00:33:15.640 | is those same people, like me,

00:33:19.000 | I'm not welcome back.

00:33:20.720 | - No, you're not under the current regime.

00:33:22.360 | It was a big loss for Russia if you're patriotic,

00:33:26.600 | but not from the point of view of the Putin regime.

00:33:29.760 | That has to do also factors into popularity.

00:33:33.560 | If the people who don't like you leave,

00:33:35.740 | they're not there to complain, to protest,

00:33:39.360 | to vote against you.

00:33:41.040 | And so your opposition declines when you let them leave.

00:33:46.040 | However, it's very costly in human capital terms.

00:33:49.100 | Hemorrhaging that much human capital is damaging.

00:33:53.360 | It's self-damaging.

00:33:54.920 | And we've seen it accelerate.

00:33:56.960 | It was already high, but we've seen it accelerate

00:34:00.240 | in the last, oh, seven to eight years

00:34:04.080 | of President Putin's rule.

00:34:06.920 | And those people are not going back of their own volition,

00:34:11.840 | but even if they wanted to go back,

00:34:13.480 | as you just said, they'd be unwelcome.

00:34:15.720 | That's a big cost to pay for this regime.

00:34:19.080 | And so whatever benefits this regime might

00:34:21.560 | or might not have given to the country,

00:34:24.960 | the disadvantages, the downside,

00:34:27.760 | the costs are also really high.

00:34:30.200 | So we don't want Putin lasting in power as long as Stalin.

00:34:34.480 | It would be better if Russia were able to choose

00:34:38.240 | among options, to choose a new leader among options.

00:34:42.680 | Many people speculate that President Putin

00:34:45.120 | will name a successor the way Yeltsin named Putin

00:34:48.880 | as his successor, President Boris Yeltsin.

00:34:52.440 | And then Putin will leave the stage

00:34:55.560 | and allow the successor to take over.

00:34:58.400 | That might seem like a good solution,

00:35:01.280 | but once again, we don't need a system

00:35:04.400 | where you hang on for as long as possible

00:35:07.000 | then nominate who's gonna take over.

00:35:09.600 | We need a system that has the kind of corrective mechanisms

00:35:13.880 | that democracies and markets have along with rule of law.

00:35:19.640 | A corrective mechanism is really important

00:35:22.640 | because all leaders make mistakes.

00:35:25.400 | But when you can't correct for the mistakes,

00:35:28.380 | then the mistakes get compounded.

00:35:31.820 | Putin could well, he seems to be healthy.

00:35:34.780 | He could well last as many years as Stalin.

00:35:38.220 | It's hard to predict because events intercede sometimes

00:35:43.100 | and create circumstances that are unforeseen

00:35:46.380 | and leaders get overthrown or have a heart attack

00:35:49.580 | or whatever.

00:35:51.420 | There's a palace insurrection where ambitious leaders

00:35:55.460 | on the inside for both personal power and patriotic reasons

00:36:01.240 | try to push aside an aging leader.

00:36:03.940 | There are many scenarios in which Putin

00:36:06.700 | could not last that long, but unfortunately right now,

00:36:11.260 | you could also imagine potentially him lasting that long,

00:36:14.580 | which as I said, is not an outcome if you're patriotic

00:36:18.820 | about Russia, is not an outcome

00:36:20.780 | you would wish out to the country.

00:36:22.700 | - I guess a very difficult question,

00:36:24.540 | but what practically do you feel is a way out

00:36:30.220 | of the Putin regime, is the way out of the corruption

00:36:34.640 | that's deeply underlies the state?

00:36:38.000 | If you look from a history perspective,

00:36:42.040 | is a revolution required?

00:36:44.160 | Is violence required?

00:36:46.920 | From a violence within or external to the country?

00:36:53.960 | Do you see, or is a powerful,

00:36:58.160 | is a inspiring leader enough to step in

00:37:02.560 | and bring democracy and kind of the free world to Russia?

00:37:08.420 | - So Russia is not a failed country.

00:37:11.040 | It's a middle income country with a tremendous potential

00:37:15.660 | and has proven many times in the past

00:37:18.780 | that when it gets in a bad way,

00:37:20.920 | it can reverse its trajectory.

00:37:24.900 | Moreover, violence is rarely ever a solution.

00:37:28.820 | Violence rarely, it may break an existing trend,

00:37:33.180 | but it's rare that violence produces

00:37:35.420 | a non-violent sustainable positive outcome.

00:37:38.720 | It happens, but it doesn't happen frequently.

00:37:42.060 | Societal upheaval is not a way always

00:37:47.060 | to institutionalize a better path forward

00:37:51.620 | because you need institutions.

00:37:53.240 | People can protest as they did throughout the Middle East

00:37:57.080 | and the protests didn't necessarily lead to better systems

00:38:01.580 | because the step from protest to new, strong,

00:38:06.420 | consolidated institutions is a colossal leap,

00:38:09.740 | not a small step.

00:38:11.740 | What we need and what we see from history

00:38:14.060 | in situations like this is a group

00:38:17.820 | within the power structures, which is a patriotic,

00:38:22.360 | that sees things going down,

00:38:25.020 | that is to say that sees things not being developing

00:38:29.420 | relative to neighbors, relative to richer countries,

00:38:32.560 | relative to more successful countries,

00:38:35.580 | and they want to change the trajectory of Russia.

00:38:40.180 | And if they can, in a coalition fashion,

00:38:43.800 | unseat the current regime

00:38:47.820 | for a new power sharing arrangement,

00:38:51.060 | which once again can be frustrating

00:38:52.960 | because you can't do changes immediately,

00:38:56.160 | you can't do things overnight, but that's the point.

00:38:59.700 | Constraints on your ability

00:39:01.420 | to change everything immediately

00:39:03.080 | and to force change overnight

00:39:05.060 | is what leads to long-term success, potentially.

00:39:08.720 | That's the sustainability of change.

00:39:12.060 | So Russia needs stronger institutions.

00:39:14.880 | It needs court system as well as democratic institutions.

00:39:20.420 | It needs functioning, open, dynamic markets

00:39:24.000 | rather than monopolies.

00:39:26.220 | It needs meritocracy and banks to award loans

00:39:30.820 | on the basis of business plans,

00:39:33.140 | not on the basis of political criteria

00:39:35.700 | or corrupt bribery or whatever it might be.

00:39:39.860 | So Russia needs those kind of functioning institutions

00:39:44.180 | that take time, are sometimes slow,

00:39:48.420 | don't lead to a revolutionary transformation,

00:39:52.220 | but lead to potentially long-term sustainable growth

00:39:56.060 | without upheaval, without violence,

00:39:59.180 | without getting into a situation

00:40:01.020 | where all of a sudden you need a miracle again.

00:40:04.460 | Every time Russia seems to need a miracle,

00:40:07.740 | and that's the problem.

00:40:10.640 | The solution would be not needing a miracle.

00:40:14.300 | Now, having said that, the potential is there.

00:40:17.900 | The civilization that we call Russia

00:40:20.020 | is amazingly impressive.

00:40:22.280 | It has delivered world-class culture,

00:40:25.240 | world-class science.

00:40:26.960 | It's a great power.

00:40:29.960 | It's not a great power with a strong base right now,

00:40:33.080 | but nonetheless, it is a great power as it acts in the world.

00:40:36.460 | So I wouldn't underestimate Russia's abilities here,

00:40:39.380 | and I wouldn't write off Russia.

00:40:41.740 | I don't see it under the current regime,

00:40:44.060 | a renewal of the country.

00:40:46.340 | But if we can have, from within the regime,

00:40:49.940 | an evolution rather than a revolution

00:40:52.760 | in a positive direction,

00:40:54.580 | and maybe get a George Washington figure

00:40:56.980 | who is strong enough to push through institutionalization

00:41:03.240 | rather than personalism.

00:41:06.140 | - So if I could ask about one particular individual,

00:41:09.360 | it'd be just interesting to get your comment,

00:41:12.020 | but also as a representative of potential leaders.

00:41:14.740 | I just on this podcast talked to Garry Kasparov,

00:41:18.580 | who I'm not sure if you're familiar with his ongoings.

00:41:23.220 | So besides being a world-class chess player,

00:41:25.420 | he's also a very outspoken activist,

00:41:28.500 | sort of seeing Putin,

00:41:31.340 | truly seeing Putin as an enemy of the free world,

00:41:34.740 | of democracy, of balanced government in Russia.

00:41:39.740 | What do you think of people like him specifically,

00:41:43.700 | or just people like him trying as leaders

00:41:47.500 | to step in to run for president,

00:41:49.460 | to symbolize a new chapter in Russia's future?

00:41:54.320 | - So we don't need individuals.

00:41:57.860 | Some individuals are very impressive,

00:42:00.740 | and they have courage, and they protest,

00:42:03.300 | and they criticize, and they organize.

00:42:06.980 | We need institutions.

00:42:08.820 | We need a Duma, or a parliament that functions.

00:42:12.340 | We need a court system that functions,

00:42:15.220 | that is to say where there are a separation of powers,

00:42:19.100 | impartial professional civil service,

00:42:22.260 | impartial professional judiciary.

00:42:27.940 | Those are the things Russia needs.

00:42:30.300 | It's rare that you get that from an individual

00:42:32.860 | no matter how impressive, right?

00:42:35.220 | We had Andrei Sakharov,

00:42:36.700 | who was an extraordinary individual,

00:42:40.620 | who developed the hydrogen bomb under Soviet regime,

00:42:45.620 | was a world-class physicist,

00:42:49.140 | was then upset about how his scientific knowledge

00:42:53.780 | and scientific achievements were being put to use,

00:42:57.340 | and rebelled to try to put limits, constraints,

00:43:02.340 | civilizing, humane limits and constraints

00:43:05.580 | on some of the implications of his extraordinary science.

00:43:10.580 | But Sakharov, even if he had become the leader

00:43:13.780 | of the country, which he did not become,

00:43:16.500 | he was more of a moral or spiritual leader,

00:43:20.140 | it still wouldn't have given you a judiciary.

00:43:22.620 | It still wouldn't have given you a civil service.

00:43:25.140 | It still wouldn't have given you a Duma,

00:43:27.020 | or functioning parliament.

00:43:29.060 | You need a leader in coalition with other leaders.

00:43:33.180 | You need a bunch of leaders.

00:43:35.420 | A whole group, and they have to be divided a little bit

00:43:38.900 | so that not one of them can destroy all the others.

00:43:42.500 | And they have to be interested in creating institutions,

00:43:46.340 | not just, or not solely or predominantly

00:43:50.180 | in their personal power.

00:43:52.180 | And so I have no objection to outstanding individuals

00:43:56.580 | and to the work that they do.

00:43:58.620 | But I think in institutional terms,

00:44:01.380 | and they need to think that way too

00:44:03.420 | in order to be successful.

00:44:05.380 | - So if we go back to the echoes of that

00:44:08.700 | after the Russian Revolution with Stalin,

00:44:10.860 | with Lenin and Stalin, maybe you can correct me,

00:44:14.300 | but there was a group of people there

00:44:17.420 | in that same kind of way,

00:44:19.700 | looking to establish institutions

00:44:22.820 | that were built in a,

00:44:26.460 | beautifully built around an ideology

00:44:30.860 | that they believed is good for the world.

00:44:34.420 | So sort of echoing that idea

00:44:37.620 | of what we're talking about what Russia needs now,

00:44:40.140 | can you, first of all,

00:44:43.260 | you've described a fascinating thought,

00:44:45.420 | which is Stalin is having amassed

00:44:48.900 | arguably more power than any man in history.

00:44:51.860 | Which is an interesting thing to think about.

00:44:54.900 | But can you tell about his journey

00:44:56.980 | to getting that power after the Russian Revolution?

00:45:00.500 | How does that perhaps echo to our current discussion

00:45:05.020 | about institutions and so on?

00:45:07.420 | And just in general,

00:45:10.460 | the story I think is fascinating

00:45:12.100 | of how one man is able to get more power

00:45:15.340 | than any other man in history.

00:45:17.060 | - It is a great story.

00:45:20.020 | Not necessarily from a moral point of view,

00:45:23.300 | but if you're interested in power,

00:45:24.980 | for sure it's an incredible story.

00:45:28.420 | We have to remember that Stalin

00:45:30.340 | is also a product of circumstances,

00:45:33.420 | not solely his own individual drive,

00:45:35.860 | which is very strong.

00:45:37.100 | For example, World War I breaks the Tsarist regime,

00:45:43.420 | the Tsarist order, Imperial Russian State.

00:45:46.260 | Stalin has no participation whatsoever in World War I.

00:45:51.500 | He spends World War I in exile in Siberia.

00:45:55.900 | Until the downfall of the Tsarist autocracy

00:46:00.860 | in February 1917,

00:46:03.300 | Stalin is in Eastern Siberian exile.

00:46:07.300 | He's only able to leave Eastern Siberia

00:46:09.860 | when that regime falls.

00:46:11.420 | He never fights in the war.

00:46:14.980 | He's called up briefly towards the end of the war

00:46:18.740 | and is disqualified on physical grounds

00:46:21.540 | because of physical deformities from being drafted.

00:46:25.860 | The war continues after the Tsarist regime

00:46:28.700 | has been toppled in the capital

00:46:31.660 | and there's been a revolution.

00:46:34.180 | The war continues and that war is very radicalizing.

00:46:39.580 | The peasants begin to seize the land after the Tsar falls,

00:46:44.420 | essentially destroying much of the gentry class.

00:46:48.740 | Stalin has nothing to do with that.

00:46:50.500 | The peasants have their own revolution,

00:46:53.140 | seizing the land, not in law, but in fact,

00:46:57.100 | de facto, not de jure land ownership.

00:47:00.060 | So there are these really large processes underway

00:47:03.540 | that Stalin is alive during, but not a driver of.

00:47:09.660 | The most improbable thing happens,

00:47:12.860 | which is a very small group of people

00:47:15.380 | around the figure of Vladimir Lenin

00:47:18.740 | announces that it has seized power.

00:47:23.540 | Now by this time in October 1917,

00:47:26.900 | the government that has replaced the Tsar,

00:47:30.220 | the so-called provisional government, has failed.

00:47:33.020 | And so there's not so much power to seize

00:47:36.940 | from the provisional government.

00:47:39.100 | What Lenin does is he does a coup on the left.

00:47:42.220 | That is to say, Soviets or councils,

00:47:48.060 | as we would call them in English,

00:47:50.020 | which represent people's power

00:47:51.980 | or the masses participating in politics,

00:47:54.540 | a kind of radical grassroots democracy,

00:47:57.500 | are extremely popular all over the country

00:48:00.740 | and not dominated by any one group,

00:48:03.860 | but predominantly socialist or predominantly leftist.

00:48:08.020 | Russia has an election during the war,

00:48:12.380 | a free and fair election for the most part,

00:48:15.740 | despite the war, at the end of 1917, in December 1917,

00:48:20.740 | and three quarters plus of the country votes socialist

00:48:25.540 | in some form or another.

00:48:27.820 | So the battle was over the definition of socialism

00:48:30.740 | and who had the right to participate in defining socialism,

00:48:35.180 | not only what it would be, but who had the right to decide.

00:48:39.300 | So there's a coup by Lenin's group known as the Bolsheviks

00:48:43.540 | against all the other socialists.

00:48:46.100 | And so Lenin declares a seizure of power

00:48:50.340 | whereby the old government has failed,

00:48:53.820 | people's power, the councils known as the Soviets

00:48:57.140 | are gonna take their place,

00:48:59.580 | and Lenin seizes power in the name of the Soviets.

00:49:03.420 | So it's a coup against the left,

00:49:05.900 | against the rest of the left,

00:49:07.940 | not against the provisional government

00:49:09.900 | that has replaced the Tsar, which has already failed.

00:49:13.060 | And so Stalin is able to come to power along with Lenin

00:49:16.900 | in this crazy seizure of power on the left

00:49:22.580 | against the rest of the left in October 1917,

00:49:25.940 | which we know as the October Revolution,

00:49:28.740 | and I call the October coup as many other historians call.

00:49:33.580 | The October Revolution happened after the seizure of power.

00:49:38.540 | What's interesting about this episode

00:49:40.940 | is that the leftists who seize power

00:49:43.780 | in the name of the Soviets, in the name of the masses,

00:49:46.580 | in the name of people's power, they retain their hold.

00:49:51.300 | Many times in history,

00:49:52.580 | there's a seizure of power by the left, and they fail.

00:49:56.340 | They collapse, they're cleaned out by an army

00:49:59.980 | or what we call forces of order,

00:50:02.420 | by counter-revolutionary forces.

00:50:04.700 | Lenin's revolution, Lenin's coup is successful.

00:50:08.900 | It is able to hold power, not just seize power.

00:50:12.580 | They win a civil war,

00:50:14.140 | and they're entrenched in the heart of the country

00:50:19.060 | already by 1921.

00:50:21.300 | Stalin is part of that group.

00:50:23.580 | Lenin needs somebody to run this new regime

00:50:27.580 | in the kind of nitty gritty way.

00:50:29.220 | Lenin is the leader,

00:50:30.900 | the undisputed leader in the Bolshevik Party,

00:50:34.240 | which changes their name to Communists in 1918.

00:50:38.060 | He makes Stalin the general secretary

00:50:42.820 | of the Communist Party.

00:50:44.380 | He creates a new position, which hadn't existed before,

00:50:49.860 | a kind of day-to-day political manager, a right-hand man.

00:50:54.740 | Not because Lenin is looking to replace himself,

00:50:57.540 | he's looking to institutionalize a helpmate,

00:51:00.300 | a right-hand man.

00:51:01.360 | He does this in the spring of 1922.

00:51:07.580 | Stalin is named to this position,

00:51:09.460 | which Lenin has created expressly for Stalin.

00:51:12.460 | So there's been a coup on the left,

00:51:14.860 | whereby the Bolsheviks, who become Communists,

00:51:18.980 | have seized power against the rest of the Socialists

00:51:21.900 | and Anarchists and the entire left.

00:51:25.220 | And then there's an institutionalization of a position

00:51:28.660 | known as General Secretary of the Communist Party,

00:51:31.780 | right-hand man of Lenin.

00:51:34.260 | Less than six weeks after Lenin has created this position

00:51:37.620 | and installed Stalin, Lenin has a stroke,

00:51:41.460 | a major stroke, and never really returns as a full actor

00:51:48.060 | to power before he dies of a fourth stroke in January 1924.

00:51:54.060 | So a position is created for Stalin

00:51:57.220 | to run things on Lenin's behalf,

00:52:00.260 | and then Lenin has a stroke.

00:52:02.820 | And so Stalin now has this new position General Secretary,

00:52:07.420 | but he's the right hand of a person

00:52:09.740 | who's no longer exercising day-to-day control over affairs.

00:52:14.740 | Stalin then uses this new position

00:52:17.380 | to create a personal dictatorship

00:52:20.040 | inside the Bolshevik dictatorship,

00:52:22.900 | which is the remarkable story I tried to tell.

00:52:25.740 | - So is there anything nefarious

00:52:28.180 | about any of what you just described?

00:52:31.080 | So it seems conveniently

00:52:33.260 | that the position is created just for Stalin.

00:52:37.080 | There was a few other brilliant people,

00:52:39.540 | arguably more brilliant than Stalin

00:52:41.500 | in the vicinity of Lenin.

00:52:43.100 | Why was Stalin chosen?

00:52:44.700 | Why did Lenin all of a sudden fall ill?

00:52:50.620 | It's perhaps a conspiratorial question,

00:52:53.700 | but is there anything nefarious

00:52:55.140 | about any of this historical trajectory to power

00:52:59.840 | that Stalin took in creating the personal dictatorship?

00:53:02.740 | - So history is full of contingency and surprise.

00:53:05.940 | After something happens, we all think it's inevitable.

00:53:11.580 | It had to happen that way.

00:53:13.740 | Everything was leading up to it.

00:53:16.180 | So Hitler seizes power in Germany in 1933,

00:53:20.620 | and the Nazi regime gets institutionalized

00:53:24.900 | by several of his moves after being named chancellor.

00:53:29.180 | And so all German history becomes a story

00:53:31.940 | of the Nazi rise to power, Hitler's rise to power.

00:53:35.220 | Every trend, tendency is bent into that outcome.

00:53:40.220 | Things which don't seem related to that outcome

00:53:43.400 | all of a sudden get bent in that direction.

00:53:46.700 | And other trends that were going on are no longer examined

00:53:50.780 | because they didn't lead to that outcome.

00:53:53.420 | But Hitler's becoming chancellor of Germany in 1933

00:53:57.700 | was not inevitable, it was contingent.

00:54:00.340 | He was offered the position

00:54:01.840 | by the traditional conservatives.

00:54:04.500 | He's part of the radical right,

00:54:05.900 | and the traditional right named him chancellor.

00:54:08.840 | The Nazi party never outright won an election

00:54:13.380 | that was free and fair before Hitler came to power.

00:54:16.620 | And in fact, its votes on the eve

00:54:19.280 | of Hitler becoming chancellor

00:54:20.700 | declined relative to the previous election.

00:54:24.260 | So there's contingency in history,

00:54:26.480 | and so Lenin's illness, his stroke,

00:54:30.220 | the neurological and blood problems that he had

00:54:36.460 | were not a structure in history.

00:54:40.020 | In other words, if Lenin had been a healthier figure,

00:54:43.740 | Stalin might never have become the Stalin that we know.

00:54:47.780 | That's not to say that all history is accidental,

00:54:50.820 | just that we need to relate the structural,

00:54:53.020 | the larger structural factors to the contingent factors.

00:54:57.720 | Why did Lenin pick Stalin?

00:55:00.000 | Well, Stalin was a very effective organizer,

00:55:02.800 | and the position was an organizational position.

00:55:06.280 | Stalin could get things done.

00:55:08.360 | He would carry out assignments no matter how difficult.

00:55:11.520 | He wouldn't complain that it was hard work or too much work.

00:55:15.880 | He wouldn't go off womanizing and drinking

00:55:18.600 | and ignore his responsibilities.

00:55:22.120 | Lenin chose Stalin among other options

00:55:24.860 | because he thought Stalin was the better option.

00:55:28.000 | Once again, he wasn't choosing his successor

00:55:30.260 | because he didn't know he was gonna have this stroke.

00:55:33.800 | Lenin had some serious illnesses,

00:55:36.840 | but he had never had a major stroke before.

00:55:39.620 | So the choice was made based upon

00:55:44.100 | Stalin's organizational skills and promise

00:55:49.220 | against the others who were in the regime.

00:55:52.960 | Now, they can seem more brilliant than Stalin,

00:55:55.660 | but he was more effective,

00:55:57.180 | and I'm not sure they were very brilliant.

00:55:59.780 | - Well, he was exceptionally competent,

00:56:01.980 | actually, at the tasks for running a government,

00:56:04.420 | the executive branch, right, of a dictator.

00:56:07.200 | - Yes, he turned out to be very adept at being a dictator.

00:56:11.680 | And so if he had been chosen by Lenin

00:56:15.260 | and had not been very good,

00:56:17.740 | he would have been pushed aside by others.

00:56:20.080 | You can get a position by accident.

00:56:23.800 | You can be named because you're someone's friend

00:56:27.860 | or someone's relative, but to hold that position,

00:56:32.240 | to hold that position in difficult circumstances,

00:56:35.460 | and then to build effectively a superpower

00:56:38.140 | on all that bloodshed, right,

00:56:40.580 | you have to be skilled in some way.

00:56:44.020 | It can't be just accident that brings you to power,

00:56:47.900 | because if accident brings you to power, it won't last.

00:56:52.140 | Just like we discovered with Putin,

00:56:54.580 | he had some qualities that we didn't foresee

00:56:57.100 | at the beginning, and he's been able to hold power,

00:57:01.260 | not just be named.

00:57:02.780 | Now, Putin and Stalin are very different people.

00:57:06.180 | These are very different regimes.

00:57:08.260 | I wouldn't put them in the same sentence.

00:57:10.900 | My point is not that one resembles the other.

00:57:13.560 | My point is that when people come to power

00:57:17.920 | for contingent reasons, they don't stay in power

00:57:21.820 | unless they're able to manage it.

00:57:23.900 | And Stalin was able to build a personal dictatorship

00:57:27.580 | inside that dictatorship.

00:57:29.140 | He was cunning, he was ruthless, and he was a workaholic.

00:57:33.660 | He was very diligent.

00:57:35.020 | He had a phenomenal memory,

00:57:37.580 | and so he could remember people's names

00:57:39.640 | and faces and events, and this was very advantageous for him

00:57:44.640 | as he built the machine that became

00:57:47.620 | the Soviet state and bureaucracy.

00:57:50.060 | - One of the things, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong,

00:57:52.580 | but you've made me realize is this wasn't some kind

00:57:57.100 | of manipulative personality trying to gain more power solely,

00:58:02.100 | like kind of an evil picture of a person,

00:58:05.340 | but he truly believed in communism.

00:58:08.220 | As far as I can understand, again,

00:58:12.020 | you can correct me if I'm wrong,

00:58:13.140 | but he wanted to build a better world

00:58:15.740 | by having, infusing communism into the country,

00:58:20.740 | perhaps into the whole world.

00:58:26.020 | So maybe my question is what role does communism

00:58:31.020 | as an idea, as an ideology play in all of this,

00:58:35.460 | in his rise to power, in the people of the time,

00:58:39.240 | in the Russian people, actually just the whole

00:58:41.160 | 20th century?

00:58:42.260 | - You're right.

00:58:44.440 | Stalin was a true believer, and this is very important.

00:58:47.960 | He was also hungry for power and for personal power,

00:58:51.660 | but just as you said, not for power's sake,

00:58:55.120 | not only for power.

00:58:56.840 | He was interested in enacting communism in reality,

00:59:01.720 | and also in building a powerful state.

00:59:04.520 | He was a statist, a traditional Russian statist

00:59:08.040 | in the imperial sense, and this won him a lot of followers.

00:59:13.040 | The fact that they knew he was a hardcore,

00:59:16.100 | true believing communist won him a lot of followers

00:59:19.940 | among the communists, and the fact that he was

00:59:22.980 | a hardcore defender of Russian state interests,

00:59:27.180 | now in the Soviet guise, also won him a lot of followers.

00:59:31.480 | Sometimes those groups overlapped.

00:59:34.120 | The communists and the Russian patriots,

00:59:36.880 | and sometimes they were completely different groups,

00:59:39.480 | but both of them shared an admiration for Stalin's

00:59:43.600 | dedication to those goals, and his abilities to enact them.

00:59:48.600 | And so it's very important to understand

00:59:51.600 | that however thirsty he was for power,

00:59:54.960 | and he was very thirsty for power,

00:59:57.100 | that he was also driven by ideals.

01:00:02.480 | Now, I don't necessarily think that everyone

01:00:07.480 | around Stalin shared those ideals.

01:00:11.320 | We have to be careful not to make everybody

01:00:13.800 | into a communist true believer,

01:00:15.800 | not to make everybody into a great statist Russian patriot,

01:00:20.200 | but they were widespread and powerful attractions

01:00:24.880 | for a lot of people.

01:00:27.800 | And so Stalin's ability to communicate to people

01:00:31.760 | that he was dedicated to those pursuits,

01:00:35.520 | and his ability to drive towards them

01:00:38.340 | were part of his appeal.

01:00:39.920 | However, he also resorted to manipulation.

01:00:43.160 | He also resorted to violence.

01:00:46.080 | He lied, he spoke out of all sides of his mouth,

01:00:49.640 | he slandered other people, he sabotaged potential rivals.

01:00:54.640 | He used every underhanded method, and then some,

01:01:00.320 | in order to build his personal dictatorship.

01:01:03.600 | Now, he justified this, as you said,

01:01:05.620 | by appeals to communism and to Soviet power.

01:01:09.280 | - To himself as well, too.

01:01:10.680 | - To himself and to others.

01:01:12.560 | And so he justified it in his own mind and to others,

01:01:16.120 | but certainly any means, right,

01:01:19.520 | were acceptable to him to achieve these ends.

01:01:24.520 | And he identified his personal power with communism

01:01:28.880 | and with Russian glory in the world.

01:01:31.360 | So he felt that he was the only one who could be trusted,

01:01:36.040 | who could be relied upon to build these things.

01:01:39.000 | Now, we put ourselves back in that time period.

01:01:41.720 | The Great Depression was a very difficult time

01:01:47.200 | for the capitalist system.

01:01:48.640 | There was mass unemployment, a lot of hardship,

01:01:53.000 | fascism, Nazism, Imperial Japan.

01:01:58.840 | There were a lot of associations that were negative

01:02:02.680 | with the kind of capitalist system

01:02:05.000 | that was not 100%, not a monolith,

01:02:10.000 | but had a lot of authoritarian incarnations.

01:02:14.400 | There was imperialism, colonies that even

01:02:17.520 | the democratic rule of law capitalist states

01:02:21.120 | had non-democratic, non-rule of law colonies

01:02:24.140 | under their rule.

01:02:25.800 | So the image and reality of capitalism

01:02:29.600 | during that time period between World War I

01:02:32.640 | and World War II was very different

01:02:35.360 | from how it would become later.

01:02:37.320 | And so in that time period, in that interwar conjuncture

01:02:41.960 | after World War I, before World War II,

01:02:44.360 | communism held some appeal inside the Soviet Union for sure,

01:02:50.240 | but even outside the Soviet Union,

01:02:52.600 | because the image and reality of capitalism

01:02:55.080 | disappointed many people.

01:02:57.200 | Now in the end, communism was significantly worse.

01:03:00.760 | Many more victims and the system of course

01:03:04.080 | would eventually implode.

01:03:06.600 | But nonetheless, there were real problems

01:03:08.560 | that communism tried to address.

01:03:11.120 | It didn't solve those problems, it was not a solution,

01:03:15.040 | but it didn't come out of nowhere.

01:03:17.160 | It came out of the context of that interwar period.

01:03:20.800 | And so Stalin's rule, some people saw it

01:03:25.120 | as potentially a better option than imperialism,

01:03:29.440 | fascism, and Great Depression.

01:03:32.440 | Having said that, they were wrong.

01:03:34.760 | It turned out that Stalin wasn't a better alternative

01:03:37.920 | to markets and private property

01:03:40.480 | and rule of law and democracy.

01:03:42.380 | However, that didn't become clearer to people

01:03:47.200 | until after World War II,

01:03:49.920 | after Nazism had been defeated,

01:03:52.480 | Imperial Japan had been defeated,

01:03:54.880 | a fascist Italy had been defeated,

01:03:57.080 | and decolonization had happened around the world.

01:04:00.360 | And there was a middle class economic boom

01:04:02.720 | in the period from the late 40s through the 70s

01:04:07.660 | that created a kind of mass middle class in many societies.

01:04:11.000 | So capitalism rose from the ashes as it were.

01:04:16.120 | And this changed the game for Stalin and communism.

01:04:19.800 | Communism is about an alternative to capitalism.

01:04:26.000 | And if that alternative is not superior,

01:04:29.540 | there's no reason for communism to exist.

01:04:32.680 | But if capitalism is in foul odor,

01:04:35.520 | if people have a bad opinion,

01:04:39.440 | a strong critique of capitalism,

01:04:41.420 | there can be appeal to alternatives.

01:04:43.400 | And that's kind of what happened with Stalin's rule.

01:04:46.880 | But after World War II, the context changed a lot.

01:04:51.100 | Capitalism was very different, much more successful,

01:04:54.800 | non-violent compared to what it was in the interwar period.

01:04:58.960 | And the Soviet Union had a tough time competing

01:05:03.120 | against that new context.

01:05:05.520 | Now today, we see similarly that the image and reality

01:05:10.480 | of capitalism is on the question again,

01:05:13.480 | which leads some people to find an answer

01:05:16.600 | in socialism as an alternative.

01:05:19.780 | - So you just kind of painted a beautiful picture

01:05:22.400 | of comparison.

01:05:23.240 | This is the way we think about ideologies

01:05:25.320 | 'cause we, is what's working better.

01:05:28.760 | Do you separate in your mind the ideals of communism

01:05:32.460 | to the Stalinist implementation of communism?

01:05:36.160 | And again, capitalism and American implementation

01:05:39.360 | of capitalism.

01:05:40.440 | And as we look at now the 21st century where yes,

01:05:45.040 | this idea of socialism being a potential political system

01:05:50.040 | that we would, or economic system we would operate under

01:05:55.760 | in the United States, rising up again as an idea.

01:05:59.560 | So how do we think about that again in the 21st century,

01:06:03.360 | about these ideas, fundamental deep ideas

01:06:06.480 | of communism and capitalism?

01:06:07.880 | - Yeah, so in the Marxist schema,

01:06:10.840 | there was something called feudalism,

01:06:13.600 | which was supposedly destroyed by the bourgeoisie

01:06:16.920 | who created capitalism.

01:06:19.240 | And then the working class was supposed

01:06:21.040 | to destroy capitalism and create socialism.

01:06:24.840 | But socialism wasn't the end stage.

01:06:27.040 | The end stage was gonna be communism.

01:06:29.720 | So that's why the communist party in the Soviet Union

01:06:32.840 | first built socialism, transcending capitalism.

01:06:37.620 | The next stage was socialism and the end game,

01:06:40.680 | the final stage was communism.

01:06:42.720 | So their version of socialism was derived from Marx.

01:06:47.460 | And Marx argued that the problem was capitalism

01:06:52.460 | had been very beneficial for a while.

01:06:57.300 | It had produced greater wealth and greater opportunity

01:07:01.560 | than feudalism had, but then it had come to serve

01:07:05.360 | only the narrow interests of the so-called bourgeoisie

01:07:08.680 | or the capitalists themselves.

01:07:10.960 | And so for humanity's sake, the universal class,

01:07:15.760 | the working class, needed to overthrow capitalism

01:07:19.040 | in order for greater productivity,

01:07:21.480 | greater wealth to be produced,

01:07:23.480 | for all of humanity to flourish and on a higher level.

01:07:27.800 | So you couldn't have socialism

01:07:30.560 | unless you destroyed capitalism.

01:07:32.840 | So that meant no markets, no private property,

01:07:37.680 | no so-called parliaments or bourgeois parliaments

01:07:40.840 | as they were called.

01:07:42.240 | So you got socialism in Marx's schema

01:07:45.800 | by transcending, by eliminating capitalism.

01:07:49.340 | Now, Marx also called for freedom.

01:07:55.200 | He said that this elimination of markets

01:07:57.760 | and private property and bourgeois parliaments

01:08:00.680 | would produce greater freedom

01:08:02.080 | in addition to greater abundance.

01:08:04.000 | However, everywhere this was tried,

01:08:08.600 | it produced tyranny and mass violence, death and shortages.

01:08:13.600 | Everywhere it was tried.

01:08:16.640 | There's no exception in historical terms.

01:08:19.760 | And so it's very interesting.

01:08:22.000 | Marx insisted that capitalism had to be eliminated.

01:08:26.800 | You couldn't have markets.

01:08:28.560 | Markets were chaos, you needed planning.

01:08:31.220 | You couldn't have hiring of wage labor.

01:08:35.680 | That was wage slavery.

01:08:37.800 | You couldn't have private property

01:08:39.520 | 'cause that was a form of theft.

01:08:41.120 | So in the Marxist scheme,

01:08:44.800 | somehow you were gonna eliminate capitalism

01:08:47.760 | and get to freedom.

01:08:50.480 | It turned out you didn't get to freedom.

01:08:52.200 | So then people said, well, you can't blame Marx

01:08:55.960 | because he said we needed freedom.

01:08:58.640 | He was pro-freedom.

01:09:00.480 | So it's kind of like dropping a nuclear bomb.

01:09:03.360 | You say you're gonna drop a nuclear bomb,

01:09:07.480 | but you wanna minimize civilian casualties.

01:09:11.960 | So the dropping of the nuclear bomb

01:09:15.600 | is the elimination of markets,

01:09:17.240 | private property and parliaments.

01:09:19.200 | But you're gonna bring freedom

01:09:22.860 | or you're gonna minimize civilian casualties.

01:09:25.680 | So you drop the nuclear bomb,

01:09:27.600 | you eliminate the capitalism

01:09:29.720 | and you get famine, deportation,

01:09:34.720 | no constraints on executive power

01:09:37.320 | and not abundance, but shortages.

01:09:39.720 | And people say, well, that's not what Marx said.

01:09:43.360 | That's not what I said.

01:09:44.800 | I said I wanted to minimize civilian casualties.

01:09:47.780 | The nuclear bomb goes off

01:09:49.680 | and there's mass civilian casualties.

01:09:52.120 | And you keep saying, but I said,

01:09:54.960 | drop the bomb, but minimize civilian casualties.

01:09:58.560 | So that's where we are.

01:09:59.520 | That's history, not philosophy.

01:10:01.960 | I'm speaking about historical examples,

01:10:04.940 | all the cases that we have.

01:10:07.100 | Marx was not a theorist of inequality.

01:10:11.600 | Marx was a theorist of alienation,

01:10:14.240 | of dehumanization, of fundamental constraints

01:10:20.280 | or what he called fetters on productivity and on wealth,

01:10:25.880 | which he all attributed to capitalism.

01:10:29.420 | Marx wasn't bothered by inequality.

01:10:31.840 | He was bothered by something deeper, something worse.

01:10:35.620 | Those socialists who figured this out,

01:10:39.680 | who understood that if you drop the nuclear bomb,

01:10:44.520 | there was no way to minimize civilian casualties.

01:10:48.240 | Those socialists who came to understand

01:10:51.400 | that if you eliminated capitalism,

01:10:53.760 | markets, private property and parliaments,

01:10:56.920 | if you eliminated that, you wouldn't get freedom.

01:11:00.140 | Those Marxists, those socialists

01:11:03.340 | became what we would call social Democrats

01:11:07.100 | or people who would use the state to regulate the market,

01:11:11.740 | not to eliminate the market.

01:11:13.580 | They would use the state to redistribute income,

01:11:18.100 | not to destroy private property and markets.

01:11:21.780 | And so this in the Marxist schema was apostasy

01:11:26.580 | because they were accepting markets and private property.

01:11:30.040 | They were accepting alienation and wage slavery.

01:11:33.540 | They were accepting capitalism in principle,

01:11:36.980 | but they wanted to fix it.

01:11:38.460 | They wanted to ameliorate, they wanted to regulate.

01:11:41.980 | And so they became what was denounced as revisionists,

01:11:46.260 | not true Marxists, not real revolutionaries,

01:11:50.220 | but parliamentary road, parliamentarians.

01:11:54.380 | We know this as normal politics,

01:11:57.300 | normal social democratic politics from the European case

01:12:01.180 | or from the American case,

01:12:03.540 | but they are not asking to eliminate capitalism,

01:12:07.420 | blaming capitalism, blaming markets and private property.

01:12:11.740 | So this rift among the socialists,

01:12:15.080 | the ones who were for elimination of capitalism,

01:12:19.020 | transcending capitalism,

01:12:20.620 | otherwise you could never ever get to abundance

01:12:25.620 | and freedom in the Marxist schema,

01:12:28.100 | versus those who accept capitalism,

01:12:30.820 | but want to regulate and redistribute.

01:12:33.980 | That rift on the left has been with us

01:12:36.940 | almost from the beginning.

01:12:39.060 | It's a kind of civil war on the left

01:12:41.680 | between the Leninists and the social democrats

01:12:45.620 | or the revisionists as they're known pejoratively

01:12:48.500 | by the Leninists.

01:12:50.500 | We have the same confusion today in the world today,

01:12:55.460 | where people also cite Marx saying capitalism is a dead end,

01:13:00.460 | and we need to drop that nuclear bomb and get freedom,

01:13:06.240 | get no civilian casualties,

01:13:08.820 | versus those who say, yes, there are inequities,

01:13:13.780 | there's a lack of equality of opportunity.

01:13:18.180 | There are many other issues that we need to deal with,

01:13:20.700 | and we can fix those issues, we can regulate,

01:13:23.460 | we can redistribute.

01:13:24.980 | I'm not advocating this as a political position.

01:13:28.060 | I'm not taking a political position myself.

01:13:30.980 | I'm just saying that there's a confusion on the left

01:13:34.020 | between those who accept capitalism and want to regulate it,

01:13:38.100 | versus those who think capitalism is inherently evil,

01:13:41.360 | and if we eliminate it, we'll get to a better world,

01:13:44.340 | when in fact history shows

01:13:46.780 | that if you eliminate capitalism, you get to a worse world.

01:13:50.300 | The problems might be real, but the solutions are worse.

01:13:54.380 | - From history's lessons,

01:13:56.340 | now we have deep, painful lessons,

01:13:58.340 | but there's not that many of them.

01:14:00.700 | You know, our history is relatively short as a human species.

01:14:04.620 | Do we have a good answer on the left of Leninists,

01:14:09.420 | Marxists versus social democrat,

01:14:12.140 | versus capitalism versus any anarchy?

01:14:17.140 | You know, do we have sufficient samples from history

01:14:21.580 | to make better decisions about the future

01:14:23.740 | of our politics and economics?

01:14:25.500 | - For sure.

01:14:26.580 | We have the American Revolution,

01:14:29.100 | which was a revolution not about class, not about workers,

01:14:33.780 | not about a so-called universal class of the working class,

01:14:37.180 | elimination of capitalism, markets, and the bourgeoisie,

01:14:40.840 | but was about the category citizen.

01:14:42.980 | It was about universal humanity,

01:14:46.860 | where everyone in theory could be part of it as a citizen.

01:14:51.860 | The revolution fell short of its own ideals.

01:14:55.260 | Not everyone was a citizen.

01:14:57.160 | For example, if you didn't own property,

01:15:01.060 | you were a male but didn't own property,

01:15:03.100 | you didn't have full rights of a citizen.

01:15:05.860 | If you were a female, whether you owned property or not,

01:15:09.000 | you weren't a full citizen.

01:15:11.140 | If you were imported from Africa against your will,

01:15:15.940 | you were a slave and not a citizen.

01:15:17.900 | And so not everyone was afforded the rights in actuality

01:15:23.780 | that were declared in principle.

01:15:27.280 | However, over time, the category citizen could expand

01:15:32.100 | and slaves could be emancipated

01:15:35.420 | and they could get the right to vote.

01:15:37.140 | They could become citizens.

01:15:38.700 | Non-property owning males could get the right to vote

01:15:43.040 | and become full citizens.

01:15:44.520 | Females could get the right to vote

01:15:47.480 | and become full citizens.

01:15:49.180 | In fact, eventually my mother was able to get a credit card

01:15:53.460 | in her own name in the 1970s without my father

01:15:57.360 | having to co-sign the paperwork.

01:16:00.280 | It took a long time, but nonetheless,

01:16:03.180 | the category citizen can expand

01:16:05.920 | and it can become a universal category.

01:16:09.160 | So we have that, the citizen universal humanity model

01:16:14.160 | of the American Revolution, which was deeply flawed

01:16:18.600 | at the time it was introduced, but fixable over time.

01:16:22.920 | We also had that separation of powers

01:16:26.100 | and constraint on executive power

01:16:27.820 | that we began this conversation with.

01:16:30.120 | That was also institutionalized in the American Revolution

01:16:33.720 | because they were afraid of tyranny.

01:16:37.040 | They were afraid of unconstrained executive power.

01:16:40.920 | So they built a system that would contain that,

01:16:44.600 | constrain it institutionally, not circumstantially.

01:16:48.140 | So that's a great gift.

01:16:50.100 | Within that universal category of citizen,

01:16:54.100 | which has over time come closer

01:16:57.400 | to fulfilling its original promise,

01:16:59.920 | and within those institutional constraints,

01:17:02.680 | that separation of powers, constraint on executive power.

01:17:07.000 | Within that, we've developed

01:17:08.880 | what we might call normal politics, left-right politics.

01:17:13.720 | People can be in favor of redistribution

01:17:17.900 | and government action, and people can be in favor

01:17:21.680 | of small government, hands-off government,

01:17:25.800 | no redistribution or less redistribution.

01:17:29.320 | That's the normal left-right political spectrum

01:17:32.520 | where you respect the institutions

01:17:34.560 | and separation of powers,

01:17:36.120 | and you respect the universal category of citizenship

01:17:41.120 | and equality before the law and everything else.

01:17:43.680 | I don't see any problems with that whatsoever.

01:17:49.260 | I see that as a great gift, not just to this country,

01:17:53.120 | but around the world and other places

01:17:55.560 | besides the United States have developed this.

01:17:59.960 | The problems arise at the extremes,

01:18:03.280 | the far left and the far right,

01:18:05.920 | that don't recognize the legitimacy either of capitalism

01:18:10.040 | or of democratic rule of law institutions,

01:18:14.000 | and they wanna eliminate constraints on executive power.

01:18:17.620 | They wanna control the public sphere

01:18:19.600 | or diminish the independence of the media.

01:18:23.560 | They wanna take away markets or private property,

01:18:26.820 | and redistribution becomes something bigger

01:18:29.200 | than just redistribution.

01:18:30.600 | It becomes actually that original Marxist idea

01:18:34.920 | of transcending capitalism.

01:18:37.280 | So I'm not bothered by the left or the right.

01:18:40.700 | I think they're normal, and we should have that debate.

01:18:45.160 | We're a gigantic, diverse country

01:18:47.740 | of many different political points of view.

01:18:51.040 | I'm troubled only by the extremes

01:18:53.960 | that are against the system, class system,

01:18:57.400 | that wanna get rid of it, and supposedly

01:18:59.960 | that will be the bright path to the future.

01:19:03.600 | History tells us that the far left

01:19:05.600 | and the far right are wrong about that.

01:19:08.420 | But once again, this doesn't mean

01:19:10.440 | that you have to be a social democrat.

01:19:13.020 | You could be a libertarian.

01:19:15.320 | You could be a conservative.

01:19:17.260 | You could be a centrist.

01:19:19.040 | You could be conservative on some issues

01:19:21.960 | and liberal on other issues.

01:19:23.880 | All of that comes under what I would presume

01:19:26.120 | to be normal politics, and I see that

01:19:29.480 | as the important corrective mechanism,

01:19:31.600 | normal politics and market economies,

01:19:35.000 | non-monopolistic, open, free, and dynamic market economies.

01:19:40.000 | I don't like concentrations of power politically,

01:19:43.720 | and I don't like concentrations of power economically.

01:19:47.420 | I like competition in the political realm.

01:19:50.080 | I like competition in the economic realm.

01:19:52.660 | This is not perfect.

01:19:55.080 | It constantly needs to be protected and reinvented,

01:20:00.080 | and there are flaws that are fundamental

01:20:04.080 | and need to be adjusted and addressed and everything else,

01:20:07.520 | especially equality of opportunity.

01:20:10.680 | Equality of outcome is unreachable and is a mistake

01:20:15.680 | because it produces perverse and unintended consequences.

01:20:20.320 | Equality of outcome attempts,

01:20:23.400 | attempts to make people equal on the outcome side,

01:20:27.400 | but attempts to make them more equal on the front end,

01:20:31.100 | on the opportunity side, that's really, really important

01:20:34.480 | for a healthy society.

01:20:36.160 | That's where we've fallen down.

01:20:38.680 | Our schools are not providing equality of opportunity

01:20:43.240 | for the majority of people in all of our school systems,

01:20:48.240 | and so I see problems there.

01:20:51.400 | I see a need to invest in ourselves,

01:20:55.280 | invest in infrastructure, invest in human capital,

01:20:59.480 | create greater equality of opportunity,

01:21:02.680 | but also to make sure that we have good governance

01:21:05.920 | 'cause governance is the variable that enables you

01:21:09.000 | to do all these other things.

01:21:11.320 | - I've watched quite a bit, returning back to Putin.

01:21:14.800 | I've watched quite a few interviews with Putin

01:21:18.640 | and conversations, especially because I speak Russian

01:21:22.480 | fluently, I can understand.

01:21:24.160 | Often the translations lose a lot.

01:21:26.520 | I find the man putting morality aside

01:21:35.800 | very deep and interesting,

01:21:38.960 | and I found almost no interview with him

01:21:43.520 | to get at that depth.

01:21:46.840 | I was very hopeful for the Oliver Stone documentary

01:21:50.800 | and with him, and to me, 'cause I deeply respect

01:21:55.360 | Oliver Stone as a filmmaker in general,

01:21:58.040 | but it was a complete failure in my eyes, that interview.

01:22:01.440 | I mean, I suppose you could toss it up

01:22:07.400 | to a language barrier, but a complete lack

01:22:12.200 | of diving deep into the person is what I saw.

01:22:16.240 | So my question is a strange one,

01:22:17.840 | but if you were to sit down with Putin

01:22:20.360 | and have a conversation,

01:22:23.720 | or perhaps if you were to sit down with Stalin

01:22:28.040 | and have a conversation,

01:22:29.680 | what kind of questions would you ask?

01:22:31.720 | This wouldn't be televised, unless you want it to be.

01:22:36.400 | So this is only you, so you're allowed to ask

01:22:39.800 | about some of the questions that are

01:22:41.920 | sort of not socially acceptable.

01:22:46.320 | Meaning, putting morality aside,

01:22:48.560 | getting at the depth of the human character,

01:22:50.640 | what would you ask?

01:22:51.840 | - So once again, they're very different personalities

01:22:55.280 | and very different time periods and very different regimes.

01:22:58.080 | So what I would talk to Stalin about and Putin about

01:23:01.920 | are not in the same category, necessarily.

01:23:06.920 | So let's take Putin.

01:23:09.520 | So I would ask him where he thinks this is going,

01:23:15.160 | where he thinks Russia's gonna be in 25 years or 50 years.

01:23:20.160 | What's the long-term vision?

01:23:21.760 | What does he anticipate the current trends

01:23:25.160 | are gonna produce?

01:23:26.560 | Is he under the illusion that Russia is on the up swing,

01:23:31.560 | that things are actually going pretty well,

01:23:36.640 | that in 25 years, Russia's gonna still be a great power

01:23:40.640 | with a tremendous dynamic economy and a lot of high tech

01:23:44.920 | and a lot of human capital and wonderful infrastructure

01:23:49.200 | and a very high standard of living and a secure borders

01:23:54.200 | and sense of security at home?

01:23:56.280 | Does he think the current path is leading

01:23:58.080 | in that direction?

01:23:59.680 | And if not, if he understands that the current trajectory

01:24:04.680 | does not provide for those kinds of circumstances,

01:24:11.960 | does it bother him?

01:24:14.520 | Does he worry about that?

01:24:16.440 | Does he care about the future 25 or 50 years from now?

01:24:20.280 | - Deep down, what do you think his answer is?

01:24:22.360 | The honest answer.

01:24:23.200 | - Either he thinks he's on that trajectory already

01:24:26.160 | or he doesn't care about that long-term trajectory.

01:24:29.600 | So that's the mystery for me with him.

01:24:31.640 | He's clever.

01:24:33.280 | He has tremendous sources of information.

01:24:36.200 | He has great experience now as a world leader

01:24:38.960 | having served for effectively longer than Leonid Brezhnev's

01:24:44.840 | long 18 year reign.

01:24:46.680 | And so Putin has accumulated a great deal of experience

01:24:51.920 | at the highest level compared to where he started.

01:24:55.640 | And so I'm interested to understand how he sees

01:24:59.120 | this long-term evolution or non-evolution of Russia

01:25:03.880 | and whether he believes he's got them

01:25:07.800 | on the right trajectory or whether,

01:25:10.640 | if he doesn't believe that, he cares.

01:25:12.560 | I have no idea because I've never spoken to him about this,

01:25:15.520 | but I would love to hear the answer.

01:25:18.200 | Sometimes you have to ask questions not directly like that,

01:25:21.760 | but you have to come a little bit sideways.

01:25:24.080 | You can elicit answers from people

01:25:27.480 | by making them feel comfortable

01:25:29.120 | in coming sideways with them.

01:25:31.200 | - Anna, just a quick question.

01:25:33.040 | So that's talking about Russia, Putin's role in Russia.

01:25:38.000 | Do you think it's interesting to ask,

01:25:41.200 | and you could say the same for Stalin,

01:25:43.480 | the more personal question of how do you feel yourself

01:25:48.480 | about this whole thing, about your life, about your legacy,

01:25:53.520 | looking at the person that's one of the most powerful

01:25:58.080 | and important people in the history of civilization,

01:26:02.540 | both Putin and Stalin, you could argue.

01:26:04.560 | - Yeah.

01:26:05.400 | Once you experience power at that level,

01:26:08.960 | it becomes something that's almost necessary for you

01:26:12.400 | as a human being.

01:26:14.120 | It's a drug, it's an aphrodisiac, it's a feeling.

01:26:18.880 | You know, you go to the gym to exercise,

01:26:22.380 | and the endorphins, the chemicals get released,

01:26:26.440 | and even if you're tired or you're sore,

01:26:29.660 | you get this massive chemical change

01:26:32.960 | which has very dynamic effects on how you feel

01:26:37.040 | and the kind of level of energy you have

01:26:39.200 | for the rest of the day.

01:26:41.000 | And if you do that for a long time

01:26:42.960 | and then you don't do it for a while,

01:26:45.100 | you're like a drug addict not getting your fix.

01:26:49.700 | You miss it, your body misses that release of endorphins

01:26:53.240 | to a certain extent.

01:26:55.080 | That's how power works for people like Putin.

01:26:57.880 | That's how power works for people who run universities

01:27:01.760 | or are secretaries of state

01:27:03.720 | or run corporations, fill in the blank.

01:27:06.860 | In whatever ways power is exercised,

01:27:11.320 | it becomes almost a drug for people.

01:27:14.640 | It becomes something that's difficult for them to give up.

01:27:17.880 | It becomes a part of who they are.

01:27:20.280 | It becomes necessary for their sense of self and wellbeing.

01:27:24.700 | The greatest people, the people I admire the most,

01:27:29.040 | are the ones that can step away from power,

01:27:31.800 | can give it up, can give up the drug,

01:27:34.960 | can be satisfied, can be stronger even

01:27:39.240 | by walking away from continued power

01:27:41.680 | when they had the option to continue.

01:27:44.040 | So with a person like Putin,

01:27:47.600 | once again, I don't know him personally

01:27:49.880 | so I have no basis to judge this.

01:27:52.620 | This is a general statement observable with many people

01:27:57.620 | and in historical terms.

01:28:00.180 | With a person like Putin who's exercised

01:28:02.400 | this much power for this long,

01:28:05.040 | it's something that becomes a part of who you are

01:28:07.640 | and you have a hard time imagining yourself without it.

01:28:11.920 | You begin to conflate your personal power

01:28:14.560 | with the wellbeing of the nation.

01:28:17.120 | You begin to think that the more power you have,

01:28:19.480 | the better off the country is, this conflation.

01:28:22.840 | You begin to be able to not imagine.

01:28:27.840 | You can no longer imagine what it would be like

01:28:29.940 | just to be an ordinary citizen or an ordinary person

01:28:33.420 | running a company even,

01:28:35.380 | something much smaller than a country.

01:28:39.000 | So I anticipate that, without knowing for sure,

01:28:44.280 | that he would be in that category of person.

01:28:47.720 | But you'd wanna explore that with questions with him

01:28:51.840 | about, so what's his day look like from beginning to end?

01:28:56.840 | Just take me through a typical day of yours.

01:28:59.560 | What do you do in a day?

01:29:00.640 | How does it start?

01:29:02.200 | What are the ups?

01:29:03.020 | What are the downs?

01:29:03.920 | What are the parts of the day

01:29:05.040 | you look forward to the most?

01:29:07.260 | What are the parts of the day

01:29:08.400 | you don't look forward to that much?

01:29:10.920 | What do you consider a good day?

01:29:13.380 | What do you consider a bad day?

01:29:15.400 | How do you know that what you're doing

01:29:19.280 | is having the effects that you intend?

01:29:22.160 | How do you follow up?

01:29:23.680 | How do you gather the information, the reaction?

01:29:26.600 | How do you get people to tell you to your face

01:29:29.420 | things that they know are uncomfortable

01:29:32.000 | or that you might not wanna hear?

01:29:34.260 | Those kind of questions.

01:29:35.100 | - And through that window,

01:29:36.960 | through that kind of questioning,

01:29:38.400 | you get a window into a man with power.

01:29:41.040 | So let me ask about Stalin,

01:29:43.720 | 'cause you've done more research.

01:29:45.420 | In another amazing interview you've had,

01:29:49.340 | the introduction was that you know more about Stalin

01:29:55.640 | than Stalin himself.

01:29:57.840 | You've done an incredible amount of research on Stalin.

01:30:00.120 | So if you could talk to him, get sort of direct research,

01:30:04.960 | what questions would you ask of Stalin?

01:30:07.680 | - I have so many questions,

01:30:09.720 | I don't even know where I would begin.

01:30:12.240 | The thing about studying a person like Stalin,

01:30:15.300 | who's an immense creature, right?

01:30:18.040 | He's exercising the power of life and death

01:30:20.880 | over hundreds of millions of people.

01:30:23.400 | He's making decisions about novels and films

01:30:26.800 | and turbines and submarines and pacts with Hitler

01:30:31.800 | or deals with Churchill and Roosevelt

01:30:35.160 | and occupation of Mongolia or occupation of North Korea.

01:30:40.160 | He's making phenomenally consequential decisions

01:30:45.600 | over all spheres of life, all areas of endeavor

01:30:50.080 | and over much of the globe,

01:30:52.440 | much of the land mass of the earth.

01:30:56.280 | And so what's that like?

01:30:58.720 | Does he sometimes reflect on the amount of power

01:31:03.440 | and responsibility he has that he can exercise?

01:31:07.720 | Does he sometimes think about what it means

01:31:10.840 | that a single person has that kind of power?

01:31:13.880 | And does it have an effect on his relations with others,

01:31:18.080 | his sense of self, the kinds of things he values in life?

01:31:22.560 | Does he sometimes think it's a mistake

01:31:24.920 | that he's accumulated this much power?

01:31:27.320 | Does he sometimes wish he had a simpler life?

01:31:30.740 | Or is he once again so drunk, so enamored,

01:31:35.280 | so caught up with chemically and spiritually

01:31:40.280 | with exercising this kind of power

01:31:43.520 | that he couldn't live without it?

01:31:45.360 | And then what were you thinking, I would ask him,

01:31:48.520 | in certain decisions that he made?

01:31:51.120 | What were you thinking on certain dates

01:31:53.340 | and certain circumstances where you made a decision

01:31:56.720 | and could have made a different decision?

01:31:59.080 | Can you recall your thought processes?

01:32:02.320 | Can you bring the decision back?

01:32:04.200 | Was it seat of the pants?

01:32:06.040 | Was it something you'd been planning?

01:32:08.320 | Did you just improvise or did you have a strategy?

01:32:12.640 | What were you guided by?

01:32:14.760 | Whose examples did you look to?

01:32:17.100 | When you picked up these books that you read

01:32:19.200 | and you read the books and you made pencil marks in them,

01:32:22.320 | is it because you absorbed the lesson there?

01:32:24.860 | Or did it really not become a permanent lesson

01:32:27.880 | and it was just something that you checked

01:32:29.780 | and it was like a reflex?

01:32:32.300 | So I have many specific questions

01:32:35.120 | about many specific events and people and circumstances

01:32:39.260 | that I have tried to figure out

01:32:42.520 | with the surviving source materials

01:32:45.840 | that we have in abundance.

01:32:47.720 | But I would still like to delve into his mindset

01:32:51.080 | and reconstruct his mind.

01:32:53.800 | The closer you get to Stalin in some ways,

01:32:57.500 | the more elusive he can become.

01:32:59.300 | - And especially around World War II,

01:33:03.080 | you've already illuminated a lot of interesting aspects

01:33:06.120 | about Stalin's role in the war,

01:33:08.160 | but it'd be interesting to ask even more questions

01:33:11.240 | about how seat of the pants or deliberate

01:33:13.620 | some of the decisions have been.

01:33:15.480 | If I could ask just one quick question,

01:33:17.800 | one last quick question.

01:33:19.860 | (mouse clicking)

01:33:22.100 | And you're constrained in time in answering it.

01:33:25.220 | Do you think there will always be evil in the world?

01:33:28.660 | Do you think there will always be war?

01:33:30.560 | - Unfortunately, yes.

01:33:33.740 | There are conflicting interests,

01:33:35.860 | conflicting goals that people have.

01:33:39.360 | Most of the time,

01:33:41.300 | those conflicts can be resolved peacefully.

01:33:44.780 | That's why we build strong institutions,

01:33:47.540 | to resolve different interests and conflicts peacefully.

01:33:51.160 | But the fact, the enduring fact of conflicting interests

01:33:56.980 | and conflicting desires, that can never be changed.

01:34:03.900 | So the job that we have for humanity's sake

01:34:08.980 | is to make those conflicting interests,

01:34:12.900 | those conflicting desires,

01:34:16.140 | to put them in a context where they can be resolved

01:34:21.140 | peacefully and not in a zero sum fashion.

01:34:25.540 | So we can't get there on the global scale.

01:34:30.380 | So there's always gonna be the kind of conflict

01:34:34.260 | that sometimes gets violent.

01:34:35.960 | What we don't want is a conflict

01:34:40.460 | among the strongest powers.

01:34:43.060 | Great power conflict is unbelievably bad.

01:34:48.060 | There are no words to describe it.

01:34:50.240 | At least 55 million people died in World War II.

01:34:54.420 | If we have a World War III,

01:34:58.040 | a war between the United States and China

01:35:00.540 | or whatever it might be,

01:35:02.660 | who knows what the number could be?

01:35:04.900 | 155 million, 255 million, 555 million.

01:35:11.640 | I don't even wanna think about it.

01:35:13.880 | And so it's horrible when wars break out

01:35:17.200 | in the humanitarian catastrophes.

01:35:20.040 | For example, Yemen and Syria

01:35:23.240 | and several other places I could name today.

01:35:26.160 | It's just horrible what you see there.

01:35:28.520 | And the scale is colossal for those places.

01:35:32.000 | But it's not planetary scale.

01:35:34.560 | And so avoiding planetary scale destruction

01:35:38.520 | is really important for us.

01:35:40.880 | And so having those different interests

01:35:43.880 | be somehow managed in a way that they don't,

01:35:48.880 | that no one sees advantage in a violent resolution.

01:35:54.040 | - And a part of that is remembering history.

01:35:56.720 | So they should read your books.

01:35:58.400 | Stephen, thank you so much.

01:35:59.640 | It was a huge honor talking to you today.

01:36:01.320 | I really enjoyed it.

01:36:02.360 | - Thank you for the opportunity.

01:36:03.720 | My pleasure.

01:36:04.560 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

01:36:07.000 | with Stephen Kotkin.

01:36:08.200 | And thank you to our presenting sponsor, Cash App.

01:36:11.240 | Download it and use code LEXPODCAST.

01:36:14.120 | You'll get $10 and $10 will go to FIRST,

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01:36:24.040 | If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube,

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01:36:28.600 | support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter.

01:36:32.040 | And now let me leave you with words from Joseph Stalin.

01:36:36.040 | Spoken shortly before the death of Lenin

01:36:38.200 | and at the beginning of Stalin's rise to power.

01:36:41.400 | First, in Russian.

01:36:43.160 | (speaking in foreign language)

01:36:48.640 | I consider it completely unimportant

01:36:59.320 | who in the party will vote or how,

01:37:02.280 | but what is extraordinarily important

01:37:05.640 | is who will count the votes and how.

01:37:08.560 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

01:37:12.880 | (upbeat music)

01:37:15.480 | (upbeat music)

01:37:18.080 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Stephen Kotkin: Stalin, Putin, and the Nature of Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #63

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