back to indexStephen Kotkin: Stalin, Putin, and the Nature of Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #63
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The following is a conversation with Stephen Kotkin, a professor of history at Princeton
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University and one of the great historians of our time, specializing in Russian and Soviet
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He has written many books on Stalin and the Soviet Union, including the first two of a
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three volume work on Stalin, and he is currently working on volume three.
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You may have noticed that I've been speaking with not just computer scientists, but physicists,
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engineers, historians, neuroscientists, and soon much more.
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To me, artificial intelligence is much bigger than deep learning, bigger than computing.
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It is our civilization's journey into understanding the human mind and creating echoes of it in
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To me, that journey must include a deep historical and psychological understanding of power.
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Technology puts some of the greatest power in the history of our civilization into the
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hands of engineers and computer scientists.
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This power must not be abused.
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And the best way to understand how such abuse can be avoided is to not be blind to the lessons
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As Stephen Kotkin brilliantly articulates, Stalin was arguably one of the most powerful
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humans in history.
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I've read many books on Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin, and the wars of the 20th century.
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I hope you understand the value of such knowledge to all of us, especially to engineers and
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scientists who built the tools of power in the 21st century.
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This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.
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If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give it 5 stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,
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support on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman, spelled F R
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I recently started doing ads at the end of the introduction, I'll do one or two minutes
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after introducing the episode, and never any ads in the middle that can break the flow
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of the conversation.
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I hope that works for you and doesn't hurt the listening experience.
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And now, here's my conversation with Stephen Kotkin.
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Do all human beings crave power?
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Human beings crave security.
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They crave adventure.
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They crave power, but not equally.
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Some human beings nevertheless do crave power.
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What words is that deeply in the psychology of people?
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Is it something you're born with?
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Is it something you develop?
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Some people crave a position of leadership or of standing out, of being recognized, and
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that could be starting out in the school years on the schoolyard.
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It could be within their own family, not just in their peer group.
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Those kind of people we often see craving leadership positions from a young age often
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end up in positions of power.
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But they can be varied positions of power.
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You can have power in an institution where your power is purposefully limited.
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For example, there's a board or a consultative body or a separation of powers.
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Not everyone craves power whereby they're the sole power or they're their unconstrained
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That's a little bit less usual.
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We may think that everybody does, but not everybody does.
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Those people who do crave that kind of power, unconstrained, the ability to decide as much
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as life or death of other people, those people are not everyday people.
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They're not the people you encounter in your daily life for the most part.
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Those are extraordinary people.
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Most of them don't have the opportunity to live that dream.
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Very few of them, in fact, end up with the opportunity to live that dream.
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So percentage wise, in your sense, if we think of George Washington, for example, would most
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people given the choice of absolute power over a country versus maybe the capped power
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that the United States presidential role, at least at the founding of the country represented,
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what do you think most people would choose?
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Well, Washington was in a position to exercise far greater power than he did.
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And in fact, he didn't take that option.
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He was more interested in seeing institutionalization, of seeing the country develop strong institutions
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rather than an individual leader like himself have excess power.
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So that's very important.
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So like I said, not everyone craves unconstrained power, even if they're very ambitious.
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And of course, Washington was very ambitious.
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He was a successful general before he was a president.
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So that clearly comes from the influences on your life, where you grow up, how you grow
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up, how you raised, what kind of values are imparted to you along the way.
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You can understand power as the ability to share, or you can understand or the ability
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to advance something for the collective in a collective process, not an individual process.
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So power comes in many different varieties.
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And ambition doesn't always equate to despotic power.
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Right power is something different from ordinary institutional power that we see.
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The president of MIT does not have unconstrained power.
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The president of MIT rightly must consult with other members of the administration,
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with the faculty members, to a certain extent with the student body and certainly with the
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Those constraints make the institution strong and enduring and make the decisions better
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than they would be if he had unconstrained power.
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But you can't say that the president is not ambitious.
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Of course, the president is ambitious.
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We worry about unconstrained power.
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We worry about executive authority that's not limited.
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That's the definition of authoritarianism or tyranny.
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Unlimited or barely limited executive authority.
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Executive authority is necessary to carry out many functions.
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We all understand that.
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That's why MIT has an executive, has a president.
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But unlimited or largely unconstrained executive power is detrimental to even the person who
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exercises that power.
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So what do you think?
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It's an interesting notion.
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We kind of take it for granted that constraints on executive power is a good thing.
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But why is that necessarily true?
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So what is it about absolute power that does something bad to the human mind?
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So you know, the popular saying of absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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That the power in itself is the thing that corrupts the mind in some kind of way where
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it leads to a bad leadership over time?
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People make more mistakes when they're not challenged.
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When they don't have to explain things and get others to vote and go along with it.
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When they can make a decision without anybody being able to block their decision or to have
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input necessarily on their decision.
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You're more prone to mistakes.
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You're more prone to extremism.
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There's a temptation there.
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For example, we have separation of powers in the United States.
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The Congress, right, has authority that the president doesn't have.
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As for example, in budgeting, the so called power of the purse.
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This can be very frustrating.
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People want to see things happen and they complain that there's a do nothing Congress
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or that the situation is stalemated.
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But actually that's potentially a good thing.
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In fact, that's how our system was designed.
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Our system was designed to prevent things happening in government.
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And there's frustration with that, but ultimately that's the strength of the institutions we
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And so when you see unconstrained executive authority, there can be a lot of dynamism.
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A lot of things can get done quickly.
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But those things can be like, for example, what happened in China under Mao or what happened
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in the Soviet Union under Stalin or what happened in Haiti under Papa Doc and then Baby Doc
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or fill in the blank, right?
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What happens sometimes in corporations where a corporate leader is not constrained by the
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shareholders, by the board or by anything.
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And they can seem to be a genius for a while, but eventually it catches up to them.
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And so the idea of constraints on executive power is absolutely fundamental to the American
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system, American way of thinking.
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And not only America, obviously large other parts of the world that have a similar system,
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not an identical system, but a similar system of checks and balances on executive power.
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And so the case that I study, the only checks and balances on executive power are circumstantial.
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So for example, distances in the country, it's hard to do something over 5,000 miles
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or the amount of time in a day, it's hard for a leader to get to every single thing
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the leader wants to get to because there are only 24 hours in a day.
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Those are circumstantial constraints on executive power.
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They're not institutional constraints on executive power.
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One of the constraints on executive power that United States has versus Russia, maybe
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something you've implied and actually spoke directly to is there's something in the Russian
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people and the Soviet people that are attracted to authoritarian power, psychologically speaking,
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or at least the kind of leaders that sought authoritarian power throughout its history.
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And that desire for that kind of human is a lack of a constraint.
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In America, it seems as people, we desire somebody not like Stalin, somebody more like
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George Washington.
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So that's another constraint, the belief of the people, what they admire in a leader,
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what they seek in a leader.
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So maybe you can speak to, well, first of all, can you speak briefly to that psychology
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of, is there a difference between the Russian people and the American people in terms of
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just what we find attractive in a leader?
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Not as great a difference as it might seem.
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There are unfortunately many Americans who would be happy with an authoritarian leader
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It's by no means a majority.
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It's not even a plurality, but nonetheless, it's a real sentiment in the population.
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Sometimes because they feel frustrated because things are not getting done.
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Sometimes because they're against something that's happening in the political realm and
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they feel it has to be corrected and corrected quickly.
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It's a kind of impulse.
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People can regret the impulse later on, that the impulse is motivated by reaction to their
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In the Russian case, we have also people who crave, sometimes known as a strong hand, an
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iron hand, an authoritarian leader, because they want things to be done and be done more
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quickly that align with their desires.
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But I'm not sure it's a majority in the country today.
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Certainly in Stalin's time, this was a widespread sentiment and people had few alternatives
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that they understood or could appeal to.
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Nowadays in the globalized world, the citizens of Russia can see how other systems have constraints
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on executive power and the life isn't so bad there.
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In fact, the life might even be better.
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So the impatience, the impulsive quality, the frustration does sometimes in people reinforce
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their craving for the unconstrained executive to quote, get things done or shake things
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But in the Russian case, I'm not sure it's cultural today.
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I think it might be more having to do with the failures, the functional failures of the
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kind of political system that they tried to institute after the Soviet collapse.
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And so it may be frustration with the version of constraints on executive power they got
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and how it didn't work the way it was imagined, which has led to a sense in which nonconstrained
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executive power could fix things.
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But I'm not sure that that's a majority sentiment in the Russian case, although it's hard to
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measure because under authoritarian regimes, a public opinion is shaped by the environment
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in which people live, which is very constrained in terms of public opinion.
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But on that point, why at least from a distance does there seem to nevertheless be support
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for the current Russian president Vladimir Putin?
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Is that have to do with the fact that measuring, getting good metrics and statistics on support
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is difficult in authoritarian governments, or is there still something appealing to that
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kind of power to the people?
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I think we have to give credit to President Putin for understanding the psychology of
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the Russians to whom he appeals.
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Many of them were the losers in the transition from communism.
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They were the ones whose pensions were destroyed by inflation or whose salaries didn't go up
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or whose regions were abandoned.
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They were not the winners for the most part, and so I think there's an understanding on
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his part of their psychology.
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Putin has grown in the position.
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He was not a public politician when he first started out.
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He was quite poor in public settings.
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He didn't have the kind of political instincts that he has now.
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He didn't have the appeal to traditional values and the Orthodox Church and some of the other
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dimensions of his rule today.
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So yes, we have to give some credit to Putin himself for this in addition to the frustrations
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and the mass of the people.
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But let's think about it this way in addition, without taking away the fact that he's become
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a better retail politician over time and that sentiment has shifted because of the disappointments
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with the transition with the population.
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When I ask my kids, am I a good dad?
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My kids don't have any other dad to measure me against.
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I'm the only dad they know, and I'm the only dad they can choose or not choose.
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If they don't choose me, they still get me as dad, right?
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So with Putin today, he's the only dad that the Russian people have.
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Now, if my kids were introduced to alternative fathers, they might be better than me.
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They might be more loving, more giving, funnier, richer, whatever it might be.
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They might be more appealing.
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There are some blood ties there for sure that I have with my kids, but they would at least
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be able to choose alternatives and then I would have to win their favor in that constellation
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If President Putin were up against real alternatives, if the population had real choice and that
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choice could express itself and have resources and have media and everything else the way
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he does, maybe he would be very popular and maybe his popularity would not be as great
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as it currently is.
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So the absence of alternatives is another factor that reinforces his authority and his
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Having said that, there are many authoritarian leaders who deny any alternatives to the
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population and are not very popular.
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So denial of alternatives doesn't guarantee you the popularity.
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You still have to figure out the mass psychology and be able to appeal to it.
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So in the Russian case, the winners from the transition live primarily in the big cities
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and are self employed or entrepreneurial.
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Even if they're not self employed, they're able to change careers.
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They have tremendous skills and talent and education and knowledge as well as these entrepreneurial
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or dynamic personalities.
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Putin also appealed to them.
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He did that with Medvedev and it was a very clever ruse.
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He himself appealed to the losers from the transition, the small towns, the rural, the
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people who were not well off and he had them for the most part.
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We don't want to generalize to say that he had every one of them because those people
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have views of their own, sometimes in contradiction with the president of Russia.
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And then he appealed to the opposite people, the successful urban base through the so called
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reformer Medvedev, the new generation, the technically literate prime minister who for
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a time was president.
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And so that worked very successfully for Putin.
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He was able to bridge a big divide in the society and gain a greater mass support than
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he would otherwise have had by himself.
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That ruse only worked through the time that Medvedev was temporarily president for a few
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years because of the Constitution, Putin couldn't do three consecutive terms and stepped aside
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in what they call castling in chess.
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When this was over, Putin had difficulty with his popularity.
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There were mass protests in the urban areas, precisely that group of the population that
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he had been able to win in part because of the Medvedev castling and now had had their
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delusions exposed and were disillusioned, and there were these mass protests in the
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urban areas, not just in the capital, by the way.
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And Putin had to, as it were, come up with a new way to fix his popularity, which happened
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to be the annexation of Crimea, from which he got a very significant bump.
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However, the trend is back in the other direction.
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It's diminishing again, although it's still high relative to other leaders around the
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So I wouldn't say that he's unpopular with the mass in Russia.
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There is some popularity there, there is some success, but I would say it's tough for us
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to gauge because of the lack of alternatives.
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And Putin is unpopular inside the state administration.
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At every level, the bureaucracy of the leadership.
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Because those people are well informed, and they understand that the country is declining,
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that the human capital is declining, the infrastructure is declining, the economy is not really growing,
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it's not really diversifying, Russia's not investing in its future.
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The state officials understand all of that, and then they see that the Putin clique is
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stealing everything in sight.
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So between the failure to invest in a future and the corruption of a narrow group around
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the president, there's disillusionment in the state apparatus because they see this
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more clearly or more closely than the mass of the population.
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They can't necessarily yet oppose this in public because they're people, they have families,
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they have careers, they have children who want to go to school or want a job.
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And so there are constraints on their ability to oppose the regime based upon what we might
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call cowardice or other people might call realism.
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I don't know how courageous people can be when their family, children, career are on
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So it's very interesting dynamic to see the disillusionment inside the government with
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the president, which is not yet fully public for the most part, but could become public.
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And once again, if there's an alternative, if an alternative appears, things could shift
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And that alternative could come from inside the regime.
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From inside the regime.
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But the leadership, the party, the people that are now, as you're saying, opposed to
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Putin, nevertheless, maybe you can correct me, but it feels like there's, structurally
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is deeply corrupt.
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So each of the people we're talking about are, don't feel like a George Washington.
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Once again, the circumstances don't permit them to act that way necessarily, right?
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George Washington did great things, but in certain circumstances.
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A lot of the state officials in Russia for certain are corrupt.
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There's no question.
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Many of them, however, are patriotic and many of them feel badly about where the country
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They would prefer that the country was less corrupt.
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They would prefer that there were greater investment in all sorts of areas of Russia.
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They might even themselves steal less if they could be guaranteed that everybody else would
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There's a deep and abiding patriotism inside Russia, as well as inside the Russian regime.
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So they understand that Putin in many ways rescued the Russian state from the chaos of
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They understand that Russia was in very bad shape as an incoherent failing state almost
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when Putin took over and that he did some important things for Russia's stability and
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There's also some appreciation that Putin stood up to the West and stood up to more
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powerful countries and regained a sense of pride and maneuverability for Russia in the
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international system.
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People appreciate that and it's real.
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It's not imagined that Putin accomplished that.
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The problem is the methods that he accomplished it with.
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He used the kind of methods, that is to say, taking other people's property, putting other
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people in jail for political reasons.
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He used the kind of methods that are not conducive to long term growth and stability.
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So he fixed the problem, but he fixed the problem and then created even bigger long
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term problems potentially.
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And moreover, all authoritarian regimes that use those methods are tempted to keep using
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them and using them and using them until they're the only ones who are the beneficiaries and
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the group narrows and narrows.
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The elite gets smaller and narrower.
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The interest groups get excluded from power and their ability to continue enjoying the
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fruits of the system and the resentment grows.
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And so that's the situation we have in Russia is a place that is stuck.
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It was to a certain extent rescued.
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It was rescued with methods that were not conducive to long term success and stability.
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The rescue you're referring to is the sort of the economic growth when Putin first took
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Yes, they had 10 years.
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They had a full decade of an average of 7% growth a year, which was phenomenal and is
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not attributable predominantly to oil prices.
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During President Putin's first term as president, the average price of oil was $35 a barrel.
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During his second term as president, the average price was $70 a barrel.
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So during those two terms, when Russia was growing at about 7% a year, oil prices were
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averaging somewhere around $50 a barrel, which is fine, but is not the reason because later
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on when oil prices were over $100 a barrel, Russia stagnated.
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So the initial growth, do you think Putin deserves some credit for that?
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Yes, he does because he introduced some important liberalizing measures.
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He allowed land to be bought and sold.
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He deregulated many areas of the economy.
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And so there was a kind of entrepreneurial burst that was partly attributable, partly
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attributable to government policy during his first term.
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But also he was consolidating political power.
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And as I said, the methods he used overall for the long term were not able to continue
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sustain that success.
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In addition, we have to remember that China played a really big role in the success of
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Russia in the first two terms of Putin's presidency because China's phenomenal growth created
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insatiable demand for just about everything that the Soviet Union used to produce.
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So fertilizers, cement, fill in the blank, chemicals, metals, China had insatiable demand
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for everything the Soviet Union once produced.
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And so China's raising of global demand overall brought Soviet era industry back from the
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And so there was something that happened.
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Soviet era industry fell off a cliff in the 1990s.
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There was a decline in manufacturing and industrial production greater than in the Great Depression
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But a lot of that came back online in the 2000s.
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And that had to do with China's phenomenal growth.
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The trade between China and Russia was not always direct.
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So this was an indirect effect.
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But raising global prices for the commodities and the products, the kind of lower end, lower
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value products in manufacturing, not high end stuff, but lower end stuff like steel
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or iron or cement or fertilizer, where the value added is not spectacular, but nonetheless,
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which had been destroyed by the 1990s and after the Soviet collapse, this was brought
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Now, you can do that once.
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You can bring Soviet era industry back to life once.
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And that happened during Putin's first two terms, in addition to the liberalizing policies,
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which spurred entrepreneurialism in some small and medium business.
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The crash of the ruble in 1998, which made Russian products much cheaper abroad and made
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imports much more expensive, also facilitated the resuscitation, the revival of domestic
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So all of this came together for that spectacular 10 year, 7% on average economic growth.
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And moreover, people's wages after inflation, their disposable income grew more even than
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So disposable income after inflation, that is real income, was growing greater than 7%.
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In some cases, 10% a year.
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So there was a boom, and the Russian people felt it, and it happened during Putin's first
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two terms, and people were grateful, rightly so, for that.
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And those who don't want to give Putin credit, give oil prices all the credit.
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But I don't think that oil prices can explain this.
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Having said that, that doesn't mean that this was sustainable over the long term.
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So you've briefly mentioned, sort of implying the possibility, you know, Stalin held power
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for, let's say, 30 years.
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You briefly mentioned that as a question, will Putin be able to beat that record, to
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So can you talk about your sense of, is it possible that Putin holds power for that kind
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Let's hope not for Russia's sake.
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The primary victims of President Putin's power are Russians.
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They're not Ukrainians, although to a certain extent, Ukraine has suffered because of Putin's
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And they're not Americans, they're Russians.
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Moreover, Russia has lost a great deal of human talent.
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Tens of millions of people have left Russia since 1991 overall.
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Somewhere between five and 10 million people have left the country and are beyond the borders
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of the former Soviet Union.
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So they left the Soviet space entirely.
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Moreover, the people who left are not the poor people.
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They're not the uneducated.
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They're not the losers.
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The people who've left are the more dynamic parts of the population.
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The better educated, the more entrepreneurial.
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So that human capital loss that Russia has suffered is phenomenal.
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And in fact, right here where we're sitting at MIT, we have examples of people who are
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qualified good enough for MIT and have left Russia to come to MIT.
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You're looking at one of them.
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And the other aspect, just to quickly comment, is those same people like me, I'm not welcome
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No, you're not under the current regime.
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It was a big loss for Russia if you're patriotic, but not from the point of view of the Putin
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That has to do, also factors into popularity.
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If the people who don't like you leave, they're not there to complain, to protest, to vote
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And so your opposition declines when you let them leave.
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However, it's very costly in human capital terms.
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Hemorrhaging that much human capital is damaging, it's self damaging.
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And we've seen it accelerate.
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It was already high, but we've seen it accelerate in the last seven to eight years of President
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And those people are not going back of their own volition.
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But even if they wanted to go back, as you just said, they'd be unwelcome.
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That's a big cost to pay for this regime.
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And so whatever benefits this regime might or might not have given to the country, the
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disadvantages, the downside, the costs are also really high.
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So we don't want Putin lasting in power as long as Stalin.
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It would be better if Russia were able to choose among options, to choose a new leader
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Many people speculate that President Putin will name a successor the way Yeltsin named
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Putin as his successor, President Boris Yeltsin.
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And then Putin will leave the stage and allow the successor to take over.
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That might seem like a good solution, but once again, we don't need a system where you
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hang on for as long as possible and then nominate who's going to take over.
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We need a system that has the kind of corrective mechanisms that democracies and markets have
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along with rule of law.
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A corrective mechanism is really important because all leaders make mistakes.
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But when you can't correct for the mistakes, then the mistakes get compounded.
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Putin could well, he seems to be healthy, he could well last as many years as Stalin.
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It's hard to predict because events intercede sometimes and create circumstances that are
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unforeseen and leaders get overthrown or have a heart attack or whatever.
link |
There's a palace insurrection where ambitious leaders on the inside for both personal power
link |
and patriotic reasons try to push aside an aging leader.
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There are many scenarios in which Putin could not last that long, but unfortunately, right
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now, you could also imagine potentially him lasting that long, which as I said, is not
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an outcome if you're patriotic about Russia, it's not an outcome you would wish out to
link |
It's, I guess, a very difficult question, but what practically do you feel is a way
link |
out of the Putin regime, is a way out of the corruption that's deeply underlies the state?
link |
Is a, if you look from a history perspective, is a revolution required?
link |
Is violence required?
link |
Is from violence within or external to the country?
link |
Do you see, or is a powerful, is a inspiring leader enough to step in and bring democracy
link |
and kind of the free world to Russia?
link |
So Russia is not a failed country.
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It's a middle income country with tremendous potential and has proven many times in the
link |
past that when it gets in a bad way, it can reverse its trajectory.
link |
Moreover, violence is rarely ever a solution.
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Violence rarely, it may break an existing trend, but it's rare that violence produces
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a nonviolent, sustainable, positive outcome.
link |
It happens, but it doesn't happen frequently.
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Mental upheaval is not a way always to institutionalize a better path forward because you need institutions.
link |
People can protest as they did throughout the Middle East, and the protests didn't necessarily
link |
lead to better systems because the step from protest to new, strong, consolidated institutions
link |
is a colossal leap, not a small step.
link |
What we need and what we see from history and situations like this is a group within
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the power structures, which is a patriotic that sees things going down.
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That is to say that sees things not being developing relative to neighbors, relative
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to richer countries, relative to more successful countries, and they want to change the trajectory
link |
And if they can, in a coalition fashion, unseat the current regime for a new power sharing
link |
arrangement, which once again can be frustrating because you can't do changes immediately,
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you can't do things overnight, but that's the point.
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Constraints on your ability to change everything immediately and to force change overnight
link |
is what leads to long term success potentially.
link |
That's the sustainability of change.
link |
So Russia needs stronger institutions.
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It needs court system as well as democratic institutions.
link |
It needs functioning, open, dynamic markets rather than monopolies.
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It needs meritocracy and banks to award loans on the basis of business plans, not on the
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basis of political criteria or corrupt bribery or whatever it might be.
link |
So Russia needs those kind of functioning institutions that take time, are sometimes
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slow, don't lead to a revolutionary transformation, but lead to potentially long term sustainable
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growth without upheaval, without violence, without getting into a situation where all
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of a sudden you need a miracle again.
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Every time Russia seems to need a miracle, and that's the problem, the solution would
link |
be not needing a miracle.
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Now having said that, the potential is there.
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The civilization that we call Russia is amazingly impressive.
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It has delivered world class culture, world class science.
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It's a great power.
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It's not a great power with a strong base right now, but nonetheless it is a great power
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as it acts in the world.
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So I wouldn't underestimate Russia's abilities here and I wouldn't write off Russia.
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I don't see it under the current regime, a renewal of the country.
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But if we can have from within the regime an evolution rather than a revolution in a
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positive direction, and maybe get a George Washington figure who is strong enough to
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push through institutionalization rather than personalism.
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So if I could ask about one particular individual, it'd be just interesting to get your comment,
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but also as a representative of potential leaders, I just on this podcast talked to
link |
Gary Kasparov, who I'm not sure if you're familiar with his, his ongoings.
link |
So besides being a world class chess player, he's also a very outspoken activist, sort
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of seeing Putin, truly seeing Putin as an enemy of the free world of democracy, of balanced
link |
government in Russia.
link |
What do you think of people like him specifically, or just people like him trying as leaders
link |
to step in, to run for president, to symbolize a new chapter in Russia's future?
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So we don't need individuals.
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Some individuals are very impressive and they have courage and they protest and they criticize
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and they organize.
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We need institutions.
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We need a Duma or a parliament that functions.
link |
We need a court system that functions.
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That is to say where there are a separation of powers, impartial professional civil service,
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impartial professional judiciary.
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Those are the things Russia needs.
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It's rare that you get that from an individual, no matter how impressive, right?
link |
We had Andrei Sakharov, who was an extraordinary individual, who developed the hydrogen bomb
link |
under a Soviet regime, was a world class physicist, was then upset about how his scientific knowledge
link |
and scientific achievements were being put to use and rebelled to try to put limits,
link |
constraints, civilizing humane limits and constraints on some of the implications of
link |
his extraordinary science.
link |
But Sakharov, even if he had become the leader of the country, which he did not become, he
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was more of a moral or spiritual leader, it still wouldn't have given you a judiciary.
link |
It still wouldn't have given you a civil service.
link |
It still wouldn't have given you a Duma or functioning parliament.
link |
You need a leader in coalition with other leaders.
link |
You need a bunch of leaders, a whole group, and they have to be divided a little bit so
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that not one of them can destroy all the others.
link |
And they have to be interested in creating institutions, not solely or predominantly
link |
in their personal power.
link |
And so I have no objection to outstanding individuals and to the work that they do.
link |
But I think in institutional terms, and they need to think that way too in order to be
link |
So if we go back to the echoes of that after the Russian Revolution with Stalin, with Lenin
link |
and Stalin, maybe you can correct me, but there was a group of people there in that
link |
same kind of way looking to establish institutions that were beautifully built around an ideology
link |
that they believed is good for the world.
link |
So sort of echoing that idea of what we're talking about, what Russia needs now, can
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you, first of all, you've described a fascinating thought, which is Stalin is having amassed
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arguably more power than any man in history, which is an interesting thing to think about.
link |
But can you tell about his journey to getting that power after the Russian Revolution?
link |
How does that perhaps echo to our current discussion about institutions and so on?
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And just in general, the story I think is fascinating of how one man is able to get
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more power than any other man in history.
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It is a great story, not necessarily from a moral point of view, but if you're interested
link |
in power, for sure it's an incredible story.
link |
So we have to remember that Stalin is also a product of circumstances, not solely his
link |
own individual drive, which is very strong.
link |
For example, World War I breaks the czarist regime, the czarist order, imperial Russian
link |
Stalin has no participation whatsoever in World War I.
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He spends World War I in exile in Siberia.
link |
Until the downfall of the czarist autocracy in February 1917, Stalin is in Eastern Siberian
link |
He's only able to leave Eastern Siberia when that regime falls.
link |
He never fights in the war.
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He's called up briefly towards the end of the war and is disqualified on physical grounds
link |
because of physical deformities from being drafted.
link |
The war continues after the czarist regime has been toppled in the capital and there's
link |
been a revolution.
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The war continues and that war is very radicalizing.
link |
The peasants begin to seize the land after the czar falls, essentially destroying much
link |
of the gentry class.
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Stalin has nothing to do with that.
link |
The peasants have their own revolution, seizing the land, not in law, but in fact, de facto
link |
not de jure land ownership.
link |
So there are these really large processes underway that Stalin is alive during, but
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The most improbable thing happens, which is a very small group of people around the figure
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of Vladimir Lenin announces that it has seized power.
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Now by this time in October 1917, the government that has replaced the czar, the so called
link |
provisional government, has failed.
link |
And so there's not so much power to seize from the provisional government.
link |
What Lenin does is he does a coup on the left.
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That is to say, Soviets or councils, as we would call them in English, which represent
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people's power or the masses participating in politics, a kind of radical grassroots
link |
democracy are extremely popular all over the country and not dominated by any one group,
link |
but predominantly socialist or predominantly leftist.
link |
Russia has an election during the war, a free and fair election for the most part, despite
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the war at the end of 1917, in December 1917, and three quarters plus of the country votes
link |
socialist in some form or another.
link |
So the battle was over the definition of socialism and who had the right to participate in defining
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socialism, not only what it would be, but who had the right to decide.
link |
So there's a coup by Lenin's group known as the Bolsheviks against all the other socialists.
link |
And so Lenin declares a seizure of power whereby the old government has failed, people's power,
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the councils known as the Soviets are going to take their place, and Lenin seizes power
link |
in the name of the Soviets.
link |
So it's a coup against the left, against the rest of the left, not against the provisional
link |
government that has replaced the czar, which has already failed.
link |
And so Stalin is able to come to power along with Lenin in this crazy seizure of power
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on the left against the rest of the left in October 1917, which we know is the October
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Revolution, and I call the October coup as many other historians call.
link |
The October Revolution happened after the seizure of power.
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What's interesting about this episode is that the leftists who seize power in the name of
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the Soviets, in the name of the masses, in the name of people's power, they retain their
link |
Many times in history, there's a seizure of power by the left, and they fail.
link |
They're cleaned out by an army or what we call forces of order, by counter revolutionary
link |
Lenin's revolution, Lenin's coup is successful.
link |
It is able to hold power, not just seize power.
link |
They win a civil war, and they're entrenched in the heart of the country already by 1921.
link |
Stalin is part of that group.
link |
Lenin needs somebody to run.
link |
This new regime in the kind of nitty gritty way, Lenin is the leader, the undisputed leader
link |
in the Bolshevik party, which changes their name to communists in 1918.
link |
He makes Stalin the general secretary of the communist party.
link |
He creates a new position, which hadn't existed before, a kind of day to day political manager,
link |
Not because Lenin is looking to replace himself.
link |
He's looking to institutionalize a helpmate, a right hand man.
link |
He does this in the spring of 1922.
link |
Stalin is named to this position, which Lenin has created expressly for Stalin.
link |
So there has been a coup on the left whereby the Bolsheviks who become communists have
link |
seized power against the rest of the socialists and anarchists and the entire left.
link |
And then there's an institutionalization of a position known as general secretary of the
link |
communist party, right hand man of Lenin.
link |
Less than six weeks after Lenin has created this position and installed Stalin, Lenin
link |
has a stroke, a major stroke, and never really returns as a full actor to power before he
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dies of a fourth stroke in January 1924.
link |
So a position is created for Stalin to run things on Lenin's behalf.
link |
And then Lenin has a stroke.
link |
And so Stalin now has this new position general secretary, but he's the right hand of a person
link |
who's no longer exercising day to day control over affairs.
link |
Stalin then uses this new position to create a personal dictatorship inside the Bolshevik
link |
dictatorship, which is the remarkable story I tried to tell.
link |
So is there anything nefarious about any of what you just described?
link |
So it seems conveniently that the position is created just for Stalin.
link |
There was a few other brilliant people, arguably more brilliant than Stalin in the vicinity
link |
Why was Stalin chosen?
link |
Why did Lenin all of a sudden fall ill?
link |
It's perhaps a conspiratorial question, but is there anything nefarious about any of this
link |
historical trajectory to power that Stalin took in creating the personal dictatorship?
link |
So history is full of contingency and surprise.
link |
After something happens, we all think it's inevitable.
link |
It had to happen that way.
link |
Everything was leading up to it.
link |
So Hitler seizes power in Germany in 1933, and the Nazi regime gets institutionalized
link |
by several of his moves after being named chancellor.
link |
And so all German history becomes a story of the Nazi rise to power, Hitler's rise to
link |
Every trend tendency is bent into that outcome.
link |
Things which don't seem related to that outcome all of a sudden get bent in that direction.
link |
And other trends that were going on are no longer examined because they didn't lead to
link |
But Hitler's becoming chancellor of Germany in 1933 was not inevitable.
link |
It was contingent.
link |
He was offered the position by the traditional conservatives.
link |
He's part of the radical right and the traditional right named him chancellor.
link |
The Nazi party never outright won an election that was free and fair before Hitler came
link |
And in fact, its votes on the eve of Hitler becoming chancellor declined relative to the
link |
previous election.
link |
So there's contingency in history, and so Lenin's illness, his stroke, the neurological
link |
and blood problems that he had were not a structure in history.
link |
In other words, if Lenin had been a healthier figure, Stalin might never have become the
link |
Stalin that we know.
link |
That's not to say that all history is accidental, just that we need to relate the structural,
link |
the larger structural factors to the contingent factors.
link |
Why did Lenin pick Stalin?
link |
Well, Stalin was a very effective organizer, and the position was an organizational position.
link |
Stalin could get things done.
link |
He would carry out assignments no matter how difficult.
link |
He wouldn't complain that it was hard work or too much work.
link |
He wouldn't go off womanizing and drinking and ignore his responsibilities.
link |
Lenin chose Stalin among other options because he thought Stalin was the better option.
link |
Once again, he wasn't choosing his successor because he didn't know he was going to have
link |
Lenin had some serious illnesses, but he had never had a major stroke before.
link |
So the choice was made based upon Stalin's organizational skills and promise against
link |
the others who were in the regime.
link |
Now, they can seem more brilliant than Stalin, but he was more effective, and I'm not sure
link |
they were very brilliant.
link |
Well, he was exceptionally competent actually at the tasks for running a government, the
link |
executive branch, right, of a dictator.
link |
He turned out to be very adept at being a dictator.
link |
And so if he had been chosen by Lenin and had not been very good, he would have been
link |
pushed aside by others.
link |
You can get a position by accident.
link |
You can be named because you're someone's friend or someone's relative, but to hold
link |
that position, to hold that position in difficult circumstances, and then to build effectively
link |
a superpower on all that bloodshed, right, you have to be skilled in some way.
link |
It can't be just the accident that brings you to power because if accident brings you
link |
to power, it won't last.
link |
Just like we discovered with Putin, he had some qualities that we didn't foresee at the
link |
beginning, and he's been able to hold power, not just be named.
link |
Now, Putin and Stalin are very different people.
link |
These are very different regimes.
link |
I wouldn't put them in the same sentence.
link |
My point is not that one resembles the other.
link |
My point is that when people come to power for contingent reasons, they don't stay in
link |
power unless they're able to manage it.
link |
And Stalin was able to build a personal dictatorship inside that dictatorship.
link |
He was cunning, he was ruthless, and he was a workaholic.
link |
He was very diligent.
link |
He had a phenomenal memory, and so he could remember people's names and faces and events.
link |
And this was very advantageous for him as he built the machine that became the Soviet
link |
state and bureaucracy.
link |
One of the things, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, what you've made me realize
link |
is this wasn't some kind of manipulative personality trying to gain more power solely, like kind
link |
of an evil picture of a person, but he truly believed in communism.
link |
As far as I can understand, again, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but he wanted to
link |
build a better world by infusing communism into the country, perhaps into the whole world.
link |
So maybe my question is what role does communism as an idea, as an ideology play in all of
link |
What was the power in the people of the time, in the Russian people, actually just the whole
link |
Stalin was a true believer, and this is very important.
link |
He was also hungry for power and for personal power, but just as you said, not for power's
link |
sake, not only for power.
link |
He was interested in enacting communism in reality and also in building a powerful state.
link |
He was a statist, a traditional Russian statist in the imperial sense, and this won him a
link |
The fact that they knew he was a hardcore true believing communist won him a lot of
link |
followers among the communists, and the fact that he was a hardcore defender of Russian
link |
state interests now in the Soviet guise also won him a lot of followers.
link |
Sometimes those groups overlapped, the communists and the Russian patriots, and sometimes they
link |
were completely different groups, but both of them shared an admiration for Stalin's
link |
dedication to those goals and his abilities to enact them.
link |
And so it's very important to understand that however thirsty he was for power, and he was
link |
very thirsty for power, that he was also driven by ideals.
link |
Now I don't necessarily think that everyone around Stalin shared those ideals.
link |
We have to be careful not to make everybody into a communist true believer, not to make
link |
everybody into a great statist Russian patriot, but they were widespread and powerful attractions
link |
for a lot of people.
link |
And so Stalin's ability to communicate to people that he was dedicated to those pursuits
link |
and his ability to drive towards them were part of his appeal.
link |
Where he also resorted to manipulation, he also resorted to violence, he lied, he spoke
link |
out of all sides of his mouth, he slandered other people, he sabotaged potential rivals.
link |
He used every underhanded method, and then some, in order to build his personal dictatorship.
link |
Now he justified this, as you said, by appeals to communism and to Soviet power.
link |
To himself as well too.
link |
To himself and to others.
link |
And so he justified it in his own mind and to others, but certainly any means, right,
link |
were acceptable to him to achieve these ends.
link |
And he identified his personal power with communism and with Russian glory in the world.
link |
So he felt that he was the only one who could be trusted, who could be relied upon to build
link |
Now, we put ourselves back in that time period.
link |
The Great Depression was a very difficult time for the capitalist system.
link |
There was mass unemployment, a lot of hardship, fascism, Nazism, Imperial Japan.
link |
There were a lot of associations that were negative with the kind of capitalist system
link |
that was not a hundred percent, not a monolith, but had a lot of authoritarian incarnations.
link |
There was imperialism, colonies that even the democratic rule of law capitalist states
link |
had non democratic, non rule of law colonies under their rule.
link |
So the image and reality of capitalism during that time period between World War I and World
link |
War II was very different from how it would become later.
link |
And so in that time period, in that interwar conjuncture after World War I, before World
link |
War II, communism held some appeal inside the Soviet Union for sure, but even outside
link |
the Soviet Union because the image and reality of capitalism disappointed many people.
link |
Now, in the end, communism was significantly worse.
link |
Many more victims and the system of course would eventually implode.
link |
But nonetheless, there were real problems that communism tried to address.
link |
It didn't solve those problems.
link |
It was not a solution, but it didn't come out of nowhere.
link |
It came out of the context of that interwar period.
link |
And so Stalin's rule, some people saw it as potentially a better option than imperialism,
link |
fascism and Great Depression.
link |
Having said that, they were wrong.
link |
It turned out that Stalin wasn't a better alternative to markets and private property
link |
and rule of law and democracy.
link |
However, that didn't become clearer to people until after World War II, after Nazism had
link |
been defeated, Imperial Japan had been defeated, a fascist Italy had been defeated and decolonization
link |
had happened around the world, and there was a middle class economic boom in the period
link |
from the late 40s through the 70s that created a kind of mass middle class in many societies.
link |
So capitalism rose from the ashes as it were, and this changed the game for Stalin and communism.
link |
Capitalism is about an alternative to capitalism, and if that alternative is not superior, there's
link |
no reason for communism to exist.
link |
But if capitalism is in foul odor, if people have a bad opinion, a strong critique of capitalism,
link |
there can be appeal to alternatives, and that's kind of what happened with Stalin's rule.
link |
But after World War II, the context changed a lot, capitalism was very different, much
link |
more successful, nonviolent compared to what it was in the interwar period.
link |
And the Soviet Union had a tough time competing against that new context.
link |
Now today we see similarly that the image and reality of capitalism is on the question
link |
again, which leads some people to find an answer in socialism as an alternative.
link |
So you just kind of painted a beautiful picture of comparison.
link |
This is the way we think about ideologies because we, is what's working better.
link |
Do you separate in your mind the ideals of communism to the Stalinist implementation
link |
of communism, and again, capitalism and American implementation of capitalism?
link |
And as we look at now the 21st century where, yes, this idea of socialism being a potential
link |
political system that we would, or economic system we would operate under in the United
link |
States rising up again as an idea.
link |
So how do we think about that again in the 21st century, about these ideas, fundamental
link |
deep ideas of communism and capitalism?
link |
Yeah, so in the Marxist schema, there was something called feudalism, which was supposedly
link |
destroyed by the bourgeoisie who created capitalism.
link |
And then the working class was supposed to destroy capitalism and create socialism.
link |
But socialism wasn't the end stage.
link |
The end stage was going to be communism.
link |
So that's why the communist party in the Soviet Union first built socialism transcending capitalism.
link |
The next stage was socialism and the end game, the final stage was communism.
link |
So their version of socialism was derived from Marx.
link |
And Marx argued that the problem was capitalism had been very beneficial for a while.
link |
It had produced greater wealth and greater opportunity than feudalism had.
link |
But then it had come to serve only the narrow interests of the so called bourgeoisie or
link |
the capitalists themselves.
link |
And so for humanity's sake, the universal class, the working class needed to overthrow
link |
capitalism in order for greater productivity, greater wealth to be produced for all of humanity
link |
to flourish and on a higher level.
link |
So you couldn't have socialism unless you destroyed capitalism.
link |
So that meant no markets, no private property, no so called parliaments or bourgeois parliaments
link |
as they were called.
link |
So you got socialism in Marx's schema by transcending, by eliminating capitalism.
link |
Now Marx also called for freedom.
link |
He said that this elimination of markets and private property and bourgeois parliaments
link |
would produce greater freedom in addition to greater abundance.
link |
However, everywhere this was tried, it produced tyranny and mass violence, death and shortages.
link |
Everywhere it was tried.
link |
There's no exception in historical terms.
link |
And so it's very interesting.
link |
Marx insisted that capitalism had to be eliminated.
link |
You couldn't have markets.
link |
Markets were chaos.
link |
You needed planning.
link |
You couldn't have hiring of wage labor.
link |
That was wage slavery.
link |
You couldn't have private property because that was a form of theft.
link |
So in the Marxist scheme, somehow you were going to eliminate capitalism and get to freedom.
link |
It turned out you didn't get to freedom.
link |
So then people said, well, you can't blame Marx because he said we needed freedom.
link |
He was pro freedom.
link |
So it's kind of like dropping a nuclear bomb.
link |
You say you're going to drop a nuclear bomb, but you want to minimize civilian casualties.
link |
So the dropping of the nuclear bomb is the elimination of markets, private property and
link |
But you're going to bring freedom or you're going to minimize civilian casualties.
link |
So you drop the nuclear bomb, you eliminate the capitalism and you get famine, deportation,
link |
no constraints on executive power and not abundance, but shortages.
link |
And people say, well, that's not what Mark said.
link |
That's not what I said.
link |
I said, I wanted to minimize civilian casualties.
link |
The nuclear bomb goes off and there's mass civilian casualties.
link |
And you keep saying, but I said, drop the bomb, but minimize civilian casualties.
link |
So that's where we are.
link |
That's history, not philosophy.
link |
I'm speaking about historical examples, all the cases that we have.
link |
Marx was not a theorist of inequality.
link |
Marx was a theorist of alienation, of dehumanization, of fundamental constraints or what he called
link |
fetters on productivity and on wealth, which he all attributed to capitalism.
link |
Marx wasn't bothered by inequality.
link |
He was bothered by something deeper, something worse, right?
link |
Those socialists who figured this out, who understood that if you drop the nuclear bomb,
link |
there was no way to minimize civilian casualties.
link |
All socialists who came to understand that if you eliminated capitalism, markets, private
link |
property and parliaments, if you eliminated that, you wouldn't get freedom.
link |
Those Marxists, those socialists became what we would call social Democrats or people who
link |
would use the state to regulate the market, not to eliminate the market.
link |
They would use the state to redistribute income, not to destroy private property and markets.
link |
And so this in the Marxist schema was apostasy because they were accepting markets and private
link |
They were accepting alienation and wage slavery.
link |
They were accepting capitalism in principle, but they wanted to fix it.
link |
They wanted to ameliorate.
link |
They wanted to regulate.
link |
And so they became what was denounced as revisionists, not true Marxists, not real revolutionaries,
link |
but parliamentary road, parliamentarians.
link |
We know this as normal politics, normal social democratic politics from the European case
link |
or from the American case, but they are not asking to eliminate capitalism, blaming capitalism,
link |
blaming markets and private property.
link |
So this rift among the socialists, the ones who are for elimination of capitalism, transcending
link |
capitalism, otherwise you could never, ever get to abundance and freedom in the Marxist
link |
schema versus those who accept capitalism, but want to regulate and redistribute.
link |
That rift on the left has been with us almost from the beginning.
link |
It's a kind of civil war on the left between the Leninists and the social democrats or
link |
the revisionists as they're known pejoratively by the Leninists.
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We have the same confusion today in the world today where people also cite Marx saying capitalism
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is a dead end and we need to drop that nuclear bomb and get freedom, get no civilian casualties
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versus those who say, yes, there are inequities.
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There's a lack of equality of opportunity.
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There are many other issues that we need to deal with and we can fix those issues.
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We can regulate, we can redistribute.
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I'm not advocating this as a political position.
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I'm not taking a political position myself.
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I'm just saying that there's a confusion on the left between those who accept capitalism
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and want to regulate it versus those who think capitalism is inherently evil and if we eliminate
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it we'll get to a better world when in fact history shows that if you eliminate capitalism
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you get to a worse world.
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The problems might be real, but the solutions are worse.
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From history's lessons, now we have deep painful lessons, but there's not that many of them.
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You know, our history is relatively short as a human species.
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Do we have a good answer on the left of Leninist, Marxist versus Social Democrat versus capitalism
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versus any anarchy?
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Do we have sufficient samples from history to make better decisions about the future
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of our politics and economics?
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We have the American Revolution, which was a revolution not about class, not about workers,
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not about a so called universal class of the working class, elimination of capitalism markets
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and the bourgeoisie, but was about the category citizen.
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It was about universal humanity where everyone in theory could be part of it as a citizen.
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The revolution fell short of its own ideals.
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Not everyone was a citizen.
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For example, if you didn't own property, you were a male but didn't own property.
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You didn't have full rights of a citizen.
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If you were a female, whether you own property or not, you weren't a full citizen.
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If you were imported from Africa against your will, you were a slave and not a citizen.
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And so not everyone was afforded the rights in actuality that were declared in principle.
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However, over time, the category citizen could expand and slaves could be emancipated and
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they could get the right to vote.
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They could become citizens.
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Nonproperty owning males could get the right to vote and become full citizens.
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Females could get the right to vote and become full citizens.
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In fact, eventually my mother was able to get a credit card in her own name in the 1970s
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without my father having to co sign the paperwork.
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It took a long time.
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But nonetheless, the category citizen can expand and it can become a universal category.
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So we have that, the citizen universal humanity model of the American Revolution, which was
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deeply flawed at the time it was introduced, but fixable over time.
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We also had that separation of powers and constraint on executive power that we began
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this conversation with.
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That was also institutionalized in the American Revolution because they were afraid of tyranny.
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They were afraid of unconstrained executive power.
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So they built a system that would contain that, constrain it institutionally, not circumstantially.
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So that's a great gift.
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Within that universal category of citizen, which has over time come closer to fulfilling
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its original promise.
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And within those institutional constraints, that separation of powers, constraint on executive
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power, within that we've developed what we might call normal politics, left right politics.
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People can be in favor of redistribution, and government action and people can be in
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favor of small government, hands off government, no redistribution or less redistribution.
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That's the normal left right political spectrum, where you respect the institutions and separation
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And you respect the universal category of citizenship and equality before the law and
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I don't see any problems with that whatsoever.
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I see that as a great gift, not just to this country, but around the world and other places
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besides the United States have developed this.
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The problems arise at the extremes, the far left and the far right that don't recognize
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the legitimacy either of capitalism or of democratic rule of law institutions.
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And they want to eliminate constraints on executive power.
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They want to control the public sphere or diminish the independence of the media.
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They want to take away markets or private property and redistribution becomes something
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bigger than just redistribution.
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It becomes actually that original Marxist idea of transcending capitalism.
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So I'm not bothered by the left or the right.
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I think they're normal and we should have that debate.
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We're a gigantic, diverse country of many different political points of view.
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I'm troubled only by the extremes that are against the system qua system that want to
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get rid of it and supposedly that will be the bright path to the future.
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History tells us that the far left and the far right are wrong about that.
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But once again, this doesn't mean that you have to be a social democrat.
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You could be a libertarian.
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You could be a conservative.
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You could be a centrist.
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You could be conservative on some issues and liberal on other issues.
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All of that comes under what I would presume to be normal politics.
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And I see that as the important corrective mechanism.
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Normal politics and market economies, non monopolistic, open, free and dynamic market
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I don't like concentrations of power politically and I don't like concentrations of power economically.
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I like competition in the political realm.
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I like competition in the economic realm.
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This is not perfect.
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It's constantly needs to be protected and reinvented and there are flaws that are fundamental
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and need to be adjusted and addressed and everything else, especially equality of opportunity.
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Equality of outcome is unreachable and is a mistake because it produces perverse and
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unintended consequences.
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Equality of outcome attempts, attempts to make people equal on the outcome side, but
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attempts to make them more equal on the front end, on the opportunity side.
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That's really, really important for a healthy society.
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That's where we've fallen down.
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Our schools are not providing equality of opportunity for the majority of people in
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all of our school systems.
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And so I see problems there.
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I see a need to invest in ourselves, invest in infrastructure, invest in human capital,
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create greater equality of opportunity, but also to make sure that we have good governance
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because governance is the variable that enables you to do all these other things.
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I've watched quite a bit, returning back to Putin, I've watched quite a few interviews
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with Putin and conversations, especially because I speak Russian fluently, I can understand
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often the translations lose a lot.
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I find the man putting morality aside very deep and interesting.
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And I found almost no interview with him to get at that depth.
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I was very hopeful for the Oliver Stone documentary and with him, and to me, because I deeply
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respect Oliver Stone as a filmmaker in general, but it was a complete failure in my eyes,
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The lack of, I mean, I suppose you could toss it up to a language barrier, but a complete
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lack of diving deep into the person is what I saw.
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My question is a strange one, but if you were to sit down with Putin and have a conversation,
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or perhaps if you were to sit down with Stalin and have a conversation, what kind of questions
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This wouldn't be televised unless you want it to be.
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So this is only you, so you're allowed to ask about some of the questions that are sort
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of not socially acceptable, meaning putting morality aside, getting into depth of the
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What would you ask?
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So once again, they're very different personalities and very different time periods and very different
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So what I would talk to Stalin about and Putin about are not in the same category necessarily.
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So let's take Putin.
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So I would ask him where he thinks this is going, where he thinks Russia is going to
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be in 25 years or 50 years.
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What's the long term vision?
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What does he anticipate the current trends are going to produce?
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Is he under the illusion that Russia is on the upswing, that things are actually going
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pretty well, that in 25 years Russia is going to still be a great power with a tremendous
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dynamic economy and a lot of high tech and a lot of human capital and wonderful infrastructure
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and a very high standard of living and a secure borders and sense of security at home.
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Does he think the current path is leading in that direction and if not, if he understands
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that the current trajectory does not provide for those kinds of circumstances, does it
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Does he worry about that?
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Does he care about the future 25 or 50 years from now?
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Deep down, what do you think his answer is?
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The honest answer?
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He thinks he's on that trajectory already or he doesn't care about that long term trajectory.
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So that's the mystery for me with him.
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He has tremendous sources of information.
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He has great experience now as a world leader having served for effectively longer than
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Leonid Brezhnev's long 18 year reign.
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And so Putin has accumulated a great deal of experience at the highest level compared
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to where he started.
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And so I'm interested to understand how he sees this long term evolution or non evolution
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of Russia and whether he believes he's got them on the right trajectory or whether if
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he doesn't believe that he cares.
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I have no idea because I've never spoken to him about this, but I would love to hear the
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Sometimes you have to ask questions not directly like that, but you have to come a little bit
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You can elicit answers from people by making them feel comfortable and coming sideways
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And just a quick question.
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So that's talking about Russia, Putin's role in Russia.
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Do you think it's interesting to ask, and you could say the same for Stalin, the more
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personal question of how do you feel yourself about this whole thing?
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About your life, about your legacy, looking at the person that's one of the most powerful
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and important people in the history of civilization, both Putin and Stalin, you could argue.
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Once you experience power at that level, it becomes something that's almost necessary
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for you as a human being.
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It's an aphrodisiac.
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You know, you go to the gym to exercise and the endorphins, the chemicals get released.
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And even if you're tired or you're sore, you get this massive chemical change, which has
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very dynamic effects on how you feel and the kind of level of energy you have for the rest
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And if you do that for a long time and then you don't do it for a while, you're like a
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drug addict not getting your fix.
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Your body misses that release of endorphins to a certain extent.
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That's how power works for people like Putin.
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That's how power works for people who run universities or are secretaries of state or
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run corporations, fill in the blank.
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In whatever ways power is exercised, it becomes almost a drug for people.
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It becomes something that's difficult for them to give up.
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It becomes a part of who they are.
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It becomes necessary for their sense of self and well being.
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The greatest people, the people I admire the most are the ones that can step away from
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power, can give up the drug, can be satisfied, can be stronger even by walking away from
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continued power when they had the option to continue.
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So with a person like Putin, once again, I don't know him personally, so I have no basis
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This is a general statement observable with many people and in historical terms.
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With a person like Putin who's exercised this much power for this long, it's something that
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becomes a part of who you are and you have a hard time imagining yourself without it.
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You begin to conflate your personal power with the well being of the nation.
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You begin to think that the more power you have, the better off the country is this conflation.
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You begin to be able to not imagine, you can no longer imagine what it would be like just
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to be an ordinary citizen or an ordinary person running a company even, something much smaller
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So I anticipate that without knowing for sure that he would be in that category of person,
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but you'd want to explore that with questions with him about, so what's his day look like
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from beginning to end?
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Just take me through a typical day of yours.
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What do you do on a day?
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How does it start?
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What are the downs?
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What are the parts of the day you look forward to the most?
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What are the parts of the day you don't look forward to that much?
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What do you consider a good day?
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What do you consider a bad day?
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How do you know that what you're doing is having the effects that you intend?
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How do you follow up?
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How do you gather the information, the reaction?
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How do you get people to tell you to your face things that they know are uncomfortable
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or that you might not want to hear?
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Those kind of questions.
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And through that window, through that kind of questioning, you get a window into a man
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So let me ask about Stalin because you've done more research, there's another amazing
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interview you've had, the introduction was that you know more about Stalin than Stalin
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You've done an incredible amount of research on Stalin.
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So if you could talk to him, get sort of direct research, what question would you ask of Stalin?
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I have so many questions, I don't even know where I would begin.
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The thing about studying a person like Stalin, who's an immense creature, right?
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He's exercising the power of life and death over hundreds of millions of people.
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He's making decisions about novels and films and turbines and submarines and packs with
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Hitler or deals with Churchill and Roosevelt and occupation of Mongolia or occupation of
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He's making phenomenally consequential decisions over all spheres of life, all areas of endeavor
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and over much of the globe, much of the landmass of the earth.
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And so what's that like?
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Does he sometimes reflect on the amount of power and responsibility he has that he can
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Does he sometimes think about what it means that a single person has that kind of power?
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And does it have an effect on his relations with others, his sense of self, the kinds
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of things he values in life?
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Does he sometimes think it's a mistake that he's accumulated this much power?
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Does he sometimes wish he had a simpler life?
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Or is he once again so drunk, so enamored, so caught up with chemically and spiritually
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with exercising this kind of power that he couldn't live without it?
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And then what were you thinking, I would ask him, in certain decisions that he made?
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What were you thinking on certain dates and certain circumstances where you made a decision
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and could have made a different decision?
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Can you recall your thought processes?
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Can you bring the decision back?
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Was it seat of the pants?
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Was it something you'd been planning?
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Did you just improvise or did you have a strategy?
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What were you guided by?
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Whose examples did you look to?
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When you picked up these books that you read and you read the books and you made pencil
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marks in them, is it because you absorbed the lesson there?
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Or did it really not become a permanent lesson and it was just something that you checked
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and it was like a reflex?
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So I have many specific questions about many specific events and people and circumstances
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that I have tried to figure out with the surviving source materials that we have in abundance.
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But I would still like to delve into his mindset and reconstruct his mind.
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The closer you get to Stalin, in some ways, the more elusive he can become.
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And especially around World War II, you've already illuminated a lot of interesting aspects
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about Stalin's role in the war, but it would be interesting to ask even more questions
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about how seat of the pants or deliberate some of the decisions have been.
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If I could ask just one quick question, one last quick question, and you're constrained
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in time and answering it, do you think there will always be evil in the world?
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Do you think there will always be war?
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Unfortunately, yes.
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There are conflicting interests, conflicting goals that people have.
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Most of the time, those conflicts can be resolved peacefully.
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That's why we build strong institutions to resolve different interests and conflicts
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But the fact, the enduring fact of conflicting interests and conflicting desires, that can
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So the job that we have for humanity's sake is to make those conflicting interests, those
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conflicting desires, to make them, to put them in a context where they can be resolved
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peacefully, and not in a zero sum fashion.
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So we can't get there on the global scale.
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So there's always going to be the kind of conflict that sometimes gets violent.
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What we don't want is a conflict among the strongest powers.
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Great power conflict is unbelievably bad.
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There are no words to describe it.
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At least 55 million people died in World War II.
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If we have a World War III, a war between the United States and China, or whatever it
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might be, who knows what the number could be?
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155 million, 255 million, 555 million, I don't even want to think about it.
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And so it's horrible when wars break out in the humanitarian catastrophes.
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For example, Yemen and Syria and several other places I could name today.
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It's just horrible what you see there.
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And the scale is colossal for those places.
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But it's not planetary scale.
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And so avoiding planetary scale destruction is really important for us.
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And so having those different interests be somehow managed in a way that they don't,
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that no one sees advantage in a violent resolution.
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And a part of that is remembering history, so they should read your books.
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Stephen, thank you so much.
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It was a huge honor talking to you today.
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I really enjoyed it.
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Thank you for the opportunity.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Stephen Kotkin.
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A thank you to our presenting sponsor, Cash App.
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Download it and use code LexPodcast.
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If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on Apple Podcast, support
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it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter.
link |
And now let me leave you with words from Joseph Stalin, spoken shortly before the death of
link |
Lenin and at the beginning of Stalin's rise to power.
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Я считаю, что совершенно неважно, кто и как будет в партии голосовать.
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Но вот что чрезвычайно важно, это кто и как будет считать голоса.
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I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote or how, but what is extraordinarily
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important is who will count the votes and how.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.