back to indexStephen Kotkin: Stalin, Putin, and the Nature of Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #63
link |
The following is a conversation with Steven Kotkin, a professor of history at Princeton University
link |
and one of the great historians of our time, specializing in Russian and Soviet history.
link |
He has written many books on Stalin in the Soviet Union, including the first two of
link |
the three volume work on Stalin, and he is currently working on volume three.
link |
He may have noticed that I've been speaking with not just computer scientists,
link |
but physicists, engineers, historians, neuroscientists, and soon much more.
link |
To me, artificial intelligence is much bigger than deep learning, bigger than computing.
link |
It is our civilization's journey into understanding the human mind and creating echoes of it in the
link |
machine. To me, that journey must include a deep historical and psychological understanding of power.
link |
Technology puts some of the greatest power in the history of our civilization
link |
into the hands of engineers and computer scientists. This power must not be abused,
link |
and the best way to understand how such abuse can be avoided is to not be blind
link |
to the lessons of history. As Steven Kotkin brilliantly articulates, Stalin was arguably one of
link |
the most powerful humans in history. I've read many books on Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin,
link |
and the wars of the 20th century. I hope you understand the value of such knowledge to all of
link |
us, especially to engineers and scientists who build the tools of power in the 21st century.
link |
This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,
link |
give us five stars in Apple Podcasts, follow us on Spotify, support on Patreon,
link |
or simply connect with me on Twitter. Alex Friedman spelled F R I D M A N.
link |
I recently started doing ads at the end of the introduction. I'll do one or two minutes after
link |
introducing the episode and never any ads in the middle that can break the flow of the conversation.
link |
I hope that works for you and doesn't hurt the listening experience.
link |
This show is presented by Cash App, the number one finance app in the App Store. I personally use
link |
Cash App to send money to friends, but you can also use it to buy, sell, and deposit Bitcoin
link |
just seconds. Cash App also has an investing feature. You can buy fractions of a stock,
link |
say $1 worth, no matter what the stock price is. Broker services are provided by Cash App
link |
Investing, a subsidiary of Square, and member SIPC. I'm excited to be working with Cash App
link |
to support one of my favorite organizations called FIRST, best known for their FIRST Robotics and
link |
Lego competitions. They educate and inspire hundreds of thousands of students in over 110
link |
countries and have a perfect rating on Charity Navigator, which means the donated money is used
link |
to maximum effectiveness. When you get Cash App from the App Store at Google Play and use code
link |
LEX Podcast, you'll get $10, and Cash App will also donate $10 to FIRST, which again is an
link |
organization that I've personally seen inspire girls and boys to dream of engineering a better
link |
world. And now, here's my conversation with Steven Kotkin. Do all human beings crave power?
link |
No. Human beings crave security. They crave love. They crave adventure.
link |
They crave power, but not equally. Some human beings nevertheless do crave power.
link |
For sure. Word is that deeply in the psychology of people? Is it something you're born with? Is
link |
it something you develop? Some people crave a position of leadership or of standing out,
link |
of being recognized. And that could be starting out in the school years, on the schoolyard.
link |
It could be within their own family, not just in their peer group.
link |
Those kind of people we often see craving leadership positions from a young age
link |
often end up in positions of power, but they can be varied positions of power.
link |
You can have power in an institution where your power is purposefully limited.
link |
For example, there's a board or a consultative body or a separation of powers. Not everyone craves
link |
power whereby they're the sole power or their unconstrained power. That's a little bit less
link |
usual. We may think that everybody does, but not everybody does. Those people who do crave
link |
that kind of power, unconstrained the ability to decide as much as life or death of other people,
link |
most people are not everyday people. They're not the people you encounter in your daily life,
link |
for the most part. Those are extraordinary people. Most of them don't have the opportunity
link |
to live that dream. Very few of them, in fact, end up with the opportunity to live that dream.
link |
So percentage wise, in your sense, if we think of George Washington, for example,
link |
most would most people given the choice of absolute power over a country versus maybe
link |
the capped power that the United States presidential role, at least at the founding
link |
of the country, represented, what do you think most people would choose?
link |
Well, Washington was in a position to exercise far greater power than he did.
link |
And in fact, he didn't take that option. He was more interested in seeing institutionalization,
link |
of seeing the country develop strong institutions rather than an individual leader like himself
link |
have excess power. So that's very important. So like I said, not everyone craves unconstrained
link |
power even if they're very ambitious. And of course, Washington was very ambitious. He was a
link |
successful general before he was a president. So that clearly comes from the influences on your
link |
life, where you grow up, how you grow up, how you raised, what kind of values are imparted to you
link |
along the way. You can understand power as the ability to share, or you can understand
link |
or the ability to advance something for the collective in a collective process,
link |
not an individual process. So power comes in many different varieties.
link |
And ambition doesn't always equate to despotic power. Despotic power is something
link |
different from ordinary institutional power that we see. The president of MIT does not have
link |
unconstrained power. The president of MIT rightly must consult with other members of the administration,
link |
with the faculty members, to a certain extent with the student body, and certainly with the
link |
trustees of MIT. Those constraints make the institution strong and enduring and make the
link |
decisions better than they would be if he had unconstrained power. But you can't say that the
link |
president is not ambitious. Of course, the president is ambitious. We worry about unconstrained power.
link |
We worry about executive authority that's not limited. That's the definition of authoritarianism
link |
or tyranny. Unlimited or barely limited executive authority. Executive authority is necessary to
link |
carry out many functions. We all understand that. That's why MIT has an executive, has a president.
link |
But unlimited or largely unconstrained executive power is detrimental to even the person who
link |
exercises that power. So what do you think? It's an interesting notion. We kind of take it for granted
link |
that constraints on executive power is a good thing. But why is that necessarily true? So what
link |
is it about absolute power that does something bad to the human mind? The popular saying of absolute
link |
power corrupts absolutely. Is that the case? That the power in itself is the thing that
link |
corrupts the mind in some kind of way where it leads to a bad leadership over time?
link |
People make more mistakes when they're not challenged, when they don't have to explain
link |
things and get others to vote and go along with it, when they can make a decision without anybody
link |
being able to block their decision or to have input necessarily on their decision. You're more
link |
prone to mistakes. You're more prone to extremism. There's a temptation there. For example, we have
link |
separation of powers in the United States. The Congress has authority that the president doesn't
link |
have, as for example, in budgeting the so called power of the purse. This can be very frustrating.
link |
People want to see things happen, and they complain that there's a do nothing Congress or
link |
that the situation is stalemated. But actually that's potentially a good thing. In fact, that's
link |
how our system was designed. Our system was designed to prevent things happening in government.
link |
There's frustration with that, but ultimately that's the strength of the institutions we have.
link |
When you see unconstrained executive authority, there can be a lot of dynamism, a lot of things
link |
can get done quickly, but those things can be like, for example, what happened in China under Mao
link |
Mao, or what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin, or what happened in Haiti under
link |
Papa Doc and then Baby Doc, or fill in the blank. What happens sometimes in corporations where a
link |
corporate leader is not constrained by the shareholders, by the board, or by anything,
link |
and they can seem to be a genius for a while, but eventually it catches up to them.
link |
And so the idea of constraints on executive power is absolutely fundamental to the American
link |
system, American way of thinking, and not only America, obviously large other parts of the world
link |
that have a similar system, not an identical system, but a similar system of checks and balances
link |
on executive power. And so the case that I study, the only checks and balances on executive power
link |
are circumstantial. So for example, distances in the country, it's hard to do something over 5,000
link |
miles, or the amount of time in a day, it's hard for a leader to get to every single thing the
link |
leader wants to get to because there are only 24 hours in a day. Those are circumstantial constraints
link |
on executive power. They're not institutional constraints on executive power. One of the constraints
link |
on executive power that the United States has versus Russia, maybe something you've
link |
implied and actually spoke directly to is there's something in the Russian people and the Soviet
link |
people that are attracted to authoritarian power, psychologically speaking, or at least the kind
link |
of leaders that sought authoritarian power throughout its history. And that desire for that
link |
kind of human is a lack of a constraint. In America, it seems as people we desire
link |
somebody not like Stalin, somebody more like George Washington. So that's another constraint,
link |
the belief of the people, what they admire in a leader, what they seek in a leader.
link |
So maybe you can speak to, well, first of all, can you speak briefly to that psychology of
link |
is there a difference between the Russian people and the American people in terms of just what we
link |
find attractive in a leader? Not as great a difference as it might seem. There are, unfortunately,
link |
many Americans who would be happy with an authoritarian leader in the country. It's
link |
by no means a majority. It's not even a plurality. But nonetheless, it's a real sentiment in the
link |
population. Sometimes because they feel frustrated, because things are not getting done. Sometimes
link |
because they're against something that's happening in the political realm, and they feel it has to
link |
be corrected and corrected quickly. It's a kind of impulse. People can regret the impulse later
link |
on that the impulse is motivated by reaction to their environment. In the Russian case, we have
link |
also people who crave, sometimes known as a strong hand and iron hand and authoritarian leader,
link |
because they want things to be done and be done more quickly that align with their desires.
link |
But I'm not sure it's a majority in the country today. Certainly in Stalin's time,
link |
this was a widespread sentiment, and people had few alternatives that they understood or could
link |
appeal to. Nowadays, in the globalized world, the citizens of Russia can see how other systems have
link |
constraints on executive power, and the life isn't so bad there. In fact, the life might even be
link |
better. So the impatience, the impulsive quality, the frustration does sometimes, and people reinforce
link |
their craving for the unconstrained executive to, quote, get things done or shake things up or
link |
yes, that's true. But in the Russian case, I'm not sure it's cultural today. I think it might be more
link |
having to do with the failures, the functional failures of the kind of political system that
link |
they tried to institute after the Soviet collapse. And so it may be frustration with the version of
link |
constraints on executive power they got and how it didn't work the way it was imagined,
link |
which has led to a sense in which non constrained executive power could fix things. But I'm not
link |
sure that that's a majority sentiment in the Russian case, although it's hard to measure because
link |
under authoritarian regimes, a public opinion is shaped by the environment in which people live,
link |
which is very constrained in terms of public opinion. But on that point, why, at least from a
link |
distance, does there seem to nevertheless be support for the current Russian president,
link |
Vladimir Putin? Is that have to do with the fact that measuring, getting good metrics and
link |
statistics on support is difficult in authoritarian governments? Or is there still something appealing
link |
to that kind of power to the people? I think we have to give credit to President Putin for
link |
understanding the psychology of the Russians who to whom he appeals. Many of them were the
link |
losers in the transition from communism. They were the ones whose pensions were destroyed by
link |
inflation or whose salaries didn't go up or whose regions were abandoned. They were not
link |
the winners for the most part. And so I think there's an understanding on his part of their
link |
psychology. Putin has grown in the position. He was not a public politician when he first started
link |
out. He was quite poor in public settings. He didn't have the kind of political instincts
link |
that he has now. He didn't have the appeal to traditional values and the Orthodox Church and
link |
some of the other dimensions of his rule today. So yes, we have to give some credit to Putin himself
link |
for this, in addition to the frustrations and the mass of the people. But let's think about it
link |
this way, in addition, without taking away the fact that he's become a better retail politician
link |
over time and that sentiment has shifted because of the disappointments with the transition with
link |
the population. When I ask my kids, am I a good dad? My kids don't have any other dad to measure me
link |
against. I'm the only dad they know and I'm the only dad they can choose or not choose. If they
link |
don't choose me, they still get me as dad. So with Putin today, he's the only dad that the Russian
link |
people have. Now, if my kids were introduced to alternative fathers, they might be better than
link |
me. They might be more loving, more giving, funnier, richer, whatever it might be, they might be more
link |
appealing. There are some blood ties there, for sure, that I have with my kids, but they would at
link |
least be able to choose alternatives and then I would have to win their favor in that constellation
link |
of alternatives. If President Putin were up against real alternatives, if the population
link |
had real choice and that choice could express itself and have resources and have media and
link |
everything else the way he does, maybe he would be very popular and maybe his popularity would not
link |
be as great as it currently is. So the absence of alternatives is another factor that reinforces
link |
his authority and his popularity. Having said that, there are many authoritarian leaders
link |
who deny any alternatives to the population and are not very popular. So denial of alternatives
link |
doesn't guarantee you the popularity. You still have to figure out the mass psychology and be able
link |
to appeal to it. In the Russian case, the winners from the transition live primarily in the big
link |
cities and are self employed or entrepreneurial. Even if they're not self employed, they're able
link |
to change careers. They have tremendous skills and talent and education and knowledge, as well as
link |
these entrepreneurial or dynamic personalities. Putin also appealed to them. He did that with
link |
Medvedev and it was a very clever ruse. He himself appealed to the losers from the transition,
link |
the small towns, the rural, the people who were not well off, and he had them for the most part.
link |
Not all. We don't want to generalize to say that he had every one of them because those people have
link |
views of their own, sometimes in contradiction with the president of Russia. And then he appealed
link |
to the opposite people, the successful urban base through the so called reformer Medvedev,
link |
the new generation, the technically literate prime minister who for a time was president.
link |
And so that worked very successfully for Putin. He was able to bridge a big divide in the society
link |
and gain a greater mass support than he would otherwise have had by himself. That ruse only
link |
worked through the time that Medvedev was temporarily president for a few years because of
link |
the constitution Putin couldn't do three consecutive terms and stepped aside in what they call
link |
castling in chess. When this was over, Putin had difficulty with his popularity. There were mass
link |
protests in the urban areas. Precisely that group of the population that he had been able to win in
link |
part because of the Medvedev castling and now had had their delusions exposed and were disillusioned.
link |
And there were these mass protests in the urban areas, not just in the capital, by the way,
link |
and Putin had to, as it were, come up with a new way to fix his popularity, which happened to be
link |
the annexation of Crimea, from which he got a very significant bump. However, the trend is back
link |
in the other direction. It's diminishing again, although it's still high relative to other leaders
link |
around the world. So I wouldn't say that he's unpopular with mass in Russia. There is some
link |
popularity there. There is some success. But I would say it's tough for us to gauge because of
link |
the lack of alternatives. And Putin is unpopular inside the state administration.
link |
At every level, the bureaucracy of leadership. Because those people are well informed and they
link |
understand that the country is declining, that the human capital is declining, the infrastructure
link |
is declining, the economy is not really growing. It's not really diversifying. Russia is not
link |
investing in its future. The state officials understand all of that. And then they see that
link |
the Putin clique is stealing everything in sight. So between the failure to invest in a future
link |
and the corruption of a narrow group around the president, there's disillusionment in the state
link |
apparatus because they see this more clearly or more closely than the mass of the population.
link |
They can't necessarily yet oppose this in public because there are people, they have families,
link |
they have careers, they have children who want to go to school or want a job. And so there are
link |
constraints on their ability to oppose the regime based upon what we might call cowardice or other
link |
people might call realism. I don't know how courageous people can be when their family,
link |
children, career are on the line. So it's very interesting dynamic to see the disillusionment
link |
inside the government with the president, which is not yet fully public for the most part,
link |
but could become public. And once again, if there's an alternative, if an alternative appears,
link |
things could shift quickly. And that alternative could come from inside the regime.
link |
From inside the regime. But the leadership, the party, the people that are now, as you're saying,
link |
opposed to Putin, nevertheless, maybe you can correct me, but it feels like there's
link |
just structurally is deeply corrupt. So each of each of the people we're talking about are
link |
don't feel like a George Washington. Once again, the circumstances don't permit them
link |
to act that way necessarily, right? George Washington did great things, but in certain
link |
circumstances, a lot of the state officials in Russia, for certain, are corrupt. There's no
link |
question. Many of them, however, are patriotic. And many of them feel badly about where the
link |
country has been going. They would prefer that the country was less corrupt. They would prefer
link |
that there were greater investment in all sorts of areas of Russia. They might even,
link |
themselves, steal less if they could be guaranteed that everybody else would steal less.
link |
There's a deep and abiding patriotism inside Russia, as well as inside the Russian regime.
link |
So they understand that Putin, in many ways, rescued the Russian state from the chaos of the
link |
1990s. They understand that Russia was in very bad shape as an incoherent failing state almost
link |
when Putin took over, and that he did some important things for Russia's stability and
link |
consolidation. There's also some appreciation that Putin stood up to the West and stood up to
link |
more powerful countries and regained a sense of pride and maneuverability for Russia and the
link |
international system. People appreciate that, and it's real. It's not imagined that Putin accomplished
link |
that. The problem is the methods that he accomplished it with. He used the kind of methods,
link |
that is to say, taking other people's property, putting other people in jail for political reasons.
link |
He used the kind of methods that are not conducive to long term growth and stability.
link |
So he fixed the problem, but he fixed the problem and then created even bigger long term problems
link |
potentially. Moreover, all authoritarian regimes that use those methods are tempted to keep using
link |
them and using them and using them until they're the only ones who are the beneficiaries. The group
link |
narrows and narrows. The elite gets smaller and narrower. The interest groups get excluded from
link |
power and their ability to continue enjoying the fruits of the system, and the resentment grows.
link |
And so that's the situation we have. And Russia is a place that is stuck. It was, to a certain
link |
extent, rescued. It was rescued with methods that were not conducive to long term success and
link |
stability. The rescue we're referring to is the economic growth when Putin first took office.
link |
They had 10 years. They had a full decade of an average of 7% growth a year,
link |
which was phenomenal and is not attributable predominantly to oil prices. During President
link |
Putin's first term as president, the average price of oil was $35 a barrel. During his second term
link |
as president, the average price was $70 a barrel. So during those two terms, when Russia was growing
link |
at about 7% a year, oil prices were averaging somewhere around $50 a barrel, which is fine,
link |
but is not the reason because later on, when oil prices were over $100 a barrel, Russia stagnated.
link |
So the initial growth, do you think Putin deserves some credit for that?
link |
Yes, he does because he introduced some important liberalizing measures. He lowered taxes.
link |
He allowed land to be bought and sold. He deregulated many areas of the economy.
link |
And so there was a kind of entrepreneurial burst that was partly attributable, partly
link |
attributable to government policy during his first term. But also he was consolidating political
link |
power. And as I said, the methods he used overall for the long term, we're not able to continue
link |
sustain that success. In addition, we have to remember that China played a really big role
link |
in the success of Russia in the first two terms of Putin's presidency,
link |
because China's phenomenal growth created insatiable demand for just about everything
link |
that the Soviet Union used to produce. So fertilizers, cement, fill in the blank,
link |
chemicals, metals. China had insatiable demand for everything the Soviet Union once produced.
link |
And so China's raising of global demand overall brought Soviet era industry back from the dead.
link |
And so there was something that happened. Soviet era industry fell off a cliff in the 1990s.
link |
There was a decline in manufacturing and industrial production greater than in the Great Depression
link |
in the US. But a lot of that came back online in the 2000s. And that had to do with China's
link |
phenomenal growth. The trade between China and Russia was not always direct. So this was an
link |
indirect effect. But raising global prices for the commodities and the products, the kind of
link |
lower and lower value products in manufacturing, not high end stuff, but lower end stuff like steel
link |
or iron or cement or fertilizer, where the value added is not spectacular, but nonetheless,
link |
which had been destroyed by the 1990s and after the Soviet collapse. This was brought back to life.
link |
Now you can do that once. You can bring Soviet era industry back to life once.
link |
And that happened during Putin's first two terms in addition to the liberalizing policies,
link |
which spurred entrepreneurialism in some small and medium business. The crash of the ruble in 1998,
link |
which made Russian products much cheaper abroad and made imports much more expensive,
link |
also facilitated the resuscitation, the revival of domestic manufacturing. So all of this came
link |
together for that spectacular 10 year, 7% on average economic growth. And moreover, people's
link |
wages after inflation, their disposable income grew more even than GDP grew. So disposable
link |
income after inflation, that is a real income, was growing greater than 7%. In some cases,
link |
10% a year. So there was a boom and the Russian people felt it and it happened during Putin's
link |
first two terms and people were grateful, rightly so for that. And those who don't want to give Putin
link |
credit, give oil prices all the credit. But I don't think that oil prices can explain this.
link |
Having said that, that doesn't mean that this was sustainable over the long term.
link |
Right. So you've briefly mentioned sort of implying the possibility Stalin held power for,
link |
let's say, 30 years. You've briefly mentioned that as a question, will Putin be able to beat
link |
that record, to beat that? So can you talk about your sense of, is it possible that Putin holds
link |
power for that kind of duration? Let's hope not. Let's hope not for Russia's sake. The primary
link |
victims of President Putin's power are Russians. They're not Ukrainians, although to a certain
link |
extent Ukraine has suffered because of Putin's actions. And they're not Americans. They're Russians.
link |
Moreover, Russia has lost a great deal of human talent. Millions and millions of people have left
link |
Russia since 1991 overall, somewhere between five and 10 million people have left the country
link |
and are beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union. So they left the Soviet space entirely.
link |
Moreover, the people who left are not the poor people. They're not the uneducated.
link |
They're not the losers. The people who've left are the more dynamic parts of the population,
link |
the better educated, the more entrepreneurial. So that human capital loss that Russia has suffered
link |
is phenomenal. And in fact, right here where we're sitting at MIT, we have examples of people who
link |
are qualified, good enough for MIT, and have left Russia to come to MIT.
link |
You're looking at one of them. And the other aspect, just to quickly comment,
link |
is those same people like me. I'm not welcome back.
link |
No, you're not under the current regime. It was a big loss for Russia if you're patriotic,
link |
but not from the point of view of the Putin regime. That has to do also factors into popularity.
link |
If the people who don't like you leave, they're not there to complain, to protest, to vote against
link |
you. And so your opposition declines when you let them leave. However, it's very costly in human
link |
capital terms. Hemorrhaging that much human capital is damaging, it's self damaging. And we've seen
link |
it accelerate. It was already high, but we've seen it accelerate in the last
link |
in the last seven to eight years of President Putin's rule. And those people are not going
link |
back of their own volition, but even if they wanted to go back, as you just said, they'd be
link |
unwelcome. That's a big cost to pay for this regime. And so whatever benefits this regime might or
link |
might not have given to the country, the disadvantages, the downside, the costs are also
link |
really high. So we don't want Putin lasting in power as long as Stalin. It would be better
link |
if Russia were able to choose among options, to choose a new leader among options.
link |
Many people speculate that President Putin will name a successor the way Yeltsin named Putin as
link |
his successor, Boris, President Boris Yeltsin. And then Putin will leave the stage and allow
link |
the successor to take over. That might seem like a good solution. But once again, we don't need a
link |
system where you hang on for as long as possible than to nominate who's going to take over. We
link |
need a system that has the kind of corrective mechanisms that democracies and markets have,
link |
along with rule of law. A corrective mechanism is really important because all leaders make mistakes.
link |
But when you can't correct for the mistakes, then the mistakes get compounded. Putin could
link |
well he seems to be healthy. He could well last as many years as Stalin. It's hard to predict because
link |
events intercede sometimes and create circumstances that are unforeseen and leaders get overthrown
link |
or have a heart attack or whatever. There's a palace insurrection where ambitious leaders on
link |
the inside, for both personal power and patriotic reasons, try to push aside an aging leader.
link |
There are many scenarios in which Putin could not last that long. But unfortunately, right now,
link |
you could also imagine potentially him lasting that long, which as I said, is not an outcome
link |
if you're patriotic about Russia. It's not an outcome you would wish out to the country.
link |
I guess a very difficult question. But what practically do you feel is a way out of the Putin
link |
regime? Is the way out of the corruption that's deeply underlies the state? If you look from a
link |
history perspective, is a revolution required? Is violence required? Is from violence within
link |
or external to the country? Is a powerful, inspiring leader enough to step in and bring
link |
democracy and the free world to Russia? Russia is not a failed country. It's a
link |
middle income country with tremendous potential and has proven many times in the past that when
link |
it gets in a bad way, it can reverse its trajectory. Moreover, violence is rarely ever a solution.
link |
Violence rarely, it may break an existing trend, but it's rare that violence produces a nonviolent
link |
sustainable positive outcome. It happens, but it doesn't happen frequently. Societal upheaval
link |
is not a way always to institutionalize a better path forward because you need institutions. People
link |
can protest as they did throughout the Middle East and the protests didn't necessarily lead
link |
to better systems because the step from protest to new, strong, consolidated institutions is a
link |
colossal leap, not a small step. What we need and what we see from history and situations like this
link |
is a group within the power structures, which is a patriotic, that sees things going down,
link |
that is to say, that sees things not developing relative to neighbors, relative to richer countries,
link |
relative to more successful countries. They want to change the trajectory of Russia.
link |
And if they can, in a coalition fashion, unseat the current regime for a new power sharing arrangement,
link |
which once again can be frustrating because you can't do changes immediately,
link |
you can't do things overnight, but that's the point. Constraints on your ability to change
link |
everything immediately and to force change overnight is what leads to long term success.
link |
That's the sustainability of change. So Russia needs stronger institutions. It needs court system
link |
as well as democratic institutions. It needs functioning open dynamic markets rather than
link |
monopolies. It needs meritocracy and banks to award loans on the basis of business plans,
link |
not on the 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 slow,
link |
don't lead to revolutionary transformation, but lead to potentially long term sustainable growth
link |
without upheaval, without violence, without getting into a situation where all of a sudden
link |
you need a miracle again. Every time Russia seems to need a miracle, and that's the problem,
link |
the solution would be not needing a miracle. Now, having said that, the potential is there.
link |
The civilization that we call Russia is amazingly impressive. It has delivered world class culture,
link |
world class science. It's a great power. It's not a great power with a strong base right now,
link |
but nonetheless, it is a great power as it acts in the world. So I wouldn't underestimate Russia's
link |
abilities here, and I wouldn't write off Russia. I don't see it under the current regime, a renewal
link |
of the country. But if we can have from within the regime an evolution rather than a revolution
link |
in a positive direction, and maybe get a George Washington figure who is strong enough to push
link |
through institutionalization rather than personalism. So if I could ask about one particular individual,
link |
it'd be just interesting to get your comment, but also as a representative of potential leaders.
link |
I just on this podcast talked to Gary Kasparov, who I'm not sure if you're familiar with his
link |
ongoings. So besides being a world class chess player, he's also a very outspoken activist,
link |
sort of seeing Putin, truly seeing Putin as an enemy of the free world of democracy, of
link |
balanced government in Russia. What do you think of people like him specifically, or just people
link |
like him trying as leaders to step in to run for president to symbolize a new chapter in Russia's
link |
future? So we don't need individuals. Some individuals are very impressive, and they have
link |
courage, and they protest, and they criticize, and they organize. We need institutions. We need a
link |
duma or a parliament that functions. We need a court system that functions. That is to say where
link |
there are a separation of powers, impartial professional civil service, impartial professional
link |
judiciary. Those are the things Russia needs. It's rare that you get that from an individual,
link |
no matter how impressive. We had Andrei Sakharov, who was an extraordinary individual,
link |
who developed the hydrogen bomb under Soviet regime, was a world class physicist,
link |
was then upset about how his scientific knowledge and scientific achievements were being put to use
link |
and rebelled to try to put limits, constraints, civilizing humane limits
link |
and constraints on some of the implications of his extraordinary science. But Sakharov,
link |
even if he had become the leader of the country, which he did not become, he was more of a moral
link |
or spiritual leader, it still wouldn't have given you a judiciary. It still wouldn't have
link |
given you a civil service. It still wouldn't have given you a duma or functioning parliament.
link |
You need a leader in coalition with other leaders. You need a bunch of leaders,
link |
a whole group, and they have to be divided a little bit so that not one of them can destroy
link |
all the others. And they have to be interested in creating institutions, not solely or predominantly
link |
in their personal power. And so I have no objection to outstanding individuals and to the work that
link |
they do. But I think in institutional terms, and they need to think that way too in order to be
link |
successful. So if we go back to the echoes of that after the Russian Revolution with Stalin,
link |
with Lenin and Stalin, maybe you can correct me, but there was a group of people there
link |
in that same kind of way, looking to establish institutions that were built in a beautifully
link |
built around an ideology that they believed is good for the world. So sort of echoing that idea
link |
of what we're talking about, what Russia needs now, can you, first of all, you've described a
link |
fascinating thought which is Stalin is having amassed arguably more power than any man in history.
link |
It's an interesting thing to think about. But can you tell about his journey to getting that power
link |
after the Russian Revolution? How does that perhaps echo to our current discussion about
link |
institutions and so on? And just in general, the story I think is fascinating of how one man is
link |
able to get more power than any other man in history. It is a great story, not necessarily
link |
from a moral point of view. But if you're interested in power, for sure, it's an incredible story.
link |
So we have to remember that Stalin is also a product of circumstances,
link |
not solely his own individual drive, which is very strong. But for example, World War One
link |
breaks the Tsarist regime, the Tsarist order, imperial Russian state. Stalin has no participation
link |
whatsoever in World War One. He spends World War One in exile in Siberia. Until the downfall
link |
of the Tsarist autocracy in February 1917, Stalin is in Eastern Siberian exile. He's only able to
link |
leave Eastern Siberia when that regime falls. He never fights in the war. He's called up briefly
link |
towards the end of the war and is disqualified on physical grounds because of physical deformities
link |
from being drafted. The war continues after the Tsarist regime has been toppled
link |
in the capital and there's been a revolution. The war continues and that war is very radicalizing.
link |
The peasants begin to seize the land after the Tsar falls, essentially destroying much of the
link |
gentry class. Stalin has nothing to do with that. The peasants have their own revolution,
link |
seizing the land, not in law, but in fact, de facto, not de jure land ownership. So there are
link |
these really large processes underway that Stalin is alive during, but not a driver of.
link |
The most improbable thing happens, which is a very small group of people around the figure of
link |
Vladimir Lenin announces that it has seized power. Now, by this time in October 1917,
link |
the government that has replaced the Tsar, the so called provisional government,
link |
has failed. 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. That is to say, Soviets or councils as we would
link |
call them in English, which represent people's power or the masses participating in politics,
link |
a kind of radical grassroots democracy, are extremely popular all over the country and
link |
not dominated by any one group, but predominantly socialist or predominantly leftist. Russia has
link |
an election during the war, a free and fair election for the most part, despite the war
link |
at the end of 1917 in December 1917. And three quarters plus of the country votes socialist
link |
in some form or another. So the battle was over the definition of socialism and who had the right
link |
to participate in defining 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,
link |
people's power, the councils, known as the Soviets, are going to take their place. And Lenin seizes
link |
power in the name of the Soviets. So it's a coup against the left, against the rest of the left,
link |
not against the provisional 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 on the
link |
left against the rest of the left in October 1917, which we know is the October Revolution.
link |
And I call the October coup as many other historians call. The October Revolution happened
link |
after the seizure of power. What's interesting about this episode is that the leftists who seize
link |
power in the name of the Soviets, in the name of the masses, in the name of people's power,
link |
they retain their hold. Many times in history, there's a seizure of power by the left,
link |
and they fail. They collapse. They're cleaned out by an army or what we call forces of order
link |
by counterrevolutionary forces. Lenin's revolution, Lenin's coup, is successful. It is able to hold
link |
power and not just seize power. They win a civil war and they're entrenched in the heart of the
link |
country already by 1921. Stalin is part of that group. Lenin needs somebody to run this new regime
link |
in the kind of nitty gritty way. Lenin is the leader, the undisputed leader in the Bolshevik
link |
Party, which changes their name to communists in 1918. He makes Stalin the general secretary
link |
of the Communist Party. He creates a new position, which hadn't existed before,
link |
a kind of day to day political manager, a right hand man. Not because Lenin is looking to replace
link |
himself. He's looking to institutionalize a helpmate, a right hand man. He does this in
link |
the spring of 1922. Stalin is named to this position, which Lenin has created expressly for
link |
Stalin. So there's been a coup on the left, whereby the Bolsheviks, who become communists,
link |
have 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. Less than six weeks after Lenin has created
link |
this position and installed Stalin, Lenin has a stroke, a major stroke, and never really returns
link |
as a full actor to power before he dies of a fourth stroke in January 1924. So a position is
link |
created for Stalin to run things on Lenin's behalf, and then Lenin has a stroke. And so Stalin now
link |
has this new position, general secretary, but he's the right hand of a person who's no longer
link |
exercising day to day control over affairs. Stalin then uses this new position to create
link |
a personal dictatorship inside the Bolshevik dictatorship, which is the remarkable story
link |
I tried to tell. So is there anything nefarious about any of what you just described? So it seems
link |
conveniently that the position is created just for Stalin. There was a few other brilliant people,
link |
arguably more brilliant than Stalin in the vicinity of Lenin. Why was Stalin chosen?
link |
Why did Lenin all of a sudden fall ill? It's perhaps a conspiratorial question, but is there
link |
anything nefarious about any of this historical trajectory to power that Stalin took in creating
link |
the personal dictatorship? So history is full of contingency and surprise. After something happens,
link |
we all think it's inevitable. It had to happen that way. Everything was leading up to it.
link |
So Hitler seizes power in Germany in 1933, and the Nazi regime gets institutionalized by several
link |
of his moves after being named chancellor. And so all German history becomes a story
link |
of the Nazi rise to power, Hitler's rise to power. Every trend, tendency is bent into that
link |
outcome. 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 that outcome.
link |
But Hitler's becoming chancellor of Germany in 1933 was not inevitable. It was contingent.
link |
He was offered the position by the traditional conservatives. He's part of the radical right
link |
and the traditional right named him chancellor. The Nazi party never outright won an election
link |
that was free and fair before Hitler came to power. And in fact, its votes on the eve of
link |
Hitler becoming chancellor declined relative to the previous election. So there's contingency in
link |
history. And so Lenin's illness, his stroke, the neurological and blood problems that he had
link |
were not a structure in history. In other words, if Lenin had been a healthier figure, Stalin might
link |
never have become the Stalin that we know. That's not to say that all history is accidental,
link |
just that we need to relate the structural, the larger structural factors to the contingent factors.
link |
Why did Lenin pick Stalin? Well, Stalin was a very effective organizer and the position was
link |
an organizational position. Stalin could get things done. He would carry out assignments,
link |
no matter how difficult. 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. Lenin chose Stalin,
link |
among other options, because he thought Stalin was the better option. Once again,
link |
he wasn't choosing his successor because he didn't know he was going to have this stroke.
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
link |
against the others who were in the regime. Now, they can seem more brilliant than Stalin,
link |
but he was more effective and I'm not sure they were very brilliant.
link |
Well, he was exceptionally competent actually at the tasks for running a government of the
link |
executive branch of a dictator. Yes, 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 pushed
link |
aside by others. You can get a position by accident. You can be named because you're
link |
someone's friend or someone's relative, but to hold that position, to hold that position
link |
in difficult circumstances, and then to build effectively a superpower on all that bloodshed.
link |
You have to be skilled in some way. It can't be just the accident that brings you to power,
link |
because if accident brings you to power, it won't last. Just like we discovered with Putin,
link |
he had some qualities that we didn't foresee at the beginning, and he's been able to hold power,
link |
not just be named. Now, Putin and Stalin are very different people. These are very different regimes.
link |
I wouldn't put them in the same sentence. 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 power
link |
unless they're able to manage it. And Stalin was able to build a personal dictatorship inside
link |
that dictatorship. He was cunning, he was ruthless, and he was a workaholic. 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 state
link |
and bureaucracy. One of the things, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you've made me
link |
realize this wasn't some kind of manipulative personality trying to gain more power solely,
link |
like kind of an evil picture of a person, but he truly believed in communism. As far as I can
link |
understand, again, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but he wanted to build a better world
link |
by having infusioned communism into the country and perhaps into the whole world.
link |
So maybe my question is, what role does communism as an idea, as an ideology,
link |
play in all of this, in his rise to power, in the people of the time, in the Russian people,
link |
actually just the whole 20th century? You're right. Stalin was a true believer,
link |
and this is very important. He was also hungry for power and for personal power,
link |
but just as you said, not for power's sake, not only for power. He was interested in
link |
enacting communism in reality and also in building a powerful state. He was a status,
link |
a traditional Russian status in the imperial sense, and this won him a lot of followers.
link |
The fact that they knew he was a hardcore true believing communist won him a lot of followers
link |
among the communists, and the fact that he was a hardcore defender of Russian state interests
link |
now in the Soviet guys also won him a lot of followers. Sometimes those groups overlapped
link |
the communists and the Russian patriots, and sometimes they were completely different groups,
link |
but both of them shared an admiration for Stalin's dedication to those goals and his abilities
link |
to enact them. And so it's very important to understand that however thirsty he was for power,
link |
and he was very thirsty for power, that he was also driven by ideals. Now, I don't necessarily
link |
think that everyone around Stalin shared those ideals. We have to be careful not to make everybody
link |
into a communist true believer, not to make everybody into a great status Russian patriot,
link |
but they were widespread and powerful attractions for a lot of people. And so Stalin's ability
link |
to communicate to people those that he was dedicated to those pursuits and his ability
link |
to drive towards them were part of his appeal. However, he also resorted to manipulation. He
link |
also resorted to violence. He lied. He spoke out of all sides of his mouth. He slandered other people.
link |
He sabotaged potential rivals. He used every underhanded method and then some in order to
link |
build his personal dictatorship. Now, he justified this, as you said, by appeals to communism
link |
and to Soviet power to himself and to others. And so he justified it in his own mind and to others,
link |
but certainly any means were acceptable to him to achieve these ends. And he identified his
link |
personal power with communism and with Russian glory in the world. So he felt that he was the only
link |
one who could be trusted, who could be relied upon to build these things. Now, we put ourselves back
link |
in that time period. The Great Depression was a very difficult time for the capitalist system.
link |
There was mass unemployment, a lot of hardship, fascism, Nazism, Japan, Imperial Japan.
link |
There were a lot of associations that were negative with the kind of capitalist system
link |
that was not 100%, not a monolith, but had a lot of authoritarian incarnations. There was imperialism,
link |
colonies that even the democratic rule of law capital estates had non democratic,
link |
non rule of law colonies under their rule. So the image and reality of capitalism during
link |
that time period between World War One and World War Two was very different from how it would become
link |
later. And so in that time period, in that interwar conjuncture after World War One before World
link |
War Two, communism held some appeal inside the Soviet Union for sure, but even outside the Soviet
link |
Union because the image and reality of capitalism disappointed many people. Now in the end,
link |
communism was significantly worse. Many more victims and the system, of course, would eventually
link |
implode. But nonetheless, there were real problems that communism tried to address.
link |
Yes, it didn't solve those problems. It was not a solution, but it didn't come out of nowhere.
link |
It came out of the context of that interwar period. And so Stalin's rule, some people saw it as
link |
potentially a better option than imperialism, fascism and Great Depression. Having said that,
link |
they were wrong. It turned out that Stalin wasn't a better alternative to markets and
link |
private property and rule of law and democracy. However, that didn't become clearer to people
link |
until after World War Two, after Nazism had been defeated, Imperial Japan had been defeated,
link |
the fascist Italy had been defeated, and decolonization had happened around the world.
link |
And there was a middle class economic boom in the period from the late 40s through the 70s
link |
that created a kind of mass middle class in many societies. So capitalism rose from the ashes,
link |
as it were. And this changed the game for Stalin and communism. Communism is about
link |
an alternative to capitalism. And if that alternative is not superior, there's no reason
link |
for communism to exist. But if capitalism is in foul odor, if people have a bad opinion,
link |
strong critique of capitalism, there can be appeal to alternatives. And that's kind of what happened
link |
with Stalin's rule. But after World War Two, the context changed a lot. Capitalism was very
link |
different, much 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. Now, today, we see
link |
similarly that the image and reality of capitalism is on the question again, which leads some people
link |
to find an answer in socialism as an alternative. So you just kind of painted a beautiful picture
link |
of comparison. This is the way we think about ideologies is what's working better. Do you
link |
separate in your mind the ideals of communism to the Stalinist implementation of communism?
link |
And again, capitalism and American implementation of capitalism. And as we look at now the 21st
link |
century, where yes, this idea of socialism being a potential political system that we would or
link |
economic system would operate under in the United States, rising up again as an idea. So how do we
link |
think about that? Again, in the 21st century, about these ideas, fundamental deep ideas of
link |
communism capitalism. Yeah. So in the Marxist schema, there was something called feudalism, which
link |
was supposedly destroyed by the bourgeoisie who created capitalism. And then the working class
link |
was supposed to destroy capitalism and create socialism. But socialism wasn't the end stage,
link |
the end stage was going to be communism. So that's why the Communist Party in the Soviet Union
link |
first built socialism, transcending capitalism. The next stage was socialism and the end game,
link |
the final stage was communism. 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. But then it had
link |
come to serve only the narrow interests of the so called bourgeoisie or the capitalists themselves.
link |
And so for humanity's sake, the universal class, the working class needed to overthrow capitalism
link |
in order for greater productivity, greater wealth to be produced for all of humanity to flourish
link |
and on a higher level. 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. So you got socialism in Marx's schema by transcending by eliminating capitalism.
link |
Now, Marx also called for freedom. He said that this elimination of markets and private
link |
property and bourgeois parliaments 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. There's no exception in historical terms. And so it's very interesting.
link |
Marx insisted that capitalism had to be eliminated. You couldn't have markets.
link |
Markets were chaos. You needed planning. You couldn't have hiring of wage labor. That was
link |
wage slavery. 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
link |
and get to freedom. It turned out you didn't get to freedom. So then people said, well,
link |
you can't blame Marx because he said we needed freedom. He was pro freedom.
link |
So it's kind of like dropping a nuclear bomb. You say you're going to drop a nuclear bomb,
link |
but you want to minimize civilian casualties. So the dropping of the nuclear bomb is the
link |
elimination of markets, private property and parliaments. But you're going to bring freedom
link |
or you're going to minimize civilian casualties. So you drop the nuclear bomb,
link |
you eliminate the capitalism and you get famine, deportation, no constraints on executive power,
link |
and not abundance, but shortages. And people say, well, that's not what Marx said. That's not what
link |
I said. I said I wanted to minimize civilian casualties. The nuclear bomb goes off and there's
link |
mass civilian casualties. And you keep saying, but I said drop the bomb, but minimize civilian
link |
casualties. So that's where we are. That's history, not philosophy. I'm speaking about
link |
historical examples, all the cases that we have. 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. He was bothered by something deeper, something worse.
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. Those socialists who came to understand
link |
that if you eliminated capitalism, markets, private property, and parliaments, if you
link |
eliminated that, you wouldn't get freedom. Those Marxists, those socialists became what we would
link |
call social democrats or people who would use the state to regulate the market,
link |
not to eliminate the market. They would use the state to redistribute income, not to destroy
link |
private property and markets. And so this in the Marxist schema was apostasy,
link |
because they were accepting markets and private property. They were accepting alienation and wage
link |
slavery. They were accepting capitalism in principle, but they wanted to fix it. They wanted
link |
to ameliorate. They wanted to regulate. And so they became what was denounced as revisionists,
link |
not true Marxists, not real revolutionaries, but parliamentary road, parliamentarians.
link |
We know this as normal politics, normal social democratic politics from the European case or
link |
from the American case, but they are not asking to eliminate capitalism, blaming capitalism,
link |
blaming markets and private property. So this rift among the socialists, the ones who are for
link |
elimination of capitalism, transcending capitalism, otherwise you could never, ever get to abundance
link |
and freedom in the Marxist schema versus those who accept capitalism, but want to regulate and
link |
redistribute. That rift on the left has been with us almost from the beginning. It's a kind of civil
link |
war on the left between the Leninists and the social democrats or the revisionists, as they're
link |
known pejoratively by the Leninists. We have the same confusion today in the world today,
link |
where people also cite Marx saying capitalism is a dead end, and we need to drop that nuclear bomb
link |
and get freedom, get no civilian casualties, versus those who say, yes, there are inequities,
link |
there's a lack of equality of opportunity. There are many other issues that we need to deal with,
link |
and we can fix those issues, we can regulate, we can redistribute. I'm not advocating this as a
link |
political position. I'm not taking a political position myself. I'm just saying that there's a
link |
confusion on the left between those who accept capitalism and want to regulate it versus those
link |
who think capitalism is inherently evil, and if we eliminate it, we'll get to a better world,
link |
when in fact history shows that if you eliminate capitalism, you get to a worse world.
link |
The problems might be real, but the solutions are worse.
link |
From history's lessons, now we have deep, painful lessons, but there's not that many of them.
link |
Our history is relatively short as a human species. Do we have a good answer on the left
link |
of Leninists, Marxists, versus social democrat, versus capitalism, versus any
link |
anarchy? Do we have sufficient samples from history to make better decisions about the
link |
future of our politics and economics? For sure. We have the American Revolution,
link |
which was a revolution not about class, not about workers, not about a so called universal
link |
class of the working class, elimination of capitalism markets in the bourgeoisie,
link |
but was about the category citizen. It was about universal humanity, where everyone in
link |
theory could be part of it as a citizen. The revolution fell short of its own ideals,
link |
not everyone was a citizen. For example, if you didn't own property, you were a male,
link |
but didn't own property, you didn't have full rights of a citizen. If you were a female,
link |
whether you own property or not, you weren't a full citizen. If you were imported from Africa
link |
against your will, you were a slave and not a citizen. And so not everyone was afforded the
link |
rights in actuality that were declared in principle. However, over time, the category
link |
citizen could expand and slaves could be emancipated and they could get the right to vote.
link |
They could become citizens. Non property owning males could get the right to vote and become full
link |
citizens. Females could get the right to vote and become full citizens. In fact, eventually my
link |
mother was able to get a credit card in her own name in the 1970s without my father having to
link |
cosine the paperwork. It took a long time, but nonetheless, the category citizen can expand
link |
and it can become a universal category. So we have that, the citizen universal humanity model
link |
of the American revolution, which was deeply flawed at the time it was introduced, but fixable
link |
over time. We also had that separation of powers and constraint on executive power that we began
link |
this conversation with. That was also institutionalized in the American revolution because they were
link |
afraid of tyranny. They were afraid of unconstrained executive power. So they built a system that would
link |
contain that, constrain it institutionally, not circumstantially. So that's a great gift.
link |
Within that universal category of citizen, which has, over time, come closer to fulfilling its
link |
original promise, and within those institutional constraints, that separation of powers,
link |
constraint on executive power, within that we've developed what we might call normal politics,
link |
left, right politics. People can be in favor of redistribution and government action, and people
link |
can be in favor of small government, hands off government, no redistribution or less redistribution.
link |
That's the normal left, right political spectrum where you respect the institutions and separation
link |
of powers, and you respect the universal category of citizenship and equality before the law and
link |
everything else. I don't see any problems with that whatsoever. I see that as a great gift,
link |
not just to this country, but around the world and other places besides the United States
link |
have developed this. The problems arise at the extremes, the far left and the far right,
link |
that don't recognize the legitimacy either of capitalism or of democratic rule of law
link |
institutions, and they want to eliminate constraints on executive power. They want to control the
link |
public sphere or diminish the independence of the media. They want to take away markets or
link |
private property, and redistribution becomes something bigger than just redistribution. It
link |
becomes actually that original Marxist idea of transcending capitalism. I'm not bothered by the
link |
left or the right. I think they're normal, and we should have that debate. We're a gigantic,
link |
diverse country of many different political points of view. I'm troubled only by the extremes
link |
that are against the system, cross system, that want to get rid of it, and supposedly that will be
link |
the right path to the future. History tells us that the far left and the far right are wrong
link |
about that. But once again, this doesn't mean that you have to be a social democrat. You could be a
link |
libertarian. You could be a conservative. You could be a centrist. You could be conservative on some
link |
issues and liberal on other issues. All of that comes under what I would presume to be normal
link |
politics. And I see that as the important corrective mechanism, normal politics and market economies,
link |
non monopolistic, open, free, and dynamic market economies. I don't like concentrations of power
link |
politically, and I don't like concentrations of power economically. I like competition in the
link |
political realm. I like competition in the economic realm. This is not perfect. It constantly
link |
needs to be protected and reinvented. There are flaws that are fundamental and need to be adjusted
link |
and addressed and everything else, especially equality of opportunity. Equality of outcome
link |
is unreachable and is a mistake because it produces perverse and unintended consequences,
link |
equality of outcome attempts, attempts to make people equal on the outcome side,
link |
but attempts to make them more equal on the front end, on the opportunity side. That's really,
link |
really important for a healthy society. That's where we've fallen down. Our schools are not
link |
providing equality of opportunity for the majority of people in all of our school systems.
link |
And so I see problems there. I see a need to invest in ourselves, invest in infrastructure,
link |
invest in human capital, create greater equality of opportunity, but also to make sure that we
link |
have good governance because governance is the variable that enables you to do all these other
link |
things. I've watched quite a bit returning back to Putin. I've watched quite a few interviews
link |
with Putin and conversations, especially because I speak Russian fluently. I can
link |
understand often the translations lose a lot. I find the man putting morality aside very deep
link |
and interesting. And I found almost no interview with him to get at that depth. I was very hopeful
link |
for the Oliver Stone documentary with him and to me, because I deeply respect Oliver Stone
link |
as a filmmaker in general, but it was a complete failure in my eyes, that interview.
link |
I suppose you could toss it up to a language barrier, but a complete lack of diving deep
link |
into the person as what I saw. My question is a strange one, but if you were to sit down with
link |
Putin and have a conversation, or perhaps if you were to sit down with Stalin and have a
link |
conversation, what kind of questions would you ask? This wouldn't be televised unless you wanted
link |
to be. So this is only you. So you're allowed to ask about some of the questions that are
link |
sort of not socially acceptable, meaning putting morality aside, getting it to depth of the human
link |
character. What would you ask? So once again, they're very different personalities and very
link |
different time periods and very different regimes. So what I would talk to Stalin about and Putin
link |
about are not in the same category necessarily. So let's take Putin. So I would ask him where he
link |
thinks this is going, where he thinks Russia is going to be in 25 years or 50 years. What's the
link |
long term vision? What does he anticipate the current trends are going to produce? Is he under
link |
the illusion that Russia is on the upswing, that things are actually going pretty well,
link |
that in 25 years Russia is going to still be a great power with a tremendous dynamic economy and
link |
a lot of high tech and a lot of human capital and wonderful infrastructure and a very high
link |
standard of living and a secure, secure borders and sense of security at home. Does he think the
link |
current path is leading in that direction? And if not, if he understands that the current trajectory
link |
does not provide for those kinds of circumstances, does it bother him? Does he worry about that?
link |
Does he care about the future 25 or 50 years from now?
link |
So either he thinks he's on that trajectory already or he doesn't care about that long term
link |
trajectory. So that's the mystery for me with him. He's clever. He has tremendous sources of
link |
information. He has great experience now as a world leader having served for effectively longer
link |
than Leonid Brezhnev's long 18 year reign. And so Putin has accumulated a great deal of experience
link |
at the highest level compared to where he started. And so I'm interested to understand
link |
how he sees this long term evolution or non evolution of Russia and whether he believes
link |
he's got them on the right trajectory or whether if he doesn't believe that he cares.
link |
I have no idea because I've never spoken to him about this, but I would love to hear the answer.
link |
Sometimes you have to ask questions not directly like that, but you have to come a little bit
link |
sideways. You can elicit answers from people by making them feel comfortable in coming sideways
link |
with them. On just a quick question. So that's talking about Russia and Putin's role in Russia.
link |
Do you think it's interesting to ask, and you could say the same for Stalin,
link |
the more personal question of how do you feel yourself about this whole thing,
link |
about your life, about your legacy, looking at the person that's one of the most
link |
powerful and important people in the history of civilization, both Putin and Stalin, you could
link |
argue? Yeah. Once you experience power at that level, it becomes something that's almost necessary
link |
for you as a human being. It's a drug. It's an aphrodisiac. It's a feeling. You know, you go to the
link |
gym to exercise and the endorphins, the chemicals get released. And even if you're tired or you're
link |
sore, you get this massive chemical change, which has very dynamic effects on how you feel and the
link |
kind of level of energy you have for the rest of the day. And if you do that for a long time,
link |
and then you don't do it for a while, you're like a drug addict, not getting your fix.
link |
You miss it. Your body misses that release of endorphins to a certain extent. That's how power
link |
works for people like Putin. That's how power works for people who run universities or are
link |
secretaries of state or run corporations fill in the blank. In whatever ways power is exercised,
link |
it becomes almost a drug for people. It becomes something that's difficult for them to give up.
link |
It becomes a part of who they are. It becomes necessary for their sense of self and well being.
link |
The greatest people, the people I admire the most are the ones that can step away from power,
link |
can give it up, can give up the drug, can be satisfied, can be stronger even by walking away
link |
from continued power when they had the option to continue. So with a person like Putin,
link |
once again, I don't know him personally, so I have no basis to judge this.
link |
This is a general statement observable with many people and in historical terms. With a
link |
person like Putin who's exercised this much power for this long, it's something that becomes a part
link |
of who you are and you have a hard time imagining yourself without it. You begin to conflate your
link |
personal power with the well being of the nation. You begin to think that the more power you have,
link |
the better off the country is this conflation. You begin to be able to not imagine. You can no
link |
longer imagine what it would be like just to be an ordinary citizen or an ordinary person running
link |
a company even, something much smaller than a country. So I anticipate that, without knowing
link |
for sure, that he would be in that category of person. But you'd want to explore that with
link |
questions with him about, so what's his day look like from beginning to end? Just take me through
link |
a typical day of yours. What do you do in a day? How does it start? What are the ups? What are the
link |
downs? What are the parts of the day you look forward to the most? What are the parts of the
link |
day you don't look forward to that much? What do you consider a good day? What do you consider a bad
link |
day? How do you know that what you're doing is having the effects that you intend? How do you
link |
follow up? How do you gather the information, the reaction? How do you get people to tell you to
link |
your face things that they know are uncomfortable or that you might not want to hear? Those kind
link |
of questions. And through that window, through that kind of question, you get a window into a man
link |
with power. So let me ask about Stalin because you've done more research. Is it another amazing
link |
interview you've had? The introduction was that you know more about Stalin than Stalin himself.
link |
You've done incredible amount of research on Stalin. So if you could talk to him, get sort of direct
link |
research. What questions did you ask of Stalin? I have so many questions. I don't even know where
link |
I would begin. The thing about studying a person like Stalin, who's an immense creature, right?
link |
He's exercising the power of life and death over hundreds of millions of people. He's making decisions
link |
about novels and films and turbines and submarines and packs with Hitler or deals with Churchill and
link |
Roosevelt and occupation of Mongolia or occupation of North Korea. He's making phenomenally
link |
consequential decisions over all spheres of life, all areas of endeavor and over much of the globe,
link |
much of the land mass of the earth. And so what's that like? Does he sometimes reflect on the amount
link |
of power and responsibility he has that he can exercise? Does he sometimes think about what it
link |
means that a single person has that kind of power? And does it have an effect on his relations with
link |
others, his sense of self, the kinds of things he values in life? Does he sometimes think it's
link |
a mistake that he's accumulated this much power? Does he sometimes wish he had a simpler life?
link |
Or is he once again so drunk, so enamored, so caught up with chemically and spiritually
link |
with exercising this kind of power that he couldn't live without it? And then what were you thinking,
link |
I would ask him, in certain decisions that he made? What were you thinking on certain dates and
link |
certain circumstances where you made a decision and could have made a different decision?
link |
Can you recall your thought processes? Can you bring the decision back? Was it seat of the pants?
link |
Was it something you'd been planning? Did you just improvise or did you have a strategy?
link |
What were you guided by? Whose examples did you look to when you picked up these books that you
link |
read and you read the books and you made pencil marks in them? Is it because you absorbed the
link |
lesson there? Or did it really not become a permanent lesson and it was just something that
link |
you checked and it was like a reflex? So I have many specific questions about many specific events
link |
and people and circumstances that I have tried to figure out with the surviving source materials
link |
that we have in abundance, but I would still like to delve into his mindset and reconstruct his mind.
link |
The closer you get to Stalin in some ways, the more elusive he can become.
link |
And especially around World War II, you've already illuminated a lot of interesting
link |
aspects about Stalin's role in the war, but it would be interesting to ask even more questions
link |
about how seat of the pants or deliberate some of the decisions have been. If I could ask just
link |
one quick question, one last quick question, and you're constrained in time in answering it,
link |
do you think there will always be evil in the world? Do you think there will always be war?
link |
Unfortunately, yes. There are conflicting interests, conflicting goals that people have.
link |
Most of the time, those conflicts can be resolved peacefully. That's why we build strong institutions
link |
to resolve different interests and conflicts peacefully. But the fact, the enduring fact
link |
of conflicting interests and conflicting desires, that can never be changed. So the job that we have
link |
for humanity's sake is to make those conflicting interests, those conflicting desires, to put
link |
them in a context where they can be resolved peacefully and not in a zero sum fashion. So we
link |
can't get there on the global scale. So there's always going to be the kind of conflict that
link |
sometimes gets violent. What we don't want is a conflict among the strongest powers. Great power
link |
conflict is unbelievably bad. There are no words to describe it. At least 55 million people died
link |
in World War II. If we have a World War III, a war between the United States and China or whatever
link |
it might be, who knows what the number could be? 155 million, 255 million, 555 million.
link |
I don't even want to think about it. And so it's horrible when wars break out in the humanitarian
link |
catastrophes. For example, Yemen and Syria and several other places I could name today.
link |
It's just horrible what you see there. And the scale is colossal for those places,
link |
but it's not planetary scale. And so avoiding planetary scale destruction is really important
link |
for us. And so having those different interests be somehow managed in a way that no one sees
link |
advantage in a violent resolution. And a part of that is remembering history. So they should read
link |
your books. Stephen, thank you so much. It was a huge honor talking to you today. I really enjoyed
link |
it. Thank you for the opportunity. My pleasure. Thanks for listening to this conversation with
link |
Stephen Kotkin. And thank you to our presenting sponsor, Cash App. Download it and use code
link |
Lex Podcast. You'll get $10 and $10 will go to first. A STEM education nonprofit that
link |
inspires hundreds of thousands of young minds to become future leaders and innovators. If you
link |
enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on Apple Podcasts, support it on
link |
Patreon or connect with me on Twitter. And now let me leave you with words from Joseph Stalin,
link |
spoken shortly before the death of Lenin and at the beginning of Stalin's rise to power.
link |
First in Russian. I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote or how.
link |
But what is extraordinarily important is who will count the votes and how.
link |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.