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2:23

Hello everyone and welcome back to

2:25

Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm chatting

2:28

with Stephen Cotkin who's a senior

2:30

fellow at the Hoover Institute but

2:32

he was also a professor of

2:35

history at Princeton University for over

2:37

30 years. He's one of the

2:39

best and best known scholars of

2:41

Russian and Soviet history perhaps best

2:44

known for his multivolium biographies of

2:46

Stalin. Stephen, welcome. Thank you so

2:48

much for the honor of the

2:51

invitation Tyler. Let me start in

2:53

another direction. What's the state of

2:55

Russian Buddhism today? Yeah, I wish

2:58

I knew. It's an excellent

3:00

question. I haven't been to

3:02

Russia since January 2020. We

3:04

had the pandemic, of course,

3:06

and now the war. I

3:09

can say that there was

3:11

a lively no longer underground

3:13

Buddhist presence in Russia. It

3:15

obviously predates the Soviet period.

3:18

It goes way back. The

3:21

Russian army was involved

3:23

in inner Asia, conflict

3:25

over a long time,

3:27

and had firsthand contact

3:29

with Buddhist peoples. But

3:31

where things are today,

3:33

just in general, across

3:35

the board, not just

3:37

on Buddhism, it's not

3:39

so simple. How much

3:41

shamanism do you think

3:43

is still around in

3:45

Siberia? culturally, significantly, but

3:47

how deep the belief

3:49

system is, is a

3:51

tougher question, right? You

3:53

know, it's always the

3:55

problem between practicing versus

3:57

raised in the tradition.

3:59

about everyone

4:01

in Siberia

4:03

from a non-European background

4:05

from non-European have

4:08

had some exposure some exposure

4:10

to shamanism in cultural terms, but

4:12

but how many of

4:14

them will visit visit shamans

4:16

for those big life traditions,

4:19

life changes, those life

4:21

changes, where there's births birth. sir,

4:23

or that's a harder thing thing

4:26

to pin down. I've traveled to

4:28

Siberia. Probably more

4:30

than a dozen times times, I

4:32

should say. I should say. And I

4:34

encountered quite a encountered quite a bit of

4:36

it. of course the there and of course

4:38

did a good job did a good job

4:41

and artifacts and retaining the artifacts.

4:43

There are some museums Again, it's been It's

4:45

been a while, but my life

4:48

visit there is probably seven or

4:50

eight years ago now, there

4:52

was still evidence that it was

4:54

alive. Can you imagine a future

4:56

where for some kind of

4:58

cultural or historic reason or historic reason

5:00

off from the more from parts

5:02

of Russia proper? Russia don't mean

5:04

because of a Chinese invasion, but

5:07

because of Siberia itself. but

5:09

in it for them, the current union? itself.

5:11

Not much. in it for

5:13

them, the current There are not very many

5:15

people there. there are not very many

5:17

colossal space it's a colossal

5:20

it's far more empty than Canada. than

5:22

Canada. So so think about Canada.

5:25

which is roughly, not exactly,

5:27

but roughly equivalent in

5:29

location. in location and Canada

5:31

itself has not a Not a large

5:34

population, but think about c - I don't know,

5:36

know, with a with a far less much denser

5:39

population even than

5:41

it has now it has

5:43

now with effectively no Toronto, no Montreal,

5:46

no Vancouver, but only provincial

5:48

cities cities and unpopulated

5:50

or sparsely populated

5:52

areas in in between. Connection,

5:55

connectivity, governance, economy, all of

5:57

of those

5:59

would be challenges

6:01

the

6:03

current connection or orientation, if you

6:05

will, that they have towards European

6:07

reform. I've been told that in

6:10

Siberia it gets colder as you

6:12

move eastward, and not just as

6:14

you move northward. Is that

6:16

true? And if so, how is it

6:18

influenced Siberian history? Western Siberia and

6:20

Eastern Siberia are dramatically

6:22

different. landscapes, flora

6:24

and fauna, weather patterns. We

6:27

think of everything east

6:29

of the Urals. as a

6:31

coherent unit, more or less.

6:33

In fact, historically, there have

6:35

been three units, Western Siberia,

6:37

Eastern Siberia, and the Russian,

6:39

then Soviet. and now again

6:42

Russian East. And they're quite

6:44

distinct. as you just

6:46

mentioned not just in the

6:48

weather patterns the rivers are

6:50

really the determining factor there

6:52

the rivers are colossal Siberia

6:54

and they set the living

6:56

patterns, the landscape, they've shaped

6:58

the history quite a bit.

7:00

You know Lake Baikal, the

7:02

largest freshwater lake. in

7:04

the world and a

7:07

tremendously important water source.

7:09

If you're dependent on the

7:11

Himalayas. for your water

7:13

which is one way to describe

7:16

Asia, that is to

7:18

say, almost every important river in

7:20

Asia comes from that mountain

7:22

range. as those

7:25

glaciers are reduced in size

7:27

or potentially vanish as the snow

7:29

cap glacial areas of the Himalayas

7:31

no longer feed the river systems

7:33

in the same way. The

7:36

Siberian river systems are all of

7:38

a sudden supremely

7:40

important as a strategic resource

7:42

not just as a basic

7:45

resource and Lake Baikal

7:47

becomes a way in

7:49

which you could imagine

7:51

that water -starved populations that

7:53

are really the southern

7:55

side of the mountains, i .e. China,

7:58

become much more interesting. in the

8:00

the water sources of

8:02

Siberia. So ironically, the the think

8:05

least about. will everyone

8:07

will think about. oil and gas and

8:09

gold and you gas could gold through the whole

8:11

name it, you could go

8:13

right through the whole periodic table

8:15

for Siberia, but it's the

8:17

water prove time that might prove

8:19

to be among the most and

8:21

maybe even the most important

8:23

resource. could and that could determine the kind

8:25

of future that you're poking at. at for

8:27

the the region as whole. So if

8:30

we can desalinate water at

8:32

a reasonable cost, Siberia becomes

8:34

much more irrelevant. more irrelevant? again,

8:36

with technology, that's true of

8:38

just about anything and everything.

8:40

If we can move away

8:42

from hydrocarbons, that changes. geopolitics rather

8:44

dramatically, at least

8:47

potentially, at least potentially, right? Similar with

8:49

of managing water managing

8:51

water. you would know

8:53

better than know better than

8:55

I, but it's the scale that we're talking

8:57

about. all right we're

8:59

not talking about something the size of

9:01

the size of Israel. Right? the size of

9:04

Israel of a a neighborhood

9:06

in Chinese urban agglomeration. Now Colin in

9:08

his famous travel book on

9:10

Siberia, he called the

9:12

place, and I quote, the

9:14

and I quote, dull and agree or

9:16

disagree. Agree or I think he's right

9:18

about the poor part. right about the

9:20

poor I wouldn't say it's dull. say

9:22

the contrary. Quite the If you've

9:25

ever seen ever seen real TIGA,

9:27

which is dense forest,

9:29

not tundra, which

9:32

is not which is but

9:34

if you've seen seen

9:36

which is thick

9:39

ancient trees forest,

9:41

all of the

9:43

ecosystem of that, meaning

9:45

just the not just the Canopies up top,

9:47

top which you can barely see

9:50

from the ground but the entire

9:52

ground ground and everything that's living there

9:54

and growing there and happening there happening

9:56

a wonder. a wonder. So from a

9:59

pure ecological of view,

10:01

I think think dull would be almost a

10:03

criminal criminal. for Siberia.

10:05

Siberia want to don't want

10:08

to put anybody in jail. over what they

10:10

say. what they say. We've been

10:12

practicing that at now for

10:14

a a little while and it hasn't worked.

10:17

But you get my point. point. So

10:19

just it's not dull and

10:21

then one could go on. The people

10:23

of course. the people of course and

10:25

etc. Siberian butter, very

10:27

good. good? Yes, especially

10:29

when it's sold under the

10:31

Danish label as you know. So all the

10:33

the Russian Exiles feasted on

10:36

Siberian butter in European

10:38

the before the but of course

10:40

it came packaged as Danish packaged as

10:42

But how did you become so

10:44

interested in the so interested in the Ob River

10:46

Valley? Travel? GK. the writer, has

10:49

this line this line about history

10:51

is really travel. and

10:53

you know travel it you a

10:55

wider wider perspective widens your horizons

10:57

and teaches you about your your

10:59

your your home country and all

11:02

your experiences all to that prior

11:05

some ways, history and

11:07

travel overlap, at least overlap at

11:09

least in Chesterson's I just went

11:11

there and I just gone

11:13

there. and having gone there I

11:15

discovered that you had kind

11:17

of a kind of you had you

11:19

had multiple layers that were

11:21

not visible and not well well

11:24

known, including the the Buddhist

11:26

layer. was a by

11:28

the the Qing troops the

11:30

Jungars in Inner Asia. Asia,

11:32

and it affected the

11:34

origins of the Dalai

11:36

Lama as an an

11:38

institution, a Pan institution

11:40

throughout Asia. Asia. And

11:43

all of this stuff is visible in

11:45

that river valley. The the olden, the the

11:48

-tish, the ear -tish is effectively a a

11:50

of the of the old. And so so if

11:52

you start from that point of view you

11:54

you go through the have the agricultural

11:56

settlement and transforming the

11:58

land into it. farmland, you

12:00

have the Soviet industrialization, that

12:03

kind of toxic civilization that

12:05

they built, right up through

12:07

plans to reverse the rivers

12:09

with exploding nuclear devices, the

12:11

kind of scientific lunacy that

12:13

you see often in these

12:16

projects where the rivers don't

12:18

flow the way you want

12:20

them to flow and you

12:22

think that there won't be

12:24

second and third order consequences

12:26

to reversing the flow of

12:29

a river. And so the

12:31

region turned out to have

12:33

so much history lay it

12:35

in, not all of which

12:37

was visible to the naked

12:39

eye, but all of which

12:42

would be visible if you

12:44

dug deeply into the source

12:46

materials and you traveled around

12:48

a little bit, place names,

12:50

for example, showed me the

12:52

Buddhists, the Jungar prehistory with

12:55

many of the place names,

12:57

which the origins were clearly

12:59

not Russian words and so

13:01

if you poked into the

13:03

etymology, you discovered that history,

13:05

even though there were no

13:08

visible signs, not even cemeteries,

13:10

visible signs of their presence

13:12

just a few centuries before.

13:14

Whatever happened to the science

13:16

city in Siberia, Akadem Gorodok,

13:19

has it pronounced? Yes, Akadem

13:21

Gorodok or we would call

13:23

it academic city, still there

13:25

and it's still really large

13:27

and important. So it still

13:29

produces science? Yes, it does.

13:32

It's had a number of

13:34

triumphs over the generations. It's

13:36

had some really high powered

13:38

institutes, cybernetics, for example, big

13:40

presence out there. It no

13:42

longer has the same level

13:45

of funding that it had

13:47

in the Soviet period when

13:49

budget constraints were a little

13:51

bit different, but it's still

13:53

important. The problem for the

13:55

Siberian academic city is its

13:58

remoteness from other centers like

14:00

manufacturing centers. Most of... of

14:02

the Siberian region around it

14:04

is old -fashioned metal industry

14:06

and mining, the

14:08

kind of stuff that

14:10

we would call dirty industry

14:13

today, steel plants, dependent

14:15

on coking coal, for example,

14:17

very much mid -20th century

14:19

style industry, and so

14:21

the scientific achievements could not

14:24

easily translate into a

14:26

new productive economy, what you

14:28

might call precision manufacturing

14:30

or knowledge economy. So they

14:32

had the science belt,

14:34

but they didn't have it

14:37

connected very well to

14:39

applications in an industrial economy

14:41

that was forward -looking. So

14:43

they fell into a

14:45

little bit of a rut.

14:47

Why were the Soviets

14:50

so obsessed with cybernetics and

14:52

AI, saying and the AI,

14:54

1960s, is it that they

14:56

understood where things were

14:58

going, or it just was

15:00

a big stupid mistake?

15:03

You can never rule out

15:05

big stupid mistakes if

15:07

we're honest, certainly, about our

15:09

own lives and analogizing

15:11

from them. The Soviets were

15:13

interested in cybernetics because

15:16

it was about more efficient

15:18

ways of gathering and

15:20

using information. So the planned

15:22

economy at core, which

15:24

was a fantasy, never a

15:27

reality. In practice, the

15:29

planned economy was central control

15:31

over some scarce commodities,

15:33

resources, products, so that you

15:35

could prioritize. And

15:38

you could therefore supply those

15:40

privileged factories in your supply

15:42

change with the scarce resources

15:44

to produce predominantly military industrial

15:46

products, but not exclusively. And

15:49

the rest of the stuff

15:51

come with May. That was

15:53

black market, including black market

15:55

factory, a factory. So cybernetics

15:58

was a solution where... you

16:00

could make planning work better.

16:02

You could kind of optimize

16:04

the information you are getting

16:06

from the localities and then

16:09

you could optimize the way

16:11

that you organize things. It

16:13

was a fantasy in a

16:15

different light and it's the

16:18

same one that the Chinese

16:20

Communist Party has today, which

16:22

is to say if your

16:24

authoritarian politics and your productive

16:26

economy don't mesh very well,

16:29

turn to technology, turn to

16:31

technological solutions to get beyond

16:33

the fact that you refuse

16:35

to do the structural reforms

16:37

on the institutional side to

16:40

ensure that the productivity, the

16:42

dynamism continues. And so it's

16:44

this eternal fantasy that science

16:46

and tech will enable you

16:49

not to have to give

16:51

up central control, power, Communist

16:53

Party monopoly. From the scientific

16:55

point of view it was

16:57

fascinating because that's who they

17:00

were, right? They were exceptional

17:02

world -class mathematicians, world -class physicists,

17:04

world -class computer scientists, and

17:06

so for them it was

17:09

the same thing it would

17:11

be for scientists anywhere. Now

17:13

in the 1980s you went

17:15

to live in Magnitogorsk in

17:17

the Ural Mountains. Other than

17:20

your work and your curiosity

17:22

as a historian of the

17:24

Soviet Union, what was the

17:26

best thing about living there,

17:29

just as a citizen of

17:31

Magnitogorsk? Was there anything you

17:33

liked? sure. It

17:35

was a harsh environment. Pollution

17:38

wouldn't begin to describe

17:40

the orange air in the

17:42

town. It was a

17:44

one -company town, one industry

17:46

town. They had a gigantic

17:48

integrated steel plant and

17:50

they had next to no

17:52

pollution controls because they

17:54

had installed pollution controls but

17:56

they didn't use them

17:59

because it lowered their output

18:01

and they were paid

18:03

and got their bonuses based

18:05

on quantitative output. So

18:07

the place was harsh as

18:09

harsh could be, but

18:11

at the same time the

18:13

people were astonishing. There

18:15

is something that for foreigners

18:17

that's really captivating about

18:19

all Slavic cultures, the Russian

18:21

one included, which is

18:23

the degree of hospitality and

18:25

the warmth inside people's

18:27

homes. So outside there's mismanagement,

18:29

corruption, unbreathable air, undrinkable

18:31

water, no places to shop

18:33

because the goods have

18:35

all been stolen, but inside

18:37

people's homes there's everything

18:40

and anything in a modest

18:42

way because the size

18:44

is not comparable to the

18:46

kind of middle -class life

18:48

we would imagine here

18:50

or in Europe or in

18:52

Japan. But inside, despite

18:54

the constrained circumstances in terms

18:56

of the amount of

18:58

space, the warmest and best

19:00

people you could imagine

19:02

and the conversation, which was

19:04

about novels and plays

19:06

and poetry and science and

19:08

the meaning of life

19:10

and philosophical terms and that

19:12

was even before you

19:14

started drinking. Now the early

19:16

plans for Magnitogorosk, they

19:19

incorporated various ideas of utopian

19:21

urban design. Did any

19:23

of those come to fruition?

19:25

Did you see any

19:27

of that when you're actually

19:29

living there, like a

19:31

rationally constructed and built city

19:33

along some kind of

19:35

different principles? Yes, and it's

19:37

still there to this

19:39

day. They built a city

19:41

according to European modernism

19:43

and they discovered that it

19:45

wasn't very livable. So

19:47

they had these fantastic buildings

19:49

that looked like your

19:51

Bauhaus from Germany or your

19:53

Vegstette from Austria, which

19:55

were not ornamental. but still

19:58

elegant. They were spare

20:00

on the ornaments but still

20:02

they had an industrial

20:04

design elegance. The problem was

20:06

families didn't want to

20:08

live with one bathroom down

20:10

the hall for everybody.

20:12

They didn't like that efficiency,

20:14

as people in your

20:16

profession might call it. They

20:18

didn't want to live

20:20

where their children were raised

20:22

collectively by somebody else.

20:24

They wanted to live as

20:26

self -contained nuclear family units

20:28

where they had a

20:30

kitchen and toilet facilities and

20:32

showers and baths inside

20:34

their own space rather than

20:37

sharing that with others.

20:39

So it was this fantastic

20:41

modernist project that was

20:43

brought to fruition at scale

20:45

and the people in

20:47

it didn't want to live

20:49

that way. The regime

20:51

soon enough changed its mind,

20:54

the central regime, and

20:56

stopped facilitating construction

20:58

architecture by the imported

21:01

German architects or

21:03

the Soviet emulation of

21:05

them and instead

21:07

turned away from this

21:09

building of modernist

21:11

communal apartments towards family

21:13

self -contained family apartments

21:15

which were infinitely

21:17

more popular and then

21:19

of course came

21:21

the Stalinist Baroque ornamentation

21:24

outside the apartments to

21:26

differentiate those buildings. You have

21:28

kind of three phases,

21:30

the spare modern ideologically inflected

21:32

European, this is the

21:34

way people should live, the

21:36

20s and 30s. Then

21:38

you have the Stalinist Baroque

21:40

indulgent family apartments which

21:42

are very expensive to build

21:44

and then you have

21:46

the Khrushchev, a five -story

21:48

cement blocks very poorly constructed

21:50

in prefabricated fashion. So

21:52

those are very big basic

21:54

history of the buildings

21:56

there, but that first piece

21:58

that you asked about

22:00

was built and is still

22:03

there. And which of

22:05

those did you live in?

22:07

Neither. None of them.

22:09

I lived in the self

22:11

-contained American cottages built for

22:13

the U .S. and other

22:15

foreign engineers hired on

22:17

contract to help build and

22:19

launch, and initially it

22:21

was thought to manage the

22:23

steel plant. Remember the

22:25

steel plant is not a

22:27

carbon copy but derived

22:29

from the Gary, Indiana plant

22:31

that was built a

22:33

few decades earlier in central

22:35

United States. And so

22:37

they had a colony, which

22:39

they call the American

22:41

colony, even though there were

22:43

also Italians and Germans

22:45

and others there. And they

22:47

had built these self -contained

22:49

cottages, meaning the kind

22:51

of house that you and

22:53

I would see in

22:55

an American suburb, and

22:58

it was removed from the

23:00

town a little bit isolated

23:02

for security purposes and also

23:04

to keep the Americans isolated

23:06

from the local population as

23:08

well as vice versa. And

23:11

those cottages also survived, I

23:13

don't know if they're still

23:15

there, but they survived into

23:17

the mid to late 90s

23:19

and I stayed in one

23:21

of those and I was

23:23

under, of course, 24 -7

23:25

surveillance. Now, Magneto Gorsk had

23:27

been a closed city, so

23:30

what was it that people

23:32

wanted to talk to you

23:34

about or hear about? What

23:36

were their questions? Everything and

23:38

anything. But priority? they wanted

23:40

to hear about the Pope

23:42

or about the Beatles or

23:44

about the president or what?

23:46

Well, the principle was just

23:49

curiosity. And so they had

23:51

been marinated in propaganda, not

23:53

just denied information. We have

23:55

a wrong view of censorship

23:57

that it's only suppression. It's

23:59

also promotion of certain kinds

24:01

of information and certain kinds

24:03

of ways of thinking. And

24:05

so both the denial of

24:08

the information and the promotion

24:10

the Marination that they went

24:12

through so they would ask

24:14

me the simple questions that

24:16

would seem silly in some

24:18

way But fully understandable to

24:20

me were workers ever allowed

24:22

to go on holiday Or

24:24

we're just our were recreational

24:27

resorts solely for the bourgeoisie

24:29

those kinds of questions because

24:31

that was the information they

24:33

were marinated in Also, they

24:35

wanted to know specific questions

24:37

about people individuals Was Ronald

24:39

Reagan really a dangerous guy

24:41

who wanted war Reagan of

24:43

course was president back then

24:46

when I was in Magneto

24:48

course and so it ran

24:50

the gamut They also wanted

24:52

help in finding some children's

24:54

clothes Because there were no

24:56

children's clothes available They wanted

24:58

medicines because medicines weren't very

25:00

short supply They wanted me

25:03

to carry correspondence out and

25:05

Then mail it when I

25:07

was finally back in the

25:09

US to some relatives They

25:11

might have abroad that they

25:13

wanted to obviate the censorship.

25:15

So their isolation was really

25:17

profound Now some things had

25:19

penetrated through right if you

25:22

watch a foreign film For

25:24

example, and you watch a

25:26

French film and you see

25:28

how the French live the

25:30

apartments that they have the

25:32

furniture that they have if

25:34

they walk through a Store

25:36

some type of store just

25:38

as part of the movie if

25:42

you see them on the street

25:44

and they pass a grocery store and

25:46

you see the Fruit

25:49

a raid on the street in

25:51

front of the store. So you'll

25:53

see oranges You'll see bananas. You'll

25:55

see things the most exotic things

25:57

imaginable for the people isolated in

25:59

the Ural Mountain area in a

26:01

closed city, and they would then

26:04

ask me, is that what shops

26:06

are really like? Do people really

26:08

have apartments with seven and eight

26:10

rooms? Is it really possible to

26:12

go on a trip without asking

26:14

permission, an exit visa, for example,

26:16

for them to travel? They needed

26:19

not just a visa from the

26:21

place they were going to, but

26:23

they needed an exit visa to

26:25

be able to leave their country.

26:27

So this was all pretty remarkable

26:29

that I, as a young man,

26:31

was plopped down into this. And

26:33

remember, I could speak the language,

26:36

and so I could converse without

26:38

an interpreter. I didn't need minders,

26:40

and I was also not afraid.

26:42

So I would just go places.

26:44

I would just travel around, either

26:46

walk or take mass transit, and

26:48

chat people up. When I was

26:50

taken to, there was an observation

26:53

platform outside town where you could

26:55

see all of Magneta Gorsk in

26:57

front of you. And

26:59

the mayor and various other

27:01

dignitaries took me to this. They

27:03

were very proud, and various I

27:06

understood that pride, not civic

27:08

pride. And then I turned around,

27:10

and the other side of

27:12

the platform showed what looked to

27:14

me like a prison complex. And

27:17

I said, oh, that must

27:19

be the prison. And they all

27:21

got red -faced, and they said

27:23

to me, oh no, we

27:25

don't have a prison here. You

27:28

know, because this is their normal way

27:31

of denying reality so that they don't

27:33

get into trouble, and a foreigner doesn't

27:35

get the wrong impression. And I said,

27:37

yeah, you're right. It's only in places

27:39

like New York City, where we have,

27:41

you know, where I'm from, where we

27:43

have prison. Out here in Magneta Gorsk,

27:45

you couldn't possibly have a prison, because

27:47

you don't have any criminals. Whereas in

27:49

New York, we have as many prisons

27:52

as you could imagine. And that broke

27:54

the ice. And then they said, well,

27:56

yeah, you know, it's not just New

27:58

York, actually. do have a prison. And so

28:00

it. to get so know each other,

28:02

to get to know each other

28:04

get to understand each other whereby make fun

28:06

didn't make fun of them me

28:08

less and feared me words, less.

28:10

In other words, them them

28:12

for who and what they were. and they And

28:14

they appreciated the fact that I had

28:17

this cure curiosity, this willingness

28:19

to learn, this

28:21

open this about learning. learning,

28:23

who they who they are, what they are. I I

28:25

took them to the cemetery. Actually

28:29

the other way the I should say they took me

28:31

to the say they took me to the cemetery

28:33

for a commemoration and we

28:36

we were there for the

28:38

part of it. then then afterwards I asked

28:40

if we could take a walk. take a walk

28:42

and they said, why would you want to

28:44

walk through there? to It's muddy, there it's said, let's

28:46

just take a walk. just I

28:48

walked with them walked with through their

28:50

through their after the solemn ceremony.

28:53

ceremony and I to

28:55

to narrate the lives of

28:57

the people whose whose headstones we

28:59

were passing. I had been

29:01

in the in the I knew the families I

29:03

knew the history I knew the history and

29:06

they and they were astonished. they

29:08

because they themselves didn't know their own

29:10

history, certainly not to the degree

29:12

I knew it. I knew it. And so

29:14

they began to see my

29:17

appreciation, my respect. respect for

29:19

history that is to say

29:21

That is to say I didn't validate enslavement

29:24

of the pe... of the peasantry,

29:26

all of that is

29:28

beyond validation. It should be

29:30

condemned and was condemned, condemned. But then

29:32

at the same time, you have

29:34

time you have You have

29:36

empathy, right? Radical empathy. empathy,

29:39

whereby not trying to validate what they did,

29:41

but you're trying to appreciate how they

29:43

could do this, who did it, why they

29:45

did it. did it, why they And as I as

29:47

I through the them through the a long

29:49

time, and there were almost no headstones where

29:52

I make some type of comment sometimes

29:54

I knew a lot, sometimes I

29:56

knew just a little piece, sometimes I

29:58

was wrong was wrong, I guessed because the

30:00

names were similar. You'd walk through a

30:02

cemetery and you'd see the name Smith,

30:04

for example, on our side. And you

30:07

might imagine it was one Smith, but

30:09

it was a different Smith. So that

30:11

happened to me. After that cemetery walk,

30:13

where I was respectful during the solemn

30:15

part of their ceremony, and then I

30:17

was like a teacher. That's why I

30:19

had the Freudian slip that I took

30:21

them out to the cemetery, when in

30:23

fact, they took me out. And

30:26

that went a really long way

30:28

in establishing the kind of trust,

30:30

mutual trust. And gradually over time

30:33

things melted and I got more

30:35

and more access to the documentation.

30:37

In the archives, they would only

30:39

let me read newspapers at first.

30:41

They had full runs of the

30:43

local newspapers, which are rare. They

30:46

were not allowed to be exported,

30:48

so our libraries in the US

30:50

didn't have local newspapers from the

30:52

Soviet Union. To any great extent,

30:54

certainly not full runs. And even

30:56

the central libraries, the Library of

30:59

Congress equivalents in the Soviet Union,

31:01

didn't always have full runs of

31:03

very local newspapers, some of which

31:05

were fly-by-night. and I would sit

31:07

with the archivists, call them over.

31:10

They've been sitting in this archive,

31:12

their whole lives, and there were

31:14

a number of them. Five or

31:16

six, they were all women, because

31:18

this was considered women's work. And

31:20

no one came to work on

31:23

their history. Who would do that?

31:25

And so there I was, the

31:27

only person besides the archivists, and

31:29

I would call them over and

31:31

I would say, look at this,

31:33

and I would then explain what

31:36

I had discovered in their history.

31:38

And some of them were really

31:40

sharp and knew their history well

31:42

and had done a lot of

31:44

research, and even those people I

31:47

could teach things to. By that

31:49

point, they were bringing me stuff,

31:51

sometimes things which weren't necessarily approved

31:53

to bring me, but they would

31:55

ask me, how do you interpret

31:57

this? because they were working on

32:00

some project. they couldn't figure it

32:02

out and maybe I could figure

32:04

it out for them. So by

32:06

the time I left the city

32:08

the first time I went back

32:10

twice. I was there in 87,

32:13

1987, and 1989 both obviously prior

32:15

to the Soviet Union collapsing in

32:17

1991 and they were now recruited

32:19

to my side so the local

32:21

secret police, the KGB as it

32:24

was then called, were very concerned

32:26

that an American agent was recruiting

32:28

local people. but I

32:30

wasn't trying to recruit them for

32:32

anything. I was just interacting with

32:34

them on the basis of mutual

32:36

interest and empathy. And so the

32:39

city became in some ways conquered

32:41

by me and the fear that

32:43

that produced in those who have

32:45

the sort of deep suspicion that

32:47

every American is an agent, the

32:49

CIA is unbelievably capable, an octopus,

32:51

everything that happens in the Soviet

32:53

Union that goes wrong, is a

32:55

result of the foreign plots and

32:57

all of this kind of stuff.

32:59

So that small number of people

33:02

who had high positions of authority

33:04

were scared, I scared the Bejesus

33:06

out of them. but I befriended

33:08

so many of the other people

33:10

from all walks of life, including

33:12

from the propaganda apparatus, several of

33:14

whom were conducting surveillance on me,

33:16

the local newspaper, some of them

33:18

were not, some of them were,

33:20

but I didn't care because I

33:22

had nothing to hide and only

33:25

to gain from the interactions with

33:27

the people. So it was quite

33:29

remarkable to be plopped down in

33:31

that isolated town in that time

33:33

period, and it was forever for

33:35

me. I have some questions about

33:37

Stalin. So if we take some

33:39

of the great Soviet creators, Basternak,

33:41

Shostakovich, Bulgakov, Eisenstein, did Stalin understand

33:43

they were geniuses? Because for all

33:45

the bad treatment, he didn't quite

33:48

crush them the way maybe he

33:50

could have. What was Stalin's...

33:52

toward them. Stalin

33:54

was one of

33:56

those people for

33:58

whom high culture

34:00

was a mark

34:02

of your advancement,

34:04

civilization, what the

34:06

Germans call Bildung,

34:08

and what the

34:11

Russians call Kulturnst,

34:13

from Kultur, the

34:15

German word, meaning

34:17

what we probably

34:19

would call edification,

34:21

potentially. And so

34:23

Stalin's generation was

34:25

about people acquiring

34:27

some familiarity with

34:29

high culture in

34:31

all its forms,

34:34

whether opera, painting,

34:36

novels, and poetry. It

34:39

was a literacy acquisition

34:41

culture, where acquisition of literacy

34:43

meant, in the first

34:45

instance, reading and writing, of

34:47

course, which Stalin learned

34:49

from the Orthodox Church schools

34:51

he attended. But also

34:53

literacy in a broader sense,

34:55

who are the great

34:57

musicians, what's the classical canon

34:59

in music, who are

35:01

the great artists, who are

35:03

the great novelists, both

35:05

Russian but also more than

35:07

Russian, Pan -European, not quite

35:09

Asian, global stuff that

35:11

didn't have the same resonance,

35:13

the world wasn't globalized

35:15

in the same way, much

35:17

of the undeveloped world

35:19

was under colonial rule, as

35:21

you know. So for

35:23

Stalin, that was an important

35:25

mark of his rise

35:27

as an individual and as

35:29

his self -work. He was

35:31

predominantly self -educated, but not

35:33

completely so. He had

35:35

just as much education as

35:37

the vast majority of

35:39

revolutionaries at his level. Some

35:41

completed university, most did

35:44

not complete university. He went

35:46

to a seminary rather

35:48

than a gymnasium and so

35:50

therefore university was inaccessible

35:52

to him. But Trotsky put

35:54

on the heirs of

35:56

being more educated than Stalin,

35:58

and certainly Trotsky was... more

36:00

adept at foreign languages based upon

36:02

exile in Europe. in Europe.

36:04

Trotsky multiple languages and read

36:06

multiple languages languages.

36:08

That wasn't the case for Stalin.

36:10

Stalin had a kind of

36:12

working had a kind of working, bizarre or

36:15

knowledge of. Persian,

36:17

Armenian, the languages that

36:19

you would that you would expect someone

36:21

in the caucus who went to who went

36:23

to the marketplace. So he grew in that milieu

36:25

and that affinity for that

36:27

culture? your And then your

36:29

question is about his

36:31

judgment. Could he judge,

36:33

for example, that that was a

36:35

was a superior or Eisenstein

36:37

was a a superior filmmaker? And

36:39

the answer is is yes, made

36:41

those judge judgments not very

36:44

many adherence to Marxism -Leninism

36:46

or to or to members

36:48

of the communist party. the

36:50

Communist Party, with him, tastes

36:52

with him that those bourgeois potentially

36:55

bourgeois inclinations inclined writers

36:57

or who predated

36:59

the the revolution and

37:01

who might who might have and

37:04

certainly didn't adhere to Marxism

37:06

didn't that they were valid you

37:08

in pure cultural

37:10

terms. valued in pure course terms.

37:13

had his prejudices. course, he

37:15

also his blind prejudices

37:17

and his blind spots. So

37:19

some high that you and I might

37:21

appreciate. I might He didn't appreciate

37:23

it. appreciate. He loved

37:25

Chekhov most because The

37:28

heroes in Chekhov were not

37:30

not the main the main

37:32

characters, also the villains. And

37:35

Stalin would remark

37:37

that that Chekhov's villains

37:39

They were believable They were They were full

37:41

body villains, in in

37:44

addition to the

37:46

heroes. So yes, non-trivial, the

37:48

he's the arbiter of

37:50

anything. anything, of high culture

37:53

is distributed allowed

37:55

and so

37:57

his tastes were critical.

38:00

the despot in the system. And

38:02

so those writers didn't thrive the

38:04

way they would have thrived in

38:06

an open society. But on the

38:09

other hand, there's something about cultural

38:11

production under despotic conditions. Hot house

38:13

despotic conditions, it also brings out

38:15

different sides of these people. Why

38:17

did Prokofi have returned in 1936?

38:20

Was he just stupid? He wasn't

38:22

making it in Europe or how

38:24

do you make sense of that?

38:26

I wouldn't have gone back. Some

38:29

people who went back

38:32

were arrested and executed

38:34

or sent to prison

38:37

labor and remote waste

38:39

to return to your

38:41

original questions about Siberia.

38:44

But exile is difficult.

38:46

Losing your native language

38:49

is difficult for people.

38:51

Immigration or exile. Immigrants

38:53

often go voluntarily. meaning

38:57

they're looking to assimilate, they're

38:59

looking to settle into the

39:01

new culture, they certainly want

39:04

their children to be completely

39:06

assimilated in many cases. For

39:08

exile it's a little bit

39:11

different, often you didn't leave

39:13

voluntarily, often you were kicked

39:16

out or you barely escaped,

39:18

you nurtured hopes to go

39:20

back at some point, either

39:23

the regime would change or...

39:25

It would soften if it

39:28

didn't fall. Moreover, if you're

39:30

a really accomplished player, you

39:32

have an exceptional talent. That

39:35

talent and the appreciation of

39:37

that talent is different at

39:40

home than it is abroad.

39:42

There's this fantastic scene in

39:44

Mepisto, the film, about an

39:47

actor who remains in sort

39:49

of... a

39:51

grandi's Nazi Germany, not greater Germany

39:54

than the Nazis. And he goes

39:56

on stage, and the Nazis rule

39:58

there, so there are a swap.

40:01

the curtains and other indications of

40:03

the Nazi regime. And someone asks

40:06

him, this is Klaus Maria Brantau,

40:08

the actor, who plays the part,

40:10

was fantastic film. Someone says, you

40:13

know, how come you didn't, you're

40:15

doing this and how come you

40:17

didn't leave? And he rebukes the

40:20

question and says, you know, not

40:22

everybody can emigrate. Not everybody can

40:25

leave. For some people. the German

40:27

language and the theater is our

40:29

life. And we may or may

40:32

not like the Nazi regime, but

40:34

why should we give that up?

40:36

And it's a moral dilemma, obviously.

40:39

That's why the question was posed.

40:41

But there's not necessarily a single

40:44

answer or a single black and

40:46

white answer, despite the fact that

40:48

you can be seen as a

40:51

collaborator for the kind of stuff

40:53

he did. So Prokofiev goes back

40:55

to do music. to

40:58

do music to appreciative audiences.

41:00

He's supremely talented and everybody

41:02

there knows that. And so

41:04

does he fully understand how

41:06

bad the regime is? 1936,

41:08

the regime is about to

41:10

descend into the frenzy of

41:13

the mass arrests, the so-called

41:15

great terror of Stalin, 36

41:17

to 38. So Prokofia doesn't

41:19

understand all of that, but

41:21

who did at the time?

41:23

But what he does understand

41:25

is that it's a musical

41:28

culture and he is a

41:30

master musician. What do you

41:32

think of the hypothesis? I

41:34

think it comes from James

41:36

Hughes that it was Stalin's

41:38

visit to Siberia and his

41:40

time there that gave him

41:42

a sense of what was

41:45

wrong with the Soviet Union,

41:47

that you needed to crush

41:49

the Kuloks to be quite

41:51

oppressive. Is that true? It's

41:54

not true sadly. I've been to

41:56

that same place where Stalin went.

42:00

Barnauau in 1928. For

42:02

a while in the

42:04

museum, not on display,

42:06

but in the back

42:08

room, they had the

42:10

wooden sled that carried

42:12

him from the railhead

42:14

to the gigantic barn

42:16

where he gave the

42:18

speech that he was

42:20

going to move forward

42:22

on collectivization. It was

42:24

a decision he had

42:26

already reached and it

42:28

was a trip that

42:30

he took in order

42:32

to break the party's

42:34

affiliation with the Kulaks.

42:36

Many of party officials

42:38

in the provinces in

42:40

the 20s had grown

42:42

rich by liaison with

42:44

the richer peasants. They

42:46

had married their daughters

42:48

to Kulaks. They were

42:50

typical corrupt officials at

42:52

the provincial level and

42:54

Stalin wanted to teach

42:56

them a lesson. that

42:59

that wouldn't fly anymore and

43:01

he went out there and

43:04

delivered a searing speech which

43:06

of course then was nationally

43:09

publicized about how the collective

43:11

is a full-speed forward on

43:13

collectivization and the kulaks were

43:16

an enemy people didn't understand

43:18

they didn't believe the how

43:21

could he be doing this

43:23

right so you have to

43:26

remember for Marxist Leninists the

43:29

base determines the superstructure. So

43:31

the nature of the economy

43:33

or what they would call

43:36

social relations, socio-economic conditions, determines

43:38

the kind of politics you

43:40

have. So if you have

43:42

a communist party in power

43:45

and you have de facto

43:47

market relations in the countryside

43:49

with a prodo or quasi

43:51

bourgeois class, richer peasants, meaning

43:54

they had more than two

43:56

cows, known as kulaks. Either.

44:00

the base would triumph or

44:02

the superstructure of the Communist

44:05

Party would have to get

44:07

rid of the base over

44:09

the long term. They were

44:11

all Marxist-Leninists in the Communist

44:13

Party and they all agreed

44:16

with this, even the corrupt

44:18

ones who were feeding well

44:20

in the liaison with the

44:22

Kuwaks. What they never imagined

44:25

was that you could do

44:27

this, that you could collectivize

44:29

agriculture across all of Soviet

44:31

Eurasia Asia through those... multiple,

44:33

multiple time zones. Where would

44:36

you get the wherewithal, the

44:38

capacity to implement that, to

44:40

take people's property away from

44:42

them? So voluntary collectivization as

44:44

of 1928 when Stalin makes

44:47

that trip to Siberia. It's

44:49

Western Siberia. Voluntary collectivization is

44:51

1% of arable land. 1%

44:53

meaning that the people who

44:55

couldn't farm themselves individually or

44:58

as a household, as a

45:00

family, they went into collectives

45:02

voluntarily because they were incapable

45:04

of managing on their own.

45:07

So for you to be

45:09

able to make 99% collective

45:11

as opposed to 1% collective,

45:13

you needed to take people's

45:15

property away from them. and

45:18

forced them into these collective

45:20

arrangements. Now the property wasn't

45:22

a de jure property, it

45:24

was only de facto property,

45:26

but de facto property is

45:29

still property. And so Stalin

45:31

made that trip in order

45:33

to announce that this was

45:35

now going to happen and

45:37

the others around him were

45:40

very skeptical that this was

45:42

feasible. They didn't have a

45:44

soft spot for the kulaks,

45:46

don't get me wrong. In

45:49

the central committee, in the

45:51

central apparatus in Moscow or

45:53

other party, bastions like Leningrad

45:55

or Kiev and Soviet Ukraine

45:57

or Novicebiersk in Western Siberia.

46:01

but they had the skepticism that this

46:03

could be done. could And so

46:05

Stalin did it. That was the thing

46:07

that shocked them all. And when all.

46:09

the process of doing it, of

46:11

caused famine. caused famine. and

46:13

he was undermining potentially

46:16

the party's own rule. own rule. kept

46:19

He just kept going all the way

46:21

through he he had the courage of

46:23

his his conviction. then when they complained about

46:25

him about made a mental note

46:27

of that. note of that. he

46:29

exacted. His version of revenge

46:32

on them a few years later. years

46:34

later their criticisms of him

46:36

when he did this. when he did

46:38

this because he believed in he

46:40

believed in that this

46:42

had to be done? that this had He

46:44

felt himself to be a

46:46

man of destiny, to and a

46:48

he could do this. and he

46:50

was looking to find the

46:52

he was galvanize the half -educated

46:54

youth. to take

46:56

violence out on

46:58

these coolocks. to

47:01

force the villagers

47:03

into these arrangements. and so what

47:05

he did, he did, and this

47:07

is what totalitarianism is. he galvanized

47:09

galvanized and those people

47:11

using their agency and

47:14

those people using their agency

47:16

destroyed their own agency. by taking up

47:18

They disempowered themselves by taking

47:20

up his call. Do

47:22

you think Stalin at all culture influenced

47:24

Stalin at all in this? and there's

47:27

there were a lot of Georgians one

47:29

Stalin, you know, so

47:31

people people argue that he got

47:33

into fights on got

47:35

into fights on the the

47:37

fights were nasty that the fights

47:39

were he became a certain

47:41

type of person. They he

47:43

became a certain type of person. him

47:46

and argue that his father beat him.

47:48

type of person. The problem

47:51

with of person. The problem

47:53

with arguments like that, Tyler. I

47:55

got that fights in the in

47:57

the schoolyard when I was his age.

47:59

his age. People beat me

48:01

up because I was a

48:04

half Catholic, half Jew at

48:06

a Catholic school. This was

48:08

an Englewood New Jersey, right?

48:10

And I was small and

48:12

people knew that they could

48:14

maybe take me on bully

48:16

style because I wasn't as

48:18

big as they were. My

48:21

father also disciplined me. with

48:23

the proverbial belt when I

48:25

got out of hand. And

48:27

I didn't go on to

48:29

collectivize agriculture. I'm not responsible

48:31

for the deaths of 18

48:33

to 20 million people. So

48:35

you're not going to be

48:37

able to explain Stalin as

48:40

a phenomenon or even as

48:42

a personality with those types

48:44

of tropes. So what explains

48:46

Stalin, at least in my

48:48

view, what I argued and

48:50

continue to argue in the

48:52

biography, is the experience of

48:54

getting into power and then

48:57

exercising power. It's building and

48:59

running the dictatorship. It's managing

49:01

Russian power in the world

49:03

that makes Stalin who he

49:05

is. Not because there's some

49:07

kind of DNA there. I

49:10

don't go for cultural DNA

49:12

like arguments, but it's about

49:14

your geography. It's about your

49:16

capabilities as a great power

49:18

relative to other great powers.

49:20

It's about the institutions that

49:22

you've inherited, not only the

49:24

ones that you've created. And

49:26

so this mix of Stalin

49:28

building a dictatorship inside the

49:30

dictatorship and exercising that power

49:32

creates the kind of person

49:34

that we know is style.

49:36

You know how I know

49:38

that? I refuse to use

49:41

sources that were retrospective. If

49:43

you survive the Stalin collectivization

49:45

terror, and you wrote a

49:47

memoir, you looked back on

49:49

those days in the school

49:51

yard that Georgian revenge and

49:53

you said oh I remember

49:55

when he was 11 and

49:57

you know he put the

49:59

cat in the microwave I

50:01

knew right then that we

50:03

were all going to die

50:05

right and so that retrospective

50:07

memoir approach where you know

50:09

what happened and then you

50:11

go back and find the

50:13

I refused to do that

50:15

so I only looked prospectively

50:17

at what people said about

50:19

him in real time and

50:21

he resigned six times in

50:23

the 1920s in the 1920s

50:25

from the dictatorship, from the

50:27

position of General Secretary of

50:29

the Communist Party. Three times

50:31

we have a written document

50:33

and three times we have

50:35

solid testimony that he did

50:37

it orally for multiple sources

50:39

who were present. And all

50:41

six times, there might have

50:43

been more, but we have

50:45

six documented times, all six

50:47

times those people who worked

50:50

most closely with him refused

50:52

to allow him to resign.

50:54

Because he was carrying the

50:56

regime on his shoulders. He

50:58

was the only person in

51:00

that group capable of doing

51:03

so. He was dedicated like

51:05

nobody else to the cause.

51:07

And they didn't see the

51:09

Stalin that we would later

51:11

see. In fact, those people

51:13

in the room with him,

51:15

those six times, he murdered

51:17

almost all of them in

51:19

less than a decade in

51:22

some cases, and in less

51:24

than two decades in other

51:26

cases. And yet they didn't

51:28

perceive that he was going

51:30

to murder them. because otherwise

51:32

they would have contrived to

51:34

get him out, let alone

51:36

accepted his multiple resignation. So

51:38

when you look at Stalin

51:40

in real time, you see

51:43

a transformation in his personality

51:45

in symbiosis or in some

51:47

relationship with building and running

51:49

that dictatorship at that time

51:51

period. And so I'm

51:53

very hesitant. Of course he has

51:55

a personality. Of course he has

51:57

these experiences as a youth.

51:59

course, they inform

52:01

him. right? He goes He goes

52:03

school, and so he And so he has

52:05

a liturgical way. of expressing

52:07

himself. Meaning, like the liturgy,

52:10

he enunciates points points

52:12

and repeats them over and

52:14

over again. it reads reads

52:16

just like a catechism, his

52:18

Marxism, Leninism. So you could

52:21

say that it's likely. it's likely that

52:23

his upbringing upbringing

52:25

his church school experiences including

52:27

at the at the influenced him

52:29

so I don't deny that there's

52:31

a personality and influences but

52:33

you're trying to explain but

52:36

one of the three. explain one

52:38

of the bloodiest in

52:40

the history of our planet. of our planet,

52:42

right? Stalin, and Mao. and Mao.

52:44

It's a very small category. category.

52:46

You can't can't put anybody else in

52:48

that category. in my my view. And

52:51

in in explaining people like

52:53

that, life experiences when

52:55

they're young young, or trips to

52:57

Siberia or coast. There were a were

52:59

a of of Georgians. grew up

53:01

in who grew up in that time period,

53:03

who were as gentle as could be. some

53:06

of them some of them are communist

53:08

party members. members. What did you learn

53:10

from Michelle Michel Foucault about power

53:12

indeed else. else? Yeah, I I

53:14

was very lucky. I I was in I

53:16

I went to Berkeley for a a

53:18

program in 1981. 1981. I I finished

53:20

in 1988 first first job

53:22

was at Princeton University. in

53:25

1989 in in the middle of

53:27

it I went for French history and

53:29

I switched into Hopsborg history and

53:31

I switched into I

53:33

switched into Russian Soviet history and

53:35

I started started learning the Russian

53:38

language. alphabet my year of the

53:40

PhD program when was supposed to take

53:42

my PhD exams. exams.

53:44

it was a radical shift

53:46

shift. And Foucault, I met him

53:48

because he came to came

53:50

in the in the 80s, like Derry

53:52

Dock came, like Habermas came Claude

53:54

Levistros, the anthropologist came through came

53:56

through. It was California they

53:59

they were european and there was

54:01

a wow factor for them.

54:03

Foucault was also openly gay

54:05

and San Francisco gay culture

54:07

was extraordinarily attractive to him.

54:09

It was unfortunately the epoch

54:11

of the AIDS epidemic. So

54:13

one time I was at

54:15

lunch with him and he

54:17

said to me, wouldn't it

54:19

be amazing if somebody applied

54:21

my theories to Stalinism? And

54:24

I'm sitting there, okay, I'm

54:26

23 years old. Imagine

54:29

if you had traveled to Switzerland

54:31

in the late 19th century and

54:33

you went up in those Engadine

54:35

mountains and you were at some

54:37

cafe in the mountain air and

54:39

there's this guy with a huge

54:41

farhead and hair up in the

54:43

air sitting there and you went

54:45

and introduced yourself and you said,

54:47

you know, hello, I'm, I'm Friedrich

54:49

Nietzsche. You would say, well, geez,

54:51

you know, I mean, This

54:53

is interesting. I should have more

54:56

conversations with you. So that's the

54:58

experience I had. I had read

55:00

Foucaulton Seminar because it was very

55:02

fashionable to do so, obviously, especially

55:05

at Berkeley, especially in a culture

55:07

that tilts one way politically, and

55:09

I think you'll guess which way

55:11

that might be. But I didn't

55:14

understand what he said. So I

55:16

went up to him as a

55:18

naive. with this book Madness and

55:20

Civilization, which we had been forced

55:23

to read, and I started asking

55:25

him questions. What does this mean?

55:27

What does this mean? What does

55:29

this mean? What does this passage?

55:32

This is indecipitable. And he patiently

55:34

explained to the moron that I

55:36

was, what he was trying to

55:38

say. And it sounded much more

55:41

interesting coming from him verbally sitting

55:43

across just a few feet away

55:45

than it had on the page.

55:48

And I was lucky to become

55:50

the class coordinator for his course

55:52

at Berkeley. And so he gave

55:54

these lectures about the truth, the

55:57

problem of the truth teller in

55:59

ancient Greece. was very far removed

56:01

from, I had no classical training,

56:03

yes I had Latin in high

56:06

school because I went to Catholic

56:08

school and it was a required

56:10

subject and I started as an

56:12

old boy with a Latin mass

56:15

which quickly changed because of what

56:17

happened with Vatican too, but no

56:19

Greek. So it was completely Greek

56:21

to me. You'll forgive me for,

56:24

that wasn't plan that I, because

56:26

it happened spontaneously. Anyway,

56:28

so I just kept asking him more

56:30

questions and invited him to go to

56:32

things and so we would have lunches

56:34

and dinners and I introduced him to

56:36

this place Little Joe's in Little Italy

56:39

part of San Francisco, which unfortunately is

56:41

no longer there. It was quite a

56:43

landmark back then. And then

56:45

he would repair after dinner to

56:47

the bathhouses in San Francisco by

56:50

himself. I was not part of

56:52

that. I'm neither openly nor closeted

56:54

gay, so that was a different

56:56

part of Foucault that I didn't

56:58

partake in, but others did. Anyway,

57:00

so I would ask him these

57:03

things and he would just explain

57:05

stuff to me. So I would

57:07

say, what's happening in Poland? you

57:09

know this is the 1980s and

57:11

he would say things to me

57:13

like the idea of civil society

57:16

is the opiate of the intellectual

57:18

class and everybody was completely enamored

57:20

of the concept of civil society

57:22

in the 80s, especially via the

57:24

Polish case. And so I would

57:26

ask him to elucidate more. You

57:28

know, so what does that mean

57:31

and how does that work? And

57:33

he told me once that class

57:35

in France came from disease in

57:37

Paris, that it wasn't because of

57:39

who was a factory worker. who

57:41

wasn't a factory worker, but it

57:44

was your neighborhoods in Paris, and

57:46

who died from cholera and who

57:48

didn't die from cholera. And a

57:50

colleague of ours, who was another

57:52

fellow graduate from the Berkeley, ended

57:54

up writing a dissertation, using that

57:57

aside, that throwaway line. I was

57:59

able to ask him these questions

58:01

about everything and anything, and what

58:03

he showed me... is your question,

58:05

what he showed me was how

58:07

power works, not in terms of

58:10

bureaucracy, not in terms of the

58:12

large mechanisms of governance, like a

58:14

secret police, but how all of

58:16

that is enforced and acted through

58:18

daily life. In other words, the

58:20

micro versions of power. And

58:23

so it's connected to the

58:25

big structures, but it's little

58:28

people doing this. That's why

58:30

I said totalitarianism is using

58:32

your agency to destroy your

58:34

own agency. And that means

58:36

denouncing your neighbors, right? Being...

58:39

encouraged to denounce your neighbors for

58:41

heresies and participating in that culture

58:43

of denunciation which loosens all social

58:45

trust and social bonds and puts

58:48

you in a situation of dependency

58:50

on the state. So you're a

58:52

gung-ho activist using your agency and

58:54

the next thing you know you

58:56

have no power whatsoever. And so

58:58

those are the kind of things

59:00

that I could talk to him

59:03

about and after he passed away

59:05

from AIDS in the summer of

59:07

1984 It was the

59:09

AIDS epidemic, horrific. He passed away

59:11

and we had a memorial for

59:13

him. I was still a PhD

59:16

student, remember. I didn't finish until

59:18

88. And there was this guy

59:20

Michel Disserto, who wrote a tribute

59:23

to Foucault in French that he

59:25

was going to deliver at the

59:27

event. It was called the Laughter

59:29

of Foucault. And

59:31

I had these conversations with

59:34

DeSerto about his analysis of

59:36

Foucault, the pleasure of analytic

59:38

work, which had been a

59:40

hallmark of Foucault, and this

59:42

laughter of Foucault, and DeSerto

59:44

taught me a phrase called

59:46

the Little Tactics of the

59:48

Habitat, which became one of

59:50

the core ideas of my

59:53

dissertation and then book Magnetic

59:55

Mountain, about this micro power

59:57

stuff. So he, even though

59:59

Foucault was gone, I was

1:00:01

able to extend the beginning

1:00:03

of the conversations with Foucault

1:00:05

through DiSertel. And I learned

1:00:07

how power works in everyday

1:00:09

life and how the language

1:00:12

that you use and the

1:00:14

practices like denunciation that you

1:00:16

enact or partake in helps

1:00:18

form those totalitarian structures so

1:00:20

it's not just the secret.

1:00:22

Because the secret police are

1:00:24

not there every minute of

1:00:26

every day. So what's in

1:00:28

your head? How are you

1:00:30

motivated? What type of behavior

1:00:33

are you motivated for? And

1:00:35

so we say, okay, what

1:00:37

would Stalin do in this

1:00:39

situation? Many people approach their

1:00:41

lives. They've never met Stalin.

1:00:43

They'll never meet Stalin. But

1:00:45

they imagine what Stalin might

1:00:47

do. And so that gets

1:00:49

implanted in their way of

1:00:52

thinking. It becomes second nature.

1:00:54

And I learned. to discuss

1:00:56

and analyze that through a

1:00:58

full call. I have to

1:01:00

say I didn't share his

1:01:02

analysis that Western society was

1:01:04

imprisoning, that the daily life

1:01:06

practices of free societies were

1:01:08

a form of imprisonment in

1:01:11

its own way. I never

1:01:13

shared that view. So it

1:01:15

wasn't for me his analysis

1:01:17

of the West that I

1:01:19

liked. It was the analytical

1:01:21

toolkit that I adapted from

1:01:23

him to apply to actual

1:01:25

totalitarianism in the Soviet case.

1:01:27

Much of that is a

1:01:30

theme in Vasily Grossman's life

1:01:32

and fate, right? The passivity

1:01:34

of people, denunciations, the logic

1:01:36

of decentralized control. Yes, I

1:01:38

read Grossman later. So remember,

1:01:40

I'm an ignoramist, like most

1:01:42

graduate students, but even more

1:01:44

so, because I don't know

1:01:46

any Russian history. I

1:01:49

have no Russian history training.

1:01:51

I'm learning the Russian alphabet.

1:01:53

And so I don't have

1:01:55

that deep and rich feel

1:01:57

for the place that I

1:01:59

would only develop later on

1:02:01

by reading and fate and

1:02:03

much else everything that Vassili

1:02:05

Grossman wrote. So what I

1:02:07

had was French history. I

1:02:09

had the Anal School. The

1:02:11

Anal School founded by Mark

1:02:13

Block and Lucian Fev in

1:02:15

the 20s. It was the

1:02:17

journal was called Anal and

1:02:19

it was known as the

1:02:21

Anal School. And Brodell, Fernand

1:02:23

Brodell became one of the

1:02:25

most famous proponents of the

1:02:27

school. Although Pierre Shoneau, I

1:02:29

prefer much more, I like

1:02:32

Shoneau's Civil in the Atlantic

1:02:34

much more than I like

1:02:36

Brodell's Philip in the Mediterranean,

1:02:38

Feve was my favorite by

1:02:40

far, and Feve decided, unlike

1:02:42

Block, Feve decided to continue

1:02:44

to publish during the Vichy

1:02:46

days, and Block went into

1:02:48

the resistance and was eventually

1:02:50

killed, and Feve had the

1:02:52

whiff of that Chauce

1:02:54

Bila, that actor in the

1:02:56

Mephisto, a movie that I

1:02:58

was talking about. But anyway,

1:03:00

it's this fabulous historical eruption

1:03:02

that comes from the French.

1:03:04

And what they do is

1:03:07

they do total history, meaning

1:03:09

they take a place, they

1:03:11

go into the judicial archives,

1:03:13

which record daily life, and

1:03:15

they do economy, society, culture,

1:03:17

and politics, all rolled into

1:03:19

one. So that's what I

1:03:21

decided to do. But in

1:03:23

the Soviet case, and I

1:03:25

became the first case study

1:03:27

of any Soviet place based

1:03:29

upon archival material with this

1:03:31

magnetic mountain project. But I

1:03:33

did it in all school

1:03:35

style, splicing in the theories

1:03:37

of micro power and micro

1:03:39

politics from Foucault and disertel.

1:03:42

So then I had to learn,

1:03:44

okay so I started learning the

1:03:47

Russian alphabet as a PhD student

1:03:49

at Berkeley instead of taking my

1:03:51

exam. I had this professor Sergei

1:03:54

Kasatkin, an emigre who was well

1:03:56

out in years, probably 70s, maybe

1:03:58

older, I'd never

1:04:01

never asked had immigrated in

1:04:03

the Civil War the Civil War

1:04:05

19-20 out through Harbin and then

1:04:07

became an then He

1:04:10

a Mongol-mongle He

1:04:12

wrote a Mongol-Russian, not a

1:04:15

Mongol Russian, but Mongol -Mongol

1:04:17

dictionary. and new Chinese,

1:04:19

new new Japanese, for for British intelligence

1:04:21

War II, War and he ends

1:04:23

up at the end of

1:04:25

life, the end of days at days at

1:04:27

teaching intensive Russian for beginners. So

1:04:29

I So I took Russian two hours a

1:04:31

day, 5 days a week, with a tiny

1:04:34

number of other students in Syria. in Sergei

1:04:36

in the classroom. in the So.

1:04:38

So, that's my level of level

1:04:40

of understanding. Vasili is very far

1:04:42

at that point. that point. I'm trying

1:04:44

to figure out how out how gerons work, you

1:04:46

you know, how the past tense were. tense work.

1:04:48

how you use verbs in which are

1:04:50

which are very different. is is

1:04:53

much closer to to ancient Greek than

1:04:55

it is to is the English. its grammar

1:04:57

and grammar some of the of

1:04:59

the language. So of the language. that

1:05:01

and then getting on a plane and getting

1:05:03

on a plane and going power

1:05:05

Gorbachev comes into power and I

1:05:07

have to do PhD this and four

1:05:09

then I finished this and

1:05:11

four years later. I'm Russian Soviet history at

1:05:14

Princeton University. So

1:05:16

this is like some kind of... of you

1:05:18

know, fantasy, dystopia, talk

1:05:20

about about This is just is

1:05:22

just unimaginable i I know even

1:05:24

know if a this life. could have

1:05:26

And then I have life. And then I

1:05:29

have the I have to start reading I have to

1:05:31

start And I have to start reading... eating

1:05:33

and I have to start of course, I

1:05:35

have to read them in the original Russian course I

1:05:37

have to read them don't read them in

1:05:39

translation. I don't go through the point where

1:05:41

I read them in translation when I was

1:05:43

a a kid. Now I'm a

1:05:45

a professional reader. reading, first time I ever

1:05:47

read them was. read them was Russian language.

1:05:50

Just like I read Kundera's of laughter

1:05:52

and forgetting and... and I I

1:05:54

learned Czech, it was part of my

1:05:56

Czech language training training at I studied

1:05:58

Czech before. before. Russian because

1:06:00

I did hops book history.

1:06:03

So all the backfill, I

1:06:05

discovered this amazing ancient civilization

1:06:07

with all of these layers

1:06:09

and like music and graphic

1:06:11

arts and literature and poetry

1:06:14

and theater. That was a

1:06:16

bonus. I had gone into

1:06:18

this only because it was

1:06:20

a problem of how power

1:06:22

worked. and the connection between

1:06:24

geopolitics institutions, daily life, ideas,

1:06:27

and I discovered a world

1:06:29

that I had not appreciated,

1:06:31

not even anticipated, Okay, sure.

1:06:33

I wasn't totally ignorant in

1:06:35

the way that maybe I'm

1:06:38

portraying it. I was predominantly

1:06:40

ignorant. So I'm not exaggerating

1:06:42

my ignorance here, but it

1:06:44

was deep. I had studied

1:06:46

European intellectual history, University of

1:06:48

Rochester as an undergraduate. So

1:06:51

I knew the German, the

1:06:53

French, British, some Italian stuff.

1:06:55

I studied German and French

1:06:57

languages as an undergraduate. So

1:06:59

I was not a complete

1:07:02

unwashed ignoramus, but Russia was

1:07:04

a world that I would

1:07:06

only discover later, and it

1:07:08

was a stroke of luck.

1:07:10

What do you like best

1:07:13

in Korean art? Yeah, it's

1:07:15

funny, you should ask that

1:07:17

question. When I was a

1:07:19

assistant professor at Princeton, I

1:07:21

got a sabbatical, and I

1:07:23

went to Japan, and it

1:07:26

had no obvious relationship to

1:07:28

my work and I was

1:07:30

an assistant professor in tenure

1:07:32

track. And you can imagine

1:07:34

what the senior faculty told

1:07:37

me. They said, are you

1:07:39

out of your mind? You

1:07:41

know, you're coming up for

1:07:43

tenure and the next year

1:07:45

you got to submit your

1:07:47

file for tenure. The end

1:07:50

of your fifth year and

1:07:52

this is your fourth year

1:07:54

and you're going to Japan.

1:07:56

And I went to Japan

1:07:58

for language boot camp. go

1:08:01

to Japanese University. So from

1:08:03

Mongolia, from Korea, from Hong

1:08:05

Kong, from everywhere across Asia,

1:08:07

it was an amazing mix

1:08:09

of people's astonishing school and

1:08:11

there were two non- Asians

1:08:14

in the school, myself in

1:08:16

this class that I was

1:08:18

in and the cultural attache

1:08:20

at the Austrian Embassy in

1:08:22

Tokyo. And

1:08:24

I'm sitting there with these Hong Kong

1:08:27

people and the teacher says something and

1:08:29

nobody in the class understands a word.

1:08:31

And then everyone looking puzzled at the

1:08:33

teacher and then the teacher goes up

1:08:36

to the board and writes a couple

1:08:38

of characters. And you hear this loud

1:08:40

sigh from all the Hong Kongers. Oh,

1:08:42

that's what it means, what she's trying

1:08:45

to say. Because they can read. They

1:08:47

can read the characters. They're not identical,

1:08:49

but they're close enough. They've

1:08:51

been changed in slightly different ways

1:08:53

in the different cultures that used

1:08:55

them. Anyway, so I got introduced

1:08:58

to Asia. I had a supervisor

1:09:00

at Tokyo University Social Science Institute.

1:09:02

Shock Canada was called. And so

1:09:04

I would go to language boot

1:09:06

camp for half the day from

1:09:08

sort of early morning till about

1:09:10

right after lunch, one o'clock or

1:09:12

so. And then I would go

1:09:15

over to an office at Tokyo

1:09:17

University, this very privileged amazing place

1:09:19

where I had this Russianist who

1:09:21

was also a Koreanist, Wada Haruki.

1:09:24

is a gem of a scholar.

1:09:26

He was sort of pro-engagement or

1:09:28

sunshine policy, kind of anti-cold war.

1:09:31

What would you expect? A little

1:09:33

bit pink on the outside, red

1:09:35

on the inside, but so air

1:09:37

you died and such a gentleman.

1:09:40

And I remember I'm speaking Japanese

1:09:42

after a while. And so that's

1:09:44

really helpful. And

1:09:47

he introduced me to this other

1:09:49

professor named Hamashta, who was in

1:09:51

the Oriental Institute next door, and

1:09:53

had a seminar in Japanese language

1:09:55

about the Chinese tributary system over

1:09:58

a month. I had this immersion

1:10:00

in East Asian stuff as a

1:10:02

result of the curiosity of wanting

1:10:04

to do the Japanese language. I

1:10:07

did rewrite my dissertation. I did

1:10:09

have a completed manuscript when I

1:10:11

came back. from the end of

1:10:13

that trip in Japan, somehow I

1:10:15

was voted up for tenure at

1:10:18

Princeton and spent 33 years there

1:10:20

as you alluded to it. But

1:10:22

I got this bug that, well

1:10:24

I had this bug earlier and

1:10:26

I was able to live it

1:10:29

with this year and I ended

1:10:31

up two and a half years

1:10:33

in Japan. My

1:10:35

dormitory at Tokyo University was at

1:10:37

a place called Komaba, Komaba Todai

1:10:39

Mai was the stop, and it

1:10:41

was at the Mingi Khan, Folk

1:10:43

Art, it was at the Folk

1:10:45

Art Museum, the Japanese Folk Art,

1:10:47

and so I fell in love

1:10:49

with Japanese furniture and folk art,

1:10:51

and I discovered the Koreans had

1:10:53

the same thing. So I met

1:10:55

my wife, who's Korean, South Korean

1:10:57

citizens, still to this day. In

1:10:59

Kanazawa, Japan, the back side of

1:11:02

Japan, not the Pacific side, not

1:11:04

the Pacific side, at

1:11:06

a Japanese language program, an

1:11:08

advanced program, not the beginner

1:11:10

one that I had started

1:11:12

the previous time in Tokyo.

1:11:14

And she was a PhD

1:11:16

student at Columbia writing a

1:11:18

dissertation about how Korean ceramics

1:11:20

influenced Japanese ceramics. So it

1:11:22

was a cultural transfer. from

1:11:24

Korea to somewhere else, which

1:11:26

was not typical and the

1:11:28

Japanese acquired Korean culture, which

1:11:30

is not something that they

1:11:32

would admit because for them

1:11:34

they were the superior, remember

1:11:36

the colonial rule there. Anyway,

1:11:38

so I began to learn

1:11:40

more and more about Korean

1:11:42

culture, including Korean folk art

1:11:44

and Korean furniture, and so

1:11:46

that's the piece. The stuff

1:11:48

that my wife taught me,

1:11:50

which is early modern, what

1:11:52

we would call early modern

1:11:54

ceramics, still has a place

1:11:56

in my heart, but it's

1:11:58

really the craftsmanship. What we

1:12:00

put in the the museums, but

1:12:03

is the high quality furniture. and

1:12:05

other accoutrements that maybe one day

1:12:07

were in the kitchen and now are

1:12:09

on display. in case and our

1:12:11

house has some of these artifacts

1:12:13

that we were able to purchase

1:12:15

in antique shops in Seoul as

1:12:17

as well as in Tokyo because

1:12:19

you can purchase Korean art. art and

1:12:21

artifacts in Japan. because

1:12:24

of the because of the colonial period the

1:12:26

Japanese took a lot of stuff back. And

1:12:29

so I had this fabulous new world that

1:12:31

opened up to me. up to me

1:12:33

just because I had this curiosity.

1:12:35

I could I learned Chinese and I

1:12:37

took a trip in a trip in 87

1:12:39

to to both China and Japan

1:12:42

to compare them. decide to

1:12:44

decide Asian language I was going

1:12:46

was gonna take up when I had

1:12:48

the opportunity And

1:12:50

I spent two months in Two

1:12:52

months in China, the the thing,

1:12:54

thing, all the way

1:12:56

from Trans-Siberian Railroad, Harbin, all the way

1:12:58

down to Hong Kong. Kong, Shian, and

1:13:01

the the terracotta Warriors, Shanghai,

1:13:03

and the boond, this is

1:13:05

China 87. So it had just begun

1:13:07

to open to open up

1:13:09

and were few and far between. And

1:13:11

it and it was a poor country and

1:13:13

it was amazing. And I got to Japan. to

1:13:15

Japan, And it was was Japan, this

1:13:18

modernity that worked. all the stuff

1:13:20

about about Japan one. Japan

1:13:22

won the Cold War.

1:13:24

We're turning Japanese now song it.

1:13:26

And I song had it. And

1:13:29

I was captivated and the instead of

1:13:31

choosing the piece, I chose but it

1:13:33

was a piece, but it was a

1:13:35

it only I chose it only theoretically

1:13:37

because I couldn't enact that yet.

1:13:39

later on when later on when I

1:13:42

had the privilege of being an assistant

1:13:44

professor at Princeton with a sabbatical

1:13:46

year. year. That I

1:13:48

decided to boldly go to go to

1:13:50

and then I said I said I that summer in

1:13:52

where I met my wife my

1:13:54

wife and and then had another year

1:13:56

in Hokkaido, the the northern island

1:13:59

where I was at Slavic research center

1:14:01

for the full year and met

1:14:03

a huge number of amazing people.

1:14:05

And so that all stays with

1:14:08

me, including the art side, and

1:14:10

because my wife is an accomplished

1:14:12

curator, we do a lot of

1:14:14

travel together where I'll give a

1:14:17

lecture about some geopolitical issue, and

1:14:19

my wife will have meetings that

1:14:21

I'll traips along to with the

1:14:23

museum directors and the other. curators

1:14:26

and so I have a very

1:14:28

privileged, very lucky ability to experience

1:14:30

that art world and including the

1:14:32

Korean art that you asked about.

1:14:35

Last question with two related parts.

1:14:37

First, when is your final Stalin

1:14:39

volume coming out and what will

1:14:41

you do next? Yeah,

1:14:44

the final Stalin volume is taking

1:14:46

me longer than I thought. Part

1:14:48

of it was accidental. I had

1:14:51

three separate unrelated cancers that put

1:14:53

me in a tunnel for about

1:14:55

18 months of medical care and

1:14:57

they were detected early and I

1:15:00

had the finest imaginable doctors. So

1:15:02

again, luck in my life and

1:15:04

luck are synonymous here. It wasn't

1:15:07

one cancer that spread. It was

1:15:09

three separate cancers that arose. But

1:15:11

after I had the first one,

1:15:14

which was caught early, they were

1:15:16

looking to see that I didn't

1:15:18

have it anymore. And the microscopic

1:15:21

quality of the surveillance enabled them

1:15:23

to discover the incipient other cancer

1:15:25

in a very early stage. And

1:15:28

then that happened again a third

1:15:30

time after the second cancer the

1:15:32

treatment had been conducted and they

1:15:35

were looking to see that it

1:15:37

was successful. So that set me

1:15:39

back a little bit. 18 months,

1:15:42

maybe two years. It teaches you

1:15:44

a lot about life when you

1:15:46

go through something like that. I

1:15:49

won't go into the details, but

1:15:51

I'm sure you understand. The bigger

1:15:53

reason. that it's taking

1:15:55

me longer is the difficulty

1:15:57

of the subject. Each

1:16:01

one of these three volumes has

1:16:03

been harder than the previous one. The

1:16:05

first one I thought I'm never going

1:16:07

to finish this thing. It's just so

1:16:10

hard. And I pulled it off

1:16:12

and then I said, okay, I can

1:16:14

do this. And then I took the

1:16:16

second one on and it was not

1:16:19

quite exponentially harder, but it was significantly

1:16:21

hard. And now the third one

1:16:23

I'm feeling the same thing. World War

1:16:25

II is so much bigger than anything

1:16:28

else that's come up in the first

1:16:30

two volumes. and it took me

1:16:32

forever to get to the truth about

1:16:34

the war. So much of what we

1:16:37

think to be true, including of course

1:16:39

about Stalin's behavior and Soviet society

1:16:41

during the war and various battles, I

1:16:43

discovered really didn't have solid evidence behind

1:16:46

it in many cases, not in all

1:16:48

cases, but in many cases. So I

1:16:50

worked through the war part, which

1:16:52

is half the book, half of volume

1:16:55

three, and now I'm in the Chinese

1:16:57

Revolution. And

1:16:59

so I'm in the Cold

1:17:02

War, the 45 to 53

1:17:04

period. And we know a

1:17:06

lot about that and it's

1:17:08

hard to be fresh about

1:17:11

the Cold War. So many

1:17:13

great scholars have gone into

1:17:15

the previously secret archives and

1:17:18

brought out amazing material and

1:17:20

written really fine analytical books.

1:17:22

But what I discovered about

1:17:25

the Cold War stuff is

1:17:27

the preoccupation bordering obsession. with

1:17:29

non-strategic questions like the fate

1:17:31

of Poland. Now, for Poles,

1:17:34

the fate of Poland is

1:17:36

existential. Don't get me wrong.

1:17:38

Just like for Lithuanians and

1:17:41

Latvians and Estonians and Ukrainians

1:17:43

today, as we speak on

1:17:45

this podcast. I get all

1:17:47

that for them. But is

1:17:50

it core, is it central

1:17:52

to the global order that

1:17:54

forms after 45? That's

1:17:58

a much harder, more difficult question. so

1:18:00

what I've discovered I

1:18:02

call the I call the four partitions.

1:18:05

China, Korea, Japan, and

1:18:07

Indochina. And in so many

1:18:09

ways, that was so much bigger than

1:18:11

the fate of in so

1:18:13

many ways. not for was so

1:18:15

much bigger than the fate of Poland.

1:18:17

Again, not for the understand a I'm

1:18:20

talking I understand what I'm talking about

1:18:22

to a certain extent. just

1:18:24

besides just being a story. But

1:18:27

you look at the at the East Asian

1:18:29

story, that's where so much of

1:18:31

the Cold War still reverberates today,

1:18:33

reverberates today, is and I would

1:18:36

argue is not over. been partitioned

1:18:38

could have been partitioned and wasn't.

1:18:40

completely taken over by the

1:18:43

have been completely taken over

1:18:45

by the Soviets, but instead

1:18:47

was partitioned to stop at the Stalin

1:18:49

to stop at the though Truman

1:18:51

even though Truman didn't have. on

1:18:53

the ground on the ground to prevent

1:18:55

Stalin from doing so. so. Stalin

1:18:57

was ready to invade. invade the home islands

1:18:59

of Japan already given the

1:19:02

order the order. should have been

1:19:04

should have been partitioned of course And

1:19:06

then of course what we know

1:19:08

is we know is Vietnam today, So you

1:19:10

have these four partitions, two of

1:19:12

which happened. of which happened, Korea and

1:19:15

both of which led to war, to

1:19:17

and two partitions that didn't happen.

1:19:19

happen. because the the won

1:19:21

in China, and one one because

1:19:24

The communists got nowhere near. nowhere

1:19:26

near in in Japan. And so

1:19:28

the really big story story in

1:19:30

later part of Stalin's life,

1:19:32

the the 45 to 53 period. And I'm I'm

1:19:34

working through that now. And I've

1:19:37

I discovered that it's not as

1:19:39

simple. as it's present. Once

1:19:41

once again like World War II, I I

1:19:43

have to go back and dig and

1:19:45

dig and dig to verify and to

1:19:47

make sure make sure that the things

1:19:49

we believe. actually happened are

1:19:51

actually true. and of

1:19:53

excavating layers of possibility,

1:19:56

paths not taken, decisions

1:19:58

made. made. We know

1:20:00

well the episode of General George

1:20:03

Marshall. He's famous for the Marshall

1:20:05

Plan in Europe and is considered

1:20:07

one of the great statesmen American

1:20:10

history, but in China he's mission

1:20:12

completely failed. It failed as bad

1:20:14

as his mission in Europe succeeded.

1:20:17

And so when you give equal

1:20:19

or even greater weight in my

1:20:22

view, as would be warranted, to

1:20:24

the East Asian story of the

1:20:26

Cold War and Stalin's role in

1:20:29

it, it could potentially freshen up

1:20:31

our understanding of this. And then

1:20:33

of course it connects to the

1:20:36

present day. So volume three is

1:20:38

called totalitarian superpower. because

1:20:40

the Soviet Union was a

1:20:43

superior totalitarianism to Nazism, but

1:20:45

it was an inferior superpower

1:20:48

to the United States, which

1:20:50

is why it was successful

1:20:52

in one case and unsuccessful

1:20:55

in the other case. But

1:20:57

totalitarian superpower has a certain

1:21:00

resonance. for where we

1:21:02

are with China today. Not identical

1:21:04

of course, but a certain residence.

1:21:06

And so I'm working my way

1:21:08

through this and I'm bogged down

1:21:10

now in the Chinese Revolution and

1:21:13

Indochina and the Korean Peninsula and

1:21:15

the Japanese occupation in fresh and

1:21:17

astonishing ways, at least for me.

1:21:19

Again, there are great books, amazing

1:21:21

scholars that we're all reliant on,

1:21:23

but I'm trying to get to

1:21:26

the source on many of these

1:21:28

things. And so I've got

1:21:30

a ways to go. We're still only

1:21:32

halfway through. We're still several years away,

1:21:35

unfortunately, on volume three, but I have

1:21:37

the sense of momentum. I was working

1:21:39

on it before we got on this

1:21:42

call, going through some of this stuff

1:21:44

and 45 and 46 on the East.

1:21:46

Don't get me wrong. Berlin is a

1:21:49

big deal. And the division of Germany

1:21:51

and the Berlin story and the... the

1:21:53

blockade there and the coup in Czechoslovakia

1:21:56

and the martial plan. I'm not trying

1:21:58

to suggest that that's true. I'm

1:22:00

just trying to suggest that there

1:22:02

are things that are also extraordinarily important

1:22:05

that have not been given the

1:22:07

same. weight. As to what I'll do

1:22:09

next, I hope I'm

1:22:11

going get my life back. I've

1:22:13

been. in Joseph Stalin's

1:22:15

company for Not

1:22:17

quite two decades now. decade

1:22:21

in a head a little more than a decade and a

1:22:23

half And it's

1:22:25

been re Markable I've learned a lot

1:22:27

and I've certainly stretched my mind

1:22:29

and come to understand the world

1:22:31

in power and much better than

1:22:33

I did before, or even though there's a

1:22:35

ways to go. But it's enough already. seeing

1:22:38

the evil you probably don't

1:22:40

have the... world is mostly digital

1:22:43

You don't have the experience of of

1:22:46

going through document with his

1:22:48

signature on it. and

1:22:50

there's dried blood on the page. So

1:22:54

So that's the kind of work I've been The I've

1:22:56

been immersed in. I understand how

1:22:58

his mind works. It's

1:23:01

not his blood. that's on that page. it's

1:23:04

somebody else's blood from their interrogation

1:23:06

but he's reading and signing off

1:23:08

on. it's

1:23:13

It's been a gift to understand

1:23:15

power. that original journey

1:23:17

I was launched on. because

1:23:19

Stalin is the gold standard of power If

1:23:22

you want to study How

1:23:24

power is accumulated. how

1:23:26

you it's operationalized

1:23:29

and what the consequences are. There's

1:23:31

no bigger story than his story. And

1:23:34

so from the point of view of

1:23:36

power, it's endlessly fascinating. It's

1:23:39

a lifelong learning it's

1:23:42

a gift as I say but but from the point

1:23:44

of view of morality, freedom,

1:23:49

the stuff that I cherish and believe

1:23:51

in and I'm privileged to be able

1:23:53

to experience. it

1:23:55

is just devastating. the

1:23:58

moral squalor. I mean, mean there

1:24:00

is no limit. The moral is just

1:24:02

bottomless and you live in that

1:24:04

world that world. Not 24-7. I'm sitting I'm

1:24:06

sitting here and... Stanford University

1:24:08

a a plush office the

1:24:11

the campus Valley is is

1:24:13

outside the door and at three

1:24:15

million dollar three bedroom on sale

1:24:17

for $10 million. million the

1:24:19

street Right? So this is not not my

1:24:22

life a hundred percent not it's not

1:24:24

something that envelops me all the

1:24:26

time but it is something that

1:24:28

absorbs me me. in

1:24:30

my life of the mine, the work

1:24:32

experience. experience and then of

1:24:35

course I finished the section on the section

1:24:37

on the war. these places all

1:24:39

of these places that I just wrote about. in

1:24:41

in the news today. So people talk to

1:24:44

people talk to me about Kramatur

1:24:46

Skin Ukraine, or fill in the

1:24:48

blank, whatever in the

1:24:50

blank, whatever. obscure to that was obscure to

1:24:52

Americans not long ago and is now known

1:24:55

to them. And

1:24:57

all the stuff happened back then in

1:24:59

back then. it was In the

1:25:01

40s only it was the Nazi land army. the

1:25:03

Soviet the army. So all those

1:25:06

place names and all that his and

1:25:08

I just wrote about that. the war,

1:25:10

the war. really more which was

1:25:12

really more than mass murder, World War War

1:25:15

the the Eastern Front. And here

1:25:17

I am, I I never thought I would

1:25:19

live through war. in those And those

1:25:21

places Of course, again, I'm not

1:25:23

there. there. I'm not living in Ukraine.

1:25:25

My relatives haven't been killed there,

1:25:27

just like they weren't in the

1:25:29

there, just like they the historical the 1940s in

1:25:31

the immersed in, material

1:25:33

that I'm immersed in. for this. get

1:25:36

a feel for this, and it has an

1:25:38

effect on you even if you

1:25:40

then can close your laptop and and

1:25:42

go off off to some fantastic

1:25:44

par, and you know what what I'm

1:25:46

talking about. Stephen Kotkin, thank you

1:25:49

very much. much. My

1:25:51

pleasure. Thank you for the

1:25:53

opportunity. Thanks

1:25:56

for listening to to Conversations Tyler. You

1:25:58

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1:26:15

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1:26:17

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1:26:19

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