Kind: captions
Language: en
and the outcome here is a horrific
man-made famine not a natural disaster
not bad Harvest but a man-made famine as
a result of then the compulsion that
gets used by the Soviet state to extract
those resources cordoning off the area
not allowing staring starving people to
uh to escape um you put very well some
of the the implications of this case
study in in how things look in the
abstract versus in
practice um and those phenomena were
going to haunt the rest of the
experience of the Soviet Union um the
whole notion that up and down the chain
of command everybody is falsifying or
tinkering with or prying the statistics
or their reports in order not to look
bad and and not to you know have
Vengeance visited upon them um reaches
the point where nobody in spite of the
pretense of comprehensive knowledge
right there's a a a state planning
agency that creates five-year plans for
the economy as a whole and which is
supposed to have accurate statistics all
of this uh is founded upon uh a
foundation of sand a deliberate plan to
bring class conflict and bring Civil War
and then heighten it in the countryside
um does damage and not least of that is
this phenomenon of a negative selection
those who have most Enterprise those who
are most entrepreneurial those who have
most self-discipline those who are best
organized will be winnowed again and
again and again uh sending the message
that mediocrity is comparatively much
safer than Talent Hitler and himler
envisioned permanent war on the Eastern
Front not a peace treaty not a
settlement not a border but a constant
moving of the border every generation
hundreds of miles east in order to keep
winning more and more living
space and with analogy to other
Frontiers to always give more fighting
experience and more training in
aggression to generation after
generation of German soldiers in terms
of nightmarish Visions this one's right
up
there the following is conversation with
vas ludus a historian specializing in
Germany and Eastern Europe he has
lectured extensively On The Rise the
rain and the fall of Communism our
discussion goes deep on this the very
heaviest of topics the Communist
ideology that has led to over 100
million deaths in the 20th century we
also discuss Hitler Nazi ideology and
World War II
this is Alex Freedman podcast to support
it please check out our sponsors in the
description and now dear friends here's
veas L
vicious let's start with KL Marx what
were the central ideas of Marx that lay
the foundation of Communism I think
there were several key ideas that Marx
deployed that were destined to have such
an impact and in some ways they were
actually kind of contradictory um on the
one hand uh Marx insisted that history
has a purpose that history is not just
random events uh but that rather it's
history we might say with a capital H
history moving in a deliberate direction
history having a goal uh a a a a
direction that it was predestined to
move in um at the same time in the
Communist Manifesto uh Karl Marx and his
colleague Friedrich Engles also
suggested that there was a role for
special individuals who might uh even
history was still moving in this
predetermined Direction might give it an
extra push might play a heroic role in
that process and I think that these two
ideas added together the notion that
there is a science of Revolution that
suggests that you can move in a
deliberate and uh and meaningful
rational way towards the end of history
and the resolution of all conflicts uh a
total liberation of the human person uh
and that moreover that was inevitable
that that was pre-programmed and
destined in the in the order of things
when you add to that the notion that
there's also room for heroism and the
individual role uh this ended up being
tremendously powerful as a combination
um earlier thinkers uh who were
socialists had already dreamt of or
projected Futures where all conflict
would be resolved and human life would
achieve some sort of perfection Marx
added these other elements uh that made
it far more powerful than the earlier
versions that he decried as merely
utopian socialism so there's a million
questions I could ask there but so on
the utopian side so there is a
utopian component to the way he tried to
conceive of his ideas yeah absolutely I
mean first of all one has to stress
markx would have gotten extremely upset
at this point in the conversation
because because to call someone a
utopian was precisely to argue that
you're not scientific you're not
rational you are not laying out the iron
laws of History you're merely hoping for
the best and that might be laudable but
it was fundamentally
unrealistic uh that said hidden among
Marx's insistence that there are laws
and and structures uh as history moves
through uh class conflict modes of
production uh towards its ultimate goal
of a comprehensive final Revolution that
will see all exploitation overthrown and
people finally being freed from
necessity um in in smuggled in among
those things are most definitely utopian
elements and there they come especially
at the end in which Marx U
sketches the notion of what things will
look like after the revolution has
resolved all problems uh there vagueness
sets in uh it's clear that it's a
blessed State that's being talked about
um people no longer exploiting one
another people no longer subject to
necessity or poverty but instead
enjoying all of the productivity of
industrialization that hither to had
been put to private profit now uh
collectively owned and deployed the
notion that one will be able to work at
one job in the morning and then engage
in Leisure activity or another yet
another fulfilling job in the afternoon
um all of these all of this free of any
contradictions free of necessity free of
the sort of ordinary irritations that we
experienc in our ordinary lives that's
deeply utopian the difference was that
Marx charted a route towards that
outcome that was uh that presented
itself as cuttingedge science and
moreover having the the the the full
credibility that science commanded so
much especially in the 19th and early
20th century so there is a long journey
from capitalism to Communism that
includes a lot of problems he thought on
once you resolve the problems all the
complexities of human
interactions the friction the problems
will be gone to the extent that they
were based on inequalities and on uh um
man's exploitation of man uh the result
was supposed to be a uh a resolution of
all of this uh and inevitably when you
talk about the history of Communism you
have to include the fact that this often
tragic and dramatic history produced a
lot of jokes jokes that were in part
reactions sometimes to the ideological
claims made by people like Marx and one
of the famous jokes was that what's the
difference between capitalism and
communism and the joke's answer was
capitalism is the exploitation of Man by
man and communism is the exact
opposite yeah you you actually have
electron humor I love it and you deliver
in such a dry beautiful way uh okay
there's again a million questions so you
outline a set of contradictions but it's
interesting to talk about his
view for example uh what was Marx's view
of
History uh Marx had been a student of
Hegel uh and Hegel as a German idealist
philosopher had uh announced very
definitively that history has a purpose
history is not a collection of random
facts uh and as an idealist he proposed
that the true movement of History the
true meaning of History what made
history history with with a capital H
something that's Transcendent and
meaningful was that it was the working
out of an idea through different
civilizations different stages of
historical development and that idea was
the idea of human Freedom so it was not
individuals or great thinkers alone
making history and having an impact it
was the idea itself striving to come to
fruition striving to come to an Ever
more perfect realization uh in the case
of of of Hegel In This Very Prussian and
German context he identified the
realization of Freedom also with the
growth of the state because he thought
that governments are the ones that are
going to be able to deliver on laws and
on the ideal of a a state of the rule of
law in
German uh that was a a a noble dream um
at the same time as as we recognize from
our perspective uh state power has been
put to all sorts of purposes besides
guaranteeing the rule of law uh in our
own times what Marx did was to take this
this characteristic insistence of Hegel
that that history is moving in a
meaningful and discernable way towards
the realization of an idea and flipped
it on its head Marx insisted that Hegel
had so much that was right in his
thinking but what he had neglected to
keep in mind was that in fact history is
is is based on matter so hence d itical
materialism the dialectical referring to
things proceeding by clashes or conflict
towards an Ever greater realization of
some essential idea and so Marx adapts a
lot of ideas of of Hegel you can
recognize entire rhetorical Maneuvers
that are uh indebted to that that
earlier training but now taken in a in a
very uh different direction what what
remained though was the confidence of
being on the right side of history and
there are few things that are as
intoxicating as being convinced that
your actions not only are right in the
abstract but are also destined to be
successful and also that you have uh the
rigor of science backing you in your
journey towards the truth absolutely I
so uh angles when when he gives the
grade side eulogy for his beloved friend
Marx um claims that Marx is essentially
the Darwin of History the Darwin of
History he that he had done for the
world of politics and of uh um human
history what Darwin had done with his
theory EV of evolution understanding the
hidden mechanism understanding the laws
that are at work and that uh make that
whole process meaningful rather than
just one damn thing after
another what about the sort of famous
line that history of all existing
societies is the history of class
struggles so what about this conception
of history as a history of class
struggle well so this was the motive
force that KL Marx and angles saw
driving the historical process forward
and it's it's important to keep in mind
that class conflict doesn't just mean
revolutions revolts peasant uprisings uh
it it's it's sort of the the totality of
friction and of clashes conflicts of
interest that appear in any society and
so Marx was able in this spirit that he
uh avowed was very scientific to
demarcate stages of historical
transformation primitive communism in
the prehistoric period Then moving
towards what was called State slavery uh
that's to say the early civilizations
deploying uh human resources and
ordering them uh by all powerful
monarchs uh then private slavery in the
ancient period and then moving to
feudalism in the Middle Ages and then
here's where where Marx is able to
deliver a pronouncement about his own
times seeing that the present day is the
penultimate the next to last stage of
this historical development because the
feudal system of the Middle Ages and the
dominance of the aristocracy has been
overcome uh has been displaced by the
often heroic achievements astonishing
achievements in Commerce and in World
building of the middle class the
bisi uh who have uh taken the world into
their own hands and are engaged in uh
class conflict with the the the class
below them which is the working class or
the proletariat and so this sort of this
sort of conflict uh um uh also by the
way obtains within classes so the
Bourgeois are going to be gravediggers
Marx announces of their own Supremacy
because they're also competing against
one another and um members who don't
survive that competition get pressed
down into the subordinate working class
uh which grows and grows and grows to
the point where uh at some future moment
the inevitable explosion will come uh
and uh a a swift Revolution Will
overturn this last this penultimate
stage uh of human history and Usher in
instead the dictatorship of the working
class and then the abolition of all
classes because with only one class
remaining everyone is finally unified
and without those internal
contradictions that had marked class
conflict before the dictatorship of the
working class is an interesting term so
what is the role of revolution in
history so this in particular for Marx I
think is a really key moment which is
what makes that such a good question in
his vision the Epic narrative that he's
presenting to us us
Revolution is key it's not enough to
have evolutionary change it's not a
question of compromises it's not a case
of of bargaining or balancing interests
Revolution is necessary as part of the
process of a subjugated class coming to
awareness of its own historical role and
when we get to the proletariat this this
uh uh uh working class uh in its
entirety to whom marks assign
this uh this epic Promethean role of
being the ones who are going to liberate
all of humanity a class that is
universal in its interests and in the
sort of role in Salvation history that
they'll be playing in this in this
secular framework uh they need
Revolution and the experience of
revolution in order to come into their
own because without it you'll only have
half-hearted compromise and something
less than the Consciousness that they
then need in order to rule to administer
and to play the historical role that
they're faded to have how did he
conceive of a
revolution potentially a violent
revolution stabilizing itself into
something where the the working class
was able to rule that's where things
become a good deal less detailed in his
and anglo's accounts the answer that
they proposed in part was this is this
is for the future to determine so all of
the details will be settled later um uh
I think there was a lied to this was a a
tremendous confidence in um some very
19th century ideas about how Society
could be administered uh and what made
for orderly
Society um in a way where uh if the
right infrastructure was in place uh you
might expect Society to kind of run
itself without the need for uh
micromanagement from above and hence we
arrive at at Marx's tantalizing promise
that at there will be a period where
it's it'll be necessary to have
centralized control and there might have
to be as he puts it despotic inroads
against property in order to bring this
revolution to pass but then afterwards
the state because it represents
everybody rather than representing
particular class interests that are in
conflict with other classes the state
will eventually wither away so there
won't be need for it now that's not to
say that that pure stasis arrives right
or that the stabilization equals being
frozen in time it's not as if that is
what things will look like but instead
the big issues will be settled and
henceforth people will be able to enjoy
lives of as he would consider in
authentic freedom without necessity
without poverty uh as a result of this
uh blessed State that's been arrived at
despotic inroads against property
did he elaborate on the despotic inroads
dispossession dispossession of the uh of
the middle classes and of the bis in his
model humanity is never standing still
right so he'd probably argue in this
Dynamic vision of how history unfolds
that there's there there's always
conflict and it's always moving
propelling history forward towards its
predestined ending um in the the way he
saw this
climax uh was that
as things did not stay the same the
condition of the working class was
constantly getting worse and hence their
revolutionary potential was growing and
the at the same time the expropriators
the Bourgeois were also facing
diminishing returns as they competed
against one another with more and more
wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer
hands and more and more elements of what
had been the middle class detached from
the ruling class and being pressed down
into the the working class uh for for
Marks this is really a key part I mean
it's a key part of this whole ratchet
effect that's going to produce this
final historical explosion and in in
German the word given to that process
was
F which is very evocative aland means
misery so it's the growing misery when
this gets translated into English uh the
results are never quite as evocative or
satisfactory the words that get used are
emeris or popularization meaning more
and more people are being turned into
poppers but for Marx that prediction is
really key and even in his own lifetime
there were already hints that in fact if
you look sociologically at the really
developed working classes in places like
Great Britain or Germany that process
was not playing out as he had expected
uh in fact uh although there have been
enormous dislocations and tremendous
suffering in the early chaotic sort of
wild west stages of of capitalism and of
industrialization there had been reform
movements as well and there had been
unions which had sought uh to carve out
uh rules and uh and agreements with
employers for how uh the conditions
under which workers labored might be
ameliorated moreover
the middle class rather than dwindling
and dwindling seem to actually be
strengthening and growing in numbers the
appearance of new kinds of people like
white collar workers or technical
experts so um already in Marx's own
Lifetime and then especially in what
follows Marx's lifetime uh this becomes
a real problem because it it uh it puts
a a stick into the spokes of this
particular historical prediction can you
speak to this realm of ideas which is
fascinating this battle of big ideas in
the 19th century what are the ideas that
were swimming around here yeah yeah well
um
the to describe the 19th century as sort
of an age of ideologies is very apt
because um Europe is being racked and
and and uh um and being put through the
ringer of
nationalism uh demands for uh
self-expression of peoples who earlier
have been in Empires or under
monarchical rule demand to redraw the
map um the tremendous transformations of
the Industrial Revolution meant that in
in the course of about a generation you
would have seen the world around you
change in ways that made it entirely
unfamiliar you'd be able to travel
across the landscape at speeds that have
been Unthinkable when you were a child
so it's it's enormous change and and
demands for yet more change and so it's
a great mix of ideas ideologies the old
the new religious ideas religious
revivals as well as demands for
secularization um and stepping into all
of this are marks and angles together uh
in what has been called I think with
Justice one of the most important and
influential intellectual Partnerships uh
uh of History uh they were very
different men uh they were both German
by origin um uh Marx had uh trained as
an academic he had married the daughter
of a baron uh because of his radical
ideas uh he had foreclosed or found
himself cut off from a possible academic
career and went the route of radical
journalism angles was very different
angles was the son of an industrialist
and the family owned factories in
Germany and in England so he was most
definitely not a member of the
proletariat that uh he and Marx uh were
celebrating uh as as so significant in
their future historical role there were
also huge differences in character
between these men Marx when people met
him they were astonished by his energy
and his dynamism they also saw him as a
man who felt determined to dominate
arguments he wanted to win arguments uh
and uh was not one to uh to to settle
for compromise or a Middle Road um he
was uh disorderly in in his personal
habits uh we might mention among other
things that he impregnated the family
made uh and didn't uh didn't accept
responsibility for the child um he was
also uh not inclined to uh undertake
regular employment in order to support
his growing family that's where angles
came in angles essentially from his
family fortune uh and then from his
journalism afterwards supported both
himself and the Marx family uh for
decades
and so in a sense um angles made things
happen uh in in the in the mysterious
way that friendships work the very
differences between these men made them
formidable as a dynamic duo because they
balanced off one another's
idiosyncrasies and turned what might
have been fals uh into potential
potential strengths British historian
ajp Taylor always has a lovely turn of
phrase even when he's wrong about a
historical issue uh in this case he was
right he said that um angles had charm
and Brilliance Marx was a genius and
angles saw himself as the definitely the
junior partner in this relationship but
here's the Paradox without angles uh
pretty clearly markx would not have gone
on to have the sort of lasting
historical impact in the world of ideas
that he had just a throwing in the mix
there's interesting characters swimming
around uh so you have
Darwin he has a I mean it's difficult to
to to
uh to characterize the the level of
impact he had even just in the religious
context they challenges our conception
of who we are as humans uh there's
n who's also I don't know hanging around
the area on the Russian side there's
DKI so it's interesting to ask maybe uh
from your perspective did these people
interact in in a space of ideas to where
this is relevant to our discuss disc or
is this mostly uh isolated I I think
that it's part of a great conversation
right I think that in their Works um
they're reacting to one another I mean
Doo's uh thought ranges across the
condition of modernity uh and he
definitely has things to say about
industrialization I think that they
react to one another in these oblique
ways rather than always being being at
each other's throats uh uh in in direct
confrontations um and that's what makes
the 19th century uh so um so compelling
as a story just because of the sheer
Vitality of the arguments uh that are
that are taking place in in ways big and
small what we should say here when you
mentioned Karl Marx maybe the color red
comes up for people and uh they think
the Soviet Union maybe China but they
don't think Germany necessarily it's
interesting that I mean Germany is where
communism was supposed to happen that's
right and so can you uh maybe speak to
that tension yeah yeah absolutely I mean
this is uh this is definitely a factor
in the entire history that uh that we're
referencing um Marx and Engles never
really shed their identity as Germans um
many of their
preconceptions uh even those traces of
nationalism that they had within
themselves even as they were condemning
nationalism as a as a fraud against the
working class um uh their clearly their
entire formation had been affected by
their their German background uh and
it's very true as you point out that
Germany is intended to be the place
where these predictions will play out
also in Britain also in France also
eventually in the United States but it's
a uh you know it's it's Germany by
virtue of be its central location and
then its rapid development uh um later
than Britain or France in
industrialization um give it this
special role in in Marx's worldview and
so um it it's a lasting irony or a
central irony of this whole story that
when a government establishes itself
that claims to be following Marx's
prescriptions and realizing his vision
it happens in the wreckage of the
Russian Empire a place that was did not
match the requirements of being IND
industrialized developed well on its way
in this historical process um and nobody
knew this better than the Bolsheviks
Lenin and his colleagues um had a keen
sense that what they were doing exciting
as it was was a gamble it was a risk
because in fact the revolution to really
take hold had to seese power in Germany
and that's why in immediately after
taking power uh they're not sure they're
going to last their their hope their
their their promise of Salvation is that
a workers Revolution Will erupt in
Germany defeated Germany in order to
link up with the one that has been
launched in this unlikely Russian
location uh and henceforth uh uh uh you
know great things will follow that do
Hue to Marx's historical uh uh Vision
the last thing to mention about this is
that uh this uh predominance of Germany
in the thinking uh of of uh Marx had two
other Reflections one was that uh German
socialists and later Communists
organized in order to fulfill Marx's
vision and they produced something that
leaves other uh westerners in
awe uh in the late 19th century and
that's the building of a strong German
Workers movement and a Social Democratic
Party that Social Democratic Party by
19112 uh is the largest party in German
politics by vote and there's the
possibility they might even come to
power without needing radical revolution
uh which again also goes against Marx's
uh original vision of their the
necessity for a revolution um workers
around the world uh or rather um radical
socialists look with admiration and awe
at what the Germans have achieved and
they see themselves as trying to do what
the Germans have done the final point is
um growing up during the Cold War One
thought that well if you want to
represent somebody as being a communist
that person has to have a Russian accent
because Russia after all the uh the
homeland of this form of government the
Soviet Union uh uh that must be the the
point of origin before the Bolshevik
seize power in order to really be a
serious radical socialist you needed to
read German because you needed to read
Marx and you needed to read kowsky and
you needed to read Bernstein and other
thinkers in this tradition and uh it's
only after the Soviet seizure of power
that uh that this all changes so there's
lots of marks of that phenomenon which
is why the clash between nationalism and
communism in uh Germany is such a
fascinating aspect of history and all
the different trajectories it could take
and we'll talk about it but if we return
to the 19th century you''ve said that uh
Marxist Chief rival was Russian
Anarchist uh Mel
bakunin uh who famously said in
1942 quote the passion for Destruction
is also a creative passion so what kind
of future did bakunin uh Envision well
bakunin in some things agreed with Marx
and in many others disagreed uh he was
an anarchist rather than uh hueing to uh
the sort of scheme of history that that
Marx was proposing so he did see
Humanity as fighting a struggle for a
better way of life he envisioned as your
quote suggests that Revolution and uh
sheer confrontation and overthrow of the
existing state of things not compromise
was going to be the way to get there but
his vision was very different rather
than organizing conspir uh
conspiratorial uh uh and hierarchical
political movement bakun and envision
that the ties would be far looser that
both the Revolutionary movement and the
the future state of humanity would grow
out of the free association the
anarchist thinking the free association
of individuals who rejected hierarchical
thinking in their relations with one
another rejected the state as a form of
organized violence and rejected
traditional religious ideas that he saw
as buttressing hierarchies so bakunin is
part of a broader movement of socialists
and anarchists who are demanding change
and envisioning really fundamental
transformation but his particular
Anarchist Vision steers him into
conflict with Marx and he makes some
prophetic remarks about the problems
with the system that Marx is proposing
you should add to this that the very far
uh the very fact that Marx uh is a
German by background and bakunin is
Russian kind of adds a further
nationalist or or element of ethnic
difference there bakunin uh warned that
a sort of creeping German
authoritarianism might insinuate its way
into a movement that hewed too closely
to having hierarchies in the struggle to
overthrow hierarchies and uh you know
his Anarchist convictions were are not
um uh not in question here they let him
into conflict with Marx and and Marx
railed against him denounced him uh and
eventually had him expelled uh from the
the
international one of the things though
that also makes bakuna so significant is
bakunin is the first in a longer series
of um approaches between anarchists and
Communists where they try to make common
cause and you have to say that in every
case it ends badly for the
anarchists because uh um the the
Communist Vision in particular
especially in leninist version uh argued
for discipline and a tightly organized
professional revolutionary movement The
anarchists Who sought to make common
cause with uh uh Communists whether it
was in the days of the Russian
Revolution or the Russian Civil War uh
or whether it was uh then in the Spanish
Civil War the anarchist found themselves
um uh targeted by uh the Communists
precisely because because uh of their
skepticism about what turned out to be
an absolutely key element in the
leninist prescription for a successful
Revolution if you can take that tangent
a little bit uh so I guess anarchists
were less organized yeah that's my
definition
yeah why do you think anarchism hasn't
been uh rigorously tried in the way the
communism was if could just take a
complete sort of tangent I mean
in one sense we are living in an anarchy
today because the the nations are in an
anarchic state with each other but why
do you think sort of there's not been an
anarchist Revolution well I I I think
that probably some Anarchist would beg
to differ right they would see uh um
communes in Spain uh uh during the
Spanish Civil War as an example of
trying to put Anarchist ideas into into
place bakunin um you know flitted from
one area of unrest to another hoping to
be in on finally the founding of the
sort of free communes that he had in
mind uh you know another key point in
all of this is that anarchy means
something different to different people
as as a term and so when you point out
quite correctly that you know we have an
anarchic international situation that's
kind of the Hoban model of the war of
all against all where man is a wolf to
man generally except if you're talking
about uh NE ists in uh in in the Russian
revolutionary tradition uh anarchists
see Anarchy as a blessed State and one
where finally people will be freed from
the distorting influence of hierarchies
traditional beliefs uh um subjugation
inequalities so for them Anarchy uh
growing out of the liberation of the
human being is seen as as a positive
good and and peaceful now that's at odds
with the the prescription of someone
like bakun for how to get there uh he
sees overthrow as being uh necessary uh
on on the route to that but you know as
we point out um uh it's uh absolutely
key to this entire Dynamic that to be an
anarchist means that your efforts are
not going to be organized the way a
disciplined and tightly organized
revolutionary movement would be yeah
it's an interesting stretch that a
violent revolution will take us to a
place of no violence or very little
violence it's a it's a leap it's it's a
leap um and it it kind of it points to a
phenomenon that um would have enraged
Marx and uh would have been deeply
alienating to others in the tradition
who followed him but that so many
scholars have commented on and that's
that there is a religious element uh you
know not not a a vowed one but a kind of
hidden religious or secular religious uh
element to Marx's Vision to to the
tradition that follows Marx um and you
know just think of the correspondences
right Marx himself as kind of a
positioning himself as a savior figure
whether that's a Prometheus or a Moses
who will lead people to the promised
land the uh apocalypse or the end times
is this final Revolution that will usher
in a blessed final State a Utopia which
is uh equivalent to a secular version of
Heaven uh there's the the working class
playing the role of uh Humanity in its
struggle to be
redeemed um and and Scholar after
scholar has has pointed this out um uh
Reinhold neore back in the 1930s had an
article in the Atlantic magazine that
talked about the Soviet Union's
communism as a religion Eric fuggin a
German American Scholar uh who fled the
Nazis and and relocated to Louisiana
State University uh and and and wrote
Toms about the new phenomenon of
political religions in the modern period
and he saw um Fascism and Nazism and uh
the so and and Soviet communism uh as uh
as bearing the stamp of of political
religions
meaning ideologies that promised what an
earlier age would have understood in
religious terms um fergin called this
the escaton and said that uh these end
times the escaton was being promised in
the here and now being made imminent uh
and he warned against that saying the
results are likely to be disastrous so
that's actually uh a disagreement with
this idea that uh you know people
sometimes say that uh the Soviet Union
is an example of an atheistic Society so
when you have atheism is the primary
thing that underpins the society this is
what you get so that's what you're
saying is a kind of uh rejection of that
saying that there's a strong religious
component uh to Communism a hidden
component one that's not officially
recognized I mean I I think that um you
know I had a chance to witness this
actually uh when I was a child my family
uh I grew up in Chicago to a Lithuanian
American family and uh my father who was
a mathematician got a very rare
invitation to travel to Soviet Lithuania
to the University of vus to meet with
colleagues and um at this point journeys
of more than a few days or a week were
very rare to the Soviet Union for for
Americans uh and uh the result was that
um I had Unforgettable experiences
visiting uh the Soviet Union in bv's day
and among the things I saw there was a
museum of atheism that had been
established in a church that had been uh
uh um ripped apart from inside and was
meant to uh meant to kind of embody the
official stance of atheism and um I
remember being baffled by the museum on
the inside because you would expect
exhibits you would ex expect something
dramatic something that will be
compelling and instead there were uh
there was some folk art uh from the
countryside showing bygone beliefs there
were some lithographs or Engravings of
the Spanish Inquisition and its Horrors
and that was pretty much it uh but as a
child I remember being um reproved in
that museum for not wearing my
windbreaker but instead carrying it on
my arm which was a very disrespectful
thing to do in an official Museum of
atheism um when I was able to visit the
Soviet Union later uh for a language
course in the summer of 1989 one of the
obligatory tours that we took was to
file reverently past the body of Lenin
outside the Kremlin in the mausoleum at
red square and communist mummies like
those of Lenin earlier Stalin had been
there as well uh communist mummies like
Mau or hoi Min um really I think uh
speak to a blending of earlier religious
sensibility reverence for relics of
great figures almost saintly figures
uh so that even what got proclaimed as
atheism uh turned out to be a very
demanding Faith as well and I think
that's a contradiction that uh that
other Scholars have pointed out as well
yeah it's a very complicated sort of
discussion when you remove religion as a
as a big component of a society whether
something like a framing of political
ideologies in religious ways is the
natural consequence of that we hear
nature abhorring a vacuum and I think
that there are there are pces in human
character that long for transcendental
explanations right that it's not all
meaningless uh it's uh in fact there's a
a larger purpose and I think it's not a
coincidence that such a significant part
of resistance to uh communist regimes
has in part come from on the one hand
religious Believers uh and on the other
hand uh from uh disillusioned True
Believers in communism who uh find
themselves uh undergoing a uh an
internal experience of just of revulsion
uh finding that their ideals uh are have
not been followed through on so this
topic is one of several topics that you
eloquently describe as contradictions
within the ideas of uh Marx so religious
there is a kind of religious adherence
versus uh also the rejection of
religious Dogma that he stood for uh
we've talked about some of the others
the the tension between nationalism that
emerged when it was implemented versus
what communism is supposed to be which
is global so globalism um then there's
the uh thing that we started talking
with is individualism so you know
history is supposed to be defined by the
large collection of humans but there
does seem to be these singular figures
including Marx himself that are like
really
important um geography of global versus
restricted to certain countries and uh
you know tradition sort of you're
supposed to break with the past yeah the
communism but then Marxism became one of
the strongest traditions in history
that's right that's right I think that
the that last one is is especially
significant because it's it's deeply
paradoxical I mean trying to outline
these contradictions by the way is like
subjecting Marx to a the sort of
analysis that Marx subjected other
people to which is to point out internal
contradictions things that are likely to
to become pressure points or cracks that
might open up what's supposed to be uh a
completely um uh set and durable and
effective uh framework um the one about
tradition uh you know Marx points out
that the need for revolution is in order
to break with the Traditions that have
hemmed people in this earlier earlier
ways of thinking earlier social
structures uh and uh and and to
constantly renovate and what happens
instead is um a tradition of rad IAL
rupture emerges and that's really tough
because imagine um uh the last stages of
the Soviet Union where
um Keen observers can tell that there
are problems that are building in
society there are discontents and
demands that are are going to clash
especially when someone like gorbachov
is proposing reforms and things are
suddenly thrown open for discussion um
the very notion that you have the
celebration of
revolutionaries uh and the Bolshevik uh
Legacy at a time when the state wants to
enforce stability and uh an order that's
been received from the prior generation
think of bv's time for instance um all
of that is a especially volatile mix and
uh uh unlikely to work out very durably
in the long run I would love to sort of
uh talk about the works uh of marks The
Communist Manifesto in Das Capital what
can we say that's interesting about the
manifestation of his ideas on paper well
the first thing to note obviously is
that uh those two works are very
different DUS Capital uh is an enormous
multivolume work that that Marx worked
at and only got the first volume out
because angles begged him to stop
revising please just finally get it into
press and then the rest angles had to uh
actually reconstruct out of notes after
uh Mark's
passed away uh it's a huge work by
contrast the Communist
Manifesto uh is uh a brief pamphlet that
ended up affecting the lives of many
millions worldwide uh in spite of its
its comparative brevity um The Communist
Manifesto moreover is also something of
the nature of having a delayed fuse you
could say because uh when it first
appears amid the revolutions of 1848
that sweep across Europe uh the work is
contrary to what people often believe
the the that pamphlet did not cause the
Revolutions of 1848 many of which had
National or liberal
demands uh the voice of Marx and angles
was barely to be heard over the den of
other far more prominent actors it is
however in the aftermath that this work
takes on tremendous significance and
becomes popularly read and properly
distributed it's especially the uh the
episode The the bloody episode of the
Paris commune in
1871 which comes to be identified with
Marx even though it was not Purely
Inspired by Marx alone nor were all of
the communards devoted marxists it's the
identification of this famous or
inFAMOUS episode in in urban upheaval
that really leads to uh um worldwide
notoriety for Marx and attention uh to
those works and they're very different
in form uh Das capital is intended to be
the Origin of Species of its uh realm of
economic thought and and represents
years and years of work of of Marx
laboring in the British Museum library
uh working through statistics working on
little bits and pieces of a larger uh
answer to Big historical questions that
he believes that he's he's arrived at
its tone is different from that of the
Communist Manifesto which is a call to
Arms it announces with great confidence
what the scheme of History will be but
rather than urging that the answer might
be paity and just waiting for history to
play out in its pre-ordained way it's
also uh a Clarion call to make the
revolution happen uh and uh in is
intended to be a a a pragmatic practical
statement of of how this is to to play
out and you know starts in part with
those ringing words about a a ghost or a
spectre haunting Europe the Spectre of
Communism which wasn't true at the time
but decades later most definitely is the
case is there something we could say
about the difference between marxian
economics and Marxist political ideology
so the political side of things and the
economics side of things so I I think
that Marx would probably have responded
that uh in fact those things are
indivisible uh it the
analysis uh as sort of the purely
theoretical uh is uh certainly can be
performed on any economic reality that
you care to mention but the imperatives
that grow out of that imper that e
economic analysis are political um Marx
and and Engles um emphasize the unity of
the and practice so it's it's not enough
to dispassionately analyze uh it's a
call to action as well because if you've
delivered the answer to how history
evolves and and changes uh it obligates
you right it uh it uh it demands certain
action um you sometimes hear from
undergraduates that they've heard from
their High School history teachers that
that Marxism was just a theoretical
construct that was an the idol
production of a philosopher who was um
not connected to the world and was never
meant to be tried in practice Marx would
have been Furious to hear this uh and
it's almost heroically wrong uh as a
historical statement because Marx
insisted that all previous philosophers
have theorized about reality What Now is
really necessary is to change it so um
you could you could say that in the
abstract a Marxist Economist can
certainly use Marxist theoretical
framework uh uh to compare to a given
economic reality uh but Marx would have
seen that as incomplete and as deeply
unsatisfactory there's kind of a
footnote to all of this which is that
even though Marxist dialectical
materialism grounds itself in these
economic realities and the political
prescription is supposed to flow from
the economic realities and uh and and
and be
inevitably uh growing out of
them in the Real History of communist
regimes you've actually seen periods
where the economics becomes detached
from the politics and I'm thinking in
particular of um the new economic period
uh early in the history of the Soviet
Union when Lenin realizes that the
economy is so far gone that you need to
reintroduce or allow in a limited way
some elements of private Enterprise just
to start getting Russia back on course
in order to have the accumulation of
surplus that will be necessary to build
the project at all and that's there are
many Bolsheviks who see the new economic
program as a New Economic Policy as a
terrible compromise and and a betrayal
of of their ideas but it's it's seen as
necessary for a short while and then
Stalin uh will will wreck it entirely or
consider for that matter uh China today
where you you have a a dominant
political class the Communist Party of
China uh which is allowing Economic
Development uh and private Enterprise as
long as it retains political control um
so some of these elements already
represent divergences from what Marx
would have expected and this is this
points to a really key problem or
question for all of the history of
Communism it has to do with it being a
tradition
in spite of itself and that could be
expressed in the following way an
original set of ideas is going to evolve
it's going to change because
circumstances change what elaborations
of any Doctrine whether it's communism
or a religious Doctrine or any political
ideology what
elaborations
are natural stages in the evolution of
any living set of
ideas or when you reach the point where
some shift or some adaptation is so
radically different that it actually
breaks with the tradition and that's an
insoluble problem you probably have to
take it on a case-by Case basis it
speaks to issues like the question that
gets raised today like is China in a
meaningful sense a communist country
anymore um and there's a there's a
diversity of opinion on this score or
you know if you're looking at the
history of communism and you look at
North Korea which now is on its third
installment of a dynastic leader from
the same family who rules like a god
king over a regime that calls itself
communist is that still a form of
Communism is it an evolution of is it a
complete reversal
of I tend to want to take an
anthropological perspective in the
history of Communism and to take very
serious
iously those people who avow that they
are communists and this is the project
that they have underway and then after
hearing that AOW uh I think as a
historian you have to say well let's
look at the details let's see what
changes have been made what continuities
might still exist whether there's a
larger pattern to be discerned here um
so it's a very very complicated history
that we're talking about let's step back
to the end of the 19th century and the
beginning of the 20th century and let's
Steelman the case for communism let's
put ourselves in the shoes of the people
there not in this way we can we can look
back at what happened in the 20th
century why was this such a compelling
notion for millions of people uh can we
make the case for it well clearly it was
a compelling case for millions of people
and and part of this story has to do
with uh overall has to do with the faith
conviction stories of uh of people
sacrificing themselves as well as their
countrymen uh in a cause that they
believed was uh not just legitimate but
uh demanded their total obedience I
think that throughout the early part of
the 20th century uh late 19th century
early part of the 20th century so much
of the compelling case for communism
came from the confidence that people in
the west more generally placed in
science the notion that science is
answering problems science is giving us
solutions to how the world around us
Works how the world around us can be
improved um some varieties of that and
like watch the quotation mark science
were crazy right like phenology
so-called scientific racism that tried
to divide Humanity up into uh discret
blocks uh and to manipulate them in ways
that were allegedly scientific or
rational so there were Horrors that
followed from uh those invocations of
science but its Prestige was enormous
and that in part had to do with uh the
uh lessening grip of religious ideas on
intellectual Elites more generally
processes of secularization not total
secularization but but processes of
secularization in in Western industrial
societies um and the sense that here's a
doctrine that will allow allow escape
from
Wars brought on by capitalist
competition poverty and economic cycles
and depressions brought on by capitalist
competition uh the
inequalities uh of societies that remain
hierarchical and class-based uh and this
claim to being cuttingedge science I
think allows people like Lenin
to derive immense
confidence in the prescription that they
have for the future and that
paradoxically the confidence that you
have in Broad Strokes the right set of
answers for how to get to the Future
also allows you to take huge liberties
with the tactics and the strategies that
you follow as long as your ultimate goal
remains the one sketched by this this
master plan so um you know ultimately
some of the predictions of someone like
lennin that that once Society has
reached that stage of the dictatorship
of the of the
proletariat the notion
that governments will essentially be
able to run themselves and the model he
had in mind oddly enough was Swiss post
offices being in Swiss Exile must have
impressed him so much with the
orderliness and the sheer discipline and
rationality of a Swiss post office and
he thought why can't you organize
governments like this where you don't
need political leaders you don't need
Grand Visions you have procedures you
have bureaucracy which does its job in a
way that's not alienating but simply
produces the the greatest good uh you
know when you think of the experiences
with bureaucracy in the 20th century
once hair stands on end to have you know
the the the comparative
naive uh on display with a prediction
like that but it deres from that
confidence that it's all going to be
okay because we understand we have the
key we have the plan to how to arrive uh
at this this uh this final uh
configuration of humanity yeah the
certainty of Science in quotes and the
goal of Utopia gets you in trouble but
also just on the human level from um
from a working class person
perspective from the Industrial
Revolution you see the growing
inequality wealth inequality and there
is a kind of you see people getting
wealthy and combined with the fact that
life is difficult life in general life
is suffering for many for most for all
if you listen to some philosophers and
there is kind of a a powerful idea in
that the man is exploiting
me and that's a populist message that a
lot of people resonate with because to a
degree it's true in every system and so
before you kind of know how these
economic and political uh ideas manifest
themselves it is really powerful to say
here Beyond the Horizon there's a world
where the rich man will not exploit my
hard work anymore and I think that's a
really powerful idea it is I mean at the
same time though it kind of points to uh
you know a further problem and that's
the identity of the
revolutionaries um it it turned out that
uh many of these revolutionary movements
uh and then the founding Elites of
communist countries uh in the aftermath
of the the Soviet seizure of power um
turn out to be something quite different
from people who have spent their lives
in factories experiencing the Industrial
Revolution firsthand I there's a special
role here for
intellectuals uh and um when when Marx
and angles right into the Communist
Manifesto the notion that certain
exceptional individuals can rise above
their class origins in a way other
people can't and
transcend their earlier role their their
materially determined role in order to
gain a perspective on the historical
process as a whole and Ally themselves
with a working class and its struggle
for
communism this sort of special role that
they carved out for themselves is
enormously appealing for intellectuals
because any celebration of intellectuals
as World movers is going to appeal to
intellectuals uh that that um Gap that
um that frequent reality of not being in
touch with uh the very classes that the
uh Communists are aiming to represent uh
is is a a very frequent theme in uh in
this story uh it
also um speaks to a crucial part of this
story which is the breaking apart or the
Civil War the war of brother against
brother the Fraternal struggle that
splits socialism and splits followers of
Marx and that's in the uh uh aftermath
of the the first world war in particular
uh or or during the this traumatic
experience the way in which uh Lenin
encourages the foundation of radical
parties that will break with social
democracy of the sort that had been
elaborated especially in places like
Germany uh scorning their moderation and
instead announcing a new dispensation
which was the leninist conception of a
disciplined hardcore of professional
revolutionaries who will act in ways
that uh that a mere Trade union movement
couldn't and what this speaks to is you
know a fundamental tension in uh in
radical movements because uh left to
their own devices lennin uh announces
workers tend to focus on their reality
their families their workplace want
better working conditions unionize and
then aim to negotiate with employers or
to agitate for reforms on the part of
the state to improve their living
conditions and then they're happy for
the advances that they have won and for
Lenin that's not enough because that's a
half measure that's the sort of thing
that leads you into an accommodation
with the system rather than the
overthrow of the system so there's a
real there's a constant tension uh in in
in this regard that plays itself out
over the Long Haul so let's go to uh
Lenin and the Russian
Revolution how did uh communism come to
power in the Soviet Union it came to
power as a result of stepping into a
power vacuum and the power vacuum was
created by the first world war and it's
the the effect that it had as a total
war unprecedented pressure placed on a
regime that in many ways uh was a a
traditional almost feudal monarchy uh
only experiencing the beginnings of the
modernization that uh the rest of Europe
had undergone the uh and for this reason
communism comes to power in a place that
Marx probably wouldn't have expected in
the wreckage wreckage of the Russian
Empire uh Lenin is absolutely vital to
this equation because uh he's the one
who presses the process forward uh
ironically um given the claim of
communist leaders to having the key to
history uh just a few months previous in
Exile in Switzerland Lenin had been
despairing and been convinced that uh
that that he's not may not even live to
see the Advent of that day but then when
Revolution does break out in uh the
Russian Empire uh in February of 1917
Lenin is absolutely frantic to get back
and when he does get back as a result of
a deal that is negotiated with the
German High command a step that they
they'll later live very much to regret
uh he is able to get back and to go into
action and to press for nothing less
than the seizure of power uh that brings
uh the his Bolshevik faction the radical
uh wing of the Socialist movement uh to
power in and then to build the Soviet
Union so even he was surprised how
effective and how fast the revolution
happened he was although I think that he
would have uh would have agreed that
what was necessary was a cataclysm on
the scale of the first world war to make
this happen um the first world war
shatters so many of the certainties of
the 19th century that we talked about as
a as a dynamic period with argument
between ideologies it it's scrambles all
sorts of earlier debates it renegotiates
the status of the individual versus an
all powerful State and the claims of the
state because to win or even just to
survive in World War I you need to
centralize centralize centralize uh and
to uh put everything onto a
authoritarian wartime footing in country
after country uh so Lenin uh earlier had
already articulated the possibility that
this might happen by talking about
how the entire Globe already was
connected uh and there's a a chain of
capitalist development that is
connecting different countries so that
the weakest link in the chain if it
breaks if it pops open
uh it might actually uh inaugurate much
bigger processes uh and uh start a chain
reaction and that's what he intended to
do and has the chance to do uh in the
course of
1917 um incidentally just to get a a
sense of the sheer
chaos and the um the human on an
individual human level what the absence
of uh established Authority meant uh
there's there's few works of literature
that are as powerful as bis pak's Dr
zivago for giving the the whole sweep of
contending forces uh in a power vacuum
uh it's an amazing testimony to that
time and place so you said uh that
Bolshevik saw violence and Terror as
necessary so can can you just speak to
this aspect of their because they took
power and and so this this was a part of
the way they saw the world right and it
had antecedence um even though Lenin and
his colleagues are competing amongst
each other for the title of most
faithful disciple of Marx and and most
true to the received uh theory in in
practice there's other influences
earlier influences that operate in the
Russian context uh that were not
operative let's say on the German
context and here you have to step back
and think about the nature of
tsarism which had maintained still uh
into the 20th century the notion of a
divine right to rule that God had
ordained uh the Tara system and uh its
hierarchies and that the question these
was was sinful and politically not
advisable and the restrictive nature of
Russian Society at this point dominated
by The tarist Establishment its
harshness its reactionary nature meant
that people who in another context in
another country might have been
reformers could instead very easily be
provoked into becoming
revolutionaries uh and Lenin is a
perfect example of this because his uh
older brother uh was executed as a
result of being in a uh radical
revolutionary movement uh that was who
was arrested and executed for uh
association with terrorism um and
earlier generations of Russian radicals
had uh founded populist groups that
would aim to engage in terrorism and
resistance against the tarist regime um
and this included uh people who call
themselves nalists and these nalists
were materialists who saw themselves um
ushering in uh a new age by absolute
rejection of earlier religious
traditions uh and aiming for material
answers to uh the the challenges of the
day uh among them uh was Nikolai chfi
who wrote uh what's been called the
worst book ever written it was in fact
one of Lennon's favorite books it in
Russian it's stel in English it gets
translated what is to be done and it's a
utopian novel about uh revolutionaries
and how revolutionaries should act with
one another in open ways new ways
non-traditional ways in order to help
usher in the the coming Revolution Lenin
loved the work and said it had the great
Merit of showing you how to be a
revolutionary so there's the Marxist
influence and then there's Russian
populist neolist influence which uh um
is also a very live current in in
Lenin's thinking and when you add these
things together you get a an explosive
mix because Lenin as a result and part
of this family trauma of his brother
becomes
a absolutely reconcilable enemy of the
tarist regime and sets about turning
himself into what you might call a
guided missile for revolution he turns
himself into a machine to produce
revolutionary change and I I mean that
with little hyperbole lenon at one point
shared with friends that he loved listen
listening to music but he tried not to
listen to beautiful music like Beethoven
because it made him feel gentle what the
revolution demanded was realism hardness
absolute Steely resolve so Lenin um
worries even fellow revolutionaries by
the intensity of his single-minded Focus
to Revolution he spends his days
thinking about the revolution he
probably dreamt about the revolution uh
and so 24 47 it's an existence where
he's paired off other um human elements
quite deliberately in order to turn
himself into an effective uh instigator
of Revolution so when the opportunity
comes in 1917 he's primed and and ready
uh for that role it's interesting that
nihilism Russian nihilism had an impact
on Lenin I mean traditionally niist
philosophy rejects all sorts of
traditional morality there's the kind of
cynical dark View and where's the light
the light is science the light is
science and materialism oh boy um the
nihilists um some of them did a very bad
job of hiding their political beliefs
because they would wear they were famous
for wearing blue tinted spectacles kind
of the sunglasses of the late 19th
century as a way of uh shielding their
eyes from light but also having a
dispassionate and realistic view of
reality uh outside so um nihilists as
the name would suggest do reject all
prior certainties but they make an
exception for Science and see that as
the possibility for founding a uh uh an
entirely new mode of existence uh for
most people I think nihilism is
introduced in the brilliant
philosophical work I don't know if
you're familiar with it uh by the name
of uh the big
Labowski nlist appear there and I think
they summarize the nlist tradition quite
well but it is indeed
fascinating and also it is fascinating
that lennin and I'm sure this influenced
Stalin as well that hardness yeah was a
necessary uh human characteristics to
take the revolution to its uh to its end
that's right that's right so prior
generations of nihilists or populists um
had resembled Lenin's single-mindedness
by being you know by by arguing that uh
one needed total devotion for this this
was if to play this role in society it
was not enough to be somewhat committed
total commitment was necessary and the
other theme that's at work here
obviously is uh if we consider Lenin
affected by Marxist ideas and the
Homegrown Russian revolutionary
tradition that predates uh uh uh the
arrival of marxist socialism in in in
Russia it's the theme of needing to
adapt to local conditions so Marxism or
communism in Vietnam or in Cuba or in
Cambodia or in Russia will be very
different in its local adaptations and
local themes and resonance than it was
in Germany where Marx would have ex
expected all this to unfold so let's
talk about Lenin Trotsky and Stalin this
little interplay that eventually led to
Stalin accumulating grabbing and taking
a hold of power what was that process
like so Lenin's Supreme confidence uh
leads the the party through some really
difficult steps that involves things
like signing the humiliating treaty with
the Germans the Treaty of
breslov where critics of the Bolshevik
said that no one who loved their their
country would have would have agreed to
a so Draconian so harsh a settlement
that saw the peeling off of large
territories that had belonged to the
Russian Empire Lenin is willing to
undertake this because the larger prize
um he even says that he's not going to
bother to read the treaty because
shortly that treaty is going to be a
dead letter his expectation is
revolution's going to break out
everywhere especially after we've raised
the standard first of all in the
wreckage of the the Russian Empire and
we should probably say that that treaty
to some small degree maybe you can
elaborate now or later l the the
groundwork for World War II because
there is resentment is a thing that with
time can lead to just extreme levels of
Destruction right it in for for German
sensibilities for German nationalists
that treaty meant that Germany had
essentially won World War I and
only a turn of events that many of them
couldn't even follow or conceive of the
the arrival of American American troops
The Tipping of the balance in the west
led to that reversal and uh um one of
the many scholars and contemporaries
pointed out that Germany between the
wars was full of people who were
convinced that Germany had actually not
lost the war however that victory of
theirs was defined so most definitely
that that groundwork is laid and
incidentally um this is something we can
talk about later uh World War I and
World War II have a lot of linkages like
that and and uh as time goes by I think
his are going to focus on those linkages
uh even more but Lenin uh also in his
leadership against the odds leads the
Bolsheviks to power in the Russian Civil
War where most betting people would have
given them very slight odds of even
surviving given how many enemies they
faced off against Lenin's insistence
upon discipline and upon uh good
organization uh allowed the bull to
emerge uh as the
winners and yet a great disappointment
follows Lenin as we said had expected
that Revolution will break out soon
everywhere and all it'll be necessary
for the Bolsheviks to do having given
the lead is to link up with others and
so he considered that what would be
established would be a red bridge
between a communist uh uh Russia and
once Germany inevitably plunged aad head
into its revolutionary transformation a
communist Germany that doesn't end up
happening on the contrary what happens
in Germany is a out andout shooting war
between different kinds of
socialists when Germany establishes a
democracy that later goes by the name of
the vimar Republic the government uh is
a government of social Democrats
moderate social Democrats who are
fearful of what they see as Russian
conditions of disorder and who are not
necessarily in sympathy with the
leninist vision of tightly organized uh
uh authoritarian rule so Communists who
Revolt in uh Germany are brutally
suppressed by mercenaries uh hardened
front Fighters and uh and uh nationalist
radicals hired by the German socialist
government and the result is a wound
that just won't heal in the German
socialist movement as a result of this
frat side it frustrates Lenin's
Ambitions so too does the fact that
Poland rather than going Bolshevik uh
resists attempts by the Bolsheviks to
move forward and to connect up with
Germany uh the polls uh yet again uh
play a tremendously important historical
role in changing the expected course uh
of historical
events it's in the aftermath of these
unexpected turns that Lenin and his
colleagues
realize that they're in this for the
Long Haul it's necessary to wait longer
they don't lose hope in or confidence
you might say in the eventual coming of
international workers Revolution but it
has it's been deferred it's been put off
and so the question then arises what do
you build within uh a state that's
established called the Union of Soviet
Socialist republics or the the Soviet
Union um Lenin as a result of an
assassination attempt uh
is deeply affected in his health and um
would have loved to continue for years
longer to steer the regime uh but
he's sidelined because of his declining
health and there emerges a contest a
contest between a very
charismatic um leader uh uh leot
Trotsky um on the one hand who is an
amazing orator who is an intellectual
who has traveled widely in the world who
has seen uh uh much of the world and who
is a a brilliant writer uh a far-ranging
intellect uh and is seen is extremely
radical because of his demand for
permanent revolution the acceleration of
revolutionary processes to drive history
forward to to strike while the iron is
hot and on the other hand is an extreme
unlikely Contender for power and that's
a man who's probably the antithesis of
Charisma if you were to meet him in
person uh a guy with a uh a squeaky
somewhat high-pitched voice not well
suited to revolutionary
oratory uh uh his face pockmarked with
uh the scars of uh youthful illness uh
and who moreover doesn't speak uh a fine
sophisticated Russian but speaks a uh
Russian heavily inflected with a
Georgian accent uh from that part of the
Russian Empire from which he came and
that was Stalin and um I know that you
already have a marvelous uh interview
with uh Steven cotkin uh the brilliant
biographer uh of Stalin uh uh who um has
so many insights U on that subject the
one thing that's that even after reading
about Stalin um that never ceases to
surprise me even in retrospect is that
Stalin gains a
reputation not as a fiery radical but as
a moderate a man who's a conciliator
someone who's calm when others are
excited someone who is able because of
his organizational skills to resolve
merely theoretical disputes with
practical Solutions now to to fully take
this aboard we have to unknow what we
know from our vantage point about
Stalin's leadership Stalin's brutality
and eliminating uh his opposition um The
Cult of Personality that Against All
Odds got built up around Stalin so so
successfully um and the the absolute
dominant role that led him later to be
described as genghiskhan with a
telephone uh um a a a brutal dictator uh
of a with ancient barbarism all lied to
the use of modern technology while
trosky is delivering stirring speeches
and theorizing Stalin Works behind the
scenes to uh control Personnel decisions
in the Bolshevik movement and in the
state and you know it's a cliche because
it's true that Personnel is policy um
trosky is increasingly sidelined uh and
then demonized and eventually expelled
from the Soviet Union and later murdered
uh in in Mexico City um for Stalin uh
eliminating his enemies turned out to be
the solution that he was most
comfortable with so from that
perspective there's a lot of fascinating
things here so one is that you can have
a a wolf a uh brutal dictator in
moderate
clothing so just just because somebody
presents as moderate doesn't mean they
can't be one of the most destructive not
the most destructive humans in history
the other aspect is is using propaganda
you can construct an image of a
person even though they're uncharismatic
not attractive their voice is no good
all of those aspects you can still have
a like uh there's still to this day a
very large number of people that see him
as a religious yeah type of uh Godlike
figure so the power of propaganda there
today we would call that curating the
image right curating the image but to
the extent to which you can do that
effectively uh is is quite incredible so
in that way also Stalin is a study of
the power of
propaganda uh can we just talk about the
ways that the the the power vacuum is
filled by Stalin how that manifest
itself perhaps one angle we can take is
how was the secret police used how how
did power manifest itself under Stalin
well um before getting to the secret
police I would just want to add the
other crucial element which is Lenin's
patronage Stalin doesn't you know brawl
his way into the Bolshevik party and and
and and dominate uh he's co-opted and
promoted to positions of importance by
Lenin who sees him as uh a somewhat
Rough Around the Edges not very
sophisticated uh much less Cosmopolitan
than other Bolsheviks but but Dependable
reliable and committed revolutionary so
um I think that one of the things that's
emerged especially after archives opened
up with the fall of the Soviet Union and
we were able to read more and more the
communications of Lenin is that uh it's
there's it's not the case that we're
talking here about um a unconnected
series of careers rather there are uh
connections to be made it's true that
towards the end of his life Lenin uh
came to be worried by uh complaints
about Stalin's rudeness towards fellow
Bolsheviks uh and in his Testament he
warned against uh Stalin's testimonies
lendon fundamentally saw himself as
Irreplaceable and so that doesn't really
help in a succession struggle right um
Stalin uh is able to rely on a secret
police apparatus that have been built up
under Lenin already and um it's uh very
early in the foundation of the Soviet
state that uh the ca or the
extraordinary commission uh is
established as a secret police
to uh terrify the enemies beat down the
opponents of the regime and to uh keep
an eye on society more generally uh the
person who's chosen for that task also
is a anomaly among Bolsheviks uh that is
a man of Polish aristocratic background
Felix zinski who comes to be known by
the nickname iron Felix uh here's a man
about whom a cult of personality also is
created
um
zinski is celebrated in the Soviet
period as the model of someone who's
harsh but fair a an executioner but with
a heart of gold somebody who loves
children somebody who has a tender heart
but forces himself to be Steely willed
against the opponents of uh the
ideological project of the Bolsheviks um
zinski is succeeded by figures who will
be absolutely instrumental to Stalin's
exercise of power and they're not immune
either Stalin in his purges takes care
also to purge the secret police as a way
of finding others upon whom to deflect
blame for uh earlier uh atrocities and
uh to produce a situation where even
committed Bolsheviks are uncertain of
what's going to happen next uh and feel
their own position
to be precarious I mean incidentally
there are other influences that probably
are brought to be hair as well it gets
said about Stalin that he used to spend
a lot of time flipping through
makaveli's the
prince and um it seems that Stalin's
personal copy of the prince um nobody
knows where that is if if if it still
exists but um the historians have found
annotations in works by Lenin that
Stalin who is a voracious reader as it
turns out um made in in the back of one
of the books which sounds almost like a
commentary on
makaveli's almost but not quite
suggestion that the ends justify the
means Stalin's own writing says that if
someone is strong active and
intelligent even if they do things that
other people condemn they're still a
good person and so stop 's
self-conception of himself is someone
who along these lines and in line with
Lennon's emphasis on on practical
results and discipline somebody who gets
things done that's the crucial ethical
standard and and in ultimately uh in in
criticisms by later dissidence of
Bolshevik
morality this question of what is the
ethical standard what is the ethical law
uh will bring this question into Focus
Because by the and this goes back to
Marx as well incidentally the notion
that any ethical system any notion of
right or wrong is purely a product of
class identity because every class
produces its distinctive ideas it's
distinc of religion it's distinc of art
forms it's distinc of uh Styles um means
that with no one Transcendent or
absolute morality it's all up for grabs
and then it's a question of power and
the exercise of Power with no limits
untrammeled by any laws whatsoever uh
dictatorship in its purest form
something that Lenin had avowed and then
Stalin comes to practice more uh even
more
fully not that it's possible to look
deep into a person's heart but you know
if you look at trosky you could say that
he probably believed deeply in Marxism
and communism probably the same with
lennin what do you think Stalin believed
was he a Believer was was he a
pragmatist that used communism as a way
to gain power and ideology as part of
propaganda or did he in his own private
moments deeply believe in this
Utopia that's an excellent question and
you're quite right I mean we cannot peer
into the inmost recesses of somebody's
being and and know for sure my intuition
though is that um is that this may be a
false alternative uh a false dichotomy
uh it's natural enough to to see
somebody who does monstr things to say
well this is being you ideology is being
used as a cover for it but I think that
um my suspicion is that these were
actually perfectly compatible in his
historical role the notion that that
there's an ideology it gives you a a a
master plan for how history is going to
develop and your own power the the
increase of that power to
unprecedented uh uh proportions your
ability to torment even your own
faithful follow followers uh in order
just to see them squirm which Stalin was
famous for uh uh to keep people
unsettled I I to me it seems that for
some people those might not actually be
opposed but might even be mutually
reinforcing which is a very scary
thought it's it's terrifying but it's
really important to
understand if we look at once Stalin
takes power at uh some of the policies
so the collectivization of
Agriculture why do you think that failed
so uh
catastrophically uh especially in the
1930s with uh Ukraine and Poore I think
the the short answer is that um the
Bolsheviks in particular but also
Communists more generally have had of
very conflicted relationship with
agriculture agriculture um as a very I
mean vital obviously but also very
traditional an old form of human
activity um has about it all of the the
smell of tradition and other problematic
factors as well um in a place like uh
Russia or the Russian Empire um peasants
throughout history for centuries had
wanted one thing and that was to be left
alone to farm their own land uh um the
you know that's their Utopia and that
for someone like Marx who had a vision
of historical development and
Transcendence and progress as being
absolutely key uh does not mesh at all
with that vision for that reason when
Marx comes up with this this Tableau
this um tremendous display of historical
transformation taking place over
centuries and headed towards the final
Utopia the role of farmers there is is
negligible peasants get called um
conservative and dull as sacks of
potatoes in uh Marx's uh historical
Vision because they're Limited in their
Horizon they Farm their land their plot
and don't have greater revolutionary
goals Beyond working the land and having
it free and clear um by contrast
industrialization that's progress I mean
images that today would be deeply
disturbing to an environmentalist
sensibility Smoke Stacks belching smoke
the byproducts of Industry a landscape
transformed by uh the factory model
that's what marks and then later the
Bolsheviks have in mind um similarly the
goal uh even as articulated in Marx's
writings is to put Agriculture and
farming on a factory model so that you
won't need to deal with this traditional
role of the independent farmer or the
peasant instead you'll have people who
benefit from progress benefit from
rationalization by working factory
farms um so in approaching the question
of
collectivization we have to keep in mind
that for uh Stalin and his comrades who
are bound and determin to drag Russia
Kicking and Screaming into the Modern
Age and not to allow it be beaten
because of its backward
as Stalin puts it traditional forms of
Agriculture are not what they have in
mind and in their rank of desired
outcomes industrialization especially
massive heavy industry uh is the
sinequanon that's their envisioned
future uh agriculture rates below so in
that case The crucial significance of
collectivization is to get a handle on
the food situation
in order to make it predictable and not
to find oneself in another crisis like
during the Civil War when the cities are
starving industry is robbed of Labor and
the factories are at a s at a standstill
so this is really the the the core
approach to collectivization to put the
productive capacities of the farmers uh
in a regimented way in a state
controlled way under the control of of
the
state this produc produces vast human
suffering because the for the
farmers their plot of land that they
thought they had gained as a result of
the revolution is now taken away they no
longer have the same incentives they had
before to be successful farmers in fact
if you're a successful farmer and maybe
have a cow as opposed to your neighbors
who have no cow you're defamed and
denounced as a kulok a tightfisted
exploiter even though you might be
helping to develop agriculture in the
region that you're from so the result is
human tragedy on a vast scale and uh a
lied to that uh incidentally is uh
Stalin sense that um this is a chance to
also Target people who are opposed to
the bulvik regime for other reasons
whether it's because of their Ukrainian
identity uh whether it's because of a
desire to to for a different nationalist
project uh so for Stalin there are many
motives that roll into collectivization
and the final thing to be said is you
are quite right that collectivization
proves to be a failure because the
Soviet Union never finally gets a grasp
on the pro problems of agricultural
production by the end of the Soviet
Union uh they're importing grain from
the West uh in uh um in spite of having
some of tremendously Rich Farmland uh to
be found worldwide and the reason for
that had to do in part I think with the
incentives that had been taken away um
prosperous individual Farmers have a
motive for working their land and
maximizing production by contrast if you
are an employee of a factory style
agricultural
enterprise uh the incentives run in very
different directions and the the joke
that was common um for decades in the
Soviet Union and other communist
countries with similar systems was we
pretend to work and they pretend to pay
us so even labor which is um
rhetorically respected and uh valorized
uh in practice is rewarded with very
slim rewards and the last point
immobility the
collectivization reduces the mobility of
the who are not allowed because of
internal passports to move to the cities
unless they have permission they're
locked in place I got to say at the time
and afterwards that looked a lot like
feudalism or Neo feudalism in terms of
the restrictions on uh on workers in the
countryside it is a terrifying horrific
and fascinating study of how the ideal
when meeting reality fails so the the
IDE idea here is to make agriculture
more efficient so be more productive so
the industrialized model but the
implementation through
collectivization had all the elements
that you've mentioned that uh contended
with human nature so first with the
coolock so the successful farmers were
punished and so then the incentive is
not just not to be a successful farmer
but to like hide added to that there's a
growing quota that everybody's supposed
to deliver on that nobody can deliver on
and so now because you can't deliver on
that quota you're basically exporting
all your food uh and you can't even feed
yourself and then you suffer more and
more and more and there's a vicious
downward spiral of like you can't
possibly produce that now there's
another human incentive where you're
going to lie everybody lies on the data
that's right and so even uh Stalin
himself probably uh as evil or
incompetent as he may be was not even
getting good data about what's even
happening even if he wanted to stop the
vicious D cycle which he certainly
didn't but he wouldn't be even able to
so there's all these like dark
consequences of uh of what on paper
seems like a good ideal and it's it's a
fascinating study of like things on
paper that's right when implemented can
go really really bad that's right and
and and the outcome here is a horrific
man-made famine not a natural disaster
not bad Harvest but a man-made famine as
a result of then the compulsion that
gets used by the Soviet state to extract
those resources cordoning off the area
not allowing staring starving people to
uh to escape um you put very well some
of the the implications of this case
study and in how things look in the
abstract versus in practice um and those
phenomena were going to haunt the rest
of the experience of the Soviet Union um
the whole notion that up and down the
chain of command everybody is falsifying
or tinkering with or prying the
statistics or their reports in order not
to look bad and and not to you know have
Vengeance visited upon them um reaches
the point where nobody in spite of the
pre sense of comprehensive knowledge
right there's a a a state planning
agency that creates 5-year plans for the
economy as a whole and which is supposed
to have accurate statistics all of this
uh is founded upon uh a foundation of
sand that's inadvertent that's not an
intended side effect but what you
described as in terms of the internal
dynamics of fostering conflict in a
rural societ Society was absolutely not
inadvertent that was deliberate the
doctrine was you bring Civil War now had
there been social tensions before of
course there had had there been envies
had there been differentiations in uh in
in wealth or status of course there had
been but a deliberate plan to bring
class conflict and bring Civil War and
then heighten it in the countryside um
does damage and not least of that is
this phenomenon of a negative selection
those who have most Enterprise those who
are most entrepreneurial those who have
most self-discipline those who are best
organized will be winnowed again and
again and again uh sending the message
that mediocrity is comparatively much
safer than talent and this pattern
incidentally gets transposed and in
tremendously harrowing ways also to an
the entire group of uh Russian
intelligencia and intellectuals of other
peoples who are in the Soviet Union um
they discover similarly that
to be independent to have a voice which
is not compliant uh carries with it uh
tremendous penalties um um in in uh
especially in Stalin's Reigns of Terror
again a difficult question about a
psychology uh of one human being but to
what degree do you think
Stalin was deliberately
punishing the farmers and the Ukrainian
farmers and to a degree was he looking
the other
way and allowing the the large scale
incompetence the horrific incompetence
of the collectivization of agriculture
well I I think it was both things right
I mean there were not only sins of
omission but also sins of commission um
incidentally one should add I don't
think for Stalin it was personal um
these are people who are very remote
from him he never never coming into
contact with the people who are
suffering in this way um attributed to
him uh is the quote that uh one death is
a tragedy a million deaths is a
statistic um I think he in action
certainly acted in a way that would
vindicate that um but the process of
collectivization was not just uh a
bureaucratic snafu following on
bureaucratic snafu there was the
mobilization of communist youth of
military of party activists to go into
the regions and to search for hidden
food to uh uh extract the uh uh the food
where it could be found and um
this we have testimony to this in the
case of uh people who later became
dissidents like Lev copv who wrote In
His memoirs about how he was among those
who were sent in to enact these policies
and he saw families with the last food
being taken away even as signs of
starvation were visible already in the
present and yet he did not go mad he
didn't kill himself he didn't fall into
despair because he believed because he
had been taught and believed at least
then that this was justified this was a
larger historical process and a a
greater good would result even from
these enormities so I think that uh um
this was quite
deliberate following this as you've
mentioned uh there was the process of uh
the great Terror where the intellectuals
where the Communist Party officials the
Military Officers
the
bureaucrats
everybody uh
750,000 people were executed and over a
million people were sent to the
gulag what can you say by way of wisdom
from this process of the great Terror
that Stalin implemented from 36 to
38 well the the terror had uh a variety
of
victims um there were people who were
True Believers and who were both bulvik
who were especially targeted by Stalin
because uh he aimed to Revenge himself
for all the sort of condescension that
he'd experience in that movement before
uh and also to eliminate rivals or
potential rival uh Power centers uh and
members of their families and then there
were people who um simply got caught up
in a process whereby the repressive
organs in the provinces were sent quotas
you have to achieve your quota and maybe
even better yet overachieve your quota
overperform that would be the key to
success and rising in uh uh the
bureaucracies in the age of the terror
what's so horrifying is the way in which
a whole society uh stood paralyzed uh in
this this process uh and how uh
neighbors would be taken away in the
middle of the night and people would be
wary of talking about it um resistance
uh uh at least in in these Urban centers
uh was entirely Paralyzed by fear when
uh if one had somehow find a way to
mobilize somehow a way to to to to
resist the process the results might
have been different there's there's an
astonishing book I mean there are so
many great books that have come out
quite recently even on these topics
Orlando figus has a amazing book called
The Whisperers that traces several
families history in the Stalin period
and it's a testimony to how a whole
society and some of its most intelligent
people got winnowed again and again and
again in that process of negative
selection that we talked about the
lasting dislocation and scars that this
left and the way in which how people
were not able to talk about these things
in public because that would put you
next on the list uh suspected of uh of
of having less than total Devotion to
the state I think one of the things that
also is so terrifying about the entire
process is even total devotion wasn't
enough um the process took on a life of
its own and I think that uh it might
even have surprised Stalin in some ways
um not enough to to to to short circus
the process but the notion where um
people were invited to denounce
neighbors co-workers maybe even family
members um meant that ever larger groups
of people would be brought into the
orbit of the secret police tortured in
order to produce confessions those
confessions then would lead to more
lists of suspects of people who uh were
had to be investigated uh and uh um
either executed or sent to the
ggs um the uncertain certainty that this
produced it was
enormous um even loyalty was not enough
to save people the stories soja nen's
Gulag archipelago is full of stories of
dedicated Communists uh who find
themselves in the GG and are sure that
some mistake has been made and uh if
only comrad Stalin would hear about this
terrible thing that has happened to them
um surely uh it would be corrected and
uh um nothing like this would everyone
else by contrast accused of terrible
crimes must there there must be some
truth behind that so uh you know talk
about ways of of disaggregating a
society ways of breaking down bonds of
trust um this left lasting traces on uh
an entire society that that endureed to
this very day yeah there're again a
fascinating study of human nature that
they're essentially was an emergent
quota of confessions of treason so like
even though the whole society was
terrified and were through Terror
loyal there's still needed to be a lot
of confessions of people being disloyal
so you're just making up now like
at a mass scale stuff is being made up
and it's also the machine of the secret
police starts eating itself because you
want to be confessing on your boss on
your and is this
weird
dark uh dynamic system where human
nature just as it is it's worst
absolutely
absolutely why if we look at this deep
discussion we had about
Marxism uh to what degree can we
understand from that lens why the
implementation of Communism in the
Soviet Union failed in such a dark way
both on the economic system with
Agriculture and industrialization and on
the human way with the just violation of
every possible human right and the
torture and the suffering and Googs and
all of all of this well I think some of
it comes back to the ethical grounding
that we mentioned earlier um the notion
that uh ethics are entirely situational
and that any ethical system is an
outgrowth of a particular class reality
a particular material
reality uh and that leaves the door wide
open um so I think that that that aspect
was uh present from the very beginning
uh I think that the um expectations of
Marx uh that the revolution would take
hold and be successful in a developed
country played a role here as well
um Russia which compared to the rest of
Europe was less developed even before
the first world war is in a dire state
after all of the ravage and the millions
of deaths that um continue even after
the war has ended in the west um that
leaves precious little in the way of uh
structural restraints or um a
functioning society that would say let's
not do things this way
um I think that in retrospect that
special role carved out for special
individuals who can move this process
forward and accelerate historical
development um allowed for people to
step into those those roles and and
appoint themselves executors of this
ideological uh Vision um so I think
those things play a role as well now
it's hard to do contrafactual history
but to what degree is this basically
that the Communist ideals create a power
vacuum and a dictator type figure steps
in and then it's a roll of the dice of
what that dictator is like so can you
imagine a world where the
dictator uh was
trosky would we see very similar type of
things or is the hardness and the
brutality of somebody like
Stalin manifested itself in um being
able to look the other way as some of
these dark things were happening more so
than somebody like trosky who would
presumably be um see the realizations of
these policies and be shocked well
counterfactuals are hard like you said
and uh and one very quickly gets off
into really deep Waters in in
speculation there were contemporaries
and there have been Scholars since who
suggest that
trosky by all indications might have
been even more radical than Stalin in
the tempo that he wanted to achieve
think of think of the the uh the um the
slogan of permanent revolution trosky
also um who dabbled in in so many uh
things in his his intellectual life also
spoke in almost utopian terms that are
just astonishing to read in utopian
terms about the construction of the new
man and the new woman and that out of
the raw material of humanity once you
really get going and once you've
established uh A system that matches
your hopes for the future it'll be
possible to reconfigure people and I
like talk about ambition to create
essentially the next stage in human
evolution a new species growing out of
humanity um those don't sound like very
modest or limited approaches um and uh I
guess we just really won't know do some
of the destructive characteristics of
Communism have to go hand inand so the
central planning that we talked about
the censorship with the secret police
uh the concentration of power in one one
dictatorial figure and uh well let's say
with again with the secret police the
the the violent
oppression what one should add to to
those factors that have a kind of
interrelated logic of their own the the
sheer fact that communism comes to power
in most of these instances as a result
of War as a result of the destruction of
what came before and a power vacuum so
think of the the Russian Revolutions in
the wake of the fall of tsarism think of
the expansion of Stalin's puppet regimes
into Eastern Europe in the wake of World
War II and the Red Army moving into
occupy areas uh in in Eastern Europe um
uh although they announc that they're
coming as
liberators uh
consider uh the foundation of communist
China on the heels of World War II and
yet more Chinese Civil War uh consider
uh cases like Korea
Vietnam it's likely that this already is
a key element in setting things up for
further crisis because upon seizure of
power if your expectation is well it'll
it ought to be relatively easy to get
this system rolling and put it on a
basis that's uh after all we have the
road map to the Future
there will follow frustrations and
impediments and resistance and there's a
ratchet effect then there because it'll
produce uh more repression uh producing
even more problems that follow um what
drives the whole thing forward though
especially in its leninist version but
already visible with with marks and
angles is the insistence on confidence
if you have the key to the Future all of
these things are possible and necessary
this leads to an an ethos I think that
um that's very hard for historians
to quantify or to study in a methodical
way but it's the insistence that you
hear with Lenin and then especially with
Stalin that to be a Bolshevik means to
be hard to be realistic to be
consequential meaning you don't shy away
from doing what needs to be done even if
your primordial ethical remainders from
whatever earlier experience you have
rebel against it um the under Stalin
there's a constant slogan of the
Bolshevik Tempo the Bolsheviks there's
no fortresses that they can't storm they
can do everything and in a way this is
the assertion that it's will over
everything history can be moved forward
and accelerated and probably you're own
actions Justified as a result no matter
what they were if you are sufficiently
hard and determined and have the
confidence to follow through and then
that obviously raises the ultimate
question what happens when that
confidence es or erodes or when it's
lost if we go to the
1920s to the home of KL
Marx fascism as implemented by the Nazi
party in Germany was called The National
Socialist German Workers Party uh so
what were the similarities and
differences of uh fascism socialism how
it was conceived of in fascism and
communism and maybe you can speak to the
broader Battle of ideas that was
happening at the time and battle of
political control right uh that was
happening at the time well I mean
there's a a whole bunch of terms that
are in play here right um and when we
speak of fascism uh fascism in its
original sense um is a radical movement
founded in Italy which though it had
been allegedly on The Winning Side uh of
World War I is disappointed with the
lack of rise in National Prestige and
territory that that that leads that that
commences after the end of the war so
bizarrely enough it's a socialist by the
name of bito musolini Who crafts an
ideological message of glorification of
the
State uh the people at large United in a
militaristic way on the March ready to
attack ready to
expand a complete overthrow of liberal
ideas of the rights of the individual or
of representative democracy and instead
vesting power in one leader in his case
The Duce musolini uh in order to rep
licate in peace time the ideal of total
military mobilization in
Wartime
um although the Nazis in in Germany are
inspired and borrow heavily from fascist
ideology there also are different
emphases that they include and that
includes uh their virulent racism from
the
outset which um in addition to a
glorification of the state glorification
of the leader and preparation for
National greatness uh race is absolutely
core and it's that
racial radicalism that the Nazis espouse
as a central idea along with
anti-Semitism the demonizing in
particular of the Jews and this this
insane racialist cosmology that the
Nazis uh AOW it is the assertion that
the Nazis will will uniquely bring to
pass unity in the people unity in the
society that leads them to give
themselves this odd name of National
Socialist some leaders like Gobles among
the Nazis uh accent the Socialist part
to begin with others put the accent
firmly on the Nationalist part in part
the the term they chose for their
movement was meant to be confusing it
was meant to
take slogans or words from different
parts of the political Spectrum to fuse
them into something unfamiliar and new
and claim that they'd overcome all
earlier political divisions that they
the Nazis claimed that they were a
movement not a party even though their
party was called a party so what did
Nazism and bolshevism and communism
share or how were they opposed to one
another we need to start with by making
clear they were ideological Archen
enemies in both worldviews the opposite
side represented the ultimate expression
of the evil that needed to be exercised
from history in order for their desired
Utopia to be brought about uh and and
this leads to um strange and perverted
beliefs about reality uh from the
perspective of the Nazis the Nazis
claimed that uh because they saw the
Jews as a demonic element in human
history the Bolsheviks weren't even
really you know didn't really believe
all of this economic dialectical
materialism they were in fact a racial
conspiracy it was alleged and so the
Nazis use the term of judeo bolshevism
to argue that uh communism is
essentially a uh conspiracy uh steered
by the Jews which was complete nonsense
uh for their part the Comm Communists uh
and and from the perspective of the
Soviet Union the
Nazis um were in essence a super
capitalist conspiracy if the if the
cosmological enemy are the capitalists
and the owners the exploiters then all
of the rigar about race and nationalism
are distractions they're meant to fool
the the uh poor saps who enlist in that
movement it's essentially steered by
capitalist owners who it is claimed are
um reduced to this desperate expedient
of coming up with this thuggish party
that represents the last gasp of
capitalism so bizarrely enough from the
Communist perspective the rise of the
Nazis can be interpreted as a good sign
because it means that capitalism is
almost done because this is the last
undisguised
uh naked face of capitalism nearing its
end so the other uh uh Beyond this um
ideological uh total opposition in terms
of their hoped for
futures the reality is that there were
aspects that were shared on either side
and that included the conviction
that they could agree that the age of
democracy was done and that the 19th
century had had its day with experiments
with representative
democracy uh uh the the claims of Human
Rights uh classical liberal ideas and
all of this had been revealed as
bankrupt it had gotten you what it got
you first the first world war as a total
conflict uh conflict leaving uh tens of
millions dead and then economically the
Great Depression showing that that the
the end was not was not far away um this
produced at one and the same time both
ideological opposition and instances of
vastly cynical
cooperation um in terms of the viar
Republic um it's obvious with a benefit
of hindsight that German democracy had
ceased to function even before Hitler
comes to power but in the process of
making democracy unworkable in
Germany uh the
extremes the
Nazi uh uh Stormtrooper army with their
brown shirts and the Communist Street
Fighters had cooperated in uh um
heightening an atmosphere of civil war
that uh uh left people searching for
desperate expedience uh uh in the last
day
of uh of the viar
Republic um the most compelling case of
their cooperation uh was the signing of
the Nazi Soviet pact on August 23rd
1939 which enables Hitler to start World
War II a non-aggression pact in official
terms it contains secret Clauses whereby
the Nazis and the Soviets meeting in
Moscow under Stalin's wary eye had
agreed on territorial division of
Eastern Europe and making common cause
uh as uh each claiming to be the winner
of the future um so in spite of their
oppositions uh these were regimes that
uh were able very cynically uh to work
together to dire effect uh in the course
of the
1950s in particular uh there arose
political scientists
who also crafted uh an explanation for
ways in which these regimes although
they were opposed to one another
actually um bore
morphological resemblances they operated
in ways that in spite of ideological
differences bore similarities uh and
such political scientists Hannah rent uh
Chief among them um crafted a model
called totalitarian Ian ISM borrowing a
term that the fascists had liked about
themselves to Define regimes like the
Nazis like Stalin Soviet Union uh for a
new kind of dictatorship that was not a
backwards cast um Revival of ancient
barbarism but with something new a new
form of dictatorship that laid total
claims on hearts and Minds that didn't
want just passive obedience but wanted
fanatical loyalty that combined fear
with compulsion uh in order to generate
belief in a system or at the very least
atomize the masses to the point where
they would go along with the plans of
the regime um this this um model um has
often met with very strong criticism uh
on the grounds that no regime in human
history has yet achieved total control
of the population under its uh grip
that's true but that's not what Hannah
rent was saying Hannah rent was saying
there will always be inefficiencies
there will be resistance there will be
uh
divergences what was new was not the
alleged achievement of total control it
was the ambition the articulation of the
ambition that it might be possible to
exercise such fundamental thoroughgoing
control of entire populations and the
final frightening thought that arent
kept before her was what if this is not
a model that comes to us from bited un
civilized ages what if this is what the
future is going to look like that's a
horrifying intuition so let me ask you
about Daryl Cooper who is a uh historian
and podcaster did a podcast with tuer
Carlson and he made some claims there
and else where about World War II there
are two claims that I would love to get
your perspective on first he stated that
Churchill was quote the chief villain of
the second World War I think Daryl
argues that Churchill forced Hitler to
expand the war Beyond uh Poland into a
global war second the mass murder of
Jews po slav gypsies in death camps was
an accident a uh byproduct of a global
war and in fact the most most Humane
extermination of prisoners of War
possible given the alternative was death
by starvation so I was wondering if you
can respond to each of those claims well
I I think that this is uh a bunch of
absurdity uh and it would be laughable
if it wasn't so serious in uh in its
implications um I to address the the
points in turn um Churchill was not the
chief villain of the second World War
the notion that Churchill allegedly
forced Hitler to escalate and expand a
conflict that could have been limited to
Poland uh is that assertion is is based
on a complete neglect of what Nazi
ideology was uh the Nazi
worldview and racism was not a ideology
that was limited in its application it
looked toward world
domination uh the in the the years since
the Nazis had come to power they
sponsored programs of Education called
geopolitics which urged Germans to think
in continents think Inc continents to uh
see themselves as one of the superpowers
that would battle for the future of the
world uh and now in in retrospect we of
course can see that Germany was not in a
position to to uh legitimate a claim
like that but the Nazis aims were
anything but
limited in particular uh this sort of
argument has been tried out in in
different ways before in previous
decades there had been attempts by
historians who were actually uh well
read and
well-published
to argue that World War
II had been in part
a contingent event that had been brought
about by accidents or
miscalculations uh and uh such
explanations argued that if you put
Hitler's ideology
aside you actually could interpret him
as a pretty traditional German
politician in the stripe of bismar now
when I say it like that I think you can
spot the problem immediately when you
put the ideology aside to uh to try to
analyze Hitler's Acts or alleged motives
in the absence of the ideology that he
himself subscribed to and described in
hateful detail in mine and other
manifestos and speeches is uh an
Enterprise that's doomed to failure uh
justifiably the notion that the mass
murder of Jews PS claves and gypsies was
an event that um simply happened as a
result of
unforeseen events and that it was
understood as somehow being Humane uh is
also runs contrary to the historical
fact when Poland was invaded uh the
Nazis Unleashed a killing wave in their
so-called operation tanan bag which sent
in specially trained and ideolog I Ally
pre-prepared Killers who were given the
name of the units of the einat grin in
order to wipe out the Polish leadership
uh and also uh to kill Jews uh this
predates any uh um of the operation
Barbarosa and the Nazis invasion of the
Soviet Union uh the Nazis moreover in
their in many different expressions of
their ideology had made clear that their
plans you can read this in mine comp for
Eastern Europe were subjugation and uh
ethnic uh cleansing uh on a vast scale
so I consider um both of these claims
absolutely untenable given the facts and
documents so do you think it was always
the case that Nazi Germany was going to
invade the Soviet Union I think as you
can read in mind com this is what's
necessary in order to uh bring that
racial Utopia to pass um and so so uh
while the timetable might be flexible
while obviously uh geopolitical
constellations would play a role in
determining when such a thing might be
possible it was most definitely on his
list and I would want to add uh that in
in my own scholarship I've worked to um
explore some of these themes a little
bit further uh my second book uh which
is entitled uh the German myth of the
East which appeared with Oxford
University press um examines centuries
in the German encounter with Eastern
Europe and how Germans have thought
about Eastern Europe whether in positive
ways or in negative ways and one thing
that emerges from this investigation is
that uh even before the Nazis come to
power in Germany there are certainly
negative and dehumanizing stereotypes
about Eastern Europeans some of them
activated by the experiences of German
occupation in some of these regions
during the first world war but the Nazis
take the very most destructive and most
negative of all those stereotypes and
make them the dominant ones making no
secret of their uh uh uh expected future
of domination and Annihilation uh in the
East the idea of laan's
real is it Poss possible to uh Implement
that idea without
Ukraine Hitler has Ukraine in his
Horizon uh as one of the chief prizes uh
and uh the Nazis then craft extensive
plans uh a master plan that they work on
in draft after draft after draft even as
the balance of the war is turning
against them on the Eastern Front this
master plan is called the genal plan OST
meaning the general plan for the East
and it foresees things like Mega
highways on which the Germanic Master
race will travel to vacation in Crimea
or how they'll their settlements will be
scientifically distributed in the wide
open spaces of Ukraine for for
agriculture that will feed an expanded
uh and purified Germanic Master race so
uh this was not peripheral to the Nazi
Ambitions But
Central as I best understand
and there is extensive and definitive
evidence that the Nazis always wanted to
invade the Soviet Union and there was
always a racial component and not just
about the Jews they wanted to enslave
and
exterminate the Jews yes but the Slavic
people the
Slavs and uh if he was success uccessful
at uh Conquering the Soviet Union I
think the things that would be done to
the Slavic people would make the
Holocaust seem
insignificant in my understanding in
terms of the numbers and the brutality
and the viciousness in which he
characterized the Slavic people in in
their in their worldview the Jews were
um especially demonized and so the
project of the domination of Eastern
Europe
involves this horrific program of
mechanized
systematized uh bureaucratically
organized and and horrifyingly efficient
mass murder of the Jewish
populations what the Nazis expected for
the slaves had a longer timeline himler
expected the head of the SS SS has given
special special mission to be part of
the transformation of these regions
ethnically and himler in his role of
envisioning this German future in
Eastern Europe uh gives such a chilling
phrase he says that while certain slaves
will uh fall victim immediately um some
proportion of Slavs uh will not be
shipped out or deported or annihilated
but instead they will remain as slaves
for our
culture and in that one phrase himler
managed to defile and
deface everything that the word culture
had meant to generations of the best
German thinkers and artists in the
centuries before the Nazis the notion of
slaves for our culture uh was part of
his longer term expectation and then
there's finally a a a a fact that is
speaks volumes about what the Nazis
planned for the
East Hitler and himler
envisioned permanent war on the Eastern
Front not a peace treaty not a
settlement not a border but a constant
moving of the border every generation
hundreds of miles east in order to keep
winning more and more living
space and with analogy to other
Frontiers to always give more fighting
experience and more training and
aggression to generation after
generation of German soldiers in terms
of nightmarish Visions this one's right
up there and always
repopulating the land conquered with the
German the Aryan race so in in terms of
race repopulating with race and
enslaving the Slavic people and
Exterminating them because there's so
many of them it takes a long time to
exterminate and even in the case of the
German
themselves um the um the hidden message
behind even Nazi propaganda about unity
and about uh uh about German national
identity was the Nazis
envisioned Relentless purges of the
German genetic stock as well so among
their victims are people with
disabilities uh people who are defined
as not racially pure enough for the
future even though they are clearly
Germans by
identity um this uh full the full scale
and the the the comprehensive Ambitions
of the Nazis are as breathtaking as they
are horrifying one of the other things I
saw uh Daryl tweet was that what ended
up happening in the second world war was
the worst possible thing that could have
happened and I just also wanted to
comment on
that which I can imagine in a very large
number of possible scenarios that could
have happened that are much much worse
including the successful conquering of
the Soviet Union as we said the kind of
things that would be done and the the
total war ever ongoing for Generations
which would result in you know hundreds
of millions of deaths and torture and
enslavement and uh not to mention the
other possible trajectory of the nuclear
that's right that's right I would think
that the Nazis with atomic weapons with
no compunctions about deploying them
would rank up there as even worse than
the horrors that we saw now let me Steel
Man a point that was also made as part
of
this uh that The
oversimplified Narrative of uh sort of
to put it crudely Hitler bad Churchill
good has been used and abused by neocons
and and uh warmongers and the military
industrial complex in the year since to
basically say this this particular
leader is just like Hitler or maybe
Hitler of the 1930s and we must invade
now before he becomes the Hitler of the
1940s and that has been applied in the
Middle East in Eastern Europe and and
God forbid that can be also applied in
the uh in the war with China in the um
21st century so yes warmongers do sure
love to use Hitler and apply that
template to wage war uh and we should be
wary of that and be careful of that both
the over application of this historical
template onto the modern world and of
warmongers in general yeah and I think
that nobody should like oversimplified
narratives we need uh subtle and
accurate narratives and also I just
would like to say that probably as we've
been talking about Stalin and Hitler are
singular figures and uh just as we've
been talking about the implementation of
these totalitarian regimes they are
singular in human history that we never
saw anything like it and I hope from
everything it looks like we will never
see anything like it again I mean there
certainly striking and unique historical
characters in The Record one of the
things that's so disturbing about Hannah
Ren's model of totalitarianism
is um the leader can be changed the
system itself demands that there be a
leader who allegedly is uh is all
powerful and all- knowing and prophetic
and the like but
um whether particular figures are
interchangeable in that role um is uh is
a key
question let me go back to the 19 19 20s
and sort of asked another counterfactual
question given the battle between the
marxists and the Communist and uh
National
Socialist was it possible and what would
that world look like if the Communists
indeed won in Germany as uh Carl Marx
envisioned and it made total sense given
the the industrialized expanse that
Germany represented uh was that possible
and what would it look like if it
happened I would think that the the
reality was probably very remote but
that was certainly their ambition uh
German Communists get quoted as saying
after Hitler it's our
turn um their sentiment was that the
arrival of Nazism on the
scene was a sign of how decrepit and
incompetent and doomed capitalism was
in hindsight that's almost impossible to
believe because what happens is the
Nazis with their characteristic brutal
ruthlessness simply decapitate the party
and arrest the activists who were
supposed to be waiting to take over so
that's forestalled a further
hypothetical that gets raised a lot is
couldn't the social Democrats and the
Communists have worked together to keep
Hitler of
power uh that's where the prior history
comes into play the very fact that
the German Revolution in 1919
sees socialists killing
socialists produces a dynamic that's so
negative that it's nearly impossible to
settle on on cooperation added to the
fact that um the communist see the
social Democrats as as as Rivals for the
Loyalty uh of the working
class in terms of just statistical
likelihood a lot of experts at the time
felt surely the German Army is going to
step in and uh
the most likely outcome would have been
a German general shutting down uh the
democracy and producing a military
dictatorship it says a lot about how
Dreadful and bloody the record of the
Nazis was that um some people in
retrospect would have felt that that
military dictatorship would have been
preferable if it had obviated the need
for the ordeal under the
Nazis what do you think Marx would say
about the 20th
century let's take it before we get to
Ma and China
just looking at the Soviet Union and
Nazi
Germany that's a really good question um
I think that
Marx
was flexible in his
expectations about tactics and
strategies even as he was sure that he
had actually cracked a big intellectual
problem of what the future is going to
look like so how it would play out he
was a man who had to deal with a lot of
disappointments because uh in in
Revolutionary Uprising after
revolutionary Uprising whether it was in
uh the Revolutions of 1848 in across
Europe whether it was in Poland whether
it was in uh uh the Paris commune um he
this is it this this is the outbreak of
the real thing and then it it doesn't
end up happening so I think that he'd
probably have tried to be patient uh
about the turn of events uh we mentioned
at the outset that that Marx felt it was
unlikely that a workers Revolution would
break out in the Russian Empire because
for that you needed lots of industrial
workers and they didn't have a lot of
Industry there's a a footnote to add
there and it proves his
flexibility a Russian socialist wrote to
Marx asking might it not be possible for
Russia to escape some stages of
capitalist development I mean do you
have to rigidly follow that scheme and
um Marx's answer was convoluted but it
wasn't a
no and that suggests that Marx was
willing to entertain all sorts of
possible
scenarios uh I think he would certainly
have been very surprised at uh uh at the
course of events as it unfolded because
it didn't match uh his expectations at
the
outset not to put this on him but would
he be okay with the price of holl
Moore for the the utopian destination of
uh communism meaning is it okay to crack
a few eggs to make an omelet well um we
don't know what Marx would say if he
would POS that question deliberately but
we do know in the case of a Marxist
historian Eric Hobs bom who was um a
prolific and celebrated British
historian of the 19th and 20th centuries
and and he was he was put this question
in the 90s after the collapse of the
Soviet Union and he stated forthrightly
that um because the Soviet Union failed
such
sacrifices uh
were um inordinate
but if the experiment had succeeded and
a glorious future had been open for
mankind as a result of the Soviet
Union's
success that would lead to a different
reply and uh that is uh one person's
perspective so that takes us to the
other side of the
world uh the side that's often in the
west not considered very much when we
talk about human history uh Chinese
dynasties
Empires are fascinating complex and
there's there's just a history that's
not as deeply explored as it should be
and the same applies to the 20th century
so um Chinese radicals founded the
Chinese Communist Party CCP in July
1921 among them as you uh talk about was
Ma
what was the story of Ma's rise to power
so
Mao takes a page from the book of Lenin
by adapting or seeking to
adapt Marx's ideology to a context that
would have surprised Marx significantly
and that is not only to set the
revolution in an as yet not
industrialized country but moreover to
make the peasants rather than being
conservative sacks of potatoes to make
them into the prime movers of the
success of this political
Venture
that's a case of the phenomenon that we
talked about earlier um when do you when
is an adaptation of an ideology or a
change to an ideology a
valid um
adjustment that you've made or
adaptation and when is it already so
different that it's something entirely
distinct um
maoism was very clearly intended to
answer this question for the Chinese
context and by implication other
non-western parts of the world this was
in part maway whose ambition was great
to put himself at the head of a success
International movement uh and to be the
successor to Stalin whose role he both
admired and resented uh from having to
be the junior partner to take an example
of a Masterwork in major milestone in
the history of Communism the Polish
philosopher Lea
kovski who was at first a committed
communist and then later became
disillusion and wrote a three volume
study of marxist thought called currents
of
Marxism in that
book when he reaches maoism kovski
essentially throws up his hands and says
like it's it's hard to even even know
what to do with this because putting the
peasantry in the Vanguard role is is
something that is already at variance
with the original design but Marx says
this is an improved version this is an
adapted and truer version of Marxism for
the Chinese
context um in case after case in in in
Ma's rise to power we see a really
complicated relationship with
Stalin he works hard to gain Stalin's
support because the common turn the
international organization headquartered
in Moscow working to encourage and help
revolutionaries worldwide is skeptical
about the Chinese Communist to begin
with and believes that China still has a
long way to go before it's reached the
stage where it's ripe for Communist
Revolution and in a way that's more
Orthodox Marxism uh than what Mao is
championing um Mao chafes under
Stalin's acknowledged leadership uh of
international communism as a movement
and in 1950 when Mao goes to visit
Stalin in Moscow in order to sign a a
treaty of cooperation he's left waiting
for days and days and days in in a snub
that is meant to show him that you're
you're just not as important as you
might think you are and then when Stalin
dies in
1953 um Mao feels the moment is ready
for him to step into the leadership
position surpassing the Soviet Union so
many of Ma's actions like the Great Leap
Forward and the agricultural disasters
that follow from that are literally
attempts to outdo Stalin to outperform
Stalin to show that what Stalin was not
able to do the Chinese Communist Regime
will be able to bring off and uh the the
toll uh for that hubris is
vast yeah in the darkest of ways he did
outdo Stalin that's right in the
statistics the Great Leap Forward ended
up killing approximately 40 million
people from starvation or
murder can described a great Le forward
so it was modeled on the crash
industrialization that Stalin had wanted
to undertake in the Soviet Union and and
to outdo it the notion of the Great Leap
Forward was that it would be possible
for the peasant masses out of their
conviction in the rightness of the
Chinese Communist cause to industrialize
China overnight that involved things
like creating small smelting furnaces in
individual Farm communes it involved
folding together uh farming territories
into vast communes of very large size
that were just because of their sheer
gigantism supposed to be by definition
more efficient than smallscale
farming um it ended up uh uh producing
environmental disaster
and campaigns to eliminate uh birds or
insects uh were supposed to demonstrate
Mastery over Nature by sheer acts of
will these included things like um
adopting Soviet
agricultural um techniques that were uh
pioneered by a crackpot biologist by the
name of trofim
lenko uh that that produced more
agricultural disas fter that involved
things like plowing to depths that were
not practical for the seeds to germinate
and grow but we're supposed to produce
super plants that would uh uh produce
bumper harvests and outpace the
capitalist countries and the Soviet
Union so the context for all of this is
a race to get first to the
achievement of full-scale Communism one
of the themes that I think it's so
valuable to pursue and to take seriously
in the history of Communism is what
concrete promises were made in the case
of um the of China ma made
promises and projections for the future
that were worrying even to some of his
own assistant he exclaimed that perhaps
by
1961 perhaps by 1973 three China would
be the winner in this competition and it
would have achieved full communism so
that which Marx had sketched as the Endo
of humanity would be achieved first by
the Chinese uh later his own um comrades
when he passed from the scene felt the
need to temper that a little bit and
promised that they would achieve full
communism by the year
2000 um such promises are helpful to a
regime to create enthusiasm and to hold
out to people the prospect of real
successes just around the corner but
what happens when the date arrives and
you haven't actually achieved that goal
that's one ticking time bomb that played
a role in the increasing erosion of
confidence in the Soviet Union and the
case of china must have been something
similar so there's a lot of other
elements that are similar to um the
Soviet Union maybe you could speak to
the 100 Flowers Campaign the 100 Flowers
Campaign is uh a chance for Mao who has
felt that he has uh lost Prestige and
lost standing in the party because of
the disasters of the Great Leap Forward
to regain some of that momentum and the
whole 100 Flowers Campaign uh officially
titled the rectification campaign uh to
set things right is still shrouded in
mystery historians disagree about how to
interpret what Ma was actually up to the
most cynical variant is that Mao
encouraged Chinese thinkers and uh
intellectuals to share ideas and to
engage in constructive criticism to
propose Alternatives and to let a full
discussion happen and then after some of
them had ventured that to come and purge
them to punish them ruthlessly for
having done what he had invited them to
do that is the most cynical variant some
historians argue that Mao himself was
not prepared for the ideas that he
himself had invited into the Public
Square and that he grew anxious and
worried and angry at this without having
thought this through in a cynical way to
begin with the end result is the same
the end result is once again negative
selection the decimation of those who
are most venturesome those who are most
talented and intelligent are punished
relentlessly for
that and just a general culture of
censorship and fear and all the same
stuff we saw in the Soviet Union that's
right I mean think of the impact on
officials um who are loyal Servants of
the regime and just want to get along
the message goes out loud and clear
don't be venturesome do not propose
reforms stick stick with the tried and
true and that'll be the safe route even
if it ends in ultimately stagnation so
as the same question I asked about the
Soviet Union why do you think there was
so much
failure of of policies that Mao
implemented in China during his rule Mao
himself had a view of human beings as
being as he put it beautiful blank
pieces of paper upon which one can write
new
characters and that is um
clearly at variance with what you and I
know about the complex nature of human
beings as we actually encounter them in
the world uh I think that in the process
of hatching schemes that were one siiz
fits-all for a country as big and as
varied in its uh um uh in its
communities as China uh inevitably uh
such an imposition of one model was
going to lead to uh U serious
malfunctions
and so much of the you know what what
other episodes in Chinese history had
showed the the entrepreneurial capacity
the productive capacity economically of
the Chinese people was suppressed by
being fitted into these rigid schemes uh
what we've seen since uh after M passes
from the scene and with the reforms of
dong sha ping uh one sees just how much
of those energies had been forcibly
suppressed for so long and now we
allowed to
reemerge Mao died in uh
1976 you wrote that the CCP in 81
looking back through the lens of
historical analysis said that he was 70%
correct 70 exactly 70% correct yeah not
69 not 71 not 71 the the scientific
Precision I mean we should we should say
that again and again um The Coop in of
the authority of Science
by um the Soviet Union by Mao by Nazi
Germany Nazi
science is um is is terrifying and
should serve as a reminder that science
is the thing that is one of the most
beautiful creations of humanity but uh
is also a thing that could be used by
politicians and dictators to do horrific
things and its Essence is questing not
certainty constant questing exactly uh
humility uh intellectual
humility so how did China evolve after
Ma's death to
today well I think that there is um
without
denouncing Mao without repudiating Ma's
70%
correctness um the regime
actually undertook a new Venture and
that Venture was to open up economically
to uh gain access to world
markets and
to play a global
role always with a Proviso that the
party retained political
Supremacy uh it's been pointed out that
while kusov tries in the Soviet Union in
1956 especially with a secret spe in
which he denounces Stalin's crimes um he
tries to go back to the founders
intentions of
Lenin nothing like that it's argued is
possible in the Chinese case because Mao
was not the equivalent of Stalin for
communist China Mau was the equivalent
of Lenin Mau was the founder so there's
no repudiating of him they are stuck
with that formula of 70% and
acknowledging that there were some
problems but by and large arguing that
that it was the the the correct stance
of the party and its leader uh that was
Paramount and the results of this wager
are you know where we are today um China
has been transformed out of all
recognition in terms of not all of the
living standards of the country but but
many
places uh it's economic growth uh has
been
dramatic and the new dis pensation is
such that people will ask is this a
communist country anymore and that's
probably a question that haunts China's
current leadership as well uh with
chairman XI we've seen a return to
earlier
patterns uh she insisting that Mao's
achievement has to be held as as equal
to that of the reform period um
sometimes imitations uh or Nostalgia for
the M period or even the offerings of
the cultural revolution are part of this
volatile mix um but all of this is uh is
outward appearance uh statistics can
also be
misleading and um I think that very much
in question is China's further
revolution in our own
times in the west China is often
demonized and we've talked extensively
today about the atrocities that result
from
uh atrocities both internal and external
that result from communist Nations
um but what can we say by way of
Hope to resist the
demonization how can we avoid cold or
hot war with China we being the West or
the United States in the 21st
century well you you mentioned in the
context of uh of the claims of science
uh humility as a crucial attribute I
think that um humility sobriety
realism are tremendously valuable in
trying to understand another Society
another form of government and
so I think one needs to be very
self-aware that project
onto others of what we think they about
is no substitute for actual study of the
sources that a society like that
produces it's it's Declarations of what
matters most to them uh the leadership's
own pronouncements about what the future
holds um I think that matters a lot more
than Pious hopes or or versions of uh um
being convinced that inevitably uh
everyone will come to resemble us in a
better future you mentioned this earlier
but just to take a small
detour what are we supposed to think
about North Korea and their declaration
that they're supposedly a communist
Nation what what can we say uh about the
economic the political system of North
Korea or is it just like a
hopelessly simple answer of this is a
complete disaster of a totalitarian
state so I think the the answer that a
historian can give is a historical
answer right that we have to inquire
into how what has to happen in order to
arrive at the past we are today where we
have a regime that's claiming to be
communist uh or uh a has a even better
version of Marx's original ideas in the
form of a Korean adaptation called
uch um how does that mesh with the
reality that we're talking about a
dynastic government and a monarchy in in
all but name but a communist monarchy if
that's if that's what it is I think that
um
examining as much as we can learn about
a closed society that is um goes about
its everyday in in ways that are
inscrutable to us is very very
challenging but the only answer when an
example like this escapes your analytic
categories uh probably there's a problem
with your analytical C categories rather
than the example being the problem in
all its messiness yeah so there's a
component here in the release to China
as well to bring like uh somebody like
John me shimer into the picture there's
a military component here too and and
that is ultimately how these
nations interact especially totalitarian
Nations interact with the rest of the
world so Nations interact
economically culturally and
militarily and the concern with
countries like North Korea is the way
for them to be present on the world
stage uh in the game of
geopolitics is by flexing their military
might and they invest a huge amount of
their GDP into the military so I
guess the question there discuss in
terms of analysis is
uh how do we deal with this kind of
system that claims to be a uh communist
system and what lessons can we take from
history and apply it to that or should
we simply just ignore and look the other
ways we've been kind of doing hoping it
doesn't get it doesn't get out of
hand yeah I mean there's
um realists see States following their
own interests and um prioritizing their
own
security and uh there's probably not
much that could be done to change that
but conflict arising as a result of
misunderstanding or mixed messages or uh
um uh misinterpretation uh those are
things that that that policy makers
probably do have some control over I
think that um there's internal processes
that'll work their way out in in the
even as opaque a place as North Korea
there's it's also the reality just as we
saw with the divided germanies that
um it's a precarious kind of uh twinned
existence when you have countries that
are across the border from one another
that are derived from what used to be a
single unit that now are kind of a real
life social science experiment in what
kind of regime do you get with one kind
of system what sort of regime do you get
with another kind of system and that's a
very a very unstable setup as it turns
out now let us jump
continents and uh in the 20th century
look to North America so you also have
lectured
about communism in America the different
communist movements in America it was
also founded in
1919 and uh evolved throughout through a
couple of red scares so what was the
evolution of the Communist party and
just in general communist in
America well it's it's fascinating to
observe this story because one
long-standing commonplace had been that
socialism uh has less purchase uh uh or
radical socialism in the United States
than in European countries uh so in in
to the extent that that was true uh it
was an uphill battle for the Communists
to get established in the United States
but um it makes it all the more
interesting to follow the development uh
of the
movement
and there were two challenges in
particular that uh played a role in
shaping the American Communist
experience one was the fact that to
begin with the party was often
identified with
immigrants uh
the communities that had come over
across the Atlantic from Europe often
had strong socialist contingents and
when this break happens within the
Socialist movement between radical
socialists and more moderate
socialists um there were fiery
individuals who uh saw the opportunity
to help shape the American communist
movement but the result was that for
many American workers they saw the sheer
ethnic variety and difference of this
movement as something that was
unfamiliar um it would only be with a
rise to the leadership of the Communist
Party of Earl Browder a American Born
political leader uh with vast Ambitions
for creating an American communist
movement that that image would start to
be modified uh Earl Browder had a
meteoric rise and then fall over the
promise he made that went by the slogan
communism is 20th century
americanism the notion was that
communism could find roots in American
political discourse and experience where
Earl Browder fell a foul of other
Communists was in his expectations
during World War II that it might be
possible for the Soviet Union and the
United States to make their current
cooperation permanent and to come to
some sort of accommodation that would uh
moderate their rivalry uh as it turns
out with the dawning already of Cold War
tensions uh that would later flower more
fully uh that was unacceptable and the
movement divested itself of of Earl
Browder another point that shaped
American perception of the communist
movement in the United States uh
involved issues of
Espionage um during the 1930s and the
1940s uh American Communists not all of
them obviously but um select members of
the movement were called upon by Soviet
intelligence to play a historical role
by uh gathering information winning
sympathies uh one of the most amazing
books of the 20th century is is the book
written by Whitaker Chambers who had
served as a Soviet spy first a committed
communist then an then a Soviet spy and
then later a renegade from those
allegiances uh his book is entitled
witness in 195 published in
1952 and it's it's one of the most
compelling books you could ever read
because it's so full of both the unique
character of the author in all of his
idiosyncrasies and and a sense of huge
issues being at stake ones upon which
the future of humanity turns so talk
about the ethical element being of
importance there um through the uh uh
apparatus of of the State uh the Soviets
managed to infiltrate spies into
America's uh military as well as uh
government institutions
great irony is that when Senator
McCarthy uh in the 50s
made vast claims about communist
infiltration of the government apparatus
claims that he was unable to
substantiate uh with
details um that reality had actually
been closer to the reality of the 1930s
and the 1940s than his own time but the
association of American Communists with
the foreign power of the Soviet Union
and uh ultimately an adherence to its
interests did a lot to uh undermine any
kind of hearing for uh American
Communists an example of course was the
notorious Nazi Soviet pact in
1939 the American communist movement
found itself forced to turn on a dime in
its propaganda
before the Nazi Soviet pact of August
1939 they had denounced Nazi Germany as
the greatest threat to World Peace just
after the signing of the pact they had
to uh Proclaim that this was a great win
for peace and for human Harmony and to
uh um completely change uh their earlier
relationship of being mortal enemies
with Nazi Germany uh there were many
American Communists who couldn't stomach
this and who in disillusionment um
simply quit their party memberships or
drifted away um but it's a fascinating
story uh of the ups and downs uh of a
political movement with radical
Ambitions in American political history
yeah the the Cold War and the extensive
levels of
Espionage sort of created combined with
Hollywood created basically firmly
solidified communism as the enemy of the
American
ideal sort of
embodied and not even the economic
policies of the polit political policies
of Communism but like the
word and and the color red with a hammer
and sickle you know Rocky four one of my
favorite movies well that's canonical
right yeah yeah I mean it is a bit of a
meme but meme becomes real
ERS uh and then enters politics and is
used by politicians to do all kinds of
name
calling you
have spoken eloquently
about modern Russia and modern Ukraine
and modern Eastern
Europe so how did Russia evolve after uh
after Stalin and after the collapse of
the Soviet
Union well I think
the short answer is without a full
historical Reckoning that would have
been healthy about the recent past in
ways that's not very surprising because
given the economic misery of
dislocations and the cumulative damage
of all of those previous Decades of this
experiment uh it left precious little
patience or Leisure or Surplus for
introspection but after an initial
period
of great interest
in understanding the full measure of
what Russia and other parts of the
Soviet Union had
undergone in this first initial
explosion of Journalism and of reporting
and investigations historical
investigations with new
sources uh after an initial period
marked by such interest
uh people
instead um retreated into the here and
now and the today and the result is that
um there's been less than would be
healthy of a taking stock a
reckoning uh even an ass signing of
responsibility for those things that
were experienced in the
past no nberg trial took place in order
to hold responsible those who had
repressed
others in uh the aftermath of the
collapse of the Soviet
Union in other ex-communist countries
there was also precious little in the
way of legal proceedings that would have
established responsibility and keep in
mind the nberg trials had as one of
their goals a very important one as it
turns out not even individual verdicts
for IND individual people found guilty
but to collect and publicize information
to create knowledge and transparency
about what the reality had been in the
past in the case of the former Soviet
Union in the case of Russia today
instead of a cleare eyed recognition of
the vast nature of what it all cost
Putin uh upon replacing
yelon uh was in a position to instead
traffic in the most varied eclectic and
often mutually contradictory historical
memories or packages of
memories so on the one hand in Putin's
Russia um the tars are rehabilitated as
Heroes of Russian
statehood uh Putin sees Lenin in a
negative light because Lenin by
producing federalism as a model for the
Soviet Union laid a time bomb at the
base of that state that eventually
smashed it into many constituent Parts
as Nations regained their
independence while Stalin it's
acknowledged Uh u exacted a dreadful
toll but also was effective as a
representative of Russian
statehood um this produced where we are
today
uh it's a it's a common place that
echoed by by many that Russia without
Ukraine is a nation state or could be a
nation state Russia with Ukraine has to
be an Empire and Putin who is not really
seeking a Revival of Stalin's
rule but still is nostalgic about
earlier forms of greatness and of the
strength of Russian statehood to the
exclusion of other values has undertaken
a course of
aggression that has produced results
quite different from what he likely
expected and I think that timing is
crucial here it's fascinating to try to
imagine what if this attempt to
redigested Russian imperial territory
had taken place
earlier I think that the arrival on the
scene of a new generation of
ukrainians has produced a very different
Dynamic and a disinclination for any
kind of nostalgia for the past packaged
however it might be and however
nostalgic it might be made to appear and
there I think that Putin's expectations
in The Invasion uh of 2022 were entirely
overturned his expectation was that that
Ukraine would be divided on this score
and that some significant portion of
ukrainians would welcome uh the advance
of Russian forces uh and instead uh
there has been the most amazing uh and
surprising heroic resistance uh that
continues to this day and it's
interesting to consider timing and also
individual
leaders zalinski you can imagine all
kinds of other figures that would have
uh folded much easier and zinsky I think
surprised a lot of the World by somehow
you know this
comedian somehow be becoming a uh
essentially uh an effective War
President so you know that that put that
in the in the in the bin of
uh singular figures that Define history
right surprises yeah how do you hope the
war in Ukraine ends I'm very pessimistic
on this score actually and for the
reasons we just talked about uh
about how these things Escape human
management or even
rationality um I think that war takes on
a life of its
own as accumulated suffering
actually eliminates possible compromises
or settlements that one might talk about
in the
abstract I think
that it's one thing for people far away
to
propose trades of
territory or
um complicated
guarantees or
Arrangements that sound very good in the
abstract and that will just be refused
by people who have actually experienced
what the war has been like in person and
what it has meant to them and their
families and everyone they know in terms
of lives
destroyed uh I think that peacemaking is
going to face a very daunting task here
given all that's
accumulated um and I think in particular
you know just from the last days of of
the launching of missile attacks against
indiscriminate or civilian
targets um that's not easy to turn the
corner on so let me ask a political
question I recently talked to Donald
Trump and he said if he is
elected uh before he is sworn into
office he will have a peace deal what
would a peace deal like that look like
and is it even even possible do you
think so we should mention that uh
Russia has captured four regions of
Ukraine now Dan Lans zapan
hon also Ukraine captured the part of
ksk region in within Russia so just like
you mentioned territory is on the table
you know NATO European Union is on the
table also funding and Military help
from the United States directly to
Ukraine is on the table do you think
it's possible to have a fair deal that
from people like you said far away where
both people walk away zinski and Putin
unhappy but equally unhappy and peace
and peace is
negotiated equally unhappy is a a very
hard balance to strike probably um I
think my concern is about the part of
the equation that involves people just
being desperately unhappy uh and laying
the foundations for more trouble to come
I I couldn't imagine what that looks
like but that's uh once again these are
things that escape uh Escape human
control in in the details so laying the
foundation for worse things to come so
it's possibly you
have a
ceasefire that lays the foundation for a
worse war and uh suffering in a year in
5 years in 10 years well in in a way we
may already be there because ratifying
the use of force to change borders in
Europe was a taboo since 1945 and and
now look where we are uh if that is
validated uh then um it sets up
incentives for for more of the same if
you look at the 20th centuy what we've
been talking about with horrendous
Global Wars that happened then and you
look at
now and it feels like just living in the
moment with the war in Ukraine
breaking the the contract of you're not
supposed to do territorial Conquest
anymore in the in the 21st century that
then the just
intensity of hatred and and Military
tension in the Middle East with the
Israel Iran on Palestine just building
and then China calmly but with a big
stick talking about
Taiwan do you think a big conflict may
be on the
way do you think it's possible that
another global war happens in the uh
21st
century I hope not but I think um so
many predictions uh reach their
expiration dates and uh and get
invalidated
um obviously it's a we we're confronting
a dire situation in the
present so as a historian let me ask you
for advice what advice would you give on
interviewing world
leaders whether it's people who who are
no longer here some of the people we've
been talking about Hitler Stalin ma or
people that are still here Putin
zalinsky Trump KLA Harris that Yahoo
siing
ping as a historian like what is it
possible to have an interesting
conversation maybe as a thought
experiment what what what kind of
conversation would you like to have with
Hitler in the 1930s or Stalin in the
1920s well first of all I mean the
answer is very clear I would never
presume to advise you about uh
interviewing world leaders uh and
prominent people because the the roster
that you've accumulated is just
astonishing so but I know what what I
might aim for and that is I think
um in historical analysis in trying to
understand the role of a particular
leader the more one understands about
their prior background and formative
influences the better a fix I think one
gets on the question of what are their
expectations what is the in German
there's a a beautiful word for this
Germans managed to ma Mash together
several words into into one even better
word and in German
it's the Horizon of
expectation so um in the case of figures
like Churchill or Hitler their
experience of World War I shaped their
actions in World War II uh their values
were shaped in their
childhood is there a way of engaging
with someone you're interviewing even
obliquely that gives a view in on their
sense of what the future might hold and
I mean that obviously such people are
expert at being guarded and not being
pinned down but the categories in which
they're
thinking uh a sense of what their what
their own ethical grounding might be or
their ethical code that gives hints to
their behavior it gets said and again
it's a cliche because it's true that one
of the best measures of a person
especially a leader is how they treat
people from whom they don't expect
anything uh are they condescending are
they on the contrary fundamentally
interested in another person even if
that person can't help them or be used
in some way um you know speaking of of
prominent world leaders to interview uh
there's Napoleon Napoleon
psychologically must have been a quite
amazing person to make a bid for Mastery
of Europe and then already thinking
about the Mastery of the world but
contemporaries who met Napoleon said
that it was very disturbing to talk with
him because meeting with him oneon-one
revealed that he could talk to you but
look like he was looking right through
you as if you were not fully real you
were more in the nature of a character
on a
chessboard and for that reason some of
them called Napoleon the master of the
sightless stair so if you're talking
with a world leader and he or she has a
sightless stare that's probably a bad
sign but there might be other
inadvertent clues or hints about the
moral
compass or the future expectations uh of
a leader that emerge in one of your
wonderful conversations yeah you you put
it brilliantly in several ways but the
moral compass getting sneaking up to the
the full nuance and complexity of the
moral compass and one of the ways of
doing that is looking at the various
Horizons in time about their vision of
the future I imagine it's possible to
get Hitler to talk about the future of
the Third
Reich and to see in in ways like what he
actually envisions that as and similar
with
Stalin but of course
act funny enough I believe those leaders
would be easier to talk to because
there's nothing to be afraid of in terms
of political
competition um modern leaders are a
little bit more guarded because they
have
to they they have uh opposition often to
contend with constituencies and
constituencies you did a lot of uh
amazing courses including for the gray
courses U on the topic of Communism you
just finished the third so you did a
series of lectures on the rise of
Communism then communism and power yes
and then uh Decline and falline of
Communism decline of Communism so when I
was sort of listening to these lectures
I can't possibly imagine the amount of
work that went into it he just speak
widely as what was that um Journey like
of taking everything you know your
expertise on Eastern Europe but just
bringing uh your lens your wisdom your
focus onto this topic and what it takes
to actually bring it to life well
journey is probably just the right word
because um it's this week that the third
of that trilogy decline of Communism is
being released and it it felt like
something that I very much wanted to do
because um the history that's narrated
there uh is one that is so compelling
and often so tragic that it needs to be
shared um the the vast amount of
material that one can include is
probably dwarfed by the amount that
actually ends up on The Cutting Room
floor one could probably do an entire
lecture course on every single one of
those lecture topics that got broached
but one of the great satisfactions of
put putting together a course like this
is also being able to give further
suggestions for study to the listeners
and in some cases to introduce them to
neglected Classics or books that make
you want to grab somebody by the lapels
and say you've got to read this um
there's probably few things that are as
exciting as a a really keen and targeted
reading
recommendation in addition I've I've
also done other courses on the history
of World War I on the Diplomatic history
of Europe from 1500 to the present a
course on the history of Eastern Europe
and also a course on
dictatorships called Utopia and Terror
and then also a course on explorers and
a course on turning points in modern
history and every single one of those is
so rewarding because there's you learn
so much in the process and it's really
fantastic and I should highly recommend
the people sign up to the uh first of
all there's the Great Courses where you
can buy the courses individually but I
recommend people sign up for GR courses
plus which I think is like a monthly
membership uh where you get access to
all these courses and they're just
incredible and uh I recommend people
watch all of yours uh since you
mentioned books this is an impossible
question and I apologize ahead of time
but is there books you can recommend
just in your own life that you've
enjoyed uh whether really small or some
obvious recommendations that
uh recommend people read it is a bit
like asking what's your favorite band uh
kind thing that's right well uh would a
book that got turned into a movie be uh
acceptable as well yes so uh in in that
case you know all of us reflect on our
own childhoods and the and the that that
that magical moment of a reading a book
or seeing a movie that that really got
you launched on some particular set of
things that you're going to find
fascinating for the rest of your life
and there's a direct line to the topics
we were talking about today from myself
in the Chicago land area as a kid seeing
the film of Dr
zivago and then later reading the novel
on which it was based by pastan and even
though the film had to be filmed on
location in Spain pretending to be
revolutionary Russia it was magical for
the sheer sweep and tragedy and human
resilience that it showed the the very
way in which a work of literature or of
cinematography could capture so
much
um still I'm I'm still amazed by that uh
and then there's also in the spirit of
recommending neglected Classics uh my
favorite author my favorite author is a
uh now uh a late Canadian author by the
name of Robertson
Davies who
wrote um novel after
novel in a mode that probably would get
called magical realism but is so much
more Robertson Davies was heavily
influenced by Carl Yung and yungan
philosophy but in literary form he
managed to create stories that blend the
mythical the mystical and the brutally
real to paint a picture of Canada as he
knew it Europe as he knew it and the
world as he knew it and um he's most
famous probably for the depford trilogy
three novels in in a series that are
linked and they're just masterful uh if
only there were more books like that the
Deford Trilogy fifth business the
Manticore world of Wonders and he got a
really nice beard yes it was an amazing
beard very 19th
century okay beautiful um what advice
would you give to young
people today that have just listened to
us talk about the 20th century and the
terrifying prospects of ideals
implemented into reality and by the way
many of the revolutions are carried
out uh by young
people and so you know the good and the
Bad and the Ugly is thanks to the young
people so the young people listening
today what advice would you give them
well it comes down to one word and that
one word is
read I'm as a college teacher I'm
concerned about what I'm seeing
unfolding before us which is classes not
my classes but classes in which students
are asked to read very
little or maybe in some cases not at all
or
Snippets that they are provided
digitally uh those have their place and
can be valuable but the task of sitting
down with a book and absorbing its
message not agreeing with it necessarily
but absorb taking in the implications
learning how to think within the
categories and the values of the
author is going to be
Irreplaceable and my anxiety is that
with uh with college bookstores now
moving entirely to uh the paperless
format um it changes how people interact
with texts and if the result is not a
Renaissance and a Resurgence of reading
but less reading that will be Dreadful
because the experience of thinking your
way into other people's
minds that sustained reading
offers is so crucial to human empathy a
broadening of your own sensibilities of
you know what's possible what's in the
full range of Being Human and then
what's best what are the best models for
what has been thought and felt and how
people have acted um otherwise
uh we fall prey to
manipulators uh and the ability of of
artificial intelligence to give us
versions of realities that never existed
and and never will and and the like it's
a really uh interesting idea so let me
give a shout out to perplexity that I'm
using here for to uh to sort of
summarize and take quick notes and get
little Snippets of stuff which is
extremely useful but it's not books are
not just about information transfer it's
uh just as you said it's a journey
together with a set of ideas and it's a
conversation and uh getting a summary of
the
book is the cliche thing is it's really
getting to the destination without the
journey and the journey is the thing
that's important thinking through stuff
and I actually learned you know I've
been
surprised I've learned I've trained my
brain to be able to get the same thing
from audiobooks also it's a little bit
more difficult because you don't control
the pacing sometimes pausing is nice but
you could still get it from audiobooks
so it's an audio version of of books and
that allows you to also go on a journey
together and sometimes more convenient
because you could take it to more places
with you right but there is a magical
thing and I also trying to train myself
mostly to use Kindle the digital version
of books but there is
unfortunately still a magical thing
about being there with the page Well
audio books are definitely not to be
scorned because as people pointed out um
the original traditions of literature
were oral right so that's actually the
the the F the the 1.0 version right uh
and combining these things is probably
the key I I think one of the things I
find so so wonderful about the best
lectures that I've heard is it's a
chance to hear someone thinking out loud
not laying down the law but taking you
through a series of logical
moves imaginative leaps alternative
suggestions um and uh uh that that's
much more than than data data transfer
the use case of AI as a companion as you
read is is really exciting to me I've
been using it recently to to basically
as you read you can have a conversation
with a system that has access to a lot
of things about a particular paragraph
and to I've been really surprised how my
brain when given some extra
ideas um other recommendations of books
but also just like a summary of other
ideas from elsewhere in the universe
that relates to this paragraph is like
is it Sparks your imagination and
thought you and you see the actual
richness in the thing you're reading
right now nobody's uh to my knowledge
has implemented a really
intuitive um interaction between Ai and
the text unfortunately partially because
um
the books are protected under DRM and so
there's like a wall where you can't
access the AI can't access the thing so
if you want to play with that kind of
thing you have to you know um break the
law a little bit which is not a nice
thing not a good thing
but just like with music Napster came up
uh people started illegally illegally
sharing
music and uh the answer to that was
Spotify which made the sharing of Music
Revolution everything and made the
sharing of Music much easier so there
are some technological things that can
enrich the experience of reading but the
actual
painful long process of reading is
really useful just like uh boredom is
useful that's right it's also called
just sitting underrated virtue yeah yeah
and of course you have to see the the
smartphone as a enemy I would say as of
that special time you have to think
because social media companies are
maximized to get your engagement they
want to grab your attention and they
grab that attention by making you as
brain dead as possible and getting you
to look at more and more and more things
so it's nice and fun it's great
recommend it highly it's good for
dopamine rush but see it as a
counter uh as a counter Force to the the
process of sitting with an idea for a
prolonged period of time taking a
journey through an expert eloquently
conveying that idea and
growing uh by having a conversation with
that idea and a book is really really
powerful so I agree with you um uh
totally what gives you hope about the
future of humanity we've talked about
the dark
past uh what gives you uh hope for the
light at the end of the tunnel so we we
we talked indeed about a lot of latent
really damaging and negative energies
that are part of human nature but I find
Hope in another aspect of human nature
and that is the sheer
variety of human
reactions to situations the very fact
that um history is full of so many
stories of amazing
endurance amazing
resilience uh the will to build up even
after
the horrors have passed this to me is an
inexhaustible source of optimism and you
know there are some people who condemn
cultural appropriation and say that
borrowing from one culture to another uh
is to be condemned well the problem is
uh a synonym for cultural appropriation
is world history trade transfer of ideas
influences uh valuing that which is
unlike your own culture uh is also a
form of appropriation quite literally
and so um those that that multitude of
human reactions and the fact that uh our
experience is so unlimited as history
testifies gives me great hope for the
future yeah and the willingness of
humans to explore all of that with
curiosity even when even when the
empires fall and the dreams are broken
We rise again that's right
unceasingly V thank you so much for your
incredible work your incredible lectures
your books and uh thank you for talking
today thank you for this such a fun chat
thanks for listening to this
conversation with vus lud vicious to
support this podcast please check out
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description and now let me leave you
with some words from KL
Marx history repeats itself first as a
tragedy second as a
farce thank you for listening I hope to
see you next time