Kind: captions
Language: en
what happened during World War II was
that once the Germans started to run out
of of
Manpower they created Foreign Legion
groups but because those people were not
Arians they couldn't be trusted so they
were put under the command of Henry
himler under command of ss and became
known as assess Waffen
units and uh one of such units was
created in
Ukraine the following is a conversation
with Siri ploi a historian at Harvard
University and the director of the
Ukrainian Research Institute also at
Harvard as a historian he specializes in
the history of Eastern Europe with an
emphasis on Ukraine he wrote a lot of
great books on Ukraine and Russia the
Soviet Union on Slavic peoples in
general across centuries on Chernobyl
and nuclear dister disasters and on the
current war in Ukraine a book titled the
rousa Ukrainian War The Return of
History this is the Le stre podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's
sirii what are the major explanations
for the collapse of the Soviet Union
maybe ones you agree with and ones you
disagree with very often people confuse
three different processes that were
taken place in the late 80s and early
90s and the one was the collapse of
Communism as ideology another was the
end of the Cold War and the third one
was the end of the Soviet
Union uh all of these processes were
interrelated interconnected but when
people provide ideology as the
explanation for all of these processes
that's why I
disagree because ideological collapse
happened on the territory of the Soviet
Union in general the Soviet Union lost
the Cold War whether we are talking
about Moscow Leningrad or St Petersburg
now ofas St but the fall of the Soviet
Union is about a story in which Vaso and
St Petersburg ended up in one country
and K of me andan ended in different
countries so the theories and EXP
explanations about how did that happen
for me this are really very helpful
theories for understanding the Soviet
collapse so the mobilization from below
the collapse of the
center against the background of
economic collapse against the background
of ideological uh ideological
implosion that's that's how I look at
the at the fall of the Soviet Union and
that's how I
look at the theories that explain that
collapse so it's a story of geography
ideology
economics which are the most important
to understand of what made the collapse
of the Soviet Union happen the Soviet
collapse was unique but not more unique
than collapse of any other Empire so
what we really witnessed or the the
world witnessed back in 1991 and we
continue to witness today with the
Russian aggression against Ukraine is a
collapse of one of the largest world
Empires we talk about talked about the
Soviet Union and now talk about Russia
as possessing plus minus one six of the
surface of the Earth you don't get in
possession of one six of the Earth by
being a nation state you get that sort
of size as an Empire and the Soviet
collapses continuation of the
disintegration of the Russian Empire
that started back in
1917 that was arrested for some period
of time by the Bolsheviks by the
communist ideology which which was
internationalist ideology and then came
back in full force in the late 80s and
early 90s so the most important story
for me this is the story of the
continuing collapse of the Russian
Empire and the rise of uh not just local
nationalism but also rise of Russian
nationalism that turned out to be as a
destructive force for the Imperial or
multi- multiethnic multinational State
as was Ukrainian nationalism or Georgian
or or Estonian for that matter oh you
said a lot of interesting stuff there in
1917 Bolsheviks
internationalists how that plays with
the idea of Russian Empire and so on but
first let me ask about us influence on
this so so one of the ideas is that you
know through the cold war that mechanism
us had major interest to weaken the
Soviet Union and therefore it the
collapse could be attributed to pressure
manipulation from the United States is
there truth to that the pressure from
the United States this is part of the
Cold War and Cold War part of that story
but it's it it doesn't it doesn't
explain the Soviet collapse and uh the
reason is quite simple the United States
of America didn't want the Soviet Union
to collapse and disintegrate they didn't
want that at the start of the Cold War
in 1948 we now have the Strategic
documents they were concerned about that
they didn't want to do that and
certainly they didn't want to do that in
the year
19991 as late as August of 1991 the day
of C the the month of the K in Moscow
President Bush George HW Bush travels
from Moscow to C and gives famous or INF
famous speech called chicken cave speech
basically warning ukrainians against
going for
Independence the Soviet collapse was a
huge headache for the administration in
the white house for a number of reasons
they liked to work with gorbachov the
Soviet Union was emerging as a junior
partner of the United States on the
international Arena collapse was
destroying all of that and on the top of
that there was a question of the nuclear
weapons unaccounted nuclear weapons so
the United States was doing everything
humanly possible to keep the Soviet
Union together in one piece until really
late November of 1991 when it became
clear that it was it was a loss cause
and they had had to say goodbye to to
gorbachov and to the project that he he
introduced uh a few months later or year
later there was a presidential campaign
and Bush was running for the second term
and was looking for for achievements and
there were many achievements I I I
basically treat him with great respect
uh but destruction of destruction of the
Soviet Union was not one of those
achievements he was on the on the other
side of the of that divide but the the
the the politics the political campaign
of course have their own rules and they
produce and give birth to
mythology with which we we still at
least in this country we live till now
till today so gorbachov is an
interesting figure in all of this is
there possible a history where the
Soviet Union did not collapse and some
of the ideas a gorbachov had for the
future of the Soviet Union came to
life of course history on the one hand
there is a statement it it doesn't allow
for what ifs on the other hand in my
opinion history is full of what if
that's what history is about and
certainly certainly there there are
scenarios how the Soviet Union would
would uh continue uh would continue
beyond let's say gorbachov's tenure mhm
and the argument has been made that the
reforms that he introduced that they
were mismanaged and they could be
managed differently or there could be no
reforms and there could be continuing
stagnation so that is all possible what
I think would happen one way or another
is the Soviet collapse in a different
form on on somebody else's watch at some
later period in time because we we
dealing with not just processes that
were happening in the Soviet Union we're
dealing with global processes and the
20th century turned out to be the
century of the disintegration of the
empires you look at the globe at the map
of the world in 1914 and you compare it
to to the map at the end of the 20th
century in 1991 1992 and suddenly you
realize that there are many candidates
for being the most important event the
most important process in the 20th
century but the biggest the biggest
Global thing that happened was redrawing
the map of the world world and
producing dozens if not hundreds of new
States that's the outcome of the
different processes of the 20th century
look Yugoslavia is falling apart around
the same time
Czechoslovakia goes through what can be
called a civilized divorce a very very
rare occurrence in in the fall of multi-
multinational States so yeah the writing
was on the wall whether it would happen
under gorbach of or later whether it
would happen as the result of reforms or
as the result of no reforms but I I I I
think that sooner or later that's that
that would happen yeah it's very
possible hundreds of years from now the
way the 20th century is written
about as the century defined by the
collapse of Empires you call the Soviet
Union the last empire the book is called
the last empire so is there something
fundamental about the way the world is
that means it's not conducive to the
formation of Empires the meaning that I
was putting in the term the Soviet Union
as the last empire was that that was the
Soviet collapse was the collapse of the
last major European Empires traditional
Empires that was there in the 18th
century 19th century and through most of
the 20th century uh the the Austria
Hungary died uh in in the midst of World
War I the Ottoman Empire disintegrated
the Brits were gone and and left India
and there was the the the successor to
the Russian Empire called the Soviet
Union was still hanging hanging on there
and then came 1991 and what we see even
with today's Russia it's it's a very
different it's a very different sort of
policies the the uh Russia uh or Russian
leadership tried to learn a lesson from
1991 so there is no National republics
uh in the in the Russian Federation that
would have more rights than uh the the
Russian administrative units uh so that
the structure is different the uh
nationality policies are different the
the level of russification is much
higher so it is it is in many ways
already a post po Imperial formation
and you're right about the that moment
1991 the role that Ukraine played in
that seems to be a very critical role he
describe just that what role Ukraine
played in the collapse of the Soviet
Union history is many
things but it started uh in a very
simple way of making notes about on the
yearly basis what happened this year at
that so it's about
chronology chronology in the history of
the collapse of the Soviet Union is very
important you have Ukrainian referendum
on December 1st
1991 and you have dissolution of the
Soviet Union by the leaders of Russia
Ukraine and Belarus one week later MH
and the question is
why uh Ukrainian referendum is is the
answer but ukrainians didn't didn't
answer their referendum question whether
they want the Soviet Union to be
dissolved or not they answered very
limited in terms of uh it's it's it's
been in question whether you support the
decision of vov Nar of your
Parliament for Ukraine to go independent
and the rest was not was not on the
ballot so why then one week later the
Soviet Union is gone and uh president
yelson explained to President Bush
around that time the reason why why
Ukraine was so important he said that
well if Ukraine is gone Russia is not
interested in this Soviet project
because Russia would be outnumbered and
outvoted by the Muslim republics so
there was there was a cultural element
but there was also another one Ukraine
happened to be the second largest Soviet
Republic and then post-soviet state in
terms of population in terms of the
economy economic potential and so on and
so forth and as yelon suggested Clos
culturally linguistically and otherwise
to Russia so with the second uh largest
Republic gone Russia didn't think that
it was in Russia's interest to continue
with with the Soviet Union and around
that time yor gar who was a chief
economic advisor of yelson was telling
him well we just don't have money
anymore to support other republics we
have to focus on Russia we have to use
oil and gas money within the Russian
Federation so the the state was
bankrupt uh Imperial projects at least
in the context of the late 20th century
they costed money it it wasn't a
money-making machine as it was back in
the 18 or 19th century and uh um the
combination of all these factors led to
the to the processes in which Ukraine's
decision to go independent spelled the
end to the Soviet Union and if today
anybody wants to restore not the Soviet
Union but some form of Russian control
over the post-soviet space Ukraine is as
important today as it was back in
December of
1991 let me ask you
about Vladimir
Putin's statement that the collapse of
the Soviet Union is one of the great
tragedies of History to what degree does
he have a point to what degree is wrong
his formulation was that this is the
greatest the greatest geopolitical
catastrophe or tragedy of the 20th
century and I specifically went and
looked at the text and and put it in in
specific time when it was happening and
it was interesting that the statement
was made a few weeks before the uh May 9
parade and and celebrations of the of
the uh Victory a key part part of of the
mythology of the current of the current
Russian state so why say things about
the U Soviet collapse being the the
largest geopolitical strategy and not in
that particular context the Second World
War uh my explanation at least is that
the World War II the price was enormous
but the Soviet Union emerged as a great
Victor and captured half of
Europe 199
one the the the in terms of the of the
lives lost at that point the price was
was actually very very low but for Putin
what was important that the state was
lost and he in particular was concerned
about the division of the Russian of the
Russian people which he understood back
then like he understands now in a very
very broad terms so for him for him the
biggest tragedy is not the loss of life
the biggest strategy is the loss of the
great power status or or the unity of
Those whom he considered to be Russian
Russian Nation so at least this is my
reading this is my understanding of what
what what what is there what is on on on
the paper and what is between the lines
so both the unity of the sort of quote
Russian Empire and the status of the
superpower that's how I read it you
wrote a book
the origins of the Slavic Nations so
let's go back into history what is the
origin of uh Slavic Nations we can look
at that at that from different
perspectives and we are now making uh
major breakthroughs in in answering this
question with the uh very interesting
Innovative linguistic analysis the study
of DNA so that's that's that's really
the New Frontier we are getting into uh
prehistorical period where there is no
historical sources and from what we can
understand today and that can of course
change tomorrow with all these
breakthroughs um in in Sciences is that
the the slaves came into existence
somewhere in the area of um marshes
prepet marshes Northwestern part of
Ukraine uh southwestern part of Belarus
eastern part of Poland and and that's is
considered to be a historical homeland
of slaves and then and then they spread
and they spread all the way to the
Adriatic so we have croats we have
Russians spreading all the way to the
Pacific we have ukrainians we have
Bellar Russians poles once we had
czechoslovaks now we have we have Czechs
and slovaks so that's the story of
starting with the eth and 9th century we
can even a little bit earlier we can
already follow that story with the help
of of the of the written sources mostly
from Byzantine then then then later from
Western from Western Europe but what uh
I was trying to do not being a scientist
not being an expert in in linguistics or
not being an expert in in in DNA
analysis I was trying to see what was
happening in the minds of those peoples
and the Elites in
particular whom we call today not slaves
but Eastern slaves which means Russians
ukrainians and B Russians how they
imagin themselves how they imagin their
world and eventually I look at the
so-called nation building projects so
trying to answer the question of how we
arrived uh to the situation in which we
are today where there are not just three
East Slavic Nations but there are also
three East Slavic States Uh Russian
Ukrainian and belarussian so this is
this is the focus of my of my book I end
admittedly in that particular book I end
on the 18th century before the era of
nationalism but then there are other
books like lost lost kingdom that where
I I bring the story all the way up to
today so what aspect of the 8th and 9th
century uh the East Slavic states perier
to to today that we should understand
well the the most important one is that
the existence of the state of caveen
Roush back during the medieval period
created a foundations uh for historical
mythology common historical mythology
and there are just Wars and battles over
who has the right more right for kaven
Rus uh the legal code that was created
at that time existed for a long period
of time the acceptance of Christianity
from Byzantium that became a big issue
that separated then Eastern slaves from
their Western neighbors including checks
and and and and and
poles but uh United in that way to let's
say bulgarians or serbs and uh the
beginning of the written literature uh
beginning beginning in C so all of that
is uh considered to be part of Heritage
all of that is being
contested uh and uh this this debates
that were academic for a long period of
time what we see now tragically are
being being continued on the on the
battlefield what is K what is Roose that
you mentioned what's the importance of
these you mentioned them as the sort of
defining places and uh terms labels at
the beginning of all this so what is KV
uh K uh became a capital uh of or the
The Outpost of the Vikings who were try
trying to establish control over the um
trade route between um what what is
today's uh Western Russia and and and
bellus and Northern Ukraine so the
forest areas and the biggest and the
richest Market in the world that existed
at that time which was in Constantinople
in Byzantium so the idea it was the idea
was to get whatever Goods you can get in
that part of Eastern Europe and most of
those goods were
slaves local population put them on the
ships uh in cave because cave was on the
border with the step zones stab zones
were controlled by other PE other groups
uh cians
oratian
pans Pags and so on and you you name it
and then
staying on the on the river being
protected from attacks of the nads to
come to the Black Sea and and sell this
products in Constantinople that was that
was the idea that was the model uh
Vikings Vikings tried to practice that
sort of of of uh um business model also
in other parts of Europe and like in
other parts of Europe they turned out to
be by by default creators of new politic
of new state
and that was that was the story of the
first of the first caveen dynasty and
Cave as the capital of that huge Empire
that was going from the baltics to
today's Central Ukraine and then was
trying to get through the southern
Ukraine to to the Black Sea that was a
major major European State Kingdom if
you if you want to call it of medieval
Europe with a lot creating a lot of
tradition in terms of Dynasty in terms
of language in terms of religion in
terms of again historical mythology so
cave is central for uh for the uh
Nation nation building myth of a number
a number of groups in the
region so in one perspective and
narrative Kev is at the center of this
Russian Empire
at which point does Moscow become come
to prominence as the center of the
Russian Empire but the Russian Empire is
a term and really creation of the 18th
century uh what we what we have for the
Caven we call it caveen rose again this
is a term of the 19th century they call
themselves Rus R and there was
Metropolitan of Rus and there was Rous
principalities so very important
important to keep in mind that Rus is
not Russia because that was a selfname
for all multiple groups on that on that
territory and U Moscow doesn't exist at
the time when cave emerges as as the
capital uh the first the first reference
to Moscow comes from the 12th century
when it was founded by one of the Caven
one of the Caven
princes and Moscow comes to prominence
really in a very different context and
with a very different Empire running the
show in the region the story of Moscow
and the rise of Moscow this is the story
of the Mongol rule over over former Ru
lands and former R
territories um the the part of the
former R eventually overthrows the the
Mongol control with the help of the
small group of people called
lithuanians which which had a yan yan
State and Yan Dynasty and and United
this lands which were mostly in today's
terms Ukrainian and belarussian so they
separate early and what is today is
Russia mostly Western Russia Central
Russia stays under the Mongol control up
until late 15th century and that was the
story when Moscow Moscow Rises as the
new capital of that real replacing the
city of
Vladimir uh as as that Capital uh for
those who ever went to Russia they they
familiar with the with of course
Vladimir as the place of the oldest uh
uh architectural
monuments uh the so-called the golden
reain of Russia and so on and so forth
lir is Central and there was so many
architectural monuments there because
before there was Moscow there was
Vladimir eventually in this in this
struggle over over control of the
territory struggle for favors uh from
from the Mongols and and the TT horde
Moscow emerges as as the center of that
particular real under Mongols after the
Mongol rule is uh removed Moscow embarks
on the project that historians Russian
historians of the 19th century called
the Gathering of the Russian
lands
uh using Russian now for Rus and and and
and trying to to uh bring back the the
the lands of of former cave and Rus but
also the lands of the former Mongol
Empire uh the Russians get to the uh
Pacific before they get to
Cave uh historically uh and really the
the
the quote unquote Gathering of the uh
uh quote unquote Russian lands ends only
in 1945 when uh the Soviet Union uh
bullies the czechoslovak government into
turning what is today's trans carpatian
Ukraine to the Soviet Union it is
included in the Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic so that's that's the
moment when that Destiny the way how it
was imagined by the 19th century Russian
historian was eventually fulfilled
Moscow was in control of all this l so
to what degree are the Slavic people one
people and this is a theme that will
continue throughout I think versus a
collection of multiple peoples whether
we're talking about the Kevan Roose or
we're talking about the 19th century
Russian Empire
conception well a number of ways to look
at that one the most obvious the most
clear is
language and um
there is no question that um polls speak
a separate language and their
slaves and there is no question for
anyone um going to Ukraine and hear in
Ukrainian realizing that this is not
Russian the level of comprehension can
be different you can understand certain
words and you you you don't understand
others and the same would be with with
Polish and the same would be with Czech
so there is this linguistic uh
linguistic uh history that is in common
but languages very clearly indicate that
you're deal you're dealing with
different with different
peoples um uh we we know that language
is not everything Americans speak a
particular way of English Australians
speak a particular variant of English uh
but for reasons of geography history we
we pretty much believe that despite
linguistic Unity these are different
nations and different peoples and and
there are there are some parts of
political tradition are in common others
others are quite different so the same
when it comes to language the same when
it comes to political tradition to the
loyalty to the political institution
applies to
Slavic uh Nations so that's that's again
there is nothing particular unique about
the slaves in that regard you wrote the
book The KAC myth history and nationhood
in the Age of Empires it tells the story
of an an anonymous manuscript called the
history of the Roose it started being
circulated in
1820s I I would love it if you can tell
the story of this um this is supposedly
one of the most impactful texts in
history modern history so what's the
importance of this text what did it
contain how did it Define the future of
the region in the first first decads of
the 19th century after Napoleonic
Wars a mysterious text emerged that was
attributed to a Orthodox Archbishop that
was La
dead which was claiming that the kazaks
of Ukraine were in fact the uh original
Rus
people and that they they uh had the
right for a particular place for central
place in in the Russian
Empire and it tells the history of the
kxs full it's it's the year of
Romanticism full of all sorts of drama
there are heroes there are
villains and the text captivates the
attention of uh some key figures in the
in the Russian intellectual Elite in St
Petersburg um um people uh like Krav who
was was executed for his participation
in 1825
Uprising uh rights rights poetry on the
basis of this text Pushkin pays
attention to it as well and then comes
along the the key figure in Ukrainian
national um uh Revival of the uh 19th
century Ukrainian national project Tas
shenko and and reads it as well and they
all read them it very
differently uh eventually by the by the
beginning of the uh and mid 20th century
some of the Russian um mostly
nationalist writers call this text the
Quran of Ukrainian
nationalism so what is what is there the
story it's it's it's very important in a
sense that what the authors and that's
what I claim in the book what the
authors of the text were trying to say
they were trying to say that the kazak
elite should have the same rights as the
Russian
nobility and brings the long historical
record to prove how cool the kaks were
over the period of time but in at the
beginning of the 19th century they put
this claim already they use new new
arguments and this arguments are about
nation and Nation ISM and they're saying
that the kaks are a separate
nation and that's that's a big big big
claim uh the Russian Empire and this is
a very very good argument uh in
historiography that Russian empire grew
and acquired this one six of the Earth
by using one very specific way of
integrating those lands it integrated
Elites it was making deals with the
elites whether the elites were Muslim or
the elites were Roman Catholic as the
case with the polls they would be Elites
would be integrated and the empire was B
based on that
estate uh uh the estate loyalty and the
state
integration but once you bring in the
factor of nation and nationalism and
language then once in a sudden the whole
model of the integration of the elites
irrespective of their language religion
and culture starts falling apart and the
polls were the first who really uh
produced produced this this sort of a
challenge to the Russian Empire by
apprising two Uprising in the 19th
century and ukrainians Then followed in
their uh footsteps so the text the
importance of the text is that it was
making claim on on the part of a
particular
estate the kazak officer class which was
that Empire could survive but it turned
it given the conditions of the time into
the claim for the special role h of uh
KX as a nation creating that this is a
separate nation a r Ru nation and that
is the challenge of nationalism that no
Empire really survived and and the
Russian EMP was not an exception so
that's a turning point when the
discourse switches from loyalty based on
the integration of the elites to the
Loyalty based on attachment to your
nation to your language and to your
culture and to your history so that was
like the initial spark the
flame that led to nationalist movements
that was the beginning and the beginning
that was building a bridge between the
existence of of the kazak state in the
17th and 18th century that was used as a
foundation for the kak mythology
Ukrainian national mythology went into
the Ukrainian national
anthem and the new age and the new stage
where the kaks were not there anymore
where there were professors
intellectuals students members of the of
the uh uh National and and organizations
and it started of course with romantic
poetry it was started with collecting
folklore and then later goes to the to
the political stage and eventually the
stage of mass politics so to you even
throughout the 20th century under Stalin
there was always a force within Ukraine
that wants it to be independent there
were five attempts uh for Ukraine to
declare its independence and to to
maintain it in the in the 20th century
only one succeeded in in 1991 but there
were four four different attempts
attempts before and you see the
Ukrainian uh national identity
manifesting itself in two different in
two different ways in the form of
national
communism uh after after the bolik
victory u in the in uh bolik controlled
Ukraine and in the form of radical
nationalism in the parts of Ukraine that
were controlled by Poland U and and
Romania and part of that was also
controlled by Czechoslovakia and later
Hungary so in those parts outside of the
of the Soviet Union the the form of the
national mobilization the key form of
national mobilization became radical
nationalism in in um Soviet Ukraine it
was National communism that came back in
the 1960s and
1970s and then in the 1991 the the the
majority of the members of the Ukrainian
Parliament who voted for independence of
members of the Communist party so that
that Spirit on on on certain level never
died so there's National communism and
radical
nationalism well let me ask you about
the radical nationalism because that is
a topic that comes up in the discussion
of the war in Ukraine today uh can you
tell me about stepan Bandera who was he
this controversial fire right Ukrainian
revolutionary there were at least two
stepan
Banderas one is the real person and
another is mythology that really comes
comes with this name and uh the real
person was um young student
nationalistically oriented student in
the late 1920s and early 1930s in the
part of Ukraine that was controlled by
Poland
who belonged to the generation who
regretted that they were not born in
time for the big struggles of the of the
um World War I and and Revolution at
that time they believed that their
fathers lost opportunity for Ukraine to
become
independent and that uh a new ideology
was needed and that ideology was uh
radical
nationalism and new tactics were needed
so
Bandera becomes the leader of the uh
organization of Ukrainian nationalists
in Ukraine at the young age and
organizes a number of assassinations of
the Polish
officials or members of the Ukrainian
Community who this young people in their
17 18 19 considered to be to be
collaborators he is
arrested put on trial and that's that's
where the myth of Pandera starts starts
to emerge because he uses the trial to
uh make statement about about the um
Ukrainian nationalism radical
nationalism and its goals and suddenly
becomes becomes a hero among the and the
youth Ukrainian youth at that time he is
uh sentenced for uh for uh execution for
death so when delivers his speech he he
knows that he he probably would would
die soon and then it was the sentence
was commuted to life to to life in
prison then World War I happens the
Polish state collapses under the the
pressure coming of course from from Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union uh Bandera
walks walks away and presides over the
act of the split of the organization of
Ukrainian nationalists into two groups
the most radical one you used call
revolutionary they call themselves
revolutionary is led by by
Banda they worked together with the Nazi
Germany at that time with the hope that
Nazi Germany would deliver them
independent
Ukraine uh first days of the German
attack Nazi attack on the Soviet
Union the um units formed on the basis
of organization of Ukrainian nationalist
March into the city of L and declare
Ukrainian
Independence that was not sanctioned by
the German authorities that was not in
German plans so they arrest bandara
members of his family his brothers me
members of the leaders leaders of the
organization so his two brothers go to
aitz di there he was sent to zon Housen
for most duration of the of the war
until
1944 refusing to
revoke Declaration of Ukrainian
Independence which again contributes
contributes further to his
mythology after the war he never comes
back to Ukraine he lives in Exile in
Munich uh so between 1930 and his death
uh in 1959 he spent in Ukraine
maybe up to 2
years maybe a little bit more but most
of the time was either in the Polish
prison or in the in the German
concentration camp or in
Exile but the myth of Bandera lived and
all the members of the organization of
Ukrainian Nationalist and then the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army that fought
against the Soviets all the way into the
early 1950s they were called Bandai
they were called band rides by the
Soviet authorities they were known also
in that way to the local population so
there was a far away leader that barely
was there on the on the spot but who who
whose name was attached to this to this
movement for really liberation of
Ukraine at that time again the battle
that failed the fact that he
collaborated with the Nazis sticks for
one perspective he's considered by man
to be a hero of Ukraine for fighting for
the independence of Ukraine from another
perspective uh coupled with the fact
that there's this radical revolutionary
extremist flavor to the way he sees the
world that label just stays that he's a
fascist he's a Nazi uh to what degree is
it's true to what degree is it not uh
this label is certainly promoted by the
first by the Soviet propaganda and then
by Russia prop Russian propaganda it's
it's it works very nicely um if you if
you focus on the on the years of
collaboration uh those were the same
years when Joseph Stalin collaborated
with Hitler right so we we have we have
the same the same reason to call um
Stalin Stalin Nazi collaborator as we
have uh the reason to call bandara Nazi
collaborator we we look at the at the
situation in the Pacific
in Indonesia in other places uh the
leaders who worked together with
Japanese with the idea of promoting
independence of their countries after
the Japanese collapse be become leaders
of the Empire so the difference with
Bandera is that he never becomes the
leader the leader of Empire and and and
Immunity that comes with that with that
position certainly doesn't apply to
him but there are other part parts of
his life which certainly certainly put
this whole thing in in question the fate
of his family his own time in the German
concentration camp uh certainly Don't
Fit Don't Fit the the propaganda one
one-sided image of Bandera in terms of
him being a hero that's that's a very
very interesting question because he is
perceived in Ukraine today by not
by by by all and probably not by the
majority but by many people in Ukraine
as a symbol of fighting against against
the the Soviet Union and by extension
against Russia and Russian occupation so
his popularity grew after February 24th
2022 as a symbol of that resistance
again we are talking here about myth and
mythology because Bandera was not
leading the fight against the Soviet U
the the the Soviet occupation in uh in
Ukraine because at that time he was just
simply not in Ukraine he was in Germany
and you can imagine that geography
mattered at that time much more than it
matters today uh there's a million
questions to ask here I think it's an
important topic because it is at the
center of the claimed reason that the
war continues in Ukraine so I would like
to explore that from from different
angles but just to clarify was there a
moment where Bandera chose
Nazi Germany over the Red Army When The
War already began so in the list of uh
allegiances is Ukraine's Independence
more important than fighting Nazi
Germany
essentially the Ukrainian Independence
was the their goal and they were there
to to work with anybody who would who
would support and and in one way or at
least allow the Ukrainian Independence
so the there is no question that uh they
they are just classic nationalists so
the the goal is uh nationalism is the
principle According to which the at
least one definitions is According to
which the cultural boundaries coincide
with political boundaries so their goal
was to create political boundaries that
would coincide with the geographic
boundaries in the conditions of the
World War II and certainly making making
deals with with whoever would would
uh would either support as I said or
tolerate that that project of theirs so
I would love to find the line between
nationalism even extreme nationalism and
Fascism and
Nazism so for bander the myth and B the
person to what degree let's look at some
of the ideology of naism to which degree
did he hate Jews was he
anti-semitic uh we uh know that
basically in his Circle there were
people who
were anti-semites in a sense that okay
we have the texts right we know that we
don't have that that information about
about or that that sort of tax or that
sort of evidence with regard to to
Bandera
himself um in terms of fascist
there is very clear and there is
research done that in particular Italian
fascist fascism had influence uh on the
on the thinking of people in that
organization including people at the top
but it is also very important to um keep
in
mind that they call themselves
nationalists and
revolutionaries and despite the fact
that in 1939 in 1940 1941 it was very
beneficial for them to declare
themselves to be Ukrainian
fascists and establish this bond with
not just with with Italy but with uh uh
Nazi Germany they refused to do that and
then they refused to recall their
independence so uh influences yes but
but clearly it's it's it's it's a
different it's it's a type of a
political uh political project so let me
fast forward into the future and see to
which degree the myth permeates uh does
Ukraine have a Neo-Nazi problem my
understanding is there are Nazis in
Ukraine and uh there are there are
supporters of uh um white supremacy
theories uh but also my understanding is
that um they are extremely
marginal and they're more marginal than
the same sort of groups are in Central
Europe maybe in the US as
well and for me the question is not
whether the Ukraine has
it but why even in the conditions of the
war the radical nationalism
and extremism and and and white
supremacist is such a marginal Force
when in the countries that are not at
the war this is this you look you look
at France you look at again it's not
exactly Nazism but really right radical
right is is becoming so
important um why why Ukraine in the
conditions of the war is the country
that manages relations between different
ethnic groups and
languages uh in the way that strengthens
political Nation so for me as a scholar
and a researcher what I see is that uh
in Ukraine the the influence of the far
right in different in different
variations is much lower than it is
among among some of Ukraine's neighbors
and in Europe in general and the
question is why I I don't know I have
I I I I don't know answer but that's
that's that that's the question that I
think is interesting to answer how how
Ukraine ended up to be the only country
in the world outside of Israel who has a
Jewish president who is my at least
understanding
is the the most popular president in
history in terms of how long his
popularity goes after the election so
this this the the really from my my
point of view interesting interesting
questions and again we we can we can
certainly debate that so uh just for
context the the the most popular far
right party won 2.15% of the vote in
2019 this is before the war so that's
where things stood it's unclear where
they stand now it'd be an interesting
question whether it escalated and how
much what you're saying is that war in
general can serve as a catalyst for
expansion of extremist groups
of extremist nationalistic groups
especially like the far right and it's
interesting to see to what degree they
have or have not risen to power in the
sort of in the shadows so no nationalist
or nationalistic party actually crossed
the the barrier to get into the
parliament so Ukraine is the country
where there is no
right of far right in the parliament we
can't say that about Germany we can't
say that about France so that's that's
just uh
um one more way to to to stress this
unique unique place of Ukraine in that
in that sense and the year 2019 is the
year already of the war the war started
in
2014 with the annexation of the Crimea
the the the front line was near donbas
all these groups were fighting there so
Ukraine maybe not to a degree that it is
now was already on the on the war
footing and yet and yet the the the the
the right party couldn't couldn't get
more than 2% so that's that's the
question that I have in mind and yes the
war historically historically of course
puts forward and and makes from uh uh
the the more nationalist views and
forces turn them from marginal forces
into more Central ones we talked about
bandara and we talked about organization
of Ukrainian nationalists they were the
most marginal group in the political
Spectrum in Ukraine in uh the 1930s that
one can only
imagine but World War II comes and they
become the most Central group because
they also were from the start go they
knew that they had the organization the
the the violence was basically one of
their means they knew how to fight so
historically historically Wars indeed
produce those results so we we are
looking at Ukraine we we are trying to
see what is happening there so Vladimir
Putin in his interview with talker
Carlson but many times before said that
the current goal for the war in
Ukraine is
densification that the purpose of the
war is
densification can you explain this
concept of densification as Putin sees
it densification is the
trop that is accepted quite well by the
by the former Soviet population and
Russian population in particular the the
most powerful mythology Soviet mythology
that then was basically passed as as
part of Heritage to the to the Russian
Federation was World War II was fighting
against fascism so once you use terms
Fascism and Nazi and nazification
suddenly suddenly people not just start
listening they just stop
analyzing and as a as a propaganda tool
this is this is of course Very very
powerful tool um in terms of to what
degree this is this this is the real
goal or not we discussed the the
importance of the far right in in in
Europe and and in Ukraine so if that's
the real goal of the war probably the
war would have to start not against
Ukraine but probably against France or
some other country if you take this at
face failure well there's something
really interesting here as you mentioned
I spoken to a lot of people in
Russia and uh you said analysis
stops in the west people look at the
word denotification and look at the
things we've just discussed and kind
of almost think this this is absurd when
you talk to people in Russia maybe it's
deep in there somewhere the history of
World War II still reverberates through
the maybe the fears uh maybe the pride
whatever the Deep emotion
uh history is there it seems that the
goal of
denazification appears to be reasonable
for people in Russia they don't seem to
see the absurdity or the complexity or
the even the need for analysis I guess
in this kind of statement word of
gasification uh I would say this is
broader this is broader um the the war
that started under the banner that
Russians and ukrainians were one and the
same people and produces that sort of
casualty uh really goes against
also some any sort of logical of logical
thinking but the uh Russia is a place
where the Free Press doesn't exist
already for a long period of time Russia
is the place where there is
U an aamber to degree and as War started
first in 2014 and then all out war in
2022 I came across a lot of people on
the personal level but also in the media
reporting that they really can't find
common language with their close
relatives in in Russia people who
visited Ukraine who know that it is not
taken over by by nationalists and is not
taken over by Nazism uh but the the
media around them the neighbors around
them the people at their work basically
say one and the same thing and we as
humans in general what whatever our
background we are very very uh our mind
is is
really it's relatively easy to
manipulate it and uh um to a degree that
even even family connections and even
Family Ties don't sometimes help to to
to maintain that that uh ability to to
think and and to analyze on your own to
look at at the
facts so Putin has alluded to the yurav
Hanka incident in the Canadian
Parliament September
2023 this man is a uh veteran of World
War II on the Ukrainian side and he got
two standing ovations in the Canadian
Parliament but they later found out that
he was part of the
SS so can you explain on this what are
your thoughts on this this had a very
big effect on the narrative I guess
propagated throughout the
region yes uh What uh what happened
during World War II was that uh once the
Germans started to run out of uh of
Manpower uh they created uh sort of
Foreign Legion groups but because those
people were not Arians
um they they were created for fighting
on the on the on the
Battleground because they were not
Arians they couldn't be trusted so they
were put under the command of Henry
himler under command of ss and became
known as assess Waffen
units and uh one of such units was
created in
Ukraine with great difficulties because
Nazis didn't consider Slavs to be
generally
worthy of even even that sort of Foreign
Legion
formations uh but they made an exception
because those people were coming from
galtia which was part of Austria Hungary
which means part of Austria which means
somehow were open to the benevolent
influence of the of the Germanic of the
Germanic race and called called the the
division giten or
galtia
uh part of of Ukrainian youth join the
gal the
division the one of the explanations was
that they were looking at the experience
of World War
I and uh seeing that the units the
Ukrainian units in the Austrian Army
then played a very important role in the
fight for independence so that is one of
the explanations you can't just use one
explanation to to to describe
motivations of everyone and every single
person who who was joining there so they
were sent to the
front they were defeated within a few
few short days by the uh by the by the
Red Army and then were were uh
retreating through through Slovakia
where they were used to fight with the
partisan movement there and eventually
surrendered to the British so that's
that's the
story you can personally maybe
understand what what what the the good
motiv ations were of this person or that
person but uh that is one of the at the
best one of the very tragic and and
unfortunate pages in in in in Ukrainian
history you you can't you can't justify
that as as as as as a phenomenon so from
that point of view the the um
celebration of that experience as
opposed to looking at that okay that
that happened
and we wish that th those young men who
were idealistic or joined the division
for idealistic purposes had had had
better understanding of things or made
other choices but you can't you can't
certainly certainly celebrate that and
and once that happened that of course
became a big a big
propaganda propaganda item in in in in
the current War uh we are talking about
about 10 to 20,000 people in the
division
and we are talking about 2 to 3 million
ukrainians fighting in the Red
Army and again it's it's not like Red
Army is is is is is completely blameless
in the way how it behaved in in Prussia
or in Germany and so on and so forth but
it's basically it's it's again we are
going back to the story of bandara so
there is a period of collaboration and
that's that's what propaganda tries to
Define him by or there is a division
giten by 20 th000 people and somehow it
makes irrelevant the experience of two
to three million people I mean just to
clarify I think there is just a blunder
on the Canadian Parliament side the
Canadian side of not doing research of
maybe correct me if I'm wrong but from
my understanding they were just doing
stupid shallow political stuff let's
applaud you know when zalinsky shows up
let's have a Ukrainian veteran let's
applaud a veteran a World War too and
then all of a sudden you realize well
there's actually complexities to Wars we
can talk about for example a lot of dark
aspects on all sides of World War II the
mass rape at the end of World War II by
the the Red Army when they say martial
German there's a lot of really dark
complexity and on all sides so you know
that could be an opportunity to explore
the dark complexity that some of the
ukrainians were in the SS uh or Bandera
the the complexities there but I think
they were doing not a complex thing they
were doing a very shallow applaud and we
should applaud Veterans of course but in
that case they were doing it for show
for zilinski and so on so we should
clarify that the Applause
wasn't knowing it wasn't for the S it
was for a Ukrainian it was for World War
II veterans but the propaganda or at
least uh an interpretation from the
Russian
side from whatever side is that they
were applauding the full person standing
before them which wasn't just a
Ukrainian veteran but Ukrainian veteran
that fought for the SS I don't have any
particular insights but I would be very
much surprised if even one person in the
parliament I mean the members of the
parliament actually knew the whole story
I would be very surprised yeah the whole
story of this person and frankly the
whole story of
um Ukraine and Russia in World War II
period yes yes uh nevertheless it had a
lot of power and really reverberated in
support of the narrative that there is a
Neo-Nazi a Nazi problem in Ukraine this
is the The Narrative that is out there
um and it's it's especially powerful in
Russia it's especially powerful in
Russia given that there are um really
the the the the uh
[Music]
the the atmosphere that that has created
really is not conducive to any to any
independent analysis well I wonder what
is the most effective way to respond to
that
particular
claim because there could be a
discussion about nationalism and extreme
nationalism and the fight for
independence and whether it isn't like
Putin wrote One people but the question
of are there Nazis in Ukraine seems to
be a question that could be
uh
analyzed rigorously with data that has
being done on the academic level but uh
in terms of the of the public response
and public
discourse uh the the only response that
I see is uh not to focus on the on the
questions raised and and put by the
propaganda because you already become
victim of that propaganda by definition
but talk about that much
broadly and and talk about about
different different aspects of if it is
World War II about different aspects of
World War II if it's about issue of the
far right in Ukraine let's talk about uh
us let's talk about Russia let's talk
about France let's compare that's the
only way how you deal with propaganda
because propaganda is not necessarily
something that uh is is an outright lie
it can be just one factor that taken out
of the context and and is is blown out
of proportion and that's that is good
enough uh in the way to defend against
that is to bring in the
context let us move gracefully
throughout back and forth through
history back to Bandera you wrote a book
on the KGB spy budon
shinski can you tell his
story this is a story of the history of
the organization of Ukrainian
nationalists and and Banda as well
already after the end of the second
world war MH uh because what you got uh
after the second world war so imagine um
May of
1945 the red banner is all over Rick
Stog the Red Army is in control of half
of Europe but the UN of the Red Army are
still fighting the war and not just
behind the Soviet lines but within the
borders of the Soviet Union and this war
continues all the way into the early
1950s up to almost up to Stalin's
death um the war is conducted by the
organization of Ukrainian nationalists
which have a Ukrainian Insurgent Army
and the government tries to crush that
resistance
so what it does it basically recruits
local people to to spy on the partisans
on the Underground and ban stasinski is
one of those people his family is
supporting the resistance they provide
food his his uh sister is engaged with
one of the local uh uh commanders of the
of this underground unit and uh uh they
know everything about Shin's family and
they know everything about him because
he is also collecting funds for the
underground so they have a conversation
with him saying that okay that's that's
what we got and you and your family can
go to to prison or you help us a little
bit we we're interested in the fiance of
your sister and we want to get him and
stasinski says
yes
and once once they round up the the
fiance he basically betrayed a member
almost member of his
family he's he is done he can't go back
to to his village he can't go back to
his study he was studying in Vi at that
time so he
becomes as I write in my book The the
secret police becomes his family and he
sent to keave he's trained for two years
sent to East Germany into Berlin and and
becomes becomes an
assassin so they sent him across the
across the border to to Western Germany
to Munich which was the headquarter of
different different um organizations
anti- Soviet organizations Ukrainian and
and Russian and Georgian and so on and
so forth and he kills he kills two
leaders of the of the organization uh of
Ukrainian nationalists one editor of the
newspaper and eventually he kills
Bandera he does that with the new weapon
a spray pistol that eventually makes it
into the bond uh novel The Man with the
Golden Gun and that whole episode is a
little bit reshaped but it is it it is
not in the film but it is in the in the
novel
itself and uh then later has a change of
mind under the influence of his German
German fiance and then and then wife uh
they decide to escape to the
West uh and while they're doing that
they discover that their apartment was
bugged and probably the KB knows all of
that so a long story
short his son dies in in
Berlin uh doesn't allow him to go there
but his wife has a nervous breakdown so
they allow him to go there to just calm
her so that there would be no Scandal
and two of them one day before their
son's
burial because that's after after that
they would be sent to Moscow they jump
the
ship and go to West Berlin 2 hours
before the Berlin Wall was being
built so they they if they would stay
for the funeral probably they would the
KB would not let them go but also if
they would stay the the the the Border
would be there and he goes he goes to
the American intelligence and says okay
that's that's who I am and that's what I
did and they look at him and they say we
don't trust you we don't know who you
are you have documents in five
names you say you killed Banda well we
have a different information he was he
was uh poisoned and probably by someone
in his in his in his close in his Clos
Circle a spray
pistol did did did you reach to much
inan flaming where does this come from
he insists they say okay you insist if
you committed all those crimes we're
given you to the German police and
German police will be will be investiga
in you and then the trial comes
and if he says if he takes back his
testimony the whole case against him
collapses he can go free but he knows
that if he goes free he is a target of
his colleagues from from from the same
department so his task at the trial is
to prove that he is
guilty that he's did that and then he
disappears
nobody knows where he goes and there are
all sorts of cover stories and I was
lucky to interview a commander for
former Chief of the of the South African
police who confirmed to me that
stasinski was in South Africa he fled
the the West German intelligence thought
that it was too dangerous for him to
stay in
Germany they sent him under under a
different name to to South Africa so
that's uh that's that's the story of
stasinski himself but going back to
Bandera of course the fact that uh he
confessed and it became known that kjb
assassinated banda that added to the to
the uh um image and and to to General
mythology about Banda what a fascinating
story of a village boy becoming an
assassin who killed one of the most
influential
revolutionaries of the region in the
20th century uh so what just zooming out
broadly on the
KGB how powerful was the KGB what role
did it play in this whole story of the
Soviet Union it depends on the period at
the time that we just described late 50s
and early
60s they were not powerful at
all and uh the reasons for that was that
uh people like
kusov were really concerned about the
secret police becoming too powerful it
became too powerful in their mind under
Stalin under
barrier and it was concerned about the
beras power as a secret police chief
that led to the CP against ber and U
kusov come come into power and Bera was
arrested and executed and what what
crusha was trying to do after that was
trying to put
um since 54 the name was already KGB KGB
under his control so he was appointed
the former comol
leaders as the heads of the KGB so the
people who
really really owned everything to him
that that sort of position and the heads
of the KGB were not members of poit bur
it changed it changed in the 70s with
androp where
KGB started started to play again very
important role in in the Soviet
history and um let's say decisions on
Afghanistan and the Soviet troops
marching into Afghanistan were made by
the um apart from Bru by the trio of the
people who are not would be called today
siliki maybe or not all of them were
siki but one of course was on drop of
the head of the KGB another was the
minister of defense and and then there
was secretary in charge of the military
industrial complex and Ministry of
Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs so
but but uh the head of the KGB became
really not just the member of poit
Bureau but the the the member of that
inner circle and then the fact that on
drop off succeeds brn is also a
manifestation of of the power that KB
acquired really after after kof in the
in the 1970s and then going into the 19
80s who was more powerful the KGB or the
CIA during the Soviet Union the CIA it's
a it's uh uh the organization that uh is
charged with the uh um information
gathering and all sorts of operations
including assassinations in in the 50s
and 60s
abroad the KGB was the organization that
really had both the surveillance
of over the population within the Soviet
Union and and and also the the
operations abroad and its
members its leaders were members of the
Inner Circle for for making decisions I
again from what I understand about the
way how how politics and decision work
and decisions are made in in the United
States the the CIA the chief of the CIA
is not is not one of the the decision-
making group The the providing
information yes so so I would say it's
not day and night but their power
political influence political
significance very different is it
understood how big the KGB
was how widespread it was given its
secretive and distributed nature certain
things we know others we don't because
the Stasi archives are open and and uh
most of the KGB especially in Moscow
they're not
uh but we know that uh the KGB combined
not only the uh
internal sort of a secret police
functions at home and counter uh Counter
Intelligence branch and uh intelligence
Branch abroad but also the the Border
troops for example right so really
institutionally it was it was it was a
huge huge Mammoth and another thing that
we know we can sort of EXT rolate from
what we know from the stazzy from the
stazi archives that the surveillance at
home the surveillance was really
massive the guess is the the the the
Soviets were not as as effective and as
as meticulous and as scrupulous and as
methodical as probably as Germans were
but that that gives you that that gives
you a basic idea of how how penetrated
the entire Society was what do you think
is important to understand about the KGB
if we want to also understand Vladimir
Putin since he was a KGB foreign
intelligence officer for 16 years from
my research including on on the on the
stasinski what what I understand is that
um in KGB and it was a powerful
organization again less powerful in 50s
and 60s but still very powerful
organization there was uh there was on
the one and the understanding of the
situation in the country and abroad that
probably other other organizations
didn't
have they had also first peak in terms
of the uh selecting cadis the the the
work in the KGB was well paid and
considered to be very
prestigious so that's that so that was
part to a degree of the Soviet Elite in
terms of whom they whom they
recruited and they had a resentment
toward the party leadership that didn't
allow them to do um James Bond kind of
things that they would want to do
because they were political risks after
this uh scandal with
stasinski um the uh at least on many
levels the KGB stopped the the practice
of the assassinations uh political
assassinations abroad because it was
considered politically to be extremely
extremely dangerous the person who was
in charge of the KGB at the time of
Bandera assassination shapin was one of
the candidates to uh replace
kusov and BR used against him that
Scandal
abroad eventually to remove him from
poit Bureau so the KGB was really was
really looking at the party leadership
as to a degree INE effective corrupt and
who was on their way and uh from what I
understand that's that's exactly the the
the the attitude
that um people like uh like Putin and
and and people of his Circle brought
brought to to power in Kremlin so the
methods that KGB used they can use now
and there is no no party or no no other
other institution actually stopping them
from doing that and um they think about
my understanding the the operations
abroad about foreign policy in general
in terms of the KGB mindset of planning
operations and executing particular
operations and so on and so forth so I
think a lot a lot of culture that came
into existence in the Soviet KGB now
became part of the culture of the of the
Russian Uh Russian
establishment you wrote the book The
Russo Ukrainian War The Return of
history that gives the full context
leading up to the
invasion of Ukraine by Russia in
February
2022 so can you uh take me through the
key moments in history that led up to
this war so we'll mention the collapse
of the Soviet Union we could probably go
much further back but the collapse of
the Soviet Union mentioned
2014 um maybe you can highlight key
moments that led up to the to
2022 the key moments would be first the
year
204 known for orange revolution in in
Ukraine and then the year
2013 known as the revolution of dignity
both were the revolts against the
something that by significant part of
Ukrainian
population was considered to be uh
completely completely unacceptable
actions on the part of the government
and people in the government at that
time so the orange revolution of
204 was a protest against falsified
presidential
elections and uh um rejection of a
candidate that was supported by Russia
publicly supported by Russia I remember
being in Moscow at that time and
couldn't believe my eyes when in the
center of Russia I saw a billboard with
yanukovich uh the trick was that they
were a lot of ukrainians in in Russia
and in Moscow in particular and they
they had the right to
vote um so and uh it led to the election
of
uh Ukraine as Ukrainian president Victor
yushenko who put on the on the agenda um
the issue of Ukraine's membership in
NATO so it was very clear pro-western
orientation and um the second U case was
the revolution of dignity
2013 with some of the same characters
including yanukovich who at that time
was already president of
Ukraine and uh there the question was of
the government promising the people for
one year at least to sign Association
agreement with European union and then
turning over almost overnight and saying
that they were not going to do
that and that's that's how things
started but then when they became really
massive and why something that was
called Revolution uh Euro
Revolution became revolution of dignity
was when the um government
police uh bit up students in downtown
cave uh who judging by the reports were
basically already almost ready to to SP
almost ready to go home and that's when
roughly half of cave showed up on the
streets that sort of the police behavior
that sort of the was absolutely
unacceptable in
Ukraine uh the the still in elections
and falsification of Elections was
unacceptable that's where around that
time and around 204 the president of
Ukraine at that time lenit kuchma writes
a book called uh Ukraine is not
Russia and apparently the term comes
from his uh his discussion with Putin
when Putin was suggesting to him quite
strongly to use Force against people on
the maidan on the Square in cave and uh
kuchma allegedly said him uh you don't
understand Ukraine is not
Russia uh you can't you can't do things
like that you get you get pushed back
and that's that's the this two events to
for and then uh uh 2013 became really
crucial point in terms of the uh Ukraine
Direction the the survival of Ukrainian
democracy which is one of very few
countries in the post Soviet space where
democracy survived the regional
flirt with between the government
leaders and and democ ocracy of the
1990s it was the all Soviet story in
Russia everywhere else there was high
Democratic expectations but they came
pretty much to an end by the end of the
decade Ukraine Ukraine preserved the
democracy
and the orientation of Ukraine toward
toward integration into in some form
into Western and European
structures that that uh Ukrainian
democracy plus Western orientation was
something
and in Russia we see the strengthening
of the autocratic regime under Vladimir
Putin that if you look deeper this are
the processes that put the two countries
on the Collision Course so there is a
division a push and pull inside
Ukraine on identity whether they're part
of Russia or part of Europe and you
highlighted two moments in Ukrainian
history that there's a big flare up
where this the statement was first
Ukraine is not Russia and essentially
Ukraine is part of Europe but there's
other moments MH what were the defining
moments they began an actual war in the
D the the the war started in February of
2014 with the Russian takeover of uh
Crimea by military force right the the
so-called Green
Man um and uh um the big question is is
why and it's it's very important to go
back to the year
2013 and uh the the start of the of the
protests and the the story of the
Ukraine signing Association agreement
with European
Union so from what we understand today
the Ukrainian government under President
yanukovich did this suicidal sharp turn
after one year of promise and
Association agreement saying that okay
we changed our mind under pressure from
Moscow and uh uh Moscow applied that
pressure for one uh reason at least in
my
opinion uh the Ukraine sign an
association agreement with European
Union would mean that Ukraine would not
be able to sign Association agreement
with any Eur Union in any shape or
form that that was at that time in the
process of making and for Vladimir Putin
that was the beginning of his or part of
of his third term one of his agenda
items for the third term was really uh
consolidation of the of the post Soviet
space and Eurasian space and not
membership in NATO not membership in
European Union but Association agreement
with European Union meant that that
posts Soviet
space would have to exist under moscow's
control but without Ukraine the second
largest post Soviet Republic the
Republic on Whose vote depended the
continuing existence of the Soviet Union
and whose vote ended in in many ways the
existence of the Soviet Union so that is
that is broadly background but but also
there are of course person ities there
are Al also their beliefs the their
readings of history and and and um all
of that became became part of the story
but if if you look at that
geopolitically the the association
agreement
is uh putting putting Ukraine outside of
the Russian sphere of
influence and the the the response was
uh an attempt
to um uh topple topple the government in
cave that clearly was uh going to to
sign that that agreement uh to um take
over Crimea and to help to deal with a
lot of issues within Russia itself and
boost the the the popularity of of uh uh
the president and it certainly certainly
worked in that in that way as well and
uh the once once Ukraine still after c
continued on its path then the next step
started the so-called hybrid Warfare in
donbas but um again the the unlike
unlike Crimea um from what from what I
understand Russia was not really looking
forward to taking possession of a donbas
donbas was viewed as the way how to
influence Ukraine to stop it from drift
toward the west maybe you can tell me
about the region of donbas
I mentioned that nationalism and
principle of nationalism is the
principle of uh making the political
borders to coincide with ethnic and
cultural
borders and that's that's how the maps
of of uh many East European countries
had been drawn in the 19th and 20th
Century on that on that principle donbas
where the
majority constituted uh by the beginning
of the 20th C century were
ukrainians was considered to be
Ukrainian and was claimed in the middle
in in in the middle of this Revolution
and revolutionary Wars and Civil Wars by
uh Ukrainian
government but Don bus became a site one
of the key sites in the Russian Empire
of early
industrialization when it's with its
mining industry with metalogical
industry so what that meant was that
people from other parts of not Ukraine
but other parts of the Russian Empire
congregated there that's that's where
jobs were that's how kusov and his
family came came to dbas the family of
bnv overshoot a little bit they got to
the Industrial Enterprises in in in the
city of uh kamin near near nipro the
place the city that was called nipro
Petrov so those were Russian peasants
moving into the area in in uh looking
for for the for the
job and um by the the the the population
became quite mixed ukrainians still
constituted the majority of the
population but not necessarily in the
towns and in the cities and culturally
the place was becoming more and more
Russian as the result of that of that
movement so apart from the Crimea donbas
was the part of Ukraine where the EIC
Russians were
the the the biggest group they were not
the majority but they were very very big
and significant group for example in the
city of marup that was all but destroyed
in the course of the last of the last
two years um the ethnic Russians
constituted uh over 40% of the
population right so that's not exactly
part of donbas but that gives you that
that gives you general idea
now the story of dbas uh and what
happened now is is multi-dimensional and
this ethnic composition is just one part
of the story another very important part
of the story is uh uh
economy and
uh dbas is a classical Rust Belt and we
know what happens with the cities that
were part of the first or second wave of
industrialization in the United States
and globally you know about social
problems that exist in those places so
donbas is probably the most dramatic and
tragic case of implosion of the Rust
Belt with the mines not anymore
producing the sort of the uh and at the
acceptable price the coal that they used
to produce is people look losing
jobs with the politicians looking for
subsidies as opposed to trying very
unpopular unpopular measures of uh
dealing something and and bringing
bringing new money and new investment
into the region so all of that all of
that become part uh of the story that
made made it easy for uh Russia for the
Russian Federation to destabilize the
situation um we have interviews with Mr
girkin who is saying that he was the
first who pulled the trigger and and
fired the short in in that war he became
the Minister of Defense in the in the uh
donet People's Republic you look at the
Prime Minister he is another person with
uh uh Moscow residency
permit
um so you see key figures in in those
positions at the start and the beginning
not being Russians from Ukraine but
being being Russians from Russia and
Russians from Moscow closely connected
to the to the government structure and
intelligence structure and so on so that
is that is the start and the beginning
but uh the the way how how it exploded
the way it did was also a combination of
of the economic and ethnocultural and
linguistic factors so for Putin the war
in donbas and even in 2022 is a
defensive war against what the Ukraine
ukan government is doing against
ethnically Russian people of
dbas is that fair to say how he
describes it what what we see this is
certainly this is certainly the argument
right this is certainly the
argument and um a
pretext uh because what uh we see there
is that there would be no and and there
was no independent mobilization in
Crimea either in Crimea or in
donbas without Russian
presence uh without Russian occupation
the factor of the Crimea there would be
no and and there was no before uh
uh at least in the previous 5 to six
years any mass mobilizations of Russians
there was none of such mobilizations in
in donbas before before girkin and other
people with
military with with um parts of military
units show up there so it is it is a it
is an excuse you you've been to Ukraine
mhm you know that Russian language is
not uh persecuted in
Ukraine and um if you've not been to D
buas it would be diff or to the Crimea
it would be difficult to find one
single Ukrainian school not that they
didn't exist at all but it would take
quite an effort for you to find it or
sometimes if to hear Ukrainian language
outside either of the institutions or or
the of the uh farmers
market so um that's that's that's the
reality that that's the reality that is
clear that is visible so uh imagine
under those conditions and context that
someone is is
persecuting ethnic Russians or Russian
speakers um want to believe in something
like that one important precondition is
never to step step your foot in Ukraine
I should mention maybe this is a good
moment to mention when I traveled to
Ukraine this is after the start of the
war I you mentioned Farmers Market which
is funny basically every single person I
talked to uh including the leadership we
spoke in
Russian for many of them Russian is the
more comfortable language even
uh and the people who spoke Ukrainian
are more on the west uh western side of
Ukraine and you know young people that
are kind of want to show that um in an
activist way that they want to fight for
the independence of their country so I
take your point I wonder if you want to
comment about language and maybe about
the future of language in
Ukraine is is the future of language
going to stabilize on
Ukrainian or is it going to return to
its traditional base of Russian language
very roughly before the start of the war
in 2014 we can talk about parity between
Russian and Ukrainian and also with as
you said clearly Ukraine being a
dominant language in the west and
Russian being being a dominant language
uh on the streets certainly in the in
the east of the country
um
and then in between of that two polls a
number of this transitional areas and um
Ukraine uh in my experience and I I
visited a lot of countries not all of
them and probably maybe maybe I will be
still surprised but in my experience
this is the only truly bilingual country
that I ever visited I lived in Canada
for a long period of time there is
Quebec and the rest and and and and um
in Ukraine you you can talk in either
Russian or Ukrainian in any part of the
of the country and you would be
understood and you would be um responded
in in a different language with the
expectation that you would would
understand and if you if you don't
understand that means you don't come
from Ukraine that's the reality the war
and loss of the Crimea and uh part loss
of
dbas if it's major major industrial
industrial areas really shifted the
balance toward uh mostly Ukrainian
speaking uh re reasons regions and um
also uh what you see and you you clearly
pointed to that starting with 2014 even
a little bit earlier the younger
generation chooses chooses
Ukrainian as as a marker of its identity
and that started in 2014 but we we we
have a dramatic dramatic shift after
2022 and on the anecdotal anecdotal
level I can tell you that I I speak to
people
who uh be in in in chv at the time this
is east of Crimea at the time of of the
Russian aggression and bombardment and
so on and so forth who had passive
knowledge of Ukrainian but spoke all
their all their life Russian and they
would speak Ukrainian to me and when I
say okay why you doing that we we know
each other for decades and you used
Russian and he said well I don't want to
have anything in common with people who
did that to us so there is the there is
a big big push of course with this with
this current War now the question is
whether this change is is something that
will stay or not what is what is the
future linguistic practices are very
very conservative
ones and uh we at the Harvard Ukrainian
Research Institute have a project called
MAA Digital Atlas of Ukraine and we were
um documenting and mapping different
data in time and what we noticed a spike
in the people self report and of viws of
Ukrainian in 2014 and 2015 at the time
of the start of the war when the the the
the threat was the most clear one this
is self-reporting that doesn't mean that
people exactly do what what but they
believe that that's what that they
supposed to do and then return back to
to where it was by the year 2016 and
2017 so this this Dynamic can can repeat
itself but given given the how long the
war is going on how big the impact how
big the stresses and that the the the
way the wave of the future is probably
associated with younger people who are
switching to Ukrainian so I would I
would uh uh my bet would be on on on uh
Ukrainian language rising in
prominence so as we get closer to
February of
2022 there's a few other key
moments maybe let's talk about in July
2021 uh Putin publishing an essay titled
on the historical Unity of Russians and
ukrainians can you describe the ideas
expressed in this essay the idea is is
very conveniently presented already in
the first paragraph in the first
sentences really of the
article where Putin says that for a long
time I was saying that Russians and
ukrainians were one and the same people
and here is the proof this is this is
the the the the the historical he
develops his historical argumentation
apparently with the help of of of of of
a lot of people around him and um he
started to talk about Russians and
ukrainians being one and the same people
one year before the start of the war in
2014 so in 2013 he was together with
patriarch Kil on visit to KF and there
was conference specifically organized
for him in the cave and caves Monastery
and that's that's where he he he stated
that the the fact that he was with
patriarch Kil is is very
important factor for understanding where
the idea is coming
from um this is the idea that was
dominant in the Russian Empire of the
19th and the beginning of the 20th
century that Russians ukrainians and B
Russians are really Russian great
Russians little Russians and white
Russians and that they constitute one
one
people yes there are some dialectical
differences yes uh ukrainians sin well
yes they they they dance funny but
overall that's that's that that doesn't
matter and the that idea actually was
[Music]
really destroyed mostly destroyed by the
uh revolution of
1917 because it wasn't just social
Revolution that's how it is understood
in in in in Us in good part of the world
it was also National Revolution it was
an Empire it was a revolution in the in
the Russian
Empire and um to bring this pieces of
Empire back within the Soviet Union the
Bolsheviks had to make concessions and
one of of those concessions was to
recognition of the existence of
ukrainians as a separate nation Bellar
Russians as a separate Nations Russians
as separate Nations endowing them with
their own
territorial um with borders with
institutions and so on and so forth but
there was one institution that was not
reformed that institution was called the
Russian Orthodox church because one of
the ways that Bolsheviks dealt with it
they couldn't eradicate religion
completely but they arrested the
development of the of of the religion
and thinking and and and and
theology uh on the level as it existed
before the Revolution of
1917 so the Russian Orthodox Church of
1917 continued to be the Russian
Orthodox Church in 19 in 1991 and in
continuing the same Imperial Mantra of
the existence of one big Russian Nation
one unified people and when you see the
formation of of the ideas about about
Nations about foreign policy in the
Russian Empire after 1991 they're going
back to the pre pre- Bolshevik times
ukrainians do that as well estonians do
that as well the difference is that when
ukrainians go back they go back to the
pre-1917 their their intellectual
fathers and and writings of basically
liberal nationalism or sometimes they go
to the radical nationalism of Banda
which would be which would be not pre1
1917 but pre
1945 when the Russians go to pre-
Bolshevik past looking for the ideas
looking for inspiration looking for the
narratives what they find there is
Empire what they find there are imperial
projects and and that's that's that's
certainly the story of the of the
Putin's claim that's the story of the
argument and to to conclude the argument
that he lays out there historical
argument comes also almost directly from
the narratives of the late 19th and the
beginning of the 20th century so it's
not only the argument is coming from the
that era but also the argumentation is
is coming from that era as well but that
those arguments are all in in the flavor
of Empire it's Empire on the one hand
but also there is Imperial understanding
of what Russian nation is that doesn't
allow for independence of its little
Russian and white russian branches
alleged branches right so uh what what
you see is the concept of the big
Russian Nation that's late 19 the
beginning 20th century Empire sees the
writing on the
wall that nationalism is on the rise and
it tries to survive by
mobilizing the nationalism of the
largest group in the Empire which
happens to be
Russian um Stalin is a big promoter of
the some form of Russian nationalism
especially during the war and after war
and he started his career as a very
promising Georgian writer right in jgan
yeah so he's not doing that for some
personal personal Affinity or cultural
intellectual Roots within within uh uh
Russ within Russian Nation or Russian
people he is doing that for the uh for
the sake of the success of the of his
Soviet and communist project and he he
he has to get the largest ethnic group
on board which are which are Russians
but but uh Stalin and and and Putin have
different understanding who Russians are
Stalin Stalin already accepted
ukrainians and B Russians their
existence Putin Putin goes back back to
pre staring and prean times so if we
step back from
the the historical context of this and
um maybe the geopolitical purpose of
writing such an essay and forget about
the essay altogether you know I have in
Ukraine and Russia I know a lot of
people in Ukraine and
Russia forget the war forget all of this
there's a kind
of they all kind of sound the
same um like if I go to France they
sound different than in Ukraine and
Russia like if you lay out this the
cultural map of the world there's just a
different beat and music and flavor to a
people I guess what I'm trying to say is
there seems to be a closeness between
the cultures of Ukraine and Russia like
how do we describe that do we
acknowledge that and how does that uh
add tension with the national
Independence um first of all especially
when it comes to Eastern Ukraine or to
big
cities many people in Ukraine spoke
Russian right generally it's it's the
same language uh on the top of that we
started our discussion with talking
about the Slavs right so both Ukrainian
and Russian language Are Slavic
languages so there is there is proximity
there as well on the top of that there
is a history of existence in uh the
Soviet Union and before that in one
Empire for a long period of time so you
see a lot of a lot of before the war a
lot of Ukrainian sers and entertainers
performing in Russia and vice vers and
biography of President zalanski is
certainly one of
the fits fits that that that particular
particular uh model as well that that
all talks about about
similarities but this similarities also
very often
obscure things that uh that became so
important in the course of this war and
I already mentioned the book uh
titled by by by President kushma of
Ukraine Ukraine is not Russia so that's
that's the argument despite the fact
that you think that we are the same we
behave
differently and it turned out that they
behave differently you have botne in in
Moscow and police violence and that's
the end of it you have the um maidan in
Ukraine and you have police violence and
that's that's the beginning that's not
the end
history really matters in in the way why
why uh sometimes people speaking the
same language with different accents
behave very differently Russia and
Russian identity was formed around the
state and has difficulty imagining
itself outside of the state and that
state happened to be Imperial from most
of Russian history Ukrainian project
came into existence in against the
state Ukraine came into existence out of
the parts of different Empires which
means they left different cultural
impact on them and for ukrainians to
stay together autocratic regime so far
didn't work it's like the colonies of
the United States you have to you have
to find common language you you have to
talk to each other and that became part
of the Ukrainian political DNA
and that that became a huge factor in
the war and um very few people in
Ukraine believed what what Vladimir
Putin was saying that Russians and
ukrainians were one and the same people
but the majority
believed that they're certainly close
culturally and historically Nations and
from that point of view the bombardment
of the Ukrainian
cities became such a shock to the
ukrainians because
down they they maybe looked at Syria
they looked at chich and were explaining
that through the fact that there was
basically such a big cultural Gap and
difference between Russians and and and
those those countries and those Nations
but I I I I my understanding at least
most of them had difficulty Imagining
the war of that proportion and that that
sort of ferocity and that sort of war
crimes the the the bringing that sort of
war crimes and on that level so it's
interesting that you say that in the DNA
of Ukraine versus Russia
so maybe Russia is
more conducive to authoritarian
regimes and Ukraine is more conducive to
defining Itself by rebelling against
authoritarian
regimes uh by Rebellion absolutely
and that was the story pretty much
before 1991 so what you see since 1991
and what you see today is a I would say
new Factor certainly in Ukrainian modern
history because ukrainians traditionally
were very successful Rebels the largest
peasant Army in the Civil War in the
Russian
Empire was the mahau Army in southern
Ukraine and one one revolt kak revolts
and other revolts one after another but
ukrainians had historically difficulty
actually uh maintaining the sort of
Freedom that they acquired had
difficulty associating thems with the
state and what we see especially in the
last two years it's it's a quite
phenomenal development in Ukraine when
ukrainians associate themselves with the
state where ukrainians um see a state
not just as a foreigner as historically
it was in Ukrainian history not just
someone who came to to take but the
state that is continuation of them that
helps to provide security for them that
the the the Ukrainian Armed Forces even
before the start of this war had the the
highest U highest uh support and
popularity in in Ukraine uh this state
today functions uh unbelievably
effectively under attacks and missile
attacks and again city government and
local government and it's it's we we are
witnessing when it comes to Ukraine we
are witnessing a very important
historical development where
ukrainians found their state for the
first time through through most through
most of their history and try to make a
transition from successful
Rebels to successful managers and state
Builders yeah I talked to John Mima
recently uh there there's a lot of
people that believe NATO had a big
contribution to the Russian invasion of
Ukraine in 2022 so what what role did
NATO play in this full history from
Bucharest in 20 uh in 2008 to to today
NATO uh was uh a big part certainly of
the uh Russian uh justification for the
war that was the thing that was uh up
there in the months leading to the to
the
aggression uh the truth is that uh and
Vladimir Putin went on records staying
that that the Western leaders were
telling him again and again that uh
there is no chance for Ukraine to become
member of NATO anytime soon Russia was
very effective back in the year
208 in stopping Ukraine and Georgia on
the path of joining NATO there was a
Bucharest Summit at which the US
president at that time George W Bush was
pushing for the
membership and Putin convinced uh
leaders of France and Germany to block
that that
membership and after that membership for
um Ukraine and for Georgia was really
removed from the from the realistic
agenda for NATO and that's that's what
the leaders of the Western World in the
month leading to the February 2022
aggression were trying to to convey to
Vladimir Putin what uh he wanted there
was an ultimatum that really was uh
there to um not to start negotiations
but really to stop negotiations he
demanded the withdrawal of NATO to the
borders of the 1997 if I if I'm not
mistaken so completely something that
neither leaders would accept nor the
countries members of NATO would accept
but for me it's very clear that that was
that that was an excuse that that was a
justification and what happened uh later
in the year 2022 and 2023 certainly
confirms me in that in that
belief uh Finland joined NATO and Sweden
is on the way to join in NATO so uh
Finland joining NATO increased uh border
between Russia and NATO toold and
probably more than that so if NATO is
the real
concern it would be probably not
completely unreasonable to expect that
if not every single soldier but at least
half of the Russian army fighting in
Ukraine would be moved to protect the
new border with nato in Finland so I
have no doubt that no one in Kremlin
either in the past or today looks
favorably or is excited about n
U take NATO moving or the countries of
Eastern Europe joining NATO but I have
very difficult time imagining that that
was the primary cause of the war and uh
what we see also we talked about
Tucker's
interview he was surprised but he
believed that Putin was completely
honest when the first 25 minutes of
interview he was talking about relations
between Russia and Ukraine was talking
about history and that was also the uh
main focus of his essay essay was not on
NATO and
Russia essay was on Russia and Ukraine
so that is where the the the real causes
are the broader context is the fall of
Empire and process of disintegration of
Empire not the story of NATO what was to
clarify the reason Putin Russia invaded
Ukraine in 2022 the immediate goal in
2014 when the war started was to stop
the drift of Ukraine toward the west and
outside of the Russian sphere of
influence the uh invasion of
2022 uh perceived the same the same
goals uh keeping Ukraine in the Russian
sphere of influence
once we have the uh
resistance and quite effective
resistance on the part of Ukraine the U
Ramstein and Coalition International
Coalition in support of Ukraine then we
see the realization of Plan B where
parts of Ukrainian territory are being
annexed and included in the constitution
of the Russian Federation so the two
scenarios don't exclude each other but
if if scenario number one doesn't work
then scenario number two goes goes into
play in uh the gates of Kev
chapter you right about Vadim zalinsky
in the early days of the War uh what are
most important moments to you about this
time the the first hours and days of the
invasion the first hours and the first
days were the most difficult
psychologically the rest of the world
really didn't expect cave to last for
more than few days didn't expect Ukraine
to last for more than few
weeks and uh uh all the data suggested
that that's what would happen Ukraine
would collapse would be taken
over uh Putin called his uh his uh War a
special military operation which
suggests you also expectations about the
scope expectations about the time so
semi-military semi police police
operation so every reasonable person in
the world believed that that would would
happen and it's the heroism of quote
unquote unreasonable people like
zalinski like the commander of Ukrainian
Armed Forces zi like mayors of the
Cities Klitschko and others I'm just
naming names that are familiar to to
almost all of us now but there are
thousands of those people unreasonable
people who decided that it was
unreasonable to attack their
country and uh that that that was that
was the most the most difficult times
and days and speaking about zalanski
every I understand reasonable leader in
the west was trying to convince him to
leave Ukraine and to set a government in
Exile in in Poland or in
London um and it was reasonable to
accept his uh one of his predecessors Mr
yanukovich flat
cave uh a few months before that in
Afghanistan the president of Afghanistan
fled
Afghanistan that was a reasonable thing
to
expect and uh he turned out to be very
very unreasonable in that in that sense
that's that comes with the guts his gods
and gods people around him and and
ukrainians in general why do you think
he stayed in Kev this former
comedian
who played a president on
TV when Kev is being invaded by the
second most powerful military in the
world because I think he believes in
things and and and one of of those
things was that if he president and he
is in the
presidential office he is there to play
his role to the
end and another thing my personal again
I never met
zalinski my personal understanding of
him is
that he's uh has talent that helped him
in his career before the presidency and
then helps now he feels the audience
and then channels the the the attitude
of the audience and and uh amplifies
it and I think that uh another reason
why he didn't leave K was that he fell
the audience the
audience in that in that particular
context were the
ukrainians so he had a sense that the
ukrainians would unify because he was
quite if you look at the polls before
the war quite unpopular and and there
was still divisions and uh factions and
the government is divided I mean there
there's the East and the west and all
this kind of stuff you think he had a
sense that this could unite people um
the East and the West was not already
such an issue after um after Crimea and
part of donbas being gone so Ukraine was
much more united than it was
before uh
he brought to power his before that
really non-existent party of regions on
his personal popularity but the
important thing is that he created uh a
majority in the parliament which really
reflected the unity that existed among
ukrainians that didn't was not there
before he won with 73% of the
population uh of of of those who took
part in in the elections his predecessor
P
penko also carried 90% of the of the
precincts and the same happened with
zalinsky so the country unified after
2014 to a degree it was impossible to to
imagine before and zalinsky felt that
zalinsky knew that and
um that's that's that's where where the
talent of politician really matters so
that that's that's something that you
can see beyond beyond just data and and
and you can feel that PR yelson had that
ability why did the peace talks fail
there was a lot of peace talks well the
the main reason is that the conditions
that uh Russia was trying to impose on
Ukraine were basically unacceptable for
Ukraine um because uh one of the
conditions apart from this strange thing
called dentification
uh was of course def facto loss of the
territory and for the
future uh really um staying outside
either of NATO or any any any Western
support which was very clear you can buy
a couple of weeks you can by a couple of
months but in the conditions like that
Russia will come back tomorrow and will
take over
everything and uh once once ukrainians
realize that they can win on the
battlefield once the Russians were
defeated and withdraw from
cave uh the the opportunity emerged to
get out of the of the negotiations which
was very clear were leading if not today
then tomorrow to the complete
destruction of Ukraine and then of of
course once the territory started to be
liberated things like Butcher and and
massacres of the civilian population
came to the four which made also quite
difficult if not impossible to conduct
negotiations from this moral and
emotional point of view what about the
claims that you know Boris Johnson the
West uh
compromised the ability of these peace
talks to be successful basically kind of
uh
manipulated the talks I asked uh people
who accompanied bris Johnson to Cave
that
question uh the answer was no and um I
believe this answer and I'll tell you
why um because it is very difficult for
me to
imagine president
zalinski to take
orders from anybody in the world either
B is J Johnson or or or Joe Biden or
anybody else and basically doing things
that zalinsky beliefs are not in his
interest or in the interest of his
country I just can't imagine that
anybody in the
world telling zalinski what to do and
zalinski actually following it uh
against his own his own wishes and
desires at least if if that is possible
what is in the public sphere doesn't
allow us to to suggest that it is that
said zans is a smart man and he knows
that the war can only continue with West
support that is a different supposition
to know that it can continue with the
West support but if we are talking about
withdrawing from the
negotiations that's that's not about the
continuation of the war for that you
don't need best support well what I mean
is if he started to sense that the West
will support no matter what then maybe
the space of decisions you're making is
different we can interpret that that way
but uh uh Boris Johnson
represented at that point Britain not
the United
States and uh really what what the war
showed and it was clear already at that
time that what was needed was massive
support from from the West as a whole
and the promise of that support came
only after the West realized that
Ukraine can win and came only in
late uh April is the
Ramstein so at least a few weeks later
so I don't know how much bris Johnson
could promise he probably could promise
to try to help and and try to convin
Vince and try to work on that if if
zalinski acted on that promise he
certainly was taken a risk but the key
issue again I'm going back where I
started it's a principal an acceptance
for Ukraine the conditions that were
offered and Ukraine was uh the moment
they saw the possibility that they could
fight back with Johnson's support
without Johnson support they they took
the chance so what are the ways this
work can end do you think what are the
different possible trajectories whether
it's peace
talks what does winning look like VI the
side what is the role of us what what
trajectories do you see that are
possible it's it's uh question on the
one level very easy to answer on the
other very difficult the level on which
it is very easy it's it's a broad
historical
perspective if you really believe and I
believe in that that this is the war of
the Soviet succession that this is the
war of the disintegration of Empire we
know how this story
ends and they end with disintegration of
Empire they end with the rise of the new
States and appearance of the new colored
Sports on the
map that's the story that started with
the American
Revolution so that's that's long-term
perspective the difficult part is of
course what will happen tomorrow the
difficult part is what what there will
be in in in two days in or even in two
years and um in very broad terms the the
war can end in one of three scenarios
the victory of one side the victory of
another side and a sort of a St stal
mate and compromise especially when it
comes when it comes to the
territories this war is already
approaching the end of the second year I
follow the the news and look analysis I
don't remember one single piece
suggesting that the next year we will
bring peace or we'll bring peace for
sure and uh we we are in in a situation
where uh the both sides still believe
that they can achieve something or prove
their position on the battlefield
certainly that was the expectations of
Ukrainian side uh back in the in the in
the summer and and early fall of
2023 and from what I understand now this
are certainly the expectations of the
Russian side
today this is this is the largest war in
Europe since World War II the largest
war in the world since Korean
War and uh we know know that that the
the uh Korean war ended in
this division division of Korea but the
negotiations were going on for more than
two years while those negotiations were
going on both sides were trying to
improve their position there and until
there was a political change death of
Stalin arrival of Asen in the United
States and the realization that the the
chance of succeeding on the
battlefield uh huge the peace talks
didn't come
so at this point all three scenarios are
possible I don't I don't really discount
any of them it's early early to to say
what will happen so without any
political change let's try to
imagine what are the possibilities that
the war ends this
year is it possible that it can end with
compromise basically at the place it
started meaning back to the borders of
2022 yeah back to the borders of 22 with
some security guarantees that aren't
really guarantees but are hopeful
guarantees no it's it's is it is not
just virtual impossibility it is
impossible without political change in
Moscow the reason is that back in the
fall of
2022 uh Vladimir Putin included
five of Ukrainian region solists even
those that he didn't control or didn't
control fully into the Russian
Constitution which basically in simple
language is that the hands are tied up
not only for Putin himself but also for
his possible
successors so that's means that no
return to the borders of 2022 without
without change political change in
Moscow are
possible um a few days after after that
that that that decision in Moscow uh
zansky uh issued a
decree saying that no negotiations with
Russia what what that really meant in
plain language is that basically we are
not prepared to negotiate a stable
agreement with five of our o
blists not just Ann nexted but also
included into the Russian Constitution
so that's where we are so the that that
scenario is is uh again everything is
possible of course but it's highly
highly unlikely so the Russian
Constitution is a is a thing that's very
that makes this all very difficult yes
and not only as a negotiation tactic for
Putin whoever would would negotiate on
the Russian side but also as as a legal
issue so like the Practical aspect of it
even is yes you really have to uh change
the Constitution before the peace
agreement takes hold or immediate medely
after that and with the Minsk agreements
that was one of things that uh Russia
wanted from Ukraine change of the
Constitution and it turned out to be
really impossible so that that's one of
the one of the Back stories of of the
Minsk and and collapse of the Minsk
agreements is there something like M
Minsk agreements that are possible now
to maybe this is a legal question but to
override the Constitution to sort of
shake everything up so see the
Constitutional Amendment as a uh as just
a negotiation tactic to to come to the
table to something like M Minsk
agreement given uh how how fast those
those amendments to the Constitution
were
adopted uh that suggests that really
executive power in in Russia has
enormous power over the the legislative
branch so it's it's Again difficult to
imagine but technically this is possible
again if if the but but possible if
there is a political change in Moscow I
don't understand why assuming political
change in Moscow is not possible this
year so I'm trying to see if there's a
way to end this war this year right
there is a possibility of armistice
right but Armistice more along the like
any Armistice along the lines of the
current front
lines but withdrawal of the Russian
troops to the borders of 2022 at this
point whether it's reasonable or
unreasonable can be achieved all only as
the result of the defeat of the Russian
army like it happened near cave is it
possible possible is
it likely especially given what is
happening with the Western support
military support for for for Ukraine
probably not but if Putin the executive
branch has a lot of power why can't the
United States President the Russian
president the Ukrainian president come
to the table and draw up something like
the M Minsk agreements where and then
rapid constitutional change is made and
you go back to the borders in 2022
before 2022 like through agreements
through compromise impossible for you
certainly not this year I look at this
year as the time when at least one side
Russian side will try to get as much as
it can through the through military
means but that's been happening last
year too there's been a counter
offensive there's been attempts there's
been it doesn't mean that uh every that
New Year somehow is supposed to bring
new
tactics uh that the the last year was uh
pretty much a lot of fighting a lot of
suffering very little movement of the of
the front line the biggest change of the
last year was Ukraine Victory on the on
the Black Sea where they pushed the the
Russian Navy into the western part of
the pond
and restored the the grain Corridor and
export from Odessa apparently up to 75%
of what it used to be before the war so
that's that's the the only major change
but again the the price is enormous in
terms of wealth in terms of especially
in terms of
so thinking about what 2024 brings
zalinski just fired Ukraine's head of
the
army a man you've mentioned General
valer uh zi what do you make of this
development this is a very very
dangerous
moment in in the
War uh the reason for that is that Z is
someone who is very popular with the
Army and with people in general
so if you look at that through American
prism that would be something analogous
to President
Truman firing General
Maur uh given
that Stakes for us at that time were
very high but probably not as high as
they are for Ukraine for Ukraine
today in both cases what is at stake is
certainly the idea that the political
leadership and Military leadership have
to be on the same page and uh the
question is whether on the part of
zalinski this is just the change of the
leadership or this is also the change of
his approach to the war and then can can
can mean many things one can mean him
taking more active part in planning
operations it can mean all also possible
change of the tactic in the war giving
that counter offensive didn't didn't
work
out uh we don't know yet I don't know
whether president zinsky at this point
knows exactly what what will come next
but this is this is the time when the
the change of the leadership in the
country and in the army that is at War
it's it's it's one of the most most try
and most dangerous moments so the thing
that President Z he expressed is that
this is this is going to be a change of
tactics making the uh the approach more
technologically advanced this kind of
things but as you said uh I believe he
is less popular than uh the chief of the
army zy 80% to 60% depending on the
polls do you think it's possible that
zalinsky days are numbered as the
president and that somebody like
Z comes to power what we know is that uh
in this
War uh Ukrainian people really
United around their
president and uh the armed forces were
always even before the start of the war
more popular than was the presidential
office so the
change if if happened in that Realm was
not was not so dramatic and from what I
can see from from social media in
Ukraine there is a lot of unhappiness a
lot of
questions but there is
also realization and very strong
realization that country has to stay
United and certainly the behavior of zy
himself is there basically not
suggesting any sort of a pran type of of
scenario that gives me some
hope actually a lot of Hope and in terms
of whether zin's days are numbered or
not I don't think they're
numbered uh but if Ukraine stays a
democracy and I believe it will
stay the what comes to my mind uh is the
story of uh
Churchill uh the story of deal in Poland
the story of pilsudski so once the war
is over really the the electorate in the
in the Democratic elections they want to
change the political leadership they
want to move forward but uh puski came
back to Power and deal came back to
Power and Churchill came back to Power
so no I I whatever happens in the in the
short run or medium-term run I think
that
uh zinsky days in politics are not
numbered so what to you is interesting
uh for example if I get a chance to
interview zalinsky what what do you is
interesting about the the person that
that would be good to ask about to
explore about the state of his mind is
thinking his view of the world as it
stands
today next month we supposed to take
place Ukrainian elections they're not
taking
place because the major majority of
ukrainians don't think this is a right
thing to do to change the president to
have the elections to have a political
struggle in the middle of the
war so zansky refused to call those
elections despite the fact that he he uh
is and continues to be the most popular
politician in Ukraine so it would be in
his to his benefit but that's that's
clearly not what what the ukrainians
want but the question of continuing as
the president Beyond 5 Years
also one way or another would raise
questions about the
legitimacy and certainly certainly
Russia will be playing this card like
there is no tomorrow and what I would be
interested in asking the lsky about
whether whether he sees that his second
term which comes on those conditions
would suggest a different different
attitude over the position maybe some
form of the of the um uh coalition
government like it was the case in
Britain with Churchill under different
circumstances of course or this is
basically in his opinion something that
would be destructive and something that
would would really be an impediment for
for the issue for the question of unity
and war effort and I would ask this
question not uh not to basically suggest
that that's that's the way to
go but I I would be very much interested
to to hear what is his thinking about
that is do you think there's a degree
during war
time that the power that comes with
being a war president can corrupt the
person sort of uh push you away from uh
the Democratic
mindset towards an authoritarian one I
think that there is a possibility of
that right you in the conditions of
any any
emergency war in in the case of the
Soviet Union there was a Chernobyl
disaster and so on and so forth you make
decisions much
faster you you you create this vertical
and um then it's it's very easier to get
to get really used to that way dealing
with the issues in in the conditions of
emergency right and and then either
continue
emergency or or with no emergency they
continuing the emergency mode I I think
um again that that would be a very very
natural thing for any human being to to
do to make it
easier should I do that easier and in
more effective way or should I do the
right way that's that's a challenge it's
it's it's it's it's sometimes it's
difficult to answer this question let me
stay in power for just a little longer
to do it the efficient way Y and then
time flies away and all of a sudden
you're it's it's you're you're going for
the third term and the fourth term and
suddenly it's easy to realize that
actually you can't controll in any other
way you
just whatever skills you had or people
around that can help is that already
gone exactly the people that's suround
you are uh not providing the kind of uh
critical feedback necessary for a
democratic system one of the things that
Tucker said after his interview with
Putin he was just in his hotel just
chatting on on video and he said that he
felt like Putin was not very good at
explaining himself like a coherent
whole Narrative of why the invasion
happened it's just this big picture and
he said that's not because he doesn't
have one but it's been a long time since
he's had somebody around him where he
has to explain himself too so he's out
of practice which is very interesting
it's a very interesting
point and that's what war and being in
power for a prolonged period of time can
do so on that topic if you had a chance
to talk to Putin what kind of questions
would you ask him what would you like to
find out about the man as he stands
today as a historian I have a lot of
questions and I have questions about
when when the decision was made to
attack
Ukraine and what went into this decision
because we we are thinking about that we
trying so as a historian I I have this
this this big question have question
about the Crimea when those decisions
were made so that sort of questions that
that interest me but the rest either I
think I understand what is going on with
him or I don't expect the answer that
can help for for example a good question
whether you regret or not the start of
the war in 2022 given given the enormous
enormous casualties on both
sides but you can't expect from a
politician an honest answer to this
question right so there are questions to
which I know he
can't answer honestly and then there are
other questions to which I think he
already provided all answers that he
could so what what for me is is is of
Interest are basically questions for a
historian about about the the timing and
and the and the and the logic of
particular decisions well I do wonder
how different what he says publicly is
from what he thinks privately so a
question about
when the decision to invade Ukraine
happen is a very good question to give
insight to the difference between how he
thinks about the world privately versus
what he says
publicly yeah and same about other you
know about Empire is if you ask uh Putin
he will say he has no interest in Empire
and he finds the notion
silly but at the same
time perhaps privately there's a sense
in which he does uh seek the the
reunification of the Russian Empire not
in the form of the Russian Empire not in
the form of the Soviet Union but
certainly in some form of the Russian
control that's that's uh
that's for me at least it's quite clear
otherwise there would be
no bursts to the bust to the to the
Russian Emperors and Katherine and and
and
others you wrote in your book titled uh
the Frontline essays on Ukraine's past
and present about the Russian
question uh I guess articulated by
Soldier niten first in
1994 soen of course is the author of gag
archipelago he's half
Ukrainian what is the Russian
question s clearly identifies himself as
Russian
and his opposition to the Communist
Regime was was AOS of a Russian
nationalist so his argument was that um
communism was bad for
Russia um and uh for him Russian
question is about the Russians ethnic
Russians but also he was
thinking about Russians in in Putin's
terms or PU thinks in Solan terms about
ukrainians and B Russians Constitution
part of that so the Russian question is
the biggest tragedy of the 20th century
the division of the Russians the the
loss of the statehood and division of
the Russians between different different
states this is this is forit in Russian
question and
his original idea and plan was presented
in the essay that he published in
1990 was called how we should
restructure Russia and restructure
Russia meant getting rid of the baltics
Central Asia and
Caucasus and have Russians ukrainians
and B
Russians including those who live in
northern Kazakhstan to create one nation
state so he was a Russian nationalist
but he was thinking about Russian nation
state as the state of Russians
ukrainians and B Russians and once the
Soviet Union collapsed and his his idea
was not implemented in the 1990s he
formulated Plan B taken over by Russia
of donbas Crimea and Southern Ukraine
the areas that now are included in the
Russian Constitution so in terms in
historical terms and intellectual terms
what is happening today in in the war
between Russia and
Ukraine is the The
Vision on one level or another level
that was formulated by the noble laat
alexand suus half Russian half
Ukraine if if there is such a thing what
what would you say is the Ukrainian
question as we stand today the Ukrainian
question is very simple it's now it's
not any more acquisition of the nation
state but actually a sovereign state but
it's it's it's maintainance so it's
Ukrainian question is like dozens of
other questions in the 20th and 21st
century the rise the rise of the new
state and uh that's that's that's what
is the Ukrainian question whether
whether Ukraine will continue to its
existence as a nation as an independent
state because that existence is being
questioned by stating that Russians and
ukrainians are one and the same people
which the facto saying your guy is
Russian and also trying to to destroy
the state is it possible that if the war
in Ukraine continues for many more years
that the next leader that follows
zalinski
would uh take Ukraine away from a sort
of democratic western style Nation
towards a more authoritarian one maybe
even with a far right
influence this kind of Direction because
of the war the influence of War
everything is possible and the longer
the war continues the more likely
scenario like that
becomes but um realization of that
scenario would go against the grain
of largest part of Ukrainian
history where
Ukraine really emerged as a pluralistic
state in which the elements of
democracy were built in the last 30
years would go against the grain of the
Ukrainian Society where as one author
formulated in the 1990s he wrote a book
Ukrainian nationalism and minority Faith
where the nationalism was a minority
faith and radical nationalism continues
to be at continued to be in 2019 a
minority faith during the last elections
so possible but unlikely given the
historical realities of the last 30 plus
years I could talk to you for many more
hours
uh on Chernobyl alone uh since you've
written a book on Chernobyl and nuclear
disaster this there's just a million
possible conversations here but let me
just jump around history uh a little
bit back to World War back before World
War II uh my grandmother lived through
hore in World War II Nazi occupied uh
Ukraine uh hollmore what do you
learn let's say about human nature and
about governments and nations from the
fact that hore happened and maybe you
could say what it is and why it happened
hore is a massive famine in Ukraine um
between the years 1932 and
1934 and um it happened as the result
of forceful collectivization of the
Agriculture and aemp on the part of
Stalin
also really roll Ukraine into the Soviet
Union um with basically no no potential
opposition from from Ukraine uh uh now
National
Communists so two things came together
in December of 1932 when in the same
decree Stalin and Molotov sign a decree
on the requisition of the grain which
lead eventually to the mass starvation
and on the Banning of Ukrainian language
Publications and education out in other
Soviet republics outside of Ukraine and
introducing limitations on the
uh the so-called ukrainization policies
so on the use of Ukrainian language in
Ukraine
itself and uh the the numbers are
debated the the numbers that uh most of
the scholars work today are 4 million
but again there are larger numbers as
well that that
circulate and uh uh this is the the the
the Famine of 3233 was not exclusive uh
Ukrainian
phenomenon but most of Ukraine F in the
Soviet Union died in Ukraine and Ukraine
was the only place where the policy on
collecting grain were coming together
with the policy of the Clans and of the
political leadership sending people from
Moscow to take over the leadership and
attack on Ukrainian culture so in terms
of what I learn about human nature it's
more me learning about the the
ideologies of the 20th century because
it's not the only famine in the
Communist lands the famine in China
which was in terms of the numbers much
more devastating than that it's in a
different category and for a good reason
but you have
Holocaust what unites these
things are are is the time this is 20th
century what unites them are the
dominance in the societies that are
doing that really uh
ideologies that not just devalued human
life but considered that actually the
way forward is by destroying large group
of populations defined ethnically
religiously socially or
otherwise which tells about the time but
tells also about Humanity because for
centuries before that human life was
valued they were enemies but the idea
was that human life can put and and you
can at the end of the day they can be
slaves they can be you can use them for
productive
force uh countries in the 18th century
with Southern Ukraine they were looking
for settlers for people to bring and and
and live on land you you move into the
20th century and there is mass
destruction of the
population in the name of ideologist
which basically are by definition
destroy human
lives and uh that's what really so
shocking and striking because that's
that break with not just with issues of
morale not just with issues of
humanity with any Common
Sense what is what is happening and
uh I I am absolutely convinced that we
didn't learn the lesson I am absolutely
convinced that we didn't learn the
lesson with turning our page on fascism
and communism we somehow decided that we
are free of that that at least in those
terms history came to an end that what
is ahead is is the future and nothing of
that sort
would would happen would take place to a
degree that people would get in trouble
for comparing any statements or or
events that are happening today with the
the communism or
fascism and and um so I I I feel
responsibility of myself and as a
historian in particular for not not
doing a better job
about about telling people that well
we we are we are who we are and we we
have as humans our dark side and we have
to be we have to be very careful so
there is a human
capacity uh to be captured by an idea
and ideology that claims to bring up a
better world as the Nazis did as Soviet
Union
did
and on the path of doing that devaluing
human life that we will bring a better
world and and if millions of people have
to be tortured on the way to
that all right but at least we have a
better world and human beings are able
to if not accept that look the other way
yes yes and in the name of a particular
Nation or race like like was the Third
Reich or in in the name of the uh
Humanity of the future so um not just
your human life destroy human life is
there something fundamental about
communism and centralized planning
that's part of the problem here maybe
this also connects the story of
Chernobyl where the Chernobyl disaster
is not just a story of failure of a
nuclear power plant but it's an entire
institution uh of the scientific the
nuclear institution but the entirety of
the government there is and there is a
number of factors of political and
social character that that produced
Chernobyl and uh uh one of them is
generally the um atmosphere of secrecy
in the Soviet
Union uh in the conditions of the Cold
War um Chernobyl reactor was a dual
purpose reactor it could boil water
today and produce enriched uranium
tomorrow right so it was top secret and
if there were problems with that with
that reactor those problems were kept
secret even at people who operated that
reactor that's that's what happened that
that's what happened in chernov another
another big big part of the story which
is um specifically
Soviet that's the nature of the
managerial culture and administrative
culture in which people had no right to
make their own decisions in their in
their place in their
position uh a few years before that
Three Mile Island happened which was a
big big nuclear disaster but in terms of
consequences nothing nothing like
Chernobyl and uh there in the context of
the American legal culture and maneral
culture people who were uh operators who
were in managerial positions that was
their responsibility to take decisions
President Carter came there but he was
not calling shots on on none of those
issues what you see with Chernobyl and
people who saw HBO serious know that
very well the moment the high official
arrives everyone actually falls in line
it's the official who calls the shot and
to move population from the city of
preit you needed the okay coming from
Moscow from the from the very top so
that is Soviet story story and and there
is a global story of cutting Corners to
to meet either deadlines like it was
with that test that they were running at
that time or to meet production quarters
this is not just socialist thing you can
replace production quarters with with
um profit and and uh and you you get you
get the same story so some parts of in
that story are
generally reflective of of our of our
today's world in general others are very
specific very specific for Soviet Union
for for Soviet experience and then the
biggest the biggest probably
Soviet part of that story is that on the
one hand the government in Moscow and
Cave they mobilize all resources to deal
with that but they keep information
about what is happening and the
radiation clouds secret from the from
the rest of the population something
that completely would be impossible and
was impossible in Us in UK where other
accidents
happened and uh then guess what a few
years
later the Soviet Union collapses very
much also thanks to the mobilization of
people over the issue of Chernobyl and
nuclear energy in uh
people writing about that that subject
call it echon nationalism ecological
nationalism which comes at least in part
from with withholding information from
people and in Ukraine mobilization
didn't start over the issues that led to
Independence didn't start over the issue
of language or didn't start over the
issue
of national autonomy it started under
the slogans tell us the truth about
about
Chernobyl we want to know whether we
live in contaminated areas or not and
that was a very very strong uh factor
that that crossed the the not just
ethnic religious linguistic lines L
between members of the party and not
members of the party of the top
leadership and not in Military and
civilian because it turned out that the
party car didn't protect you from being
affected by by
radiation so the all national
mobilization happens the first mass
manifestations are about Chernobyl not
about anything else that's fascinating I
mean uh for people who might not know
Chernobyl is located in Ukraine it would
be it's a fascinating view that choba
might be one of the critical sort of
threshold Catalyst for the collapse of
the Soviet Union that's very interesting
uh what just as a small side uh I guess
this is a good moment to give some love
to the HBO series it made me even though
it's British accents and so on uh it
made me realize that some of these
stories in Eastern Europe could be told
very
effectively uh through film through
series it was quite a it's I mean it was
so incredibly well done and maybe I can
ask you historically speaking um were
you
impressed uh I was I
was
and I think that
the miniseries
are very truthful on on a number of
levels and very untruthful on some
others and uh they got they got
excellent in very well the the macro and
micro levels so the macro level is the
issue of the big truth and and the the
story there is very much built around
the theme that I just discussed now it's
about the the the cost of lies right and
the Soviet Union
line to the people and and and that's
that's what the film explores so that
that that's I call it a big truth about
Chernobyl and they got a lot of uh minor
things really really very well like the
curtains on the Windows like how the
houses looked from inside and outside I
didn't see any post Soviet film or any
Western film that would be so good at
capturing those everyday details but
then there is a huge gray area in
between big truth and small truth is of
the of the recreating the environment
and that's how you get from one to
another and then you see the KGB
officers coming and taking someone out
of the meting and arresting which was
not necessary you see the Soviet boss
threatening someone to throw the person
from the helicopter so you get this
Hollywood sort of things despite the
fact that it's HBO HBO serious and um
they're the best really in terms as as a
film in the fourth uh episode where they
completely decided just to hell with the
reality and let's let's make a film so
they bring legasov to the one of the key
character to the um this court meetings
that they bring uh the key Soviet party
B Shina he wasn't there they created a
drama there so but uh so they they they
got they got the main thing the big
truth right and that's that's why I like
this this this production sometimes you
have
to uh to show what something felt like
you have to go bigger than it actually
was I mean if you I don't know if you
experience
heartbreak and you want to and you see a
film about it you want there to be
explosions you want to see this this in
images visible right so and uh but the
the question again I just mentioned KGB
marching in and and or some party leader
G giving a
speech they were not given that speech
but the sense was was there and it was
in the air and I as people of my
generation who were there knew that and
recognized that but for for New
Generation whether they are in Ukraine
in Russia in Us in Britain in in in
Zimbabwe anywhere yeah you have to you
have
to do this this um little little
untruths and and introduce them and I
had a very interesting uh on on air
conversation
with uh the U author of The
Script meon and I asked him the question
of okay the film declared really the
importance of the truth but how do you
square that
with with the need in the film to to uh
really uh put it mildly to go beyond
beyond the measures of Truth what what
our understanding of that term is well I
suppose it is a bit terrifying that some
of the most dramatic moments in history
are probably quite mundane the decisions
to begin Wars
invasions they're
probably something like a a zoom meeting
on a on a random Tuesday in today's
workplace so it's not it's not like
there's dramatic music playing these are
just human decisions and they command
armies and they command
destruction um I I person
because of that believe in the power of
individuals to to to be able to stop
Wars not just start wars individual
leaders so let me just ask you about
nuclear safety because there's an
interesting point you make you uh wrote
In the book in in Adams and Ash as a
global history of nuclear disaster so
technically nuclear energy is extremely
safe terms a number of people died per
energy generated it's much safer than
coal and oil for example as far as I
understand but the case you also to make
is you write quote many of the political
economic social and cultural factors
that led to the accidents of the past
are still with us today making the
nuclear industry vulnerable to repeating
old mistakes in new and unexpected ways
and any new accidents are certain to
create new anti-nuclear
mobilization and then you continue with
this makes the nuclear industry not only
risky to operate but also impossible to
count on as a long-term solution to an
overwhelming problem so can you explain
that perspective it's it's an
interesting it's an interesting one
soort of speaking to the psychology when
an accident does happen it has a
dramatic effect and
uh also speaking to the fact that
accidents can happen not because of the
safety of the nuclear power plant but of
the
underlying structure of government that
oversees it yes I wrote book on
Chernobyl and then tried to understand
Chernobyl better about placing it in the
context of other disasters as a
historian and was looking at the
political factors and social factors and
cultural factors not not the physics or
or or or engineering part part of the
story and um the the factors that are
still with us uh are the like it was the
case in Chernobyl the authoritarian
regimes right and and and high
centralization of the decision making
and desire to cut corners and also the
issues associated with secrecy so that's
that's that that that is with us if you
look at the where the future of the
nuclear industry is now at this point
it's the regimes and parts in the Middle
East that's a big New Frontier the
countries that are not particularly
known for the history of of democratic
existence uh where we also have the
situation that we had at Three Mile
Island that we had at at uh uh Chernobyl
this is the first generation Engineers
nuclear Engineers right so people who
are where the um country doesn't have a
lot of experience in gener Generations
after Generations working in that
particular industry where it's all new
that's that's certainly that is
certainly additional additional risk and
um what we got now with this current war
is something that not that people
completely didn't expect but didn't
happen in the past you see the war
coming to the nuclear sides Chernobyl
was taken over by the Russian army or
National Guard rather uh the first day
of the invasion then there was Zaria the
largest nuclear power plant in Europe
where the battle was waged on the
territory of the nuclear power
plant uh the the missiles being fired
buildings Catching Fire and um the the
situation of the that brought the
Fukushima
disaster was there at zap Poria more
than once and Fukushima came because the
s were shut down as they add zapia but
they still needed
electricity to bring water and to cool
them down and in Fukushima case it was
the tsunami that cut off the supply of
electricity in the case of zapara there
was the war fair that was happening in
the area around zapia that did did the
same effect so we have 440 reactors in
the world today plus
minus none of them was designed to
withstand the direct missile attack or
to function in the conditions of the
Warfare if operators they're human then
they make mistakes like they did at
Three Mile Island or Chernobyl but think
also if the war is happening around them
if they're not sure what is happening
with their with their families uh if
they don't know whether they will be
next missile whether we'll hit the uh
room where where they the control room
or not
that that multiplies also so we we are
in a situation where um we are not done
yet with the nuclear accidents you each
time it's not like we don't pay
attention or we don't
learn smart people work on that and
after every accident try to figure the
way how not to to to to step in in into
the same into the same trap
but next accident would actually expose
a new new vulnerability you deal with
Chernobyl and then tsunami comes you
deal with tsunami and then War comes and
we we really in that sense um we have
sometimes wild imagination but sometimes
it's difficult to imagine what can
happen next so we're not done there will
be there will be nuclear accidents
unfortunately in the future and that
makes nuclear
energy so problematic when you count on
it to fight climate change I'll explain
why you gave the figures how many people
die from burning coal from how many
people die from from
radiation and it's it's it's a good
argument some people would question them
because it's also the issue of not just
dying but uh impact impact of radiation
on on cancer on on our health which is
not completely understood yet so it's
still there there is a lot of question
marks but let's assume what you are
saying that's the figures that's how it
is but we as people we for whatever
reason are not afraid of
coal but we are very much afraid of
radiation it's invisible it's it's co
it's everywhere MH and you can't you
can't see it mhm and then and and then
you start having issues and and then you
have
St problems and um during the covid the
the governments closed the
borders maybe maybe good idea maybe not
so good ideas I isolation so that was
the way government started to to fight
for access to uh fiser to to Mna to to
to Sputnik to to whatever it is to to
vaccine uh so now back to the to the
radiation what is happening once once
Chernobyl
happens uh that's the the highest point
in the development of nuclear industry
so far in terms of how many how many new
reactors were commissioned or the the
licenses were
issued uh the next react reactor after 3
m Island in the US us go ahead was given
it seems to me 10 years ago or something
like that the Fukushima happens the
reaction is in China to that as well
they're very much concerned so there is
a saying in the in the field Chernobyl
anywhere is Chernobyl everywhere after
Fukushima Germany decides to go nuclear
free and and gets there at the expense
of burning burning coal so that's that's
how we react and each major accident
that that means Global
freeze on the on the on the nuclear
reactor production for at least another
10 years so that's what I mean that
nuclear industry is polit not
just in terms of of of Technology not
just in terms of radiation impact on
health but also politically a very very
unreliable option and to you you suspect
that that's an irreparable aspect of
human nature and the human mind that
there's certain things that just create
a kind of panic invisible threats of
this kind whether it's a virus or um or
radiation there's something about the
mind if I get a stomach a in the United
States after Fukushima I kind of think
it's probably radiation this kind of uh
irrational type of thinking and that's
not possible to repair I think we can we
can be we can bet tray
right we can be pretty smart aren't we
but but
generally we are afraid of things that
we see but even more we afraid of things
that we don't see and radiation is one
of those let's zoom out on the world we
talked about the war in
Ukraine how does the war in Ukraine
change the world order we just look at
everything that's going on zoom out a
bit
China the Israel Gaza War so the Middle
East India what is interesting to you
important to think about in the coming
years and
decades as a historian and I'm training
that
way uh I have a feeling of deu I see the
the the cold war is coming back in many
in many of its of its
features and um
the war started and and we discussed
that uh in
2014 at least in my interpretation with
um Russia trying
to um really reestablish its control
over the post Soviet space and Ukraine
is was crucial for that for that project
and the more globally Russian Vision
since 1990s was that they didn't like
the American monopolar
World they knew and realized that they
couldn't go back to the bipolar world of
the of the um Cold War era so the the
vision was multi-polar
World in which again it wasn't just
academic exercise it was a political
exercise in which Russia would be one of
the centers one of the polls on par with
China on par with European Union on par
with the United States
that's that's very broadly speaking the
context in which in which the war starts
in 20 in
2014 where we are
now well we are now in Russia certainly
trying to regain its military
strength but no one actually believes
that Russia is the sort of a superpower
it was imagined before
2022 we see certain in Russia uh finding
the way to deal with the
sanctions but we don't see certain
Russia as a as a economic economic power
with any sort of a future so it is not
an implosion of the of the Russian
military economic and political power
but it's significantly actually it is
diminished so um today very difficult
imagine the Russia emerging as another
pole of the of the multi-polar world not
impossible but it's the war certainly
made that that's very problematic and
and much more difficult on the other
hand what the war did it basically uh
awakened the West the old
west United States and Western Europe
transatlantic
Alliance
and on the top of that there are East
European countries that are uh even much
stronger proponents of of assistance for
Ukraine than is Germany or or or or the
United States of America so it is it is
the the replay of the Cold War story The
Return of the West that one of the
chapters in my book The Russa Ukrainian
war is is called that way we also can
see the elements of the rebuilding of
the beijin Moscow Alliance of the 1950s
which was a very important part of the
Cold War it was extremely important part
of the Korean war that in many ways
launched launched also the the Cold War
globally so I see a lot of parallels of
of going back to the time of the Cold
War and the bipolar world that emerges
it's not anymore the world focused on
Washington and mosco it's more like
World focused on on Washington and
Beijing and then there were countries in
between there are countries in between
that that join join one block or another
block that is emerging that is not fully
fully formed this is this is in my
opinion makes the task of of us
historians to really go back to the Cold
War and look and look for for through
New Perspective on on the history of
that conflict because there is a lot of
things that we can we can learn
so so in in some ways history does
repeat itself here so now it's a cold
war with China and and the United States
what's a hopeful trajectory for the 21st
century for the rest of it the hopeful
trajectory is
um really um trying to be as wise and as
lucky as as our our predecessors during
the Cold War because the the dominant
discourse so far about the Cold War was
what a horrible thing that cold war was
what did we do wrong how did we end up
in the Cold
War and I think especially today this is
a wrong question to ask the right
question to ask
is how did it happen what did we do so
right that for now more than 70 years we
don't have a World
War how come that after World War I
World War II came within 20
years how come that what what helped us
to keep the world on the bring but still
away from the global war for such a long
period of Time how to keep the Cold War
cold that's that's the biggest lesson
that the history of the C War can give
us and I don't think we we ask the
question qu often enough ask the
question that way and if you don't ask
right questions we don't get right
answers yeah if you've written a book a
great book on the Cuban Missile Crisis
we
came very close not to Just Another
World War but to uh you know a nuclear
war and um the destruction
of human civilization as we know it
so I guess it's a good question to ask
uh what do we do so right and maybe one
of the answers could be that we just got
lucky and and the question is how do how
do we keep getting
lucky um luck luck is clearly clearly
one of the factors in in the in um Cuban
Missile Crisis because uh what happened
there and the there is one of the
lessons is that uh
eventually the the commanders at the top
they believe that they have all the
cards they negotiate with each other
they try to to see who who blinks first
in in the game of nuclear
brinkmanship the trick
is that they don't
control fully people on the
ground the most dangerous moment of one
of the most dangerous moment of the
Cuban Missile Crisis was the Soviet
missile shooting down the American
airplane killing the pilot an act of War
right so technically we're already in
War uh
and the the order to shoot the missile
was given with Moscow having no clue
what was going on the ground Moscow
never gave gave approval for
that and uh again I described that in
book many times about Kennedy bringing
back his wisdom from World War II years
there there always will be S so B who
didn't get the order or or or missed
things and and that was happening on the
American side as well so uh people who
believe that they in control really are
not in control and that can
escalate uh whether they very often
against against their their ises so that
is one lesson but going back to what why
we're still here and why why the world
didn't didn't end up in
1962 is that the leadership and and
that's that's I I come to the issue that
you strongly believe in that people
personalities matter leaders
matter uh they were they were very
different right
uh age education political careers
understanding what politics are and so
on and so forth you mean k kusov and
Kennedy yes but they had one thing in
common that in one way they belong to
the same
generation that was generation of the
bikini at all that was the generation of
the hydrogen bomb the bomb that unlike
the atomic bomb they knew could destroy
the world and they were scared
they were scared of the nuclear of the
nuclear
weapons and they tried to do whatever
they could pushing against their
advisors or or
or were trying to deal with their with
their
anxieties the first is true for Kennedy
the the later maybe for kusov to make
sure that this that the war between the
United States and and and uh the Soviet
Union doesn't start because they knew
that that war would be would be a
nuclear war so we have we have a very
very paradoxical sort of situation the
crisis occurred because of the nuclear
weapons because kosov put them on Cuba
but the crisis was resolved and we
didn't end in the third world war
because of the nuclear weapons
because people leaders were afraid of
them and that's that's where I want to
put emphasis it's not that the nuclear
weapons created crisis or solve the
crisis it's basically our perception of
them and we are now in the age after the
Cold War era is the new generation of
Voters with the new generation of
politicians we don't belong to the
generation of bikini at all we maybe
know what bikini is but we think that
this is a different different thing yeah
is something else and it's very it's
very important it's it's so fascinating
how that Fades into memory that uh the
power and and the respect and fear of
the power of nuclear weapons just Fades
into memory and then we may very well
make the same mistakes again yes we
can another leader said that I believe
but about a totally different topic well
uh like you said I'm I'm also glad that
we're here uh more as a civilization
that we're still seem to be going on
there's several billion of us and I'm
also glad that the two of us are here
I've read a lot of your books I've been
recommending it uh please keep writing
thank you for talking today this is an
honor thank you very much Le it was it
was a pleasure thanks for listening to
this conversation with sirohi to support
this podcast please check out our
sponsors in the description and now let
me leave you with some words from Ernest
Hemingway never think that war no matter
how necessary nor how Justified is not a
crime thank you for listening and hope
to see you next
time