#444 – Vejas Liulevicius: Communism, Marxism, Nazism, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler
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The following is conversation with, they has Sally vicious, a historian specializing in germany and eastern europe. He has lectured extensively on the rise, the rain in the fall of communism. Our discussion goes deep on this, the very heavy est of topics, the communist ideology that has LED to over one hundred million deaths in the twenty eighth century.

We also discussed hitler, not the ideology, and world war two. Now, a quick you second mention, we sponsor, check them out in the description is the best way to support this podcast. We got A G one for health Better help for your mind notion for team collaboration element for electoral ates amid eight leap for nps she's wise, and my friends also.

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Let's start with carl Marks. What were the central ideas of Marks that lay the foundation of communism?

I think there were several key ideas that Marks deployed that we're destined to have such an impact. And in some ways, they were actually kind of contradictory. On the one hand, Marks insisted that history has a purpose, that history is not just random events, but that rather it's history, we might say, with a capital age history moving in a delivered direction, history having a goal A A A direction that IT was predestined to move in um at the same time, in the communist manifesto, carl Marks and his colleague feeder angles also suggested that there was a role for special individuals who might a, even if history was still moving in this predetermined direction, might give you an extra push, might play a heroic role in that process and I think that these two ideas added together the notion that there is a science of revolution that suggests that you can move in a deliberate and a meaningful rational way towards the end of history and the resolution of all conflicts. Uh a total liberation of the human person a and that moreover, that was ineffective, able that that was preprogrammed and destined in in the order of things when you add to that the notion that there is also room for heroism and the individual role, uh this ended up being tremendously powerful as a combination um earlier thinkers, uh who are socialists, had already dreamed of or projected futures where all conflict would be resolved and human life would achieve some sort of perfection Marks added these other elements and that made IT far more powerful than the earlier versions that he decried as merely utopian social.

So there's a million questions I can ask there. But so on the utopian size, so there is a upim component to the way he try to conceive of his ideas.

You are absolutely what I mean. A first of all, what has to stress Marks would gotten extremely upset at this point in the versac because because to call someone of utopian was precisely to argue that you're not scientific, you're not rational, you're not laying out the iron laws of history. You're merely hoping for the best. And that might be laudable, but IT was fundamentally unrealistic that said, hidden among marx's insistance that there are laws and and structures uh as history moves through uh class conflict modes of production h towards its ultimate goal of a comprehensive final revolution that will see all exploitation overthrown and people finally being freed from city um in in, smuggled in among those things are most definitely european elements and there they come, especially at the end in which Marks sketches the notion of what things will look like after the revolution has resolved all problems. Their vaginas sets in.

Ah it's clear that it's a blessed state that's being talked about um people no longer exploiting one another, people no longer subject to necessity of poverty, but instead enjoying all of the productivity of industrializing that hither two had been put to private profit, now collectively owned and deployed the notion that one will be able to work at one job in the morning and then engage and leisure activity or another yet another fulfilling job in the afternoon. Um all of these, all of these free of any contradictions, free of necessity, free of the sort of ordinary vitality that we experience an ordinary lives that's deeply utopia. The difference was that Marks charted out towards that outcome that was that presented itself as cutting edge science and moreover having the the full credibility that science commanded so much, especially in the nineteen, an early twenty a century.

So there is a long journey from capitalism to communism that includes a lot of problems. He thought, once you resolve the problems, all the complexity of human interactions, the friction, the problems will be gone.

To the extent that they were based on inequalities and on man's exploitation of man, the was supposed to be A A A A resolution of all of this um and inevitably, when you talk about the history of communism, you have to include the fact that this often tragic and dramatic history produced a lot of jokes, jokes that were in part reactions. Sometimes that the ideological claims made by people like Marks and one of the famous jokes was that what's the difference between capital alem and communism? And the joke's answer was, capitalism is the exploits of man by man, and communism is the exact opposite.

Yeah, you you actually have a electron humor. And I love you and you deliver in such a dry, beautiful weight. Uh, okay, this again, a million questions.

So you outline is contradictions. But it's interesting to talk about his view. For example, what was marked his view of history?

Uh, Marks had been a student of hagel and hagel as a german idealism. Philosophers had announced very definitively that history has a purpose. History is not a collection of random facts.

And as an idea alist, he proposed that the true movement of history, the true meaning of history, what made history, history with a capital age, something that transcended and meaningful, was that I was the working out of an idea through different civilizations, different stages of historical development. And that idea was the idea of human freedom. So IT was not individuals or great thinkers alone making history and having an impact.

IT was the idea itself striving to come to fruition, striving to come to an ever more perfect realization. Uh, in the case of of of hao, in this very brushing and german context, he identified the realization of freedom also with a growth of the state because he thought that governments are the ones that are going to be able to deliver on laws and on the ideal of A A state of the rule of law in german, the high start, uh, that was a noble dream. At the same time as as we recognize from our perspective, state power has been put to all sorts of purposes besides guarantee the rule of law are in our own times, what Marks did was to take this this characteristic insistence of hague, that that history is moving in a meaningful and discernment, able way towards the realization of an idea and flipped IT on its head.

Marks insisted that hao had so much that was right in his thinking. But what he had neglected to keep in mind was that, in fact, histories is is based on matter, so hence dialectical materialism, the dialectical referring to things proceeding by clashes or conflict towards, and ever greater realization of some essential idea. And so Marks adapts a lot of ideas of of ho.

You can recognize entire factorial maneuvers that are indeed to that, that earlier training, but now taken in a very different direction. What remain, though, was the confidence of being on the right side of history. And there are few things that are as intoxicating as being convinced that your actions not only are right in the abstract, but are also destined to be successful.

and also that you have a the rigor of science backing you in your journey. Toes the truth .

absolutely I mean so uh angles when when he gives the great side ology for his beloved friend mark um claims that mark is essentially the Darwin of history, the Darwin of his that he had done for the world of politics and of um human history what Darwin had done with the theory of evolution. Understanding the hidden mechanism, understanding the laws that are at work and that um make that whole process meaningful rather than just one damping ing after another what .

about the sort of famous line that history of all existing societies is the history of class struggles to? What about this conception of history as a history of class struggle?

So this was the mode of force that caroming ks and angle saw driving the historical process forward. And it's it's important to keep in mind that class conflict doesn't just mean revolution, revolts, peasant uprisings. It's the the totality of frictions and of clashes, conflicts of interest that appear in any society.

And so mark was able, in the spirit that he allowed, was very scientific to demarcate stages of historical transformation, primitive communism in the prehistoric period, then moving towards what was called state slavery. H, that's to say, the early civilizations deploying human resources and ordering them by all powerful monarch. H, then private slavery in ancient period, and then moving to feudalism in the middle ages. And then here's where, where mark is able to deliver a pronouncement about his own time, seeing that the present day is the panel ultimate the next to last stage of the historical development, because the feudal system of the middle ages in the dominance of the stock, racy has been overcome, uh, has been displaced by the author, heroic achievements, astonishing achievements in commerce and in world building of the middle class the bush I Z H who have taken the world in their own hands and our engaged in uh class conflict with the the class below them which is the working class for the politi a and so this is this sort of conflict um um also by the way of tags within classes so the buzz are going to be grave digger Marks announce ces of their own supremacy because they're also competing against one another and um members who don't survive that competition get press down into the subordinate working class uh which grows and grows and grows to the point where uh at some future moment the inevitable explosion will come and a swift solution will overturn this less this panel yma stage of human history and usher in instead the dictatorship of the working class and then the abolition of all classes because the only one class remaining, everyone is finally unified, and without those internal contradictions that had marked class conflict before.

the dictatorship of the working class is an interesting term. So what is the role of revolution in history?

So this in particular for Marks, I think, is a really key moment, which is what makes that such a good question in his vision, the epic c narrative that he's presenting to us. Revolution is key. It's not enough to have evolutionary change. It's not a question of compromises. It's not a case of of bargaining or balancing interests. Revolution is necessary as part of the process of a subjected class coming to awareness of its own historical role and when we to the politi this this uh uh a working class uh in its entirety to whom Marks a signs this uh this epic promethean role of being the ones we're going to liberate all of humanity class that is universal in its interest and in the sort of role in salvation history it'll be playing in this in this secular framework. Uh, they need revolution and the experience of revolution in order to come into their own, because without IT, you'll only have half hard to compromise and something less than the consciousness that they then need in order to rule, to administer and to play the historical role that .

they're faded to have. How did he conceive of a revolution, potentially a violent revolution, stabilizing itself into something where the the working class was able to rule?

That's where things become a good deal less detailed in his and angles accounts. The answer that they proposal in part was this is this is for the future to determine so all of the details will be settled later.

Um uh I think that was allied to this was a tremendous confidence in um some very nineteen nineteen century ideas about how society could be administered um and what made for orderly society um in a way where uh if the right infrastructure was in place uh you might expect society kind of run itself without the need for micro management from above and hence we arrive at at at mark as tantalizing promise that there will be a period where it's IT will be necessary to have centralized control and there might have to be as he puts the despotic inroads against property in order to bring this revolution to pass but then afterwards the state because IT represents everybody rather than representing particular class interest that are in conflict with other classes, the state will eventually weather away so there won't be need for IT. That's not to say that, that pure stasis arrives, right, or that the stabilization equals being frozen in time. It's not as if that is what things will look like, but instead the big issues will be settled and hence forth. People will be able to enjoy lives of, as he would consider, an authentic freedom without necessity, without poverty uh, as a result of this blessed state that's been arrived .

at despotic inroads against property. Did he elaborate on the depot and roads?

Dispossession, dispossession of the of the middle classes in the buzzi. In his model. Humanity is never standing still, right? So you'd probably argue in this dynamic vision of how history unfolds that there's there's always comfort is always moving, propelling history forward towards its predecease ding. Um in the the way he saw this climate. X uh was that as things did not stay the same, the condition of the working class was constantly getting worse.

Enhance their revolutionary potential is growing and the at the same time, the expropriation or the bush I Z were also facing diminishing returns as they competed against one another, with more and more wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and more and more elements of what had been the middle classes detached from the ruling class and being pressed down into the the working class. Um for for Marks this is really a key part. I means the key part of this whole ratchet effect is going to produce this final historical explosion.

And in in german, the word given to that process was fed Allen, which is very avoca tive island means misery. So it's the growing misery. When this gets translated into english, uh, the results are never quite as evocative or satisfactory. The words that get used, our immortalizing or properzia meeting, more and more people are being turned into poppers. But for Marks, that prediction is really key and even in his own lifetime, there are already hints that in fact, if you looked sociologically at the really developed working classes in places like gray britain or germany, that process was not playing out as he had expected. Uh in fact, uh, although they're been enormous dislocations and tremendous suffering in the early chaotic sort of wild west stages of of capitalism and of industrializing, there had been reform movements as well and there had been unions which had sought uh to carve out rules and and agreements with lawyers for how are the conditions under which workers labor might be moreover, the middle class, rather than winning and dwindling, seem to actually be strengthening and growing and numbers of the appearance of new kinds of people like White collar workers or technical experts so um already in Marks his own lifetime and then especially in what follows Marks his lifetime. This becomes a real problem because IT IT IT puts us uh a stick into the of this particular historical prediction.

Can you speak to this realm of ideas, which is fascine? There's battle of big ideas in the one thousand nine century. What are the ideas they were swimming around here?

Yeah yeah well um the to describe the nineteenth century as sort of an age of ideologies is very apt because um europe is being rack and and um um and being put through the ringer of nationalism demands for self expression of pupils who earlier been in empire or under monarchical rule, demands to redraw a map um the tremendous transformations of the industrial revolution meant that in in the course of about a generation you would have seen the world around you change in ways that made IT entirely unfamiliar.

Be able to travel across the landscape at speeds that have been unthinkable when you were a child so enormous change and and demands for yet more change and so it's a great mix of ideas, ideologies, the old and the new religious ideas, religious revivals as well as demands for secularization. And stepping into all of this are Marks and angles together in what has been called, I think, with justice. One of the most important and influential intellectual partnerships are of history. They were very different men. Uh they were both german by origin.

Um uh Marks had trained as an academic he had married the daughter of a barren um because of his radical ideas he had four closed or just found himself cut off from a possible academic career and went the out of radical journalism angles was very different angles was the sun of an industrialist and the family owned factories in germany and in england so he was most definitely not a member of the politi that he and Marks were celebrating as as so significant in their future historical role there were also huge differences in character between these men Marks when people met him, they were astonished by his energy and his dynamism. They also saw him as a man who felt determine ed to dominate arguments he wanted to win arguments and was not one to to for compromise or A A middle road um he was a disorderly in in his personal habits uh we might mention among other things that he impregnated the family made and didn't didn't accept responsibility for the child. Um he was also um not inclined to a undertake regular employment in order to support his growing family.

That's where angles came in, angles essentially from his family fortune h and then from his journalism afterwards supported both themselves s and the mark's family for decades. And so in a sense um angles made things happen uh in the in the mysterious way that friendships work. The very differences between these men made them formidable as a dynamic duo, because they baLanced off one and other idiosyncratic and turn what might have been faults into potential, potential strengths.

British store in A J. P. Taylor always has a lovely turn of phrase, even when he's wrong about historical issue.

In this case, he was right. He said that angles had charm and brilliance. Mark was a genius, and angle saw himself as the definitely the junior partner in this relationship. Here's the paradox. Without angles, a pretty clearly Marks would have not have gone on to have the sort of lasting historical impact in the world of ideas .

that he had just a thrown in the mix. There's interesting characters swiming around you of Darwin. Here's A I mean, it's difficult to do a to characterize you the level impact ahead, even just in the religious context, the chAllenges, our conception of who we are as humans.

Now there's nature who's also, I know, hanging around the area on the rose inside. There's this sexy so is this change to ask maybe of from your perspective, did these people interact in in the space of ideas to where this is relevant to our discussion or is mostly, uh, isolated? I think that it's .

a part of a great conversation, right? I think that in their works, they're reacting to one another. I M industry asked, is thought ranges across the condition of modern nation. And he definitely has things to say about industrializing. I think that a they react to one another in these a bleak ways rather than always betting being at each other throats um in in direct confrontations and that's what makes the nineteen century uh so so compelling as a story just because of the sheer vitality of the arguments that are that are taking place in in ways big and small.

Well, we should say here, when you mentioned car Marks, maybe the color red comes up for people and they think the soviet union, maybe china, but they don't think germany necessarily is interesting that I mean, germany is where coming was supposed to happen. That's right. And so can you maybe speak to that?

ten? Chi, yeah absolutely. I mean this is a this is definitely a factor in the entire history that a that we're referencing um Marks and angles never really shed their identity as germans um many of their preconceptions, even those traces of nationalism that they had within themselves, even as they were condemning nationalism as as a fraud against the working class um there clearly their entire formation had been affected by their their german background ah and it's very true, as you point out, that germany is intended to be the place where these predictions will play out. And they're also in britain, also in france, also eventually in the united states.

But it's a uh it's it's germany by virtue of be its central location and then its rapid development later than britain or france in industrialized um give IT the special role in in mark's world view and so um IT is a lasting irony or a central irony of this whole story that when a government establishes itself that claims to be following mark's prescriptions and realizing his vision IT happens in the records of the russian empire a place that was did not match the requirements of being industrialized, developed well on its way in the historical process. Um and nobody knew this Better than the bullshit lending and his colleagues um had a keen sense that what they were doing exciting as IT was, was a gamble IT was a risk because in fact the revolution to really take hold had to seize power in germany and that's why immediately after taking power uh, they're not sure they are going to last their their hope, their promise of starvation is that a workers revolution will erupt in germany. Defeated germany in order to link up with the one that has been launched in this unlikely russian location uh and hence forth uh uh uh you know great things will follow that do hue to marx's historical uh uh vision that with the lasting dimension about this is that uh this uh predominance of germany in the thinking uh of of uh Marks had two other reflections.

One was that a german socialists and later communists organize in order to a fulfillment k's vision and they produce something that leaves other westerners in all, uh, in the late one thousand nine th century. And that's the building of a strong german workers movement and a social democratic party. That social democratic party by one thousand nine and twelve, uh, is the largest party in german politics by vote and there is the possibility they might even come to power without meeting radical revolution uh which again also goes against mark's a original vision of their the necessity for a revolution.

Um workers around the world, a or rather um radical socialists look with admiration and all and what the germans have achieved and they see themselves as trying to do with the germans have done the final point is um growing up during the cold war, one thought that well, if you want to represent somebody as being a communist, that person has to have a russian accent because russia, after all the homeland of this form of government and the sov union, uh, that must be the point of origin before the bull have exceeds power. In order to really be a serious radical socialist, you needed to read german because you needed to read Marks and you needed to read cow ski and you need to read bernstein and other thinkers in this tradition. And uh it's only after the soviet asure of power that the that this all change. So there's lots of Marks of that phenomenon.

which is why the clash between nationalism and communism in germany are such a fascinating aspect of history in all the different trajectories IT could take and will talk about IT. But if we return to the nineteenth century, you've said that marx's chief rival was russian mihail balcony, who famous? He said, in eighty forty two, quote, the passion for destruction is also creative passion.

So what kind of future? The balcony? Uh, invision.

Well, but in some things agreed with Marks, and in many others disagreed. He was an anarchist, rather than hewing to the sort of scheme of history that their Marks was proposing. So he did see humanity as fighting a struggle for a Better way of life.

He envisioned, as your quotes suggest, that revolution and sheer confrontation and overthrow the existing state of things, not compromise, was going to be the way to get there but his vision was very different rather than organizing conspiratorial um uh and hierarchical political movement but kun visioned that the ties would be for a loser that both the revolutionary movement and the the future state of humanity would grow out of the free association. The ana is thinking the free ation of individuals who rejected hya article thinking in their relations with one another, rejected the state as that the form of organized violence and rejected traditional ligious ideas that he saw as buttering herky. So baccarin is part of a broader movement of socialist, and antics were demanding change and envisioning really fundamental transformation.

But his particular anarchist vision steers them into conflict with Marks. And he makes some pathetic reMarks about the problems with the system that Marks is proposing you you should add to this that the very far, very fact that Marks is a german by background and balcony is russian kind of ads of further nationalist or or element of ethnic difference there. But couldn't a warned that a sort of creeping german authority ism might institute its way into a movement that huge too closely to having high erkin in the struggle to overthrow hierarchies? And you, his anarchist convictions are are not not in question here.

They let him into conflict with Marks. And and Marks railed against him, denounced him, and eventually had him expelled from the the international. One of the things though that also makes bacon is so significant is but who is the first in a longer series of um approaches between anarchists and communists where they try to make common cause. And you have to say that in every case that ends badly for the anarchists because um um the the communist vision in particular, especially in its leninist version, uh argued for discipline and a tightly organized professional revolutionary movement the anarchists who sought to make common cause with communists st whether IT was in the days the russian revolution or the russian civil war or whether IT was then in the spanner civil war, the found themselves um targeted by uh the communist sts precisely because um of their skepticism about what turned out to be an absolutely key element in the lenders prescription for a successful revolution.

If you going to take that attention a little bit um so I guess, and were less organized .

by definition yeah why .

do you think anarchism hasn't been a rigorously tried in the way the communism was? If we just take a complete sort of danger that mean in one sense, we are living an energy today because the the nations are an an an narc state with each other. But what do you think there's not been an anais revolution?

Well, I I think that probably some anarchists would beg to differ, right? They would see um um communes in spain a during the spanish civil war an example of trying to put anarchist ideas into into place by koon um you know flitted from one area of unrest to another hoping to be in on finally the founding of the sort of free communes that he had in mind you know another key point in all of this is that anarchy means something different to different people as as a term and so when you point out quite correctly that you we have an another international situation that kind of the hobson's del of the war of all against stall where man is a wolf to man.

Generally accept, if you're talking about a needless in in in the russian revolutionary tradition and 啊 anarchists see anarchy is a blessed state and one where finally people will be freed from the distorting influence of hierarchy， traditional beliefs, uh subject ation inequalities so for them, uh, growing out of the liberation of the human being is seen as as a positive, good and and peaceful. Now that's that odds with the the prescription of someone like but couldn't for how to get there. He sees overthrow as being necessary on on the road to that but you as we point out, uh, it's absolutely key to the entire dynamic that to be an anarchist means that your efforts are not going to be organized the way a disciplined and tightly organized .

revolutionary movement would be yet an interesting stretch that a violent revolution will take us to a place of no violence or very little violence so it's a leap.

It's a leap um and IT kind of IT points a phenomenon that um would have been enraged Marks and would have been deeply alienating to the others in the tradition who have followed him but that so many in scholars have commented on and that's that there is a religious element uh you know not not a avoid one but a kind of hidden religious or secular religious element to marx's vision to the tradition that follows Marks um and you know just think of the correspondence is right Marks himself as kind of a positioning himself as a savior figure whether that's a prometheus or a moses who will lead people to the promise land the apocalypse of the end times is this final revolution that will usher in uh a blessed final state a utopia which is uh equivalent to a secular version of a heaven uh there's the the working class playing the role of a humanity in its struggle to be redeemed um and and scalar after scholar has has pointed this out uh ryan hold nee bour back in the thousand nine hundred and thirties had an article in the atlantic magazine that talked about the soviet union communism as a religion eric figurin.

A german american scholar who fled the nazis and and relocated to lousianner state university and and wrote tomes about the new phenomenon of political religions in the modern period, and he saw fascism and nazism, m and a and soviet communism as as bearing the stamp of of political religion, meaning ideologies that promised what an earlier age would have understood in religious terms. Are gona all this the esko thon, and said that these at n times the escapade was being promised in the hero now being made imminent. And he warned against that, saying the results are likely to .

be disastrous. So that's actually a disagreement with this idea that, you know, people sometimes say that, uh the soviet union is an example of an atheist cc society so when you have atheism is the primary thing that underpin the society, this is what you get. So that's what you're saying is a kind of a rejection of that, saying that there's a strong religious component uh, to economy, uh a hidden component.

one that's not officially recognized. I mean, I I think that um I had a chance to witnesses actually um when I was a child, my family I grew up in chicago to a lithuania american family and my father, who was a mathematician, got a very rare invitation to travel to soviet lizana to the university of Venus to meet with colleagues and at this point journeys of more than a few days or a week were very rare to the soviet union for for americans and the result was that I had unforgettable experiences visiting the soviet union in pressure of the day.

And among the things I saw there was a museum of atheism m that had been established in a church that had been, uh, ripped apart from inside and was meant to, meant to kind of embodied official stance of atheism. And I remember being blocked by the museum on the inside, because you would expect exhibits that, you would expect something dramatic, something that will be compelling. And instead there were, there were some folk art from the countryside showing by gon beliefs.

There were some lithographs or engravings of the spanishers position and its horse and that was pretty much yet uh but as a child I remember being um reproved in that museum for not wearing my wind breaker but instead Carrying out on my ARM, which was a very disrespectful thing to do in an official museum of athens. M um when I was able to visit the soviet union later for language course in the summer of one thousand nine hundred eighty and nine, one of the obligatory tours that we took was to file reverently past the body of lennon outside the kremlin in the muslims at red square. And communist mom's, like those of lennon earlier stolen, had been there as well.

Uh, communist mommy like my uh or hole chemin. Um really, I think uh speak to a blending of earlier religious sensibility, reverence for relic of great figures, almost sadly, figures uh, so that even what got proclaimed as atheism turned out to be a very demanding faith as well. And I think that's a contradiction that that other scholars have pointed out as well.

Yeah is a very complicated for a discussion when you remove religion as a as a big component of society, whether something like a framing of political ideologies in religious ways is the natural consequence of that. We hear nature .

of horse a vacuum. And I think that there are there are places in human character that long for transcendental explanations, right, that it's not all meaningless uh, it's in fact there's a larger purpose and I think it's not a coincidence that such a significant part of resistance to a communism regimes has in part come from on the one hand, religious beliefs h and on the other hand a from uh disillusioned true believers in communism who find themselves undergoing um an internal experience of just a revulsion uh finding that their ideals are are have not been followed on.

So this topic is one of several topics that you eloquent describe as contradictions within the ideas of a Marks. So religious, there is a kind of religious at hearings versus a also the rejection of religious dogma he stood for. We've talked about some of the others, the detention between nationalism that emerged when he was implemented verses what communism is supposed to be, which is global global ism.

Um then there's the thing that we started talking with this individualism. So you know history supposed to be defined by the large collection of humans, but there does seem to be the singular figures, including Marks himself, that are like really important a geography of global versus restricted to certain countries. And, uh, you know, tradition you supposed to break with the past year and the communism, but then marxism became one of the strongest traditions in history. That's right.

That's right. I think that last one is, is especially significant because it's it's deeply period ox ico. I'm trying to outline these contradictions, by the way, is like subjecting Marks to the sort of analysis that Marks subjected other people to, which is the point out internal contradictions, things that are likely to to become pressure points, are cracks that might open up in what supposed to be a completely a set and dry and effective uh, framework.

Um the one about tradition uh you know mark points out that the need for revolution is in order to break with the traditions that have hammed people in this earlier earlier ways of thinking earlier social structures a and and to constantly renovate and what happens instead is um a tradition of radical rupture emerges and that's really tough because imagine um uh the last stages of the soviet union where um keen observers can tell that there are problems that are building in society, there are discontents and demands that are are going to clash, especially when someone like gorbio h is proposing reforms and things are suddenly thrown open for discussion. Um the very ocean that you have, the celebration of revolutionaries, uh and the bulge vic legacy at a time when the state wants to enforce stability and an order has been received from the prior generation, think of ration of time, for instance. All of that is especially volatile mix and unlikely to work out very durably in the long run.

I would love to set of a talk about the works of Marks, the company's manifesto and duck. What can we say that interesting about the manifestation of his ideas on paper?

Well, the first thing to note, obviously, is that those those two works are very different. That's capital a is an enormous multi volume work that that Marks worked at and only got the first volume out because angle begged him to stop revising. Please just finally get IT into press and then the rest angles had to uh actually reconstruct out of notes after uh Marks passed away. Uh is a huge work. By contrast, the communist manifesto uh is um a brief panel light that ended up affecting the lives of many millions worldwide in spite of its its comparative brevity. Um the communist manifesto, moreover, is also something of the nature of having a delayed views, you could say because a when IT first appears amid the revolutions of one hundred and forty eight that sweep across europe a the work is contrary to what people often believe that pallets did not cause the revolutions of one hundred forty eight, many of which had national or liberal demands uh the voice of mark angles was barely to be heard over the din of other far more prominent actors. IT is, however, in the aftermath that this work takes on tremendous significance and becomes popularly red and popular distributed it's especially the uh the episode the the bloody episode of the paris commune eighteen seventy one which comes to be identified with Marks even though he was not purely inspired by Marks alone nor were all of the communards devoted marxists.

It's the identification of this famous or infamous episode in in urban upheaval that really leads to uh um worldwide notorious for Marks and attention uh to those works and they're very different inform uh thus capital is intended to be the origin of species of its a realm of economic thought and and represents years and years of work of of Marks laboring in the british museum library, a working through statistics, working on little bits and pieces of a larger answer to big historical questions that he believes that he he's arrived at uh its tone is different from that of the commits manifesto, which is a call to arms IT announcers with a great confidence what the scheme of history will be but rather than urging that the answer might be passivity and just waiting for history to play out its prior way, it's also A A cleri an call to make the revolution happen uh and is intended to be a pragmatic practical statement of of how this is to play out and you know starts in part with those ringing words about us, a ghost to respect or haunting europe the specter of communism, which wasn't true at the time but decades later, most definitely is the case.

Is there something to say about the difference between marx in economics and mark is political ideology so the political side of things in the .

economics of things so I I think that Marks would probably responded that in fact those things are indivisible. Uh, the analysis uh as sort of purely theoretical, is certainly can be performed on any economic reality that you care to mention but the imperatives that grow out of that in that econic analysis are political um Marks and and angles um emphasize the unity of theory and practice so it's it's not enough to dispassionate analyze uh it's a call to action as well because if you delivered the answer to how history evolves and changes IT obligates you right IT demands certain action um you sometimes hear from undergraduates that they've heard from their high school history teachers that that mark is was just a theoretical construct that was on the idle production of a philosopher who was um not connected to the world and was never meant to be tried in practice.

Marks would have been furious to hear this and it's almost heroically wrong as a historical statement because Marks insisted that all previous philosophers have theorize about reality what now is really necessary is to change IT so um you you could say that in the abstract uh a marxist economists can certainly use markis theoretical framework uh to compare to a given economic reality but Marks would have seen that is incomplete and as deeply unsatisfactory there's kind of a fu note to all of this which is that even though marxist dialectical materialism grounds itself in these economic realities and the political prescription is supposed to flow from the economic realities and um and and be inevitably a growing out of them. In the real history of communist regimes you've actually seen periods where the economics becomes detached from the politics and i'm thinking in particular of um the new economic period uh early in the history of the soviet union when lennon realizes that the economy is so far gone that you need to reintroduce or allow in a limited way some elements of private enterprise just to start getting russia back on course in order to have the accumulation of surplus that will be necessary to build the project at all and that there are many multis to see the new economic program as a new economic policy as a terrible compromise and in a betrayal of of their ideas. But it's it's seen as necessary for a short while and then stolen will will entirely or consider for that matter uh china today where you have a uh a dominant political class, the communist party of china, uh which is allowing economic development a and private enterprise as long as IT retains political control.

Um so some of these elements already represent divergences from what Marks would have expected. And this is this points to a really key problem question for all of the history of communism, and has to do with that being a tradition in spite of itself. And that could be expressed in the following way, an original set of ideas.

It's going to evolve. It's going to change because circumstances is change. What elaborations of any doctor, whether it's communism or a religious doctrine or any political ideology, what elaborations are natural stages in the evolution of any living set of ideas, or when you reach the point where some shift or some adaptations is so radical, different that IT actually breaks with the tradition.

And that's an insolvable problem we probably have to take out on a case by case basis. IT speaks to issues like the question that gets raised today. I is china in a meaningful sense, a communist country anymore um and there's a there's a diversity of opinion on the score.

Or you know if you're looking at the history of communism, and you look at north korea, which now is on its third installment of a dynastic leader from the same family who rules like a god king over a regime that calls itself communist st, is that still a form of commission? Is an an evolution of, is that a complete reversal of? I tend to want to take an anthropological perspective in the history of communism, and to take very seriously those people who avow that they are communist.

And this is the project that they have underway. And then after hearing that of owl, I think is a history you have to say, well, let's look at the details. Let's see what changes have been made, what continuity might still exist, whether there's a larger pattern to be discerned. T here. Um so it's a very, very complicated history that we're talking about.

Let's step back to the end of the thousand nine hundred century, in the beginning of the twenty years century, and let's steel man the case for communism. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of the people there. Not in this way.

We can look to look back at what happened in the twenties century. Why was this such a compelling notion for millions of people? Can we make the case for IT?

Well, clearly was a compelling case for millions of people. And and part of this story has to do with, overall, to do with the faith, conviction stories of of people sacrificing themselves as well as their country man, in a cause that they believed was not just legitimate, but demanded their total obedience.

I think that throughout the early part of the twenty eighth century, late one thousand nine hundred th century, early part of the twenty eighth century, so much of the compelling case for communism came from the confidence that people in the west more generally placed in science, and the notion that science is answering problems. Science is giving a solution to how the world around us works, how the world around us can be improved. Um some varieties of that and I watch the quotation mark. Science were crazy right like phonology so called scientific racism that tried to divide humanity up into uh discrete blocks uh and to manipulate them in ways that were allegedly scientific or rational so there were horrors that followed from uh, those invocations of science, but its prestige was enormous and that in part had to do with uh, the a lessing grip of religious ideas on intellectual elites more generally. Processes of secular zia, not total secular zone, but but processes of secular zone in.

In western industrial societies um and the sense that here's a doctrine that will allow escape from wars brought on by a capitals competition, poverty and economic cycles and depressions brought on by a capital competition ah the inequalities of societies that remain hierarchical in class based and this claim to be in cutting edge science, I think, allows people like lennon to derive immense confidence in the prescription that they have for the future and that paradox xy ally, the confidence that you have in broad strokes the right set of answers for how to get to the future also allows you to take huge liberties with the tactics and the strategies that you follow as long as your ultimate goal remains the one sketched by this this master plan. So um you know ultimately some of the predictions of someone like lennon that that once society has reached that stage of the dictor ship of of the politi the notion that governments will essentially be able to run themselves and that the model he had in mind, oddly enough, was swiss post offices being in swiss exile must have impressed him so much with the orderliness and the sheer discipline and rationality of a swiss post office and he thought, why can't you organize governments like this where you don't need political leaders, you don't need grand visions, you have procedures, you have bureaucracy, which does its job in a way that's not alienating but simply produces the the greatest good. You know, when you think of experiences with the bureaucracy in the twenty years century, once hair stands on and to have the comparative uh um on display with a prediction like that, but IT derives from that confidence that it's all gna be OK because we understand we have the key, we have the plan to how arrive uh at this this final configuration of humanity yeah the certainty .

of science in quotes and the golf of utopia gets you in trouble but also just on a human level, from from a working class person perspective, from the industrial revolution, you see the growing inequality, wealth and inequality. And there is a kind of, you see people getting wealthy. And combine with the fact that life is difficult, life in general, life is suffering for many, for most, for all.

If you listen to some, and there is kind of A A powerful idea in that the man is exploiting me, and that's a popular message that a lot of people resonate with because to a degrees drop in every system. And so before you kind of know how these economic and political ideas manifest themselves, IT is really powerful to say, here, beyond the horizon, there's a world where the rich man will not exploit my hard work anymore. And I think that's a really powerful idea.

IT is, I mean, at the same time, so I kind of points to uh you know a further problem as the identity of the revolutionary um IT IT turned out that uh many of these revolutionary movements uh and then the finding elites of communist countries uh in the aftermath of the the soviet measure of power um turn out to be something quite different from people who have spent their lives in factories experiencing the industrial revolution first hand. And there's a special role here for intellectuals and when when Marks and angles right into the communist manifesto the notion that certain exceptional individuals can rise above their class origins in a way other people can't and transcend their earlier role, their material determined role, in order to gain a perspective on the historical process as a whole, and allied themselves with a working class and its for communism. This sort of special role that they carved out for themselves is enormously appealing for intellectuals because any celebration of intellectuals as world movers is going to appeal intellectuals.

Uh that that um gap that um uh that frequent reality of not being in touch with the very classes that the comments are aiming to represent uh is a very frequent theme in a in this story uh IT also um speaks to a crucial part of the story which is the breaking apart or the civil war, the war of brother against brother, the funeral al struggle that split socialism and split followers of Marks and that's in the uh aftermath of the the first world war in particular during the this traumatic experience the way in which lennon encourages the foundation of radical parties that will break with social democracy of the sort that have been elaborated. Especially in places like germany scoring their moderation and instead announcing a new dimension tion, which was the lenders conception of a disciplined, hard core professional revolutionaries who will act in ways that that a mere trade union movement couldn't. And what this speaks to is you know a fundamental tension in uh in radical movements because h left to their own devices, then in uh announcers.

Workers tend to focus on their reality, their families, their workplace, want Better working conditions, unionize and then aim to negotiate with employers or to a agitate reforms on the part of the state, improve their living conditions. And then they're happy for the advances that they have won. And for london, that's not enough because that's a half measure. That's the sort of thing that leads you into an accommodation with the system rather than the overthrown over the system. So there's a real there's a conservation uh in in in this regard that place itself out over the long haul.

So let's go to a lenin and russian revolution. How did the communism come to power? In south, an IT came to power .

a result of stepping into a power vacuum. And the power vacuum was created by the first real law. And it's the the effect that IT had as a total war, unprecedented pressure placed on a regime that in many ways uh was A A traditional almost photo monarchy, uh only experiencing the beginnings of the modernization that a the rest of europe and undergone uh and for this reason communism comes to power in a place that Marks probably wouldn't have expected in the wreckage of the russian empire. A lendon is absolutely vital to this equation because he's the one who presses the process forward ironically um given the claim of communist leaders to having the key to history just a few months previous in exile and switzerland and lennon had been desperate and have been convinced that that that he's not meant I even live to see the advent of that day but then when revolution does break out in uh the russian empire uh in february of one thousand nine hundred and seventeen, lennon is absolutely frantic to get back and when he does get back as a result of a deal that is negotiated with the german high command, a step that they are later live very much to regret, he is able to get back and to go into action and to press for nothing less than the seizure of power ah that brings the his boltin c faction, the radical uh wing of the socialist movement a to power in and then to build the soviet union so .

even he was surprised how effective and how fast the revolution .

happened he was although I think that he would a would have agreed that what was necessary was a capitalism on the scale of the first world war to make this happen um the first world war shares so many of the certainties of the nine hundred th century that we talked about as as a dynamic period with argument between ideologies.

It's scrambles all sorts of earlier debates IT renegotiate tes, the status of the individual versus and all powerful state and the claims of the state because to win or even just to survive in whole world, one you need to centralize, centralize, centralized uh and to put everything onto a uh authoritarian war time footing in country after country. Uh so lennon uh earlier had already articulated the possibility that this might happen by talking about how the entire globe already was connected. And there's a chain of capitalist development that is connecting different countries so that the weakest link in the chain, if IT breaks, if IT pops open, a IT might actually inaugurated bigger processes and started a chain reaction.

And that's what he intended to do and has the chance to do in the course of one thousand nine hundred and seventeen. Incidentally, just to get us a sense of the sheer chaos and the um the human on an individual human level what the absence of uh established authority meant. There's there's few works of literature that is powerful as but is pox doctors jao for giving the whole sweep of contending forces in a power vacuum. It's an amazing testimony at that time in place.

So you said the bolshoi s of violence and terror as necessary. So can you just speak to this aspect there? Because they took power and and so this was a part of the way they saw the world.

right? And I had enticements, even though lenton and his colleagues are competing among st. Each other for the title of most faithful ful disciple of Marks and and most true to the received a theory in in practice there's other influences, earlier influences that Operate in the russian context uh, that we're not Operative, let's say, in the german context. And here you have to step back and think about the nature of sorrow m which had maintained still uh into the twenty years century, the notion of divine right to rule that god had ordained that our our system and its and that a question this was was simple and politically not advisable. And the restrictive nature of russian society at this point, dominated by its arrest establishment, its harshness, its reactionary nature, meant that people who, in another context in another country might have been reformers, could instead very easily be provoked into becoming revolutionaries.

And lending is a perfect example of this because his, a older brother, uh, was executed as a result of being in a, uh, radical revolutionary movement uh that was who was arrested, executed for uh association with terrorism um and earlier generations of russian radical had uh founded populist groups that would aim to engage in terrorism in resistance against the tourist regime um and this included uh people who call themselves neist and these newly sts were materialists who saw themselves um ushering in uh a new age by absolute rejection of earlier religious traditions uh and aiming for material answers to uh the the chAllenges of the day uh among them uh was nicola china chef ski who wrote uh what's been called the worst book ever written IT was in fact one of land's favorite books in russian. Ates sodium in english is translated what is to be done and it's a utopian novel about revolutionary and how revolutionary should act with one another in open ways, new ways, non traditional ways, in order to help ushering the the coming revolution. Lendon love the work and said he had a great matter of showing you how to be a revolutionary.

So there's the marxist influence and then there's russian populist nearly influence, which uh um is also a very live current in in london thinking. And when you add these things together, you get a an explosive mix because lennon, as a result in part of this family traun of his brother becomes A. Absolutely reconciliable enemy of the tarried regime and sets about turning himself into what you might call a guided missile for revolution.

He turns himself into a machine to produce revolutionary change. And I mean that with little hyperbole, lending at one point shared with friends that he loved listening to music, but he tried not to listening to beautiful music like very often because he made him feel gentle. While the revolution demanded was real album hardness, absolute stealing resolve.

So lendon um worries even to follow revolutionary by the intensity of his single mda of focus to revolution. He spends his days thinking about the revolution. He probably dropped about the revolution. Uh and so twenty four or seven is an existence where he's paired off other um human elements, quite deliberate, in order to turn himself into an effective instigator of revolution. So when the opportunity comes in one thousand nine hundred and seventeen, he's primed and and ready, uh, for that role.

It's interesting that nya ism, russian analisa had an impact on london. And in traditionally, nyala philosophy rejects all sorts of traditional morality. There is a kind of cynical, dark view. And where is the late.

the lightest science, the lightest science and materialism, the nyi sts? Um some of them did a very bad job of hiding their political beliefs because that they would wear they were famous for wearing blue tinted spectacles, kind of the sunglasses of the late eighteen th century as a way of shielding their eyes from light, but also having a display ate and realistic view of reality outside. So um realists, as the name would suggest, do reject all prior certainties, but they make an exception for science and see that as the possibility for founding a an entirely new mode of existence .

for most people. I think animalism is introduced in the brilliant philosophical work. I know you're familiar with the by the name of the big law ski analysis appear there and I think they summarize analyst tradition quite well. But IT is indeed fascinating and also IT is fascinating ing that learning and i'm sure this influence stalling as well that hardness yeah was unnecessary human characteristics to take the revolution to its its end.

That's right. That's right. So prior generations of analysts or populists um had resembled lenton single minded ness by being by arguing that a we need a total devotion for this. This was if to play this role in society IT was not enough to be somewhat committed. Total commitment was necessary.

And the other thing that that work here obviously is um if we consider lendon affected by marxist ideas and the homegrown russian revolutionary tradition that pre dates uh uh um the arrival of marxist socialism in in russia, it's the theme of needing to adapt to local conditions. So marxism uh or communism in vietnam or in cuba or in cambodia or in russia, will be very different in its local adaptations and local themes and resonance. Then IT was in germany where Marks would have expected all this done fold.

So let's talk about when in rosky and stalin, this little interplay that eventually had to stalin accumulating, grabbing and taking a hold of power, what was that process like?

So lennon, supreme confidence leads the the party through some really difficult steps that involves things like signing the humiliating treaty with the germans, the treated of bread sloops, where critics of the bullshit said that no one who love their their country have would have agreed to a so draconian, so harsh a settlement that saw the peeling off of large territories that had belong to the russian empire lennon is willing to undertake this because the larger prize um he even says that he's not going to bother to read the treaty because shortly that treat is going to be a dead letter his expectation is revolutions going to break out everywhere. Especially after we've raised the standard, first of all, in the wreckage of the the russian empire .

and we should probably say that that treated to some small degree, maybe you can elaborate now or later, at least the the groundwork for world war two. Because there is resentment is a thing that with time can lead to just extreme levels of destruction.

right in in for for german sensibilities, for german nationalists, that treaty meant the germany had essentially one world war one and only a turn of events that many of them couldn't even follow or conceivable the the arrival of american troops, the tipping in the baLance in the west LED to that reversal.

And um one of the many scholars and contemporary pointed out that germany between the wars was full of people who are convinced that germany had actually not lost the war however, that Victory of theirs was defined so most definitely that the groundwork is laid and incidentally, um this is something we can talk about later world war one and world world war two have a lot of linkage ches like that and and as time goes by, I think historians are going to focus on those linkages even more but lennon are also in his leadership against the odd's leads the bolshoi s to power in the russian civil war where most bedding people would have given them very slight odds of even surviving given how many enemies they faced off against linn's insistence about discipline and upon good organization allow the bulk of emerge as the winners and yet a great disappointment follows lending, as we said had expected that revolution will break out soon everywhere and all will be necessary for the bolshoi s to do having given the lead is to link up with others and so he considered that what would be establish would be a red bridge between a communist st. Um uh russia and once germany inevitably plunged ahead into its revolutionary translation, iconic germany, that doesn't end up happening. On the contrary, what happens in germany is a out and out shooting war between different kinds of socialists when germany establishes a democracy that later goes by the name of the vanna republic.

The government is the government of social democrats, moderate social democrats, who are fearful of what they see as russian conditions disorder. And we are not necessarily in sympathy of with the lenders vision of tightly organized a authority, an rule. So communist revolt in, uh, germany are brutally suppressed by mercenaries, uh, the harden front fighters and a and h nationals radical hired by the german socialist government.

And the result is a wound that just won't heal in the german socialist movement. As a result of this fratricide, IT frustrates len's ambitions. So too there's the fact that poland, rather than going bulch wic, resists attempts by the bullshit x to move forward and to connect up with germany.

Uh uh the polls, uh yet again uh, play a tremendously important historical role in changing the expected course of historical events. It's in the aftermath of these unexpected turns that lending and his colleagues realize that they are innings for the long hall. It's necessary to wait longer. They don't lose hope in or confidence, you might say, in the eventually coming of international worker's revolution. But IT has its been deferred. It's been put off and so the question then arises what you build within a state that establish called the union of soviet socialist republic ics for the the soviet union um when in as a result of an assassination attempt uh is deeply affected in his health and um would have loved to continue for years longer to steer the regime but he's sideline because of his declining health and there emerges a contest, the contest between a very charismatic um leader uh uh leota ski um on the one hand who is an amazing orator, who is an intellectual who has traveled widely in the world, was seen um a much of the world and who is a brilliant writer uh a far arranging intellect and is seen as extremely radical because of his demand for permanent revolution the acceleration of revolutionary processes to drive history forward to to strike while the iron is hot and on the other hand is an extremely unlikely contender for power and that's a man whose probably the antithesis of carma if you were to meet him in person uh a guy with a uh a squeaky, somewhat high pitched voice.

Not well suit to revolutionary auditory uh his face pock marked with uh the scars of uh youthful illness h and who moreover doesn't speak uh a fine sophisticated russian but speaks a uh russian heavily inflected with a georgian accent um from that part of the russian empire from which he came and that was stalin and um I know that you already have a marvellous uh interview with uh Stephen kokand uh the brilliant biographer a of stolen uh who um has so many insights um on that subject the one thing that that even after reading about stalling um that never cease to surprise me even in retrospect, is that stalin gains a reputation not as a fire y radical but as a moderate a man who's a conciliator, someone whose calm and others are excited someone who is able, because of his organization skills, to resolve merely theoretical disputes with practical solutions now to fully take this aboard we have to what we know from our vantage point about style and leadership style in the brutality and eliminating his opposition um the cut of personality that against all odds got built up around stolen so so successfully um and the the absolute dominant role that LED him later to be described as gangs kon with a telephone A A A A A brutal dictator uh uh with ancient barber's m allied to the use of modern technology while try ski is delivering staring speeches and theorizing stolen works behind the scenes to uh control personal decisions in the bulch VC movement and in the state and you know it's a good shake as it's true that personnel is policy rosky is increasingly sidelined and then demonize and eventually expelled from the soviet union and later murdered um in in mexico. City um for stolen um eliminating ating his enemy has turned out to be the solution that he was most comfortable with.

So from that perspective, there's a lot of fascinating things here. So one is that you can have a wolf, a brutal dictator in mother clothing. So just just because somebody presents his mother doesn't mean they can be one of most destructive, not the most started to humans in history.

The other aspect is using propaganda. You can construct the image of a person even though they're uncharismatic not attractive, their voice is no good. All of those aspects, you can still have a route like they're still, to this day, a very large number of people that see him as a religious type of a god like figure. So the power of propaganda there today.

we call accurate the image.

creating image. But to the extent to which you can do that effectively, um is is quite incredible. So in that way, also stolen is the study of the power propaganda. Can we just talk about the ways that the the power vacuum is filled by stolen how their manifest itself perhaps one angle can take as how was the secret police used hutted power manifests itself understand well .

um before getting to the secret police, I would just want to add the other crucial element, which is lenders patronage style. Doesn't you brawl his way into the boss of a party and and and and dominate? He's q opted and promoted to positions of importance by lendon who sees him as uh a somewhat rough around the edges, not very sophisticated uh much less Cosmopolite than other bolshy ics but but dependable, reliable and committed revolutionary.

So um I think that one of the things that emerged, especially after archives opened up with the fall of the soviet union and we were able to read more and more the communications of lenin, is that there's it's not the case that we're talking here about um a unconnected series of careers. Rather there are connections to be made. It's true that towards the end of his life, lenna came be worried by complaints about thousands rudeness towards fellow bulch ics.

And in his testiment he warned against a stan's testimonies. London fundamentally saw himself as irreplacable, and so that doesn't really help in a succession struggle right. Um stolen is able to rely on a secret police APP aratus.

They have been built up under london already and um it's a very early in the foundation of the soviet state that uh the chick h or the extraordinary commission is established as a secret police to terrify the enemies, beat down the opponents of the regime and to a keep an iron society more generally. Uh the person whose chosen for that task also is a anomaly among bulch. Vx, uh, that is a man of polish isi craic background, felix decision ski, who comes to be known by the nickname iron felix. Uh, here's a man about whom a culture personality also has created. Version ski is celebrated in the soviet period as the model of someone who's harsh but fair, a, an executioner but with a heart of gold, somebody who loves children somebody who has a tender heart but forces himself to be steely willed against the opponents of the ideological project of the bulge vex um the genki is succeeded by figures who will be absolutely instrumental to stalin's exercise of power and they're not immune either stolen in his prejuges takes care also to perch the secret police as a way uh finding others upon him to deflect blame for a earlier atrocities and uh to produce a situation where even committed bull chavez are uncertain of what's going to happen next and feel their own position to be precarious I mean, incidentally, there are other influences that probably brought to bear here as well. IT gets said about style and that he used to spend a lot of time flipping through mucky valleys.

The prince and um IT seems that stands personal copy of the prince um nobody knows where that is if if if IT still exists but the historians have found annotations in works by lennon that stalin, who is a vacuous reader, as IT turns out, um made in in the back of one of the books which sounds almost like a commentary on lucky valley almost but not quite suggestion that the ends justify the means stan's own writing says that if someone is strong, active and intelligent, even if they do things that other people condemn, they're still a good person and so stan's self conception of himself is someone who along these line and in line with lens emphasis on on practical results and discipline, somebody who gets things done. That's the crucial ethical standard and and in ultimately a in in criticisms by later dissident of bolshoi c morality this question of what is the ethical standard, what is the ethical law, uh, will bring this question into focus because by the and this goes back to Marks as well, incidentally, the notion that any ethical system, any notion of writer wrong is purely a product of class identity because every class produces its distinctive ideas. It's the sting of religion, is the sting of art forms, is the sting of styles um means that with no one transcendent or absolute morality it's all up for grabbing. And then it's a question of power and the exercise of power with no limits untramelled any laws whatsoever, dictatorship in its purest form, something that london had a vowed. And then style en comes to practice more a, even more fully.

Not that is possible to look deep into a person's heart, but you feel like a rose key. You could say that he probably believed deeply in marxism, in the communism, probably the same in london. What do you think stan believed? Was he a believer? Was, was he a pregnantly st.

That use communism as a way to gain power? Ideology is part propaganda. Or did he, in his own private moments, to deeply believe in the setup? A.

and that's an excEllent question and you're quite right. I mean we cannot peer into the in most recesses of somebody dies being and and know for sure my intuition though is that um is that this may be a false alternative, A A false economy ah it's natural enough to see somebody who does monist ers things to say, well this is being ideologies being used as a cover for IT. But I think that um my suspicion is that these were actually perfectly compatible in his historical role the notion that that there's an ideology that gives you A A master plan for how history is going to develop and your own power that the increase of that power, the unprecedented uh uh proportions, your ability to torment even your own faithful followers uh in order just to see them score which stolen, was famous for uh I to keep people unsettled. I to me IT seems that for some people those might not actually be opposed but might even be mutually reinforcing, which is a very scary thought.

It's terrifying. What's really important to understand if you look at one stone takes power at some of the policies. So the collectivisation of agriculture, why do you think that failed so uh catastrophically uh especially in the one thousand nine and thirties with the ukraine and political.

I think the the short answer is that um the bull travels in particular, but also communities more generally without a very conflicted relations with agriculture.

Agriculture um as a very, very vital obviously, but also very traditional an old form of human activity um has about IT all of the the smell of tradition and other problematic factories as well um in a place like uh russia, uh with a russian empire um peasants throughout history for centuries had wanted one thing and I was to be left alone to farm their own land um that's their utopia and that for someone like Marks who had a vision of historical development and transcendence and progress as being absolutely key uh does not measure at all with that vision for that reason, when Marks comes up with this this tablet, this tremendous display of historical transformation taking place over centuries and headed towards the final utopia, the role of farmers there is is negligible. Peasants get called a conservative and dull a sex of potatoes in uh mark's uh historical vision because they're limited in their horizon. They farm their land, their plot and don't have greater revolutionary goals beyond working the land and having IT free and clear.

By contrast industrializing that's progress and images that today would be deeply disturbing to an environmentalists sensibility. Smoke steps belching smoke, the by products of industry landscape transformed by, uh, the factory model. That's what Marks and then later the bullshit s have in mind. Similarly, the goal, even as articulated in marx's writings, is to put agriculture and farming on a factory model so that you won't need to deal with this traditional role of the independent farmer or the present. Instead, you'll have people who benefit from progress, benefit from rationalization by working factory farms.

So in approaching the question of collectivisation, we have to keep in mind that for uh, stolen and his comrades who are bound and determined to drag russia kicking and screaming into the modern age and not to allow to be beaten because of its backwards, a styling puts IT traditional forms of agriculture are not what they have in mind and in their rank of desired outcomes. Industrializing, especially massive heavy industry, is the cyclone that's their envisioned future of agriculture rates below. So in that case, the crucial significance of collectivisation is to get a handle on the food situation in order to make IT predictable and not to find oneself in another crisis like during the civil war, when the cities are starving, industry is robt of labor, and the factories are at a at a stand still.

So this is really the the the core approach to collectivisation to put the productive capacity of the farmers, uh, in a regimented way, in a state controlled way, under the control of of the state. This produces vast human suffering because for the farmers, their plot of land that they thought they had gained as a result of the revolution is now taken away. They no longer have the same incentives they had before to be successful farmers.

In fact, if you're a successful farmer and maybe have a cow, as suppose your neighbors who have no cow, you're defame and denounces a cool C, A tight fisted exploiter, even though you might be helping to develop a agriculture in the region that you're from so the result is human tragedy on a vast scale. And allied to that uh incidentally, is uh styling sense that um this is a chance to also target people who are opposed to the bullet vic regime for other reasons whether it's because of their ukrainian identity, uh, whether it's because of a desired for a different nationalist project. Uh so for stalin there are many motives that roll in to collectivisation and the final thing to be said is you're quite right that collectivisation proves to be a failure because the soviet union never finally gets a grasp on the problem problems of agricultural production.

By the end of the soviet union they are importing grain from the west ah in ah in spite of having some of tremendously rich farmland to be found worldwide. And the reason for that had to do in part, I think, with the incentives that had been taken away uh prosperous individual farmers have a motive for working their land and maximizing production. By contrast, if you are an employee of a factory style agricultural enterprise, uh the incentives run in very different directions and the joke that was common um for decades in the soviet union and other communist countries with similar systems was we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.

So even labor which is um rhetorically respected and uh vi ized um in practice is rewarded with very slim rewards. And the last point in mobility, the collectivisation reduces the mobility of the presents who are not allowed because of internal passports to move to the cities unless they have permission, they're locked in place. And got ta say at the time and afterwards, that looked a lot like footballs m or a neo feudalism in terms of the restrictions on on workers in the .

countryside. IT is a terrifying, horrific and fascinating study of how the idea when meeting reality fails. So the the idea here is to make agriculture more efficient.

So be more productive. So the industrialized model, but the implementation through collectivisation, had all the elements mentioned that a contended with human nature. So first with the cool ox, so the successful farmers were punished.

And so then the incentive is not just not to be a successful farmer. But to like hide, added to that, there's a growing quota that everybody supposed to deliver on that nobody can deliver on. And so now because you can't deliver on that quote, you basically expLoring all your food, uh, and you can even feed yourself and then you suffer more, more and more.

And there's a vicious downward spiral like you can possible produce that. Now there's an another human incentive where you're gonna lie. Everybody lies on the data. And so even uh stolen himself probably uh as evil or in company as he may be he was not even getting good data about what's even happening even if he wanted to stop the vicious on my cycle, which he certainly didn't but he wouldn't be even able to so there is all these like dark consequences of uh of what on paper seems like a good idea and is a fascinating study of like things on papers that's when implemented can go really.

really bad. That's right. The outcome here is a horrific man made family, not a nal disaster, not bad harvest, but a man laid famine as a result of then the compulsion that is used by the soviet state to extract those resources according ing off the area, not allowing starting starting people to to escape.

Um you put very well some of the the implications of this case study in in how things look at the abstract versus in practice um and those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the soviet union um the whole notion that up and down the chain of command everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or pretium ying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and and not to you know have vengeance visited upon them um reaches the point where nobody inspired the pretense of comprehensive knowledge right there's A A state planning agency that creates five year plans for the economy is as a whole and which is supposed to have accurate statistics. All of this is founded upon A A foundation of sand that's in advert. That's not an intended side effect.

But what you described as in terms of the internal dynamics of Fostering conflict in a rural society was absolutely not in inverted. That was deliberate. The doctrine was you bring civil war now had there have been social tensions before, of course there are had had there been envy, had there been differentiations in uh in in wealth or status, of course there had been but a deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heightened in the countryside um does damage.

And not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection. Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurs, those who have most self discipline, those were the best organized, will be windows again and again and again, uh, sending the message that media quality is comparatively much safer than talent. And this pattern, incidentally, gets transposed and in tremendous herring ways also to a the entire group of uh russian intelligencies and intellectuals of other people's who are in the soviet union. Um they discover similarly that to be independence, to have a voice which is not compliant uh Carries with the uh tremendous penalties um in in especially installs. Rains of terror again.

a difficult question about a psychology of one human being. But to what degree you think stolen was deliberately punishing the farmers and the ukrainian farmers and to a degree, was he looking the other way and allowing me the large scale incompetence, the horrific competence of the collectivisation agriculture to happen? Well.

I mean, I think he's both things right. I mean, there were not only sense of emission but also sense of commission. Um incidently, once to add I don't think for style in IT was personal um these are people who are very remote from him.

He never never coming into contact with the people who are suffering in this way um attributed to him is the quote that one death is a tragedy a million deaths is a statistic I think he in action certainly acted in a way that would vindicate that um but the process of collectivisation was not just a bureaucratic snaffle following a bureaucratic snafu there was the mobilization of communist youth of military, of party activists to go into the regions and to search for hidden food to uh uh extract the um the food work could be found and um this we have had testimony to this in the case of people who later became dissidents like love couple love who wrote in his memo res about how he was among those who were sent to enact these policies and he saw families with the last food being taken away even as signs of starvation were visible already in the present and yet he did not go mad. He didn't kill himself. He didn't fall to despair because he believed because he had been taught and believed at least then that this was justified. This was a larger historical process and a greater good would result even from these enormities. So I think that um this was quite deliberate.

Following this, as you've mentioned, there was the process of the great terror, or the intellectuals, where the commits, party officials, the military officers, the bureaucrats, everybody, a seven hundred and fifty thousand people were executed and over a million people sent to the gulag. What can you say by with wisdom from this process of the great tair that still implemented from thirty six to thirty eight?

Well, that the terror had a variety victims um there were people who were true believer and who were bulch fix who were especially targeted by stalin because he aimed to revenge himself for all the sort of condescent that he's experienced in that movement before and also to eliminate rivals or potential rival power centers and members of their families and then there were people who um simply got caught up in a process whereby the repressive organs in the provinces were sent. quotas. You have to achieve your quota and maybe even Better yet, over achieve your quota, over perform, that would be the key to success. And rising in uh the bureaucracies in the age of the terror, what's so horrifying is the way in which a whole society stood paralyzed in this this process um and how a neighbors would be taken away in the middle the night and people would be wary of talking about IT um resistance uh um at least in in these urban centers uh with entirely paralyzed by fear when uh if one had somehow find a way mobilized, somehow a way to to resist the process, the results might have been different. There's there's an astonishing book. I mean, there are so many great books that have come out quite recently even on these topics or landa figures has a amazing book called the whispers that traces several families history in the stalling period and it's a testimony to how a whole society and some of its most intelligent people got winnowed again and again and again in that process of negative selection that we talked about, the lasting dislocation and scars that this left, and the way in which shows people were not able to talk about these things in public because that would put you next on the list uh suspected of of of having less than total devotion to the state.

I think one of the things that also is so terrifying about the entire process is even total devotion an wasn't enough um the process took on a life of its own and I think that uh in in might even have surprise stolen in some ways um not enough to to to to short circus the process but the notion where um people were invited to Denny ce neighbors, coworkers, maybe even family members um meant that every larger groups of people would be brought into the orbit of the secret police tortured in order to produce confessions those confessions then would lead to more list of suspects of people who are were had to be investigated and um either executed or sent to the gooloo um the uncertainty that this produced IT was enormous um even loyalty was not enough to save people the stories soga eton's gu la architects is full of stories of dedicated communist sts uh who find themselves in the gooloo and are sure that some mistake has been made and if only comrade stalin would hear about this terrible thing that has happened to them um surely uh I would be corrected and nothing like this with everyone else by contrast. Accused of terrible crimes must there must be some truth behind that so uh you know, talk about ways of of disagreeing a society, ways of breaking down bonds of trust um this left lasting traces on an entire society that endured to this very day yeah.

there again a fascinating study of human nature that there essentially was an an emergent quote of confessions of treason. So like even though the whole society was terrified and were through terror loyal, there still needed to be a lot of confessions of people being displayed. So you just making shut up now, like at a mass scale, stuff is being made up and is also the machine of the secret police starts eating itself because you want to be confessing and your that's boss on year and is this weird, dark, uh dynamic system or human nature is is, is worst .

absolutely absolutely.

Why if we look at this deep discussion ahead about marxism, uh, to what degree can we understand from that lends why the implementation communism in the soviet union failed in such a dark way with an economic system with agriculture and industrializing, and on the human way with the just violation of every possible human right and the torture and the suffering and h go logue in all of all of this.

Well, I think some of IT comes back to the ethical grounding that we mentioned earlier, the notion that ethics are entirely situation, and that any ethical system is an outgrowth of a particular class reality, of particular material reality. And that leaves the door wide open. So I think that that that aspect was present from the very beginning. I think that the um expectations of Marks a that the revolution would take hold and be successful in a developed country played a role here as well. Russia, which compared to the rest of europe was less developed even before the first world war is in a dire state after all of the ravage in the millions of deaths that um continue even after the war ended in the west um that leaves precious little in the way of uh structural restraint or um a functioning society that would say let's not do things this way um I think that in retrospect, that special role carved out for special individuals who can move this process forward and accelerate historical development um allowed for people to step into those those roles and and appoint themselves executors of this ideological vision um so I think those things play a role well not hard .

to do counterfactual history. But to what degree is this basically that the communist ideals create a power vacuum, a dictator type figure steps in.

And then is the role, the dice of what that dictators like? So can you imagine a world where the dictator was trust key? Would we see very similar type of things? Or is the hardness and the brutality of some be like stalin manifested itself in um being able to look at the other way as some of these dark things we're happening more so than somebody like rock who would presumably be um see the realization of these policies and be shocked.

Well counterfactual s are hard but you said and and one very quickly gets off into really deep waters in speculation. There were contemporaries and there have been scholars since who suggest that trust key by all indications might have been even more radical, installing in the tempo that he wanted to achieve I think of the um the um the slogan of permanent revolution rosky also um who doubled in in so many things in his intellectual life, also spoke in almost utopian terms that are just astonishing to read in utopian terms about the construction of the new man and the new woman and that out of the raw material of humanity, once you really get going and once you ve established a system that matches your hopes for the future, it'll be possible to reconfigure people and talk about ambition to create essentially the next stage and human evolution, a new species growing out of humanity those those sound like very modester limited approaches. And I guess we just really won't know.

do some of the destructive characteristics of communism have to go hand in hand? So the central planning that we talked about, the censorship of the sea police, uh, the concentration of power in one one dictor al figure in the, well, I say, was this again, with the seeker police, the the violent oppression one one should .

add to to those factories that have a kind of interrelated logic of their own. The the sheer fact that communism comes to power in most of these instances, as a result war, as a result of the destruction of what came before and a power vacuum. So I think of the russian revolutions in the wake of the fall of tourism.

Think of the expansion of stands pup t regimes into eastern europe in the wake of world war two and the red army moving into occupy areas in in eastern europe um although they announced that they're coming as liberators. Uh consider uh the foundation of communist china on the heels of world war two and yet more chinese civil war. Uh consider a cases like korea vietnam is likely that this already is a key element in setting things up for further crisis.

Because a precision of power, if your expectation is well IT IT ought to be relatively easy to get this system rolling and put in on a basis that, after all, we have the road map to the future, there will follow frustrations and impediments and resistance. And there's a racket affect them there because it'll produce more oppression, a producing even more problems that follow. Um what drives the whole thing forward, though, especially in its lenders version, but already visible with with Marks and angles, is the insistently on confidence.

If you have the key to the future, all of these things are possible and necessary. This leads to an an ethos. I think that um that's very hard for historians to quantify or to study in a method way.

But it's the insistence that you hear with lending and then especially with stalin, that to be a bullshit means to be hard, to be realistic, to be consequential, meaning you don't shy away from doing what needs to be done even if your primordial ethical remaining from whatever earlier experience you have rebel against IT. Um the understand and there's a constant slogan of the bulge, vic tempo, the bullet x there's no fortress that they can't storm. They can do everything. And in a way, this is the assertion that it's will over everything history can be move forward and accelerated and problem your own actions justified as a result, no matter what they were, if you are sufficiently hard and determined and have the confidence to follow through. And then that obviously raises the ultimate question, what happens when that confidence ebs or roads or when it's lost?

If we go to the nineteen twenties, to the home of commons, fascism, as implemented by the native party in germany, was called the national socialist german workers party.

Ah, so what were the similarities and differences of fashion socialism? How was conceived of in fashion and communism? And maybe you can speak to the broader battle of ideas that was happening at the time and battle of political control and that was happening at the done well.

I mean, there's a whole bunch of terms that are in play here, right? And when we speak of fascism, uh fascism in its original sense um is a radical movement founded in italy which though I had been allegedly on the winning side a of world war one is disappointed with the lack of rise in national prestige and territory that that that leads the commences after the end of the war so bizarre enough it's a socialist by the name of benito musli who crafts an ideological message of glorification of the state uh, the people at large united in a military tic way on the march, ready to attack, ready to expand a complete overthrow of liberal ideas of the rights of the individual or of represented democracy and instead vesting power in one leader in his case the duch musli in order to replicate in peace time the ideal of total military mobilization in war time um.

Although the new season in germany are inspired red and borrow heavily from fascist ideology, there also are different emphasis that they include and that includes their violent racism from the outset which um in addition to a glorification of the state, location of the leader and preparation for national greatness uh races absolutely core and it's that racial radicalism that the nazis as spouse, as a central idea, along with antisemitic tim, the demonizing in particular of the jews in this this insane racialist Cosmology that the nazis a avow IT is the assertion that the notices will uniquely bring to pass unity in the people, unity in the society that leads them to give themselves this odd name of national socialist. Some leaders like googles among the notes, uh, accent the socialist part to begin with. Others put the accident firmly on the nationalist part, in part that the term they chose with their movement was meant to be confusing IT was meant to take slogans or words from different parts of the political spectrum to fuse them into something unfamiliar and new, and claim that they'd overcome all earlier political divisions that they, the notes claimed that they were a movement, not a party, even though their party was called the party.

So what did notices m and bulshed ism, m and communism share? Or how would they opposed to one another? What we need to start with about making clear they were ideological arch enemies in both world views the opposite side represented the ultimate expression of the evil that needed to be exercise from a history in order for their desired utopia to be brought about and this leads to um strange and perverted beliefs about reality uh from the perspective of the notes, the not claimed that um because they saw the jews is a dominic element in human history. The bulls fs weren't even really you know didn't really believe all of this economic dialectical materialism.

They were in fact a racial conspiracy was alleged and so the notes use the term of judeo bolshoi's m to argue that, uh, communism is essentially a conspiracy steered by the jews which was complete nonsense for their part the communist sts and and for the perspective of the soviet union, the nazis um we're in essence a supercapitalist conspiracy if the if the Cosmological enemy are the capitalists and the owners, the exploiters, then all of the riga, all about race and nationalism are distractions they meant to fool the the uh poor saps who enlisted in that movement it's essentially steered by capitalist owners who is is claimed are um reduced to this desperate expedient of coming up with the thug ish party that represents the last gasp of capitalism so bizarre enough from the communist perspective, the rise of the nazis could be interpreted as a good sign because IT means the capitalism is almost done because this is the last undisguised a naked face of capitalism nearing its end. So the other uh uh beyond this um ideological uh total opposition in terms that they hoped for futures. The reality is that there were aspects that were shared on either side and that included the conviction that. They could agree that the age of democracy was done and that the one thousand nine th century had had its day with experiments with representative democracy, uh, uh, the the claims of human rights, uh, classical liberal ideas. And all of this has been revealed as bankrupt IT got you what I got you first the first world war as a total conflict uh conflict leaving uh tens of millions dead and then economically the great depression showing that the the the end was not was not far away.

Um this produced at one in the same time both ideological opposition and instances of vastly cynical CoOperation um in terms of the vima republic um it's obvious with the benefit of hindsight that german democracy had seized the function even before hitler comes to power but in the process of making democracy unworkable in germany uh the extremes the not the uh a storm trooper army with their Brown shirts and the communist street fighters had CoOperated in uh um heightening an atmosphere of civil war that uh left people searching for desperate expedience um in the last days of a of the vima republic um the most compelling case of their CoOperation was the signing of the nations soviet packed on August twenty thirty one thousand nine hundred and thirty nine which enables hitler to start world war two a nonaggression packed in official terms IT contains secret clauses whereby the nazis and the soviets meeting in moscow under stolen where I had agreed on territorial division of eastern europe and making common cause uh as a each claiming to be the winner of the future um so in spite of their oppositions uh these were regimes that uh were able very cynically to work together to die effect in the course of the one hundred fifties in particular there are rose political scientists who also crafted uh an explanation for ways in which these regimes. Although they were opposed to one another, actually um bore morphological resembLance ces they Operated in ways that, in spite of ideological differences, bore similarities, ties and such political scientists hana rent uh um chief among them um crafted a model called totalitarians m borrowing a term that the fascists had liked about themselves to define regimes like the notes like style and soviet union, uh, for a new kind of dictatorship that was not a backwards cast revival of ancient barber's m but with something new, a new form of dictatorship that laid total claims on hearts and minds that didn't want just passive obedience but wanted for natica loyalty that combined fear with compulsion in order to generate belief in a system or at the very least atomized the masses to the point where they would go along with the plans of the regime this this a model um has often met with very strong criticism um on the grounds that no regime in human history has yet achieved total control of the population under its a grip. That's true but that's not what hand rent was saying hand and was saying there will always be efficiencies.

There will be resistance. There will be uh divergences. What was new was not the alleged achievement of total control. IT was the ambition, the articulation, the ambition that I might be possible to exercise such fundamental and going control of entire populations.

And the final, frightening thought that a rent kept before her was, what if this is not a model that comes to us from beni ted, uncivilized ages? What if this is what the future is going to look like? That's a horrifying intuition.

So let me ask you about dao Cooper, who is a historian. Pakistan did the protest will talk across. And he made some claims there and elsewhere about world war two.

There are two claims that I would love to get your perspective on. First, he stated that churchill was, quote, the chief, one of the second world war. I think dell argues that church of forced hitler to expand the war beyon poland into a global war.

Second, the mass murder of jews polls slave gyp's in death camps was an accident, A A by product of global war. And in fact, the most humane extermination of prisoners of war possible, given the alternative, was death by a starvation. So I was wondering if you can respond .

to each of those claims. Well, I think this is a bunch of absurdity and IT would be laughing able if IT wasn't so serious in its implications. Um I to address the the points in turn um churchill was not the chief fill under the second world war the notion that churchill allegedly force hiller to escalate and expand a conflict that could have been limited to poland is that assertion is is based on a complete neglect of what not the ideology was the nai world view and racism was not a ideology that was limited in its application IT look forward world domination uh the in the the years since the access has come to power, they sponsor programs of education called geopolitics which urged germans to think in continents, think in continents to uh see themselves as one of the superpowers that would battle for the future of the world um and now in in retrospect, we of course can see that germany was not in a position to to uh legitimate to claim like that but the nazis aims were anything but limited in particular.

Um this sort of argument has been tried out in in different ways before in previous decades there had been attempts by historians who were actually uh well read and well published to argue that uh world war two had been in part a contingent ent event that i've been brought about by accidents or miscalculation uh and uh such explanations argued that if you put hitler's ideology aside, you actually could interpret him as a pretty traditional german politician in the stripe of bismark. Now when I say IT like that, I think you can spot the problem immediately when you put the ideology aside to uh to try to analyze hillers acts or alleged motives in the absence of the ideology that he himself subscribed to and described in hateful detail in my and other manifesto s and speeches is an enterprise that's doomed to failure justifiably the notion that the mass murder of juice polle slows and gypsies was an event that um simply happened as a result of unforeseen events and that IT was understood as somehow being humane. Uh is also runs contrary to the historical fact when poland was invaded, the nazis unleashed a killing wave in their so called Operation time in bag, which sentence specially trained and ideologically preprepared killers who were given the name of the units of the eyes sadd group en, in order to wipe out the polish leadership and also to kill jews. This pre dates any of the Operation barbarossa and the noses invasion of the soviet union a the nazis, moreover, in there in many different expressions of their ideology, had made clear that their plans you can read this in income for eastern europe were subject and uh ethnic cleaning on a vast scale. So I consider um both of these claims absolutely untanned given the facts and documents.

So do you think I was always the case that um not the germany was going .

to invade soviet union? I think as you can read in my calm, this is what's necessary in order to uh bring that racial utopia to pass. Um and so uh while the timetable might be flexible, while obviously uh geopolitical conStellations would play a role in determining when such a thing might be possible, IT was most definitely on his list. And I would want to add that in in my own scholarship i've worked to um explore some of these teams S A little bit further um my second book um which is entitled the german myth of the east, which appeared with oxford university press um examines centuries in the german encounter with eastern europe and how germans have thought about eastern europe, whether in positive ways or in negative ways and one thing that emerges from this investigation is that um even before the nais come to power in germany, there are certainly negative and dehumanizing stereotypes about eastern europeans. Some of them activated by the experiences of german occupation in some of these regions during the first world war but the nazis take the very most destructive and most negative of all those steroid pes and make them the dominant ones making no secret of their um uh expected future of domination and anio lation in the east.

The idea of living is impossible to implement that idea without ukraine.

Heller has ukraine in his horizon as one of the chief prizes um and the nazis then craft extensive plans, a master plan that they work on in draft, after draft, after draft, even as the baLance of the wars turning against them on the eastern front. This master plan is called the again AI plan ost, meaning the general plan for the east and IT force's things like mega highways on which the dramatic master race will travel to vacation in crimea or how the their settlements will be scientifically distributed in the wide open spaces of ukraine for for agriculture that will feed and expanded and purify dramatic master race. So, uh, this was not peripheral to the nazi ambitions, but central.

As I first understand, there is extensive and definitive evidence that the not is always wanted to evy the soviet union, and there is always a racial component, and not just about the juice. They wanted to enslave and exterminate the jews, yes, but the slavic people, the slaves, and a, if he was successful at conquer the soviet union, I think the things that would be done to the slavic people would make the hook seem significant in my understanding, in terms of the numbers and the brutality and the viciousness in which he characterised soviet .

people in in in their world view, the jews were um especially demonized. And so the project of the domination of eastern europe involves this horrific program of mechanised systematized, a bureaucratically organized and and horrifying efficient mass murder of the jewish populations. What the us.

Is expected for the slaves had a longer time line. Heller expected. The head of the S, S, S, S. Is given special mission to be part of the transformation of these regions ethnically. And he learnt in his role of envisioning this german future in eastern europe gives such a chilling phrase he says that while certain slaves will a fall victim immediately, um some proportion of slaves um will not be shipped out or deported or anio ot but instead the'd remain as slaves for our culture.

And in that one phrase, hym ler managed to the file in the face everything that the world culture had meant to generations of the best german thinkers and artists in the centuries before the nazis. The notion of slaves for our culture, uh, was part of his longer term expectation. And then there's that. Finally, a fact that is speaks volumes about what the notice planned for the east. Hitler and humbler envisioned permanent war on the eastern front, not a peace treaty, not a settlement, not a border, but a constant moving of the border, every generation, hundreds of miles east, in order to keep winning more and more living space, and with analogy to other frontiers, to always give more fighting experience and more training and aggression to generation after generation of german soldiers in terms of nightmarish visions, this ones right up there.

And always repopulating the land conquered with the german, the area and race. So in in terms of race, republican race and in slave in the slavic people and exterminating them because there's so many of them, IT takes a long time to exterminate.

And even in the case of the germans themselves um the um the hidden message behind even nazi propaganda about unity and about uh uh about german national identity was the nazis envisioned relentless purges of the german genetic stock as well. So among their victims are people with disabilities, uh people who are defined as not racially pure enough for the future even though they are clearly germans by identity um this uh full the full scale and the the the comprehensive ambitions of the nazis are as breath taking as they are horrifying.

One of the other things I saw dell tweet, was that what ended up happening in the second world war was the worst possible thing that could have happened. And I also wanted to comment on that, which I can imagine a very large number of possible scenario that could have happened, and much, much worse, including the successful conquering of the soviet union, as we said, the kind of things that would be done, and the the total war ever ongoing for generations, which would result know hundreds of millions of deaf and torture and slave maintain, not to mention the other possible trajectory of nuclear.

That's that's I would think that the notes with atomic weapons, with no compunctions about deploying them, would rank up there as even worse than the horse that we saw.

Now let me still man a point that was also made as part of this, that the oversimplified narrative of sort of to put a cruelly hit their bad churche good has been used and abused by neocons and warm mongers and the military industrial complex in years since.

To basically say this, this particular leader is just like hitler, or maybe he leader of the one thousand nine thirties and we must invade now before he becomes the hitler er of the nineteen and forties and that has been applied the midday east in eastern european and god forbid that can be also applied in the uh in the war with china in the twenty first century. So yes, warm mongers do sure love to use hitler and apply that template to wage war. And we should be wary of that. He'd be careful that both the over application of this historical time plate onto the modern world and of war mongers in general yeah.

And I think that nobody should like oversimplified narratives. We need subtle and accurate narratives.

And also, I just would like to say that probably as we'd ve been talking about stalin and hit, there are singular figures. And just as we've been talking about the implementation of these totalitarian an regimes, they are singular in human history that we never saw anything like IT. And I hope from everything he looks like, we will never see anything like that again.

I M y're certainly striking and unique historical characters in the record. One of the things that so disturbing about hana rents model of totalitarian an ism is the leader can be changed. The system itself demands that there be a leader who allegedly is um is all powerful and all knowing and pathetic and the alike. But whether particular figures are interchangeable in that role um is a is a key question.

Let me go back to the one thousand nine hundred and twenties instead of asked another kind of actual question, given the battle between the marxist and the communist and the national socialist was IT possible, and what would the world look like if the communist is indeed won in germany as a carl Marks envisioned and IT made total sense, given the the industrialized expands the german, was that possible? And what would that look like if IT happened? I would .

think that the the reality was probably very remote, but that was certainly their ambition. German communists get quoted as saying after hitler it's our turn um their sentiment was that the arrival of notices m on the scene was a sign of how decrepit and incompetent and doomed capitalism was.

In hindsight that's almost impossible to believe because what happens is the nazis, with their characteristic brutal ruthlessness, simply decapitated the party and arrest the activists who are supposed to be waiting to take over. So that's for stalled. A further hypothetic ticals that gets raised a lot is couldn't the social democrats and the communists have work together to keep hit out of power? That's where the prior history comes into play.

The very fact that the german revolution in one thousand nine hundred and nineteen sees socialists killing socialists produces a dynamic that's so negative that it's nearly impossible to settle on on CoOperation added to the fact that um the time to see the social democrats as as as rivals for the loyalty uh of the working class in terms of just statistical likelihood, a lot of experts at the time felt surely the german army is going to step in and the. Most likely outcome would have been a german general shutting down the democracy and producing a military dictatorship. IT says a lot about how dreadful and bloody the record of the nazis was that um some people in retrospect would have felt that that military dictor ship would have been preferable if IT had obviated the need for the ordeal under the nazis.

What you think Marks would save about the tweet century? Let's take IT before we get to moe in china, just looking at the soviet union and and and native germany.

That's a really good question. Um I think that Marks was flexible in his expectations about tactics and strategies. Even as he was sure that he had actually cracked a big intellectual problem of what the future is going to look like.

So how I would play out, he was a man who had to deal with a lot of disappointments because in in revolutionary uprising after revolutionary uprising, whether IT was in uh the revolutions of one hundred and forty eight in across europe, whether was in poland, whether IT was in a the paris commune, um he this is IT this this is the outbreak of the real thing and then IT doesn't end up happening so I think that he would probably have tried to be patient. Uh, about the turn of events. Uh, we mentioned the outset that that mark felt that was unlikely that a worker's revolution would break out in the russian empire because for that you needed lots of industrial workers and they had have a lot of industry.

There's A A footnote to add there. And IT proves this flexibility. A russian socialist route to Marks asking might IT not be possible for russia to escape some stages of capitalist development. I mean, you have to originally follow that scheme and um mark's answer was convoluted but IT wasn't to know and that suggests that Marks was willing to entertain all sorts of possible scenarios. Um I think he would certainly have been very surprised at at the course of events that unfold because I didn't match his .

expectations at the outset not to put this on him but would he be okay with the Price a lot more for the the utp destination of a communism meaning is that okay to crack a few eggs to make a omy?

Well um we don't know what Marks would say if we will post that question deliberately, but we do know in the case of a markis historian, eric hobs bm who was um a prolific and celebrated british storia of the nineteen thousand and two thousand years centuries and and he he was put this question in the nineties after the collapse of the soviet union and he stated forthrightly that um because the soviet union failed such sacrifices uh were inordinate but if the experiment had succeed and a glorious future has been open for mankind as a result of the soviet union success. That would lead to a different reply, and that is one person's perspective. So that takes .

us to the other side of the world. The site is often in the west, not considered very much. We talk about human history. Chinese dynasty empires are fascinating, complex and there's it's just the history that's not as deeply exporters this should be in the same applies to the twenty of th century so um chinese radical founded the chinese commits party C C P. In july nineteen nineteen twenty one among them as you are, talk about a mile, all the story of mouse raised the power.

So mao takes a page from the book of lennon. By adapting or seeking to adapt, mark is ideology to a context that would have surprised mark significantly. And that is not only to set the revolution in, and as yet not industrialized country, but moreover, to make the peasants, rather than being conservative sex of potatoes, to make them into the prime movers of the success of this political venture.

That's a case of the phenomenon that we talked about earlier. When do you when is an adaptation of an ideology or a change to an ideology, a valid um adjustment that you've made or adaptation? And when is IT already so different? That is something entirely distinct. Um milisa was very clearly intended to answer this question for the chinese context hand by implication, other non western parts of the world this was in part miles way whose ambition was great to put himself at the head of a successful international movement uh and to be the successor to stalin whose role he both admired and resented uh from having to be the junior partner to take an example of a master work in a major milestone in the history of communism.

The polish philosopher asia cocoa ski, who was at first a committed communist and then later became disillusion and wrote a three volume study of marxists t called current of marxism in that book when he reaches milisa, cocos y essentially throws up his hands and says, like, it's it's hard. You you know what to do with this, because putting the pantry in the vanguard role is something that is already at variance with the original design. But mark says, this is an improved version. This an adapted and true version of marxism for the chinese context um in case after case in in mouse rise to power, we see a really complicated relationship with style en he works hard to gain stolen support because the common turn the international organization headquarter in moscow working to encourage and help revolutionary worldwide, is sleeping al about the chinese communist st. To begin with and believes that china still has a long way to go before it's reached the stage where it's ripe for communist revolution and in a way that's more orthodox marxism than what now is championing mouch fs under stands a acknowledge leadership of international communism as a movement. And in one thousand nine hundred and fifty, when mow goes to visit stalin in moscow in order design a treat of CoOperation, he's left waiting for days and days and days in in a snub that is meant to show him that you're you're just not as important as you might think you are and then when stalin dies in one thousand nine hundred and fifty three um mow feels the moment is ready for him to step into the leadership position surpassing the soviet union. So many of mouse actions like the Green leap forward and the agricultural disasters that follow from that are literally attempts to outdo stalin, to outperform stolen, to show that what stalin was not able to do, the chinese communist regime will be able to bring off and uh, the the toll, uh, for that hubris is vast.

Yeah, in the darkest of ways he did. I do stalin.

that's right. In the statistics.

the great leap forward end up killing approximately million people from starvation or murder. King described a greatly forward.

So IT was modeled on the crash industrializing that stolen had wanted undertake in the soviet union. And and how do IT the notion of the greatly forward was that IT would be possible for the present masses out of their conviction in the rightness of the chinese communist cause to industrialize china overnight that involve things like creating small smelting furnace in individual farm communes.

IT involved folding together uh farming territories into vast communes of very large size that were just because of there are sheer giantism supposed to be by definition more efficient than small scale farming. Um IT ended up uh uh producing environmental disasters and campaigns to limit uh birds or insects uh were supposed to demonstrate mastery over nature by sheer acts of will. These included things like um adopting soviet agricultural um techniques that were pioneers by a crackpot biologist, by the name of trophy, the sanko uh that that produced more agricultural disaster that involve things like allowing to depth that were not practical for the seeds to germinate and grow.

But we're supposed to produce super plants that would um produce bumper harvests and outpace the capitalist countries and the soviet union. So the context for all of this is a race to get first to the achievement of full scale communism. One of the themes that I think it's so valuable to pursue and to take seriously in the history of communism is what concrete promises were made in the case of um the um uh of china, mae made promises and projections for the future that were worrying even to some of his own assistance.

He exclaimed that perhaps by one thousand nine hundred and sixty one, perhaps by one thousand nine hundred and seventy three, china would be the winner in this competition and I would have achieved full communism so that which mark had sketched as the end point of humanity would be achieved first by the chinese uh later his own um comrades when he passed from the scene felt the need to temper that a little bit and promise that they would achieve full communism by the year two thousand um such promises are helpful to a regime to create enthusiasm and to hold out to people. The prospect of real success is just around the corner. But what happens when the date arrives and you haven't actually achieve that goal? That's one ticking time bomb that played a role in the increasing erosion of confidence in the soviet union. And the case of china must have been something similar.

So there's a lot of other elements that are similar to the soviet union. Maybe you could speak to the hundred flowers campaign.

The hundred flowers campaign is A A chance for now who has felt that he has lost prestige and lost standing in the party because of the disasters of the greatly p forward to regain some of that momentum. And the whole hundred fires campaign, a officially titled the rectification campaign a to set things right, is still shrouded ded in mystery. Historians disagree about how to interpret what mow was actually up to.

The most cynical variant is that now encouraged chinese thinkers and intellectuals to share ideas and to engage constructive criticism, to propose alternatives and to let a full discussion happen. And then after some of them had ventured that to come in and urge them to punish them ruthlessly for having done what he had invited them to do, that is the most cynical variant. Some historians argue that maw himself was not prepared for the ideas that he himself had invited into the public square, and that he grew anxious and worried and angry at this without having thought this through in a cynical way.

To begin with, the end result is the same. The end result is, once again, negative. Selection design of those were most ventured those were most counted and intelligent are puni shed relentlessly .

for that and just a general culture of sensors, oration and fear and all the same stuff I saw on the union.

That's right. I think of the impact on officials um where loyal servants to the regime and just want to get along the message goes out loud and clear, don't be venture ism, do not propose reforms, stick with the try and true and that'll be the safe route even if IT ends in ultimately stagnation.

So as the same question I asked about soviet union, why do you think there are so much failure of of policies that maw implemented in china during his rule.

maw himself had a view of human beings as being as he put a beautiful blank pieces of paper upon which one can write new characters and that is um clearly at variance with what you and I know about the complex nature of human beings as we actually encounter them in the world.

Uh, I think that in the process of hatching schemes that were one size fits all for our countries as big and is varied in its um uh in its communities as china, a inevitably uh such an opposition of one model was going to lead to serious male functions. And so much of the you know what what other episodes and chinese hist show the the entrepreneurial capacity, the productive capacity economically of the chinese people was suppressed by being fitted into these rigid schemes. Uh what we've seen since uh um after mile passes from the scene and with the reforms of Young shouting in a once is just how much of those energies have been forcibly suppressed for so long and now allowed .

to reemerge mao died in the nineteen seventy six. You wrote that the C C. P. In eighty one, looking back through the length of historical analysis, said that he was seventy percent correctly. Seven, zero, exactly seventy percent correct.

Yeah.

not sixty nine. someone. The scientific precision, I we should, we should say that again and again, the corpsing of the authority of science, by so the union, by mw, by nc germany. Nc science is, is, is terrifying and should service a reminder that science is the thing that is one of the most beautiful creations of humanity but um is also saying they could be used by politicians and dictators to .

do horrific things and its essence this question not .

certainty the in questing exactly humility, intellectual humility. So how did china evolve after mouse death to today?

Why I think that there is um without denouncing mile, without repudiating miles, seventy percent correctness, the regime actually undertook a new venture and that adventure was to open up economically to gain access to world markets and to play a global role, always with a prosor that the party retained political supremacy it's been pointed out that while crucial b tries in the soviet union in one thousand nine hundred and fifty six, especially with a secret speech in which he denounces stolen crimes um he tries to go back to the founders intentions of lennon nothing like that it's argued as possible in the chinese case because maw was not the equivalent of stolen for communist china.

How was the equivalent of lennon? Mow was the founder so there's no repudiating of him. They are stuck with that formula of seventy percent and acknowledging that there were some problems but by and large arguing that IT was the the the correct stance of the party and its leader that was paramount and the results of this wager are, you know where we are today um china has been transformed out of all recognition in terms of not all of the living standards of the country but many places.

Uh its economic growth, uh, has been dramatic and the new disposition is such that people ask, is this a communist country anymore? And that's probably a question that haunts china's current leadership as well. With chairman SHE, we've seen a return to earlier patterns.

Uh SHE insisting that mouse achievement has to be held as as equal to that of the reform period. Sometimes invitations h or nostalgia for the male period or even the sufferings of the cultural revolution are part of this volatile mix. Um but all of this is um is outward appearance uh statistics can also be misleading. And um I think that very much in question is china's further revolution in .

our own times in the west, china is often given ice. We've talked extensively today about the atrocity results from attracted both internal and external, the results from a communist nations. But what can we say by way of hope? To resist the demonization, how can we avoid cold or hot war with china, we being the west or the united states in the twenty first century?

Well you you mentioned in the context of of the claims of science, uh humility as a crucial attribute. I think that um humility subway realism are tremendously valuable in trying to understand another society, another form of government and so I think what needs to be very self aware that projection onto others of what we think there about is no substitute for actual study of the sources that a society like that produces its its declarations of what matters most of them uh the leadership's own pronouncements about what the future holds um I think that matters a lot more than pious hopes or or versions of um being convinced that inevitably everyone will come to resemble us in a Better future.

You mentioned this earlier, but just to take a small dear, what are we supose to think about north korea and their declaration that they're supposed to the commission nation? What can we say about the economic and political system of north korea? Or is IT just like a hopelessly simple answer of this is a complete disaster of totalitarian an state?

So I think that the answer that our historic can give us a historical answer, right, that we have to inquire into how, what has to happen in order to arrive at the past.

We are today where you have a regime that's claiming to be communist st uh or A A has a even Better version of marx's original ideas in the form of a korean adaptation called, uh um how is that mesh with the reality that we're talking about? A dynamic c government and a monarchy in in orbit name but a communist monarchy if if that's what IT is I think that um examining as much as we can learn about a close society that is um goes about its every day in ways that are incredible to us is very, very chAllenging. But the only answer when an example like this escapes your analytic categories, probably there's a problem with your analytic categories rather than the example being the problem. You all it's messiness.

yes. So there's a component here in the released to china as well to bring like a summer like john mere share into the picture. There's a military component here too. And and that is ultimately how these nations interact, especially to the italian nations interact with the rest of the world. So nations interact economically, culturally and military. In the concern with countries in north korea is the way for them to be present on the world stage in the game of geopolitics is by flexing their military might and they invest a huge amount of their GDP into the military. So I guess the question there is to discuss in terms of analysis is how do we deal with this kind of system that claims to be a communist system, and what lessons can we take from history and apply IT to that? Or should we simply just ignore and look the other way as we been kind to hope that he doesn't get IT .

doesn't get out of hand? Yeah I mean, there's realists see states following their own interests and prioritising their own security and there's probably not much that can be done to change that. But conflict rising as a result of misunderstanding or mixed messages or uh uh this interpretation of those are things that that that policymakers probably do you have some control over. I think that um there's internal processes that will work their way out in in even as a pay a place as north korea. There's it's also the reality, just as we saw with the divided germanies, that um it's a precarious kind of um twin existence when you have countries that are across the border from one another that are derived from what used to be a single unit that now are kind of a real life social science experiment in what kind of regime you get with one kind of system, what sort of regime you get with another kind of system. And that's a very a very unstable set up, as IT turns out.

Now let us jump continents, and in the twenty eighth century, look to north america. So you also have left red about communism in america, the different communities movements in america. IT was also founded in ninety nineteen, and the evolved throughout through a couple of red scars. So what is the evolution of the communist party in just in general, communist in america?

It's fascinating to observe this story because one lone standing common place have been that socialism uh has less purchase a uh or radical socialism in the united states than in european countries. Uh so in to the extent that that was true um IT was an appeal battle for the communist st to get established in the united states but um IT makes you all of them more interesting to follow the development of the movement. And there were two chAllenges in particular that played a role in shaping the american communist experience.

One was the fact that to begin with the party was often identified with immigrants uh the communities that had come over across the atlantic from europe often had strong socialist contingents and when this break happens within the socialist movement between radical socialists and more moderate socialists um there were fire individuals who uh saw the opportunity to help shape the american communist movement but the result was that for many american workers they saw the sheer ethnic variety and difference of this movement of something that was unfamiliar um IT would only be with a rise to the leadership of the comments party of earl browder, a american born political leader with vast ambitions for creating an american communist movement, that that image would start to be modified. A earl browder had a meteoric rise and then fall over the promises made that went by the slogan communism is two thousand eth century americanism. The notion was that communism could find roots in american political discourse and experience where earl browder fell, fall of other communists was in his expectations during world war two.

That IT might be possible for the soviet union in the united states to make their current CoOperation permanent and to come to some sort of accommodation that would moderate their rivalry. As IT turns out, with the dawning already of cold war tensions, uh, that would later flower more fully, that was unacceptable. And the movement divested itself of a earle browder, another point that shaped american perceptions of the communist movement in the united states involved issues of espionage um during the nineteen nineteen thirties and the one thousand nine hundred and forties uh american communist not all of them obviously but um select members of the movement we're called upon by soviet intelligence to play a historical role by uh gathering information, winning sympathies.

One of the most amazing books of the twenty eth century is the book written by winter or chAmbers, who had served as a soviet spy. I first to committed communist, a soviet spy, and then later relegated from those allegiances. His book is entitled witness in thousand and fifty, published in one thousand nine hundred and fifty two and it's it's one of the most compelling books you could ever read because it's so full of both the unique character of the author in all of his idiosyncratic and a sense of huge issues being at stake once upon which the future of humanity turns. So talk about the ethical element being of importance there. Um through the um apparatus of of the state uh the soviets managed to infiltrate spies into america's uh military as well as a government institutions. One great irony is that when the murthy in the fifties made vast claims about communism infiltration of the government apparatus, claims that he was unable to substantiate ah with details um that reality had actually been closer to the reality of the one thousand nine hundred and thirties in the one thousand nine hundred forties than his own time but the association of american communists with the foreign power of the soviet union and ultimately and add hearings to its interests, did a lot to uh undermine any kind of hearing for uh, american communists an example, of course, was the naturalist nac soviet packed in one thousand hundred and thirty nine. The american contest movement found itself forced to turn on a dime and its propaganda before the native soviet packed of August one thousand nine hundred and thirty nine, they had denounced nac germany as the greatest threat to world peace just after the signing of the pact they had to uh proclaim that this was a great win for peace and for human harmony and to um um completely change uh their earlier relationship of being mortal enemies with nazi germany there were many american communists who couldn't stomach this and who in disillusion um simply quit their party memberships or drifted away um but it's a fascinating story of the upside downs of a political movement with radical ambitions in american .

political history yeah the cold war and the extensive levels of espionage so created, combining with hollywood, created a basically firmly solidified communism as the enemy of the american ideal. I was have embodied and not evenly economic policies of the political policies of community, but like the world and the color red on the hamon cycle. You know, rocky four, one of my favorite movies.

Well, that's canonical.

right? Yeah yeah I mean, IT is a bit of a meme but me becomes reality and um in an enters politics and is used by politicians to do all kinds of a name coin. You have spoken equally about modern russia and modern ukraine and modern eastern europe. So how did russia evolve after after stopping and after the collapse, the soviet union?

Well, I think the short answer is, without a full historical reckoning, that would have been healthy about the recent past in ways that's not very surprising because given the economic misery of dislocations and the cumulative damage of all of those previous decades of this experiment, IT left precious little patients, or leasure or surplus for introspections.

But after an initial period of great interest in understanding the full measure of what russia and other parts of the soviet union had undergone in this first initial explosion of journalism and of reporting and investigations, historical investigations with new sources, after an initial period marked by such interest, people instead um retreated into the here and now and the today and the result is that um. There's been less than would be healthy of a taking stock, a reckoning, uh, even in A A signing of responsibility for those things that were experienced in the past. No nurnberg trial took place in order to hold responsible those who repressed others in the aftermath of the collapse of the soviet union in other H.

X communist countries, there was also precious little in the way of legal proceedings that would have established responsibility. And and keep in mind, the nurtures had, as one of their goals, are very important one, as IT turns out, not even individual verdicts for individual people found guilty, but to collect and publicize information, to create knowledge and transparency about what the reality had been in the past, in the case of the former soviet union, in the case of russia today, instead of a clear eye recognition of the vast nature of what IT all cost putin uh upon replacing yelland, uh, was in a position to instead traffic in the most varied, a collective and often mutually contradictory historical memories or packages of memories. So on the one hand, in putin's russia um the cars are rehabilitated as heroes of russian statehood um putin sees lennon in a negative light because lennon, by producing federalism as a model for the soviet union, laid a time bomb at the base of that state that eventually smashed IT into many constituent parts as nations regain their independence while stolen it's acknowledge uh exacted A A dreadful toll but also was effective as a representative of russian statehood.

This produce where we are today. It's a it's a commonplace that echoed by by many that russia without ukraine is a nation state or could be a nation state. Russia, with ukraine, has to be an empire.

And putin, who is not really seeking a revival of style's rule, but still is nostalgic about earlier forms of greatness and of the strength of russian statehood to the exclusion of other values, has undertaken a course of aggression that has produce results quite different from what he likely expected. And I think that timing is crucial here. It's fascinating to try to imagine what if this attempt to read gest ukraine into an expanded russian imperial territory had taken place earlier. I think that the arrival on the scene of a new generation of ukrainians has produced a very different dynamic and a disinclination for any kind of nostalgia for the past package, however IT might be, and however nostalgic IT might be made to appear. And there I think that putins expectations in the invasion of twenty twenty two were entirely overturned his expectation was that that ukraine would be divided on the score and that some significant portion of ukrainians would welcome ah the advance of russian forces uh and instead uh there has been the most amazing and surprising heroic resistance uh that continues to this day .

and is interesting to consider timing and also individual leaders as the one key. You can imagine all kinds of other figures that would have a folded, much easier and so on, getting surprise a lot of the world by somehow, you know, this comedian somehow be becoming A A essentially a an effective war president. So you know that that put that in in in the bin of singular figures that defined history.

Surprising cody .

hope the war in ukraine ends.

I'm very pessimistic on the score actually, and for the reasons we just talked about, about how these things escape human management or even rationality um I think that war takes on a life of its own as accumulated suffering actually eliminates possible compromises or settlements that one might talk about in the abstract. I think that. It's one thing for people far away to propose trades of territory or complicated guarantees or. Arrangements that sound very good in the abstract and that will just be refused by people who have actually experienced what the war has been like in person and what IT is meant to them and their families and everyone they know in terms of lives destroyed. Uh, I think that peacemaking is going to face a very daunting task here given all that's accumulated um and I think is particular just from the last days of of the launching of missile attacks against in discriminate or civilian targets, that's not easy to turn the corner on .

so I asked a political question I recently talked IT on. A champion said, if he is elected before he is one into office, he will have a peace deal. What would a peace deal like that look like? And is that even possible? Do you think so? We should mention that russia has captured four regions of ukraine. Now the naso, the petition in her son, also ukrainy capture the part, of course, creation in ruin, russia. So just as you mentioned, territories on the table, you know, nato, european union is on the table, also funding and military help from the states directly to ukraine on the table, you think is possible to have a fair deal that from people like you said, far away, where both people walk away lands and unhappy, but equally unhappy and peace and piece is negotiating .

equally unhappy, is A A very hard bounced strike probably. I think my concern is about the part of the equation that involves people just being desperately unhappy, laying the foundation for more trouble to come. I couldn't imagine what that looks like, but that once again, these are things that escape, escape human control in in the details.

so laying the foundation for worse things to come. So it's part we have a ceasefire that lays the foundation for a worse warn and suffering in a year, in five years and ten years.

But in a way, we may already be there because ratifying use of force to change borders in europe was a taboo since one thousand and forty five. And now look where we are. If that is validated, uh then um IT sets up incentives for for more of the same.

If you look at the two twenty centuries, what we've been talking about with horrendous global wars that happen then, and you look at now, IT feels like just living in the moment with the war, ukraine breaking the the contract of, you're not supposed to do territorial conquest anymore in the in the twenty first century, that then they just intensity of hatred and and military attention in the middle east, with the israel iran palace in just building, and then china calmly, but with a big stick talking about taiwan. Do you think a big conflict, maybe on the way, do you think is possible that another global war happens in the twenty first century?

I hope not but I think so many predictions uh reached their expiration dates and um and get invalidated. Um obviously it's if we were confronting a dire situation in the present.

So as a historian, let me ask for advice. What advice would you give on interviewing world leaders, whether it's people who who are no longer here, some of the people have been talking about hitler, stan mo, or people, they're still here.

Putin lansky trump, come Harris ahoo seizing pain as a historian, like what is IT possible to have an international conversation? Maybe as a thought experiment, what what kind of conversation would you like to have a hit learn in nineteen thirties? Are still in ranching twice.

Well, first of all, I mean, the answers is very clear. I would never presume to advise you about uh, interviewing world leaders, uh, and prominent people because the the roster that you've accumulated is just astonishing.

So but I I know what what I might aim for and that is I think in historical analysis, in trying to understand the role of a particular leader, the more one understands about their prior background and formative influences, the Better of fix. I think one gets on the question of what are their expectations? What is the in german, there's A A beautiful word for this german managed match together, several words, one even Better word.

And in german, as evon huggins on the horizon of expectation. So um in the case of figures like churchill or healer, their experience of world war one shaped their actions. In world war two, their values were shaped in their childhood. Is there a way of engaging with. Someone you're interviewing even obliged that gives a view in on their sense of what the future might hold. And I mean that obviously such people are expert at being guarded and not being pin down, but the categories in which they're thinking A A sense of what their what their own ethical grounding might be, their ethical code that gives hints to their behavior IT gets said and again as a clerk because it's true that one of the best measures of a person, especially a leader, is how they treat people from whom they don't expect anything uh are they condescending? Are they, on the contrary, fundamentally interested in another person even if that person can't help them or be used in some way? Um you speaking of of prominent world leaders to interview there's napoleon napoli psychologically must have been a quite amazing person to make a bid for mastery of europe and then already thinking about the mastery of the world but contemporaries who manaus lian said that he was very disturbing to talk with him because meeting with him one on one revealed that he could talk to you but looked like he was looking right through you as if you were not fully real you were more on the nature of a character on a chessboard and for that reason some of them called napoleon, the master of the sightless stair. So if you're talking with a world leader and here he has a sight list, are that's probably a bad sign, but there might be other in adverted clues, or hence about the moral compass or the future expectations of a leader that emerge in one of your wonderful conversations.

Yeah, you put a brilliantly in several ways, but the moral compass, getting sneaking up to the the full new order and complexity, the moral compass. And one of the ways of doing that is looking at the various horizons in time about their vision of the future, I imagine, is possible to get hit. Learn to talk about the future of the third right in to see in in ways like what he actually visions that as and similar was starlin.

But of course, act funny enough. I believe those leaders would be easier to talk to because there is nothing to be afraid of in terms of political competition. Modern leaders are a little bit more guarded because they have to, they have opposition, often to a content with you did a lot of amazing courses, including for the great courses on the topic of communism. You just finished the third. So he did a series of lectures on the rise of communism, then communism and power, yes, and then a decline and fall of.

So when I .

was sort of listening to these lectures, I can possibly imagine the amount .

of work .

they went into IT. He just speak, why this? What was that journey like of taking everything you know they are expertise on eastern europe but just bringing a your lens, your wisdom, your focus on to this topic and what IT takes to actually bring IT to life .

well journey is probably just the right word because um it's this week that the third of nature ilog decline of communism is being released and IT IT felt like something that I very much wanted to do because um the history that's narrated there uh is one that is so compelling and often so tragic that IT needs to be shared.

Um the the vast amount of material that one can include is probably double fed by the amount that actually ends up on the cutting room floor. One could probably do an entire lecture course on every single one of those lecture topics that got breached. But one of the great satisfactions of putting together, of course, like this is also being able to give further suggestions for study to the listeners and in some cases, to introduce them to neglected classics or books that make you want to grab somebody by the lapels and say you've got to read this.

Um there's probably few things that are as exciting as A A A really keen and targeted reading recommendation. In addition, i've i've also done other courses on the history of world war one, on the diplomatic history of europe from fifteen hundred to the present, a course on the history of eastern europe, and also, of course, on dictatorships called utopia and terror, and then also, of course, on explores, and of course, on turning points in modern history. And every single one of those is so rewarding because there's you learn so much in the process and it's really fantastic.

And I should highly recommend the people sign up to the uh for the others, the great courses. We can buy the courses individually, but I recommend people sign up for great courses plus these things like a monthly membership where you get access to all these courses. And there are just incredible, and I recommend people watch all of yours.

Since you mention books, this is impossible question and apologize ahead of time. But is there books you can recommend just in your own life that you've enjoyed a whether really small or some obvious recommendations that the recommend people read? IT is a bit like asking, what's your favorite band?

And that's right. Well, with a book that got turned into a movie, be a acceptable as well. yes. So in that case, know all of us reflect on our own childhoods and and the that magical moment of a reading a book or seeing a movie that that really got you launched on some particular set of things that you're going to find fascinating for the rest of your life.

And there's a direct line of the topics we talking about today from myself in the chicago land area as a kid, seeing the film of doctor jao and then later reading the note on which IT was based by pasternak. And even though the film had to be filmed on location in spain pretending to be revolutionary russia, IT was magical for the sheer sweep and tragedy and human resilience that IT showed the the very way in which a work of literature or a cinema tower phy could capture so much. Um still i'm i'm still amazed by that.

And then there's also in the spirit of recommending neglected classics. My favorite author my favorite author is a now a late canadian author by the name of Roberts and davies, who wrote a novel after novel. In a mode that probably would get called magical realism, but is so much more. Robertson davies was heavily influenced by carl Young and yunan philosophy, but in literary form he managed to create stories that blend the mythical, the mystical and the brutally real to paint a picture of canada as he knew IT, europe as he knew IT and the world as he knew IT. And um he's most famous probably for the depth ferrill og three novels in a series that are linked and they're just masterful if only there .

were more books like that the death rate logy fifth business, the manteca world wonders. And he got a really nice beard. Yes.

he was an amazing beat every one thousand nine th century.

Okay, beautiful. Um what advice would you give to Young people today that have just listened to us talk about the twenty eth century in the terrifying prospect of ideals implemented into reality? And by the way, many of the revolutions are Carried out by Young people. And so you know the good and the bad and the ugly is thanks to the Young people. So the Young people seeing today, what advice would you give them?

Well, IT comes down to one word, and that one word is read. I'm as a college teacher. I'm concerned about what i'm seeing unfolding for us, which is classes, not my classes, but classes in which students are asked to read very little or maybe in some cases, not at all, or snippets that they are provided digitally.

Uh, those have their place and can be valuable. But the task of sitting down with a book and absorbing its message, not agreeing with IT necessarily, but absorb taking in the implications, learning how to think within the categories and the values of the author, is going to be irreplacable. And my anxiety is that with a with college bookstores now moving entirely to uh the paperless format, um IT changes how people interact with texts. And if the result is not a renaissance and a resurgence of reading, but less reading, that will be dreadful, because the experience of thinking your way into other people's minds that sustained reading offers is so crucial to human empathy, a broady of your own sensibilities of, you know, what's possible, what's in the full range of being human and then what's best what are the best models for what has been thought and fell and how people have acted um otherwise we fall pray to manipulators uh and the ability of of artificial intelligence to give us versions of realities that never existed and never will and the like.

It's a really interesting idea so let me give a shutout to complexity that i'm using here or to deserve summarise and take quick note to get little slippers self, which is extremely useful. But it's not books are not just about information transfer.

It's just as you said, it's a journey together with a set of ideas and it's a conversation in getting a summary of the book is the delicate thing is, is really getting to the destination without the journey. And the journey is the thing that's important thinking through the and i've actually learned and have been surprised, i've learned i've trained my brain to be able to get the same thing from audio books. Also, it's a little bit more difficult because you don't control the pain.

Sometimes pausing is nice, but you could still get a from audio a books, so all your version of of books. And that allows you to also go on a journey together. And sometimes more convenient, because you could take you to more places with you.

But there is a magical thing. And I also trying to train myself. Most need to use kindle, the digital versions al books. But there is unfortunately still a magical thing about being there with the page.

What audio books are definitely not to be scorned because as people point IT out um the original traditions of literature or all right. So that's actually the the one point of version, right? Uh, and combining these things is probably the key. And I think one of the things I find so, so wonderful about the best lectures that i've heard is it's a chance to hear someone thinking out loud, not laying down the law, but taking you through a series of logical moves, imagination leaves, alternative suggestions um and uh um that that's much more than than a data transfer.

The youth case of a ee as a companion, as you read, is is really exciting to me. I've been using IT recently to to basically, as you read, you can have a conversation or the system that has access to a lot of things about a particular paragraph.

And i'm been really surprised how my brain was given some extra ideas, other recommendations of books, but also just like a some way of other ideas from elsewhere in the universe that released to this paragraph is IT Sparks to your imagination and thought and you see the actual richness and the thing you're reading now nobody's uh to my knowledge is implemented a really intuitive um interaction within A I in the text unfortunately partially because um the books are protected under dr. m. So there's like a wall where you can ask the I can access the thing.

So if you want to play with that kind of thing, you have to you know and break the law a little bit which is not a nice thing, not a good thing. but. Just like with music, napster, ter came up, uh, people started illegal, legally sharing music.

And the the answer to that was spotify, which made the sharing a music revolution as everything, and made the sharing of music macie. So there are some technological things that can enrich the experience of reading, but the actual painful long process of reading is really useful, just like a boredom is useful. That's right. It's also called .

just sitting the rated virtue yeah.

And of course you have to see the the smart phone as an enemy. I would say as of that special time, you have to think because social media companies are maximized to get your engagement. They want to grab your attention, and they grab that attention by making you as brain that as possible and get you to look more, more, more things.

So it's nice and fun, is great, recommended highly, is good for doping rush, but see IT as a counter um is counterforce the process of sitting with an idea for a prolonged period of time, taking a journey through an expert, a eloquent conveying that idea and growing uh by having a conversation with that idea and a book is really, really power so agree with you um uh totally what is you hope about the future of humanity? We've talked about the dark past. Uh what gives you a hope for the light at the end of the top?

So we, we, we talked indeed about a lot of linens, really damaging and negative energies that are part of human nature. But I find hope in another aspect of human nature, and that is the sheer variety of human reactions to situations. The very fact that history is full of so many stories of amazing endurance, amazing resilience, uh, the will to build up even after the horse have passed this to me is an inexact stile source of optimism.

And you know, there are some people who condemn cultural appropriation and say that borrowing from one culture to another uh is to be condemned or the problem is uh a synonym. Cultural appropriation is world history, trade transfer, ideas, influences, valuing that which is unlike your own culture is also a form of appropriation, quite literally. And so um those that that multitude of human reactions in the fact that our experiences so unlimited as history testifies, gives me great hope for the future.

Yeah the willingness of humans to explore all that with curiosity, even when even when the empires fall and the dreams are broken, we rise again.

That's right. unceasing.

That has thank you so much for your incredible work, your incredible lectures, your books and h, thank you for talking to you.

Thank you for this such a fun chat. Thanks for .

listings to this conversation with their house vicious to support the spot as we check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from carl Marks. History repeat itself, first as a tragedy, second as a force. Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.