Greetings from Quito, Ecuador. I will never stop being amazed by the supreme interviewing gifts of Peter Robinson. Lean, well informed, and above all, lets us live the wealth of his fantastic guests.
Kotkin's perfect delivery of his responses are disconcerting - not because of the content, but because of his lack of mistakes, ums, ahs, and inconsistent cadence. I think he self-corrected exactly one time. This dude is a machine. He's the academic Terminator. You know he's reading the back side of his retina.
I'm amazed that in this day and age, when long format theatrical documentaries are so popular, that no one has made a multi-part movie explaining what happened in Russia much in the same manner as Band of Brothers and From the Earth to the Moon.
I once asked a man whom I knew was an intelligen fellow and a historian what would he most like in life... "To remember everything I read" he said. Wise man I thought!
This is such a great explanation of a type of political thinking that is extremely dangerous and I wish more people knew about this history. It is so fascinating, I don’t know why people don’t study it more
First time I've seen Kotkin sitting quite still. Used to watching him rove on stage and into the audience. Socialism in the cities and capitalism in the countryside. A little like Americas fly-over country and progressive cities?
As always, great interview giving great insights. And you are certainly reaching curious Millennials! Peter Robinson is a formidable interviewer. Going strong since decades!
Concise and to the point. Explores the raw notion of power. Accumulation of raw power, independent of anyone else's views. Personal loyalty above all else. Of perennial significance.
STALIN was a Georgian Ortodox Seminarist he hate OTOMANS and NAZIS were controled from ISTAMBUL...to save GEORGIA and Beria's ARMENIA the Russian must stop Nazis that were in the payroll of Muslims of Jerusalem and Istambul
The irony of Stalin's collectivization and industrialization drive is that it was only possible due to the importation of machinery and skills developed by capitalism, particularly in the United States. Stalin purchased huge amounts of physical capital from the USA in the 1930s. I don't know if the Bolsheviks would have seen it as irony, though...they might have seen it as a way to go directly from a peasant society to a communist one and skip over the capitalist stage entirely in the outline laid down by Marxism.
Would really like to hear an episode or series of Hardcore History with Dan Carlin featuring Stephen Kotkin; or perhaps just an Uncommon Knowledge special with a similar setup. A subject like this needs more time to unfold the necessary nuance to properly explain the mechanisms behind the events.
"...someone who knows more about the life of Joseph Stalin than Joseph Stalin knew about the life of Joseph Stalin." 1) That's a bold claim, given how much truth was buried in the Soviet Union, even in post-Stalin era. 2) Don't ever speak that sentence again... It took me a half hour to uncross my eyes.
When Kotkin refers to the murder of 300 Red Army officers, he is not speaking about the Purge - these deaths occurred in the first month after the German invasion, and these officers were scapegoated and executed during the Battle of Moscow in 1941. While may officers were indeed arrested and executed during the previous years, the idea that a depleted officer corps contributed to the poor performance of the Red Army in the early days of Operation Barbarossa is mostly a story spread by Red Army apologists, to present a clean story. In fact, many commanders understood what was happening along the new German border, and before and during the start of the invasion they had warned Stalin - who told them that they were lying. The reality is that Stalin's own incompetence and paranoia had a greater effect at sabotaging the Red Army in the first month of fighting; along with, of course, the devastating operational surprise and tactical superiority achieved by the Germans (the Nazi blunder, of course, being to have underestimated Red Army strength to be 50 full divisions smaller than it was, thanks to poor intelligence).
As far as the obsession with Trotsky goes and the coerced confessions, I think it just means Stalin was deeply insecure. He needed affirmation that what he was doing was sound and tortured confessions from people to pad that insecurity.
Everyone knows millennials are the ruin of Western civilization, which is strange considering you haven't been around long enough to actually ruin anything.
Interesting that Trotsky survived so long. Were all of his supporters Jewish? Did Stalin see Jews as a power block? Did that motivate his actions? Why do Peter and Kotkin not discuss this?
I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy. - Joseph Stalin (1943)
Well done. The professor makes the key point that ideas matter. If you take Marxism or Adam Smith seriously and put their principles into action you can get very different outcomes.
I am a millennial who used to be a marxist and crypto-stalinist some years ago. Thanks to Hoover Institution for constantly putting out this kind of quality content, it really helps! There is so much neo-marxist propaganda out there that voices of reason are desperately needed.
I'm curious: What do you - did you - consider a crypto-stalinist to be? I've heard several left-wingers call themselves crypto-cum-something but I don't know what that's supposed to mean.
@madamegouze Oh, a "crypto-x" is just a way of saying that someone is secretly and maliciously something that he isn't admitting to in public. For example I used to be active within a leftist party in my country which officially considers itself to be "democratic socialist" but in reality many of us were hardcore communists, admirers of Stalin and Mao. That is the way leftists operate. They try to persuade the mainstream society with moderate, nice sounding rhetoric but secretly they are far more radical and their goal is to radically transform society towards their ideals by the means of silent subversion. Conservatives in the US and in all of the west need to be way more alert about this and fight back!
Then were a revisionist. I find most people who claim to have been Marxists and converted to Liberalism do not actually understand Marxist theory. If you did understand the complex history of the USSR, and you did understand the theory, you'd know that this video is nothing but slander.
Interviewer is heavy handed in his restatements. If it's Stanford students in the audience surely such heavy handed and paternalistic statements undermine the very the very valuable and clear concise presentation by the author.
You guys at Stanford, give your guests better chairs. It’s unacceptable that you give grown men those uncomfortable chairs without arm rests. Steven Kotkin also clearly has back problems. I can tell because of my own and I can immediately notice others with it.
Stephen Kotkin is the most impressive scholar and speaker I have ever listened to. (And I had Pearce Williams at Cornell and Spence at Yale.). Mastery over a vast catalog of sources, acute judicious use of them, perception into character beyond the page and clear expression of conclusions. I've watched many hours of his talks and am eager to learn from him.
The famine ended with the election of FDR, who loved uncle Joe. He sent American wheat and produce to the USSR, it was shipped through the Black Sea and the Soviets claimed it was grown in the Ukraine.sold to the population as produce of the USSR.
This idea about forcing people to modernize.....it reminds me of school... we are forced to go to school to become a modern people..... but the crap we are taught doesn’t serve us......
I think Stalin's personality disorder issues are seen in his bizarre actions. He sees everyone as either a good friend or a bitter enemy. There's no in between. Like people with personality disorders, he's always afraid of betrayal and abandonment. He can't take criticism of any kind without feeling he's being personally attacked. There's a lack of empathy and a strong sense of objectifying people for his own ends regardless of the consequence to them. Manipulation, superficial charm when it serves his purpose, pathological lying, etc.
The most important point missing here that Stalin had great deal of experience in internal dealings of gang of bandits he acquired from his bank robbing years. Non of his rivals in bolshevik gang could beat him at that in their internal power struggle.
Stalin was never accused nor sentenced for a robbery. The 'okhrana' had an agent and they knew everything, they caught most of them when they tried to exchange the stolen banknotes.
Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator, creator of great power, and destroyer of tens of millions of lives …” And a friend of Franklin Roosevelt, may I remind you all!
Dear Mr. Robinson, estimated Sir, i have for you, besides the most emphatic praise for what you have already accomplished on your show, an extremely urgent and important proposal. Both Mr Victor Davis Hanson and Mr. Stephen Kotkin are members of the Hoover Institute. They are both exceptional men of proven quality and accomplishment. They are excellent debaters and expositors of complex ideas in very comprehensive schemes of thought. Yet, yet, as i am since some time now trying to get a hold on what is happening in the world and especially in the US, listening very carefully to these true luminaries (the best show in town, you said yourself about Mr. Kotkin) it so happens that i cannot help noticing an unmistakable and potentially very deep rift in their estimate of things national and international. This comes out abundantly clear when they discuss anything to do with what Trump stood and still stands for. This issue is the biggest issue on the table now, for the US itself but also for the world at large (see the 3rd Lecture on "Sphere of influence" held by Mr Kotkin in Vienna in 2017). I beseech you, dearest Sir, to put them together as soon as possible with you at your table and have them talk about these issues, each one clarifying himself in debate. Both are civilized men, of good cheer, wellintentioned, and modest men. You must have them talk with you together, please, you cannot not do this. I think such a debate could be of the most extreme importance in sanitizing the republican party's grip on things. Because the Us and the world must get beyond what the Trump phenomenon means and has still in store it seems. Only those speakers, together with you monitoring, can vastly and in one go contribute to this as no other team of public intellectuals could. PLEASE, consider my proposal and most vehement request at lenght. Many thanks and loyal greetings from Belgium
Really fascinating. I didn't even know that under Lenin the Russians sort of made things work by allowing the peasants to practice pseudo-capitalism. Then Stalin came along and really, uh, turned Russia into a new direction...
It is sad that I am rewatching this and realizing that the same collectivism he said Stalin did with the term "kulak" is the same thing we have been doing recently here in the US with terms like "racist" and "transphobic". Turning the people against each other while drawing everyone to the obedience of the government, who pushed the agenda for that very reason. It truly is a fact that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Ive read robert service stuff, and stalin by montefiore (amazing!!!), but heck this guy sounds like he may have a book too top them all. Very astute analysis, great interview
Weirdly, to my set of associations, when we ask, in the time of terror, why the confessions? It's most like the Inquisition. And that is absolutely chilling, for the reason that supposedly religion is totally outlawed. The torture is to extract the confession, but the murder is the result of the confession, you admit you're a traitor, so you die. You admit you're a muslim or a jew, under torture, and because you've admitted it to the Grand Inquisitor, you must die. It's almost unimaginable that he would have murdered over 800k faithful followers of the revolution.
More than half of the people killed were opponents of the revolution - kulaks, landlords, tsarist officials, the bourgeoisie. According to statistics in April 1940 of the total number of prisoners (1.269.785) only 1.4% were political or 17.621 in absolute numbers.
"It was necessary to modernize argument" really runs into trouble when you consider that almost all countries, even the rich ones, were peasant countries and rose out of that without totalitarianism. And no, it's not a matter of size, majority of Russians live(d) in the European section of the country, in area similar to combined France, Germany and Poland. Wast majority being very low population density area.
Luke Bruce In 1980, my brother was in the Soviet Union. It was a total mess. Driving through Moscow, you had no idea what was a store. The only way you knew was when you saw a lineup. People would get into the lineup without even asking what the lineup was for because they knew it had to be some necessary daily shopping item and whatever it was you always needed it. Simple things, like toilet paper, were always in short supply. The country with the largest forests on the planet, couldn't make enough toilet paper for its own citizens. Incredibly, one of the first things to fall in short supply in Hugo Chavez's socialist state was toilet paper, as well. What a system. He was in a cab one day and it started to rain. Every vehicle stopped, including his cab. The driver grabbed a set of wind shield wipers, jumped out and snapped them into place on the windshield. Every driver of every stopped vehicle was doing the same thing. When the driver got back in the car, my brother asked what that was all about. The driver said that if you left them in place, people would steal them so you always took them off when you weren't driving. He said you had to because it might take months to replace them because wipers were in such short supply. That's the price the people paid so the Soviets could brag about their space program. Market needs dictated by the government instead of by the people who needed them. Imagine if Trump decided what groceries you were going to need next week. I'll bet you'd love that.
MrSunshine64 It's Marxist policy. That's what Stalin was essentially supporting, although he did fight hard to maintain his spot as the head of the state. The essential Marxism was still in place all through the Soviet era. That lack of essential goods is a trademark of all communist regimes, no matter the era or the country. That's a disingenuous statement.
I agreed just in the first 4 minutes in terms of modernization of a "peasant" country. Portugal, one of the greatest European powers of all time, because of 48 years of fascist dictatorship in the 20th century, was in 1973 as behind as you can possibly be for a western European country and through capital investment and property rights, loans and a great banking system Portugal went from a completely backward country in 1974 to one of the most advanced and most modern countries in Europe in a span of less than 30 years from 1975 to the early 2000s. So yeah, it works pretty well. Ironically though it was members of the clandestine Portuguese communist party and communist sympathizers that brought down the fascist dictatorship in Portugal in April of 1974.
Greetings from Quito, Ecuador. I will never stop being amazed by the supreme interviewing gifts of Peter Robinson. Lean, well informed, and above all, lets us live the wealth of his fantastic guests.
Kotkin's perfect delivery of his responses are disconcerting - not because of the content, but because of his lack of mistakes, ums, ahs, and inconsistent cadence. I think he self-corrected exactly one time. This dude is a machine. He's the academic Terminator. You know he's reading the back side of his retina.
If I close my eyes , I can imagine that Joe Pesci is an Historical Genius.
“Political crimes for speaking the truth”.....sounds familiar.
I'm amazed that in this day and age, when long format theatrical documentaries are so popular, that no one has made a multi-part movie explaining what happened in Russia much in the same manner as Band of Brothers and From the Earth to the Moon.
Peter must be quite happy at how many young people these days are interested in this kind of content. Great stuff.
Millennial here. I love it
Beautiful talk. I also love the talking pace of the guest.
This guy would need a 10 hour interview.
www.archive.org/details/stephen-kotkin-waiting-for-hitler-audio
His two books on Stalin are the most exhaustive yet engrossing biographies I've ever read, they're truly amazing.
Yes indeed.
We heard about Hitler all the time, but not so much about Stalin, in school.
When Stephen Kotkin speaks, a wise man shuts up
This is amazing. Was he crying at some point? 20:30 Robinson appeared to pick something up. This guy speaks with emotion. I can listen to him for days
This is ABSOLUTELY fascinating. Thank you for uploading.
I once asked a man whom I knew was an intelligen fellow and a historian what would he most like in life... "To remember everything I read" he said. Wise man I thought!
Very interesting stuff. Do they even teach this in school anymore? I suspect the answer is no.
Yes. Beginning a unit on Stalin tomorrow in my IB History class. High school seniors
@@doctorgman1 Do they let you compare the ideology of these dark times to what some prominent politicians of today say?
This is such a great explanation of a type of political thinking that is extremely dangerous and I wish more people knew about this history. It is so fascinating, I don’t know why people don’t study it more
First time I've seen Kotkin sitting quite still. Used to watching him rove on stage and into the audience. Socialism in the cities and capitalism in the countryside. A little like Americas fly-over country and progressive cities?
Joe Pesci is my favorite Stalin scholar.
Rasectos lol now all I hear is Pesci 😂.
Haha I knew he looked like someone I had seen before. Its indeed Pesci!
A Buick never had positraction.
If this guy entered a competition to do Pesci impersonations,he'd win hands down every time.
Yeah - and as George Carlin truly says, it's amazing how much Pesci can take care of with a simple baseball bat!
As always, great interview giving great insights. And you are certainly reaching curious Millennials! Peter Robinson is a formidable interviewer. Going strong since decades!
archive.org/details/stephen-kotkin-paradoxes-of-power-audio
archive.org/details/stephen-kotkin-waiting-for-hitler-audio
Wish I could take all of this guy's classes.
Concise and to the point. Explores the raw notion of power. Accumulation of raw power, independent of anyone else's views. Personal loyalty above all else. Of perennial significance.
total pure capitalism
Would love another video with Kotkin - he's brilliant
Thank you for this great interview.
Why do I matter? You're going to Siberia
I've always wondered what it would be like to go to the Gulag.
Read Grover Furr
STALIN was a Georgian Ortodox Seminarist he hate OTOMANS and NAZIS were controled from ISTAMBUL...to save GEORGIA and Beria's ARMENIA the Russian must stop Nazis that were in the payroll of Muslims of Jerusalem and Istambul
Papa Stalin LOL
@@garyvonneida4065 There is no truth in the news and no news in the truth!
learned more about Russia in this talk than the whole history lessons in high school.
Millennial here. Avid viewer of Hoover Institutions. Please post more content!
Great Interview. Cannot wait for the next part.
Excellent as always, glad to have had a chance to attend his lecture in Tbilisi back in 2015
This is so great, thanks a lot. I only wish it lasted forever. Thanks for letting him explain it properly.
Should we feel nervous when we hear government officials talk about class warfare, pitting the haves with the have nots and etc.
The irony of Stalin's collectivization and industrialization drive is that it was only possible due to the importation of machinery and skills developed by capitalism, particularly in the United States. Stalin purchased huge amounts of physical capital from the USA in the 1930s.
I don't know if the Bolsheviks would have seen it as irony, though...they might have seen it as a way to go directly from a peasant society to a communist one and skip over the capitalist stage entirely in the outline laid down by Marxism.
Would really like to hear an episode or series of Hardcore History with Dan Carlin featuring Stephen Kotkin; or perhaps just an Uncommon Knowledge special with a similar setup. A subject like this needs more time to unfold the necessary nuance to properly explain the mechanisms behind the events.
Absolutely fascinating history.
"He always brings up Stalin" - Norm Macdonald
When does Norm Macdonald say that? I tried googling it.
@@squamish4244 adam egret always says stalin was the bad guy because he wants hitler to look better
Many, many thanks for this great content!
Brilliant mind, fascinating discussion
"...someone who knows more about the life of Joseph Stalin than Joseph Stalin knew about the life of Joseph Stalin."
1) That's a bold claim, given how much truth was buried in the Soviet Union, even in post-Stalin era.
2) Don't ever speak that sentence again... It took me a half hour to uncross my eyes.
True and valid comment compared to other's references to "Hollywood" thus FICTION.
The term useful idiots was coined by Lenin. This is what your leaders think of you.
When Kotkin refers to the murder of 300 Red Army officers, he is not speaking about the Purge - these deaths occurred in the first month after the German invasion, and these officers were scapegoated and executed during the Battle of Moscow in 1941.
While may officers were indeed arrested and executed during the previous years, the idea that a depleted officer corps contributed to the poor performance of the Red Army in the early days of Operation Barbarossa is mostly a story spread by Red Army apologists, to present a clean story. In fact, many commanders understood what was happening along the new German border, and before and during the start of the invasion they had warned Stalin - who told them that they were lying.
The reality is that Stalin's own incompetence and paranoia had a greater effect at sabotaging the Red Army in the first month of fighting; along with, of course, the devastating operational surprise and tactical superiority achieved by the Germans (the Nazi blunder, of course, being to have underestimated Red Army strength to be 50 full divisions smaller than it was, thanks to poor intelligence).
Wow, what an amazing interview. Thank you Dr. Kotkin for your incredible scholarship!
As far as the obsession with Trotsky goes and the coerced confessions, I think it just means Stalin was deeply insecure. He needed affirmation that what he was doing was sound and tortured confessions from people to pad that insecurity.
Always great to hear from Stephen Kotkin!
I am aware of the basic history Mr. Kotkin states. First time I have witnessed him. Reverent.
This guy is brilliant.
you folks should put the author's amazon link in your description.
absolutely fascinating interview and yes i am a millenial. thank u!
IllICITGRYNE I’m proud of you!
Maybe read about how this propaganda's been completely debunked over and over again, then, millenial. :)
Everyone knows millennials are the ruin of Western civilization, which is strange considering you haven't been around long enough to actually ruin anything.
@@khrachvikkhrachvik7049 and yet you cannot provide one reference to this plentiful debunking, to help the Millenials education? For shame
Interesting that Trotsky survived so long. Were all of his supporters Jewish? Did Stalin see Jews as a power block? Did that motivate his actions? Why do Peter and Kotkin not discuss this?
I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy. - Joseph Stalin (1943)
Source?
Well done. The professor makes the key point that ideas matter. If you take Marxism or Adam Smith seriously and put their principles into action you can get very different outcomes.
BEST INTERVIEWER IN THE BUSINESS!!!
Wonderful interview. Stephen Kotkin speaks with such calm and eloquent authority. Thanks for posting this video.
I am a millennial who used to be a marxist and crypto-stalinist some years ago. Thanks to Hoover Institution for constantly putting out this kind of quality content, it really helps! There is so much neo-marxist propaganda out there that voices of reason are desperately needed.
Allzumenschliches44 this makes me so happy to hear
I'm curious: What do you - did you - consider a crypto-stalinist to be? I've heard several left-wingers call themselves crypto-cum-something but I don't know what that's supposed to mean.
@madamegouze
Oh, a "crypto-x" is just a way of saying that someone is secretly and maliciously something that he isn't admitting to in public. For example I used to be active within a leftist party in my country which officially considers itself to be "democratic socialist" but in reality many of us were hardcore communists, admirers of Stalin and Mao.
That is the way leftists operate. They try to persuade the mainstream society with moderate, nice sounding rhetoric but secretly they are far more radical and their goal is to radically transform society towards their ideals by the means of silent subversion. Conservatives in the US and in all of the west need to be way more alert about this and fight back!
Just because I agree with Kotkin doesnt mean I agree with Shaprio, or watch breitbart news.
Then were a revisionist. I find most people who claim to have been Marxists and converted to Liberalism do not actually understand Marxist theory. If you did understand the complex history of the USSR, and you did understand the theory, you'd know that this video is nothing but slander.
I must buy this book
FASCINATNG interview!! Very revealing.
"No one can receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven".
The Almighty uses the wicked to destroy the wicked.
Min 13-16 gave me chills..
History repeating itself.
Interviewer is heavy handed in his restatements. If it's Stanford students in the audience surely such heavy handed and paternalistic statements undermine the very the very valuable and clear concise presentation by the author.
That was great. Peter is an excellent interviewer
This is wonderful
archive.org/details/stephen-kotkin-paradoxes-of-power-audio
archive.org/details/stephen-kotkin-waiting-for-hitler-audio
Can you imagine American teachers teaching this? No way
You guys at Stanford, give your guests better chairs. It’s unacceptable that you give grown men those uncomfortable chairs without arm rests. Steven Kotkin also clearly has back problems. I can tell because of my own and I can immediately notice others with it.
Stephen Kotkin is the most impressive scholar and speaker I have ever listened to. (And I had Pearce Williams at Cornell and Spence at Yale.). Mastery over a vast catalog of sources, acute judicious use of them, perception into character beyond the page and clear expression of conclusions. I've watched many hours of his talks and am eager to learn from him.
A few great speeches of him online
This guy is such a great story teller, and the interviewer asked all the right question, then let the professor finish his response.
archive.org/details/stephen-kotkin-waiting-for-hitler-audio
Mr Richie Kaye you think this guy is a compelling speaker?
I just discovered him and I hope to find more of his work.
AMAZING VIDEO BRAVO ❤😍❤
Excellent documentary, a must read ...thank you!
The famine ended with the election of FDR, who loved uncle Joe. He sent American wheat and produce to the USSR, it was shipped through the Black Sea and the Soviets claimed it was grown in the Ukraine.sold to the population as produce of the USSR.
Great interview, very clear answers.
whoever added the noise-gate ruined the flow and sound quality to this video.
This idea about forcing people to modernize.....it reminds me of school... we are forced to go to school to become a modern people..... but the crap we are taught doesn’t serve us......
I think Stalin's personality disorder issues are seen in his bizarre actions. He sees everyone as either a good friend or a bitter enemy. There's no in between. Like people with personality disorders, he's always afraid of betrayal and abandonment. He can't take criticism of any kind without feeling he's being personally attacked. There's a lack of empathy and a strong sense of objectifying people for his own ends regardless of the consequence to them. Manipulation, superficial charm when it serves his purpose, pathological lying, etc.
Jason West sociopathic, perhaps narcissistic borderline
Dr. Kotkin probably does a great Joe Pesci impression
look forward to reading your books.
Stalin, hero of the left.
The most important point missing here that Stalin had great deal of experience in internal dealings of gang of bandits he acquired from his bank robbing years. Non of his rivals in bolshevik gang could beat him at that in their internal power struggle.
Stalin was never accused nor sentenced for a robbery. The 'okhrana' had an agent and they knew everything, they caught most of them when they tried to exchange the stolen banknotes.
Stephen Kotkin is one of the most interesting persons I've heard. I'm transfixed.
Remember the words of Israel’s first prime minister David Ben Gurion, “ I am a Bolshevik . “
Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator, creator of great power, and destroyer of tens of millions of lives …” And a friend of Franklin Roosevelt, may I remind you all!
I always wondered how Joe Pesci would sound as an intellectual.
Millennial crew REPRESENTIN🤘
so thankful for this
The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money to waste!!
AMAZING VIDEO LOVE YOU ❤❤❤
I recommend watching some of Yuri Maltsev's lectures here on UA-cam. Viva Mises.
great interviews!
best interviewer in the fuuuckin game
I could listen to this guy all day. Gotta love Bach, too.
archive.org/details/stephen-kotkin-waiting-for-hitler-audio
Dear Mr. Robinson, estimated Sir, i have for you, besides the most emphatic praise for what you have already accomplished on your show, an extremely urgent and important proposal. Both Mr Victor Davis Hanson and Mr. Stephen Kotkin are members of the Hoover Institute. They are both exceptional men of proven quality and accomplishment. They are excellent debaters and expositors of complex ideas in very comprehensive schemes of thought. Yet, yet, as i am since some time now trying to get a hold on what is happening in the world and especially in the US, listening very carefully to these true luminaries (the best show in town, you said yourself about Mr. Kotkin) it so happens that i cannot help noticing an unmistakable and potentially very deep rift in their estimate of things national and international. This comes out abundantly clear when they discuss anything to do with what Trump stood and still stands for. This issue is the biggest issue on the table now, for the US itself but also for the world at large (see the 3rd Lecture on "Sphere of influence" held by Mr Kotkin in Vienna in 2017).
I beseech you, dearest Sir, to put them together as soon as possible with you at your table and have them talk about these issues, each one clarifying himself in debate. Both are civilized men, of good cheer, wellintentioned, and modest men. You must have them talk with you together, please, you cannot not do this. I think such a debate could be of the most extreme importance in sanitizing the republican party's grip on things. Because the Us and the world must get beyond what the Trump phenomenon means and has still in store it seems. Only those speakers, together with you monitoring, can vastly and in one go contribute to this as no other team of public intellectuals could. PLEASE, consider my proposal and most vehement request at lenght. Many thanks and loyal greetings from Belgium
“Even though it was working””.......reminds me of people who would rather a recession than see Trump succeed......
Really fascinating. I didn't even know that under Lenin the Russians sort of made things work by allowing the peasants to practice pseudo-capitalism. Then Stalin came along and really, uh, turned Russia into a new direction...
Incredible talk. Is anybody else getting a little Joe Pesci vibe from Kotkin?
I love listening to intellectual conversation in my own New Yawk accent!
How degenerated ... brainwash is not "intellectual conversation"
While I do love the closing music, it seems a bit... too cheery after that closing statement lol.
It is sad that I am rewatching this and realizing that the same collectivism he said Stalin did with the term "kulak" is the same thing we have been doing recently here in the US with terms like "racist" and "transphobic". Turning the people against each other while drawing everyone to the obedience of the government, who pushed the agenda for that very reason.
It truly is a fact that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Ive read robert service stuff, and stalin by montefiore (amazing!!!), but heck this guy sounds like he may have a book too top them all. Very astute analysis, great interview
Hello, is Kotkin's biography of Stalin more reliable than of Robert Service?
Excellent interview
clear good speaker
Weirdly, to my set of associations, when we ask, in the time of terror, why the confessions? It's most like the Inquisition. And that is absolutely chilling, for the reason that supposedly religion is totally outlawed. The torture is to extract the confession, but the murder is the result of the confession, you admit you're a traitor, so you die. You admit you're a muslim or a jew, under torture, and because you've admitted it to the Grand Inquisitor, you must die. It's almost unimaginable that he would have murdered over 800k faithful followers of the revolution.
More than half of the people killed were opponents of the revolution - kulaks, landlords, tsarist officials, the bourgeoisie. According to statistics in April 1940 of the total number of prisoners (1.269.785) only 1.4% were political or 17.621 in absolute numbers.
"It was necessary to modernize argument" really runs into trouble when you consider that almost all countries, even the rich ones, were peasant countries and rose out of that without totalitarianism. And no, it's not a matter of size, majority of Russians live(d) in the European section of the country, in area similar to combined France, Germany and Poland. Wast majority being very low population density area.
Stalin's Big Idea. Modernise the peasantry by taking them back to serfdom.
more like taking them from illiteracy to outer space
industrial serfdom vv agricultural, or, if really lucky, slavery and death in the gulags.
Luke Bruce
In 1980, my brother was in the Soviet Union. It was a total mess. Driving through Moscow, you had no idea what was a store. The only way you knew was when you saw a lineup. People would get into the lineup without even asking what the lineup was for because they knew it had to be some necessary daily shopping item and whatever it was you always needed it. Simple things, like toilet paper, were always in short supply. The country with the largest forests on the planet, couldn't make enough toilet paper for its own citizens. Incredibly, one of the first things to fall in short supply in Hugo Chavez's socialist state was toilet paper, as well. What a system.
He was in a cab one day and it started to rain. Every vehicle stopped, including his cab. The driver grabbed a set of wind shield wipers, jumped out and snapped them into place on the windshield. Every driver of every stopped vehicle was doing the same thing. When the driver got back in the car, my brother asked what that was all about. The driver said that if you left them in place, people would steal them so you always took them off when you weren't driving. He said you had to because it might take months to replace them because wipers were in such short supply.
That's the price the people paid so the Soviets could brag about their space program. Market needs dictated by the government instead of by the people who needed them. Imagine if Trump decided what groceries you were going to need next week. I'll bet you'd love that.
boring liberal BS.
MrSunshine64
It's Marxist policy. That's what Stalin was essentially supporting, although he did fight hard to maintain his spot as the head of the state. The essential Marxism was still in place all through the Soviet era. That lack of essential goods is a trademark of all communist regimes, no matter the era or the country.
That's a disingenuous statement.
I agreed just in the first 4 minutes in terms of modernization of a "peasant" country. Portugal, one of the greatest European powers of all time, because of 48 years of fascist dictatorship in the 20th century, was in 1973 as behind as you can possibly be for a western European country and through capital investment and property rights, loans and a great banking system Portugal went from a completely backward country in 1974 to one of the most advanced and most modern countries in Europe in a span of less than 30 years from 1975 to the early 2000s. So yeah, it works pretty well. Ironically though it was members of the clandestine Portuguese communist party and communist sympathizers that brought down the fascist dictatorship in Portugal in April of 1974.
Thank you for this great content. Highly intellectual and stimulating.