Here are the timestamps. Please check out our sponsors to support this podcast. Transcript: lexfridman.com/serhii-plokhy-transcript 0:00 - Introduction & sponsor mentions: - Eight Sleep: eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings - Shopify: shopify.com/lex to get $1 per month trial - NetSuite: netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - AG1: drinkag1.com/lex to get 1 month supply of fish oil 1:18 - Collapse of the Soviet Union 17:27 - Origins of Russia and Ukraine 30:30 - Ukrainian nationalism 38:13 - Stepan Bandera 1:07:13 - KGB 1:22:11 - War in Ukraine 1:58:27 - NATO and Russia 2:09:30 - Peace talks 2:23:17 - Ukrainian Army head Valerii Zaluzhnyi 2:29:54 - Power and War 2:40:45 - Holodomor 2:47:17 - Chernobyl 2:57:51 - Nuclear power 3:07:28 - Future of the world
43:40 Was Stepan Bandera Nazi? Serhii Plokhy: "Nazi, this label is certainly promoted fist by Soviet propaganda and then by Russian propaganda...If you focus on the years of collaboration, those were the same years when Joseph Stalin collaborated with Hitler. So we have the same reason to call Stalin Nazi collaborator as we have the reason to call Bandera Nazi collaborator."
Dude, Bandera was the leader of a radical far right organization that had the word 'nationalist' in its name, Stalin was a red dictator, it is a laughable answer
Well, that's right, Stalin is a fascist who started World War II. Bandera is a Nazi because he wanted to free himself from the Soviet occupation with the help of other occupiers.
Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo and spent several years in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp The two Bandera brothers were arrested by the Germans in 1941 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp They died in July 1942 after being brutally tortured So after that, what grounds do we have for calling Bandera a Nazi collaborator?
@@ninaactor2787 During WWII, some Indians fought on the side of Germany for the promise that the Nazi would deliver them from control by United Kingdom.
Lex, I don't know how often you read your comments but listening to your podcasts with political thinkers and historians has done a lot for me. I started college at 16 and have delayed my graduation over and over again because I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. I majored in Political Science. The amount of knowledge that I had gained from these podcasts had inspired me to open up a few books and it reignited my interest in my field, making me happy to finally decide to make a career out of this. Thank you
Mearsheimer would crash his claims.For instance,this guy somehow conclude that for Putin the collapse of SSSR was bigger tragedy than loss of man during the ww2. So, Mearsheimer would have probably tell him that you can't compare loss of life kind of tragedy with the term "GEOPOLITICAL catastrophe"!Putin said it very clear for the most of people,but this guy is not one of them.If you want to learn from guy who can't comprehend a simple sentence,go on.This kind of people are not seeking the truth,they already decided what it looks like and then they looking for pretext for it.
@@ldhorricks Putin has described the collapse of Soviet Union as a "largest GEOPOLITICAL catastrophe of the century".He did not describe it as a largest human tragedy,or human loss.If he would do that,then this so-called historian could claim that for Putin "the biggest tragedy is not the loss of life,the biggest tragedy is the loss of the great power..."Do you understand now,or should I draw it to you?
Very nice overview of the historical landscape around Ukraine. Like the way Serhii tells history, it's not boring at all. Read one of his books, worth reading
So amazing to hear such an extended interview with Serhii. I read Ukraine: the gate of Europe back in 2018, never imagined to be able to watch a 3+ hours interview with the author. Thanks, Lex!
One minor correction (at 18:44): "Once we had Czechoslovaks, now we have Czechs and Slovaks." Sorry for going nitpicky, but compared to the others mentioned, it's a bit misleading. Slovaks, Moravians and Czechs (going east-to-west) can technically be taken as three stages of settling in one direction of the slavic diaspora. But Czechoslovakia and the idea of a joint nation is an invention of the early 20th Century, made out of sheer convenience to make a better case for RE-establishing a country after the breakup of Austro-Hungaria. Sadly enough, the wider English culture remains oblivious to anything that went on between the German and Russian lands prior to Napoleon winning at Austerlitz. Like... Czechs having a fairly singificant presence in Europe for centuries as a nation and kingdom (until the 1620 Battle of White Mountain), even having one of their major monarchs as the Holy Roman Emperor (Charles IV, recently elevated from virtually-unknown to somewhat-known worldwide thanks to the game Kingdom Come: Deliverance). Czechs and Slovaks exist as separate nations/ethnics/... since pre-1000AD and in the case of Czechs, the oldest written local sources go down to the 13th Century. Differences between Czechs and Moravians are barely worth mentioning, as both groups always maintained close ties. But Slovaks were largely separated from much of their western kin most of the time, mostly due to geographic and political reasons. The Czechoslovak get-together-again after WW1 was an idealistic political stunt that looked great on paper back then, but was doomed to fail in the long run in any case. This would be worth a whole socio-economic lecture. Also, the thing about "Bohemia" and "Bohemians" is a sad historical misnomer worthy of an entire lecture too.
See my comment for a correction of a rediculously inaccurate board statement he makes. I'll suggest he is not an expert on East Asian history and should probably say less until he learns more.
10 місяців тому+6
there was a common empire "great moravia" in 9-10th century, the split happened when Magyar came then it became Bohemia and Hungary
But Great Moravia wasn't a "national state", it was simply an early medieval state-like formation of some slavic tribes. And the tribe that later gave name to the Czech nation, the ancient Czechs, was just one peripheral tribe dependent on the prince of Moravia. @
I don't know whether 1,000 years ago Czechs were ethnically different from Poles or Slovaks; whether countries didn't distinguish themselves earlier than nations. But you are right -- talking about the ancient past using the word "Czechoslovakian" is a biting mistake here.
Historians...who is ordering them the narrative? I no longer know who to trust. I do not even know is having a historian from the opposite side would help. Maybe a historian of the C.I.A. (not their own), or some kind of an "Economic Assassin" guest would help see better how the relationships BTW close nations were historically muddled with.
11:52 Serhii mentions that "level of russification is much higher" in the post soviet state of Russia. The closed captions says 'unification' rather than 'russification.' This mistranslation/ failure at writing the correct words used is something that should be corrected, as the meaning conveyed by those two terms is strikingly different for everyone who is not perhaps Russian.....
@@daniel8728 What was done in Ukrainianization? All I know is Ukraine trying to make Ukranian the only official language, anything else? Cause if not then there's no comparison here.
@@cookml Tucker Carlson, John Meirsheimer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Oliver Stone - among others. He gives a stage to many Americans who parrot Russian propaganda - knowingly or not. Hearing from Ukrainians at least allows people to hear the side of the country being invaded - and constantly disparaged by his guests.
@@cookml jokes aside, every other guest that talk on topic of geopolitics is russian simp or carrying pro russian views on russia war on Ukraine. There were Guests without pro russian views - you can even say they hold anti russian but American views, not Ukrainian view. The difference is that you can say to anti russian American “it is fake, it is propaganda, you believe media too much” when you discuss russian war, but you cant say it that easily to Ukrainians, they know their facts about invasion directly from their relatives and friends also they understand russian language and that’s why understand more clearly what russians say and what their goal is.
from 2:43:00-2:47:00 in this interview: I was taken with S.P.'s way of expressing a very wise observation. Thanks, Lex, for once again helping us to understand the issues of the day by interviewing some of the most thoughtful folk on these topics.
Thank you both for a truly worthwhile 3+ hours, previously I had a rather sketchy knowledge (very sketch)y!) of Ukrainian history, I now feel I might be in a position to learn a lot more - re-read Bloodlands, listen to your program once again, buy a book or two of the professor’s books.
He also skillfully ignored the Maidan Coup, the right wing violence and US state department support leading up to it. What a clown is this guy that he never mentions the role of Victoria Nuland, as if she hasn't been exposed meddling in Ukrainian affairs. Ukraine got what it deserved because of people like Serhii.
@@irina573Yet he’s not wrong. There has been meddling way before 2014. If there is a counter argument, it would be nice to have a constructive discussion. Дякую.
@@Dr_Beastus One example - he said there are no NAZIs in Ukraine nowadays. Please search in Google or better in DuckDuckGo NAZI and Ukraine. You will find a lot of evidence: symbols, flags, pictures, and tattoos (even with Hiter himself). Please read about SS Galizien and the Wolynia Massacre in 1943. He said also Bandera is considered as NAZI because he collaborated with Hitler, but also others (Stalin for instance) also collaborated with Hitler. The truth is Bandera is considered as a NAZI because he shared the same ideas with Hitler: Jews, Russians, Poles and other nations are less human than Ukrainians and Germans. Ukraine should be pure like a glass of water - and so on.
@@Dr_Beastus Too many things but as a general thing, he keeps talking about Ukraine as a democracy.. Ukraine is/was known to be one of the most corrupt countries, Zelensky banned freedom of press, EU/Ukrainian leaders lied about Minsk, He forcefully mobilised for this war, he doesnt allow mae to leave their country. Does this sound like a democracy?
At the 1:41 mark Serhii talks about Ukraine being a truly bilingual country. Could this also apply also in Slovakia? Not to quibble on a minor point, but I think many Slovaks can speak and understand Czech. But maybe they're closer linguistically than Russian and Ukrainian. I don't know. Perhaps someone can speak to this. Thank you for the interview. Very knowledgeable guest and Lex you always do great work as an interviewer.
Many Ukrainians speak fluent Russian because they either had everyone around them speak Russian, or they had TV where most of the films and TV shows were in Russian, or both. But from my experience talking with Russians, they struggle to understand Ukrainian. If we look at vocabulary, Belarusian shares 84% of vocabulary, Polish 70%, Slovak 68%, Russian 62%.
My guess is Czech and Slovakian are closer to each other than Russian and Ukrainian. If a Czech, visiting Bratislava, can understand Slovakian without previous exposure to the language then it is not the same thing as in Ukraine. Russians from Russia cannot understand Ukrainian. But Russian-speaking people from Ukraine do understand Ukrainian for most part. That's why it is not uncommon in Ukraine to have bilingual conversations expecting that the one person would easily understand what the other person says. And if, for example, a Russian-speaking person does not understand the Ukrainian-speaking person at all then it becomes clear that the first person is not from Ukraine. Because even if a Russian speaker has never spoken any Ukrianian, just by living in Ukraine he would have a decent passive knowledge of Ukrainian from the school, media, songs on the radio, just coming across people from different parts of Ukraine. So, Serhii explained it very accurately. Having at least passive knowledge of both Ukrainian and Russian is a marker that a person has lived in Ukraine for some time. But Czech and Slovakian are just much closer to each other, that's why if a person understands Slovakian it does not necessarily mean he is from Slovakia, maybe he is from the Czechia.
I know 3 of these languages. Czech and Slovak are way more similar to each other than Russian and Ukrainian. Also, while a lot of Slovaks can actually speak Czech, Czechs might understand Slovak but they don't usually speak it. So yeah, you could say Slovakia is kinda bilingual (not officially though), but there are also plenty of bilingual (and even multilingual) countries in Africa and Asia.
No it is not. Czech and Slovak are considered different languages for political reasons. In reality they are just dialects of one another. Ukrainian and Belorussian could be considered such but Russian is already significant enough and is a different language.
Thanks, Lex, for the awesome podcast episode, especially in these uncertain times. The guest was really inspiring, and I learned a lot about the nearby Slavic regions from the impressive historical insights shared.
Encouraging to hear a scholarly discussion, that is focused on expanding our understanding of this situation. The visible thoughtfulness of Serhii Plokhy's personality and presentation that makes his words trustworthy. With the stakes & the pain-level so high in Ukraine, to feel educated rather than propagandized after listening to a discussion, is an achievement. Thank you. The Bolsheviks "arrested the development of the religion and thinking and theology." to fix it in pre 1917 imperialism. I have struggled to a way to come to grips with at force in Russian politics. Again, thank you. The podcast is so much more useful than a lecture because I can replay the parts I really need to hear, to let them slink in. Again, thank you. "NATO wa a big part of the Russian justification for the war, The truth is..." "The immediate goal was to stop the drift of the Ukraine to he West..." YES, except it was more than a "drift" it was a march toward a better future. Putin's Russia represents nothing but rot.
Question unrelated to the video: why do reactions often not get through, despite them not violating community guidelines? I have written a lot of reactions below the video and they just don't show up. It's highly frustrating.
Started watching this, 30 mins in I paused, read several works by, or about Pushkin, Tolstoy, Trotsky, Dostoevsky, and others. Now I am coming back to finish watching the rest of the video, with some context. Thanks Mr Friedman...
I hosted 30-40 player diplomacy games for people back in 2014 where each player got to play as a country and roleplay modern geopolitics. I didn't understand at the time (was a kid), but someone told me it was very important to include Ukraine as a separate country from Russia. I split them up and gave Ukraine control of Romania and some Baltic states (every part of the world had to be owned by some player at game start, there were only 40 players maximum and previous game hosts had Ukraine and Russia together). I didn't realize at the time the geopolitical implications for what I did. All I knew was that I made someone happy and it meant a lot to me.
It meant a very potent strategic advantage to the player who owned Ukraine! Since the time of the Thracian empire and before to the modern day, Ukraine is an extremely geographically important area of the world for transportation and commerce for the regions east of Europe with the entire West. Which means it is even more important when borders start moving.
As a Ukrainian, i'd love to see you interview Zelensky. Even ask him complex questions as some of the viewers has already suggested here. I like the interviewer. The guy thinks, always tries to ask follow-up questions. Respect. Not browning-nose to you, just like the approach and the personality.
At 1:15:31 he says Komsomol leaders (Soviet youth political organization), not council leaders, 1:15:47 - indistinct word here is Politburo, and at 1:16:07 is mentioned Brezhnev, not Beria (Beria is long gone by that time). 1:16:14 - in foreign language he means Siloviki, which is Russian umbrella term for military, security, and police state organizations.
19:57 we (me and people around me) are not feeling ourselves in one community of so called “eastern slavs”. Hrvati (for example) were always closer to me mentally than russians. To form this illusion of similar identity was a mission of russian propaganda for years even after soviet union collapsed. And still it didn’t work for most of Ukrainians. And the more Ukrainians were discovering Europe and World, the more clear it has become.
Lex, you describe Zelenskyy dismissively as just a comedian and actor. A little more reading and thinking would reveal that Zelenskyy also went to law school and successfully ran a production company for 2 decades. Your guest is correct … Zelenskyy has an innate ability to ‘read’ his audience, that’s a successful comedian. He also has the legal, managerial, marketing mind to lead a country at war against a so-called superpower. Your guest is excellent, thanks for having him on.
A few important remarks about Orange Revolution that Mr. Plokhy did not mention: Yuschenko was not the first Ukrainian president to express desire to join NATO - previous president Leonid Kuchma showed strong interest in joining NATO too - even came uninvited to NATO conference in Prague. After elections were nullified by the Ukrainian supreme court due to numerous proofs of election fraud coming from various ukrainian districts, "someone" poisoned Yuschenko himself, who barely survived and remained heavily scarred to this day. This was perceived by Ukrainians as Russia trying to forcefully retain grip on Ukraine. Ukrainians did not forget this fact and so when Yanukovich changed his rhetoric from clearly pro-russian to the centrist one (deepen ties with both sides) and overnight refused to sign trade agreement with the EU and instead chose to enter economic union with Russia, Ukrainians saw this betrayal as continuation of Russian plan to retain grip on Ukraine when they poisoned Yuschenko - that's why Maidan revolution happened - Ukrainians did not want to end up like Belarusians, vassals to the Russian Federation with their national language going sadly extinct...
Mr. Fridman, please interview Mr. Vitaly Portnikov, who will explain to you in detail all the background and implications of this war. Regarding the message that your family sounds the same in Ukraine and Russia. What do you want if Ukraine has been occupied since the time of Bohdan Khmelnytsky? If my parents and I, who were indigenous Ukrainians, were Russified? What if my grandmother hated Bandera, even though she was from the western regions of Ukraine, and her father, a loyal communist, was repressed? Was she labeled as the daughter of an enemy of the people? You can turn people's brains so much that they will be against their relatives, even if it is against common sense. I also have a question-are the British, Americans, and Australians one nation because they sound alike? Anticipating your answer, I will say that we are different nations. The only reason all three nations speak English is that you all came out of the same past-the British Empire. It is the same in Ukraine. There is no need to reinvent the wheel; everything works the same everywhere.
Delighted to listen to the talk. It seems to me that, closer to the beginning of the fourth hour of the talk, both gentlemen started to feel tired, especially Lex.
Would be good for the world, but Lex won’t learn, unfortunately he is stuck in his Soviet childhood and hopeless in terms if understanding of current Ukrainian agenda
@@retroactivehistory More like complete darkness. He is one of the lamest commentators ever. He even calls the war a "special military operation", barf. Has a lot of fascist warmongering fans of course.
Exactly the only ppl to fight against the Russians in WW2 were the Nazis, the Fins, the Poles, and the Japanese. He wasn't a Fin, a Pole, and damn sure wasn't Japanese. 😂 They knew exactly who that SS member was. Wow how the world has flipped on its head. We were fighting side by side with the Russians against the Nazis. Now we're applauding them/him for fighting against Russia. He might've killed Americans, Canadians, Australians, British, and the French too for all they know.. Unbelievable! I would bet you all the money in my bank account that he was on the Western Front before the Eastern Front.. Causing mass genocide, and war crimes.. 😮
Wonderful and timely guest! Lex I noticed the essential water on the desk. Since they aren’t listed in your sponsors, I thought I would comment on this product. It was my water of choice for nearly a year before, realizing my health began to deteriorate. I couldn’t get enough of this clean cold, delicious tasting water. but the high alkalinity caused Gerd and dysfunction of my gallbladder. With no other interventions, I ceased drinking the water and all of the symptoms, the burning in my throat. The indigestion, and the pain in my gallbladder went away. I did some research online and learned that, although it sounds counterintuitive, too much alkalinity in the stomach is not good for digestion. So many of these new fad health waters are anything but healthy.
You should invite a guest to have a discussion on the birth rate crisis that is occuring in South Korea. The slow death of a society and finding out the reason behind it seems to me to be more urgent then an endless sequence on 'War' where the rest of humanity is left out from the discussion and political interest is the major driving force behind it
Yeah, the only mention of the US is that they "might have more n@zis", which honestly isn't even true from my anecdotal understanding. This dude dances around like a ballerina in a minefield.
@@cioccolateriaveneziana I had a comment earlier here that got deleted because they like to censor this stuff, which should speak for itself. But anyway, yes, he doesn't point out the provocations and NATO bombings and so on. He leaves a lot of inconvenient truths out of the conversation, and we all know why.
Does his last name literally translate as "bad"? (I know погано is "bad" in Ukrainian, but плохії means that as well (or "the bad ones" according to Google translate))
Kiev Rus language has many of the same words in Ukrainian langauge, not so with russian language. Russian language has many words of Turkish/Mongolian origin.
Plokhy leaves out a major period of Ukrainian history, which is the long period when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth controlled what is now western Ukrainian, including the city of Lvov. During this period the Ukrainians were ruled by the Cossack hierarchy, which was allied with the the Polish gentry. Only in 1648 did the Cossacks revolt against Polish rule, principally because the Poles stopped paying the "registered" Cossacks. The result of the revolt was the division of the Ukraine between the Poles and Russians and for the next two hundred years the Ukrainians tried to maintain a balance between those two forces. The relationship between Poland and Ukraine is more complicated and has as much an impact on the current situation than does the Russian influence, which did not exist until the end of the 17th century.
You make a very good point. When people talk about "Ukraine has always been part of Russia" I think they must have got their history knowledge about eastern Europe from James Bond movies, where eastern Europe is basically all stereotypical Russia. But Russian influence is actually very recent in a lot of places. My family's home region, Ternopil, was Russian for only 47 consecutive years, 1944 to 1991, and also from 1939 September to 1941 June. It was not even the life of my grandmother or grandfather, who served in the war fighting AGAINST Russia. The city I currently live is much more Russified, but it was founded by Duke Algirdis of Lithuania in 1363. For 432 years it was Lithuanian-Polish. It was Russian for 122 years, 1795 to 1917, before becoming part of the independent UPR. Then of course, USSR for 70 and independent for 33. Yet there is a strange sense of seeing the Russian presence as legitimate, and disregarding the much deeper Polish-Lithuanian history. I agree, too with your assessment of "complicated." My great-grandfather was a military officer. We have photos of him in Austrian uniform in WW1 and he was a proud officer of the Habsrburg army. Then he joined the Polish Army and served in the Second Polish Republic, fighting against the Soviets, also as an officer. When the Russians occupied eastern Poland in 1939, they offered him a commission in the Red Army. He refused to ever serve Russians, in any capacity. His son, my grandfather, joined the Germans in WW2 to fight the Russians. So, it was complicated....Germans are against Poles; we will serve in the Polish army, but if it's Germans vs Russians we are siding with the Germans. By contrast, the situation with Russians is simple: the enemy. Doesn't matter if you are Austrian-Galicia, Polish-Second Republic, Germany, or independent Ukraine, Russia is the enemy. Never marry a Russian, never speak their language. Never serve them. Never trust them.
Ukrainians where not a nation back then. It became a nation after ww2 when Soviet union established its borders and language. Communists in Soviet Union had an idea of "nation building". Little is known that Soviet Union created Macedonian grammar in 1945. They took Serb language and modified it to create Macedonian nation, same as they created Ukrainian.
Explain how my family has photos of our relatives involved in Ukrainian nationalist movements even in an era when our home region (Ternopil) had never yet been Russian. And explain how there are plenty of books, documents, famous poets or authors, etc. who spoke of a Ukrainian national identity even in the 1800s. The Soviet Union did not exist in the 1890s; ww2 had not yet happened in the 1910s and 20s. How is it there was a Ukrainian diaspora raising concern about the Holodomor and Soviet oppression in the early 1930s, 15 years before "after ww2", if it was all a post-ww2 creation of the USSR? Maybe go meet some actual Ukrainians, preferably elderly ones, and especially those who were not living in the USSR and could not have possibly been "created" by the Soviet Union, which certainly did not govern Austria and Poland, before the USSR even existed, nor did it govern Canada, Argentina, Brazil, all of which had people who were consciously of the Ukrainian nation, long before WW2. @@harbinger200
Do you really think that country which is unable to seal its borders is capable to "pulling strings" all over the world? You watched too many James Bond movies.
@@imcbocian do you really think that the US can't seal it's borders? It's about interests of people in power. The US is involved in war and spending enormous amount of money to it's military-industrial complex, pressuring EU to give money to Ukraine. Ukrainian government pretty much depends on the US right now only because if that even if we do not consider the previous context. The US openly says that Ukrainian government must increase the scale of mobilization of the Ukrainians.
The very fact you willing to compete on death tolls speaks tons of you. No, those were vast territories surpassing Ukraine and Belarus both in surface and population. Check your facts before you decide to say something.
It never was, since `45. Finns were fooled into NATO and out of neutrality. And actually, only NOW they are in potential danger.@@cioccolateriaveneziana
??? Finland has never been any Russian land as there are no Russians. Okraine (not Ukraine) is Novorossiya being taken from the Ottomans from 21 wars until Vlachia (Rumenia) 1707. Ukraine is mostly Galicia and west from Kiev and had NEVER being on Black Sea . Ukrainians and Okrainian- Russian settlers are two different ethnic groups, like Serbs and Croats (White Croats being actually Ukrainians too)
Yes there were logistical problems & more resistance from ukrainians than expected but military analysts are clear there were not enough russian troops to take Kiev & would have been long drawn out & bloody for both sides especially civilians ..no way Putin was planning to force his way into such a large city opposed..only if govt surrendered which was his plan
Thank you, very interesting and educative as always!❤ Just a small remark - 2:28 - he doesn’t speak foreign language (as said in the subtitles), he names different cities - “Kiev, Minsk and Dushanbe - left in different countries”
Aleksandar, congratulations for questions asked, as well as a very calm manner of interviewing respected Ukrainian Professor. Both of you have a nice Slavic accent and I am happy that you are not hiding it. It would be interesting if your interviewee would be in a debate in which slightly different opinions would be on the table. However, the Ukrainian Professor delivered his version of the truth. Another dimension which I want to stress is that this horrible conflict had to be avoided, because Slavic people are killing Slavic people. Let us talk about the outcome of this conflict in a couple of years, hoping that in the meantime the entire Europe will not be already totally destroyed, or burning. Actually, I like the patriotic segments of the speech of your interviewee.
What this war shows is that values and sense of identity are more important to people than ethnicity and that's where putin miscalculated in launching his full scale attack in 2022 trusting his intelligence that russia's efforts to buy off the play-makers in Ukraine will be enough to prevent serious military opposition.
it's hyperbolic anti-historical-knowledge nonsense to fear that entire Europe could be totally destroyed/burning in the medium/long term, let alone your 'couple of years'. Have u read any texts on the European History? Or 20th century history? Thorough goings over takes weeks of time, intesnsively allday long, to do so.
Очень интересный гость. И первый час беседы особенно классный. Но затем когда гость стал затрагивать более политизированную сторону истории, его ангажированность стало видно особенно сильно. Однако на эти темы говорить сложно без политических предрассудков, к сожалению. Некоторые люди умудряются спорить с политикой Римской республики. Хотя там непредвзятого намного меньше. Но классно, когда проблемы рассматриваются с разных точек зрения, и высказываются разные люди.
Да тот еще историк. Его послушать, то получается, что Украина хотела подписать Соглашение об ассоциации с ЕС, но Россия надавила и Янукович отказался. Ну вот конкретно в этом моменте насвистел, хотя и сказал до этого, что это очень важный момент. А как же Договор о зоне свободной торговле, который Украина подписала в 1994 году, и который начал действовать с 2012 года между РФ, РБ и Украиной? По этому договору отменялись тарифные и нетарифные ограничения между участниками. Москва поставила вопрос, что в случае подписания Украиной аналогичного соглашения с ЕС, это будет нарушением договора 1994 года.
@@dg7237да ты шо ?!! А то шо януковища избрали в президенты из за того что он пообещал подписать соглашение о зоне свободной торговли с Европой это что ? Просто Напиздел януковищ? Да ?
This boy Lex left the Soviet Union but the Soviet Union never left him…. And now he clings to Trump as to his holly Soviet boss with dirty boots that Lex is licking hard to get a pat on the head…
2:53:00 Chernobyl TV series was riddled with gross historical and scientific inaccuracies; it is a hyped up Hollywood-style sensationalism. If Lex didn't notice any of the fake science, then he doesn't know much.
He even started stuttering when asked a question whether Bandera was an antisemitic. Of course he was and his comrades were. Also the officers of SS Galychyna were killing not just soldiers but civilians as well. Ukrainians who collaborated with Nazis were sometime even more vicious than Germans. I am from western Ukraine and I ve talked to many old people from both camps. Ukraine doesn’t have a neo nazi problem it has a problem of identification. One part of ucrania speaks Ukrainian and the other one speaks Russian and by declining them to have Russian as a second official language, shit hit the fan
Really? You are from western Ukraine, when your channel's text is all in Russian and your location is listed in Russia. You mean, you are the daughter of Stalin's thugs who genocided the Ukraine and were sent as the occupation force once the USSR conquered western Ukraine. Your parents or grandparents having killed a bunch of Ukrainians doesn't make you Ukrainian.
I don't understand what your point about Bandera has to do with the language question in Ukraine. If you were actually from Ukraine, you would know that you can comfortably speak Russian in any part of Ukraine without a problem.
I've read Bandera's political manifesto, and while he was not very trusting toward jews, he certainly did not condone killing or deporting them. He acknowleged the presence of Jewish community in Ukraine and didn't mind it remaining that way. He did not fancy mixed marriages, though -- if I remember correctly. So it looks like his idea was a certain degree of separation, shall we say. That's what I remember. Whether antisemitic or not -- those views were certainly not nazi.
I absolutely loved the podcast. Serhii is a very intelligent and an interesting person to talk and listen to. I love how he keeps to be neutral and professional when talking about Ukraine and Russia even though he comes from Ukraine.
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Transcript: lexfridman.com/serhii-plokhy-transcript
0:00 - Introduction & sponsor mentions:
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- AG1: drinkag1.com/lex to get 1 month supply of fish oil
1:18 - Collapse of the Soviet Union
17:27 - Origins of Russia and Ukraine
30:30 - Ukrainian nationalism
38:13 - Stepan Bandera
1:07:13 - KGB
1:22:11 - War in Ukraine
1:58:27 - NATO and Russia
2:09:30 - Peace talks
2:23:17 - Ukrainian Army head Valerii Zaluzhnyi
2:29:54 - Power and War
2:40:45 - Holodomor
2:47:17 - Chernobyl
2:57:51 - Nuclear power
3:07:28 - Future of the world
Very thank full for this guest, I almost lost hope and thought you will invite guests that repeat russian propaganda narrative
Nice follow-up after TC. I know this is a topic you are passionate about based on past discussions and posts. Thank you for sharing this content.🤙🏼
ty Lex gg wp gl hf
Totally delusional in his predictions
When is the Destiny Finkelstein debate going to be available? Is it a secret??????
43:40 Was Stepan Bandera Nazi?
Serhii Plokhy: "Nazi, this label is certainly promoted fist by Soviet propaganda and then by Russian propaganda...If you focus on the years of collaboration, those were the same years when Joseph Stalin collaborated with Hitler. So we have the same reason to call Stalin Nazi collaborator as we have the reason to call Bandera Nazi collaborator."
Brillian answer!
Dude, Bandera was the leader of a radical far right organization that had the word 'nationalist' in its name, Stalin was a red dictator, it is a laughable answer
Well, that's right, Stalin is a fascist who started World War II. Bandera is a Nazi because he wanted to free himself from the Soviet occupation with the help of other occupiers.
Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo and spent several years in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
The two Bandera brothers were arrested by the Germans in 1941 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp
They died in July 1942 after being brutally tortured
So after that, what grounds do we have for calling Bandera a Nazi collaborator?
@@ninaactor2787 During WWII, some Indians fought on the side of Germany for the promise that the Nazi would deliver them from control by United Kingdom.
Mr Serhii, thank you very much.
Lex, I don't know how often you read your comments but listening to your podcasts with political thinkers and historians has done a lot for me. I started college at 16 and have delayed my graduation over and over again because I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. I majored in Political Science. The amount of knowledge that I had gained from these podcasts had inspired me to open up a few books and it reignited my interest in my field, making me happy to finally decide to make a career out of this. Thank you
Wow! That is very inspiring!
Good speed Michael. It’s never delayed, you’re only on time brother. Good luck in your endeavors
Amazing. Thanks.
What a cool comment for Lex to get! 🌟
Good luck, Michael, with whatever you decide to do! Knowledge is the key to freedom!✨️
LEX IS HOT!!!! 🔥🔥🔥
Such an absolutely brilliant and so enlightening. Thank you Lex and Serhii
You need to invite Timothy Snyder too.
He is completely out of touch
@@Abby-np5rr he's an expert on the subject.
Please no 😂
Would be good but Lex probably would afraid to. As Timothy is very open & sincere about nature of russians 😊
A podcast with Timothy Snyder would be superb!
Lex, this is a great interview! Have you considered mediating a debate between Plokhy and Mearsheimer, whose theories go unchallenged?
Great idea
Mearsheimer would crash his claims.For instance,this guy somehow conclude that for Putin the collapse of SSSR was bigger tragedy than loss of man during the ww2. So, Mearsheimer would have probably tell him that you can't compare loss of life kind of tragedy with the term "GEOPOLITICAL catastrophe"!Putin said it very clear for the most of people,but this guy is not one of them.If you want to learn from guy who can't comprehend a simple sentence,go on.This kind of people are not seeking the truth,they already decided what it looks like and then they looking for pretext for it.
Mearshiemer is a coward, fraud and compulsive liar. He would never agree to an interview with someone who could expose his lies.
@@renatobelic what on earth are you talking about?
@@ldhorricks Putin has described the collapse of Soviet Union as a "largest GEOPOLITICAL catastrophe of the century".He did not describe it as a largest human tragedy,or human loss.If he would do that,then this so-called historian could claim that for Putin "the biggest tragedy is not the loss of life,the biggest tragedy is the loss of the great power..."Do you understand now,or should I draw it to you?
Very nice overview of the historical landscape around Ukraine. Like the way Serhii tells history, it's not boring at all. Read one of his books, worth reading
So amazing to hear such an extended interview with Serhii. I read Ukraine: the gate of Europe back in 2018, never imagined to be able to watch a 3+ hours interview with the author. Thanks, Lex!
One minor correction (at 18:44): "Once we had Czechoslovaks, now we have Czechs and Slovaks." Sorry for going nitpicky, but compared to the others mentioned, it's a bit misleading.
Slovaks, Moravians and Czechs (going east-to-west) can technically be taken as three stages of settling in one direction of the slavic diaspora. But Czechoslovakia and the idea of a joint nation is an invention of the early 20th Century, made out of sheer convenience to make a better case for RE-establishing a country after the breakup of Austro-Hungaria.
Sadly enough, the wider English culture remains oblivious to anything that went on between the German and Russian lands prior to Napoleon winning at Austerlitz.
Like... Czechs having a fairly singificant presence in Europe for centuries as a nation and kingdom (until the 1620 Battle of White Mountain), even having one of their major monarchs as the Holy Roman Emperor (Charles IV, recently elevated from virtually-unknown to somewhat-known worldwide thanks to the game Kingdom Come: Deliverance).
Czechs and Slovaks exist as separate nations/ethnics/... since pre-1000AD and in the case of Czechs, the oldest written local sources go down to the 13th Century. Differences between Czechs and Moravians are barely worth mentioning, as both groups always maintained close ties. But Slovaks were largely separated from much of their western kin most of the time, mostly due to geographic and political reasons. The Czechoslovak get-together-again after WW1 was an idealistic political stunt that looked great on paper back then, but was doomed to fail in the long run in any case. This would be worth a whole socio-economic lecture.
Also, the thing about "Bohemia" and "Bohemians" is a sad historical misnomer worthy of an entire lecture too.
See my comment for a correction of a rediculously inaccurate board statement he makes. I'll suggest he is not an expert on East Asian history and should probably say less until he learns more.
there was a common empire "great moravia" in 9-10th century, the split happened when Magyar came then it became Bohemia and Hungary
But Great Moravia wasn't a "national state", it was simply an early medieval state-like formation of some slavic tribes. And the tribe that later gave name to the Czech nation, the ancient Czechs, was just one peripheral tribe dependent on the prince of Moravia. @
I don't know whether 1,000 years ago Czechs were ethnically different from Poles or Slovaks; whether countries didn't distinguish themselves earlier than nations. But you are right -- talking about the ancient past using the word "Czechoslovakian" is a biting mistake here.
This is true , but I understood Plokhy as explaining how matters looked or was described in the west , especially america…
Please lex, have more historians. Thanks for the conversations
this "historian" is rewriting history...
@@wishIKnewHowToLoveprove it, he had some minor inaccuracies but for the most part was correct objectively
Historians...who is ordering them the narrative? I no longer know who to trust.
I do not even know is having a historian from the opposite side would help.
Maybe a historian of the C.I.A. (not their own), or some kind of an "Economic Assassin" guest would help see better how the relationships BTW close nations were historically muddled with.
This one is not a historian, is a propagandist.
“Historians”
11:52 Serhii mentions that "level of russification is much higher" in the post soviet state of Russia. The closed captions says 'unification' rather than 'russification.' This mistranslation/ failure at writing the correct words used is something that should be corrected, as the meaning conveyed by those two terms is strikingly different for everyone who is not perhaps Russian.....
You could not have been pleased when it automatically transcribed you as Wank a witch
@@zetristan4525 funny
@@yuriywankiewicz6689And wouldn't Plokhy be translated as Bads? 😜If not, my bad...
And the Ukrainization of Russians, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, and others is just dandy! Hypocrisy!
@@daniel8728 What was done in Ukrainianization? All I know is Ukraine trying to make Ukranian the only official language, anything else? Cause if not then there's no comparison here.
By far, the best interviews (IMHO) are the ones with historians. Mindbenders all!
Better later then never: 1st Ukrainian voice on this podcast for last 2 years
How many Russians voices have we heard?
@@cookml Tucker Carlson, John Meirsheimer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Oliver Stone - among others. He gives a stage to many Americans who parrot Russian propaganda - knowingly or not. Hearing from Ukrainians at least allows people to hear the side of the country being invaded - and constantly disparaged by his guests.
@@cookmlTaker😂
@@cookml I mean every podcast have “russian” voice
@@cookml jokes aside, every other guest that talk on topic of geopolitics is russian simp or carrying pro russian views on russia war on Ukraine.
There were Guests without pro russian views - you can even say they hold anti russian but American views, not Ukrainian view. The difference is that you can say to anti russian American “it is fake, it is propaganda, you believe media too much” when you discuss russian war, but you cant say it that easily to Ukrainians, they know their facts about invasion directly from their relatives and friends also they understand russian language and that’s why understand more clearly what russians say and what their goal is.
One of the most important guests finally on the channel. Please read his books. Can’t wait for Timothy Snyder.
from 2:43:00-2:47:00 in this interview: I was taken with S.P.'s way of expressing a very wise observation. Thanks, Lex, for once again helping us to understand the issues of the day by interviewing some of the most thoughtful folk on these topics.
What Ukrainian culture?
Thank you both for a truly worthwhile 3+ hours, previously I had a rather sketchy knowledge (very sketch)y!) of Ukrainian history, I now feel I might be in a position to learn a lot more - re-read Bloodlands, listen to your program once again, buy a book or two of the professor’s books.
Пан Сергій - фаховий та поважний вчений. На питання "в чому сенс вторгнення в 2022?" майстерно почав з "коли війна почалась в 2014..." Brilliantly
Так, хоча в багатьох аспектах, по типу: чому Ярослав Мудрий почав штампувати гривну, він не розповів)
He also skillfully ignored the Maidan Coup, the right wing violence and US state department support leading up to it. What a clown is this guy that he never mentions the role of Victoria Nuland, as if she hasn't been exposed meddling in Ukrainian affairs. Ukraine got what it deserved because of people like Serhii.
@@ufukpolat3480 the ears of the Kremlin stick out from under your hat. hello mr major of russion FSB 😄🤡
@@irina573of course I see how are you dumb. Just see how much people was at maidan, and how much was at full Ukraine. Too close argument my boy
@@irina573Yet he’s not wrong. There has been meddling way before 2014. If there is a counter argument, it would be nice to have a constructive discussion. Дякую.
What a great, deeply informative episode. It's a shame it has more than 10 times less views than the one with Tucker
It's bias. This guy is lying. Try to fact-check him.
@@TonnyDeff I’ll look into it - can you give some examples of points where he is lying? Also, what’s a good unbiased source?
@@Dr_Beastus One example - he said there are no NAZIs in Ukraine nowadays. Please search in Google or better in DuckDuckGo NAZI and Ukraine. You will find a lot of evidence: symbols, flags, pictures, and tattoos (even with Hiter himself). Please read about SS Galizien and the Wolynia Massacre in 1943. He said also Bandera is considered as NAZI because he collaborated with Hitler, but also others (Stalin for instance) also collaborated with Hitler. The truth is Bandera is considered as a NAZI because he shared the same ideas with Hitler: Jews, Russians, Poles and other nations are less human than Ukrainians and Germans. Ukraine should be pure like a glass of water - and so on.
@@Dr_Beastus check this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decalogue_of_a_Ukrainian_Nationalist
@@Dr_Beastus Too many things but as a general thing, he keeps talking about Ukraine as a democracy.. Ukraine is/was known to be one of the most corrupt countries, Zelensky banned freedom of press, EU/Ukrainian leaders lied about Minsk, He forcefully mobilised for this war, he doesnt allow mae to leave their country. Does this sound like a democracy?
At the 1:41 mark Serhii talks about Ukraine being a truly bilingual country. Could this also apply also in Slovakia? Not to quibble on a minor point, but I think many Slovaks can speak and understand Czech. But maybe they're closer linguistically than Russian and Ukrainian. I don't know. Perhaps someone can speak to this. Thank you for the interview. Very knowledgeable guest and Lex you always do great work as an interviewer.
I can tell you that linguistically, Ukrainian closer to Slovaks and Czechs languages, than to Russian.
Many Ukrainians speak fluent Russian because they either had everyone around them speak Russian, or they had TV where most of the films and TV shows were in Russian, or both.
But from my experience talking with Russians, they struggle to understand Ukrainian.
If we look at vocabulary, Belarusian shares 84% of vocabulary, Polish 70%, Slovak 68%, Russian 62%.
My guess is Czech and Slovakian are closer to each other than Russian and Ukrainian. If a Czech, visiting Bratislava, can understand Slovakian without previous exposure to the language then it is not the same thing as in Ukraine. Russians from Russia cannot understand Ukrainian. But Russian-speaking people from Ukraine do understand Ukrainian for most part. That's why it is not uncommon in Ukraine to have bilingual conversations expecting that the one person would easily understand what the other person says. And if, for example, a Russian-speaking person does not understand the Ukrainian-speaking person at all then it becomes clear that the first person is not from Ukraine. Because even if a Russian speaker has never spoken any Ukrianian, just by living in Ukraine he would have a decent passive knowledge of Ukrainian from the school, media, songs on the radio, just coming across people from different parts of Ukraine. So, Serhii explained it very accurately. Having at least passive knowledge of both Ukrainian and Russian is a marker that a person has lived in Ukraine for some time. But Czech and Slovakian are just much closer to each other, that's why if a person understands Slovakian it does not necessarily mean he is from Slovakia, maybe he is from the Czechia.
I know 3 of these languages. Czech and Slovak are way more similar to each other than Russian and Ukrainian. Also, while a lot of Slovaks can actually speak Czech, Czechs might understand Slovak but they don't usually speak it. So yeah, you could say Slovakia is kinda bilingual (not officially though), but there are also plenty of bilingual (and even multilingual) countries in Africa and Asia.
No it is not. Czech and Slovak are considered different languages for political reasons. In reality they are just dialects of one another. Ukrainian and Belorussian could be considered such but Russian is already significant enough and is a different language.
Best guest! So informative
Thank you for this incredible interview. Thank you Lex for doing this.
Thanks, Lex, for the awesome podcast episode, especially in these uncertain times. The guest was really inspiring, and I learned a lot about the nearby Slavic regions from the impressive historical insights shared.
This historian is very biased
@mrblack5554 is he wrong though?
My great grandmother was from Nova Lesna, Slovakia so I am eager to hear this episode and learn more about that time. Many thanks
Doporučuju Snyderovi lekce na yt.
After listening this western version of the history you need to listen the eastern version, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
@@PRINCIPijalan you mean the KGB version?
@@standad7541 Timothy Snyder? I will look into it! Thanks!
@@PRINCIPijalan Any suggestions on ones you find more accurate?
Encouraging to hear a scholarly discussion, that is focused on expanding our understanding of this situation. The visible thoughtfulness of Serhii Plokhy's personality and presentation that makes his words trustworthy. With the stakes & the pain-level so high in Ukraine, to feel educated rather than propagandized after listening to a discussion, is an achievement. Thank you.
The Bolsheviks "arrested the development of the religion and thinking and theology." to fix it in pre 1917 imperialism. I have struggled to a way to come to grips with at force in Russian politics. Again, thank you.
The podcast is so much more useful than a lecture because I can replay the parts I really need to hear, to let them slink in. Again, thank you.
"NATO wa a big part of the Russian justification for the war, The truth is..."
"The immediate goal was to stop the drift of the Ukraine to he West..." YES,
except it was more than a "drift" it was a march toward a better future.
Putin's Russia represents nothing but rot.
Question unrelated to the video: why do reactions often not get through, despite them not violating community guidelines? I have written a lot of reactions below the video and they just don't show up. It's highly frustrating.
They do. Just keep scrolling😂
Thank you Lex and Serhil Plokhy for the historical review.
Started watching this, 30 mins in I paused, read several works by, or about Pushkin, Tolstoy, Trotsky, Dostoevsky, and others. Now I am coming back to finish watching the rest of the video, with some context. Thanks Mr Friedman...
Serhii did an excellent job explaining the complex relationship between Russia and Ukraine.
I hosted 30-40 player diplomacy games for people back in 2014 where each player got to play as a country and roleplay modern geopolitics. I didn't understand at the time (was a kid), but someone told me it was very important to include Ukraine as a separate country from Russia.
I split them up and gave Ukraine control of Romania and some Baltic states (every part of the world had to be owned by some player at game start, there were only 40 players maximum and previous game hosts had Ukraine and Russia together).
I didn't realize at the time the geopolitical implications for what I did. All I knew was that I made someone happy and it meant a lot to me.
It meant a very potent strategic advantage to the player who owned Ukraine! Since the time of the Thracian empire and before to the modern day, Ukraine is an extremely geographically important area of the world for transportation and commerce for the regions east of Europe with the entire West. Which means it is even more important when borders start moving.
This is epic. First time I’ve heard either of these individuals. Fantastic information. Thanks
Lovely interview 👋
As a Ukrainian, i'd love to see you interview Zelensky. Even ask him complex questions as some of the viewers has already suggested here. I like the interviewer. The guy thinks, always tries to ask follow-up questions. Respect. Not browning-nose to you, just like the approach and the personality.
The most admirable fact is that Lex never interrupts the person he's speaking with.
At 1:15:31 he says Komsomol leaders (Soviet youth political organization), not council leaders, 1:15:47 - indistinct word here is Politburo, and at 1:16:07 is mentioned Brezhnev, not Beria (Beria is long gone by that time). 1:16:14 - in foreign language he means Siloviki, which is Russian umbrella term for military, security, and police state organizations.
It's fascinating how this man can teach people in Harvard with such a level of knowledge 😂
@@denisgutit'a fascinating that you don't understand that wrong subtitles are meant - maybe try to think with your brain instead of gut, dear Denis.
19:57 we (me and people around me) are not feeling ourselves in one community of so called “eastern slavs”. Hrvati (for example) were always closer to me mentally than russians. To form this illusion of similar identity was a mission of russian propaganda for years even after soviet union collapsed. And still it didn’t work for most of Ukrainians. And the more Ukrainians were discovering Europe and World, the more clear it has become.
Lex, you describe Zelenskyy dismissively as just a comedian and actor. A little more reading and thinking would reveal that Zelenskyy also went to law school and successfully ran a production company for 2 decades. Your guest is correct … Zelenskyy has an innate ability to ‘read’ his audience, that’s a successful comedian. He also has the legal, managerial, marketing mind to lead a country at war against a so-called superpower. Your guest is excellent, thanks for having him on.
Thank you for the interview! Analyzing the present historically is vital.
I hope you have Henry Rollins as a guest. A conversation between you two would be fascinating given Henry's travels and humanitarian views.
It's pretty telling how Lex multiple times tries to blame Zelensky for every deadly sin while not a single bad word about putin.
A few important remarks about Orange Revolution that Mr. Plokhy did not mention:
Yuschenko was not the first Ukrainian president to express desire to join NATO - previous president Leonid Kuchma showed strong interest in joining NATO too - even came uninvited to NATO conference in Prague.
After elections were nullified by the Ukrainian supreme court due to numerous proofs of election fraud coming from various ukrainian districts, "someone" poisoned Yuschenko himself, who barely survived and remained heavily scarred to this day. This was perceived by Ukrainians as Russia trying to forcefully retain grip on Ukraine.
Ukrainians did not forget this fact and so when Yanukovich changed his rhetoric from clearly pro-russian to the centrist one (deepen ties with both sides) and overnight refused to sign trade agreement with the EU and instead chose to enter economic union with Russia, Ukrainians saw this betrayal as continuation of Russian plan to retain grip on Ukraine when they poisoned Yuschenko - that's why Maidan revolution happened - Ukrainians did not want to end up like Belarusians, vassals to the Russian Federation with their national language going sadly extinct...
Thank you for this video. I watched it all the way through and it was. Very informative
Mr. Fridman, please interview Mr. Vitaly Portnikov, who will explain to you in detail all the background and implications of this war. Regarding the message that your family sounds the same in Ukraine and Russia. What do you want if Ukraine has been occupied since the time of Bohdan Khmelnytsky? If my parents and I, who were indigenous Ukrainians, were Russified? What if my grandmother hated Bandera, even though she was from the western regions of Ukraine, and her father, a loyal communist, was repressed? Was she labeled as the daughter of an enemy of the people? You can turn people's brains so much that they will be against their relatives, even if it is against common sense.
I also have a question-are the British, Americans, and Australians one nation because they sound alike? Anticipating your answer, I will say that we are different nations. The only reason all three nations speak English is that you all came out of the same past-the British Empire. It is the same in Ukraine. There is no need to reinvent the wheel; everything works the same everywhere.
Vitalyy is the man! Really underrepresented in the western media and YT
Delighted to listen to the talk. It seems to me that, closer to the beginning of the fourth hour of the talk, both gentlemen started to feel tired, especially Lex.
Amazingly correct answers by Serhii
what you are doing is so, so, so important, !!! hugest thank you, !!! safe journeys, peace, !!! huge thank you, !!!
great choice: Great historian; please, invite Timothy Snyder also
Lex, you are an incredible interviewer. Well done..
All his questions were prepared by Maria Zakharova.
Impossible. She is always drunk or high, she can't even speak properly.
maybe it's time to interview Timothy Snyder?
That'd be too good to be true!
Would be good for the world, but Lex won’t learn, unfortunately he is stuck in his Soviet childhood and hopeless in terms if understanding of current Ukrainian agenda
Get Alexander Mercouris on your podcast
Disbarred lawyer turned Russian propagandist? Nah.
@@WilkinsMichaelAnd yet he has been more right on Ukraine war than NAFO trolls. Cope.
@@retroactivehistory More like complete darkness. He is one of the lamest commentators ever. He even calls the war a "special military operation", barf. Has a lot of fascist warmongering fans of course.
@@WilkinsMichael But you're happy to listen to western propagandists in the media and governments. Nice to know you like your propaganda one sided
What an amazing deep dive into the history!!!
Thank you for an interesting guest and a great interview. I have wanted to read one of his books for a while. But have never gotten to it.
Load of clap. go back to school
@@dimapro judging by the language you are using, you either need to attend school yourself, or it's not very helpful 🤡
Glad you can identify yourself otherwise hard to see that you are a clown@@anikiforova
@@dimapro I'm afraid you are projecting your issues onto others, dear.
@@dimaproda da Dima
Best podcast I ever heard Thank you.
The Canadian parliament clearly said he fought against Russia in WW2. They knew exactly who he was.
Exactly the only ppl to fight against the Russians in WW2 were the Nazis, the Fins, the Poles, and the Japanese. He wasn't a Fin, a Pole, and damn sure wasn't Japanese. 😂 They knew exactly who that SS member was. Wow how the world has flipped on its head. We were fighting side by side with the Russians against the Nazis. Now we're applauding them/him for fighting against Russia. He might've killed Americans, Canadians, Australians, British, and the French too for all they know.. Unbelievable! I would bet you all the money in my bank account that he was on the Western Front before the Eastern Front.. Causing mass genocide, and war crimes.. 😮
😂 or 😮??? Who else fought agains Russia after 1941 and where was Canada's ALLIES
High quality guest and some fantastic content and historical knowledge about Ukraine. These very guests content makes all the difference.
Why would you use that as a opening clip?
Probably because this clip best fits the russian narrative of portraying Ukrainians as nazis.
Wonderful and timely guest!
Lex I noticed the essential water on the desk. Since they aren’t listed in your sponsors, I thought I would comment on this product. It was my water of choice for nearly a year before, realizing my health began to deteriorate. I couldn’t get enough of this clean cold, delicious tasting water. but the high alkalinity caused Gerd and dysfunction of my gallbladder. With no other interventions, I ceased drinking the water and all of the symptoms, the burning in my throat. The indigestion, and the pain in my gallbladder went away. I did some research online and learned that, although it sounds counterintuitive, too much alkalinity in the stomach is not good for digestion.
So many of these new fad health waters are anything but healthy.
It's said that our guts become less acidic with age, which is why supplementation of vitamin B12 becomes useful.
Here's a thought why don't you just drink normal water that's filtered and have your vitamins from food and supplements?
Thank you very much for the video from Odesa, Ukraine
🩵💛
Despite my criticisms, the host seems to be working on understanding reality and I personally appreciate his efforts.
Thank you for the interview.
You should invite a guest to have a discussion on the birth rate crisis that is occuring in South Korea. The slow death of a society and finding out the reason behind it seems to me to be more urgent then an endless sequence on 'War' where the rest of humanity is left out from the discussion and political interest is the major driving force behind it
I like the way he said about Yugoslavia falling apart....seems he omits important facts to tailor the history to his likes.
Yeah, the only mention of the US is that they "might have more n@zis", which honestly isn't even true from my anecdotal understanding. This dude dances around like a ballerina in a minefield.
He has an obvious agenda. Wrong on so many accounts and nazi apologist to top if off.
How exactly? I'm not opposing you, I'm genuinely asking.
@@cioccolateriaveneziana I had a comment earlier here that got deleted because they like to censor this stuff, which should speak for itself.
But anyway, yes, he doesn't point out the provocations and NATO bombings and so on. He leaves a lot of inconvenient truths out of the conversation, and we all know why.
Thank you for this discussion 🇺🇦
Lex, great work. Big support. Thank you.
Absolute crap, this guy is a paid liar.
Does his last name literally translate as "bad"? (I know погано is "bad" in Ukrainian, but плохії means that as well (or "the bad ones" according to Google translate))
Kiev Rus language has many of the same words in Ukrainian langauge, not so with russian language. Russian language has many words of Turkish/Mongolian origin.
Wake up, ragul, and count Turkic loanwords in Ukrainian
But Ukrainian has more of them though.
Excellent interview! Thank you!
Many thanks, Lex! ❤
It was an interesting and meaningful conversation,
especially in comparison with Tucker's chatter-box show.
Be carefull, Tucker is a Jesus-like figure for many people.
Serhii Plokhyy is a G for this
He's surname is Bad.
@@aloha5527 Like you, trying this language out for the first time in life?
Thank you for interviewing this fine scholar.
Wonderful! Listened for whole 3 hours
Plokhy leaves out a major period of Ukrainian history, which is the long period when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth controlled what is now western Ukrainian, including the city of Lvov. During this period the Ukrainians were ruled by the Cossack hierarchy, which was allied with the the Polish gentry. Only in 1648 did the Cossacks revolt against Polish rule, principally because the Poles stopped paying the "registered" Cossacks. The result of the revolt was the division of the Ukraine between the Poles and Russians and for the next two hundred years the Ukrainians tried to maintain a balance between those two forces. The relationship between Poland and Ukraine is more complicated and has as much an impact on the current situation than does the Russian influence, which did not exist until the end of the 17th century.
You should not look at this guy's direction for facts. He's comparing major western historical figures to Ukrainian guys - very poor comparisons.
You make a very good point. When people talk about "Ukraine has always been part of Russia" I think they must have got their history knowledge about eastern Europe from James Bond movies, where eastern Europe is basically all stereotypical Russia. But Russian influence is actually very recent in a lot of places. My family's home region, Ternopil, was Russian for only 47 consecutive years, 1944 to 1991, and also from 1939 September to 1941 June. It was not even the life of my grandmother or grandfather, who served in the war fighting AGAINST Russia. The city I currently live is much more Russified, but it was founded by Duke Algirdis of Lithuania in 1363. For 432 years it was Lithuanian-Polish. It was Russian for 122 years, 1795 to 1917, before becoming part of the independent UPR. Then of course, USSR for 70 and independent for 33. Yet there is a strange sense of seeing the Russian presence as legitimate, and disregarding the much deeper Polish-Lithuanian history. I agree, too with your assessment of "complicated." My great-grandfather was a military officer. We have photos of him in Austrian uniform in WW1 and he was a proud officer of the Habsrburg army. Then he joined the Polish Army and served in the Second Polish Republic, fighting against the Soviets, also as an officer. When the Russians occupied eastern Poland in 1939, they offered him a commission in the Red Army. He refused to ever serve Russians, in any capacity. His son, my grandfather, joined the Germans in WW2 to fight the Russians. So, it was complicated....Germans are against Poles; we will serve in the Polish army, but if it's Germans vs Russians we are siding with the Germans. By contrast, the situation with Russians is simple: the enemy. Doesn't matter if you are Austrian-Galicia, Polish-Second Republic, Germany, or independent Ukraine, Russia is the enemy. Never marry a Russian, never speak their language. Never serve them. Never trust them.
Ukrainians where not a nation back then. It became a nation after ww2 when Soviet union established its borders and language. Communists in Soviet Union had an idea of "nation building". Little is known that Soviet Union created Macedonian grammar in 1945. They took Serb language and modified it to create Macedonian nation, same as they created Ukrainian.
Explain how my family has photos of our relatives involved in Ukrainian nationalist movements even in an era when our home region (Ternopil) had never yet been Russian. And explain how there are plenty of books, documents, famous poets or authors, etc. who spoke of a Ukrainian national identity even in the 1800s. The Soviet Union did not exist in the 1890s; ww2 had not yet happened in the 1910s and 20s. How is it there was a Ukrainian diaspora raising concern about the Holodomor and Soviet oppression in the early 1930s, 15 years before "after ww2", if it was all a post-ww2 creation of the USSR? Maybe go meet some actual Ukrainians, preferably elderly ones, and especially those who were not living in the USSR and could not have possibly been "created" by the Soviet Union, which certainly did not govern Austria and Poland, before the USSR even existed, nor did it govern Canada, Argentina, Brazil, all of which had people who were consciously of the Ukrainian nation, long before WW2. @@harbinger200
@@WangMingGewhy it is that Austrians, Germans and Poles aren't the enemy and Russians are?
incredibly good interview!
One question - where is the USA during these turbulent times???
🤫
Pulling strings
The US less focused on Ukraine than Russia, Russia was pulling the strings
Do you really think that country which is unable to seal its borders is capable to "pulling strings" all over the world?
You watched too many James Bond movies.
@@imcbocian do you really think that the US can't seal it's borders?
It's about interests of people in power.
The US is involved in war and spending enormous amount of money to it's military-industrial complex, pressuring EU to give money to Ukraine.
Ukrainian government pretty much depends on the US right now only because if that even if we do not consider the previous context.
The US openly says that Ukrainian government must increase the scale of mobilization of the Ukrainians.
Very interesting guest! thank you!
Amazing topic, and interview
Ww2 was far harder on Ukraine, Belarus and Poland than the smallish bits of russia that were occupied by Germany…
True
but it's not about the bits... it's about people who fought and there were much more ppl fighting from Russia...
The very fact you willing to compete on death tolls speaks tons of you. No, those were vast territories surpassing Ukraine and Belarus both in surface and population. Check your facts before you decide to say something.
Thank you Lex and the team.
thanks for this
Lex interviewing Vitali Klitschko would be phenomenal. Usyk would also be great
Both of them are terrible speakers.
This is good one
Amazing Interview. Thank you
This was brilliant, thank you so much!
Finland is not same as Ukraine from Putins point of view
Well, not now when it's in the NATO, thankfully.
Yet the Russians tried repeatedly to take it over, and did succeed in seizing some of its territory.
It never was, since `45. Finns were fooled into NATO and out of neutrality. And actually, only NOW they are in potential danger.@@cioccolateriaveneziana
??? Finland has never been any Russian land as there are no Russians. Okraine (not Ukraine) is Novorossiya being taken from the Ottomans from 21 wars until Vlachia (Rumenia) 1707. Ukraine is mostly Galicia and west from Kiev and had NEVER being on Black Sea . Ukrainians and Okrainian- Russian settlers are two different ethnic groups, like Serbs and Croats (White Croats being actually Ukrainians too)
Don't be what u say... lalala
Best interview on this channel. After Zelensky ❤
Lex, thanks for this great interview!
I heard about it from interview with president Zelenskyi which was also great.
Thank you Lex.l love SPs books❤
This is the real Ukrainian conversation
This is a real Western Ukrainian conversation! This gentleman is constantly trying to whitewash Ukrainian history!
Yes there were logistical problems & more resistance from ukrainians than expected but military analysts are clear there were not enough russian troops to take Kiev & would have been long drawn out & bloody for both sides especially civilians ..no way Putin was planning to force his way into such a large city opposed..only if govt surrendered which was his plan
you are acting like russia isn't winning the war
@@azerty8866 of course, it is not winning. They have 2 trillion budget deficit and their National Security Fund is almost empty.
@@azerty8866 is it? Define winning for russia then.
There is no "kiev", it's Kyiv
You're absolutely right about Kiev
Thank you, very interesting and educative as always!❤
Just a small remark - 2:28 - he doesn’t speak foreign language (as said in the subtitles), he names different cities - “Kiev, Minsk and Dushanbe - left in different countries”
Aleksandar, congratulations for questions asked, as well as a very calm manner of interviewing respected Ukrainian Professor. Both of you have a nice Slavic accent and I am happy that you are not hiding it. It would be interesting if your interviewee would be in a debate in which slightly different opinions would be on the table. However, the Ukrainian Professor delivered his version of the truth. Another dimension which I want to stress is that this horrible conflict had to be avoided, because Slavic people are killing Slavic people. Let us talk about the outcome of this conflict in a couple of years, hoping that in the meantime the entire Europe will not be already totally destroyed, or burning. Actually, I like the patriotic segments of the speech of your interviewee.
What this war shows is that values and sense of identity are more important to people than ethnicity and that's where putin miscalculated in launching his full scale attack in 2022 trusting his intelligence that russia's efforts to buy off the play-makers in Ukraine will be enough to prevent serious military opposition.
it's hyperbolic anti-historical-knowledge nonsense to fear that entire Europe could be totally destroyed/burning in the medium/long term, let alone your 'couple of years'. Have u read any texts on the European History? Or 20th century history? Thorough goings over takes weeks of time, intesnsively allday long, to do so.
Очень интересный гость. И первый час беседы особенно классный. Но затем когда гость стал затрагивать более политизированную сторону истории, его ангажированность стало видно особенно сильно. Однако на эти темы говорить сложно без политических предрассудков, к сожалению.
Некоторые люди умудряются спорить с политикой Римской республики. Хотя там непредвзятого намного меньше.
Но классно, когда проблемы рассматриваются с разных точек зрения, и высказываются разные люди.
Да тот еще историк. Его послушать, то получается, что Украина хотела подписать Соглашение об ассоциации с ЕС, но Россия надавила и Янукович отказался. Ну вот конкретно в этом моменте насвистел, хотя и сказал до этого, что это очень важный момент. А как же Договор о зоне свободной торговле, который Украина подписала в 1994 году, и который начал действовать с 2012 года между РФ, РБ и Украиной? По этому договору отменялись тарифные и нетарифные ограничения между участниками. Москва поставила вопрос, что в случае подписания Украиной аналогичного соглашения с ЕС, это будет нарушением договора 1994 года.
@@dg7237да ты шо ?!! А то шо януковища избрали в президенты из за того что он пообещал подписать соглашение о зоне свободной торговли с Европой это что ? Просто Напиздел януковищ? Да ?
The no like. Button is for protecting people like him
This boy Lex left the Soviet Union but the Soviet Union never left him…. And now he clings to Trump as to his holly Soviet boss with dirty boots that Lex is licking hard to get a pat on the head…
2:53:00 Chernobyl TV series was riddled with gross historical and scientific inaccuracies; it is a hyped up Hollywood-style sensationalism. If Lex didn't notice any of the fake science, then he doesn't know much.
He even started stuttering when asked a question whether Bandera was an antisemitic. Of course he was and his comrades were. Also the officers of SS Galychyna were killing not just soldiers but civilians as well. Ukrainians who collaborated with Nazis were sometime even more vicious than Germans. I am from western Ukraine and I ve talked to many old people from both camps. Ukraine doesn’t have a neo nazi problem it has a problem of identification. One part of ucrania speaks Ukrainian and the other one speaks Russian and by declining them to have Russian as a second official language, shit hit the fan
Absolutely right. It was these bans that destroyed Ukraine from the inside.
finally an adult at the room.
Really? You are from western Ukraine, when your channel's text is all in Russian and your location is listed in Russia. You mean, you are the daughter of Stalin's thugs who genocided the Ukraine and were sent as the occupation force once the USSR conquered western Ukraine. Your parents or grandparents having killed a bunch of Ukrainians doesn't make you Ukrainian.
I don't understand what your point about Bandera has to do with the language question in Ukraine. If you were actually from Ukraine, you would know that you can comfortably speak Russian in any part of Ukraine without a problem.
I've read Bandera's political manifesto, and while he was not very trusting toward jews, he certainly did not condone killing or deporting them. He acknowleged the presence of Jewish community in Ukraine and didn't mind it remaining that way. He did not fancy mixed marriages, though -- if I remember correctly. So it looks like his idea was a certain degree of separation, shall we say. That's what I remember. Whether antisemitic or not -- those views were certainly not nazi.
I absolutely loved the podcast. Serhii is a very intelligent and an interesting person to talk and listen to. I love how he keeps to be neutral and professional when talking about Ukraine and Russia even though he comes from Ukraine.
lex trying so hard to find nazis in Ukraine
Great podcast. Thank you for the wealth of knowledge.
Finaly Lex got a normal guest (not pro russian)