Stephen Kotkin: Stalin, Putin, and the Nature of Power

Stephen Kotkin (02:06.000)

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Lex Fridman (03:05.560)

And now, here's my conversation with Stephen Kotkin.

Lex Fridman (03:11.060)

Do all human beings crave power?

Stephen Kotkin (03:13.880)

No.

Lex Fridman (03:15.340)

Human beings crave security.

Stephen Kotkin (03:18.100)

They crave love.

Lex Fridman (03:20.160)

They crave adventure.

Stephen Kotkin (03:22.880)

They crave power, but not equally.

Lex Fridman (03:26.580)

Some human beings nevertheless do crave power.

Stephen Kotkin (03:29.880)

For sure.

Lex Fridman (03:30.880)

What words is that deeply in the psychology of people?

Lex Fridman (03:34.780)

Is it something you're born with?

Lex Fridman (03:36.500)

Is it something you develop?

Stephen Kotkin (03:38.820)

Some people crave a position of leadership or of standing out, of being recognized, and

Lex Fridman (03:49.500)

that could be starting out in the school years on the schoolyard.

Stephen Kotkin (03:53.400)

It could be within their own family, not just in their peer group.

Stephen Kotkin (03:58.760)

Those kind of people we often see craving leadership positions from a young age often

Stephen Kotkin (04:04.520)

end up in positions of power.

Lex Fridman (04:06.960)

But they can be varied positions of power.

Stephen Kotkin (04:09.700)

You can have power in an institution where your power is purposefully limited.

Lex Fridman (04:15.400)

For example, there's a board or a consultative body or a separation of powers.

Stephen Kotkin (04:21.180)

Not everyone craves power whereby they're the sole power or they're their unconstrained

Lex Fridman (04:27.620)

power.

Stephen Kotkin (04:29.020)

That's a little bit less usual.

Lex Fridman (04:30.760)

We may think that everybody does, but not everybody does.

Stephen Kotkin (04:35.840)

Those people who do crave that kind of power, unconstrained, the ability to decide as much

Lex Fridman (04:44.300)

as life or death of other people, those people are not everyday people.

Stephen Kotkin (04:49.660)

They're not the people you encounter in your daily life for the most part.

Lex Fridman (04:54.840)

Those are extraordinary people.

Stephen Kotkin (04:57.460)

Most of them don't have the opportunity to live that dream.

Lex Fridman (05:01.500)

Very few of them, in fact, end up with the opportunity to live that dream.

Lex Fridman (05:05.460)

So percentage wise, in your sense, if we think of George Washington, for example, would most

Stephen Kotkin (05:13.100)

people given the choice of absolute power over a country versus maybe the capped power

Stephen Kotkin (05:20.620)

that the United States presidential role, at least at the founding of the country represented,

Lex Fridman (05:27.380)

what do you think most people would choose?

Stephen Kotkin (05:29.340)

Well, Washington was in a position to exercise far greater power than he did.

Lex Fridman (05:36.260)

And in fact, he didn't take that option.

Stephen Kotkin (05:40.500)

He was more interested in seeing institutionalization, of seeing the country develop strong institutions

Lex Fridman (05:49.780)

rather than an individual leader like himself have excess power.

Lex Fridman (05:54.340)

So that's very important.

Lex Fridman (05:56.460)

So like I said, not everyone craves unconstrained power, even if they're very ambitious.

Lex Fridman (06:01.660)

And of course, Washington was very ambitious.

Lex Fridman (06:03.860)

He was a successful general before he was a president.

Lex Fridman (06:08.900)

So that clearly comes from the influences on your life, where you grow up, how you grow

Lex Fridman (06:14.100)

up, how you raised, what kind of values are imparted to you along the way.

Stephen Kotkin (06:20.800)

You can understand power as the ability to share, or you can understand or the ability

Stephen Kotkin (06:27.060)

to advance something for the collective in a collective process, not an individual process.

Lex Fridman (06:34.180)

So power comes in many different varieties.

Lex Fridman (06:38.060)

And ambition doesn't always equate to despotic power.

Stephen Kotkin (06:43.420)

Right power is something different from ordinary institutional power that we see.

Lex Fridman (06:51.580)

The president of MIT does not have unconstrained power.

Stephen Kotkin (06:55.500)

The president of MIT rightly must consult with other members of the administration,

Stephen Kotkin (07:01.980)

with the faculty members, to a certain extent with the student body and certainly with the

Stephen Kotkin (07:07.260)

trustees of MIT.

Stephen Kotkin (07:10.300)

Those constraints make the institution strong and enduring and make the decisions better

Stephen Kotkin (07:17.620)

than they would be if he had unconstrained power.

Lex Fridman (07:21.020)

But you can't say that the president is not ambitious.

Stephen Kotkin (07:24.180)

Of course, the president is ambitious.

Lex Fridman (07:27.080)

We worry about unconstrained power.

Stephen Kotkin (07:29.640)

We worry about executive authority that's not limited.

Lex Fridman (07:33.900)

That's the definition of authoritarianism or tyranny.

Stephen Kotkin (07:37.740)

Unlimited or barely limited executive authority.

Lex Fridman (07:42.740)

Executive authority is necessary to carry out many functions.

Stephen Kotkin (07:46.300)

We all understand that.

Lex Fridman (07:47.540)

That's why MIT has an executive, has a president.

Lex Fridman (07:51.780)

But unlimited or largely unconstrained executive power is detrimental to even the person who

Lex Fridman (08:00.560)

exercises that power.

Lex Fridman (08:02.700)

So what do you think?

Lex Fridman (08:04.500)

It's an interesting notion.

Stephen Kotkin (08:06.140)

We kind of take it for granted that constraints on executive power is a good thing.

Lex Fridman (08:11.740)

But why is that necessarily true?

Lex Fridman (08:14.200)

So what is it about absolute power that does something bad to the human mind?

Lex Fridman (08:21.920)

So you know, the popular saying of absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lex Fridman (08:27.220)

Is that the case?

Stephen Kotkin (08:28.900)

That the power in itself is the thing that corrupts the mind in some kind of way where

Lex Fridman (08:35.220)

it leads to a bad leadership over time?

Lex Fridman (08:39.020)

People make more mistakes when they're not challenged.

Stephen Kotkin (08:42.420)

When they don't have to explain things and get others to vote and go along with it.

Stephen Kotkin (08:48.240)

When they can make a decision without anybody being able to block their decision or to have

Stephen Kotkin (08:54.740)

input necessarily on their decision.

Lex Fridman (08:57.580)

You're more prone to mistakes.

Stephen Kotkin (08:59.660)

You're more prone to extremism.

Lex Fridman (09:02.060)

There's a temptation there.

Stephen Kotkin (09:04.080)

For example, we have separation of powers in the United States.

Lex Fridman (09:08.400)

The Congress, right, has authority that the president doesn't have.

Stephen Kotkin (09:15.540)

As for example, in budgeting, the so called power of the purse.

Lex Fridman (09:19.500)

This can be very frustrating.

Stephen Kotkin (09:21.820)

People want to see things happen and they complain that there's a do nothing Congress

Lex Fridman (09:26.300)

or that the situation is stalemated.

Lex Fridman (09:30.340)

But actually that's potentially a good thing.

Lex Fridman (09:33.860)

In fact, that's how our system was designed.

Stephen Kotkin (09:37.140)

Our system was designed to prevent things happening in government.

Lex Fridman (09:42.100)

And there's frustration with that, but ultimately that's the strength of the institutions we

Stephen Kotkin (09:47.500)

have.

Lex Fridman (09:48.500)

And so when you see unconstrained executive authority, there can be a lot of dynamism.

Stephen Kotkin (09:54.220)

A lot of things can get done quickly.

Lex Fridman (09:57.300)

But those things can be like, for example, what happened in China under Mao or what happened

Stephen Kotkin (10:02.220)

in the Soviet Union under Stalin or what happened in Haiti under Papa Doc and then Baby Doc

Lex Fridman (10:08.700)

or fill in the blank, right?

Lex Fridman (10:10.880)

What happens sometimes in corporations where a corporate leader is not constrained by the

Lex Fridman (10:18.540)

shareholders, by the board or by anything.

Lex Fridman (10:21.660)

And they can seem to be a genius for a while, but eventually it catches up to them.

Lex Fridman (10:26.720)

And so the idea of constraints on executive power is absolutely fundamental to the American

Stephen Kotkin (10:32.280)

system, American way of thinking.

Lex Fridman (10:35.600)

And not only America, obviously large other parts of the world that have a similar system,

Stephen Kotkin (10:42.780)

not an identical system, but a similar system of checks and balances on executive power.

Lex Fridman (10:48.440)

And so the case that I study, the only checks and balances on executive power are circumstantial.

Lex Fridman (10:56.980)

So for example, distances in the country, it's hard to do something over 5,000 miles

Stephen Kotkin (11:04.060)

or the amount of time in a day, it's hard for a leader to get to every single thing

Stephen Kotkin (11:09.300)

the leader wants to get to because there are only 24 hours in a day.

Lex Fridman (11:13.380)

Those are circumstantial constraints on executive power.

Stephen Kotkin (11:16.740)

They're not institutional constraints on executive power.

Stephen Kotkin (11:20.740)

One of the constraints on executive power that United States has versus Russia, maybe

Stephen Kotkin (11:27.160)

something you've implied and actually spoke directly to is there's something in the Russian

Stephen Kotkin (11:30.940)

people and the Soviet people that are attracted to authoritarian power, psychologically speaking,

Stephen Kotkin (11:38.980)

or at least the kind of leaders that sought authoritarian power throughout its history.

Lex Fridman (11:45.420)

And that desire for that kind of human is a lack of a constraint.

Stephen Kotkin (11:51.100)

In America, it seems as people, we desire somebody not like Stalin, somebody more like

Lex Fridman (11:58.060)

George Washington.

Lex Fridman (11:59.100)

So that's another constraint, the belief of the people, what they admire in a leader,

Lex Fridman (12:04.540)

what they seek in a leader.

Lex Fridman (12:06.740)

So maybe you can speak to, well, first of all, can you speak briefly to that psychology

Stephen Kotkin (12:14.340)

of, is there a difference between the Russian people and the American people in terms of

Lex Fridman (12:20.340)

just what we find attractive in a leader?

Lex Fridman (12:24.220)

Not as great a difference as it might seem.

Stephen Kotkin (12:27.820)

There are unfortunately many Americans who would be happy with an authoritarian leader

Lex Fridman (12:34.500)

in the country.

Stephen Kotkin (12:35.500)

It's by no means a majority.

Stephen Kotkin (12:38.600)

It's not even a plurality, but nonetheless, it's a real sentiment in the population.

Stephen Kotkin (12:44.060)

Sometimes because they feel frustrated because things are not getting done.

Stephen Kotkin (12:48.660)

Sometimes because they're against something that's happening in the political realm and

Stephen Kotkin (12:54.180)

they feel it has to be corrected and corrected quickly.

Lex Fridman (12:57.060)

It's a kind of impulse.

Stephen Kotkin (12:59.460)

People can regret the impulse later on, that the impulse is motivated by reaction to their

Lex Fridman (13:05.940)

environment.

Stephen Kotkin (13:07.260)

In the Russian case, we have also people who crave, sometimes known as a strong hand, an

Stephen Kotkin (13:13.020)

iron hand, an authoritarian leader, because they want things to be done and be done more

Stephen Kotkin (13:18.580)

quickly that align with their desires.

Lex Fridman (13:23.420)

But I'm not sure it's a majority in the country today.

Stephen Kotkin (13:28.220)

Certainly in Stalin's time, this was a widespread sentiment and people had few alternatives

Lex Fridman (13:34.880)

that they understood or could appeal to.

Stephen Kotkin (13:37.620)

Nowadays in the globalized world, the citizens of Russia can see how other systems have constraints

Lex Fridman (13:43.980)

on executive power and the life isn't so bad there.

Stephen Kotkin (13:47.900)

In fact, the life might even be better.

Lex Fridman (13:50.780)

So the impatience, the impulsive quality, the frustration does sometimes in people reinforce

Stephen Kotkin (13:58.940)

their craving for the unconstrained executive to quote, get things done or shake things

Lex Fridman (14:05.580)

up.

Stephen Kotkin (14:06.580)

Yes, that's true.

Lex Fridman (14:08.540)

But in the Russian case, I'm not sure it's cultural today.

Stephen Kotkin (14:12.100)

I think it might be more having to do with the failures, the functional failures of the

Stephen Kotkin (14:20.700)

kind of political system that they tried to institute after the Soviet collapse.

Lex Fridman (14:27.220)

And so it may be frustration with the version of constraints on executive power they got

Lex Fridman (14:34.260)

and how it didn't work the way it was imagined, which has led to a sense in which nonconstrained

Stephen Kotkin (14:43.580)

executive power could fix things.

Lex Fridman (14:45.820)

But I'm not sure that that's a majority sentiment in the Russian case, although it's hard to

Stephen Kotkin (14:51.040)

measure because under authoritarian regimes, a public opinion is shaped by the environment

Lex Fridman (15:00.100)

in which people live, which is very constrained in terms of public opinion.

Lex Fridman (15:04.820)

But on that point, why at least from a distance does there seem to nevertheless be support

Lex Fridman (15:11.740)

for the current Russian president Vladimir Putin?

Stephen Kotkin (15:15.860)

Is that have to do with the fact that measuring, getting good metrics and statistics on support

Stephen Kotkin (15:23.060)

is difficult in authoritarian governments, or is there still something appealing to that

Lex Fridman (15:28.460)

kind of power to the people?

Stephen Kotkin (15:30.660)

I think we have to give credit to President Putin for understanding the psychology of

Stephen Kotkin (15:36.740)

the Russians to whom he appeals.

Lex Fridman (15:41.880)

Many of them were the losers in the transition from communism.

Stephen Kotkin (15:46.340)

They were the ones whose pensions were destroyed by inflation or whose salaries didn't go up

Lex Fridman (15:52.280)

or whose regions were abandoned.

Stephen Kotkin (15:55.420)

They were not the winners for the most part, and so I think there's an understanding on

Lex Fridman (16:00.580)

his part of their psychology.

Stephen Kotkin (16:02.900)

Putin has grown in the position.

Lex Fridman (16:04.400)

He was not a public politician when he first started out.

Stephen Kotkin (16:08.180)

He was quite poor in public settings.

Lex Fridman (16:10.900)

He didn't have the kind of political instincts that he has now.

Stephen Kotkin (16:14.880)

He didn't have the appeal to traditional values and the Orthodox Church and some of the other

Lex Fridman (16:20.640)

dimensions of his rule today.

Lex Fridman (16:24.100)

So yes, we have to give some credit to Putin himself for this in addition to the frustrations

Lex Fridman (16:31.820)

and the mass of the people.

Lex Fridman (16:34.220)

But let's think about it this way in addition, without taking away the fact that he's become

Stephen Kotkin (16:39.220)

a better retail politician over time and that sentiment has shifted because of the disappointments

Stephen Kotkin (16:46.720)

with the transition with the population.

Lex Fridman (16:51.500)

When I ask my kids, am I a good dad?

Stephen Kotkin (16:57.020)

My kids don't have any other dad to measure me against.

Lex Fridman (17:01.980)

I'm the only dad they know, and I'm the only dad they can choose or not choose.

Lex Fridman (17:08.700)

If they don't choose me, they still get me as dad, right?

Lex Fridman (17:13.180)

So with Putin today, he's the only dad that the Russian people have.

Stephen Kotkin (17:18.860)

Now, if my kids were introduced to alternative fathers, they might be better than me.

Lex Fridman (17:24.600)

They might be more loving, more giving, funnier, richer, whatever it might be.

Stephen Kotkin (17:32.100)

They might be more appealing.

Stephen Kotkin (17:34.300)

There are some blood ties there for sure that I have with my kids, but they would at least

Stephen Kotkin (17:39.260)

be able to choose alternatives and then I would have to win their favor in that constellation

Lex Fridman (17:47.260)

of alternatives.

Stephen Kotkin (17:48.800)

If President Putin were up against real alternatives, if the population had real choice and that

Stephen Kotkin (17:55.420)

choice could express itself and have resources and have media and everything else the way

Stephen Kotkin (18:01.220)

he does, maybe he would be very popular and maybe his popularity would not be as great

Lex Fridman (18:08.460)

as it currently is.

Lex Fridman (18:10.540)

So the absence of alternatives is another factor that reinforces his authority and his

Lex Fridman (18:18.780)

popularity.

Stephen Kotkin (18:19.780)

Having said that, there are many authoritarian leaders who deny any alternatives to the

Lex Fridman (18:25.340)

population and are not very popular.

Lex Fridman (18:29.260)

So denial of alternatives doesn't guarantee you the popularity.

Lex Fridman (18:33.760)

You still have to figure out the mass psychology and be able to appeal to it.

Lex Fridman (18:39.180)

So in the Russian case, the winners from the transition live primarily in the big cities

Lex Fridman (18:49.540)

and are self employed or entrepreneurial.

Stephen Kotkin (18:56.780)

Even if they're not self employed, they're able to change careers.

Stephen Kotkin (19:00.940)

They have tremendous skills and talent and education and knowledge as well as these entrepreneurial

Stephen Kotkin (19:08.980)

or dynamic personalities.

Lex Fridman (19:12.140)

Putin also appealed to them.

Stephen Kotkin (19:13.900)

He did that with Medvedev and it was a very clever ruse.

Stephen Kotkin (19:18.820)

He himself appealed to the losers from the transition, the small towns, the rural, the

Stephen Kotkin (19:27.300)

people who were not well off and he had them for the most part.

Lex Fridman (19:32.740)

Not all.

Stephen Kotkin (19:33.740)

We don't want to generalize to say that he had every one of them because those people

Stephen Kotkin (19:36.840)

have views of their own, sometimes in contradiction with the president of Russia.

Lex Fridman (19:42.380)

And then he appealed to the opposite people, the successful urban base through the so called

Stephen Kotkin (19:47.800)

reformer Medvedev, the new generation, the technically literate prime minister who for

Stephen Kotkin (19:54.980)

a time was president.

Lex Fridman (19:56.940)

And so that worked very successfully for Putin.

Stephen Kotkin (19:59.220)

He was able to bridge a big divide in the society and gain a greater mass support than

Lex Fridman (1:00:02.560)

Now I don't necessarily think that everyone around Stalin shared those ideals.

Stephen Kotkin (1:00:11.380)

We have to be careful not to make everybody into a communist true believer, not to make

Stephen Kotkin (1:00:16.260)

everybody into a great statist Russian patriot, but they were widespread and powerful attractions

Stephen Kotkin (1:00:25.980)

for a lot of people.

Lex Fridman (1:00:27.900)

And so Stalin's ability to communicate to people that he was dedicated to those pursuits

Lex Fridman (1:00:35.520)

and his ability to drive towards them were part of his appeal.

Stephen Kotkin (1:00:40.220)

Where he also resorted to manipulation, he also resorted to violence, he lied, he spoke

Stephen Kotkin (1:00:47.780)

out of all sides of his mouth, he slandered other people, he sabotaged potential rivals.

Stephen Kotkin (1:00:55.660)

He used every underhanded method, and then some, in order to build his personal dictatorship.

Stephen Kotkin (1:01:03.640)

Now he justified this, as you said, by appeals to communism and to Soviet power.

Lex Fridman (1:01:09.060)

To himself as well too.

Stephen Kotkin (1:01:10.700)

To himself and to others.

Lex Fridman (1:01:12.680)

And so he justified it in his own mind and to others, but certainly any means, right,

Stephen Kotkin (1:01:20.220)

were acceptable to him to achieve these ends.

Lex Fridman (1:01:24.840)

And he identified his personal power with communism and with Russian glory in the world.

Lex Fridman (1:01:31.460)

So he felt that he was the only one who could be trusted, who could be relied upon to build

Lex Fridman (1:01:37.780)

these things.

Stephen Kotkin (1:01:38.780)

Now, we put ourselves back in that time period.

Lex Fridman (1:01:43.980)

The Great Depression was a very difficult time for the capitalist system.

Stephen Kotkin (1:01:48.660)

There was mass unemployment, a lot of hardship, fascism, Nazism, Imperial Japan.

Stephen Kotkin (1:01:58.860)

There were a lot of associations that were negative with the kind of capitalist system

Stephen Kotkin (1:02:04.900)

that was not a hundred percent, not a monolith, but had a lot of authoritarian incarnations.

Stephen Kotkin (1:02:14.420)

There was imperialism, colonies that even the democratic rule of law capitalist states

Stephen Kotkin (1:02:21.040)

had non democratic, non rule of law colonies under their rule.

Lex Fridman (1:02:25.900)

So the image and reality of capitalism during that time period between World War I and World

Stephen Kotkin (1:02:32.920)

War II was very different from how it would become later.

Lex Fridman (1:02:37.540)

And so in that time period, in that interwar conjuncture after World War I, before World

Stephen Kotkin (1:02:43.620)

War II, communism held some appeal inside the Soviet Union for sure, but even outside

Stephen Kotkin (1:02:51.800)

the Soviet Union because the image and reality of capitalism disappointed many people.

Stephen Kotkin (1:02:56.740)

Now, in the end, communism was significantly worse.

Lex Fridman (1:03:01.020)

Many more victims and the system of course would eventually implode.

Lex Fridman (1:03:06.700)

But nonetheless, there were real problems that communism tried to address.

Lex Fridman (1:03:11.200)

It didn't solve those problems.

Stephen Kotkin (1:03:12.980)

It was not a solution, but it didn't come out of nowhere.

Lex Fridman (1:03:17.220)

It came out of the context of that interwar period.

Lex Fridman (1:03:20.860)

And so Stalin's rule, some people saw it as potentially a better option than imperialism,

Lex Fridman (1:03:29.500)

fascism and Great Depression.

Stephen Kotkin (1:03:32.740)

Having said that, they were wrong.

Stephen Kotkin (1:03:34.980)

It turned out that Stalin wasn't a better alternative to markets and private property

Lex Fridman (1:03:40.300)

and rule of law and democracy.

Stephen Kotkin (1:03:43.540)

However, that didn't become clearer to people until after World War II, after Nazism had

Stephen Kotkin (1:03:51.580)

been defeated, Imperial Japan had been defeated, a fascist Italy had been defeated and decolonization

Stephen Kotkin (1:03:58.500)

had happened around the world, and there was a middle class economic boom in the period

Stephen Kotkin (1:04:04.620)

from the late 40s through the 70s that created a kind of mass middle class in many societies.

Lex Fridman (1:04:11.100)

So capitalism rose from the ashes as it were, and this changed the game for Stalin and communism.

Stephen Kotkin (1:04:21.660)

Capitalism is about an alternative to capitalism, and if that alternative is not superior, there's

Lex Fridman (1:04:29.700)

no reason for communism to exist.

Lex Fridman (1:04:32.780)

But if capitalism is in foul odor, if people have a bad opinion, a strong critique of capitalism,

Stephen Kotkin (1:04:41.500)

there can be appeal to alternatives, and that's kind of what happened with Stalin's rule.

Lex Fridman (1:04:47.020)

But after World War II, the context changed a lot, capitalism was very different, much

Lex Fridman (1:04:52.980)

more successful, nonviolent compared to what it was in the interwar period.

Lex Fridman (1:05:00.300)

And the Soviet Union had a tough time competing against that new context.

Stephen Kotkin (1:05:05.620)

Now today we see similarly that the image and reality of capitalism is on the question

Stephen Kotkin (1:05:12.180)

again, which leads some people to find an answer in socialism as an alternative.

Lex Fridman (1:05:19.860)

So you just kind of painted a beautiful picture of comparison.

Stephen Kotkin (1:05:23.220)

This is the way we think about ideologies because we, is what's working better.

Lex Fridman (1:05:29.080)

Do you separate in your mind the ideals of communism to the Stalinist implementation

Lex Fridman (1:05:34.660)

of communism, and again, capitalism and American implementation of capitalism?

Lex Fridman (1:05:41.540)

And as we look at now the 21st century where, yes, this idea of socialism being a potential

Stephen Kotkin (1:05:51.940)

political system that we would, or economic system we would operate under in the United

Lex Fridman (1:05:56.240)

States rising up again as an idea.

Lex Fridman (1:05:59.580)

So how do we think about that again in the 21st century, about these ideas, fundamental

Lex Fridman (1:06:05.740)

deep ideas of communism and capitalism?

Stephen Kotkin (1:06:07.780)

Yeah, so in the Marxist schema, there was something called feudalism, which was supposedly

Lex Fridman (1:06:14.860)

destroyed by the bourgeoisie who created capitalism.

Lex Fridman (1:06:19.300)

And then the working class was supposed to destroy capitalism and create socialism.

Lex Fridman (1:06:25.020)

But socialism wasn't the end stage.

Stephen Kotkin (1:06:27.020)

The end stage was going to be communism.

Lex Fridman (1:06:29.780)

So that's why the communist party in the Soviet Union first built socialism transcending capitalism.

Stephen Kotkin (1:06:37.620)

The next stage was socialism and the end game, the final stage was communism.

Lex Fridman (1:06:43.640)

So their version of socialism was derived from Marx.

Lex Fridman (1:06:47.540)

And Marx argued that the problem was capitalism had been very beneficial for a while.

Lex Fridman (1:06:57.420)

It had produced greater wealth and greater opportunity than feudalism had.

Lex Fridman (1:07:03.700)

But then it had come to serve only the narrow interests of the so called bourgeoisie or

Lex Fridman (1:07:08.740)

the capitalists themselves.

Lex Fridman (1:07:11.220)

And so for humanity's sake, the universal class, the working class needed to overthrow

Stephen Kotkin (1:07:17.560)

capitalism in order for greater productivity, greater wealth to be produced for all of humanity

Stephen Kotkin (1:07:24.660)

to flourish and on a higher level.

Lex Fridman (1:07:27.940)

So you couldn't have socialism unless you destroyed capitalism.

Lex Fridman (1:07:32.920)

So that meant no markets, no private property, no so called parliaments or bourgeois parliaments

Lex Fridman (1:07:40.660)

as they were called.

Lex Fridman (1:07:42.300)

So you got socialism in Marx's schema by transcending, by eliminating capitalism.

Lex Fridman (1:07:50.240)

Now Marx also called for freedom.

Stephen Kotkin (1:07:55.440)

He said that this elimination of markets and private property and bourgeois parliaments

Lex Fridman (1:08:00.540)

would produce greater freedom in addition to greater abundance.

Stephen Kotkin (1:08:04.340)

However, everywhere this was tried, it produced tyranny and mass violence, death and shortages.

Lex Fridman (1:08:15.860)

Everywhere it was tried.

Stephen Kotkin (1:08:16.860)

There's no exception in historical terms.

Lex Fridman (1:08:19.820)

And so it's very interesting.

Stephen Kotkin (1:08:22.300)

Marx insisted that capitalism had to be eliminated.

Lex Fridman (1:08:26.820)

You couldn't have markets.

Stephen Kotkin (1:08:28.900)

Markets were chaos.

Lex Fridman (1:08:29.900)

You needed planning.

Stephen Kotkin (1:08:31.260)

You couldn't have hiring of wage labor.

Lex Fridman (1:08:35.780)

That was wage slavery.

Stephen Kotkin (1:08:37.980)

You couldn't have private property because that was a form of theft.

Lex Fridman (1:08:43.020)

So in the Marxist scheme, somehow you were going to eliminate capitalism and get to freedom.

Stephen Kotkin (1:08:50.540)

It turned out you didn't get to freedom.

Lex Fridman (1:08:52.280)

So then people said, well, you can't blame Marx because he said we needed freedom.

Stephen Kotkin (1:08:58.660)

He was pro freedom.

Lex Fridman (1:09:00.580)

So it's kind of like dropping a nuclear bomb.

Stephen Kotkin (1:09:04.580)

You say you're going to drop a nuclear bomb, but you want to minimize civilian casualties.

Lex Fridman (1:09:13.960)

So the dropping of the nuclear bomb is the elimination of markets, private property and

Stephen Kotkin (1:09:18.300)

parliaments.

Lex Fridman (1:09:21.180)

But you're going to bring freedom or you're going to minimize civilian casualties.

Lex Fridman (1:09:25.760)

So you drop the nuclear bomb, you eliminate the capitalism and you get famine, deportation,

Lex Fridman (1:09:34.860)

no constraints on executive power and not abundance, but shortages.

Lex Fridman (1:09:40.880)

And people say, well, that's not what Mark said.

Lex Fridman (1:09:43.500)

That's not what I said.

Stephen Kotkin (1:09:44.660)

I said, I wanted to minimize civilian casualties.

Lex Fridman (1:09:47.820)

The nuclear bomb goes off and there's mass civilian casualties.

Lex Fridman (1:09:52.260)

And you keep saying, but I said, drop the bomb, but minimize civilian casualties.

Lex Fridman (1:09:58.620)

So that's where we are.

Stephen Kotkin (1:09:59.680)

That's history, not philosophy.

Lex Fridman (1:10:01.860)

I'm speaking about historical examples, all the cases that we have.

Stephen Kotkin (1:10:07.360)

Marx was not a theorist of inequality.

Stephen Kotkin (1:10:11.900)

Marx was a theorist of alienation, of dehumanization, of fundamental constraints or what he called

Stephen Kotkin (1:10:22.240)

fetters on productivity and on wealth, which he all attributed to capitalism.

Lex Fridman (1:10:29.620)

Marx wasn't bothered by inequality.

Lex Fridman (1:10:31.880)

He was bothered by something deeper, something worse, right?

Stephen Kotkin (1:10:37.060)

Those socialists who figured this out, who understood that if you drop the nuclear bomb,

Stephen Kotkin (1:10:44.540)

there was no way to minimize civilian casualties.

Stephen Kotkin (1:10:48.380)

All socialists who came to understand that if you eliminated capitalism, markets, private

Stephen Kotkin (1:10:54.820)

property and parliaments, if you eliminated that, you wouldn't get freedom.

Stephen Kotkin (1:11:00.420)

Those Marxists, those socialists became what we would call social Democrats or people who

Stephen Kotkin (1:11:07.960)

would use the state to regulate the market, not to eliminate the market.

Stephen Kotkin (1:11:14.520)

They would use the state to redistribute income, not to destroy private property and markets.

Lex Fridman (1:11:22.100)

And so this in the Marxist schema was apostasy because they were accepting markets and private

Lex Fridman (1:11:29.460)

property.

Stephen Kotkin (1:11:30.460)

They were accepting alienation and wage slavery.

Lex Fridman (1:11:33.580)

They were accepting capitalism in principle, but they wanted to fix it.

Stephen Kotkin (1:11:38.500)

They wanted to ameliorate.

Lex Fridman (1:11:40.100)

They wanted to regulate.

Lex Fridman (1:11:42.240)

And so they became what was denounced as revisionists, not true Marxists, not real revolutionaries,

Lex Fridman (1:11:50.340)

but parliamentary road, parliamentarians.

Stephen Kotkin (1:11:54.460)

We know this as normal politics, normal social democratic politics from the European case

Stephen Kotkin (1:12:01.060)

or from the American case, but they are not asking to eliminate capitalism, blaming capitalism,

Stephen Kotkin (1:12:09.180)

blaming markets and private property.

Lex Fridman (1:12:11.880)

So this rift among the socialists, the ones who are for elimination of capitalism, transcending

Stephen Kotkin (1:12:20.540)

capitalism, otherwise you could never, ever get to abundance and freedom in the Marxist

Stephen Kotkin (1:12:27.060)

schema versus those who accept capitalism, but want to regulate and redistribute.

Stephen Kotkin (1:12:34.260)

That rift on the left has been with us almost from the beginning.

Stephen Kotkin (1:12:39.220)

It's a kind of civil war on the left between the Leninists and the social democrats or

Stephen Kotkin (1:12:45.820)

the revisionists as they're known pejoratively by the Leninists.

Stephen Kotkin (1:12:50.580)

We have the same confusion today in the world today where people also cite Marx saying capitalism

Stephen Kotkin (1:13:00.380)

is a dead end and we need to drop that nuclear bomb and get freedom, get no civilian casualties

Lex Fridman (1:13:08.820)

versus those who say, yes, there are inequities.

Stephen Kotkin (1:13:13.940)

There's a lack of equality of opportunity.

Stephen Kotkin (1:13:18.340)

There are many other issues that we need to deal with and we can fix those issues.

Stephen Kotkin (1:13:22.460)

We can regulate, we can redistribute.

Lex Fridman (1:13:24.980)

I'm not advocating this as a political position.

Stephen Kotkin (1:13:27.980)

I'm not taking a political position myself.

Stephen Kotkin (1:13:30.860)

I'm just saying that there's a confusion on the left between those who accept capitalism

Lex Fridman (1:13:36.260)

and want to regulate it versus those who think capitalism is inherently evil and if we eliminate

Stephen Kotkin (1:13:42.220)

it we'll get to a better world when in fact history shows that if you eliminate capitalism

Stephen Kotkin (1:13:48.380)

you get to a worse world.

Lex Fridman (1:13:50.360)

The problems might be real, but the solutions are worse.

Stephen Kotkin (1:13:54.660)

From history's lessons, now we have deep painful lessons, but there's not that many of them.

Lex Fridman (1:14:00.780)

You know, our history is relatively short as a human species.

Stephen Kotkin (1:14:04.880)

Do we have a good answer on the left of Leninist, Marxist versus Social Democrat versus capitalism

Lex Fridman (1:14:13.660)

versus any anarchy?

Stephen Kotkin (1:14:18.340)

Do we have sufficient samples from history to make better decisions about the future

Lex Fridman (1:14:23.660)

of our politics and economics?

Stephen Kotkin (1:14:25.580)

For sure.

Stephen Kotkin (1:14:26.700)

We have the American Revolution, which was a revolution not about class, not about workers,

Stephen Kotkin (1:14:34.020)

not about a so called universal class of the working class, elimination of capitalism markets

Lex Fridman (1:14:39.140)

and the bourgeoisie, but was about the category citizen.

Stephen Kotkin (1:14:44.060)

It was about universal humanity where everyone in theory could be part of it as a citizen.

Lex Fridman (1:14:52.040)

The revolution fell short of its own ideals.

Stephen Kotkin (1:14:55.540)

Not everyone was a citizen.

Stephen Kotkin (1:14:58.220)

For example, if you didn't own property, you were a male but didn't own property.

Stephen Kotkin (1:15:03.220)

You didn't have full rights of a citizen.

Stephen Kotkin (1:15:06.000)

If you were a female, whether you own property or not, you weren't a full citizen.

Stephen Kotkin (1:15:11.300)

If you were imported from Africa against your will, you were a slave and not a citizen.

Lex Fridman (1:15:18.940)

And so not everyone was afforded the rights in actuality that were declared in principle.

Stephen Kotkin (1:15:27.660)

However, over time, the category citizen could expand and slaves could be emancipated and

Lex Fridman (1:15:35.500)

they could get the right to vote.

Stephen Kotkin (1:15:37.180)

They could become citizens.

Lex Fridman (1:15:40.500)

Nonproperty owning males could get the right to vote and become full citizens.

Stephen Kotkin (1:15:45.900)

Females could get the right to vote and become full citizens.

Stephen Kotkin (1:15:49.240)

In fact, eventually my mother was able to get a credit card in her own name in the 1970s

Stephen Kotkin (1:15:55.980)

without my father having to co sign the paperwork.

Lex Fridman (1:15:59.660)

It took a long time.

Lex Fridman (1:16:02.140)

But nonetheless, the category citizen can expand and it can become a universal category.

Lex Fridman (1:16:09.300)

So we have that, the citizen universal humanity model of the American Revolution, which was

Stephen Kotkin (1:16:17.360)

deeply flawed at the time it was introduced, but fixable over time.

Stephen Kotkin (1:16:23.860)

We also had that separation of powers and constraint on executive power that we began

Stephen Kotkin (1:16:28.500)

this conversation with.

Stephen Kotkin (1:16:30.260)

That was also institutionalized in the American Revolution because they were afraid of tyranny.

Stephen Kotkin (1:16:37.160)

They were afraid of unconstrained executive power.

Lex Fridman (1:16:41.080)

So they built a system that would contain that, constrain it institutionally, not circumstantially.

Lex Fridman (1:16:48.260)

So that's a great gift.

Stephen Kotkin (1:16:50.500)

Within that universal category of citizen, which has over time come closer to fulfilling

Stephen Kotkin (1:16:58.040)

its original promise.

Lex Fridman (1:17:00.260)

And within those institutional constraints, that separation of powers, constraint on executive

Stephen Kotkin (1:17:05.900)

power, within that we've developed what we might call normal politics, left right politics.

Stephen Kotkin (1:17:14.080)

People can be in favor of redistribution, and government action and people can be in

Stephen Kotkin (1:17:20.980)

favor of small government, hands off government, no redistribution or less redistribution.

Stephen Kotkin (1:17:29.520)

That's the normal left right political spectrum, where you respect the institutions and separation

Stephen Kotkin (1:17:35.260)

of powers.

Lex Fridman (1:17:37.340)

And you respect the universal category of citizenship and equality before the law and

Stephen Kotkin (1:17:42.680)

everything else.

Lex Fridman (1:17:44.620)

I don't see any problems with that whatsoever.

Stephen Kotkin (1:17:49.220)

I see that as a great gift, not just to this country, but around the world and other places

Lex Fridman (1:17:55.460)

besides the United States have developed this.

Stephen Kotkin (1:18:00.020)

The problems arise at the extremes, the far left and the far right that don't recognize

Lex Fridman (1:18:07.020)

the legitimacy either of capitalism or of democratic rule of law institutions.

Lex Fridman (1:18:14.180)

And they want to eliminate constraints on executive power.

Stephen Kotkin (1:18:17.700)

They want to control the public sphere or diminish the independence of the media.

Stephen Kotkin (1:18:23.660)

They want to take away markets or private property and redistribution becomes something

Lex Fridman (1:18:28.700)

bigger than just redistribution.

Stephen Kotkin (1:18:30.660)

It becomes actually that original Marxist idea of transcending capitalism.

Lex Fridman (1:18:37.380)

So I'm not bothered by the left or the right.

Stephen Kotkin (1:18:41.740)

I think they're normal and we should have that debate.

Lex Fridman (1:18:45.220)

We're a gigantic, diverse country of many different political points of view.

Stephen Kotkin (1:18:50.980)

I'm troubled only by the extremes that are against the system qua system that want to

Lex Fridman (1:18:57.900)

get rid of it and supposedly that will be the bright path to the future.

Stephen Kotkin (1:19:03.900)

History tells us that the far left and the far right are wrong about that.

Lex Fridman (1:19:08.500)

But once again, this doesn't mean that you have to be a social democrat.

Stephen Kotkin (1:19:13.140)

You could be a libertarian.

Lex Fridman (1:19:15.420)

You could be a conservative.

Stephen Kotkin (1:19:17.380)

You could be a centrist.

Lex Fridman (1:19:19.160)

You could be conservative on some issues and liberal on other issues.

Stephen Kotkin (1:19:24.060)

All of that comes under what I would presume to be normal politics.

Lex Fridman (1:19:28.300)

And I see that as the important corrective mechanism.

Stephen Kotkin (1:19:31.920)

Normal politics and market economies, non monopolistic, open, free and dynamic market

Lex Fridman (1:19:39.580)

economies.

Stephen Kotkin (1:19:40.580)

I don't like concentrations of power politically and I don't like concentrations of power economically.

Lex Fridman (1:19:47.380)

I like competition in the political realm.

Stephen Kotkin (1:19:50.020)

I like competition in the economic realm.

Lex Fridman (1:19:53.580)

This is not perfect.

Stephen Kotkin (1:19:55.260)

It's constantly needs to be protected and reinvented and there are flaws that are fundamental

Lex Fridman (1:20:03.900)

and need to be adjusted and addressed and everything else, especially equality of opportunity.

Stephen Kotkin (1:20:11.260)

Equality of outcome is unreachable and is a mistake because it produces perverse and

Lex Fridman (1:20:18.480)

unintended consequences.

Stephen Kotkin (1:20:20.900)

Equality of outcome attempts, attempts to make people equal on the outcome side, but

Lex Fridman (1:20:27.620)

attempts to make them more equal on the front end, on the opportunity side.

Stephen Kotkin (1:20:33.060)

That's really, really important for a healthy society.

Lex Fridman (1:20:36.380)

That's where we've fallen down.

Stephen Kotkin (1:20:38.740)

Our schools are not providing equality of opportunity for the majority of people in

Lex Fridman (1:20:46.780)

all of our school systems.

Lex Fridman (1:20:49.180)

And so I see problems there.

Stephen Kotkin (1:20:51.260)

I see a need to invest in ourselves, invest in infrastructure, invest in human capital,

Stephen Kotkin (1:20:59.820)

create greater equality of opportunity, but also to make sure that we have good governance

Stephen Kotkin (1:21:05.860)

because governance is the variable that enables you to do all these other things.

Stephen Kotkin (1:21:11.260)

I've watched quite a bit, returning back to Putin, I've watched quite a few interviews

Stephen Kotkin (1:21:17.220)

with Putin and conversations, especially because I speak Russian fluently, I can understand

Stephen Kotkin (1:21:24.140)

often the translations lose a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:21:30.780)

I find the man putting morality aside very deep and interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:21:40.620)

And I found almost no interview with him to get at that depth.

Stephen Kotkin (1:21:46.820)

I was very hopeful for the Oliver Stone documentary and with him, and to me, because I deeply

Stephen Kotkin (1:21:54.820)

respect Oliver Stone as a filmmaker in general, but it was a complete failure in my eyes,

Lex Fridman (1:22:00.660)

that interview.

Stephen Kotkin (1:22:03.300)

The lack of, I mean, I suppose you could toss it up to a language barrier, but a complete

Lex Fridman (1:22:11.740)

lack of diving deep into the person is what I saw.

Stephen Kotkin (1:22:16.340)

My question is a strange one, but if you were to sit down with Putin and have a conversation,

Stephen Kotkin (1:22:25.340)

or perhaps if you were to sit down with Stalin and have a conversation, what kind of questions

Lex Fridman (1:22:30.660)

would you ask?

Lex Fridman (1:22:32.900)

This wouldn't be televised unless you want it to be.

Lex Fridman (1:22:36.460)

So this is only you, so you're allowed to ask about some of the questions that are sort

Stephen Kotkin (1:22:43.020)

of not socially acceptable, meaning putting morality aside, getting into depth of the

Stephen Kotkin (1:22:49.740)

human character.

Lex Fridman (1:22:50.820)

What would you ask?

Lex Fridman (1:22:52.820)

So once again, they're very different personalities and very different time periods and very different

Lex Fridman (1:22:57.460)

regimes.

Lex Fridman (1:22:58.460)

So what I would talk to Stalin about and Putin about are not in the same category necessarily.

Lex Fridman (1:23:08.180)

So let's take Putin.

Lex Fridman (1:23:11.120)

So I would ask him where he thinks this is going, where he thinks Russia is going to

Lex Fridman (1:23:16.500)

be in 25 years or 50 years.

Lex Fridman (1:23:20.340)

What's the long term vision?

Lex Fridman (1:23:23.140)

What does he anticipate the current trends are going to produce?

Stephen Kotkin (1:23:26.700)

Is he under the illusion that Russia is on the upswing, that things are actually going

Stephen Kotkin (1:23:35.040)

pretty well, that in 25 years Russia is going to still be a great power with a tremendous

Stephen Kotkin (1:23:41.740)

dynamic economy and a lot of high tech and a lot of human capital and wonderful infrastructure

Lex Fridman (1:23:48.920)

and a very high standard of living and a secure borders and sense of security at home.

Stephen Kotkin (1:23:56.420)

Does he think the current path is leading in that direction and if not, if he understands

Stephen Kotkin (1:24:05.340)

that the current trajectory does not provide for those kinds of circumstances, does it

Lex Fridman (1:24:12.180)

bother him?

Lex Fridman (1:24:14.740)

Does he worry about that?

Lex Fridman (1:24:16.540)

Does he care about the future 25 or 50 years from now?

Lex Fridman (1:24:20.020)

Deep down, what do you think his answer is?

Lex Fridman (1:24:22.340)

The honest answer?

Stephen Kotkin (1:24:23.340)

He thinks he's on that trajectory already or he doesn't care about that long term trajectory.

Lex Fridman (1:24:29.660)

So that's the mystery for me with him.

Lex Fridman (1:24:31.760)

He's clever.

Stephen Kotkin (1:24:33.340)

He has tremendous sources of information.

Stephen Kotkin (1:24:36.360)

He has great experience now as a world leader having served for effectively longer than

Stephen Kotkin (1:24:42.880)

Leonid Brezhnev's long 18 year reign.

Lex Fridman (1:24:47.720)

And so Putin has accumulated a great deal of experience at the highest level compared

Stephen Kotkin (1:24:53.560)

to where he started.

Lex Fridman (1:24:55.740)

And so I'm interested to understand how he sees this long term evolution or non evolution

Stephen Kotkin (1:25:03.000)

of Russia and whether he believes he's got them on the right trajectory or whether if

Lex Fridman (1:25:10.680)

he doesn't believe that he cares.

Stephen Kotkin (1:25:12.480)

I have no idea because I've never spoken to him about this, but I would love to hear the

Lex Fridman (1:25:16.760)

answer.

Stephen Kotkin (1:25:18.700)

Sometimes you have to ask questions not directly like that, but you have to come a little bit

Lex Fridman (1:25:23.360)

sideways.

Stephen Kotkin (1:25:25.280)

You can elicit answers from people by making them feel comfortable and coming sideways

Lex Fridman (1:25:30.000)

with them.

Lex Fridman (1:25:31.000)

And just a quick question.

Lex Fridman (1:25:33.080)

So that's talking about Russia, Putin's role in Russia.

Lex Fridman (1:25:38.160)

Do you think it's interesting to ask, and you could say the same for Stalin, the more

Lex Fridman (1:25:43.820)

personal question of how do you feel yourself about this whole thing?

Stephen Kotkin (1:25:50.640)

About your life, about your legacy, looking at the person that's one of the most powerful

Lex Fridman (1:25:59.000)

and important people in the history of civilization, both Putin and Stalin, you could argue.

Stephen Kotkin (1:26:04.760)

Yeah.

Stephen Kotkin (1:26:05.760)

Once you experience power at that level, it becomes something that's almost necessary

Stephen Kotkin (1:26:11.480)

for you as a human being.

Lex Fridman (1:26:14.280)

It's a drug.

Stephen Kotkin (1:26:15.400)

It's an aphrodisiac.

Lex Fridman (1:26:17.360)

It's a feeling.

Stephen Kotkin (1:26:18.920)

You know, you go to the gym to exercise and the endorphins, the chemicals get released.

Lex Fridman (1:26:26.560)

And even if you're tired or you're sore, you get this massive chemical change, which has

Stephen Kotkin (1:26:34.680)

very dynamic effects on how you feel and the kind of level of energy you have for the rest

Lex Fridman (1:26:39.640)

of the day.

Lex Fridman (1:26:41.120)

And if you do that for a long time and then you don't do it for a while, you're like a

Lex Fridman (1:26:46.680)

drug addict not getting your fix.

Stephen Kotkin (1:26:49.760)

You miss it.

Lex Fridman (1:26:50.760)

Your body misses that release of endorphins to a certain extent.

Stephen Kotkin (1:26:55.200)

That's how power works for people like Putin.

Stephen Kotkin (1:26:58.000)

That's how power works for people who run universities or are secretaries of state or

Stephen Kotkin (1:27:04.640)

run corporations, fill in the blank.

Lex Fridman (1:27:08.360)

In whatever ways power is exercised, it becomes almost a drug for people.

Stephen Kotkin (1:27:14.720)

It becomes something that's difficult for them to give up.

Lex Fridman (1:27:17.940)

It becomes a part of who they are.

Stephen Kotkin (1:27:20.360)

It becomes necessary for their sense of self and well being.

Stephen Kotkin (1:27:25.720)

The greatest people, the people I admire the most are the ones that can step away from

Stephen Kotkin (1:27:30.840)

power, can give up the drug, can be satisfied, can be stronger even by walking away from

Lex Fridman (1:27:40.520)

continued power when they had the option to continue.

Lex Fridman (1:27:45.360)

So with a person like Putin, once again, I don't know him personally, so I have no basis

Lex Fridman (1:27:51.000)

to judge this.

Stephen Kotkin (1:27:52.680)

This is a general statement observable with many people and in historical terms.

Stephen Kotkin (1:28:00.240)

With a person like Putin who's exercised this much power for this long, it's something that

Stephen Kotkin (1:28:05.800)

becomes a part of who you are and you have a hard time imagining yourself without it.

Lex Fridman (1:28:11.980)

You begin to conflate your personal power with the well being of the nation.

Stephen Kotkin (1:28:17.160)

You begin to think that the more power you have, the better off the country is this conflation.

Stephen Kotkin (1:28:22.920)

You begin to be able to not imagine, you can no longer imagine what it would be like just

Stephen Kotkin (1:28:30.040)

to be an ordinary citizen or an ordinary person running a company even, something much smaller

Lex Fridman (1:28:38.000)

than a country.

Lex Fridman (1:28:39.960)

So I anticipate that without knowing for sure that he would be in that category of person,

Lex Fridman (1:28:47.840)

but you'd want to explore that with questions with him about, so what's his day look like

Lex Fridman (1:28:56.360)

from beginning to end?

Lex Fridman (1:28:57.360)

Just take me through a typical day of yours.

Lex Fridman (1:28:59.640)

What do you do on a day?

Lex Fridman (1:29:00.720)

How does it start?

Lex Fridman (1:29:02.280)

What are the ups?

Lex Fridman (1:29:03.280)

What are the downs?

Lex Fridman (1:29:04.280)

What are the parts of the day you look forward to the most?

Lex Fridman (1:29:07.400)

What are the parts of the day you don't look forward to that much?

Lex Fridman (1:29:11.140)

What do you consider a good day?

Lex Fridman (1:29:13.520)

What do you consider a bad day?

Lex Fridman (1:29:16.460)

How do you know that what you're doing is having the effects that you intend?

Lex Fridman (1:29:22.240)

How do you follow up?

Lex Fridman (1:29:23.760)

How do you gather the information, the reaction?

Lex Fridman (1:29:26.680)

How do you get people to tell you to your face things that they know are uncomfortable

Lex Fridman (1:29:31.920)

or that you might not want to hear?

Lex Fridman (1:29:34.400)

Those kind of questions.

Lex Fridman (1:29:35.400)

And through that window, through that kind of questioning, you get a window into a man

Lex Fridman (1:29:40.120)

with power.

Lex Fridman (1:29:42.000)

So let me ask about Stalin because you've done more research, there's another amazing

Stephen Kotkin (1:29:48.000)

interview you've had, the introduction was that you know more about Stalin than Stalin

Stephen Kotkin (1:29:56.960)

himself.

Lex Fridman (1:29:57.960)

You've done an incredible amount of research on Stalin.

Lex Fridman (1:30:00.200)

So if you could talk to him, get sort of direct research, what question would you ask of Stalin?

Lex Fridman (1:30:07.640)

I have so many questions, I don't even know where I would begin.

Lex Fridman (1:30:12.240)

The thing about studying a person like Stalin, who's an immense creature, right?

Stephen Kotkin (1:30:18.400)

He's exercising the power of life and death over hundreds of millions of people.

Stephen Kotkin (1:30:23.660)

He's making decisions about novels and films and turbines and submarines and packs with

Stephen Kotkin (1:30:31.720)

Hitler or deals with Churchill and Roosevelt and occupation of Mongolia or occupation of

Stephen Kotkin (1:30:39.600)

North Korea.

Stephen Kotkin (1:30:41.320)

He's making phenomenally consequential decisions over all spheres of life, all areas of endeavor

Lex Fridman (1:30:49.880)

and over much of the globe, much of the landmass of the earth.

Lex Fridman (1:30:56.420)

And so what's that like?

Stephen Kotkin (1:30:59.760)

Does he sometimes reflect on the amount of power and responsibility he has that he can

Lex Fridman (1:31:06.320)

exercise?

Lex Fridman (1:31:07.800)

Does he sometimes think about what it means that a single person has that kind of power?

Lex Fridman (1:31:14.200)

And does it have an effect on his relations with others, his sense of self, the kinds

Lex Fridman (1:31:20.120)

of things he values in life?

Lex Fridman (1:31:22.660)

Does he sometimes think it's a mistake that he's accumulated this much power?

Lex Fridman (1:31:27.420)

Does he sometimes wish he had a simpler life?

Stephen Kotkin (1:31:30.960)

Or is he once again so drunk, so enamored, so caught up with chemically and spiritually

Lex Fridman (1:31:41.240)

with exercising this kind of power that he couldn't live without it?

Lex Fridman (1:31:45.500)

And then what were you thinking, I would ask him, in certain decisions that he made?

Lex Fridman (1:31:51.200)

What were you thinking on certain dates and certain circumstances where you made a decision

Lex Fridman (1:31:56.620)

and could have made a different decision?

Lex Fridman (1:31:59.180)

Can you recall your thought processes?

Lex Fridman (1:32:02.500)

Can you bring the decision back?

Lex Fridman (1:32:04.320)

Was it seat of the pants?

Lex Fridman (1:32:06.180)

Was it something you'd been planning?

Lex Fridman (1:32:08.400)

Did you just improvise or did you have a strategy?

Lex Fridman (1:32:12.760)

What were you guided by?

Lex Fridman (1:32:15.000)

Whose examples did you look to?

Stephen Kotkin (1:32:17.240)

When you picked up these books that you read and you read the books and you made pencil

Lex Fridman (1:32:20.960)

marks in them, is it because you absorbed the lesson there?

Stephen Kotkin (1:32:25.000)

Or did it really not become a permanent lesson and it was just something that you checked

Lex Fridman (1:32:29.640)

and it was like a reflex?

Lex Fridman (1:32:32.400)

So I have many specific questions about many specific events and people and circumstances

Stephen Kotkin (1:32:39.400)

that I have tried to figure out with the surviving source materials that we have in abundance.

Lex Fridman (1:32:47.800)

But I would still like to delve into his mindset and reconstruct his mind.

Stephen Kotkin (1:32:53.840)

The closer you get to Stalin, in some ways, the more elusive he can become.

Lex Fridman (1:33:00.980)

And especially around World War II, you've already illuminated a lot of interesting aspects

Stephen Kotkin (1:33:06.080)

about Stalin's role in the war, but it would be interesting to ask even more questions

Lex Fridman (1:33:11.160)

about how seat of the pants or deliberate some of the decisions have been.

Stephen Kotkin (1:33:15.580)

If I could ask just one quick question, one last quick question, and you're constrained

Lex Fridman (1:33:23.080)

in time and answering it, do you think there will always be evil in the world?

Lex Fridman (1:33:28.680)

Do you think there will always be war?

Lex Fridman (1:33:31.200)

Unfortunately, yes.

Stephen Kotkin (1:33:33.800)

There are conflicting interests, conflicting goals that people have.

Lex Fridman (1:33:40.560)

Most of the time, those conflicts can be resolved peacefully.

Stephen Kotkin (1:33:44.960)

That's why we build strong institutions to resolve different interests and conflicts

Lex Fridman (1:33:50.520)

peacefully.

Lex Fridman (1:33:52.120)

But the fact, the enduring fact of conflicting interests and conflicting desires, that can

Lex Fridman (1:34:02.200)

never be changed.

Lex Fridman (1:34:04.640)

So the job that we have for humanity's sake is to make those conflicting interests, those

Stephen Kotkin (1:34:14.040)

conflicting desires, to make them, to put them in a context where they can be resolved

Stephen Kotkin (1:34:20.440)

peacefully, and not in a zero sum fashion.

Lex Fridman (1:34:25.600)

So we can't get there on the global scale.

Lex Fridman (1:34:30.480)

So there's always going to be the kind of conflict that sometimes gets violent.

Lex Fridman (1:34:37.080)

What we don't want is a conflict among the strongest powers.

Stephen Kotkin (1:34:43.280)

Great power conflict is unbelievably bad.

Lex Fridman (1:34:48.240)

There are no words to describe it.

Stephen Kotkin (1:34:50.320)

At least 55 million people died in World War II.

Stephen Kotkin (1:34:55.920)

If we have a World War III, a war between the United States and China, or whatever it

Lex Fridman (1:35:01.080)

might be, who knows what the number could be?

Lex Fridman (1:35:05.160)

155 million, 255 million, 555 million, I don't even want to think about it.

Lex Fridman (1:35:14.000)

And so it's horrible when wars break out in the humanitarian catastrophes.

Lex Fridman (1:35:20.120)

For example, Yemen and Syria and several other places I could name today.

Stephen Kotkin (1:35:26.280)

It's just horrible what you see there.

Lex Fridman (1:35:28.640)

And the scale is colossal for those places.

Lex Fridman (1:35:32.060)

But it's not planetary scale.

Lex Fridman (1:35:34.660)

And so avoiding planetary scale destruction is really important for us.

Lex Fridman (1:35:41.000)

And so having those different interests be somehow managed in a way that they don't,

Lex Fridman (1:35:49.120)

that no one sees advantage in a violent resolution.

Lex Fridman (1:35:54.400)

And a part of that is remembering history, so they should read your books.

Lex Fridman (1:35:58.200)

Stephen, thank you so much.

Stephen Kotkin (1:35:59.440)

It was a huge honor talking to you today.

Lex Fridman (1:36:01.240)

I really enjoyed it.

Stephen Kotkin (1:36:02.520)

Thank you for the opportunity.

Lex Fridman (1:36:03.800)

My pleasure.

Stephen Kotkin (1:36:04.800)

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Stephen Kotkin.

Lex Fridman (1:36:08.240)

A thank you to our presenting sponsor, Cash App.

Stephen Kotkin (1:36:11.560)

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Stephen Kotkin (1:36:14.200)

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Stephen Kotkin (1:36:19.640)

of thousands of young minds to become future leaders and innovators.

Stephen Kotkin (1:36:23.280)

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Stephen Kotkin (1:36:28.920)

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Lex Fridman (1:36:32.080)

And now let me leave you with words from Joseph Stalin, spoken shortly before the death of

Stephen Kotkin (1:36:37.480)

Lenin and at the beginning of Stalin's rise to power.

Lex Fridman (1:36:41.720)

FIRST IN RUSSIAN

Stephen Kotkin (1:36:42.840)

Я считаю, что совершенно неважно, кто и как будет в партии голосовать.

Lex Fridman (1:36:50.400)

Но вот что чрезвычайно важно, это кто и как будет считать голоса.

Stephen Kotkin (1:36:56.960)

I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote or how, but what is extraordinarily

Lex Fridman (1:37:04.360)

important is who will count the votes and how.

Stephen Kotkin (1:37:09.560)

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (20:07.100)

he would otherwise have had by himself.

Stephen Kotkin (20:09.260)

That ruse only worked through the time that Medvedev was temporarily president for a few

Stephen Kotkin (20:17.780)

years because of the Constitution, Putin couldn't do three consecutive terms and stepped aside

Stephen Kotkin (20:25.100)

in what they call castling in chess.

Lex Fridman (20:30.540)

When this was over, Putin had difficulty with his popularity.

Stephen Kotkin (20:35.300)

There were mass protests in the urban areas, precisely that group of the population that

Stephen Kotkin (20:41.620)

he had been able to win in part because of the Medvedev castling and now had had their

Stephen Kotkin (20:48.980)

delusions exposed and were disillusioned, and there were these mass protests in the

Lex Fridman (20:55.620)

urban areas, not just in the capital, by the way.

Lex Fridman (20:59.060)

And Putin had to, as it were, come up with a new way to fix his popularity, which happened

Lex Fridman (21:03.820)

to be the annexation of Crimea, from which he got a very significant bump.

Stephen Kotkin (21:10.420)

However, the trend is back in the other direction.

Stephen Kotkin (21:15.500)

It's diminishing again, although it's still high relative to other leaders around the

Stephen Kotkin (21:21.380)

world.

Lex Fridman (21:22.380)

So I wouldn't say that he's unpopular with the mass in Russia.

Stephen Kotkin (21:28.300)

There is some popularity there, there is some success, but I would say it's tough for us

Lex Fridman (21:32.980)

to gauge because of the lack of alternatives.

Lex Fridman (21:36.580)

And Putin is unpopular inside the state administration.

Lex Fridman (21:42.340)

At every level, the bureaucracy of the leadership.

Stephen Kotkin (21:45.500)

Because those people are well informed, and they understand that the country is declining,

Stephen Kotkin (21:51.260)

that the human capital is declining, the infrastructure is declining, the economy is not really growing,

Stephen Kotkin (21:57.180)

it's not really diversifying, Russia's not investing in its future.

Stephen Kotkin (22:02.060)

The state officials understand all of that, and then they see that the Putin clique is

Stephen Kotkin (22:07.860)

stealing everything in sight.

Lex Fridman (22:10.260)

So between the failure to invest in a future and the corruption of a narrow group around

Stephen Kotkin (22:16.820)

the president, there's disillusionment in the state apparatus because they see this

Lex Fridman (22:22.380)

more clearly or more closely than the mass of the population.

Stephen Kotkin (22:27.420)

They can't necessarily yet oppose this in public because they're people, they have families,

Lex Fridman (22:38.020)

they have careers, they have children who want to go to school or want a job.

Lex Fridman (22:43.020)

And so there are constraints on their ability to oppose the regime based upon what we might

Lex Fridman (22:49.220)

call cowardice or other people might call realism.

Stephen Kotkin (22:52.580)

I don't know how courageous people can be when their family, children, career are on

Lex Fridman (22:59.980)

the line.

Lex Fridman (23:01.960)

So it's very interesting dynamic to see the disillusionment inside the government with

Stephen Kotkin (23:06.420)

the president, which is not yet fully public for the most part, but could become public.

Lex Fridman (23:13.140)

And once again, if there's an alternative, if an alternative appears, things could shift

Lex Fridman (23:17.500)

quickly.

Lex Fridman (23:18.580)

And that alternative could come from inside the regime.

Lex Fridman (23:22.220)

From inside the regime.

Lex Fridman (23:23.220)

But the leadership, the party, the people that are now, as you're saying, opposed to

Stephen Kotkin (23:29.540)

Putin, nevertheless, maybe you can correct me, but it feels like there's, structurally

Stephen Kotkin (23:37.420)

is deeply corrupt.

Lex Fridman (23:39.260)

So each of the people we're talking about are, don't feel like a George Washington.

Lex Fridman (23:47.780)

Once again, the circumstances don't permit them to act that way necessarily, right?

Lex Fridman (23:53.060)

George Washington did great things, but in certain circumstances.

Stephen Kotkin (23:57.660)

A lot of the state officials in Russia for certain are corrupt.

Lex Fridman (24:03.220)

There's no question.

Stephen Kotkin (24:04.780)

Many of them, however, are patriotic and many of them feel badly about where the country

Lex Fridman (24:12.540)

has been going.

Stephen Kotkin (24:14.300)

They would prefer that the country was less corrupt.

Stephen Kotkin (24:17.180)

They would prefer that there were greater investment in all sorts of areas of Russia.

Stephen Kotkin (24:24.240)

They might even themselves steal less if they could be guaranteed that everybody else would

Lex Fridman (24:30.400)

steal less.

Stephen Kotkin (24:32.140)

There's a deep and abiding patriotism inside Russia, as well as inside the Russian regime.

Lex Fridman (24:40.540)

So they understand that Putin in many ways rescued the Russian state from the chaos of

Stephen Kotkin (24:46.060)

the 1990s.

Stephen Kotkin (24:47.900)

They understand that Russia was in very bad shape as an incoherent failing state almost

Stephen Kotkin (24:55.780)

when Putin took over and that he did some important things for Russia's stability and

Lex Fridman (25:03.260)

consolidation.

Stephen Kotkin (25:05.540)

There's also some appreciation that Putin stood up to the West and stood up to more

Stephen Kotkin (25:12.940)

powerful countries and regained a sense of pride and maneuverability for Russia in the

Stephen Kotkin (25:19.380)

international system.

Lex Fridman (25:21.520)

People appreciate that and it's real.

Stephen Kotkin (25:23.760)

It's not imagined that Putin accomplished that.

Lex Fridman (25:27.700)

The problem is the methods that he accomplished it with.

Stephen Kotkin (25:32.020)

He used the kind of methods, that is to say, taking other people's property, putting other

Lex Fridman (25:37.700)

people in jail for political reasons.

Stephen Kotkin (25:40.740)

He used the kind of methods that are not conducive to long term growth and stability.

Lex Fridman (25:46.160)

So he fixed the problem, but he fixed the problem and then created even bigger long

Stephen Kotkin (25:50.960)

term problems potentially.

Lex Fridman (25:53.500)

And moreover, all authoritarian regimes that use those methods are tempted to keep using

Stephen Kotkin (26:00.300)

them and using them and using them until they're the only ones who are the beneficiaries and

Lex Fridman (26:05.980)

the group narrows and narrows.

Stephen Kotkin (26:08.360)

The elite gets smaller and narrower.

Stephen Kotkin (26:11.500)

The interest groups get excluded from power and their ability to continue enjoying the

Stephen Kotkin (26:18.940)

fruits of the system and the resentment grows.

Lex Fridman (26:22.600)

And so that's the situation we have in Russia is a place that is stuck.

Stephen Kotkin (26:28.060)

It was to a certain extent rescued.

Stephen Kotkin (26:31.900)

It was rescued with methods that were not conducive to long term success and stability.

Stephen Kotkin (26:37.900)

The rescue you're referring to is the sort of the economic growth when Putin first took

Lex Fridman (26:43.100)

office.

Stephen Kotkin (26:44.100)

Yes, they had 10 years.

Stephen Kotkin (26:45.100)

They had a full decade of an average of 7% growth a year, which was phenomenal and is

Stephen Kotkin (26:50.460)

not attributable predominantly to oil prices.

Stephen Kotkin (26:55.220)

During President Putin's first term as president, the average price of oil was $35 a barrel.

Stephen Kotkin (27:03.180)

During his second term as president, the average price was $70 a barrel.

Lex Fridman (27:08.660)

So during those two terms, when Russia was growing at about 7% a year, oil prices were

Stephen Kotkin (27:16.540)

averaging somewhere around $50 a barrel, which is fine, but is not the reason because later

Lex Fridman (27:24.180)

on when oil prices were over $100 a barrel, Russia stagnated.

Lex Fridman (27:30.920)

So the initial growth, do you think Putin deserves some credit for that?

Lex Fridman (27:34.220)

Yes, he does because he introduced some important liberalizing measures.

Stephen Kotkin (27:40.280)

He lowered taxes.

Lex Fridman (27:42.220)

He allowed land to be bought and sold.

Stephen Kotkin (27:45.960)

He deregulated many areas of the economy.

Lex Fridman (27:50.340)

And so there was a kind of entrepreneurial burst that was partly attributable, partly

Stephen Kotkin (27:57.700)

attributable to government policy during his first term.

Lex Fridman (28:01.900)

But also he was consolidating political power.

Lex Fridman (28:05.240)

And as I said, the methods he used overall for the long term were not able to continue

Lex Fridman (28:12.480)

sustain that success.

Stephen Kotkin (28:14.980)

In addition, we have to remember that China played a really big role in the success of

Stephen Kotkin (28:21.200)

Russia in the first two terms of Putin's presidency because China's phenomenal growth created

Stephen Kotkin (28:30.540)

insatiable demand for just about everything that the Soviet Union used to produce.

Lex Fridman (28:37.300)

So fertilizers, cement, fill in the blank, chemicals, metals, China had insatiable demand

Stephen Kotkin (28:46.660)

for everything the Soviet Union once produced.

Lex Fridman (28:50.260)

And so China's raising of global demand overall brought Soviet era industry back from the

Stephen Kotkin (29:00.480)

dead.

Lex Fridman (29:02.240)

And so there was something that happened.

Stephen Kotkin (29:04.880)

Soviet era industry fell off a cliff in the 1990s.

Stephen Kotkin (29:09.000)

There was a decline in manufacturing and industrial production greater than in the Great Depression

Stephen Kotkin (29:14.780)

in the US.

Lex Fridman (29:16.940)

But a lot of that came back online in the 2000s.

Lex Fridman (29:21.220)

And that had to do with China's phenomenal growth.

Lex Fridman (29:23.980)

The trade between China and Russia was not always direct.

Lex Fridman (29:28.380)

So this was an indirect effect.

Lex Fridman (29:30.700)

But raising global prices for the commodities and the products, the kind of lower end, lower

Stephen Kotkin (29:38.100)

value products in manufacturing, not high end stuff, but lower end stuff like steel

Stephen Kotkin (29:45.020)

or iron or cement or fertilizer, where the value added is not spectacular, but nonetheless,

Stephen Kotkin (29:53.700)

which had been destroyed by the 1990s and after the Soviet collapse, this was brought

Lex Fridman (29:59.340)

back to life.

Stephen Kotkin (30:00.340)

Now, you can do that once.

Lex Fridman (30:02.580)

You can bring Soviet era industry back to life once.

Lex Fridman (30:06.660)

And that happened during Putin's first two terms, in addition to the liberalizing policies,

Lex Fridman (30:12.540)

which spurred entrepreneurialism in some small and medium business.

Stephen Kotkin (30:17.000)

The crash of the ruble in 1998, which made Russian products much cheaper abroad and made

Stephen Kotkin (30:24.220)

imports much more expensive, also facilitated the resuscitation, the revival of domestic

Stephen Kotkin (30:31.380)

manufacturing.

Lex Fridman (30:33.540)

So all of this came together for that spectacular 10 year, 7% on average economic growth.

Lex Fridman (30:43.180)

And moreover, people's wages after inflation, their disposable income grew more even than

Lex Fridman (30:51.020)

GDP grew.

Lex Fridman (30:52.620)

So disposable income after inflation, that is real income, was growing greater than 7%.

Lex Fridman (30:59.140)

In some cases, 10% a year.

Lex Fridman (31:01.860)

So there was a boom, and the Russian people felt it, and it happened during Putin's first

Lex Fridman (31:06.920)

two terms, and people were grateful, rightly so, for that.

Lex Fridman (31:12.940)

And those who don't want to give Putin credit, give oil prices all the credit.

Lex Fridman (31:19.820)

But I don't think that oil prices can explain this.

Stephen Kotkin (31:23.700)

Having said that, that doesn't mean that this was sustainable over the long term.

Lex Fridman (31:29.540)

So you've briefly mentioned, sort of implying the possibility, you know, Stalin held power

Stephen Kotkin (31:35.940)

for, let's say, 30 years.

Stephen Kotkin (31:38.640)

You briefly mentioned that as a question, will Putin be able to beat that record, to

Lex Fridman (31:45.300)

beat that?

Lex Fridman (31:46.300)

So can you talk about your sense of, is it possible that Putin holds power for that kind

Lex Fridman (31:52.700)

of duration?

Lex Fridman (31:54.200)

Let's hope not.

Stephen Kotkin (31:55.900)

Let's hope not for Russia's sake.

Lex Fridman (31:59.540)

The primary victims of President Putin's power are Russians.

Stephen Kotkin (32:05.420)

They're not Ukrainians, although to a certain extent, Ukraine has suffered because of Putin's

Lex Fridman (32:11.180)

actions.

Lex Fridman (32:12.180)

And they're not Americans, they're Russians.

Lex Fridman (32:15.700)

Moreover, Russia has lost a great deal of human talent.

Stephen Kotkin (32:20.660)

Tens of millions of people have left Russia since 1991 overall.

Stephen Kotkin (32:27.340)

Somewhere between five and 10 million people have left the country and are beyond the borders

Stephen Kotkin (32:33.320)

of the former Soviet Union.

Lex Fridman (32:35.660)

So they left the Soviet space entirely.

Stephen Kotkin (32:38.260)

Moreover, the people who left are not the poor people.

Lex Fridman (32:41.860)

They're not the uneducated.

Stephen Kotkin (32:44.320)

They're not the losers.

Lex Fridman (32:45.780)

The people who've left are the more dynamic parts of the population.

Stephen Kotkin (32:50.100)

The better educated, the more entrepreneurial.

Lex Fridman (32:53.120)

So that human capital loss that Russia has suffered is phenomenal.

Lex Fridman (32:58.440)

And in fact, right here where we're sitting at MIT, we have examples of people who are

Lex Fridman (33:04.560)

qualified good enough for MIT and have left Russia to come to MIT.

Stephen Kotkin (33:10.380)

You're looking at one of them.

Lex Fridman (33:12.200)

And the other aspect, just to quickly comment, is those same people like me, I'm not welcome

Stephen Kotkin (33:19.980)

back.

Lex Fridman (33:20.980)

No, you're not under the current regime.

Stephen Kotkin (33:22.420)

It was a big loss for Russia if you're patriotic, but not from the point of view of the Putin

Lex Fridman (33:28.860)

regime.

Stephen Kotkin (33:29.860)

That has to do, also factors into popularity.

Stephen Kotkin (33:33.660)

If the people who don't like you leave, they're not there to complain, to protest, to vote

Stephen Kotkin (33:39.620)

against you.

Lex Fridman (33:41.160)

And so your opposition declines when you let them leave.

Stephen Kotkin (33:46.300)

However, it's very costly in human capital terms.

Lex Fridman (33:49.180)

Hemorrhaging that much human capital is damaging, it's self damaging.

Lex Fridman (33:55.060)

And we've seen it accelerate.

Stephen Kotkin (33:57.040)

It was already high, but we've seen it accelerate in the last seven to eight years of President

Stephen Kotkin (34:04.740)

Putin's rule.

Lex Fridman (34:07.340)

And those people are not going back of their own volition.

Lex Fridman (34:11.940)

But even if they wanted to go back, as you just said, they'd be unwelcome.

Lex Fridman (34:15.840)

That's a big cost to pay for this regime.

Lex Fridman (34:19.180)

And so whatever benefits this regime might or might not have given to the country, the

Lex Fridman (34:25.100)

disadvantages, the downside, the costs are also really high.

Lex Fridman (34:30.280)

So we don't want Putin lasting in power as long as Stalin.

Stephen Kotkin (34:34.540)

It would be better if Russia were able to choose among options, to choose a new leader

Stephen Kotkin (34:40.520)

among options.

Stephen Kotkin (34:42.940)

Many people speculate that President Putin will name a successor the way Yeltsin named

Stephen Kotkin (34:48.300)

Putin as his successor, President Boris Yeltsin.

Lex Fridman (34:52.720)

And then Putin will leave the stage and allow the successor to take over.

Stephen Kotkin (34:58.500)

That might seem like a good solution, but once again, we don't need a system where you

Lex Fridman (35:05.100)

hang on for as long as possible and then nominate who's going to take over.

Stephen Kotkin (35:09.700)

We need a system that has the kind of corrective mechanisms that democracies and markets have

Lex Fridman (35:17.820)

along with rule of law.

Stephen Kotkin (35:19.580)

A corrective mechanism is really important because all leaders make mistakes.

Lex Fridman (35:25.620)

But when you can't correct for the mistakes, then the mistakes get compounded.

Stephen Kotkin (35:32.060)

Putin could well, he seems to be healthy, he could well last as many years as Stalin.

Stephen Kotkin (35:38.340)

It's hard to predict because events intercede sometimes and create circumstances that are

Stephen Kotkin (35:44.860)

unforeseen and leaders get overthrown or have a heart attack or whatever.

Stephen Kotkin (35:51.660)

There's a palace insurrection where ambitious leaders on the inside for both personal power

Lex Fridman (35:59.140)

and patriotic reasons try to push aside an aging leader.

Stephen Kotkin (36:04.020)

There are many scenarios in which Putin could not last that long, but unfortunately, right

Stephen Kotkin (36:09.820)

now, you could also imagine potentially him lasting that long, which as I said, is not

Stephen Kotkin (36:16.460)

an outcome if you're patriotic about Russia, it's not an outcome you would wish out to

Stephen Kotkin (36:21.740)

the country.

Stephen Kotkin (36:22.740)

It's, I guess, a very difficult question, but what practically do you feel is a way

Lex Fridman (36:29.380)

out of the Putin regime, is a way out of the corruption that's deeply underlies the state?

Lex Fridman (36:38.860)

Is a, if you look from a history perspective, is a revolution required?

Lex Fridman (36:44.300)

Is violence required?

Lex Fridman (36:47.700)

Is from violence within or external to the country?

Lex Fridman (36:54.060)

Do you see, or is a powerful, is a inspiring leader enough to step in and bring democracy

Lex Fridman (37:05.380)

and kind of the free world to Russia?

Lex Fridman (37:09.140)

So Russia is not a failed country.

Stephen Kotkin (37:11.180)

It's a middle income country with tremendous potential and has proven many times in the

Stephen Kotkin (37:17.780)

past that when it gets in a bad way, it can reverse its trajectory.

Lex Fridman (37:24.700)

Moreover, violence is rarely ever a solution.

Stephen Kotkin (37:29.340)

Violence rarely, it may break an existing trend, but it's rare that violence produces

Lex Fridman (37:35.300)

a nonviolent, sustainable, positive outcome.

Stephen Kotkin (37:38.840)

It happens, but it doesn't happen frequently.

Stephen Kotkin (37:42.900)

Mental upheaval is not a way always to institutionalize a better path forward because you need institutions.

Stephen Kotkin (37:53.540)

People can protest as they did throughout the Middle East, and the protests didn't necessarily

Stephen Kotkin (37:59.140)

lead to better systems because the step from protest to new, strong, consolidated institutions

Stephen Kotkin (38:08.380)

is a colossal leap, not a small step.

Lex Fridman (38:11.900)

What we need and what we see from history and situations like this is a group within

Stephen Kotkin (38:18.300)

the power structures, which is a patriotic that sees things going down.

Stephen Kotkin (38:25.280)

That is to say that sees things not being developing relative to neighbors, relative

Stephen Kotkin (38:31.360)

to richer countries, relative to more successful countries, and they want to change the trajectory

Lex Fridman (38:38.640)

of Russia.

Lex Fridman (38:40.460)

And if they can, in a coalition fashion, unseat the current regime for a new power sharing

Stephen Kotkin (38:49.420)

arrangement, which once again can be frustrating because you can't do changes immediately,

Stephen Kotkin (38:56.180)

you can't do things overnight, but that's the point.

Stephen Kotkin (39:00.460)

Constraints on your ability to change everything immediately and to force change overnight

Stephen Kotkin (39:04.860)

is what leads to long term success potentially.

Lex Fridman (39:08.900)

That's the sustainability of change.

Lex Fridman (39:12.120)

So Russia needs stronger institutions.

Lex Fridman (39:14.940)

It needs court system as well as democratic institutions.

Stephen Kotkin (39:20.500)

It needs functioning, open, dynamic markets rather than monopolies.

Stephen Kotkin (39:26.340)

It needs meritocracy and banks to award loans on the basis of business plans, not on the

Stephen Kotkin (39:33.580)

basis of political criteria or corrupt bribery or whatever it might be.

Lex Fridman (39:39.960)

So Russia needs those kind of functioning institutions that take time, are sometimes

Stephen Kotkin (39:47.340)

slow, don't lead to a revolutionary transformation, but lead to potentially long term sustainable

Stephen Kotkin (39:55.140)

growth without upheaval, without violence, without getting into a situation where all

Stephen Kotkin (40:01.340)

of a sudden you need a miracle again.

Stephen Kotkin (40:04.700)

Every time Russia seems to need a miracle, and that's the problem, the solution would

Stephen Kotkin (40:11.780)

be not needing a miracle.

Lex Fridman (40:14.380)

Now having said that, the potential is there.

Stephen Kotkin (40:17.940)

The civilization that we call Russia is amazingly impressive.

Lex Fridman (40:22.400)

It has delivered world class culture, world class science.

Stephen Kotkin (40:28.360)

It's a great power.

Stephen Kotkin (40:30.100)

It's not a great power with a strong base right now, but nonetheless it is a great power

Stephen Kotkin (40:34.700)

as it acts in the world.

Lex Fridman (40:36.580)

So I wouldn't underestimate Russia's abilities here and I wouldn't write off Russia.

Stephen Kotkin (40:41.660)

I don't see it under the current regime, a renewal of the country.

Lex Fridman (40:46.580)

But if we can have from within the regime an evolution rather than a revolution in a

Stephen Kotkin (40:52.920)

positive direction, and maybe get a George Washington figure who is strong enough to

Lex Fridman (41:00.420)

push through institutionalization rather than personalism.

Lex Fridman (41:06.200)

So if I could ask about one particular individual, it'd be just interesting to get your comment,

Lex Fridman (41:12.100)

but also as a representative of potential leaders, I just on this podcast talked to

Stephen Kotkin (41:16.100)

Gary Kasparov, who I'm not sure if you're familiar with his, his ongoings.

Lex Fridman (41:23.300)

So besides being a world class chess player, he's also a very outspoken activist, sort

Stephen Kotkin (41:28.700)

of seeing Putin, truly seeing Putin as an enemy of the free world of democracy, of balanced

Lex Fridman (41:38.740)

government in Russia.

Lex Fridman (41:40.240)

What do you think of people like him specifically, or just people like him trying as leaders

Lex Fridman (41:47.460)

to step in, to run for president, to symbolize a new chapter in Russia's future?

Lex Fridman (41:55.320)

So we don't need individuals.

Stephen Kotkin (41:58.100)

Some individuals are very impressive and they have courage and they protest and they criticize

Lex Fridman (42:04.180)

and they organize.

Lex Fridman (42:07.060)

We need institutions.

Stephen Kotkin (42:08.900)

We need a Duma or a parliament that functions.

Lex Fridman (42:12.380)

We need a court system that functions.

Stephen Kotkin (42:15.320)

That is to say where there are a separation of powers, impartial professional civil service,

Lex Fridman (42:24.100)

impartial professional judiciary.

Stephen Kotkin (42:28.140)

Those are the things Russia needs.

Lex Fridman (42:30.480)

It's rare that you get that from an individual, no matter how impressive, right?

Stephen Kotkin (42:35.260)

We had Andrei Sakharov, who was an extraordinary individual, who developed the hydrogen bomb

Stephen Kotkin (42:43.100)

under a Soviet regime, was a world class physicist, was then upset about how his scientific knowledge

Lex Fridman (42:53.620)

and scientific achievements were being put to use and rebelled to try to put limits,

Stephen Kotkin (43:01.580)

constraints, civilizing humane limits and constraints on some of the implications of

Stephen Kotkin (43:08.380)

his extraordinary science.

Lex Fridman (43:10.820)

But Sakharov, even if he had become the leader of the country, which he did not become, he

Stephen Kotkin (43:16.660)

was more of a moral or spiritual leader, it still wouldn't have given you a judiciary.

Lex Fridman (43:22.640)

It still wouldn't have given you a civil service.

Stephen Kotkin (43:25.200)

It still wouldn't have given you a Duma or functioning parliament.

Lex Fridman (43:29.140)

You need a leader in coalition with other leaders.

Stephen Kotkin (43:32.820)

You need a bunch of leaders, a whole group, and they have to be divided a little bit so

Lex Fridman (43:39.000)

that not one of them can destroy all the others.

Lex Fridman (43:42.580)

And they have to be interested in creating institutions, not solely or predominantly

Lex Fridman (43:50.000)

in their personal power.

Lex Fridman (43:52.240)

And so I have no objection to outstanding individuals and to the work that they do.

Lex Fridman (43:58.700)

But I think in institutional terms, and they need to think that way too in order to be

Stephen Kotkin (44:04.180)

successful.

Lex Fridman (44:05.180)

So if we go back to the echoes of that after the Russian Revolution with Stalin, with Lenin

Lex Fridman (44:11.260)

and Stalin, maybe you can correct me, but there was a group of people there in that

Stephen Kotkin (44:18.580)

same kind of way looking to establish institutions that were beautifully built around an ideology

Stephen Kotkin (44:30.820)

that they believed is good for the world.

Lex Fridman (44:34.580)

So sort of echoing that idea of what we're talking about, what Russia needs now, can

Stephen Kotkin (44:41.260)

you, first of all, you've described a fascinating thought, which is Stalin is having amassed

Stephen Kotkin (44:48.880)

arguably more power than any man in history, which is an interesting thing to think about.

Lex Fridman (44:54.500)

But can you tell about his journey to getting that power after the Russian Revolution?

Lex Fridman (45:00.620)

How does that perhaps echo to our current discussion about institutions and so on?

Lex Fridman (45:08.740)

And just in general, the story I think is fascinating of how one man is able to get

Lex Fridman (45:14.560)

more power than any other man in history.

Stephen Kotkin (45:17.220)

It is a great story, not necessarily from a moral point of view, but if you're interested

Lex Fridman (45:24.080)

in power, for sure it's an incredible story.

Lex Fridman (45:27.620)

So we have to remember that Stalin is also a product of circumstances, not solely his

Lex Fridman (45:34.260)

own individual drive, which is very strong.

Stephen Kotkin (45:38.760)

For example, World War I breaks the czarist regime, the czarist order, imperial Russian

Lex Fridman (45:46.020)

state.

Stephen Kotkin (45:47.620)

Stalin has no participation whatsoever in World War I.

Lex Fridman (45:51.740)

He spends World War I in exile in Siberia.

Stephen Kotkin (45:56.220)

Until the downfall of the czarist autocracy in February 1917, Stalin is in Eastern Siberian

Lex Fridman (46:06.020)

exile.

Stephen Kotkin (46:07.460)

He's only able to leave Eastern Siberia when that regime falls.

Lex Fridman (46:12.440)

He never fights in the war.

Stephen Kotkin (46:15.140)

He's called up briefly towards the end of the war and is disqualified on physical grounds

Lex Fridman (46:21.420)

because of physical deformities from being drafted.

Stephen Kotkin (46:25.880)

The war continues after the czarist regime has been toppled in the capital and there's

Lex Fridman (46:32.860)

been a revolution.

Stephen Kotkin (46:35.520)

The war continues and that war is very radicalizing.

Stephen Kotkin (46:40.700)

The peasants begin to seize the land after the czar falls, essentially destroying much

Stephen Kotkin (46:47.100)

of the gentry class.

Lex Fridman (46:49.180)

Stalin has nothing to do with that.

Stephen Kotkin (46:50.540)

The peasants have their own revolution, seizing the land, not in law, but in fact, de facto

Lex Fridman (46:57.660)

not de jure land ownership.

Lex Fridman (47:00.160)

So there are these really large processes underway that Stalin is alive during, but

Lex Fridman (47:08.420)

not a driver of.

Stephen Kotkin (47:10.980)

The most improbable thing happens, which is a very small group of people around the figure

Lex Fridman (47:17.340)

of Vladimir Lenin announces that it has seized power.

Stephen Kotkin (47:23.620)

Now by this time in October 1917, the government that has replaced the czar, the so called

Lex Fridman (47:30.660)

provisional government, has failed.

Lex Fridman (47:34.220)

And so there's not so much power to seize from the provisional government.

Lex Fridman (47:39.280)

What Lenin does is he does a coup on the left.

Stephen Kotkin (47:43.220)

That is to say, Soviets or councils, as we would call them in English, which represent

Stephen Kotkin (47:51.020)

people's power or the masses participating in politics, a kind of radical grassroots

Stephen Kotkin (47:56.120)

democracy are extremely popular all over the country and not dominated by any one group,

Lex Fridman (48:04.140)

but predominantly socialist or predominantly leftist.

Stephen Kotkin (48:09.500)

Russia has an election during the war, a free and fair election for the most part, despite

Stephen Kotkin (48:16.180)

the war at the end of 1917, in December 1917, and three quarters plus of the country votes

Stephen Kotkin (48:24.700)

socialist in some form or another.

Lex Fridman (48:27.980)

So the battle was over the definition of socialism and who had the right to participate in defining

Stephen Kotkin (48:34.460)

socialism, not only what it would be, but who had the right to decide.

Lex Fridman (48:39.460)

So there's a coup by Lenin's group known as the Bolsheviks against all the other socialists.

Lex Fridman (48:47.400)

And so Lenin declares a seizure of power whereby the old government has failed, people's power,

Stephen Kotkin (48:54.780)

the councils known as the Soviets are going to take their place, and Lenin seizes power

Stephen Kotkin (49:01.420)

in the name of the Soviets.

Lex Fridman (49:03.540)

So it's a coup against the left, against the rest of the left, not against the provisional

Stephen Kotkin (49:09.340)

government that has replaced the czar, which has already failed.

Lex Fridman (49:13.220)

And so Stalin is able to come to power along with Lenin in this crazy seizure of power

Stephen Kotkin (49:21.700)

on the left against the rest of the left in October 1917, which we know is the October

Lex Fridman (49:27.360)

Revolution, and I call the October coup as many other historians call.

Stephen Kotkin (49:35.020)

The October Revolution happened after the seizure of power.

Stephen Kotkin (49:38.740)

What's interesting about this episode is that the leftists who seize power in the name of

Stephen Kotkin (49:44.500)

the Soviets, in the name of the masses, in the name of people's power, they retain their

Lex Fridman (49:49.860)

hold.

Stephen Kotkin (49:51.560)

Many times in history, there's a seizure of power by the left, and they fail.

Lex Fridman (49:56.760)

They collapse.

Stephen Kotkin (49:58.260)

They're cleaned out by an army or what we call forces of order, by counter revolutionary

Lex Fridman (50:03.580)

forces.

Stephen Kotkin (50:04.980)

Lenin's revolution, Lenin's coup is successful.

Lex Fridman (50:09.020)

It is able to hold power, not just seize power.

Stephen Kotkin (50:12.660)

They win a civil war, and they're entrenched in the heart of the country already by 1921.

Lex Fridman (50:21.780)

Stalin is part of that group.

Stephen Kotkin (50:23.940)

Lenin needs somebody to run.

Stephen Kotkin (50:26.660)

This new regime in the kind of nitty gritty way, Lenin is the leader, the undisputed leader

Stephen Kotkin (50:32.580)

in the Bolshevik party, which changes their name to communists in 1918.

Lex Fridman (50:38.260)

He makes Stalin the general secretary of the communist party.

Stephen Kotkin (50:45.620)

He creates a new position, which hadn't existed before, a kind of day to day political manager,

Lex Fridman (50:52.900)

a right hand man.

Stephen Kotkin (50:54.980)

Not because Lenin is looking to replace himself.

Lex Fridman (50:57.660)

He's looking to institutionalize a helpmate, a right hand man.

Stephen Kotkin (51:02.340)

He does this in the spring of 1922.

Lex Fridman (51:08.060)

Stalin is named to this position, which Lenin has created expressly for Stalin.

Lex Fridman (51:12.600)

So there has been a coup on the left whereby the Bolsheviks who become communists have

Stephen Kotkin (51:19.060)

seized power against the rest of the socialists and anarchists and the entire left.

Lex Fridman (51:25.580)

And then there's an institutionalization of a position known as general secretary of the

Lex Fridman (51:30.660)

communist party, right hand man of Lenin.

Stephen Kotkin (51:34.420)

Less than six weeks after Lenin has created this position and installed Stalin, Lenin

Stephen Kotkin (51:40.220)

has a stroke, a major stroke, and never really returns as a full actor to power before he

Stephen Kotkin (51:50.060)

dies of a fourth stroke in January 1924.

Lex Fridman (51:55.100)

So a position is created for Stalin to run things on Lenin's behalf.

Lex Fridman (52:00.340)

And then Lenin has a stroke.

Lex Fridman (52:02.860)

And so Stalin now has this new position general secretary, but he's the right hand of a person

Stephen Kotkin (52:09.780)

who's no longer exercising day to day control over affairs.

Stephen Kotkin (52:15.500)

Stalin then uses this new position to create a personal dictatorship inside the Bolshevik

Stephen Kotkin (52:21.420)

dictatorship, which is the remarkable story I tried to tell.

Lex Fridman (52:25.780)

So is there anything nefarious about any of what you just described?

Lex Fridman (52:30.540)

So it seems conveniently that the position is created just for Stalin.

Stephen Kotkin (52:37.100)

There was a few other brilliant people, arguably more brilliant than Stalin in the vicinity

Stephen Kotkin (52:42.060)

of Lenin.

Lex Fridman (52:43.060)

Why was Stalin chosen?

Lex Fridman (52:45.720)

Why did Lenin all of a sudden fall ill?

Stephen Kotkin (52:51.300)

It's perhaps a conspiratorial question, but is there anything nefarious about any of this

Lex Fridman (52:56.940)

historical trajectory to power that Stalin took in creating the personal dictatorship?

Lex Fridman (53:02.780)

So history is full of contingency and surprise.

Stephen Kotkin (53:07.500)

After something happens, we all think it's inevitable.

Lex Fridman (53:11.620)

It had to happen that way.

Stephen Kotkin (53:14.040)

Everything was leading up to it.

Lex Fridman (53:16.260)

So Hitler seizes power in Germany in 1933, and the Nazi regime gets institutionalized

Stephen Kotkin (53:24.820)

by several of his moves after being named chancellor.

Lex Fridman (53:29.220)

And so all German history becomes a story of the Nazi rise to power, Hitler's rise to

Stephen Kotkin (53:34.260)

power.

Lex Fridman (53:35.460)

Every trend tendency is bent into that outcome.

Stephen Kotkin (53:40.780)

Things which don't seem related to that outcome all of a sudden get bent in that direction.

Lex Fridman (53:46.800)

And other trends that were going on are no longer examined because they didn't lead to

Stephen Kotkin (53:51.900)

that outcome.

Lex Fridman (53:53.500)

But Hitler's becoming chancellor of Germany in 1933 was not inevitable.

Stephen Kotkin (53:58.740)

It was contingent.

Lex Fridman (54:00.440)

He was offered the position by the traditional conservatives.

Stephen Kotkin (54:04.660)

He's part of the radical right and the traditional right named him chancellor.

Stephen Kotkin (54:09.820)

The Nazi party never outright won an election that was free and fair before Hitler came

Stephen Kotkin (54:15.580)

to power.

Lex Fridman (54:16.780)

And in fact, its votes on the eve of Hitler becoming chancellor declined relative to the

Stephen Kotkin (54:22.180)

previous election.

Lex Fridman (54:24.380)

So there's contingency in history, and so Lenin's illness, his stroke, the neurological

Lex Fridman (54:33.980)

and blood problems that he had were not a structure in history.

Stephen Kotkin (54:40.100)

In other words, if Lenin had been a healthier figure, Stalin might never have become the

Stephen Kotkin (54:45.720)

Stalin that we know.

Stephen Kotkin (54:47.940)

That's not to say that all history is accidental, just that we need to relate the structural,

Stephen Kotkin (54:53.020)

the larger structural factors to the contingent factors.

Lex Fridman (54:57.820)

Why did Lenin pick Stalin?

Stephen Kotkin (54:59.540)

Well, Stalin was a very effective organizer, and the position was an organizational position.

Lex Fridman (55:06.700)

Stalin could get things done.

Stephen Kotkin (55:08.420)

He would carry out assignments no matter how difficult.

Lex Fridman (55:11.620)

He wouldn't complain that it was hard work or too much work.

Stephen Kotkin (55:16.100)

He wouldn't go off womanizing and drinking and ignore his responsibilities.

Stephen Kotkin (55:22.420)

Lenin chose Stalin among other options because he thought Stalin was the better option.

Stephen Kotkin (55:28.140)

Once again, he wasn't choosing his successor because he didn't know he was going to have

Lex Fridman (55:32.140)

this stroke.

Stephen Kotkin (55:34.020)

Lenin had some serious illnesses, but he had never had a major stroke before.

Lex Fridman (55:40.780)

So the choice was made based upon Stalin's organizational skills and promise against

Stephen Kotkin (55:50.340)

the others who were in the regime.

Stephen Kotkin (55:52.660)

Now, they can seem more brilliant than Stalin, but he was more effective, and I'm not sure

Stephen Kotkin (55:57.900)

they were very brilliant.

Stephen Kotkin (55:59.100)

Well, he was exceptionally competent actually at the tasks for running a government, the

Stephen Kotkin (56:04.420)

executive branch, right, of a dictator.

Lex Fridman (56:07.020)

Yes.

Stephen Kotkin (56:08.020)

He turned out to be very adept at being a dictator.

Lex Fridman (56:11.780)

And so if he had been chosen by Lenin and had not been very good, he would have been

Stephen Kotkin (56:18.160)

pushed aside by others.

Lex Fridman (56:20.060)

Yeah.

Stephen Kotkin (56:21.780)

You can get a position by accident.

Stephen Kotkin (56:24.780)

You can be named because you're someone's friend or someone's relative, but to hold

Stephen Kotkin (56:30.700)

that position, to hold that position in difficult circumstances, and then to build effectively

Lex Fridman (56:36.860)

a superpower on all that bloodshed, right, you have to be skilled in some way.

Stephen Kotkin (56:44.060)

It can't be just the accident that brings you to power because if accident brings you

Lex Fridman (56:49.620)

to power, it won't last.

Stephen Kotkin (56:52.340)

Just like we discovered with Putin, he had some qualities that we didn't foresee at the

Lex Fridman (56:57.220)

beginning, and he's been able to hold power, not just be named.

Stephen Kotkin (57:02.780)

Now, Putin and Stalin are very different people.

Lex Fridman (57:06.260)

These are very different regimes.

Stephen Kotkin (57:08.100)

I wouldn't put them in the same sentence.

Lex Fridman (57:10.940)

My point is not that one resembles the other.

Stephen Kotkin (57:14.480)

My point is that when people come to power for contingent reasons, they don't stay in

Lex Fridman (57:20.980)

power unless they're able to manage it.

Lex Fridman (57:23.980)

And Stalin was able to build a personal dictatorship inside that dictatorship.

Lex Fridman (57:29.340)

He was cunning, he was ruthless, and he was a workaholic.

Stephen Kotkin (57:33.700)

He was very diligent.

Stephen Kotkin (57:35.260)

He had a phenomenal memory, and so he could remember people's names and faces and events.

Lex Fridman (57:41.560)

And this was very advantageous for him as he built the machine that became the Soviet

Lex Fridman (57:48.100)

state and bureaucracy.

Stephen Kotkin (57:50.540)

One of the things, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, what you've made me realize

Stephen Kotkin (57:54.660)

is this wasn't some kind of manipulative personality trying to gain more power solely, like kind

Stephen Kotkin (58:02.960)

of an evil picture of a person, but he truly believed in communism.

Stephen Kotkin (58:10.460)

As far as I can understand, again, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but he wanted to

Stephen Kotkin (58:13.740)

build a better world by infusing communism into the country, perhaps into the whole world.

Lex Fridman (58:26.160)

So maybe my question is what role does communism as an idea, as an ideology play in all of

Lex Fridman (58:35.260)

this?

Lex Fridman (58:36.260)

What was the power in the people of the time, in the Russian people, actually just the whole

Lex Fridman (58:41.100)

20th century?

Lex Fridman (58:43.380)

You're right.

Stephen Kotkin (58:44.880)

Stalin was a true believer, and this is very important.

Stephen Kotkin (58:48.180)

He was also hungry for power and for personal power, but just as you said, not for power's

Stephen Kotkin (58:54.260)

sake, not only for power.

Stephen Kotkin (58:57.080)

He was interested in enacting communism in reality and also in building a powerful state.

Stephen Kotkin (59:04.720)

He was a statist, a traditional Russian statist in the imperial sense, and this won him a

Lex Fridman (59:11.800)

lot of followers.

Stephen Kotkin (59:14.000)

The fact that they knew he was a hardcore true believing communist won him a lot of

Stephen Kotkin (59:19.140)

followers among the communists, and the fact that he was a hardcore defender of Russian

Stephen Kotkin (59:26.000)

state interests now in the Soviet guise also won him a lot of followers.

Stephen Kotkin (59:32.000)

Sometimes those groups overlapped, the communists and the Russian patriots, and sometimes they

Stephen Kotkin (59:37.740)

were completely different groups, but both of them shared an admiration for Stalin's

Lex Fridman (59:43.660)

dedication to those goals and his abilities to enact them.

Lex Fridman (59:48.620)

And so it's very important to understand that however thirsty he was for power, and he was

Lex Fridman (59:55.260)

very thirsty for power, that he was also driven by ideals.