Serhii Plokhy: History of Ukraine, Russia, Soviet Union, KGB, Nazis & War | Lex Fridman Podcast #415
- What happened during World War II was that once the Germans started to run out of manpower, they created
foreign legion groups. But because those people were not Aryans, they couldn't be trusted. So they were put under the command of Heinrich Himmler under command of SS, and became known as SS Waffen units, and one of such units
was created in Ukraine. - The following is a
conversation with Serhii Plokhy, a historian at Harvard University and the director of the
Ukrainian Research Institute, also at Harvard. As a historian, he specializes in the
history of Eastern Europe with an emphasis on Ukraine. He wrote a lot of great books on Ukraine and Russia, the Soviet Union,
on Slavic peoples in general, across centuries on Chernobyl
and nuclear disasters, and on the current war in Ukraine, a book titled The Russo-Ukrainian War, The Return of History. This is the Led Fridman
podcast, to support it, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends,
here's Serhii Plokhy. What are the major explanations for the collapse of the Soviet Union? Maybe ones you agree with
and ones you disagree with? - Very often people confuse
three different processes that were taken place in the late eighties and early nineties, and
the one was the collapse of communism as ideology. Another was the end of the Cold War, and the third one was the
end of the Soviet Union. All of this processes were
interrelated, interconnected, but when people provide ideology
as the explanation for all of these processes, that's why I disagree, because ideological collapse
happened on the territory of the Soviet Union in general. Soviet Union lost the Cold War, whether we are talking about Moscow, Leningrad, or St. Petersburg now, or Vladivostok. But the fall of the Soviet
Union is about a story in which Vladivostok and St. Petersburg ended up in one country, and Kyiv, Minsk, and (speaks foreign language) ended in different countries. So the theories and explanations about how
did that happen for me, this really very helpful theories for understanding the Soviet collapse. So the mobilization
from below, the collapse of the center, against the
background of economic collapse, against the background
of ideological implosion. That's how I look at the
fall of the Soviet Union and that's how I look at the theories that explain that collapse. - So it's a story of
geography, ideology, economics, which are the most
important to understand of what made the collapse of
the Soviet Union happen? - The Soviet collapse was unique, but not more unique than
collapse of any other empire. So what we really witnessed, or the world witnessed back in 1991, and we continue to witness today with the Russian aggression
against Ukraine, is a collapse of one of the largest world empires. We talked about the Soviet Union, and now talk about Russia
as possessing plus, minus, one sixth of the surface of the earth. You don't get in possession
of one sixth of the earth by being a nation state. You get that sort of size as an empire. And the Soviet collapses
continuation of the disintegration of the Russian Empire
that started back in 1917, that was arrested for some
period of time by the Bolsheviks, by the communist ideology, which was internationalist ideology, and then came back in full
force in the late eighties and early nineties. So the most important story
for me, this is the story of the continuing collapse
of the Russian Empire and the rise of not
just local nationalism, but also rise of Russian
nationalism that turned out to be as a destructive force for the imperial or multi-ethnic, multinational state, as was Ukrainian nationalism or Georgian or Estonian for that matter, - Well you said a lot of
interesting stuff there in 1917, Bolsheviks, internationalists,
how that plays with the idea of Russian Empire and so on. But first, let me ask
about US influence on this. So one of the ideas is that,
you know, through the Cold War, that mechanism, US had made your interest to weaken the Soviet Union, and therefore the collapse
could be attributed to pressure and manipulation from the United States. Is there truth to that? - The pressure from the United States, this is part of the Cold War and Cold War part of that story, but it doesn't explain
the Soviet collapse. And the reason is quite simple. The United States of America didn't want the Soviet Union to
collapse and disintegrate. They didn't want that at the
start of the Cold War in 1948. We now have the strategic documents. They were concerned about that. They didn't wanna do that, and certainly they didn't wanna do that in the 1991, as late August of 1991, the month of the coup, in Moscow, president Bush, George HW
Bush travels from Moscow to Kyiv and gives famous, or infamous speech called
Chicken Kyiv speech, basically warning Ukrainians
against going for independence. The Soviet collapse was a huge headache for the administration in the White House for a number of reasons. They liked to work with Gorbachev. The Soviet Union was
emerging as a junior partner of the United States on
the international arena. Collapse destroyed all of that. And on the top of that,
there was a question of the nuclear weapons,
unaccounted nuclear weapons. So the United States was doing
everything humanly possible to keep the Soviet Union
together in one piece until really late November
of 1991, when it became clear that it was, it was a lost cause and they had to say goodbye to Gorbachev and to the project that he introduced. A few months later, or a year later, there was
a presidential campaign, and Bush was running for the second term and was looking for achievements. And there were many achievements. I basically treat him with great respect, but destruction of the Soviet Union was not one of those achievements. He was on the other side of that divide. But the politics, the political campaign, of course have their own
rules and they produce and give birth to mythology
with which we still, at least in this country, we
live till now, till today. - So Gorbachev is an interesting
figure in all of this. Is there a possible history where the Soviet Union did not collapse and some of the ideas that
Gorbachev had for the future of the Soviet Union came to life? - Of course, history, on the
one hand, there is a statement. It doesn't allow for what-ifs. On the other hand, in my
opinion, history is full of what-if, that's what history is about. (Lex laughs) And certainly there are scenarios, how the Soviet Union would continue beyond, let's
say Gorbachev's tenure. And the argument has been
made that the reforms that he introduced, that
they were mismanaged and they could be managed differently, or there could be no reforms and there could be continuous stagnation. So that is all possible. What I think would happen one way or another is the Soviet
collapse in a different form on somebody else's watch at
some later period in time. Because we're dealing
with not just processes that happening in the Soviet Union, we're dealing with global processes and the 20th century turned
out to be the century of the disintegration of the empires. You look at the globe at the
map of the world in 1914, and you compare it to the map at the end of the 20th century in 1991, 1992. And suddenly you realize that
there are many candidates for being the most important event, the most important process
in the 20th century. But the biggest global thing that happened was redrawing
the map of the world and producing dozens, if
not hundreds of new states. That's the outcome of
the different processes of the 20th century. Look, Yugoslavia is falling
apart around the same time. Czechoslovakia goes through what can be called a
civilized divorce, a very, very rare occurrence in the fall of multinational states. So yeah, the writing was on the wall, whether it would happen under Gorbachev or later, whether it would
happen as the result of reforms or as the result of no reforms. But I think that sooner or later, that would happen. - Yeah, it's very possible. Hundreds of years from now, the way the 20th century is written about as the century defined by
the collapse of empires. You call the Soviet Union the last empire. The book is called The Last Empire. So is there something fundamental
about the way the world is that means it's not conducive
to the formation of empires? - The meaning that I was
putting in the term the Soviet Union as the last empire was that that was the Soviet collapse,
was the collapse of the last major European
empires, traditional empires that was there in the 18th
century, 19th century, and through most of the 20th century, the Austria Hungary died in the midst of World War I, the Ottoman
Empire disintegrated, the Brits were gone and left India. And there was the successor to the Russian Empire
called the Soviet Union, was still hanging on there. And then came 1991. And what we see even with today's Russia, it's a very different sort of policies. The Russian leadership tried
to learn a lesson from 1991, so there is no national Republics in the Russian Federation that
would have more rights than the Russian administrative units. So the structure is different. The nationality policies are different. The level of unification is much higher. So it is in many ways already a post imperial formation. - And you're right about
that moment in 1991, the role that Ukraine played in that seems to be a very critical role. Can you describe just that what role Ukraine played in the collapse of the Soviet Union? - History is many things, but it started in a very simple way of making notes about on the yearly basis what happened this year at that. So it's about chronology. Chronology in the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union is very important. You have Ukrainian referendum
on December 1st, 1991, and you have dissolution
of the Soviet Union by the leaders of Russia. Ukraine and Belarus respond a week later, and the question is why? Ukrainian referendum is the answer. But Ukrainians didn't answer their referendum question of whether they want the Soviet Union to be dissolved or not. They answered very limited in terms of, it's been in question whether
you support the decision of (speaks foreign language)
of your parliament for Ukraine to go independent, and the rest was not on the ballot. So why then one week later,
the Soviet Union is gone? And President Yeltsin explains
to President Bush around that time, the reason why
Ukraine was so important. He said that, well, if Ukraine is gone, Russia is not interested
in this Soviet project because Russia would be outnumbered and outvoted by the Muslim republics. So there was a cultural element, but there was also another one. Ukraine happened to be the
second largest Soviet republic and then post-Soviet state in
terms of population, in terms of the economy, economic
potential, and so on and so forth. And as Yeltsin suggested, close
culturally, linguistically and otherwise to Russia. So with the second largest republic gone, Russia didn't think that
it was in Russia's interest to continue with the Soviet Union. And around that time, Yegor Gaidar who was the chief economic
advisor of Yeltsin, was telling him, well, we
just don't have money anymore to support other republics. We have to focus on Russia. We have to use oil and gas money within
the Russian Federation. So the state was bankrupt,
imperial projects, at least in the context
of the late 20th century, they costed money. It wasn't a moneymaking machine as it was back in the
18th and 19th century, and the combination of
all these factors led to the processes in
which Ukraine's decision to go independent, spelled
the end to the Soviet Union. And if today anybody wants to restore, not the Soviet Union, but some form of Russian control
over the post-Soviet space, Ukraine is as important today as it was back in December of 1991. - Lemme ask you about Vladimir Putin's statement that the collapse
of the Soviet Union is one of the great tragedies of history. To what degree does he have a point? To what degree is he wrong? - His formulation was that this is the greatest geopolitical catastrophe or tragedy of the 20th century. And I specifically went
and looked at the text and put it in specific
time when it was happening. And it was interesting that the statement was made a few weeks before the May nine parade and celebrations of the victory, a key part of the mythology of the current Russian state. So why say things about the Soviet collapse being the largest geopolitical tragedy and not in that particular
context, the Second World War? My explanation at least
is that the World War II, the price was enormous, but the Soviet Union
emerged as a great victor and captured half of Europe. 1991, in terms of the lives lost at that point, the price was
actually very, very low. But for Putin, what was important
that the state was lost. And he in particular was
concerned about the division of the Russian people, which he understood back then, like he understands now
in very, very broad terms. So for him, the biggest
tragedy is not the loss of life, the biggest tragedy is the loss of the great power, status, or the unity of those whom he considered to be Russian nations. So at least this is my reading,
this is my understanding of what is there, what is on the paper and what
is between the lines. - So both the unity of the
sort of quote Russian Empire and the status of the superpower. - That's how I read it. - You wrote a book, The
Origins of The Slavic Nations. So let's go back into history. What is the origin of Slavic nations? - We can look at that from
different perspectives. And we are now making major breakthroughs in answering this question
with the very interesting, innovative linguistic
analysis, the study of DNA. So that's really the new frontier. We're getting into a prehistorical period where there is no historical sources. And from what we can understand today, and that can of course change tomorrow with all these breakthroughs
in sciences, is that the Slavs came into existence
somewhere in the area of Pripyat marshes, northwestern part of Ukraine, southwestern part of Belarus, eastern part of Poland. And that's is considered to be
historical homeland of Slavs. And then they spread, and they spread all the
way to the Adriatic. So we have Croats, we have Russians spreading
all the way to the Pacific. We have Ukrainians, we
have Belarusians, Poles. Once we had Czechoslovaks, now
we have Czechs and Slovaks. So that's the story of
starting with the eighth and ninth century. We can even a little bit
earlier, we can already follow that story with the help
of the written sources, mostly from Byzantine, then
later from Western Europe. But what I was trying to
do, not being a scientist, not being an expert in linguistics or not being an expert in DNA analysis, I was trying to see what
was happening in the minds of those peoples and
their lives in particular, whom we call today not Slavs, but Eastern
Slavs, which means Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. How they imagine themselves,
how they imagine their world. And eventually I look at the so-called nation building projects. So trying to answer the
question of how we arrived to the situation in which we are today, where there are not just
three East Slavic nations, but there are also three
East Slavic states, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian. So this is the focus of my book. And admittedly in that particular book I end on the 18th century
before the era of nationalism. But then there are other
books like Lost Kingdom where I bring the story
all the way up to today. - So what aspects of the eighth and ninth century, the East Slavic states permeates to today that
we should understand? - Well, the most important
one is that the existence of the state of Kyivan Rus back during the medieval period created a foundations
for historical mythology, common historical mythology. And there are just wars and battles over who has
the right, or more right for Kyivan Rus. The legal code that was created at that time existed for a long
period of time, the acceptance of Christianity from Byzantium,
that became a big issue that separated then eastern
Slavs from their Western neighbors, including Czechs and Poles. But united in that way
to let's say Bulgarians or Serbs and the beginning
of the written literature, beginning in Kyiv. So all of that is considered
to be part of heritage. All of that is being contested. And this debates that were academic for a long period of time, what we see now tragically
have been being continued on the battlefield. - What is Kyiv, what is
Rus that you mentioned? What's the importance of these? You mentioned them as the
sort of defining places and terms, labels at the
beginning of all of this. So what is Kyiv? - Kyiv became a capital or the outpost of the Vikings who were trying to
establish control over the trade route between what is today's Western Russia and Belarus and Northern Ukraine. So the forest areas and the biggest and the richest market in
the world that existed at that time, which was in
Constantinople, in Byzantium. So the idea was to get
whatever goods you can get in that part of Eastern Europe. And most of those goods were slaves. Local population put
them on the ships in Kyiv because Kyiv was on the
border with the step zones. Step zones were controlled
by other groups, (speaks foreign language) and so on. And you name it. And then staying on the river being protected
from attacks of the moments to come to the Black Sea and sell these products in Constantinople. That was the idea. That was the model. Vikings tried to practice that sort of business model also in
other parts of Europe and like in other parts of
Europe, they turned out to be, by default creators of new
politics, of new states. And that was the story of the first Kyivan Dynasty and Kyiv as the capital
of that huge empire that was going from the Baltics
to today, central Ukraine, and then was trying to get
through the southern Ukraine to the Black Sea. That was a major, major European state kingdom,
if you wanna call it, of medieval Europe with
a lot, creating a lot of tradition in terms of
dynasty, in terms of language, in terms of religion, in terms of, again, historical mythology. So Kyiv is central for
the nation building myth of a number of groups in the region. - So in one perspective and narrative, Kyiv is at the
center of this Russian empire, at which point does
Moscow come to prominence as the center of the Russian empire? - Well, the Russian Empire is a term and really creation of the 18th century. What we have for the Kyivan, and we call it Kyivan Rus. Again, this is a term of the 19th century. They call themselves Rus, and there was metropolitan of Rus and there was Rus principalities. So very important to keep in
mind that Rus is not Russia, because that was a self name
for all multiple groups on that territory. And Moscow doesn't exist
at the time when Kyiv emerges as the capital. The first reference to Moscow comes from the 12th
century when it was founded by one of the Kyivan
Princes, and Moscow comes to prominence really in
a very different context and with a very different
empire running the show in the region. The story of Moscow
and the rise of Moscow. This is the story of the Mongol rule over former Rus lands and
former Rus territories. The part of the former Rus eventually overthrows the Mongol
control with the help of the small group of people called Lithuanians, which had a young state and young dynasty and united this lands, which were mostly in today's terms, Ukrainian and Belorussian. So they separate early. And what is today is Russia,
mostly Western Russia, Central Russia, stays
under the Mongol control up until late 15th century. And that was the story when Moscow rises as the new capital of that realm replacing the city of Vladimir as that capital for those who ever went to Russia, they familiar with, of course, Vladimir as the place of the oldest architectural monuments, the so-called the Golden Ring of Russia,
and so on and so forth. Vladimir is central. And there were so many
architectural monuments there, because before there was
Moscow there was Vladimir, eventually in this struggle
over control of the territory, struggle for favors from the Mongols and the Tatar horde, Moscow
emerges as the center of that particular realm under Mongols, after the Mongol rule is removed, Moscow embarks on the
project that historians, Russian historians of the 19th
century called the gathering of the Russian lands,
using Russian now for Rus. And trying to bring back the lands of former Kyivan Rus, but also the lands of
the former Mongol empire. The Russians get to the Pacific before they get to Kyiv, historically, and really the quote-unquote
gathering of the quote unquote Russian lands. And only in 1945 when the Soviet Union bullies the Czechoslovak
government into turning what is today's Ukraine
to the Soviet Union. It is included in the Ukrainian
Soviet socialist republic. So that's the moment when
that destiny, the way how it was imagined by the 19th century Russian historian was eventually fulfilled. Moscow was in control of all this lands. - So to what degree are the
Slavic people one people? And this is the theme that
will continue throughout, I think, versus a collection
of multiple peoples, whether we're talking about the Kyivan Rus or we're talking about
the 19th century Russian empire conception. - Well, a number of ways to look at that. One, the most obvious, the
most clear is language. And there is no question that Poles speak a separate
language in their Slavs. And there is no question for anyone going to Ukraine, and hearing Ukrainian realizing
that this is not Russian, the level of comprehension
can be different. You can understand certain words and you don't understand others. And the same would be with Polish, and the same would be with Czech. So there is this linguistic history that is in common, but languages
very clearly indicate that you're dealing with different people. We know that language is not everything, Americans speak a
particular way of English. Australians speak a
particular variant of English. But for reasons of geography history, we pretty much believe that
despite linguistic unity, these are different nations
and different peoples. And there are some parts of political tradition more in common. Others are quite different. So the same when it comes to language, the same when it comes
to political tradition, to the loyalty to the
political institution applies to Slavic nations. So again, there is nothing
particularly unique about the Slavs in that regard. - You wrote the book, the Cossack Myth, History and Nationhood
in the Age of Empires, it tells the story of
an anonymous manuscript called the History of the Rus. It started being circulated in the 1820s. I would love it if you
can tell the story of, this is supposedly one of the most impactful texts
in history, modern history. So what's the importance of this text? What did it contain? How did it define the
future of the region? - In the first decay of the 19th century, after Napoleonic Wars, a
mysterious text emerged that was attributed to
a orthodox arch bishop that was long dead, which was claiming that
the Cossacks of Ukraine were in fact the original Rus people, and that they had the right for a particular place for central place in the Russian Empire. And it tells the history of the Cossack. It's the era of romanticism, full of all sorts of drama. There are heroes, there are villains, and the text captivates the attention of some key figures in the Russian intellectual elite in St. Petersburg, people
like (speaks foreign language) who was executed for his
participation in 1825 Uprising writes poetry on the basis of this text. Pushkin pays attention to it as well. And then comes along the key figure in Ukrainian national revival of the 19th century
Ukrainian National Project. (speaks foreign language)
and reads it as well, and they all read it very differently. Eventually by the beginning of the mid 20th century, some of the Russian mostly nationalist
writers called this text the Quran of Ukrainian nationalism. So what is there? The story, it's very
important in a sense that what the authors, and that's what I claim in
the book, what the authors of the text were trying to say. They were trying to say
that the Cossack elite should have the same rights
as the Russian nobility, and brings the long
historical records to prove how cool the Cossack were
over the period of time. But at the beginning of the 19th century, they put this claim already,
they used new arguments, and this arguments are about
nation and nationalism, and they're saying that the
Cossack are a separate nation, and that's a big, big, big claim. The Russian Empire, and this is a very, very good
argument in historiography, that Russian empire grew and acquired this one sixth of the Earth, by using one very specific way
of integrating those lands. It integrated elites, it was
making deals with their elites, whether their elites were Muslim or their elites were Roman Catholic, as the case was with the Poles, elites would be integrated, and the empire was made
based on that estate, the state loyalty and
the state integration. But once you bring in the factor of nation and nationalism and language,
then once in a sudden the whole model of the
integration of the elites, irrespective of their language, religion, and culture starts falling apart. And the Poles were the first who really produced this sort of a challenge to the Russian empire by two
uprisings in the 19th century. And Ukrainians then
followed in their footsteps. So the text, the importance
of the text is that it was making claim on the
part of a particular estate, the Cossack officer class, which was that empire could survive. But it turned it, given the conditions of the time into the claim
for the special role of Cossack as a nation, creating that this is a
separate nation, a Rus nation. And that is the challenge of nationalism that no empire really survived. And the Russian Empire
was not an exception. So there's a turning point when
the discourse switches from loyalty based on the
integration of the elite to the loyalty based on attachment to your
nation, to your language, and to your culture and to your history. - So that was like the
initial spark, the flame that led to nationalist movements. - That was the beginning
and the beginning, that was building a bridge
between the existence of the Cossack state in
the 17th and 18th century. That was used as a foundation
for the Cossack mythology. Ukrainian national mythology
went into the Ukrainian national anthem and the new age and the new stage where the
Cossack were not there anymore, where the professors,
intellectuals, students, members of the national and organizations. And it started of course,
with romantic poetry. It was started with collecting folklore, and then later goes to the political stage and eventually the stage of mass politics. - So to you, even throughout
the 20th century under Stalin, there was always a force within Ukraine that wants it to be independent. - There were five attempts for Ukraine to declare it's independence and to maintain it in the 20th century, only one succeeded in 1991. But there were four
different attempts before. And you see the Ukrainian national identity manifest in itself in two different ways, in the
form of national communism after the Bolshevik victory in
Bolshevik controlled Ukraine, and in the form of radical
nationalism in the parts of Ukraine that were controlled
by Poland and Romania. And part of that was also
controlled by Czechoslovakia and later Hungary. So in those parts outside
of the Soviet Union, the form of the national
mobilization, the key form of national mobilization
became radical nationalism in Soviet Ukraine, it was national communism that came back in the 1960s and 1970s. And then in the 1991, the majority of the members of the
Ukrainian parliament who voted for independence were members
of the Communist Party. So that spirit on a
certain level never died. - So there's national communism
and radical nationalism. Well, let me ask you about
the radical nationalism, because that is a topic that
comes up in the discussion of the war in Ukraine today. Can you tell me about
Stepan Bandera, who was he? This controversial far-right, Ukrainian revolutionary? - The right list two Stepan Banderas. One is the real person and another is mythology that really comes with this name. And the real person was a young student, nationalistically oriented
student in the late 1920s and the early 1930s in the part of Ukraine that was controlled by
Poland, who belonged to the generation who regretted that they were not born in
time for the big struggles of the World War I and revolution at that time, they believed that their fathers lost
opportunity for Ukraine to become independent and that
a new ideology was needed, and that ideology was radical nationalism and new tactics were needed. So Bandera becomes the leader of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists
in Ukraine at the young age and organizes a number of assassinations of the Polish officials or members of the Ukrainian community who this young people in their 17, 18, 19 considered to be collaborators. He is arrested, put on trial. And that's where the
myth of Bandera starts to emerge because he uses the trial to make statement about the Ukrainian nationalism, radical
nationalism and its goals, and suddenly becomes a hero among the youth, Ukrainian youth at that time, he's sentenced for execution, for death. So when he delivers his
speech, he knows that he probably would die soon. And then it was the sentence
was commuted to life in prison. Then World War II happens, the Polish state collapses
under the pressure coming, of course from Nazi Germany. And the Soviet Union, Bandera walks away and presides over the act of
the split over the organization of Ukrainian nationalists into two groups. The most radical one you
called Revolutionary, they call themselves
Revolutionary, is led by Bandera. They worked together with the
Nazi Germany at that time, with the hope that Nazi
Germany would deliver them independent Ukraine. First days of the German attack, Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. The units formed on the
basis of organization, Ukrainian National march
into the city of Lviv, and declare Ukrainian independence. That was not sanctioned
by the German authorities, that was not in German plans. So they arrest Bandera, members
of his family, his brothers, leaders of the organization. So his two brothers go
to Auschwitz, die there. He was sent to Sachsenhausen for most duration of the war until 1944, refusing to revoke declaration
of Ukrainian independence, which again, contributes further to his mythology after the war. He never comes back to Ukraine. He lives in exile in Munich. So between 1930 and his death in 1959, he spent in Ukraine maybe up to two years, maybe a little bit more, but most of the time was
either in the Polish prison or in the German concentration
camp or in exile. But the myth of Bandera lived, and all the members of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists and then the Ukrainian insurgent army that fought against the Soviets
all the way into the early 1950s, they were called Banderites. They were called Banderites
by the Soviet authorities. They were known also in that
way to the local population. So there was a far away
leader that barely was there on the spot, but whose name was attached to this movement for really liberation of Ukraine at that time. Again, the battle that failed. - The fact that he collaborated
with the Nazis sticks. For one perspective he's considered by many to be
a hero of Ukraine, fighting for the independence of Ukraine. From another perspective,
coupled with the fact that there's this radical,
revolutionary extremist flavor to the way he sees the world. That label just stays, that
he's a fascist, he's a Nazi. To what degree is this true? To what degree is it not? - Nazi, this label is
certainly promoted by, first, by the Soviet propaganda and then by Russian propaganda. It works very nicely. If you focus on the
years of collaboration, those were the same
years when Joseph Stalin collaborated with Hitler. Right? So we have the same reason to call Stalin Nazi
collaborator as we have the reason to call
Bandera Nazi collaborator. We look at the situation in the Pacific, in Indonesia and other places, the leaders who worked together with
Japanese, with the idea of promoting independence
of their countries after the Japanese collapse,
become leaders of the empire. So the difference with Bandera is that he never becomes the leader of empire and immunity that comes with that position certainly
doesn't apply to him. But there are other parts of his life, which certainly put this
whole thing in question. The fate of his family, his own time in the
German concentration camp, certainly don't fit the propaganda one-sided image of Bandera. In terms of him being
a hero, that's a very, very interesting question because he is perceived in Ukraine today, not by all, and probably
not by the majority, but by many people in Ukraine as a symbol of fighting against the Soviet Union and by extension against
Russia and Russian occupation. So his popularity grew after February 24th, 2022, as a symbol of that resistance. Again, we are talking here
about myth and mythology, because Bandera was not
leading the fight against the Soviet occupation in Ukraine, because at that
time he was just simply not in Ukraine, he was in Germany. And you can imagine that
geography mattered at that time much more than it matters today. - There's a million questions to ask here. I think it's an important topic because it is at the center
of the claimed reason that the war continues in Ukraine. And so I would like to explore that from different angles. But just to clarify, was there
a moment where Bandera chose Nazi Germany over the Red Army
when the war already began? So in the list of allegiances, is Ukraine's independence more important than fighting Nazi Germany, essentially? - The Ukrainian
independence was their goal, and they were there to work with anybody who would support and in one way or at least allow the
Ukrainian independence. So there is no question that they're just classic nationalists. So the goal is, nationalism is the principle
according to which, or at least one definitions is according to which the cultural boundaries coincide with political boundaries. So their goal was to
create political boundaries that would coincide with the
geographic boundaries in the conditions of the World War II. And certainly making deals with whoever would either support, as I said, or tolerate that project of theirs. - So I would love to find
the line between nationalism, even extreme nationalism
and fascism and Nazim. So for Bandera the myth
and Bandera the person, to what degree, let's look at
some of the ideology of Nazis. To which degree did he hate Jews? Was he anti-Semitic? - We know that basically in
his circle, there were people who were anti-Semites
in a sense that, okay, we have the texts, right? We know that. We don't have that information about or that sort of text or that sort of evidence with
regard to Bandera himself. In terms of fascism, there is very clear and there is research done that in particular Italian fascism had influence on the thinking of people in that organization,
including people at the top. But it is also very
important to keep in mind that they called themselves nationalists and revolutionaries. And despite the fact that in 1939 and 1940 and 1941, it was very beneficial for them to declare themselves
to be Ukrainian fascists and establish this bond with, not just with Italy, but with Nazi Germany. They refuse to do that, and then they refuse to
recall their independence. So influences, yes, but clearly it's a different
type of a political project. - So lemme fast forward into the future and see to which degree
the myth permeates. Does Ukraine have a neo-Nazi problem? - My understanding is
there are Nazis in Ukraine and there are supporters of
white supremacy theories, but also my understanding is that they're extremely marginal and they're more marginal
than the same sort of groups are in central Europe, maybe in the US as well. And for me, the question is not whether the Ukraine has it, but why even in the conditions of the war, the radical nationalism and extremism and white supremacist
is such a marginal force when in the countries that are
not at the war, this is this, you look at France, you look at, again, it's not exactly national, but really right, radical right is becoming so important. Why Ukraine and the conditions of the war is the country that manages relations between
different ethnic groups and languages in the way that
strengthens political nation. So for me, as a scholar, and a researcher, what I
see is that in Ukraine, the influence of the far right in different variations
is much lower than it is among some of Ukraine's neighbors and in Europe in general. And the question is why, I
don't know, I have guesses. I don't know answer. But that's the question that I think is interesting to answer. How Ukraine ended up to be the only country in
the world outside of Israel who has a Jewish president, who is, my at least understanding, is the most popular president
in history in terms of how long his popularity
goes after the election. So this are the really,
from my point of view, interesting, interesting questions and again, we can certainly debate that. - So just for context, the most popular far right party won 2.15% of the vote in 2019,
this is before the war. So that's where things stood. It's unclear where they stand now. It'd be an interesting
question whether it escalated and how much, what you're
saying is that war in general can serve as a catalyst for
expansion of extremist groups of extremist nationalistic groups, especially like the far right. And it's interesting to see
to what degree they have or have not risen to power
sort of in the shadows. - So no nationalist or nationalistic party
actually crossed the barrier to get into the parliament. So Ukraine is the country
where there is no right or far right in the parliament. We can't say that about Germany, we can't say that about France. So that's just one more way to stress this unique place
of Ukraine in that sense. And the year 2019 is the
year already of the war. The war started in 2014 with
the annexation of the Crimea. The frontline was near Donbas. All these groups are fighting there. So Ukraine, maybe not to
a degree that it is now, was already on the war footing. And yet, the right party
couldn't get more than 2%. So that's the question
that I have in mind. And yes, the war historically of course puts forward and makes from the more nationalist views and forces turn them from marginal forces into more central ones. We talked about Bandera and we talked about organization
of Ukrainian nationalists. They were the most marginal
group in the political spectrum in Ukraine in the 1930s
that one can only imagine. But World War II comes and they become the most central group because they also were from
the start, go, they knew they had the organization. Violence was basically one of their means. They knew how to fight. So historically, war did
produce those results. So we're looking at Ukraine, we're trying to see what is happening there. - So Vladimir Putin in his
interview with Tucker Carlson, but many times before said that the current
goal for the war in Ukraine is denazification, that the purpose of the war is denazification. Can you explain this
concept of denazification as Putin sees it? - Denazification is the trope that is accepted quite well by the former Soviet population
and Russian population. In particular, the most
powerful mythology, Soviet mythology that then
was basically passed as part of heritage to the Russian Federation was World War II, was
fighting against fascism. So once you use terms fascism and Nazi and denazification, suddenly people not just start listening, they just stop analyzing. An as a propaganda tool this is of course very, very powerful tool, in terms of to what degree
this is the real goal or not, we discussed the
importance of the far right in Europe and in Ukraine. So if that's the real goal of the war, probably the war would have
to start not against Ukraine, but probably against France or some other country if
you take this at face value. - Well, there's something
really interesting here, as you mentioned that's spoken
to a lot of people in Russia, and you said analysis stops, in the West, people look
at the word denazification and look at the things
we've just discussed and kind of almost think, this is absurd. When you talk to people in Russia, maybe it's deep in there
somewhere, the history of World War II still
reverberates through the, maybe the fears, maybe the pride, whatever the deep
emotional history is there. It seems that the goal
of denazification appears to be reasonable for people in Russia. They don't seem to see the
absurdity or the complexity or the even the need for
analysis, I guess in this kind of statement, word of denazification . - I'll say this is broader. The war that started under
the banner that Russians and Ukrainians were
one and the same people and produces that sort of casualty, really goes against also some, any sort of logical thinking. But the Russia is a place where the free press doesn't exist already for a long period of time. Russia is the place where there is an echo chamber to a degree. And as war started first in 2014, and then all out war in 2022, I came across a lot of
people on the personal level, but also in the media reporting that they really can't
find common language with their close relatives
in Russia, people who visited Ukraine, who know
that it is not taken over by nationalists and is
not taken over by Nazis. But the media around them,
the neighbors around them, the people that they
work basically say one and the same thing. And we as humans in general,
whatever our background, we are very, very, our mind is really, it's relatively easy to manipulate it and to a degree that even
even family connections and even family ties don't sometimes help to maintain that ability to think and to analyze on your own,
to look at at the facts. - So Putin has alluded to the Yaroslav Hunka incident
in the Canadian parliament September, 2023. This man is a veteran of World War II on the Ukrainian side, and he got two standing ovations
in the Canadian parliament, but they later found out
that he was part of the SS. So can you explain on this,
what are your thoughts on this? This had a very big effect
on the narrative, I guess propagated throughout the region. - Yes. What happened during World War II was that once the Germans
started to run out of manpower, they created sort of foreign legion groups. But because those people were not Aryans, they were created for fighting on the battleground because they were not Aryans,
they couldn't be trusted. So they were put under the
command of Heinrich Himmler under command of SS and became known as SS Waffen units. And one of such units
was created in Ukraine with great difficulties because Nazis didn't consider
Slavs to be generally worthy of even even that sort of foreign legion formations. But they made an exception because those people
were coming from Galatia, which was part of Austria Hungary, which means part of Austria, which means somehow were open
to the benevolent influence of the Germanic race and called the Division
Galatian, or Galatia, part of Ukrainian youth
joined the Galatian division. The one of the explanations was that they were looking at
the experience of World War I and seeing that the units, the Ukrainian units in the
Austrian army then played a very important role in the
fight for independence. So that is one of the explanations. You can't just use one explanation to describe motivations of everyone and every single person
who was joined in there. So they were sent to the front, they were defeated within a few short days by the Red Army. And then were retreating through Slovakia where they were used to fight with the partisan movement there and eventually surrendered to the British. So that's the story. You can personally maybe understand what the good motivations were of this person or that person. But that is one of the
best, one of the very tragic and unfortunate pages in Ukrainian history. You can't justify that as a phenomenon. So from that point of
view, the celebration of that experience as opposed
to looking at that, okay, that happened. And we wish that tho those young men who were idealistic or joined the division for
idealistic purposes had better understanding of
things or made other choices. But you can't certainly celebrate it. And once that happened,
that of course became a big propaganda item in the current war, we're talking about about 10 to 20,000 people in the division, and we're talking about two to 3 million Ukrainians
fighting in the Red Army. And again, it's not like Red Army's is completely blameless
in the way how it behaved in Prussia in Germany
and so on and so forth. But it's basically, again, we are going back to the story of Bandera. So there is a period of collaboration and that's what propaganda
tries to define him by. Or there is a division
Galatian by 20,000 people and somehow it makes irrelevant,
the experience of two to 3 million people. - I mean, just to clarify, I think there's just a blunder
on the Canadian parliament side, the Canadian side of
not doing research of, maybe, correct me if I'm wrong, but from my understanding,
they were just doing stupid shallow political stuff. Let's applaud, you know,
when Zelenskyy shows up, let's have a Ukrainian veteran,
let's applaud a veteran of World War II, and then all
of a sudden you realize, well, there's actually complexities
towards, we can talk about, for example, a lot of
dark aspects on all sides of World War II, the mass rape
at the end of World War II by the Red Army. When they say martial
German, there's a lot of really dark complexity
in it on all sides. So, you know, that could be an opportunity to explore the dark complexity that some of the Ukrainians were in the SS, or Bandera, the complexities there. But I think they were
doing not a complex thing. They were doing a very shallow applaud, and we should applaud veterans, of course. But in that case, they
were doing it for show, for Zelenskyy and so on. So we should clarify that
the applause wasn't knowing, it wasn't for the SS, (laughs)
it was for a Ukrainian, it was for World War II
veterans, but the propaganda, or at least an interpretation
from the Russian side, from whatever side is that they were applauding
the full person standing before them, which wasn't
just a Ukrainian veteran, but Ukrainian veteran
that fought for the SS. - I don't have any particular insights, but I would be very much
surprised if even one person in the parliament, I mean the members of the parliament actually
knew the whole story. I would be very surprised. - Yeah, the whole story of this person, and frankly the whole
story of Ukraine and Russia and World War II period. - Yes, yes. - Nevertheless, it had a lot of power and really reverberated in
support of the narrative that there is a neo-Nazi,
a Nazi problem in Ukraine. - This is the narrative that is out there, and especially powerful in Russia, it's especially powerful in
Russia, given that there are really the atmosphere that has created really is not conducive to any independent analysis. - Well, I wonder what is the
most effective way to respond to that particular claim? Because there could be a
discussion about nationalism and extreme nationalism and
the fight for independence and whether it isn't like
Putin wrote, one people, but the question of are
there Nazis in Ukraine seems to be a question that could be analyzed rigorously with data. - That is being done
on the academic level. But in terms of the public response and public discourse, the only response that I see is not to focus on the questions raised
and put by the propaganda, because you already become victim of that propaganda by definition. But talk about that much broadly and talk about different aspects, or if it is World War II,
about different aspects of World War II, if it's about issue of the far right in Ukraine,
let's talk about US, let's talk about Russia,
let's talk about France. Let's compare. That's the only way how you deal with propaganda, because
propaganda is not necessarily something that is an outright lie. It can be just one factor that's taken outta the context and is blown out of proportion. And that is good enough. - And the way to defend against that is to bring in the context. Let us move gracefully throughout, back and forth through history. Back to Bandera, you wrote
a book on the KGB spy Bogdan Stashinsky. Can you tell his story? - This is a story of the
history of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists
and Bandera as well already after the end of the second World War, because what you got after the second World War,
so imagine May of 1945, the red banner is all over Riksdag. The Red Army is in
control of half of Europe, but the units of the Red Army
are still fighting the war, and not just behind the Soviet lines, but within the borders
of the Soviet Union. And this war continues all
the way into the early 1950s up to almost up to Stalin's death. The war is conducted by the organization of Ukrainian nationalists, which have a Ukrainian insurgent army. And the government tries
to crush that resistance. So what it does is basically
recruits local people to spy on the partisans
on the underground. And Bogdan Stashinsky
is one of those people. His family is supporting the resistance. They provide food. His sister is engaged
with one of the local commanders of this underground unit. And they know everything
about Stashinsky's family and they know everything about him because he is also collecting
funds for the underground. So they have a conversation
with him saying that, okay, that's what we got. And you and your family
can go to to prison or you help us a little bit. We're interested in the fiance of your sister, and we wanna get him. And Stashinsky says yes. And once they round up the fiance, he basically betrayed a member or almost member of his family. He is done. He can't go back to his village. He can't go back to his study. He was studying in Lviv at that time. So he becomes, as I write in my book, the secret police becomes his family. And he is sent to Kyiv. He is trained for two
years, sent to East Germany, into Berlin and becomes an assassin. So they sent him across the border to Western Germany, to Munich, which was the headquarter of different organizations, anti-Soviet
organizations, Ukrainian and Russian and Georgian
and so on and so forth. And he kills two leaders of the organization of Ukrainian
nationalists, one editor of the newspaper, and
eventually he kills Bandera. He does that with the new weapon, a spray pistol that eventually
makes it into the Bond novel, The Man With The Golden Gun. And that whole episode
is a little bit reshaped, but it's not in the film,
but it's in the novel itself. And then later has a change
of mind under the influence of his German fiance and then wife. They decide to escape to the west. And while they're doing that,
they discover that their apartment was bugged, and
probably the KGB knows all of that. so a long story short, his son dies in Berlin, the KGB doesn't
allow him to go there, but his wife has a nervous breakdown. So they allow him to go
there to just calm her so that there would be no scandal. And two of them, one day before their son's burial, because after that they
would be sent to Moscow. They jumped the ship and go to West Berlin, two hours before the Berlin Wall was being built. So if they would stay for the funeral, probably the KGB would not let them go. But also if they would stay, the border would be there. And he goes to the American intelligence and says, okay, that's who I am, and that's what I did. And they look at him and
they say, we don't trust you. We dunno who you are, you
have documents in five names. You say you killed Bandera. Well, we have a different information. He was poisoned and probably by someone in his close circle. A spray pistol? Did you read too much Ian Fleming, where does this come from? He insists, they said, okay, you insist, if you
committed all those crimes, we're giving you to the German police. And German police will
be investigating you. And then the trial comes. And if he takes back his testimony, the whole case against him
collapses, he can go free. But he knows that if he
goes free, he is a target of his colleagues from
the same department. So his task at the trial is
to prove that he's guilty, that he did that. And then he disappears and
nobody knows where he goes. And there are all sorts of cover stories. And I was lucky to interview
a commander, former chief of the South African
police, confirmed to me that Stashinsky was in South Africa. - He fled. - The West German intelligence thought that it was too dangerous
for him to stay in Germany. They sent him under a different name to South Africa. So that's the story of Stashinsky himself. But going back to Bandera,
of course, the fact that he confessed and it became known that KGB assassinated
Bandera, that added to the image and to general
mythology about Bandera. - What a fascinating story of a village boy becoming
an assassin who killed one of the most influential
revolutionaries of the region in the 20th century. So just zooming out broadly then in KGB, how powerful was the KGB? What role did it play in this whole story of the Soviet Union? - It depends on the period. At the time that we just
described, late fifties and early sixties, they
were not powerful at all. And the reasons for that was that people like (speaks foreign language) were really concerned about the secret police becoming too powerful. It became too powerful in
their mind under Stalin. And it was concern about Beria's power as a secret
police chief that led to the coup against Beria and
Kryuchkov come into power and Beria was arrested and executed. And what Kryuchkov was trying to do after that was trying to put since '54, the name was already KGB, KGB under his control. So he was appointing the
former council leaders as the heads of the KGB. So the people who really, really owned everything to
him, that sort of position and the heads of the KGB were
not members of (indistinct), it changed in the seventies
with Andropov where KGB started to play again, very important role in the Soviet history and let's say decisions on Afghanistan and the Soviet troops marching
into Afghanistan were made apart from Beria, by the trio of the people who are not, would be called today,
(speaks foreign language) or not all of them were
(speaks foreign language) but one of course was
Andropov, the head of the KGB. Another was the Minister of Defense. And then there was secretary in charge of the military Industrial Complexity, Minister of Foreign Affairs. So, the head of the KGB became really not just the member of
(speaks foreign language) but the member of that inner circle. And then the fact that Andropov succeeds Beria is also a
manifestation of the power that KGB acquired really after Kryuchkov in the 1970s and then going into the 1980s. - Who was more powerful, the KGB or the CIA during the Soviet Union? - The CIA, it's the organization that is charged with the information gathering and all sorts of operations
including assassinations in the fifties and sixties abroad. The KGB was the organization that really had both the surveillance over the population
within the Soviet Union and also the operations abroad. And its members, its leaders were members
of the inner circle for making decisions. Again, from what I
understand about the way how politics and decision work and decisions are made
in the United States, the chief of the CIA is not one of the decision making group that providing information. Yes. So I would say it's not day and night, but their power, political influence, political significance, very different. - Is it understood how big the KGB was, how widespread it was, given its secretive and distributed nature? - Certain things we know, others we don't because the Stasi archives are open and most of the KGB, especially in Moscow, they're not. But we know that the KGB
combined not only the internal sort of a secret
police functions at home and counterintelligence branch and intelligence branch abroad, but also the border troops, for example. Right? So really institutionally it was a huge, huge mammoth. And another thing that
we know, we can sort of extrapolate from what we know from the Stasi archives, that
the surveillance at home, the surveillance was really massive. The guess is, the soviets
were not as effective and as meticulous and as scrupulous and as methodical as
probably as Germans were. But that gives you a basic idea of how penetrated the entire society was. - What do you think is
important to understand about the KGB? If we want to also
understand Vladimir Putin, since he was a KGB foreign
intelligence officer for 16 years. - From my research,
including on the Stashinsky, what I understand is that in KGB, and it was a
powerful organization, again, less powerful in fifties and sixties, but still very powerful organization. There was on the one
hand the understanding of the situation in the country and abroad that probably other organizations didn't have. They had also first pick
in terms of selection, the work in the KGB was well paid and considered to be very prestigious. So that was part to the degree of the Soviet elite in terms of whom they recruited. And they had a resentment
over the party leadership. They didn't allow them to
do James Bond kind of things that they would wanna do because
there were political risks after this scandal with Stashinsky, at least on many levels, the KGB stopped the practice of the assassinations, political assassinations abroad because it was considered politically to be extremely, extremely dangerous. The person who was in charge
of the KGB at the time of Bandera assassination, Shelepin, was one of the candidates
to replace Kryuchkov and Brezhnev used against
him that scandal abroad eventually to remove him from
(speaks foreign language) so the KGB was really looking
at the party leadership strategically as ineffective, corrupt and who was on their way. And from what I understand, that's exactly the attitudes that people like Putin and people
of his circle brought to power in Kremlin. So the methods that KGB
use they can use now. And there is no party or no other other
institution actually stopping them from doing that. And the thing about, my understanding the operations abroad about
foreign policy in general in terms of the KGB mindset
of planning operations and executing particular
operations and so on and so forth. So I think a lot of culture that came into existence in the
Soviet KGB now became part of the culture of the
Russian establishment. - You wrote the book,
the Russo-Ukrainian War, The Return of History, that gives the full context leading up to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February, 2022. So can you take me through
the key moments in history that led up to this war? So we'll mention the
collapse of the Soviet Union. We could probably go much farther back, but the collapse of the
Soviet Union mentioned 2014. Maybe you can highlight key moments that led up to 2022. - The key moments would be first the (speaks foreign language) known as Oragne Revolution in Ukraine, and then in 2014, known as
the Revolution of dignity. Both were the revolts
against something that by significant part of Ukrainian
population was considered to be completely, completely unacceptable
actions on the part of the government and people
in the government at that time. So the Orange Revolution of 204 was a protest against falsified
presidential elections and rejection of a
candidate that was supported by Russia, publicly supported by Russia. I remember being in Moscow at that time and couldn't believe my eyes
when in the center of Russia, I saw a billboard with Yanukovych. The trick was that there
were a lot of Ukrainians in Russia and in Moscow in particular, and they had the right to vote. So, and it led to the election of Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who put on the agenda the issue of Ukraine's membership in NATO. So it was very clear
pro-Western orientation. And the second case was
the Revolution of Dignity 2013 with some of the same characters including Yanukovych who at that time was already
president of Ukraine. And there, the question
was of the government promising the people for one year at least to sign association
agreement with European Union and then turning over almost overnight and saying that they were
not going to do that. And that's how things started. But then when they became really massive and why something that
was called revolution, Euro revolution became
Revolution of Dignity was when the government police beat up students in downtown Kyiv, who judging by the reports
were basically already, almost ready to disperse,
almost ready to go home. And that's when roughly half of Kyiv showed up on the streets. That sort of, the police
behavior, that sort of, was absolutely unacceptable in Ukraine. Still in elections and falsification of
elections was unacceptable. That's where, around that time and around 204, the president
of Ukraine at that time, Leonid Kuchma, writes a book called Ukraine is Not Russia. And apparently the term comes from his discussion with Putin. When Putin was suggesting
to him quite strongly to use force against people
on the square in Kyiv. And Kuchma allegedly said, "You don't understand. Ukraine is not Russia, you can't do things like that. You get pushback." And that's this two events 204 and then 2013 became really
crucial point in terms of the Ukraine direction, the survival
of Ukrainian democracy, which is one of very few
countries in the post-Soviet space where democracy survived
the original flirt between the government leaders and democracy of the 1990s. It was the whole Soviet story in Russia, everywhere else there was
high democratic expectations, but they came pretty much to an end by the end of the decade. Ukraine preserved the democracy and the orientation of Ukraine toward integration in
some form, into Western and European structures, that Ukrainian democracy plus Western
orientation was something. And in Russia, we see the strengthening of the autocratic regime under Putin, that if you look deeper,
these are the processes that put two countries
on the collision course. - So there's a division, a push and pull inside Ukraine on
identity of whether they're part of Russia or part of Europe. And you highlighted two moments
in Ukrainian history that there's a big flare up where the statement was first Ukraine is not Russia, and essentially Ukraine is part of Europe, but there's other moments. What were the defining moments that began an actual war? - The war started in February of 2014, with the Russian takeover of Crimea by military force, right? The so-called Green Man. And the big question is why, and it's very important to
go back to the year 2013 and the start of the protests and the story of the
Ukraine signing association agreement with European Union. So from what we understand today, the Ukrainian government
under President Yanukovych, did this suicidal sharp turn after one year of promising association agreement saying that, okay, we changed our mind under
pressure from Moscow. And Moscow applied that pressure for one reason, at least in my opinion, the Ukraine signing an
association agreement with European Union would mean that Ukraine would not be able
to sign association agreement with any Eurasian union
in any shape or form. That was, at that time
in the process of making, and for Vladimir Putin, that
was the beginning of his, or part of his third term, one of his agenda items for the third
term was really a consolidation of the post-Soviet space
and Eurasian space, and not membership in NATO, not membership in European Union, but association agreement
with European Union meant that that post-Soviet space would have to exist under Moscow's control, but without Ukraine, the second largest post-Soviet Republic, the republic on whose vote depended the continuing existence of the Soviet Union and whose vote ended in many ways the existence
of the Soviet Union. So that is broadly background, but also there are of
course personalities, there are also their beliefs, the readings of history. And all of that became part of the story. But if you look at that geopolitically, the association agreement is putting Ukraine outside of the
Russian sphere of influence. And the response was an attempt to topple the government in
Kyiv that clearly was going to sign that agreement to take over Crimea and to help to deal with a lot of issues within Russia itself and boost the popularity of the president. And it certainly worked
in that way as well. And once Ukraine still, after Crimea continued on its path, then the next step started the so-called hybrid warfare in Donbas. But again, unlike Crimea
from what I understand, Russia was not really looking
forward to taking possession of Donbas, Donbas was viewed as the way to influence Ukraine, to stop if from drift towards the west. - Maybe you can tell me
about the region of Donbas. - I mentioned that nationalism and principle of nationalism
is the principle of making the political borders to coincide with ethnic and cultural borders. And that's how the maps of many East European countries
had been drawn in the 19th and 20th century. On that principle, Donbas, where the majority
constituted by the beginning of the 20th century were
Ukrainians was considered to be Ukrainian and was claimed in the middle of this revolution
and revolutionary wars and civil wars by Ukrainian government. But Donbas became a site, one of the key sites in the Russian empire of early industrialization, and its mining industry
with mythological industry. So what that meant was that
people from other parts of, not Ukraine, but other parts of the Russian empire congregated there, that's where jobs were. That's how Kryuchkov and his family came to Donbas, the family of Brezhnev overshoot a little bit. They got to the industrial
enterprises in the city of Kaminsk, the city that was called.
(speaks foreign language) So those were Russian
peasants moving into the area looking for the job. And the population became quite mixed. Ukrainians still constituted
the majority of the population, but not necessarily in the
towns and in the cities. And culturally, the
place was becoming more and more Russian as the
result of that moment. So apart from the Crimea, Donbas was the part of Ukraine where the ethnic Russians were the biggest group. They were not the majority, but they were very, very
big and significant group. For example, in the city
of Mariupol, that was all but destroyed in the course
of the last two years, the ethnic Russians constituted over 40% of the population, right? So that's not exactly part of Donbas, but that gives you general idea. Now the story of Donbas and what happened now is multidimensional. And this ethnic composition
is just one part of the story. Another very important part
of the story is economy. And Donbas is a classical rust belt. And we know what happens with
the cities that were part of the first or second wave of industrialization in the
United States and globally, know about social problems
that exist in those places. So Donbas is probably the most dramatic and tragic case of
implosion of the rust belt with the mines not anymore
producing the sort of, and at the acceptable price,
the coal that they used to produce, these people losing jobs with the politicians looking
for subsidies as opposed to trying very unpopular measures of dealing something and bring new money and new investment into the region. So all of that become part of the story that made it easy for Russia, for the Russian Federation
to destabilize the situation. We have interviews with Mr. Girkin who is saying that he was the first who pulled the trigger and fired the shot in that war. He became the Minister of Defense in the people's republic. You look at the prime minister,
he is another person with Moscow residency permit. So you see key figures in those positions at the start and the beginning, not
being Russians from Ukraine, but being Russians from Russia and Russians from Moscow closely connected to the government structure and intelligence structure and so on. So that is the start and the beginning. But the way how it exploded the way it did was also a combination of the
economic and ethnocultural and linguistic factors. - So for Putin, the war on Donbas and even in 2022 is a
defensive war against what the Ukrainian government
is doing against ethnically Russian people of Donbas. Is that fair to say how he describes it? - What we see, this is
certainly the argument, right? This is certainly the
argument and a pretext because what we see there is that there would be no, and there was no independent
mobilization in Crimea either, in Crimea, in Donbas,
without Russian presence, without Russian occupation
de facto of the Crimea, there would've been no, and there was no before, at least in the previous five to six years, any mass
mobilizations of Russians, there was none of such
mobilizations in Donbas before Gerkin and other
people with military, with parts of military
units showed up there. So it is an excuse, you've been to Ukraine, you know that
Russian language is not persecuted in Ukraine. And if you've not been to
Donbas, it would be difficult or to the Crimea it would be difficult to find one single Ukrainian school. Not that they didn't exist at all, but it would take quite an
effort for you to find it or sometimes even to hear
Ukrainian language outside either of the institutions or
the farmer's market. So that's the reality. That's the reality that
is clear, that is visible. So imagine under those conditions and context that someone is persecuting ethnic Russians or Russian speakers, to believe in something like that, one important precondition is never to step your foot in Ukraine. - I should mention maybe this
is a good moment to mention, when I traveled to Ukraine, this is after the start of the war, You mentioned farmer's
market, which is funny. Basically every single person I talked to, including the leadership,
we spoke in Russian. For many of them, Russian is the more comfortable language even. And the people who spoke
Ukrainian are more on the western side of Ukraine. And you know, young people that
are kind of wanting to show that in an activist way
that they want to fight for the independence of their country. So I take your point, I wonder
if you wanna comment about language and maybe about the
future of language in Ukraine, is the future of language
going to stabilize on Ukrainian or is it going to return to its traditional base
of Russian language? - Very roughly before the
start of the war in 2014, we can talk about parity
between Russian and Ukrainian and also with, as you said, clearly Ukraine being a
dominant language in the west and Russian being a dominant
language on the streets, certainly in the east of the country. And then in between of that to pause a number of
these transitional areas and Ukraine in my experience, and I visited a lot of
countries, not all of them, and probably, maybe
I'll be still surprised, but in my experience, this is the only truly bilingual country that I ever visited. I lived in Canada for
a long period of time. There is Quebec in the West. And in Ukraine, you can
talk in either Russian or Ukrainian in any part of the country, and you would be understood and you would be responded
in a different language with the expectation that
you would understand. And if you don't understand, that means you don't come from Ukraine. That's the reality. The war and loss of the Crimea and partial loss of Donbas,
of it's major industrial areas really shifted the balance toward mostly Ukrainian speaking regions. And also what you see, and you clearly pointed to that, starting with 2014, even a little bit earlier, the younger generation chooses Ukrainian as a marker of its identity. And that started in 2014. But we have a dramatic shift after 2022. And on the anecdotal level, I can tell you that I speak to people who be in Geneve at the time, this is east of Crimea at the time of
the Russian aggression and bombardment and so on and so forth, who had passive
knowledge of Ukrainian, but spoke all their life Russian. And they would speak Ukrainian to me. And when I say, okay, why you doing that? We know each other for decades and you used Russian? And he said, "Oh, I don't
wanna have anything in common with people who did that to us." So there is a big, big push of course with this current war. Now the question is whether
this change is something that will stay or not, what is the future? Linguistic practices are
very, very conservative ones. And we at the Harvard Ukrainian
Research Institute have a project called (speaks foreign language) digital atlas of Ukraine. And we were documenting and mapping different data in time. And what we noticed a spike
in the people self reporting of use of Ukrainian in 2014 and 2015, at the time of
the start of the war, when the threat was the most clear one, this is self-reporting. That doesn't mean that
people exactly do what, but they believe that that's
what they're supposed to do and then return back to where it was by the year 2016 and 2017. And so this dynamic can repeat itself, but given the how long
the war is going on, how big the impact is,
how big the stress is, and that the wave of the future is probably associated with younger people who are switching to Ukrainian. So my bet would be on Ukrainian language rising in prominence. - So as we get closer to February of 2022, there's a few other key moments. Maybe let's talk about in July, 2021, Putin publishing an essay
titled On The Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. Can you describe the ideas
expressed in this essay? - The idea is very conveniently presented already in the first paragraph, in the first sentences
really of the article where Putin says that "For a long time I was saying the Russians and Ukrainians were one
and the same people. And here is the proof. This is the historical," he develops his historical
argumentation apparently with the help of a lot
of people around him. And he started to talk about Russians and Ukrainians being one
and the same people one year before the start of the war in 2014. So in 2013 he was together
with Patriarch Kirill on visit to Kyiv, and there was a conference
specifically organized for him in the Kyivan Monastery. And that's where he stated that the fact that he was with
Patriarch Kirill is very important factor for understanding
where the idea is coming from. This is the idea that was dominant in the
Russian empire of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. That Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are really
Russian, great Russians, little Russians and white Russians, and that they constitute one people. Yes, there are some
dialectical differences. Yes, Ukrainians sing well,
yes, they dance funny. But overall that doesn't matter. And that idea actually was really destroyed, mostly
destroyed by the revolution of 1917 because it wasn't
just social revolution. That's how it is understood in US, in good part of the world. It was also national revolution. It was an empire, it was a revolution in the Russian Empire. And to bring this pieces of empire back within the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks had to make concessions. And one of those concessions
was to recognition of the existence of Ukrainians
as a separate nation, Belarusians as a separate
nations, Russians as separate nations, endowing them with their own territorial, with borders, with institutions and so on and so forth. But there was one institution
that was not reformed, that institution was called
the Russian Orthodox Church. 'Cause one of the ways that
Bolsheviks dealt with it, they couldn't eradicate
religion completely, but they arrested the development of the religion and thinking
and theology on the level as it existed before
the revolution of 1917. So the Russian Orthodox
Church of 1917 continued to be the Russian Orthodox Church in 1991. And in 2013, continuing the same imperial
mantra of the existence of one big Russian nation,
one unified people. And when you see the formation of the ideas about nations, about foreign policy in the Russian empire after 1991, they're going back to the pre-Bolshevik times. Ukrainians do that as well. Estonians do that as well. The difference is that
when Ukrainians go back, they go back to the pre 1917, the intellectual fathers and writings of basically
liberal nationalism or sometimes they go to the
radical nationalism of Bandera, which would be not pre-1917, but pre-1945. When the Russians go to pre-Bolshevik past looking
for the ideas, looking for inspiration, looking
for the narratives, what they find there is empire, what they find there
are imperial projects. And that's certainly the story of the Putin's claim. That's the story of the argument. And to conclude the argument that he lays out there historical argument comes also almost directly
from the narratives of the late 19th and the
beginning of the 20th century. So it's not only the argument
is coming from that era, but also the argumentation is coming from that era as well. - But that those arguments are all in the flavor of empire. - It's empire on the one hand. But also there is
imperial understanding of what Russian nation is that
doesn't allow for independence of its little Russian and white Russian
branches, alleged branches. Right? So what what you see with the concept of the big Russian nation, that's late 19th beginning 20th century empire sees the writing on the wall, that nationalism is on the rise and it tries to survive by mobilizing the nationalism of the
largest group in the empire, which happens to be Russian. Stalin is a big promoter of some form of Russian nationalism, especially during the war and after war. And he started his career as a very promising Georgian
writer writing in Georgian. So he's not doing that for some personal affinity or cultural intellectual roots within Russian nation or Russian people. He is doing that for
the sake of the success of his Soviet and communist project. And he has to get the largest
ethnic group on board, which are Russians. But Stalin and Putin have different understanding
who Russians are. Stalin already accepted
Ukrainians and Belorussians, they existed. Putin goes back to pre-Stalin times. - So if we step back from the historical context of this and maybe the geopolitical
purpose of writing such an essay and forget about the essay altogether. You know, I have family in Ukraine and Russia, I know a
lot of people in Ukraine and Russia, forget the
war, forget all of this. There's a kind of, they
all kind of sound the same. Like if I go to France,
they sound different then in Ukraine and Russia. Like if you lay out this the cultural map of the world, there's just
a different beat and music and flavor to a people. I guess what I'm trying
to say is there seems to be a closeness between the
cultures of Ukraine or Russia. Like how do we describe that? Do we acknowledge that and how does that add tension with the national independence? - First of all, especially when
it comes to Eastern Ukraine or to big cities, many people in Ukraine
spoke Russian, right? Generally it's the same
language, on the top of that we started our discussion with talking about the Slavs, right? So both Ukrainian and Russian
language are Slavic languages. So there is proximity there as well. On the top of that, there
is a history of existence in the Soviet Union and before that in one empire for a long period of time. So you see a lot of, before the war, a lot of Ukrainian singers and entertainers performing
in Russia and vice versa. And biography of President
Zelenskyy certainly one of the, fits that particular model as well, that all talks
about similarities. But this similarities
also very often obscure things that became so important in the course of this war. And I already mentioned the book titled by President Kushma of Ukraine, Ukraine is not Russia. So that's the argument. Despite the fact that you
think that we are the same, we behave differently. And it turned out that
they behave differently. You have (speaks foreign
language) in Moscow and police violence and
that's the end of it. You have the (speaks
foreign language) in Ukraine and you have police violence and that's the beginning,
that's not the end. History really matters in the way why sometimes speak people
speak in the same language with different accents,
behave very differently. Russia and Russian identity
was formed around the state and has difficulty imagining
itself outside of the state. And that state happened to be imperial for most of Russian history. Ukrainian project came into existence in revolt against the state. Ukraine came into
existence out of the parts of different empires, which means they left different
cultural impact on them. And for Ukrainians to stay
together, a theocratic regime, so far didn't work. It's like the colonies
of the United States. You you have to find common language. You have to talk to each other. And that became part of
the Ukrainian political DNA and that became a huge factor in the war. And very few people in Ukraine believed what Vladimir Putin was
saying that Russians and Ukrainians were one
and the same people, but the majority believed
that there're certainly close culturally and historically nations. And from that point of
view, the bombardment of the Ukrainian cities
became such a shock to the Ukrainians because deep down they maybe looked at Syria,
they looked at Chechnya and were explaining that through the fact that there was basically
such a big cultural gap and difference between Russians and those countries and those nations. But my understanding
at least, most of them had difficulty imagining
the war of that proportion and that that sort of ferocity and that sort of war crimes, the bringing that sort of war crimes and on that level. - So it's interesting that
you say that in the DNA of Ukraine versus Russia. So maybe Russia is more conducive to authoritarian regimes and Ukraine is more
conducive to defining itself by rebelling against authoritarian regimes - By rebellion. Absolutely. And that was the story
pretty much before 1991. So what you see since 1991 and what you see today is, I would say new factor, certainly in Ukrainian modern history, 'cause Ukrainians traditionally
were very successful rebels. The largest peasant army in
the civil War in the Russian Empire was the (speaks
foreign language) army in southern Ukraine. And one revolt, Kasakh revolts and other revolts, one after another. But Ukrainians had historically
difficulty actually maintaining the sort of
freedom that they acquired, had difficulty associating
themself with the state. And what we see, especially
in the last two years, it's a quite phenomenal
development in Ukraine when Ukrainians associate
themselves with the state where Ukrainians see a state not just as a foreigner, as historically,
it was in Ukrainian history, not just someone who came to take, but the state that is
continuation of them, that helps to provide security for them. That the Ukrainian armed forces, even before the start of this war had the highest support and
popularity in Ukraine. The state today functions unbelievably effectively under
attacks and missile attacks, and again, city government
and local government. And we're witnessing when it comes to Ukraine, we're witnessing
a very important historical development where
Ukrainians found their state for the first time through
most of their history and try to make a transition
from successful rebels to successful managers and state builders. - Yeah, I talked to John
Mearsheimer recently, there's a lot of people
that believe NATO had a big contribution to the Russian
invasion of Ukraine in 2022. So what role did NATO
play in this full history from Bucharest in 2008 to today? - NATO was a big part, certainly of the Russian justification for the war. That was the theme that was up there in the months
leading to the aggression. The truth is that, and Vladimir Putin went on records saying that the western leaders
were telling him again and again that there is
no chance for Ukraine to become member of NATO anytime soon. Russia was very effective
back in the year 2008, in stopping Ukraine and Georgia on the path of joining NATO. There was a Bucharest Summit, at which the US president at that time, George W Bush was pushing
for the membership and Putin convinced leaders of France and Germany to block that membership. And after that membership for Ukraine and for Georgia, was
really removed from the realistic agenda for NATO. And that's what the leaders of the western world in
the month leading to the February, 2022 aggression
were trying to convey to Vladimir Putin. What he wanted, there was an ultimatum
that really was there to, not to start negotiations, but
really to stop negotiations. He demanded the withdrawal
of NATO to the borders of the 1997, if I'm not mistaken, so completely something that
neither leaders would accept nor the country's members
of NATO would accept. But for me, it's very clear that that was an excuse, that
that was a justification. And what happened later in the year 2022 and 2023 certainly
confirms me in that belief, Finland joined NATO and Sweden is on the way to join in NATO. So Finland joined in NATO, increased border between Russia and NATO, twofold, and probably more than that. So if NATO is the real concern, it would be probably not
completely unreasonable to expect that if not every single soldier, but at least half of the
Russian army fighting in Ukraine would be moved to protect the new border with NATO in Finland. So I have no doubt that no one in Kremlin, either in the past or
today looks favorably or is excited about NATO moving or the countries
of Eastern Europe joining NATO. But I have very difficult
time imagining that that was the primary cause of the war. And what we see also, we talked
about Tucker's interview, he was surprised, but he believed that Putin was completely honest when the first
25 minutes of interview, he was talking about relations
between Russia and Ukraine. He was talking about history and that was also the
main focus of his essay. Essay was not on NATO and Russia, his essay was on Russia and Ukraine. So that is where the real causes are. The broader context is the fall of empire and process of disintegration of empire, not the story of NATO. - What was, to clarify the reason Putin, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022? - The immediate goal in
2014 when the war started was to stop the drift of
Ukraine toward the West and outside of the Russian
sphere of influence, the invasion of 2022
perceived the same goals keeping Ukraine in the
Russian sphere of influence. Once we have the resistance, quite effective resistance
on the part of Ukraine, the Ramstein and international
Coalition in support of Ukraine, then we see
the realization of plan B where parts of Ukrainian
territory are being annexed and included in the Constitution
of the Russian Federation. So the two scenarios
don't exclude each other, but if scenario number one doesn't work, then scenario number two goes into play. - In the gates of Kyiv chapter, you write about Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the early days of the war. What are most important
moments to you about this time? The first hours and days of the invasion. - The first hours and
the first days were the most difficult psychologically, the rest of the world really
didn't expect Kyiv to last for more than few days. Didn't expect Ukraine to
last for more than few weeks. And all the data suggested
that that's what would happen. Ukraine would collapse, be taken over. Putin called his war a
special military operation, which suggests you also
expectations about the scope, expectations about the time. So semi-military, semi-police operation. So every reasonable person
in the world believed that that would would happen. And it's the heroism of quote
unquote unreasonable people like Zelenskyy, like the commander of Ukrainian armed forces like Zaluzhnyi, mayors of the cities,
(speaks foreign language) and others, I'm just naming
names that are familiar to almost all of us now. But there are thousands of those
people, unreasonable people who decided that it was unreasonable to attack their country. And that was the most
difficult times and days. And speaking about Zelenskyy, every I understand reasonable
leader in the West was trying to convince him to leave Ukraine and to set a government in
exile in Poland or in London. And it was reasonable to accept his, one of his predecessors,
Mr. Yanukovych fled Kyiv. A few months before that in Afghanistan, the president of Afghanistan fled Afghanistan. That was a reasonable thing to expect. And he turned out to be very, very unreasonable in
that sense, that comes with the guts, his guts
and guts people around him and Ukrainians in general. - Why do you think he stayed
in Kyiv, this former comedian who played a president on TV, when Kyiv is being invaded
by the second most powerful military in the world? - Because I think he believes in things and one of of those things was that if he president and he's in
the presidential office, he's there to play his role to the end. And another thing, my personal, again, I never met Zelenskyy. My personal understanding of him is that he has talent that
helped him in his career before the presidency and then helps now. He feels the audience and then channel the
attitude of the audience and amplifies it. And I think that another
reason why he didn't leave Kyiv was that he felt the audience, the audience in that particular
context were the Ukrainians. - So he had a sense that
the Ukrainians would unify because he was quite,
if you look at the polls before the war, quite unpopular and there was still
divisions and factions, and the government is divided. I mean, there's the east and the west and all this kind of stuff. You think he had a sense that this could unite people? - The east and the west was
not already such an issue after Crimea and part
of Donbas being gone. So Ukraine was much more
united than it was before. He brought to power his before that really
non-existent party of regions on his personal popularity. But the important thing is that he created a majority in the parliament, which really reflected
the unity that existed among Ukrainians that
didn't, was not there before, he won with 73% of the population of those who took part in the elections. His predecessor Petro
Oleksiyovych also carried 90% of the precincts. And the same happened with Zelenskyy. So the country unified after 2014 to a degree it was impossible to imagine before. And Zelenskyy felt that,
Zelenskyy knew that. And that's where the talent
of politician really matters. And that that's something that you can see beyond just data. And you can feel that. Apparently Yeltsin had that ability. - Why did the peace talks fail? There was a lot of peace talks. - Well, the main reason is
that the conditions that Russia was trying to impose
on Ukraine were basically unacceptable for Ukraine because one of the conditions apart from this strange
thing called denazification, was of course de facto
loss of the territory. And for the future really staying outside either of NATO or any western support,
which was very clear. You can buy a couple of
weeks, you can buy a couple of months, but in the
conditions like that, Russia will come back tomorrow and will take over everything. And once Ukrainians realized that they can win on the battlefield, once the Russians were defeated and withdrew from Kyiv, the opportunity emerged to get out of the negotiations, which
was very clear, were leading if not today, then tomorrow to the complete destruction of Ukraine. And then of course, once
the territories started to be liberated, things like butcher and massacres of the civilian
population came to the fore, which made also quite
difficult, if not impossible, to conduct negotiations from this moral and emotional point of view. - What about the claims that, you know, Boris Johnson, the West,
compromised the ability of these peace talks to be
successful, basically kind of manipulated the talks? - I asked people who
accompanied Boris Johnson to give that question. The answer was no. And I believe this answer,
and I'll tell you why, because it is very
difficult for me to imagine President Zelenskyy to take orders from anybody in the world,
either Boris Johnson or Joe Biden or anybody else. And basically doing things that Zelenskyy believes are not in his interest or in the interest of his country. I just can't imagine
that anybody in the world telling Zelenskyy what to do and Zelenskyy actually
following it against his own wishes and desires, at least if that is possible, what
is in the public sphere doesn't allow us to suggest that it is. - That said, Zelenskyy is a smart man and he knows that the
war can only continue with the west support. - That is a different supposition to know that it can continue
with the West support. But if we're talking
about withdrawing from the negotiations, that's not
about the continuation of the war, for that you
don't need Western support. - Well, what I mean is
if he started to sense that the West will support no matter what, then maybe the space of decisions you're making is different. - We can interpret that that way. But Boris Johnson represented at that point, Britain,
not the United States, and really what the war showed, and it was clear already at that time that what was needed was massive support from the West as a whole. And the promise of that support came only when the West realized
that Ukraine can win, and came only in late
April with the Ramstein. So at least a few weeks later. So I dunno how much Boris
Johnson could promise, he probably could promise to try to help and try to convince and try to work on that if Zelenskyy acted on that promise. He certainly was taking a risk. But the key issue, again, I'm
going back where I started it's principle, an acceptance
for Ukraine, the conditions that were offered and Ukraine was, the moment they saw the possibility that they could fight
back with Johnson support, without Johnson support,
they took the chance. - So what are the ways this
war can end, do you think? What are the different
possible trajectories, whether it's peace talks, what does winning look
like for either side? What is the role of US? What trajectories do you
see that are possible? - It's a question on one level, very easy to answer on the other very difficult, the level on which it is very easy. It's a broad historical perspective. If you really believe, and I believe in that,
that this is the war of the Soviet succession. That this is the war of the
disintegration of empire. We know how the story ends and they end with
disintegration of empire. They end with the rise of the new states and appearance of the new
colored spots on the map. That's the story that started
with the American revolution. So that's long term perspective. The difficult part is of course
what will happen tomorrow. The difficult part is what they'll be in two days and or even in two years. And in very broad terms, the war can end in one of three scenarios. The victory of one side,
the victory of another side, and a sort of a stalemate and compromise, especially when it comes, when it comes to the territories. This war is already approaching the end of the second year. I follow the news and look analysis. I don't remember once
single piece suggesting that the next year will bring peace or will bring peace for sure. And we are in a situation where the both sides still believe that they can achieve something or improve their position
on the battlefield. Certainly that was the expectations of Ukrainian side back in the summer and early fall of 2023. And from what I understand now, this is certainly the expectations of the Russian side today. This is the largest war in
Europe since World War II, the largest war in the
world since Korean War. And we know that the
Korean War ended in this division of Korea. But the negotiations were going
on for more than two years. While those negotiations were going on, both sides were trying to
improve their position there. And until there was a political
change, death of Stalin, rival of Eisenhower in the United States, and the realization that the chances of succeeding on the battlefield are huge, the peace talks didn't come. So at this point, all three
scenarios are possible. I don't really discount any of them. It's early to say what will happen. - So without any political
change, let's try to imagine what are the possibilities
that the war ends this year? Is it possible that it
can end with compromise, basically at the place it started? - Meaning back to the borders of 2022? - Yeah. Back to the borders of '22 with some security guarantees
that aren't really guarantees, but are hopeful guarantees. - No, it's not just virtual impossibility. It's impossible without
political change in Moscow. The reason is that back
in the fall of 2022, Vladimir Putin included five
of Ukrainian region sublists, even those that he didn't control or didn't control fully into
the Russian constitution, which basically in simple language is that the hands are tied up
not only for Putin himself, but also for his possible successors. So that's means that no
return to the borders of 2022 without change, political change in Moscow are possible. A few days after that
decision in Moscow, Zelenskyy issued a decree saying that
no negotiations with Russia. What that really meant
in plain language is that basically we're not prepared to negotiate a stable
agreement with five obstacles, not just the next, but also included into the Russian constitution. So that's where we are. So that scenario is again, everything is possible of course, but it's highly, highly unlikely. - So the Russian constitution
is a thing that's very, that makes this all very difficult. - Yes. And not only as a
negotiation tactic for Putin or whoever would negotiate
on the Russian side, but also as a legal issue. - So like the practical aspect
of it even is difficult. - Yes, you really have to
change the constitution before the peace agreement takes hold or immediately after that. And with the Minsk agreements,
that was one of things that Russia wanted from Ukraine,
change of the Constitution, and it turned out to be really impossible. So that's one of the backstories of the Minsk and collapse
of the Minsk agreements. - Is there something like Minsk agreements that are possible now to,
maybe this is a legal question, but to override the
constitution to sort of shake everything up. So see the constitutional amendment as just a negotiation
tactic to come to the table, to something like Minsk agreement. - Given how how fast
those those amendments to the constitution were
adopted, that suggests that real executive power in Russia has enormous power over the legislative branch. So it's, again, difficult to imagine, but technically this is possible again. Yeah, but possible, if there is a political change in Moscow, - I don't understand why assuming
political change in Moscow is not possible this year. So I'm trying to see if there's a way to end this war this year, right? - There is a possibility
of armistice, right? But armistice more along, like any armistice, along the lines of the current front lines, but withdrawal of the
Russian troops to the borders or 2022 at this point,
whether it's reasonable or unreasonable can be
achieved only as the result of the defeat of the Russian army. Like it happened near Kiev. Is it possible? Possible. Is it likely, especially
given what is happening with the Western support,
military support for Ukraine? Probably not. - But if Putin, the executive
branch has a lot of power, why can't the United States president, the Russian president, the
Ukrainian president, come to the table and draw up something
like the Minsk agreements where, and then rapid
constitutional changes made, and you go back to the borders in 2022, before 2022, like through agreements, through compromise, impossible for you. - Certainly not this year. I look at this year as the time when at least one side, Russian
side, will try to get as much as it can through military means. - But that's been happening last year too. Has been a counteroffensive,
there's been attempts- - That doesn't mean that New Year somehow is
supposed to bring your tactics that the last year was pretty much a lot of fight and a lot of suffering. Very little movement of the frontline. The biggest change of the last year was Ukraine victory on the Black Sea, where they pushed the Russian Navy into the
western part of the pond and restored the grain corridor and export from Odessa
apparently up to 75% of what it used to be before the war. So that's the only major change. But again the price is
enormous in terms of wealth, in terms of,
especially in terms of lives. - So thinking about what 2024 brings, Zelenskyy just fired
Ukraine's head of the Army, a man you've mentioned,
general Valeri Zaluzhnyi. What do you make of this development? - This is a very, very dangerous moment in the war. The reason for that is
that Zaluzhnyi is someone who is very popular with the army and with people in general. So if you look at that
through American prism, that would be something analogous to President Truman
firing General MacArthur, given that stakes for US at
that time, were very high, but probably not as high as
they're for Ukraine today. In both cases, what is at stake is certainly the idea that the political leadership and military leadership
have to be on the same page. And the question is whether
on the part of Zelenskyy, this is just the change of the leadership or this is also the change
of his approach to the war. And then can mean many things. One can mean him taking
more active part in planning operations. It can mean also possible
change of the tactic in the war, given that counter
offensive didn't work out. We don't know yet. I don't know whether
the president Zelenskyy at this point knows exactly
what will come next. But this is the time when the change of the leadership in the country and in the army that is at war. It's one of the most trying, most dangerous moments. - So the thing that President
Zelenskyy expressed is that this is gonna be a change of tactics, making the approach more technologically advanced,
this kind of things. But as you said, I believe he is less popular than the
chief of the Army, Zaluzhnyi, 80% to 60%, depending on the polls. Do you think it's possible that Zelenskyy days are
numbered as the president? That somebody like
Zaluzhnyi comes to power? - What we know is that in this war, Ukrainian people really united around their president and the armed forces were always, even before the start of the war, more popular than was
the presidential office. So the change, if happened in that realm was not so dramatic. And from what I can see from
social media in Ukraine, there is a lot of unhappiness,
a lot of questions. But there is also realization and very strong realization
that country has to stay united. And certainly the behavior
of Zaluzhnyi himself is there basically not suggesting any sort of a pre-Georgian type of scenario. That gives me some hope,
actually a lot of hope. And in terms of whether
Zelenskyy's days are numbered or not, I don't think they're numbered. But if Ukraine stays a democracy and I believe it'll stay,
the what comes to my mind is the story of Churchill, the story of De Gaulle, in Poland, the story of Pilsudski, so once the war is over,
really the electorate in the democratic elections,
they wanna change the political leadership,
they wanna move forward. But Pilsudski came back to power and De Gaulle came back to power, and Churchill came back to power. So, no, whatever happens in the short run or medium term run, I think that Zelenskyy days in
politics are not numbered. - So what to you is interesting, for example, if I get a
chance to interview Zelenskyy, what to you is interesting
about the person that would be good to ask
about, to explore about the state of his mind, his
thinking his view of the world as it stands today? - Next month were supposed to take place Ukrainian elections,
they're not taking place because the majority of
Ukrainians don't think this is the right thing to do,
to change the president, to have the elections to have a political struggle
in the middle of the war. So Zelenskyy refused
to call those elections despite the fact that he is and continues to be the most
popular politician in Ukraine. So it would be to his benefit. But that's clearly not what the Ukrainians want. But the question of
continuing as the president beyond five years, also one way or another would raise
questions about the legitimacy and certainly Russia
will be playing this card like there is no tomorrow. And what I would be interested
in asking Zelenskyy about, whether he sees that his second term, which comes on those conditions would suggest different
attitudes towards the opposition, maybe some form of the coalition government, like
it was the case in Britain with Churchill under different
circumstances of course. Or this is basically, in
his opinion, something that would be destructive and something that would
really be an impediment for the issue, for the question
of unity and war effort. And I would ask this question, not to basically suggest that
that's the way to go, but I would be very
much interested to hear what is his thinking about that is. - Do you think there's
a degree during war time that the power that comes with being a war president can
corrupt the person, sort of push you away from the democratic mindset towards an authoritarian one? - I think that there is a
possibility of that, right? You, in the conditions of any emergency, war in the
case of the Soviet Union, there was a Chernobyl disaster
and so on and so forth. You make decisions much faster. You create this vertical and
then it's very easy to get really used to that way,
dealing with the issues in the conditions of emergency, right? And then they continue emergency (laughs) or with no emergency, they're
continuing the emergency mode. I think again that that would be a very, very natural thing for
any human being to do, to make it easier. Should I do that easier
and in more effective way, or should I do the right way? That's a challenge. Sometimes it's difficult
to answer this question. - Lemme stay in power
for just a little longer to do it the efficient way
and then time flies away and all of a sudden you're
going for the third term. And the fourth term. - And suddenly it's easy to realize that actually you can't
rule in any other way. You just, whatever
skills you had of people around that can help,
is that already gone? - Exactly. The people that surround you are not providing the kind of
critical feedback necessary for a democratic system. One of the things that Tucker said after his interview with Putin, he was just in this hotel
just chatting on video, and he said that he felt like Putin was not very good
at explaining himself, like a coherent whole narrative of why the invasion happened. It's just this big picture. And he said that's not
because he doesn't have one, but it's been a long time
since he's had somebody around him who he has
to explain himself to. So he's out of practice,
which is very interesting. It's a very interesting point. And that's what war and being in power for a
prolonged period of time can do. So on that topic, if you had
a chance to talk to Putin, what kind of questions would you ask him? What would you like to find out about the man as he stands today? - As a historian, I
have a lot of questions and I have questions about
when the decision was made to attack Ukraine and what
went into this decision because we're thinking about that. We're trying. So as a historian, I
have this big question. I have question about the
Crimea when those decisions were made. So that sort of questions,
that interest me, but the rest either I
think that I understand what is going on with him or I don't expect the answer
that can help, for example, a good question, whether you regret or not, the start of the war in 2022, given the enormous, enormous
casualties on both sides. But you can't expect from a politician an honest answer to this question. Right? So there are questions
to which I know he can't answer honestly, and then there are other questions to which I think he already provided all answers that he could. So what what for me is of interest are basically
questions for a historian about the timing and the logic of particular decisions. - Well, I do wonder how different what he says publicly is from
what he thinks privately. So a question about when the decision to invade Ukraine happens
is a very good question to give insight to the difference between how he thinks about the
world privately versus what he says publicly. And same about other, you know,
about empire, as if you ask Putin, he will say he
has no interest in empire and he finds the notion silly, but at the same time, perhaps privately there's
a sense in which he does seek the reunification
of the Russian empire. - Not in the form of the
Russian Empire, not in the form of the Soviet Union, but certainly in some form of the Russian control. That's for me at least, it's quite clear. Otherwise there would be no busts to the Russian
emperors and Katherine and Peter and others. - You wrote in your book
titled The Frontline, Essays on Ukraine's Past and Present, about the Russian question, I guess articulated by Solzhenitsyn first in 1994. Solzhenitsyn of course is the
author of Gulag Archipelago. He's half Ukrainian. What is the Russian question? - Solzhenitsyn clearly
identifies himself as a Russian, and his opposition to the communist regime was a position of a Russian nationalist. So his argument was that
communism was bad for Russia and for him, Russian question is about the Russians, ethnic Russians, but also he was thinking about Russians in Putin's terms, or Putin thinks in Solzhenitsyn's
terms about Ukrainians and Belarusians constituting part of that. So the Russian question
is the biggest tragedy of the 20th century, the
division of the Russians, the loss of the statehood and division of the Russians between different states. This is for Solzhenitsyn,
Russian question. And his original idea and plan was presented in the essay that he published in 1990, which was called How we
Should Restructure Russia, and restructure Russia meant
getting rid of the Baltics, central Asia and Caucasus
and have Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, including those who live in northern Kazakhstan
to create one nation state. So he was a Russian nationalist, but he was thinking about
Russian nation state as the state of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. And once the Soviet Union collapsed, and his idea was not
implemented in the 1990s, he formulated plan B, taken over by Russia of Donbas, Crimea and
Southern Ukraine, the areas that now are included in
the Russian Constitution. So in historical terms and intellectual terms,
what is happening today in the war between Russia and Ukraine is the vision on one level or another
level that was formulated by the noble laureate,
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn half Russian, half Ukrainian. - If there is such a thing, what would you say is the Ukrainian question as we stand today? - The Ukrainian question is very simple. It's now, it's not anymore
acquisition of the nation state, but actually a sovereign state. But it's maintenance. So the Ukrainian question is like dozens of other questions in the 20th and 21st century, the
rise of the new state. And that's what is the Ukrainian question, whether, whether Ukraine will
continue to its existence as a nation, as an independent state because that existence is being questioned by stating that Russians
and Ukrainians so on, and the same people which de
facto saying Ukraine is Russian and also trying to to destroy the state. - Is it possible that if
the war in Ukraine continues for many more years, that the next leader that follows Zelenskyy would take Ukraine away from a sort of democratic western style nation towards a more authoritarian
one, maybe even with a far right influence,
this kind of direction because of the war, the influence of war? - Everything is possible and the longer the war continues, the more likely scenario
like that becomes, but realization of that scenario would go against the grain of largest part of Ukrainian history. Where Ukraine really emerged as a pluralistic state on
which the elements of democracy were built in the last 30 years
would go against the grain of the Ukrainian society. Where as one author
formulated in the 1990s, he wrote a book, Ukrainian
Nationalism a Minority Faith, where the nationalism was a minority faith and radical nationalism continues to be, or at least continue to
be in 2019, a minority faith during the last elections. So possible, but unlikely given the
historical realities of the last 30 plus years. - I could talk to you for
many more hours (laughs) on Chernobyl alone since
you've written a book on Chernobyl and nuclear disaster. There's just a million
possible conversations here. But let me just jump around
history a little bit. Back before World War
II, my grandmother lived through Holodomor in World
War II, Nazi occupied Ukraine, Holodomor, what do you learn, let's say about human
nature and about governments and nations from the fact
that Holodomor happened, and maybe you could say what
it is and why it happened. - Holodomor is a massive famine in Ukraine between the years 1932 and 1934. And it happened as the result of forceful collectivization
of the agriculture and a tamp on the part of Stalin also really roll Ukraine into
the Soviet Union with basically no potential
opposition from Ukraine, now national communists. So two things came together in December of 1932 when in the same decree, Stalin and Molotov signed a decree on
the requisition of the grain, which lead eventually
to the mass starvation and on the banning of
Ukrainian language publications and education out in other
Soviet republics outside of Ukraine and introducing limitations on the so-called Ukrainization policies. So on the use of Ukrainian
language in Ukraine itself. And the numbers are debated. The numbers that most of the scholars work today are 4 million. But again, there are
larger numbers as well that circulate. And this is, the famine of '32, '33 was not exclusive
Ukrainian phenomenon, but most of Ukrainians in the
Soviet Union died in Ukraine. And Ukraine was the only place where the policy on collecting
grain were coming together with the policy of the cleansing of the political leadership
sending people from Moscow to take over the leadership and
attack on Ukrainian culture. So in terms of what I
learn about human nature, it's more me learning about the ideologists of the 20th century because it's not the only
famine in the communist lands, the famine in China, which
was in terms of the numbers, much more devastating than that. It's in a different category
and for a good reason, but you have holocaust. What unites these things is
the time, this is 20 century, what unites them are the
dominance in the societies that are doing that, really ideologists that not just devalued human life, but considered that
actually the way forward is by destroying large group of
populations defined ethnically, religiously, socially or otherwise, which tells about the time, but tells also about humanity
because for centuries before that human life was
valued, there were enemies, but the idea was that human life can put and you can, at the end of
the day, they can be slaves, you can use them for productive force. Countries in the 18th century
with southern Ukraine, they will looking for
settlers, for people to bring and live on land. You move into the 20th century and there is mass destruction
of the population in the name of ideologies, which basically are by definition destroy human lives. And that's what really
so shocking and striking because that's break
with not just with issues of morale, not just
with issues of humanity, with any common sense, what is happening. And I'm absolutely convinced that we didn't learn the lesson. I'm absolutely convinced that
we didn't learn the lesson with turning our page on
fascism and communism, we somehow decided that
we're free of that, that at least in those terms,
history came to an end. That what is ahead is in
future, nothing of that sort, what happened would take place to a degree that people would get in trouble for comparing any statements or events that are happening today with either the communism of fascism. And so I feel responsibility of myself and as a historian in particular for not doing a better job
about telling people that well, we are who we are and we have as humans our dark side and we have to be very careful. - So there is a human
capacity to be captured by an idea, an ideology that claims to bring up a better
world as the Nazis did, as Soviet Union did. And on the path of doing
that devaluing human life that we will bring a better world. And if millions of people have to be tortured on the
way to that, all right, but at least we have a better world and human beings are able to, if not accept that, look the other way. - Yes. So, and in the name of a particular nation or race, like, like with the Third Reich or in in the name of the
humanity of the future, so not just devalue, human
life destroy human life. - Is there something
fundamental about communism and centralized planning that's part of the problem here? Maybe this also connects to
just story of Chernobyl, where that Chernobyl disaster is
not just a story of failure of a nuclear power plant, but it's an entire institution of the scientific and nuclear institution. But the entirety of the government. - There is, and there is a
number of factors of political and social character
that produced Chernobyl. And one of them is generally the atmosphere of secrecy in the Soviet Union. In the conditions of the Cold War, Chernobyl reactor was
a dual purpose reactor. It could boil water today and produce enriched
uranium tomorrow, right? So it was top secret. And if there were problems
with that reactor, those problems were kept secret
even at people who operated. That's what happened. That's what happened in Chernobyl. Another big, big part
of the story, which is specifically Soviet, that's the nature of the managerial culture and administrative culture
in which people had no right to make their own decisions in their place, in their position. A few years before that,
Three Mile Island happened, which was a big, big nuclear disaster. But in terms of consequences, nothing like Chernobyl. And there in the context of
the American legal culture and managerial culture, people who were operators who were in
managerial positions, that was their responsibility
to take decisions. President Carter came there, but he was not calling shots
on none of those issues. What you see with Chernobyl, and people who saw HBO
serious know that very well, the moment the high official arrives, everyone actually falls in line, is the official who calls the shot. And to move population
from the city of Pripyat, you needed the okay coming from Moscow, from the very top. So that is Soviet story and there is a global
story of cutting corners to meet either deadlines
like it was with that test that they were running at that time or to meet production quarters. This is not just socialist thing, you can replace production quarters with profit and you get the same story. So some parts of in
that story are generally reflective of our,
today's world in general. Others are very specific for Soviet Union, for Soviet experience. And then the biggest probably Soviet part of that story is
that on the one hand, the government in Moscow and Kyiv, they mobilize all
resources to deal with that, but they keep information
about what is happening and the radiation clouds secret from the rest of the population, something that completely would be impossible and was impossible in US, in UK where other accidents happened. And then guess what? A few years later the Soviet Union collapses
very much also thanks to the mobilization of people
over the issue of Chernobyl and nuclear energy, and people writing about that subject
call it eco-nationalism, ecological nationalism, which
comes at least in part from withholding information from people. And in Ukraine, mobilization
didn't start over the issues that led to independence, didn't start over the issue of language or didn't start over the
issue of national autonomy. It started under the slogans, "Tell us the truth about Chernobyl." We wanna know whether we live
in contaminated areas or not. And that was a very, very strong factor that crossed the, not just ethnic religious
linguistic lines, lines between members of the party or not members of the party of the top leadership and not,
and military and civilian, because it turned out that the party car didn't
protect you from being affected by radiation. So the all national mobilization happens, the first mass manifestations
are about Chernobyl, not about anything else. - That's fascinating. I mean, for people who might not know, Chernobyl
is located in Ukraine. So it would be, it's a fascinating view that Chernobyl might be
one of the critical sort of threshold catalysts for the
collapse of the Soviet Union. That's very interesting. Well, just as a small aside, I guess this is a good
moment to give some love to the HBO series. It made me, even though
it's British accents and so on, it made me realize that some of these stories in Eastern
Europe could be told very effectively through film, through series. It was quite a, I mean it
was so incredibly well done and it maybe I can ask you historically speaking, were you impressed? - I was, I was. And I think that the
miniseries, very truthful on a number of levels and very untruthful on some others. (Lex laughs) And they got excellent in a very well, the macro and micro levels. So the macro level is the
issue of the big truth. And the story there is very much built around the theme that I just discussed. Now it's about the cost of lies, right? And the Soviet Union line to the people. And that's what the film explores. So I call it a big truth about Chernobyl. And they got a lot of minor things really, really very well. Like the curtains on the windows, like how the houses looked
from inside and outside. I didn't see any post-Soviet film or any western film that would be so good at captioning
those everyday details. But then there is a
huge gray area (laughs) in between big truth and small truth is of the recreating the environment. And that's how you get
from one to another. And then you see the KGB officers coming and taking someone out of the meeting and arresting, which was not necessary. You see the Soviet boss
threatening someone to throw the person from the helicopter. So you get this Hollywood sort
of things despite the fact that it's HBO series and they're the best really in terms as a film in the fourth episode where they can completely
decided just, to hell with the reality (laughs)
and let's make a film. So they bring Legasov one
of the key characters to the this court meetings that they bring. The key Soviet party, Boris
Shcherbina, he wasn't there. They created drama there. So, but so they got the main
thing, the big truth right. And that's why I like this production. - Sometimes you have to show what something felt like, you have to go bigger than it actually was. I mean, if you, I don't know,
if you experience heartbreak and you want, and you see a film about it, you want there to be explosions. - You want to see this in
images, visible, right? So, but the question again, I just mentioned KGB marching in and so some party leader giving a speech, they were not giving that
speech, but the sense was there and it was in the air. And I, as people of my generation
who were there, knew that and recognized that, but for new generation,
whether they are in Ukraine and Russia, in US, in Britain,
in Zimbabwe, anywhere, yeah, you have to do this little and truth
and introduce them and, had a very interesting on air conversation with the author of the script. Amazing. And I asked him the question of, okay, the film declared really
the importance of the truth, but how do you square that with, yeah, (both laugh) with the need in the film
to really put it mildly to go beyond the measures of truth, whatever understanding of that term is? - Well, I suppose it is a
bit terrifying that some of the most dramatic
moments in history are probably quite mundane. The decisions to begin wars, invasions, they're probably something
like a Zoom meeting on a random Tuesday in today's workplace. So it's not like there's
dramatic music playing. These are just human decisions
and they command armies and they command destruction. I personally, because of that, believe
in the power of individuals to be able to stop wars, not just start wars, individual leaders. So lemme just ask about nuclear safety because there's an
interesting point you make. You wrote in the book, in Atoms and Ashes, a Global History of Nuclear Disaster. So technically nuclear
energy is extremely safe. There's a number of people
died per energy generated, it's much safer than coal and oil, for example, as far as I understand. But the case you also
make is you write quote, "Many of the political, economic, social and cultural factors that led
to the accidents of the past are still with us today, making the nuclear industry vulnerable to repeating old mistakes
in new and unexpected ways, and any new accidents are certain to create new anti-nuclear mobilization. And then you continue with, this makes the nuclear
industry not only risky to operate, but also
impossible to count on as a long-term solution to
an overwhelming problem. So can you explain that perspective? It's an interesting one, sort
of speaking to the psychology of when an accident does happen,
it has a dramatic effect. And also speaking to the fact that accidents can happen not because of the safety
of the nuclear power plant, but of the underlying structure of government that oversees it. - Yes, I wrote book on Chernobyl and then tried to
understand Chernobyl better, but place in it in the
context of other disasters as a historian and was looking
at the political factors and social factors and cultural factors, not the physics or
engineering part of the story. And the factors that are still with us are like it was the case in Chernobyl the authoritarian regimes, right? And high centralization
of the decision making and desire to cut corners and also the issues
associated with secrecy. So that is with us. If you look at where the future of the nuclear industry
is now at this point, it's the regimes and
parts in the Middle East. That's a big new frontier. The countries that are
not particularly known for the history of democratic existence, where we also have the situation that we had at Three
Mile Island that we had at Chernobyl. This is the first generation engineers, nuclear engineers, right? So people who are, where the country doesn't have a lot
of experience in generations after generations working in that particular industry
where it's all new. That is certainly additional risk. What we've got now is this current war, is something that, not that
people completely didn't expect, but didn't happen in the past. You see the war coming
to the nuclear sites, Chernobyl was taken
over by the Russian Army or National Guard rather on
the first day of the invasion. Then there was Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe where the battle was
waged on the territory of the nuclear power plant. The missiles being fired,
buildings catching fire. And the situation that brought the Fukushima
disaster was there at Zaporizhzhia more than
once, and Fukushima came because the rectors were shut down as they are at Zaporizhzhia, but they still needed
electricity to bring water and to cool them down. And in Fukushima case, it was the tsunami that cut off the supply of electricity. In the case of Zaporizhzhia,
there was the war that was happening in the
area around Zaporizhzhia that did the same effect. So we have 440 reactors in
the world today, plus, minus, none of them was designed to withstand the direct missile attack or to function in the
conditions of the warfare. If operators, they're human, then they make mistakes like they did at Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. But think also if the war
is happening around them, if they're not sure what is happening with their families, if they
don't know whether they will be next missile, whether we'll hit their room where they, the control room or not, that multiplies also. So we are in a situation where we are not done yet with the nuclear accidents, new, each time, it's not like we don't pay
attention or we don't learn. Smart people work on that. And after every accident,
try to figure the way how not to step into the same trap. But next accident would actually expose a new vulnerability. You deal with Chernobyl, and then tsunami comes,
you deal with tsunami and then war comes. And we really in that sense, we have sometimes wild imagination, but sometimes it's difficult to imagine what can happen next. So we are not done. There will be nuclear accidents
unfortunately in the future. And that makes nuclear energy so problematic when you count on it to fight climate change. I'll explain why. You gave the figures how many people die
from burning coal, from how many people die from radiation. And it's a good argument. Some people would question them because it's also the
issue of not just dying, but impact of radiation on cancer, on our health, which is not
completely understood yet. So it's still there, there
is a lot of question marks, but let's assume what you're saying. That's the figures. That's how it is, but we as people we for whatever reason
are not afraid of coal, but we're very much afraid of radiation. It's invisible. It's Covid, it's everywhere, and you can't see it. And then you start having issues and then you have problems. And during the Covid, the governments closed the borders. Maybe a good idea,
maybe not so good ideas. Isolation. So that was the way,
governments started to fight for access to Pfizer, to Moderna, to Sputnik, to whatever it is, to vaccine. So now back to the radiation, what is happening once Chernobyl happens, that's the highest
point in the development of nuclear industry so far in terms of how many new reactors were commissioned or the licenses were issued. The next reactor after Three Mile Island in the US go ahead was given,
it seems to me 10 years ago or something like that,
the Fukushima happens, the reaction is in China to that as well. They're very much concerned. So there is a saying in the field, Chernobyl anywhere is
Chernobyl everywhere. After Fukushima, Germany
decides to go nuclear free and gets there at the
expense of burning coal. So that's how we react. And each major accident,
that means global freeze on the nuclear reactor production for at least another 10 years. So that's what I mean that
nuclear industry, not just in terms of technology and not just in terms of
radiation impact on health, but also politically a very,
very unreliable option. - And to you, you suspect
that's an irreparable aspect of human nature in the human mind that there's certain things that just create a kind of panic. Invisible threats of this kind. Whether it's a virus or radiation. There's something about the mind. If I get a stomach ache
in the United States after Fukushima, I kind of
think it's probably radiation, this kind of irrational type of thinking. And that's not possible to repair? - I think we can be
trained, right? (laughs) We can be trained. - [Lex] Pretty smart, aren't we? - But generally we're afraid
of things that we see, but even more we're afraid
of things that we don't see and radiation is one of those. - Let's zoom out on the world. We talked about the war in Ukraine. How does the war in Ukraine
change the world order? Lemme just look at
everything that's going on. Zoom out a bit. China, the Israel/Gaza War,
the Middle East, India. What is interesting to you, important to think about in the
coming years and decades? - As a historian, and
I'm trained that way, I have a feeling of deja vu. I see the Cold Wars coming
back in many of its features. And the war started and we discussed that in 2014, at least in my interpretation
with Russia trying to really reestablish its control over the post-Soviet space, and Ukraine was crucial for that project. And the more globally Russian
vision since 1990s was that they didn't like the
American monopolar world. They knew and realize
that they couldn't go back to the bipolar world of the Cold War era. So the vision was multipolar world in which again, it wasn't
just academic exercise, it was a political exercise
in which Russia would be one of the centers, one of the
poles on par with China, on par with European Union, on
par with the United States. That's very broadly speaking the context in which the war starts
2014, where we are now, well we are now in Russia certainly trying to regain its military strength, but no one actually believes
that Russia is the sort of a superpower it was
imagined before 2022. We see certainly Russia finding the way to deal with the sanctions, but we don't see certainly Russia as a economic power with
any sort of a future. So it's not an implosion of the Russian military
economic and political power, but it's significantly
actually, it's diminished. So today, very difficult to imagine the Russia
immersion as another pole of the multipolar world. Not impossible, but the
war certainly made that very problematic and much more difficult. On the other hand, what
the war did, it basically awakened the West, the old West, United States and Western
Europe transatlantic alliance. And on the top of that, there are East European countries that are even much stronger
proponents of assistance for Ukraine than is Germany or
the United States of America. So it is the replay of the Cold War story, the return of the West, that
one of the chapters in my book, The Russo-Ukrainian
War, is called that way. We also can see the
elements of the rebuilding of the Beijing-Moscow
alliance of the 1950s, which was a very important
part of the Cold War. It was extremely important
part of the Korean War that in many ways launched
also the Cold War globally. So I see a lot of parallels
of going back to the time of the Cold War and the
bipolar world that emerges. It's not anymore the world
focused on Washington and Moscow. It's more like world focused
on Washington and Beijing. And then there are countries in between, there are countries in between that join one block or another
block that is emergent, that is not fully formed. This is, in my opinion, makes the task of us historians to really go back to the Cold War and look
for through new perspective on the history of that conflict. Because there is a lot of
things that we can learn. - So in some ways history
does repeat itself here. So now it's a cold war with China and the United States. What's a hopeful trajectory
for the 21st century? For the rest of it? - The hopeful trajectory is
really trying to be as wise and as lucky as our predecessors
during the Cold War were. (Lex laughs) Because the dominant discourse so far about the Cold War
was what a horrible thing that Cold War was. What did we do wrong? How did we end up in the Cold War? And I think especially today, this is a wrong question to ask. The right question to
ask is how did it happen? What did we do so right? That for now more than 70 years,
we don't have a world war? How come that after World War I, world War II came within
20 years, how come that, what helped us to keep
the world on the brain, but still away from the global
war for such a long period of time, how to keep the Cold War cold? That's the biggest lesson that the history of the Cold War can give us. And I don't think we ask
the question quite often enough, ask the question that way. And if you don't ask right questions, we don't get right answers. - Yeah, you've written a book, a great book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we came very close not to just another World War, but
to, you know, a nuclear war and the destruction of human civilization as we know it. So I guess it's a good question to ask, what did we do so right? And maybe one of the answers
could be that we just got lucky and the question is how
do we keep getting lucky? - Luck is clearly, clearly
one of the factors in the Cuban missile crisis
because what happened there, and there is one of the
lessons is that eventually the commanders at the top, they believe that they have all the cards, they negotiate with each other. They try to see who blinks first in the game of nuclear brinkmanship. The trick is that they don't control fully people on the ground. The most dangerous moment, or one of the most dangerous moment of the Cuban missile crisis was the Soviet missile shooting
down the American airplane, killing the pilot, an act of war, right? So technically we're already in the war, and the order to shoot
the missile was given with Moscow having no clue
what was going on the ground. Moscow never gave approval for that. And again, I described that in book many times about
Kennedy bringing back his wisdom from World War II years. There there always will be
SOB who didn't get the order or miss things. And that was happening on
the American side as well. So people who believe that they're in control
really are not in control, and that can escalate whether they were very often against, against their issues. So that is one lesson, but going back to why we are still here and why the world didn't end up in 1962, is that the leadership, and
that's, I come to the issue that you strongly believing that people, personalities matter, leaders matter. They were very different, right? Age, education, political
careers, understanding what politics are and so on and so forth. - You mean Kryuchkov- - Kryuchkov and Kennedy, yes. But they had one thing in common
that in one way they belong to the same generation,
that was generation of the beginning of it all. That was the generation of
the hydrogen bomb, the bomb that unlike the atomic bomb, they knew could destroy the world. And they were scared, they were scared of the nuclear weapons, and they tried to do whatever they could pushing against the advisors or were trying to deal
with their anxieties. The first is true for Kennedy. Then later maybe for
Kryuchkov to make sure that this, that the war
between the United States and the Soviet Union doesn't start because they knew that that war would be a nuclear war. So we have a very, very
paradoxical sort of situation. The crisis occurred because
of the nuclear weapons, because Kryuchkov put them on Cuba, but the crisis was resolved and we didn't end in the third World War because of the nuclear weapons, because people, leaders were afraid of them. And that's where I wanna put emphasis. It's not that the nuclear
weapons created crisis or solved the crisis, is
basically our perception of them. And we are now in the age after the Cold War era is
the new generation of voters, is the new generation of politicians. We don't belong to the
generation of beginning at all. We may be not what beginning is, but we think that this is- - It's a different thing. - That this is something else. And it's very important. - It's so fascinating how that fades into memory that the power and the respect and fear of the power of nuclear weapons just fades into memory and that we may very well
make the same mistakes again. - Yes, we can. - (laughs) Another leader
said that, I believe, but about a totally different topic. Well, like you said, I'm also
glad that we're here more as a civilization that we
still seem to be going on. There's several billion of us and I'm also glad that
the two of us are here. I've read a lot of your books,
I've been recommending it. Please keep writing. Thank you for talking today. This was an honor. - Thank you very much, Lex. It was a pleasure. - Thanks for listening
to this conversation with Serhii Plokhy. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Earnest Hemingway. "Never think that war,
no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime." Thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time.