Excellent interview. Hats off to Dr Lex for his thoughtful questioning, for asking great questions on a subject close to his beating Russian heart. He let the interviewee answer without any pathetic narcistic BBC style interviewee assassination. And, so, having taken the floor, Prof Kotkin then succinctly and nicely nails the root problem of Russian governance (for me) with a root solution from 40.50 to 41.10, with good further comments soon thereafter.  Thank you Prof Kotkin for your wisdom, and also to Dr Lex. An interesting interaction between an older and younger intellectual. More please, more .....