Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

thank you all very much for coming I'm very pleased to welcome you here today my name is Joshua Tucker I'm the director of the Georgian center Humana study Russia for those of you who who are here for the first time at one of our events I just want to encourage you to keep an eye on the anything booth on going on throughout the semester including we're going to be on April 12th we'll have the next meeting of the New York City Russia Public Policy series which is tentatively titled Putin's last term question mark so that'll be coming up in April but we've got lots of events going on so if you're not already on the Jordan Center mailing list you can get in touch with Heather or reach out to us at the same area we registered for this to get on our mailing list well anyway it is a wonderful pleasure to see so many of you here today and we're all very much looking forward to hearing professor Hawkins speak to us today so I'm going to introduce professor concern of the history department to introduce our guests today thank you for the introduction and for dr. enjoy it's a wonderful occasion again we have Steve cotton for those of you who need a refresher and maybe don't know Steve cockin is one of those people who's actually changed the field in two ways one of them is to create another school of thought within this early school history it goes under various names none of them very good I want to go through the inputs on the perinatal post revisions and so on and so forth but at the same time also created new kind of debate which we didn't have before if you recall your mid 1990s if you're reading on Soviet history when you wanted to take the Soviet Union seriously then you would also probably be sympathetic and abrasive whereas if you're creative probably treated as a joke and at that a joke it failed now work that in their mind and how you can fail but that's more or less the criticism I'm Steve came along just keep talking in all different ways you can take it seriously but careful what you wish for neither what you say would reality you didn't speak it seriously but it's complicated ways that many people have not found true along the way in passing he wrote a book which I still think is the best book from the collapse of the Soviet Union that was gone again Armageddon averted another book co-authored mostly on the on the collapse under the transitions in Eastern Europe that was called uncivil societies you can work it out from there and most recently he's been involved in a three-part brought a three-volume project honest almond bar graffia Stalin which is actually much more for Stalin in context that would have a few to do so we were happy enough to happen when he came out great before he came out with the first volume he was the first distinguished lecturer at the Jordan Center this is volume 2 and we look forward to abundant three Steve thank you thank you thank you for the invitation it's nice to be back you don't always get invited back at least that's been my experience let's hope there is a volume three and let's hope I'm near again to present so we have before us a book which is 906 pages of text although I tell the second talk again my wife insists it reads like no more than 700 intimidating don't be so how does one deliver look like that in our talk which is a finite period there's no good way and I do it different ways each time I'll try a version tonight let's see how that goes so the first problem is the person and we have here a human being it's the first line of the book that Stalin wasn't even big and you have to kind of get to know a human being it's very important one of you and so you discover that he likes gardening he likes ominous he likes colored pencils blue red and green but he doesn't they're not specific to his movements or just what he's reaching 400s so most everything he grows in green blue or red colored pencil he was a bit of a neat freak so he smoked a pipe as you know but he didn't use pipe tobacco he used cigarette tobacco so he would unroll cigarette he preferred heresy going the floor that was the brand new cigarette he unrolled cigarette and then he poured it you know through the paper he poured it into the pipe and if some didn't go in he would take out his letter opener and he would clean up the parts of the tobacco that didn't go in to make sure all the women if he drops him on the floor he would bend down himself on the floor and clean it up if there were runners on the carpets as there were always he would walk only on the runners not on the parquet and if he saw so when I'm ahead wasn't on the runner he was shout out hey get on the run he liked to read he was a voracious reader his reading habits change over time they as no doubt viewers have as well of course he rent at Marx and Lenin very closely and for a long time he would put little pieces of white paper inside the volume so that he could remember the place where the quotation was so he would cut these white pieces of paper into long strips and then put them in the books after a while he got so familiar with the quotations that he didn't need to go back to where the white papers were he could remember that just off the top of his head the quotations when he began to read also more deeply in history not just Russian history but also ancient Roman history because as he transformed his machine from a dictatorship to a despot that would be felt he needed to become more familiar with how despotism worked so you read it quite carefully all about the Roman vestments he read my letter that is to say novels his favorite character his favorite writer was Chapel because Chapel according to Stalin portrayed the villains realistic that was interesting and I could go on about what type of person misguidance it is the book does that a pretty great length delving into his habits his work habits his interests his decision-making processes his relations with other people and what other people made of him in real time not what they said about him many years later recollecting but what they made of him recording it in time so today had been a meeting with him and they had recorded it at the time I considered that more value sometimes we do take the later recollection but in any case what others thought of him so all of this is I think really important because we have a person who is clearly some form of psychopathy between 16 and 20 million people died in the combined rule of Lenin and Stalin mostly from starvation and disease disease related matter that doesn't include the World War two deaths Hitler is mostly responsible for the World War two deaths but Stalin was quite indiscriminate in how he managed the prosecuted the war and so many people died because of the way Stalin fought the war not just because he's invaded but 16 to 20 million most of which is Stalin someone which is what it is a big number in any case and you don't get to numbers that big including more than a million people shop summarily executed or died under torture which is sort of equivalent to being shot so that's also a very big number rulers don't have to be psychopathic but I'm taking I'm taking those numbers to indicate that there's prima facie evidence of psychopathic behavior so I have to make a diagnosis of characterization so what's interesting is that there's a person who's also the psychic paper anyway this is one of the challenges in the book of how to do this and conveyed as well how to get to know him as a person so the person is part of a life and time story at the same time this is typical for many approaches in biography like sometimes the challenge in Stalin's case is that the length of times but there's kind of nothing to leave out on the timer side with a lot of people when you write their biography world events happen but they aren't connected to the person so it can be self-indulgent for the biographer to describe world events during their lifetime at length in set pieces if they don't touch on the main character but just because you wanted a set piece on whatever it might be the Great Depression you name the subject the Japanese Empire in East Asia but in Stalin's case in fact there are almost no world events that you can't somehow connect to him and the policies that he enacted and the stuff that he was involved in so this is a difficult proposition then because as you move forward in time the biography of Stalin becomes a kind of world history you can't say that amount of to many people and so balancing the personal the life with the times I found to be difficult on the one hand kind of everything should go in in some ways but on the other hand obviously that's not possible where were you can't you have to tell some of it from his point of view but if you tell exclusively from his point of view then the readers can't really understand in other words if it's only style of thinking then you get a very distorted mirror on the world or in that time but without some of Stalin thinking that you can't the bike it doesn't make sense I found that to be challenging moving back and forth between Stalin looking at stops and letting the reader see stuff so Lester Stalin's own eyes say more objectively if I said that I'd be running out of the building that's being a person anyhow so this is by way of introduction now let me get to some of the more substantive arguments I'm happy to talk about the method problem you know the first volley for those of you who were here last time I started with the whole world and there was a little speck birth of Stalin which happened you know in the 1870s but it was insignificant his birth a nobody on the periphery of the Russian Empire when he was born it's only his later life that makes his birth significant so I kind of moved the world forward and I put the speck in the world and then that speck grew as the world moved forward from 1878 to 1928 Volume one until the speck and the world began to almost fully overlap by the end of Volume one not quite but he was getting close now in volume to the overlap is very very significant and the whole volume takes place in his office which I found the semi claustrophobic to do 906 pages of text which is a life and times and there's a lot of the world in this Hitler there's all sorts of other things and yet it's mostly the action as it was mostly in his office a little bit of his doctrine which is the equivalent of the doors and there were times when I felt this as the writer led along as the reader with potential leadership I felt you know just let's open a window and get out let's take a walk around the block let's go into the city let's go to effect he didn't really go to factors he didn't go to farms him or other ministries burial him go abroad he went abroad in before 1917 actually before 1914 and then he doesn't go abroad again till war two so he's just homebody is one way to describe it so that's a challenge of narration there are many other challenges of method that I could discuss I'm bringing this up as a as a point of potential conversation if you're interested but now to the substantive arguments so much so one of the big arguments is about the centrality of geopolitics as a driver mr. famous quote from Churchill about people argue that that war never settles anything according to Churchill just about nothing is settled except by war and the centrality of war in our history is a really big deal you know in my lifetime the United States has not been at war 1977 and 1979 those are the only times otherwise we have been involved in a conflict significant conflict somewhere in the world a really big deal American history is the war you wouldn't know it necessarily from the cell body so one of the arguments I make in the book is about them the way geopolitics and warmest history so it goes something like this this is a even more simplified version than the book delivers the 1919 of Versailles peace treaty doesn't get very good press very few people are going to defend the peace treaty and one argument is that it was a punitive treaty against the Germans and therefore was doomed to fail and contributed to the rise of Hitler [Music] happens already at the time people like to go she ate some himself later the other argument is that it wasn't anything wrong with the treaty it was just that the British and the French shrank from enforcing him and if only they had enforced it if they had had to will been more resolute were worked out too strong and so my argument is that neither one of those points of view is correct and that's because the precise reading was an anomaly that never could have happened except in the Year 1919 and could never last no matter what type of treaty it was and who had the women laughter workforce reasoning which I developed in volume 1 what forms the bedrock the basis of the arguments in part two is as follows 1919 is the only time since Bismarck's unification of Germany where Germany and Russia are both flat on their back this means that either Russia's a great power or Germany's a great power or both the Versailles Treaty is imposed upon a destroyed Germany without the participation even of a destroyed Russia and you can presuppose that either Germany or Russia is coming back as a power of some sort and in fact in a single generation both came back as great powers so this anomaly of 1919 is the only time you could have imposed a crazy treaty like this on the Germans without even inviting the Russians for the conversation there's a little bit of similarity with the 1991 settlement which some of you have lived through which was imposed on Russia that was flat on its back and everyone was dismissive of Russia and kind of here we are again and it's not flat on its back and it has the wherewithal to revise the 1991 so which that kid has begun to do so we can we can live in that world you can imagine the world after 1919 when both Germany and Russia had collapsed and when both came back so now my argument is the British understood that the treaty was an impossibility not only did the British understand this but they immediately themselves began to try to revise the very treaty that they had helped impose so if you know the General Conference of nineteen 22 it's effectively an attempt what to get to revise the Versailles peace by bringing Germany out you know back in to a deal that they will be let's say self interested in upholding there's even an attempt you can debate on how serious it was to bring Russia back in and in fact Russia is invited to Genoa but does it deal simultaneously with the general negotiations in Rapallo not far from Genoa with the JumpShip but nonetheless the grid each other once will convene the General Conference with the Germans and the Russians invited to try to fix this for side panels and you can argue when I do argue that the entire into war period constitutes a British effort to revise the Versailles Treaty to make the settlement stable now within that proposition within one can argue the British well good at this they were bad at this that's a separate arm I'm just dying to mean that this is what happened we can get into the details of who was good and who was better and what the revision was supposed to look like and what the French position was how the Japanese factored into this I'll get off I'll get to that just hear me out on this proposition so now with the British attempting to revise the Versailles peace in order to stabilize the situation in Europe you have been the invention of Soviet geopolitics simultaneously with this so what's the invention of Soviet Union Plus just that is a Stalin invent Soviet geopolitics and it first appears in this preface he writes in December 1924 that appears in January 25 cold socialism in one which is also dealt with in volume 1 and socialism in one country is not what we think it is we have the Trotskyite of denunciation of socialism what country which has entered into the textbooks yankee installed an abandoned world revolution in order to only focus on socialism in one country because he wasn't a real revolutionary black Trotsky but instead was this thermidorian sentence well what was the argument in socialism in one country was couple things but one argument was that well since the world revolution hasn't happened unexpectedly but that there has been a revolution in Russia should we build socialism in the one country where the revolution has happened yes or no or should we surrender to the forces of in periods well what do you think the answer was to that question the same answer that Lenin had given before he died in January 1924 and the same answer that Trotsky had given in print which was of course we're not going to surrender we're going to build socialism in this one country as we're waiting for and tried to instigate the world revolution but two years after Stalin published this Trotsky and others denounced Stalin tendentious Lee not when he wrote it not when it was published but two years later they denounced contentiously arguing that he was abandoning Rober this was over the fiasco of events in China which I described the last time I gave it and of course sir penny how so this is one piece but the bigger piece the invention of Soviet geopolitics is also in that essay it's amazing what happens when you go back and read the original materials as opposed to the intermediaries so the other thing Stalin David socialism was even more consequence the idea of building socialism in the one country where it happened and not surrendering to capitalism was shared by everybody but the more interesting piece is that he argued that revolution was not solely or even predominantly caused by class warfare that war was critical in the Midwife of socialist revolution he made an argument about the russian revolution in the russian case and white workers in russia were supposedly so much more revolutionary and he argued that the war had more radicalized them and were over this then developed into this larger geopolitics and a lot of geopolitics when is followed this is once again playing out in volume two in the 1930s the same time as the british revisionist was trying to happen meaning the british don't want to jump for psy they want to fix so Stallman argues that we need to inhibit an all imperialist coalition against the sole meaning because you see the imperialists cannot stomach the success of the Soviet Union so they will gang up on us all of them and this was even further complicated it wasn't just France Britain and Germany it was also Japan now on a complicating factor the Japanese had not really been but now of course in the interwar period of prominent work in terms of revisions and so if they all managed to gang up on us then we're toast and so Soviet foreign policy Soviet geopolitics is on the one hand prevent the all imperialist the all capitalist coalition against the Soviet Union so that's what that Rapallo episode is in 1922 during the General Conference when they do a deal with the Germans as both of them are pariah States pariah States meaning they're victims of the Versailles order they have that common interest of being pariah victimized by your side and so the the Russians are going to serve Tisha sleep help the Germans violate to preside treaties restrictions on building the military back and the Germans are going to help the Russians by not joining the French and British all imperialist anti-soviet coalition so if there's a war against the Soviet Union all imperialist or Soviet regime is toast but if the capitalists go to war against themselves an intra capitalist war then not only will that help secure and preserve the Soviet Union but the capitalist war against each other could and might even likely produce socialist revolution in the capitalist countries just like it happened in the Russian case in World War II so it was a twofer on the one hand if they fought each other rather than you if there was a wedge between the capitalism and they were catalyzed provoked into war against each other not only with the Soviet Union survive and be secure but there would be socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist this is Soviet geopolitics and beginning in the mid 20s carried through all the way till of June 22nd a little more detail on this so therefore anything that could prevent the capitalist from ganging up on you anything that could drive some wedge between the Germans on the one hand and the French and the British on the other or between the French and the British - or between the Europeans and the Japanese she chairman Wright's memos about this lovino frights when was about this and Stalin is issuing constant instructions to military intelligence - so it's very well documented this behavior so in the midst of this in the midst of the British trying to stabilize the situation by sort of tweaking Versailles and the Soviets trying to drive this wedge which is the opposite right they're trying to drive a wedge into this tempting of capitalist rock culture mom you then have the Hitler the rise of Hitler Hitler coming to power the most amazing thing about Hitler coming to power in January 1933 is he doesn't change either position the British do not cease attempting to revise the Versailles Treaty by bringing the Germans in this is going to be denounced as appeasement and never Chamberlain and all that other stuff but it's a continuous policy before Hitler comes to power and it does make some sense from the pollution and the Soviets don't cease trying to attract Germany away from the British and the French the foundation the bedrock of this new Soviet geopolitics clear disdain and so despite the fact that Hitler doesn't look like he keeps his word is kind of a rabid radical right-wing not the traditional conservative that Chamberlain and others inventory partner despite that they're still attempting to have these to revise revise the research to Britisher offering hitler revision of her site just like they offered it to the vine markers and the soviets are offering hitler all sorts of deals just like they did to the prior divide mark rulers in order to prevent this all capitalist coalition so believe it or not this is not clearly minute story you don't get this level of clarity into the bedrock negotiations and everything else now we know how this is going to come out right we know that the british are going to look stupid forever to try to sell you know that stalin is also going to look stupid for having done this because he'll do the pack and the pack will look like a genius move which it was in 1939 that wasn't a genius move by 1940 anyway and so you're you're kind of less shocked in some ways by how the third is unfolds and what the machinations involved and then when you bring the japanese into the story as i said it makes it then it raises the temperature it makes it even more complicated because the japanese are the ones that even before Hitler in Germany on seizing territory creating that Manchu quo puppet state or whatever you want to call that Russia right in 1932 in the northern part north eastern part of China and so it's at this point we're spelling those full-scale motorisation is David Stone and all the sub shop anyway so that geopolitical story that is going to play out in all sorts of interesting and complicated ways in Volume two as I go into the detail of the machinations and and the different episodes Munich pact the Finnish war all of this needs to be put within this framework and then it adds as I said complications but those involved on the phone and you can argue that in fact the British and the Soviets had a common interest in defeating Nazi Germany in other words that they were both pursuing the wrong policies instead of trying to quote appease Hitler or instead of trying to attract Hitler out of the coalition with the West there should have been a West Soviet coalition because this is existential to both neither of them perceived the existential nature of the Hitler threat until finally Hitler invades the Soviet Union and then there will be an alliance between the British and the Soviets of sorts not a real alliance the way we didn't understand it but kind of allies that's an issue well let's take the Munich pact for a second on this so it's very easy to criticize Chamberlain prism the guy kind of makes fun of himself he comes back from handing over the sedating lot for no compensation to Hitler by talking about peace in our time that's a famous quote and he's got that giant peak nose and he's got that ridiculous top hat and he's got the umbrella that services a king talking about peace in that time so no one is going to rehabilitate channels right he's kind of beyond redemption almost at this point especially because he's a conservative so what is Chamberlain safe in 1938-39 where is he actually say sister confidante no they're telling me that I need to do a deal with Stalin and Soviet Communism to fight a war and defeat Hitler that's what they're telling me that I need to do this and if I do that and it works how do I get the Communists out of Central Europe think about that for a second you defeat Hitler in the coalition and then you got communism in the middle of Europe let's call that the Cold War that was a very significant problem and was very costly to undo that and get those communists out of it and I don't know about you but I'm of the opinion that communism was a menace and needed to be destroyed and not been let into Europe or once it was in Europe to be a bit so you can argue that Chamberlain was using this as a rationality not do something not do anything expel pain himself if this was in real time 38:39 useful for seeing a dilemma that was a significant dilemma that doesn't mean that his appeasement policy was the correct cause but nonetheless the complication of how to fix this Hitler thing was not saying okay so they could be much more on the geopolitical stuff and not allow that much so far and move on to something else but if there are further questions about this and how we're in Falls and what was Stalin doing over Czechoslovakia what was Stalin doing in the Finnish war and all that that's all fair game for questions but I'm not going to give those I just got a check for time attention I think I'm okay now I'm gonna move on to another interpretive basket so I set up the person problem and some of the dilemmas that I felt writing this and then I gave you one of the big drivers argument big drivers of history if a multi-product argument of the book which has to do with this inner gorgeous oh and now I'm going to move to communism maybe I'll just do a little riffing on that and then we'll see how much time so there's a big argument in the book about something I call the tragedy of the left I also a little risque to be presenting that here but you know what at my stage of life if you can't take risks that's the point it was something like this the communism was for real these people believed in communism Stalin believed in communism he was a communist ideologue communism had certain bedrock precepts it's very important to take the ideology seriously doesn't explain everything there's a lot of the geopolitics stuff although you can see that geopolitics is refracted through the ideology right preventing the all capitalist all imperious coalition is what impelled Stalin towards a potential deal with Hitler so even the deal with the Nazis is in part the ride from communist ideology so now let's talk a little bit more about the communism story and I said this before including in this building that the big secret of the secret archives the one that you know we were dying to know get into the classified archives see the party archive CD innermost regime documents the big secret is the Communists were communists behind closed doors in rooms like this when they weren't speaking to the public you would think they would just relax it's not enough for a proletariat whose was the imperialism enough with that garbage let's just kick back now we can let our guard down in fact when they're behind closed doors that's all we talk about is proletariat Bush was the imperialism because that's how they thought that's the only way they know how to look at the world and this is the quote the big secret of getting into a secret communist Isis an economist does this mean they're not cynics and opportunists of course not idealism and cynicism idealism an opportunist and always go hand in hand you just have to be a member of a history department as I have been a Princeton for 29 years to see this in action and one doesn't preclude the other are not with the binaries they're self reinforcing and we're all the Leninism teaches you the immense tactical flexibility in pursuit in pursuit of the rigid core convictions so you can violate every one of the core convictions in your tactics in order to implement the core convictions over time that's Leninism ultimate tactical flexibility with the rigid core convictions and the scholar has got the school and as I show he's a pupil of Lenin in the deepest sense including on the tactical flexibility the cynicism involved in implementing the coordination so people argue all the time you know communism was very vague really didn't have any dogma precepts that they took seriously and that's partly true it's partly true that was very big and it was partly true that they could be dismissive of some of them precepts but there were a few things that you couldn't change or that you couldn't relinquish and you couldn't betray and that was you couldn't be capitalist you just could not be counted we didn't have the revolution we didn't take up arms we didn't sacrifice comrades in the Civil War right to build capitalist capitalism what was it well there were debates about this in the economy it was pretty clear capitalism is private property the markets wage slavery or wage labor so communism was supposed to be elimination of private property with collective property elimination of markets with planning and elimination of wages with what that they didn't figure out the wages they kept differentiated wages okay with no private property legally in the means of production and no illegal markets in the largest parts of the economy you'll see that they'll make these sessions to markets in some limited spheres and of course there are these illegal markets or semi legal markets known as the shadow economy or the great but anyway so elimination of capitalism in the economy as much as possible this was clear in the sphere of politics is also pretty clear because capitalists had these bourgeois Parliament's which weren't real Parliament's according to the Communists they were only two for the interests of the bush was a they were hoodwinked the working class and other have-nots and so we would have not boys what parliaments but people's power or what we called Soviets councils like Jacob and clubs and so no boys while Parliament's something which was more less controlled by the bourgeoisie and more all people's power or Soviets councils and moreover if the capitalists as we expect don't just surrender if they put up a fight against socialism will need to use repressive measures because they after all did the capitalists shrink from using the police and torture and everything else no they use it against the workers so shoot the markers not use those tools against the dead end or bourgeoisie of course we should use them so not only was the state supposed to be people's power but it had to be a hard-nosed dictatorship that used all the methods necessary to defeat the capitalists the bush was he because they would do that when you moved into the realm of culture it was less clear what was capitalist culture for example it was poetry capitalist was Pushkin capitalist so they debated this question as you as deliberate people in the audience know it was jazz capitalist if it was capitalist it was incompatible with the Soviet border so they debated this they went back and forth and they made peace with things like poetry and jazz as you know and incorporated into the order but some people were still against it as not really being Congress but in the culture was boring big listen I have a whole chapter on spelling a culture where he takes the position less ideological than he did in the economy it's very interesting and in part because the loyalists like dem young give me a terrible writer school and the white Gardens potential oppositionists like Baraka for great writers and so the trick was not to produce more dente on the Vietnamese swim spell for the stomach but to try to get the bull dose to be fellow-travellers to be loyal in some fashion and there's this tremendous manipulation from Gorky to get a loyalist intelligentsia of foreign travels with our partners but that's in part because of the ambiguity over capitalist culture it doesn't you know you don't have the private property markets equivalent in culture to be able to suppress to get you to the transcendence of Japanese anyway so oh this you've heard from me now thirty years in some form it works out in this book because Stalin is going to collectivize agriculture it's the first chapter of money to be spent an imposed collectivization and it's going to make these arguments about how we need to modernize we need to get scale we need fertilizer autonomy and we need the bigger size of the harvest so therefore we need to change the economy the peasant the rural economy we've inherited from the 1917-18 peasant revolution which you can see in the 20s we need to transcend that we can't just allow it to develop as private farms whereby private farmers do really well three cows four cows eat cows 12 counts hiring others because that's capitalism and we need we're not capitalist we can't be like America with these giant admiral businesses that are privately owned we need to be like America with the giant a verb is but they can't be Catholics we have to destroy the capitalists so it's amazing that he's able to impose this collectivization the way he did and the more I studied it the more mind-boggling it be but it's important because the left this is the tragedy the left argument the left is now going to divide I call me the Russian Revolution over land or propulsion and they're going to divide precisely on the use of coercion to eliminate capitals that's the key the bike that's going to produce this tragic event of marketing how does that go clothes like this in 1928 one percent of the arable land in the Soviet Union have been voluntarily collectivized one percent so voluntary collectivization is not in the cards evolving towards collective property not that's not happening in fact if you look closely if you study who the collectives are on the 1% of our goal and it's the people who can't find that it wasn't form these collectives to try to survive so Stalin argues it no you guys I mean are we communists yeah are we going to eliminate capitalism or not it's not happening voluntarily there's only one way to do it with coercion class warfare it's the gate class warfare deport the better off peasants when they derive as kulaks on rich peasants better off peasants of course very few of them were actually rich but in any case the other part of the Left says you're wrong there's a different way to get to socialism which is a stage on the way economies like feudalism capitalism socialism communism the Communist Party first built socialism on the way to building condos socialism is built by eradicating Katherine's transcendence Kalibak that a galleon of Hegel okay so then these other socials to say well we can involve through parliamentary means gradualism reform we can get to socialism without the mass coercion and the violence because Marx didn't write about enslaving 120 peasants who know about freedom I was supposed to have abundance social justice and peace with socialism not this crazy collectivization coercively implant and some of those leftists who argued for the evolution towards a transcendence of capitalism a peaceful fashion they immediately criticized the 1917 Leonard a seizure of power right away well there's not right away but a little bit later on and then most of them who believed in an evolutionary approach when they saw a collectivization if they had criticized but here's what Stalin sent back to them he said you know are the capitalists going to voluntarily walk away are they going to just allow you to transcend them are they going to allow you to eliminate that think about this how are you gonna do that there's only one way to do that with coercion and violence so here's where the life split the lameness left which Stalin then implements this not just in the city but in the countryside the lettuce left has been massaged to do that it's either eradicate capitalism or capitalism is forever meaning either you pay the costs of getting rid of capitalism or you're just a quote revisionist you're just delusionary that you think it's somehow going to disappear of itself the funny thing that happens to them the evolutionary left is overtime they decide different people in different times not all at the same all the time they decide that you know capitalism is okay we're going to make our peace with capitalism and they become what we call European Social Democrats or Swedish Social Democrats or whatever term you want and they discover that you can keep markets and private property but you have to regulate them and you have to redistribute the wealth inside regulate and redistribute the wealth so you can't eliminate markets and private property and still have freedom let alone abundance what you can have for pretty deep regulation and redistribution and the Communists say aha you see I knew from the beginning that you were revisionist and that you really were not after the eradication of capitalism you weren't serious lectures you are in fact apologists for capitalism and you're making your peace with cannibals so this argument is going to play out across the whole twentieth century and we still have this problem today where people discuss for example transcending capitalism as if it's something that happens naturally or without coercion this is not an argument about how capitalism is wonderful and beautiful this is an argument about what it costs to get rid of it based upon historical examples and how that realization is so again on the left slowly over time and so this history this lemon the seriousness of purpose that the Communists had what they said there's only one way to do this our way and unfortunately that correct that's basically what the 20th century has proved but this is the way it happens and that the other way is melioration revisionism redistribution regulation whatever you welfare state whatever you want to call so it's this history quite something in teaching us this that is an argument in the book also about the tragedy of the right because there's a radicalization of the right towards fascism and the tragedy of the right is also colossal its immense where the traditional right doesn't understand that the radical right is their enemy and will eliminate them sees instead the left as the enemy and so brings things like Mussolini or Hitler to power legally through legal means as a way block the left and then there's this then the radicalized right destroys the traditional right that's the story the tragedy the right fascism but you can see that that's integrally connected to the tragedy of the left because if you believe that the communist saw for real and I believe that because they demonstrated that then they really weren't threat and something needed to be done the radical right wasn't what you needed to do in my view because you lost your freedom matter but you can see that there was a real problem that they were addressing and when the leftist tried to say oh no no we're not communists we're not like those Bolsheviks what I like Lenin we're different the traditional right could say you're fooling yourself and in some ways that argument actually had yeah so this this tragedy the left which impinges on the right and unfolds over the course of the 30s and is with us today also his detail at length in the book and it mixes in as I suggested earlier with the geopolitical argument this is not a philosophical statement I'm not a political philosophy this is a historical argument about what happened from historical cases and you can say well Cabul areas often you're not calling it the right words and this and that and I'm telling you what they called it and what they did and how they play I think this is a really important lesson let me just check the time one more time there's no clock on the wall which leads me into Mesa so now let me try to bring some of this together before we go to Q&A this has been very episodic maybe even abstract for example I didn't discuss how Stalin misunderstood fascism the most important question in front of his regime and he didn't get it he called fascism finance capital just the primitiveness of these categories working-class imperialism finance capitals breathtaking the primitive the guys shrewd as shrewd can be he's got Machiavellian insight of the people's vulnerabilities and how you can manipulate them how you can manipulate a whole society there's a brilliance there at the same kind of primitive horizons finance capital so eventually the communism is going to put on the mantle of resistance to fascism right that they were really the main resistance to fascism and this is going to be a significant part of the legitimacy especially the post-world War two years and there's some truth to that because in fact a lot of the Communists were any on the ground in that very much choice because it was difficult for communists to collaborate it wasn't really an offer to collaborate with the fascist regimes but in any case there was some heroism on the Communist side when it came to a profession but there's an earlier story which is splitting the left-right and how the Communist Party and especially Stalin this little Spade is a mythology but in in Germany it's true how Scotland's policy which he didn't invent because the German communists and the German Social Democrats hated each other and that was a kneeling unbridgeable gap even without scholars and appearance but how the left fought each other and how Stalin called the Social Democrats social fascists meaning no better in fact the equivalent of the Nazis and divided the left and weakened the left even though the combined left one more vote significantly worse than the Nazis did so a lot of it is playing out this way in concrete terms I made a little bit of an abstract or overarching version of it and then the details about what happened in Germany before and during 1932-33 internal story rate of Communists are midwife's in part of Hitler's coming to talk yes Stalin does not get there the bulk of the credit for this he's a contributor on margins because as I said the German Social Democrats and the German communists are at each other's throats without Stalin comments on policy reinforcement so this is also going to play out then in the Spanish Civil War because there is no possibility of a Popular Front on the left the Popular Front on the left is a myth it couldn't work because the Communists and the Socialists that is to say the Social Democrats when the communists hated each other and it was an unbridgeable gap because one was for the forcible eradication of capitalism and its overthrow and the other one was for parliamentary evolutionary transcendence of captains and neither side trust each other and they knew I meant anything to do with each other we haven't even put the anarchists into the equation two more hated both by socialists the Social Democrats anybody communist the amicus story has been more or less suppressed from the larger story of histories of the left if you read all the hagiography of the left and it writes about itself it's all about the march to Swedish social democracy and then how the Lenin thing could have been that but failed to become that because Stalin wasn't but anyway so if you look at the Spanish Civil War it is a popular front on the right and it's successful why because Franco pushes out the full-on jests he is able to unite the Catholic traditionalists the church social conservatives and we would call it today he's able to unite the monarchists including the different monarchist because the monarchists are split he's able to unite the army and there's a popular front on the right called Franco's regime which is a success and the phalange are completely marginal in that Popular Front on the right yeah bit but the Popular Front on the left you can't push the Communists out there the army that's one problem one can't push him out and they're also the weapons you can't fight without so the Popular Front on the left is inherently doomed and the Popular Front right as possible and comes into being because pronto is dexterous as well as murderous in forming this Popular Front so this argument I'm making about the tragedy what is going to play out and all the big episodes that we think we know well and I hope you know the detail in volume 2 is convincing there's a lot of new stuff on a Spanish Civil War that we got from the presidential archives the Soviet presidential archives only a few years ago the Declassified the Civil War the Spanish Civil War materials they're very interesting okay so in conclusion this is not a an argument that ideology determines everything is just an argument that ideology needs to be taken seriously an ideology comes in a in a way that it has content it's not just posturing clothing it's discourse there's actual content to the ideology which is this eradication of capitalism therefore what is capitalism I don't know how we can make sense of this in public does that close everything off no does that answer all the questions no there's then a story about the social earthquake of 1917 I did the social earthquake there's a more-or-less not fully but more or less legal social hierarchy in Czarist Russia you're born into a class you kind of stay in and your noble your gentry your peasant or commoner your clergy we know that this movement we know that there's promotion into noble status Lenin's family is promotion know the status for civil service right so it's a complicated story of this but all that however it was evolving and shifting is just cracked wide open it's like the earth opened up a social earthquake and all of these people from the lower orders right get to rise up much more quickly as a result of the revolutionary process so this social earthquake produces all sorts of interesting traits it produces it dissolves The Pale of Settlement there's a mad rush of Jews into positions of authority and influence as a result of this circle but not only Jews Latvians beyond Russians Ukrainians right there's this massive social earthquake whereby people who were not favoured under the Czarist regime and did not have significant positions of authority for the most part now have opportunities that many of them concedes Stalin is an example of this obviously but there are many other examples and this produces this produces incredible opportunity for people who have limited horizons prior to the socialist but but these people get pushed up or get the opportunity and season about everybody seizes the opportunity you'll see in life that there are a lot of regrets things you should have done when something was right there in front of you received the opportunity and seized it and you didn't and then two years later you're like how come that bimbo got that position and I didn't get it life is full of failure to perceive opportunities that sees that but this is my theory strategy Wow that we get for a moment but so after this reorientation the social earthquake and the people who rise and seize the opportunities you then have a new group of people who are in positions of authority this is shaken up again in a second time in the late 20s and early thirties which somebody was looking at China in the 1970s Mao's China and analogized to nineteen late 1920s early 1930 so in call the Cultural Revolution it was another social earthquake whereby people from alors Bush all of a sudden got pushed up to the top sees their opportunities in many cases in grant positions now what you see in the mid thirties is Stalin beginning to think about this problem what's the class structure of the new society you seek us once again the guy's a communist so he's got to have a story for himself and of the society at large about what's the social structure what's the class structure of Soviet society he's going back and forth on this he needs a story of political economy because Marxist political economy for capitalism what's the political economy for socialism Marxist class analysis for capitalism what's the class analysis for socialism on the way to becoming communism Starla's deeply engaged and eventually infamously you'll know it comes out makes an argument that there are two classes of the socials but and they're not antagonistic because all classes under capitalism right so there are two classes there's the workers and the peasants now the two classes in there and in this not antagonistic relationship so that's class Society in the new regime but then there's this other hawkwood category which he calls a stratum like a geological strata sloy is the Russia which is not a class which means it's it's important but not as important as the workers in the present and that stratum is called the Soviet intelligence you're not just intelligence it's also called the working or toiling intelligence you all sorts of ways in which differentiated from the intelligence you like I'm talking to right now so this however strata contains the no ruling class obviously these are the people in positions of authority and Stalin is an argument that various party events conferences and congresses you can show it to me I got a very thick skin I've been doing this for a long time seriously anyhow so this strategy concept this concealment of the Soviet elite and Stalin's having arguments with the idea of why do you rail against with intelligentsia what are you doing with this anti intellectualism that's barbarism no ruling class remember the workers are the ruling class no ruling class has ever ruled without expertise common sense we need to strata which is providing the expertise for ruling class ie work he's constantly harping on this which tells you that he had a problem anytime return to it again and again and again barbarism anti intellectualism denouncing the soviet intelligence it's not intelligence right it's functionaries this is channel Nicky not bureaucrats bureaucrats are something different especially if you read neighbor right these are functionaries you know that's the translation and so this functionary class they're obviously the ones controlling the property in positions of power feathering their own asses taking the better apartments tainting the better food and better clothing as soon as it comes into the warehouses all of which is being reported to Stalin but he doesn't even need the reports he understands so he's thinking about this problem - on the one hand has theorized wait comes up with strata give him credit and on the other hand what to do with them because they're behaving like a new ruling class when he's only importing then the status of his strength and so he's now debating with himself what you do should he allowed there consolidate should they consolidate as a new ruling class the workers he's back and forth you can learn what to do quite yet but you can see it's bothering him moreover I haven't even put in the piece about how Trotsky [Music] writes all of these articles and theses and in fact the whole book about the betrayal of the revolution Thermidor and the victory of the functionary class which Salva supposedly represents that's very inconvenient Lansky even though he's a blowhard he's got a worldwide audience he's this megalomaniac and his what's the thing called wouldn't you get sick but you're not really sick hypochondriac psychosomatic what me he's all of that ruled the one that's just drama beyond drama mental drama over dramatization he would be a cable hopes he would fit into the cable culture he's the equivalent of that at the time he's out with and he's got this argument about the functionary class right when spells trying to figure this out and so it's bothering Stalin how to deal with this and that's bothering him even more that Trotsky is accusing him of representing and consolidating this functionary class so that's not the whole explanation for the terror nineteen thirty six to thirty is not the whole explanation the terror is multi-layered and ultimately as Alam wrote it defies explanation it's very difficult to figure out what the sky was thinking you read the documents you see this stuff you look at the evidence you turn off the lights you lay down on a couch you look up at the ceiling and it just it doesn't because I'm comfy but this is a piece of it this is a piece he begins to convince himself it's hard to tell if this is a motivation or exposed back total justification can't prove that anyway you can't see him doing it a lot of evidence but it begins to convince himself that people of the Revolutionary epoch are now kind of the epoch is passed and by they kind of outlived their epoch the same way that classes was supposed to disappear in some fashion peasantry was supposed to manage all the time because everything was supposed to get industrialized food and agriculture and there would be you know classes that were backward penny booze wah I passed by history he begins to talk about how the functionary class of the Revolutionary epoch that social earthquake that opened up including people like himself as well as as others or some of his generation some of generation well how big and so he then develops a theory about how a new elite which he calls Soviet intelligence a Soviet telogen see how a new Soviet intelligence a from the soil workers and peasants again or modest people become the uses of modest or modest people who were not involved in things like collectivization or other episodes but instead of the beneficiaries of that how we can marinate them in Marxism Leninism these people from the soil will be better at running the state on behalf of the ruling class I and in fact that's what the short course is about and one of the things that people don't usually put together is the fact that all during the Munich pact the drama of Munich Stalin was absent from his these telegrams are coming in from Benesch and from others with they weren't answered because Stalin was at a four-day conference of ideologues to present to them the short course that he had spent the whole summer rewriting in 1938 this so can you imagine the events of Munich are taking place and Stalin is spending four consecutive days in a room bigger than this with people like you discussing the short course and hadith interpreting and its value for you in training you to be better more sophisticated representatives of the working class s functionality it's just incredibly dramatic so the terror story turns out to be also crazy as I was saying it defies explanation but deeply implicated in this ideological problem in this ideological world in this communist way of thinking the communist attempts to explain the world to themselves thank you for your attention [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I mean as usual I tell you that if you go to the next one on this book will be a different lecture all together people makes sense sometimes a year after you hear it sometimes too but it will make sense ultimately we have lots of time for a Q&A and I hope you'll take advantage I'm sure that we lost the pushes particularly by the message the crisis of the left so if I'm understanding a part of what you're saying is that this is historical trauma Europe light and North Atlantic Germany is throwing up new groups of population of every descending powers right here is a possible realization we take different forms and different I think part of what your argument is that this particular place through these kinds of people which we understand as nationalities the Armenian the majority of the emblems will show some of his positions of power also for their not particularly meaning that maybe well already they may be but words of analysis offenders that's ponzi and humorous at worst kind of destructive I mean so seriously that's understanding you so let me be good news it was and other than that one in the world maybe that part of it will do much for Sweden it's the closest part I'm trying to figure out and the tragedy they're saying the left so it's a it's inexplicable in some ways we now can explain in retrospective but it's inexplicable that the land that produces the protocols of the Elders of Zion has the union of Russian people and has a very conservative peasantry in many ways ends up as the socialist story and that the one that has the gigantic social democratic party in the parliament highly developed sophisticated social democratic party ends up with the Nazis right it's more the the German story should have been a socialist regime and the Russia stood have been the fascist regime but the roles are reversed so that that's an amazing story which can trogir put before us a long long time ago and which I tried to deal with in part in Volume one and that's now still playing out so I'm not taking a position on whether Milton Friedman or Eduard Bernstein or Swedish social democracy instead every Bernstein is the preferred political outcome I believe that that's a legitimate debate and I believe that it's fine to have those both represented in the Specter my problem is when the Socialists argue that you must get rid of capitals and they tell you that that's how you want to get to free that's the tragedy of the left that misunderstand you cannot have abundance and freedom by eradicating capitals how do we know that that's called history we have the history on that history is very rich of detail and we can argue about some of the details but the larger story is incontrovertible in life so the left has to figure this out and it will figure it out and it takes a long time for it to figure out it takes a long time for it to say yeah you know without markets and private property no freedom which looks like a rightist argument but in fact is the basis for Swedish social democracy we still don't understand that today I will get objections or at a minimum size from this audience by just making that argument because capitalism quote is evil unholy and once again you can have your critique of capitalism I'll fine with that I understand that there was something called imperialism I teach history right I understand that there's something called child labor I understand that there's something called exploitation yeah I worked in a factory when I was growing up as a teenager because my father wasn't worked at an embroidery factory as you know so it's not like I don't know from personal experience let alone from history but at the same time we still have this confusion this kind of pie-in-the-sky notion that capitalism is the problem and if we can get beyond capitalism will be better and my argument is that's the tragedy you try to get beyond capitalism and you lose your freedom you lose your abundance you lose your peace you lose it all does this mean that keeping capital you embrace it and we say everything about it is good no it means you can if you don't like many phenomena you can regulate them you can redistribute redistribute the wealth you can do all manner of whatever you want rent control once again whatever you want but it still accepts private property in the morals the failure to accept private property of the markets is a principal tragedy of the left ideologically which were still living with to this day and I think that's an important message which is not a political message because once again I recognize Swedish social democracy as a perfectly legitimate political orientation and not only in that country but in any country that wants to happen does that make better sense or no you want me go ahead you know who they are yeah so you know no Stalin was not warned anti-semitic than was the average for the time period so anti-semitism explains nothing you can't call Stalin an anti-semite unless you call the average person who lived in the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union's what Stalin paranoid that's the easiest possible explanation sick in the head paranoid one of the great things about Hitler was that when Stalin murder this officer corps Hitler say this guy's sick in the head so apparently it is the easy way out but I don't think is the proper explanation because Stalin remains completely functional and is conducting state affairs and is making a whole lot of interesting rational decisions from my point of view during the same time period as he's doing this terrorist not as far as you know going after the Bolsheviks know about the literature long ago showed that that wasn't the case the so-called all the Bolsheviks those who've joined the party before 1917 died at about the same rate as everyone else in the park in other words they were not victimized more than other groups were victimized so the explanation has to be different from those either long-standing tropes or the easy way out you know one of the things someone - once I gave us a presentation like this and I explained it's about could walk problem which people don't know you know because it was illegal to a film star on emotion so Stalin could move forward without swinging his hip around so you walk like this and the more agitated he got the more you got to swing the head we have a tiny bit of footage from Tehran and Potts back that's the only page we have and you can see he's walking very slowly in small steps so you can barely perceive how to swing of it and I'm at night he was up all the time in his office so everyone invited his office all he did was pace so always no one was going like this in phases now you've got the elbow problem right he said significant accident and his left elbow not a little function so you'll see that in most of the pictures you know when he's got the cigarette in his mouth it's his right arm when he's making motions to an audience err is pointing this way or whatever it says right off his left arm he could use it but it was painful and he didn't have the full range of motion sometimes for photographs he would put the cigarette in his left arm and hold it there but you won't see him bringing it up to his mouth and then he's got the web toes on his feet you know the side of the devil right he's got diarrhea he's got very significant diarrhea because of altars and other stomach ailments I recommended calling the second volume in Russian translation Domino's ethos that's a rush of joy from stuff anyway and so you could go on with this stuff right he's gotta feed he's got some ailments and some physical deformities like aha this must explain right the insecurities or the anger the fury over being partially to form the whatever once again that's a to easy way up a lot of people have deformities a lot of people have alters of diarrhea not that many people are killing 60 [Music] so there's something systemic here it's about the system which makes this possible and then there's something about his theories of rule as I was beginning to discuss with Charlie yes u.s. history is a history how is that not coercion once again I said you can make any argument you want about that I said I know that history well I'm just saying that within capitalism within markets and private property you can have stable societies that are wealthy and that are free and have a lot of freedom including for people like myself will come from the law Wars under communism you don't have that under capitalism you can have it with markets and private property you can have that's the only argument I make as far as how you want to characterize markets and private property I take no position on that you're able to do that on your own there's a wide spectrum from left to right which I regard as legitimate independent of where I stand on the issue I have my own political views which are not to me if I work on the three well only to say that the opponents where you are and who you are both in terms of class and in terms of country I mean right now we're in another crisis everyone reads about the growing inequality the downward mobility the effect on the global south so it's an ongoing story as you've said yeah and coercion right now the United States is in seven different countries bombing away so you know it's not if one of your big points was about coercion and I'm making the point that it's taken a hell of a lot of coercion to keep capitalism from being challenged right so I'm talking to the column here to the Western I'm talking to this column so what you just said you just said that right and what are the consequences to what you just said are there any consequences for example are you now going to be arrested are you gonna be fired from your job nobody are you that these are your kids gonna be expelled from school it was happening in the fifties and I made it through the month at all how about an entire system that does that well not just individual I mean I'm not saying we cannot everything better I'm arguing only against your one point that it takes coercion and coercion is bad and we're doing a lot of coercion for what you think is better it's if it's a bad coercion it's happening and we're doing it we're gonna disagree not about substance because you don't understand my point we're disagreeing about something where I'm actually not making the argument that you think I'm making it's very simple the argument that I'm making and it's just not coming across in Landsberg yeah given the massive amount of research you did for the book what what were you what surprised you that you learned and what did you change your mind about over the course of researching well yeah I get that question a lot that's a really excellent question and the problem with answering it is that it kept happening in other words I learned something I never knew before and it was very exciting and then it happened the next day and the next day and the next thing and it was just like more snow buried and more snow very and more snow until finally I couldn't even excavate those earlier layers but I'll give you one example that's I can still remember at this point remember I'm old now as well so I'm doing a finish and I had never really understood the finished work married people it was one of those things that wasn't a significant theme in the textbooks you kind of glossed over it in your lecture it happened but it wasn't until essential I was wrong but that's kind of how it was in my life and so the Finnish war was one discovery after another but the big discovery was Stalin attempting to negotiate it's gonna take me a couple of seconds to explain so what happens in the Finnish wars Stalin offers Finland a deal he says that Leningrad is too close to finish territory and under threat and defends we're not worried about you but someone's going to use your territory to attack us in other words you're your neutral pejorative travela t is a false neutrality because you're not sovereign you're too small to be sovereign and either the British or the Germans some great power is going to use your it's us and the line where the border is now too close to Leningrad because it's not within artillery range without even crossing the border and so I need to revise the border and I'm going to do a deal and I'm going to give you this giant piece of Soviet Corellia but I need this Karelian isthmus you know kind of towards we Borg not all the way that we would like from pushing out from Leningrad I knew that them and the friends won't have anything to do with this because they've seen Hitler with the Munich pact and Czechoslovakia which has happened before this and they think that Stalin is a gangster asking for X and then he's going to get asked for X plus 1 and then X plus 2 and so finally there's no more fit and so they and in any case the Finns by their own constitution can't see territory legally to us as apartment against any agreement that the government so the negotiations are fraught and both sides and I was speaking so there were eight meetings before Stalin launches the war eight meetings between the fence and the Soviets on this question which I hadn't known or I hadn't paid close enough attention and all the eight meetings Finland is four million people so he needs about 170 million people the Soviet Union is biggest army in the world and they're negotiating with the fence 8 times war Stalin shows up for seven of the eight meetings and I'm take it to myself Stalin doesn't show up for any negotiations let them all for seven out of eight infinitely have negotiate impose a fait accompli sure he may show up for that negotiation he's making concessions the negotiations are going on and the fence say no you can't have this and stances are are you sure know what's good what about this so he moves back yes for less and then they say no way and then yes for less and I'm what I not see this in any other episode that he's behaviors missus fascinating so this part was interesting to me that I should have known but I didn't know but here's the part that was in some ways of discovery I'm sorry if this is silly or even a laugh at me that doesn't constitute a discovery but it was for me the Finns Stalin had no credibility as a negotiated with defense they didn't take him seriously as a negotiator they didn't understand he's not these meetings that in itself tells everything you need to know what the hell's the guys showing up for if you wasn't just easier territory he can have a minion show up and make the proposals and do the tricks and fool you and everything here he's again and again at the was he having fun arguing with the fins of tiny little country and making concessions and they won't take it the fins don't perceive this they don't perceive they think he's just not for real and he's gonna seize all the fins turn they don't understand that it's not like the balls was still had a minyan impulse all tough go tell the waltz this is what's happening we're doing this and we're doing this and we're doing that and that was the end of the quote negotiations with the boys the fancies treating differently and so the thing that was the revelation for me was the inability of the Finns to perceive that Stalin was a credible negotiator and that he was offering something and that they should accept this as a legitimate offer they don't get that and it never happens and Stalin gets really angry he's infuriated by this he spent all this time and so not only does he not want rain bombs down gently when he produces a stooge government the so-called People's Government of Finland with Hasina yeah common turns stooge actors try to finish and forms a government allegedly at the border and teriyaki but in effect receiving his incredible favor they never cease the territory that the government is supposed to go plant itself in a city of soon as they get there so the whole stooge government thing isn't fit of pique and fury and it boxes fellow himself into a corner as this was a discovery for me but star who had credibility in the eyes of the Finns and not only in the fence so then we started thinking about the bread store you know they're supposed to do a deal together they had negotiations like how are they supposed to take him at his word you're dealing with Stalin he's telling me he'll do X Y & Z and you might call sure I believe you sure let's put it in writing your signature is good you're as good as your word oh yeah you're murdering all these people but nonetheless you have credibility rights it began to sink deeper into me this credibility problem and then we had it with the pack this is an episode that I didn't present here I usually present the paxton skin detector if you YouTube there's a handful of these things and what's also in the book but in the pack thing we have this it's in the literature argument that Stalin trusted not one of they trusted him the only trusted him and that was the treasurer you know that's why it's suckered into this invasion and was ready for the invasion and I'm thinking to myself hmm Stalin trusted Hitler is that portal so prima facie was impossible so I'm starting to look at the pact and there's this episode this is a very long answer is it I'm not good at short answer I've lost my ability to police myself if you look at the pact right there's this episode as you know right the Hitler goes in September the pact is sealed late August Hitler goes in September first invades Poland Stalin is supposed to go in at some point in fact he's fighting a war against the Japanese at this time which the textbooks don't deal with because Europe is European studies in Japan ization studies of their subjects and books but they're happening soon and Stalin finally goes into day after there's a truce with the Japanese in the world war the Far East and this is crazy episode in Galicia we're Stalin this September 18th 1920 mighty and the Germans are on Stalin decided water right they've had this negotiation in Montrose office and there's this map of Poland and they get the line down in one side is Hitler's Palmer than the other side stop and if they're not there's only a princess top side of the line and then Stalin sends a minion to military intelligence headquarters in Berlin and the minion walks in and on the table is this map field map of operations in Poland and they got the little stick pins you know the Germans are here two tanks are heating artilleries here and it all shows that the Germans in fact on the Soviet side of the line and we're all gonna map is on the table when the Soviet minion walks in so if you're stun you and is that an accident they put that map on the table when knowing I mean if you're trying to hide this thing you pulled the map up and you put it in the drawer or you receive him in a different room it's a message it's got to be in this so he calls lieutenant general and crystalline German military attache into the criminal and he says to him you guys are on my side wall what's your explanation and Lieutenant General was a foreign Russian spirit he's born he's a German ethnic but it's born so they're having this conversation record and he says you know I mean it's just like this you see we're killing the poles and the poles are fleeing and as they flee eastward to get away from us was we're moving west to east they're gone that way on your side all right and we're just chasing them and killing them and as soon as we're done killing the pulse we will just go back to our side of the world and you know let's remember that what's there on Stalin's side of the line might have met where their month is now on the Galicia oil fields so the dare mock test sees Stalin's away oh just because they're chasing the polls and the polls are running away so you think so I figured out just once again this is enough I figured out that Stalin had no guarantee that the Germans would stop at his Atalaya thing true maybe they wouldn't even stop at the Polish border and go right into the Soviet Union maybe the whole pact was a ruse how did he know otherwise that this was piece of paper signed by Ribbentrop who the hell his Ribbentrop a champagne self maybe this whole thing was a trick and so Stalin tells lieutenant general the German assistant thank you very much we're gonna take the territory dismissed he leaves the office several hours later the Red Army seizes the Belizean water fields by force and there were casualties The Fairmont takes casualties on the red army takes casualties in Poland so this to me makes sense now in other words the idea that there's no trust whatsoever no guarantees she's got to take the territory back by force there's a further many further dimensions to this episode than what I'm giving here but it's the sort of discovery on the finish stone how the Finns could never take him seriously as a negotiator let me down this path to figure out though that nobody trusts in anybody I know it doesn't sound like much you to discover it but it is personal yes we will you talked a lot about the both of the few box audiology instance thinking given that out there explained the zig zag to the Popular Front in 1936 let alone again go to the back tonight I'll be like yeah so I've already explained this in a lecture in my view but will you Frank yeah you got some fatherly today love us we're trying so Stalin was never being under Popular Front it was never close to him emotion he hated the Socialists with social temples he made it reluctantly and late in the game and then he gave it up as soon as he could so the answer to your question is once again the Leninist flexible tactics I know I gotta get the communism but along the way I can do brest-litovsk I can do peasant present a toast for the so-called new economic policy I can do whatever is necessary for the moment in order to get where I've got to be so I'm not givin up that I've gotta destroy the German imperialists but if I got a do Brussels a toast to survive to destroy the German imperialists later I'll do breasticles same with the so-called Popular Front episode they're arguing Stalin's getting of arguments on behalf of a popular Park a very long time before he reluctantly concedes it it was conceded he doesn't show up to discuss it at the con turn meaning he's not there give him a speech about it he doesn't publicly endorse it there's a photo of him with the Comintern delegation but he is not a speaker at the at the common term conscious where this is unfolding moreover he's negotiating to try to get a deal with Hitler the whole time he's entered into the new policy for the common term of Popular Front now with the pact with Hitler once again this is derived from his communist ideology the which I argued earlier in the presentation which is that you must prevent the imperialists from forming a coalition to gang up on you so you need to drive a wedge through the imperialists and to drive a wedge through the imperialists you got to peel them off so you peel off Germany with a pack in the Germany you avoid the war yourself the Germans in them and the French and British core war that's exactly what happened you stay out of the war they may even have a socialist revolution as a result of them going to war so that's straight out of in his mind the marxist-leninist ideology the tactical flexibility plus the the--this old Soviet geopolitics the theory about our intra capitalist war his Soviet security and potentially evolution that I answer it now yes and the last one I think yeah so that happens in volume 2 since 1940 and by 2 ends in the June of June 22nd 1941 so we don't have any documentation on Stalin's reaction to atrocities assassination in real time in other words hooray for finally we then have him mentioning it not that much later but a little bit later about how it's a victory for the proletariat you know the usual wouldn't language that we've been talking about of how he spoke because that's how we thought so what's the significance of this is so contrived the assassination of Stalin is obsessed with Trotsky you get this thought you got this right you know the three-volume tortured by Trotsky which is immortal there's never going to be a better biography of Trotsky rebonding the torture now you can disagree with this interpretation of that interpretation well it's just breathtaking don't you achieve from that the narrative arc you know the drama of the arc the detail the winning detail the insight there's a lot of Trotsky's personalities to it torture is poor on Stalin just as Trotsky was but he's brilliant doctor which is brilliant Stalin is more obsessed with Trotsky than just about anybody else's obsession with anybody else it's just remarkable and it clearly has something to do with Stalin self-deception how he understands who he is using Trotsky as a foil and these fancy-pants intellectuals who think they're smarter than me but I'm smarter than that you know this one could do a lot of psychologizing about that and people have done significant psychologists but then at the same time there's this ideological problem where Trotsky has put his finger on the new elite issue the consolidation of the new elite and this has been bothering Stalin before Trotsky's put his finger on and then continues to bother and then Solomon also uses Trotsky for state purposes consolidating his despotism at home with the bogey of Trotsky it's very successful is broadcasting his obsession with Trotsky to the whole Union to six to the earth it's in that obsession becomes a part of daily life not just Fela obsessive but the nation the human is obsessing this is a problem in part because Trotsky is not significant he's just a writer and he's got a point of view and something people read him and the historiography today on Stalin is heavily influenced by trotsky's interpretation I'm in some ways excavating Stalin from the rubble the Trotsky bury him it but Trotsky had no army see Hitler he's got this army he's got this really big that's right there on Stalin's border it's technologically very sophisticated and while Stalin is obsessing with Trotsky the way you know author is obsessed with their book reviewers well that's happening right this Hitler thing is massing on the board so the story was Hitler not Trotsky they meanwhile Stalin is mobilizing the whole Soviet Union to talk about Trotsky as Hitler's handmaiden and also to other stuff when in fact that a Trotsky was less significant ultimately than Hitler was but not for Stalin cifra Stalin Trotsky is as significant as Hitler and that's part of the story of the 1936 mmm you don't get this again you don't get this again until now and that's the part that's in vol 3 now is a really big problem for stuff because mouth has had his own revolution and Mao is young and vigorous and Stalin is physical wreck as a result of World War two so when Stalin finally meets mouth he's he's can see that he's being eclipsed there's a guy who's got his own revolution in even bigger country who's young and when Stalin goes because he's mortal my mom is gonna be there and so this Eclipse Mao eclipsing Stalin is this is the other piece the other nemesis like the Trotsky nemesis from earlier but Stalin toys with what to do with MAO try to humiliate him try to keep him in a box this is all vol.3 stuff but ultimately the mouthing is it's too big for stuff it doesn't clip sever and Khrushchev of course is no match for math as we see in the period that will lead to the sino-soviet split so Tito is a very small piece Tito is usually the one that we focus more on here a Tito is important in this involved in history but a small piece and Stalin psychology compared to mom Trotsky and as they descended to the book ends with mobilization some around June 21st there is a heightened security June 21st so the book ends in Stalin's office on the night of June 21st recreate the entire night in his office when he's pacing to try to figure out if Hitler is coming or not coming it's from the whole day from the morning up through the wee hours and of course if there is coming and they cross the border in force writing 1 volume 2 ends and volume 3 should it be written yeah yes we'll cover World War 2 the Cold War and Stalin's life after he dies that's for sure that's for me well congratulations - thank you for coming [Applause]

Channel: NYUJordanCenter

Views: 53,581

Rating: 4.6660342 out of 5

Keywords: NYU, NYU Jordan Center, NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, Russian Studies, Stephen Kotkin, Kotkin, Stalin, Russian History

Id: XMM5VzDGLUU

Length: 110min 20sec (6620 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 08 2018