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- [00:00]
A
Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads go to libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today. History as it happens February 27, 2026 Four years of war, late Putinism. The tricolor banner of the Russian Republic now flies over the Kremlin.
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B
I look forward to working closely with President Yeltsin in support of his efforts to bring democratic and market reform to Russia.
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A
But I don't believe anyone could ever doubted that there would be obstacles on Russia's road to a vibrant economy and a strong democracy. In Russia today, the clear winner of the Russian presidential election, Vladimir Putin, began
- [01:15]
B
to establish the Putin era. Vladimir Putin, the career spy, talks about establishing what he calls a dictatorship of the law. It's a new millennium, but the same old savage war in Chechnya. I look the man in the eye. I found it to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. Russia's decision to send troops into Crimea has rightly drawn global condemnation.
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A
Putin is inflicting appalling, appalling devastation and horror on Ukraine, bombing apartment buildings. Twenty six years after coming to power, Vladimir Putin will not extract himself or his country from a ruinous war in eastern Ukraine, at least not on terms other than his own. In the meantime, he has tightened the screws of repression on Russian society, cracking down on dissent in his culture war against the so called West. How might this end? Can it possibly end well for the aging autocrat in the Kremlin? That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [02:26]
B
The War in Ukraine has begun. The reality of the Russian onslaught on Mariupol grows more dire by the hour. It's called Paradox of Tyranny because you're so afraid of the consequences of the fallen tyrant that you adjust and excuse yourself by sort of supporting or tolerating that tyrant. So revolutions are rare, uprisals are rare. They do need a leader, which Russia at certain times doesn't seem to have. So we don't know how and when it will.
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A
Early May 2000, the first democratic transfer of executive power in Russian history, a former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin was sworn in as president and he promised to respect and guard human and civil rights. He said he would perform his duties openly, guided only by the interests of the state. I consider it my sacred duty, said Putin, to unite the people of Russia, to gather citizens around clearly defined tasks and aims, and to remember every minute of every day that we are one nation and one people. We have one common future. And now, more than a quarter century later, President Putin is still in power, still trying to shape Russia's future through the conquest of its neighborhood and by consolidating his dictatorship at home. You know, as you watch the videos of every successive Putin inauguration 2004, 2012, 2018 and most recently May 7, 2024 he looks older, of course, and the attendees fashion choices and hairstyles change with the times. But it also feels like time is standing still. It is the same man making the same long entrance, placing his hand on the constitution again and promising to uphold Russian greatness now as he wages a ruinous war in Ukraine. You citizens of Russia, Putin said two years ago, have confirmed the correctness of the country's course. This is of great importance right now when we're faced with serious challenges. I see in this a deep understanding of our common historical goals, a determination to adamantly defend our choice, our values, freedom and the national interests of Russia. So Vladimir Putin was never a liberal democrat, but historian Nina Khrushcheva says in an essay for foreign affairs. Before February 2022, so before the start of the all out invasion, Russian society was fairly open, she says. Official media was under state control, but independent outlets flourished. The Internet had no restrictions and people could read or watch what they wanted. When the war broke out, she says, mass protests ensued. People were dumbfounded Russia would launch an invasion of a neighboring country. Dissent was immediately met with retaliation. In the first few months, more than 15,000 anti war protesters, including more than 400 miners were detained. Khrushcheva was recently in Russia and reported her observations in this essay and I'll share a link to it. Paywall free in the show Notes for this episode, Khrushcheva says to visit Russia over the past four years has been to observe the consolidation of a dictatorship in real time. To answer the question readers confront in 1984, wondering how Big Brother's gaze became so penetrating and relentless. At the start of the invasion, she says the state lacked the means to quell all possible opposition, and so it suppressed selectively, people self censored even, as many found ways to express their distaste for Russia's path. But in the time since, since Moscow's built a larger, repressive apparatus, it has cultivated a climate of fear and uncertainty that encouraged many Russians to silence not just themselves but also one another. Nina Krushcheva teaches at the New School. She is an editor of and a contributor to Project Syndicate. She is the author of several books, most recently one about her great grandfather, Nikita Khrushchev, An Outlier of the system, published in 2024. Our conversation next Tap. Subscribe now in the show Notes for early access to every episode ad, free listening and all our bonus content, or sign up@historyasithappens.com Nina Khrushcheva, welcome to the podcast.
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B
Thank you very much for inviting me.
- [07:07]
A
So you wrote this essay in Foreign affairs about how Russia is becoming a tyranny already has become a tyranny under Vladimir Putin. Broadly speaking, governments, even in democratic societies, tend to become more repressive during wartime. Dissent, for instance, is not tolerated as it might be in peacetime. Is this problem worse in dictatorships?
- [07:34]
B
Well, thank you. Well, Russia actually is not a tyranny yet, and that's the point of my article in Foreign Affairs. It is a restrictive authoritarian police state. But there is a difference between totalitarian and authoritari, because in totalitarian ideology belongs to the state and everybody is part of that ideology. There is no individual life in open space. There is no individual thinking in open space. Everything belongs to the state. In Russia, it's different. I mean, it certainly got much more restrictive during the four years of war, yet it is still an authoritarian state. It's not a totalitarian state. It's not a dictatorship. And that's what I wrote. And the piece is that when you go there, you observe creation of dictatorship in real time. But it's not a dictatorship yet. And so I give a lot of examples of how normal life, sort of normal life, restaurants, Western fashions, Western music continues to exist, together with the kind of patriotic pronouncements coming from the Kremlin, coming from Russian political class, from the official states. So yes, there's certainly more restrictions than they were before 2022, when the war began. But not everything is restricted, for example, I mean, they've been since the summer. There've been a lot of efforts to clamp down on global Internet connected services. So WhatsApp was blocked, YouTube was blocked, Signal is blocked. Now there's a conversation. The telegram is being blocked. And you cannot already make phone calls on the telegram yet. So something would not. In a totalitarian state, you can do zoom still. You can use vpn, you can watch all sorts of shows that are available depending on the TV channel, you can actually get all the western movies. I mean, for example, Harry Potter is forbidden. And yet every young person in Russia watches Harry Potter for Christmas and New Year's. That has been a tradition for all these many years when Russia was freer. So absolutely, there is a war, and with the war, certainly many more restrictions. But this is not a dictatorship yet, and this is certainly not totalitarianism.
- [09:52]
A
Well, I know historians debate whether it's possible to have a totalitarian regime or whether there's ever been a true totalitarian system, because it's really hard to control every last thing. Right. But in Russia today, when you visited there and then you reported on your trip for Foreign affairs, you say there's a gray area and people are unsure what is allowed and what isn't allowed. And it can change without really any rhyme or reason. And even some people who are loyal to the regime, far right patriotic people who have, I guess you would call them influencers in the United States even they have come under scrutiny or being persecuted.
- [10:32]
B
Exactly. And that's what sort of this transition from authoritarianism to totalitarianism. By the way, if we talk about totalitarian regimes, I think Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union was quite totalitarian. I mean, they've been fantastically successful in that. I mean, there's really everything was belonging to the state in this sense. Ideology, life, economy, and everything else.
- [10:54]
A
Information. I mean, there was no Internet.
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B
Oh, absolutely.
- [10:57]
A
Well, it's harder today because of the Internet?
- [10:59]
B
No, because it's different history. I mean, Russia was free since the late 80s to, I would say, 2020, sort of free enough. I mean, certain degree of autocratic force. And Putin has been an autocrat almost right from the beginning of his existence. But it was autocracy with many ele of democratic life, which shrunk tremendously after 2022. But one of the things, I mean, the basis of my piece in many ways, is George Orwell and George Orwell's 1984. Because what's really remarkable about Russia, at least what I found absolutely fascinating, but horrible but fascinating, is that nobody has ever really lived in George Orwell. It was written as fiction. I mean, he never lived. I mean, he's examples that he drew upon was the Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany. But he didn't live in it. He was imagining how it is. And Russia today is very real. George Orwell. And you really sort of live in that absolute absurdity when demands of the state are so insane that you cannot even imagine that they are not fictional. And I give different examples. There is one. There is a Soviet cartoon character, Cheburashka, that everybody loved. And then of course, the famous Labubu, the Belgian Taiwanese owners who came up with this plush toy, Lashka. It's a plush toy. And so there's all these declarations that Cheburashka is patriotic because it's Soviet. And Labuba, oh my God, it's a Western influence. It has to be forbidden. Adult people who are in charge of politics, I mean, it's as if everybody turned into Lindsey Graham, basically make all this insane declaration.
- [12:46]
A
Even Harry Potter, right? Is supposed to be something.
- [12:48]
B
Even Harry Potter, yes, and even Harry Potter, they fight with Satanism. And so Harry Potter, I mean, of course, J.K. rowlings withdrew the rights to Harry Potter from the Russians. Not that it mattered because everybody's watching it. But also you would hear that. I mean, I think now it's the. I don't know what the English word for it is. It is before Lent, it's a carnival before Lent in the Russian tradition, they're burning kind of the devils or the representatives of the devils. And before Lent begins. And so I learned it was never happened before. I learned that Voldemort is being burned with one of those devil. He's like, well, that's great, we are on the same side. But no, it's the Western influence. Voldemort represents the Western influence. So all this Harry Potter forbidding, in many ways it's occult. It's not the real Christianity. We have to fight with that, say many Russian officials. And yet I was just in Moscow in December, they opened a new restaurant right next to where I live where there's a Harry Potter menu. And I would grace pleasure had pasta, a Slytherin pasta. It was all green and slimy and whatnot. So. And totalitarians, there's really cannot be those parallel Orwellian realities. And in Russia they are possible, they do exist. And that what makes it so fascinating, I mean, once again use this word because nobody has ever lived in Orwell. I mean, I think one of the examples that I give also is that 1984, first of all, it's the most sold book in Russia now, but it's also the most stolen book in Russia now. And it's being stolen and sold together with the Russian constitution. And so the joke is that you live in Orwell as in reality, but the Russian constitution, this wonderful utopian promise in where people have rights and they have right to assembly and the government is not supposed to punish you. And by the way, in the constitution, in the Russian constitution, it says there is no state ideology. So now Putin pushes state ideology of this kind of tradition, values all the time. So being in Russia right now, it's really like stepping into the pages of George Orwell. And I don't know how many countries have ever experienced that.
- [14:58]
A
I was going to ask you about the role of ideology or the absence of it. Here you write that, and this is surprising, maybe to some people you wrote in your essay before February 2022. So the start of the full scale invasion, Russian society was fairly open. You say official media was under state control, but independent outlets flourished. The Internet had no restrictions and people could read or watch what they wanted. When the war broke out, mass protests ensued. People were dumbfounded. Russia would launch an invasion of a neighboring country. Dissent, you say, was immediately met with retaliation. So Russia is an authoritarian police state, an autocracy under Putin, but not a totalitarian, tyrannical state. Yet the headline of your piece was Russia's Descent into Tyranny. But it seems that there is some kind of, I don't know if you want to call it a social compact, but a tacit agreement with the people. If you keep your mouth shut and you don't oppose the war, you can have most of what you want in life. Is that the deal?
- [15:58]
B
It was the deal, I think, originally, because the war was not supposed to last long, as you remember, for the first two years, especially the first year, it was when it's going to be over, when it's going to be over. Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, who's called until Putin the last dictator for a long, long time, he has been in charge of Belarus since the mid-1990s. So he kept saying, in fact, that, well, the war has dragged on and it shouldn't be and when it's going to be over. So everybody was waiting for it to end because it didn't seem plausible. That would be a long war in the middle of Europe, for sure. And so originally, because the war was supposed to be fast and quick and some agreement would be reached, then, okay, you don't protest and so you continue. Life is not going to get worse and it's going to be fine. But it wasn't supposed to be four years, but then it was four years. And then this decision for Putin is to. I mean, he's a KGB man, he doesn't step back. So every movement is going to be forward as long as he can, or it has to be concessions from others for him not to move forward. And so he hasn't stopped the war. It continues. And now it's very difficult to maintain that appearance of. I mean, in big cities you're still possible, but they're being daily shot by the Ukrainian drones. And certainly the territories on the border with Ukraine, they are at war, even if technically the military actions happen on the Ukrainian territory, which is another kind of this Orwellian contradiction. Remarkable Orwellian contradiction in a sense, is that Russia doesn't call this war. It's a special military operation. So all the bordering territories are at war in a time when the state never said that this is actually a war. So that illusion of normalcy is increasingly difficult to maintain. And that's why until the summer, there was still more options for independent outlets that a lot of them moved away to foreign countries, but they're broadcast in the Russia through VPN, on YouTube, which is blocked and so on. So now it's being more and more blocked to the point that there would be no entrance of any other information into Russia precisely because the war is now dragging on. Putin has no desire to finish it unless it is on his terms. And so he has to prepare an atmosphere in which there would know opposition voices, either liberal or not liberal or even patriotic, who want angrier war or criticize him for not pushing to more war onto Ukraine.
- [18:45]
A
Well, it's the nature of repressive authoritarian states is that you keep finding new people to crack down on. I mentioned earlier, based on what I learned from reading your piece, that even people who are considered loyal to the regime supporters of the war, they're being persecuted now, too.
- [19:01]
B
Prosecuted is a bit of a strong word. They're being watched and they're being warned. Some of the patriotic characters were made foreign agents. And foreign agent is sort of, at the beginning it was people who were receiving international funding for their work. But then as quickly as in the sort of we do it in Russia, quickly, those who disagree become the enemies of the people. You sort of move from people who have other interests in mind, and that's just a distinction into a complete violation of their rights, but also complete negation of their rights and their possibility to be Russian citizens, in a sense. And so some of those patriots became unexpectedly, to them, became foreign agents, just because they warned that no analysis, for example, I mean, they would analyze from a very patriarchal. They would analyze that Putin should do this, the Kremlin should do this. There's no analysis now required. So you shut up. There's absolutely no need for you. We know better. And anybody, any voice that doesn't say long live Putin or long, long live Russia is now being silenced. And it hasn't happened all of it yet, but it is a process. And so they've been warned. And there's all this nationalistic groups, many of them called patriotic groups, Call of the people. Another one is national unity and so on. So they're kind of half militaristic. I mean, vigilante groups. Before, they would, for example, fight with the migrants or fight with intellectuals who still would speak about their views in some remaining liberal bookstores. Now they're also being watched, this vigilante groups. So they wouldn't go too far. They wouldn't go too far from criticizing the liberals to criticizing the Kremlin, because the Kremlin needs absolute unity in a totalitarian way, although they haven't gotten that far yet.
- [21:02]
A
Sure. Well, you note here how there's museums, art bookstores, where people can go and spend the whole day to pretend that some level of normality persists in their country, while outside the museum, there's the state repression. I want to return to the subject of ideology here, because I started our conversation by asking you about now whether during wartime, societies such as Russia's, governments such as the one in Russia become more repressive the longer the war drags on. You say that under the Soviet system, I think most people know this, there was a state ideology to make sense of all the sacrifices the regime imposed on people. But in Russia under Putin, there was no ideological system. So an ideology had to be invented to cobble together unity for the war. What is the basis for this ideology and what purpose does it serve?
- [21:58]
B
Oh, this is such a fantastic question, because people are at a loss what exactly that is. And it has been going on, this sort of patriotization of Russia, if Russia is a democracy, I mean, in early Putin years, I call it baby Putin. In the 2000s, there was already this idea that democracy can be sovereign. We're not gonna be that Western democracy that Yeltsin, the first Russian president, brought in. We're gonna be sover, whatever that means. There is a vertical of power that claimed that Putin had decisions are made from the top and then go into lower levels of government. So there's always been this demand to centralize Russian power, which, by the way, for all of us, everybody who studied the Soviet Union, this is normal because it is a centralized power. I mean, in different iterations of Russian political systems, it kind of presents itself differently. But it's always this centralization. There is no competition because the tsar, general secretary of the Communist Party, the president decides, and then everybody else runs around and filling his orders. So when the war began, it had to become this kind of centralization. Russianness had to become more organized, because otherwise you're going to have a labubu most of the time, which they, by the way, still do have. And so Putin had this. I think it's 17 points of Russia being unique, civilization. So suddenly Russia has become civilizational. And there's 17 points. It includes traditional values. The marital union is between men and a woman, although there is some freedoms in that 17 points, and so on. And so that's another kind of an amazing Russian thing, is that the leader tells you how to think, and then you just go on and run and think it. And if you not think that way because you may have your own opinion, then you're going to be punished for not thinking this way. So sudd, suddenly every Western thing becomes a crime, even rationality. I mean, that's why I gave my example with Cheburashka against Labubu is like, that's an irrational point. But somehow west becomes. If west has a rational formula, then Russia becomes crazy, irrational. And so that's what they're trying sort of to push onto people. And I talk to young people when I'm there, and I ask them, what exactly does this Russian sovereign, unique civilization means? And nobody can tell me. The only thing they can tell me. Well, not the only, but one of the things they can tell me is that the more the young say that the more it is pushed on us, the more we are not going to follow it.
- [24:29]
A
Maybe young people like Western stuff, Western values, freedom.
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B
It's not even Western life. I mean, that's the thing. In the last 30, whatever, 35 years, it's a normal life. I mean, that's what it is. In fact, actually, that was a debate. Debate that was with Mikhail Gorbachev. I think he was meeting with George H.W. bush. And George Bush told him about sort of the now the Soviet Union is going to follow Western values. And Gorbachev said, no, these are not Western values. I mean, why do you call them Western? I mean, we want the same thing. And the great James Baker then said, well, let's call them universal. And so that's when it became universal. And so this is a universal value. They're not Western. These kids, young people, they don't live in Western values. They just think it's a normal thing. It's a normal thing to go to a restaurant and it's a, you know, it doesn't have to be Chinese or Indian. And in fact, in many, in protests, you see that in bookstores because one of the values is that you're supposed to use Cyrillic. Once you use English lettering, Latin lettering, but a lot of it is in English, then you are violating the unique civilization. And so what was remarkable, that in the last four years, a lot of bookstores which used to have Russian lettering, say books or, you know, the soft things that you sell in bookstores, candles or diaries, suddenly all of this in the last two, three years, they all, all got in English. I mean, it is a sign of protest. I mean, you cannot do anything else. But that's how you protect the idiotic distinction between Russian civilization and suddenly Western civilization, European civilization of which Russia is part of. And I think that's a big debate and that's a big divide between sort of all the people who surrender to the orders of the state and the young people who. I was told, I was in a bookstore and one young woman said, oh, who cares about all of this forbidding of English language? And she was drinking something which is very popular among the young. Horrible. It's orange juice with espresso and it's called the Bumble in Russian. The Bumble. I mean, it's eight in Russian, the Bumble. And she said, well, look, this is a drink that actually came from Berlin. She tells me. I wouldn't know that that came from Berlin. It's called the Bumble. It doesn't use the Russian word for the bumble. It has an English name, the Bumble. And so that's how they basically live in absolutely parallel reality to this Russian values that are supposed to be everything against the West. They do not live against the West. They live in this normal, global, universal environment.
- [27:08]
A
Sure, I mean, Russia does have a rich cultural, artistic tradition, literature, art, science, what have you. But that doesn't seem what Putin is pushing here. He's pushing some kind of anti west worldview.
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B
Russia is a European culture. It is culture that grew out of European formulas. I mean, and they love Pushkin, Alexander Pushkin, the greatest Russian poet, early 19th century. He was writing his first poems were in French. I mean it wasn't in some Mesopotamian language, it was in French. Dostoevsky, who is considered incredibly Russian. Dostoevsky's novels, his work grew out of European models, out of Dickens, out of German Romantics and so on. So Russia is, is part of that. I mean it's an extension of the European culture on its own, with its own characteristics, but still. And then it cross pollinated back to. I mean imagine Thomas Mann without Dostoevsky and so on. So that artificial distinctions are ridiculous. I mean look at the Nutcracker. The Nutcracker is the. Tchaikovsky is the composer of the universe. But Putin kind of says no, no, Pushkin is ours and we are just to going, going to use. If you are patriotic, you use Pushkin, like read Pushkin and see that Pushkin was a global writer. Nikolai Gogol is a global writer. And so all of this is incredibly contradictory because you cannot claim. And of course with Ukrainian influence there's a lot of canceling of Russian culture, which I find completely idiotic, by the way. Less so in America, although in America too, but a lot of it in Europe. So basically put Putin and Europe do the same thing. I mean they circumvent reality and try to make culture responsible for either patriotism or anti Russianness. Which culture is by the way, way above that, way beyond that. It's timeless, it's universal. And we can talk about Berth Hohen 9 Symphony, the Ode of Joy, as you may remember it was played for I think Adolf Hitler's birthday in 1932. I remember as a kind of side of the great Germanic power of rising Nazi Nazism. And then it was played in 1989 in Berlin as a note of joy as a symbol of the European Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
- [29:38]
A
The conversation continues. Tap subscribe now in the show Notes for early access ad free listening and all of our bonus content or go to historyasithappens.com. And there's also the issue of whether Putin believes, truly believes he's de nazifying Ukraine and the use of World War II memory when it comes to the causes and the origins of this war. I do want to talk about the war now and the reasons why it was started, why it's being fought fought. If it is a civilizational war in Putin's mind against the West. Well then Ukraine became a battlefield and a tug of war between the west and Russia. And you wrote a piece for Project Syndicate shortly after the war began. Four years ago, I revisited it to prepare for a conversation. And what you predicted has come true, that the war would prove to be ruinous for Russia. Not entirely. The Russian economy has withstood, for the most part, the sanctions, although things are getting rough. But on a larger level, it has not worked out the way Putin promised. Do you have a better understanding today, do you think analysts in general have a better understanding today as to why Putin began the war when he did and the reasons why he did it than we did, say, four years ago?
- [31:03]
B
I think so, yes. And I think that what I wrote is that basically it was a war with philosophical arguments of Nicola and Lillian the. The philosopher and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, that all these Slavic countries need to stick together. And this is one of the reasons of Russian strange development is because it's very hypothetical. I mean, the same thing with the Bolshevik Revolution. In 17, Marx had a theory, but it's the Russians who jumped in and started filling it in and kind of making into reality. It's almost like what Orwell is today. Orwell wrote fiction. And so suddenly Russia is just like, oh, let's live in it. It works fine. So in many ways, I mean, it's the size of Russia, it's the history of Russia. So Putin had this idea, but it was more than that because it was. I mean, Ukraine was claiming. And Volodymyr Zelenskyy was offering Ukraine as a bloodstorm, sort of against Russianism. For Joe Biden, he couldn't do it with Donald Trump because Donald Trump didn't think Russia was, or Putin was an enemy. But Joe Biden was promised that he's going to help Ukraine to be separate and completely independent and anti Russia. And that is not wrong. When the Russians say, or the Kremlin says that Ukraine was prepared to be anti Russia, it really is true. So I think the civilizational part was on both sides because Ukraine was used by the west to undermine Russia in many way. But of course, the Russian side, or Putin could have used different methods to fight with it, to not physically fight with it, to deal with it in a different way. And he chose not to. And he chose actually use bombs and tanks and everything else. And that's where these are the origins, is that the west is saying Russia is an enemy, and Putin says, okay, Russia is an enemy. We're gonna fight with you through Ukraine.
- [32:55]
A
In the battle between democracy and autocracies, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security. This is the real test, and it's going to take time. So Let us continue to draw inspiration from the iron will of the Ukrainian people.
- [33:12]
B
If I were Putin, if I were the president of Russia, of Russia of 11 time zones in the 23rd year, 22nd year of my existence, I too would be thinking, with all the declarations that is made from the west and through Ukraine, that the Western power is out to get me, that the Western powers are gonna use Ukraine to take me out, out the way Nicolas Maduro was just taken out of power right now. Putin really believed in that. And so that's how the war began.
- [33:42]
A
How though? So in 2014, Ukraine, under Yanukovych was about to sign a trade deal with the European Union that had been in the works for many years. The negotiations under pressure, Yanukovych backed out of that trade deal with the eu. From Putin's vantage, from Moscow's vantage, it would have hurt the Russian economy, Russian trade with Ukraine. Putin followed that by invasion, invading, annexing Crimea. And then we had the low level civil war starting in 2014 in the Donbass before the full scale invasion that went on for eight years. Given those facts, why did Russia believe Ukraine could be a threat?
- [34:20]
B
I was the last academic assistant of George Cannon, the great American diplomat. I mean, he had many one liners, sort of soundbites that I still remember and actually wrote some of them down. And one of them was saying, saying that the problem with America, it judges the countries by the way it thinks about them the way they should be, not by the way the countries think they themselves should be and how they behave. Strategic empathy is exactly true.
- [34:46]
A
Strategic empathy is necessary, right?
- [34:49]
B
Empathy was not the word then, so he would never have used it. But yes, he was. I mean, one of the things he also said was when I was taking notes for him at some point, I underlined it three times. He said that appeasement is not containment and contrast, entertainment is not appeasement. There's different things. So when you actually talk to your adversary, it doesn't mean that you're appeasing them. So yes, and I think if you look at it from Putin's point of view, for me that makes a lot of sense. Because once you have this kind of conversation about Russia's strategic defeat, if I were like, show me any country that wants to be defeated. This is not an excuse of Putin, this is not in defense of Putin. This is only an explanation that from his perspective, after 22, 23 years in power, he hears that and he takes it personally. Because in Russia, power is always personalized. And Volodymyr Zelensky, who remembered that Joe Biden was on his side. Joe Biden was promising that he's going to stand with Ukraine. Vladimir Zelensky, in, I think it was spring 21, was making declarations from his point of view, completely correct, that Crimea needs to be taken from Russia and it may be taken from Russia by force. Putin hears Crimea is going to be taken from Russia by force. Force. What is his thinking? His thinking is you need to defend Crimea. It cannot be taken from Russia by force. This is, once again, Zelenskyy is in the right. It's legally the territory of Ukraine. However, when you have a smaller country and a larger country that always reacts to issues that it has, geopolitical issues that it has by using force, I would probably not make declarations like, if you are going to prepare something of that nature, do it not as a showman the way Zelenskyy is, do it in some other way the way Kissinger would have done it. And so I can explain Putin's reasoning. It doesn't make them right, it doesn't make them legal. I actually think in the long run, ultimately Russia, as I wrote then, it is a great disaster for Russia, what happened. It's horrible for the future. But in geopolitical terms, from the way Russia is, what Putin did, regrettably, unfortunately,
- [37:03]
A
shockingly, makes a lot of sense because it's Ukraine. Ukraine has a special place in the Russian mind and Putin's mind. Historically, civilizationally, we're not talking about Poland or the Baltics or some other country that's less important to Russia. It's because this dealt with Ukraine. So the idea that NATO might one day, of course we know this is not going to happen. NATO would expand to Ukraine or even Georgia. That's different than, say, the Baltic states joining NATO.
- [37:31]
B
Well, of course, in the Baltic states, they fell off in 91, and that was it. In Ukraine in 2012, just shortly before the annexation of Crimea, I just looked. I was writing something else and I just looked at them actually writing about Canada and I looked at the numbers. So in 2012, 35% of Ukrainians in the western regions and Lviv and other parts wanted to join NATO. 39% there did not. In the east of Ukraine and central east Ukraine, there were 5% in 2012 who wanted join NATO. So for Putin, as of 2013, when the Maidan began and whatnot, that was a sign. That's why the Russians say Ukraine is being dragged into NATO, because in 2012, the numbers were completely different. Of course, the other side of it is that by annexing Crimea, by having the civil war, actually Putin stopped. It was interesting. He didn't want to go further in 2014.
- [38:33]
A
And he could have invaded Ukraine then.
- [38:35]
B
Yeah, he could have. And he chose not to. So these actions obviously made Ukrainians rethink their desire to join NATO. In fact, it was like with the Sweden and Finland is that Finland had no problem ever. I mean, it never was afraid, was not afraid of Russia. In fact, when the invasion, the full scale invasion began in 22, then president of Finland said, well, we kind of made you in NATO, but we don't have to, we don't need to, because we really don't think that there is any threat. And yet ideologically, Russia has become a threat. And one of the things that Donald Rumsfeld used to say that often the preparation of war or the narrative, narrative of war can become one of the most important causes of the war. And that's exactly what we're seeing happen on all sides.
- [39:23]
A
I mean, this is a fascinating debate that's been going on for four years. Fascinating discussion. Certainly not for the people who've had the bombs falling on them for four years. Whether it was geostrategy or, say, notions of security, or whether it's these larger reasons, civilizational reasons, or national prestige, national greatness. If Ukraine is allowed to, quote, unquote, join the west, then that's a blow to Russia's national prestige, notions of Russian greatness. I think it's all of these factors, it's hard to parse them or to make, say, a pie chart, to say it's 15% of this or 20% of that. But I think all of these things are in play here. Would you agree?
- [40:04]
B
Oh, completely. And you just put it very, very well. Exactly. All of them. And what's horrible in this is that by pushing all of these notions for Russ, it actually loses on every front. And that's what's so remarkable. So it wants less NATO and that's why the war in Ukraine happens. Well, there is more NATO. It wants national prestige. It lost all of the prestige. In fact, Russia was. Soviet Union was the liberator of Europe for all these many years. Now not only Putin rethinks The World War II results, now the whole Europe is not thinking that Russia is liberated of Europe anymore and doesn't look at the Soviet army the way it used to before. And that's also very Orwellian. I mean, in many ways, whatever you push forward ultimately gets back to you with a negative result. And that's exactly what we're seeing with the war in Ukraine, because fine, Putin is going to get that territory would be, say, I mean, I'm just imagining, say it could be this division between north and South Korea on the niche. Like what? It's going to be a wonderful thing that this country will develop and love.
- [41:11]
A
I mean, what are they winning? They're winning a wasteland.
- [41:13]
B
Well, they're the win. So what are they winning? I mean, first of all, it's going to be rebuilt for decades, centuries to come. There is no money. Who is going to invest into this with a population that is going to hate you anyway? And Ukrainians are great at partisan war. It's the guerrilla war. So what's the future in all all these victories that Putin supposedly is going to have? So it is this kind of the Russian conundrum is that you think you're going to move forward, but actually you're moving backward. And one of the greatest lessons of the Cuban Missile crisis, which just turned what, 64 years it was that you actually think of the outcome of your actions and think, okay, well I'm actually going to make a political decision here rather than a military. We won. And that's exactly what Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy did at the time. And unfortunately Putin didn't follow that path, probably because he's not a politician first and foremost. He's a KGB lieutenant colonel and that really defines most of his decisions and his actions.
- [42:17]
A
Good segue to my last question, by the way. I did watch the Kevin Costner movie From the early 2000s thousands the other day, 13 days about the Cuban Missile Crisis actually. Movie's not bad, even though Kevin Costner's not a very good actor.
- [42:31]
B
But anyway, I would deeply disagree. I don't think it was not bad, but if anybody wants to do so.
- [42:37]
A
You didn't like that movie, then no
- [42:39]
B
dramatization wants to do something useful if they're interested in the Cuban missile crisis. BBC just did a fantastic 10 part podcast called the Bomb.
- [42:49]
A
Oh wow, okay.
- [42:50]
B
Kennedy and KHRUSHCHEV and it's 30 minutes an episode and it's a wonderful. This is not a self promotion. Although we were Max Kennedy, JFK's nephew, Bobby Kennedy's son and I, we were narrators for this, for this podcast. But the job BBC did in putting it together is really quite remarkable. They tried to take into consideration all sides and really look through minute by minute of how decisions are being made, who made them, who helped, who didn't and whatnot.
- [43:22]
A
I will check that Out. I mean, the movies, only a movie. So my last question to you then is where is this leading then? If the war drags on, if it can't be won, however, victory might be defined. And at this point, with all the losses in blood and treasure. Right. I don't know how you define victory. If the state becomes more and more suffocating, if the economy continues to deteriorate, it would seem any country under these conditions would be ripe for public unrest. I don't want to say we could see the end of Putinism, but Nina, could we see the end of Putinism here?
- [44:01]
B
Well, this is not sustainable. But when has sustainability ever stopped? Russia, please. So sustainable is really not a category that is applied to Russia. And also protests are not. You can predict them. It doesn't mean that they're going to happen this way. Yes, I mean, I think logically, rationally, that's what it should be. But also I want to go back to the beginning of our conversation. That's exactly why all the screws are getting tighter, precisely because the potential for unrest is there and it has to be nipped in the bud. And so everything has to be forbidden for that not to happen. So it's going to be more than just a police state, it's a FSB state, it's a KGB state, which is more than just more repression. Let me put it this way, more repression than police. But yes, I think the way you are describing it is exactly how it should be. Doesn't mean that it's going to happen this way. In the time that we are thinking it might happen. Another year, another two, another five, it will happen, but we don't have a timeline for that. We cannot predict at what point would be breaking point and the appraisal will happen. But one thing I am certain of, I can be wrong. But for now I am certain of it because I just last year I published a book in Russian called Nikita Khrushchev, that of the system sort of talks about Stalinism and then how you get out of Stalinism. And so what I learned in writing the book, that for every Stalin in Russia, there is a Khrushchev. So when Stalin is gone, as you say, Putinism is over. When Stalin is to going, Stalinism is gone too. It continues as a way of thinking. It can continue as some sort of methodology in certain parts. But Stalinism was over when Stalin died in 1953. So Putinism will be over. Something will remain. But that Putinism of Putin will be over. We just don't know when sure.
- [46:02]
A
Could it be a popular revolt or a coup or something? Because I don't know. I mean, revolutions are difficult.
- [46:08]
B
Well, Russians really very rarely protest en masse. I mean, this is not what Russians do. And that's why they kind of the Russian reaction, that's what I wrote in the piece as well, is that they kind of adjust and circumvent. It's called Paradox of Tyranny because you're so afraid of the consequences of the fallen tyrant that you adjust and excuse yourself by sort of supporting or tolerating that tyrant. So revolutions are revolutionary rare. Uprisals are rare. They do need a leader, which Russia at certain time doesn't seem to have. So we don't know how and when it will happen. And if something, I would imagine that it would be probably more of a revolution or some sort of unrest of the elites by the elites than the regular population. Although once again, I think these scenarios are many and I would not dare to predict any of them. Russia has tended to view the expansion of freedom and democracy as a threat to its interests. The opposite is true. Free and prosperous societies on Russia's borders will advance Russia's interests by serving as sources of stability and economic opportunity.
- [47:23]
A
On the next episode of History As It Happens. It is the next installment of our American America 250 series. We'll be joined by historian Alan Taylor. Hey, make sure to sign up for my free newsletter. Just go to Substack and search for History As It Happens.
- [47:39]
B
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