How the Cold War made the modern world

Summary

History Extra Podcast | How the Cold War Made the Modern World
September 16, 2025
Host: Danny Byrd | Guest: Prof. Vladislav Zubok

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into how the Cold War shaped the modern world, challenging common narratives with insights from Vladislav Zubok, author of The World of the Cold War. The discussion moves beyond a simple East-West binary, emphasizing global complexity, the nuanced roles of ideology, the emergence of new nations, the inner collapse of the USSR, and the Cold War’s profound economic and societal legacies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Was the World of the Cold War? (01:47–05:30)

• Childhood in the Soviet Union: Zubok recounts the ideological certainties that shaped his upbringing and the eventual disillusionment he faced as a young adult.

  “I grew up in the world of the Cold War that was essentially my Soviet world...with this strong ideological certainty...that Communism could work and we could come to that future happiness for...our own proud country and maybe for the rest of humanity.” (02:42, Zubok)

• Cold War’s Shifting Nature: The period was marked by major transitions—from post-WWII devastation and atomic anxieties, through the apocalyptic fears of the Cuban Missile Crisis, to détente and shifting underlying assumptions about the possibility of a global war.

  “But the nature of this Cold War was protean. It kept changing its basic assumptions, and more importantly, unspoken assumptions kept changing.” (05:18, Zubok)

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2. Challenging the Black-and-White Narrative (05:30–08:38)

• Myth Versus Reality in Ideology: Zubok contests the simplistic view of the Cold War as a mere ideological standoff, emphasizing how ordinary people, even in highly ideological societies, often disengaged from official doctrines.

  “The last thing people thought about was ideology. You know, the more people are subject to this message from above, in particular, the less people like it.” (05:51, Zubok)

• Ideology in America and the USSR: Zubok found Americans to be even more deeply ideological—if unconsciously so—than Soviets, largely because Americans considered their worldview “natural,” not ideological.

  “When I confronted it with my own, of course, residual Soviet beliefs, I said to myself, wow, this country is ideological through the core like no one else I’ve seen before.” (07:43, Zubok)

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3. The Term "Cold War": Western Creation, Soviet Rejection (08:38–12:14)

• Western Language, Soviet Suspicion: Terms like “Cold War” and “geopolitics” were taboo in the Soviet Union; they were seen as Western inventions or even reactionary.

  “When you mentioned geopolitics, people who read the literature, they would say, ah, this is this reactionary, fascist sort of ideology...” (09:08, Zubok)

• Origin of the Term: Zubok credits Walter Lippmann—rather than Orwell—for popularizing “Cold War” in the American discourse, influencing how the conflict was framed in the West.

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4. The Global South: Decolonization and Frontlines (12:14–18:07)

• More Than a Two-Superpower Standoff: Many newly independent nations, especially in the Global South, became key players, seeking aid and choosing paths between the US and USSR models.

  “Those liberated states...looked at both superpowers...and began to ask, what’s the best road to modernization for us?” (13:44, Zubok)

• Case Studies: Examples include Egypt, India, Vietnam, and the American response to prevent Soviet influence, such as the 1953 coup in Iran.

  “Much of the Cold War is in reality about those countries.” (16:52, Zubok)

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5. Why Did the USSR Collapse? A Reassessment (18:39–24:55)

• American Myths vs. Soviet Reality: Zubok challenges the belief that US military spending or Reagan’s policies alone caused the collapse.

  “Most of Americans simply do not want to admit it was sheer luck. Because the idea is...Reagan won the Cold War by bankrupting the Soviets...Well, as a historian, I took those two claims seriously...I didn’t find evidence that actually forced them to retreat and collapse.” (19:17, Zubok)

• Gorbachev’s Role: The transformative effect of Gorbachev, who brought a unique ideological revolution, eschewed violence, and unwittingly enabled the Soviet collapse.

  “This is all because of Gorbachev. Because otherwise…I keep telling my students, you don’t believe it, but look at North Korea...Could the Soviet Union have become like that? ...Of course.” (22:42, Zubok)

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6. Beyond Superpowers: Yugoslavia, Tito, and the Non-Aligned Movement (24:55–29:10)

• Tito’s Independent Path: Yugoslav leader Tito resisted domination from both Washington and Moscow, eventually helping to form the Non-Aligned Movement.

  “As we scratch every good Stalinist, we find a good nationalist, so a good Croatian. Tito built his own Yugoslav empire and managed to antagonize pretty much everyone...” (25:13, Zubok)

• Global South Strategies: Many new states leveraged both sides for aid and avoided direct superpower confrontation.

  “It was smart choice for the part of the global south to be sort of sitting on the fence, dangling both legs in different directions and trying to milk both sides in terms of loans and economic aid.” (28:38, Zubok)

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7. Redefining Capitalism (29:10–34:19)

• Cold War as Economic Crucible: The Cold War forced capitalism to reinvent itself—initially via state intervention (Keynesianism), and later through the free-market revolutions of Thatcher and Reagan as responses to crisis and competition with socialism.

  “Only towards the end of the 50s, and mostly in the 60s, the future of capitalism was being discussed. And...leading thinkers and leading economists never actually contemplated the possibility that capitalism could manage its own by itself without the huge interference and oversight of the state.” (30:52, Zubok) “That was the moment when capitalism reinvented itself again...that coincided with the terminal problems of the Soviet Union, the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union itself. And that...gave immense booster to that belief...that we discovered the recipe of eternal dynamism of humanity.” (32:58, Zubok)

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8. The Post-Cold War Disillusionment in Russia (34:19–38:10)

• Reality After the "End of History": For many in Russia and the former Soviet bloc, the euphoria of the Cold War's end gave way to hardship, disillusionment, and social turmoil.

  “As I was shuttling back and forth between the ruins of the Soviet Union...and the glittering Western world that was in its sort of Fukuyama-like euphoria...I couldn’t see more the contrast between these two kind of details of the two cities...” (34:54, Zubok)

• Unmet Expectations and Backlash: The sudden collapse of the old order and lack of immediate prosperity bred disappointment and set the stage for nationalist populism.

  “People waited for a cornucopia after the end of communism...any sane observer at the time would have said there would be a backlash. There would be. It’s almost inevitable.” (37:24, Zubok)

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9. Historical Analogies: Weimar Germany and the Russian 1990s (38:10–40:57)

• Parallel Traumas: Zubok echoes and historicizes the analogy between post-WWI Germany and post-Soviet Russia—great power collapse, economic chaos, and the temptation for strongman rule.

  “The more I think about it in retrospect, the more I apply this analogy with...Weimar Germany...that this country, this big, unpredictable country, might one day pull out a trick on all of us. That wouldn’t be pleasant.” (40:22, Zubok)

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10. Are We in a Second Cold War? (40:57–45:51)

• A Different World Order: Zubok disagrees the world faces a “second Cold War,” noting today’s conflicts (US–China, Russia–West) lack the entrenched ideological and global fuel of the Cold War.

  “So far [the] conflict does not look as entrenched, as inexorable, as being fed by global developments and global ideologies as the first Cold War was.” (41:16, Zubok)

• From Mars to Mercury: The shift from “the Time of Mars” (war) to “the Time of Mercury” (trade and deal-making), personified by politicians like Donald Trump, marks today’s less ideological, more transactional order.

  “Mercury is his God. And that proves my point. We have a much more robust, if less idealistic, less ideological international trade system...than we ever had at the start of the Cold War…” (44:31, Zubok)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The really theological protagonist in the Cold War was American, not Soviet.” (07:54, Zubok)
• “Much of the Cold War is in reality about those countries [the Global South].” (16:52, Zubok)
• “Gorbachev was not corrupted enough by power. It’s true. It’s true, Danny. He was not corrupted enough.” (21:34, Zubok)
• “That was a smart choice. This non-aligned movement didn’t go very far, but it was smart choice…” (28:38, Zubok)
• “That gave immense booster to that belief, again highly teleological belief, that we discovered the recipe of eternal dynamism of humanity.” (33:16, Zubok)
• “We just want to cut deals and make money. That’s it.” (44:44, Zubok)
• “Capitalism is very strong.” (45:38, Zubok)

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Key Timestamps

• Soviet childhood and ideological certainty: 02:42
• Nature of Cold War changes: 05:18
• Soviet perception of ‘Cold War’ & term’s Western origins: 09:08 – 11:40
• Global South, decolonization, and their agency: 12:27 – 17:45
• Why did the USSR collapse?: 18:48 – 24:55
• Yugoslavia, Tito, and Non-Aligned Movement: 25:08 – 29:10
• The reinvention of capitalism: 29:22 – 34:19
• Post-Cold War hardships in Russia: 34:41 – 38:10
• Weimar–Russia analogy: 38:18 – 40:57
• Are we in a new Cold War? The Age of Mercury: 41:11 – 45:51

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Conclusion

Prof. Vladislav Zubok offers a rich, nuanced portrait of the Cold War’s legacy—one defined not only by superpower rivalry, but by decolonization, economic transformation, evolving ideologies, and the lived experiences of millions. His challenge: to look behind the familiar headlines and celebrate the “protean” nature of this world-changing conflict, while being alert to the lessons history offers for navigating present-day anxieties and shifting world orders.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host Introduction]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. For most of the latter half of the 20th century, the world was frozen in a standoff. The Cold War era was defined by the ideological fissure between capitalism led by the United States and communism espoused by the Soviet Union. But in a new book, Vladislav Zubok challenges much of the accepted wisdom that has shaped popular perceptions about the Cold War since 1991. Danny Byrd spoke to him to find out more.

[Danny Byrd]

Your book's title is the World of the Cold War. Now, I was born shortly before the Berlin Wall came down, so I remember next to nothing about the Cold War. And for the benefit of those people listening who are either too young or might even need reminding what exactly did this world look like?

[Vladislav Zubok]

Well, Denis, you may be called lucky, to be born shortly before the wall fell, because it was the period of immense exaltation and hopes for the future of the. I grew up in the world of the Cold War that was essentially my Soviet world. I grew up in Moscow, in the Soviet Union, and went through my happy, rather happy childhood with this strong ideological certainty that my adults, for some reason, maybe out of caution, did not disrupt until I reached my university years. The certainty was that Communism could work and we could come to that future happiness for, of course, our own proud country and maybe for the rest of the humanity. So little me could not really understand why so many people around the world opposed that great idea. And of course, later, when I grew up, I was disillusioned myself. But again, this was the world we lived in for several decades, and it cannot be brushed with one kind of color and one sort of instrument because it lasted for too long. It started right after immensely distorted, destructive world war, at the end of which two atomic bombs were used against civilians without any discrimination. It should be remembered. So this is why I call the first part of my book the Time of Mars, the God of war, of course, meaning that the world wanted peace. People yearned for peace, but they remembered all too freshly how many millions died and how indiscriminately power could be used. And if we fast forward to the 60s, we're already in a different era. We already had the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was probably the peak when probably everyone in the United States who had some kind of sane reasoning thought, that's it, that's it. Our bunkers, our shelters will not save us. That's the end of the world. So it was pretty apocalyptic. But after that, we had a more limited but still savage war in Vietnam waged by the United States. And against this, the Soviet Union suddenly began to look as a more conservative, less revolutionary, less threatening power. So we had the time of detente. So many times you would say, I lived through the Cold War. But the nature of this Cold War was protean. It kept changing its basic assumptions, and more importantly, unspoken assumptions kept changing. And I would say the biggest, most important unspoken assumption was about the possibility of war. Great war, global war.

[Danny Byrd]

Now, one of the big ideas in your book is that the Cold War wasn't simply this black and white battle of ideology that the west ultimately won. Could you elaborate on how your interpretation challenges this widely held perspective?

[Vladislav Zubok]

When scholars write about ideology, they mean that people all walk and take sun on the beach and Drink and make love. They think about ideology. In fact, because I grew up in a highly ideological society, and ideology was something that the state crammed into our consciousness day and night, I know exactly that the last thing people thought about was ideology. You know, the more people are subject to this message from above, in particular, the less people like it. So I mentioned my own kind of naive communist beliefs, but you know that they began to dissipate as soon as I reached the age of puberty. Other things distracted me from that, from the promise of communism. And when I became student of Moscow State University, I already knew that Soviet history was bloody. Soviet history was far from idyllic, and there's no, like, horizon that we need to reach. In fact, it was a major point of uncertainty and anguish for me as a growing young man who decided to become a historian. It was like the horizon disappeared. So what's there? What's out there? There was a horizon. So when I began to study the other side of the Cold War, for instance, most classically, of course, American view of themselves and American ideology of, let's put it crudely, Cold War liberalism, because America called itself different names, but the name they loved most was, we are the leader of a free world. And later on, Madeleine Albright called it indispensable nation in the same way, we're the leader of a world. So freedom was a key word always. Throughout the Cold War, freedom was contested. Who's free? Is a black American, as free as a white American, and so on and so forth. But later I discovered, particularly when I ended up in the United States for the first time, and it was a special story when I crossed the Iron Curtain, so to say, for the first time, I discovered that Americans are much more ideological than the Soviets. And the reason for that is very simple. Because in America, they told Americans that we don't have ideology. And it was like an air they breathed, but this air was not cold air. It was called something else. You know, it's natural. And when I confronted it with my own, of course, residual Soviet beliefs, I said to myself, wow, this country is ideological through the core like no one else I've seen before. And this country is highly nationalistic. So my views of the United States, and then they, of course, lived there, and then I worked with Americans, I had many friends and became American citizen myself eventually. So. But I still think that the really theological protagonist in the Cold War was American, not Soviet.

[Danny Byrd]

And just to zone in on your point there about the phraseology of the Cold War, such as leader of the Free world and that kind of thing. You mention in the introduction to your book how the term Cold War was almost used ironically within a Soviet perspective. And I was wondering if you could go a little bit into how the geopolitical standoff was perceived east of the Iron Curtain when you were growing up, how was the Cold War perceived within the Soviet Union?

[Vladislav Zubok]

Well, all these words, Cold War and geopolitics were bad words in Soviet academia, in Soviet ideological discourse, and just a polite conversation. When you mentioned geopolitics, people who read the literature, they would say, ah, this is this reactionary, fascist sort of ideology pitting some countries against the others, invented by that ideal of British imperialism, Harold Mackinder, and of course, developed later by those apologists of Adolf Hitler. So when you say geopolitics, you immediately get into this ideological conversation. And of course, I repeat, the usual kind of reaction of any normal kind of Soviet educated person is, oh, I'm out of it. I don't want to talk about this stuff. Okay? So for the first time, I read the books about the Cold War. Of course, when I was given those books written by American authors such as Gabriel Kolko, who was a revisionist, or Arthur Schlesinger, who was arch liberal, Orthodox, and they used this word, Cold War, right and left. So gradually, even I got this contagion and began to use this word without kind of thinking, what's behind this word? And of course, we know that. Who invented it? Walter Lippmann used it on the COVID of his response to a major, major document written by his rival, George Kennan, who sat in Moscow and thought, the Soviets, the Soviets are fanatically aggressive. You cannot deal with them. You cannot cut any deals with them. The only thing that we need to develop is containment. And Walter Lippmann in 1947, in his essays published everywhere across the United States, said, well, we should contain them in a certain way, in a more focused way, but in such a way that we would have Cold War. And it was so influential, Walter Lippmann was so influential that this got stuck. Usually some students tell me, oh, before it was George Orwell. George Orwell used it, yeah, sure, British, of course. But as always, Americans steal the show because they are much more influential, right? They have a better press and more powerful press. So I got this term from American authors. And for the first five years as I began to read the literature, and I was already. I was already in the late 20s at the time when I read about the Cold War, I basically got what Americans thought the Cold War was about. So it took me a lot of time, my immersion into newly opened Soviet archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union, my immersion into Western archives, including the British archives, by the way, to see this is what they. They didn't talk much about the Cold War in the archives, by the way. They talked about myriad of other things. But the word Cold War was coined by publicists and historians to kind give it a proper framework and angle. So I got interested in specifics at the expense of this generic name, Cold War. And I still think the title is okay, the World of the Cold War. You need a title for a book or. Danny. Right. You cannot live without a title.

[Danny Byrd]

We often think of the Cold War as a standoff between two superpowers. But your book highlights how the newly independent nations of the global south were on the front line of this conflict. How did those emerging states shape the Cold War?

[Vladislav Zubok]

I think it gave the very fact that the Cold War lasted for so long, let's call it longevity of the conflict. Also, we should add to this very quickly the long life of the Soviet Union, which may be surprising to some listeners. But look, the Soviet Union was a post totalitarian, post revolutionary creature that kept insisting on being like the carrier of the flame of that revolution, right? And all other so called totalitarian states. That's another great Western invention, actually, you know, the Italian fascist invention, totalitarianism. But anyway, it was attached to the Soviet Union. It got stuck. The Soviets of course hated it and always denied it. But the truth is that was a special post revolutionary state with huge control over many things, centralization and so on and so forth that continued for so many more decades than its twins, let's say, right. Who coined that term? They perished and the Soviet Union existed. And I would say it's coterminous with the Cold War. And not coincidentally, not coincidentally. And that brings me back to your question about the importance of newly liberated state, the Global south and the continuing decolonization. Because there are some historians say, the Cold War. What is the Cold War? It's basically the history of decolonization. And at first I thought I would disagree with that. But then I thought there's a great truth actually in this definition, alternative definition of the period, I would say. So the period from 45 to, I don't know, 70s, late 70s, was a period of decolonization and the emergence of new liberated state. But that's a great, great point because those liberated states, particularly in the global south, beginning with Egypt and Syria and Iraq, then going to Vietnam, Vietnam and Indochina in General, and then so on and so forth, Great part of Africa. They looked at both superpowers, one United States, liberal democracy, very capitalistic, very individualistic, very rich, but also violent. And they looked at the Soviet Union with the promise of communism, much poorer, also violent. And they began to ask, what's the best road to modernization for us? Americans of course, said, no, it's us, it's us. We have stages of development. We'll send you aid, we'll send you powerful American dollars. But they had too many strings and conditions attached to it. And the Soviets at first at least came and gave money and tried to build electric dams and tried to build steel mills such as in India. So at some point between rough 1955 and 65, it looked like many of those states would follow the Soviet Union. And Americans were apoplectic about it. They were truly apoplectic. And they even resorted to some coups, like in Iran in 1953, with explicit goal to prevent that country of Iran of following Soviet development path. And they even elected and supported the autocrat, the Shah of Iran, basically dismissing all talks about democracy together with their British friends from secret services, of course, because they thought, you know. Well, of course we know we're supporting authoritarian son of the beach, but it's our son of the beach who will follow American example of development. And this is what counts. The most important thing is to keep that Soviet plague of misdevelopment, as Americans call it for themselves, misdevelopment out. And later on we'll figure out what to do. Okay? So much of the Cold War is in reality about those countries. And of course the first such major, major Asian country to choose its way was China. And of course China, against all predictions in 49, followed the Soviet Union. As Mao Zedong said in 1949, we lean on one side. And it was not American side. So Americans couldn't understand that it was a major slap on the face of their enormous wealth and prestige and so on and so forth. And then others followed and Indochina followed and Africa followed. So if you imagine the Cold War as a process, it was sort of like centripetal process. Sorry for my elementary physics mechanics, I don't know when. And other countries would try to use the Soviet Union and the United States to help them to modernize. And that became the main fuel of the Cold War. And that became the main fuel of the Cold War. And revival of the Cold War happened in Africa in the 1970s. And of course for Americans at the end of the 70s, Nicaragua was added to Cuba. Cuba became communist in 1961 and Nicaragua in 79. And and Chile almost became communist under Allende, overthrown by Pinochet later on. So for Americans, Latin America was under threat. And that was the source, the main source of American anxiety about Soviet threat.

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[Danny Byrd]

Now, a lot of people assume the US won the Cold War because the gap in technology between the superpowers and the expenditure on nuclear arms ultimately brought the USSR to its knees.

[Vladislav Zubok]

And.

[Danny Byrd]

But you suggest it was more about what was happening inside the Soviet Union itself, what was really going on behind the scenes that led to its collapse and the end of the Cold War.

[Vladislav Zubok]

Well, one American friend kept citing for me that proverb. I forgot part of it, but it goes like this. God loves fools, drunks and Americans. So Americans are very lucky people. Throughout much of its history, they were, as Trump says it, isolated by two beautiful oceans. Right? They didn't face aggressive enemies, Canadians and weaker Mexicans and the Spanish empire before Mexico. So Americans were lucky. And they were incredibly lucky in the Cold War again, in my view. And most of Americans simply do not want to admit it was sheer luck. Because the idea is if you go through American literature, or even more if you go through that, I don't know, social networks where they discuss these things, if ever they would say Reagan won the Cold War by bankrupting the Soviets, by bringing down the price of oil. This is one fable. In another fable, Reagan outspent the Soviets and the Soviet leviathan was crushed by the weight of military expenditures and military commitments. Well, as a historian, I took those two claims seriously. I went to Soviet archives and literature and I found a lot of evidence that the Soviets disliked their commitments, that the budgetary expenses were very high. I didn't find the evidence that actually forced them to retreat and collapse. I found an evidence of an ideological revolution that was an absolutely amazing development when Gorbachev became the head of the party and all of a sudden began to say, first quietly to his smaller group of new thinkers, as they called themselves, and then broadly, by spreading glassness to the country, basically saying Lenin promised a different socialism. We need to return to len socialism. And of course, Lenin was such a savage totalitarian, you may say, killer, that even Stalin could be proud of him, right? But Gorbachev's Lenin, for some reason, turned out to be an intellectual who wanted to give a beautiful dream of socialism to Russia and the rest of the world. And then this bad Stalin, that cop, came and kind of, you know, destroyed that beautiful dream. So in other words, Gorbachev came as an arch ideologue and a country of cynical people. Where did he come from? So in one of the reviews, a person whom I know reviewed my book and said, Gorbachev was not corrupted enough by power. It's true. It's true, Danny. He was not corrupted enough. But because there was such a person in the Soviet hierarchy, the entire Western world, but particularly Americans, became incredibly lucky because Gorbachev guided the Soviet empire. First external empire, and then, you may say misguided if you miss that empire. Right, Misguided Soviet empire is this Pied Piper of Gammon, so to say, with all the communist rats into the water and all got drowned. They didn't go drowned. They became catalysts. Rather, I should immediately correct the old fable. All those rats said, we don't want to be Communist rats, we want to be capitalist rats in the end. But Gorbachev led this process beyond belief. So that you read. And the most important sources to be read are not even Soviet sources, although they are important because you go through endless speeches that Gorbachev used to convince his comrades and convince himself that he was on the right path while taking the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union off the cliff. Right? That's amazing. But even more important is to read American and British sources, for instance, where those officials who thought they knew the Soviet Union very well, well, who lived with the Soviet Union all their life and who lived in the world of the Cold War all their lives, right? Those people were scratching the back of their head, was saying, I cannot believe it. It cannot happen. He will never do it. And of course, next week Gorbachev would do it. And they would say, yes, but then that's the absolute red line. He would never cross that red line. Of course, Gorbachev crossed another red line until he lost control of the events. And the events, because people were not fools, thought interesting opportunity for us, particularly people in Hungary, Poland, Baltic republics of the Soviet Union. They decided, well, it's time to take action. And actually, this guy is amazing. This guy, by the way, does not want to use force against us. He has More tanks at his disposal than the rest of the world. And yet he says he's against violence, even in domestic affairs, against the use of force. So people were not fools. People knew it already by the first months of 1989. So this is why we remember 1989 as the year of miracles. The fall of Berlin Wall, you know, the victory of Solidarity in Poland and the end of communism everywhere in Eastern Europe. And then the first steps inside the Soviet Union itself of developing opposition, multiparty system, free press and so on and so forth. This is all because of Gorbachev. This is all because of Gorbachev. Because otherwise. I keep telling my students, you don't believe it, but look at North Korea. North Korea is much smaller country with limited resources. It survived all right and remained as it is. Could the Soviet Union have become like that again? With some modifications, but protected by stockade of nuclear missiles? Of course. Of course. No doubt about it.

[Danny Byrd]

Your book also touches on the unique role of leaders like Tito and the Non Aligned movement. How did Yugoslavia and others navigate the Cold War on their own terms? And what kind of influence did they have on the broader conflict?

[Vladislav Zubok]

Well, Tito was a Stalinist through and through. He was in Moscow in the late 30s as a communist emigre, political emigre. And by the way, all emigres lived in one place. You know, there was a hotel that they raised now in Moscow. I would have restored it because you could cover the entire hotel with plaques. Here lived such and such luminary. Pretty much every important Chinese leader lived there. Every important leader of the communist movement lived in that hotel anyway. So he could have been liquidated by Stalin's secret police, but he was not. He probably survived by informing and helping the secret police, informing another communist. So he was a Stalinist who wanted to be part of that new empire of call it Soviet socialist empire after 1945. But as we scratch every good Stalinist, we find a good nationalist, so a good Croatian. Tito built his own Yugoslav empire and managed to antagonize pretty much everyone on the boundaries of what he called Yugoslavia. He quarreled with the Americans, quarreled with Italians, including Italian communists. He quarreled with everyone else. So Stalin became increasingly irritated with him. Because for Stalin it was absolutely normal that Stalin was a great imperialist. Absolutely normal. But how dared him to be also an imperialist? That's unheard of. So in other words, the long story short, Stalin excommunicated Tito in 1948. And lo and behold, Tito decided not to submit to Stalin's will, not to go and get killed docilely like many other communists did. And he began to survive. The British helped him, Americans helped him to a certain extent. But then Tito had a problem of identity. After the death of Stalin, Khrushchev, the next Soviet leader, came to Yugoslavia and basically said we were wrong. Comri Tito, please rejoin the Communist camp. And Tito had a better idea because he had such a big ego. He was small. Stalin as an imperialist of the Balkans, he decided, why don't I play a role in creating a non aligned movement. He reached out to Arab nationalists such as Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, who later on nationalized the Suez Canal from the British and the French and so on and so forth. And Tito in a sense was right because in such a way he became a much more weighty and much more crucial partner for the Kremlin than had he joined the camp again. He would have become one of the minions and so on and so forth. Maybe more respected minion, but still a minion. So his choice was very important. But there were other reasons why other leaders of other countries such as Indonesia, India, Burma and others, decided also to be outside the Cold War. Well, that was no brainer for them because they thought they would avoid the calamity of siding with one side and being on the forefront of that great ideological, geopolitical and military confrontation. In this way they would avoid the fate of some countries we know that had already become sort of the forefront of by the Cold War calamities such as Korea, divided and ravaged by the real war and later Vietnam, don't forget. So that was a smart choice. This non aligned movement didn't go very far, but it was smart choice for the part of the global south to be sort of sitting on the fence, dangling both legs in different directions and trying to milk both sides in terms of loans and economic aid.

[Danny Byrd]

And something that really jumped out at me was your point about how the Cold War redefined capitalism. That's not a connection people often make. And I was wondering if you could elaborate on exactly what you meant by that.

[Vladislav Zubok]

Oh, well, you know, capitalism of course was a major crisis. And this is why we had the Soviet Union and this is why we had the Great Depression bringing Europe into the vortex of the Second World War. And after 1945, what people do not realize, not only that Europe was ravaged, the centrality of European countries, they used to be proud owners of much of the rest of the world, right with their colonial empires, particularly the British Empire. That pride was severely challenged by post war realities. And capitalism could not Even feed the metropolis. I mean, how many years the British had to live on rationing cards? So the choice between colonies and feeding your own people was palpable at the time. And moreover, the uncertainty about the future of capitalism was tremendous, tremendous. And that lasted into the 50s as well. Again, people tend to forget how because later successes they were, were projected into the past. And for the people it was like one breezy walk from, I don't know, the late forties to European integration. And then all great things happened and then the British joined a European Economic Community and so on and so forth. So that sort of repeats the same kind of teleology that I had imbibed as a Soviet child about communism. But you know, indeed people began to leave much, much better than before. But that was the fact. Only towards the end of the 50s, and mostly in the 60s, the future of capitalism was being discussed. And for that reason leading thinkers and leading economists never actually contemplated the possibility that capitalism could manage its own by itself without the huge interference and oversight of the state. We call it Keynesianism. But it also can be explained by uncertainty and bad record of capitalism accumulated during the preceding decades, particularly the Great Depression and the inability to keep the global trade order that led to many, according to many, to fascism and Nazism as imperial divides and so on, so forth, forth. So fast forward to the 70s. In the 70s it looked like capitalism again reached its limits and began to require its old diseases, primarily stagflation, high energy prices, the beginning of the decline of gainful employment for industrial workers, and the start of de industrialization in the leading countries. But that was the moment when capitalism reinvented itself again with the wisdom of hindsight. Today we look back at the late 70s and the 80s, the Thatcher revolution, the Reagan revolution, and we see nuances that people could not see before because people at the time viewed the crisis of the old capitalism. And what people did, they linked it to too much socialism. Remember Thatcher, remember Reagan? For American socialism is a funny word because they never had socialism really, but you know, they use it all the time, of course, I mean more state regulation, meaning more socialism for them. So their solution was to get rid of that state socialism and allow capitalism to rise like Atlantis, sort of Ayn Rand sort of ideology. Stand up and show the greatness of what you can do. Mr. Capitalism. And from that time on, I guess that coincided with the terminal problems of the Soviet Union, the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union itself. And that gate gave immense booster to that belief, again highly teleological belief that we discovered the recipe of eternal dynamism of humanity. And we have this formula, macroeconomic management of the world that will fit all locks and all doors and all problems. And of course, it was teleological illusion that we had. Good 25, 30 years after that, I should say. And you, I think, already grew up at that time, Danny. You saw that the going was pretty good at some point, but then things began to sour and we kind of reached the phase and we look back to the immense period of evolution of capitalism, and we are back to the drawing desk and scratching the back of our head and saying what to do next.

[Danny Byrd]

Now, the end of the Cold War has been regarded as the indisputable triumph of capitalism and of liberal democracy, something that Francis Fukuyama described as the end of history. But from Russia's point Of view, the 1990s looked very different. How did Russians experience that post Cold War moment? And how has it influenced the trajectory of U.S. russia relations in the decades that have followed?

[Vladislav Zubok]

Well, I should say I belong to those lucky Russians for whom the end of the Cold War and the Soviet collapse work. A terminus with new, immense opportunities. Well, immense or not immense new opportunities, rediscovery of the rest of the world, the fall of the Iron Curtain. I began to travel as an. I met lots and lots of interesting people, participated in various conferences, became part of fantastic transnational communities and networks. So I have nothing to complain about. But as I was shuttling back and forth between the ruins of the Soviet Union, those ruins that were called New Russia, and the glittering Western world that was in its sort of Fukuyama like euphoria, don't worry, be happy sort of state of mind. I couldn't see more the contrast between these two kind of detail of the two cities, so to say, with hugely impoverished people in Moscow and by the way, in Kyiv and by the way, also in the Baltic states and other parts of the Soviet Union as well. Proud Georgia, little state and then the Caucasus. Used to live very well, exceptionally well in the Soviet Union. Traveled there to interview one of the heroes of the Cold War and Eduard Shevardnadze them. And lo and behold, I found shanty towns instead of a proud cities, villages completely impoverished, with poor people begging for everything. I was beyond belief how, you know, those proud rich Georgians were looking at me and saying, are you from Moscow? Said I'm from Moscow and said, we used to go to Moscow and have high of our life with that stack of money. And they showed me with both hands how big stack of money they had. During this, of course, because of shadow economy and various deals that they cut in those good old days of the 70s and the 80s during the most corrupt phase of Soviet socialism. So it couldn't be much greater contrast. And I don't remember I was thinking like, oh, that's a bad omen. I didn't think like that. In fact, I think I changed the way this and said sooner or later some kind of trickle effect would happen. And I did believe in global. Oh, in a big way. I thought, you know, sooner or later poor Georgians would become richer. By the way, it never came. Thirty years later, they still much poorer than Muscovites, despite their pride in being Georgian democracy. Ukrainians are pretty poor after, you know, period, because it's the war. It's the war. But even before the war, things were not going too well for the majority. Right. So it kind of the idea was that people waited for a cornucopia after the end of communism. And the millions of people thought, well, we got rid of communism. Now we're waiting for this happiness to come to us. And Westerners help us, Western advisors, Western economists help us. And any sane observer. It wasn't me, any sane observer at the time would have said there would be a backlash. There would be. It's almost inevitable there would be a backlash. But I didn't think so at the time. So I'm not, not. Not that, you know, great wise, gray, wise man of the 90s.

[Danny Byrd]

It's quite interesting in your conclusion, you mentioned that a lot of people have started to draw analogies between that period in Germany after the First World War.

[Vladislav Zubok]

Right, right.

[Danny Byrd]

Where that economy was so volatile. And then you have this sort of traumatized, beleaguered population which then look to. To extreme demagogue.

[Vladislav Zubok]

Yes, yes, yes. Because of course, that transition from the Wilhelm Germany before 1914, very proud country, you know, country that was growing very fast. And the British Empire was worried, everybody was worried that this country would absolutely dominate in Europe in every possible way. All of a sudden, after 1919, after, you know, the reparations, not paid after, you know, and it didn't quite translate for most of the people what happened. We know now, with better analysis, that their macroeconomic stability was badly ruptured and basically their money stopped working. The same industrious Germans, the same industries, they kept working, but the money were ravaged by hyperinflation. So nobody understood it quite right at that time. And then came this guy Hitler. I applied it to the 90s in the Soviet Union, but also in Ukraine, also in other parts of the Soviet Union that got liberated itself from the Communist dictatorship and that absolutely impoverishing economic model that the Soviets had. But they didn't find happiness. They didn't find happiness right away. In fact, the long 90s were grueling times. And the more I think about it in retrospect, the more I apply this analogy with the Germany after World War I, Weimar Germany, I call it. But then I talked to a British friend of mine who was the last British ambassador to the Soviet Union, Roderick Braithwaite, the man who published many excellent books himself. And he said, oh, Vlad. He said, oh, we use that analogy all the time in the early 90s among ourselves, foreign diplomats sitting in Moscow and seeing what is going on out there. So my analogy turned out to be not original. It turns out that Western experts had used it all the time and they were. Were afraid, justifiably afraid, that this sort of Russia, the early 90s, Russia, despite its good intentions and the fact that its leadership at the time claimed to be democratic and even wanted to join NATO and wanted to join Europe. Right. That this country, this big, unpredictable country, might one day pull out a trick on all of us. That wouldn't be pleasant.

[Danny Byrd]

Looking at the world right now, tensions between China and America, Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine. There's a lot of talk about a new Cold War. Do you think your book can offer any wisdom on how we should navigate this moment in time?

[Vladislav Zubok]

Well, I would start by saying that I don't believe that we are in the second Cold War. Not for reasons that I don't see a conflict brewing between Russia and Europe or between the United States and China. We have this conflict, but this conflict so far does not look as entrenched, as inexorable, as being fed by global developments and global ideologies as the first Cold War was. My analogy is very simple. Historians often say, Danny, that the Second World War was extension of the First World War. Well, some historians even say that was a long world war with some hiatus in the 20s and the 30s. And then this guy in Berlin came and said, we must have a replay, right? But I don't see. I don't see the potential of such replay in such an extension today. Maybe that's actually not such a bad news, because you may say, well, who is then this Russian leader in the Kremlin? What does he want if not a replay of greatness? But mark you, his idol, Putin's idol is Peter the Great, Not Lenin, not Stalin. Well, Peter the Great defeated the Swedes But Peter the Great did not really fight against global international system. He wanted to bring Russia into that system. So, okay, after a couple of millions of dead people, he and Catherine the Great succeeded in doing it. So that's a major, major difference, in my view. And people go through the entire list of differences, of course, the lack of global ideologies, the la of that global uncertain south that we already discussed. That was the main fuel of the first Cold War. The main fuel, if you compare it to sort of nuclear reaction that that was nuclear fuel for the Cold War. That came from Africa, came from the Middle east, came from China, came from Korea, and so on, so forth. Indochina. Right now, they're all happy to play the game inside the already existing global order. They're just not happy with word liberal. And sometimes they say, who defines what is liberal and what is not? We are all for this order, but we want to change, to tweak it somewhat so that they wouldn't be in a supreme ideological judge deciding how democratic we are, how liberal we are. We just want to cut deals and make money. That's it. And this is why I called my last not chapter concluding part of the book, the Time of Mercury. And as I was finishing the book, I was thinking of that Roman God of trade, Mercury. I didn't think that Trump would become the president for the second time, although again, I'm not a sage. I should have thought about it, but I didn't. But then Trump came, and what he does exactly that, exactly that. He goes to the Middle east recently and tells them all those who try to turn you into liberal democracies are just idiots. I want to cut deals with you. I'm a Mercury. I'm not like Jefferson or whoever or Wilson. So he wants to cut deals. Mercury is his God. And that proves my point. We have a much more robust, if less idealistic, less ideological international trade system, international financial and economic system than we ever had at the start of the Cold War or maybe even in the 1970s. People don't remember that in 1971, the United States withdrew from the Golden Standard. They basically played the same trick as the British played in the early 30s during the Great Depression. But it didn't lead to a Great depression in the 70s. It led to stagflation. Then Thatcherism came and other things. But the United States already kind of did those things in the 70s. And capitalism was precarious in the 1970s. Capitalism is very strong.

[Podcast Host Introduction]

That was Vladislav Zubok, whose book the World of The Cold War 1945-1991 is out now. Published by Pelikan.

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