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Intelligence Squared
Putin, The Soviet Union and The Rise of Russian Imperialism, with Mikhail Zygar (Part One)
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A
This episode is sponsored by the Planet Visionaries Podcast Planet Visionaries is back with a new season hosted by Alex Honnold, who you might know from his incredible solo climb of the 3,000 foot El Capitan in Yosemite national park this season. You can hear him in conversation with people who are not just imagining a better future, but actually building it. Here at Intelligence Squared, we love conversations that explore real solutions and real progress. In this podcast, you'll hear from scientists, explorers, activists and storytellers from around the world who are reshaping the future in practical and inspiring ways. In an upcoming episode, Alex speaks to Chris Tompkins, a conservationist and former CEO of Patagonia who has dedicated her life to preserving millions of acres of land across South America. In 2017, this vision led to one of the largest private land donations ever when her foundation gifted an area that the size of Denmark to Chile to create a new national park. What makes this show so compelling is that it highlights the human side of climate work. It's not just policy or numbers, it's people taking meaningful action to create a better world. Listen in to be part of the movement to reimagine our planet's future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch on Apple, Watch, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you're listening right now. Right now, there are talented people out there who could take your company to the next level. Do you want to hope they see your job post before your competitors or do you want to match with them with Indeed Sponsored Jobs? Hiring Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other sites. Give your job the best chance to be seen with Indeed sponsored Jobs. They help you stand out and hire quality candidates who can drive the results you need. Sponsored Jobs Boost your posts for quality candidates so you can reach the exact people you want faster and it makes a big difference. According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than than non sponsored jobs because you reach a bigger pool of quality candidates. Join the 1.6 million companies that sponsor their jobs with Indeed. When we're hiring, we find being specific about what we need really matters. With Indeed sponsored Jobs, you can set detailed requirements such as experience level, skills, industry background and actually get candidates who meet them. Instead of sifting through applications that don't fit, we end up with people who've done the work before and can prove it. That precision is what makes the difference for us. Plus, with Indeed sponsored Jobs, you only pay for results. No monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts. Just a boost whenever you need to find quality talent fast. People are finding quality hires on Indeed. For right now in the minute I've been talking to you. Companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed according to Indeed Data Worldwide. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Now with Indeed Sponsored Jobs and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com intelligencesquared just go to indeed.com intelligencesquared right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com intelligencesquared terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the Right Way with Indeed.
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with the exiled Russian journalist Mihal Zegar. Zegar joined us at the Kiln Theatre in London to discuss the fall of the Soviet Union and why that period can help explain the failure of democracy today in Russia. A renowned Russian dissident journalist, Zagar fled into exile after publicly condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. His new book, the Dark side of the Earth, draws on hundreds of interviews from Mikhail Gorbachev to ordinary citizens and builds a vivid account of the collapse of the USSR and its legacy today. Now let's join our host, chief international correspondent for cnn, Clarissa Ward, with more.
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C
Thank you.
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D
Thank you so much everybody for joining us this evening. Thank you. Michal, who just got off a red eye flight from Miami, so if he falls asleep halfway through, we won't hold it against him.
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C
I really wanted to conceal that fact.
- [05:05]
D
Oh, whoops, sorry. And for those of you who aren't familiar with Mikhail, he is an extraordinary writer and thinker and also friend. Little known fact about Michael he was a war correspondent for years, but before going on to become the founding editor in chief of Dost or in English TV Reign, which has or was a vital critical outlet constantly putting a microscope on state propaganda under the regime of Vladimir Putin. He is an incredibly prolific writer. He has won awards, he has written an a number of brilliant books. This one, the Dark side of the Earth, is his latest, but I would also encourage everyone to check out all the Kremlin's men. And his work has come at considerable personal sacrifice and so has his outspoken stance. He is living in exile, forced to leave Russia after taking a very vocal stance on the invasion of Ukraine. I believe you were sentenced to. To eight and a half years. Eight and a half years in absentia. And I think it's easy to forget what kind of courage speaking out like that takes, particularly when you have friends and family and loved ones and you're forced to leave your home. And so we're here tonight to talk about this book, which is kind of an extraordinary retrospective of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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A
And.
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D
And I think what I found really interesting about it is that, well, many, many things which we'll get into. And I should add, by the way, I will sort of rabbit on for a while and then after 45 minutes to an hour, I will open it up and you will all be able to ask Michal your questions. But what I thought was interesting is that the collapse of the Soviet Union is something that has been covered extensively, it's been written about extensively. And I wanted to start by getting to grips with what drove you or what compelled you to feel like this history needed to be retold, re examined and understood in a different light.
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C
Thank you. That's the very question I asking myself all the time. And I do have the answer because I think that we got it wrong. We don't know this story. All the books, most books written about the collapse of the Soviet Union were written in the beginning of the 90s. We used to think that we know how that story ended. Ronald Reagan said, Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall, then good guys prevailed. Then Francis Fukuyama declared that that's the end of history. Berlin Wall fell, that was the end of the Cold War and that's it. But actually that was our perspective and our illusion 35 years ago. And looking at this moment, at this process, from today's point of view, it's clear that that was not the end of history. Probably that was not the end of the Cold War. And are we really sure that that was the end of the Soviet Union? We used to think that Soviet Union bloodlessly collapsed. But if it is so what is happening right now in Ukraine? Isn't this still Soviet Union collapsing and Soviet generation of people who are running Russia right now trying to keep that Soviet mentality and to suppress post Soviet generation trying to impose their Soviet narrative. I do think that we took that part of story as the end of history. But that was the end of the first season of the TV show and we are right now in season five and we missed the important characters. We were so focused on Gorbachev and Yeltsin and Reagan and Bush. So we missed everything Important, or at least a lot of important things, because we used to think that the attempt of a coup in the Soviet Union in August 1991 was a failure. And all those people were ridiculous. They could not hold the power. They lasted for three days and then it was over. And they are, they are always overlooked by historians and people like them. All the hardcore conservative Soviet heavyweights always seem ridiculous because, yeah, they were outdated. They couldn't do anything. If so, why? Russia today is the country where gka, where this coup had obviously prevailed. It looks much worse than as if that Soviet junta had won. Obviously, Putin is the hero apparent of those people. And actually, if we check, it would be clear that all those leaders of the Soviet junta, they were celebrated, they were honored. Khrushchkov was Putin's advisor, Minister of Defense. Yazov was given several orders of merits. So Russia today is not that country that we were imagining when all those books about collapse of Soviet Union were written. And I think the world today is completely different. So we need to react, rewrite this story and rethink and refocus and watch all the important characters.
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D
So in a sense, what I'm understanding is that we have viewed this through the rose tinted glasses of the liberal world order as a triumph of man's instinctive inclination towards freedom and towards democracy. When in actual fact you're saying that. And you go into this in like, really brilliant, cogent detail in the book. But a lot of what precipitated the decline of the Soviet Union was less about freedom fighting and more about the collapse of institutions that had sort of stagnated from the inside out and were no longer fit for purpose.
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C
You know, I'm not sure that we used to think about collapse of Soviet Union as the result of freedom fighting. At least in many parts of the world. The stereotype is quite the opposite. At least in Russia and in many countries of, as we call it now, global south, that's the result of the Western conspiracy. Vladimir Putin said that that's the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. And according to Russian propaganda, not only Russian propaganda, that was the result of CIA, you name it. A lot of people think that, yeah, that was unfortunate. And a lot of Americans, truly, maybe not only Americans, think that, yeah, we won the Cold War, we defeated Soviet Union, that's why Soviet Union collapsed, because we like arms race, oil prices, yeah.
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D
They lost it, but also our ideas were better, is the kind of prevailing feeling in the U.S. let's say, you know, the Russian, we have genes in rock and roll.
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C
The Russian subtitle of this book is quite, quite different from the English subtitle. Actually, British and American subtitles are different. And Russian is something completely different. So the Russian subtitle is the story of how Soviet people defeated the Soviet Union. That's a very important approach for me because I wanted to show that the collapse of Soviet Union would have been impossible if only Soviet Union, if only, sorry, Soviet people didn't hate it. And if only Soviet people wouldn't start believing in something completely different in democracy. My. Let me tell our audience one of the symbolic stories I have in my book which explains why I had to write it. We don't have usually we have never had the explanation why the coup of August 1991 collapsed. They were pathetic. They couldn't do anything. They were just people who ran KGB and Soviet army and Communist Party of Soviet Union. But somehow they couldn't do anything. My method is always looking into personal explanations because I think that politicians are not that clever. Sometimes stupidity explains everything, or personal motivation, or love and sex and food. And so I think that I found the person who really defeated that coup. And that was the wife. That was the wife of Ministry of Defense. Her name was Emma. And she suffered. She was in a car crash in May 1991. She was in coma for a few months. She barely survived. And her husband loved her a lot, but he didn't want to tell her anything about their plans. She. He was trying to conceal all the preparation for the coup from her. And in the end, she learned about the coup from the TV news. And when she learned about that, she came with all her bandages to the Ministry of Defense. She started crying and she started demanding him to quit. She was telling that that's crazy. You cannot be a traitor. You should call Gorbachev. You should apologize. You will be cursed by your country and by. You should not do that. Immediately withdraw tanks from Moscow. And she kept demanding for three days till the moment when the first three men were killed accidentally in Moscow. And that was the final straw. That was the moment when he said, yes, Emma, you're right, and he withdrew tanks from Moscow and that was the end of the coup. So basically, Mma Yazova, that woman of. She was 56. Somehow she was the product of that Soviet culture of that era. She somehow believed that that was wrong. She believed that Soviet Union had to be transformed into real democracy. It was not her personal heroism. She was part of that society that believed. So she became the instrument. So I wrote this book about those people who really Believed. And it's really important what people believe in.
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D
And I love as well about your book is that we have a tendency sometimes to see things in these very Manichaean kind of black and white world worldview and good guys and bad guys. And there are so many characters in this book either who you haven't heard of or you think you've heard of, but you have like a different twist on them or a different detail of them even. You're talking about Yuri Gagarin, where you start the book, the first cosmonaut to travel into space. And you talk about him reading Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22, which is probably.
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C
The last thing, the last thing he.
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D
Read, the last thing you'd expect him to read. And he said what was his. He had a great line. The novel is excellent. The guys should read it. But I think it sort of touches on this kind of complexity about Russia in general that few people in the west really understand or appreciate that, like, nothing is totally straightforward necessarily, or black and white. And this is true, obviously, beyond Russia. But how did you go about choosing which subjects you were going to hone in on? And I'm thinking now also of when you talk about the way Solzhenitsyn writes and you say that in Russian, his Russian is often like, quite awkward and clumsy. All these, like, small details that build up like a much more complex portrait. And I just wonder how you went about like, choosing the characters, choosing which of these idiosyncrasies you would tease out and. And why you went to such lengths in terms of the research and the storytelling to. To tease those threads out.
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C
Thank you for that. Yeah, I think that this book is. Is kind of jigsaw. Yeah, I was trying to choose important, the most important characters. And still there are a lot of characters.
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D
All of them are 200 conversations you had, is that correct?
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C
I had 200 interviews with different people. Not all of them are other characters. So I was talking to most former politicians of that era, leaders of so called popular fronts of different former Soviet republics, from Lithuania to Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ukraine or Belarus, to former first secretaries of communist parties of those countries, former first presidents of those republics, and also to a lot of rock stars, a lot of cultural figures. So it was. Yeah, I was interviewing people, I was getting their stories, trying to show what was really happening, because I truly believe that it's much easier to show than to explain. So I. All those conversations, all those real stories, they. They can bring you there sometimes. I knew that I had to explain because, you know, Russian version. And I wrote both. I, I wrote Russian version in Russian, English version in English.
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D
So it wasn't just a direct translation. There's no.
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C
No, no, no.
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D
Wow. No, you were just a glutton for punishment.
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C
I had to explain a lot for non Russian speaking audience, which is not obvious. For example, you mentioned Solzhenitsyn. But for example, I realized that I needed to explain what's wrong about Gorbachev, right? Because Gorbachev speaking in Russian doesn't sound like Gorbachev speaking via interpreter in English because he sounds like the perfect intellectual and the visionary and almost messiah of democracy. If he's interpreted, if he's translated to English, his Russian is very awkward and dry.
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D
He's quite famous with journalists who cover Russia for being pretty verbose and a bit dry.
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C
Was very peculiar even for the Soviet politicians. Soviet politicians never spoke clearly. Most of them had, most of them really were not educated enough to have possibility to talk. But actually he was, he was educated. He was a lawyer from Moscow State University. But still, still they educate the intellectual in their family was his wife who was from school of philosophy of Moscow State University, and she was the intellectual in chief in their family. And he never learned how to speak properly in Russian. And that's one of the reasons why he was never probably treated seriously by a lot of people in the Soviet Union, because Soviet intelligentsia never could really believe that he knows what he's saying because like, his, his language was so weird. And so, yeah, he was, he looked like the, you know, guy from Kolhos who is trying to look like a philosopher but doesn't really understand what, what he's saying. At the same time, you know, I spent a lot of time with Gorbachev. I interviewed him number of times. He was very nice person, not an amazing statesman, a genius politician, or I would say genius bureaucratic politician. So he knew all the rules of the intrigues in the Communist Party. He was a brilliant man. He was very nice and, and it was clear that he loved his wife. I can tell you one story that is not in the book. Once he was talking to a small group of journalists and friends and it was rather late and he was rather old and after drinking several bottles of different bottles of wine, let's put it this way, because I was drinking wine, he was like, okay, and now let's go to visit girls. And everyone is like, and it's like past midnight. And he's like, yeah, yeah, we need, we need to go to girls, let's go. And he's Going to his car. And someone is, yeah, goes to his car as well, and he's got some security. And he goes to the cemetery, to Novadieviche Cemetery, the place where his wife Raisa was buried. So he meant he was trolling us and he wanted to see our reaction. But his intention, his desire, his only desire was to go to talk to his late wife who died many years before that. So. And she was really the only love of his life. And really a lot of things he did, as he explained it himself, he has always known that she wouldn't go to bed with him if his arms would be covered with blood. So he could not afford any violence because of her, because of her political values.
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D
And what I find really interesting about the way you talk about Gorbachev as well is that, you know, to many, perhaps in Russia, he was seen as a traitor. To many in the west, he was seen as a hero. And you portray him in a much more human way where he's kind of neither of the above. And I wonder like, you know, if you can kind of encapsulate what to your mind, his legacy is.
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C
You know, just recently I was trying to explain the main plot of the collapse of Soviet Union in several short sentences.
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D
Good luck.
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Yeah.
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And I did it that way. So this is the book about the old, about the superpower that used to be really great and used to be running the world with its ideas and arms. And there, there is an old elite that doesn't want to go and to give way to the new generation. And then there is a young leader who says, yes, we can. And he inspires a lot of people. Yes, we can have democracy and freedom. He inspires a lot of people. He gets Nobel Peace Prize. And then there is another leader who is much more aggressive and he's tough and he appeals to those who had never been privileged.
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D
I see where we're going with this.
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C
Who had never been privileged. And there is a new. And you know, and nothing sticks to him. Whatever he does, it doesn't ruin his reputation. It's even better if he's controversial. There is a new movement around him and it's clear that the first one is Mikhail Gorbachev and the second is Boris Yeltsin. So for me, this is not only the story about, about Soviet Union, this is the story of superpower on decline. And it's about, probably it could be a story about America today because we see a lot of very far right movements and make Soviet Union great again, as the, obviously the slogan of so many politicians in this book.
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B
Foreign.
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A
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- [27:20]
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D
One other thing that I notice which.
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C
Is there is nothing about Russian exceptionalism or Gorbachev being something that we have never seen before or after.
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D
Right, right. No, absolutely. Did you have to write it differently, though? Because I'm very struck now about this idea that you wrote the book differently in each language. Which, when you're writing about Gorbachev and when you're writing about Yeltsin, do you have to slightly change the framing or the tone to make it?
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C
No, no, no, no. I just, I. When I knew that something is not clear to. When I was writing my first book, all the Kremen's Men, I found that approach that I'm writing it for those people who are going to live in 100 years and they will know nothing about us. Or probably I'm writing it for the aliens who are going to come and they know nothing about Russia, about Putin, about Putin's inner circle. So I need to explain, and I was first criticized by a lot of Russian journalists for explaining to my readers who is Arlo Pugacheva in that book. Because for Russian readers explaining who is Ola Pugacheva, isn't it?
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D
It's like explaining who Barbara Streisand is or something.
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C
Yeah, but Al Pugashevi is Barbra Streisand plus Cher plus Aretha Franklin plus Tina Turner at the same time. And that's the one person. And she is still alive. So. Yeah, but you know, a lot of people, a lot of people from younger generation, a lot of Russians who are 20, they learned who is Ola Pugacheva this year because she gave an interview, protested against Putin openly two months ago and they didn't know who she was. So, yes, now I know that. Yeah, I need to explain everything because American audience and young Russian audience, they are on the same page or British audience, international audience, no one has to know. So I think to be respectful to the audience, you need to explain something. For example, Russian book is. Is twice as long. Because I had, you know, I needed to show different perspectives from different places of the Soviet Union. I knew that I cannot focus on Moscow and Kremlin, so I had to show Lithuania and Azerbaijan and Armenia and Ukraine and Belarus and Kazakhstan and other as well as China, Poland and other angles. So in Russian version, I have all of these. Moldova, Kyrgyzstan. Because. Yeah, because Russian audience, Russian speaking audience is not going to be intimidated. On the contrary, it's very important lesson. Anti imperialistic lesson, I would say, because everything is very important. I knew that it would be impossible for, for international audience, so I kept the key parts. Nagorno Karabakh. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, I'm sorry, but the readers have to suffer and read why Nagorny Karabakh is important, what was happening there, why Trump cannot remember that it's not Albania and a Birbaijan. So, yeah, Armenian and Azerbaijan.
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D
You know, I was really struck by a lot of the cultural references and descriptions as well. And particularly earlier on in the book, you talk about the role of alcohol in the Soviet Union, which sounds timelessness.
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C
And vodka. That's the name of the second chapter.
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D
Yeah. And I found that really interesting because I think that obviously people have a stereotype, and maybe it's based on Yeltsin or whatever, of like Russians and vodka, but, like, talk to us a little bit more about what that's actually about in the context of this time frame and this idea of, like, this numbing.
- [33:53]
C
You know, I'll start with mentioning that this is a very personal book. I start every chapter with one page story about my own family. I was 10 when Soviet Union collapsed, so I remember the last years. I cannot remember the last 30 years, but I have a lot of important family stories about that. And each chapter starts with that. And one of the heartbreaking stories to me is the story of my mother and her alcoholic father, my grandfather coming home for New Year's night, which is.
- [34:34]
D
Like Christmas, basically, in Russia. It's the celebration.
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C
Yeah. More important than Christmas, like the most important holiday. Breaking the tree, breaking all the decorations, beating her mother. And she's hiding under the table, thinking that how she wanted that the nuclear war would start immediately, right now, because she wanted everyone to feel as miserable as she was. So drinking and vodka and timelessness and vodka. That's the quote from Vladimir Vysotsky, one of the greatest Soviet poets, Russian poets of the Soviet period. That was, in a way, the symbol of that despair that generations were feeling. They knew that their life is a dead end. They cannot achieve anything. They cannot. They will never be free. They will never do anything with their life different from something that was predetermined by the authorities or by their people, by their parents. They cannot choose the place where they are going to work because they are going to distribute, to be distributed after the university or the college. So vodka drinking has become the. The only solution. And I have a lot of different stories from the 50s, from the 60s, from the 70s. And that's why it was probably the most pathetic reform of Gorbachev, because he started his tenure as a president with this dry law, which was probably needed because the whole population was heavily drinking at the same time. That was the worst possible idea to win the hearts of the people because they were desperate, not because they were drinking. They were drinking because they were desperate because they were desperate and he was not doing. He was not trying to do anything with their despair.
- [36:56]
B
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Ginny Hooker and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. Become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future events you can head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full live events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
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