Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was

Summary

Odd Lots Podcast Summary: "Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was"

Release Date: June 9, 2025

Hosts:

• Joe Weisenthal
• Tracy Alloway

Guest:

• Vladislav Zubok, Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and author of The World of the Cold War, 1945-1991.

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1. Introduction

In this episode of Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway delve deep into the intricacies of the Cold War with esteemed historian Vladislav Zubok. The conversation seeks to unravel the true nature of the Cold War, challenging conventional narratives and offering fresh perspectives based on Zubok's extensive research.

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2. Defining the Cold War

Joe Weisenthal begins by questioning the common characterization of the current US-China tensions as a "new Cold War." He highlights the importance of understanding the original Cold War to ascertain if such a label is appropriate today.

Tracy Alloway adds context from her academic experiences, emphasizing the varying international interpretations of historical events, such as the American Revolution being known as the "American War of Independence" in the UK.

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3. Zubok's Reinterpretation

Vladislav Zubok offers a nuanced view of the Cold War, asserting that it was fundamentally a contest between two models of modernization: capitalism and socialism. He emphasizes that the ideological battle centered not just on abstract ideas but on the practical modernization and geopolitical influence, especially in Europe.

"It was about which system would modernize the world better. Throughout the Cold War, questions about modernization were central until capitalism was ultimately seen as more effective."
— Vladislav Zubok [04:56]

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4. Geopolitical Dimensions

Zubok points out that Europe became a central battleground post-World War II due to its vulnerability and the power vacuum left in its wake. The Marshall Plan and the division of Germany exemplify the strategic moves by the US to contain Soviet expansionism.

"The battle for Europe was not just about territory but about establishing a dominant economic and political system."
— Vladislav Zubok [08:37]

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5. Ideological Misunderstandings

The conversation touches upon how early American perceptions of the Soviet Union were shaped by internal crises like the Great Depression, fueling fears of communism's global spread. Zubok challenges the notion that Soviet expansionism was purely ideological, suggesting it was also a response to geopolitical realities.

"American internal insecurity, especially after the Great Depression, fueled the impulse to view communism as a global threat that needed containment."
— Vladislav Zubok [14:26]

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6. Diplomacy and Detente

Zubok highlights the critical role of diplomacy in preventing the Cold War from escalating into direct conflict. He discusses the evolution of Soviet leadership from Stalin to Brezhnev and how diplomatic efforts like détente and arms control agreements were pivotal in managing tensions.

"Diplomacy was hugely important, even during the most tense moments like the Cuban Missile Crisis, leading to peaceful outcomes."
— Vladislav Zubok [20:47]

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7. The Role of Non-Aligned Movement

The discussion extends to how countries like India navigated the Cold War by seeking a "third way" of development, balancing influences from both the US and the Soviet Union. Zubok explains that the Non-Aligned Movement allowed these nations to exploit superpower tensions for their own economic and political gains.

"India and other non-aligned countries played both sides, seeking assistance from Moscow and Washington to build their infrastructure and economies."
— Vladislav Zubok [21:21]

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8. Nuclear Weapons and Ideological Shifts

Zubok explores how the advent of nuclear weapons forced a reevaluation of Marxist-Leninist ideology within the Soviet Union. The existential threat posed by thermonuclear weapons led Soviet leaders like Khrushchev to adopt policies favoring peaceful coexistence, paving the way for détente.

"The development of nuclear weapons made the traditional Marxist-Leninist vision of a violent revolution untenable, leading to a push for peaceful advancement of communism."
— Vladislav Zubok [24:57]

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9. Human Rights Movements

The emergence of human rights movements in the West significantly impacted Soviet-American relations. Zubok argues that these movements delegitimized détente by shifting American focus towards moral and ethical critiques of the Soviet Union, rather than purely strategic considerations.

"Human rights became a moral tool for the US to challenge Soviet legitimacy, undermining détente and intensifying the ideological battle."
— Vladislav Zubok [39:02]

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10. Collapse of the Soviet Union

Zubok provides a critical analysis of Mikhail Gorbachev's role in the Soviet Union's collapse. He contends that while economic dysfunction was a significant factor, Gorbachev's policies and reluctance to maintain momentum contributed to the rapid disintegration and subsequent rise of Russian nationalism.

"Gorbachev's inability to sustain reforms and his overreliance on outdated Leninist principles led to a leadership vacuum, hastening the Soviet collapse."
— Vladislav Zubok [50:45]

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11. Lessons for US-China Relations Today

Reflecting on the historical Cold War, Zubok advises against labeling current US-China tensions as a new Cold War. He emphasizes learning from past diplomatic successes and cautions against falling into cyclical arms races and ideological rigidity.

"We are not facing an essentialist and existential conflict like the original Cold War. Instead, it's a more specific geopolitical rivalry that requires nuanced management."
— Vladislav Zubok [31:32]

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12. Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reflection on the enduring impact of the Cold War's collapse on modern Russia and the importance of understanding historical contexts to navigate current geopolitical challenges effectively. Hosts encourage listeners to engage with Zubok's work for a deeper comprehension of this pivotal era.

"The collapse of the Soviet Union created an existential crisis for Russia, replacing communist ideology with nationalism, which continues to influence current events."
— Vladislav Zubok [53:25]

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Key Takeaways:

• The Cold War was primarily a contest between two modernization models—capitalism and socialism—centered around Europe's geopolitical landscape.

• Internal crises within capitalism, such as the Great Depression, significantly influenced American perceptions and strategies during the Cold War.

• Diplomacy played a crucial role in preventing direct conflict, with détente serving as a critical phase in managing superpower tensions.

• Non-aligned nations like India leveraged Cold War dynamics to pursue their own development agendas.

• The advent of nuclear weapons necessitated ideological shifts within the Soviet Union, leading to policies favoring peaceful coexistence.

• Human rights movements in the West played a pivotal role in challenging Soviet legitimacy, impacting diplomatic relations.

• The collapse of the Soviet Union was influenced by both economic dysfunction and leadership challenges, leading to the rise of Russian nationalism.

• Current US-China tensions differ fundamentally from the original Cold War and require tailored diplomatic approaches based on historical insights.

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Notable Quotes:

• "It was about which system would modernize the world better." — Vladislav Zubok [04:56]

• "Diplomacy was hugely important, even during the most tense moments like the Cuban Missile Crisis." — Vladislav Zubok [20:47]

• "Human rights became a moral tool for the US to challenge Soviet legitimacy, undermining détente." — Vladislav Zubok [39:02]

• "Gorbachev's inability to sustain reforms and his overreliance on outdated Leninist principles led to a leadership vacuum." — Vladislav Zubok [50:45]

• "We are not facing an essentialist and existential conflict like the original Cold War." — Vladislav Zubok [31:32]

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Further Engagement:

Listeners are encouraged to read Vladislav Zubok's The World of the Cold War, 1945-1991 for an in-depth exploration of the topics discussed. Engage with Bloomberg's Odd Lots community through their daily newsletter and Discord server to continue the conversation on history and its impact on today's world.

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This summary captures the essence of the conversation, highlighting key discussions and insights shared by Vladislav Zubok on the true nature of the Cold War and its lasting implications.

Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Joe Weisenthal]

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

[Tracy Alloway]

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Tracy, you know, we did that episode with Arthur Kroper recently, and one of the questions that came up is whether, you know, you could characterize the US And China as being in a new Cold war. Right. But of course, that raises the question of what was the Cold War in the first place? Sort of hard to answer. Are we in a new Cold War if you actually don't know what the original one was?

[Tracy Alloway]

Joe, I can see through this intro already. You're trying to link it to a previous podcast, but I know you've been reading the history books. The. That's what this is. You read another history book, you want to talk about the Cold war.

[Joe Weisenthal]

This is 100% correct, but it's timely for multiple reasons, obviously, because there's the US China tension, there is the ongoing war in Ukraine. And so, you know, and generally, if you want to understand the present, you want to understand how he got here. And, you know, it's interesting to me. So I first sort of quote, learned about the Cold War, I think, in middle school. No, high school. And it was like maybe 93 or 94. And that was only a few years after, I guess it, quote, formally ended.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And yet by the time I was learning about it in high school, it was being taught it might as well have been like Civil War history.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah, capital H history.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, capital H history. Just old history. And I'm trying to learn a little bit more about it these days. And I read some books, but there's still a lot of questions about, in my mind, what it was really all about.

[Tracy Alloway]

Well, so I also first learned about the Cold War in high school, and I had A realization when I moved from high school to college. So I was doing a sort of American curriculum in Tokyo, AP History, AP US History, and then went to London, went to the LSE and did International relations, a big portion of which is history. And it kind of blew my mind how different the interpretations of history actually were. So, for instance, I had learned about the American Revolution, Right. As a lot of Americans did. But in the UK it is, of course, the American War of Independence. And so it was just a massive culture shock for me to go from that sort of U.S. oriented curriculum to something more British centric or more international. So one thing I am very curious about is how the Cold War sort of played out from the non US Perspective.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. And Right. Like we called it the Cold War, I guess. And so the question is, what was it called elsewhere? Well, I'm really excited. We really do have the perfect guest today. He has a new book out on the question of what was the Cold War? We're gonna be speaking with Vladislav Zubak. He is the Stevenson professor of International History and at the London School of Economics. So doubly perfect. He's the author of the new book the World of the Cold War, 1945-1991. He's also written several other books, sort of in the same general history, a lot of Soviet history. His prior book that I also highly recommend came out in 2021, collapsed the fall of the Soviet Union. What really happened there? So, Professor Zubak, thank you so much for coming on. Odd.

[Podcast Announcer]

Lots of thank you for inviting me. That's a great moment to talk about great changes in history as we experiencing now.

[Joe Weisenthal]

We are definitely experiencing them now. So I guess if someone had asked me like a year ago or a few years ago and I wasn't really thinking about these things, what was the Cold War? I might have said, well, this global battle between capitalist vision and communism, or democracy versus authoritarianism, or maybe something else. But what was the Cold War? Cause your book actually does sort of offer a different claim. And it seems to be more about something basic and land and territory and mostly centered on Europe.

[Podcast Announcer]

No, not at all. Well, let me start by the.

[Joe Weisenthal]

All right. I completely misunderstood the book, but go on.

[Podcast Announcer]

Well, you completely misinterpreted my book, which is a normal.

[Tracy Alloway]

I like this episode already.

[Podcast Announcer]

Normal thing. Which is a normal thing today. You know, whoever says whatever, it's misinterpretation and fake news. So let me tell you one thing that might amuse you.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Sure.

[Podcast Announcer]

You started by telling the audience when you learned about the Cold War and high school. And so let me tell you when I learned about it, because I grew up in the Soviet Union, basically wondering, well, it was in the midst of a Cold War, it was the 60s, 70s, and I grew up as a young believer that the future belongs to Communism. Don't laugh at me. And I just was surprised why so many people couldn't get it, that communism is the way of the future. And then very late in my sort of student years, I began to realize, hey, it's much more complicated. The world is divided, and so on and so forth. And we were told the world is divided between socialism and capitalism. So when I learned about the Cold War, I mostly learned it from American literature. So I was very much influenced by American books because nothing was written in the Soviet Union about the Cold War. Nothing. That's a special, special question. Why? But I couldn't find a single decent book on the Cold War. So I learned it from American authors like John Lewis Gaddis. Some people may remember there were great books by John Lewis Gaddis in the 80s. And so I read them and totally absorbed them. And so the ironic thing that many years later, 30 years later, I'm coming back to my original kind of idea. Yes, it was the battle between socialism and. And capitalism. Yes. And in a sense the whole phenomenon of the Cold War should not be understood like, oh, it's a game of great powers. It's about Europe becoming a vacuum after World War II to be filled by two great powers, the Soviet Union and the United States. Yeah, it was there. All that was there. And an ideology was there of communism and American liberalism. But for instance, business people hear about ideas, they kind of come a little bit soporific and they say just ideas. Tell me something more important. So the most important thing, it was the battle for the future of capitalism, in my view. And for everyone who were in Europe, in Washington and New York or in Moscow, wherever in Tokyo, it was about that. Because the previous 30 years of capitalism were disastrous. Capitalism discredited itself. So if you were in the late 40s in Europe, you would think, maybe I should become a young communist. So the previous disasters, years of capitalism caused the phenomenon of the Cold War. And it was just geopolitical situation when Europe was up for grabs. Much of Europe, thanks to Hitler, was up for grabs between the two coalitions, between the Soviet Union and the Western powers, the so called Anglo Saxons. It gained geopolitical dimensions in this way. But essentially it was about which system would modernize the world better. This is essentially throughout the Cold War, you had modifications of the same questions until it was answered very much in favor of capitalism. In the 70s and 80s particularly, yes, capitalism is much, much better. In fact, that's the only way.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Tracy, I think I'm still half right. There is a big geopolitical element about Europe, but I do now have to reread the book to not take away my overly simplistic take away from it. Anyway, Tracy, go on.

[Tracy Alloway]

Okay, well, in all honesty, I have not read the book, so I get to ask all the extremely basic questions here, but I think this is relevant to the discussion, but at least not misinformed. Yeah, at least I'm learning about it in real time. But Vlad, I guess my question is how did the US and the Soviet Union come to understand each other's respective positions? So, you know, what was the process through which they sort of calcified each other's ideologies and came away with this notion that, you know, okay, the US Very capitalist, maybe capitalism requires a lot of expansion, a lot of domination of the world to keep going, whereas the US came away thinking, well, you know, Soviets believe in communism and communism is going to take over the world. How did that process actually happen?

[Podcast Announcer]

Well, let me start with what I know better about the Soviets, because I grew up there and I said I was a young Marxist and all that. I was, you may say, you know, brainwashed at the time, in high school and all that. By the end of the high school, by the way, I began to have doubts. It was already the 70s, so it was very much unclear at the time that we would ever built anything called communism already. But, you know, let me return to your question and let's say it's very important to say let's talk about the start of the Cold War because it was an immensely long contest, immensely long confrontation, like for four decades. Right. So it's very important. I broke up my book into four major sections. And if you are in the first section, when the Cold War just started in the Soviet Union, they read Lenin. And Lenin said as long as capitalism exists, it would produce imperialism. And imperialism is about competition for resources and wars, global wars, because capitalism is global. So that's what you learn about the other side in the Soviet Union. So whenever somebody like Stalin would say, hey, you know, the United States now is a top capitalist power, that means that, you know, other powers should compete, like the UK should, British Empire should compete with Americans. And this is essentially the main source of instability and global war. This is what you believed in As a matter of faith, in the Soviet Union, if you are in the United States, it's much less so, let's say theoretical and more like based on experience of dealing with Red Russia or Communist Russia. And during the first decade, Americans completely dismissed the existence of Red Russia and never granted diplomatic recognition to that country because it was a kind of nonsense for Americans to think that people don't believe in private property, they reject entrepreneurship, they reject God, atheists and so on and so forth. This is just a nonsense. This state cannot exist. And then they began to change their mind gradually. Oh, it should stay and all that. But what made them change their mind about the Soviet Union above all was the Great Depression and a huge crisis of capitalism. Back to my original point about the contest between capitalism and communism, the very fact that the idea of this context entered the American mind and later Americans even began to say, oh, Communists are taking over the world and all that stuff. It is because of their internal insecurity, American internal insecurity. Because the Great Depression did take place. It was almost 10 years. Yes, America exited the war as powerful as it never had been. But thanks to the war, nobody could say, would another Great Depression happen after the end of the war. So that was immense internal insecurity coupled with that American exceptionalism. We've done so well before, we should do great in the future. That produced American impulse towards the Cold War. And I would say I'm back and forth on this question, by the way, when you ask who started it in such a complex context, between the two ways of life, two ways of modernization, it's very difficult sometimes to say who started it. But I would say Americans had more resources and therefore they were much more proactive in 1945, 46, 47, 48, when they began to see the Soviets acting not as they had expected. Strangely, because the Soviets always acted as Soviets, they just were expansionists, they were assertive. But after 45, they were also extremely weak. They lost 27 million people during World War II and all that stuff. So Americans knew that, but they also saw Soviets being expansionist and decided to take an initiative. So so much of the Cold War, in a way, during its original phase, is Americans acting, Americans doing the Marshall Plan, Americans doing dividing Germany into two parts in reaction to the perceived Soviet expansionism and real Soviet expansionism, but also realizing we're stronger, we can stop them. We have huge wealth, we have atomic bomb, and they don't. And we have resources to stop communism. But the premise is in America, American mind, that communism is such a dangerous thing that can spread all over the world. And why it can spread? Hello? Because capitalism is weak in particularly in Europe. Because capitalism stopped working in Europe and we must reignite it. We must set it straight and make it stand on both feet.

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[Joe Weisenthal]

Cold War formally started with the famous long telegram from the US diplomat George Kennan. And he talked about, you know, that laid the foundation of this idea of containment in this idea that the Soviets were a fundamental threat to everything we hold dear in the west, in the US Our way of life, our freedom, et cetera. And you're dismissive in the book of his maybe paranoid views. But on the other hand, up until there was a Comintern that aimed to foment communism around the world and obviously the Soviets moved a missile to Cuba and fought a war in Afghanistan and Angola, et cetera. Why was it so unrealistic to think that the Soviet Union did have expansionist visions for spreading a specific way of life across the globe?

[Podcast Announcer]

Well, I never said that the Soviets didn't have expansionist view because that was the essence of the idea.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I continued.

[Podcast Announcer]

No, no, no, no, no. You actually have just proved to that you read the book, at least parts of the book that tells about the canon. Fascinating character and Cannon's long telegram. My take on Cannon is actually many people read excellent books on canon because he was such a master of words. He essentially gave subsequent generations of American liberal historians all the words to use, the entire kind of ideological framework to use about what Soviet threat was about. He used the word virus, malignant parasite and other Helpful things to understand Soviet threat. But if we go beyond all this, we ask a question, okay, Malignant parasite on what parasite on healthy capitalist liberal society. That again, the thesis is it is liberal capitalism that collapsed in the 1930s and above all in Europe, above all in Germany, but also in other countries. And maybe America can restore this capitalism to its greatness, but maybe not, because at the end of the long telegram, Kennan has doubts. Kennan says we should contain communism, but not to such an extent that we in America would ourselves turn into a garrison state. So his fear is that in this huge effort to contain communism, America might itself itself change its nature and stop being liberal capitalist society and would become a garrison state. So that's a sort of sense of uncertainty. But later this sense of uncertainty was dropped, particularly in the 60s, with this buoyant Kennedy esque kind of message. And then great Society and so on, so forth. So it's very important again, I repeat, when you read about the Cold War, to ask a question, when exactly in what phase of the Cold War are you, and what kind of questions do you raise about this phase? Because it's four decades. Four decades. So that uncertainty about capitalism began to pass in Europe. And Europe experienced a moment of huge economic wonder at the end of the 50s and in the 60s. But then decolonization started and that uncertainty about what would happen to the global south resurfaced. That the fact that all these countries like India and China, of course, became communist, famously in 1949. So that always loomed large in the imagination of Americans, is that if China turned communism and not follow that great, unique and correct American way, maybe others would take this way of misdevelopment. It's interesting that all American diplomats and pundits and experts use that misdevelopment when they spoke about Soviet socialism during the 50s, 50s and the 60s. So when you began to pile up, well, what about Afghanistan? What about this or that? You're already kind of continuing into extrapolating the timeline into the future. My answer to you would be, don't do it because we have a conflict. It started in the late 40s. It created a certain kind of deadlock, a sense of deadlock, a long battle that no one knew how to win. And one horrible perspective of that deadlock was the possibility of a nuclear war. Don't forget, this is why you mentioned the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis showed that when both sides faced that prospect of a German nuclear war, both sides, no matter how more bombs and missiles and bombers the United states had in 1962, it had 17 times more than the Soviet Union. No matter that both sides preferred to step back. And aside from a confrontation, nobody knew how this conflict would end. So this conflict continued for decade after decade and after decade, which is the nature of any conflict that cannot end in a decisive victory and when both sides have existential reasons not to raise up their hands.

[Tracy Alloway]

So to say, you already anticipated my next question, which was what was the role of nuclear weapons in prolonging the conflict? So I'm going to skip to something else that you just mentioned, but can you talk a little bit more about the Cold War experience in a place like India? Because again, so much of the focus tends to be on the US versus Russia, for obvious reasons. But there was a lot going on in other parts of the world as well. And some would argue that, you know, some countries were even successful in sort of exploiting the tension between the US and Russia for their own advantage.

[Podcast Announcer]

Well, you mentioned India and excellent studies on India. The fact is that Nehru and the first generation of Indian rulers, Indian leaders, had been very much under the influence of socialism, not necessarily Stalin like socialists, but they kind of had huge apprehension of Western capitalism and they wanted to find out a third way of development. That was one of major reasons why India, among other countries joined the Non Aligned Movement. They didn't want to participate in that geopolitical conflict between the west and the East. But also they did seriously expect to get what they wanted, a kind of mixed model, something from socialism, something from free entrepreneurship, and decide for themselves what is best to them. So in the late 50s and in the 60s, you see the Indians kind of turning to Moscow and asking Moscow, help us with that, for instance, to build a steel mill and turning to America, America and telling Americans, oh, can you help with that? So they played on both sides and I think it was the right choice. So that lasted actually into the early 80s until the emergence of the global liberal capitalist system that we live with today, which is, I think it's crumbling before our eyes today. But anyway, that system was emerging in the 70s and 80s. Read the fourth part of my book. It's about that emergence of that system. And at that time, people of non aligned movement, like Indians, like Brazilians, like others, they began to feel the pinch of that system. And all of a sudden they discovered their experiments with expert substitution failed, that there was a huge transnational force that dictated them the rules above all the rules of how get resources, how to get money, how to get loans and credits. And that was the system that they totally associated with American influence, with the World bank, with imf. But it was broader than that. It was a global capitalist system that began to emerge during the 70s, something that theorists would call today's Washington Consensus. And it was also part of the Cold War, like I mentioned, several things. That geopolitical context over Europe, decolonization, and now this, and all those huge transnational global developments influenced the Cold War, and they influenced the choices of countries like India, of course.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I want to ask a question that sort of maybe falls in the middle of the story and actually goes back to nuclear weapons. You know, the Marxist Leninist eschatology, maybe that's the right word, is like eventually the capitalist countries, either because of their conflicts or other internal contradictions of the system, eventually they'll collapse, and we don't know how long it'll take, but eventually communism will win out. To what degree did the sort of existence of the nuclear bomb or the development of the nuclear bomb undermine that story that history will not end? Human will not end necessarily with communist victory. History could end with all of humanity simply being erased in the nuclear war. And how much did the sort of opening up of this other possible path through which human history could unfold sort of shake that underlying faith in the original story?

[Podcast Announcer]

Well, that's a great question, by the way, because Lenin and Marx wrote the theory at the time when nuclear weapons didn't exist. Yeah, okay. When these weapons emerged, the kind of canonical Marxist Leninist approach to world history had to be adjusted. And it was a fascinating process of adjustment because above all, after Stalin, under Stalin and after Stalin, the Soviet Union was ideocracy and free debate was impossible. And yet there were some elements of debate and discussion about nuclear weapons which I write about in my book from some likely corners, like nuclear physicists who warned, for instance, the leadership in Moscow leadership in 1954, that the invention of thermonuclear weapons makes the end of the entire humanity possible. And the party leaders immediately reproached them and squashed the debate because their view was, hey, you know, our canonical explanation is that it's not humanity, it's capitalism that will perish. But then other unlikely candidates like it, among them a chess champion, Botvinnik, whom I cite in my book, began to write to the party leaders, wait a minute. I'm Communist member myself, but I don't want humanity to perish. This is my way of reconciling the two goals, keeping peace and making communism a peaceful outcome of the competition between the two systems. So suddenly that Guy Bott, thinking very logically, pointed to the main problem of the Marxist Leninist approach, that it always had preached a violent end of some kind of a revolution. And then of course, the victory of communism as a result of another imperialist war. But this imperialist war is no longer possible because of the existence of thermonuclear weapons. So ultimately, Khrushchev, not being very theoretical Guy, but kind of very instinctive politician, came up with his solution to this debate and basically said, well, the forces of socialism are strong enough. He of course meant above all the Soviet Union and China strong enough to prevent another war that imperialists otherwise want to unleash and therefore will proceed to communism, but peacefully. So it just basically squared the circle and then the idiocratic bureaucracy followed this lead. And then what you have is detente. Then what you have is detente and arms control. That was the major outcome of that ideological reconciliation that the Soviet leadership, and particularly the guy after Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, said, but we want peace. We don't renounce our ideological belief that capitalism would perish and communism would triumph, but we have to do it peacefully. Our main duty is to struggle for peace. And in the old days, let's say 20 years earlier, such guys like Brezhnev would have been denounced as, I don't know, heretics, revisionists, I don't know. But in the 70s, it was all right. So in a sense that ideological innovation opened the way for detente, peaceful policies by Brezhnev, and with all kinds of good consequences for Europe. With American Soviet detente flourishing briefly, but flourishing under Nixon and looking backwards, you begin to realize that without this period of Brezhnev and the struggle for peace, otherwise you wouldn't have had Gorbachev. And of course, without Gorbachev in the late 80s, from 85 to 1991, you cannot imagine the end of such conflict as the Cold War because Gorbachev was a major part and then single handedly did many things that made the end of this conflict possible, thinkable, and actually it happened.

[Charles Schwab Advertiser]

This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. When is the right time to sell a stock? How do you protect against inflation? Are you taking the right risks with your portfolio? Financial decisions can be tricky, and often your own cognitive and emotional biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help join host Mark Reape as he offers practical solutions to help overcome the cognitive and emotional biases that may affect your investing decisions. [e-mail] financialdecoder when you're with Amex Business.

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[Joe Weisenthal]

To say one thing. One area where I think the Soviet Union was objectively better is that it's a country where a chess grandmaster would be so politically influential. I would like to live in such a, you know, that was one country.

[Tracy Alloway]

Where chess is valid.

[Podcast Announcer]

Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Where Botvinnik writes a letter that's influenced.

[Podcast Announcer]

Well, at a small cultural note for our audience. I mean, not everybody played chess in the Soviet Union. That's to begin with. So when CIA experts or somebody else would point out that the Soviets are so devious because they all play chess and all out fox us in the west, it's not true because the political leadership played domino. Much more simple game. They played domino. They were much more primitive.

[Joe Weisenthal]

That's where they got the domino theory from. Anyway, Tracy, go.

[Podcast Announcer]

Right.

[Tracy Alloway]

Amazing. Okay, well, Vlad, as you keep repeating, this is such a sprawling period in history and I have so many questions, but one I want to make sure we actually get to is just sort of bringing everything up to date. And Joe mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you is because one thing you hear, one of the pretenses, one of the pretenses, other than he read the book, is this idea of the US And China being in a cold war. So when you hear someone say, oh, this is the new Cold war between the US And China, what is your immediate reaction?

[Podcast Announcer]

No, I don't believe in this. It's a cold war between the US And China. Well, unless you want to, you know, let me rephrase it. You know, it may be called a cold war if you take very superficial or rather abstract theoretical take on what the Cold war is. So it's just a competition between great powers that for some reason, primarily because of the existence of nuclear weapons, never turns hot. Well, if you take this kind of abstract, generic approach, then you may say, oh, another cold war, probably because of the existence of nuclear weapons, if we're lucky, will have a series of the Cold war into eternity. Right. But I'm not A fan of this approach. I'm much more into specific historical interpretation of the Cold War, which I said was above all a context between the two ways of modernization, capitalism and non capitalism, called socialism. And capitalism won all rounds of that competition handily. And this is why essentially the Cold War ended the way it ended. But where are we now between the United States and China? It's much more narrow. In really more geopolitical context, who would be the top in the hierarchy of capitalist powers? Yes, somebody would say, oh, it's about freedom versus lack of freedom and authoritarianism in China. But it's a much weaker argument really, in my view. A because China evolves in its own way through hundreds and hundreds of years. But nobody said that ultimately China would not begin to vote and have political parties. Who knows, maybe in 200 years China will develop into some sort of democracy. So I would never say no to that. My approach is more specific that for now, I don't believe we are facing as profound, as dangerous as essentialist and existential conflict as the Cold War had been, particularly in the first two decades of the Cold War, between 1947, let's say 1962, 68, whatever. So this is my answer to the question there, the conflict. But I would hesitate to call it the Cold War. However, we should all learn from 40 years of cold War history to make this Sino American conflict manageable, or at least more manageable. And I have a few ideas about this by just looking at the Soviet American interaction during the previous major conflict. One idea is, of course, diplomacy should work. And I'm always struck how important was diplomacy even at the worst moments of the Cold War, even at the time of McCarthyism in the United States, even at the time, not to mention the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis when Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged all those famous messages that ultimately led to the peaceful outcome of the crisis. So diplomacy is hugely important. The second point I want to make about the Sino American confrontation today, that the danger of tunnel vision. People should learn to think outside the box. There was in the Cold War so many people who said there cannot be any way of talking to those Communists, to those Russkies, and there were many hardliners in the Soviet Union who never wanted to trust or talk to the Americans. And yet there were always people thinking outside the box and finding cultural, diplomatic and other ways of interaction. That's really important. A third observation. Some people would say tariffs, economic sanctions and arms race would solve this conflict today between China and the United States. I would say the Entire Cold War actually shows that it was nonsense. Arms race did not solve political sources of confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. The development of capitalism, the development of global economy solved that conflict. The fundamental underlining issues of that conflict. So if the United States wants to outspend China, more sophisticated weaponry, AI intelligence to manage the weaponry, that's another deadlock. That's like forgetting fundamental lessons of history. And finally, look at the COVID of my book, Falling Domino. One major problem of Cold War mentality, particularly on the American side, but also on the Soviet side, of course, was thinking, once we make this one concession anywhere, there will be the falling domino effect, and that will be the end of our credibility, the end of our position. That will be the end of our whole global position in the world, in our camp. So what did Americans get by following this falling domino theory? They ended up in Vietnam. And what did the Soviets gain by going along this line? They actually collapsed at the end of it. So it's not a good way. It's not a good way to resurrect the falling domino mentality by saying, if, God forbid, if China moves against this island somewhere and we do not defend this island by military force, then that's the end of the world. We know. It's a falling domino. It's a classic falling domino theory.

[Joe Weisenthal]

When I was growing up, terms like human rights, it never would have occurred to me when I was younger that these could be loaded terms, that there could be anything bad about a human rights group or a human, you know, whatever it is, or minority rights or so forth. I thought these were just unalloyed goods. And one of the things. I've been thinking about that recently again, actually, in current geopolitical context, because just a week or two ago, Trump was in the Gulf and he made all these agreements, and we're gonna sell lots of semiconductors to Gulf countries and so forth. Saudi Arabia still does a lot of executions by beheading and things that would horrify people in the United States, all kinds of things in the human rights realm that would horrify people in the United States, but we can still do business with them. We could still sell them a lot of semiconductors and buy their oil and so forth. One of the things you point out in your book is the role of human rights groups at times throughout this story of undermining detente and sort of when we were having these sort of softer moments, that ultimately the human rights groups in the west, they were not helpful on that front. Could this be a more Productive, peaceful path in the United States to perhaps be more willing to just accept, you know what, we can do business with countries, we can sell arms and chips and we don't have to worry. It's just not our business how they conduct their internal affairs.

[Podcast Announcer]

Well, you know, this is one of those moments during the long Cold War when Americans played very proactively and Americans were vibrant society, let me use this loaded term, free society. Unlike the Soviets, but ironically, American human rights movement was ignited by something that was happening inside the Soviet Union to begin with. There was a group, very small groups of human rights defenders called dissidents in the Soviet Union that evoked huge admiration in American societies as sort of good Russians versus evil Russians. People whose names were household names at the time and few people remember them now, like, you know, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov and another, you know, great names at the time. And then came the issue of Jewish emigres who wanted to leave the Soviet Union to go to Israel or to go to other countries. And American Jewish groups who faced discrimination at home and wanted to sort of assert themselves at the same time at home. They found a great cause, a good cause inside the Soviet Union to help their brethren to emigrate from the Soviet Union. So that was the true emergence of the human rights movement in the United States that conflated with other great currents that already been there, like civil rights movements and anti racist movements and feminist movements and environment movements. It was a great moment in American history. So what happened? I think it would be foolish on anybody's part to blame human rights movements for undermining detente, because detente was very shaky and very, very fragile thing to begin with. But Daytone was, in a sense, the Soviets were doubly unlucky during the 70s because they thought that with a sheer agreement on the quality of armaments and the agreement on like taming the arms race, they would create the foundation for the tante. And that was really, really naive to think so because again, back to one of my points. Arms races or taming arms race? Taming arms races is good, but arms races, in a sense, they're crucial to solving real political issues. So these arms agreements that the Soviets were so proud of, well, they didn't play any role in the end. What played the role was human rights, a movement inside the United States that delegitimized detente in the eyes of millions of Americans. Plus of course, there were other issues dealing to decolonization in Africa, the fall of the Portuguese empire and the Soviets jumped in immediately, guided by the Marxist in this kind of fraternity solidarity mentality. And American hardliner said, you see, they aren't changing, they keep rolling it. They keep undermining global stability and wherever they can. And there were other things as well, which sadly led the Soviets to their own falling domino mindset and overreaction in Afghanistan that you mentioned. So everything was a reaction to something. But I would place the rise of human rights in context. What indubitably happened, however then was that people like President Carter and then President Reagan quickly realized that this is a moral course to follow. And it also was expedient course politically because by championing global human rights campaigns, the United States were back as the leader of the free world. And they were back with much more credentials, like finally being not only the leaders of the free world, but the leaders of the just world, which was usually something claimed by the Soviet Union in earlier years. The Soviet Union always was against racism, against Jim Crow, against colonialism. And suddenly the United States grabbed all of that and redirected it against the Soviet Union. And you Ruskis are actually hidden colonizers, you authoritarians, you don't let your people emigrate and all that. So it was a decisive ideological turning point in the Cold War, which the Soviets at first didn't realize was that way. And then later they became pathetically defensive and just couldn't find a good way to deal with that until Gorbachev finally said during his presidency, let's not be afraid of human rights. Let's basically accept that we also can be free and just society. And he began to liberalize the Soviet society with the outcome that we already know.

[Tracy Alloway]

I want to go back to something you said very early on in the conversation, but you mentioned that the Cold War wasn't really written about in the Soviet Union. I guess when you were living there, when you were studying and in school. And I'm really curious about personal experiences during the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the best books I ever read on the subject was by Svetlana Aleksevich, I wanna say Secondhand Time, which is a sort of oral history of Russians experiencing this transition, communism to capitalism. So I'm just very curious what your personal experience was and I guess what the sort of messaging was to the Russian population about that huge transition and transformation.

[Podcast Announcer]

Well, it was, as you said, unexpected and huge transition that amounted to the complete loss of identity. And you may say that by that time very few people seriously took ideological promises of arrival of communism. And many people began to think that Life in the west was not awful, but actually much more superior. And that particularly turning point in 89, 1991, when the Soviet press liberated by Gorbachev, began to beam to Soviet audience through television, it wasn't like something that foreign stations did. It was the Soviet television began to convey this information about the much better life in the West. So all pillars of Soviet mindset, sort of Soviet worldview, began to collapse simultaneously. And it led to several fateful consequences. First was that sense of cynicism, dejection of any certainty, any moral, any kind of ethical certainties in the society, which was accompanied by huge wave of domestic crime and violence and mostly economic violence. Secondly, that was this kind of realization. Well, if capitalism is the only way for humanity to exist and evolve, anything to gain money, to make profit is allowed. So again, the combination of collapse of ethical norms with sudden spread of capitalist practices led to that Wild east mentality, much more so than the Wild west was in America, I would say. And ultimately the void was filled by nationalism or some kind of at least, and I wouldn't say totally filled, but, you know, some kind of expectation that if everything collapses around me, it means that either I choose my family and myself as the only sort of bulwark in the future, or I would believe in another superego, which is nation nationalism. And so the nationalist and ethnic conflicts sprung up immediately as Gorbachev began to dismantle the old mentality, the old system in the Soviet Union. And that was highly dangerous and highly destructive. And of course, in part, those nationalists militated against the past and past grievances and all the people killed by Stalin and Lenin and all that, but they also kind of satisfied the new need for a renewed sense of identity. So I used to think that the Soviet collapse was relatively peaceful until the current war in Ukraine, because clearly this new wave of Russian nationalism is linked to the continuing lack of idea, continuing void in the heart of Russia, why so many changes happened, and what's the meaning of those changes. So it was possible, as it turned out, as I'm saying, with deep sadness, for the leader of Russia to fill that tremendous vacuum with another refurbished idea of Russian imperial and national domination.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So I just have one last question. We could talk for a long time and have lots of things, including we could talk about the war in Ukraine and how actually Kennan himself predicted that that could be a consequence of Clinton's NATO expansion and things like that. But I want to ask one last question. The way you depict it, and also, especially in your previous book, Collapse, you're pretty hard on Gorbachev and you sort of castigate him at times for his unwillingness to use force. At times. But, you know, one of the things that you concede in this book is that the collapse of the Warsaw Pact there was a big economic element. The Soviet Union could no longer supply cheap oil to East Germany and other countries and so forth. And that the economic dysfunction of the Soviet Union played a significant role in the failure to keep those military allies on the other side of the Iron Curtain. But then you sort of say Gorbachev unilaterally disarmed more or less the ussr, that it was an unforced collapse, that it was sort of an internal choice. Why shouldn't we assume that the economic dysfunction that led to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, which you acknowledge would not have eventually led to the disintegration of the USSR itself and the emergence of all these countries pursuing some conception of freedom and national identity?

[Podcast Announcer]

Oh yeah, I keep struggling with the same question because history is never linear and it can go different ways. And of course, those who look back at the history of the 20th century and in fact the 19th century, see that immense force of nationalism and national self determination. But this is one way to say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable and that it was just a matter of time for all those different nations to find a road to their statehood and sovereignty and all that. But in other ways, to look back at history and see the perils and dangers of sudden collapses, sudden collapses of empires, we see essentially the tremendous instability in Europe paving the way to fascist and Nazi dictatorships rooted in the sudden collapse of empires as a result of World War I. So the suddenness of this collapse, the fact that they create this immense vacuum and destroy the old common identities and common links, immense common links between different ethnic groups and across different ethnic groups. This is a hugely dangerous moment. And in fact, I tried to strike a balance in collapse looking at both sides, but sort of probably knowing what would follow after Gorbachev. Maybe I overdo the second question.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You're really hard on Gorbachev.

[Podcast Announcer]

I'm hard on Gorbachev because he raised expectations tremendously and I was among his followers and millions of people looked up to him for leadership. And when particularly he made tremendous changes in the late 88, 89, not right away, you know, the first two years were very kind of very frustrating. I remember that. But then he made that huge leap forward, huge leap forward. And that leap forward contained elements of the future collapse because it had many misguided premises. He believed in Leninism. He believed in that sort of many things that he shouldn't believe in, but he did. But then by taking this leap, Gorbachev kind of got frozen in the process of this leap. He suddenly lost his initiative. He became famously slow or infamously slow in taking other steps. So with such tremendous changes, you have to maintain the momentum or you lose it to others. And he lost that momentum to Yeltsin, to the Russian sort of leader who essentially pulled Russia from under Gorbachev and destroyed the Soviet Union. Not the Balts, not Georg. Ukrainians destroyed the Soviet Union. Yeltsin did, in my view. So by looking at this story, I sort of. I'm harsh on the later Gorbachev because the book is mostly about three years, 89, 1991, during which Gorbachev had already done his greatest kind of leap into the future and got scared somewhat, couldn't find a new path, got outgunned by his rival. So my harshness on Gorbachev, maybe he's guided by the fact that fact that I would very much prefer him to succeed because other options were very, very, very clear for us. Now, what other options led to, you know, for those who admired in Washington, people admired Yeltsin and thought that Gorbachev was still a communist. True, Yeltsin turned into anti communist, but look, it was Yeltsin who gave us the current Kremlin leader afterwards, Vladislav Zubok.

[Joe Weisenthal]

This was fantastic. We could talk for a long time after I read Collapse. I sort of thought, by the way, that Gorbachev sort of seems like an Obama type character, Nobel prize winner. But then, you know, in the wake of it, maybe some lost momentum. We could talk for a long time about all this. Really appreciate you so much for coming on. Everyone should read your book. I will reread it again because I apparently missed the entire point. But really, thanks for coming on. Odd lot.

[Podcast Announcer]

Well, thank you very much for talking about history. It's a rare moment.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Tracy, I really do have to reread the book. I mean, I apparently I was like, I love this book. And then I missed the entire point.

[Tracy Alloway]

How did that happen?

[Joe Weisenthal]

I don't. My reading comprehension isn't that great. People say, jill, how do you read so many books? The answer is by not paying attention to the words on the page.

[Tracy Alloway]

Well, good thing we're not basing a bunch of podcast episodes on your reading and understanding of history books. Okay, that was fascinating. I did think, well, first of all, I keep recommending that book secondhand to you. I will Read it. And I really think you should. And I think one of the important takeaways from that conversation and from other conversations that we've had in the past is this idea of, like, just how big an existential crisis the collapse of the Soviet Union actually was for Russia. And Vlad's point that you ended up replacing the communist ideology with nationalism. I mean, we are still living through the consequences of all of that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, we totally are. We didn't really get into it too much. And he sort of ends the book and talking about the US China relationship. And one of the points that he makes, whereas the US Soviet relationship was really something that was always handled at the diplomatic level, the US China relationship has, especially in the last 30 years, 40 years, whatever, has really been driven by the business community specifically, which sort of makes it a very different story to the Cold War. And it just has not been about that sort of ideological battle, ideological per se. And in fact, there was a really good article, I think it was, in the Financial Times last year, where there was like. Like Cuba was asking China for some advice on economic growth. And I think the Chinese leader was like, well, you could try introducing market competition. You maybe give that a shot. So while, you know, obviously China wants to expand its influence, it seems like, you know, it does it by building factories and stuff like that and expanding its economic footprint much more than asking its trading partners to, you know, commit to its specific model.

[Tracy Alloway]

Well, speaking of building factories, one episode I do want to do because this keeps coming up, is why were communists so obsessed with steel? And, you know, Vlad mentioned the idea of, like, India asking Russia for help in building some steel factories. And it feels like sometimes I think the. The Cold War could have been, you know, we could have avoided the Cold War if we just had some sort of steel manufacturing off competition between the great world powers and whoever made the best steel would be declared the winner and their economic would be, you know, embraced by the rest of the world. We should have gone down that route.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Did you know that the name Stalin was a nom de guerre, that means man of steel.

[Tracy Alloway]

I did actually know that. I didn't know that until recently. You know, steel. You could tell a really good story about the Cold War just through the medium of steel. Someone should write that book, Odd Lot.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Series, the History of the Cold War as told through the medium of steel. That might be a little niche.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah, just a little. Okay, shall we leave it there?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Let's leave it there.

[Podcast Announcer]

There.

[Tracy Alloway]

This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at Tracy Allaway.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. Follow our guest Vladislav Zubak. He's at Vladislav Zubak1 and definitely check out his new book the World of the Cold War. Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman, Armand Dashiell Bennett at dashbot and Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks. For more Odd Lots content go to bloomberg.comoddlot where we have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes and you can chat about all of these things 247 including books, including History in our Discord, Discord, GG Oddlots and if you.

[Tracy Alloway]

Enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we talk about the history of the Cold War, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

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