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- [00:00]
Mike Pesca
The gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [00:22]
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- [00:55]
Mike Pesca
It's Tuesday, December 16, 2025 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca and there is a shocking two part pie Vanity Fair today. Shocking for a couple of reasons. One, it is the most in depth interview or series of interviews conducted over a year with Susie Wiles who is the most important person in the Trump administration that you probably don't know about. She's the chief of staff and in these interviews she says some shocking things. Shocking because most of them are true and many of them are not particularly complimentary to the administration. She for instance, said that JD Vance has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade and that Elon Musk is a ketamine user and an odd, odd duck. And she says that Russell Vogt, the budget director, is a right wing absolute zealot. So is she going to get in trouble? Well, for these probably not. I don't think President Trump will punish her at all for denigrating Elon Musk. I think Russell Vote might where as a point of pride that he's being called a right wing absolute zealot. And you know, as far as the one statement that she said about Mr. Trump that he might not like Mr. Trump has an alcoholic's personality. She as the daughter of an alcoholic, the former NFL player and broadcaster Pat Summerall knows a little bit about this and she says that some clinical psychologist that knows 1 million times more than I do will dispute what I'm going to say. But high functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink and so I'm a bit of an expert on big personalities. He has an alcoholics personality. So she's saying he has a big personality. He operates with a view that there is nothing he can't do. Nothing, zero, nothing. She also says a lot of things that he's going to love. Like when asked why does President Trump lash out, especially against women calling a female reporter a piggy, she said President Trump's a counter puncher. And these days, increasingly it's women who are doing the punching. I'm sure he's going to like that. How did the author Chris Whipple get so many quotes? Well, he spent a lot of time. He also wrote a book before the election which the Trump campaign must have liked. It was called Uncharted. And a lot of it was about how bad the Biden and Harris campaigns were. But also unlike Michael Wolff, he was a fly on the wall, but then didn't burn his sources and as far as I could tell, didn't cover himself with shame for making a bunch of things up. So I do think that not only will Susie Wilds survive this, I think that the president is going to like much of what she said because as she said, he is a counterpuncher. He likes to throw a punch. And she did. One of them might have glanced Trump himself on the chin and but you got to take it if you're him. I don't know if he's thinking this clearly or rationally these days, but he is a chaos agent. He thrives in the chaos. And this was a chaotic type series of stories. Also, just so many quotes. Part one, I counted 125 quotes. Part two, I counted 170 quotes. The longest we go again, this is my count. The longest we go in part one is 216 words without a quote and in part two, less than half that. So just give me all the quotes. And unlike that other quote hound, Michael Wolf, allow me to trust them on the show Today I give you a full show interview with Mikhail Zagar, who is a Russian now in exile, which means he's done something right to offend Putin. His book is the Dark side of the Earth, Russia's short lived victory over totalitarianism. And it looks at several chapters, political and cultural, within a short time frame, when it seemed that maybe Russia would go from the totalitarianism of Stalin to whatever they're clearly oppressive system of government is today. Mikhail Zygar up next.
- [05:18]
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Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree, Zoe.
- [05:21]
Mike Pesca
This thing weighs a ton.
- [05:22]
Mikhail Zygar
Drewski, lift with your legs, man.
- [05:23]
Mike Pesca
Santa. Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you britches.
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Mikhail Zygar
I'm not.
- [05:28]
Ad/Promo Voice 1
Of course he did.
- [05:29]
Mike Pesca
Right, Santa you know my elf Drew Ski here, he handles the nice list. And elf, I'm six' three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile you can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies, right Mrs. Claus?
- [05:43]
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- [05:50]
Mikhail Zygar
It as a gift.
- [05:50]
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- [05:54]
Mikhail Zygar
Nice. My side of the tree is slipping. Kimber the holidays are better. AT T Mobile switch in just 15 minutes and get iPhone 17 on us with no trade in needed. And now T Mobile is available in US cellular stores with 24 monthly bill.
- [06:08]
Mike Pesca
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- [06:17]
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- [06:54]
Mike Pesca
Mikhail Zeger is a journalist, a writer, a filmmaker, a Russian, and he has written a fantastic and interesting history of of a condensed period of Russian history, and it includes everything you'd want to know about politics and high culture. But he also weaves in what famous actresses were doing and rock stars and cosmonauts. Lots of cosmonauts. The name of this book is the Dark side of the Earth, Russia's short lived victory over Totalitarianism. Mikhail, welcome to the gist.
- [07:32]
Mikhail Zygar
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
- [07:35]
Mike Pesca
This story roughly, though not totally coincides with your story. As a Russian, a family who was sent to Africa, called back to Russia, got to see as a young pioneer, got to get some firsthand experience of the propaganda state and then get to experience what happens when they quickly abandon propaganda after the USSR dissipates. How personal a project was this for you?
- [08:03]
Mikhail Zygar
You know, definitely that was a personal story. At least my personal story motivated me to start writing it, although I didn't plan actually to include anything about My life or my. My family. Before, actually before the moment my mother died, because I left. I left Russia on the third day of the invasion in 2022, of the invasion of Ukraine. So around more than three years ago. And then it was clear for me that I. I'm never going. I'm not going back. Probably I won't be able to go back. I was sentenced in absentia by Russian state to eight and a half years of prison. So for. For opposing the war. And then I found myself in this situation when I'm in exile and I was writing this book about the collapse of Soviet Union for few years by that moment. And my mother died in Moscow. I couldn't go to the funeral. And somehow I realized that I must include some parts of my own story into this book. So I start every chapter with one page story of my parents, my grandparents, or of my childhood, because. Yeah, but it's more than. It's more than a book about myself because I think the last 30 years of the Soviet Union, they shaped the whole generation, the generation of those people who are running Russia right now, and actually also the generation of leaders today of people who run the U.S. people who rule different countries in Western Europe, East Europe. So, yeah, I think still those 30 years of the last 30 years of the Cold War, they still matter and they define the world we live in.
- [10:01]
Mike Pesca
Yes, yes. And that is the exact. One of my exact takeaways that I felt a little bit guilty that I read the book and was especially interested in all the resonances to today. Putin's in the book. He's not a very important figure then. But whenever you can, you talk to people who met the assistant or the guy who was running a far flung bureau of the kgb. And I did feel a little selfish, like I was, I don't know, some. Some plutocrat who was throwing away very choice cuts of meat only to get to the filet mignon of thinking about how it relates to today. So I want to go through some of the book. Maybe it relates, maybe it doesn't. It's just fascinating history, if that's okay. But before I do, give me and the listeners a little bit of orientation about what you doing. Up until 2022, you were running an alternative news channel where you already. You must have already been in the crosshairs of state censors. What was life like before you came out against the war?
- [11:04]
Mikhail Zygar
No, you know, actually I was founding editor, the only independent news TV channel, so we were the only TV channel that was not censored. And that we didn't, we didn't have such a phenomena as self censorship, which is, which is the most important because we were very young and bald and we started our TV channel in the short period of so called Medvedevs thaw, when Putin stepped down as a president for four years and, and Russia for a period of time became a bit more liberal. So I was running this TV channel which was almost destroyed in 2014, just a month before the annexation of Crimea. I wrote, I wrote several books about the Russian political history and contemporary Russia. One of them is called all the Kremlin's Men and it's the, this, the history of Putin's inner circle. It was published in Russian and here translated to a lot of different languages. And I think it's one of the most precise stories of how, how Putin was shaped as the politician. And so.
- [12:20]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, but this didn't get you jailed.
- [12:22]
Mikhail Zygar
No, I was working in Russia till as many independent journalists, till the end, till the last possible moment. And it was clear that after the beginning of the war it was not, it was not possible. The military censorship was established on the third day, all the war. So a lot of people left, actually a lot of people left protesting against the war. I was one of one and a half million of Russians who, who fled the country. And yeah, I was accused of protesting against the war and they, they call it spreading disinformation about Russian army and sentenced for that. But basically the reason for that became my previous book, which was called War and Punishment. That was the book about the historical mythology that surrounds Ukraine and all those myths Putin is usually using when he's trying to lecture Tucker Carlson or Donald Trump or anyone else about ancient Russian history. So he is using all the same old myths about Russia and Ukraine. So I wrote a book debunking all those myths.
- [13:36]
Mike Pesca
Right, let's talk about some of the people, some of the people that I met for the first time. Zednek Minor. Am I saying that right?
- [13:44]
Mikhail Zygar
Zdenik liner.
- [13:48]
Mike Pesca
I forgot.
- [13:49]
Mikhail Zygar
Yes, the Czech name. Rather complicated. Yeah.
- [13:53]
Mike Pesca
Right. So he is, Tell us who he is. And I was just fascinated when he talks about the death, I think it was the death of Stalin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And sort of not a mourning, but just not a celebration, just like an outpouring of animal spirits. But tell me about that. Yes, Dennik and that incident.
- [14:11]
Mikhail Zygar
Zdenik is an important character of my book, which is, which is nonfiction and it's all based on his diaries and all and his memoirs. And he was classmate of young Mikhail Gorbachev. He was, he came to Moscow State university in early 50s and he studied alongside with. With Gorbachev in school of law. And he witnessed Stalin's death, Stalin's funeral as well as he was probably the closest friend of Gorbachev. And then he came back to Czechoslovakia completely disillusioned, completely frustrated with Soviet version of communism. And he was one of the ideologists of so called Prague Spring. He wanted to. To reform socialism in Czechoslovakia in the 60s and was one of the prominent leaders of that movement and actually influenced Gorbachev a lot.
- [15:10]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, when he's a student theoretically he's quite autocratic. He doesn't even think that if you criticize the state, for instance, you're. You should get a defense. So when it's all on paper or heady ideas, he's very on board. And then he goes and there's a funeral for Stalin and it's not funereal, it's not mourning, it's debauchery.
- [15:32]
Mikhail Zygar
He says that no one is really grieving, that people are just, they are just like watching football match. It's just the entertainment for them. And they although they pretend that they believe in Stalin as God or they pretend to believe in communism, in reality they are so obsessed with their own problems and they know that they should pretend not to be punished. And he is deeply impressed by that.
- [16:01]
Mike Pesca
Another character I want to get to, who I probably should have known, but he's a little, a little down the org chart for a foreigner like me is Grigory Yavlinsky, who becomes a major economist when Yeltsin is in charge of the country. But just talk. He shows up at different chapters. Tell me about his background and the first paper that he wrote that put him on the map and almost got him erased from the map.
- [16:30]
Mikhail Zygar
Yeah, that's one of the scary stories of my book about a young economist who is in his early 30s and he writes the report about the state of Soviet economy and he comes to the conclusion that it won't work. That nothing really motivates the people. They don't have any reason to work better or because no matter what they do, their life is a dead end. And there are two possibilities. To bring back Stalinist system and to make everyone fear for their life and to work out of fear or to give people freedom. And that sounds really good.
- [17:12]
Mike Pesca
This is a cool headed appraisal. I'm an economist, as you said. One of the alternatives was let's just govern on fear. That might work. Or what we're doing now will not work.
- [17:22]
Mikhail Zygar
We.
- [17:23]
Mike Pesca
We're not going to be able to produce enough cotton. Even if the guy, even if the dictator of the cotton producing region says, we'll do 4 billion tons this year. They bribe officials with the trains coming in with empty bales of cotton. He analyzes it all.
- [17:40]
Mikhail Zygar
And what makes this story scary is that he's diagnosed with tuberculosis and he doesn't have one.
- [17:49]
Mike Pesca
But first he doesn't say, we have to get every one of these papers and we have to retract them. We can't let anyone read it. And they go and they literally find all 600 of these papers and they are wiped out of existence.
- [18:03]
Mikhail Zygar
And then, and then they diagnose him with tuberculosis and they tell him that everything, all of his papers, all the things of his things are contaminated and he has to be isolated in the hospital and he's locked up there without any, Any hope to ever go back. And, and his, his lung has to be removed even though he's healthy. But he doesn't know, doesn't know that that's, that's the way how this, the state, the, the, the Soviet system decides to isolate him and his dangerous ideas from the rest of the society.
- [18:41]
Mike Pesca
Right, Right. He gets a checkup, he's told, which is weird because usually higher functioning people are entitled to these checkups. Doctor tells him, yeah, the lungs got to come out. You have tuberculosis. It doesn't seem like he has t. Plus, a lot of the people in the tuberculosis ward were former prisoners because you get tuberculosis in Siberia. But then you have this scene where one doctor leans over and whispers in.
- [19:02]
Mikhail Zygar
His ear, you're healthy. Run away.
- [19:05]
Mike Pesca
Yes, yes. So what does he do?
- [19:08]
Mikhail Zygar
Yeah, he, you know, he, he was trying to fight for his life. He was, he had his checkups in different other clinics, but basically he could not do anything except for weight. And he was lucky enough to survive till that moment when Gorbachev was elected the general secretary and the whole atmosphere changed and his former university professor was able to help him, and he was just kicked out of the hospital and the doctor told him, forget about it. That never happened. But he survives after all.
- [19:49]
Mike Pesca
And then I want to talk to a figure we all know, but I didn't know some things about her. Raisa Gorbachev, who first of all blew away Margaret Thatcher in terms of her style and her sophistication. You know, Margaret Thatcher, she's someone who has access to all the, all the abundance of the Western world. But Gorbachev, Raisa Gorbachev Shows up in this beautiful suit, and she obviously comports herself well, and she's very, very smart. But what I didn't.
- [20:17]
Mikhail Zygar
At the same time, Nancy Reagan hated her.
- [20:20]
Mike Pesca
For what?
- [20:23]
Mikhail Zygar
Talking too much? For talking too much. For having opinion every now and then. She knew everything about everything.
- [20:30]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, but Raisa Gorbachev is an academic. And tell me about what she studied and what it wasn't allowed to be called because of the Soviet system.
- [20:39]
Mikhail Zygar
Yeah. She was graduate of School of Philosophy of Moscow State University, which. Which was rare, but actually she didn't want to study Marxism, Leninism, which was required for any philosopher in the Soviet Union. She started what now is called sociology, and she started her own sociological research in that region where she lives. So she was interviewing simple peasants. She was interviewing people to get to know the full. The broader picture of. Of Soviet agriculture and the psychology of all those people who were working on the ground, which was rather bold because that. That science did not exist in the Soviet Union. She was kind of trying to. To invent something that was completely forbidden.
- [21:33]
Mike Pesca
So she's worldly, she's smart, she's trying to think her way out of the system. So is Melinar of the Czechoslovakia at that time. He comes to independent conclusions. We talked about Yavlinsky. Gorbachev also travels aboard abroad, sees things, goes to Canada at one point. Can't believe that this gigantic farm that would take dozens or hundreds of people to run in Russia is run by four people, including the husband and wife who run it. What we have here, what you paint, is a picture of enforced ignorance and enforced lack of information that can't be allowed to exist because it would expose the Soviet system as destined to fail. But in the person of Gorbachev, you have miraculously, somehow a person unlike Khrushchev, unlike Stalin, unlike all the other members of the Politburo who figured a few things out, saw the world a bit more clearly, kind of defied the Soviet mental mind control. And this isn't even in your book. This is just what I got out of it. That was the most important thing in making Gorbachev this transformational figure. Someone had to think their way out of a Soviet system that was designed to suppress thought.
- [22:55]
Mikhail Zygar
Yeah. And, you know, I think it's important. It's really important. It was very important for me to start not in the 80s, not in the moment when Gorbachev was elected as Soviet leader, but a bit early in. In the 60s, because that was the moment when Soviet Union was becoming more and more cynical. People were losing their faith in Communism. No one longer any longer believed that Soviet system was really just one and that communism was even possible. And Gorbachev was one of first his wife and then he followed her example. More and more people started believing in impossibility of freedom and that Soviet Union could, could have been reformed and could, could have become more democratic. And that was, that was his conclusion and that, that was conclusion of a lot of people who were, who started thinking in a completely different way. And to my mind it's very like I'm, I, I'm focusing in this book on what people believe in because I think that that really matters.
- [24:00]
Mike Pesca
I will be back with more of the author of the Dark side of the Earth, Mikhail Zygara. Up next.
- [24:16]
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- [24:32]
Mikhail Zygar
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- [24:50]
Mike Pesca
Savings versus Comparable Verizon plans plus the cost of optional benefits plan features and taxes and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third line free via monthly bill credits. Credit stop if you cancel any lines. Qualifying credit required. We're back with Mikhail Zeigar, author of the Dark side of the Earth. And so I've been thinking about the United States also has been described as a teetering empire. And compared to the Soviet Union, they have different types of information systems. So the United States right now is awash in information, maybe even you could say misinformation, disinformation. So it's very hard to tell what's accurate and authentic. But in your country a book was written about them titled Nothing is True and Everything is Possible. The Surreal Heart of Russia. And I was wondering if you would compare the two different information systems, one in which the propaganda is purposeful and in your face, thus destabilizing trust in truth in government and the United States, where that's not exactly the situation. But maybe it's the same effect where we're just so overwhelmed and our senses can't quite comprehend it.
- [26:02]
Mikhail Zygar
You know, I do can compare, but with a later period because when Gorbachev becomes the Soviet leader in 1986, there is a famous catastrophe, the explosion in Chernobyl. The Nuclear power power station explodes. And Gorbachev is shocked because he cannot get any truthful information. Even he, although he's running the country and he's trying to figure it out and he cannot because that's not how the system works. And for him that becomes the crucial moment because he realizes that freedom of speech is needed to inform the population about what people need to know. And he opens that Pandora box and he lets journalists speak their mind. He allows freedom of press. And very soon that becomes a snowball. Very soon journalists start writing, they start the investigations of the Stalinist past, of corruption schemes in Soviet economy. It becomes more and more. And that, that blows up minds of the Soviet people because they were completely not prepared for that. Without any information they are, within a year they become overflowed with such a great amount of information. And sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's still Soviet propaganda, sometimes it's a lot of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories become really popular because that's, that's the first thing human psychology tends to believe in when, when it doesn't have the, the real fact check information. So I can compare this unexpected freedom, unexpected freedom of speech in the Soviet Union to the recent technological revolution that happened in our world when with social media, we, all of us, we were overflowing with gigantic amounts of information. So what was happening in the Soviet Union in the late 80s happened again, but globally with all of us. So yes, a lot of people are frustrated, a lot of people are just puzzled and they don't know how to check and how to distinguish true from false. And probably everything is false, probably all the information is fake because before that there was an illusion that we know because everything what is printed on paper should be, is supposed to be true. And now we know for sure that it's not. And everyone is bewildered. And yeah, that's. People are becoming more and more cynical because they have nothing to believe in and, and the only protective mechanism is not to believe in anything because that's.
- [29:08]
Mike Pesca
The only way you have this faux sophistication. You're not going to get one over on me. And therefore even truth gets shut out. Do you think we in the west are as vulnerable to this as the Soviet Union was back then?
- [29:21]
Mikhail Zygar
You know, I don't believe that human beings are different. I think that the situation has changed. It's another type of technological revolution. But human psychology is more or less the same as well as, you know, I think that the reaction of the humanity to the invention of printing press by gutenberg was more or less the same. Yeah, it was, it was a huge shock or, you know, the reaction of the humanity to television. In the 60s, we saw everywhere youth uprisings because of new television generation. Now we have generations affected by social media. And like all generation and younger generation, they are affected equally in a different way. But like, everyone is exposed.
- [30:11]
Mike Pesca
I would think, or I would like to think that we in the west have at least built up some immunity. And in the Soviet Union, or a place where there was no freedom and no discernment and no traditions of even traditions of fact checking and standards of proof, that's a little like the native tribe that first comes into contact with the Europeans and smallpox runs rampant. I also see, I'll also add to that we have excesses of capitalism, but what happened after the fall of communism was that the cartoonish gangster version of capitalism is what took hold. So I compare the two and I say human, humans are the same and will be either greedy or susceptible to misinformation. But maybe 200 years of institutions in the United States and longer than that, maybe that helps a little.
- [31:03]
Mikhail Zygar
You're right. You're right. I do hope, because in Soviet Union, definitely there were no institutions. And even though they were individuals who were trying to reform the society and were strongly believing in values, just that was not enough people. A bunch of people believing in values, that's not enough. Institutions are definitely needed. But if you want to continue those parallels, I think that we have something in, in this story, in the story of the collapse of Soviet Union that would remind us of what is happening in this country. Because let's, let's try to put it in few sentences. The story begins with the old generation of politicians that is clinging onto power and doesn't want to give the way to the new, to the new generation. Then there is a younger leader who turns up and who says, yes, we can have democracy. And he is inspiring and everyone adores him. Especially, like globally. Yeah.
- [32:02]
Mike Pesca
He's more popular internationally than at home.
- [32:06]
Mikhail Zygar
Yeah. And he gets Nobel Peace Prize.
- [32:08]
Mike Pesca
Yeah.
- [32:08]
Mikhail Zygar
And then there is another leader who is much more aggressive. He's a tough guy. He fights fake news in the mainstream media.
- [32:15]
Mike Pesca
Right.
- [32:16]
Mikhail Zygar
Nothing sticks to him.
- [32:17]
Mike Pesca
He's a large ruddy man.
- [32:19]
Mikhail Zygar
He's very controversial. But no matter how controversial he is, it doesn't ruin his reputation. On the contrary, it makes him even more popular.
- [32:27]
Mike Pesca
This is Yeltsin. Yes, yes. Or Trump in our case. Yes.
- [32:30]
Mikhail Zygar
Yeah. The second is Yeltsin. The first is Gorbachev. But somehow this plot reminds us of another empire on decline, which was Soviet Union. But yeah, I insist that you're right, that institutions is at least the institution of free and fair election is something that I hope will prevent the United States from the similar scenario as we saw 35 years ago, with the Soviet Union.
- [33:00]
Mike Pesca
I've asked you a couple questions about Yeltsin over and over. Gorbachev and even more stodgy members of the Politburo told themselves that's it. Yeltsin's done. He's either embarrassed himself or shown up drunk in public or whatever it is he's done discredit himself. And they're never right. Now, the weird thing about it is I find from your book, it's not because Yeltsin was necessarily so crafty or such a survivor said either people around him or people who wanted to prop him up, put words in his mouth, people told themselves that he said things he didn't say or represented things he didn't represent. What I'm trying to say is Yeltsin really was a mess, but the myth overwhelmed the mess, I think. Is that a fair reading?
- [33:50]
Mikhail Zygar
In a way, yes. He started definitely as the folklore mythological figure, because he did he. There was a famous speech that was attributed to him, and he never delivered that speech. It was written by another person, but it was like a very good mythological story. But he was a good. He was a good politician. He was very brave politician. He was a terrible statesman, but a very talented politician. He had that kind of intuition. He knew what to say and where. So probably the best thing he has, the genius gesture he once did was during the coup In August of 1991, when he was delivering his speech from on top of the tank. And that picture of Yeltsin standing on the tank and speaking about democracy, that was the most popular video and photo everywhere in the world. And that proved that he was like that leader who can overcome authoritarianism, he can overcome communism, dictatorship, which was not true. Somehow he became authoritarian leader who called himself a democrat. But at least as a politician, he was really persuasive.
- [35:10]
Mike Pesca
There wasn't any one reason why true democracy or democracy didn't take hold after the USSR went away. I'll read a American statesman giving his assessment on this will work. If this would work. If I had to guess today, I would guess that he, Yeltsin, would ultimately fail. That is to say, Gorbachev will also. Yeah. That is to say he will not be able to reform the Soviet economy to turn it into an efficient modern society. And when that happens, he's likely to be replaced by somebody who will be far more hostile than he's been in terms of his attitude towards the West. So there was the interregnum with Yeltsin and these words uttered by Dick Cheney came true in the form of Putin. Was it mainly an economic story that forestalled the flourishing of democracy or was it just. There were so many stories. When we look back, it was really realistically never going to happen.
- [36:09]
Mikhail Zygar
You know, I don't think that Dick Cheney was right. I think, I think like on the contrary, because Dick Cheney was, was sure that there was no way how Russia could be. Soviet Union could have been trans transformed and there was no reason to try to help it because it was doomed. And I don't believe that it was true because in the American administration there were two different points of view. And President Bush Sr. And his Secretary of State James Baker had completely different point of view. They were thinking that Soviet Union had to be transformed and under Gorbachev's guidance it could have become more democratic. And Dick Cheney was trying to explain to them that no, it's better to have Soviet Union dismembered and 15 little dictatorships are better than one democratic Soviet Union. And I think what we have now we have dickchener's scenario in the end prevailed. So yes, Soviet Union was dismembered. So Soviet Union became not 15 little dictatorships but like 11 dictatorships including Russia. But that scenario brought us to the current war and brought us to current Putinism. So right. Actually Dick Cheney's scenario was fulfilled and we see that that's a bad scenario. So definitely the, the attempt to try to help Gorbachev or like minded people try to transform Russia into more, into better, more decent democracy would have been better, a better case. And it's my conviction, I don't believe that Russia was doomed to have Putin in the end. Although a lot of choices were wrong. Yeltsin was not in the position to become founding father of Russian democracy. He was no George Washington. He didn't have any values. Most people surrounding him were old communists. And Yeltsin was like by the middle of the 90s he was a corpse. He could barely talk or walk. And still Western leaders, including President Clinton, Clinton, we all remember that video with, with Clinton laughing at Boris Kelsey. And still they were pretending that, that he was the reliable partner. No, he was not. He was a mess.
- [38:46]
Mike Pesca
And so in your assessment was Gorbachev the one to, who could have seen the USSR through to a more Western friendly democratic state? He, because he was always trying to hold the USSR together as a federation. Did we need a different figure other than the two of them?
- [39:10]
Mikhail Zygar
You know, there were a lot, a lot of different figures. Absolutely. I do think that Gorbachev was slightly better than Yeltsin because Gorbachev had values. And you know, the lead, the legendary leader of Soviet dissident movement, Andrei Sakharov, Soviet Oppenheimer, the person who invented hydrogen bomb and then started hating his creature and became the founding father of that democratic movement. He died in 1989, but still he found it a very strong movement. And Gorbachev was much closer to Sakharov than Yeltsin was. Yeltsin didn't have any values. He wanted power. That was his only, only objective.
- [39:59]
Mike Pesca
Was it. Was it Solzhenitsyn who lived, who came to America and lived in Vermont for a time? Yeah. Fun fact, Solzhenitsyn. And you should ask someone, this is a trivia question. What was Solzhenitsyn almost attacked by and where? And the answer is instead of Vermont wolves in Vermont, he moves to Vermont and almost gets eaten by wolves. Anyway, shouldn't laugh. But that is a fun fact as unearthed in your book. Yeah. A couple other questions I want to ask. One is, I was surprised. Is this widely known in geopolitical circles that Star wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative, which gets debated as even impossible, that it really did spook Gorbachev and at least as a piece of leverage? Well, you tell me. I sense that it was helpful to Reagan and the Americans.
- [40:51]
Mikhail Zygar
Yeah. Because Gorbachev for a moment, he truly believed in that. And also Soviet army generals were afraid of that program and they were trying to persuade Gorbachev to persuade Reagan to drop it because they were not ready for another wave of arms race. And actually another wave of arms race didn't start. So if there is a myth that Star wars finally killed Soviet economy, it was not correct. Because no, they, they were not able to start another, another wave, another circle.
- [41:30]
Mike Pesca
The last question is, if you concoct a alternative history where somehow you're allowed to stay and work in Russia and maybe even criticize the war in Ukraine, maybe the Ukrainian war doesn't happen just enough so that the hypothetical of this question makes sense. If you had to write this book and come out with this book, and I know you worked on it for six years while still being a Russia in Russian, how would the book be different?
- [41:58]
Mikhail Zygar
No, I don't think that it will be. It would be different. I think that this, this book is psychologically needed for a lot of Russians just to try to believe in themselves. And that was one of my ideas because it's a book about people and it explains why people matter, why ordinary people making crucial decisions can change the world. And I have millions of stories about those ordinary people. And I think it will be very important for a lot of Russians to read about it and just to start believing in themselves again because not a lot has changed. You know, Russian society was in a way, a hostage society even before the invasion of Ukraine. We have a lot of people who are completely apathetic back there in Russia. People who don't believe that they can change anything. They don't vote, they don't believe any mainstream news because like, it's not about them. Like they, they are trying to enjoy life and to pretend that nothing is happening and they cannot change anything, that that makes them unhappy. So yeah, I think this book is important for those people just to an attempt to remind them that no, actually they, they can change a lot. And it was not the Western conspiracy that ruined Soviet Union. It was Soviet people who defeated Soviet Union.
- [43:39]
Mike Pesca
Mikhail Zagar is a journalist who was the editor in chief of the Russian news channel.
- [43:46]
Mikhail Zygar
Zozhed Doged.
- [43:47]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, Doge.
- [43:49]
Mikhail Zygar
Just like Elon Musk's Doge, but Doge.
- [43:52]
Mike Pesca
With a D. Well, now it's in the past tense, so I guess Doge. Yeah, and he's the author of all the Kremlin's Men, the Empire Must Die and War and Punishment. His new book is the Dark side of the Earth. Russia's Short Lived Victory over Totalitarianism. Thank you, Mike.
- [44:09]
Mikhail Zygar
Thank you.
- [44:16]
Mike Pesca
And that's it for today's show. Cory War is the producer of the Gist. Kathleen Sykes helps him with the Gist list. Leah Yan is our production coordinator. Jeff Craig does our socials. Michelle Pesca is COO of Peach Fish Productions. And thanks for listening.
- [44:38]
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Mikhail Zygar
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