shelved 29,666 times Showing 30 distinct works. Something without precedent arose in the first days of the February Revolution: the formation of the Petrograd Soviet, sitting in one wing of the Tauride Palace, and that of the Provisional Government, sitting in the other. He's speaking here about television, Facebook, Twitter, all of it. So that war of attrition where you think the other guy's willpower is collapsible, can continue indefinitely. Peter Robinson: We're not permitting the Ukrainians to go over the border. "I . This is it. Well, Putin did the Ukrainian thing. They love trade. Kotkin's Stanford colleague, Steve Pifer, a former US ambassador and former senior State Department official in charge of Russia and Ukraine, disagrees with Kotkin on some important points. Peter Robinson: We agreed with Putin. Reagan shifted a really big system and how did he figure out how he could expand his scope for agency? All the stuff we're doing, by the way. "Ukraine could celebrate that anniversary by driving Russia all the way to the status quo ante of February 23rd, 2022." Not so. It's not a solution, North Korea still exists. Who's down? They don't know any history, but why? And so that the Taiwan knot is about how the status quo is working for us. We're way behind the eight ball. Peter Robinson: Lyndon Johnson was effective but he was also a pretty nasty piece of work. Taiwan is a self-governing, prosperous country that is not part of Communist China. Stephen Kotkin: the Russian thing. We saw it in the First World War and we saw it in the Second World War. Stephen Kotkin: because you raised the big issue and you framed it properly with the US and World War I and World War II, Kosovo. But I gotta tell you, I don't wanna lose all of these alliances and relationships. These were: 1) A second appearance on Alex Kaschuta's Subversive podcast. So Europe is an unfolding project with much disappointment, but overall it's packed. Peter Robinson: We're just emptying the warehouse. Readers plunging into Stephen Kotkin's "Stalin: Paradoxes of Power" expecting a detailed dissection of the cobbler's son and seminarian from Georgia who evolved into the . Peasants were free. What did Stalin understand by Marxism if, according to Kotkin, he also invoked the same doctrine to justify destroying the NEP? 4) An appearance on Todd Lewis's Praise of Folly podcast. If they take it, they cant have it. Economic recovery was rapid. Let's be honest. He also contributed as a commentator for NPR and the BBC. You see, he thought, "I'm gonna integrate Taiwan economically, make them dependent on us, integrate very deeply, and then they'll move politically towards our system. But why did the son of ex-serfs succeed while the big Saratov landowner came up short? When Stalin learned of the Menshevik-Bolshevik split in late 1903, he sided with Lenin. Stephen Kotkin: if I get invited back. We did not sit around in the situation room or some other august setting on the White House property or in Foggy Bottom and say, "How are we gonna manage this China stuff?" In 1900, Social Democrats in Tiflis, St Petersburg, Moscow, and elsewhere were arguing over the kind of politics they needed to advance the cause. It's hard to say. And they wrecked them. No question it would be better. We talked about Russia and Ukraine and it's going to be difficult to get the Russians to negotiate. Such was the case with Bukharin and the Right Opposition. I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, part of a three-volume history of Russian power in the world and of Stalin's power in Russia. The game is accession into the EU. Let's say Robert Caro's "Master of the Senate", Stephen Kotkin: which is just one of my favorite ever biographies because of the complexity-. Georgi Plekhanov, Lenin, and Julius Martov launched Iskra in 1900 and campaigned for three years to unite their fellow socialists in a duly constituted, Empire-spanning party with an elected leadership and an explicitly revolutionary program. But how in the world, with their current level of institutions, are they going to bring into that country, double their GDP in reconstruction money, even if we get the armistice today? Then, Stalin turned against his erstwhile allies or was it the other way around? Let's discuss that on our next show. And now being an ally of the United States after that devastating defeat in the war, Japan too began to rethink its China policy and how close it needed to be to China versus how close it needed to be to the US on Asian strategic questions. He's gotta feel threatened. Mass arrests followed. Peter Robinson: That sounds pretty attractive really. And then you factor in many other issues that we could discuss, but the point being is that Poland gets its over 2%, the UK over 2%. Indeed, in the days and weeks after the overthrow of the tsar, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks momentarily drew nearer to one another politically, mutually ignoring the supposed worker-centric democratic affinities of one, and the intelligentsia-centric dictatorial affinities of the other portentous affinities that have preoccupied generations of liberal American historians, exemplified in the work of Leopold Haimson. So can we have such people again? Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 by Stephen Kotkin review - personality proves decisive Stalin at Tsaritsin straight from exile into revolution. So that's the first and most important point. Because there are internal and external alternatives to your regime that politically you are destabilized, right? We began with that as a plus because it reinvigorated the alliance system. A single individuals decisions can radically transform an entire countrys political and socio-economic structures, with global repercussions, the author declaims. The war in Ukraine. Maybe we're adaptable and resilient. Callum Jones February 21, 2023. It's a deep degradation of their human capital. There's no evidence that this is happening. Taiwan's presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason to attack." Peter Robinson: Now I have to sum up a little bit my impression of what has happened so far. A handful of self-appointed Kadet Party parliamentary leaders hatched it behind closed doors. That's our secret weapon. Investment. This is the last question. And then a couple of things happen. But this time it didnt work. The October Revolution was a malicious freak of history, a putsch of Bolshevik squadristi that could have been prevented by a pair of bullets one for that deranged fanatic, Lenin, master of the abusive, pithy phrase, the other for Trotsky, that grandiloquent orator. Today we would speak of a drone strike on individuals who cause offense, drawn from an approved kill list. Are we still capable of producing the George Kennans and the Henry Kissingers and the George Schultzes and the Stephen Kotkins? If we understand who we are and how we got here and what we're capable of, we can project forward pretty far here. And then now it's up to the tanks and we're fighting over the fighter jets. Everything Russia does in, they're bombing the schools, they're bombing the hospitals, they are murdering civilians. Though willing to explain to assembled crowds his rationale for upholding the law, Kotkin writes, Stolypin personally led troops in repression when these pedagogical methods did not persuade. I'm Peter Robinson. This is the bottom line on Taiwan that you have to use as your point of departure. So you tell me how you win a war of attrition where you're not attriting? Stalin, Volume 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 . It's changed the tone to a very great extent, both in security terms and just in wider terms of who has a voice, who should have a voice, what's the center of gravity in Europe, and how should Europe operate. You're, as usual, very well prepared here. But Kotkin's political outlook, neglect of ideas, and addiction to hindsight warp his presentation of Russian and Soviet history, undermining his entire project. I came up with this equation very early in the war. Reading a complex book carefully has become a counter-cultural act." Consequential history. He did not. The Russian people were not paying close attention not reflecting, not arguing day and night as former Harvard cheerleader John Reed showed in his classic Ten Days That Shook the World. Kotkin backdates the 1903 Bolshevik-Menshevik split to 1900, mixing up the issues that divided the RSDLP at that point with those that agitated Social Democrats sic et simpliciter in 1900. Yes, Europe was rich and should take care of itself. This is Niall last autumn. To view the full transcript of this episode, read below: Peter Robinson: The study of history may be fascinating, it may even be ennobling, but does it do any good? To be sure, bad weather two years in a row and Stalins decision to periodically expropriate needed grain at gunpoint the Urals-Siberian method exacerbated the crisis. Stephen Kotkin: I wish I could write like that. The NEP was a success, not a policy debacle traceable to communist ideology. Kotkins anti-communist fervor turns matters upside down. Stephen Kotkin: Yes. Who's up? Peter Robinson: in 1783. Peter Robinson: Stalin produced tanks, we produced ships. Moreover, suppose they get every inch of territory back. All of that comes from the sensibility of studying history. No surprise, I don't know how you send a memo to a large group of people and expect it not to get leaked, but here's the quotation. For the most part, they have rule of law and stable constitutional systems. That Sevastopol is their main naval port on the Black Sea and it was established by Catherine the Great. They did not have in mind the Soviet (as Lars Lih has held) but a Provisional Government led by revolutionaries, not counter-revolutionary Kadets. Every day is existential for them. Born in Georgia in 1878 to parents who were once serfs, Stalin entered the Gori Theological School in 1888. NEP had gone through crises before, in 1923 and 1925, and both had been resolved by making policy adjustments. The number of German tanks in question is, I believe, single digits, and we're going in and have now committed ourselves to a, I don't remember the unit, squad, squadron? Stephen Kotkin: I'm not succinct. Stephen Kotkin: So that definition of victory makes complete sense from an emotional point of view. He was for the Cold War until he was against it. I appreciate that. Lenin arrived at the Finland Station in early April. But Kotkin rejects this explanation. So you win a war of attrition by either breaking the other guy's will and/or outproducing in a massive way over time. We have to understand how remarkable China is and that we have to share the planet with China. We live here in a country where the Left loves the European Union, and yet they won't let us teach Western civilization on a college campus. Russia doesn't win anything. Stephen Kotkin: They're getting easier and easier, Peter, as always with you. Nobody can have Ukraine. President Zelensky's definition of victory is recuperation, reclaiming of every inch of internationally recognized Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. That was developed. By Stephen Kotkin. Peter Robinson: what he also sees is that Putin got away with it. So either you're gonna fight a war of attrition properly or your chances of winning it are gonna be diminished. If it happens, it fails and the Ukrainian counter offensive is massively successful beyond everyone's wildest dreams and they take back the territory. Stephen Kotkin: Correct. You tell me. Both sides have the will to continue fighting. And there's some savings in the short-term on that. What's happening in, we've got this cockamamie situation where it works in practice but not in theory, so to speak. I'm not so sure we do. View more results from the 1940 Census. If you look at the history and you look at the way the world works, the US' provision of security guarantees globally is why the world is a better place today than it was a hundred and something years ago when the US was not so committed. It's a club of very successful countries and its dynamic is shifting a little bit because of its enlargement, and the same goes for the NATO story. I certainly have had my booster shot vaccine. Marxism was a theory of everything, Kotkin jibes. When we make a mistake and we make some doozies, and we've made some doozies recently and we'll make more mistakes, we can correct them. You see, you have a couple of big issues that aren't going away. Peter Robinson: Yeah, he got six years of his life, he was right about everything and 80 years wrong. So you're talking about a reconstruction, which is two times GDP. He is also working on a multi-century history of Siberia, focusing on the Ob River Valley.[6]. Peter Robinson: He became pretty good at it. Of course it would be better. Let's talk about the war aims. [3] He has won a number of awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Your willpower holds and the other guy's willpower collapses. So that's where we are. We've gone way long because I'm indulging myself. An excellent student, he graduated in 1894 and moved to Tiflis to enroll in the Tiflis Theological Seminary, obtaining his degree in 1899. Peter Robinson: Here comes the fifth question. Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, by Stephen Kotkin", "Book review: 'Stalin: Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928,' by Stephen Kotkin", "Terror and killing and more killing under Stalin leading up to World War II", "A Portrait of Stalin in All His Murderous Contradictions", Available articles and publications for download, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stephen_Kotkin&oldid=1139682450, University of California, Berkeley alumni, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with disputed statements from December 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Russian and Soviet politics and history, communism, global history, Berkeley: University of California; paperback with afterword in 1993, Oxford and New York: Oxford University; paperback with new preface, 2003; updated edition 2008, This page was last edited on 16 February 2023, at 10:17. MyHoover delivers a personalized experience atHoover.org. One is, this war is about Ukraine joining the West. Professor Stephen Kotkin continued his multi-volume biography of Joseph Stalin, with a focus on Stalin's leadership of the Soviet Union in the years leading up to World War II. That's big history, too. Senator J.D. It is a great nation now. He wants back the Crimea, which the Russians took in 2014. If we understand our own system, if we know who we are, if we know how we got here, if we know what makes this country powerful, not infallible, certainly not infallible but powerful. And how they do so determines the world's fate. They could get them with an EU accession process. It's beautifully written. Stephen Kotkin: Peter, I noticed you didn't quote Senator Tom Cotton on this question, but we'll take it from here. Peter Robinson: And Stephen, you don't feel that it would be better, that the alliance would be better if Germany. There was an armistice. In domestic affairs, every left tendency advocated accelerated economic development, not forced collectivization and industrialization, and was thus in constant opposition to the really existing alternative: the go-slow program of economic recovery and unhurried economic advance favored by the minimalist policies of the Stalin-Zinoviev-Kamenev leadership of 192324, and by the Stalin-Bukharin duumvirate of 192527. Last year, Stephen Kotkin left Princeton to become a full-time fellow here at the Hoover Institution, which among its many other benefits for your friends and admirers is that it should make scheduling these interviews much easier. Kotkin is a frequent contributor on Russian and Eurasian affairs and writes book and film reviews for various publications, including The New Republic, The New Yorker, the Financial Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post. And let's teach that to the next generation and let them appreciate it, including the fact that our system allows condemnation of our system, not just criticism. Let's be honest. I'll just wreck it." These and other blank spaces undermine the historians claims about the unprecedented coverage of his Stalin study. The East Palestine Disaster Echoes 1948's Killer Smog in Donora, PA by Cassondra Hanna. The Ukrainians, amazingly, fought off Russia's attempted conquest. We were successful in enabling, facilitating the Ukrainian's defense of their country. The leadership also ramped up the production of textiles and other consumer goods to coax the peasants. Kotkin makes an intriguing suggestion about Stalin's decision to assume all of it, "the giddy pleasure and the torment" of absolute leadership, on his shoulders alone. But as we said from the beginning, the problem with that argument is not that the Ukrainians aren't courageous and ingenious, it's that Russia is destroying their house. It introduced special field courts that used summary justice to send more than 3,000 accused political opponents to the gallows. Stolypin strung them up in demonstrative public executions so that people would get the point.. Why? They're gonna demote you, or worse. Certainly, Oblomovism characterized neither man. Let's not be afraid. Stephen Kotkin, the John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs, . The construction of political order on the basis of class rather than common humanity and individual liberty was (and always will be) ruinous, he warns. Stephen Kotkin, David Wolff Routledge, Mar 4, 2015 - Political Science - 356 pages 0 Reviews Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified This. And then the Ukraine War comes, that is to say Russia has a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Peter Robinson: Just restocking our own shelves. What he sees in has happened to Russia, he's much more rational and he sees what you see, which is that Russia has threaded its trust, shredded any possibility of alliance, humiliated itself. If each one of them got to the number or above it, the US would still be the dominant military there. So if I'm just, Peter Robinson: just playing this out for you. He has no way, right now, to bring Taiwan politically closer voluntarily because if it doesn't come voluntarily, he can only-, Stephen Kotkin: Right, and so he needs to have it voluntarily. Yes, get the stuff on the island before, God forbid, a war breaks out. To make up for the apparent dearth of material on Stalin in this period, Kotkin pads his biography with a hundred and fortypage long, upper-division level lecture on the momentous history of Russia and the world between 1905 and 1917, a pastiche covering many random, causally unconnected issues, with an emphasis on the actions and writings of high tsarist officials, notably P. A. Stolypin. Sometimes it's exemplary in the positive sense. People are talking about 350 billion as the estimated cost of rebuilding Ukraine right now. And so, we think that there are these well oiled machines and they have a strategy and they communicate it down the chain of command and if you don't fulfill your orders, you're toast, right? It's your house and they just snatch two of those rooms. The other significant issue for Kotkin was the signature appended to it, Stalin (Man of Steel): That strong sonorous pseudonym was not only superior to Oddball Osip, Pockmarked Oska, or the very Caucasus specific Koba, but also Russifying.. The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University. Either we have to ramp up production on our side and/or we have to destroy his production, or we're not in a good situation. Historian Stephen Kotkin became the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2022. Yet Stalin kept his position. Still, he grudgingly recognizes that Lenins dictatorship shared with much of the mass a popular maximalism, an end to the war come what may, a willingness to use force to defend the revolution Lenin drew strength from the popular radicalism. In other words, there was a democratic basis to the October Revolution. That's his problem, right? Donald Trump gets elected. I was unimpressed with Putin's threats. So this is yet another argument for a definition of victory in Ukraine. "China Sends Waves of Warplanes Near Taiwan. But Kotkins political outlook, neglect of ideas, and addiction to hindsight warp his presentation of Russian and Soviet history, undermining his entire project. General Minihan, "I hope I'm wrong. Stalins cloak-and-dagger escapades, in contrast, command Kotkins undivided attention. There're a lot of countries that became our friend and there are a lot of other countries that would like to become our friend. Stalin? They have lost their statuses and energy superpower. You know, "If you do this, if you support Ukraine, fire and brimstone." And look at this, this is gonna end at some point because they can't keep up production. Democratically elected, its proceedings public, Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries led it. He moved in and out of prison . Stephen Kotkin: Europe as a whole is an enormous success. So what's the answer? Even Kvali, long hostile to such agitation, finally came around to the new, interventionist politics. Stephen Kotkin: So reducing the scope of Soviet influence in the Middle East, squeezing the Soviets out of the Middle East, that was pretty breathtaking. And so at some point, they're gonna be unable to continue the war because they're not gonna have stuff." This snapshot of Stephen Kotkin's life was captured by the 1940 U.S. Census. 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