Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David Remnick, editor-in-chief, The New Yorker, interviews historian Stephen Kotkin about the first tome of his three-volume biography, "Stalin:Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928."
Kotkin is great but, very absorbed by his topic, by all his topics. David Remnick as an interviewer is excellent, insightful. If you just want to 'watch a lecture' there are lots of good Kotkin one and half hour uninterrupted presentations elsewhere. This is a very good panel discussion where Kotkin is "called out", asked to explain his opinions by a knowledgeable interviewer. Read the first 700 pager, half way through 'Waiting for Hitler', and waiting for third volume.
I have read a handful of bios of stalin including the Simon Montefiore book that I hold in some regard but Prof Kotkin adds a new dimension to the subject and I find it--and him--fascinating
I thought the same thing on another interview he did( pertaining to the Joe Pesci similarity, by the way the similarity ends with the common sounding voice and looks), Stephen is immensely knowledgeable and very subjective!! I love his work and the work of Jonathan Brent on anything about Russia's incredibly interesting history.
When You have a dream and when you have the belief that you can do it then you acquire a self direction and focus so powerful that you get rid of all obstacles in front of you.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has not only read Jeremy Rifkin's book, The Third Industrial Revolution, and taken it to heart. He and his colleagues have also made it the core of the country's thirteenth Five-Year Plan
Stephan Kotkin and Ian Kershaw are the best their like the iron man and captain America on biographies. If you didn’t know Ian kershaw weite Hitler a biography.
The interviewer has an uncanny ability to interrupt and sidetrack Kotkin just as he's approaching the synthesis of a multi-faceted answer. Very frustrating.
The reason is probably a combination of low sugar + the interviewer already knowing the answers to the questions he asked. This wasn't the first time Kotkin did interviews/reviews of his work. They also know each other. If you don't already know Kotkin's stories, this interview is definitely jarring.
BRIEF COMMENT: WHEN WILL HIS THIRD VOLUME BE READY FOR PUBLICATION? THE LAST THING I READ ONLINE WAS HE'S IN THE PROCESS OF WRITING THE BOOK & IT MIGHT BE READY FOR FINAL RELEASE IN THE SUMMER OR EARLY FALL OF 2021. LET'S HOPE SO. HIS RESEARCH IS AMAZING & HIS FIRST TWO VOLUMES HAVE RECEIVED MUCH PRAISE FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. PLEASE HURRY W/THAT FINAL VOLUME MR.KOTKIN.
This is a terrific interview. David is pointing Stephen towards the golden vein of his research. I have been interested in Soviet studies for many years and ceaselessly irritated by the fog of propaganda from the so-called left and right. You feel as you read Stephen - at least I did - his uncompromising honesty in this treatment of the material, as though he wanted to write one of the greatest histories, unvarnished and truthful. So far, so good. His final volume will cover the most interesting period: the Great Patriotic War through to Stalin's demise, and possibly the de-Stalinisation from 1956. It is like waiting for the final season of Game of Thrones.
The Information Research Department (IRD) tweaked animal farm and promoted it internationally. www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1322943/world-war-3-animal-farm-news-george-orwell-book-cold-war-spt?fbclid=IwAR1vWXB6pKgXZfUVEJUO6EILqECiwUUsWMHjHuxXQrUOU2jbHaNWIZrgT8E Robert Conquest was on the staff of the (IRD), which received Orwell's list and constructed many lists used for blacklisting or persecuting people, with their main targets for propaganda and persecution being in the Third World. The most violent repressions happened after right-wing coups. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Research_Department
@menckencynic By "angels", you mean bloody imperialists waging war on all anti-colonial and anti imperialist peoples rising up against their extremely violent oppression.
Imagine being a working class person and still remaining ignorant enough to believe the lies of imperialism though, and not literally being a communist.
14+ capitalist nations sending invading armies during the civil war, Nazi invasion after US appeasement, operation unthinkable, over the top carpet bombing of Dresden and nuclear bombings in Japan (clearly done as a display of power to send a message), acceleration of nuclear arms race by the US, most missiles pointed at the USSR, Red Scare propaganda used to wage war on people's movements anywhere in the world ....
Kotkin is always so personally appealing and intellectually thought-provoking--what a tough combo to achieve! He can satisfy without acquiescing to those who try to press him into a binary position. Wouldn't you love to hear his assessment on the current violence in our streets and cities? But we probably won't. And if you've listened to him carefully, perhaps you can guess. I take as my text his oft-repeated comment: "it is never necessary to kill people in order to improve an economic system." One funny thought he provokes here is he says Russians want to build a strong state and that effort inevitably creates a personal dictatorship. It provokes the thought that we Americans want a constitutionally-limited state, and we end up with a juggernaut that describes itself as, "...like the ancient Romans--we crucify the first 5 guys we see, and then the rest fall into line." Maybe not so funny. Yes, I agree with my fellow Kotkinians--I do wish he would sit and talk with Dave Rubin or Joe Rogan. Kotkin has the mass appeal to make that a million-views video. In one fell swoop, he could give masses of Americans the historical foundation we all need for taking constructive political action.
Kotkin is extremely informative, very perceptive and entertaining as well, as ever. I would have enjoyed this talk even more if Remnick had butted out a lot more. No doubt this is not a view shared by many but I'm not sure that being editor-in-chief of the New Yorker does not encourage you to exhibit, in miniature, some of the same tendencies Stalin himself suffered from.
" He was a gentleman from sole to crown..." Ah, yes, just the qualities a man needs to be able to identify people with, uh, some of the same tendencies Stalin himself suffered from. On Remnick's butting in, I think that his "What do you think of psychobiography? How about Robert C. Tucker...?" at 1:05:30 or so is very charitable: Kotkin was getting high-pitched, loud and repetitive, all while making the simple, mundane, and perhaps in this context obvious point that power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Remnick simply brought the man back to his senses, for which I think the audience there, and the rest of us out here, are grateful.
Kotkin is a very bright lad ad I'm looking forward to reading his Stalin. (I have Volume 1 on order.) I think he comes off much better here than he does in his many book promotion speeches which are kinda canned.
I was backing up into a parking spot and Kotkin pulled in head first and stole it from me . He gave me the finger, called me a kulak and told me to get bent .
From Kamenev at 14th Party Congress I began this part of my speech with the words, “We are against the theory of individual preeminence, we are against creating a Chief!” With these same words I end my speech. (Applause by the Leningrad delegation) (Voice from a seat) “And who do you propose?” I am in agreement ! Who would replace Stalin Felix Dzierzynski What's the solution shared decision policy with basically article evaluators
None of this slaughter would have occurred absent willing minions: the people who pulled the triggers, who took the cows, etc. We need to better understand these people.
Tenure, mention by the interviewer, a solid system according to the joke, well, should ask how solid it is to Norman G Finkelstein, it would be understood differently and not refer to so lightly.
Stephen Kotkin, I first consciously heard about Stalin in my secondary school during history class at the school Number 31 in Vitebsk, Belarus. I think I was about seventeen back then. Stalin seemed to have been out of favor at that time because nothing much about him had penetrated my teen mind. My history teacher`s words about Stalin that settled down in my memory were :"Although Stalin won WWII and saved our country from enslavement by Germany he had made many mistakes and has given our country a bad name abroad." Is there anything more to add to her explanation?I was born 10 years after Stalin`s death. My parents had not met yet when he died. Then I found myself in the United States after the breakup of the Soviet Union. I have exposed to so much information about Stalin over here that my impression is Stalin has not died in America yet. I have been reprimanded for Stalin`s labor camps (the last labor camp was officially closed several years before I was born), accused of having persecuted the Jews in the Soviet Union and stuff like that. I thought one needs to come over to America in order to find out the truth about oneself. Almost no American asked me about my life. Why? They know everything from American mass media. Only the American wife of an American acquaintance of mine from my work asked me pointblank about my life in the Soviet Union. I`d set out to tell her. She cut me short after several sentences and said: "No, your life wasn`t like that. Listen, I`m going to tell you what your life was like..." And she went on to tell me a Soviet lifestyle of fear and oppression and want and long lines seen in a typical American movie about the life of the Soviet people in the Soviet Union. It was not how I had remembered my life. Maybe because I had lived far from Moscow and out of Russia that I had missed out on the typical stuff of Soviet life as portrayed in the US. When I got over to America, a college dorm roommate of mine had been here for five years already. One of his first pieces of advice to me was: "Don`t waste your breath trying to explaining anything to the Americans. They are not capable of understanding anything that sits outside of the framework of their mindset that gets shaped into them in this country..." I thought this was a crude exaggeration. After many years in the US I have come to the conclusion how right my former roommate was.I like watching your shows. They help me increase my vocabulary about life in Soviet Russia. I think when you talk about famine you`d do well to compare it with big famines in other countries. Like 3 massive famines in India deliberately condoned by Great Britain in the 19th century so that the Indian farmers didn`t get used to government help. I sometimes feel that from the Western point of view Russia is held to be a backward country because it committed the same crimes as western European countries and the US did with a lag of a century or two. It gives the right to western democracies to crow. After some five centuries of robbing the whole world but failing to break up Russia into colonies like the rest of the world. I grew up in a republic that had been devastated and razed to the ground during WWII. Russia had pumped a vast amount of money to rebuild and industrialize this republic (and many others) and cultivate its friendship, all at the cost of its own poverty. When the Soviet Union collapsed, all that industry almost ground to a halt for lack of material resources. I also read a book in the US written by a French reporter who was the first Western reporter to get into he Soviet Union when it had opened up for some time after Khrushchev`s speech denouncing Stalin. The reporter was leaving Tbilisi when an uprising was taking place in the city. I learned about this uprising for the first time in my life. It was mostly by Georgian university students who had been offended by Khrushchev`s speech. The students thought Khrushchev had slung mud at the Greatest Son of the Georgian nation to justify his own coming to power. The uprising was brutally suppressed by troops sent by Khrushchev. I told a Georgian "Russian wife" I know here about this. She was not surprised to hear about that. She said everyone in Georgia knew it. So I have learned in the US so much more about the country of my childhood that when I was growing up there. I bet if you spend some time in Russia, you could find out so much more about your own country. I have met some young Americans who visited Russia and said the Russians are not the kind of people the US media tell us about. Well, as for my country Belarus, I rarely encounter an American who knows what it is. I`d like to hear any of your comments, please.
peter ivankovich Здравствуйте. Я живу в Америке и учу русский язык. У меня есть несколько знакомых и собеседников в Белоруси. А когда Вы переехали в Америку?
Peter, You need to take that post down and paragraph it. Solid blocks of type like that are very difficult to read -- and you deserve to get f=more readers for your mixed and interesting thoughts.
"Special country with personalistic rule" reiterates and reflects Hitchens' definition of "religious thinking." The construct of religious thinking is: 1. Hero worship + 2. unassailable dogma + 3. criminalization of some thought (the thought crime).
@MsYogaGrrrl - My use of Hitchens (I am sure you have read all of his books) is perfectly accurate for what I use it for - an analogy that helps clarify Kotkin's term, "personalistic rule." I don't think you quite grasped the analogy. I see from your library of vids you're a kid, you will learn with more reading. I congratulate you on even being here. Here's a beginning reading list: Kotkin-Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, Simon Sebag Montefiore "Young Stalin," Allan Bullock - Hitler and Stalin, Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Michael Dobbs - Six Months in 1945 - FDR, Stalin, Churchill, Truman, and the Making of the Modern World, Robert Service - Stalin A Biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore - Stalin The Court of the Red Tsar. Get back to me when you are done with those. ;)
40:57 False. The right question is: When do Kevin's parents leave for their next vacation. :P Loving the talk so far. We need to get this guy on Sam Harris Podcast. I emailed him and he said he was inundated with podcast requests. However, the people can speak.
One has to be part of a central committee like the ones with the Trotskyists to understand the dynamic involved in decision making. We are a long way from understanding fully what was involved in a political party as radical as the Bolshevik at the time of the taking over of power which took place in a very specific historical time in Russia. Any attempt to “explain” the time of Stalin cannot be valid unless one takes in account and embrasses the ideal of communism and understand fully the ferocious not to say murderous opposition of capital. The work of Trotsky about Stalin is probably the only one which permits to understand Stalin regime on a political level, not on a question of personality which, it has to be admitted can play a role but never a decisive one. Nothing exists by itself, it is part and parcel of the whole and as such the history of mankind cannot be seen through personality which is what has been understood so far, we see history through glamorous or infamous leaders, it’s like describing a fruit from its outside appearance and ignore the inside. Thinking inside the box doesn’t help to progress unfortunately.
One thing is clear - it is ethnic Jews who led Bolshevik revolution in Russian. Some were assimilated, most of them were not. Yet nobody gives "credit" to true authors of the 70 years of communism in Russia which destroyed lives of millions of Russian people. The victims of communism were Russians, not Americans.
If your reading vol 1 Stalin at Tsaritsyn begins to show his Psychopathic monster character With Tsaritsyn surrounded by White armies he carried show trials and executions
55.00 is interesting. Rikov saying that collectivisation 'now', will be catastrophic, and Stalin's insistence that, 'we think capitalism is wrong ergo we stop it NOW, because that is what we ARE as Marxists'.
At 30:35 Stalin's only legal job. So much for the theory that you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. 🤣🤦♂😎🤣 What one may think of as the crux, including Lenin's Testament (spoiler alert: go listen to Kotkin), revs up around 42:00. This is Kotkin the grinder in the archives, not the guy with the nervous bad jokes doing a book tour. I find him credible. Brilliant. And ver-ree important.
Anyone interested in this book should watch the Uncommon Knowledge videos where Kotkin is interviewed by Peter Robinson. Both of the two interviews (one for each released book) are far superior to this. Robinson gets right into the meat and potatoes of the books.
What if Chamberlain had waved an ipad in the air instead of a flimsy piece of paper flapping in the wind. And he says: oops my battery died and I lost the signature is lost. SO HE SAYS BUT I have Herr Hitler's word. Hitler's word is good for it anyway. Ooops my pants fell down. Would history have been changed? Aside from the kiddiing, one historian said that the problem was that the negotiation was done leader to leader rather than government to government.
From studying British India, British India & British Ireland were capitalist, yet had plenty of famines. Pure capitalism causes famines too, not just communism.
Stephan Kotkin is a great talker and from what I have read a wonderful writer but I do not agree with his surmises...I look at it a little differently. I believe he created this premise to draw attention to and insinuate a new idea that contradicts most previous writings on the subject of Stalin....to me he was looking for an opening that wasn't the same old stuff (.thus like a business that creates a new product that makes huge profits).in a nut shell he tries to make people believe that Stalin was an ordinary man in which his politics made him a murderer ....a very vague and unprovable premise and a great idea for a book to make a lot of money...very clever..I guess I am playing devil's advocate but to me Kotkin is blurring the line between psycho killer and normal human being in the name of financial profit ...which doesn't really bring forth a positive outcome...having said all that being the wonderfully self sacrificing consumer I can't wait to get his books ..all of them..The true feeling behind my reply is envy...so I am petty and a bit of a "hater" . Kotkin is almost too good to be true.
The reason why there is very little evidence in real time of his sociopathic behavior is because who is going to tell the truth in real time?..it would have been certain death. Only in hindsight after Stalin's death do people then become comfortable with documenting what their feelings actually were...I don't know that just seems to make sense to me.
David Remnick is often uncomfortably and embarrassingly naive in this interview process. He's trying to steer things to anticipated insights when he should just let the rich narrative unfold naturally.
And turns out Stalin "the Monster" is nothing compared to the sociopathy of the corporate global oligarchs and their new feudalism. Read the other Kotkin - Joel.
Have you ever seen a Great historical leader without blood on his hands? Than more time separate us from that person, than less bloody that leader appear. Let's take in consideration political and sociall situation inside the country. Revolution 1905, WW l Revolution 1917, Civil war 1918 - 1924. Plus international interventions. Nation is divided by political affiliations. Anybody wants to try to be a leader ? And the territory play it's role. If there was Trotsky instead of Stalin, than we would see bloody dictatorship. And Trotsky didn't have plan to get the nation on right track. There was genocide in many countries, with much higher death rate from repressions. In 1931( if I'm not mistaking) , Stalin said " We have about 10 years to turn from agricultural country to modernize industrial one, otherwise we will be whipped out." There was no one who could lead the Nation to Victory over NAZIS.
Kotkin assumes no possibility that Lenin's testament was altered or quashed by Stalin subsequent to January 1924. There IS evidence that Lenin was taking his distance from Stalin by late 1923, but his incapacity prevented more aggressive action. It was left to Trotsky to take up the political struggle against Stalin in 1924, but by then Stalin had permeated the party and state apparatus with his allies and dependents, then used them to stifle dissent, opening the door to their expulsion and, eventually, murder.
"The pull of the Harriman family continues to this day ..." followed by giggles from some clueless audience member titillated to be so close to old money.
Stalin's insatiable appetite for more and more power no matter what, eerily matches the same with Donald Trump. Trump seems to never be satisfied with enough power. This interview/lecture was full of insight from beginning to end. His mind has boundless energy and we must avail ourselves of his comprehensive work.
Remnick needs to learn not to interrupt! So many print journalists are lost at sea when they try to do talk journalism and Remnick is a particularly good bad example of Idiot print bozos stomping all over their subject.. And that is what makes this a really good example of print stupidity!. best Bruce Peek
+neuropsychdoc: Remnick has his own style and agenda -- no doubt about it. And usually that's annoying. But in this case I think he provides a somewhat useful counterpoint to Kotkin's tendencies. Kotkin is ultimately okay by himself -- he has enough self-restraint. But here Remnick reinforces that self-restraint and I find that a good thing overall . . .
Clem Cornpone Yeah, Remnick is trying to make the trains run on time while the audience is desperately trying to learn from the few precious minutes they have with Stephen Kotkin
Man, the interviewer is so annoying. What an unrespectful guy. He evidently wants Stephen to say what he wants. Thanks God Stephen does not allow him to.
How many innocent Russia’s citizens were killed by Stalin? America’s greatness of own recognitions of Capitalism systems of freedoms, entrepreneurship spirit and equality of opportunities have been come from own established principles of Foundation and Constitution laws and will be continued always by America’s own recognitions, confidence and recognized principles of Foundation and Constitution laws to avoid Communism ideologies systems forever and for good.
Seems to feel the need to interject himself into a perfectly good discussion. I've seen Stephen Kotkin do many Q&As, and as hard as it is to believe, he is actually quite capable of calling on people to ask a question.
