Stephen Kotkin & Keith Gessen | Stalin 

I love listening to Professor Kotkin's talks and his reading his books. Wish I had them I was in college some 40 years ago...Keep writing please, I will keep reading.

One thing I wish Dr. Kotkin had said is that Lenin's Bolsheviks considered themselves, and were, tough professional revolutionaries, with a philosophy that people such as themselves had to be ruthless to push forward the revolution. The question was posed by the interviewer: why didn't the Mensheviks or some other party come out on top in 1917? Despite some bumbling, the Bolsheviks lead by Lenin were deadly serious.

Terrific conversation! Enjoyed every moment of Mr. Kotkin's speech.

We now have two thirds of that great biography of Stalin.

correction to professor Kotkin, in Hungary it was not the rural conservative farmers who destroyed the Communist experiment but the Romanian army intervention who in fact liberated them. That intervention was not responsible directly for the following quasi-fascist Horthy's government, but it did removed Kuhn's junta

Kotkin's fantastic!

Thanks!

some of the audience questions, good god, get to the point.

The more I learn about the Stalin years,the more confused I become! That’s no bad thing!??

29:41 best part

Every time I listen to Korkin I can’t but help think I am listening to Joe Pesci from the movie “My Cousin Vinny.”

Here might be a good place to ask..was Trotsky killed with a certain cocktail-making implement, or with a piece of mountaineering equipment? Anyone?

I’m in

I'm old enough to remember when people read books made from paper.

Mr Gessen looks like a young Kasparov to me

33:48 : )

The most footnoted multi volume biography of a dictator ever by the greatest living historian. Stalin was the most cunning manipulative political leader of all time and he did it mostly with the power of the writ or pen. Did he kill more than Mao or Hitler certainly the latter and maybe the former.

Steven Kotkin is, without a doubt, a learned individual when it comes to the subjects of Stalin, Soviet politics, World War I & II, etc; but I've noticed that he is misguided when it comes to his belief of the superiority of democracy over every other form of human government. He's a liberal by choice!

It's incredible the amount of verbal abuse and hefty amount of money spent trying to defile the memory of Stalin that has been going on for more than 60 years. thanks to Stalin, Mao Tse-tung transformed China into a decent country and the Soviet Union became a space pioneer and nuclear power able to resist the imperialist mood. Still, Stalin went through a very crude ordeal as most Bolsheviks and spent real harsh times as prisoner of the Czar in Siberia. in 1914 he almost perish in one of those camps surviving 50 degrees Farenheit below zero temperatures. Of course after Stalin took power The Gulag was the natural retribution awarded to the enemies of the revolutionary state. But the world wide well-financed campaing to demonize the most loved leader of the Soviet Union keeps going on endlessly. It reminds me of a huge number of people who regard Robespierre, Marat, Danton and most representatives of the French Bourgeoisie like monsters. The bourgeoisie made France what it is today and were as ruthless as the Bolsheviks, so what's the big deal? That's the way reality evolves and is met by human beings. Reactionaries like Hitler and Mussolini want to turn back the clock of time while revolutionaries want humanity to go forward, to advance but encounters strong opposition that has to be dealt with. Moreover the final occidental narrative is what has taken over many deluded brains; thanks to that narrative Truman is a great dude. He's not the genocidal type of monster who dropped 2 nuclear bombs over defenseless japanese communities. no. he's cool. Churchill, personal hero for many individuals had a long history of crimes against Africans , Arabs and Indians as representative of the bloody british empire which forced millions of chinese to become opium freaks. No wonder the degrading political campaign against the most honest leader of the world gains steam. It is a fact that Stalin never kept a penny for himself being the greatest economic support of Lenin during his younger years of Robin Hood life directly participating in all kind of confiscations and bank assaults to finance the revolution. After the successful October Revolution 16 foreign imperialistic armies invaded the Soviet Union to put back the bloody Czar in power. These invading armies helped by the rich peasants starved the population to blame Lenin. Stalin helped Lenin in the ensuing Civil War and Stalingrad was named after him because he defeated the Czarist Army there ending the foreign intervention. Then Stalin took over after Lenin death and this time he defeated the russian royalty, big slave owners and big landowners. Stalin knew he had to industrialize the Soviet Union to save it from the threatening Nazi leadership. But the rich and powerful hated evolution and attacked the revolution. Stalin had no other way to deal with arsonists, murderers and agents of foreign empires. Nobody can deny Stalin saved the world from the Nazi-Fascist hordes but the western aristocratic world leaders and mouthpieces of hatred for the defenseless and poor will never forget and will never forgive that the son of a servant rose up so high in history that he is still remembered as the one who turned backward Russia into an industrial power, stronger enough to save civilization from the Nazi Beast. These well-paid " intellectuals" of British and American imperialism aim to make Stalin look like Hitler. But they have failed. Even Thomas Mann, a german writer with no left leanings and persecuted by Hitler stated the difference."Nazi ideology is quite different from socialism." Hitler and Stalin are quite opposite. Hitler and Nazism is an animalistic bestiality of the german aristocracy while Stalin and socialism is an idealistic movement of the working class for equality among humans. An experiment for equality is very difficult to achieve due to our own greediness and selfishness and as such is subject to mistakes and infights that affect the course of the dream of humanity: World Brotherhood. Stalin made mistakes. Mao pointed out that Stalin didn't quite understand dialectics main and secondary contradictions. Stalin worst mistake was that he didn't believe that deep inside the party were the main enemies of socialism. Nikita Khrushchev being the main one whom in 1956 at the xx party congress denounced Stalin crimes and cowardly took his remains out of red square. of course Kruschev stabbed his former leader in the back after Great Stalin died, paving the way for what we see today: THE OLIGARCHIC RUSSIAN MAFIA KLEPTOCRACY LED BY PUTIN. That's a reality of human life. Either the reactionaries stab you in the back or you stab them first. Now tell me what would have become of China without the leadership of Mao? it would be a multicolonial entity belonging to the great powers, not the china that we know today. Japan wouldn't have declared war on USA if USA had allowed them to take over China. things happened because there was a chinese red army led by Mao that changed the course of history. If that's not greatness i don't know what it is. Now Katyn forest massacre, well the polish were the most arch reactionary anti semitic savages on those days ready to slaughter any semblance of human rights as they do today jailing anybody that acknowledge that the polish did the Nazis dirty work in the concentration camps. Well Stalin took advantage and hit first. The same happened when the red army stopped near Warsaw. Stalin was not stupid to spend soviet lives to save the bloody polish royalty. pretty simple. in the end what makes Stalin and Mao so important in history is that they changed the world for good. Thanks to them the owners of the world learned that you can not abuse a people forever and made reforms: social security, 8-hours shift, paid vacations and lots of benefits for the working class. so if millions died by any reason or another, today there are millions like you who enjoy the good life thanks to the blood spilled by the martyrs of the working class and their main heroic leaders: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. In the end, thanks to Stalin and Roosevelt people still breathes on this planet.

Stalinist civilization? Soviet Socialist Civilization? No way! Where is the audience questioner at? At best a culture like the Vikings, the Huns, the Tartars, the Barbary Pirates, the Nazis.