YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael McFaul

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90
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2018-05-24
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2018-05-24
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  1. “People have to remember it wasn't just a transition from autocracy to democracy. That was one part of it. There was also a transition. Transitions even too small a word. Transformation from command economy to market economy and from an empire to a brand new state, independent state of Russia. And in all of the post-communist world in that period, the moment that democracy becomes the political system coincides with one of the deepest economic depressions they've had since World War II. And the combination of those things together does a lot to undermine support for the Democrats. And remember, they're calling themselves we are the Democrats. And so for your common person, the Democrats are the ones that are presiding over this economic chaos.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “He wins pretty handily, beats six candidates, so there's not a runoff. And the week before that election, they're going over their numbers, right? They're looking, and he says to me, Mike, we got this in hand. This is it. We've won. I don't know exactly when, but our side will prevail. The coup took place two months after that, but the coup was defeated because he had Democratic legitimacy. Had he not won that election? Think of the counterfactual. Had he not had that mandate of the people when he goes to the White House to stand up and say, we are not going to listen to these commands, the White House in Moscow. The White House in Moscow where the Russian government was at the time. The Soviet government was in the Kremlin. The White House was where the Russian government is. And for three days, there's this standoff where Yeltsin is handing out, I am the leader of Russia, I'm the democratically elected.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “But I want to just before we talk about what went wrong, remember what went right. Like we didn't win the Cold War. And maybe we played a role in the margins, but the real winners of the Cold War were these people demanding a democratic society. And Lithuanians and Ukrainians and Georgians too, right? But without that and without Gorbachev and Yeltsin, there's no end to the Cold War. So those were great days. In fact, I remember very vividly I was sitting at the Moscow City Council. My friend, and he's still my friend, back to that, Misha Schneider is his name. He was one of the main campaign guys just sitting across from you. I'm reminded they got campaign folks too. They got their axle rods. And he was one of them. And he was in charge, a part of the inner team for President Yeltsin's first successful election in June 1991 for president.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “First, let's remember the good times. So that was $1991 was a tough time economically, right? Because the Soviet economy is collapsing. But there were these demonstrations. And by the way, that's when I first met Putin. Putin was a deputy mayor for international relations for one of the heroes of that time, Anatoly Subch was his name. And we were coming over as NDI. We brought some members council city council people from LA and New York to talk about like how do you balance a budget for a city. That was kind of the work we were doing. And he was our interlocutor. He was our liaison, right? He and his deputy. I got to know his deputy a lot better. And our job back then was chicken or fish, right? Like we're trying to figure out what to have for the banquet for Vice President Biden and all the other dignities.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Polite to us, but he said, We can't stay with him. He can't have these imperialist stay with him. But I would just, in that milieu, right, of thinking about that stuff. So when I got back to Stanford the next fall, yeah, I got quite involved. And you know, in a way, that was my first bit of activism about for democratic political change. And, you know, I've had that impulse with me, including domestically. I think we did some work for democratic change together later in my career. But I've also had this intellectual interest about it. And in particular, how international influences affect domestic political change. So it starts in South Africa, moves to Russia later in the Middle East. No, I work on lots of countries. That's probably the theme, and it starts with the anti-partheid movement.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “When the events turn musical, I could hold my own and I could dance. But then there's a little side note, which is my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife. She was heading that summer to Nigeria. And I created an excuse to follow her there. You know, I got some grant from Stanford to say I was going to study Soviet Nigerian relations or something. But I spent the summer of 85 in Africa, the first time to Africa. One of my friends in Moscow, by the way, said his name was Fani. He was the slickest, coolest guy in all of Moscow, known at all the disco techs, dancing Michael Jackson in these places, the coolest guy ever, very, very sophisticated guy. And he said, you know, when you get to Lagos, make sure you look me up. And so I did. And we tried, we eventually connected with him only to find out that his father was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Nigeria. And so he was very...”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Well, it was an interesting, it actually starts in Moscow in 1985 for me because I was there with ANC activists, students from these national liberation movements, the SWAPO movement in Namibia. I literally would go to these parties and we would all sing the ANC song and we would sing free Nelson Mandela. That was just part of the culture there. And by the way, they had a good time. Those were always fun parties to be invited to.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “And it was really sobering. And I went from there to a cab out to the airport with my Russian colleague who I'd been doing a lot of this work with, by the way, who later, his name Sergei Markov, he later became a Putin supporter over the years. But I did think that maybe I wasn't going to come back. But that round, my guys won and his guys lost. That was August 1991. There was a coup attempt. He was right”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Advising them, and that gave me an even greater excuse to interact with these people. But to your point about Putin knowing it, my last day of that academic year, I went in to see my advisor, Apollon Davidson was his name. Strange name for a Russian. He was there leading historian on South Africa. And I said, hey, Apalon, I didn't say Hagi up alone. I said, Professor Davidson, it's been great to work with you. I'm going to try to come back in the fall because I haven't quite finished my research. And he said, Mike, you're not coming back in the fall. I was like, what do you mean? And he said, You know, you came here to work on your dissertation, but you didn't do that. You worked with these Democratic opposition people, and their time is over now. And that means you'll never come back to this country.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “You do. And so different people had different strategies for that. Mine was just to kind of absorb the history and let the chips fall where they may. And that's when I got to know the people that eventually were part of the group that did bring down the Soviet Union, the Democratic movement. Democratic Russia was the movement back then, the kind of the solidarity. And it was an incredible time. I mean, every other week, 200, 300,000 people on the streets have one of the photos in the book. And I got to know these people. I later then got to know an American NGO. It's called the National Democratic Institute. They came to town. A student of mine had worked for them, and this is pre-email. So she asked them to deliver a letter to me. And that's how I met them. And they didn't have any staff. And I ended up, you know, kind of informing.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, and I knew that this was going to be a big moment in the history of the 20th century. I was there with some other graduate students from Harvard and Chicago, actually somebody from here and Princeton, you know, all the elite colleges, the Fulbright. And we're watching our discipline dissolve, right? Soviet studies is dying on the vine.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “If you're interested in political change, you should be studying the Soviet Union because things here are changing. And that was intriguing to me. And the next couple of days, she introduced me to these people that were revolutionaries. There's no better word for them. They believed in a two-party system and the renunciation of the cult of Leninism. And you've got to remember, in that society at that time to have those beliefs, that's like walking on the street here and running into somebody that's promoting Marxism, Leninism as the future for American political system, right? You got they're fringy and they acted fringy too, by the way. They were pretty kooky people. But that is when I decided she was right and I kept coming back. Sorry for the long divergence there, but then I get back, I sign up as a Fulbright scholar to finish my dissertation, but really I want to just want to live history because 1990-91.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Figured out that I was interested in political change, which is a theme of my academic work for the last three decades, she said, forget about Zimbabwe and Angola.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Know I gave the talk, I was trying to get that information from them as a total wash, but as I walk out, a woman comes up behind me. Tanya is her name. And she never met an American. And she wanted to talk. This was her shot, right? Here I am. I'm in her institute. I'm about to walk out. And she comes up to me and she just said, let's talk more. And so we walked around, you know, this is 1988, so she's still worried about being followed and listening devices and all that. So we kept moving. And she was at the time their leading Zimbabweanist for the Soviet Union. She'd written the one big book on Zimbabwe. I knew her. I knew her book. Knew of her work. Yeah. Is it the Hoover Institution? I'd read it. And, you know, the essence of it was she finally kind of figured out what I was doing and she said all that stuff they told you and there's a bunch of garbage that's just propaganda that's really not what we're doing but when she found it”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, independent variable, dependent variable, causal inference, all that stuff. And to the political scientists out there, I love political science. Get me wrong. It's a great profession. I'm glad to be part of it.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “That I know is on Putin's file. I'll tell you why. I know it for a fact. But I've been bouncing back and forth. I went back in 88. I gave this talk at the African Institute because I'm trying to research back then how the Soviets are supporting revolutionaries in Southern Africa, right? And in fact, this was a real turning point in my life. I go back in the spring of 1988. I meet somebody who worked on Africa and they said, oh, you should come give a talk. So I gave a talk in my broken Russian and all my mumbo jumbo polyside jargon. I'm sure nobody understood a word I was saying. I'm sure they all thought.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Well, that came a little later. That came a little later, yeah. So that was my next big time living there since 1991. I go back to Moscow State University. So you're right, same university. I'm there to finish my PhD, my Dhil at Oxford, which is about national liberation movements in Southern Africa. Kind of from that time in 85.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “The International Society. I went to a lot of African national liberation day events and they then were connected to these communist elites. And so I even saw a side of that part of the society, that privileged society that I didn't see in Leningrad. And that's when I got a better appreciation for, you know, why this system was evil and was not a fair society in the way that I used to think about it a couple years earlier.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah. Well, so two things had changed. One, I was now a fourth year Russian student as opposed to a second year. So my language a bit better. I could interact with Russians easier. Two, I got more into the fabric of that society. I started meeting with Refusniki is what they were called back then, Jewish people that were denied the right to emigrate. I started meeting with some more dissident types. One person who later Who I'm still in touch with, by the way, who was very interested in the rebirth of the Russian Orthodox Church, independent from the Soviets. He later became a priest after the collapse of communism. And then I met some, I got into this weird group, I met some of these Russian elites through my association with Moscow State University. My best friend, in fact, that year was a guy.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yes, I have one Russian friend from that period. Most of them faded away. That was a long time ago. But when I was named ambassador, he found me again. And we've been communicating ever since. Some American friends, too, by the way. In fact, and the great thing of this book tour, by the way, David, is people just come out of the woodwork you haven't seen. I just gave a talk at NYU last week, and somebody from that trip who I literally had not seen for 35 years came to my talk and it was great to see him again.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “And he was like my age. And it's like, well, we got way more in common with these people than we have our differences. At least that was my first naive impression.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Leningrad 1983. Definitely that thing they were not as different from us as I had been told. And I didn't experience the full oppression of communism then. That happened with later years. But that year was white knights, Leningrad, June, July, first time abroad, experiencing new cultures, really interesting group Americans that were there. And so all of those factors contributed to this idea that this wasn't so bad. And they did do some things right, I thought. And, you know, I met people who were just like me. I mean, I remember the first time I met this guy. I later understood why I met him. I didn't know it at the time. I met him because he was working on the black market, but he treated me like a friendly person and Americans and he was really into the doors.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Well, that was right as Ronald Reagan came in. So I was there fall of 81. He was saying some pretty scary things about confrontation. And I already had this interest from Montana, but I showed up there in fall quarter of my freshman year I took first year Russian and polycyha 35, how nations deal with each other. And my proposition was that if we could just get to know the Soviets, that's what we called them back then, we could reduce tensions. That was my theory. That was my theory of diplomacy as a 17-year-old kid. And two years later, I'd never been abroad before, but I got onto a program to study at Leningrad State University. Imagine that call, by the way, to my mother who thought that California was a communist country with a bunch of hippies. And then it's like, hey, mom, I'm going to the evil empire for the summer.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “But I did a lot of things. I was like the student body president. I was an active guy and active in politics and did like youth ledge and United Nations. I didn't get into Harvard. I remember that. But I got into McAllister. I wanted to go there. And it was just a simple decision. The financial aid package from Stanford was thousands, not thousands, tens of thousands of dollars more attractive And I didn't know anything about the place, to be honest, but my parental contribution for my freshman year was four hundred dollars. And that was the decision maker. And so that's how I ended up at Stanford”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Honest about that. There's a lot of strange people in California. I got into a college McAllister College in Minnesota. Yeah.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “And that was the day I figured out I was in California, first of all, and then I applied and I got in. I mean, my mom didn't want me to go. She thought a bunch of hippies and, you know, strange people are from California. That's what people.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “No, no, no. He's an artist in Utah. But Steve, he was worldly because he'd lived in California before. And he kept every day, he would say, we got to get out of Montana, this parochial backwards place. You got to go abroad, you know, over, I'm not, this is not the right word, you got to go out of state to see the world for college. And one day we walk down to the office where they had all these applications. He handed me the Stanford one. And I'm looking at the CA and I can't figure out where that is because I just assumed all the elite schools were in the East, like Harvard and Stanford. And is that Connecticut? Canada.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Pretty fluky thing. So, junior year, we moved to. My junior year, though, I was in chemistry, and my partner was a guy named Steve Smith. And every day we would go ahead.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Well, that's true. I'm still playing, though. I still go on to the Stanford courts with my sons and get the crap beat out of me. But he said to me something kind of profound. He said, Isn't it great to be able to use your brain to do something instead of just running around that stupid track? And that kind of lingered with me and, you know, helped me.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “He did that. And I remember the day we were debating at some tournament, and I was a pretty good runner back then, David. And, you know, I set records even in like a ninth grade. And he said,”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Well, that was a big thing, and we ran this case. By the way, my debate partners now, Senator Danes from Montana. Yes, Steve Danes. So we were pretty good.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “And I was looking for the easiest way to get an A in English because I hated English at the time. And my neighbor, Brightie Sullivan, she said, the easiest way, the Mickey Mouse course to get an A is debate class. And so I signed up for the debate class. And eventually Mr. Adams was his name. He's passed away. He convinced me to join the debate team, right? And the topic that year was how to improve U.S. trade policy. And so my partner and I were new, right? We're rookies or whatever you're called. We ran this squirrely case, like an obscure case, which was to repeal the Jackson Van Jackson Vanity.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “We moved there my junior year in December they were fired and he never played in Bozeman again. He went on the road until he retired, playing in all kinds of places. But that move was critical to my education and my interest in Russia because I didn't like writing. I didn't like reading. I'm not sure I'd have read a novel up to that point in my life.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “With him, usually keyboards, and I had a brother that played bass, we had a tradition of trying to play with him over on New Year's. So that was always fun. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, we had a good time with that.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Entirely shocked me. That definitely came from that time. But my junior year of high school, five kids, not a lot of money, how are we going to get these kids through college? We moved to Bozeman, which is only 90 miles down the road, butte to Bozeman. It's like going from a tough mining town to the college town. And my dad got a permanent job, or so we thought, at the Ramada Inn in Bozeman, Montana, the house band, right? Tuesdays through Saturdays, 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. I used to sit in with him from time to time. Where did you play with him?”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Story of trying to get a job and trying to get us into college actually is the moment that gets me involved in Russia because I was born in Glasgow, but I grew up in Butte. And if you know anything about Montana, Butte's a pretty rough and tumble place. It's a mining town. You know, I used to get beaten up. I was going to say in fights. That would be incorrect. I used to get beaten up from time to time. Not a very intellectual place. And I was a jock then, you know, struggling to keep my place. You're pugnacious.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “And allegedly that one last week, because we did Russia, but the roads also did Iran, was the most downloaded pod that he's ever done for Pod Save the World. But anyway, so, you know, yeah, my dad was gone. So in a way, I had to be the father figure. Were you the oldest? I was the oldest because he was gone a lot. And the irony of his...”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Yeah, up there, more ICBMs probably than people. And then just one day he wanted to go on the road. He was sick and tired of teaching. He wanted to play for a living. So his instrument was the saxophone. His music of choice was jazz. But there's not a lot of jazz gigs in Montana or the Greater Northwest. So over the years, he can play anything and everything, and he adapted to the circumstances.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Well, he was a school teacher originally, right? He was this great musician kid from Wisconsin. What do you do with the degree in music you become a teacher? Ended up in Glasgow, Montana, which is really on the edge of America. Yeah, right on the...”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Well, I grew up in Montana my whole life until I went to school as a 17 year old kid at Stanford. My dad was a country Western musician and that's, you know, if you know anything about the business, that means sometimes you're a country Western musician and sometimes you're not working.”

    2018-05-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 245 — Michael McFaul · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source