YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephen Kotkin

lines on the record: 166
first: 2022-05-25
most recent: 2022-05-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Cost them officially cost them $50 billion. You look around at the infrastructure that endured from that $50 billion expense. And you're thinking, you know, that's like the Second Avenue subway. You get almost nothing for your money. And so, yeah, it's corruption, Lex, but it's also because they don't want to do that. They don't want to invest in their people. They couldn't do it if they wanted to, and when they try, it doesn't work. But why invest in your own people? Invest in your hardware, your military hardware invest in your cyber capabilities, invest in all your spoilation techniques and your hard power.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But Russia's grand strategy is we're a mess. We don't invest in our human capital. Our human capital flees, or we actually drive it out. It goes to MIT, like you did, or it goes to fill in the blank, right? We can't invest in our people. Our health care is terrible. Our education system is in decline. We don't build infrastructure legs. We don't improve our governance. We don't invest in those attributes of modern power that make the West powerful. We can't because when we try, the money is stolen. We try these grandiose projects of national projects they're called. We're going to invest in higher ed. We're going to invest in high tech. We're going to build our own Silicon Valley known as Gulkivore. We're going to do all those things and what happens. They can't even build an airport without the money disappearing. The Sochi Olympics led.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Western mistakes and West invasion of the wrong country and Western destruction of its credibility through international financial crises. And one could go on. So if the West weakens itself through its mistakes and its own corruption, you're going to survive and maybe even come out into that world where you're the center. And so Russia's entire grand strategy, just like China's grand strategy, Iran, it's hard to say they have a grand strategy because they're so So profoundly weak”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe the West is going to buy your energy and your palladium and your titanium and your rare metals like lithium because you're willing to have your poor people mine that stuff and die of disease at an early age. But Western governments, they don't want to do that. They don't want to do that dirty mining of those very important rare earths. But you're willing to do that because it's just people whose lives you don't care about as an autocratic regime, right? So that's the world you live in where you're trying to get to this other world. You're at the center of the other world. You dominate the other world. But the only way to get there, Lex, is the West has to weaken, divide itself, maybe even collapse. And so you're encouraging to the extent possible Western divisions, Western disunities. A Western lack of resolve.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or what we could call a Eurasian centric world. And it's not going to be easy, Lex, just for the reasons that we enumerated before. But maybe you're going to get a helping hand. Maybe the West is going to transfer their best technology to you. They're going to sell you their best stuff. And then you're going to absorb it and maybe copy it and reverse engineer it. And if they won't sell it to you, maybe you'll just have to steal it. Maybe the West is going to allow you to bank, even though you violate many laws that would prohibit the West from extending those banking services to you.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would put it this way, Lex. After you absorb all of that from your minions and it impresses upon your consciousness where you live. You live in a Western-dominated world. That the multipolar world doesn't exist. Your goal is to make that multipolar world exist. Your goal is to bring down the West. Your goal is for the West to weaken. Your goal is a currency other than the dollar and the euro. Your goal is an international financial system that you dominate. Your goal is technological self-sufficiency made in China 2035, right? Your goal is a world that you dominate, not that the West dominates. And you're going to do everything you can to try to attain that world, which is a Russian-centric world or a Chinese-centric world.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so you live in that world. You live in the Western world, and it's very hard to have illusions about what world you live in when you're under that, you need those Western banks, you need that foreign currency, right? You need that high-end Western technology, that technology transfer. You're speaking or you're forced to speak or your minions are forced to speak at international gatherings in English. And I could go on. All the indicators that you live in, and so Putin lives in that world. He's no fool.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And let's say you're in Beijing, not just in Moscow, and you go to a meeting in your own neighborhood. You're the leader of China. You go to a meeting with other Asian leaders. Do they all speak in Chinese with you? No, Lex, they don't speak Chinese. You go to an international meeting as the leader of China, and guess what language is the main language of intercourse? Yes, the same one you and I are speaking right now.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you have any illusions about who controls the international financial system? I don't think so, Alex. You looking over your industrial plan for the next year, and you're looking over how many tanks you're going to get and how many cruise missiles you're going to get and how many submarines you're going to get and fill in the blank. And you know what? It says right there in the paperwork where the component parts come from, where the software comes from. Comes from the West, Lex. Your whole military industrial complex is dependent on high end Western technology.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not just the kleptocracy, it's a belief system. It's passion, its conviction. You can call them illusions, you can call them fantasies, whatever you want to call them, they're real. They're real for those people. And so, yes, they're looting that very state that they're trying to make one of the great powers in the world. And they resent the fact that the West doesn't acknowledge them as one of those great powers. And they resent that the West is more powerful. People talk about how Putin doesn't understand. The world and that it gets really bad information. Lex, if you're sitting there in that Kremlin, You're trying to conduct business in the world, and you're getting reports from your finance minister or your central bank governor Your whole economy, everything that matters, somehow all your trade is denominated in dollars and euros.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their eyes are moist because they're thieves and looters? No, Lex, because they believe in Russian greatness. They have a deep and fundamental, passionate commitment to the greatness of Russia, which in unsentimental fashion, they're all sentimental to the max. That's why their eyes are moistening, but they imagine unsentimentally that any sacrifice is okay, a sacrifice of other people's lives. A sacrifice of their conscripts in the military, a sacrifice of Ukrainian women and children and elderly. That's a small price to pay for those moist eyes about Russian greatness and Russia's position in the world.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was the problem of the Russian studies literature. It wasn't just about stealing, looting the state. It was about Russian greatness. You see those rituals in the Kremlin right in the Grand Kremlin palace, in the St. George's Hall, some of the greatest interiors in the world, and you see a ward ceremonies and you see marking holidays, and all of these looters of the state have their uniforms on with their medals, and someone's given a speech or singing a ballad, and their eyes are moist.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're not sentimental, Lex. You say to yourself, The cause of Russian greatness is greater than any individual life. Russia being in the first rank of the great powers. Russia realizing its mission to be Special country with a special mission in the world, a civilization unto itself. First rank of the great powers, maybe even the greatest power. That's worth the price that we have to pay, especially in other people's lives, right? We have a lot of literature on the Putin regime, which talks about the kleptocracy, the place is a kleptocracy. And it is a kleptocracy. We all can see that, and anybody in London live in the high life servicing this kleptocracy can testify that it's a kleptocracy. And not only in London, of course, right here in the United States, in New York. You know, it's not only a kleptocracy, Lex.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rather than confront them in a Cold War fashion where you stand up to their aggressions and you punish them severely in order to deter further behavior. So that's the first and most important part of the calculation miscalculation. There are a lot of other dimensions.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Important consideration here is in your own mind you've been getting away with murder, literally, as well as figuratively, and you think, you know, I probably can do something again and get away with it. And so the failure to respond at scale, in fact, the indulgences, the further dependencies that are introduced, the illusion that trade is the mechanism to manage authoritarian regimes. You know that great German clich ⁇. Vandel Dorchandel change through trade or transformation through trade one of Angela Merkel's favorite expressions you're going to get the other side to be better”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you decided, you know, I think I'll now invade Crimea and forcibly annex Crimea, and I'll instigate an insurrection in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine, in Luhansk and let's imagine you did all that, and then you had to stick out your wrist so that, you know, it could be slapped a couple of times. And you said, you know, I can pretty much do what I want. They're putting a sanction here and there, and they're doing this and they're doing that. And you know what? They're more energy dependent on me than before. I got better money laundering and reputation services than anybody has. Maybe it's the Middle East and the Chinese would disagree with you that you have better than them, but yours are pretty good. And the Panama Papers get released revealing all of your offshoring and your corruption and nothing happens, Lex. So the first and most...”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or you use some other internationally outlawed chemical weapon. And let's imagine that you did it and nothing happened to you. It wasn't like you were removed from power. It wasn't like you paid a personal price. Sure, maybe there was some sanctions on your economy, but you didn't pay the price of those sanctions. Little people paid the price of those sanctions. Other people in your country paid the prices. Let's imagine not only were you murdering people, literally, but you decided to entice the idiotic ruler of Georgia Into a provocation that you could then invade the country You invaded the country and you bit off these territories of Khazi and South Ossetia. And what price did you pay for that”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I asked them what's your favorite trade? And the line from the mall, and this is a cliche my favorite trade is when I made a mistake, but I got out early before all the carnage. So their favorite trade is not when they made some brilliant choice, but it's when they miscalculated, but they reduced the consequences of their miscalculation by recalibrating quickly. So let's talk about the calculation and miscalculation of February. Let's imagine, Lex, that you've been getting away with murder. I don't mean murder in a figurative sense. I mean you've been murdering people. You've been murdering them domestically and you've been murdering them all across Europe and you've been murdering them not just with, for example. Car accident, a stage car accident, or using a handgun, you use Novichok.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“War never goes according to plan. Fall war is based upon miscalculation, but not everybody is punished for their miscalculation. All aggressive war we're talking about, not defensive war, is based upon miscalculation. But you can adjust, you can recalibrate. You know, when you're driving down the road and that very annoying voice is telling you in a thousand feet, make a right. You fail to make a right, it recalibrates, right? It tells you okay now, you know, go turn around or U-turn or make a left. It doesn't say you're an idiot and turn around and make a U-turn, but it does recalibrate. You can miscalculate, and the problem is not the miscalculation. Usually it's the failure to do that adjustment. People I know who are hedge fund traders.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like I said, there are a lot of things about the West that we ought to criticize as citizens and we do criticize. But we have to be clear about where responsibility lies in these events that we're talking about today.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Meaning you can unelect that government in the next election. And that government makes foreign policy choices on the basis of its perceived interests. That's not a crime, Lex. That's not a provocation. That's not something that compels the leader of another country to invade you. That is legal under international law, and it's also a realist fact of life. The realists like to tell you, you know, that Russia here was disrespected, Russia's interests were not taken into account, et cetera, et cetera. But the real world works in such a way that treaties matter, that international law matters. That's why people like me were not in favor of the US two thousand three invasion of Iraq, Lex, because it wasn't legal, in addition to the fact that we thought it might backfire. But you know,”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so the idea that Ukraine, which had the legal right, might want to join NATO in the EU, which was not going to happen in our lifetimes and was not a direct threat to the Putin regime since the Western countries that make up the EU and NATO. Decided that your Ukraine was not ready for membership. There was no consensus, it was not going to happen. But it's Ukraine's free choice to express that desire. And if your government is elected by your people, freely elected.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I very popular on the left, very popular with realist scholars, very popular with some of the people recently on your podcast. And so it's neither eternal Russian imperialism nor is it Western imperialism, right? The mere fact that the West is stronger than Russia is not a crime on the part of the West. It's not a crime that countries voluntarily want to join the West, that beg to get in either the EU or NATO or other bilateral alliances or other trade agreements. Those are voluntarily entered into, and that's not criminal. If the West sphere of influence which is open, an open sphere of influence, which, as I say, people voluntarily join, if that expands, that's not a crime, nor is that a threat to Russia ipso facto. NATO is a defensive alliance, and the countries are largely pacifists who are members of NATO. It defends members if they are attacked.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And therefore, they could make different choices. They could say, we don't have to stand up to the West, we don't have the capabilities to do that. We can still be a great country. We can still be a civilization unto itself. We can still be Russia. We can still worship an Orthodox cathedrals. We can still be ourselves, but we don't have to pursue this chererical pursuit, this elusive quest to stand up to the West and be in the first ranks of powers. So I'm countering that argument. I'm saying it's perpetual geopolitics. It's a geopolitical choice rising out of this dilemma of the mismatch between aspirations and capabilities. It's not eternal Russian imperialism. And I'm also countering the other argument here, Lex, which is to say that it's the West's fault. It's Western imperialism.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I'm against that. And the reason I'm against it is because it's not true, it's empirically false. There is no cultural trait inherent tendency for Russia to be aggressive. It's a strategic choice that they make.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Alex. And so that's, I'm thankful for that And I'm thankful that people may disagree and that people make the argument that NATO expansion is to blame. But you see, I'm countering two arguments here. I'm countering one argument, which is very deeply popular, pervasive about how Russia has this cultural tendency to aggression. And it can't help but invade its neighbors, and it does it again and again. And its eternal Russian imperialism, and you have to watch out for it. This very popular argument in the Baltic states, it's really popular in Warsaw. It's really popular with the liberal interventionists. It's very, very popular with those who are part of the Iraq war squad that got us into that mess.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not suggesting Lex that everything the West has done. Has been honorable or intelligent. Fortunately, we live in a democracy. We live in liberal regimes. We live under the rule of law. Liberal in the classical sense of rule of law, not liberal in the leftist sense. We live in places like that, and we can criticize ourselves, and we can criticize the mistakes that we made or the policy choices or the inactions that were taken. And there are a whole lot of things to answer for. And you can now discuss the ones that are your favorites, the dishonor or the mistakes. And I could discuss mine, and we could spend the whole rest of our meeting today discussing the West's mistakes.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The freedom of countries to choose their alliances, and then I have this problem where when you rape somebody, it's not because they're wearing a short skirt. It's because you have raped them. You've committed a criminal act,”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Russian history, did we not see this before? Is this not predate NATO expansion? Does this not predate the existence of NATO? Would Oliver Stone sit here in this chair and say to you, you know? Had to impose serfdom in the 17th century because NATO expanded. They had no choice. Their hands were tied. They were compelled to treat their own population like slaves. Because, you know, NATO expanded. I mean, I could go on through the examples of Russian history that predate the existence, let alone the expansion of NATO, where you have behavior, policies, actions very similar to what we see now from the Kremlin. And you can't explain those by NATO expansion, can you? And so that argument doesn't wash from me because I have a pattern here that predates NATO expansion. I have international agreements founding documents signed by the Kremlin over many, many decades.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Agreement signed by the Soviet Union, the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe, signed by the Soviet Union, the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act signed by the Russian government the post-Soviet Russia, all of those documents signed by either the Soviet regime or the Russian regime, which is the legally recognized international inheritor, right, successor of the Soviet state. All of those agreements are still in force and all of them say that countries are sovereign and can freely choose their foreign policy and what alliances they want to join. Let's even go farther than that. I mean, you don't have to go farther than that, but let's go farther than that, Lex, is an autocratic repressive regime that invades its neighbors in the name of its own security, something new.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Lex, so let's imagine that a tragedy has happened here in New York and a woman got raped. We know the perpetrator. They go to trial, and Oliver Stone gets up and says, you know what? The woman was wearing a short skirt. And there was no option but for the rapist to rape her. The woman was wearing lipstick. Or the woman was applying for NATO membership and just had to be raped. I mean, didn't want to rape her, but was compelled because of what she was doing and what she looked like and the clothes she was wearing and the alliances that she was under international law signed by Moscow, all the treaties that sovereign countries get to choose whatever alliance they belong to. Treaties that the UN Charter signed by Russia, the Soviet Union, the 1975 Helsinki.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But in ways other than bombing and murdering civilians, children, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers. After you include that, then of course the larger number of victims of the Putin regime are not Ukrainians but ultimately Russians and there's how many of them now that have fled.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, Lex, you're absolutely right. And so before the invasion, the full-blown invasion of february twenty twenty two into Ukraine, because as you know, the war has been going on for many years at a lower level compared to what it is these days, but still a tragic war with many deaths. Prior to February 2022, before this latest war, we could have said that the greatest victims of the Putin regime are Russian. Domestic, that the people who are suffering the most from the Putin regime. Not sitting here in New York City, but in fact are sitting there in Russia now, of course with the invasion of Ukraine and really the Atrocities that have been well documented and more are being investigated. We can't easily say anymore that Russians are the greatest victims of the Putin regime.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ukraine is not murdering its own journalists in systematic fashion. If journalists are killed in Ukraine, it's a tragedy. If journalists are killed in Russia or Russian journalists are killed abroad, it's regime policy.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or really full level of competence, even compared to the Ukrainian judiciary, which was nothing to brag about? No, you can't say that, Lex. So we can differentiate between the very flawed, corrupt oligarchic democracy in Ukraine and the very corrupt oligarchic autocracy in Russia. I think that's a fair distinction.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not a comparable regime to Ukraine. You could say, oh, well, there were oligarchs in Ukraine and there are oligarchs in Russia. There's corruption in Ukraine. There's corruption in Russia. So really, what's the big difference? And the answer is, well, Ukraine had the open public sphere. Ukraine had a real partner. Can you call Russia's Duma a real parliament? I don't think so. I don't think you can. Can you say that there were any checks whatsoever on the executive branch in Russia? Can you say that the Russian judiciary had any independence?”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's talk about freedom of speech and freedom of the public sphere. We're not talking about freedom as a slogan here. We're talking about a huge array of institutions and practices and norms ultimately. And if they exist, you know and you live under them. And if they don't exist, you fully understand that as well. Ukraine was a flawed democracy Before Russia invaded. Is utterly corrupt Many ways dysfunctional, especially the elites with dysfunctional, the gas industry in Ukraine was absolutely terrible because of the corruption that it generated, the oligarch problem. A handful of people stealing the state resources, and yet Ukraine had an open public sphere, and it had a parliament that functioned. And so despite its flaws, It was still a democracy. The regime in Moscow, you can't say that, Lex.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Institutions Lex, right? We're not talking about propaganda here. When we use words like freedom, we're talking about rule of law. We're talking about protection of civil liberties. We're talking about protection of private property. We're talking about an independent and well-funded judiciary. We're talking about an impartial, non-corrupt, competent civil service. We're talking about separation of powers where the executive branch's power is limited, usually by an elected parliament. In fact, yes, let's talk about elections.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Freedom is better than unfreedom, Lex. It's a lot better than unfreedom, and a guy like you understands that really well.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leonov said, you know, the West spent all this time blackening the image of the Soviet Union. All these resources and propaganda and covert operations to blacken the Soviet image, and they did, Lex. The West did do that. And then Leonov wrote in the next sentence, and you know what? We gave them a lot of material to work with to blacken our image.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your podcast listeners understand there's a singularity to that kind of expression, Lijoletia. Leonov just died, but one of the things he, and in fact the people who were supposedly arrested by Putin as scapegoats for the Ukraine war, the main one Sergei Biseda gave the eulogy at Lionov's funeral in april twenty twenty two, showing that it's a lie that all of these people have been arrested and purged and other nonsense in social media. But to get back to what Leonov said and get back to your enemy point.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we're not just going to take this. We're not going to let this go on. We're not going to let this expand to further territories. We're going to create the NATO alliance. And we're going to rally. Democratic liberal regimes to stand up to this illiberalism, this violence, and this aggression. And so, yeah, Lex, it's always convenient to have an enemy, but there was an enemy. Nikolai Leonov, who recently died, he died in April 2022, and he had a major funeral. He was the last head analyst of the Soviet KGB. And Liona Fiz is one of the most important figures for understanding the Soviet collapse. And he has the best memoir on the Soviet collapse, which is known in Russian as Lika Latia. You will understand that and you'll help your.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How about the murders and the show trials up and down East and Europe in the late 40s after the imposition of the clone regimes? You good with that? Yeah, it's very convenient to have an enemy, I agree with you. But, you know, there was some actions, Lex. There were some threats to people's freedom. There was some invasions. There was some aggression and violence on a mass scale like collectivization of Eastern Europe. And we could go on, Lex, with the examples. I'm just giving a few of them. And so the Cold War was not a mistake. It was not a misunderstanding. We don't have to blame someone for the Cold War. We have to give credit for the Cold War. The Truman administration deserves credit for standing up to Stalin's regime, for standing up to these actions, for saying”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Course, Lex, of course, you're right about that. But let's put it this way people talk about the Cold War. And they usually looking to assign blame for the Cold War as if it's some kind of mistake, a misunderstanding, or a search for an enemy that was convenient to rally domestic politics. A coup in Czechoslovakia, and somebody installs a communist regime in february nineteen forty eight. No reaction to that. That's just okay. There's a blockade of Berlin. Is that cool by you where they try to strangle West Berlin so that they can swallow West Berlin and add it to East Berlin? You cool with that? How about Korean War invasion of North Korea, invasion of South Korea by North Korea? You cool with that?”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Steal the election inside Ukraine, right? Which the Ukrainian people rose up valiantly against and risked their lives and overturned, right? So there were public statements from Putin already back then. The statements about Horakovsky in 2003 when he was arrested and expropriated. This is a longstanding psychological deeply psychological issue, which is about managing Russian power in the world, as I was saying, the gap with the West, but has this further dimension of feeling like losers and wanting to reverse that. That's their life experience.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so that project, that Patrick, which we see him expressing again and again, he speaks about it publicly. It's not something that we need to go looking for a quest, the secret we can't find it. What are they thinking? It's right there in front of our face. And Putin has spoken the same way for a long time. People point to the 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference that Putin delivered and certainly your listeners could use a snippet or two of that just like they could use a couple of quotes from Potham Shift to contextualize what we're talking about. But it predates the 2007 Munich speech, the reaction to Ukraine's uprising in 2004, attempt to”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The losing end domestically and reverse that domestically. That's what the Putin regime is about. Remember Michael Khadorkovsky's Yukos? Remember all the companies that are now owned by Putin cronies because they were taken away from whoever stole them in the first place. And now they're trying to do that on the international scale. It's one thing to put domestic opponents in jail. It's one thing to take away someone's property domestically. But you're not going to reverse the power of the West with the diminished Russia that you have.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They wanted to reverse being on the losing side. And so they began to expropriate, to steal the money, steal the property from those first thieves who stole in the 90s and the 2000s and on have been about re-stealing, taking the losers in the transition, taking the money from the winners and reversing this resentment, this loser status. Those are your Pathrush and your Putins. But at the same time, this blows out to let's reverse the losses being on the losing side, the roiling resentment at the decline of their power internationally. Let's try to reverse that too. So you have a profound psychological whole generation of people who are”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Russian, which is a term, as you know, that means those who are resentful, or you might call them the losers, the losers in the transition. So, when the Soviet Union fell, and there was a diminishment, a very substantial diminution in Russian power and influence in the world, a lot of people lost out. They weren't able to steal the property. They weren't able to loot the state in the nineties. And they were on the outside. They gradually came back in. They were the losers in the transition domestically. And for them”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stalin had that same conspiratorial mentality of the West, everything that happened in the world was part of a Western conspiracy directed against the Soviet Union and now directed against Russia, even though the West is trying to appease, the West is offering its services, the West is trying to change Russia through investment in a positive way, but instead the West is what's changing. The West is becoming more corrupt. Western services are being corrupted by the relationship with Russia. So you have to ask yourself, who are these people in power in the Kremlin who imagine that while they're availing themselves of every service and every blandishment of the West while they're availing themselves of this, that they're fighting a conspiracy by the West to bring them down? So, this is what they call the abhigionia.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source