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Vladislav Zubok

lines on the record: 48
first: 2025-06-09
most recent: 2025-06-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Outgunned by his rivals. So my harshness on Gorbachev, maybe he's guided by the fact that I would very much prefer him to succeed because other options were very, very, very clear for us now what other options led to. For those who admired in Washington, people admired Yeltsin and thought that Gorbachev was still a communist. True, Yeltsin turned into anti-communist, but look, it was Yeltsin who gave us the current Kremlin leader, after all.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To the Russian sort of leader who Essentially pulled Russia from under Gorbachev and destroyed the Soviet Union, not the Bolts, not Georgians, not Ukrainians destroyed the Soviet Union. Yelsen did, in my view. So by looking at this story, I'm harsh on the later Gorbachev because the book is mostly about three years, 89, 1991, during which Gorbachev had already done his greatest kind of leap into the future and got scared”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm hard on Gorbachev because he raised expectations tremendously. And I was among his followers and millions. Of people looked up to him for leadership And when particularly, he made tremendous changes in the late 88, 89. Not right away, you know, the first two years were very kind of very frustrating. I remember that. But then he made that huge leap forward, hugely leap forward. And that leap forward contained elements of the future collapse because it had many misguided premises. He believed in Leninism. He believed in that sort of many things that he shouldn't believed in. But he did. But then by taking this leap, Gorbachev kind of got frozen in the process of this leap. He suddenly lost his initiative. He became famously, you know, slow or infamously slow in taking other steps. With such tremendous changes, you have to maintain a momentum or you lose it to others. And he lost that momentum to the Elson.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Collapse the fact that they create this immense vacuum and destroy the old common identities and common links, immense common links between different ethnic groups and across different ethnic groups. This is a hugely dangerous moment. And in fact, I try to strike a balance and collapse, looking at both sides, but sort of probably knowing what would follow. After Gorbachev, maybe I overdo the second. You were really hard, Gorborough.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, I keep struggling with the same question because history is never linear and it can go different ways. And of course those who look back at the history of the 20th century and in fact the 19th century see the immense force of nationalism and national self-determination. But this is one way to say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable and it was just a matter of time for all those different nations to find a road to their statehood and sovereignty and all that. But in other ways to look back at history and see the perils and dangers of sudden collapses, sudden collapses of empires. We see essentially the tremendous instability in Europe paving the way to fascist and Nazi dictatorships rooted in a sudden collapse of empires as a result of World War I. So the suddenness of this”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was possible, as it turned out, as I'm saying within deep sadness, for the leader of Russia to fill that tremendous vacuum with another refurbished idea of Russian imperial and national domination.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so the nationalist and ethnic conflicts sprung up immediately as Gorbachev began to dismantle the old mentality, the old system in the Soviet Union. And it was highly dangerous and highly destructive. And of course, in part, those nationalists militated against the past and past grievances in all the people killed by Stalin and Lenin and all that. But they also kind of satisfied the new need for a renewed sense of identity. So I used to think that the Soviet collapse was relatively peaceful until the current war in Ukraine because clearly this new wave of Russian nationalism is linked to the continuing lack of idea, continuing void in the heart of Russia why so many changes happen and what's the meaning of those changes.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or some kind of at least, and I wouldn't say totally filled, but, you know, some kind of expectation that if everything collapses around me, it means that either I choose my family and myself as the only sort of bulwark in the future, or I would believe in another superego, which is nation, nationalism.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fateful consequences. First was that sense of cynicism, dejection of any certainty, any moral, any kind of ethical certainties in the society, which was accompanied by a huge wave of domestic crime and violence and mostly economic violence. Secondly, that was this kind of realization, well, if capitalism is the only way for humanity to exist and evolve, anything to gain money to make profit is allowed. So again, the combination of collapse of ethical norms with sudden spread of capitalist practices led to that wild east mentality, much more so than the wild west was in America, I would say. And ultimately, the void was filled by nationalism.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But there was, as you said, unexpected and huge transition that amounted to the complete loss of identity. And you may say that by that time, very few people seriously took ideological promises of arrival of communism and many people began to think that life in the West was not awful, but actually much more superior and that particularly turning point in the 89, 1991 when the Soviet press, liberated by Gorbachev, began to beam to Soviet audience through television. It wasn't like something that foreign stations did. It was a Soviet television began to convey this information about a much better life in the West. So all pillars of Soviet mindsets sort of Soviet worldview began to collapse simultaneously. And it led to several”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Turning point in the Cold War, which the Soviets at first didn't realize was that way, and then later they became pathetically defensive and just couldn't find a good way to deal with that. Until Gorbachev finally said during his presidency, let's not be afraid of human rights. Let's basically accept that we also can be free in just society. And he began to liberalize the Soviet society with the outcome that we already know.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quickly realized that this is a moral cause to follow and it also was expedient course politically because by championing global human rights campaigns the United States were back as a leader of the free world and they were back with much more credentials like finally being not only the leaders of the free world but the leaders of the just world which was usually the clay something claimed by the Soviet Union right in earlier years you know the Soviet Union always was against racism against Jim Crow against you know colonialism and suddenly the United States grabbed all of that and redirected it against the Soviet Union and you Ruskis are actually you know hidden colonizers your authoritarians you know you you don't let your people emigrate and all that so it was a decisive ideology”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feminist movements, you know, and environment movements. It was a great moment in American history. So what happened, I think it would be foolish on anybody's part to blame human rights movements for undermining Ditan because D ⁇ tante was very shaky and very, very fragile thing to begin with. But D ⁇ tente was, in a sense, the Soviets were doubly unlucky during the 70s because they thought that with a sheer agreement on the quality of armaments and the agreement on like mindset and overreaction in Afghanistan that you mentioned so everything was a reaction to something but I would place the rise of human rights in context what indubitably happened however then was that people like President Carter and then President Reagan”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The time, and then came the issue of Jewish emigrays who wanted to leave the Soyuz Union to go to Israel or to go to other countries. And American Jewish groups who faced discrimination at home and wanted to sort of assert themselves At the same time, at home, they found a great cause, a good cause inside the Soviet Union to help their brethren to emigrate from the Soviet Union. So that was through emergence of the human rights movement in the United States that conflated without a great currents that already been there, like civil rights movements and anti-racist movements.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, this is one of those moments during the long Cold War when Americans played very proactively and Americans were in vibrant society. Let me use this loaded term free society. Unlike the Soviets, but ironically, American human rights movement was ignited by something that was happening inside the Soviet Union. To begin with, there was a group, very small groups of human rights defenders called dissidents in the Soviet Union that evoked huge admiration in American societies as sort of good Russians versus evil Russians, you know, people whose names were household names at the time, and few people remember them now, like, you know, Alexander Soljanitsen and Andrei Sakharov and another, you know, great names.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what did the Soviets gain by going along this line? They actually collapsed at the end of it. So it's not a good way. It's not a good way to resurrect the falling domino mentality. By saying if, God forbid, if China moves against this island somewhere, you know, and we do not defend this island by military force, then that's the end of the world we know. A folding domino. It's a classic falling domino theory.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of a global economy salt that conflict of fundamental underlining issues of that conflict. So if the United States wants to outspend China more sophisticated weaponry, AI, intelligence to manage the weaponry, that's another deadlock. That's like forgetting fundamental. lessons of history. And finally, look at the cover of my book, Falling Domino. One major problem of cold war mentality, particularly on the American side, but also on the Soviet side, of course, was thinking once we make this one concession anywhere, there will be the falling domino effect and that will be the end of our credibility, the end of our position. That will be the end of our whole global position in the world and our cap. So what did Americans get by following this falling domino theory? They ended up in Vietnam.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was in the Cold War so many people who said they cannot be any way of talking to those communists, to those Ruskis. And there were many hardliners in the Soviet Union who never wanted to trust or talk to the Americans, and yet there were always people thinking outside the box and finding cultural, diplomatic, and other ways of interaction. That's really important. A third observation, some people would say tariffs, economic sanctions, and arms race would solve this conflict today between China and the United States. I would say the entire Cold War actually shows that it was nonsense. Arms race did not solve political sources of confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. The development of capitalism, the development of”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“or at least more manageable and I have a few ideas about this by just looking at the Soviet American interaction during the previous major conflict. One idea is of course diplomacy should work and I'm always struck how important was diplomacy even at the worst moments of the Cold War, even at the time of McCarthyism in the United States, even at the time, not to mention the time of the Cuban missile crisis when Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged all this famous messages that ultimately led to the peaceful outcome of the crisis. So diplomacy is hugely important. The second point I want to make about the Sino-American confrontation today that the danger of tunnel vision people should learn to think outside the box.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Facing as profound, as dangerous, as essentialist and existential conflict as the Cold War had been, particularly in the first two decades of the Cold War between 1947, let's say 1962-68, whatever. So this is my answer to a question there as a conflict, but I would hesitate to call it the Cold War. However, We should all learn from 40 years of Cold War history to make the Sino-American conflict manageable.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Capitalism and non capitalism called Socialism. And capitalism one that all rounds of that competition handily, and this is why essentially the Cold War ended the way it ended. But where are we now between the United States and China? It's much more narrow and really more geopolitical context. Who would be the top in a hierarchy of capitalist powers? Yes, somebody would say, oh, it's about freedom versus lack of freedom of authoritarianism in China, but it's a much weaker argument, really, in my view. A, because China evolves in its own way, you know, through hundreds and hundreds of years. But nobody said that ultimately China would not begin to vote and have political parties. Who knows? Maybe in 200 years, China will develop. some sort of democracy so I would never say no to that my approach is more specific that for now”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't believe that it's a cold war between the US and China. Well, unless you want to rephrase it, it may be called the Cold War if you take very superficial or rather abstract theoretical take on what the Cold War is. So it's just a competition between great powers that for some reason primarily because of the existence of nuclear weapons never turns hot. Well, if you take this kind of abstract generic approach, then you may say, oh, in other words, probably because of the existence of nuclear weapons, if we're lucky, we'll have a series of the Cold War into eternity, right? But I'm not a fan of this approach. I'm much more into specific historical interpretation of the Cold War, which I said was, above all, a context between the two ways of modernization.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's influencing well, well, well, the small cultural note for our audience. Not everybody played chess in the Soviet Union. That's to begin with. So when CIA experts or somebody else would point out that the Soviets are so devious because they all play chess and all outfox us in the West, it's not true because the polygri leadership played domino, which was a simple game. They play domino. They got much more prim”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in a sense that ideological innovation opened the way for detente peaceful policies, Babrezhnev, and with all kinds of good consequences for Europe, with American Soviet detente flourishing, briefly but flourishing under Nixon, and looking backwards, you begin to realize that without this period of Brezhnev and the struggle for peace, otherwise you wouldn't have had Gorbachev. And of course, without Gorbachev in the late 80s, from 85 to 1991, you cannot imagine the end of such conflict as the Cold War, because Gorbachev was a major part and single-handedly did many things that made the end of this conflict possible, thinkable, and actually happen.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then what you have is Detente and Arms Control. That was the major outcome of that ideological reconciliation that the Soviet leadership and particularly the guy after Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, said, you know, but we want peace. Don't renounce our ideological belief that capitalism would perish and communism would triumph, but we have to do it peacefully. Our main duty is to struggle for peace. And in the old days, let's say 20 years earlier, such guys like Brezhnev would have been denounced as, you know, I don't know, heretics, revisionists, I don't know. But in the 70s, that was all right.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Came up with his solution to this debate and basically said the forces of socialism are strong enough, of course, meant above all the Soviet Union and China, strong enough to prevent another war that imperialists otherwise want to unleash and therefore will proceed to communism but peacefully. So it just basically squared the circle and then the idiocratic bureaucracy followed this lead and then what you have is detente.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then other unlikely candidates like among them a chess champion Botwinnik, whom I cite in my book, began to write to the party leaders, wait a minute, I'm communist member myself, but I don't want humanity to perish. This is my way of reconciling the two goals, keeping peace and making communism a peaceful outcome of the competition between the two systems. So suddenly that guy, but we need thinking very logically, pointed to the main problem of the Marxist-Leninist approach, that it always had preached a violent end of capitalism, some kind of a revolution, and then, of course, the victory of communism as a result of another imperialist war. But this imperialist war is no longer possible because of the existence of several nuclear weapons. So ultimately Khrushchev, not being very theoretical guy, but kind of very instinctive politician.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was a fascinating process of adjustment because above all, after Stalin, under Stalin and after Stalin, the Soviet Union was idiocracy and free debate was impossible. And yet there were some elements of debate and discussion about nuclear weapons, which I write about in my book, from some likely corners like nuclear physicists who warned, for instance, the leadership in Moscow leadership in 1954 that the invention of thermal nuclear weapons makes the end of the entire humanity possible. And the party leaders immediately reproached them and squashed the debate because their view was, hey, you know, our canonical explanation is that it's not humanity, it's capitalism that will perish.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's a great question, by the way, because Lenin and Marx wrote the theory at the time when nuclear weapons didn't exist.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“force that dictated them the rules above all the rules of how get resources, how to get money, how to get loans and credits. And that was the system that they totally associated with American influence, with the World Bank, with IMF. But it was broader than that. It was a global capitalist system that began to emerge during the 70s, something that theorists would call today a Washington consensus. And it was also part of the Cold War. Like I mentioned several things that geopolitical context over Europe, decolonization, and now this. And all those huge transnational global developments influenced the Cold War. And they influenced the choices of countries like India, of course.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of turning to Moscow and asking Moscow, help us with that, for instance, to build a steel mill and turning to America and telling Americans, oh, can you help with that? So they played on both sides. And I think it was a right choice. So that lasted actually into the early 80s until the emergence of the global liberal capitalist system that we live with today, which is, I think, is crumbling before our eyes today. But anyway, that system was emerging in the 70s and 80s. Read the fourth part of my book. It's about that emergence of that system. And at that time, people of non-aligned movement, like Indians, like Brazilians, like others, they began to feel the pinch of that system. And all of a sudden, they discovered their experiments with experts substitution failed. That there was a huge transnational.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You mentioned India and excellent studies on India. The fact is that Nero and the first generation of Indian rulers, Indian leaders had been very much under the influence of socialism, not necessarily Stalin-like socialists, but they kind of had huge apprehension of Western capitalism and they wanted to find out a third way of development. That was one of major reasons why India, among other countries, joined the non-aligned movement. They didn't want to participate in that geopolitical conflict between the West and the East, but also they did seriously expect to get what they wanted, a kind of mixed model, something from socialism, something from free entrepreneurship, and decide for themselves what is best to them. So, you know, in the late 50s and in the 60s, you see the Indians kind of”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And one horrible perspective of that deadlock was the possibility of a nuclear war. Don't forget, this is why you mentioned the Cuban missile crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis showed that when both sides faced that prospect of a thermonuclear war, both sides, no matter how more bombs and missiles and bombers the United States had in 1962, it had 17 times more than the Soviet Union, no matter that both sides preferred to step back. And aside from a confrontation, nobody knew how this conflict would end. So this conflict continued for decade after decade and after decade, which is the nature of any conflict that cannot end in a decisive victory. And when both sides have existential reasons not to raise up their hands, sort of say.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that always loomed large in the imagination of Americans, is that if China turned communism and not followed that great, unique and correct American way, maybe others would take this way of misdevelopment. It's interesting that all American diplomats and pundits and experts use that misdevelopment when they spoke about Soviet socialism during the 50s and the 60s. So when you began to pile up, well, what about Afghanistan? What about, you know, this or that, you're already kind of continuing into extrapolating the timeline into the future. My answer to you would be, don't do it because we have a conflict. It started in the late 40s. It created a certain kind of deadlock, a sense of deadlock, a long battle that no one knew how to win.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of uncertainty, but later this sense of uncertainty was dropped, particularly in the 60s with this buoyant Kennedy-esque kind of message and then great society and so on and so forth. So it's very important, again, I repeat, when you read about the cold water, ask a question when exactly, in what phase of the Cold War are you and what kind of questions you raise about this phase? Because it's four decades, four decades. So that uncertainty about capitalism began to pass in Europe and Europe experienced a moment of huge economic wonder at the end of the 50s and in the 60s. But then decolonization started. And that uncertainty about what would happen to the global south resurfaced that the fact that all these countries like India and China, of course, became communist famously in 1990.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“parasite unhealthy capitalist liberal society that you know again the thesis is it is liberal capitalism that collapsed in the nineteen thirties and above all in europe above all in germany but also in other countries and maybe america can restore this capitalism to its greatness but maybe not because at the end of the long telegram canon has doubts canon says We should contain communism but not to such an extent that we in America would ourselves turn into a garrison state. So his fear is that in this huge effort to contain communism, America might itself change its nature and stop being liberal capitalist society and would become a garrison state. So, you know, that's a sort of sense.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have just proved that you read the book, at least parts of the book that tells about the canon fascinating character and canon's long telegram. My take on Canon is actually, you know, many people read excellent books on Canon because he was such a master of words. He essentially gave subsequent generations of American liberal historians all the words to use, the entire kind of ideological framework to use about what Soviet threat was about. He used the word virus, malignant parasite, and other, you know, helpful things to understand Soviet threat. But if we go beyond all this, we ask a question, okay, malignant parasite on what?”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and particularly in Europe because capitalism stopped working in Europe and we must reignite it. We must set it straight and make it stand on both feet.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were also extremely weak. They lost 27 million people during World War II and all that stuff. So Americans knew that, but they also saw Soviets being expansionist and decided to take an initiative. So much of the Cold War in a way during its original phases, Americans acting, Americans during the Marshall Plan, Americans doing dividing Germany into two parts in reaction to the perceived Soviet expansionism and real Soviet expansionism, but also realizing we're stronger. We can stop them. We have huge wealth. We have atomic bomb and they don't. And we have resources to stop communism. But the premise is in American mind that communism is such a dangerous thing that can spread all over the world. And why it can spread? Hello, because capitalism is weak.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depression happened after the end of the war. So that was immense internal insecurity coupled with that American exceptionalism. You know, we've done so well before. We should do great in the future that produced American impulse towards the Cold War. And I would say, you know, I'm back and forth on this question, by the way, you know, when you ask who started it in such a complex context between the two ways of life, two ways of modernization. It's very difficult sometimes to say who started it, but I would say Americans had more resources and therefore they were much more proactive in 1945, 46, 47 when they began to see the Soviets acting not as they had expected, strangely because the Soviets always acted as Soviets. They just were expansionists, they were assertive. But after 45,”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nonsense for Americans to think that people don't believe in private property, they reject entrepreneurship, they reject God, atheists, and so on and so forth. This is just a nonsense. This state cannot exist. And then, you know, they began to change their mind gradually. Oh, it should stay and all that. But what made them change their mind about the Soviet Union above all was the Great Depression and a huge crisis of capitalism back to my original point about the contest between capitalism and communism. The very fact that the idea of this context entered the American mind and later Americans even began to say, oh, communists are taking over the world and all that stuff. It is because of their internal insecurity, American internal insecurity, because the Great Depression did take place. It was almost 10 years. Yes, America exited the war as powerful as it never had been, but thanks to the war, nobody could say with another...”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For resources and wars, global wars, because capitalism is global. So that's what you learn about the other side in the Soviet Union. So whenever somebody like Stalin would say, hey, you know, the United States now is a top capitalist power. That means that, you know, other powers should compete, like the UK should, British Empire should compete with Americans. And this is essentially the main source of instability and global war. This is what you believed in as a matter of faith in the Soviet Union. If you're in the United States, it's much less, let's say, theoretical and more like based on experience of dealing with Red Russia or Communist Russia. And during the first decade, Americans completely dismissed the existence of Red Russia and never granted diplomatic recognition to that country because a kind of”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let me start with what I know better when about the Soviets, because I grew up there. And I said I was a young Marxist and all that. I was, you know, you may say, brainwashed at the time in high school and all that. By the end of the high school, by the way, I began to have doubts. It was already the 70s. So it was very much unclear at the time that we would ever build anything called communism already. But, you know, let me return to your question. And let's say it's very important to say let's talk about the start of the Cold War because it was an immensely long contest, immensely long confrontation. Like for four decades, right? So it's very important. I broke up my book into four major sections. And if you are in the first section when the Cold War just started, in the Soviet Union, they read Lenin. And Lenin said, as long as capitalism exists, it would produce imperialism and imperialism is about competition.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was just geopolitical situation when Europe was up for grabs. Much of Europe, thanks to Hitler, was up for grabs between the two coalitions between the Soviet Union and the Western powers, the so-called Anglo-Saxons. It gained geopolitical dimensions in this way, but essentially it was about which system would modernize the world better. This is essentially throughout the Cold War you had modifications of the same questions until it was answered very much in favor of capitalism in the 70s and 80s particularly yes, capitalism is much, much better. In fact, that's the only way.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People hear about ideas, they kind of come a little bit so horrific and they say, just ideas. Tell me something more important. So the most important thing, it was the battle for the future of capitalism, in my view. And, you know, for everyone who were in Europe, in Washington and New York or in Moscow, wherever, in Tokyo, it was about that. Because, you know, the previous 30 years of capitalism were disastrous. Cattle isn't discredited itself, so if you were in the late 40s in Europe, you would think, hmm, maybe I should become a young communist. So the previous disastrous years of capitalism caused the phenomenon of the Cold War.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nothing. That's a special, special question. Why? But I couldn't find a single decent book on the Cold War. So I learned it from American authors like John Lewis Gaddis, some people may remember. There were great books by John Lewis Gaddis in the 80s. And so I read them and totally absorbed them. And so the ironic thing that many years later, 30 years later, I'm coming back to my original kind of idea. Yes, it was the battle between socialism and capitalism. Yes. And in a sense, the whole phenomenon of the Cold War should not be understood like, oh, it's a game of great powers. It's about, you know, Europe becoming a vacuum after World War II to be filled by, you know, two great powers, the Soviet Union and the United States. Yeah, it was there. All that was there in an ideology was there of communism and American liberalism. But for instance, business.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I just was surprised why so many people couldn't get it, that communism is the way of the future. And then very late in my sort of student years, I began to realize, hey, it's much more complicated. The world is divided and so on and so forth. And we were told the world is divided between socialism and capitalism. So when I learned about the coal, I mostly learned it from American literature. So I was very much influenced by American books because nothing was written in the Soviet Union about the Cold War.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Normal thing, which is a normal thing today, you know, whoever says whatever, it's misinterpretation and fake news. So let me tell you one thing that might amuse you. Sure. You started by telling the audience when you learned about the Cold War in high school. Let me tell you when I learned about it because I grew up in the Soviet Union basically wondering, well, it was in the midst of a Cold War. It was the 60s, 70s, and I grew up as a young believer that the future belongs to communism. Don't laugh at me.”
2025-06-09 · Odd Lots · Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source