#415 – Serhii Plokhy: History of Ukraine, Russia, Soviet Union, KGB, Nazis & War

32:12So in one perspective and narrative give us at the center of this Russian empire, at which point does Moscow become come to prominence as the center of the Russian Empire? Well, the Russian Empire is a term and real creation of the 18th century. What we have for the Kievan, we call it Kievan Rus again, this is a term of the 19th century, they call themselves Rus. And there was metropolitan of Rus and there was Rus principalities. So very important to keep in mind that Rus is not Russia because that was a self -name for all multiple groups on that territory. And Moscow doesn't exist at the time when Kiev emerges as the capital.

33:06The first reference to Moscow comes from the 12th century when it was founded by one of the Kievan princes. And Moscow comes to prominence really in a very different context and with a very different empire right in the show in the region. The story of Moscow and the rise of Moscow, this is the story of the Mongol rule over former Rus lands and former Rus territories. The part of the former Rus eventually overthrows the Mongol control with the help of the small group of people called Lithuanians which had a young state and young dynasty and united this lands which were mostly in today's terms Ukrainian and Belarusian.

34:02So they separate early. And what is today's Russia, mostly western Russia, central Russia stays under the Mongol control up until late 15th century. And that was the story when Moscow rises as the new capital of that realm replacing the city of Vladimir. As that capital for those who ever went to Russia, they familiar with of course Vladimir as the place of the oldest architectural monuments, the so -called the Golden Ring of Russia and so on. So of course Vladimir is central and there are so many architectural monuments there because before there was Moscow, there was Vladimir eventually in this struggle over control of the territory struggle for favors from the Mongols and the Tatar horde.

35:01Moscow emerges as the center of that particular realm under Mongols after the Mongol rule is removed. Moscow embarks on the project that historians, Russian historians of the 19th century called the Gathering of the Russian lands. Using Russian now for Rus and and and trying to to bring back the lands of former Kiev and Rus, but also the lands of the former Mongol Empire. The Russians get to the Pacific before they get to Kiev historically and really the the the quote and quote gathering of the quote and quote Russian lands and only 1945 when the Soviet Union bullies the Czechoslovak government into turning what is today's trans -Corpatian Ukraine to the Soviet Union.

36:05It is included in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. So that's that's the moment when that destiny the way how it was imagined by the 19th century Russian historian was eventually fulfilled. Moscow was in control of all this lands. So toward degree are the Slavic people, one is the theme that will continue throughout I think versus a collection of multiple peoples whether we're talking about the Kievan Rus or we're talking about the 19th century Russian Empire conception. Well a number of ways to look at that. One the most obvious the most clear is language. And there is no question that polls speak a separate language in their loves and there is no question for anyone going to Ukraine and here in Ukrainian realizing that this is not Russian.

37:08The level of comprehension can be different you can understand certain words and you you don't understand others and the same would be with with Polish and the same would be with Czech. So there is this linguistic linguistic history that is in common but languages very clearly indicate that you're dealing with different with different peoples. We know that language is not everything. Americans speak a particular way of English. Australians speak a particular variant of English but for reasons of geography history we we pretty much believe that despite linguistic unity this are different nations and different peoples and there are some parts of political tradition or in common others are this quite different.

38:04So the same when it comes to language the same when it comes to political tradition to the loyalty to the political institution applies to Slavic nations. So that's that's again there is nothing particular unique about the Slavs and an anonymous manuscript called the history of the Rus. It started being circulated in 1820s. I would love it if you can tell the story of this. This is supposedly one of the most impactful texts in history, modern history. So what's the importance of this text? What did it contain? How did it define the future of the region? In the first decades of the 19th century after Napoleonic wars.

38:54A mysterious text emerged that was attributed to an orthodox archibishop that was long dead which was claiming that the Kazakhs of Ukraine were in fact the original Rus people and that they they had the right for particular place for central place in in the Russian empire and it tells the history of the Kazakhs. It's the era of romanticism full of all sorts of drama there are heroes there are villains and the text captivates the attention of some key figures in the Russian intellectual elite in St. Petersburg. People like Kondratio Rileyev who was executed for his participation in 1825 uprising writes writes poetry on the basis of this text pushkin based attention to it as well and then comes along the the key figure in Ukrainian national revival of the 19th century Ukrainian national project Trashev -Chamkoyn and reads it as well and they all read them it's very differently eventually by the by the beginning of the in the mid 20th century some of the Russian mostly nationalist writers call this text the Koran of Ukrainian nationalism.

40:39So what is what is there the story it's it's very important in a sense that what the authors and that's what I claim in the book what the authors of the text were trying to say they were trying to say that the Kazakh elite should have the same rights as the Russian ability and brings the long historical record to prove how called the Kazakhs were over the period of time but in at the beginning of the 19th century they put this claim already they used new new arguments and this arguments are about nation and nationalism and they're saying that the Kazakhs are a separate nation and that's that's a big big big big claim.

41:29The Russian empire and this is a very very good argument in historiography that Russian empire grew and acquired this one six of the earth by using one very specific way of integrating those lands it integrated elites it was making deals with the elites whether the elites were Muslim or the elites were Roman Catholic as the case with the polls they would be elites would be integrated and the empire was based based on that state the state loyalty and the state integration but once you bring in the factor of nation and nationalism and language then once in a sudden the whole model of the integration of the elites irrespective of their language religion and culture starts falling apart and the polls were the first who really produced this this sort of a challenge to the Russian empire by a prize in two prizes in the 19th century and Ukrainians then followed in their footsteps so the tax the importance of the tax is that it was making claim on the part of a particular estate the Kazakh officer class which was that empire could survive but it turned it given the conditions of the time into the claim for the special role of a Kazakhs as a nation creating that this is a separate nation a Russian nation and that is the challenge of nationalism that no empire really survived and and the Russian empire was not an exception so there's a turning point when the discourse switches from loyalty based on the integration of their elites to the loyalty based on attachment to your nation to your language and to your culture and to your history so that was like the initial spark the flame that led to nationalist movements that was the beginning and the beginning that was building a bridge between the existence of the Kazakh state in the 17th and 18th century that was used as a foundation for the Kazakh mythology Ukrainian national mythology went into the Ukrainian national anthem and the new age and the new stage where the Kazakhs were not there anymore where there were professors intellectuals, students, members of the national and organizations and it started of course with romantic poetry it was started with collecting folklore and then later goes to the political stage and eventually the stage of mass politics so to you even throughout the 20th century under Stalin there was always a force within Ukraine that wants it to be independent.

44:35There were five attempts for Ukraine to declare independence and to maintain it in the 20th century only once excited in 1991 but there were four four different attempts at times before and you see the Ukrainian national identity manifest in itself in two different ways in the form of national communism after the Bolshevik victory in the Bolshevik control Ukraine and in the form of radical nationalism in the parts of Ukraine that were controlled by Poland and Romania and part of that was also controlled by Czechoslovakia and later Hungary. So in those parts outside of the Soviet Union the the form of the national mobilization the key form of national mobilization became radical nationalism in Soviet Ukraine it was national communism that came back in the 1960s in 1970s and then in the 1991 the majority of the members of the Ukrainian parliament who voted for independence members of the Communist Party so that spirit on certain level never died.

46:00So there's national communism and radical nationalism well let me ask you about the radical nationalism because that is a topic that comes up in the discussion of the war in Ukraine today can you tell me about Stepan Banderra who was he this controversial far right Ukrainian revolutionary there are at least two Stepan Banderas one is the real person and another is mythology that really comes comes with this name and the real person was a young student missionistically oriented student in the late 1920s and early 1930s in the part of Ukraine that was controlled by Poland who belonged to the generation who regretted that they were not born in time for the big struggles of the of the world war one and and pollution at that time they believed that their father's lost opportunity for Ukraine to become independent and that in new ideology was needed and that ideology was radical nationalism and new tactics were needed so Banderra becomes the leader of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists in Ukraine at the young age and organizes a number of assassinations of the Polish officials or members of the Ukrainian community who this young people in their 17 18 19 considered to be to be collaborators he is arrested put on trial and that's that's where the myth of Banderra starts to emerge because he uses the trial to make statements about the Ukrainian nationalism radical nationalism and its goals and suddenly becomes becomes a hero among the youth Ukrainian youth at that time he is sentenced for execution for death so when he delivers his speech he he knows that he probably would die soon and then it was the sentence was committed to life to life in prison then world war two happens the Polish state collapses under the pressure coming of course from from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union Banderra walks away and presides over the act of the split of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists into two groups the most radical one you used to call revolutionary they call themselves revolutionary is led by by Banderra they work together with the Nazi Germany at that time with the hope that Nazi Germany would deliver them independent Ukraine first days of the German attack Nazi attack on the Soviet Union the units formed on the basis of organization of Ukrainian nationalist march into the city of Lviv and declare Ukrainian independence that was not sentient by the German authorities that was not in German plans so they arrest Banderra members of his family his brothers members of the leaders leaders of the organization so his two brothers go to Auschwitz die there he was sent to Zaksimhausen for most duration of the of the war until 1944 refusing to revoke declaration of Ukrainian independence which again contributes contributes further to his mythology after the war he never comes back to Ukraine he lives in exile in Munich so between 1930 and his death in 1959 he spent in Ukraine maybe up to two years maybe a little bit more but most of the time was either in the Polish prison or in the in the German concentration camp or in exile but the myth of Banderra lived and all the members of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists and then the Ukrainian insurgent army that fought against the Soviets all the way into the early 1950s they were called Banderrides they were called Banderrides by the Soviet authorities they were known also in that way to the local population so there was a far away leader that barely was there on the on the spot but whose whose name was attached to this to this movement for really liberation of Ukraine at that time again the battle that failed the fact that he collaborated with the Nazis sticks from one perspective he's considered by many to be a hero of Ukraine for fighting for the independence of Ukraine from another perspective coupled with the fact that there's this radical revolutionary extremists flavor to the way he sees the world that label just stays that he's a fascist he's a Nazi which what degrees is true to what degrees is true this label is certainly promoted by the first by the Soviet propaganda and then by Russian propaganda it's it works very nicely if you if you focus on the on the years of collaboration those were the same years when Joseph Stalin collaborated with Hitler right so we we have we have the same the same reason to call Stalin Stalin Nazi collaborator as we have the reason to call Bandara Nazi collaborator we we look at the at the situation in the Pacific in Indonesia in other places the leaders who worked together with the Japanese with the idea of promoting independence of their countries after the Japanese collapse become leaders of the empire so the difference with Bandara is that he never becomes the leader the leader of empire and and immunity that comes with that with that position certainly doesn't apply to him but there are other parts of his life which certainly certainly put this whole thing in question the fate of his family his own time in the German concentration camp certainly don't fit don't fit the propaganda one one sided image of Bandara in terms of him being a hero that's that's a very very interesting question because he is perceived in Ukraine today by not by by all and probably not by the majority but by many people in Ukraine as a symbol of fighting against against the the Soviet Union and by extension against Russia and Russian occupation so his popularity grew after February 24th 2022 as a symbol of that resistance again we are talking here about myth and mythology because Bandara was not leading the fight against the Soviet the Soviet occupation in in Ukraine because at that time he was just simply not in Ukraine he was in Germany and you can imagine that geography mattered at that time much more than it matters today there's a million questions to ask here I think it's an important topic because it is at the center of the claimed reason that the war continues in Ukraine so I would like to explore that from from different angles but just to clarify was there a moment where Bandara chose Nazi Germany over the red army when the war already began so in the list of allegiances is Ukraine's independence more important than fighting Nazi Germany essentially the Ukrainian independence was their goal and they were there to to work with anybody who would who would support and in one way or at least allow the Ukrainian independence so there is no question that they they are just classic nationalists so the the goal is the nationalism is the principle according to which the at least one is according to which the cultural boundaries coincide with political boundaries so their goal was to create political boundaries that would coincide with the geographic boundaries in the conditions of the world war two and certainly making making deals with this whoever would would either support as I said or tolerate that that project of this so I would love to find the line between nationalism even extreme nationalism and fascism and Nazism so for Bandara the myth of Bandara the person to what degree let's look at some of the ideology of Nazism to which degree did he hate Jews was he anti -Semitic we know that basically in his circle there were people who were anti -Semites in a sense that okay we have the texts right we know that we don't have that that information about about that sort of text or that sort of evidence with regards to to Bandara himself in terms of fascism there is very clear and there is research done that in particularly Italian fascists fascism had influence on the on the thinking of people in that organization including people at the top but it is also very important to keep in mind that they call themselves nationalist and revolutionaries and despite the fact that in 1939 in 1940 in 1941 it was very beneficial for them to declare themselves to be Ukrainian fascists and establish this bond with not just with Italy but with Nazi Germany they refused to do that and then they refused to recall their independence so influences yes but but clearly it's it's it's a different it's a different type of a political political project so let me fast forward into the future and see to which degree the myth permeates does Ukraine have a neo -Nazi problem my understanding is the of white supremacy theories but also my understanding is that they're extremely marginal and they're more marginal than the same sort of groups are in central Europe maybe in the US as well and for me the question is not whether the Ukraine has it but why even in the conditions of the war the radical nationalism and extremism and and white supremacist is such a marginal force when in the countries that are not at the war this is the you look you look at France you look at again it's it's not exactly nazis but really right radical right is is becoming so important why why Ukraine in the conditions of the war is the country that manages relations between different ethnic groups and languages in the way that strengthens political nation so for me as a scholar and a researcher what I see is that in Ukraine the the influence of the far right in different in different variations is much lower than it is among among some of Ukraine's and in Europe in general and the question is why I don't know I have guesses I don't know answer but that's that's that that that's the question that I think is interesting to answer how how Ukraine ended up to be the only country in the world outside of Israel who has a Jewish president who is my at least understanding is the most popular president in history in terms of how long his popularity goes after the election so this uh this uh they did really from my point of view interesting interesting questions and again we we can we can submit debate that so uh just for context the the most popular far right party one two point one five percent of the vote in 2019 this is before the war so that's where things stood it's unclear where they stand now it'd be an interesting question whether it escalated how much what you're saying is that war in general can serve as a catalyst for expansion of extremist groups of extremist nationalist groups especially like the far right and it's interesting to see to what degree they have or have not risen to power in the sort of in the shadows so no nationalist or nationalistic party actually crossed the the barrier to get into the parliament so Ukraine is the country where there is no right or far right in the parliament we can't say that about Germany we can't say that about France so that's just one one more way to to to stress this unique unique place of Ukraine in that in that sense and the year 2018 is the year already of the war the war started in 2014 with the annexation of the Crimea the the the front line was near Donbass all these groups were fighting there so Ukraine maybe not a degree that it is now was already on the on the war footing and yet and yet the the the the the the right party couldn't couldn't get more than two percent so that's that's the question that I have in mind and yes the war historically historically of course puts forward and and makes from the the more nationalist views and forces turned them from marginal forces into more central ones we talked about bandara and we talked about organization of Ukrainian nationalists they were the most marginal group in the political spectrum in Ukraine in the 1930s that one can only imagine but were two comes and they become the most central group because they also were from the start go then you they had the organization the the violence was basically one of their means then you how to fight so historically historically wars indeed produce those those results so we are we are looking at Ukraine we are we are trying to see what is happening there so Vladimir Putin in his interview with Tarka Carlson but many times before said that the current goal for the war in Ukraine is denotification that the purpose of the war is denotification can you explain this concept of denotification as Putin sees it denotification is the drop that is accepted quite well by the by the former Soviet population and Russian population in particular the the most powerful mythology Soviet mythology that then was basically passed as a part of heritage to the to the Russian Federation was world war two was fighting against fascism so once you use terms fascism and Nazi and denotification suddenly suddenly people not just start listening they just stop analyzing and as a as a propaganda tool this is this is of course very very powerful tool in terms of to what degree this is this is the real goal or not we discussed the importance of the far right in in in Europe and and in Ukraine so if that's the real goal of the war probably the war would have to start not against Ukraine but probably against France or some other country if you take this at face with you there's something really interesting here as you mentioned that's spoken to a lot of people in Russia and you said analysis stops in the west people look at the word denotification and look at the things we've just discussed and kind of almost think this this is absurd when you talk to people in Russia maybe it's deep in there somewhere the history of world war two still reverberates through the maybe the fears maybe the pride whatever the deep emotional histories there it seems that the goal of denotification appears to be reasonable for people in Russia they don't seem to see the absurdity or the complexity or the even the need for analysis I guess in this kind of statement word of denotification I will say this is broader this is broader the the war that started under the banner that Russians and Ukrainians were one and the same people and produces that sort of casualty really goes against also some any sort of logical of logical thinking but the Russia is a place where the free press doesn't exist already for a long period of time Russia is the place where there is an echo chamber 30 degree and as war started first in 2014 and then all out war in 2022 I came across a lot of people on the personal level but also in the media reporting that they really can't find common language with their close relatives in in Russia people who visited Ukraine who know that it is not taken over by by nationalists and is not taken over by Nazis but the media around them the neighbors around them the people at their work basically say one and the same thing and we as humans in general with whatever our background we are very very our mind is is really it's relatively easy to manipulate it and to a degree that even family connections that even family ties don't sometimes help to to maintain that that ability to think and to analyze on your own to look at the facts so Putin has alluded to the Yaroslav Hanukkah incident in the Canadian Parliament September 2023 this man is a veteran of war war two on the Ukrainian side and he got two standing ovation in the Canadian parliament but they later found out that he was part of the SS so can you explain on this what are your thoughts on this this had a very big effect on the narrative I guess propagated throughout the region yes what what happened during World War Two was that once the Germans started to run out of of manpower they created sort of foreign legion groups but because those people were not Aryans they were created for fighting on the on the battleground because they were not Aryans they couldn't be trusted so they were put under the command of Henry Himmler under command of SS and became known as SS Waffen units and one of such units was created in Ukraine with great difficulties because Nazis didn't can say the Slavs to be a generally worthy of even even even that sort of religion formations but they made an exception because those people were coming from Galicia which was part of Austria hungry which means part of Austria which means somehow were open to the benevolent influence of the of the Germanic of the Germanic race and called called the division Galitsyn or Galicia part of Ukrainian youth joined the Galits the division the one of the explanations was that they were looking at the experience of World War One and seeing that the units the Ukrainian units in the Austrian army then played a very important role in the fight for independence so that is one of the explanations you can't just use one explanation to describe motivations of everyone and every single person who was joined in there so they were sent to the front they were defeated within a few few short days by the by the by the Red Army and then were retreating through Slovakia where they were used to fight with the partisan movement there and eventually surrendered to the British so that's that's the story you can personally maybe understand what what what the good motivations were of this person or that person but that is one the the best one of the very tragic and unfortunate pages in in in Ukrainian history you can't you can't justify that as a as a as a as a phenomenon so from that point of view the the celebration of that experience as opposed to looking at that okay that that happened and we wish that those young man who were idealistic or joined the division for idealistic purposes had had had had better understanding of things or made other choices but you can't you can certainly certainly celebrate it and and once that happened that of course became a big big propaganda propaganda item in in in in the current war we are talking about about 10 to 20 ,000 people in the division and we are talking about two to three million Ukrainians fighting in the Red Army and again it's it's not like Red Army is is is is is completely blameless in the way how it behaved in in pressure in Germany and so on and so forth but it's basically it's it's again we we are going back to the story of bandara so there is a period of collaboration and that's that's what propaganda tries to define him by or there is a division delights in by 20 ,000 people and somehow it makes a relevant the experience of two to three million people I mean just to clarify I think there's just a blunder on the Canadian parliament side the Canadian side of not doing research of maybe correct me if I'm wrong but from my understanding they were just doing stupid shallow political stuff let's applaud you know when Zelensky shows up let's have a Ukrainian veteran let's applaud a veteran a world war two and then all of a sudden you realize well there's actually complexities towards we can talk about for example a lot of dark aspects on all sides of world war two the mass rape at the end of world war two by the the Red Army when this March or German there's a lot of really dark complexity and on all sides so you know that could be an opportunity to explore the dark complexity that some of the Ukrainians were in the SS or bandara the the complexities there but I think they were doing not a complex thing they were doing a very shallow applaud and we should applaud veterans of course but in that case they were doing it for show for the Zelensky and so on so we should clarify that the applause wasn't knowing it wasn't for the SS it was for a Ukrainian it was for world war two veterans but the propaganda or at least an interpretation from the Russian side from whatever side is that they were applauding the full person standing before them which wasn't just a Ukrainian veteran but Ukrainian veteran that fought for the SS I don't have any particular insights but I would be very much surprised if even one person in the parliament I mean the members of the parliament actually knew the whole story I would be very surprised yeah the whole story of this person and frankly the whole story of Ukraine and Russia and World War II appears yes yes nevertheless I had a lot of power and really reverberated in support of the narrative that there is a neo -Nazi a Nazi problem in Ukraine this is the the narrative that is out there and it's it's a special report in Russia it's a special report in Russia given that there are really the the the the the atmosphere that is created really is not conducive to any independent analysis well I wonder what is the most effective way to respond to that particular claim because there could be a discussion about nationalism and extreme nationalism and the fight for independence and whether it isn't like Putin wrote one people but the question of are there a Nazis in Ukraine seems to be a question that could be

1:13:52analyzed rigorously with data that has been done on the academic level but in terms of the of the public response and public discourse the the only response that I see is not to focus on the on the questions raised and and put by the propaganda because you're already become victim of that propaganda by definition but talk about that much broadly and and talk about different different aspects of if it is world war two about different aspects of world war two if it's about issue of the far right in Ukraine let's talk about US let's talk about Russia let's talk about France let's compare that's the only way how you deal with propaganda because propaganda is not necessarily something that is is an outright lie can be just one factor that's taken out of the context and and is is blown out of proportion and that's that that that is good enough in the way to defend against that is to bring in the context let us move gracefully throughout back and forth through history back to Banderah you wrote a book on the KGB spy Bogdan Stoshinsky can you tell his story this is a story of the history of the organization Ukrainian nationalists and and Bandera as well already after the end of the Second World War because what you got after the Second World War so imagine May of 1945 the red banner is all over Rikstag the red armies and control of half of Europe but the units of the red army are still fighting the war and not just behind the Soviet lines but within the borders of the Soviet Union and this war continues all the way into the early 1950s up to almost up to Stalin's death the war is conducted by the organization of Ukrainian nationalists which have a Ukrainian insurgent army and the government tries to crush that resistance so what it does is basically recruits local people to to spy on the partisans on the underground and Bogdan Stoshinsky is one of those people his family is supporting the resistance they provide food his sister is engaged with one of the local commanders of the of this underground unit and they know everything about him because he is also collecting funds for the underground so they have a conversation with him saying that's okay that's that's what we've got and you and your family can go to to prison or you help us a little bit we we're interested in the fear and self your sister and we want to get him and Stoshinsky says yes and once once they round up the the fans say he basically betrayed a member or almost member of his family he's he's done he can't go back to to his village he can't go back to his study he was studying and we were at that time so he becomes as I write in my book the secret police becomes his family and he is sent to Kiev he's trained for two years sent to his Germany into Berlin and becomes becomes an assassin so they sent him across the across the border to Western Germany to Munich chose the headquarters of different different organizations anti -Soviet organizations Ukrainian and Russian and Georgian and so on and so forth and he kills he kills two leaders of the of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists one editor of the newspaper and eventually he kills Bandara he does that with the new weapon a spray pistol that eventually makes it into the bond novel the man with the golden gun and that whole episode is a little bit reshaped but it is it it is not in the film but it is in the in the novel itself and then later has a change of mind under the influence of his German German fiancee and then then wife they decide to escape to the west and while they're doing that they discover that their apartment was bugged and probably the KGB knows all of that so a long story short his son dies in in Berlin the KGB doesn't allow him to go there but his wife has a nervous breakdown so they allow him to go there to just calm her so that they would be no scandal and two of them one day before their sons burial because that's after after that they would be sent to Moscow they jumped the ship and go to West Berlin two hours before the Berlin wall was being built so they did the you even they would stay for the funeral probably they would the KGB would not let them go but also if they would stay the the the the border would be there and he goes he goes to the American intelligence and says okay that's that's who I am and that's what I did and they look at him and they say we don't trust you we don't know who you are you have documents and five names you say you killed Bandara well we have a different information he was he was a poisoned and probably by someone in his in his in his clothes in his clothes circle a spray pistol did did did you reach too much Ian Flamin where does this come from he insists they say okay you insist if you committed all those crimes we're giving you to the German police and German police will be will be investigating you and then the trial comes and if he says if he takes back his testimony the whole case against him collapses he can go free but he knows that if he goes free he is a target of his colleagues from from from from the same department so he's tasked at the trial is to prove that he is guilty that he's did that and then he disappears nobody knows where he goes and there are all sorts of cover stories and I was lucky to interview a commander for the former chief of the of the South African police who confirmed to me that Stoshinsky was in South Africa the West German intelligence thought that it was too dangerous for him to stay in Germany they sent him under different name to to South Africa so that's that's that's the story of Stoshinsky himself but going back to Bandara of course the fact that he confessed and it became known that KGB assassinated Bandara that added to the to the image and to to general mythology about Bandara what a fascinating story of a village boy becoming an assassin who killed one of the most influential revolutionaries of the region in the 20th century so what just zooming out broadly on the KGB how powerful was the KGB what role did it play in this whole story of the Soviet Union it depends on the period at the time that we just described late fifties and early sixties they were not powerful at all and the reasons for that was that people like Khrushchev were really concerned about the police becoming too powerful it became too powerful in their mind understanding under Berya and it was concerned about the Berya's power as a secret police chief that led to the coup against Berya and Krushchev come come into power and Berya was arrested and executed and what what Krushchev was trying to do after that was trying to put since 54 the name was already KGB KGB under his control so he was appointing the former Komsomal leaders as the heads of the KGB so the people who really really owed everything to him that sort of position and the heads of the KGB were not members of Polidura it changed it changed in the 70s with Andropa where KGB started started to play again very important role in the Soviet history and let's say decisions on Afghanistan and the Soviet troops marching into Afghanistan were made by the apart from Brezhnev by the trio of the people who are not would be called today Siliviki maybe or not all of them were Siliviki but one of course was on drop of the head of the KGB and other was the minister of defense and then there was secretary in charge of the military industrial complex the minister of foreign affairs so but the head of the KGB became really not just the member of Polidura but the the the the member of that inner circle and then the fact that on drop of six hits Brezhnev is also a manifestation of of the power that KGB acquired really after after Krushchev in the in the 1970s and then going into the right natures who was more powerful the KGB or the CIA during the Soviet Union the CIA it's it's the organization that is charged with the information gathering and all sorts of operations including assassinations in the 50s and 60s abroad the KGB was the organization that really had both the surveillance of over the population within the Soviet Union and and and also the the operations abroad and its members its leaders were members of the inner circle for making decisions I again from what I understand about the way how how politics and decision work and decisions are made in the United States the the CIA the chief of the CIA is not is not one of the decision -making group that providing information yes so I would say it's not day and night but their power political influence political significance very different is it understood how big the KGB was how widespread it was given its secretive distributed nature certain things we know others we don't because this ties the archives are open and and most of the KGB especially in Moscow they're not but we know that the KGB combined not only the internal sort of a secret police functions at home and counter counter intelligence branch and intelligence branch abroad but also the the border troops for example right so really institutionally it was it was it was a huge huge mammoth and another thing that we know we can sort of extrapolate from what we know from the stasi from the stasi archives that the surveillance at home the surveillance was really massive the gas is the the the the the sovets were not as as effective and as as meticulous and as scrupulous and as methodical as probably as Germans were but that that gives you that that gives you a basic idea of how how penetrated the entire society was what do you think is important to understand about the KGB if we want to also understand Vladimir Putin since he was a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years from my research including on the on the stashinsky what what I understand is that in KGB and it was a powerful organization again less powerful than 50s and 60s but still very powerful organization there was there was on the one hand the understanding of the situation in the country and abroad that probably other other organizations didn't have they had also first peak in terms of the selecting cadres the the the work in the KGB was well paid and considered to be very prestigious so that's the so that was part to a degree of the Soviet elite in terms of whom they whom they recruited and they had a resentment toward the party leadership they didn't allow them to do James Bond kind of things that they would want to do because they were political risks after this scandal with stashinsky the at least on many levels the KGB stopped the the practice of the assassinations political assassinations abroad because it was considered politically to be extremely extremely dangerous the person who was in charge of the KGB at the time of when that assassination she lepon was one of the candidates to replace Khrushchev and Brezhnev used against him that scandal abroad eventually to remove him from political so the KGB was really was really looking at the party leadership as to a degree in effective corrupt and who was on their way and from what I understand that's that's exactly the the the the attitudes that people like like Putin and and people of his circle brought brought to to power in Kremlin so the methods that KGB use they can use now and there is no no part you know no other other institution actually stopping them from doing that and they think about my understanding the operations abroad about foreign policy in general in terms of the KGB mindset of planning operations and executing particular operations and so on and so forth so I think a lot a lot of culture that came into existence in the Soviet KGB now became part of the culture of the of the Russian Russian establishment you wrote the book the Russo -Ukrainian War the return of history that gives the full context leading up to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 so can you take me through the key moments in history that led up to this war so we'll mention the collapse of the Soviet Union we could probably go much farther back but the collapse of the Soviet Union mentioned 2014 maybe you can highlight key moments that led up to the to 2022 the key moments would be first the year 2004 now for orange revolution in Ukraine and then year 2013 known as the revolution of dignity both were the revolts against the something that by significant part of Ukrainian population was considered to be completely completely unacceptable actions on the part of the government and people in the government at that time so the orange revolution of 2004 was a protest against falsified presidential elections and rejection of a candidate that was supported by Russia publicly supported by Russia I remember being in Moscow at that time and couldn't believe my eyes when in the center of Russia I saw a billboard based on the coverage the trick was that there were a lot of Ukrainians in Russia and in Moscow in particular and they they had the right to vote so and it led to the election of Ukrainian as Ukrainian president Viktor Ryushchenko who put on the agenda the issue of Ukraine's membership in NATO so it was apparently a pro -Western orientation and the second case was the revolution of dignity 2013 with some of the same characters including Yanukovych who at that time was already president of Ukraine and there the question was of the government promising the people for one year at least to sign association agreement with European Union and then turning over almost overnight and saying that they were not going to do that and that's that's how things started but then when they became really massive and why something that was called revolution your revolution became revolution of dignity was when the government police beat up students in downtown cave who judging by the reports were basically already almost ready to to disperse almost ready to go home and that's when roughly half of cave showed up on the streets that sort of the police behavior that sort of that was absolutely unacceptable in Ukraine the still in elections and falsification of elections was unacceptable that's where around that time and around 2004 the president of Ukraine at that time Lenin Kuchma writes a book called Ukraine is not Russia and apparently the term comes from his his discussion with Putin when Putin was suggesting to him quite strongly to use force against people on the may done on the square in cave and Kuchma allegedly said him you don't understand Ukraine is not Russia you can't you can't do things like that you get you get pushback and that's that's the this two events tour four and then 2013 and became really crucial point in terms of the Ukraine direction the the survival of Ukraine and democracy which is one of very few countries in the post -soviet space where democracy survived the original flirt with between the government leaders and democracy of the 1990s it was the all Soviet story in Russia everywhere else there was high democratic expectations but they came pretty much to an end by the end of the decade Ukraine Ukraine preserve the democracy and the orientation of Ukraine towards toward integration into in some form into western and european structures that that Ukrainian democracy plus western orientation was something and in Russia we see the strengthening of the autocratic regime under Vladimir Putin that if you look deeper the this are the processes that put the two countries on the collision course so there's a division a push and pull inside Ukraine on identity whether they're part of Russia or part of Europe and you highlighted two moments in Ukrainian history that there's a big flare -up where this the statement was first Ukraine is not Russia and essentially Ukraine is part of Europe but there's other moments what were the defining moments they began an actual war in the darkness the war started in february of 2014 was the Russian takeover of Crimea by military force right the so -called green man and the big question is is why and it's it's very important to go back to the year 2013 and the the start of the of the protests and the the story of the Ukraine sign an association agreement with european union so from what we understand today the Ukrainian government under president general college did this suicidal sharp turn after one year of promise an association agreement saying that okay we changed our mind under pressure from Moscow and Moscow applied that pressure for one reason at least in my opinion the Ukraine sign an association agreement with european union would mean that Ukraine would not be able to sign association agreement with any Eurasian union in any shape or form that that was at that time in the process of making and for Vladimir Putin that was the beginning of his part of his third term one of his agenda items for the third term was really a consolidation of the of the post -soviet space and Eurasian space and not membership in NATO not membership in European Union but association agreement with European Union meant that that post -soviet space would have to exist under Moscow's control but without Ukraine the second largest post -soviet republic the republic on whose vote depended the continuing existence of the Soviet Union and whose vote ended in many ways the existence of the Soviet Union so that is that is broadly background but but also there are of course personalities there are also there beliefs that the the readings of history and and and all of that became became part of the story but if if you look at that geopolitically the the association agreement is put in put in Ukraine outside of the Russian sphere of influence and the the the response was an attempt to topple topple the government in Kiev that clearly was going to to sign that that agreement to take over Crimea and to help to deal with a lot of issues within Russia itself and boost the the the popularity of of the president and it certainly certainly worked in that in that way as well and the once once Ukraine still after Crimea continued on its path then the next steps started the so -called hybrid warfare in Donbass but again the unlike and like Crimea from what from what I understand Russia was not really looking forward to taking possession of Donbass Donbass was viewed as the way how to influence Ukraine to stop it from drifted over the west maybe you can tell me about the region of Donbass I mentioned that nationalism and principle of nationalism is the principle of making the political borders to coincide with ethnic and cultural borders and that's that's how the maps of of many Eastern European countries had been drawn in the 19th and 20th century on that on that principle Donbass where the majority constituted by the beginning of the 20th century were Ukrainians was considered to be Ukrainian and was claimed in the middle in in the middle of this revolution and revolutionary wars and civil wars by Ukrainian government but Donbass became a site one of the key sites in the Russian Empire of early industrialization and it's it's mining industry with logical industry so what that meant was that people from other parts of not Ukraine but other parts of the Russian Empire congregated that that's that's where jobs were that's how Khrushchev and his family came came to Donbass the family of Brezhnev overshoot a little bit they got to the industrial enterprises in in the city of Kamensk near near abroad the place the city that was called Gnipropetrovsk so those were Russian peasants moving into the area in in looking for the for the job and by the the population became quite mixed Ukrainians still constituted the majority of the population but not necessarily in the towns and in the cities and culturally the place was becoming more and more Russian as the result of that of that moment so apart from the Crimea Donbass was the part of Ukraine where the ethnic Russians were the the biggest group they were not majority but they were very very big and significant group for example in the city of Mariupol that was all but destroyed in the course of the last of the last two years the ethnic Russians constituted over 40 % of the population right so that's not exactly part of Donbass but that gives you that that gives you general idea now the story of Donbass and what happened now is is multi -dimensional and this ethnic composition is just one part of the story another very important part of the story is economy and Donbass is a classical rust belt and we know what happens with the cities that were part of the first or second wave of industrialization in the United States and globally you know about social problems that exist in those places so Donbass is probably the most dramatic and tragic case of implosion of the rust belt with the minds not anymore producing the sort of the and at acceptable price the call that they used to produce is people losing jobs with the politicians looking for subsidies as opposed to trying very unpopular and popular measures of dealing something and and bring bringing your money and your investment into the region so all of that all of that become part of the story that made it easy for Russia for the Russian Federation to destabilize the situation we have interviews with Mr.

1:43:39Girkin who is saying that he was the first to pull the trigger and and fired the shot in that war he became the minister of defense in the Donetsk People's Republic you look at the prime minister he is another person with Moscow residence apartment so you see key figures in those positions at the start and the beginning not being Russians from Ukraine but being Russians from Russia and Russians from Moscow closely connected to the government structure intelligence structure and so on so that is that is the start and the beginning but the the way how how it exploded the way it did was also a combination of the economic and agricultural and linguistic factors so for Putin the war in Donbass and even in 2022 is a defensive war against what the Ukrainian government is doing against ethnically Russian people of Donbass is that fair to say well how he describes it what what we see this is certainly this is certainly the argument right this is certainly the argument and a pretext because what we see there is that there would be no and there was no independent mobilization in Crimea either in Crimea or in Donbass without Russian presence without Russian occupation the factor of the Crimea there would be no and there was no before at least in the previous five to six years any mass mobilizations of Russians there was none of such mobilizations in in Donbass before before Gertkin and other people with military with these parts of military units showed up there so it is it is a it is an excuse you've been to Ukraine you know that Russian language is not persecuted in Ukraine and if you've not been to Donbass it would be difficult to find one single Ukrainian school not that they didn't exist at all but it would take quite an effort for you to find it or sometimes even to hear Ukrainian language outside either of the institutions or the farmers market so that's that's that's the reality that that's the reality that is clear that is visible so imagine and those conditions and contacts that someone is is persecuted ethnic Russians or Russian speakers want to believe in something like that one important precondition is never to step step your foot in Ukraine I should mention maybe this is a good moment to mention when I travel to Ukraine this is after the start of the war I mentioned farmers market which is funny basically every single person I talk to including the leadership we spoke in Russian for many of them Russian is the more comfortable language even and the people who spoke Ukrainian are more in the western side of Ukraine and you know young people that are kind of wrong to show that in an activist way that they want to fight for the independence of the country so I take your point I wonder if you want to comment about language and maybe about the future of language in Ukraine is the future of language going to stabilize on Ukrainian or is it going to return to its traditional base of Russian language very roughly before the start of the war in 2014 we can talk about parity between Russian and Ukrainian and also with as you said clearly Ukraine being a dominant language in the west and the Russian being being a dominant language on the streets certainly in the east of the country and then in between of that to pause a number of these transitional areas and Ukraine in my experience and I visited a lot of countries not all of them and probably maybe maybe I will be still surprised but in my experience this is the only truly bilingual country that I have visited I lived in Canada for a long period of time there is quite back and the rest and in Ukraine you can talk in either Russian or Ukrainian in any part of the country and you would be understood and you would be responded in a different language which is the expectation that you would understand and if you if you don't understand that means you don't come from Ukraine that's the reality the war and loss of the Crimea and partial loss of them bus if it's major major industrial industrial areas really shifted the balance towards mostly Ukrainian speaking regions and also what you see and you clearly pointed to that starting with 2014 even a little bit early the engage in Russian chooses Ukrainian as a marker of its identity and that started in 2014 but we we have a dramatic dramatic shift after 2022 and on the anecdotal level I can tell you that I speak to people who be in in in Cheneyiv at the time this is east of of Crimea at the time of of the Russian aggression bombardment and so on and so forth who had passive knowledge of Ukrainian but spoke all their all their life Russian and they would speak Ukrainian to me and when I say okay why you're doing that we we know each other for decades and you used Russian and he said oh I don't want to have anything in common with people who did that to us so there is the there is a big big push of course with this with this current war now the question is whether this change is is something that will stay or not what is what is the future linguistic practices are very very conservative ones and we at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute have a project called Mapa Digital Atlas of Ukraine and we were documenting and mapping different data in time and what we noticed is the spike in the people self -reporting of use of Ukrainian in 2014 and 2015 at the time of the start of the war when the the the the threat was the most clear one this is self -reporting that doesn't mean that people exactly do what what they believe that that's what that they're supposed to do and then return back to to where it was by the year 2016 and 2017 so this this dynamic can can repeat itself but given given the how long the war is going on how big the impact it how big the stresses and that the the way the way the wave of the future is probably associated with younger people who are switching to Ukrainian so I would I would my bat would be on on Ukrainian language rising in prominence so as we get closer to febber of 2022 there's a few other key moments maybe let's talk about in July 2021 Putin publishing an essay titled on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians can you describe the ideas expressed in this essay the idea is is very conveniently presented already in the first paragraph in the first sentences really of the article where Putin says that for a long time I was saying the Russians and Ukrainians were one in the same people and here is the proof this is this is the the the historical he develops his historical argumentation apparently is the help of a lot of people around him and he started to talk about Russians and Ukrainians being one in the same people one year before the start of the war in 2014 so in 2013 he was together with Spatiar Kiril on visit to cave and there was a conference specifically organized for him in the cave in cave's monastery and that's that's where he he stated that the fact that he was with Spatiar Kiril is is very important factor for understanding where the ideas come in from um this is the idea that was dominant in the Russian empire of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century that Russians Ukrainians and Belarusians are really Russian great Russians little Russians and white Russians and that they constitute one one people yes there are some dialectical differences yes Ukrainians sing well yes they dance funny but overall that's that doesn't matter and the that idea actually was really destroyed mostly destroyed by the revolution of 1917 because it wasn't just social revolution that's how it is understood in in in US in good part of the world it was also national revolution it was an empire it was a revolution in the in the Russian empire and to bring this pieces of empire back within the Soviet Union the Bolsheviks had to make concessions one of those concessions was to recognition of the existence of Ukrainians as a separate nation Belarusians as a separate nations Russians as a separate nations in downing them with their own territorial with borders with institutions and so on and so forth but there was one institution that was not reformed that institution was called the Russian Orthodox Church because one of the ways that Bolsheviks dealt with it they couldn't eradicate religion completely but they arrested the development of the of the religion and thinking and and and and theology on the level as it existed before the revolution of 1917 so the Russian Orthodox Church of 1917 continued to be the Russian Orthodox Church in 1991 and in 2013 continuing the same imperial mantra of the existence of one big Russian nation one unified people and when you see the formation of of the ideas about about nations about foreign policy in the Russian Empire after 1991 they're going back to the pre pre Bolshevik times Ukrainians do that as well Estonians do that as well the difference is that when Ukrainians go back they go back to the pre 1917 their their intellectual fathers and and writings of basically liberal nationalism or sometimes they go to the radical nationalism of Mandara which would be which would be not pre 1917 but pre 1945 when the Russians go to pre Bolshevik past looking for the ideas looking for inspiration looking for the narratives what they find there is empire what they find there are imperial projects and and that's that's that's certainly the story of the of the Putin's claim that's the story of the argument and to to conclude the argument that he lays out the historical argument comes also almost directly from the narratives of the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century so it's not only the argument is coming from that era but also the argumentation is it's coming from that era as well but that those arguments are all in in the flavor of empire it's empire on the one hand but also there is imperial understanding of what Russian nation is that doesn't allow for independence of its little Russian and white Russian branches alleged branches right so what what you see is the concept of the big Russian nation that's late 19th beginning 20th century empire sees the writing on the wall that nationalism is on the rise and it tries to survive by mobilizing the nationalism of the largest group in the empire champions to be Russian Stalin is a big promoter of the some form of Russian nationalism especially during the war and after war and he started his career as a very promising Georgian writer writing in Georgian yeah so he's not doing that for some personal personal affinity or cultural intellectual roots within within Russia within Russian nation or Russian people he is doing that for the for the sake of the success of the of his Soviet and communist project and he has to get the largest ethnic group on board which are which are Russians but but Stalin and and and Putin have different understanding who Russians are Stalin Stalin already accepted Ukrainians and Belarusians the existence Putin Putin goes back to pre Stalin and pre Lenin times so if we step back from the the historical context of this and maybe the geopolitical purpose of writing such an essay and forget about the essay altogether you know I have family in Ukraine and Russia I know a lot of people in Ukraine and Russia forget the war forget all of this there's a kind of they all kind of sound the same like if I go to France they sound different than in Ukraine and Russia like if you lay out this the cultural map of the world there's just a different beat and music and flavor to a people I guess what I'm trying to say is there seems to be a closeness between the cultures of Ukraine and Russia and how do we describe that do we acknowledge that and how does that attention with the national independence first of all especially when it comes to Eastern Ukraine or to be big cities many people in Ukraine spoke Russian right generally it's the same language on the top of that we started our discussion with talking about the Slavs right so both Ukrainian and Russian language are Slavic languages so there is there is proximity there as well on the top of that there is a history of existence in the Soviet Union and before that in one empire for a long period of time so you see a lot of a lot of before the war a lot of Ukrainian singers and entertainers performing in Russia and vice versa and biography of President Zelensky certainly one of the fits fits that that particular particular model as well that that all talks about similarities but this similarity is also very often obscure things that that became so important in the course of this war and I already mentioned the book titled by President Kuchma of Ukraine Ukraine is not Russia so that's that's the argument despite the fact that you think that we are the same we behave differently and it turned out that they behave differently you have Bolotna in Moscow and police violence and that's the end of it you have the my done in Ukraine and you have police violence and that's that's the beginning that's not the history really matters in the way why why sometimes people speak in the same language with different accents behave very differently Russia and Russian identity was formed around the state and has difficulty imagining itself outside of the state and that state happened to be imperial for most of Russian history Ukrainian project came into existence in revolt against the state Ukraine came into existence out of the parts of different empires which means they left different cultural impact on them and for Ukrainians to stay together out the critic regime so far didn't work it's like the colonies of the United States you have to you have to find common language you have to talk to each other and that became part of the Ukrainian political DNA and that that became a huge factor in the war and very few people in Ukraine believed what what Vladimir Putin was saying that Russians and Ukrainians were one and the same people but the majority believed that there certainly closed cultural and historically nations and from that point of view the bombardment of the Ukrainian cities became such a shock to the Ukrainians because deep down they they may be looked at Syria they looked at Chechnya and were explaining that through the fact that there was basically such a big cultural gap and difference between Russians and and those countries and those nations but I my understanding at least most of them had difficulty imagining the war of that proportion and that sort of for us and that sort of war crimes that sort of war crimes and on that level it's interesting that you say that in a DNA of Ukraine versus Russia so maybe Russia is more conducive to authoritarian regimes and Ukraine is more conducive to defining itself by rebelling against authoritarian regimes by rebellion absolutely and that was the story pretty much before 1991 so what you see since 1991 and what you see today is my would say new factor certainly in Ukrainian modern history because Ukrainians traditionally were very successful rebels the largest peasant army in the civil war in the Russian Empire was the Mahno -Army in southern Ukraine and one one revolt cause a crevals and other revolts one after another but Ukrainians had historically difficulty actually maintaining the sort of freedom that they acquired had difficulty associating themselves with the state and what we see especially in the last two years it's it's a quite phenomenal development in Ukraine when Ukrainians associate themselves with the state where Ukrainians see a state not just as a foreigner as historically it wasn't Ukrainian history not just someone who came to to take but the state that is continuation of them that helps to provide security for them that the Ukrainian armed forces even before the start of war had the highest support and popularity in Ukraine the state today functions unbelievably effectively under attacks and missile attacks and against city government and local government and it's it's we are witnessing when it comes to Ukraine we're witnessing a very important historical development where Ukrainians found their state for the first time through most through most of the history and tried to make a transition from successful rebels to successful managers and state builders yeah I talked to John Mishima recently there's a lot of people that believe NATO had a big contribution to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 so what what role did NATO play in this full history from Bucharest in 20 in 2008 to today NATO was a big part certainly of the Russian justification for the war that was the theme that was up there in the months leading to the to the aggression the truth is that and Vladimir Putin went on records saying that that the western leaders were telling him again and again that there is no chance for Ukraine to become member of NATO anytime so Russia was very effective back in the year 208 in stopping Ukraine and Georgia on the path of joining NATO there was a Bucharest summit at which the US president at that time George W.

2:07:35Bush was pushing for the membership and Putin convinced leaders of France and Germany to block that that membership and after that membership for Ukraine and for Georgia was really removed from the from the realistic agenda for NATO and that's that's what the leaders of the western world in the month leading to the February 2020 to aggression were trying to to convey to Vladimir Putin what he wanted there was an ultimatum that really was there to not to start negotiations but really to stop negotiations he demanded the withdrawal of NATO to the borders of the 1997 if I'm not mistaken so completely something that neither leaders would accept nor the country's members of NATO would accept but for me it's very clear that that was that that was an excuse that that was a justification and what happened later in the year 2022 and 2023 certainly confirms me in that in that belief Finland joined NATO and Sweden is on the way to join in NATO so Finland joined in NATO increased border between Russia and NATO to fault and problem more than that so if NATO is the real concern it would be probably not completely unreasonable to expect that if not every single soldier but at least half of the Russian army fighting in Ukraine would be moved to protect the new border with NATO in Finland so I have no doubt that no one in Kremlin either in the past or today looks favorably or is excited about NATO NATO moving or the countries of eastern Europe joining NATO but I have very difficult time imagining that that was the primary cause of the war and what we see also we talked about Tucker's interview he was surprised but he believed that Putin was completely honest when the first 25 minutes of interview he was talking about relations between Russia and Ukraine was talking about history and that was also the main focus of his essay essay was not on NATO and Russia his essay was on Russia and Ukraine so that is where the the the real causes are the broader context is the fall of empire and process of disintegration of empire not the story of NATO what was to clarify the reason Putin Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 the immediate goal in 2014 when the war started was to stop the drift of Ukraine toward the west and outside of the Russian sphere of influence the invasion of 2022 perceived the same the same goals keeping Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence once we have the resistance quite effective resistance on the part of Ukraine the rumstein and coalition international coalition in support of Ukraine then we see the realization of plan B where parts of Ukrainian territory are being annexed and included in the constitution of the Russian Federation so the two scenarios don't exclude each other but if if scenario number one doesn't work then scenario number two goes goes into play in the gates of Kiev chapter you write above a lot of what are most important moments to you about this time the the first hours and days of the invasion the first hours and the first days were the most difficult psychologically the rest of the world really didn't expect Kiev to last for more than few days didn't expect Ukraine to last for more than few weeks and all the data suggested that that's what would happen Ukraine would collapse would be taken over Putin called his his war a special military operation which suggests you also expectations about the scope expectations about the time so semi military semi police police operation so every reasonable person in the world believed that that would what would happen and it's the herrism of quote -unquote unreasonable people like Zelensky like the commander of Ukrainian armed forces Zoluzny like mayors of the cities Glitchko and others I'm just naming names that are familiar to to almost all of us now but there are thousands of those people unreasonable people who decided that it was unreasonable to attack their country and that that was that was the most the most difficult times and days and speaking about Zelensky every understand reasonable leader in the west was trying to convince him to leave Ukraine and to set a government in exile in in Poland or in London and it was reasonable to accept his one of his predecessors Mr.

2:13:47Yanokovich flat cave a few months before that in Afghanistan the president of Afghanistan flat of Afghanistan that was a reasonable thing to expect and he turned out to be very very unreasonable that in that sense that's that comes with the gods his gods and gods people around him and Ukrainians in general why do you think you're stating Kiev this former comedian who played a president on TV one Kiev is being invaded by the second most powerful military in the world because I think he believes in things and and and one of those things was that if he a president and he is in the presidential office he is there to play his role to the end and another thing my personal again I has talent that helped him in his career before the presidency and then helps now he feels the audience and then channels the the the the attitude of the audience and amplifies it and I think that another reason why he didn't leave Kiev was that he felt the audience the audience and that in that particular context for the Ukrainians so he had a sense that the Ukrainians would unify because he was quite if you look at the polls before the war quite unpopular and and there was still divisions and factions and the government is divided I mean there's the east and the west and all this kind of stuff you you think he had a sense that this could unite people the east and the west was not already such an issue after after Crimea and part of the bus being gone so Ukraine was much more united than it was before he brought to power he is before that really non -existent party of regions on his personal popularity but the important thing is that he created a majority in the parliament which really reflected the unity that existed among Ukrainians that didn't was not there before he won with 73 % of the population of those who took part in in the elections his predecessor Petro Poroshenko also carried 90 % of the of the prisons and the same happened with Zelensky so the country unified after 2014 to a degree it was impossible to to imagine before and Zelensky felt that Zelensky knew that and that that that where the talent of politician really matters that's that's something that you can see beyond beyond just data and and you can feel that apparently Yeltsin had that ability why did the peace talks fail there was a lot of peace talks the main reason is that the conditions that Russia was trying to impose on Ukraine were basically unacceptable for Ukraine because one of the conditions apart from this strange thing called denotification was of course de facto loss of the territory and for the future really staying outside either of NATO or any any any western support which was very clear you can buy a couple of weeks you can buy a couple of months but in the conditions like that Russia will come back to tomorrow and will take over everything and once once Ukrainians realize that they can win on the battlefield once the Russians were defeated and was drawn from cave

2:18:26the the opportunity emerged to get out of the of the negotiations which was very clear were leading if not today then tomorrow to the complete destruction of Ukraine and then of course once the territory started to be liberated things like Butcher and the massacres of the civilian population came to the fore which made also quite difficult if not impossible to conduct negotiations from this moral and emotional point of view what about the claims that you know Boris Johnson the West compromised the ability of these peace talks to be successful basically kind of manipulated the talks I asked people who accompanied Bruce Johnson to give that question the answer was no and I believe the censor and I'll tell you why because it is very difficult for me to imagine President Zelensky to take orders from anybody in the world either Boris Johnson or Joe Biden or anybody else and basically doing things that Zelensky believes are not in his interest or in the interest of his country I just can't imagine that anybody in the world telling Zelensky what to do and Zelensky actually following it against his own his own wishes and desires at least if that is possible what is in the public sphere doesn't allow us to suggest that it is that said Zelensky is a smart man and he knows that the war can only continue with the West support that is a different supposition to know that it can continue with the West support but if we are talking about withdrawing from the negotiations that's that's not about the continuation of the war that you don't need Western support well what I mean is if he started the sense that the West will support no matter what then maybe the space of decisions you're making is different we can interpret that that way but Boris Johnson represented at that point Britain not the United States and really what the war showed and it was clear already at that time that what was needed was massive support from from the West as a whole and the promise of that support came only after the West realized that Ukraine can win and came only in late April with the Ramstein so at least a few weeks later so I don't know how much Boris Johnson could promise he probably could promise to try to help and try to convince and try to work on that if if Zelensky acted on that promise he certainly was taking a risk but the key issue again I'm going back where I started it's a principle an acceptance for Ukraine the conditions that were offered and Ukraine was the moment they saw the possibility that they could fight back with Johnson support without Johnson support they took the chance so what are the ways this work can end do you think what are the different possible trajectories whether it's peace talks what is winning look like free this side what is the role of U .S what what trajectories do you see that are possible it's it's a question on the one level very easy to answer on the other very difficult the level on which it is very easy it's it's a broad historical perspective if you really believe and I believe in that that this is the war of the Soviet succession that this is the war of the disintegration of empire we know how this story ends and they end with disintegration of empire they end with the rise of the new states and the parents of the new collared sports on the map that's the story that started with the American revolution so that's that's long -term perspective the difficult part is of course what will happen tomorrow the difficult part is what what there will be in in in two days in or even in two years and in very broad terms the the war can end in one of three scenarios the victory of one side the victory of another side and a sort of a stalemate and compromise especially when it comes when it comes to the territories this war is already approaching the end of the second year I follow the the news and look analysis I don't remember one single piece suggesting that the next year will will bring peace or will bring peace for sure and we we are in in a situation where the both sides still believe that they can achieve something or improve their position on the battlefield certainly that was the expectations of Ukrainian side back in the in the in the summer and in the fall of 2023 and from what I understand now this is certainly the expectations of the Russian side today this is this is the largest war in Europe since World War II the largest war in the world since Korean War and we know that that the the Korean War ended in this division division of Korea but the negotiations were going on for more than two years while those negotiations were going on both sides were trying to improve their position there and until there was a political change death of Stalin rival of Eisenhower in the United States and the realization that the the chances of succeeding on the battlefield huge the peace talks didn't come so at this point all three scenarios are possible I don't I don't really discount any of them it's early early to to say what will happen so without any political change let's try to imagine what are the possibilities that the war ends this year is it possible that it can end with compromise basically at the place it started meaning back to the borders of 2022 yeah back to the borders of 22 with some security guarantees that aren't really guarantees but a hopeful guarantees no it's it's it is it is not just virtual impossibility it is impossible without political change in Moscow the reason is that back in the fall of 2022 Vladimir Putin included five of Ukrainian region sublists even those that he didn't control or didn't control fully into the Russian constitution which basically in simple language is that the hands are tied up not only for Putin himself but also for his possible successors so that means that no return to the borders of 2022 without without change political change in Moscow are possible a few days after after that that that decision in Moscow Zelensky issued a decree saying that no negotiations with Russia what what that really meant in plain language is that basically we are not prepared to negotiate a stable agreement with five wall oblasts not just a next but also included into the Russian constitution so that's where we are so that that that that scenario is is can everything is possible of course but it's highly highly likely so the Russian constitution is a is a thing that's very that makes us all very difficult yes and not only as a negotiation tactic for Putin however would would negotiate on the Russian side but also as a legal issue so like the practical aspect of you really have to change the constitution before this agreement takes hold or immediately after that and with the Minsk agreements that was one of things that Russia wanted from Ukraine change of the constitution and it turned out to be really impossible so that that's one of the one of the back stories of the Minsk and and collapse of the Minsk agreements is there something like Minsk agreements that are possible now to maybe this is a legal question but to override the constitution to sort of shake everything up so see the constitutional moment as a as just an negotiation tactic to come to the table to something like Minsk agreement given how how fast those those amendments to the constitution were adopted that suggests that really executive power in Russia has enormous power over the legislative branch so it's it's again difficult to imagine but technically this is possible again if the but but possible if there is a political change in Moscow I don't understand why assuming political change in Moscow is not possible this year so I'm trying to see if there's a way to end this war this year right there is a possibility of armistice right but armistice more along the like any armistice along the lines of the current front lines but withdrawal of the Russian troops to the borders of 2022 at this point whether it's reasonable on reasonable can be achieved all only as the result of the defeat of the Russian army like it happened near cave is it possible possible is it likely especially given what is happening with the western support military support for for Ukraine probably not but if Putin the executive branch has a lot of power why can't the United States president the Russian president the Ukrainian president come to the table and drop something like Minsk agreements where and then rapid constitutional changes made and you go back to the border of 2022 before 2022 like through agreements through compromise impossible for you certainly not this year I look at this year as the time when at least one side Russian side will try to get as much as it can through the through military means but that's been happening last year too there's been a counteroffensive there's been attempts that it doesn't mean that every that new year somehow is supposed to bring new tactics that the last year was pretty much a lot of fighting a lot of suffering very little movement of the of the front line the biggest change of the last year was Ukraine victory on the on the black sea where they pushed the the Russian navy into the western part of the pond and restored the the and grain corridor and export from Odessa apparently up to 75 percent of what it used to be before the war so that's that's the only major change but again the the price is enormous in terms of a wealth in terms of a special in terms of life so thinking about what 2024 brings Zelensky just fired Ukraine's head of the army a man you've mentioned general velary Zolushny what do you make of this development this is a very very dangerous moment in the war uh the reason for that is that Zelensky is someone who is very popular with the army and with people in general so if you look at that through american prism that would be something analogous to president Truman firing general macaque uh given that stakes for us at that time were very high but probably not as high as they are for Ukraine for Ukraine today in both cases what is its stake is certainly the idea that the political leadership and military leadership have to be on the same page and the question is whether on the part of Zelensky this is just the change of their leadership or this is also the change of his approach to the war and then can mean many things one can mean him taking more active part in planning operations it can mean also possible change of the tactic in the war giving that counteroffensive didn't didn't work out uh we don't know yet i don't know why the president Zelensky at this point knows exactly what what what will come next but this is this is the time when the the change of the leadership in the country and in the army that is at war it's it's one of the most most trying most dangerous moments so the thing that president Zelensky express is that this is this is going to be a change of tactics making the uh the approach more technologically advanced this kind of things but as you said uh i believe he is less popular than uh the chief the army so usually uh 80 % to 60 % depending on the polls do you think is possible the Zelensky's days are numbered as the president and that somebody like uh solution he comes to power and what we know is that uh in this war uh Ukrainian people really united around their president and the armed forces were always even before the start of the war more popular than was the presidential office so the change if if if if happened in that realm was not was not so dramatic and from what i can see from from social media in Ukraine there is a lot of and happiness a lot of questions but there is also realization and very strong realization that country has to stay united and certainly the behavior of zealousy himself is there basically not suggest in any sort of a pregusion type of of scenario that gives me some hope actually a lot of hope and in terms of whether Zelensky's days are numbered or not i don't think they're numbered uh but if Ukraine stays a democracy and i believe it will stay the what comes to my mind is the story of uh Churchill the story of the gol in pollen the story of pilsutsky so once the war is over really the the electorate in the in the democratic elections they want to change the political leadership they want to move forward but pilsutsky came back to power and the gol came back to power in Churchill came back to power so no i don't i whatever happens in the in the short run or medium -term run i think that uh Zelensky days in politics are not numbered so what to you is interesting uh for example if i get a chance to interview Zelensky what what do you think about the the person that that would be good to ask about to explore about the state of his mind is thinking his view of the world as it stands today next month we're supposed to take place Ukrainian elections they're not taking place because the majority of Ukrainians don't think this is the right thing to do to change the president to have the elections to have a political struggle in the middle of the war so Zelensky refused to call those elections despite the fact that he he uh is and continues to be the most popular politician in Ukraine so it would be in his to his benefit but that's that's clearly not what what the Ukrainians want but the question of continuing as the president beyond five years also one way or another would raise questions about the legitimacy and certainly certainly Russia will be playing this card like there is no tomorrow and what i would be interested in asking Zelensky about whether whether he sees that his second term which comes on those conditions would suggest a different different attitude over their position maybe some form of the of the coalition government like it was the case in Britain with Churchill and the different circumstances of course or this is basically in his opinion something that would be destructive and something that would would really be an impediment for for the issue for the question of unity and war effort and i would ask this question not not to basically suggest that that's that's the way to go but i i would be very much interested to hear what is his thinking about that is do you think there's a degree during wartime that the power that comes with being a war president can corrupt the person sort of uh push your way from uh the democratic mindset towards an authoritarian one i think that there is a possibility of that right you in the conditions of any any emergency the war and in the case of the Soviet Union there was a Chernobyl disaster and so on and so forth you make decisions much faster you you you create this vertical and then it's very easy to get to get really used to that way dealing with the issues in in the conditions of emergency right and then the continued emergency or or there's no emergency they continue in the emergency mode i think again that that would be a very very natural thing find a human being to to do to make it easier you know what should i do that easier and in more effective way or should i do the right way that's that's the challenge it's it's it's it's it's it's sometimes it's difficult to answer this question let me stay in power for just a little longer to do it the efficient way and then time flies away and all of a sudden you're it's it's you're you're going for the third term and the fourth term and then suddenly it's easy to realize that actually you control in any other way you just whatever skills you had of people around that can help is that already gone exactly people that surround you are not providing the kind of critical feedback necessary for democratic system one of the things that Tucker said after his interview he was just in his hotel just chatting on video and he said that he felt like Putin was not very good at explaining himself like a coherent whole narrative of why the invasion happened and just this big picture and he said that's not because he doesn't have one but it's been a long time since he's had somebody around him where he has to explain himself to so he's out of practice which is very interesting it's a very interesting point and that's what war and being in power for prolonged period of time can do so on that topic if you had a chance to talk to Putin what kind of questions would you ask him what would you like to find out about the man as he stands today?

2:40:38As a historian I have a lot of questions and I have questions about when the decision was made to attack Ukraine and what went into this decision because we are thinking about that we are trying so as a historian I have this big question have question about the Crimea and those decisions were made so that sort of questions that interest me but the rest either I think that I understand what is going on with him or I don't expect the answer that can help for for example a good question whether you regret or not the start of the war in 2022 given given the enormous enormous casualties on both sides but you can't expect from a politician and honest answer to this question right so there are questions to which I know he can't answer honestly and then there are other questions to which I think he already provided all answers that he could so what for me is an interest I basically questions for a historian about the time and the logic of particular decisions well I do wonder how different what he says publicly is from what he thinks privately so a question about when the decision to invade Ukraine happens is a very good question to give insight to the difference between how he thinks about the world privately versus what he says publicly and same about other you know about empire as if he asks Putin he will say he has no interest in empire and he finds the notion silly but at the same time perhaps privately there's a sense in which he does seek the reunification of the Russian empire not in the form of the Russian empire not in the form of the Soviet Union but certainly in some form of the Russian control that's that's that's from me at least it's quite clear otherwise there would be no busts to the bust today to the Russian emperors and Catherine and Peter and others you wrote in your book titled the the front line essays on Ukraine's past and present about the Russian question I guess articulated by Solzhenitsyn first in 1994 Solzhenitsyn of course is the author of Galaga archipelago he's half Ukrainian what is the Russian question Solzhenitsyn clearly identifies himself as Russian and he is a position to the communist regime was was a position of a Russian nationalist so his argument was that communism was bad for Russia

2:43:54and for him Russian question is about the Russians ethnic Russians but also he was thinking about Russians in Putin's terms or Putin thinks in Solzhenitsyn's terms about Ukrainians and Belarusians constituting part of that so the Russian question is the biggest tragedy of the 20th the division of the Russians the the loss of the statehood and division of the Russians between different different states this is this is Solzhenitsyn Russian question and his original idea and plan was presented in the essay that he published in 1990 which was called how we should restructure Russia and restructure Russia meant getting rid of the Baltic Central Asia Caucasus and have Russian Ukrainians and Belarusians including those who live in modern Kazakhstan to create one nation state so he was a Russian nationalist but he was thinking about Russian nation state as the state of Russian Ukrainians and Belarusians and once the Soviet Union collapse and his his idea was not implemented in the 1990s he formulated plan B taken over by Russia of Donbas, Crimea and southern Ukraine the areas that now are included in the Russian constitution so in terms in historical terms and intellectual terms what is happening today in in the war between Russia and Ukraine is the division on one level or another level that was formulated by the noble laureate like southern Solzhenitsyn half Russian half Ukraine if there is such a thing what would you say is the Ukrainian question as we stand today the Ukrainian question is very simple it's now it's not any more acquisition of the nation state but actually a sovereign state but it's maintained so it's a Ukrainian question is like dozens of other questions in the 20th and 21st century the rise the rise of the new state and that's that's what is the Ukrainian question whether whether Ukraine will continue to its existence as a nation as an independent state because that existence is being questioned by stating that Russians and Ukrainians are one and the same people which the fact to say your guy is Russian and also trying to destroy the state is it possible that if the war in Ukraine continues from many more years that the next leader that follows Zelensky would take Ukraine away from a sort of democratic western style nation towards a more authoritarian one maybe even with the far right influence this kind of direction because of the war the influence of war everything is possible and the longer the war continues the more likely scenario like that becomes but um realization of that scenario would go against the grain of the largest part of Ukrainian history where Ukraine really emerged as a pluralistic state in which the elements of democracy were built in the last 30 years would go against the grain of the Ukrainian society where as one author formulated in the 1990s he wrote a book Ukrainian nationalism a minority faith where the nationalist was a minority faith and radical nationalism continues to be at least continued to be in 2019 a minority faith during the last elections so possible but unlikely given the historical realities of the last 30 plus years I could talk to you for many more hours uh uh yes and Chernobyl alone uh since you've written a book on Chernobyl and nuclear disaster this there's just a million possible conversations here but let me just jump around history uh a little bit back to world war to back before world war my grandmother lived through holo moron world war two not see occupied uh Ukraine uh holo mor what do you learn let's say about human nature and about governments and nations from the fact that holo morr happened and maybe you could say what it is and why it happened holo morr is a massive famine in Ukraine um between the years 1932 and 1934 and um it happened as the result of forceful collectivization of the agriculture and a tamp on the part of Stalin also uh really roll Ukraine into the Soviet Union uh biz basically no no potential opposition from from Ukraine uh now national communists so two things came together in December of 1932 when in the same decree Stalin and Mao Zedovsina decree on the requisition of their grain which lead eventually to the mass derivation and on the banning of Ukrainian language publications and education out in other Soviet republics outside of Ukraine and introducing limitations on the the so -called Ukrainianization policies so on the use of Ukrainian language in Ukraine itself and the the numbers are debated the numbers that uh most of the scholars work today are four million but again there are larger numbers as well that that circulate and uh this is the the famine of 32 33 was not exclusive uh Ukrainian phenomenon but most of Ukraine far in the Soviet Union died in Ukraine and Ukraine was the only place where the policy on collecting grain were coming together is the policy of the clans and of the political leadership sending people from Moscow to take over the leadership and attack on Ukrainian culture so in terms of what I learn about human nature it's more me learning about the the ideologists of the 20th century because it's not the only famine in the communist lands the famine in China which was in terms of the numbers much more devastating than that it's in a different category and for a good reason but you have lost what unites these things are is the time this is 20th century what unites them are the dominance in the societies that are doing that really uh ideologists that not just devalued human life but considered that actually the way forward is by destroying large group of populations defined ethnically religiously socially otherwise which tells about the time but tells also about humanity because for centuries before that human life was valued there were enemies but the idea was that human life can put and you can at the end of the day they can be slaves they can be you can use them for productive force countries in the 18th century without in Ukraine they were looking for settlers for people to bring and live on land you move into the 20th century and there is mass destruction of the population in the name of ideologists which basically are by definition destroy human lives and that's what really so shocking and striking because that break with not just the issues of morale not just the issues of humanity there's any common sense what is what is happening and uh I I'm absolutely convinced that we didn't learn the lesson I'm absolutely convinced that we didn't learn the lesson with turning our page on fascism and communism is somehow decided that we are free of that that at least in those terms history came to an end that what is ahead is is is a fusion nothing of that sort would what happened would take place to a degree that people would get in trouble for comparing any statements or or events that happen in today we is either the communism of fascism and and so I feel responsibility of myself and as a historian in particular for not not doing a better job about about telling people that well we we are we are who we are and we we we have as humans our dark side and we have to we have to be very careful so there is a human capacity to be captured by an idea and ideology that claims to bring up a better world as the Nazis did as Soviet Union did and on the path of doing that devaluing human life that we will bring a better world and and if millions of people have to be tortured on the way to that all right but at least we have a better world and human beings are able to if not accept that look the other way yes and in the name of a particular nation or race like like was the third Reich or in in the name of the humanity of the future so not just devalued human life destroy human life is there something fundamental about communism and centralized planning that's part of the problem here maybe this also connects the your story of Chernobyl where the Chernobyl disaster is not just a story of failure of a nuclear power plant but it's an entire institution of the scientific and nuclear institution but the entirety of the government there is and there is a number of factors of political and social character that that produced Chernobyl and one of them is generally the atmosphere of secrecy in the Soviet Union in the conditions of the Cold War Chernobyl reactor was a dual purpose reactor it could boil water today and produce in rich uranium tomorrow right so it was top secret if there were problems with that with that reactor those problems were kept secret even at people who operated that's that's what happened that that's what happened in Chernobyl another another big big part of the story which is specifically Soviet that's the nature of the managerial culture and administrative culture in which people had no right to make their own decisions in their their place in their position a few years before that three mile island happened which was a big big nuclear disaster but in terms of consequences nothing nothing like Chernobyl and there in the context of the American legal culture and managerial culture people who were operators who were in managerial positions that was their responsibility to take decisions president Carter came there but he was not calling shots on none of those issues what you see with Chernobyl and people who saw HBO series know that very well the moment the high official arise everyone actually falls in line it's the official who calls the shot and to move population from the city of Pripyat you needed the okay coming from Moscow from from the very top so that is Soviet story and and there is a global story of cutting corners to to meet either deadlines like it was with that test that they were running at that time or to meet production quarters this is not just socialist thing you can replace production quarters with with profit and and and you get you get the same story so some parts of in that story are generally reflective of our of our today's world in general others are very specific very specific for Soviet Union for for Soviet experience and than the biggest the biggest probably Soviet part of that story is that on the one hand the government in Moscow and Kiev they mobilize all resources to deal with that but they keep information about what is happening and the radiation clouds secret from the from the rest of the population something that completely would be impossible and wasn't possible in U .S.

2:58:47in UK where other accidents happened and then guess what a few years later the Soviet Union collapses very much also thanks to the mobilization of people over the issue of Chernobyl and nuclear energy in people writing about that that subject call it agonationalism ecological nationalism which comes at least in part from this holding information from people and in Ukraine mobilization didn't start over the issues with that led to independence didn't start over the issue of language or didn't start over the issue of national autonomy it started under the slogans tell us the truth about Chernobyl we want to know whether we live in contaminated areas or not and that was a very very strong factor that crossed the not just ethnic religious linguistic lines between members of the party not members of the party of the top leadership and not in military and civilian because turned out that the party card didn't protect you from being affected by by radiation so the all national mobilization happens the first mass manifestations are about Chernobyl not about anything else that's fascinating i mean for people who might not know Chernobyl is located in Ukraine so it would be it's a fascinating view that Chernobyl might be one of the critical sort of threshold catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union that's very interesting uh what just is a small side uh i guess this is a good moment to give some love to the HBO series it made me even though it's British accents and so on it made me realize that some of these stories in eastern europe could be told very effectively uh through film through series it was quite a it's i mean it was so incredibly well done and it maybe i can ask you historically speaking um were you impressed i was i was and i think that the mini -series are very truthful on on a number of levels and very untruthful in some ways and they got they got excellent in a very well the the macro and micro levels so the macro level is the issue of the big truth and and the the story there is very much built around the theme that i just discussed now it's about the the cost of lies right and the the Soviet Union lying to the people and and and that's that's what the film explores so that's i call it a big truth about Chernobyl and they got a lot of uh minor things really really very well like the curtains on the windows like how the houses looked from inside and outside i didn't see any post -soviet film when you western film that would be so good at caption those everyday details but then there is a huge gray area in between big truth and small truth is of the of the recreate in the environment and that's how you get from one to another and then you see the KGB officers come in and take in someone out of the meeting and arresting which was not necessary you see the Soviet boss threatened in someone to throw the person from the helicopter so you get this Hollywood sort of things despite the fact that it's a HBO or HBO series and they're the best really in terms as a film in the fourth episode where they can completely decided just to how is the reality and let's let's make a film so they bring legassos to the one of the key characters to the the squad meetings that they bring the soviet party was Chirbina he wasn't there they create a drama there so but so they they they got they got the main thing the big truth right and that's that's why i like this this this production sometimes you have to uh to show what something felt like you have to go bigger than it actually was i mean if you i don't know if you experience heartbreak and you want it and you see a film about it you want there to be explosions you want to see this this in images you yeah visible right so and uh by the the the question again i just mentioned KGB marching in and and some party leader given a speech they were not given that speech but the sense what was there and it was in the air and i as people of my generation who were there knew that and recognized that but for for new generation whether they are in Ukraine and Russia in US and Britain in in in Zimbabwe anywhere yeah you have to you have to do this this little little untruths and and introduce them and hell of a very interesting uh on on air conversation with uh the author of the script amazing and i asked him the question of the the film declared really the importance of the truth but how do you square that with with the need in the film to to really put it mildly to go beyond beyond the measures of truth for whatever understanding of that term is well uh i suppose it is a bit terrifying that some of the most dramatic moments in history are probably quite mundane the decisions to begin wars invasions they probably something like a a zoom meeting on a random Tuesday in today's workplace so it's not it's not like there's dramatic music playing these are just human decisions and they command armies and they command destruction i personally because of that believe in the power of individuals to to be able to stop wars not just star wars individual leaders so let me just ask about nuclear safety because there's an interesting point you make you uh wrote in the book in in atoms and ashes a global history of nuclear disaster so technically nuclear energy is extremely safe there's a number of people died per energy generated it's much safer and recall an oil for example as far as i understand but the case you also make is you write quote many of the political economic social and cultural factors that led to the accidents of the past are still with us today make it the nuclear industry vulnerable to repeating old mistakes in new and unexpected ways and any new accidents are certain to create new anti -nuclear mobilization and then you continue with this makes the nuclear industry not only risky to operate but also impossible to con on as a long -term solution to an overwhelming problem so can you explain that perspective is it's an interesting it's an interesting one so to speak into the psychology when an accident does happen it has a dramatic effect and uh also speaking to the fact that accidents can happen not because of the safety of the nuclear power plant but of the underlying structure of government that oversees it yes i wrote book and Chernobyl and then tried to understand Chernobyl better but placing it in the context of other disasters as a historian and was looking at the political factors and social factors and cultural factors not not the physics or or or engineering part part of the story and um the the factors that are still with us are the like it was the case in Chernobyl the authoritarian regimes right and and anti -centralization of the decision -making and desired to cut corners and also the issues associated with secrecy so that's that's that that that is with us if you look at the where the future of the nuclear industry is at now at this point it's the regimes and parts in the middle east that's a big new frontier the countries that are not particularly known for the history of democratic existence uh where we also have the situation that we had at three mile island that we had at at Chernobyl this is the first generation engineers nuclear engineers right so people who where the country doesn't have a lot of experience in generations after generations working in that particular industry where it's all new that's that's certainly that that is certain additional additional risk and what we got now is this current war is something that not that people completely didn't expect but didn't happen in the past you see the war come into the nuclear sites Chernobyl was taken over by the Russian army or National Guard rather the first day of the invasion then there was a Parisian the largest nuclear power plant in Europe where the battle was waged on the territory of the nuclear power plant the missiles being fired built in sketching fire and the the situation of the that brought the Fukushima disaster was there as a Parisian more than once and Fukushima came because the reactors were shut down as they are at the Parisia but they still needed electricity to bring water and to call them down and in Fukushima case it was the tsunami that cut off the supply of electricity in the case of the Parisia there was the warfare that was happening in the area around the Parisia that did did the same effect so we have 440 reactors in the world today plus minus none of them was designed to withstand the direct missile attack or to function in the conditions of the warfare if operators they're human then they make mistakes like they did it through my island or Chernobyl but think also if the war is happening around them if they're not sure what is happening is there is their families if they don't know whether they will be next missile whether will hit their room where where the the control room or not that that multiplies also so we we are in a situation where we are not done yet with the nuclear accidents new each time it's not like we don't pay attention or we don't learn smart people work on that and after every accident try to figure the way how not to to to step in into the same into the same trap but next accident would actually expose in your your vulnerability you deal with Chernobyl and then tsunami comes you deal with tsunami and then war comes and we really in that sense we have sometimes wild imagination but sometimes it's difficult to imagine what can happen next so we are not done there will be there will be nuclear accidents unfortunately in the future and that makes nuclear energy so problematic when you count on it to fight climate change I'll explain why you gave the figures how many people die from burning coal from how many people die from from radiation and it's it's it's a good argument some people would question them because it's also the issue of not just dying but impact impact of radiation on cancer on on our health which is not completely understood yet so it's still there there is a lot of question marks but let's assume what you are saying that's the figures that's how it is but we as people we for whatever reason I'm not afraid of coal but we are very much afraid of radiation it's invisible it's it's COVID it's everywhere and you can't you can't see it and then and then you start having issues and and then you have some problems and during the COVID the the governments closed the borders maybe maybe good idea maybe not so good ideas isolation so that was the way government started to fight for access to Pfizer to to modern to to sputnik to to whatever it is to to vaccine so now back to the to the radiation what is happening once once Chernobyl happens that's the highest point in the development of nuclear industry so far in terms of how many how many new reactors were commissioned or the licenses were issued the next reactor reactor after a three mile island in the US go ahead was given it seems to me 10 years ago or something like that the Fukushima happens the reaction is in China to that as well they're very much concerned so there is a saying in the in the field Chernobyl anywhere is Chernobyl everywhere after Fukushima Germany decides to go nuclear free and and gets there at the expense of burning burning coal so that's that's how we react and each major accident that means global freeze on the on the on the nuclear reactor production for at least another 10 years so that's what I mean that nuclear industry is politic not just in terms of of of technology not just in terms of radiation impact on health but also politically a very very unreliable option and to you you suspect that that's an irreparable aspect of human nature in the human mind that there's certain things that just create a kind of panic invisible threats of this kind whether it's a virus or or radiation there's something about the mind if I get a stomach ache in the United States after Fukushima I kind of think it's probably radiation this kind of a rational type of thinking and I think that's not possible to repair I think we can we can be we can be trained right we can be pretty smart are we education but but but generally we are afraid of things that we see but even more we are afraid of things that we don't see and radiation is one of those let's zoom out on the world we talked about the war in Ukraine how does the war in Ukraine change the world order let me just look at everything that's going on zoom out a bit China the Israel Gaza war the Middle East

3:15:41India what is interesting to you important to think about in the coming years and decades as a historian and I'm trained that way I have a feeling of deja vu I see the the cold war is coming back in many in many of its features and the war started and we discussed that in 2014 at least in my interpretation with Russia trying to really reestablish its control over the post -soil at space in Ukraine it was crucial for that for that project and the more globally Russian vision since 1990s was that they didn't like the American monopolar world they when you and realize that they couldn't go back to the bipolar world of the of the cold war era so the vision was multiple world in which again it wasn't just academic exercise it was a political exercise in which Russia would be one of the centers one of the polls on par with China on par with european union on par with the united states that that very broadly speaking the context in which in which the war starts in 20 in 2014 where we are now well we are now in Russia certainly trying to regain its military strength but no one actually believes that Russia is the sort of a superpower it was imagined before 2022 we see certainly Russia finding the way to deal with the sanctions but we don't see certainly Russia as economic power with any sort of a future so it is not an implosion of the of the Russian military economic and political power but it's significantly actually it is diminished so today very difficult imagine the Russia immersion as another poll of the of the multipolar world not impossible but it's the war certainly made that that very problematic and much more difficult on the other hand what the worded it basically awakened the west the old west united states and western europe transatlantic alliance and on the top of that there are east european countries that are even much stronger proponents of assistance for Ukraine than is germany or or the united states of america so it is it is the the replay of the Cold War story the return of the west that one of the chapters in my book the Russian Ukrainian war is it's called that way we also can see the elements of the rebuilding of the Beijing Moscow alliance of the 1950s it was a very important part of the Cold War it was extremely important part of the Korean War that in many ways launched launched also the the Cold War globally so I see a lot of parallels of going back to the time of the Cold War and the bipolar world that emerges it's not anymore the world focused on Washington and Moscow it's Malayk world focused on Washington and Beijing and then there are countries in between there are countries in between that's that join join one block another block that is emerging that is not fully formed this is this is in my opinion makes the task of us historians to really go back to the Cold War and look and look for for through your perspective on the history of that conflict because there is a lot of things that we can we can learn so so in some ways history does repeat itself here so now it's a Cold War with China and the United States what's a hopeful trajectory for the 21st century for the rest of it the hopeful trajectory is really trying to be as wise and as lucky as as our predecessors during the Cold War because the the dominant discourse so far about the Cold War was what a horrible thing that Cold War was what did we do wrong how did we end up in the Cold War and I think especially today this is a wrong question to ask the right question to ask is how did it happen what did we do so right that for now more than 70 years we don't have a World War how come that after World War one World War two came within 20 years how come that what helped us to keep the world on the brain but still away from the global war for such a long period of time how to keep the Cold War cold that's that's the biggest lesson that the history of the Cold War can give us and I don't think we ask the question or quite often enough ask the question that way and if you don't ask right questions we don't get right answer yeah you've written a book a great book on the human missile crisis and we came very close not just another World War but to you know a nuclear war and the destruction of human civilization as we know it so I guess it's a good question to ask what do we do so right and maybe one of the answers could be that we just got lucky and and the question is how do we how do we keep getting lucky luck luck is clearly clearly one of the factors in the in Cuban missile crisis because what happened there and there is one of the lessons is that eventually the commanders at the top they believe that they have all the cards they negotiate with each other they try to to see who who blinks first in in the game of nuclear brinkmanship the trick is that they don't control fully people on the ground the most dangerous moment of one of the most dangerous moment of the Cuban missile crisis was the Soviet missile shooting down the American airplane killing the pilots an act of war right so technically already in the war and the the order to shoot the missile was given with Moscow having no clue what was going on the ground Moscow never gave gave approval for that and again I described that in book many times about Kennedy bringing back his wisdom from World War two years there always will be SOB who didn't get the order or missed things and and that was happening on the American side as well so people who believe that they in control really are not in control and that can escalate whether they but it's very often against against their their issues so that is one lesson but going back to what why we're still here and why why the world didn't didn't end up in 1962 is that the leadership and and that's that's I I come to the issue that you strongly believe in that people personalities matterly this matter they were they were very different right age education political careers understanding what politics are and so on and so forth I mean a crucial and Kennedy yes but they had one thing in common that in one way they belong to the same generation that was generation of the bikini at all that was the generation of the hydrogen bomb the bomb that unlike the atomic bomb the new could destroy the world and they were scared they were scared of the nuclear of the nuclear weapons and they tried to do whatever they could pushing against their advisors or or or trying to deal with their with the anxieties the the first is true for Kennedy the the the way to maybe for Khrushchev to make sure that this that the war between the United States and and the Soviet Union doesn't start because they knew that that war would be would be a nuclear war so we have we have a very very paradoxical sort of situation the crisis occurred because of the nuclear weapons because Khrushchev put them on Cuba but the crisis was resolved and we didn't end in the third world war because of the nuclear weapons because people leaders were afraid of them and that's that's where I want to put emphasis it's not that the nuclear weapons created crisis or solved the crisis it's basically our perception of them and we are now in the age after the Cold War era is the new generation of voters is the new generation of politicians we don't belong to the generation of bikini at all you maybe know what bikini is but we think that this is different different thing yeah but this is something else and it's very it's very important it's so fascinating how that fades into memory that the power and the respect and fear of the power of nuclear weapons just fades into memory and then we may very well make the same mistakes again yes we can another leader said that I believe but about a totally different topic well like you said I'm also glad that we're here more as a civilization that we're still seem to be going on there's several billion of us and I'm also glad that the two of us are here of read a lot of your books I've been recommending it please keep writing thank you for talking today this is an honor thank you very much it was it was a pleasure thanks for listening to this conversation with Serhi Plohi to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from Ernest Hemingway never think that war no matter how necessary nor how justified is not a crime thank you for listening and hope to see you next time