Future Crimea agreement, Reagan compared to Gorbachev, and what constraints Trump – William Taubman
William Taubman is my guest today. He is a political scientist and Sovietologist who is especially famous for the biographies of two Soviet leaders who tried to reform Russia, Nikita Khrushchev, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Of course, we talked about the uniqueness and general role of leaders in the history of Russia. And also about whether the empire is always evil, what will happen to Crimea, and whether Putin is unique.
00:00 Is it possible to reform Russia so that it ceases to be an evil empire? Putin has enormous power, but he is not interested in reforms. We need to imagine a new leader with enormous power who will succeed where Khrushchev and Gorbachev failed.
The war in Ukraine is a new episode in the protracted collapse of the Soviet empire. It will take several decades, even the entire 21st century, for democracy to take root in Russia. What will be the consequences of the war for Russia? The First World War served as a catalyst for the revolution. The war in Afghanistan has weakened the regime and fueled reform sentiment. Nationalists, right-wingers, and patriots will act tougher and tougher.
09:22 I thought that Putin was bluffing and would not invade Ukraine. Putin turned out to be insane and reckless, and in the face of defeat, he can go to insane and reckless acts and, for example, use nuclear weapons.
13:25 Khrushchev exposed Stalin and the deployment of missiles in Cuba. Gorbachev tried to democratize, to transform the Soviet Union. It's about their uniqueness. If Putin is unique, then there are other people who regret what he did, and at some point, they may decide to get rid of him.
18:56 Russians are fickle. And perhaps, after the war in Ukraine, which now seems lost, they will rethink how much they want to support Putin's authoritarian regime. The putsch of 1991 failed because the people of Moscow wanted democracy, not a return to an authoritarian, totalitarian state. The people who supported Gorbachev and Yeltsin did not control the events in the remaining months of 1991. The leaders decided everything at the top.
22:38 The war in Afghanistan was disastrous for Soviet soldiers. The impulse to end the war came from above. There is much more publicity in the current war - not in Russia itself. Those who tried to protest were arrested and silenced. Hundreds of thousands of people fled to avoid being mobilized. Maybe not the majority of dissatisfied, but who knows? As long as there is no resistance from above.
24:02 I am shocked by the relationship between Putin and his henchmen. They must be unhappy. Maybe some of his longtime supporters in the FSB and GRU.
29:36 Can the Americans or someone else from the outside somehow influence reform or put pressure on Russia to achieve some kind of change?
35:51 Soviet and Russian propaganda. The Americans, the right wing of the Republicans, have fallen to the Soviet level. Russian propaganda is now much worse than the one that was in the USSR. The brutality in Ukraine, the shelling of innocent people by Russian soldiers, who themselves are probably the victims of a system that sends them to the slaughter without any preparation, is even worse than Soviet propaganda.
38:51 Crimea: Putin does not want to talk. And Zelensky doesn’t want to talk either. There must be some kind of deal, if there is no complete defeat and surrender of one of the parties: the Russians are withdrawing from the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, but possibly retaining Crimea.
41:45 I have been many times, maybe 30 times, in Russia, in the Soviet Union, and in Ukraine. But now we don't want to go there anymore. Yes, and we can not, and would not go.
45:23 Gorbachev's death turned out to be important for the whole world, and it remained almost unnoticed in Russia. Communists hated Gorbachev, Democrats hated Gorbachev no less. Why?
50:14 Is the empire evil? There was the variant of the truncated Soviet Union that Gorbachev envisioned. It should not be assumed that if peoples want to exercise their right to secession and self-determination, then this will necessarily lead to a more positive outcome.
58:32 In the Soviet Union, with its Marxist ideology, they preached the idea that leaders don't really play such an important role. As a child, Putin was a fighter, he loved to fight. And he never wanted to lose. These unique personality traits of the Russian leader explain Russia's behavior and invasion of Ukraine. So countries become hostages of one injured person.
61:06 We don't know what Trump would do if he could do whatever he wanted. But for now, he's being held back and restricted by the press, by Congress, by the states, by the voters.
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