American History Hit - Frenemies: Russia & the USA, a History

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

For nearly half a century, the United States and Russia stood as adversaries, entrenched in a tense geopolitical rivalry known as the Cold War. Yet this period represents only a brief chapter in the broader, more complex history of their relationship...In this episode, Professor Vladislav Zubok joins Don to take us through the historic highs and lows of Russo-American relations.Vlad is a professor at LSE and is the author of many books including Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union and The World of the Cold War, 1945-1991.Edited and produced by Tom Delargy. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. For decades of the 20th century, the world lived in the looming shadow of superpower conflict, between two nations, the United States of America and a Soviet Union.

With the push of a button, each nation had the power to destroy the other, but not without risking their own survival. So, they were left with less direct means of undermining each other. From tank standoffs in the streets of Berlin to a space race to the moon, these Cold War enemies vied, for dominance in a high-stakes game of geopolitical brinkmanship. One false move and a chain reaction could begin, resulting in the quite likely extinction of life on planet Earth. The Cold War is but one era of the U.S. and Russia's intertwined history, certainly its most famous,

but what was their relationship like before becoming staunch adversaries? And how will their shared past influence a critical future for these global powers? Greetings all, glad you're with us. This is American history hit. I'm Don Wildman. The United States of America and Russia have never had a friendly relationship. It has always been one dictated by strategic concerns, oscillating for centuries between pragmatism and open hostility. From the days of Russian Empire, through its transformation to a communist state, all the way to the modern federation, Russia has always been for the U.S. a challenge, a counterweight on the geopolitical scales,

if not a direct rival. We have been at best suspicious partners, and at worst, mortal enemies. But why? For what reason? What events have led to these two countries and so much drama? Our guest today is Vladislav Zubak, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, and author of Collapse, the Fall of the Soviet Union.

Hello, Professor Zubak, thanks for being here. Well, great to be on your program, Dawn. It is serious stuff. more history than most Americans realize. Our relationship has been so much a part of everyday news in our time. It's hard to have perspective. It's also that Russia has a radically changed direction as a nation in the modern age. I mean, three times at least. But I think it's also important to state the profound difference in our cultures. One, the undeniability of Mother Russia. It is a very old culture. And no matter the governance, no matter who's in charge, there is gravitas and permanence to the culture that is akin, I'd say, to the pioneering myth of America, the theme of America, what informs our everyday life here. That's important to understand, a big difference in our cultures. It is also important that this idea of Russia goes back long before there was even in America. And this is important. Russia has been attacked and or invaded many times for 250

years ruled by the Mongol Empire, the Horde, before that the Vikings, never mind Napoleon and the Nazis. Americans tend to look at the world through the lens of our own existence, bordered by two countries and two oceans for 200 years. But it's not an excuse for bad behavior, certainly not today. But keep it in mind as we discuss these modern events. Do you agree on my take? Well, it's a very American take. And of course, it has a lot of truth to it. And I would say it sort of downgrades the importance of American imagination. American imagination of Russia was equally important to reality. And, you know, it's enough to watch American movies. I mean, you know, for instance, my favorite is Marvaryk. Whenever you have a Russian, it appears as a very quaint,

very un-European, almost strange guy who wants to shoot Indians. That's in a maverick. You know, to be more serious, I think America was born as an ideological. project. Russia to an extent was born as a religious project because the whole idea of a third Rome, so much quoted, is that there was real Rome, there was Byzantine, Constantinople, that had fallen to the Crusaders and then the Turks, and then there's a third Rome, Moscow. What is it, if not a religious ideological project? And of course, for two projects, both of whom are quite essentialist and globalist in many ways, and in the universalist and exceptionalist, if you add more. It's very hard to find a compromise just to say, okay, we can just quietly coexist. We are

on the opposite side of the globe. And by the way, Americans and Russians never killed each other in an open battle. There were skirmishes sometimes, like the Korean War. But that hostility, indeed is remarkable, and much of this hostility I would venture to say is ideological and comes from imagination on both sides. But having said that, let me add one tweak for the Russian side. On the Russian side, there's much more positive associated with America than vice versa for the Americans to Russia. Because throughout essentially the first century and a half of America's existence, America figured for many Russians as a land of. freedom as some place where they could escape if they got fed up with their own bureaucracy,

their own czardom, their own serfdom, and so on and so forth. Also, American culture had huge impact on the Russians throughout. You know, all the even early authors were translated into Russian. As a child, by the way, and that was, I grew up in the post-Stalin environment in the Soviet Union. I read Sennemort Cooper. I read about last Monk-Hihans. I read. I I read about all that stuff that shaped me much more, I would say, than that so-called socialist realism, all those turgid figures from the novels concocted by Stalinist prize winners. So I was very much into O'Henry. I was very much into Fenimore Cooper.

So that was a positive America. So people like me who grew up in the Soviet Union now actually could understand why we're enemies. Because I heard lots of stories from my father, veteran, a war, that we were allies during World War. And lo and behold, for a brief time, Russia, that was post-Zarist Russia and the United States, where allies in World War I as well. Vlad, from our founding in the late 18th century, America, you have two nations which are diametrically opposed. One believes in a new spirit of constitutional republicanism.

The other is an absolute monarchy under an all-powerful czar. How does Russia view America in those days? And what's at stake in our relationship as we move into the 1800s? I think from the very beginning of America's existence as a sovereign nation, Russia as a state favored America's independence and looked at it as a potential ally, and of course, against the British Empire, because naturally the greatest adversary of the Russian Tsars and Russia geopolitically in Europe and later outside Europe and Asia was Great Britain. So, America naturally harbored a lot of anti-British sentiments, so it's not a big surprise

when during the Civil War, American Civil War, when Great Britain for a time entertained an idea of recognizing Southern Confederation, Russia not only favored an non-neutrality, but also openly kind of rooted for the North, for Lincoln. Not to mention that, you know, on both sides, the conservative and liberal sides of the Russian society, there were reasons to support the North. There was liberalism because the Russians liberated the Serfs about the same time as Lincoln proclaimed in that slavery declaration. And it was not a coincidence because, you know, Russians looked at America and Americans at that time actually looked at Russia. The Russian liberal public opinion wanted Lincoln to win and

wanted the South to lose. And in terms of the Tsar, strangely enough, he also rooted for the North and also rooted for the United States because I guess, again, he viewed the United States as a good counterpoint to the power of the British Empire that controlled the seas and, you know, was too powerful and so and so forth. And we're closer than it seems, I mean, geographically, Alaska, obviously, and the Pacific Ocean. How does that play a part in this? The Russian drive to have a Pacific port, what becomes Vladivostok. Why was the Pacific so important to Russia and how did that reflect on their relationship with the U.S.? Well, it's another parallelism and Russian experience and American experience. While Russian and Ukrainian Cossacks pushed eastward to conquer Siberia, to conquer the Far East. Then they clashed with the Chinese Empire. They took some islands in the Pacific. And then actually continued to colonize, along with the Russian merchants, they colonized Alaska. And went all the way almost to San Francisco, to the present-day San Francisco. That was sort of Russian America.

American colonization, of course, proceeded from the opposite direction. And I would say both colonizations and vastly different nations, vastly different regimes, they proceeded as spontaneous grassroots movements. Because, you know, what the Cossacks and the merchants wanted in Alaska and in the Pacific was wealth. Of course, they hunted, they exported fur, they caught fish, they looked for wealth. And of course, Americans did the same. The two currents never clashed, fortunately, because Russia was too far. Russia had a moment of weakness, particularly after the Crimean War in 1850s.

America had its moment of weakness in 1850s. America had its moment to witness in the 1860s because of the Civil War. But then the American current resumed to move westward and northward, and the Russian Tsar had that stroke of common sense, I think, to sell Alaska and the entire Russian America to the Americans for quite a paltry amount of money at the time, but just to avoid a conflict between the two nations. And I guess to buy a good relationship with Washington at the time, which lasted into the early.

20th century, American and Russia, you know, didn't have any major disagreements until the new era came. So those new disagreements were part of sort of modern-day nationalism, and I can summarize them into words. First of all, public opinion in America suddenly was woken up to the plight of American political prisoners. And it was this guy, George Kennan. He was an uncle of George Kenan, whom everybody knows, who studied the Cold War. So George Cannon, the senior, traveled all across Russia with full support of the Russian government, by the way, the same kind of government that put people in prison. But then he returned to America in a classic kind of way for all Western travelers described to the enlightened liberal opinion of

Americans how awful is the empire of the Tsars, full of prisons, full of inhumane conditions, for political prisoners. And that was one impetus for the turn to the negative in American public opinion. The word that entered the American dictionary at the time, pogrom. And you wonder, you know, America was very anti-Semitic periodically, right? And didn't quite like those Jews from Eastern Europe. But all of a sudden, the entire American press was so indignant about pogroms happening on the outskirts of the Russian Empire somewhere in Chisinov, which is now independent

Chisinau in Moldova. or, you know, some western parts of Ukraine, which were not even Russian territories. They were annexed by Catherine de Grey. So, you know, that's a new phenomenon that Americans periodically wanted to show, well, unlike them, we're free and we root for those minorities. And we despise you, the Tsarist Empire, because you're something opposite to us. I would treat it as part of that common phenomenon of nationalism rising everywhere, you need the other. The more you're nationalistic, the more you need the opposite, the other, that is negative. It is for sure. Any adversary is as useful as it is a disadvantage. It's an

interesting defining element to this relationship. Were they aware, Russia, how the riches that were in Alaska? I mean, it was called Seward's Folly for so long. Had they recognized what they were going to give away, the Klondike Gold Rush and so forth? No, I don't think so. But even if, if they had realized that, well, it was clear that the Russians could not hold that territory because the Russian Empire was awfully overextended at the time. And, you know, there were so many other cases when the Russian Tsars pushed too far, for instance, in Korea and got into trouble with Japan and so forth. The Tsarist Russia had an awful reputation, by the way, of being expansionist power.

And of course, in every American early history of Russia, that is even before the Cold War, I would say, you would have this kind of label attached to Russia. It's inherently expansionist. But at the same time, American early historians, of course, called this expansionism a frontier. The same kind of expansionism on the American side was good, but the expansionism of Russians was bad. Why? Because the nature of the regime.

The regime is evil. And we are democracy. We're kind of a freedom. So you have some parallelism that is often not seen, I would say, on the American side or on the Russian side. But if you compare them, it actually becomes fascinating. Interesting. That drive to create this specific presence leads to the Russian-Japanese War and also to the presence of an American to take care of this project. Very heroically, Teddy Roosevelt steps in, ends up winning a Nobel Peace Prize for this effort.

Was this a change in our relationship at this point? Is this just something we make more of as Americans? Well, this episode of 1905 shows that Russia and America, on a pragmatic sense, are never poised as enemies. But actually, even the Tsar, Nicholas II, the Tsar of Russia, viewed America as a possible moderator. He didn't turn to any other country. He didn't turn to Switzerland. He didn't turn to, I don't know, to Sweden. he turned right to the United States to Teddy Roosevelt.

Why? Because there was this long tradition in the Russian society and among Russian officialdom to view America as a potential ally or at least a moderator. Roosevelt very deftly brought both sides to negotiations. And mind you, it's a very topical, by the way, for today, that was probably the first mediation and when I was seeing the second mediation in quite another war. But it took Roosevelt and Japanese and the Russians only one month. It took only one month. What kind of episode was that?

I would say whenever it came to the moment when real hard interests were at stake, when geopolitical stability, Americans felt, well, Japan actually can be our rival, which was quite right, in Asia. Then America was capable of coming up with a surprising, innovation and serving either as a moderator or even a partner of Russia in dire straits. And of course, later on we see twice when Americans took part in two world wars on the side of the coalition of which Russia made one part. It's such a relationship of episodes.

You've used that word. And the next episode to come really is known as the Russian Revolution. But what's interesting to me as we enter into this period, 1910s leading up to 1917, is that we've had a very cooperative relationship at this point. I mean, Alaska being a big thing. And then, of course, Teddy Roosevelt there. All of that is going along over the decades. Then suddenly there is this turn.

And it comes out of World War I when Russia pulls itself out and faces its own revolution. This completely changed as a game as far as America's concerned because of the ideology involved, the economics involved. How does America take this in stride? or do they immediately oppose the Russians in general for their revolution? Well, 1917 is a very pivotal episode because it brings to mind very quick succession of enchantment with Russia and frustration with Russia. Later on, the same kind of dynamic would be repeated between the People's Republic of China or rather China in the United States around 1945, 49.

First enchantment, a possibility of having Americans, helping that great democratic-minded Russian people. I'm quoting Woodrow Wilson, by the way, to become a real stable democracy and be like us, be like us, like Americans. And of course, Americans invested into this project as well. They not only Wilson declared we're joining World War I because we are on the side of democracy now. And of course, there is no more autocracy in Russia after March 1917. But also Americans gave loans to the provisional government that consisted of,

moderate socialists mostly and some liberals briefly, and they gave about $10 million to that government. And then all of a sudden, everything was lost. Lenin comes, Lenin and Trotsky pulls Russia that they renamed into something that was even unpronounceable, Soviet socialist, whatever, federation from the war. And Americans felt deeply cheated. And of course, that rapid transition from enchantment to frustration would color an American attitude to the Soviet Union for the next two decades, I would say. It's a classic dualism on an American part. On one side, Americans were in the crusade to make Russia good, to make Russia better, to help Russian people to build democracy, right? That's very American thing to do. On the other hand,

they see it just doesn't work out. So they need to develop a more pragmatic approach to this strange people out there and they refused to do it. So until 1933, American diplomatic recognition was not extended to Bolshevik Russia. Washington just stood out of everything European, but particularly refused to deal with the Bolsheviks until Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to power. Right. What's so interesting to me in our series here, we talk a lot about the rise of the trade unions and the pushback from U.S. industrialists, not the least of which is Henry Ford. I mean, just enormous amount of pushback against all of this. This is fueling the general American fear, which grows and grows through the 20th century, of communism, taking us over like this undermining force.

How much did the first red scare come directly out of that revolution? To a great extent, it came from domestic American anxiety. As I read a number of American historians, they argue that domestic concerns and domestic anxieties always came first. because America was so far away from Europe. So it was the fear of domestic anarchism. It was the fear of domestic trade unions becoming anarchist and openly challenging American way of life because American way of life is individualism, right?

You go west, you start your own farm, you dig gold, you do all this thing. All of a sudden you have collectivism. Right. And the opposite of it is anarchism, which is very different from American individualism because anarchism comes with this godless kind of attachment, you know, suspiciously unchristian, and then comes from either from those Catholic Italians

who are not religious at all in imagination of good Protestant Americans, or I don't know whom, you know, people from the East. And those Jews again come. So many Jews from Eastern Europe who I looked upon very, very, with John Estai and have my own grandfather who emigrated from Zaris, Russia, and graduated from University of UPennan became a socialist. So Césonne history shows me that how difficult it was to be a Jew in the United States, but also a radicalized Jew.

And I always wondered why my grandfather became so radicalized in the great city of Philadelphia in the city of Brotherhood life and nevertheless accepted by those Quakers to be at the university. But the fact is he was radicalized and he did return to Soviet Russia in 1924. because he became a victim of the first red's care, so-called Palmer's race. But he became a victim, but not enough to be like, you know, electrocuted and it really ended up in prison. Hey, I discovered that he was an elector for the Communist Party USA in the presidential elections of 1924 when Eugene Deppes was a candidate. So my dad was an elector from the city of Philadelphia and everything was published openly in the Communist News daily worker. I can find my grandfather there on the list of a liturys. What kind of a red scare is

that? It's not what I expected to find. So America was always relatively free and relatively, you know, you could have something like Palmer raids and people lost their jobs and they were blacklisted, but still it was a remarkably free society. Right. So from 1917, Russian Revolution to 1933, that entire period, our roaring 20s into what becomes the Great Depression, And that's the time that America is getting used to this new reality of the threat of collectivism or the threat of communism portrayed by Russia. That begins that stereotype, doesn't it? Well, there are very few small communities who really knew what was happening in Russia and only segmentally. Well, particularly important with the Quakers and other religious groups who traveled to Russia. Herbert Hoover, the future president who organized the American Relief Administration to help those millions of Russians who were dying from family.

Also a Quaker, yeah. Also Quaker, exactly. So those people kind of were interested in Russia. I would put them in this, you know, one of the two brackets that I already defined for the listeners. Crusade. Those were people of the crusade. To come to rescue Russians, rescue their souls, help them to steady their way and so on so forth. They become like good Americans, right?

Pragmatists were businessmen. People like, I don't know, Filini people, even Ford to an extent who were interested in a way anti-Semitic like hell, Ford was, but he was interested in the potential of that Russia, once these godless Bolsheviks would go away, you know, we can sell them goods, we can sell them with cars, and we can turn them again in a pragmatic way, not in a crusade way, into good Americans. So all those currents were existing in the 20s, but Russia, like Europe at the time, was somewhere far, far away. You remember, of course, that Americans went to the last isolationist phase where they, you know, refused to join, The Congress refused to vote for the League of Nations.

They did their own thing. We're exceptionalists. Let Europeans save their own skins and all that stuff. And of course, in the 30s and all changed, but that the new chapter opened when pragmatism began to rear his head again in America towards Russia. But at that time already, Bolsheviks were almost gone. There was one Georgian guy who was also Bolshevik, but he was about to kill all the rest of them.

His name was Joseph Stahl. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. You've already mentioned, I suppose the Great Depression is the answer to this question, but what happens in 1933 that we suddenly become more pragmatic and welcome a diplomatic relationship? Dawn, when I was a student and I began to study American history, that was the most favorite episode. Because all Soviet historians said that Roosevelt was such a wise guy, such a good guy. He recognized the Soviet Russia because he recognized reality.

And some of them wrote, because 1933, it was clear that Japan was threatening American interests in the Far East. That was very clear to the British. That also became clear to the Americans, although America continued to play isolationist and did not intervene in that politics in a major way. But in 1933, Hitler came to power as well. And then it became quite clear for a few clear-minded people in Washington that, something was moving, something was shifting, that American isolationist was no longer possible

for a long time. But that was very much against the grain of the society that didn't want to get involved in European affairs again. So it was against this sort of new emerging reality that Roosevelt decided to extend diplomatic relations to the Soviet Union. Also, at the time, 33 was relatively good year for Soviet foreign policy. I mean, it was a terrible year internally because millions of peasants, including Ukrainian peasants, died from famine. It was quite terrible. But in terms of domestic policy, Soviets played a collective security.

There was this guy, Maxime Litvinov, who brought the Soviet Union to the League of Nations. So the Soviet Union began to look as if in a few years it would become a more normal country. So it was a little bit easier for Roosevelt to do what he did, to recognize that country. But also it was easier for him to sort of to change policy that had been promoted by all his predecessors, mostly the Republicans. So he comes as a revolutionary in every sense, like the New Deal is a revolution of sorts, and in foreign policy he tries also to change the established policy of his predecessors.

And by the way, the point of recognition is very interesting, because the United States would later claim, and I mean later, even during the entire Cold War, that they recognize the Soviet Union within the boundaries of 1933, mind you. And of course, later on, Stalin began to annex new territories, which Americans would never recognize the jury, but only recognize de facto. It is the reaction to now fascism that dictates all of what happens over the next decade going into World War II and beyond. We have talked many, many times in the show about World War II and Stalin and Roosevelt. So we'll sort of skip through that, except for the fact that it was obviously a gigantic success. And so one would have thought at that point that these two adversaries,

or at least these two pragmatic partners, we'll call them, would now hatch a very positive relationship. Indeed, the exact opposite happens. And that is always confusing to me how we completely turned the corner into becoming Cold War adversaries versus at least having some kind of ongoing celebration about what we just accomplished together. Right, but don't forget, there were all those currents. There was this deep-seated hostility towards Bolshevik Russia and Zaris Russia before that. Harry Truman famously said after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, fine, let Russians and Germans keep killing each other as many as possible.

Harry Truman was not particularly into foreign policy in the Christie. He was, you know, the guy from the border states. So he reflected that deep-seated view of the Bolshevik Russia. And then, of course, that was a factor of Stalin and his great purchase. That is Stalin's elimination of millions, millions, even after his famine killed millions of millions of Ukrainians and Russians and others in 1932, 33. Then it was this unprecedented and poorly explained wave of terror to kill the potential fifth column in a society from which not only Bolshevik had.

elites, not only military countries, but common people suffer terribly, over a million was eliminated. So when foreigners watched it, and of course, from 1934, American diplomats were in Moscow, they were disgusted. And they all said, hey, you know, it's an insane country. It will never become normal. And there was this kind of realization among some of them that it was Stalin. It was Stalin as a man, an evil man. But they also blamed it strangely on the whole bureaucracy and the whole regime.

So when somebody like Kenan would later try to explain this and summarize it to Washington newcomers in 1946, of course, he came with startling images of a malignant virus or parasite or whatever. Even Kenan, I believe, could not explain what happened, but he saw two things. As a good American, he had enormous sympathy for some. suffering Russians. His diaries are full of great quotations about how friendly, how fantastic Russians were. And for Kenan, they all came in part from the pages of Leotolstoy War and Peace and some great classics on Chekhov and so on so forth. But all Americans thought that Russians are almost like

us, you know, great vitality, great straightforwardness and all that. So why all this is happening? Of course, it's not because of the people. It's because of the evil. regime. So Kennan's dualism repeated that kind of previously existed American dualism. You either crusade to make Russia another America or you deal pragmatically with Russia in time of need, but then quickly, quickly abandon this Rosie Lesz and deal with this country as a permanent threat. There are several potential low points to talk about as far as the Cold War is concerned. We can start with the Berlin airlift, but then it goes through to Korea. war, Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I mean, it's amazing how many

major discussions we can have about all these different episodes. But what is at heart here is this fascinating conversation about the chicken and the egg. Does this start with an ideological difference, or is there an expressed evil that we're seeing there that it's anti-American? You know, where does it begin? Is it us not seeing them become like Americans, or is it them not seeing us, you know, giving room for them to be who they are? Don, don't forget that there were many communist sympathizers inside the New Deal Coalition and in the Rusul government. And we have it for established fact that some of them actually held Soviet intelligence.

But in general, there were many people who sympathized with the Soviet Union. I mean, among them was Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of American atomic bomb, right? Yeah. So those people thought that the only way to take. keep peace, particularly if you invent such a dreadful weapon as atomic bomb, is to include Soviet Russia into some kind of architecture of peace. And many people who were not pro-communist or sympathetic to communism supported that inclusion idea because you remember there was this idea of World Federation. Many Americans joined even the idealistic movement to create a world

government. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew how to deal with Joseph Stalin. They met two times in Yalta and previously in Tehran. They had some good accords. And Roosevelt specifically wanted to win Stalin's trust. Of course, he was later accused of naivete and all kinds of appeasement and so on so forth. But this is one current. And another current I already mentioned, associated with much broader segments and swaths of American society that never could understand how we can get along with such a country. Governed by tyranny, people are not free, where religious views are persecuted. Stalin, by the way, made a concession to that in 43.

He restored the Russian Orthodox Church, specifically before he went to meet Roosevelt and Tehran. You see, we now tolerate religion. But, you know, people who travel to the Soviet Union, of course, people like Cannon rolled back. It was terrible oppression. People get arrested and all that. So for Americans to come to grips with this also involved the idea of their own. Who are we in the world? And I think it played much more important role than ideology per se.

Or you may call it Don American ideology. In my view, American ideology played a vastly greater role in the origins of the world. the Cold War and so-called international communism. International communism, very few people understood what it was, but everyone understood that America must now take global responsibility in the world. We must step in. It's impossible to do world government and world federation, like United Nations was created, but suddenly the Soviets, Stalin, do not play constructive role within this United Nations.

That means we must step in. We Americans must step in and lead. the free world. And that ideology of us being exceptionally responsible for the future of the world, that sort of exceptionalist ideology, I think, made the Cold War inevitable. I really say this word inevitable. I'm a historian. But I think that kind of ideology backed by power. Wealth, atomic bomb, industrial potential of Americans who could produce, you know, the entire, you know, huge amount of vessels or chips and whatever in the world, something that only China can do now, by the way. Back then, it was America. So that unique constellation and combination of

factors crowned by great ideological fervor in America made the Cold War virtually inevitable. The note I made earlier on about adversaries create opportunities, were we becoming a less isolationist country, America, because we had this new drive to create democracy, in the world, or were we blocking international communism from taking over too much of the world? That becomes the domino theory. It's so interesting to consider the friction between those two forces. Well, indeed, you know, nothing is simple. Nothing is simple. So for those simple-minded Americans who said, you know, we just want to make the world free and happy. And, you know, and for, you know, if you're in Moscow, if you're Stalin, and I would say if you only Stalin,

because other people already thought differently in 1945. Stalin was much more hardline in any one of those sycophants who surrounded him at the time, even more hardline in Molotov, believe it or not. So that's from Stalin's perspective, Americans' new mission was a huge and unpleasant surprise. He expected Americans to remain in ally to supply the Soviet Union with some loans and technology to help the Soviet Union to recover after immense losses of the war. and develop. But he expected the Americans to leave Europe after 45. And sort of leaving Europe in the hands of the British and the Soviets, the British were led by Churchill, a good old

imperialist, the devil you know. Then he was replaced by Etli whom Stalin didn't respect and like Churchill. But anyway, you know, with Britain, the Russians knew how to deal with the British. You know, they had a couple of centuries of rivalry with the British. But the American's decision to stay in Europe, around 1946, 47, it was congealed in a set of decisions, particularly to stay in Germany. That was a huge game changer for Stalin. And he was not prepared for it. He did not know how to interpret it. So being Stalin, being, you know, always an extremist in his worst case scenarios, being finally

this pupil of Lenin with his theory of imperialism and inevitability of wars and so on, so on. Stalin came up with a very simple kind of doctrine. Okay, that means that they create another coalition to surround us and smother us. So, for instance, when George Cannon published that famous article X in Foreign Affairs in 1947, there was a strong pressure on the Soviet side among the people who supervised the translation of this article to replace the word containment with the word strangulation. Wow. So in Stalin's eyes, containment meant.

not just a peaceful and more passive response to aggression. It was an active preparation for creation of a military political bloc against the Soviet Union. And sure enough, whatever Stalin did then acquired that self-fulfilled kind of quality to it. Whatever Stalin did made such a block more and more inevitable and more and more realizable. of course we have NATO in 1949, ultimately. Boy, all these themes start playing forward into today's world for sure. But I want to bring us back to what we talked about at the beginning, that there is this mentality of Russia, that we are going to be attacked, that something's coming to get us, that goes all the way back way before America, way before NATO, and that's

baked into the Russian mentality and certainly into the leadership. How does this reflect in the Cuban missile crisis, I wonder? Because by that time, time, now we're jumping ahead a good 10, 15 years, by that time, Americans are convinced that they're out to get us. Sputnik has gone over. Science is now playing a big part in this. The Russians are brilliant. Oh, my God, they're going to play chess. All of this whole Cold War mentality comes to a head in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Well, Cuban Missile Crisis is a very different ballgame, I think, from the traditional Russian anxiety or mentality or anything. Because I would place the Cuban missile crisis separately, but at the same time as a pinnacle of that tremendous built-up

that we call the first part of the Cold War. So without that tremendous built up in all its dimensions, it's hard to explain how in the world the Soviet Union decided to send its precious nucleotip missiles across the ocean to the island of Cuba that had very limited strategic importance for the traditional Russian mindset. I mean, you need to go through a whole set of explanations, which, by the way, Americans tried to do ever since with some success, but never to their own satisfaction. So let me quickly mention a few important ingredients that we need to take into account. First thing is a long-term race, missile nuclear race. Without the existence of nuclear weapons and missiles, it's very hard to imagine the Cuban

missile crisis, right? The Soviets, you write, all of a sudden, thanks to Stalin, thanks to the program started by Stalin almost immediately after Hiroshima, all of a sudden began to score these amazing successes. There were also amazing people in those programs, but I would say also resources at the state channeled into those programs. So it ravaged and a very poor country was able to come up with those enormous expensive devices like thermonuclear bomb and Indian continental missile. But the United States were always ahead, even after Sputnik. Even when Americans thought that there was a bomber gap and a missile gap in the Soviet favor, in fact, it existed in American

favor. And that was a real cause for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Looking at that from the Kremlin perspective, Americans continue to play senior uncle and refuse to acknowledge Soviet great role in the world, or at least such a role that would allow them to sit and talk about the outcome of the Cold War, the outcome of the confrontation. Because Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, really was impatient. And one cause for his impatience was he wanted to end the Cold War. He wanted to switch to what he called peaceful coexistence. Americans never, by the way, trusted him on that.

What Americans heard was, will bury you. That unfortunate phrase that he uttered when he was drunk talking to American and other Western correspondents. And it became an absolute great find for American media for the next decades. of the Cold War. So Hhrushchev blurted it. But he really wanted to end the confrontation. He wanted to end the confrontation on some kind of a grand compromise terms. Americans refused him systematically on that. So suddenly, around 1960, 61, early 62, Khrushchev viewed a great chance to have such a settlement, a great settlement. The third world began to decolonize.

so the West was getting weakened because so many new independent countries joined the UN and that was sympathetic to the Soviet Union. The United States had a young president who, unlike seasoned Eisenhower, well, was sick and a little bit spoiled by his father's billions in the eyes of Khrushchev. And also the island of Cuba was a boon for Soviet propaganda. it became hugely culturally popular in the Soviet Union. What an ideal situation. What an ideal situation plus a fear. Because Khrushov being a man of changing moods and being subject already to the criticism of communist Chinese,

particularly Mao, he made already many mistakes. He was fearful of another dreadful mistake. So for him it was either a greatest opportunity of his lifetime or the greatest danger of his light time. Both of them were located in Cuba. Sure. If Americans would invade Cuba and take Cuba out, everybody would blame Khrushchev for losing the first island of communism in the Western Hemisphere. If his operation to send missiles would succeed, Cuba would be independent. And also he would be able to make a great settlement

with Kennedy saying, look, you put your missiles in Turkey and Italy and all around us. we now have missiles under your own nose, you are now seats, so to say. So let's sit down and talk. Cuba then becomes kind of an emblem for relations throughout the next 20 years. You know, in my childhood, you end up with detente, Nixon, in DeFord, and also Carter to some degree. All of this time period, things kind of settle down. And we kind of think it's just going to sort of be that way for the rest of time, as far as I was concerned. Then, of course, Afghanistan happens, and Ronald Reagan comes into power.

Reagan is a good example of Americans sort of energizing this enemy relationship. Again, for our own good or for the good of the world. Who knows? Well, to be remembered, I've just published a book called The World of the Cold War where I go through all these episodes, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, but also detente and also reignition of the Cold War under Reagan. So, again, if we look from afar at those 20-25. years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, maybe 30 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, again, we have

two tendencies which coincide with this dualism that we talk so much about for previous stages of Russian-American relations. One is pragmatism and realization that we may all die if we don't reach some kind of compromise. And the greatest contribution of the Cuban Missile Crisis to global history, I think, was this realization. of nuclear mortality of the world, because both sides were going quite recklessly, having nuclear explosions right and left, and the Soviets under Khrushchev even detonated so-called super-powerful nuclear weapons, including the Tsar bomb, the largest terminuclear device ever detonated in Russian North in 1961.

So how high you can go, how many systems you can build. So the Cuban missile crisis made people think differently about that problem. And for the next 30 years, the danger of nuclear annihilation became embedded in a mindset, a collective mindset of both Soviet leaders, whoever they were. Brezhnev, Andropov, and later Gorbachev, and American leaders, beginning with Nixon, who was anti-communist and McCarthyist in the 50s, but realized that you need to manage Soviet power. And ending with Carter and Reagan. Carter and Reagan looked very different, of course, in retrospect, but both of them were very

much aware of nuclear danger and possibility of nuclear war. We know much more about Reagan later on, of course, when he was quite haunted by that idea of nuclear annihilation. So that's a positive, that's pragmatic, that's pragmatic contribution of of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But as always, in American mindset, you have the second component, which is crusade. What then happens to crusade if we recognize that evil empire on the other side of the ocean in Eurasia, if we recognize the Soviet Union as an equal superpower, what happens then

to our identity? What happens then to our crusade? So for a while, as Nixon was going to China and then going to Moscow, and signing various treaties with the communists, that undercurrent was suppressed by that, you know, anti-Vietnam protest was going on. Nixon was winding down the war in Vietnam. Kissinger was helping him. But then there was an explosion, particularly after the revelations of Watergate and Watergate

scandal, of that another component of American domestic mindset. And that component now zeroed in on human rights. Right. And so that was a really. discovery of a crusade in a big way, in a universalist way. And communists were just one of possible evils of the world, because by that time, everybody recognized that, you know, laid old Brezhnev and all those octogenarians and Kremlin were not the same as old-style Bolshevik revolutionaries like Trotsky and Lenin. But, you know, the human rights returned Americans to the

central position of the world with a universal mission. to make the world safe for freedom and make minorities. That's the crucial change with the previous narrative. Minorities, all kinds of minorities, make them happier, make them integrate. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. The Berlin Wall falls 1989. It symbolizes the raising of the Iron Curtain. Communist regimes across the Eastern Block fall down.

1991 USSR is officially dissolved. Mikkel Gorbachev resigns. Boris Yeltsin emerges as president of the Russian Federation, all of this sweeping history. I'm zipping past here. On the Russian side, we know how we felt. I mean, I literally wept when I watched this on the news in 19, you know, as a wall fell down.

Americans were just uncoiled with relief. Oh my God, the world is going to be one. We're going to be fine. They're going to get it now. The crusade is successful. On the Russian side, it's very different. How was the wall going down, end of all of that perceived by the Russian people and by the Russian leadership?

Well, dawn, again, on the Russian side, it was not universal. And I'm sure some people and a so-called conservatives and hardliners and Russian nationalists felt, oh, my God, we're losing the external empire. And then German process of reunification led Germany to become a member of NATO, the entire Germany. That was another big event. But I can say I almost swept myself at the time in November, December 89, because at that time, very few of us, and maybe no one among sort of young and progressively looking, forward-looking, educated people in the Soviet Union, view the fall of the Berlin Wall as a loss of empire. On the contrary, we all, and I think millions of people in the

Soviet Union at the time, woken up by Gorbachev's reforms, glossed, public discussion, free elections. I remind you, 89 was not only a revolution in Eastern Europe, but was a political revolution in the Soviet Union with semi-free elections and the creation of

new active parliament and political opposition and so on so forth. So those people viewed it as a tremendous opportunity for indeed joining the West. So not only Americans said, oh my God, our American mission finally is fulfilling in this completely unexpected and grandiose ways,

but also the Russians on the other side and Ukrainians, and in different extent, the bolts and other nationalities viewed it through the same lenses, where the great divergence happened when the Soviet Union in the South was beginning to crumble. So already in 1990, but particularly in 1991, usually this three years, 89, 1991, they got conflated. And in a textbookish kind of view of history, yes, the wall collapses and immediately the Soviet Union collapses. But I should tell you, I lived with this period, every day was important, and it was a period of tremendous hopes and tremendous opportunities. So the end of the Soviet Union, because it was already in the climate of colossal economic crisis, financial

collapse and a threat of ethno-national bloodshed, and some parts of the Soviet Union was bloodshed already. So all of a sudden it looked like for many of us as if the promise of cornucopia and some kind of post-communist paradise was replaced by a new Leviathan, a new vision of great chaos and Hopsyan kind of anarchy. So that was a great diversion between the Western, particularly American mindset and the post-Soviet mindset. So every time I would later, and many years, three decades later, I would talk to my American friends. And when I began to explain to him how I felt and many of my peers felt about the

collapse of the Soviet Union, they just couldn't understand me. They said, you know, for us, it was a great time. Suddenly we were liberated from nuclear nightmares. The entire Europe was free to pursue whatever dreams they pursued. What's wrong with you guys? I said, listen, you know, we lost our state. The Soviet Union ceased to exist and instead some kind of new Russia was proclaimed that had no real statehood, no real structure, no real borders, no real sovereignty. The whole trauma of Ukraine becoming independent and sovereign, which was inconceivable for Russian mindset to get to terms with. You know, it's still, you know, we see the tragedy going on related to that. episode. So, there was so much that happened with Soviet collapse that Americans simply couldn't process and understand. For them, Russians were liberated like everyone else by the fall of the wall and they pursued their dreams and I heard from Americans, things like

that. Why keep complaining about the fall of the Soviet? You know, so many new cars in the streets of Moscow all of a sudden. And I said, yeah, great Mercedes driven by mafiosian criminals. Yeah, sure. Well, and it is into that vacuum that, of course, Vladimir Putin steps into. And he's his own story for another episode. But fair to say, 2000, everything kind of turns back towards a reorganization, we'll call it. And it isn't in the face of that threat of anarchy. If I may say, as an American, again, I think you're fairly characterizing the American view of this. We have always seen the international aspect of this threat. But indeed, the Russians, of course, are thinking about the internal aspect of it. How do you prevent anarchy from happening? You clamp down. You reorganize on different terms because now capitalism plays a big part of it, not communism, not state planning, but nonetheless the same motivation is here. And really that brings us to the modern day, of course, skipping some major episodes,

but that's the Putin, Russia that we live in. So how do you characterize Putin's Russia versus the Russians that we've discussed in this conversation historically? Well, Putin's Russia started and don't forget in 1999. when his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, freely elected president of Russia twice, freely elected, stepped down because of completely ruined health and alcoholism and internal problems that he couldn't solve. He apologized before all the Russians said, you know, I couldn't fulfill your dreams.

I'm stepping down and giving power to my successor, Vladimir Putin. So that didn't strike me and many others as a very democratic way of saying, you know, now he will rule you. But at least in the year 2000, we had relatively free elections already heavily manipulated with all the means of money being paid and modern technologies of brainwashing were used by media and other means. But anyway, he got elected. What kind of Russia he inherited? I would call the best analogy to this Russia would be Weimar Germany.

Weimar Germany, that is a country that lost World War I, but still did. not get to Hitler and Nazis. And one characteristic of Weimar or Russia, if I draw from this analogy of Germany, one of of these characteristics was the sense among Russian liberals and Democrats, we tried so hard, we dismantled our own empire, believe it or not, many people who believe that, you know, they themselves destroyed the Soviet Union. And to an extent I write in my book, collapse, it was true. Why the world and particularly the United States keep suspecting us of being imperialist, eternal imperialists,

why they say every time we wanted to mediate in the conflicts like Nagorno-Karabakh or Daggistan, near Afghanistan and other places that, ah, don't get there. It's another manifestation of Russian imperialism. Russians became frustrated to be treated like the Soviet Union had been in. the past. So Weimar Russia suffered from domestic problems, huge domestic problems, loss of certainty and identity, of course, and that growing Weimar syndrome. Was it inevitable that this sort of Russia would become the Russia today? I don't think so. But you got Putin in power who gradually, very gradually, began to move in a salami way.

Salami tactic is very Hungarian expression. Now you have Dictor Orban reviving that expression. And post-Soviet Russia, Putin exactly acted in a salami way to gradually concentrate wealth and power in his hands. At first, he had enough power because the constitution of Russia of 1993 actually was a strongly presidential republic, Republican constitution. I mean, it gave president much more powerful. than the current American president, for instance, has. So it was only when Putin began to meddle with this sort of super-presidential constitution, to change it, to fix it, and look for other pretexts to amass even more power and even more wealth, than you begin to shift from the Weimar kind of Russia to something worse.

And that changed, many people, I would say, dismissed that. Many people thought we had already seen, we had witnessed all kind of authoritarian and totalitarian things. We learned from them never again. But we see that this return is always possible. And to dismantle even relatively democratic, even de facto democratic institutions is a long process, but it can be done. The conclusion of this conversation also represents the conclusion of this. period because for all the drama between the U.S. and USSR and now Russia, the emergence of China changes the whole thing. All the while we've busied ourselves with this whole philosophical,

ideological, military confrontation. The Chinese are retooling their whole society, and now we deal with them leading the pack. It's such an irony, isn't it? It is. It is. And, you know, of course, having been reading so much about the Russian-American and Russian Western relations during the past more than 30 years. I mean, I ended up in the West shortly after the Soviet collapse, so I continued to read the Russian free press, which was remarkably free during the 90s, and even later under Putin was still free.

But I also, of course, I also read American press about Russia. So what struck me is continuing exaggeration of Russian role, geopolitical role, and possibility to do. cause harm to the West. And of course, I always thought, you know, the Russia that I knew in the 90s and the Russia that I knew in the year 2000s, of course they kept all the nuclear weapons. Of course, they kept all their bombers and missiles, but it was not the same superpower. And even, wait a minute, Don, even that superpower that had been so much feared by Americans during the 80s was in reality much weaker.

Yes, yes. It was not an elephant on unseen legs, so to say, but it was much weaker than Americans imagined it. So today's Russia, in my view, is even weaker and getting weaker in a sense, despite all the bombast and propaganda. So to contrast with that Russia, China has been amassing fantastically efficiently, using Western great connivance and American soporific attitudes, whatever, the power that none of us could imagine. And even those people who warned that someday China would end up being, you know, number one and being that concentration of power were poo-poored by others and say, well, it's just a peaceful rise.

It's not communism. It's, you know, it's capitalism with Chinese characteristics and blah, blah, blah. So, indeed, you're right. And we're facing, you know, that new image of, and reality of fantastically. efficient China with this enormous population, enormous industrial resources in the fast-growing army, and ever weaker Russia that, as we could see just the other day, lost some portion of its bomber, strategic bombers fleet without giving even a peep, without even complaining publicly.

What is that? That definitely invites another of the two components of American attitudes to Russia, pragmatic. What will America do with its everlasting crusade to make Russia possible for democracy? What will Americans do without those great dissidents, without people like Alexei Navalny, with the evil guy sitting in the Kremlin like Vladimir Putin and his anti-Russia? I don't know. I think that second component, the crusade-prone component of Americans, identity will continue to complicate American pragmatic policy towards Russia. But I think it's time for pragmatism in any case.

Well, I think it's going to be forced simply because of China's new dominance. Exactly. Exactly. I have been honored to speak with this man. You can visit many, many of his lectures and things online. He's an extremely active intellectual. Vladislav Zubak, thank you so much for joining us. Tell me about your newest book, please.

The newest book is called The World of the Cold War, 45 to 91, and it's been published by Penguin Press in May this year. So I recommend my listeners to buy this book. They will find many answers to many questions there. And much that we have not even discussed in this lengthy conversation, thank you so much for indulging me. I appreciate it. Thank you, really. Great conversation. Enjoyed it.

Thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes. Two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. From mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries, don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on.

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