Odd Lots - Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

These days, it's common to talk about the emergence of a New Cold War that exists between the US and China. It's debatable whether or not this is a useful framing. But in order to answer the question, it requires that you have some conception of what the original Cold War actually was. Vladislav Zubok, a professor at the London School of Economics, has a new book out on exactly this question. In The World of the Cold War: 1945-1991, Zubok attempts to explain how we should understand this period, which he sees as both an ideological battle, as well as a geo-strategic one — and also a battle that the two main actors (the US and the USSR) saw very differently at the time. In addition to understanding the contours of that tension, we discuss its applicability today, as the new administration attempts to re-arrange our relationship with China and the Middle East, as well as other rivals, allies, and partners.Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox — now delivered every weekday — plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thanks for listening to Odd Lots. Follow the show on Amazon Music for more future episodes or just ask, Alexa, play the Odd Lots podcast on Amazon Music. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts Radio News. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthall. And I'm Tracy Allaway. Tracy, you know we did that episode with Arthur Croper recently. And one of the questions that came up is whether you could characterize the U.S. and China. as being in a new Cold War. Right. But of course, that raises the question of what was the Cold War in the first place?

It's sort of hard to answer. Are we in a new Cold War if you actually don't know what the original one was? Joe, I can see through this intro already. You're trying to link it to a previous podcast, but I know you've been reading the history books. That's what this is. You read another history book. You want to talk about the Cold War. This is 100% correct.

But it's timely for multiple reasons, obviously, because there's U.S. China. tension, there is the ongoing war in Ukraine. And so, you know, and generally, if you want to understand the present, you want to understand how we got here. And you know, it's interesting to me. So I first sort of, quote, learned about the Cold War, I think, in middle school, no, high school, and it was like maybe 93 or 94. And that was only a few years after, I guess, it, quote, formally ended. Yeah. And yet by the time I was learning about it in high school, it was being taught, it might as well have been like Civil War history. Yeah, Capital Age history.

Yeah, capital age history, just old history. And I'm trying to learn a little bit more about it these days and I read some books, but there's still a lot of questions about, in my mind, what it was really all about. Well, so I also first learned about the Cold War in high school. And I had a realization when I moved from high school to college. So I was doing a sort of American curriculum in Tokyo, AP history, AP US history. And then went to London, went to the LSC, and, and did international relations, a big portion of which is history. And it kind of blew my mind

how different the interpretations of history actually were. So for instance, I'd learned about the American Revolution, right, as a lot of Americans did. But in the UK, it is, of course, the American War of Independence. And so it was just a massive culture shock for me to go from that sort of U.S.-oriented curriculum to something more British-centric or more international. So one thing I am very curious about is how the Cold War sort of played out from the non-U.S. perspective. Yeah, and right, like we called it the Cold War, I guess. And so the question is, what was it called elsewhere? Well, I'm really excited. We really do have the perfect guest today. He has a new book out on the question of what was the Cold War. We're going to be speaking with Vladislav Zubach. He is the Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, so doubly perfect. He's the author of the new book, The World of the Cold War, 1945 to 1991. He's the author of the also written several other books, sort of in the same general history, a lot of Soviet history. His prior book that I also highly recommend came out in 2021, collapsed the fall of the Soviet Union,

what really happened there. So Professor Zubach, thank you so much for coming on Oddlots. Thank you for inviting me. And that's a great moment to talk about great changes in history as we're experiencing now. We are definitely experiencing them now. So I guess if someone had asked me like a year ago or, you know, a few years ago when I wasn't really think about these things, what was the Cold War? I might have said, well, this global battle between capitalist vision and communism or democracy versus authoritarianism or something, maybe something else. But what was the Cold War? Because your book actually does sort of offer a different claim, and it seems to be more about something basic and land and territory and mostly centered on Europe.

No, not at all. Well, let me start by the other. I completely misunderstood the book, but go on. Well, you completely misinterpreted my book. Okay. That's fine. I like this episode already. Normal thing, which is a normal thing today, you know, whoever says whatever, it's misinterpretation and fake news. So let me tell you one thing that might amuse you.

Sure. You started by telling the audience when you learned about the call born high school. Let me tell you when I learned about it, about it, because I grew up in the Soviet Union basically wondering, well, it was in the midst of a cold war. It was the, you know, the 60s, 70s and I grew up as a young believer that the future belongs to communism. Don't laugh at me. And I just was surprised why so many people couldn't get it, that communism is the way of the future. And then, no, very late in my sort of student years, I began to realize, hey, it's much more complicated, you know, the world is divided and so on and so forth. And we were told the world is

divided between socialism and capitalism. So when I learned about the cold war, I mostly learned it from American literature. So I was very much influenced by American books because nothing was written in the Soviet Union about the Cold War. Nothing. That's a special question. Why? But, you know, I couldn't find a single decent book on the Cold War. So I learned it from American authors like John Lewis Gaddis, some people may remember. There were great books by John Lewis Gaddis in the 80s, and so I read them and totally absorbed them. And so the ironic thing that many years later, 30 years later,

I'm coming back to my original kind of idea. Yes, it was the battle between socialism and capitalism. Yes. And in a sense, the whole phenomenon of the Cold War should not be understood, like, oh, it's a game of great powers. it's about Europe becoming a vacuum after World War II to be filled by two great powers, the Soviet Union in the United States. Yeah, it was there.

All that was there. And an ideology was there of communism and American liberalism. But for instance, business people hear about ideas. They kind of come a little bit so prolific. And they say, just ideas. Tell me something more important. So the most important thing, it was the battle for the future of capital. in my view. And for everyone who were in Europe in Washington and New York or in Moscow,

whatever, in Tokyo, it was about that. Because, you know, the previous 30 years of capitalism were disastrous. Capitalism discredited itself. So if you were in the late 40s in Europe, you would think, hmm, maybe I should become a young communist. So the previous disastrous years of capitalism caused the phenomenon of a Cold War. And it was just geopolitical situation when Europe was up for grabs. Much of Europe, thanks to Hitler, was up for grabs between the two, you know, coalitions between the Soviet Union and the Western powers, the so-called Anglo-Saxons. It gained geopolitical dimensions in this way.

But essentially, it was about which system would modernize the world better. This is essentially, throughout the Cold War, you had modifications of the same questions until it was answered very much in favor of capitalism in the 70s and the 80s particularly. Yes, capitalism is much, much better. In fact, that's the only way. Tracy, I think I'm still half right. There is a big geopolitical element about Europe, but I do now have to reread the book to not take away my overly simplistic takeaway from it.

Anyway, Tracy, go on. Okay, well, in all honesty, I have not read the book, so I get to ask all the extremely basic questions here, but I think this is relevant to the discussion. But at least not misinformed. Yeah, at least I'm learning about it in real time. But Vlad, I guess my question is, how did the U.S. and the Soviet Union come to understand each other's respective positions? So, you know, what was the process through which they sort of calcified each other's ideologies and came away with this notion that, you know, okay, the U.S. very capitalist, maybe capitalism requires a lot of expansion, a lot of domination of the world to keep going, whereas the U.S. came away thinking,

well, you know, Soviets believe in communism and communism is going to take over the world. How did that process actually happen? Well, let me start with what I know better about the Soviets, because I grew up there. And, you know, I said I was a young Marxist and all that. I was, you know, you may say, you know, brainwashed at the time in high school and all that. But by the end of the high school, by the way, I began to have doubts. It was already the 70s. So it was very much unclear at that time that we would ever build anything called communism already.

But, you know, let me return to your question. And let's say, in that same point, to say, let's talk about the start of the Cold War. Because it was immensely long contest, immensely long confrontation, like for four decades, right? So it's very important. I broke up my book into four major sections. And if you are in the first section, when the Cold War just started, in the Soviet Union, they read Lenin. And Lenin said, as long as capitalism exists, it would produce imperialism. And imperialism is about competition for resources and wars, global wars, because capitalism is global.

So that's what you learn about the other side in the Soviet Union. So whenever somebody like Stalin would say, hey, you know, the United States now is a top capitalist power. That means that, you know, other powers should compete, like the UK should, British Empire should compete with Americans. And this is essentially the main source of instability and global war. This is what you believed in as a matter of faith in the Soviet Union. If you are in the United States, it's much less, let's say, theoretical and more like based on experience of dealing with Red Russia or Communist Russia. And during the first decade, Americans completely dismissed the existence of Red Russia and never granted diplomatic recognition to that country because there was a kind of nonsense for Americans to think that people don't believe in private property. They reject entrepreneurship.

They reject God, atheists, and so on so forth. This is just a nonsense. This state cannot exist. And then, you know, they began to change their mind gradually. Oh, it should stay and all that. But what made them change their mind about the Soviet Union, above all, was the Great Depression and a huge crisis of capitalism. Back to my original point about the context between capitalism and communism.

The very fact that the idea of this context entered the American mind and later Americans even began to say, oh, communists are taking over the world and all that stuff. It is because of their internal insecurity, American internal insecurity, because the Great Depression did take place. It was almost 10 years. Yes, America exited the war as powerful as it never had been, but thanks to the war, nobody could say, would another great depression happen after the end of the war? So that was immense internal insecurity coupled with that American exceptionalism,

you know, we've done so well before we should do great in the future that produced American impulse towards the Cold War. And I would say, you know, I'm back and forth on this question, by the way, you know, when you ask who started it, in such a complex context between the two ways of light, two ways of modernization, you know, it's very difficult sometimes to say who started it. But I would say Americans had more resources and therefore they were much more proactive in 1945, 46, 47. And when they began to see the Soviets acting not as they had expected, strangely because the Soviets always acted as Soviets. They just were expansionist.

They were assertive. But after 45, they were also extremely weak. They lost 27 million people during World War II and all that stuff. So Americans knew that, but they also saw Soviets being expansionist and decided to take an initiative. So much of the Cold War, in a way, during its original phase, is Americans acting. Americans doing the Marshall Plan, Americans doing, you know, dividing Germany into two parts in reaction to the perceived Soviet expansionism and real Soviet expansionism, but also realizing we're stronger.

We can stop them. We have huge wealth. We have atomic bomb and they don't. And we have resources to stop communism. But the premise is, in American mind, that communism is such a dangerous thing that can spread all over the world. And why it can spread? Hello? Because capitalism is weak, particularly in Europe, because capitalism stopped working in Europe. And, you know, we must reignite it. We must just set it straight and, you know, make it stand on both feet.

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and this idea that the Soviets were a fundamental threat to everything we hold dear in the West in the U.S., our way of life, our freedom, et cetera. And you're dismissive in the book of his maybe paranoid views. But on the other hand, you know, up until, you know, there was a commenter that aimed to foment communism around the world. And obviously the Soviets moved a missile to Cuba and fought a war in Afghanistan. and Angola, et cetera. Why was it so unrealistic to think that the Soviet Union did have expansionist visions

for spreading a specific way of life across the globe? Well, I never said that the Soviets didn't have expansionist view because that was the essence of the ideology. I continue to miss. I continue to miss. No, no, no, no. You have just proved that you read the book. At least parts of the book that tells about the canon, fascinating character.

and Canon's Long Telegram. My take on Canon is actually, you know, many people read excellent books on Canon because he was such a master of words. He essentially gave subsequent generations of American liberal historians all the words to use, the entire kind of ideological framework

to use about what Soviet threat was about. He used the word virus, malignant parasite, and other, you know, helpful things to understand Soviet threat. if we go beyond all this, we ask a question, okay, malignant parasite on what? Parasite on healthy capitalist liberal society. That, again, the thesis is it is liberal capitalism that collapsed in the 1930s. And above all in Europe, above all in Germany, but also in other countries,

and maybe America can restore this capitalism to its greatness, but maybe not. because at the end of the long telegram, Canon has doubts. Canon says, we should contain communism, but not to such an extent that we in America would ourselves turn into a garrison state. So his fear is that in this huge effort to contain communism, America might itself change its nature and stop being liberal capitalist society and would become a garrison state.

So, you know, that's a sort of sense of uncertainty, but later this sense of uncertainty was dropped, particularly in the 60s with this point, you know, Kennedy-esque kind of message and then great society and so on and so forth. So it's very important, again, I repeat, when you read about the Cold War to ask a question, when exactly, in what phase of the Cold War are you? And what kind of questions you raise about this phase? because it's four decades, four decades. So that uncertainty about capitalism began to pass in Europe and Europe experienced a moment of, you know, huge economic wonder at the end of the 50s and in the 60s. But then decolonization started, and that uncertainty about what would happen to the global south resurfaced,

that the fact that all these countries like India and China, of course, became communist famously, So that always loomed large in the imagination of Americans. As that if China turned communism and not, you know, follow that great, unique and correct American way, maybe others would take this way of misdevelopment. It's interesting that all American diplomats and the pundits experts use that or misdevelopment when they spoke about Soviet socialism during the 50s and the 60s. So when you began to pile up, well, what about Afghanistan? what about, you know, this or that, you're already kind of continuing into extrapolating the timeline into the future.

My answer to you would be, don't do it because we have a conflict. It started in the late 40s. It created a certain kind of deadlock, a sense of deadlock, a long battle that no one knew how to win. And one horrible perspective of that deadlock was the possibility of a nuclear war. Don't forget. This is why you mentioned the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis showed and when both sides faced that prospect of a term of nuclear war, both sides, no matter how more bombs and missiles and bombers the United States had in 1962, it had 17 times more than the Soviet Union, no matter that, both sides preferred to step back. And aside from a confrontation, nobody knew

how this conflict would end. So this conflict continued for that. decade after decade and after decade, which is the nature of any conflict that cannot end in a decisive victory and when both sides have existential reasons not to raise up their hands, so to say. You already anticipated my next question, which was what was the role of nuclear weapons in prolonging the conflict. So I'm going to skip to something else that you just mentioned. But can you talk a little bit more about the Cold War experience in a place like India? Because again, so much of the focus tends to be on the U.S. versus Russia for obvious reasons, but there was a lot going on in other parts of the world as well. And some would argue that, you know, some countries were even

successful in sort of exploiting the tension between the U.S. and Russia for their own advantage. Well, you mentioned India and an excellent studies on India. The fact is that Nero and the first generation of Indian rulers, Indian leaders, had been very much under the influence of some not necessarily Stalin-like socialist, but they kind of had huge apprehension of Western capitalism. And they wanted to find out a third way of development. That was one of major reasons why India, among other countries, joined the non-aligned movement. They didn't want to participate in that geopolitical conflict between the West and the East. But also they did seriously expect to get what they wanted.

kind of mixed model, something from socialism, something from free entrepreneurship, and decide for themselves what is best to them. So, you know, in the late 50s and in the 60s, you see the Indians kind of, you know, turning to Moscow and asking Moscow, help us with that, for instance, to build a steel mill, and turning to America and telling Americans, oh, can you help with that? So they played on both sides, and I think it was a right choice. So that lasted actually in to the early 80s until the emergence of the global liberal capitalist system that we live with today, which is, I think it's crumbling before our eyes today, that anyway, that system was emerging in the 70s and the 80s, read the fourth part of my book. It's about that,

emergence of that system. And at that time, people of non-aligned movement like Indians, like Brazilians, like others, they began to feel the pinch of that system. And, And all of a sudden, they discovered their experiments with expert substitution failed, that there was a huge transnational force that dictated them the rules, above all the rules of how get resources, how to get money, how to get loans and credits. And that was the system that they totally associated with American influence, with the World Bank, with IMF. But it was broader than that.

It was a global capitalist system that began to emerge. during the 70s, something that theorists would call today's Washington consensus. And it was also part of the Cold War. Like I mentioned several things that geopolitical context over Europe, decolonization, and now this. And all those huge transnational global developments influenced the Cold War. And they influenced the choices of countries like India, of course. I want to ask a question that sort of maybe falls in the middle of the story. and actually it goes back to nuclear weapons.

You know, the Marxist-Leninist eschatology, maybe that's the right word, is like eventually the capitalist countries, either because of their conflicts or other internal contradictions of the system, eventually they'll collapse, and we don't know how long it'll take, but eventually communism will win out.

To what degree did the sort of existence of the nuclear bomb or the development of the nuclear bomb undermine that story, that history will not end, human will not end necessarily with communist victory. History could end with all of humanity simply being erased in the nuclear war. And how much did this sort of opening up of this other possible path through which human history could unfold sort of shake that underlying faith in the original story? Well, that's a great question, by the way, because Lenin and Marx, wrote the theory at the time that when nuclear weapons didn't exist.

Yeah. Okay. When these weapons emerged, the kind of canonical Marxist-Leninist approach to world history had to be adjusted. Yeah. And it was a fascinating process of adjustment because above all, after Stalin, under Stalin and after Stalin, the Soviet Union was ideocracy, and free debate was impossible. And yet there were some elements of debate and discussion.

about nuclear weapons, which I write about in my book, from some are likely corners like nuclear physicists who warned, for instance, the leadership in Moscow leadership in 1954 that the invention of thermonuclear weapons makes the end of the entire humanity possible. And the party leaders immediately reproached them and squashed the debate because their view was, hey, you know, our canonical explanation is that it's,

not humanity. It's capitalism that will perish. But then other unlikely candidates like it, among them a chess champion, between Nick, who I cite in my book, began to write to the party leaders, wait a minute, I'm a communist member myself, but I don't want humanity to perish. This is my way of reconciling the two goals, keeping peace and making communism a peaceful outcome of the competition between the two systems. So suddenly that guy, but Vinnikin thinking very logically, pointed to the main problem of the Marxist-Leninist approach, that it always had preached a violent end of capitalism, some kind of a revolution, and then, of course, the victory of communism as a result of another imperialist war. But this imperialist war is no longer possible because of the existence

of thermonuclear weapons. So ultimately, Khrushchev, not being very theoretical guy, but kind of very instinctive politician came up with his solution to this debate and basically said, well, the forces of socialism are strong enough, he of course meant above all the Soviet Union and China, strong enough to prevent another war that imperialists otherwise want to unleash and therefore will proceed to communism but peacefully. So it just basically squared the circle and then the ideological bureaucracy followed this lead. And then what you have, is detente. Then what you have is detent and arms control. That was a major outcome of that ideological reconciliation. The Soviet leadership, and particularly the guy after Khrushchev,

the unit Brezhnev, said, you know, but we want peace. We don't renounce our ideological belief that capitalism would perish and communism would triumph, but we have to do it peacefully. Our main duty is to struggle for peace. And in the old days, let's say 20 years, earlier such guys like Brezhnev would have been denounced as, you know, I don't know, heetics, revisionists, I don't know. But in the 70s, it was all right. So in a sense that ideological innovation opened the way for detente, peaceful policies, but Brezhnev.

And with all kinds of good consequences for Europe, with, you know, American Soviet detent flourishing, briefly, but flourishing under Nixon. And looking backwards, you begin to realize that without this, period of Brezhnev and the struggle for peace. Otherwise, you wouldn't have had Gorbachev. And of course, without Gorbachev in the late 80s from 85 to 1991, you cannot imagine the end of such conflict as the Cold War, because Gorbachev was a major part and single-handedly did many things that made the end of this conflict possible, thinkable, and actually it happened. This is Caroline Hyde. And I'm Ed Ludlow inviting you to

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That's the Bloomberg Tech podcast. I'm Caroline Hyde in New York. And I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts. Tracy, I just want to say one thing. One area where I think the Soviet Union was objectively better is that it's a country where a chess grandmaster is so politically influential. I would like to live in such a, you know, that was one aspect. The country where chess is valued. Yeah, we're Botvinik writes a letter.

That's influential. Well, well, well, at a cultural, a small cultural note for our audience, I mean, you know, not everybody played chess in the Soviet Union. That's to begin with. So when CIA experts or somebody else would point out that the Soviets are so devious because they all play chess and all outfox us in the West, it's not true because the political leadership played domino, much more simple game.

They play domino. They were much more primitive. They got the domino theory from. Anyway, Tracy, go. Right, right, right, right. Okay, well, Vlad, as you keep repeating, this is such a sprawling period in history. And I have so many questions. But one, I want to make sure we actually get to is just sort of bringing everything up to date.

And Joe mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you is because one thing you hear nowadays. One of the pretenses. One of the pretenses other than he read the book is this idea of the U.S. and China being in a Cold War. So when you hear someone say, oh, this is the new Cold War between the U.S. and China, what is your immediate reaction? No, I don't believe in this. It's a Cold War between the U.S. and China. Well, unless you want to, you know, let me rephrase it. You know, it may be called the Cold War if you take very superficial or rather abstract theoretical take on what the Cold War is. So it's just a competition between great powers that for some reason, primarily because of the existence of nuclear weapons, never turns hot. Well, if you take this kind of abstract, generic approach, then you may say, oh, you're not a Cold War. And probably because of the existence of nuclear weapons, if we're lucky, will have a series of the Cold War into eternity, right?

But I'm not a fan of this approach. I'm much more into specific historical interpretation of the Cold War, which I set was, above all, a context between the two ways of modernization. Capitalism and non-capitalism, called socialism. And a capitalist won that all rounds of that competition handily, and this is why essentially the Cold War ended the way it ended. But where are we now between the United States and China? it's much more narrow in really more geopolitical context. Who would be the top in the hierarchy of capitalist powers? Yes, somebody would say, oh, it's about freedom versus lack of freedom and authoritarianism in China.

But it's a much weaker argument, really, in my view. A, because China evolves in its own way, you know, through hundreds and hundreds of years. so, but nobody said that ultimately China would not begin to vote and have political parties. Who knows? Maybe in 200 years, China will develop into some sort of democracy. So I would never say no to that. My approach is more specific that for now, I don't believe we are facing as profound, as dangerous, as essentialist and existential conflict as the Cold War had been, particularly in the first two decades of the Cold War between 1947, let's say, 1962, 68, whatever. So this is my answer to a question there, the conflict, but I would hesitate to call it the Cold War.

However, however, we should all learn from 40 years of Cold War history to make the Sino-American conflict manageable, or at least more manageable. And I have a few ideas about this by just looking at the Soviet-American interaction during the previous major conflict. One idea is, of course, diplomacy should work. And I'm always struck how important was diplomacy, even at the worst moments of the Cold War, even at the time of McCarthyism in the United States, even at the time, not to mention the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged all this famous message. that ultimately led to the peaceful outcome of the crisis.

So diplomacy is hugely important. The second point I want to make about the Sino-American confrontation today, that the danger of tunnel vision, people should learn to think outside the box. There was in the Cold War so many people who said there cannot be any way of talking to those communists. to those Ruskis. And there were many hardliners in the Soviet Union who never wanted to trust or talk to the Americans.

And yet they were always people thinking outside the box and finding cultural, diplomatic, and other ways of interaction. That's really important. At third observation, some people would say tariffs, economic sanctions, and arms race would solve this conflict today between China and the United States. I would say the entire Cold War actually shows that it was nonsense. Arms race did not solve political sources of confrontation

between the Soviet Union and the United States. The development of capitalism, the development of a global economy solved that conflict, the fundamental underlying issues of that conflict. So if the United States wants to outspend, China, more sophisticated weaponry, AI, intelligence to manage the weaponry, that's another deadlock. That's like forgetting fundamental lessons of history.

And finally, look at the cover of my book, Falling Domino, one major problem of Cold War mentality, particularly on the American side, but also on the Soviet side, of course, was thinking once we make this one concession anywhere, there will be the falling domino effect, and that will be the end of our credibility, the end of our position. That will be the end of our whole global position in the world and our cap. So what did Americans get by following this falling domino theory? They ended up in Vietnam. And what did the Soviets gain by going going along this line. They actually collapsed at the end of it. So it's not a good way. It's not a good way to resurrect the falling domino mentality by saying, if, God forbid,

if China moves against this island somewhere, you know, and we do not defend this island by military force, then that's the end of the world we know. It's a falling domino. It's a classic falling domino theory. When I was growing up, terms like, human rights. It never would have occurred to me when I was younger, that these could be loaded terms, that there could be anything bad about a human rights group or a human, you know, whatever it is, or minority rights, or so forth. I thought these were just unalloyed goods. And one of the things, you know, I've been thinking about that recently, again, actually in current geopolitical context, because just a week or two ago, Trump was in the Gulf and he, you know,

made all these agreements and we're going to sell lots of semiconductors to golf countries and so forth, you know, Saudi Arabia still does a lot of executions by beheading and things that would horrify people in the United States, all kinds of things in the human rights realm that would horrify people in the United States, but we can still do business with them. We can still sell them a lot of semiconductors and buy their oil and so forth. One of the things you point out in your book is the role of human rights groups at times throughout this. story of undermining detente. And sort of when we were having these sort of softer moments that ultimately the human rights groups in the West, they were not helpful on that front. Could this

be a more productive, peaceful path in the United States to perhaps be more willing to just accept, you know what? We can do business with countries. We can sell arms and chips. And we don't have to worry. It's just not our business how they conduct their internal affairs. Well, you know, this is one of those moments during the long-call war when Americans played very proactively and Americans were in a vibrant society. Let me use this loaded term, free society, unlike the Soviets. But ironically, American human rights movement was ignited by something that was happening inside the Soviet Union. To begin with, there was a very small groups of human rights defenders called dissidents. the Soviet Union that evoked huge admiration in American societies as sort of good Russians versus

evil Russians, you know, people whose names were household names at the time and few people remember them now, like, you know, Alexander Soljanitsyn and Andrei Sakharov and then another, you know, great names at the time. And then came the issue of Jewish emigraise who wanted to leave the Soviet Union to go to Israel or to go to other countries and American Jewish groups who faced discrimination at home and wanted to sort of assert themselves at the same time at home, they found a great cause, a good cause, inside the Soviet Union to help their brethren to emigrate from the Soviet Union. So that was the true emergence of the human rights movement in the United States that conflated with other great currents that's already been there,

like civil rights movements and, you know, anti-racist movements and feminist movements, you know, an environment movement. So it was a great moment in American history. So what happened, I think it would be foolish on anybody's part to blame human rights movements for undermining detain because detainte. Because detent was very shaky, very, very fragile thing to begin with. But de tant was, in a sense, the Soviets were doubly unlucky during the 70s because they thought that with a sheer agreement on the quality of armaments and the agreement on like taming the arms, race, they would create the foundation for the entente. And that was really, really naive to think so, because again, back to one of my points, arms races or taming arms race, I'm taming arms races is good,

but arms in a sense they're crucial to solving real political issues. So these arms are agreements that the Soviets was so proud of, well, they didn't play any role in the end. What played the role was human rights movement inside the United States that delegitimize the Italian. in the eyes of millions of Americans. Plus, of course, there were other issues dealing to decolonization in Africa, the fall of the Portuguese Empire and the Soviets jumped in immediately guided by the Marxist Leninist kind of fraternity, solidarity, mentality. And the American hotline said, you see, they are changing.

They keep roiling it, you know, they keep undermining global stability and whatever they can. And there were other things as well, which sadly led the Soviets to their role. falling domino mindset and overreaction in Afghanistan that you mentioned. So everything was a reaction to something. But I would place the rise of a human rights in context. What indubitably happened, however, then was that people like President Carter and then President Reagan quickly realized that this is a moral cause to follow. And it also was expedient course politically. because by championing global human rights campaigns, the United States were back as a leader of the free world.

And they were back with much more credentials like finally being not only the leaders of the free world, but the leaders of the just world, which was usually something claimed by the Soviet Union, right, in earlier years. The Soviet Union always was against racism, against Jim Crow, against, you know, colonialism. And suddenly the United States grabbed all of that and redirected it against the Soviet Union,

and you, Ruskis, are actually, you know, hidden colonizes your authoritarian, you know, you don't let your people emigrate and all that. So it was a decisive ideological turning point in the Cold War, which the Soviets at first didn't realize was that way. And then later they became pathetically defensive and just couldn't find a good way to deal with that. Gorbachev finally said during his presidency, let's not be afraid of human rights. Let's basically accept that we also can be free and just society. And he began to liberalize the Soviet society with the outcome that we already know. I want to go back to something you said very early on in the conversation. But you mentioned that the Cold War wasn't really written about in the Soviet Union. I guess when you were living there when you were studying and in school. And I'm really curious about personal experience. during the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the best books I ever read on the subject was by Svetlana Alexevich, I want to say, secondhand time, which is a sort of oral history of Russians experiencing this transition from communism to capitalism.

So I'm just very curious what your personal experience was, and I guess what the sort of messaging was to the Russian population about that huge transition and transformation. Well, that was, as you said, unexpected and huge transition that amounted to the complete loss of identity. And you may say that by that time, very few people seriously took ideological promises of arrival of communism. And many people thought, began to think that life in the West was not awful, but actually much more superior. in that particularly turning point in the 89, 1990, one when the Soviet press, liberated by Gorbachev began to beam to Soviet audience through television. It wasn't like something that foreign stations did. It was a Soviet television began to convey this information about a much better life in the West.

So all pillars of Soviet mindset, sort of Soviet worldview, began to collapse simultaneously. And it led to several fateful consequences. First was that sense of cynicism, dejection of any certainty, any moral, any kind of ethical certainties in the society which was accompanied by a huge way of domestic crime and violence and mostly economic violence. Secondly, that was this kind of realization. Well, if capitalism is the only way for humanity to exist. and evolve, anything to gain money to make profit is allowed.

So again, the combination of collapse of ethical norms with sudden spread of capitalist practices led to that wild east mentality, much more so than the Wild West was in America, I would say. And if ultimately the void was filled by nationalism, or some kind of at least, and I wouldn't say totally filled, but some kind of expectation that if everything collapses around me, it means that either I choose my family and myself as the only sort of bulwark in the future, or I would believe in another super ego, which is nation, nationalism.

And so the nationalist and ethnic conflicts sprung up immediately as Gorbachev began to dismantle the old sort of the old mentality, the old system in the Soviet Union. was highly dangerous and highly destructive. And of course, in part, those nationalists militated against the past and past grievances and, you know, all the people killed by Stalin and Lenin and all that. But they also kind of satisfied the new need for a renewed sense of identity. So I used to think that the Soviet collapse was relatively peaceful until the current war in Ukraine because clearly, you know, this new wave of Russian nationalism and is linked to the

continuing lack of idea, continuing void in the heart of Russia why so many changes happened and what's the meaning of those changes. So it was possible, as it turned out, as I'm saying, in deep sadness, for the leader of Russia to fill that tremendous vacuum with another a refurbished idea of Russian imperial imperial and national domination. So I just have one last question. And there's there's, we could talk for a long time and I have lots of things, including we could talk about the war in Ukraine and how actually Kenan himself predicted that that could be a consequence of Clinton's NATO expansion and things like that.

But you know, I want to ask one last question. The way you depicted and also especially in your previous book, collapse, you're pretty hard on Gorbachev and you sort of castigate him at times for, or his unwillingness to use force at times. But, you know, one of the things that you can see in this book is that the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, there was a big economic element. The Soviet Union could no longer supply cheap oil

to East Germany and other countries and so forth, and that the economic dysfunction of the Soviet Union played a significant role in the failure to keep those military allies on the other side of the Iron Curtain. But then you sort of say Gorbachev unilaterally disarmed, more or less, the USSR, that it was an unforced collapse, that it was sort of an internal choice. Why shouldn't we assume that the economic dysfunction that led to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, which you acknowledge would not have eventually led to the disintegration of the USSR itself and the emergence of all these countries pursuing some conception of freedom and national identity? Oh, I keep struggling with the same question because history is never linear and it can go different ways.

And of course, those who look back at the history of the 20th century and, in fact, the 19th century, see the immense force of nationalism and national self-determination. But this is one way to say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable and it was just a matter of time for all those different nations to find. their road to their statehood and sovereignty and all that. But in other ways to look back at history and see the perils and dangers of sudden collapses, sudden collapses of empires. We see essentially this tremendous instability in Europe paving the way to fascist and Nazi dictatorships rooted in the sudden collapse of empires as a result of World War I. So the suddenness of this collapse, the fact that they create this immense vacuum and

destroy the old common identities and common links, immense common links between different ethnic groups and across different ethnic groups. This is a hugely dangerous moment. And in fact, I try to strike a balance and collapse, looking at both sides, but sort of probably knowing what would follow after Gorbachev, maybe I overdue the second time. You're really hard on Gorbachev. I'm hard on Gorbachev because he raised expectations tremendously. And I was among his followers and millions of people looked up to him for leadership. And when particularly, he made tremendous changes in the late 88, 89, not right away. You know, the first two years were very kind of very frustrating.

I remember that. But then he made that huge leap forward, hugely forward. And that leap forward contained elements of the future collapse because it had many misguided premises. He believed in Leninism. He believed in that sort of many things that he shouldn't believe in. But he did. But then by taking this leap, Gorbachev kind of got frozen in the process of this leap. He suddenly lost his initiative.

He became famously, you know, slow or infamously slow in taking other steps. So with such tremendous changes, you have to maintain the momentum or you lose it to others. and he lost that momentum to the Yeltsin, to the Russian sort of leader, who essentially pulled Russia from out of Gorbachev and destroyed the Soviet Union, not the Bolts, not Georgians, not Georgians, destroyed the Soviet Union. Yeltsin did, in my view. So by looking at this story, I'm harsh on the later Gorbachev because the book is mostly about three years, 89, 1990, one, during which Gorbachev had already done his greatest kind of leap

into the future and got scared somewhere. Couldn't find a new path. Got outgunned by his arrival. So my harshness on Gorbachev, maybe he's guided by the fact that I would very much prefer him to succeed because other options were very, very, very clear for us now, what other options led to. You know, for those who admired in Washington, people admired Yeltsin and thought that Gorbachev was still a communist.

True, Yeltsin turned into anti-communist. But look, it was Yeltsin who gave us the current Kremlin leader, after all. Vladis Love Zubok. This was fantastic. We could talk for a long time. After I read Collapse, I sort of thought, by the way, that Gorbachev sort of seems like an Obama-type character. Nobel Prize winner, but then, you know, in the wake of it, maybe some lost momentum. We could talk for a long time about all this.

Really appreciate you so much for coming on. everyone should read your book. I will reread it again because I apparently missed the entire point. But really, thanks for coming on odd lots. Well, thank you very much for talking about history. It's a rare moment. Tracy, I really do have to reread the book. I'm apparently, I was like, I love this book. And then I missed the entire point. How did that happen? My reading comprehension isn't that great. People say, Joe, how do you read so many books? The answer is by not paying attention to the words on the page. Well, good thing we're not basing a bunch of podcast episodes on your reading and understanding of history books. Okay, that was fascinating.

That was great. I did think, well, first of all, I keep recommending that book secondhand time to you. And I really think you should. And I think one of the important takeaways from that conversation and from other conversations that we've had in the past is this idea of like just how big an existential crisis, the collapse of the Soviet Union actually was for Russia. And Vlad's point that you ended up replacing the communist ideology with nationalism. I mean, we are still living through the consequences of all of that. No, we totally are. We didn't really get into it too much. And he sort of ends the book and talk about the U.S.-China relationship. And one of the points that he makes, whereas the U.S. Soviet relationship was really something that was always handled at the diplomatic level. The U.S.

China relationship has, especially in the last, you know, 30 years, 40 years, whatever, has really been driven by the business community. Yeah. specifically, which sort of makes it a very different story to the Cold War. And it just has not been about that sort of ideological battle per se. In fact, there was a really good article. I think it was in the Financial Times last year where there was like Cuba was asking China for some advice on economic growth. And I think the Chinese leader is like, well, you could try introducing market competition.

You maybe give that a shot. So while, you know, obviously China wants to expand its influence, it seems like, you know, does it by building factories and stuff like that and expanding its economic footprint much more than asking its trading partners to, you know, commit to its specific model. Well, speaking of building factories, one episode I do want to do, because this keeps coming up, is why were communists so obsessed with steel? And, you know, Vlad mentioned the idea of, like, India asking Russia for help and building some steel factories. And it feels like sometimes I think the Cold War could have been, you know, we could have avoided the Cold War if we just had some sort of

steel manufacturing off competition between the great world powers. And whoever made the best steel would be declared the winner and their economic model would be, you know, embraced by the rest of the world. We should have gone down that route. Did you know that the name Stalin was a nom de guerre that means man of steel? I did actually know that. I didn't know that until recently. You know, steel, you could tell a really good story about the Cold War just through the medium of steel. Someone should write that book. Oddlott series, the history of the Cold War as told through the medium of steel. That might be a little on the issue. Yeah, just a little. Okay, shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the Oddlots podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at

Tracy Allo. And I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the stalwart. Follow our guest, Vladislav Zubach. He's at Bladislav Zubach 1 and definitely check out his new book. The World of the Cold War. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez, at Carmen Armid, Dashel Bennett at Dashbot, and Kale Brooks at Kail Brooks. For more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash oddlots, where we have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and you can chat about all of these things 24-7, including books, including history in our Discord.org.g.g. slash oddlots. And if you enjoy Oddlots, if you like it when we talk about the history of the Cold War, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast.

platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes, absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening. On April 4th, 23, around two in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16.