School of War - Ep 123: Sergey Radchenko on Soviet Motivations in the Cold War

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Sergey Radchenko, Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power, joins the show to talk about the strategic aims of the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War and how the Soviets attempted to run the world. ▪️ Times      •      01:17 Introduction      •      02:32 A novel argument     •      08:36 Power and recognition       •      11:51 Who started the Cold War?     •      14:55 The American dilemma       •      17:09 Fukuyama     •      21:21 Nuclear guarantees         •      25:16 The shadow of WWII       •      29:44 Flippancy and boredom      •      32:06 Détente     •      32:12 Backstabbing     •      37:52 American lecturing     •      45:39 Sources of Soviet collapse Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack Follow the link to buy the book - To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power

What were the ultimate goals of the Soviet Union during the Cold War? Survival, global revolution, something in between, and how did those objectives shift with the changing of the guard at the top of the communist regime? And how did they interact with the designs of Russia's main adversary, the United States? Let's get into it. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infinite. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a war. stay on it. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran.

The people who are not these buildings. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields. And in the streets. We shall never surrender. For maps, videos, and images, follow us on Instagram. And also feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War.

I am delighted to be joined today by Sergei Redchenko. He's the Wilson E. Schmidt distinguished professor at the Kissinger Center at Johns Hopkins Sice. He's based at Sice Europe, Bologna, which I confess I did not realize existed until I was reading your bio, and that's where you're speaking to us. Now, how long have you lived in Italy, Sergey? I've been here for about three years. It's a wonderful place. I cannot complain.

It's great to be in Bologna, but it's also great to be at an American institution like Sise, Jones Hopkins, while being in Bologna. And I should say the reason for you're joining us today, as you have published this, this weighty in every sense, in the literal sense, and I think in the sense of impact book called To Run the World, the Kremlin's Cold War bid for global power. So thank you for making the time today. And I think where I'd like to start, because there's a tremendous amount to cover here,

is in addition to sort of themes that one would expect to discover in any account of the Cold War, themes of how, you know, countries or great powers strive for security or the ways in which they're motivated by ideology and how these things balance. You introduce other terms into your scheme or your analysis. One is ambition and the other is a desire for recognition. These are linked things and you suggest

that they are very important to understanding Soviet motivation. So could you just start there, sort of big picture, explain how you think about Soviet decision making and Soviet behavior through the Cold War in terms of these terms that are important to your argument? Well, that's right. I mean, this is a novel argument to a certain degree because much of our writing about the Cold War focused historically on issues such as ideology, competition between two systems, capitalism versus communism, to a lesser extent or some world, you know, security, as you mentioned. And I bring in a slightly different angle by looking at the striving for legitimacy by the Soviet leaders. This

driving for a place in the world which they think agreed to their expectation of where they should be in the world system. They wanted recognition by other powers of that position. And that's hence the question of recognition comes in because how do you arrive at a place in the world that you feel you deserve? Well, you want others to recognize that this is what you are, right? You want others to recognize this. So in a sense, it's a simple concept. And indeed, we know, even in the post-Cold War period, we know that Russia and China have been all about ambition, all about status, all about their ranking in the global system. But what bothered me is why is it that we never really approached this question historically and looked at how the Soviets strove towards recognition,

strove towards legitimacy during the Cold War. And as I investigated documents, and of course, now we have volumes and volumes of newly declassified documents, which I was very fortunate to access, I realized that this indeed was a key motive, and that is not to say that ideology did not matter. It's not to say that security did not matter.

All those things matter, but I almost construct like a muscle of pyramid of needs in my book. I say, yeah, of course, a security mattered, et cetera, et cetera. But in the end, what they wanted was self-actualization. They wanted to be recognized as something important that is the Soviets. But also talk about China in the book as well.

And indeed, much of the book deals with China in China's own striving for recognition. And I should say in addition to your published work, folks should check out your Twitter account, which I've enjoyed for years because, I mean, for many reasons, but most, I think, distinctively, these nuggets from the archives that you will pull out and give brief analyses on, which I've enjoyed very much. Well, that's right. Let me. So, you know, it's just going to add about the archives.

And this is what a lot of people sometimes are confused about. And say, well, how, you know, can you go to Russia and do research? You know, are in the Russian archives closed? And I would say, well, they used to be closed. But it's kind of intuitive to think about it. But since, well, in the last 10 years, I will say, there's been a remarkable declassification process in Russia. And so much more stuff has come to light that we can retail.

almost every, not almost every Cold War crisis with new materials. And sometimes, you know, smoking gun evidence that changes our interpretation of how we see the Cold War and what matter. Sometimes, you know, the evidence reinforces existing interpretations. Of course, I was also very fortunate to live and work in China for about four years, where I also collected documents which have now become closed. They had a period, I won't say openness, but things were easier in China or under Huchintan Tower when I was there. and now the things are closed. But what these materials allow us to do is to take almost a kind of a surgical, very detailed

approach to Soviet and Chinese policymaking. We can see what those leaders thought on any particular day about particular issues, because we have just literally thousands of pages of their conversations, of their, you know, rants, sometimes like in Hhrushov's case, Rishov liked to rant publicly, and all of that was recorded, you know, at the public bureau meetings. Anyway, so it's a lot of new material.

I'm troubled by my, when we talk about Khrushchev, I'm struggling to wipe the image of Steve Bouchemi in the death of Stalin from my eyes. There's a very unsurious thing to say, but nevertheless, there it is. I like it. I enjoy it too. Yeah, I enjoy it. Well, how do you square the increased access to archives in Russia with, you know, the political turn that Russia has taken over the same period of time.

How do those two things go together? I mean, that's an interesting question, right? Because at one level, you see growing authoritarianism in Russia, indeed Putin consolidating his control, cracking down on media, you know, things looking increasingly grim. And, of course, now we've also had the invasion of Ukraine. But at the same time, I guess it's just a question of Russian bureaucracy, the wheels, you know, slowly turning. I mean, there is a law on declassification, so they were declassifying stuff. And so what I found, that that was actually remarkable feeling, you know, to be in the archive,

they're bringing out all these materials from personal papers of Stalin, Ruchov, Brezhne, Fandropov, you know, and you're sitting there as the first researcher ever allowed to work with this papers. You know, nobody has seen this paper before. And every page you read, You're just, you know, you're waiting for discoveries, and there are so many interesting things there. Let me ask kind of a dumb version of a question about the early Cold War here as a way of getting us into Stalin, but linked to this theme of recognition and the desire for recognition. In the summer of 1945, the Soviet Union has shouldered a tremendous part of the burden of defeating Nazi Germany. Its troops are in Berlin.

It is, you know, one of really only two great powers with the United States to come out. out of World War II, I mean, grievously wounded, but arguably in a stronger position than it began. Who needs further recognition? Why is this the point where a desire for recognition and a struggle for greater legitimacy or for legitimacy drives Joseph Stalin? I mean, doesn't he have a supreme place at the table at this moment? What he has at this moment is power. But power without legitimacy is insecure power. So he wants this power to be recognized. And he was very insistent on it even before the war ended. He had his conversation with Churchill. Remember the percentages agreement. I mean, historians have known about it. I've also now seen the Russian side of that. And what struck

me there was just how seriously the Soviets debated percentages with the British. They literally got into these meetings and they would say, okay, so we'll get 75 percent. influence in Hungary, you get 25%. And the British would push for more and the Soviets would say, no, we want extra 2%. What does it even mean? You know, it seems completely ridiculous. But they were getting into those conversations, which I find remarkable. You know, Stalin felt that if Soviet sphere, the Soviet sphere is recognized and this way, he would be more legitimate and therefore more secure in his ambitions. And so he was sometimes willing to pull back from some of the adventures which you could have potentially participated in, the key, of course,

being the Greek civil war. Now I talk about it in the book, how eventually he did come around to support the Greek revolution to a greater extent. We now have remarkable documents about this, but also in China. I mean, China is a key example where he basically sent a telegram to Mao Zedong saying, no civil war, sorry, make a deal with the nationalist Chinese government, with the government of Changkash. Mal was absolutely outraged because this entailed a betrayal.

of an ally, but he had to do it because Stalin forced him to. So he went to Chongqing and had negotiations with Chiang Keshik. And so there are instances like this. I mean, another interesting example is Stalin initially planning to divide Japan, sort of like Korea was ultimately divided. So he was making a bit for a northern part of Japan, Hokkaido. And Truman said, no. Truman said, no, you can't do that.

And Stalin backed off. And you kind of have to ask yourself, Does he back off because he was perhaps intimidated, afraid of the atomic bomb? Or was he trying to still maintain a semblance of, you know, kind of agreement with the United States over legitimate spheres? And I'm not 100% sure in the book, and nobody can be sure, right? This is a historian's problem. Even now, 80 years later, we're debating these things. Nobody can get into Stalin's head and say, well, he's.

Here's what exactly what Stalin thought. But there are indications. There are indications we can at least kind of try to appreciate his thinking. And what struck me is just how much he valued American recognition of his games. Let's linger here for a bit because I don't need to tell you there's libraries are full. There are libraries that could be devoted to the question of how the Cold War begins and who started it and who bears the greater share of the responsibility. Is it Soviet ideology, revolutionary zeal and imperialism? Is it American paranoia that provokes a reaction?

Is it somewhere in between? What is your statement? What is your take on this longstanding debate? I think in this particular debate, I tend to side more with the traditional view, i.e. that Stalin was mainly responsible for the Cold War. I mean, in the end, it's very difficult to say, because some historians will say,

Well, Stalin wanted cooperation. He wanted great power cooperation. But we simply don't know. I mean, we pushed back against Stalin, we meeting the West. There was a pushback against Stalin. It came to be known as containment, right? If containment was not there, would Stalin have said, okay, fine. You know, I just have my sphere here that I have.

I will not push any further. Would he have said, on the other hand, hey, look at this, look at this opportunities that are opening up. How about I exploit this? And I think Stalin was deeply cynical, deeply pragmatic, and highly opportunistic. I think George Cannon was spot on when he described this quality in Soviet foreign policy, this opportunism. And so if containment did not exist, then I think Stalin would have potentially gone further and further. We don't know that.

We don't know that for sure. But when in a situation when we do not know, I think the safest policy to pursue the policy of containment, because the president, price of getting it wrong was going to be Soviet domination. The price of getting it, you know, of getting it wrong the other way was simply the Cold War. So in the end, we ended up with the Cold War. As far as, you know, the specific issues that led straight into, you know, communism of Eastern Europe and so on. I talk about this in the book at length. And in particular, I highlight one interesting issue, and that is Stalin's realization that Communists could not come

to power in Europe through elections. He realized that, I mean, early, it wasn't, now we say, well, this was obvious from the start, but it wasn't obvious in 1945 because communist parties were genuinely popular, not just in countries like, let's say, Czechoslovakia or, you know, or let's say Yugoslavia, but also in France and Italy where communists were making gains. And then Stalin realized that this was not going to happen. Elections were being held without Soviet intervention, without Soviet manipulation, communists would have been defeated in Eastern Europe. And so once he started to realize that, and we're talking about late 1946, 1947, I think he changed this whole approach and he realized that if he wanted to maintain his fear of influence in Eastern

Europe, at least, then it would have to be through brutal intimidation. On this question of the American dilemma, you were at the Kissinger Center and you quote Henry Kissinger, this fantastic line that sums up the devil. dilemma, the powers which represent legitimacy and the status quo cannot know that their antagonist is not amenable to reason until he has demonstrated it. And he will not have demonstrated it until the international system is already overturned. So if you wait for Hitler to invade Poland or you wait for the Soviets to come crashing through the fold of gap, well, you know the answer. Well, exactly. That is the dilemma, right? That's the dilemma that not only Truman faced back in

1945 when he was dealing with Stalin, but it's also a dilemma we face today. And indeed, one of the issues of the book that I think is going to be very appealing to readers is that I try to go beyond the Cold War, because generally Cold War histories basically cover the Cold War and say, okay, 89, the Berlin Wall Falls, everything, everyone lives happily thereafter. But we know, of course, that this particular generation of Cold War scholarship proved to be, I would say, not connected enough with the present time. So today we're living in a very different time where confrontation has returned to international politics, certainly here in Europe, but also looking broadly at the, for example, the Sino-American relationship. It seems that we're almost moving into another Cold War.

And so under those circumstances, you can connect the Cold War and thinking about, you know, American responses to Stalin, thinking about how Americans dealt with the Cold War. And you connect that to the present. You see a lot of interesting parallels, including you know, Russian desire for some special sphere of influence, Russian desire for some special, you know, position in the world order, which is very similar to how Stalin, for example, thought about some of the same questions. So I see a lot of continuity between the Cold War and the post-Cold War period

and into, you know, onto our own day. Yeah. I don't want to get too far from the chronological narrative, and I want to come back to Chris Schiff in a second, but just continuing from where you are right now, another, I mean, another obvious reason to devote the attention to the Cold War that you have and to work to connect it to the present is it is the only example we have of great power confrontation in the nuclear world. There are no other case studies at scale, right? And so you,

you, you, you have several nice turns of phrase to describe the situation, one of which sort of borrowing from Fukuyama and Hegel that, you know, that nuclear parity really does introduce a kind of end of history, not in a silly literal sense, obviously, but in a deep sense, at least until it doesn't work anymore. That's right. I'll just go back to the caveman. Well, I know that's, and that's extremely interesting, right? Because today we, you know, people talk all the time about parallels to the president.

And we're like looking at history and say, well, where can we see precedence to what we're experiencing today? And some people point to the period before the first world war saying, well, you know, this great our rivalry, et cetera, et cetera, it seems similar. But I don't see that at all. I think this nuclear revolution is what really made the Cold War, the Cold War. Without the nuclear revolution, it would have been very, very different. But nuclear revolution, and that's the irony, with the end of the Cold War, it was not

undone. We are still living in the world full of nuclear weapons. And so what does that mean? And I try to draw on Fukuyama, who I admire greatly. you know, his book is at the end of history is endlessly trashed by people from who have not read. Generally, people who haven't read it in my ear. He's got a very interesting philosophical discussion there about the desire for recognition for which he actually, he draws on Hegel, filtered through Alexander Kosev.

It was a very interesting, you know, philosophical tradition there. But this desire for recognition is certainly one of the key themes of Fukuyama's scholarship in general, not just this particular book. But I sort of, you know, use that idea and apply it in a different context. And I say, well, if you take the Higelian struggle between the master and the slave, that is, you know, it's part of Hedgel's description. And, you know, it's what the Pukyamund rolls upon. Then you can, you could argue that the fact that you have nuclear power effectively takes out this element of fear of death on the part of great powers. If you're a nuclear power, you don't really worry about being invaded.

Sort of like, let's say, the Soviet Union or Russia before was invaded, they know how they previously had this fear of invasion. I think with nuclear weapons, things change. I think that changes. And what changes then is that you cannot really destroy this power. You can only play, this competition can only play out in other areas of the world. Hence, you have proxy wars. And in the end, this power can only destroy itself, which is, of course, what happened to the Soviet Union.

So in this sense, the nuclear revolution does introduce a kind of end of history in the Higelian sense, although I think Higel would be, Higel would be very upset about this particular characterization. No, well, I have two young male children, my children in the house since in the older brother walks around in a fair amount of regular anxiety about the younger brother's bids for power. So I watched the master slave dialectic play out, sometimes multiple times daily in the McLean household. I don't want to overdo Hagell. Look, I think, you know, it's a useful anecdote to mention in the book. And, you know, it's not what makes it so long. But, you know, I had to mention it. But in the end, in the end, I think historians need to be up front about their assumptions and their, you know, the influences that they're under. I never used to do that. But now I feel like, you know, I can see where some of the ideas that I draw, upon where they come from and I can see Hago being there, I can see, you know, Fukuyama being there, et cetera.

Yeah. And look, I mean, the problem with any too easy reference to 1914 as a source of historical analogy, and to be clear, it's possible to make two easy references to the 1930s as well, is that in 1914, as best as I can tell, most of the major powers, certainly the aggressive powers, thought they could win the war. They thought they were going to fight a war, which they would then stand a good chance of winning and coming out stronger than they began the war. And it is hard to imagine any leader by the midpoint of the Cold War, let alone today.

You seem to market around the Cuban missile crisis that the realization sets in, and maybe that's something we should discuss, the thinking that you could start a direct major power confrontation using all instruments of national power and for it not to be suicidal. It's obviously your suicide and national suicide are nearly inevitable outcomes. Is it the Cuban missile crisis? Where does the logic of nuclear weapons in its fully developed sense set in the Cold War story? I think around this time, I mean, I would date it maybe even a little bit earlier.

Obviously, Hirschov comes around to this idea that nuclear weapons provide guarantees for the Soviet Union fairly early on. And he also realizes already by the mid-50s that he could use atomic weapons for nuclear blackmail. He tries to do that in Suez Crisis in 1956, the Suez Crisis. the Suez crisis is then resolved. And he thinks that it's because he made nuclear threats against Britain and France. Now, we know, of course, that it wasn't that for that reason. It was basically because of the United States, an American pressure on Great Britain, that the British decided to pull out of this whole misadventure.

But Hirschov doesn't know that. And so he feels, wow, you know, this is great. I've got this weapons and I can basically use them to threaten my adversaries. And then he proceeds to do that in 1957 in the Syrian crisis. He does it in 58 in the Middle East crisis. Well, there was a dual crisis, really, one in the Middle East, the other in China. Of course, the Taiwan Straits crisis, the second Taiwan Straits crisis. But then he really does it in Berlin.

And this is where it comes really to the point where he has to consider it very carefully. There's a Politburo meeting in 1961 where he weighs the possibility of war. And he says, well, you know, would the Americans really fight a war? Nuclear war over where, over Berlin? That's ridiculous. Why would they do that? That's completely ridiculous. So he basically gives the percentage is 5%.

He says, you know, the chances of war with the United States over West Berlin are 5%. And, you know, he has a very highly psychopathic presidium who all kind of say, yeah, yeah, that sounds great, although I think Anastas Mikhail was a little bit. his sidekick and Nastas Mikhail was a little bit careful with this, but he was the only one who cautioned against this kind of assumptions. But anyway, when push came to Shove and Hushchev had to decide whether to push the United States, whether to bring the matter to the brink, and see whether the Americans would capitulate over Berlin, in other words, effectively abandoned West Berlin to the Soviets. He decided not to do it. And why is that? Because

he understood the danger of a nuclear confrontation. And I think that's where it sits in. even before the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it truly develops the sphere of nuclear confrontation, developed by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, because there, Khrushchev, this is the guy who lived through the Second World War, right, who lost his son in the Second World War. And now he's facing this possibility of a nuclear confrontation with the United States. Not only that, but he has his dear ally Fidel Castro sending him telegram saying, how about we strike the United States first, you know, at this point, Hhrushchev just explodes. We have his various rants. I was very fortunate to have access to this material, but this is basically for

Schov would just basically dictate a lot. He did not read so many books, you know, he did not write all that much, but he loved to dictate to basically rant and, you know, all this stuff would be taken down. And some of his letters to Castro are just remarkable because he tries to kind of reason with Castro say, and, you know, he rants against Castro, says, well, rails against Castro, say, why, you know, only crazy person can think like that. We don't want to go to a nuclear war with the United States, et cetera. So, of course, he realizes the logic of nuclear confrontation fully by October 1960. World War II is a, is a throughline through all of the major Cold War Soviet leaders, and you identify it as central to, well, to their thinking and to their decisions.

what is the total effect? What's the through line of the impact of the war on them and then maybe if there are variations between Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, and drop up, I guess. What are those? What is the impact of World War II on Soviet leaders thinking? Well, I think it's the fear of repetition. These are people who saw the horrors of war.

I was really struck by for sure's recollections of Stalin-Grad, where he recounted later that there were so many corpses that they had to burn them, and they would pile corpses, mix them together with pieces of wood and set them on fire. And he recounted this site much later. He really knew what war was like, a real war. Brezhnev was, who succeeded for Schof, he was also involved in the Second World War, actually was wounded during a landing in Navarassizk, was thrown off a boat. Andropov was not directly on the front lines, but he was in charge of a guerrilla movement

in the north of Russia, northwest, I should say. So those people really experienced the war, and I think that gave them a sense of a sense of caution that sometimes I find is lacking in present-day leaders. Consider Brezhnev. Brezhnev was absolutely obsessed with the idea of promoting peace. And you could say, well, promoting peace, that's just Soviet propaganda. But for Brezhnev, it was a fixation. He would meet with foreign leaders.

He would say things like, you know, we have to be remembered by history. What will history remember us by? We have to be the ones who bring the world to peace. And for him, this whole idea of detente is, it was very much about, about avoiding nuclear war, about peacemaking. I mean, Vlad Zubok, of course, talks about this in his book about Soviet foreign policy. I think he's correct in the sense of seeing Bershnif his first informals, peacemaker, you know, ideologically committed to the idea of peace.

So they all, yeah, I think the fear, the previous experience of war really affected the way they approached foreign policy. Well, that is, I mean, it's very concerning. I mean, you said this in passing, but we should, I think, linger on it for a second, that then one thing that does not hold in any analogy you could construct between using the Cold War as a way of understanding present-day dilemmas, is this memory of the Second World War, which is alive for all of these leaders. It's also alive for Americans, even if they, you know, they did not witness the devastation of their own homeland.

You know, they didn't experience suffering on the scale that the Soviets did. Nevertheless, they witnessed many of them, and many of the leaders, witnessed suffering on a vast scale elsewhere. and obviously, many many Americans died in combat. Well, that's right. I mean, Kennedy, JFK, of course, played a key role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, was a boat captain, right, in the Second World War. So, of course, he knew what war was like.

Of course he knew what suffering was like, and he had lost his own, members of his own family during the Second World War, much like Hershoff. So I think that gave a very different perspective to leaders of, you know, of the Cold War, which I think current leaders are unfortunately lacking. Well, this goes back to Fukuyama, who among the qualities of his book, as you know, as you get to the final chapters, he starts to explore all the possible things that could be wrong with his argument and why, you know, liberal democracy may not actually have triumphed in the

end or if it has, how it will sort of fall apart. And all of his sort of, you know, self-criticism ultimately then predicts what happens in the 1990s and 20 aughts and the rise of authoritarianism in various forms. He does have this little interesting thing about men with small chests. Exactly. The war where, you know, which war he plays on this role of the issue of recognition and the issue of, you know, of, I guess, feeling proud of yourself, et cetera, and how liberal democracy.

And he almost hints of the desirability of having little wars. Exactly. And boredom. The role that boredom will play. that boredom will set in because unlike a khrushchev or a gorbachev who can't they they can't look away from the reality of what a war will be because they've seen it and lived it as we get further and further away from anything at that scale you could imagine flippancy in boredom and a lack of seriousness setting and you sort of suggest i'm curious to know you know you sort of suggest you see it now yeah i do see it

now, I do see great degree of irresponsibility now. What strikes me in present-day discourse is the almost dismissive attitude that people have towards nuclear weapons, certainly in some of our public discussions, which is in great contrast to the Cold War where I guess maybe the memory of Hiroshima was still present and the, this, you know, the realization of just what a horrible conflict it could be was very much current, both in the Soviet Union, but also in the United States, which I don't see this today. You know, people don't seem to be, oh, it's almost like we've taken, you know, we're taking nuclear weapons for granted. Oh, yeah, they exist. They exist, but we don't really think about them in the same way that Cold War leaders were thinking about it.

And they were, of course, thinking both in terms of using nuclear weapons, because that whole, you know, whole strategy of potential confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States rested on the idea of using nuclear weapons. And also they were absolutely horrified by the prospect of this ever happening. We could go back to de taunt in this sort of middle phase of the Cold War. I'm more familiar with the question of detente from the American side, what Kissinger was thinking, what Nixon was thinking, what their foreign policy thinking implied, implied for their sort of understanding of the American project.

And, you know, roughly my sense is that by the late 60s, there is an impression that America is no longer in a position to dominate in the way that it was 20 years earlier, that the Soviet Union was here to stay, that it was achieving military parity. And so the Nixon argument, the Kissinger argument on some level is this is recognizing reality, dealing with reality, surrendering some of our, or suppressing at least, some of our deeply held universalist assumptions about the direction of world history and just dealing with another great power as a great power, setting aside its revolutionary characteristics. I'm interested.

One would think, you know, from that American self-understanding that the Soviets wouldn't have an equal interest in day. If they're doing so well and on the rise, why would they have an equal interest in daytime? Why would Brezhnev be so committed to daytime? Say more about that. I'm fascinated by the Soviet desire for daytime. So there are all kinds of factors there that are very, very important. First of all, detente starts as European detain before it even becomes Soviet-American

Deton, right? The Soviets reach out to the French. They, after 69, tried to build closer ties with West Germany, with Willy Brandt, who's also pursuing his ospholitic. And that actually had a very pragmatic aspect. They had really wanted, the Soviets had really wanted to shake names. NATO solidarity to undermine NATO solidarity. And they thought that when, for example, in 1966,

DeGolol declared that France would no longer be in the military structures of NATO, the Soviets thought, oh, this is great, that shows the road forward. Maybe NATO is starting to fall apart. So they were very keen to play France against Germany, Germany against France, both of them against the United States. This was part of the tactical play. But there are other issues here. And I think they're more of a strategic character.

First, very important issue, is the issue of, China. China becomes an absolute obsession for the Soviet leaders. I mean, it was obsession throughout this period. I talk a lot about this in the book, but certainly by the late 1960s, I mean, they're actually fighting a war with China by 1969, right? They have border clashes at Damanski-Jembaal in March 69, and they're really just paranoid about it. They're absolutely paranoid. And this paranoia of theirs has a cultural underpinning, which is very interesting, which you would not expect. So Brezhnev keeps talking about China as an alien civilization. You know, the Chinese, we cannot trust them. They are strange people, but we're

Europeans. And so he keeps pushing this idea. I even have a chapter or subchapter in the book called Brezhnev, the European. He keeps talking about this idea of the Soviet Union as the European power. And so he sees European deton, but also ultimately the turn towards the United States as part of an effort to counter China, which he sees as an existential threat for Russia. Existential threat, almost in kind of civilizational terms. So that is another factor. Another, in the next factor, I would say, that has been understressed, I think, is the economic factor. And Brezhnev understands that there's money to be made from developing economic relations with the West.

And indeed, if you look at what he's doing in the early 70s, he starts selling, he starts building pipelines, he's trying to get the West Germans to pay for it, which they do. He builds, you know, he starts exporting. I mean, some of that even precedes the 1970s, but it really picks up in the 1970s. And the Soviet economy becomes really interconnected with the world economy, in particular, the Western economy. That's an interesting facet of the Cold War, which you really rarely hear because you almost think in the Altar, on the autarkic terms. So the Soviets were by themselves, the West was by itself.

Not like that at all. In fact, the Soviets increasingly came to depend on their ability to sell oil and gas to the Europeans, earn money from it, hard cash, which then they used to import grain, et cetera. So the economic aspect was very interesting. And indeed, in the first meeting between Brezhnev and Nixon, one of the issues discussed was the idea of when Brezhnevren Bresnev went to Moscow during the summit in May, 1972, And one of the ideas the Soviets were really pushing was the idea of a big gas deal between the United States and the Soviet Union, which ultimately was not realized. So the economic factor was very important.

And finally, and that I think is hugely important, it's the notion of recognition. This is where the Soviets, that's why they put so much emphasis on the so-called basic principles, the document that was signed during the May visit, May 172 visit by Nixon. the document was called basic principles of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, and it emphasized equality. It emphasized equality because for Presbyniv, the key factor was that the Americans were now coming around. As you said, the Americans were recognizing that they're kind of, you know, not necessarily on the way down, but they have to make some space for an emerging power, and this emergent power was the Soviet Union, and therefore the Americans would henceforth have to recognize the Soviet equality

and indeed manage the world together with the United States. So we have this remarkable moment in the spring of 1973 when Henry Kissinger travels to Moscow, Brezhnevsky takes him to Zavido, which is a hunting resort outside of Moscow about two hours away, and they go there hunting boars. And in the privacy of one of the towers, you know, you can imagine Kissinger trying to hunt boars from that position. But anyway, in the privacy of the tower, the, you know, Brezhne basically makes the speech to Kissinger. He says, according to Kissinger's recollection later to a conversation with Nixon,

he says, Brezhne basically told me, you and I, you know, you, the Americans and I, the Soviet Union, we want to run the world, hence the title of the book, to run the world. The idea that basically the United States and the Soviet Union would need to cooperate to manage the world. And then Nixon resigns. Brezhnev gets sick and Scoop Jackson starts making trouble in the Senate. And it all comes under a lot of pressure. How does walk us through how this sort of mutually desired, this is overstating it, but nevertheless, mutually desired condominium, which in the early 1970s seems to be a prospect. It's more complicated than that. Obviously, Nixon and Kissinger want to use China to pressure the Soviets. And it's not actually like everyone's just going to get along. Nevertheless, how does this all fall apart?

Well, it is very interesting. And the big question here is, was it sustainable, really? Because as you say, it seemed like Kissinger was indulging. He was sort of working with Brezhne, but at the same time, the Americans were more than happy to stab the Soviets in the back like they did in the Middle East. Kissinger was famous for his ability to outplay the Soviets there. And the Soviets reciprocated fully where they could score points at America's expense. They did so. So, I mean, it really raises questions about stability of the tone as a concept, which is relevant for the present day as well. If you have a strategic competition between two superpowers, can you really cooperate or will you try to ultimately undercut one another? That's a good question. I think the book is leaning towards the latter explanation. But then, yeah, the personal relationship was important. I mean, Brezhnev loved Nixon.

He absolutely admired Nixon. we have this most remarkable conversation between Nixon and Brezhnev in the Oval Office, where if you read the transcript, you know, the transcript that was published in the foreign relations of the United States, among other places, you know, it reads fine enough, but if you compare it to what was actually said, you realize the Brezhnev that the transcript does not actually reflect the actual conversation. Now, how do we know the actual conversation? It turns out, of course, that Nixon was recording the Oval Office, Hens, you and, Watergate, etc. But we have this remarkable conversation where Brezhnev just goes full out,

you know, just flattering Nixon saying, you know, it's just remarkable, really, replaying the same themes about recognition, greatness, you know, of great powers and so on. So he loved Nixon and he was really disappointed that Nixon was defeated by Watergate. Indeed, the Soviets were even trying. There was a remarkable moment where one of Brezhnev's AIDS was writing to Andropov, who was the head of the KGB saying, can we help Nixon in this Watergate business? Because clearly his enemies are trying to bring him down, and then Drobov responded, well, we're not sure, but we can try.

So there's this remarkable story. In the end, obviously, couldn't do anything. But then Brezhnev himself deteriorated very sharply. He had a breakdown, mental breakdown, in the fall of 1974. And he never developed a good relationship with Ford, who succeeded Nixon. And that lack of personal engagement, I think, mattered a great deal to the fortunes of detente as well,

and which continued to deteriorate. I mean, we had Africa in the mid-1970s, which added fuel to the fire. Then ultimately, we had Afghanistan, which really brought, you know, which, well, by that time, I think detente was dead. So if the transition from, you know, whatever the foreign policy of Stalin and Khrushchev represents to de Tant represents some kind of dimming of. revolutionary zeal and embrace of embrace of something else by the 80s you you describe a soviet union in which the the original legitimating ideology is is essentially dead and needs to be replaced by

something else and that is that is you know a part of gorbachev's project to what extent does american pressure on human rights does what what to what extent is you know scoop jackson and the neocons early neocons like what role do they play in this diminishment of soviet self-confidence? And to what extent is it purely internal and the American role in it is not that significant? I mean, this is a hugely complicated question, of course, because there are different aspects to this. If you look at the late 70s and even going back to Scoop Jackson and his insistence on changing Russian Soviet immigration laws, did that have any impact? I think it mainly just irritated the Soviets. When Carter insisted, for example, on the fact that the Soviets

were not, you know, we're not paying enough attention to human rights. That annoyed the Soviets for particular reason. They felt that this was an example of American lecturing, and they hated lecture being a lecture too. They thought that this was not, this was not in line with their self-perception as a great power. Exhibia your great power. Why is it American lectures to you?

So this is something that I think, in a sense, helped undermine DeTon, did not really necessarily have any positive outcomes. There was a very interesting discussion between Carter and Przinski at one point where Prasinski tells Carter, well, they are so sensitive about this human rights issue because they understand that, and I'm paraphrasing Brzezinski, of course, but he basically says something like, you know, they understand how important it is, they understand their weakness here, et cetera, but in reality, what the Soviets worried about is not, you know,

they did not fear American criticism of human rights for the sake of human rights. rights. What they worried about was the idea of being seen as an inferior power being lectured to. And that's very important. Then as we move into the 1980s, we have not just this aspect, not just the human rights aspect, but we have another aspect. And that is we have Reagan with his ideas about nuclear arms race. And I ask in the book, I said, to what extent did this play into Gorbachev's reforms? And the answer is also quite complicated. In the end, it did actually matter. It did matter because Gorbachev talked about this. Gorbachev said at Polar Bureau meetings, you know, we're being outspent by the Americans. We cannot keep up. So what should we do? This was one of the factors for, for example, Gorbachev's pursuit of nuclear arms control. But there were other factors as well. So we cannot ignore the fact that Gorbachev genuinely was afraid of nuclear conflict. Remember, of course, this came shortly after 1983, Abel Archer,

the world was seemingly on the brink of a war. And Gorbachev was very much empowered that time, I mean, not in powers the general secretary, but basically involved in the public bureau meetings. He was certainly understanding what was going on. And he was also equally afraid of a nuclear war. And of course, when Chernobyl happened in 1986, this added to Gorbachev's apprehension. And I have a remarkable citation in the book, which is unprintable, unfortunately. I think they printed it in the book, but it's probably unspeakable when Gorbachev spoke about what nuclear war would mean for Europe. So that was another. factor. But I think fundamentally, and this is where your reference becomes so important when you

said that the Soviets were basically realizing that ideology or revolutionary ideology was no good, Gorbachev clearly realized that. And he looked to replace that with something else. He still wanted like Soviet leaders before him, he still wanted recognition of Soviet leadership. And that is important. And you can see a lot of the Soviet foreign policy initiatives in light of this quest for recognition quest for leadership, quest for legitimacy through recognition as a global power. And he put a lot of emphasis on this idea of new thinking and in the Cold War, you know, great power responsibility for peace in the world. And I argue in the book that, interestingly, ironically enough, many of this ideas actually go straight back to Brezhnev, straight back to

forsov, so new thinking was not so new after all. But in any case, what Gorbachev was trying to do was to simply, you know, assert Soviet leadership, but reinvent Soviet greatness on a new basis. Final question, but it's a double-barreled big question. So we might go on for a while with it. Why did Gorbachev's project fail in the end? And then part two is considering, I think, most Americans would like to see the Chinese Communist Party's control of China collapse in the way that communism collapsed in Russia, or the Communist Party's control of Russia collapsed. what lessons can we draw from the end of the Soviet Union for American attitudes towards China today? So this is a super interesting question, very difficult question.

I think if we're looking for sources of Soviet collapse and the larger than life factor is, of course, economics. For Schof had promised to build communism within 20 years, but it didn't work. And it was already clear to the Soviets, already by the mid-1960s, that it wasn't going to work. In fact, if we look at the poll of your discussions, the old. knew what was going to happen. In 1968, Andropov wrote a memo to Brezhnev arguing that the Soviet Union was falling behind an R&D, in education, and all, you know, in labor efficiency, all kinds of factors, predicting effectively the defeat. So you defeat in the Cold War, what happened to this memo? It was found in Brezhnev's desk when he died in November 1982. So Brezhnev knew, but he just didn't

know what to do about it. He did not know. Andropov did not. know what to do about it. So in the end, it's important that economic prosperity, economic growth, this is the true source of legitimacy for any government. If the government cannot deliver on the quality of life, then they will have problems. And the Soviets were trying to replace, supplant the lack of domestic legitimacy, for they had no political legitimacy domestically, nor in terms of economic prosperity. They did not have that. They did not have that. they were trying to supplant that lack of domestic legitimacy with external legitimacy, externally endowed,

illegitimacy given to them through recognition by other great powers. But in the end, this contradiction between the Soviet self-perception as a great power and the reality that it really wasn't. It really wasn't. You know, that is what drove the whole Soviet project into the ground. So the fact that the Soviets couldn't deliver economically, I think, is what ultimately brought them to room. Now, if we turn to China, China, I think the Chinese recognized this problem earlier than the Soviets.

And when did they recognize this? Well, clearly in the 1970s already, when they looked at the mess of the Great Look Forward, they looked at the mess of cultural revolution that rocked China's beginning from 1957 and all the way to, effectively, until Miles' death in 1976. And I think they realized that really greatness matters and they also cared about greatness. They all carried, no, Mao Zedong, including, no, Deng Shopin included, they really cared about greatness and bringing China back to centrality in international border. But the means of achieving this greatness could not be the same as what Maltaudon was trying

to do. Because Maltaudan was too ideological in his approach to some of these things and could not realize, could not understand what worked. And of course, Deng Shoping was much more pragmatic when it came. came to these things and decided to really pursue the road of development, abandoned the road of revolution that happened in the 1970s, and provide the economic foundation for Chinese domestic legitimacy upon which external legitimacy can also rest. So the Chinese have a much better sense in this regard. And that's why, you know, today the Soviet Union is no more, but China is

America's strategic competitor. So where, you know, where do we find ourselves? Well, it's, you know, This cold war is still to resolve itself. And the verdict is out. Well, to prepare for its conduct, I can't imagine a better recommendation than to recommend everyone should read Sergey Redchenko's to run the world. The Kremlin's Cold War bid for global power. It's a really impressive contribution. This has been a really interesting conversation.

Thanks so much for making the time. Thank you for having me on the podcast. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.