The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - What Can Soviet Foreign Policy Teach Us About Russia Today?

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

The West's relationship with Russia has been utterly fascinating, confusing, maddening, and encouraging for more than a century. Sergey Radchenko (Distinguished professor at Johns Hopkins University) is the author of a new book called "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power." It's just won the Lionel Gelber Prize, presented by the Munk School for Global Affairs, for the world's best English-language book on foreign affairs. He joins host Steve Paikin for a wide-ranging discussion on the making and breaking of the Soviet UnionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It's called To Run the World, the Kremlin's Cold War bid for global power. It's just won the Lionel Gelber Prize for the world's best English language book on foreign affairs. The author, Sergey Radchenko, is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and we're delighted that it brings him to our studio tonight. Lovely to meet you. I'm so glad to be here. Can I try out my two or three words of Russian that I know? Well, far away. Okay. Здравствуйте. Добрый день.

Okay. Как дела? Очень хорошо. Okay. Отлично. Away we go. That's all I got. That's all I got.

Strangely enough, I want to start our discussion here by asking you about something you say on the very last page of your book. You say that Russia has an unsatiable, self-destructive ambition to run the world, not just run its sphere of influence, but the whole world. Why do you say that? So in that final paragraph, I projected forward, I was trying to understand where Russia is heading. And for historians, it's a difficult thing to say.

Historians have trouble enough understanding the past, never mind projecting or talking about the future. In that particular paragraph, I'll look at what Putin is trying to accomplish. And to me, he seems to be like a person who is trying to gain something from that chaos that is unfolding in the world in order to reposition Russia in a place where it would again exercise the sort of influence which Putin thinks Russia deserves. Not to necessarily run the world single-handedly, but to be in a position to assert its ambition to be one of the great powers involved in the running of the world.

So it's not like Russia is trying to take over the world, and this is not what I argued in the book, but what I argued is that Russia has the ambition to be up there as one of the great powers that are effectively involved in managing the world. Well, let's tell some of the story as you do from World War II until the end of the Soviet Union. And I want to go back. This was the Soviet Union that needed rebuilding after World War II, and this is how you describe

it. Sheldon, if you would, the graphic, please. Some 1,710 cities and over 70,000 villages were completely or partially destroyed. 25 million people were left homeless. Adding to the toll were some 40,000 leveled hospitals, 43,000 libraries, and 84,000 educational institutions. An estimated 25.5 million Soviet citizens perished in the war

and this number does not include another 13.9 million of the dead children. There was not a family left untouched by the conflict. Does that not tell you, Sergei, everything you need to know about why the Soviet Union and now Russia acts in the way that it does? Well, that moment was extremely interesting for Soviet history and also for where Russia finds itself today because the Russians still have this preoccupation, almost obsession with the Second World War. Obviously Russia or the Soviet Union was substantially destroyed, but it also was able to prevail.

It was also able to survive. And at the end of war, it found itself in a position to assert itself into Europe. Soviet post-war planners were thinking that the Soviet Union deserved a sphere of influence because, well, they shed blood for it. They defeated Nazi Germany. So who is there to stop them? And they were thinking in terms of extending far into Europe. They were hoping that the United States would actually welcome that ambition. And that was, of course, the basis for the Yalta agreement. At least that's how Stalin envisioned that.

It didn't quite work out that way. But I think today the Russians still look back at that period, certainly Putin still looks back at that period and says, well, we did so much for Europe, we did so much for the world, and now our contribution is being somehow ignored or not acknowledged enough. Why is this happening, et cetera? So they do still connect their legitimacy discourse today, their legitimacy discourse of the Russian state, to the Soviet victory in the Second World War.

If you go to Yalta and if you look at the facts, was in fact Soviet Union on a par with the United States as a world superpower at that time? I think at that time it probably was. I mean, the Soviet Union effectively was in control of Eastern Europe. And that is, you know, when people say, well, Yalta was such a great betrayal on the part of the United States,

of Poland, for example, and so on and so forth. The Soviets controlled Poland, right, at the point of Yalta. There was very little that the United States could do. What the American president at that time, FDR, wanted to do was to get the Soviets also involved in the war against Japan to help out the Americans. And he was willing to give Stalin a lot of concessions. So Stalin was looking forward to a period of great power cooperation where the Soviets would have their recognized sphere of influence.

And what I emphasize in the book is that question of recognition became very important to Stalin. He valued gains, but he valued legitimate gains even more. And sometimes he was willing to compromise in order to have his gains legitimized by the United States, recognized by the United States, because gains that are legitimate are more long-lasting. Your book really dives into those moments in Soviet and American history where they come to a fork in Soviet and American history where they come to a fork in the road and if they go one way it could be very constructive and if they go another way, which invariably happened, it all goes very badly.

Okay, we have this great power rivalry, so let me ask, did the West have any choice but to acknowledge that the Soviet Union was going to have its way with Eastern Europe after World War II? I know you just touched on Poland, but what about all of Eastern Europe? Well, that was the question. I mean, the United States emerged from the Second World War as also superpower. Not only that, the United States had nuclear weapons, which is something the Soviet Union did not have.

President Truman in 1945 was thinking that he would be able to have his way 85% of the time in any negotiation with the Soviets, right? And when Stalin was faced with this reality he thought, well, how are we supposed to respond to that? If we give any concessions to the Americans they will think that we are giving concessions, we're conceding under pressure, and they will present even more demands to us. So Stalin's response to that was to apply pressure in his turn and that pressure and counter pressure is how we ended up in the Cold War.

But I don't know if it could have been different because if you are an American leader, American president and you're looking at the Soviet Union that may actually have global expansionist ambitions, what is a better position for you to take other than contain that threat? So it's a very tragic situation. Perhaps by containing the threat, you help brain-ebound the Cold War, but if you don't contain the threat well,

you could be dealing down a few years from now, you could be dealing with a much worse situation and much more aggressive leader in Moscow. I learned from your book that George Marshall, General George Marshall, whose plan to rebuild much of the world was offered and accepted by much of the world, was also offered to the Soviet Union and they declined. How big a missed opportunity was that?

It probably was a mistake on their part because it would have, I don't want to say bankrupted, it would not have bankrupted the United States probably, but the Americans really were hoping that they would not take this up, right? They did offer it to them not really with any kind of sincerity, but Stalin was obsessed about the power of the American dollar. And he was worried that the Americans, instead of leaving Europe to him, to Stalin, as he would have expected, they stayed in Europe. And not only that, but they tried to rebuild Europe. And for Stalin, that was something really, really threatening. He was worried about a Marshall Plan basically extending,

or the American aid extending its way into Eastern Europe, into his sphere of influence. And he was trying to push back against that. And some of the most dramatic episodes I talk about in the book are when, for example, the Czechoslovaks, they try to accept Marshall, but Stalin said, you cannot do that. And so there was this conflict between the Soviets and even their own allies in Eastern Europe because Stalin was so obsessed, so paranoid about the Americans.

What he saw is the Americans' plot to get into Eastern Europe, into the Soviet sphere of influence, and buy up the allies with the power of the American dollar. I know it's hard to say, and I know you examined many different options, but what would you say was the actual beginning of the Cold War? So the beginning of the Cold War is very difficult to date, precisely because it was not like a moment where you turn the light off and now we're in the Cold War. It was a slide, and we're not certain that we are in the Cold War

until we properly were in the Cold War. It took several events, developments from approximately the summer of 1945. So the end of the Second World War, you've got Potsdam, you already have some clashes with Potsdam. You have the London Conference of Foreign Ministers in September of 1945. When things really get stuck, then you continue through, you know 1946 and you have George cannons long telegram for example or Churchill's Fulton speech and those were important turning the iron curtain speech That's the iron curtain speech and you have sort of Important events. I don't know when things really become inevitable

You could say that it was inevitable from the start simply because the Americans and the Soviets had a very different vision of the world. Stalin thought in terms of spheres of influence, and he thought that the Americans would keep away from his sphere, and the Americans were not thinking in those terms. Truman thought in terms of an open world, open door policy. And he worried about the Soviets trying to take over Bulgaria and Romania and control their governments, for example. Stalin was thinking, why are you worried about the Soviets trying to take over Bulgaria and Romania and control their governments, for example. Stalin was thinking, why are you worried about Bulgaria and Romania? They're next to us there.

Look where Bulgaria and Romania are and where the United States. That's a different vision altogether, right? So there was a clash of visions between the Americans and the Soviets at that point, which I think you could argue made the Cold War inevitable. Well, on that word inevitable, let's figure out another one of those forks in the road. Stalin dies in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev takes over, there is an opportunity at that moment to either turn down or ratchet up the tension. Of course we know which way it went.

Was it inevitable? So when Stalin died, his successors struggled for power among themselves, but also looked for some sort of a relaxation of tensions with the United States, with the West more broadly. It didn't really work out, and I think the reason it did not work out probably in part has to do with the fact that this is also the period where the Soviets developed proper nuclear capacity. They tested their first nuclear bomb, of course, in August 1949. By the mid-1950s, they have thermonuclear weapons.

They have means of delivery. In 1957, the first ICBM is tested successfully. So for the Soviets, they see themselves, they find themselves in a position where they feel, look, we are invincible, we are this superpower, so why aren't Americans accepting us for what we are? We should be able to get our way most of the time, certainly in the areas next to us, certainly in Germany, for example, et cetera.

So the Soviets become much less inclined towards compromise. I think partly as a result of this realization they have nuclear weapons in their hands and therefore they don't have to compromise. Well, you tell us Khrushchev was obsessed with getting America to respect him. Why was that so important? I think it's not just Khrushchev. All the getting America to respect him. Why was that so important? I think it's not just Khrushchev.

All the Soviet leaders, from Stalin all the way to Gorbachev and even beyond to Putin today, they have been obsessed with this notion of respect, this notion of status, of prestige, of how the world looks at the Soviet Union, at Russia. Why is it so important? I think it's because they somehow connect their legitimacy with external recognition. They want America to recognize them as this great co-equal, great superpower, great power,

because it gives them a sense of greatness than they sell to their own people, saying, look, if the Americans recognize us as great, we must be truly great, right? And Khrushchev was one of those. Khrushchev, with his fairly, fairly, I would say poor background, and if you look at where he came from, right, a very kind of worker, working class background, emerges to be the leader of this superpower armed with nuclear weapons.

I mean, he feels he's entitled to respect. And he then plays with nuclear weapons. He feels he's entitled to respect. And he then plays with nuclear weapons in order to force respect and concessions from Western powers, from Suez in 1956 to the Berlin crisis beginning from 1958 to ultimately the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, where he pushes it a little bit too far and brings the world very close to the brink of a nuclear war. He also, you tell us, seems to be obsessed with the notion that no country can go, you know, if it's in our sphere of influence, we cannot lose a single country, which of course encourages him to invade Hungary in 1956.

Again, was there any alternative but to do that? Well, you know, sometimes the Soviets seem to be willing to make compromises. Think about, for example, the Austrian Treaty in 1955. They are willing to back out. In 1956, though, yes, they invade Hungary. And when you look at their decision-making about invading Hungary It seems that Hrushov was really concerned that the West will take a loss of Hungary As a sign that the Soviets are actually quite weak and then push somewhere else And this is all connected of course to what's happening in the Middle East at that time because you've got the Suez crisis

unfolding at the same time with the British and the French, together with the Israelis effectively attacking Egypt. And so Khurshov connected those two issues in his mind. And he's saying, well, if they win in the Middle East and also in Hungary, although in Hungary, it wasn't like it wasn't that they were winning in Hungary, it's just the Hungarian people could not put up with that horrible system that the Soviets had imposed on them and rebelled against it. But Khrushchev saw that as a win, possible win for the West.

He did not want to allow them to have that victory because that would undermine his own standing, his own legitimacy, and the Soviet greatness as the superpower with clients. Well, there is a wonderful paradox that you describe in the book, because on the one hand, Khrushchev does want love and respect

from the United States, but he also wants recognition from third world countries for being the revolutionary anti-imperialist that he is. How does he make sense of those conflicting things? And that becomes so difficult, not just for Khrushchev, but also for his successor, who overthrew him in 1964, Leonid Brezhnev.

How do you square this idea of a recognition by the West as a co-equal superpower, which presumably, if you have that sort of recognition, you then pull back from your various misadventures in the global south, or the third world, as it was called at that time. At the same time, how do you defend your reputation as the leader of the revolutionary world.

And the way that the Soviets did it, under Khrushchev and also under Brezhnev, was to basically say, okay, we are a co-equal superpower of the United States, so why is it that the West expects that we pull back from the global south and stop supporting global revolution? Because if the Americans are allowed to support counterrevolution,

we should be allowed to global revolution. Because if the Americans are allowed to support counterrevolution, we should be allowed to support revolution. It's our kind of a right as a superpower. So they try to square that, but that created difficult situations. For example, during the Vietnam War, when President Nixon hoped that by enticing the Soviets into a better relationship with the United States, he would get them to also put pressure on Vietnam, to stop supporting Vietnam, etc. And that linkage, as the idea was called, never worked precisely for that reason, that

for the Soviets that recognition as a global revolutionary power was very important, just as important as being recognized as a co-equal superpower with the United States. As we show a picture of Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy shaking hands at the Vienna Summit in June of 1961, we know that a little more than a year later, the world will almost come to nuclear war. Through your research, what more did you learn about how close we came to blowing everything up at that point? So I had a remarkable time doing research

on the Cuban Missile Crisis. You would think that everything has been said about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and there's nothing to uncover. Turns out, there's a lot of stuff that we still do not know. And one of the things that I was able to get access to were Soviet documents written by the Ministry of Defense in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, where they assessed how it went from the perspective of the Soviet military. And it's crazy that the Soviet,

actually the Russian Ministry of Defense declassified these documents in the spring of 2022. So just after they invaded Ukraine, presumably, you know, they thought, okay, let's see what else we can do. And they decided to declassify documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis. But anyway, there's a lot of interesting detail. Some of that is in the book about how, just how they bungled up the whole, I mean, it's remarkable that they pulled it off even. It was logistically so crazy,

the first time the Soviets deployed this sort of weapons so far outside of their borders, right? The way that they were trying to then construct those bases, the way that they were trying to hide the missiles under palm trees, which was totally absurd, right? You could not do that. All of that is in the documents. They went to Cuba not even knowing

what the electrical current was, and so they couldn't get their machines to work there because the electrical current did not work. So a lot of interesting new stuff, but what I found most interesting and remarkable in the documents was just how afraid Ryshov personally was of a nuclear war, And you could see that after Castro, Fidel Castro suggested to him that perhaps they should carry out a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States.

They had missiles there in Cuba. And Khrushchev just went ballistic. No pun intended. No pun intended, that's right. He just thought, you know, how crazy is this guy Fidel Castro who is, he clearly does not understand what nuclear war means. And so later he would just fume. And we have this remarkable rants by Khrushchev that were taken down by his notekeepers, whoever,

you know, staff that worked around for show. He would have this long rants about how crazy Fidel Castro was and what is he doing. He said he's not aware of the dangers of nuclear war, which are then, you know, which show why he ultimately decided to back down. So I think that is, you know, interesting. We knew that he was worried about nuclear war. Of course we knew, but we did not know just how much he was worried in October 1962. One of the things that your book also touches on is the notion that even though the Soviet

Union and China were both communist countries during this time, they did not get along very well at all. And this leads to, Sheldon, next picture if we could please, the world famous 1972 visit by then US President Richard Nixon with Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier. The feeling of not being respected enough by the United States persisted, as you've told us in the Soviet Union. And Richard Nixon and Zhou Enlai make this toast saying, we hold the future of the world in our hands. And Brezhnev is infuriated by this. How does he react? I'm glad you found this passage

because it is one of my favorite passages in the book. So Nixon goes to China, makes this toast, the future of the world will be in the hands of the United States. In China, Kissinger later goes to Moscow and Brezhnev is like, what is he saying? What did the American president just say? Kissinger tries to explain it away by saying,

well, he had too much to drink, et cetera, et cetera. But of course, from the Soviet perspective, that's infuriating because they want to be recognized as a co-equal superpower, not the Chinese. Look at the Soviet Union, look where Chinese, look where the Soviet Union is. Of course, the Soviet Union is much more important. Then in 1973, Brezhnev travels to the United States

and he has a dinner, he goes to San Clemente in California, has a dinner with Nixon there, and Nixon makes a toast, which is not reflected in the American documents because only the Soviet interpreter was present, so we just have the Russian side of that. He makes a toast, he says, actually the future of the world will be decided, or it's in the

hands of the United States and the Soviet Union. And Brezhnev is just so happy about this, this little memorandum with a classification, top secret is sent around to the Politburo saying, look, the Americans are finally recognizing that we are also holding the future of the world together with them. This is so important. Well, we have a picture actually of those two men toasting. This is not in San Clemente, but this is at the White House in Washington, June 1973. Richard Nixon on the right, Leonid Brezhnev on the left.

And I'm going to ask you, Sergey, another one of those what if questions, okay? Shortly thereafter, Nixon gets embroiled in Watergate and he has to resign. Brezhnev gets very sick and he becomes, you know, he's kind of reflective of the sclerotic nature of the Soviet Union. What if neither of those two things had happened? What if Brezhnev didn't get sick? What if Nixon didn't get taken down by Watergate? What might the future have been?

So that's the counterfactual. That's very hard to answer, but it does show the role of individuals in history. And it's clear that Brezhnev and Nixon liked each other more or less. Brezhnev certainly loved Nixon. And we have that meeting in the Oval Office in June 1973 where Brezhnev was there. We have an audio version of that because, of course, Nixon was taping the Oval Office Room, of course,

ultimately led to Watergate, I mean, not to Watergate, but to his eventual resignation. And you could hear that, you could just hear the recording, which I have heard in the original, and you can see just how much Brezhnev was so eager to make Nixon love him. You know, he was just really flattering Nixon.

It was just hilarious. He hugged and kissed him. Absolutely. He loved it. He loved Nixon. And then, of course, when Nixon was forced to resign, Brezhnev could not understand that. There's a hilarious episode where one of Brezhnev's aides writes to the KGB head, Yuriy Andropov, saying, well, it seems that Nixon's enemies are after him.

Can't we find any compromise on them? And, you know, Andropov... Compromising material. Yeah, compromising material. Andropov responds saying, well, you know, there's not so much that we can do, we can try, but obviously didn't work, whatever they tried. So Nixon resigns and Brezhnev, I think, is heartbroken by that and he feels

that he could take this relationship somewhere. But then he's also, his health declines as well as I recount in the book after 74 and he becomes more of a figurehead and the bureaucracy takes over more or less and steers Soviet foreign policy in a more conservative direction away from this kind of, you know, engagement, friendly engagement with the United States, I think. So it's hard to

say, it's hard to say. Of course there were systemic factors and the systemic, the key systemic factor is that these are two superpowers and they have a strategic competition. So if you have two guys who like each other, can they stop the strategic competition or does it have, kind of does it just happen by itself no matter who's at the helm? I don't know how to answer this question, but I think it was an interesting turning point.

1985 Mikhail Gorbachev takes over and he brings some very new thinking with him and let's go to the book now for an excerpt on that. Gorbachev made non-intervention the central pillar of his foreign policy and an integral part of his new thinking that he now sought to inspire the world with. The key message that Gorbachev was trying to carry across was that it was not that the Soviet Union had been defeated, but the Cold War itself had been defeated. And with it, America's attempts to tell the world how to live.

OK, Sergei, here's another one of these forks in the road. Gorbachev is obviously a very different leader. He's younger, he's dynamic, he's forward-thinking. What should the United States have done when he took over? For example, would that have been a good time to invite the Soviet Union to join NATO? Hard question. You know, a hard question.

I've looked at this very closely, including at the discussions around NATO and what to do about German reunification. That's February 1990. Very controversial point, because later Putin would say that promises were made by Western leaders and those promises were broken. My take on this is that no real promises were made, or in other words, no promises were made that were actually accepted by the Soviets,

because way into the spring of 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev continued to act in a way that showed that he wanted to have his way with NATO, which was to basically get German neutrality or something like that and get NATO pull out from Germany. In the end, he had to accept that United Germany would join NATO, which is ultimately, of course, what happened. But then he became increasingly desperate.

In May 1990, he actually offered the Americans, said, I want to join NATO too, the Soviet Union, can you accept us? And the Americans kind of more or less ignored it. At that point, it was just simply unthinkable in so many ways. And then the Americans thought that, for them, NATO was very, very important,

and this was an anchor that kept them in Europe, and bringing the Soviets into it would clearly undermine NATO from within, probably end NATO in the way we know it. Should they have been more forthcoming? I don't know, I don't know, because the Soviets were defeated in the Cold War. So do you then accept your opponent into your key military alliance?

Why would you do that, right? Why would you do that? If the Soviets won in the Cold War when the Americans were clamoring, knocking at the door, please accept us into the war so packed, would the Soviets be so kind to them and do that? I don't know. There's some, there's an element of realism here that clearly was at play. And I think the Americans were generally forthcoming and were generally supportive. George Bush, clearly President George Bush was very supportive of Mikhail Gorbachev for

a period of time. So it is a fork in the road, and who knows how things would have turned out if the Americans perhaps were willing to do more about including the Soviet Union or Russia in Western security architecture. But I don't know, because I'm a historian, right? I cannot rethink history in a different way

and say something would be much better if it rethink history in a different way and say something would be much better if it turned out in a different way. Understood. Couple of minutes left here. I want to touch on two more things. Your book, of course, ends with the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. But let me bring you to today.

Is it a good and constructive thing for the world that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin seem to get along so well? I think it's good when leaders have good relations. It's not so good when they use those good relations to undermine other countries, undermine their security, erode their security. Look, it's very clear what Vladimir Putin is trying to do. He's trying to reconstruct a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

He feels that he's entitled to Ukraine. And he's hoping that President Trump shares this appreciation. This is what you didn't really have at Yalta. We begin with Yalta. And they said that the Americans had a different vision of the world, a world that should be open and not be a world of empires of 19th century imperialism. Well, today you're dealing with an American president

who may actually be thinking more like a 19th century imperialist, that the world should be divided into spheres of influence. The question then becomes, well, what is Russia's sphere of influence? And then another question is, what will those countries that are supposed to be assigned to Russia's fears of influence, you know, how will they react? Should we ignore their agency? And of course, the answer is no, we shouldn't. No, we shouldn't. It matters what people in Kiev think.

It matters what Ukraine thinks. It matters what Europe thinks. And I don't think that they will allow Russia to determine their future, to hold their future in their hands. Let's finish on this. More than a couple of decades ago, I had the honor of interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev for this television station, and I asked him if he believed the West was actually trying to actively hold Russia down.

Let's see what he said. Sheldon, roll it if you would. Russia is a competitor. Russia is an educated country, well-educated people, tremendous resources, perhaps half the resources of the world are in Russia. And if that country gains momentum, it will be a competitor. In a very competitive market, there will be another competitor. So some people in the West think pragmatically, let Russia be down as long as possible.

But that would not be, in my opinion, the best style of handling relations with Russia. The best style is partnership, alliance, and friendship. A calm Russia, stable Russia, a successfully developing democratic Russia is a lot better than an unstable Russia. In which case, in spite of everything you just said, should we be cheering on a closer relationship between the United States and Russia? I think in the, you know, for the future, a closer relationship between the United States and Russia is a good thing. The question is what actually allows for this close relationship to prosper.

If you're building a close relationship on the basis of Russia's domination of its neighbors, or you look away when the Russians basically run over Ukraine, waging an aggressive war, I don't think that is a healthy foundation for a long-term partnership. Gorbachev just spoke about democracy. Well, Russia is not a democratic country. Russia is a dictatorship today, right? So having a wonderful relationship with a dictatorship that Russia is today,

is that good for the future of the world? I don't know. Worse things have happened, I suppose. We'll see how it turns out, but I don't have great expectations from the current effort by President Trump to reengage with Russia on the basis. I am happy to recommend to run the world the Kremlin's Cold War bid for global power. It has brought Sergei Rodchenko to our studio. And congratulations on winning the Gelber Prize. That's a terrific honor.

I'm so thrilled. Steve, thank you for having me here. We really appreciate it. A delight.