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Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Sergey Radchenko, Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, to discuss his new book, To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power. They chat about how the Soviet struggle with the United States and China reflected its irreconcilable ambitions as a self-proclaimed superpower and the leader of global revolution, and how this tension drove Soviet policy throughout the second half of the 20th Century. They also discuss whether Soviet foreign policy was motivated more by Marxist-Leninist ideology or by traditional Russian imperialism and security concerns.
Get the book here: https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/history/diplomatic-and-international-history/run-world-kremlins-cold-war-bid-global-power?format=HB
Show Notes:
The Bulwark: Brian Stewart – “Going to War for Respect”
Financial Times: Edward Luce – “To Run the World — Moscow’s quest for power and parity with the US”
Foreign Affairs: John Lewis Gaddis – “Why Would Anyone Want to Run the World?”
Foreign Policy: Casey Michel – “Putting the Cold War on the Couch”
The New Statesman: Serhii Plokhy – “Russia’s great-power complex”
The Spectator: Rodric Braithwaite – “China’s role in Soviet policy-making”
Creators & Guests
Host
Tim Benson
Ill Literacy, the newest podcast from The Heartland Institute, is helmed by Tim Benson, Senior Policy Analyst for Heartland’s Government Relations team. Benson brings on authors of new book releases on topics including politics, culture, and history on the Ill Literacy podcast. Every episode offers listeners the author’s unique analysis of their own book release. Discussions often shift into debate between authors and Benson when ideological differences arise, creating unique commentary that can’t be found anywhere else.
What is Ill Literacy: Books with Benson?
The Heartland Institute's podcast discussing notable new works with their authors. Hosted by Tim Benson.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Illiteracy Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Benson, a senior policy analyst at the Heartland Institute and National Free Market Think Tank. We're in the episode a 160 something range now with the podcast. So we've been around for quite a bit now. But for those of you just tuning in for the first time, basically, what we do here in the podcast is, I invite an author on to discuss a book of theirs that's been newly published or recently published on something or someone or some event or some idea, etcetera, etcetera that we think you guys would like to hear a conversation about.
Tim Benson:And then, hopefully, at the end of the podcast, you go ahead and give the book a purchase and give it a read. So if you like this podcast, please consider giving your literacy a 5 star review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the show and also by sharing with your friends since that's the best way to support programming like this. And my guest today is doctor Sergei Radchenko, and doctor Radchenko is the Wilson e Schmidt distinguished professor at the Henry a Kissinger Center For Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, based at SAIS Europe in Italy. You may have seen his work in Foreign Affairs or The Guardian, The Journal of Democracy, Foreign Policy, The Spectator, The National Interests, and The New York Times, among many others. And, some of his books include 2 Suns in the Heavens, the Sino Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, and Unwanted Visionaries, the Soviet Failure in Asia.
Tim Benson:And he is here to discuss his latest book, his awesome new book, To Run the World, The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power, which was published back in May by Cambridge University Press. So, yeah, doctor Rodchenko, thank you so so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it.
Sergey Radchenko:Well, Tim, thank you for inviting me. I look forward to the conversation.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Actually, before we get to the book itself, I was checking out your bio, I think on the university page or somewhere. And, it said you grew up in on, Sakhalin Island, which, I think would probably make you the first person in my life I've ever talked to from Sakhalin. So that's pretty rad. That's a first for me, so that's cool.
Tim Benson:It's
Sergey Radchenko:it's a remote place. That's right. My my journey from Sakhalin to Sais,
Tim Benson:has been
Sergey Radchenko:one full of surprises, but, you know, stranger things happen. So
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. No. I was actually I don't I mean, if you can tell from the getup, I'm somewhat of a surfer. So I was actually went on surf line to see what the, if you guys have any good surf beaches out there in in Sakhalin.
Tim Benson:It looks like you got a couple.
Sergey Radchenko:Yeah. Yeah. I I suppose so. Although the water temperature would be quite frigid.
Sergey Radchenko:Well You'd have to wear, like, a dry suit, I think.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I grew up in New Jersey, so half I mean, like, all the the good surf months are in the winter, you know, fall and winter when the water temperature is, like, you know, 40 degrees. So it's nothing nothing I can't handle with a good wet suit, but, no.
Tim Benson:Yeah. So that's cool. Alright. The book itself, it's a, tour de force. It's really a fantastic, fantastic book, and it's something I'm gonna be, thinking about quite a bit.
Tim Benson:And, it's gonna be a sort of a go to reference, you know, pretty much going forward, because there's just just so much new stuff in it we haven't seen, before. And, you know, you did a ton of archival work for the book, not just in, in Russia, but also in China. And I think people, you know, just, you know, just coming to it, just thinking about it, you know, for the first time would be shocked to know that these archives in Russia and China were so open and available, to you. You know, it doesn't seem to to jive with the with the authoritarianism of those two regimes. So whether let me ask you.
Tim Benson:So when you were doing all this archival, digging, were there, like, a few things or anything that really, stood out to you that, like, you know, when you found it and you're reading through it, like, made the, you know, the eyes, your eyes sort of pop out of your pop out of your head, anything like that?
Sergey Radchenko:So so, Tim, thank you for for that. You know, archival research is dear to the heart of historian, but those people working in China and Russia have frequently faced difficulties getting to archival documents. Now I was very fortunate, to live in China at a time of relative openness, which has now come to an end. And by relative, I mean, it wasn't really open. You'd still have to go and negotiate your way into the archives, and I have some crazy, crazy stories about doing this in China, but I spent about 5 years there.
Sergey Radchenko:Mhmm. And I I was able to collect, a good amount of materials that, no historian has ever used before for for any research, showing how the Chinese thought about the world. So that was very useful. But then what happened was that in the early, 2010 20 tens, Russia suddenly opened up this gigantic, depository of materials on on on the Cold War. Now why they did it?
Sergey Radchenko:I don't know. You know, Putin, of course, has been absolutely obsessed with history. He talks about history all the time. He sees himself as something of a contemporary Peter the Great and, you know, brings, like, archival documents to meetings and the government as a personal character. Maybe it had something to do with this, maybe for some other reason.
Sergey Radchenko:But, anyway, the documents opened up in Russia, showing the Russian story, documents opened up in Russia showing the Russian story, in the Cold War, and that was there just at the right time. I worked there for a few years collecting these documents, which, of course, informed this book that we're talking about today. And they were so exciting that I would just go on in the archives in the morning, and I could not you know, you would have to drag me out
Tim Benson:at night.
Sergey Radchenko:Everything we thought we knew about the Cold War, well, you know, a lot of that was right, but there was always some crazy detail that we did not know about, that that was right there in the documents, for the taking. And that was very fortunate because, of course, now this materials, it's not that they've closed, although partially that's the case in China. They're off limits. You know, there's no way. In Russia, they're kind of still open, but who will go to Russia?
Tim Benson:And those will
Sergey Radchenko:be taken hostage by the government or, you know, or arrested for in in prison for 30 years. I'm I'm not gonna I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not taking this chance.
Tim Benson:So I get you.
Sergey Radchenko:Yeah. So so so you asked me, you know, what what what are some interesting stories? Tons of them. Right? I I found bits and pieces, for example, that suggested that that the the Soviets were able to decrypt American intelligence, or rather American, cable traffic.
Sergey Radchenko:And so they knew what the Americans were talking about with regard to South Korea, and that information fed into Stalin's decision to authorize the Korean War. I mean, that's something we didn't know about. And there were new bits of information about the Cuban Missile Crisis. For example, a postmortem by, by the Soviet military who went to Cuba in 1962 with the missiles, you know, nuclear missiles. It had the United States.
Sergey Radchenko:And then after after the whole thing fell apart, wrote a a a report explaining what happened and how, you know, the whole operation was completely crazy. There were a lot of interesting bits and bits and pieces on the Middle East, and and in particular on this or, actually, on the Soviet American relationship. That, I think, is something I would emphasize, particularly the relationship with between Richard Nixon and Daniel Brezhnev, the Soviet leader. You know, Brezhnev loved Nixon. He loved meeting him.
Sergey Radchenko:You know? He so there's some of the that is not in the American archives, but it's in the Russian archives about their conversations, for example, that I found really striking and interesting. And some of the most striking things are conversations between Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader, and the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who would get together and talk about, like, the future of the world and how to build the communism.
Tim Benson:The golden toilets. Right?
Sergey Radchenko:Yeah. Building toilets made of gold and you really stuff. What is this? You know, are these people crazy? So there's a lot of great stuff and, obviously, for historian working on on a broad subject like that, the Cold War.
Sergey Radchenko:You know, obviously, decades, there was a lot of stuff that I could, take from from these materials.
Tim Benson:Yeah. The the Brezhnev, Nixon relationship is inter it's so interesting. It it's that you wouldn't think, you know, they would have been so worn to each other if they just had, like, you know, reading this stuff, I was thinking of, just, like, really goofy things, like, imagining, you know, like, a buddy cop movie where, like, Brezhnev and Nixon are partners and, you know, like, a lethal weapon or something like that, you know, with, like, Nixon and Brezhnev or something. But, anyway, off of that, stupid stuff that flows through my head. Well, I guess the the normal entry question, which I probably should ask you first about the, before I ask you about the archives and stuff.
Tim Benson:But, just basically, you know, what, you know, what made you wanna write this book? What was what was the genesis of the project? And, how long did it take you to, you know, from start to finish?
Sergey Radchenko:Right. So we have, we have 45 minutes. Right? I mean, I I I could go into great detail about why Yeah.
Tim Benson:Go for it.
Sergey Radchenko:Subject like that. I mean, obviously, there's something of a personal history, for me. You mentioned that I grew up in Sakhalin Island, and that, of course, was partially partially overlapped with the Cold War, but also with the end of the Cold War. So I, left Sakhalin when I was age 15, went to Texas, all places, and studied in Texas. And and but but, you know, I was always fascinated by that history of confrontation, not just the superpower confrontation, not the Soviet American confrontation, but also the Chinese element.
Sergey Radchenko:And, of course, being from the, Far East of the Soviet Union, the China element was very much present in my thinking. So that's how I really got involved in the study of history with the focus on the Cold War and a focus in particular on relation between China and the USSR, and that is a big part of the book, of course. But then, and, you know, and then I did did various bits and pieces about the Cold War in previous books. But then I realized that what needed to be told is a general history of the Cold War, a seen from the, for, you know, from the stand up standpoint, of the Kremlin or Beijing. And, of course, I had access to materials that allowed me to do just that.
Sergey Radchenko:So it's really a combination of, of of of my interest and also the availability of materials that then came together, and that allowed me to to put together this narrative that is not just empirically quite well, grounded in in archival documents, but also has a kind of overarching thesis, a a kind of general claim about the underlying motivations of of Soviet foreign policy to certain extent also also Chinese foreign policy. And what I argued in the book is that the Soviet leaders during the Cold War valued nothing more than their own legitimacy. They wanted to be seen as legitimate leaders of a great power, and they wanted that greatness of theirs to be recognized, first and foremost by the United States because they saw that the Americans were the great recognizers, the other power out there that could grant them this recognition. And so you could really go back to the origins of the Cold War and all the way go all the way through to the end of the Cold War and even beyond. And that's, by the way, one of the big arguments of the book that we thought the Cold War ended and it was all fine, but, actually, there were a lot of continuity between the Cold War and the post Cold War.
Sergey Radchenko:The Kremlin craved nothing as much as American recognition as a great power, and a lot of its foreign policy decisions from 1945 and even before that all the way to the present, are rooted and craving for recognition.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And, you talk about in the book that the, you know, these sources of Soviet ambitions are, you know, not specifically Soviet. They're not specifically Marxist Leninist, but, you know, they as you said, they both predate and postdate the USSR and just sort of overlap with the Cold War. But, how far does the lens of Marxism, Leninism, looking through that lens, how far does that get us into understanding Soviet behavior?
Sergey Radchenko:Sure. I mean, after reading the book, some people got this impression that I'm against ideology. I'm basically saying that ideology doesn't matter, and to understand the Cold War, we have to focus on ambition, on greatness, and things like that. I think that's only partly correct. I I do talk about ideology a lot in the book, both in its in the instrumental sense that the Soviet used it.
Sergey Radchenko:So, for example, they would have you know, they would they pursued a particular foreign policy, for reasons of greatness, where they wanted to expand Soviet influence or whatever, but they, framed it in ideological terms as in, you know, promotion of revolution. Sometimes, though, things work together, and its history is is multi causal. Right? So you cannot say, well, even they themselves, the Soviets themselves, may not necessarily have realized why they, took, to particular decisions. Was it for ideological reasons?
Sergey Radchenko:Was it perhaps for reasons of of some kind of national greatness or that they desired the recognition of their great power status or something like that? So there are a combination of factors. So I I I look at ideology and I say, well, fundamentally, how you know, what was ideology and how does it explain Soviet actions? And in the book, I argue that if you look at, you know, ideology as a set of texts, or particular doctrine that is, you know, expressed in the writings of the ideologues from Marx to Lenin, then it's not it's very limited. I mean, the likes of Nikita Khrushchev and Lenin Priyesh, do you think they read Dasca Patel by Karl Marx?
Sergey Radchenko:I I bet they never did. I don't think they ever did. Did. Right?
Tim Benson:Probably not because most people have not read. I mean I've been really serious. Volume 2 or volume 3. No way.
Sergey Radchenko:I mean, if leaders of the communist, yeah, the the communist state did not read Das Kapital, then, you know, how do we explain their And it's a lot of the case actually, a lot a lot
Tim Benson:Engels probably didn't even read it. You know?
Sergey Radchenko:Oh, okay. Well, now you're walking in thin ice there. But, but no. So this is one way. But this is a very limited way of understanding ideology.
Sergey Radchenko:So in the in the, opening of the book in the introduction, I I probed this question. I said, well, what is ideology? Is it a way of viewing the world? Is it a lens for understanding the world? Well, if this is how we define ideology, then certainly, of course, you know, the the Soviets acted in the way that they acted because they viewed the world in the way that they viewed the world.
Sergey Radchenko:But that is not just marxism Leninism, and that is the point that is worth emphasizing because there are different aspects of this worldview that the Soviets had that had nothing to do with Marx and Lenin. Whether it's the imperialist Russian tradition that goes back into 19th century, even further, back, whether it's, well, sometimes it was pure racism, you know, cultural stereotypes. And look at how Brezhnev approach approached the question of China. I mean, Brezhnev was obsessed about China. Was it for Marxist Leninist reasons?
Sergey Radchenko:I argue that not at all. He he had a civilizational concerns about China. He thought, you know, he was afraid of China on almost racial grounds, and they documented all very well through his various conversations, his statements. He never quotes Marx, but he does say certain things about China that make you wonder. It's like, where did he pick up these ideas about China?
Sergey Radchenko:You know? So I try to trace these ideas. I try to put them all back together, in in in presenting a kind of a world view that you could say, well, this is ideology. Fine. But this is not marxism Leninism, and I want to make a distinction between these two things.
Sergey Radchenko:I think by now I've confused our listeners quite a
Tim Benson:lot. No. No.
Sergey Radchenko:But that is that that is, you know, that's a point worth emphasizing. I'm not against ideology. I'm just we have to be clear what ideology actually means and how it actually fits in Soviet decision making.
Tim Benson:Right. Actually, let's go back, to the, like, the very beginning of the book. As you start the book with these vignettes, from, I think it's called the Great Patriotic War, you know, the the Eastern Front, you know, from Khrushchev and Brezhnev and Gorbachev, of, you know, things that they experienced during the war. And, so explain to us why these vignettes are instructive for the rest of the book because we have this this through line between basically all these leaders of the Soviet Union, where World War 2 is central to their thinking, you know, the the destruction caused by the war or the the human cost of the war. So what exactly is the impact of World War 2 on their, thought processes as leaders of 1 of the, you know, the the 2 great nuclear superpowers?
Sergey Radchenko:Well, that's a great question, Tim, and I do and that's what that's why I start the book with this recollection of these leaders about their experience in the 2nd World War because I do think it matters. It matters, you know, what we experienced historically defines us as individuals today. You know, the fact that I grew up, on the ruins of the Soviet empire in the in the Soviet Far East as things were crumbling. Did did this have an effect on my world view? Of course, it did, you know, in in various ways.
Sergey Radchenko:I don't wanna go into this because this is about Soviet leaders and not me. But I approached the question with the same, attitude, and I was trying to understand what is it that they feared most of all. And, of course, the answer to this is they feared the repetition of the 2nd World War, which they experienced firsthand. And I talk about Khrushchev, who was at Stalingrad and offers vivid recollections of the of the destruction and death that he encountered there. His own son died in the 2nd World War.
Sergey Radchenko:Brezhnev, also, the Soviet leader, after Khrushchev, had similar experiences. And then even Mikhail Gorbachev also experienced the 2nd World War, albeit he was just a teenager when it unfolded in, the Russian southwest where he lived at the time. And so after the war, once the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons, you know, the question was, well, how what does you know, what do you do at this point? Right? You have nuclear weapons.
Sergey Radchenko:Do you risk having a war with the west, remembering what war was like, recalling your own personal experiences? And the answer for these people was no. No. In fact, that's why Khrushchev backed off in many of the crisis this crisis that he engineered himself from the Berlin crisis from 58 to 61 to the Cuban Missile Crisis. He will push to the brink, and then he would back off.
Sergey Radchenko:Why is that? Because he recalled experiences of the 2nd World War. In fact, during one of the meetings on the Berlin crisis in 1961, he spoke directly to his experience in the 2nd World War, and they and they kind of you know, he had this recollection of the irrationality of humans. Why why do people do crazy things? And understanding that people are not necessarily rational, he didn't want to push his luck too far, and it's very fortunate, for us because then he backed off.
Sergey Radchenko:He backed off in Berlin. He backed off in Cuba thinking that he had pushed too far. If he did not have that experience of the 2nd World War, would he still be as careful? I'm not sure. And that's actually an important point because, of course, today, Russian leaders do not have the experience, the direct experience of the 2nd World War.
Sergey Radchenko:If you think Vladimir Putin was actually born in the early 19 fifties, so that's already the post war period. It's a very different story. And then, you know, going back to the Soviets, Brezhnev. For Brezhnev, the idea of keeping peace, maintaining peace, building peace was actually, it replaced for him any kind of ideology that you might want to talk about. So he pursued a foreign policy of peace, and he really meant it.
Sergey Radchenko:He really wanted to build up what he called what was, at that time, called in some quarters a condominium between the Soviet Union and the United States where these two great powers, the superpowers, would manage the world, of course, for him, it was also a question of status. Yeah. Would be recognized as co managers of the world by Richard Nixon. Great. You know, would work together, but the idea would be to preserve peace, make sure that they that the 2 superpowers would be able to pull back from any kind of conflict that could potentially be triggered by their clients somewhere, you know, that could potentially bring on a 3rd, the 3rd World War nuclear war.
Tim Benson:Yeah. I think it's kinda hard for Americans, to really wrap their heads around just the the uniqueness of the the eastern front in World War 2. I mean, it's really like a war that's almost sui generis. You know? I mean, the amount of, just destruction and the human toll.
Tim Benson:And I mean, you know, Hitler had basically announced to his generals, you know, before the right before the invasion that this is, you know, this is gonna be a, its own new form of war here that, you know, the gloves are off, you know, throw morality out the window, whatever you think about Geneva Convention. This isn't a war of extermination. And, I mean, it really basically almost was or pretty much was that, just the the the cost, the toll on on the Soviet Union of that war is, you know, like I said, I think it's very difficult for Americans to really comprehend,
Tim Benson:you
Tim Benson:know, the amount of villages destroyed, the amount of, you know, industry wiped out, the the environmental destruction, obviously, the, you know, the massive, massive human costs of that war. So, I think that's,
Sergey Radchenko:nice to have a for them. Right? They still talk about it today, but I think today and still today, it serves as the basis for the legitimation of the Russian regime today.
Tim Benson:But today,
Sergey Radchenko:the difference is that they did not experience it firsthand.
Tim Benson:Right. Right.
Sergey Radchenko:Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Benson:That's a big problem. Alright. So speaking of the war or getting right out of the, you know, at the end of the war. So the Soviets, Stalin, and, you know, the rest of the politburo were actually pretty hopeful. They had this hopeful vision of the post war world and, you know, the Soviet position in Europe and and elsewhere.
Tim Benson:What were the Soviets, their core concerns coming out of the war in 1945?
Sergey Radchenko:Well, it was both concerns and hopes. They prevailed in the 2nd World War. They emerged as the leading military power in Europe, and moreover, a long term rival, Germany, had been vanquished. Other potential European, you know, claimants to power have been generally weakened, whether it's France that lay prostrate or Britain that was thoroughly, demolished also during the second world war. And the Soviets felt that they were in a good position to assert their power across Europe.
Sergey Radchenko:And so they had a number of planning committees to plan for the post war world. And one of the things that that strikes you as you read through the materials of those planning committees, one of them was headed by Maxim Litvinov, former foreign minister or foreign commissar. There was one headed by von Meyers, key former ambassador to the UK. You know, they prepared this they had this deliberate deliberations and prepared these long reports for Stalin, in which the, you know, the striking thing is that they kind of they they they just the extent of their ambition, they thought that the Soviets would be able to project their power on the post across the European continent with Britain just sort of balancing offshore. But in the north, they they thought that they could potentially reach as far as Sweden in terms of just projection of their influence.
Sergey Radchenko:In the south, obviously, they eyed the Turkish straits. They felt that they had to control those in order to have access to, you know, out from the Black Sea, control the Black Sea, obviously, but also have access out into the Mediterranean. And they also thought that they would be able to keep Germany in small pieces, disunited, and and weakened, potentially as an agricultural country. That was one of the ideas that was being proposed at that time. So they were pretty ambitious, and and very 19th century imperialistic in terms of their thinking.
Sergey Radchenko:I wouldn't say that thinking was was something extraordinary for the European context. I mean, yeah, those people came out of the 19th century. A lot of them. Right? Stalin thought on those terms, and the British also thought on those terms.
Sergey Radchenko:It was actually the Americans who thought differently. It was, it was the Americans who came to the second to the end of the 2nd world war with a different vision a vision that would go beyond the 19th century spheres of influence concept that would that that proposed a more open world, and that is that perhaps actually takes us to the key reasons for why the Cold War broke, and broke out. It was this clash of visions between a very 19th century imperialistic Soviet vision of series of influence and the more open American vision of of of an open world.
Tim Benson:Yeah. So on that, I mean, I know if you ask this question to a 1,000 different people, you're gonna get a 1,000 different answers. But, you know, what's your take on the, you know, the who started the Cold War debate?
Sergey Radchenko:So there are, there are sort of 2 main schools of thought here. Right? The first is the traditional school of thought that blamed everything Stalin. Stalin was responsible because he was just an angry expansionist wanted to dominate the world. Then a revisionist school of thought emerged in the United States following the Vietnam War, blaming the United States for its imperialist, quasi imperialist, you know, greedy greediness, you know, this idea of imposing capitalism on Western Europe or etcetera etcetera, this kind of idea.
Sergey Radchenko:Right? Blaming effectively the Marshall Plan for the outbreak of the second, sorry, for the for the Cold War. My own view is that I tend to blame Stalin more, and that is because I've had a chance to read all the documents, that were made available to me on the Soviet side. And what I saw there for their late 19 forties was a very dark personality, somebody deeply cynical, somebody deeply, you know, really power hungry, an individual who was absolutely brutal and who was absolutely, just intent on dominating what he could dominate. So, that aligns much more with the traditionalist historiography than with the revisionist historiography.
Sergey Radchenko:And and if you're talking about specifically, you know, the timeline, I could document very well that already by early 1947, Stalin was basically pulling out of this Yalta framework, this idea that he could have great power great power cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. He was already working, to undermine some of that, for example, through extending, help to the Greek communists and so on and so forth, even before Marshall Plan. Right? So Marshall Plan was certainly not a turning point, but it was it was, of course, an important milestone on the road to the Cold War. I mean, another thing I show in the books, the Cold War was not something that happened overnight.
Sergey Radchenko:It's not like somebody switched the lights off and said, okay. Now we're in the Cold War. It was a step by step process that did not seem irreversible at any point until it actually did become irreversible. So this point, I mean, this process began somewhere already in 1944, early in 1945, and then continued until really until 1948, 49. And, you know, both sides, took actions that contributed to the decrease in the climate of trust.
Sergey Radchenko:But I would tend to blame Stalin more. That is not to say that Stalin did not want to see post war cooperation. I think he did. I think he valued that. I showed that in the book.
Sergey Radchenko:Sometimes he thought that American recognition of his gains as legitimate was actually more important to him than having gains that were unrecognized. And sometimes he was willing to compromise. He would back off. He would say, okay. I back off here, but you recognize my gain somewhere else because legitimate gains, legitimate power, legitimately exercised, even to Stalin, was much more valuable than power illegitimately exercised, I.
Sergey Radchenko:E. Basically, direct Soviet imposition. That said that said, you know, I would still say, Stalin much more than the other side.
Tim Benson:Alright. Yeah. Yeah. It seems to me that if the it seems to me that, like, the sort of the that the cold war outcome was, I don't wanna say inevitable, but pretty close to inevitable anyway. And there doesn't seem to be much upside for the United States in backing off and allowing Stalin a little bit more free reign in, you know, 1945, 46,
Sergey Radchenko:47,
Tim Benson:because just from basically what we know about Stalin, You know, pretty much that, like, you know, whatever he thought he could, like, reasonably take, and get away with, he was gonna do it.
Sergey Radchenko:Right? Very opportunistic. Yeah. Yeah. There's a there's a complexity here that is ultimately, irresolvable.
Sergey Radchenko:We can say now looking at the documents that Stalin was potentially interested in Cold War or pre Cold War cooperation, with the United States, and that, you know, more assertive American foreign policy could have potentially upset him and made him in return, you know, more assertive as well. But here's the problem. I think Stalin himself did not know where his appetites ended. He was taking what was given to him. And, if he was given something, he would then potentially discover that he wanted something else.
Sergey Radchenko:And so to say that he was interested in post war cooperation in 1945 and that if we if we just left him alone in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, he would just, you know, swallow those countries and stay there. This is very naive because after doing that, he might say, well, what about, you know, what about France? What about Italy? So the the only way to prevent this kind of behavior is to contain this. Right?
Sergey Radchenko:That's why we have George Kennan. That's why we have containment to push back against this this kind of impulses and to close those opportunities. Now the price of doing this is that you potentially tragically lead the relationship towards a more confrontational relationship. But the price of getting it wrong and letting Stalin take even more much higher territory is much higher. Right?
Sergey Radchenko:It's Soviet domination, and it's just it's a really difficult, call that one has to make. And by the way, it's not you know, the early cold war is not the only time we have to make this call. Even now we're in a situation where we're talking about our relationship with China, for example. How do we, you know, how do we know what our opposite sides in Beijing, for example, think about the world? You know, maybe they want to cooperate, but what if they don't?
Sergey Radchenko:You know, then Yeah.
Tim Benson:Would be
Sergey Radchenko:in a very difficult situation. So it's in in a way, it's very it's a it's a call that is extremely hard to make. I think George Kennan was about right in terms of calling for, you know, when he when he wrote on his own telegram that impervious to the logical reasons, the Kremlin is sensitive to the logical force. So push back against them, see what happens. You know, they'll probably retract, and they'll do something else.
Tim Benson:Right.
Sergey Radchenko:That was probably, about the right approach. So so I I generally Yeah.
Tim Benson:I was to say, like, I don't think, you know, for example, the the the overtures they made to getting some sort of foothold in Libya after the war. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think of, like, we had allowed the Soviets into Libya that, you know, in the names of, you know, comedy or, you know, peaceful relations, I don't think, like I think Stalin's gonna be like, alright. Yeah. We're good.
Tim Benson:You know? That's the we're fine. That's that's that's all that's all we wanted. We're we're we're great. You know?
Tim Benson:That's we're that's, you know, we're we're good for you.
Sergey Radchenko:Libya episode by the way, the Libya episode, I I love to talk about that in the book because that's something few people know about. Right?
Tim Benson:I didn't know that.
Sergey Radchenko:Everybody knows about Poland. Everybody knows about, you know, Germany. No. You know, few people know that Stalin was trying to get an a colony in Africa, and it was actually pushing for it very hard in 1945. It's like, you know, you've promised us a colony.
Sergey Radchenko:I mean, he actually had pretty good reasons because, there there were some unclear signals from the United States in the spring of 1945 that suggested perhaps the Soviets would be allowed to to keep one of the Italian colonies. And so he was he kept pushing this. And, you know, we want the colony. We want the colony. And, of course, he didn't quite say it.
Sergey Radchenko:He I think it was something like zone or whatever you call it. You know? It it it at some point, I think they did say, we just want to try our hand at colonial administration. But they were rebuffed. They were denied that.
Sergey Radchenko:And and that, you know, was that a wrong policy? Stalin was upset, but was that a wrong policy? If I were in the shoes of James Burns, who was the secretary of state at that time, I think I would do the same thing. You know, I'll do the same thing.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Sure. Yeah. And, I mean, that's a total nonstarter for the British as well. Like, there's no way we're gonna let you in the Mediterranean.
Tim Benson:You know? Like
Sergey Radchenko:Well, exactly. Exactly. So we did there's a lot of competition there. I mean, each side realized that we're engaged in this kind of competition, and each side was all really trying to under undermine the other. It doesn't make all of them equally responsible for the outbreak of the Cold War, but I think you're I think it's fair to say that there was there was something almost like a natural pull towards confrontation when you have these great powers that are especially the Soviet Union and the United States looking at the vacuum of post war Europe saying, you know, how are we going to arrange this?
Sergey Radchenko:Their cooperation was just not going to us. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Wanna move to China, for a bit because that's the, you know, the the 3rd wheel in the book, so to speak. So how much of Soviet policy is, I don't know, preoccupied is the best word, but preoccupied with China and how their actions are going to be, perceived by, you know, by Mao, by the by the CCP. You know, how much of their policy reflects the the rivalry they had with China for, you know, leadership of the of the the revolutionary movements in the 3rd world?
Sergey Radchenko:So I argue in the book that that's a huge part of Soviet foreign policy. And in fact, one of the, problems with the existing historiography of the Cold War is we haven't paid enough attention to the element of China and Soviet thinking. I saw China in almost every aspect of Soviet foreign policy, and that actually goes back to this question of recognition. Remember how I said the Soviets really wanted to be recognized by the United States as a great power, as an equal superpower? Well, they also wanted to be recognized by China as the leader of the, you might call it, the communist world.
Sergey Radchenko:And that kind of recognition by China was also hugely important to the Soviet self perception of legitimacy. If the Chinese recognize us for the leader of the revolutionary forces, we must be the leader of the revolutionary forces. Now there were there was actually a conflict between these two visions of recognition or these two strivings, because to be recognized as great power or an equal superpower by the United States is not quite exactly the same thing as being recognized as the leader of the revolutionary forces by China because you pursue very different foreign policy. For example, to be recognized by the United States, you help the United States out of Vietnam. You know, you you have superpower cooperation.
Sergey Radchenko:This is what Nixon wanted. But, to be recognized as a great revolutionary power, you undermine the United States and Vietnam, and you help the Vietnamese, right, because you promote revolutions. So it was very contradictory, and sometimes that actually, befuddled Soviet policymakers. They couldn't quite figure out what kind of policy they they had to pursue, but China was hugely important because they crave China's recognition. They also competed with the Chinese leaders for influence.
Sergey Radchenko:From very early on, it it became apparent already very soon after Stalin's death. While Stalin was alive in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong was willing to defer to Stalin. He was sort of the father of the of the global communist movement, and Mao he didn't like Stalin. Right? Mao hated Stalin.
Sergey Radchenko:Stalin mistreated him, but still he would defer to Stalin and not do stuff that clearly Stalin did not like. Whereas with Stalin's death, mouthful that he was the leader of the global revolutionary forces and the you know, the communist world. He recognized, of course, that's that that that China was backward, technologically backward, that it still rely on Soviet help, that the Soviet Union was the leader of, you know, in the in in in in in in many ways, but in strategic, thinking, Mao put himself above Khrushchev. He thought that Mao, was you know, he he thought himself, he thought of himself as as somebody who was he would be able to define the strategy for the entire communist movement. And there was a clash there between him and Khrushchev and later between Mao and Khrushchev's successors, Brezhnev Kosygin, etcetera.
Sergey Radchenko:And and, you you know, you can see throughout the Cold War how they struggle for influence in the socialist world or how, for example, the China factor was important to Khrushchev's thinking when he decided to help Cuba in 1962, 2, and that has been really, you know, something that historians never realized. I mean, if you think about while Khrushchev sent missiles to Cuba. Right? We never think about China. But what Khrushchev what we realized by looking at the documents that Khrushchev really worried about Cuba being overrun by the United States.
Sergey Radchenko:He thought that the United States would invade Cuba after the Bay of Pigs in 1961. It became even more probable. He was worried about losing Cuba. Why is it that he was so worried about losing Cuba? Because he felt that, that he would then be accused by the Chinese of selling out the revolutionary movement.
Sergey Radchenko:Right. That's what the Chinese accused him of. Right? The Chinese were telling the not just the Cubans, but everybody. Look at the Soviets.
Sergey Radchenko:They claim that they're this revolutionary, leaders, but in reality, they don't do anything to help you. So that is you know, that China factor is really important. And then in the 19 seventies, speaking about the importance of the China factory, becomes important in a different sense because the relationship between the Soviet Union and China breaks down in the early 19 sixties. And by the late sixties, they become sworn enemies. In fact, in 1969, they have a war.
Tim Benson:Fighting each other.
Sergey Radchenko:Fighting. And there's an actual war. Right? There you know, hundreds of people die. So they're fighting.
Sergey Radchenko:The Soviets are potentially considering use of a preemptive nuclear strike against China. We don't know how far they went in the in that consideration, but China assumes this grand, role of of the major threat that the Soviets were facing in Asia, and that actually turns the Soviets towards detente in Europe and then, fundamentally, also the Soviet American detente between Brezhnev and and and Nixon. China was a huge factor there because Brezhnev, worried about China, was now thinking that perhaps, the Europeans and the Americans were not so bad after all.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Well, speaking of that that, that tension between you talked about, you know, for the Soviets, for these, Khrushchev and Brezhnev and all these guys, this tension about, you know, being the head of state for, you know, a a status quo great power on the one hand and also, you know, the leader of a revolutionary international revolutionary movement on the other. You know, because, again, those two things are not they don't sync up all the time. Did any did anyone in particular handle that that tension, better than most, or or was it just something that was the you know, just sort of devilish for, for that no one could really get, like, a handle on it perfectly, you know, that well.
Sergey Radchenko:I think I think it was a problem that was consistent for them, certainly, since Khrushchev, who was constantly being torn apart by this conflicting impulses of of, on the one hand, being a revolutionary leader, on the other hand, trying to build up a relationship of equals with the United States. I mean, the way they squared it was that they basically told themselves, well, if we are an equal superpower of the United like the United States, then we should have equal rights. So if the Americans promote counterrevolution, we should promote revolution. So there's nothing wrong with this. Right?
Sergey Radchenko:But that Yeah. Not go very far with Americans who were constantly upset about the Soviets trying to undermine them in the 3rd world, like, in places like Angola, for example, in the mid 19 seventies, at the same time, trying to build the. And how's that supposed to work? I have a very interesting example from Brezhnev, actually, the way he juggled his competing priorities. So, Brezhnev really wanted Nixon to come to Moscow.
Sergey Radchenko:He wanted this personal relationship. Of course, ultimately, Nixon did come to Moscow in, May 1972. But if you remember, what what else was happening in in in the spring of 1972 is that Nixon was intensifying bombardment of Vietnam, in in in response to sort of, you know, North Vietnamese hostilities. And, and so that was a huge problem for Beiersdov because he was facing his own angry colleagues saying, why how can we have Nixon here when he's doing all these horrible things, bombing North Vietnam? We should just reject him.
Sergey Radchenko:We should not allow the summit to take place. Brezhnev wanted Nixon. He really wanted detente, so he had to basically turn his colleagues away. Say, no. This is much more important for us.
Sergey Radchenko:But when he he when Nixon was in Moscow, there was this really remarkable episode where, where Brezhnev is having a great discussion with Nixon. And and then suddenly, just out of the blue, start shouting, saying, you vile American imperialist, you know, what are you doing in Vietnam, etcetera, etcetera. And then, you know, Nixon in his memoir reflects on this saying, yeah, I couldn't understand what happened, you know, why he was such a nice we had such a nice conversation, and then suddenly this sudden outburst. Well and then, of course, Brezhnev again reverted to his usual self. Well, now we know what happened.
Sergey Radchenko:So he Brezhnev did this in order to procure a transcript of conversay or conversation with Nixon, so where he talked about Vietnam, which he then showed to his colleagues. So he talked to you. There was a party plan where he said, well, look. Here's what I told Nixon about Vietnam. You know?
Sergey Radchenko:This and
Tim Benson:this.
Sergey Radchenko:We're very tough with him. Then he also sent this transcript to the Vietnamese to show to them that he was a true revolutionary leader and not a sellout. And then the the greatest moment is he showed it to Castro. Castro turned. I mean, Castro from Cuba, but he values Castro's opinion.
Sergey Radchenko:Right? He didn't want to be seen by Castro to sell out. So he gave that to Castro saying, look, we defended Vietnam, you know, in our conversation with Nixon. So that is a really great example of of of facing these competing priorities and trying to figure out how to balance them.
Tim Benson:Yeah. So more on that, that is a a great story. But, detente, was was detente a sustainable policy, or was it just something that, you know, was really sort of dependent on that that the personal relationship between Nixon and Brezhnev? I mean, was there, you know, was there any way that that policy had any legs to it whatsoever beyond those 2 men?
Sergey Radchenko:So, you know, person the personal relationship was key to this, and and there was chemistry there between Nixon and Brezhnev in a way that that Brezhnev never developed after Watergate with Gerald Ford, never mind with Carter. But, you know, it's I guess I guess there are limitations where the stakes is. Yes. There was a personal relationship, and sometimes sometimes Brezhnev would would take steps that would seem to, that would, you know, that, he would not have taken with other people. Like, for example, when he invited Nixon to come to Moscow, right, that was he gained supposition from a lot of people, from his own talents.
Sergey Radchenko:He still pushed through because he was personally committed to this project of detente. And, I mean, if Nixon was not ousted as a result or did not resign in in August 1974 as a result of Watergate
Tim Benson:Which Brezhnev was very upset with about.
Sergey Radchenko:If you could not understand it. Watergate? Who can understand this kind of thing? So he and at one point, there's this great story about him. One of the one of Brezhnev's aids, I think, asking, you know, can we help, Nixon in any way?
Sergey Radchenko:Like, do we have to confirm or something in Nixon's end?
Tim Benson:It's in
Sergey Radchenko:the cage you'd be riding back. Say, we're you know, we have limited options here.
Tim Benson:Yeah.
Sergey Radchenko:Yeah. But, so he was really upset about Nixon's demise, so to speak. So it was, know, this personal element was important, but there was still the strategic competition. And the basic point is despite the tone, when the Soviets got an opportunity to stab the Americans in the back, They generally, you know, it was difficult to prevent them from
Tim Benson:doing that.
Sergey Radchenko:They liked it. When when, when the North Vietnamese took over, Saigon in 1975, where now the Soviets over toured? Yeah.
Tim Benson:Of course.
Sergey Radchenko:They they they won. You know, in Angola, they they they they won as well, in the mid 19 seventies. On the other hand, the Americans also took every opportunity to basically undermine the Soviets one day. They could do that and get away with it. And Kissinger, for all his, brought the stations of great love for Brezhnev, you know, stabbed him in the back many times in the Middle East.
Sergey Radchenko:And this it's really well sound in the Middle East as a result of Kissinger's various machinations. I mean, so so, in in a sense, the strategic competition between these two powers continued, but I think it would not have deteriorated to an outright, second, remission of the Cold War If we, if if if Nixon stuck around and also the key element here is that Brezhnev himself also, if he maintained his his, kind of grasp on on affairs of state, things would have been different. Now what happened with Brezhnev, as we know, is that after 1974, he declined mentally very quickly. And before you know it, all he cares about is, you know, weighing himself or, you know, taking or doing a haircut or something like that. Like, he kept a diary.
Sergey Radchenko:And if you go through, you know, towards the end 19 seventies, just you just see that he's basically a dead man walking. You know? He's not he can't do anything. He's mentally deteriorated really, really badly. And so when that happened, that personal element is just clearly no longer there.
Sergey Radchenko:There's nobody to steer towards to to taunt.
Tim Benson:Right. So it's kind of interesting. Brezhnev's decline is sort of, mirrors this, this this diminishment of Soviet confidence, you know, in the late seventies, early eighties, you know, even beyond into the eighties, or in this diminished confidence in revolutionary ideology and all that stuff. How much of this is internal, and how much of this is, sort of forced on them by, American policy?
Sergey Radchenko:Well, the bottom line here to and, you know, that's something we have to understand about the Soviet project. The Soviet project started failing long before the end of the Cold War. In the 19 fifties, Soviets were fairly optimistic. You have Khrushchev boasting about the future of communism. You have the launch of Sputnik, October 4, 1957.
Sergey Radchenko:Right? You know, Soviet technology seems to be ascendant. Things are going very well. April 61, Gagarin becomes the
Tim Benson:first man
Sergey Radchenko:in space. I mean, Khrushchev was kind of really full of hope. But then already then, you start having problems. 1st, in the agricultural sector, eventually in industry as well. By the mid 19 sixties, late 19 sixties, the Soviet Soviets realized that that communism is not working.
Sergey Radchenko:It's not working. I mean, I I actually was fortunate to read the Politburo transcripts for early 1966 where they have a discussion of economic questions. You know what struck me? They knew. They knew that the whole thing was not working, like nothing was working.
Sergey Radchenko:They were trying to figure out, well, how do you do how do you steam how do you get people to work? Maybe we should give them better, you know, incentives. I pay them better money or something. Let them you know, And so you have the Kasigan reforms that were launched around that time, which was an idea. You know, the idea there was very much to promote, private incentives, in order to stimulate people.
Sergey Radchenko:But that also didn't wasn't really working. What really bailed them out, though, were the prices of oil that just went
Tim Benson:through the roof
Sergey Radchenko:from the airlines. Remember that happened also in the context of the Soviet discovery of enormous reserves of oil and gas in Western Siberia because they were starting to run out. Their economy also demanded oil, but then they discovered this, you know, this gigantic resources of oil and gas in Western Siberia, and, in places like Jumain, close to Jumain, also up north in Likoy, later in Eastern Siberia. So all of that allowed them to export, those resources and earn hard currency and sustain their economy, which was already I mean, they already had to import grain from the United States. Right?
Sergey Radchenko:That is not that doesn't show you that communism is working very well if you have to do that. And so you get to the late 19, seventies, early 19 eighties. It's clear the Soviet economy is in deep, deep, deep crisis, and it's that, you know, and that people did not believe in communism. It was clear. I mean, for the society the society itself did not believe in communism.
Sergey Radchenko:And even Brezhnev believes Brezhnev, that's why I say Brezhnev believed in peace, but not in communism. Right? He replaced he replaced communism with this idea of promoting peace. So in this time
Tim Benson:I was just gonna say, is so is that essentially why Gorbachev's reform project was doomed to failure? Just because the lack of belief in, you know, in communism? I mean, was that really the the main reason why that can just never or, like, was the system just so, you know, already just rotten
Sergey Radchenko:from the inside? Inside. I mean, that that is a big part of the explanation. I explanation. I remember what Gorbachev was trying to do, and and I talk about that in the book.
Sergey Radchenko:I mean, Gorbachev was trying to reinvent Soviet foreign policy towards, you know, cooperation with the United States, the promotion of peaceful coexistence. That's why I actually argue that, you know, that that idea of peaceful coexistence was not he called it new thinking. Actually, it wasn't particularly new. It went all the way back to Brezhnev, all the way back to Khrushchev. And so, the idea that Gorbachev had as far as foreign policy was concerned was to reinvent the Soviet Union, as a as a great power and acquire some new standing as this, you know, as as as as the country of reformed socialism.
Sergey Radchenko:And he wanted something for himself, you know, to be recognized as a prophet of reformed socialism to show that the system was working. The problem was the system was not working, and that is ultimately where the sources of of Soviet collapse are to be found. When we go back to Soviet economy, we see that it's not delivering. He tries to reform it. He loses control because things just start falling apart very quickly.
Sergey Radchenko:There's deep corruption. There's, over centralization. Nobody knows how to reform. They don't follow the Chinese rule. They don't follow even, you know, the Eastern European, reforms.
Sergey Radchenko:Like, for example, Yamash Kadar was pursuing in Hungary. And so things really start to deteriorate very, very quickly for for, for Gorbachev. So I would I would say, yes. I'm a bit of an economic determinist. And when I discuss the the end of the Cold War, I say that that's basically for internal Soviet domestic reasons, which, by the way, will surprise a lot of people because a lot of people in the United States thinking about it.
Sergey Radchenko:You still find this thinking, it's you know, among the general public thing that it was Reagan. Reagan basically forced the Soviet Union to collapse. I mean, I don't wanna overstress this. I mean, obviously, the Soviets were spending a lot of spend a lot of money on the military. And then the Star Wars and various things that Reagan came up with really pushed Gorbachev, on that front as well.
Sergey Radchenko:He was worried about losing the competition, with the United States. There was the war in Afghanistan. It did not bankrupt the Soviet Union. It was basically a small war as far as the Soviet Union, was concerned. I mean, think about it.
Sergey Radchenko:In this the whole Afghan war, the Soviet Union for the 10 years the Soviets were involved there, lost just times fewer people than they had lost in the war in Ukraine, Russia, lost in the war in Ukraine.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's fewer than we lost in Vietnam. But
Sergey Radchenko:Exactly. Exactly. So it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't the external aspects of the Soviet experience that really brought the Soviets to Aruna. It was the internal aspect. It was the, it was the inability.
Sergey Radchenko:Fundamentally, it was this. It was the inability of the government to deliver in the promises, to build communism that they had not to made to the Soviet people. They just simply could not be able you know, could not do that. And so that was the end.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Okay. I know we're getting close-up to an hour. Do you have time for a couple more questions? It's the present day.
Tim Benson:Yeah. So I was thinking about, you know, you mentioned before, Brezhnev and his sort of casual, racism towards the Chinese. You know, there's one point in the book or, I can't remember if he's speaking to Nixon or to, Kissinger about the Chinese. He's like, he like, we're Europeans. Like, you like, we can trust each other.
Tim Benson:We we, you know, the the can't trust the Chinese. They're they're Asians. And, you know, so this situation now well, you know, the entire history of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union is the, you know, the the big power in China's, you know, sort of second fiddle. Now, the roles are sort of reversed where China is the, you know, big power and Russia is sort of the, I wanna say, lackey, but, you know, Russia is not in the sort of the driver seats to more of its own, destiny, and then sort of has to be deferential in some ways to the Chinese. Do you think that is a sustainable relationship?
Tim Benson:I mean, how much, you know, how much does it really piss Putin off and, you know, that Russia is the number 2 in this, you know, this relationship with with China?
Sergey Radchenko:Right. So I think I think the real question here is, not not the distribution of power within this relationship. As you mentioned, China, of course, is much more, powerful today than Russia is, but what the Russians and the Chinese make of it. And here we have a dramatic contrast between what we see today in the Russian Chinese relationship and what we saw in, at the time of the Sino Soviet split. And the Soviets were quite arrogant.
Sergey Radchenko:They were very pushy with the Chinese. They demanded that the Chinese follow their set of prescriptions. They you know, there was a real struggle for leadership, and the Soviets basically bullied the Chinese around. Now Mao was also not somebody who was easily bullied around. Right?
Sergey Radchenko:He was a very nasty character, and, yeah, he was extremely, had a very thin skin and had a very, very high opinion of himself. But but he had a, you know the Soviets really kind of drove drove him crazy because he thought that he they were too arrogant. Now if you flip that to the present, then you'll see that the today, the Chinese are extremely careful with the Russians. They're extremely careful. They do not demand that Russia defers to China in everything.
Sergey Radchenko:And I think the absence and here we'll come back to this question of ideology. The absence of a common, revolutionary ideology, which would require to have a high priest either in Moscow or Beijing, I think helps. Whereas in the 19 sixties, the Soviets basically claimed the right to interpret Marxist Leninism, and wanted the China for all of their interpretations. Today, we don't have that kind of commonality. I mean, they claim some common view of the world, but in reality, this shared ideology between is is is very is is very vague.
Sergey Radchenko:It's very vague, and it's not like the Chinese are saying, okay. You accept everything that we think about the world, and defer to everything that we say about the world. You know, the Russians if the Chinese started doing that, and let's make this clear, the Russians if the Chinese started doing it, the Russians, I think, would find themselves in a very, very difficult situation. But I think the Chinese, so far, at least, have not really done that. They have been very careful not to antagonize Russia too much and hack have actually deferred to Putin on on lots of questions, and Putin have not kept them abreast on, on issues, like, for example, the invasion of Ukraine.
Sergey Radchenko:We know today that, he did not really share the details of this with Xi Jinping. You know, some other issues as well. We know the Chinese were probably not too happy about Putin's behavior in certain aspects, but they are careful to maintain a positive relationship. Why is that? Because I think both the Chinese and the Russians remember just how bad their relationship were worked out in the 19 sixties and what that what that gave, what advantage that gave to their enemies, especially the United States, which, of course, then played one against the other under Richard, Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
Sergey Radchenko:Today, they're determined to avoid that avoid that kind of repetition of history, and, and maintain this relationship. Now will they be able to do that, especially as the power difference between them grows even further and Russia becomes more and more of a vassal to China? I don't know. I don't know that they will because the Russians fundamental remain deeply nationalistic. Right?
Sergey Radchenko:They they like to be told what to do. So that's one of those things where you all should have to say, we'll we'll live and see.
Tim Benson:Right. Yeah. So are there any lessons, from the cold war, that we can draw on, for our relationship with China today? Is there anything you know, is there are there things in the past that we can look back to that would, you know, help us deal with this this, you know, burgeoning new power in China?
Sergey Radchenko:So I think the number one lesson of the Cold War is that we should maintain confidence in ourselves and in our own society, in in in the, in in in in in building resilience. This is actually something that, George Kennan wrote in the long telegram that is often ignored, compared to his various other statements. But towards the end of the long telegram, he said, in the end, you know, the system the Soviets have, it's just not natural. It's not going to survive. What we have to do is we have to outlast them.
Sergey Radchenko:We have to build up our own capabilities, invest in education, invest in health care, invest in better life in, in America. I'm paraphrasing. Of course, you can go back to the loan telegram by heart. But, basically, that's the point that he makes. Invest in ourselves, invest in our resilience because our society is fundamentally better than the closed, autocratic society that, at that time, the Soviet Union represented and that, today, China represents.
Sergey Radchenko:And I think that's an important lesson. I think it's a lesson about optimism and also a lesson about thinking long term, and and and, a lesson about patience because sometimes we have to be patient, and it is our fortune throughout the Cold War that leaders of the United States, also in the Soviet Union, were actually sometimes patient. And and, and and were able to negotiate out, negotiate their way out of very dangerous crises that could have actually ended in in nuclear war. Those were real real flash points. And, I think today, in a world that is fundamentally, certainly in the in the nuclear aspect, is not all that different from the Cold War.
Sergey Radchenko:We should take some of those lessons on board and remember just how important it is to maintain channels of communication with the adversaries, and understand our own high responsibility for for for the survival of the world while retaining a general, you know, optimistic outlook on the future.
Tim Benson:Alright. Great. Well, you might have just answered the last question, with the normal exit question we give everybody with your the answer you just gave, but I'll ask it again anyway, just in, just in case there's anything else you wanna say. So, you know, basically, you know, what's the what would you like the audience to get out of this book? Or, you know, what, what's the one thing you'd want a reader to take away from the book, you know, having read it?
Sergey Radchenko:Complexity. It's always difficult. History is complex. History is nuanced. One of the most remarkable things, and maybe it's not so remarkable, you'd expect that, but, you know, people talk about history all the time.
Sergey Radchenko:We're all, you know, we all know history where we all have some kind of historical reference points and then we draw on history to make judgments and, you know, suggest that what what we should do today. By the way, I just did that in the answers to my previous question. Right? But the reality is, is that history is is hugely complicated. History is even not the same as the past.
Sergey Radchenko:Right? The past is much more complicated than histories that we write. And I talked about how I went through hundreds of thousands of pages of documents to write this book that took 10 years to write. Well, I just barely scratched the surface, really. I just barely scratched the surface.
Sergey Radchenko:So history is vastly, is is just vastly more complicated than sometimes we're willing to imagine. So when we draw lessons drawing on something in the past, I think we have to be extra extra careful. I think that's the message that I want, readers to take away from this book.
Tim Benson:Yeah. It's like the, was it Din Xiaoping or, Chu and Lai when the the, you know, the apocryphal, you know, quote, someone asked them about the, you know, what do you think of? Yeah. The French revolution. Yeah.
Sergey Radchenko:It is it is truly an apocryphal quote because I don't know the name track it down.
Tim Benson:Well, wherever it came from, Yeah. It's that's entirely correct. Yeah. It's too too early to tell. Yeah.
Tim Benson:So, the book, once again, everybody, is To Run the World, the Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power. As I said before, just a really, just awesome new book in the subject, just chock full of interesting, stuff that even, is if you're, like, a, you know, a cold war history buff or what have you or, you know, a buff on the history of the Soviet Union or communist China, where there's gonna be stuff in here that you've never read or seen before just because, you know, doctor Radchenko is the first person to, you know, have access to it in the archive. So, tons and tons of interesting things. Like I said, a really fascinating, book on the subject of Soviet foreign policy. And, like I said, I think it's going to be the the standard, you know, the gold standard on that topic, for quite a long time.
Tim Benson:So highly, highly recommend the book to everybody out there. Once again, the book is To Run the World, the Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power, and the author, once again, doctor Sergei Radchenko. So, doctor Radchenko, thank you so so much for, you know, taking the time to, you know, come on the podcast and talk about the book with us, and thank you for taking the, I'm sure the multiple years of your life to, you know, writing the book. And so that, you know, making sure that we could all enjoy the, the fruits of your labors. We appreciate it.
Sergey Radchenko:Well, thank you, Tim. Really, really, enjoyed the conversation.
Tim Benson:Thanks a lot. Alright. And, again, if you like this podcast, please consider leaving us a 5 star review and sharing with your friends. And, if you have any, questions or comments or you have any suggestions for books you'd like to see on the podcast or anything like that, you can always reach out to me at, tbenson@heartland.org. That's tbens0n@heartland.org.
Tim Benson:And for more information about the Heartland Institute, you can just go to heartland.org. And we do have our, Twitter, x Twitter, account for the podcast. You can reach us there too, at illbooks@illbooks. So there's that. Oh, doctor Ratchenko, is there any, anything you wanna plug before we go?
Tim Benson:Any social media or appearances or anything like that you want people to know about?
Sergey Radchenko:Not really. No. I am on X, pontificating on subjects I know nothing about. So, do do do do follow me there at, doctor Radchenko at drradchenko.
Tim Benson:Alright. Very good. Yeah. So, that's pretty much it, everybody. So thanks for listening, everyone.
Tim Benson:We'll see you guys next time. Take care, everybody. Love you, mom. Love you, Robbie. Bye bye.