Resurgence of Soviet Terror and Manipulation of History - David Satter explains the current conflict
Vložit
- čas přidán 29. 08. 2022
- Russia’s war against Ukraine has escalated significantly this year, but did not start in February, or even in 2014. Its roots are far deeper, and more malign than just territorial ambitions. Today I am exploring how Russia got to this point, and where is goes next, with the person perhaps best equipped to answer this question, and a long-standing critic of The Kremlin - David Satter. Russia’s attempts to control, coerce and dominate Ukraine have deep roots in its Soviet and imperialist past, and are very much a by-product of the weaknesses and internal dynamics its aging, totalitarian regime.
David Satter is a journalist and historian who has written extensively about Russia and the Soviet Union, especially the decline and fall of the USSR and rise of post-Soviet Russia. David Satter became the first American journalist to be expelled from Russia since the Cold War in December 2013. This was perhaps not a surprising move, given that his books have covered topics such as the FSB’s role in the apartment bombings that brought Putin to power, and the criminalization of Russia under Boris Yeltsin. David’s core theme is why a pluralist and progressive state did not emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how this understanding guides it’s current policies and actions.
From 1976 to 1982 David was the Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times, and then became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for The Wall Street Journal. He is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He has been a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As well as numerous articles, he is also the author of several books that are essential reading to help understand the origins of the current crisis, including the brilliantly named books:
- It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past
- Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State
- The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin
This man is well informed. Sadly, I studied Russian in college then ended up working there during the final Soviet years. I am so sorry I did that. Now I have all that ugliness in my memory. The Soviet Union was like a circle of Dante's Hell. I'm not guilty but I have that crap in my memory. Now Putin tries to resurrect the horror. So far he is doing pretty well with the horror part.
Yes, all the horror, with no silver linings at all…
One of the best conversations David Satter has had since the invasion.
Life is complex ... but that was interesting. Slava Ukraine !!
All in all this is an extremely good and relevant presentation. David Satter is very capable and knowledgeable and I enjoy him. He seems well suited to speak about the "absence of rule of law" phenomena in Russia. I see he grasps the significance of this not only there, but elsewhere as well. Thank you Jonathan for another experience in time well spent.
Great comment- thanks! Rule of law is the most fundamental principle, I think. Will try to get David back on the channel
@@SiliconCurtain I look forward to it very much, as I do most, if not all of the things you put up. Your work is becoming prolific, to say the least.
Thank you for you both. Came here from your recent interview. This also helps clarify my thoughts. Hope your stream will reach a wider audience 🙏
The question for me is not "are Russians capable of democracy". That implies they are somehow genetically different from the rest of us. It's "is Russia capable of democracy": ie, does a country which is so large and varied (including economically) and contains to many ethnic groups need to be split up before it can be democratic. As someone who started thinking about this in mid-June or whatever, I only have the question rather than any attempt at an answer but I think it's a more valid one.
If only it would become a federation with 50 or so states that have mire or less an equal weight with their own direcltly elected legislatives and locally appointed executives (see USA and EU), that would already be a huge step towards a different kind of Russia.
@Pierre Saelen I'm no expert but I have been reading about this. From the little I know, it sounds very complicated. Most areas, even ones named after ethnic groups like Tuva and Buryatia, are dominated by ethnic Russians. That doesn't make rebellion impossible. After all the Americans did it to us British! That wasn't about ethnicity/language.
It does also raise questions if you can trust Russian figures on ethnicity.
The exception on Russian ethnic domination is the Caucasus. As you know; Chechnya rebelled. However that area is very poor/heavily subsidised. The joke is, really, Kadyrov won the war because Moscow gives him anything he wants. Plus the Caucasus area is very ethnically complicated (something like 40 languages). Hard for us to understand but some of those groups are more scared of each other than the Russians!
Rresources are not equally distributed. Moscow does subsidise some regions.
Tatarstan is quite wealthy and has a large Tatar population (but also has an autonomous area called Buryatia - an example of complications).
For me, I'm trying to find out more about all this but it does sound very complicated so my opinion changes every day.
@@Gargoiling Thanks.
The efforts at Russification have been non-stop since Tsarist times already.
My point was that in its current shape, just like the USSR before it, this is no federation: this is one superstate dwarfing all others combined, and this facilitates totalitarianism.
Unherd had an interview with a Russian about the potential break-up of the Russian Federation.
That interview was 8 months ago: Sergej Sumlenny: "Get ready for the break up of Russia"
To me that prospect still seems far off.
Still it was an interesting argument, because the interviewee detailed the regional differences even among Russians.
You may like the interview and, yes, it might change your opinion for one day.
@@pierresaelen3097 Sure, as you say, it's been a deliberate process but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. You can't tell the population of the USA to go back to Europe (Admittedly my guess is that in Russia, there may be a lot more people who could decide to be Buryat depending on the circumstances). I understand your point about how this facilitates totalitarianism. I'm just not sure whether the cure could be worse than the disease. I have seen the one by Sumlenny. I don't know if you use Twitter but there's a guy called Kamil Galeev on there who writes a lot on this subject. I don't know if he's right about everything but he's always interesting. He's in favour of breakup. For me, I'm just aware of the limitations of my knowledge. If you look at the Taliban say, I'm not a fan but I don't know of a solution either
@@Gargoiling Thanks for the information.
No, I don't use Twitter actively.
Just as with the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Western countries won't want it out of fear as to what would happen with its nukes.
That's why Bill Clinton pushed Ukraine to honor its promise (when declaring its independence) of handing over all its nukes to Russia, just as Belarus and Kazakhstan did.
If the Russian Federation would break up, it would be despite the West and then we might see a similar push by the West to hand over all nukes to Muscovy, but I doubt the bigger and wealthier secessionist parts will be willing to honor that request given Ukraine's experience as to how Moscow honors its pledges of respecting the territorial integrity of its neighbors.
Some secessionist parts might give in to the pressure for purely financial reasons: it's damn costly to maintain nuclear weapons, let alone repair the current decrepit ones.
The West will have to pay them more than what the black market would offer them.
The problem is that the URSS collapsed because of economic circumstances rather than the result of a moral evolution. The system changed, but not because mentalities had changed and people were fed-up with the system.
Exactly, there was no intention to shed their empire, no remorse, and a lot of regret and ‘imperial nostalgia’
probably the best interview in the whole series of Silicon Curtain on the Ukraine war, and I write this 6 months after this was recorded and a lot of new things unfolded. It is still the most interesting interpretation.
Guess what - I just recorded another conversation with David this afternoon! To be published Sunday!
@@SiliconCurtain I am looking forward to see it.
I'm looking forward to a follow-up interview
There are two interviews with David on the channel! Also try the ones with Yuri Felshtinsky
@@SiliconCurtain OK, thanks. Will do!
It may help to understand this phenomenon, if you look into history and anthropology of various Finno-Ugric peoples. Into androphagi (Herodotus, Plinius, others). In Mordva tribes your status was based on the number of persons you killed. Putin is a Veps, his so called Patriarch is a Mordvin. Failed German Project Russia is only 300 years old and is falling apart. This is but one facet... Great book by Marshall Poe "A People Born to Slavery" may help as well. Mr Putin realised that to get to power in that society one needs to kill. In KGB Academy he attanded they teach that you have to lie constantly, but they warn that if you start to believe in your lies - you become a sociopath.
This interview is my favourite. Because it reveals an ugly secret - this problem is not Russia - it is us and the abandonment of objective truth in the West. Thinking for ourselves & developing our own views is hard work. So nice of the social justice people to have done all the thinking! Like going to Ikea and buying something that tells you what to think. "Social Justice; the wonderful everyday." I would recommend reading the “Captive Mind” as a background to this interview - written by Czeslaw Milosz in 1951 as a denunciation of Stalinism. ‘Mental equilibrium’ plays a key part in this text. It won a Nobel prize for literature - but not available in Ikea !
Vlad Vexler also talks about the crisis of western democracy.. Putin attacked Ukraine BECAUSE he thought us weak and divided…
💐🙏
This was an excellent discussion and interchange. We need to restore civility and the ability to disagree without demonizing.
Jonathan, are you Irish by any chance? You have a pretty distinct Irish look to my stereotypical impression
I have Irish roots on my mother’s side, yes, and Central European on the other!
@@SiliconCurtain very interesting, thank you for answering
Interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I've long seen Trump as a drop-in useful idiot / Manchurian candidate. The inconvenient truth is that the Steele dossier played right into my predilections. Yes, I relied on the news media to substantiate it, so I was twice taken in.
Time to read your guest's books, I suppose.
Otherwise, this conversation has some passages that are like beef jerky: they need to be savored and chewed slowly to get all the flavor.
Great analogy! David Satter, the beef jerky / biltong of journalists…
For the most part this was informative, though I must take issue with David Satter’s characterization of the Steele Dossier as just Russian disinformation. These Intel memos were acknowledged from the outset to have some disinformation, estimated to be around 10-30%. And certainly, many claims could not be corroborated, and some turned out to be inaccurate in some subtle fashion. But the questions these memos raised resonated quite strongly with Trump’s behavior, both before and after taking office. The Mueller Report was particularly damning with regards to collusion, not to mention the almost dozen cases of related obstruction. And then there are the indictments of figures like Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, the alteration of the GOP platform with regards to arming Ukraine, the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting, the 2018 Helsinki Summit, and the Ukraine Scandal which led to Trump’s first impeachment. And speaking of the Durham investigations…they all imploded.
czcams.com/video/W2DxiDNRhzc/video.html (CNN: 18 reasons for Trump being a Russian asset)
I am a Kremlin propagandist. And I approve your message !!
"Race and Gender discrimination is the issue in the West" I should have known better than thinking he was a Honest man...smfh
Fox Nooze = R T TV.
Love this channel! Very informative. Eff MSM!😁
Russians had a sample of democracy under Jeltsin. In russia the perception of democracy exists when everyone is intoxicated to the same degree. For the future and prosperity of russia what would be requried is nothing else but western style of goulag.
The comments about Trump's collusion with the Russian State have not aged well.
Really, how so? Russia clearly tried to influence trump through connections with his circle of advisors and family…
@@SiliconCurtain I know, as has been said, with Trump all roads seem to lead to Putin, and everyone saw what happened in Helsinki. The man being interviewed said repeatedly that was just a hoax perpetrated by the MSM. The reason why I say that the comments have not aged well was the recent disclosures that John Durham was actively covering up financial crimes committed by Trump.