Latest / The Smart Cookies podcast / Hare Krishna, Russian Jesus and the End of the World - Cultural Chaos during the COLLAPSE of the Soviet Union, with Prof. Joseph Kellner

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Hare Krishna, Russian Jesus and the End of the World - Cultural Chaos during the COLLAPSE of the Soviet Union, with Prof. Joseph Kellner · The Smart Cookies podcast

• 0:04
  Joseph Kellner is a historian of Russia and the
• 0:06
  Soviet Union at the University of Georgia. He's
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  also the author of the recently released book,
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  The Spirit of Socialism, Culture and Belief at
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  the Soviet Collapse. Professor Kellner, a very
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  warm welcome to the show. Thank you so much for
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  having me. Here in 2025, so almost 40 years after
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  the fall of the Berlin Wall, the term late Soviet
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  culture sounds... like such a uniquely odd concept,
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  especially in the West, like something out of
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  a forgotten comic book or something. It's very
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  exotic indeed, because from the vantage point
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  of today, you know, this globalized kind of bland
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  Western monoculture, pretty much all of us are
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  inhabiting now. It's difficult to imagine that
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  at least for a while, there was a competing system
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  out there with its own distinct and often flourishing
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  culture. And that system seemed viable almost
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  right until... the very end now we're going to
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  discuss that end and and what happened afterwards
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  but before we do i wanted to ask something much
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  more um straightforward if you will what did
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  living and participating in this late soviet
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  culture actually feel like for example let's
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  say you were an average soviet citizen in the
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  80s what was your standard like what kind of
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  media did you consume what kind of shops or cafes
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  did you frequent How did you feel about the party,
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  et cetera? I know this is like a really wide
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  question, but feel free to tell me everything.
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  We have some time here. Sure. And, you know,
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  I'll try my best because the late Soviet period,
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  the collapse era, is only now becoming a topic
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  for historians. It's only now, you know, it takes
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  about 30 years before we can call something history
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  and we really start looking at it historically.
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  And I happen to be of a generation, I was born
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  in 1987, so I have no personal experience of
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  this. And I think that that provides, that there's
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  strengths and weaknesses there. Like I didn't
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  live there. I certainly met plenty of Soviet
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  people who lived in this time and were able to
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  describe it to me. But I also have some degree
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  of remove from these events. And so I can give
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  you my best impressions. And the book attempts
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  to reconstruct what late Soviet culture was,
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  sort of at the underlying values and the worldview
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  that people held in that time. But specifically
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  to the 80s, I mean, the 80s is such a hard question
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  because it's split right in half. The first half
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  of the 80s is what used to be called the era
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  of stagnation. It's kind of late Soviet, which
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  we think of as fairly drab, a strong sense of
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  malaise, a lack of... faith, certainly very vanishingly
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  few people believe in any kind of communist future
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  at this time. And yet you're hearing about it
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  all the time from the leadership and from the
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  media. And so it's kind of a surreal, like you
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  said, parallel world, which then by 1986 or 87
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  with Gorbachev and the really, really dramatic
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  reforms, both to the economy and maybe more importantly
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  to the media, if we're talking about culture,
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  liberalizing of the media, The late 80s in the
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  Soviet Union are really exhilarating, really
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  exciting time, really dramatic change. And from
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  a population that at the beginning, if we talk
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  about what you do in your daily life, in the
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  beginning of that decade is essentially indifferent
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  to media, doesn't take seriously what they read
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  in the newspaper, watches TV for entertainment,
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  but understands that everything is coming through
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  the lens of the Communist Party. And then by
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  the end of that decade... Everybody is reading.
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  Everybody's watching television. There are lines
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  at six in the morning. Every news kiosk and every
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  metro station has a huge line and everyone is
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  just buying everything they can find because
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  all of a sudden people are saying, journalists
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  are saying in media, things that were completely
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  unspeakable for the last five, 10, 50 years.
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  And so the late Soviet, the late, late period,
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  the reform era is a time of really, really high.
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  engagement. Something that I think, like you
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  said, in the internet age, it's hard to imagine.
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  Everybody's reading and talking about the same
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  things. Everybody's gathered around televisions,
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  sharing books, sharing newspaper articles, really,
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  really interested in the direction of the country
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  and in history and politics. And as my book shows,
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  in spirituality, in kind of new worldviews of
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  all kinds that fall well outside of politics.
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  And so the second half of that decade is really
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  a unique and exciting time. OK, I was under the
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  impression that that kind of opened up after
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  the fall of the Soviet Union. But you're actually
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  telling me that it happened before. So with the
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  advent of Gorbachev and his liberalizing reforms.
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  Well, it's yeah, it spans the collapse and the
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  book spans the collapse for that reason. But
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  by 1987 or 88, most of the strictures on media
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  are being lifted. And there's just the. The genre
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  of the time is the expose. There's just people
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  who are digging through archives or just citizens
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  digging through their attics and recovering their
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  relatives who had been suppressed in the purges
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  under Stalin or finding all of these parts of
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  the past that had been officially erased, essentially.
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  And so in the 80s, before the economic crisis
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  sets in, and that really comes with the later
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  collapse, there is both a sense that everyone's
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  walking on bones, that there's this deep, really
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  dark history that's being revealed, but also
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  a sense of freedom and new information and a
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  sense of truth that is just flooding the airwaves.
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  And that is in the Gorbachev period. That all
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  happens. Culture is liberalized well before the
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  economy is. And of course, when the economy is
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  liberalized, that's when you get the crisis of
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  the collapse. And suddenly it becomes an awful
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  lot less fun and a lot less interesting. Well,
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  maybe equally interesting, a lot less fun. A
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  while back, I interviewed Jacob Michanowski,
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  the author of the wonderful historical book,
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  Goodbye Eastern Europe. And in the intro to the
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  book, he says he decided to write it because
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  in the West, Eastern Europe was usually seen
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  as, and I quote, a gray place where nobody ever
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  laughed. Yes. So some sort of a brutalist Mordor
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  that, you know, one would see for three seconds
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  in an old James Bond movie or something. Absolutely.
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  Most of all, it was always the same. It was frozen
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  in time. That was the stereotype. But cultures
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  can't really stay the same, even if they want
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  to. So can you talk a little bit about how maybe
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  Soviet culture changed over time? Let's say,
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  I don't know, how are like, you illustrated how
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  the beginning of the 80s was different from the
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  end of the 80s, but how are like the 50s different
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  from the 80s? It wasn't just one big blob of
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  culture that stayed the same, right? Certainly
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  not. And there's a dawning understanding, I think,
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  among historians. I said earlier, this period
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  from maybe the 70s, 80s, the Brezhnev era used
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  to be called the era of stagnation. And we don't
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  call it that anymore because that was this kind
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  of caricatured impression of the Eastern Bloc
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  that things were just kind of slowly decaying
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  and being held together by state power. And nobody
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  believed what... state was saying. And it was
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  all kind of this very stark division of your
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  public life, which is drab and repressive. And
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  then you have your private sphere at home where
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  you can talk. And all of that stereotype has
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  faded very dramatically, and for good reason.
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  Late Soviet culture is really dynamic. There's
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  all kinds of lively currents in the culture.
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  If we start in the 50s and 60s, those are official
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  currents. So, I mean, think of the space race
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  as probably the crowning achievement of both
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  Soviet but also Soviet culture. I mean, it's
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  just such a cultural touchstone for the whole
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  world. And so people are fascinated by science.
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  They have enormous respect for the hard sciences
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  and, of course, for the heroes of the period,
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  for Gagarin and Tereshkova and so forth. And
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  Laika. And Laika, most of all. And they are reading
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  Soviet, you know, official news magazines and
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  journals. with really genuine interest. And those
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  journals, I should say, were really high quality.
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  The Soviet Union was producing really good media
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  on the whole by really qualified and educated
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  people. And so a very high level of literacy
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  and engagement in official life in the 50s and
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  the 60s. And that starts to fade when kind of
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  the promises of the space age and the promises
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  of the planned economy become less and less plausible.
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  And by the 70s, you do have a general disillusionment
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  with the system, a general sense that communism
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  is clearly not coming. And the more that Brezhnev
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  talks about it, the more comic it appears. But
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  even then, in the 70s, in the 80s, and what my
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  book goes great lengths to show, there is a whole
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  world of cultural ferment and reading and discussion
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  groups and kitchen circles where people are exchanging.
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  religious ideas, spiritual ideas, novel political,
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  historical theories. There's kind of a lively
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  intellectual culture that survives well into
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  this period. And it's not illegal. It's not that
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  these people are hiding from the state and they're
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  not dissidents. They're not necessarily anti
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  -Soviet at all. They're just with kind of a genuinely
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  drab work life and a genuinely drab kind of urban
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  landscape. still very highly educated, worldly,
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  curious people with respect for science who are
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  talking with their friends and have a lot of
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  time to do that and generating a lot of new ideas.
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  And so in the 90s, when the system collapses,
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  these ideas flood onto the streets. You know,
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  there's huge resurgences of religion and spiritual
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  ideas. There's all kinds of novel theories of
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  the world that catch on and so forth. But all
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  of that actually develops in the 70s and in the
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  80s. And so culture is very much alive and distinct
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  from the West, but certainly not stagnant. Did
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  the party try to control these currents or at
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  least channel them in some way? Because it must
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  have been aware of these reading circles and
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  book clubs and so forth that you were discussing.
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  Generally speaking, no. People felt perfectly...
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  secure and discussing these things in their kitchens.
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  I mean, this is, keep in mind, by the 60s and
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  70s, people aren't being arrested simply for
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  thought crimes. It's not the Stalin era. You
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  might be laughed at at work. You might be denied
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  a promotion in a research institute if you're
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  actually spending most of your time in astrology,
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  certainly. But they're not going to send you
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  to the gulag for these things. And so the party
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  not only is not repressing these currents. But
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  what's really interesting is that a lot of them,
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  in one way or another, descend from official
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  ideology, official media. And I'll give two examples.
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  Astrology, I mentioned, and astrology becomes
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  really, really big in the 1990s. But there are
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  circles of people getting into astrology in the
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  70s and 80s. And all of them are people who grew
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  up in the space age, who just remained fascinated
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  by... stars and by hard science and by space.
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  And they were raised in a climate where that
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  was encouraged at every step. I mean, from the
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  youngest age onward, the party wanted to inculcate
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  this kind of not just scientific interest, but
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  kind of a lofty spiritual interest in space travel
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  and in the stars and in science. And so that
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  translates very well into a culture of astrology.
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  Another really prominent current in the 90s is
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  the Hare Krishnas. Hare Krishnas are like the
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  face of this. I remember those. Yeah, yeah. I
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  remember those. They also appeared in Slovenia
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  after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Absolutely.
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  Please go ahead. Well, it's astounding. Everybody
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  who lived in these parts of the world, I described
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  the topic. And at the moment I say Hare Krishna,
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  they say, oh, of course. Hare Krishnas were every
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  metro station. And where do they come from? These
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  are Soviet people. They're not from India. They're
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  not from the United States. And it seems to come
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  out of nowhere, but the truth is that Soviet
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  culture put huge emphasis on India and Indian
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  culture for geopolitical reasons. So India was
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  a really important ally to the Soviet Union.
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  There were very popular films about yoga. There
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  were very widespread and well -selling translations
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  of Hindu scriptures, of the Vedas, institutes
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  that were educating people in Indian languages.
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  I mean, all of this was official and officially
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  encouraged. And a lot of those people end up
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  becoming Hare Krishnas and becoming invested
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  in or in Buddhism or in Indian culture in various
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  ways that are not, you know, officially, that
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  wasn't the official goal. And the Hare Krishnas,
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  when they do become organized enough, they do
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  see some persecution. So they're exceptional
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  in that way. You know, you could not be formally
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  organizing a religious organization in this time.
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  And so the Hare Krishnas did experience some
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  state repression, which the book discusses. On
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  the whole, the interest in India, the interest
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  in yoga is very, very widespread. And that too
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  comes from the state. And that happened in the
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  70s already. Absolutely, in the 60s. Wow. It
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  starts in the 60s. You know, Yugoslavia was,
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  along with India, I believe, one of the founding
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  members of the so -called non -aligned movement.
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  So there are close ties there as well. So maybe
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  this is also where Hare Krishna's emergence comes
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  from. But it's fascinating. I remember them as
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  a kid. All of a sudden, they just appeared out
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  of nowhere and they were chanting in the middle
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  of the city, Ljubljana, where I grew up in. It
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  wasn't the Mormons or, I don't know, like the
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  Buddhists. It was Hare Krishna specifically.
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  Then they had a couple of scandals. So the whole
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  thing didn't end up well. But yeah, they certainly
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  were there. And they were very colorful. We weren't
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  used to that necessarily. It's a very charismatic
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  movement. And they really seized on the collapse
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  with alacrity. They were the first to be handing
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  out literature, the first to be registering as
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  religious organizations. They were ready to go.
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  And there were people already in the Soviet Union
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  who had been doing this for decades and were
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  really deeply committed. I mean, so the Hare
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  Krishna movement is early 70s when it sort of
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  officially starts in the country. But there are
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  just a lot of people who have a high regard for
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  India and Indian culture and Indian spirituality
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  who see the Hare Krishnas and don't think that
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  they're just, you know, hippie weirdos. They
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  think, you know, I want to know more about these
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  people. How come some like Western Christianity
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  or some sort of more exotic strands of it, Protestant
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  strands, then didn't make, you know, some inroads
• 15:31
  into the Soviet Union, given the fact that...
• 15:35
  control became more relaxed and Hare Krishnas
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  were there all of a sudden? That's a very good
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  question. And in my book, I do separate Western
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  Christian currents and I consider them not entirely
• 15:51
  of the same spiritual flourishing. They were
• 15:54
  there. There were tons and tons of missionaries.
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  There were Mormon missionaries for sure, but
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  Protestants of all kinds, Baptists. The two main
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  differences are that first, there actually were
• 16:07
  already underground Baptists fairly well organized
• 16:11
  in the Soviet Union. And so they had a national
• 16:14
  organization and they were already kind of organizing
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  and fixed. There was no real great enthusiastic
• 16:24
  rush of people into Baptist arms. Most of the
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  proselytizing they did was among former Baptists
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  or among Orthodox Christians. And they didn't
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  have necessarily the same momentum that the astrologers
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  and the Hare Krishnas did. And the other is that
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  I think at this time, I mean, most Russians will
• 16:46
  think when they think of Christianity, they think
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  of orthodoxy. And orthodoxy did have a presence
• 16:50
  in the Soviet Union that was kind of depressing
• 16:53
  and sapped of its spiritual vigor. So there was
• 16:55
  an official church that was tolerated and people
• 16:58
  could go to church. The clergy was... you know,
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  90 % informants, like it was completely co -opted
• 17:04
  by the state. And in the 90s, there's a very
• 17:09
  really conservative turn in the church. They're
• 17:11
  not experimental. They're not really, a lot of
• 17:14
  people are calling themselves Orthodox as kind
• 17:16
  of a cultural identity, but there's not a ton
• 17:19
  of deep spiritual interest in Orthodoxy. And
• 17:23
  I think that The Christians, the Baptists are
• 17:26
  also kind of lumped in with that to the person
• 17:28
  on the street that they don't see Christianity
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  as kind of something really novel and exciting.
• 17:34
  Correct. Yeah. Novel and exciting and useful
• 17:36
  at the time. Yeah. You know, I ask that because,
• 17:39
  you know, I live in Japan and I visited Korea
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  and I didn't expect so many neon crosses everywhere.
• 17:45
  You know, I was like, isn't this a Buddhist Asian
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  country? And you walk in some random town in
• 17:53
  the middle of the night and all of these really
• 17:54
  scary red neon crosses are emanating from anywhere.
• 18:00
  And it just felt like I'm going to get killed
• 18:03
  by some serial killer in any second. It was just
• 18:07
  really unexpected. So I was like, okay, if there's
• 18:09
  all of these Protestant churches in Korea out
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  of all places, then I would expect them closer
• 18:16
  to home, so to speak. in the soviet union yeah
• 18:19
  and those groups are certainly not without their
• 18:21
  own charisma i mean there's obviously very energetic
• 18:23
  and charismatic um global evangelical movement
• 18:26
  uh you do have some of that you have pentecostals
• 18:30
  in in the soviet union at this time or in russia
• 18:33
  you have uh the jehovah's witnesses are also
• 18:37
  fairly prominent although they they'd also been
• 18:39
  there through the whole soviet period they're
• 18:40
  well i also remember those from yeah i remember
• 18:43
  those um But there's nothing equivalent to the
• 18:47
  Christianity of Korea, of some parts of South
• 18:52
  America. I will say another part of that is over
• 18:55
  the course of the 90s, the Orthodox Church, as
• 18:59
  it becomes closer and closer with the government,
• 19:02
  works very hard to suppress rival Christian groups.
• 19:06
  And so the Orthodox Church is definitely not
• 19:08
  going to allow... giant neon crosses in Soviet
• 19:11
  or Russian cities. Not in the competition business.
• 19:14
  Yeah. Let me quote from an amazing article you
• 19:18
  recently wrote for the Jacobin. This is how I
• 19:21
  found you, actually. You wrote the following.
• 19:24
  In the lifetimes of the baby boom generation,
• 19:26
  the predecessor Soviet Union had led the world
• 19:29
  into space. It had won more than 20 Nobel Prizes.
• 19:33
  It had competed at the highest level of international
• 19:35
  sports, and even five years before the collapse,
• 19:38
  it had guaranteed free healthcare, housing, employment,
• 19:41
  and education to a population of 300 million
• 19:45
  people. In the light of what happened to the
• 19:48
  USSR later, these successes are obviously only
• 19:52
  rarely mentioned. However, having them laid out
• 19:55
  like you did, this doesn't sound like a failed
• 19:59
  country. Far from it. Was its collapse a complete
• 20:03
  thunderbolt out of the blue for most people,
• 20:06
  or did some of them know or intuit that the end
• 20:09
  of the Soviet Union was near? It's a really good
• 20:12
  question because the contrast is so stark from
• 20:17
  the 90s in Russia to what had been in the ostensibly
• 20:20
  stable Soviet Union. And ultimately, nobody had
• 20:25
  anticipated the collapse. I mean, there's very,
• 20:27
  very few people, experts, observers, or... just
• 20:31
  citizens who expected the country to collapse.
• 20:35
  There's a really rightly famous book by an anthropologist,
• 20:41
  Alexey Yurchak, called Everything Was Forever
• 20:43
  Until It Was No More. And it takes up this exact
• 20:47
  question. There was a sense in the Soviet Union,
• 20:50
  both that this system was eternal and unchanging.
• 20:55
  There's kind of a limitless sense of time that
• 20:57
  somehow... history hadn't ended in the Soviet
• 21:00
  Union, but it kind of stalled. But then when
• 21:02
  the collapse happens, it's very easy to say,
• 21:05
  oh yeah, of course this was going to happen.
• 21:07
  And the collapse makes perfect sense because,
• 21:09
  and it's a real paradox at the heart of it. The
• 21:12
  collapse was not, I mean, it was experienced
• 21:15
  as a bolt out of the blue, for sure. And there's
• 21:18
  no reason that the Soviet Union couldn't have
• 21:19
  lasted another 20 years or collapsed earlier.
• 21:22
  You know, there's a lot of different historical
• 21:24
  factors. But... Structurally, it was not sustainable.
• 21:30
  I mean, the successes that I list there, the
• 21:33
  Nobel Prizes, certainly the welfare state, those
• 21:37
  things rested on very shaky pillars. And that
• 21:40
  wasn't always obvious. The major one being oil
• 21:45
  prices. I mean, the Soviet Union, the welfare
• 21:47
  state, the wealth of the state rested more and
• 21:50
  more through the 70s and 80s on oil markets.
• 21:55
  The price of oil declines. It was a really catastrophic
• 21:57
  economic pressure for the system. The planned
• 22:00
  economy was clearly not as agile as Western liberal
• 22:07
  capitalist economies. The economic picture, in
• 22:12
  retrospect, is not as bright. Even though there
• 22:14
  was growth, there was no outsized debt, for instance,
• 22:20
  by the middle of the 80s, the pillars of those
• 22:22
  achievements are shaky. They were not sustainable.
• 22:27
  They were kind of illusory. But that says a historian
• 22:30
  looking back and to people actually living through
• 22:32
  it, there was no sense that everything could
• 22:35
  go so fast and that everything was so unstable.
• 22:38
  That came as a huge surprise. How did people
• 22:42
  experience this collapse then? That, like you
• 22:46
  said, for most of them happened practically overnight.
• 22:50
  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, certainly... One essential
• 22:54
  part of understanding the experience of the collapse
• 22:56
  is just how sudden it was. It happened. I mean,
• 22:59
  certainly the economic crisis, even by 1989,
• 23:03
  we have documents from all these different Soviet
• 23:06
  research institutes and agencies that are planning
• 23:08
  10, 20 years, budgeting for 10, 20 years in the
• 23:11
  future. No sense that all this money was going
• 23:14
  to vanish and all the state support was going
• 23:16
  to vanish. And so the collapse and the crisis
• 23:19
  of the 90s. First and foremost is an economic
• 23:23
  crisis. There's just economic contraction on
• 23:25
  the scale of the Great Depression in this country,
• 23:27
  in the United States. Really dramatic declines
• 23:31
  in health outcomes, really sharp spikes in cardiovascular
• 23:35
  disease from stress, in drug and alcohol abuse,
• 23:39
  certainly unemployment. All of these things happen
• 23:42
  very dramatically and very quickly. There's also
• 23:45
  a moral crisis. There is a sense of... If you're
• 23:49
  raising a child in this world, there's violence
• 23:51
  on the streets and drugs and alcohol and completely
• 23:54
  unregulated pornography and advertising, which
• 23:57
  kind of blurs into pornography. And it's just
• 23:59
  a really grim kind of landscape that you're living
• 24:02
  in. So not just poverty and its various pathologies,
• 24:08
  but a moral crisis. And then all of it compared
• 24:12
  with the world that you described, all of it
• 24:14
  compared with what seemed five years ago to be
• 24:17
  a... superpower with all that entails, a really
• 24:21
  successful country in a lot of ways for the average
• 24:24
  person. And so that element is what's so disorienting
• 24:29
  about the crisis and what makes people so confused,
• 24:34
  so lacking in kind of a sense of direction. An
• 24:39
  economic crisis alone doesn't necessarily have
• 24:41
  that. The crisis in the Soviet Union was deeper.
• 24:44
  And in the book, I describe it as fundamentally
• 24:47
  a spiritual crisis. And that's essentially what
• 24:49
  I mean, that all of the reference points, all
• 24:53
  of the big picture that people could pin their
• 24:54
  lives to is just gone overnight. When the Soviet
• 24:57
  Union dissolved in 1991, like you already explained,
• 25:00
  the standard of living dropped dramatically.
• 25:03
  So there's the economic aspect of it all. And
• 25:06
  that's pretty well. However, what's not so well
• 25:09
  documented is what your book is about, and that's
• 25:12
  the sudden kind of cultural displacement. I mean,
• 25:15
  you're living your entire life as a member of
• 25:17
  almost like a particular civilization, and then
• 25:20
  practically overnight you're informed that it
• 25:22
  no longer exists. I mean, you've talked to some
• 25:25
  people living through this time. They must have
• 25:28
  explained it as a uniquely bizarre experience,
• 25:31
  no? Yes. The key word that I always return to
• 25:35
  is disorientation because there's a sense, and
• 25:38
  we have to remember that in a crisis like that,
• 25:40
  you have no sense of how bad it can get. There's
• 25:43
  no natural bottom. There's no sense of when it's
• 25:45
  going to end. And so you have no, and in the
• 25:50
  1980s, as I said, sort of the Soviet history
• 25:53
  is being uprooted all the time. And you're learning
• 25:55
  that everything you knew about the past is essentially
• 25:58
  been falsified. And so you have no future and
• 26:01
  no past. And the crisis is so sudden that people
• 26:06
  are desperate to find some kind of orientation.
• 26:08
  They are seeking out any kind of explanation
• 26:12
  for what's going on and willing to listen to
• 26:14
  really radical ideas because what they're hearing
• 26:17
  from official sources just doesn't ring true.
• 26:21
  I mean, in the 90s, the government is speaking
• 26:24
  as if there's some kind of coherent economic
• 26:26
  plan that they're being guided by refined Western
• 26:28
  economic theory. But it's a free -for -all in
• 26:31
  practice. It's a libertarian nightmare where
• 26:34
  obviously the most powerful and the few, few
• 26:38
  super rich are running the show. And so people
• 26:42
  are disoriented. And when someone can speak to
• 26:47
  them and give a coherent, compelling explanation
• 26:51
  of what's happening and what will come, they
• 26:53
  latch onto that. And so you see millions of people
• 26:56
  at this time. engage in a really, really active
• 26:59
  search for meaning and search for direction and
• 27:02
  orientation. Okay, so the vacuum that appeared
• 27:06
  had to be filled somehow. And that's where a
• 27:09
  tasty list of unusual narratives and characters
• 27:12
  starts not only to spring up, but like you said,
• 27:15
  to resonate with a lot of people. So I think
• 27:16
  this would be a good spot for you to give us
• 27:18
  an example of one of those exotic harbingers
• 27:23
  of the new culture that was suddenly forming
• 27:25
  in the... Was it the Russian Federation yet?
• 27:29
  It was, yeah. Yeah. In the article, you mentioned
• 27:31
  mathematician Anatoly Fomenko and his pretty
• 27:35
  crackpot theories. But we can talk about someone
• 27:38
  else if you'd like to. Yeah, well, we'll certainly
• 27:40
  return to Fomenko. I mean, Fomenko, I think as
• 27:43
  more people read the book, I think Fomenko is
• 27:45
  emerging as the most interesting to people. And
• 27:47
  I'm getting the most questions about him because
• 27:50
  he really is such a Nazi ending character. Just
• 27:53
  briefly, Anatoly Fomenko is the Soviet. Russian
• 27:56
  mathematician, world -renowned mathematician,
• 27:58
  very accomplished in his subfield of geometry,
• 28:03
  who in the 90s starts to publish this theory
• 28:06
  of history that all of history unfolded in the
• 28:09
  last thousand years. And with that, he just turns
• 28:12
  everything we know about history on its head.
• 28:14
  And people start reading him in huge, huge numbers.
• 28:17
  Wait, so he literally said that history began
• 28:19
  a thousand years ago or anything that was worth
• 28:22
  studying happened? A thousand years ago. No,
• 28:26
  history literally, that writing emerges about
• 28:28
  a thousand years ago. And that before that, we
• 28:30
  have no historical sources. So, sorry, where
• 28:34
  is he getting this from? Well, he would say that
• 28:38
  this is all based in the hard scientific analysis
• 28:43
  of historical manuscripts. So all by strict.
• 28:51
  Bulletproof mathematical formulas. He makes the
• 28:54
  case. And he's a mathematician and he's leaning
• 28:55
  on his credentials. And so he took a bunch of
• 29:00
  historical records of eclipses and comets and
• 29:03
  other celestial events, which are very reliably
• 29:06
  recorded in historical manuscripts. And he did
• 29:13
  the math. He plugged these things, hundreds of
• 29:15
  manuscripts, into an algorithm that he designed
• 29:18
  himself into a Soviet supercomputer. And interpreted
• 29:21
  the outcome to mean that, in fact, we've really
• 29:24
  badly misplaced these things in history. All
• 29:27
  of them happened far, far more recently. For
• 29:30
  instance, he has Jesus Christ in the 12th century,
• 29:33
  living sometime towards the end of the 12th century.
• 29:36
  And with that, you know, a total rewriting of
• 29:39
  history for all peoples and for Eurasia in particular.
• 29:43
  But almost nothing we know about the past holds
• 29:46
  up in his theory. And most importantly. Millions
• 29:51
  of people are reading this. I mean, plausibly
• 29:53
  in the low, millions of people are reading and
• 29:55
  taking seriously this theory. So Fomenko is one.
• 29:58
  There was also a flourishing of apocalyptic sects.
• 30:00
  There were three different people claiming to
• 30:02
  be the second coming of Christ at the same time
• 30:04
  and competing with each other and gathering followers.
• 30:08
  There were a ton of really dramatic pyramid schemes,
• 30:12
  people selling the moon to people on TV and huge
• 30:14
  financial schemes that collapsed at this time.
• 30:17
  And so it's... It's limitless how many of these
• 30:21
  kind of salesmen and proselytizers and prophets
• 30:24
  are appearing at the same time in the early 90s.
• 30:27
  So it's not just like an economic free -for -all.
• 30:30
  It sounds like a cultural free -for -all as well.
• 30:33
  Just whatever idea you can throw out there, hope
• 30:36
  it's going to stay. You're just trying it. But
• 30:38
  how is this like, for example, if we come back
• 30:41
  to Fomenko, how is that kind of alleviating?
• 30:44
  this sense of disorientation that people have,
• 30:47
  this theory that all history started a thousand
• 30:49
  years ago? Is he connecting it somehow to what's
• 30:51
  happening to Russia at that time? So it's a very
• 30:55
  good question. It's one that I've thought about
• 30:57
  a lot because it doesn't immediately lend itself
• 31:00
  to kind of a current day politics or current
• 31:03
  day explanation or solution, I should say. And
• 31:08
  I think to answer the question, I'll try to give
• 31:10
  a more coherent summary of his theory. So Fomenko
• 31:14
  claims, claims to have proven that all of history,
• 31:19
  our sort of multi -thousand year timeline of
• 31:21
  history, is actually several repeating units
• 31:24
  and that we have mistakenly separated them and
• 31:27
  expanded them back in time. And so he takes the
• 31:31
  entire pre -classical period and he just moves
• 31:33
  it forward by, you know, 2 ,000 years. And he
• 31:36
  takes the classical civilizations and says, no,
• 31:38
  these actually happened, you know. 1200 years
• 31:41
  later, the medieval period, he puts on top of
• 31:43
  the early modern period. And he just says, all
• 31:45
  of these things have remarkable similarities.
• 31:48
  Sort of the rise and fall of the Arab Caliphate,
• 31:51
  for instance, is completely the same as the rise
• 31:53
  and fall of the Roman Empire. And that's because
• 31:55
  they're the same thing. And we've just made up
• 31:57
  these different words in different times for
• 31:59
  them. All of it coincides with the last thousand
• 32:03
  years. And specifically for Russia, his findings
• 32:08
  are... First, that there was no Mongol invasion.
• 32:10
  That never happened. And in its place, there
• 32:14
  was this major, what he calls a great empire,
• 32:18
  a Slavic -Turkic great empire from the 14th to
• 32:22
  17th centuries that rules the entire known world.
• 32:27
  And the Mongols, what we think of as the Mongol
• 32:31
  invasions, were just small skirmishes on the
• 32:33
  outskirts of this empire by the Cossacks, who
• 32:39
  are the same as the Mongols, who are the same
• 32:40
  as the Khazars. He sort of blends all these people
• 32:42
  together. The capital was not in Karakorum in
• 32:45
  Mongolia. It was actually in Yaroslavl on the
• 32:48
  Volga. And Marco Polo, when he's writing about
• 32:50
  Mongolia, he's writing about Russia. And so the
• 32:53
  center of the world becomes this Slavic -Turkic
• 32:56
  great empire, which is essentially centered in
• 32:58
  Russia. And so you're getting some sense of how
• 33:00
  this matters to Russian people. Now, more generally,
• 33:03
  like I said, history begins in the 10th century
• 33:05
  and writing emerges in... Rome. But Rome is the
• 33:10
  same city as Jerusalem and the same historic
• 33:12
  city as Alexandria. And then the major arc of
• 33:15
  history is the rise of this great empire, which
• 33:18
  was a peaceful empire. It was a multi -ethnic,
• 33:20
  peaceful, progressive, happy place for several
• 33:24
  centuries. Christian in faith, Christianity being
• 33:27
  the original world faith in his telling. And
• 33:30
  then by the 17th century, it starts to splinter
• 33:32
  and his timeline comes back into sync with our
• 33:34
  own. The other key part is that All of this was
• 33:37
  obscured in a conspiracy by the Romanovs who
• 33:41
  were allied with the Germans. And so the sort
• 33:43
  of Western Europeans and the Romanovs worked
• 33:44
  together to bury this great empire, to turn the
• 33:49
  steppe peoples and the Turks against the Slavs
• 33:52
  and the Slavs against each other. And all of
• 33:54
  that is kind of invented for the purpose of dividing
• 33:56
  and conquering. So if you're still with me. I
• 33:59
  am. And I'm very entertained. I'm kind of rooting
• 34:03
  for Fomenko right now, to be honest. Well, a
• 34:06
  lot of people were, and that's precisely it.
• 34:07
  A great Slavic empire. I'm a Slav, you know.
• 34:09
  I got to look into this. Slavic and Turkic. Yeah.
• 34:15
  And they're sort of the same peoples. So the
• 34:18
  simplest explanation is that this does provide
• 34:21
  some sense of proud identity, you know, for Russians
• 34:27
  who have lost their dignity before the world.
• 34:30
  I mean, the 1990s is such a stripping of dignity
• 34:32
  for this country and such a trauma in that way.
• 34:35
  And so Fomenko says, no, there's actually this
• 34:38
  lost past that's extremely impressive, glorious,
• 34:43
  that we can be proud of, and that there's kind
• 34:46
  of a natural place at the center of the world
• 34:48
  for northern Eurasia and for Russia. And so in
• 34:52
  that way, it's kind of a nationalist trope. It's
• 34:55
  kind of a nationalist arc. But I hesitate to
• 34:59
  call him a nationalist because he doesn't...
• 35:01
  He's always willing to throw basic tenets of
• 35:03
  Russian nationalism in the trash. I mean, beginning
• 35:06
  with, you know, he has the Old Testament being
• 35:08
  written after the New Testament. And so the Orthodox
• 35:11
  Church hates him. You know, the Orthodox Church
• 35:13
  basically thinks he's the Antichrist. They never
• 35:16
  officially said as much, but they treated him
• 35:18
  that way. So he actually had so many, like, acolytes
• 35:22
  or readers that the church had to respond to
• 35:26
  this. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, the church
• 35:28
  was, I mean, he was all over the television and
• 35:30
  media people were discussing him and he was out
• 35:32
  there promoting his theory all the time. And
• 35:34
  so the church was very aggressive in saying this
• 35:37
  is nonsense. His history of Christianity is complete
• 35:40
  heresy. And so Fomenko had a co -author named
• 35:45
  Nasovsky, Gleb Nasovsky, who was also a mathematician.
• 35:49
  And he was an old believer. So he belonged to
• 35:52
  an old schism within the Orthodox Church. And
• 35:56
  the old believers were putting anti -Fomenko
• 35:59
  literature in the churches and saying, do not
• 36:01
  believe this heresy. And so he's clearly not
• 36:06
  in lockstep with most Russian nationalists. Some
• 36:08
  people have accused him of anti -Semitism, which
• 36:12
  is kind of an old standard of Russian nationalism.
• 36:15
  It always comes out in some way or another. But
• 36:18
  Fomenko is in no way consistent on the place
• 36:21
  of Jews in this history. I think it's very difficult
• 36:23
  to pin him really as an anti -Semite. And he's
• 36:26
  not very interested in that question. And so
• 36:27
  really essential parts of Russian nationalism,
• 36:31
  he discards. There's something totally chaotic
• 36:34
  and kind of psychedelic about him that doesn't
• 36:36
  fit quite right. I mean, usually these conspiracy
• 36:39
  theories end up with like blaming the Jews somehow.
• 36:45
  And he's blaming the Romanovs and the Western.
• 36:47
  He blames the Romanovs. Which is quite refreshing.
• 36:50
  It is refreshing. And Germans in particular,
• 36:53
  but it really is the Romanovs are the villains.
• 36:56
  He considers, he believes that the burying of
• 36:59
  this history, obscuring of this history, is the
• 37:02
  same historical event as the burning of the Library
• 37:04
  of Alexandria. So he compulates those two things.
• 37:06
  And he says that this is like the greatest cover
• 37:08
  -up in world history, but the Romanovs are behind
• 37:11
  it. So it's not that easy to peg him for a standard
• 37:15
  nationalist, I think. I'm making tea here, if
• 37:19
  you'll forgive me. No, no, please do. What happens
• 37:21
  to the man and his theories? He's still around.
• 37:25
  Oh. He's still around, and we exchange emails
• 37:29
  occasionally. I interviewed him in the course
• 37:31
  of my research, and he's been very generous.
• 37:35
  For maybe understandable reasons, he has a difficult
• 37:38
  relationship with historians, and a lot of historians
• 37:41
  spent the 90s just attacking him in every possible
• 37:44
  way. And so I always appreciated, I made clear
• 37:47
  to him that my interest is not in overturning
• 37:49
  his theory. My interest is why the theory catches
• 37:51
  on in the 90s. Why do people care about it? I'm
• 37:54
  not a historian of the Mongols. And so I convinced
• 37:58
  him of that and he has been helpful. He's given
• 38:02
  me permissions to use his materials and so forth.
• 38:05
  His theory is much diminished. There are still
• 38:10
  people who read it. He said that he still gets
• 38:12
  letters all the time from people in their different
• 38:13
  corners of Russia that are saying, oh, I have
• 38:15
  this evidence from the Far East of what you're
• 38:18
  saying. And so he writes back, he engages with
• 38:20
  these people. But there's no longer a place for
• 38:25
  him in the center of book – well, there's no
• 38:27
  more bookstores, I guess, generally. But in the
• 38:30
  90s, he was the absolute centerpiece of bookstores
• 38:32
  and in the history section. That's not the case
• 38:35
  anymore. He's definitely more obscure and he
• 38:38
  has faded in prominence because ultimately there
• 38:40
  is a – the sort of historical orthodoxy has been
• 38:43
  gathered again. And now there's kind of a history
• 38:45
  that everyone can more or less agree on where
• 38:47
  it's being imposed. And so Fomenko unfortunately
• 38:50
  is back to being a mathematician first and foremost.
• 38:55
  Does the situation kind of stabilize with all
• 38:58
  of these apocalyptic cults and obsession with
• 39:02
  Zodiac and new religious sects and so forth,
• 39:06
  like parallel to Fomenko and his theories? Is
• 39:11
  that kind of all happening within the same current
• 39:14
  of like springing up suddenly and then kind of
• 39:17
  retreating into the background? Or did some of
• 39:20
  these things leave a deeper mark? I think they
• 39:24
  have left a mark. I mean, I think that the period,
• 39:26
  the peak of this really is only a few years.
• 39:28
  It's like five years. And even by the late 90s,
• 39:31
  the Orthodox Church, again, is starting to crack
• 39:34
  down and starting to gain the ability to sort
• 39:36
  of fight off these spiritual challengers with
• 39:39
  the state's help. But on the whole, by the Putin
• 39:44
  era, the fervor does settle. And there's still
• 39:49
  very... Large numbers of Russians that believe
• 39:51
  in astrology, for instance. There are still a
• 39:54
  lot of people invested in sort of parascientific
• 39:59
  theories and things like this and journals that
• 40:02
  promote them. But there's no more public kind
• 40:06
  of seeking phenomenon. There's no more mass phenomenon.
• 40:10
  Why exactly is hard to say. I think that these
• 40:13
  theories, all of them together, all of these
• 40:17
  new ideas. addressed a small set of questions
• 40:21
  that were most interesting to Russians at the
• 40:23
  time. And those are, I've identified three basic
• 40:27
  questions that everyone was seeking answers to.
• 40:30
  The first is a question of intellectual authority
• 40:32
  or epistemic authority. Where does knowledge
• 40:35
  derive? How do we actually know what's true and
• 40:37
  what's not? Because that becomes so unclear in
• 40:39
  the late Soviet period. Who can we trust? The
• 40:44
  second is a question of identity. Who are we?
• 40:46
  What does it mean to be Russian? early 90s, the
• 40:50
  Russian Federation is just like, the country
• 40:52
  happens by accident. It just falls out of the
• 40:53
  Soviet Union. And what does it mean? That there's
• 40:55
  no national anthem, even there's no sense of
• 40:58
  what this country is other than kind of the remainder.
• 41:01
  And so people want to know what Russia is. And
• 41:04
  often in the Russian context, that takes the
• 41:06
  form of, are we Eastern or are we Western? Are
• 41:09
  we part of the European tradition? Are we something
• 41:12
  different, something that belongs to the steppe
• 41:14
  and has kind of a distinct civilization? And
• 41:17
  then the third question is of... historical time
• 41:19
  and its direction, like where are we headed?
• 41:21
  What is the big picture of past and future that
• 41:24
  we can affix our lives to? And those are all
• 41:27
  really deep questions. I mean, these are deep
• 41:28
  spiritual questions that plague Russians at that
• 41:31
  time. I think that the Putin era ultimately has
• 41:34
  answers to these questions. I think that authority
• 41:37
  has been reestablished, intellectual authority,
• 41:40
  kind of official media and official history.
• 41:44
  I think that Russia's position vis -a -vis the
• 41:46
  West is hardened. And there's kind of an official
• 41:48
  answer to that, that more or less people are
• 41:50
  satisfied with. I mean, things change very fast.
• 41:53
  It's been a very traumatic bunch of years in
• 41:56
  recent years, but I'm speaking generally of the
• 41:57
  Putin era. And I think that Russia's sense of
• 41:59
  itself as like a great civilization is reestablished.
• 42:03
  And that's a lot of the Putin ideology is about,
• 42:06
  you know, we are destined, we have this historical
• 42:08
  destiny, we have this glorious past. And so all
• 42:11
  of those answers... kind of consolidate around
• 42:13
  an official ideology. And that coincides with
• 42:15
  the decline in seeking, in searching for, yeah.
• 42:20
  Sorry, I'm pouring tea right by the microphone.
• 42:23
  All good. Does this new sort of state ideology
• 42:27
  that appears under Putin becomes kind of centralized
• 42:30
  around more traditional ideas about what a Russian
• 42:35
  is and what that means, the Orthodox Church?
• 42:39
  I think so. And I should have said the Orthodox
• 42:43
  Church, of course, is a pillar of the current
• 42:46
  Putinism, the current sort of official ideology.
• 42:49
  And it's absolutely more conservative, more traditional.
• 42:53
  It is the claim that Russia preserves some kind
• 42:58
  of traditional values that have been lost in
• 43:01
  the market -oriented hedonistic West. And so
• 43:05
  there is stifling of these other currents. For
• 43:10
  instance, one of the chapters is about an apocalyptic
• 43:13
  sect, one of these people who claim to be Christ,
• 43:16
  and they moved with their followers out to Siberia
• 43:19
  and they built a new Jerusalem in the Taiga.
• 43:22
  The leadership has been arrested in recent years.
• 43:25
  In the last five years, the government actually
• 43:27
  just arrested and has imprisoned the leadership
• 43:28
  of that group. And so there is an aggressive
• 43:30
  crackdown in some respects. A lot of foreign
• 43:34
  religious groups have been suppressed in various
• 43:36
  ways, outlawed. And all of it towards a very
• 43:40
  conservative sense of what Russia is and what
• 43:42
  Russia should be. And so the 90s are anything
• 43:46
  but conservative. It is such a freewheeling and
• 43:49
  experimental time. And all of that is long, you
• 43:52
  know, is history. You said it's a wild and kind
• 43:55
  of like hedonistic time. Does that include sexuality
• 43:59
  as well? Not as much as you would expect. Okay.
• 44:04
  In the sense that... That's disappointing. All
• 44:05
  right. Sorry to disappoint. The book is very
• 44:09
  tame in that respect. The touchstone, I think
• 44:11
  for most, so at least for American readers, Western
• 44:13
  readers, the closest equivalent we have in our
• 44:17
  sort of historical memory is the 60s in this
• 44:19
  country. So a period of really, really radical
• 44:24
  worldviews in all directions springing up and
• 44:26
  people seeking and spiritualities of all different
• 44:29
  kinds. And so we think of the 60s as maybe...
• 44:32
  an American equivalent. There's all kinds of
• 44:34
  ways it doesn't quite fit. And one of them is
• 44:36
  absolutely sexuality. These groups tend to be
• 44:40
  conservative in that regard. The Hare Krishnas,
• 44:41
  for all their hippie associations, are actually
• 44:44
  a very conservative movement in that way. They
• 44:47
  have very strict regulations on sexuality as
• 44:51
  well as diet, personal behavior. I mean, they
• 44:54
  have traditional outlook on most of those things.
• 44:57
  Same with these apocalyptic groups. They tend
• 45:00
  to be fairly stayed on the sexual front. I'm
• 45:03
  sure, of course, there were people going the
• 45:05
  other direction, experimenting, but it is fairly
• 45:09
  tame and it's fairly strictly patriarchal. I
• 45:12
  mean, there is no strong current of women's liberation
• 45:16
  even within this milieu. Why that is, I can speculate.
• 45:22
  I mean, the Soviet Union itself, for all of its
• 45:24
  feminist... sort of official feminist ideology
• 45:27
  and the natural place of feminism in Marxist
• 45:31
  ideology, it was a very conservative place in
• 45:34
  terms of gender relations and in terms of sex.
• 45:36
  And so you didn't have that current to draw from.
• 45:42
  And within this sort of underground spiritual
• 45:45
  circles that were forming in Russia in the 70s
• 45:49
  and 80s, They tended to be fairly male dominated
• 45:51
  and have very gendered views of kind of, you
• 45:54
  know, women may be more spiritual, more in touch
• 45:56
  with the spiritual world. The leaders should
• 45:58
  be men. And that is kind of preserved through
• 46:01
  the 90s. Oh, interesting. Because all I can think
• 46:03
  of is like those cool female snipers in the Second
• 46:06
  World War. You know, or like those realist socialist
• 46:11
  paintings of female workers and soldiers and
• 46:14
  scientists and stuff. So one would think that
• 46:17
  kind of like was reflected in general in society.
• 46:21
  Well, so from the start, you know, the Soviet
• 46:23
  Union identifies itself as kind of a feminist
• 46:27
  state with feminist ideology. Feminism has a
• 46:29
  very natural place within Marxism. Marxism typically
• 46:34
  can see the... imprisonment of women in the home
• 46:38
  as extremely economically inefficient. Women
• 46:42
  joining the workforce is really important, is
• 46:43
  a really major untapped source of labor in the
• 46:47
  Marxist view. And from there, you can sort of
• 46:52
  imagine the men as the oppressing class, or there's
• 46:56
  sort of an analogy to women as an underclass
• 46:59
  that are liberated in most Marxist ideology.
• 47:03
  And you do see some of that. I mean, the Soviet
• 47:05
  Union is the first country to legalize abortion.
• 47:07
  It has fairly progressive laws in divorce and
• 47:10
  so forth, at least in the 20s and sort of the
• 47:12
  utopian Soviet period. And then there's all kinds
• 47:15
  of superficial, I mean, absolutely the women
• 47:18
  snipers as heroes, the first woman in space.
• 47:21
  You know, the Soviets put a woman in space something
• 47:24
  like 20 years before the United States. It's
• 47:26
  incredible how long it took the West to do that.
• 47:29
  But in practice, women... labored under what
• 47:32
  was called the double burden, both having to
• 47:35
  be kind of engaged in the workforce as active,
• 47:39
  as public as men, because it's a feminist country,
• 47:42
  but in the home subject to all of the same expectations
• 47:46
  of homemaking and raising children. And so women
• 47:49
  are not in effect liberated in the Soviet Union
• 47:52
  nearly to the extent that it's promoted. And
• 47:55
  I think that very quickly or very easily maps
• 47:57
  onto the question of sexuality as well. conservative
• 48:01
  in that regard, which lives on and lives on to
• 48:05
  the current day in Russia. We talked about this
• 48:07
  kind of new culture that Putin and the leadership
• 48:13
  of the Russian Federation started to cultivate.
• 48:15
  How did this new culture incorporate capitalism?
• 48:20
  Because that kind of became the motor of the
• 48:23
  new state, whether they liked it or not. But
• 48:26
  you said that they didn't want to kind of at
• 48:28
  least officially go. the way of these hedonistic
• 48:31
  Western market -driven societies. And yet they
• 48:36
  became a capitalist country, which was like shock
• 48:40
  capitalism at the beginning. Absolutely. Definitely
• 48:44
  the business end of capitalism. Could you elaborate
• 48:45
  this a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so Russia
• 48:48
  gets the business end of capitalism. It is the
• 48:50
  really ruthless and, in fact, violent end of
• 48:54
  the global market in the 1990s. There's no effective
• 48:59
  institutions to defend property rights really.
• 49:02
  And so you see very quickly the emergence of
• 49:05
  not just oligarchs or new Russians who are super
• 49:08
  rich, but they have their own enforcers and their
• 49:10
  own – it's really a mafia state in a lot of ways.
• 49:13
  The early 90s are a capitalist free -for -all
• 49:16
  and it's extremely grim. There are people – I
• 49:19
  mean inequality skyrockets. There's a very small
• 49:23
  set of people who were able to seize on – kind
• 49:26
  of the gutting of the Soviet state and all of
• 49:28
  its publicly owned assets, which was the whole
• 49:32
  state was publicly owned. And it ends up in the
• 49:35
  hands of an incredibly small elite who enjoy
• 49:40
  no respect from the public. Everyone in the public
• 49:42
  recognizes that they're just robber barons and
• 49:44
  criminals and mobsters. And that's the face of
• 49:47
  capitalism. I mean, through the 1990s, that is
• 49:51
  the experience of both capitalism and democracy
• 49:52
  for Russian people. And I think this is so important
• 49:54
  to understand Putinism. Yeah. I mean, there's
• 49:57
  no mystery about Putinism, at least as it starts
• 50:00
  early on. The promise is we are going to rein
• 50:03
  in the oligarchs. We are going to, you know,
• 50:06
  they preserve capitalism. The state reclaims
• 50:09
  certain functions and it's a kind of state capitalism.
• 50:11
  But we are not going to permit chaos. The state
• 50:16
  has a role in. providing order and security and
• 50:19
  a rationality to capitalism. And that is so appealing
• 50:24
  to the vast majority of Russians. And then you
• 50:27
  add to that the questions I said about sort of
• 50:30
  identity and about what it means to be Russia,
• 50:32
  Russia's dignity, all of that together makes
• 50:34
  Putinism extremely appealing and extremely popular
• 50:37
  early on. Capitalism endures. I mean, it's still
• 50:39
  a capitalist country, absolutely. But the worst
• 50:42
  impulses of capitalism and kind of the total
• 50:45
  exposure to the world market. That is so punishing
• 50:48
  for Russians who find themselves in the world
• 50:51
  of repeated bouts of hyperinflation and basically
• 50:54
  unable to afford anything on the global market.
• 50:56
  That is reined in somewhat by the state, but
• 50:59
  it is still state capitalism of some kind. And
• 51:02
  that's what we're seeing. I mean, that's kind
• 51:04
  of the vogue in authoritarian states now. Socialism,
• 51:08
  going back to a socialist system is never on
• 51:09
  the table, really, for anyone. And so you can
• 51:13
  tell this whole history as kind of history of
• 51:15
  neoliberal capitalism rushing into that whole
• 51:19
  part of the world, the whole former Soviet bloc.
• 51:21
  And what we see now is kind of the backlash and
• 51:24
  the outcomes of that without fundamentally threatening
• 51:27
  capitalism, I think. How do most Russians see
• 51:31
  the period of the USSR now? You spoke to a lot
• 51:35
  of them for your book, I gather. I spoke to a
• 51:39
  lot of them. I didn't speak to most of them.
• 51:40
  And so it's hard for me to generalize. You must
• 51:43
  have gotten a sense, at least a little bit, because
• 51:46
  where I come from, we have, you know, I was born
• 51:49
  in Yugoslavia, I told you before, and there's
• 51:51
  a big wave of Yugo nostalgia, especially with
• 51:53
  my generation. And then I moved to Berlin and
• 51:56
  I encountered it in Germany as well for people
• 52:01
  who, actually, I met a guy who escaped from East
• 52:06
  Germany to West Germany. As a 17 -year -old.
• 52:10
  No, he stayed in West Berlin, but then he said
• 52:13
  that now he actually misses East Germany. Those
• 52:17
  times. Of course, some of that must be rooted
• 52:19
  in nostalgia, in just pure nostalgia for when
• 52:22
  you were young and everything was obviously better.
• 52:25
  Everybody has that. But some of it might not.
• 52:29
  Watchword is definitely nostalgia. I mean, Soviet
• 52:31
  nostalgia is very real. There is a sense. And,
• 52:34
  you know, it's not... specific necessarily to
• 52:36
  the Eastern Bloc because people are nostalgic
• 52:39
  in the West. Nostalgia and often a reactionary
• 52:42
  nostalgia is very widespread today because I
• 52:46
  think that the internet in particular has an
• 52:49
  effect of atomizing all of us. We don't have
• 52:52
  any shared media. We don't have any shared culture
• 52:54
  anymore. And at a minimum, we can look back at
• 52:58
  the 60s and see some common cause and common
• 53:03
  mission and common place that... That was felt
• 53:06
  very widely. Now, I think that effect is more
• 53:08
  dramatic in the Eastern Bloc generally, including
• 53:11
  in Yugoslavia, because at a minimum, you knew
• 53:15
  where you stood. There was a sense of stability.
• 53:18
  The planned economy did provide a very significant
• 53:22
  degree of equality, even if it's kind of inequality
• 53:24
  in relative poverty. There was no sense of gross
• 53:29
  unfairness vis -a -vis your neighbors. A guarantee
• 53:36
  of leisure time. These people I was talking about
• 53:40
  in their kitchen circles, they could be certain
• 53:43
  of enough money to spread the table for their
• 53:46
  friends and have them over and talk through the
• 53:48
  night and their employment was guaranteed. And
• 53:50
  so it's very easy to look back at the 70s in
• 53:55
  Russia and the Soviet Union and say, there was
• 53:59
  a country that knew where it stood in the world.
• 54:02
  It was a country that was proud of its history.
• 54:05
  that had a distinct identity, where everyone
• 54:09
  was part of a collective to some extent, and
• 54:12
  not in sort of the utopian communist sense, but
• 54:14
  there was a collective feeling. And that is hard
• 54:17
  to sustain in capitalism, especially as it becomes
• 54:21
  our current tech -driven, internet -addled, very
• 54:27
  fractious capitalism. And so I think that nostalgia
• 54:30
  is not a mystery at all. And a lot of the people
• 54:33
  I talk to, And a lot of these groups I look at
• 54:36
  have some elements of looking backwards. I think
• 54:39
  it's a very attractive thing. I don't know a
• 54:42
  lot of people these days who look to the future
• 54:44
  with hope. It's easier to look backwards. I mean,
• 54:48
  there are also some, and this is the discussion
• 54:50
  I keep having with my parents who were kind of
• 54:54
  happy that Slovenia became independent as much
• 54:58
  of the population was at the time. I think that
• 55:01
  has reversed somewhat now. But yeah, it was a
• 55:04
  fact that people could afford an apartment, that
• 55:07
  a job was waiting for you when you graduated
• 55:10
  from university or high school. I look at their
• 55:15
  pictures and they're going to deny it, but it
• 55:17
  looks like they had fun. It wasn't some sort
• 55:19
  of grim, endless shifts in some gray factory
• 55:23
  sort of life. And of course, not all countries
• 55:27
  in Eastern Europe or not all socialist countries
• 55:30
  were alike. I'm reluctant to ascribe it just
• 55:35
  to pure nostalgia on our part. Like you said,
• 55:38
  there were some things that are unimaginable
• 55:41
  for our generation or younger. I don't know anybody
• 55:44
  who would work a couple of years and then just
• 55:45
  buy an apartment these days. Yeah. I mean, the
• 55:49
  level of security. And that was sort of the guarantee.
• 55:52
  I mean, by the end, when communism was already
• 55:54
  off the table, nobody believes in the utopian
• 55:57
  element, the greatest claim to legitimacy that
• 56:00
  those states had was... The welfare state, the
• 56:04
  guarantees of employment, of housing. And it's
• 56:07
  true, they did guarantee those things. I mean,
• 56:08
  healthcare, for instance, life expectancy in
• 56:12
  the Soviet Union lagged only a few years behind
• 56:14
  the West. It was basically comparable. Inequality,
• 56:18
  much lower. And lower sort of globally compared
• 56:21
  to states with similar economies. The guarantee
• 56:26
  of housing, not great quality housing, but you
• 56:29
  had it. And so these things did free up people
• 56:31
  to... engaging culture and there was culture
• 56:34
  i mean people were and and you know soviet film
• 56:37
  for instance was good there was there was a productive
• 56:39
  film industry that people actually appreciated
• 56:41
  there was art and and time to talk about it and
• 56:46
  then sort of let your gaze wander and so in addition
• 56:49
  to the sort of the basics of security those provide
• 56:51
  an element of cultural and spiritual freedom
• 56:56
  which is not something we associate with with
• 56:58
  the eastern block but I think that's how it was
• 57:00
  experienced by a lot of people. People were still
• 57:03
  having fun at that time. People in even worse
• 57:07
  circumstances have fun and they find culture
• 57:09
  and they find meaning in their lives. And when
• 57:13
  in the post -socialist world, things were initially
• 57:18
  so chaotic and so traumatic, it's very easy.
• 57:21
  It's almost impossible not to experience some
• 57:25
  kind of nostalgia. Yugoslavia, of course, had
• 57:27
  a much more... or at least immediately, a much
• 57:30
  more bitter end to the socialist period and a
• 57:34
  much more violent outcome, although Slovenia
• 57:36
  being among the more fortunate in that respect.
• 57:40
  But all the same, in any part of the Eastern
• 57:45
  Bloc, the immediate contrast was not very flattering
• 57:49
  for the capitalist future. I forgot to ask you
• 57:52
  something before, so I'm going to ask now. One
• 57:55
  of the reasons I really wanted to talk about
• 57:57
  the spirit of socialism in your book is the fact
• 57:59
  that Yugoslavia, so another socialist country
• 58:02
  that fell apart roughly at the same time, like
• 58:04
  you said, unfortunately in a very violent manner,
• 58:07
  although in Slovenia we got off relatively lucky
• 58:10
  compared to the neighborhood. In any case, one
• 58:14
  of the first things I remember as a kid after
• 58:17
  we became an independent capitalist country of
• 58:21
  a fortune teller on television and this guy became
• 58:24
  huge instantly his name was daniel schmidt danny
• 58:27
  and he was on the on the telly like every single
• 58:30
  day people would call in asking if they're gonna
• 58:32
  win the lotto that week or or find their missing
• 58:35
  hamster or whatever and and this happened all
• 58:38
  over the region and is still immensely popular
• 58:41
  in the balkans do you think it's it's it's more
• 58:44
  than just a coincidence that in a lot of these
• 58:46
  post -socialist societies people wanted to get
• 58:50
  some sort of spiritual or metaphysical reassurance
• 58:53
  that an order of some kind still exists out there?
• 58:58
  Certainly more than the coincidence. I mean,
• 59:00
  this phenomenon was across the socialist world.
• 59:04
  In the Soviet case in 1989, there were two television
• 59:10
  faith healers that brought in millions, I mean,
• 59:14
  hundreds. I mean, like the viewing estimates
• 59:17
  are... almost half the population watching these
• 59:20
  seances that were going on TV. Really, really
• 59:23
  stunning. And those two names, the names were
• 59:26
  Chumak and Kasparovsky, everybody remembers them.
• 59:30
  They are sort of the faces of this whole moment.
• 59:32
  And so that there was an equivalent in Yugoslavia
• 59:36
  doesn't surprise me at all. And there's in fact
• 59:39
  now a whole field of scholars who are looking
• 59:42
  at this in different places. alternative spiritualities
• 59:45
  in Central Asia, in Poland, in Yugoslavia. In
• 59:49
  fact, I think there was even a conference recently
• 59:51
  specifically on Southeastern Europe. Bulgaria,
• 59:56
  for whatever reason, was particularly active.
• 59:59
  There were a lot of faith healers and famous
• 1:00:01
  faith healers that were kind of tolerated by
• 1:00:02
  the socialist state and then become very big.
• 1:00:05
  And so I have no expertise in Yugoslavia or in
• 1:00:10
  the non -Soviet Eastern Bloc. But I would be
• 1:00:15
  surprised if similar currents, similar dynamics
• 1:00:18
  weren't in place. This sense of very sudden loss
• 1:00:22
  of identity, very sudden economic crisis, loss
• 1:00:26
  of confidence in intellectual or political authorities,
• 1:00:29
  and a sense of directionlessness. Those things
• 1:00:35
  to me contribute to a spiritual flourishing.
• 1:00:41
  in the Soviet Union. And I see no reason why
• 1:00:44
  it wouldn't be the same elsewhere. But speaking
• 1:00:47
  from the Yugoslav context, you can tell me, I
• 1:00:49
  mean, I'm sure there are also distinctive qualities
• 1:00:50
  and distinctive interests that differ from the
• 1:00:53
  Soviet ones. No, but just from what you're telling
• 1:00:56
  me, the parallels are really striking. You know,
• 1:00:59
  Jehovah's Witnesses, Hare Krishna, fortune tellers,
• 1:01:03
  apocalyptic cults, like people selling absolute
• 1:01:06
  weird garbage door to door. The emergence of...
• 1:01:11
  oligarchs that used to be close to the ruling
• 1:01:14
  class in the old system. I mean, it's all there.
• 1:01:17
  So I thought there would be more of a difference.
• 1:01:21
  I mean, of course, there were also differences,
• 1:01:23
  but I can recognize all of those things. I'm
• 1:01:27
  quite gobsmacked by that. Well, that's reassuring
• 1:01:29
  because it's always... I've published the book
• 1:01:32
  and the biggest fear is that somebody reads it
• 1:01:35
  and says, this is completely wrong. This didn't
• 1:01:37
  happen. Flowing this out of proportion, this
• 1:01:40
  wasn't a thing, but more often I'm hearing from
• 1:01:41
  people all over the Eastern Bloc say, oh yeah,
• 1:01:43
  this was the spirit of the time. Yeah, you had
• 1:01:47
  me at Hare Krishna. Because I forgot about it
• 1:01:51
  up until now. What was some of the most wildest
• 1:01:57
  thing that kind of took hold at that time? Certainly
• 1:02:00
  Fomenko. People are just delighted to hear the
• 1:02:04
  details of Fomenko's theory and his reasoning
• 1:02:07
  too, his methods and how he comes to these conclusions
• 1:02:08
  are really funny and really amazing. In the book,
• 1:02:11
  one of the chapters is about this sect. The leader's
• 1:02:16
  name was Vissarion, or he took the name Vissarion.
• 1:02:19
  Is that the Jesus guy who literally looks like
• 1:02:23
  Jesus? I saw some short documentary on YouTube.
• 1:02:26
  He appears. dressed in white out of some forest
• 1:02:30
  and everybody's waiting for him. Please tell
• 1:02:31
  me about this. That's the guy. That is the guy.
• 1:02:34
  And he looks the part for sure. He looks a lot
• 1:02:39
  like Jesus as represented in Soviet films. Not
• 1:02:43
  coincidentally. That helps. And in 1991, he declares
• 1:02:48
  himself Christ and he... He himself is actually
• 1:02:51
  of the provincial working class. He's from Siberia,
• 1:02:54
  but he comes to the cities and he does this incredible
• 1:02:57
  tour. I mean, he's so active proselytizing and
• 1:02:59
  spreading his word through every big and small
• 1:03:01
  Soviet city and preaching of an apocalypse and
• 1:03:06
  specifically an ecological apocalypse. So they're
• 1:03:08
  kind of an ecological cult, but they have all
• 1:03:12
  kinds of new age currents within them. So reincarnation,
• 1:03:16
  astrology, faith healing, energy healing, all
• 1:03:18
  this stuff, they find a place in this sect. And
• 1:03:20
  so it's kind of a new agey sect. They also, not
• 1:03:25
  to overload you, they have a strong UFO interest.
• 1:03:27
  There's like a UFO element to their cosmology,
• 1:03:30
  but it succeeds. I mean, they gather some probably
• 1:03:33
  50 ,000 people that stay with the group and many,
• 1:03:36
  many more will come and go. And about 10 ,000
• 1:03:39
  will move out to Siberia. And so they, and these
• 1:03:42
  are people, technical intelligentsia. white collar
• 1:03:45
  urbanites who have no experience building or
• 1:03:48
  living in the woods and they migrate to Siberia.
• 1:03:51
  And they build there this really beautiful and
• 1:03:55
  to this day functioning commune that is pristine.
• 1:03:59
  They don't drink. There's no stray animals. These
• 1:04:02
  two things are kind of visible in every provincial
• 1:04:03
  city in Russia. But here it's very well maintained.
• 1:04:08
  Ostensibly very happy. I know this because I...
• 1:04:10
  I researched there. They invited me. I went there
• 1:04:13
  for two weeks. I stayed with different people.
• 1:04:15
  And I lived in February in Siberia and it was
• 1:04:18
  just snow covered and a beautiful place. I don't
• 1:04:21
  deny that my sort of impression is shaped by
• 1:04:24
  the fact that I just had a lovely time there.
• 1:04:28
  But on the whole, as these kind of sects go,
• 1:04:30
  it is not a repressive sect. They lean kind of
• 1:04:33
  the new age and hippie direction. And so they
• 1:04:37
  endure. And of the many... second comings of
• 1:04:40
  Christ at that time. I think they're the only
• 1:04:42
  one that really endures, that has a lasting presence.
• 1:04:45
  And so learning about what they believe and how
• 1:04:48
  they all ended up there and how they built this
• 1:04:50
  new world was really exciting and really interesting.
• 1:04:52
  The currents are the same. Like I said, it's
• 1:04:54
  people from all these different new age and esoteric
• 1:04:58
  currents found a place in this sect and they
• 1:05:00
  kind of united to form a collective around the
• 1:05:03
  charismatic person of Vissarion. But without
• 1:05:06
  him, I think they'll continue. They don't appeal
• 1:05:09
  as much to the younger generation. So most of
• 1:05:11
  these people are still of the kind of 90s generation.
• 1:05:14
  A lot of their kids are not, they understand
• 1:05:16
  it. They're not critical, but they're not necessarily
• 1:05:18
  going to stay in the woods. Five years ago, the
• 1:05:20
  leadership was arrested in a crackdown by the
• 1:05:22
  Putin government. Including Vissarion? Vissarion.
• 1:05:26
  Yep. He's in prison. Damn. But I have every expectation
• 1:05:31
  that the group will continue because I don't
• 1:05:33
  think they depend on him really for their existence
• 1:05:35
  in that way. are still out there and they probably
• 1:05:38
  have, now I forget, 5 ,000 to 10 ,000, let's
• 1:05:41
  say, people living out in these sort of villages
• 1:05:43
  scattered along a river in Siberia, in southern
• 1:05:46
  Siberia. They're kind of this weird time capsule
• 1:05:49
  of this 1990s moment. Like some sort of Russian
• 1:05:53
  Rajnish Puran with like Osho. That's right. That
• 1:05:57
  Netflix show. That's right. He was also arrested.
• 1:06:01
  He was, although he kind of deserved it. A lot
• 1:06:05
  of bad stories came out. At the end of that fantastic
• 1:06:10
  Jacobin article, you write, it is no coincidence
• 1:06:13
  that the questions that racked Russian society
• 1:06:16
  at the Soviet collapse are today racking ours.
• 1:06:20
  Conspiracy theory is now a primary mode of discourse
• 1:06:22
  alongside a breakdown of any shared intellectual
• 1:06:25
  authority. Anxiety about identity has bred various
• 1:06:28
  reactionary nostalgias all over the West. vanishingly
• 1:06:33
  few of us look ahead with hope. Ouch. How is
• 1:06:38
  it possible that we have arrived to a similar
• 1:06:41
  junction from the other end? And most of all,
• 1:06:44
  how can we avoid some of the pitfalls? Yeah,
• 1:06:48
  I mean, it's really remarkable how many parallels
• 1:06:50
  there are. The sort of three basic questions
• 1:06:52
  of authority and identity and direction are completely
• 1:06:57
  unanswerable in the current moment, at least
• 1:06:59
  speaking of the United States. We certainly don't
• 1:07:03
  have any shared authority. There's no general
• 1:07:04
  respect for academic intellectual authorities,
• 1:07:07
  for scientific authorities, political. The sense
• 1:07:10
  of what America is and what the country stands
• 1:07:12
  for is disputed in the most basic way. There's
• 1:07:16
  no consensus. And people are looking backwards
• 1:07:19
  more than they're looking forwards, for sure.
• 1:07:21
  And so that is a really striking and worrying
• 1:07:26
  outcome. The easiest common denominator to point
• 1:07:28
  to is... and specifically neoliberal capitalism,
• 1:07:32
  that there's been kind of a hollowing out of
• 1:07:34
  any common or public life. And although we were
• 1:07:40
  the beneficiaries for a long time, you know,
• 1:07:41
  in the 1990s, we still were wealthy and feeling
• 1:07:44
  victorious in the Cold War. I think ultimately
• 1:07:46
  the victory belongs to capitalism more than it
• 1:07:48
  did to the United States in the sense that, you
• 1:07:51
  know, right now in this country, nobody, very
• 1:07:54
  few people feel themselves victors or historically,
• 1:07:57
  you know, leading anymore. The missing element
• 1:08:00
  is an economic crisis. I mean, we do have a slow
• 1:08:03
  burning crisis of inequality. And so there are
• 1:08:06
  certainly millions of Americans who do not feel
• 1:08:08
  themselves benefiting from tech bubble after
• 1:08:12
  tech bubble and the growth that we're still having.
• 1:08:15
  But a true economic crisis, which is always around
• 1:08:20
  the corner. I mean, it's so easy to anticipate
• 1:08:23
  whether it's self -inflicted, a debt ceiling
• 1:08:26
  default or something. The AI bubble bursting,
• 1:08:30
  the fossil fuel bubble that we're trying so hard
• 1:08:32
  to inflate right now, you know, bursting inevitably.
• 1:08:35
  I think that that kind of crisis would very rapidly
• 1:08:39
  accelerate the kind of transformations that you
• 1:08:41
  see in Russia. Historians shouldn't predict the
• 1:08:44
  future. And I take some comfort in the fact that
• 1:08:46
  we really can't, like, it's easy to draw trend
• 1:08:48
  lines and say that we're headed clearly for kind
• 1:08:50
  of some kind of right -wing authoritarianism,
• 1:08:52
  or we're already there and it's getting worse.
• 1:08:54
  That's not a guarantee. I think that... In history,
• 1:08:58
  there are definitely times when a formation like
• 1:09:00
  that looks extremely powerful and unbeatable
• 1:09:02
  and actually is fractious and can fall apart.
• 1:09:05
  We saw it happen in Brazil, for instance. And
• 1:09:09
  so it's not a guarantee that we're headed in
• 1:09:11
  the same direction as Russia, but it will take
• 1:09:15
  some adjustment and it will take, at a minimum,
• 1:09:18
  some reclaiming of a common square and a common
• 1:09:21
  purpose. So how to do that, I have no great solution.
• 1:09:24
  I do think that... It's going to happen on the
• 1:09:27
  internet. I think that the internet is such a
• 1:09:30
  primary driver and sort of the consolidation
• 1:09:32
  of tech giants and the internet getting just
• 1:09:35
  shittier and shittier and information getting
• 1:09:37
  worse and worse at greater and greater cost is
• 1:09:40
  unsustainable. I don't think young people like
• 1:09:43
  the internet. I don't think they like AI. I don't
• 1:09:45
  even think they like their phones. What's to
• 1:09:47
  like? It's a big garbage heap. For sure. I just
• 1:09:50
  talked with Corey Doctorow in the previous...
• 1:09:53
  episode about the ancientification of the internet.
• 1:09:56
  And he said that this cannot go much longer.
• 1:10:01
  We're at the end stage of the decay of the internet.
• 1:10:04
  I'm envious that you met the man. I really admire
• 1:10:06
  Cory Doctorow. He has a really extraordinary
• 1:10:09
  understanding of where the internet has been
• 1:10:13
  and where it's headed. And much of what I'm saying,
• 1:10:15
  I'm sure, is influenced by him. I think that
• 1:10:19
  the current... arrangement of the internet won't
• 1:10:22
  last um like you said what's to like i'm talking
• 1:10:24
  to my own students like you know they all have
• 1:10:27
  ai they all have phones but they don't like them
• 1:10:29
  they don't want to be they're pinned to them
• 1:10:31
  they're stuck um they're trapped in the in sort
• 1:10:33
  of the collective way that the corey doctor talks
• 1:10:35
  about but they don't want to be there and these
• 1:10:38
  companies are going to die i mean there's going
• 1:10:40
  to be an ai bubble i think pretty clearly and
• 1:10:42
  even if not you know facebook these kind of aging
• 1:10:46
  sad titans of the internet There's going to be
• 1:10:50
  a new internet coming, and I hope that it can
• 1:10:52
  yield something a little more democratic and
• 1:10:53
  more productive of new ideas and an organization,
• 1:10:56
  because whatever our crisis is, the internet
• 1:10:59
  is right now contributing a lot more than it's
• 1:11:01
  solving. From your mouth to Vissarion's ears.
• 1:11:05
  That's right. A provocative question at the end.
• 1:11:10
  A touch of irony, but the Soviet incarnation
• 1:11:12
  of socialism clearly fade. However, the word...
• 1:11:16
  itself, that was practically banned in the West
• 1:11:19
  pretty much ever since the Second World War,
• 1:11:21
  is now making a bit of a comeback as a possible
• 1:11:24
  and viable alternative to the current rotting
• 1:11:27
  system. And it's doing that in the most unusual
• 1:11:30
  of places, the United States of America. Not
• 1:11:33
  sure when this episode will come out, but it
• 1:11:36
  looks like the next mayor of New York, the financial
• 1:11:40
  capital of the world, is going to be a self -described
• 1:11:42
  democratic socialist. Still sounds like science
• 1:11:46
  fiction right now, but do you think America could
• 1:11:48
  ever succeed where the USSR failed and carry
• 1:11:52
  on the torch of socialism? A very ungrateful
• 1:11:55
  question for a historian. But this is a podcast,
• 1:11:58
  so I have to risk it. No, I'm ready to try. I
• 1:12:03
  mentioned Alexei Yurchak's book about the late
• 1:12:05
  Soviet Union, which was called Everything is
• 1:12:07
  Forever Until It Was No More. The idea being
• 1:12:10
  that it seemed eternal, but its end seemed perfectly
• 1:12:15
  expected at the same time. And I have to say
• 1:12:19
  that applies just as well here. I mean, sort
• 1:12:21
  of the dominance of harsher and harsher form
• 1:12:24
  of capitalism seems so hard to get out of. What's
• 1:12:29
  the phrase that it's easier to imagine the end
• 1:12:31
  of the world than the end of capitalism? But
• 1:12:33
  that is not a guarantee. It doesn't mean it's
• 1:12:36
  true. And I think there's a very good reason
• 1:12:39
  that socialism is back in the lexicon. Part of
• 1:12:42
  it is that beneath a certain age, The association
• 1:12:46
  with the Soviet Union is gone and nobody cares.
• 1:12:48
  My students don't have this immediate revulsion
• 1:12:52
  at the idea because they didn't grow up in the
• 1:12:54
  Cold War. And so socialism, which was always
• 1:12:57
  a much broader category and a much broader vision
• 1:13:00
  than the Soviet version of it, is being reimagined
• 1:13:03
  in all kinds of ways. And I think productive
• 1:13:05
  ways. Socialism remains, I think, the... most
• 1:13:10
  coherent and plausible critique of capitalism
• 1:13:12
  and the most plausible direction for reform.
• 1:13:16
  I don't know that there's anything else that
• 1:13:20
  can so coherently present an alternative. And
• 1:13:24
  so for that reason, I think as long as capitalism
• 1:13:26
  exists, so will socialism. And that's been the
• 1:13:28
  case. They kind of emerged together more or less.
• 1:13:31
  And I think that especially among younger generations,
• 1:13:34
  there will always be an interest in... pushing
• 1:13:38
  America in that direction. America does have
• 1:13:40
  a socialist tradition. It's been fairly well
• 1:13:43
  suppressed, but there are recurring bouts of
• 1:13:48
  socialism in this country, locally, in cities,
• 1:13:51
  and also on the national stage. We're certainly
• 1:13:53
  in one of those now. Mamdani could be a bellwether
• 1:13:58
  of many more to come. He's provided a model that
• 1:14:01
  seems very successful in, like you said, the
• 1:14:03
  financial capital of the world, the beating heart
• 1:14:05
  of capitalism. And so it's not impossible, even
• 1:14:10
  if it seems very impossible. American socialism
• 1:14:12
  would have very distinctive characteristics.
• 1:14:14
  It would have to. And the country will remain
• 1:14:19
  kind of patriotic to a degree that traditional
• 1:14:22
  socialism is typically more internationalist.
• 1:14:25
  I think that pride in this country and patriotism
• 1:14:28
  have to be part of a solution, even if it's a
• 1:14:31
  left -wing solution, even though that makes people
• 1:14:33
  very uncomfortable. It's an exciting time, which
• 1:14:37
  is in historical sense, usually bad. Exciting
• 1:14:40
  and interesting times are bad. But I do think
• 1:14:42
  that somewhere in there, there's possibility
• 1:14:44
  as well as despair. When you spoke about American
• 1:14:48
  patriotism, I'm a huge basketball fan. So I watch
• 1:14:52
  a lot of NBA games. Yugoslavs love basketball.
• 1:14:56
  Of course. Of course. Can't help it. And it always
• 1:15:01
  kind of startles me. When I see soldiers sometimes
• 1:15:05
  at the games and, you know, it's some sort of
• 1:15:09
  like saluting the veterans in the middle of a
• 1:15:13
  basketball game. And then the NBA is hardly as
• 1:15:16
  bad as the NFL in that respect. Oh, okay. I don't
• 1:15:19
  know anything about the NFL. And then they even
• 1:15:23
  ask like European basketball players, even like
• 1:15:27
  players from the Balkans, like, are you excited
• 1:15:30
  that, you know, the veterans are... I'm like,
• 1:15:33
  whoa, that's a really unexpected, slightly frightening
• 1:15:37
  question for somebody who's not even from the
• 1:15:40
  States. Well, if you want a culturally immersive
• 1:15:43
  experience, the NBA, I mean, is seen as kind
• 1:15:45
  of the other end of the spectrum compared to
• 1:15:48
  the NFL, which, you know, it's B2 flyovers and
• 1:15:52
  fireworks and flags and military bands. And even
• 1:15:57
  formal kind of marketing partnerships between
• 1:15:59
  the military and the NFL. I mean, they're completely
• 1:16:00
  embedded with one another. So the NFL, watching
• 1:16:04
  the Super Bowl to me is like the most immediate
• 1:16:07
  vision of American culture as it stands. And
• 1:16:09
  so I recommend it. I also love football. So it's
• 1:16:12
  fun to watch as well. All right. We'll give it
• 1:16:17
  a go. Thanks again for this conversation. Where
• 1:16:20
  can people get your book? The book is called
• 1:16:23
  The Spirit of Socialism, Culture and Belief at
• 1:16:25
  the Soviet Collapse. You can buy it right from
• 1:16:28
  the publisher, from Cornell University Press.
• 1:16:31
  It's available on Amazon for the same price,
• 1:16:32
  but at Cornell University Press, you can get
• 1:16:35
  a 30 % discount. Nice. Give me a moment. I don't
• 1:16:40
  remember what the code is. Let's see it. There's
• 1:16:43
  a discount. I thought you were going to show
• 1:16:45
  the book. I have the book too. I'll show you
• 1:16:47
  that. 09B card. Zero nine B -C -A -R -D should
• 1:16:53
  get you a 30 % discount. And the cover art is
• 1:16:58
  actually a pen and ink drawing by Anatoly Fomenko.
• 1:17:02
  Oh, no way. He's a great artist. He's a renaissance
• 1:17:06
  man. Yeah, that's nice. He is. He's a really
• 1:17:09
  interesting artist as well as a mathematician
• 1:17:11
  and innovative historian. Cool. Speaking of,
• 1:17:16
  it reminded me when I saw this psychedelic drawing,
• 1:17:18
  was there like any sort of like An interest in
• 1:17:21
  psychedelics? Like in the 90s or even before
• 1:17:26
  that? That was there. And there's a, it wasn't
• 1:17:30
  a major mainstream in the same way that sort
• 1:17:33
  of sexuality and experimentation in that direction
• 1:17:35
  were not central to the culture. But there was
• 1:17:38
  a Soviet hippie movement and the hippies thrive
• 1:17:42
  in the 90s like everyone else. There's a book
• 1:17:45
  called Flowers Through Concrete by Julianne First.
• 1:17:49
  who's a German scholar. And she is the world
• 1:17:53
  authority on Soviet hippies, if you're interested
• 1:17:55
  in that topic. Thanks again for your time. Do
• 1:17:57
  you have any social media where people can follow
• 1:17:58
  your work or are you done with the internet,
• 1:18:01
  like we said? I'm with the internet. I use the
• 1:18:03
  internet, but I'm liberated from social media.
• 1:18:06
  Okay, nice. Thanks again, Professor Kellner.
• 1:18:11
  Thank you very much for listening. Please subscribe
• 1:18:12
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• 1:18:14
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• 1:19:17
  It's super nice to see. I'm deeply touched. So
• 1:19:20
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