Norman Naimark: Genocide, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Absolute Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #248

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Norman Naimark, a historian at Stanford specializing in genocide, war and empire. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and now, here's my conversation with Norman Naimark.

Lex Fridman 0:20 Did Stalin believe that communism is good, not just for him, but for the people of the Soviet Union and the people of the world?

Norman Naimark 0:27 Oh, absolutely. I mean, Stalin believed that, uh, you know, socialism was the be all and end all of, uh, you know, human existence. He was a true Leninist and in Lenin's tradition, this was, uh, you know, what he believed. I mean, that- that set of beliefs didn't, uh, exclude other kinds of things he believed or thought or did. But, uh, no, the kind- w- what had- the way he defined socialism, the way he thought about socialism, no, he absolutely thought it was in the interest of the Soviet Union and of the world. And in fact, that the world was one day going to go socialist. In other words, I think he believed in the- in eventually in the international revolution.

Lex Fridman 1:09 So given, uh, the genocide in the 1930s that you describe, was Stalin evil, delusional or incompetent?

Norman Naimark 1:19 Uh, evil, delusional or incompetent? Well, you know, evil is one of those words, you know, which has a lot of, uh, kind of religious and moral, uh, connotations. And in that sense, yes, I think he was an evil man. I mean, he, you know, eliminated people absolutely unnecessarily. He, um, tortured people, had people tortured. Uh, he was completely indifferent, uh, to, uh, the suffering of others. He couldn't have cared a whit, you know, that millions, uh, uh, were suffering. And so yes, I- I consider him a- an evil man. I mean, y- you know, historians don't like to-

Lex Fridman 2:01 Use the word evil?

Norman Naimark 2:01 ... use the word evil. It's a, you know, it's a word for moral philosophers, but I think it certainly fits, uh, who he is. I think he, uh, was delusional. And there is a wonderful historian, uh, at Princeton, a political scientist actually, named Robert Tucker who said he suffered from a paranoid delusional system. And I will always remember that of- of Tucker's, uh, writing because, uh, what Tucker meant is that he was not just paranoid, meaning, you know, I'm paranoid, I'm worried you're out to get me, right?

Lex Fridman 2:39 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 2:40 But that he constructed a whole, uh, plots of people, uh, whole systems of people who were out to get him. So in other words, his delusions were that there were all of these groups of people out there, um, who were out to, uh, diminish his power and remove him fr- and remove him, uh, from his position and undermine the Soviet Union in his view. So yes, I think he did suffer from, uh, from, uh, delusions. And this had a huge effect because whole groups then, uh, were destroyed, uh, by his, uh, by his activities which he would construct, uh, based on, uh, on these delusions. He was not incompetent. He was an extremely competent man. I mean, I think most of the research that's gone on especially since the, uh, Stalin archive, uh, was opened at the beginning of this century. And I think almost every historian who goes in that archive comes away from it with the feeling of a man who was enormously hardworking, intelligent, uh, you know, with an acute sense of politics, a really excellent sense of, um, you know, political, uh, rhetoric. A fantastic editor, you know, in a kind of agitational sense. I mean, he's a real agitator, right? And, um, of a, um, you know, a really hard worker. I mean, somebody who works from morning 'til night. Uh, a micromanager in some ways. So his competence, I think, was really extreme. Now there were times when that fell down. You know, times in the '30s, times in the '20s, times during the war where he made mistakes. It's not as if he didn't make any mistakes, but I think, you know, you- you look at his stuff, you know, you look at his archives, you look what he did, I mean, this is an enormously competent man who- who in many, many different a- areas of enterprise because he, you know, he had this notion that he should know everything and did know everything. I remember one, uh, archive, dyala it's called, you know, a kind of folder that I looked at where he actually went through the wines that were produced in his native Georgia and- and- and wrote down how much they should make of each of these wines, you know, how m- how many, you know, barrels they should- they should produce of these wines, which grapes were better than the other grapes. Sort of correcting-

Lex Fridman 5:13 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 5:13 ... in other words what people were putting down there. So he was, um, you know, his competence ranged very wide or at least he thought his competence ranged very wide. I mean, both things I think are the case.

Lex Fridman 5:25 If we look at this paranoid delusional system, Stalin was in power for 30 years. He is, many argue one of the most powerful men in history. Did, in his case, absolute power corrupt him or did it reveal the true nature of the man? And maybe just in- in your sense as we kind of build around this genocide of the early 1930s, this paranoid delusional system, did it get built up over time? Was it always there? It's- it's- it's kind of a question of, um, did the genocide, was that always inevitable essentially in this man or did power create that?

Norman Naimark 6:05 I mean, it's a great question and I don't think you can... I, I don't think you can say that it was always, uh, in- kind of inherent in the man. I mean, the man without his position and without his power, you know, wouldn't have been able to accomplish what he eventually, uh, did in the way of murdering people, you know, and murdering groups of people, which is what genocide is. So, you know, I don't... I, I c- it wasn't sort of in him. I mean, there were... And again, you know, the new research has shown that, you know, he had... His childhood was, um, you know, not a particularly nasty one. Uh, people used to say, you know, the father beat, beat him up. And then it turns out actually it wasn't the father, it was the mother once (laughs) in a while. But, but basically, you know, he was not, um, an unusual young Georgian kid or student even. And, uh, you know, it was, it was the, the growth of the Soviet system and him within the Soviet system, I mean, his own development within the Soviet system, I think that led, you know, to the kind of, uh, mass killing that occur- occurred in the 1930s. Um, h- you know, he essentially achieved complete power by the early, uh, 1930s. And then as he... As he rolled with it, as you would say, you know, or people would say, y- you know, it increasingly became murderous. Uh, and there was no, um... You know, there were no checks and balances, obviously, on that, that murderous system. And not only that, you know, people supported it, uh, in the NKVD and elsewhere. And he learned how to manipulate people. I mean, he was a, a superb, you know, political manipulator of, uh, of, of those people around him. And, um, uh, y- you know, we have... We, we, we've got new transcripts, for example, of, of, you know, Politburo meetings in the early 1930s. And you read those things and you re-... You know, he uses humor and he uses sarcasm, especially. He uses verbal ways to undermine people, you know, to control their behavior and what they do. And he's a really, uh... You know, he, uh, he's a, a real, um, I guess manipulator is the right word, and he does it, he does it with, um, you know, a kind of skill that on the one hand is admirable, and on the other hand, of course, is, uh, is terrible because it ends up, uh, you know, creating the system, uh, of terror, uh, that he creates.

Lex Fridman 8:48 I mean, I g- I guess just to linger on it, (sighs) I just wonder how much of it is a slippery slope. In the early '20s, 1920s, did he think he was going to be murdering even a single person, but, uh, thousands and millions? I, I just wonder, maybe the murder of a single human being just to get them... You know, because you're paranoid about them potentially threatening your power, does that murder then open a door? And once you open the door, you become a different human being. A deeper question here is the Solzhenitsyn, you know, "The line between good and evil runs in every man." Are all of us, once we commit one murder in this situation, does that open a door for all of us? And it... Uh, I guess even the further deeper question is how, how, how easy it is for human nature to go on this slippery slope that ends in genocide?

Norman Naimark 9:49 There are a lot of questions in those-

Lex Fridman 9:51 I apologize. (laughs)

Norman Naimark 9:51 ... in those questions. And, uh, you know, the slippery slope question, uh, I would, I would answer, I suppose by saying, you know, Stalin wasn't the most likely, uh, successor of Lenin.

Lex Fridman 10:04 Right.

Norman Naimark 10:04 There were plenty of others. There was a... There were a lot of political contingencies that emerged in the 1920s that made it possible for Stalin to seize power. I don't think of him as a... Uh, you know, if you were to just know him in 1925, I don't think anybody would say, much less himself, that this was a, a future mass murderer. I mean, Trotsky mistrusted him and thought he was a, you know, um, uh, uh, a mindless bureaucrat. You know, others were less mistrustful of him, but, you know, he managed to gain power in the way he did through this bureaucratic and political maneuvering, uh, that was very, uh, successful. Uh, you know, the slippery slope, as it were, doesn't really begin until the 1930s, in my view. In other words, once, once he gains complete power and control of the Politburo, once the, the, the, um, programs that he institutes of the Five-Year Plan and collectivization go through, once he reverses himself and is able to reverse himself or reverse the Soviet path, you know, to give, uh, various nationalities their, you know, their ability to develop their own cultures and sort of internal, uh, uh, politics... Once he reverses all that, you know, you have the Ukrainian famine in '32, '33, you have the murder of Kirov, who was one of the leading, uh, figures, you know, in the political system, you have the suicide of his wife, you have all these things come together in '32, '33 that then, you know, make it more likely, in other words, that bad things are gonna happen. Um, and people start seeing that too around him, they start seeing that it's not a slippery slope, it's a, it's a dangerous... It's a dangerous, uh, situation which is emerging.And, and some people really understand that. So I don't... I, I really do see a differentiation than between the '20s. I mean, it's true that Stalin during the Civil War, there's a lot of, you know, good research on that, um, you know, shows that he already had some of these characteristics of being, as it were, murderous and being, uh, you know, being, um, dictatorial and pushing people around and that sort of thing. That was all there. Uh, but I don't, I don't really see that as kind of the necessary stage for the next thing that came, uh, which was the '30s, which was really terror, uh, of the worst sort, you know, where e- everybody is afraid for their lives and there are... Most people are afraid for their lives and their families' lives and where torture and that sort of thing becomes a common part, you know, of who, who... what people had to face. So it's a different... It's a different world and, you know, people will argue. They'll argue this kind of Lenin, Stalin continuity debate, you know, that's been going on since I was an undergraduate, right? That, that, uh, that argument, you know, was Stalin the natural sort of next step from Lenin or was he something completely different? Um, many people will argue, you know, because of Marxism-Leninism, because of the ideology, that, you know, it was, it was the ne- natural... It was a kind of natural next step. I don't think so, you know? And I would, I would tend to lean the other way. Not absolutely. I mean, I won't make an absolute argument that what Stalin became had nothing to do with Lenin and nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism. It had a lot to do with it, but th- you know, he takes it one step, one major step further and again, that's why I don't like the slippery slope, you know, metaphor because that means-

Lex Fridman 13:55 There's a leap.

Norman Naimark 13:55 ... it's kind of slow and easy.

Lex Fridman 13:57 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 13:57 It's a leap.

Lex Fridman 13:58 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 13:58 Uh, and, and we call, you know... I mean, historians talk about the Stalin Revolution, you know, in '28 and '29, you know, that, that he, he in some senses creates a whole new system, you know, through the five-year plan, collectivization and seizing political power the way he does.

Lex Fridman 14:17 Can you talk about the 1930s? Can you describe what happened in Holodomor, the Soviet terror famine in Ukraine in the '32 and '33-

Norman Naimark 14:25 Yes. So-

Lex Fridman 14:25 ... that killed millions of Ukrainians?

Norman Naimark 14:27 Right. It's a long story, you know, but le- let, let me try to (laughs) be as succinct as I can be. I mean, the Holodomor, the, the terror famine of, uh, '32, '33 comes out of, in part, an all-Union famine that re- that is the result of collectivization. You know, collectivization was a catastrophe. Uh, you know, the more or less of the so-called kulaks, the more or less richer farmers... I mean, they weren't really rich, right? Anybody with a tin roof and a cow was considered a kulak, you know, and other people who had nothing were also considered kulaks if they opposed collectivization. So these kulaks, we're talking millions of them, right? And U- Ukraine, it's worth recalling, and I'm sure you know this was a, you know, heavily agricultural area and Ukrainian peasants, um, you know, were on... in the countryside and resisted, uh, collectivization more than even Russian peasants resi- resisted, uh, collectivization, um, suffered during this collectivization program and they, you know, burned sometimes their own houses, they killed their own animals. Um, they were shot, you know, sometimes on the spot. Um, tens of thousands and others were sent into exile. So there was a conflagration in the countryside and the result of that conflagration in Ukraine was terrible famine and again, there was famine all over the Soviet Union, but it was especially bad, uh, in, uh, Ukraine, in part because Ukrainian peasants resisted. Now in '32, '33, a couple of things happen. I mean, I've argued this in, in my writing and, and, and, um, you know, I've also worked on this. I continue to work on it, by the way, with, with a museum in, in Kyiv that's going to be about the Holodomor. They're b- they're building the museum now, and it's going to be a very impressive, uh, set of exhibits and talk with historians all the time about it. So, so what happens in '32, '33 are a couple of things. First of all, the, uh, uh, Stalin develops an even stronger... I say even stronger 'cause he already had an antipathy for the Ukrainians, an even stronger antipathy for the Ukrainians in general. First of all, they resist collectivization. Uh, second of all, he's not getting all the grain he wants out of them and which he needs and so he sends in then, uh, people to expropriate the grain and take the grain away from the peasants. These teams of people, you know, some policemen, some urban thugs, some party people, some poor peasants, you know, take part too, go into the villages, uh, and forcibly seize grain and, um, and animals from the Ukrainian peasantry. They're seizing it all over. I mean, let's remember again, this is all over the Soviet Union in '32, uh, especially. Uh, then, uh, you know, in December of 1932, uh, January of '33, February of '33, Stalin is convinced the Ukrainian peasantry, um, needs to be shown who's boss, that they're not turning over their grain, that they're resisting the expropriators, that they're hiding the grain, which they do sometimes, right? That they're basically not loyal to the Soviet Union, that they're acting like traitors, that they're ready-And he says this, you know, to, I think it's Kaganovich he says it to, you know, they're ready to kind of pull out of the Soviet Union and join Poland. I mean, he thinks Poland is, you know, out to get the U- out to get Ukraine. And so he's gonna then essentially break the back of these peasantry. And the way he breaks their back, uh, is by going through another expropriation program, which is not done in the rest of the Soviet Union. So he's taking away everything they have. Everything they have. There are new laws introduced where they will actually punish people, including kids, with death if they steal any grain. You know, if they take anything from the, you know, from the fields. So, you know, you can shoot anybody, you know, who is looking for food. And then he introduces measures in Ukraine which are not introduced into the rest of the Soviet Union. For example, um, Ukrainian peasantry are not allowed to leave their villages anymore. They can't go to the city to try to find some things. I mean, we've got pictures of, you know, Ukrainian peasants dying on the sidewalks in Kharkiv and in Kiev and, and places like that, who've managed to get out of the village and get to the cities. But now they can't leave. They can't leave Ukraine to go to Belorussia or Belarus today, uh, or to Russia, you know, to get any food. There's no... He won't allow any relief to Ukraine. A number of people offer r- relief, including the Poles, but also the Vatican offers relief. He won't allow any relief to Ukraine. He won't admit that there's a famine in Ukraine. And instead what happens, uh, is that Ukraine turns into, the Ukrainian countryside turns into what my now, uh, passed colleague, who died several years ago, Robert Conquest, called a vast Belsen. And by that, you know, the images of bodies just lying everywhere. You know, people dead. And, uh, and dying, you know, of hunger, which is, b- by the way... I mean, uh, uh, as you know, I've spent a lot of time studying genocide. I don't think there's anything worse than dying of hunger, from what I have read. I mean, you see terrible ways that people die, right? But dying of hunger is just such a, a horrible, horrible thing. And so, for example, uh, we know there were many cases of cannibalism in the countryside, 'cause there wasn't anything to eat. People were eating their own kids, right? And Stalin knew about this. And again, you know, we started with this question a little bit earlier. He doesn't, he, there's not a sign of remorse. Not a sign of pity, right? Not a sign of any kind of human emotion that normal people would have.

Lex Fridman 21:01 What about the opposite of, um, joy for teaching them a lesson?

Norman Naimark 21:08 I, I don't think there's joy. I'm not sure Stalin really understood-

Lex Fridman 21:13 Emotion of-

Norman Naimark 21:13 ... what joy was.

Lex Fridman 21:14 ... inter- interaction?

Norman Naimark 21:14 You know, I, I th- I, I, I think he felt it was necessary to get those SOBs, right? That they deserved it. He says that several times, "This is their own fault." Right? "This is their own fault." Um, and as their own fault, you know, they get what they deserve, basically.

Lex Fridman 21:36 How much was the calculation? How much was it reason versus emotion? In, in, in terms of-

Norman Naimark 21:42 Uh-

Lex Fridman 21:43 You said he was competent. Was there a long-term strategy, or was this strategy based on emotion and anger and...

Norman Naimark 21:51 No, no. Well, I think actually the r- the right answer is a little of both. I mean, usually the right answer in history is something like that.

Lex Fridman 21:59 A little of both.

Norman Naimark 21:59 Right? Now you can't, you can't... It wasn't just... I mean, f- first of all, you know, the, the Soviets had it in for Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalism, which they really didn't like. And by the way, Russians still don't like it, right? Um, so they had it in for Ukrainian nationalism. They, they feared Ukrainian nationalism. As I said, you know, Stalin, Stalin writes, you know, "We'll loo- we'll lose Ukraine," you know, if these guys win. You know, so there's a kind of long-term determination, as I said, you know, to kind of break the back of Ukrainian national, uh, identity and Ukrainian nationalism, as any kind of separatist force whatsoever. And so there's that rat- rational calculation. At the same time, I think Stalin is annoyed and, um, peeved and angry on one level with the Ukrainians for resisting collectivization and for being difficult and for not, you know, not conforming, uh, you know, to the way, uh, he thinks, uh, peasants should act in this situation. So you have both things. He's also very angry at the Ukrainian party and eventually purges it for not being able to control Ukraine and not be able to control the situation. You know, Ukraine is, in theory, the breadbasket, right, of Europe. "Well, where, well, how come the breadbasket isn't turning over to me all this grain so I can sell it abroad and, and, uh, you know, build new factories and support the workers in the cities?" So there's a kind of annoyance, you know, when things fail, and this is absolutely typical of Stalin, when things fail, he blames it on other people, and usually groups of people, right? Not individuals, but groups, again. So a little bit of both I think is the right answer.

Lex Fridman 23:54 This blame, it feels like there's a playbook that dictators follow. I just wonder if it comes naturally or just kind of evolves. 'Cause, you know, blaming others and then telling these narratives and then creating the other and then somehow that leads to hatred and genocide. It feels like, uh, like, there's too many commonalities...... for it not to be a naturally emergent strategy that works for dictatorships?

Norman Naimark 24:20 I mean, that's a good... It's a very good point, and I think it's one, you know, that, you know, has its merits. In other words, I think, uh, you're right, that there's certain kinds of strategies by dictators that, you know, are common to them. Uh, a lot of them do killing, not all of them, of that sort that Stalin did. I've written about Mao and Pol Pot and, you know, and Hitler and, you know, there, there is a sort of, as you say, a kind of playbook, uh, for political dictatorship. Also for, you know, a kind of Communist totalitarian way of, of functioning, you know? And that, that way of functioning was described already by Hannah Arendt early on when she wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism. Um, and, and, and she more or less writes the playbook, um, and Stalin does follow it. The, the real question in, uh, uh, it seems to me is, to what extent? You know, and, and how deep does this go, and how often does it go in that direction? I mean, you can, you can argue, for example, I mean, Fidel Castro was not a nice man, right? He was a dictator, he was a terrible dictator. Um, but he did not engage in mass murder. Ho Chi Minh was a dictator, a Communist dictator, who grew up, you know, in the Communist movement, went to Moscow, you know, spent time in Moscow in the '30s and went to find... fo-found the, the Vietnamese Communist Party. You know, he was a horrible dictator. I'm sure he was responsible for a lot of death and destruction, but he wasn't a mass murderer. And so you get those, you know? I mean, I would even argue, others, others will disagree, um, that Lenin wasn't a mass murderer. You know, that he didn't, he didn't kill the same way, you know, that Stalin killed. Or, or people after him. They're Communist dictators too, after all. Khrushchev, well, was a Communist dictator, but he stopped this killing. Um, a- and, you know, he's still responsible for Gulag and people sending off... sent off into a Gulag and imprisonment and torture and that sort of thing, but it's not at all the same thing. So there are some, you know, like Stalin, like Mao, like Pol Pot, you know, who commit these horrible, horrible atrocities, uh, extensively engaging, in my view, uh, in genocide, uh, and there are some who don't. Um, and, you know, what's, what's the difference? Well, you know, the difference is partly in personality, partly in historical circumstance, you know, partly in, you know, who is it that controls the reins of power.

Lex Fridman 26:54 How much do you connect the ideas of Communism or Marxism or socialism to Holodomor, to Stalin's rule? So, how naturally, as you kind of alluded to, does it lead to genocide?

Norman Naimark 27:09 It's also, uh... I mean, I, in some ways, I've just addressed that question by saying it doesn't always lead to genocide. You know, in the case, again, you know, Cuba is not pretty, uh, but it wa- didn't have, uh, there was no genocide in, in Cuba, and same thing in North Vietnam.

Lex Fridman 27:26 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 27:27 Um, you know, even North Korea, as awful as it is, is a terrible dictatorship, right? And, and people's rights are totally, uh, destroyed, right? They have no freedom whatsoever. You know, is not, as far as we know, genocidal. Who knows whether it could be or whether if they took over South Korea, you know, mass murder wouldn't take place and that kind of thing. But my point is, is that the ideology doesn't necessarily dictate genocide. In other words, it's a, it's an ideology, I think, that, that makes genocide sometimes too easily possible, given, you know, the way it thinks through history as being, you know, you're on the right side of history and some people are on the wrong side of history, and you have to destroy those people who are on the wrong side of history. I mean, there is something in, you know, uh, Marxism-Leninism which, which, you know, has that kind of language and that kind of thinking. But I don't think, um, it's, um, necessarily that way. There's a wonderful historian at, uh, at Berkeley named Martin Melia, who, uh, has written, uh, you know, wrote a number of books on this subject, and he was very, very... Uh, he was very... He was convinced that the, um, you know, that the ideology itself, uh, you know, played a, a crucial role in the murderousness of the Soviet regime. I'm not completely convinced. You know, when I say not completely convinced, I think there're... or you could argue with different ways. Equally valid... val- uh, you know, with equally valid arguments.

Lex Fridman 29:05 I mean, there's something about the ideology of, of Communism that allows you to, uh, decrease the value of human life, almost like this philosophy of, it's okay to crack a few eggs to make an omelet.

Norman Naimark 29:19 Right.

Lex Fridman 29:19 So maybe that... if you can reason like that, then it's easier to take the leap of, for the good of the country, for the good of the people, for the good of the world, it's okay to kill a few people, and then that's where... I j- I, I... (sighs) I wonder-

Norman Naimark 29:35 No.

Lex Fridman 29:35 ... about the slippery slope. (laughs)

Norman Naimark 29:37 Yeah. No, no. Again, you know, I don't think it's a slippery slope. I think it's, um... I think it's dangerous. In other words, I think it's dangerous. But I don't, I don't consider... You know, I don't like Marxism-Leninism any better than the next guy-

Lex Fridman 29:51 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 29:51 ... and I've lived in plenty of those systems to know, uh, how they can beat people down and how they can, um, you know, um, destroy human aspirations and, and human interaction between people. But, um, they're not necessarily murderous systems. They are systems that contain people's autonomy, that-... force people to, into work and labor and lifestyles that they don't wanna live. I spent a lot of time, you know, with, with the East Germans and Poles, um, you know, who lived in, and even, uh, and even in the Soviet Union, um, you know, in the post-Stalin period, where people lived lives they didn't wanna live, you know, and, and had no, didn't have the freedom to choose. Uh, and that was terrifying in and of itself, but these were not murderous systems, and they, and they, uh, they, and, and they, you know, ascribed to Marxism-Leninism.

Lex Fridman 30:51 So, I suppose it's important to draw the line between mass murder and... genocide and mass murder versus just mass violation of human rights.

Norman Naimark 31:02 Right, right.

Lex Fridman 31:05 And the leap to mass murder, you're saying, um, may be easier in some ideologies than others, but it's not clear that somehow one ideology definitely leads to mass murder and not-

Norman Naimark 31:17 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 31:18 I wonder how many factors, what factors, how much of it is a single charismatic leader? How much of it is the, um, uh, conflagration of multiple historical events? How much of it is just dumb, the opposite of luck? Um, do you have a sense where if you look at a moment in history, predict looking at the factors whether something bad's going to happen here? When you look at Iraq at... when, uh, Saddam Hussein first took power, well, you could... or you can, you know, go even farther back in history, would you be able to predict? So, you said... You already kind of answered that with Stalin saying there's no way you could have predicted that, uh, in the early '20s. Is that always the case? You basically can't predict?

Norman Naimark 32:09 It's pretty much always the case.

Lex Fridman 32:11 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 32:11 In other words, hi-... I mean, history is a, a wonderful, um, you know, discipline and way of looking at life and the world in retrospect, meaning it happened. It happened, and we know it happened, and it's too easy to say sometimes it happened because it had to happen that way. It, it almost never has to happen that way, and, you know, things, um... So I- I very much, um, am of the school of... that emphasizes, you know, contingency and choice and difference and different paths and not... you know, not necessarily a path that has to be... uh, has to be followed. Um, um, those, those, you know, and, and, you know, sometimes you can, you can, you can warn about things. I mean, you can think, well, something's gonna happen, and usually, usually the way it works... Let me just give you one example. I mean, I'm thinking about an example right now which was the war in Yugoslavia, you know, which came in the 1990s and eventu- eventuated in genocide in Bosnia, and, and, and I, you know, I remember very clearly, you know, the 1970s and 1980s in Yugoslavia. And people would say, you know, "There's trouble here" and, you know, some- something could go wrong, but no one in their wildest imagination thought that there would be outright war between them all. Then the outright war happened, genocide happened, and afterwards people would say, "I saw it coming." You know, so you get a lot of that, uh, especially with pundits and journalists, and that's... "I saw it coming. I knew it was happening."

Lex Fridman 33:51 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 33:51 You know, well, I mean, what happens in the human mind, and it happens in your mind too, is, you know, you go through a lot of alternatives.

Lex Fridman 33:57 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 33:58 I mean, think about January 6th, you know, in this country and all the different alternatives which people had in their mind or, or, y- y- e- or before January 6th, you know, after the, after the lost election.

Lex Fridman 34:10 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 34:10 You know, things could have gone in lots of different ways and there were all kinds of people choosing different ways it could have gone, but nobody really knew how it was gonna turn out. It wasn't that smart people really understood that there'd be this c- cockamamie uprising on January 6th, you know, that almost, you know, caused this enormous grief. So, all of these kinds of things in history, you know, are, are deeply contingent. They depend on, you know, factors that we cannot predict, and, um, you know, and it's the joy of history that it's open, you know. I- y- you think about how people are now... I mean, let me give you one more example and then I'll shut up.

Lex Fridman 34:46 (laughs)

Norman Naimark 34:46 But w- but, you know, there's the environmental example. You know, we're all threatened, right? We know it's coming. We know there's trouble, right? We know there's gonna be a catastrophe some point. But when? What's the catastrophe?

Lex Fridman 35:01 Yeah, what's the nature of the catastrophe? Everyone says catastrophe.

Norman Naimark 35:02 And what's the nature of it? Right, right, right.

Lex Fridman 35:04 Is it gonna be wars because of resource constraint? Is it going to be hunger?

Norman Naimark 35:07 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 35:07 Is it gonna be, uh, like, mass migration of different kinds that leads to some kind of conflict and immigration? And-

Norman Naimark 35:13 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 35:13 Maybe it won't be that big of a deal and a total other catastrophic event will completely challenge the entirety of the human civilization.

Norman Naimark 35:22 That's exactly right. That, that, that's my point.

Lex Fridman 35:23 (laughs)

Norman Naimark 35:23 That's my point. That's my point. Uh, you know, we really don't know. I mean, there's a lot we do know. I mean, the, the warming business and all this kind of stuff, you know, is scientifically there, but how it's going to play out... And e- and everybody's saying, you know, different things, and, and then you get somewhere in 50 years or 60 years, which I won't see, and people say, "Aha! I told you it was gonna be X or it was gonna be Y or it was gonna be Z." So, I- I just don't think in history you can... Uh, well, you can't predict. You simply cannot predict what's going to happen.

Lex Fridman 35:59 It's kind of when you just look at Hitler in the '30s for me. Oftentimes when I kind of read different accounts, it- it is so often, certainly in the press but in general, me just reading about Hitler, I get the sense like this is a clown. There's no way this person...... will gain power.

Norman Naimark 36:18 Which one?

Lex Fridman 36:19 Hitler.

Norman Naimark 36:19 Hitler or Stalin?

Lex Fridman 36:20 Hitler. Hitler.

Norman Naimark 36:21 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:21 No, no, no. With Stalin-

Norman Naimark 36:22 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:22 ... you don't get a sense he's a clown.

Norman Naimark 36:24 E- yeah. Right, right.

Lex Fridman 36:24 He's a really good executive.

Norman Naimark 36:25 Right.

Lex Fridman 36:26 You think, you don't think he would lead to mass murder, but you think he's going to, uh, uh, build a giant bureaucracy at least. With Hitler, it's like, (laughs) like a failed artist who keeps screaming about stuff. There's no way he's gonna... I mean, you certainly don't think about the, the atrocities, but-

Norman Naimark 36:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:45 ... there's no way he's going to gain power-

Norman Naimark 36:47 Right.

Lex Fridman 36:47 ... especially against commune- I mean, there's so many other competing forces that could've easily, uh, beat him, right? So, but then you realize like s- you know, event after event where this clown keeps dancing, and all of a sudden, he gains more and more power and-

Norman Naimark 37:02 Right.

Lex Fridman 37:02 ... in just certain moments in time, he makes, um, dec- strategic decisions in terms of, uh, cooperating or gaining power over the military, all those kinds of things that eventually give him the power. I mean, uh, this, this clown is one of the most, uh, impactful, in a negative sense, human ing- hu- uh, human beings in history.

Norman Naimark 37:25 Right. And even the Jews who are there and are being screamed at and discriminated against and whose, you know, there's series of measures taken against them incrementally during the course of the 1930s, but very few who leave.

Lex Fridman 37:39 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 37:39 I mean, some pick up and go and say, "I'm getting the hell outta here." You know? And, uh, you know, some Zionists, you know, tried to leave too and go to the United States and stuff. But, um, or go to Israel, um, Palestine at the time. But, um, or, or to Britain or France, but in general, you know, even, even the Jews who should've been very sensitive to what was going on, you know, didn't really understand the extent of the danger. And it's really hard for people to do that, you know? It's, i- i- it's almost impossible, in fact, I think.

Lex Fridman 38:12 So most of the time in that exact situation, nothing would've happened, or there'd be some drama and so on, it'd be there's some bureaucrat and... But every once in a while in human history, there's a kind of turn, and maybe, um, something catalyzes something else and just, um, it accelerates to accelerate, escalates, escalates, and then war breaks out or totally un... You know, revolutions break out.

Norman Naimark 38:37 Right.

Lex Fridman 38:40 Can we go to the big question of genocide?

Lex Fridman 38:43 What is genocide? What are the defining characteristics of genocide?

Norman Naimark 38:48 Dealing with genocide is a difficult thing when it comes to the definition. Um, there is a definition, the December 1948, uh, UN, uh, Convention on the Pre- Prevention and Punishment of Genocide is considered the sort of major document of definitionally, in the definitional sense of genocide. And it emphasizes, you know, the intentional destruction, you know, of, uh, an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group, those are the four groups again, uh, comma, as such. And what that means basically is destroying the group as a group. In other words, there's a kind of beauty in human diversity and different groups of people, you know, Estonians, you know, a tribe of Native Americans, South African tribes, you know, the Rohingya in, uh, Myanmar. There's a kinda beauty humanity recognizes in the distinctiveness of those groups.

Lex Fridman 39:54 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 39:55 Uh, you know, this was a notion that emerges really with romanticism at the, after the French Revolution in the beginning of the 19th century with Herder mostly. And th- this beauty of these groups then, um, you know, is what is under attack in genocide. Um, and it's with intent, you know, the idea is that the in- it's intentional destruction. So this is a kind of, um, you know, um, analogy to first degree, second degree, and third-degree murder, right? First-degree murder, you know, you're out to kill this person and you plan it and you go out and you do it.

Lex Fridman 40:33 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 40:33 Right? That's intent, right? Manslaughter is not intent. You end up doing the same thing, but it's different. So, um, you know, the, the major person behind the definition was a man named Raphael Lemkin. I don't know if you heard his name or not, but he was a Polish-Jewish jurist, uh, who came, you know, from Poland, came to the United States during the war and had been a kind of, um, crusader for recognizing genocide. It's a word that he created, by the way, and he coined the term in 1943, and then published it in 1944 for the first time. Genoc meaning people and cide meaning killing, right? And so Lemkin then had this term, and he pushed hard to have it recognized, and it was in the UN convention. So that's the rough definition. The problem with it is, uh, uh, the definition... The problems with the definition are several. Uh, you know, one of them is, um, is it just these four groups, you know, racial, religious, ethnic, or national? See, this comes right out of the war. And what's in people's minds in 1948 are Jews, Poles, Russians, Yugoslavs sometimes, who were killed by the Nazis. That's what's in their mind.

Lex Fridman 41:54 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 41:54 But there are other groups, too, if you think about it, you know, who are killed, social groups or political groups. And, and that was not allowed in the convention, meaning for a lot of different reasons, the Soviets were primary among them, they didn't want other kinds of groups, let's say kulaks, for example-

Lex Fridman 42:14 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 42:15 ... uh, to be considered. That's a social group.... uh, or peasants, which is a social group. So... Or a political group. I mean, let's take a group, um, uh, you know, communists killed groups of people, but non-communists also killed groups of people. You know, in Indonesia in 1965-'66 they killed, you know, we don't know exactly, but roughly 600,000 Indonesian communists. Well, is that genocide or not? You know, uh, my point of view, it is genocide, although it's Indonesians killing Indonesians. And we have the same problem with the Cambodian genocide. I mean, we talk about a Cambodian genocide, but most of the people killed in the Cambodian genocide were other Cambodians. They give it the name... They're ready to recognize that it's genocide because they also killed some other peoples, meaning the Vietnamese, the Cham people who are, you know, Muslim- Muslim- smaller Muslim people in the area, and a few others. So the question then becomes, well, does it have to be a different nationality or ethnic group or religious group for it to be genocide? And my answer is no. You know, you need to expand the definition. It's a little bit like with our Constitution. You know, we got a constitution, uh, but we don't live in the end of the 18th century, right? We live in the 21st century, and so you have to update the Constitution over the centuries. And similarly, the Genocide Convention needs up- updating too. So that's how I work with the definition.

Lex Fridman 43:45 So this is this invention. Was it an invention, this beautiful idea, romantic idea that there's groups of people and the group is united by some unique characteristics? That was a invention in human history that... This idea? Not the-

Norman Naimark 44:02 Well, that's the word, yes.

Lex Fridman 44:02 Not to see us as individuals?

Norman Naimark 44:03 In some senses, it was. Uh, I mean, it's not... It, you know... There are things that are- are always constructed at one fashion or another, and that-

Lex Fridman 44:10 Yes.

Norman Naimark 44:11 ... the cons- and the construction, you know, more or less represents the reality. And what the reality is always much more complicated than the construction or the invention of the... of- of a term or a concept or a way of thinking about a nation, right? And- and this way of thinking of nations, you know, as- as, again, you know, groups of religious, linguistic, um, uh-

Lex Fridman 44:36 Right.

Norman Naimark 44:38 ... um, not political necessarily, but cultural entities-

Lex Fridman 44:41 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 44:42 ... is something that was essentially invented. Yes.

Lex Fridman 44:45 Yes. I mean, you know, if- if you look at-

Norman Naimark 44:47 They're no- They're no Germans in the 17th century.

Lex Fridman 44:49 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 44:50 There are no Italians in the 17th century, right? They're only there after, you know, the invention o- of the nation, which comes, uh, again, mostly as, uh, out of the French Revolution and in the Romantic movement, a man named Johim... Johann Gottfried von Herder, right, who was the... really the first one who sort of went around, collected people's languages and collected their sayings and their dances and their folkways and stuff and said, "Isn't this cool," you know, that there are Estonians and that there are Latvians and that there are these other... these interesting different peoples who don't even know necessarily that they're different peoples, right? That comes a little bit later, right? Once the concept is invented, then people start to say, "Hey, we're nations too." You know? And the Germans decide they're a nation, and they unify, and the Italians discover they're a nation, and they unify instead of being, you know-

Lex Fridman 45:45 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 45:46 ... Florentines and Romans and- and, um, you know, Sicilians.

Lex Fridman 45:52 But then beyond nations, there's, uh, political affiliations, all those kinds of things. It- it's- it's fascinating that, you know, you start, you look at the early homo sapiens and then there's obviously tribes, right?

Norman Naimark 46:03 Right.

Lex Fridman 46:04 And then that- that's very concrete. That is geographic location, and it's a small group of people, and you have warring tribes probably connected to just, um, limited resources. But it's fascinating to think that that is then taken to the space of ideas to where you can create a group at first to, um, to appreciate its beauty. You create a group, uh, based on language, based on, um, maybe even... So political, philosophical ideas, religious ideas, all those kinds of things, and then that naturally then leads to getting angry at groups-

Norman Naimark 46:41 Right.

Lex Fridman 46:41 ... and making them the other and then hatred.

Norman Naimark 46:44 Right. That comes more towards the end of the 19th century, you know, with the influence of Darwin. I mean, you can't blame Darwin for it, but Neo-Darwin, Darwinians, you know, who start to talk about, you know, the competition between nations, the natural competition. The weak ones fall away. The strong wins get ahead. You know, you get this sort of combination also with, um, you know, modern antisemitism and with racial thinking, you know. The racial thinking at the end of the 19th century is very powerful. So now, you know, at the end of the 19th century f- versus the beginning of the n- uh, you know, be- you know, the middle of the 19th century, you know, you can be a German and be a Jew, and there's no contradiction.

Lex Fridman 47:26 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 47:26 As long as you speak the language and you, you know, you dress and think and act and share the culture. By the end of the 19th century people were saying, "No, no." You know? "They're not Germans. They're Jews. They're different. They have different blood. They have different..." They don't say genes yet, but th- you know, that sort of a- a sense of people, and that's when, you know, there's this sense of superiority too and inf- inferiority.

Lex Fridman 47:49 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 47:49 You know, that they're inferior to us.

Lex Fridman 47:51 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 47:52 You know? And, um, and that we're the strong ones and we have to... You know, and Hitler, by the way, just adopts this hook, line, and sinker. I mean, he... There are a whole series of thinkers at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century who he cites in Mein Kampf, you know, which is written in the early 1920s that, you know, basically purveys this racial thinking. So nationalism changes. So nationalism in and of itself is not bad.... and it's not bad, you know, to share culture and language and, and, you know, folk ways and, and a sense of common belonging. There's nothing bad about it, inherently. But then what happens is it becomes, you know, frequently is used and becomes, especially in fascism, becomes, um, dangerous.

Lex Fridman 48:42 And then it's especially dangerous when the two conflicting groups share geographic location.

Norman Naimark 48:49 That's right.

Lex Fridman 48:49 So like with,

Lex Fridman 48:50 with Jews... (sighs) You know, I come, you know, I'm a Russian Jew and it's always interesting, I take pride in, um, in... You know, I love the tradition of the Soviet Union, of Russia, I love America, so I, I love these countries. They have a, they have beautiful tradition, and, in literature, in science, in art, and all those kinds of things. But it, it's funny that people, not often, but sometimes, correct me that I'm not Russian, I'm a Jew. And it's, uh, it's a, it's a nice reminder-

Norman Naimark 49:30 Yes.

Lex Fridman 49:31 ... that, um, that is always there. The desire to create these groups and then when they're living in the same place, for that division between groups, that hate between groups can explode. And I just, I wonder why is that there? Why does, why does the human heart turn so easily towards this kind of hate?

Norman Naimark 49:57 Uh, you know, that's a big question in and of itself. You know, the human heart is full of everything, right? It's full of hate, it's full of love, it's full of indifference, it's full of apathy, it's full of energy. So...

Lex Fridman 50:11 Yeah.

Norman Naimark 50:12 I mean, hate is something, you know, that, um... I mean, I, I think, uh, a- and, you know, along with hate, you know, the ability to really hurt and injure people is something that's within all of us, you know, it's within all of us, and it's just something that's part of who we are, um, and part of our society. So, you know, we're shaped by our society, and our society can do with us often what it wishes. You know, that's why it's so much nicer to live in a more or less beneficent society, like that of a democracy in the West, than to live in the Soviet Union, right? I mean, because, um, you know, you have more or less the freedom to do, to do what you wish, and, and not to be forced into situations in which you would have to then do nasty to other people. Um, you know, some societies, as we talked about, you know, are more, are more have, have proclivities towards, you know, asking of its people to do things they don't want to do, and, uh, and forcing them to do so. So, um, you know, freedom is a wonderful thing, to be able to choose not to do evil is a great thing, you know? Whereas in some societies, you know, you feel in some ways for, not so much for the NKVD bosses but for the guys on the ground, you know, in the 1930s, or not so much for the Nazi bosses but for the guys, you know, in the police battalion that were told, "Go shoot those Jews." You know? And you do it not necessarily because they force you to do it but because your social, you know, your social situation, um, uh, you know, encourages you to and you don't have the courage not to.

Lex Fridman 52:10 Yeah, I was just, uh, as I often do, re-reading Victor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning-

Norman Naimark 52:15 Oh, right.

Lex Fridman 52:15 ... and, and he said something, um, that just, uh, I often pull out, sort of lines. "The mere knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing. Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn." So that's speaking to, um, you feel for those people at the lowest level implementing the orders, um, of those above.

Norman Naimark 52:49 Right. And also you worry yourself what will happen if you were given those same orders, you know? I mean, what would you do? You know, what, what kinda reaction would you have in a similar situation? And, um, you know, you don't know.

Lex Fridman 53:07 I could see myself in, in World War II, uh, fighting for almost any country that, uh, I was born in. There's a love of community, there's a love of country that's just, um, at least to me comes naturally. Just love of community, and country is one such community.

Norman Naimark 53:27 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:27 And I could see fighting for that country, especially when you're sold the story that you're fighting evil, and I'm sure every single country was sold that story, effectively, and then, uh, when you're in the military and you have a gun in your hand or you're in the police force and, uh, you're ordered, "Go to this place and, uh, commit violence," it's hard to know what you would do. It's a mix of fear, it's a mix of, um... Maybe you convince yourself, you know, what can one person really do? And over time, it's again that slippery slope, 'cause you could see all the people who protest, who revolt, they're ineffective. (laughs) So like, if, if you actually want to practically help somehow, you're going to convince yourself that you can't, one person can't possibly help.

Norman Naimark 54:21 Right.

Lex Fridman 54:22 And then you have a family, so you want to make sure, you know, you wanna protect your family. You, you tell all of these stories and over time-... it, uh, you naturally convince yourself to dehumanize the other. (inhales deeply) Yeah, I think about this a lot, um, mostly because I worry that I would be a good German.

Norman Naimark 54:42 Yeah. No, no, that's right. That's right. And one of the, you know, one of my tasks as a, as a teacher, right, uh, are students. And I have, you know, classes on genocide, and I have one now, uh, and another one, by the way, on Stalin. Um, but the one on, on genocide, you know, o- one of my tasks is to try to, try to get th- get the students to understand this is not about weird people who live far away in, in time and in place, but it's about them, you know? And that, you know, that's a hard lesson, but it's an important one, you know, that, that this is in all of us, you know, it's in all of us, and there's nothing, you know... And, and you just try to gird yourself up, you know, to try to f- figure out ways that maybe you won't be complicit, um, and that you learn how to stand by your principles. But it's very hard. It's extremely difficult. And you can't... T- the other interesting thing about it, it's not predictable. In other words, they've done a lot of studies of Poles, for example, who during the war saved Jews, you know. Well, who were the Poles who saved Jews versus those who turned them in? It's completely unpredictable, you know. Sometimes it's the worst anti-Semites who protect them because they don't believe they should be killed.

Lex Fridman 55:56 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 55:57 Right? Um, and sometimes, you know, you, you... It's not predictable. It's not as if the humanists among us-

Lex Fridman 56:03 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 56:03 ... you know, are the ones who, uh, you know, con- consistently show up, you know, uh, you know, and, and, and experience danger, in other words, and are ready to take on danger, uh, to defend, you know, your fellow human beings. Not necessarily. I mean, sometimes simple people do it, and sometimes they do it for really simple reasons, and sometimes people you would expect to do it don't, m- m- you know. And you've got that mix, and it's just not predictable.

Lex Fridman 56:33 One thing I've learned in this age of social media is it feels like the people with integrity and the ones who would do the right thing are the quiet ones.

Norman Naimark 56:43 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 56:44 Uh, in terms of humanists, in terms of activists, there are so many points to be gained, um, of declaring that you would do the right thing.

Norman Naimark 56:53 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 56:53 It's, um, it's the simple, quiet folks, um, that... 'Cause I've, I've seen quite... O- on a small, obviously much smaller scale, just shows of integrity and character when there were sacrifice to be made and it was done quietly, uh, the s- sort of the small heroes. Um...

Norman Naimark 57:12 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 57:12 Those are, um... Yo- you're right. They're... It's surprising, but they're often quiet.

Norman Naimark 57:17 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 57:17 That's why I'm distrustful of people who kind of proclaim that they would do the right thing.

Norman Naimark 57:21 Right, right, right. And there are different kinds of integrity too. I mean, I edited a, a memoir of a Polish, uh, you know, underground fighter, uh, member of the underground who was in Majdanek, in the concentration camp in Majdanek, you know? And he was just an interesting mix of different kinds of integrity, you know. On the one hand, you know, he, he, it, it, it really bothered him deeply when Jews were killed or sent to the camp or that sort of thing. On the other hand, he was something of an anti-Semite, you know? Um, he would, uh, you know, sometimes if Jews were his friends, he would help them, and if they weren't, sometimes he was really mean to them, you know? And you could... Uh, there are various levels, you know. A concentration camp is a, um, you know, a terrible social experiment in some ways, right? Uh, uh, but you learn a lot from how people behave, and what you see is that they... You know, people behave sometimes extraordinarily well in some situations and extraordinarily poorly in others, and that it's mixed and you can't predict it and it's hard to, hard to find consistency. I mean, that's the other thing. It's, you know... I think we claim too much consistency for the people we study and the people we think about in the past, you know?

Lex Fridman 58:40 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 58:40 They're not consistent any more than, you know, we are consistent, right?

Lex Fridman 58:43 Mm-hmm. Well, let me ask you about human nature here on, on both sides. So first, what have you learned about human nature from studying genocide? Why do humans commit genocide? What lessons... Uh, first of all, why is a difficult question, but what insights do you have into humans that genocide is something that happens in the world?

Norman Naimark 59:07 That's a really big and difficult question, right? And it's, um, it has to be parsed, I think, into different kinds of questions. You know, why does genocide happen? You know, which the answer there is frequently political, meaning, you know, why Hitler ended up killing the Jews. Well, it had a lot to do with the political history of Germany and wartime history of Germany, right, um, in the '30s. And, you know, it's traceable to then. No, uh... Like you, you mentioned it yourself. You know, you can't imagine Hitler in, in their mid-20s turning into anything, uh, of the kind of dictator he ended up being and the kind of, um, murderer, mass murderer he ended up being. So, so... And the same thing goes, by the way, for Stalin and Soviet Union and Pol Pot. I mean, these are all essentially political movements where the polity, state is seized, you know, by a ideological or, uh, you know, party, single-party movement and then is moved in directions where, where mass killing takes place. And another... The other question, you know, so let's separate that question out. The other question is, why do ordinary people participate? Because the fact of the matter is...... just ordering genocide is not enough. Just saying, you know, "Go get them," is not enough. There have to be people who will cooperate and who will do their jobs, you know, both at the kind of meso level, the middle level of a bureaucracy, but also at the everyday level. You know, people who have to pull the triggers and that kind of thing, and, you know, force people into the gas chamber and grab people, you know, in Kiev in September 1941 at Babyn Yar and push them, you know, towards the ravine where the machine gunners are gonna shoot them down. You know? And, and those are all slut- different questions. The question of, um, you know, the, especially the lower level, people who actually do the killing, is a question which I think we've been talking about, which is that within all of us, you know, is the capability of being murderers, and mass murderers, I mean, to participate in mass murderers. I won't call them laws of social psychology, but the, the character of social psychology, you know, we will do it in most cases. I mean, one of the shocking things that I learned just a, you know, few years ago studying the Holocaust is that you could pull out. In other words, if, if they order a police battalion to go shoot Jews, you didn't have to do it. You could pull out. They weren't gonna ... Th- they never killed anybody. They never, they never executed anybody. They never even punished people for saying, "No, I don't, I'm not gonna do that." So people are doing it voluntarily. They may not want to do it. You know, they give them booze to try to, you know-

Lex Fridman 1:02:04 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 1:02:04 ... numb the pain of murder 'cause they know there's, there is pain. I mean, people experience pain when they murder people. But they don't pull out. And so it's the character of who we are in society, in groups, and we're very, very influenced. I mean, we're highly influenced by the groups in which we operate and, you know, who we talk to and, and who our friends are within that group and who is the head of the group and... I mean, you see this even, I mean, you see it in any group, you know, whether it's in the academy, right, at, uh, at Stanford or whether it's, you know, in a labor union or whether it's in a church group in, in Tennessee or whe- wherever. You know, people pay attention to each other and they, and they are unwilling, frequently, to say, "No, this is wrong. Even though all of you think it's right, it's wrong." I mean, they just don't do that usually, especially in societies, uh, that are authoritarian or totalitarian, right? Because it's, it's harder 'cause there's a backup to it, right? There's the NKVD there or there's the Gestapo there, and there are other people there. So you just, you know... They may not be forcing you to do it.

Lex Fridman 1:03:18 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 1:03:19 But, but your social being plus this danger in the, in the distance, you know, you do it.

Lex Fridman 1:03:28 But then if you go up the hierarchy, at the very top there's a dictator. Presumably, you know, you go, go to, like, middle management at the-

Norman Naimark 1:03:36 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:03:36 ... bureaucracy. The, the higher you get up there, the more power you have to change the direction of the Titanic.

Norman Naimark 1:03:45 Right, right, right.

Lex Fridman 1:03:47 But nobody seems to do it.

Norman Naimark 1:03:49 Right. Or what happens, and it does happen, it happens in the German Army, I mean, it happens in the case of the Armenian Genocide, where we know there are governors who said, "No, I'm not g- I'm not gonna kill Armenians. What kind of business is this?" They're just removed. They're removed. And you find a replacement very easily. So, you know, you do see people who stand up. And again, it's not really predictable who it'll be, I would maintain. I mean, I haven't done the study of the, of the Armenian governors who said no.

Lex Fridman 1:04:19 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 1:04:19 I mean, the Turkish governors who said no to the Armenian Genocide. But, you know, um, there are people who do step aside every once in a while, in the middle level. And again, they're German generals who say, "Wait a minute. What is this business in Poland when they start to, to kill Jews, or in Belarussia?" And, you know, they're just pushed aside. You know, if they don't do their job, they're pushed aside. Or they end up doing it, and they usually do end up doing it.

Lex Fridman 1:04:47 What about on the victim side? So I mentioned Man's Search For Meaning. Um, what can we learn about human nature, the human mind, uh, from the victims of genocide? So Viktor Frankl talked about the ability to discover meaning and beauty even in suffering. Is there something to be said about, you know, in your studying of genocide, that you've learned about human nature?

Norman Naimark 1:05:15 Well, (sighs) again, I, I, I don't... I, I have to say, I come out of the study of genocide with a very pessimistic view of human nature. A very pessimistic view of human nature.

Lex Fridman 1:05:25 Even on the victim side?

Norman Naimark 1:05:26 Even on the victim side. I mean, the victims will eat their children, right? Ukrainian case, they have no choice. You know, the victims will rob each other. The victims will form hierarchies within victimhood so you see... Uh, let me give you an example. Again, I told you I was working on Majdanek. And there's, um, uh, in Majdanek, uh, at a certain point in '42, um, uh, a group of Slovak Jews were arrested and, uh, sent to Majdanek. Those Slovak Jews were a group. Somehow they, they, I mean, they stuck together. They were very competent. They were, um, you know, many of them were businessmen. They knew each other. And for a variety of different reasons within the camp, and again, this shows you the diversity of the camps and also, you know, these images of black and white in the camps are not very useful, they ruled the camp. I mean, they basically had all the important jobs in the camp, including jobs like beating other Jews. And...... persecuting other Jews and persecuting other peoples, um, which they did. And this Polish guy who I mentioned to you, the, the, who wrote this memoir, hated them because of what they were doing to the Poles, right?

Lex Fridman 1:06:53 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 1:06:53 And th- and, and he, you know, he's, he's incensed because, "Aren't these supposed to be the Untermensch?" He says. "And look what they're doing. They're treating us, you know, like dirt." And they do, they treat him like dirt. So, you know, in this kind of work on Majdanek, there's certainly parts of it that, you know, were inspiring. Um, you know, people helping each other, people trying to feed each other, people giving warmth to each other. Uh, you know, there's some very heroic, uh, Polish women who end up having a radio show called Radio Majdanek, which they put on every night in the women's camp.

Lex Fridman 1:07:36 (laughs)

Norman Naimark 1:07:36 Which is, you know, to raise people's spirits, and they, you know, sing songs and do all this kind of stuff, you know, to, to try to keep themselves from, y- you know, the horrors that they're experiencing around them. And so you do see that and you do see, you know, human beings acting, um, in support of each other, but, you know, uh, (exhales) I mean, Primo Levi is one of my favorite writers about, about the Holocaust and about the camps, and, you know, I don't, I, I don't think Primo Levi saw anything, you know... I mean, he had pals, you know, who, who he helped and who helped him. I mean, uh, m- but he describes this, this kind of, you know, terrible, inhuman environment which no one can escape really, no one can escape. He ends up committing suicide too, I think because of his, his sense of... We don't know exactly why, but probably because of his sense of what happened in the camp. I mean, later he goes back to Italy, becomes a writer, and that sort of thing. So I don't, I don't... Especially in the concentration camps, it's really hard to find places like Viktigfrankl where you can say, you know, "I am moved in a positive way, you know, by what happened." Uh, there were cases, there's no question. People hung together, they tried to help each other, but, but, you know, they, they were totally, totally caught in this, in this, um, web of genocide.

Lex Fridman 1:09:15 See? So there are stories, but the thing is, I have this sense, maybe it's a hope, that within most, if not every human heart, there's a kinda like flame of compassion and kindness and love that waits, that longs to connect with others, that ultimately unmask, overpowers everything else. If you just look at the story of human history, the resistance to violence and mass murder and genocide feels like a force that's there. The, i- and it feels like a force that's more powerful than whatever the dark momentum that leads to genocide is. It feels like that, um, that's more powerful. It's just quiet. It's hard to tell the story of that little flame that burns with all of our, within all of our hearts, that longing to connect to other human beings, and we... There's something also about human nature and us as storytellers that we, we're not very good at telling the stories of that little flame. We're much better at telling the stories of atrocities. (laughs)

Norman Naimark 1:10:27 No, you know, I, I think maybe I fundamentally disagree with you. I think maybe I fundamentally... I don't disagree that there is that flame. I just think it's just too easily doused, and I think it's, too easily goes out in a lot of people, and, um, I mean, I, like I say, I come away from this work a, a pessimist. You know, there is this work by a Harvard s- psychologist, now I'm forgetting it.

Lex Fridman 1:10:55 Steven Pinker.

Norman Naimark 1:10:56 Yes, yes. Steven Pinker, that shows over time, you know... And, you know, initially I was quite skeptical of the work, but in the end I thought he was quite convincing, um, that over time, um, the incidence of homicide, you know, goes down, the incidence of rape goes down, the incidence of genocide, except for the big blip, you know, in the middle of the 20th century, goes down. Uh, not markedly, but it goes down generally, that, that, you know, more... That norms, international norms are changing how we think about this and stuff like that. I though- I thought he was pretty convincing about that. But think about, think about, you know, we're mo- we're modern people. I mean, we, we've advanced so fast in so many different areas. I mean, we should have eliminated this a long time ago, a long time ago. Um, you know, how is it that, uh, you know, we're still facing this business of genocide in Myanmar, in Xinjiang, in, in, um, you know, Tigray, uh, in Ethiopia. You know, the potentials of genocide there and all over the world? You know, we still, we still have this thing that we cannot handle, that we can't deal with, and, uh, you know, uh, again, you know, electric cars and planes that fly from here to, you know, Beijing... Think about the differences between 250 years ago or 300 years ago, uh, and today, but the differences in genocide are not all that great. I mean, they, even... The incidence has gone down. I think Pinker is demonst- I mean, there are problems with his methodology, but I, on the whole, I'm with him on, on, on that book. I thought in the end it was, it was quite well done. So, I...You know, I- I do not, I, I have to say I'm not, uh, I'm not an optimist about what this human flame can do.

Lex Fridman 1:12:49 (laughs)

Norman Naimark 1:12:49 And, you know, uh, I once, I once, um, someone once said to me, when I posed a similar kind of question to a seminar. A friend of mine at Berkeley once said, "Remember original sin, Norman." Well, I don't, you know, that's very Catholic, and I don't, I don't really think in terms of original sin. But in some ways, you know, her point is we carry this with us. You know, we carry with us a, a really potentially nasty mean streak that can do harm to other people.

Lex Fridman 1:13:22 But we carry the capacity to love too.

Norman Naimark 1:13:24 Yes, we do.

Lex Fridman 1:13:25 And so it's-

Norman Naimark 1:13:25 Yes, we do. That's part-

Lex Fridman 1:13:26 It's-

Norman Naimark 1:13:26 That's part of the deal.

Lex Fridman 1:13:28 You have a bias in that you have studied some of the darker aspects of human nature and human history. So, it is difficult from the trenches, from the muck, to, to see a possible sort of way out through love, but it's not obvious that that's not the case. You mentioned electric cars and rockets and airplanes. To me, the more powerful thing is Wikipedia, the internet. Only 50% of the world currently has access to the internet, but that's growing, in information, in knowledge, in wisdom, especially among women in the world. As that grows, I think it becomes a lot more difficult, if love wins, it becomes a lot more difficult for somebody like Hitler to take power, for genocide to occur, because people think. Uh, and the masses, I think, the people have power when they, when th-, when they're able to think. When they can see the full kind of, um... First of all, when they can s- study your work, (laughs) they can know about the fact that genocide happens, how it occurs, how the promises of great charismatic leaders lead to great, uh, destructive mass genocide. And just, just even studying the fact that the Holocaust happened for a large number of people is a powerful preventer of future genocide. The f- like one of the lessons of history is just knowing that this can happen. Learning how it happens, that normal human beings, uh, leaders that give big promises can also become evil and destructive. The fact, knowing that that can happen is a powerful preventer of that. And then you kind of wake up from this haze of believing everything you hear, and you learn to just, in your small local way, to, uh, give, put more love out there in the world. I, I believe it's pos- it's not, it's not too, uh, sort of to push back, I'm not, it's not so obvious to me that in the end, I think in the end love wins. That's my intuition. If I had to bet money on it, I, I have a sense that this genocide thing is, um, more and more going to be an artifact of the past.

Norman Naimark 1:15:51 Well, I certainly hope you're right. I mean, I certainly hope you're right. And, um, you know, it could be you are, we don't know. But the evidence is different. The evidence is different, and, um, you know, the, the capacity of human beings to do evil to other human beings is repeatedly demonstrated. Um, you know, whether it's in massacres in Mexico or, you know, ISIS and the Yazidi Kurds or, you know, you can just go on and on. Syria. I mean look what that- and Syria used to be a country, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:16:31 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 1:16:31 And now it's a, you know, it's been a mass grave and, and people then have left in the millions, you know, for other places. And, you know, I'm not saying, um, you know, I'm not saying, uh, uh... I mean, the Turks have done nice things for the Syrians and the Germans welcomed in a million or so and actually reasonably absorbed them. Y- I mean, it's all, it's not, I'm not saying bad things only happen in the world. There are good and bad things that happen, you're absolutely right. And, um, but I don't think we're on the path, uh, to eliminating these bad thin- really bad things from happening. I just don't think we are, and I don't think there's any, uh, I don't think the facts demonstrate it. I mean, I hope, I hope you're right, but, but I think otherwi- uh, otherwise it's just an article of faith.

Lex Fridman 1:17:22 Well... (laughs)

Norman Naimark 1:17:23 You know, which is the, perfectly fine. It's better to have that article of faith than to have a article of faith which says, you know, things should get bad or things like that.

Lex Fridman 1:17:32 Well, it's not, it's not just fine, it's the only way if you want to build a better future. So optimism is a prerequisite for engineering a better future. So like, okay, so a historian has to see clearly into the past.

Norman Naimark 1:17:45 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:17:46 An engineer has to, has to imagine a future that's different from the past, that's better than the past. Because without that, they're not going to be able to build a better future. So there's a kind of saying like, you have to consider the facts. Well, at every single moment in history, if you allow yourself to be, um, too grounded by the facts of the past, you're not going to create the future. So that's kind of the tension that we're living with.

Norman Naimark 1:18:14 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:18:15 To have a chance, we have to imagine that that better future is possible. But one of the ways to do that is to study history. (laughs)

Norman Naimark 1:18:24 (laughs) Which engineers don't do enough of, is m-

Lex Fridman 1:18:26 They do not.

Norman Naimark 1:18:26 Which is, uh, a real problem.

Lex Fridman 1:18:28 They do not.

Norman Naimark 1:18:28 You know, it's a real problem.

Lex Fridman 1:18:31 Well, basically a lot of disciplines in science and so on don't, don't, don't-

Norman Naimark 1:18:34 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:18:34 ... do enough of.

Norman Naimark 1:18:35 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:18:36 Can you tell the story of China from 1958 to 1962? What was called the Great Leap...... Forward, orchestrated by Chairman Mao Zedong that led to the deaths of tens of millions of people, making it arguably the largest famine in human history.

Norman Naimark 1:18:54 Uh, yes. I mean, it was, uh, you know, a terrible set of events, um, that led to the death... You know, people will dispute the numbers. Um, you know, 15 million, 17 million, 14 million, 20 million people, uh, died, um, in-

Lex Fridman 1:19:15 Many people-

Norman Naimark 1:19:15 ... the Great Leap.

Lex Fridman 1:19:16 ... say 30, 40, 50 million.

Norman Naimark 1:19:17 Some people will go that high too. That's right. That's right. Essentially, Mao, uh, and the Communist Party leadership, but it was, you know, it was mostly Mao's doing, decided he wanted, you know, to move the country into communism. And, and part of the idea of that, you know, was rivalry with the Soviet Union. Um, you know, Mao was a good Stalinist, or at least felt like Stalin was the right kind of communist leader to have, and he didn't like Khrushchev at all, and he didn't like what he thought were Khrushchev's reforms. And also Khrushchev's pretensions to moving the Soviet Union into communism. So Khrushchev, you know, started talking about giving more power to the party, less power to the state, and if you have more power to the party versus the state then you're moving into communism quicker.

Lex Fridman 1:20:06 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 1:20:07 So what Mao decided to do was to engage in this vast program of, you know, building what were called people's communes. And these communes, you know, were enormous conglomerations of es- essentially collective farms, you know? And what would happen on those communes is there would be, you know, there would be places for people to eat and there would be places for the kids to be raised in, you know, essentially kind of, uh, separate homes and they would be schooled. Everybody would turn over their metal, which was one of the, actually turned out to be terribly negative phenomenon, their metal pots and pans to be melted to then make steel. Every of these big communes would all have little steel plants, and they would build steel, and the whole countryside would be transformed.

Lex Fridman 1:21:00 Mm-hmm.

Norman Naimark 1:21:01 Well, like many of these sort of m- I mean, a true megalomaniac, uh, project, you know, like some of Stalin's projects too. And this particular project then, you know, the people had no choice, uh, they were forced, you know, to do this. Um, it was incredibly dysfunctional, uh, for Chinese agriculture, um, and ended up, you know, creating, as you mentioned, a wh- a- a terrible famine that everybody understood was a famine as a result of this. I mean, there were some, there were also some, uh, problems of nature at the same time and some flooding and bad weather and that sort of thing, but it was really a manmade famine. Uh, and, and, and Mao said at one point, "You know, who cares, you know, if, you know, millions die. It, it just doesn't matter. We've got millions more left." I mean, he would periodically say things like this that showed that like Stalin he had a, you know, total indifference, you know, to the fact that people were dying in large numbers. It led, again, to cannibalism and to terrible wastage, uh, all over, uh, the country and millions of people died, and there was just no stopping it. Uh, you know, there were people in the party who began to kind of edge towards telling Mao this wasn't a great idea (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 1:22:24 (laughs) .

Norman Naimark 1:22:24 ... you know, and that he should back off, but he wouldn't back off, and the result was, you know, catastrophe in the countryside and all these people dying. And then they, you know, compounding the problem was the political elite which then, you know, if peasants would object or if certain people would say no, they'd beat the hell out of them. You know, they would beat people, you know, who didn't do what they wanted them to do. So it was, um, it was really, really, um, a horrific set of events, uh, on the Chinese, uh, i- in the Chinese countryside. I mean, you know, and people, people wrote about it. I mean, we, we, we learned about it. There were people who were keeping track of what was going on and eventually wrote books about it, so, you know, so we have, I mean, we have pretty good documentation. Not so much on the numbers. Numbers is a, numbers are always a difficult problem, you know. I'm, I'm facing this problem, by the way, this is a little, little bit separate, with the Holodomor where, you know, Ukrainians are now claiming 11.5 million people died in Holodomor and, you know, most people assume it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 million, 4.5 million maybe. So you have wildly different numbers that come out. And we have different kinds of numbers as, as you mentioned too with the Great Leap Forward. So it was a huge catastrophe for, for China, and Mao only backed off when he had to and then, you know, revived a little bit with the, um, you know, Red Guards movement later on when, when, you know, he was, he was upset that the bureaucracy was resisting him a little bit when it came to the Great Leap. But he had to, he had to back off. It was such a, such a terrible catastrophe.

Lex Fridman 1:24:06 So one of the things about numbers is that you usually talk about deaths, but with, with the famine and with starvation, the, the thing I often think about that's impossible to put into numbers is the number of people and the degree-

Norman Naimark 1:24:22 (sighs)

Lex Fridman 1:24:22 ... to which they were suffering. You know, the number of days spent in suffering.

Norman Naimark 1:24:28 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:24:30 And so, I mean, death is... (sighs) I, uh, death is just one of the consequences of suffering, and to, to me it feels like one, two, three years or months and then years of, of-... of not having anything to eat, um, is- is worse. And it's sort of those- those aren't put into numbers often.

Norman Naimark 1:24:55 That's right. And the effect on people long term, you know, in terms of their mental health, in terms of their physical, uh, health, their ability to work, all those kinds of things, you know? I mean, Ukrainians are working on, th- there are people working on this subject now, you know, the long term effect of- of the hunger famine on them. And I'm sure there's a similar kind of long term effect on Chinese peasantry of what happened, you know? The, I mean, you're destroying-

Lex Fridman 1:25:20 Multi-generational.

Norman Naimark 1:25:21 Yes, multi-generational. That's right. That's right.

Lex Fridman 1:25:23 Wow.

Norman Naimark 1:25:23 And, you know, it's a- it's a really... You're absolutely right, this is a terrible, terrible way to die and, uh, and it lasts a long time. And sometimes you don't die, you survive, but, you know, in- in the kind of shape where y- that y- you can't- you can't do anything. I mean, you can't- you can't function, uh, your brain's been injured, you know? Um, no, no, it's a really, uh... Uh, these- these famines are really horrible.

Norman Naimark 1:25:49 You're right.

Lex Fridman 1:25:49 So when you talk about genocide, it's often talking about murder.

Norman Naimark 1:25:52 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:25:52 Where do you place North Korea in this discussion? We kind of mentioned it. So in the, what is it? The Arduous March, um, of the 1990s where it was mass starvation, uh, many people describe mass starvation going on. Now in North Korea. When you think about genocide, when you think about atrocities going on in the world today, where do you place North Korea?

Norman Naimark 1:26:20 So take a step back, when the, uh... There were all these courts that were set up for- for Bosnia and for Rwanda and- and- and for other genocides, uh, in the 1990s, and then, um, the decision was made by the international community, UN basically, to set up the inter- International Criminal Court, which would then try genocide in the more modern period, uh, the more contemporary period. And, um, the ICC lists three crimes, basically. You know, the- the genocide, uh, uh, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Um, and subsumed to crimes against humanity are a lot of the kinds of things you're talking about with North Korea. I mean, it's- it's torture, it's artificial, sometimes artificial famine or famine, you know, that is not... Uh, not necessary, right? Not- not necessary to have it, and other, there are other kinds of, you know, mass rape and stuff like that. There are other kinds of things that fit, uh, into the crimes against humanity, and that's sort of where I think about North Korea, as committing crimes against humanity, not genocide. And again, remember, genocide is- is meant to be... Uh, it- it- it... I mean some people, there's disagreement among scholars and jurists about this, some people think of genocide as the crime of crimes, the worst of the three that I just mentioned. But some think of them as co-equal, and the ICC, the International Criminal Court, is dealing with them more or less as co-equal, even though we tend to think of genocide as the worst. So I- I mean, what I'm trying to say is that, you know, I don't want to- I don't wanna split hairs. I- I think it's sort of morally and ethically unseemly, you know, to split hairs about what is genocide and what is a crime against humanity. You know, this is for lawyers, not for historians. I mean, it's-

Lex Fridman 1:28:22 Oh, terminology wise?

Norman Naimark 1:28:24 Yeah, yeah. You know, that it... Y- y- you don't- you don't want to get into that because it, uh... I mean, when it happened with Darfur a little bit, where the Bush administration had- had declared that, uh, Darfur was a genocide and the UN said, "No, no. It's, uh..." you know, it wasn't genocide, it was a crime against humanity.

Lex Fridman 1:28:43 Right. Uh-huh.

Norman Naimark 1:28:43 And that, you know, that confused things versus clarified them. I mean, we knew, damn well knew what was happening. People were being killed or being attacked, um, and, uh... And so, you know, on the one hand, I- I think the whole concept and the way of thinking about history using genocide as an important part of human history is- is crucial. On the other hand, I don't- I don't like to, y- you know, get- get involved in hair-splitting, what's genocide and what's not. So- so that, you know, North Korea, I tend to think of, like I said, as, uh, as committing crimes against humanity and- and, you know, forcibly incarcerating people, torturing them, that kind of thing. You know, routinely incarcerating and depriving them of certain kinds of- of human rights can be considered a crime against humanity. But I- I don't think of it as the same way I think about genocide, which is an attack on a group of people. Let me just leave it at that.

Lex Fridman 1:29:42 Mm-hmm. What in this, if we think about... If- if it's okay, can we loosely use the term genocide here? Just let's not play games with terminology.

Norman Naimark 1:29:50 Okay. Right.

Lex Fridman 1:29:51 Just bad (sighs) crimes against humanity.

Norman Naimark 1:29:54 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:29:55 Uh, of particular interest are the ones that are going on today still, because it- it raises the question to us, what do people outside of this, what role do they have to play? So w- what role does the United States, or what role do I, a- as a human being who has food today, who has shelter, who has a comfortable life, what role do I have when I think about North Korea, when I think about Syria, when I think about, uh, maybe the weaker population in- in China?

Norman Naimark 1:30:33 Well, I mean, the role is the same role I have, which is to teach and to learn and- and to get the message out that this is happening, because the more people who understand