Vejas Liulevicius: Communism, Marxism, Nazism, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler | Lex Fridman Podcast #444

1. 0:00 – 3:10

   Introduction

   1. VLVejas Liulevicius0:00

      And the outcome here is a horrific man-made famine, not a natural disaster, not bad harvest, but a man-made famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those resources, cordoning off the area, not allowing starring- starving people to, uh, to escape. Um, you put very well some of the- the implications of this case study in- in how things look in the abstract versus in practice. Um, and those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the Soviet Union. Um, the whole notion that up and down the chain of command, everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or prettifying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and- and not to, you know, have vengeance visited upon them, um, reaches the point where nobody, in spite of the pretense of comprehensive knowledge, right? There's a- a state planning agency that creates five-year plans for the economy as a whole and which is supposed to have accurate statistics. All of this, uh, is founded upon, uh, a foundation of sand. A deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heighten it in the countryside, um, does damage, and not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection. Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurial, those who have most self-discipline, those who are best organized will be winnowed again and again and again, uh, sending the message that mediocrity is comparatively much safer than talent. Hitler and Himmler envisioned permanent war on the Eastern front. Not a peace treaty, not a settlement, not a border, but a constant moving of the border every generation hundreds of miles east in order to keep winning more and more living space. And with analogy to other frontiers, to always give more fighting experience and more training and aggression to generation after generation of German soldiers. In terms of nightmarish visions, this one's right up there.

   2. LFLex Fridman2:29

      The following is a conversation with Vejas Liudevicius, a historian specializing in Germany and Eastern Europe. He has lectured extensively on the rise, the reign, and the fall of communism. Our discussion goes deep on this, the very heaviest of topics, the communist ideology that has led to over 100 million deaths in the 20th century. We'll also discuss Hitler, Nazi ideology, and World War II. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Vejas Liudevicius.

2. 3:10 – 30:55

   Marxism

   1. LFLex Fridman3:10

      Let's start with Karl Marx. What were the central ideas of Marx that lay the foundation of communism?

   2. VLVejas Liulevicius3:17

      I think there were several key ideas that Marx deployed that were destined to have such an impact. And in some ways, they were actually kind of contradictory. Um, on the one hand, uh, Marx insisted that history has a purpose, that history is not just random events, uh, but that rather it's history, we might say, with a capital H. History moving in a deliberate direction, history having a goal, uh, a- a- a direction that it was predestined to move in. Um, at the same time, in The Communist Manifesto, uh, Karl Marx and his colleague Friedrich Engels also suggested that there was a role for special individuals who might, uh, even if history was still moving in this predetermined direction, might give it an extra push, might play a heroic role in that process. And I think that these two ideas added together, the notion that there is a science of revolution that suggests that you can move in a deliberate and, uh, and meaningful, rational way towards the end of history and the resolution of all conflicts, uh, a total liberation of the human person, uh, and that moreover, that was inevitable, that that was pre-programmed and destined in the- in the order of things. When you add to that the notion that there's also room for heroism and the individual role, uh, this ended up being tremendously powerful as a combination. Um, earlier thinkers, uh, who were socialists had already dreamt of or projected futures where all conflict would be resolved and human life would achieve some sort of perfection. Marx added these other elements, uh, that made it far more powerful than the earlier versions that he decried as merely utopian socialism.

   3. LFLex Fridman5:05

      So there's a million questions I could ask there, but so on the utopian side, so there is a utopian component to the way he tried to conceive of his ideas?

   4. VLVejas Liulevicius5:16

      Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, one has to stress Marx would have gotten extremely upset at this point in the conversation-

   5. LFLex Fridman5:22

      (laughs)

   6. VLVejas Liulevicius5:22

      ... because- because to call someone a utopian was precisely to argue that you're not scientific, you're not rational, you are not laying out the iron laws of history, you're merely hoping for the best. And that might be laudable, but it was fundamentally unrealistic. Uh, that said, hidden among Marx's insistence that there are laws and- and structures, uh, as history moves through, uh, class conflict, modes of production, uh, towards its ultimate goal of a comprehensive final revolution that will see all exploitation overthrown and people finally being freed from necessity, um, in- in-Smuggled in among those things are most definitely utopian elements and there, they come especially at the end in which Marx, uh, sketches the notion of what things will look like after the revolution has resolved all problems. Uh, there, vagueness sets in. Uh, it's clear that it's a blessed state that's being talked about. Um, people no longer exploiting one another, people no longer subject to necessity or poverty, but instead enjoying all of the productivity of industrialization that hitherto had been put to private profit, now, uh, collectively owned and deployed. The notion that one will be able to work at one job in the morning and then engage in leisure activity or another, yet another fulfilling job in the afternoon. Um, all of these, all of this free of any contradictions, free of necessity, free of the sort of ordinary irritations that we experience in our ordinary lives. That's deeply utopian. The difference was that Marx charted a route towards that outcome that was, uh, that presented itself as cutting-edge science and moreover having the, the, the full credibility that science commanded so much, especially in the 19th and early 20th century.

   7. LFLex Fridman7:22

      So there is a long journey from capitalism to communism that includes a lot of problems. He thought once you resolve the problems, all the complexities of human interactions, the friction, the problems, will be gone.

   8. VLVejas Liulevicius7:37

      To the extent that they were based on inequalities and on, uh, um, man's exploitation of man, uh, the result was supposed to be a, uh, uh, a resolution of all of this. Uh, and inevitably when you talk about the history of communism, you have to include the fact that this often tragic and dramatic history produced a lot of jokes, jokes that were in part reactions sometimes to the ideological claims made by people like Marx. And one of the famous jokes was that, "What's the difference between capitalism and communism?" And the joke's answer was, "Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, and communism is the exact opposite."

   9. LFLex Fridman8:16

      (laughs) Yeah. You act- you actually have a, a lecture on humor. I love it. And you deliver in such a dry, beautiful way. Uh, okay, there's, again, a million questions. So you outline a set of contradictions, but it's interesting to talk about his view. For example, uh, what was Marx's view of history?

   10. VLVejas Liulevicius8:37

       Uh, Marx had been a student of Hegel, uh, and Hegel is a German idealist philosopher, had, uh, announced very definitively that history has a purpose. History is not a collection of random facts. Uh, and as an idealist, he proposed that the true movement of history, the true meaning of history, what made History, History with a capital H, something that's transcendent and meaningful, was that it was the working out of an idea through different civilizations, different stages of historical development, and that idea was the idea of human freedom. So it was not individuals or great thinkers alone making history and having an impact, it was the idea itself striving to come to fruition, striving to come to an ever more perfect realization. Uh, in the case of, of, of Hegel, in this very Prussian and German context, he identified the realization of freedom also with the growth of the state, because he thought that governments are the ones that are going to be able to deliver on laws and on the ideal of a s- a state of the rule of law, in German, Rechtsstaat. Uh, that was a, a, a noble dream, um, at the same time as, as we recognize from our perspective, uh, state power has been put to all sorts of purposes besides guaranteeing the rule of law, uh, in our own times. What Marx did was to take this, this characteristic insistence of Hegel that, that history is moving in a meaningful and discernible way towards the realization of an idea and flipped it on its head. Marx insisted that Hegel had so much that was right in his thinking but h- what he had neglected to keep in mind was that, in fact, history is, is, is based on matter. So th- hence dialectical materialism, d- dialectical referring to things proceeding by clashes or conflict towards an ever-greater realization of some e- essential idea. And so Marx adapts a lot of ideas of, of Hegel. You can recognize, uh, entire rhetorical maneuvers that are, uh, indebted to that, that earlier training, but now taken in a, in a very, uh, different direction. What r- what remained though was the confidence of being on the right side of history. And there are few things that are as intoxicating as being convinced that your actions not only are right in the abstract, but are also destined to be successful.

   11. LFLex Fridman11:14

       And also that you have, uh, the rigor of science backing you in your journey towards the truth.

   12. VLVejas Liulevicius11:21

       Absolutely, um, so, uh, Engels, when, when he gives the graveside eulogy for his beloved friend Marx, um, claims that Marx is essentially the Darwin of history, the Darwin of his- he, that he had done for the world of politics and of, uh, um, human history what Darwin had done with his theory evolu- of evolution, understanding the hidden mechanism, understanding the laws that are at work and that, uh, make that whole process meaningful rather than just one damn thing after another.

   13. LFLex Fridman11:59

       What about the sort of famous line that history of all existing societies is the history of class struggles? So what about this conception of history as a history of class struggle?

   14. VLVejas Liulevicius12:10

       Well, so this was the mode of force that Karl Marx and Engels saw driving the historical process forward. And it's, it's important to keep in mind that class conflict doesn't just mean revolutions, revolts, peasant uprisings. Uh, it, it's, it's sort of the, the totality of frictions and of clashes, conflicts of interest that appear in any society. And so Marx was able, in this spirit that he, uh, avowed was very scientific, to demarcate stages of historical transformation. Primitive communism in the pre-historic period, then moving towards what was called state slavery. Uh, that's to say the early civilizations deploying, uh, human resources and ordering them, uh, by all-powerful monarchs. Uh, then private slavery in the ancient period, and then moving to feudalism in the Middle Ages, and then here's where, where Marx is able to deliver a pronouncement about his own times, seeing that the present day is the penultimate, the next-to-last stage of this historical development because the feudal system of the Middle Ages and the dominance of the aristocracy has been overcome, uh, has been displaced by the often heroic achievements, astonishing achievements in commerce and in world-building of the middle class, the bourgeoisie, uh, who have, uh, taken the world into their own hands and are engaged in, uh, class conflict with the, the, the class below them, which is the working class or the proletariat. And so this sort of, this sort of conflict, uh, um, uh, also by the way obtains within classes. So the bourgeoisie are going to be gravediggers, Marx announces, of their own supremacy because they're also competing against one another. And, um, members who don't survive that competition get pressed down into the subordinate working class, uh, which grows and grows and grows to the point where, uh, at some future moment, the inevitable explosion will come, uh, and, uh, uh, uh, swift revolution will overturn this las- this penultimate stage, uh, of human history and usher in instead the dictatorship of the working class and then the abolition of all classes because with only one class remaining, everyone is finally unified and without those internal contradictions that had marked class conflict before.

   15. LFLex Fridman14:43

       The dictatorship of the working class is an interesting term. So what is the role of revolution in history?

   16. VLVejas Liulevicius14:50

       So this in particular for Marx I think is a really key moment, which is what makes that such a good question. In his vision, the epic narrative that he's presenting to us, revolution is key. It's not enough to have evolutionary change. It's not a question of compromises. It's not a case of, of bargaining or balancing interests. Revolution is necessary as part of the process of a subjugated class coming to awareness of its own historical role. And when we get to the proletariat, this, this, uh, uh, uh, working class, uh, in its entirety to whom Marx assigns this, uh, this epic Promethean role of being the ones who are going to liberate all of humanity, a class that is universal in its interests and in the sort of role in salvation history that they'll be playing in this, in this secular framework. Uh, they need revolution and the experience of revolution in order to come into their own, because without it you'll only have half-hearted compromise and something less than the consciousness that they then need in order to rule, to administer, and to play the historical role that they're fated to have.

   17. LFLex Fridman16:00

       How did he conceive of a revolution, potentially a violent revolution stabilizing itself into something where the, the working class was able to rule?

   18. VLVejas Liulevicius16:16

       That's where things become, uh, a good deal less detailed in, uh, his and, and Engels' accounts. The answer that they proposed in part was this is, this is for the future to determine. So all of the details will be settled later. Um, uh, I think there was... Allied to this was a, a tremendous confidence in, um, some very 19th century ideas about how society could be administered, uh, and what made for orderly society, um, in a way where, uh, if the right infrastructure was in place, uh, you might expect society to kind of run itself without the need for, uh, micromanagement from above. And hence, we arrive at, at, at Marx's tantalizing promise that, uh, there will be a period where it's m- it'll be necessary to have centralized control and there might have to be, as he puts it, despotic inroads against property in order to bring this revolution to pass. But then afterwards, the state, because it represents everybody, rather than representing particular class interests that are in conflict with other classes, the state will eventually wither away so there won't be need for it. Now that's not to say that, that pure stasis arrives, right? Or that the stabilization equals being frozen in time. It's not as if that is what things will look like. But instead, the big issues will be settled and henceforth people will be able to enjoy lives of, as he would consider it, uh, an authentic freedom without necessity, without poverty, uh, as a result of this, uh, blessed state that's been arrived at.

   19. LFLex Fridman17:54

       Despotic inroads against property. Did he elaborate on the, the despotic inroads?

   20. VLVejas Liulevicius18:02

       Dispossession. Dispossession of the, uh, o- of the middle classes and of the bourgeoisie. In his model, humanity is never standing still, right? So he'd probably argue in this dynamic vision of how history unfolds that there's, there, there's always conflict and it's always moving, propelling history forward towards its predestined ending. Um, in the... The way he saw this climax, uh, was that...As things did not stay the same, the condition of the working class was constantly getting worse and hence, their revolutionary potential was growing. And the, uh, at the same time, the expropriators, the bourgeoisie were also facing diminishing returns as they competed against one another with more and more wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and more and more elements of what had been the middle class detached from the ruling class and being pressed down into the, the working class. Uh, for, for Marx, this is really a key part. I mean, it's a key part of this whole ratchet effect that's going to produce this final historical explosion. And in, in German, the word given to that process was Verelendung, which is very evocative. Elend means misery. So it's the growing misery. When this gets translated into English, uh, the results are never quite as evocative or satisfactory. The words that get used are immiserization or pauperization, meaning more and more people are being turned into paupers. But for Marx, that prediction is really key. And even in his own lifetime, there were already hints that, in fact, if you look sociologically at the really developed working classes in places like Great Britain or Germany, that process was not playing out as he had expected. Uh, in fact, uh, although there have been enormous dislocations and tremendous suffering in the early chaotic sort of Wild West stages of, of capitalism and of industrialization, there had been reform movements as well, and there had been unions which had sought, uh, to carve out, uh, rules and, uh, and agreements with employers for how, uh, the conditions under which workers labored might be ameliorated. Moreover, the middle class, rather than dwindling and dwindling, seemed to actually be strengthening and growing in numbers or the appearance of new kinds of people like white-collar workers or technical experts. So, um, already in Marx's own lifetime, and then especially in what follows Marx's lifetime, uh, this becomes a real problem because it, it, uh, it puts a s- uh, a stick into the spokes of this particular historical prediction.

   21. LFLex Fridman20:53

       Can you speak to this realm of ideas, which is fascinating, this battle of big ideas in the 19th century? What are the ideas that were swimming around here?

   22. VLVejas Liulevicius21:03

       Yeah, yeah. Well, um, the, to describe the 19th century as sort of an age of ideologies is very apt because, um, Europe is being racked and, and, and, uh, um, and being put through the wringer of nationalism, uh, demands for, uh, self-expression of people who earlier had been in empires or under monarchical rule, demands to redraw the map. Um, the tremendous transformations of the Industrial Revolution meant that in, in the course of about a generation, you would have seen the world around you change in ways that made it entirely unfamiliar, to be able to travel across the landscape at speeds that have been unthinkable when you were a child. So it's, it's enormous change and, and demands for yet more change. And so it's a great mix of ideas, ideologies, the old and the new, religious ideas, religious revivals, as well as demands for secularization. Um, and stepping into all of this, uh, are Marx and Engels together, uh, in what has been called, I think, with justice, one of the most important and influential intellectual partnerships, uh, uh, of history. Uh, they were very different men. Uh, they were both German by origin. Um, uh, Marx had, uh, trained as an academic. He had married the daughter of a baron. Uh, because of his radical ideas, uh, he had foreclosed or just found himself cut off from a possible academic career and went the route of radical journalism. Engels was very different. Engels was the son of an industrialist, and the family-owned factories in Germany and in England. So he was most definitely not a member of the proletariat that, uh, he and Marx, uh, were celebrating, uh, as, as so significant in their future historical role. There were also huge differences in character between these men. Marx, when people met him, they were astonished by his energy and his dynamism. They also saw him as a man who felt determined (laughs) to dominate arguments. He wanted to win arguments, uh, and, uh, was not one to, uh, to, to settle for compromise or a, a middle road. Um, he was, uh, disorderly in, in his personal habits. Uh, we might mention, among other things, that he impregnated the family maid, uh, and didn't, uh, didn't accept responsibility for the child. Um, he was also, uh, not inclined to, uh, undertake regular employment in order to support his growing family. That's where Engels came in. Engels essentially, from his family fortune, uh, and then from his journalism afterwards, supported both himself and the Marx family, uh, for decades. And so in a sense, um, Engels made things happen. Uh, in, in the, in the mysterious way that friendships work, the very differences between these men made them formidable as a dynamic duo because they balanced off one another's idiosyncrasies and turned what might have been faults, uh, into potential, potential strengths. British historian A.J.P. Taylor always has a lovely turn of phrase, even when he's wrong about a historical issue. Uh, in this case, he was right. He said that, um, "Engels...... had charm and brilliance. Marx was a genius. And Engels saw himself as the, definitely the junior partner in this relationship. But here's the paradox. Without Engels, uh, pretty clearly, Marx would have not have gone on to have the sort of lasting historical impact in the world of ideas that he had.

   23. LFLex Fridman24:49

       Just to throw in the mix, there's interesting characters swimming around. Uh, so you have Darwin. He has a, I mean, it's difficult to, to, to, uh, to characterize the, the level of impact he had. Even just in the religious context, it challenges our conception of who we are as humans. Uh, there's Nietzsche, who's also, I don't know, hanging around the area.

   24. VLVejas Liulevicius25:14

       (laughs)

   25. LFLex Fridman25:14

       On the Russian side, there's Dostoevsky.

   26. VLVejas Liulevicius25:16

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman25:17

       So it's interesting to ask maybe, uh, from your perspective, did these people interact in, in a space of ideas to where this is relevant to our discussion? Or is this mostly, uh, isolated?

   28. VLVejas Liulevicius25:32

       I, I think that it's a part of a great conversation, right? I think that in their works, um, they're reacting to one another. I mean, Dostoevsky's, uh, thought ranges across the condition of modernity, uh, and he definitely has things to say about industrialization. I think that, uh, they react to one another in these oblique ways rather than always being, being at each other's throats, uh, uh, in, in direct confrontations. Um, and that's what makes the 19th century uh, so, um, so compelling as a story just because of the sheer vitality of the arguments, uh, that are, that are taking place in, in ways big and small.

   29. LFLex Fridman26:10

       What we should say here, you know, when, when you mention Karl Marx, maybe the color red comes up for people and, uh, they think the Soviet Union, maybe China. But they don't think Germany necessarily. It's interesting that, I mean, Germany is where communism was supposed to happen.

   30. VLVejas Liulevicius26:28

       That's right.
3. 30:55 – 45:52

   Anarchism

   1. LFLex Fridman30:55

      But if we return to the 19th century, you've said that, uh, Marx's chief rival was Russian anarchist, uh, Mikhail Bakunin, uh, who famously said in 1942, quote, "The passion for destruction is also a creative passion." So what kind of future did Bakunin, uh, envision?

   2. VLVejas Liulevicius31:17

      Well, Bakunin, in some things, agreed with Marx, and in many others disagreed. Uh, he was an anarchist rather than, uh, uh, hewing to, uh, the sort of scheme of history that, that Marx was proposing. So he did see humanity as fighting a struggle for a better way of life. He envisioned, as your quote suggests, that revolution and, uh, sheer confrontation and overthrow of the existing state of things, not compromise, was going to be the way to get there. But his vision was very different. Rather than organizing conspi- uh, conspiratorial, uh, uh, and hierarchical political movement, Bakunin envisioned that the ties would be far looser, that both the revolutionary movement and the, the future state of humanity would grow out of the free association, anarchist thinking, the free association of individuals who rejected hierarchical thinking in their relations with one another, rejected the state as a form of organized violence, and rejected traditional religious ideas that he saw as buttressing hierarchies. So Bakunin is part of a broader movement of socialists and anarchists who were demanding change and envisioning really fundamental transformation. But his particular anarchist vision steers him into conflict with Marx. And he makes some prophetic remarks about the problems with the system that Marx is proposing. We should add to this that the very far, uh, the very fact that Marx, uh, is a German by background and Bakunin is Russian kind of adds a further nationalist or, or element of ethnic difference there. Bakunin, uh, warned that a sort of creeping German authoritarianism might insinuate its way into a movement that hewed too closely to having hierarchies in the struggle to overthrow hierarchies. And, uh, uh, y- you know, his anarchist convictions were, are not, um, uh, not in question here. They led him into conflict with Marx. And, and Marx railed against him, denounced him, uh, and eventually had him expelled, uh, from the, the International. One of the things though that also makes Bakunin so significant is Bakunin is the first in a longer series of, um, approaches between anarchists and communists where they try to make common cause. And you have to say that in every case it ends badly for the anarchists because, uh, um, the, the communist vision in particular, especially in its Leninist version, uh, argued for discipline and a tightly organized professional revolutionary movement. The anarchists who sought to make common cause with, uh, uh, communists, whether it was in the days of the Russian Revolution or the Russian Civil War, uh, or whether it was, uh, then in, uh, the Spanish Civil War, the anarchists found themselves, um, uh, targeted by, uh, the communists precisely because, uh, of their skepticism about what turned out to be an absolutely key element in the Leninist prescription for successful revolution.

   3. LFLex Fridman34:36

      If we can take that tangent a little bit, uh, so I guess anarchists were less organized?

   4. VLVejas Liulevicius34:43

      Yeah, by definition. (laughs)

   5. LFLex Fridman34:46

      Yeah. (laughs) Why do you think anarchism hasn't been, uh, rigorously tried in the way that communism was, if we could just take a complete sort of tangent? I mean, in one sense, we are living in an anarchy today because the n- the nations are in an anarchic state with each other. But why do you think sort of there's not been an anarchist revolution?

   6. VLVejas Liulevicius35:11

      Well, I, I, I think that probably some anarchists would beg to differ, right? They would see, uh, um, communes in Spain, uh, uh, during the Spanish Civil War as an example of trying to put anarchist ideas into, into place. Bakunin, um, you know, flitted from one area of unrest to another hoping to be in on finally the founding of the sort of free communes that he had in mind. Uh, uh, you know, another c- key point in all of this is that anarchy means something different to different people as, as a term. And so when you point out quite correctly that, you know, we have an anarchic international situation, that's kind of the Hobbesian model of the war of all against all where man is a wolf to man. Generally, except if you're talking about, uh, nihilists in, uh, in, in the Russian revolutionary tradition, uh, anarchists see anarchy as a blessed state, and one where finally people will be freed from the distorting influence of hierarchies, traditional beliefs, uh, um, subjugation, inequalities. So for them, anarchy, uh, growing out of the liberation of the human being is seen as, as a positive good and, and peaceful. Now, that's at odds with the, the prescription of someone like Bakunin for how to get there. Uh, he sees overthrow as being, uh, necessary, uh, uh, on, on the route to that. But, you know, as we point out, um, uh, it's, uh, absolutely key to this entire dynamic that to be an anarchist means that your efforts are not gonna be organized the way a disciplined and tightly organized revolutionary movement would be.

   7. LFLex Fridman36:50

      Yeah, it's an interesting stretch that a violent revolution will take us to a place of no violence or very little violence. It's a, it's a leap. (laughs)

   8. VLVejas Liulevicius37:00

      It's a, it's a leap. Um, and it, it kind of, it points to a phenomenon that, um, would have enraged Marx and, uh, would have been deeply alienating to, uh, others in the tradition who followed him, but that so many in, uh, scholars have commented on, and that's that there is a religious element, uh, you know, not, not a avowed one, but a kind of hidden religious or secular religious, uh, element to Marx's vision, to the tradition that follows Marx. Um, a- and, you know, just think of the correspondences, right? Marx himself as kind of a... Positioning himself as a savior figure, whether that's a Prometheus or a Moses who will lead people to the Promised Land. The, uh, Apocalypse or the end times is this final revolution that will usher in a, a blessed final state, a utopia which is, uh, uh, equivalent to a secular version of Heaven. Uh, there's the, the working class playing the role of, uh, humanity in its struggle to be redeemed. Um, a- and, and scholar after scholar has, has pointed this out. Um, uh, Reinhold Niebuhr back in the 1930s had an article in the Atlantic magazine that talked about the Soviet Union's communism as a religion. Eric Voegelin, a German American scholar, uh, who, uh, fled the Nazis and, and relocated to Louisiana State University, uh, and, and, and wrote tomes about the new phenomenon of political religions in the modern period and he saw, um, fascism and Nazism and, uh, the so- and, and Soviet communism, uh, as, uh, as bearing the stamp of, of political religions, meaning ideologies that promised what an earlier age would have understood in religious terms. Um, uh, Voegelin called this the eschaton and said that, uh, these e- end times, the eschaton was being promised in the here and now, being made imminent. Uh, and he warned against that saying the results are likely to be disastrous.

   9. LFLex Fridman39:11

      So that's actually, um, a disagreement with this idea that, uh, you know, people sometimes say that, uh, the Soviet Union is an example of an atheistic society. So when you have atheism as the primary thing that underpins a society, this is what you get. So that's... What you're saying is a kind of, uh, rejection of that, saying that there's a strong religious component, uh, to a communism.

   10. VLVejas Liulevicius39:39

       A, a hidden component, one that's not officially recognized. I mean, I, I think that, um... You know, I had the chance to witness this actually. Uh, when I was a child, my family... Uh, I grew up in Chicago to a Lithuanian American family. And, uh, my father who was a mathematician got a very rare invitation to travel to Soviet Lithuania to the University of Vilnius to meet with colleagues and, um, at, at this point, journeys of more than a few days or a week were very rare to the Soviet Union for, for Americans. Uh, and, uh, the result was that, um, I had unforgettable experiences visiting, uh, the Soviet Union in, in Brezhnev's day and among the things I saw there was a museum of atheism that had been established in a church that had been, uh, um, ripped apart from inside and was meant to, uh, meant to kind of embody the official stance of atheism. And, um, I remember being baffled by the museum on the inside because you would expect exhibits. You would ex- e- expect something dramatic, something that will be compelling. Uh, and instead there were, uh, there was some folk art, uh, from the countryside showing bygone beliefs. There were some lithographs or engravings of the Spanish Inquisition and its horrors, and that was pretty much it. Um, when I was able to visit the Soviet Union later, uh, for a language course in the summer of 1989, one of the obligatory tours that we took was to file reverently past the body of Lenin outside the Kremlin in a mausoleum at Red Square. And communist mummies like those of Lenin, uh, earlier Stalin had been there as well, uh, communist mummies like Mao, uh, or Ho Chi Minh, um, really I think, uh, speak to a blending of earlier religious sensibility, reverence for relics of great figures, almost saintly figures, uh, so that even what got proclaimed as atheism, uh, turned out to be a very demanding faith as well. And I think that's a contradiction that, uh, that other scholars have pointed out as well.

   11. LFLex Fridman42:08

       Yeah, it's a very complicated sort of discussion when you remove religion as a, as a big component of a society, whether something like a framing of political ideologies in religious ways is the natural consequence of that.

   12. VLVejas Liulevicius42:23

       We hear nature abhorring a vacuum and I think that there are, there are places in human character that long for transcendental explanations, right? That it's not all meaningless. Uh, it's, uh, i- in fact there's a, a larger purpose and I think it's not a coincidence that such a significant part of resistance to, uh, communist regimes has in part come from, on the one hand, religious believers, uh, and on the other hand, uh, from, uh, disillusioned true believers in communism who, uh, find themselves, uh, undergoing a, uh, an internal experience of just, of revulsion, uh, finding that their ideals, uh, are... Have not been followed through on.

   13. LFLex Fridman43:05

       So this topic is one of several topics that you eloquently describe as contradictions within the ideas of, uh, Marx. So religious. There is a kind of religious adherence versus, uh, also the rejection of religious dogma that he stood for. Uh, we've talked about some of the others. Uh, the- the tension between nationalism that emerged when it was implemented versus what communism is supposed to be, which is global. So globalism. Um, then there's the, uh, thing that we started talking with, is individualism. So, you know, history is supposed to be defined by the large collection of humans, but there does seem to be these singular figures, including Marx himself, that are like really important. Um, geography of global versus restricted to certain countries and, uh, you know, tradition sort of you're supposed to break with the past-

   14. VLVejas Liulevicius44:01

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman44:01

       ... under communism. But then Marxism became one of the strongest traditions-

   16. VLVejas Liulevicius44:06

       That's right.

   17. LFLex Fridman44:06

       ... in history (laughs) .

   18. VLVejas Liulevicius44:07

       That's right. That's right. I think that the- that last one is- is especially significant because it's- it's deeply paradoxical. I mean, trying to outline these contradictions, by the way, is like subjecting Marx to, uh, the sort of analysis that Marx subjected other people to, which is to point out internal contradictions, things that are likely to- to become pressure points or cracks that might open up in what's supposed to be, uh, a completely, um, uh, set and durable and effective, uh, framework. Um, the one about tradition, uh, you know, Marx points out that the need for revolution is in order to break with the traditions that have hemmed people in, this earlier, earlier ways of thinking, earlier social structures, uh, and- uh, and- and to constantly renovate. And what happens instead is, um, a tradition of radical rupture emerges, and that's really tough because imagine, um, uh, the last stages of the Soviet Union where, um, keen observers can tell that there are problems that are building in society. There are discontents and demands that are- are going to clash, especially when someone like Gorbachev is proposing reforms and things are suddenly thrown open for discussion. Um, the very notion that you have a celebration of revolutionaries, uh, and the Bolshevik, uh, legacy at a time when the state wants to enforce stability and, uh, an order that's been received from the prior generation. Think of Brezhnev's time, for instance. Um, all of that is an especially volatile mix and, uh, uh, unlikely to work out very durably in the long run.

4. 45:52 – 54:51

   The Communist Manifesto

   1. VLVejas Liulevicius45:52

   2. LFLex Fridman45:52

      I would love to sort of, um, talk about the works, uh, of Marx, uh, The Communist Manifesto and, uh, Das Kapital. What can we say that's interesting about the manifestation of his ideas on paper?

   3. VLVejas Liulevicius46:05

      Well, the first thing to note, obviously, is that, uh, tho- those two works are very different. Das Kapital, uh, is an enormous multi-volume work that- that Marx worked at and only got the first volume out because Engels begged him to stop revising. "Please just finally get it into press." And then the rest, Engels had to, uh, actually reconstruct out of notes after, uh, Marx passed away. Uh, it's a huge work. By contrast, The Communist Manifesto, uh, is, uh, a brief pamphlet that ended up affecting the lives of many millions worldwide, uh, in spite of its- its comparative brevity. Um, The Communist Manifesto, moreover, is also something of the nature of having a delayed fuse, you could say, because, uh, when it first appears amid the revolutions of 1848 that sweep across Europe, uh, the work is contrary to what people often believe. The- the... That pamphlet did not cause the revolutions of 1848, many of which had national or liberal demands. Uh, the voice of Marx and Engels was barely to be heard over the din of other far more prominent actors. It is, however, in the aftermath that this work takes on tremendous significance and becomes popularly read and popularly distributed. It's especially the, uh, the episode, the- the bloody episode of the Paris Commune in 1871, which comes to be identified with Marx, even though it was not purely inspired by Marx alone, nor were all of the Communards devoted Marxists. It's the identification of this famous or infamous episode in- in urban upheaval that really leads to, uh, um, worldwide notoriety for Marx and attention, uh, to those works. And they're very different in form. Uh, Das Kapital is intended to be the Origin of Species of its, uh, realm of economic thought and- and represents years and years of work of- of Marx laboring in the British Museum library, uh, working through statistics, working on little bits and pieces of a larger, uh, answer to big historical questions that he believes that he's- he's arrived at. Uh, its tone is different from that of The Communist Manifesto, which is a call to arms. It announces with great confidence what the scheme of history will be, but rather than urging that the answer might be passivity and just waiting for history to play out in s- its preordained way, it's also, uh, a clarion call to make the revolution happen, uh, and, uh, is- is intended to be a- a- a pragmatic, practical statement of- of how this, uh, is to- to play out. And, you know, starts in part with those ringing words about a- a- a ghost or a specter haunting Europe, the specter of communism, which wasn't true at the time, but decades later most definitely is the case.

   4. LFLex Fridman49:10

      Is there something we could say about the difference between Marxian economics and Marxist political ideology? So the political side of things and the economics side-

   5. VLVejas Liulevicius49:22

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman49:22

      ... of things.

   7. VLVejas Liulevicius49:24

      So I, I think that Marx would probably have responded that, uh, in fact those things are indivisible. Uh, it... The analysis, uh, as sort of theo- purely theoretical, uh, is, uh, certainly can be performed on any economic reality that you care to mention, but the imperatives that grow out of that impera- that e- economic analysis are political. Um, Marx and, and Engels, um, emphasized the unity of theory and practice. So it's, it's not enough to dispassionately analyze. Uh, it's a call to action as well, because if you've delivered the answer to how history evolves and, and changes, uh, it obligates you, right? It, uh, it, uh, uh, it demands certain action. Um, you sometimes hear from undergraduates that they've heard from their high school history teachers that, that Marxism was just a theoretical construct that was in the idle production of a philosopher who was, um, not connected to the world and was never meant to be tried in practice. Marx would have been furious to hear this, uh, and it's almost heroically wrong, uh, as a historical statement, because Marx insisted that all previous philosophers have theorized about reality. What now is really necessary is to change it. So, um, you could, you could say that in the abstract, uh, a Marxist economist can certainly use Marx's theoretical framework, uh, uh, to compare to a given economic reality. Uh, but Marx would have seen that as incomplete and as deeply unsatisfactory. There's kind of a footnote to all of this, which is that even though Marxist dialectical materialism grounds itself in these economic realities, and the political prescription is supposed to flow from the economic realities and, uh, and, and, and be inevitably, uh, growing out of them, in the real history of Communist regimes, you've actually seen periods where the economics becomes detached from the politics. And I'm thinking in particular of, um, the new economic period, uh, early in the history of the Soviet Union, when Lenin realizes that the economy is so far gone that you need to reintroduce or allow in a limited way some elements of private enterprise just to start getting Russia back on course in order to have the accumulation of surplus that will be necessary to build the project at all. Uh, and that's, uh, there are many Bolsheviks who see the new economic program as a, new economic policy as a terrible compromise and, and a betrayal of, of their ideas. But it's, it's seen as necessary for a short while, and then Stalin, uh, will, will wreck it entirely. Or consider, for that matter, uh, China today, where you have a, a, a dominant political class, the Communist Party of China, uh, which is allowing economic development, uh, and private enterprise as long as it retains political control. Um, so some of these elements already represent divergences from what Marx would have expected, and this is... This points to a really key problem or, or question for all of the history of communism. It has to do with it being a tradition in spite of itself, and that could be expressed in the following way. An original set of ideas is going to evolve. It's going to change, because circumstances change. What elaborations of any doctrine, whether it's communism or a religious doctrine or any political ideology, what elaborations are natural stages in the evolution of any living set of ideas, or when do you reach the point where some shift or some adaptation is so radically different that it actually breaks with the tradition? And that's, uh, an insoluble problem. You probably have to take it on a case by case basis. It speaks to issues like the question that gets raised today, like is China in a meaningful sense a communist country anymore? Um, and there's a d- uh, there's a, a diversity of opinion on this score. Or, you know, if you're looking at the history of communism and you look at North Korea, which now is on its third installment of a dynastic leader from the same family who ruled like a god king over a regime that calls itself Communist, is that still a form of Communism? Is it an evolution of? Is it a complete reversal of? I tend to want to take an anthropological perspective in the history of communism, and to take very seriously those people who avow that they are communists, and this is the project that they have underway. And then after hearing that avowal, uh, I think as a historian you have to say, "Well, let's look at the details. Let's see what changes have been made, what continuities might still exist, whether there's a larger pattern to be discerned here." Um, so it's a very, very complicated history that we're talking about.

5. 54:51 – 1:14:45

   Communism in the Soviet Union

   1. VLVejas Liulevicius54:51

   2. LFLex Fridman54:51

      Let's step back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and let's steel-man the case for communism. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of the people there, not in this way we can, we can look back at what happened in the 20th century. Why was this such a compelling notion-

   3. VLVejas Liulevicius55:11

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman55:11

      ... for millions of people? Uh, can we make the case for it?

   5. VLVejas Liulevicius55:16

      Well, clearly it was a compelling case for millions of people. And, and part of this story has to do with, uh, overall has to do with the faith, conviction, stories of, uh, of people sacrificing themselves as well as their countrymen, uh, in a cause that they believed was, uh, uh, not just legitimate but, uh, demanded their total obedience. I think that throughout the early part of the 20th century, uh, late 19th century, early part of the 20th century, so much of the compelling case for communism came from the confidence that people in the west more generally, placed in science, uh, the notion that science is answering problems. Science is giving us solutions to how the world around us works, how the world around us can be improved. Um, some varieties of that, and I watch the quotation marks, "science" were crazy, right? Like phrenology, so-called scientific racism that tried to divide humanity up into, uh, discrete blocks, uh, and to manipulate them in ways that were allegedly scientific or rational. So, there were horrors that followed from, uh, those invocations of science, but its prestige was enormous. And that in part had to do with, uh, the, uh, lessening grip of religious ideas on intellectual elites more generally, processes of secularization, not total secularization, but, but processes of secularization in, in western industrial societies. Um, and the sense that here's a doctrine that will allow escape from wars brought on by capitalist competition, poverty and economic cycles and depressions brought on by capitalist competition, uh, the inequalities, uh, of societies that remain hierarchical and class-based. Uh, and this claim to being cutting edge science, I think allows people like Lenin to derive immense confidence in the prescription that they have for the future. And that paradoxically, the confidence that you have in broad strokes the right set of answers for how to get to the future also allows you to take huge liberties with the tactics and the strategies that you follow as long as your ultimate goal remains the one sketched by this, this master plan. So, um, you know, ultimately some of the predictions of someone like Lenin that, that once society has reached that stage of the dictatorship of the- of the proletariat, the notion that governments will essentially be able to run themselves. And that the model he had in mind, oddly enough, was Swiss post offices. Being in Swiss exile must have impressed him so much with the orderliness and the sheer discipline and rationality of a Swiss post office. And he thought, "Why can't you organize governments like this where you don't need political leaders, you don't need grand visions, you have procedures, you have bureaucracy which does its job in a way that's not alienating, but simply produces the- the greatest good." Uh, you know, it- it, when you think of the experiences with the bureaucracy in the 20th century, one's hair stands on end to have, you know, the- the- the comparative naivete, uh, o- on display with a prediction like that. But it derives from that confidence that it's all going to be okay because we understand, we have the key, we have the plan to how to arrive, uh, at this, this, uh, this final, uh, configuration of humanity.

   6. LFLex Fridman59:15

      Yeah. The certainty of "science" in quotes, and, uh, the goal of utopia gets you in trouble. But also just on the human level from, um, from a working class person perspective. From the Industrial Revolution, you see the growing inequality, wealth inequality, and there is a kind of, you see people getting wealthy and combined with the fact that life is difficult, life in general, life is suffering for many, for most, for all if you listen to some philosophers. And there is kind of a- a powerful idea in that the man is exploiting me. And that's a populous message that a lot of people resonate with because to a degree is true in every system. And so before you kind of know how these economic and political, uh, ideas manifest themselves, it is really powerful to say, "Here beyond the horizon, there's a world where the rich man will not exploit my hard work anymore." And I think that's a really powerful idea.

   7. VLVejas Liulevicius1:00:23

      Y- It is. I mean, at the same time though, it kind of points to, uh, you know, a further problem. And that's the identity of the revolutionaries. Um, it, it turned out that, uh, many of these revolutionary movements, uh, and then the founding elites of communist countries, uh, in the aftermath of the, the Soviet seizure of power, um, turn out to be something quite different from people who have spent their lives in factories experiencing the Industrial Revolution firsthand. I mean, there's a special role here for intellectuals. Uh, and, um, when, when Marx and Engels write into the Communist Manifesto the notion that certain exceptional individuals can rise above their class origins in a way other people can't and transcend their earlier role, their, their materially determined role, in order to gain a perspective on the historical process as a whole and ally themselves with a working class in its struggle for communism.... this sort of special role that they carved out for themselves is enormously appealing for intellectuals, 'cause any celebration of intellectuals as world movers is going to appeal to intellectuals. Uh, that, that, um, gap, that, um, uh, that frequent reality of not being in touch with, uh, the very classes that the, uh, Communists are aiming to represent, uh, is, is a, a very frequent theme in, uh, in this story. Uh, it also, um, speaks to a crucial part of the story, which is the breaking apart, or the civil war, the war of brother against brother, the fraternal struggle that splits socialism and splits followers of Marx. And that's in the, uh, uh, aftermath of the, the First World War, in particular, uh, or, or during the, this traumatic experience, the way in which, uh, Lenin encourages the foundation of radical parties that will break with social democracy of the sort that had been elaborated, especially in places like Germany, uh, scorning their moderation, and instead announcing a new dispensation, which was the Leninist conception of a disciplined, hardcore, professional revolutionaries who will act in ways that, uh, that a mere trade union movement couldn't. And what this speaks to is, you know, a fundamental tension in, uh, in radical movements, because, uh, left to their own devices, Lenin, uh, announces, workers tend to focus on their reality, their families, their workplace, want better working conditions, unionize and then aim to negotiate with employers or to, uh, uh, or agitate for reforms on the part of the state to improve their living conditions. And then they're happy for the advances that they have won. And for Lenin, that's not enough, because that's a half measure. That's the sort of thing that leads you into an accommodation with the system, rather than the overthrow of the system. So there's a real... There's a constant tension, uh, in, in, in this regard that plays itself out over the long haul.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:03:38

      So let's go to, uh, Lenin and the Russian Revolution. How did, uh, communism come to power in the Soviet Union?

   9. VLVejas Liulevicius1:03:48

      It came to power as a result of stepping into a power vacuum, and the power vacuum was created by the First World War, and it's the, the effect that it had as a total war, uh, unprecedented pressure placed on a regime that, in many ways, uh, was a, a traditional, almost feudal monarchy, uh, only experiencing the beginnings of the modernization that, uh, the rest of Europe had undergone. The, uh... And for this reason, communism comes to power in a place that Marx probably wouldn't have expected, in the wreckage, wreckage of the, uh, Russian Empire. Uh, Lenin is absolutely vital to this equation, because, uh, he's the one who presses the process forward. Uh, ironically, um, given the claim of communist leaders to having the key to history, uh, just a few months previous in exile in Switzerland, Lenin had been despairing and had been convinced that, uh, that, that he's not, may not even live to see the advent of that day. But then when revolution does break out in, uh, the, uh, Russian Empire, uh, in February of 1917, Lenin is absolutely frantic to get back. And when he does get back, as a result of a deal that is negotiated with the German high command, a step that they're, they'll later live very much to regret, uh, he is able to get back and to go into action and to press for nothing less than the seizure of power, uh, that brings, uh, the, his Bolshevik faction, the radical, uh, wing of the socialist movement, uh, to power in... And then to build the Soviet Union.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:05:33

       So even he was surprised how effective and how fast the revolution happened?

   11. VLVejas Liulevicius1:05:39

       He was, although I think that he would have, uh, would have agreed that what was necessary was a cataclysm on the scale of the First World War to make this happen. Um, the First World War shatters so many of the certainties of the 19th century that we talked about as a, uh, as a dynamic period with argument between ideologies. It, it scrambles all sorts of earlier debates. It renegotiates the status of the individual versus an all-powerful state and the claims of the state, because to win or even just to survive in World War I, you need to centralize, centralize, centralize, uh, and to, uh, put everything onto a, a authoritarian wartime footing in country after country. Uh, so Lenin, uh, earlier had already articulated the possibility that this might happen by talking about how the entire globe already was connected, uh, and there's a, a, a chain of capitalist development that is connecting different countries so that the weakest link in the chain, if it breaks, if it pops open, uh, it might actually, uh, inaugurate much bigger processes, uh, and, uh, start a chain reaction. And that's what he intended to do and has the, uh, chance to do, uh, in the course of 1917. Um, incidentally, just to get a sh- a sense of the sheer chaos...... and the, um, the human, on an individual human level, what the absence of, uh, established authority meant. Uh, there's, there's few works of literature that are as powerful as Boris Past- Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago for giving just the, the whole sweep of contending forces, uh, in a power vacuum. Uh, it's a, an amazing testimony to that time and place.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:07:41

       So you said, uh, the Bolsheviks saw violence and terror as necessary. So c- can you just speak to this aspect of their... Because they took power and- and so th- this was a part of the way they saw the world.

   13. VLVejas Liulevicius1:07:55

       Right and it had antecedents. Um, even though Lenin and his colleagues are competing amongst each other for the title of most faithful disciple of Marx and- and most true to the received, uh, theory in- in practice, there's other influences, earlier influences that operate in the Russian context, uh, that were not operative, let's say, on the German context. And here you have to step back and think about the nature of czarism, which had maintained still, uh, into the 20th century the notion of divine right to rule, that God had ordained, uh, the czarist system and, uh, its hierarchies, and that to question these was, was sinful and politically not advisable. And the restrictive nature of Russian society at this point dominated by the czarist establishment. Its harshness, its reactionary nature meant that people who in another context, in another country might have been reformers could instead very easily be provoked into becoming revolutionaries. Uh, and Lenin is a perfect example of this because his, uh, older brother, uh, was executed as a result of being in a, uh, radical revolutionary movement, uh, that was... uh, who was arrested and executed for, uh, association with terrorism. Um, and earlier generations of Russian radicals had, uh, founded populist groups that would aim to engage in terrorism and resistance against the czarist regime, um, and this included, uh, people who called themselves nihilists. And these nihilists were materialists who saw themselves, um, ushering in, uh, a new age by absolute rejection of earlier religious traditions, uh, and aiming for material answers to, uh, the- the challenges of the day. Uh, among them, uh, was Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who wrote, uh, what's been called the worst book ever written. It was, in fact, one of Lenin's favorite books. It, in Russian it's ƒтo дeлaть, in English it gets translated What Is To Be Done, and it's a utopian novel about, uh, revolutionaries and how revolutionaries should act with one another in open ways, new ways, non-traditional ways, in order to help usher in the- the coming revolution. Lenin loved the work and said it had the great merit of showing you how to be a revolutionary. So there's the Marxist influence and then there's Russian populist nihilist influence, which, uh, um, is also a- a very live current in- in Lenin's thinking. And when you add these things together, you get a- an explosive mix, because Lenin as a result and part of this family trauma of his brother becomes a absolutely irreconcilable enemy of the czarist regime and sets about turning himself into what you might call a guided missile for revolution. He turns himself into a machine to produce revolutionary change, and I- I mean that with little hyperbole. Lenin at one point shared with friends that he loved listening to music, but he tried not to listen to beautiful music like Beethoven because it made him feel gentle. What the revolution demanded was realism, hardness, absolute steely resolve. So Lenin, um, worries even fellow revolutionaries by the intensity of his single-minded focus to revolution. He spends his days thinking about the revolution, he probably dreamt about the revolution, uh, and so 24/7 it's an existence where he's paired off other, um, human elements quite deliberately in order to turn himself into an effective, uh, instigator of revolution. So when the opportunity comes in 1917, he's primed and- and ready, uh, for that role.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:12:15

       It's interesting that nihilism, Russian nihilism had an impact on Lenin. I mean, traditionally nihilist philosophy rejects all sorts of traditional morality. There's a kind of cynical dark view and where's the light?

   15. VLVejas Liulevicius1:12:28

       The light is science.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:12:30

       Oh.

   17. VLVejas Liulevicius1:12:30

       The light is science and materialism.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:12:32

       Oh boy.

   19. VLVejas Liulevicius1:12:32

       Um, the nihilists, um, some of them did a very bad job of hiding their political beliefs because they would wear... They were famous for wearing blue-tinted spectacles, kind of the sunglasses of the late 19th century, as a way of, uh, shielding their eyes from light, but also having a dispassionate and realistic view of reality, uh, outside. So, um, nihilists, as the name would suggest, do reject all prior certainties, but they make an exception for science and see that as the possibility for founding a, uh, uh, an entirely new mode of existence.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:13:09

       Uh, for most people, I think nihilism is introduced in the brilliant philosophical work, I don't know if you're familiar with it, uh, by the name of The Big Lebowski.

   21. VLVejas Liulevicius1:13:18

       (laughs) . All right.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:13:19

       Nihilists appear there, and I think they summarize the nihilist tradition quite well. But it is indeed fascinating and also it is fascinating that Lenin, and I'm sure this influenced Stalin as well...... that hardness-

   23. VLVejas Liulevicius1:13:32

       Yeah.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:13:33

       ... was a necessary, uh, human characteristics to take the revolution to its, uh, to its end.

   25. VLVejas Liulevicius1:13:40

       That's right. That's right. So prior generations of nihilists or populists, um, had resembled Lenin's single-mindedness by being, you know, by, by arguing that, uh, one needed total devotion for this. This was if, to play this role in society, it was not enough to be somewhat committed. Total commitment was necessary. And the other theme that's at work here obviously, is, uh, if we consider Lenin affected by Marxist ideas and the homegrown Russian revolutionary tradition that predates, uh, uh, uh, the arrival of Marxist socialism in, in, in Russia, it's the theme of needing to adapt to local conditions. So Marxism, uh, or communism in Vietnam or in Cuba or in Cambodia or in Russia will be very different in its local adaptations and local themes and resonance than it was in Germany where Marx would have exa- uh, expected all this to unfold.

6. 1:14:45 – 1:24:33

   Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin

   1. VLVejas Liulevicius1:14:45

   2. LFLex Fridman1:14:45

      So let's talk about Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. This little interplay that eventually led to Stalin accumulating, grabbing, and taking a hold of power. What was that process like?

   3. VLVejas Liulevicius1:15:00

      So Lenin's supreme confidence, uh, leads the, the party through some really difficult steps that involves things like signing the humiliating treaty with the Germans, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where critics of the Bolsheviks said that no one who loved their, their country would have, would have agreed to a so draconian, so harsh, uh, settlement that saw the peeling off of large territories that had belonged to the Russian Empire. Lenin is willing to undertake this because the, the larger prize. Um, he even says that he's not going to bother to read the treaty because shortly that treaty is going to be a dead letter. His expectation is revolution is going to break out everywhere, especially after we've raised the standard, first of all, in the wreckage of the, the Russian Empire.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:15:48

      And we should probably say that that treaty, to some small degree, maybe you can elaborate now or later, lays the, the groundwork for World War II because there is... Resentment is a thing that with time can lead to just extreme levels of destruction.

   5. VLVejas Liulevicius1:16:06

      Right. Uh, e- and for, for German sensibilities, for German Nationalists, that treaty meant that Germany had essentially won World War I.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:16:15

      Yeah.

   7. VLVejas Liulevicius1:16:15

      And only a turn of events that many of them couldn't even follow or conceive of, the a- the a- arrival of American troops, the tipping of the balance in the West, led to that reversal. And, uh, um, one of the many scholars and contemporaries pointed out that Germany, between the wars, was full of people who were convinced that Germany had actually not lost the war-

   8. LFLex Fridman1:16:40

      Yeah.

   9. VLVejas Liulevicius1:16:40

      ... however that victory of theirs was defined. So most definitely that, that groundwork is laid. And incidentally, um, this is something we can talk about later, uh, World War I and World War II have a lot of linkages like that. And, and, uh, as time goes by, I think historians are gonna focus on those linkages, uh, even more. But Lenin, uh, also in his leadership, against the odds, leads the Bolsheviks to power in the Russian Civil War where most betting people would have given them very slight odds of even surviving, given how many enemies they faced off against. Lenin's insistence upon discipline and upon, uh, good organization, uh, allowed the Bolsheviks to emerge, uh, as the winners, and yet a great disappointment follows. Lenin, as we said, had expected that revolution will break out soon everywhere and all it'll be necessary for the Bolsheviks to do, having given the lead, is to link up with others. And so he considered that what would be established would be a red bridge between a communist, uh, uh, Russia and once Germany inevitably plunged ahead into its revolutionary transformation, a communist Germany. That doesn't end up happening. On the contrary, what happens in Germany is a out and out shooting war between different kinds of socialists. When Germany establishes a democracy that later goes by the name of the Weimar Republic, the government, uh, is a government of social democrats, moderate social democrats who are fearful of what they see as Russian conditions of disorder and who are not necessarily in sympathy, uh, with the Leninist vision of tightly organized, uh, uh, authoritarian rule. So communists who revolt in, uh, Germany are brutally suppressed by mercenaries, uh, the hardened front fighters and, uh, and, uh, nationalist radicals hired by the German socialist government. And the result is a wound that just won't heal in the German socialist movement as a result of this fratricide. It frustrates Lenin's ambitions. So too does the fact that Poland, rather than going Bolshevik, uh, resists attempts by the Bolsheviks to move forward and to connect up with Germany. Uh, uh, the Poles, yet again, uh, play a tremendously important historical role in changing the expected course, uh, of historical events. It's in the aftermath of these unexpected turns that Lenin and his colleagues realize that they're in this for the long haul. It's necessary to wait longer. They don't lose hope.... in, or confidence you might say, in the eventual coming of international workers' revolution. But it has, it's been deferred, it's been put off. And so the question then arises, what do you build within, uh, a state that's established called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the, the Soviet Union? Um, Lenin, as a result of an assassination attempt, uh, is deeply affected in his health, and, um, would have loved to continue for years longer to steer the regime. Uh, but he's sidelined because of his declining health, and there emerges a contest, a contest between a very charismatic, um, leader, uh, uh, Leo Trotsky, um, on the one hand, who is an amazing orator, who is an intellectual, who has traveled widely in the world, who has seen, uh, uh, much of the world, and who is a, a brilliant writer, uh, a far-ranging intellect, uh, and is seen as extremely radical because of his demand for permanent revolution, the acceleration of revolutionary processes to drive history forward, to s- to strike while the iron is hot. And on the other hand, is an extremely unlikely contender for power, and that's a man who's probably the antithesis of charisma, if you were to meet him in person. Uh, a guy with a, uh, a squeaky, somewhat high-pitched voice, not well-suited to revolutionary oratory. Uh, uh, his face pockmarked with, uh, the scars of, uh, youthful illness, uh, and who moreover, doesn't speak a fine, sophisticated Russian, but speaks a, uh, Russian heavily inflected with a Georgian accent, uh, from that part of the Russian empire, uh, from which he came, and that was Stalin. And, um, I know that you already have a marvelous, uh, interview with, uh, Stephen Kotkin, uh, the brilliant biographer, uh, of Stalin, uh, uh, who, um, has so many insights, uh, uh, on that subject. The one thing that's, that even after reading about Stalin, um, that never ceases to surprise me, even in retrospect, is that Stalin gains a reputation not as a fiery radical, but as a moderate, a man who's a conciliator. Someone who's calm when others are excited. Someone who is able, because of his organizational skills, to resolve merely theoretical disputes with practical solutions. Now, y- y- to, to fully take this aboard, we have to unknow what we know from our vantage point about Stalin's leadership, Stalin's brutality in eliminating, uh, his opposition, um, the cult of personality that against all odds got built up around Stalin so, so successfully, um, and the, the absolute dominant role that led him later to be described as Genghis Khan with a telephone. Uh, um, a, a, a brutal dictator, uh, of, uh, with ancient barbarism allied to the use of modern technology. While Trotsky is delivering stirring speeches and theorizing, Stalin works behind the scenes to, uh, control personnel decisions in the Bolshevik movement and in the state, and, you know, it's a cliche 'cause it's true that personnel is policy. Um, Trotsky is increasingly sidelined, uh, and then demonized, and eventually expelled from the Soviet Union, and later murdered, uh, in, in Mexico City. Um, for Stalin, uh, eliminating his enemies turned out to be the solution that he was most comfortable with.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:23:29

       So from that perspective, there's a lot of fascinating things here. So one is that you can have a, a wolf, a, uh, brutal dictator in moderate clothing. So just, just because somebody presents as moderate-

   11. VLVejas Liulevicius1:23:45

       That's right.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:23:45

       ... doesn't mean they can't be one of the most destructive, if not the most destructive humans in history. The other aspect is using propaganda, you can construct an image of a person, even though they're uncharismatic, not attractive, their voice is no good, all of those aspects, you can still have a r- like, uh, there's still to this day, a very large number of people that see him as a religious-

   13. VLVejas Liulevicius1:24:13

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:24:14

       ... type of, uh, godlike figure.

   15. VLVejas Liulevicius1:24:16

       Yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:24:17

       So the power of propaganda there.

   17. VLVejas Liulevicius1:24:19

       Today we would call that curating the image, right?

   18. LFLex Fridman1:24:21

       Curating the image, but to, to the extent to which you can do that effectively, uh, is, is quite incredible. So in that way, also, Stalin is a study of the power of propaganda.

7. 1:24:33 – 1:31:48

   Stalin

   1. LFLex Fridman1:24:33

      Uh, can we just talk about the ways that the v- the, the power vacuum is filled by Stalin? How that manifests itself? Perhaps one angle we can take is how was the secret police used? How, how did power manifest itself under Stalin?

   2. VLVejas Liulevicius1:24:49

      Well, um, th- before getting to the secret police, I would just want to add the other crucial element, which is Lenin's patronage. Stalin doesn't, you know, brawl his way into the Bolshevik party and, and, and, and dominate. Uh, he's co-opted and promoted to positions of importance by Lenin, who sees him as, uh, a somewhat rough around the edges......not very sophisticated, uh, much less cosmopolitan than other Bolsheviks, but, but dependable, reliable, and committed revolutionary. So, um, I think that one of the things that's emerged, especially after archives opened up with the fall of the Soviet Union and we were able to read more and more of the communications of Lenin, is that, uh, it's, there's... It's not the case that we're talking here about, um, a unconnected series of careers. Rather, there are, uh, connections to be made. It's true that towards the end of his life, Lenin, uh, came to be worried by, uh, complaints about Stalin's rudeness towards fellow Bolsheviks, uh, and in his testament he warned against, uh, Stalin's testimonies. Lenin fundamentally saw himself as irreplaceable and so that doesn't really help in a succession struggle, right? Um, Stalin, uh, is able to rely on a secret police apparatus that had been built up under Lenin already and, um, uh, it's, uh, very early in the foundation of the Soviet state that, uh, the Cheka, or the Extraordinary Commission, uh, is established as a secret police to, uh, terrify the enemies, beat down the opponents of the regime, and to, uh, keep an eye on society more generally. Uh, the person who's chosen for that s- task also is a anomaly among Bolsheviks. Uh, that is a man of Polish aristocratic background, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, who comes to be known by the nickname Iron Felix. Uh, here's a man about whom a cult of personality also is created. Uh, Dzerzhinsky is celebrated in the Soviet period as the model of someone who's harsh, but fair. A, an executioner, but with a heart of gold. Somebody who loves children, somebody who has a tender heart but forces himself to be steely-willed against the opponents of, uh, the ideological project, uh, of the Bolsheviks. Um, Dzerzhinsky is succeeded by figures who will be absolutely instrumental to Stalin's exercise, uh, of power and they're not immune either. Stalin, in his purges, takes care also to purge the secret police as a way of finding others upon whom to deflect blame for, uh, earlier, uh, atrocities and, uh, to produce a situation where even committed Bolsheviks are uncertain of what's going to happen next, uh, and feel their own position, uh, to be precarious. I mean, incidentally, uh, there are other influences that probably are brought to bear here as well. It gets said about Stalin that he used to spend a lot of time flipping through Machiavelli's The Prince and, um, it seems that Stalin's personal copy of The Prince, um, nobody knows where that is, if, if, if it still exists. But, um, historians have found annotations in works by Lenin that Stalin, who was a voracious reader as it turns out, um, made in, in the back of one of the books which sounds almost like a commentary on Machiavelli's almost but not quite suggestion that the ends justify the means. Stalin's own writing says that if someone is strong, active, and intelligent, even if they do things that other people condemn, they're still a good person. And so Stalin's self-conception of himself is someone who along these lines, and in line with Lenin's emphasis on, on practical results and discipline, somebody who gets things done, that's the crucial ethical standard. And, and in ultimately, uh, in, in criticisms by later dissidents of Bolshevik morality, this question of what is the ethical standard, what is the ethical law, uh, will bring this question into focus because by the... In... And this goes back to Marx as well incidentally. The notion that any ethical system, any notion of right or wrong is purely a product of class identity because every class produces its distinctive ideas, its distinctive religion, its distinctive art forms, its distinctive s- uh, styles, um, means that with no one transcendent or absolute morality it's all up for grabs. And then it's a question of power and the exercise of power with no limits, untrammeled by any laws whatsoever. Uh, dictatorship in its purest form, something that Lenin had avowed and then Stalin comes to practice more, uh, even more fully.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:30:08

      Not that it's possible to look deep into a person's heart, but, you know, if you look at Trotsky you could say that he probably believed deeply in Marxism and communism. Probably the same with Lenin. What do you think Stalin believed? Was he a believer? Was, was he a pragmatist that used communism as a way to gain power and an ideology as part of propaganda or did he in his own private moments deeply believe in this utopia?

   4. VLVejas Liulevicius1:30:35

      That's an excellent question and, and you're quite right. I mean, we cannot peer into the inmost recesses of somebody's being and, and know for sure. My intuition though is that, um, is that this may be a false alternative, uh, a false dichotomy. Uh, it's natural enough to, to see somebody who, who does monstrous things to say, "Well this is being u- ideology is being used as a cover for it." But I think that, um, my suspicion is that these were actually perfectly compatible in his historical role. The notion that, that there's an ideology, it gives you a, a master plan for how history is going to develop and your own power, the, the increase of that power to unprecedented, uh, uh, proportions. Your ability to torment even your own faithful followers, uh, in order just to see them squirm which-... Stalin was famous for, uh, uh, to keep people unsettled. I, I, to me, it seems that for some people, those might not actually be opposed, but might even be mutually reinforcing, which is a very scary thought.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:31:43

      It's, it's terrifying, but it's really important to understand.

8. 1:31:48 – 1:45:38

   Holodomor

   1. LFLex Fridman1:31:48

      If we look at once Stalin takes power, at, uh, some of the policies, so the collectivization of agriculture, why do you think that failed so, uh, catastrophically, uh, especially in the 1930s with, uh, Ukraine and Poland, and more?

   2. VLVejas Liulevicius1:32:09

      I think the, the short answer is that, um, the Bolsheviks in particular, but also communists more generally, have had a very conflicted relationship with agriculture. Agriculture, um, is a very, I mean, vital obviously, but also very traditional and old form of human activity, um, has about it all of the, the smell of tradition and other problematic factors as well. Um, in a place like, uh, Russia, uh, or the Russian empire, um, peasants throughout history for centuries had wanted one thing, and that was to be left alone to farm their own land. Um, uh, uh, the, you know, that's their utopia. And that for someone like Marx who had, had a vision of historical development and transcendence and progress as being absolutely key, uh, does not mesh at all with that vision. For that reason, when Marx comes up with this, this tableau, this, um, tremendous display of historical transformation taking place over centuries and headed towards the final utopia, the role of farmers there is, is negligible. Peasants get called, um, conservative and dull as sacks of potatoes in, uh, Marx's, uh, historical vision because they're limited in their horizon. They farm their land, their plot, and don't have greater revolutionary goals beyond working the land and having it free and clear. Um, by contrast, industrialization, that's progress. I mean, images that today would be deeply disturbing to an environmentalist's sensibility, smokestacks, belching smoke, the byproducts of industry, a landscape transformed by, uh, the factory model, that's what Marx and then later the Bolsheviks have in mind. Um, similarly, the goal, uh, even as articulated in Marx's writings, is to put agriculture and farming on a factory model so that you won't need to deal with this traditional role of the independent farmer or the peasant. Instead, you'll have people who benefit from progress, benefit from rationalization by working factory farms. Um, so in approaching the question of collectivization, we have to keep in mind that for, uh, Stalin and his comrades who are bound and determined to drag Russia kicking and screaming into the modern age, and not to allow it to be beaten because of its backwardness, as Stalin puts it, traditional forms of agriculture are not what they have in mind. And in their rank of desired outcomes, industrialization, especially massive heavy industry, uh, is the sine qua non. That's their envisioned future. Uh, agriculture rates below. So in that case, the crucial significance of collectivization is to get a handle on the food situation in order to make it predictable and not to find oneself in another crisis like during the Civil War when the cities are starving, industry is robbed of labor, and the factories are at a stand- at a standstill. So this is really the, the, the core approach to collectivization, to put the productive capacities of the farmers, uh, in a regimented way, in a state-controlled way, under the control of, of the state. This produces vast human suffering because the, for the farmers, their plot of land that they thought they had gained as a result of the revolution is now taken away. They no longer have the same incentives they had before to be successful farmers. In fact, if you're a successful farmer and maybe have a cow, as opposed to your neighbors who have no cow, you're defamed and denounced as a kulak, a tight-fisted exploiter, uh, even though you might be helping to develop, uh, agriculture, uh, in the region that you're from. So the result is human tragedy on a vast scale, and, uh, allied to that, uh, incidentally, is, uh, Stalin's sense that, um, this is a chance to also target people who are opposed to the Bolshevik regime for other reasons, whether it's because of their Ukrainian identity, uh, whether it's because of a desire to, to, for a different nationalist project. Uh, so for Stalin, there are many motives that r- roll into collectivization. And the final thing to be said is, uh, you're quite right that collectivization proves to be a failure because the Soviet Union never finally gets a grasp on the pro- problems of agricultural production. By the end of the Soviet Union, uh, they're importing grain from the West, uh, in, uh, um, uh, in spite of having some of tremendously rich farmland, uh, to be found worldwide. And the reason for that had to do in part, I think, with the incentives that had been taken away. Uh, prosperous individual farmers have a motive for working their land and maximizing production.By contrast, if you are an employee of a factory-style agricultural enterprise, uh, the incentives run in very different directions. And the, the joke that was common, um, for decades in the Soviet Union and other communist countries with similar systems was, we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. So even labor, which is, um, rhetorically respected and, uh, valorized, uh, in practice, is rewarded with very slim rewards and, the last point, immobility. The collectivization reduces the mobility of the peasants who are not allowed because of internal passports to move to the cities unless they have permission. They're locked in place. And I got to say, at the time and afterwards, that looked a lot like feudalism or neo-feudalism in terms of the restrictions on, uh, on workers in the countryside.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:38:42

      It is a terrifying, horrific, and fascinating study of how the ideal when meeting reality fails. So the, the idea here is to make agriculture more efficient, so it would be more productive, so the industrialized model. But the implementation through collectivization had all the elements that you've mentioned that, uh, contended with human nature, so first with the kulaks, so the successful farmers were punished. And so then the incentive is not just not to be a successful farmer, but to, like, hide. Added to that, there's a growing quota that everybody's supposed to deliver on that nobody can deliver on. And so now because you can't deliver on that quota, you're basically exporting all your food, uh, and you can't even feed yourself. And then you suffer more and more and more, and there's a vicious downward spiral of like you can't possibly produce that. Now there's an- another human incentive where you're just gonna lie, everybody lies on the data.

   4. VLVejas Liulevicius1:39:49

      That's right.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:39:50

      And so even, uh, Stalin himself probably, uh, as evil or incompetent as he may be, he was not getting good data about what's even happening-

   6. VLVejas Liulevicius1:40:00

      That's right.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:40:00

      ... even if he wanted to stop the vicious downward cycle, which he certainly didn't, but he wouldn't be even able to. So there's all these, like, dark consequences of, uh, of what on paper seems like a good ideal, and it's a, it's a fascinating study of, like, things on paper-

   8. VLVejas Liulevicius1:40:19

      Yes.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:40:20

      (laughs)

   10. VLVejas Liulevicius1:40:20

       That's right.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:40:21

       ... when implemented can go really, really bad.

   12. VLVejas Liulevicius1:40:23

       That's right. And, and, and the outcome here is a horrific manmade famine, not a natural disaster, not bad harvest, but a manmade famine as a result of then the compulsion that gets used by the Soviet state to extract those resources, cordoning off the area, not allowing starring- starving people to, uh, to escape. Um, you put very well some of the, the implications of this case study in, in how things look in the abstract versus in practice. Um, and those phenomena were going to haunt the rest of the experience of the Soviet Union. Um, the whole notion that up and down the chain of command, everybody is falsifying or tinkering with or prettifying the statistics or their reports in order not to look bad and, and not to, you know, have vengeance visited upon them, um, reaches the point where nobody, in spite of the pretense of comprehensive knowledge, right? There's a, a state planning agency that creates five-year plans for the economy as a whole and which is supposed to have accurate statistics. All of this, uh, is founded upon, uh, a foundation of sand. That's inadvertent. That's, uh, not an intended side effect. But what you described as in terms of the internal dynamics of fostering conflict in a rural society was absolutely not inadvertent. That was deliberate. The doctrine was you bring civil war. Now had there been social tensions before? Of course there had. Had there been envies, had there been differentiations in, uh, in, in wealth or status? Of course there had been. But a deliberate plan to bring class conflict and bring civil war and then heighten it in the countryside, um, does damage and not least of that is this phenomenon of a negative selection. Those who have most enterprise, those who are most entrepreneurial, those who have most self-discipline, those who are best organized will be winnowed again and again and again, uh, sending the message that mediocrity is comparatively much safer than talent. And this pattern incidentally gets transposed and in tremendously harrowing ways also to an- the entire group of, uh, Russian intelligentsia and intellectuals of other peoples who are in the Soviet Union. Um, they discover similarly that to be independent, to have a voice which is not compliant, uh, carries with it, uh, tremendous penalties, um, um, in, in, uh, especially in Stalin's reigns of terror.

Episode duration: 3:31:57