Stephen Kotkin: Stalin, Putin, and the Nature of Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #63

the following is a conversation with Steven Kotkin a professor of history at Princeton University and one of the great historians of our time specializing in Russian and Soviet history he has written many books on Stalin in the Soviet Union including the first to of a three-volume work on Stalin and he's currently working on volume three he may have noticed that I've been speaking with not just computer scientists but physicists engineers historians neuroscientists and soon much more to me artificial intelligence is much bigger than deep learning bigger than computing it is our civilizations journey into understanding the human mind and creating echoes of it in the machine to me that journey must include a deep historical and psychological understanding of power technology puts some of the greatest power in the history of our civilization into the hands of engineers and computer scientists this power must not be abused and the best way to understand how such abuse can be avoided is to not be blind to the lessons of history as Steven kotkin brilliantly articulates Stalin was arguably one of the most powerful humans in history I've read many books on Joseph Stalin Vladimir Putin and the wars the 20th century I hope you understand the value of such knowledge to all of us especially to engineers and scientists who build the tools of power in the 21st century this is the artificial intelligence podcast if you enjoy it subscribe on YouTube give it five stars an Apple podcast follow on Spotify support on patreon or simply connect with me on Twitter at lex friedman spelled fri d ma n i recently started doing ads at the end of the introduction i'll do one or two minutes after introducing the episode and never any ads in the middle they can break the flow of the conversation I hope that works for you and doesn't hurt the listening experience this show is presented by cache app the number one finance app in the App Store I personally use cache app to send money to friends but you can also use it to buy sell and deposit Bitcoin in just seconds cash app also has an investing feature you can buy fractions of a stock say $1 worth no matter what the stock price is brokers services are provided by cash up investing a subsidiary of square and member si PC I'm excited to be working with cash app to support one of my favorite organizations called first best known for their first robotics and Lego competitions they educate and inspire hundreds of thousands of students in over 110 countries and have a perfect rating and Charity Navigator which means the donated money is used to maximum effectiveness when you get cash app from the App Store Google Play and use coal xpod gas you'll get $10 and cash app will also donate $10 to 1st which again is an organization that I've personally seen inspire girls and boys to dream of engineering a better world and now here's my conversation stephen Kotkin do all human beings crave power no human beings crave security they crave love they crave adventure they crave power but not equally some human beings nevertheless do crave power for sure what words is that deeply in the psychology of people is it something you're born with is it something you develop some people crave a position of leadership or of standing out of being recognized and that could be starting out in the school years on the schoolyard it could be within their own family not just in their peer group those kind of people we often see craving leadership positions from a young age often end up in positions of power but they can be varied positions of power you can have power in an institution where your power is purposefully limited for example there's a board or a consultative body or a separation of powers not everyone craves power whereby they're the sole power or there they're unconstrained power that's a little bit less usual we may think that everybody does but not everybody does those people who do crave that kind of power unconstrained the ability to decide as much as life or death of other people most people are not everyday people they're not the people you encounter in your daily life for the most part those are extraordinary people most of them don't have the opportunity to live that dream very few of them in fact end up with the opportunity to live that dream so percentage-wise in your sense if we think of George Washington for example most would most people given the choice of absolute power over a country versus maybe the capped power that the United States president presidential role at least at the founding of the country represented what do you think most people would choose well Washington was in a position to exercise far greater power than he did and in fact he didn't take that option he was more interested in seeing institutionalization of seeing the country develop strong institutions rather than an individual leader like himself have excess power so that's very important so like I said not everyone craves unconstrained power even if they're very ambitious and of course Washington was very ambitious he was a successful general before he was a president so that clearly comes from the influences on your life where you grow up how you grow up how you raised what kind of values are imparted to you along the way you can understand power as the ability to share or you can understand or the ability to advance something for the collective in a collective process not an individual process so power comes in many different varieties and ambition doesn't always equate to despotic power the spotted power is something different from ordinary institutional power that we see right the president of MIT does not have unconstrained power the president of MIT rightly must consult with other members of the administration with the faculty members to a certain extent with the student body and certainly with the trustees of MIT those constraints are make the institution strong and enduring and make the decisions better than they would be if he had unconstrained power but you can't say that the president is not ambitious of course the president is ambitious we worry about unconstrained power we worry about executive authority that's not limited that's the definition of authoritarianism or tyranny unlimited or barely limited executive authority executive authority is necessary to carry out many functions we all understand that that's why MIT has an executive has a president but unlimited or largely unconstrained executive power is detrimental to even the person who exercises that power so what do you think it's an interesting notion we kind of take it for granted that constraints on executive power is a good thing but why is that necessarily true so what is it about absolute power that does something bad to the human mind so you know the popular saying of absolute power corrupts absolutely is that the case that the power in itself is the thing that corrupts the mind in some kind of way where it leads to a bad leadership over time people make more mistakes when they're not challenged when they don't have to explain things and get others to vote and go along with it when they can make a decision without anybody being able to block their decision or to have input necessarily on their decision you're more prone to mistakes you're more prone to extremism there's a temptation there for example we have separation of powers in the United States the Congress right has Authority that the president doesn't have as for example in budgeting the so-called power of the purse this can be very frustrating people want to see things happen and they complained that there's a do-nothing Congress or that the situation is stalemated but actually that's potentially a good thing in fact that's how our system was designed our system was designed to prevent things happening in government and there's frustration with that but ultimately that's the strength of the institutions we have and so when you see unconstrained executive authority there can be a lot of dynamism a lot of things can get done quickly but those things can be like for example what happened in China under Mao or what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin or what happened in Haiti on the Papa Doc and then baby doc or fill in the blank right what happens sometimes in corporations where a corporate leader is not constrained by the shareholders by the board or by anything and they can seem to be a genius for a while but eventually it catches up to them and so the idea of constraints on executive power is absolutely fundamental to the American system American way of thinking and not only America obviously large other parts of the world that have a similar system not an identical system but a similar system of checks and balances on executive power and so the the the case that I study the only checks and balances on executive power are circumstantial so for example distances in the country it's hard to do something over 5,000 miles or the amount of time in a day it's hard for a leader to get to every single thing the leader wants to get to because there are only 24 hours in a day those are circumstantial constraints on executive power they're not institutional constraints on executive power one of the constraints on executive power the United States has versus Russia maybe something you've implied and actually spoke directly to is there's something in the Russian people in the Soviet people they're attracted to authoritarian power psychologically speaking or at least the kind of leaders at that sought authority and power throughout its history and that desire for that kind of human is a lack of a constraint in America it seems as people we desire somebody not like Stalin somebody more like George Washington so that's another constraint of the belief the people would they admire in a leader what they seek in a leader so maybe you can speak to well first of all can you speak briefly to that psychology of is there a difference between the Russian people and the American people in terms of just what we find attractive in a leader not as great a difference as it might seem there are unfortunately many Americans who would be happy with an authoritarian leader in the country is by no means a majority it's not even a plurality but nonetheless it's a real sentiment in the population sometimes because they feel frustrated because things are not getting done sometimes because they're against something that's happening in the political realm and they feel it has to be corrected and corrected quickly it's a kind of impulse people can regret the impulse later on the impulse is motivated by reaction to their environment in the Russian case we have also people who crave sometimes known as a strong hand and iron hand and authoritarian leader because they want things to be done and be done more quickly that align with their desires what I'm not sure it's a majority in the country today certainly in Stalin's time this was a widespread sentiment and people had few alternatives that they understood or could appeal to nowadays in the globalized world the citizens of Russia can see how other systems have constraints on executive power in the life isn't so bad there in fact a life might even be better so the impatience the impulsive quality the frustration does sometimes in people reinforce their craving for the unconstrained executive to quote get things done or shake things up or yes that's true but in the Russian case I'm not sure it's cultural today I think it might be more having to do with the failures the functional failures of the kind of political system that they tried to institute after the Soviet collapse and so it may be frustration with the version of constraints on executive power they got and how it didn't work the way it was imagined which has led to a sense in which non constrained executive power could fix things what like like I'm not sure that that's the majority sentiment in the Russian case although it's hard to measure because under authoritarian regimes public opinion is shaped by the environments in which people live which is very constrained in terms of public opinion but on that point why at least from a distance desert seem to nevertheless be support for the current Russian President Vladimir Putin is that have to do with the fact that measuring getting good metrics and statistics on support is difficult know that Aryan governments or is there still something appealing to that kind of power to the people I think we have to give credit to President Putin for understanding the psychology of the Russians who to whom he appeals many of them were the losers in the transition from communism they were the ones whose pensions were destroyed by inflation or whose salaries didn't go up or whose regions were abandoned they were not the winners for the most part and so I think there's an understanding on his part of their psychology Putin has grown in the position he was not a public politician when he first started out he was quite poor in public settings he didn't have the kind of political instincts that he has now he didn't have the appeal to traditional values in the Orthodox Church and some of the other dimensions of his rule today so yes we have to give some credit to Putin himself for this in addition to the frustrations and the mass of the people but let's think about it this way in addition without taking away the fact that he's become a better politician over time and that sentiment has shifted because of the disappointments with the transition with the population when I asked my kids am I a good dad my kids don't have any other dad to measure me against I'm the only dad they know and I'm the only dad they can choose or not choose they think if they don't choose me they still get me as dad right so with Putin today he's the only dad that the Russian people have now if my kids were introduced to alternative fathers they might be better than me they might be more loving more giving funnier richer whatever it might be they might be more appealing there are some blood ties there for sure with that I have with my kids but they would at least be able to choose alternatives and then I would have to win their favor in that constellation of alternatives if President Putin were up against real alternatives if the population had real choice and that choice could express itself and have resources and have media and everything else the way he does maybe he would be very popular and maybe his popularity would not be as great as it currently is so the absence of alternatives is another factor that reinforces his authority and his popularity having said that there are many authoritarian leaders who deny any alternatives to the population and are not very popular so denial of alternatives doesn't guarantee you the popularity you still have to figure out the mass psychology and be able to appeal to it so with with the in the Russian case the winners from the transition live primarily in the big cities and our self employed or intrapreneurial even if they're not self employed there they're able to change careers they have tremendous skills and talent and education and knowledge as well as these entrepreneurial or dynamic personalities Putin also appealed to them he did that with Medvedev and it was a very clever ruse he himself appealed to the losers from the transition the small towns the rural the people who were not well-off and he had them for the most part not all we don't want to generalize to say that he had every one of them because those people have views of their own sometimes in contradiction with the President of Russia and then he appealed to the opposite people the successful urban base through the so-called reformer with the idea of the new generation the technically literate prime minister who for a time was president and so that worked very successfully for Putin he was able to bridge a big divide in the society and gain a greater mass support than he would otherwise have had by himself that ruse only worked through the time that Medvedev was temporarily president for a few years because of the Constitution Putin couldn't do three consecutive terms and stepped aside in what they call castling in chess this when this was over Putin had difficulty with his popularity there were mass protests in the urban areas precisely that group of the population that he had been able to win in part because of the Medvedev castling and now had had their delusions exposed and were disillusioned and there were these mass protests in the urban areas not just in the cap by the way and Putin had to as it were come up with a new way to fix his popularity which happened to be the annexation of Crimea from which he got a very significant bump however he the trend is back in the other direction it's diminishing again although it's still high relative to other leaders around the world so I wouldn't say that he's unpopular with mass in Russia he there is some popularity there there is some success but I would say it's tough for us to gauge because of the lack of alternatives and Putin is unpopular inside the State Administration at every level deeper accuracy of because no simple are well informed and they understand that the country is declining that the human capital is declining the infrastructure is declining the economy is not really growing it's not really diversifying Russia's not investing in its future the state officials understand all of that and then they see that the Putin cleek is stealing everything in sight so between the failure to invest in a future and the corruption of a narrow group around the president there's disillusionment in the state apparatus because they see this more clearly or more closely than the mass of the population they can't necessarily yet oppose this in public because there are people they have families they have careers they have children who want to go to school or want a job and so there are constraints on their ability to oppose the regime based upon what we might call cowardice or other people might call realism I don't know how courageous people can be when their family children career are on the line so it's very interesting dynamic to see the disillusionment inside the government with the president which is not yet fully public for the but could become public and once again if there's an alternative if an alternative appears things could shift quickly and that alternative could come from inside the regime from inside the regime but the leadership the the party the people that are now as you're saying opposed to Putin they're nevertheless maybe you can correct me but it feels like there's structural he's deeply corrupt so each of each of the people we're talking about our and don't feel like a George Washington once again the circumstances don't permit them to act that way necessarily right George Washington did great things but in certain circumstances a lot of the state officials in Russia for certain are corrupt there's no question many of them however are patriotic and many of them feel badly about where the country has been going they would prefer that the country was less corrupt they would prefer that there were greater investment in all sorts of areas of Russia they might even themselves steal less if they could be guaranteed that everybody else would steal less there's a deep and abiding patriotism inside Russia as well as inside the Russian regime so they understand that Putin in many ways rescued the Russian state from the chaos of the 1990s they understand that Russia was in very bad shape as an incoherent failing state almost when Putin took over and that he did some important things for Russia's stability and consolidation there's also some appreciation that Putin stood up to the West and stood up to more powerful countries and regained a sense of pride and maneuverability for Russia in the international system people appreciate that and it's real it's not imagined that Putin accomplished that the problem is the methods that he accomplished it with he used the kind of methods that is the same taking other people's property putting other people in jail for political reasons he used the kind of methods that are not conducive to long-term growth and stability so he fixed the problem but he fixed the problem and then created even bigger long-term problems potentially and moreover all authoritarian regimes that use those methods are tempted to keep using them and using them and using them until they're the only ones who are the beneficiaries and the group narrows and narrows the elite gets smaller and narrower the interest groups get excluded from power and their ability to continue enjoying the fruits of the system and the resentment grows and so that's the situation we have in Russia is a place that is stuck it was to a certain extent rescued it was rescued with methods that were not conducive to long-term success and stability the rescue referring to is this of the economic growth when Putin first tests took office they had 10 years they had a full decade of an average of 7% growth a year which was phenomenal and is not attributable predominantly to oil prices during president Putin's first term as president the average price of oil was $35 a barrel during his second term as president the average price was $70 a barrel so during those two terms when Russia was growing at about 7% a year oil prices were averaging somewhere around $50 a barrel which is fine but is not the reason because later on when oil prices were over $100 a barrel Russia stagnated so the initial growth do you think Putin deserves some credit for that yes he does because he introduced some important liberalizing measures he lowered taxes he allowed land to be bought and sold he deregulated many areas of the economy and so there was a kind of intrapreneurial burst that were that was partly attributable partly attributable to government policy during his first term but also he was consolidating political power and as I said the methods he used overall for the long term were not able to continue sustain that success in addition we have to remember that China played a really big role in the success of Russia in the first two terms of Putin's presidency because China's phenomenal growth created insatiable demand for just about everything that the Soviet Union used to produce so fertilizers cement fill-in-the-blank chemicals metals China had insatiable demand for everything the Soviet Union once produced and so China's global raising of global demand overall brought soviet-era industry back from the dead and so there was something that happened Soviet era industry fell off a cliff in the 1990s there was a decline in manufacturing and industrial production greater than in the great depression in the US but a lot of that came back online in the 2000s and that had to do with China's phenomenal growth the trade between China and Russia was not always direct so this was an indirect effect but raising global prices for the commodities and the products the kind of lower and lower value products in manufacturing not high-end stuff but lower and stuff like steel or iron or cement or fertilizer where the value-added is not but nonetheless which had been destroyed by the 1990s and after the Soviet collapse this was brought back to life now you can do that once you can bring Soviet era industry back to life once and that happened during Putin's first two terms in addition to the liberalizing policies which spurred intrapreneurial ISM and some small and medium business the crash of the ruble in 1998 which made Russian products much cheaper abroad and made imports much more expensive also facilitated the resuscitation the revival of domestic manufacturing so all of this came together for that spectacular 10-year seven percent on average economic growth and moreover people's wages after inflation their disposable income grew more even than GDP grew so disposable income after inflation that is a real income was growing greater than seven percent in some cases ten percent a year so there was a boom and the Russian people felt it and it happened during Putin's first two terms and people were grateful rightly so for that and those who don't want to give Putin credit give oil prices all the credits but I don't think that oil prices can explain this having said that that doesn't mean that this was sustainable over the long term so you've briefly mentioned sort of implying the possibility Stalin held power for let's say thirty years you briefly mentioned that as a question will Putin be able to beat that record to beat that so can you talk about your sense of is it possible that Putin holds power for that kind of duration let's hope not let's hope not for Russia's sake the primary victims of president Putin's power are Russians they're not Ukrainians although to a certain extent Ukraine has suffered because of Putin's actions and they're not Americans they're Russians moreover Russia has lost a great deal of human talent yes millions and millions of people have left Russia since 1991 overall somewhere between five and ten million people have left the country and are beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union so they left the Soviets base entirely moreover the people who left are not the poor people they're not the uneducated they're not the losers the people who've left are the more dynamic parts of the population the better educated the more entrepreneurial so that human capital lost that Russia has suffered is phenomenal and in fact right here we were sitting at MIT we have examples of people who are qualified good enough for MIT and have left Russia to come to MIT you're looking at one of them and the other aspect just to quickly comment is those same people like me I'm not welcome back no you're not under the current regime it was a big loss for Russia if you're patriotic but not from the point of view of the Putin regime that has to do also factors into popularity if the people who don't like you leave they're not there to complain to protest to vote against you and so your your opposition declines when you let them leave however it's very costly in human capital terms hemorrhaging that much human capital is damaging its self damaging and we've seen it accelerate it was already high but we've seen it accelerate in the last oh seven eight years of President Putin's rule and those people are not going back of their own volition but even if they wanted to go back as you just said they'd be unwelcome that's a big cost to pay for this regime and so whatever benefits this regime might or might not have given to the country the disadvantage is the downside the costs are also really high so we don't want Putin lasting in power as long as Stalin it would be better if Russia were able to choose among options to choose a new leader among options many people speculate that President Putin will name a successor the way Yeltsin named Putin as his successor Boris president Boris Yeltsin and then Putin will leave the stage and allow the successor to take over that might seem like a good solution but once again we don't need a system where you hang on for as long as possible then nominate who's gonna take over we need a system that has the kind of corrective mechanisms that democracies and markets have along with rule of law a corrective mechanism is really important because all leaders make mistakes but when you can't correct for the mistakes then the mistakes get compounded a Putin could well he seems to be healthy he could well last as many years of Stalin it's hard to predict because events intercede sometimes and create circumstances that are unforeseen and leaders get overthrown or have a heart attack or whatever there's a palace insurrection we're ambitious leaders on the inside for both personal power and patriotic reasons try to push aside an aging leader there are many scenarios in which Putin could not last that long but unfortunately right now you could also imagine potentially him lasting that long which as I said is not an outcome if you're patriotic about Russia is not an outcome you would wish up to the country is that I guess a very difficult question but what what practically do you feel is a way out of the Putin regime as a way out of the corruption that's deeply underlies the the state is a if you look from a history perspective as a revolution required is some his violence required is in you know from a violence within or external to the country do you see or origin as a powerful is a inspiring leader enough to step in and bring democracy and kind of the free world to Russia so Russia is not a failed country it's a middle-income country with the tremendous potential and has proven many times in the past that when it gets in a bad way it can reverse its trajectory moreover violence is rarely ever a solution violence rarely it may break an existing trend but it's rare that violence produces a non-violent sustainable positive outcome it happens but it doesn't happen frequently societal upheaval is not a way always to institutionalize a better path forward because you need institutions people can protest as they did throughout the Middle East and the protests didn't necessarily lead to better systems because the step from protests to new strong consolidated institutions is a colossal leap not a small step what we need and what we see from history and situations like this is a group within the power structures which is a patriotic that sees things going down and that is to say that sees things not be developing relative to neighbors relative to richer countries relative to more successful countries and they want to change the trajectory of Russia and if they can in a coalition fashion unseat the current regime for a new power sharing arrangement which once again can be frustrating because you can't do changes immediately you can't do things overnight but that's the point constraints on your ability to change everything immediately and to force change overnight is what leads to long-term success potentially right that's the sustainability of change so Russia needs stronger institutions it needs court system as well as democratic institutions it needs functioning open dynamic markets rather than monopolies it needs meritocracy and banks to award loans on the basis of business plans not on the basis of political criteria or corrupt bribery or whatever it might be right so Russia needs those kind of functioning institutions that take time are sometimes slow don't lead to revolutionary transformation but lead to potentially long term sustainable growth without upheaval without violence without getting into a situation where all of a sudden you need a miracle again every time Russia seems to need a miracle and that's the problem the the solution would be not needing a miracle now having said that the potential is there the civilization that we call Russia's amazingly impressive it has delivered world-class culture world-class science it's a great power it's not a great power with a strong base right now but nonetheless it is a great power is a tax in the world so I wouldn't underestimate Russia's abilities here and I wouldn't write-off Russia I don't see it under the current regime a renewal of the country but if we can have from within the regime and evolution rather than a revolution in a positive direction and maybe get a George Washington figure who is strong enough to push through institutionalization rather than personalism so if I could ask about one particular individual maybe just interesting to get your comment but also as a representative of potential leaders I just on the spot has talked to Gary Kasparov who I'm not sure if you're familiar with his his ongoings so besides being a world-class chess player he's also a very outspoken activist sort of seeing Putin truly seeing Putin as an enemy of the free world of democracy of balanced government in Russia what do you think of people like him specifically or just people like him trying as leaders to step in to run for president to to symbolize a new chapter in Russia's future so we don't need individuals some individuals are very impressive and they have courage and they protest and they criticize and they organize we need institutions we need a Duma or a parliament that functions we need a court system that functions that is to say where there are a separation of powers impartial professional civil service impartial professional judiciary those are the things Russia needs it's rare that you get that from an individual no matter how impressive right we had Andrei Sakharov who was an extraordinary individual who developed the hydrogen bomb under Soviet regime was a world-class physicist was then upset about how his scientific knowledge and scientific achievements were being put to use and rebelled to try to put limits constraints civilizing you main limits and constrained on some of the implications of his extraordinary science but Sakharov even if he had become the leader of the country which he did not become he was more of a moral or spiritual leader it still wouldn't have given you a judiciary it still wouldn't have given you a civil service it still wouldn't have given you a Duma or functioning Parliament you need a leader in coalition with other leaders you need a bunch of leaders a whole group and they have to be divided a little bit so that not one of them can destroy all the others and they have to be interested in creating institutions not just or not solely or predominantly in their personal power and so I have no objection to outstanding individuals and to the work that they do but I think in institutional terms and they need to think that way too in order to be successful so if we go back to the echoes of that after the Russian Revolution was Stalin or Lenin Stalin maybe you can correct me but there was a group of people there in that same kind of way looking to establish institutions that were built in a you know in a beautifully built around an ideology that they believed is good for the world so sort of echoing that idea of what we're talking about what Russia needs now can you first of all you've described a fascinating thought which is Stalin as having amassed arguably more power than any man in history she's interesting thing to think about but can you tell about his journey to getting that power after the Russian Revolution how does that perhaps echo to the our current discussion about institutions and so on and just in general the story I think is fascinating of how one man is able to get more power than any other man in history it is a great story not necessarily from a moral point of view but if you're interested in power for sure it's an incredible story so we have to remember that Stalin is also a product of circumstances not solely his own individual Drive which is very strong but for example World War one breaks the Czarist regime the Czarist order Imperial Russia in the state Stalin has no participation whatsoever in World War one he spends World War one in exile in Siberia until the downfall of the Czarist autocracy in February 1917 Stalin is in eastern Siberian exile he's only able to leave eastern Siberia when that regime Falls he never fights in the war he's called up briefly towards the end of the war and is disqualified on physical grounds because of physical deformities from being drafted the war continues after the Czar's regime has been toppled in the capital and there's been a revolution the war continues and that war is very radicalizing the peasants begin to seize the land after the Tsar Falls essentially destroying much of the gentry class Stalin has nothing to do with that the peasants have their own revolution seizing the land not in law but in fact de facto not desert land ownership so there are these really large processes underway that Stalin is alive during but not a driver of the most improbable thing happens which is a very small group of people around the the figure of Vladimir Lenin announces that had in a seized power now by this time in October 1917 the government that has replaced the Tsar the soap visional government has failed and so there's not so much power to seize from the provisional government what Lenin does is he does a coup on the left that is to say Soviets or councils as we would call them in English which represent people's power or the masses participating in politics a kind of radical grassroots democracy are extremely popular all over the country and not dominated by any one group but predominantly socialist or predominantly leftist Russia has an election during the war a free and fair election for the most part despite the war at the end of 1917 in December 1917 and 3/4 plus of the country votes socialist in some form or another so the battle was over the definition of socialism and who had the right to participate in defining socialism not only what it would be but who had the right to decide so there's a coup by Lenin's group known as the Bolsheviks against all the other socialists and so Lenin declares a seizure of power whereby the old government has failed people's power the council's known as the Soviets are gonna take their place and Lenin seizes power in the name of the Soviet so it's a coup against the left against the rest of the left not against the provisional government that has replaced the Tsar which has already failed and so Stalin is able to come to power along with Lenin in this crazy seizure of power on the left against the rest of the left in October 1917 which we know is the October Revolution and I call the October coup as many other historians call the October Revolution happened after the seizure of power what's interesting about this episode is that the leftists who seize power in the name of the Soviets in the name of the masses in the name of people's power they retain their hold many times in history there's a seizure of power by the left and they fail they collapse they're cleaned out by an army or what we call forces of order by counter revolutionary forces Lenin's Revolution Lenin's coup is successful it is able to hold power and not just seize power they win a civil war and they're entrenched in the heart of the country already by 1921 Stalin is part of that group Lenin needs somebody to run this new regime in the kind of nitty-gritty way Lenin is the leader the undisputed leader in the Bolshevik Party which changes their name to communists in 1918 he makes Stalin the General Secretary of the Communist Party he creates a new position which hadn't existed before a kind of day-to-day political manager a right-hand man not because Lenin is looking to replace himself he's looking to institutionalize a helpmate a right-hand man he does this in the spring of 1920 to stall and his name to this position which Lenin has created expressly for Stalin so there has been a coup on the Left where by the Bolsheviks who become communists have seized power against the rest of the socialists and anarchists and the entire left and then there's an institutionalization of a position known as General Secretary of the Communist Party right-hand man of Lenin less than six weeks after Lenin has created this position and installed Stalin Lenin has a stroke and a major stroke really returns as a full actor to power before he dies of a fourth stroke in January 1924 so a position is created for Stalin to run things on Lenin's behalf and then Lenin has a stroke and so Stalin now has this new position general secretary but he's the right hand of a person who's no longer exercising day-to-day control over affairs Stalin then uses this new position to create a personal dictatorship inside the Bolshevik dictatorship which is the remarkable story I tried to tell so is there anything nefarious about any of what you just described so it seems conveniently that the positions created just for Stalin there was a few other brilliant people arguably more brilliant than Stalin in the vicinity of Lenin why was Stalin chosen why did Lenin all of a sudden fall ill as perhaps a conspiratorial question but is there anything nefarious about any of this historical trajectory to power that Stalin took in creating the personal dictatorship so history is full of contingency and surprise after something happens we all think it's inevitable it had to happen that way everything was leading up to it so Hitler seizes power in Germany in 1933 and the Nazi regime gets institutionalized by several of his moves after being named Chancellor and so all German history becomes a story of the Nazi rise to power Hitler's rise to power every trend tendency is bent into that outcome things which don't seem related to that outcome all of a sudden get bent in that direction and all the trends that were going on are no longer examined because they didn't lead to that outcome but Hitler's becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933 was not inevitable it was contingent he was offered the position by the traditional conservatives he's part of the radical right and the traditional right named him Chancellor the Nazi Party never outright won an election that was free and fair before Hitler came to power and in fact it's votes on the eve of Hitler becoming Chancellor declined relative to the previous election so there's contingency in history and so Lenin's illness his stroke the neurological and blood problems that he had were not a structure in history in other words if Lenin had been a healthier figure Stalin might never have become the Stalin that we know that's not to say that all history is accidental just that we need to relate the structural the larger structural factors to the contingent factors why did Lenin pick Stalin Stalin was a very effective organizer and the position was an organizational position Stalin could get things done he would carry out assignments no matter how difficult he wouldn't complain that it was hard work or too much work he wouldn't go off womanizing and drinking and ignore his responsibilities Lenin chose Stalin among other options because he thought Stalin was the better option once again he wasn't choosing his successor because he didn't know he was gonna have this stroke Lenin had some serious illnesses but he had never had a major stroke before so the choice was made based upon Stalin's organizational skills and promise against the others who are in the regime now they can see more brilliant than Stalin but he was more effective and I'm not sure they were very brilliant well he was exceptionally competent actually at the tasks for running a governor of the executive branch rate of a dictator yes he turned out to be very adept at being a dictator and so if he had been chosen by Lenin and had not been very good he would have been pushed aside by others you can get a position by accident you can be named because you're someone's friend or someone's relative but to hold that position to hold that position in difficult circumstances and then to build effectively a superpower on all that bloodshed right you have to be skilled in some way it can't be just the accident that brings you to power because if accident brings you to power it won't last just like we discovered with Putin he had some qualities that we didn't foresee at the beginning and he's been able to hold power not just be named and now Putin and Stalin are very different people these are very different regimes I wouldn't put them in the same sentence my point is not that one resembles the other my point is that when people come to power for contingent reasons they don't stay in power unless they're able to manage it and Stalin was able to build a personal dictatorship inside that dictatorship he was cunning he was ruthless and he was a workaholic he was very diligent he had a phenomenal memory and so he could remember people's names and faces and events and this was very advantageous for him as he built the machine that became the Soviet state and bureaucracy one of the things maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong with you've made me realize is this wasn't some kind of manipulative personality trying to gain more power solely like kind of an evil picture of a person but he truly believed in communism the the you know as far as I can understand again you can correct me if I'm wrong but he wanted to build a better world by build by having infusing communism into into into the country and perhaps into the the the whole world so maybe my question is what role does communism as an idea as an ideology playing all of this in his rise to power in the people of the time in the Russian people actually just the whole 20th century you're right Stalin was a true believer and this is very important he was also hungry for power and for personal power but just as you said not for powers sake not only for power he was interested in enacting communism in reality and also in building a powerful state he was a statist a traditional Russian statist in the Imperial sense and this won him a lot of followers the fact that they knew he was a hardcore true believing communist won him a lot of followers among the communists and the fact that he was a hardcore defender of Russian state interests now in the Soviet guys also won him a lot of followers sometimes those groups overlapped the Communists and the Russian Patriots and sometimes they were completely different groups but both of them shared an admiration for Stalin's a dedication to those goals and his abilities to enact them and so it's very important to understand that however thirsty he was for power and he was very thirsty for power that he was also driven by ideals now I don't necessarily think that everyone around Stalin shared those ideals we have to be careful not to make everybody into a communist true believer not to make everybody into a great statist Russian patriot but they were widespread and powerful attractions for a lot of people and so Stalin's ability to communicate to people those that he was dedicated to those pursuits and his ability to drive towards them were part of his appeal however he also resorted to manipulation he also resorted to violence he lied he spoke out of all sides of his mouth he slandered other people he sabotaged potential rivals he used every underhanded method and then some in order to build his personal dictatorship now he justified this as you said by appeals to communism and to Soviet father himself as well too to himself and to others and so he justified it in his own mind and to others but certainly any means right were were acceptable to him to achieve these ends and he identified his personal power with communism and with Russian glory in the world so he felt that he was the only one who could be trusted who could be relied upon to build these things now we put ourselves back in that time period the Great Depression was a very difficult time for the capitalist system there was mass unemployment a lot of hardship fascism Nazism Japan Imperial Japan there were a lot of associations that were negative with the kind of capitalist system that was not a hundred percent not a monolith but had a lot of authoritarian incarnations there was imperialism colonies that even the democratic rule of law capitalist states had non democratic non rule of law colonies under their rule so the image and reality of capitalism during that time period between World War one and World War two was very different from how it would become later and so in that time period in that interwar conjuncture after World War one before World War two communism held some appeal inside the Soviet Union for sure but even outside the because the image and reality of capitalism disappointed many people now in the end communism was significantly worse many more victims and the system of course would eventually implode but nonetheless there were real problems that communism tried to address it didn't solve those problems it was not a solution but it didn't come out of nowhere it came out of the context of that inner war period and so Stalin's rule some people saw it as potentially a better option than imperialism fascism and Great Depression having said that they were wrong it turned out that Stalin wasn't a better alternative to markets and private property and rule of law and democracy however that didn't become clearer to people until after World War two after Nazism had been defeated Imperial Japan had been defeated fascist Italy had been defeated and decolonization had happened around the world and there was a middle class economic boom in the period from the late 40s through the 70s that created a kind of mass middle class in many societies so capitalism rose from the ashes as it were and this changed the game for Stalin and communism communism is about an alternative to capitalism and if that alternative is not superior there's no reason for communism to exist but if capitalism is in foul odor if people have a bad opinion a strong critique of capitalism that can be appealed to alternatives and that's kind of what happened with Stalin's rule but after World War two the context changed a lot capitalism was very different much more successful not a non-violence compared to what it was in the interwar period and the Soviet Union had a tough time competing against that new context now today we see similarly that the image and reality of capitalism is on the question again which leads some people to find an answer in socialism as an alternative so you just kind of painted a beautiful picture of comparison this is the way we think about ideologies because we is what's working better do you separate in your mind the ideals of communism to the Stalinist implementation of communism and again capitalism and American implementation of capitalism and as we look at now the 21st century where yes this idea you know of socialism being a potential political system that we would or economic system would operate under in the United States rising up again as an idea so how do we think about that again in the 21st century about these ideas fundamental deep ideas of communism capitalism yeah so in the Marxist schema there was something called feudalism which was supposedly destroyed by the bourgeoisie who created capitalism and then the working class was supposed to destroy capitalism and create socialism but socialism wasn't the end stage the end stage was going to be communism so that's why the communist party in the Soviet Union first built socialism transcending capitalism the next stage was socialism and the end game the final stage was communism so their version of socialism was derived from Marx and Marx argued that the problem was capitalism had been very beneficial for a while it had produced greater wealth and greater opportunities and feudalism had but then it had come to serve only the narrow interests of the so called booze huazi or the capitalists themselves and so for Humanity's sake the universal class the working class needed to overthrow capitalist in order for greater productivity greater wealth to be produced for all of humanity to flourish and on a higher level so you couldn't have socialism unless you destroyed capitalism so that meant no markets no private property no so-called Parliament's or bourgeois Parliament's as they were called so you got socialism in Marxist schema by transcending by eliminating capitalism now Marx also called for freedom he said that this elimination of markets and private property and bourgeois Parliament's would produce greater freedom in addition to greater abundance however everywhere this was tried it produced tyranny and mass violence death and shortages everywhere it was tried there's no exception in historical terms and so it's very interesting Marx insisted that capitalism had to be eliminated you couldn't have markets markets were chaos you needed planning you couldn't have wait a hiring of wage labor that was wage slavery now you couldn't have private property because that was a form of theft so in the Marxist scheme somehow you were going to eliminate capitalism and get to freedom it turned out you didn't get to freedom so then people said well you can't blame Marx because he said we needed freedom he was Pro freedom so it's kind of like dropping a nuclear bomb you say you're gonna drop a nuclear bomb but you want to minimize civilian casualties so the dropping of the nuclear bomb is the elimination of markets private property in Parliament's but you're going to bring freedom or you're going to minimize civilian casualties so you drop the nuclear bomb you eliminate the capitalism and you get famine deportation no constraints on executive power and not abundance but shortages and people say well that's not what I mark said that's not what I said I said I wanted to minimize civilian casualties the nuclear bomb goes off and there's mass civilian casualties and you keep saying but I said drop the bomb but minimize civilian casualties so that's where we are that's history not philosophy yeah I'm speaking about historical examples all the cases that we have Mark's was not a theorist of inequality Marx was a theorist of alienation of dehumanization of fundamental constraints or what he called fetters on productivity and on wealth which he all attributed to capitalism Marx wasn't bothered by inequality he was bothered by something deeper something worse right those socialists who figured this out who understood that if you drop the nuclear bomb there was no way to minimize civilian casualties those socialists who came to understand that if you eliminated capitalism markets private property and Parliament's if you eliminated that you wouldn't get freedom those Marxists those socialists became what we would call Social Democrats or people who would use the state to regulate the market not to eliminate the market they would use the state to redistribute income not to destroy private property in markets and so this in the Marxist schema was apostasy because they were accepting markets and private property they were accepting alienation and wage slavery they were accepting capitalism in principle what they wanted to fix it they wanted to ameliorate they wanted to regulate and so they became what was denounced as revision not true Marxists not real revolutionaries but parliamentary Road parliamentarians we know this as normal politics normal social democratic politics from the European case are from the American case but they are not asking to eliminate capitalism blaming capitalism blaming markets and private property so this rift among the Socialists the ones who are for elimination of capitalism transcending capitalism otherwise you could never ever get to abundance and freedom in the Marxist schema versus those who accept capitalism but want to regulate and redistribute that rift on the left has been with us almost from the beginning it's a kind of civil war on the left between the Leninists and Social Democrats or the revisionists as they're known pejoratively by the Leninists we have the same confusion today in the world today where people also cite Marx saying capitalism is a dead end and we need to drop that nuclear bomb and get freedom get no civilian casualties versus those who say yes there are inequities there's a lack of equality of opportunity there are many other issues that we need to deal with and we can fix those issues we can regulate we can redistribute I'm not advocating this as a political position I'm not taking a political position myself I'm just saying that there's a confusion on the left between those who accept capitalism and want to regulate it versus those who think capitalism is inherently evil and if we eliminate it we'll get to a better world when in fact history shows that if you eliminate capitalism you get to a worse world the problems might be real but the solutions are worse from history's lessons now we have deep painful lessons but there's not many of them you know our history is relatively short as a human species do we have a good answer on the left of Leninist Marxist versus social democrat versus capitalism versus any anarchy you know do have sufficient samples from history to make better decisions about the future of our politics and economics for sure we have the American Revolution which was a revolution not about class not about workers not about a so-called universal class of the working class elimination of capitalism markets and the bourgeoisie but was about the category citizen it was about universal humanity where everyone in theory could be part of it as a citizen the revolution fell short of its own ideals not everyone was a citizen right for example if you didn't own property you were a male but didn't own property you didn't have full rights of a citizen if you were a female whether you own property or not you weren't a full citizen if you were imported from Africa against your will you were a slave and not a citizen and so not everyone was afforded the rights in actuality that were declared in principle however over time the category citizen could expand and slaves could be emancipated and they could get the right to vote they could become citizens non-property owning males could get the right to vote and become full citizens females could get the right to vote and become full citizens in fact eventually my mother was able to get a credit card in her own name in the 1970s without my father having to co-sign the paperwork I took a long time but nonetheless the category citizen can expand and it can become a universal category so we have that the citizen universal humanity model of the American Revolution which was deeply flawed at the time it was introduced but fixable over time we also had that separation of powers and constraint on executive power that we began this conversation with that was also institutionalized in the American Revolution because they were afraid of tyranny they were afraid of unconstrained executive power so they built a system that would contain that constrain it institutionally not circumstantially so that's a great gift within that Universal category of citizen which has over time come closer to fulfilling its original promise and within those institutional constraints that separation of powers constraint on executive power within that we've developed what we might call normal politics left-right politics people can be in favor of redistribution and government action and people can be in favor of small government hands off government no redistribution or less redistribution that's the normal left-right political spectrum where you respect the institutions and separation of powers and you respect the universal category of citizenship and equality before the law and everything else I don't see any problems with that whatsoever I see that as a great gift not just to this country but around the world and other places besides the United States have developed this the problems arise at the extremes the far left and the far right that don't recognize the legitimacy either of capitalism or of democratic rule of law institutions and they want to eliminate constraints on executive power they want to control the public sphere or diminish the Independence of the media they want to take away markets or private property and redistribution becomes something bigger than just redistribution it becomes actually that original Marxist idea of transcending capitalism so I'm not bothered by the left or the right I think they're normal and we should have that debate where a gigantic diverse country of many different political points of view I'm troubled only by the extremes that are against the system cost system that want to get rid of it and supposedly that will be the right path to the future history tells us that the far left and the far right are wrong about that but once again this doesn't mean that you have to be a social democrat you could be a libertarian you could be a conservative you could be a centrist you could be conservative on some issues and liberal on other issues all of that comes under what I would presume to be normal politics and I see that as the important corrective mechanism normal politics and market economies non monopolistic open free and dynamic market economies I don't like concentrations of power politically and I don't like concentrations of power economically I like competition in the political realm I like competition in the economic realm this is not perfect it's constantly needs to be protected and reinvented and there are flaws that are fundamental and need to be adjusted and addressed and everything else especially equality of opportunity equality of outcome is unreachable and is a mistake because it produces perverse and unintended consequences equality of outcome attempts attempts to make people equal on the outcome side what attempts to make them more equal on the front end on the opportunity side that's really really important for a healthy society that's where we've fallen down our schools are not providing equality of opportunity for the majority of people in all of our school systems and so I see problems there I see a need to invest in ourselves invest in infrastructure invest in human capital create greater equality of opportunity but also to make sure that we have good governance because governance is the variable that enables you to do all these other things I've washed quite a bit returning back to Putin I've watched quite a few interviews and with Putin in conversations you know especially because I speak Russian fluently I can understand often the translations lose a lot I am I find the man putting morality aside very deep and interesting and I found almost no interview with him to be to get at that depth I was I was very hopeful for the Oliver Stone documentary and with him and to me because I deeply respect our stone as a filmmaker in general but it was a complete failure in my eyes that interview the the lack of it I mean I suppose you could toss it up to a language barrier but a complete lack of diving deep into the person as what I saw my question is a strange one but if you were to sit down with Putin and have a conversation or perhaps if you're sa-do's Saddam was Stalin and have a conversation what kind of questions would you ask well this wouldn't be televised unless you want it to be so this is only you so you're allowed to ask about some of the questions that are sort of not socially acceptable meaning putting morality aside getting into depth of the human character what would you ask so once again they're very different personalities and very different time periods in very different regimes so what I would talk to Stalin about and Putin about her are not in the same category necessarily so let's take Putin so I would ask him where he thinks this is going where he thinks Russia's going to be in 25 years or 50 years what's the long-term vision what does he anticipate the current trends are going to produce is he under the illusion that Russia is on the up swing that things are actually going pretty well that in 25 years Russia is going to still be a great power with a tremendous dynamic economy and a lot of high tech and a lot of human capital and wonderful infrastructure and a very high standard of living and a secure secure borders and sense of security at home see think the current path is leading in that direction and if not if he's if he understands that the current trajectory does not provide for those kinds of circumstances does it bother him it does he worry about that does he care about the future 25 or 50 years from now deep down what do you think is the answer either the honesty either he thinks he's on that trajectory already or he doesn't care about that long-term trajectory so that's the mystery for me with him he's clever he has tremendous sources of information he has great experience now as a world leader having served for effectively longer than laying at Brezhnev's long 18 year reign and so Putin has accumulated a great deal of experience at the highest level compared to where he started and so I'm interested to understand how he sees this long term evolution or non evolution of Russia and and whether he believes he's got them on the right trajectory or whether if he doesn't believe that he cares I have no idea because I've never spoken to him about this but I would love to hear the answer sometimes you have to ask questions not directly like that but you have to come a little bit sideways you can elicit answers from people by making them feel comfortable in coming sideways with them on just a quick question so that's talking about Russia yeah Putin's role in Russia do you think it's interesting to ask and you could say the same for Stalin the more personal question of how do you feel yourself about this whole thing about your life about your legacy looking at the person that's one of the most powerful and important people in the history of civilization both Putin and Stalin you could argue yeah once you experience power at that level it becomes something that's almost necessary for you as a human being it's a drug it's an aphrodisiac it's a feeling you know you go to the gym to exercise and the endorphins the chemicals get released and even if you're tired or you're sore you get this massive chemical change which is has very dynamic effects on how you feel and the kind of level of energy you have for the rest of the day and if you do that for a long time and then you don't do it for a while you're like a drug addict not getting your fix you miss it your body misses that release of endorphins to a certain extent that's how power works for people like Putin that's how power works for people who run universities or our secretaries of state or run corporations fill in the blank in whatever ways power is exercised it becomes almost the drug for people it becomes something that's difficult for them to give up it becomes a part of who they are it becomes necessary for their sense of self and well-being the greatest people the people I admire the most are the ones that can step away from power can give it up can give up the drug can be satisfied and be stronger even by walking away from continued power when they had the option to continue alright so with a person like Putin once again I don't know him personally so I have no basis to judge this this is a general statement observable with many people and in historical terms with a person like Putin who's exercised this much power for this long it's something that becomes a part of who you are and you have a hard time imagining yourself without it you begin to conflate your personal power with the well-being of the nation you begin to think that the more power you have the better off the country is this conflation you begin to be able to not imagine you can no longer imagine what it would be like just to be an ordinary citizen or an ordinary person running a company even something much smaller than a country so I anticipate that without knowing for sure that he would be in that category of person but you'd want to explore that with questions with him about so what's his day look like from beginning to end just take me through a typical day of yours what are you doing a day how does it start what are the ups what are the downs what are the parts of the day you look forward to the most what are the parts of the day you don't look forward to that much what do you consider a good day what do you consider a bad day yeah how do you know that what you're doing is having the effects that you intend how do you follow up how do you gather the information the reaction how do you get people to tell you to your face things that they know are uncomfortable or that you might not want to hear those kind of questions through that window through that kind of question you get a window into a man with power so let me ask about stalling because you've done more reason another amazing interview you've had the the introduction was that you know more about Stalin than Stalin himself you've done incredible amount of research on Stalin so if you could talk to him get sort of direct research what question did you ask of Stalin I have so many questions I don't even know where I would begin the thing about studying a person like Stalin who's an immense creature right he's exercising the power of life and death over hundreds of millions of people he's making decisions about novels and films and and turbines and submarines and and pacts with Hitler or deals with Churchill and Roosevelt and and occupation of Mongolia or occupation of North Korea he's making phenomenally consequential decisions over all spheres of life all areas of Endeavour and over much of the globe much of the land mass of the earth and so what's that like does he sometimes reflect on the amount of power and responsibility he has that he can exercise does he sometimes think about what it means that a single person has that kind of power and does it have an effect on his relations with others his sense of self the kinds of things he values in life does he sometimes think it's a mistake that he's accumulated this much power does he sometimes wish he had a simpler life or is he once again so drunk so enamored so caught up with chemically and spiritually with exercising this kind of power that he couldn't live without it and then what were you thinking I would ask him in certain decisions that he made what were you thinking on certain dates and certain circumstances where you made a decision and could have made a different decision can you recall your thought processes can you bring this Beck was at seat-of-the-pants was it something you'd been planning did you just improvise or did you have a strategy what were you guided by whose examples did you look to when you picked up these books that you read and you read the books and you made pencil marks in them is it because you absorbed the lesson there or did it really not become a permanent lesson and was just something that you checked and it was like a reflex so I have many specific questions about many specific events and people and circumstances that I have tried to figure out with the surviving source materials that we have in abundance but I would still like to delve into his mindset and reconstruct his mind the closer you get to Stalin in some ways the more elusive he can become and especially around World War two you've already illuminated a lot of interesting aspects about Stalin's role in the war but it would be interesting to ask even more questions about how seat-of-the-pants or deliberate some of the decisions have been if I could ask just one quick question one last quick question and you're constrained in time and answering it do you think there will always be evil in the world do you think there will always be war unfortunately yes there are conflicting interests conflicting goals that people have most of the time those conflicts can be resolved peacefully that's where we build strong institutions to resolve different interests and conflicts peacefully but the fact the enduring fact of conflicting interests and conflicting desires that can never be changed so the job that we have for Humanity's sake is to make those conflicting interests those conflicting desires to make them to put them in a context where they can be resolved peacefully and not in a zero-sum fashion so we can't get there on the global scale so there's always gonna be the kind of conflict that sometimes gets violent what we don't want is a conflict among the strongest powers great power conflict is unbelievably bad there are no words to describe at least 55 million people died in World War two if we have a world war 3 a war between the United States and China or whatever it might be who knows what the number could be a hundred and fifty five million two hundred and fifty five million five hundred and fifty five million I don't even want to think about it and so it's horrible when wars break out in the humanitarian catastrophes for example Yemen and Syria and several other places I could name today it's just horrible what you see there and the scale is colossal for those places but it's not planetary scale and so avoiding planetary scale destruction is really important for us and so having those different interests be somehow managed in a way that they don't that no one sees advantage in a violent resolution and a part of that is remembering history so they should read your books Stephen thank you so much it was a huge honors talking to you today I really enjoyed it thank you for the opportunity my pleasure thanks for listening to this conversation with Steven Kotkin and thank you to our presenting sponsor cash app download it and use code let's podcast you'll get ten dollars and ten dollars we'll go to first a stem education nonprofit that inspires hundreds of thousands of young minds to become future leaders and innovators if you enjoy this podcast subscribe on youtube give it five stars an apple podcast supported on patreon or connect with me on Twitter and now let me leave you with words from Joseph Stalin spoken shortly before the death of Lenin and at the beginning of Stalin's rise to power first in Russian yeah she died Oh recession innovation act or acog Buddhist party gonna bite the watchdog Chile China vajna at the Couture Heacock which is she dies Casa I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote or how but what is extraordinarily important is who will count the votes and how for listening and hope to see you next time you