May 22, 2025 • 34 mins
At the end of ww1, the vast but ailing Russian empire collapsed. What followed was regicide, civil war and famine. But just a generation later, the world had changed. Russia, now part of the Soviet Union found itself uniquely positioned to itself on the global scene in a way it had done before. In this episode I speak with Russian born historian Sergey Rachenko, he Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs about his groundbreaking book To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power. We discuss the motivations and aspirations of Stalin, Krushchev and their successors as we learn how the events of the last century still cast a shadow today.
Guest: Sergey S. Radchenko
Music: Pixabay
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
At the end of World War I, the vast but ailing Russian Empire collapsed. What followed was regicide, civil War and famine. But just a generation later, the world had changed. Russia. Now part of the Soviet Union found itself uniquely positioned to thrust itself onto the global scene as a major power. In a way Russia had never done in the past.
(00:01):
As we learn how the events of the last century still cast a shadow today, world War II was devastating for the Soviet Union. While numbers cannot be confirmed, it's been suggested that as many as 25 million Soviet citizens lost their lives as a result of the war, and in cities such as Stalingrad, up to 90% of habitable buildings were destroyed.
Every family was a. Affected by this. Uh, but the victory in the Second World War gave the Soviet government a sense of legitimacy. Their system prevailed ultimately, and the Soviet leaders felt that they could have a different kind of foreign policy, perhaps a more assertive foreign policy and project Soviet power deep into the heart of Europe in the run up to the end of war.
So that was their estimate and their expectation based on the sense of a, a deserved position in the global pecking order that was supposed to be very high as a result of this victory against Germany. So did they view the situation then as being one where you were gonna have. Three major powers going forward, obviously themselves.
He did, certainly did not take. France, seriously at all. He took Britain seriously for a time. He didn't think that Britain had the kind of power that would allow it to really challenge Soviet's influence in part of Europe. But he did engage in those negotiations with Prime Minister Churchill. In Moscow in October, 1944 that resulted in the so-called percentages agreement, and he thought that he could do those kinds of negotiations with Churchill, a fellow imperialists.
Due to its, you know, weaknesses as a result of the second World War is just going to be much less important. So when you talk about the sphere of influence, obviously that's something that was associated with colonial powers. But from Stalin's perspective, was this a continuation of, you know, the sort of Marxist Leninist idea of, you know, like global revolution and bringing communism to the whole world?
Now, when we get to 19 45, 19 46, 47, it seems that Stalin thinks in those terms, a how do you subordinate foreign revolutions to serve the goal of, of the strengthening of the USSR? In the most obvious example of that was how he sacrificed the interests of his communist allies in China. For the sake of a broader agreement with the nationalist government, CHKS nationalist government with whom Stalin signed a treaty in, uh, August, 1945, a Treaty of Alliance.
Having a global communist revolution was really on Stalin's agenda. Now that doesn't mean that it would not enter his agenda later. As you know, the French say appetite comes with eating. But at least if you go back to what evidence we have of Stalin's intentions and, and Soviet capabilities in 1945, his um, uh, appetites were actually limited to Eastern Europe, more or less, and to immediate Soviet periphery.
How did Stalin view that? Was that a threat to the Soviets as the kind of predominant communist power? What was his reaction to the whole Yugoslavia as a kind of independent communist state, not directly part of his sphere of influence. Sure, sure. Well then this is a great question because this is one of the, uh, more mysterious aspects of Stalin's behavior.
Albania could be perhaps brought into this whole. Obviously Albania was not a sla Slavic country, but he seems to have at least entertained those ideas that also Tito had. Tito was very glad to do that. I mean, the main obstacle to this was. Uh, the disagreement between, let's say the Yugoslav and let's say the Bulgarian about the kind of the nature of that federation that would emerge because from Tito's perspective, this was supposed to be, you know, let's say Bulgaria entered into Federation with Yugoslavia, it would be just one of the federated states, but from, let's say, the Bulgarian perspective, they wanted equal rights with Yugoslavia.
So in the end, I think Stalin ultimately grew increasingly jealous of what. He perceived the Tito's power grabbing schemes in the Balkans. That is probably the, the core reason for the Soviet Yugoslav split when it unfolded in the late 1940s. In a similar vein, you had East Germany. I. Which ultimately, you know, became a separate state from West Germany, divided by the Berlin War, most famously.
I think one of the reasons why he wanted that was because he felt that if the Soviet occupied Germany was just its own little state, and then the part of Germany that was occupied by other became its own state that other Germany would be much more powerful and the Soviets would not be able to extract the sort of reparations they hoped.
It just happened because the Cold War unfolded and basically the lines of occupation became more or less permanent, right? So, uh, it's not, it wasn't, I think it wasn't really pre-planned in this sense. It was kind of, uh, accidental and it was simply an outcome of the beginning of the Cold War. So going back to China then, which you touched on when China did become a communist country under ma turn, was that then perceived as an existential threat to the Soviets?
I mean, the reason he wanted a reasonable government and the reasonable. A reasonable cooperation, rather with the government in Ji was that his relations with Guang China were ratified, so to speak, or, uh, legitimized in the context of the Yalta conference. So Yalta provided the sort of legitimating framework within which the Soviets and the nationalist Chinese government had their own treaty.
Uh, much too late, according to Mao Zong, Mao would later bury a grudge against Stalin saying that Stalin never believed in the Chinese revolution and they, that he always thought that Mao Zong was something somebody like Tito, or at least half a Tito, but at least for the time being in 49 Mao put on a brave face one to Moscow In 1950 they signed.
I don't think that we're really visible to the naked eye until probably 58 or even 59, but tension certainly. Started to emerge. And those tensions had to do with the fact that Mao thought that after Stalin's death, he was, uh, something of a senior figure in the communist movement. And the Soviet leaders, Nikita k Chauvin in particular, were, well, uh, Nikita Kau was just not qualified to lead the socialist commonwealth.
Picking up from that, when Khrushchev came to power, he was viewed as, you know, somewhat erratic, you know, banging his shoe at the United Nations, and obviously he was involved with the Cuban Missile Crisis and so on. Domestically, though he did have this investigation into, you know. Stalin's abuses and so forth, but on an international scene, substantive level, was there anything decidedly different about his approach versus that of Stalin?
I don't know if I fully agree with this. I mean, this idea that. Peaceful coexistence was necessary because of the emergence of nuclear weapons. Yes. I mean, that was clearly the case. By 1950s when the Soviets paired their thermonuclear capabilities with their missile technologies and the United States did the same, it became very clear in the Kremlin.
I mean, clearly Stalin had that view, but did Hho not also have this view? If he didn't have this view, then why did he order the invasion of Budapest in 1956 in brutal suppression of the Hungarian uprising? So I think that although there were some. Uh, differences in style clearly, and at least initially after Stalin's death, the Soviet leaders actually considered improving relations with the West on the whole, the, both, the Soviet grand strategy, and I think the means of getting there have not really, did not really change all that much.
Well, I think that's an important question. It did, uh, Vietnam and particularly did emerge as an area for competition between China and uh, the Soviet Union. This has to be understood in the context of the sign Soviet split as the two communist great powers fell out in the late fifties, early sixties.
It did not neighbor the Soviet Union. It had a long historical ties with the Chinese communist revolution. Suffice it to say that Cochin in his time, spent a lot of time in China and had very close personal relationships with the likes of drone life, for example. And, uh, there was a perception as well that Koch's policy of peaceful coexistence did not really apply to divided nations like Vietnam, where they had to carry on military struggle against imperialism and so on and so forth.
And was not really as important to the Soviet Union strategically as it was to China. But somehow the Chinese really blew it in so many ways, and the Vietnamese were angry with them and, and began to lean, uh, towards the Soviets in the early 1970s. There were all kinds of problems between China and Vietnam at this point.
(00:22):
So in Vietnam, obviously the United States was in Vietnam. Russia was involved supporting the Vietnamese, and if you think about today we have the conflict in Ukraine where, you know, Russia's involved in Ukraine. We have America and NATO providing arms to Ukraine and Russia have set various red lines where they said, you know, if you send like, you know, F 16 fighters or missiles or what have you, we will view that as you being involved in the conflict.
Absolutely. Although perhaps less than today, I think today Moscow, uh, directs a direct conflict with the United States so much more than in the situation with Vietnam, because in Vietnam it was not a direct participant. Now, today, it is a direct participant, and so the chances of escalation are higher than they were in the war in Vietnam.
They would not respond very well to this kind of prodding, and they continued fighting and continued presenting the Soviets with requests for more weapons, more ammunition, and the Soviets had to give it to them because they felt that if they didn't, the Chinese would accuse them of selling out an ally.
So talking of Brezhnev, some years ago, I heard a Russian joke, and in the joke you had these various Soviet leaders all on a train and the train broke down. And so Lennon said, okay, nationalize the train. And they did, and the train was still stationary. So then Stalin said, shoot the driver, and they shot the driver and the train was still stationary.
So the, uh, promise of building a communist future still remained. And there, it was part of the agenda, but nobody believed in it anymore. And so that is something that, you know, uh, that was clear to the Soviets already in the late 1960s, Soviet leaders understood that they were not delivering on the promise of communism, but BNI somehow did not have the courage.
And secondly, Soviet allies in Eastern Europe pleaded for more oil and gas, so it was very difficult for the Soviets, but they did get some extra hard currency earnings that allowed them to import grain and. Maintained the Soviet system until the 1980s when at that point, Gorbachev, when he came to power, you know, just had to accept that that system was not working and that a major overhaul was required.
I think the peak of their power was probably in 1945 actually. And that is where they were in control of, you know, military control of much of Eastern Europe. By the way, they were still fairly popular in some Eastern European countries that saw them as liberators from Nazism. And it was only later that this attitude changed so militarily, I think 1945 was a.
Precarious moral position where it would have to continue to, uh, impose its rule by force on its neighbors. By the 1960s, problems were very grave and, and mounting for sure had to suppress a food. Right. In 1962 in Nous, in 1963, the Soviets had to spend something like 840 tons of gold. They had to sell them to.
A lot of people who you know have a casual interest in the news and politics. Tend to view Gorbachev as this, you know, great peacemaker reformer, a guy who essentially tore down the Soviet Union and wanted to reform Russia in the sort of Western mold. But in reality, obviously he was a communist. Did he actually want to bring down the Soviet system, break up the Soviet Union and create some other kind of system, having realized that this just wasn't working out?
It it was, it was just, uh, decrepit and uh, was not believed by anybody including the Soviets themselves. So he had to come up with new ideas. And, uh, when he published his book, the Destroy a New Thinking. In 1987, he thought of that tro new thinking as being directed not only towards the Soviet Union, but even externally.
Now, what he did not fully realize was that to project global leadership, you also have to be an economic power. Uh, you have to have the means, not just ideas. And so when it came. Two, the, when we get to the late 1980s, he found it difficult to rally the world behind himself because the Soviet Union was already falling apart.
This is more of an economic history, but that will be published in about a year from now, I think our hope. Hey Sarge, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. It's been a fascinating topic. I truly appreciate it. Coming soon, I explore AI and the tragedy of the Armenian genocide.
At the end of World War I, the vast but ailing Russian Empire collapsed. What followed was regicide, civil War and famine. But just a generation later, the world had changed. Russia. Now part of the Soviet Union found itself uniquely positioned to thrust itself onto the global scene as a major power. In a way Russia had never done in the past.
(00:01):
As we learn how the events of the last century still cast a shadow today, world War II was devastating for the Soviet Union. While numbers cannot be confirmed, it's been suggested that as many as 25 million Soviet citizens lost their lives as a result of the war, and in cities such as Stalingrad, up to 90% of habitable buildings were destroyed.
Every family was a. Affected by this. Uh, but the victory in the Second World War gave the Soviet government a sense of legitimacy. Their system prevailed ultimately, and the Soviet leaders felt that they could have a different kind of foreign policy, perhaps a more assertive foreign policy and project Soviet power deep into the heart of Europe in the run up to the end of war.
So that was their estimate and their expectation based on the sense of a, a deserved position in the global pecking order that was supposed to be very high as a result of this victory against Germany. So did they view the situation then as being one where you were gonna have. Three major powers going forward, obviously themselves.
He did, certainly did not take. France, seriously at all. He took Britain seriously for a time. He didn't think that Britain had the kind of power that would allow it to really challenge Soviet's influence in part of Europe. But he did engage in those negotiations with Prime Minister Churchill. In Moscow in October, 1944 that resulted in the so-called percentages agreement, and he thought that he could do those kinds of negotiations with Churchill, a fellow imperialists.
Due to its, you know, weaknesses as a result of the second World War is just going to be much less important. So when you talk about the sphere of influence, obviously that's something that was associated with colonial powers. But from Stalin's perspective, was this a continuation of, you know, the sort of Marxist Leninist idea of, you know, like global revolution and bringing communism to the whole world?
Now, when we get to 19 45, 19 46, 47, it seems that Stalin thinks in those terms, a how do you subordinate foreign revolutions to serve the goal of, of the strengthening of the USSR? In the most obvious example of that was how he sacrificed the interests of his communist allies in China. For the sake of a broader agreement with the nationalist government, CHKS nationalist government with whom Stalin signed a treaty in, uh, August, 1945, a Treaty of Alliance.
Having a global communist revolution was really on Stalin's agenda. Now that doesn't mean that it would not enter his agenda later. As you know, the French say appetite comes with eating. But at least if you go back to what evidence we have of Stalin's intentions and, and Soviet capabilities in 1945, his um, uh, appetites were actually limited to Eastern Europe, more or less, and to immediate Soviet periphery.
How did Stalin view that? Was that a threat to the Soviets as the kind of predominant communist power? What was his reaction to the whole Yugoslavia as a kind of independent communist state, not directly part of his sphere of influence. Sure, sure. Well then this is a great question because this is one of the, uh, more mysterious aspects of Stalin's behavior.
Albania could be perhaps brought into this whole. Obviously Albania was not a sla Slavic country, but he seems to have at least entertained those ideas that also Tito had. Tito was very glad to do that. I mean, the main obstacle to this was. Uh, the disagreement between, let's say the Yugoslav and let's say the Bulgarian about the kind of the nature of that federation that would emerge because from Tito's perspective, this was supposed to be, you know, let's say Bulgaria entered into Federation with Yugoslavia, it would be just one of the federated states, but from, let's say, the Bulgarian perspective, they wanted equal rights with Yugoslavia.
So in the end, I think Stalin ultimately grew increasingly jealous of what. He perceived the Tito's power grabbing schemes in the Balkans. That is probably the, the core reason for the Soviet Yugoslav split when it unfolded in the late 1940s. In a similar vein, you had East Germany. I. Which ultimately, you know, became a separate state from West Germany, divided by the Berlin War, most famously.
I think one of the reasons why he wanted that was because he felt that if the Soviet occupied Germany was just its own little state, and then the part of Germany that was occupied by other became its own state that other Germany would be much more powerful and the Soviets would not be able to extract the sort of reparations they hoped.
It just happened because the Cold War unfolded and basically the lines of occupation became more or less permanent, right? So, uh, it's not, it wasn't, I think it wasn't really pre-planned in this sense. It was kind of, uh, accidental and it was simply an outcome of the beginning of the Cold War. So going back to China then, which you touched on when China did become a communist country under ma turn, was that then perceived as an existential threat to the Soviets?
I mean, the reason he wanted a reasonable government and the reasonable. A reasonable cooperation, rather with the government in Ji was that his relations with Guang China were ratified, so to speak, or, uh, legitimized in the context of the Yalta conference. So Yalta provided the sort of legitimating framework within which the Soviets and the nationalist Chinese government had their own treaty.
Uh, much too late, according to Mao Zong, Mao would later bury a grudge against Stalin saying that Stalin never believed in the Chinese revolution and they, that he always thought that Mao Zong was something somebody like Tito, or at least half a Tito, but at least for the time being in 49 Mao put on a brave face one to Moscow In 1950 they signed.
I don't think that we're really visible to the naked eye until probably 58 or even 59, but tension certainly. Started to emerge. And those tensions had to do with the fact that Mao thought that after Stalin's death, he was, uh, something of a senior figure in the communist movement. And the Soviet leaders, Nikita k Chauvin in particular, were, well, uh, Nikita Kau was just not qualified to lead the socialist commonwealth.
Picking up from that, when Khrushchev came to power, he was viewed as, you know, somewhat erratic, you know, banging his shoe at the United Nations, and obviously he was involved with the Cuban Missile Crisis and so on. Domestically, though he did have this investigation into, you know. Stalin's abuses and so forth, but on an international scene, substantive level, was there anything decidedly different about his approach versus that of Stalin?
I don't know if I fully agree with this. I mean, this idea that. Peaceful coexistence was necessary because of the emergence of nuclear weapons. Yes. I mean, that was clearly the case. By 1950s when the Soviets paired their thermonuclear capabilities with their missile technologies and the United States did the same, it became very clear in the Kremlin.
I mean, clearly Stalin had that view, but did Hho not also have this view? If he didn't have this view, then why did he order the invasion of Budapest in 1956 in brutal suppression of the Hungarian uprising? So I think that although there were some. Uh, differences in style clearly, and at least initially after Stalin's death, the Soviet leaders actually considered improving relations with the West on the whole, the, both, the Soviet grand strategy, and I think the means of getting there have not really, did not really change all that much.
Well, I think that's an important question. It did, uh, Vietnam and particularly did emerge as an area for competition between China and uh, the Soviet Union. This has to be understood in the context of the sign Soviet split as the two communist great powers fell out in the late fifties, early sixties.
It did not neighbor the Soviet Union. It had a long historical ties with the Chinese communist revolution. Suffice it to say that Cochin in his time, spent a lot of time in China and had very close personal relationships with the likes of drone life, for example. And, uh, there was a perception as well that Koch's policy of peaceful coexistence did not really apply to divided nations like Vietnam, where they had to carry on military struggle against imperialism and so on and so forth.
And was not really as important to the Soviet Union strategically as it was to China. But somehow the Chinese really blew it in so many ways, and the Vietnamese were angry with them and, and began to lean, uh, towards the Soviets in the early 1970s. There were all kinds of problems between China and Vietnam at this point.
(00:22):
So in Vietnam, obviously the United States was in Vietnam. Russia was involved supporting the Vietnamese, and if you think about today we have the conflict in Ukraine where, you know, Russia's involved in Ukraine. We have America and NATO providing arms to Ukraine and Russia have set various red lines where they said, you know, if you send like, you know, F 16 fighters or missiles or what have you, we will view that as you being involved in the conflict.
Absolutely. Although perhaps less than today, I think today Moscow, uh, directs a direct conflict with the United States so much more than in the situation with Vietnam, because in Vietnam it was not a direct participant. Now, today, it is a direct participant, and so the chances of escalation are higher than they were in the war in Vietnam.
They would not respond very well to this kind of prodding, and they continued fighting and continued presenting the Soviets with requests for more weapons, more ammunition, and the Soviets had to give it to them because they felt that if they didn't, the Chinese would accuse them of selling out an ally.
So talking of Brezhnev, some years ago, I heard a Russian joke, and in the joke you had these various Soviet leaders all on a train and the train broke down. And so Lennon said, okay, nationalize the train. And they did, and the train was still stationary. So then Stalin said, shoot the driver, and they shot the driver and the train was still stationary.
So the, uh, promise of building a communist future still remained. And there, it was part of the agenda, but nobody believed in it anymore. And so that is something that, you know, uh, that was clear to the Soviets already in the late 1960s, Soviet leaders understood that they were not delivering on the promise of communism, but BNI somehow did not have the courage.
And secondly, Soviet allies in Eastern Europe pleaded for more oil and gas, so it was very difficult for the Soviets, but they did get some extra hard currency earnings that allowed them to import grain and. Maintained the Soviet system until the 1980s when at that point, Gorbachev, when he came to power, you know, just had to accept that that system was not working and that a major overhaul was required.
I think the peak of their power was probably in 1945 actually. And that is where they were in control of, you know, military control of much of Eastern Europe. By the way, they were still fairly popular in some Eastern European countries that saw them as liberators from Nazism. And it was only later that this attitude changed so militarily, I think 1945 was a.
Precarious moral position where it would have to continue to, uh, impose its rule by force on its neighbors. By the 1960s, problems were very grave and, and mounting for sure had to suppress a food. Right. In 1962 in Nous, in 1963, the Soviets had to spend something like 840 tons of gold. They had to sell them to.
A lot of people who you know have a casual interest in the news and politics. Tend to view Gorbachev as this, you know, great peacemaker reformer, a guy who essentially tore down the Soviet Union and wanted to reform Russia in the sort of Western mold. But in reality, obviously he was a communist. Did he actually want to bring down the Soviet system, break up the Soviet Union and create some other kind of system, having realized that this just wasn't working out?
It it was, it was just, uh, decrepit and uh, was not believed by anybody including the Soviets themselves. So he had to come up with new ideas. And, uh, when he published his book, the Destroy a New Thinking. In 1987, he thought of that tro new thinking as being directed not only towards the Soviet Union, but even externally.
Now, what he did not fully realize was that to project global leadership, you also have to be an economic power. Uh, you have to have the means, not just ideas. And so when it came. Two, the, when we get to the late 1980s, he found it difficult to rally the world behind himself because the Soviet Union was already falling apart.
This is more of an economic history, but that will be published in about a year from now, I think our hope. Hey Sarge, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. It's been a fascinating topic. I truly appreciate it. Coming soon, I explore AI and the tragedy of the Armenian genocide.
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