Stephen Kotkin: Six Futures of Russia—Why We Need History (and Libraries) | LIVE from NYPL

Brent Reidy: Good evening. Good night. I'm Brent Reidy, the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries here at the New York Public Library. Thank you so much for joining us, whether you're in our sold-out audience or watching us online. We are very excited to be joined tonight by an old friend, a special lecture by none other than Stephen Kotkin. Stephen is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute. He is director of the Hoover History Laboratory. But many of you may know him from the days before he fled to the West Coast and left us a few years ago, professor emeritus of

history

and international affairs at Princeton University.

Needless to say, he is a brilliant writer, a brilliant historian, and his knowledge and insight into the

history

and future of geopolitics and authoritarian regimes has given him permanent job security in these times. Unfortunately it is a permanent job security. He is the author of numerous books, including Joseph Stalin's masterful multi-volume biography of him. You can get a copy out front if you have the chance when you enter. The first volume he actually worked on here at the library as a Cullman Fellow, one of the first Coleman Fellows in the first one, I think. , five years of the scholarship program.

He is now working on the final volume, Stalin, Totalitarian Superpower, 1941 to 1990s. Stephen is here tonight to mark an incredible occasion, a very important anniversary. We celebrate the 125th anniversary of our Slavic and Eastern European collections. Those materials range from illuminated manuscripts from the early 14th century to books published this year. We are still collecting. They cover languages ​​from Slavic and Eastern European to Hebrew, Yiddish and the multitude of languages ​​that once came under the flag of the Soviet Union. A curious fact: on the first day this building was inaugurated, on May 24, 1911, one of the first books that a Russian requested was a book by the Russian writer Nikolai Grat titled -- and I won't try the Russian because I don't have the linguistic facility that our other speakers tonight have, but it was a study of Nietzsche and Tolstoy.

So we'll hear from Stephen in a moment. But first we're going to hear a little bit from our curator of Slavic and East European studies, Bogdan Horbal, about this incredible collection, the history of it, and then Stephen will follow him. At the end of our time tonight there will be time for some questions. They should have been given a small note card upon entry. Please think of questions during the night and we will come during the conference and collect them. If you are looking online, you can simply put your question in the chat and we will diligently write them down and also bring them to our speaker.

Also, and I'm sorry to those watching online, this isn't for you, but I hope you saw that we had an incredible collection of prints on display right in front of you as you walked in. Many thanks to Rebecca Chantier, who directed the screen tonight. They will remain on display after the program. So if you didn't get the chance when you came in, check out just the tip of the iceberg of our incredible collections tonight. Live from NYPL is made possible through the continued generosity of Celeste Bartos, Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos. And it wouldn't be possible without all of you.

Thank you for your support and please join me in welcoming Bogdan Horbal. Bogdan Horbal: Good evening and thank you for coming. Vartan Gregorian

need

s no introduction. And the Armenian-American scholar, educator and historian who pulled the library out of the financial crisis of the 1970s. However, his first encounter with the library came years earlier. He described it as follows. "The first time I set foot in the New York Public Library was in 1956. I walked down Fifth Avenue and then walked to the New York Public Library and walked in. I headed toward a familiar sign, the Slavic Division.

I walked in and "No one asked me for identification. So I thought I had entered there illegally and quickly left hoping that no one would catch me. I never knew it was the right people's palace to just walk in." Some Slavic and Eastern European materials held at the New York Public Library trace their origins to the NYPL's two predecessors. As you may know, the Astor and Lenox

libraries

merged to become the NYPL in 1895. Funding for this was provided by the Tilden Trust. The Astor Library began the process of collecting works in Latin or Western European languages ​​dedicated to or printed in Slavic and Eastern European countries.

A process that continues to this day. The Lenox Library contributed several vernacular Bibles and Slavic and Baltic liturgical texts. In 1897, the first director of the NYPL, John Shaw Billings, suggested collecting materials in Russian. At the same time, a group of Russian New Yorkers submitted a request to collect Russian materials along with a card catalog of titles to be acquired. God bless these Russians. In February 1899, New York Public Library trustees set aside $1,000 to create what was originally described as the Russian literature section. Located in the old Astor Library building, it was an instant hit. In 1900 more than a thousand readers attended and consulted more than 5,000 articles out of a total of only 2,298 articles.

These are amazing statistics. While most of the library's Slavic collections to this day are Russian, during the early years a commitment was made to create a broad Slavic and Eastern European collection. Thus, during the inaugural year, the unit's name was changed to the Slavic Department. Over the ensuing decades and up to the present, the library has systematically built collections in many vernacular languages, creating holdings that rank highly compared to those of Ivy League university

libraries

. Herman Rosenthal, the founding head of the Slavic department, laid the foundation for this success. He contracted with suppliers and established book exchanges with various academic institutions throughout Eastern Europe, some of which continued for decades to come.

In 1924, more than 41,000 readers came to use the Slavic Division collections, another surprising statistic. This took place during the early years of Abraham Yarmolinsky, the head of the highly successful Slavic Division. Yarmolinsky and Harry Miller Lydenberg, head of the Reference Division, undertook a daring trip to buy books from Soviet Russia in 1923, ten years before the United States officially recognized the Soviet Union. They bought or received as gifts about 9,000 books. It is partly thanks to contacts Yarmolinsky made in Soviet Russia that the library has a notable collection of Soviet materials, including publications in several minority languages ​​of the Soviet Union.

The main supplier of Soviet materials was Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga, a Soviet book export agency. As shown in this summary of charges, he gave prices in gold rubles. These are the chervonets coins that the Soviet government used mainly for foreign trade operations. When the Soviet Union put thousands of volumes collected through mass confiscations of private libraries up for sale, the New York Public Library was among the buyers. In 1931 alone, the library purchased about 2,200 volumes from the private library of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich. The results of the work of Rosenthal, Yarmolinsky, and his staff were significant. In 1960, it was concluded that the Library of Congress, Columbia and Harvard universities, and the New York Public Library should be considered of equal value to scholars working in the field of Slavic and Eastern European studies. .

This initial success and collection creation became even more significant when the international situation deteriorated. The Soviets stopped the sale of materials from confiscated private libraries in the mid-1930s. World War II and acquisitions made acquiring materials virtually impossible. And then came the Sovietization of Eastern Europe and Cold War export restrictions, which were devastating for procurement. These difficulties coincided with increased interest in the peoples of Eastern Europe, which led the new head of the Slavic Division, John Mish, a linguist of Polish origin, to undertake a trip to the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia, during which established or reestablished many contacts.

During the post-World War II era, some antiquarian purchases were made, including magnificent illuminated manuscripts for the Spencer collection. But Mish primarily focused on expanding our collections with contemporary publications. This occurred at the time when the division's readership began to grow beyond the predominantly émigré audiences of previous decades. University students and professors, especially at Columbia University, as well as journalists and other enthusiasts of Slavic and Eastern European cultures, began to dominate as readers and engage in deeper research. In 1951, almost 87,000 items were served in the Slavic Division. American economic stagnation in the 1970s hit New York City especially hard, and the city entered a period of crisis.

Limited funds and a job freeze made the development of diverse collections extremely challenging during the final years of John Mish and later under the leadership of Victor Koressaar, an Estonian-born academic. In 1984, Edward Kasinec became the sixth head of the Slavic Division. The division

need

ed a revival. He expanded the staff and took on important tasks. One of the achievements was the improvement in the aspects in which the division acquired new materials. Division staff and numerous qualified volunteers contributed to the description of different parts of the collections. Some of these descriptions and other articles were presented at international conferences and published.

The preservation and restoration of inherited materials was accomplished with the help of funds obtained from grants, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities. More than 24,000 images from the division's holdings were digitized and included in NYPL's digital collections. Many books and serials went to Google to be scanned and placed on HathiTrust. Kasinec and his staff reached out to local and international communities of scholars, emigrant communities, and enthusiasts of Slavic subjects. These efforts resulted in broader access to the collection by scholars, along with donations from important private collections and the creation of several endowments. In 1989, the division was renamed the Slavic and Baltic Division to better reflect its holdings.

However, two decades later, as part of a broader organization, the division was dissolved and its collections were incorporated into the General Research Division and specialized divisions such as manuscripts and rare books. Meanwhile, libraries continued to expand their Slavic and Eastern European collections. The new phase of collecting in this field coincides with the library's involvement in the creation of the Conservation and Research Collections Consortium, commonly called ReCAP. Originally created as a shared physical repository, it has evolved into a shared collection of the New York Public Library, as well as Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton Universities. The Slavic and Eastern European collections were the first to be covered by a collaborative collection development agreement that reduced duplication and has created a much larger collection of unique items.

I also want to say that Slavic and Eastern European objects are regularly included in exhibitions organized by the New York Public Library. The most spectacular of them was Russia Engages the World, visited by 100,000 people. In 2007, the exhibition Graphic Modernism: From the Baltic to the Balkans highlighted the library's significant collection of avant-garde works on paper. In recent years, the Polanski exhibition of the treasures of the New York Public Library displayed several Slavic and Eastern European items, including a Russian translation of Vladimir Nabokov's Alice in Wonderland. You may know that when we do things here, we do it in a big way.

I mean, really big. Let me conclude this brief presentation with a quote from this timeless classic. Alice asked the cat, "Could you please tell me where I should go from here?" The cat replied, "That largely depends on where you want to go." I will now let our keynote speaker, Professor Stephen Kotkin, address the fascinating topic of what the future holds. Thank you. Stephen Kotkin: I wouldn't mind hearing the rest of that. . It's great to be here. This is one of my favorite places in the world. I'm just testing you. Do you think this is my first time on stage?

My wife, I don't see her. She's late. Her plane is late. there was a planeprevious, but she took the last one. And today, again, she was yelling at the screen. She's screaming, "Don't go in there. Don't go in there." It was the video of our wedding. Yes. I think she has early Alzheimer's. Every day she tells me that she has no idea what she first saw in me. Do we have time for questions? I'll get there. I just... have to relax a little. So much royalty here, so many old friends, a place like this it's a miracle.

Imagine that you have to leave your country, or they force you to leave or you flee before they expel you. You end up in Harbin, Kobe, Istanbul, Paris or New York. And you may not know anyone there, you may not speak those languages, and you may miss your homeland. And in the case of New York, there is space. There is a space. And you can enter the space just as Vartan Gregorian entered it and as I would enter there. And you will also be able to see people who have the same destiny as you. They are literate.

They read. However, they read in languages ​​that are not necessarily the native language of the country in which they are currently located. They are happy to have found a welcome, to have had access to a new country. But they dream, in many cases, of the homeland and back. And they read. They catch up with the newspapers from home. There is no Internet. Then they have to come into the room and read them. And then they meet other people who read the same newspapers. And maybe they'll figure out where their kids could go to school or discover places where they could get cheaper food and start building a community out of a room, in a library.

Reconnect with the

live

s you were forced to leave and reconnect with the new

live

s you have. It is simply an extraordinary story. Unfortunately they don't come back. They died of old age here. Some gave up the dream of returning and others kept it. And now, here we are again. Here we are again. And again, there are millions. And who would have thought it? It's different now. Newspapers are online. Television is online. You don't need a room. You have a Facebook page now. You can find anyone who might be interested in what you are interested in. So it's not the same and yet, the preservation of culture, the preservation of values, the preservation of dreams, the preservation of who you think you are.

You are forced to give up and you lose and you want to come back, that's in the library. Because all of those people that Bogdan showed you, they dedicated their lives and hired staff who dedicated their lives to collecting that material and preserving it so that when people like Vartan Gregorian or like me or many others who were in this audience came off the street and into the room, it was there for us to use, and it will be there in a hundred years, also for those who walk down the street. I had my first work experience with Ed Kasinec when he was the Slavic, in charge of the Slavic bibliographer at Berkeley.

I was a PhD student at Berkeley. And then he came here, as you may have heard, in 1984 to take over the division here and when I arrived, it was incredible. You could talk to someone and they'd say, "Oh, are you interested in that? Did you order that book? Did you call that book? I know six other things that deal with related topics, some of which aren't in the catalog." and some of which we should have cataloged long ago. Let me bring them to you." It wasn't true that they had met Trotsky and Bukharin when they were here in the reading room, but that's how it seemed.

So they were looking at how I look today, that is, worn-out, very worn-out people. Anyway, it was exciting. I had an office here for a whole year at the Cullman Center and I was able to go through the collection. And as you may have heard a lot about Stalin, volume one the materials that I read here. So Vladimir Putin is 71 years old. 60 years old in Russia, your life expectancy for a man is 78. His doctors are probably better than the average doctor, so he could go much further than 78, but at some point that will happen. Maybe he won't have a stroke. brain and fall into a puddle of urine like the guy I wrote about in 1953, but maybe however it goes, whenever it goes, it goes.

So where could this go not only when? he is no longer here, but while he is alive, maybe even? So this was the question I have reflected on. And you can guess that I'm not very good at predicting the future. Otherwise, I'd be at that front desk somewhere else in the library, whether it's Goldman Sachs or whoever is there paying the front desk bills. He'd be working there instead of here if he could predict the future. I'm still working on the past. I'm getting better. So I can't predict the future, but I can talk about the structures and the potential drivers of change and therefore what the possibilities are or the scenarios as we call them.

So I'm going to go over six of them. Those of you who are subscribers to Foreign Affairs will know that my essay on this topic appeared in this issue, the May-June issue, which was published, I think, this morning, and my editor. If you want to know why my works are readable, my editor, Justin, is sitting here in the audience and he is my not-so-secret weapon. The boy is phenomenal. In any case, the first possibility I am going to present to you is that Russia becomes France. People ask me: Could Russia become democratic? Could there be a democratic revolution?

Could Russia finally achieve the rule of law? And I say: can Russia become France? That's what you're asking. And that's why France had a monarchical tradition. She had a large, gigantic and absolutist state bureaucracy. Then she had this crazy revolutionary tradition, which went this way and that and this and that. And if you avoided the sword, you were lucky. And she threatened her neighbors, as you know from Napoleon. But France no longer represents a threat to its neighbors. And she killed her king. OK. The king returned, the emperor returned. It's France. But they finally achieved a kind of consolidated republic.

Right now they are in fifth place, thanks to De Gaulle. I hope I live to see more. That would give me some longevity. Maybe not me. But anyway, you get the point. In some way they have overcome and also assimilated their past, that great monarchical tradition, that great bureaucratic tradition, that crazy revolutionary tradition. Now they have a rule of law, a state, an open society, a free and open society. And they no longer threaten their neighbors like before. And that's it. Because Russia, you see, also has a monarchical tradition. They also have an absolutist state. They also have a crazy revolutionary tradition.

And it was much crazier than the French, which is saying a lot. I know those kids back in Columbia waiting for Qatari money to start digging the tunnels under the tent camp. I study the revolution. I spent my entire life doing this. So I've seen a lot. I know where it's going. Anyway, the Russians have had this too. And they are also threatening the neighboring part. So when you ask, can Russia become democratic? I tell you: can Russia become France? The distance between today's Russia and today's France is the answer to your question. That is the distance they have to travel to become a consolidated, stable and sustained rule of law with institutions that limit executive authority, a free and open society.

And if you think there is some distance between today's Russia and today's France, then you think there might be a difficult path to achieve that. Now, of course, Russia and France are not the same country. There are many differences. But of all the countries in the world, France is the closest to Russia. Then Russia becomes France. That's my first potential future. My second potential future is for Russia to remain authoritarian. She is still a nationalist. But she doesn't have to threaten her neighbors because that is self-destructive. The cost of that is too high. In other words, they step back a little.

They withdraw. So the reduction of Russia would be the second possible future. You wouldn't get the result from France. You would still have the authoritarian regime. They would still potentially be very anti-Western. They still potentially wouldn't have a free and open society. They might even be xenophobic in their nationalism. But the key would be that they feel like they can't take on the world, especially the Western alliance, because it's too costly. It hurts Russia. This is not altruism. This is self-interest. His opinion is that Russia deserves to be a great power. Russia has always been a great power, but right now we cannot afford what we are doing.

We cannot afford Putin's track record. So we just back off a little bit and maintain a version of the regime we have. In some ways, this would be a fantastic outcome for Ukraine. It wouldn't solve Russia's problem, but it might make them withdraw from the war, not because they love Ukraine, not because they love the West, but because they think the war is hurting Russia. Russia is losing a lot of people. Her demographics are terrible. Russia is a technological desert. Russia's private sector, the high-tech private sector, is in Tel Aviv and Yerevan, and all kinds of other places that are not Russia.

And those responsible know it. They are very aware. They are not stupid. They know the statistics. They can look and see the trajectory they are on. When you are a raw materials exporting power, as Russia has been since the 18th century, you need technology transfer like oxygen. And if you become isolated from your sources of technology transfer and you become a technology transfer desert and all your next generation of high tech 20 and 30 year olds, like I said, live in Tel Aviv or Yerevan or all the rest places we could name, you may feel hurt by Russia as a nationalist.

Reduction. OK. Number Three. Number three is Russia becoming a vassal of China. Bet you didn't think you'd live to see that. Russia becomes a vassal of China. It can be seen that Russia and China are getting closer and closer. You can also see that there is a certain reluctance in the hug. Russia does not want to be subjugated by China. China wants no responsibility for the disaster that is Russia. So Russia is not yet a vassal of China. It's on that trajectory, but you can't choose to be a vassal of China. China chooses who are her vassals.

And if they think you're a hopeless case, they want to exploit you, but they don't necessarily want to appoint the government or oversee policies. They don't necessarily want you to be their vassal because you are Russia. And Russia does not want to be subjugated to China because at one time Russia was the big brother and China was the little brother dependent on Russia. And that's why pride hurts a lot when you see this. You can see all over the Russian social media space the humiliation of China doing everything Russia used to do. That the things Russia makes are not as good as the things China makes.

Russia lost its machine tool industry. China currently manufactures almost all machine tools for Russia. This is amazing. I must tell you, Mao, he did not have a machine tool industry. He had no industry. Yes. So how did that happen? Anyway, it's okay. So the third is Russia becoming a vassal of China. And as I say, we're moving in that direction even though each side is a little worried about how deep the hug might be. But if you burn all the bridges in the West and then blame the West for the arson, China is really your only game in town and that dependency really increases.

And if you are China and you are also burning bridges with the United States and the West, Russia is an important player for you. Plus, let's face it, it's kind of convenient on the world's largest land border between Russia and China, you don't actually have to put soldiers there like you used to have. You can put your shoulders facing, I don't know, Taiwan because you don't have to protect that border if Russia is in your pocket. If Russia flips, suddenly, if you have a pro-American Russia, you will have a really big border to defend and your Taiwan and all the other scenarios will undergo big changes.

So no matter how bad Russia is, you can't let Russia fall because if it falls, it could go to the other side. As well. This brings me to scenario number four: Russia as North Korea. And you're looking at me like you used to look at me, Rob, when he used to look up those crazy Soviet books and say, "Can't you read anything that's intelligent?" I know that look. How could Russia, 142 times the size of North Korea, become North Korea? It's stupid. Well, like everything, all life is absurd. I think that those of you who are over 25 years old know it and certainly those of you who are my age know it.

Know. OK. What do I mean by Russia becoming North Korea? What I mean is isolation from the world, plundering as far as the eye can see, mischief, dirty tricks. They are going to empty their crypto accounts if they haven't already. So be careful: I can see this audience with crypto accounts. They are vulnerable. Isolated, incentivized only for plunder and mischief, completely dependent on China as a lifeline. But, like I said, if North Korea falls, the United States wins the Korean War. It's unified under South Korea, which is an ally of the United States, and MacArthur, it's on the Yellow River.

Yes. Decades and decades after MacArthur was rejected, MacArthur's descendants arrive in the Yellow and United StatesThe United States and South Korea win the Korean War. What do you think that kind of scenario looks like in Beijing? What if we just lost the Korean War? Wouldn't that be fun? You know, Mao went in there and lost a lot of seven-figure soldiers. And we'll just lose it. I do not think. You see, then, for example, what if we had our own nuclear program? The Chinese say no, you can't do that. They say, oh, really? And we do it.

What if we had ballistic missiles? Oh no, you can't do that. North Korean ballistic missiles can reach Beijing. Yes, they can, not just Tokyo. And there you have it. They are simply doing what they want. They depend on us. We could strangle them in a minute. We could cut off their power immediately. And yet, misbehave. Kill his half-brother who is under Chinese protection in Southeast Asia. He just murders him. Yes. And then can you imagine? You're 100% dependent like North Korea, but you can do some things like, hey, poke the Chinese in the eye. The Chinese say Xi Jinping had a phone call with Putin and got him to agree not to use nuclear weapons.

And the Chinese put it up the flagpole, boasting that they are in favor of peace. And their diplomacy is very effective and their leader is above everyone else. And a few days later, the Russians announce that they are placing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Isn't it fun? Isn't that a great Chinese diplomatic achievement? Yes. Do the Russians do that on purpose if you've been to the archives? You know they don't do that kind of thing on purpose. They take credit for doing it on purpose after the fact. But you read the original memos and they had no idea of ​​the possible effects.

But this simply teaches us that the more Russia depends on China. The more susceptible China is to Russia's bad behavior getting out of control. If you tell that child not to touch the cookie jar, you know 100%, 1000% what is going to happen. Blow, right into the cookie jar. And then, of course, it falls and there's glass everywhere on the floor. Yes. That is the North Korea scenario. So that's number four. I'm going to check the time for a second here. Not that bad. So, you know, Biden and Trump are in a barbershop. I don't know who made the appointments at exactly the same time.

Their staff just isn't very smart. And they are in different chairs. Trump has his barber and Biden has his barber, and they are doing their job. The boys don't talk to each other. It's a little strange that they are together. And Trump and Biden's barber ends almost at the same time. And Trump's barber says: How about some aftershave? And Trump says, oh, no, no, no. If you put on aftershave, that cheap-smelling aftershave, Melania will think I've been to a brothel. Then Biden's barber says, "President Biden, how about some aftershave?" And Biden says, "Sure. Jill has no idea what a brothel smells like." We have the Rosenthals right here.

That Rosenthal was the founding director. And here they sit here, the great, great, great, great, great, great relatives of Rosenthal. He could do more. Can I do more? No. I'm looking at the boss. I can't do more. I made one of Trump. I'll do one for Biden. We will be impartial. So, you know, in the Democratic Party they have a tradition of asking the president about his underwear. It all started with Clinton. Remember with Clinton? They said, boxers or briefs? Do you remember what Clinton responded? Boxers. Okay, boxers. And then Obama came and they asked Obama, boxers or briefs?

He thought the question was beneath the dignity of the presidency. Remember, he was dean of the law school while he was president. The thing is, America wasn't a law school. Still, he refused to answer. And Joe Biden arrives. They asked Joe. Boxers or briefs? Joe looks for a second and says: It depends. Impartial. Each side got one. What were you talking about, Ed? What was this conference about? Alright. You see it? We have a little bit left. Yes. Number five is chaos, anarchy. Number five is an even bigger problem than the first four. Number five is the lookout.

I'm not predicting, again, anything. I am not predicting any of these scenarios. I don't give them chances. I'm just laying out what could happen. Chaos and anarchy might be fine. They could simply collapse and nuclear weapons and scientists could spread throughout the world. And ISIS could be present in upcoming nonproliferation discussions. So, yeah, it could get really terrible. Does it mean Armageddon if Russia enters a period, descends into anarchy and collapses? The last few times it happened, he wasn't so pretty. That was, of course, the prenuclear era, right? In the tsarist case, it was the nuclear age.

In the Soviet case there was a lot of concern about all those weapons, the material for the weapons, the scientists and the technicians. There was a lot of concern about many things. And one can imagine chaos descending on Russia. And the Chinese say, oh, you know what? They have these territories that they stole from us. You see, Russia is the only country that still owns territories taken from China in unequal treaties, what the Chinese call the century of humiliation. And then there's a whole river basin that the Chinese might want to take back because they once controlled it.

And maybe the other side of the river basin looks good too. And then there are some territories that the Japanese like. What they call the northern territories, this is what Russia calls the Koreans. And remember that the Japanese were in possession of Sakhalin for a while. And remember that the Japanese occupied the Russian Far East. And damn, I could spin this. You know, Finns, there's a big region called Karelia that was once in Finland. And then there is this great isthmus that Stalin took in addition to Karelia and which is near St. Petersburg. There are a lot of cans of worms or Pandora's boxes or whatever you want to call them, so I don't know.

Chaos and anarchy. Again there is no prediction, but it is the fifth scenario. Alright, we're almost done. You know, for once I'm on time and, as you can see, my wife is not here. The number six does not appear as number six in the Foreign Affairs article that was published online today. I only have five in there, so you'll get one more for the same price that all the other people got for just five. How's that for the New York Public Library? I receive bribes from the tickets they sold you. Sorry, this is New York. It's just a token bribe, but it's still New York and they get it.

Alright. The sixth is what Russia believes is its future and which I call the continental impasse. It is where Russia is civilization itself. It is self-sufficient and is a pole in a multipolar world. And it's a pole because it attracts all those other countries that are attracted to the Russian model of murdering their own people, impoverishing them and surrounding the drain. And it is such an attractive model that everyone wants to speak Russian, especially if they are in prison and have to talk to the guards and smoke a cigarette. And this is that great continental dead end.

And the Armenians are really in love with this because, as you know, they had a defense treaty with the Russians and the Russians did nothing. And Belarusians also love this Russian continental impasse, because they lost their country to Russia under Lukashenko. And yes, the Kazakhs want a piece of what Ukraine has now. Russian missiles destroy its infrastructure and kill its civilians. Yes, the entire region wants this. In fact, all global humanity wants this because Russia is a very attractive country. It has a lot of soft power. Yes, this is her vision of the future. Russia as a glorious, autonomous civilization that does not need the rest of the world.

Forget technology transfer. That will just magically happen. Forget the dynamic economy, that's going to appear out of nowhere and anywhere. Forget about dependence on China, which will somehow disappear. I don't know where the Chinese are going. And forget that the West and the United States are powerful, all that is collapsing. All of that is decadent. They are all crazy about the values ​​that take over universities and threaten the civilization represented by Russia. This continental impasse is the main vision of Russia that apologists and propagandists give us. But you also get it from many people you talk to on the street, provincials, city dwellers and, of course, members of the regime at all levels.

I didn't call it a future for Russia because it has failed. It already failed. It failed like Imperial Russia, which collapsed. It failed like the Soviet Union, which not only collapsed but lost the territory that imperial Russia had. And in fact, the soldiers who took the oath to the Soviet Union and then became soldiers of Russia, retreated from Eastern Europe and the Baltic states along the same paths along which Napoleon had retreated, but now only in the direction opposite. . So this Russian continental civilization has itself failed. Slavophilism, almost all Slavic peoples are dying in the case of Ukraine, literally, to enter the EU and NATO.

And that is why the continental impasse, the future of the Putin regime and the spokesmen of the Putin regime, seems to me not to be a valid future. I could be wrong about all of these things. But that's why you only have five in the Foreign Affairs article, but tonight you have the sixth. I presented it, shall we say, somewhat negatively. I didn't really give it the same love and care that the Russians themselves give it on Telegram and especially on, you know, the TV channels, the Russian TV channels. All right, let me wrap up and then we'll have a question or two.

I see we arrived just in time. So Russia is not Western. It is culturally European. There is no doubt that Russia is culturally European. You cannot imagine European culture without Russia. That's what the collections show here. Art, music, literature, architecture, dance, and we could go on. It's amazing. And it is part of Europe, culturally. But institutionally, it is not part of Europe. It is not Western, institutionally. Because western is not a geographical term. It is an institutional matrix. They are the limits to executive power. It is the rule of law, an impartial professional judiciary, an impartial professional public administration, a free and open society, free and open media.

That's the West. Japan is not culturally European at all. But its institutions are completely Western. They have institutions in Japan that you would recognize, yes, from France. Yes. And this is your challenge. How to ensure that Russia remains Russia, but acquires the institutions that make it Western? And Russia's identity is linked to the fact that it is not Western. The Byzantine version of Christianity versus the Western or Roman version of Christianity. And I could go on. It's not the only piece, but it's a big piece. Non-Western does not mean anti-Western. And anti-Western does not mean extreme anti-Western.

There are breadths of anti-Westernism. You can be a little anti-Western. You can be an anti-Western nut. And now we are at the end of that end. And so discover how to retain your identity as a non-Western in your own mind, culture, civilization, set of values, set of institutions and yet obtain a stable order that provides peace and prosperity. That has been the challenge of Russian power, and instead they have increasingly decided not to follow through with that challenge, but to invest too much in their military, to invest too much in their secret police, to invest too little in everything else. and challenge the West and prop up an autocratic regime at home with enemies at home and enemies abroad.

And this has been their strategy, and the strategy is excellent except if the West is strong. Because if the West is a disaster, Russia is fine. All power is relative and your strength is only compared to the strength of another person. When my daughter was five years old and we played soccer, she could take the ball from her. When she was 14, I couldn't touch the ball. She would just surround me and have all these techniques and make me look like the fool she was on the football field. And then everything is relative. If the West is a five-year-old playing soccer or a 14-year-old playing soccer, it's a different game.

And if the West is strong, as we discovered in the response to the Ukraine war, Russia is in trouble. And if the West is counterproductive, weak and in decline and Russia contributes to that decline, then Russia can get ahead. The challenge now, however, is not just that the West's balance of power with Russia is something they need to keep an eye on. Now it is also the East. And then we will conclude on this. Alexander Nevsky. Yes, Alexander Nevsky, who was the prince of Novgorod. He had a choice. He was attacked by the Teutons, what we would call Germans, the Western Crusaders who brought Western Christianity over.

And he was attacked by the Mongol Tatars from the other side. And he decided, Nevsky, to please the Mongol Tatars and go to their capital and ask them for permission to rule, sort of like Beijing, and fight the German Teutons, because that was Western Christianity that would transform the identity of Russia. So paying homage to the Mongol Tatars is not as bad as allowing the West to conquer you andchange your identity, your values, your DNA. And the problem with that analysis is that it took Russia centuries to expel the Mongol Tatar horde. And Russia's interaction with the West was mutually prosperous.

And Russia remained all the time. And she didn't lose her identity. That is why it is a myth that Russia has to fight against the West and adapt to the East. But it is, in some ways, the central myth of the trajectory they believe they are on now. Anyway, thanks for your attention. Are these from me? The staff wrote this so I wouldn't be embarrassed. You know how it is. OK. To what extent does Vladimir Putin have followers who will continue his legacy after his death? Do you have any plans to speed up that process so we can test it?

Oh yeah. These regimes, when they disintegrate, are rebuilt from the fragments of the old pieces. You get the fragments. So when you create a revolution, you think you're starting from year zero, that you're going to overthrow everything and destroy all the old institutions. And in fact, you are going to flush the toilet. Actually, we don't have a chain. When I was a kid, we flushed the toilet and it went down the toilet. Now I don't know what you do. I know. Then you rebuild with the fragments. And then you discover, like Tocqueville, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about the ancien regime and the French Revolution, that you recreate the things you try to destroy, that you end up rebuilding, and worse still, a stronger absolutist state under the regime. revolution that you thought you were against.

That is why it is not easy to import institutions from abroad and ensure that they are maintained. It is not easy to reform institutions when using fragments of the old regime. Again, the case is Japan, the Meiji Restoration. They sent a mission around the world to study everyone's institutions and see what was adaptable in the Japanese context in the 1870s. Take a look at the French banking system. Take a look at the German general staff. Review the German constitution. Look at the American banking and educational system. Like at a Walmart, browse and select from the shelf the institutions you like.

And it's a miracle because they hold up in the Japanese context. They are capable of importing institutions and transforming the country in Western style. It doesn't happen immediately. There is an episode there where things did not go well. We skip that. However, in the fullness of time. So, Putin has many people who would be happy to succeed him from within his regime. Not the tax collector who is the prime minister. He is just a tax collector. But there are many others he could delve into. And some of them would be less anti-Western. Some of them would be less pro-Chinese.

Some of them would be less effective. Some of them would be more effective. Alright. Let's see what else we have. What does a Trump presidency portend for Russia's alliances with the United States and the West? Yes, what does a Trump presidency portend? Yeah, I mean, really? I have no idea. I haven't even seen him in four years, I still don't know. I'm two doors down from General HR McMaster, who was national security advisor to the Trump regime. I ask you the same question. He looks at me and says, "Don't get me started." Although his book will be out soon.

It's a great book. Yeah, I have no idea with Trump. The thing about Trump is that he is contrary. You walk into the office and you tell Trump, and he says, "You know, this is what I think you should do. I think you should form an alliance with Putin." And Trump says, "Get out of here. I'll never do that. I'm Trump, don't tell me what to do." And then he might do the opposite or he might forget that he had the conversation with you. What do you think is possible or probable a disintegration of the Russian Federation?

No, do you think a disintegration of the Russian Federation is possible or probable? So the Soviet Union was a chocolate bar. Do you know the chocolate bar? They have these wrinkles. And so the pieces are pre-broken, so to speak. You can tear them at the folds. Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Belarus, Soviet Kazakhstan. They have these garbage stands. The Soviet socialist garbage union remains. And they are ready to be broken. They are already organized. They have state borders. They have constitutions. They have the whole thing. Russia is not like that, so some version of a Russian dissolution would not look like the Soviet one, which was clean and orderly.

It broke like those pieces of a chocolate bar. Except in the caucuses, in the North Caucasus, perhaps a clear break could be achieved, which would mean only what, a million deaths. But in the rest of the country, ethnic minorities are not the majority in their republics, as they call them, and they are all deep inside Russia with nowhere to go. So it's possible, but it wouldn't be what we thought it would be. The possible scenario is one in which your neighbors come in and claim the furniture they think is theirs. What is the importance of the Russian oil and gas industry in its future?

Well, it's pretty important in your present. So they are buying everything. So you think about this. How do they fight this war? We don't talk about war. War is too broad a topic to include here. But this is a piece I have to tell you about. There is a gigantic group of elites who have made a fortune from this war. Because one day it was a Starbucks and now it's a Russus Bucks. They simply changed the plate and gave it to a friend. And that friend now has a huge source of income. And that continued throughout the economy.

And all these people got valuable property, valuable businesses for nothing. Are they in favor of war? They couldn't be more in favor of war. Because they want even more properties. They want even more personal enrichment. And then there are the kids from the provinces who have no prospects because there are no jobs there. But hey, I'll pay you nine times the average monthly salary to sign up to fight against the Ukrainians. And so we have a huge lower class population who now earn salaries as soldiers much higher than those of the middle class. And you are recruiting 30,000 soldiers a month without announcing a mobilization.

That's equivalent to 350,000 soldiers a year. And if they die on the battlefield, their family receives a one-time payment of $90,000. Which I must tell you is very useful in the Russian provinces. You can buy half of the province with the 90K. And so when Gertz Ali wrote this book about the Nazis, he talked about how much of Nazism was driven by the confiscation of Jewish property, the confiscation of everyone's property, so that they could get their hands on it. The subhumans and everyone else, and Göring wore a ring on each finger and they all had the gold.

And he was denounced because he made Nazism look like cynicism and mere personal enrichment when in fact it was an ideology. And the answer is that it was an ideology. They were Nazis, but personal enrichment was not a minor factor. Self-interest and conviction are power. And with the Russian case, we don't know how much they believe in this war. It may just be personal enrichment, but it is incredible personal enrichment. And when they import that stuff from China, 90% of their semiconductors, for example, now come from China, just like machine tools, they pay for it in oil and gas, as far as the eye can see.

No one in this room will live to see the end of natural gas and neither will their children. All right, we're running out of time. Now we are in what is called injury time. Six minutes have passed. The referee allowed it to go on longer because some of you were injured during the match. And so the rest have added that injury time due to your injury. I'll go a little further and then we'll free the hostages. In fact I think the door is open. What do you think is a wise policy for the United States? What kind of policy should we adopt regardless of the scenarios?

Thank you. Let's end it, because that's how peace, Foreign Affairs, Russia's Future Five ends. So this is going to be even more banal than everything I've said so far. You succeed in the international system because you are successful. You invest in yourself. You do better things. Other people, other countries see this. They see you as an example. They want to ally with you. They want to be your friends. They want some of your secret sauce. You destroy yourselves. You look like a mess. You have policies that are paralyzed or ineffective. You don't invest properly in your people.

There's rent-seeking and theft and all kinds of things, monopolies, and the rest of the world doesn't necessarily think that's a good model for them. It's the same strategy that George Kennan described. It is the same strategy that was successful in the Cold War. So yes, you have to invest in yourself. So let's do a couple of... let's check a couple of those boxes. There are 32.34 million young people ages 18 to 24 in the United States. Thirteen million of those 33, 34 million are in higher education, 13 million. Of those 13 million in Ivy Plus, Ivy Leagues Plus, University of Chicago, Stanford, Ivy Plus, of the 13 million in higher education, Ivy Plus, 100,000.

One hundred thousand of 13 million. One hundred and fifty percent of the conversation about higher education revolves around those 100,000, not the 13 million. And you see, they go to state universities, they go to community colleges, two-year universities. Maybe some of you went there. And they can't get into the nursing class because it's full. And they can't get into the coding class because it's full. So, let's talk about 200 children interpreting the revolution on a campus where 100,000 people are. Or let's invest like crazy in community colleges and incentivize them to perform better and double down on the better performers. What if you need people who can do and get things done?

How about we resurrect vocational training? How about resurrecting AI vocational training, AI-influenced vocational training? Being at Stanford, I follow the topic of AI very closely. And most of the recent research revolves around how lower-skilled workers see greater productivity gains through the application of AI to industrial processes. Yes. AI is not about riffs. This is not nonsense. We were already good at it. AI tries to transform industrial processes. And that is where AI-influenced vocational training needs it as oxygen. I could go on. Remember when the Astors and Carnegies built libraries? Yes, you remember it because we are standing in it.

We are no longer at the reservoir. We are at the New York Public Library. Let's build facilities for biotech manufacturers so that all the kids who used to go to the library to read and discover things about the world and learn who they wanted to be can now make things and we can have the next Carnegie or the next one. Aster builds maker labs around the country like libraries. And I could go on. How about math? We have a million and a half math teachers in the United States, a million and a half. So what is America's top national security import?

It's mathematics. We import mathematics from East Asia. We import mathematics from South Asia. We import mathematics from West Africa. The children who come here know mathematics. And our children don't know math. That is why they worry about themselves and their grievances. They Yes. So we need a million math teachers. We have a million and a half. I want another million. And I could go on. That is the answer. Wherever Russia goes, whatever Russia does or doesn't do, we can be prepared. This is not rocket science. I told you it was going to be banal. And then all the adjustments to the political system in which normality and coalition-building and compromise are encouraged instead of insanity and performance politics and getting space on the Red Army Channel or the Puts Channel or whatever.

Those are called channels, right? Fox News and MSNBC. Yes. How about a change, a little adjustment of the incentives? It's been done before. OK. I could go on and on about this, but all of this is possible because we have corrective mechanisms. Authoritarian regimes have no corrective mechanisms. They get a Putin or a Xi Jinping and they have them until they die. We take them in, we call them whatever you want, and we have them until they're done, which is usually four years, sometimes eight years. I know it's a long time. Life is short, but it's over.

And then we have the next idiot.