Serhii Plokhy: History of Ukraine, Russia, Soviet Union, KGB, Nazis & War | Lex Fridman Podcast #415

Serhii Plokhy is a Ukrainian historian at Harvard University, director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, and an author of many books on history of Eastern Europe, including his latest book The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:

TRANSCRIPT:

EPISODE LINKS:
2006 - The Origins of the Slavic Nations
2010 - Yalta: The Price of Peace
2012 - The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires
2014 - The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union
2015 - The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
2016 - The Man with the Poison Gun: A Cold War Spy Story
2017 - Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation
2018 - Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy
2021 - Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis
2021 - The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine's Past and Present
2022 - Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disaster
2023 - The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History

PODCAST INFO:

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:18 - Collapse of the Soviet Union
17:27 - Origins of Russia and Ukraine
30:30 - Ukrainian nationalism
38:13 - Stepan Bandera
1:07:13 - KGB
1:22:11 - War in Ukraine
1:58:27 - NATO and Russia
2:09:30 - Peace talks
2:23:17 - Ukrainian Army head Valerii Zaluzhnyi
2:29:54 - Power and War
2:40:45 - Holodomor
2:47:17 - Chernobyl
2:57:51 - Nuclear power
3:07:28 - Future of the world

SOCIAL:

[lexfridman]

Here are the timestamps. Please check out our sponsors to support this podcast.
0:00 - Introduction & sponsor mentions:
1:18 - Collapse of the Soviet Union
17:27 - Origins of Russia and Ukraine
30:30 - Ukrainian nationalism
38:13 - Stepan Bandera
1:07:13 - KGB
1:22:11 - War in Ukraine
1:58:27 - NATO and Russia
2:09:30 - Peace talks
2:23:17 - Ukrainian Army head Valerii Zaluzhnyi
2:29:54 - Power and War
2:40:45 - Holodomor
2:47:17 - Chernobyl
2:57:51 - Nuclear power
3:07:28 - Future of the world

[vitiachao]

43:40 Was Stepan Bandera Nazi?
Serhii Plokhy: "Nazi, this label is certainly promoted fist by Soviet propaganda and then by Russian propaganda...If you focus on the years of collaboration, those were the same years when Joseph Stalin collaborated with Hitler. So we have the same reason to call Stalin Nazi collaborator as we have the reason to call Bandera Nazi collaborator."

[michaelcruz]

Lex, I don't know how often you read your comments but listening to your podcasts with political thinkers and historians has done a lot for me. I started college at 16 and have delayed my graduation over and over again because I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. I majored in Political Science. The amount of knowledge that I had gained from these podcasts had inspired me to open up a few books and it reignited my interest in my field, making me happy to finally decide to make a career out of this. Thank you

[andreme]

You need to invite Timothy Snyder too.

[niloyahmed]

Please lex, have more historians. Thanks for the conversations

[yura_nos]

So amazing to hear such an extended interview with Serhii. I read Ukraine: the gate of Europe back in 2018, never imagined to be able to watch a 3+ hours interview with the author. Thanks, Lex!

[christinemartin]

By far, the best interviews (IMHO) are the ones with historians. Mindbenders all!

[MuscovitesNightmare]

It's pretty telling how Lex multiple times tries to blame Zelensky for every deadly sin while not a single bad word about putin.

[shogun-]

One of the most important guests finally on the channel. Please read his books. Can’t wait for Timothy Snyder.

[alex_d-fp]

Very nice overview of the historical landscape around Ukraine. Like the way Serhii tells history, it's not boring at all. Read one of his books, worth reading

[andrewdemchyshyn]

Better later then never: 1st Ukrainian voice on this podcast for last 2 years

[robertmichalic]

A few important remarks about Orange Revolution that Mr. Plokhy did not mention:

Yuschenko was not the first Ukrainian president to express desire to join NATO - previous president Leonid Kuchma showed strong interest in joining NATO too - even came uninvited to NATO conference in Prague.

After elections were nullified by the Ukrainian supreme court due to numerous proofs of election fraud coming from various ukrainian districts, "someone" poisoned Yuschenko himself, who barely survived and remained heavily scarred to this day. This was perceived by Ukrainians as Russia trying to forcefully retain grip on Ukraine.

Ukrainians did not forget this fact and so when Yanukovich changed his rhetoric from clearly pro-russian to the centrist one (deepen ties with both sides) and overnight refused to sign trade agreement with the EU and instead chose to enter economic union with Russia, Ukrainians saw this betrayal as continuation of Russian plan to retain grip on Ukraine when they poisoned Yuschenko - that's why Maidan revolution happened - Ukrainians did not want to end up like Belarusians, vassals to the Russian Federation with their national language going sadly extinct...

[irina]

Пан Сергій - фаховий та поважний вчений. На питання "в чому сенс вторгнення в 2022?" майстерно почав з "коли війна почалась в 2014..." Brilliantly

[OleksandraTkachenko-vd]

Mr. Fridman, please interview Mr. Vitaly Portnikov, who will explain to you in detail all the background and implications of this war. Regarding the message that your family sounds the same in Ukraine and Russia. What do you want if Ukraine has been occupied since the time of Bohdan Khmelnytsky? If my parents and I, who were indigenous Ukrainians, were Russified? What if my grandmother hated Bandera, even though she was from the western regions of Ukraine, and her father, a loyal communist, was repressed? Was she labeled as the daughter of an enemy of the people? You can turn people's brains so much that they will be against their relatives, even if it is against common sense.
I also have a question—are the British, Americans, and Australians one nation because they sound alike? Anticipating your answer, I will say that we are different nations. The only reason all three nations speak English is that you all came out of the same past—the British Empire. It is the same in Ukraine. There is no need to reinvent the wheel; everything works the same everywhere.

[yuriywankiewicz]

11:52 Serhii mentions that "level of russification is much higher" in the post soviet state of Russia. The closed captions says 'unification' rather than 'russification.' This mistranslation/ failure at writing the correct words used is something that should be corrected, as the meaning conveyed by those two terms is strikingly different for everyone who is not perhaps

[PistolPeteUK]

Such an absolutely brilliant and so enlightening. Thank you Lex and Serhii

[FnTom_II]

One minor correction (at 18:44): "Once we had Czechoslovaks, now we have Czechs and Slovaks." Sorry for going nitpicky, but compared to the others mentioned, it's a bit misleading.
Slovaks, Moravians and Czechs (going east-to-west) can technically be taken as three stages of settling in one direction of the slavic diaspora. But Czechoslovakia and the idea of a joint nation is an invention of the early 20th Century, made out of sheer convenience to make a better case for RE-establishing a country after the breakup of Austro-Hungaria.
Sadly enough, the wider English culture remains oblivious to anything that went on between the German and Russian lands prior to Napoleon winning at Austerlitz.
Like... Czechs having a fairly singificant presence in Europe for centuries as a nation and kingdom (until the 1620 Battle of White Mountain), even having one of their major monarchs as the Holy Roman Emperor (Charles IV, recently elevated from virtually-unknown to somewhat-known worldwide thanks to the game Kingdom Come: Deliverance).

Czechs and Slovaks exist as separate nations/ethnics/... since pre-1000AD and in the case of Czechs, the oldest written local sources go down to the 13th Century. Differences between Czechs and Moravians are barely worth mentioning, as both groups always maintained close ties. But Slovaks were largely separated from much of their western kin most of the time, mostly due to geographic and political reasons. The Czechoslovak get-together-again after WW1 was an idealistic political stunt that looked great on paper back then, but was doomed to fail in the long run in any case. This would be worth a whole socio-economic lecture.

Also, the thing about "Bohemia" and "Bohemians" is a sad historical misnomer worthy of an entire lecture too.

[nataliiavoloshyn]

19:57 we (me and people around me) are not feeling ourselves in one community of so called “eastern slavs”. Hrvati (for example) were always closer to me mentally than russians. To form this illusion of similar identity was a mission of russian propaganda for years even after soviet union collapsed. And still it didn’t work for most of Ukrainians. And the more Ukrainians were discovering Europe and World, the more clear it has become.

[joeytranchina]

Encouraging to hear a scholarly discussion, that is focused on expanding our understanding of this situation. The visible thoughtfulness of Serhii Plokhy's personality and presentation that makes his words trustworthy. With the stakes & the pain-level so high in Ukraine, to feel educated rather than propagandized after listening to a discussion, is an achievement. Thank you.

The Bolsheviks "arrested the development of the religion and thinking and theology." to fix it in pre 1917 imperialism. I have struggled to a way to come to grips with at force in Russian politics. Again, thank you.

The podcast is so much more useful than a lecture because I can replay the parts I really need to hear, to let them slink in. Again, thank you.

"NATO wa a big part of the Russian justification for the war, The truth is..."

"The immediate goal was to stop the drift of the Ukraine to he West..." YES,
except it was more than a "drift" it was a march toward a better future.
Putin's Russia represents nothing but rot.

[mooser]

Lex, you describe Zelenskyy dismissively as just a comedian and actor. A little more reading and thinking would reveal that Zelenskyy also went to law school and successfully ran a production company for 2 decades. Your guest is correct … Zelenskyy has an innate ability to ‘read’ his audience, that’s a successful comedian. He also has the legal, managerial, marketing mind to lead a country at war against a so-called superpower. Your guest is excellent, thanks for having him on.