Why Americans Don’t Understand Vladimir Putin - Konstantin Kisin
Episode Stats
Words per minute
170.18065
Harmful content
Misogyny
1
sentences flagged
Toxicity
10
sentences flagged
Hate speech
5
sentences flagged
Summary
After a wave of missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities, which killed 12 and injured dozens, President Trump expressed his frustrations with Vladimir Putin on Monday. But something has happened to him. He s gone crazy. This is an interesting theory.
Transcript
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Prompted by a wave of missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities,
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which killed 12 and injured dozens last weekend,
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President Trump expressed his frustrations with Vladimir Putin on Monday, saying,
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I've always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him.
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Before we examine it in detail, it's worth pointing out that numerous U.S. presidents have attempted to believe it.
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President George W. Bush famously looked into Putin's eyes and saw a soul,
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while Bill Clinton insisted that Putin could be relied on to stick to their agreements.
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U.S. presidents prefer, or at least pretend, to believe this because it prevents them from having to face the reality of who Vladimir Putin has always been,
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But far more importantly, I think this belief is also a product of the American psyche,
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which makes even the most cynical U.S. politicians susceptible to manipulation by those who operate within a different moral framework.
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Regular viewers will know that you will not find a bigger fan of the United States than me.
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One cannot help but be inspired by the culture of openness, cooperation, and positivity.
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The story of America is that anything is possible, especially when good people get together to do business, make money, and thrive.
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While most Americans take these cultural traits as given, the reality is that they are rare and in no small part the foundation of America's success.
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Americans are widely regarded around the world as extremely friendly, welcoming, proactive, and constructive.
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The trade-off of this business-focused, open-minded, good-faith, let's-make-money approach
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is a consistent failure to contend with the reality that not all cultures and not all people are like this.
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My Western friends often say that I come across as intense, unsmiling, and even angry in interviews and videos.
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By American standards, they're certainly right.
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Which is why they're always surprised when I tell them the story of showing a Russian family member a school photo of mine.
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Why have you all got that idiotic American smile, she asked me.
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The open, welcoming, and positive attitude that is the default setting in America
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is widely regarded in many parts of the world as evidence of gullibility, unseriousness, and naivete.
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It is seen, sometimes justifiably, as an attitude that leaves people vulnerable to deception.
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Not because Americans are stupid, but because their desire to believe in the good of others
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makes it harder for them to recognize when others are not, in fact, good.
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To fully grasp the cultural chasm between Russia and America, you need to understand history.
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The United States is a nation of people who conquered a continent.
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It is filled with the descendants of those who left their homelands to seek a better life on the other side of the world.
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Facing immense hardships, they did not just overcome, they triumphed.
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In a few centuries, successive waves of newcomers banded together to build a nation out of nothing
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through hard work, a go-get-it mentality, and a high-trust, collaborative society.
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Americans have no genetic memory of being invaded by powerful enemies,
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of being held down and oppressed by foreign conquerors,
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of mass persecution, of extermination by their governments,
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The American ethos is defined by overcoming the challenges the country has faced in its history.
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The Great Depression was merely the precursor to the country's explosion
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Pearl Harbor was followed not only by overwhelming victory in World War II,
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but by America emerging as the world's dominant nation and the center of Western civilization.
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Anything is possible, problems are challenges to be solved, and the future is bright.
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One of the founding experiences of the Russian nation is being occupied by the Mongols.
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The descendants of Genghis Khan wiped out anyone who resisted and subjugated everyone else.
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If you're struggling to understand what this meant,
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imagine your country is invaded by ISIS or Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones.
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They butcher, rape, and torture their way through every major city.
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They force everyone else to bend the knee.
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In Russian, this period is called the Tato-Mongol Yoke,
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a yoke being a device used to join two work animals such as oxen together to pull a load.
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This period of time lasted around 240 years, as long as the entire history of the United States.
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To this day, the Russian language contains many Mongolian words,
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especially those related to taxation, weaponry, and violence.
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Another formative period in Russian history is called Smuta, or Times of Trouble.
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Ivan the Terrible, infamous for killing his only viable heir in a fit of rage,
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passed on his crown to a feeble and incapable son, Fyodor.
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When Fyodor died without an heir, Russia was thrust into 15 years of chaos,
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in which a succession of usurpers and false claimants battled over the throne.
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Combined with famine, disease, and a series of foreign invasions,
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the Times of Trouble saw at least a third of Russia's population wiped out in just 15 years.
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One of the key conclusions Russians drew from this is that whatever else he is,
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A weak ruler leads to chaos, and chaos is to be avoided at any cost.
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How poorly this is understood in the West is ironically and perfectly encapsulated in the
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different names Russians and English speakers have for Ivan the Terrible.
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His moniker in Russian is much more accurately translated as fearsome.
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In the centuries since, Russia has been repeatedly invaded by its Western neighbors,
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including the Swedes, Lithuanians, Poles, Finns, and famously, Napoleon and Hitler.
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While these attacks were ultimately repelled, they left deep scars in the Russian psyche.
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There is little triumphalism about defeating Napoleon,
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And while victory in the Great Patriotic War, the Russian name for World War II,
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is much celebrated, it came at the cost of around 20 million lives.
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For contrast, the United States lost just over 400,000 people in the same war.
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Compare also the revolutions and civil wars which took place in the two countries.
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The Russian Revolution, which sparked the Russian Civil War,
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resulted in the installation of a tyrannical, murderous communist regime,
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which exterminated its enemies, expropriated private property,
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ending an economic collapse and Cold War defeat in 1991.
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Meanwhile, the American Revolution is a story of a successful fight for independence,
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while the American Civil War, although bloody and painful,
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is seen as the price of progress on the path to ultimate unification.
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While American baby boomers lived through a period of economic expansion,
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success, and triumph, the Russian counterparts, like Putin, who was born in 1952,
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Stalin's slave labor camps, and economic stagnation.
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By the time they were in their prime, their country collapsed all around them,
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creating chaos, instability, and a sense of loss, humiliation, and exploitation.
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These historical experiences inevitably produce people who see the world through such different lenses
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Centuries of pain, poverty, famine, war, brutality, suspicion, and humiliation
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do not produce happy, smiling, positive go-getters.
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Which brings us back to the claim that the normally reasonable, rational, and pragmatic Vladimir Putin,
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with whom we can do business, has suddenly become a different person and gone crazy.
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This claim is convenient for a number of reasons.
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First, it absolves those who have been claiming he is reasonable, rational, and pragmatic,
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while his troops have been butchering civilians,
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stealing Ukrainian children, and torturing prisoners of war in captivity.
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Second, it justifies the foreign policy of turning a blind eye to the reality of Putin's Russia
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On social media, Americans often accuse me of being a Putin-hater,
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for stating basic facts about his career history and the regime he's set up in Russia.
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the Soviet Union's main intelligence and security agency.
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The agency was the successor to the Cheka and the NKVD,
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which were the tools used by Stalin and other Soviet leaders
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to murder and imprison dissidents, domestic critics, and foreign defectors.
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He joined the agency long after its crimes under Stalin had been exposed.
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Vladimir Putin has never been elected in a free and fair election.
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He was effectively handed the presidency in 1999 by his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin,
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ending Russia's brief experiment with democracy.
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like Mikhail Khorakovsky, Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny,
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and Garry Kasparov, is dead, imprisoned, or in exile.
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In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea in Ukraine,
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Putin lied repeatedly that the soldiers without insignia
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saying with a cunning grin that you can go to a store
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He later handed out medals to the very Russian soldiers
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Putin's cleaned house with both liberal and nationalist critics,
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who have been imprisoned like Igor Gekonstrelkov,
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My point is, to anyone who understands the reality of Putin's regime,
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Vladimir Putin is in power and retains power
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someone who's prepared to lie, manipulate, and kill
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That is literally what the KGB trained him to do.
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Finally, it seems our American friends are beginning
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George Kennan famously wrote that Russia was impervious
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So far, dangling only the carrot of ending the killing
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and sending a starry-eyed historically and geographically illiterate lawyer
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The only way Trump will get serious negotiations going
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is to threaten Putin with ramping up not only sanctions,
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but high-grade, extensive military aid to Ukraine.
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you should know that they're available on my sub stack
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