Kotkin, Stephen

historian at Princeton University; author of a three-volume biography of Stalin

Stephen Kotkin: Stalin, Putin, and the Nature of Power

Lex Fridman Podcast · Jan 3, 2020

• Stephen Kotkin
• Stalin
• Vladimir Putin
• Soviet history
• Russian history
• authoritarianism
• communism vs capitalism
• executive power
• Russian Revolution
• historical contingency

Core ideas

Kotkin opens on the psychology of power, arguing that while many people crave recognition or leadership, far fewer crave genuinely unconstrained power — the ability to decide life and death without any institutional check. He distinguishes ordinary institutional power (a university president who must consult trustees and faculty) from despotic power, and argues that constraints on executive authority (like the U.S. separation of powers, including a "do-nothing Congress") are not a bug but the central strength of a durable political system: unchecked leaders make more mistakes and are more prone to extremism because they're never forced to justify decisions or absorb pushback. He resists the idea that Russians are culturally distinct in craving authoritarian rule, noting a real (if minority) authoritarian impulse exists in the American population too, and suggests Russian support for strongman rule today has more to do with the perceived failures of the post-Soviet transition than with any fixed national psychology.

On Putin specifically, Kotkin argues his popularity stems from genuine political skill (an ability to read and address the psychology of the "losers" of the post-Soviet transition, and — for a time via the Medvedev "castling" arrangement — to simultaneously appeal to the winners) combined with the absence of any real electoral alternative. He credits Putin with real economic achievement in his first two terms (a decade of ~7% annual growth), attributing it partly to genuine liberalizing reforms (lower taxes, land privatization, deregulation) and partly to favorable external conditions (China's demand for Soviet-era heavy industry output, the 1998 ruble crash making Russian goods cheap) rather than oil prices alone — while arguing the methods used to consolidate power (expropriation, jailing rivals) were not conducive to long-term institutional stability, leaving Russia "stuck": rescued from 1990s chaos but without the durable institutions needed for sustained success. He states plainly that he hopes Putin does not match Stalin's roughly thirty years in power, argues the primary victims of Putin's rule are Russians themselves (citing a large-scale, disproportionately talented emigration since 1991), and argues that what Russia needs is not a single inspiring individual (even one as impressive as Andrei Sakharov) but functioning institutions — an independent judiciary, civil service, and parliament — built by a coalition of leaders willing to constrain each other and themselves.

Turning to Stalin, Kotkin frames his rise as a story of contingency rather than inevitability: the Bolsheviks' October 1917 seizure of power was a coup against the rest of the political left (which had won a plurality in Russia's free 1917 election) rather than against the already-collapsed provisional government, and Stalin's ascent within it depended heavily on Lenin's unpredictable stroke and eventual death — had Lenin remained healthy, Kotkin argues, Stalin might never have consolidated the personal dictatorship he built from the newly created "General Secretary" post. He stresses that Stalin was not merely a cynical power-seeker but a genuine ideological true believer in both communism and Russian state power, and that this sincerity — combined with ruthlessness, manipulation, a phenomenal memory, and an exceptional capacity for organizational work — is what let him hold and expand power rather than simply be handed it. Kotkin situates communism's early appeal in the specific historical context of the interwar period, when capitalism's failures (the Great Depression, mass unemployment, colonialism, fascism) made an alternative genuinely attractive, even though — in his assessment — the alternative ultimately proved far worse in human cost and eventually collapsed.

On ideology more broadly, Kotkin lays out Marx's theory as demanding the wholesale elimination of markets, private property, and parliaments to reach a freer, more abundant socialist/communist end-state, and argues that every historical attempt to do so produced tyranny, shortages, and mass violence instead of the promised freedom — a split he traces to the historical break between Leninists (who insisted on eliminating capitalism outright) and Social Democrats (who accepted markets but sought to regulate and redistribute), a divide he says persists in left politics today. He praises the American Revolution's contribution of a "universal citizen" category (though acknowledging it initially excluded women, non-property-owners, and enslaved people) and its institutionalized constraints on executive power as durable, expandable achievements, and says he is untroubled by ordinary left-right political disagreement over redistribution — his concern is reserved for political extremes on either end that reject the legitimacy of markets or democratic rule of law altogether. Asked what he would ask Putin or Stalin directly given the chance, Kotkin describes wanting to probe whether they see their long-term trajectory clearly and whether they are troubled by it, and offers a personal theory that sustained exercise of absolute power functions almost like an addictive drug, making it psychologically very difficult for such leaders to imagine, or willingly choose, an ordinary life without it.

Excerpts