Vladislav Zubok
@VladislavZubok1
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Historian of international relations, London School of Economics. My “Collapse. The Fall of the Soviet Union” is available in paperback and as audiobook.
Brighton, UK
Joined August 2021
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Last Seen Profiles
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A brief history of the Cold War is mission impossible. But I accomplished it before AI can do it. Long live human history written by humans, with warts and all. Great to be in this vibrant field!
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Gorbachev who has just passed will be in history like Roman god Janus, 2-faced. He ended the cold war and this gave us a new Europe. He was buried under the Soviet collapse, and this eventually gave us the current European war. His favourite phase: “History will fix it!”
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Thirty years ago Yeltsin’s tanks fired at the Russian parliament. Most of liberals then were convinced: the parliament was “fascist” and Yeltsin was a “democrat.” The entire West sided with him. When Putin thinks about this episode, he probably say to himself “spasibo.
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Which Russian past is relevant today? In my piece, I reflect on how the experience of the early 17th century should be taken into account. It both weakens Putin and make his rule last.
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My take on risks of protracted war.
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The conference on “Ending War” (LSE, SAIS, Kissinger Center) was intense, challenging, and sobering. Top specialists spoke about different conflicts, but patterns emerged. Here are my personal conclusions.
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My book on the Soviet Collapse appeared in bookstores. This is Waterstone on Garrick Street.
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Stunning how many are upset with the release of “good Russians” from the gulag. For them this is bad as it complicates their black&white worldview of Russia as a kind of 1952 evil empire. Glad Biden, Harris, and Scholz did not listen to those purity seekers.
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Greatly honored that my book “Collapse. The Fall of the Soviet Union” is a winner of Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History.
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Excellent analysis today in the FT by Gabuev on the need to create channels for deescalation on the war.
It will be harder to do it now than in 1961-62 for Kennedy. Secrecy no longer works and disgust with the Putin regime is overwhelming. Still it must be done before too late.
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Two eminent experts at the end of the long article come down to the punchline: in its current form and shape the war in Ukraine is adrift and unwinnable. Well, the last word can be added in a whisper. As it has been in 2022, 2023, etc.
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Historian never stops learning. Learned today from the interview with Alexander Stubb that Finland had fought “more than 30 wars and skirmishes with Russia since the 1300s.” Given the date of Finland’s independence in Dec 1917, it is a major news to me.
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Luce in the FT reviews excellent book by Sergei Radchenko. Luce’s view is that Russia/USSR were incurably ill of unquenchable pride and insecurity. Ok, communism did not matter then? And what was the West afraid of during 40 yrs?
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I have collected my thoughts despite summer heat. The price of a fictitious leadership in the White House for American politics will be higher than its short-term benefits. Make your own conclusions.
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I have read that Jiang Zemin worked at the Likhachev Automobile Plant in Moscow in the 1950s. My father Martin worked at that plant during the war, in 1942-43. He met famous Likhachev there. Then he reached 17 and volunteered to the army. Now all of them gone, even the plant.
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The Wagner Blitzkrieg. Putin, real or clone, must find ways to destroy the column 350 km from the Kremlin. If he fails, we may see defenestrations from the General Staff. The second nuclear button is in Shoigu’s possession. Never seen such things in Russia since Oct 93!
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Second, politicians in democracies continue to push for victory long after the military realise that a war is unwinnable.
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Strongly recommended piece to read. Crimea in the focus. The main question for discussion is the dynamic btw UKR war aims and its war sentiments. My view is that the call for revenge in UKR will take a long time “to manage.”
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Yaffa shows how a modern Kurtz, Wagner, built a private gold-diamond empire in Africa, then went to control oil to Syria, then exploded in Ukraine. The heart of darkness on the move… with the last stop in the Kremlin. Excellent essay!
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It is stunning to find my book Collapse as a finalist next to two fantastic history books by Ada Ferrer and Tiya Miles. And moved by warm words from the Cundill Prize jury, including its chair John Robert McNeill.
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First, homefront is a determining factor in pushing for continuation of a war. Democracies are less likely to initiate a war termination via compromise than autocracies.
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Third, the US is known to continue an unwinnable war for years…and then quits.
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I am so glad the piece in Foreign Affairs got attention. Soviet past speaks to RUS present in innumerable ways. But…No signs yet that Moscow wants to return to the old Soviet practice of controlling history. They keep declassifying!
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Two years since Mikhail Gorbachev died. His Russian-Ukrainian background made him hope that the two nations would remain in a voluntary confederation. This was possible, however, only within a larger pan-European security architecture. We see the price of a failed vision.
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Sergey Radchenko and yours truly got carried away in this conversation. A Blitz through 80 years of history! And Martin Di Caro patiently let us roll on…
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When Cuba held the US by the throat…With excellent Sergey Radchenko, we reflect about newly declassified Russian documents. Do some people learn only on the brink, if ever?
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@ForeignAffairs
An example of how Ukrainian strategists increasingly lead the West into defining war-end goals.
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Marx is right again, at least regarding Russia. Tragedy…farce…tragedy…farce, etc.
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After 7.5 million bombs dropped, twenty years of trade embargo, and thirty more years of China’s rise - the US President on a friendly visit to Hanoi. Nothing is impossible in international relations, if one lives long enough!
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In response to systemic misrepresentation of Sam Charap’s position on Ukr-Rus war: he never defended “peace at any price.” He knows the logic of the war of attrition, unlike his numerous haters and critics. And cataloguing his “errors” is not a way to conduct a debate.
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Geopolitics, Brzezinski’s chessboard, Mackinder’s Heartland are
coming back with a kaboom. And one thing does not change: English-language writers control (and invent) the global narrative of conflict.
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Those who now speak of a new Cold war should watch this and ponder how much more humanity existed back then. Not human rights, but humanism. My favourite part is at the end with Pasternak.
Bernstein Thanks Shostakovich In Moscow (1959) via
@YouTube
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Enjoyed this article, comparing Wagner with pre-Nazi Freikorps. And it starts with Count Alexei Vronsky from Anna Katenina!
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Important call for sanity and realism. History shows, however, that it may take a year or two for the men in power to move to diplomatic track, despite emerging stalemate.
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@DrRadchenko
Worthy exercise and smartly written, but the end of such stable regimes can be quite sudden and complete.
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Mark Milley, the top US general still believes that the war will not be won by either side on the battlefield. Russia, he said to the FT, will not achieve its military means. And Ukr too. “It would require essentially the collapse of the Rus mil.”
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War atrocities do not prevent talks (Korea, Vietnam), but they do not lead to war termination as long as the public urges to teach a lesson to an aggressor. War fatigue creates a room for an armistice.
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I have read McGlynn’s article in Engelsberg ideas together with the review of her books by Joy Neumeyer in The New Left Review. . I wish this review were in public domain. A future Western strategy depends on the reading of Russia’s “mental codes.”
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Hmm…I thought the last big invasion of Russia from the West was in 1941, not in 1918….
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Brilliant piece with not much to add.
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A super topical inquiry by Keith Gessen. Long read! When a great journalist meets historians, the discussion cannot be banal.
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Arrest of a respected WSJ correspondent as a spy means that the Kremlin begins to pull the plug on any uncontrolled reporting from Russia. Sinister move. No such things during the Cold War at least after 1950s when it was a material for show trials.
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Lastly, war termination via armistice is just a means to build a sustainable peace. It may work (Korea) or fail (World War 1).
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Honoured to be with marvellous historians at McGill, thanks to the Cundill prize ceremony. Talked today about politics of truth and what it means today. It will be available online. I only wish my grandfather who wrote history under Stalin and Khrushchev could see it.
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First important conference of the Cold War Studies at the LSE in years. Hopefully others will follow! Many thanks to generosity of donors who made it possible.
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Charap with sober and courageous analysis. No doubt will be attacked for lack of faith in victory. Yet the war of attrition has its implacable logic and high costs for both warring sides.
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The first pragmatic and expertly analysis of the Ukr war from a Russian expert. The conclusions are absolutely the same as Mark Milley made: a war of attrition for both sides with no political will for an exit.
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Another article begins with this phrase about Putin being “adept at exploiting” internal Western divisions. My take: Putin is no longer “adept” at anything! These are just internal divisions cause by war, inflation, poor governance, and capitalism in general. Period.
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The NYT writes: “By attacking in Kursk, the Ukrainians have taken American advice” not to strike the entrenched positions (in Ukraine), and go where the enemy is not to secure the ground, e.i. Russia. So: US gov advised Ukr army to invade a nuclear power. A new chapter in N-era.
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As I can see from the comments re the Tallinn conf, some European triumphalists have already defeated Putin, dismembered the Rus Bear, and planned another wave of EU-NATO expansion. Something tells me that future will be trickier than this glorious scheme.
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A glimpse into history: Baker talking to Tariq Aziz on 9 January 1991 in Geneva. The US then used a successful deterrence to prevent the use of WMD. The threat was “to turn Iraq into a weak and backward country…”
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I am baffled by Finnish excuses to close their border to Russian refugees from the draft. The Finns are in the world of illusions regarding Russians ability to protest? Reminds me of 1918, when they sent Russian refugees “to resist” the Bolsheviks. Gift for Putin.
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Excellent Keith Gessen poses a potent question. I am honoured that he refers to my “Collapse” and to the remarkable book by M.E.Sarotte. Unfortunately, there is no way to replay the past.
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Biden travelled to Kyiv and back by train. 20 hours of travel to stay a few hours there. Incredible investment of time for POTUS, but well worth the political effect.
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This text made my day: an assistant prof and a PhD student from Texas boldly recommend the US gov to “step in” further into the quagmire of the Ukr-Rus war. Nothing bad will happen. Even when some US servicemen get killed. There will be eventual victory and democracy.
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Fiona Hill reflects re format of armistice talks re Ukraine. She read my book, and now argues that the US made a mistake by recognising Russia as the sole continuing state of the Soviet Union, because of debt and nukes. Thus the West helped Russian imperial dreams.
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More on the causality here
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At last I am reading an excellent book on the end of the cold war in global politico-economic perspective. Bartel praises democracy, but not with usual bromides. A lot to chew for those who expect another collapse of Russia.
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The Russian victory day in a longer perspective. The Sov regime began to use the cult of sacred war as a prop for the failing ideological regime after 1965. Gorbachev cancelled it. Curiously Yeltsin returned to it 1995. Putin scraped the last dregs of its emotional potential.
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I have just tried to explain on BBC World Service that this is not Kornilov in 1917, but rather a mutinous voyevoda playing Ceasar. Six minutes of air is not a good format though. NB: the real Time of Troubles began in 1605 only after Tsar Boris died of “natural” death.
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Great many of casualties of Turkish earthquake are victims of men’s corruption, not the forces of nature. Blatant developers “amnestied”from the construction code. The power of money rules, and its human cost is rising.
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Sam Charap responds to his critics with strategic prudence and dignity. It should be added that the US has dual aims in this war: to sustain Ukr military power and to deter a great power war. Diplomacy that Charap proposes will not hurt any of these aims.
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Curious article in the FT saying that the Russian war is unique in history as the entire elite is against it. The confidants fear what happens when Putin happens would face the full truth. They say he ruled out nukes.
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Topical! How the talks between Stalin and Truman on Korean war could have started and why they did not. With remarkable new docs.
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Experts on IR should watch how Zelenskyy would perform vs
Modi and Lula. His weapon is shaming, and it worked beyond belief on German and French leadership. UKR is now the tail that wags the dog in the West. Would it work in Asia and Latin America?
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How many times in Russian history (and not only) symbolic repression undermined authorities more than violence? People in Moscow stream to pray “for the soul of Alexey.” And what can the Moscow police do? Cordon off churches?
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The Kremlin and Kiev claim the opposite side is a terrorist state for vastly different purposes. Kiev want more Western engagement in the war. The Kremlin seeks to deter this engagement. Both refuse to even imagine terms of armistice.
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Amazing text from the head of an academic think tank in Moscow. On the futility of the Putinist conservative revanche and shameful illusions that lead to aggressive expansionism. Amazing because he is not in Zurich but in Moscow.
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Kimmage and Lipman on the new cultural-emotional chasm between Europe and Russia.
Even the USSR was European, they argue. I fully agree. Brezhnev was a European statesman. With his war,
Putin drove a wedge. The West reacted by expelling Russians from the liberal realm.
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David Frum believes it is too bad the US left Iraq. “We should have continued with nation-building.” After this I read Putin’s reasoning that the UKR war “made us more sovereign.” Great minds exist on both sides of the Atlantic!
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My latest on the dilemmas of post-1991 history. Sometimes we buy time and kick the biggest cans down the road. Perfectly human but…
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Kissinger’s Centennial. One of very few men in history that will be praised and cursed long after he is gone. He is like Kennan:?everyone knows he is a giant, and nobody follows his advice.
In Moscow he was known in the 1970 as “Kisa” (pet cat).
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Reading Gates. “For years, US diplomacy has neglected much of the global South, the central front for nonmilitary competition with China and Russia.” This is what JFK worried about in 1961.
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Moscow presented General Surovikin as a new Suvorov. As for now, he is closer to Kuropatkin who had commanded the Russian troops in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5.
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In the New Yorker a big interview of Remnick with historian Kotkin. I agree with him on false and realistic goals in war for Ukrainians. Kotkin is not part of the armchair cheer-leading chorus that demands to win every inch back w/o any idea of realities and peace after.
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John Lewis Gaddis praises the book by excellent Sergey Radchenko… and supports revisionism of American foreign policy! That policy that still seeks to run the world.
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Putin’s meeting with media yesterday points to trouble. The leader has remarkably hazy info on the war. One suspects the meeting took place ten days ago, but was released later. If not, the guy is dangerously misinformed.
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There is no other take possible on the elimination of Prigozhin and his people. Somebody famously said: Kto kogo? The answer to this question will define Russia’s political history through the next year.
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Even after losing a number of unwinnable wars Americans still prefer to win, not to manage…This is cultural.
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It is nonsense to write that Stalin wanted to destroy Ukrainian identity. Any serious historian knows he did other horrible things, but not this.
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Zelenskyy speaking to the British Parliament promises to defeat “war itself.” If this is a refrain of “the war to end all wars,” e.i. The Great War, then we need a lot to learn from the past.
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Some people on Twitter want Milley to be fired for what he said. Who do you really prefer: a highly professional and honest military or a fellow who says “the right things” that you want to hear?
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Nolan’s Oppenheimer owes its depth to the great book by Marty Sherwin and Kai Bird.
They showed that fusion of content and form, passion and analysis that yielded a powerful chain reaction. Happy that Marty got Pulitzer, but sad he is not around to debate the film.
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@DrRadchenko
Great minds think alike.
Smuta is the meme of the month. Next year will be “anticipation of Smuta.”
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Adam Tooze adds his erudite voice to the analysis of the UKR war. His verdict: the West is full of lofty rhetoric but real delivery is paltry and not enough to tilt scales of war. The West does not even lead from behind.
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Just curious at what point the prospect of Russian collapse would begin to loom larger as a problem of international security than Putin’s inept aggression?
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Now, as the war of attrition has become obvious for all, I have re-read my year old article. Right or wrong in specifics, the main premise holds up well.
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Can Putin Survive? Foreign Affairs has published my article on the lessons of Soviet collapse for Russia today.
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FT writes that Ukrainian gas tanks, Europe’s largest, are now keeping gas prices low and saving the EU people from cold. Especially the Poles. But who had built those storage tanks? I suspect the Soviet Union. Long live the irony of historical twists and turns.
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Sleepwalking is back in vogue! Now in the Taiwan Straights:
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@DAlperovitch
@ForeignAffairs
What a thread! Great inputs which regrettably extinguish any light at the end of the tunnel. At the same time I urge at least to imagine a tunnel.
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Ukrainian attack on Moscow, a retaliation for Kyiv.
The drones probably targeted the Kremlin and the General Staff, but because of the anti-air systems ended up falling on civilians. Tit for tat escalation will grow until a crescendo of unknown proportions.
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My take in the current tipping point in Russian and European history. Curzio Malaparte as a useful guide at the end of the essay.
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Putin has just lost one of his greatest friends
In the West. Berlusconi e morto. Usually the flow of time takes care of things more effectively than any elaborate strategies.
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My Ukrainian friend read it and said I did a thankless task. The dominant narrative is that hundreds if thousand must die before Russia sues for peace.
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@DrRadchenko
I disagree with Michta even
More than you. His thesis is as old as Russia: that it is something opposite to EUROPE. Which Europe? The project of 1957-1991? Most of Russian reactions are typical European nationalism-imperialism-chauvinism. Everything borrowed from Europe.
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Gorbachev’s disputed legacy.
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And this is from superb Sebag Montefiore. The description of the assassination of Emperor Paul in 1801 is blood-curdling. But Putin knows this story.
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An authoritative Russian finance expert Alexashenko: “I do not foresee any financial constraint on the Kremlin that could force it to change its aggressive policy.”
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I love it as an old fan of the former and the skeptic on the latter: “the insights provided by Marx helped shift much of the contemporary left away from the OLD-FASHIONED postmodernist linguistic theory that had dominated US academia…(Foreign Affairs on Generation Z)
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