Has enabled us to invite so many prominent authors. [applause] i i would also like to recognize and thank New York Historical trustee, chairman emeritus roger herzog, who is responsible for the 2011 renovation of New York HistoricalSociety Building as well as this magnificent robert a Smith Auditorium during his tenure as chairman. Lets give him a big hand, thank you. [applause] i also want to recognize and thank Trustees Barry barnett, joe pickett, ira and all the wonderful chapmans councilmembers with us with a great work and support as well. A few. [applause] so the program tonight will last an hour, include a questionandanswer session, and the q and who will be conducted via written questions on cards. You should receive a card and a pencil. If you havent, the staff are circulating right net and more out and they will be collected later on in the program. There will be a formal book signing in our ny history store on the 77th street side of our building, and copies of the books will be available for sale. We are thrilled to welcome Stephen Kotkin back to New York Historical society. Hes a Professor Holding joint appointments in the History Department in the Woodrow Wilson school at princeton university. Hes also a fellow at stanford universities hoover institution. The author of several critically acclaimed books, his latest stalin waiting for hitler, 19291941, the second of three planned point on the life and times of the soviet dictator. Before we begin id like to ask that you please turn off your cell phones, electronic devices, and now please join me in welcoming Stephen Kotkin. Thank you. [applause] good evening everyone. There is a Little Madeleine albright stool her vx at up to speak the podium. Thats with the called cold ane state department, the Madeleine Albright stool, but im not going to use the podium if thats okay. I normally walk around the room. In fact, i walk all the way around so that i can check the sales, and j. Crew. And im speaking yes. Got to check up out how much te sweatpants costs during the lecture. Its only 55,000 55,000 a yeu cant check the sales on j. Crew when its not a lecture or get to check during the i see no one has the laptop open right now. So this seems to be a more engaged audience than i am used to. [laughing] lets see how this is going to go. So theres this guy, and is on his deathbed turkeys that maybe hours to live, if that. And hes very agitated and hes got to get something off his chest. His wife is by the bedside in the hospital, and hes trying, trying, finally, he does it picky says to her, ive got to tell you something. I cheated on you. And the wife looks at him and she says, why do you think i poisoned you . [laughing] and her name is melania. [laughing] do we have time for questions . [laughing] little did i know, dale, a biography of stall which i began many years ago was going to become a selfhelp book when it was published. [laughing] but here we are. So this is not the trump lecture. I i also do a trump lecture. Maybe ill be invited back for that, well see, i dont know. This is the stall and lecture. So stall and waiting for hitler opens in 1929. The year before, he has announced in a small group he has blurted out that is going to collective eyes agriculture by force. Now, theres something called the peasant commune, not in the entire eurasia but in the russian ports, for example, body in ukraine, not in baltics. The communes collectively redistribute land after a death in the family or a a berth in e family or a calamity so that those who have less land and need more can get a a little bt more, and those were fine can give up a look at atlanta. But after the land is redistributed it work individually. Individual household farms. So the commune is not collectively working the land. This is what collectivization of agriculture entails, and the reason he has done this, the reason stalin has decided to do this in 1928, now is going to pose in 1929, is because hes a communist. I know that sounds hard to believe, but the key secret of the communist party archives, the ones that were classified and hidden and it wouldnt talk about them and would let you see them, the key secret of those archives is that when you get to see the communists behind closed doors, it turns out that they are communists. Instead of saying, oh, you kn, all that nonsense, the workingclass, imperialism, the bourgeoisie, we can relax now. Nobody is watching. We can talk about what we really care about. Instead, when they are behind closed doors nobody is watching. They dont think anybody is going to find out. All the talk about, workingclass, bourgeoisie, if you listen. Stalins argument is as follows. He says while we have socialism in the cities, state owned state managed economy. Socalled planned economy, or fiveyear plan. But in the countryside the peasants have had their own revolution in 1917, 1918. They evicted the gentry class from the land. That is to say, they get rid of the land owners and they themselves become the de facto land owners, about 25 million peasant households. This is all to the 1920s, and the peasants, some of them are quite hardworking. So one day they have two cows, they were card, you get a third cow, they continue to work, they get a fourth care. They may in fact, hire other villagers to work for them because their farms are successful. Well, this is capitalism. This is hired labor, otherwise known as wage slavery, as marx called it. Stalin calls this in the jargon of the time culottes farms. Slang, it means just pick it means these people kind of holding the others in the fifth. Its a derogatory term. So the regime is dependent on the size of the harvest. They need more grain but as the peasants are successful, there are threats to the regime because they are quote better off farmers. This is the paradox the regime has, inflated its self in the cities and in the countryside. Theres de facto private ownership of the land, a clause i market economy, and there are some peasants, not that many, who are doing well. And, in fact, because theyre doing well the people in the cities are eating. But stalin says we cant have two systems. Socialism in the city, and capitalism in the countryside. Because the marxists believes that the social base, the social relations of production determines the political system over the long haul. So capitalism in the countryside with the vast majority of people live, about 120 million of the 140 or 115 Million People, live in the countryside. Capitalism there needs the regime over the longterm is not viable. It will be undone by this new world bourgeoisie that is fully. So stalin argues this and he says, were going to now collective eyes agriculture. The other people in the regime, they are no friends of pattersons, they dont like markets, they are not happy with capitalism in the countryside, theyre committed to eradicating capitalism to get the socialism and then eventually to get to communism. So voluntarycollectivization, youre going to wait a long time for that to happen. However, those people who voluntarily collected lies to their farms are the ones who cant make it. The individual household farms. The only way to do it is by force. Active application of force. Coercive, wholesale, collective so this is what stalin is going to do now. The other members of the innercircle and wider part of the regime, the second echelon, this third act on say its crazy, you cant really do this. Where are we going to get all that force from . Whos going to do all that and dont you think it would be catastrophic western mark well , we wont increase the harvest. Stalin says we need mechanization, right . We need a grana me and fertilizer and consolidation of farms to get scale, just like is happening in america and they all agree with this. Stalin says our tiny household farms is not going to get us that. We need consolidation, big collectivization. They say we can still do that with the model we have. Please dont try to impose this by force. They are communists too and stalin says you dont have the courage of your convictions. Do you believe in socialism and communism or you dont. Either we are going to eradicate capitalism in the countryside or we are going to surrender. You might think, why dont they just allow the successful peasants to continue to grow their farms, acquire more towels and to build a larger scale agriculture through their hard work once again, the answer is thats capitalism. We cant have that. Thats what they did in america. We are a socialist country run by a communist party. Of course, stalin is undeterred, tremendous willpower. Maneuverability, shrewdness and he outmaneuvered them all. And it forces this mass wholesale coercive collectivization across eurasia affecting 120 Million People. Its just breathtaking that hes able to do this, what he does is he insights class warfare in the villages. He pits one group ofpeasants against the other. He imposes quotas for the number of rich peasants who have to be expropriated and shot or deported. So if this were a village, he would say 10 percent of you, 40 of you are better off peasants and have to be deported to the wastes of siberia and the rest of you are going to join the collectives. It turns out that not four of you but 10 of you are better off. That is to say you have three or four orfive cows and the rest of you arent as well off , but if you say this is a crazy idea, that it had youre now a better off peasants or you are in codes with the better off peasants. So the quotas which have to be met, the peasants get together and they begin to protect themselves by saying no, its not me, its you. And they point the fingers at each other. This process, this stirring of hatred and grievances, for example, somebody looks at someone elses wife a few years ago and a peasant remembers that and that grievance becomes the impetus for now pointing out whos an enemy, who is a henchman or objectively in cahoots with the international bourgeoiss. Stalin tours up this process. The process of hatred and jealousy and revenge and violence. And it turns out his critics are right. The critics who said its dangerous if we do this, youre going to destabilize the situation, the harvest is going to be worse, not better. They actually proved to be correct. However, they are correct, well beyond what they even predicted. And as the process launched in 1929, there is a lucky artist the first year in 1930 and then theres a drought followed by torrential rain in 1931. A dislocation, the peasant resistance, the deportations, deporting the people who can work. They are getting rid of the better off peasants and others getting caught up in the process. As a catastrophic 1931 to 33. About 5 to 7 Million People starve to death. And 50 million to 70 Million People starve that survive. Then its not just about those who perish, but also those who are malnourished, the children who are malnourished and this is the legacy that last a long time. But the horrendous efforts and the famine last and persists 1932, 1933. Theres even a famine in 1934 in some places by 1934, the harvest is better. The surviving peasants plant the grain and the collectives and harvest the grain though they actually saved stalins regime, the peasants who were enslaved and forced into these collectives across eurasia. This episode, why is it important . Its important because stalin does does not flinch. He doesnt say you know, you guys were right, i did destabilize the situation. I shouldnt have done that. Lets go back. Letsretreat. He continues to press forward all the way through the famine, using some of the famine and dislocation in order to finish the job of collectivization. And by 1934, he has eradicated capitalism in the countryside. And now hes being celebrated even by his critics for having done what nobody thought could be done. Which was to impose collective farms across 1 6 of the earth. This social engineering. This episode, what happens sometimes with ideas, and ideas can be noble or ignoble. The methods can be noble or ignoble in implementing what happens sometimes with ideas, ideas that are noble, we get that. We allow for that and we celebrate that but when somebody is an idealist or has ideas and the ideas are monstrous, or the implementation, the means are monstrous, we tend to talk about opportunism, lust for power and also some other attributes which of course are present, but we tend not to give as much to the ideas when the ideas themselves are anathema. This episode and many other episodes in the book in my view indicates that there is an idealist here, a communist idealist, a communist true believer, yes hes an opportunist. Yes hes bending this way and that way and is flexible the way lenin taught him. Yet hes trying to aggrandize and gain even more power over those who already have leadership. But hes doing this because he believes this is necessary for the regime to survive, for socialism to be built and for social justice to be achieved. The elimination of capital. He firmly , deeply believes this in documents are very numerous. About his beliefs or his discussions of his motivations during this and other processes. So we need to take seriously sometimes even when the person is not to our liking, even when the ideas are not to ourliking. Just as theres a lot of opportunism with noble ideas. There is course idealism with monstrous ideas as well. Anyway, so this opens the book. Stalin presses this collectivization forward. They get nearly 100 percent collectivization. They force the nomads in context on all the hurting. The grazing land into collective farms which they end up losing most of their livestock. The famine in kazakhstan is by far theworst. The costs are astronomical. Stalin sees an instrument of the movement of history and this is all justified and necessary but what happens is during the process, he was being criticized. First they doubted him when it started. And then when he destabilize everything, the famine, that broke out, the disease, accompanying the famine, it was horrible. Officials began whispering behind his back and sometimes not behind his back. Criticizing what he had done. So this roy told him to no end. It made him so angry that he was doing the hard thing that they said couldnt be done, but needed to be done. They agreed that capitalismin the countryside had to be eliminated, but they were too afraid to try or incapable of trying. And he wasnt afraid. He did it. And they had the severity , to all criticizing. This deeply got under his skin. And we see this anger and resentment over the criticism of collectivization coming back again and again and again to a further episode in the regime including when he murders a large number of his self loyal elites in 1936 and 38 and is also covered in the book. So the argument of the book is that its not a personality thats formed in youth and then unleashed on the world. It is the experience of acquiring power, exercising power. Life and death power over hundreds of millions of people. That experience is what forms the stalin home rule. In other words, its a rule. Its theexperience of rule. Its running and building that dictatorship. And collective icing agriculture, imposing that communist system on this vast population. This experience, we all talk about how absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thats a famous saying, right . Well, power like that, absolute power also forms personalities. Whatever was there, whatever demonic internal roiling sentiments were there before, they were magnified deeply by this experience of rule. I could give many examples of this process at work. Now, this is a long book. Ive been told. Its 900 pages of text. My wife is kind enough to say that it reads like no more than 700. She said this about volume 1 also. The pages just fly by. So a book that big, its very difficult to give a 30 or a 40 minute consultation of it but i want to take another episode, a second episode if thats okay besides the collectivization episode to illuminate the kinds of things you would find in the book. I think im okay with time for a change. Yes. So the second episode id like to talk about is the infamous Hitler Stalin pact. The Hitler Stalin pact. This is a book that has culture, domestic politics, the economy, Foreign Policy all in the same cover to cover between two covers. Sometimes with stalin we get the culture in one book, the cultural specialists will take that on. We will get a foreignpolicy in a separate book. My trip with stalin is to put everything that he ran, created, experienced, destroyed between the two covers. To bring together what it was like to be stalin, not to separate and compartmentalize. The other thing is the geography. There are whole days of stalins life that i now know what he did waking up until going to bed. And what path to death that day and while he put on the document. Hes a human being. For example, he likes colored pencils. He likes green, red and blue colored pencils. The documents in the archive are full of his scribblings and scrollings in these colored pencils. They are produced by the sacco and vanzetti factory. Lets call it back. He smokes a pipe as you know. And he puts tobacco inside the pipe from cigarettes. This floor brand cigarette is his favorite. He unrolled the cigarette. Takes the cigarette and dumps the tobacco into the pipe, whose cigarette . If he spills any tobacco on the table or the floor, he scooped it up. Because hes a little bit of a neat freak. You know when you go to an overpriced restaurant and they have that white piece of paper on the table on top of the tablecloth, and then after you are done eating the bread, they come with that letter opener thing and they take the bread crumbs and they take them away. Thats what he did with the tobacco. If there was a hallway and a runner down the hallway, he walked on the runner and if somebody else that he saw was not on the runner, he would shout out, get on the carpet. He bowled, he loved a form of bowling. A russian form of bowling called hockey bowling. He loved the russian bathhouse. He loved to read. He read all the time, hundreds of pages of books. Later on and hes murdering everybody he against a read about roman despotism. He thinks they are desperate in the roman story reading about augustus. So theres a person in their and its hard to get inside that person. Its hard to get in there but evil is much more interesting when its human. So here we have the hitler saga, this infamous thing in august 1939. And one of the wise tales is this amazing number of false stories about stalin that are passed on from generation to generation and then you look to see the documents is asian, whereis this substantia