Dwarkesh Patel

Oh, so you said you were there in 88 and 89.

So this is before the Berlin Wall has fallen.

Yeah.

Okay, in 88, was the mood—obviously things are going terribly, but did people realize that they're only two years away or three years away from the complete dissolution of the Soviet Union?

That does you zero good.

So around this time is when people are finally learning about what actually happened during the Stalinist period.

Oh, yeah.

So people are optimistic that, well, we can sort of have a changing of the guard and maybe things will improve.

But at the same time, they're learning about how terrible their history actually was.

So between these two things...

And also at some point they must realize through the 90s that things actually aren't improving.

In fact, they're getting worse.

Yeah.

So what is the inflection point at which the mood is just depressing?

OK, so people are learning about these things for the first time.

Is the sense that they kind of suspected?

I mean, people have family.

They must have known my uncle was he was off in this little mining town that he was forced to go to for a decade right there after.

But so were they totally shocked or was there some sense that things were pretty bad and now we're just learning the extent to it?

Okay, speaking of these different countries that the Soviets and the United States were competing for during the Cold War, you had this presentation where you say, look, Reagan alone didn't do this.