Dwarkesh Patel

At the same time, 2% GDP, well, if they just had one or two more years of extra economic growth or faster growth, that could make up for this huge diplomatic coup.

So again, this goes back to the question of, you know,

If some domestic policy just caused slightly higher economic growth rates, that would make up for the biggest diplomatic coup of the entire Cold War, which goes back to economy first, diplomacy second.

All right, you convinced me.

Bard is acceptable.

I'll stick here.

The subway is not a big deal.

I don't want to move to Moscow.

Okay, so while the Eastern European satellites are trying to leave the Soviet Union, this has happened many times through the 20th century, right?

So Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 68, Poland through solidarity.

And every previous time,

There's a many million person strong Red Army stationed in Eastern Europe left over from World War II, which rolls in the tanks and prevents these revolutions from taking place.

So what happens in the late 80s and early 90s that the Red Army is still there.

There's still millions of Red Army soldiers.

They just don't shoot.

Okay, this is what I wanted to ask you about.

So you had the Tocqueville quote about how revolutions happen when governments start to institute some kind of reform.

Gorbachev is doing perestroika, glasnost, and there's the conservative reactionary part to the Communist Party, which, by the way, is a phrase I wouldn't expect to have said, but...

Um, they're, uh, they're trying to resist this.

And so Gorbachev goes about dismantling the party secretariat, um, and instead devolving power down to the individual republics.