Dwarkesh

They have this big ideological role-changing mission.

We're going to spread communism around the world.

And that isn't enough to prevent some war over, in the case of 1969, literally just islands in the middle of a river, right?

There's like nothing super consequential at stake here.

So why didn't the fact that they were both these communist countries do more to cement the relationship?

So I want to understand...

say, Stalin's decisions in particular in the case of telling the communists during the Chinese Civil War that you can go below the Yangtze River so that he can split up the communists and the nationalists in China and leave China weak.

We know from all the actions in Stalin's life that he was a devoted communist, right?

He does collectivization and almost destroys his regime because he's a devoted communist.

At the same time... And so communism says that there has to be this worldwide revolution at some point.

If there is a worldwide revolution, there will be other powerful communist countries.

So that's implied in the nature of what a worldwide communist revolution is.

But at the same time, he's...

You know, he doesn't seem communist enough to want China to become fully communist.

He, like, cares more about real geopolitic.

But did Stalin, as a communist, he thought, okay, there's going to be at some point, the whole world is going to be communist.

And he thought that he personally would be managing the whole world?

If Stalin hadn't died, do you think a Sino-Soviet split was still inevitable?

Because yes, there wouldn't have been Khrushchev's secret speech.

Obviously, Stalin wouldn't have condemned the cult of personality, but the grievances you mentioned would still exist.