Sarah Paine

Russians are known to be hard drinkers, right?

And they're also known for being brutal, right?

Unclear whether it's going to collapse.

That's a good argument.

He might be right.

This is why I think we'll never get definitive answers because you don't have to be in Nicholas II's brain, right?

It's an autocracy.

What he decides matters.

I dare say if he had been Peter the Great, the guy who tortured his only son to death...

and suffered numerous setbacks, I doubt that he would have had any problems dealing with rioting Russians.

He would have figured out who are loyal units and then just blow away whatever's getting in his way.

And he would have done his initial, his next battle.

And then when he won that battle, the Russian revolution would have gone away because they would have gone, see, we did it.

We got these people.

So, but it's, Kotkin's argument is a very good one.

But it's, to me, it's Nicholas Sassen's incompetent leadership is the bigger thing.

And then you're arguing about how important is the rebellion and how deep rooted it is.

And you'll never know, right, what this...

Kotkin could be absolutely right.

And I think this is a reason, one of the reasons I gave the counter-argument is to get used to understanding ambiguity and appreciating that other people could be right and you may not know.