Sarah Paine

And so that was a big criticism of the authors of this book, is that the question you're asking is, no, they just milked it while they were there.

Yeah, no, it is tragic.

It is tragic.

And it started out as a difficult address in pre-industrial revolution that required certain things to survive.

And they were more ruthless than their neighbors.

That's how they did survive.

I mean, they just...

In a previous lecture, I discussed how they wiped out entire princely states and connates and things, just wipe them out.

And then you're using their elites because it's a rough neighborhood.

And the problem is if you aren't on the winning side, you're going to be on the losing side, right?

But since the Industrial Revolution...

where you can do compounded economic growth that comes from commerce and trade and industry and things.

So that's the real way to get powerful, because you get power that becomes a function of your wealth.

That involves having legal systems, institutions, stability.

And Russia has found it very difficult getting with that program.

And it has to do with, I think, this very difficult historical legacy, who rises to power, and also all the missing things.

They didn't have the Renaissance.

They didn't have the Reformation, these fundamental movements that were very influential in the West.

And so there's a lot of negative space of things that didn't happen.

There's all the awful stuff that you saw that did happen, but then they're missing things.