Stephen Kotkin

about how we need to take you down because you're going to preserve your self-preservation.

You're going to preserve yourself because you don't trust.

There's a lack of trust inside these dictatorships.

If you knew that Stalin hadn't sent me, for sure, 100%,

you would say, you know, you're right.

You got a point there.

What can we do about this?

But you know that Stalin is constantly doing these provocations, or you suspect he is.

And you know that he's got people, provocateur, who are around the system doing things like this.

And the secret police are listening in on your phone conversations.

And the driver of your car works for Stalin, doesn't work for you, and is reporting any overheard conversations in the car.

And the maid in your apartment

is also working for the secret police and reporting up the chain of command.

So the system that you're in enmeshes you in this distrust, in this surveillance and distrust.

So what looks like, geez, let's just take them down and save our own life, let alone save the country, looks like, yes, it's logical, but that's not the kind of lives that they led.

We would think that based upon the kind of lives in the system that we live in.

The bodyguard stuff increases over time, but the regime is walled off from the people.

Stalin doesn't go out in public.

He's not one of these populist types in public who's bathing in the adulation of the crowd.

He's in the office.