Stephen Kotkin

You look at the bank and you think, wow, that's pretty solid.

They got these neoclassical columns.

It's all made out of stone.

Looks really impressive.

This bank is really solid.

And then one day it gets in people's heads that the bank might not have your money.

the bank might not be good in reality for your paper holdings.

And so you rush the bank to try to get your money out before that money is gone or doesn't exist.

And everybody gets that idea at the same time, not just one person, and you get a bank run.

And so this really solid institution with these neoclassical stone columns turns out to be

evaporates, effinescent.

You can have a political bank run in the repressive apparatus.

They cease thinking that they should kill people like themselves

on behalf of a system that they are no longer loyal to, no longer adhering to.

That can happen in the forces of order, as we call them, in the repressive apparatus.

It can happen inside the elite.

Because when the leader gives the order, it's got to go through the whole chain of command.

The leader doesn't give the order to the soldier.

It goes to the one boss, the subordinate to that boss, the subordinate, and anywhere along the chain of command, there can be disloyalty and revolt.

There can be what we call political defection.