Stephen Kotkin
👤 PersonAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
They can realize their citizenship, just like we do as consumers in the marketplace, consumers of podcasts.
And so that's where you get legitimacy from, where the system enables people.
Opportunity at home.
Opportunity for people who otherwise don't have opportunity.
That's legitimacy.
That's priceless.
China doesn't have that.
Russia doesn't have that.
Stalin had that legitimacy for a time based upon the idea that he was building a new world and overcoming the horrors of capitalism and imperialism and world war.
And Khrushchev gave a second wind to that.
even as he was revealing more of the horrors.
And then that just ran out.
And they unwittingly destroyed the system, trying to give it a third wind.
under Gorbachev.
And so they have no way forward.
They're stuck.
They can't do structural reform and maintain their power.
But without structural reform, without a legitimate system, they also can't maintain their power forever.
So it's really interesting.
In the short run, we're all dead