Стыдные вопросы про Америку / вДудь

0:00 I've never seen a chipmunk. Chip'n'Dale. It makes no sense to be American when the Cold War is over. They will pervert our kids. They are the bosses. Brodsky supported the war. History gets rewritten everywhere. Why does the US start so many wars? Slavic demonology. He's going to the rescue. Before watching this episode please subscribe to our Telegram channel. It will help us keep in touch if YouTube gets banned. Here is the name of the channel. I will leave the link in the description. Ivan, you are one of the biggest experts in Russia-United States relations. In your books you wrote: We - Russians and Americans - can't imagine how interconnected we are.

0:45 How close we are in our differences. I would like to talk to you about Russia-United States relations and about the US in general. I'm going to ask you tens of random questions about us and them. Great. Ivan Kurilla 57 years old Historian, Americanist Born in Volgograd Teaches at Bowdoin College Brunswick Maine We're in Brunswick, Maine. What kind of place is this? This is the Bowdoin College campus, which was built in the 18th century.

1:35 Many Presidents and famous writers went to this college. Hawthorne and Longfellow studied here at the same class. And also the founders of Subway, Netflix, and Evan Gershkowich, the reporter that has recently been swapped. They supported Gershkowich here. They had a Free Gershkowich banner on the college website. I've heard that this is the elite college. This is the case in all old colleges in New England. Massachusetts is considered to be the most elite..Maine used to be a part of Massachusetts.

2:23 There is a plenty of prestigious and most expensive universities here. Bowdoin is one of these most attractive and competitive colleges. We had 30 thousand applications and we could only accept 500 students. The competition is very intense. Let's make it clear: these 30 thousand applicants were all willing to pay for their studies. They were all willing to pay for their studies. Or was someone else willing to pay for them? Bowdoin is a private college and here is how this works. Anyone can apply regardless of their wealth.

3:14 Students are selected based on their skills, not their financial condition. Once the selection is over we ask students how much they are capable of paying for their studies. Students bring their parents' income statements. If their parents are willing to pay for their studies, which is quite a lot.. $88 800 a year They're good. Otherwise they can get a partial scholarship. Some of our students even get a full scholarship.

4:01 The majority of our students are borrowing money for their college. It is similar to a mortgage. A mortgage for your studies. A lot of students are in huge debt after they finish studying. Yes, they're paying for the debt for many years. How can you move to the US? We've just talked about students from all over the world coming to study in the US. Studying is not the only way to move to the US. In our last episode we showed you a plenty of talented people who became successful in the US. If you are willing to move to the US but don't know how to do it Migrator would help you do the paper work.

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6:23 How good should a student be to get a full scholarship? How special should this person from Russia, India, or China be? This person should be one of the 500 best students that the college is willing to accept. This student doesn't have to be the best of 500. The college would pay for him in case his parents are not able to pay. This students has to be smart.. Of course, the students has to be as good as the other 500. We also care if their parents had higher education.

7:10 We're looking if this student is the first person in his family to have a higher education. Is this a priority? It is. This matters for us. Some people would tell you that this is unfair. Coming from an educated family is a disadvantage. What can you reply? I have watched Eric Foner, a great American historian, perform recently. He talked about the Reconstruction era. President Andrew Johnson protested against such affirmative actions.

8:03 These actions allowed to choose people from unprivileged families over more privileged. Back then it was more about the black people but it could also be applied to families where nobody had higher education. There were critics of such policies back then who claimed that this was a discrimination. Foner said that such logic would only reinforce the inequality. People with not enough resources would not get a chance to get a higher education.

8:52 Such policies were adopted to give the unprivileged an opportunity to make it. So students whose parents have no higher education have a priority over those whose parents are educated. They are. This is also the case for racial minorities. African Americans also have a priority. They have a lower income and they are less educated so we are trying to fix this. Some people disagree with such policies, especially Republicans. Former, and probably, future President Trump disagrees with this approach. They call it a reverse discrimination.

9:45 I was surprised to find out that there was a reverse Dulles' plan. The Dulles' Plan never existed. This is a fake doctrine. Okay. Soviet and later Russian people were being frightened by this fake doctrine. I found out that there was a similar fake doctrine in the US relating to communism. There was a so-called Communist Revolution Plan which became a thing before the Dulles' plan. This plan was spread across the US and it was even brought into the Congress a few times. Congressmen would receive this plan from their voters and they would bring it to the Congress.

10:34 This plan was a reverse Dulles' plan. What was it about? This document claimed that all the problems in America, according to the conservatives, were caused by communists. So what do communists dislike? Liberal ideas among the youth.. They even said 'They will pervert our kids' Not really. I guess, you got this from Dulles' Plan, which was a fictional book. In the Communist Plan there was a list of actions that would potentially destroy America.

11:22 Banning the right to bear arms.. This plan was obviously a part of Republican propaganda. This plan referred to a 1920's article that never existed. The Congress reviewed this plan and the New York Times wrote an article about it in the early 1970s. Even after the New York Times exposed this fake plan a lot of people still believed in it.

12:14 They were still trying to expose such conspiracies in the Congress. There's a lot of conspiracy theories believer in both Russia and the US. Right-wing conservatives tend to blame the foreign influence for all the internal problems. They would blame evil communists for their problems. And the same was happening in Russia where people believed in the Dulles' Plan. They believed that all the problems in their country were caused by CIA.

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14:37 Every issue is solved individually and quickly. Try VPN Naruzhu for free for seven days. Use your email to activate the service. The link is in the description. Follow, activate, and enjoy unlimited Internet. Sixty billion roubles will be spent on some shi... Back to the interview What are you doing here? I'm teaching the history of Russia-United States relations. I'm teaching for one semester a year. Who are your students? Bowdoin College students. I've got a small group of students. We don't have a lot of students here in general. I'm teaching American students.

15:23 Are you teaching in English? I am. All the studies are held in English here. What is their motivation to study relations with Russia? I asked them about it on the first class. They all answered differently. Some of them are interested in Russia, some of them wish to study foreign relations. I hope that I don't let them down. First and second year students don't have to choose their future career. They pick classes that they are interested in. My course is called Frenemies, which means friends-enemies.

16:10 Oh.. Can you make up a name for your course as if it an article? Yes, there is a syllabus of the course.. A colleague of mine teaches Russian language and he also teaches a course called Slavic Demonology. Does he tell them about Perun? He doesn't. His course is dedicated to Russian literature. He can tell them about Stalin and Lenin.. There are no courses on Stalin here in Bowdoin. In Wellesley College, where I used to work, there was a Stalin course and a Putin course. Really? Who's teaching there? Nina Tumarkin. She used to write some speeches for Reagan.

17:00 She didn't write speeches for him. She consulted him before his trip to the USSR. She advised him to honor Soviet soldiers who died in the WW2. Americans don't know how important it is in Russia. Nina Tumarkin reminded Reagan about it and he said this. You told this story in your Ira Shikhman interview. I will leave the link in the description. You said that Americans believe that they won the WW2, which is actually true.. They didn't lose. They don't talk about the role that the Soviet Union played in the war.

17:47 You said that Reagan was advised to say this in his meeting with Gorbachev. So it was Nina Tumarkin who advised it to him. Yes. I guessed, he said this at one of his public performances. Probably in MSU. He mentioned this in his speech and it worked well. When Obama had just been elected.. You advised his administration to visit Volgograd. Did you talk to his administration? I talked to his advisors.. I said that coming to Volgograd would be a great gesture. I did. This was a similar advice to which Tumarkin gave to Reagan.

18:37 Obama's administration didn't want him to be associated with Stalingrad. All because of Stalingrad? This is what they told me. There could be other reasons. Let's imagine that Obama came to Volgograd and spoke about the role of Soviet Union in defeating Nazis. What would it change? Putin visits Volgograd a lot. This is how he shows that this is important. One of the biggest problems that Russians have with the Americans is that the Americans don't appreciate the sacrifice of Soviet people in the war.

19:25 I hear this a lot from our compatriots. I feel like such performance from the President would be a good gesture. We're now talking about 2008 or 2009. The situation is very different today. Back then I felt like it could stop the new trend. Do you remember Putin's 2007 speech? This was an Anti-American speech. So what would Obama's visit change actually? What would it change? What would it change in our lives? I'm trying to be rational like Valery Karpin or Alexander Mostovoy. So what? Foreign relations are not only the relations between the presidents and the diplomats.

20:13 These are also the relations between the people. In democracies the authorities are elected by the people. When one country doesn't like another country they wouldn't want to have good relations with this country. Russia is not a democratic country but still some popular beliefs are taken into account. I feel like we could have avoided the confrontation with the US. Putin had his own plans and it all went where it went..

21:02 Back then I hoped that our relations would improve. When a politician makes a statement it becomes a part of his image. Obama underestimated Russia. He called it a regional power a few times. I guess, he offended some officials in Moscow. He underestimated Russia and it also led to a new Cold War. Politician's words become a part of his image.. If a politician makes a wise move that his advisors told him to do, he looks wise in everyone's eyes.

21:48 Yes, I feel like this is true for everyone, especially politicians. Your actions make you who you are. There can be different reasons behind your actions. But these actions shape who you are. Sometimes heroic acts are driven by fear. Once you make this act - you are a hero. It doesn't matter what you think about it. For politicians words are as important as actions. Once you say something, it becomes a part of you. This is how I feel about it.

22:35 It is important to remind each other that we don't understand each other well enough. Is it true that CIA published Doctor Zhivago? CIA was involved in promoting authors who were oppressed in Russia. As far as I remember CIA took part in publishing the novel. US government authorities like CIA or the Pentagon or the State Department all invested in studying the Soviet Union in the universities.

23:33 The Cold War implied studying your enemy. A lot of experts in Russian culture were financed by Pentagon. It doesn't mean that this people were influenced by the Pentagon or CIA. In fact, Pentagon was quite unhappy. They invested money in studying the enemy and people were studying Tolstoy and Chekhov instead. They were financing these activities, including publishing Doctor Zhivago. People who studied Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were sponsored by Pentagon or CIA but they were not influenced by these organizations.

24:20 Yes, not all of them were influenced. In the beginning of the Cold War in early 1950s they introduced Area Studies in the US.. And the universities received a lot of money to study the Soviet Union. As far as I know, which I am not sure about, sometimes Pentagon would keep in touch with the professors.. But I feel like it was all about another American tradition - professors becoming government authorities.

25:20 They would work for the State Department and CIA as analysts.. And then they would come back to the universities as professors. This is very common here. In Russia universities don't work with the authorities at all. Here they studied Russia as scholars and then they got employed by the government to apply their knowledge. I don't think that they hired the professors of Russian literature as analysts.. They probably hired historians, sociologists, economists. I like filming wild squirrels and some people make fun of me because of that.

26:12 Aren't you surprised by this squirrel hunting right here? We're not used to American wild nature. It's very different from European nature. In Europe they have put all the wild life into the enclosures. America surprised me with its wildlife when I arrived here. You can spot a deer in a city. Squirrels are everywhere here.. And raccoons, too. Raccoons and rabbits, too. When I wake up in the morning I see a flock of wild turkeys walking in the fog. About ten big turkeys. Your breakfast came to your house.

26:59 My friends asked me if I liked hunting..I don't. There's a bunch of wildlife here. I've seen videos of bears breaking into people's garages. I brought my cat here and people told me not to let him go outside. There are predators here. Yes, they would eat my cat. There are huge prey birds here..And coyotes running around. This is the reverse side of the coin. It's a metaphor to this country. There is a lot of diversity here but you've got to always be careful.

27:46 It's true. Wildlife can be dangerous. You first arrived here in 1990 in the Kent State University. This University is known for the famous shootings in 1970. Yes, the National Guard shot the protesters. Can you tell us about this shooting? In 1970 the anti-war protests were at their peak. The students were actively protesting against the war in Vietnam. The protests started in 1968 reached the peak by 1970. The Kent State University Campus, as well as other campuses, was used by students who protested against the war.

28:31 The Governor was worried about these protests and he ordered the National Guard to enter the campus and to disperse the crowd. I guess, the investigation hasn't described what happened next. The commander of the troops ordered to fire at the protesters. They killed four people and wounded nine, including passers by. Some people were protesting and other were just walking towards their class. There were innocent people wounded by the police.

29:17 This was one of the most violent attacks on protesters in the US. In 1990 I was a young man it felt like 1970 was a long time ago. However, I met a lot of professors who witnessed these events. Now, 34 years later, we're much further from my arrival in the US than I was from the shooting. It's been 54 years since the shooting. The Kent State University is, unfortunately, most known for these events. This university is ranked much lower than the college where we are now. After the shooting the KSU received a lot of money from the government.

30:05 Other universities were jealous. They said that KSU made money from the shooting. They received extra money from the government to build a new library. So the government tried to make amends. Kind of. This is not what I think. This is what other professors told me. Is it right to say that Americans protested against the war in Vietnam quite late? Yes. On the fifth year of the war? Yes, they started protesting in 1968, after four years of war. The war escalated after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964. And the first mass protests began in 1968.

30:50 Why so late? There was a lack of information. There are researches proving that the civil rights activists supported this war. The war exhausted some of these organizations. The US military was the first desegregated government organization. Black and white troops had equal rights since Truman administration. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution were separated by just a month. These events happened at the same time.

31:38 Many African American activists felt like by fighting the communists in Vietnam they would establish themselves as Americans. If their country needs to stop the communists, they would fight for their country and their people. This was a common opinion in the 1960s. At some point in February 1968 everything changed on the Chinese New Year's Eve. Vietnamese soldiers attacked the city of Saigon, which was deep in the hinterland. These guerrillas were quickly liquidated but the attack happened in front of the reporters.

32:33 They took pictures and videos of the attack. Some of these pictures went viral. A South Vietnamese officer shot the guerrilla in front of everyone. The American photographer took pictures of the execution. The Americans got terrified of these pictures. This is when they questioned this war. American troops were dying and people were protesting against sending more guys to Vietnam. Five years of fighting is a lot.

33:21 Famous people like Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) protested against the war. He said that the Vietnamese did nothing bad to him and he wouldn't fight them. He was sentenced to five years in prison and he fled to Canada. A lot of significant people protested against the war and the people joined them. Did they put the protesters in prison? They did but not for a long time. They would sentence them for a few weeks. Some of them were sentenced to a year. I don't know if any of them were sentenced to more than a year in prison. In your book you wrote that Brodsky supported the war in Vietnam.

34:09 Brodsky was still living in the Soviet Union..He didn't actually support the war. From the memoirs of the Ardis Publishing founders we know that they met Brodsky.. They talked to him about the war in Vietnam. The Americans had already been protesting against the war. The publishers were left-wing and anti-war. Brodsky told them that the students needed to study. He said that they had to nuke the Vietnam.

34:57 To kill the communists? I'm not sure that Brodsky would actually press the red button and nuke anyone..He was showing off, I think. This is actually how a lot of Russians see America. For Brodsky America was the guarantor of freedom. Meanwhile everything was much more complicated in the United States. Many Soviet dissidents believed that the US were fighting for freedom all over the world.

35:48 A lot of them believed in this. They felt like the US government was never wrong. The protesters were either wrong or corrupt by the Soviet Union. So Brodsky supported the United States because they didn't like the Soviet Union. This bipolar system is pretty common. People see the world in black and white, which is wrong. The world is much more complicated.

36:35 You used to work in Wellesley, Massachusetts before moving here, which is a women's college. It is. Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright are the alumnae of the college. Why is this a women's only college? Women colleges were founded at the times when the majority of colleges were for men only. Bowdoin used to be a men's college. It was a men's college until 1971. What about Wellesley, which is still a women's college? There are no men's colleges left. I feel like there are three women's colleges left, including Wellesley. They have a tradition of only accepting girls. We had a similar Besstuzhev's university in Saint Petersburg, which was founded almost on the same year as Wellesley.

37:22 This was a breakthrough back then. Isn't it archaic nowadays? Some people would say that this is archaic and this is a discrimination.. It is archaic because it is a single-sex college. Some people would say that this discriminates men. Men are traditionally privileged, so a college which would allow an underrepresented group to be educated is justified. It's hard to understand this coming from the Soviet Union but women here got equal rights quite recently.

38:22 I'm not talking about equal political rights but equal rights in the society. In 1970s there were still some men's colleges here. When Jane Fonda visited the Soviet Union in 1970s to star in the Blue Bird she was shocked to see women directors and camera-men. There were no women in the Hollywood. Women could only be actresses. I spoke to Wellesley College president and she told me that her supervisor in Harvard was the first female professor in her field of studies.

39:13 So it all happened quite recently. So we had feminism in Russia before the US. I feel like there was a breakthrough after 1917. During WW2 the Americans were taught to communicate to Russians. They were taught to drink vodka and to talk to women. 'Some Soviet women might get offended if you give them a hand or offer them a seat' After the 1917 revolution Russian women believed in gender equality and they wouldn't accept some of the traditional etiquette.

40:04 This is how the Americans were instructed in 1945. When we could visit America in the 1990s they would warn us about feminists.. It has gone a full circle. In 1990s America was experiencing a new wave of feminism. In 1970s, however, the Soviet Union was miles ahead of the US in terms of women representation. We can say that we were equal in our poverty and powerlessness. However, we were still equal. I'm Russian and the American policies towards women and towards African American seem weird to me.

40:51 Are you talking about diversity quotas? Yes, sometimes such measures seem like a reverse discrimination. You've got to understand that they had inequality here not long ago. This inequality is still a problem. I had a friend from Georgia. He told me that when he was a kid they wouldn't let black people into their home. When a black woman knocked on his door he cried and ran to his father. It all happened recently. People who are still alive remember the inequality. It is still around. And the society is trying to adjust it..

41:38 They are trying to adjust it. They are trying to solve the problem of inequality. Coming from the Soviet Union this seems very weird. However, there are reasons behind these policies. Recently women were only considered as housewives. This is how my parents' generation saw women. My mother was a reporter. People of her age in the United States were mostly housewives. It was very different here. Vladimir Nabokov used to teach in Wellesley. Does anything remind people of him there? Yes, they have a Russian language department where they store a collection of butterflies. This is not his collection, they bought it in his memoriam.

42:24 He was catching butterflies at the lake next to the college. And they also have a Nabokov's door in the campus. I don't know what it has to do with him.. There is a plate that says Nabokov Portal. They are keeping the memory of him. He's the highlight of Russian Department in Wellesley. You wrote:'As soon as the American press found out that the writer arrived in the States with his mistress Gorky was denied staying in a few hotels' 'Him and Andreeva had to stay at their friends' house' It happened in 1906 when Gorky visited the US.

43:10 Did he really come here with his mistress? He considered her to be his wife. The protestant culture is very strong here and they don't approve of getting married for the second time. Gorky took an oath when he got married and he could not leave his wife, according to their traditions. They considered his second wife to be his mistress. American society is much more religious than we think. They possess much more traditional values than we do. America embodied the ideas of enlightenment in the 18th century.

44:06 However, the Americans denied one of the main ideas of European enlightenment - atheism. Voltaire and other French Enlightenment writers praised atheism and said that religion was a poor fiction. These ideas didn't work in America. They had a few waves of the Great Awakenings. Now we live in the fourth Great Awakening. It is a period of a religious revival. There are new religions emerging, like mormonism. The American society is united by faith. This includes having traditional views on family values.

44:56 This country is much more traditional than Russia despite all the latest trends. There is a hypothesis that the Americans became religious because the Soviets were atheist? This played some role, too. The Americans became religious much earlier, in the 18th century. The founders of New England were puritans, which was a radical Calvinist cult who were oppressed for their beliefs. In some sense, Calvinist traditions are still alive today.

45:44 We say that America is a free country. It is free in a political sense. If we take a look at moral freedom, there are more limitations here than in Russia. The legacy of Calvinist tradition is strong here. America has been a religious country for a very long time. In 1920s they called the bolsheviks atheists and later in 1940s and 1950s the United States had to reinvent their role in the new world order.

46:35 They had to be different from the Soviet Union and they paid attention to being religious. Some of local traditions were introduced in 1950s during McCarthyism. They were trying to reinvent themselves to oppose the Soviet Union. School prayers, which were cancelled later.. They also introduced a requirement to print In God We Trust on bank notes. America became more religious during the Cold War. However, it doesn't mean that America wasn't religious before.

47:30 These lovely elderly people are working out. They don't work here, do they? I don't think that they work here. College campus is open for everyone so everyone can work out on this lawn. This college is trying to interact with the world. American campuses are the greatest thing about America. Compared to Russian universities.. This lawn is blossoming.

48:16 It is blossoming. They have all the books in the libraries. How can you not study here? In Russia I would struggle a lot to find a book that I needed to read. Campuses were one of my first impressions here. Why are campuses the best thing about America? This place looks like there are no flaws in this country. Which is not true. A student in Austin University told us about homeless people living next to the campus.

49:05 Why are campuses so good here? Is there a particular reason behind it? A campus is not the only representation of America. I have a colleague Alexander Kubyshkin. He wrote a book a couple of years ago. The book is called the City and the Gown and it is dedicated to the role of universities in American cities. American universities used to be quite poor in terms of education. Up until late 19th century..Harvard and Bowdoin were already prestigious but there was a lack of good universities here in the States.

49:55 The Americans felt like the universities raise new elites, which is bad. Teaching everyone to read and write was democratic but higher education would only raise the new elites. American universities would only become significant after 1860s. The Morrill Land-Grant act allowed land-grant colleges.

50:42 As the society became more complicated they lacked professionals. A professional is a person with a degree higher than a bachelor. Engineers, lawyers, doctors are all professionals. This created an incentive for them to introduce education reforms. They adopted the German education system and for the last 150 years colleges have been playing a very important role in the American society. Many parents believe that going to college is a great opportunity for their kids to build a career.

51:41 If you are born in a privileged family you would have to stay in your position. You are definitely going to the college. You are. You are going to a good college. A good college like this one would have an impact on your whole life. Networking in the beginning of your life. Yes. In Russia some people are not proud of their higher education. Some people are not happy with their college. Here your college becomes your business card for the rest of your life.

52:30 A Harvard graduate will remain a Harvard graduate for the rest of his life. A Kent State graduate would struggle much more in his life. A graduate of a good college would benefit from his college for his whole life. Would his CV be more significant? It would be much more significant. If won't be able to become a professor in a college unless you wrote your PhD in a top three college. Most of the professors in the United States are the graduates of the same few colleges.

53:21 Everyone wants to go to a good college or to at least some college. You said that the United States rewrite their history. How? History gets rewritten everywhere. It is a healthy state of this science. There is no history if nothing is being rewritten. In America there are many battles going on regarding the interpretation of the past. They have their own pain points which have nothing to do with Russian pain points. The Civil War is the main event of the American history and there is a lot of debate on this war.

54:08 This war was the turning point in history of this country. The slaves got released and the conflict changed this whole nation. Eric Foner, a great American historian, called this period the second foundation of the country. Nowadays people doubt the interpretation of the war because the American society is now different from what it used to be. Who are Americans? For a very long time African Americans were not considered to be a part of this nation.

54:55 Even a hundred years after they were released from slavery. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and said 'Finally, two nations will unite into one' Until 1964 African American people were not considered to be American. Sixty years later the situation is different but it is still a sensitive topic. The American nation now includes the African Americans and this affects their opinion on the past.

55:41 They looked back on their past from a multi-colored perspective and it turned out that the African Americans did not take part in the Civil War. Two groups of white people were fighting each other. It is important that they were fighting to abandon slavery, however, the black people did not take part in the war. This became a problem. Eight years ago they opened a museum of African American culture in Washington. This museum is very different from other museums in a way that it looks at the past. The civil rights movement was much more important for African American population because they played a big role in this movement.

56:33 They protested and their actions led to something. They became the actors. In 1863 Lincoln ended slavery but the black people had nothing to do with it. This is a very different view of the past. It turns out that the Civil War was not as important. It was a local conflict inside one of the ethnic groups. This is an example of rewriting history. You told me a similar story about Texas. This relates to their school text books.

57:20 The 1619 Project received the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 during the BLM wave. 1619 was the year when the first black slaves were introduced to America. This projects offers to reconsider the history of this country from the perspective of the slaves. They made a sketch of a future text book that would describe the Revolutionary War as an attempt to preserve slavery. According to the project, the founding fathers were not fighting for freedom but to keep their slaves because England would end slavery. The Great Britain ended slavery quite soon and the US kept it for another 80 years.

58:06 How true is that claim? Were they really fighting for slavery? I can't be sure about this now..I guess, they were fighting for their ideas. They weren't thinking about slavery too much. Jefferson wasn't supporting slavery even though he had some slaves. This point of view deserves some attention. It is an example or writing history from a very specific point of view. A person who is in power today would try justify his power by the past events. A white protestant Anglo-Saxon would have the different history book than an African American descendant of slaves. Or than a Russian emigrants' descendant.

58:53 These would be three different history books. They would have something in common.. But they would not only differ but also contradict each other. This is how history works. History consists of many sources. How do you feel about it? I find this interesting as a historian. Aside from studying American history I like studying history in a modern society. How does modern society communicate with the past? The past cannot be explored and described as some white spots on Earth. History gets reconstructed all the time because of new challenges and new actors.

59:44 I'm interested in studying the past and finding out why we care about it so much. This is very interesting. I like studying American history. It turns out that Russia is not the only country with unpredictable past. Past in general is unpredictable. The past is very big. Imagine a science of the present. Of everything that is happening now. We are sitting here talking and somebody has gone to bed already. Some other man has caught a lobster ten miles away from here.

1:00:30 Can you imagine how much stuff is going on in the world? We would not be able to describe the full history of the past hour on Earth. There is too much going on. Can you imagine how many stuff happened in the past? We are choosing what we can find there with our small flashlight. Depending on where we aim the flashlight we would see the different points of view. What we see depends on our point of view. It doesn't mean that the past is entirely subjective. I don't want to claim that there is no past. The events of the past are real. However, they are much more diverse than we think.

1:01:17 Our attempts to describe the past are too narrow by definition. We only describe the experience of a specific social group. Is it right to say that Putin has his own flashlight when he talks about the past? Yes, but the problem is that he doesn't understand that there are other flashlights, too. He thinks that his point of view is the only correct perspective. He banned quite a lot of perspectives of the past in Russia. He calls these perspectives anti-Russian propaganda coming from Polish, American, or Ukrainian enemies.

1:02:04 Putin has not been properly educated. His closest advisor is Vladimir Medinsky, a person who makes all the historians mad. Putin continues to come back to his opinion over and over again. A couple of days he called the Security Council to talk about the past. This is quite barbaric from the professional perspective. He justifies his actions by the past events. In fact, it is not true. He only cares about the past events that can justify his actions. He might not understand it. He might really believe in what he says. His decisions come first and the justification comes next.

1:03:01 I would like to ask you a couple of questions about McCarthyism. Can we briefly explain what it was? In the beginning of the Cold War the US were scared of communism. In early 1950s this wave of fear was associated with Senator McCarthy's name. McCarthy once said that he had a list of 200 members of the communist party who worked in the State Department.

1:03:47 A couple of years before that one of the former employers of the State Department was pleaded guilty in spying for the Soviet Union. The statue of limitations had already run out and he was sentenced to a year of prison for perjury. This case even more fear of the communists. Senator McCarthy claimed that there were 200 communists in the State Department and more of them in the military and in the Pentagon. People believed him. Politician who argued with him lost in the following elections.

1:04:39 The voters believed McCarthy. There were no communists in the government bodies of the US.. They even put the leaders of the communist party in prison. Gus Hall, who later kissed Brezhnev when he was an old man, was put in prison for being a communist. Later he was recovered by the supreme court. They put him in prison for supporting the manifest that was considered extremist. Hollywood wouldn't hire people who were suspected in sympathizing the left-wing. McCarthyism lasted until 1956-1957.

1:05:30 Actors weren't allowed to work because of their views? Actors, writers, and directors. Hollywood was very leftist at that time. There were many Russian emigrants in the industry.. They didn't support communism, though. They didn't. During WW2 they were shooting movies sympathizing with the Soviet Union. They helped Roosevelt spread the idea that the Soviet Union was an ally, not the villain. And later people blamed Hollywood for praising the communists. There were many leftist people in Hollywood just like today there are many leftist students.

1:06:20 Hollywood studios were on the verge of getting closed. Hollywood studios became banning leftist people from new projects. These black lists were one of the most famous features of McCarthyism. Ronald Reagan started his political career and met his wife because she was a leftist woman. He came to investigate her views but he fell in love with her and covered her. Her name was Nancy.

1:07:05 Did they hunt anyone else outside of Hollywood? McCarthy never showed this list of 200 people to anyone. He claimed that he had it but he never showed the names. At some point he said that there were communists in the Pentagon. The US military bases were full of communists. He took a picture next to the map where he showed the communist bases as red stars. Eventually, it was the Pentagon that managed to defeat him. McCarthy blamed the Pentagon for being communist and they sued him for defamation.

1:07:52 This court case was shown live on American TV and the audience played a big role in the outcome. McCarthy didn't look confident in the court. People saw him live and noticed that he looked mentally ill. This was the beginning of the end of his career. He shouldn't have blamed the military for hiring communists. So what happened to him next? He became a drunkard and died at young the age of 48. He died from the cirrhosis of the liver caused by alcoholism.

1:08:38 When we talk about Russian emigrants in the US we usually think of Sykorsky, Zvorykin, Ayn Rand..I would like to ask you about less famous emigrants. First of all, the biggest patriotic song in America was written by a man from Tyumen who served in the US military. He was born in Tyumen and he grew up in America. There are a few opinions on his place of birth but he was definitely born in Russian Empire. His name is Irving Berlin. He was born Bellin and a typo led to his last name becoming Berlin. He did not only write God Bless America but he was also probably the most popular songwriter of the century.

1:09:30 He'd written more hits than anyone. Everyone here knew his songs by heart. He was born in Russian Empire. A man born in Russian Empire wrote God Bless America.. It's the country of the emigrants. It's a feature, not a bug. This is a country of the emigrants. Everyone is fine here with emigrants writing patriotic songs. Henry Kissinger, who was probably the most influential American diplomat of the century, had German accent until the rest of his life. Wernher von Braun and Einstein were emigrants, too.

1:10:18 This is absolutely normal here in America. There was a Russian head of council in Hawaii. He was the head of Senate. Nikolay Sudzilovsky. He left Russia after Alexander II got murdered. He stayed in America and worked as a doctor. There was a short period of time when Hawaii was an independent country. He was the head of their Senate for this short period of time. Was Hawaii an independent country? It was. It was first a kingdom.. A video recorder was invented by a Russian emigrant.

1:11:03 Alexander Poniatoff. He was an engineer. You mentioned Zvorykin and Sykorsky. Poniatoff was another engineer that succeeded in the US. In the 19th century America was a country of engineers. Russia would invite American engineers. American engineers would build railways and plants in Russia. Unlike Berlin, who left Russia when he was a kid, these three engineers got educated in Russia. They moved to America and managed to create new industries.

1:11:51 At some point Russian engineering school caught up to the American school. Poniatoff was one of these engineers. Is this an active church? Or is it a former church? As far as I know, this is a former church. Now it's a cultural center. It used to be a Christian church. Now it's a place where people of different religions can visit to talk to God. Are there prayer rooms for Muslim and Jewish people?

1:12:38 Probably. I haven't been there yet.. I went to a similar building in Wellesley which used to be a Christian church and later became a place for all believers. This is how they are trying to escape from being purely white protestant country. They are trying to be more friendly towards other religions. This has started happening quite recently. Churches are turned into cultural centers.

1:13:23 What is the point of doing that? Why does America care about not being a white protestant country? There have been several opinions on what the American nation is. Previously they would turn all the emigrants into the white protestants. The Italians and the Irish never changed. This concept didn't work. When they started having emigrants of other races they needed to invent another concept. They created this melting pot concept. They would try to turn everyone into a new nation.

1:14:11 The melting pot is now outdated, too. Now they have a concept of a salad bowl. A salad bowl consists of different ingredients. The nation is the salad and all the people are different. Everyone keeps their identity to make America a diverse country. Is melting pot outdated now? It is outdated. Melting pot implied turning everyone into the this porridge.

1:14:58 Now they have the salad bowl. We're shooting this interview in the United States, where you work. Why are you working here? There is no work left for me in Russia this year. I tried to stay in Russia to continue working there. I didn't want to leave. However, I went on a Sabbatical. I took a vacation to finish my book. As soon as I went on a Sabbatical I got fired. It turned out that they didn't allow me to go on a vacation. I guess, they fired me for another reason.

1:15:48 This was obviously used as a formal reason to fire me. It's clear. Why? Last year a few people reported on me. One person called Anna Korobkova reported on me, as well as on many other people who didn't support the war. There might have been other reports that they didn't show me. Someone told me that the rectors in Saint Petersburg were told to fire the professors who signed the anti-war statement. I signed this statement so there was a number of reasons to fire me.

1:16:34 Nobody told me anything about it..So I moved to the United States. My colleagues from other universities told me they were sorry for me but they told me not to even try working in their universities. I feel like I have a reputation. It's a good reputation but it's not appropriate in modern Russia. I'm working here temporarily. One semester here, one semester in another college.. I will be working in another college next spring. Another one? Next spring I'm coming back to Wellesley. I will stay there for six more months. You're a nomad. I am. It's hard to have a permanent job here. I wasn't preparing for that.

1:17:19 It's a bit too late to move somewhere when you're 57. I'm not so young anymore. I tried to stay in Russia but I failed. I am an optimistic historian and I hope to come back to Russia some day. You studied English in Volgograd using an unusual method. Can you tell us about this method? I didn't expect that question. Yes, there was an experiment. I was a history student in the USSR. I was a student before they started teaching English quite well. Before it became a basic knowledge. My generation didn't need to know English. We could not travel anywhere when I entered the university in 1984.

1:18:09 The university did an experiment that I found quite successful. They taught us using an intensive method of learning. They taught us to speak from the very beginning. They taught us not to be scared to speak. And it worked. Most of us are too scared to start speaking a foreign language. They brought us into the class and there were no chairs or desks there. There were soft chairs placed in a circle. There were colored lights as if we were in a pub.

1:18:56 They showed us slides of some nice pictures. Why did they do that? They set the mood for us. What kind of nice pictures did they show you? Some pictures of nature. Not American? Not particularly American. They didn't show us pictures of the skyscrapers. This was a psychological set up to make us forget that we were studying. And then they applied this intensive learning method. They gave us English names. Were you Ivan? No, I was Robert, if I'm not mistaken. It doesn't matter. We were trying to imitate real life conversations.

1:19:46 We would start with some basic situations.. And in the end of the class we would relax and listen to some music. Our teacher would repeat the dialogues that we had modulating his voice. It helped us memorize everything. I am still confident in my speaking even though I make mistakes. They never corrected us if we made some small mistakes. Would you say 'he have' or what kind of mistakes.. No, but sometimes I would forget some of the words.

1:20:39 This learning method was quite a breakthrough for 1984. It was. They told us they it was invented by a Bulgarian linguist and psychologist. They would use this method before sending people abroad. We were one of the firsts groups of students who were taught using this method. Our teacher was a big enthusiast. In 2016 Mikhail Khodorkovsky made a list of 13 people who could replace Putin. Navalny won the voting.. But you were on the list, too. How did you feel about that? The reporters woke me up..Khodorkovsky didn't talk to me about putting me on this list.

1:21:26 He announced this list and the reporters woke me up in the morning. At first I felt anxious. I felt like I was framed. Russia was an authoritarian country already. I opened this list and saw that Kudrin was also on the list. I felt like this list wasn't as dangerous.. Kudrin had more reasons to worry. I felt like I wouldn't suffer from being on the list. This list was more like a joke in Russia. When I came to America to some conferences people would whisper that Khodorkovsky picked me.

1:22:16 A year later everyone forgot about this list. This list was taken more seriously in America than it was in Russia. We're in Russian Culture Center that has a different name now. Yes, it used to be Russian Studies. Last year it was renamed to Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies. Because of the war many American colleges had to rename their Russian programs. In Wellesley they still have a Russian Department. They have Russian language and Russian literature teachers here.

1:23:07 There is a teacher of Russian history and a teacher of Russian political science. They work in the History Department and their office is in another place. Your colleague just rushed to his class and told us he would be teaching Harms and Shalamov. Yes, he is a teacher of Russian literature. He's also a teacher of Slavic Demonology. This beast looks like a Gogol's character. Yes, kind of. There is a list of authors that he talks about on this course. This is a literature course, not a mythology one. From Lermontov's Demon to Soviet writers.

1:23:59 Students love this class. His classroom is always packed with students. 35 students is a lot for our small college. Why would anyone study Gogol's demons or the demons of Soviet Moscow? Studying is interesting. Liberal Arts colleges are designed to make studying interesting. A lot of students don't know their future job yet. In a liberal arts college they would have four years to pick a job that they would like the most. Fairytales are fun. Demonology is fun.

1:24:48 Frenemies is an interesting course, too. Students pick the class because they like its name. And then we teach them how scientific research actually works. Some of them enjoy this subject and then sign up for more advanced classes. Some of them leave after completing the class. This is how education works. It has to make students interested. How else would you pick a job? So curiosity should be rewarded. Yes, curiosity is rewarded here. Studying should be fun.

1:25:40 Otherwise there would be no point in it. Russian language used to be popular because of great Russian writers. And here is how they advertise learning Russian now: Do you want to understand what is written on the Russian anti-war protester's banner? Study Russian. Is this a stand where all the teachers would advertise their classes? A lot of teachers do it. There are general announcements here and there are courses banners. Anti-capitalists group? Yes. Free radicals? Obviously, there are different kinds of students.

1:26:29 Is everyone okay with the word radicals? It's a word play. There are banners over there, too. Yes, let's check it out. This banner says that studying Russian would give you a bonus pay as a job applicant because the US government considers Russian as a critical language. Russia is a threat again. Now studying Russian is rewarded. How can we translate the word critical? It means important. Critically important? Yes. The US government needs more Russian-speaking professionals.

1:27:15 Is it true that the teachers are motivated to have more students pick their classes? Of course. There is an economic reason behind this. The teachers need more students to continue working at the college. If nobody signs up the teacher gets fired. More students sign up to the class in the first year than there are left by the second year. Teachers are motivated to have as many students pick their class as possible. Who is Zbigniew Brzezinski? Russian propaganda loves bringing his name up. Is it true that he was an enemy of Russia and the Soviet Union? His last name is pronounced as Brzezinski.

1:28:05 He was one of the political advisors in America. He was a National Security Advisor in Jimmy Carter's administration. Some of his speeches were anti-Soviet and some of his critics claimed that he hated everything Russian because he was Polish. This is too easy of an explanation. I've seen him perform once in 2012. I didn't feel like he said anything anti-Russian. Did you see him in person?

1:28:50 Yes. He performed at some meeting in Washington. He was talking about Russia. I would saw that he was quite optimistic about Russia. I think that he had a wider view on Russia than some people claimed. When he was the National Security Advisor he ended the Detente. The Detene facilitated negotiations over arms control which were over once Bzrezinski was appointed as the National Security Advisor. The Soviet Union is often blamed for ending the Detente with the Afghanistan invasion.

1:29:41 In fact, the Detente was over before the USSR invaded Afghanistan. It all started with Carter's administration. We know what Brzezinski advised Carter. They needed to recover after being defeated in Vietnam. They faced an economic crisis as oil prices increased. And they had Watergate in the same year. The US nation faced three major crises in a year. Everything they were proud of - economy, political system, and the army - failed miserably.

1:30:28 How could they remain the best in the world? They needed to find a new way to prove their leadership. Brzezinski advised Carter to extend internal victories on foreign policies. The civil rights movement was victorious, segregation was finally over. Carter would now talk about the human rights violations in the Soviet Union. We have solved the problem while they haven't. Exactly. Carter's predecessors could not point at the USSR because racial segregation was still a thing in the US. Carter was looking down on the Soviet Union. The Detene was over.

1:31:15 Despite the Watergate scandal and the defeat in Vietnam the Americans could say that their country was better than the Soviet Union. This idea was introduced by Brzezinski. Carter liked this idea because he was a man of faith and he cared about human rights. Brzezinski was a great manipulator. There are pictures of former.. Former presidents of Bowdoin College. The latest president is a man in a suit while the first presidents wore gowns.

1:32:02 They are still wearing gowns. I feel like the artist to picture the president in a suit. Gothic style is still very common in American colleges. Professors always wear their gowns on the first and on the last days of studies. American colleges love this Medieval style. It is an interesting question - why should education system look like we're in the Medieval times? I don't have an answer to this question. There is a huge campus in Yale that looks like a Medieval building. Even though the campus was built in 1930s. They built old-fashioned houses on purpose.

1:32:49 There is no Gothic tradition in the US. It was all imported from Europe. This comes down to hierarchy. The higher education system was associated with the elites. The Medieval society was very hierarchical. So they built this Republic of Knowledge, Hesse's Castalia. The Glass Bead Game is a very good metaphor of the higher education system.

1:33:36 All these gowns and Gothic spires should remind the students that they are in a special place now with different rules. You said that some books here surprised you a lot. Yes, they have some books in Russian here that students can borrow. Some of these books were published in the USSR and in Russia..I had these books at home. And some of these books were published in the US. These are the memoirs of Alexandra Tolstaya, the daughter of Leo Tolstoy. This book was signed by her and gifted to one of Bowdoin professors.

1:34:26 Wow. This is a rarity. Chekhov Publishing, New York. This was one of the biggest publishing houses of Russian books. Look at the logo. The Statue of Liberty and a book. In your interviews and lectures you like talking about American goods in the USSR. First metal railways and motor ships, telegraph, Zinger sewing machine, Berdan rifle, the first moveable bridge on Neva, Varyag Cruiser, the Great Constructions.. Magnitogorsk plant, Volgograd tractor plant, Nizhniy Novgorod automobile car plant, Dnieper Hydroelectic Station. All these objects were built or designed with the help of American engineers.

1:35:13 You also said that the Americans like countries that use their technologies. They do. Why? As a nation they care a lot about being a role model for the whole world. It started with the puritans in the 17th century and this model has changed a lot since.. However, they really care about leading the humanity. They like proving this to themselves. The Americans like when other countries copy their political institutions.

1:36:11 Americans like to share their technological and economical knowledge. For them it is a proof of their leading role. When the Japanese invited Americans in the late 19th century they became friends. The Americans called them the Pacific Ocean Yankees. Decades later they would go to war against Japan. The Americans helped Japan built a fleet after the revolution. Russia would also hire American engineers and the US people would appreciate this.

1:37:00 Nicholas I built the railroad from Moscow to Petersburg. And then even the bolsheviks invited American engineers during the industrialization of the country. Eventually, the United States recognized the Soviet Union in 1933. These events are all related. When you're sharing your technologies with another country does it make this country easier to fight in a war? I don't think that this was their logic. We can think about it but I am not sure that this was the plan. When engineers came to work..

1:37:48 I didn't mean that this was a plan. It was one of the reasons. For whom? I don't think that the planned to fight the USSR before the Cold War. There was no potential confrontation with the USSR before the Cold War. During the Cold War they stopped sharing technologies. There were bans and sanctions on the use of technologies. Russian spies would steal the technologies from the US. Even Putin talked about it. They wouldn't hire American engineers.

1:38:34 The United States were still the supplier of new ideas and new technologies. If this was the plan they would be sharing technologies during the Cold War but it didn't happen. How did the US help the Soviet Union during the famine? There was a famine in the Volga region and in the south of Russia and Ukraine. After WWI and the Civil War a lot of men were killed or could no longer work. The Soviet authorities made some economic mistakes and then there were a couple of years of crop failure.

1:39:22 It all led to a famine. All the reserves were gone. Thousands were dying. And the US provided aid to the Soviet Union even though they considered the USSR as villains. President Hoover said that millions were dying and the United States had to help them regardless of their political views. American Relief Administration would work in Russia for a couple of years. There is a book about ARA program in Russia that was recently translated to Russian.

1:40:14 I helped translate this book and now everyone in Russia can find out what ARA did during the famine. And there is a film by Alexander Arkhangelsky and Tatiana Sorokina called The Famine.

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