This is the full transcription of podcast 'Hidden Forces'.
Origins of the Ukraine War & What Comes Next Serhii Plokhy.done #Podcast #Transcription #ReadAlong #KnowledgeUnlocked
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This is the full transcription of podcast 'Hidden Forces'.
Origins of the Ukraine War & What Comes Next Serhii Plokhy.done #Podcast #Transcription #ReadAlong #KnowledgeUnlocked
What's up everybody? My name is Dmitriy Kafinas and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and to learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest in today's episode is Professor Sergei Plohji, the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University and a leading authority on Ukraine, Russia, and Eastern Europe. He's published extensively on the international history of World War II and the Cold War, and he joins me today to discuss the subject of his latest book on the war in Ukraine and the return of history. This is a conversation about national identity, the disintegration of empires, and what will follow from the largest European land war since World War II. How will the outcome of the war in Ukraine inform the evolution of the international order? And what are the most compelling theories that explain Putin's decision to invade (1/40)
in the first place? Was it to build a greater Russia, as some of his detractors have claimed, or did Moscow face legitimate security concerns from NATO enlargement that on their own can explain the course of events? The answer to this last question holds important lessons about the future of European security and US policy towards China, which is what we spent part of the second hour discussing. If you want access to that part of the conversation and you're not already subscribed to Hidden Forces, you can join our premium feed and listen to the second hour of today's episode by going to hiddenforces.io. All of our content tiers give you access to our premium feed, which you can listen to on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app just like you're listening to this episode right now. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person (2/40)
events and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to infoathiddenforces.io and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this incredibly informative conversation with my guest, Professor Serhii Blokhi. Professor Serhii Blokhi, welcome to Hidden Forces. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. The pleasure is all mine, Professor. So before we get into the subject of today's conversation, which is going to build off your latest book, The Russo Ukrainian War, The Return of History, I'd love if you could take a moment to tell me in my audience a little bit about you, your background and your interest areas and focus in the field of history. I am Professor of Ukrainian and European History at Harvard University. And this is more or less what I have been doing for my entire life, my professional life. I was educated in Ukraine, which was at that time part of the Soviet Union. (3/40)
I started my academic career at the University of Dnipro, which is now relatively close to the front lines of this war. I continue it in Canada, University of Alberta in Western Canada. And I am Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard since 2007, Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard. And my field is Ukrainian and European History, but also Global History. One of the courses that I teach at Harvard is on the Yalta Conference. I teach course also on the Cold War, that on the top of course, of course is on Ukrainian and European history. And in that sense, the book that we are discussing today, it brings together different fields, my different interests, but also my connection to the region, connection to Ukraine, connection to the things that are happening today on the battleground. So while I was reading the book, I came to the view that it dealt with two, if not maybe three topics. One was the origin of the war in Ukraine. And folded within that was also a (4/40)
conversation, a big part of it was really a conversation about Russian and Ukrainian identity and the sense of Russian nationhood and how that has evolved both up until the end of the Cold War and then subsequently with the fall of the Soviet Union. And the other part of the book is really a look forward into what the consequences of this war will be for the future and how the global order is evolving. Would you say that that's pretty much an accurate description? Yes, I would say it is an accurate description and the origins of the war, the issues of identity. This is the focus of the first chapters, few chapters, and then the future is the focus of the concluding two chapters. What is also in between, I try to look at the actual developments on the front lines in the course of the last year. So the book was written between March of 2022 and February of 2023. So what certainly the reader will get out of that book will be not just the origins and consequences of the war, but there will (5/40)
be a lot of war itself. Yeah, there's, you devote many chapters to describing actually the progression of the war in the last year. So that was extremely useful as well. And I'm sure it'll be a really good history for people who are maybe in the future and learning about the war later. So when did you begin writing this book? I started writing it really in late March, so it would be more or less one month into the war. And by that time, the shock that came with the war, I was able to overcome it on some level. But also for me, it became clear already in March, in late March, the overall outcome of that war. So we still don't know when it will end and exactly how it will end. But already in late March, it was clear for me that Ukraine would survive as an independent state. And that would be certainly mean defeat for Russia and for Russian aspirations as it was and plans it was going to the war. So from that point of view, at least I thought that I knew what I was talking about in (6/40)
historical perspective. In historical perspective, I mean, I could talk about the origins, I could discuss the developments, and I could also talk in my opinion quite confidently about the future, not the immediate future. I don't know what will happen tomorrow. I don't know exactly what will happen one year from now. But historical frame gives you understanding of the ultimate outcome, long-term outcome of those processes. Because I look at this war as the war of the Soviet succession or Russian succession, one of the wars of the history, story of the disintegration of the Russian Empire, one of the biggest world empires. And we know where the wars end of that sort. They end up with ultimately the victory of the national movements, the formation of the states. And another thing that the first months of the war made me confident of was the ultimate Ukrainian victory. So the victory meaning survival. In the after World War II, in now almost 80 years since then of World War II, there was (7/40)